Western Medieval Manuscripts : Miscellany of household information

Western Medieval Manuscripts

Down to about the end of the 14th century most manuscript books were typically made either by professional scribes working for hire, or by some who would practise the craft by vocation, in religious houses or other ecclesiastical environments. Thereafter, it became increasingly common for a variety of lay persons (lawyers, merchants, estate managers, the numerous unbeneficed clergy, and the like) to construct and copy manuscripts for their own use, or for that of a small circle of associates, such as a household or a family. The spread of pragmatic literacy among professionals, for such purposes as accounting and correspondence, rapidly increased the circulation of paper as the preferred material for writing, and the making of books as a means of keeping texts useful for many practical purposes, or for edification or entertainment, became common practice. The physical construction of such manuscripts was often accretive, the compiler accumulating a series of paper gatherings and booklets as exemplars became available. When sufficient material was to hand it might be put into a hard binding, but it might equally be stitched into a vellum wrapper (resembling a modern paperback), or kept loose in a folder. MS Ll.1.18 at Cambridge University Library (hereafter 'Ll') is a good example of the kind of 'home-made' books that must have become very common in the 15th century, though because of their ephemeral character and vulnerable supports, relatively few have survived.Though the identity of Ll's compiler remains unknown, recent research has shown that he was someone very likely to have been involved, in various practical ways, in the running of the archbishop of York's palace at Southwell, in Nottinghamshire. The bulkiest item in his varied collection of texts is a formulary (a set of templates for legal documents) which drew for its exemplars on the archive of William Booth, archbishop of York from 1452 to 1464, a clergyman very active in both the ecclesiastical and political spheres through the mid-15th century. This suggests that the compiler probably had clerical responsibilities in the archbishop's household. Other items in the manuscript indicate that catering and welfare were also part of his remit. They include sets of culinary receipts, some of them distinctly up-market, and perhaps suitable for the archiepiscopal table, together with a variety of medical prescriptions, which point to some of the risks to health at the time. These include remedies intended to ward off the repeated visitations of the plague, and also for a new disease, the deadly sweating sickness, first recorded in England in 1469. As befitted a high-status household, the compiler also had by him manuals for the care and exercise of horses, hounds and hawks, reminding us that the English clergy's passion for the chase extended over many centuries.Ll rewards study from a variety of angles, and further work in the archives of Southwell and of the archbishops of York may yet reveal exactly who its compiler was. He seems to have been especially associated with William Worseley, a prebendary of Southwell (and later dean of St Paul's, London), a fact unexpectedly revealed when one reverses the image of a draft letter to Worseley, which the compiler amused himself by penning in mirror-writing on folio <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(145);return false;'>81r</a>. Richard Beadle Professor of Medieval English Literature and Palaeography emeritus St John's College, Cambridge