Salutem in Christo.

After my hearty commendations etc.

These are not onely to lett you know that I have received your Letters, but to thanke you for them. And I am heartily glad to read in them, that some of your differences were composed before my Letters came; and that the rest are so well setled since the receipt of them. I hope you will all hereafter be so kind one to another, and so carefull of the Common Good, as that you will in wisdome prevent the rising of any the like differences amongst you. It will be a great honour to the Church, and as great a safety to your selves in the midst of them (if any such be) which maligne the prosperity of both.

For the decree concerning the new addition to the maintenance of the Quire, I like it very well, and thanke you all for your voluntary concurrence in it, and hereby give you my approbation, and require that it be registred. Onely, one thing I thinke will be necessary to be added. For I do not find any day or time expressed therein, in or from which it shall take effect, which I pray you to add to the decree. And for my part I will clearly expresse to you what I thinke: If you shall deferr it to the beginning of another yeare, and so of another Receivers time, both the Quire will stay too long for the addicon of their meanes, and he that is next Receiver (that Office I perceive being to come among the junior Prebends) may perhaps thinke it the harder it should begin upon him. Therefore I suppose it may be thought fitt to begin presently from the day of the date of the decree, as such acts are usually interpreted to do when no day is exprest. And yet because Dr Jeffries the now Receiver is a man that hath a charge, and none of the wealthiest amongst you, and that he hath so conscionably and willingly yielded to this decree against his present profitt, it may be fitt to take no more from him for this halfe yeare remaining then 20 marks, if you shall so thinke requisite.

Salutem in Christo

My very Good Lord.

Your Letters of August 7th came to my hands the 24th of the same month. And long before their Comming, I heard of your heavy mischance by the Breach of your Legg; but was still in hope that it was not true. Because in the Interim I receav’d two Letters from my Lord Deputy; And neither of them made any mention of this sad Accident. And now I am very glad to heare from yourselfe, That since it pleas’d God, the Accident did befall you, you are on so faire a way of Recovery, which God blesse to you.

I am glad the Bishopricke of Kilmore is settled according to the purpose of that happie Law, and within the Tyme limited. And as for the Bishops reluctancye, transeat cum cæteris; so the Sea and Succession have the Benefitt. Yet I professe I cannot wonder enough, why a man that otherwise understands himselfe so well, should be so much his owne Enemy, and the Churches. And as for his Diocesan Synod, I shall say noe more, till you have had Opportunity to speake with my Lord Primate. And if his Grace be pleas’d to write freely to mee, I shall make such use of itt, as is fitt. But if any thing bee done upon itt, how it can bee kept from my Lord of Kilmore, or why it should, I know not.

I am very glad the Bishop of Clonfert hath had so good successe; And I hope he and his Successors will now looke to itt.

For the Bishop of Downes busines, if Mr Railton speake to mee About a Letter for a License of Mortmayne, I shall doe all my best Service to remoove any stopp. And shall bee able (I hope) to satisfy the King, your Lordship having layd downe the Busines so cleerly to mee.

For the Passage in your Letter concerning the Scottish Bishops theire Case hath much both troubled, and pittyed mee. And I should be very glad, would itt please God to make mee able, to doe them anie kindnes. But as for their Comming into Ireland, I have already written sufficiently to my Lord Deputy.

In June 1588, Elizabeth Forth allegedly wanted to visit her sister Frances Bedingfield, who was staying with her mother at a Bedingfield family property called Denham College. It lay some twenty-three miles from Butley between Eye and Wingfield Castle, one of Henry Jerningham's residences. The ‘College’ can be identified as a house standing at the north end of Denham village. Much of the moat that once surrounded the house can still be seen today, and its memory survives in the name ‘College Farm’ (see Plate 7). An inventory of the house's contents compiled in May 1590 indicates that the College was a simply furnished and second¬ary family residence that had seen better days. The dining chamber was ‘hanged aboute with patched old dornixe’ (a wool and linen fabric first made in Tournai), while the hall contained two plank tables and two plank forms. Another inventory compiled two months later reveals that both Frances Bedingfield and her mother Katherine Jerningham had chambers in the much more lavishly furnished Bedingfield town house in the London parish of St Bartholomew the Less.

Elizabeth had to persist in her efforts to persuade Charles to agree to her going, and his father allegedly tried to dissuade them, rebuking Charles, presumably for agreeing to the plan. Finally, however, as on several previous occasions, she was provided with men and horses for the journey. Charles went with her. To the Forths there seemed at first to be nothing unusual about the trip. This time, however, Elizabeth did not return to Butley for well over three and a half years.

About a month after Elizabeth's departure, in late July 1588, with the Spanish Armada in the Channel, the Privy Council ordered several counties to send militia contingents to London and other places. According to the Suffolk antiquary Robert Reyce, writing early in the following century, Robert Forth had charge of a band of 500 men. Forth remembered in 1593 that ‘commandment was geven for atten¬dance at Tylberrye for the better preservacion of her Majestie and the defence of this Realme’ against the intended Spanish invasion. Charles had accompanied him to Tilbury, where he remained ‘all that tyme of service’.

The contributors and editors started out with particular ambitions for this book: to extend existing debates about Anglo-Italian cultural relations in the Middle Ages; to cover as wide a range of disciplinary interests as possible; and to encourage further conversations about the significance of cultural exchanges between Britain and Italy before the age of the Grand Tour.

We hope that the book achieves these aims and goes some way towards establishing a new approach to the study of cultural exchange. In every chapter, it is the lived experience of individuals, substantiated by written evidence, that shapes our collective understanding of how different cultures interact with each other. From Margaret Bridges's map-makers and my own survey of urban historians to Italian merchants and bankers in London (Helen Bradley, Bart Lambert, Ignazio Del Punta), from Victoria Flood's Franciscans to owners of manuscripts (Carolyn Collette and Michele Campopiano), the processes of cultural interaction, subtle as they are and often evident only in hindsight, are shown to take place at the level of human experience.

This is not to say that we take a simplistic liberal-humanist view of the individual as the source of human agency and social change. Each chapter of the book locates individuals not so much as products of ‘society’ at large, and certainly not as essentialist already-formed individuals, but as the constructs of particular discursive communities. It is in these communities that cultural exchanges are most likely to take place. Carolyn Collette writes about Richard de Bury as a book collector interacting with other book collectors, notably Petrarch and the royal court. Helen Bradley describes the Italian community living in London and their interactions with the locals while, like many modern migrants, maintaining a sense of their own identity as Italians. Ignazio Del Punta uses the discourse of economics to construct a community of Italian bankers in England and their relations with the Crown. Victoria Flood focuses on the Franciscan community and their uses of the discourse of prophecy to support their worldview. Cultural interaction, then, is here re-theorized as the sharing, exchange, and assimilation of ideologically meaningful discourses.

Another way in which this book moves the conversation forward is by its focus on material and intellectual activities other than humanism.

That a tenor line's liturgical context was expected to hold some significance for the subject matter of a motet is attested by the fourteenth-century theorist Egidius de Murino. He writes: ‘First select a tenor from any antiphon or responsory or other melody in the antiphonary, and the words should correspond to the material that you want to treat’ (Primo accipe tenorem alicuius antiphone vel responsorii vel alterius cantus de antiphonario et debent verba concordare cum materia de qua vis facere motetum). A substantial branch of motet scholarship in recent decades has explored the musical and textual interplay between tenors drawn from liturgical chants and the texted voices placed above them. Focusing on Alma virgo virginum/Benedicta es, Maria/[TENOR] (Mo 8,304, fols 350v–351v, hereafter Mo 304), the first motet in fascicle 8 following the opening Deus in adiutorium, this study explores the apparent mismatch between the motet's tenor and its upper voices.

The triplum and motetus texts clearly align the motet with the Feast of the Assumption:

The tenor, however, which has no designation in the manuscript, has associations with the Holy Saturday responsory Plange quasi virgo, aligning the motet with Passiontide suffering, darkness, and death – themes apparently incompatible with the celebratory Assumption texts of the upper voices. This study explores how the interaction of Mo 304's three voices brings out meanings that would not otherwise be obvious – or indeed present at all – in each separate vocal line. The study considers how these meanings, which give subtle thematic unity to the motet, might facilitate the identification of the tenor part and the motet's original performance context.

MO 304'S TENOR AND ITS ASSOCIATION WITH THE HOLY SATURDAY RESPONSORY PLANGE QUASI VIRGO

Mo 304's tenor uses a set of twenty-three pitches repeated three times (see Example 15.1a). Its liturgical source remained unidentified in scholarship until 1969, when Gordon Anderson suggested that it derived from the melisma et amara (‘and bitterness’) in the chant Plange quasi virgo, the third responsory of Matins Nocturn I on Holy Saturday, as given in the Sarum Antiphonal (Example 15.1b). The Plange quasi virgo responsory as given in BnF lat. 15181, fol. 291r, from Paris c.1300, is geographically and temporally pertinent to Mo 304, and gives a slightly closer match with the tenor line (Example 15.1c).

Among the cultural traits shared across European countries in the Middle Ages, one of the most prominent elements of their common classical inheritance is often forgotten by scholars: Roman law. Commentaries on aspects of the law were produced in many European countries by the leading thinkers of the period, whose works had considerable influence upon the decisions of kings and governments. This chapter focuses upon some less well known evidence for the reception of Italian legal and political works in the northern English city of York in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, where the library of John Neuton, treasurer of York Minster, demonstrates the importance of the works of Bartolus of Saxoferrato and Giles of Rome to leading English intellectuals and practitioners of the day. The scope of the chapter is limited to the evidence concerning Neuton's library, providing a case study for further work on the holdings of the other medieval libraries in York.

The medieval study of law was based in particular on what came to be called the Corpus iuris civilis (‘corpus of civil law’), a collection of key texts of jurisprudence assembled under the emperor Justinian between 529 and 534. In the Middle Ages, this corpus ‘provided an articulated language for the public dimension of human activity necessary for a concept of political life’, defining concepts such as res publica (literally ‘public affairs’, the commonwealth) and utilitas publica (‘the common good’). The compilation was at the centre of the activity of medieval commentators, starting with the interlinear glosses by Irnerius, who taught in Bologna probably from the end of the eleventh century. Bologna became the major centre for the study of Roman law, as exemplified by the activity of the so-called Four Doctors of Bologna and of Accursius (d. c. 1263), who compiled some of the earlier glosses in the so-called glossa ordinaria. Drawing on Roman tradition, medieval commentators built theories of political relationships.

One of the theorists who built on the work of these illustrious predecessors was Bartolus de Saxoferrato (Bartolo da Sassoferrato in Italian, 1313/14–57), regarded as one of the most influential jurists of the Middle Ages.

On Tuesday 6 April 1596, Elizabeth Blith of Butley in Suffolk, a twenty-three-year-old unmarried woman, was examined before three gentlemen of the county by virtue of a commission from the Court of Requests. Her testimony was given in the course of a suit brought by Robert Forth Esq. of Butley against his daughter-in-law Elizabeth Forth. Elizabeth Blith declared that she knew both the plain¬tiff and Elizabeth Forth and had known Robert's son Charles, then already deceased. She had been a chambermaid to Elizabeth Forth. She went on to describe how, some fourteen years before, Charles, then aged sixteen, had been lured into a clandestine marriage with Elizabeth, the daughter of Katherine Jerningham.

According to Elizabeth Blith

Katherine Jerningham's forecast proved over-optimistic. Robert Forth was deeply affronted by this underhand usurpation of one of the most cherished of all paternal rights of a gentleman of property – the arrange¬ment of, or at the very least strong influence over, his heir's marriage. As a staunch Protestant, who knew that men of his outlook were called puritans by their religious enemies (even though he repudiated this label), he was no doubt appalled that his son should have been lured into marriage with the daughter of John Jerningham, a man whom he probably regarded as a ruined Catholic, a ‘papist’. (However, nobody involved in the case as a party or a witness ever suggested that John Jerningham had had any part in the making of Elizabeth's marriage.) Distressed though Forth was, he eventually accepted the accomplished fact of the marriage, but his wholehearted consent was never ‘won’. Eleven of the witnesses examined on his behalf that Tuesday in Holy Week 1596 described different aspects of the making and eventual breakdown of the unfortunate marriage of Charles and Elizabeth Forth.

George Andrewes Dean of Limbricke to be Bishop of Fernes and Laughlin: To hold in Commendam any thing he hath saving the Deanery. The Bishopricke is voyd by the death of the late Bishop thereof. You must draw up a Letter accordingly out of hand.

W. Cant.

Mye verye good Lord:

Maye these find you in health and happines. It seemes you have had some great frights in the Cuntrye, and I hope more then Milford it selfe. I heard noe newes of it before your letters came but onlye once: And then noe more then that some enimyes had landed and burnt a little village. I hope the hurt is not soe much, thoughe the feare wear more.

His Maiestye is not yett gone to Portsmouth, but goes on Mundaye, or Wensdaye at farthest for ought yett appeares. And the Lord Weston on Tuesdaye last was made Lord Treasurer and the old Lord Treasurer President of the Councell, and the olde Lord President was Lord Privye Seale before. These things I presume you knowe, for I use not to wright anye newes. The same daye (beinge S. Swithin, and a faire daye with us) I was Translated to London. Soe you see it was a daye of chaunge both for clergye and Leye. God make it happye: For I expect nothinge but troble and daunger.

Other things ar as your Lordship left them; save that I see all things made uncertaine bye the necessityes of the tyme. Howe I shall Complye with that havinge allwayes gone upon Constant wayes, I cannot tell. I praye remember mye service to your Ladye; and that done in full wishes for your Lordships happines, I leave you and yours to the Grace of God, and shall ever rest

your verye lovinge frend

Guil: London

Westminster Julye. 19. 1628.

To the right honorable my very good Lord the Lord Scudamore at his howse at Home-Lacy in Hereford-Sheire be these delivered.

Mye verye good Lord.

I receaved bye your former Letres the saddest Newes that ever I heard in mye life. Yett I must and doe hartelye thanke you for wrightinge soe lovinglye to me. For if you had not written as you did I had bine left to the wildnes of the manye reports which spredd over the citye. And I knowe your pen writt those Letres from a hart full of sorowe for that great loss, and in speciall for the Barbarous and damnable manner of it. I purpose not to wright these, ether to declaime in his commendations which soe fewe would beleeve. Or to express my greefe which as fewe would pitye. But onlye to lett your Lordship knowe that though I have passed a great deale of heavines yett I have cause to expect more to come. And the Benefitt of thiss will be, that I shall for ever less esteeme what the Malice of the worlde can laye upon me. Under which If any fall (as much is threatned) I thanke you hartelye for your second Leters that you will appeare, what I have ever hoped, a frend in the tyme when frends fall of. And I hope you thinke I shall in mye waye be redye ever to serve your Lordship.

I Crave pardon of you that I answeared not your Leters sooner. For to the first I was able to give noe answeare, mye greefe had soe oppressd me. And the second bye Mr Brownes absence out of Towne came not to mye hands till the Carrier was gone. I was not with his Maiesty since thiss Execrable fact was committed till nowe that he came to Windsore, but stayd in London to give the best comfort I could to the Ladye Duches, whoe good Ladye hath bine in great Extremitye. Nowe the Court seemes newe to me, and I meane to turne a new leafe in it, for all those things which ar chaungable. For the rest I must be the same I was, and patientlye both Expect and abyde what God shall be pleased to laye upon me: To whose gracious providence I leave you and my selfe, and shall ever rest

your Lordships very lovinge frend and servant

Guil: London:

I praye remember mye service to your Ladye.

Richard Harris Barham was correct in his 1837 lay lampooning the legend of St Dunstan: the tale of the saint tweaking the devil's nose was indeed one which everyone knew. In fact, so famous was the tale that Barham felt it needed no further explanation. Few in the nineteenth century, however, could have known of its origins, nor indeed have imagined its novelty when the story first entered the hagiographical tradition in the final decade of the eleventh century. St Dunstan (909–988) had been dead for over a century and at least two different accounts of his Life had already been written, but Osbern of Canterbury was the first to tell this tale in his Vita S. Dunstani, written c. 1090. This essay explores the origins of this story, addresses why Osbern chose to introduce it into the legend of Dunstan, and asks what his careful remodelling of the tale can reveal about the purposes of hagiographical narratives.

The Historical Context

When Dunstan, former abbot of Glastonbury and archbishop of Canterbury, died in 988, he was swiftly championed as a saint. Within a decade a secular cleric and personal friend of Dunstan from his Glastonbury years, known only by the initial ‘B’, had written a Vita and shortly afterwards Adelard, a monk from St Peter's monastery, Ghent, revised this text into a set of twelve liturgical lessons. When Osbern came to write his Vita shortly after 1090, he primarily relied on these two earlier Lives, to which he made a variety of alterations. He repeatedly supplemented and embellished the existing legend and even, as in the case of this tale, introduced entirely new material.

Although a recent addition, the story quickly acquired canonical status and became an integral feature of the legend; it is conceivable that Osbern added it precisely because of its capacity to capture the imagination. Eadmer of Canterbury reworked it some fifteen years later, and William of Malmesbury incorporated it into his Vita S. Dunstani (written c. 1129–30); by the fourteenth century abridged versions of the story were circulating in both Latin and Middle English Legendaries.

Mye verye good Lord:

I heare send your Lordship fower papers which the Dean of Rochester brought me yesterdaye. I have redd them over twice, and have little to saye to them, and that little your Lordship shall find in the papers themselves. That boldnes I hope you will pardon, because I conceave I doe but use the leave you gave me.

Thiss morninge as I was goinge to wright thiss Leter to your Lordship I receaved a Leter from the Bishop of Brehen. He is Come to London, which falls not out verye well. But that you maye see all, I heare send your Lordship his Leter, and in it the Copye of mye answear to hime which I have nowe sent. If mye directions to hime be other then you could wish, you maye give other as you find Cause.

In thiss and in all things els I shall doe mye best to serve mye Master, and submitt the rest. To Gods blessed protection I leave you, and rest

your Lordships most humble servant

W: Cant:

Croyden. September 6. 1638.

For your Lordship

Salutem in Christo

Worthy Sir.

The Occasion of these Briefe Letters to you is this: I heare, That notwithstanding all the Greate Care and Paynes you have taken (which I Confesse is more then anie mans els in my Memory) for the suppressing of Libellous printing in those parts: Yet I am given to Understand, and that from meere Strangers to mee, That there is, or hath lately beene some New Stuffe printing at Amsterdam, or els-where. And particularly, That at Amsterdam, there hath a Libell beene lately printed, Called [The Beast is Wounded] I thanke God, I trouble not my selfe much with these things: But am very sorry for the Publicke, which suffers much by them. My Suite to you at this tyme is: That if there be sent unto you either Letters, or Bookes, or Papers, or anie Thing els to be Conveighed, to Mee, be it from Amsterdam, or anie other place, you will be pleased to take Care to see them sent unto mee with safety: for which Care and Paynes, as well for divers other Courtesyes, I shall heartily Thanke you, and ever rest

Your very Loving friend to serve you

W: Cant:

Lambeth November 26 1638

To my Honoured frend Sir William Boswell his Majesties Agent at the Haghe these

Salutem in Christo.

My very good Lord.

I hartily thanke you for your Letters, and for the continuance of your care for Dr Moreton. I pray faile not to send me notice in case the Incumbent of those Livings dye, but for the proposall you make, I shall thinke my selfe very well if I can obteyne but one of them from his Majesty. However these are to desire your Lordship to take this Letter as a Caveat, that you give noe Institution to the Rectory of Sefton, or Walton in prejudice of his Majestys right, to any upon any pretence whatsoever. My Lord Treasurer acquainted me with your payment of the Clergyes Contribution to Sir W. Udall, and I hartily thanke you for your paines and diligence therein. Methinkes it were not amiss that you found some means or other to lett my Lord Strange at least understand what a niggardly Chaplaine he hath preferrd, and how much the Example may prejudice his Majestys service. I have noe thing else to trouble your Lordship but to desire you to excuse me that I write not in myne owne hand, being at this tyme very busy and in great hast. Soe I leave you to Gods blessed protection and rest

Your Lordships very lovinge Freind and Brother.

W: Cant:

Lambeth house April 23. 1639

To the Right Reverend Father in God my very good Lord and Brother the Lord Bishop of Chester. these