John Shirley's Heirs.

ABSTRACT

John Shirley compiled and wrote at least three miscellanies, probably more, in the first half of the fifteenth century; and Shirley's books appear to have remained accessible to a number of scribes in the decades following his death, to be used as exemplars for further miscellanies produced mainly in London for a century after his death. This article is an attempt to bring together what evidence we have for the network of scribes who inherited Shirley's books: what they copied from Shirley, what were their interests, how they may have had access to his books.

John Shirley compiled and wrote at least three miscellanies, probably more, in the first half of the fifteenth century up to his death in 1456; and Shirley's books appear to have remained accessible to a number of scribes in the decades following his death, by what means we do not know, to be used as exemplars for further miscellanies produced mainly in London for a century after his death. (1) This article is an attempt to bring together what evidence we have for the network of scribes who inherited Shirley's books: what they copied from Shirley, what were their interests, and how they may have had access to his books.

In a collection of essays on miscellanies, it will first be necessary to establish that Shirley's books and the books of later scribes who copied some of Shirley's texts can be considered as miscellanies, as understood elsewhere in this volume. Although most scholarly studies of Shirley's books have focused on their literary contents and Shirley's introductions, a closer look at their contents, as laid out so clearly in Tables 1 to 3 of Margaret Connolly's recent book on Shirley (pp. 30-31, 70-74, 146-49), reveals compilations more miscellaneous than these studies suggest. His earliest volume, London, British Library MS Additional 16165, includes besides literary works texts such as the Gospel of Nicodemus, the Master of Game, and a Latin Regula sacerdotalis. His second, as reconstructed from its parts in Sion College MS Arc.L.40.2/E.44, BL MS Harley 78 (fols [80.sup.r]-[83.sup.v]), and Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.3.20, includes besides literary works the translation of Deguileville's Pelerinage de la vie humaine, prognostications, prayers, and proverbs. His third, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 59, while the most exclusively literary of his compilations, nevertheless includes a list of the Knights of the Garter in 1416, the Middle English translation of Augustinus de contemptu mundi, medical recipes, and an account of lucky and unlucky days. Those who copied his texts in succeeding decades also compiled miscellanies of literary, didactic, historical, and practical texts. For instance, BL MS Harley 7333 brings together the prose Brut, Middle English versions of Cato, proverbs, and Lydgate's verses on the kings of England with what we would more clearly define as literary texts.

In John Shirley, Chapter 8, Margaret Connolly discusses the manuscripts of Shirley's 'successors', as she calls them. Manuscripts in which are copied one or more texts apparently derived from Shirley's manuscripts are BL MS Additional 34360; BL MS Harley 2251; Cambridge, MA, Harvard University, Houghton Library MS Eng. 530; BL MS Harley 7333; BL MS Cotton Titus A.xxvi (fols 61-207); John Stow's manuscripts, BL MSS Harley 367 and Additional 29729; and possibly BL MS Additional 5467 (Connolly, pp. 172-85). Other manuscripts discussed by Connolly as sharing a number of texts in common with Shirley manuscripts, though showing no signs of direct derivation, are BL MS Harley 7578 and Bodleian MS Rawlinson C.86 (pp. 177-78, 181-82). Others sharing some contents with this group of manuscripts are Leiden, University Library MS Vossius Germ. Gal. Q.9; Cambridge, Jesus College MS 56; Bodleian MS Fairfax 16; Cambridge, Trinity College MSS R.3.19 and R.3.21; BL MSS Harley 2255, Harley 372, Egerton 1995, and Lansdowne 699; and Lambeth Palace Library MS 306.

Derivation from Shirley's copies is most easily established by two means: copying of his wordy introductions to texts, which often give information about the patron for whom the text was composed or the occasion for its composition; or copying of Shirley's unusual spellings. Connolly describes this latter feature as 'His preference for forms such as "nexst" and "filowyng", his use of the spelling "eo" in words such as "beon", "eorlle", "neode" and "weoping", and his periodic doubling of consonants in words such as "englisshe", "frensshe" and "after" ' (p. 170). An instance of his lengthy introductions may be given from Trinity College MS R.3.20, in his introduction to Lydgate's 'Bycorne and Chychevache':

Loo, sirs, the devise of a peynted or desteynede clothe for an halle a parlour or a chaumbre, devysed by Johan Lidegate at the request of a worthy citeseyn of London; .rst there shal stonde an ymage in poete wyse seying thees thre balades. (2)

An abbreviated version of this heading, 'Compyled by John Ludgate monke of Berye at the request of a worthye syttesyne of London to be peynted in a perler', was added to the explicit of a copy of 'Bycorne and Chychevache' in Trinity College MS R.3.19,3 a manuscript of the second half of the fifteenth century with ties to Shirley's books through the collaboration of its main scribe with the so-called 'Hammond scribe' (about whom more below). The Shirley-derived note came, however, not from this connection but through John Stow, who had access to both Shirley's books and the Trinity manuscript in the following century. Such wordy introductions with Shirleian spellings copied into some of the volumes listed above give evidence of Shirley derivations even when the Shirley exemplar does not survive, as for instance is the case with the long Shirleian introductions to The Canterbury Tales or to The Lives of Saints Edmund and Fremund in BL MS Harley 7333, folio [37.sup.r]. (4)

In the absence of introductions and Shirleian spellings, one should be wary of claiming derivation from Shirley's manuscripts just because the same text appears in one of the manuscripts listed above and in a Shirley book. To date, little work has been done to trace Shirley's influence through textual analysis; and some work that has been done in this line has turned up evidence that specific same-texts in these manuscripts did not use Shirley's books as exemplars. Margaret Connolly expresses doubt about derivation of all common texts from Shirleian originals when she states that 'the mere presence in [Additional 34360 and Harley 2251] of texts which also occur in Ashmole 59 does not in itself prove the latter volume must have been the Hammond scribe's source in all instances' (p. 180). George B. Pace and Alfred David note that, based on textual analysis, the copy of Chaucer's 'Gentillesse' in British Library MS Harley 7333 does not derive from Shirley's copies in either Ashmole 59 (fol. [27.sup.r]) or Trinity College MS R.3.20 (p. 358). (5)

One text that runs right through this nexus of surviving books by Shirley and his heirs, Lydgate's verses on the 'Kings of England' (IMEV 3632), illustrates well the fact that Shirley's books were not necessarily the exemplars for the common texts of his heirs. First of all, it is surprising how many copies of Lydgate's poem on the kings survive in these books: in Shirley's own Ashmole 59 (fols [75.sup.r]-[77.sup.r]); in Shirley-derived MSS Harley 7333 (fol. [149.sup.r-v]), Additional 34360 (fols [60.sup.v]-[62.sup.v]) and Harley 2251 (fols [2.sup.v]-[4.sup.r]), the latter two by the Hammond scribe; twice in Trinity College MS R.3.21 partly written (though not on these folios) by the Hammond scribe (fols [242.sup.r]-[243.sup.v] and [319.sup.r]-[320.sup.v]); and in five other manuscripts whose contents have been compared with those of the Shirley volumes, BL MS Egerton 1995, by William Gregory, skinner, of London (fols [110.sup.r]-[112.sup.r]); Bodleian MS Fairfax 16 (fols [330.sup.v]-[332.sup.v]); Cambridge, Jesus College MS 56 (fols [46.sup.r]-[47.sup.v]); Lambeth Palace Library MS 306 (fols [17.sup.v]-[18.sup.v]); and Leiden,

University Library MS Vossius Germ. Gall. Q.9 (fols [92.sup.v]-[94.sup.r]). (6) It is perhaps not surprising that John Stow did not copy it into either of his partly Shirley-derived manuscripts, Harley 367 and Additional 29729, since by the mid-sixteenth century it would have required the addition of too many stanzas for subsequent kings to make it current. Textual analysis reveals how little these other manuscript copies rely on Shirley's. From an analysis of the textual variants in all the surviving manuscripts and early prints, I discovered three groups or families of related manuscripts, with a number of isolated manuscripts that did not clearly fit any of these groups or whose surviving text was too fragmentary to categorize. (7) Shirley's Ashmole 59 stood virtually in a class by itself, with many variants that demonstrated that Shirley or the scribe of his source had been quite free with the text, altering words, phrases, word order, and even whole lines from the standard text. For instance, Shirley's stanza on Edward III ends,

   He wane Calays by his manly devyce
   Regned in Englande two and fyffty yeere
   Enterred atWestmynster who list the cronycle here. (1.75)

All other manuscripts read at line 75, 'And he gate Caleys by his prudent devyce' and at line 77, 'Lithe at Westmestre, thus seith the cronyclere'. Among the thirty-four surviving manuscripts of this text, that in Cambridge University Library MS Add. 6686 (pp. 272-73) is the closest to Shirley's, though still it does not reproduce many of Ashmole 59's unique readings. Cambridge, Jesus College MS 56 and the Leiden manuscript fall into a loosely related, and usually late, group of seven manuscripts from which the printed versions were derived. All the others in the Shirley-related manuscripts fall within one large group of fourteen manuscripts, written mostly in London and mostly towards the end of the second quarter or the third quarter of the fifteenth century. The two copies written by the Hammond scribe, Harley 2251 and Add. 34360, are very close textually. In the same branch of the family with it are Lambeth Palace MS 306, Harley 7333, and Egerton 1995, the latter two also quite closely related to one another textually. In another branch of this family are the two virtually identical copies in Trinity College MS R.3.21, loosely relating to Fairfax 16 and to the Bristol schoolmaster's book, Oxford, Lincoln College MS Lat. 129 (fols [62.sup.v]-[64.sup.r]). From this textual comparison, it is clear that it was not Shirley's copy that stood as the exemplar for this group, though there is evidence that the Hammond scribe and some others of these scribes had access to his manuscripts, including Ashmole 59.

Shirley spent most of his life as a servant in the retinue of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick and apparently began his scribal and compiling activity while still in Beauchamp's employ, writing the first two of three miscellanies that survive, BL MS Additional 16165 in the 1420s and Trinity College MS R.3.20 with its now separate fragments at the beginning of the 1430s. After the earl's death in 1439, and possibly before, he took up residence within the close of St Bartholomew's Hospital, north of St Paul's and therefore close to the metropolis's centre of commercial book production in the fifteenth century, where he wrote the third miscellany that survives, Bodleian MS Ashmole 59 in the 1440s. Scholars have differing opinions about the nature of Shirley's scribal activity, particularly in the later years of his life after he settled in St Bartholomew's close and rented four shops from the Hospital; (8) but regardless of his own status as amateur or professional scribe, antiquarian or commercial stationer, it is clear that at least some of his manuscripts passed into the hands of professional scribes after his death. It may be instructive to examine what we know of those scribes.

One London inheritor of Shirley's texts was the so-called 'Hammond scribe', who wrote the miscellanies BL MSS Harley 2251 and Additional 34360, each duplicating some contents of Shirley's Trinity College MS R.3.20 in its original larger form and/or his Ashmole 59. Eleanor Prescott Hammond first identified this scribal hand in manuscripts copied in London during the reign of Edward IV (1461-83), identifying, too, his access to Shirley's manuscripts. (9) Thirteen other manuscripts, portions of manuscripts, or fragments survive by his hand, including two copies of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; two of Hoccleve's Regement of Princes; a medical miscellany; a collection of documents, charters, and texts setting forth London city and guild rights and liberties; a copy of the Statutes of the Realm; and a collection of documents and texts relating to heraldry and the rights and responsibilities of the Earls Marshall and Constables of England. (10) The Hammond scribe's two Shirley-derived volumes have similar contents, almost all the contents in the shorter Additional 34360 being duplicated in the longer Harley 2251.

A sequence of three texts with an erroneous portion of a fourth in Additional 34360 has been taken as evidence that the Hammond scribe had access to Shirley's Trinity R.3.20 miscellany when it was still combined at least with the folios now in Harley 78: (11) on folios 49-57 of Additional 34360 the Hammond scribe copied Chaucer's 'Complaint Unto Pity' (IMEV 2756), with Shirley's introduction from Harley 78 copied almost word for word, and the anonymous 'Complaint to His Lady' (IMEV 3414) from the folios now surviving in Harley 78, which was originally part of the thirteenth quire of Shirley's volume. In Additional 34360 these are immediately followed by Lydgate's translation of Psalm 102, 'Benedic anima mea domino' (IMEV 2572) which begins the second quire of Trinity R.3.20, the fifteenth of the reconstructed volume. But part way through, the Hammond scribe erroneously began copying Lydgate's translation of Psalm 86, 'Gloriosa dicta sunt de te' (IMEV 2688) instead, which begins the first quire of Trinity R.3.20, the fourteenth of the reconstructed volume. The argument is that he would have made the mistake because the quire with 'Gloriosa dicta sunt' immediately followed that in which the two poems now in Harley 78 appeared. Seth Lerer has pointed out also another piece of evidence that the Hammond scribe had the pre-disassembled volume before him: Additional 34360's copy of the 'Complaint to his Lady' preserves the final stanza of this poem, which does not survive in Shirley's fragment in Harley 78. (12) He writes,

Shirley's text of the Complaint runs to the bottom of fo. 83 [[83.sup.v]] of Harley 78, but there is no flourish or 'Explicit' to indicate the close of the text. Because the Harley text is made up of individual leaves, cut from a quire and bound in sequence, it is highly likely that the extra stanza found in Additional 34360 would have been on the following leaf of Shirley's text. (p. 402)

In all, Additional 34360 duplicates nine texts found in Shirley's pre-disassembled Trinity R.3.20, though as I have mentioned they may not necessarily all have been copied from Shirley's volume. (13)

The Hammond scribe's other Shirley-derived miscellany, BL MS Harley 2251, begins by duplicating eleven of the texts from the second booklet of Additional 34360, some of which were copied from Shirley's R.3.20. In all, it duplicates nineteen texts from Shirley's R.3.20 and twenty from Ashmole 59, including five that are found in all three; of these five, as Connolly points out, two are derived from Trinity R.3.20, one from Ashmole 59, one from neither, and one might be from either. (14) It does not duplicate the texts now preserved in the Harley 78 fragment, as does Additional 34360. Those texts in Harley 2251 that include Shirley's headings and so are likely to have been copied from his manuscripts also include texts found exclusively in Trinity R.3.20 or Ashmole 59 (that is, not in both). From all this, it appears that the Hammond scribe had access to Shirley's pre-disassembled R.3.20 when writing Additional 34360, and to both Shirley's R.3.20 (? possibly after disassemblage) and Ashmole 59 when writing Harley 2251.

Eleanor Hammond concluded that the Hammond scribe must have been employed in a large scriptorium involved in commercial book production:

If this scribe had access while working on Harley 2251 to Shirley's (?) copy of The Fall of Princes, to Shirley's volume now at Cambridge [Trinity College MS R.3.20], to a Court of Sapience text probably later than Shirley, and to verse by Lydgate which had received additions later than Shirley; if he had some of these sources before him when compiling the Additionals volume [BL MS Additional 34360], and then also a copy of the Assembly of Ladies at his command; if he was in such connection with another scribe that he could pick up work on the Canterbury Tales in the middle of a tale, as in the Royal manuscript [Royal 17 D.XV]--how can we account for him except as a professional employed in a scriptorium or a publishing business, where many codices were in stock to furnish bases for reproduction? ('A Scribe of Chaucer', pp. 28-29)

Certainly her comment on his having a large library at his command is still more apt when we realize, as Hammond with knowledge of only six of his manuscripts could not do, that he also had access to a copy of the Statutes of the Realm, to medical texts in Middle English enough to fill a volume, to London city and guild records, and to texts relating to the rights and responsibilities of the Heralds, Earls Marshall, and Constables; and that he also began a quire in Trinity College MS R.3.21 that was completed by the main scribe of that manuscript, who took over in mid-work. On the other hand, we might expect a scribe working in a commercial scriptorium to turn out multiple copies of the same work from the same exemplar, but the Hammond scribe does so only in the case of the two miscellanies we have been discussing: while he wrote two copies of The Regement of Princes and one and a half of The Canterbury Tales, each was from a different exemplar. (15)

There are many similarities between the Hammond scribe and John Shirley, though they are separated by one or two generations from one another. (16) Shirley's manuscripts are all written on paper, as were all but a fragment of the Hammond scribe's, in an age when many literary manuscripts were still being written on vellum. (17) No manuscript by either man is heavily decorated or illuminated. Both had access to many manuscripts of various contents, and sometimes to multiple exemplars for a single text. Both made multiple copies of some texts. Both seem to have been interested in history, or we would say had antiquarian interests, since both copied historical texts among others in their miscellanies and the Hammond scribe seems to have taken pains to copy Shirley's long introductions describing patrons or occasions for the poems he copied from Shirley. Both had close ties to London's mercantile society, Shirley through the family of his second wife,

Margaret Lynne, whose father, William, was a wool merchant and whose brother-in-law, Thomas Oxney, was a grocer; the Hammond scribe through his ties to the secretary and the son-in-law of Sir Thomas Cook, draper. (18) An owner of three of the Hammond scribe's manuscripts, and possibly a fourth, was John de Vale, who held the same kind of position as secretary and man of affairs for Sir Thomas Cook as Shirley had held for Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. (19) These similarities might lead us to conclusions about the scribal activities of either man in comparison with the other: was Shirley more likely to have been involved in commercial book production because his profile is similar to that of the Hammond scribe, or was the Hammond scribe more likely to have been employed as clerk in a mercantile household or copying texts for his own use and for circulation among members of London's mercantile society because his profile is similar to that of Shirley? In either case, their access to such a quantity and wide variety of texts gives one pause to wonder how large a library members of London's mercantile society maintained or how organized was the circulation of books among the members of this society.

Besides the two miscellanies copied by the Hammond scribe, a third miscellany offers evidence of copying from Shirley's books. This is now BL MS Harley 7333, which contains a number of texts with Shirley's distinctive introductions, though not all from extant Shirley manuscripts. Harley 7333 is a folio volume made up of seven parts and written by at least eight scribes. (20) The Shirley-influenced texts occur in three portions of the manuscript written by three scribes who apparently worked together, passing texts and quires from one to the other for completion. In the second portion of the manuscript, a quire comprising the present folios [25.sup.ra]-[32.sup.vb] written entirely by scribe B, the quire ends with two poems by Lydgate unique to this manuscript, the first of which, Lydgate's translation of Laurence Calot's poem, 'The Title and Pedigree of Henry VI' or, 'On the English Title of Henry VI to the Crown of France' (IMEV 3808), begins with a Shirleian introduction:

Here begynneth a remembraunce of a peedeugre how that the kyng of Englond, Henry the Sext, is truly borne heir vnto the corone of Fraunce by lynyall successioun als wele on his .ader side Henry the Fifth whom God assoill as by Kateryne queen of Englond his modir whom God assoile, made by Lydygate Iohn the monke of Bury at Parys by the instaunce of my Lord of Warrewyk. (fol. 31)

The second, 'A Roundel for the Coronation of Henry VI' (IMEV 2804), follows on its heels with the introduction,

Here endith the genologie of Kyng Henry the Sext and folowith a roundell of him ayens his coronacioun made by Lydegate daun Iohn. (fol. [32.sup.v]) (21)

These two poems survive in no other manuscripts, but the introduction to the first, and the appropriateness of Shirley's copying a poem commissioned by and praising his employer, Richard Beauchamp, together offer strong evidence for a Shirleian exemplar, now lost, for the copy here. (22) Other contents of this quire are the end of 'Parvus Cato' (IMEV 3955, which is also found in Harley 2251), 'Cato major' (IMEV 854, also found in Harley 2251), and 'Complaint of a Prisoner Against Fortune' (IMEV 860, found in both Harley 2251 and Additional 34360). Shirley had also demonstrated his interest in Lydgate's poems on Henry VI's coronation by including copies of his poem 'To King Henry VI on his Coronation' (IMEV 2211) in both of his miscellanies, Trinity R.3.20 and Ashmole 59 (and it is also in Harley 2251).

The second portion of this manuscript showing Shirleian influence immediately follows this, in the first several quires of Part 3 (which altogether comprises fols 33-[119.sup.v]), the first four quires being written by scribe C with only a single folio, the first of the fourth quire, by scribe B. The quire begins (fol. 33) with a copy of Lydgate's Guy of Warwick (IMEV 875), which, like 'The Title and Pedigree of King Henry VI' would have been an appropriate poem for Shirley to copy with its Warwick connections. Furthermore, as Connolly points out, the copy here presents 'a reading which is identical to that in [Cambridge, MA] Harvard [University, Houghton Library MS English] 530' (p. 175), another Shirley-influenced manuscript (about which more below). (23) This is followed (fol. [36.sup.ra]) by Richard Sellyng's poem, 'An Old Man's Counsel to Beware', or, 'Evidens to beware' (IMEV 4074), whose concluding stanza asks Shirley 'to amende where it is amisse'; and then a copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, beginning at folio 37 with the Shirleian introduction noted above and with Shirley's glosses copied up to and including The Reeve's Tale but discontinued thereafter. None of the poems in these two parts survives in a manuscript written by Shirley, so it would appear that scribes B and C of Harley 7333 had access to at least one Shirley manuscript now lost.

The third portion of the manuscript showing Shirleian influence is Part 5, comprising two quires, folios 134-48, of which the first side alone is written by scribe B, the rest by scribe D. Scribe B begins Chaucer's 'Anelida and Arcite' (IMEV 3670), writing two columns on folio [134.sup.r]. Scribe D picks up at the top of the verso side and completes 'Anelida and Arcite', then copies, in sequence, 'The Complaynte ageyne Hope' (fol. [135.sup.r]; IMEV 370); Lydgate's Lives of Saints Edmund and Fremund (fols [136.sup.rb]-[146.sup.v]; IMEV 3440); Lydgate's 'Complaint that Crist Maketh of his Passion' (fol. [147.sup.r]; IMEV 2081); Chaucer's 'Lak of Stedfastnesse' (fol. [147.sup.v]; IMEV 3190); his 'Gentillesse' and 'Truth' (fol. [147.sup.vb]; IMEV 3348, 809); his 'Complaint to his Purse' (fol. [148.sup.r]; IMEV 3787); and two poems attributed to Halsham, a 'Balade' and 'Tyed with a Line' (fol. [148.sup.r]; IMEV 3504, 3437). 'Lak of Stedfastnesse', 'Gentillesse', and 'Truth' are all in Shirley's miscellany, Trinity R.3.20; 'Anelida and Arcite' and the two Halsham stanzas are in Shirley's earliest miscellany, Additional 16165; and the Prayer and Envoy only to Lydgate's Lives of Saints Edmund and Fremund are in his last miscellany, Ashmole 59 (fols [22.sup.v]-[24.sup.v]). Chaucer's 'Complaint to his Purse' is in both of the Shirley-derived Hammond scribe miscellanies, Additional 34360 and Harley 2251; and the 'Balade' attributed to Halsham is also found in Additional 34360. 'Gentillesse' is also incorporated into Scogan's 'Morale Balade' (IMEV 2264) in Shirley's Ashmole 59, and appears separately in the Hammond scribe's Harley 2251.24 Chaucer's 'Lak of Stedfastnesse' and 'Complaint to his Purse' and Lydgate's Lives of Saints Edmund and Fremund in this portion are preceded by Shirleian introductions. (25) All the other poems in this portion need not have derived from Shirley manuscripts, even though the same text appears in Shirley or Shirley-derived manuscripts. (26)

The scribes who wrote Harley 7333 appear to have had access to many manuscripts, including either several Shirley manuscripts or Shirley-derived manuscripts now lost. They were apparently working closely with one another in a scriptorium of sufficient size to occupy at least six scribes. Three scribes, whom I designate B, C, and D, wrote most of the manuscript, often writing only the first side or folio of a stint that another of them would finish. The first three quires, folios 1-24, an acephalous and atelous copy of the prose Brut, may have been copied by a hand distinct from these three. Judging by the medieval foliation in the rest of the volume, this copy of the Brut is missing three quires from the beginning and one from the end. (27) This portion of the manuscript may have been written outside the scriptorium and acquired by the scribes as a separate booklet. Two other scribes, E and F, collaborated to write one quire near the end of the volume (fols 149-56); and one other scribe, H, collaborated with scribe D to write the last quire in the volume. Manly and Rickert established that by the late fifteenth century the manuscript was at the Abbey of St Mary de Pratis, a house of Austin Canons in Leicester, and then it was in the hands of a sequence of owners in or around Leicester at least through the end of the sixteenth century. (28) However, as Connolly points out, A. I. Doyle cautions against assuming that necessarily the manuscript was prepared at the abbey, pointing out that Jeremy Smith localizes the language to North Hampshire (Connolly, p. 186, n. 21). The names and rebuses that connect the manuscript with Leicester occur in several portions of the manuscript, including those examined more closely here as demonstrating Shirley influence, but were all added after it was written. (29) It may be significant that the marginal note 'Doctor Peni wirt this booke' appears on folio [150.sup.r], one of two folios on which scribe E wrote his only contribution to the volume, a copy of Lydgate's 'Kings of England' (IMEV 3632), or that this quire is written by two hands that appear nowhere else in the volume.

Some texts in Harley 7333 with Shirleian introductions for which we have no extant Shirley manuscript indicate that the scribes in this scriptorium had access to at least one Shirley manuscript now lost or one derived from such a manuscript. Those which are clearly Shirley-derived, and those whose contents duplicate texts in the known Shirley manuscripts, do not follow any pattern of copying from one or two extant manuscripts, and often duplicate texts in other Shirley-circle manuscripts that do not survive in the three miscellanies. Since they duplicate texts found in Shirley's Additional 16165 and not in his other two miscellanies, it is just possible that these scribes had access to that manuscript. From the evidence of the texts they copied, however, it seems likely that these scribes also had Shirley-written or Shirley-derived exemplars to hand which have not survived, rather than that the manuscripts R.3.20 and/or Ashmole 59 came into their hands after their use by the Hammond scribe and before they came into the hands of John Stow.

A fourth manuscript with clear Shirley derivations is Cambridge, MA, Harvard University, Houghton Library MS Eng. 530, which was for a long time erroneously included in the list of Shirley-written manuscripts. (30) Like Harley 7333 and the Hammond scribe's smaller miscellany, BL MS Additional 34360, this manuscript is made up of booklets, possibly written at different times and in this case written by several scribes apparently working independently. The third portion, accounting for almost three-quarters of the manuscript (fols [59.sup.r]-[211.sup.v]), is taken up by an atelous copy of the prose Brut with two Shirleian introductions, one at the beginning (fol. [59.sup.r]), the other at a break at the beginning of the reign of Richard II (fol. [180.sup.v]).31 As Connolly points out, these replicate not only Shirley's preference for long introductions giving details of authorship or occasion but also replicate his unusual spellings ('heer', 'yee', 'reedethe', 'heorethe', 'filowing', etc.). She also points out the additional details of the death and burial of Richard Beauchamp on the last extant folio of the volume before the text breaks o. due to lost folios at the end, noting that these details would have been known to Shirley (p. 173). The manuscript also contains (fols [4.sup.v]-[12.sup.v]) a copy of Lydgate's Guy of Warwick (IMEV 875) with an introduction in Shirley's style: 'an abstract owte the cronycles in Latyn made by Gyrade Cornubyence the worthy the cronyculer of Westsexse & translated into Englishe be Lydegate daun Johan at the request of Margret countess of Shrewsbury lady Talbot Fournyvale & Lytle of the lyfe of that moste worthy knyght Guy of Warrewyk of whose blode she lenyally descendid' (fol. [4.sup.v]). (32) As noted above, an acephalous copy of this poem is also found in Shirley-derived Harley 7333. The manuscript also includes (fols 13-33) a copy of The Chronicle of the Three Kings of Cologne, which is textually close to that in Shirley's Ashmole 59 and was also copied into the lost Shirley volume whose contents are listed on folio iir of Ashmole 59. (33) Guy of Warwick is preceded by an acephalous copy of the 'Complaint of Christ' (IMEV 3612) which is not found in any of the manuscripts directly influenced by Shirley, but was copied also in Lambeth Palace Library MS 306 (f. 145r), a manuscript of the larger Shirley circle some of whose contents parallel those in Shirley manuscripts. The final two items in the manuscript, 'The III Considerations Richt Necesserye to the Good Governaunce of a Prince' (fols 34-48) and Lydgate's 'Serpent of Division' (fols 49-[57.sup.v]), are recorded in a separate booklet whose writing and decoration are distinctly more professional in appearance than the rest of the volume.

Besides the Shirleian introductions and spellings, the Shirley-derived portions of this manuscript also mimic Shirley's decorative style: descenders in the bottom line are exaggerated and criss-crossed (e.g., fols 199, [199.sup.v], 200), and ascenders in the top line are exaggerated in large and bold loops (e.g., fols 174, 177, 183, 201), sometimes feathered in the manner of Shirley's decorative script in his surviving miscellanies (e.g., fols [166.sup.v], [171.sup.v]). Originally there were also decorated running titles in Shirleian fashion, now cropped completely but with decorated descenders surviving at tops of some folios (e.g. fols [166.sup.v], 169). As I have noted elsewhere, it was no doubt the combination of these features that led scholars in the nineteenth century to attribute the manuscript's writing to Shirley ('Professional Scribes?', p. 132). Unfortunately, its leaves offer no evidence of its provenance. From all the evidence summarized here, it is clear that the scribes of the prose Brut and of Lydgate's Guy of Warwick had access to Shirley or Shirley-derived exemplars that do not survive, and it may be that the copies of The Three Kings of Cologne and 'Complaint of Christ' are also derived from Shirley manuscripts. This manuscript, then, gives evidence for yet another Shirley manuscript now lost, written in the 1440s. (34) The Guy of Warwick text might suggest a tie between this and the Harley 7333 manuscript, but then again, Shirley may have made more than one copy of that text.

Finally, BL MS Cotton Titus A.xxvi includes in the second of three distinct portions (fols [61.sup.r]-[207.sup.r]) two texts with Shirley-style introductions, Lydgate's 'Fifteen Joys of Our Lady' (fol. [157.sup.v]; IMEV 533), and The Siege of Rhodes, beginning on folio [160.sup.v]. (35) As noted by Connolly, this introductory rubric also presents 'an initial and descenders which imitate [Shirley's decorative script]' (p. 177). Only the Shirleian introduction to The Siege of Rhodes survives in this manuscript, due to loss of the subsequent leaves, but a single leaf of the work survives in MS Cotton Vitellius D.xii (fol. 43). These texts give evidence of yet another Shirley exemplar now lost to which the scribe of this portion of Titus A.xxvi had access. Its other contents, medical treatises and saints' lives, have no connections to known Shirley manuscripts. BL MSS Harley 7333 and Cotton Titus A.xxvi, and Harvard MS Eng. 530, offer evidence of several Shirley manuscripts that have not survived. Some of the Shirley-derived texts to which they bear witness are of such length as to take up an entire manuscript, like The Canterbury Tales or the prose Brut; others are of sufficient length to take up a significant portion of a manuscript, like The Siege of Rhodes, Guy of Warwick, or The Lives of Saints Edmund and Fremund. Besides these, the Shirley-derived manuscripts give credible evidence of Shirley copies of seven shorter poems that do not survive in any of the surviving Shirley miscellanies. (36) These texts taken together account for almost all their clearly Shirley-derived contents, suggesting that rather than copying from known Shirley manuscripts as well as those now lost, they may have been dependent entirely upon the lost ones. Lost texts of such length and quantity give evidence of perhaps three more Shirley manuscripts, one written in the 1440s and the others of uncertain date, besides the miscellany to which the table of contents on folio II of Ashmole 59 bears witness and the lost first twelve quires of Ashmole 59 itself (although some of the missing texts may be accounted for by these quires).

By contrast, the two miscellanies copied by the Hammond scribe, Harley 2251 and Additional 34360, offer clear evidence of copying from the surviving miscellanies of Shirley. They seem to have remained if not in the same hands then at least in the same London milieu as the two Shirley manuscripts that had served as exemplars for some of their texts. All four, two of the Hammond scribe and two of Shirley, came into the hands of John Stow in the mid-sixteenth century, as did several of the other manuscripts in the wider Shirley circle. Much has been written about Stow, a tailor known now for his literary and antiquarian interests and his large library of fifteenth-century manuscripts. (37) I have written elsewhere of how the manuscripts of the Hammond scribe's collaborator, the scribe of Trinity College MSS R.3.19 and R.3. 21, came into the hands of John Stow through a succession of printer owners by whom they had sometimes been used as exemplars. (38) While we need not argue that these manuscripts followed the same route to Stow, it seems clear from what we can know of their provenance that they remained in circulation in this same circle of London scribes, stationers, printers, and antiquarians with mercantile connections for a century after Shirley's death until they fell into Stow's hands, and thus both exemplars and copies survived together. The other Shirley-derived manuscripts, including Harley 7333 and Harvard MS Eng. 530, probably were not produced in the capital but were copied from Shirley or Shirley-derived exemplars that had been carried out of the metropolis by their owners; outside the protection of metropolitan book-producing circles, they were dispersed and the exemplars not only separated from their copies but lost entirely. I am suggesting that the other five relatively inexpensive and undecorated paper miscellanies, the Hammond scribe's Harley 2251 and

Additional 34360 and Shirley's three surviving miscellanies, owe their survival to their usefulness as exemplars for the book trade in London and their intrinsic interest to bibliophilic antiquarians in London in the century when many paper manuscripts were being discarded for the more 'modern' printed copies of the same texts. Thus the contents of these five manuscripts may have served as exemplars for some of the contents of other manuscripts produced in London in this same circle (e.g., Trinity College MSS R.3.19 and R.3.21; Lambeth Palace MS 306; Bodleian MS Fairfax 16; or BL MSS Egerton 1995 or Harley 2255), as they did for Stow's own Harley 367 and Additional 29729.

APPENDIX

Table of Scribal Stints in British Library MS Harley 7333

PART I (fols         M&R scribe 1        LRM scribe A   3 quires
  1-[24.sup.v])

PART II (fols        M&R scribe 2        LRM scribe B   1 quire
  25-[32.sup.v])

PART III (fols       M&R:                LRM:
  33-[119.sup.v])    33-56 scribe 3      scribe C       3 quires
                     57, [57.sup.v]      scribe B       1 folio, beg.
                       (1-20) scr. 4                      quire
                     [57.sup.v]          scribe C       rest of quire +
                       (21)-65 scr. 3                     first folio
                                                          of next q.
                     [65.sup.v]-         scribe D       rest of quire
                       [72.sup.v]
                       scribe 1
                     73-[73.sup.v]       scribe B       1 folio, beg.
                       scribe 4                           quire
                     74-[119.sup.v]      scribe D       rest of quire +
                       scribe 1                           6 qs

PART IV (fols        M&R scribe 1        LRM scribe D   2 quires
  120-[133.sup.v])                                        ([1.sup.8]
                                                          [2.sup.8-2])

PART V (fols         M&R:                LRM:
  134-148)           134 scribe 4        scribe B       1 folio, beg.
                                                          quire
                     [134.sup.v]-148     scribe D       rest of quire +
                       scribe 1                           1 q.

PART VI (fols        M&R:                LRM:
  [149.sup.v]-203)   149-156 scribe 5    149-150        2 folios, beg.
                                           scribe E       quire
                                         150-156        rest of quire
                                           scribe F
                     157-164 scribe 6    scribe B       1 quire
                     165-[196.sup.v]     scribe D       4 quires
                       scribe 1
                     197-203 scribe 7    scribe G       1 quire

PART VII (fols       M&R:                LRM:
  204-[211.sup.v])   204-205 scribe 8    scribe H       2 folios, beg.
                                                          quire
                     205 (last 19)-211   scribe D       rest of quire
                     scribe 9

Key:

M&R Manly and Rickert, The Text of the Canterbury Tales, 1, 207-09.

LRM author's description of the hands

(1) The most recent study of Shirley's life and literary activities is Margaret Connolly, John Shirley: Book Production and the Noble Household in Fifteenth-Century England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998); for a recent discussion of Shirley's reliability as an authority for determining the Chaucer canon (and on access to his books after his death), see Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards, ' "Chaucer's Chronicle", John Shirley, and the Canon of Chaucer's Shorter Poems', Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 20 (1998), 201-18.

(2) Trinity College MS R.3.20, p. 10. The poem is written on pages 10-15. For 'Bycorne and Chychevache', see The Index of Middle English Verse, ed. by Carleton Brown and Rossell Hope Robbins (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), hereafter IMEV, no. 2541, and Supplement to the Index of Middle English Verse, ed. by Rossell Hope Robbins and John L. Cutler (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1965), hereafter IMEVS.

(3) Trinity College MS R.3.19, fol. 159. The poem is written by the main scribe of the manuscript on folios [157.sup.v]-[159.sup.r].

(4) Quoted in Connolly, John Shirley, p. 174. The long Shirleian-style introduction to Lives of Saints Edmund and Fremund (IMEV 3440) names Shirley's lord, Richard Beauchamp, as commissioner of the poem (fol. [136.sup.rb]; see n. 25 below). Shirley also attributes the commissioning of 'The Title and Pedigree of Henry VI' (IMEV 3808) to Beauchamp, and as with the other two, its long introduction does not appear in a Shirley manuscript though it does in Harley 7333, fols [31.sup.rb]-[32.sup.vb]. These are also discussed in Connolly, John Shirley, p. 175.

(5) The Variorum Edition of The Works of GeoVrey Chaucer, v: The Minor Poems (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982), 70, n. 4. Nevertheless, Margaret Connolly includes 'Gentilesse' among the texts in Harley 7333 'which show the clearest indications of dependence on Shirley exemplars' (p. 186, n. 15).

(6) The text survives in whole or fragmentary form in twenty-four more manuscripts and three early prints, by Pynson (1518), de Worde (1530), and Wyer (?1590). It might be noted that the 'Kings' is the only text written by its scribe, one of eight or nine scribes, in Harley 7333, and that it is other parts of the manuscript that most clearly demonstrate Shirley's influence. For a full list of the manuscripts of Lydgate's 'Kings of England', see Linne R. Mooney, 'Lydgate's "Kings of England" and another Verse Chronicle of the Kings', Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 20 (1989), 255-89 (p. 277).

(7) See Linne R. Mooney, with Adrian C. Barbrook, Christopher Howe, and Matthew Spencer, 'Stemmatic Analysis of Lydgate's "Kings of England": A Test Case for the Application of Software Developed for Evolutionary Biology to Manuscript Stemmatics', Revue d'histoire des textes, forthcoming.

(8) For a summary of these conflicting views, see Connolly, John Shirley, pp. 2-4, 191-95.

(9) 'Two British Museum Manuscripts (Harley 2251 and Adds. 34360): A Contribution to the Bibliography of John Lydgate', Anglia, 28 (1905), 1-28, and 'A Scribe of Chaucer', Modern Philology, 27 (1929), 26-33. Other scholarly work on this scribe includes A. I. Doyle, 'An Unrecognized Piece of Piers the Ploughman's Creed and Other Work by its Scribe', Speculum, 34 (1959), 428-36; Richard Firth Green, 'Notes on Some Manuscripts of Hoccleve's Regement of Princes', British Library Journal, 4 (1978), 37-41; Linne R. Mooney, 'More Manuscripts Written by a Chaucer Scribe', Chaucer Review, 30 (1996), 402-07; and Mooney, 'A New Manuscript by the Hammond Scribe', in The English Medieval Book: Studies in Memory of Jeremy Griffiths, ed. by A. S. G. Edwards, Vincent Gillespie, and Ralph Hanna (London: British Library, 2000), pp. 113-23.

(10) The Canterbury Tales manuscripts are London, College of Physicians MS 388 (olim 13) and BL MS Royal 17 D.xv, fols [167.sup.r]-[301.sup.r]; the Regement of Princes manuscripts are BL MSS Arundel 59 and Harley 372, fols [71.sup.r]-[112.sup.r]; the medical miscellany is Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.14.52; the Statues of the Realm is BL MS Harley 4999; the London city and guild collection is Cambridge MS Trinity College O.3.11; and the texts on heraldry are in BL MS Additional 29901. Other manuscripts by this scribe are Worcester, Dean and Chapter MS F.172, a collection of religious pious and didactic texts; BL MS Cotton Claudius A.viii, fols [175.sup.r]-[97.sup.v], a copy of Fortescue's Governance; Trinity College MS R.3.21, fols [34.sup.r]-[49.sup.v] where the scribe copied most of a single quire, containing 'Pety Job' (IMEV 1854) and 'Parce Mihi Domine' (IMEV 561); BL MS Harley 78, fol. [3.sup.r], a fragment of Pierce the Plowman's Creed (IMEV 663); and Bodleian MS Rawlinson D.913, fol. 43, a fragment of the prose Merlin.

(11) Connolly, John Shirley, pp. 178-79, describes the error and the Hammond scribe's scoring through both the error and the conclusion of 'Benedic anima mea'. In Additional 34360 he writes Chaucer's 'Complaint to Pity' (IMEV 2756) and the anonymous 'Complaint to his Lady' (IMEV 3414) as if they were a single text, beginning folio 49 with a copy of Shirley's introductory note for the 'Complaint to Pity'. He begins Lydgate's 'Benedic anima mea domino' (IMEV 2572) on folio [53.sup.v] with a copy of Shirley's introduction to the first instance of this poem in Trinity R.3.20 (p. 17) to which John Stow later added text from Shirley's introduction to the second instance in Trinity R.3.20 (p. 161). On folio 57 he mistakenly changes to copying 'Gloriosa dicta sunt de te' (IMEV 2688), scores it through, continues 'Benedic anima mea' for forty lines, then scores that through as well and leaves folio [57.sup.v] blank.

(12) 'British Library MS Harley 78 and The Manuscripts of John Shirley', Notes &Queries, n.s. 37 (1990), 400-03.

(13) Additional 34360 duplicates the four texts from Harley 78 and Trinity R.3.20, originally in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth quires of the disassembled volume, about which I have written above; four French roundels on folios [22.sup.v] and 23 of which three are attributed to William de la Pole in both manuscripts; and two other English poems found also in Trinity R.3.20, 'Anelida and Arcite' (IMEV 3670) and 'On Kissing at Verbum caro factum est' (IMEV 4245).

(14) The five texts found in all three are 'Ballad to Henry VI at his Coronation' (IMEV 2211) and 'Valentine to the Virgin' (IMEV 3065), derived from Trinity R.3.20; Chaucer's 'Fortune' (IMEV 3661), derived from Ashmole 59; Lydgate's 'On Kissing at Verbum caro factum est', which might be derived from either; and Chaucer's 'Gentilesse' (IMEV 3348), which is derived from neither (see Connolly, John Shirley, p. 179). Fourteen texts found in Harley 2251 and also in Trinity R.3.20 (but not in Ashmole 59) are all by Lydgate: 'Right as the Crabbe goth Forward', fol. [40.sup.r] (IMEV 3655); excerpts from The Fall of Princes, fols [81.sup.r]-[146.sup.r] (IMEV 1168); 'A Wikked Tong wol Alway Deme Amis', fol. 151 (IMEV 653); 'Procession of Corpus Christi', fol. [224.sup.v] (IMEV 3606); 'A sayenge of the Nyghtyngale', fol. [229.sup.r] (IMEV 1498); 'Gaude virgo mater cristi', fol. [234.sup.v] (IMEV 464); 'Criste qui lux es et dies', fol. [235.sup.v] (IMEV 614); 'Benedic anima mea domino', fol. [236.sup.r] (IMEV 2572); 'Thoroughfare of Woe', fol. [246.sup.v] (IMEV 1872); 'Balade on a New Year's Gift of an Eagle Presented to King Henry VI', fol. [249.sup.v] (IMEV 3604); 'A Gentlewoman's Lament', fol. [250.sup.v] (IMEV 154); 'Of the Sodein Fal of Princes in oure Dayes', fol. [254.sup.v] (IMEV 500); 'Bycorne and Chychevache', fol. [270.sup.r] (IMEV 2541); and 'On the Duke of Gloucester's Approaching Marriage to Jacqueline of Hainault', fol. [279.sup.v] (IMEV 3718). Fifteen texts found in Ashmole 59 and Harley 2251 (but not in Trinity R.3.20) are Lydgate's 'Kings of England Sithen William Conquerour', fol. 2 (IMEV 3632); Lydgate's 'Consulo quisque eris', fol. [11.sup.v] (IMEV 1294); Lydgate's 'Midsomer Rose', fol. [15.sup.r] (IMEV 1865); 'Sonet vox tua in auribus', fol. [17.sup.r] (IMEV 2816); Lydgate's 'Everything Draweth to his Semblable', fol. [19.sup.v] (IMEV 3800); Lydgate's 'Amor et pecunia', fol. [46.sup.v] (IMEV 698); 'Four Complexions', fol. [79.sup.r] (IMEV 2624); 'Devoute & VertuosWordes', fol. [80.sup.v] (IMEV 3538); Lydgate's 'Song of Vertu', fol. [146.sup.r] (IMEV 401); Lydgate's 'Stans puer ad mensam', fol. [148.sup.r] (IMEV 2233); 'Worship, wymmen, wyne and unweldy age', fol. [150.sup.v] (IMEV 4230); Scogan's 'Moral Balade', fol. [153.sup.v] and again stanzas 2 and 3 only, fol. [178.sup.v] (IMEV 2264); 'Sayings of Old Philosophers', fol. [156.sup.v] (IMEV 3487); 'Seven Wise Counsels', fol. [168.sup.r] (IMEV 576); and Lydgate's 'Isopes Fabules', fol. [257.sup.r] (IMEV 4178), though in this last case it should be noted that only four stanzas of Fable VII appear in Ashmole 59.

(15) For scribes who wrote multiple copies of the same text, see Doyle and Parkes's account of 'scribe D', who wrote at least seven complete copies and part of an eighth copy of Gower's Confessio Amantis, A. I. Doyle and M. B. Parkes, 'The Production of Copies of the Canterbury Tales and the Confessio Amantis in the Early Fifteenth Century', in Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts, and Libraries: Essays Presented to N. R. Ker, ed. by M. B. Parkes and A. G. Watson (London: Scolar, 1978), pp. 163-210; the 'Edmund-Fremund scribe', who wrote four copies of Lydgate's Lives of Saints Edmund and Fremund, Kathleen Scott, 'Lydgate's Lives of Saints Edmund and Fremund: A Newly-Located Manuscript in Arundel Castle', Viator, 13 (1982), 337-66; the 'Beryn scribe', who wrote all or parts of five copies of the prose Brut: forthcoming article by Lister M. Matheson and Linne R. Mooney.

(16) Shirley died in 1456 at the age of ninety; scholars date the Hammond scribe's active writing career to the reign of Edward IV (1461-83) and possibly a bit later.

(17) Bodleian MS Rawlinson D.913, fol. 43 is vellum.

(18) Anne F. Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs describe the circle of London merchants to which both Shirley and the Hammond scribe (whom they identify as John Multon, stationer) belonged; see 'The Provenance of the Manuscript: The Lives and Archive of Sir Thomas Cook and His Man of Affairs, John Vale', in The Politics of Fifteenth-Century England: John Vale's Book, ed. by Margaret Lucille Kekewich, Colin Richmond, Anne F. Sutton, Livia Visser-Fuchs, and John L. Watts (Stroud: Sutton, 1995), pp. 110-11.

(19) Three of the Hammond scribe's manuscripts contain a monogram of John de Vale: the Shirley derived miscellany, MS Harley 2251, fol. [170.sup.r]; the Worcester religious anthology, Worcester, Dean and Chapter Library MS F.172, fol. [196.sup.v]; and the medical miscellany, Trinity College MS R.14.52, fol. 1. A fourth, the collection of documents and texts relating to London city and guild rights and liberties, contains copies of several documents relating to Sir Thomas Cook's mayoralty and on one of its back flyleaves a copy of a deposition of John Forster, son-in-law to Sir Thomas Cook and apparently employer or friend of John de Vale after the latter's death. See Sutton and Visser-Fuchs, 'The Provenance of the Manuscript', pp. 73-123, esp. p. 108 and n. 154. An interesting comparison might be made with the antiquarian interests of another secretary and man of affairs of this period, William Worcester, who like these two men kept up his antiquarian and scribal activities after the death of his patron, Sir John Fastolf.

(20) John M. Manly and Edith Rickert, The Text of The Canterbury Tales, 8 vols (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940), break the manuscript into seven portions (I, 207-08) and describe 'Six to nine or more hands' (I, 209). I separate their first hand into two (they are nevertheless similar and may be the same person writing different styles) and divide others, as tabulated in the Appendix.

(21) These two poems, with introductions as quoted here, are from The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, Part II: Secular Poems, ed. by Henry Noble MacCracken, EETS OS 192 (1934), pp. 613-22.

(22) Lydgate praises Beauchamp in the prologue to the poem:

   I meved was shortly in sentement
   By precept first and commaundement
   Of the nobly prince and manly man,
   Which is so knyghtly & so moche can,
   My lord ofWarrewyk, so prudent & wise,
   Beyng present that tyme at Parys
   Whan he was than repaired agein
   From Seint Iulian of Mavns, oute of Mayn,
   Resorted home, as folkys telle conne,
   From the castell that he had[de] wonne
   Thurgh his knyghthode and his hy noblesse,
   And thurgh his wysdom & his hy prowesse.
   (l. 11, MacCracken, p. 614)

(23) Besides the Harvard manuscript, Guy of Warwick is also found in several other manuscripts whose other contents parallel those in Shirley's miscellanies: Trinity R.3.21 (of which a part, not Guy, was copied by the Hammond scribe) and the related manuscripts, BL MS Lansdowne 699 and Leiden, University Library MS Vossius Germ. Gall. Q.9.

(24) Besides these occurrences in Shirley or Shirley-derived manuscripts, another manuscript of the larger group sharing contents with Shirley's manuscripts contains several of the poems from this portion of Harley 7333, suggesting a common source. Bodleian MS Fairfax 16 duplicates five of these poems within only three folios: Chaucer's 'Complaint to his Purse' on folio [193.sup.r], his 'Lak of Stedfastnesse' on folio [194.sup.r], the two Halsham poems, 'Balade' and 'Tyed with a Line' on folio 195, and 'The Complaynte ageyne Hope' on folio [195.sup.v]. Besides these, it duplicates 'Anelida and Arcite' on folio [32.sup.r] and Chaucer's 'Truth' twice, on folios [40.sup.r] and [201.sup.r].

(25) For example, Lydgate's Lives of Saints Edmund and Fremund is introduced by a lengthy prose heading, with Shirley spellings: 'O alle reders and hereres of this lamentable story, compleynithe with me the martyrdome of Saint Edmunde Kyng kanon seo[ ]shuned in the Abbey of Bury, nowe late translated oute of Latyne into Englishe by daun John Lydgate, religeous of the same place, at the comandement of Kynge Henre the VI, solempnising there his .este of Cristemasse the [blank] yere of his tendre age, of the speciall instaunce of Richard Beauchaump Eorlle o. Warwike, than ordeynde and chosen Mastre to the Kynge by the lordes of th'onurable and wyse Counseyle of this Reavme' (fol. [136.sup.rb]). As Connolly points out (John Shirley, p. 186, n. 19), this heading contradicts Lydgate's own statement in the poem that it was commissioned by Abbot Curteys; but perhaps Shirley refers not to the commissioning of the poem but to the decision to celebrate Christmas at Bury.

(26) For instance, there is no evidence at all of derivation of 'The Complaynte ageyne Hope' from Shirley, nor of 'The Complaint that Crist Maketh on his Passion'.

(27) The medieval foliation in roman numerals assigns folio numbers 'XXV' to 'XLVIII' to these first twenty-four folios (which accounts for three eight-folio quires before the beginning of the present volume), and assigns folio numbers beginning 'LVII' to the folios now numbered 25 and upwards (which accounts for one more eight-folio quire at the end of the first portion, completing the prose Brut).

(28) Manly and Rickert, I, 214-17. These include the name (fol. [41.sup.r]) and rebus (fols [32.sup.v], [45.sup.v], [189.sup.r], [190.sup.r], [192.sup.r]) and coat of arms (fols [189.sup.r], [190.sup.r]) of Stoughton, or Stockton, whom Manly and Rickert identify as William Stoughton, cellarer of the Abbey of St Mary de Pratis; and the note, 'Doctor Peni wirt this booke' (fol. [150.sup.r]), whom Manly and Rickert identify as John Peny, canon at St Mary de Pratis by 1480, prior in 1493, abbot in 1496, then bishop of Bangor in 1504 and bishop of Carlisle in 1508.

(29) The first rebus (fol. [32.sup.v]) appears after the 'Title and Pedigree' (IMEV 3808) at the end of Part ii; the second rebus (fol. [45.sup.v]) and name 'Stoughton' (fol. [41.sup.r]) appear in the early portion of The Canterbury Tales which shows Shirleian influence; but the later rebuses and coats of arms (fols [189.sup.r], [190.sup.r], [192.sup.r]) appear in a portion of Part vi copied by scribe D.

(30) See Linne R. Mooney, 'Professional Scribes? Identifying English Scribes Who Had a Hand in More Than One Manuscript', in New Directions in Later Medieval Manuscript Studies: Essays from the 1998 Harvard Conference, ed. by Derek Pearsall (York: York Medieval Press, 2000), pp. 131-41 (pp. 131-32); Linda Ehrsam Voigts, 'A Handlist of Middle English in Harvard Manuscripts', Harvard Library Bulletin, 33.1 (1985), 17-22 (p. 17).

(31) See Voigts, pp. 20-21 and 21; the first reads: 'Loo heer my lordes maystres and felawes may yee see a truwe and brief abstract of the cronycles of this reaume of England frome the tyme that ever makynde enhabited hit into the tyme of the last Edwarde reedethe or heorethe the sothe here filowing.' The second reads: 'Nowe my gracyous lordes and feyre laydes my maystres and specyalli freendes and gode felawes vouchseauf here now I beseche yowe to here the cronycle of this sayde Richarde the secounde sone and heyre to prynce Edward [...] the which cronycle was lamentabuly compylled at parys by hem of fraunce in theyre volgare langage and nowe translated by Daun Johan Lydegate the munk of Bury.'

(32) Quoted from Voigts, pp. 18-19.

(33) See Connolly, pp. 171, 173.

(34) See Connolly, p. 173.

(35) See Connolly, p. 177. The Shirleian introduction to 'Fifteen Joys' reads; 'Lo my lordes and ladyes, here begynnen the fyfftene joyes of oure Lady, cleped the xv Ooes, translated out of Frenshe into Englisshe by daun John the Monke of Bury at th'instance of the worshipfull Pryncesse Isabelle, nowe Countasse of Warre lady Despenser.' The whole poem is edited by MacCracken, I, 260-67. It is also preserved in Trinity R.3.21 (fol. [170.sup.r]), that manuscript partly written (though not these folios) by the Hammond scribe.

(36) The seven minor works copied by Shirley to which these manuscripts bear witness are 'The Title and Pedigree of King Henry VI' (IMEV 3808) and 'Roundel for the Coronation of King Henry VI' (IMEV 3804), both of which survive only in Harley 7333; Sellyng's 'Counsel to Beware' (IMEV 4074), also unique to Harley 7333; 'The Complaynte ageyne Hope' (IMEV 370), which survives also in Fairfax 16 among other witnesses; 'The Complaint that Crist maketh of his Passion' (IMEV 2081) and 'Fifteen Joys of Our Lady' (IMEV 533), both of which also survive in Trinity R.3.21 among other witnesses; and Chaucer's 'Complaint to his Purse' (IMEV 3787), which survives in many manuscripts, though none written by Shirley.

(37) See, among others, Connolly, pp. 182-85.

(38) Linne R. Mooney, 'Scribes and Booklets of Trinity College, Cambridge, Manuscripts R.3.19 and R.3.20', in Middle English Poetry: Texts and Traditions: Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall, ed. by A. J. Minnis (York: York Medieval Press, 2001), pp. 241-66 (264-66).

LINNE R. MOONEY

University of Maine