attach the pages to the cover boards. Normal Western binding uses thread for the former and thicker cord running across the spine of the book for the latter, with the thread knotted onto the cords. Coptic sewing is also found in the earliest surviving leather bookbindings, which are from Coptic libraries in Egypt from the 7th and 8th centuries; in particular the design of the cover of one in the Morgan Library (MS M.569) has been compared to the St Cuthbert Gospel. In the techniques used in the binding, apart from the raised decoration, the closest resemblance is to an even smaller Irish pocket gospel book from some 50 years later, the Cadmug Gospels at Fulda, which is believed to have belonged to Saint Boniface. This is also in red goatskin, with coloured incised lines, and uses a similar unsupported or cordless stitching technique. The first appearance of the cords or supports that these "unsupported" bindings lack is found in two other books at Fulda, and they soon became universal in, and characteristic of, Western bookbinding until the arrival of modern machine techniques. The cords run horizontally across the spine, and are thicker than the threads that hold the pages together. They are attached, typically by lacing through holes or glue, to the two boards of the cover, and the threads holding the gatherings are knotted to them, resulting in a stronger binding. Dating The manuscript itself carries no date but a rather precise dating has been given to it, based mainly on its palaeography or handwriting, and also the known facts of Cuthbert's burial. The dating was revised after the acquisition by the British Library, who added to their online catalogue entry: Previously dated to the end of the 7th century (The Stonyhurst Gospel, ed. T. J. Brown (1969), pp. 12–13), R. Gameson dates the script to c. 710–c. 730 and L. Webster dates the decoration on the covers to c. 700–c. 730 (The St Cuthbert Gospel, eds C. Breay and B. Meehan (2015), pp. 33, 80). The script is the "capitular" form of uncial, with just a few emphasized letters at the start of sections in "text" uncial. Close analysis of the changing style of details of the forms of letters allows the manuscript to be placed with some confidence within a chronological sequence of the few other manuscripts thought to have been produced at Wearmouth-Jarrow. The Northumbrian