Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/328

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [n s. iv. OCT. 21, 1911.

and the Lichfield MS. (for information as to which I am indebted to the Bishop of Stafford) have preserved an inviolate anonymity.

The discreet author, while preferring to leave his name to conjecture being possibly not uninfluenced in this determination by certain constitutions of Archbishop Arundel's, touching disputations as to the veneration of saints' images and other matters suspiciously heretical has never- theless provided evidence sufficient to refute Bale's light-hearted guess as to his name and age, for it appears that he was engaged upon the book at least as early as 1405, although he had possibly not completed his task in 1409. In chap, xlvii., upon the First Commandment, Pauper says :

" In the sere of oure lord mcccc ]>e Kalendys of Januerie fellyn on ]>e thiirsday whan as they seyne shulde followe plente of alle gode and pees also/ but ]?at 3ere folwyd grete hungre, grete pestylence, sodeyn deth, 'werre wyt in ]>e lond, and werre wytoutyn, drede sorwye and care and tribulacyoun in every degre be Kalendys han chaunged sythyn from day to day and ]>is }ere ben comyn a^en on \>e thursday/ but our dysese chaungyth not but alway into werse for our sin alway moryth and not lessyth."

The natural construction to be put upon this passage, which is quoted as it appears in MS. Reg. 17c. XXI., is that it was written in 1405, the year next after 1400 in which the 1st of January fell upon a Thursday. A little before, in chap, xxix., on the same Commandment, Dives had spoken of

" ]>at wonderful comete and starre whiche aperyd upon J>islond/ ]>e }ere of oure lord mccccii from ]?e ephyphany tyl to weks after estren ]>at was pe mydde of apprylle,"

from which it would seem that the event was still fresh in the writer's mind, although, it is true, his account differs from that of other contemporary writers (e.g., Walsing- ham, ' Hist. Angl.,' p. 248), " cometa apparuit mense Martis " ; ' Historical Col- lections of a Citizen of London,' p. 103, " Also thys yere there was a sterre that was callyd Comata . . . . and he duryd V wekys and more " ; cf. also ' Chronicon Adae de Usk,' ed. 1904, p. 75).

This strong evidence as to the date of composition is supported by allusions to what appear to be other events of the first decade of the fifteenth century or earlier years. Dives, for example, speaking of the comet, remarks upon the countries in the realm that have been destroyed and changed into other lordship and nations since the star appeared ; and he adds that both the King and all the realm are likely in a

short time to be changed and destroyed, [n chap, xviii. on the Second Commandment hie considers it possible that the realm may be translated again to the Britons or some other tongues ; he has already in the seventeenth chapter declared the land to ae in point to be lost and changed to another nation 'and into a new tongue. Now if, as seems obvious, the allusion is to Glend- ower's rebellion, such violent language could not have been very well used at a date much later than 1405. Another allusion is apparently to the deaths of Richard II. and Archbishop Scrope, and possibly of Sudbury ; Pauper in chap. Ix. on the First Commandment states that now the English have made many martyrs, that they spare neither their own king nor their bishops : they slew St. Thomas, their bishop and father, and would by common clamour and common assent have slain their king. In chap, xxvii. on the Fourth Command- ment there is a reference to the rebellion of the poor people against their sovereigns, presumably the revolt of 1381. Statements in the eleventh chapter on that Command- ment, and in the third chapter on the sixth, that now men say that no lewd folk should meddle with God's law or the Gospel or Holy Writ, and that men are forbidden to have God's law in their mother tongue, may have reference to the Constitutions against the Lollards enacted at Oxford in 1407 and re-enacted in London in 1409. Other allusions to " this land " being brought " in bitter bales " (chap. iii. on the Sixth Commandment, chap. iv. on the Fifth Commandment) are certainly not incon- sistent with authorship under Henry IV.

As for such evidence as is afforded by the authorities quoted in the book, not one, so far as I have been able to check their existence, appears to be such as would not be available in the latter half of the four- teenth century ; I have traced no quotation from any part of the ' Corpus Juris Can- onici ' later than the Liber Sextus, and Durandus and Nicholaus de Lyra seem to be the two most recent authors used.

To my mind, there is no doubt that ' Dives and Pauper ' was composed between the years 1405 and 1410 ; the book probably took a considerable time to write, but I cannot imagine why the author should let stand the passage quoted above from chap, xlvii. on the First Commandment if he were still engaged upon his labours in 1411, when New Year's Day was once more a Thursday. If this conclusion is accepted, the author- ship of Henry Parker, Carmelite and