Middle Temple Library's collection of manuscripts numbers approximately 200 volumes. As to be expected, the majority are manuscript versions of case reports, statues, and other related legal materials.

This includes a volume of Draughts and Acts passed in 1652-3, and numerous case reports from the 17th century, a period characterized by its lack of printed Law Reports. A significant number of these were donated by the Treby family in 1846, and have been designated as the George Treby Manuscript Collection. Sir George Treby was a notable Middle Templar, as well as Solicitor-General (1688), Attorney-General (1689), and Chief Justice (1692). In 1681 he published A Collection of Letters and Other Writings Related to the Horrid Popish Plot, one of the volumes in our Early Printed Books collection.

The example to the right is f.85, from the Doctors Commons manuscripts, Vol. I, 1771-72. This collection of manuscripts consists of a reports from the Doctors' Commons, where cases where heard by lay judges and advocates of the ecclesiastical and admiralty courts. It was dissolved in the 19th century.

The collection also contains some non-legal curiosities, including a manuscript version of Luis Pacheco de Narvarez's Libro de las Grandecas de la Espada, originally printed in 1600. This manuscript version includes ink-drawn reproductions of all of the illustrations in this early work on fencing and swordmanship.

Middle Temple also holds some medieval manuscripts, as outlined in N.R. Ker's Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, Vol. I. One of the most interesting of these is Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae, an illuminated and rubricated manuscript written ca. 1300. It was donated to the Library by Elias Ashmole in the 17th century.

The manuscripts are currently being catalogued, and the records added to the online catalogue.