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Home , Chevrefoil, Dinadan, Palamedes (romance), Sir Tristrem, Thomas of Britain

Richard III’s Books: X. The Prose

ANNE F. SUTTON AND LIVIA VISSER-FUCHS

Tristan, lover, knight of the and famous huntsman, was one of the best known heroes of the later middle ages. One story can be cited to prove his popularity. Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, had a row with his son,Charles, and galloped off fugiously into the forest. The next morning when he was recovering from his night of exertions his good humour was restored by his friend and Chamberlain, Philippe Pot, who said: Good morning, monseigneur, what is this? Are you now or Sir ? Did you think there would be no Sir Tristrams wandering around who would be a match for you?‘ The Duke was feeling rather the worse for wear, he laughed and agreed that he had had his ‘adventure, but added that despite his sorry state he was still capable of taking up arms if love or honour demanded it. To both Philip and his courtier, ‘Tristram’ was an integral part of the Arthurian stories, he was Lancelot’ 5 equal, a knight errant and one of the best knights in the world. Their ‘Tristram’ was very different from the .original character of Celtic legend. The Celtic hero had become one of the famous triangle, with Queen Isolde and King Mark of , as developed by twelfth- ccntury poets, and that creation in its turn underwent considerable alteration at the hands of the authors of the Prose Tristan.2 Most English people still know the love story of Tristan and Isolde in a version deriving from the prose Tristan through the medium of Sir , Spenser or Tennyson. It was certainly the longest and one of the most influential romances of the middle ages. It was not,however, the original story of Tristan and Isolde and it has received a lot of criticism, mostly prejudiced, since the time the older poems were discovered and published in the nineteenth century.

23 The Origins of the Love Story The Celtic origins of the legend are not doubted. Pictish, Irish, Welsh, Cornish and Breton stories passed via the Breton conteurs into the twelfth-century romances and poems in the French language.3 Tristan derived ultimately from Drust, the son of a king of the Picts in the late eighth century. Versions of Drust’s story that were to become episodes in the Tristan story were circulating in the ninth century and written down in In'sh in the tenth;" other elements, notably the triangular relationship of the three main characters, Trystan, Essylt and March, and the magical compulsion on the lovers, were developed in Welsh and Irish stories. It was probably Welsh story-tellers who spliced the Irish stories to the Pictish saga and developed the personage of King as Tristan’s uncle. By the early eleventh century the basic story was known in Brittany, where other important additions were made and exotic details from India, Arabia and the Latin romance of Apollonius of Tyre were used to embellish the Irish, Christian tale.‘ The full composite story was circulating in France by the 1160s. The second half of the twelfth century saw the production of several famous poems retelling the Tristan legend or parts of it, and it is these which now dominate most twentieth-century understanding of the story. ’s , made not long after 1160, described one small incident.6 The Folie Tristan, a poem which exists in two versions, dealt with another episode, that of Tristan’s disguiSe as a fool, assumed in order to gain access to his beloved, ‘Isolt’.7 The three greatest renderings of the full story of Tristan and Isolde do not survive in complete texts. The first of these, the Tristan of , written for the court of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine between 1155 and 1185, was the inspiration for the German masterpiece by Gottfried of Strassburg (c. 1200- 1220).8 The third of the great versions was that by the Norman, Béroul, written in the 11905.9 For the legend’s later history in England the version of Thomas Was the most important, but only its last sequence survives. His full text can,however, be largely reconstructed by using the Norse Tristrams Saga of , which survives complete, and the anonymous thirteenth-century English Sir Tristrerri (almost complete), with some assistance from the other versions he inspired.'0 ’ . . . . . , '

The Prose Tristan: Authorship, Inspiration and Intention The several authors of the prose Tristan are not known. It is now generally agreed that there must have been a lost, comparatively short, version of the Tristan story iti existence by 1235-40, already very different from the poems and placing Tristan and Isolde in an Arthurian background. Fragments of its second portion may be preserved in one version. The greatest number of surviving manuscripts are of another,’slightly later, version, called the ‘vulgate’ text: a few are complete but the vast majority are fragments, one being British Library Harleian Ms.49 ' once owned by Richard of Gloucester.“ From the middle of the thirteenth century onwards these versions were copied, mixed together and interpolated with other stories,.such as the Prose Lancelot and the Mort Artu. One such version served Thomas Malory as his source for‘his Sir Tristan de . '2By 1400, five or six different versions existed and the work when complete ran to about 500 folios or more. than 1600 pages, if a complete printed edition were undertaken.'3 ~

24 Messire Luce, Lord of the castle of Gat, near Salisbuyy, was probably the author of the lost original Prose Tristan. No trace or evidence of his castle’ s existence has been discovered and the surviving text that may incorporate some of his work is in the French of Northern France and not in Anglo-Norman. In the prologue that survives explaining his intentions, Luce says that he planned an estoire or biography of Tristan,l one of the great knights of Arthur’s court, and makes no specific mention of his love affair or of Isolde. His book, livre de Luce, was later taken over by another author who- enlarged it and made other changes to the underlying preoccupations of the original story. If Messire Luce transferred Tristan and Isolde to an Arthurian background, the new author wanted to inqorporate in his book — which he said had pleased King Henry III of England” — all the rest of the Round Table tales by Walter Map and Robert de Boron and the stories of Lancelot du Lac. He intended, in fact, to make an ‘encyclopedia’ and entrelacement (interweaving) of Arthurian tales. As ‘Helié dc Boron’ he claimed relationship to Robert dc Boron (c. 1200), author of the Joseph, which provid_ed him with the inspiration for a genealogy of Tristan. The name, however, is a fiction and his identity has not been discovered. '5 ' By the 1170s the story of Tristan and Isoldg had been sucked into the' Arthurian cycle" but not fully integrated. There were obvious similarities between the stories of Lancelot and Tristan who were both" 1n love with queens, both famous knights and who both had bouts of madness. It would be much tidier to put all these characters into the same universe and chronology, and the better known Arthurian environment _soon completely absorbed the more Eeripheral Celtic one. The medieval passion for synthesising and organising a11- nowledge on one subject into a' compendium or summa affected even romances. "’ -The author of the prose Tristan took from the Tristan of Thomas the actual story of the lovers; he also knew the poem known as the Folie Tristan, the Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes, the Mort Artu, Estoire and probably the versions by Béroul and Eilhart. '3 The immediate' mspiration behind his work was probably the Prose Lancelot which he set out to emulate. ‘? The Prose Lancelot was a complicated, well organised series of interwoven stories telling of the hero’s adventures, his love for Queen and the Quest for the -, amid all the panoply of Arthur’s court. By integrating the ‘foreign’ geography of Tristan — Cornwall; Ireland and Brittany — with the Logrcs, and J oyeuse Garde of Lancelot and Arthur, the Prose Tristan drew the stories together physically The author gave Tristan a series of knightly adventures, like tho_se of Lancelot, and made him a knight errant of the Round Table and companion of- all other well known characters of Arthur’s court. Above all he sent him on the Grail Quest and ensured that he, too, like Lancelot and , was a descendant of the first guardians of the Grail, through Bron, the brother-'in-law of Joseph of Arimathea. 2° He gave Tristan a faithful, amusing knight-companion? Dinadan, 2' who was able to put in perspective any excessive or expressjon of love on the part of Tnstan He also gave Isolde two new, unrequited lovers 1n Kaireddin, who finally dies of love, and Palamedcs, ’1 who 1s always faithful to her (unlike Tristan) and generous and loyal to Tristan himself. He recast the uncontrollable passion of the original lovers in the more ‘courtly’

25 mould of Lancelot and Guinevere; he reéounted none of the joys of love but made it a tyranny his lovers had to endure.23 The result was not entirely successful: above all the story’s length worked against it. The author ended up with a rather monotonous and loosely constructed work, composed of many interwoven stories, but he was also ingenious and inventive, capable of episodes of considerable pathos as well as lively and amusing dialogue.“ He inserted lyrics and letters composed by the protagonists.” He wrote above all for the aristocratic‘taste of the first half of the thirteenth century: Henry III was undoubtedly not the only person whom his work pleased. This compendium went into several redactions and many manuscripts survive; it was interpolated with yet more episodes and became the only known version of the story of Tristan and Isolde. It was ‘Helié de Boron’ who placed Tristan alongside Arthur, Lancelot and Galahad as one of the paragons of knightly behaviour.

Richard of Gloucester’s Tristan: the manuscript and its owners Harley 49 is visually a clean, attractive, plain text, written in the middle of the fifteenth century, on vellum, 43 to 44 lines to a page (page size 276 x 192mm,)“ The modern foliation runs 1*, 1-155, including one original flyleaf at the beginning and one at the end; the paper flyleaves and the binding date from the nineteenth century. The verso of the last folio of the text and the recto side of the original end flyleaf have signs of ownership (the verso side of this flyleaf is blank). At the top of the first surviving page of the text a seventeenth-century hand has added by way of title, Vita Sadochi et Tristami Regum H ibornensum (?) Galice (?), and what appear to be two catalogue numbers, 26 and 34.A.10. The first page was therefore already missing when these were added in the seventeenth century. The scribe (probably in imitation of his exemplar) divided the text into sections A-G and each right hand page has the appropriate capital letter repeated at its head in red. Each section is divided into small chapters, numbered in Roman numerals in red in the margin (no foliation was therefore necessary for the fifteenth-century reader). Each chapter opens with a blue, two-line initial with red penwork flourishes and a brief summary of its contents in red, for example: Come Sadoc aloit chacier, numbered in the margin in Roman numerals. The beginning of the text is missing. Presumably only one folio is missing as this could easily have contained the first four and a half chapters and perhaps some decoration of the opening initial. The story now starts in the middle of chapter five of section A. The ending is also incomplete: the text breaks off in the middle of a sentence and page (now f. 148; f.l48b is blank). The initial of the unfinished chapter (ch.93) was not filled in and only three words of it were written down. The scribe then added an index of chapter headings (ff. 149-154b) which ends with the last complete chapter of his text (ch.92). It must be presumed the scribe stopped copying at the end of an imperfect exemplar and not out of weariness or dissatisfaction. . _ There are no annotations in the text. There is one unidentifiable inscription in an unknown hand at the top of folio 155 which appears to read: Remember iwat you sayet A y [smudged] A welle forton welle

26 No owner prior to Richard 1s known. His formal ex libris 1s written in a hand that is not his on folio 155:

Iste liber constat Ricardo duci Gloucestre ,L(a x S”._8%

Iste liber consiat Ricarido duci Gloucestre. The note of ownership in BL. Harleian -Ms. 49, f. l 55. Probably not in Richard’s own hand. By permission of the British Library.

', I The next owner appears i0 be Elisabeth of York, whose name, with a motto'27 — the latter almost illegible — is at the foot of the same page: ,

Sans re[mo]vyr elyzabeth

Sane“: ' --; ((0721. «.éflr‘ ‘

Sans re[mo]vyr' elyzabeth. Elizabeth of York’s signature with a motto in BL. Harleian Ms. 49, f. 155. Now partly illegible. By permission of the British Library.

27 She -is known to have signed herself ‘Elisabeth the King?s .daughter’” and ‘Elisabeth the Queen’,” so it is just possible she wrote this when she was neither, that is when Edward IV was dead and before she became Henry VII’s Queen. She could have acquired the book while Richard was alive, for instance while she was in the north at Sherrif Hutton, where possibly some of the King’s ducal books remained, or after his death from his effects. Elisabeth may not have kept the book for long, but passed it on to the ancestor of the next owner to inscribe his name, followed by two lines of verse (f. 148b):_ George Turbervyle A Turbervyle a monster is that loveth not his friend _ or stoops to foes, or doth forget good' turns and so I end The poet’s grandfather, John, was one of the Turberviles of Bere Regis. They. were out of favour under Richard III, one being tried for treason with William Collyngboume in 1485 but not executed.30 An Elisabeth Turbervile was the mother of John Morton, the future cardinal and the marriage of another Turbervile to a Norris in the fifteenth century’1 may have been almost as beneficial to the family’s advancement at Henry VII’s court. The family was also related to the' Arundels of Llanheme. All these names are those of discontented families'under Richard III, active in the ‘Buckingham’ 'rebellion'and the Tudor invasion. John Turbervile may well have been at Bosworth for Henry and in August 1486 he and Sir Richard Guildford kept the doors at the christening of Prince Arthur.32 He was sheriff of Dorset 1486-7 and held several posts connected with Corfe and its castle. At any time during his career at the Tudor court John could have acquired this copy of Tristan. He died in 1536, leaving several sons of whom the fifth, Henry (died 1549), inherited the manor of Winterborne Whitchurch and was the father of the poet, George.” The family as a whole Was boisterous and litigious. George’s elder brother, Nicholas, was Well known 1n thé county as a justice of the peace; he was murdered by his own brother-in-law' 1n 1580 and notorious to at least some of his neighbours as the ‘killing justice'. The poet himself killed a man in self-defence and was pardoned by the Queen in 1573.” He was probably born 1544, his education is obscure, but he visited Russia 1568-9.35 He knew many of the writers of his age and was the subject of an epitaph by Sir John Harrington, Elisabeth I’s godson. Much of his poetry was in honour of Anne Russell, Countess of Warwick, in the character of ‘Pandora’, and her husband, Ambrose Dudley. Turbervile was the author of a Book of Faulconrie or Hauking (1575), dedicated to Dudley, and The Noble Art of Venerie or Hunting (1576), dedicated to Sir Henry Clinton. 3‘ Most relevant to his ownership of the Tristan manuscript is the fact that the hero was famous 1n England for his skill 1n hunting (see below). The poet probably died after 1588 and before the second edition of his book on hunting in 1611.” One other Turbervile inscribed her name in the manuscript (f. 154b): Judith Turbervile, described by some as the poet’s daughter.” Whoever she was, the book soon passed to Sir Simonds D’Ewes (1602-50), the antiquarian and book collector, and friend of Sir RobertCotton.” Sir Simonds’ library was sold by_his grandson, another Sir Simonds (died 1772), to Robert Harley, Earl of_ Oxford, on 4 October 1705. It was his first acquisition of a major collection (over

28 660 manuscripts for £450). Harley died in 1724 but his son, Edward, continued to add to the collection. The catalogue of the Harleian Library by Henry Wanlcy appeared in 1759.‘0 In 1773 the books were bought for the British Museum (now the British Library) from the then Countess of Oxford.

Richard of Gloucester’s interest in the story: love, hunting or chivalry? Richard’s manuscript 'of the French prose Tristan contains less than a tenth of the story. The clearly written, slightly abbreviated text is unlikely to have presented problems to anyone with a knowledge of French.“l When Richard owned the manuscript it still had its first page and the story began at the beginning: the story of Tristan’s ancestors, Sador, his wife Chelinde, and their immediate descendants who go through many adventures and troubles, some of which appear to foreshadow Tristan’s own.42 Generations later, Helyabel, sister of Mark, King of Cornwall, gives birth, shortly before her own death, to a son whom she calls Tristan because of the tristesse she feels at the loss of her husband. Tristan’s early life is troubled both by the possessive love and the envious hatred he inspires in those around him. King Mark sends the young man to Ireland to ask for the hand of Isolde. On the return voyage they inadvertently drink the love potion meant for Mark and his bride on their wedding night. The potion duly takes effect. Richard’s book here reads, in translation (ff.96b-97): She looks at Tristan and Tristan at her. They look at each other and know each other’s wishes and thoughts. Tristan knows that Isolde loves him; and Isolde knows that Tristan loves her. This fills her with joy . . . Tristan is equally happy and full of joy and he says to himself that he is now the most blessed knight that ever was, because he is loved by the most beautiful and valiant lady in the world. Isolde marries Mark and the lovers’ life is haunted by their illicit desire and the hatred and intrigue of the King and his courtiers. Discovered together, she is sent to live with lepers and he is condemned to the stake, but both escape and take refuge in the forest. Here Richard’s volume ends in mid-sentence and we do not know whether he ever owned the sequel. The full story, of chivalric deeds, partings and meetings, madness, imprisonment and brief spells of j oy, the lovers’ eventual death in each other’s arms and their joint burial, does not need to be told here.43 Conceivably Richard could have seen the redaction of the prose Tristan that would influence English authors and readers for the next three centuries. On 31 July 1485 Caxton finished printing Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur. This included a substantial part of the story, inspired by a manuscript very close to some of the extant fifteenth-century copies of the prose version, which Malory called ‘the French book’ .“ Malory’s main concern was Tristan’s role as a knight errant, his ‘first duty is to knighthood and his fidelity to Isolde only serves as an occasional illustration of his chivalric conduct’ .‘5 Malory had no objection to the love element but to him the hero was a knight of the Round Table first, a View that the Duke of Burgundy and Philippe Pot, as well as the young Richard of Gloucester probably shared. In Malory’s version Tristan’s story starts ‘properly’ at the beginning with his birth, and ends naturally when Tristan’s reputation as Lancelot’s equal is assured and he and Isolde retire happily to .

29 The pros_e Tristan itself has been called‘ a manual of courtesy’ describipg an aristocratic society concerned with knightly education and etiquette in all circumstances.“ Similarly it has been argued that the treatment 6f the story by the author of the prose Tristan — in Malory’ sredaction — was of particular interest to fifteenth- -century readers because it depicted a familiar, disorderly, restless and diw'ded world, it was no longer primarily a love story but a story of ‘men in society’. ‘7 . Late medieval readers — like modern ones — would not have consciously valued the story fOr such reasons. There was no other version available to them as the Tristan poems were only rediscovered early m the nineteenth century. The long, episodic text, would not .have ‘ dismayed them, for. long, encyclopedic collections, .both scientific and literary, were common and generally popular throughout the middle ages.“3 Certainly Caxton liked Malory’s-long text of Sir Tristram de Lyones enough to leave it unabridged, though it took up almost a third of the entire ,work. Caxton is probably the best guide to what ‘dyvers gentylmen of this royaume of England’ who had asked him to print the Arthurian stories, liked to read. He promised them ,‘noble chyvalrye" first, but also ‘curtosyc, humanyte, friendlynesse, hardynesse, love, frendshyp, cowardyse, murdre, hate, vertue and synne."’ In short, everything. There was another reason for fifteenth-century English" readers’ interest in Tristan: the hero’s (proverbial) reputation as a-hunter and master of game. The origins of this reputation are not easy to trace but it appears to be confined to England. 5° It was impo_rtant to Malory and his contemporayy, the composer of the Bake of St Albans'; it may have been important to Richard of Gloucester and it was certainly so to one of the later Owners of the present ma'nuscript, George Turbervile. _ . Tristan’ s introduction of the ‘art’ of venery with a detailed account of how hé taught the hunters of King Mark to unmake the déer and blow the horn after the kill had undoubtedly been 1n the Tristan of Thomas, written by the 1 180s. The first section of Thomas work does not survive but it can be reconstructed, partly from the Middle English verse redaction, , made between 1294 and 1330, Which was based on it." The English stanzaic poem is a brief rendering of the story but it spends a disproportionate: number of line's on the hun_ting scene. This suggests not only that this material was in its source, but also that the poet expected his readers or listeners to be interested m this particular episode. 52He describes Tristan’ s skills' 1n detail, adding that he set an example for later ages. 53A similar eniphasis 1s found 1n other versions that derived from Thomas: Gottfried of Strassburg, who 15especially detailed, and the Norse version. 5“ Delight 1n hunting expertise can be found 1n other English literary sources, such as Sir and the . 55The English verse Ipomydon had the hero unmake the deer 1n front of the lady; when she saw how proficient he was she knew ‘that he was come of gentill men’. 5‘ The English prose Ipomedon, of which Richard owned the only copy now extant, described how during a day’s hunt the young man sends the best game to the lady, much to her pleasure. After the hunt she ‘come hir self and all hire women, to see undoo the dere’, and in the next sehtence, she ‘began to lufe him’.’7 Such skills apparently helped to establish the hero’s status as a man of good birth and upbringing and gained him the admiration of his companions. It may have been mere change that Tristan among

30 all the hunting heroes of romances, became the English hunter par excellence, but it was also a result of Thomas’ decision to include the almost ‘professional’ information about hunting in his poem.” In contrast the French prose Tristan nowhere elaborates on the hero’s expertise in this field. In England Tristan’s reputation as a hunter continued to develop, presumably based on fairly widespread reading of Sir Tristrem. Malory links ‘Tristram’ unequivocally to hunting lore:

And aftir, as he growed in myght and strength, he laboured in huntynge and in hawkynge — never jantylman more that ever we herde rede of. And as the booke seyth, he began good mesurcs of blowynge of beestes of venery and beestes of chaaoe and all maner of vermaynes, and all the tearmys we have yet of hawkynge and huntynge. And therefore the booke of venerye, of hawkynge and huntynge is called the booke of Sir Trystams. Wherefore, as me semyth, all jantyllmen that beryth olde armys ought of ryght to honoure Sir Trystrams for the goodly tearmys that jantylmen have and use and shall unto the Day of Dome, that thereby in a maner all men of worshyp may discever a jantylman frome a yoman and a yoman frame a vylayne. For he that jantyll is woll drawe hym to jantyll tacchis and to folow the noble customys of jantylmen.

Here is the same emphasis on the social value of such skills.” In the Bake of St. Albans, a collection on hawking, hunting and heraldry printed in 1486, Dame Juliana Bemers, the mysterious author of the hunting section has:

Wheresoevere ye fare by fryth of by fell My dere chylde, take hede how Tristram dooth you tell How many maner beestys of venery that were.“

In his turn George Turbervyle in his The Noble Art of Venerie mentions Tristan several times: ‘skilfull Trystram’s lore’, ‘our old Tristam’." As Sir Walter Scott put it: ‘ ‘Sir Tristrem’ or ‘an old Tristrem’ seems to have passed into a common proverbial appellation for an expert huntsman’.62 It is certain that for two at least of the owners of this copy of Tristan, the reputation of the hero as a hunter may have been an additional point of interest: Richard of Gloucester, who loved hunting as much as most kings and aristocrats of his day (see copious references to hunting in Harleian ms.433; it was the main sport of the royal household), and George Turbervile, the author of a hunting book. It has to be admitted, however, that the prose Tristan was doomed to disappoint them if they searched its text for this rather English aspect of Tristan’s life. The main interest of the prose Tristan as a whole, and the section owned by Richard in particular, must have been its chivalric adventures. The love story was there, but it had been reduced to one motif among many. What Richard found ifr his text was the knight errantry, which Sir Thomas Malory loved so much. Malory’s readers liked it, too — his publisher Caxton was sure of that —— and Richard may have shared that liking. Knight errantry was a noble activity for an honourable man as defined by Tristan himself in another part of the prose Tristan:

31 I am a knight errant, and knights errant always wander through the kingdom of and other countries in search of adventures, because, as far as they are able . and have the opportunity, they must defend the weak against the strong and uphold loyalty wherever they are. And if theycome across any wgong done to a knight, a lady or a maidpn and theycan put it right, they must do so immediately; and if they do not, they can no longer be considered knights or men of honour, for they will have failed to keep their oath to God, to all chivalry an_d the world as well. ‘3 These ideals despite their fictional setting, were commonplacgs of chivalry. More honoured 1n their breach than m their obseryance they were still promulgated with enthusiasm. It was probably sometime in 1484 that Caxton dedicated his translation of the Order of Chtvalry to Richard III. The Order was one of the best known treatises setting out the conduct and duties of the ideal Christian knight and it drew from Caxton one of his finest rhetorical dedications m enthusiastic support of kmghtly education. Chivalry was the real preoccupation of readers of the prose Tristan and its fictions were not far removed from the ideals they knew should govern their own conduct. I

Appendix: Tristan’ s arms, sword and ancestry In the context of Richard of Gloucester’ s ownership of the Tristan manjlscript it may be noted that' 111 one version of the story the hero’s héraldic device 15 a boar. It 1s unlikely, however, that this tradition was known m England 1n the fifte_enth century. Scholars now agree that this emblem 1s wholly Germanic 1n origin. It stands for courage and nobility and as such was the most frequently used animal emblem” 1n Germanic countries and not special to Tristan The other arms often attributed to Tristan are a lion on a red ground (or blue, in French sources). It has been argued that such arms are not necessarily a complimentary reference to the lions of the house of Anjou (and later of England) for the lion was the most common heraldic charge in France, England and Scandinavia. The text of the prose Tristan appears to indicate that Tristan ‘in fact’ bore two gold crowns on a red ground. The black boar occurs in Gottfried of Strassburg’ sversion.“ Another ve_ry tenuous link between Tristan and Richard III might be thought to exist in the sword Curtana, one of the four swords borne at Richard’s coronation. -It was broad and without a point. Among the regalia of King John there had been a sword called ‘of Tristan’, which may refer to the same weapon. The origin of such a name for a sword in John’s regalia may derive from the story of .Tristan’s joust with Morholt during which a fragment of Tristan’s sword was left in Morholt’s skull. The piece was later used to identify the owner. In Malory it is a piece out of the edge of the sword, but there may have existed a tradition that it'was the point. Another legendary sword without a point was owned by Ogier the Dane, knight of Charlemagne and called Corte (aceusativc Cortain). Ogier 15 said to have tested 1t on a block of Iron and broken off' as point. According to R. S. Loomis‘? the composer of the Prose Tristan has Tristan’ s sword pass to Ogier, but the present authors have been unable to check this.‘There is also a tradition that Ogier married the daughter of Edgar, King of England, which accounted for the weapon coming to this country. The English ceremonial sword and the damaged weapons of Tristan and Ogicr probably only had their shortness in

32 common, hence the name of two of them. Certainly a great confusion of legends and stories about pointless weapons lay behind the use of the names in this case. There 15 no evidence that Curtana m Richard’s day was still considered to have any link with Tristan (or Ogier). ‘5 Yet another minor feature of the prose Tristan that could have been of interest to Richard was the ancestry of the hero. The fifteenth- -century aristocracy had a passion for genealogy“ and would have enjoyed the details about Tristan’ s descent. This passion was _apparently not shared by Malory who left out the early section altogether. Especially interesting, however, was Tristan’ sdescent from Joseph of Arimathea, who for centuries had been believed to have brought the Holy Grail and Christianity to Britain and founded Gl_astonbury Abbey. At the Council of Constance m 1417 Thomas Polton, the main English representative, defended the superiority of England over France and the antiquity of the English faith by telling his audience, among other things, that Joseph came to England with twelve companions and converted the people, several centun'es before St. Denis did the same in France. It is just possible that he hoped the story would meet with some recognition from the other delegates because the prose Tristan which contained a simple version of the legend, was widely read. Perhaps his listeners merely smiled. " Richard’s manuscript now lacks the page that finéained the story but there_ Is no reason to assume that it was not complete' 1n 5 ay

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NOTES AND REFERENCES

l. Oeuvres de Georges Clmstellain, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, 8 vols., Brussels 1863-6, vol. 3, p.279. C. A. J. Amstrong, The Golden Age of Burgundy. Dukes that outdid kings, The Courts of Europe. Politics, Patronage and Royalty, 1400-1800. ed. A. G. Dickens, London 1977, p.71, gives a rather misleading version of the story and the quotation. 2. The Dukes of Burgundy knew the story of Tristan from many versions, editions and mss. Tristan was clearly seen as Lancelot's equal, e.g. in the Pa: de la Belle Pe’le'rine (Joust of the Fair Pilgrim) in I449 the main opponents bear their arms; Olivier de la Marche, Mémoires, ed. H. Beaune and J. d’Arbaumont, 4 vols., Paris 1884-8, vol. 2, p. I21. 3. Helaine Newstead, The origin and growth of the Tristan legend. Arthurian Literature m the Middle Ages, ed. R. S. Loomis, Oxford 1959, pp. 122-133, esp. 124-125, and the sources cited there. There has been extensive research into the origins of the legend, notably by J. Bédier and G. Schoepperle. 4. Newstead, pp. 126-127. { I 5. Newstead, pp.127-132. 6. Newstead, p.122; F. Whitehead, The Early Tristan Poems, Arthurian Literature (see n. 3), p. 144; The Luis of _ Marie de France, trans. by G. S. Burgess and K. Busby, Harmondsworth I986, pp. 109-110. 7. Whitehead (see n. 6), p. I44. See also R. L. Curtis, Tristan Forsené. the Episode of the Hero' s Madness'm the Prose Tristan, in The Changing Face of Arthurmn Romance. Essays on Arthurian Prose Ramances' m Memory of Cedrié E. Pickford. Cambridge 1986, pp'Jo-zz. . Thomas and Gottfried are translated by A. Hatto, , Tristan. . . With the surviving fragments of the Tristan of Thomas, Harmondswonh 1960. For both poems see the introduction by Hatto and also Whitehead (see n. 6), pp. 134- IM, and W. T. H Jackson, Gottfried von Strassburg, Arthurian Literature (see 11. 3),pp. 145- 156. M. D. Legge, Anglo-Norman- Literature 'and its Background, Oxford 1963, on the Tristan of Thomas, pp. 44-5, on Béroul, p. 59.

33 9. Béroul. The Romance of Tristan, trans. by A. S. Fedrick, Hannondsworth 1970. Newstead (see n.3), p. l 22, n.7, gives other editions. The other Gennan version by Eilhart of around 1 I90 (Whitehead (see n.6), pp. 1 34-141) is close to Béroul. l0. Whitehead (see n.6), pp. 1 34-144. On the Trislram Saga see P. M. Mitchell, Scandinavian Literature, Arthurian Literature (see n3), pp.462-47l. . Both the Tristan story and the Prose Tristan have generated an enormous amount of literature. The main studies of the prose Tristan are: E. Uiscth, Le roman en prose de Tristan. 12 Roman :12 Palaméde 21 la Compilation d2 Rustic-kn dc Pisa. Analyse critique d'aprés It: manuscrils de Paris, Bibliothéque dc l’Ecolc des hautes éludes 82, Paris 1891, New York I970; E. Vinaver, Etudes sur le Tristan en prose, les sources, Ie: manuscrils, bibliographie critique, Paris 1925; the same,The Prose Tristan, Arthurian Literature (see n3), pp.339-347; R. L. Curtis, Le Roman de Tristan en Prose, 3 vols., Munich 1963, Leiden I976, Woodbridge 1985, reprinted Woodbridge 1988-9 as Arthurian Literature, vols. [2, l3 and 14; the same, Tristan Studies, Munich 1969; E. Baumgaflner, Le Tristan en prose. Essai d 'imerpremlion d'un roman mediéval. Publications Romanes at F rancaises 133, Geneva 1975; P. Ménard. Le Roman de Tristan en prose, vol. 1, Des avenlures de Lancelot a‘Iafin de la ‘Falie Tristan ', Textes littéraires francais 353, Geneva 1987. Laseth has a more than 400-page long analysis of the story which he divided into 619 paragraphs. Curtis’ edifion covers paragraphs 1-92 of Lbseth's division. She fists 77mss. of the prose Tuition and B printed editions before 1533. Ménard’s edition is in progress. It is based mainly on Vienna, Nationalbibliothek ms.2542 and takes over where Curlis’ edition ends. It is not a critical edition as the size of the text and the number of mss. make this impossible. The present authors are much indebted to Baumgartner's useful and sensible summaryof all earlier work and arguments, pp.85-87, 90 and 92. She also has an extensive bibliography. Ménard's introduction is equally useful. There is also a journal Tristania. subtitled A journal devoted to Tristan studies. [2. See esp. Vinaver, Le Roman dc Tristan et lseull dam I 'aeuvre de 1110mm-Malary. Paris 1975, and Baumgarmer (see n.1l)I pp.77-83, on Paris, 3N. ms.fr.l03. 13. Menard (sec n. 11), pp. 8 and 13. 14. R. L. Curtis, The Problems ofthe Authorship of the Prose Tristan, Romania, vol. 79 (I958). p. 328. The Cherlsey tiles ofTristan and Isolde are an instance of the story’s wide popularity at this time: R. S. Loomis, Illustrations of Medieval Romances on Tries from Cherlsey Abbey. University of Illinois Studies In Language and Literature, vol. 2, no.2, Urbana 1916. 15. Curtis, The Problems (see n.14), pp.314-338, summarised in her Le Roman, vol. I (see n.l l), pp.8-12. Baumganner (see n. l 1)summarises all theories, pp.88-98. l6. Newstead (see n. 3),p. 122. l7. For the compendia see c. g. E. J. Mickel, Tristan' s ancestry in the Tristan en prose. Romania, vol. 109 (1988), pp. 68-89, esp. 73-74. Both Tristan and Lancelot wen! mad as the result of misunderstandings with their ladiw, In the Prose Tristan and Prose Lancelot respectively. Tristan also pretended to go mad in the two poems called Folie Tristan. For a discussion ofTrisum's madness in the Prose Tristan, see Curtis, Tristan Forsené (see n.7), pp. 10- 22, esp. 10, I3. For the story see Laseth's analysis (see n.1 1), paragraphs 836-871, and Curtis, Le Roman (see n.ll), vol. 3, summary, paragraphs 101-104. l8. Curtis, Tristan Farsené (see n.7). pp. 10-1 5;Baumgarlner (see n.l l) on the sources of the Prose Tristan, pp. 1 01 - 117, on the minor sources (Chrétien de Troyes, Estoire Merlin), pp.133-l46; Vinaver. The Prose Tristan (see n.l l), p.340. 19. For the rest of this paragraph see generally Baumgartner (see n.l l), pp.118-l32, 327, 329; Vinaver, The Prose Tristan (see n.11), pp.339-347. . 20. See e.g. Mickel (see n.l7), passim: Baumgartner (see n.l 1), p.1 [9. 21. For Dinadan, compare Baumgarlner (see n.1l), pp. 1 82-189, and Vinaver, The Prose Tristan (see 11.11),pp.343- 344. 22. For Palamedes, see Vinaver, The Prose Tristan (sec n.l l), p.343; compare Baumgartner (see n. l 1),pp.246-252 and passim. 23. Baumganner (see n. l 1),p.171. 24. Opinions on the Frost: Tristan are very diverse. possibly the result of the sheer difficulty of reading the entire work as well as the fact that a complete edition has not been available. Vinaver, Le Roman (see 11.12), is not complimentary on many aspects of the work. In his The Pros: Tristan (see n. l l)l p.345, he criticised it as a mere

34 compendium; Curtis, Le Roman (see n.l I), vol. I, pp.8-l I, thinks it should not be compared to the greater twelfth century works, as it set out to be something different; Baumgartner (see n.ll), pp.328-329, gives measured praise; Ménard (see n.l I), pp.8, 45-52, is very much more complimentary. 25. Baumgarlner (see n.l I), pp.328-329. (For the lyrics see Baumgartner, pp.298-307, for the letters, p.290). Ménard (see n.11), p.47, points to the midnight dialogue of the lovers Palamedes, Kaireddin and Lancelot, which is indeed veryeffective. R. L. Curtis, A Romance within 3 Romance: the Place of the Roman du Valle! a [a Cole Maulailliee in the Prose Tristan. in Studies in the Medieval French Language and Literature presented to Brian Woledge in honour of his 80!]: birthday. ed. S. B. North, Geneva 1987, pp. l7-35, compliments the raillery and dialogue between the Vallet and the Demoiselle Médisante. 26. The ms. is described in H. L. D. Ward, Catalogue afRomances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum. 3 vols., London 1883-1910, vol. I. pp.358-359; Vinaver, Etudes (see n.l 1), pp.48-49; P. Tudor-Craig, Richard III. catalogue of the NPG exhibition, 2nd ed., 1977, item 16], p.66. 27. That it is her signature is accepted by C. E. Wright, Fumes Harleiam'. A Study of the sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, London 1972, p.144, with a reference to her signature in BL. Add.l70l2, £21. He transcribes the motto as ‘Somemtschyr' (?) and says it is in the same hand. See also A. G. Watson, The Library of Sir Simonds D’Ewes. London 1966, p.132. 28. She uses this signature e.g. in Princeton University Library Ms. Garrett I68; BL. Royal [4 E iii; BL. Cotton Vesp.F xiii. In Stoneyhurst College Ms.37 she uses Elizabeth Plantagenet. . 29. She uses this signature in e.g. BL. Add.l7012; Add.5000l. . A. H. Thomas and I. Thomley, eds., The Great Chronicle afLandon, London I936, p.236. 31. John Hutchins, The History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset . . .. 3rd edn. by William Shipp and J. W. Hodson, Westminster [861, gives pedigrees of the Turberviles (vol. 1, pp.l38-l39) and the Mortons (vol. 2, pp.594-595), neither of which are perfect; the fonner seems to have too many generations in the fifteenth century. For the Turberviles see also John Erskine Hankins, The Life and Work: of George Turbervile, University of Kansas Publications. Humanistic Studies No.25, Kansas 1940, pp.3-6, 85-92. . Hankins (see n.31), pp.4, 85. . Ibid., pp.5, 86. . lbid.. pp.14, 21, 86-92. . lbid.. pp.5-28 for the poet’s life. . The Noble Ar! was-re-edited in 1611; the l576 edn. was reissued Oxford 1908. . Hankins (see n.3l), p.26. . Hankins does not refer to a daughter and says the name of the poet’s wife is unknown, p.25. Wright (see n.27), p.332, gives Judith as George’s daughter, as does Ward (see n.26) p.358. Hutchins (see n.31), gives no Judith in the family, but does give George a sister, Edith. . A 263 in Watson (see n.27), p.132; for a biography of D’Ewes, see ibizt. pp.l-45. . Wright (see n.27), pp.xv-xvii; for Robert Harley’s interests, see p.xxxiv. . Harley 49 has (part of) the version that was the best known from the thirteenth century on: Baumgartner (see n. l 1), p.85; Curtis, Tristan Studies (see ml 1), p.82. Ménard (see n. l l), p.28. states that good texts of the entire work existed in the 15th century, some with their language modernised. 42. On Tristan’s ancestors see e.g. Mickel (see n. l 7); J. H. Calkins, Chelinde et la naissance du Tristan en prose. Le Mayan Age, vol.94 (I987), pp.4l-49. 43. Summaries of the prose Tristan may be found in Curtis, LeRaman (see ml 1), vol. 1,pp.228-235, vol. 2, pp.53-6l; and Baumgartner (see M l), pp.l-14. Newslead (see n.3) has a basic synopsis of the Tristan and Isolde story, pp. 123-124. 44. On Malory' s exemplar, see E. Vinaver. The Works of Sir Thomas Malary, 3 vols., 2nd edn., Oxford 1967, vol. 3, pp. 14374438. 45. Vinaver, ibid., p.1435. 46. J. Larmat, Le Roman de Tristan en prose, manuel de courtoisie, in Der algfranzfimche Prosaroman . . . , ed. E. Ruhe and R. Schwaderer, Beitrfige zur romanische Philologie des Mittelalters l2, Warzburg I977. 47. Felicity Riddy, Sir Thomas Malory. Leiden I987, ch.4. 48. See above and note 17. 49. The Prologues andEpilogues of William Caxton, ed. W. J. B. Crotch, EETS. OS. 176, 1928 (for 1927), repr. 1978, p. 94.

35 50. See e.g. L. Sudre, Les allusions i la légende dc Tristan dans la littérature de moyen 53:, Romania. vol. 15 (1886), pp.534-557; all allusions given here are to Tristan the lover and the knight. 51. The text of Sir Tristrem survives in the so-called Auchinleck ms. See R. S. Loomis, The Auchinleck Manuscript. . . , Publications of the Modern Language Society of America. vol. 51 (1942), pp.595-627; T. A. Shonk, A Study of the Auchinleck Manuscript . . . , Speculum, vol. 60 (I985), pp.7I-9l. Sir Trislrem was first edited by Sir Walter Scott, Sir Tristrem: a MelricaIRamunce, London 1804. Though Scott knew the text was not Scottish, his work caused later scholars mistakenly to assume that Sir Trislrem was part of the Scottish medieval heritage: G. P. McNeill, Sir Tristrem. Publications of the Scottish Tex! Society 8, Edinburgh 1886. Full modern English text in .l. L. Weston, The Chief Middle English Poets, London I922, pp. MM 73. See also C. E. Pickford, Sir Trislrem, Sir Walter Scott and Thomas, in Studies in and Languages in Memory of Frederick Whitehead, ed. W. Rothwell e! 01., Manchester I973, pp.2l9-238; A Manual of Writing: in Middle English 10504500. gen. ed. J. Burke Savers, fasc.l, The Romances, New Haven I967, pp.77-8; T. C. Rumble, The Middle English Sir Trimem.‘ towards a reappraisal, Comparative Literature, vol. II (I959), pp.22l-228; Susan Crane, Insular Romance. Politics, Faith, and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature. Berkeley I986, pp.188-l96. For the evidence of Tristan versions known in England: R. M. Wilson, The Lost Lileralure of Medieval England. London I970, pp. 108-109. Lydgate in his Complaint of the Black Knight has two stanzas (lines 330-343) to ‘Palomydes', that is Palamedcs.who made his first appearance in the prose Tristan. 52. See Pickford (see n.51); the hunting details fill 9 out of 304 surviving stanzas. 53. See E. Kalbing, ed.. Die nardiuhe und die englische Version der Trirmnsage. 2 vols., Heilbronn 1878-82, vol. 2, pp. 1 l4-l l7. When Tristan is first mentioned as a hunter he is said to be more skilled than ‘Manerious'. Manerius is the hero of a twelfth-century Latin poem. who after a long, unsuccessful day’s hunting unexpectedly meets a noble maiden; they kiss and quickly ‘cross the last boundary of Venus’. See F. J. E. Raby, A History of Secular Latin Poetry in the Middle Ages, 2 vols.. Oxford I957, vol. 2, pp.310-312, and references given there; Marcelle Th iébaut, The Slag of Love. The Chase afLa ve in Medieval Literature, Ithaca] London 1974, discusses Manerius and the symbolic meaning of the hunt generally. 54. Gottfried: edn. Hatto (see n3), pp.78-85; Norse version: edn. Kalbing (see n.53) vol. I, pp.21-22, 128-l 29. John Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk. The Art of Medieval Hunting, London 1988, p.43, suggests Gottfried uses the passage to underline the foreignness of Tristan. The German and Norse versions were not known in fifteenth-century England. 55. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. ed. J. A. Burrow, Harmondsworth 1972l pp.6l-62. 56. E. K6lbing, cd., Ipomedan in drei englischen Bearbeilungen, Breslau 1889, p.268, and see lpamadon. pp.l9-24. 57. lbid.. p.325. For the various versions of the lpomedan and Richard’s copy, see The Ricardian, vol. 7 (l985-7), pp.327-328. 58. Thomas almost certainly did not ‘invent' the hunting details but found them in a treatise similar to the later Arr de venerie of William Twici. master huntsman of Edward II, and included them to show how the art was introduced by the Normans inlo England: F. Remigereau, Tristan mailre de vénerie dans la tradition anglaise et dans le roman dc Tristan, Romania, vol. 58 (I932), pp.2l8-237. 59. Vinaver, The Works (see n.44), vol. 1, p.375; see also vol. 2, pp.57l, 682-683. 60. Julians Barnes Bake of Hunt yng. ed. 6. Tilander, Karl shamn I964, Cynegelica l l, p.22. The author's source was an English translation ofthe work of William Twici, who in his turn had used a text similar to the one known to Thomas (see n.58), see E. F. Jacob. Essays in Later Medieval History, Manchester I968, ch. 10, The Book of St. Albans. pp.200-202. 61. Edition of 1908 (see n.36), pp.39, 96, I48, I74. 62. Scott's edition of Sir Trislrem (see n.5l) pp.377-378, quoted by both K6lbing (see n.53), p.108, and MacNeill (see n.51). p.102. ' 63. Tristan ‘on chivalry' quoted by Baumgartner (see ml 1), p.181. 64. See the Penguin translation (see n.8), p.130. For Tristan’s arms see ibid, Appendix 3; R. S. Loomis, Trislram and the House ofAnjou, Modern Language Review, vol. 17 (I922), pp.24-30, and articles by Loomis and others in the same journal, vols. l0, I4, 15, 23; and especially M. Pastoumcau, Les annoiries dc Tristan dans la lillérature ct I'iconographie mcdiévales, Gwéclmll. Bulletin de la Saciélé Finisle'rienne d'Hismire et d'Archéalogie, vol. 1 (I978), pp.9-32. 65. Tristan and the House of Anjou (see 11.64),p.29.

36 66. See Anne F. Sutton and P. W. Hammond, eds., The Coronation of Richard III, Gloucester/ New York 1983, pp.236—238, and references given there, especially E. F. Twining, European Regalia, London 1967, pp.232-236. 67. E.g. Calkins (see n.42). on the earlier section of the prose Tristan. 68. See J.-P. Genet, English Nationalism: Thomas Polton at the Council of Constance, Nottingham Medieval Studies, vol. 28 (1984), pp.60-78. The many versions of the legend are thoroughly rehearsed in JameS'Ussher. Brilannicamm Ecclesiarum Antiquimtes. . . , Dublin I639, ch.2.

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RICHARD III AND YORKIST HISTORY TilUST THE HOURS 'OF RICHARD III‘ r ANNE F. SUTTON and LIVIA VISSER- FUCHS The book of hours which Richard III chose to use as King. It IS unusual for the quantity of prayers it contains, and unique because Richard made his own ildditions to it, including a long, moving prayer for comfort and a private crusading itany The illumination and text are described, with a detailed analysis of both Richard’s prayer and litany. Richard’s piety is discussed In relation to his book of hours, his career and reputation. 133 pages. Illustrated: 4 colour, 27 black and white Special price to Members of the Richard III Society, £14, including p. &p. from Miss A. Smith, 14 Lincoln Rd, Guildford, Surrey GU2 6TJ. Cheques to be payable to Richard III Society. £25, including p. &p. to Non-Members, from Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd. Phoenix Mill, Far Thrupp, Stroud, Glos. GL5 ZBU. Cheques to be payable to Alan Sutton Publishing Limited.

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