2743. Presentments of the juries at the courts of the abbot of Selby [1472-1533, ed. James Raine], English Miscellanies, 22-34. Surtees Soc. Durham, etc., 1890.

York.

2743a. Charters to St. Peter's hospital, York, and to Byland abbey [12th-13th centuries], ed. F. W. Ragg. Cumberl. and Westm. Antiq. and Archæol. Soc., Trans., new series, ix. 236–70. Kendal, 1909.

2744. Discovery of the register and chartulary of the mercers' company, York [with extracts from these records, 1420-1523]. By Charles Kerry. Antiquary, xxii. 266–70, xxiii. 27-30, 70-73. London, 1890-91.

2745. Extracts from the municipal records of the city of York, during the reigns of Edward IV., Edward V., and Richard III., ed. Robert Davies. London, 1843.

Valuable extracts from the chamberlains' accounts and from the minutes of proceedings of the city council.

2746. Fabric rolls of York minster [1360-1639, with an appendix, 1165-1704, ed. James Raine]. Surtees Soc. Durham, etc., 1859.

2747. Register of the freemen of the city of York, 12721759 [ed. Francis Collins]. Surtees Soc. 2 vols. Durham, etc., 1897-1900.

2748. Register of the guild of Corpus Christi in the city of York [1408-37], with an appendix of illustrative documents [ed. R. H. Skaife]. Surtees Soc. Durham, etc., 1872.

2749. The register of Walter Gray, archbishop of York [1225-55, with illustrative documents, ed. James Raine]. Surtees Soc. Durham, etc., 1872.-Register of Walter Giffard, archbishop of York, 1266-79 [ed. William Brown]. Surtees Soc. Durham, etc., 1904.-Register of William Wickwane, archbishop of York, 1279-85 [ed. William Brown]. Surtees Soc. Durham, etc., [1907].-Register of John le Romeyn, archbishop of York, 1286-96 [ed. William Brown]. Pt. i. Surtees Soc. Durham,

etc., 1913.

For extracts from other episcopal registers of York, see No. 2223.

2750. The statutes, etc., of the cathedral church of York [circa 1221, etc., ed. James Raine]. London, 1879. pp. 109.— 2nd edition [no editor named], Leeds, 1900.

2750a. York memorandum book [ed. Maude Sellers]. Pt. i., 1376-1419. Surtees Soc. Durham, etc., 1912.

'A book of diverse memoranda concerning the city of York': city ordinances, gild regulations, etc. Text, with some translations.

§ 58. MISCELLANEOUS: POETRY, ETC.

a. Poetry, Nos. 2751-62.

b. Household Books and Letters, Nos. 2763-70.

c. Wills and Deeds, Nos. 2771-8.

d. Universities and Inns of Court, Nos. 2779-96.

e. Commerce, Industry, and Agriculture, Nos. 2796a-2801.

a. POETRY.

In the second half of the twelfth century the poems of Nigel Wireker, John de Hauteville, and those ascribed to Walter Map (Nos. 2751, 2761) throw light on the corruptions of the church and the manners of the age. In the fourteenth century Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and Piers Plowman (which goes under the name of Langland, No. 2759), illumine all sides of religious and social life; Laurence Minot sings of the wars of Edward III., while Gower and the author of Richard the Redeless devote much attention to the government of Richard II. The political poems from John to Richard III. (Nos. 2754-6a) reflect the popular sentiments of the times concerning political and religious questions. Some of them-for example, the Song of Lewes (No. 2755)— are of considerable historical value; but after the reign of Edward III. their importance wanes. See Gustav Liebau, König Eduard III. im Lichte Europäischer Poesie, Heidelberg, 1901.

See the histories of English literature by Ten Brink and Morley (Nos. 35, 49); J. J. Jusserand, Histoire Littéraire du Peuple Anglais, [i.] Des Origines à la Renaissance, Paris, 1894, 2nd edition, 1896 (translated under the title, A Literary History of the English People, London, 1895, 2nd edition, 1907); Gustav Körting, Grundriss der Geschichte der Englischen Litteratur, Münster, 1887 (4th edition, 1905); Cambridge History of English Literature (No. 37a), vols. i.-ii.; and W. H. Schofield, English Literature from the Norman Conquest to Chaucer,

London, etc., 1906. Many metrical biographies are included in §§ 48, 56d. See also Nos. 1829, 2800, 3129.

General Political Poems, etc.

2751. Anglo-Latin satirical poets and epigrammatists of the twelfth century, ed. Thomas Wright. Rolls Series. 2 vols. London, 1872.

Nigelli Speculum stultorum, i. 3-145; Tractatus Nigelli contra curiales et officiales clericos, i. 146–230. Both are dedicated to William Longchamp, bishop of Ely, and satirise the follies of the age, especially the corruptions of the church. The author, Nigel Wireker, was precentor of Canterbury. His principal work is the Speculum Stultorum. See Immanuel Weber, De Nigello Wirekero, Leipsic, [1679].

Johannis de Altavilla Architrenius, i. 240-392. Written about 1184; the Archweeper' laments over the vices of mankind; the author, John de Hauteville, is said to have been a monk of St. Albans.

Alexandri Neckam (?) De vita monachorum, ii. 175-200.

For some political poems of the 12th century, edited by C. L. Kingsford, see English Historical Review, 1890, v. 311–26.

2752. Cy ensuyt une chanson moult pitoyable des oppressions qe la povre commune de Engletere souffre soubz la cruelte des justices de Trayllbastun [ed. Francis Cohen, afterwards Sir Francis Palgrave. London, 1818].

Also contains a poem on the death of Simon de Montfort, and two other poems. There is another song on the death of Simon, edited by F. W. Maitland, in English Historical Review, 1896, xi. 314-18; reprinted in his Collected Papers (No. 656a), iii. 43-49.

2753. English and Scottish popular ballads, ed. F. J. Child. 5 vols. Boston, etc., [1882-98].

The best collection of ballads; admirably edited. Supersedes Child's older collection: 8 vols., 1857-58 and 1864. There is a much abbreviated edition by Helen Child Sargent and G. L. Kittredge, Boston, etc., [1904].

2754. Political poems of the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV., ed. Frederic Madden. Soc. of Antiq. of London, Archæologia, xxix. 318-47. London, 1842.

For some earlier poems, see ibid., 1817, xviii. 21-28, Death of Edward III., etc.; 1824, xx. 1-423, Creton's Deposition of Richard II.; 1827, xxi. 43-78, Siege of Rouen, temp. Hen. V.

2755. *Political songs of England, from the reign of John to that of Edward II. Edited and translated by Thomas Wright.

Camden Soc. London, 1839.-Another edition, revised' by Edmund Goldsmid, in his Bibliotheca Curiosa. 4 vols. in 1. Edinburgh, 1884.

The

Goldsmid omits some of the longer poems printed by Wright. most valuable song in Wright's volume is that on the battle of Lewes (pp. 72-121), which was written soon after the battle. It is a remarkably bold and complete statement of the baronial programme of constitutional reform. The author was a Franciscan friar. There is an excellent edition of this Latin tract by C. L. Kingsford: The Song of Lewes, Oxford, 1890. On pp. 323-45 Wright prints a song on the times of Edward II., written about 1320, of which we have a better edition by C. Hardwick: A Poem on the Times of Edward II., Percy Society, 1849, PP. 35.

2756. *

Political poems and songs relating to English history, from the accession of Edward III. to that of Richard III., ed. Thomas Wright. Rolls Series. 2 vols. London, 1859-61.

Les Vous du Héron (with an English translation), i. 1-25. Relates how Edward III. came to declare war against Philip of Valois in 1338; composed about 1341. It was also printed by La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, Mémoires sur l'Ancienne Chevalerie (Paris, 1826), ii. 95-111.

John of Bridlington, i. 123-215. Contains a critical review of the political acts of Edward III., especially from 1327 to 1346, in Latin verse with a prose commentary; completed about 1370 (Tout, Political History of England, p. 457, ŝays not before 1377), by an unknown writer who adopts the pseudonym John of Bridlington.'

The Reconciliation of Richard II. with the City of London, 1393, by Richard de Maidstone (d. 1396), an admirer of Richard II., i. 282–300. Earlier edition, by Thomas Wright, Camden Soc., 1838.

The Complaint of the Plowman, also called the Plowman's Tale, i. 304346. Assails the clergy; written about 1394. There is a better edition in Skeat's Complete Works of Chaucer (No. 2757), vii. 147-90. Another English poem by this unknown author is Pierce the Plowman's Crede, ed. W. W. Skeat, Early English Text Society, 1867; revised edition, Oxford, 1906, pp. 73: a Wyclifite satire, written about 1394 and directed particularly against the friars.

John Gower's Corruptions of the Age, Vices of the Different Orders of Society, King Richard II., Tripartite Chronicle, Verses on Henry IV., etc., i. 346-63, 417-54, ii. 1-15. These poems of Gower assail the government of Richard II. and denounce the Lollards. They are all included in Macaulay's edition (No. 2758). For his Vox Clamantis, see also No. 2758. The Deposition of Richard II., also called Richard the Redeless, i. 368– 417. See No. 2759.

Jack Upland, ii. 16-39; also printed in Skeat's Complete Works of Chaucer (No. 2757), vii. 191-203. A popular indictment of the corruption of the friars, written in 1402.

The Libel of English Policy, ii. 157–205. See No. 2800.

For two poems on the siege of 'Harflet' (Harfleur) and the battle of Agincourt, which have been wrongly ascribed to Lydgate, see Thomas Hearne's edition of the Vita et Gesta Henrici V. (No. 1814), 359-75; and N. H. Nicolas, History of the Battle of Agincourt (London, 1827), pp. ccxlix.-cclxii. See also Oskar Emmerig, The Bataile of Agyncourte ' im Lichte Geschichtlicher Quellenwerke, Nuremberg, 1906, pp. 67 (intended as an introduction to a new critical edition of the poem); and his Dariusbrief und Tennisballgeschichte, in Englische Studien, 1908, xxxix. 362-401.

2756a. Twenty-six political and other poems, ed. Josef Kail. Pt. i. Early English Text Soc. London, 1904.

Composed in the first quarter of the 15th century.

Chaucer (d. 1400).

2757. Complete works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. W. W. Skeat. 7 vols. Oxford, 1894-97.-Poetical works of Chaucer. Edited by Richard Morris, with memoir by [N.] Harris Nicolas. 6 vols. London, 1891.-The student's Chaucer, being a complete edition of his works, ed. W. W. Skeat. Oxford, [1894].-Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. A. W. Pollard and others. Globe edition. London, 1898; reprinted 1899, 1901.-A six-text print of Chaucer's Canterbury tales, in parallel columns, ed. F. J. Furnivall. Chaucer Soc. 8 pts. 8 pts. London, [1868-77]. Index, by Hiram Corson, London, 1911, pp. 121. For the Ellesmere facsimile, see p. 46, above.-Various other works of Chaucer, and treatises illustrating his works, published by the Chaucer Society, 1868, etc.

The Canterbury Tales give vivid glimpses of the social life of England. See William Godwin, Life of Chaucer, 2 vols., London, 1803 (2nd edition, 4 vols., 1804); Matthew Browne [W. B. Rands], Chaucer's England, 2 vols., London, 1869; Bernhard ten Brink, Chaucer, pt. i., Münster, 1870; T. R. Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, 3 vols., New York, 1892; R. K. Root, The Poetry of Chaucer, Boston, etc., 1906; G. G. Coulton, Chaucer and his England, London, 1908; E. P. Hammond, Chaucer, a Bibliographical Manual, New York, 1908 (valuable); John Koch, A Detailed Comparison of the Eight Manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Heidelberg, 1913. Gower (d. 1408).

2758. Complete works of John Gower, ed. G. C. Macaulay. 4 vols. Oxford, 1899-1902.-Poema quod dicitur Vox clamantis necnon Chronica tripartita auctore Johanne Gower, ed. H. O. Coxe. Roxburghe Club. London, 1850.

The Vox Clamantis is an important Latin poem, begun in 1381, which deals with the causes of the uprising of 1381. It gives a vivid picture of