[Illustration: Fleuron]
=The Boke of Saint Albans=
[Illustration: Fleuron]
=The
Boke of Saint Albans=
BY
DAME JULIANA BERNERS
CONTAINING
TREATISES ON HAWKING, HUNTING, AND COTE ARMOUR:
PRINTED AT SAINT ALBANS BY THE SCHOOLMASTER-PRINTER IN 1486
REPRODUCED IN FACSIMILE
=With an Introduction by=
WILLIAM BLADES
_AUTHOR OF “THE LIFE AND TYPOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM CAXTON”_
LONDON
ELLIOT STOCK, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
=“Manhood I am, therefore I me delyght
To hunt and hawke, to nourish up and fede
The greyhounde to the course, the hawke to th’ flight,
And to bestryde a good and lusty stede.”=
_From_ SIR THOMAS MORE’S _Poems_.
[Illustration: Fleuron]
=Introduction.=
Several independent printing presses were established in England before
the close of the fifteenth century; and from them issued numerous books
which are invaluable to all students of antiquity from the light they
throw upon the social habits and literary progress of our nation. Of
these it may safely be said that not one exceeds in interest that work
of an unknown typographer, which is here presented in facsimile, and
which, from the town in which it was compiled, as well as printed, is
known to all bibliographers as “The Book of St. Albans.” This work has
always been a favourite, partly because our feelings are appealed to in
favour of the writer who for centuries has taken rank as England’s
earliest poetess, and is still, in all our Biographical Dictionaries,
reckoned among “noble authors;” and partly because we love mysteries,
and a mystery has always enshrouded the nameless printer. The subjects,
too, so curiously alliterative—Hawking, Hunting, and Heraldry, have an
enticing and antique flavour about them, being just those with which, at
that period, every man claiming to be “gentle” was expected to be
familiar; while ignorance of their laws and language was to confess
himself a “churl.”
As to the language and orthography of the book, it is a never-failing
source of interest, being quite different from any other printed work of
the fifteenth century, except the St. Albans’ Chronicle from the same
press. Among bibliographers it ranks as “_rarissimus_,” the known copies
being so few that they might probably be counted on the fingers of one
hand.
Looking at the book, then, all round, it will be a convenient plan to
consider these subjects separately, and to treat the volume in its four
aspects of Authorship, Typography and Bibliography, Subject-matter, and
Philology.
[Illustration: Fleuron]
[Illustration: Fleuron]
CHAPTER I.
=Authorship.=
Historians and Biographers, together with Librarians and Booksellers,
have a natural antipathy to anonymous books; and, wherever they can, are
willing to accept the smallest amount of evidence as proof of paternity.
It saves much trouble and avoids numerous errors in cataloguing, when a
recognised name can be associated with an anonymous work. From this
tendency a bad habit has arisen of attributing to particular writers
books concerning which the evidence of authorship is doubtful, if not
altogether untrustworthy.
In this very book we have a striking instance of such erroneous
attribution. The three treatises, of which the book is made up, are
quite distinct, and to a portion only of one of these is there any
author’s name attached. Yet that name, “Dam Julyans Barnes,” altered by
degrees to “Dame Juliana Berners,” is now universally received as the
name of the authoress of the whole volume. With even less show of reason
she is credited with the authorship of a “Treatise on Fishing” for which
there is not the shadow of evidence, that treatise having been added ten
years later by Wynken de Worde, who, when reprinting the Book of St.
Albans, thought that the subject of Fishing would complete the work as a
Gentleman’s Vade Mecum.
There are really four distinct tractates in the Book of St. Albans,
although the two last being on Heraldry are generally counted as one.
The first is on Hawking; to this no name of the author is attached, but
it has a prologue which no one acquainted with the other writings of the
printer can doubt to be his. Of this we shall have more to say anon.
The second tractate is on Hunting: it is specially associated with the
name of Dame Juliana Berners, and will require a more extended
elucidation than the others.
Here the evidence of authorship is as good as for most pieces of
fifteenth-century production—a period at which literary rights did not
exist, and when the scribe, if at all acquainted with the subject upon
which the book he was copying treated, did not scruple to interpolate
his own ideas, and that without any egotistical vanity, but merely from
a feeling that all books being written for the good of men, and not from
vanity in the author, it was a duty to improve them where possible. But
as improvement mostly meant the addition of something on the same
subject taken from another manuscript, we have the constant occurrence
of one MS. being a compilation of two or three others, and yet appearing
under the name of the last compiler.
In this treatise on Hunting we have the express statement at the end of
the twenty-fourth page—“Explicit Dam Julyans Barnes.” This might
certainly apply to the transcription only, but, when taken with Wynken
de Worde’s version, the probability is, that the lady compiled as well
as wrote it. In the reprint by Wynken de Worde, only ten years later
than the original, he varies the colophon thus:—“¶ Explicit dame Julyans
Bernes doctryne in her boke of huntynge,” the whole reprint ending
“Enprynted at westmestre by Wynkyn the Worde the yere of thyncarnacōn of
our lorde. M . CCCC . lxxxxvj.” So that he, a contemporary, evidently
believed her to be the authoress. Later authorities attributed the whole
book to her pen, but as they were in possession of no more evidence than
we now are, and probably not so much, we should attach no weight to such
statements, which were founded simply on a vivid imagination.
But what is known of the lady who is admitted to have compiled the
twenty-four pages on Hunting? Who was Dame Julians Barnes? Here, unless
a sentimental and inventive sympathy be employed to throw an artificial
light upon the darkness, we are in total ignorance. A biography of her
has certainly been written, and all our Dictionaries and Encyclopædias
devote a page or two to her history, which, in 1810, under Haslewood’s
nurture, attained its full development. Even so far back as 1549, or
nearly a century after her supposed death, the learned Bale, who wrote
an account of all our English celebrities, allows his gallantry to
bedeck her memory with garments fine. “Fœmina illustris!” he exclaims,
“corporis et animi dotibus abundans ac forma elegantia spectabilis” (An
illustrious lady! abundantly gifted, both in body and mind, and charming
in the elegance of her mien). Considering that the name of the lady is
the whole of the text upon which Bale had to build, this is by no means
a bad specimen of imaginative biography, and became a good foundation
for future commentators. The story, however, fared rather badly at
first; for Holinshed, in 1577, while echoing Bale very exactly, is made,
by a curious error of the printer, who mistook the letters _rn_ for _m_,
to call the authoress Julyan Be_m_es; while Baker in his Chronicles, too
careless even to refer to the original text, adds another blunder to the
story, and, thinking that Julyan must be a man’s name, dubs the
authoress “a gentleman of excellent gifts, who wrote certain treatises
of Hawking and Hunting.”
Chauncy, in 1700 (History of Hertfordshire), restored her sex to the
lady, and then set to work upon making a family history for her. His
first discovery was that, being a “Dame,” she was of noble blood.
Finding also that the family name of Lord Berners was, in olden time,
spelt occasionally Barnes, he soon supplied a father for our authoress,
in the person of Sir James Berners. And so the game of making history
went on merrily up to the time of Joseph Haslewood, who, in 1810,
reprinted Wynken de Worde’s edition of the Book of St. Albans, and
supplied a full-blown biography of the authoress, giving particulars of
her birth and education, the occupations of her youthful days, and a
most imposing pedigree. Let us quote Haslewood’s own words: “Julyans, or
Juliana, Barnes, otherwise Berners, who has been generally designated as
the authoress of the present volume, is supposed to have been born,
towards the latter end of the fourteenth century, at Roding-Berners, in
the county of Essex. The received report is that she was the daughter of
Sir James Berners, whose son was created Baron Berners, temp. Henry IV.,
and that she once held the situation of Prioress of Sopwell Nunnery, in
Hertfordshire.” He then attributes to her the authorship of all four
works in the Book of St. Albans. The difficulty of accounting for a lady
so placed writing upon such subjects, is cleverly, if not satisfactorily
settled by assuming that she passed her teens at court, partaking of the
amusements of the field, and writing for her own use a commonplace book
on various subjects. Then retiring through disappointment (doubtless a
love affair) to a cloister, her rank raised her to the position of
prioress. There in her seclusion, writing amidst the solitude of
listless hours and vain regrets, she versified the general rules of
sport from her own pleasant recollection, and from the diaries of her
youthful happiness, which fortunately she had preserved. If we remember
the mania which seized all classes for diary-keeping at the beginning of
this century, when Haslewood wrote this, it will deepen our sense of
humour to note that he attributes private diary-keeping to a young lady
who lived _ante_ 1450.
But enough of such sham biography; let us return to facts.
The word “Dame” did not in the fifteenth century, as it does now, imply
any connection with a titled family, it meant simply Mistress or Mrs.
Chaucer speaks of Dame Partlet in this sense; and had the Dame Julyans
Barnes of the fifteenth century lived now, she would have been just
“Mrs. Barnes.”
Similarity of name in history, like similarity of sound in philology is
a will-o’-the-wisp which has led many a writer into a bog. Allowing that
Lord Berners’ name was sometimes spelt Barnes, is that sufficient reason
for making our authoress a member of his family? I think not.
That the greater portion of the book on Hunting was compiled by Mistress
Barnes, is probably correct,[1] and had she written much more, and
produced even an original work on the subject, she would not have stood
alone, even at that early period, as an authoress. Crystine de Pisan,
two of whose works were printed by Caxton, was contemporary with Julians
Barnes, and left not only numerous original writings behind her—one of
which was upon the Art of War—but left her mark, and that no mean nor
ignoble one, upon the political course and moral development of her
countrymen. But Dame Julyans’ work upon Hunting is certainly not
original, as indeed very few works upon any subject were at that period.
This is evident from a glance at the text and the grouping of the
subjects. It begins with distinguishing the varieties of beasts and
their ages; the proper names by which to designate the beasts, singly
and together; on hunting and dressing a Roe, a Boar, a Hare; of flaying;
of the horns of a Roebuck; of the Hart; of the seasons; of the Hare.
Then follows, from another source, an interpolation of a discourse
between a Master of the Hunt and his man, going over portions of the
same ground again; and this ended, we get back again to the original MS.
and the dismemberment of various beasts. All through, with the exception
of the interpolated conversation, the text is addressed to “My deare
childe.” Thus we read—“Do so, my child;” “Think what I say, my son;” “My
lief childer;” “Say, child, where you go? my dame taught you so.”
Evidently that portion was originally written for a mother to use as a
school-book, by which her son would learn to read, and, at the same
time, become familiar with the terms of venery.
Footnote 1:
Taking Berners and Barnes to be the same word, it is curious to
note—in connection with the work attributed to Dame Juliana, viz., The
Book of Hunting—that the masters of that sport employed men called
_Berners_, to be ready with relays of horses and to feed the
hounds.—_See_ Halliwell’s “Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial
Words.”
In the Bodleian Library is a small manuscript on the Terms of the Chase,
the beginning of which is:—
“Mi dere sones, where ye fare, be frith or by fell,
Take good hede in his tyme how Tristram wol tell.”
This manuscript was probably copied by some youth as a school-exercise,
which would account for the following odd colophon—“Explicit, expliceat,
ludere scriptor eat.”
Compare the above with the opening stanza of the verses we attribute to
Mistress Barnes:—
“Wheresoever ye fare, by frith or by fell,[2]
My dear child, take heed how Tristram doth you tell.”[3]
Footnote 2:
“By frith or by fell” = by forest or by plain; but see Halliwell’s
Dictionary.
Footnote 3:
Sir Tristram, the well-known knight of the Round Table, was a mighty
hunter, and the great authority upon all subjects connected with the
chase. Popular belief attributed to him the origin of all the special
terms used in hunting, and his name was invoked to give authority to
any statement upon this subject, just as in a later century the
arithmetical rules of Cocker give rise to the popular
phrase—“According to Cocker.”
The rest of the Oxford MS. is in similar accord with the print, but
nowhere in it is there a word about Mistress Barnes.
The words “Explicit Dam Julyans Barnes” have been considered to prove
that the lady was alive when the book was printed. If, however, Sir
James Berners were her father, of which there is no evidence, she must
have been close upon a hundred years old in 1486, as he died in 1390.
But this is importing a needless difficulty into the theory, which is
not rendered more probable by making the authoress and printer
contemporary.
It may here be as well to say a few words about Sopwell Nunnery, over
which, without a particle of evidence, our authoress is supposed to have
presided. Sopwell Nunnery, Hertfordshire, was founded about 1140, under
the rule of St. Benedict, and subject to the Abbot of St. Albans, from
which it was not far distant. The rule of life among the inmates was
very severe, and at the first the nuns were enclosed under locks and
bolts, made additionally sure by the seal, on the door, of the Abbot for
the time being (Chauncy’s History, p. 466). How long this lasted, and
how the nuns liked it, history saith not; but, in 1338, a
re-organisation had become imperative, and the Abbot of St. Albans,
among other instructions, ordered that no nun should lodge out of the
house, and no guest within it (Newcome, p. 468). There does not seem
much scope left here for the Prioress to take an active part in field
sports, though a hundred and fifty years later, which was about the
period of our “Dame,” many relaxations of the strict rules may have
become common. But, then, we have apparently accurate lists of all the
Prioresses of Sopwell in the fifteenth century, and the name of Juliana
Barnes does not appear at all in them. The known dates are these:—In
1416, Matilda de Flamstede was Prioress. Four years before her death,
which was in 1430, she was succeeded by Letitia Wyttenham. The next
whose name is known was Joan Chapell; the date of her appointment is not
recorded, but as she was set aside in 1480 on account of her age, she
had probably occupied the position for many years. In 1480, Elizabeth
Webb succeeded Joan Chapell.
What is really known of the Dame is almost nothing, and may be summed up
in the following few words. She probably lived at the beginning of the
fifteenth century, and she possibly compiled from existing MSS. some
rhymes on Hunting.
There is still the authorship of the other parts of the book to
determine, and if similarity of wording and phraseology may be taken as
evidence, they were all from one pen.
At the end of the book on Heraldry the printer has put the
following—“Here endeth the book of Blasing of Arms translated and
compiled together at Seynt Albons.” Here we have the printer’s own
statement as to the origin of his text, and doubtless this, as well as
the treatise on Hawking, were made up or “compiled” from more than one
manuscript in French. Haslewood gives a list of such as are in the
British Museum, in several of which portions of the printed work are
contained. Works on Hunting and Hawking were not uncommon in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and are still found in all large
collections of manuscripts. There were several in the libraries of the
Dukes of Burgundy in the fifteenth century, and many are still extant in
the national collections of England and France.
The other tractates in the volume have an origin very similar to that of
the Book of Hunting. The Book of Hawking is an evident compilation from
several manuscripts, which accounts perhaps for its deficiency in
arrangement and want of continuity. The Book of Coat Armour also has two
distinct sources in contemporary works, one of which was the “De Officio
Militari” of Nicholas Upton. From this the schoolmaster copied Book IV.
almost word for word, supplementing it from “The Book of the Lineage of
Coat Armour,” as stated already. The only other literary work which can
be attributed to our printer is the extensive compilation known as the
St. Albans’ Chronicle or the Fructus Temporum. But neither in the
Chronicle, where he simply combined two histories into one, nor in the
Book of St. Albans, which is also a compilation, does the schoolmaster
show any literary ability above the average of scholars of his period.
As specimens of the schoolmaster’s powers of composition we annex the
following, the originals of which can be seen in the ensuing facsimile
pages:—
=Prologue to the Book of Hawking.=
“In so much that gentlemen and honest persons have great delight in
Hawking, and desire to have the manner to take hawks: and also how and
in what wise they should guide them ordinately: and to know the gentle
terms in communing of their hawks: and to understand their sicknesses
and infirmities, and to know medicines for them according, and the many
notable terms that be used in hawking both of their hawks and of the
fowls that their hawks shall slay. Therefore this book following in a
due form shows very knowledge of such pleasure to gentlemen and persons
disposed to see it.”
=Prologue to Mistress Barnes’ Compilation on Hunting.=
“Likewise, as in the Book of Hawking aforesaid are written and noted the
terms of pleasure belonging to gentlemen having delight therein, in the
same manner this book following showeth to such gentle persons the
manner of Hunting for all manner of beasts, whether they be beasts of
Venery, or of Chace, or Rascal. And also it showeth all the terms
convenient as well to the hounds as to the beasts aforesaid. And in
certain there be many diverse of them as it is declared in the book
following.”
=Prologue to the Book of Coat Armour.=
“Here in this book following is determined the lineage of Coat Armours:
and how gentlemen shall be known from ungentle men, and how bondage
began first in angel and after succeeded in man kind, as it is here
showed in process, both in the childer of Adam and also of Noe, and how
Noe divided the world in three parts to his three sons. Also there be
showed the nine colours in Arms figured by the nine orders of Angels,
and it is showed by the foresaid colours which be worthy and which be
royal; and of regalities which be noble and which be excellent. And
there be here the vertues of Chivalry, and many other notable and famous
things, to the pleasure of noble persons shall be showed, as the works
following witnesses, whosoever liketh to see them and read them, which
were too long now to rehearse. And after these notable things aforesaid
followeth the Blasing of all manner Arms in Latin, French, and English.”
So wrote the schoolmaster. Let us now see what kind of book this is
typographically.
[Illustration: Fleuron]