SHORTER CONTRIBUTIONS

THE REDISCOVERY OF MARGERY KEMPE: A FOOTNOTE

Hilton Kelliher

T H E year 1934 was truly an annus mirabilis for to its early history, a document salvaged fromEnglish literary studies, when over the space of the original binding tells us something aboutthree months during the summer and autumn provenance and dating. This takes the form ofunique manuscripts of three major works were a letter of 1440 from Peter de Monte, notarybrought to light. In July came the announce- apostolic, reciting a faculty granted to anment by Walter Oakeshott of his discovery in incumbent of Soham in Cambridgeshire whotheFellowsLibrary at Winchester College of a has been identified as William Buggy (d.text of Le Morte d'Arthur differing in some 1442).^ Nevertheless the earliest clear indi-respects from that published by Caxton in cation of provenance remains the inscription1485, but which later proved to have been in 'Liber Montis Gracie. This boke is ofhis office at the time of printing.^ In August Mountegrace'on the vellum bifolium bound inColeridge's autograph fair copy of an early at the front of the volume. Perhaps signifi-recension of Kubla Khan emerged from the cantly, it has been observed that the unusualMonckton Milnes collection at Crewe Hall in pattern of pricking in the manuscript is similarDerbyshire.^ In September a country house to that in a collection of works by or attributednear Chesterfield yielded The Book of Margery to St Gregory that was copied at Mount GraceKempe, the autobiography of the fractious in the mid-fifteenth century by the monk JohnNorfolk mystic and pilgrim that had until then Awne (d. 1472-3).^ From the late fourteenthbeen known only from seven pages of extracts century the Carthusians led the way in thepublished by Wynkyn de Worde about 1501. transmission of spiritual teaching. This par-Almost fifty years after its rediscovery the ticular Yorkshire priory was home to mysticsKempe manuscript came up at public auction like Nicholas Love and Richard Methley, andand was purchased by the British Library, thus its library boasted several works belonging tobecoming the last of the trio to enter the that tradition.'' Annotations made while thenational collection.^ manuscript was still in its care draw parallels

The final version of Margery Kempe's between the religious practices of Kempe andspiritual autobiography was dictated to a priest Methley and, more specifically, mention aofKing'sLynninJuly 1436. The present copy vision experienced in 1485 by Prior Johnwas the work of an otherwise unknown scribe Norton.who signed himself off with the words 'ihesu The whereabouts of the volume between itsmercy quod Salthows'.^ As with the Malory removal from Mount Grace, which must havemanuscript, in which the fragment of an taken place no later than the suppression ofindulgence used for repair provided a vital clue 1539, and the late eighteenth or early nine-

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teenth century, when it surfaced in the handsof the Bowdens in Derbyshire, have remaineda matter for conjecture. The standard accountof its more recent provenance is that publishedin The Times of 30 September 1934 by Lt.-Col.William Erdeswick Ignatius Butler-Bowden(1880-1956), in whose family home ofSouthgate House, Chesterfield, it had thenrecently come to light.

It may be remembered that we are a Catholic familyand I believe that, when the monasteries were beingdestroyed, the monks sometimes gave valuablebooks, vestments, &c., to such families in the hopeof preserving them. Though there is nothing toprove it, this may have been the case with MargeryKempe's manuscript, and the Carthusians of MountGrace may have given it to one of my family.

The manuscript has lain in a bookshelf in thelibrary of Pleasington Old Hall, Lancashire, next toa missal of 1340 in the rite of York, ever since I canremember. We used to look at it occasionally andsometimes visitors read a page or two of it. Abouttwo years ago I took it to Mr. van de Put, thelibrarian at the Victoria and Albert Museum, whoshowed It to Hope Emily Allen. She identified it asMargery Kempe's lost autobiography. After theidentification of the manuscript I lent it for somemonths to the British Museum, for the benefit ofexperts there.

Records confirm that the manuscript wasplaced on deposit for use in the Students'Room of the Department of Manuscripts onthree occasions between September 1934 andMarch 1937, in order to facilitate the work ofProfessor Meech and Hope Emily Allen on thescholarly edition that was published by theEarly English Text Society in 1940.̂ The restof the story requires some qualification.

A circumstantial account of the recovery ofthe manuscript is given in a letter that theColonel's eldest son, Captain MauriceErdeswick Butler-Bowden (b. 1910), R.N.,O.B.E., wrote from Dapsland, Mayfield, inSussex, on 30 January 1970 to Mrs D. WinifredTuck of King's Lynn. Grateful thanks areowed to Mrs Tuck whose researches elicitedthis account, and at whose request the Lynn

Museum, to which she had donated therelevant papers, sent a photocopy to thisLibrary following its acquisition of the manu-script. Thanks are also due to the formerCurator of the Lynn Museum, Elizabeth M.James, and to her successor, Lindy Brewster.Maurice Butler-Bowden wrote as follows (withminor changes in presentation):

... I cannot add much that you will not have gleanedalready from Professor R. W. Chambers' Intro-duction and my Father's Editor's Note in the editionpublished by Jonathan Cape (bound in purple cloth)in 1936, except perhaps to tell you the story of howthe leather bound manuscript was found :-

When in 1927 my grandfather died my Father (LtCol W. Butler Bowden) took over the family housein Derbyshire. I was then only a Midshipman in theRoyal Navy (and wish I still could be). It was alargish Georgian House with a big front hall whichwe children liked because it could and did easilyprovide room and surrounding space to have a fullsized Ping Pong table permanently rigged. The bats& balls lived in a wall cupboard on one side of thefireplace. One evening when some grown up friend(X) of my Parents was staying, one of us trod on thePing Pong ball and my father went to the cupboardto get out a replacement and it was soon apparentthat he was having difficulty in finding either a ballor even the tube of balls. When our visitor (X) wentover to assist the reason for the difficulty wasobvious (we children knew it from experience).There was in there an entirely undisciplined clutterof smallish leather bound books. My father's retortto the hopingly helpful but unproductive visitor was'Look X I am going to put this whole ' ' lot onthe bonfire tomorrow and then we may be able tofind Ping Pong balls & bats when we want them'. Tothis X replied 'Willie, before you do anything sosuddenly may I ask an expert (Z) friend/acquaintance of mine who knows about these thingsto come and look through this cupboard, after allthere may be something of real interest there whichyou may not at the moment realise'. To which myPa replied 'Yes, if you insist but they are all oldhousehold account books but I cannot for the life ofme see why they were bound in leather - but if yourfriend thinks his trip would be worth it I willcertainly give him a bed'.

After the usual exchange by letter & by telephone(just) Z was duly met at the Station one evening in

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time to change for dinner. The following morningafter breakfast Z got down to burrowing through thecupboard, and, some thirty minutes later called inon my Pa in his Study and said 'Thank you verymuch for your hospitality, I think I will be away now- 1 think I have found something more interestingthan I should have hoped for in my wildest dreams- may I please take it down to London with me forcloser study and so as to check the identification.'My father agreed and it turned out to be theautobiography of Margery Kempe which the expertshad been hoping for years would come to the surfacesomewhere. There would seem to be a Lesson hereespecially in the present times when old & historic(which ours wasn't) houses are being sold up etc.The opening cover, leather & paper, of this boundmanuscript had been eaten away presumably by amouse and my father had this expertly repaired.

A few remarks on the two accounts will notmar this lively tale. The visiting friend ('X')was evidently Charles Gibbs-Smith and theexpert (*Z') Albert Van de Put, both then onthe staff of the Victoria and Albert Museum.The actual identification was made by HopeEmily Allen, already known for her work onthe hermit Richard Rolle. John ErdeswickButler-Bowden, the Captain's grandfather,who died in 1929 (not 1927), was of mixedLancashire and Derbyshire descent. He ownedthe manor and the New (not Old) Hall atPleasington, between Blackburn and Preston,along with Southgate House, some miles to thenorth east of Chesterfield.^ Although the familyhad moved out of the Lancashire property longbefore the time of the discovery, to judge fromthe account given by the elder Butler-Bowdenthe manuscript must have been at Pleasingtonbefore the end of the century.̂ ** This estate hadin 1777 passed after centuries of ownership bythe Ainsworths into that of another Lancashirefamily, the Butlers. Since it came to theBowdens, by marriage, only in 1840-uponwhich occasion they assumed the name Butler-Bowden - and since two bookplates inside thefront cover can be identified as those of HenryBowden (1754-1833) of Southgate House, one

may assume that the earlier provenance isDerbyshire rather than the strongly Catholicarea of mid-Lancashire.^^

The pedigree of the Derbyshire Bowdens inthe sixteenth and seventeenth centuries israther uncertain.^^ The family has been tracedas far back as George Bowden (b. 1537, andstill living 1611) of Bowden Hall near Chapel-en-le-Frith in the Peak District. He seems tohave been an ancestor of Henry Bowden (d.1665) of Beightonficlds in Barlborough whichadjoins the parish of Clowne, where standsSouthgate House which the later Henry (d.1833) was the first of the name to occupy. Bothvillages lie on the north-eastern border of thecounty, between Chesterfield and Worksop. Ithappens that among the properties owned byMount Grace at its suppression was theadvowson of the nearby rectory of Beighton,situated some seven miles north west ofBarlborough.^^ This had been alienated to thePriory in 1456 by Sir James Strangways ofHarlsey Castle, Yorkshire, and his wifeElizabeth.^* Beighton was, in fact, the onlyadvowson that belonged to the Priory inDerbyshire, and indeed its sole possession inthe county at the Dissolution.

This offers at least a possible route by whichThe Book of Margery Kempe could havemigrated at the suppression to the vicinitywhere the Bowdens later settled.^^ It might,perhaps, have been carried away by one of theseventeen dispossessed monks of Mount Grace,or have been borrowed or otherwise acquiredby a rector of Beighton somewhat beforethat time. In 1535, at the time of thegreat ecclesiastical survey commissioned byHenry VIII, the incumbent was one LeonardLynley, who died in the year before thesurrender of December 1539.̂ ^ His successorwould therefore have been the last rector to bepresented by the Prior, if not the first by theCrown, to which the advowson seems initiallyto have fallen. According to Joseph Foster's'Index Ecclesiasticus' the incumbent on

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13 May 1543 was William Saunderson, and by14 July following Ralph Rogers.'^ Coinci-dentally, a John Saunderson was one of thenovices pensioned off from Mount Grace.

A further possibility is that the manuscriptfell to the new secular owners of the Priory.The reversion and yearly rent of the site andbuildings were granted in 1540 to Strangways'seponymous grandson who some months laterwas licensed to alienate lands in Mount Graceand Beighton to Thomas, ninth Lord Dacre.̂ ®In the very next year Dacre fell victim toHenry VIII's blood-lust, and the wardship ofhis infant son, who was to die in 1553, wasgranted to the King.^^ The family honoursremained forfeit until restored to his brother byElizabeth I in 1558. Thereafter his successor,Gregory, tenth Lord Dacre, granted the manorand hall of Beighton in 1561 to Geofrey

Bosvile. The advowson seems after a while tohave been settled on the owners of the manor,being granted to Robert and William Swift in1544 and 1548. (Bosvile had himself grantedlands there to Robert Swift in 1547.̂ **) It thendescended through a daughter of Robert toFrances Wortley who purchased the manorfrom the Fiennes family. Lords Dacre of theSouth, in 1570.'"

Whatever the precise route taken by TheBook of Margery Kempe, such transfers andappropriations of monastic manuscripts werecommon and are well attested.^^ But it is notdifficult to believe that, much as ColonelButler-Bowden suggested in 1934, a relic ofthis nature might at some time subsequentlyhave been acquired and treasured by a recusantfamily seated in the area.

1 First announced in The Times., 23 July 1934, and,following its purchase from the Warden andFellows of Winchester College on 26 March1976, now BL, Additional MS. 59678. Its historywas discussed by Lotte Hellinga and the presentwriter in Toshiyuki Takamiya and Derek Brewer(eds.). Aspects of Malory, Arthurian Studies, no.i (Woodbridge, 1981; corrected repr. 1986), pp.127-58.

2 First discussed in a letter of Alice D, Snyder tothe Times Literary Supplement, 2 Aug. 1934, p.541, and now BL, Additional MS. 50847, bypurchase from the Marchioness of Crewe, 9 Dec.1961. For dating and provenance see further my'The Kubla Khan manuscript and its firstcollector', British Library Journal, xx (1994), pp.184-98.

3 Col. Butler-Bowden's piece in The Times of 30Sept. 1934 is quoted below. The MS., purchasedat Messrs. Sotheby's sale of 24 June 1980, lot 58,is now numbered BL, Additional MS. 61823.

4 The name or signature of a 'RichardusSalthowus', written in a fifteenth-century hand,is seen in Cambridge University Library MS.li.4.12, f. ii, in the space left for an illuminatedinitial. At f iv there occurs the ownership-inscription of the monk Roger de Blicklingge:one of this name witnessed a deed in Swardeston,

CO. Norfolk, in Dec. 1385 (BL, Stowe Charter207).

5 The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. by Prof.Sanford Brown Meech, with prefatory note byHope Emily Allen, E.E.T.S., O.S., no. 212(1940, for 1939), p. xliv. And see further A. B.Emden, A Biographical Register of the Universityof Cambridge to 1500 (Cambridge, 1963), p. 104,col. a, where William Buggy, Bogy, or Buky,M.A., B.Th., a Fellow of Corpus Christi Collegefrom 1411/2 to 1417/8, is noted as having beenadmitted to the living of Soham on 8 April 1427.(Emden, however, misidentifies him as vicar ofSaham Toney in Norfolk.)

6 By my colleague Andrew Prescott in his de-scription of BL, Additional MS. 62450 (formerlyBradfer-Lawrence MS. 5) in The British Library,Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts, NewSeries, ig8i-ig85 (London, 1994), pt. i, pp.

94-5-7 Dom David Knowles, The Religious Orders in

England (Cambridge, 1957), vol. ii, pp. 223-6;and N. R. Ker, Mediaeval Libraries of GreatBritain, 2nd edn. (London, 1964), pp. 132, 283.

8 Volume labelled 'MSS on Loan in the Students'Room' in the archives of the Department coversthe period 1920-1982. On pp. 73, 74 it is notedthat the MS. was deposited by the owner,

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through Mr Gibbs-Smith of the Victoria andAlbert Museum, on 24.ix.34 for 'Photostatingfor Miss Allen', and collected by him on 4.xii.34,having meanwhile been 'Taken by C. T.Lamacraft for Repairs 28.9.34'. Again, entrieson pp. 83, 84 show that it was deposited for MissAllen and Prof. S. B. Meech, from 26.vi. to23-x.i935i and on pp. 99, 100 for Miss M[abel]Day, from 3i.iii to 29.iv.37.

9 W. Farrer and J. Brownbill (eds.), VictoriaCounty History of Lancashire., vol. vi (London,1911), pp. 267, 268; and W. A. Abram, Historyof Blackburn (Blackburn, 1877), pp. 612-21.

10 Between at least 1891 and 1913 it was occupiedby Sir William Henry Hornby, ist Bart., M.P.for Blackburn, but by 1918 it is described asunoccupied: see Kelly's Directory of Lancashirefor those years.

11 The Book of Margery Kempe, p. xxxii; the armsmay be compared with those given for Bowdenof Southgate House in Burke's General Armory(London, 1884), p. 107, col. a.

12 Cf. Egerton MS. 996, f 39 (in DerbyshireVisitation of 1611) with the account supplied byJohn Butler Bowden in 1830 and printed inStephen Glover's History and Gazeteer of theCounty of Derby, ed. Thomas Noble (Derby,1833), vol. ii, pp. 338-9, and with Burke'sLanded Gentry (London, 1914), pp. 210-11.

13 W. Dugdale, Monasticon AngUcanum, ed. J.Caley, H. Ellis and B. Bandinel (London,1817-30), vol. vi, pt. I, p. 24.

14 E. Margaret Thompson, The Carthusian Order

in England (London, 1930), p. 235; and P.R.O.,Calendar of Patent Rolls: Henry VI, vol. vi(London, 1910), p. 277. See also BL, EgertonCharter 2453. For Strangways see Dictionary ofNational Biography, vol. lv (London, 1898), p.

29.15 The priests and others are listed, with their

pensions, by Dugdale, op. cit., and in YorkshireArchaeological Journal, xviii (1904-5), pp- 261-3.

16 Record Commisssion, Valor Ecclesiasticus, td. ].Caley, vol. iii (London, 1817), p. 177; a"^Calendars of Wills and Administrations in theConsistory Court of the Bishop of Lichfield andCoventry, 1516-1652, ed. W. P. W. Phillimore,Index Library, vol. vii (London, 1892), p. 66,where Lynley's will is dated 1538.

17 Cambridge University Library Add. MS. 6745,f 166.

r8 Thompson, op. cit., p. 237, citing P.R.O.,Ministers' Accounts, no. 4630; and Letters andPapers of...Henry VHI, vol. xvi (London, 1898),p. 176, g.379(5i)-

19 Letters and Papers of... Henry VIII, vol. xvi,nos. 954, 978.

20 BL, Egerton Charters 2456 and 2459, from theThoresby Park Papers of the Pierrepont family,later owners of the manor.

21 BL, Additional MS. 6705, f. 21 v; and Glover,op. cit., vol. ii, p. 112.

22 C. E. Wright, 'The Dispersal of the Libraries inthe Sixteenth Century', in Francis Wormald andC. E. Wright, The English Library before ijoo(London, 1958), pp. 148-75 (esp. pp. 159-61).

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