The fire in Ashburnham House in Westminster in 1731 famously destroyed some and damaged others of the manuscripts in the immensely important Cottonian collection which became one of the foundation collections of the British Museum Library.
Its successor the British Library now holds the collection and regularly posts about its relevant holdings on its always interesting Medieval manuscripts blog. In a recent post it discusses work that has been done on a charred fragment from the 1731 fire which modern technology has enabled scholars to identify as the remains of a panegyric dedicated to Cardinal Wolsey and composed by the antiquary John Leland. Hitherto the work was only known from John Bale’s catalogue and was assumed to be lost.
This is another instance of new techniques helping to reveal more from surviving manuscripts. In recent years there have been accounts of palimpsests being revealed and marginalia recovered which have yielded new and significant textual iinformation.
The post about the panegyric, which includes a link to another about the project looking at the charred fragments, can be viewed at Lost and found: in praise of Cardinal Wolsey
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