Contextualizing the Dartmouth Brut: From Professional Manuscripts to “The Worst Little Scribbler in Surrey”

This essay situates the Dartmouth Brut within the manuscript culture of mid- to late fifteenth-century England. After a brief sketch of the manuscript’s modern ownership, the author turns to the original owners, the Ewre family of County Durham, and then to a recently discovered Brut with some ownership associations with the Dartmouth Brut. Finally, the author compares the competently written Dartmouth manuscript with one of the physically sloppiest of all Brut manuscripts—Glasgow MS Hunter 443. These manuscripts provide useful foils to each other when examined against the large body of Brut manuscripts, illuminating the different methods available to fifteenth-century scribes.