Pembroke possesses a remarkable collection of medieval manuscripts, 310 complete, and with many additional fragments. The first systematic attempt to catalogue them happened about a hundred years ago, thanks to the work of M. R. James; and it is fair to say that the catalogue then produced offers only a partial picture of the whole. A proper catalogue has been long overdue, and there could have been no-one better to carry out this work than Rod Thomson. Rod has approached his task with scholarly precision, devotion and energy, and this catalogue is the result of his labours. It tells the whole story for the first time.

A third of our manuscript collection came originally from the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, and was gifted to Pembroke at the end of the sixteenth century by William Smart of Ipswich. It's almost an accident that it ended up here, as it seems it had not been Smart's original intention to bequeath the collection to Pembroke. Now, however, these manuscripts – including some that date back to before the Norman Conquest – are the glory of our holdings; though the most glorious of all, the volume known as the Bury Gospels, was given separately by another donor, Edmund Boldero.

Our other manuscripts came to the College from many sources, over several centuries; and Rod Thomson has unearthed some fascinating attributes that throw light on the early life of the College. The peculiar way in which the early manuscripts were chained; the doubleheight reading desks; the survival of early bindings; the wax tablets that were used to record borrowings by fellows and scholars; and the depositing of books by scholars as pledges in return for borrowed funds from the ‘chests’ of money made available by alumni of the time. Rod has illuminated all the complexities of where the manuscripts came from, how they were numbered and recorded, how they appeared in various records through the ages, and what part they play in the collection.

Up to now, we have known too little about our wonderful manuscripts. (We know even less about our early modern period books.) Rod Thomson has brought them to life for us in this catalogue, and we will be forever in his debt for doing so. Many are very beautiful; some are exceptionally well preserved; all are fascinating.