This
mistaken
endeavour to make Scripture the sole rule of
life springs of ignorance and want of thought.
life springs of ignorance and want of thought.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v02
' He
tells us that he admired the beauty of that place 'as parradyce
but peir,' and adds
And I to heir thir birdis gay
Did in a bonk abyd.
Here, certainly, is the reserve of the professional makar. The
Murning Maiden is on a higher level, in respect of directness
and technical accomplishment; and, though it is not without traces
of alliterative and allegorical convention, it is never artificial. It
is no exaggeration to say that, in all our Middle English literature,
there is no poem more plainly human and simple. A forlorn maiden,
wandering in a wood in 'waithman weir',' encounters a man (the
writer of the lyric) who, after listening to her soliloquy of sorrow,
asks her why she trespasses with bow and arrows. She answers:
Thocht I walk in this forest fre,
Withe bow, and eik with fedderit flane,
It is weill mair than dayis thre
And meit or drink zit saw I nane.
Thocht I had never sio neid
My selffe to wyn my breid,
Zour deir may walk, schir, thair alane:
Zit wes never na beistis bane;
I may not se thame bleid.
i huntsman's dress.
arrow.
## p. 282 (#300) ############################################
282 Anonymous and Popular Scottish Verse
1
Sen that I never did 30w ill,
It wer no skill ze did me skaith.
3our deir may walk quhair euir thai will:
I wyn my meit be na sio waithel.
I do bot litill wrang,
Bot gif I flowris fang.
Giff that 3e trow not in my aythes,
Tak heir my bow and arrowis bayth,
And lat my awin selffe gang.
She refuses the frank terms which he offers, and insists on
remaining in the forest, a 'woful weycht, with her bed
full cauld,
With beistis bryme* and bauld.
The forester, touched by her sorrow, vows he will not consent to
her wild plan.
In to my armes swythe
Embrasit I that blythes,
Sayand, 'sweit hairt, of harmes ho 6!
Found? sall I never this forrest fro,
Quhill 3e me confort kyth. '
Than knelit I befoir that cleir5,
And meiklie could hir meroye craiff,
That semlie than, with sobir cheir,
Me of hir gudlynes forgaif.
It wes no neid, I wys,
To bid us vther kys;
Thair mycht no hairtis mair joy resaif,
Nor ather could of uther haif;
This 8 brocht wer we to blis.
Of other pieces of this genre mention may be made of The
Luvaris Lament (ascribed by Bannatyne to Fethe or Fethy), with
the burden
Canld cauld culis the lufe
That kendillis our het,
and In May in a Morning, reminiscent, in its form, of the
riming alliterative poems. Though Welcum to Mayº continues the
traditional courtly' manner and the aureate diction of the makars
(e. g. 'saufir firmament,' 'annammellit orient,' 'beriall droppis,'
and the like), it shows a change in the point of view. It may
be extravagant to discover more than a renascence appre-
ciation of nature in the poem, yet these lines are not merely
conventional :
Go walk vpoun snm rever fair,
Go tak the fresch and holsum air,
Go luk vpoun the flurist fell,
Go feill the herbis plesand smell.
i hunting.
2 oath.
3 wight.
4 fierce.
5 fair one,' maid.
pause.
go.
• Beginning, 'Be glad al ze that luvaris bene. '
(
7
8 thus.
## p. 283 (#301) ############################################
Early Scottish Prose 283
Another lyric, beginning Quhen Flora had ourfret the firth, works
up the commonplaces about the merle and mavis, and does not
shrink from aureation.
Scho is sa brycht of hyd and hew,
I lufe bot hir allone I wene;
Is non hir lufe that may eschew
That blenkis of that dulce amene.
So, too, O Lusty May, with Flora quene proclaims its kinship in
such a phrase as 'preluciand bemis. The Song of Absence, which
Pinkerton wrongly attributed to James I', is more lively in its
Its irregular lines recall the movement of the 'rustic
stanza ; but these are steadied by the ballast of such phrases as
the ‘hait canicular day' or the 'sweet mow redolent' of the
beloved. Evidence of this 'aureate' habit is so persistent in the
minor love poems in the collections that they must be grouped
with the courtly poetry of the period.
Finally, there is the didactic and religious verse of the collec-
tions. Little of this is, however, anonymous; and rarely, if ever,
may it be described as 'popular. ' Engrained as the ethical habit
appears to be in Scottish literature—so deeply, indeed, as often to
convey the impression of unrelieved seriousness-it is not in any
strict sense an idiosyncrasy of pre-reformation verse. In her
reflections on life's pains and aspirations, Scotland but conformed
to the taste of her neighbours. If she appear, after the sixteenth
century, to ponder more upon these things-or, let us say, less
upon others—she does so under stress of a combination of special
circumstances, rather than in indulgence of an old habit or
incurable liking.
An additional interest, philological rather than literary,
attaches to the Asloan collection from the fact that it contains
a number of prose passages, which are among the earliest remains
of Scots prose, other than legal and official documents. That
there should be any vernacular prose, whether official or quasi-
literary, at the beginning of the fifteenth century is almost
surprising, when we consider the place held by Latin in the
intellectual life, even in the commercial relationships of renascence
Scotland? The plea for a native medium is hardly urged before
the middle of the sixteenth century; and then it is only occasional,
and, as in Lyndsay's Exclamatioun to the Redar, apologetic,
1 Ancient Scotish Poems (1786), II, 425. See Chapter x of this volume.
. See Chapter 1v.
## p. 284 (#302) ############################################
284
Early Scottish Prose
6
a
because of the stress of reformation conflict. It was probably but
rarely that a Scot excused his ‘Ynglis' on the grounds stated by
the earl of March in his letter to Henry IV of England! We
know that Scots was used in public documents in the late four-
teenth century. In the Bute MS of Laws six of the twenty-five
pieces are in the vernacular; so too are the parliamentary records
from the reign of the first James. But neither in these nor in the
texts represented in the Asloan MS can we discover any half-
conscious effort of style, such as marks the beginnings of fifteenth
century prose in England.
The earliest examples of vernacular prose are the translations
of Sir Gilbert Hay, or of the Haye,' dated 1456, and preserved in
a single volume now in the collection at Abbotsford. They are
(1) The Buke of the Law of Armys, or Buke of Bataillis, based
on the French of Honoré Bonet, (2) The Buke of the Order of
Knichthood, following L'Ordre de Chevalerie and (3) a version of
the pseudo-Aristotelian Government of Princes. To which of these
the entry in the Asloan MS ("The Document of Schir Gilbert Hay')
refers is not known, for the portion of the MS which contained
the text has been lost. Of more originality, but with small claim
as literature, is the long treatise on political wisdom and rule of
life for a prince, by John of Ireland, rector of Yarrow and quondam
confessor to James III and Louis XI of France. The text, labelled
Johannis de Irlandia Opera Theologica, is preserved in the
Advocates' Library. A long extract from John's writings stands
first in the Asloan MS (“On the Passioun,' etc. ); and we have
clues to his authorship of other vernacular treatises of a semi-
theological character which are not extant. The place of his prose
in the history of the language has been discussed in another
chapter3. The contents of the Portuus of Noblines in the Asloan
MS, and (in part) in the Chepman and Myllar prints, are explained
by the fuller title, 'The wertuis of nobilnes and portratours thairof
&c. callit the Portuus and matynnis of the samin. ' This piece is a
dull discussion, in a series of homilies, on Faith, Loyalty, Honour
and the other virtues. It purports to be a translation by Andrew
Cadiou from the French. The Spectakle of Luf or Delectatioun
It ‘ys mare cleir to myne understandyng than latyne or Fraunche' (1400). Cf.
Chapter iv.
? Perhaps we should say the earliest important examples; for the short fifteenth
century tracts, Craft of Deyng, The Wisdom of Solomon and The Vertewis of the Mess,
preserved in the Cambridge University MS, Kk. 1. 5, may be earlier. Their interest is,
however, entirely philological. See the edition by J. Rawson Lumby, E. E. T. S. 1870.
3 See Chapter 1v.
## p. 285 (#303) ############################################
Early Scottish Prose 285
of Wemen, translated from the Latin, is an exhortation, in the
conventional dialogue-form, 'to abstene fra sic fleschly delecta-
tiounis quhilk thow callis luf. ' The reader is informed in the
conclusion that the translation was finished at St Andrews on
10 July 1492, by G. Myll, ‘ane clerk, quhilk had bene in to
Venus court mair than the space of xx zeiris, quhill (he adds)
I mycht nocht mak the seruice that I had bene accustomyd to
do; quharfor I was put out of hir bill of hushald. ' The Schort
Memoriale of the Scottis corniklis for addicioun, an account of
the reign of James II, is of no literary pretence.
Early in the sixteenth century, Murdoch Nisbet wrote out his
version of Purvey's recension of Wyclif's translation of the New
Testament. It anticipates the Bassandyne Bible by half-a-century;
but it does not appear to have been circulated. It remained in
manuscript till 1901. Its mixture of northern and southern forms
gives it considerable philological interest. After it, we may name
Gau's Richt Vay(a translation from Christiern Pedersen), Bellenden's
Livy and Scottish History, the patchwork translation called The
Complaynt of Scotlande, Winzet's Tractates, bishop Leslie's
History of Scotland, Knox's History and Buchanan's Chamaeleon,
Lindesay of Pitscottie's History, the controversial writings of
Nicol Burne and other exiled Catholics and king James VI's
early effort on versification (Ane Schort Treatise); but the
consideration of these belongs to a later chapter. The pro-
fessional Rolment of Courtis, by Abacuck Bysset, though of the
seventeenth century (1622), represents the aureate style of Middle
Scots and is the last outpost of that affectation in northern
prose
## p. 286 (#304) ############################################
CHAPTER XII
1
.
ENGLISH PROSE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
I
PECOCK. FORTESCUE. THE PASTON LETTERS.
2
THE work of popularising prose was a slow and humble
process. In the 'century of the commons' literature was con-
sistently homely. Works of utility-books of manners and of
cookery, service books and didactic essays, as well as old romances
copied and modernised and chronicles growing ever briefer and
duller-familiarised the middle classes with books Dictionaries
prove the spread of study; and, though verse was more popular
reading than prose, countless letters and business papers remain
to show that soldiers, merchants, servants and women were learning
to read and write with fluency. The House of Commons and the
king's council now conducted business in English; and, in the latter
part of the century, politicians began to appeal to the sense of the
nation in short tracts. In the meantime, the art of prose writing
advanced no further. The Mandeville translations mark its high
tide, for even The Master of Game, the duke of York's elaborate
treatise on hunting, was, save for the slightest of reflections-
‘imagynacioun (is) maistresse of alle werkes '-purely technical.
A fashionable treatise, as the number of manuscripts proves, it
was, in the main, a translation of a well known French work;
it is chiefly interesting for its technical terms, mostly French,
and as witness to the excessive elaborateness of the hunting
pleasures of the great.
Save for the solitary and unappreciated phenomenon of Pecock,
Latin, for the greater part of the century, maintained its position
as the language of serious books. The other two learned men of
the time wrote first in Latin, and seem to have been driven to use
English by the political ascendency of a middle-class and unlettered
faction. The praises of Henry V are recorded in Latin; nearly two
dozen Latin chronicles were compiled to some seven in English;
the books given by the duke of Gloucester and the earl of
## p. 287 (#305) ############################################
John Capgrave
287
Worcester to the universities were in Latin, and so were the
volumes purchased by the colleges themselves.
John Capgrave, the learned and travelled friar of Lynn in
Norfolk, was the best known man of letters of his time. His
reputation was based upon comprehensive theological works, which
comprised commentaries upon all the books of the Bible, condensed
from older sources, besides a collection of lives of saints, lives of
the Famous Henries and a life of his patron, Humphrey, duke of
Gloucester. All these were in Latin. But he composed in English,
for the simple, a life of St Katharine in verse and one of St Gilbert
of Sempringham in prose, as well as a guide for pilgrims to Rome
and a volume of Annals, presented to Edward IV.
Capgrave's chronicle, so far as originality goes, makes some
advance on Trevisa, being a compilation from a number of
sources with an occasional observation of the writer's own. He
seems to have regarded it in the nature of notes: 'a schort
remembrauns of elde stories, that whanne I loke upon hem and
have a schort touch of the writing I can sone dilate the circum-
staunces. ' Valuable historically, as an authority on Henry IV, it
also attracts attention by the terseness of its style. It'myte,' says
the author, 'be cleped rather Abbreviacion of Cronicles than a
book'; but graphic detail appears in the later portion, dealing with
Capgrave's own times. It is he who tells us that Henry V after his
coronacion was evene turned onto anothir man and all his mociones
inclined to vertu,' though this is probably in testimony to the
peculiar sacredness of the anointing oil. Capgrave was a doctor
in divinity and provincial of his order, the Austin Friars Hermit;
he was extremely orthodox, violently abusive of Wyclif and
Oldcastle, an apologist of archbishops, yet, like other chroniclers,
restive under the extreme demands of the papacy.
Even apart from his signal achievement in literature, the lively
character and ironical fate of Reginald Pecock must attract
interest. A learned man and original thinker, he was yet astound-
ingly vain. Though Humphrey of Gloucester was his first patron,
he was raised to the episcopate by the party which ruined the
duke, and shared that party's unpopularity. An ardent apologist
of the newest papal claims and of the contemporary English
hierarchy, he was, nevertheless, persecuted by the bishops and
deserted by the pope. Finally, his condemnation on the score of
heretical opinions was brought about by the malice of a revengeful
political party.
## p. 288 (#306) ############################################
288 English Prose in the XV th Century
Reginald Pecock was a Welshman, a student in the university
of Oxford, where he became a fellow of Oriel and took holy orders.
He was early celebrated for his finished learning and, before 1431,
Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, it seems, drew the rising man to
London where, in that year, he was made Master of Whittington
College near the Tower, the recent foundation of the famous mayor.
London was still thick with Lollards, and it became Pecock's
lifelong aim to overcome their heresy by persuasion. Before ten
years were passed he had issued a number of books or pamphlets
to cope with those which the heretics were pouring forth. In
1444, he was made bishop of St Asaph, and he was so active in
his diocese, in preaching and in other ways, as to rouse opposition.
He had not, however, withdrawn from the public life of London;
and, in 1447, he preached a sermon at Paul's Cross which provoked
much antagonism. He defended episcopal non-residence and
neglect of preaching on the ground that the conduct of the
ecclesiastical organisation was a prior duty; but he also justified
papal ‘provisions' to benefices and the payment of annates to
Rome upon grounds most displeasing to the English hierarchy.
He put the substance of his discourse in writing and gave it to
his friends. Yet not only the populace but many scholars, clergy
and friars called him a heretic. His apology was controverted
from Paul's Cross by the celebrated Millington, Provost of King's,
Cambridge, and archbishop Stafford, though personally friendly,
was obliged to investigate Pecock's opinions. Pecock was not
censured; but his translation to Chichester on the murder of
Moleyns perhaps marked him as a member of the court party
who might conveniently be thrust into a thankless post of
danger. The mob hated him as one of Suffolk's friends, and
he had the distinction of mention in the lively ballad on the
duke's death, The Dirge of Jack Napes. As a privy councillor
and trier of petitions, Pecock took his share in the unpopular work
of government, but he continued to put forth short popular books
against the Lollards and, at length, a complete and reasoned work,
The Repressor of overmuch blaming of the clergy. This elaborate
book, which its author thought would destroy Lollardy and prevent
further criticism of the hierarchy, brought about his ruin.
A hollow truce was then (1457) subsisting between the two
political parties ; one of Pecock's latest pamphlets, addressed to
Canynge, mayor of London, contained allusions to disturbances which
the Yorkist mayor chose to consider seditious. He accordingly laid
| Abbreviatio R. Pecock.
## p. 289 (#307) ############################################
Pecock's Repressor
289
the tract before the council. An outcry was raised at once by
the politicians, and Pecock's theological adversaries seized the
moment to accuse him of heresy. Archbishop Bourchier, allied
with the Yorkist faction, conducted the examination promptly.
Nine of Pecock's works were, in one day, inspected and reported
upon by twenty-four divines, who can hardly have been
-
placated by the claim of the accused 'to be judged by his peers'
in erudition. After several interviews, Pecock was formally con-
demned, and the archbishop, in a conventionally fraternal speech,
bade him choose at once between recantation and death by fire.
Apparently confounded by the charge of heresy, Pecock at length
replied: 'it is better to incur the taunts of the people than to
forsake the law of faith and to depart after death into hell-fire
and the place of torment. ' According to his own principles,
indeed, submission to the authority of the church was all that
was open to him. A public recantation was exacted, and at
Paul's Cross, before a great crowd whose ferocity, excited by the
spectacle of the solitary bishop beside the bonfire, rose so high that
they would fain have flung him into it, Pecock handed fourteen of
his works (that cost moch goodes') to the executioner to be
burned, and recited a full recantation in English in his peculiar
repetitive style. After a vain attempt to obtain protection from
the papacy, Pecock was committed to a dreary imprisonment for
life in Thorney abbey; and there, a year or two later, he died.
It is not hard to see why the bishops repudiated their self-
appointed champion. Immeasurably their superior in learning
as in argument, his conceit galled them, his assertion of the feudal
authority of the pope cut at the roots of hierarchical indepen-
dence; he had treated the friars with contempt, and his mode of
defending the condition of the church was felt to be dangerous.
One of the charges against him was that he wrote on great
matters in English; another, that he set the law of nature above
the Scriptures and the sacraments: in truth, Pecock's attempt to
defend the ecclesiastical system by an appeal to reason was a
negation of the principle of authority upon which it rested, and
a superficial reading of The Repressor might give the impression
that the author minimised the importance of the Bible.
The Repressor was the climax of Pecock's endeavours to
conquer the Lollards on their own ground. Corporal punishment
he allowed to be lawful in the last resort; but he held it the duty
of the clergy to reclaim heretics by reasonable argument. To
attempt this thoroughly, Pecock, in The Repressor, first stated
E. L. II. CH. XII.
19
## p. 290 (#308) ############################################
290 English Prose in the XV th Century
clearly what were the erroneous 'trowings' of the Lollards, and
then proceeded to reason against them instead of crushing them
by merely quoting a mass of authority. Unhappily, this fair
,
statement of his adversaries' case proved a two-edged weapon,
for his own replies were sometimes of a kind so casuistical
as to provoke irritation. Again, Pecock's excellent arguments
from history and theological literature made little impression
upon contemporaries almost as ignorant as they were biassed,
while his philosophical reasoning not only was beyond their grasp,
but was suspected of being a greater danger than the Lollardy it
controverted. To reason of religion at all, and in the vulgar
tongue, was a crime; to reason with heretics appeared to admit
that they had some kind of case; worst of all, in those intolerant
times, was Pecock’s tolerance.
The book is clearly arranged in five parts, each divided into
chapters, and a short prologue sets forth the purport and plan,
namely, to defend eleven points of 'governances of the clergy
condemned by some of the common people. ' Part I deals with
the Lollard position in general, while the succeeding parts defend
the arraigned practices by special arguments. Part I is the most
important and shows by how great a distance Pecock was in
advance of his age. Could his methods have been adopted by
the English hierarchy, the ecclesiastical revolution of the next
dynasty would, perhaps, never have occurred, and Hooker would
have been forestalled by a century.
Pecock finds the heresies of the Lollards to arise from three
fundamental errors in their method of thinking; when these are
relinquished, the way will be clear for constructive explanation.
The Lollards assume the New Testament to be the origin of
religion and morality, holding no ordinance to be binding unless
grounded, that is originating, in Scripture; secondly, they maintain
that every pious Christian can instinctively discover the full
meaning of Scripture; and, last, they assert that this pious Christian
is then justified in scorning any reasoning or expounding by
scholars and churchmen.
These theses of the lay party' are to be disproved not by
counter-quoting of texts, but by reasoning; and Pecock, therefore,
enters first upon a brief explanation of the method of logical
argument: ‘Wolde God it (logic) were leerned of al the comon
people in her moderis langage for thanne thei schulden therbi
be putt fro myche ruydnes and boistousness which thei han now
in resonyng. '
>
## p. 291 (#309) ############################################
The Repressor and the Lollards
291
6
Pecock declares that Scripture was not intended to reveal to
man any of the moral laws which he had already discovered by
law of kind,' i. e. light of nature. Scripture, in fact, assumes
that men recognise the moral law, and if it were possible that
any apparent discord should subsist between the words written
in 'the outward book of parchemyn or of velym' and 'the doom
of resoun write in mannis soule and herte,' then must the written
words be interpreted to accord with reason, not reason glosed to
accord with the writing. It is actually worse to undervalue this
'inward Scripture' than to undervalue the Bible itself. Because
Scripture enforces many points of morality, we are not to regard
the book as the foundation of the moral law-any more than men
of London say, when men of the country upland bring branches
of trees from Bishop's wood and flowers of the field for the
citizens to array their houses with at midsummer, that these
branches grew out of the carts or the hands of the bringers.
It follows that neither the truths of moral philosophy nor corol-
laries deduced from either philosophy or the law of nature are
grounded' in Scripture. To ask of any ordinance or custom
80 deduced by philosophy or common sense: 'where fyndist
thou it groundid in Holi Scripture ? ' is as far beside the mark
as to ask of a conclusion of grammar: 'where findist thou it
groundid in tailour craft? or of a point of sadler craft where
findist thou it groundid in bocheri ? ' Much that is needful for
us to know is left for us to discover by reason and experience:
'I preie thee, Sir, seie to me where in Holi Scripture is zouen
the hundrid parti of the teching upon matrimonie which y teche
in a book mad upon Matrimonie and in the firste partie of Cristen
a
religioun ? ' Nor does Scripture give a hundredth part of Pecock's
teaching upon usury in The filling of the four tables, and yet
these books he considers full scanty to teach all that is needful
to know upon matrimony and usury. He concludes that pilgrim-
ages, the use of images in churches, or the endowments of the
clergy, are not to be condemned because they are not expressly
ordained in Scripture.
That the members of the lay party overvalue the authority of
Scripture Pecock generously grants to be due to the excellent effect
on their minds of studying it. Precious, indeed, is the effect; but to
hold the Bible, therefore, for the sole rule of truth, is as if one should
endeavour to live entirely upon that necessary of life, honey. The
lay party will, however, allege that reason is fallible; to which
Pecock answers, that so may eyesight or hearing sometimes prove
1942
## p. 292 (#310) ############################################
292 English Prose in the XV th Century
deceptive, and yet we cannot see or hear save with eye and ear;
while the dangers of fallacious reasoning are minimised by a learned
clergy, whose gathered knowledge enables them to expound the
whole meaning of Scripture. Another safeguard, he avers, we have in
the infallibility of syllogism; let reason proceed on this method and
she cannot err: ‘for if y be siker and suer in my reason that no
man is in the chirche of Seint Poul at Londoun, and that the
bischop of London is a man, y may be sekir and sure that the
bischop of London is out of the chirche of Seint Poul at London,
thouz alle aungels in heven wolde seie the contrarie. '
As for the second 'trowing' of the Lollards—that every
humble Christian can sufficiently interpret Scripture they can
easily recognise its falseness by their own divisions. Do not the
Bible-men already distinguish parties, some as doctor-mongers,
some opinion-holders, some neutrals? Hath not Bohemia ex-
perienced the doom of 'ech kingdom devidid in hem silf'! To
interpret Scripture aright is evidently difficult, therefore should
learned men be consulted; not that every preacher or wearer
of a doctor's cap is competent to expound, and grievous it is to
find so little attention paid to the serious scholar who 'flotereth
not so ofte aboute the eeris of the lay peple as dooth the feet of
preaching. '
The third 'trowing' of the lay party-that, having (as they
assume) attained to the knowledge of Scripture, they should
pay no further attention to the arguments of clerks—is as bad
as the Mohammadan law which punishes the man who reasons
about his faith, whereas truth is ready to come to the light and be
confirmed: it is but 'countirfeet goold' which abides not the fire.
This mistaken endeavour to make Scripture the sole rule of
life springs of ignorance and want of thought. Where does
Scripture say that the New or Old Testament 'schulde be writt
in Englisch tunge to lay men or in Latyn tunge to clerkis'; where,
that men schulden make ale or beer of whiche so myche horrible synne
cometh myche more than of setting up of ymagis or of pilgrymagis? . . . without
ale and beer and without sidir and wijn and meeth, men and women myte
lyve ful long and lenger than thei doon now, and in lesse jolite and cheerte of
herte forto bringe hem into horrible grete synnes-
and yet the laity think these drinks quite permissible, i. e. lawful, i. e.
right. Would that those women who make themselves so wise in the
Bible and ‘so coppid of speche a nentis clerkis' might wear none
of their fine 'coverchefis of lynnen or of silk of whiche so miche
synne cometh'till they could find scriptural warrant for them!
## p. 293 (#311) ############################################
Pecock's Minor Works
293
Illustration is among Pecock's strong points—homely, striking
and tersely worded, but too often adding a provocation. He had
the unlucky art of selecting an irritating topic: 'If the king of
England dwelt in Bordeaux and should send a noble letter to
the judges exhorting them to impartial justice,' was one of his
illustrations, when the nation was frantic over the loss of Gascony
and not a law-court was freely held.
The second part of The Repressor takes point by point the
lay party's objections to the church and proves, to the author's
satisfaction, that the arraigned customs are not only unforbidden
by Scripture, but that each rests upon good grounds. Even if a
good custom, such as the use of images, be abused, the abuse is
not serious, for nobody makes literal idols of images, taking
them to be gods. Besides, scriptural warrant exists for them in
the practice of Laban and of Micah and the Levite.
The necessity of vindicating every ecclesiastical practice com-
pels Pecock to have recourse, sometimes, to casuistry; and his
justification of the practice of the mendicants who only touched
money with a stick, or of those who deserted necessitous parents
to save their own souls in a convent, is not pleasant. But he
was unconscious of any weakness in his case; to him, logic was
everything; 'prove' is his favourite word; he believed men were
convinced by logic. Nor was it to the details of his case that
his enemies objected His appeal to reason was the real crime,
and his criticism was hardly less weakening to the rule of
authority. To nullify the current moral of a fable connected
with the donation of Constantine, he proved the fabulousness of
the famous donation itself, imprudently adding that the evils
ascribed to the wealth of the church arise from the appoint-
ment, nowadays, of unfit persons to bishoprics. He had the
audacity to declare that a statement of St Jerome's was probably
not true. He pointed out a discrepancy between Eusebius and
pseudo-Damasus, and decided, on historical grounds, for Eusebius.
It could only be expected that he would have to face the charge
of denying the authority of Scripture and of the Fathers of the
church. The prelates were little likely to think well of a man
who dragged their practices to the bar of criticism.
Pecock's smaller works seem to have pursued the same plan
of facing the heretic on his own ground. In The Book of Faith
he discards the axiom that the Church cannot err, because the
Lollards would not admit it, and proceeds on the supposition that
she might. But, if the Church should err, this would not excuse
## p. 294 (#312) ############################################
294 English Prose in the XV th Century
the laity from obedience, for she would fail only after having done
all that was humanly possible to find the truth much more than an
individual could do. God would not blame her members for such
unavoidable error. Nor hath any man proved, neither ever can,
his own trowing to be true contrary to the Church. He must
submit, then, to her wisdom, which, if not absolutely infallible, is
relatively enormously greater than that of any individual. But
the prelates accused Pecock of declaring that the catholic church
was liable to error.
It is certain that Pecock was sincere in his bold arguments,
and that he believed himself to be refounding the ecclesiastical
structure. Whether his works were as widely read as he believed
we cannot tell. He intended them for the lay party, i. e. the
Lollards, and made his books as brief as possible, because they
were necessary for every man to study. In The Donet he seems
(like some later apologists) to have tried to find the necessary
minimum of belief and to frame a creed which all would accept,
paving his way by the assertion that the apostles' creed was
only named after the apostles, not compiled by them. The
Poor Men's Mirror was a selection or skeleton made from
The Donet in the hope that even the poor would purchase so
cheap and necessary a book. Many other productions Pecock
names in a self-satisfied manner in The Repressor; yet, when
his orthodoxy was suddenly challenged, he replied that he would
not be responsible for works more than three years old, for many
had been copied and circulated without his consent and might
be incorrect. As this limit would exclude nearly all his works
save The Repressor, Pecock either knew the accuracy of copyists
to be notoriously poor, or was entering a disingenuous plea. His
enemy, Gascoigne, declares that he was always changing his mind
and disavowing his former statements.
At all events, Pecock had some following of young men,
probably at Oxford, where, though the university had promptly
renounced him and expressed penitence for permitting heresy to
flourish, his books were still being burned as late as 1475, having
been overlooked, said the apologetic authorities, in very obscure
corners. That they should be even then hidden and remembered
implies a more than superficial effect; yet there are very few
copies now existing. Most of his works have perished altogether,
and, after the Tudor reformation, Reginald Pecock was considered
a martyred protestant and received the mistaken eulogy of Foxe.
The Repressor is so clearly written that the achievement of
## p. 295 (#313) ############################################
Pecock's Style and Vocabulary 295
its author is hardly realised at first in its magnitude. Pecock
had to find or make terms for conveying abstract ideas and
philosophical distinctions; yet it is but seldom that he betrays
the difficulty and states that he uses a word in two senses (e. g.
leeful for 'permissible' and 'enjoined'). His wide command of
terms is not that of a man conversant only with theological
literature; many of his more unusual words are to be found in
Chaucer or in Piers the Plowman', while others seem to be of
recent importation and a few, even, of his own invention
Perhaps it is significant of the materialism of the age that
Pecock so seldom indulges in metaphor; 'to lussche forth texts,' 'a
coppid (crested) woman' are simple, but he felt obliged more than
once to explain elaborately, as did Trevisa, the nature of figurative
language where one would have thought the meaning self-evident".
The only drawback to Pecock's style, for a modern reader, is
his tendency to pleonasm. The reason already suggested does
not cover nearly all the instances of double, or even triple,
expressions. Pecock is not wholly free from the old love of
:
i Carect, apposid, approprid, aliened, eto.
? Corrept, correpcioun=rebuke, distinguished from correction=punishment, coursli
=in course of nature.
Probably the difficulty lay less in finding abstract terms than in making precise
distinctions: deliciosite, cheerte, carpentrie, bocheri give no pause; nor the active use
of verbs : to feble, to cleree (make clear); nor the host of adverbs and adjectives
composed by -li, -ose, -able : manli=human, cloistrose, contrariose, plentuose, makeable,
doable, kutteable, preachable, i. e. of a text, etc. Not that his words have all survived:
yet coursli, overte and netherte, aboute-writing, mynde placis =shrines, & pseudo, &
reclame=protest, are good terms.
On the other hand Pecock could not be sure that a word would be restricted to a
particular use, that readers would seize the opposition of graciosli to naturali, the
distinction between correcte and correpte, orologis and clocks (dials and mechanical
clocks), lete and lette (permit and hire out, hinder), jollite, with a bad signification, and
cheerte, a neutral term. A few words which already bore a twofold meaning Pecock
accepted for both senses : religiose (conventual or pious), persoun (person or parson),
quyk (alive or speedy, but quykli has the modern meaning), rather (more or earlier),
eto. Like earlier writers he often couples the elder and newer words : undirnome and
blamyd, rememoratiij and minding signs, wiite and defaute, skile and argument, but, as
the work progresses, he uses oftener skile, minding sign and undirnome. He has no
preference for the new-fangled, his aim is to be understood; if a few of Trevisa's or
Capgrave's obsolescent words disappear and feng or fong or bynam, fullynge, out-take,
are replaced in The Repressor by take or took, baptym, no but, yet Pecock prefers riall,
beheest, drenched, hiled, to the unfamiliar regalle, promissioune, drownede, couered,
though these last are to be found already in the anonymous translation of Poly-
chronicon (see ante, p. 78). We find that some of the old prefixes so common in
Trevisa, by- and to-, appear no longer, while the hitherto rare preposition frequent
in underling, undertake and undirnym (Trevisa seldom ventured upon undirneþe).
The opposition of a yeer of dearth to one of greet cheep, and the use of doctour.
monger, guest-monger, suggest the modern signification.
* E. g. Vol. I, pp. 161, 162.
## p. 296 (#314) ############################################
296 English Prose in the XV th Century
balanced phrases, nor, perhaps, from the turn for quasi-legal forms
affected in his age. He repeats the seid, the now rehercid
tiresomely, and rejoices in triplicates: 80 mich fonned, masid and
dotid: ech gouernaunce or conuersacioun or policie which Holi
Scripture werneth not and forbedeth not. This tendency, how-
ever, is most noticeable in the early and more dialectical portions
of The Repressor, while the very contrast between the full pre-
cision of the arguments and the colloquial turn of the examples
gives a pleasing sense of variety. The spelling is, as a rule,
consistent, and is noteworthy for a system of doubling the vowels
to give a long sound: lijk, meenis, waasteful, etc. It is probable
that the extant copy of The Repressor was executed under Pecock's
immediate supervision, to be handed to the archbishop.
Sir John Fortescue, the intrepid chief justice of Henry VI and
the earliest English constitutional lawyer, occupies, in the sphere of
political literature, a position not unlike that of Pecock in religious
controversy. But the larger part of his works, which aim at
justifying the title of the house of Lancaster, are in Latin. The
arguments of the smaller tracts are historical; but his large
work, De Natura Legis Naturae, is, mainly, philosophical. In this
book the actual claim of Henry VI is made to rest upon the large
foundation of that law of nature which resolves the succession
to all kingdoms. He discovers three ‘natural' kinds of govern-
ment: absolute monarchy (dominium regale), republicanism
(dominium politicum) and constitutional monarchy (dominium
politicum et regale). The right of the Lancastrian house,
therefore, is bound up with the English constitution. Even when
he reaches the second part of the book and deals with the struggle
then being waged, Fortescue keeps to an abstract form of argument.
*Justice'is to settle the claim to a kingdom in Assyria preferred
by three personages, the brother, daughter and daughter's son of
the deceased monarch. The reader reflects on Edward III, but
Fortescue throws over the claim to France and the settlement of
Scotland; there is no inheritance through a female, and 'Justice'
assigns the kingdom to the brother.
Such an attempt to solve the problem of the time by referring
it to a general law is something in the manner of Pecock. The
consideration of the 'natural' forms of government and the
decision that the constitution of England is a dominium politicum
et regale became, with Fortescue, a firm conviction. Though the
cause he had at heart, and for which he risked fortune and life
## p. 297 (#315) ############################################
Sir John Fortescue 297
and went into exile, was not advanced by his reasoning but hope-
lessly crushed by the cogent arguments of archery and cannon, he
was able to exercise a perhaps not unsatisfying activity in the
composition of two works which might teach Englishmen better
to understand and value that noble constitution to which the
Yorkist conqueror certainly paid little enough attention. His book
De Laudibus Legum Angliae was written 1468–70, and, like its
predecessor, was meant for the use of the young prince Edward,
whose education Fortescue seems to have had in charge, and
who sustains a part in the dialogue. His travels with the fugitive
royal family had shown the observant chief justice something of
Scottish, and more of French, modes of government. As he com-
pares the French absolute system with the noble constitution of
England, his philosophy becomes practical, and he endeavours to
apply theory to the actual conduct of government, giving us by the
way pictures of the life and the law courts of England as he had
known it.
But Tewkesbury field left the Lancastrians without a cause,
and Fortescue could do no more than bow to the inevitable and
lay before the new sovereign de facto his last treatise upon his
favourite subject. It is in English. The house of York, possibly
from lack of learning as well as from a perception of the importance
now pertaining to the common people's opinions, always dealt
with politics in the vulgar tongue. The treatise, sometimes
entitled Monarchia, and sometimes The Difference between an
Absolute and a Limited Monarchy, combines a eulogy of the
English theoretical system of government with advice for its
practical reformation. It was probably finished in 1471 or a
little later, though there are reasons for thinking that it was
originally intended for Henry VI. Fortescue again distinguishes
between the two kinds of monarchy, absolute and constitutional,
and praises the advantages of the latter. Not that an absolute
monarch is necessarily a tyrant: Ahab offered Naboth the full
price for the vineyard.
The all important question for a constitutional king is
revenue, and with this his subjects are bound to provide him :
As every servant owith to have is sustenance off hym that he
serveth so ought the pope to be susteyned by the chirche and
the kyng by his reaume. ' The expenses of the English king are
of three kinds ; (1) ‘kepynge of the see,' provided for specially by
the nation in the poundage and tonnage duties, that the kynge
kepe alway some grete and myghty vessels, ffor the brekynge off
## p. 298 (#316) ############################################
298 English Prose in the XV th Century
9
>
an armye when any shall be made ayen hym apon the see. Ffor
thanne it shall be to late to do make such vessailes'; (2) ordinary
royal charges, household, officials, etc. ; (3) extraordinary, including
ambassadors, rewards and troops on a sudden necessity: there is
no thought of a permanent army. The dangers of royal poverty
and overgreat subjects are pointed out, with examples discreetly
taken from French and old English history. How shall the revenue
be increased ? Not by direct taxes on food, as abroad, ‘his hyghness
shall have heroff but as hadd the man that sherid is hogge, much
crye and litel woll. ' Let the king's 'livelode' come of his lands:
as did Joseph in Egypt, on the plan which yet keeps the ‘Saudan
off Babilon' (Cairo) 80 wealthy. (Is this a reminiscence of
Mandeville ? ) It is a method within the king's competence, for an
English king can never alienate his lands permanently; which, says
the philosophic judge, only proves his supreme power: ‘ffor it is
no poiar to mowe aliene and put away, but it is poiar to mowe
have and kepe to hym self. As it is no poiar to mowe synne
and to do ylle or to mowe be seke, wex old or that a man may
hurte hym self. Ffor all thes poiars comen of impotencie. '
The danger of impoverished subjects is discussed next. Poor
commons are rebellious, as in Bohemia. A poor nation could not
A
afford to train itself in marksmanship as the English all do at
their own costs. Why, then, do not the poverty-stricken French
rebel? Simply from 'cowardisse and lakke off hartes and corage,
wich no Ffrenchman hath like unto a Englysh man. ' The French
are too cowardly to rob: “there is no man hanged in Scotland in
vij yere to gedurffor robbery. . . . But the English man is off
another corage,' for he will always dare to take what he needs
from one who has it. Fortescue glories in the prowess of our
sturdy thieves. An interesting plan for forming the council of
salaried experts, to the exclusion of the great nobles, brings the little
book to a close, with a prophetical 'anteme' of rejoicing, which a
grateful people will sing when Edward IV shall on these lines
have reformed the government and revenue. A quaint postscript
seems to deprecate the possible distaste of king Edward for the
parliamentary nature of the rule described.
Fortescue had to make his peace with the new king by
retracting his former arguments against the house of York.
This he did in the form of a dialogue with a learned man in a
Declaration upon 'certayn wrytyngs. . . ayenst the Kinges Title to
the Roialme of Englond,' wherein, not without dignity, he admitted
fresh evidence from the learned man and declared himself to have
## p. 299 (#317) ############################################
Walter Hylton
299
.
been mistaken. This, and a few other and earlier Latin pamphlets,
are of purely historical interest. His last work was, probably, the
dialogue between Understanding and Faith, a kind of meditation
upon the hard fate of the righteous and the duty of resignation.
The works of Pecock and Fortescue were destined to appeal
rather to later generations than to their own contemporaries,
whose tastes were better served by books more directly didactic
and less controversial, whether these were of the purely devotional
type or pseudo-devotional compilations of tales with arbitrary
applications. Of this latter sort the most famous example is Gesta
Romanorum. Devotional literature, as distinct from the Wyclifite
and controversial literature, for nearly a century and a half
derived from the school of mystics, the spiritual descendants of
Richard Rolle of Hampole. Their great master is Walter Hylton,
an Augustinian canon of Thurgarton in Nottinghamshire, whose
beautiful Ladder of Perfection supplied both system and cor-
rective to Rolle's exuberance of feeling.
That English mysticism was practical and missionary was
doubtless due to Rolle; and the example he set of copious writing
in the vernacular was followed by his disciples, whose tracts,
sermons and meditations, whether original or translated from the
Fathers, helped to render the language of devotion more fluent
than that of common life. When the life of the recluse had
become once more an honoured profession, the phraseology of
mysticism was readily understood by the special circle to which it
appealed. Hylton's works are far more modern than Rolle's, both
in matter and expression. They were favourites with the early
printers and are still read in modernised form. The lofty thought
and clear insight, the sanity, the just judgment of The Ladder of
Perfection or The Devout book to a temporal man are not more
striking than the clarity of the style. Hylton's language has not,
perhaps, a very wide range, but he renders abstract and subtle
thoughts with ease. Careful explanations are made of any fresh
term; pairs of words and phrases, though very frequent, are
scarcely ever tautologous, nor is alliteration noticeable. Biblical
language occurs less often than might be expected, but illustration
is common and ranges from simple comparison ('as full of sin as a
hide or skin is full of flesh') to complete metaphor, whose signifi-
cance he evidently expects his readers to grasp readily. Thus,
when he likens the progress of the soul to a pilgrimage to Jerusalem,
he adds, ‘Jerusalem is as moche as to saye as a syght of peace, and
## p. 300 (#318) ############################################
300 English Prose in the XV th Century
betokeneth contemplacyon in parfyte love of God! ' Or he speaks
of meekness and love, the prime virtues of the recluse's life, as two
strings, which, 'well fastened with the mynde of Jesu maketh good
accorde in the harpe of the soule whan they be craftely touched
with the fynger of reason; for the lower thou smytest upon that
one the hyer sowneth that other? ' In almost every respect
Hylton presents a contrast to his contemporary Trevisa.
An incidental remark in The Ladder-'this readest thou in
every book that teacheth of good living' bears witness to a con-
siderable body of literature of which only fragments have come
down to us. Chief among them is the well-known Revelations of
Divine Love by the anchoress Juliana of Norwich, a work of
fervent piety, pre-eminent in the graces of humility and love.
Juliana's meditations upon her vision evince her acquaintance
with Hylton, and, probably, with other religious writers. Such
study was, indeed, a duty strictly enjoined upon recluses by the
Ancren Riwle. More than once she uses Hylton's actual words
when developing the same ideas: 'the soul is a life,' they both
reiterate, and Juliana terms its inalterably pure essence, or spirit,
as distinguished from the sense-perceptions, its substance, in a
manner reminiscent of older scholars'. Apparently, she was not
acquainted with the translation of a Kempis, made in the middle
of the century, and again translated for the Lady Margaret.
Wholly different in kind are the moralised skeleton tales, by no
means always moral in themselves, of the famous Gesta Romanorum,
the great vogue of which is witnessed by the fact that the Anglo-
Latin recension assigned to the end of the fourteenth century was
being continually copied in the fifteenth, and that an English
translation then appeared, popularising this source-book of future
literature, beside the English Legenda Aurea, which, half-original,
half-translation, belongs to the same period.
? Wynkyn de Worde's edition.
2 Juliana's date is hardly certain. Only two late MSS are now known, B. M. Sloane
2499, said to belong to the seventeenth century, and Paris, Bibl. Nationale 30, said to
be a sixteenth century copy (cf. Miss Warrack's preface to her edition of Juliana).
Acoording to these she was born in 1342, saw the vision in 1373, wrote her account of
it about 1393, and was still living in 1442. (Cf. The Examination of William Thorpe,
which demands the belief that he, too, lived to be nearly a hundred, as used to be
assumed also of Hylton and of Juliana Berners. ) It is generally stated that Juliana
describes herself as unable to read, but this is an error, The Paris copyist calls her
a symple creature unlettyrde'; but 'a simple creature' is a term of humility :
the author of the prologue to the Wyclifite Bible so describes himself : 'unlettered'
may only mean no great scholar. The Sloane manuscript alters this word to that
cowde no letter. ' But the Revelations do not require the ascription of such a miracle
to enhance their value.
:
## p. 301 (#319) ############################################
Secreta Secretorum
301
Much akin to Gesta was another old classic of the Middle Ages,
Secreta Secretorum, three translations of which were executed in
the fifteenth century, one, by James Yonge in 1422, hailing from
the English Pale in Ireland. It is a work which ranks high
among medieval forgeries, professing to be no less than an
epistle on statesmanship addressed by Aristotle to his pupil
Alexander the Great. No doubt the public found its medley of
astrological and medical rules and elementary precepts on cleanli-
ness and decency the more impressive for its profound advice to
'avoid tyranny,' or to husband resources 'as the ampte getys
liflode for winter,' or not to trust in one leach alone, for fear of
poison, but to have at least ten. The clumsy attempt to express
more or less abstract ideas in English is interesting as a sort of
foil to Pecock's achievement. The Anglo-Irish version partakes of
the nature of a political appeal. The terror inspired in the Pale
by O'Dennis or MacMorough is plainly set forth, as illustration to
the original, and the earl of Ormonde is besought to remember Troy
when he captures rebels, 'trew men quelleris,' and to destroy them
'by the thow sharpe eggis of your swerde. . . rygoure of lawe and
dyntes delynge. ' Save for the uncouth spelling, the composition
is not very different from translations penned in England.
Yonge's use of modern illustration is but one among many in-
dications of the interest which the middle classes were beginning
to feel in the political events of their own days, and, to satisfy
it, a group of contemporary chronicles appeared, more interesting
to the historian than to the student of letters.
With the increase of popular agitation, the dull monastic
Latin chronicles withered away and were succeeded by a few in the
vernacular. Though these, in their earlier portions, are meagre
translations from the popular compendium called the Brute (French
or Latin or English') or from the Eulogium (Latin), the writers often
become individual when dealing with their own times. The re-
strained indignation of the monk of Malmesbury or Canterbury who
made the English Chronicle (1347—1461) at the incompetence
which produced the civil war invests his concise record with real
dignity, homely as is his vocabulary. But his political judgment
does not temper his readiness to accept the circumstantial legends
of the day, and two pages of his little work are given to a graphic
story of a ghost, futile and homely as only a fifteenth century
ghost could be.
In contrast with this, or with the more staid Cronycullys of
1 English translation by J. Maundeville, Rector of Burnham Thorpe, in 1435.
## p. 302 (#320) ############################################
302 English Prose in the XV th Century
Englonde may be set the more scholarly composition of the Lan-
castrian Warkworth, Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, who took
pains to preserve his chronicle for future readers. His picture of
the final loss of the royal cause' has the dignity of tragedy.
He sees retribution in the falls of princes and points the moral
pithily: “suche goodes as were gadirde with synne were loste
with sorwe'—'perjury schall nevere have bettere ende withoute
grete grace of God. ' He is clear in style and a little addicted
to the usual pleonasms (“wetynge and supposynge,' 'excitynge
and sturing,' 'a proverb and a seyenge,' etc. ).
Some short contemporary accounts bear the character of
official reports, or news letters, e. g.
tells us that he admired the beauty of that place 'as parradyce
but peir,' and adds
And I to heir thir birdis gay
Did in a bonk abyd.
Here, certainly, is the reserve of the professional makar. The
Murning Maiden is on a higher level, in respect of directness
and technical accomplishment; and, though it is not without traces
of alliterative and allegorical convention, it is never artificial. It
is no exaggeration to say that, in all our Middle English literature,
there is no poem more plainly human and simple. A forlorn maiden,
wandering in a wood in 'waithman weir',' encounters a man (the
writer of the lyric) who, after listening to her soliloquy of sorrow,
asks her why she trespasses with bow and arrows. She answers:
Thocht I walk in this forest fre,
Withe bow, and eik with fedderit flane,
It is weill mair than dayis thre
And meit or drink zit saw I nane.
Thocht I had never sio neid
My selffe to wyn my breid,
Zour deir may walk, schir, thair alane:
Zit wes never na beistis bane;
I may not se thame bleid.
i huntsman's dress.
arrow.
## p. 282 (#300) ############################################
282 Anonymous and Popular Scottish Verse
1
Sen that I never did 30w ill,
It wer no skill ze did me skaith.
3our deir may walk quhair euir thai will:
I wyn my meit be na sio waithel.
I do bot litill wrang,
Bot gif I flowris fang.
Giff that 3e trow not in my aythes,
Tak heir my bow and arrowis bayth,
And lat my awin selffe gang.
She refuses the frank terms which he offers, and insists on
remaining in the forest, a 'woful weycht, with her bed
full cauld,
With beistis bryme* and bauld.
The forester, touched by her sorrow, vows he will not consent to
her wild plan.
In to my armes swythe
Embrasit I that blythes,
Sayand, 'sweit hairt, of harmes ho 6!
Found? sall I never this forrest fro,
Quhill 3e me confort kyth. '
Than knelit I befoir that cleir5,
And meiklie could hir meroye craiff,
That semlie than, with sobir cheir,
Me of hir gudlynes forgaif.
It wes no neid, I wys,
To bid us vther kys;
Thair mycht no hairtis mair joy resaif,
Nor ather could of uther haif;
This 8 brocht wer we to blis.
Of other pieces of this genre mention may be made of The
Luvaris Lament (ascribed by Bannatyne to Fethe or Fethy), with
the burden
Canld cauld culis the lufe
That kendillis our het,
and In May in a Morning, reminiscent, in its form, of the
riming alliterative poems. Though Welcum to Mayº continues the
traditional courtly' manner and the aureate diction of the makars
(e. g. 'saufir firmament,' 'annammellit orient,' 'beriall droppis,'
and the like), it shows a change in the point of view. It may
be extravagant to discover more than a renascence appre-
ciation of nature in the poem, yet these lines are not merely
conventional :
Go walk vpoun snm rever fair,
Go tak the fresch and holsum air,
Go luk vpoun the flurist fell,
Go feill the herbis plesand smell.
i hunting.
2 oath.
3 wight.
4 fierce.
5 fair one,' maid.
pause.
go.
• Beginning, 'Be glad al ze that luvaris bene. '
(
7
8 thus.
## p. 283 (#301) ############################################
Early Scottish Prose 283
Another lyric, beginning Quhen Flora had ourfret the firth, works
up the commonplaces about the merle and mavis, and does not
shrink from aureation.
Scho is sa brycht of hyd and hew,
I lufe bot hir allone I wene;
Is non hir lufe that may eschew
That blenkis of that dulce amene.
So, too, O Lusty May, with Flora quene proclaims its kinship in
such a phrase as 'preluciand bemis. The Song of Absence, which
Pinkerton wrongly attributed to James I', is more lively in its
Its irregular lines recall the movement of the 'rustic
stanza ; but these are steadied by the ballast of such phrases as
the ‘hait canicular day' or the 'sweet mow redolent' of the
beloved. Evidence of this 'aureate' habit is so persistent in the
minor love poems in the collections that they must be grouped
with the courtly poetry of the period.
Finally, there is the didactic and religious verse of the collec-
tions. Little of this is, however, anonymous; and rarely, if ever,
may it be described as 'popular. ' Engrained as the ethical habit
appears to be in Scottish literature—so deeply, indeed, as often to
convey the impression of unrelieved seriousness-it is not in any
strict sense an idiosyncrasy of pre-reformation verse. In her
reflections on life's pains and aspirations, Scotland but conformed
to the taste of her neighbours. If she appear, after the sixteenth
century, to ponder more upon these things-or, let us say, less
upon others—she does so under stress of a combination of special
circumstances, rather than in indulgence of an old habit or
incurable liking.
An additional interest, philological rather than literary,
attaches to the Asloan collection from the fact that it contains
a number of prose passages, which are among the earliest remains
of Scots prose, other than legal and official documents. That
there should be any vernacular prose, whether official or quasi-
literary, at the beginning of the fifteenth century is almost
surprising, when we consider the place held by Latin in the
intellectual life, even in the commercial relationships of renascence
Scotland? The plea for a native medium is hardly urged before
the middle of the sixteenth century; and then it is only occasional,
and, as in Lyndsay's Exclamatioun to the Redar, apologetic,
1 Ancient Scotish Poems (1786), II, 425. See Chapter x of this volume.
. See Chapter 1v.
## p. 284 (#302) ############################################
284
Early Scottish Prose
6
a
because of the stress of reformation conflict. It was probably but
rarely that a Scot excused his ‘Ynglis' on the grounds stated by
the earl of March in his letter to Henry IV of England! We
know that Scots was used in public documents in the late four-
teenth century. In the Bute MS of Laws six of the twenty-five
pieces are in the vernacular; so too are the parliamentary records
from the reign of the first James. But neither in these nor in the
texts represented in the Asloan MS can we discover any half-
conscious effort of style, such as marks the beginnings of fifteenth
century prose in England.
The earliest examples of vernacular prose are the translations
of Sir Gilbert Hay, or of the Haye,' dated 1456, and preserved in
a single volume now in the collection at Abbotsford. They are
(1) The Buke of the Law of Armys, or Buke of Bataillis, based
on the French of Honoré Bonet, (2) The Buke of the Order of
Knichthood, following L'Ordre de Chevalerie and (3) a version of
the pseudo-Aristotelian Government of Princes. To which of these
the entry in the Asloan MS ("The Document of Schir Gilbert Hay')
refers is not known, for the portion of the MS which contained
the text has been lost. Of more originality, but with small claim
as literature, is the long treatise on political wisdom and rule of
life for a prince, by John of Ireland, rector of Yarrow and quondam
confessor to James III and Louis XI of France. The text, labelled
Johannis de Irlandia Opera Theologica, is preserved in the
Advocates' Library. A long extract from John's writings stands
first in the Asloan MS (“On the Passioun,' etc. ); and we have
clues to his authorship of other vernacular treatises of a semi-
theological character which are not extant. The place of his prose
in the history of the language has been discussed in another
chapter3. The contents of the Portuus of Noblines in the Asloan
MS, and (in part) in the Chepman and Myllar prints, are explained
by the fuller title, 'The wertuis of nobilnes and portratours thairof
&c. callit the Portuus and matynnis of the samin. ' This piece is a
dull discussion, in a series of homilies, on Faith, Loyalty, Honour
and the other virtues. It purports to be a translation by Andrew
Cadiou from the French. The Spectakle of Luf or Delectatioun
It ‘ys mare cleir to myne understandyng than latyne or Fraunche' (1400). Cf.
Chapter iv.
? Perhaps we should say the earliest important examples; for the short fifteenth
century tracts, Craft of Deyng, The Wisdom of Solomon and The Vertewis of the Mess,
preserved in the Cambridge University MS, Kk. 1. 5, may be earlier. Their interest is,
however, entirely philological. See the edition by J. Rawson Lumby, E. E. T. S. 1870.
3 See Chapter 1v.
## p. 285 (#303) ############################################
Early Scottish Prose 285
of Wemen, translated from the Latin, is an exhortation, in the
conventional dialogue-form, 'to abstene fra sic fleschly delecta-
tiounis quhilk thow callis luf. ' The reader is informed in the
conclusion that the translation was finished at St Andrews on
10 July 1492, by G. Myll, ‘ane clerk, quhilk had bene in to
Venus court mair than the space of xx zeiris, quhill (he adds)
I mycht nocht mak the seruice that I had bene accustomyd to
do; quharfor I was put out of hir bill of hushald. ' The Schort
Memoriale of the Scottis corniklis for addicioun, an account of
the reign of James II, is of no literary pretence.
Early in the sixteenth century, Murdoch Nisbet wrote out his
version of Purvey's recension of Wyclif's translation of the New
Testament. It anticipates the Bassandyne Bible by half-a-century;
but it does not appear to have been circulated. It remained in
manuscript till 1901. Its mixture of northern and southern forms
gives it considerable philological interest. After it, we may name
Gau's Richt Vay(a translation from Christiern Pedersen), Bellenden's
Livy and Scottish History, the patchwork translation called The
Complaynt of Scotlande, Winzet's Tractates, bishop Leslie's
History of Scotland, Knox's History and Buchanan's Chamaeleon,
Lindesay of Pitscottie's History, the controversial writings of
Nicol Burne and other exiled Catholics and king James VI's
early effort on versification (Ane Schort Treatise); but the
consideration of these belongs to a later chapter. The pro-
fessional Rolment of Courtis, by Abacuck Bysset, though of the
seventeenth century (1622), represents the aureate style of Middle
Scots and is the last outpost of that affectation in northern
prose
## p. 286 (#304) ############################################
CHAPTER XII
1
.
ENGLISH PROSE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
I
PECOCK. FORTESCUE. THE PASTON LETTERS.
2
THE work of popularising prose was a slow and humble
process. In the 'century of the commons' literature was con-
sistently homely. Works of utility-books of manners and of
cookery, service books and didactic essays, as well as old romances
copied and modernised and chronicles growing ever briefer and
duller-familiarised the middle classes with books Dictionaries
prove the spread of study; and, though verse was more popular
reading than prose, countless letters and business papers remain
to show that soldiers, merchants, servants and women were learning
to read and write with fluency. The House of Commons and the
king's council now conducted business in English; and, in the latter
part of the century, politicians began to appeal to the sense of the
nation in short tracts. In the meantime, the art of prose writing
advanced no further. The Mandeville translations mark its high
tide, for even The Master of Game, the duke of York's elaborate
treatise on hunting, was, save for the slightest of reflections-
‘imagynacioun (is) maistresse of alle werkes '-purely technical.
A fashionable treatise, as the number of manuscripts proves, it
was, in the main, a translation of a well known French work;
it is chiefly interesting for its technical terms, mostly French,
and as witness to the excessive elaborateness of the hunting
pleasures of the great.
Save for the solitary and unappreciated phenomenon of Pecock,
Latin, for the greater part of the century, maintained its position
as the language of serious books. The other two learned men of
the time wrote first in Latin, and seem to have been driven to use
English by the political ascendency of a middle-class and unlettered
faction. The praises of Henry V are recorded in Latin; nearly two
dozen Latin chronicles were compiled to some seven in English;
the books given by the duke of Gloucester and the earl of
## p. 287 (#305) ############################################
John Capgrave
287
Worcester to the universities were in Latin, and so were the
volumes purchased by the colleges themselves.
John Capgrave, the learned and travelled friar of Lynn in
Norfolk, was the best known man of letters of his time. His
reputation was based upon comprehensive theological works, which
comprised commentaries upon all the books of the Bible, condensed
from older sources, besides a collection of lives of saints, lives of
the Famous Henries and a life of his patron, Humphrey, duke of
Gloucester. All these were in Latin. But he composed in English,
for the simple, a life of St Katharine in verse and one of St Gilbert
of Sempringham in prose, as well as a guide for pilgrims to Rome
and a volume of Annals, presented to Edward IV.
Capgrave's chronicle, so far as originality goes, makes some
advance on Trevisa, being a compilation from a number of
sources with an occasional observation of the writer's own. He
seems to have regarded it in the nature of notes: 'a schort
remembrauns of elde stories, that whanne I loke upon hem and
have a schort touch of the writing I can sone dilate the circum-
staunces. ' Valuable historically, as an authority on Henry IV, it
also attracts attention by the terseness of its style. It'myte,' says
the author, 'be cleped rather Abbreviacion of Cronicles than a
book'; but graphic detail appears in the later portion, dealing with
Capgrave's own times. It is he who tells us that Henry V after his
coronacion was evene turned onto anothir man and all his mociones
inclined to vertu,' though this is probably in testimony to the
peculiar sacredness of the anointing oil. Capgrave was a doctor
in divinity and provincial of his order, the Austin Friars Hermit;
he was extremely orthodox, violently abusive of Wyclif and
Oldcastle, an apologist of archbishops, yet, like other chroniclers,
restive under the extreme demands of the papacy.
Even apart from his signal achievement in literature, the lively
character and ironical fate of Reginald Pecock must attract
interest. A learned man and original thinker, he was yet astound-
ingly vain. Though Humphrey of Gloucester was his first patron,
he was raised to the episcopate by the party which ruined the
duke, and shared that party's unpopularity. An ardent apologist
of the newest papal claims and of the contemporary English
hierarchy, he was, nevertheless, persecuted by the bishops and
deserted by the pope. Finally, his condemnation on the score of
heretical opinions was brought about by the malice of a revengeful
political party.
## p. 288 (#306) ############################################
288 English Prose in the XV th Century
Reginald Pecock was a Welshman, a student in the university
of Oxford, where he became a fellow of Oriel and took holy orders.
He was early celebrated for his finished learning and, before 1431,
Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, it seems, drew the rising man to
London where, in that year, he was made Master of Whittington
College near the Tower, the recent foundation of the famous mayor.
London was still thick with Lollards, and it became Pecock's
lifelong aim to overcome their heresy by persuasion. Before ten
years were passed he had issued a number of books or pamphlets
to cope with those which the heretics were pouring forth. In
1444, he was made bishop of St Asaph, and he was so active in
his diocese, in preaching and in other ways, as to rouse opposition.
He had not, however, withdrawn from the public life of London;
and, in 1447, he preached a sermon at Paul's Cross which provoked
much antagonism. He defended episcopal non-residence and
neglect of preaching on the ground that the conduct of the
ecclesiastical organisation was a prior duty; but he also justified
papal ‘provisions' to benefices and the payment of annates to
Rome upon grounds most displeasing to the English hierarchy.
He put the substance of his discourse in writing and gave it to
his friends. Yet not only the populace but many scholars, clergy
and friars called him a heretic. His apology was controverted
from Paul's Cross by the celebrated Millington, Provost of King's,
Cambridge, and archbishop Stafford, though personally friendly,
was obliged to investigate Pecock's opinions. Pecock was not
censured; but his translation to Chichester on the murder of
Moleyns perhaps marked him as a member of the court party
who might conveniently be thrust into a thankless post of
danger. The mob hated him as one of Suffolk's friends, and
he had the distinction of mention in the lively ballad on the
duke's death, The Dirge of Jack Napes. As a privy councillor
and trier of petitions, Pecock took his share in the unpopular work
of government, but he continued to put forth short popular books
against the Lollards and, at length, a complete and reasoned work,
The Repressor of overmuch blaming of the clergy. This elaborate
book, which its author thought would destroy Lollardy and prevent
further criticism of the hierarchy, brought about his ruin.
A hollow truce was then (1457) subsisting between the two
political parties ; one of Pecock's latest pamphlets, addressed to
Canynge, mayor of London, contained allusions to disturbances which
the Yorkist mayor chose to consider seditious. He accordingly laid
| Abbreviatio R. Pecock.
## p. 289 (#307) ############################################
Pecock's Repressor
289
the tract before the council. An outcry was raised at once by
the politicians, and Pecock's theological adversaries seized the
moment to accuse him of heresy. Archbishop Bourchier, allied
with the Yorkist faction, conducted the examination promptly.
Nine of Pecock's works were, in one day, inspected and reported
upon by twenty-four divines, who can hardly have been
-
placated by the claim of the accused 'to be judged by his peers'
in erudition. After several interviews, Pecock was formally con-
demned, and the archbishop, in a conventionally fraternal speech,
bade him choose at once between recantation and death by fire.
Apparently confounded by the charge of heresy, Pecock at length
replied: 'it is better to incur the taunts of the people than to
forsake the law of faith and to depart after death into hell-fire
and the place of torment. ' According to his own principles,
indeed, submission to the authority of the church was all that
was open to him. A public recantation was exacted, and at
Paul's Cross, before a great crowd whose ferocity, excited by the
spectacle of the solitary bishop beside the bonfire, rose so high that
they would fain have flung him into it, Pecock handed fourteen of
his works (that cost moch goodes') to the executioner to be
burned, and recited a full recantation in English in his peculiar
repetitive style. After a vain attempt to obtain protection from
the papacy, Pecock was committed to a dreary imprisonment for
life in Thorney abbey; and there, a year or two later, he died.
It is not hard to see why the bishops repudiated their self-
appointed champion. Immeasurably their superior in learning
as in argument, his conceit galled them, his assertion of the feudal
authority of the pope cut at the roots of hierarchical indepen-
dence; he had treated the friars with contempt, and his mode of
defending the condition of the church was felt to be dangerous.
One of the charges against him was that he wrote on great
matters in English; another, that he set the law of nature above
the Scriptures and the sacraments: in truth, Pecock's attempt to
defend the ecclesiastical system by an appeal to reason was a
negation of the principle of authority upon which it rested, and
a superficial reading of The Repressor might give the impression
that the author minimised the importance of the Bible.
The Repressor was the climax of Pecock's endeavours to
conquer the Lollards on their own ground. Corporal punishment
he allowed to be lawful in the last resort; but he held it the duty
of the clergy to reclaim heretics by reasonable argument. To
attempt this thoroughly, Pecock, in The Repressor, first stated
E. L. II. CH. XII.
19
## p. 290 (#308) ############################################
290 English Prose in the XV th Century
clearly what were the erroneous 'trowings' of the Lollards, and
then proceeded to reason against them instead of crushing them
by merely quoting a mass of authority. Unhappily, this fair
,
statement of his adversaries' case proved a two-edged weapon,
for his own replies were sometimes of a kind so casuistical
as to provoke irritation. Again, Pecock's excellent arguments
from history and theological literature made little impression
upon contemporaries almost as ignorant as they were biassed,
while his philosophical reasoning not only was beyond their grasp,
but was suspected of being a greater danger than the Lollardy it
controverted. To reason of religion at all, and in the vulgar
tongue, was a crime; to reason with heretics appeared to admit
that they had some kind of case; worst of all, in those intolerant
times, was Pecock’s tolerance.
The book is clearly arranged in five parts, each divided into
chapters, and a short prologue sets forth the purport and plan,
namely, to defend eleven points of 'governances of the clergy
condemned by some of the common people. ' Part I deals with
the Lollard position in general, while the succeeding parts defend
the arraigned practices by special arguments. Part I is the most
important and shows by how great a distance Pecock was in
advance of his age. Could his methods have been adopted by
the English hierarchy, the ecclesiastical revolution of the next
dynasty would, perhaps, never have occurred, and Hooker would
have been forestalled by a century.
Pecock finds the heresies of the Lollards to arise from three
fundamental errors in their method of thinking; when these are
relinquished, the way will be clear for constructive explanation.
The Lollards assume the New Testament to be the origin of
religion and morality, holding no ordinance to be binding unless
grounded, that is originating, in Scripture; secondly, they maintain
that every pious Christian can instinctively discover the full
meaning of Scripture; and, last, they assert that this pious Christian
is then justified in scorning any reasoning or expounding by
scholars and churchmen.
These theses of the lay party' are to be disproved not by
counter-quoting of texts, but by reasoning; and Pecock, therefore,
enters first upon a brief explanation of the method of logical
argument: ‘Wolde God it (logic) were leerned of al the comon
people in her moderis langage for thanne thei schulden therbi
be putt fro myche ruydnes and boistousness which thei han now
in resonyng. '
>
## p. 291 (#309) ############################################
The Repressor and the Lollards
291
6
Pecock declares that Scripture was not intended to reveal to
man any of the moral laws which he had already discovered by
law of kind,' i. e. light of nature. Scripture, in fact, assumes
that men recognise the moral law, and if it were possible that
any apparent discord should subsist between the words written
in 'the outward book of parchemyn or of velym' and 'the doom
of resoun write in mannis soule and herte,' then must the written
words be interpreted to accord with reason, not reason glosed to
accord with the writing. It is actually worse to undervalue this
'inward Scripture' than to undervalue the Bible itself. Because
Scripture enforces many points of morality, we are not to regard
the book as the foundation of the moral law-any more than men
of London say, when men of the country upland bring branches
of trees from Bishop's wood and flowers of the field for the
citizens to array their houses with at midsummer, that these
branches grew out of the carts or the hands of the bringers.
It follows that neither the truths of moral philosophy nor corol-
laries deduced from either philosophy or the law of nature are
grounded' in Scripture. To ask of any ordinance or custom
80 deduced by philosophy or common sense: 'where fyndist
thou it groundid in Holi Scripture ? ' is as far beside the mark
as to ask of a conclusion of grammar: 'where findist thou it
groundid in tailour craft? or of a point of sadler craft where
findist thou it groundid in bocheri ? ' Much that is needful for
us to know is left for us to discover by reason and experience:
'I preie thee, Sir, seie to me where in Holi Scripture is zouen
the hundrid parti of the teching upon matrimonie which y teche
in a book mad upon Matrimonie and in the firste partie of Cristen
a
religioun ? ' Nor does Scripture give a hundredth part of Pecock's
teaching upon usury in The filling of the four tables, and yet
these books he considers full scanty to teach all that is needful
to know upon matrimony and usury. He concludes that pilgrim-
ages, the use of images in churches, or the endowments of the
clergy, are not to be condemned because they are not expressly
ordained in Scripture.
That the members of the lay party overvalue the authority of
Scripture Pecock generously grants to be due to the excellent effect
on their minds of studying it. Precious, indeed, is the effect; but to
hold the Bible, therefore, for the sole rule of truth, is as if one should
endeavour to live entirely upon that necessary of life, honey. The
lay party will, however, allege that reason is fallible; to which
Pecock answers, that so may eyesight or hearing sometimes prove
1942
## p. 292 (#310) ############################################
292 English Prose in the XV th Century
deceptive, and yet we cannot see or hear save with eye and ear;
while the dangers of fallacious reasoning are minimised by a learned
clergy, whose gathered knowledge enables them to expound the
whole meaning of Scripture. Another safeguard, he avers, we have in
the infallibility of syllogism; let reason proceed on this method and
she cannot err: ‘for if y be siker and suer in my reason that no
man is in the chirche of Seint Poul at Londoun, and that the
bischop of London is a man, y may be sekir and sure that the
bischop of London is out of the chirche of Seint Poul at London,
thouz alle aungels in heven wolde seie the contrarie. '
As for the second 'trowing' of the Lollards—that every
humble Christian can sufficiently interpret Scripture they can
easily recognise its falseness by their own divisions. Do not the
Bible-men already distinguish parties, some as doctor-mongers,
some opinion-holders, some neutrals? Hath not Bohemia ex-
perienced the doom of 'ech kingdom devidid in hem silf'! To
interpret Scripture aright is evidently difficult, therefore should
learned men be consulted; not that every preacher or wearer
of a doctor's cap is competent to expound, and grievous it is to
find so little attention paid to the serious scholar who 'flotereth
not so ofte aboute the eeris of the lay peple as dooth the feet of
preaching. '
The third 'trowing' of the lay party-that, having (as they
assume) attained to the knowledge of Scripture, they should
pay no further attention to the arguments of clerks—is as bad
as the Mohammadan law which punishes the man who reasons
about his faith, whereas truth is ready to come to the light and be
confirmed: it is but 'countirfeet goold' which abides not the fire.
This mistaken endeavour to make Scripture the sole rule of
life springs of ignorance and want of thought. Where does
Scripture say that the New or Old Testament 'schulde be writt
in Englisch tunge to lay men or in Latyn tunge to clerkis'; where,
that men schulden make ale or beer of whiche so myche horrible synne
cometh myche more than of setting up of ymagis or of pilgrymagis? . . . without
ale and beer and without sidir and wijn and meeth, men and women myte
lyve ful long and lenger than thei doon now, and in lesse jolite and cheerte of
herte forto bringe hem into horrible grete synnes-
and yet the laity think these drinks quite permissible, i. e. lawful, i. e.
right. Would that those women who make themselves so wise in the
Bible and ‘so coppid of speche a nentis clerkis' might wear none
of their fine 'coverchefis of lynnen or of silk of whiche so miche
synne cometh'till they could find scriptural warrant for them!
## p. 293 (#311) ############################################
Pecock's Minor Works
293
Illustration is among Pecock's strong points—homely, striking
and tersely worded, but too often adding a provocation. He had
the unlucky art of selecting an irritating topic: 'If the king of
England dwelt in Bordeaux and should send a noble letter to
the judges exhorting them to impartial justice,' was one of his
illustrations, when the nation was frantic over the loss of Gascony
and not a law-court was freely held.
The second part of The Repressor takes point by point the
lay party's objections to the church and proves, to the author's
satisfaction, that the arraigned customs are not only unforbidden
by Scripture, but that each rests upon good grounds. Even if a
good custom, such as the use of images, be abused, the abuse is
not serious, for nobody makes literal idols of images, taking
them to be gods. Besides, scriptural warrant exists for them in
the practice of Laban and of Micah and the Levite.
The necessity of vindicating every ecclesiastical practice com-
pels Pecock to have recourse, sometimes, to casuistry; and his
justification of the practice of the mendicants who only touched
money with a stick, or of those who deserted necessitous parents
to save their own souls in a convent, is not pleasant. But he
was unconscious of any weakness in his case; to him, logic was
everything; 'prove' is his favourite word; he believed men were
convinced by logic. Nor was it to the details of his case that
his enemies objected His appeal to reason was the real crime,
and his criticism was hardly less weakening to the rule of
authority. To nullify the current moral of a fable connected
with the donation of Constantine, he proved the fabulousness of
the famous donation itself, imprudently adding that the evils
ascribed to the wealth of the church arise from the appoint-
ment, nowadays, of unfit persons to bishoprics. He had the
audacity to declare that a statement of St Jerome's was probably
not true. He pointed out a discrepancy between Eusebius and
pseudo-Damasus, and decided, on historical grounds, for Eusebius.
It could only be expected that he would have to face the charge
of denying the authority of Scripture and of the Fathers of the
church. The prelates were little likely to think well of a man
who dragged their practices to the bar of criticism.
Pecock's smaller works seem to have pursued the same plan
of facing the heretic on his own ground. In The Book of Faith
he discards the axiom that the Church cannot err, because the
Lollards would not admit it, and proceeds on the supposition that
she might. But, if the Church should err, this would not excuse
## p. 294 (#312) ############################################
294 English Prose in the XV th Century
the laity from obedience, for she would fail only after having done
all that was humanly possible to find the truth much more than an
individual could do. God would not blame her members for such
unavoidable error. Nor hath any man proved, neither ever can,
his own trowing to be true contrary to the Church. He must
submit, then, to her wisdom, which, if not absolutely infallible, is
relatively enormously greater than that of any individual. But
the prelates accused Pecock of declaring that the catholic church
was liable to error.
It is certain that Pecock was sincere in his bold arguments,
and that he believed himself to be refounding the ecclesiastical
structure. Whether his works were as widely read as he believed
we cannot tell. He intended them for the lay party, i. e. the
Lollards, and made his books as brief as possible, because they
were necessary for every man to study. In The Donet he seems
(like some later apologists) to have tried to find the necessary
minimum of belief and to frame a creed which all would accept,
paving his way by the assertion that the apostles' creed was
only named after the apostles, not compiled by them. The
Poor Men's Mirror was a selection or skeleton made from
The Donet in the hope that even the poor would purchase so
cheap and necessary a book. Many other productions Pecock
names in a self-satisfied manner in The Repressor; yet, when
his orthodoxy was suddenly challenged, he replied that he would
not be responsible for works more than three years old, for many
had been copied and circulated without his consent and might
be incorrect. As this limit would exclude nearly all his works
save The Repressor, Pecock either knew the accuracy of copyists
to be notoriously poor, or was entering a disingenuous plea. His
enemy, Gascoigne, declares that he was always changing his mind
and disavowing his former statements.
At all events, Pecock had some following of young men,
probably at Oxford, where, though the university had promptly
renounced him and expressed penitence for permitting heresy to
flourish, his books were still being burned as late as 1475, having
been overlooked, said the apologetic authorities, in very obscure
corners. That they should be even then hidden and remembered
implies a more than superficial effect; yet there are very few
copies now existing. Most of his works have perished altogether,
and, after the Tudor reformation, Reginald Pecock was considered
a martyred protestant and received the mistaken eulogy of Foxe.
The Repressor is so clearly written that the achievement of
## p. 295 (#313) ############################################
Pecock's Style and Vocabulary 295
its author is hardly realised at first in its magnitude. Pecock
had to find or make terms for conveying abstract ideas and
philosophical distinctions; yet it is but seldom that he betrays
the difficulty and states that he uses a word in two senses (e. g.
leeful for 'permissible' and 'enjoined'). His wide command of
terms is not that of a man conversant only with theological
literature; many of his more unusual words are to be found in
Chaucer or in Piers the Plowman', while others seem to be of
recent importation and a few, even, of his own invention
Perhaps it is significant of the materialism of the age that
Pecock so seldom indulges in metaphor; 'to lussche forth texts,' 'a
coppid (crested) woman' are simple, but he felt obliged more than
once to explain elaborately, as did Trevisa, the nature of figurative
language where one would have thought the meaning self-evident".
The only drawback to Pecock's style, for a modern reader, is
his tendency to pleonasm. The reason already suggested does
not cover nearly all the instances of double, or even triple,
expressions. Pecock is not wholly free from the old love of
:
i Carect, apposid, approprid, aliened, eto.
? Corrept, correpcioun=rebuke, distinguished from correction=punishment, coursli
=in course of nature.
Probably the difficulty lay less in finding abstract terms than in making precise
distinctions: deliciosite, cheerte, carpentrie, bocheri give no pause; nor the active use
of verbs : to feble, to cleree (make clear); nor the host of adverbs and adjectives
composed by -li, -ose, -able : manli=human, cloistrose, contrariose, plentuose, makeable,
doable, kutteable, preachable, i. e. of a text, etc. Not that his words have all survived:
yet coursli, overte and netherte, aboute-writing, mynde placis =shrines, & pseudo, &
reclame=protest, are good terms.
On the other hand Pecock could not be sure that a word would be restricted to a
particular use, that readers would seize the opposition of graciosli to naturali, the
distinction between correcte and correpte, orologis and clocks (dials and mechanical
clocks), lete and lette (permit and hire out, hinder), jollite, with a bad signification, and
cheerte, a neutral term. A few words which already bore a twofold meaning Pecock
accepted for both senses : religiose (conventual or pious), persoun (person or parson),
quyk (alive or speedy, but quykli has the modern meaning), rather (more or earlier),
eto. Like earlier writers he often couples the elder and newer words : undirnome and
blamyd, rememoratiij and minding signs, wiite and defaute, skile and argument, but, as
the work progresses, he uses oftener skile, minding sign and undirnome. He has no
preference for the new-fangled, his aim is to be understood; if a few of Trevisa's or
Capgrave's obsolescent words disappear and feng or fong or bynam, fullynge, out-take,
are replaced in The Repressor by take or took, baptym, no but, yet Pecock prefers riall,
beheest, drenched, hiled, to the unfamiliar regalle, promissioune, drownede, couered,
though these last are to be found already in the anonymous translation of Poly-
chronicon (see ante, p. 78). We find that some of the old prefixes so common in
Trevisa, by- and to-, appear no longer, while the hitherto rare preposition frequent
in underling, undertake and undirnym (Trevisa seldom ventured upon undirneþe).
The opposition of a yeer of dearth to one of greet cheep, and the use of doctour.
monger, guest-monger, suggest the modern signification.
* E. g. Vol. I, pp. 161, 162.
## p. 296 (#314) ############################################
296 English Prose in the XV th Century
balanced phrases, nor, perhaps, from the turn for quasi-legal forms
affected in his age. He repeats the seid, the now rehercid
tiresomely, and rejoices in triplicates: 80 mich fonned, masid and
dotid: ech gouernaunce or conuersacioun or policie which Holi
Scripture werneth not and forbedeth not. This tendency, how-
ever, is most noticeable in the early and more dialectical portions
of The Repressor, while the very contrast between the full pre-
cision of the arguments and the colloquial turn of the examples
gives a pleasing sense of variety. The spelling is, as a rule,
consistent, and is noteworthy for a system of doubling the vowels
to give a long sound: lijk, meenis, waasteful, etc. It is probable
that the extant copy of The Repressor was executed under Pecock's
immediate supervision, to be handed to the archbishop.
Sir John Fortescue, the intrepid chief justice of Henry VI and
the earliest English constitutional lawyer, occupies, in the sphere of
political literature, a position not unlike that of Pecock in religious
controversy. But the larger part of his works, which aim at
justifying the title of the house of Lancaster, are in Latin. The
arguments of the smaller tracts are historical; but his large
work, De Natura Legis Naturae, is, mainly, philosophical. In this
book the actual claim of Henry VI is made to rest upon the large
foundation of that law of nature which resolves the succession
to all kingdoms. He discovers three ‘natural' kinds of govern-
ment: absolute monarchy (dominium regale), republicanism
(dominium politicum) and constitutional monarchy (dominium
politicum et regale). The right of the Lancastrian house,
therefore, is bound up with the English constitution. Even when
he reaches the second part of the book and deals with the struggle
then being waged, Fortescue keeps to an abstract form of argument.
*Justice'is to settle the claim to a kingdom in Assyria preferred
by three personages, the brother, daughter and daughter's son of
the deceased monarch. The reader reflects on Edward III, but
Fortescue throws over the claim to France and the settlement of
Scotland; there is no inheritance through a female, and 'Justice'
assigns the kingdom to the brother.
Such an attempt to solve the problem of the time by referring
it to a general law is something in the manner of Pecock. The
consideration of the 'natural' forms of government and the
decision that the constitution of England is a dominium politicum
et regale became, with Fortescue, a firm conviction. Though the
cause he had at heart, and for which he risked fortune and life
## p. 297 (#315) ############################################
Sir John Fortescue 297
and went into exile, was not advanced by his reasoning but hope-
lessly crushed by the cogent arguments of archery and cannon, he
was able to exercise a perhaps not unsatisfying activity in the
composition of two works which might teach Englishmen better
to understand and value that noble constitution to which the
Yorkist conqueror certainly paid little enough attention. His book
De Laudibus Legum Angliae was written 1468–70, and, like its
predecessor, was meant for the use of the young prince Edward,
whose education Fortescue seems to have had in charge, and
who sustains a part in the dialogue. His travels with the fugitive
royal family had shown the observant chief justice something of
Scottish, and more of French, modes of government. As he com-
pares the French absolute system with the noble constitution of
England, his philosophy becomes practical, and he endeavours to
apply theory to the actual conduct of government, giving us by the
way pictures of the life and the law courts of England as he had
known it.
But Tewkesbury field left the Lancastrians without a cause,
and Fortescue could do no more than bow to the inevitable and
lay before the new sovereign de facto his last treatise upon his
favourite subject. It is in English. The house of York, possibly
from lack of learning as well as from a perception of the importance
now pertaining to the common people's opinions, always dealt
with politics in the vulgar tongue. The treatise, sometimes
entitled Monarchia, and sometimes The Difference between an
Absolute and a Limited Monarchy, combines a eulogy of the
English theoretical system of government with advice for its
practical reformation. It was probably finished in 1471 or a
little later, though there are reasons for thinking that it was
originally intended for Henry VI. Fortescue again distinguishes
between the two kinds of monarchy, absolute and constitutional,
and praises the advantages of the latter. Not that an absolute
monarch is necessarily a tyrant: Ahab offered Naboth the full
price for the vineyard.
The all important question for a constitutional king is
revenue, and with this his subjects are bound to provide him :
As every servant owith to have is sustenance off hym that he
serveth so ought the pope to be susteyned by the chirche and
the kyng by his reaume. ' The expenses of the English king are
of three kinds ; (1) ‘kepynge of the see,' provided for specially by
the nation in the poundage and tonnage duties, that the kynge
kepe alway some grete and myghty vessels, ffor the brekynge off
## p. 298 (#316) ############################################
298 English Prose in the XV th Century
9
>
an armye when any shall be made ayen hym apon the see. Ffor
thanne it shall be to late to do make such vessailes'; (2) ordinary
royal charges, household, officials, etc. ; (3) extraordinary, including
ambassadors, rewards and troops on a sudden necessity: there is
no thought of a permanent army. The dangers of royal poverty
and overgreat subjects are pointed out, with examples discreetly
taken from French and old English history. How shall the revenue
be increased ? Not by direct taxes on food, as abroad, ‘his hyghness
shall have heroff but as hadd the man that sherid is hogge, much
crye and litel woll. ' Let the king's 'livelode' come of his lands:
as did Joseph in Egypt, on the plan which yet keeps the ‘Saudan
off Babilon' (Cairo) 80 wealthy. (Is this a reminiscence of
Mandeville ? ) It is a method within the king's competence, for an
English king can never alienate his lands permanently; which, says
the philosophic judge, only proves his supreme power: ‘ffor it is
no poiar to mowe aliene and put away, but it is poiar to mowe
have and kepe to hym self. As it is no poiar to mowe synne
and to do ylle or to mowe be seke, wex old or that a man may
hurte hym self. Ffor all thes poiars comen of impotencie. '
The danger of impoverished subjects is discussed next. Poor
commons are rebellious, as in Bohemia. A poor nation could not
A
afford to train itself in marksmanship as the English all do at
their own costs. Why, then, do not the poverty-stricken French
rebel? Simply from 'cowardisse and lakke off hartes and corage,
wich no Ffrenchman hath like unto a Englysh man. ' The French
are too cowardly to rob: “there is no man hanged in Scotland in
vij yere to gedurffor robbery. . . . But the English man is off
another corage,' for he will always dare to take what he needs
from one who has it. Fortescue glories in the prowess of our
sturdy thieves. An interesting plan for forming the council of
salaried experts, to the exclusion of the great nobles, brings the little
book to a close, with a prophetical 'anteme' of rejoicing, which a
grateful people will sing when Edward IV shall on these lines
have reformed the government and revenue. A quaint postscript
seems to deprecate the possible distaste of king Edward for the
parliamentary nature of the rule described.
Fortescue had to make his peace with the new king by
retracting his former arguments against the house of York.
This he did in the form of a dialogue with a learned man in a
Declaration upon 'certayn wrytyngs. . . ayenst the Kinges Title to
the Roialme of Englond,' wherein, not without dignity, he admitted
fresh evidence from the learned man and declared himself to have
## p. 299 (#317) ############################################
Walter Hylton
299
.
been mistaken. This, and a few other and earlier Latin pamphlets,
are of purely historical interest. His last work was, probably, the
dialogue between Understanding and Faith, a kind of meditation
upon the hard fate of the righteous and the duty of resignation.
The works of Pecock and Fortescue were destined to appeal
rather to later generations than to their own contemporaries,
whose tastes were better served by books more directly didactic
and less controversial, whether these were of the purely devotional
type or pseudo-devotional compilations of tales with arbitrary
applications. Of this latter sort the most famous example is Gesta
Romanorum. Devotional literature, as distinct from the Wyclifite
and controversial literature, for nearly a century and a half
derived from the school of mystics, the spiritual descendants of
Richard Rolle of Hampole. Their great master is Walter Hylton,
an Augustinian canon of Thurgarton in Nottinghamshire, whose
beautiful Ladder of Perfection supplied both system and cor-
rective to Rolle's exuberance of feeling.
That English mysticism was practical and missionary was
doubtless due to Rolle; and the example he set of copious writing
in the vernacular was followed by his disciples, whose tracts,
sermons and meditations, whether original or translated from the
Fathers, helped to render the language of devotion more fluent
than that of common life. When the life of the recluse had
become once more an honoured profession, the phraseology of
mysticism was readily understood by the special circle to which it
appealed. Hylton's works are far more modern than Rolle's, both
in matter and expression. They were favourites with the early
printers and are still read in modernised form. The lofty thought
and clear insight, the sanity, the just judgment of The Ladder of
Perfection or The Devout book to a temporal man are not more
striking than the clarity of the style. Hylton's language has not,
perhaps, a very wide range, but he renders abstract and subtle
thoughts with ease. Careful explanations are made of any fresh
term; pairs of words and phrases, though very frequent, are
scarcely ever tautologous, nor is alliteration noticeable. Biblical
language occurs less often than might be expected, but illustration
is common and ranges from simple comparison ('as full of sin as a
hide or skin is full of flesh') to complete metaphor, whose signifi-
cance he evidently expects his readers to grasp readily. Thus,
when he likens the progress of the soul to a pilgrimage to Jerusalem,
he adds, ‘Jerusalem is as moche as to saye as a syght of peace, and
## p. 300 (#318) ############################################
300 English Prose in the XV th Century
betokeneth contemplacyon in parfyte love of God! ' Or he speaks
of meekness and love, the prime virtues of the recluse's life, as two
strings, which, 'well fastened with the mynde of Jesu maketh good
accorde in the harpe of the soule whan they be craftely touched
with the fynger of reason; for the lower thou smytest upon that
one the hyer sowneth that other? ' In almost every respect
Hylton presents a contrast to his contemporary Trevisa.
An incidental remark in The Ladder-'this readest thou in
every book that teacheth of good living' bears witness to a con-
siderable body of literature of which only fragments have come
down to us. Chief among them is the well-known Revelations of
Divine Love by the anchoress Juliana of Norwich, a work of
fervent piety, pre-eminent in the graces of humility and love.
Juliana's meditations upon her vision evince her acquaintance
with Hylton, and, probably, with other religious writers. Such
study was, indeed, a duty strictly enjoined upon recluses by the
Ancren Riwle. More than once she uses Hylton's actual words
when developing the same ideas: 'the soul is a life,' they both
reiterate, and Juliana terms its inalterably pure essence, or spirit,
as distinguished from the sense-perceptions, its substance, in a
manner reminiscent of older scholars'. Apparently, she was not
acquainted with the translation of a Kempis, made in the middle
of the century, and again translated for the Lady Margaret.
Wholly different in kind are the moralised skeleton tales, by no
means always moral in themselves, of the famous Gesta Romanorum,
the great vogue of which is witnessed by the fact that the Anglo-
Latin recension assigned to the end of the fourteenth century was
being continually copied in the fifteenth, and that an English
translation then appeared, popularising this source-book of future
literature, beside the English Legenda Aurea, which, half-original,
half-translation, belongs to the same period.
? Wynkyn de Worde's edition.
2 Juliana's date is hardly certain. Only two late MSS are now known, B. M. Sloane
2499, said to belong to the seventeenth century, and Paris, Bibl. Nationale 30, said to
be a sixteenth century copy (cf. Miss Warrack's preface to her edition of Juliana).
Acoording to these she was born in 1342, saw the vision in 1373, wrote her account of
it about 1393, and was still living in 1442. (Cf. The Examination of William Thorpe,
which demands the belief that he, too, lived to be nearly a hundred, as used to be
assumed also of Hylton and of Juliana Berners. ) It is generally stated that Juliana
describes herself as unable to read, but this is an error, The Paris copyist calls her
a symple creature unlettyrde'; but 'a simple creature' is a term of humility :
the author of the prologue to the Wyclifite Bible so describes himself : 'unlettered'
may only mean no great scholar. The Sloane manuscript alters this word to that
cowde no letter. ' But the Revelations do not require the ascription of such a miracle
to enhance their value.
:
## p. 301 (#319) ############################################
Secreta Secretorum
301
Much akin to Gesta was another old classic of the Middle Ages,
Secreta Secretorum, three translations of which were executed in
the fifteenth century, one, by James Yonge in 1422, hailing from
the English Pale in Ireland. It is a work which ranks high
among medieval forgeries, professing to be no less than an
epistle on statesmanship addressed by Aristotle to his pupil
Alexander the Great. No doubt the public found its medley of
astrological and medical rules and elementary precepts on cleanli-
ness and decency the more impressive for its profound advice to
'avoid tyranny,' or to husband resources 'as the ampte getys
liflode for winter,' or not to trust in one leach alone, for fear of
poison, but to have at least ten. The clumsy attempt to express
more or less abstract ideas in English is interesting as a sort of
foil to Pecock's achievement. The Anglo-Irish version partakes of
the nature of a political appeal. The terror inspired in the Pale
by O'Dennis or MacMorough is plainly set forth, as illustration to
the original, and the earl of Ormonde is besought to remember Troy
when he captures rebels, 'trew men quelleris,' and to destroy them
'by the thow sharpe eggis of your swerde. . . rygoure of lawe and
dyntes delynge. ' Save for the uncouth spelling, the composition
is not very different from translations penned in England.
Yonge's use of modern illustration is but one among many in-
dications of the interest which the middle classes were beginning
to feel in the political events of their own days, and, to satisfy
it, a group of contemporary chronicles appeared, more interesting
to the historian than to the student of letters.
With the increase of popular agitation, the dull monastic
Latin chronicles withered away and were succeeded by a few in the
vernacular. Though these, in their earlier portions, are meagre
translations from the popular compendium called the Brute (French
or Latin or English') or from the Eulogium (Latin), the writers often
become individual when dealing with their own times. The re-
strained indignation of the monk of Malmesbury or Canterbury who
made the English Chronicle (1347—1461) at the incompetence
which produced the civil war invests his concise record with real
dignity, homely as is his vocabulary. But his political judgment
does not temper his readiness to accept the circumstantial legends
of the day, and two pages of his little work are given to a graphic
story of a ghost, futile and homely as only a fifteenth century
ghost could be.
In contrast with this, or with the more staid Cronycullys of
1 English translation by J. Maundeville, Rector of Burnham Thorpe, in 1435.
## p. 302 (#320) ############################################
302 English Prose in the XV th Century
Englonde may be set the more scholarly composition of the Lan-
castrian Warkworth, Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, who took
pains to preserve his chronicle for future readers. His picture of
the final loss of the royal cause' has the dignity of tragedy.
He sees retribution in the falls of princes and points the moral
pithily: “suche goodes as were gadirde with synne were loste
with sorwe'—'perjury schall nevere have bettere ende withoute
grete grace of God. ' He is clear in style and a little addicted
to the usual pleonasms (“wetynge and supposynge,' 'excitynge
and sturing,' 'a proverb and a seyenge,' etc. ).
Some short contemporary accounts bear the character of
official reports, or news letters, e. g.
