In 1984 Bernard Quaritch, Ltd of London published catalogue No. 1036, offering for sale 134 leaves and fragments of leaves abstracted from medieval manuscripts, entitled Bookhands of the Middle Ages, and carrying as a subtitle on the first page, Medieval Manuscript Leaves Principally from a Collection Formed in the 19th Century. The catalogue proved to be the first of a series that was to have an important effect on the preservation of medieval manuscript leaves and fragments, though it did so at least in part by assigning prices to each of the 134 items that at the time seemed really very high – though in most cases they have not seemed so since. The fact that many of the items came from the collection formed by the Oxford antiquary Philip Bliss (1786–1857), having been acquired by him from local binders, according to Sir Frederic Madden, ‘for the price of a pot of beer’, no doubt helped to allay objections from those medievalists who object to commerce in such manuscript leaves for fear that their sale will encourage the breakup of medieval manuscripts for profit. In any event, the catalogue was a watershed, and brought not only higher prices, but also greater attention and interest to what proved to be a burgeoning market.

Perhaps the most intriguing item in the catalogue was one that appeared at the very end of a section called ‘Medieval Schooling and Intellectual History’, no. 108, and was described thus: