The General Sentence.

This form of excommunication, read four times a year, has been printed from an excellent text in the Early English Text Society’s volume entitled Instructions for Parish Priests. The General Sentence is commonly found in the printed or later Manuals, but appears to have had no distinct place in any medieval service-book.

Mr. Henry Littlehales, who, in 1898, gave the Chaucer Society his Notes on the Road from London to Canterbury, no. 30 of the Society’s Second Series, and who also edited for the Early English Text Society “The Prymer, or Lay Folk’s Prayer-Book,” from a Cambridge University MS. ab. 1420, nos. 105, 109 in the Original Series, has kindly given the Chaucer Society 250 copies of each of the Facsimiles of two Illuminated pages in Fifteenth-Century MS. Prymers in the British Museum.

They are issued herewith, but are not made one of the Society’s publications, because we cannot undertake to reproduce them when the present copies run out. Every Member will decide for himself whether he puts these Facsimiles into one of the Society’s Texts, or keeps them apart in his picture-album.

All will join in thanking Mr. Littlehales for his pretty and welcome gift.

F. J. Furnivall.

1 August, 1903.

A page of a fifteenth century Prymer, (the common medieval layfolks prayer book) From the Brit. Mus. MS. 2 A. XVIII.

Full size.

A page of a fifteenth century Prymer, Brit. Mus. MS. Harl. 2915. This is the common picture before the Office for the Dead.

Full Size.

Early English Text Society. Extra Series, XC.

English Fragments from Latin Medieval Service-Books

WITH TWO COLOURED FACSIMILES FROM Medieval Prymers.

EDITED BY HENRY LITTLEHALES.

LONDON: PUBLISHED FOR THE EARLY ENGLISH TEXT SOCIETY By KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., LIMITED, DRYDEN HOUSE, 43, GERRARD STREET, SOHO, W. 1903

Price Five Shillings.