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“The Question of Halsam”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Helen Pennock South*
Affiliation:
New York University

Extract

In British Museum Addit. MS. 34360 on folio 22 occurs one stanza of rime royal entitled “The question of halsam.” It is smooth in meter, well-balanced in thought, and practically perfect in stanza form, comparing very favorably in these respects with other minor lyrics of the early fifteenth century. The popularity of this poem is attested by its presence in many manuscripts of that century and by the fact that Caxton printed it together with a second seven-line stanza also ascribed to Halsham. Both of these lyrics are found in Bodley 3896, f. 195a (MS. Fairfax 16), which affords not only the earliest, but the most authentic text of these pieces:

      The worlde so wide / thaire so remuable
      The sely man / so litel of stature
      The grove and grounde / of clothinge so mutable
      The fire so hoote / and subtil of nature
      The water neuer in oon / what creature
      That made is of these foure / thus flyttyng
      May stedfast be as here / in his lyving

      The more I goo / the ferther I am behinde
      The ferther behinde / the ner my wayes ende
      The more I seche / þe worse kan I fynde
      The lighter leve / the lother for to wende
      The bet y serve / the more al out of mynde
      Is thys ffortune not I / or infortune
      Though I go lowse / tyed am I with a Lune

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1935

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References

1 Dr. E. Flügel, “Kleinere Mitteilungen aus Handschriften,” Anglia, xiv, 463, n. Flügel also states that these two “balades” as they are called in one manuscript, were adapted under Henry VIII as “dreistimmige lieder.”

2 Professor Carleton Brown in his Register of Middle English Religious and Didactic Verse, i, 48, places this manuscript in the first half of the fifteenth century.

3 The manuscript reads and for of, evidently a scribal error, since four out of the six MSS. use of. I understand the line to mean “The grove (trees in general) and the ground so changeable in their clothing.”

4 To make the rime scheme of the stanza accurate, mynde should rime with wende, not with fynde. All versions now read mynde, but it is possible that the archetype showed Kentish influence. If so, mende would be used and the rime would be correct. In the poems of the Kentish Gower the spellings mende and mynde are both found. See glossary of The Works of John Gower (English), edited by G. C. Macaulay.

5 Brown, Carleton, op. cit., ii, 336–337, no. 2252.

6 Ibid., ii, 331, no. 2212.

7 Transcripts of the lyrics in Bodley 3896, Addit. MSS. 16165, 34360, and 5465, and Harley 7578 were made for me by Miss E. G. Parker of Oxford and Miss Edith S. Scroggs of London. I have a rotograph of the Cambridge University text. The Harley 7333 version is given by Flügel in Anglia, xiv, 463, n., as well as by Wright and Halliwell in Reliquiae Antiquae, i, 234. The Huth text as transcribed by Furnivall may be found in Notes and Queries, Fifth Series, ix, 342–343.

8 Oxford Dictionary, Lune.1

9 Ibid.

10 Catalogue of Additions to the MSS. in the British Museum, 1846–47, pp. 155–156. Brown, Carleton, op. cit., i, 355, 356, 394.

11 Ibid., i, 472.

12 Ibid., i, 382.

13 Furnivall's transcript printed in Notes and Queries, Fifth Series, ix, 342–343. Addit. 5465 gives similar lines:

“thoo I go lose yet am I teyd wt a lyne

it is fortune or In fortune this I fynde.“

14 See Register of Middle English Religious and Didactic Verse, ii, 399, no. 2693.

15 Ibid., ii, 331, no. 2211. Halliwell, James Orchard, A Selection from the Minor Poems of Dan John Lydgate (Percy Society, 1840), pp. 193 ff., 74 ff. MacCracken, Henry Noble, The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, E.E.T.S., Ex. Ser., 107, xvii, xxx, no. 45, no. 153.

16 Hammond, Eleanor Prescott, “Two British Museum Manuscripts (Harley 2251 and Adds. 34360): A Contribution to the Bibliography of John Lydgate,” Anglia, xxviii (1905), p. 5.

17 Halliwell, op. cit., p. 75.

18 Flügel, op. cit., p. 463. Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum, 1846–47, pp. 155–156.

18 Halliwell, op. cit., p. 193, note. Skeat, The Chaucer Canon (1900), p. 145.

20 Ritson, Bibliographia Poetica: A Catalogue of Engleish Poets (London, 1802), p. 57. Furnivall, Notes and Queries, Fifth Series, ix, 342–343. Flügel, op. cit., p. 463. Hammond, op. cit., p. 4. MacCracken, op. cit., p. xvii.

21 Calendarium Inquisitionum post Mortem (London, 1828), iv, 13.

22 Elwes, Dudley George Cary, and Robinson, Rev. Charles J., A History of the Castles, Mansions, and Manors of Western Sussex (London, 1876), p. 109. See also Notes and Queries, Fifth Series, vii, 407.

23 Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1349–75, passim.

24 “A Return (so far as can be ascertained) of the Members of Parliament for the County and Boroughs of Sussex,” compiled from the return of members of Parliament ordered by the House of Commons to be printed March 1, 1878, by Alan H. Stenning, Esq., Sussex Archaeological Collections, xxx, 183–187.

25 Cal. of Patent Rolls, 1367–70, p. 221.

26 Op. cit., p. 109.

27 Cal. of Inquisitions Post Mortem (London, 1916), ix, 370.

28 Ibid.

29 From the time of Richard de Halsam, who died about 1301 (Yorkshire Inquisitions, iii, Yorkshire Arch. Soc. Record Ser., xxxi, 144), there are numerous records of Halsams or Halshams—the name is spelled either way—in Halsham or adjacent towns. In the Close Rolls for 1354 (Cal. Cl. R., 1354–60, p. 41) reference is made to the heir of John de Halsham, a minor in the king's wardship. Whether or not the heir was named John is not stated. At any rate a John de Halsham of the same neighborhood gained some publicity ten years later by poaching in the free warren and parks at Burstwyk—about four miles from Halsham—belonging to the king's daughter Isabel. The commission issued on her complaint (Cal. of Patent Rolls, 1361–64, p. 539) lists John Halsham's name among the thirty or more charged with this misdemeanor.

30 Dugdale, The Baronage of England, i, 128. Dictionary of National Biography (London, published since 1917 by the Oxford University Press), xiii, 1127 ff.

31 The Mowbrays held lands in Yorkshire “which stretched in a great crescent from Thirsk, whose valley is still called the Vale of Mowbray, to Kirkby Malzeard and the sources of the Nidd, with the outlying castle of Black Burton in Lonsdale” (D.N.B., xiii, 1125). Thirsk is about thirty-five miles from Seamer, the site of John Halsham's activities. See also Dugdale's Baronage, i, 127, 130.

32 Cal. of Patent Rolls, 1381–85, p. 423.

33 Cal. of Close Rolls, 1381–85, p. 452.

34 Cal. of Patent Rolls, 1381–85, p. 399.

35 Ibid., p. 439.

36 Cal. of Close Rolls, 1381–85, p. 459.

37 Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Peerage and Baronetage, 91st edition (1933), p. 2245.

38 Dugdale, op. cit., ii, 96.

39 Cal. of Fine Rolls, 1369–77, viii, 57.

40 Ibid., viii, 65.

41 Ibid., viii, 306.

42 Cal. of Patent Rolls, 1370–74, 330.

43 Cal. of Fine Rolls, 1377–83, ix, 5.

44 xv, 840.

45 The Episcopal Register of Robert Rede, Lord Bishop of Chichester, Sussex Record Society, viii; vol. i of the Register, pp. 89–90.

46 Ibid., i, 132–133.

47 Cal. of Patent Rolls, 1385–89, p. 421.

48 Cal. of Close Rolls, 1389–92, pp. 367–370.

49 Boutell, Rev. Charles, Monumental Brasses and Slabs, p. 92.

50 André, J. Lewis, “Female Head-Dresses Exemplified by Sussex Brasses,” Sussex Arch. Coll., xlii, 8.

51 Turner, Rev. Edward, “Brasses in Sussex Churches,” Sussex Arch. Coll., xxiii, 161.

52 André, J. Lewis,“West Grinstead Church and the Recent Discoveries in that Edifice,” Sussex Arch. Coll., xxxviii, 52.

53 Cal. of Patent Rolls, 1396–99, p. 227. Ibid., 1401–05, p. 520. Ibid., 1405–08, pp. 355, 498.

54 Ibid., 1401–05, pp. 115, 288, 290, and 1405–08, p. 62.

55 Cal. of Fine Rolls, 1399–1405, xii, 317–318. Also Foedera, viii, 412.

56 Bishop Rede's Register, i, 185, Sussex Record Soc., vol. viii.

57 Elwes and Robinson, op. cit., p. 284.

58 Sussex Feel of Fines, iii, 265, no. 3117, Sussex Record Soc., vol. xxiii. Matilda (Maud) married Lord St. John after John Halsham's death. Philippa also had a son John, who was named in her inquisition post mortem as her heir (Notes and Queries, Fifth Series, viii, 239). His age is given as ten years in 1395, so that we may suppose he was her first born. Since Hugh, after his father's death, was in possession of his mother's property, it is thought that John died young (Notes and Queries, Sixth Series, iv, 198).

59 Elwes in his corrected Halsham pedigree (op. cit., p. 284) gives as Matilda's daughters Joan, who married first Sir John Bowne and then Sir Robert Roos, and also a daughter Margaret. I believe that this Joan is the same as Ann mentioned in the deed recorded in the Sussex Feet of Fines for 32 Henry VI, no. 3117 (see preceding note) as the daughter of John Halsham and “late the wife of Robert Roos, knight.” There may have been a daughter Margaret, but since Matilda's son John married a Margaret (Sussex Feet of Fines, no. 3117), there is a chance that Elwes mistook the daughter-in-law for an own daughter. Hugh, in his will, mentions a sister, Philippa Fauconer, wife of Sir Thomas Fauconer, Lord Mayor of London in 1415 (Elwes, op. cit., 284; Notes and Queries, Fifth Series, xi, 315; Cal. of Patent Rolls, 1413–16, passim). Her name would suggest that she was the daughter of the first wife. I should, therefore, list John Halsham's offspring as follows: (1) Philippa's children: John (died young), Hugh, Richard, Philippa; (2) Matilda's children: John, Ann, and perhaps Margaret.

60 Bishop Rede's Register, i, 185.

61 Feet of Fines, iii, 224, no. 2802, Sussex Record Soc., xxiii.

62 Cal. of Patent Rolls, 1413–16, p. 303.

63 Calendarium Inouisitionum post Mortem, iv, 13.

64 Dictionary of National Biography, xii, 306.

65 Cal. of Close Rolls, 1399–1402, p. 322.

66 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th ed., viii, 715.

67 Cal. of Patent Rolls, 1416–22, p. 197.

68 Brown, op. cit., i, 355.

69 Cal. of Patent Rolls, 1429–36, pp. 359, 476.

70 Ibid., 1436–41, p. 27.

71 Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Thomas Brockhill, married a Richard Sellyng, whom I take to be the squire, although no title is given. Thomas Brockhill died in 1437 and was buried in Saltwood Church, Kent (Archaeologia Cantiana, xviii, 423). I find many references to the Selling family in Kent, but of an earlier date, and am, therefore, not able to prove definitely that Squire Richard Sellyng belonged to this prominent family (Arch. Cant., iv, 308; xi, 331, 350; xiv, 204).