Resumen de The Early Provenance of Rawlinson D. 328
Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D. 328 is a rare example of a manuscript belonging to a grammar school student from fifteenth-century England. Containing grammatical texts in Latin and Middle English, notes related to Plymouth and Exeter, copies of writs, Latin hymns, proverbs, historical notes, and courtesy texts, it has previously been studied as an artefact of pedagogical history. It contains, after all, numerous texts copied out by a single person as part of his grammar school education. But as I argue here, this manuscript is also worthy of attention because of its exceptionally rich provenance evidence. That is, this manuscript contains the names of numerous individuals, many of whom I have identified for the first time. For those who were previously identified, I here report on new archival evidence that fills out their biographies. All these names circle around the urban elite of southwest England in the second half of the fifteenth century. In addition to offering evidence for the various individuals associated with the manuscript, in this essay I also propose a new identification for the manuscript’s owner-scribe, Walter Pollard. Previous scholars assumed that Pollard was a merchant from Plymouth. But based on archival evidence, I argue that the owner-scribe of Rawlinson D. 328 was much more likely a priest from nearby.
