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COPYRIGHT 2002 Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature
The verses printed for the first time below are found in a mid-fifteenth-century document in the archives of Holkham Hall, in north Norfolk, and the circumstances of their preservation, together with their dialect, suggest that it was at or near Holkham that they were set down, and probably composed. Spirited in style but plangent in tone, partisan, avowedly ephemeral, and manifestly designed for reading aloud or recitation to a popular audience, they provide a striking evocation of how a set of ordinary people in a remote corner of England perceived the unstable condition of the realm some three hundred years before the existing park and Palladian hall at Holkham were created. Though they may lack the polish of some of the more accomplished political poems of the mid-century, (1) the Holkham verses are worth editing for the urgent and genuine sense of contemporary verite that they unmistakably convey, and also, since they can be precisely dated and localized, for their linguistic interest.
Deed no. 116 in the Holkham archives consists of a membrane roll measuring approximately 24 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches (62 x 23.5 cm.), damaged and uneven at both the top and foot. It began life as a manorial document of a familiar type, a terrier, listing (in Latin) the holdings of a particular individual named John Sewale in Burghall, one of several manors in the township at Holkham. It is dated 29 September 1433, and was presumably drawn up by a bailiff or steward, who were the estate servants normally responsible for compiling such documents. (2) The terrier occupies the face of the roll, and the dorse at this time remained blank. Many places and topographical features in the locality of Holkham are mentioned, and numerous holders of adjacent lands identified, either corporately, such as the Bishop of Norwich, the Prior of Walsingham, and the Abbot of Dereham, or personally, such as Sir William Calthorp, otherwise known as an associate of the Paston family. (3) Sewale's terrier is closely connected with other seigneurial documents in the Holkham archives, and it is endorsed with a later fifteenth-century inscription that reads (under ultraviolet light) `T Gregges rentall and a terrer made', which probably refers to Thomas Grigges, one of the principal landholders at Holkham in the latter half of the fifteenth century. (4) Marginal annotations by a later hand or hands show that the terrier must have remained in use for some time after its compilation. In particular, in the left-hand margin against each entry either `australis' or `borealis' has been entered to indicate the geographical orientation of the terrain, providing (as we shall see) a possible connection with a curious feature of the verses overleaf. The terrier was a working document, and since it was later used in the compilation of other estate records, it obviously remained in the vicinity of the Holkham lands to which it refers, perhaps in the possession of the estate servant who compiled it, or a successor. Some time during this period the opportunity was taken to write out a set of topical verses on the blank dorse of the roll. (5)
The hand which set down the verses employed a current and informal version of the anglicana script. It is not the same as the somewhat more professional-looking hand of the terrier, and in appearance (as well as linguistically) it resembles some of the more untutored hands to be found amongst the Paston letters and papers of the same period. The spelling, indeed, is markedly provincial, and includes a few forms that might be considered outre even by fifteenth-century East Anglian standards. (6) Once the verses had lost their topicality the roll must presumably have returned to its place amongst the archives of the Holkham estates, where it remains to this day. It thus seems more than likely that we owe their preservation, and probably their composition, to someone who lived or worked in that area of north Norfolk.
In presenting the text, the following editorial procedures have been adopted. The scribe wrote a single character, y, to represent both y and p, and where the latter was intended, it is so printed. Emendations are placed within square brackets. Word-division has been normalized, with hyphens introduced to indicate where words have been written with elements separated, e.g. `vp-on'. Capital letters for many proper names, and at the beginning of the great majority of verse lines, are editorial. No marks of punctuation appear in the manuscript, and those shown in the printed text are all editorial. In the manuscript, the text is written in a continuous column, with every third line set off to the right, as was conventional in verse composed in tail rhyme; layout and stanzaic division in the printed version conform to modern editorial norms for writings of this type. Since the text presents unusual linguistic difficulties, running glosses are provided. Interpretations of several words are discussed in the commentary that follows, and an appendix dealing with some regional features of the language is given at the end.
The first section of the Holkham verses (lines 1-57) has much in common with other political poems of the mid-fifteenth century which deal with the loss of the English possessions in France, the death of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, in 1447, the policy and fall of Willam de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk (d. 1450), and his associates, and the period approaching the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses. (7) The second part (lines 58-117) refers sympathetically, by their cognizances, to a group of Yorkist lords, and their resolution to resist the kind of `treason' that had been attributed to Suffolk and his affinity: Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick (the ragged staff); John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk (the white lion); William Neville, Lord Fauconberg (the fish hook); and Edward, formerly Earl of March, and briefly Duke of York during the first two months of 1461, before he was proclaimed king early in March (the rose). (8) The conclusion of the text, where the rose, the ragged staff, the white lion, and the fish hook have together travelled north and prevailed in a major battle in which great numbers are slain, is also relevant to an estimate of its date. It must refer to the events of mid-to late March 1461, culminating in the massive confrontation of the Yorkists and the Lancastrians at Towton, near Tadcaster in south Yorkshire, on 29 Match 1461. William Neville was created Earl of Kent on 1 November 1461, just before Edward IV's first Parliament (which opened on 4 November), but the verses refer to him by his former title, `Fakynnbryge' (line 69). The third Duke of Norfolk is known to have died shortly afterwards, on 6 November. (9) It is therefore evident that the verses must have been composed and circulated sometime during the months of April to October 1461, a period of unrest and disorder in England generally, and in Norfolk especially. The dating presents us with a seemingly long lapse of time at the centre of the composition, between the events leading up to the fall of Suffolk in 1450 and the aftermath of the decisive Yorkist victory at Towton eleven years later. This is at first puzzling, but becomes explicable in the light of the circumstances in which the Yorkist lords `l[a]bord pe last zere' (line 65) prior to the battle, as we shall see.
The text begins by bemoaning the general wickedness of the times, somewhat in the manner of the widely circulated general verses on the `abuses of the age', (10) singling out covetousness, and, with perhaps unusual specificity, `isserie' (line 12, usury), if the normal limited sense of the word is intended. These are the two `shrews' that have brought treason into the land. The choice of the tail-rhyme metre, though not unprecedented for political verses, (11) marks the Holkham text out as belonging to the more demotic end of the spectrum of compositions of this type, but the repeated `minstrel-style' appeals to a listening audience (e.g. `Herken, sorys', line 46, and cf. lines 31, 40, 55, 61, 64, 85, 100, 109, 112) are much more unusual, and make it plain that it was not intended for private reading. The author, indeed, invokes `jestovrys' (line 16) as a source of what he goes on to relate.
In common with other political verses, those in the Holkham roll are intentionally cryptic in their specific references. As well as the familiar device of alluding to prominent persons by their badge or cognizance, the author of the Holkham verses also has a means (which does not seem to be paralleled in similar texts) of referring disguisedly or vaguely both to particular individuals and to the factions they represent. The treason precipitated by covetousness and usury, we are told, began with `gens of australys' (line 17), that is, `gins' (devices, statagems) of `the southern [one]'. The exact construction to be placed on `australys', a learned-sounding word, otherwise unrecorded in a vernacular context, and somewhat unexpected in a popularly addressed text, is no doubt deliberately unclear. As will become evident, it could be taken to refer in the first instance to William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk (?from `South-folk'), with or without those immediately associated with him, but then later to the Lancastrian or court party more generally. Towards the end, `australys' is opposed to `borialys', which at first means the region towards which the group of Yorkist lords have gone (line 74). Subsequently, it refers to the group themselves (perhaps the movement which `the northern [one]', namely the Duke of York, leads), who `wax ryte bold', `Now hustralys of tresun hath lest is hold' (lines 106-7). In the closing lines of the text, australys's discomfiture is connected with a battle. The author, a strong adherent of the opposing party, hopes for a fortunate outcome for borialys from these developments, whose...
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