from military service and that he was deficient also in force of
character, it cannot be said that, so far as we can judge from his two
translations from the French, he possessed much literary ability. There
is nothing original in either of them except the short preface to the
“Epistle of Othea” here printed, and, interesting as this is in other
respects, its style is so involved that in places it is hardly
intelligible. Nor is the writer more fortunate in his account of the
French work which he translated; for by some strange misunderstanding he
deprives its authoress of the credit of it and makes out (p. 3) that it
was compiled by doctors of the University of Paris merely at the
instance and prayer of the “fulle wyse gentylwoman of Frawnce called
Dame Cristine.” It is curious that a very similar statement is made as
to her works generally in a marginal note in the “Boke of Noblesse,”[77]
with reference to a passage taken from her “Livre des faits d’armes,”
which, however, is wrongly spoken of as the “Arbre des batailles.” It is
there said that Christine was a lady of high birth and character, who
dwelt in a house of religious ladies at Passy (Poissy?) near Paris, that
she maintained with exhibitions several clerks studying in the
University of Paris and caused them to compile divers virtuous books,
such as the “Arbre des batailles,” and that the doctors in consequence
attributed the books to Christine herself. As this note is in the hand
of the well-known William Worcester or Botoner, who was servant and
secretary to Fastolf, the two statements no doubt had a common origin,
coming perhaps from Sir John himself.
From the prominent way in which Scrope mentions the Duke of Berry it is
reasonable to conclude that the French MS. which supplied him with the
original text contained a dedicatory address by the authoress to that
famous royal bibliophil, who, as we know, was one of her special
patrons. In the inventory of his library, among the MSS. acquired soon
after 1401, there is in fact the entry,[78] “Item le livre de l’espitre
que Othéa la deesse envoia à Ethor (_sc._ Hector), compilé par
damoiselle Christine de Pizan, escript en françois de lettre de court,
très bien historié .... le quel livre la dicte Cristine a donné à mon
dit seigneur”; and the probability is that on Fastolf’s return to
England he brought with him either this identical MS. or a transcript of
it, together with a copy of De Tignonville’s “Dis des philosophes.”
Existing copies of the “Épître d’Othéa” are not uncommon. In the
Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris there are twelve,[79] and Koch (p. 59)
mentions six others at Brussels, while the British Museum possesses
four. One of these is included in the fine collection of Christine’s
poems and other works in Harley MS. 4,431. It is the MS. “H,” readings
from which are given here in the notes, and the collotype frontispiece,
which depicts the goddess Othea personally handing her letter to Hector,
is reproduced from the second of its numerous miniatures, one of which
precedes each of the hundred “textes.” The collection, which is of the
highest importance, including pieces found nowhere else,[80] was made by
Christine herself, apparently about 1410–1415, for the French queen,
Isabella of Bavaria, the MS. beginning with an introductory poem of
ninety-six lines addressed to her.[81] Probably it came into the
possession of John, Duke of Bedford, Regent of France, in 1425[82] among
other MSS. from the royal library of the Louvre; for the signature
“Jaquete” of his second wife, Jacquetta of Luxemburg, is written on the
fly-leaf, together with that of Anthony Wydeville, Earl Rivers, her son
by her second marriage, in 1437, with Sir Richard Wydeville, who was
created Earl Rivers in 1466. As we have already seen, Anthony, Earl
Rivers, translated the “Dis des philosophes,” and he also made an
English version, printed by Caxton in 1478, of Christine’s “Proverbes
moraux,” the text of which he no doubt obtained from this MS. After he
perished on the scaffold in 1488, the volume passed by some means to
Louis de Bruges, Sieur de Gruythuyse, created Earl of Winchester in
1472, whose motto and name, “Plus est en vous. Gruthuse,” appear on the
same page. In 1676 it belonged to Henry Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle,
and no doubt it found its way into the Harley collection by the marriage
of his grand-daughter Lady Henrietta Cavendish-Holles in 1713 to Edward
Harley, Lord Harley, second Earl of Oxford in 1724. That it was known to
Fastolf, when Master of the Household to the Regent Bedford, is likely
enough; but the copy of the “Épître d’Othéa” included in it can hardly
have been the one used by Scrope, as it is dedicated, not to the Duke of
Berry, but to his nephew Louis, Duke of Orleans. After some lines of
apostrophe to the “Fleur de lis” and to “Seigneurie,” which begin,
“Tres haulte flour, par le monde louee,
A tous plaisant et de dieu auouee,”
it proceeds,
“Et a vous tres noble prince excellant,
Dorliens duc loys, de grant renom,
Filz de Charles Roy quint de cellui nom,
Qui fors le roy ne congnoiscez greigneur,
Mon tres loue et redoubte seigneur,
Dumble vouloir moy, poure creature,
Femme ignorant, de petite estature,
Fille iadis philosophe et docteur,
Qui conseiller et humble seruiteur
Vostre pere fu, que dieu face grace,
Et iadis vint de Boulongne la grace,
Dont il fu ne, par le sien mandement,
Maistre Thomas de pizan, autrement
De Boulonge, fu dit et surnomme,
Qui sollempnel clerc estoit renomme.”
* * * * *
This is the dedication which appears, not only in some other MSS. but in
the edition printed by Philippe Pigouchet at Paris, probably in 1490,
under the title _Les cent histoires de troye_.[83] Of the other three
manuscript copies in the British Museum, Royal MS. 14 E. ii. (f. 294)
and 17 E. iv. (f. 272) have no dedication at all, while that in Harley
MS. 219 (f. 106) appeals to a third patron:
“Prince excellent de haute renommee,
De qui grand vois par le mond est semee,
Tres noble en fais, sage, duit et apris
De touz les biens qui en bon sont compris,
Roy noble et haut chiualer conquerour,
Digne destre par vaillaunce Emperour,
A vous puissant, tres redoute seignour,
Qui dessur vous ne cognoise greignour,
Soit tres humble recommendacioun
Deuant mise de vray entencioun
De par moy que en sagesse non digne
Femme ignorant suy nommee Cristine,
Fille iadis philosophe et docteur,
Qui conseiller fu, humble seruiteur
Au Roy Charles quint, qui dieu face grace.”
* * * * *
The king who is thus addressed can be no other than the unfortunate
Charles VI., although any hopes that he once excited had by this time
been dispelled by his strange intermittent fits of insanity, which dated
from 1392. Very similar terms were employed in the dedication to him by
name of the “Chemin de long estude” in 1402:
“A vous, bon roy de France redoubtable,
Le VI^e Charles du nom notable,
Que Dieux maintienge en joie et en sante,
Mon petit dit soit premier presente,
Tout ne soit il digne qu’en telz mains aille,
Mais bon vouloir comme bon fait me vaille.”
In this instance, however, Christine associated with him his uncles
Berry and Burgundy and his brother Orleans, who during his incapacity
divided the real power between them:
“Et puis a vous, haulz ducs magnifiez,
Dicelle fleur fais et ediffiez,
Dont l’esplendeur s’espant par toute terre,
Par quel honneur fait los a France a querre.”
In her presentation copies she was not wont to measure her language, and
probably Scrope’s extravagant eulogy of the Duke of Berry was based upon
what he found in his MS., although, instead of translating the
dedication as it stood, he chose to embody it in his preface. On the
other hand, Christine of course was in no way responsible for the
statement that the duke lived for a hundred years (p. 3). How it
originated is a mystery, for there is no doubt whatever that he died on
15th June, 1416, at the age of seventy-six.[84] Jean Bouchet indeed in
his _Annales d’Aquitaine_,[85] although he records the date of his death
correctly, states that he was ninety or thereabouts, but he gives no
authority, and it is enough to say that Berry’s father King John II. was
born in 1319, and his eldest brother Charles V. in 1337. It will be seen
that Scrope represents him as a perfect paragon of chivalrous qualities,
unrivalled in his time both in war and in council, as well as for deeds
of piety. In more sober history, however, he by no means appears to such
advantage. His cultured and sumptuous tastes, his splendid buildings and
his library and other rich collections, have shed a certain lustre on
his name; but, as he showed especially in his government of Languedoc,
he was cruel, rapacious, and unprincipled, and in critical times his
life was that of a selfish and prodigal voluptuary. For war he had
neither talent nor zest; his real element appears to have been
diplomacy, and, apart from his patronage of art and letters and his
benefactions to the church, his chief claim to credit rests on his
repeated attempts to mediate between the Burgundian and Orleanist
factions. Scrope’s estimate of him is in striking contrast with that of
modern historians, such as Raynal[86] and Martin, the latter of whom in
recording his death writes, “Ce prince laissa une mémoire souillée entre
toutes dans cette êpoque de souillures. Il joignait à bien d’autres
vices le vice que la France pardonne le moins à ses chefs, le péché
irremissible, la lâcheté.”[87]
To pass from the preface to the “Epistle of Othea” itself, there is no
reason to suppose that the translator had received the training of a
scholar; on the contrary, the probability is that, owing to a sickly
youth and other drawbacks, his education had been more or less
neglected. It is not even certain that he had been regularly taught
French. From a curious passage interpolated by Trevisa in his
translation of Higden’s “Polychronicon,” which was finished in 1387, it
seems that the fashion was then already dying out among the class to
which by birth he belonged,[88] and possibly therefore he learnt all he
knew of the language while he was with his stepfather in France. Be that
as it may, his rendering of Christine de Pisan’s French may claim on the
whole to be fairly well done. The verse of his “textes” is too much of
the doggrel type and his meaning is sometimes obscure, but as a rule he
follows the original closely, while the orthography of the MS., though
atrociously bad, is no worse than what we are accustomed to in the
_Paston Letters_ and elsewhere at the same period. Occasionally, as is
only natural, he goes astray, though it is of course possible that the
fault lay with the MS. from which he translated. In most cases the
source of his errors is obvious. Thus he translates “ton bon cuer” (p.
5) by “all good hertys,” having evidently mistaken “ton” for “tou[t]”;
and again “en quant fraisle vaissel est sa vie contenue” (p. 28) by “in
how frele (_sc._ frail) a vessel his lyff is all naked” (toute nue)!
Similarly “conscience pour soy” (p. 16) appears as “conscience for
feyth” (foy); “ala querre les autres dieux” (p. 62) as “thanne went he
forth [to seek] the tothir ii^o” (deux); “mais a nostre propos [la
fable] veult dire” (_ibid._) as “Mars to owre purpose seith”; and “gard
toy de lagait (l’agait) de tes ennemis” (p. 73) as “kepe the (_sc._
thee) from the peple (la gent) of thyn ennemyes.” It is not so easy to
understand the process by which the simple sentence “Vanite fist lange
devenir deable” (p. 15) was transformed into “Vanite made avoyde degre
to becum a fende,” whatever that may mean; or why in the story of Acis
and Galatea (p. 65) “un iouuencel qui Acis estoit nommez” became “and he
was dede” (_sc._ dead), though possibly in this case there was some
confusion between “acis” and “occis.” But the strangest mistranslation
is in the words “Averyse and covetise be ii^o sausmakers the which
sesseth neuer to seye, ‘Bryng, Bryng’” (p. 105), where the French text
has “sont ii. sancsues,” sanguisugæ, or leeches. The reference of course
is to Proverbs xxx. 15, “The horseleach hath two daughters, crying,
‘Give, give’”; and, as stated in the note, “horseleeches” is in fact the
rendering given in another translation of Christine’s work. Scrope’s
“sausmakers” can hardly be anything but “sauce-makers,”[89] but it is
not impossible that he coined the mongrel word “sanc-suckers,” which the
scribe miscopied.
The second English translation of the “Épître d’Othéa” referred to above
can be so little known that a brief account of it will not be
superfluous. It exists only in the form of a small printed octavo in
black-letter with the title _Here foloweth the C. Hystoryes of Troye_,
and there is no doubt that it was taken from Pigouchet’s French edition
of 1490,[90] or one of the reprints; in fact it copies the second title
in French, merely omitting the imprint “à Paris.” Many of its rough
woodcuts, one of which accompanies each “texte,” also come from the same
source, being generally reversed, but others are independent and their
subjects often have no connexion whatever with the text. In place of the
dedication to the Duke of Orleans the translator gives a prologue of his
own in ten seven-line stanzas, the first two of which are as follows:
“Boke, of thy rudenesse by consyderacion
Plunged in the walowes of abasshement,
For thy translatoure make excusacion
To all to whom thou shalt thy selfe present,
Besechynge them vpon the sentement
In the composed to set theyr regarde
And not on the speche cancred and frowarde.
“Shewe them that thy translatour hath the wryten,
Not to obtain thankes or remuneracions,
But to the entent to do the to be wryten
As well in Englande as in other nacyons.
And where mysordre in thy translation is,
Vnto the perceyuer with humble obeysaunce
Excuse thy reducer, blamyng his ygnoraunce.”
All the information which he gives about himself in this prologue is
that, when he made his translation, he was “flowring in youth,” but
after the “Finis” he has added, “Thus endeth the .C. Hystories of Troye,
translated out of Frenche in to Englysshe by me. R.W.” This again is
followed by the colophon, “Imprynted by me Robert Wyer, dwellyng in S.
Martyns parysshe at Charyng Crosse at the sygne of S. John̄ Euangelist
besyde the Duke of Suffolkes place”; and it is therefore highly probable
that R. W. and Robert Wyer were identical, though the latter is not
otherwise known except as a printer. A list of nearly a hundred books
issued by him has been made up,[91] ranging in date from 1530 to 1556,
and all those which, as in this instance, have the Duke of Suffolk’s
name in the imprint must have been published after 1536, when the
property referred to, which previously belonged to the Bishop of
Norwich, passed into his possession. The date of the book therefore is
about 1540–1550, though the translation may have been made some years
before. For the sake of comparison with the earlier version of Stephen
Scrope, one of the texts with its commentary is here given:
THE .XXVIII. TEXTE.
Loue and prayse Cadmus so excellente,
And his dyscyples holde thou in chyerte.
He gaygned the fountayne of the Serpente
With ryght great payne afore that it wolde be.
THE .XXVIII. GLOSE.
Cadmus was a moche noble man and founded Thebes, whiche cytie was
greatly renomed. He set there a study & he hym selfe was moche
profoundly lettered and of great science. And therfore sayth the
fable that he daunted the serpent at the fountayne, that is to
vnderstande the science and sages that alwayes springeth; the
Serpent is noted for the payne and trauayle which it behoueth the
student to daunte afore that he maye purchase scyence. And the fable
sayth that he hym self became a serpent, which is to vnderstande he
was a corrector and mayster of other. So wol Othea say that the good
knight ought to loue and honour the clerkes lettered, which ben
grounded in science. To this purpose sayeth Arystotle to Alexandre,
“Honour thou scyence and fortyfie it by good maysters.”
THE .XXVIII. ALLEGORIE.
Cadmus whiche daunted the Serpent at the fountayne, whiche the good
knyght ought to loue, we may vnderstande the blyssed humanite of
Jesu christ, which dompted the serpent and gaigned the fountayne,
that is to say the lyfe of this world, from the which he passed
afore with great payne and with great trauayle. Wherof he had
perfyte victory whan he rose agayne the thyrd day, as sayth S.
Thomas, “Tertia die resurrexit a mortuis.”
In conclusion it only remains to say a few words on the possible
connexion of Stephen Scrope with two other works already mentioned,
which, like his “Epistle of Othea” or “Boke of Knyghthode” and his
“Sayings of the Philosophers,” were written for Sir John Fastolf or
under his influence. One of them, the “Boke of Noblesse,” is preserved
in a unique copy in the British Museum, Royal MS. 18 B. xxii., and was
edited for the Roxburghe Club in 1860 by Mr. J. Gough Nichols. In the
form in which it has come down to us, it was addressed to Edward IV. at
the time of his invasion of France in 1475, professing to be “write and
entitled to courage and comfort noble men in armes to be in perpetuite
of remembraunce for here noble dedis, as right conuenient is soo to
bee,” or, more precisely, for the purpose of inciting the English to
recover by force of arms their lost foreign conquests. The contents were
admirably summarized in the editor’s introduction, and all that need be
said of them here is that, in addition to a highly interesting
retrospect of English relations with France, they include a large amount
of matter derived from a French treatise on the art of war, which is
spoken of as the “Arbre de Batailles” and attributed to “Dame Cristyn.”
Although the editor failed to identify the author, he pointed out that
he must have been intimately associated with Fastolf and had access to
his papers. Strictly speaking, Fastolf’s name is not specially prominent
except in the marginal insertions and notes, where the writer refers to
him as “myne autor” and gives several curious anecdotes as heard from
his lips. The body of the MS. is clearly not autograph; but these
additions, together with the title and colophon,[92] are in a different
handwriting, and, although the editor seems to have been unaware of the
fact, it is beyond question that of William Worcester, or Botoner, who
was not only Fastolf’s servant and secretary, but is also known as an
annalist and a diligent collector of matter on historical, topographical
and other subjects.[93] The editor therefore dismissed his claims to the
authorship of the work rather too hastily, for, as the final touches
were certainly his, the only question is whether he was also responsible
for the whole of it from its inception. From the limit of date of the
events mentioned there is some reason to believe that it was originally
composed within Fastolf’s lifetime and was only revised and enlarged in
1475 for a special occasion; and its date may perhaps be fixed still
more exactly, since there is an allusion (p. 42) to “another gret armee
and voiage fordone for defaut and lak of spedy payment _this yere_ of
Crist M^lccccli.” Apart from the final additions there is evidence to
connect Worcester with it in a passage of the prologue to a series of
documents relating to the wars in France which were collected by
him,[94] mainly no doubt from materials that belonged to Fastolf, and
which may be regarded as _pièces justificatives_ to the “Boke of
Noblesse.” This collection also appears to have been designed for Edward
IV., but the original prologue was awkwardly recast, as we now have it,
after Worcester’s death by his son for dedication to Richard III. The
passage in it referred to, for which he is responsible, is as follows:
“And I, as moost symple of reasone, youre righte humble legemane,
cannot atteyne to understond the reasons and bokes that many wise
philosophurs of gret auctorite have writtene upone this vertue of
Force, but that my pore fadyr, William Worcestre ... toke upone hym
to write in this mater and compiled this boke to the most highe and
gretly redoubted kyng, your most nobille brodyr and predecessoure,
shewyng after his symple connyng, after the seyng of the masters of
philosophie, as Renatus Vegesius in his Boke of Batayles, also
Julius Frontinus in his Boke of Knyghtly Laboures, callid in Greke
Stratagematon, a new auctoure callid The Tree of Batayles.”
Obviously this cannot apply to the purely historical documents of which
the collection itself consists. It is, however, strongly suggestive of
the “Boke of Noblesse,” to which they are, as it were, an appendix, and
coupled with the evidence of the handwriting of the additions, it leaves
little room for doubt that William Worcester was its author. At the same
time, it is by no means unlikely that Stephen Scrope also had a hand in
it. If indeed it was wholly compiled in 1475, this is impossible, since
he died in 1472.[95] Assuming, however, for the reason given above, that
it dates from 1451, or thereabouts, he was residing at the time with
Fastolf and was no doubt on familiar terms with Worcester. As already
remarked, a prominent feature of the work is the number of extracts
translated from the so-called “Arbre de Batailles” of “Dame Cristyn.”
This, however, was not, as the editor supposed, Honoré Bonet’s treatise
of that name[96] assigned to a wrong author, but Christine de Pisan’s
“Faits d’armes et de chevalerie” under a wrong title.[97] Whether
Worcester was capable of making translations from it as early as 1451 is
somewhat doubtful; for he seems to have only begun to learn French about
August, 1458,[98] little more than a year before Fastolf’s death. Scrope
on the contrary had before this translated two French works for the
latter, one of them being by the same Christine, and it is therefore in
this part of the “Boke of Noblesse,” if at all, that he may possibly
have collaborated.
Unlike the last-named work, the anonymous English version of Cicero’s
“De Senectute” which Caxton printed in 1481 has already been attributed
to William Worcester,[99] the ground of this assumption being an entry
made in his “Itinerarium,”[100] that on 10th August, 1473, he presented
to Bishop Waynflete at Esher a translation which he had made of this
treatise, but got nothing in return. Apart from this statement there is
no more reason for attributing Caxton’s text to Worcester than to
Scrope. The language is better than might have been expected from either
of them, but as no MS. copy exists, we cannot tell to what extent it was
edited by Caxton. In the preface, as may be seen above (p. xxx.), it is
said that the translation was made from the French of Laurence de
Premierfait by Sir John Fastolf’s “ordenaunce and desyre.” As there is
no reason to doubt this, its date cannot be later than 1459, so that, if
Worcester was the translator, he kept it at least thirteen years before
he offered it to Waynflete. This does not seem very likely, and his
translation was therefore possibly a different one altogether, completed
shortly before the occasion when the bishop so disappointed him by his
cold acceptance of it. The earlier version in that case was almost
certainly by Scrope; but, where so much is left to conjecture, the most
that can be said is that the evidence upon which it has hitherto been
assigned to Worcester is not wholly conclusive.
G. F. W.
ERRATA.
P. 2, l. 6, _for_ yowr emost _read_ yowre most.
P. 11, l. 1, _for_ streygth _read_ strey[n]gth.
P. 19, l. 17, _for_ yif is _read_ yif it.
P. 56, Text lii., l. 3, _transfer semicolon to end of line_.
P. 72, note 3, _for_ metu Dei _read_ nutu Dei.
P. 104, Text xci., l. 3, _for_ thyre _read_ thyne.
THE EPISTLE OF OTHEA TO HECTOR;
OR
THE BOKE OF KNYGHTHODE.
Noble[101] and worshipfull among the ordre of cheualrie, renommeed ffor
in as much as ye and suche othir noble knyghtes and men of worchip haue
exerciced and occupied by long continuaunce of tyme the grete part of
yowre dayes in dedys of cheualrie and actis of armis, to the whic[h]e
entent ye resseyved the ordre of cheualrie, that is to sey, principaly
to be occupied in kepyng and defendyng the cristyn feythe, þe rigth of
the chirch, the lond, the contre and the comin welefare of it—And now,
seth it is soo that the naturel course off kynde, by revolucion and
successyon of .lx. yeeres growyn vpon yowe at this tyme of age and
feblenesse, ys comen, abatyng youre bodly laboures, takyng away yowre
naturall streyngtht and power from all such labouris as concernyth the
exercysing off dedis of cheuallrie, be it yowre noble courage and
affeccion of such noble and worchipfull actis and desirys departyth not
from yow, yet rygth necessarie [it] now were to occupie the tyme of
yowre agys and feblenes of bodie in gostly cheuallrie off dedes of armes
spirituall, as in contemplacion of morall wysdome and exercisyng gostly
werkys which that may enforce and cavse yow to be callid to the ordire
of knyghthode that schal perpetuelly endure and encrese in ioye and
worship endelese.