Journal of Medieval History

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Lament for a dead king

Diana Tyson

To cite this article: Diana Tyson (2004) Lament for a dead king, Journal of Medieval History, 30:4,
359-375, DOI: 10.1016/j.jmedhist.2004.08.003

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 Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004) 359–375
www.elsevier.com/locate/jmedhist

Lament for a dead king

Diana Tyson
Department of French, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT

Abstract

This article concerns laments written in medieval French about English royal and noble
personages. We look at those that survive, at existing research on them, at what unites and
divides them, and at the conditions of their creation and the function to which they were put.
Different manuscript versions are compared, and special attention is paid to the manuscript
context in which they have been preserved. For comparison purposes, we examine existing
Latin laments on the same subjects, as well as two continental French ones on the dukes of
Burgundy. We conclude that the laments were individually created and that they are not part
of a defined literary genre. Their survival is fortuitous and due in large measure to their being
incorporated in larger blocks of historical material and copied and recopied as part of them.
Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Medieval kingship: Edward I; Edward II; Political poetry; Laments

Laments in medieval French about the deaths of English kings are rare, in spite
of the preoccupation of medieval literature with death in general. This paper looks
at those that we have, as well as at one presaging the death of its subject and at two
poems written about the deaths of non-royal persons, in order to evaluate them and
to scrutinize the circumstances of their survival.1 Important work has been done by
Isabel Aspin who, in her collection of Anglo-Norman political songs, edited


Tel. 44C(0)20-7638-5952.
E-mail address: d.tyson@britishlibrary.net
1
I have personally studied all the manuscripts discussed in this paper.

0304-4181/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jmedhist.2004.08.003
360 D. Tyson / Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004) 359–375

two royal laments: the Elegy on the death of Edward I and the Lament of Edward
II.2
Edward I expired, his physical strength exhausted, on his last expedition to try yet
again to subjugate the rebellious Scots; he died on the shore of the Solway Firth at
Burgh-on-Sands on 7 July 1307.3 The Elegy is contained in Cambridge University
Library MS Gg.I.1 f.489r,v, written in an early fourteenth-century hand.4 It consists
of 82 lines of octosyllables arranged in groups of eight, rhyming a-b-a-b-b-c-b-c
(except in the ninth group where it is a-b-a-b-b-a-b-a). At the end of the first stanza
are two lines: Priom Dieu en devocioun / Qe de ses pecchez le face pardoun, probably
meant as a refrain but not indicated as such and not repeated.5 The text follows
a version of the Old French prose Brut chronicle which ends with the death of
Edward I, without a break but with a capital S. It is written in the third person,
describes the king’s life and feats in laudatory terms, and includes an important
section (ll.43-66) on the sorrow of pope Clement V on hearing of his death.6
The death of Edward II was rather different. Forced to abdicate and ultimately
imprisoned in Berkeley Castle, he was cruelly maltreated and brutally put to death
in 1327. The Lament of Edward II is preserved in two manuscripts, both dating
from the fourteenth century: Longleat MS 26 ff.76v,77r and British Library MS

2
I.S.T. Aspin, Anglo-Norman political songs, Anglo-Norman Text Society XI (Oxford, 1953), 79-92
and 93-104. They are careful, well-documented editions. The titles are hers and as they describe the nature
of the poems accurately, I have adopted them. On medieval laments, see also V.E.B. Richmond, Laments
for the dead in medieval narrative (Pittsburgh, 1966).
3
On medieval French texts concerning Edward I’s Scottish campaigns, see D.B. Tyson, ‘A royal
itinerary - the journey of Edward I to Scotland in 1296’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 45 (2001), 127-44,
and D.B. Tyson, ‘The Siege of Caerlaverock - A re-examination’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 46 (2002),
45-69.
4
R.J. Dean, Anglo-Norman literature. A guide to texts and manuscripts (Anglo-Norman Text Society,
London, 1999), 58 no.85. Editions previous to Aspin’s are: T. Wright, The political songs of England, from
the reign of John to that of Edward II (London, 1839), 241-5 (transcription and translation only), see also
new edition by Peter Coss (Cambridge, 1996) - this is an exact reprint with an introduction by the editor;
K. Böddeker, Altenglische Dichtungen des MS. Harley 2253 (Berlin, 1878), 453-5, a reprint of Wright’s
text; E. Zettl, An anonymous short English metrical chronicle, Early English Text Society original series 196
(London, 1935), 105-7 prints the text from the manuscript. Aspin, Songs, 80-81 notes a Middle English
version in British Library MS Harley 2253 f.73r,v and sections of this in Cambridge University Library
MS Additional 4407, article 19, fragments a, b and c, and prints the Harley text as does Wright, Political
songs, ed. Coss, 246-50; see W.W. Skeat, ‘Elegy on the death of King Edward I’, Modern Language Review
7 (1912), 149-52, who compared the two versions and concluded that ‘this English Elegy is a loose
translation of a French Elegy of the same date (1307)’ (149).
5
All quotations have been printed according to modern standards.
6
On the image of Edward I in contemporary eyes, see also J.-C. Thiolier, Edition critique et commente´e
de Pierre de Langtoft, Le re`gne d’Edouard Ier (Centre d’études littéraires et iconographiques du moyen âge,
Université de Paris XII, Créteil, 1989), J.-C. Thiolier, ‘Le portrait d’Edouard Ier Plantagenet par Pierre de
Langtoft’, Etudes de linguistique et de litte´rature en l’honneur d’André Cre´pin (Greifswald, 1993), 393-407
and M.R. Reeve, ‘The former painted cycle of the Life of Edward I at the Bishop’s Palace, Lichfield’,
Nottingham Medieval Studies 46 (2002), 70-83. D.L. D’Avray, Death and the prince: memorial preaching
before 1350 (Oxford, 1994), 70-79 shows us the picture of the king as given in sermons preached in his
memory.
 D. Tyson / Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004) 359–375 361

Royal 20 A II f.10r,v. It was edited most recently in 1973.7 The poem is composed
of 120 lines, arranged in 15 groups of octosyllabic lines rhyming a-b-a-b-a-b-a-b. It
is written in the first person, with the king lamenting the low state into which he has
fallen in the year of his death. It is thus, strictly speaking, not a lament on his death
but on his life and his approaching end. Whether the king himself was its author, as
some scholars have suggested, seems doubtful in spite of the heading in the
Longleat manuscript: De le roi Edward le fiz roi Edward. le chanson qe il fist
mesmes. This heading looks as if it was put in later, though in the same hand as the
text; it is noticeable that the second part, claiming that the king was the author of the
poem, is in a paler shade of ink than the first, which could argue that it was added as
an afterthought. (The Royal text has no heading.). One reason for the belief that the
king did write the piece seems to be Fabyan’s declaration that he had seen writings
‘which are reported [my italics] to be of his owne makynge in the tyme of his
enprysonement’. The Longleat heading could be said to support this claim, but its
verisimilitude is doubtful, while the first-person form and the tone of the poem are
hardly proof of authorship. Tout’s feeling that ‘he [the king] seems to me to have been
unlikely to write anything’ expresses the main grounds for doubting the royal
authorship theory.8
To these two texts may be added another, much less well known and not included
by Aspin, which survives in two manuscripts in the Bodleian Library: MS Bodley
302 (Summary Catalogue 2086) f.141r, in a fourteenth-century hand, and MS
Ashmole 789 f.160r, in a late fifteenth or early sixteenth century hand.9 It consists of

7
T.M. Smallwood, ‘The Lament of Edward II’, Modern Language Review 68 (1973), 521-9. The editor
gives transcripts of both manuscripts, with notes on difficult readings and textual problems, and discusses
the relation of the manuscripts, concluding that there is a connection between them but neither is copied
from the other. Dean, Anglo-Norman literature, 58-9 no.87. The earliest edition, based on the Longleat
manuscript, was by P. Studer, ‘An Anglo-Norman poem by Edward II, king of England’, Modern
Language Review 16 (1921), 34-46. See Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts Third Report
(London, 1872), 180 for mention of the Longleat manuscript.
8
R. Fabyan, The New Chronicles of England and France, ed. H. Ellis (London, 1811), 431-2; T.F. Tout,
‘The captivity and death of Edward of Carnarvon’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 6 (1921-2),
Appendix II, 114. Aspin, Songs, 95-6 discusses the problem in detail. Smallwood, ‘Lament of Edward II’,
528-9 feels that ‘the authorship question has not been settled’. C.V. Langlois, ‘Anonyme, auteur d’une
pièce en vers anglo-normands sous le nom d’Edouard II’, Histoire litte´raire de la France 36 (Paris, 1927),
633-5 states that there existed a Latin poem ‘fait par Edouard II dans une de ses prisons’ and suggests that
the Old French text is a translation of this and that it is ‘l’opuscule d’un clerc qui fait parler le roi.’ On the
other hand, A. Benedetti, ‘Una canzone francese di Edoardo II d’Inghilterra’, Nuovi Studi Medievali I, pt.2
(1924), 283-94 did think the king himself was the author, calling it ‘una canzone scritta da Edoardo II’
(283) and considering that ‘si tratti dell’espressione diretta di un’anima che soffre’ (284). V.H. Galbraith,
‘The literacy of the medieval English kings’ (The British Academy 1935 Raleigh lecture on history),
Proceedings of the British Academy XXI (1935), 33 n.6 does not commit himself on the point of authorship.
See also note 18 below.
9
Dean, Anglo-Norman literature, 58 no.86. Edition by M.D. Legge, ‘La Piere D’Escoce’, Scottish
Historical Review 38 (1959), 109-13. The Ashmole manuscript is described in A. Hiatt, ‘The forgeries of
John Hardyng: the evidence of Oxford, Bodleian MS Ashmole 789’, Notes and Queries, new series 46 no.1
(1999), 7-12.
362 D. Tyson / Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004) 359–375

24 alexandrines (lines 14-16 are missing in the Ashmole manuscript without a break
in the script) arranged in monorhymed groups of four. In the Bodley manuscript it is
written as if in prose, in 29 lines, in the same hand as the preceding and following
text, without a break; a red capital marks the beginning of the items. The Ashmole
version is also written as prose, continuously, in 14 lines of manuscript in the same
hand as what precedes and follows; here there are breaks between the items. The text
laments the death of Edward Roy d’Angleterre but gives pride of place to the piere de
Escoce, that is, the Stone of Scone, giving details of its history.10 It records that this
Edward took the Stone to Westminster, so it is clear that the king in question is
Edward I.11
To set the two French poems on Edward I in a wider context, we may turn
to a piece of Latin verse lamenting his death, in Oxford Magdalen College MS
Lat.6 f.163r, in a fourteenth-century hand. It consists of 24 lines arranged in
rhyming couplets. Aspin noted the existence of this, saying it is ‘quite
independent of the English and French elegies’ and ‘by changing the names it
could be made to fit any warrior king’.12 The text is a general encomium in
honour of Edwardus, without further specification, but it mentions struggles with
the Welsh and the Scots and is thus more applicable to Edward I than Aspin
allows.13
There is another manuscript version of this poem in Cambridge Peterhouse MS 94
f.iii b,14 a late thirteenth-century manuscript containing as its main text the
Dictionarium Hugutionis, a Latin glossary compiled by Huguccio, bishop of
Ferrara.15 It is headed: Isti versus sunt de Edwardo Rege nuper defuncto de Anglia
Edwardum. It differs in two respects from the Oxford version: Oxford’s ll.17 and 18
(Rex quandoque fuit nunc nil nisi pulvis et ossa / Gloria tota ruit regem capit hec modo
fossa) are in Cambridge ll.21-2 (which does not impair the sense in any way), and
Cambridge ends with two extra lines lacking in the Oxford manuscript: Abbas
Pipwelle qui regem semper amavit / Scripsit in hac pelle versus quos hic recitavit. This
seems to indicate that the text was written down and recited by one Abbot Pipwell but

10
Legge and Dean reflect this in the titles they give it, respectively Piere D’Escoce and Stone of Scone.
On the Stone of Scone, see W.F. Skene, The coronation stone (Edinburgh, 1869) which carefully examines
the various legends together with the historical evidence. According to legend, the Stone, said to have been
used by Jacob as a pillow to rest his head, passed to Scota, daughter of Pharaoh, and her husband
Gaythelos, son of the king of Greece, who took it to Spain and Ireland and finally to Dalriadic Scotland;
see Legge, ‘Piere D’Escoce’, 111-13 and Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland V, ed. F.C. Groome (Edinburgh,
1884), 326-8. Sir Thomas Gray’s Scalacronica, written in 1355-7, ed. J. Stevenson (Glasgow, Maitland
Club, 1836), 112-4 tells the same story but here Gaythelos (‘Gaidel’) dies in Spain and it is his descendants
that ultimately establish the Stone at Scone.
11
Edward I took the Stone to Westminster Abbey in 1296.
12
Aspin, Songs, 80.
13
See H.O. Coxe, Catalogus Codicum Mss. qui in Collegiis Auslisque Oxoniensibus hodie adservantur II
(Oxford, 1852), 10.
14
The text is printed in M.R. James, A descriptive catalogue of the manuscripts in the library of
Peterhouse (Cambridge, 1899), 111-112. Aspin does not mention this manuscript.
15
On Huguccio, see Lexikon des Mittelalters V (Munich, 1991), 181-2.
 D. Tyson / Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004) 359–375 363

gives us no information on the author. In all other respects the two versions
are identical.16 I have been unable to identify this abbot Pipwell – could there be
a connection with Pipewell Abbey in Northamptonshire? Two of its abbots, listed
in The Heads of Religious Houses, could fit the date: Andrew de Royewelle
(?Rothwell)?1298-1308, and his successor Thomas of Thockrington (Thokerington)
1309-1320, but the chances of identification are remote.17 It is at any rate interesting
to note the abbot’s enthusiasm, both for the king and the verses.
On Edward II, too, there is a Latin poem.18 The only manuscript of this I have
found is London College of Arms MS Arundel 48 ff.153r,v and 154r, no doubt the
one referred to by Tanner, written in a fifteenth-century hand.19 It consists of 112
lines arranged in rhyming couplets, and has been printed twice, to my knowledge.20
The text is in essence the same as the French one, though not literally so, and it is
unclear whether either version is a translation or adaptation of the other, though
a connection between them must be assumed. It is quite possible that the French is
the earlier version. Johnstone felt that the king may have written the French ‘and
that from this Fabyan later made his Latin translation’ (adding that ‘there remains

16
Mention should be made here of the Latin lament on the death of king Richard I in Geoffrey de
Vinsauf’s Nova Poetria, composed around 1210. Geoffrey inserts it as an example of how to express grief
in a literary composition. See T. Wright, Biographia Britannica Literaria (London, 1842-6), II, 400 who
prints the text of this lament; J.B. Kopp, ‘Geoffrey of Vinsauf: The New Poetics’ in J.J. Murphy, Three
medieval rhetorical arts (Tempe, Arizona, 2001), 47-8 gives a translation of it. The king’s name is not
mentioned and his identity has to be inferred from the context (particularly the fact that Richard was
killed on a Friday) and the historical data about the author.
17
See D.M. Smith and V.C.M. London, The heads of religious houses, England and Wales (Cambridge,
2001), 299-30; they cite British Library MS Cotton Otho B xiv f.197r, which lists these abbots. On
ff.156r-158r of the same codex I found larger sections also relating to these two abbots but there was
nothing pertinent to our enquiry, and I have not taken the matter further. G.R.C. Davis, Medieval
cartularies of Great Britain (London/New York/Toronto, 1958), 88-9 describes this manuscript. On
Pipewell Abbey, see E.J. King, ‘The foundation of Pipewell Abbey, Northamptonshire’, Haskins Society
Journal: Studies in Medieval History 2 (1990), 167-77.
18
See above note 8. Studer, ‘Anglo-Norman poem by Edward II’, 34-46 also mentions the possibility
of a Latin poem; H. Walpole, A catalogue of royal and noble authors of England (3rd ed., Dublin, 1759),
I, 19-20 refers to T. Tanner, Bishop of St Asaph, Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica, sive de scriptoribus,
qui in Anglia, Scotia et Hibernia ad saeculi XVII floruerunt ... (London, 1748), 253 for mention of
a manuscript ‘in the Herald’s office’ of a Latin poem ‘written by this unhappy Prince, while a prisoner’,
which authorship is contested by Walpole. Fabyan, New Chronicles, 431-2 mentions a Latin poem and
gives an English adaptation of it; Studer, ‘Anglo-Norman poem by Edward II’, 34-6 reproduces
Fabyan’s entry.
19
See W.H. Black, Catalogue of the Arundel Manuscripts in the library of the College of Arms (‘not
published’, London, 1829), 80 item 41: Hic incipit Lamentatio gloriosi Regis Edwardi de Karnarvan ... (I
think Black’s reference in this same item 41 to Joseph Ritson, Bibliographica Poetica ... (London, 1802), 94
is erroneous: this applies to a poem by ‘Plantagenet Edward, duke of York’ in which ‘ a despairing lover
bids farewell to his mistress’.)
20
Liber Niger Scaccarii by William Worcester: Annales Rerum Anglicarum, ed. T. Hearne
(Oxford, 1728), 425-9; Liber Niger Scaccarii by William Worcester in: Letters and papers illustrative
of the wars of the English in France, ed. J. Stevenson (London, Rolls Series 22, 1864), II part ii,
743-6.
364 D. Tyson / Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004) 359–375

the further possibility that Edward wrote neither’) and Aspin also thought that the
six lines of Latin quoted by Fabyan (which are the Arundel text’s lines 1-2 and 5-8)
are ‘a close translation’ of the French.21 We know of other medieval historical matter
where the French versions are the earliest, notably Brut chronicle material, and
which have subsequently been translated into English or Latin or both.22 But this
must remain conjecture.
Two laments in French about the deaths of non-royal English persons also
survive. The battle of Evesham in 1265 and the death of Simon de Montfort
furnished the occasion for such a composition: British Library MS Harley 2253,
a manuscript which, as already mentioned, contains an English version of the Elegy
on the death of Edward I, features on f.59r,v a 32-line poem written in a fourteenth-
century hand; it deplores the deaths of the count, called the flower of English
chivalry, and of those who were slain with him.23 It was edited by Aspin24 who prints
it as nine 12-line heterometric stanzas, each followed by the refrain:
Ore est ocys
La flur de pris,
Qe taunt savoit de guere,
Ly quens Mountfort;
Sa dure mort
Molt enplorra la terre.25
This a-a-b-c-c-b rhyme scheme runs throughout the poem.
This text was published no fewer than six times, the latest being the Aspin
edition.26 In 1972 Hugh Shields published another, until then unnoticed, version
surviving in Trinity College Dublin MS 347 ff.2v-3r, which he dates in the early
fourteenth century. He prints it in four-line stanzas, with a two-line refrain (thus
giving one line where Aspin gives three), and discusses the important textual
variations of the two versions.27 The text expresses profound sorrow at Simon’s
death, comparing it to that of li martyr de Canterberi (l.12). The Dublin version
makes it into a martyrdom pur nus saver e deliverer de males leys en tere (l.15) and
ends, rather surprisingly, with what Shields calls ‘four... lines of doggerel’ which are

21
H. Johnstone, Edward of Carnarvon 1284-1307 (Manchester, 1946), 20 and Aspin, Songs, 95.
22
See A. Gransden, Historical writing in England II (London/New York, 1996), 73 ff. and J. Taylor,
English historical literature in the fourteenth century (Oxford, 1987), 111, 131.
23
Dean, Anglo-Norman literature, 57 no.84. Taylor, English historical literature, 267 says: ‘It is said that
in 1323, on his visit to the north, Edward II listened to songs about Simon de Montfort which are now
missing’, and one wonders whether he also listened to this one.
24
Aspin, Songs, 24-35.
25
The refrain is written out twice, after the first and seventh stanzas. In all other cases it appears as ‘Ore
est ocys etc.’ or ‘Ore est etc’.
26
Ibid., 25 lists the earlier editions.
27
H. Shields, ‘The Lament of Simon de Montfort’, Medium Aevum 41 (1972), 202-7. Shields compares
the two manuscript versions, concluding that ‘in general, D is textually no more satisfactory than L’ (204)
and looks in detail at the complicated scansion, as indeed did Aspin.
 D. Tyson / Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004) 359–375 365

‘an obvious addition to the original text’,28 expressing the hope that God will send an
avenger about whom the author will then write bon chansun.
And again there is a Latin poem, surviving in one well-preserved manuscript,
Cambridge Gonville and Caius College MS 85 (formerly 167), on the second vellum
flyleaf, f.ii r, written in a clear, late thirteenth-century hand. It has been edited
once.29 It consists of 171 lines arranged in groups of three, composed of a rhyming
couplet followed by a third line with a uniform rhyme throughout. It is written in
a lively, in places almost conversational, tone with classical and biblical allusions,
and is quite different from the French poem. It pays elaborate attention to Simon’s
standardbearer Guy de Balliol, who does not appear in the French poem at all.
Aspin thought that the Latin poem ‘may have been known to the writer of the
present [French] poem, though the two works are not sufficiently alike to suggest
direct borrowing’; as for its date, Maitland wrote that ‘this copy of the song was
written within ten or twenty years after the battle of Evesham, while the last verses
suggest that the song itself was composed very soon after the fatal day.’30
There exists also, written two centuries later, a lament in French on the death of
Richard duke of York, father of Edward IV, who died at the battle of Wakefield in
1460. This survives in three manuscripts: London British Library MS Harley 48 f.81v
in a late fifteenth- early sixteenth-century hand, London British Library MS Stowe
1047 f.217r in a late sixteenth-century hand, and London College of Arms MS M.3
f.1v in a late fifteenth-century hand.31 It is written in decasyllabic rhyming couplets,
with a very defective scansion. The Harley version has 30 lines, while the Stowe
poem, the least corrupted of the three versions, is 34 lines long; the extra four lines
(ll.25-8) narrate the burial of the duke by his son the king. The College of Arms
manuscript has 33 lines: it does include ll.25-8 but lacks l.29 (Se noble duc a Wakefeld
moruste), clearly a scribal oversight.32 Otherwise, apart from minor differences, the
three versions, while not directly related, are so close that we may conclude they
derive from the same model.33 Its first lines are: En memoyre soit a tous cuers de

28
Ibid., 203.
29
F.W. Maitland, ‘A song on the death of Simon de Montfort’, English Historical Review XI (1896),
314-18, which discusses the thirteenth-century owner of the manuscript, Walter de Hyda, in some detail.
See Aspin, Songs, 27 and Wright, Political songs, ed. Coss, xxvii-xxviii, lxiii.
30
Aspin, Songs, 27; Maitland, ‘Song on the death of Simon de Montfort’, 315.
31
The Stowe version was edited by R.F. Green, ‘An epitaph for Richard, Duke of York’, Studies in
Bibliography 41 (Papers of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 1988), 218-24; the text
is also given on pp. 145-6 of P.W. Hammond, A.F. Sutton and L. Visser-Fuchs, ‘The reburial of Richard,
Duke of York, 21-30 July 1476’, The Ricardian X no.127 (December 1994),122-65. The Harley version was
printed with a translation by T. Wright in Political poems and songs relating to English history from the
accession of Edward III to that of Richard III, 2 vols (London, Rolls Series 14, 1859-61), II, 256-7.
32
The scribe shows his insecurity in other places. L.1 reads: ‘A tous cuers de noblesse’ instead of ‘En
memoyre soit a tous cuers de noblesse’, and he is clearly unfamiliar with the name Fotheringay: his l.27
reads: ‘Qua ffornie ai son cors del reposer’ as against Stowe: ‘Que a Fodringey son corps doit reposer’.
33
Green, ‘Epitaph for Richard, Duke of York’, agrees: ‘... all three [manuscripts] are descended from
a single archetype’ and thinks that this archetype may have been the copy hanging over the duke’s
tomb.
366 D. Tyson / Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004) 359–375

noblesse / Que ycy gist le fleur de gentillesse,34 and it lists the duke’s achievements,
laying stress on his claims to the thrones of France and England. The Harley text is
signed Chestre le Herault at the end,35 indicating that it was copied by him (as are the
two preceding texts, the burial description and Les chapitres de mesire Phillipe de
Lalaing).
As comparative material, again to set our poems in a wider context and going
further afield, we may look for instance at the epitaphs by Jean Molinet on Philippe le
Bon and Charles le Téméraire (who died in 1467 and 1477 respectively), both
surviving in several manuscripts and most recently edited from Cambridge
Fitzwilliam Museum MS 283 volume 2 ff.114r-115r, written in a sixteenth-century
hand.36 The first consists of 36 lines of rhyming couplets in alexandrines, printed by
the editor in four-line stanzas as it appears in the manuscript, written in the first
person and describing the duke’s life and career. The second is composed of 45
decasyllables divided in five-line stanzas, each on an aspect of the duke’s person, and
rhyming a-a-b-a-b. It conforms to the cy gist formula, written by a third person, and is
a laudatory epitaph rather than a biographical sketch. Thorpe considered that the
first ‘was among the most successful of Molinet’s productions. ... Of its type it is
a masterpiece of pithy and yet dignified brevity’. The second is part of L’arbre de
Bourgonne sus la mort du duc Charles, an allegorical piece in prose and verse in seven
sections, the epitaph being the second, and Thorpe thought that it might have been
‘written soon after the duke’s death on 6 January 1477 and fitted into a later setting’.37
We should note how much more formal (though still sincerely felt) than our texts are
these poems written by an accomplished author.
Considering our five insular French texts as a whole, what strikes one first is the
lack of a set formula. They are different in length, form, metre, content, and
approach. Some are written in the first person, others in the third. Some stress the
biographical details while in others the encomium element dominates. The quality of
the versification differs greatly among them, as does the emotional depth. One, the
York text, has the ci gist form. The Edward II poem shows ‘obvious signs of
Provençal influence’ according to Studer.38 The emphasis on the Stone of Scone sets

34
This is the Stowe version; Harley reads: A remenbrance a tous ceurs ....
35
The signature is abbreviated here: Chestre le ht, but appears in full on f.77v at the end of Les chapitres
de mesire Phillipe de Lalaing.
36
L. Thorpe, ‘Two epitaphs by Jean Molinet’, Scriptorium 8 (1954), 283-8. N. Dupire, Les faictz et
dictz de Jean Molinet I (Paris, Société des anciens textes français, 1936) gives the epitaphs on pp.34-5
and 234-5. The manuscript (which was bought in 1849 by the Earl of Ashburnham from the Parisian
collector Paul Barrois and sold at Sotheby’s on 10 June 1901, see also Royal Commission on
Historical Manuscripts Eighth Report part III (London, 1881), 91) has, written immediately after our
epitaphs, the epitaphs of Philippe de Crèvecoeur, counsellor to Charles le Téméraire, and the
emperor Maximilian of Austria. The Faictz et dictz include many other texts lamenting the passing
of eminent persons. See also C. Martineau-Génieys, Le the`me de la mort dans la poésie française de
1450 à 1550 (Paris, 1978), particularly her section on La de´ploration fune`bre chez les grands
rhe´toriqueurs, 295-437.
37
Thorpe, ‘Two epitaphs’, 284.
38
Studer, ‘Anglo-Norman poem by Edward II’, 38.
 D. Tyson / Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004) 359–375 367

the Oxford Edward I text apart from the others. Especially individual are the opening
lines, which set the tone for what follows. Thus, the Cambridge Edward I text starts in
the epic fashion, addressing a listening public: Seignurs oiez, pur Dieu le grant, /
Chançonete de dure pite´. The Oxford Edward I poem, while still addressing an
audience, simply makes a statement of fact: Qui est la piere de Escose, vous die pur
verite´. The Edward II poet, whoever he was, calls on God and his fellow men, and
even on his own song (l.106: Va t’en chaunson ignelement), but has no opening
address, starting simply by telling his sorrows: En tenps de iver me survynt damage.
The de Montfort author also starts right in, speaking from the heart: Chaunter
m’estoit, / mon cuer le voit. And the York poet begins with an admonition to the
chivalric world: En memoyre soit a tous cuers de noblesse / Que ycy gist le fleur de
gentillesse. All these very different approaches may be in part explained by the fact
that literary styles evolved over the two centuries separating the death of Simon de
Montfort from that of Richard duke of York, but they also demonstrate the
individuality of each author.
Are they epitaphs, elegies or laments? Aspin’s titles are carefully chosen: ‘Elegy
on Edward I’, ‘Lament of Edward II’, ‘Lament for Simon de Montfort’.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘epitaph’ means an inscription on
a tomb and, by extension, a composition written when someone has died; an
‘elegy’ is a song of lamentation or a funeral ode; a ‘lament’ is an elegy. So the
terms seem to a certain extent to be used interchangeably. The texts are all
expressions of sorrow and loss and thus may be called laments or elegies, with the
exception of the York text: its ci gist formula suggests that the text was intended
to be put on a tombstone, and this theory is supported by the Stowe version
which is headed Epitaphium Ricardi ducis Eboracensis patris Ed.4 and is
also marked Epitaphium in a later marginal hand. It may thus be properly
classed as an epitaph. Its most recent editors are of the view that ‘it is likely that
the written epitaph ... was actually hung on the hearse and stayed there long
enough for people to admire and copy’, while Green thinks that ‘it was written to
be displayed on the tomb itself’.39 None of the other texts has any kind of
heading, so that there is no indication of a specific, intended function. (The
Fitzwilliam manuscript texts are again more formal, being headed respectively:
Epitaphe de feu digne de bonne memoire tresnoble et tresredoubte´ Sire Monsire le
duc Philippes de Bourgongne40 and Et si apre´s s’ensyt l’epitaphe de feu tresnoble
cremu et redoubte´ Sire Monsire le duc Charles de Bourgongne.) It should be noted
that all these texts have a particular person as their subject and are thus quite
distinct from the much more general ‘as I am so wilt thou be’ sort of tombstone
inscription, such as is found for instance on the tomb of Edward the Black Prince

39
Hammond, Sutton, Visser-Fuchs, ‘Reburial of Richard, Duke of York’, 129-30; Green, ‘Epitaph for
Richard, Duke of York’, 219.
40
Visser-Fuchs, ‘Reburial of Richard, Duke of York’, 131 notes that ‘in a few instances copies of this
text are attached to the accounts of his funeral ... suggesting that there was a close connection between the
two and that copies circulated together’.
368 D. Tyson / Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004) 359–375

in Canterbury Cathedral.41 They are also distinct, of course, from laments

incorporated in texts and forming part of their fabric, as it were.42
Were they written as spontaneous expressions of grief? They do strike us, their
modern readers, as such. Shields, when discussing the de Montfort text, observes
accurately that ‘it is indeed by its actuality that the poem strikes us today’, saying the
lament ‘is not so much a document seeking to influence the course of politics as
a voice expressing popular reaction to an event of history which had intensely human
interest.’43 We should note that the two aspects to an expression of mourning,
a celebration of the life and achievements of the deceased and a voicing of grief at the
loss, feature in all our texts except in the Edward II poem in which the subject
laments his fate.
Are the Latin texts, too, spontaneous expressions of sorrow? The Latin Edward I
poem combines the theme of the inevitability of death with praise of the king and his
achievements but seems less vibrant than the French one; it is more rhetorical, there is
no direct speech, no use of the first person, no addressing the audience, and it does not
actually name Edward I. The Latin Edward II poem is, as we have seen, essentially the
same text as the French and thus shares its personal, emotional approach. The de
Montfort poem, independent of the French, is again more rhetorical but nonetheless
more lively than either of the others. If we believe Maitland’s opinion, cited above,
that it was composed ‘very soon after the fatal day’, this would argue for its being
written in an effusion of sorrow and it does indeed sound like that.
The nature of the codices containing the laments, and their location in them, may
tell us something about how and why the poems survived, an aspect often ignored by
editors who tend to concentrate on the texts themselves; in the words of one scholar:
‘One can learn a lot about the function of a given copy of a text from the company it
keeps in the manuscript, as also from its general appearance.’44 Three of them, the
Ashmole, Harley 48 and Stowe manuscripts, are made of paper (though Ashmole
has some interleaved vellum sections) and date from the late fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. MS Ashmole 789 has been the subject of several studies. One of these
describes the manuscript as ‘a composite book of formulatory materials which
belonged to Dr Charles Booth, bishop of Hereford (1516-35), and which he
presented to his registry for the use of his successors.’45 The Stowe manuscript is the

41
See D.B. Tyson, ‘The epitaph of Edward the Black Prince’, Medium Aevum 46 (1977), 98-104.
42
See, for instance, Richmond, Laments for the Dead, 27 on Layamon’s Brut where the laments are ‘an
integral part of the story ... what one character says about another’ and R. Colliot, ‘Les épitaphes
arthuriennes’, Bulletin bibliographique de la Société internationale arthurienne 25 (1973), 155-75.
43
Shields, ‘Lament of Simon de Montfort’, 205-6.
44
D’Avray, Death and the Prince, 228.
45
J. Catto, ‘The King’s government and the fall of Pecock, 1457-58’, in: Rulers and the ruled in late
medieval England. Essays presented to Gerald Harriss, ed. R.E. Archer and S. Walker, (London/Rio
Grande, 1995), 201-222; he states that ‘The largest part of the book (ff.147-359) [which includes the
Edward text] is a well-indexed formulary of the mid fifteenth century, to which occasional additions have
been made’ (212). See E. Perroy, Etudes d’histoire me´die´vale (Paris, 1979), 289-98 and 314-5 for other
references to this manuscript.
 D. Tyson / Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004) 359–375 369

commonplace book of Francis Thynne, Lancaster Herald from 1602 to his death in
1608; the epitaph is in a section that the Stowe catalogue identifies as ‘extracts from
the notes of an officer of arms, temp. Edw. IV’ and has no connection with what
comes before or after it but is copied, though with breaks before and after, in
a continuous series.46 The Harley 48 manuscript is also a collection of historical
texts, most of them copied by a Chester Herald. So all three present the format of
a number of historical or history-related texts copied together.47
The seven vellum manuscripts are all older, dating from the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. The Cambridge Edward I text is part of a voluminous manuscript
containing miscellaneous poetry in French, Latin and English, some on historical
topics. The Bodley Edward I text exists in a composite codex, consisting of three
separate sections, featuring moralistic and historical texts; the third section is made
up of Bede’s Liber ecclesiastice hystorie gentis Anglorum secundum Bedam plus
a number of short historical texts in Latin and French, of which our text is one,
concerning Scottish public affairs. The Royal Edward II text is at the end of a five-
leaf quire which features a Brut sequence (a combination of images, Latin text and
diagrams), situated at the beginning of a codex containing important Old French
works (Langtoft’s chronicle, a fragment of Lancelot du Lac and La Queste del Saint
Graal ); it has been added later, possibly in a different hand.48 The whole quire looks
as if it may originally not have belonged to this manuscript but was bound with it
later. The Longleat codex, which contains the same poem, is a miscellany of Latin
theological texts; six short French texts in it are clearly added later, in various places
and in different hands.49 British Library MS Harley 2253, which contains the Simon
de Montfort text, is a large codex containing many important items in Latin, French
and English on a variety of topics; much published work exists about these. The
other manuscript featuring this text, Trinity College Dublin MS 347, is a miscellany
of mainly religious items in Latin in many different hands. Finally, the London
College of Arms manuscript containing the York text is ‘Ballard’s Book’ (Ballard
was March King of Arms under Edward IV, Richard III and Henry VII),
a collection in English, Latin and French of mainly heraldic material with a few
historical items.50

46
Catalogue of the Stowe manuscripts in the British Museum, I (London, 1895), 672-5. On Francis
Thynne, see D. Carlson, ‘The writings and manuscripts collections of the Elizabethan alchemist, antiquary
and herald Francis Thynne’, Huntington Library Quarterly 52 (1989), 203-72 (a description of MS Stowe
1047 on p.254).
47
The Fitzwilliam codex, also made of paper, again contains a variety of historical items, the epitaphs
forming a section roughly in the centre; it is clearly an attempt to gather work by Jean Molinet (though it
also includes printed extracts of Monstrelet’s Chroniques - ff.2r-30v - and of the Chronique by Nicaise
Ladam - ff.134r-153v).
48
Smallwood, ‘Lament of Edward II’, 521 is also unsure about the nature of the hand.
49
Studer, ‘Anglo-Norman poem by Edward II’, 37-8 lists the items in the codex but has omitted a Latin
page-filling text at the bottom of f.8r and all of f.8v, and another that fills the whole of f.40v.
50
See A.R. Wagner, A catalogue of English mediaeval Rolls of Arms (London, 1950), 111-115.
370 D. Tyson / Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004) 359–375

So we have variety: four miscellanies of (mostly but not only) historical items in
several languages, one codex with French non-historical texts, and two with Latin
religious texts.
As to the location in the codices of our laments and whether they were an integral
part of a manuscript text, or copied as an item in a series, or ‘page-filling’ (i.e. the use
of a blank section of vellum to insert a text not originally planned there), here also
we find diversity. The Oxford Bodley and Ashmole Edward I texts are part of a series
on Anglo-Scottish history. Hiatt, discussing Ashmole, mentions our poem as the
fifth item in a section of thirteen which are ‘relevant to the issue of the English claim
to the overlordship of Scotland’;51 the four preceding items occur also, and in the
same order, in the Bodley manuscript, and other items occur in both manuscripts
after the Edward I text, the Bodley sequence seeming to be the more extensive one.
This suggests that the items were transmitted together as one corpus (with some
being lost between the writing of the Bodley and the Ashmole manuscript). The
Cambridge Edward I text constitutes the end of a Brut chronicle, so was planned
there, perhaps as a suitable conclusion.
The Royal Edward II text has clearly been added to the preceding Latin Brut
sequence and looks very much like an afterthought, though a sincerely wanted text
nonetheless.52 The Longleat codex has, added to its Latin thirteenth century
theological texts, six French texts in different early fourteenth century hands:53 some
proverbs on f.1v (a torn fragment, probably part of a paste-down), a lapidary on
ff.6r-8r, and a dialogue on the ages of man on the bottom margins of ff.21v and 22r;
the Edward II poem on ff.76v and 77r has been written on empty pages, there is no
connection with the preceding material and most of f.76r is blank; Chastel de leal
amour is on f.77v and 78r, ff.78v and 79r are blank, then De la Diffinission de Amur
follows on f.79v with its last four lines squeezed in at the bottom of f.80r below an
unrelated Latin text. The first three are all in different inks and hands but the last
three could be by the same scribe.54 An important factor is that the codex is visibly
composed of two or more sections bound together, with f.80r clearly starting a new
section - in other words, the Edward II, Chastel and Diffinission texts were added on
some blank pages at the end of a manuscript section (but, at least in the case of the
Diffinission text, after the rebinding, because of the end of this being added on f.80r).
In other words, the Edward II poem has been added out of any context in a codex of
unrelated material.

51
Hiatt, ‘Forgeries of John Hardyng’, 8-9.
52
Smallwood, ‘Lament of Edward II’, 521 states that ‘a poem of conventional praise [of Edward II] in
Latin ... has been scratched out and this poem ... substituted’, which confirms the theory of an
afterthought.
53
Studer, ‘Anglo-Norman poem by Edward II’, 37 says these were ‘certainly not later than 1350’; Aspin,
Songs, 93 (where a proofreading error has left out a word) gives: ‘Several [?] later, current hands have
added Anglo-Norman items ...’.
54
I am fairly certain that this is the case for the first two but less sure about the last; if that were by
a different scribe, that might partly explain the leaving blank of ff.78v and 79r.
 D. Tyson / Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004) 359–375 371

The Harley de Montfort text forms part of a series copied consecutively; it is

immediately preceded and followed, without gaps, by English texts, in the same
hand.55 These are, as noted in the catalogue, ‘A ballad or Song, made by one of the
adherents to Simon de Montfort Earl of Leicester, soon after the Battle of Lewis ...’
and ‘A long ballad against the Scotts’, and our text fits logically in this context. The
Dublin de Montfort text presents a special problem. As its editor noted, it is written
on two pages, ff.2v and 3r, in different hands, the second one being arguably earlier
than the first and continuing on the same page with the following text (the
Descriptiones terrarum).56 The tight binding of the manuscript makes it very hard to
distinguish the quires but, contrary to Shields’ conclusion that the two pages form
‘part of one gathering’, it looks to me as if ff.1 and 2 might be one leaf added to the
front of the codex (the following quire then being ff.3-8). Old foliations suggest the
manuscript may be a composite one, anyway, and one can only guess at what was its
original beginning. The baffling question is this: supposing the original folio
containing the first part of the poem got lost somehow, and supposing a leaf was
added to the front of the codex as I have postulated, what did a later scribe use as the
model for his copy of the beginning of the poem on this leaf? Was the original folio
so spoilt that it was removed but still legible enough to recopy the text? Or was the
original exemplar (and what happened to that?) still available? Fortunately, we can
establish without solving these questions that the poem was wanted where it was,
because its end is in the same hand as the following item. Since it has no connection
with the other items in the codex it must be considered as having been copied as one
of a series of independent items.
The Harley York text is on a page by itself, independently, but clearly intended
there as a sequel to what went before (a detailed account of the reinterment of
Richard in Fotheringay) and in the same hand. The Stowe York text is one of a
number of unconnected but consecutively copied texts, as is in the nature of
a commmonplace book. It may have been chosen independently, or all the small
items in this section may have been copied en bloc. The College of Arms York text is
written on f.1v and has no connection with what precedes or follows; it may well
have been added later, though given the nature of the general contents of this
‘Ballard’s Book’, which includes several historical items along with purely heraldic
ones, we may still suppose it was wanted there as a valued historical text.
So none of the French manuscript versions is ‘page-filling’, with one exception.
All are either part of a larger historical composition, or items copied consecutively in
a series, or, as is the case for the Royal Edward II and College of Arms York texts,
added later but in locations where there is a connection with the adjacent material.
This seems to suggest that their survival was largely due to their being incorporated
into, or essentially part of, other material and that they were not independently
surviving texts that could be used to fill up an empty section in an existing

55
On this manuscript, see Wright, Political songs, ed. Coss, lix-lx.
56
Shields, ‘Lament of Simon de Montfort’, 203: ‘It is not out of the question that the second page was
written earlier than the first.’
372 D. Tyson / Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004) 359–375

manuscript. The exception is the Longleat manuscript where all the French items
including the Edward II poem were filled in later, out of context with the main body
of the codex and also with each other.57 This evidence, combined with the fact that
the Royal Edward II text was also added later, albeit in a compatible context, might
argue that this poem did perhaps survive independently.
We should again remember the Latin texts. The Oxford Edward I poem is in
a small vellum codex of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in good condition and
containing religious and moralistic texts in Latin in various hands. Our text starts on
l.9 on f.163r, divided by a gap from the last eight lines of the preceding one, in a hand
which is different from both the preceding and the following texts. F.163v is blank,
followed by four blank leaves, and I think this is a case of ‘page-filling’. Its
Cambridge version is contained in the Dictionarium Hugutionis, a well-preserved and
carefully executed vellum codex of the late thirteenth century. The Dictionarium is
preceded by three folios giving an index, three columns per page and ending halfway
down the second column on f.iiiv. The Edward poem, clearly added later in a
different, late fourteenth-century hand, is written in the third column on f.iiiv and is
followed, without a break and in the same hand, by a 15-line text concerning the
theft of an ox. It is also ‘page-filling’. Neither text seems to have any connection with
the other items in its codex.
The College of Arms Edward II Latin text survives in a paper manuscript which
contains 92 historical or history-related items in English, French and Latin. It was
compiled by William Botoner also called Worcester (1415-1482?), secretary to Sir
John Fastolf, and is clearly a miscellany of various items bound together. Our text,
on ff.153r,v and 154r, is surrounded by blank folios (150v,151, 152 and 154v). It is in
a different hand from what comes before and after it. The heading, Hic incipit
Lamentatio gloriosi Regis Edwardi de Karnarvan, quam edidit tempore sue
incarceracionis, is in the same hand as the text but in paler ink and may therefore
have been added as an afterthought. Considerable conservation work has been
carried out on the volume, which is in a modern binding. This makes it hard to
decide on its original composition and to form an opinion on whether our poem was
an integral part of the original collection. It looks as if ff.153 and 154 might have
been two separate leaves, kept folded together for some time (one can see the fold
marks) and inserted at some date into the collection. This theory is supported by the
fact that the water mark in f.153 is different from that in the preceding pages though
the page sizes, all trimmed together, would at first sight suggest that ff.141-54 belong
together. It seems fairly clear that this is not a case of ‘page-filling’ but of a text
collected with others in a compatible environment, in which it resembles the French
rather than the Latin texts.

57
Smallwood, ‘Lament of Edward II’, 527 also makes the point that the Edward II poem here is in an
unrelated context ‘where a scribe seeking material to embellish a chronicle (as in R [the Royal manuscript])
would hardly know to look for it’. Details about the history of the Longleat manuscript might be helpful
but I was unable to find any.
 D. Tyson / Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004) 359–375 373

The most ‘page-filling’ of the Latin texts is the poem on the death of Simon de
Montfort, surviving in a late thirteenth-century manuscript containing several Latin
texts on canon law. The two front and one back vellum fly-leaves (ff.i, ii and 96)
feature a large number of short Latin texts in different hands, clearly all added in an
ad hoc fashion on space left over after completion of the volume. Our text occupies
the first 2 1/5 columns of f.ii r, a four-column page, and is written in groups of three
lines.58 Numerous wormholes have been made in the vellum after the writing of the
poem (the resulting slight reading problems noted meticulously by Maitland). From
the position of these wormholes in the same place in successive folios it is possible to
say with certainty that these three fly-leaves were in their present position when the
manuscript was put together, and they clearly constituted an invitation to scribes
looking for empty vellum space. Our text has no link whatever with the surrounding
miscellaneous material, and it is impossible to say why the scribe chose to write it in
this particular codex.
So three of our four Latin texts are very clearly ‘page-filling’, whereas the fourth,
the Edward II poem, is an isolated text bound with, and thus incorporated in,
a historical miscellany.
It is worth pointing out that whenever one text is out of step with the rest, it is
always the Edward II poem. Not only does it stand apart in being a lament
anticipating death, spoken in the first person, but it alone has a parallel Latin
version, it alone is page-filling in one French version (the Longleat manuscript, and
the Royal version is also problematic in its placing), it alone is arguably not page-
filling in its Latin manuscript version.
As for the authors of the French texts, the two poems for Edward I and the ones
for Edward II and Simon de Montfort, writings generated by an important historical
event, appear to have been composed within a short time after that event by authors
of no known eminence. Their simplicity seems to indicate that their writing may have
been spontaneous and perhaps not specifically requested by any authority. This
cannot be said of the York epitaph which, though also generated by a historical
event and the work of an unknown author, must have been intended as part of the
apparatus of the official funeral ceremony. Its copy in the Harley manuscript was
done by a Chester Herald but it is uncertain who wrote it.59 Of all the texts it can be
said that while the occasionally defective scansion may well be due to corruption in

58
Stanza 52 is in two lines, clearly a scribal oversight.
59
Green, ‘Epitaph for Richard, Duke of York’, 220 thinks it unlikely that Thomas Whiting, the Chester
Herald present at the burial, was the author (though he thinks it may have been copied by him) nor that
William Ballard, also present and copyist of the College of Arms version, wrote it. W.H. Godfrey, The
College of Arms ..., London Survey Committee Monograph 16 (Cambridge, 1963), which lists all the
officers of arms with biographical notes for each, gives in its section on Chester Heralds (119-29) other
names which could be possible copyists, such as Thomas Knight (created 1592, so at the right date for the
script), Henry Chitting (created 1618 who ‘left manuscripts’), or James Thomas (created 1587, of whom ‘in
1597 Garter Dethick said he had ‘a knowledge of some languages, but small experience’); William Penson
(created 1603) is given as having a connection with several Harley manuscripts but I could not discover
any similarities in script with Harley 48.
374 D. Tyson / Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004) 359–375

the chains of copying, it could also indicate that the authors in question were not
skilled versifiers.
How sought after were they? Given the fact that we have so few, and in so few
manuscripts, one is tempted to reply: Not very! But there is the fact that at least one,
the Cambridge elegy on Edward I, was translated into English which indicates
a certain level of interest. The fact that the Latin Edward II poem is probably an
adaptation of the French text makes the same point. The corrupt condition of the
Oxford text on Edward I, especially in the Ashmole version, may also, paradoxically,
point to some popularity since it suggests a history of multiple copying. The fact that
Francis Thynne chose to include the York text in his commonplace book (if he chose
it deliberately) also speaks for its still being of interest long after its composition; the
presence of the extra four lines suggests that this model may have belonged to
a different family from the Harley model, which argues a multiplication of
manuscripts. Indeed, the very survival of these laments, precarious as it was, shows
a certain degree of continuing interest, at least on the part of scribes and compilers.60
We may conclude from such evidence as we have that the laments were emotional
effusions written soon after the subjects’ deaths, without much literary pretension
but with sincere feelings of sorrow and loss. They do not follow any kind of pattern,
but are individual in each case. Their most striking common aspect is their survival
itself which depended to an important degree on their being copied together with
other historical texts, rather than as literary compositions in their own right - and, as
is so often the case for medieval manuscript material, on luck.

Appendix

List of Manuscripts

Cambridge Fitzwilliam Museum MS 283 (Philippe le Bon/Charles le Téméraire; Fr.)

Gonville and Caius College MS 85 (Simon de Montfort; Latin)
Peterhouse MS 94 (Edward I; Latin)
University Library MS Gg.I.1 (Edward I; French)

Dublin Trinity College MS 347 (Simon de Montfort; French)

London British Library MS Harley 48 (Richard of York; French)

MS Harley 2253 (Simon de Montfort; French)
MS Royal 20 A II (Edward II; French)
MS Stowe 1047 (Richard of York; French)
College of Arms MS Arundel 48 (Edward II; Latin)
MS M.3 (Richard of York; French)

60
On the question of their dissemination, see also Wright, Political songs, ed. Coss, lvii-lxvii.
 D. Tyson / Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004) 359–375 375

Longleat Longleat MS 26 (Edward II; French)

Oxford Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 789 (Edward I/Piere d’Escoce; French)
MS Bodley 302 (Edward I/Piere d’Escoce; French)
Magdalen College MS Lat.6 (Edward I; Latin)

Diana Tyson is part-time lecturer and Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of French at
University College London. Her interest is in historical matter written in medieval French, especially in
England. Her published research ranges from editions of Chandos Herald’s Vie du Prince Noir and Rauf
de Boun’s Petit Bruit to work on patronage of Old French historiographers, on the Old French prose Brut
chronicle, especially its manuscript tradition, and on individual historiographers, among them Jean le Bel
and Olivier de la Marche. She increasingly works on discovering, listing and transcribing hitherto
unpublished manuscript material, most recently of manuscript versions of the Itinerary of Edward I’s 1296
Scottish campaign and of the Siege of Caerlaverock.