Catalogue description A collection of 52 documents relating to Italy

These documents, found with the Ashburnham estate and family archives, are all parchment and have been kept rolled up separately. Each has a number and date neatly endorsed in what appears to be a 19th century hand. The extant numbers of the broken series runs 4-263, in no chronological order; nos. 248-263 do not have the date endorsed in the usual way.

The documents are varied; sixteen or more are papal and two have bullae attached; fourteen seem to record public and legal proceedings in Florence. The rest are miscellaneous and mostly under notarial attestation. No. 261 (1507) has illuminated initials, margins and three shields of arms.

The earliest document is 1048, six are of the 13th, seven of the 14th, seventeen of the 15th, and twenty-one of the 16th centuries. Thirty-two of the documents were calendared by the Rev. Walter Budgen (see Ashburnham MS. 4319) in varying detail under the title, 'Papal Bulls &c. at Ashburnham Place'.