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Manuscripts, mostly in English or Latin, deposited at the National Library of Wales in 1938.

Important mediæval manuscripts and later literary and historical manuscripts, [12 cent, first ½]-[late 19 cent.], reflecting the collecting interests of the Maurice and Owen families of Clenennau and Brogyntyn.
They include an important mid-fifteenth century miscellany of prose and verse in Middle English (Brogyntyn MS II.1); English and Welsh poetry; plays; astrology and prophecies; chronicles of the history of Britain, one of which is a thirteenth century version of Historia Regum Britanniæ of Geoffrey of Monmouth (Brogyntyn MS I.7); a lute book, [c. 1595] (Brogyntyn MS I.27); a copy of the laws of Hywel Dda [1625x1632] (Brogyntyn MS I.12); legal precedents and other papers of legal interest in Latin and English; pedigrees, genealogy and heraldry of North and South Wales families; religious treatises, prayers, devotions and sermons; a seventeenth-century Latin-Welsh dictionary and other manuscripts of linguistic interest; extracts from classical literature; commonplace books; academic notes; copies of significant historical letters and documents; political tracts; moralistic and philosophical works; memoranda, journals and private papers of members of the Anwyl and Owen families; a few Brogyntyn estate and trust papers, 1727-1792; and notes on public offices and official papers deriving from the administration of Oswestry Corporation, 1660, 1673. Some ancilliary materials, [19 cent, second ½]-[1960s], mostly correspondence and notes relating to individual manuscripts, are also included (MSS I.27a, II.1a, II.10a, II.22a, II.42a, II.54(h), II.56a).

The Explanatio in Psalmos attributed to Haimo of Halberstadt (ff. 1-68 verso), here imperfect by the loss of a quire at the beginning: ']ipse semper est rex iudeorum ... et corpore spirituali et subtili'. The text, corresponding to Migne, Patrologia Latina cxvi, cols. 237-693, begins in the commentary on Psalm 15 and, unaccountably, breaks off at the foot of the first column of f. 68 verso, where the remaining column would have sufficed to complete the commentary on Psalm 150. Written in England, the manner of writing in omissions and the 'dragon initials', but not the script, are suggestive of Canterbury or Rochester.
Written by one good hand. Punctuation by point and punctus elevatus; hyphens. Ink brown. Omissions are regularly made good by writing in small in the margin with a signe-de-renvoi, sometimes by the scribe, sometimes by another hand, sometimes, otiosely, by both (cf. N. R. Ker, English Manuscripts in the Century after the Norman Conquest (Oxford, 1960), p. 50). Nota marks are by the scribe. Spaces for tituli, at least up to f. 45, were originally left blank, perhaps to be filled in in red; they were later filled in in ink, by the scribe, in capitals. Between ff. 21 verso and 45, tituli, written small, now partly cropped, appear in the outer margin.

A Bible, written in France, [13 cent., first ¼]. Texts: 'Hic incipit epistola beati Ieromini ...' [Friedrich Stegmüller, Repertorium biblicum medii aevi (Madrid, 1950-80) 284] (ff.1-2); Stegmüller 284 repeated (ff. 3-4); and The Bible (ff. 5-352). The OT, compared with the order established about 1230 in Parisian Bibles (see for instance N. R. Ker and A. J. Piper, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries (Oxford, 1969- ), I, 96-97) lacks the Prayer of Manasses and 2 Ezra. The unusual NT order is: Gospels, Acts, Catholic Epistles, Pauline Epistles and Apocalypse. For the OT, prologues are lacking for 2 Chronicles, Ecclesiastes and Wisdom (the Paris prologues for the latter two are added by another hand in the margin), that for Tobit is Stegmüller 349, while the series for the Minor Prophets, Amos to Machabees, is Stegmüller 512, 516, 522, 525, 527, 529, 532, 535, 540, 544 and 551. The only prologues in the NT are, for the Gospels, Stegmüller 590, 607, 615 and 624, for Acts 640; for the Catholic Epistles (James) Jacobus ecclesie ierosolimitane post apostolos curam et regnum suscepit ... uel inuisibiliter percutiat; and for the Epistle to the Romans, Stegmüller 662. The hand which added the prologues in the margin of the OT also added in the margin the standard prologues for the Pauline Epistles up to Philippians.
The text was corrected throughout, before decoration (see f. 104); it was annotated and further corrected by several thirteenth-century hands. Some of the larger omissions, neatly made good in the margin by the scribe, have their text otiosely repeated, in circles, by a contemporary hand. Between 2 Chronicles and Esther, chapter divisions were revised by one of the correcting hands, in conformity with the Paris Bible, most notably in Esther, where nine chapters become sixteen. The text is lightly glossed throughout, by pen and plummet, by the same thirteenth-century hands. Cited by glosses, apart from the Fathers, are Bede (ff. 281 verso, 323), Raban (f. 270), Hugh of St Victor (ff. 5, 245 verso, 258, 323 verso), Richard of St Victor (f. 160) and 'Ray[mund]' (f. 166).

Manuscripts, mainly in English but also including the majority (ten out of thirteen) of the Welsh Brogyntyn manuscripts, deposited at the National Library of Wales in 1934.

A composite volume in two sections, the first, [15 cent., first ¼ (after 1401)] (ff. 1-18), containing the Anglo-Norman treatise on Seneschaucy (ff. 4-7), Walter of Henley's treatise on husbandry in Anglo-Norman (ff. 7-10), and various legal texts (ff. 1-4, 10-18 verso); the second, [14 cent, first ½], a defective copy of an unidentified Latin text on vaticination (ff. 19-24). The two sections were probably not bound together until after 1837.
Section i is written by a single hand, in anglicana, in uniform script in pale ink, apart from f. 18 verso, which was evidently filled later by the same hand. Section ii is written in anglicana by a single hand of the first half of the fourteenth century, in brown ink. There is no rubrication. The scribe exaggerates ascenders in top lines and decorates them with profile heads. There are six stabmarks in the inner margin.

A formulary or commonplace book compiled by Richard de Bury, otherwise Richard Aungerville, civil servant, diplomat, Privy Seal 1329-1333, Lord Chancellor and bishop of Durham from 1333, containing his transcriptions of some 1,500 documents, mostly official administrative and courtesy correspondence, both foreign and domestic, mainly of English origin or sent to Englishmen from the court of Rome (ff. 1-105 verso, 116 verso-173, 179-239); together with a treatise on eloquence (ff. 105 verso-116).
Some five hundred of the letters were published in The Liber Epistolaris of Richard de Bury, ed. by N. Denholm-Young (London, 1950); a further three hundred, calendared by Denholm-Young, were previously published in Thomas Rymer's Foedera (London, 1816-30) and elsewhere. Full indexes are provided by Denholm-Young.

A volume containing a copy, written in a late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century hand, of the Polychronicon of Ranulf Higden to 1342 (ff. 1-307).
The text is written by one hand, except for notes on f. 1 verso, in anglicana, with variation in degree of currency and in ink; headings in fere-textura. There has been overwriting of the text in places, where letters were indistinct, notably on ff. 1-20. Correction of the text, despite first appearances, is all probably by the scribe, writing compactly (e.g. on ff. 52 and 62), as also is the inserted leaf containing omitted text (f. 279). There are six- to nine-line parti-coloured red/blue initials for the beginnings of chapters, infilled with good red and purple pen-work which includes beasts and foliage, with red/blue nerfs and flourished borders (f. 210 is a page where the pen-work was not completed); there are three-line blue initials for the index and two-line for chapters, all with red pen-work. The rubricator has mistaken many initials, including three of those which should form Higden's acrostic. On f. 52 are diagrams of Noah's ark. Headings, underlining, dates in the margin, paragraph marks and touching of initials in the text are all in red. An index to the Polychronicon is on ff. iii-xii.

The Tretyse of þe Seven Poyntes of Trewe Love and Everlastynge Wisdame, translated from the Latin Horologium Sapientiae; see the edition of K. Horstmann, 'Orologium Sapientiae or the Seven Poyntes of Trewe Wisdom aus MS. Douce 114', Anglia, 10 (1888), 323-389, from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 114 (announced variant readings from Caxton never published). W. Wichgraf, 'Susos Horologium Sapientiae in England nach Handschriften des 15. Jahrhunderts', Anglia, 53 (1929), 123-,33, 269-287, 345-373, and ibid. 54 (1930), 351-352, identifies the Latin origin of the text in Henry Suso's Horologium Sapientiae, comments on Horstmann's edition and lists five manuscripts of the complete English text, excluding ours, together with manuscripts in which chapters 4 and 5 each appear on their own; see also W. Wichgraf, 'Susos Horologium Sapientiae in England nach Mss des 15. Jahrhunderts', Archiv für neueren Sprachen und literaturen, 169 (1936), 176-181, which includes discussion of MS Cambrai 255.
The Latin colophon on f. 90, referring to Mount Grace, is probably derivative; it appears at the end of the same text in MS Cambrai 255 (see Catalogue générale des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France, vol. 17 (Paris, 1891), p. 88; cf. N. R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain (London, 1964) and Andrew G. Watson, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: Supplement to the Second Edition (London, 1987), Mount Grace). Written by a single hand, in good anglicana formata. Brown ink. Parti-coloured red/blue 7-line initials on ff. 1 verso and 8, accompanied by red and purple penwork and by red/blue nerfs and flourished borders; on f. 1 and elsewhere for chapter-openings, 3-line blue initials with red penwork (4-line for 'I' on f. 41 verso); headings and sidenotes in red, alternate red and blue paragraph marks.

A miscellany of texts in prose and verse, mainly in English but a few in Latin. The volume was written by sixteen scribes (see Daniel Huws (1996), pp. 190-199, now superseding Auvo Kurvinen (1953)), with writing styles varying from bastard secretary (ff. 8 verso-11) to fere-textura; ink varying from light to very dark brown and dark sepia. A selection of ten texts from the manuscript was published in Early English Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, ed. by J. O. Halliwell (London, 1855).
Among the main texts are the Arthurian romance 'Sir Gawaine and the Carle of Carlyle' (ff. 12-26), a treatise on the limning of books (ff. 33-52 verso), a life of St Catherine of Alexandria (ff. 91-129) and a prose version of the Middle English poem 'The Siege of Jerusalem' (ff. 157 verso-184). Ancilliary materials, [mid-20 cent.], comprising typescript notes relating to the manuscript are filed separately (Brogyntyn MS II.1a).

A volume containing a Latin account of early British history in the form of a pedigree-chronicle from Aeneas and Julius Caesar to Yvor son of Cadwaladr and the Saxons, in the hand of Thomas Edenham (see ff. 4 verso, 7 and f. 41 verso ('Ednham' at foot of page)) at 'Berford' in 1483 (ff. 44 recto-verso, 67, 70, 79 verso, 80, 86 verso, 88 verso, 94 and 96 verso). Folios 4-19 verso were evidently written in 1487 (f. 18 verso). Thomas Edenham, O.F.M., was a native of Edenham, Lincolnshire (f. 7). The contents of ff. 31 verso-37 ('De ciuitate Lincolnie et eius preconiis') suggest that he remained within the diocese of Lincoln. The diocese offers several places called Barford (medieval 'Berford'): near Kettering, near Banbury and near Bedford; none has an obvious Franciscan connection.
Written by a single scribe in a secretary script with anglicana traits. Headings, paragraph marks, roundels and their connecting lines, foliation, underlining of proper names and most dates are in red.

A copy of a printed book consisting of two parts, Expositio hymnorum secundum vsum Sarum, followed by Expositio sequentiarum (London, 1515, STC 16127), printed by Richard Pynson, whose full-page device appears at the end of the first part; see also colophons on f. lxiii verso of first part and f. l of second. Woodcut of a monk reading used twice before and once at end of first part, and once before second part.
Other copies are at Trinity College, Oxford, and Cambridge University Library (see William Carew Hazlitt, Bibliographical Collections and Notes, 3rd series (London, 1887), p. 77, and C. E. Sayle, Early English Printed Books in the University Library, Cambridge (Cambridge, 1900), p. 56, no. 263).

A printed copy of Marcus Vigerius, Decachordum Christianum ... Controuersiaque [d]e instrumentis dominice Passionis (Paris, 1517), printed by Josse Badius Ascensius in two parts, with the printer's woodcut device on title page of both sections, decorated initials throughout and illustrative woodcuts on ff. ii verso, xxxviii, lxxi verso, lxxxii verso, cvi, cxxvii, cxxxvii verso, cccv, cccxiii verso and cccxxiv of first part (for full description see Ph. Renouard, Bibliographie des Impressions et des Oeuvres de Josse Badius Ascensius (Paris, 1908), iii, 352-353, and Brigitte Moreau, Inventaire des éditions parisiennes du XVIe siècle, tome ii, 1511-20 (Paris, 1977), p. 455, no. 1725).
Numerous marginal notes in Latin, mostly textual glosses, have been added by an unidentified hand of the sixteenth century. The preserved pastedowns (f. 4, f. xxxiv at end) are parchment leaves from a treatise on canon law in Latin, [14 cent., first ½] (two columns, written space 125 x 95 mm.).

Three dramatic Protestant dialogues translated into English, [c. 1540], by Robert Radcliffe of Jesus College, Cambridge, from the Latin Dialogi Aliquot of the French humanist and rhetorician Jean Tixier de Ravisi (Ravisius Textor), in a presentation manuscript for Henry VIII, with dedications: 'vnto oure moste Christian kynge supreme heed of the Chirche of Englande, and of oure happye remembrance, kynge henry the, viii' (p. 1); 'Your gracys humble subiect, Robert Radcliff professre of Artes, and schole maist[er] of Jesus Collegg in Cambrygg' (p. 89); the gift may be connected with Radcliffe's attempts to gain favour at court (cf. his letter, 1540, to Thomas Cromwell in Letters and Papers Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, 23 vols (London, 1862-1932), xvi (1898), 204 (no. 400)). Little else is known of Robert Radcliffe; he cannot be identified with the dramatist Ralph Radcliffe (c. 1519-1559), who was schoolmaster, 1546-1559, at Hitchin, Hertfordshire, and is mentioned in John Bale, Scriptorum Illustrium Maioris Brytanniæ Catalogus, 2 vols (Basel, 1557-9, repr. Farnborough, 1971), I (1557), 700-701, and ibid., Index Britannniae Scriptorum (Cambridge, 1990), pp. xxxi, 332-334.
A note by Lord Harlech, November 1917, requesting prompt return of the volume, is attached inside front cover. Ancilliary materials relating to the (spurious) authorship of the manuscript are filed separately; they include four letters, 1917-1930, from Reginald L. Hine, Hitchin, and one, 1931, from Robin Flower, British Museum, to Lord Harlech, together with a press-cutting from The Morning Post, 1 September 1930 (Brogyntyn MS II.10a).

A volume containing mainly pedigrees of North and South Wales families written by two principal scribes of the circle of George Owen of Henllys, Pembrokeshire.
(a) Pages 1, 7-209, 223-232, 239-256 and possibly 372-373 are written by a scribe who, although experienced in penning a good secretary hand and in executing ornate headings, is often inaccurate in his transcription of Welsh personal and place-names; he also wrote the line 'Owain ap Gruffith /i/ gelwid Gwinn ap Gr: yn jawn' on p. 41, in italic (examples of the same italic hand are found in the margins of pp. 19, 66, 113, 355, 356, 361 and elsewhere). This section comprises a collection of pedigrees mostly of North Wales families, including 'Bonedd y Saint' (pp. 84-90); the prose text 'Pedwar Marchog ar Higen oedd yn llys Arthur' (end wanting) (pp. 37-38); the dates of battles in the 'Wars of the Roses' (pp. 31, 208); five englynion, including one by Richard Davies, bishop of St Davids (p. 1), and other englynion dispersed among the pedigrees (pp. 57, 78, 92, 114-115, 170), together with the series of forty englynion entitled 'Campod Manuwel' (pp. 223-232); and the prose piece 'Disgrifiad Arfau', a Welsh translation of the heraldic treatise 'Tractatus de Armis', attributed to John Trevor, bishop of St Asaph (pp. 239-256). The ultimate source of this section is the collection of pedigrees and other texts written, [c. 1510], by 'Syr' Tomas ab Ieuan ap Deicws in Peniarth MS 127 (see p. 53); however, internal evidence suggests that the scribe was copying from the transcript of Peniarth MS 127 in NLW MS 17112D rather than directly from the original (see p. 104, where he begins copying the note 'Darfu examinatio y llyfrev newydd hyd yma' which occurs on f. 66 verso of NLW MS 17112D, before he realized his mistake). Both Brogyntyn MS I.15 and NLW MS 17112D preserve the original order of the text of Peniarth MS 127, which has been subsequently disarranged in binding. (b) Pages 211-212, 269-371, 374-411 are written by another experienced scribe whose display script is almost indistinguishable from that of the first scribe. These pages contain pedigrees mostly of South Wales families and include two copies of 'Llyma enway Kwnkwerwyr y rhai a vyant yngwlad Vorgannwg ay harfay' (pp. 280, 361-362), a third containing merely a short list of the conquerors' names (p. 310), and two copies of 'Llyma achoed Saint ynys Brydain' [= 'Bonedd y Saint'] (pp. 363-365, 385-386). The text on pp. 211-212, as indicated by a note in the hand of George Owen of Henllys at the head of p. 211, was copied in 1596 from the manuscript of 'Hyw Lewis Sr morgan' of Hafodwen, Carmarthenshire, which 'D'd ap Ienkin m'edd o Vachynlleth' wrote in 1586; the original is now NLW MS 3055D (Mostyn MS 159), pp. 232-233. The text on pp. 271-343 is partly derived from a manuscript written in 1513 by the Carmarthenshire poet and genealogist Ieuan Brechfa for 'Mastr John ap Henry ap Rees', with some of the pedigrees brought down to the second half of the sixteenth century; Ieuan Brechfa's manuscript does not seem to have survived; it is not Peniarth MS 131, pp. 199-308, which is thought to be in his hand. The source of pp. 345-411 is unknown, although the text on pp. 347-365 follows very closely that in Peniarth MS 143, pp. [?1-3], 4, 47-48, 7-19, 33-46, 49-52, written by the same mid-sixteenth century scribe who wrote many of the religious texts in Cardiff Central Library Havod MS 22. A leaf containing a prophecy in English verse, written in a late-sixteenth century hand, has been tipped in after the main text (pp. 413-414).

Autograph drafts of poems in Latin and Greek, 1571-1611, by Charles Bill, MA (c. 1551-post 1611) of Eton and King's College, Cambridge, later secretary to William Brooke, 10th baron Cobham, and finally schoolmaster at Bagshot, Surrey (see Charles Henry Cooper and Thompson Cooper, Athenae Cantabrigienses, 3 vols (Cambridge, 1858-1913) ii, 527-528).

A volume containing notes in legal French, [late 16 cent. x early 17 cent.], on English land law, with an index of subjects (f. 124 recto-verso).

A copy of Siôn Dafydd Rhys, Cambrobrytannicæ Cymraecæve Lingvae Institvtiones et Rvdimenta... (London: Thomas Orwin, 1592, ESTC S115912), with manuscript additions in a number of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century hands throughout the volume and on the back fly-leaves, including Welsh verse in strict and free metre on pp. 98, 151, 196, 200 and 308-309, and 'pedwar mesir arhigain Cerdd Dant', 'y pedwar mesir arhugain Cerdd dafod' and 'y saith fesur ar hugain, ne'r saith fesurau [Cerdd Dant]' on pp. 305-307, together with a drawing of a Welsh triple harp and a diagram illustrating the tuning of its three sets of strings on p. 308.
The Welsh verses on p. 98 are probably in the hand of Robert Lloyd, whose name occurs on pp. 95, 98 and 157, and those on pp. 196 and 200 in the hand of Ffoulk Edwardes, whose name occurs on p. 156. The eighteenth-century hand which added the dates to poems on pp. 45, 164, 181, 183, 184, 190 and 248 probably also copied the verses on pp. 151, 248 and the texts on pp. 305-309.

A volume containing mainly notes in Latin on tragedy, and on Classical literature and philosophy, [1598x1600], in various hands, but mainly that of Emmanuell Giffard (MA 1603, d. 1633), of Christ's College, Cambridge, later MP for Rye and for Bury St Edmunds (see Alumni Cantabrigienses). Giffard received the book as a gift from John Stead (f. 78 verso), admitted to the same college as fellow-commoner 1598-9 (see Alumni Cantabrigienses).
The main subjects of study are the tragedies of Seneca (ff. 6-54 verso). A few medical notes are included (ff. 1-2).