Lament for a dead king
2004; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 30; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1016/j.jmedhist.2004.08.003
ISSN1873-1279
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Studies of British Isles
ResumoAbstract This article concerns laments written in medieval French about English royal and noble personages. We look at those that survive, at existing research on them, at what unites and divides them, and at the conditions of their creation and the function to which they were put. Different manuscript versions are compared, and special attention is paid to the manuscript context in which they have been preserved. For comparison purposes, we examine existing Latin laments on the same subjects, as well as two continental French ones on the dukes of Burgundy. We conclude that the laments were individually created and that they are not part of a defined literary genre. Their survival is fortuitous and due in large measure to their being incorporated in larger blocks of historical material and copied and recopied as part of them. Keywords: Medieval kingship: Edward IEdward IIPolitical poetryLaments Notes 1 I have personally studied all the manuscripts discussed in this paper. 2 I.S.T. Aspin, Anglo-Norman political songs, Anglo-Norman Text Society XI (Oxford, 1953), 79-92 and 93-104. They are careful, well-documented editions. The titles are hers and as they describe the nature of the poems accurately, I have adopted them. On medieval laments, see also V.E.B. Richmond, Laments for the dead in medieval narrative (Pittsburgh, 1966). 3 On medieval French texts concerning Edward I's Scottish campaigns, see D.B. Tyson, ‘A royal itinerary - the journey of Edward I to Scotland in 1296’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 45 (2001), 127-44, and D.B. Tyson, ‘The Siege of Caerlaverock - A re-examination’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 46 (2002), 45-69. 4 R.J. Dean, Anglo-Norman literature. A guide to texts and manuscripts (Anglo-Norman Text Society, London, 1999), 58 no.85. Editions previous to Aspin's are: T. Wright, The political songs of England, from the reign of John to that of Edward II (London, 1839), 241-5 (transcription and translation only), see also new edition by Peter Coss (Cambridge, 1996) - this is an exact reprint with an introduction by the editor; K. Böddeker, Altenglische Dichtungen des MS. Harley 2253 (Berlin, 1878), 453-5, a reprint of Wright's text; E. Zettl, An anonymous short English metrical chronicle, Early English Text Society original series 196 (London, 1935), 105-7 prints the text from the manuscript. Aspin, Songs, 80-81 notes a Middle English version in British Library MS Harley 2253 f.73r,v and sections of this in Cambridge University Library MS Additional 4407, article 19, fragments a, b and c, and prints the Harley text as does Wright, Political songs, ed. Coss, 246-50; see W.W. Skeat, ‘Elegy on the death of King Edward I’, Modern Language Review 7 (1912), 149-52, who compared the two versions and concluded that ‘this English Elegy is a loose translation of a French Elegy of the same date (1307)’ (149). 5 All quotations have been printed according to modern standards. 6 On the image of Edward I in contemporary eyes, see also J.-C. Thiolier, Edition critique et commentée de Pierre de Langtoft, Le règne d'Edouard Ier (Centre d'études littéraires et iconographiques du moyen âge, Université de Paris XII, Créteil, 1989), J.-C. Thiolier, ‘Le portrait d'Edouard Ier Plantagenet par Pierre de Langtoft’, Etudes de linguistique et de littérature en l'honneur d'André Crépin (Greifswald, 1993), 393-407 and M.R. Reeve, ‘The former painted cycle of the Life of Edward I at the Bishop's Palace, Lichfield’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 46 (2002), 70-83. D.L. D'Avray, Death and the prince: memorial preaching before 1350 (Oxford, 1994), 70-79 shows us the picture of the king as given in sermons preached in his memory. 7 T.M. Smallwood, ‘The Lament of Edward II’, Modern Language Review 68 (1973), 521-9. The editor gives transcripts of both manuscripts, with notes on difficult readings and textual problems, and discusses the relation of the manuscripts, concluding that there is a connection between them but neither is copied from the other. Dean, Anglo-Norman literature, 58-9 no.87. The earliest edition, based on the Longleat manuscript, was by P. Studer, ‘An Anglo-Norman poem by Edward II, king of England’, Modern Language Review 16 (1921), 34-46. See Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts Third Report (London, 1872), 180 for mention of the Longleat manuscript. 8 R. Fabyan, The New Chronicles of England and France, ed. H. Ellis (London, 1811), 431-2; T.F. Tout, ‘The captivity and death of Edward of Carnarvon’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 6 (1921-2), Appendix II, 114. Aspin, Songs, 95-6 discusses the problem in detail. Smallwood, ‘Lament of Edward II’, 528-9 feels that ‘the authorship question has not been settled’. C.V. Langlois, ‘Anonyme, auteur d'une pièce en vers anglo-normands sous le nom d'Edouard II’, Histoire littéraire de la France 36 (Paris, 1927), 633-5 states that there existed a Latin poem ‘fait par Edouard II dans une de ses prisons’ and suggests that the Old French text is a translation of this and that it is ‘l'opuscule d'un clerc qui fait parler le roi.’ On the other hand, A. Benedetti, ‘Una canzone francese di Edoardo II d'Inghilterra’, Nuovi Studi Medievali I, pt.2 (1924), 283-94 did think the king himself was the author, calling it ‘una canzone scritta da Edoardo II’ (283) and considering that ‘si tratti dell'espressione diretta di un'anima che soffre’ (284). V.H. Galbraith, ‘The literacy of the medieval English kings’ (The British Academy 1935 Raleigh lecture on history), Proceedings of the British Academy XXI (1935), 33 n.6 does not commit himself on the point of authorship. See also note 18 below. 9 Dean, Anglo-Norman literature, 58 no.86. Edition by M.D. Legge, ‘La Piere D'Escoce’, Scottish Historical Review 38 (1959), 109-13. The Ashmole manuscript is described in A. Hiatt, ‘The forgeries of John Hardyng: the evidence of Oxford, Bodleian MS Ashmole 789’, Notes and Queries, new series 46 no.1 (1999), 7-12. 10 Legge and Dean reflect this in the titles they give it, respectively Piere D'Escoce and Stone of Scone. On the Stone of Scone, see W.F. Skene, The coronation stone (Edinburgh, 1869) which carefully examines the various legends together with the historical evidence. According to legend, the Stone, said to have been used by Jacob as a pillow to rest his head, passed to Scota, daughter of Pharaoh, and her husband Gaythelos, son of the king of Greece, who took it to Spain and Ireland and finally to Dalriadic Scotland; see Legge, ‘Piere D'Escoce’, 111-13 and Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland V, ed. F.C. Groome (Edinburgh, 1884), 326-8. Sir Thomas Gray's Scalacronica, written in 1355-7, ed. J. Stevenson (Glasgow, Maitland Club, 1836), 112-4 tells the same story but here Gaythelos (‘Gaidel’) dies in Spain and it is his descendants that ultimately establish the Stone at Scone. 11 Edward I took the Stone to Westminster Abbey in 1296. 12 Aspin, Songs, 80. 13 See H.O. Coxe, Catalogus Codicum Mss. qui in Collegiis Auslisque Oxoniensibus hodie adservantur II (Oxford, 1852), 10. 14 The text is printed in M.R. James, A descriptive catalogue of the manuscripts in the library of Peterhouse (Cambridge, 1899), 111-112. Aspin does not mention this manuscript. 15 On Huguccio, see Lexikon des Mittelalters V (Munich, 1991), 181-2. 16 Mention should be made here of the Latin lament on the death of king Richard I in Geoffrey de Vinsauf's Nova Poetria, composed around 1210. Geoffrey inserts it as an example of how to express grief in a literary composition. See T. Wright, Biographia Britannica Literaria (London, 1842-6), II, 400 who prints the text of this lament; J.B. Kopp, ‘Geoffrey of Vinsauf: The New Poetics’ in J.J. Murphy, Three medieval rhetorical arts (Tempe, Arizona, 2001), 47-8 gives a translation of it. The king's name is not mentioned and his identity has to be inferred from the context (particularly the fact that Richard was killed on a Friday) and the historical data about the author. 17 See D.M. Smith and V.C.M. London, The heads of religious houses, England and Wales (Cambridge, 2001), 299-30; they cite British Library MS Cotton Otho B xiv f.197r, which lists these abbots. On ff.156r-158r of the same codex I found larger sections also relating to these two abbots but there was nothing pertinent to our enquiry, and I have not taken the matter further. G.R.C. Davis, Medieval cartularies of Great Britain (London/New York/Toronto, 1958), 88-9 describes this manuscript. On Pipewell Abbey, see E.J. King, ‘The foundation of Pipewell Abbey, Northamptonshire’, Haskins Society Journal: Studies in Medieval History 2 (1990), 167-77. 18 See above note 8. Studer, ‘Anglo-Norman poem by Edward II’, 34-46 also mentions the possibility of a Latin poem; H. Walpole, A catalogue of royal and noble authors of England (3rd ed., Dublin, 1759), I, 19-20 refers to T. Tanner, Bishop of St Asaph, Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica, sive de scriptoribus, qui in Anglia, Scotia et Hibernia ad saeculi XVII floruerunt … (London, 1748), 253 for mention of a manuscript ‘in the Herald's office’ of a Latin poem ‘written by this unhappy Prince, while a prisoner’, which authorship is contested by Walpole. Fabyan, New Chronicles, 431-2 mentions a Latin poem and gives an English adaptation of it; Studer, ‘Anglo-Norman poem by Edward II’, 34-6 reproduces Fabyan's entry. 19 See W.H. Black, Catalogue of the Arundel Manuscripts in the library of the College of Arms (‘not published’, London, 1829), 80 item 41: Hic incipit Lamentatio gloriosi Regis Edwardi de Karnarvan … (I think Black's reference in this same item 41 to Joseph Ritson, Bibliographica Poetica … (London, 1802), 94 is erroneous: this applies to a poem by ‘Plantagenet Edward, duke of York’ in which ‘ a despairing lover bids farewell to his mistress’.) 20 Liber Niger Scaccarii by William Worcester: Annales Rerum Anglicarum, ed. T. Hearne (Oxford, 1728), 425-9; Liber Niger Scaccarii by William Worcester in: Letters and papers illustrative of the wars of the English in France, ed. J. Stevenson (London, Rolls Series 22, 1864), II part ii, 743-6. 21 H. Johnstone, Edward of Carnarvon 1284-1307 (Manchester, 1946), 20 and Aspin, Songs, 95. 22 See A. Gransden, Historical writing in England II (London/New York, 1996), 73 ff. and J. Taylor, English historical literature in the fourteenth century (Oxford, 1987), 111, 131. 23 Dean, Anglo-Norman literature, 57 no.84. Taylor, English historical literature, 267 says: ‘It is said that in 1323, on his visit to the north, Edward II listened to songs about Simon de Montfort which are now missing’, and one wonders whether he also listened to this one. 24 Aspin, Songs, 24-35. 25 The refrain is written out twice, after the first and seventh stanzas. In all other cases it appears as ‘Ore est ocys etc.’ or ‘Ore est etc’. 26 Ibid., 25 lists the earlier editions. 27 H. Shields, ‘The Lament of Simon de Montfort’, Medium Aevum 41 (1972), 202-7. Shields compares the two manuscript versions, concluding that ‘in general, D is textually no more satisfactory than L’ (204) and looks in detail at the complicated scansion, as indeed did Aspin. 28 Ibid., 203. 29 F.W. Maitland, ‘A song on the death of Simon de Montfort’, English Historical Review XI (1896), 314-18, which discusses the thirteenth-century owner of the manuscript, Walter de Hyda, in some detail. See Aspin, Songs, 27 and Wright, Political songs, ed. Coss, xxvii-xxviii, lxiii. 30 Aspin, Songs, 27; Maitland, ‘Song on the death of Simon de Montfort’, 315. 31 The Stowe version was edited by R.F. Green, ‘An epitaph for Richard, Duke of York’, Studies in Bibliography 41 (Papers of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 1988), 218-24; the text is also given on pp. 145-6 of P.W. Hammond, A.F. Sutton and L. Visser-Fuchs, ‘The reburial of Richard, Duke of York, 21-30 July 1476’, The Ricardian X no.127 (December 1994),122-65. The Harley version was printed with a translation by T. Wright in Political poems and songs relating to English history from the accession of Edward III to that of Richard III, 2 vols (London, Rolls Series 14, 1859-61), II, 256-7. 32 The scribe shows his insecurity in other places. L.1 reads: ‘A tous cuers de noblesse’ instead of ‘En memoyre soit a tous cuers de noblesse’, and he is clearly unfamiliar with the name Fotheringay: his l.27 reads: ‘Qua ffornie ai son cors del reposer’ as against Stowe: ‘Que a Fodringey son corps doit reposer’. 33 Green, ‘Epitaph for Richard, Duke of York’, agrees: ‘… all three [manuscripts] are descended from a single archetype’ and thinks that this archetype may have been the copy hanging over the duke's tomb. 34 This is the Stowe version; Harley reads: A remenbrance a tous ceurs …. 35 The signature is abbreviated here: Chestre le ht, but appears in full on f.77v at the end of Les chapitres de mesire Phillipe de Lalaing. 36 L. Thorpe, ‘Two epitaphs by Jean Molinet’, Scriptorium 8 (1954), 283-8. N. Dupire, Les faictz et dictz de Jean Molinet I (Paris, Société des anciens textes français, 1936) gives the epitaphs on pp.34-5 and 234-5. The manuscript (which was bought in 1849 by the Earl of Ashburnham from the Parisian collector Paul Barrois and sold at Sotheby's on 10 June 1901, see also Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts Eighth Report part III (London, 1881), 91) has, written immediately after our epitaphs, the epitaphs of Philippe de Crèvecoeur, counsellor to Charles le Téméraire, and the emperor Maximilian of Austria. The Faictz et dictz include many other texts lamenting the passing of eminent persons. See also C. Martineau-Génieys, Le thème de la mort dans la poésie française de 1450 à 1550 (Paris, 1978), particularly her section on La déploration funèbre chez les grands rhétoriqueurs, 295-437. 37 Thorpe, ‘Two epitaphs’, 284. 38 Studer, ‘Anglo-Norman poem by Edward II’, 38. 39 Hammond, Sutton, Visser-Fuchs, ‘Reburial of Richard, Duke of York’, 129-30; Green, ‘Epitaph for Richard, Duke of York’, 219. 40 Visser-Fuchs, ‘Reburial of Richard, Duke of York’, 131 notes that ‘in a few instances copies of this text are attached to the accounts of his funeral … suggesting that there was a close connection between the two and that copies circulated together’. 41 See D.B. Tyson, ‘The epitaph of Edward the Black Prince’, Medium Aevum 46 (1977), 98-104. 42 See, for instance, Richmond, Laments for the Dead, 27 on Layamon's Brut where the laments are ‘an integral part of the story … what one character says about another’ and R. Colliot, ‘Les épitaphes arthuriennes’, Bulletin bibliographique de la Société internationale arthurienne 25 (1973), 155-75. 43 Shields, ‘Lament of Simon de Montfort’, 205-6. 44 D'Avray, Death and the Prince, 228. 45 J. Catto, ‘The King's government and the fall of Pecock, 1457-58’, in: Rulers and the ruled in late medieval England. Essays presented to Gerald Harriss, ed. R.E. Archer and S. Walker, (London/Rio Grande, 1995), 201-222; he states that ‘The largest part of the book (ff.147-359) [which includes the Edward text] is a well-indexed formulary of the mid fifteenth century, to which occasional additions have been made’ (212). See E. Perroy, Etudes d'histoire médiévale (Paris, 1979), 289-98 and 314-5 for other references to this manuscript. 46 Catalogue of the Stowe manuscripts in the British Museum, I (London, 1895), 672-5. On Francis Thynne, see D. Carlson, ‘The writings and manuscripts collections of the Elizabethan alchemist, antiquary and herald Francis Thynne’, Huntington Library Quarterly 52 (1989), 203-72 (a description of MS Stowe 1047 on p.254). 47 The Fitzwilliam codex, also made of paper, again contains a variety of historical items, the epitaphs forming a section roughly in the centre; it is clearly an attempt to gather work by Jean Molinet (though it also includes printed extracts of Monstrelet's Chroniques - ff.2r-30v - and of the Chronique by Nicaise Ladam - ff.134r-153v). 48 Smallwood, ‘Lament of Edward II’, 521 is also unsure about the nature of the hand. 49 Studer, ‘Anglo-Norman poem by Edward II’, 37-8 lists the items in the codex but has omitted a Latin page-filling text at the bottom of f.8r and all of f.8v, and another that fills the whole of f.40v. 50 See A.R. Wagner, A catalogue of English mediaeval Rolls of Arms (London, 1950), 111-115. 51 Hiatt, ‘Forgeries of John Hardyng’, 8-9. 52 Smallwood, ‘Lament of Edward II’, 521 states that ‘a poem of conventional praise [of Edward II] in Latin … has been scratched out and this poem … substituted’, which confirms the theory of an afterthought. 53 Studer, ‘Anglo-Norman poem by Edward II’, 37 says these were ‘certainly not later than 1350’; Aspin, Songs, 93 (where a proofreading error has left out a word) gives: ‘Several [?] later, current hands have added Anglo-Norman items …’. 54 I am fairly certain that this is the case for the first two but less sure about the last; if that were by a different scribe, that might partly explain the leaving blank of ff.78v and 79r. 55 On this manuscript, see Wright, Political songs, ed. Coss, lix-lx. 56 Shields, ‘Lament of Simon de Montfort’, 203: ‘It is not out of the question that the second page was written earlier than the first.’ 57 Smallwood, ‘Lament of Edward II’, 527 also makes the point that the Edward II poem here is in an unrelated context ‘where a scribe seeking material to embellish a chronicle (as in R [the Royal manuscript]) would hardly know to look for it’. Details about the history of the Longleat manuscript might be helpful but I was unable to find any. 58 Stanza 52 is in two lines, clearly a scribal oversight. 59 Green, ‘Epitaph for Richard, Duke of York’, 220 thinks it unlikely that Thomas Whiting, the Chester Herald present at the burial, was the author (though he thinks it may have been copied by him) nor that William Ballard, also present and copyist of the College of Arms version, wrote it. W.H. Godfrey, The College of Arms …, London Survey Committee Monograph 16 (Cambridge, 1963), which lists all the officers of arms with biographical notes for each, gives in its section on Chester Heralds (119-29) other names which could be possible copyists, such as Thomas Knight (created 1592, so at the right date for the script), Henry Chitting (created 1618 who ‘left manuscripts’), or James Thomas (created 1587, of whom ‘in 1597 Garter Dethick said he had ‘a knowledge of some languages, but small experience’); William Penson (created 1603) is given as having a connection with several Harley manuscripts but I could not discover any similarities in script with Harley 48. 60 On the question of their dissemination, see also Wright, Political songs, ed. Coss, lvii-lxvii.
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