The first owner of the manuscript and sole compiler of its principal contents (i.e. up to fol. 44v) as Pincombe and Ward have suggested is Edward Gunter of Lincoln's Inn (admitted 3 February 1563 , 70). The evidence for this comes from a number of entries signed with a monogram comprising the letters EG (on folios 9v, 16r-v, 17v) and a couplet on folio 16v ('Geve credytte who lyst to women muche / For I haue donne my lucke is suche') bearing the annotation 'quoth gunter'. The Lincoln's Inn association comes from two unique orations in verse presented at wedding masques held there and written by one of its members, Thomas Pounde (fols. 24r-37r). Further conclusive evidence is found an inscription on the inside fold of the vellum cover, obscured in a crease which has stiffened and shrunk back into several folds, here for the first time transcribed in full: To his welbeloved brother Edward Gunter gent at lincōles linconles yēne yenne geue these to spede. It records the gift of the blank volume to Edward Gunter with an imperative from his brother to fill the pages with useful knowledge ('geve these to spede'). At the end of the volume the fly-leaf is covered with jottings, pen trials and doodles in conjuction with a name signed variously as 'Eline', 'Eliner' and 'Eliner gunter'). Elinor was clearly using the page to practice her signature and to try out different scripts for example 'Be it knowen vnto all men by thes presentes' is copied out twice in full (and the first few words many more times further down the page) in a secretary hand with some ill-formed graphs and in a more competent italic script. The prominence of the signatures on the back fly-leaf and the entries, already mentioned, signed with the letters E and G has led to the suggestion that the volume was compiled by Elinor (Cunningham and Lancashire make this assumption), but as Pincombe and Ward suggest, and the inscription now confirms, the owner and principal scribe of the manuscript is her brother Edward.

Edward and Ellen (diminutive of Elinor) are listed as children of Geoffrey Gunter of Milton and Agnes Yate of Highworth ; genealogies for the Gunters of Kintbury are found in volume three of Ellias Ashmole's (London, 1719), 315; Bodleian MS Rawl. D. 865, fol. 113v; and (Exeter: William Pollard, printer, 1885), 14. Edward is the second son after Simon and is followed by three more males, John, Bryan and Humphrey, listed as 3rd, 4th and 5th respectively. The Gunter genealogies also record three daughters, Joan and Elizabeth both married by 1566, and Elinor, probably the youngest of the Gunter children, for whom there is no record of a marriage. However, Elinor's marriage to Thomas Fisher (Edward's 'welbeloved' friend at Lincoln's Inn, see below) who was lord of a manor in Liddington Wick in Wiltshire is recorded in the (London: George Bell & Sons, 1882, 27). Thomas Fisher's last will made in October 1598 shortly before he died 'being sicke and weake in bodie' refers to 'Ellen ... my welbeloved wiefe' and provides for their three children Henry, Anne and Dorothie (). Ellen is the 'sole executrix' and 'John Gunter gentlemen' (Edward's younger brother and surviving heir of the Gunters of Kintbury) is one of three overseers.

Edward Gunter descended from a solid country gentry family, and at the time of making his final will on 11 October 1585, 'sick and diseased in bodye' (), he resided in North Moreton a small county parish 12 miles south of Oxford. He died a few weeks later on 28th of the same month. A few things can be gleaned about his life and career. Edward was a trained lawyer, called to the bar by 7 Feb 1574 (, 389) and, as the evidence suggests, he maintained a life-long connection with Lincoln's Inn being appointed autumn steward of the reader's dinner at a council held on 6 Nov 1579 (ibid., 415) and forming his closest friendships there. All four overseers named in his will were fellow Inns men (named for the 'speciall goodwill truste and confidence which I have conceiued in [them]'): his 'welbeloved' Henry Willoughby (of West Knoyle, Wiltshire; entered Lincoln's Inn 20 April 1567; , 74), William Oldesworth or Oldisworth (of Gloucestershire; entered Lincoln's Inn 8 October 1564; , 72); Richard Wheeler (of London; special admission to Lincoln's Inn on 17 Nov 1566. , 74) and Thomas Fisher (of Liddington Wick, Wiltshire; entered Lincoln's Inn 4 Nov 1562; , 70). Also mentioned in Lincoln's Inn Black Books, 364, under a list of benchers present at a council meeting held 2 Feb 1569 together with Richard Wheeler). Edward Gunter remained a bachelor and it is clear from the references in his will to his chamber (or lodgings) in London with its furnishings ('bedding', 'chaires' and 'cushens') and items of clothing (his 'Russett studie gowne' and 'blacke clothe gowne furred with budge') that his professional life was based in the metropolis. The mention of books 'at London or elsewheare' suggests that his life was divided between London and his country seat at North Moreton. Edward Gunter might also have been employed in some capacity as a royal financial officer: on fol. 87v of his miscellany there are two sets of accounts in his hand, one listing various fees incurred in the department of the Exchequer and another for an enrolment of a recognizance in Chancery (a division of the high court). This might have been part of his legal work as a barrister, but much later (in 1596) his brother Brian did have such a role being appointed by the Lord Treasurer as escheator for Oxfordshire and Berkshire (see James Sharpe, , 37).

At the time of making his will Edward was head of the Gunter family and he passed on the ancestral inheritance to John, the next brother in line, defaulting to his nephew Edward in case of an early death. But this third son of Geoffrey and Agnes together with his wife Alice Keblewhite of Blewbury were destined to enjoy remarkably long lives for the period. Two brasses in St Mary's Church, Kintbury commemorate John Gunter aged 89 (died 1624) and Alice aged 86 (died 1626) 'being full as of yeares so of bounty and charity'. There were also legacies for his younger siblings their spouses and numerous progeny. The parsonage of North Mourton was bequeathed to Bryan and his son Harvey, along with his 'second bedsted and bed furnished' and an equal division with elder brother John of 'goods and chattells'. Humfrey, Edward's youngest brother, was left money and furnishings to 'Threescore poundes', and 'one of my spanish bedstedes and my fourth best fetherbed furnished'; legacies also went to his sisters.

Edward's brother Bryan was later to be involved in an infamous and bizarre case involving the pretended demonic possession of his daughter Anne and false accusations of witchcraft in the village of North Moreton. As the recently digitized casebooks of Richard Napier reveal, Anne was taken to the famous astrologer on five separate occasions for consultations (see ). The full story of the subsequent star chamber case instigated by Richard Bancroft the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1606 is told by James Sharpe in (New York: Routledge, 2000).

Edward Gunter was probably in his early thirties when he became a member of Lincoln's Inn and began to compile his personal miscellany. (We have dates of birth for two of the Gunter boys. John the third son, according to the information given in the Kintbury Church brasses, must have been born in 1536, and Brian, the fourth son, as Sharpe surmises 'on the estimate of his age that he gave during the Star Chamber investigations, was born about 1540'; , 33. A date range from ca. 1530-35 is a reasonable estimate for the birth date of Edward the second male Gunter child.) Though Edward was a serious law student he also took part in some of the social activities that gave the Inns of court their reputation as a kind of finishing school for gentlemen. One of the extra-curricular activities encouraged at the Inns was dancing, as Ward puts it, 'dancing, together with fencing and music ... formed part of the educational pattern of the Inns from at least the middle of the fifteenth century until the middle of the seventeenth', (8). Edward’s notes on the sometimes intricate sequence of steps, hops and prances for fifteen different English social dances (almaines, pavans and measures) suggests that this was an activity which he enjoyed. The long verse orations copied into the miscellany accompanied a masque—'a form of courtly dramatic entertainment, often richly symbolic, in which music and dancing played a substantial part' (OED n. 1)—in which the law students would have participated, if not in the dramatic action certainly in the dancing at the end of the show.

As an eligible young bachelor Edward was concerned about his appearance making notes of recipes 'To do away freckels in the face', 'To make heere growe' and 'To make one well colored' (fol. 14r). In the opening folios of the manuscript he collected extracts and sententious verses in Latin, from diverse sources, on the subject of women and marriage. The selection is overwhelmingly of authorities professing a negative and disparaging attitude towards women and shows how the antifeminist tradition was kept current in the Elizabethan period. The selection might also reflect a disinclination to marriage on the part of the compiler and a reassuring self-justification for an heir to an estate for remaining single. Edward copied a Latin satirical verse by Sir Thomas More (fol. 1v) proclaiming: 'A wife is a burden, but she could be useful if she dies in time to leave you all she owns' (translation taken from trans. by Leicester Bradner and Charles Arthur Lynch. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953, 163); and another expressing the same idea, copied both in the original Latin (fol. 1r) and translated into English (fol. 17v) entitled 'of ioyfull days with a wyffe' and subscribed with the compiler's EG monogram. A Latin couplet on disharmony in marriage (fol. 1r) is taken from Juvenal's 6th Satire: 'The bed which contains a bride is always the scene of strife and mutual bickering / There's precious little sleep to be had there' (translation taken from , trans. by Niall Rudd. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, 46); and in the last example, another Latin epigram by Thomas More (fol. 1v), also with an English version subscribed with the EG monogram (fol. 17v), compares a second marriage to a shipwrecked sailor going to sea again to risk life and limb.

Another locus of anxiety for Edward was a sensitivity about social status. Members of the Inns of Court in the sixteenth century, being largely populated by the sons of the landed gentry, had a highly developed sense of social distinction. Being well descended was a particular obsession of the period, and an impressive genealogy and coat of arms became increasingly desirable as external proofs of status. As Laurence Stone suggests 'nothing could be more damaging than to cast aspersions on a man's ancestry' (. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965, 25). Two English verses on fol. 17v signed with Edward Gunter's monogram deal with the subject of malicious talk 'off envious people & backbyters'; and in particular envy of others' pedigrees or loose talk about the legitimacy of claims to gentility. The plosives in 'prattelynge parrette pratte / off pettygrees' almost spits out the speaker's distain for an upstart braggart.

A later owner of the manuscript whose name appears in the lower right-hand corner of the last leaf verso is identified in as the writer and translator William Oldisworth (d. 1734). However, with the new information from Edward Gunter's will, it is more likely that the name refers to an earlier relation and namesake of the writer: Edward Gunter's fellow bencher at Lincoln's Inn William Oldisworth (spelt variously Oldesworth and Oldsworth) of Gloucester (d. 1603). As already mentioned William joined Lincoln's Inn in 1564, the year after Edward's entry and followed a similar career trajectory to his friend being called to the bar some months before Edward in 1573; and like Edward, in gaining bencher status, rising to become one of the senior members of the Inn. Edward's longer living contemporary progressed further with offices held as recorder of Gloucester from November 1587, justice of the peace, member of the council in the marches of Wales and twice elected MP for Gloucester, in 1597 and 1601 (see ).