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Hammond provides the nearest thing to a published description, "Omissions" 37 — 38. She offers briefer information about the codex at "Departing" 331; and similar brief material appears at Brusendorff 208 (with a photo of f. 244v facing 280).

All discussions of this manuscript and others produced by the scribe must begin with Doyle's "New Light." The promised continuation of this study has never appeared, although Doyle addresses Shirley's career again at "Court" 175, 176 — 178; and see also Griffiths. As he always is, Doyle has been unfailingly generous in sharing unpublished information about Shirley: here I frequently rely upon a presentation Doyle made at the July 1983 York conference on fifteenth-century manuscripts and upon comments in our correspondence. For Richard Beauchamp, see DNB 2:29 — 31; and GEC 12, ii:378 — 382.

Parkes (xix — xxi) discusses the introduction and development of "secretary." The writing styles of Pepys and Vernon are, of course, also ultimately document-derived ("anglicana"), but the scribes of these manuscripts, a century after the development from document hands, write them at their most careful and formal ("formata").

The other full manuscripts Shirley copied are Bodleian Library, MS. Ashmole 59 (Doyle dates the paper 1444 — 47) and a manuscript now split and partly lost (Doyle dates the paper 1431 — 32): Sion College, MS. E.44 + British Library, MS. Harley 78, ff. 80 — 83 + Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. R.3.20, with the otherwise lost contents poem of this second codex in Stow's sixteenth-century transcription at British Library, MS. Additional 29729, f. 177v. Cf. Griffiths 92 — 93. I quote the calendars, IMEV 1426 and 2598, from Hammond's edition, English Verse 194 — 197.

All three leaves of this quire appear to be singletons.

Quires 10 — 14 are unsigned.

Quire xxi was originally twelve paper leaves, with thirteenth and fourteenth leaves, both vellum — and probably a bifolium — added; as part of this process (strengthening the end of the book), leaf 12 (the last paper one) was cancelled. But subsequently, the second vellum leaf, now leaf 13, got lost (missing text from "Anelida").

Hammond provides a nearly complete list of contents in "Omissions." She overlooks a pair of brief Latin items (a prose prayer, f. 245; four verses, f. 256); and Picard's "Divinal," appended to the lyrics associated with Thomas Chaucer on f. 251v (the last an omission she subsequently made good at "New Year's" 192). On the presentation of "Anelida" and its possible implications, see Edwards.

On the life of paper stocks, see the alternatives, ranging from four to fifteen years, outlined at Irigoin 21 — 22.

Beauchamp's first wife died on the earlier date, and he married the addressee of his lyric on the second. One might be a bit skeptical about the exactness of the ascription, added later by Shirley, however: Beauchamp's second wife was his cousin's widow, and the marriage, although it produced two children, including a male heir, may have been something of a dynastic convenience.

For Anne, countess of Stafford, see GEC 12, i:181 and 2:388. For the standard chronologies of relevant Lydgate works, see Schirmer 31, 37, 59 — 61, 92 — 94, 116 — 118; and Pearsall 71, 83 — 84, 166 — 168. Other named poets appear in the volume. For Thomas Picard, a court musician with previous connections to Edward, duke of York, see Hoccleve 127 (Seymour's suggestion that the "Divinal" refers to Alice Chaucer presumably involves emending "seventeþ" in the first line to "eleveþ," which would give ALEZ). Lowry 331 suggests associating the "Halsham esquyer," to whom Shirley ascribes IMEV 3504 and 3437, with a Haslam who appears in Richard Beauchamp's 1415 muster roll (with Thomas Malory, inter alia). South identifies this figure as a knight from West Grinstead (Sussex) with no descernible Beauchamp connections, but in either case, there is strong evidence that the poems are Lydgate's, as Bühler argues (568 — 569 and 569 — 570n).

The letter was delivered by Sir Thomas Berkeley's last steward, now a Beauchamp dependent, and entered in the bishop's register 1 April 1423.

This fastidiousness also appears in the negative: compare Shirley's refusal in lines 66 — 69 to ascribe the Latin prose rule to an author. Only two codices of any of the prose works have anything which approaches Shirley's specificity. Cambridge University Library, MS. Ii.iii.21, although it does not ascribe Boece itself to Chaucer, intercalates into the text two of the poet's lyrics, which are ascribed. An opulent fragment of a Master of Game manuscript, now the property of the Duke of Gloucester, has an ascription, like Shirley's, to "my lorde of ᵹorke," but the author shares billing in the rubric with the patron for whom the manuscript was produced: "The boke made and compilid togedir be the information of Sir Thomas of Kerdeston." But Danielsson (52) believes that Kerdeston acquired his information because he was making over an earlier book, in fact Edward's presentation copy. (His suggestion that the hand is Richard Frampton's should probably be rejected, unless Frampton's textura differed radically from his more usual script.) I am very grateful to the Duke of Gloucester and his steward, Sir Simon Bland, for their generosity and courtesies in allowing me to examine three Middle English hunting manuscripts at Kensington Palace (one of which appears to be Kerdeston's trial run for the more opulent Master manuscript).

On Shirley's presence in France (whether he actually left Calais is unclear), see Doyle, "New Light" 94. Richard Beauchamp himself was at Harfleur, but not Agincourt, and greeted the victorious Henry at Calais; cf. Gesta 129n. (For Edward's death — he was one of only two English lords lost in the battle — see 97).

Prose contents of Ashmole include a translation of the Secreta secretorum (ff. 1 — 12v, IPMEP 452); a sequence of translated meditations, primarily on death and including verse, usually transmitted as a unit (ff. 78 — 83v; ed. Horstmann 2:367 — 375; IPMEP 491 + 338 + IMEV 4160); and The Three Kings of Cologne (ff. 100 — 130, IPMEP 290). In the third manuscript the prose occurs in the portion at Sion, the translation of de Deguileville, The Pilgrimage of the Lyfe of the Manhode (recently edited by Avril Henry, EETS 288, 292).

Doyle extends considerably earlier lists of manuscripts dependent on Shirley in "Unrecognized Piece" and "Court" 177, n. 42; for a more recent summary, see Griffiths 92 — 93.

In addition to the ascribed portion of "Anelida," Additional contains two "dirty" poems ascribed but no longer accepted as Chaucer's (IMEV 1635 and 2611) and two unascribed lyrics which still hover on the edge of the canon, "Proverbs" and "A Ballad of Complaint" (IMEV 3914 and 650).

I read an earlier version of this paper at the Kalamazoo Medieval Institute, 4 May 1989, at a session dedicated to the memory of Sarah Horrall. I remain particularly grateful to Martha Driver, who organized this occasion, and to the good will of Derek Pearsall, who presided.