Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1985, Page 61
57
Gilbert Haldane’s ownership of a copy of the Fasciculus temporum
has a certain contextual interest in view of the faet that Malcolm
Halcrow, another early member of St Andrews University, is the first
definitely identifiable owner of the Dalhousie copy. On sig. Air of the
latter, immediately to the right of the folio number at the top of the
page, is the handwritten inscription: “Liber Malcolmj Hawcro regentis
Sanctiafndree],”8 indicating that the book was in the possession of
Halcrow while he held the Office of regent in the university in the early
sixteenth century. Above this inscription on sig. Air is another hand-
written statement of ownership which has been vigorously scored out
and is now partly illegible - it may be suspected that the writing has
been damaged by the application of a Chemical preparation by some
nineteenth-century scholar, perhaps David Laing himself, since the
latter proposed, albeit with some hesitation, to read the deleted line as
follows: “Iste est liber Henrici domin] de Sancto Claro.”9 With the
exception of the first four words this reading is extremely doubtful, the
word dominj particularly so. Laing seems therefore merely to have
been guessing that a possible owner was Henry Lord Sinclair (d.
1513), the Scottish aristocrat well known to literary historians for his
patronage of the poet Gavin Douglas, who flattered him with the title
of “Fader of bukis, protectour to sciens and lair” (Eneados, first pro-
logue, line 85).10 The relevance of Malcolm Halcrow and Henry Lord
Sinclair to the provenance and history of the Dalhousie volume will be
discussed in the final section of this paper.
The Dalhousie Fasciculus temporum ends, as mentioned above,
with two originally blank leaves, the second of which bears obvious
marks of once having funetioned as the back cover, since the verso is
mueh more soiled than the preceding pages. The title-page of the book
is correspondingly soiled and worn at the right-hand edge, as are the
8 So read by Laing, BM III, 180; the last word has been mutilated by the binder’s
scissors. Cf. Durkan and Ross, p. 110.
9 Cf. Laing (as previous note). I regret that the significance of this inscription only
became apparent to me after the Dalhousie volume had been returned to Scotland in
the summer of 1974, and that I did not attempt to verify Laing’s reading by exposing the
original to ultra-violet light.
10 David F. C. Coldwell (ed.), Virgil’s Aeneid translated into Scottish Verse by Gavin
Douglas, STS ser. III, 25, 27-28 & 30 (1957-64), II, 5. For Sinclair’s patronage of
Douglas see for example Priscilla Bawcutt, Gavin Douglas: A Critical Study (Edin-
burgh, 1976), pp. 92-93.