Page:The Legal Code of Ælfred the Great.djvu/25

Rh in respect of capitalization, the placing of numerals, etc., Ot is entirely similar to E. Occasionally a letter stands above another (i above y in gyf, to imitate the original) and sometimes a letter is inserted above a word with the use of the comma, as in E. Ot seems to have had no accents.

This Ms. is assigned to the first quarter of the eleventh century. This date is sufficiently established by its being together and in the same hand with the copy of the Chronicle to 1001.

This manuscript is to be found in the British Museum, catalogued as Burney 277.) It is one of a large number of miscellaneous fragments, mostly Latin, that have been attached to blank leaves in a large folio volume. It is a double octavo parchment leaf, which was used as a book cover and is punctured with holes made in sewing. On one side of it a great part of the text is obliterated. It was the inside double leaf of its layer and gives therefore a continuous text, extending from XLIV (Ine Introd.) æfter to LXVII (Ine 23) mæges, — The hand here is not a fair one; the letters are elongated similar to Ot. It follows the same rules as to placing numerals, etc., as the other Mss. There are 25 lines on the page. No accents are to be seen in the fragment.

This Ms. is to be placed in the second quarter of the eleventh century.

This manuscript also is in the British Museum, in the Cottoniana Nero A I. It is said to have come from the Cathedral Church of Worcester. It may be one of the Mss. collected at the instance of Archbishop Parker; to Joscelin, Parker's secretary, are ascribed the glossing and completing of this Ms. accdg. to E. It then passed, like many copies etc. by Nowell, Lambarde and others, into the collection of Sir Robert Cotton. — Thorpe 1840 printed variants from it, which Schmid II 1858 followed.

This is an unhandy volume, very small, not more than