The lower half of a leaf, containing voice-parts for four English anonymous polyphonic liturgical works. Formerly a pastedown leaf on the inside lower cover of a printed copy of St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei (Paris, 1544) at shelfmark Okes 253, which was bound (according to Bent in Bibliography below, pp. 143-4) in London probably c. 1544-5. Lifted from that position in 1966.
The layout of the voice-parts is unusual, with tenor and bass parts notated on both the recto and the verso. One possibility, proposed by Margaret Bent (in Bibliography below, pp. 143-8), is that the fragment is a remnant of a choirbook, perhaps one in which the four pieces were partly or wholly later additions. (Each piece is the work of a different copyist, and various notational styles are present.) An alternative possibility is that the fragment was cut from a performers' part that was never bound into a larger volume. The latter interpretation would help to explain not only the unusual layout of the voice-parts, but also the absence of sewing-holes from both the left- and right-hand margins of the sheet. The notational style of item 1suggests that it was copied at an earlier date than items 2-4.
Owned in the 18th century by John Okes; donated in 1710 to parish of Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire; placed on indefinite loan to Christ Church Library in 1964.