Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/368

 272 ILLUSTRATIONS OF MEDIEVAL MANNERS, COSTUME, &C. This document is entitled, " L' ordonnance et maniere de creer et faire nouveaulx Chevaliers du baing, au temps de paix, selon la custmne d'Angleterre," commencing thus, — " Quant ung escuier vient en la Cour pour recevoir I'ordre de Chevalre," {sic.) It was not, however, very correctly given, and Bysshe has not recorded the MS. from which he derived it. Dugdale, in his History of Warwickshire, published 1656, gives an English version from an ancient tract in French, pre- served in a MS. in the College of Arms and he added im- pressions from the plates used previously by Bysshe, taken from Le Neve's copy ; the subjects were drawn in the origi- nal in much larger proportions, and illuminated, as Dugdale supposed, about the time of Edward IV. Anstis, in his observations introductory to an Essay upon the Knighthood of the Bath, 17.25, speaks of several copies remaining, of earlier date than the reign of Henry VII., one of them in his own possession ; and he printed another, from Cott. MS. Nero, C. ix, with an old English version ^. Ancient transcripts of the French text are preserved in Cott. MSS. Nero, D. ii. f. 254 ; Domit. xviii. f. 243 ; and Ashmolean MS. 764, f. 90^. A copy of the English text may be found in Harl. MS. 41, f. 19. The formulary is preserved also in Arundel MS. in Coll. Arm. xxvi. f. 28. The tract in Lansd. MS. 285, f. 7, agrees in substance, and a copy is found in one of the Lambeth MSS. The rare tract, entitled, " The man- ner of creating the Knights of the Ancient and Honourable Order of the Bath, according to the Custom used in England in Time of Peace, with a List of those Honourable persons who are to be created Knights of the Bath at his Majesties coronation, 23 April, 1661," is probably a rei)rint of Dugdale's text. A copy is preserved in Harl. MS. 1462. Sir Harris Nicolas, in his History of the Order of the Bath, reprinted the English Eormulary, given by Anstis from Cott. MS. Nero, C. ix., but he has altered the spelling in accordance with modern orthography, and sacrificed to popular conve- nience the originality and authentic character of this curious document. albert way. ' Marked L. 5, f. 28, a. This trans- tract there found, lation was reprinted by Sir Samuel Mey- ^ Anstis, Kniglithood of the Bath, Ap- rick in his Critical Enquiry, vol. ii. p. 17L pendix, p. 99. edit. ISS-I. He gives it as if it were an ^ See the description of this MS. in original translation, found in the Herald's Mr. Black's Catalogue of the Ashmolean College, but it a])pears to have been only MSS. col. 381. This tract appears to be a version given by Uugdale from a French the same which was given by Bysshe.