^{page 190 note 1} Norfolk and Suffolk, tho nominally two counties, were practically but one. They were (for many purposes, at least) an administrative and financial unit, and were presided over by a single sheriff.

^{page 190 note 2} It is, I confess, with some regret that I have been forced to exclude Thomas Chaucer from the number of East Anglian patrons of letters. That he was a patron of Lydgate we know from the “Balade made by Lydegate at þe departyng of Thomas Chaucyer on ambassade in to ffraunce” and the “Amerous balade by Lydegate made at þe departing of Thomas Chauciers on þe kynges ambassade into ffraunce ”which are preserved in the two Shirley mss. Addit. 16165 and Ashmole 59. Both of these texts are printed by Furnivall in Notes and Queries, S. 4. ix, pp. 381 ff., and the former of them is printed by Miss Hammond in Modern Philology, i, pp. 333 ff. In the former poem, Lydgate, after a prayer for Chaucer's preservation on the sea and safe return, praises the generous hospitality that his patron practices at home. Then, in stanza 7, he addresses a friend of Chaucer's:

Stanza 8 is addressed to Chaucer's wife; in the ninth and tenth stanzas he turns again to Chaucer's neighbours and says:

Was the shire in which Chaucer and his friends lived Norfolk? It is true that Chaucer, at the date of this poem (1417) owned a moiety of the manor of Gresham, in northern Norfolk, which he had acquired by his marriage to Matilda, daughter of Sir John Burghersh. The manor was formerly the possession of Edmund Bacon and descended from him to his two daughters, Margaret and Margery. Margaret's share of the manor descended to her granddaughter Matilda Burghersh. Margery's share passed to her husband, Sir William Moleyns (or Molynes). It is this common association of Thomas Chaucer and Moleyns with the manor of Gresham that caused Miss Hammond to infer that Lydgate's poem refers to Norfolk. “It will appear likely,” she says (l. c., pp. 332, 333), “.. from the family connection just sketched, that a son of the house of Molynes was a very natural inmate of the home of Thomas Chaucer, and that the manor of Gresham, as the place of common interest to both Molynes and Chaucer, is probably meant here.” This opinion was accepted by Dr. H. N. MacCracken, who says (Publications of the Modern Language Association, xxvi, pp. 146, 147): “She [the Countess of Suffolk] was the daughter of Thomas Chaucer, whose family's interest in letters is attested by Lydgate's Complaint on Departing of Thomas Chaucer, and whose house, according to Lydgate, was the center of the social life of the county of Suffolk.” On closer consideration, however, it seems likely that the country to which Lydgate refers was in the neighbourhood of Thomas Chaucer's Oxfordshire residence, Ewelme. It is a well known fact that Chaucer's chief associations were with Oxfordshire. He sat for that county in Parliament in 1400-1, 1402, 1405-6, 1407, 1409-10, 1411, 1413, 1414, 1421, 1422, 1425-6, 1427, 1429, 1430-1 (D. N. B., x, p. 167). He was appointed on the commission of the peace for that county in 1403, 1404, 1406, 1407, 1410, 1412, 1413, 1423, 1424, 1432 (Calendar of the Patent Rolls, 1401-5, p. 519; 1405-8, p. 496; 1408-13, p. 484; 1413-16, p. 422; 1422-9, p. 568; 1429-36, p. 623). His apparent absence from the commission between 1413 and 1423 is due perhaps to the fact that the patent rolls for five or six years previous to 1422 are not yet calendared. He also appears constantly in connection with other business relating to Oxfordshire and the neighbouring counties of Berks, Bucks, and Herts (e. g., Calendar of the Patent Rolls, 1401-5, p. 356; 1408-13, pp. 172, 222; 1413-16, pp. 178, 408; 1429-36, pp. 70, 72, 75, 81, 127, 218, 354). He was never on the commission of the peace for Norfolk or Suffolk, however, nor does he appear to have served in either of those counties on such commissions as he was so frequently charged with in relation to the business of Oxfordshire and its vicinity. It seems clear, then, that Chaucer was an Oxfordshire man, and that he had little connection with Norfolk and Suffolk. Lydgate's reference to Moleyns, tho it may at first sight point to Norfolk, in reality confirms this view. This gentleman was (if we are correct in identifying him with the great-grandson of Edmund Bacon) William Moleyns of Stoke Pogis, Buckinghamshire, who' died in 1425, aged 48 years (see Complete Peerage, L. 1892, iv, pp. 276, 277; Lipscomb's Buckinghamshire, iv, pp. 544 ff.). He had many estates in Buckinghamshire, particularly in the neighbourhood of Stoke Pogis and Aylesbury, but was not in possession of that moiety of the manor of Gresham which had been the property of his grandmother. When we consider that Stoke Pogis is only about 21 miles distant from Ewelme, and that Moleyns owned a manor at Henley, Oxf., about 10 miles from Ewelme, it seems almost certain that Lydgate's reference is to Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire rather than to Norfolk and Suffolk. To the references given in this note I may add: Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner, i, pp. xxx, 75, 76, etc.; Nicolas, in Aldine Chaucer, L. 1893, i, pp. 86 ff.; D. N. B., xxviii, pp. 256; Blomefield's Norfolk, viii, p. 127; Calendarium Inquisitionum Post Mortem, iv, p. 199.

^{page 193 note 1} Paston Letters, i, pp. xxii, 11, D. N. B. xliv, pp. 5 ff.

^{page 193 note 2} Temple of Glass, ed. Schick, ll. 308-314.

^{page 193 note 3} Publications of the Modern Language Association, xxiii, p. 134.

^{page 193 note 4} Dr. MacCracken (ibid., pp. 138, 139) anticipates this objection, but not convincingly. For a lady to wear the motto of her lover before betrothal is somewhat different from a wife's wearing her husband's arms after marriage. Dr. MacCracken concludes with saying: “Of course, it cannot be proved that Agnes Barry did not bring this motto with her into the family.” If this could be substantiated it would furnish the most satisfactory way out of the difficulty.

^{page 194 note 1} The Paston letters contain abundant evidence of Sir John's bookishness and most of the passages are well known. See letters 568, 596, 632, 690, 746, 747, 749, 869.

^{page 194 note 2} We may note, before leaving Sir John, letter 794, from one John Pympe to Sir John Paston, dated 1477. It consists of five stanzas in rime royal, with a postscript in prose. Apparently John Pympe was an author, but I have no knowledge of him except this letter. Was Sir John his patron?

^{page 194 note 3} D. N. B., xviii, pp. 235, 237. Fastolf took up his permanent residence in Norfolk in 1454 (Paston Letters, i, pp. lxxxix, cxii) but the family was an old one in the county (D. N. B., ibid.).

^{page 195 note 1} Paston Letters, i, pp. lxxxvii, 296, 297, 461; ii, p. viii, etc.

^{page 195 note 2} Cat. Lib. MSS. Harl., ii, p. 633.

^{page 195 note 3} Blades, Caxton, L. 1861, i, p. 159.

^{page 195 note 4} Sidney Lee, in D. N. B. xviii, p. 238; Gairdner, Paston Letters, i, p. cxiv.

^{page 195 note 5} See Itineraria Symonis Simeonis et Willelmi de Worcestre, ed. J. Nasmith, Cantab., 1778, p. 368: “1473. die 10 augusti presentavi W. episcopo Wyntoniensi apud Asher librum Tullii de Senectute per me translatum in anglicis, sed nullum regardum recepi de episcopo.”

^{page 196 note 1} Tanner had apparently seen a ms. of this work; see Bibliotheca, p. 115. It appears also to be referred to in Paston Letters, i, p. 545.

^{page 196 note 2} I give the title according to Tanner's version of it. Gairdner (Paston Letters, i, p. cxiv) gives it, from ms. Laud. B. 23, as “Stellae versificatae pro anno 1440 ad instantiam J. Fastolfe militis.” For lists of Worcester's numerous other works see Tanner, and D. N. B., lxii, pp. 442, 443. His De ordinibus religiosorum tam nomine quam habitu compilatus de diversis cronicis in civitate Lond.“ was written for a Norfolk patron, Nicholas Ancrage, prior of St. Leonard's, a Benedictine cell close to Norwich, in 1465. Valuable information about Worcester is contained in an essay, The Note Books of William Worcester, in F. A. Gasquet's Old English Bible.

^{page 196 note 3} Pastori Letters, i, pp. cxiii-vi, 300, 301. There is some reason for believing that Fastolf had some connection with the Book of Noblesse, presented to Edward IV in 1475, some years after Fastolf's death. For the evidence see J. G. Nichols's introduction to that text in the volume edited by him for the Roxburghe Club.

^{page 196 note 4} My designations of distance thruout this paper will always refer to air lines, and not to the actual distances by road, and are only rough approximations of the air lines. They will be useful, however, as relative indications of the distances between places referred to, which are marked on the map facing the first page of this article. This map, which is only a tracing of a tracing from Stanford's London Atlas, makes no pretensions to accuracy and is furnished merely as a help in locating the places referred to.

^{page 197 note 1} Paston Letters, i, p. 393, abstract of a letter of Fastolf, calling Stapleton “my cousin.”

^{page 197 note 2} Blomefield's Norfolk, ix, p. 321.

^{page 197 note 3} Sir Miles Stapleton appears with Sir John Fastolf in the commissions of 1445, 1447, 1448, 1450, 1452. He appears in the commission of 1447 with John Paston. See Calendar of the Patent Rolls, 1441-6, p. 474; 1446-52, p. 592.

^{page 197 note 4} Paston Letters, i, pp. 39, 141, 120, 152, 156, etc. In 1450 and thereabouts Paston was apparently on very good terms with Stapleton, but later their relations became somewhat strained, for in 1461 Paston calls him “that knavyssh knyght, Sir Miles Stapilton” (Paston Letters, ii, p. 28, letter to Margaret Paston).

^{page 197 note 5} For the list of his works see Furnivall, Political, Religious, and Love Poems, re-edited 1903, E. E. T. S., p. 308.

^{page 198 note 1} Ibid., p. 301.

^{page 198 note 2} Ibid., p. 303.

^{page 199 note 1} 27 Henry VI is from 1 Sept., 1448 to 31 Aug., 1449. Metham's language might suggest that Lady Catherine died between the completion of the romance and the writing of the epilog, but this was not the case, for she was still living on 2 Jan., 7 Edward IV, having married, after the death of Sir Miles, Sir Richard Harcourt of Ellendale, Staffordshire (Blomefield's Norfolk, ix, p. 321).

^{page 199 note 2} Metham's apology might indicate either that he wrote this romance in his youth, and had not acquired that skill which “continuance” gives, or that he began to rime when he was somewhat old. His treatise on palmistry, immediately preceding the Amoryus and Cleopes, bears a note to the effect that it was “translatyd” into English “the xxv. wyntyr off hys age.”

^{page 200 note 1} Furnivall, op. cit., pp. 306-308. I can give no other information about Metham than that furnished by the Quaritch ms. That he was a scholar of Cambridge, probably a resident of Norwich, and flourished c. 1449 is all we have. Dr. Furnivall says (p. 308) that, according to the statement of the Registrary, the Cambridge University records do not mention him. Nor is he mentioned in such Norwich records as I have examined, nor in the Norfolk Feet of Fines. The family appears to have been originally of Yorkshire, with branches in Lincolnshire, to judge from the authorities referred to in G. W. Marshall's Genealogist's Guide. It is possible that John Metham is to be connected with Thomas Metham who married Elizabeth, the sister of Thomas Stapleton of Kentmere, etc., of the Yorkshire Stapletons, from whom the Norfolk branch of the family sprang. Thomas Stapleton died in 1373; Thomas Metham in 1402-3, aetat. 24, leaving male descendants who held the barony for several hundred years. See for this the Complete Peerage, vii, p. 242, note b.

^{page 200 note 2} See letters by Dr. MacCracken and the present writer in the Nation, Feb. 29 and March 14, 1912.

^{page 201 note 1} E. Steele, Lydgate and Burgh's Secrees of Old Philosophers, E. E. T. S., p. xxvi, Doc. vi.

^{page 201 note 2} According to the monumental inscription given by Blomefield: “.et [orate] p. a'i'ab, D'ne Catherine, filie D'ni Thomas Poole, fil. Michaelis nup. comitis Sufi: …” (Norfolk, ix, p. 324). This Thomas must have been the second son of the first Earl of Suffolk, for the third earl died without male issue, and the Thomas who was son of the second earl was a priest. For these details see D. N. B., xlvi, pp. 33, 34. For a good genealogy of the Stapletons see Norfolk Archœology, vols, viii, xvi. By Sir Miles's marriage to Elizabeth Felbrigg (his first wife) and the marriage of his daughter to Sir William Calthorp, he was connected with two of the foremost families of Norfolk.

^{page 201 note 3} See Blomefield, as cited in note 2, p. 197 above.

^{page 201 note 4} He served with William Paston on the commissions of 1430, 1431, 1434, 1436, 2 Jan. 1437, and 14 March 1437. He served with William Paston and Sir John Fastolf on the commissions of May 1437, 1438, 1441, and 1444. He served with Sir Miles Stapleton on the commissions of 1438, and 1439, and 1440, and with Sir Miles Stapleton and Sir John Fastolf on those of 1445 and 1448. He served on the commission of 1447 with Sir John Fastolf, Sir Miles Stapleton, and John Paston. See Calendar of the Patent Bolls, 1429-36, p. 621; 1436-41, pp. 586, 590, 591; 1441-6, p. 474; 1446-52, p. 592.

^{page 202 note 1} For a list of the estates of which William de la Pole died seized, see Dugdale, Baronage of England, ii, p. 189. In Suffolk there were about 35 manors, etc., in Norfolk 5, and in all the other counties about 21. The estates in Suffolk are particularly frequent in the district immediately east of Bury, in the neighbourhood of Stow Market, Hadleigh, and Eye. Others are near Harleston, Halesworth, Saxmundham, Ipswich, and Lowestoft. In Norfolk, Causton is 4 m. WSW of Aylsham, Costesey 4½ m. NW of Norwich, and Stocton 3½ m. NW of Beccles. William de la Pole was born at Cotton, about 13 miles E. by N. from Bury, and was buried at Wingfield, near the Norfolk line (D. N. B., xlvi, pp. 50, 55).

^{page 202 note 2} These, with the English poems suspected to be the work of Suffolk, are printed by Dr. MacCracken in his article, An English Friend of Charles of Orléans, in Publications of the Modern Language Association, xxvi, pp. 142 ff. Dr. MacCracken's interest in East Anglian patrons of letters began at an earlier date than my own, and it is a pleasure to acknowledge the help he has afforded me in my study of the subject.

^{page 202 note 3} See preceding note. William de la Pole is sometimes spoken of as a patron of Reginald Pecock. He was certainly his ecclesiastical patron (Repressor, ed. Babington, Rolls Series, i, xxxii) but I have found no evidence of his being his literary patron.

^{page 203 note 1} Steele, Secrees of Old Philosophers, E. E. T. S., p. xxvii, Doc. vn. Adam Moleyns, afterwards bishop of Chichester, is not the person Lydgate refers to in the Departing of Thomas Chaucer, but a considerably younger man, for no notice occurs of him before 1436 (D. N. B., xxxviii, p. 131). The italics are mine.

^{page 203 note 2} MacCracken, Studies in the Life and Writings of John Lydgate, Harvard, 1907, (unpublished) dissertation.

^{page 203 note 3} Cat. Cod. MSS. in Coll. Aulisque Oxon., Pars ii, S. Johannis Baptistae, p. 16.

^{page 204 note 1} Both died later than 1415 (Complete Peerage, vii, pp. 304, 305).

^{page 204 note 2} Calendar of the Patent Rolls, 1436-41, p. 504; 1441-6, p. 62. Curteis became abbot of St. Edmund's about Feb. 18, 1429 (ibid., 1422-9, p. 528).

^{page 204 note 3} Publications of the Modern Language Association, xxiii, p. 134.

^{page 204 note 4} Richard Yates, History and Antiquities of the Abbey of St. Edmund's Bury, pp. 150, 151.

^{page 205 note 1} History of English Poetry, ed. Hazlitt, iii, p. 56.

^{page 206 note 1} Horstmann, Altenglische Legenden, Neue Folge, St. Edmund und Fremund, pp. 379 ff.

^{page 206 note 2} A parallel case of a religious undertaking literary work at the command of his superior occurs in the case of the prose legends of saints contained in ms. Douce 114, printed in Anglia, vol. viii. In the “shorte Apologetik of þs englisshe compyloure” the author asks forgiveness from his readers for the faults of his writing, that they may be

The Proemium to the Eulogium Historiarum (ed. Haydon, Rolla Series, i, pp. 1-5) informs us that that work also was undertaken at the command of the author's superior.

^{page 207 note 1} Cat. Harl. MSS., ii, p. 592.

^{page 207 note 2} MacCracken, Studies, etc.