The pages are ruled for 35 lines and are written in single column. The handwriting is of the end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth century, and resembles what I elsewhere describe as the ‘third hand’ in MS. Fairfax 3, though I should hesitate to affirm that it is certainly the same, not having had the opportunity of setting the texts side by side. There is, however, another hand in the MS., which appears in the Latin lines on ff. 33 v^o and 39 v^o. The initial letters of poems and stanzas are coloured, but there is no other ornamentation. The book contains (1) ff. 5--10 v^o, the English poem in seven-line stanzas addressed to Henry IV, beginning ‘O worthi noble kyng.’ (2) f. 10 v^o, 11, the Latin piece beginning ‘Rex celi deus.’ (3) f. 11 v^o--12 v^o, two French balades with a set of Latin verses between them, addressed to Henry IV (f. 12 is seriously damaged). This is what I refer to as the Dedication. (4) ff. 12 v^o--33, _Cinkante balades_. (5) f. 33 v^o, Latin lines beginning ‘Ecce patet tensus,’ incomplete owing to the loss of the next leaf. Written in a different hand. (6) ff. 34--39, ‘Traitié pour ensampler les amantz marietz,’ imperfect at the beginning owing to the loss of the preceding leaf. (7) f. 39 v^o, Latin lines beginning ‘Henrici quarti,’ written in the hand which appears on f. 33 v^o. On the first blank leaf is the following in the handwriting of Sir Thomas Fairfax: ‘S^r. John Gower’s learned Poems the same booke by himself presented to kinge Henry ye fourth before his Coronation.’ (Originally this was ‘att his Coronation,’ then ‘att or before his Coronation,’ and finally the words ‘att or’ were struck through with the pen.) Then lower down in the same hand: ‘For my honorable freind & kinsman s^r. Thomas Gower knt. and Baronett from Ffairfax 1656.’ On the verso of the second leaf near the left-hand top corner is written a name which appears to be ‘Rychemond,’ and there is added in a different hand of the sixteenth century: ‘Liber Hen: Septimi tunc comitis Richmond manu propria script.’ On the fifth leaf, where the text of the book begins, in the right-hand top corner, written in the hand of Fairfax: ‘ffairfax N^o 265 by the gift of the learned Gentleman Charles Gedde Esq. liuinge in the Citty of St Andrews.’ Then below in another hand: ‘Libenter tunc dabam Id testor Carolus Gedde Ipsis bis septenis Kalendis mensis Octobris 1656.’ On the last leaf of the text, f. 39, there is a note in Latin made in 1651 at St. Andrews (Andreapoli) by C. Gedde at the age of seventy, with reference to the date of Henry IV’s reign. Then in English, ‘This booke pertaineth to aged Charles Gedde,’ and inserted between the lines by Fairfax, ‘but now to ffairfax of his gift, Jun. 28. 1656.’ Below follows a note in English on the date of the death of Chaucer and of Gower, and their places of burial.