View the Manuscript: Part 2:

A roundel commemorating the Flood shows Noah and his wife in an ark that resembles a fifteenth-century ship. Above the ark we see the departure of the raven, who did not return, and the arrival of the dove with the olive branch. Assorted couples people the ark. The surrounding caption meticulously records the number of years Noah lived after the flood -- 350 -- and his [imagined] place of burial. ("Noe post diluvium vixit [350] annos mortuus et sepultus est in Phaleth.")

The first of two rows of roundels beneath the Flood show the sons of Noah -- Sem, king of Asia, Japhet, king of Europe, and Ham, king of Africa -- together with a diagrammatic tau map of the world (A tau map is a graphic device that divides the known world, a circle, into three continents by the use of a tau, the Greek letter T). All these Old Testament figures are dressed in the height of mid-fifteenth century fashion, a common practice in medieval illustrations.

The second row of roundels shows the sons of Japhet, king of Europe, followed by British (green borders) and French (blue) lines of descent, and short histories of the seven Saxon kingdoms (yellow). Either through scribal error or deliberate omission, the French line does not show a linear connection to any of Japhet's sons, unlike the British and Saxon lines. (Those familiar with the "Salic law" speech in Shakespeare's Henry V may be interested to note that the French line begins with "Faramundus," better known to Shakespeareans as Pharamond.)

The lines of descent are decorated by three Yorkist symbols in regular rotation -- the sun in splendor, the fetterlock, and the rose-en-soleil, while the white rose image continues to alternate with the banners on either side of the manuscript.

The makers of this manuscript adhered faithfully to the list of kings shown in Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain -- a listing so exhaustive that it was necessary to assign them two full columns on the manuscript. The line descends vertically for several feet and then begins again in a second green column.

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