The COUNCIL of the CAMDEN SOCIETY desire it to be understood that they are not answerable for any opinions or observations that may appear in the Society's publications; the Editors of the several Works being alone responsible for the same.

PREFACE.

On the completion of a long-promised contribution to English lexicography some introductory notices seem indispensible, as an accompaniment to one of the most valuable linguistic monuments of its class to be found in any European country. Whether we regard the Promptorium Parvulorum a as an authentic record of the English language in the earlier half of the fifteenth century, as illustrative of the provincial dialects of East Anglia, or as explanatory of the numerous archaisms of a debased Latinity that pervades early chronicles and documents, its value can scarcely be too highly estimated. If, on the other hand, we take into consideration the curious evidence which it supplies to those who investigate the arts and manners of bygone times, it were difficult to point out any relic of learning at the period equally full of instruction, and of those suggestive details which claim the attention of students of medieval literature and antiquities in the varied departments of archæological research.

These considerations, not less than the great scarcity of the work, whether we enumerate the MSS. hereafter described, or the few and often mutilated copies of editions by the fathers of English typography, Pynson, Julian Notary, and Wynkyn de Worde, preserved to our days, were induce

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a In the MS. at King's College, Cambridge, the work is entitled, in the prologue, "Promptorius Parvulorum;" in Pynson's edition "Promptorius Puerorum;" and in that by Wynkyn de Worde "Promptuarium Parvulorum Clericorum." The last title is doubtless most correct. Promptuarium in classical latinity signifies a store-room or repository; in medieval times it denoted the department in a conventual or collegiate establishment or the like, whence stores were dispensed, which in a monastery was under the charge of the Cellarer. The author gives "Boterye; celarium, promptuarium;" p. 45; "Celer; promptuarium; Celerere of the howse; cellerarius, promptuarius;" p. 65; Spence, botery or celere; cellarium, promptuarium;" p. 468. As illustrations of the use of the term by medieval writers, I may mention the "Promptuarium argumentorum dialogice ordinatorum," Colon. 1496, "Promptuarium exemplorum," appended to the "Sermones de Sanctis" printed by Julian Notary in 1510," Joh. Herolt Promptuarium," Nuremb. 1520, and "Jo. Piniciani Promptuarium Vocabulorum; " Aug. Vind. 1516. The title, it may be observed, was adopted for a Latin-French and French-Latin vocabulary, “Promptuarium Latine Lingue," printed at Antwerp by Plantin, 1564; and the well-known series of medallion portraits first published at Lyons in 1553 is entitled "Promptuarium Iconum Insigniorum."

CAMD. SOC.

ments to undertake a task which has now, after many unforeseen impediments, been brought to completion. I will not, however, consume time in seeking to propitiate those whose indulgence I might hope to win, for shortcomings and imperfections which no one perhaps can more truly estimate or regret than myself. The student of early literature who has engaged in the minute toils which such an undertaking demands, or in the wearisome labor of collation, may be willing perhaps to regard with leniency deficiencies and even inaccuracies into which the editor may have been betrayed in the course of his work.

The special subjects to which I have limited my observations in the following preliminary notices may be thus stated:

I. The author of the Promptorium, with such traces as may be found of his history or of his literary labors.

II. The sources from which his Latinity was derived.

III. The MSS. of the work, and also the printed editions which have been available in the preparation of this volume.

I. We are enabled to ascertain with certainty, from the author's own statement given in the Harleian MS. at the close of his Preambulum, that the Promptorium was compiled by a Dominican Friar of Lynn Episcopi, Norfolk, A.D. 1440. This monastery of Black Friars or Friars-Preachers stood in the eastern part of the town. Few traces of it are now to be seen. It is believed that this house existed in the reign of Edward I., and was founded by Thomas Gedney. An anchorage is stated to have belonged to it, and herein possibly the author, who describes himself as "fratrem

See p. 3, infra.

b Dugdale, Mon. Angl. vol. vi. p. 1487; Taylor's Index Monast. p. 37; Blomefield's Norfolk, vol. viii. p. 527.

There was a chapel of St. Catherine in the conventual church, and with this chapel probably the above-mentioned anchorage was connected. Henry le Despencer, Bishop of Norwich, wrote a letter to the mayor and burgesses of Lynn, 5 Rich. II. desiring that they would grant their part of the house of St. Catherine to John Consolif, a servant of Lord le Despencer, the bishop's brother, there to live a solitary life upon the alms of the good people; the other part of the house, belonging to the Archdeacon of Norwich, having been before granted to the said John Consolyf. Blomefield, ut supra, p. 513. There was a remarkable hermitage at Lynn, in a cave on the sea-shore, in the bishop's marsh, at a spot called "Lenne Crouch," where, as appears by a document dated 1349, a lofty cross, 110 feet in height, had been erected for the benefit of seafaring men. But hermits and recluses were essentially different.

predicatorem reclusum Lenne Episcopi," had sought a retreat from more active duties to devote his leisure to the task which he had undertaken. If the library of his own house could not supply him with the works necessary for his literary purpose, doubtless they could have been easily obtained from those of other houses belonging to the Order.

There is no reason to suppose that the word reclusus is here used in any other than its strict sense of an "ankyr," one who was shut up in a building specially appropriated to the purpose, and with a solemn service, by episcopal sanction; after which he could not leave his cell except in case of necessity or with the permission of the bishop. The expression in the preface, "Lenne sub regula paupertatis astrictus," probably refers to the vows taken on the occasion of his becoming a Dominican friar. The author has himself explained the word "ankyr" by " recluse," and rendered it anachorita (p. 12). An instance of a friar being a recluse (inclusus) at Pagham in Sussex is mentioned in the will of St. Richard, Bishop of Chichester; and we read of an anchoress within the nunnery of Clementhorpe, near York, in 1475.c

The author was, as we learn from his own words, bred, if not born, in Norfolk: "comitatus Northfolchie modum loquendi solum sum secutus, quem solum ab infancia didici, et solotenus plenius perfectiusque cognovi." It may deserve observation that the peculiarities of the local dialect of the county should have been thus distinctly noticed at this period. We are, however, informed that, at an earlier time, Samson de Botington, abbot of St. Edmundsbury 1182-1211, was accustomed to discourse to the people in the vernacular of Norfolk, the county in which he was born and bred, and that he had a pulpit for the purpose in the conventual church.d

There has hitherto been some uncertainty in regard to the name of the

a Hearne has given a note, hereafter mentioned, in which the compiler of the work is stated to have been "frater Ricardus Fraunces, inter quatuor parietes pro Christo inclusus." Ames has inserted a note by a Mr. Lewis, who was led to the conclusion that he had actually been starved to death between four walls; but Herbert observes that the phrase means no more than that he was confined or imprisoned; to which Dibdin adds "most probably a voluntary recluse or monk." Typ. Ant. vol. ii. P. 418. b Sussex Archæol. Coll. vol. i. p. 174. Madox, Form. Angl. p. 437. d Reyner, Apost. Benedict. in Anglia, App. p. 143.

compiler of the Promptorium. In the Glossary to Hearne's edition of Langtoft's Chronicle, under the word "Nesshe," the following statement appears: "Maken nesshe is interpreted mollifico and molleo (so 'tis expressed for mollio,) in the Promptorium parvulorum sive clericorum (call'd also Medulla Grammatica), a very scarce folio book printed by Richard Pynson in the year 1499, being the 14th year of the reign of King Henry VII. at which time it was look'd upon as a work of great use and excellency, as may appear from this printed note at the end. ¶ Ad laudem et ad honorem," &c. (as given in the account of Pynson's edition, p. xlii. infra.) "The author was a preaching or black Fryer, and follow'd the dialect of the East parts of England, to which he had been used from his infancy, as he tells us in his Prologue. His name was Richard Frauncis, as I find by this note written in an old hand at the beginning of a copy of this book that was lent me by Mr. Ward of Longbridge, viz. ¶Nomen Compilatoris istius libri est Frater Ricardus Fraunces, inter quatuor parietes pro Christo inclusus."a Against this statement, however, which is at most the anonymous note or tradition of some previous possessor of the book, may be cited, first, an entry of equal authority in a copy of the same edition by Pynson in the public library at Cambridge-" Autor hujus operis fuit Galfredus Grammaticus dictus, frater Ordinis S. Dominici." To this friar we find the authorship ascribed by the learned Bale, Bishop of Ossory, himself an East-Anglian, not indeed under the title of the Promptorium, but as the Medulla Grammatices, distinctly identified however by the incipial words of the Preambulum as the work more commonly known by the name first mentioned. Bale, whose Catalogue of the writers of Great Britain was published at Basle in 1557, writes also thus with his accustomed critical asperity:-" Galfridus Grammaticus, ad scholas semper a puero nutritus, sub corruptis, obscuris, ac barbaris præceptoribus, prima ejus artis rudimenta edoctus, corruptior ipse aliorum tandem magister evasit. Sibi ipsi nihilominus, non aliter quam olim arrogans ille Palamon, adfectus, multa tribuebat, tanquam essent cum eo nato simul et bonæ literæ, et bene dicendi artes obortæ, atque cum eo demum moriente et illæ simul essent interituræ. Ciceronem, Salustium, Servium, Plinium, Varronem, Vergilium, Horatium, Quintilianum, et alios bonos authores in

a Peter Langtoft's Chronicle, edit. Hearne, vol. ii. p. 624.

In the first edition, printed at Ipswich, 1548, the notice of Galfridus varies only in a few particulars from that above cited.