Described Hardwick & Luard: iv.196–7.

[1]

f. 3

First at the houre conuenient the bisshop wyth his ministres indued and arrayed after their accustumable maner shall comme to the hyghe aulter and there shall the sayd bisshop say and perfourme thoffice of the masse wyth gloria in excelsis and the collecte and when the collecte is sayd and the bisshop sette byfore the myddys …

f. 18

… soo that they be not contrary to the rewle or the lawe of holy churche ne to goode maners neyther to thies premisses.

‘This is the fourme and order of the cerimonies perteignyng to the solempne prosession benediction and consecracion of holy virgyns and thys consecracion may oonly be celebrate by a bisshop and that uppon an holy and solempne day that is to say the sonday or somme other solempne feest’ (f. 3). Fourme and Order of the Cerimonies Perteignyng to the Solempne Profession, Benediction, and Consecracion of Holy Virgyns. Ritual for Ordination of Nuns. IPMEP 178; Wells Rev. 2:655 [3]. Edited from this MS by Maskell ii.308–31.

Other texts: Wells Rev. lists 3 other MSS: BL Cotton Vespasian A.xxv ff. 120–124v; BL Lansdowne 378 ff. 43–46v; and Lansdowne 388. Mary C. Erler, ‘Bishop Richard Fox's Manuscript Gifts to his Winchester Nuns: A Second Surviving Example’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 52 (2001), 334–37 adds BodL Barlow 11 (SC 6423).

Ownership: MS belonged to St Mary’s, Winchester (Nunnaminster) and was the gift of Bishop Richard Fox (Latin inscription on f. 2). BodL Barlow 11 is a matching volume given by Fox to the nunnery at Wherwell.

s. xvi in; Erler (p. 337) suggests that both this MS and BodL Barlow 11 might be dated c. 1516, a little before Bishop Fox arranged for his new translation of the Rule of St Benedict to be printed by Richard Pynson in 1517 (STC 1859).