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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The Coventry MS, which contains writings by Chaucer, Hoccleve, Lydgate, Mandeville, and others, belonged to the Grammar School at Coventry from shortly after 1602 until the early years of the present century, when it disappeared. The volume reappeared, in private hands, in the 1950's and was bought by the Coventry City Council. Virtually nothing has been known of the contents of the MS. The Chaucerian texts (transcriptions printed in the article) are A B C, Bukton, Purse, Gentilesse, Lak of Sledfastnesse, Truth. These texts generally represent a good tradition (Brusendorff's “Bradshaw group”) and exhibit an interesting relationship with the important Canterbury Tales MS, Cambridge University Library Gg. 4. 27. The Coventry MS was written in the middle or third quarter of the fifteenth century. Its Chaucerian texts mark it as the fourth largest anthology of Chaucer's Short Poems known from medieval times.
1 Chaucer: A Bibliographical Manual (New York, 1908), p. 354.
2 The authors are indebted to the Coventry City Council (and to A. A. Dibben, City Archivist) for permission to publish transcriptions from the MS.
3 If the doubtful Complaynt D'Amours is counted, Harley 7333 also has six.
4 In addition to providing the description of the MS, A. I. Doyle has settled various details, particularly with respect to the correctness of the transcription. I also owe my knowledge of the MS to him. [G. B. Pace]
5 Cambridge University Library MS. Add. 4467, f. 5r . Thomas Alford gentleman of the City of Coventry was also a cordwainer of the City of London: Harleian Soc. Pub., XV (London, 1880), 11.
6 C. U. L. Add. 4468, f. 16r : “Classis 25, MisceIl. no. 12. A MS. in English Verse on Parchment, Fol.” Not in Wanley's hand.
7 Ed. E. Bernard, 1697, Vol. n, p. 33, No. 1457. Another contemporary list of the MSS, not by Wanley, in Bodleian MS. Tanner 268, f. 9, has as no. 4 “Chaucers works in parchment with his Effigies in his habit at the beginning of the Book.”
8 See C. E. Wright, Proceedings of the British Academy, XLVI (1961), 101–104; Diary of II. Wanley, Bibliog. Soc, 1966,i, xiii–xv. At the time of publication he was only 25, and 18 when he presented the MSS.
9 Pp. 172–175.
10 Titus and Vespasian, p. xli.
11 An extract from the printed catalogue, pp. 16–20, about 300 volumes, with typed prices and buyers, inserted in C. U. L. Add. 4467; Add. 4468 has pencil ticks and notes against various items probably in preparation for the sale, including the letters GS (for Grammar School?) by the item under discussion, which in 1834 the headmaster is said to have removed to his house. See M. C. Seymour, “The English MSS of Mandeville's Travels,” Edin. Bib. Soc. Trans., iv (1966), 201–202, with a brief description of the volume. M. R. James was informed that MS. 15 (C. M. A. 1460) was no longer there when compiling On the Abbey of S. Edmund at Bury, Camb. Antiq. Soc. 8vo Pub. xxviii (1895), p. 82, No. 230, though its second half is listed as lot 291 and since 1919 has been C. XT. L. Add. 6190. MS. 16 (C. M. A. 1461), not apparently in the sale, was in fact purchased by E. G. Duff from a London bookseller in 1894 and is now in John Rylands Library, Manchester, Eng. 94. Both these were gifts of Wanley himself in 1689–90. MS. 2 (C. M. A. 1447), given by his father Nathaniel (d. 1680), now Harvard Lat. 241, was not in the sale; while Rylands Lat. 341 (since 1923), only given by J. F. Norton in 1886, was lot 289.
12 Transactions of the Bristol and Glos. Archaeol. Soc., xxxvii (1914), 187.
13 Cf. I er Collogue International de PaUographie Latine (Paris, 1953), Nomenclature des icritures livresques, pp. 21–23. The pedigree and terminology of English scripts cannot be assimilated simply to the continental. In other parlance the present script could be called a bastard, but it is quite different from a continental bastarda. An agreed English classification or table of equivalents is badly overdue but efforts are now being made to achieve one.
14 This term, by analogy with the continental fere-huma-nistica, fere-hybrida, etc., is an invention of the present writer but has been generally admitted to fill a need unambiguously.
15 Catalogue of Printed Books and Manuscripts Bequeathed by F. Douce (Oxford, 1840), p. 65; Summary Catalogue of Western MSS IV (Oxford, 1897), No. 21947; London Guildhall, Commissary Court Register Sharpe, f. 303v, will, 14 Oct. 1459, of John Burton (d. 20 Nov.), prob. 13 Dec. 1460: “to Kateryn my doughter Nunne of halywell my grete Inglisshe booke called legenda sanctorum so that aftir hir decesse I will that the same booke remayne to the Prioresse and Covent of the same place for evermore for to praye for my soule and alle Cristen soules.”
16 Cf. C. F. Biihler, The 15th-Century Book (Philadelphia, 1960), pp. 20–24, on the distinction between professional, semiprofessional, and amateur or occasional scribes. The hands in question are practised ones, and Douce could have been done by nuns.
17 Cf. E. Rickert, in J. M. Manly and E. Rickert, The Text of the Canterbury Tales (Chicago, 1940), I, 572, 582. The secondary initials of blue with red flourishing and the plain versals and paragraph marks in one color are of the kinds that scarcely alter during the century or from place to place.
18 The abbreviations for ET, CON, and = (a triple tittle-see OED, s.v. little, sense fc); EST and AMEN in full.
19 Through the good offices of Mr. Dibben and the Coventry City Police (cf. n. 33 below).
20 For Chaucer cf. Huntington Ellesmere 26. C. 9, British Museum Harley 4866, Lansdowne 851, etc.; for Hoccleve Arundel 38 and Royal 17. D. vi; for Lydgate Harley 1766, 2278, 4826, etc. The habit and hair-style of each is different, in keeping with their vocations. Seymour implausibly suggests the beggar in the prologue of the Regemenl.
21 See M. R. James, The Chaundler MSS, Roxburghe Club, 1916, for contemporary tinted outline drawings of secular doctors, clerks, and scholars at Winchester and New Colleges; and the frontispiece to Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers, ed. C. F. Biihler, EETS, 211 (1939), for an ancient philosopher illustrated in the same style. Egidius Romanus is shown in a white habit, but mitred, in Durham Univ. Lib. MS. Cosin V. I. 9, f. 2r, ca. 1400. In Digby 233, however, he has a blackish habit.
22 Durham U. L. Cosin v. iii. 9, ed. F. J. Furnivall, Minor Poems, EETS, E. S., LXI (1892), 95–242; The Regemenl, EETS, E.S., LXXII (1897), pp. xv–xvii, for the sources of that work.
23 Ed. F. Warren and B. White, EETS, 181 (1931); cf. W. F. Schirmer, J. Lydgale (1961), pp. 126–129.
24 Summary Catalogue, No. 3441.
25 S. C. 27627; Calalogi Codicum Manuscriplorum Biblio-thecae Bodleianae, I, i, 1858, col. 522; S. C. 1504. Laud, in appearance distinctly inferior to Bodley, is exactly parallel to it for the first two pages of text. The variants in the Dance of Death support the descent S-B-L, though not necessarily direct. Coventry stands mostly with S and B, occasionally with L, and sometimes with Huntington Ellesmere 26. A. 13, which passed through the hands of John Shirley, the London scribe (d. 1456).
26 Ed. R. J. Dean, Studies Presented to M. K. Pope (Manchester, 1939), pp. 79–87, not noticing that it contains items printed by Caxton as late as 1486/7 nor that the Latin end-leaf notes in the MS, Fairfax 10, relate to the Broughtons of Toddington, Beds., and the clergy of the hospital and chapel there: cf. Victoria County History, I, 402–403; ii, 444–446; III, 158, 384, 436, 438–440, etc. A parchment wrapper listing the three works mentioned survives in Pembroke College, Cambridge, MS. 227, which belonged to Roger Marchall, fellow of Pembroke from 1437 and physician to Edward IV: cf. A. B. Emden, Biographical Register of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 392–393, 679, not noticing this book, nor that he was born at Toddington and had a brother still living there at the time of his will in 1477. Dr. Ker has pointed out to me that the contents-list of the Pembroke MS is in Gonville and Caius College 467: M. R. James, Catalogue, ii (Cambridge, 1908), 542. The wrapper also bears the inscription “Woodcok. Penbrook hall in Cambryg”—a Herts, and London cleric who, at his death in 1488, left the college several books (one De Vila Christi) resembling items in the Fairfax list and probably received from Marchall: Emden, pp. 644, 686. On the other hand John Broughton, who founded the Toddington hospital in 1433, lived long enough to have owned all the listed books, he was an executor of the notable Lincolnshire book-owner Sir Thomas Cumberworth in 1451, and in 1462 he restored to Bury St Edmunds Abbey a register, Cambridge U. L. Ff. ii. 29, which he bought from a London stationer.
27 See The Bodley Version of Mandemlle's Travels, ed. M. C. Seymour, EETS, 253 (1963), pp. xi, xvi–xvii, xix–xx; cf. J. M. Manly and E. Rickert, The Text of the Canterbury Tales, i, 173–179, 575–576, 602–603; R. A. Caldwell, “The Scribe of the Chaucer MS, Cambridge University Library Gg.4.27,” MLQ, v (1944), 33–44. For the East Anglian and Essex associations of Huntington Ellesmere 26. C. 9 see Manly and Rickert, i, 152–159, 565–567. B. M. Cotton Cleopatra D. vii has contemporary additions concerning Westminster, London, and Middlesex (mid-15th-cent.).
28 To be edited by M. C. Seymour for the EETS.
29 See Herbert's edition, cited above (n. 10), from which Coventry seems nearest Laud misc. 622 and then Digby 230; but cf. C. F. Biihler, “The New Morgan Manuscript of Titus and Vespasian,” PMLA, LXXVI (1961), 20–24, for two new MSS.
30 Catalogi Cod. Man. Bib. Bod., ix (1883), col. 242.
31 H. Bergen, Troy Book, iv (EETS, 126,1920, p. 87) makes this suggestion for other MSS of the same school, not Selden supra 53 or Digby 230, however.
32 R. H. Robbins and J. L. Cutler, Supplement to the Index of Middle English Verse (Lexington, Ky., 1965), No. 502.5.
33 This reading may be only what the MS ought to read; the writing is over an erasure and interpretation is doubtful. I quote from a letter by Dr. Doyle: “He [the Coventry Archivist] has had the erased line under ultraviolet light (at Police HQ!) and says that ‘it seems to read’ Thai the were beltr' be take in Feise. … It looks to me as if the original scribe has had two goes at it.”
34 F. N. Robinson, The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 2nd ed. (Boston, 1957), pp. 915–919 (Textual Notes to the Short Poems). Robinson's edition is chosen because it is readily available, conservative, and relatively full in its treatment of the poems. Ideally perhaps the texts should all be classified afresh, but to do so would require not one but several articles.
35 The assumptions are either stated or implicit in the closely reasoned rationale of textual criticism by the writer's former teacher, the linguist A. A. Hill: “Some Postulates of Distributional Analysis,” SB, iii (1950–51), 63–95.
36 For the MSS see Robinson's textual notes and the Brown-Robbins Index of Middle English Verse (New York, 1943) with its recent (1965) supplement (n. 32 above). The modern editions collated, in addition to Robinson's, are W. W. Skeat's (The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Oxford, 1894, i), H. Frank Heath's (A. VV. Pollard et al., The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 1904; Globe Edition), John Koch's {Geoffrey Chancers kleinere Dichtungen, Heidelberg, 1928), and E. T. Donaldson's {Chaucer's Poetry, New York, 1958), these being the principal editions to include all of the poems involved.
37 The Melbourne MS (State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, Felton Bequest, Deguilleville in English) contains an unpublished copy of the ABC which belongs to Robinson's group B. The authors are indebted to the authorities of the State Library for a photograph of the MS. For a fragment of the A B C in Durham Univ. Lib., Cosin v.I.9, see A. I. Doyle, “Unrecorded Chaucerian Manuscript,” The Durham Philobiblon, I, No. 8 (Jan. 1953), 54–55; the fragment is too short to classify (stanzas 1–2 only).
38 The first variant is normally (as here) the Coventry reading, the second Robinson's. Readings for other MSS are cited from the writer's own transcriptions (which agree essentially with the published transcriptions).
39 Following ten Brink, Aage Brusendorfi (The Chaucer Tradition, London, 1925, p. 240) argues that the rejected variants are closer to the French original of the ABC and hence may be genuine. Robinson's view of the variants is widely held (Skeat, Heath, Koch, Donaldson).
40 Robinson (also Skeat, Heath): Now, ladi bryghte.
41 Speght, however, is probably only a copy, with minor modifications, of Gg. 4. 27 (not, as seems generally assumed, a sister); see George B. Pace, “Speght's Chaucer and MS. Gg. 4. 27” (forthcoming in SB, Vol. xx).
42 Except for mere differences of spelling, the following is a complete corpus of variants (C is Coventry, F Fairfax, N Notary, T Thynne): 1 Buhtoun FCN; & c T; 3 oo woorde C, one word N, a worde FT; 5 you to expresse CN, to expresse FT; 7 write CN, writen FT; 8 such CNT, swich F; 9 sein CF, seye NT; it is C, that is N, that hyt is FT; 11 pat C, his FNT; 12 nolde C, wolde FNT; 13 offt CFN, ejte T; 19 pou CFT, you N; 20 be CN, ben FT; 23 be CN, to be FT; 24 offt CN, eft FT; of weddingefall C,falle ofweddynge FN, to fed of weddyng T; 25 prouerbe C, prouerbes FNT; figure CFN, fygures T; 30 han C, have FNT; 31 to lede CJrely to lede FNT; 32 fid harde is CN, ful harde it is F , foide is T.
43 The assumption that the original contained no unique readings is obviously controverted here.
44 Charles Johnson and Hilary Jenkinson, English Court HandA.D. 1066 to 1500 (Oxford, 1915), i,34.
45 See Hill, pp. 87–89.
46 The basic MS is Fairfax, and the resulting text essentially that of Robinson (but not line 19, shal; this ungram-matical form appears in none of the authorities).
47 “The Text of Chaucer's Purse,” SB, I (1949), 105–121; cf. Robinson, p. 919.
48 Robinson: but ye (but see my article, p. 117).
49 Robinson mentions as unclassified Cambridge University Library MS. Gg. 4. 27. 1(b), a late (ca. 1600) addition to Gg. 4. 27; cf. R. A. Caldwell, “Joseph Holand,” MP, XL (1943), 299; D. D. Griffith, Bibliography of Chaucer 1908–1953 (Seattle, Wash., 1955), p. 30. This copy need not go unclassified: line 20 (is queme) as well as general similarity of text shows that it is from Stowe's edition (London, 1561). E. P. Hammond observes (Chaucer: A Bibliographical Manual, p. 371) that an unclassified copy of the poem is in Bossewell's Workes of Armorie (1572); this too is from Stowe. (Stowe's edition, from Cotton Cleopatra D. vii or a comparable lost MS, should probably be included among the authorities for the poem.)
50 Robinson's selection of variants does not illustrate adequately the amount of variation found in the authorities; the text of Cenlilesse is by no means certain in lines 1, 2, 4, 16, 20. In line 4 Brusendorff (p. 255, n. 2) and Koch prefer love.
51 But Skeat reads can him queme and Heath, Koch, and Donaldson wol him queme (from still other MSS).
52 Here again there is variation among editors (between claymeth and desireth), but coueiteth seems to have been universally rejected.
53 Boston, 1933, pp. 1037–38.
54 For the same grouping see John Koch, rev. of F. J. Furnivall, A One-Text Print of Chaucer's Minor Poems (London, 1880), Anglia, iv (1881), 109; L. H. Holt, “Chaucer's Lac of Stedfastnesse,” JEGP, vi (1906), 419–431; G. B. Pace, “Chaucer's Lak of Stedfastnesse,” SB, iv (1951–52), 113–114.
55 Listed as lacking the envoy (because omitted inadvertently by the Chaucer Society). This stanza, up to now unpublished, reads:
Prince desire to be honorable Speke with folke and hate extorcioun Suffre nothinge that may be reprevable To thin estate done in thi regioun Shewe forth thi swerde of castigacioun Drede god do law loue trouth and wurthinesse And wed thi folke agayne to stedfastnesse
In their supplement (1965) to the Brown-Robbins Index, Robbins and Cutler list, as a new MS, Ipswich County Hall Deposit, Hillwood (olim Brome)—but this is not actually a text of Chaucer's poem (it merely quotes two lines from it).
56 Ben nothing lyk: so Robinson and Skeat, although the MSS support Is no thing lyke and Beon no thing oon (Heath, Koch, Donaldson).
57 Done: so Robinson, Skeat, Heath; the MSS support Do (Koch, Donaldson).
58 Robinson lists, without classifying, five “other copies”; these all belong to his group y. A sixth copy (unpublished) occurs on a flyleaf in Nottingham Univ. Lib. MS. Me LM 1 (olim Mellish); this also belongs to group y. The authors are indebted to Mrs. M. A. Welch (Archivist), and to H. D. Brewster, for furnishing them a photograph of the MS.
59 Of the readings only blyndelh seems universally rejected (e.g., Heath adopts all the B readings except blyndelh).
60 The title (which Robinson and others have adopted from Gg. 4. 27) need not be spurious.
61 Skeat, Heath, and Donaldson adopt the Gg. 4. 27 form of the refrain.
62 There is, of course, the copy of Buktnn, but this poem is neither in Additional 22139 nor in Gg. 4.27 (nor is the Coventry copy from any extant MS).
63 The affiliation with the Cotton and Ellesmere MSS is inferable from the preceding section; that with Additional 10340 is not because Robinson's framework made treatment of it unnecessary.
64 The Chaucer Tradition, pp. 205–206.
65 Piers Plowman: The A Version (London, 1960), p. 147.
66 Ibid., p. 149.
67 The MS headings, aside from ABC, are principally Pryer a Noslre Dame, Incipil carmen secundum ordinem Lit-terarum alphabets, and Devoute dylee of owe Lady.
68 For the possibility that some texts of Gg. 4. 27 derive from “special sources” see the quotation from Manly and Rickert below.
69 The writer (who has in preparation a study of all the Truth MSS) has evidence which appears to support Brusen-dorff to this extent: that several MSS, Gg. 4. 27 among them, seem to possess equal authority for the body of the poem (suggesting that Chaucer may have produced more than one version). Coventry's handling of the disputed refrain is extremely interesting, for it not only has the pronoun, which Gg. 4. 27 lacks, but misplaces it on its first occurrence (1. 7) in such a fashion as to suggest derivation from a copy in which the pronoun was either inserted or crossed out or handled in some fashion so that it was overlooked initially (cf. Brusendorff's argument that the MSS of Truth derive from a draft with revisions).
70 i, 178–179; the statements are not in sequence.
71 The Canterbury Tales (some of them), Prologue to The Legend of Good Women, The Parliament of Fowls, and Trtith. Manly and Rickert, discussing the provenance of Gg. 4.27, leave no doubt as to their view: “These facts seem to point to a wealthy patron of literature … who knew owners of special texts” (p. 180).