Ecce patet tensus: The Trentham Manuscript, In
Praise of Peace, and John Gower’s Autograph Hand
By S e b a s t i a n S o b e c k i
Among those witnesses of John Gower’s works that are known to have been
produced during his lifetime, the Trentham manuscript (London, British Library,
Additional MS 59495) stands out for its remarkable design as a seemingly planned
trilingual collection.1 The manuscript, usually dated to the first year of Henry IV’s
reign, exclusively contains Gower’s poetry—showcasing his virtuosity in English,
French, and Latin. A number of its poems are either addressed to or invoke Henry,
yet nothing is known about the history of this manuscript before the seventeenth
century. As a result, scholarship on the Trentham manuscript (henceforth Trentham) tends to foreground the question whether this compilation was ever presented to Henry.2 I will adduce fresh evidence to establish the early provenance of
Trentham and show that the manuscript remained in Southwark until the middle
of the sixteenth century. Second, I will offer a new context for the composition
of Trentham by reading the collection against the background of Anglo-French
relations during the first months of Henry’s rule. Finally, I will argue for Gower’s
personal involvement in and continued ownership of this manuscript.
The Provenance of the Trentham Manuscript
The earliest known owner of the Trentham manuscript is one Charles Gedde,
who presented the codex to Thomas, third Lord Fairfax of Cameron (1612–
71) in 1656.3 From that point onward, the ownership history of the manuscript
has been documented.4 On fol. 2v the signature “rychemonde” appears in a
I would like to thank the two anonymous readers for their comments and suggestions. Bob Yeager,
Kees Dekker, and Jonathan Hsy kindly offered their thoughts and corrections. I am particularly
grateful to Linne Mooney for her generous advice.
1
The manuscript formerly belonged to the now demolished Trentham Hall in Staffordshire. On
this manuscript, see R. F. Yeager, “Politics and the French Language in England during the Hundred
Years’ War: The Case of John Gower,” in Inscribing the Hundred Years’ War in French and English
Cultures, ed. Denise Baker (Albany, NY, 2000), 127–57; Lynn Staley, Languages of Power in the Age of
Richard II (Philadelphia, 2006), 346–49; Siân Echard, Printing the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 2008);
Candace Barrington, “The Trentham Manuscript as Broken Prosthesis: Wholeness and Disability in
Lancastrian England,” Accessus 1 (2013): 1–33; and Arthur W. Bahr, “Reading Codicological Form
in John Gower’s Trentham Manuscript,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 33 (2011): 219–62, reprinted
with changes in Arthur Bahr, Fragments and Assemblages: Forming Compilations of Medieval London
(Chicago, 2013).
2
Bahr, “Reading Codicological Form,” 222 n. 10.
3
Add. MS 59495, fol. 5r.
4
Echard, Printing the Middle Ages, 110–13, and the description in the British Library Catalogue of
Archives and Manuscripts, http://searcharchives.bl.uk/, under vol. 1 for Add. MS 59495.
Speculum 90/4 (October 2015)
doi:10.1017/S0038713415002316
925
926
Ecce patet tensus: Gower’s Autograph Hand
Fig. 1. London, British Library, Add. MS 59495, inscription on fol. 41r.
Library Board.
C
The British
sixteenth-century hand, followed by the annotation “Liber Hen: Septimi tunc
Comitis Richmond manu propria script,” identified in the current record of the
British Library catalog as written in Fairfax’s hand.5 However, the authenticity
of the claim that Trentham may have been in the possession of Henry VII when
he was Earl of Richmond cannot be verified.
There is another inscription in Trentham that has been hitherto unidentified
but which contains vital information for the early provenance of this manuscript.
In the top right corner of the last folio (41r) the following inscription appears:
“Will Sanders vn Just” (Fig. 1). George Macaulay tentatively described this as a
fifteenth-century hand, adding that the writing appears to be “cut away.”6 The
current record in the British Library corrects Macaulay’s dating, identifying the
handwriting as belonging to a sixteenth-century legal hand.7 But the inscription
features not one but two hands: the portion “Will Sanders” is indeed written in a
legal hand of the sixteenth century. The forward-sloping ascender on d, the spiked
descender on r, and a number of the remaining letters forms are characteristic of
manorial, ecclesiastical, and quarter-court records throughout the sixteenth century (Figs. 2–3).8 The two-compartment Anglicana a becomes less common in the
last quarter of the century, where the single-compartment Secretary a predominates. This is an early to mid-Tudor legal hand with mixed features and Chancery
forms. By contrast, “vn Just” is written in a later italic hand of the seventeenth
century. As an abbreviation, un Just is commonly accompanied by de P., and
stands for un justice de peace, law French for “Justice of the Peace.”9 The remaining text, surmised by Macaulay as cut away and denoted by “(?)” in the British
5
This inscription is discussed by Echard, Printing the Middle Ages, 110 and 112 (Echard mistakenly
gives “fol. 6v.”).
6
G. C. Macaulay, ed., The Complete Works of John Gower, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1899–1902), 1:lxxxi.
Michael Livingston, in his edition of In Praise of Peace, reiterates Macaulay’s impression that the
writing has been cut off: Michael Livingston and R. F. Yeager, eds., The Minor Latin Works with In
Praise of Peace (Kalamazoo, MI, 2005), note to line 47.
7
The British Library Catalogue of Archives and Manuscripts, http://searcharchives.bl.uk/, under
vol. 1 for Add. MS 59495.
8
Figures 2–3 contain examples of comparable legal hands from sixteenth documents.
9
See, for instance, the 1659 printing (STC 1253:15) of John Rastell’s standard work, the bilingual
Les termes de la ley (on 284v, under the entry for “Sessions”, the law French column has “Just
de P.”).
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Fig. 2. (Color online) Extracts from Manorial Rental, 1529. Hilda E. P. Grieve, Some
Examples of English Handwriting, from Essex Official, Ecclesiastical, Estate and Family
Archives of the 12th to the 17th Century (Chelmsford, 1949), 9. By courtesy of Essex
Record Office.
Library record, can be read, too. Given its location at the very top-right edge of
the folio, the inscription extends into the corner, which is slightly curled to the
inside, producing almost a dog-ear effect. If the corner is peeled back by 2–3 mm,
a capital superscript D above a capital subscript P. emerges, yielding the reading
D
Will Sanders vn Just
P.
The same page contains further evidence. Below and to the left of the signature
a faint outline of a coat of arms can be seen (Fig. 4), showing an escutcheon
containing a chevron.
“Sanders” is not an uncommon name in Tudor England, and a small number of
individuals with this combination of first and surname occur in sixteenth-century
records. However, the search becomes much easier when looking for a William
Sanders JP in the mid-Tudor period. William Saunders (1495–1571) of Ewell
in Surrey served as justice of the peace for the county from 1541 to 1564. The
blazon of the Saunders family of Ewell reads “Sable a chevron Ermine between
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Ecce patet tensus: Gower’s Autograph Hand
Fig. 3. (Color online) Churchwardens’ Accounts, Great Dunmow, 1540. Hilda E. P. Grieve,
More Examples of English Handwriting, from Essex Parish Records of the 13th to the 18th
Century (Chelmsford, 1950), plate V. By courtesy of Essex Record Office.
three bull heads cabossed Argent,”10 which translates as a white or silver chevron
set against a black background with tails and three bulls’ heads cut off at the neck.
The outline on fol. 41r, therefore, matches that of the various Saunders families
of Surrey.
As part of the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry VIII’s administration set up
the Court of Augmentations to regulate the sequestration of ecclesiastical lands
and moveable goods. On 1 February 1539, Saunders was appointed one of the
seventeen receivers for this court, and by the middle of the following year he was
firmly established in that post, which he held until 1547.11 As he was receiver for
Surrey and Sussex, Saunders’s portfolio included St. Mary Overeys (also “Overie”
10
Surrey Coats of Arms I–Z, based on work done by Robert S. Boumphrey and available from
the Surrey County Council, http://www.surreycc.gov.uk/recreation-heritage-and-culture/archives-andhistory/archives-and-history-research-guides/surrey-coats-of-arms, accessed 2 March 2014. More on
the coat of arms of the Sanders family in Surrey can be found in Ralph Sanders, Peggy Sanders Van
der Heide, and Carole Sanders, Generations: A Thousand-Year Family History (Philadelphia, 2007).
11
S. R. Johnson, “Saunders, William (by 1497–1570), of Ewell, Surr.,” in Stanley T. Bindoff, ed.,
The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1509–1558, 3 vols. (London, 1982), 3:276–78,
and Michael L. Walker, “The Manor of Batailles and the Family of Saunder in Ewell during the
16th and 17th Centuries,” Surrey Archaeological Collections 54 (1955): 76–101, at 87. Walter Cecil
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C
Fig. 4. British Library, Add. MS 59495, outline of escutcheon with chevron, fol. 41r.
The British Library Board.
or “Overy”) in Southwark, the Austin priory where Gower had lived for roughly
the last thirty years of his life.12 In fact, Saunders oversaw the long process of
dissolving the priory. This was a cumbersome task because the priory enjoyed
the status of a mitered abbey and was valued at between £624 and £656 at the
time of its dissolution—the prior alone received a pension of £100, which he had
negotiated up from an original £80.13 It was Saunders’s task to pay the six-monthly
pensions of ten former monks and the prior after the dissolution of Gower’s
parish.14 Saunders appears to have been chosen for this assignment because his
Richardson, History of the Court of Augmentations, 1536–1554 (Baton Rouge, LA, 1961), 50, gives
5 July 1540 as the date of Saunders’s appointment.
12
On Gower and St. Mary Overeys, see John Hines, Natalie Cohen, and Simon Roffey, “Iohannes
Gower, Armiger, Poeta: Records and Memorials of His Life and Death,” in A Companion to Gower,
ed. Siân Echard (Cambridge, UK, 2004), 23–42, especially 28–41.
13
The lower figure for the value of the priory is the result of calculations made by William Dugdale,
Monasticon Anglicanum: A History of the Abbies and Other Monasteries and Cathedral and Collegiate
Churches with Their Dependencies in England and Wales, 6 vols. (London, 1846), 6/1:173; the higher
figure is John Speed’s: Charlotte G. Boger, Southwark and Its Story (London: Grattan, 1881), 216.
The prior’s pension is given in J. S. Brewer and James Gairdner, Letters and Papers, Foreign and
Domestic, Henry VIII, 18 vols. (London, 1862–1901), 14/2:142 (no. 401).
14
Brewer and Gairdner, Letters and Papers, 13/2:503 (no. 1196). For the names of the monks and
the pensions list, see also Brewer and Gairdner, Letters and Papers, 14/2:142 (no. 401), and Dugdale,
Monasticon Anglicanum, 6/1:173.
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family had deep ties with St. Mary Overeys. The last prior, Bartholomew Linsted
(alias Fowle),15 was an executor of the will of Saunders’s mother and he seems
to have been a family friend: in his will Saunders’s father makes bequests to the
prior, to the priory itself, and to the church of St. Mary Magdalene.16 In addition,
Saunders inherited from his father property in Southwark, some of which was
located in the parish of St. Saviour, which after 1540 became the amalgamated
new parish church comprising St. Mary Overeys as well as the nearby Southwark
churches St. Mary Magdalene and St. Margaret.17 Saunders also owned the Three
Crowns Inn and he may have possessed further property in Southwark.18
William Saunders sympathized with the Catholic cause (he saved crosses and
vestments on occasion), and he appears to have been assigned to St. Mary Overeys
because of his family connections, which permitted him to pay out the pensions of
his parents’ friends and conduct the dissolution in a manner that minimized conflict with the affected monks. Perhaps the authorities’ choice of Saunders for the
sequestration of a distinguished mitered abbey provides an explanation for why
the dissolution of the monasteries operated relatively smoothly and successfully
in some areas. Despite his religious views, Saunders was very good at regulating
the sale of former church property, and he made a career of it: throughout the
1540s and 1550s he collected related posts, including the office of commissioner
for the sale of church goods in East Surrey. Saunders also joined the Chantry
Commission for Surrey in February 1546 and became escheator in Surrey and
Sussex three years later.19 His skills were valued even under Mary, when he was
employed in her household, probably in a financial capacity.20
But Linsted only surrendered St. Mary Overeys on 14 October 1541,21 that is,
after Saunders had also been appointed a justice of the peace for Surrey. In all
likelihood, therefore, Saunders may have received Trentham as part of his role in
the dissolution of the priory between 1541 (when he became JP for Surrey) and
1547, the end of his receivership at the Court of Augmentations.22 In theory it
15
On Linsted, see David Knowles, C. N. L. Brooke, and Vera C. M. London, eds., The Heads of
Religious Houses: England and Wales, 3 vols. (Cambridge, UK, 1972–2008), 3:523.
16
Walker, “The Manor of Batailles,” 84.
17
Early inventories of St. Saviour, dating from the 1550s, are given in J. R. Daniel-Tyssen, “Inventories of the Goods and Ornaments of the Churches in the County of Surrey in the Reign of Edward
VI,” Surrey Archaeological Collections 4 (1869): 81–91. Some of the items listed as belonging to the
church were given by Linsted (who was also known as Fowle).
18
On the Saunders’ connections with Southwark, see Walker, “The Manor of Batailles,” 83–86.
19
Walker, “The Manor of Batailles,” 87.
20
Johnson, “Saunders, William.” Walker, without demonstrating any support, claims that Saunders
was a cofferer under Mary: “The Manor of Batailles,” 87.
21
Boger, Southwark and Its Story, 216. James Storer, Select Views of London and Its Environs,
2 vols. (London, 1804–5), 1: no pagination; section beginning “St Mary Overies,” gives the date
as 14 October 1540, whereas H. E. Malden, A History of the County of Surrey, 4 vols. (London,
1902–12; reprint, 1967), 2:107–12, gives 27 October 1539. But since Linsted was still alive in 1553,
and Saunders oversaw the dissolution over a number of years, the manuscript did not have to reach
him at the beginning of the process if Trentham was in the possession of Linsted or one of the monks.
22
Since a later hand added “vn Just DP.” to his name on fol. 41r, it is not necessary for Saunders to
have acquired Trentham during his time as JP. He may have obtained the manuscript during his first
year in office as receiver for Surrey and Sussex.
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is conceivable though highly improbable that the manuscript had left St. Mary
Overeys and returned to it before it was acquired by William Saunders at the
time of the priory’s dissolution.23 Saunders certainly obtained items of value for
himself during his role as receiver: his will of 1570 mentions two gold crosses,
which he gave to his children.24 London Lickpenny tells us that it was possible by
the early afternoon to buy a hat on Cornhill market that had only been stolen at
Westminster in the morning,25 but the illegal sale and appropriation of sequestered
church goods continued to be a serious offense throughout the sixteenth century—
as the hanging of Bardolph in Shakespeare’s Henry V demonstrates.26 Yet for
many Catholics who were actively involved in the dissolution of the monasteries,
the occasional keeping of items that belonged to a church with which they and
their families had been associated must have been a matter of faith as well as
institutional preservation. There is ample evidence from Mary’s reign for the
enormous difficulties the queen encountered when trying to convince parishioners
to return stolen objects despite assuring them that these would be put back to their
traditional use.27
The discovery of William Saunders’s ownership holds three significant corollaries for the study of the Trentham manuscript. First, the manuscript most probably
remained in the possession of the priory between Gower’s death (if not before then)
and the middle of the sixteenth century. Second, if the Trentham manuscript was
kept at St. Mary Overeys until the priory’s dissolution, then this book was never
presented to Henry IV. Third, we now know of a manuscript that in all likelihood
was owned by Gower until his death in 1408. It is true, of course, that the poet’s
will does not mention the book but neither are his writing materials or drafts
included in the document.28 Presumably his blindness and advanced age made
him part with such belongings in the years after he had stopped composing. Also,
it would be a mistake, I think, to interpret a will as the inventory of the testator’s
belongings. A second error is to assume that the items listed in a will are the only
items of value in the possession of the testator. A common pattern in medieval and
early modern wills is to pass on the most significant manors, holdings, or estates
23
Nothing in Trentham overtly associates the manuscript with the priory, so it is unlikely that it
would have found its way back to St. Mary Overeys once it had left Southwark. There is the remote
possibility that the book was indeed in the possession of Henry VII when he was Earl of Richmond:
Richard Foxe, Henry’s secretary at the time and bishop of Winchester from 1501, was a friend and
tutor to Henry Saunders, William’s father. Both were involved in the Savoy Hospital, and Foxe was
the main executor of Henry Saunders’s will (Sanders et al., Generations, 110–16). But this theory
would require Foxe to have known about Trentham’s association with the priory, in addition to being
familiar with the Saunders’ ties to St. Mary Overeys.
24
Records of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury and related jurisdictions (PROB) 11/53/491.
Walker, “The Manor of Batailles,” 87, speculates that these crosses were church property before
1550.
25
James M. Dean, Medieval English Political Writings (Kalamazoo, MI, 1996), lines 97–104.
26
Henry V, act 3, scene 6.
27
Ethan H. Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge, UK, 2003), 289–91.
28
The will has been printed by Richard Gough, Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain, 2 vols.
(London, 1786–96), 2:15–26. A corrected version was edited by a certain W. H. B. as “Will of
John Gower the Poet, anno 1408” in Gentleman’s Magazine 3 (1835): 49–51. For a translation, see
Macaulay, ed., The Complete Works of John Gower, 4:xvii–xviii.
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Ecce patet tensus: Gower’s Autograph Hand
to the main heir, followed by a list of other holdings and often individual items
given to lesser heirs and servants.29 Moveable goods are usually allocated only to
this second category of heirs, but those possessions that belong to or are contained
in manors and houses granted to the main heirs are not inventoried. Gower must
have owned writing utensils, parchment, drafts, and, perhaps, manuscripts that
would not be deemed significant enough to be listed in his will. The Martyrology
that he bequeaths to St. Mary Overeys is a religious work and therefore deserves
to be singled out as a bequest to his priory.30 Trentham, together with his writing materials, may have passed to St. Mary Overeys during his last years, or it
may have reverted to the priory together with his quarters and other personal
belongings.31
Anglo-French Relations and In Praise of Peace
Too humble to be a royal presentation copy, yet too well executed to catch
dust on a shelf, the Trentham manuscript has puzzled readers for quite some time.
John Fisher saw in it a present fit for a king. He deems that ‘‘both the script and
initials appear to be up to the standard of the best Gower manuscripts,” whereas
R. F. Yeager finds Trentham to be “plain, unlike most royal presentation copies,”
adding elsewhere that the manuscript is not “of the quality usually associated
with presentation copies prepared for monarchs.”32 But if Trentham was never
given to Henry IV, could it be a copy or perhaps a master? The latter possibility
can be excluded, I think, because among the five early copies of Gower’s works
that show signs of corrections, Trentham is the only manuscript that contains no
major revisions.33 Yet if Trentham is a copy of a manuscript that was presented to
Henry,34 then why does it display a standard of craftsmanship that puts it on a par
29
Wealthy people who owned land often produced two wills for use in different courts, one document relating to property and rents from property and the other giving personal bequests of moveable
goods. See, for instance, the wills of John Carpenter and his wife Katherine, described by Thomas
Brewer, Memoir of the Life and Times of John Carpenter (London, 1856), 91–102, and the texts of
one of his wills together with those of both of Katherine’s wills, in appendices 2–4 on pp. 131–65. I
am grateful to Linne Mooney for this information.
30
W. H. B., “Will of John Gower,” 50.
31
It is also possible that he obtained his writing materials from the priory should it indeed have
had a scriptorium. Although Malcolm Parkes has argued against the existence of a facility at St. Mary
Overeys—M. B. Parkes, “Patterns of Scribal Activity and Revisions of the Text in Early Copies of
Works by John Gower,” in New Science out of Old Books: Manuscripts and Early Printed Books.
Essays in Honour of A. I. Doyle, ed. Richard Beadle and A. J. Piper (Aldershot, UK, 1995), passim,
especially 81–82—as a mitered abbey the priory had significant holdings and therefore administrative
needs. At its dissolution the last prior received a pension of one hundred pound, a sum usually
designated for a bishop. If the monastery did not have its own scriptorium, it surely must have had
frequent and ready access to such facilities nearby. At the New Chaucer Society Congress in Reykjavik,
held in 2014, Martha Carlin and Caroline Barron revealed new documentary evidence that points to
a concentration of scribes in the Southwark area.
32
John H. Fisher, John Gower, Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer (New York, 1964), 72;
R. F. Yeager, “John Gower’s French,” in A Companion to Gower, ed. Echard, 137–52, at 145; and
Yeager, “John Gower’s Audience: The Ballades,” Chaucer Review 40 (2005): 81–104, at 89.
33
Parkes, “Patterns of Scribal Activity,” 82.
34
Yeager, “John Gower’s Audience,” 88.
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with presentation copies? Ralph Hanna astutely notes the extraordinary lengths
to which the main copyist, M. B. Parkes’s Scribe 5, goes in the manuscript:
[T]he scribe shows extreme specialisation of script, and uses two stylings of anglicana
for English and Latin, a script like that of the London Herald MS [University of London
Library, MS 1] for the French items only. He has a rather uneasy go of it; for nearly a full
leaf at the point of transition (fols. 11v–12v), he inconsistently tries to convert his script
from its Anglo-Latin anglicana to his Anglo-Norman secretary letter-forms. Both script
and the texts it communicates are distinctly “modern”—Anglo-Norman poems almost
contemporary and presented in an innovative writing style. But equally, their cultural
bases are old-fashioned, and their script’s lengthy history is appropriately a French one,
associated with Edwardian imperialist adventure.35
In other words, the care taken in executing Trentham, together with the various decorated initials and occasional marginal annotations, suggests that the
manuscript contains some of the features of a presentation piece, whereas we
now know that it most probably did not leave St. Mary Overeys during Gower’s
lifetime.
At the same time, the many allusions to Henry internally emphasize the paleographical and codicological nature of a presentation copy, whereas other stretches
of the manuscript do not seem to concern themselves with the king. All the while,
however, there is consensus that from beginning to end the Trentham manuscript
reveals conscious design and careful organization. In the précis to his substantial discussion of Trentham, Arthur Bahr puts the conundrum as follows: “The
manuscript thus presents its modern readers with an interpretive quandary. Its
suggestions of purpose are too numerous and fundamental to ignore, but they are
sufficiently complicated by literary ambiguity and material uncertainty that we
cannot extract from the manuscript a single goal, audience, or agent.”36 In the
ensuing discussion Bahr resolves this problem by positing that Trentham “is an
artfully constructed meditation on the multiple natures and implications of kingship, and the very complexity of its construction serves to acknowledge both the
visceral pleasure of using aesthetic modes to grapple with such vitally important
questions and the impossibility of creating clear-cut ‘propositional content’ as
answers to them.”37 To some extent, then, the ambiguity of form in the Trentham
manuscript is seen as willed, as a productive constituent of the complex work
in which this compilation engages. With the benefit of knowing that Trentham
was unlikely to have been presented to Henry, I would venture a simpler answer: Gower’s objective lost its urgency during the production of the manuscript.
I will argue that he started the manuscript probably in December 1399 or January 1399/1400 to advocate a renewal of Richard’s truce with France, but when
the king surprisingly confirmed the twenty-eight-year truce on 18 May 1400,
Gower’s project was no longer acute. After all, if most readers agree that much
of this manuscript was directed at Henry IV, then why should the composition
of this collection not reflect the rapidly changing political situation surrounding
the new king? By the time the poet added the final poem, which only nominally
35
Ralph Hanna, London Literature, 1300–1380 (Cambridge, UK, 2005), 227.
Bahr, “Reading Codicological Form,” 223.
37
Ibid., 261.
36
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Ecce patet tensus: Gower’s Autograph Hand
makes reference to Henry, the Trentham manuscript had become Gower’s book.
Since Trentham stayed with Gower until his death, it is fair to assume that he
approved of its final form. And there is indeed scholarly consensus that the poet
oversaw the production of this copy.38
Setting the modest oblong format of the volume (232 × 155 mm) against the
high quality of the main scribe and his specialized execution of scripts in three
different languages, Trentham creates the impression of a rushed presentation
copy.39 This sense is enhanced by the fact that a number of the poems in the
manuscript, such as Ecce patet tensus, recycle lines and themes from Gower’s
other works. In fact, as Candace Barrington notes, except for In Praise of Peace
and the Cinkante Balades, “the manuscript’s poems appear fully or partially
elsewhere.”40 In addition to these two works, some of the short poems may also
have been composed at the time. Much of the quandary surrounding Trentham
can be explained when thinking of a deadline Gower had wished to meet with
this manuscript. And the fact that In Praise of Peace and the Cinkante Balades are
unique to Trentham might suggest that they hold particular clues for the purpose
of the collection. Since the English poem opens the manuscript, I will concentrate
my discussion on its contents.41
In Praise of Peace is Gower’s only other extant English poem beside the Confessio Amantis. The poem consists of 385 lines of English decasyllabic rhyme royal,
most of which consistently scan as iambic pentameter.42 In the manuscript the
poem is divided into ten sections, nine of which are rubricated by flourished initials.43 The content of the poem, however, features seven discernible movements.
The first movement spans the preamble (stanzas 1–4), which praises Henry IV
and confirms his claim to the throne, and stanzas 5–16, which are dedicated
to the cultural history of peace and concentrate on the exempla of Solomon
and Alexander. The second part juxtaposes war and peace in two addresses to
Henry: the first lists the shortcomings of war (stanzas 16–21), the second enumerates the advantages afforded by peace (stanzas 22–24). With the fourth movement
the poem leaves behind its mostly secular discussion of peace, explicating instead
the religious significance of peace in the books of the Bible (stanzas 25–39). The
fifth movement again turns to Henry, asking him to change the course of history
and surpass the Nine Worthies (stanzas 40–44). Next, the poem enumerates the
38
Barrington, “The Trentham Manuscript as Broken Prosthesis,” 1.
Another instance of a writer preparing a last-minute manuscript of advice for a king—this time
Henry V—is discussed by Linne Mooney, “A New Holograph Copy of Hoccleve’s Regiment of
Princes,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 33 (2011): 263–66. For a challenge to Mooney’s identification,
see Lawrence Warner’s forthcoming article in Studies in the Age of Chaucer 37 (2015).
40
Barrington, “The Trentham Manuscript as Broken Prosthesis,” 2.
41
I treat the opening Latin remarks as an introduction to In Praise of Peace.
42
Besides a number of nineteenth-century editions, In Praise of Peace has been edited by G. C.
Macaulay in The English Works of John Gower, 2 vols., EETS ES 81–82 (London, 1900–1901;
reprint, 1969), vol. 2; Livingston and Yeager, The Minor Latin Works with In Praise of Peace; and
Kathleen Forni, ed., The Chaucerian Apocrypha: A Selection (Kalamazoo, MI, 2005). All quotations
from this poem are taken from Livingston and Yeager.
43
Livingston and Yeager, The Minor Latin Works, introduction, and Candace Barrington, “John
Gower’s Legal Advocacy and ‘In Praise of Peace,’” in John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition, ed. Elizabeth Dutton (Cambridge, UK, 2010), 119–20.
39
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Christian properties of peace, concentrating on charity and pite, or compassion
(stanzas 45–51). The seventh and final movement, occupying stanzas 52–55, acts
as a conclusion to the poem and contains a final appeal to Henry.
Traditionally In Praise of Peace has been treated as a Lancastrian panegyric
for the new king that is interlaced with occasional cautionary notes on domestic
policy. However, my reading will place the poem in the context of Anglo-French
relations. More specifically, I argue that In Praise of Peace was composed between Henry IV’s coronation in October 1399 and his confirmation of the truce
with France on 18 May 1400. The immediate occasion for this poem and for
the compilation of the Trentham manuscript was the prospect of imminent war
with France in early 1400. Essentially, in this poem Gower is asking Henry to
confirm Richard II’s twenty-eight-year truce with France. More broadly, however, the Trentham manuscript is conceived as an Anglo-French collection to
showcase the cultural ties—and love—that bind the two countries together. By
asking Henry to adopt Richard’s policy of appeasement and rapprochement with
France, Gower is pursuing a daring strategy in this poem and collection as a
whole. As a consequence, I suggest that Gower emerges in his relationship with
Henry as an assertive and bold poet who does not shy away from taking political
risks.
In Praise of Peace carries no title in the manuscript, but the authorial explicit
refers to the work as “carmen de pacis commendacione, quod ad laudem et
memoriam serenissimi principis domini regis Henrici quarti suus humilis orator
Iohannes Gower composuit.”44 The first English title, The Praise of Peace, was not
assigned by Walter W. Skeat, as is commonly stated, but was the idea of Edward
W. B. Nicholson, Bodley’s Librarian between 1882 and 1912. Macaulay states as
much in his 1901 edition of the text, but a year earlier Heinrich Spies connected
the English title with Nicholson in Englische Studien.45 Even though Skeat used
the title The Praise of Peace in the list of contents to his 1897 edition of various
Chaucerian works, a different title, “Unto the worthy and noble Kinge Henry the
Fourth,” actually precedes the text in his edition.46 In his 1901 edition for the
Early English Text Society Macaulay amalgamated both of Skeat’s editorial titles
into To King Henry the Fourth in Praise of Peace.47
Over the last thirty years, In Praise of Peace has attracted the attention of
some of the most discerning readers in the field. In 1987, R. F. Yeager scrutinized the poem in a perceptive survey of Gower’s and Chaucer’s approaches to
protopacifism, and in the same year David Lawton even suggested that In Praise
44
“[A] hymn in peace’s commendation that John Gower, his own humble orator, composed in
praise and honor of his highness, prince, and lord, King Henry IV.” The translation is from David
R. Carlson, John Gower: Poetry and Propaganda in Fourteenth-Century England (Cambridge, UK,
2012), 204.
45
Gower, The English Works of John Gower, 2:481; Heinrich Spies, “Bisherige Ergebnisse und
weitere Aufgaben der Gower-Forschung,” Englische Studien 28 (1900): 163–208, at 181.
46
The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer: Chaucerian and Other Pieces, ed. Walter W. Skeat,
7 vols. (Oxford, 1894–97), vol. 7. See v and vi for the description and list of contents and 205 for the
opening of the text of the poem. Macaulay states that Skeat’s title was suggested by Nicholson: The
English Works of John Gower, 2:553.
47
The English Works of John Gower, 2:481.
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of Peace may have influenced the political position taken by John Lydgate in
his Siege of Thebes.48 Five years later, Paul Strohm exposed the poem’s affinity
with Lancastrian propaganda and, in particular, with The Record and Process of
the Renunciation and Deposition of Richard II, a document that furnished the
blueprint for officially sanctioned accounts of Henry’s coup d’état.49 Strohm dates
The Record and Process to 1400 at the earliest, thereby pushing back the composition date for Gower’s poem, which had been traditionally linked to Henry’s
coronation.50 On the basis of the volatile domestic situation with which Henry
had to grapple during the early days of his reign, Strohm suggests 1401–4 as
a plausible range for the poem’s composition.51 Frank Grady, in an influential
reading of In Praise of Peace, advances a slightly earlier terminus ad quem, again,
using domestic criteria. He argues that it was written “certainly before the Percys’ revolt of the summer of 1403 and probably before Henry’s troubles with the
Franciscans of Leicester in 1402.”52 Subsequent treatments of the work have accepted Grady’s and Strohm’s post-1400 dating, though recently, for a number of
different reasons, Jennifer Nuttall, David Carlson, and Michael Livingston have
again recommended moving the poem nearer to Henry’s coronation.53 A post1400 dating can be excluded on purely codicological grounds: Parkes has shown
that In Praise of Peace was written by the earlier of two scribes; the hand of the
second scribe added the last poem in Trentham before 1401, the second year of
Henry’s reign.54
In a study of Gower’s political context Carlson has recently elaborated on his
reading of the poem.55 He argues that In Praise of Peace is not about peace
or “pax per se”; instead, he maintains that peace “figures in Gower’s poem
only as a topic, in subordination, amongst others, by which a locally particular
panegyric for a particular ruler is constructed” (204). For Carlson, peace in this
poem is a symbol of control (205–207). He therefore views In Praise of Peace
essentially as “Lancastrian propaganda, even because of the occasionally criticaladmonitory remarks it incorporates” (205). This is not to say that the poem
48
R. F. Yeager, “Pax Poetica: On the Pacifism of Chaucer and Gower,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer
9 (1987): 97–121, and David Lawton, “Dullness and the Fifteenth Century,” English Literature
History 54 (1987): 761–99, at 781. More recently, Robert Meyer-Lee took Lawton’s observation a
step further and proposed that In Praise of Peace may also have been a model for Lydgate’s coronation
poem for Henry VI: Poets and Power from Chaucer to Wyatt (Cambridge, UK, 2007), 37.
49
Paul Strohm, Hochon’s Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton,
NJ, 1992), 89–90.
50
Ibid., 90. Henry was crowned on 13 October 1399.
51
Ibid., 90.
52
Frank Grady, “The Lancastrian Gower and the Limits of Exemplarity,” Speculum 70/3 (1995):
552–75, at 572.
53
Jennifer Nuttall, The Creation of Lancastrian Kingship: Literature, Language and Politics in Late
Medieval England (Cambridge, UK, 2007), 57, and David R. Carlson, “Gower pia vota bibit and
Henry IV in 1399 November,” English Studies 89 (2008): 377–84, at 377. This is also a position
taken by James Dean, “Gower, Chaucer, and Rhyme Royal,” Studies in Philology 88 (1991): 251–75,
and by Michael Livingston in his introduction to The Minor Latin Works. On the dating see also
Livingston’s note 4 and Livingston’s note to line 208.
54
On the manuscript’s scribes, see Parkes, “Patterns of Scribal Activity.”
55
Carlson, John Gower, 203–10 and 216.
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is critical of Henry, for, Carlson maintains, Gower praises “peace to argue in
favour of Lancastrian domination” (205). In other words, In Praise of Peace is
an “official verse panegyric . . . written ad laudem regis” (209). Because it as a
laudatory work, Carlson dates the poem nearer to Henry’s coronation, suggesting
that it was written “simultaneously with the arrival of the Lancastrian dynasty
itself, just at the moment of Henry’s acquisition of the kingship and the patronal
resources that it disposed.”56
This reading of the poem as a panegyric is at odds with Bahr’s reappraisal of the
Trentham manuscript as a compilation that balances laudatory sentiments with
cautionary verses.57 Bahr’s approach is refreshing because he views the poem in
the context of the entire manuscript. His analysis leads him to state that In Praise
of Peace as well as the manuscript itself is marked by a sobering tone:
The cautionary undertones of In Praise of Peace are sufficiently subtle that they require a substantial level of active apprehension from the reader. In this they begin
the Trentham manuscript’s gradual construction of ambivalent patterns whose initial
outlines . . . seem significant, and potentially threatening, only in retrospect. Here those
outlines, if we choose to perceive them, suggest a recognition that whatever our idealistic
wishes, the possibility remains that Henry’s reign will slide off in the other direction:
not peace but war; not ancestry or acclamation or any of the various Lancastrian claims
alluded to in the poem’s opening stanzas, but conquest—like Alexander’s—pure and
simple.58
However, Bahr’s reading overlaps with existing approaches in taking for granted
that this poem is domestic in focus. Whilst agreeing with Bahr on the poem’s
cautionary tone and on the need to read this work in its (sole) material context,
I wish to inflect this reading trajectory with a synchronic historical angle that
makes In Praise of Peace not so much a word of advice on domestic matters from
poet to king but a stern warning about leaving in place the fragile peace with
France that has characterized Richard’s reign.
Whereas the poem has been read as an early instance of pacifism, as an invitation for the king to seize religious jurisdictions,59 and as implicitly shaped
by internalized legal conventions,60 the virtually exclusive focus on the domestic
political situation has remained unchanged. But when Yeager first drew attention
to Gower’s vision of a pax poetica in this poem, he viewed In Praise of Peace as
addressing both domestic and foreign politics.61 I would like to take the path less
56
Ibid., 216.
Bahr, “Reading Codicological Form.” In 2011, when Bahr’s article appeared, Carlson’s book
presumably was already in press.
58
Bahr, “Reading Codicological Form,” 232.
59
Greg Walker, Writing under Tyranny: English Literature and the Henrician Reformation (Oxford,
2007), 92–94.
60
Ben Lowe, Imagining Peace: A History of Early English Pacifist Ideas, 1340–1560 (University
Park, PA, 1997), and Candace Barrington, “John Gower’s Legal Advocacy and ‘In Praise of Peace,’” in
John Gower, Trilingual Poet, ed. Dutton, 112–25. Lowe, a historian whose reading trajectory follows
the early history of pacifism, does not even notice the domestic dimension but reads the poem as an
accession address to Henry with the objective of encouraging peace with France.
61
Yeager, “Pax Poetica,” 99.
57
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traveled and delve into England’s precarious relationship with France between
Henry’s coronation and his confirmation of the truce in the following spring.62
The first four stanzas of the poem assert Henry’s right to rule. This unqualified
embrace of the official Lancastrian version of events appears to pose a dilemma
for Gower: how does one vindicate usurpation by violent means in a poem that
advocates the renunciation of precisely such violence? And indeed, Gower first
justifies Henry’s appropriation of the crown by force before he urges the king to
renounce violence and espouse a policy of conciliation. Strohm has shown that
in toeing the line—as laid down in The Record and Process—Gower inherited
some of the flaws built into the vindication of Lancastrian rule.63 This apparent conundrum has caused Frank Grady—somewhat ingeniously—to resolve the
contradiction by discerning an almost subversive layer in Gower’s tone: the poet
uses the Lancastrian language of propaganda just as he demonstrates the limitations of such language by exposing “both the difficulties inherent in imagining a
pacific Lancastrian monarchy and the problem at the heart of his own historical
method.”64 However, this only becomes an ethical dilemma if we read the poem
as confining itself to offering Henry advice on domestic affairs.
Given its violent birth, Henry’s reign did not get off to a good start. Quite
rightly Grady characterizes the early years of Lancastrian rule as marked “by
an environment of wars, rebellions, tax revolts, administrative incompetence,
inflation, and Lollardy.”65 Yet none of these developments presented Henry with
much of an alternative; these problems simply had to be confronted. Making
peace with rebels may not have been an option, but peace with France was a
different matter altogether. Renewing hostilities with France and thereby risking
to violate the fragile truce in place since 1396, on the other hand, was an action
that left Henry’s administration with a choice. And there are good grounds to
believe that the poem makes such a distinction between domestic needs (“lond”)
and international options (“world”), the former stressing royal imperative, the
latter choice.
When Gower rehearses the Lancastrian defense of Henry’s usurpation in the
opening stanzas, he clearly refers to England and its inhabitants three times as
“this lond,” “the lond,” and “the londes folk” (lines 5, 17, and 13). Clearly there
is no need to argue with a premodern monarch’s need to maintain quiet and
stability at home—even more so if Henry’s right to rule is divinely sanctioned.
Somewhat obsessively, “God” is mentioned nine times in the course of the first
four stanzas to establish beyond any doubt that Henry is God’s choice: “God
hath thee chose in comfort of ous alle” (line 4). But then the poem shifts gears.
62
An early date for the poem does not invalidate Strohm’s observation that In Praise of Peace is
indebted to Record and Process. In his recent edition David Carlson gives a date of 1399 for the latter
work: The Deposition of Richard II: The Record and Process of the Renunciation and Deposition of
Richard II (1399) and Related Writings (Toronto, 2007), introduction. Furthermore, as Chris GivenWilson notes, G. O. Sayles had suggested that The Record and Process was only the culmination of an
iteration of documents: “The Manner of King Richard’s Renunciation: A ‘Lancastrian Narrative’?,”
English Historical Review 108 (1993): 365–70, at 388.
63
Strohm, Hochon’s Arrow, 89–90.
64
Grady, “The Lancastrian Gower,” 558.
65
Ibid., 555.
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Gower slips in the concept of political choice. First comes a stanza on Solomon,
who was guided by wisdom in his policies. This inspired choice is then contrasted
with a minatory sequence on Alexander the Great, who opted for conquest, not
of his “lond” but “Of all the world to winne the victoire” (line 38). The specter
of Alexander reveals an acute fear of territorial aggression. Michael Livingston,
the poem’s most recent editor, stresses Gower’s use of Alexander as a negative
exemplum, although he, too, sees In Praise of Peace largely as domestic advice
for Henry.66 But as a historical exemplum, Alexander set the benchmarks for
international conquest and imperial expansion. This is, after all, what justified his
inclusion in the canon of the Nine Worthies, to whom stanza 41 is dedicated.
The Alexander sequence initiates a long passage of sustained criticism of war
in which Gower repeatedly invokes princes and kings, clearly in reference to
Christian rulers at odds with one another, as in stanza 9:
So mai a kyng of werre the viage
Ordeigne and take, as he therto is holde,
To cleime and axe his rightful heritage
In alle places wher it is withholde.
Bot otherwise, if God Himsilve wolde
Afferme love and pes betwen the kynges,
Pes is the beste above alle erthely thinges.
One has to ask, however, whether the incessant emphasis on international war
is appropriate for a poem with an apparently domestic focus. Gower envisages
that a king may wage war to enforce his rightful heritage “in alle places wher
it is witholde,” yet he should, nevertheless, “afferme love and pes betwen the
kynges” everywhere else (I am more inclined to place a comma after “wolde” so
that “otherwise” does not lose its sense). It is clear that “in alle places wher it
is witholde” does not restrict itself to domestic matters; rights must be pursued
relentlessly—as well as everywhere. These lines point to the actual objective of
the poem: Gower is asking Henry to confirm Richard’s twenty-eight-year truce of
1396 and affirm peace with France.
The spatial, geographic dimension circumscribed by “places wher” is a thinly
veiled allusion to Gascony and the Duchy of Aquitaine of which it is part. Gascony
may have presented Henry with a public as well as personal pretext for renewing
hostilities with France. In 1390 Richard II made Henry’s father, John of Gaunt,
duke of Aquitaine for life. But Henry may well have believed—as did Froissart—
that the title had been granted in hereditary tenure. A number of historians maintain that the roots of the conflict between Richard and Gaunt lie with the latter’s
recall from Gascony (in fact, it has been suggested that Richard’s demise was
accelerated by the widespread opposition to the truce of 1396).67 On his return
from France, John of Gaunt “was received by the King,” as Thomas Walsingham
puts it, “with honour, as was fitting, but not, so some said, with love.”68 After
66
Livingston and Yeager, The Minor Latin Works, introduction.
Anne Curry, The Hundred Years War (London, 1993), 89.
68
The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham, 1376–1422, ed. D. Preest and J. G. Clark (Woodbridge, UK, 2005), 295.
67
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his domestic ambitions had exhausted their potential, and his quixotic Castilian
enterprise had resulted in spectacular failure, Gaunt fixed his eyes on Gascony,
which he went on to secure with a small force in 1394.69 This commitment to
Aquitaine became a family affair after Gaunt’s death: less than two weeks after
Henry’s coronation, on 23 October 1399, the new king made it clear that Gascony was one of his priorities by appointing his son, the future Henry V, duke of
Aquitaine.70 Whereas, as a concession to France, Richard had appointed John of
Gaunt to the duchy as a vassal of the king of France, Henry IV made Gascony a
direct fief of the English crown. This focus on France is substantiated by stanza
11, where Gower almost overtly refers to the hostilities that would later form
part of the Hundred Years War: “The more he myghte oure dedly werre cesse,
/ The more he schulde his worthinesse encresse” (lines 76–77). Livingston, too,
concedes that this passage refers to the conflict with France. The insular risings
and rebellions were Henry’s personal wars to establish his sovereignty, but “oure
dedly werre” denotes a collective effort, an Anglo-French conflict that is as yet
unresolved. Although the truce of 1396 has been in place since 1389, when it was
sealed by Richard’s marriage to Princess Isabel of France, the Anglo-French war
was by no means over and can therefore still be concluded (“cesse”).
A closer look at the months between Henry’s accession and his delayed confirmation of the truce reveals that in the winter of 1399/1400 just about everyone
in Westminster believed that war with France was imminent. It was only a lack
of resources that prevented Henry from moving into action.71 What may have
prompted Gower to write this poem and produce the Trentham collection, however, is the position publicly assumed by Henry toward France in the first three
months of his reign. The Recueil des croniques et anciennes istoires de la Grant
Bretaigne, written between 1465 and 1475 by the pro-English Burgundian chronicler Jean de Waurin, assigns a speech to Henry that he is alleged to have made
during a procession in London in January 1400: “I swear and promise to you
that neither his highness my grandfather King Edward, nor my uncle the prince of
Wales, ever went so far in France as I will do, if it please God and St. George, or I
will die in the attempt.”72 The problem of the Lancastrian regime change proved to
be a monumental setback for Anglo-French reconciliation.73 As Jonathan Sumption notes, many of Richard’s supporters fled to France and brought with them
their version of events.74 Their reports styled Richard as a friend of France and
69
Curry, The Hundred Years War, 72–74.
Curry, The Hundred Years War, 92–93, and G. L. Harriss, Shaping the Nation: England, 1360–
1461 (Oxford, 2005), 426–27.
71
Curry, The Hundred Years War, 78. Gower received a grant of two pipes of Gascon wine a year
on 21 November of that year: Fisher, John Gower, 68. It would be interesting to evaluate Henry’s gift
in this context.
72
Jean de Waurin, A Collection of the Chronicles and Ancient Histories of Great Britain, Now
Called England: From AD 1399 to AD 1422, trans. William Hardy and Edward Hardy (London,
1887), 42–43.
73
Curry, The Hundred Years War, 89. The French never accepted Henry, 90.
74
Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War, 3 vols. (London, 1990–2009), 3:863. See also Craig
Taylor, “‘Weep Thou for Me in France’: French Views of the Deposition of Richard II,” in Fourteenth
Century England III, ed. W. M. Ormrod (Woodbridge, UK, 2004), 207–22.
70
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Henry’s usurpation as a revolution. Jean Creton, who served as valet to the Earl
of Salisbury, spoke of Richard as a king who “loved the French people with all
his heart.”75 He would later write La Prinse et mort du roy Richart, a poem on
Richard’s martyrdom. In this work, Creton helps establish Henry’s belligerent
reputation: “And, certes, the only reason why he was deposed and betrayed, was
because he loyally loved his father-in-law, the King of France, with a love as true
and sincere as any man alive.”76 Similarly, in the anonymous Chronique de la
traison et mort de Richart Deux Roy d’Engleterre, as the heads of the Earl of
Gloucester and of Richard’s brother, the Earl of Huntington, are placed on London Bridge, an English mob, no longer checked by a Francophile Richard, shouts:
“God save our lord King Henry, and my lord the Prince! Now we will wage
war with all the world except with Flanders.”77 Reflecting on Henry’s usurpation, the mid-fifteenth-century chronicler Robert Blondel states that the English
population tainted themselves with collective guilt by supporting Henry: “Et n’est
point de doubte que toute l’isle d’Angleterre qui approuva cellui meffait se rendit
infecté et coulpable de si grant crime que non pas seulement le roy françois ne sa
parens, affins et alliez, maiz aussie tous chevalliers vaillans qui comme zelateurs
de justice, de tous crimes publicques mesmement qui sont perpetrez contre la roial
majesté.”78 Blondel then instills the fear of conquest in his French audience by
likening Henry to Scipio Africanus: “que encores viendra aucum prince de hault
courage qui sera si amoureux de justice et de la chose publicque qu’il entreprendra par armes a pugnir soubz la main de Dieu si horrible cas, et que, ainssi que
Scipion l’Auffricain pugnit jadis Cartaige, il repetera les despoilles dont les pillars
d’Angleterre ont a grant tort et par trop de foiz despoillié le royaume françois.”79
Sumption lists a number of other examples of works in support of Richard, written in French, that created the perception of English Francophobia.80 What is
even more significant from the perspective of French policy was “the widespread
misconception,” as Sumption puts it, that “Richard had been deposed because of
his support for peace with France.”81 As Sumption summarizes the situation:
[I]n France men were convinced that he was accused of abandoning Brest and Cherbourg
to their former owners and of entering into the twenty-eight-year truce without the
consent of his subjects. Charles VI’s ministers had for years regarded Richard II as
the solitary barrier against the tide of English francophobia. They were obsessed by
the English King’s dispute with the Duke of Gloucester, which had received extensive
publicity in their country. They assumed that Bolingbroke’s supporters must have hated
Richard for the same reasons as Gloucester had. For many years the received opinion
on the continent was that the deposition of Richard II was a declaration of war.82
75
Sumption, The Hundred Years War, 3:863.
John Webb, “Translation of a French Metrical History of the Deposition of King Richard the
Second,” Archaeologia 20 (1824): 1–423, at 221.
77
Benjamin Williams, ed., Chronique de la traı̈son et mort de Richart Deux Roy d’Engleterre
(London, 1846), 258.
78
Alexandre Héron, ed., Oeuvres de Robert Blondel, 2 vols. (Rouen, 1891–93), 1:440.
79
Ibid., 1:441.
80
Sumption, The Hundred Years War, 3:863.
81
Ibid., 3:864.
82
Ibid.
76
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Even Christine de Pizan, as late as 1403 and 1404, praised Richard II in the highest
terms.83
On learning that Henry’s coronation was confirmed, the French immediately
reinforced their garrisons on the marches of Calais and Aquitaine.84 Charles VI
was exceptionally hostile to the new English king. The military historian Anne
Curry even calls the first fifteen years of the fifteenth century a “cold war,”85
and to some extent the truce of 1396 had never been properly observed.86 There
were English raids on the Norman coast as well as plenty of mutual, officially
sanctioned acts of piracy in the months and even years after Henry’s accession.87
Then there was the problem of Isabel, Richard’s widow and daughter to Charles.
A. J. Pollard sees Isabel’s marriage to Richard as the cornerstone of the fragile
truce between England and France.88 Much depended on how Henry would treat
Charles’s daughter: after a series of diplomatic incidents, Isabel was sent back to
France in May 1401, but without her dowry.
A glance at privy council meetings between the end of 1399 and the following spring reveals that the inner circles of England’s royal administration were
preoccupied with Gascony and the anticipated outbreak of war with France. In
the winter of 1399/1400 the council conducted much administrative and legal
business in Gascony to bolster English interests there.89 On Christmas Eve Henry
took the unusual step of appointing a Gascon, Gaillard de Durfort, to the office
of grand seneschal of Aquitaine,90 presumably to secure the loyalty of the Gascon
barons, who were being wooed by the French court at the time. In January, following the Revolt of the Earls, Henry closed all ports because he feared that once
“reports of [the revolt] began circulating on the continent, they could precipitate
a foreign invasion.”91 And even when Charles confirmed the peace with England on 31 January in an attempt to renew diplomatic relations, which had been
severed since November,92 Henry’s new tone toward France became abrasive: “Instead of referring to Charles as carissimo consanguineo nostro Franciae as he had
done in November . . . , he now addressed him as adversario nostro Franciae.”93
83
Taylor, “Weep Thou for Me in France,” 213–14.
Sumption, The Hundred Years War, 3:864.
85
Curry, The Hundred Years War, 62.
86
Christopher Allmand, The Hundred Years War: England and France at War, c. 1300–c .1450
(Cambridge, UK, 1988), 26.
87
Allmand, The Hundred Years War, 26–27. Much of this continued after the truce: the French
threatened invasion of Gascony in 1401 and again in 1402.
88
A. J. Pollard, Late Medieval England 1399–1509 (London, 2000), 30–31. John A. Wagner believes
that Henry’s decision not to send back Isabella until August expressed his fundamental hostility to
Valois France: Encyclopaedia of the Hundred Years War (Westport, CT, 2006), 148.
89
Thomas Rymer, Foedera, ed. George Holmes, 10 vols., 3rd ed. (The Hague, 1739–45), 3/1–
2:171–74.
90
Ibid., 174.
91
S. P. Pistono, “Henry IV and Charles VI: The Confirmation of the Twenty-Eight-Year Truce,”
Journal of Medieval History 3 (1977): 353–56.
92
Ibid., 357.
93
Ibid., 362. Only the outbreak of the Franco-Burgundian feud following the assassination of Louis
of Orleans in 1407 by John the Fearless gave England peace: Maurice Hugh Keen, England in the
Later Middle Ages: A Political History (London, 1973), 255.
84
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Matters took a dramatic turn for the worse in February: two high-ranking English
ambassadors—the bishop of Durham and the Earl of Worcester—were denied an
interview by Charles, who had the English herald imprisoned in what amounted
to a diplomatic scandal. Ian Mortimer believes that “Henry’s priority in January
1400 should have been the defence of the realm.”94 He continues, “Charles VI
of France had refused to recognise him as king, and had refused even to meet his
ambassadors. . . . Nor would he confirm the truce. Instead he had strengthened the
castles on the borders of Picardy, forbidden all trade with Englishmen, and had
gathered a fleet at Harfleur ready to invade South Wales and take possession of
Pembroke and Tenby castles.”95 In response to the French reaction, Henry called
a council meeting for 9 February. A confirmation of the truce was unexpectedly
presented by William Faryngton, Charles’s envoy, but there were still no letters
of safe conduct that would permit English envoys to meet Charles. The councillors believed that war was imminent and proceeded to raise troops at their own
expense. The minutes for the council meeting concede that “war with France was
[deemed] inevitable.”96 The council agreed to mobilize on land and sea over the
coming three months,97 and in March they decided to send a force to Gascony.98
As if aware of the negotiations between the two countries, Gower speaks of the
possibility that peace can be acquired, purchased even: “And do the werre awei,
what so betide. / Pourchace pes, and set it be thi side” (lines 123–24). At a time
when the privy council was busy warmongering, Gower’s poem has something
remarkable to say:
If eny man be now or ever was
Agein the pes thi prevé counseillour,
Lete God ben of thi counseil in this cas,
And putte awei the cruel werreiour.
(lines 127–30)
This international dimension is further intensified by the appeal for a political solution that transcends a mere armistice: “To make pes, acord, and unité /Among
the kinges that ben now devised” (lines 234–35). Clearest of all, perhaps, the closing stanza of In Praise of Peace reaches out beyond Henry and to an international
audience:
Noght only to my king of pes Y write,
Bot to these othre princes Cristene alle,
That ech of hem his oghne herte endite,
And see the werre er more meschief falle.
(lines 379–82)
94
Ian Mortimer, The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England’s Self-Made King (London, 2013),
210.
95
Ibid., 210.
96
Harris Nicolas, ed., Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council of England, 7 vols. (London,
1834–37), 1:xi of the chronological catalog (102–6 for the actual record).
97
Pistono views the situation as follows: “Since war against France seemed imminent, the lords
present at the council agreed for the nobility to supply the king with ships, men and money during the
following three months”: “Henry IV and Charles VI,” 361.
98
Nicolas, Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, 1:xii–xiii.
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Despite Gower’s outspoken stand, the allegation that the poet was a political
sycophant does not seem to go away. For many years, this charge was encapsulated
by the image he paints of himself in the preface to the first edition of the Confessio
Amantis. The poet places himself in a boat, rowing in the Thames, when he chances
upon King Richard’s barge:
In Temse whan it was flowende
As I be bote cam rowende,
so as fortune hir tyne sette,
My liege lord par chaunce I mette.99
The king then invites Gower to board the royal barge before asking him to
write a substantial work (“boke”), or “som newe thing” (line 51). This little vignette of poetical ambition—the paddling poet who happens to meet the cruising
king—has fired the critical imagination. If this was not evidence enough of a selfcongratulatory prince pleaser, then the subsequent alleged two rededications of
the poem to Henry IV (the first of which was believed to have been made still
during Richard’s reign and addresses Henry as the Earl of Derby) only exacerbate Gower’s reputation as the literary equivalent to the weather vane.100 And it
was Fisher who stamped the stigma of sycophancy on Gower: “Has there ever
been a greater sycophant in the history of English literature?”101 Although some
qualifications follow, it is never hard to guess whether Fisher saw in Gower an
“opportunistic timeserver or a poet-philosopher of depth and integrity.”102 For
Robert Myer-Lee, Gower “wore a Lancastrian collar” and was “an early and
widely disseminated Lancastrian apologist.”103 Much of this reputation has been
dismantled by, as Georgiana Donavin puts it, “corrective analyses,”104 and a recent editor of In Praise of Peace states that “Gower, too, has been redeemed from
later scholarship’s not-wholly-accurate depictions of him as a sycophant.”105
Strohm considers In Praise of Peace a piece of Lancastrian propaganda.106 His
reading places the poem close to “official” Lancastrian arguments.107 Strohm’s
classification of Gower as a Lancastrian polemicist takes as a foundation The
Record and Process: in the anti-Ricardian and jingoistic Cronica Tripertita Gower
“had no reason . . . to withhold mention of conquest,” whereas the “more
99
Macaulay, The English Works of John Gower, 1:3, lines 39–42. All references to the Confessio
will be to Macaulay’s edition.
100
Terry Jones offers intriguing evidence for two instead of three redactions, the second of which
was made after Henry IV’s usurpation. See “Did John Gower Re-Dedicate his Confessio Amantis
before Henry IV’s Usurpation?,” in Middle English Texts in Transition: A Festschrift Dedicated to
Toshiyuki Takamiya on His 70th Birthday, ed. Simon Horobin and Linne R. Mooney (Woodbridge,
UK, 2014), 40–74.
101
Fisher, John Gower, 133.
102
Ibid., 134.
103
Meyer-Lee, Poets and Power, 49 and 91.
104
Georgiana Donavin, “Rhetorical Gower: Aristotelianism in the Confessio amantis’s Treatment of
‘Rethorique,’” in John Gower: Manuscripts, Readers, Contexts, ed. Malte Urban (Turnhout, Belgium,
2009), 155–73, at 166 n. 43.
105
Livingston and Yeager, The Minor Latin Works, introduction n. 9.
106
Strohm, Hochon’s Arrow, 75–94.
107
Ibid., 89.
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conciliatory In Praise of Peace aspires to surmount conflict and hence relies
upon the blurred and contradictory but ultimately reassuring formulations of
the Record and Process.”108 In Praise of Peace has thus become an important
building brick in the theory of Gower as a Lancastrian sycophant. If here as elsewhere in Strohm’s discussion of Lancastrian propaganda The Record and Process
becomes the basis for assessing whether a given work conforms to the criteria of
“Lancastrianism,” then it must follow that “blurred and contradictory” formulations form a part of this definition. But The Record and Process is an anguished
document, a “wounded text” in Strohm’s own usage. He applies this term to some
of John Fortescue’s writings, but the definition hauntingly invokes The Record
and Process: “These texts straddle and embrace contradiction, irreconcilable postulates and doxa, and invest in irrational prejudice, unexamined hierarchies, and
even protonationalist jingoisms. The further, and deeper, contradiction of these
texts inheres in their very gesture toward self-stabilization. This is, of course, their
attempt to firm up their politics by professing loyalty to a single dynastic philosophy or a particular royal incumbency.”109 Although Strohm does not appear to
be thinking about The Record and Process, his concept of the “wounded text”
reads like a summary of the troubled prototext of Lancastrian writings. And if The
Record and Process is the reservoir on which Lancastrian writers draw (in addition
to being the origin myth of the Lancastrian dynasty), then it is unsurprising that
subsequent works betray the same nervous acceptance of a dynastic incumbency
that showed unease with the circumstances of its own inception. But this argument could be inverted: if “blurred and contradictory” formulations circumscribe
the narrative of Lancastrian usurpation, any text written at the time that does not
distance itself unequivocally from Henry yet dabbles in public matters must appear blurred and contradictory. This is not to say that I reject Strohm’s project of
moving The Record and Process into the center of our thinking about Lancastrian
literature and the concomitant language of power; rather, I would like to suggest
that because this text reflects the complicated and, indeed, contradictory, if not
repressed, nature of Henry’s accession its use as the basis for evaluating whether a
writer is Lancastrian in sympathy is limited.110 There can be no doubt that Gower
was a Lancastrian writer, but I would argue that he was a Lancastrian writer in
the same sense in which Shakespeare was an Elizabethan writer or Dickens was a
Victorian writer: Gower happened to live through a significant political transition
and he happened to live at a time when poetry relied on courtly endorsements
instead of ticket revenues or book sales.
The poem emphatically confirms Henry’s entitlement to the throne, yet it also
warns the king against using the same justification to enforce his claims to Gascony
and France on the grounds that conquest constitutes a choice by going beyond
108
Ibid., 90.
Strohm, Politique: Languages of Statecraft between Chaucer and Shakespeare (Notre Dame, IN,
2005), 147.
110
For other approaches to writers working in the service of the Lancastrian cause at the time, see
Gwilym Dodd, “Was Thomas Favent a Political Pamphleteer? Faction and Politics in Later FourteenthCentury London,” Journal of Medieval History 30 (2011): 1–22, and the discussion of Richard
Frampton in Scribes and the City: London Guildhall Clerks and the Dissemination of Middle English
Literature, 1375–1425, ed. Linne R. Mooney and Estelle Stubbs (Woodbridge, UK, 2013), 107–18.
109
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the defense of one’s divine birthright. As Carlson correctly notes, “[T]o a ruler
recently come to the throne by violence, or to people near him, some such remarks
as Gower makes might seem critical, in the sense that they might be taken to
pass judgment, in retrospect, negatively, on what had been done.”111 Advising
a nervous, new ruler to exercise restraint in domestic affairs is certainly risky,
but to urge him to abandon his claims to France after he had so spectacularly
enforced his claim to the English throne borders on bravery. After all, until Henry
confirmed the truce in May 1400 England and France were, as one historian puts
it, “on the verge of open war.”112
The Purpose of the Trentham Manuscript
In its manuscript context, two aspects of In Praise of Peace are particularly
striking. First, this is the only English poem in a compilation that otherwise gathers Gower’s French and Latin poetry; second, the poem occupies the prominent
initial position. Codicologically, Trentham is of course self-consciously multilingual. Tim William Machan, who believes that this manuscript was prepared for
Henry’s coronation, notes the color rubrication throughout that marks the different languages of the codex.113 It is noteworthy that the majority of the texts in the
Trentham manuscript are written in Gower’s Anglo-French. A manuscript that
brings together the three languages of later medieval England and that is dominated by French draws attention not only to the single English poem it contains
but also to the very idea of what “English” means. As Ardis Butterfield puts it,
“Gower, as no other English writer of the fourteenth century, makes us question
Englishness.”114 He does this in the Trentham manuscript more openly than in any
of his other poetic or material contexts. This is vitally important because Gower’s
French was much less insular—and therefore less “English” in a cultural sense—
than other contemporary Anglo-French texts. His Cinkante Balades, which also
survive only in the Trentham manuscript, have prompted Brian Merrilees to argue
that Gower’s command of French verse “reflects the newest trends in continental
French.”115 And, as mentioned above, Ralph Hanna views the stylized script as
drawing on French models. Crucially, perhaps, Butterfield notes that the Cinkante
Balades is the earliest collection of French lyrics.116 The individual balades are
not only infused with the writings of Machaut, Butterfield notes, but they also
111
Carlson, John Gower, 205.
Pistono, “Henry IV and Charles VI,” 363.
113
Tim William Machan, “The Visual Pragmatics of Code-Switching in Late Middle English Literature,” in Code-Switching in Early English, ed. Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright (Berlin, 2011),
303–33, at 310.
114
Ardis Butterfield, The Familiar Enemy: Chaucer, Language, and Nation in the Hundred Years
War (Oxford, 2010), 241.
115
Unpublished paper quoted by Butterfield, The Familiar Enemy, 244. Butterfield’s own arguments
about the nature of this single-author collection of poems make a similar point. Rory Critten argues
that the Trentham manuscript may be an attempt to construct a lyrical Gower: Rory G. Critten, “The
Uses of Self-Publication in Late Medieval England” (PhD diss., University of Groningen, 2013), 17.
116
This point may have led Yeager to suggest that Trentham may have influenced Charles d’Orléans:
“John Gower’s Audience,” 89.
112
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participate in and partake of the work of other contemporary French poets.117
Is there a better way to celebrate Anglo-French relations and the lasting truce
between England and France in a manuscript that brings together Gower’s English writing and a French work that showcases the very latest cultural exchanges
afforded by cross-Channel contact?
Thus, it is possible to read the entire manuscript as an attempt to balance not
only English and French, but also England and France. In December 1399, Henry
had still wanted to tear up the truce of Leulinghen and go to war with France, but
in May 1400 he renewed the peace. Bahr has strengthened the link between the
Trentham manuscript and Henry, largely on the grounds of the significance of In
Praise of Peace and the Cinkante Balades: “Given their explicit links to Henry,
the fact that In Praise of Peace and the Cinkante Balades are unique to Trentham
heightens the sense that this particular object, or one modeled on it, was designed
for him.”118 Bahr continues that “we can imagine interpreting [Trentham’s] multilingual codicological symmetry as an elaborate compliment to the new king:
just as Trentham uses Gower’s poetry to unite into a pleasing whole the multiple languages set loose upon the world by human pride at Babel, for example,
so too will the manuscript’s royal recipient prove able to reunite his fractious
kingdom, undoing the political chaos that Gower so strongly associated with linguistic divisioun.”119 Bahr stresses two significant components of the Trentham
manuscript here: the appeal to Henry and the multilingual condition of this codex.
Christopher Cannon, too, believes that “the context of the Cinkante Balades in
MS Additional 59495 could not more strongly suggest a royal connection.”120 But
since the context of In Praise of Peace as well as the Cinkante ballades lies not
in England but in France or, rather, between England and France, I would like to
argue that Gower encourages Henry to act as a peacemaker and heal the divisioun
between the two countries. Thus, this manuscript, as so much of Gower’s work,
reveals an interest in kingship even as Henry moves into the background in the
subsequent parts of Trentham.121
One of the most revealing insights Bahr generates is the codicological symmetry
he discerns in Trentham.122 Here, perhaps the most striking feature of Trentham’s
architecture is the equal length of In Praise of Peace and the Traitié, each having
385 lines, if one includes the missing material from the Traitié that appears in
other manuscript witnesses. Discounting the brief prefatory and concluding poems
in Latin, the two substantial English and French poems balance each other. This
symmetry between English and French may be a structural device to convey the
117
Butterfield, The Familiar Enemy, 246–48. See also Yeager, “John Gower’s Audience.”
Bahr, “Reading Codicological Form,” 225.
119
Ibid., 226.
120
Christopher Cannon, “Class Distinction and the French of England,” in Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Medieval English Literature: The Influence of Derek Brewer, ed. Charlotte
Brewer and Barry Windeatt (Cambridge, UK, 2013), 48–59, at 59.
121
“In fact, the manuscript demonstrates a clear, consistent interest in kingship, including but not
limited to Henry’s, for the three major texts not addressed to him explicitly—‘Rex celi deus,’ ‘Ecce patet
tensus,’ and the Traitie—all concern royal behavior and misbehavior”: Bahr, “Reading Codicological
Form,” 227.
122
Ibid., 224–26.
118
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desire for continued peace between England and France, a theme throughout the
manuscript. Hence, the poem following In Praise of Peace, the 56-line Latin Rex
celi Deus, reiterates Gower’s desire for Henry to lead a peaceful reign (lines 47 and
49) and establishes the collection as intended for Henry.123 The laudatory quality
of this short work serves as the formal, elevated introduction to the manuscript.
It is worthwhile remembering that Henry was not married between 1394 and
1403, whereas the peace between England and France rested on the marriage
of Richard and Isabel.124 The queen was effectively being held hostage by Henry,
leaving the “marriage” between England and France—symbolized by Richard and
Isabel—in suspense. Thus, the Traitié (which can also mean “treaty,” “accord”)
invokes two spouses, inviting comparison with England and France. This broader
meaning of love and marriage—not just between lovers hoping for marriage but
also as governing other parties—is reflected in the marginal notes to Balades
V and VI in the Cinkante Balades: “Les balades d’amont jesques enci sont fait
especialement pour ceaux q’attendont lours amours par droite mariage” (The
balades from the beginning up to this point are made especially for those who
wait on their loves in expectation of rightful marriage). “Les balades d’ici jesqes au
fin du livere sont universeles a tout le monde, selonc les propretés et les condicions
des Amantz, qui sont diversement travailez en la fortune d’amour” (the balades
from here until the end of the book are universal, for everyone, according to the
properties and conditions of Lovers who are diversely suffering the fortunes of
Love).125 That this universality extends beyond individuals is brought out by the
envoy to the Cinkante Balades, exclusive to Trentham:
O gentile Engleterre, a toi j’escrits,
Pour remembrer ta joie q’est novelle,
Qe te survient du noble Roi Henri,
Par qui dieus ad redrescé ta querele:
A dieu purceo prient et cil et celle,
Q’il de sa grace au fort Roi coroné
Doignt peas, honour, joie et prosperité.
[Oh gentle England, I write for you,
For remembrance of your new joy,
Which comes to you from the noble King Henry,
By whom God has redressed your quarrel:
Let one and all therefore pray to God,
That He who with His grace crowned the King indeed
May give peace, honor, joy and prosperity.]126
The Cinkante Balades in the Trentham manuscript are not addressed to Henry per
se, but to an apostrophized England, which has experienced a lovers’ “querele.” It
123
Livingston and Yeager, The Minor Latin Works.
For the suggestion that Henry may have had marriage plans shortly after his coronation, see
Linne R. Mooney, “‘A Woman’s Reply to her Lover’ and Four Other New Courtly Love Lyrics in
Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.3.19,” Medium Aevum 67 (1998): 235–56.
125
Text and translation: R. F. Yeager, ed., John Gower: The French Balades (Kalamazoo, MI,
2011).
126
Balade 51, lines 25–31; text and translation from Yeager, John Gower: The French Balades.
124
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is hoped, of course, that the new king—a new lover, perhaps?—will bring “peas”
to England again.
That the lovers Gower has in mind throughout Trentham are not individuals
but nations (a term used with all due caution in a premodern setting) is shown
most clearly in the poem that immediately follows the Cinkante Balades, Ecce
patet tensus (Behold the Taut [Bow]), which sources almost half its lines from
Gower’s Vox Clamantis. This short poem harks back to In Praise of Peace, as
Bahr observes, whilst continuing the amatory subject matter of the Cinkante
Balades.127 Written from the perspective of Cupid, this brief poem stresses the
compelling force of love. But this is no simple meditation on “omnia vincit amor”
(line 3),128 for lines 18–20—which are not found in the Vox Clamantis—invoke
a Cupid who targets not people but nations:
Vulnerat omne genus, nec sibi vulnus habet.
Non manet in terris qui prelia vincit amoris,
Nec sibi quis firme federa pacis habet.
[He wounds every nation, but receives no wound himself.
In the wars of Love there is no victor on earth,
Nor has anyone concluded with him a firm treaty of peace.]
Here again the main objectives of the manuscript are woven into a whole: love, nations, treaties, and peace. Genus in this poem may stand for “nation” or “people,”
yet it is significant that Cupid’s arrows can shoot at whole nations. I believe that
this poem, which draws on the Vox Clamantis and which emphatically repeats
the blindness of Cupid, is connected to the illustrations of an old archer (believed
to be Gower) found in a number of manuscripts of the Vox Clamantis, including British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius A.IV (Fig. 5). The archer is portrayed as
shooting at a T-in-O map that invokes the larger scale of nations rather than that
of individuals. I will return to the illustration and to this poem in the final section
of this article, where I hope to demonstrate the active involvement of Gower in
this manuscript.
Time was pressing in December 1399 and January 1399/1400. A physically
modest yet internally ambitious book might have been the only way for Gower to
present his appeal to the king, given the rapid deterioration of relations between
England and France. But if, for the sake of argument, we do not wish to accept
a Gower concerned for the well-being of England and France, then we may still
find that the same political circumstances may have stirred Fisher’s opportunistic
Gower into action: of all the known and publicly visible English poets at the time,
Gower had arguably the largest stake in French culture. His career peaked at
and profited from Richard’s truce with France. If not for the overtly political and
ethical reasons of avoiding war, would the sudden prospect of the disruption of
his persistent access to French cultural production not have prompted Gower to
act? Asking an impetuous monarch to give way took creativity, tact, and plenty
127
Bahr, “Reading Codicological Form,” 253.
All references to and translations from this poem are from Livingston and Yeager, The Minor
Latin Works.
128
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Ecce patet tensus: Gower’s Autograph Hand
Fig. 5. (Color online) Gower the Archer, frontispiece of British Library, Cotton MS
C The British Library Board.
Tiberius A.IV, fol. 9v.
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of guts. If In Praise of Peace tells us anything about Gower’s relationship with his
Lancastrian liege, then it is that sycophancy had no place in it. But events moved
rapidly. Despite the seeming inevitability of renewed conflict, Henry confirmed
the truce in May 1400, thereby removing the need for Gower’s manuscript. This
shift can be discerned in the design of Trentham itself: as Bahr has shown, even
though the symmetrical design reveals prior planning, the execution progressively
removes Henry from the focus of the manuscript.
Parkes’s Scribe 10: Gower’s Hand?
Malcolm Parkes has identified the work of two scribes in Trentham: Scribe 5,
who produces the bulk of the manuscript, and Scribe 10, who adds Ecce patet
tensus and Henrici quarti primus, the final poem in the collection.129 In addition,
Scribe 10 adds a few minor revisions to the work of Scribe 5.130 Scribe 10 is
therefore the second and last hand to appear in this manuscript. Parkes adds
that this scribe only worked on one other manuscript, Cotton MS Tiberius A.IV,
which contains a copy of the Vox Clamantis and some minor Latin poems. As I
will show, Scribe 10 also finished Cotton MS Tiberius A.IV, at a time at which
Gower’s gradual blindness had set in but had not yet reached its most advanced
stage. In this second manuscript he adds two of the final poems, Vnanimes esse
and Presul ouile regis.131 Furthermore, these two manuscripts are believed to be
the likeliest to have been supervised by Gower himself,132 and Scribe 10 only
appears in these two—as a concluding hand.
Now that we know that the Trentham manuscript most probably remained in
Gower’s possession until his death, the last hand to write in and make revisions
to the manuscript—that of Scribe 10—must enjoy a sense of authorial approval
and therefore authority. The same scribe appears to have had a similar function in
the only other manuscript in which he wrote, Cotton MS Tiberius A.IV. The two
final poems in this manuscript, Cultor in ecclesia and Dicunt scripture, appear
to have been composed some time after the manuscript had already reached
its final folio, 177r. Yeager argues that Cultor in ecclesia may have been written
between 1402 and 1408, whereas Dicunt scripture appears to have been composed
in conjunction with Gower’s will.133 More importantly, the scribe who added
these last two poems on the final folio, Parkes’s Scribe 9, did so a number of
years after Scribe 10 had finished the manuscript, probably even after Gower’s
death: “SCRIBE 9 appears on the final leaves of three manuscripts, GC [‘C’
denotes ‘Cotton MS Tiberius A.IV’] and H. He probably belonged to a new
generation, since his handwriting is characteristic of the second decade of the
fifteenth century.”134 Therefore, at the time during which Gower lost his ability
129
Parkes, “Patterns of Scribal Activity,” 90–91 and 94.
Ibid., 94.
131
Ibid.
132
Yeager, “Gower in Winter: Last Poems,” in The Medieval Python: The Purposive and Provocative
Work of Terry Jones, ed. R. F. Yeager and Toshiyuki Takamiya (New York, 2012), 88–89, at 89.
133
Livingston and Yeager, The Minor Latin Works, introduction.
134
Parkes, “Patterns of Scribal Activity,” 94.
130
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to see—between 1400 and 1402—Scribe 10 was the last hand to write in and
complete the only two manuscripts in which he is attested, both of which are
believed to have been supervised by Gower.
The final poem of Trentham, Henrici quarti primus, is of structural importance
to the compilation, and Bahr has shown just how crucial the addition of Ecce
patet tensus is for the symmetry of the collection,135 yet his focus is not the scribes
but the design of Trentham: “We therefore cannot prove that Gower, Scribe 5,
or any other identifiable agent intended the Trentham manuscript to have the
codicological form that it does.”136 But what if Scribe 10, who corrected the work
of Scribe 5, was the last to work on Trentham and the manuscript stayed with
Gower? After all, Parkes argues that “the scribes . . . who were most likely to
have had the opportunity to work with Gower are, perhaps, 4 and 5.”137 Scribe
10 adds some of the most significant features to Trentham, yet the connections
shared by Ecce patet tensus and Henrici quarti primus have not been noticed.
Henrici quarti primus, the final poem in the Trentham manuscript, is the first
of three versions of the same lyric about Gower’s failing eyesight (my emphasis):
Henrici quarti primus regni fuit annus
Quo michi defecit visus ad acta mea.
Omnia tempus habent; finem natura ministrat,
Quem virtute sua frangere nemo potest.
Ultra posse nichil, quamvis michi velle remansit;
Amplius ut scribam non michi posse manet.
Dum potui scripsi, set nunc quia curua senectus
Turbavit sensus, scripta relinquo scolis.
Scribat qui veniet post me discrecior alter,
Ammodo namque manus et mea penna silent.
Hoc tamen, in fine verborum queso meorum,
Prospera quod statuat regna futura Deus. Amen.
[It was in the first year of the reign of King Henry IV
When my sight failed for my deeds.
All things have their time; nature applies a limit,
Which no man can break by his own power.
I can do nothing beyond what is possible, though my will
has remained;
My ability to write more has not stayed.
While I was able I wrote, but now because stooped old age
Has troubled my senses, I leave writing to the schools.
Let someone else more discreet who comes after me write,
For from this time forth my hand and pen will be silent.
Nevertheless I ask this one final thing, the last of my words:
That God make our kingdoms prosperous in the future.
Amen.]138
135
Bahr, “Reading Codicological Form,” 261.
Ibid., 223.
137
Parkes, “Patterns of Scribal Activity,” 95.
138
For the text and translation of all three versions, see Livingston and Yeager, The Minor Latin
Works.
136
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The second version of this poem makes only small changes, mainly by giving not
the first (1399–1400) but the second (1400–1401) regnal year in the first line. But
the second version also changes the second line of the poem, adding a finality to
Gower’s blindness: whereas the Trentham recension has “when my sight failed
for my deeds,” the second version gives “when I stopped writing, because I am
blind.” The three versions are usually interpreted as indications that Gower was
progressively losing his eyesight,139 yet he only seems to have stopped writing after
Trentham had been produced. This means that he could have performed some
physical writing in the winter of 1399–1400 and thereafter. But what exactly does
Gower mean by “writing”? It is generally assumed that his use of the verb scribere
denotes writing in a looser sense, that is, writing as composing, the work done by
an author. Yet when medieval authors speak of composing, they use words for
editorial tasks, such as “compile” or “edit.” In fact, Gower himself uses such a
phrase in the explicit to In Praise of Peace, when he appears as Henry IV’s orator:
“suus humilis orator Iohannes Gower composuit.”140 I believe that scribere in this
poem denotes physical writing, not composing. In the third and longest version
of the poem Gower differentiates between “writing” and “composing”:
Quamuis exterius scribendi deficit actus,
Mens tamen interius scribit et ornat opus.
Sic quia de manibus nichil amodo scribo valoris,
Scribam de precibus que nequit illa manus.
[Although the act of writing externally now fails me,
Still my mind writes within me and adorns the work.
Thus because I can write nothing further with my hands,
I will write with my prayers what my hand cannot.]141
Jonathan Hsy explains that Gower offers here “the most expanded discussion
of his compositional practice as a blind poet, carefully distinguishing a physical
capacity to write from an ability to compose in the mind.”142 Hence, the fourfold
use of scribere in the Trentham version refers to the physical ability to write and
not to composing. In addition, in line 10 he adds that “from this time forth” he
will stop writing with his hand. This poem, however, he appears to have written
himself. If scribere stands for the physical capacity to write by hand, and Gower
tells us here that from this point on he will no longer write, then in all probability
Scribe 10 could be Gower himself.
The second version of the poem tells us that his blindness only prevented
him from writing in the second year of Henry’s reign; it follows, therefore, that
Gower still possessed some ability to write in 1399–1400, when Scribe 10 entered
Henrici quarti primi in the Trentham manuscript. It is often overlooked that the
Trentham version of Henrici quarti primi actually does not say that he is blind.
139
On Gower’s self-identification as a progressively blind writer, see Jonathan Hsy, “Blind Advocacy: Blind Readers, Disability Theory, and Accessing John Gower,” Accessus 1 (2013): article 2:
1–38, and Yeager, “Gower in Winter.”
140
See my discussion of the explicit to In Praise of Peace above.
141
Lines 11–14, Livingston and Yeager, The Minor Latin Works.
142
Hsy, “Blind Advocacy,” 14.
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Ecce patet tensus: Gower’s Autograph Hand
C The
Fig. 6. Scribe 10; Henrici quarti primus, British Library, Add. MS 59495, fol. 39v.
British Library Board.
The word Gower uses to describe his blindness in the two later versions of the
poem is cecus, employed twice in each poem.143 The identification of Scribe 10
with Gower gains support when considering that this same authorizing hand
made the final revisions to Trentham and Cotton MS Tiberius A.IV and across
two manuscripts only wrote four short Latin poems, the longest of which, Ecce
patet tensus, covers only one page.144
All four poems in the two manuscripts in which Scribe 10 writes are short
enough to be manageable for someone coping with impaired sight. It is difficult
to determine on the basis of Trentham alone whether Scribe 10 suffered from a
loss of vision, but his stints in Trentham and Cotton MS Tiberius A.IV reveal one
feature common in writers who have difficulty seeing. Most scribes use the bottom
of the x-height as a reference point, so that shaft strokes move to the left or right
in anticipation of reaching the ruled line. Scribes can judge when their shaft is
1–2 mm above the ruled line, at which point they produce the foot. But Scribe
10 draws each shaft all the way to the ruled line (Figs. 6 and 7). Although not
uncommon for scribes, in disability studies this is called baseline writing, and it is
143
Livingston and Yeager, The Minor Latin Works. The term cecus also appears in the Latin poem
De lucis scrutinio, which Yeager dates to c. 1392–95: The Minor Latin Works, introduction. However,
the meanings of cecus and scribere become much more nuanced and sharper after winter 1399–1400.
144
A hand in the margin clarifies the word “laudis” next to line 22 (fol. 33v), but it is difficult to
ascertain whether this is Scribe 10 correcting himself or perhaps a later addition, possibly made by a
monk at St. Mary Overeys. One cannot be certain that the poem is complete as it stands, though there
is no reason to posit that it is unfinished: Yeager describes the last line as “open-ended but nonetheless
credible”, The Minor Latin Works, introduction.
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C The British
Fig. 7. Scribe 10; Ecce patet tensus, British Library, Add. MS 59495, fol. 33v.
Library Board.
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Ecce patet tensus: Gower’s Autograph Hand
Fig. 8. (Color online) Scribe 10, Vnanimes esse, British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius A.IV,
C The British Library Board.
fol. 176v.
usually indicative of the use of a writing aid such as a ruler, grid, or thread.145 Even
if Gower could still partially see, perhaps as a result of debilitating cataracts—the
most common cause of blindness—the ruled bottom line of the x-height could
have given him additional security. Neither the other scribe in Trentham, Scribe
5, nor the scribes in Cotton MS Tiberius A.IV employ this practice.
In or after 1402, when Scribe 10 entered Vnanimes esse and Presul ouile regis
in Cotton MS Tiberius A.IV, Gower’s eyesight had deteriorated, and the scribe
indeed makes a remarkable mistake in the first of these two poems. In line 7 of
Vnanimes esse, starting in the middle of the line at “docet,” the hand veers from
the writing line and gradually slumps below the bottom of the x-height (Fig. 8).
The degree to which line 7 departs from the ruled border is so considerable
that the final two letters of the last word, “timeri,” are located almost entirely
below the x-height.146 However, the ruled line marking the bottom of the x-height
remains clearly visible. In addition, the script in lines 6–8 is much bigger than in
the remaining lines.147 It would be an eccentric choice to employ a scribe who
has difficulties executing his hand in a manuscript most likely overseen by the
poet, unless this scribe is Gower himself. At the very least one would have to
explain why in two manuscripts that were so closely supervised by Gower (and
one of which Gower almost certainly retained until his death) an insecure hand
145
Roy A. Huber and A. M. Headrick, Handwriting Identification: Facts and Fundamentals (London, 1999), 193–94. Huber and Headrick add that baseline or straightedge writing is also referred to
as “blind-man’s writing,” 194. I am not referring to special-education assessments of “baseline writing” in the context of scholarship on cognitive or developmental disabilities; instead I am concerned
with physical motor and visual impairments.
146
The final word of line 7, “timeri,” and the final word of the following line, “mederi,” which has
been affected by “timeri” above, have been corrected in the same hand. Their position relative to the
x-height has not been modified.
147
I am grateful to Linne Mooney for adding this observation.
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that appears nowhere else in the poet’s considerable body of material texts is
permitted to provide only the finishing touches, consisting of two very short and
personal poems. In theory it is possible that Gower employed as his amanuensis an
unreliable scribe, perhaps an older monk at St. Mary Overeys, but it is altogether
more probable that these additions were made by Gower himself. Gower could
have developed such a hand during his legal career or at London’s Guildhall,
if Linne Mooney and Estelle Stubbs are correct in suggesting that he may have
been clerk at the Guildhall in the 1360s and 1370s.148 In addition, the two poems
written by Scribe 10 in Cotton MS Tiberius A.IV amount to only seventeen lines
in total and, taken together, are therefore much shorter than his contributions to
Trentham two years earlier. These observations correspond to the rate at which
Gower’s condition deteriorated between 1400 and 1402, as the three versions of
his poem about the onset of blindness document.
The significance of blindness and the shooting of arrows by Cupid in Ecce
patet tensus, the other poem in Trentham written by Scribe 10, has only been
once connected with illustrations of what is believed to be Gower as an archer in
copies of the Vox Clamantis.149 In particular, the image in Cotton MS Tiberius
A.IV stands out (Fig. 5). Scribe 5, the main scribe of Trentham, also worked on
Cotton MS Tiberius A.IV, as did Scribe 10. In fact, the Cotton manuscript may
contain Gower’s drawing hand. Jeremy Griffiths has traced a controlling hand
over the outlines of the illuminations of the figure of the archer, including in the
version in Cotton MS Tiberius A.IV, and R. F. Yeager believes this tracing hand
to be Gower’s: “If Gower’s involvement with the copying of his works is as extensive as we believe—and I for one agree that it must have been, especially over
a handful of early manuscripts including BL Cotton Tiberius A.IV—then to one
degree or another [the tracing hand] was most likely Gower’s.”150 In Ecce patet
tensus—Behold the Taut [Bow]—the blind archer Cupid sends out his arrows
into the hearts of nations, much as the Gower figure aims at the Isidorean globe
in Cotton MS Tiberius A.IV. Throughout, the poem speaks of Cupid as blind,
cecus, a word that is used five times in the poem and which Gower uses twice
in the later version of Henrici quarti primi to describe his own condition.151 The
connection with Gower’s other blind archer, the illustration of the old man in
copies of the Vox Clamantis, is further made by the fact that Ecce patet tensus
borrows almost half its lines from Vox Clamantis. These lines, however, appear in rearranged order, which is indicative perhaps of Scribe 10 writing the
lines from Vox Clamantis in Ecce patet tensus from memory; after all, writing
a short piece from memory might be less taxing than locating lines in a copy of
148
Mooney and Stubbs, Scribes and the City, 135–36. Mooney adds, in a personal communication,
that if Gower was trained as an attorney, he would have had to serve as a clerk earlier in his career,
where he would have learned to write in such scripts.
149
To my mind, only Candace Barrington has made the comparison, although she sees the blind
Cupid of Ecce patet tensus as capturing a different sense of blindness from that portrayed by illustrations of the old archer in manuscripts of the Vox Clamantis: “The Trentham Manuscript as Broken
Prosthesis,” 18–19.
150
Yeager, “Gower in Winter,” 89.
151
Livingston and Yeager, The Minor Latin Works.
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a long poem and copying them, complete with the perils of eye skip and concomitant problems. The depiction of Gower with the bow in Cotton MS Tiberius
A.IV is accompanied by a short poem, written by one of the manuscript’s many
scribes:
Ad mundum mitto mea iacula, dumque sagitto;
At vbi iustus erit, nulla sagitta ferit.
Sed male viuentes hos vulnero transgredientes;
Conscius ergo sibi se speculetur ibi.
[I send my darts at the world and simultaneously shoot arrows;
But mind you, wherever there is a just man, no one will receive arrows.
I badly wound those living in transgression, however;
Therefore, let the thoughtful man look out for himself.]152
This is moral Gower, then, as he wanted to be seen in his last years; an old man
with failing eyesight, who meant to reach out to kings and nations, stirring them
to love and peace.
Candace Barrington has shown that uniquely among Gower’s work the Trentham manuscript is permeated by traces of impairment and disability, to the extent
that this collection behaves as a prosthesis, “demonstrating the inherent fantasy in
wholeness, completion, wellness, and perfection.”153 The Trentham manuscript,
then, was begun to encourage Henry to confirm the truce with France but was
completed as an early draft of Gower’s very own ars moriendi, perfected in his
trilingual funereal monument in St. Mary Overeys, now a part of Southwark
Cathedral. Unsurprisingly, Trentham shares this concern for Gower’s memory
with Cotton MS Tiberius A.IV. A few years after Scribe 10/Gower had finished
the manuscript by entering Presul ouile regis in the final folio, Scribe 9 inserted
the last two Latin poems in the remaining space on the same folio. The last of
these two poems, Dicunt scripture, dated by Yeager to the time of Gower’s will,154
reinforces the indulgenced plea “orate pro anima Johannis Gowr” found on fol.
174v, and Jennifer Summit therefore observes that Dicunt scripture conflates “the
poet’s manuscript with his tomb.”155 Gower’s careful planning of his tomb finds an
echo in the poet’s hand closing and therefore authorizing these two manuscripts,
one of which we now know for certain to have remained with him until his
death.
At the time at which Scribe 10/Gower completed Trentham and Cotton MS
Tiberius A.IV—and on that reasoning, Gower may also have owned the latter
manuscript—Gower could still write, albeit increasingly poorly and slowly. It
could be added here that Henrici quarti primi is the most personal of Gower’s
works or, at the least, the earliest version of his most personal poem. It is also a
152
Ibid., introduction.
Barrington, “The Trentham Manuscript as Broken Prosthesis,” 29.
154
Livingston and Yeager, The Minor Latin Works, introduction.
155
Jennifer Summit, Memory’s Library: Medieval Books in Early Modern England (Chicago, 2008),
190. See also Siân Echard, “Last Words: Latin at the End of the Confessio Amantis,” in Interstices:
Studies in Late Middle English and Anglo-Latin Texts in Honour of A. G. Rigg, ed. Richard Firth
Green and Linne Mooney (Toronto, 2004), 99–121 (in particular, 99–100).
153
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poem in which he tells us that he can still write but will no longer do so. Read
closely, Trentham contains not only his most personal but also one of the last
poems Gower may very well have physically written—is it not understandable,
then, that he would have wished to hold on to this manuscript?
Sebastian Sobecki is Professor of Medieval English Literature and Culture in the Department of English, University of Groningen, Oude Kijk in ’t Jatstraat 26, 9712 EK
Groningen, The Netherlands (e-mail: s.i.sobecki@rug.nl).
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