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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 June 2022
THE historian chips eagerly in search of veins of psychological truth behind the autobiographer’s polished facade. But the latter’s Roman art held little appeal in the medieval west. Medieval autobiographers had no generally favoured literary stereotype on which to model their fragments of experience. Familiar with confessional practices, and with preachers’ fabliaux, they often wrote with a frank, engaging air. Yet, since they were inclined to conform to what they considered seemly for exempla, the historian needs to be as much on his guard against seduction by their apparent artlessness as by the polished suavity of the antique self-portrait.
1 Ed Meech, [S. B.] and Allen, [H. E.], EETS (1940); version in modem English by Butler-Bowden, W. (London 1936)Google Scholar.
2 Meech and Allen, pp xxxii seq.
3 Ibid pp vii seq.
4 For her emulation of Bridget, ibid p 47. The Book’s composition as a series mainly of short, self-contained episodes and contemplations, often tenuously linked, suggests that it was dictated. The priest wrote Liber II ‘after her own tongue’ (ibid p 221)
5 Ibid p 5. For a recent comment on Margery’s illiterate bookishness, Aston, M., ‘Lollardy and Literacy’, History, 62 (1977) p 349CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Meech and Allen pp 55 seq.
7 Ibid pp 152 seq. For personal testimony supporting Margery’s performance of a miracle by ‘he that wrote this book’, ibid pp 178-9.
8 Often, whilst Margery was ‘occupied about the writing’, he ‘could not sometimes keep himself from weeping’ (ibid p 219). He ‘held it expedient to honour of the blissful Trinity that his holy works [through Margery] should be notified and declared to the people when it pleased him, to the worship of his holy name’ (ibid p 221).
9 For her models, ibid pp 39, 143.
10 Ibid pp vii-viii, xlvii-li.
11 Ibid pp 3, 5.
12 For Baxter, Margery, Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich 1428-31, ed Tanner, N. P., CSer 4 ser 20 (1977) pp 41Google Scholar seq; Thomson, J. A. F., The Later Lollards 1414-1520 (Oxford 1965) pp 123Google Scholar seq.
13 Compare The Revelations of Saint Birgittal [ed Cumming, W. P.], EETS (1929)Google Scholar.
14 Legendys of Hooly Wummen, ed Serjeantson, M. S. EETS (1938)Google Scholar; compare the Life of St Catherine of Alexandria written by Capgrave, John, Augustinian friar of Lynn (1394-1464), ed Horstmann, C. and Furnivall, F. J., EETS (1893)Google Scholar.
15 Meech and Allen pp 7, 12, 17, 89, 208-9.
16 Ibid p 109.
17 For Brunham’s career, ibid pp 359-62. For tensions between bishop Despenser of Norwich and the men of Lynn, Anglo-Norman Letters and Petitions, [ed Legge, M. D.] (Oxford 1941) nos 1, 2, 5, 8, 44, 58, 63, 302, 304, 305Google Scholar. For Lynn’s, internal tensions in the early Lancastrian period, Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous (Chancery), 1309-1422, no 517; HMC, Eleventh Report, Appendix, Part III (London 1887) pp 191Google Scholar seq.
18 For some of the royal commissions on which Brunham was appointed. Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1381-5, p 349; ibid 1385-9, pp 181, 259; ibid, 1391-6, p 157. He may have been the ‘J. B’ whom Richard II referred to in a signet letter of 1396-8 as having been replaced in his long-held office of customer at Lynn without reasonable cause (Anglo-Norman Letters and Petitions, no 14).
19 Meech and Allen pp 9, 111.
20 Ibid pp 7-9.
21 Ibid pp 9-11. For her extravagant headgear and the reactions which it provoked, compare Baldwin, F. E., Sumptuary Legislation and Personal Regulation in England (Baltimore 1926) pp 76 seq, 85, 91–2Google Scholar.
22 Meech and Allen pp xlix, 361-2. Their vows of chastity were, as canonically required, mutual, but Margery makes clear that John agreed to them reluctantly, as a result of her constant pressure, ibid pp 11-2, 21, 23-5, 34; compare Makowski, [E. M.] [‘The conjugal debt and medieval canon law’], JMedH, 3 (1977) pp 99 seqGoogle Scholar.
23 Meech and Allen pp 82 seq, 91-2, 103, 116, 226-8, 246-7.
24 Ibid pp 21 seq, 28-9, 104. For difficulties which she experienced in relations with her son, and with her widowed daughter-in-law, ibid pp 221 seq, 228, 231.
25 Ibid pp 9-10. It is unlikely that Margery was an heiress (ibid pp 361-2).
26 Ibid pp 362 seq. For his debts, ibid p 25.
27 Ibid pp 6 seq.
28 Ibid pp 38-9.
29 Ibid pp 11-12, 115, 181.
30 Ibid pp 20-1.
31 Ibid pp 29 seq, 85 seq.
32 Ibid pp 144-6.
33 Ibid pp 142 seq.
34 The Revelations of Saint Birgitta, pp xxix seq; Knowles, RO 2 (1961) pp 176 seq. In 1415 Bridget’s canonisation was confirmed at the council of Constance, and the foundation-stone of the Bridgettine convent of Syon (Middlesex) was laid (Acta Sanctorum, October 4, p 475; Knowles, RO 2 p 177). Margery was in Rome, seeking memorials of Bridget, and concerned that the saint should be ‘had in more worship than she was at that time’ possibly within months of the process at Constance (Meech and Allen pp 95, 304-5). Margery’s Carmelite confessor Alan of Lynn, who died probably in the 1420s, made indexes to Bridget’s Revelations (ibid pp 259, 268; compare for his career, Emden (C) pp 381-2). For Margery’s later visit to Syon Abbey, Meech and Allen pp 245-6, 348-9.
35 Ibid pp 50 seq. For contrary reactions of confessors to Margery’s revelations, ibid pp 43-5. Capgrave’s model of St Catherine, though in important respects different from Margery, is worthy of comparison: his heroine is resolute in defence of her virginity and religion, literate and steeped in erudition, and adept at worsting in public debate the nobles who put forward the conventional views of secular society.
36 Meech and Allen pp 37-8, 168, 328.
37 Haines, R. M., ‘Wilde Wittes and Wilfulness: John Swetstock’s Attack on those Poyswunmongeres, the Lollards’, SCH 8 (1972) p 152Google Scholar; Meech and Allen pp lvii, 259. 329.
38 Ibid p 133; compare the mayor of Leicester’s fears Ibid p 116.
39 Ibid p 125.
40 Ibid p 154.
41 Ibid pp 105-6, 151, 170, 202.
42 Ibid pp 243-4.
43 Ibid p 154.
44 Ibid pp 85-6, 92, 96-7, 102, 105-6.
45 Ibid pp 179-80.
46 Ibid pp 221 seq.
47 Ibid pp 202, 337. Margery could have taken conventual vows after her husband’s death, which probably occurred in 1431 (ibid pp 332, 342; compare Makowski p 110). For a case commissioned by bishop Alnwick of Norwich in 1436, in which a Norfolk lady’s escape from an unhappy marriage by profession as a nun was adjudged licit, Virgoe, R., ‘The Divorce of Sir Thomas Tuddenham’, Norfolk Archaeology, 34 (Norwich 1966-69) pp 406 seqGoogle Scholar.
48 Meech and Allen pp 20, 186.
49 Ibid pp 132, 138-9, 148 seq, 155, 165 seq; Pantin, W. A., ‘Instructions for a devout and literate layman’, Medieval Learning and Literature. Essays presented to Richard William Hunt, ed Alexander, J. J. and Gibson, M. T. (Oxford 1976) pp 398 seqGoogle Scholar.
50 In Canterbury, Bristol, Leicester, York, Hull, Lincoln and London (Meech and Allen pp 27-9, 107-9, 111 seq 118, 120 seq, 129, 245).
51 One aspect of her rejection of secular values which may have seemed most shocking to Lynn folk was her readiness to act without or against the counsel of her friends (ibid p 247). In her own eyes, she had already been received into the celestial familia, and the counsel she received there took priority—perhaps one could see this as a sort of conflict of ‘bastard feudal’ loyalties.
52 Ibid pp xlvi seq.
