THE FRENCH MANUSCRIPTS IN THE PARKER LIBRARY

Matthew Parker's activities as a collector of manuscripts of every kind in the aftermath of the dissolution of the monasteries are wellknown. They include literary texts, both classical and medieval; chronicles and genealogies; treatises on medicine, law, language, spelling, geography, morality, alchemy, astrology, and music; treaties, statutes and letters; Bibles, psalters, meditations, commentaries, glosses, prayers, sermons, hymns, songs and a variety of other genres. Most of them are, naturally, in Latin, although it is perhaps his assemblage of Old English material which is most celebrated. Nevertheless, some sixty of his manuscripts contain texts entirely or partly in French. For the most part, of course, this means the Anglo-Norman dialect, since most of the Trench' manuscripts are of insular origin; certain examples, however, come from the continent. Occasional scholars from France, including some of the most eminent, had, even in the nineteenth century, already taken an interest in these manuscripts in the context of a broader enquiry into sources of French interest located in Great Britain. Francisque Michel, for instance, in his first Report in 1838 for the official Archives des Missions, describes how in 1833 he was sent to England with the aim of examining manuscripts in the British Museum and the libraries of Oxford and Cambridge in order to note, or make a direct copy of, everything he might find important for the history and early literature of France, and how he had devoted two years to the task in the course of which he had transcribed MS LXVI in Corpus Christi College.1 This text is, in fact, in Latin, the Itinerum of William of Rubruck, but we can be sure that Michel took note of some of the French titles.