The manuscripts of Reading Abbey were widely dispersed following the Dissolution, and such as have survived have gradually found their way into numerous libraries and archives scattered across the United Kingdom and the United States. The early fate of this manuscript is unknown, but by the late eighteenth century it had come into the possession of the De Burgh family of Oldtown, Naas, Ireland. Descendants of the family sold it in the 1950s to James Stevens Cox of Guernsey, from whose son it has been acquired by Berkshire Record Office. It is believed to have been the only Reading Abbey manuscript remaining in private hands.
The manuscript is a formulary set within a series of short treatises (tractatus) on various aspects of official letter- and document-writing. It is a practical, workmanlike book, devoid of ornamentation apart from larger coloured capitals, apparently rebound in the eighteenth century, but otherwise unaltered since its compilation. Its particular interest rests on the fact that in many cases the illustrative examples are based on genuine original texts, often with the details of personal names and places disguised as initials; some are either the full texts of genuine documents or can, with slight emendation, be recognized as such. The models can be dated with some certainty between 20 February 1227 and 16 April 1337, with the great preponderance falling in the first half of the fourteenth century before c.1330. The manuscript comprises a total of 116 folios. It is of a single compilation and seems to have been written in one hand in the mid-fourteenth century, perhaps in c.1340-50.
As well as being of great interest in form and structure, the formulary has significant value for the considerable amount of evidence and specific detail concerning Reading Abbey and the people with whom it did business, particularly, though not exclusively, of Reading and district and particularly in the first half of the 14th century. Most of this information is not available elsewhere.
