THE AUTHOR OF "THE DESTRUCTION OF TROY"

Author(s): THORLAC TURVILLE-PETRE

Source: Medium Ævum , 1988, Vol. 57, No. 2 (1988), pp. 264-269
Published by: Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43629212

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 NOTES

THE AUTHOR OF THE DESTRUCTION OF TROY

Disappointingly little is known about the circumstances in which po

Alliterative Revival were composed. To judge from the language in
texts are preserved, several were written in the north-west Midlan
whom and for whom? Not a single name has come down to us, and
such ignorance it is not surprising that there has been so much s
with so little result. Huchown of the Awle Ryale, Clerk of Tranen
Strode, Simon Newton, John Massey and many another name trip
tongue; each has been advanced as an author of alliterative poetry
there is no evidence to ascribe a single line of alliterative verse to
them.

In these circumstances it is cruelly frustrating that the unique ma

The Destruction of Troy , by far the longest of all alliterative poems,
reveal ťthe nome of the knight )>at causet it to be made, & the nom
that translatid it out of latyn in-to englysshe',1 since there is a gap in
the point at which the names should appear. All is not lost, however
with a keen eye on immortality has other methods of recording
which are less affected by the carelessness of scribes or owners of m
In fact, unnoticed by both the scribe and the editors, the author
been in front of readers' eyes all the time, written in large, flouris
The first words of the Prologue and of Books i-xxn of The Destruct
are as follows: Maistur, In, [text lost' , Here, All, Now, Now, E
Comyn, Lenge, Every, Robbet, Kyngys, Dresse, Ector, Wen, H
As, Lystenes, After, Lengys, Euery. The initial capitals spel
LHANNES CLERK DE WHALALE. The missing letter is obv
and the first word of Book xx, After , is likely to be a scribal sp
northern Efter. Thus corrected, the acrostic reads: 'Maistur Iohann
Whalele.'
Whalele (or Whalale) must be Whalley in Lancashire, between Burnley and
Blackburn, on the River Calder, a tributary of the Ribble. In the Middle Ages
it was the site of a large Cistercian abbey, the ruins of which are still to be seen,
not a great distance from Whalley church, with its fine choir-stalls and
misericords of the early fifteenth century, which were removed from the
Abbey.2 The origin of the place-name is OE *hwœl+ leahs John Clerk's
spelling of it is unusual; Ekwall cites a thirteenth-century form Walelega ,4 but
the later mediaeval spellings are generally Whalley (e) or Whallay , together with

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 Notes 265

some Qu- forms. The sp

(Lichfield), f. 146', in an
Other authors of bot
accurately, revealed) t
Ranulph Higden from t
became something of a
the intermediate versio
CONPILA VIT FRATER RANULPHUS CESTRENSIS MONACHUS.6
The first eighty chapters of the Speculum Curator um have a similar devi
the end of his Ars Componendi Sermones is a note pointing out that
'littere capitanee huius artis syllabatim inuicem tantum sonant Ars
Cestrensis'.

Higden's work was particularly well known in his own area of the north-
west Midlands, and in view of his influence upon this method of recording
authorship it is significant that one manuscript of the Polychronicon , London,
British Library, MS Harley 3600, belonged to Whalley Abbey.7 It contains a
continuation of the chronicle up to 1430 which is of great historical interest.8
John Clerk does not make any reference to Higden's work, but it is worth
noting that the Polychronicon was a source of the alliterative Siege of Jerusalem.
The device used by Higden to encode his name was copied by other
chroniclers. The Austin canon Henry Knighton, writing at the end of the
fourteenth century and drawing heavily upon the Polychronicon , similarly
recorded his name as HENRICUS CNITTHON.9 In the 1440s the Austin friar
Bokenham composed his Mappula Angliae , a translation of a section of the
Polychronicon , and not only recorded his name in the chapter-initials as
OSBERN BOKEN_AM, but was also considerate enough to refer in the
Epilogue to (pe chapitures whose capitalle lettrys expressyn the compilatours
name'.10 The most celebrated example is that of Thomas Usk, writing shortly
before his execution in 1 388, who organized the initial letters of the chapters of
his Testament of Love to spell MARGARETE OF VIRTW HAVE MERCI
ON THIN VSK.11

The method of recording ownership by Gittere capitanee' had much

recommend it. Scribes generally began chapters with large initials, a
Thomas Chetham, scribe of The Destruction of Troy , was no exception. H
capitals extend to three, six or even eight lines; some are elaborately flourish
and the letters W and H that begin Books xvi and xvn even include miniatu
grotesques. A further advantage of this method is that the author's name
woven into the text of his work, so that even if part of the text is lost o
inaccurately transcribed, as in the case of Clerk's and Bokenham's work, t
name can still be deciphered without any difficulty or doubt.
It would be reasonable to expect that in Book xxn of The Destruction of Tr
John Clerk would signal the end of the acrostic and 'sign off' in some wa
The last line of this book reads: ťAnd so ]?ai lyue pere in legh, oure lord gyf
joye' (9399). The word legh means 'peace'; it seems to occur nowhere else in
poem in this spelling with this meaning. In the spelling /¿, its sense is so

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266 Medium JEvuu lvii.2

different, 'sheltered side of

word. I suggest the poet
Whalley. This might seem
understood to be the earl
the abbey in 1354 claimin
which the abbey was in d
The exact nature of John
mile to the west of Whal
sixteenth century as repla
fourteenth century.15 I
commemorates the Bard o
family holding land in th
Dunbar's great lament for
with its list of writers
frequently provided wishf
poets. Ironically, one nam

That scorpion fell has don

Maister Johne Clerk and J
Fra balat making and trig
Timor mortis conturbai me. (

It must be admitted that

be identified are all Scott
Destruction of Troy would
the only manuscript now
Thomas Chetham of Nuth
John Clerk was indeed a
Lydgate uses the term in h

Tragidie, who so list to k

It begynneth in prospérit
And endeth euer in aduers
And it also doth pe conqu
Of riche kynges and of lo

In fact, alliterative poe

burlesque opens by parody
Dunbar himself shows clos
the Tua Mariit Wemen and
Destruction of Troy had r
'translated' the text into
assumption that the author
read, if complete, revealed
the list of contents in the
known nothing more than

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 Notes 267

Is John Clerk the autho

histories come immediatel
The Destruction of Troy ,
It is extant in two fifteen
there is evidence to sugg
between the Ribble and t
several French and Latin
have pointed to paralle
Destruction upon of Troy
demonstrate that both w
sition. The provenance of
manuscripts, one, Oxfor
Oxfordshire.22 The other
1952, when it was sold
couple of miles from Wh
the recusant family of W
tion,25 and who, no doub
by preserving the books o
pockets with the proceed
Having worked for many
assurance that it is not f
features of style and voc
use of the adverbial phr
comparison as fie noble
'authority tags' - as demy s m
so on. The Destruction of
phrases, none of them fo
unparalleled in Middle En

gretful (11. 33, 13826), 'very f

ourn, ourning (11. 19 19, 2540
1258, 7787, 8337, etc.), 'a larg
vne (11. 1 541, 1813, 5529, etc

These and other expressi

that despite many undou
not the author of The Wa
alliterative work of any
contain any such distingu
other poetic styles would
Four short poems are as
century Bannatyne MS.24
Dunbar;25 the others, too
late fifteenth- or early s
Clerk, 'Clerk of Tranent',

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 268 Medium íEvum lvii.z

The interest of what has so far been discovered is that for the first time we
have an alliterative poem of the north-west Midlands that can be localized on
evidence other than the dialect of the texts that have been preserved. Since
there can be no evidence of original dialect from rhyme, statements about the
provenance of unrhymed alliterative poetry must always be regarded with
some suspicion. My assertion some years ago that The Destruction of Troy "was
probably written in Lancashire'26 was based on no firm evidence that I can
remember; that it seems to have been correct is not much more than luck.
So far John Clerk has proved elusive. There is no record of him in the
incomplete list of monks at Whalley Abbey, or in lists of priests serving the
local parishes.27 1 have worked through the Ordination Lists in the Lichfield
Episcopal Registers; between 1360 and 1435 there are nine John Clerks, but
none of them appears to have any association with Whalley. It is unfortunate
that he suffers from the affliction of a common name. Among many others
similarly burdened, a John Clerke of Burnley (in the parish of Whalley) rented
land in Royle in 1440, 28 but there is nothing to connect him with the
alliterative poem.
If for no other reason than to guide the dating of The Destruction of Troy and
of the poetic movement of which it is so central a part, it would be of great
value to be able to identify John Clerk. His title 'Master' suggests that he was
in secular orders and not a monk at Whalley Abbey. It is more likely that after
spending a period at university (where he was perhaps ordained), he returned
to serve 'the knight )>at causet it to be made', someone such as Sir John
Stanley, KG, of Lathom in south Lancashire, or his son John, who was
Steward of Blackburnshire from 1425 to 1437. 29
There is good reason to hope that John Clerk and his patron will be
identified before long, probably while someone is looking for something quite
different. It will be a significant discovery.

Dept of English, THORLAC TURVILLE-PETRE

University of Nottingham

NOTES

1 The 'Gest Hystoriale ' of the Destruction of Troy, ed. by G. A. Panton and D. Donaldson,
39, 56 (London, 1869, 1874), p. lxx.
2 VCH Lanes., VI, 352.
» A. H. Smith, English P lace-Name Elements, EPNS, 25 (Cambridge, 1956), I, 271.
4 E. Ekwall, The Place-Names of Lancashire (Manchester, 1922), p. 76.
» See J. Taylor, The Universal Chronicle of Ranulph Higden (Oxford, 1966), pp. 4, 93-5, 1
6 See V. H. Galbraith, 'An autograph MS of Ranulph Higden's Polychronicon' Huntington
Quarterly , XXIII (1959/60), 1-18.
7 Taylor, The Universal Chronicle , p. 132.
8 See M. V. Clarke, Fourteenth Century Studies (Oxford, 1937), pp. 75-6, 91-5 -
9 See V. H. Galbraith, The Chronicle of Henry Knighton , in rnt% S ax I: a Volume oj M
Essays , ed. by D. J. Gordon (Edinburgh, 1957), pp- 1 36-45 .

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 Notes 269

10 Osbern Bokenham, Legen

(London, 1938), pp. xvi-xvii.
" See Complete Works of Geoff
ï897), pp. xix-xx.
12 Printed in Sir William Dug
(London, 1817-30), V, 642.
15 Ekwall, Lancashire, 76-7.
14 The Poems of William Dun
■' See C. A. Luttrell, 'Three n
,6 Lydgate's Troj Book , ed.
17 See T. Turville-Petre, The
alliterative ancestry of Dunbar
English, VII (1974), 22-54.
18 The title 'Maister' suggests
Scottish Tongue , ed. by Sir W
■9 See H. N. Duggan, 'The so
(1976), 624-36.
20 Discussed in The Wars of Alexander , ed. by H. N. Duggan and T. Turville-Petre, EETS, ss, 10
(London, 1989), pp. xxxvi-xlii.
21 See Middle English Alliterative Poetry and its Literary Background, ed. by D. A. Lawton
(Cambridge, 1982), p. 5; The Siege of Jerusalem , ed. by E. Kolbing and M. Day, EETS, os, 188
(London, 1932), pp. xxvi-xxix.
22 See A. I. Doyle's chapter in Middle English Alliterative Poetry , ed. Lawton, p. 93.
2' VCH Lanes ., VI, 420-1.
24 The Bannatyne Manuscript , ed. and introd. W. Tod Ritchie, STS, 2nd ser., 22, 23, 26 (Edinburgh,
1928-34).
25 See Poems of Dunbar , ed. Kinsley, 257.
26 Turville-Petre, The Alliterative Revival , p. 34.
27 See T. D. Whitaker, An History of the Original Parish of Whalley and Honor of Clitheroe, ed. by J. G.
Nichols and P. A. Lyons, 4th edn, 2 vols. (London, 1872-6), I, 1 12-14; VCH Lanes., VI, passim.
28 VCH Lanes., VI, 445.
29 J. S. Roskell, The Knights of the Shire for the County Palatinate of Lancaster , Chetham Society, n.s.
96 (Manchester, 1937), pp. 123-8. Thomas Chetham, who copied The Destruction of Troy , was
bailiff to his descendants, the Earls of Derby: see Luttrell, 'Three MSS', pp. 46-7.

WAS MARIE DE FRANCE THE DAUGHTER OF WALERAN II,

COUNT OF MEULAN?

The uncertainties surrounding the identity of the Marie de France

we usually attribute the celebrated collection of twelve narrative lai
never interfered with the enjoyment of her poetry. Critical concer
steadily moved, in any case, in the direction of the texts themselve
responses to them, or towards the question of the author's personality
'femininity'. Yet a series of intriguing references to Marie in three d
works, which many - perhaps most - feel belong to one and the same
as well as at least one external allusion to a dame Marte,1 bring us bac
enigma: who was the author we call Marie de France?
The most recent response to this enduring question was made in 197
A. Knapton produced a new candidate: Mary, daughter of Step
England, heiress of Boulogne through her mother, and abbess of

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