This is not a lavish manuscript, but it has status: King Alfred is sending it as an official gift to his bishop at Worcester, where it is to be used as a copy text for other manuscripts. He sent an æstel 'book pointer' worth a flock of 300 sheep with it as encouragement. The Alfred Jewel in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford may be the head of one of these æstels.

The page is left- and right-justified. Words are broken (without hyphens) in order to achieve this: see lines 6-7 (go-des), 8-9 (hio-ra),

and 11-12 (æf-ter) for examples.

There are ample margins at top, bottom, and left: the gutter is quite narrow.

The lines are evenly spaced; the intervening spaces are about 6 to the body of the text's 4.

Ascenders and descenders encroach on each other's space, but not seriously.

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© MEG TWYCROSS 1998