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[Two medieval tally sticks.]

[Two medieval tally sticks.] Thom Godesire det Toscy de Kant Jud xxx s. red / med ad festu sci mich Anno gre m. cc. vicef nono & med / ad festu sci martin px seqns p cursucur pl Andr de mikelgat. / & Ingeram Tallear (1229). [&] Ego Thomas Brian de Badick debeo d d Lombard. viij Marcas...1232.

[G. Vertue?]
[Under both inscriptions]...Ric: Rawlinson LLD... 1753.
Two engraved facsimiles to a single sheet, of the Latin tallies of Thomas Godsire and Thomas Brian de Badick; with transcriptions below each. Sheet 275 x 155mm, 10¾ x 6". Trimmed within plate. Fold creases, some surface punctures and damage. A little soiled and stained. Trace of pen annotations to verso.
Tally sticks served as records or receipts for financial transactions such as the payment of taxes, debts and fines. From the 12th century onward tally sticks were officially employed by the Exchequer of England to collect the King's taxes. In recording a debt, wooden sticks were often split horizontally into two parts: the lender receiving one part, the stock; and the debtor, the other part, the foil. Sticks dating from 1296 were found in the Chapel of the Pyx, Westminster Abbey in 1808. England abolished the use of tally sticks in 1826. These are from the collection of Richard Rawlinson (1690 - 1755), a clergyman and antiquarian who bequeathed a huge collection of books and manuscripts to the Bodleian Library, Oxford. In 1716 he was ordained, but as he was a nonjuror and Jacobite, the ceremony was performed by a nonjuring bishop, Jeremy Collier. In 1728 he became a bishop, but seems to have preferred to pass his time in collecting books and manuscripts, pictures and curiosities, rather than in discharging his episcopal functions. At his death Rawlinson left to the Library 5,205 manuscripts bound in volumes that include many rare broadsides and other printed ephemera, his curiosities, and some other property that endowed a professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. The Rawlinsonian Professor of Anglo-Saxon was first appointed in 1795. He was also a benefactor to St John's College, Oxford.
[Ref: 24718]  £80.00


 

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