Copy of a grant of privileges to St James Priory [Exeter] by Pope Innocent III in Latin dated c. 1199/1200, endorsed with a fragment of musical score with an early 14th-century text.

This comes from King's College estates records for St James Priory in Exeter which was granted to the College along with its attached lands in 1444 by Henry VI. The following by John Saltmarsh (former College Librarian and authority on the history of the College), sheds more light on its origins:

'The manuscript of Bryd onebrere was found last year [1932] in the Muniment Room of King's College; a text of the early fourteenth century, inscribed, with a musical setting for one voice, on the back of an elaborate copy of a bull of Pope Innocent III. This document was formerly in the possession of the Cluniac Priory of St James by Exeter, and there it must have received its very irregular endorsement. But the original of the words is earlier, and not of Devonshire. They have been copied from an older manuscript, of the thirteenth century and probably written before 1250; the basis of their dialect is Midland, though some of the forms suggest that the scribe was a Northerner.'

(from Two Medieval Lyrics, publ. Cloanthus Press, 1933, which includes a transcription and translation of the text)

not indicated

verso

parchment