THE HAMPSHIRE ANTIQUARY & NATURALIST. 



But I have one word more about Westbury. It 

 was here, and not at Westbury in Wilts, as some 

 histories have it, that the meeting of Henry I and 

 Robert of Normandy took place. The one came from 

 Odiham, the other from Gosport. They were about 

 as likely to meet at Sheffield as all down in Wilts. 

 Westbury is only a short mile from theGosport-road. 



WEATHER REPORT FOR THE WEEK. 

 From the meterological register made at the Ordnance 

 Survey Office, Southampton, under the direction of Col. Sir 

 Chu. Wilson. K.C.B., K.C.M.G., F.R.S., R.E. Lat. 50 

 54' 50" N. ; long. i24'o" W. ; height above sea, 84 feet. 

 Observers Sergt. T. Chambers, R.E., and Mr. J. T. Cook. 



Black bulb in vacuo. 



THE HAMPSHIRE INDEPENDENT, March 29, 1890. 



"THE BOOK OF NUNNAMINSTER." 



The Hampshire Record Society has now issued to 

 its subscribers a volume dealing with " An ancient 

 manuscript of the eighth or ninth century formerly 

 belonging to St. Mary's Abbey, or Nunnaminster, Win- 

 chester."* This manuscript is a missal or liturgy 

 written by some unknown scribe and containing 

 " the accounts of the Passion of our Lord as narrated 

 by the four Evangelists, followed by a short series of 

 prayers or collects, the greater part of which follow 

 the order of our Lord's life and passion, which are in 

 their turn succeeded by a few metrical pieces." Apart 



* "An Ancient Manuscript of the Eighth or Ninth 

 Century formerly belonging to St. Mary's Abbey, or 

 Nunnaminster, Winchester." Edited by Walter de Gray 

 Birch, F.S. A., of the British Museum. London: Simpkin 

 and Marshall ; Winchester : Warren and Son. 1889. 



from its caligraphic importance the document is 

 of considerable interest in its bearing upon early 

 liturgical history, but fewdocumentsofso early an age 

 being known. Chief among the metrical pieces is the 

 " Lurica (or Lorica) of Lodgen," supposed to have 

 been composed by the celebrated Welsh monk and 

 historian, Gildas, of which this manuscript is the 

 earliest copy known. As to the date of the document, 

 although some authorities place it in the eighth 

 century (pp. 10, 27), Mr. Birch is more inclined to date 

 the writing in the ninth century (p. 17). Its connec- 

 tion with the Nunnaminster lies in the fact that it was 

 in the possession of that monastery in the ninth or 

 tenth century, and that during that period some one 

 who had access to the book not improbably the 

 Abbess of the time inserted on a blank space a 

 record of the boundaries of the property ot Queen 

 Ealhswith (and therefore of St. Mary's Abbey) in 

 Winchester. The manuscript appears to have been 

 intended for use by the head of a nunnery, but it 

 could not have been compiled for this particular in- 

 stitution, for it w r as not till the close of the ninth 

 century that it was founded by Alfred the Great and 

 his queen. There is nothing in the document itself 

 to throw light upon this point. A map is given to 

 illustrate the entry of the boundaries of the abbey 

 property, which approximately occupied the 

 ground between the lower part of High-street, 

 or Cheap-street as it was then called, and Colebrook- 

 street ; but every vestige of the abbey has so com- 

 pletely disappeared that no attempt is made to 

 indicate the exact spot occupied by the abbey. 

 Occasion is taken by the editor to give some par- 

 ticulars of the history of the abbey, with a list of 

 the abbesses, to which additions have been made 

 from the Compotus Rolls of Froyle Manor, and also 

 the adjustment by King Edgar of the boundaries 

 between this and the Old and New Minsters. We 

 gave a short historic account of the abbey in the 

 Hampshire Independent of October 26 last in con- 

 nection with the sale of the site, which we are now 

 glad to know has become public property. 



The subsequent history of the manuscript is equally 

 fragmentary. Presumably it must have got into lay 

 hands on the dissolution of the monastery (which was 

 delayed till 1540), and then or soon after got into the 

 possession of some member of the Roscarek family of 

 Cornwall or Ireland. In 1720 it was purchased by 

 Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford, from John War- 

 burton, of co. Somerset, and is now in the Harleiaa 

 Library at the British Museum. 



Facsimiles are given of a page of the manuscript, 

 which is written in a clear bold hand, and of its 

 ornamental initial letters. The document consists of 

 41 leaves of stout vellum 85 by 6j inches. Mr. Birch 

 does not give us any information as to the binding, 

 but it appears incidentally that the leaves must have 

 been fastened together in book form at the time of 

 compilation, for two leaves have been cut out leaving 

 only a narrow slip running up the back without 



