Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1985, Blaðsíða 97

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approximate dating of the three volumes between 1490 and 1510, with
the Dalhousie manuscript at the end of this period rather than the
beginning, would seem to accord with the history of the “pre-Secreta-
ry” style of writing in Scotland, which as far as I can see was not
practised long after James IV’s era. The Asloan manuscript, written
by a scribe trained before 1500, is perhaps the latest of the examples
which I have noticed.
The rest of the story must necessarily be a matter of educated
guesses. One of the Sinclairs much given to the study of history was
William, third laird of Roslin, who held this title in the third quarter of
the sixteenth century; but his habit of annotating his books makes it
seem less likely that the Dalhousie manuscript, devoid as it is of early
owners’ signatures much less of marginalia, was ever in his hånds." A
more plausible candidate for the ownership of this manuscript in the
middle of the sixteenth century is Henry Sinclair, dean of Glasgow and
later bishop of Ross, a younger son of Sir Oliver Sinclair whose
impressive library of printed books is well known to Scottish bibliogra-
phers.100 Dean Sinclair’s interest in historical studies is evidenced both
by his collaboration with the Italian scholar Giovanni Ferrerio, whom
he urged to write a continuation of Boece,101 and by his ownership of
half a dozen Scottish historical manuscripts the majority of which
demonstrably passed to William, the third laird, after the bishop’s
death in 1565.102 However, not all of Bishop Henry Sinclair’s manu-
scripts followed this path to Roslin: the Wyntoun manuscript, now
Adv. 19.2.4, discussed above (p. 76) bears his signature at f. 8r but is
not otherwise associated with the Sinclair family,103 and the Dalhousie
transcript of historical texts may likewise have been atypical. One
possibility is that Sinclair had acquired the manuscript from his rela-
99 For this laird and his library see Lawlor (as n. 96), passim.
100 Cf. Durkan and Ross, Early Scottish Libraries, pp. 49-60, 171, and T. A. F.
Cherry, “The Library of Henry Sinclair, Bishop of Ross, 1560-1565,” The Bibliotheck
[Glasgow] 4 (1963-66), 13-24. For the career of this Henry Sinclair see Watt, Fasti (n.
17), pp. 156, 270.
101 Cf. Hector Boece, Scotorvm Historiae... Libri XIX... Accessit... continuatio, per
Ioannem Ferrerium (Paris [pr. Lausanne], 1574), p. 384.
102 Lawlor (n. 96), nos. II-V and XI.
103 For its history in the seventeenth century see Laing, The Orygynale Cronykil (n.
65), III, xxiii-xxiv.