University of Virginia Library

I am grateful to the American Council of Learned Societies and the Bureau of General Research at Kansas State University for aid in support of the research used to prepare this study.

"Lincoln Cathedral Library MS. 91: Life and Milieu of the Scribe," Studies in Bibliography, 32 (1979), 158-179. Unless otherwise specified, page numbers in parentheses in the text of this paper refer to this study.

Yorkshire Archbishop's Register 5A, f. 235v. Material from this and the documents cited in notes 3 and 11 is quoted with permission of the Borthwick Institute for Historical Research, York.

The bequest by William Thornton, apparently the scribe's son, of "my newe messebuke to the maner of Newton in Rydale to serve in seynt Peter chapell to the worlde end" (Probate Register 5, f. 353r) suggests the continued importance of the chapel to the family. Generations later, the chapel was not much more than a memory, but still a proud one. In 1705 Alice Thornton set forth in her will a plan for "rebuilding the chappell at East Newton, which was long since demolished, desiring . . . that the service of God may be there celebrated according to the order of the Church of England, as now by law established" (The Autobiography of Mrs. Alice Thornton, of East Newton, ed. Charles Jackson, Surtees Soc. Publ., No. 62 (1875), p. 334). One wonders whether the recusant Thorntons heard the Roman mass there.

In my earlier study, following the lead of the published calendars of these documents, I gave the dates as 1443, 1449, and 1468.

Caroline C. Morewood, "Great Edston," The Victoria History of the County of York, North Riding, ed. William Page (1870), I.476-477.

York Memorandum Book, ed. Joyce W. Perry, Surtees Soc. Publ., No. 186 (1973), p. 127.

Imbedded in the 1468 entry in the Close Rolls (PRO: C.54/320) is an English document setting forth the entailment of Great Edston and Northolm by Henry Holthorp in 1459. (Henry's father William was brother to Katherine, mother of Robert Stillyngton.) The use of the vernacular in the 1459 document suggests that Henry Holthorp may have been able to read English, but not Latin.

E. F. Jacob, The Fifteenth Century, 1399-1485 (1961), p. 634, describes Stillyngton as a Cambridge academic, but see DNB 18.1265-66 and A. B. Emden, Biographical Register of The University of Oxford to A.D. 1500 (1959), 3.1777-79.

For a fuller discussion of this manuscript, see G. R. Keiser, "Rawlinson MS. A.393: Another Findern Manuscript," Transactions, Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 7 (1980), 445-448.

For information concerning Pikeryng's landholdings, see Inquisitions and Assessments relating to Feudal Aids, 1284-1431, Vol. VI: York and Additions (1920), p. 314; H. J. Ellis and F. B. Bickley, Index to Charters and Rolls in the Department of Manuscripts, British Museum (1900), I.569; Calendarium Inquisitionum post mortem sive escaertum (1828), IV. 214; Calendar of the Fine Rolls (1937), XVII.196. Concerning Pikeryng's public service, see Calendar of the Patent Rolls, Henry VI (1907-08) II.521, 628; III.594; IV.481; Calendar of Close Rolls, Henry VI (1933-37), II.109-110; III.467, 472; Calendar of Fine Rolls (1935-36) XV.267, XVI.71.

Yorkshire Probate Register 2, f. 27r.

In the discussion that follows "TE" refers to Testamenta Eboracensia, Vols 1-3, Surtees Soc. Publ, Nos. 4, 30, 45 (1836-1865). The numbers separated by a period refer to volume and page, respectively.

For information concerning Margaret's alleged misdoings and the association of her family with Nun Monkton, see Eileen Power, Medieval English Nunneries (1922) passim.

North Country Wills, ed. John W. Clay, Surtees Soc. Publ., No. 116 (1908), pp. 48-49.

Parenthetical citations in this and the following paragraph refer to folio numbers in Lincoln MS. 91 (L) and page numbers in Yorkshire Writers, Vol. I, ed. C. Horstman (1895) (YW).

For information concerning the other manuscripts containing the work I am indebted to A. I. Doyle, A Survey of the Origins and Circulation of Theological Writings in English in the 14th, 15th, and early 16th Centuries with Special Consideration of the Part of the Clergy Therein (1955) II. 69-70, 81-83.

Dom David Knowles, The Religious Orders in England (1957), II.223. For details, see E. Margaret Thompson, The Carthusian Order in England (1930), pp. 313-334; and Michael G. Sargent, "The Transmission by the English Carthusians of some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings," Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 27 (1976), 225-240.

For speculation of this kind, see Karen Stern, "The London 'Thornton' Miscellany (II)," Scriptorium, 30 (1976), 213-214, and A. S. G. Edwards, "'The Whole Book': Medieval Manuscripts in Facsimile," Review, 2 (1980), 25.