A Lost Manuscript of the ‘Rymes of […] Randolf Erl of Chestre’

John Spence

One of the mysteries that continue to surround Robin Hood’s first appearance in literature is that of his companion. In Passus V of the B-Text of Langland’s Piers Plowman, the figure of Sloth laments:

I kan noght parfitly my Paternoster as the preest it syngeth, But I kan rymes of Robyn Hood and Randolf Erl of Chestre, Ac neither of Oure Lord ne of Oure Lady the leeste that evere was maked.1

The reference here is intriguing because, unlike the early Robin Hood ballads,2 no medieval narrative verse is known to survive which has any of the three Ranulfs who were historically earls of as the protagonist.3 There are several studies which explore this mystery – most significantly those by J. W. Ashton in 1905 and Glyn Burgess in 2005.4 Their

1 William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman: A Critical Edition of the B-Text […], ed. A. V .C. Schmidt, 2nd edn (London, 1995; 1st edn 1978), Passus V, ll. 395-7. The reference to ‘Randolf Erl of Chestre’ appears in the B-Text and the C-Text of Piers Plowman (one manuscript refers to ‘Romaunces’ of ‘Randolf þe Reve’: see Piers Plowman: The B-Version [...], ed. George Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson (London, 1975), V, textual note to l. 396, p. 331. Schmidt’s edition dates the B-Text after 1370, but by 1379 (pp. xxiv- xxv); Kane dates the B-Text to soon after 1381, but probably before 1388 (George Kane, ‘Langland, William (c. 1325–c. 1390)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004) (hereafter ODNB), online at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/16021). 2 The main extant early narratives survive in late-fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century copies; the main texts are Robin Hood and the Monk, Robin Hood and the Potter, and A Gest of Robyn Hode. On these see Thomas H. Ohlgren, Robin Hood: The Early Poems, 1465-1560. Texts, Context, and Ideology, with an Appendix by Lister M. Matheson (Cranbury, NJ, 2007); Stephen Knight, Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography (Cornell, 2003), pp. 13-21. The early ballads are edited together both in Rymes of Robyn Hood: An Introduction to the English Outlaw, ed. R. B. Dobson and J. Taylor, 2nd edn (Stroud, Gloucestershire, 1997; 1st edn London, 1976), and in Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, ed. Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren, TEAMS Middle English Texts Series (Kalamazoo, MI, 1997), and online at http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/knightol.htm . 3 Ranulf le Meschin (d. 1129) was Ranulf I, ; his son Ranulf de Gernons (d. 1153) was Ranulf II; and Ranulf II’s grandson, Ranulf Blundeville (1170–1232), was Ranulf III. Useful accounts of their lives are in the ODNB: Edmund King, ‘Ranulf (I), third earl of Chester (d. 1129)’, ODNB, online at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23127; Graeme White, ‘Ranulf (II), fourth earl of Chester (d. 1153)’, ODNB; online edn, May 2007, online at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23128; Richard Eales, ‘Ranulf (III), sixth earl of Chester and first earl of Lincoln (1170–1232)’, ODNB, online edn, Oct. 2008, online at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2716 . A fuller account of Ranulf III’s life is J. W. Alexander, Ranulf of Chester: A Relic of the Conquest (Athens, GA, 1983). 4 J. W. Ashton, ‘“Rymes of … Randolf, Erl of Chestre”’, ELH: A Journal of English Literary History, v (1938), 195- 206; Glyn S. Burgess, ‘“I kan rymes of Robyn Hood, and Randolf Erl of Chestre”’, in Keith Busby, Bernard Guidot, and Logan E. Whelan (eds.), ‘De sens rassis’: Essays in Honor of Rupert T. Pickens (Amsterdam and New , 2005), pp. 51-84. See also R. M. Wilson, The Lost Literature of Medieval England, 2nd edn (London, 1970; 1st edn 1952), pp. 117-18; and James W. Alexander, ‘Ranulf III of Chester: An Outlaw of Legend?’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, lxxxiii (1982), 152-7.

1 eBLJ 2010, Article 6 A Lost Manuscript of the ‘Rymes of […] Randolf Erl of Chestre’ work provides a necessary context for interpreting Langland’s reference. Ashton and Burgess both focus on Ranulf III, and consider his historical role in the politics and warfare of his time. They examine those few surviving brief allusions to Ranulf, earl of Chester, or to an unnamed earl of Chester, in more literary medieval works – notably as a minor character in Fouke le Fitz Waryn and Syr Launfal, as well as (to an extent) in medieval chronicles.5 They look closely at the references to a Randolph or Randall which appear in ballads about Robin Hood (none of which can however be said with certainty to refer to Ranulf, earl of Chester).6 They also discuss a sixteenth-century poem in praise of the earls of Chester which includes a long enumeration of Ranulf III’s achievements. And they investigate the appearances of Ranulf, earl of Chester (and of any unnamed earl of Chester) in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century plays. These include one lost play which featured Ranulf, earl of Chester, as the title character; there are also three surviving plays about Robin Hood where Ranulf has a role.7 This evidence, however, is spread over several hundred years, and seems to point in different directions. The absence of a surviving medieval narrative about Ranulf has even led some scholars to speculate whether Ranulf was ever the central character in a narrative poem, or whether he might instead have been a companion – or enemy – to Robin Hood.8 Others, most notably James W. Alexander, have argued that the Ranulf ‘rymes’ are more likely to take Ranulf II, earl of Chester, as their protagonist than Ranulf III, on the basis that Langland was writing for ‘folks of humble or middling status’ who would not have been interested in a ‘chivalrous or feudal ballad’, but only in a tale of an outlaw who opposed corruption, and that Ranulf II had revolted against King Stephen.9 The identification of Ranulf II has met with some scepticism: Glyn Burgess in particular provides a detailed case against this identification.10 However, none of the scholars who have investigated this question have yet, to my knowledge, discussed the evidence described below, a catalogue entry recording an early lost manuscript copy of verses about the deeds of Ranulf, earl of Chester, which once formed part of MS. Cotton Otho B. III. In this article I will therefore describe the evidence for the lost manuscript copy, analyse what can be learned from the surviving catalogue entry, discuss

5 Ranulf III features in Fouke le Fitz Waryn, ed. E. J. Hathaway, P. T. Ricketts, C. A. Robson and A. D. Wilshire, Anglo-Norman Text Society, 26-28 (Oxford, 1976), at p. 50, l. 9 - p. 53, l. 5, and at p. 57, l. 34 - p. 58, l. 38 (discussed in Burgess, ‘Rymes’, pp. 60-4). A reference to an ‘Erl of Chestre’ participating in a tournament occurs in Syr Launfal (edited in Of Love and Chivalry: An Anthology of Middle English Romance, ed. Jennifer Fellows (London, 1993), pp. 199-229, at ll. 469-74, and discussed in Ashton, ‘Rymes’, p. 196, and Burgess, ‘Rymes’, pp. 58-60). 6 An alternative explanation for these references is that they may refer to a Reynold Greenleaf, another supposed associate of Robin Hood with the same first name: see note to l. 1171 of A Gest of Robyn Hode, in Robin Hood, ed. Knight and Ohlgren, online at http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/Teams/gest.htm . 7 Anthony Munday’s The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon and The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, and the anonymous Look about You: see Ashton, ‘Rymes’, pp. 198-9; Burgess, ‘Rymes’, pp. 78-9. 8 See Burgess, ‘Rymes’, pp. 75-8, 83; Stephen Knight, ‘Which Way to the Forest? Directions in Robin Hood Studies’ in Thomas G. Hahn (ed.), Robin Hood in Popular Culture: Violence, Transgression and Justice (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2000), pp. 111-28, at p. 121. 9 Alexander, ‘Ranulf III’ (quotation from p. 154). Andrew Galloway, ‘Making History Legal: Piers Plowman and the Rebels of Fourteenth-Century England’, in Kathleen M. Hewett-Smith (ed.), William Langland’s ‘Piers Plowman’: A Book of Essays (New York and London, 2001), pp. 7-39, at pp. 25-7, accepts Alexander’s identification. 10 ‘Rymes’, pp. 57-8; see also Eales, ‘Ranulf (III)’.

2 eBLJ 2010, Article 6 A Lost Manuscript of the ‘Rymes of […] Randolf Erl of Chestre’ possible analogues for parts of the text, and make some suggestions about what this entry might mean for helping us to understand the passage in Piers Plowman and the early Robin Hood tradition. I will also identify those historians and antiquaries who saw and made notes from the manuscript before it was damaged. In Thomas Smith’s 1696 catalogue of Sir Robert Cotton’s library, the first item in the manuscript Cotton Otho B. III is described as follows:

Annales a Christo nato ad annum Ch. 1255 : in quibus multa de rebus Angliæ adnotantur, præsertim post adventum Normannorum in Angliam ; & versus finem de obsidione Cestriæ, et de prælio ibidem, & de gestis Ranulphi, Comitis de Cestria. F. I.

[Annals from the birth of Christ to the year of our Lord 1255: in which many things concerning English matters are noted, especially after the arrival of the Normans in England; and lastly verses about the siege of Chester, and about the battle of the same, and about the deeds of Ranulf, earl of Chester. Folio 1.]11

Unfortunately, Cotton Otho B. III is one of the manuscripts that was was badly damaged in the fire at Ashburnham House, Westminster, on 23 October 1731. In the 1732 report on the library’s holdings it was noted that the manuscript now consisted of 84 damaged leaves.12 The manuscript was further harmed in a fire at a bindery in 1865.13 Only 2 folios apparently containing text from item 1 remain (folios 1 and 2 in the manuscript as now extant). These folios contain fragments of a chronicle in Latin prose in a small hand from the second half of the thirteenth century, and the text has been rendered largely illegible by damage. None of the verse material appears to have survived.14 The entry in the Smith catalogue would probably have been noted before now by modern scholars looking at the ‘rymes [...] of Randolf ’, except that a manuscript of John of Fordun’s

11 Thomas Smith, Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian Library, 1696 / Catalogus librorum manuscriptorum bibliothecae Cottonianae (Oxford, 1696); reprinted, ed. C. G. C. Tite (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 69-70 (at p. 69); my translation. 12 [David Casley], A Report from the Committee Appointed to View the Cottonian Library [...] (London, 1732), pp. 59-60 (at p. 59). 13 Andrew Prescott, ‘“Their Present Miserable State of Cremation”: The Restoration of the Cotton Library’, in C. J. Wright (ed.), Sir Robert Cotton as Collector: Essays on an Early Stuart Courtier and his Legacy (London, 1997), pp. 391-454 (p. 448, n. 169). 14 I am grateful to Dr Julian Harrison, Curator of Medieval and Earlier Manuscripts at the British Library, for his advice on the date of the hand and for sharing his description of the manuscript in advance of its publication online at http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/manuscripts/index.asp . The manuscript is also discussed in Annales Cestrienses. Chronicle of the Abbey of S. Werburg, at Chester, ed. R. C. Christie, Publications of the Record Society of and , 14 (London, 1887), ‘Introduction’, pp. 5-38, online at http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=67174 . Christie speculates that Otho B. III was once in the library of St Werburg’s Abbey, Chester, and that the chronicle it once contained may have been a source for the Annales Cestrienses (a set of annals from the end of the thirteenth century from St Werburg’s).

3 eBLJ 2010, Article 6 A Lost Manuscript of the ‘Rymes of […] Randolf Erl of Chestre’

Scotichronicon was apparently classified as Otho B. III after the 1731 fire, and described under that shelfmark in a rather confused entry in the 1802 catalogue of Cottonian manuscripts:

Fragmenta chartacea, in pyxide asservata. [Paper fragments preserved in a box.] Annales : ubi multa de Anglia et Scotia. [Annals, in which there are many things about England and Scotland.] The volume described by Smith under the above reference is said by Casley to have been written on vellum: it may therefore be doubted whether this was a part of it. This fragment is too much damaged to be of any use. A transcript of the articles 7, 8, and 9 of this vol. as described in Dr. Smith’s Catal. has been purchased by the trustees of the Brit. Mus. in the year 1793. See the Catal. of Additions to the Library, No 5444.15

The Scotichronicon manuscript was subsequently reclassified as Cotton Otho B. III*, and the original Otho B. III returned to its earlier shelfmark.16 However, the 1802 catalogue has not yet been superseded as the main reference guide for the Cottonian manuscripts. The Smith catalogue’s reference to Otho B. III’s verses ‘about the siege of Chester, and about the battle of the same, and about the deeds of Ranulf, earl of Chester’, is valuable as confirmation that at least one medieval narrative poem which featured Ranulf as the main character did indeed exist. The catalogue entry is also useful for what we can infer from it about the lost ‘Ranulf rhymes’. While it is not certain from the entry whether the Ranulf of the poem would have been involved in the siege and battle at Chester it apparently described, it certainly seems possible. No siege or battle at Chester is recorded during the lives of any of the three Ranulfs who were historically earls of Chester, but Ranulf III played a role in other sieges, and Ashton, R. M. Wilson, and Burgess have all suggested that chronicle accounts of two of these might represent material that could have been found in the lost ‘rymes’ about Ranulf.17 As none of these scholars examined these possible analogues in the light of their medieval manuscript contexts, I have identified and discussed these below. The first of these was the ‘fair of Lincoln’, the battle that took place at that city during the conflict with Prince Louis of France shortly after the death of King John. The account of this siege which features Ranulf III most prominently appears in a chronicle created by William de Whittlesey in the 1320s and preserved in a single medieval manuscript. Whittlesey, a monk at Peterborough Abbey, was the creator, and one of the authors, of the historical manuscript, written in Latin c. 1322-29, which is now London, British Library, Additional MS. 39758.18 In one passage, at ff. 77rv, the manuscript recounts how Ranulf III defeated and killed the Count

15 J. Planta (ed.), A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian Library Deposited in the British Museum (London, 1802), p. 365 (my translation of the Latin); on the transcript of other parts of Otho B. III, see below, p. 8 and n. 38. The reference to Casley must be a reference to the 1732 report; the brief entry on Otho B. III in David Casley, A Catalogue of the Manuscripts of the King’s Library: an Appendix to the Catalogue of the Cottonian Library [...] (London, 1734), p. 315, reads ‘84 Leaves, burnt round, and useless.’ It makes no mention of vellum. 16 See ‘Introduction’ to Annales Cestrienses, ed. Christie; Colin G. C. Tite, The Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton’s Library: Formation, Cataloguing, Use (London, 2003), p. 150. 17 Ashton, ‘Rymes’, pp. 196-7; Wilson, Lost Literature, pp. 117-18; Burgess, ‘Rymes’, pp. 69-74. 18 On Whittlesey see Janet D. Martin, The Cartularies and Registers of Peterborough Abbey, Northamptonshire Record Society 28 (Kendal, 1978), pp. 17-19. Whittlesey was also a compiler, scribe or illuminator of BL, Add. MS. 47170, a genealogical roll-chronicle: see The British Library Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts, 1946-1950: Part 1, Descriptions (London, 1979), pp. 242-3; John Spence, ‘The Identity of Rauf de Boun, Author of the Petit Bruit’, Reading Medieval Studies, xxxi (2005), 57-76 (pp. 63-5).

4 eBLJ 2010, Article 6 A Lost Manuscript of the ‘Rymes of […] Randolf Erl of Chestre’ of Perche as those loyal to Henry III confronted Louis and his forces at Lincoln, before capturing Louis, forcing him to renounce his claim to the throne, and installing Henry as king.19 In fact Louis was not at the battle, despite some other later chroniclers placing him there; and the earlier History of William Marshal attributes the killing of the earl to Reginald Croc with William Marshal’s assistance.20 Whittlesey’s version of events became known to later historians via William Dugdale’s Baronage of England but I have found no evidence of it circulating more widely in later medieval England.21 The second siege in which Ranulf III was reported to have been involved was however recorded within several versions of a genealogy of the constables of Chester: it is preserved in at least two extant medieval manuscripts, London, National Archives, DL 42/7,22 and London, British Library, Cotton MS. Cleopatra C. III,23 as well as in a transcript by William Dugdale from a medieval manuscript roll.24 These three versions of the text describe how Ranulf, during a campaign against the Welsh, had to take refuge in a castle and sent word to his constable Roger de Lacy at Chester. The constable gathered a crowd of minstrels and shoemakers and marched on the castle as if they were an army, and duped the Welsh forces into retreating. Some

19 The relevant passage is not edited in the extracts from Whittlesey’s chronicle which were printed in Joseph Sparke, Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores varii […], 2 vols (London, 1723), ii, pp. 125-216. 20 See Burgess, ‘Rymes’, pp. 69-73; cf. T. F. Tout, ‘The Fair of Lincoln and the “Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal”’, English Historical Review, xviii (1903), 240-65; History of William Marshal, ed. by A. J. Holden, trans. by S. Gregory, with historical notes by D. Crouch, 3 vols, Anglo-Norman Text Society Occasional Publications Series, 4-6 (London, 2002-6), ll. 16239-17030 (the death of the Count of Perche is at ll. 16704- 68); David Crouch, William Marshal: Knighthood, War and Chivalry, 1147-1219, 2nd edn (London, 2002; 1st edn 1990), pp. 133-5. 21 William Dugdale transcribed the passage in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Dugdale 18 (SC 6058), f. 47v, cols 1-2, and used the story in his The Baronage of England […], 2 vols (London, 1675-76), i, pp. 42-3. The Baronage is the only source cited by J. Horace Round, Peerage and Pedigree: Studies in Peerage Law and Family History, 2 vols (London, 1910), ii, pp. 301-9, and by Ashton, ‘Rymes’, Alexander, ‘Ranulf III’, Wilson, Lost Literature, and Burgess, ‘Rymes’, for this story. 22 Edited in The Coucher Book of the Cistercian Abbey of Kirkstall in the West Riding of the County of York [...], ed. W. T. Lancaster and W. Paley Baildon, Thoresby Society, 8 (Leeds, 1904), pp. 237-43 (pp. 241-2). 23 Edited in William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum […], 3 vols (London, 1655-73), i, pp. 187-90 (at p. 188); in the revised 19th-century edition, William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum [...], rev. by John Caley, Henry Ellis and Bandinel, 6 vols (London, 1817-30), it appears in v, at pp. 315-6 (p. 315). 24 In Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. hist. c. 242 (SC 39868), ff. 78v-79v (74v-75v in earlier foliation) which, Dugdale writes, was taken ‘Ex Rotulo quodam antiquo in pergamena de tempore Rex Henr: vjti (vt videtur) penes Petrum Daniell de Tabley com. Cestr. armig. September Anno 1640’ (f. 78v) [‘from an old parchment roll from the time of King Henry VI (it seems) belonging to Peter Daniell of Tabley, squire of the county of Cheshire in September 1640’ (my translation)]. This version is similar, but not identical, to the version provided in the Monasticon. According to The Containing King’s Vale-Royal Entire Together with Considerable Extracts from Sir Peter Leycester’s Antiquities of Cheshire […], 2 vols (Chester, 1778), ii, pp. 809-10, Peter Daniell of Over-Tabley, Cheshire, was a Member of Parliament in 1625 and died 18 April 1652, aged 68.

5 eBLJ 2010, Article 6 A Lost Manuscript of the ‘Rymes of […] Randolf Erl of Chestre’ later versions, beginning apparently with Humphrey Lhoyd and David Powell’s Historie of Cambria, identified Ranulf ’s place of refuge as , about 30 miles from Chester.25 However, the medieval texts of this account which I have identified do not name the castle, although it is clearly outside Chester even in these cases. Ranulf III was also involved in other sieges. He participated in Richard I’s siege of Nottingham Castle in 1194.26 During the Fifth Crusade, he was also present at the siege of Damietta in 1218 and 1219.27 Ranulf II, another possible protagonist in this lost work, had also seen his share of sieges, notably at Lincoln. He had been besieged by King Stephen in Lincoln Castle in 1141; he later besieged Lincoln twice, in 1147 and 1149.28 Chester itself was besieged in the thirteenth century after Ranulf III’s death. In 1265, while it was held by the de Montforts, royalist forces besieged the castle.29 However, no siege or battle recorded at Chester that I have identified involved any of the three Ranulfs who were earls of Chester.

25 Humphrey Lhoyd and David Powell, The Historie of Cambria, now called […] (London, 1568), pp. 296- 7, which does not cite a source for the story. This passage is repeated verbatim in the first edition of Raphael Holinshed et al., The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland [...], 2 vols (London, 1577), ii, p. 641; it is also referred to in William Camden, (London, 6th edn. 1607; 1st edn. 1586), p. 462, cf. William Camden, Britain [...], trans. by Philemon Holland (London, 1610) p. 610; the story itself (without a reference to the source) first appeared in Camden’s Britannia in the third edition (London, 1590), at p. 487. The Historie of Cambria is also cited as a source for this episode in Dugdale, Baronage, i, p. 101 (in addition to the version of the story from BL, Cotton MS. Cleopatra C. III which Dugdale himself had included in the Monasticon). Peter Leycester, Historical Antiquities in Two Books […], 2 vols (London, 1673), ii, p. 141, gives a version of this narrative naming Rhuddlan, citing as his source ‘an ancient Parchment Roll, written above two hundred Years ago, wherein the Barons of Halton with their Issue were carefully collected’; however, the passage makes clear that Leycester was also familiar with the accounts in The Historie of Cambria, Camden’s Britannia, and Dugdale’s Baronage. There are also post-medieval versions of the story which mention Rhuddlan in manuscripts, probably taken from these printed sources. I have noted versions in BL, Harl. MS. 2099, p. 530, and in BL, Harl. MS. 2159, f. 58v, both of which belonged to Randle Holmes IV of Cheshire before passing into the Harleian collection; and in BL, Add. MS. 11334, ff. 43rv, a manuscript of Dr Foote Gower (on whom see below, p. 7 and n. 36). 26 Trevor Foulds, ‘The Siege of Nottingham Castle in 1194’, Transactions of the Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire, xcv (1991), 20-8, reproduced online at http://www.deremilitari.org/resources/articles/foulds.htm. 27 Thomas C. Van Cleve, ‘The Fifth Crusade’, in Kenneth M. Sutton (gen. ed.), A History of the Crusades, 6 vols (Madison, Milwaukee and London, 1952-89), ii, pp. 377-428 (402-21). 28 Paul Dalton, ‘Aiming at the Impossible: Ranulf II Earl of Chester and Lincolnshire in the Reign of King Stephen’, in A. T. Thacker (ed.), The Earldom of Chester and its Charters: A Tribute to Geoffrey Barraclough, Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society, lxxi (1991), pp. 109-34, at p. 112; Gesta Stephani, ed. and trans. K. R. Potter, intro. and notes by R. H. C. Davis (Oxford, 1976), pp. 110-12, 198, 220, gives a hostile account of Ranulf II’s actions. 29 J. R. Maddicott, Simon de Montfort (Cambridge, 1994), p. 335; A. T. Thacker, ‘Later Medieval Chester 1230- 1550: City and Crown, 1237-1350’, in B. E. Harris, A. T. Thacker et al. (eds.), The Victoria History of the : A History of the County of Chester, 5 vols, in progress (Oxford and London, 1979-), v, part 1, The City of Chester: General History and Topography, pp. 34-8 (p. 34 and n. 17), and online at http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=19185 .

6 eBLJ 2010, Article 6 A Lost Manuscript of the ‘Rymes of […] Randolf Erl of Chestre’

In summary, this catalogue entry, not previously noted as evidence about the ‘rymes [...] of Randolf ’, makes clear that there was indeed once a written narrative verse text about Ranulf, earl of Chester, in existence, apparently since the second half of the thirteenth century and until 1731.30 It seems likely that Ranulf III was the subject of this poem, and the focus was apparently on his military exploits, which fits well with some other semi- legendary references to Ranulf that appear in late medieval sources.31 If the lost text was a later-thirteenth-century verse narrative about Ranulf, this would have been around two hundred years older than the earliest extant manuscript containing a poem about Robin Hood, and around a hundred years earlier than the reference in Piers Plowman. Smith’s catalogue gives no indication of the language, but what are probably the surviving pages of the chronicle are in Latin. If the verses were also in Latin, they would not necessarily present an obstacle to a parish priest such as Sloth, who describes himself as being able to understand administrative language, even though he cannot interpret religious Latin texts.32 The placement of the verses next to a chronicle parallels some of Robin Hood’s earliest literary appearances from the fifteenth century, in chronicles and in marginal notes accompanying chronicles; it seems both narrative traditions had a semi-historical status.33 It should also be noted that the verses about Ranulf were in a manuscript which was seen by several historians and antiquaries prior to the 1731 fire. The manuscript was lent to Richard Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1608, and had also been borrowed by Hugh Barker and James Ussher (later Archbishop of Armagh) by 1611.34 Roger Dodsworth made notes from the chronicle which preceded the verses about Chester and Ranulf.35 Dr Foote Gower may also have had access to information from the chronicle.36 Henry Wharton too

30 It is possible that the verses could have been added to the end of the chronicle significantly after the chronicle itself was copied into the manuscript. Indeed, they could even have been bound together from separate manuscripts at any point before the 1696 catalogue entry was composed. As both the chronicle and the verses are listed as a single item, however, the second possibility is very unlikely. 31 Cf. the appearances in Fouke le Fitz Waryn and Syr Launfal mentioned above, p. 2 and n. 5, and also Ranulf III’s appearance in The Oldest Anglo-Norman Prose ‘Brut’ Chronicle: An Edition and Translation, ed. Julia Marvin, Medieval Chronicles (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2006), p. 282, ll. 3969-80, discussed at p. 40 and n. 143. 32 Langland, Piers Plowman: B-Text, ed. Schmidt, Passus V, ll. 416-22. 33 On these appearances see most recently Julian M. Luxford, ‘An English Chronicle Entry on Robin Hood’, Journal of Medieval History, xxxv (2009), 70-6. This identifies a previously unnoticed note concerning Robin Hood, perhaps written in the mid-1460s, written in the margins of a manuscript of Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon. 34 Tite, Early Records, pp. 45, 53, 150. Hugh Barker was a civil lawyer who held posts in London and Oxford in the early seventeenth century: Sheila Doyle, ‘Barker, Hugh (1565–1632)’, ODNB, online edn, Jan 2008, online at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1399. On Bancroft see Nicholas W. S. Cranfield, ‘Bancroft, Richard (bap. 1544, d. 1610)’, ODNB, online edn, Jan. 2008, online at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1272; on Ussher see Alan Ford, ‘Ussher, James (1581–1656)’, ODNB, online at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28034 . 35 Bodleian Library, MS. Dodsworth 122 (SC 5063), f. 98v. These notes do not mention Ranulf. 36 Christie notes that the antiquary and cleric Dr Foote Gower (1725/6-1780), in the first edition of his A Sketch of the Materials for a New History of Cheshire (Chester and London, 1771), stated that he was in possession of ‘The most Material Parts of the Chester Annals’ (p. 83). This material was said to be from ‘a remarkable manuscript; frequently quoted under the Title of Annales Cestrienses, or the Chester Annals. The Author of this Manuscript is unknown. It consists of Annals from the Birth of Christ to the Year 1255; and particularly recites many Historical Circumstances relative to Chester, with the renowned Acts of its Great Monarch, the famous Earl Randal’ (pp. 15-16). I have not been able to locate any trace of a similar manuscript other than Otho B. III; it seems more likely to me that at the time of writing Gower was not aware of the extent of the damage to this part of Otho B. III, a supposition supported in ‘Introduction’ to Annales Cestrienses, ed. Christie, n. 6. On Gower see D. Ben Rees, ‘Gower, Foote (1725/6–1780)’, ODNB, online edn, Jan. 2008, online at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11172 .

7 eBLJ 2010, Article 6 A Lost Manuscript of the ‘Rymes of […] Randolf Erl of Chestre’ appears to have noted information from this chronicle, and it seems that Bishop Kennett later made his own notes from some of Wharton’s notes.37 Other sections of Cotton Otho B. III were transcribed on behalf of the antiquary John Bridges, in what is now London, British Library, Additional MS. 5444.38 John Le Neve also made use of information from other parts of Cotton Otho B. III.39 Perhaps more traces of the ‘rymes […] of Randolf Erl of Chestre’ may yet be discovered among the unedited notes of one of these scholars.

37 See ‘Introduction’ to Annales Cestrienses, ed. Christie. Christie notes that the Diptycha of Bishop of Peterborough, White Kennett, in BL, Lansdowne MS. 935, cites Otho B. III under the title ‘Annal. Cestr.’, apparently drawing on it via Henry Wharton’s manuscripts for several items of information about the abbots of St Werburg’s. On Wharton see Laird Okie, ‘Wharton, Henry (1664–1695)’, ODNB, online edn, Oct 2008, online at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/29167 . On Kennett see Laird Okie, ‘Kennett, White (1660–1728)’, ODNB, online at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/15402 . 38 See Annales Londonienses in Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, ed. William Stubbs, Rolls Series, 2 vols (London, 1882-83), i, pp. xi-xv (edited at pp. 3-251); Spence, ‘Rauf de Boun’, p. 73, n. 30. 39 Christie notes that John Le Neve, Fasti Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ […] (London, 1716) cites Otho B. III as its source for the date of Ralph de Maydenstune’s resignation from the bishopric of Hereford (at pp. 108-9), but the information is from the Annales Londonienses; cf. Annales Londonienses, ed. Stubbs, p. 36. Le Neve, Fasti, also cites Otho B. III as a source at pp. 56, 258, 285, and 256; in each case the reference is to the Annales Londonienses (cf. Annales Londonienses, ed. Stubbs, pp. 134, 233, 133-4, and 238 respectively). Le Neve drew heavily on Kennett’s materials for his Fasti (see Nicholas Doggett, ‘Le Neve, John (b. 1679, d. in or before 1741)’, in ODNB, online at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/16439 ); Le Neve might also, of course, consulted Otho B. III directly.

I am grateful to Judith Weiss for encouraging me to pursue this reference to the ‘rymes of [...] Randolf ’, to Eva Oledzka of the Bodleian Library for her assistance with MS Eng. hist. c. 242, and to the eBLJ’s editor and anonymous reader for their helpful advice which has improved this article.

8 eBLJ 2010, Article 6