Fifteenth-Century Owners of Chaucer's Work: Cambridge, MagdaleneCollege MS Pepys 2006

Mary Carpenter Erler

The Chaucer Review, Volume 38, Number 4, 2004, pp. 401-414 (Article)

Published by Penn State University PressDOI: 10.1353/cr.2004.0010

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THE CHAUCER REVIEW, Vol. 38, No. 4, 2004.Copyright © 2004 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

FIFTEENTH-CENTURY OWNERS OF

CHAUCER’S WORK:

CAMBRIDGE, MAGDALENE COLLEGE

MS PEPYS 2006

by Mary C. Erler

Cambridge, Magdalene College MS Pepys 2006 is a composite of twomanuscripts owned by Samuel Pepys, for whom the joined pages servedas his collected works of Chaucer. Pepys’s book has recently received sub-stantial attention. It was edited in facsimile by A. S. G. Edwards (1985)and since then has been discussed by Charles Owen in his book on themanuscripts of the Canterbury Tales (1991), been described in the cata-logue of the Pepys library by Richard Beadle and Rosamund McKitterick(1992), and been included in M. C. Seymour’s catalogue of Chaucer manu-scripts (1995).1 Despite the consequent growth in our understanding ofthis manuscript, the question of its provenance still calls for attention and,in some cases, correction.2

It seems likely that the two manuscripts were put together by Pepys,who was responsible for their present binding.3 The manuscript’s firstportion will not be discussed here;4 instead the focus will be on its secondpart, a Chaucerian miscellany of the latter half of the fifteenth century.In it two names appear, one a member of a gentry family and the other aLondon mercer. Through the identity of these two men we can see some-thing of the milieu in which Chaucer’s work was being read fifty to a hun-dred years after his death.

In addition, the manuscript’s second half makes it one of the impor-tant witnesses to Chaucer’s minor poems. Twenty-one of these short versessurvive; this manuscript contains nine of them, the largest number ofChaucer’s short poems in any collection except for Oxford, Bodleian MSFairfax 16, which has thirteen. MS Pepys 2006 contains the Complaint ofMars, the Complaint of Venus, Anelida and Arcite, Lenvoy de Chaucer a Scogan,An ABC, the Complaint of Chaucer to His Purse, Truth, Merciles Beaute (thePepys manuscript is the only early witness), plus two lines from Fortune.

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Besides the minor poems, Pepys 2006’s second half also contains exam-ples of Chaucer’s instructive prose: the Tale of Melibee and the Parson’sPrologue and Tale, plus Chaucer’s Retraction. McKitterick and Beadle pointout that “2006 is the only known manuscript where the prose material inthe Canterbury Tales has all been excerpted together.”5

The manuscript’s contents thus represent two channels through whichinterest in Chaucer flowed at the end of the fifteenth century. Seth Lererhas described one group of such readers as “heirs to Chaucer’s squire . . .seeking to reimagine the courtly worlds of patronage and making dra-matized in Chaucer’s fiction.”6 The Complaint of Mars, the Complaint ofVenus, Merciles Beaute, and the Complaint of Chaucer to His Purse come fromthis world—now, in the second half of the fifteenth century, assuming acertain antiquarian coloration. The other interest to which Chaucer’swork appealed was the moral or didactic, satisfied here by Melibee, theParson’s Tale, Truth, and Lenvoy de Chaucer a Scogan.

In the second half of Pepys, two hands of about the same date areresponsible for the texts. A. I. Doyle has dated these hands 1450–1500.7

The first wrote Melibee and part of the Parson’s Tale; the second finishedthe Parson’s Tale, wrote the Retraction, and followed up with the lyrics. Theshift occurred in midphrase; Charles Owen comments, “The change inscribes could hardly have been planned.”8 Coming as it does in the mid-dle of the Parson’s Tale, this changeover prevents us from seeing the twoscribes as devoted to moral and to courtly interests, respectively. Whetherone person selected the material is impossible to tell, but because thewriting of the collection’s disparate items took place at about the sametime, it seems likely that the personal taste of a single figure is reflectedhere. We may assume the two names in the manuscript belong to its own-ers; whether one or both were also the commissioners or even the scribesof Pepys 2006 we cannot say.

The first name that is found in the manuscript belongs to John Kyriell.Written in a display hand at the top left of a blank leaf (p. 378) that hasbeen glued to its preceding leaf, the name can still be seen against thelight: Johannes Kiriel. John M. Manly and Edith Rickert discovered Kyriellas a member of a Kentish family (wrongly dating his death, an error thathas been reproduced by others),9 but Ethel Seaton was the first to iden-tify him precisely, pointing out that the owner might be the youngerbrother of the well-known Kentish military man Sir Thomas Kyriell.10 Thelatter’s exploits against France in the 1430s and 1440s are well docu-mented (he is twice mentioned in the Paston letters). After the battle ofSt. Albans in 1461 he was executed by order of Queen Margaret ofAnjou.11 Seaton speculated that the manuscript might originally havebelonged to Sir Thomas and have passed to his younger brother in 1472,when Sir Thomas’s widow died (see below).

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Sir Thomas’s brother, whom I will call John Kyriell I since there wereseveral men of that name, is the first candidate as the manuscript’s sig-natory. The earliest documentary evidence of him comes in 1441 whenhe sold some Surrey lands that his mother Margaret had left him in theparish of Chaldon.12 His bond with her must have been strong; when hemade his own will forty years later he asked to be buried beside her atWestenhangar, the family manor, should he die in Kent.13

About this time, perhaps, he married his first wife Jane, the daughterof Roger Clitherow of Goldston, Kent. On her brass she is shown wear-ing a remarkable horseshoe-shaped headdress, the bourroulet (Fig. 1).14

The rime royal stanza at the foot of her figure concludes, “Though ertheto erthe of kinde retorne / Prey that the sowle in blisse sojorne.” Shedied around 1454, probably during the time that her husband John wasa prisoner in France.15

Indeed, his imprisonment is the most notable feature of John Kyriell’slife. His will says that he “suffered great charges, being a prisoner inFrance twenty-five years and having to be ransomed.”16 We can date hisreturn to England almost exactly. His sister-in-law Cecily Kyriell, hisbrother Sir Thomas’s widow, made her will in April 1472, leaving all hergoods and silver at Westenhangar to John Kyriell the elder on his returnto England from abroad. Should he die out of England the goods wereto be delivered to John Kyriell the younger, bastard.17 Two months afterCecily’s death, John Kyriell was back in England. In June 1472 the patentrolls show that, with two others, he was appointed “to the command ofan armed power which the king is sending to sea to resist his enemiesand rebels.” In the same month he was listed as captain of a ship calledLe Garse, with a commission to take mariners “for the resistance of theking’s enemies.”18

It is possible that the inheritance from his brother’s widow allowedJohn Kyriell finally to pay his ransom and return to England. If Kyriellhad been in France for precisely twenty-five years, the date of his capturewould have been 1447. However his brother Sir Thomas was taken pris-oner at Formigny in 1450,19 and if John had been captured with him wemight understand the dating of his imprisonment as approximate, from1450 to 1472.

Through the rest of the 1470s Kent records are full of his activity. In1474 John Kyriell with six others was appointed “to enquire into all ship-ments of wools [and other merchandise] which ought to repair to thestaple of Calais contrary to [certain statutes] and to certify theron.”20 In1475 he sailed to France again, with a commission to take mariners fora ship called La Fawckon “for the conduct of an armed force which theking has ordered to go with him to France for the recovery of thatrealm.”21 (The chamberlain’s records from the Kent town of Lydd that

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Fig. 1. Brass of Joan Clitherow, wife of John Kyriell I, ca. 1455, at Ash-near-Sandwich, Kent, reproduced from Muriel Claydon, Catalogue of the Rubbings ofBrasses and Incised Slabs (London, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1915; reprinted1968), plate 50.

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year show a payment to “the soldiers that went with John Keryell.”)22 TheFrench excursion must have been a brief one, since other records showhim at home in Kent during the latter part of the 1470s. In 1476 and1478 he twice presented an incumbent to the parish church ofWestenhangar (he is here called “esquire”).23 In 1478 he was on a com-mission with the sheriff of Kent to arrest Richard Love, merchant.24

We are given a surprising glimpse of the end of his life, however, by JohnLeland’s gossipy jottings. Getting his Christian name wrong, Leland says,

Syr Thomas Kiriell was prisoner in Fraunce, and that longe; aftarthat he cam home to libertye he maried one ChicheleysChamberlaine of London’s doughtar caulyd Elizabethe. ThisChicheley dwellid in Hartelane [Harp Lane] in a syde of TowreStrete, where now is the Bakers Hawle.25

Sylvia Thrupp provides a very full description of this London house,based on the renovations the Bakers undertook when they bought it in1506, just eight years after Elizabeth Chichele Kyriell’s death, from theson of one of her executors. Harp Lane is a short north-south street, run-ning between Great Tower Street and the present Lower Thames Street,just east of the parish church of St. Dunstan. As Thrupp points out, it was“in the best residential district of medieval London, where many of thegreat merchants had their mansions.” It had in fact been a London mer-chant’s house for at least a century and a half. Thrupp traces its owner-ship from Elizabeth Chichele’s father and grandfather John and William,respectively a London chamberlain and alderman, back to RichardLyons, a vintner who was executed during the rising of 1381, and ulti-mately to Nicholas Pyk, a merchant of the reign of Edward III.26

Leland continues:

Chicheley [that is, Kyriell’s wife’s father] was brothar to ChycheleyArchbyshope of Cauntorbery. Aftar Kyryell had this howse by theright of Elizabethe his wyfe. Kyryell had no children by hir; aftarhis deathe she was maried unto Ser Rafe Ascheton, KnyghtMarciale, and he being deade she was thirdly maryed to Ser JohnBourcher uncle to the last Erle of the Bouchers of Essex, she hadnevar childe.27 Edward Poynings made pacte with Boucher andElezabethe to have Ostanger aftar theyr deathe and to enter intoit they lyuynge, paiet than [blank]. Checheleyne [for Chichele,chamberlain] of London had 24 children.28

John Kyriell died in March 1483, eleven years after his release fromFrench custody. His will contains only two personal bequests.29 In one ofthem he left twenty shillings to a certain Margaret Hosier and we might

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wonder if this woman was the mother of his bastard son John. A Londonlife is visible here as well as a Kentish one: he was a parishioner of St.Dunstan in the East and he owned lands and tenements in London,unspecified (certainly the Bakers’ Hall property was one of these). Hiswife remarried quickly, as was the custom, in about four months (beforeJuly 17 of that year).30 Kyriell left the remainder of his Kent manors ofWalmer and Mongham, after Elizabeth’s death, to his bastard son “JohnKyriell the younger who is to pay her a hundred marks, according to anagreement between the parties.” The will continues, “But if the said Johnclaim any more or other lands of the testator, or pretend that there hasbeen other bargain between them, the testator repudiates and denies anysuch bargain, but affirms that the hundred marks aforesaid are due to him.”

John Kyriell I is not necessarily the man who signed the Pepys manu-script. It might equally have been his bastard son John Kyriell II or evenhis grandson of the same name. John Kyriell II appears in the Lydd civicrecords in a way very similar to his father. In 1483–84 the town “paid inexpenses for John Keryell when he wanted to have men for the king.”31

A Kentish mariner like his father, he was named in 1488 as master of aship called the Margaret of Hythe and was empowered to tax fishermenin the Cinque Ports who might wish to fish in English ports.32 In a codi-cil to the 1490 will of Sir John Fogge, the husband of his cousin AliceKyriell Fogge (Sir Thomas’s daughter), Fogge specified that John Kyriellwas to receive twenty marks yearly out of the manor of Westenhangar.33

In his own will, made March 16, 1504,34 he asked to be buried in thePremonstratensian abbey of St. Radegund’s (Bradsole),35 about threemiles equidistant from Dover and Folkestone, near the sepulchre ofBartraham Kyriell in the high chancel (perhaps a dead child, since I havefound no other mention of a Kyriell family member of this name). At hisdeath he was living at Bellavue, near Lympne, which he left to his wifeAlice, along with lands in Hythe, Romney, and Bonnington. His Sussexmanor of Brinchley went to his son John when he became twenty-four—and this man, who has so far eluded inquiry, is John Kyriell III.36 It is infact not impossible that, living as he did in the first decades of the six-teenth century, the name in the manuscript might be his. Thus the manu-script signature might belong to one of three men: John Kyriell I whodied in 1483; John Kyriell II who died in 1504; and John Kyriell III, whoflourished in the early sixteenth century.

The second inscription in the manuscript reads: “Iste liber constatWillielmo ffetypace mercerij londoniensis.”37 Manly and Rickert suggestedthat this was William, the youngest son of an extremely wealthy Londondraper, John Fetplace or Fetiplace (the spellings of this name are many),who made his will in 1464.38 John’s father, Thomas Fettyplace esquire,had made a great marriage to Beatrice, the widow of Gilbert, lord Talbot,brother of the first earl of Shrewsbury.39 She was Portuguese and perhaps

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connected in some way with its royal family. Thomas and Beatrice mighthave met at a great Lisbon tournament held by King John I of Portugalin 1414.40 Probably in recognition of his mother’s elevated Portugueseconnection, in 1455 John Fettyplace was employed by Henry VI as a mes-senger to carry the English king’s gift of the Order of the Garter to theKing of Portugal. He is here called “oure welbeloved Squier.”41 The kingpaid one hundred marks to Matthew Philip, a London goldsmith, for thegilt garter ornamented with pearls and flowers, and John Fettyplacereceived forty pounds for his “costs and expenses.”42

At least two surviving books may have been associated with JohnFettyplace and his circle. First, Manly and Rickert noted that his will“shows that John Fetplace was the type of man who might have owned aChaucer. He seems to have married the widow of Robert Horne (cf. thisname in Troilus MS Harl. 4912).”43 John Fettyplace’s wife Joan hadindeed been earlier married to Robert Horne, whom Sylvia Thrupp iden-tifies as a fishmonger and alderman in 1444–56.44 Thrupp says he wasdead by 1468; if he was the first husband of Joan Fettyplace he was deadby August 22, 1464, when John Fettyplace made his will leaving twentypounds to be divided between Robert, John, and Anne Horne, childrenof his wife Joan.45 (The marriage has been attributed erroneously toWilliam Fettyplace by Edwards and subsequent writers.) Second, M. R.James noted that the inscription “Iste liber constat Johanni Fetiplace” isfound in an early fourteenth-century book of statutes, Trinity CollegeCambridge MS O.5.33 (1314).46

John left a will of great practical piety (twenty pounds to poor house-holders in and out of London) combined with an unusual educationalconcern. For five years after his death money was to be set aside forpreachers at Paul’s Cross every Sunday and at St. Mary Spital the threedays in Easter week.47 When he died in 1464 his four sons were underage. A 1475 document records the transmission of part of his youngestson William’s inheritance, and Manly and Rickert suggested that this datesignaled William’s coming of age.48

In his 1528 will,49 William’s devout orientation, like his father’s, tookan educational form. Instead of a sermon series, however, Williamendowed a school as part of his chantry at Childrey, Berkshire, a schoolwhich was to teach “all boys and persons coming thither for the sake oflearning” their prayers, the elements of religion, and the tenets of behav-ior. If anyone wished, he might progress to the study of grammar, that is,of Latin.50 In addition William’s will speaks of his offenses against his“even Christian” and his misuse of “such goods as I have occupied” andit asks for God’s infinite mercy “to put between my soul and his right-eousness at the day of my dreadful judgment.” William and his wife areremembered by brasses in their Berkshire parish where they appearthree-quarters length rising from tombs clad in their shrouds.51

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William Fettyplace, the Berkshire gentleman who died in 1528 afteran exemplary life, was certainly the youngest son of the great draper androyal servant John Fettyplace. Whether he was Willliam Fettyplace, theLondon mercer who signed MS Pepys 2006, cannot be absolutely demon-strated. The Mercers’ Company admissions do not list a WilliamFettyplace,52 and the inscription in Pepys 2006 might be the sole recordof a William Fettyplace, mercer, were it not for the recent discovery byAnne Sutton, former archivist of the Mercers’ Company, of a previouslyunpublished reference. In a 1494–95 London customs roll WilliamFettyplace is named as importing a large quantity of linen, the main mer-cery cloth. The various kinds of linen listed came from Holland, Ghent,Brussels, and Tournai, and totaled about 340 pieces, valued at 126pounds.53 The customs roll thus supports the slender evidence of themanuscript signature, and confirms William Fettyplace as a prosperousLondon entrepreneur.

The earliest mention of William Fettyplace in Berkshire comes twoyears later in 1497.54 Though no records explicitly link the London manand the Berkshire one, the evidence can accommodate a single life—onelived first in the capital and later away from it. Hence we might imagine,though we cannot prove, an early career in London, say from a coming-of-age in 1475 until a move to Berkshire in 1497—twenty-two years, atwhich point William Fettyplace would have been in his forties—and thena later life in Berkshire, in a thirty-year period from 1497 until death in1528, aged about 74.

The question of how the manuscript passed between the two familiesmay come down to where it was transmitted. Both Kyriells and Fettyplaceswere active in London, as we have seen, and the manuscript might havebeen sold in the capital’s secondhand book market. But the two familieswere also located in the same county. Though the Fettyplaces’ principalfocus was Berkshire, they too, like the Kyriells, owned property in Kent.Since the early fifteenth century they had held the manor of NewLangport, Kent, a mile west of Lydd55—the Kent town whose civic recordsshow payments to local men mustered by both John Kyriell I and II. BothJohn Kyriell I’s manor of Westenhangar and John Kyriell II’s house ofBellavue, at Lympne, were about twelve miles from Lydd, while John KyriellII owned lands even closer, in Romney, about three or four miles away.56 Ifthe Fettyplaces and Kyriells were living within a few miles of each other, itmight be that the manuscript changed hands in Kent, perhaps either atthe death of John Kyriell I in 1483 or at his son’s decease in 1504.

The conjunction of a gentry name and a merchant one in this manu-script has seemed unusual, yet in their social level the Kyriell andFettyplace families bear comparison. In both cases the families are rep-resented by an important figure at the midpoint of the fifteenth century.Sir Thomas Kyriell (d. 1461) was a member of the landed gentry with

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extensive service at court, in the military, and locally as a justice of thepeace and M.P. for Kent. At the same time he had ties with some ofLondon’s ruling class: he was at least twice part of land transactions thatincluded Philip Malpas, an important London draper and alderman,sheriff and M.P. at mid-century.57 The career of his younger brother, JohnKyriell I, was less distinguished, though like Sir Thomas’s it combinedKentish soldiering and London activity: marriage into one of London’spremiere families, the Chicheles, and life in what had for 150 years beenan important London merchant’s house.

The Fettyplace family also had a prominent mid-fifteenth century rep-resentative. John Fettyplace (d. 1464), though he is primarily identifiedas a London draper, had been in royal service, where he is referred to as“squire,” and one of his sons, Sir Thomas (William Fettyplace’s brother),was knighted.58 Both Sir Thomas Kyriell and John Fettyplace were appar-ently connected with Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham. In the1450s Kyriell was a feofee with the duke in the transfer of two manors.59

Fettyplace included the duke as a soul to be prayed for in the twenty-yearobit he set up at St. Margaret Lothbury, in London.60

Although in the succeeding generations of each family the man whomay have owned the manuscript (John Kyriell I or II, William Fettyplace)is a less visible figure than his predecessor (Sir Thomas Kyriell, JohnFettyplace), the families are not dissimilar. If in the middle of the fifteenthcentury the focus is on court service, by the end of the century a movementoutward is traceable, to a sphere of activity primarily regional rather thancentral. Indeed, what this biographical research shows most sharply is howclose the strands that we label “gentry” and “merchant” can be.

Certainly MS Pepys 2006 is representative of the growing taste forChaucerian anthologies so prominent in the second half of the fifteenthcentury.61 But further characterizing the manuscript’s content, and henceassessing its intended audience, is somewhat difficult since the range ofits material is unusual in several ways. The pairing of Melibee and Parson’sTale in a miscellany is unique. According to Manly and Rickert, threeanthologies have Melibee only, while one presents Melibee with the Monk’sTale. (Elsewhere Melibee appears only in more or less complete antholo-gies of the Canterbury Tales.)62

The presence of the minor poems, too, registers oddly in combinationwith instructive material. Discussing the fifteenth-century manuscriptanthologies of the Canterbury Tales, Daniel Silvia observes that these col-lections usually present either the courtly tales or the moral ones.63 YetPepys 2006 appears to combine these interests, including both seriousand mocking works on love (Mars versus Merciles Beaute) and serious andmocking works on the business of life (Truth versus Purse). Two othermanuscripts have about the same number of minor poems as Pepys’snine: Trinity College Cambridge MS R.3.20 has eight and MS Harley 7333

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has seven. Yet both are bigger, more inclusive anthologies, the formeroriginally intended as part of a larger compilation, the latter made for areligious house and perhaps read communally there.64 Pepys seems bestcompared with Fairfax 16, the manuscript including the largest numberof minor poems (thirteen), since both appear to be designed for per-sonal rather than institutional perusal, and to display the preference ofan individual. The compiler of Pepys 2006 was actively interested both inChaucer’s presentation of sophisticated behavior and in his mockery ofit—and, it seems, in affirming the religious values of forgiveness andworldly transcendence as well.65

If its choice of texts makes Pepys slightly unusual, its ownership is moreconventional. Prominent members of both families flourished at mid-century, a bit earlier than the names found in the manuscript—SirThomas Kyriell (+1461) and John Fettyplace (+1464)—and the formerhas been suggested as a possible owner or patron of Pepys 2006. Thecareers of both men are very like that of the patron of Fairfax 16, Sir JohnStanley (d. 1469), who commissioned his manuscript about 1450. Thecommon notes are military duties, service in the royal household, andlocal importance. Stanley was sheriff of Anglesey, captain of Carnavon,usher of the royal chamber, and M.P. for Surrey, a pattern visible in thelives of Kyriell and Fettyplace as well.66

Even if the manuscript is considered to be substantially later in thecentury, however, and if its first owners or patrons were the men whosenames we read in its pages, John Kyriell I and/or II and WilliamFettyplace, its audience is still a familiar one. Both Kyriell I and Fettyplacewere younger sons, while Kyriell II was illegitimate, though recognizedby his family. The presence of their names in Pepys 2006 has seemed toimply either a broadening of the manuscript’s readership or a slightsocial descent in its audience. Fettyplace’s name in particular has beenread in this way, since he was a London mercer. It might be preferable,however, to see these names as witnesses to a degree of social change inthe occupations and interests of the gentry families whose memberswould, from the first, have been readers of Chaucer. In the slight shiftvisible in the careers of the Kyriells and Fettyplaces between the midpointof the fifteenth century and its end, we see a movement from court ser-vice and/or great merchant involvement at the center to a regionalemphasis—local military or political service in Kent or Berkshire. Sucha shift may say more about the social realignment of these families thanit does about real changes in Chaucer’s readership.

Fordham UniversityBronx, New York(erler@fordham.edu)

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I am grateful to George R. Keiser and to Anne F. Sutton for substantial help in writingthis essay, as well as to the anonymous readers for The Chaucer Review and its editors.

1. A. S. G. Edwards, introduction, Manuscript Pepys 2006: A Facsimile, Magdalene CollegeCambridge . . . (Norman, Okla., and Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1985); Charles A. Owen, Jr., TheManuscripts of the Canterbury Tales (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1991); Rosamond McKitterick andRichard Beadle, Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College Cambridge, Vol. V:Manuscripts (Cambridge, Eng., 1992), xxvi, 30–44; M. C. Seymour, A Catalogue of ChaucerManuscripts: Volume I, Works before the Canterbury Tales (Aldershot, 1995), 134–36. The MSwas described earlier by M. R. James, Bibliotheca Pepysiana III: Catalogue of the Manuscripts(London, 1914), 60–63, and by John M. Manly and Edith Rickert, eds., The Text of theCanterbury Tales, 8 vols. (Chicago, 1940), 1:406–9.

2. George R. Keiser’s review of the facsimile edition raises questions about the MS’sprovenance and provides valuable biographical information about the names in its pages:Studies in the Age of Chaucer 9 (1987): 212–15.

3. Edwards refers to “Pepys, who was presumably the first to bind them together” (MSPepys 2006, xxx). McKitterick and Beadle say, “In the absence of other evidence there aregrounds for thinking that the two manuscripts may have been bound together after theycame into Pepys’s possession, at some time before 1697 . . . Their textual relationship, how-ever, may go back to their origins in the fifteenth century, since as [Aage] Brusendorff[The Chaucer Tradition (London, 1925), 195] points out, they appear to have derived anumber of their shared texts from sources also used by Caxton” (Catalogue, 44). Owenbelieves, however, that “the textual affiliations of the two tales [Mel and ParsT] would seemto rule out the conjecture . . . that the P[epys] texts were copied from a printed source”(Manuscripts, 116). That Pepys joined the two MSS thus seems likely but not certain.

4. A. I. Doyle has dated the hands of the MS’s first half as “midfifteenth century”(McKitterick and Beadle, Catalogue, 43). It contains The Three Kings of Cologne, Lydgate’sComplaint of the Black Knight, Temple of Glass, and Serpent of Division, Benjamin Burgh’s CatoMinor and Cato Major, Chaucer’s LGW, HF, PF, and ABC (all imperfect), plus all of For,Mars, and Ven. In addition to the sources listed above, for the MS’s first half, see George B.Pace and Alfred David, eds., A Variorum Edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Volume V: TheMinor Poems, Part One (Norman, Okla., 1982), 3, 24, 25; and Larry D. Benson, ed., TheRiverside Chaucer, 3rd edn. (Boston, 1987), 1076–91 (notes by Laila Z. Gross).

5. McKitterick and Beadle, Catalogue, 40. The explicit to Mel reads, “Here endethChauceres owne tale of Thopas and of Melibee and Prudence his wyfe,” thus suggestingthat a lost version of Thop might have preceded Mel in the MS.

6. Seth Lerer, chapter two, “Reading like the Squire: Chaucer, Lydgate, Clanvowe, andthe Fifteenth-Century Anthology,” in Chaucer and His Readers (Princeton, 1993), 57–84.

7. McKitterick and Beadle, Catalogue, 43, hands D and E. Though this palaeographi-cal dating is authoritative, later dating has also been offered. Manly and Rickert suggested1470–1500, presumably referring just to the MS’s latter part (Text 1:408). Edwards quotesPace and David as dating four of the MS’s lyrics “late fifteenth century” and adds that hewould prefer “very late fifteenth century” (MS Pepys 2006, xxiii). Seymour gives 1475–1500for the latter half of Pepys 2006 (Catalogue, 156).

8. Owen, Manuscripts, 116.9. Manly and Rickert speak of “the John Kiriel (d. 1490) who came of a distinguished

Kentish family related by marriage to the Stourtons, Cobhams, and Chicheleys, who wereinterested in MSS” (Text, 1:408). They cite no source; the mistaken date of 1490 has beenfollowed by Edwards and by McKitterick and Beadle.

10. Ethel Seaton, Sir Richard Roos c. 1410–1482, Lancastrian Poet (London, 1961), 106–8.Seaton gives some information about Sir Thomas Kyriell’s connection to the Cobhams(107); the Chicheley marriage of John Kyriell I will be treated in this essay.

11. For Sir Thomas Kyriell’s life, see Josiah C. Wedgwood, The History of Parliament:Biographies of the Members of the Commons House 1439–1509, 2 vols. (London, 1936), 1:521–22.Wedgwood includes the references to the Paston letters (1:43, 125).

12. Calendar of the Close Rolls [hereafter CCR] 1435–41 (London, 1937), 491.13. For the 1483 will of John Kyriell I, see CCR 1476–1485 (London, 1954), no. 1013.14. A Parisian book of hours of the mid-fifteenth century shows a woman receiving

communion wearing an identical headdress: London, British Library Additional MS 18192,

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fol. 196, reproduced in Peter Coss, The Lady in Medieval England 1000–1500 (Stroud,Gloucestershire, 1998), 83.

15. Muriel Claydon, Catalogue of the Rubbings of Brasses and Incised Slabs, Victoria andAlbert Museum (London, 1915; repr. 1968), 24, 85, plate 50.

16. CCR 1476–85, no. 1013.17. Prob 11/6/68v (PCC 9 Wattys), quoted in J. Renton Dunlop, “Pedigree of the

Family of Crioll, or Kyriell, of co. Kent,” Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, 5th ser., 6(1926–28): 254–61.

18. Calendar of Patent Rolls [hereafter CPR] 1467–1477 (London, 1900), 340, 355(esquire), 489, 515 (no designation).

19. Wedgwood, History of Parliament, 1:521. 20. CPR 1467–77, 489.21. CPR 1467–77, 515.22. Arthur Finn, ed., Records of Lydd (Ashford, Kent, 1911), 294; for two other payments

in that year to John Kyriell, see 293, 295.23. T. Shipden Frampton, “St. Mary’s, Westenhangar (Church Destroyed), Rectors and

Patrons,” Archaeologia Cantiana 31 (1916): 82–91, at 89.24. CPR 1477–85, 78.25. Lucy Toulmin Smith, ed., The Itinerary of John Leland . . . 1535–1543, 5 vols.

(London, 1907–10): 4.vii:34.26. Sylvia Thrupp, A Short History of the Worshipful Company of Bakers of London (London,

1933), 162–65. It is visible, with its garden, on the “Agas” map, reproduced in AdrianProckter and Robert Taylor, eds., The A to Z of Elizabethan London, London TopographicalSociety 122 (London, 1979), map 25.

27. John Kyriell I’s widow’s will (she died as Elizabeth Bourchier) is dated February 10,1498; Prob 11/11/259–59v (PCC 32 Horne). She died April 2, 1499, according to theCalendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem . . . Henry VII, Vol. 2 (London, 1915), no. 196 (hereafterCIPM).

28. Toulmin Smith, Itinerary 4.vii:34.29. He was dead before April 1, 1483, when a writ of diem clausit extremum was issued

(Catalogue of Fine Rolls [hereafter CFR] 1471–1485 [London, 1959], 237).30. On July 17, 1483, Elizabeth Kyriell and Sir Rafe Ashton (probably by this time her

second husband) disposed of the manor of Stokbury which John Kyriell had left her (CCR1476–85, no. 1113, but see CIPM Hen VII, no. 196).

31. Finn, Records of Lydd, 315, and for a reference in 1484–85, see 317.32. CPR 1485–94, 276.33. Arthur Hussey, Ashford Wills, Being Abstracts of the Wills of Residents in the Town of

Ashford, Kent, AD 1461–1558 (Ashford, Kent, and London, 1938), 44.34. A. W. Hughes Clarke, ed., Kentish Wills. Genealogical Extracts from Sixteenth-Century

Wills in the Consistory Court at Canterbury (London, 1929), 6. The will is CanterburyConsistory Court, vol. viii, fol. 51.

35. W. H. St. John Hope, “On the Premonstratensian Abbey of St. Radegund, Bradsole,in Poltin, near Dover,” Archaeologia Cantiana 14 (1882): 140–52; William Page, ed., VictoriaCounty History [hereafter VCH] of Kent (London, 1926), 2:172–75. A house with an averageof seven to ten canons, St. Radegund’s “frequent disorder” is referred to, and chargesagainst its abbot in 1500 are cited, in Joseph A. Gribben, The Premonstratensian Order in LateMedieval England (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2001), 54, 60–61, 246.

36. Though Dunlop believed that the John Cryell of Westwell, Kent, who made a willand died in 1542. was John Kyriell III (“Pedigree,” 258), this man belonged to a later gen-eration, and may have been John Kyriell IV. The will is that of young man, unmarried, theonly bequests fashionable clothing left to servants and male friends (Prob 11/14/108–108v[PCC 14 Spert]).

37. Another inscription below it reads “Iste Liber Constat Thome W.”38. Manly and Rickert, Text, 1:406–9.39. For Gilbert, lord Talbot, who died before Rouen in 1419, see Dictionary of National

Biography, 22 vols. (Oxford, 1973; repr. edn), 19:319.40. J. R. Planché, “On the Monument of a Supposed Princess of Portugal in East

Shefford Church, Berkshire,” and “Geneological Notice of the Family of Fettiplace,”

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Journal of the British Archaeological Association 16 (1860): 145–51 and 201–4, respectively.41. Thomas Rymer, Foedera, Conventiones, Literae . . . inter Reges Angliae . . . , 3rd edn., 10

vols. (London, 1741), 5.ii:64, where the gorgeous garter robes Henry sent are described.As further evidence that John Fettyplace had been in royal service, Seaton cites a 1452–53reference to his position as one of the queen’s squires, in Duchy of Lancaster (D.L.)Accounts 5/8, fol. 11v (Sir Richard Roos, 108).

42. Frederick Devon, ed., Issues of the Exchequer . . . (London, 1837), 480.43. Manly and Rickert, Text, 1:409.44. Sylvia Thrupp, The Merchant Class of Medieval London (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1948), 350.

Thrupp cites A. B. Beaven, The Aldermen of the City of London, 2 vols. (London, 1908–13),2:9, and Reginald R. Sharpe, ed., Calendar of the Letter-Books . . . of the City of London . . . LetterBook L . . . Temp. Edward IV-Henry VII (London, 1912), fol. 57v for Robert Horne.

45. John Fettyplace’s lavish will is Prob 11/5/36v–38v (PCC 5 Godyn).46. M. R. James, ed., The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College Cambridge, 4

vols. (Cambridge, Eng., 1900–12), 3:334–35.47. John Fetplace, draper, left 800 pounds to his eldest son, and to his other three sons

and one daughter 400 pounds each. He does not appear in A. H. Johnson, ed., The Historyof the Worshipful Company of Drapers of London, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1914–22).

48. Manly and Rickert, Text, 1:409. On September 1, 1475, Henry Nevell, WilliamFuller, and William Milne, ironmongers, and John Smart, grocer, entered into bond for ahundred pounds “for the payment into the Chamber by the said Henry of a like sum tothe use of William, son of John Fetplace, late draper, on his coming of age” (Sharpe, LetterBook L, 131–32).

49. William Fettyplace’s will is Prob 11/23/42v–44v (PCC 6 Jankyn).50. A. F. Leach, “Childrey School,” VCH Berkshire, 2:275–76.51. Claydon, Catalogue, 137, 148, reproduced in T. H. Morley, Monumental Brasses of

Berkshire (1924), 78–79.52. I am grateful to Dr. Anne F. Sutton, former archivist to the Mercers’ Company, for

this information and for the following reference.53. William Fettyplace imported two “maudes” and one chest containing 80 pieces of

Holland (linen), 90 pieces “gentish” (Ghent-made linen), 70 pieces “brussell” (Brussels-made linen), 29 1/2 pieces of “dornykes” (coarser linen), 18 pieces of “verdure” (tapestrydecorated with greenery or trees) and 48 pieces of linen. The glosses are Dr. Sutton’s, whocomments that “all the items were ‘mercery’” (PRO E 101/79/5, m.2, Tonnage andPoundage Account, Michaelmas 1494 to Michaelmas 1495).

54. William Fettyplace witnessed the release of a Berkshire manor on December 8,1497 (CCR 1485–1500 [London, 1955], no. 1116).

55. Edward Hasted, The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, 2nd edn.12 vols. (Canterbury, 1797–1801): 8:430. Ann Brown notes that “rich gentry who had inter-ests both in London and elsewhere were widespread in the south-east” and points to thepreponderance in Kent of the “very wealthy Fishmongers, Drapers, Grocers andGoldsmiths” (“London and North-West Kent in the Later Middle Ages: The Developmentof a Land Market,” Archaeologica Cantiana 92 [1976]: 145–55, at 145).

56. Will of John Kyriell II, summarized in Clarke, Kentish Wills, 6.57. CCR 1447–54, 484; CCR 1454–61, 347; and see Wedgwood, History of Parliament,

1:569.58. Although the VCH Berkshire, 4:35, regularly refers to John Fettyplace’s father as Sir

Thomas Fettyplace (1395–1442/6), Wedgwood calls him only “esquire” (History ofParliament, 1:321).

59. CCR 1447–54, 484; CCR 1454–61, 347.60. John Fettyplace’s will, Prob 11/5/36v–38v (PCC 5 Godyn).61. Julia Boffey and John J. Thompson, “Anthologies and Miscellanies: Production and

Choice of Texts,” in Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375–1475, ed. Jeremy Griffithsand Derek Pearsall (Cambridge, Eng., 1989), 279–315, at 280.

62. Manly and Rickert, Text, 4:148. MSS Arundel 140 (ca. 1450–60), Stonyhurst B.XXIII(ca. 1440–60), and Sloane 1009 (ca. 1477–96) have Mel only; Huntington HM 144 (ca.1480–1500) has Mel and MkT.

63. Daniel S. Silvia, “Some Fifteenth-Century Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales,” in

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Chaucer and Middle English Studies in Honour of Rossell Hope Robbins, ed. Beryl Rowland(Kent, Ohio, 1974), pp. 153–63. Courtly tales include KnT, MLT, ClT; moral tales are PrT,SNT, MkT, Mel, PhyT, Retr.

64. For Trinity College Cambridge MS R.3.20, a John Shirley manuscript, see R. J. Lyall,“Materials: The Paper Revolution,” in Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375–1475,ed. Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge, Eng., 1989), 11–30, at 19–20. Harley7333 was made in Leicester for a house of Austin canons, St. Mary le Pratis; see Boffey andThompson, “Anthologies,” 287.

65. Thorlac Turville-Petre has thoughtfully analyzed the personal significance of theChaucerian and other texts chosen for inclusion in a mid-century psalter: “Poems byChaucer in John Harpur’s Psalter,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 21 (1999): 301–13.

66. Wedgwood, History of Parliament, 1:797–99, and see the introduction to JohnNorton-Smith’s edition, Bodleian Library Manuscript Fairfax 16 (London, 1979).

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