A Digital Catalogue of the
Pre-1500 Manuscripts and Incunables of the
Canterbury Tales
Second Edition
SCRIBE B=ADAM PINKHURST/PYNKHURST
The scribe formerly known as “Scribe B” (so named by
Doyle and
Parkes 1978) has been identified by Linne R. Mooney as Adam
Pinkhurst. Mooney believes Pinkhurst was from Surrey, and that he worked as a textwriter
for the Mercers’ Company and/or the mercer
John Organ. Organ also
worked at the Customhouse where his service overlapped with that of Geoffrey Chaucer from 21 June
1376-14 December 1386.
note Pinkurst’s hand has been identified in the
following:
1. A Petition of the Folk of Mercerye (1387-88) (The National Archives, Public Record Office
8/20/997; ed. in
Chambers and Daunt, 33-37. Identified by
Mooney 2006 (facsimiles).
2. Trinity College, Cambridge, MS B.15.17 of Langland’s
Piers Plowman.
note
3.
Hg (National Library of
Wales MS Peniarth 392D,
Canterbury Tales; cf. Ramsey
1982,
1986)
4.
El (Huntington Library
MS 26 C 9,
Canterbury Tales; cf. Ramsey
1982,
1986)
5. Cambridge University Library MS Kk.1.3 (20) [
Kk] (single leaf of PrT;
Doyle 1995, pp. 60-62, facscimiles)
6. The Hatfield House “Cecil Fragment” of
Troilus and Criseyde (see
Campbell 1958;
Doyle 1995, pp. 58-9, facsimile;
Mooney 2006, figs. 2A and 2B)
8. Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS Peniarth 393D of
Boethius (
Stubbs 2002)
The text hand is of the anglicana formata type representative of the
latter half of the fourteenth century, with double-compartment
a (cf. the hand of
Kk and Trinity, however, where the secretary
a is preferred), looped ascenders on
b and
d,
8-shaped
g and word-final
s, “tilted”
y. The text headings are written in either a larger anglicana
script, or in a hybrid anglicana.
One of the primary distinctions between Pinkhurst’s work in
Hg and
El (as noted by
Hanna 1989, p. 8) is that in
El ascenders in the top lines, running heads, explicits and incipits, and elsewhere
where space allows, extend much higher than usual and are frequently topped by an ornamental,
c-shaped hook. The scribe’s long
r in
El, in final position, often closes with a counter-clockwise loop, a feature absent in
the scribe’s work elsewhere.
El as a whole is more
carefully planned and executed than
Hg, and as part of
this the scribe employs “a graded system of
litterae notabiliores and
paragraph marks” (
Doyle and Parkes 1978, p. 187). Finally, one
might take note of the more highly calligraphic quality of the scribe’s hand in
El than
Hg,
with a duct at once slightly more angular and yet more supple than in
Hg. In other respects, the hand can be described as in
Hg, a variety of anglicana
formata dated to the end of the fourteenth century and the early fifteenth century.
LANGUAGE
LALME LP 6400,
London. Labeled “Type III” by
Samuels (1983, p. 24), and localized in
London, the language is identical in most respects to that of
El (cf. Ramsey
1982,
1986, and the replies to Ramsey: Samuels
1983 and
Smith 1988). With the addition of Trinity
College, Cambridge, MS B.15.17 and “A Petition of the Folk of Mercerye” to
the Pinkhurst catalogue—meaning that most of Samuel’s examples of Type III are by the
same scribe—
Horobin and Mooney raise serious questions about the
validity of Type III as a category of London English. For detailed analyses of Pynkhurst’s
spellings, see
Smith 1995 and
Horobin and
Mooney 2004, pp. 73-92,
Horobin 2003, chapters 2 and 3, as
well as the references cited earlier in this section.
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John Gower (1325?-1408)
Nationality: English
“…poet, may have been born in the 1330s or 1340s. Although the date of his death can be fixed, and his tomb still survives in Southwark Cathedral (formerly the priory of St Mary Overie), that of his birth is unknown. In a letter to Archbishop Arundel (c.1400) accompanying his Latin poem the
Vox clamantis, Gower describes himself as ‘old’. How old he was is not revealed, but it has been assumed that this and similar references indicate that he was probably over sixty by the turn of the century.…
Gower died in 1408. His will was proved on 24 October. He left bequests to his wife, Agnes, who was one of his executors, to the prior, sub-prior, canons, and servants of St Mary Overie, and to the churches and hospitals of Southwark and the neighbourhood. Among the gifts to the priory was a large book, a
martilogium ‘newly composed at my expense’, in which a memorial for him was to be recorded every day. He was buried in the chapel of St John the Baptist. Though his tomb and effigy is still to be seen, it has been moved twice since 1800, and the chapel has now disappeared. The painting and lettering on the tomb have been restored from earlier descriptions (by Thomas Berthelette, who printed the Confessio amantis in 1532, Leland, and Stow). Under his head was the likeness of three books–the
Speculum meditantis, the
Vox clamantis, and the
Confessio amantis. A Latin inscription identified him as an esquire (
armiger), a famous poet, and a benefactor. According to Stow he was represented with long curling auburn hair and a small forked beard. This seems likely to have been an idealized recollection of the poet in more youthful days (as perhaps are the pictures of him shooting the arrows of satire against the world that appear in two manuscripts of the Vox clamantis). An explicitly identified portrait (effigies Gower esquier) appears in the duke of Bedford’s psalter-hours (after 1414; BL, Add. MS 4213). It shows him as an elderly, almost bald man with white curling hair and a forked beard (Wright, 191); it may have been done from memory. It is one of a series of ten depictions of him in the initials of this Lancastrian manuscript, and some care seems to have been taken in the placing of them with psalms in a way that could recall the Vox clamantis. The figure is similar to the elderly, balding Amans sometimes depicted in manuscripts of the Confessio amantis, for instance in Bodl. Oxf., MS Bodley 902; in others, however (BL, MS Egerton 1991 provides a good example), the penitent is represented as an elegant and youthful figure. Such portraits are meant probably to be general rather than exact ‘likenesses’.
Gower’s poetic reputation has rested almost exclusively on the
Confessio amantis. The number of manuscripts testify to its popularity. Uniquely, it seems, for a Middle English poem it was translated into Portuguese (probably in 1433–8) by Robert Payn, an Englishman in the household of Queen Philippa, the daughter of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, and later a canon at Lisbon, and from that into Castilian prose (after 1428) by Juan de Cuenca. In the fifteenth century Gower’s name is linked with that of Chaucer, and later Lydgate, as one of the ‘masters’ of English poetry. He continued to be praised in the sixteenth century: in Pericles ‘ancient Gower’ is brought back from his ashes to introduce a play based on his story of Apollonius. But his fame did not last, and in spite of Thomas Warton’s full and generous account–‘If Chaucer had not existed, the compositions of John Gower … would alone have been sufficient to rescue the reigns of Edward III and Richard II from the imputation of barbarism’ (Warton, 311)–some nineteenth-century critics simply abused him–he ‘raised tediousness to the precision of science’, according to James Russell Lowell (
My Study Windows, 1871). The Macaulay edition laid the foundation for serious study, and gradually modern criticism has done more justice to his poetic excellence. Chaucer’s epithet ‘moral’ was a very exact one. Gower had a coherent and serious view of the need for love and concord and peace, but he was not always solemn: in his
Confessio amantis especially he brilliantly combined entertainment with doctrine–‘somwhat of lust, somewhat of lore’ (
DNB).
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John Organ (d. 1392)
Nationality: English
“…Although he played a leading part in civic government and finance for over 20 years, Organ’s early life and background remain obscure. The first known reference to him occurs in April 1361, by which date he had become involved, probably as a trustee, in the conveyance of property in Tottenham, Middlesex. Organ may well have been in business for some time when, in November 1368, Richard Gillingham of Kent entered into a bond for 80 marks with him as a ‘citizen and mercer of London’. His first return to Parliament during the previous spring suggests that he already possessed some influence in the City; and the appearance of his name among the merchants to whom Queen Philippa owed money (in this case almost £22) when she died in 1369 is also a sign of his rising fortunes.
How far Organ prospered as a result of his many years as a collector of customs and subsidies in the port of London is now a matter of conjecture. During the entire reign of Richard II only three customs officials–of whom he was one–were entrusted with the collection of all three of the major imposts raised on goods imported through the capital. His experience, which rivalled that of many a professional administrator, made him tremendously valuable both to the Crown and the London merchants waiting for assignments on the wool custom. It has, indeed, been argued that his confirmation in office was intended to reassure the King’s major creditors in the City: they in turn can only have welcomed the prospect of administrative continuity made possible by the reappointment of a friend and business associate” (
History of Parliament).
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Campbell, Jackson J. “A New Troilus Fragment.” PMLA 73 (1958): 305-8.
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Chambers, R. W., and Marjorie Daunt, eds. A Book of London English
1384-1425. Oxford: Clarendon, 1931. 33-37.
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Christianson, C. Paul. A Directory of London Stationers and Book Artisans
1300-1500. New York: Bibliographical Society of America, 1990.
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Doyle, A. I., and M. B. Parkes. “The Production of Copies of the Canterbury Tales and the Confessio Amantis in the Early Fifteenth Century.” In
Ed. M. B. Parkes and A. G. Watson, eds. Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts, and Libraries: Essays
Presented to N. R. Ker. London: Scolar Press, 1978. 163-210.
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Doyle, A.I. “The Copyist of the Ellesmere Canterbury
Tales.” In Martin Stevens and Daniel Woodward, eds. The
Ellesmere Chaucer: Essays in Interpretation. Ed. San Marino, CA & Tokyo: Huntington Library &
Yushodo Co., Ltd., 1995. 49-67.
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Hanna, Ralph III. introd. The Ellesmere Manuscript of Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales: A Working Facsimile. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1989. 1-15.
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Horobin, Simon. The Language of the Chaucer Tradition. Cambridge: D.
S. Brewer, 2003.
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Horobin, Simon, and Linne R. Mooney. “A Piers Plowman
Manuscript by the Hengwrt/Ellesmere Scribe and Its Implications for Standard English.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 26 (2004): 65-112.
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McIntosh, Angus, M. L. Samuels, and Michael Benskin, eds. A Linguistic Atlas
of Late Mediaeval English. 4 vols. Aberdeen: Aberdeen Univ. Press, 1986.
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Mooney, Linne R. “Chaucer’s Scribe.” Speculum
81 (2006): 97-138.
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Mooney, Linne R., and Estelle Stubbs. Scribes in the City: London
Guildhall Clerks and the Dissemination of Middle English Literature, 1375-1425. Woodbridge, Suffolk:
York Medieval Press (Boydell & Brewer), 2013.
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Ramsey, Roy Vance. “The Hengwrt and Ellesmere Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales: Different Scribes.” Studies in Bibliography 35 (1982):
133-54.
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Ramsey, Roy Vance. “Paleography and Scribes of Shared Training.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 8 (1986): 107-44.
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Samuels, M. L. “Chaucer’s Spelling.” Middle English
Studies Presented to Norman Davis in Honour of his Seventieth Birthday. Ed. Douglas Gray and E. G. Stanley.
Oxford: Clarendon, 1983. 17-37. Rpt. in The English of Chaucer and his Contemporaries: Essays by
M. L. Samuels and J. J. Smith. Ed. J. J. Smith. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1988. 23-37.
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Samuels, M. L., and J. J. Smith. “The Language of Gower.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 82 (1981): 295-304. Rpt. in The English of Chaucer and his
Contemporaries: Essays by M. L. Samuels and J. J. Smith. Ed. J. J. Smith. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University
Press, 1988. 13-22.
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Smith, Jeremy J. “The Trinity Gower D Scribe and his Work on Two Early Canterbury Tales MSS.” In J. J. Smith, ed. The English of Chaucer and his
Contemporaries. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1988. 51-69.
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Smith, Jeremy J. “The Language of the Ellesmere Manuscript.” In Martin Stevens and Daniel Woodward, eds. The Ellesmere Chaucer: Essays in
Interpretation. San Marino, CA & Tokyo: Huntington Library & Yushodo Co., Ltd., 1995. 69-86.
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Stubbs, Estelle, ed. “A New Manuscript by the Hengwrt/Ellesmere Scribe? Aberystwyth,
National Library of Wales, MS. Peniarth 393D.” Journal of the Early Book Society 5
(2002): 161-8.
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See
Mooney 2006, and her Table 1. Mooney shared
her discoveries about Adam Pynkhurst at the New Chaucer Society 14th
Biennial Congress, Glasgow, Scotland (July 2004). Crucial to Mooney’s identification is the
oath Pynkhurst inscribed in the
Scriveners’ Company Common Paper
(Guildhall Library 5370; see
Mooney 2006, fig. 10) when he became a
member of the Scrivener’s Guild. The suggestion that Pynkhurst “may possibly have been
the Adam, scrivener, named in Chaucer’s poem” was made in 1990 by C. Paul
Christianson, who also suggests an alternative candidate, “the
scrivener Adam Stedemen who, in 1384, served as executor of the
goldsmith John de Welsshe” (1990, p. 149). See also
Mooney and Stubbs 2013, Chapter 4, which records a number of documents
in the National Archives (Kew), the London Metropolitan Archives, and the British Library. Numerous
facsimiles are included.
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Horobin and Mooney 2004 attribute this MS to “Scribe B.”
There they suggest that this is the earliest of the extant work of Scribe B. They also argue that
the fragment
Kk is among the latest of the same
scribe’s output.