Preface to Russell

General Preface: Footnotes

Though this Boke of Nurture by John Russell is the most complete and elaborate of its kind, I have never seen it mentioned by name in any of the many books and essays on early manners and customs, food and dress, that have issued from the press. My own introduction to it was due to a chance turning over, for another purpose, of the leaves of the MS. containing it. Mr Wheatley then told me of Ritson’s reference to it in his Bibliographica Poetica, p. 96; and when the text was all printed, a reference in The Glossary of Domestic Architecture (v. III. Pt. I. p. 76, note, col. 2) sent me to MS. Sloane 1315—in the Glossary stated to have been written in 1452—which proved to be a different and unnamed version of Russell. Then the Sloane Catalogue disclosed a third MS., No. 2027, and the earliest of the three, differing rather less than No. 1315 from Russell’s text, but still anonymous. I have therefore to thank for knowledge of the MSS. that special Providence which watches over editors as well as children and drunkards, and have not on this occasion to express gratitude to Ritson and Warton, to whom every lover of Early English Manuscripts is under such deep obligations, and whose guiding hands (however faltering) in Poetry have made us long so often for the like in Prose. Would that one of our many Historians of English Literature had but conceived the idea of cataloguing the materials for his History before sitting down to write it! Would that a wise Government would commission another Hardy to do for English Literature what the Deputy-Keeper of the Public Records is now doing for English History— give us a list of the MSS. and early printed books of it! What time and trouble such a Catalogue would save!

But to return to John Russell and his Boke. He describes himself at the beginning and end of his treatise as Usher and Marshal to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, delighting in his work in youth, quitting it only when compelled by crooked age, and then anxious to train up worthy successors in the art and mystery of managing a well-appointed household. A man evidently who knew his work in every detail, and did it all with pride; not boastful, though upholding his office against rebellious cooks, putting them down with imperial dignity, “we may allow and disallow; our office is the chief!” A simple-minded religious man too,—as the close of his Treatise shows,—and one able to appreciate the master he served, the “prynce fulle royalle,” the learned and munificent Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, the patron of Lydgate, Occleve, Capgrave, Withamstede, Leonard Aretine, Petrus Candidus, Petrus de Monte, Tito Livio, Antoyne de Beccara, &c. &c., the lover of Manuscripts, the first great donor to the Oxford University Library which Bodley revived, “that prince peerless,” as Russell calls him, a man who, with all his faults, loved books and authors, and shall be respected by us as he was by Lydgate. But our business is with the Marshal, not the Master, and we will hear what John Russell says of himself in his own verse,

an vsshere y Am / ye may beholde / to a prynce of highe degre,

þat enioyethe to enforme & teche / alle þo thatt wille thrive & thee,

Of suche thynges as here-aftur shalle be shewed by my diligence

To them þat nought Can / with-owt gret exsperience;

Therfore yf any mañ þat y mete withe, þat for fawt of necligence,

y wylle hym enforme & teche, for hurtynge of my Conscience.

To teche vertew and connynge, me thynketh hit charitable,

for moche youthe in connynge / is bareñ & fulle vnable. (l. 3-9.)

At the end of his Boke he gives us a few more details about himself and his work in life:

Now good soñ, y haue shewed the / & brought þe in vre,

to know þe Curtesie of court / & these þow may take in cure,

In pantry / botery / or cellere / & in kervynge a-fore a sovereyne demewre,

A sewer / or a mershalle: in þes science / y suppose ye byñ sewre,

Which in my dayes y lernyd withe a prynce fulle royalle,

with whom̅ vschere in chambur was y, & mershalle also in halle,

vnto whom̅ alle þese officeres foreseid / þey euer entende shalle,

Evir to fulfille my commaundement wheñ þat y to þem calle:

For we may allow & dissalow / oure office is þe cheeff

In cellere & spicery / & the Cooke, be he loothe or leeff. (l. 1173-82.)

Further on, at line 1211, he says,

“Moore of þis connynge y Cast not me to contreve:

my tyme is not to tary, hit drawest fast to eve.

þis tretyse þat y haue entitled, if it ye entende to preve,

y assayed me self in youthe with-outeñ any greve.

while y was yonge y-noughe & lusty in dede,

y enioyed þese maters foreseid / & to lerne y toke good hede;

but croked age hathe compelled me / & leue court y must nede.

þerfore, sone, assay thy self / & god shalle be þy spede.”

And again, at line 1227,

“Now, good soñ, thy self, with other þat shalle þe succede,

whiche þus boke of nurture shalle note / lerne, & ouer rede,

pray for the sowle of Iohñ Russelle, þat god do hym mede,

Som tyme seruaunde with duke vmfrey, duc of Glowcetur in dede.

For þat prynce pereles prayethe / & for suche other mo,

þe sowle of my wife / my fadur and modir also,

vn-to Mary modyr and mayd / she fende us from owre foe,

and brynge vs alle to blis wheñ we shalle hens goo. AMEN.”

duc] The duc has a red stroke through it, probably to cut it out.

As to his Boke, besides what is quoted above, John Russell says,

Go forthe lytelle boke, and lowly þow me commende

vnto alle yonge gentilmeñ / þat lust to lerne or entende,

and specially to þem þat han exsperience, praynge þe[m] to amende

and correcte þat is amysse, þere as y fawte or offende.

And if so þat any be founde / as þrouȝ myñ necligence,

Cast þe cawse oñ my copy / rude / & bare of eloquence,

whiche to drawe out [I] haue do my besy diligence,

redily to reforme hit / by resoñ and bettur sentence.

As for ryme or resoñ, þe forewryter was not to blame,

For as he founde hit aforne hym̅, so wrote he þe same,

and þaughe he or y in oure matere digres or degrade,

blame neithur of vs / For we neuyre hit made;

Symple as y had insight / somwhat þe ryme y correcte;

blame y cowde no mañ / y haue no persone suspecte.

Now, good god, graunt vs grace / oure sowles neuer to Infecte!

þañ may we regne in þi regioun / eternally with thyne electe. (l. 1235-50.)

If John Russell was the writer of the Epilogue quoted above, lines 1235-50, then it would seem that in this Treatise he only corrected and touched up some earlier Book of Norture which he had used in his youth, and which, if Sloane 2027 be not its original, may be still extant in its primal state in Mr Arthur Davenport’s MS., “How to serve a Lord,” said to be of the fourteenth century, and now supposed to be stowed away in a hayloft with the owner’s other books, awaiting the rebuilding and fitting of a fired house. I only hope this MS. may prove to be Russell’s original, as Mr Davenport has most kindly promised to let me copy and print it for the Society. Meantime it is possible to consider John Russell’s Book of Norture as his own. For early poets and writers of verse seem to have liked this fiction of attributing their books to other people, and it is seldom that you find them acknowledging that they have imagined their Poems on their own heads, as Hampole has it in his Pricke of Conscience, p. 239, l. 8874 (ed. Morris, Philol. Soc.). Even Mr Tennyson makes believe that Everard Hall wrote his Morte d’ Arthur, and some Leonard his Golden Year. On the other hand, the existence of the two Sloane MSS. is more consistent with Russell’s own statement (if it is his own, and not his adapter’s in the Harleian MS.) that he did not write his Boke himself, but only touched up another man’s. Desiring to let every reader judge for himself on this point, I shall try to print in a separate text, for convenience of comparison, the Sloane MS. 1315, which differs most from Russell, and which the Keeper of the MSS. at the British Museum considers rather earlier (ab. 1440-50 A.D.) than the MS. of Russell (ab. 1460-70 A.D.), while of the earliest of the three, Sloane MS. 2027 (ab. 1430-40 A.D.), the nearer to Russell in phraseology, I shall give a collation of all important variations. If any reader of the present text compares the Sloanes with it, he will find the subject matter of all three alike, except in these particulars:

Sloane 1315. Sloane 2027.

Omits lines 1-4 of Russell.

Contains these lines.

Inserts after l. 48 of R. a passage about behaviour which it nearly repeats, where Russell puts it, at l. 276, Symple Condicions.

Inserts and omits as Sl. 1315 does, but the wording is often different.

Omits Russell’s stanza, l. 305-8, about ‘these cuttid galauntes with their codware.’

Omits a stanza, l. 319-24, p. 21.

Contains this stanza (fol. 42, b.).

Contracts R.’s chapter on Fumositees, p. 23-4.

Contracts the Fumositees too (fol. 45 and back).

Omits R.’s Lenvoy, under Fried Metes, p. 33-4.

Has one verse of Lenvoy altered (fol. 45 b.).

Transfers R.’s chapters on Sewes on Fische Dayes and Sawcis for Fishe, l. 819-54, p. 55-9, to the end of his chapter on Kervyng of Fishe, l. 649, p. 45.

Transfers as Sl. 1315 does (see fol. 48).

Gives different Soteltes (or Devices at the end of each course), and omits Russell’s description of his four of the Four Seasons, p. 51-4; and does not alter the metre of the lines describing the Dinners as he does, p. 50-5.

Differs from R., nearly as Sl. 1315 does.

Winds up at the end of the Bathe or Stewe, l. 1000, p. 69, R., with two stanzas of peroration. As there is no Explicit, the MS. may be incomplete, but the next page is blank.

Has 3 winding-up stanzas, as if about to end as Sloane 1315 does, but yet goes on (omitting the Bathe Medicinable) with the Vssher and Marshalle, R. p. 69, and ends suddenly, at l. 1062, p. 72, R., in the middle of the chapter.

In occasional length of line, in words and rhymes, Sloane 1315 differs far more from Russell than Sloane 2027, which has Russell’s long lines and rhymes throughout, so far as a hurried examination shows.

But the variations of both these Sloane MSS. are to me more like those from an original MS. of which our Harleian Russell is a copy, than of an original which Russell altered. Why should the earliest Sloane 2027 start with

“An vsschere .y. am / as ye may se : to a prynce Of hyghe degre”

if in its original the name of the prince was not stated at the end, as Russell states it, to show that he was not gammoning his readers? Why does Sloane 1315 omit lines in some of its stanzas, and words in some of its lines, that the Harleian Russell enables us to fill up? Why does it too make its writer refer to the pupil’s lord and sovereign, if in its original the author did not clench his teaching by asserting, as Russell does, that he had served one? This Sloane 1315 may well have been copied by a man like Wynkyn de Worde, who wished not to show the real writer of the treatise. On the whole, I incline to believe that John Russell’s Book of Norture was written by him, and that either the Epilogue to it was a fiction of his, or was written by the superintender of the particular copy in the Harleian MS. 4011, Russell’s own work terminating with the Amen! after line 1234.

But whether we consider Russell’s Boke another’s, or as in the main his own,—allowing that in parts he may have used previous pieces on the subjects he treats of, as he has used Stans Puer (or its original) in his Symple Condicions, l. 277-304,—if we ask what the Boke contains, the answer is, that it is a complete Manual for the Valet, Butler, Footman, Carver, Taster, Dinner-arranger, Hippocras-maker, Usher and Marshal of the Nobleman of the time when the work was written, the middle of the fifteenth century.—For I take the date of the composition of the work to be somewhat earlier than that of the MS. it is here printed from, and suppose Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, “imprisoned and murdered 1447,” to have been still alive when his Marshal penned it.—Reading it, we see “The Good Duke” rise and dress, go to Chapel and meals, entertain at feasts in Hall, then undress and retire to rest; we hear how his head was combed with an ivory comb, his stomacher warmed, his petycote put on, his slippers brown as the waterleech got ready, his privy-seat prepared, and his urinal kept in waiting; how his bath was made, his table laid, his guests arranged, his viands carved, and his salt smoothed; we are told how nearly all the birds that fly, the animals that walk the earth, the fish that swim in river and sea, are food for the pot: we hear of dishes strange to us, beaver’s tail, osprey, brewe, venprides, whale, swordfish, seal, torrentyne, pety perveis or perneis, and gravell of beef. Bills of fare for flesh and fish days are laid before us; admired Sotiltees or Devices are described; and he who cares to do so may fancy for himself the Duke and all his brilliant circle feasting in Hall, John Russell looking on, and taking care that all goes right. I am not going to try my hand at the sketch, as I do not write for men in the depths of that deducated Philistinism which lately made a literary man say to one of our members on his printing a book of the 15th century, “Is it possible that you care how those barbarians, our ancestors, lived?” If any one who takes up this tract, will not read it through, the loss is his; those who do work at it will gladly acknowledge their gain. That it is worthy of the attention of all to whose ears tidings of Early England come with welcome sound across the wide water of four hundred years, I unhesitatingly assert. That it has interested me, let the time its notes have taken on this, a fresh subject to me, testify. If any should object to the extent of them, or to any words in them that may offend his ear, let him excuse them for the sake of what he thinks rightly present. There are still many subjects and words insufficiently illustrated in the comments, and for the names venprides (l. 820); sprotis, (? sprats, as in Sloane 1315), and torrentille (l. 548); almond iardyne (l. 744); ginger colombyne, valadyne, and maydelyne (l. 132-3); leche dugard, &c., I have not been able to find meanings. Explanations and helps I shall gladly receive, in the hope that they may appear in another volume of like kind for which I trust soon to find more MSS. Of other MSS. of like kind I also ask for notice.

The reason for reprinting Wynkyn de Worde’s Boke of Keruynge, which I had not at first thought of, was because its identity of phrase and word with many parts of Russell,—a thing which came on me with a curious feeling of surprise as I turned over the leaves,—made it certain that de Worde either abstracted in prose Russell’s MS., chopping off his lines’ tails,—adding also bits here, leaving out others there,—or else that both writers copied a common original. The most cursory perusal will show this to be the case. It was not alone by happy chance that when Russell had said

O Fruture viant / Fruter sawge byñ good / bettur is Frutur powche;

Appulle fruture / is good hoot / but þe cold ye not towche (l. 501-2)

Wynkyn de Worde delivered himself of

“Fruyter vaunte, fruyter say be good; better is fruyter pouche;

apple fruyters ben good good hote / and all colde fruters, touche

not,”

altering not’s place to save the rhyme; or that when Russell had said of the Crane

The Crane is a fowle / that stronge is with to fare;

þe whynges ye areyse / fulle large evyñ thare;

of hyre trompe in þe brest / loke þat ye beware

Wynkyn de Worde directed his Carver thus: “A crane, reyse the wynges fyrst, & beware of the trumpe in his brest.” Let any one compare the second and third pages of Wynkyn de Worde’s text with lines 48-137 of Russell, and he will make up his mind that the old printer was either one of the most barefaced plagiarists that ever lived, or that the same original was before him and Russell too. May Mr Davenport’s hayloft, or some learned antiquarian, soon decide the alternative for us! The question was too interesting a “Curiosity of Literature” not to be laid before our Members, and therefore The Boke of Keruynge was reprinted—from the British Museum copy of the second edition of 1513—with added side-notes and stops, and the colophon as part of the title.

Then came the necessary comparison of Russell’s Boke with the Boke of Curtasye, edited by Mr Halliwell from the Sloane MS. 1986 for the Percy Society. Contrasts had to be made with it, in parts, many times in a page; the tract was out of print and probably in few Members’ hands; it needed a few corrections, and was worthy of a thousand times wider circulation than it had had; therefore a new edition from the MS. was added to this volume. Relying on Members reading it for themselves, I have not in the notes indicated all the points of coincidence and difference between this Boke and Russell’s. It is of wider scope than Russell’s, takes in the duties of outdoor officers and servants as well as indoor, and maybe those of a larger household; it has also a fyrst Boke on general manners, and a Second Book on what to learn at school, how to behave at church, &c., but it does not go into the great detail as to Meals and Dress which is the special value of Russell’s Boke, nor is it associated with a writer who tells us something of himself, or a noble who in all our English Middle Age has so bright a name on which we can look back as “good Duke Humphrey.” This personality adds an interest to work that anonymity and its writings of equal value can never have; so that we may be well content to let the Curtasye be used in illustration of the Nurture. The MS. of the Curtasye is about 1460 A.D., Mr Bond says. I have dated it wrongly on the half-title.

The Booke of Demeanor was “such a little one” that I was tempted to add it to mark the general introduction of handkerchiefs. Having printed it, arose the question, ‘Where did it come from?’ No Weste’s Schoole of Vertue could I find in catalogues, or by inquiring of the Duke of Devonshire, Mr W. C. Hazlitt, at the Bodleian, &c. Seager’s Schoole of Vertue was the only book that turned up, and this I accordingly reprinted, as Weste’s Booke of Demeanor seemed to be little more than an abstract of the first four Chapters of Seager cut down and rewritten. We must remember that books of this kind, which we look on as sources of amusement, as more or less of a joke, were taken seriously by the people they were written for. That The Schoole of Vertue, for instance—whether Seager’s or Weste’s—was used as a regular school-book for boys, let Io. Brinsley witness. In his Grammar Schoole of 1612, pp. 17, 18, he enumerates the “Bookes to bee first learned of children”:— 1. their Abcie, and Primer. 2. The Psalms in metre, ‘because children wil learne that booke with most readinesse and delight through the running of the metre, as it is found by experience. 3. Then the Testament.’ 4. “If any require any other little booke meet to enter children; the Schoole of Vertue is one of the principall, and easiest for the first enterers, being full of precepts of ciuilitie, and such as children will soone learne and take a delight in, thorow the roundnesse of the metre, as was sayde before of the singing Psalmes: And after it the Schoole of good manners, called, the new Schoole of Vertue, leading the childe as by the hand, in the way of all good manners.”

I make no apology for including reprints of these little-known books in an Early English Text. Qui s’excuse s’accuse; and if these Tracts do not justify to any reader their own appearance here, I believe the fault is not theirs.

A poem on minding what you say, which Mr Aldis Wright has kindly sent me, some Maxims on Behaviour, &c., which all end in -ly, and Roger Ascham’s Advice to his brother-in-law on entering a nobleman’s service, follow, and then the Poems which suggested the Forewords on Education in Early England, and have been partly noticed in them, p. i-iv. I have only to say of the first, The Babees Boke, that I have not had time to search for its Latin original, or other copies of the text. Its specialty is its attributing so high birth to the Bele Babees whom it addresses, and its appeal to Lady Facetia to help its writer. Of the short alphabetic poems that follow,—The A B C of Aristotle,—copies occur elsewhere; and that in the Harleian Manuscript 1304, which has a different introduction, I hope to print in the companion volume to this, already alluded to. Vrbanitatis, I was glad to find, because of the mention of the booke of urbanitie in Edward the Fourth’s Liber Niger (p. ii. above), as we thus know what the Duke of Norfolk of “Flodden Field” was taught in his youth as to his demeanings, how mannerly he should eat and drink, and as to his communication and other forms of court. He was not to spit or snite before his Lord the King, or wipe his nose on the table-cloth. The next tracts, The Lytylle Chyldrenes Lytil Boke or Edyllys Be (a title made up from the text) and The Young Children’s Book, are differing versions of one set of maxims, and are printed opposite one another for contrast sake. The Lytil Boke was printed from a later text, and with an interlinear French version, by Wynkyn de Worde in ‘Here begynneth a lytell treatyse for to lerne Englisshe and Frensshe.’ This will be printed by Mr Wheatley in his Collection of Early Treatises on Grammar for the Society, as the copy in the Grenville Library in the Brit. Mus. is the only one known. Other copies of this Lytil Boke are at Edinburgh, Cambridge, and Oxford. Of two of these Mr David Laing and Mr Henry Bradshaw have kindly given me collations, which are printed at the end of this Preface. Of the last Poem, Stans Puer ad Mensam, attributed to Lydgate— as nearly everything in the first half of the 15th century was— I have printed two copies, with collations from a third, the Jesus (Cambridge) MS. printed by Mr Halliwell in Reliquiæ Antiquæ, v. 1, p. 156-8, and reprinted by Mr W. C. Hazlitt in his Early Popular Poetry, ii. 23-8. Mr Hazlitt notices 3 other copies, in Harl. MS. 4011, fol. 1, &c.; Lansdowne MS. 699; and Additional MS. 5467, which he collated for his text. There must be plenty more about the country, as in Ashmole MS. 61, fol. 16, back, in the Bodleian. Of old printed editions Mr Hazlitt notes one “from the press of Caxton, but the only copy known is imperfect. It was printed two or three times by Wynkyn de Worde. Lowndes mentions two, 1518, 4to, and 1524, 4to; and in the public library at Cambridge there is said by Hartshorne (Book Rarities, 156) to be a third without date. It is also appended to the various impressions of the Boke of Nurture by Hugh Rhodes.” This Boke has been reprinted for the Early English Text Society, and its Stans Puer is Rhodes’s own expansion of one of the shorter English versions of the original Latin.

The woodcuts Messrs Virtue have allowed me to have copies of for a small royalty, and they will help the reader to realize parts of the text better than any verbal description. The cuts are not of course equal to the beautiful early illuminations they are taken from, but they are near enough for the present purpose. The dates of those from British Museum MSS. are given on the authority of trustworthy officers of the Manuscript Department. The dates of the non-Museum MSS. are copied from Mr Wright’s text. The line of description under the cuts is also from Mr Wright’s text, except in one instance where he had missed the fact of the cut representing the Marriage Feast at Cana of Galilee, with its six water-pots.

The MS. of Russell is on thick folio paper, is written in a close—and seemingly unprofessional—hand, fond of making elaborate capitals to the initials of its titles, and thus occasionally squeezing up into a corner the chief word of the title, because the T of The preceding has required so much room. The MS. has been read through by a corrector with a red pen, pencil, or brush, who has underlined all the important words, touched up the capitals, and evidently believed in the text. Perhaps the corrector, if not writer, was Russell himself. I hope it was, for the old man must have enjoyed emphasizing his precepts with those red scores; but then he would hardly have allowed a space to remain blank in line 204, and have left his Panter-pupil in doubt as to whether he should lay his “white payne” on the left or right of his knives. Every butler, drill-serjeant, and vestment-cleric, must feel the thing to be impossible. The corrector was not John Russell.

To all those gentlemen who have helped me in the explanations of words, &c.,—Mr Gillett, Dr Günther, Mr Atkinson, Mr Skeat, Mr Cockayne, Mr Gibbs, Mr Way, the Hon. G. P. Marsh—and to Mr E. Brock, the most careful copier of the MS., my best thanks are due, and are hereby tendered. Would that thanks of any of us now profiting by their labours could reach the ears of that prince of Dictionary-makers, Cotgrave, of Frater Galfridus, Palsgrave, Hexham, Philipps, and the rest of the lexicographers who enable us to understand the records of the past! Would too that an adequate expression of gratitude could reach the ears of the lost Nicolas, and of Sir Frederic Madden, for their carefully indexed Household Books,—to be contrasted with the unwieldy mass and clueless mazes of the Antiquaries’ Household Ordinances, the two volumes of the Roxburghe Howard Household Books, and Percy’s Northumberland Household Book!—They will be spared the pains of the special place of torment reserved for editors who turn out their books without glossary or index. May that be their sufficient reward!

3, St George’s Square, N.W.
16 Dec., 1866.

Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester.

Mr C. H. Pearson has referred me to a most curious treatise on the state of Duke Humphrey’s body and health in 1404 (that is, 1424, says Hearne), by Dr Gilbert Kymer, his physician, part of which (chapters 3 and 19, with other pieces) was printed by Hearne in the appendix to his Liber Niger, v. ii. p. 550 (ed. alt.), from a MS. then in Sir Hans Sloane’s Collection, and now Sloane 4 in the British Museum. It begins at p. 127 or folio 63, and by way of giving the reader a notion of its contents, I add here a copy of the first page of the MS.

Incipit dietarium de sanitatis custodia preinclitissimo principi ac metuendissimo domino, domino humfrido, duci Gloucestrie, Alijsque preclaris titulis insignito, Scriptum & compilatum, per venerabilem doctorem, Magistrum Gilbertum Kymer, Medicinarum professorem, arcium ac philosophie Magistrum & in legibus bacallarium prelibati principis phisicum, Cuius dietarij colleccionem (?) dilucidancia & effectum viginti sex existunt capitula, quorum consequenter hic ordo ponitur Rubricarum.

dietarij colleccionem] The letters are to me more like cł, or coll than anything else, but I am not sure what they are.
Rubricarum] The MS. runs on without breaks.

The first note marker is printed at the end of “dietarij”, but must be intended for the following word.

Capitulum 1m est epistola de laude sanitatis & vtilitate bone diete.

Capitulum 2m est de illis in quibus consistit dieta.

Capitulum 3m de tocius co[r]poris & parcium disposicione.

Capitulum 4m est de Ayere eligendo & corrigendo.

Capitulum 5m de quantitate cibi & potus sumenda.

Capitulum 6m de ordine sumendi cibum & potum.

Capitulum 7m de tempore sumendi cibum & potum.

Capitulum 8m de quantitate cibi & potus sumendorum.

Capitulum 9m de pane eligendo.

Capitulum 10m de generibus potagiorum sumendis.

Capitulum 11m de carnibus vtendis & vitandis.

Capitulum 12m de ouis sumendis.

Capitulum 13m de lacticinijs vtendis.

Capitulum 14m de piscibus vtendis & vitandis.

Capitulum 15m de fructibus sumendis.

Capitulum 16m de condimentis & speciebus vtendis.

Capitulum 17m de potu eligendo.

Capitulum 18m de regimine replecionis & inanicionis.

Capitulum 19m de vsu coitus.

Capitulum 20m de excercicio & quiete.

Capitulum 21m de sompni & vigilie regimine.

Capitulum 22m de vsu accidencium anime.

Capitulum 23m de bona consuetudine diete tenenda.

Capitulum 24m de medicinis vicissim vtendis.

Capitulum 25m de aduersis nature infortunijs precauendis.

Capitulum 26m de deo semper colendo vt sanitatem melius tueatur.

Sharon Turner (Hist. of England, v. 498, note 35) says euphemistically of the part of this treatise printed by Hearne, that “it implies how much the Duke had injured himself by the want of self-government. It describes him in his 45th year, as having a rheumatic affection in his chest, with a daily morning cough. It mentions that his nerves had become debilitated by the vehemence of his laborious exercises, and from an immoderate frequency of pleasurable indulgences. It advises him to avoid north winds after a warm sun, sleep after dinner, exercise after society, frequent bathings, strong wine, much fruit, the flesh of swine, and the weakening gratification to which he was addicted. The last (chapter), ‘De Deo semper colendo, ut sanitatem melius tueatur,’ is worthy the recollection of us all.” It is too late to print the MS. in the present volume, but in a future one it certainly ought to appear.

Of Duke Humphrey’s character and proceedings after the Pope’s bull had declared his first marriage void, Sharon Turner further says:

“Gloucester had found the rich dowry of Jacqueline wrenched from his grasp, and, from so much opposition, placed beyond his attaining, and he had become satiated with her person. One of her attendants, Eleanor Cobham, had affected his variable fancy; and tho’ her character had not been spotless before, and she had surrendered her honour to his own importunities, yet he suddenly married her, exciting again the wonder of the world by his conduct, as in that proud day every nobleman felt that he was acting incongruously with the blood he had sprung from. His first wedlock was impolitic, and this unpopular; and both were hasty and self-willed, and destructive of all reputation for that dignified prudence, which his elevation to the regency of the most reflective and enlightened nation in Europe demanded for its example and its welfare. This injudicious conduct announced too much imperfection of intellect, not to give every advantage to his political rival the bishop of Winchester, his uncle, who was now struggling for the command of the royal mind, and for the predominance in the English government. He and the duke of Exeter were the illegitimate brothers of Henry the Fourth, and had been first intrusted with the king’s education. The internal state of the country, as to its religious feelings and interest, contributed to increase the differences which now arose between the prelate and his nephew, who is described by a contemporary as sullying his cultivated understanding and good qualities, by an ungoverned and diseasing love of unbecoming pleasures. It is strange, that in so old a world of the same continuing system always repeating the same lesson, any one should be ignorant that the dissolute vices are the destroyers of personal health, comfort, character, and permanent influence.”

After narrating Duke Humphrey’s death, Turner thus sums up his character:—

“The duke of Gloucester, amid failings that have been before alluded to, has acquired the pleasing epithet of The Good; and has been extolled for his promotion of the learned or deserving clergy. Fond of literature, and of literary conversation, he patronized men of talent and erudition. One is called, in a public record, his poet and orator; and Lydgate prefaces one of his voluminous works, with a panegyric upon him, written during the king’s absence on his French coronation, which presents to us the qualities for which, while he was living, the poet found him remarkable, and thought fit to commend him.”

These verses are in the Royal MS. 18 D 4, in the British Museum, and are here printed from the MS., not from Turner:—

Eek in this lond—I dar afferme a thyng—

Ther is a prince Ful myhty of puyssaunce,

A kynges sone, vncle to the kynge

Henry the sexte which is now in fraunce,

And is lieftenant, & hath the gouernaunce

Off our breteyne; thoruh was discrecion

He hath conserued in this regioun

Duryng his tyme off ful hihe prudence

Pes and quiete, and sustened rihte.

Ȝit natwithstandyng his noble prouydence

He is in deede prouyd a good knyht,

Eied as argus with reson and forsiht;

Off hihe lectrure I dar eek off hym telle,

And treuli deeme that he dothe excelle

hihe, rihte] These e-s represent the strokes through the h-s.

In vndirstondyng all othir of his age,

And hath gret Ioie with clerkis to commune;

And no man is mor expert off language.

Stable in studie alwei he doth contune,

Settyng a side alle chaunges of fortune;

And wher he louethe, ȝiff I schal nat tarie,

Witheoute cause ful lothe he is to varie.

chaunges] MS. thaunges.

Duc off Gloucestre men this prince calle;

And natwithstandyng his staat & dignyte,

His corage neuer doth appalle

To studie in bookis off antiquite;

Therin he hathe so gret felicite

Vertuousli hym silff to ocupie,

Off vicious slouth to haue the maistrie.

And with his prudence & wit his manheed

Trouthe to susteyne he fauour set a side;

And hooli chirche meyntenyng in dede,

That in this land no lollard dar abide.

As verrai support, vpholdere, & eek guyde,

Spareth non, but makethe hym silff strong

To punysshe alle tho that do the chirche wrong.

Thus is he both manly & eek wise,

Chose of god to be his owne knyhte;

And off o thynge he hath a synguler price,

That heretik dar non comen in his sihte.

In cristes feithe he stant so hol vpriht,

Off hooli chirche defence and [c]hampion

To chastise alle that do therto treson.

synguler] The l is rubbed.

And to do plesance to oure lord ihesu

He studieht euere to haue intelligence.

Reedinge off bookis bringthe in vertu,—

Vices excludyng, slouthe & necligence,—

Makethe a prince to haue experience

To know hym silff in many sundry wise,

Wher he trespaseth, his errour to chastise.

studieht] So in MS.

After mentioning that the duke had considered the book of ‘Boccasio, on the Fall of Princes,’ he adds, ‘and he gave me commandment, that I should, after my conning, this book translate him to do plesance.’ MS. 18 D 4.—Sharon Turner’s History of England, vol. vi. pp. 55—7.

P. S. When printing the 1513 edition of Wynkyn de Worde’s Boke of Keruynge, I was not aware of the existence of a copy of the earlier edition in the Cambridge University Library. Seeing this copy afterwards named in Mr Hazlitt’s new catalogue, I asked a friend to compare the present reprint with the first edition, and the result follows.

NOTE ON THE 1508 EDITION OF The Boke of Keruynge,

By the Rev. Walter Skeat, M.A.

The title-page of the older edition, of 1508, merely contains the words, “¶ Here begynneth the boke of Keruynge;” and beneath them is—as in the second edition of 1513—a picture of two ladies and two gentlemen at dinner, with an attendant bringing a dish, two servants at a side table, and a jester. The colophon tells us that it was “Enprynted by wynkyn de worde at London in Flete strete at the sygne of the sonne. The yere of our lorde M.CCCCC.VIII;” beneath which is Wynkyn de Worde’s device, as in the second edition.

The two editions resemble each other very closely, running page for page throughout, and every folio in the one begins at the same place as in the other. Thus the word “moche” is divided into mo-che in both editions, the “-che” beginning Fol. A. ii. b. Neither is altogether free from misprints, but these are not very numerous nor of much importance. It may be observed that marks of contraction are hardly ever used in the older edition, the word “ye” being written “the” at length, and instead of “hãged” we find “hanged.” On the whole, the first edition would seem to be the more carefully printed, but the nature of the variations between them will be best understood by an exact collation of the first two folios (pp. 151-3 of the present edition), where the readings of the first edition are denoted by the letter A. The only variations are these:—

P. 151.

lyft that swanne] lyfte that swanne A (a misprint).

frusshe that chekyn] fruche that chekyn A.

thye all maner of small byrdes] A omits of.

fynne that cheuen] fyne that cheuen A.

transsene that ele] trassene that ele A.

Here hendeth, &c.] Here endeth, &c. A.

Butler] Butteler A.

P. 152,

l. 5. trenchoures] trenchours A.

l. 12. hanged] hanged A.

l. 15. cannelles] canelles A.

l. 18, 19. ye] the (in both places) A.

l. 20. seasous] seasons A.

l. 23. after] After A.

l. 27. good] goot A.

l. 30. ye] the A.

l. 34. modon] modon A.

l. 36. sourayne] souerayne A.

P. 153.

ye] the A (several times).

l. 5. wyll] wyl A.

l. 9. rede] reed A. reboyle] reboyle not A.

l. 12. the reboyle] they reboyle A.

l. 17. lessynge] lesynge A.

l. 20. campolet] campolet A.

l. 21. tyer] tyerre A.

l. 22. ypocras] Ipocras A (and in the next line, and l. 26).

l. 24. gynger] gynger A.

l. 27. ren] hange A.

l. 29. your] youre A.

In l. 33, A has paradico, as in the second edition.

It will be readily seen that these variations are chiefly in the spelling, and of a trivial character. The only ones of any importance are, on p. 151, lyste (which is a misprint) for lyft, and trassene for transsene (cp. Fr. transon, a truncheon, peece of, Cot.); on p. 152, goot for good is well worth notice (if any meaning can be assigned to goot), as the direction to beware of good strawberries is not obvious; on p. 153, we should note lesynge for lessynge, and hange for ren, the latter being an improvement, though ren makes sense, as basins hung by cords on a perch may, like curtains hung on a rod, be said to run on it. The word ren was probably caught up from the line above it in reprinting.

The following corrections are also worth making, and are made on the authority of the first edition:—

P. 155,

l. 10, For treachour read trenchour.

l. 23. For so read se.

l. 24. For se’ read se.

P. 156,

l. 1. ony] on A.

l. 7. For it read is.

l. 15. ye so] and soo A. (No doubt owing to confusion between & and ye.)

l. 16. your] you A.

l. 29. For bo read be.

P. 157,

l. 20. For wich read with.

P. 158,

l. 3. For fumosytces read fumosytees.

l. 7. For pygous read pynyons (whence it appears that the pinion-bones, not pigeon’s-bones, are meant).

l. 25. The word “reyfe” is quite plain.

P. 160, ll. 18, &c. There is some variation here; the first edition has, after the word souerayne, the following:—“laye trenchours before hym / yf he be a grete estate, lay fyue trenchours / & he be of a lower degre, foure trenchours / & of an other degre, thre trenchours,” &c. This is better; the second edition is clearly wrong about five trenchers. This seems another error made in reprinting, the words lower degre being wrongly repeated.

P. 161,

l. 6. It may be proper to note the first edition also has broche.

P. 165,

l. 8. For for ye read for they.

l. 27. the[y]; in A they is printed in full.

P. 166,

l. 18. For raysyus read raysyns.

P. 167,

l. 21. For slytee read slytte.

P. 169,

ll. 10, 18. carpentes] carpettes A.

l. 14. shall] shake A.

l. 23. blanked] blanket A.

Nearly all the above corrections have already been made in the side-notes. Only two of them are of any importance, viz. the substitution of pynyons on p. 158, and the variation of reading on p. 160; in the latter case perhaps neither edition seems quite right, though the first edition is quite intelligible.

In our Cambridge edition (see p. 170, l. 5) this line about the pope is carefully struck out, and the grim side-note put “lower down”, with tags to show to what estate he and the cardinal and bishops ought to be degraded!

Note to p. xxiv. l. 10, “Our Women,” and Their Knowledge of Languages, p. xxv-vi.

“I might here (if I would, or had sufficient disposition of matter conceiued of the same) make a large discourse of such honorable ports, of such graue councellors, and noble personages, as giue their dailie attendance vpon the quéenes maiestie there. I could in like sort set foorth a singular commendation of the vertuous beautie, or beautifull vertues of such ladies and gentlewomen as wait vpon hir person, betweene whose amiable countenances and costlinesse of attire, there séemeth to be such a dailie conflict and contention, as that it is verie difficult for me to gesse, whether of the twaine shall beare awaie the preheminence. This further is not to be omitted, to the singular commendation of both sorts and sexes of our courtiers here in England, that there are verie few of them, which haue not the vse and skill of sundrie speaches, beside an excellent veine of writing before time not regarded. Would to God the rest of their liues and conuersations were correspondent to these gifts! for as our common courtiers (for the most part) are the best lerned and indued with excellent gifts, so are manie of them the worst men when they come abroad, that anie man shall either heare or read of. Trulie it is a rare thing with vs now, to heare of a courtier which hath but his owne language. And to saie how many gentlewomen and ladies there are, that beside sound knowledge of the Gréeke and Latine toongs, are thereto no lesse skilfull in the Spanish, Italian, and French, or in some one of them, it resteth not in me: sith I am persuaded, that as the noble men and gentlemen doo surmount in this behalfe, so these come verie little or nothing at all behind them for their parts; which industrie God continue, and accomplish that which otherwise is wanting!

“Beside these things I could in like sort set downe the waies and meanes, wherby our ancient ladies of the court doo shun and auoid idlenesse, some of them exercising their fingers with the needle, other in caul-worke, diuerse in spinning of silke, some in continuall reading either of the holie scriptures, or histories of our owne or forren nations about vs, and diuerse in writing volumes of their owne, or translating of other mens into our English and Latine toong, whilest the yoongest sort in the meane time applie their lutes, citharnes, prickesong, and all kind of musike, which they vse onelie for recreation sake, when they haue leisure, and are frée from attendance vpon the quéenes maiestie, or such as they belong vnto. How manie of the eldest sort also are skilfull in surgerie and distillation of waters, beside sundrie other artificiall practises perteining to the ornature and commendations of their bodies, I might (if I listed to deale further in this behalfe) easilie declare, but I passe ouer such maner of dealing, least I should séeme to glauer, and currie fauour with some of them. Neuerthelesse this I will generallie saie of them all, that as ech of them are cuning in somthing wherby they kéepe themselues occupied in the court, so there is in maner none of them, but when they be at home, can helpe to supplie the ordinarie want of the kitchen with a number of delicat dishes of their owne deuising, wherein the Portingall is their chéefe counsellor, as some of them are most commonlie with the clearke of the kitchen, who vseth (by a tricke taken vp of late) to giue in a bréefe rehearsall of such and so manie dishes as are to come in at euerie course throughout the whole seruice in the dinner or supper while: which bill some doo call a memoriall, other a billet, but some a fillet, bicause such are commonlie hanged on the file, and kept by the ladie or gentlewoman vnto some other purpose. But whither am I digressed?” —1577, W. Harrison, in Holinshed’s Chronicles, vol. I. p. 196, ed. 1586.