THE Coucher Book of Kirkstall Abbey is an ancient volume now containing 115 leaves of parchment enclosed in a brown leather cover with a flap. Its size is 8 inches by 63 inches. Since 1868 it has been deposited in the Public Record Office; previously it was preserved among the evidences of the Duchy of Lancaster in Lancaster Place, and its official designation is now "Duchy of Lancaster Miscellaneous Books, No. 7." It is not known how it came to be with the Duchy records. It was already among them in the time of Roger Dodsworth, a century after the dissolution.

In the course of its long existence the Coucher Book has sustained considerable damage. In one or two cases leaves have been detached and have disappeared from the volume, though in one instance the present Editors have succeeded in tracing a fragment consisting of two missing leaves, which is now among the Calverley MSS. in the British Museum. It would seem desirable that it should be restored to its proper place in its parent volume at the Record Office, but presumably an Act of Parliament would be required to effect this change. The writing of the original scribe in the Coucher Book is beautifully clear and legible, and the ink he used was good and permanent, as may be seen from the fac-simile; but neither of these things can be said of all the later work, some parts of which are almost undecipherable. In one place an attempt has been made at some former period to revive faded writing by the application of galls or some other restorative, with a disastrous result, the item has disappeared under a large brown stain, and damage has also been done to some adjacent parts of the writing.

1 Add. Charters 17,119.

But on the whole the

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manuscript, considering its age, may be said to be in fairly good condition. At an early period the folios were headed with Roman numerals, and an index was prepared from those numbers and inserted in the MS. (see pages 284-9). At a later date a new paging in Arabic numerals has been added. The two sets of figures coincide to folio 75, but the two leaves originally following are now missing, with the result that the next folio, headed originally LXXVIII, is 76 in the Arabic paging. Similarly, as the two leaves, now in the Museum, originally bound in as folios LXXXVIII and xc, are wanting, the difference between the two pagings again increases, folio 88 representing XCII, and so on. The earlier portions of the MS. are rubricated. The medieval spelling of the original has been followed in the present work, except in some cases of obvious error.

The contents of the volume, as will be seen from the following pages, present a very mixed appearance. The first design was sufficiently simple. The book was to be a record of the muniments by virtue of which the house held its various possessions. The deeds were copied in sections arranged topographically. The original writer generally commenced transcribing, at the top of a page, the charters relating to a particular vill (or several vills grouped under one name), and when he had copied all the deeds connected with that vill, or group, which he considered it necessary to include, he usually left a certain space blank for the insertion of subsequent grants, and then commenced again with the charters of another place. But in after years the original design was not adhered to, and the blank spaces were gradually filled up with various miscellaneous entries, ranging from a Papal Bull to a medical recipe. The greater part, however, of these later entries are transcripts of documents connected with the rather numerous law proceedings indulged in by the monks.

It may be observed that this is by no means a solitary instance of such utilisation of blank spaces in monastic records. Another notable local example of the practice occurs in the chartulary of the Cluniac Priory of St. John, at Pontefract. In preparing that fine MS. for the press, the Editor, the late Mr. Richard Holmes, decided to leave out all the later matter, and to print only the original

portions; and he strongly recommended that the same plan should be adopted with the Kirkstall volume, or rather that the original matter should be first printed, and the later entries grouped in a second part. But after due consideration it seemed to the Council of the Thoresby Society better on the whole to print the work as it stands, and thus present to those interested in the history of the Abbey an exact copy of a record of so much importance. Throughout the present volume an attempt has been made to minimise confusion by constantly indicating the differences in the handwiting of the original.

As a manuscript, the Kirkstall Coucher Book is disappointing. It cannot for a moment be compared with the noble chartularies which were prepared in some other houses,-Furness for instance, or Pontefract, or Fountains, or St. Leonard's Hospital at York. But there are some indications that a second and doubtless more

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important chartulary was prepared at Kirkstall at a later date, and that it was in existence at a comparatively recent period. such a volume was undertaken, it may well be that the Coucher Book was thenceforward neglected, and came to be regarded as a sort of scribble book for the insertion of any records or memoranda which it was convenient to have readily accessible.

However this may have been, it is certain that the Coucher Book is very far from being a complete record of all the grants to the Abbey. And it is not only that numerous deeds of a date later than that when the work was originally taken in hand never found their way into it we know that there were a considerable number of an earlier period, some belonging to the earliest days of the house, in the muniment chest when the original scribe commenced his labours, which he did not consider it necessary to include. We obtain a notable instance of this from what is commonly known as Henry de Lacy's foundation charter, No. LXVII. In that charter Henry confirms the grants of three of his vassals, William Peitevin, William de Reineville, and Samson de Allerton. The charters relating to at least two of these three grants are not given in the Coucher Book. These are by no means the only instances of the omission of early deeds

known to have existed. The theory in the scriptorium at Kirkstall, as at other places, seems to have been that when the copyist found a later deed which appeared to confirm or supersede an earlier one, it was sufficient to copy the second.

A still more important and regrettable defect is the systematic omission of the names of the witnesses to the various deeds. The original scribe was content simply to indicate that the grant was duly attested, by writing at the end of his copy the word "testes" or "testibus," or more frequently merely the letter "T." It is, perhaps, not too much to say that this omission deprives the Coucher Book of half its value to us. It has been found possible in the present volume in some cases to restore the missing names from various outside sources, by far the greater number of such restorations being due to the invaluable manuscripts of that greatest of Yorkshire antiquaries, Roger Dodsworth.

The contents of the Coucher Book may be roughly classed under four heads-charters, or grants of property, privileges, or protection; fines, or final concords; copies of records connected with law proceedings; and miscellaneous. The last-named division comprises, as before stated, a most diversified collection of entries.

The charters proper in the volume were, as already mentioned, originally grouped into local divisions. Commencing with Kirkstall itself, we have next the groups relating to the lands in the immediate neighbourhood, as Horsforth, Cookridge, Brearey, Allerton, and Roundhay. Then follow the deeds relating to more distant possessions, Clifford, Snydale, Bessacar, Cliviger, and so on. The pages of the MS. are headed with the names of the vills, but, as has previously been indicated, the scribe by no means confined himself, in making his entries, to the lands contained in the particular township under the heading of which he was writing. For instance, under "Roundhay" we find grants in Austhorpe, Seacroft, Osmondthorpe, and Shadwell. Similarly under "Brearey" are grants in Burdon, Bramhope, and Arthington. Perhaps the lands of the Abbey were at this time attached to a series of principal granges, known by the names inserted as headings.