Ffeil NLW MS 23985A. - Lewis Johnes' Book,

An imperfect copy, lacking title-page, and all following f. cxxxvi, of an unidentified early sixteenth-century printed edition of the Latin Decretales of Gregory IX. The text ends at the beginning of c. 1, X, De fideiussoribus, III, 22. Preceding the Decretales are sixteen originally-blank paper leaves, and a vellum leaf containing a fragment of a medieval Latin text, in a XIII cent. hand, originally used as a front pastedown, now raised and left as a fly-leaf. The covers bear blind-tooled rolled decorations of Oldham's 'heads in medallions' type, similar to his HM. h (29), identified as a London production of 1533-44; see further J.B. Oldham, English Blind-Stamped Bindings (Cambridge, 1952), 54 & plate L.
The volume was owned at the end of the sixteenth or beginning of the seventeenth centuries by 'Lewis Johnes', who added his name on ff. 16, xlvv, xlvi and inside rear cover. He also added pen trials and Welsh poetry to the sixteen preliminary blank leaves. The poems include an early cywydd attributed to Siôn Tudur (c. 1522-1602) (ff. 9 verso-10), a text seemingly first attested in Cardiff MS 2.114 of 1564-5, see Enid Roberts, Gwaith Siôn Tudur (Caerdydd, 1980) I, 672; an incomplete cywydd, attributed elsewhere to Gruffudd ab Ieuan ap Llywelyn Fychan (c. 1485-1553) (f. 12); and a series of 37 englynion of gnomic type, each beginning with 'Eira mynydd ...' (ff. 5 verso-9). These englynion are not among those appearing in Oxford Jesus College MS 111 (Llyfr Coch Hergest), col. 1028-9 (see Kenneth Jackson, Early Welsh Gnomic Poems, Cardiff, 1935, 22-6), and their form and contents suggest that they are later-dating imitations of the genre, seemingly unattested. The name of Lewis Johnes (or Jones), again in a late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century hand, also appears in the first part of NLW MS 5283B (pp. 7, 98, 119, 126, 161, 166 and 170), a collection of cywyddau, mostly written in his hand, which begins with the above-mentioned poem attributed to Siôn Tudur. Johnes' legal connection, exemplified by his ownership of the Decretales, may also be reflected in the legal script which he adopts when writing his name on pp. 98 & 126 of this manuscript, a volume which also bears the names of Evan Johnes (p. 166), Hughe Johnes (p. 55) and Harry Jones (pp. 13, 43, 88, 140), possibly kinsmen.