広島工業大学紀要研究編
第 44巻（2010）pp.343-352

論文

The Use of doubt(e) for Determining the Date of a Manuscript
Kisei SAKEMI *(Received Sep. 4, 2009)

Abstract
This paper questions when the letter <b> was introduced into doute, examines dictionaries
and computer corpora, and concludes that the spelling doubte can be a key to date a manuscript. The author starts from his own experience and the personal correspondence with Dr.
Margaret Laing, tries to find examples of doute and doubte (with variant forms) in OED, MED
and the Helsinki Corpus, and suggests in conclusion a further survey on the forms reconstructed by Latin as well as those suffered metathesis or analogy so as to use the results for assigning
more accurate date to a manuscript.
Key Words: spelling, manuscript, date, corpus

0. When reading Guy of Warwick in the Auchinleck MS（c. 1330）,I very often resorted to the Caius Cambridge MS 107/
176 whenever I encountered difficult passages. In doing so I found many later forms in the Caius MS, such as they /thei, their, theim, suche, eche, thurgh, not, neither, shall（pr. pl.）, shuld, -yng(e）, litell, ayene, streight, sawe, werke, gaue,
doubte, people, and so on. J. Zupitza, the editor of Guy of Warwick（EETS ES 42, 49, 59. 1883-91）, dates this MS to c.
1400, and D. Burnley and A. Wiggins, who edited an electronic version of all the Auchinleck works for the National
Library of Scotland（http://www.nls.uk/auchinleck/）, followed him. However, personally I was inclined to move thedate forward at least 50 years, and put a query to Margaret Laing at the University of Edinburgh to that effect, whopointed out that the MED dates the Caius MS to“c. 1475.” I myself am in favor of the later date.
It is, above all, the spelling doubt(e) in the Caius MS that attracted my attention. When did this spelling with < b >come into use? First, I tried the quotation-search of OED on the condition of‘date = 1300-1500’. The results are 13 hits
for doubt and 23 hits for doubte. The earliest citation is from“a1300 Cursor M. 22604（Edin.）”, but since MED dates thisMS Royal College of Physicians to“a1400”, the second earliest citation from Gower may safely be regarded as the earliest
one:“1393 Conf. I. 230 First ben enformed for to lere A craft, which cleped is facrere. For if facrere come about, Than
afterward hem stant no doubt.”（Underline mine） Another noticeable fact is that Caxton accounts for 16 out of 23
instances. Did this translator/ printer make this doubt(e) popular?
1. According to Dr. Laing, before 1300 there are no instances of doubt(e). In a personal correspondence she writes:
I believe the spelling of ‘doubt’ with <b> came in around 1400. There are certainly no such spellings in my
LAEME corpus up to 1300. Beyond that, my sources are the same as yours -- OED and MED.
OED points out that the Old French forms from which the word was borrowed into Middle English are all of
the dout- type. The < b > was introduced as a result of increased knowledge of Latin in late Middle English andearly Modern English times（< Latin dubitare）. < b > was introduced into both Middle English and Middle
French, but was subsequently dropped from French though kept in English.
＊＊＊

Department of Electronics and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Hiroshima Institute of Technology― 343 ―

Kisei SAKEMII think ca. 1400 is probably about right for the first surviving citations -- see the quotations taken from MED
below. I can find none any earlier than the Gower Confessio Amantis ones, from the Fairfax MS which is dated
end of the 14th century -- so not much after the conjectured composition date of ‘before 1393’. The Chaucer MS
quoted is from the first quarter of the 15th century.
（a1393） Gower CA（Frf 3） 1.2891: And al the poeple unto thee louteth, And al the world thi pouer doubteth.
（a1393） Gower CA（Frf 3） 6.2171: The king was doubtif of this dom.
（a1393） Gower CA（Frf 3） 7.3524: If he be doubtous To slen in cause of rihtwisnesse.. it is Pusillamite.
a1425（c1385） C haucer TC（Benson-Robinson）5.1518: Wep if thow wolt, or lef ! For out of doubte,
This Diomede is inne, and thow art oute.
From her explanation we know that dou(b)t(e) derives from Latin dubitare and that < b > was introduced into not
only Middle English but also Middle French. Is it, then, possible that the form with < b > did not come directly from
Latin, but by way of French? That may be the case because, as we shall see later, people familiar with French often
used it. It is not surprising at all if Gower, who wrote Mirour de l’Omme in French and Vox Clamantis in Latin,
introduced < b >. By the way, Laing’s list does not contain the citation in OED from Gower CA I. 230. It is because G.
C. Macaulay（1900）reads it as doute in his edition（2. 2124）. However, there is in fact an instance of doubte at 4. 1022 inrhyme（ : aboute）.1 Is it, then, that this form is Gower’s preferred spelling? On the contrary, he preferred doute to
doubte; he has as many as 34 uses of doute in CA.
2. On the Internet I got access to the Middle English Compendium and looked up the“doubt*”type in MED. The
results are“651 matches in 62 records,”but when the form doubt used in the prefaces or introductions by later editors
and the doubte forms which appear in French passages are removed, it comes to 385 instances in 23 records. Let us
give them in chronological order, that is, after the Helsinki Corpus,（M1, M2,）M3 and M4.
M3（1350-1430）
1393

Confessio Amantis

4

a1400

Cursor Mundi（Phy-E）

21 （doubt）

c1400

Ch’s CT（Hg）

1

a1425

Wycliffe: The Bible3
2 （doubtinge 1, doubt 1）

a1425

Ch’
s CT（Gg.4.27）

41 （doubte）

a1425

Ch’
s CT（La 851）53 （doubte 1, doubtles 2）

a1425

Ch’
s CT（Ha 7334）

62 （doubte 2）

To M3 there are only 12 instances in all. The instance in MS Hengwrt, D. Sum. [= Summoner’s Tale] 1712, is citedfrom Chaucer Society’s publications, but it is an error for doute. As we now know, the scribe of Ha 7334 is Scribe D who
copied seven manuscripts of Gower’s CA and two manuscripts of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales（CT）.7 He might havelearned that spelling with < b > through copying Gower’s work. One of his two uses of doubte, D.Sum 1712, is copied
doute in MS Hg, the MS written by Scribe B, who might be Adam, Chaucer’s own“scriveyn.”8 Therefore, the < b >was probably inserted by Scribe D. The instance in Cursor M, which was retrieved from OED as well, is found only in
the Royal College of Physicians MS, and the other MSS, Cotton, Fairfax, Göttingen and Trinity, do not have the < b >,and so this was also introduced by the scribe. The one of two instances I have confirmed in The Holy Bible is found at I.
Corinthians. Cap. XV. verse 27 of the later version, and its MS, British Library, Royal 1 C. 8, is dated“before 1420”by
Forshall & Madden,9 and“a1425”by MED. Consequently, we can say that Gower, who has four instances, is the first to
use the doubt- type.

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The Use of doubt(e) for Determining the Date of a Manuscript

The above list contains three instances from Lansdowne 851 and two from Harley 7334, and both of them have one
instance from Chaucer’s Tale of Melibeus. This tale is, according to J. B. Severs（1941）, a close translation of the Livrede Melibée et de Dame Prudence written by Renaud de Louens sometime after 1336. We cannot tell whether the Frenchtranslator used the doubt- type or not, because his holograph has been lost. However, the French exemplar Chaucer
worked from might have had doubt- ; Severs’s edition of the French source, the base of which is Paris, Bibliothèquenationale, MS. fr. 578（14th c.）, does have this < b > form only.10 Since Chaucer’s translation is now assigned to 1386-90,
it seems likely that the < b > had been introduced into Middle French before that time. Chaucer did not reach for theLatinized form when it was in his French source, right before his eyes. On the other hand, Gower used that spelling
form frequently, but it was in his French work, Mirour de L’Omme（c. 1377）. The glossary of G. C. Macaulay’s edition（1899）lists these words:
doubtance, s.

8069, B. iv. 4,

fear, doubt

doubte, doute, s. 1341, 2112, 4678, T. v. 3,

fear, doubt

doubter, v.a., n. and refl. 442, 802, 1197, 6324, T. xiii. 1,
doubtous, a.

27837, T. iv. 1,

fear, care, doubt

doubtful

Of these, only the instance of line 4678 lacks < b >. However, in CA（1390-93）he, too, as I mentioned above, holds backthe use of it（doubte 1 : doute 34）, though he has one use of doubteth, doubtous and doubtif, respectively. Incidentally,
MED cites only Gower for the headword doubtif. And interestingly enough, Tobler-Lommatzsch’s Alt- französisches
Wörterbuch has the headword doubtous（doubteux, Ménag. I 55）, but not of doubtif. （Godefroy’s Dictionnaire del’ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes has both of them.）
M. K. Pope, in her From Latin to Modern French（p. 149, §373）, states that in Early Old French, that is, from the endof the 5th c. to the end of the 11th c., labials were effaced whenever they were juxtaposed to following dentals（dǔbǐto >dote）. And then in the 14th century, it is generally said, such spellings as doubte with etymological < b > came intofrequent use.11 Tobler-Lommatzsch cites one instance of doubte from the Old French translation of Ovid’s Remedia
Amoris（sans nulle doubte, Rem. Am. 1322）,12 but since the Bibliography of Dictionnaire étymologique de l’ancien
français（http://www. deaf-page.de/）dates the MS, Sächsische Landesbibliothek ― Staats- und Universitäts- bibliothek
Dresden, Oc. 66, to c. 1375, the first quotation cited by Godefroy is earlier:
13
Sur la deubte que il ont de nous courroucier. （1359, Ord., III, 362）

If this is really the first instance in Middle French, it follows that Gower, who must have completed Mirour de l’Omme
before Richard’s accession in 1377,14 inserted < b > just some twenty years after the first instance in French. According
to Pope（p. 422 § 1073, p. 456 §1218）, it is in the later thirteenth century that the earliest spelling treatises which
enforce respect for the Latin etyma appeared; that is, the first spelling treatise, Tractatus Orthographiae, composed by astudent of Paris, and the better known Orthographia Gallica which appeared soon afterwards. Pope also says that the
few authors of the fifteenth century who, like Gower, still make use of French in literary compositions, model their usage
as closely as they can on the speech of France ― or rather Paris, are Anglo-French rather than Anglo-Norman.15 In fact,
Gower in Mirour de l’Omme uses debte beside dette, and soubdeinement beside so(u)dainement, though in CA dette 8 :debte 0. Also, he doubles consonants in accordance with Latin spelling in accepter, accord, accuser, commander, commun,
etc.16 This means that Gower knew the new trend in Paris and put it into practice when writing in French.
3. Now to M4（1430-1500）. Let us divide the witnesses in this period into two; one is Caxton and his followers, and theother is others than the Caxton group. And we can see that others than the Caxton group have as few uses of doubt- as
in M3.
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Kisei SAKEMI

M4: Others than Caxton group

doubt-

dout-

a.1456

Shirley: Death of James1（doubt）

117

1461, 79

Paston Letters, Pt 1

2（doubt 1, -table 1）718

c.1475

Guy of Warwick（Caius ms.）7（doubte 6, -ted 1）

619? a.1500

Davies: English Chronicle20
1（doubte）

0

a.1500

The Brut（Addit. 10099）

3（doubted 3）521

The occurrences are unexpectedly infrequent. Striking is that MS. Caius of Guy of Warwick has seven uses of doubt-;
the scribe would have been very familiar with French. It is understandable that MED dates that MS to c. 1475, for
Caxton, who set up a press at Westminster in 1476, uses, as we will see below, the doubt- type almost exclusively. The
only thing is, the scribe of MS. Caius uses the dout- type as well ― six times.22 Now, this list is not all; there are someother examples in The Paston Letters. By searching James Gairdner’s edition（vols. 2-6）included in the Innsbruck
Corpus（= Innsbruck Computer Archive of Middle English Texts）, we find 14 instances（the occurrence in 1426 must
be removed because N. Davis reads it as doute ）.
1426, March

doubte1432, Nov. 9

Articles de Monsr. de Warrewyk... s o that it may resonably be doubted leste he wol conceive ayeins the said Erle, or eny other that wol
take upon him ...
1432, Nov. 9

op. cit.

	        ... h e hath be stured by summe from his lernyng, and ... the seid Erle doubting the harme that mighte
falle to the King, and ...
1453

The Duke of Norfolk’s Petition	        ... for doubt lest that othyr yn tyme comyng take example thereoff, and1455, May 21

From the Duke of York to Henry VI [No. 1022]

	        ... o ur ennemyes of approuved experience ... have throwen unto the same ryght stedyousely and ryght
fraudulentlye manye ambyguytees and doubtes of the fayth, lygeaunce, and dewtee that ...
1455, June 22

From Sir John Fastolf to John Paston I [No. 526]	        ... h e hath a lettre of credence to the baylly of Dedham because of doubt of syght of the baylly ys lettre
ther for disclosyng, &c., ...
1455, July 7

From William Worcester to John Paston I [No. 529]	        ... for y doubt he shall and most obbey, yff he hath offended.
1458（?）,Jan. 24

From Richard, Earl of Salisbury, to Viscount Beaumont	        ... by the trouth I owe unto the King, but that therby I doubt not, I shulde not rekever, daies of my lyfe, ...
1461, Oct. 111474（?）,May 9= MED [No. 117]
From Sir Ralph Hastings to John Paston II	        ... the Connestable sykened with you in his goyng to Calais, of whome I doubt me, and so ...
1474（?）,May 9

op. cit.

	        ... I kepe not to make moo, for I doubt me that this we are about, ...
1478, March 1

From William Botoner to Sir John Paston II [No. 780]	        ... a nd at reverence of Jhesu that my Robert lose no tyme, nether be idelle, for doubt of ymaginacions
and temptacions.
1479, March       = MED [No. 103]1491（?）,March 27

From the Earl of Oxford to Sir John Paston III [No. 822]	        ... nat doubting but that Sir Edmound Benyngfeld shall be there in like wise.

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The Use of doubt(e) for Determining the Date of a Manuscript

In 1450’s, there is one more besides these five instances:1451, January 28

From Sir John Fastolf to Thomas Howes [No. 1005]         I doubt they can doo it, they I remembre it not, but yhyt it ...
Moreover, in No. 1022 of 1455 appears redoubted, and in No. 575 of 1467 undoubted. The Paston family was located in
Norfolk, but the several members of the family, John I（1421-66）, Edmond I（1425-49）, William II（1436-88）, and John II（1442-79）, according to N. Davis（2004）, died in London, so the Pastons must have often gone to and from London. In
fact, most of those who appear in The Paston Letters belonged to the upper ranges of society; they must have been
educated and capable of reading French without difficulty. The spelling with silent < b > might have struck them asfashionable. Nonetheless, in that collection the dout- type is still dominant, appearing 42 times.23 From this and the above
list of M4 we could say that before 1450 there are still very few occurrences of the doubt- type.
4. It seems to be Caxton（c. 1422-91）and his successor Wynkyn de Worde（d. 1534）that made the spelling of doubttype popular. Robert Copland（fl. 1508-1547）,whom de Worde hired as a translator, could be grouped into this company.
Here is the occurrences of doubt- in the books Caxton translated or added passages to.
1482

Polychronicon, Vol. VIII

8 （doubted 6, doubte 1, doubtable 1）

1483

Legend of the Holy Rood

2 （douted 2）1483

Knight of La Tour-Landry

8 （doubte 5, doubted 1, doutyng（e 2）1485Charles the Grete

48 （doubte 26, douted 16, doubteth 4, doubtyng 2）1485

Malory’s Darthur

60 （doubte 53, doubted 6, doubteth 1）c. 1489

Blanchardyn

27 （doubte 13, doubted 14 ）c. 1489

Four Sons of Aymon

91 （doubte 67, doubt 11, doubted 11, doubteth 2）

Since the volume VIII of Polychronicon was written by Caxton himself, the spelling is his own, and it was adopted from
French. With regard to his attitude on translation, Octavia Richardson（1884: vii-viii）says as follows.
... I n his translation of this work, Caxton shows himself piously literal. Words and phrases, both foreign andunusual, he transferred bodily to his text; nothing ever deterred him, simply because it was French; he wanderedalong every winding of the sentences he was rendering, and brought them over with all their sinuosities into theEnglish.24
Wynkyn de Worde used the same spelling that his master did. However, in the three works he published there are
only 28 instances.
1499

Three Kings of Cologne

4（doubte 3, doubtes 1）

1506-8Works of Richard Rolle17	（doubte 8, doubt（e）full 4, doubted 3, doubtes 1,
doubtles 1, doubtable 1）c.1510

The Gesta Romanorum

7（doubte 7）

It may be because de Worde, being contented with reprints, translated very few books himself. The Cambridge History
of English and American Literature（1907-21, Vol. II. XIII）says as follows.
... We have no evidence that de Worde did anything in the way of editing or translating; but he had in his
employ assistants who were able to translate from the French.

― 347 ―

Kisei SAKEMI

De Worde had several translators under him, one of whom was Robert Copland（c. 1470-1548）. In The Foure Sonnes of
Aymon（1554）reprinted by his son, William Copland（fl. 1548- 1568）, too, the doubt- type is a dominant form, but thiswork, where Caxton’s preferred forms, such as grete, deth, werke, knowlege, see and coude, are replaced with death,great, worke, knowledge, sea, and could respectively, reflects Early Modern English. Incidentally, the search results of
CE 1（1500- 1570; 27 works）in the Helsinki Corpus for both types are dout* 23 vs. doubt* 45. Despite the adoption anddissemination of the doubt- type by the Caxton group,25 even in the 16th century the dout- type survived perseveringly.
5. To the search results of MED there is one more work left. It is an English translation of the tale of Melusine thewater-nymph written in around 1387 by Jean d’Arras, a North French trouvère, at the request of John, duke of Berry.
The prose translation is included in Brit. Lib., Royal 18. B. 2（c. 1500）,which also has many uses of doubt- .
c.1500Melusine, Pt 1

86 （doubte 71, doubted 21, doubtous 7, doubtyng 4, doubtles 4, doubt 3）

The translator is unknown, but since it is said to be a close translation of the French prose, it is possible that it was
rendered by Caxton（d. 1491）or Copland, for in late mediaeval England very few translators used this spelling as
frequently as Caxton or Copland did. This form does not appear in The Regiment of Princes by Hoccleve（c.1368- c.1430）
nor in The Troy Book nor The Siege of Thebes by Lydgate（c.1370- c.1450）. Nor does it in the saints lives by John
Capgrave（1393-1464）or An Anthology of Chancery English（ed. J. H. Fisher et al）. However, my inference may be
wrong because if it had been translated by Caxton or Copland, they would have printed it, not copied as it is in the MS.
Royal 18. B. 2.
Now, to this Melusine there is also another version in stanzas of seven lines, which W. W. Skeat（1866）calls The
Romance of Partenay or of Lusignan, and the MS of this verse, Cambridge, Trinity College, R. 3. 17（the early 16th c.）also has doubte. Skeat（op. cit., p. xx）says that“the author may have been born, of English parents, in the province ofPoitou, where the legend of Melusine was extremely well-known.”
6. Conclusion.
Gower, who seems to be the first in England to use the spelling with < b >, usually uses the dout- type, and fromcarelessness he inserted < b > into the forms with dout-, for in writing in French he was anxious to introduce < b > into
those forms. In 1450’s the doubt- type appears occasionally, and that in the letters written by such upper-class persons
as the Paston family. Then the spelling form was popularized by Caxton who remained faithful to the French original,and his successors, de Worde and Copland, contributed to it. Therefore, if the doubt- type appears more often than the
dout- type, then the MS could be placed to around 1475.
Finally, let us check the Innsbruck Corpus in order to verify this statement. （I exclude both the Paston Letters andthe works by Caxton and de Worde.） As a result, the four files, it turned out, have the < b > form.
? a.1425

BOESKE（Boece ed. by Skeat）? a.1450

HERBARUM（de Viribus Herbarum） 1 （doubtid）

c.1488-96

LETTCHRI（Christ Church Letters）

a.15001

doubteth

3 （doubtful 2, doubtedly 1）

BRUT2（The Chronicles of England） 3 + 2 （doubted 3 + vndoubted 2 ）This result is almost the same as the above search results of MED. Eight instances out of ten are after the appearanceof Caxton. The three in Christ Church Letters are from 1488, 1490 and 1496, and its MS can possibly be of somewhat
later date. The five in The Chronicles of England are from Brit. Lib. MS, Addit. 10,099（a.1500）. Only two instances are
relatively earlier. But the MS of Boece which Skeat used as a base text, Camb. Univ. Lib., Ii. 3.21,26 reads it as dowteth.
Another MS Skeat collated with, Brit. Lib. Addit. 10,340（EETS ES 5）, also reads douteþ. So does the MS the Riverside
Chaucer is based on, Camb. Univ. Lib., Ii. 1.38（douteth）. Therefore, it is probable that Skeat inserted < b > by mistake.
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The Use of doubt(e) for Determining the Date of a Manuscript

Then only one instance remains. That appears in A Middle English Translation of Macer Floridus de Viribus Herbarum,
the MS of which is probably Sloane 2269, and MED dates it to“? a.1450”. Since this text has one instance of doute, too,
the dating by MED seems to be plausible.
Thus this spelling form is likely to help us to date a manuscript. So will the form bird. MED states that the first
instance of the metathesized form is in 1419, and that from around 1475 downward it became popular. 27 If we collect andstudy more forms of this kind, not only such Latinized forms as subtle28, debt, describe, perfect,29 adventure, advise/advice,assault, fault, equal, etc., but also such common words as bird, could with < l >, delight with < gh >, guide30 with < ui >,sound with < d >, and autumn, the first user of which is Chaucer,31 we would be able to assign a more accurate date to amanuscript.32

Notes
・* I owe much to Dr. Margaret Laing, who gave me a detailed and polite answer to my query. I also wish to thank Míceál

F. Vaughan, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Washington, for his very carefulreading of my draft and his many constructive comments.
1. 4. 1022 Wherof thei weren alle in doubte,
2. 22604 Saint peter sal be domb þat dai, / Þat he ne a word dar noht spek, / For doubt of demsteris wrek.
3. Professor Vaughan helped me to find Wycliffe’s doubtinge in the margin of the earlier version of Ecclesiasticus Cap. V（p. 133）.
Ecclesiasticus. Cap. V. .... in techinge now the truthe, and now afferm ¦ ynge the con ¦ trarie of truthe, whichething techeris doubt ¦ inge ether vn ¦ stidefast in feith, ben wont to do. in the weye of the Lord;
I. Corinthians. Cap. XV. ... whanne he seith, alle thingis ben suget to hym, with outen doubt outakun hym
that suget ¦ ide alle thingis to hym. And ...
4. I.Pars 1023 thow schat not schryue thee for veynglorye / ne for ypocrise / ne for non cause but only for the
doubte of ihesu Crist
5. E.Mch 1722 ... to here / Neiþer Theodomas ʒit halfe so clere / And Thebes whan þe Cite was in doubte /... a-boute. /B.Mel 1884 For doubtelesse, if we bien sory & repentant of þe sinnes & giltes þe whiche we haue trespasede in ...
B.NP 3108 Of dremes for .I. saie þe doubteles / þat mony a dreme ful sore is for to drede
6. D.Sum 1712 In which þer went a lymytour aboute / To preche and eek to begge it is no doubte
B.Mel 1216 And if so be þat þou be in doubte wher þou maist parforme a þing or noon chese rather tosuffre þan bigynne.
7. According to J. J. Smith（1988）, his hand is identified in the following 12 MSS : Trinity, Cambridge R.3.2（Gower, CA;
quires 9, 15-19, and parts of 14）, University Libr, London V.88 （Piers Plowman‘C-text’）, BL Addl 27944（Bartholomaeus; fols. 2-7v, 96-335v）, Bodl Bodley 902（Gower, CA; fols. 2-16v）, Corpus Christi, Oxford, B.67（Gower,
CA）, Christ Church, Oxford 148（Gower, CA）, Columbia University Libr, Plimpton 265（Gower, CA）, BL Egerton 1991
（Gower, CA）, Bodl Bodley 294（Gower, CA）, Princeton, University Libr, Robert H Taylor MS（Gower, CA; fols. 7r190r）, BL Harley 7334（CT）, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS 198（CT）. And in BL Harley 7334 and Corpus
Christi Oxford 198,“the majority of forms are commonly found in the Southern Midlands, many of them invariable
between the MSS.” Interesting enough, the Latin word cicada appears only four times in ME（see MED, Part C.3, p.
271）,three of which are used by Trevisa in his translation of De Proprietatibus Rerum and Higden’s Polychronicon.
8. Linne Mooney（2006）thinks that Scribe B might be Adam, Chaucer’s own“scriveyn.”
9. The earlier Wycliffite version is adopted from the following five MSS, which Forshall & Madden date as follows.

― 349 ―

Kisei SAKEMI

		

book

date

came

Corp. Ch. Coll. Oxford, 4

11

before 1420

4

Douce 369（1）16

before 1390

6

Douce 369（2）34

before 1390 ?

151

Douce 3703

before 1400 ?

73

BL, Royal 1 B. 6

8before 1400

0However, I suspect that Douce 369（2）and Douce 370 were copied after 1450, because the occurrence of came, whichappears frequently after 1420, is very prominent in these two MSS. Another reason is that although Royal 1 C. 8（a1425）, from which almost all items in the later version are adopted, has only 11 instances of came, Dc 369（2）has 151
instances, and Dc 370 has as many as 73 instances in three books.
10. The spelling of doubt- type appears at lines 346, 368, 408, 415, 530, 531, 533, 537, 540, 543, 544, 545, 555, 684, and 685.
11. This information is based on the personal correspondence with Yuji Kawaguchi, professor of French at Tokyo
University of Foreign Studies. He says that as to the date of the first instance of a spelling form, there seems to be no
reliable reference book, but that it is in 1694 that the spelling doubte was returned to doute by the Academy.
12. Tobler-Lommatzsch gives this quotation from Altfranzoesische Uebersetzung der Remedia Amoris des Ovid（Leipzig,1871）, which G. Koerting edited based on Sächsische Landesbibliothek ― Staats-und Universitäts-bibliothek Dresden,Oc. 66. Koerting dates this MS to the early 15th century or the last quarter of the 14th century. The translator isanonymous, but Koerting thinks he is a person from Paris. To this translation there is another MS, which is in San
Marco Bibliothek in Venezia and lacks both the beginning and the ending. It is less than half of the Dresden MS（fol.
15-76d）. The ten instances of doubte(s) in the Dresden MS（531, 869, 1112, 1322, 1341, 1771, 1996, 2069, 2143, 2242）areall doute(s) in this San Marco MS. Incidentally, the homepage of Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France says that a
trouvère named Jacques d’Amiens in Picardie（fl. 1250-80）also translated Ars Amatoria and composed a poem titled“li Remedes d’amors”,but this is, according to Koerting, has little to do with Ovid’s Remedia Amoris.
13. Ord means Ordnnaunces des Roys de France de la troisième race, p. p. E. J. de Laurière etal., Paris（Imp. roy.）17231849. But I have not seen this book yet.
14. A. E. Hartung, A Manual, Vol. 7, p. 2198.
15. M. K. Pope, op. cit. p. 423 §1075. P. Studer（1920: 4-16）, stating that Anglo-Norman was a homogeneous languagewith distinctly Norman characteristics and that by the middle of the 14th century it was a dead language, prefers theterm‘Anglo-Norman’ to‘Anglo-French.’
16. G. C. Macaulay, op. cit. p. xxxii.
17. The Dethe of the Kynge of Scotis, p. 25 ... Yit doubt y nat that ye shall se the daye and the tyme, that ye shallpray my soule, ...
The one instance of dout- is found in the next page（p. 26）:... I doute me full sore that, and ye contynue thus your tourmentes upon my wretched person, that for the ...
18. Clement Paston to John Paston 1（1461） ... but put all things out of doubt he is such a man as will not lye.
William Paston I to Richard Lee（1479） ... if he did them any wrong, and where as ther is a doubtable mater;
The seven instances of dout- include doute 6 and dout 1, in the letters of 1426, 1460, 1479 and in the petitions of 1449,
1454??.
19. The seven uses of doubt- in the Caius MS of Guye of Warrewik are:50

And grettly doubted in euery place.

1175

For doubte of deth y woll not flee:

1197

For the more men woll the doubte

1930

After good men withoute doubte

3960

All the sarasyns of him had doubte.

6090

For doubte of deth y woll not flee.’6099

And Amys anone, withoute doubte,

The instances of dout- are given in note 22.
20. An English chronicle of the reigns of Richard II, etc., ed. J. S. Davies.
― 350 ―

The Use of doubt(e) for Determining the Date of a Manuscript[25th year of Henry VI] ... And there they brak up their waache, and euerye man went to his owne dwellyngplace, ... and no doubte of hit was（sic）a fervent coolde weder and a bytynge.
21. The Brut, or The Chronicles of England, edited from Ms. Raw. B171（pp. 14-286）, B173（pp. 452-5）, Add 10099（pp.
491-533）,etc., ed. F. W. D. Brie.
p. 495A
 nd also with bisshoppes & men of te spiritueltie, in so fer forth tat tei doubted sore tat he wold haue
had te Temperalties out of ter handes;

p. 497T his King, beyng in his Cradel, was moche doubted & dradd, bicause of te gret conquest of his fadre, ...

p. 523... Bokyngham & othir lordes. & forthwith tei Arose, for tei durst ne lenger Abide, for tei doubted
tat te hole Cite shold haue risen Ayenst teme, but ...

On the other hand, the five instances of dout- are: doute 3, doutid 1, doutet 1.
22. In Caius MS there are six occurrences of dout- : dowte 3, dowt 1, doute 2.
23. The details of 42 instances are:dout（e）17, dowt（e）21, doutyng 1, dowteful（l）2, dowtabill 1
24. However, L. Kellner（1890: cxi）says that he cannot admit Miss Octavia Richardson’s statement with regard to
Caxton’s‘piety.’
25. Among the books published by William Copland there is Valentine and Orson（1555）,which was translated from the
French by Henry Watson at the request of Wynkyn de Worde in 1503-5. Concerning the vocabulary in Valentine andOrson, the editor of that book（EETS O.S. 204）,Arthur Dickson, says as follows.
... Writers of his time coined words freely, and in particular translators frequently‘translated’merely by giving
the foreign words an English guise; in this they followed the precedent of Caxton, and most of the words which
Watson seems to have been the last to use are Caxton’s words.
26. The uppermost layer of CUL Ii. 3.21 of Boece is, according to Samuels（1983: 34）, in the language of the NW KentLondon border, and the dialect of the scribe was quite close to that of his exemplar.
27. Recently I have noticed this metathesized form used in Wynkyn de Worde’s edition of Gesta Romanorum, while theother three MSS, Brit. Lib., Harley 7333（c. 1440）, Brit. Lib., Addit. 9066（c. 1440）, and Camb. Univ. Lib. Kk 1.6（a.
1500）, all have brid（de）or bryd, and the two of these, Harley 7333 and Addit. 9066, are both dated by MED to“a1500（? a1450）”.
28. Interestingly, unlike the case with doubte, Chaucer appears to be one of the earliest users of subtil(e) ; in Hg subtil
appears 15 times and subtile 4 times, while sotil/ sotel 0, but soutilite 2.
29. The earliest instance of perfect with < c > is found at Ayenbite of Inwyt（1340）,which is said to be Dan Michel’s own
holograph:p. 127: ... Huo þet þise uour uirtues mi3te zuo habbe / he ssolde by wel perfect and yblissed ine þise wordle /and more ine þe oþre.
30. The search results of the MED corpus for guide-/ guyde- show that Gower may also be the first user of this spelling,
while Chaucer’s preferred form is gyde-. Interestingly enough, this form is used by both Scribe D and the Caius scribeof Guy.
31. See Terasawa（1977: 85）.
32. For example, MED regards the date of the St. John’s College MS H 1 of Trevisa’s Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden as
almost the same as that of Trevisa’s translation（1387）, while another MS Brit. Lib., Addit. 24194 is dated to“c.1410.”
According to the introduction（p. lviii）by C. Babington and J. R. Lumby, Mr. Bond, of the British Museum, told themthat“both are certainly of the same period, namely, about the reign of Henry IV [1399-1413]”and that“the Tenison
MS. [= Addit. 24194] appears slightly the older of the two.” Why, then, does not MED date the St. John’s MS to“c.1410”or“c.1410-15”? In fact, this MS has three occurrences of sound*, which first appeared about 1400:
p. 355, vol. 1 ... thei begynne with a softe noyce and tune, and pleyenge priuely vnder a dulle sounde of a moregrosse corde returne to the same.
p. 115, vol. 1 ... the mownte of Syon, ... whiche is callede, after the langage of men of Sire, Golgotha, soundenge by― 351 ―

Kisei SAKEMIinterpretacion, Caluaria, ...
p. 459, vol.4 ... men coniecture that cite to be callede in the langage off ?e Allemaynes Rauenesburghe, whichesoundethe in Englische the cite of ravenes. / ...

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― 352 ―