Notes on some manuscripts of Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes

IN one of the scrap-books of the notorious collector John Bagford (1650-1716), which are now part of the Harleian collection, is preserved a hitherto unnoticed leaf from a manuscript of Thomas Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes. It is a single parchment leaf (Fragment 90, MS. Harley 5977), mounted on a guard, and measuring 155 X 105 mm (written area, approximately 150X70 mm), with twenty-eight long lines to the page, and no stanza division. It contains lines 2472-527 (according to the line-numbering of Furnivalls edition of the poem),' written in a neat mixed (Anglicana and Secretary) hand of the middle of the fifteenth century; the initial letter of each line is marked with a single vertical red stroke. The leaf has been heavily trimmed, and no trace now remains of any marginal glossing, foliation, signature, or catchword.