Sequence = typical English 3-part discant, other pieces: red five-line staves, red-blue initials, longs and breves, and the lozenge-shaped notes of the so-called English mensural notation

3 vertical strips r+v; 3 horizontal strips r+v;

Together, the three horizontal strips form a contiguous section of the lower part of a bifolio, and the three vertical strips come from a small contiguous section at the top of a separate folio (see Bent, Hartt and Lefferts). For the purposes of reference, f.1 is the larger part of the bifolio fragment, f.2 is the smaller part, and f. 3 is the folio fragment composed of vertical strips.

Parchment

RISM B/IV 2: A 15th century paper manuscript meas. 215 x 150 mm. and containing 139 folios numbered in modern pencil at t.r.r. The script is cursive and the contents are the Gesta Romanorum (see H. Oesterley, Gesta Romanorum [1872], p. 192). One 17th century unnumbered ribbed paper flyleaf precedes and follows the corpus. 4 blank unnumbered paper flyleaves at the front and 3 at the end of the codex respectively precede and follow the old ones. The new leaves belong to the modern 1966 binding of 3/4 brown leather (the remainder of the binding is of paler brown cloth with the Harley arms in gilt on the front and back). The 14th century musical fragments, which were formerly used as binding strips, are now preserved separately in a transparent plastic cover. They consist of 3 successive horizontal strips plus 3 smaller vertical strips. The first three now meas. roughly 75 mm. in height when placed together, and had an original width of 180 mm. The contiguous bifolio page (f. 2) continues for a further 50 mm. These three strips were evidently the bottom of a page, and the almost complete three-part sequence which forms our item 1 may well have been an addition filling up three spare staves a few decades later than the original motet manuscript. This piece is however notated in the same Ars Antiqua notation as the other compositions, though on brown rather than red five-line staves. The three smaller strips (f. 3) consist of two which belong together and meas. a maximum of 71 x 48 mm. combined, and an isolated fragment, perhaps from the beginning of the same staves, meas. 74 x 24 mm. The verso of these smaller fragments is blank. While the sequence is a typical English example of three-part discant, the other pieces appear to follow the style of the Worcester fragments.

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