A new book in the Bodleian

I spent a considerable part of this morning and afternoon attending an online symposium at the Bodleian Library. It was devoted to a book the Library has recently acquired. Now there is nothing unusual in that - as Bodley’s Librarian pointed out in his opening remarks the Library takes in something like a thousand books every day. This one however is exceptional.

An illuminated manuscript French translation of the New Testament produced to the highest standards of the day in the Parisian ateliers during the last quarter of the thirteenth century it was acquired before 1350 by the future King Jean II, who inscribed his name in it as a sign of ownership. It may have come to England as a result of the King’s captivity after the battle of Poitiers in 1356, or, perhaps more probably, with his granddaughter Queen Joan of Navarre, who married King Henry IV in 1403. The application of ultra-violet light has revealed the erased names of later English owners - Thomas, later Duke of Clarence, his stepson Edmund Beaufort, Count of Mortain and later Duke of Somerset, who then gave it to his stepfather’s youngest brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Duke Humphrey - or Humfrey - was, of course, a seminal figure in the development of what became the Bodleian Library, and a significant patron of learning and literature both established Latin and French texts and the latest Italian Humanist versions. The volume appears to have disappeared after Duke.Humfrey’s death in 1447 before reappearing in the eighteenth century. Thanks to a government ban on its export it has now been acquired and given a permanent home in the library its last royal owner so clearly supported and valued.

The symposium offered a series of fascinating talks about the book, which is on show in the Weston Library, and, as of today,  also available in digitised form online at Bodleian Library MS. Duke Humfrey c. 1

The full Bodleian catalogue entry with the various recovered inscriptions can be seen at MS. Duke Humfrey c. 1 - Medieval Manuscripts

The Bodleian website illustrates two of the miniatures and lists the impressive array of contributors to the symposium at From Jean le Bon to Good Duke Humfrey

The book itself and the symposium provide and provided a fascinating insight into the cultivated literary tastes and patronage of princes either side of the Channel between the last years of St Louis and the mid-fifteenth century.

Wikipedia has an illustrated biography of the Duke at Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester

 

Humphrey Duke of Gloucester

Fifteenth century portrait by an unknown artist Library of St Vaast, Arras

Image: Britannica

 

St Alban

Whether you observe St Alban on June 20th, which we lost with it falling on a Sunday this year, and raises the question as to why he is only a memoria given that he is the proto-martyr of Britain, or on his dies natalis of June 22nd it is worth saying that a visit to St Alban's shrine church of the Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Alban is well worth while

It is a while since I visited it but it is a deeply moving building, one that has survived the ravages of time, including partial collapses of the nave in the middle ages and partial rebuildings, of the upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, neglect, a drastic and heavy handed "restoration" in the late nineteenth century and much besides. It still has one of the richest collections of surviving medeival art in a major church, with wall paintings and sculpture of the highest quality. Its survival at all is almost miraculous, and in that time honoured cliche it is a sermon in stone not only of English church history but also an eloquent one of the survival of the Church amidst all that the world can do to it.

There is an online account of its history at St Albans Cathedral and the informative cathedral website can be seen at  The Cathedral and Abbey Church of Saint Alban

Today the restored shrine base is the focus of prayer and devotion to St Alban, even if his relics are lost, or possibly in part in Germany.

The restored Shrine of St Alban

Image: Wikiwand

A reconstruction of the Abbey and its buildings on the eve of the dissolution

A painting by Joan Freeman

Image: Wikipedia

The abbey before Lord Grimsthorpe's "restoration"

Image: Herts Memories

Lord Grimsthorpe's drastic restoration campaign did save the building from collapse and his west front is more impressive than its predecessor, and probably what at least of the type at least one medieval abbot intended. Other changes to the main windows of the transepts, the re-roofing and the addition of buttresses cutting through medieval work are more than questionable, as is the loss of the " Hertfordshire spike" from the tower.

 

The south wall of the nave built partly of reused Roman brick from Verulamium and local flint. The early fourteenth century cloister arcading is brutally cut by Lord Grimsthorpe's nineteenth century buttresses.

Image: vidimus.org

St Albans had agreat tradition of  chronicle writing in the middle ages, and is best known for the work of matthew paris in the thirteenth century and Thomas Walsingham in the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.

As someone who already knew the abbey I was interested to find in my research on Bishop Richard Fleming a link. Like all self-respecting medieval Bishops of Lincoln - in whose diocese the abbey lay but with its autonomy protected by a series of Papal privileges - and with an Abbot qually keen, indeed obliged,  to uphold the status of his house as an anney nullius there was the inevitable clash of jurisdictions and furious exchanges of letters in the 1420s. This afforded a great insight into the exempt status of the abbey both then and throughout its history. It was fascinating to see how the monastic Archdeaconry of St Albans, transferred to the diocese of London from that of Lincoln in 1550 survived until the mid-nineteenth century, only being reconfigured in 1845 and close to the foundation of the modern diocese. There is something of its history at Archdeacon of St Albans

Humphrey Duke of Gloucester sponsored by St Alban before the Blessed Sacrament and Christ as the Man of Sorrows circa 1430-40

Image:luminarium.org

There is perhaps something of an irony that Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, a great patron of the abbey and is buried there, was to be Bishop  Fleming's principal adversary in the conflict over Fleming's failure to become Archbishop of York in 1424-6. The St Albans factor may have added to the attendant disharmony.

St Alban pray for us

Humphrey Duke of Gloucester

Today is the 570th anniversary of the death at Bury St Edmunds of Humphrey Duke of Gloucester (1390–1447), prince, soldier, and literary patron.

The excellent concise life of him by G.L.Harriss in the Oxford DNB can be accessed here,
and there is another illustrated account here.  The full length biography Humphrey Duke of Gloucester by K.H.Vickers from 1907, which is still useful, can be viewed on Project Gutenberg here.

Humphrey Duke of Gloucester
A sixteenth century copy by J.Le Boucq in a manuscript at Arras

Image:luminarium.org

The youngest son of King Henry IV he received his Christian name as a tribute to the family of his mother Mary de Bohun.

I have posted previously about the Duke and the events of 1425 in particular in Stand off on London Bridge.

On Matt's History Blog The Fall of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester there is a useful account of the Dukes death and place in the events of the time 

One of the recipients of Humphrey's patronage was the abbey at St Albans, and it was there that he had chosen to be buried:

Duke Humphrey sponsored by St Alban before the Blessed Sacrament and Christ as the Man of Sorrows circa 1430-40

Image:luminarium.org

Duke Humphrey and his second wife Eleanor Cobham
From the Benefactor's Book of St Albans 1431

Image: Wikipedia  

Duchess Eleanor was disgraced and imprisoned after a witchcraft scandal in 1441. Her life and downfall are set out, again with skill and economy, by G.L. Harriss in the ODNB at Eleanor (c.1400–1452). Her alleged principal necromancer Roger Bolingbroke was an Oxford man, principal of St Andrew's Hall. He may well fit in with the contemorary Oxford tradition of astrology - and the risk of serious charges ensuing if politics, let alone the succession to the Crown, was addressed.  There is an account of him and the prosecution at Roger Bolingbroke and a more detailed one with extracts from a contemporary chronicle at  ExecutedToday.com » 1441: Roger Bolingbroke, “hanged, hedyd, and quartered" Eleanor herself, divorced from the Duke, and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment died at Beaumaris castle in Anglesey in 1452.

Humphrey lived in the style appropriate to the son, brother and uncle of Kings, and some hint of that can be seen not only in manuscripts he owned but also in the rare survival of a piece of plate from his collection:

 

A cup bearing the arms of Duke Humphrey and his Duchess Eleanor,

now in the possession of Christ's College Cambridge

Image: Project Gutenberg

Duke Humphrey from the Talbot Shrewsbury Book 1443-45

BL Royal MS E VI f.2v.

Image: Wikimedia 

It was Humphrey who built the first royal residence at Greenwich in the years after 1428 and which was to be taken over by his nephew King Henry VI and his Queen Margaret. renamed the Palace of Placentia and rebuilt under King Henry VII it was to remain an important royal residence until the Civil War, and then, after the Restoration and possible plans for a new royal palace there, to become eventually the great Naval complex we see today. 

Greenwich Palace

Image: National Maritime Museum

St Saviour's Hospital Bury St Edmunds
The hospital built in 1184-5. This is the lower half of the west range, which was 100ft long

Image:geograph.org.uk

St Saviour's Bury St Edmund's where Humphrey died was the largest of the six hospitals in Bury

and there is the VCH Suffolk account of it here.  A small part of the buildings survive near Bury St Edmunds railway station.

The tomb of Humphrey Duke of Gloucester at St Albans, adjacent to the shrine of the saint

Image:churchmonumentssociety.org




The coffin and crypt of Humphrey Duke of Gloucester at St Albans
The painted crucifix is of great interest. Whether it still survives I do not know.

Image:churchmonumentssociety.org

Thre is an illustrated article about the Duke's tomb, and something about the circumstances of his death and burial, in the article about it as Monument of the Month in May 2010 for the Church Monuments Society here 

He has another enduring monument in Ocford - Duke Humfrey's Library, which still uses the older spelling of his name. A book collector and patron of Italian humanists Humphrey made two substantial gifts to the University of  Oxford. In 1439 he gave 129 manuscripts and in 1444 another 134. Oxford responded by adding an extra storey to the Divinity School they were building to house these and their other books and named it in the Duke's honour. The building was not completed until 1488, but it still retains his name. There is more about it, with links, at Duke Humfrey's Library.
The remainder of his library had been promised but went instead to King Henry VI's foundation in Cambridge of King's College. Humphrey's interests and importance in this reception of contemporary culture are considered in the life by Harriss in the ODNB linked to above.

Interior of Duke Humfrey's Library today, as refitted and arranged by Sir Thomas Bodley in 1598

Image: Bodleian Blogs



John Capgrave presents his Commentary on Exodus to Duke Humphrey c.1440
This is one of the three surviving books from the Duke's gift still in the Bodleian Library

Image: Bodleian/Wikipedia 

Stand off on London Bridge

Today is the 590th anniversary of the stand off on London Bridge which averted the outbreak of more serious conflict in the capital and perhaps elsewhere.

A decade after Agincourt and little over three years after the death of King Henry V the Council ruling England for the child King Henry VI was split between factions centred around the King's younger uncle and Protector - a position that remained undefined, and hence a source of tension - Humphrey Duke of Gloucester and his uncle, and the King's great-uncle, Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester and later to become Cardinal.

Humphrey Duke of Gloucester

Image:luminarium.org

Duke Humphrey sponsored by St Alban before the Blessed Sacrament and Christ as the Man of Sorrows circa 1430-40

Image:luminarium.org

Duke Humphrey favoured a belligerent policy in France in pursuit of the English campaign, and had managed to bitterly offend the main English ally, the Duke of Burgundy by his marriage to Jacqueline, Countess of Hainault, Holland and Zeeland. To do so the couple had sought an annulment of her marriage to the Duke of Brabant, couisin to the Duke of Burgundy who hoped to eventually secure her territories - as indeed he did manage to in the end. Humphreye was not trusted by many of his colleagues on the Council, and they had successfully resisted his claim in 1422 to exercise wider powers in England during the absence in France of the Regent, his elder brother, John Duke of Bedford.

Bishop Henry Beaufort

Kunstjistorisches Musuem, Vienna

The Bishop of Winchester was again serving as Chancellor of the realm, and as a man of exceptional wealth was a key figure in funding loans to the Crown for the French war. An ambitious as well as an able man he had been forced by King Henry V to decline the offer of a Cardinal's hat in 1418-19.

Gloucester had returned in April from his inglorious military efforts on behalf of his wife in the Low Countries, and increasinglt polarised opinion in the government. Bishop Beaufort as  Chancellor appointed Sir Richard Wydeville (grandfather of the Queen of King Edward IV) as Constable of the Tower of London and ordered him to forbid access to others, including the Duke of Gloucester. With tension rising the Bishop now brought in Lancashire and Cheshire archers to his manor at Southwark facing London across the Thames. Beaufort later claimed that this was because he feared an attempt by Gloucester to seize the young King who was living at Eltham

At 8 or 9 in the morning of October 30th the Bishop's men morning attacked the bridge gate, and followed up " with shot and other means of warre." On the north bank Gloucester appealed to the Londoners - it was the day of the election of the new Mayor - and with whom he enjoyed a good relationship. The Londoners swarmed to repel any move by the Bishop's men into the City.

Peace was preserved by shuttle diplomacy across London Bridge carried out by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry Chichele, who had presumably come in from Lambeth, and the Infante Dom Pedro, Duke of Coimbra. A cousin of Duke Humphrey and nephew of the Bishop he was in London whilst travelling round Europe and the Near East. There is an online life of him at Peter, Duke of Coimbra, and his life is in some ways not dissimilar to that of Humphrey in many ways, in their interests, career and fate as protectors or regents for their nephews.

  

Archbishop Henry Chichele

Tomb effigy in Canterbury Cathedral

Image:canterbury-archaeology.org.uk

Pedro, Duke of Coimbra

Portrait believed to be of Infante Pedro, first Duke of Coimbra. Detail from the fifth panel of the polyptych Adoration of Saint Vincent, attributed to Portuguese Renaissance painter Nuno Gonçalves, composed c.1470 (possibly as early as 1450s). Originally found at the monastery of São Vicente de Fora, now held by the National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon, Portugal.

Image:Wikimedia 

Their shuttle diplomacy required eight journeys across the bridge, but  peace was maintained.

London Bridge and Southwark byVissher circa 1600

Image:wharferj.wordpress.com

A reconstruction of London Bridge circa 1450

Image:meadowbk.fsnet.co.uk

A reconstruction by W.S.Brewer showing Southwark, showing Winchester House on the lower left, St Mary Overy Priory - now the Anglican cathedral - and London Bridge about 1500

Image:lorp.org

The bridge was finally rebuilt in 1831, but the  remains of Winchester House or Palace can still be seen on the Souk Bank, clos eto what is now the Annglican cathedral in Soutwark

The remains of the hall of Winchester House today

Image: Wikipedia

The following day, October 31st, Beaufort wrote to the Regent Bedford in France, urging his return, as follows:

"as you desire the welfare of the king our sovereign lord and of his realms of England and of France, and your own weal and ours also, haste you hither; for by my troth if you tarry , we shall put this land at risk of a battle. Such a brother you have here. God make him a good man. For your wisdom knows well that the prosperity of France stands in the welfare of England "

 John, Duke of Bedford

Image: Wikimedia

On December 20th the Regent arrived with his wife at Sandwich, and during the next months which included the meeting of Parliament at Leicester, a part of the Lancastrian patrimony and away from the tensions of London, brokered a deal whereby Beaufort gave up the Chancery, but did receive early in 1427 his long-desired Cardinal's hat from the hands of the Regent in Calais. Gloucester may have removed the Chancellor but got little else, save a further grievance against his uncle, that of becoming a Cardinal whilst still based in England.