GENEALOGY AND JOHN HARDYNG’S VERSE CHRONICLE Sarah L. Peverley he two distinct versions of the Middle English verse Chronicle composed by John Hardyng during the Wars of the Roses offer a privileged insight Tinto how genealogy was utilized within a historical narrative to negotiate the politically unstable backdrop of the 1450s/60s and articulate a public desire for unity and stability. At their most basic level, Hardyng’s texts engage with the genealogy of contemporary sovereigns by charting the succession of British and English monarchs from the first founding of Britain down to the late fifteenth century.1 However, rather than settling into the familiar pattern of many other Brut-orientated narratives, whereby the deeds of past kings are recorded and, for the most part, passed over without explicit attention or comment from the author, each of Hardyng’s texts has its own idiosyncratic method of connecting figures and events from his sovereigns’ past with the politically volatile present. Whilst the first version reprocesses history and genealogy in distinctly aesthetic terms, regularly employing literary and thematic devices appropriated from Boethius, 1 The first version survives in London, British Library, MS Lansdowne 204; the second is extant in twelve manuscripts, three fragments, and two printed editions. For a study of the two versions see my PhD thesis, ‘John Hardyng’s Chronicle: A Study of the Two Versions and a Critical Edition of Both for the Period 1327–1464’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Hull, 2004). I am currently preparing new editions of both versions: the first with James Simpson for TEAMS Mid- dle English Texts; the second for Boydell and Brewer’s Medieval Chronicle Series. The second ver- sion was edited by Henry Ellis as The Chronicle of Iohn Hardyng (London, 1812), but since Ellis’s text is derived from Richard Grafton’s two printed editions (1543), I have taken my quotations from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Arch. Selden B. 10, one of the earliest and fullest manuscripts of the second version; for the reader’s reference the relevant pages of Ellis’s edition are also given. 260 Sarah L. Peverley Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate to enhance Hardyng’s self-referential interjections on kingship and good governance, the second version adopts a more forthright method of conveying the royal lineage of Hardyng’s patrons, which points to a shift in the Chronicle’s purpose and audience. This recension still draws upon visual and self-referential elements to invest additional meaning in the history, but omits the majority of the non-chronicle materials found in the first version to implement a new strategy by which author, text, and genealogy are explicitly aligned with notions of transparency and truth. This case study seeks to address the way in which Hardyng reshaped the later version of his Chronicle to reflect and comment on the fractured political period in which he lived.2 It will therefore focus on two key issues: first, how Hardyng pre- sents himself and his work as truthful and authoritative; and, secondly, how he utilizes his self-styled role as a truth-teller to offer a carefully constructed genealog- ical history of his patron’s entitlement to the thrones of Britain, France, Portugal, Spain, and Jerusalem at a time when the dissemination of the Yorkist claim to the English throne was of paramount importance.3 Hardyng began compiling the second version of his Chronicle — dedicated to Richard, duke of York, and his family, and rededicated to his son, Edward IV, after York’s death — sometime between 1457 and 1460. Whether he started his revision of the text immediately after presenting the first version to Henry VI in 1457 is unclear, but since the prologue and several interjections in the early part of the Chronicle address York as Henry VI’s legal heir, and refer to how he will ‘rule’ his ‘subgettes’, Hardyng must have been working on these sections between 8 November 2 Unfortunately a discussion of both versions is beyond the scope of this study. For the first version, see my ‘Dynasty and Division: The Depiction of King and Kingdom in John Hardyng’s Chronicle’, in The Medieval Chronicle III: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on the Medieval Chronicle Doorn/Utrecht 12–17 July 2002, ed. by Erik Kooper (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004), pp. 149–70, and ‘John Hardyng’s Chronicle’, pp. 140–95. 3 For Hardyng’s use of autobiographical details, see Peverley, ‘Dynasty and Division’ and ‘John Hardyng’s Chronicle’, pp. 143–51. For early Yorkist propaganda, see Alison Allan, ‘Yorkist Prop- aganda: Pedigree, Prophecy and the “British History” in the Reign of Edward IV’, in Patronage, Pedigree and Power in Later Medieval England, ed. by Charles Ross (Gloucester: Sutton, 1979), pp. 171–92; Allan, ‘Political Propaganda Employed by the House of York in England in the Mid- Fifteenth Century, 1450–1471’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Wales (Swansea), 1981); Allan, ‘Royal Propaganda and the Proclamations of Edward IV’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 59 (1986), 146–54; Colin Richmond, ‘Propaganda in the Wars of the Roses’, History Today, 42 (1992), 12–18; and Charles Ross, ‘Rumour, Propaganda and Popular Opinion during the Wars of the Roses’, in Patronage, the Crown and the Provinces in Later Medieval England, ed. by Ralph A. Griffiths (Gloucester: Sutton, 1981), pp. 15–32. GENEALOGY AND JOHN HARDYNG’S VERSE CHRONICLE 261 1460, when York’s title was officially recognized by parliament, and 31 December 1460, when he died at the battle of Wakefield.4 Unlike the opening four-stanza dedication to Henry VI in the first version, the first stanzas of the second version are devoted to connecting Hardyng with previ- ous writers and establishing his role in continuing the tradition of chronicle writ- ing that began long ‘afore Crist did enclyne | In Mary, moder and maiden’.5 His brief summary of the different languages and styles that his scholarly predecessors elected to use is, in many respects, merely a routine example of the practice of trans- latio studii et imperii, whereby medieval authors saw a ‘relationship between pres- ent and past cultures’ and ‘the means by which cultural value and authority was transmitted from one period to another’.6 Nevertheless, Hardyng’s decision to em- ploy the translatio topos before he discusses the legitimacy of York’s ancestry and status as future sovereign underscores a desire to establish his own authority as an author first. By establishing his chronicle’s place in an ancient tradition of histori- cal writings, and his ability to assimilate, inspect, and translate previous histories for the Duke, Hardyng portrays himself as a knowledgeable and judicious individ- ual. Yet at the same time he describes the rich heritage of chronicle writing he has access to, he also acknowledges a potential problem: he does not have the skill to write as eloquently as his predecessors and make his work as ‘glorious’ as theirs.7 4 Eight of the twelve extant manuscripts of the second version contain the prologue addressed to York; of the other manuscripts, three are incomplete at the beginning of the Chronicle and one manuscript — Princeton University, MS Garrett 142 — contains a revised prologue, which omits all of the material relating to York and his titles. This manuscript is unique and appears to have been compiled during Henry VI’s brief Readeption; see my ‘Adapting to Readeption in 1470–1471: The Scribe as Editor in a Unique Copy of John Hardyng’s Chronicle of England (Garrett MS. 142)’, Princeton University Library Chronicle, 66 (2004), 140–72. For direct addresses to York in the early part of the Chronicle, see Bodl. MS Arch. Selden B. 10, fol. 24rv (reign of Cloten), fols 38 –39r (reign of Carause), fol. 67rr (reign of Gurmonde), fols 78 –79v (reign of Cadwallader); and Ellis, pp. 93–94, 155–56, 179–82. York formally put forward his claim to the throne on 16 October 1460. On 24 October an Act of Settlement was drawn up detailing that York should inherit the English throne upon Henry VI’s death, and he was proclaimed heir apparent on 8 November. For further details, see P. A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York 1411–1460 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 212–18. 5 Bodl. MS Arch. Selden B. 10, fol. 5r; Ellis, p. 15. For commonplaces in medieval prologues, see Antonia Gransden, ‘Prologues in the Historiography of Twelfth-Century England’, in Legends, Traditions and History in Medieval England (London: Hambledon, 1992), pp. 125–51, and David Lawton, ‘Dullness in the Fifteenth Century’, ELH, 54 (1987), 761–99. 6 Jocelyn Wogan-Brown and others, The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory, 1280–1520 (University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 7, 317. 7 Bodl. MS Arch. Selden B. 10, fol. 5r; Ellis, p. 15. 262 Sarah L. Peverley In presenting himself as an aged, unskilled, ‘symple’ man, wishing to eschew sin through his writing, Hardyng employs another rhetorical commonplace frequently utilized by fifteenth-century writers to ally themselves with ‘political truth-telling’: the humility topos. As David Lawton has pointed out, we are not to take late medieval authors at face value when they profess to being ‘dull’ and devoid of ‘eloquence’ for this is the favourite guise in which [fifteenth-century] poets present themselves: as ‘lewed’, ‘rude’, lacking in ‘cunnyng’, innocent of rhetoric and social savoir-faire, bankrupt in pocket or brain, too young or too old, feeble, foolish and fallen — in a word dull. This is a humility topos of an intensely specific kind [and is employed] to reclaim access to the public world.8 In this instance, the world that Hardyng wants access to, and licence to speak about, is the politically unstable world of late fifteenth-century England, in which the son of Henry VI has been set aside as heir to the throne in favour of the Duke of York.