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We would like to thank the following scholars: Ruth Horie, who very graciously and efficiently transcribed the variants of the Modus text in the Courtenay cartulary for us, and provided timely and crucial paleographical and codicological opinions. We would also like to thank Malcolm Richardson for very kindly sending us his detailed and illuminating study-in-progress of the scribes of the royal chancery. We are also grateful to David Wallace, Rita Copeland, and Barbara Hanawalt for inviting us to the University of Minnesota to present an early version of this paper as a Frenzel Chair lecture — and for being such marvelous hosts. Another portion of this paper was delivered as a plenary address at the 1997 “The Law and the Prophets Conference” at the University of Western Ontario, organized by Jane Toswell, an occasion on which both David Ganz and Robert Brentano offered unforgetable enthusiasm and encouragement.Google Scholar

² See Kerby-Fulton, K., “Informal Book Illustration, Reformist Ideology and the Anglo-Irish Civil Service,” in ch. 4 of Kerby-Fulton, and Despres, D., Iconography and the Professional Reader: The Politics of Book Production in the Douce Piers Plowman (Minneapolis, 1998).Google Scholar

³ See Kerby-Fulton, and Justice, , “Langlandian Reading Circles and the Civil Service in London and Dublin, 1380–1427,” New Medieval Literatures 1 (1998): 59–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴ For a selection of unflattering comments, see Sayles, G. O., “Modus tenendi parliamentum: Irish or English?” England and Ireland in the Later Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Jocelyn Otway-Ruthven, ed. Lydon, James (Kill Land [County Dublin], 1981), 122–23; for Brown's, A. L., see The Governance of Late Medieval England (Stanford, 1989), 174.Google Scholar

⁵ Pronay, Nicholas and Taylor, John, eds., Parliamentary Texts of the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1980), 142–43.Google Scholar

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⁶ Roskell, J. S., “A Consideration of Certain Aspects and Problems of the English Modus tenendi parliamentum,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 50 (1968): 411–42.Google Scholar

⁷ We use the word to mean change based on ideological principles, but also, in specific instances, change back to supposedly older, uncorrupted practices. See Kerby-Fulton, , Reformist Apocalypticism and Piers Plowman (Cambridge, 1990), 3–4.Google Scholar

⁸ Pronay and Taylor, eds., Parliamentary Texts; many of their conclusions were anticipated in their two important essays: Taylor, John, “The Manuscripts of the ‘Modus Tenendi Parliamentum’,” English Historical Review 83 (1968): 673–88; and Pronay, Nicholas and Taylor, John, “The Use of the Modus tenendi parliamentum in the Middle Ages,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 47 (1974): 11–23. Those scholars whose views are confirmed by the opinions summarized in the following are: Clarke, Maude V., Medieval Representation and Consent (London, 1936); Morris, W. A., “The Date of the Modus Tenendi Parliamentum,” English Historical Review 49 (1934): 407–22; Galbraith, , “Modus,” 81–99; and Roskell, , “Consideration.” Google Scholar

⁹ Sayles, , “Irish or English?” Google Scholar

¹⁰ Ibid., 123, 139.Google Scholar

¹¹ Rotuli parliamentorum (London, 1783), 2.337–39.Google Scholar

¹² Ibid., 2.337.Google Scholar

¹³ Quotations from Piers Plowman are drawn from Kane, George, ed., Piers Plowman: The A Version (London, 1960); Kane, George and Donaldson, E. T., Piers Plowman: The B Version (London, 1975); Russell, George and Kane, George, eds., Piers Plowman: The C Version (London, 1997).Google Scholar

¹⁴ Walsingham, Thomas, Chronicon Anglie, ed. Thompson, Edward Maunde (London, 1875), RS 64.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Goodman, Anthony, “Sir Thomas Hoo and the Parliament of 1376,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 41 (1968): 139–49.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Given-Wilson, C., “Adam Usk, the Monk of Evesham and the Parliament of 1397–1398,” Historical Research 66.161 (1993): 329–35; and Strohm, Paul, Hochon's Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton, 1992), particularly on the “Record and Process.” Google Scholar

¹⁷ See Martin, G. H., ed., Knighton's Chronicle 1337–1396 (Oxford, 1995), xxxvi–xl, for Martin's invaluable list of the official and unofficial sources for Richard's reign that came almost immediately into the hands of this chronicler.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Tout, T. F., Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England: The Wardrobe, the Chamber, and the Small Seals (Manchester, 1928), 3.297.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Galbraith, V. H., ed., The Anonimalle Chronicle 1333 to 1381 (Manchester, 1927), 86.Google Scholar

²⁰ The word “statute” did not automatically confer what we would call “statutory” force to a royal act; see, for example, Plucknett, Theodore F. T., Statutes and their Interpretation in the First Half of the Fourteenth Century, Cambridge Studies in Legal History (Cambridge, 1922); Clementi, D., “Richard II's Ninth Question to the Judges,” English Historical Review 86 (1971):96–113.Google Scholar

²¹ It should be obvious by now what model underlies our discussion. It is clarifications in and developments of the papacy's doctrinal authority in the twelfth century, and the elaborate mechanisms of record and publication of which the papacy availed itself in the thirteenth that allowed Peter Olivi to argue plausibly that past exercise of that doctrinal authority in public pronouncements constrained what John XXII could teach about Franciscan poverty. See Tierney, Brian, Origins of Papal Infallibility: A Study of the Concepts of Infallibility, Sovereignty, and Tradition in the Middle Ages (Leiden, 1972).Google Scholar

²² Pronay, and Taylor, , Parliamentary Texts, 106.Google Scholar

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²⁴ Ibid., 19–20.Google Scholar

²⁵ Richardson, H. G. and Sayles, G. O., “The Early Statutes,” Law Quarterly Review 50 (1954): 201–23, 540–71; Plucknett, , Statutes and their Interpretation. Google Scholar

²⁶ Skemer, Don C., “From Archives to the Book Trade: Private Statute Rolls in England, 1285–1307,” Journal of the Society of Archivists 16 (1995): 193–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁷ See Section 2. A below.Google Scholar

²⁸ On the conditions of the London book trade, see most importantly Doyle, A. I. and Parkes, M. B., “The Production of Copies of the Canterbury Tales and the Confessio amantis in the Early Fifteenth Century,” Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts and Libraries: Essays Presented to N. R. Ker , ed. Parkes, M. B. and Watson, Andrew G. (London, 1978), 163–210; and Paul Christianson, C., “A Community of Book Artisans in Chaucer's London,” Viator 20 (1989): 207–18. The booklet style of production was in use in London at least by the 1330s; see Shonk, Timothy A., “A Study of the Auchinleck Manuscript: Bookmen and Bookmaking in the Early Fourteenth Century,” Speculum 60 (1985): 71–91. For booklet production in general, see Robinson, Pamela R., “The ‘Booklet’: A Self-Contained Unit in Composite Manuscripts,” Codicologica 3 (1980): 49–69.Google Scholar

²⁹ Hardman, Philippa, “A Medieval Library In Parvo,” Medium Ævum 47 (1978): 262–73, discusses a booklet-style manuscript whose booklets were apparently left unbound for some time by the owner, but this is a less likely circumstance for these lawyers’ manuscripts.Google Scholar

³⁰ A famous common petition of 1372 complained of lawyers bringing partial matters forward as common petitions, using their parliamentary function on their clients’ behalf; see Rp 2.310.Google Scholar

³¹ See Taylor, , “Manuscripts,” 681; and for Stubbs's comment (from his Constitutional History), and other disturbingly authoritative dismissals, see Sayles, , “Irish or English?” 122.Google Scholar

³² Pronay, and Taylor, , Parliamentary Texts, 28.Google Scholar

³³ Cosgrove, Art, A New History of Ireland. 2. Medieval Ireland, 1169–1534 (Oxford, 1993).Google Scholar

³⁴ A transcription of the text from Ct is forthcoming in Horie, Ruth and Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn, “The French Version of the Modus tenendi parliamentum in the Courtenay Cartulary: A Transcription,” in The Medieval Reader, ed. Kerby-Fulton, K. and Hilmo, M., special issue of Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 3rd ser. 1 (1998).Google Scholar

³⁵ On Courtenay, see Otway-Ruthven, A. J., A History of Medieval Ireland, 2d ed. (New York, 1980), 317–18; and for the documents on Courtenay and de Vere relating to events discussed in this paragraph: Calendar of Close Rolls 1385–1389, 3, 232; Calendar of Patent Rolls 1381–85, 88.Google Scholar

³⁶ Pronay, and Taylor, , Parliamentary Texts, 122, for a discussion of Hedigan and the Finch-Hatton Roll.Google Scholar

³⁷ Otway-Ruthven, , Medieval Ireland, 317; see especially Rotulorum patentum et clausorum cancellarie Hibernie calendarium , ed. Tresham, E. (London, 1828), 115, numbers 211–15, for the reaction to the child lieutenant's appointment; and see C.C.R. 1381–85, 154, on the messenger sent to Westminster “to lay before the king and council the state of Ireland.” Google Scholar

³⁸ As in the cases of Connacht and Ulster discussed by Otway-Ruthven, , Medieval Ireland, 360.Google Scholar

³⁹ Sayles, , “Irish or English?” 132.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination (Toronto, 1971), 225.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Cosgrove, , New History of Ireland 2, 549, for these quotations, and on the legislative and fiscal weakness of the representative's powers.Google Scholar

⁴² See McHardy, A. K., “The Representation of the English Lower Clergy in Parliament during the Later Fourteenth Century,” Studies in Church History 10 (1973): 97–107. The implications of this important essay have not yet been recognized by Modus scholars, but they do remove one common reason for dating the treatise to the time of Edward II, a time when proctors of the lower clergy were more in evidence. McHardy explains the near invisibility of the clerical proctors in England after that date: “First, a large number of appointments [i.e., as proctors] did not necessarily mean there was a large number of attenders, for one person might be chosen as the representative of several groups or individuals…. Second, it is probable that some parliamentary proctors were not recognized as such, because they were already bound to attend parliament in another capacity…. Third, the proctors did not form a cohesive and homogenous group…. To sum up … I hope to have shown that the lower clergy were more assiduous in undertaking their parliamentary duties than has been assumed hitherto” (106–7). This evidence suggests that a Ricardian parliamentary reformist thinker or Modus promoter may well have been motivated by exasperation that the proctors were hardly visible in England, and often wearing several hats at once when they were (and thus likely to have conflicting loyalties). The clear-cut role of the Irish proctors (since 1370) would look progressive, reformist, and even “utopian” by comparison.Google Scholar

⁴³ The distinction is a medieval one. See Cosgrove, , A New History, 352.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ C.C.R., 1381–85, 356, 2 March 1384, see also 12 Sept. 1384, 482.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ C.C.R., 1381–85, 500, 30 Dec. 1384, Westminster.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Otway-Ruthven, , Medieval Ireland, 318.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ By 1385 Richard would replace Courtenay with De Vere; Courtenay was in trouble with the king by 1390, when a writ patent asked for a report of the goods and chattels of Philip de Courtenay, arrested by the king's authority.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ This must be held distinct from Sayles's theory, intriguing but (as our Appendix shows) untenable, that the “Irish version” of the Modus is the original version from which the English versions derived. The possibility we raise would explain certain initiatives in parliamentary procedure new to England in the 1380s, but not to Ireland, such as amercing fees for absenteeism. Fines were first suggested in England about 1382, about the time we would imagine the Modus having its first impact.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Martin, , Knighton's Chronicle, 356.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Ibid., xxxvii.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Pronay and Taylor suggest persuasively that it may have been used in the court of claims; Pronay, and Taylor, , “Use,” 17.Google Scholar

⁵² Sandler, L. F., Gothic Manuscripts, 1285–1385 (London, 1986), 75, cat. no. 151.Google Scholar

⁵³ Rp 3:236.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Tout, not given to exclamation, exclaimed that “Nothing in the history of this memorable parliament is more significant than this declaration … it declared the supremacy of parliament over the lawyers and law courts, asserted by the judges to be the instruments of monarchy”; Tout, , Chapters, 3:432.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ An obvious analogy is the acknowledged authority of the learned laws in jurisdictions proper to them: canon law in English ecclesiastical courts and civil law in diplomatic and international matters.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Cam, Helen M., Liberties and Communities in Medieval England: Collected Studies in Local Administration and Topography (Cambridge, 1944), 242n.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Rp 3:293.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Rp 3:64; see Cam, , Liberties, 242.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ For Cosgrove's quotation and the feud, see Art Cosgrove, “The Emergence of the Pale, 1399–1447,” in A New History of Ireland 2:546–56, especially 551; on attempts to check the lieutenant's authority during this period, see 548–49; on the role of the Commons in Ireland, see 549–50, as well as Sayles, , “Irish or English?” Google Scholar

⁶⁰ See Pronay, and Taylor, , Parliamentary Texts, 120–22, and below.Google Scholar

⁶¹ The phrase is the official one; see, for instance, the Gerard Papers, for Anno 7 R.2, “Philippo de Courtney militi quem dominus Rex ordinavit locum suum tenentem in terra sua Hibernie, ad regendum gubernandumque eandem terram suam …,” Analecta Hibernica 2 (1931): 200.Google Scholar

⁶² All scholars in the field lament the “poverty of our sources,” as Othway-Ruthven, Jocelyn puts it, “The Background to the Arrest of Sir Christopher Preston in 1418,” Analecta Hibernica 29 (1980): 73. This poverty was exacerbated by the depredations of centuries of colonial warfare and strife, right down to the destruction of the Dublin Public Record Office in the troubles of 1922.Google Scholar

⁶³ What Pronay and Taylor refer to as the Irish version is actually extant only in one medieval manuscript, the Preston inspeximus, and several post-medieval transcriptions. But the arrangement of this Irish version bears no relation to the disarrangement of B and of the French version, as we have it from the Finch-Hatton roll, in the only transcription published so far, at least. The other French one, in the Courtenay Cartulary (Ct) is, according to Pronay, and Taylor, , “undoubtedly the better. Although it omits certain phrases, it gives on the whole a full and accurate translation of the Latin original” (215). Unfortunately, the published literature, including Clarke (on whose Collation Table [91–95] Pronay and Taylor seem to depend [121 n. 26]) usually cites Hardy's transcription of Finch-Hatton, and therefore equates the French version with it; Hardy, , “On the Treatise entitled Modus Tenendi Parliamentum,” Archaeological Journal 19 (1862): 259–74. But Hardy did not know about Ct, so his is not an “edition” of the French text in any sense. That the Preston inspeximus might well have been related to the Finch-Hatton French version — with all the shared errors — would not be surprising: both Preston and Cashel were members of the Ormond affinity during the Lancastrian period. This, however, does not mean that the “Irish” version was derived from the “French,” but only that the Preston inspeximus may have been derived from Finch-Hatton. It also tells us nothing about how the Modus was known in Ricardian Ireland: for that we need to go to Ct, which belonged to a man we know was king's lieutenant in Ireland in 1383, and which is, according to Pronay and Taylor, textually very “accurate.” Their positioning of Ct in their C category as a redaction for laymen is in some respects unsatisfactory; one must ask, in what sense is a lieutenant of Ireland a bureaucratic “layman”? Google Scholar

⁶⁴ On this case see Cosgrove, , A New History of Ireland, 550–51; Otway-Ruthven, , “Background”; Richardson, H. G., “The Preston Exemplification of the Modus tenendi parliamentum,“ Irish Historical Studies 3 (1942): 187–92, Pronay, and Taylor, , Parliamentary Texts, 148; and the next note.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Otway-Ruthven, , Medieval Ireland, 360. The articles stated that Ormond had “promised before all the estates of parliament” to “keep the laws and repel all manner of extortions and oppressions and to make due payment”; in return Ormond was granted the subsidies he needed to continue his vigorous campaigns against the two groups known in legal documents of the time as “Irish enemies” (the non-compliant Gaelic-Irish) and the “English rebels” (aggressively disgruntled colonists).Google Scholar

⁶⁶ See Pronay, and Taylor, , Parliamentary Texts, 152.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ This and all further quotations from the report are cited from the transcription in Otway-Ruthven, , “Background,” 77–80, esp. 77.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Pronay's and Taylor's translation (143) of the Latin of what they call the Irish version, the Preston inspeximus in Huntington Library EL 1699 (hereafter referred to by its sigil, H).Google Scholar

⁶⁹ H, section XXI.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Pronay, and Taylor, , Parliamentary Texts, 152; they think that O'Hedigan was the inspiration for what they call the Irish version (122).Google Scholar

⁷¹ Otway-Ruthven, , Medieval Ireland, 361.Google Scholar

⁷² This is unfortunately the only surviving medieval manuscript copy of the Latin version of the Irish Modus, but the Waterford version apparently had this interpolation as well (see Pronay, and Taylor, , Parliamentary Texts, 126, and variants for post-medieval transcriptions, 135). O'Hedigan's version has influenced the sense that the Irish copy is derivative. That uninterpolated copies were in circulation in Ireland long before, at least in French, is indicated by the Courtenay cartulary.Google Scholar

⁷³ Since O'Hedigan was appointed in 1406, and Lancaster was reappointed as deputy (the lesser office) in 1408, the petition must date between 1406 and 1408. For the petition and for the French Modus itself as found in the Finch-Hatton roll, see Hardy, .Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Followed immediately by an agreement between the earl of Devon and Philip Courtenay; see further the dicussion in section 5 below, and see Pronay, and Taylor, , Parliamentary Texts, 122.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Pronay, and Taylor, , Parliamentary Texts, 213, for the “vulgar French,” revealing a prejudice ultimately unhelpful to understanding the real influence of the Modus. Google Scholar

⁷⁶ This copy makes it immediately clear why the Modus might have been handy in both languages. Pronay and Taylor seem to assume that the French indicates “lay” usage, but a glance at the writ, for instance, which documents Preston's arrest for Lord Talbot, a writ prepared by the same two scribes as the certified copy of the Modus, indicates that this assumption is unwarranted. The writ shifts back and forth nearly seamlessly between French and Latin with little sense of the subordination of either language, and much mutual intrusion of diction from the one into the other.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ For Passavant, see C.PR. 1422–1429, 67; for Sutton, , C.P.R. 1401–1405, 377.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Galbraith, , “Modus,” 88.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Roskell, , “Consideration,” 436, also citing Galbraith.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ At the least he continued Tamworth's practice of maintaining the junior clerks in a single household: C.P.R. 1374–1377, 209 (grant of 1 January 1376, of £20 per annum for expenses maintaining junior clerks until ready to serve; the grant notes the continuation of Tamworth's policy). He was still trying to collect most of what the grant had entailed on 20 October 1384, when payment was ordered on the annuity and on the arrears since Richard confirmed the grant; C.C.R. 1381–1385, 490. On the background, see Tout, , “The Household of Chancery and Its Disintegration,” Essays in History Presented to Reginald Lane Poole , ed. Davis, H. W. C. (Oxford, 1927), 46–85; and Beilby, Mark, “The Profits of Expertise: The Rise of the Civil Lawyers and Chancery Equity,” Profit, Piety, and the Professions in Later Medieval England, ed. Hicks, Michael (Gloucester, 1990), 72–90.Google Scholar

⁸¹ C.P.R. 1385–1389, 513. Martin was dead by 11 January 1393, when the heirs of Michael de la Pole petitioned successfully for the reversion of the Stamford holdings; C.P.R. 1391–1396, 210.Google Scholar

⁸² Tout imagines a different kind of involvement on Martin's part; see Chapters, 3:432n.Google Scholar

⁸³ Clementi, , “Richard II's Ninth Question.” Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Justice, and Kerby-Fulton, , “Langlandian Reading Circles.” The intellectual and literary culture of scribes and bureaucrats has received more attention in studies of medieval France; for an instance that shows the creative treatment of the dating of a work like that which we will discuss in section 5 below, see the discussion of the long version of the Roman de Fauvel in Brown, E. A. R., “Representations de la royauté dans les Livres de Fauvel,” in Représentation, pouvoir et royaute à la fin du moyen âge, ed. Blanchard, Joel (Paris, 1995), 215–35.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ See further Kerby-Fulton, and Despres, , Iconography and the Professional Reader. Google Scholar

⁸⁶ See especially Doyle, A. I., “Remarks on the Surviving Manuscripts of Piers Plowman,” ed. Kratzmann, Gregory and Simpson, James, Medieval English Religious and Ethical Literature: Essays in Honour of G. H. Russell (Cambridge, 1986), 35–48; and Fisher, John, “Piers Plowman and the Chancery Tradition,” Medieval English Studies Presented to George Kane , ed. Kennedy, Edward, Waldron, R., and Wittig, J. (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1988), 267–77, but see also the strictures on Fisher's use of the term “chancery hand” in Lister Matheson's review of Fisher, John, Richardson, Malcolm, and Fisher, Jane L., An Anthology of Chancery English (Knoxville, 1984) in Speculum 61 (1986): 646–50.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ Kerby-Fulton, and Justice, , “Langlandian Reading Circles.” Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Kerby-Fulton, and Despres, , Iconography. Google Scholar

⁸⁹ St. John Brooks, E., “The Piers Plowman MSS in Trinity College, Dublin,” The Library, 5th ser., 6 (1951): 141–53, esp. 152.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ Harley can in fact be traced back, through accounts used as binding leaves, to the household of Roger de Mortimer, and to Trim. See Ker, N. R., Facsimile of British Museum MS Harley 2253 (London, 1965), xxii–xxiii.Google Scholar

⁹¹ See Kerby-Fulton, and Justice, , “Langlandian Reading Circles.” For a copy of the Canterbury Tales written in Ireland in the same period, see BL Add. 25718.Google Scholar

⁹² On the Ormond readership, see Kerby-Fulton, and Justice, , “Langlandian Reading Circles”; on Douce 104 and the Red Book illustration, see Kerby-Fulton, and Despres, , Iconography. Google Scholar

⁹³ Pronay, and Taylor, , Parliamentary Texts, 143.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ Ibid., 146.Google Scholar

⁹⁵ Roskell, , “Consideration,” 442, and on exchequer origins, 436.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ Ibid., 436.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ His other reference is more general: C.4.185.Google Scholar

⁹⁸ “The author of the Modus, in proposing the reform of clerical representation designed to give a greater interest to the lower clergy … was perhaps swimming against the tide” writes Roskell — but this is not really true of Ricardian Ireland or even of Ricardian England. The use of proctors in the English parliament had by this time become so unclear that many modern scholars have come to believe that it had ceased. In fact, to be fair, even medieval parliamentarians likely did not notice them much. As McHardy's work on the representation of the lower clergy in parliament in the later fourteenth century shows, the majority of English dioceses were executing the premunientes clause to summon the lower clergy, but one person (and not necessarily a clergyman) was often chosen to represent several groups: for example, “Master John Banchard, [already] bound to attend parliament as archdeacon of Worcester, was also commissioned to represent, in the parliament of 1373, the chapter of Worcester, the bishop of Salisbury, the abbot of Evesham, and the abbot of Glastonbury” — and McHardy assures us that his case was not unique (McHardy, , “Representation,” 106–7). Exchequer clerks themselves often did multiple proctor duty: for example, Richard Piriton, exchequer clerk and archdeacon of Colchester, was proctor for the clergy of his archdeaconry. In fact, as McHardy has shown, clerical proctors of the lower clergy were still being summoned, but “were not recognized as such, because they were already bound to attend parliament in another capacity” (106). Rather, McHardy's findings suggest that the Modus author (or promoter) did indeed know the parliamentary system internally; he knew that the summonses were being sent out, and even that, nominally, some proctors were appearing, but he may have wanted to urge a reform of the system.Google Scholar

⁹⁹ On which see Sandler's, L. F. excellent new study, Omne Bonum: A Fourteenth-Century Encyclopedia of Universal Knowledge (London, 1996), esp. 110–11.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁰ For Langland's comments on these topics in his final version, see C. Prol.81–84; 3.32–37; 3.181–86; 4.125; perhaps 5.164–65; and 18.279 (on absentee bishops). There is a facinating instance of revision in A. 11.197 and the corresponding B-text and C-text passages: in the A-text passage pluralism is mentioned positively — in B and C the positive perspective is revised out. For simple mentions of benefices, see B.3.312 and A.9.192.Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ Hoccleve, , “Prologue to the Regement of Princes,” ed. O'Donaghue, B., Thomas Hoccleve, Selected Works (Manchester, 1982), lines 1464–70.Google Scholar

¹⁰² See BL MS Royal 6.E.VI, fol. 303v for the marginal note directed against his fellow clerk, W. de Hanley. On this and similar office in-joking in Hoccleve, see Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn, “Langland and the Bibliographic Ego,” Written Work: Langland, Labor, and Authorship, ed. Justice, Steven and Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn (Philadelphia, 1997). James's encyclopedia also gives us a visual iconography for other clericist concerns, such as authentic documentation and forgery: see fol. 166v and 114r of Royal 6 E.VI. Sandler, , Omne Bonum, 1:24–25, transcribes all the marginalia directed at colleagues.Google Scholar

¹⁰³ Omne Bonum, 1:111. By the same token, that he did not hold such sinecures might equally explain his reformist attitudes.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁴ Most famously, antimendicantism, for which see Szittya, Penn R., The Antifraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature (Princeton, 1986). James's orientation was and remained very clerical; in 1375 he received a pension for life, a room at the priory of Holy Trinity, Aldgate (making him for a short time a neighbor as well as a civil service colleague of Geoffrey Chaucer) and an annual gift of a robe (Szittya, 68).Google Scholar

¹⁰⁵ Conveniently reproduced in Sandler, , Omne Bonum, 2:38, 23.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁶ Redbook, 3: ccclxxi.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁷ See Kerby-Fulton, and Despres, , Iconography. The exchequer must have been a visually stimulating place to work: at any given time there would have been stored there for safekeeping not only gold and the crown jewels, but all manner of precious objects, including even falcons; see Hall, Hubert, Antiquities and Curiosities of the Exchequer (London, 1989).Google Scholar

¹⁰⁸ Public Record Office E 36/274, fol. 295, accompanying the text printed in Wilkins, David, Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae (London, 1737), 2:60–61. The text in question is the Constitutions made by Pecham at the Council of Reading. Decima Douie's Archbishop Pecham, 98, says that Pecham's agenda was to reenact Ottobono's statutes at Reading; Pecham was, of course, attacking pluralism, and she says of one of Ottobono's canons that it “severely criticized the dishonesty of a system by which endowments intended to provide for the spiritual needs of the laity were squandered on wealthy non-resident incumbents” (Douie, 99). Apparently it was the bishops who were most responsible for the abuse (Douie, 102). The text accompanying the pictogram seems to cover other aspects of church reform (e.g., concubinage: “Videlicet supra constitucione de Concubinare”), but it is the Reading Council entry that comes right beside the pictogram. The papal legate Otto's measures (prior to Ottobono's) to curb pluralism “aroused violent resistance” — (episcopal, that is); and Ottobono's canon “severely criticized” the waste of endowments that pluralism entailed (99), but had “never been put into execution” — so Pecham was faced with the task of enforcing it for the first time (100). He took the relatively conservative policy of not making it retroactive (99), but he was still in the awkward position of having to tell clergy that they could only keep their last living. The pictogram marks, in effect, a table of contents to church reform holdings in coffer “C,” along with other constitutions on concubines, excommunication, etc.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁹ The notion of “the incurable wound” itself appears in a number of biblical texts: Job 34:6, Jer. 15:18, Mic. 1:9, Is. 14:6.Google Scholar

¹¹⁰ See Alford, John A., Piers Plowman: A Glossary of Legal Diction (Cambridge, 1988).Google Scholar

¹¹¹ Pearsall translates the word as “drawn or inscribed”; see Pearsall, Derek, ed., Piers Plowman, by William Langland: An Edition of the C-Text (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1978).Google Scholar

¹¹² For a similar use of symbols in certain chronicles, see Gransden, Antonia, Historical Writing in England, c. 550 to c. 1307 (London, 1974), plates VII and VIII. In the case of Matthew Paris (VIII), the symbols are known to be derived from his use of government documents. See also fol. 150 for the crown image standing alone (as in HM 143).Google Scholar

¹¹³ The annotator shows exactly the kind of fascination with monastic issues that led earlier scholars to suggest, initially, that James le Palmer was a monk: in fact, both men probably had the kind of knowledge of, and interest in, monasticism that one could acquire from daily documentary work in the exchequer.Google Scholar

¹¹⁴ The illustrations are even less formal than HM 143's. For the identification of the hand, see Fisher, , “Piers,” 269.Google Scholar

¹¹⁵ These annotations have not been transcribed; for a complete transcription of HM 143's annotations, see Grindley, Carl, “From Creation to Desecration: The Marginal Annotations of Piers Plowman C Text HM 143” (MA thesis, University of Victoria, 1992).Google Scholar

¹¹⁶ These are reproduced respectively as fig. 2 of Scott, Kathleen, “The Illustrations of Douce 104,” Yearbook of Langland Studies 4 (1990): 1–86, and in Pearsall, Derek and Scott, Kathleen, A Facsimile of Bodleian Library Douce 104 (Cambridge, 1992), xciv.Google Scholar

¹¹⁷ See Justice, Steven, “Introduction: Authorial Work and Literary Ideology,” in Justice, and Kerby-Fulton, , eds., Written Work, 1–12.Google Scholar

¹¹⁸ This option seems unlikely since he retained the passage in the C-text.Google Scholar

¹¹⁹ This annotator's habits are discussed in Kerby-Fulton, and Despres, , Iconography. Google Scholar

¹²⁰ See Kerby-Fulton, , “Langland in his Working Clothes? Scribe D, the C Loose Revision Material, the Ilchester and Huntington Manuscripts, and the Nature of Scribal Intervention,” in Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall, ed. Minnis, A. J. (Cambridge, forthcoming); and Kerby-Fulton, and Justice, , “Scribe D and the Marketing of Ricardian Literature,” a paper given at the International Conference of Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, 1997.Google Scholar

¹²¹ William Baron, an officer of the exchequer, commissioned a compilation of Middle English devotional reading for the nunnery of Dartford in Kent, a compilation not unlike the kind of women's audience associated with the Vernon manuscript and HM 128, a Piers manuscript also copied in the hand of a government clerk. There are also some allusions to notarial culture in the so-called Z text.Google Scholar

¹²² For a paleographical description, see Horie, and Kerby-Fulton, , “French Version.” Google Scholar

¹²³ We are grateful to Tim Haskett for advice on this matter.Google Scholar

¹²⁴ This is the substitution of “bien” for “lieu.” Google Scholar

¹²⁵ This tends to render more probable the conclusion, advanced in the textual discussion, that I ought not to be thought the original version.Google Scholar

¹²⁶ Galbraith, , “Modus.” Google Scholar

¹²⁷ Pronay and Taylor find that route closed to them because of their views on the nonpolitical character of the Modus, which is discussed above; see section 2.A. Google Scholar

¹²⁸ Galbraith's modestly offered terminus a quo. Google Scholar

¹²⁹ Galbraith, , “Modus,” 86 and 85.Google Scholar

¹³⁰ The date of Ct may be as early as “s.XIV.med”; see Horie, and Kerby-Fulton, , “French Version.” Google Scholar

¹³¹ “Comes autem Lancastrie, sicut pluries, uocatus non uenit. Non enim decebat habere parliamentum in cameris, ut dixit. Habebat namque regem et collaterales suos sibi suspectos, et ipsos non iam clam sed manifeste protestabatur inimicos suos”; Denholm-Young, N., ed., Vita Edwardi secundi monachi cuiusdam Malmesberiensis (London, 1957), 104.Google Scholar

¹³² This detail is brought in evidence by Clarke, , Medieval Representation, 216–17.Google Scholar

¹³³ Ibid., 202.Google Scholar

¹³⁴ Pronay, and Taylor, , Parliamentary Texts, 25.Google Scholar

¹³⁵ See nn. 42 and 98 above.Google Scholar

¹³⁶ Roskell, , “Consideration.” Google Scholar

¹³⁷ “Hic describitur modus, quomodo Parliamentum regis Anglie et Anglorum suorum tenebatur temporibus regis Edwardi filii Etheldredi regis; qui modus recitatus fuit per discretiores regno coram Willielmo duce Normannie conquestore ei rege Anglie, ipso conquestore hoc precipiente, et per ipsum approbatus, et suis temporibus ac etiam temporibus successorum regum Anglie usitatatus,” 67.Google Scholar

¹³⁸ Taylor, and Pronay, , Parliamentary Texts, 22–25, citing in the last instance Galbraith, , “Modus,“ 84n; a printer's error in the edition, however, makes Galbraith say that this would be an anachronism by the end of Edward II's reign.Google Scholar

¹³⁹ Mention should be made of a red herring, the association, often claimed, between the Modus and the Lancastrian treatise on the Steward, which has been taken to imply both an early date for the former and its association with Thomas of Lancaster. The association itself, as Pronay and Taylor rightly say, is tenuous; they point out that the proximity of the two in manuscript collections has no force. Beyond that, however, even the alleged similarity of purpose and content does not amount to much. Both the Steward treatise and the Modus propose a committee of twenty-five to deal with certain difficult issues; but committees were no novelty, and the shorter tract lacks altogether the originality of the Modus’s proposal, which is the procedure by which the committee may reduce itself by steps to twelve, six, three, and two members and finally to one. Even the number twenty-five is borrowed from Magna Carta. Beyond even this, the Lancastrian treatise on the Steward is not Lancastrian. Sayles's judgment cannot quite stand: “It has been attributed to the reign of Edward II, though no one at that time would have been so ignorant as to suppose either that Edward II was the son of Henry III or that Peter Gaveston was murdered under Edward I” (151n.). It is equally hard to imagine anyone fifty years later so ignorant who could also have written this treatise. The phrase “tempore regis Edwardi filii regis Henrici” is probably a scribal error for “tempore regis Edwardi filii regis Edwardi filii regis Henrici,” a gruesome style sometimes resorted to for specifying Edward II and one that almost begs eyeskip; but this style only became necessary after 1327, when the string of three Edwards rendered “Edward son of Edward” ambiguous.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁰ Sayles, , “Irish or English?” 139–40.Google Scholar

¹⁴¹ The other issue considered by Sayles (“occulto loco” / “lieu appart” / “loco aperto”) is complicated and finally inconsequential. While the Finch-Hatton manuscript of F reads appart, the Courtenay manuscript reads apert, so there is no difficulty understanding how the statement in I might have been derived. In its place, we have a new problem in the history of B and F. It would seem either that apert in Ct was a scribal error (where the exemplar read appart) that coincidentally produced something more like the original meaning of A or the conscious correction by the scribe of something in his exemplar that he recognized to be silly. For another possibility, see Horie and Kerby-Fulton. In either case, appert, which is the reading appearing in the earlier manuscript of F, may have been in the exemplar used by the translator of I. Google Scholar

¹⁴² Pronay, and Taylor, , Parliamentary Texts, 213–15. The points of substantial agreement are clearer if one remembers the possibilities that some apparent agreements (of F with A against B) could in fact be agreements against only the present text of B, after, that is, additional errors had crept into its textual tradition.Google Scholar

¹⁴³ For example, the omission in B and F (Pronay, and Taylor, , Parliamentary Texts, 108; Hardy, , “On the Treatise,” 269) of A's qualifying phrase “si velint” (Pronay, and Taylor, , Parliamentary Texts, 75); the appearance in B and F (110; 270) of the noun episcopus where A (71) has the pronoun (unambiguously referring to bishops) “quilibet”; the omission in B and F (109; 270) of the numeral in A's phrase (70) “isti duo officiarii,” where the context makes the number clear; the mistaken promise in B and F (110; 270) that the next chapter will discourse “de predicacione” (“de la predicacioun”) when A correctly promises (71) discussion “de pronuntiatione.” Google Scholar

¹⁴⁴ For example, the omission in B and F (106; 268) of the second appearance of iusticiarius in A’s clause (73) “nec est aliquis iusticiarius Anglie iusticiarius,” an omission that compromises the elegance but not the point of the expression; the obvious but inconsequential omission in B and F (107; 269) of the verb in A's clause (74) “vel populus vel patria tribuletur”; the meaningless change in B and F (108; 269) of A's assertion that the common legislative and judicial business of the realm are the “maxima negotia” of parliament (sc., by contrast with partial petitions) to the assertion that they are “maxime communia negotia” (“lez pluis communes busoignes”).Google Scholar

¹⁴⁵ He reproduces the chapter “De modo parliamenti” which, in B as in F, erroneously indicates that the discussion of the clerks of parliament, which precedes this chapter, is to follow it. The scribe, already having copied that chapter, cannot have been unaware of the inconsistency.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁶ Hardy, , “On the Treatise,” 266.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁷ Pronay, and Taylor, , Parliamentary Texts, 73, 106; Hardy, , “On the Treatise,” 268. See also the agreement between A and F (Pronay and Taylor 68; Hardy 266) that clerical proctors are “electi” (“eluz”), where scribal error in B (104) has substituted “clerici”; the preference in F (266) of A's verb of obligation “solebat” (“soloit”) where B prefers (106) “tenetur”; the assertion in A (68) and F (266) that the election of Port barons constitutes their attorneying (“electi attornati,” “esluz attornez”) where B implies (104) that these are separate actions (“electi et attornati”); F's specification (271), with A (72), that any excuse by illness for the king's absence from parliament must be made with a clear explanation “una cum notorio testemonio” of the peers sent to examine him, as against B's meaningless assertion that the excuses must be conveyed “cum negotio et testimonio” (111). This last point illustrates nicely how the adapter seems to have worked, for in this case he rejects an incoherent scribal error, whereas at other times (n. 120 above) he did not bother about incoherence; the point at issue in this instance — the king's absolute duty to attend parliament — seems to have mattered enough to the adapter to motivate a check, which he would not otherwise have made, against his A manuscript.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁸ When B meaninglessly reads, through dittography, “villa illa” (110) and F (270) like A (71) omits the intruding pronoun, we need not assume that the scribe checked against A; he probably simply recognized dittography. When F writes (267) “parlement le roy” while B has (105) merely “parliamentum” but A (69) “parliamentum regis,” we need not assume that the scribe needed an exemplar to reproduce a formulaic phrase.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁹ Such as the omission in B (110) of the phrase “unde sunt” from A (70: “baronia illa unde sunt”; where F, 270, rightly reads “le Baronie qoi ils soient”); or the meaningless translation in B (110) of A's “illas deliberent” (71) to “illis dileberentur” (F: “eux deliverount,” 270). It could also include the instances in the previous note.Google Scholar