At Hampshire Record Office dragons and beasts appear almost exclusively in written records connected to the Church and its estates, or those belonging to monastic houses such as abbeys. ... There are illustrations of dragons to be found amongst some of the parchment pages of the estate records of the bishops of Winchester known as pipe rolls, dating from medieval and Tudor times, and within the Mottisfont Rental, from the medieval abbey at Mottisfont. ... It seems likely that scribes were familiar with drawings of real and mythical beasts which they had seen in bestiaries elsewhere. ... Almost all of the medieval books containing dragons and beasts at Hampshire Record Office would have been written by local scribes from monastic houses. - [Hampshire Record Office]

Language: English