This manuscript is a composite with the main part containing the Coronation Book of Charles V of France (r. 1364-1380), which was commissioned by the French king in 1365 and made it to England in the fifteenth century following the sale and dispersal of the French Royal Library. The second part, containing a number of ordeal manuals reproduced here, is a pontifical of the early thirteenth century that belonged to the medieval cathedral of St Mungo, in Glasgow. The two parts were seemingly bound together once they had entered the library of Sir Robert Cotton in the early seventeenth century.
Several folios are currently missing from the Early English Laws website, but will be added later this year once the manuscript is removed from exhibition display.