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As compared with the order of pictures reproduced in Purchas’s edition of 1625, the disturbed order of leaves in Quire VI of the Codex Mendoza may indicate that the rebinding took place after Purchas’s study of the manuscript. The second series of quire signatures and the foliation sequence almost certainly belong to this period of rebinding, as is probably the case of also most or all of the repairing guards of thick paper (stubs [a]-[d], etc.).

The volume itself seems to contain no direct evidence to allow closer dating of the present binding; dating from the watermarks of the lower endleaves is inconclusive. The possibilities would seem to be that either: (a) the binding was made between 1625 and 1654, most likely for John Selden (d. November 30, 1654) or, since his date of acquisition is uncertain, possibly for the previous owner or (b) the manuscript was bound after Selden’s death, perhaps soon after or maybe even before its arrival at the Bodleian between 1655 and 1659. Many of Selden’s printed books and manuscripts were rebound around this time; however, such bindings are usually recognizable as modest bindings covered in brown (perhaps calf) leather, with a simple fillet decoration (véase B. C. Barker-Benfield 1997, 31–34). The parchment binding, though modest and without decoration, does not seem entirely consistent with these.