Copy of an agreement of William, Lord Fitzhugh, and Abbot John of the Cistercian Abbey of Jervaulx in 1437, concerning a quarrel over land in Feldom, in Latin, large manuscript document on parchment [England (Richmond, North Yorkshire), dated 27 September 1597]

Large single-sheet document, with 41 long lines of main text copying the agreement of 1437, plus another 10 lines of endorsement at foot, in an ornamental calligraphic English secretarial hand with capitals, ascenders and descenders with penwork flourishes (the notarial mark in the same hand, at the foot, recording the scribe's name as William Fothergill), reverse with short contemporary endorsement, some small spots, stains and folds, overall in excellent condition, 460 by 470mm.; in foolscap envelope with notes from Sotheby's sale

Provenance:
1. Jervaulx Abbey was founded in 1145, and dedicated to the Virgin in 1156. It grew quickly to be one of the great Cistercian houses of medieval England, and in June 1537 its last abbot, Adam Sedburgh, joined the Pilgrimage of Grace and was hanged, with the monastery then forfeit to the king. This early closure during the Dissolution, as well as the blowing up of the building with gunpowder and robbing the roofs of lead, ensured that very little survives of the archive of Jervaulx, and only ten manuscripts from their library can now be traced (N.R. Ker, Medieval Libraries, 2nd ed., 1964, p. 105, all in grand institutions in the United Kingdom or Ireland). The estate of Feldom came to them in the thirteenth century, and was granted by the Crown to Matthew Stuart, 4th Earl of Lennox, alongside the abbey itself in 1540. The present document must be a copy made as part of a subsequent land dispute, proving the abbey's claims to Feldom, and thus also the claims of their legal heirs.

2. Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872), this his MS. 40,402; passing after his death to his heirs, and thence to Lionel and Philip Robinson, whose book dealership operated from the rooms in which the present auction is held. Sold as part of the Phillipps' collection in Sotheby's, 13 April 1981, lot 216 (part i).

3. Alan G. Thomas (1911-92), London bookseller; his posthumous sale in Sotheby's 21 June 1993, lot, 11 (part 13), to Martin Schøyen (his MS. 1675/12) and thereafter kept in his London library.