A bound manuscript compendium of statutes, orders and decrees relating to Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Covering the period 1585 to 1661, the contents reflect the physical and curricular expansion of the College during its first 75 years of existence.

The first half (folios 1-43) contains the Latin text of the College’s first statutes as provided by its founder Sir Walter Mildmay. The second part of the manuscript (folios 44-81) comprises orders and decrees primarily in English concerning such matters as the borrowing and buying of books from the college library, stipends, rent rates for chambers and rules of the use of the college tennis court. In 1630, one of the decrees ordered that no student ‘shall size bread and beer anywhere but in the Butteries, nor have Dyett provided for them constantly out of the College’ (p. 63). The onset of a plague epidemic eight years later also features prominently. Scholars and fellows of the College were permitted to ‘have free leave to betake themselves thither, where they shall be able best to provide for their own safety, and that notwithstanding the same, they shall receive in the time of their absence the allowance from the College…’ (p. 68) In 1651, misbehaving students were threatened with fines and imprisonment when it was discovered that some of them ‘not regarding their own birth, degree, and quality have made divers contracts of marriage with women of mean estate, and of no good fame in the town to their great disparagement, the discontent of their Parents and friends, and the dishonour of the government of that our University’. Students were strictly forbidden to ‘resort to such houses and places as are mentioned in the said Statute to eat or drink or play or take tobacco, to the misspending their time and to the corrupting of others by their ill example, and to the scandalizing the government of our said University.’ (pp. 71-72)

The volume is most likely from the library of William Shaw (1688-1739) of St John’s College, Cambridge, Rector of Akenham and antiquary. Among the Clarendon Papers held at the Bodleian Library are two further manuscripts from the collection of William Shaw, namely an eighteenth-century commonplace book (MS. Clar. dep. c. 413) and an eighteenth-century volume of ‘Extracts of Records &c. relating to St John’s College in the University of Cambridge’ (MS. Clar. dep. c. 414). The Emmanuel College volume has an eighteenth-century numbering on the inside front cover (No. 47). The two manuscript volumes in the Bodleian Library bear identical numbering, respectively nos. 100 and 46, placing the latter just next to our volume, also relating to a Cambridge college.

The inside cover of the volume contains the bookplate of Charlotte Villiers, Countess of Clarendon (1721-1790), formerly Lady Charlotte Capell, heiress to the wealthiest branch of the Hyde family and wife of Thomas Villiers, Baron Hyde and later 1st Earl of Clarendon (both titles acquired through his marriage). The family seat, The Grove, the name of which appears on the bookplate, was located near Watford, in Hertfordshire. It was acquired in 1753 by Thomas Villiers and turned into one of the most fashionable country homes in England.