I originally designed the predecessor of this volume (A Conspectus of Scribal Hands Writing English, 960–1100, published in 2012) as a stepping-stone towards a history of late Old English spelling, and as such its scope was limited to manuscripts and documents generally ascribed to the latter half of the tenth century and the entirety of the eleventh. That projected history having now been abandoned, I felt there would be value in expanding the Conspectus by taking the starting date back to the year 700, thereby allowing for the inclusion of around 300 new entries.

For ease of reference, I have retained the layout of the 960–1100 volume, with holding libraries listed alphabetically and individual hands numbered sequentially. To preserve the sequence, new entries have been inserted into the list with a decimal point in the hand number (e.g. 298 Chichester, 298.5 Cologne, 299 Copenhagen). Hand 671 (previously blank) has been added, and hand 1004 has been changed to 1005.2; otherwise, the hand numbers from the 960-1100 volume are unchanged. In places, discontinuous numbering of the decimal points has been used to allow for further additions by future scholars and, particularly in the case of some continental libraries, to allow for future discoveries. Errors that occurred during the composition of the earlier volume have been silently corrected, sporadic instances of English in Latin charters have been noted, and more information regarding facsimiles has been supplied (particularly in relation to the more recent volumes in the Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile series, which have useful bibliographies). ‘App’ before a number in the column listing Ker numbers is now used to signify an entry in his Appendix. In the apparatus, a small number of new entries has been incorporated into the Indices of Names and Places and the Subject Index has also been expanded to accommodate new material. The Appendix to the 2012 volume has been omitted, however, in that it has no bearing on the present work.

Unchanged and unchanging is my debt to Simon Keynes for his assistance with charters, and my appreciation of the unremitting helpfulness and patience shown to me by everyone at Boydell, especially Caroline Palmer. Above all, words cannot convey my gratitude for the help given to me by my son Tim, without whose assistance, when I became too ill for sustained academic work, this project could never have come to fruition.