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Notes
A version of this article was presented to the Ninth Annual Conference of the Southeastern Medieval Association held at the University of Virginia, 7-8 October 1983. I would like to thank the staff of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (HRHRC) at the University of Texas at Austin for all the assistance they have given me during the course of this Study and for the photographs provided by their courtesy. Cardigan is catalogued at the HRHRC as MS 143. Most descriptions date the MS as c.1450, based on the chronicle contained in it which ends in 1449. My paleographical analysis supports this date. The HRHRC also owns Phillipps 6750 (Ph1), an important Chaucer MS containing two fragments of the Canterbury Tales.
Charles A. Owen, Jr., "The Alternative Reading of The Canterbury Tales: Chaucer's Text and the Early Manuscripts," PMLA, 97 (1982), 237, 250, n. 31. Owen discusses this "growing consensus" for the Ellesmere a order and challenges it, offering an alternative reading which "sees the text of Chaucer's masterpiece as a collection of fragments reflecting different stages of his plan for the work as a whole" (246).
Owen, 237: "the neat pile of manuscript postulated by Robert A. Pratt and other proponents of the Bradshaw shift is a fiction. That it could have existed while the Hengwrt editor was making his effort to collect text and still have eluded his search defies belief"; I. A. Doyle and M. B. Parkes, "The Production of Copies of the Canterbury Tales and the Confessio Amantis in the Early Fifteenth Century," pp. 163-210 in Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts, and Libraries: Essays Presented to N.R. Ker, ed. M. B. Parkes and A. G. Watson (1978), p. 199: "we can find no evidence for centralized, highly organized scriptoria in the metropolis and its environs at this time other than the various departments of the central administration of government, and no evidence that these scriptoria played any part—as organizations—in the copying of literary works."
H. S. Bennett, "The Production and Dissemination of Vernacular Manuscripts in the Fifteenth Century," The Library, 5th ser., 1 (1947), 174.
The three pages missing at the front of the MS were apparently lost when Cardigan was stolen from the Brudenell library. A. S. G. Edwards, "The Case of the Stolen Chaucer Manuscript," The Book Collector, 21 (1972), 380-385, citing the notes of a private detective investigating the theft, states that "'when the Chaucer MS. was at Brudenells two front pages were in it. Maggs says that the first two pages were torn out when he got it [Maggs was the first of several dealers who handled the stolen MS]. As a matter of fact A. E. Brudenell's name was inscribed on 2nd page.' Certainly the manuscript lacks at least two initial leaves in its present state" (382, n. 7). Apparently the leaves were removed to conceal the Brudenell's ownership of the MS when the thief sold the book to Maggs Bros. The theft is also discussed in "The Cardigan Chaucer: Adventures of a MS.," Anon., The London Times, February 19, 1925, p. 15.
"Notes on Sales: The Cardigan Chaucer," Anon., Times Literary Supplement, March 19, 1925, p. 207: "for some arbitrary reason the late Lady Cardigan refused all requests of scholars to examine the manuscript. Even Professor Skeat and Dr. Furnival were not allowed to collate it."
The Cardigan MS turned up at Vassar College following its theft, having been purchased for the College by Henry Noble MacCracken from a New York dealer on June 20, 1923. While the MS resided at Vassar, Clara Marburg was able to study it. An article by Marburg, "Notes on the Cardigan Manuscript," PMLA, 41 (1926), 229-251, appeared subsequently. In it she asserts that "it is evident that the Cardigan MS belongs to the Dd-subdivision of the A-group" (230), which is contradicted by Manly and Rickert, who associate Cardigan with Manchester English 113 (Ma) in a group distinct from Dd (II, 51-54). Charles A. Owen, Jr. also distinguishes Cardigan from the Dd-group ("The Pre-1450 Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales," Unpublished). The article cited in note 7 (above) provides a description of the MS which predates Manly and Rickert. The description is not always accurate. For example, Cardigan is described as containing "244 vellum leaves," the number of leaves covering the Chaucer portion of the MS only (not counting the missing leaves). Marburg (230) states that the MS contains "555 pages."
George R. Keiser, "The Collation of the Cardigan Chaucer Manuscript," PBSA, 73 (1979), 333-334; Robert Earl Lovell, John Lydgate's 'Siege of Thebes' and 'Churl and Bird': Edited from the Cardigan-Brudenell Manuscript, Diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1969.
Norman Davis, ed., Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, Part I (1971): "the common flourish on r (usually the long form) . . . is often used to render a syllabic re whether final or not" (lxxxii).
C. E. Wright, English Vernacular Hands from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Centuries (1960), pl. 23 and 24; I. A. Doyle, "The Work of a Late Fifteenth-Century English Scribe, William Ebesham," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 39 (1957), 298-325; Davis, Paston Letters.
I am grateful to Nicholas Yeager, calligrapher and parchment scholar, for his advice on the inks used in Cardigan.
For a discussion of Lydgate's popularity in the fifteenth century see Derek Pearsall, John Lydgate (1970), Chapt. 1, and Charles A. Owen, Jr., "The Canterbury Tales: Early Manuscripts and Relative Popularity," JEGP, 54 (1955), 110.
Pearsall, pp. 122-123; David Anderson, "Theban History in Chaucer's Troilus," SAC, 4 (1982), 113; C. David Benson, "The Knight's Tale as History," Chaucer Rev., 3 (1968), 114; Robert W. Ayers, "Medieval History, Moral Purpose, and the Structure of Lydgate's Siege of Thebes," PMLA, 73 (1958), 463-464: Ayers' note 6 mentions that "Alexander Neckham (d. 1217) recommends study of the Thebiad and the Aeneid as among works of the 'ystoriographos.' Apparently with Isidore (Etymologiarum, XIV, Ch. iv, 10) as his authority Ralph Higden refers to parts of the Thebes story at several points in his Polychronicon . . . and in a passage which assumes historical authenticity for both the Thebiad and Lydgate's poem, Caxton refers his readers to 'Stacius' and the 'siege of thebes' for more information."
The nota marker occurs in the Knight's Tale in fol. 19v, l. A1967; fol. 20v, l. A2051; fol. 23r, l. A2155; fol. 23v, l. A2208; fol. 23v, l. A2220; and fol. 33r, l. 2965. In the Siege of Thebes it occurs at fol. 249v, l. 294; fol. 249v, l. 307; fol. 250r, l. 325; fol. 250r, l. 335; and fol. 252v, l. 604.
While this article was in press, further research has produced additional strong support for the assertion that Scribe A began his copying with the Lydgate material and then moved on to the Canterbury Tales. In the Lydgate material and the early part of Fragment A of the CT, the scribe favors the pronoun forms here ("her"), here ("their"), and hem ("them"), but gradually, during his copying of the CT, the forms hure, there, and them (for "her," "their," and "them" respectively) become exclusive. This pattern only makes sense if one accepts the reordering hypothesis; otherwise, we would have to believe that Scribe A systematically developed a pronoun paradigm which eventually excluded the use of the "h-" forms and then readjusted his usage not only to include those forms in the Lydgate material, but to favor them over their alternatives.
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