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The Library of John Blacman and Contemporary Carthusian Spirituality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2009

Roger Lovatt
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Extract

The library of John Blacman represents the largest and most comprehensive collection of devotional and mystical writings known to have been owned by any individual in late medieval England. On that ground alone it would merit attention. Buthis library repays study for other reasons. Firstly it is possible to place it within a detailed context. We know a considerable amount about Blacman himself and this knowledge of the man is paralleled by our knowledge of his books. Our perception of the private libraries of late medieval England is normally based on bald lists of books, occasionally supplemented by a handful of surviving manuscripts. These lists are usually derived from wills, which can all too frequently be shown to be seriously defective as a complete record of the libraries concerned. And, in particular, such lists can give only a static and skeletal picture of the relationship between the books and their owners. However, in the case of Blacman's library, while our major source is indeed a list of his books, it is a list which is exceptionally revealing. To some extent this is because part of the list is more informative than usual in providing the complete contents, insteadof a single portmanteau title, for about a third of the books. Hence we can reconstruct the precise nature of a number of the composite volumes in the library. More important is the fact that we have, properly speaking, not This article began life, in very different form, as a paper given to the Exeter Conference on ‘The medieval mystical tradition in England’. I am much indebted to the kindness and forbearance of the editor of the conference proceedings, Miss Marion Glasscoe.

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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , April 1992 , pp. 195 - 230
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 154, flyleaf and fos. ir–2v.

2 Bodl. Lib., MS Bodley 801, Digby 104 (fos 21–60), Laud misc. 152, 154 (two parts of the sameMS); British Library, MS Sloane 2515; Eton College, MS 213; Lambeth Palace, MS 436, and St John's College, Oxford, MS182. BL, MS Harley 1032 contains the De Veritate of Aquinas, a work which appears in Blacman's list, and has links with the Witham Charterhouse (fos. igiv–2v) but the incipit of its second folio and the absence of the distinctive Witham ex libris inscription (see below, p. 7 n. 16) prove that it was not one of Blacman's books, despite its identification as such by M.R.James and, subsequently, others: Blacman, Henry the Sixth, 56.

3 For what follows, see BRUO i. 194–5 and Roger Lovatt, ‘John Blacman: biographer of Henry vi’, in R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (eds), The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: essays presented to Richard William Southern, Oxford 1981, 415–44.Google Scholar

4 Eton Coll., Lease Book 1445–1529, fos 62–6V.

5 Cobban, A. B., The Medieval English Universities: Oxford and Cambridge to c. 1500, Aldershot 1988, 344–8.Google Scholar

6 Wolffe, B., Henry 6, London 1981, 3–21,Google Scholar and Roger Lovatt, ‘A collector of apocryphal anecdotes: John Blacman revisited’, in Pollard, A. J. (ed.), Properly and Politics: essays in later medieval English history, Gloucester 1984, 172–97.Google Scholar

7 Bodl. Lib., MS Laud misc. 152, fo. ir; Blacman, , Henry the Sixth, 6, 7–9, 13, 14, 15–16, following here the meaning of ‘communiter’ and ‘minister’ adopted by M. R.James on P. 35Google Scholar

8 Ibid. 5, 15–16; Lovatt,‘Blacman revisited’, 187. Henry vi's vernacular Bible, Bodl. Lib., MS Bodley 277, may have been inherited from his father: C. M. Meale, ‘Patrons, buyers and owners: book production and social status’, in Griffiths, J. and Pearsall, D. (eds), Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375–1475, Cambridge 1989, 201–38, at p. 223.Google Scholar

9 Chronology tentatively reconstructed from BL, MS Sloane 2515, fos 3r–5r, and Bodl. Lib., MSSLaud misc. 152, fos. ir, 286v, and Laud misc. 154, fo. 2v. For the redditus, Statuta Ordinis Cartusiensis, Basle 1510, esp. Statuta Nova Ordinis Cartusiensis (1368), part in, cap. i and Tertia Compilatio Statutorum Ordinis Cartusiensis (1509), cap. xi.

10 Thompson, E.M., The Carthusian Order in England, London 1930, 145, 304–7;Google ScholarWorcestre, W., Itineraries, ed. Harvey, J. H., Oxford 1969, 296;Google ScholarThe Chartae of the Carthusian General Chapter, ed. Sargent, M. and Hogg, J., AC, 100:4, 1984, 18–19, 115.Google Scholar

11 Lovatt, ‘Blacman’, 429 and n. 1; Parkes, M. B., English Cursive Book Hands, 1250–1500, repr. London 1979, 6, 25 and plate 6;Google ScholarThompson, , Carthusian Order, 306–7.Google Scholar For earlier intellectual activity at Witham, see Bodl. Lib., MS Bodley 859, fos 1–42 and Jacob, E. F., Essays in the Conciliar Epoch, Manchester 1963, 203–5. The grant of confraternity, dated 6 May 1459, is now amongst the deeds in the Henderson Bequest in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.Google Scholar

12 The gifts are listed in Bodl. Lib., MS Laud misc. 154, fly-leaf and fos ir–2v. BL, MS Sloane 2515 does not appear in these lists. Blacman may well have lived for some years after 1474, by which time he had given all but two of his listed books to Witham, and could later have acquired further MSS: see Lovatt, ‘Blacman revisited’, 176–81.

13 Three versions of these lists have been published, each incomplete and inaccurate: James, M. R. edited a misleadingly conflated, and incorrect, text of the first two lists in Blacman, , Henry the Sixth, 55–9,Google Scholar while unaccountably making no mention of the third list, even though it follows immediately after the second list in the Laud MS and contains almost twice as many items; Thompson, Carthusian Order, 317–21 reproduces an uncorrected version of James's text of the first list, and omits the second list, but adds an inaccurate transcript of the third list; finally, a skeletal version of Thompson's text, mentioning only the leading item in each volume, appears in BRUO, 195, where no. vii is mistakenly identified as BL, MS Harley 1032, and St John's Coll., Oxford, MS 182 should be identified as no. lv rather than no. xviii. In the absence of a satisfactory text reference is best made to Thompson, , Carthusian Order, 317–21.Google Scholar

14 In both lists the last item, no. 24, is added in Blacman's own hand.

15 Bodl. Lib., MSS Laud misc. 154, fo. ir and Laud misc. 152, fo. ir. The poem is reproduced in Watson, A. G., Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 435–1600 in Oxford Libraries, Oxford 1984, i. 97–8.Google Scholar

16 The form is ‘Liber domus beate marie de Witham ordinis cartusiensis ex dono M. Johannis Blacman’. Noticeably Blacman is not described as a monk of the house. See Bodl. Lib., MSS Bodley 801, fo. ir; Digby 104, fo. 2ir; Laud misc. 152, fo. ir; Laud misc. 154, fo. ir; Eton Coll., MS 213, fo. ir.

17 Lambeth Palace, MS 436, fo. ir; St John's Coll., Oxford, MS 182, fo. ir.

18 Bodl. Lib., MSS Laud misc. 152, fo. 286v, and Laud misc. 154, fo. ir.

19 The fact that the Revelations of St Bridget appear much later in this list, and are not grouped by Blacman within his own earlier category of ‘revelaciones’ (alongside the works of St Elizabeth of Schönau, St Mechtild of Hackeborn and St Catherine of Siena) suggests that the book was not in his possession when he drew up the first part of his list.

20 One might add Blacman's copies of an anonymous Utilis Tractatus Rethorice, an Ars Conficiendi Colores (referring to the ‘colours’ of rhetoric), and his index to the letters of Peter of Blois, a popular medieval exemplar of epistolary style. Blacman also possessed two standard textbooks of Latin grammar, Nequam's De Nominibus Utensilium (listed under its opening words of Qui vult bene disponere) and the Phale Tolum of the Parisian grammarian, Adam de Parvo Ponte. See Murphy, J. J., Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, California 1974, 163–72, 189–90, 229–30, 303–9Google Scholar and, more specifically, Leader, D. R., A History of the University of Cambridge, I: The University to 1546, Cambridge 1988, 117–21.Google Scholar

21 These include the Summa de Casibus Consciencie of Bartholomaeus de Sancto Concordio, a Forma audiendi confessionem, an Interrogaciones fort penitencialis, a Tractatus de virtutibus et viciis, a Tractatus inquirendi peccata in foro penilenciali, and a Tractatus de penitencia Roberti Grostest.

22 Entitled Canon Tabularum Rede in no. 21 of the first list; see BRUO iii. 1556–60. For Blacman's lasting attachment to Merton College, see Oxford City Documents, Financial and Judicial, ed. J. E. Thorold Rogers (Oxford Historical Society, xviii, 1891), 314.

23 Entitled A Chartuary afire Penkarr in no. 23 of the first list. See Pollard, G., ‘The medieval town clerks of Oxford’, Oxoniensia 31 (1966), 73–4.Google Scholar

24 Eton Coll., MS 213, fo. xv. The ink of the drawing is similar to that of Blacman's annotations on fos ig6r, 257V. The arms of Eton occur on fos 1, 131, 197. For the context of the drawing, see St, W. H.John, Hope, Windsor Castle: an architectural history, London 1913, i. 233–6 and plate xix.Google Scholar

25 The first list also includes the hymn Dulcis Jhesu Memoria and the Stimulus Peccatoris of William of Rymington (Bodl. Lib., MS Bodley 801, fos ngvff.). But Rymington's Stimulus is a work of spiritual direction as much as a purely devotional text; see the edition by Brien, R. O' in Cîteaux xvi (1965), 278–304.Google Scholar

26 One possible exception might be represented by the De Originali Peccato of Giles of Rome.

27 BL, MS Sloane 2515, fos 3r–57v: Blacman's meditation occupies fos 3r–5r. On this MS see also, A. Gray, ‘ A Carthusian Carta Visitalionis of the fifteenth century’, BIHR xl (1967). 91–101.

28 Blacman's concern with mortality later took on a millenarian aspect. A book in his second collection contains the Revelationes of the pseudo-Methodius concerning the end of the world and a quaestio on a similar theme by John Paul de Fundis of Bologna University: St John's Coll., Oxford, MS 182, fos 128V–48V, and Thorndike, L., A History of Magic and Experimental Science, New York 1923–1968, iv. 232–42. Comparable reflections on entering the Carthusian order are in Westminster Diocesan Archives, MS H. 38, fos 83–155.Google Scholar

29 The Papa Pius turco of Blacman's list must correspond with this letter, even though the second folio incipit does not appear in the printed text. The presence of unlisted material at the beginning of the manuscript can readily account for such a discrepancy. See Pio II: lettera a Maometto II, ed. Toffanin, G., Naples 1953, 109–77.Google Scholar

30 Graham, R., ‘The Order of St Antoine de Viennois and its English Commandery, St Anthony's, Threadneedle Street’, Archaeological Journal lxxxiv, 2nd ser. xxxiv (1927), 341–406, esp. 363–4, 396.Google Scholar

31 The Consuetudines are printed in PL cliii. 635–760. The Speculativa Clausorum can be identified by its second folio incipit as the Speculum Inclusorum edited by Oliger, L. in Lateranum iv (1938), 63–141.Google Scholar

32 Blacman's Imitatio is listed as Musica Ecclesiastica, a title it frequently bore in late medieval England.

33 This text, which appears in Blacman's list as Fragmenta Collecta, can be identified by its second folio incipit as St John's Coll., Oxford, MS 182; for the be'guine lives see fos 1–105. The curious title is derived from the opening words of the preface by Jacques de Vitry to his life of Marie of Oignies, the first work in the manuscript.

34 For the Donatus, see A. I. Doyle,‘The European circulation of three Latin spiritual texts’, in Minnis, A. J. (ed.), Latin and Vernacular: studies in late-medieval texts and manuscripts, Cambridge 1989, 129–46, esp. 138–41. The work incorporates quotations from Rolle, Hilton and St Bridget, and several long extracts from Book II of Gerard Groote's translation of Ruysbroeck's Spiritual Espousals occur in the second section of the Donatus. See Bodl. Lib., MS Bodley 918, fos 85V–131V, 20iv.Google Scholar

35 For quotations in the Donatus from Gerard of Zutphen's De Spiritualibus Ascensionibus, see ibid, fos 46V–9V.

36 Roger, Lovatt, ‘The Imitation of Christ in late medieval England’, TRHS, 5th ser. xviii (1968), 97–121, esp. 117–21.Google Scholar

37 Heinrich Senses Horologium Sapientiae, ed. Künzle, P. (Spicilegium Friburgense, xxiii, (1977), 116–249. Künzle's list of the English MSS requires correction in detail but his general picture of the circulation of the Horologium remains valid.Google Scholar

38 The English MSS of the De Adhaerendo Deo are Bodl. Lib., MSS Bodley 856 and Lat. th. d. 27. The MSS of the Liber Spiritualis Gratiae of St Mechtild are Cambridge UL, MS Ff. 1. 19; Bodl. Lib., MS Digby 21 and Trinity College, Oxford, MS 32.

39 For detailed references, see the author's thesis, ‘The Influence of the Religious Literature of Germany and the Low Countries on English Spirituality c. 1350–1475’, unpubl. DPhil diss., Oxford 1965. Also Lovatt,‘Imitation’, 97–121, and idem, ‘Henry Suso and the medieval mystical tradition in England’, in Glasscoe, M. (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Exeter 1982, 47–62.Google Scholar Carthusian interest in similar English works has been most recently and fully described by Sargent, M. G., James Grenehalgh as Textual Critic, AC lxxxv (1984), i. 15–55.Google Scholar Also, E. Colledge,‘The Treatise of Perfection of the Sons of God’, English Studies xxxiii (1952), 49–66, and The Booke of Gostlye Grace of Mechtild of Hackebom, ed. Halligan, T. A., Toronto 1979, 52–3.Google Scholar

40 One English MS of the De Adhaerendo Deo (Bodl. Lib., MS Lat. th. d. 27) is certainly Carthusian, perhaps from Coventry, and the other (Bodl. Lib., MS Bodley 856) may well be. Both English MSS of the Speculativa Clausorum, or Speculum Inclusorum, are Carthusian in origin. BL, MS Royal 5. A. V was given to Coventry by its prior, and St John's Coll., Oxford, MS 177 clearly originated within the order although it cannot be attributed to a specific house. For another reference to the work circulating within the order, see Thompson, , Carthusian Order, 324–5.Google Scholar

41 Lambeth Palace, MS 436, fo. ir; St John's Coll., Oxford, MS 182, fo. ir.

42 The General Chapter instructed English charterhouses to keep a register of their books but no certain example has survived; see Chartae, ed. Sargent and Hogg, AC, 100:2 (1983), 98. The booklist in BL, MS Sloane 3548, fo. 158 may represent the library catalogue of an English charterhouse but its provenance is very far from certain: Bressie, R., ‘MS Sloane 3548, Folio 158’, Modem Language Notes liv (1939), 246–56.Google Scholar For books which can be attributed to particular houses, see Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, ed. Ker, N. R., 2nd edn, London 1964,Google Scholar and Supplement, ed. Watson, A. G., London 1987. There are also many Carthusian books which cannot be given a specific provenanceGoogle Scholar

43 Bodl. Lib., MS Laud misc. 152, fo. 921, and Statuta Ordinis Cartusiensis, Basle 1510, part 2, ch. xvi.

44 Lambeth Palace, MS 436, fo. 52r.

45 Bodl. Lib., MS Laud misc. 154, fo. 2r.

46 For Carthusian interest in the Scale and the Cloud, see Sargent, , Grenehalgh, i. 44–52. The London Charterhouse ‘edited’ text of the Scale is now BL, Ms Harley 6579.Google Scholar

47 Sargent, , Grenehalgh, i. 29–31.Google Scholar For the MSS of Love's Mirror, see Salter, E., Nicholas Love's ‘ Myrrour of the Blessed Lyf of jesu Christ’, AC x (1974), 3–18,Google Scholar revised in the same author's ‘The manuscripts of Nicholas Love's “Myrrour of the Blessed Lyf of jesu Christ” and related texts’, in A. S. G. Edwards and D. Pearsall (eds), Middle English Prose: essays on bibliographical problems, London 1981, 115–27. Also, Doyle, A. I., ‘Reflections of [sic] some manuscripts of Nicholas Love's “Myrrour of the Blessed Lyf of jesu Christ”’, Leeds Studies in English xiv (1983), 82–93.Google Scholar

48 Sargent, M.,‘Contemporary criticism of Richard Rolle’, in Kartäusermystik und-Mystiker i, AC lv: i (1981), 160–205; Basset's Defensorium is edited on pp. 188–205.Google Scholar

49 For continued concern about this issue within the Carthusian order, see the short tract Ut inclusi non querant signa et mirabilia, apparently transcribed in the Coventry Charterhouse towards the end of the fifteenth century: Christ's College, Cambridge, MS 11, fos iv-iiir. And for similar Carthusian views on Ruysbroeck, see the Confirmacio Ordinis Carlhusiensis in Trinity College, Cambridge, MS 1401, esp. fo. 86v. Also, The Chastising of God's Children, ed. J. Bazire and E. Colledge, Oxford 1957, 54–61.

50 Bodl. Lib., MS Laud misc. 152, fo. 31V.

51 Sargent,‘Contemporary criticism of Richard Rolle’, 190, 195, 197.

52 BL, MS Sloane 2515, fos 25V–33V, and Lambeth Palace, MS 436.

53 See Lovatt,‘The Religious Literature of Germany’, 193–5, and idem, ‘Henry Suso and the medieval mystical tradition in England’, 58–9.

54 Blacman, , Henry the Sixth, 14, 16, 20.Google Scholar

55 BL, MS Sloane 2515, fos 3r–5r; O'Connor, M. C., The Art of Dying Well: the development of the Ars Moriendi, New York 1942.Google Scholar

56 Thompson, , Carthusian Order, 323–9.Google Scholar For examples of Carthusian scribes transcribing, clearly for circulation, more than one copy of the same work, see Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, ed. Ker, 122–3, 278 305 (John Whetham) and Doyle, ‘Reflections of some manuscripts’, 88 (Stephen Doddesham). On the movement of monks between houses, see the valuable account by Rowntree, C. B., ‘Studies in Carthusian History in Later Medieval England’, unpubl. PhD diss., York 1981, 162–8.Google Scholar

57 The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. S. B. Meech and H. E. Allen (Early English Text Society, original ser. ccxii, 1940), i. pp. xxxvi-xliii, 29 n. 3, 68 n. 7, 88 n. 3, 105 n. 4, 174 n. 5.

58 Hogg, J., ‘Mount Grace Charterhouse and late medieval English spirituality’, Collectanea Cartusiensia 3, AC lxxxii: iii (1980), 1–43.Google Scholar Methley's original works have been edited by Hogg, j. and Sargent, M. in AC xxxi (1977) and in Kartäusermystik und -Mystiker, AC lv (1981–1982),Google Scholar i, ii and v. Norton's works, as yet unedited, survive in Lincoln Cathedral, MS 57; see also Hendriks, L., The London Charterhouse, London 1889, 292–3,Google Scholar and, in general, Knowles, D., The Religious Orders in England, Cambridge 1948–1959, ii. 223–6, iii. 239.Google Scholar

59 See the ‘prophecies’ of one Fletcher, another monk of Mountgrace, who was a disciple of Norton and transcribed his writings: Thompson, , Carthusian Order, 391; Lincoln Cathedral, MS 57, fos 2r, 79r.Google Scholar

60 For what follows, see Sargent, , Grenehalgh, i. 25–6, 44–50, ii. 330–472; idem,‘A new manuscript of The Chastising of God's Children with an ascription to Walter Hilton’, Medium Aevum xlvi (1977), 49–65; and idem, ‘Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection: the London manuscript group reconsidered’, Medium Aevum Hi (1983), 189–216.Google Scholar

61 John, Bale, Scriptorum Illustrium Maioris Brytanniae Catalogus, Basle 1557, 1559, i 569.Google Scholar

62 St John Hope, W., The History of the London Charterhouse, London 1925, 32, cf. PL cliii. 674. The Cistercian house of St Mary Graces had been established on a similarly incongruous metropolitan site by Edward in only some ten years previously.Google Scholar

63 Hope, , London Charterhouse, 49–51;Google ScholarThompson, , Carthusian Order, 310.Google Scholar

64 Ibid. 311–12; William, Roper, The Lyfe of Sir Thomas Moore, knighte, ed. E. V. Hitchcock (Early English Text Society, original ser. cxcvii, 1935), 6.Google Scholar

65 Hope, , London Charterhouse, 55–8Google Scholar. For the proprietorial behaviour of the nominal founder, Sir Walter de Mauny, see ibid. 31–2, 81.

66 Knowles, D. and Grimes, W. F., Charterhouse, London 1954, 23–31;Google ScholarChauncy, M., Historia aliquot martyrum anglorum, London 1888, 66, 68, 69.Google Scholar The tradition of lay visitors was established by the founder himself: Hope, , London Charterhouse, 81.Google Scholar

67 Ibid. 84–8, 96, 97.

68 Ibid. 88–104. This tradition was also initiated by the founder: ibid. 35. Further burials are noted by Rowntree, Studies, 369–72.

69 Hope, , London Charterhouse, 94, 96, 97, 99. Equally exigent requests are in PRO, Prerogative Court of Canterbury will register 1 Wattys (John Curteys), and in Guildhall Library, Commissary Court of London will register, iii, fo. 371 (John Clyderhowe).Google Scholar

70 Hope, , London Charterhouse 82, 88–99;Google Scholar Rowntree, Studies, ch. vi; Thomson, J. A. F., ‘Piety and charity in late medieval London’, this JOURNAL xvi (1965), 178–95 at pp. 189–90;Google ScholarTanner, N. P., The Church in Late Medieval Norwich, Toronto 1984, 124–5;Google ScholarSomerset Medieval Wills, ed. Weaver, F. W. (Somerset Record Society, 1901–1905 repr. Gloucester 1983), 88, 135, 223.Google Scholar

71 Chartae, ed. Sargent and Hogg, AC c: ii (1983), 215–21.

72 Chauncy, Historia, 70.

73 Calendar of Papal Letters, 1471–1484, 582–13; Underwood, M. G., ‘Politics and piety in the household of Lady Margaret Beaufort’, this JOURNAL xxxviii (1987), 48.Google Scholar

74 The terms of Colet's will prove that he did live at Sheen, although this has been doubted: Testamenta Vetusta, ed. N. H.Nicholas, London 1826, 569; George, Cavendish, The Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey, ed. R. S. Sylvester (Early English Text Society, original ser. ccxliii, 1959), 130.Google Scholar

75 Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1476–1485, 204; BRUO, , 1501–1540, 314–15.Google Scholar

76 PRO, Prerogative Court of Canterbury will register 4–5 Godyn.

77 For the careers of such active scribes as Homersley and Whetham of London, or Darker, Doddesham and Mede of Sheen, see Thompson, , Carthusian Order, 278, 306–7, 329, 332–3 and 324–9Google Scholar (for the transmission of texts from London), and Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, ed. Ker, , 278, 305, 309. In most cases these lists of their MSS can be extended.Google Scholar

78 Sargent, , Grenehalgh, i. 85–92, 173–4.Google Scholar

79 Glasgow UL, MS Hunterian 136, flyleaf; Bodl. Lib., MS Bodley 117, fos 14V–18V; Cambridge UL, MS Gg. 1. 6, fo. ir.

80 Underwood, ‘Politics and piety’, 48; Bodl. Lib., MS Douce 322, fos ir, 52V; Hope, , London Charterhouse, 92–3, 101–2;Google ScholarThompson, , Carthusian Order, 342–3, where Prior Batmanson is confused with his father: BRUC, 44–5.Google Scholar

81 Paris, Bibliothéque Nationale, MS lat. 10434; Bodl. Lib., MS Hatton 14, back cover.

82 Pembroke College, Cambridge, MS 309, fo. 402V; Thompson, , Carthusian Order, 327–8; Chartae, ed. Sargent and Hogg, AC c: ii (1983), 215–21.Google Scholar

83 Sargent, ‘Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection’, 204–8. Also, now, Fletcher, A. J., ‘A suggested place of origin of the Huntington 112 copy of Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection’, Notes and Queries, new ser. xxxii (1985), 10–11.Google Scholar

84 Magna Vita Sancti Hugonis, ed. D. L. Douie and H. Farmer, London 1961–1962, i. pp. xxvii, 60–3, 80–1.

85 Thompson, , Carthusian Order, 143–4,Google Scholar but the servants were kept well away from the monastery itself. Such problems as did beset Witham (ibid. 302–7) were more concerned with internal discipline. The ‘externalisation’ of the charterhouses is a major theme in English spirituality during the period. It is well treated in Rowntree, Studies, esp. chs. ii, iii, vi, vii; see also Gillespie, V., ‘Cura Pastoralis in Deserto’, in M. Sargent (ed.), De Cella in Seculum: religious and secular life and devotion in late medieval England, Cambridge 1989, 161–81.Google Scholar

86 Somerset Medieval Wills, ed. Weaver, i. 41. There are numerous references to Witham in this collection.

87 T. P., Wadley, Notes or Abstracts of the Wills Contained in the Volume Entitled the Great Orphan Book and Book of Wills, Bristol 1886, 6, 9, 35 and passim, and, for Witham's tenements, 77, 113, 131, 152. For the civic focus of Bristol piety see C. Burgess, ‘“By Quick and by Dead”; wills and pious provision in late medieval Bristol’, ECH cii (1987), 837–58.Google Scholar

88 Somerset Medieval Wills, ed. Weaver, i. 41–2.

89 Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, ed. Ker, 204–5, 317; also BRUO ii. 949–50, 1163, 1258–9, 1277. One exception is the bequest made by a layman, John, Gregory, in 1429 of a ‘“Syding’ de gallic” [sic]; Somerset Medieval Wills, ed. Weaver, i. 129.Google Scholar

90 Glasgow UL, MS Hunterian 77. For Doddesham's work, Aelred of Rievaulx's De Institution Inclusarum, ed. J. Ayto and A. Barratt (Early English Text Society, original ser. cclxxxvii, 1984), pp. xxix–xxxii.

91 Chartae, ed. Sargent and Hogg, AC c: ii (1983), 148.

92 For continued insistence on spoken Latin at Merton College, see Registrum Annalium Collegii Mertonensis, 1483–1521, ed. H. E. Salter (Oxford Historical Society, lxxvi, 1923), 209–10, 233–4.

93 On this difficult and neglected topic, see Rowntree, Studies, ch. iii and appendix ‘Biographical register of English Carthusians’. Chauncy (Historia, 67) stressed the- unusual - social distinction of the London monks of his day.

94 Thompson, , Carthusian Order, 304–5; BRUO iii. 2206.Google Scholar

95 Maginot, N., Der Actus Humanus Moralis unter dem Einfluss des Heiligen Geistes nach Dionysius Carthusianus, Munich 1968, 13–15.Google Scholar

96 Pemb. Coll., Cambridge, MS 221, fo. iv; Whatmore, L. E., The Carthusians under King Henry the Eighth, AC cix (1983), 163–4.Google Scholar

97 T. H., Aston,‘Oxford's medieval alumni’, Past and Present lxxiv (1977), 28–9;Google ScholarAston, T. H. and others, ‘The medieval alumni of the University of Cambridge’, Past and Present lxxxvi (1980), 67–73.Google Scholar

98 Chartae, ed. Sargent and Hogg, AC c: i (1982), 56, 175, 181.

99 BRUC, 204 (Eccleston), 502 (S. George); BRUO i, 493, ii. 961–2; Hogg, J., ‘The pre-Reformation priors of the Provincia Angliae’, AC, new ser. i (1989), 25–59, at pp. 45–6, 56.Google Scholar For Horde, see Thompson, , Carthusian Order, 417–18, 448, 467, 471.Google Scholar

100 Ibid. 341. For Houghton, see Whatmore, , Carthusians, 4–10;Google Scholar and for Malleverer, Grace Book of Containing the Records of the University of Cambridge for the Years 1501–1542, ed. W. G. Searle, Cambridge 1908, 167–8; Hogg,‘Priors’, 47, 49, 51.

101 For Webster and Lawrence, see Grace Book γ, ed. Searle, 71, 103; for Man, see BRUO, 1501–1540, 375; Hogg,‘Priors’, 42, 47, 55, 58; Whatmore, Carthusians, 32–4.

102 Two contrasting examples are Andrew, Borde and Maurice, Chauncy; BRUO, 1501–1540, 59, 112–13.Google Scholar Cf. ibid. 327–8 (Kendall).

103 Clifford Letters of the Sixteenth Century, ed. A. G. Dickens (Surtees Society, clxxii, 1962 for 1957), 67–9.

104 For detailed references, see Whatmore, Carthusians, passim, and the same author's earlier articles in: The Clergy Review xxxix (1954), 349–52, and Downside Review lxii (1944), 34–9 and lxiii (1945), 235–8. The crucial sources for their Cambridge background are in Vie du Bienheureux Martyr Jean Fisher, Cardinal, Eveque de Rochester, ed. F. van Ortroy (Analecta Bollandiana, x, 1891), 168–9, 172–3.

105 Knowles, , Religious Orders, iii. 215.Google Scholar The confessors-general are listed in VCH Middlesex, i. 190–1. See also BRUC, 226–7 (Fewterer), 507 (Stephen Saunder), 630–1 (Westhaugh); BRUO iii. 1910 (Trowell); Grace Book γ, ed. Searle, 83, 126 (Copinger). For other former fellows of colleges, see BRUC, 72 (Bond), 635–6 (Whitford); BRUO i. 61–2 (Asplyon), 371 (Catesby), iii. 1855–6 (Terrynden). Also, Alumni Cantabrigienses, compiled by Venn, J. and Venn, J. A., pt. 1, iii, Cambridge 1924, 33 (Lache), 445 (Reynold); Catalogue of the Library of Syon Monastery, ed. M. Bateson, Cambridge 1898, pp. xxiii–xxvii.Google Scholar

106 Gutch, J., Collectanea Curiosa, Oxford 1781, ii.268–71;Google ScholarAungier, G. J., The History and Antiquities of Syon Monastery, London 1840, 531.Google Scholar

107 For what follows I am indebted to Tait, M. B., ‘The Brigittine Monastery of Syon with special reference to its monastic usages’, unpubl. D Phil diss., Oxford 1975, esp. chs vi, vii, viii.Google Scholar

108 Thompson, , Carthusian Order, 324–9;Google ScholarHendriks, L., The London Charterhouse, London 1889, 364.Google Scholar

109 Ibid. 366–8; Whatmore, , Carthusians, 225–6 (for the reply).Google Scholar

110 M., Aston, Lollards and Reformers, London 1984, 207–17.Google Scholar

111 BRUO ii. 913–15 (Hereford); Hudson, A., The Premature Reformation, Oxford 1988, 437–40.Google Scholar

112 For example, Groote's Latin translation of Ruysbroeck's Spiritual Marriage: BL, Royal MS 6. B. IX, fo. 141

113 Pemb. Coll., Cambridge, MS 221; BRUO, i. 544 (Darker), and Glasgow UL, MS Hunterian 136, flyleaf. In general see J. Hogg,‘The Latin Cloud’, in M. Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Woodbridge 1984, 104î15.

114 Hussey, S. S., ‘Latin and English in the Scale of Perfection’, Mediaeval Studies xxxv (1973). 456–76, esp. 456–8; BRUC, 231 (Fishlake), 456 (John Pole); BRUO, 1501–1540, 280–1 (Heneage).Google Scholar

115 Magd. Coll., Oxford, MS 141 and St John's Coll., Oxford, MS 77; BRUO i. 615–16.

116 For a similar note of caution concerning the exclusive role often attributed to the Carthusians in exporting the works of the English Mystics, see Doyle, A. I., ‘Carthusian participation in the movement of works of Richard Rolle between England and other parts of Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries’, Kartäusermystik und-Mystiker, ii. AC lv (1981), 109–20.Google Scholar

117 Chauncy, , Historia, 67.Google Scholar

118 Sargent, , Grenehalgh, esp. ch. iii.Google Scholar

119 M. Underwood, ‘John Fisher and the promotion of learning’, in B. Bradshaw and E. Duffy (eds), Humanism, Reform and the Reformation: the career of Bishop John Fisher, Cambridge 1989, 25–46; BRUC, 229–30. Pole's, judgement is in his Pro Ecclesiasticae Unitatis Defensione, Rome 1536, F. ciii;Google ScholarWhatmore, , Carthusians, 43–59.Google Scholar