Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 36.djvu/33

 12 [sic] Nov., a man of very distinguished birth, but content to pass there under the name of “Jean de Bourgogne dit à la Barbe.” He revealed himself, however, on his deathbed to Jean d'Outremeuse, his friend and executor. In fact, in his will he styled himself “Messire Jean de Mandeville, chevalier, comte de Montfort en Angleterre et seigneur de l'isle de Campdi et du Chateau Perouse.” Having, however, had the misfortune to kill in his own country a count (or earl), whom he does not name, he bound himself to traverse three parts of the world. He came to Liège in 1343, and, although of very exalted rank, he preferred to keep himself there concealed. He was, besides, a great naturalist, and a profound philosopher and astrologer, and he had above all an extraordinary knowledge of medicine, rarely deceiving himself when he gave his opinion as to a patient's chances of recovery. On his death he was interred among the Guillelmins in the suburb of Avroy’ (cf., Chronique et Geste de J. des Preis, 1887, p. cxxxiii). D'Outremeuse again mentions Mandeville in his ‘Tresorier de Philosophie Naturelle’ (Bibl. Nat., fonds franç., 12326). Without connecting him with De Bourgogne he there styles him ‘Seigneur de Monfort,’ &c., and quotes several passages in Latin from a ‘Lapidaire des Indois,’ of which he says he was the author; a French version of the ‘Lapidaire’ was printed under Mandeville's name at Lyons about 1530. D'Outremeuse also asserts that Mandeville lived seven years at Alexandria, and that a Saracen friend gave him some fine jewels, which he (D'Outremeuse) afterwards acquired. As to Jean de Bourgogne à la Barbe, the name is otherwise known as that of the author of a treatise on the plague. Manuscripts of this are extant in Latin, French, and English, the author sometimes being called De Burdegalia, De Burdeus, &c.; and it is significant that a French copy originally formed part of the same manuscript as the Paris Mandeville ‘Travels’ of 1371 (, Cat. des MSS. Libri et Barrois, 1888, p. 252). The colophon of the treatise states that it was composed by Jean de Bourgogne à la Barbe in 1365 at Liège, where he had before written other noble scientific works; and in the text he claims to have had forty years of medical experience, and to have written two previous tracts on kindred subjects. He appears again, as ‘John with the Beard,’ in the Latin vulgate version of Mandeville's ‘Travels.’ Mandeville is there made to say that, when in Egypt, he met about the Sultan's court a venerable and clever physician ‘sprung from our own parts;’ that long afterwards at Liège, on his way home in 1355, he recognised the same physician in Master John ‘ad Barbam,’ whom he consulted when laid up with arthritic gout in the street Basse Sauvenière; and that he wrote the account of his wanderings at Master John's instigation and with his aid. The same story has even been quoted from a French manuscript, with the name Jean de Bourgogne in full, and the added detail that Mandeville lodged at Liège in the hostel of one Henkin Levoz (Roxb. ed. p. xxviii). As the whole incident is absent from the French manuscripts generally, it could hardly have formed part of the original work; but it marks a stage towards the actual identification of De Bourgogne with Mandeville, as asserted by D'Outremeuse's chronicle and implied in the epitaph, which D'Outremeuse probably composed. But, admitting this identity, there is the question, Which of the two names, Mandeville or De Bourgogne, was authentic?

If D'Outremeuse reported truly, De Bourgogne in his will claimed not only to be Sir John Mandeville, but count, or earl, of Montfort in England. Such a title was certainly never borne by the Mandeville family, and the probability is that it, like the other appellation (‘seigneur de l'isle de Campdi et du Chateau Perouse’) given by D'Outremeuse to his mysterious friend, was a fiction. D'Outremeuse's account of the cause of his friend's departure from England may be possibly based on historical fact, although the investigation is full of difficulty.

One John de Burgoyne, who was in Edward II's reign chamberlain to John, baron de Mowbray, took part with his master in the rising against the two Despensers, the king's favourites, in 1321. The Despensers were then banished, and De Burgoyne was, for his share in the attack on them, pardoned by parliament on 20 Aug. 1321 (Parl. Writs, ii. div. ii. App. p. 167, div. iii. p. 619). Next year the Despensers were recalled by the king, and they defeated their enemies at Boroughbridge on 16 March, when Mowbray, De Burgoyne's master, was executed. John de Burgoyne thus lost his patron, and in May his own position was seriously endangered by the formal revocation of his earlier pardon, so that he had cogent reasons for quitting England. Mandeville, in his ‘Travels,’ professes to have left his native country at Michaelmas 1322. This coincidence of date is far from proving that the Burgoyne in Mowbray's service is identical with the Jean de Bourgogne who died at Liège in 1372, and who is credited by D'Outremeuse with assuming the alias of Mandeville; but their identity is not impossible. It would account for such knowledge of England as is shown now and then in the