Physical description

Form:

codex

Paperof three different stocks.

There are three watermarks in this manuscript: A (fol. 1), B (fols 3-65), and C (fols 67 and 68). A is a crowned shield containing a coat of arms in several sections with possibly another shield in the centre. B is a small pot with a quatrefoil at the top and potentially some letters on its body, which are too difficult to make out. C is a larger pot surmounted by a crescent with the letters 'C', 'A', and 'B' on its base. C resembles in some details Heawood 3603 (1646). The modern endpapers contain the watermark 'Archine'.

Folio mainly in sixteens: i3 ii-iv16 v15 vi3. The gatherings are easily visible at the spine, since the manuscript was repaired and rebound in 1984. The two flyleaves are not included in this collation because they are of a different stock of paper.

The manuscript is neatly written and well-spaced throughout, with wide, though unruled, margins at the left of each page. Each of the receipts has been numbered on the left hand side, followed by a colon, and then the title of each receipt is centred and followed by a semi-colon. Attributions to individuals appear to the left of the titles. Baker often uses long dashes beside the last line of her receipts.

Margaret Baker has written the main part of the manuscript, fols 2r-69v, in a formal italic hand. A second hand, informal mixed, has added three receipts on fol.1v.

Hand A (fols 2r-69v): Margaret Baker's.

Hand B (fol. 1v): probably a hand contemporary with the manuscript.

Later binding, half bound in brown goatskin on orange cloth. The goatskin appears on the corners of the covers and the side, extending to a 30 mm border on both covers. At the centre of both the upper and the lower cover is Sir Hans Sloane's coat arms, in gold, enclosed on an oval shape. The oval is inscribed with the words 'BIBLIOTHECA MANUSCRIPT SLOANEIANA', surrounding the coat of arms which features a downward-pointing sword flanked by two boars' heads in the lower portion, and, above this, a hand, a lion passant, and a diamond shape (as described in Cyril Davenport's English Heraldic Bookstamps, London: Archibald and Constable, 1909, p.341). The side of the MS features six compartments, all separated by a raised border outlined with gold tooling. The two lowest compartments and the top compartment are blank. The three remaining compartments are inscribed in gold 'MRS BAKERS MEDICAL RECEIPTS', 'BRITISH LIBRARY.', and 'SLOANE MS. 2486'. A white oblong label has been applied near the top, '98', and a similar sticker, 'G.7', has been applied near the bottom. A record inserted among the back endpapers indicates that the manuscript was examined after binding in 1984.

The main hand in the manuscript has added page numbers to the seventeen pages corresponding to fol.2r-fol.10r (the first section of the manuscript). A later hand has renumbered the entire manuscript with the foliation which has been used in this catalogue entry. Note that the manuscript has been mounted on guards with the following gatherings i (fols 1-3), ii (fols 4-19), iii (fols 20-35), iv (fols 36-51), v (fols 52-66), vi (fols 67-69). The two flyleaves and seven endpapers are unfoliated.

The first leaf of the manuscript appears to be a later addition, written on a different stock of paper with a watermark which does not recur elsewhere in the manuscript (the modern binding makes it appear as if fols 1 and 2 are conjugate, but it is not certain that they were originally so). The hand which has written the first three receipts, on the verso of this leaf, is quite different from the hand in which the rest of the manuscript is written. These receipts are not part of the numbered sequence which begins on fol.2r with "1" nor are they included in the index. As the original page numbering also begins on fol.2r, it is reasonable to conclude that the first three receipts, and the leaf on which they are written, are later additions.

The manuscript has been rebound recently, and its pages reinforced and repaired. A number of the leaves contain heavy bleedthrough.

Provenance

Margaret Baker has signed the manuscript at the end of the index (fol.69v), along with the date " 1650""

Some time after Margaret Baker compiled the manuscript, a John Collins obtained it (his signature is on fol. 1r). His signature appears to be later than seventeenth century. Sir Hans Sloane obtained it for his collection presumably during the first half of the eighteenth century. Sloane bequeathed his collection to the British Library in his will of 1749.

The Sloane collection of books and manuscripts was one of the founding collections of the British Museum, created by Act of Parliament in 1753. Source: Arundell Esdaile, The British Museum Library: A Short History and Survey, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1946, p. 17.