MS 3: Cromwell Lee, Italian-English Dictionary

Archive Unit
  • This material is held at
  • Reference
      GB 473 MS3
  • Dates of Creation
      Oxford, 16th c. (1590s?)
  • Name of Creator
  • Language of Material
      English Italian
  • Physical Description
      Support (paper) 427 x 271 mm. Text area ca. 396 x ca. 222 mm. Fol. i + 344 + i leaves as foliated in top right corner of rectos (foliation dated 1989). Collation: 1-43(8). Binding: Contemporary English 16th/17th c. brown calf over millboard. Blind-stamped ornamental roll forming frame (double) and panel (single) on both boards, framed with triple fillets. Spine has 6 raised bands with ‘3’ stamped in gilt at head. Fixing points for 2 book ties on both boards. Marks of chain fixture at top right of upper board. All edges sprinkled red with shelfmark and title in black ink on fore-edge. Repaired and rebacked – no date. Binding dimensions 433 x 286 mm.

Scope and Content

Italian to English dictionary ordered alphabetically - unfinished. Composed by Cromwell Lee (d. 1601), Italian traveller and nephew of Sir Thomas Wyatt, possibly after he settled in Oxford ca. 1590, and copied in fair hand by Thomas Poticary (fl. 1575-1594), who also produced a fair copy of the College statutes.

  • 1. Fols 1-344: Lee, Cromwell, Italian-English dictionary. "A. from a preposition, sometimes for Ad in composition of verbes ...Tralignato. out of kinde, degenerated, wrongest, the wronge way. [catchword] Tralignamento." Single 17th c. hand in black ink: Italian vocabulary in italic, English definitions in secretary. Written in two columns of between ca. 69 and 92 lines each, except fols 98r-102v, 121r-127v, 249r-250v, and 262v-271r, where three columns are used for words beginning with a common prefix. Frame-ruled in pencil throughout. Catchwords bottom margin right of final leaf of each quire.

Access Information

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Acquisition Information

Donated by Cromwell Lee, see College Benefactor's Book (MS 374), col. xliiii, "Dictionarium Italicum a scipso collectum MS."

Fol. ir: shelf mark of St John's College, Oxford, 18th c.?

Other Finding Aids

This catalogue entry derives from Stewart Tiley's unpublished descriptive catalogue of the post-1500 western manuscripts at St John's College, Oxford (2018). This entry was uploaded to ArchivesHub in March 2023 as part of the St John's College Library digitization project. To learn more about the project and to find digital resources, please visit the Digital Library

Bibliography

Hegarty, Andrew, 2011. A Biographical Register of St John's College, Oxford, 1555-1660. Oxford, Boydell Press for the Oxford Historical Society, p. 343.