Cordyal.

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Accession number: 
PML 677
Author: 
Gerardus, de Vliederhoven, active 14th century
Published: 
[Westminster] : William Caxton, 24 March 1479.
Description: 
[78] leaves ; 31 cm (fol.)
Credit Line: 
Purchased with the Bennett collection, 1902.
Notes: 

Title from author's prologue (leaf [1]/4v): Thus endeth the prologue of this book named .Cordyal. Which treteth of the four last and final thinges that ben to come. And here beginneth the first parte of the seide four last thinges.
Imprint from colophon (leaf 10/5v): ... Whiche werke present I began[n] the morn[n] after the saide Purificacion of our blissid Lady. Which was the daye of Seint Blase Bisshop and Martir. And finisshed on the even of thannunicacion of our said bilissid Lady fallyng on the wednesday the xxiiii daye of Marche. In the xix yeer of Kyng Edwarde the fourthe.
Printed in Caxton's types 2*:135B and 3:136B.
Collation: [1-9⁸ 10⁶]: 78 leaves, leaves [1]/1 and [10]/6 blank.
Paper format: Chancery folio
The text is ascribed to Dionysius Carthusiensis and to Gerardus de Vliederhoven.
Translated by Anthony Wydeville (or Woodville), Earl Rivers.
PML copy leaf dimensions: 29.3 x 20.3 cm
Bennett completed this copy in 1898: he purchased Maurice Johnson's copy at Sotheby's, 21 March 1898 (De Ricci, Census of Caxtons, 33.13) and transferred quire 3 to his copy; Johnson's then-incomplete copy was sold on to Boies Penrose and Abel Berland.

Binding: 
Contemporary blind-stamped English calf over wooden boards (31 x 22 cm), sewn on 4 supports by Caxton's binder (Group B). Manuscript of a list in Latin as front pastedown (same text appears on MA 717), plain paper as rear pastedown and fly leaves; plain endbands.
Variant Title: 

Of the four last thinges

Inscriptions/Markings: 

Hand decoration: Rubricated, contemporary red lombards and paragraph marks. Annotations: Lines reversed and corrected in margin by labeling with letters b and a by Caxton Shop Hand A (leaf [8]/5v), see BMC XI 113. Contemporary alpha-numeric quire signatures in bottom right corner (except quire c). (Line corrections and quire signatures added in Caxton's shop.) Leaf [10]/4v with references to the pope, Santiago and Rome pilgrimages scratched out.

Provenance: 
John Lowe, inscription (removed, now MA 717); unidentified shelf mark E.5 (front pastedown); Bertram Ashburnham (1797-1878), Earl of Ashburnham, shelf mark 29.D (front pastedown); his sale, Sotheby's, 25 June 1897, lot 1187, to Pickering for Bennett; Richard Bennett (1849-1930), armorial bookplate (rear pastedown) and bibliographical notes: No. 269, 1/7/97 and price codes: yem/-/- +com, binding s/-/-, 8 leaves (i.e. quire [3] (Berland sale, Christie's NY, 1 Oct. 2001, pt. 1, lot 30): Richard Harrys, cleric, inscription below colophon; Bridgett Edwardes, inscription, 17th century; Maurice Johnson (1688-1755), of Spalding, Lincolnshire; his sale, Sotheby's, 21 March 1898, lot 433, to Pickering for Bennett) m/m/m (front fly leaf recto); Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913), purchased with the Bennett collection, 1902.
Classification: 
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