Physical description

Form:

Codex

Paper

Watermark: a one-handled pot with the initials IV on the body and a crescent at the top. No perfect matches with Briquet, Heawood, or Churchill.

Folio. Collation not attempted.

This autograph manuscript is fairly neatly written and well spaced (though near the end of the volume there are words excised, written sideways and above the margins). Margins are ruled in brown: one along the top of the page, one on the left, and three on the right, creating three columns. References, to page numbers or biblical verses, often appear in the left margin.

There is one hand in the manuscript, Elizabeth Hastings's autograph. It matches with the hand in some of her letters (e.g. the postscript in Huntington MS HA 4834).

Hand A [or Elizabeth Hastings] (fols 3r-5r, 6r-10r, 11r-12r, 13r-15v, 17r-19r, 20r-23v, 26r-29r, 30r-v, 34v-35v, 38r-v, 42r-44r, 60r, 75r-76r): italic.

Contemporary limp vellum, with one tie on the upper cover, near the middle. On the inside lower cover there is a flap of vellum with a leather thong. Originally one would have tucked the manuscript inside this back flap then tied the leather strips together. The cover is uneven, so the measurement was taken at its largest point. Dimensions: 286x205mm.

1-90 fols. Unfoliated.

Good.

Provenance

This manuscript was compiled between 1625 and 1633. It seems to have remained in the Hastings family.

The manuscript is part of the Hastings family collection. " "The Hastings Collection was purchased by the Huntington Library in January 1927 from Maggs Brothers of London, who had acquired the papers from Edith Maud Abney-Hastings, Countess of Loudoun. A small group of ca. 100 miscellaneous Hastings manuscripts was purchased from Lady Edith Maclaren in 1977"" (Guide to British Historical Manuscripts in the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1982, p. 81).