Two Leicestershire Romance Codices: Cambridge, University Library MS Ff.2.38 and Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 61 (2012)

In analyzing the history of Middle English books, it is rare to find extensive connections between surviving manuscripts, and thus, when we alight on such connections, they can be quite telling. For example, scholars have recently drawn attention to the host of scribes active in London during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, many of whom copied multiple manuscripts of Middle English literature. From such analyses, a picture of loosely affiliated freelance copyists has emerged as the model dominating London book production in the century before Caxton. (1) Ralph Hanna also depicts Yorkshire scribes active in copying out multiple manuscripts, signaling an active literary culture far from the capital. (2) And the region of Bury St. Edmunds is known to have produced a series of high-end Lydgate manuscripts, providing us with a picture of yet another provincial book-producing locale--this one apparently specializing in the literature of their local luminary. (3) Yet individual manuscripts of Middle English romance--which was demonstrably a popular genre, with more than a hundred extant manuscripts--survive as almost completely discrete entities, with few identifiable connections to other manuscripts or to wider patterns of scribal dissemination. (4) I wish here to draw attention to previously overlooked connections between two of the most important compilations of Middle English romance: Cambridge, University Library MS Ff.2.38 (hereafter CUL) and Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 61 (hereafter Ashmole). As I argue below, both manuscripts share a paper stock, and both were copied out by a scribe from Leicestershire. Thus, both of these codices were almost certainly provincial productions for a provincial readership, made around the same time in the same locale for a similar sort of reader. But as I also argue, both manuscripts evince different production models--CUL being more organized and bearing the signs of production by a provincial professional, Ashmole being comparatively miscellaneous and amateur. Examining the connections between these manuscripts shows that romance was often produced by remarkably ad hoc procedures, making its production quite different from the more organized and cooperative ventures of London scribes. (5) Containing nine romances, CUL represents one of the genre's most important compilations: in terms of the number of its romances, it is second only to the Auchinleck Manuscript (Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS Advocates 19.2.1) and equal to the Lincoln Thornton Manuscript (Lincoln, Cathedral Library MS 91). (6) It is entirely in a single hand (a mixture of Anglicana and Secretary), which can be conservatively dated to the late fifteenth-early sixteenth century; however, given the many features it shares with Ashmole and the consistent dates offered by its four paper stocks, we should almost certainly locate CUL on the earlier end of this date range, roughly the last quarter of the fifteenth century. (7) It is entirely on paper and divides its texts into two roughly homogeneous sections: religious and didactic texts (fols. 3r-63r) and romances (fols. 63r-261v). Its didactic texts include Pety Job, The Long Charter of Christ, How the Good Man Taught His Son, and vitae of Margaret, Mary Magdalene, Thomas Becket, and Katherine. Its romances include the popular Robert of Sicily, Guy of Warwick (the unique fifteenth-century version), Northern Octavian, and Sir Eglamour of Artois. Ashmole is best known for its unusual format--tall and narrow--which led many earlier scholars to presume this was a minstrel's holster book. (8) Ashmole bears many broad similarities to CUL: this manuscript, like CUL, is copied entirely by a single scribe and is datable to roughly the second half of the fifteenth century. (9) Like CUL, Ashmole is entirely on paper. (10) Also like CUL, Ashmole contains numerous examples of didactic and religious literature, as well as romances; unlike CUL, however, Ashmole does not divide its romances and its didactic literature into separate sections. …