4 Proceedings of the Royal Irish A rndemy. 



time to the end of the third quarter of the seventeenth century, when John 

 Rush worth, Deputy Clerk to the House of Commons during the Long 

 Parliament, presented it to the Bodleian, its history is a hlank; and, as 

 the products of the Iiish school of sciihes in Ireland were not up to that 

 date differentiated from theii- products in England, as also no one who was 

 nnaoquainted with Tlu AnrwJs of the Four Masters could he expected to 

 know anything abotit MacEegol, it was assumed that he was an Englishman. 

 Dr. O'Conor, however, gives various acute reasons from the internal 

 eA"idence of the iis. itself, which, with cumulative force, drive home the 

 conclusion that it was written, not in England, hut in Ireland; and humorously 

 adds : — 



" ffos cffo versicvlos feci, tulit alter TionoremP 



Passing to the intrinsic features of the book itself, the 169 leaves of thick 

 and coarse vellum measure 14 hy lOg inches. It is thus, according to 

 Su- John T. GUbert,' " the largest sized of the old Ii-ish Gospel books." Its 

 present binding, which is very strong and tight, and does not permit of a 

 completely adequate photograph Ijeing taken of any of the interior pages, is 

 in the usual Bodleian style of about the beginning of the nineteenth century. 

 The contents are (I) the fom- Gospels according to St. Jerome's Yulgate,= in a 

 text which, as Dr. Abbott thinks,' is very like that of the Book of KeUs ; 

 (II) illuminated poiiraits of SS. Mark, Luke, and John prefixed to then- 

 i-espective works ; (Til) a bungling variety of the traditional hexameters on 

 the four evangelists,* together with the subscription ah-eady mentioned. 

 These occupy the last page, which has been di\dded into six equal spaces with 

 a mde border^ ; and, (IV) the Xorthumbiian and Mercian interlineation, 

 together with a pen-and-ink sketch of St. Mark on the blank page 51 recto, 

 and thirteen quaint figures mostly at the lx)ttom of the pages on which they 

 occur. All these, being the work of the interlineators, may be dismissed from 

 further notice here. 



It is evident that the portrait of St. Matthew, with probably a quantity of 

 the usual prefatory matter, has been lost, amid the many ^acissitudes thi-ough 

 which the MS. passed before it fortunately came into the possession of 

 Eushworth. Indeed it bears traces of having been very roughly handled, 

 and of having been out in all kinds of weather. 



' yational 3£SS. of IreUnd, vol. 1, p. xiii. His tliree lithographs are full-sized. 

 = Codex B. ' CeltU Ornaments from the Bool: of EelU. 



' Found in the following Codices, Fiildcnsis, and Gospels of Beneventum (Brit. Mns. MS. 

 Add . No. 5463). 



^ Eeproduped by Gilbert, plate zxiT. of the above-named work. 



