{"id":5409,"date":"2024-03-08T22:28:19","date_gmt":"2024-03-08T22:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/?p=5409"},"modified":"2024-03-08T22:28:19","modified_gmt":"2024-03-08T22:28:19","slug":"a-marriage-contract-and-a-book-cover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/2024\/03\/08\/a-marriage-contract-and-a-book-cover\/","title":{"rendered":"A Marriage Contract \u2026 and a Book Cover?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Elissa B.G. Mullins<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t judge a book by its cover\u2014especially when the cover warrants its own catalogue record!
\nLittle did yeoman William Butter and his wife-to-be Judeth Shaw imagine that their marriage contract would one day be recycled to cover an astronomical treatise printed a century before they met.
\nA fragment of their contract served as a manuscript waste wrapper for a 1560 Latin edition of Proclus\u2019 De sphaera<\/em>, printed in Paris by Guillaume Cavellat (shelf-mark: 881 P8S.L\u21131560<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"Printed<\/p>\n

We presume William and Judeth were happily married sometime in the latter half of the seventeenth century, given that the manuscript refers to \u201cour most gratious soveraigne Lord Charles the Second,\u201d who reigned from 1660-1685.
\nWritten in an unidentified hand, the manuscript describes a contract between \u201cyeoman William Butter of Buglawton in the County of Chester,\u201d son of Randle Butter, and Judeth Shaw, daughter of John Shaw, witnessed in the county of Stafford. The text reads in bold: \u201cto have and to hold,\u201d and details the terms and contents of the dowry.<\/p>\n

\"Manuscript<\/p>\n

Having piqued the cataloguers\u2019 curiosity, the cover has been (painlessly) separated from the text of De Sphaera<\/em>, rehoused, and given its own descriptive record. Come take a look at the proud newest member of our Post-1650 Manuscript Collection (shelf-mark: Post-1650 MS 0801<\/a>)!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Elissa B.G. Mullins Don\u2019t judge a book by its cover\u2014especially when the cover warrants its own catalogue record! Little did yeoman William Butter and his wife-to-be Judeth Shaw imagine that their marriage contract would one day be recycled to cover an astronomical treatise printed a century before they met. A fragment of their contract […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140,"featured_media":5412,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[452,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-collection-highlights","category-manuscripts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5409"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5420,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5409\/revisions\/5420"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}