Catholicon Anglicum

168 in the Monson family collection and was collated with Add MS 15562 in a publication by the Camden Society in 1882.

In July 2013, the complete copy of the Catholicon Anglicum, formerly owned by the Monson family, was sold by Sotheby's to a buyer outside of the United Kingdom for £92,500, so an export ban was subsequently placed on the book by then-culture minister Ed Vaizey after a recommendation from the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA), administered by Arts Council England.

[7] The importance of the Catholicon Anglicum has been described by Ed Vaizey:[8] "The manuscript is of outstanding significance for the history of the English language, which is fundamental to the identity and life of our nation."

Christopher Wright from the RCEWA has said:[9] This rare survival of a 15th-century English-Latin word list is one of the vital first steps on the road to the English dictionary as we know it today.

Its anonymous author, possibly a Yorkshireman on the basis of some dialect words included, provides an invaluable witness to the English language as it existed in the second half of the 15th Century, and can claim an honourable place in the roll of famous lexicographers that stretches through Johnson and Murray into our own age.