¹ There is no modern comparative study of the Benedictine congregations: a summary survey was offered by Philibert Schmitz's Histoire de l'ordre de Saint Benoit (7 vols., 1942–56), iii.ii, 157–269 (du Concile du Constance à la Réforme). For a lively account of Bursfeld, Melk, Padua and the reform of St-Sulpice de Bourges see G. G. Coulton, Five Centuries of Religion, iv: The Last Days of Medieval Monachism (Cambridge, 1950), 165–95, 208–34, 386–99. For Padua see also Collett, B., Italian Benedictine Scholars and the Reformation: The Congregation of Santa Giustina of Padua (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar. For the learning of the monks of these congregations in the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries see now F. Posset, Renaissance Monks: Monastic Humanism in Six Biographical Sketches, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions, 108 (Leiden, 2005).

² N. Brann, The Abbot Trithemius (1462–1516). The Renaissance of Monastic Humanism, Studies in the History of Christian Thought, 24 (Leiden, 1981), 107–203, 218.

³ Ibid., 227.

⁴ Ibid., 243.

⁵ Cassiodorus, Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum, ed. R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1937). See also G. Picasso, ‘Tradizione monastica e cultura umanistica all'alba del Medioevo. Scienter nescius et sapienter indoctus (S. Gregorio Magno, Dialogi 2,1)’, Benedictina, 45, 2 (1999), 259–67. For the prohibition of letters see Regula Benedicti, liv.

⁶ For the place of learning in the Carolingian reform see Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, ed. R. McKitterick (Cambridge, 1994); D. Ganz, Corbie in the Carolingian Renaissance, Beihefte der Francia, Bd. 20 (Sigmaringen, 1990). For the ecclesiastical background see R. McKitterick, The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms, 789–895, Royal Historical Society Studies in History (1977).

⁷ Leclercq, J., The Love of Learning and the Desire for God (New York, 1982), 133Google Scholar; Southern, R. W., Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford, 1970), 59Google Scholar.

⁸ See, for example, Hale, J. R., England and the Italian Renaissance: The Growth of Interest in its History and Art (1966)Google Scholar; England and the Continental Renaissance: Essays in Honour of J. B. Trapp, ed. E. Chaney and P. Mack (Woodbridge, 1990).

⁹ For the failed Celestine foundation of Henry V see Catto, J. I., ‘Religious Change under Henry V’, in Henry V: The Practice of Kingship, ed. Harriss, G. L. (Oxford, 1985), 97–115Google Scholar. For the Brigittine abbey of Syon see V. Gillespie, Syon Abbey, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 9 (2001), idem, ‘Syon and the New Learning’, in The Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England, Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, 18 (Woodbridge, 2002), 75–95. For the Franciscan Observants see Medieval Religious Houses, ed. D. Knowles and R. Hadcock (1971); Moorman, J., A History of the Franciscan Order from its Origin to the year 1517 (Oxford, 1968), 444Google Scholar.

¹⁰ For the Carthusians see E. M. Thompson, The Carthusians in England (1930); M. Aston, ‘The Development of the Carthusian order in Europe and Britain: A Preliminary Survey’, in In Search of Cult: Essays in Honour of Philip Ratz, ed. M. O. H. Carver (Woodbridge, 1993), 139–51. For their role in the writing and transmission of devotional and spiritual texts see R. Lovatt, ‘The Imitatio Christi in Late Medieval England: The Alexander Prize Essay’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, fifth series, 18 (1968), 97–121 at 107, 110; idem, ‘The Library of John Blacman and Contemporary Carthusian Spirituality’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 43 (1992), 195–230; Sargent, M. G., ‘The Transmission by the English Carthusians of Some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 27 (1976), 225–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ For reports of hunting hounds, terriers and other canines in the precincts of English monasteries in this period see A. Jessopp, Visitations of Religious Houses in the Diocese of Norwich, Camden Society, new series, 43 (1888), 21 (Wymondham Abbey, 1492), 264 (Norwich Priory, 1532), 279–80 (St Benet Hulme).

¹² D. Knowles, The Religious Orders in England (3 vols., Cambridge, 1949–59), iii, 449.

¹³ For background see ibid., 445–9. See also G. Sitwell, ‘The Foundation and Recruitment of the English Benedictine Congregation’, Downside Review, 102 (1984), 48–59; idem, ‘The 1617 Constitutions of the English Benedictine Congregation’, Downside Review, 98 (1980), 291–7.

¹⁴ Knowles, Religious Orders, ii, 218, iii, 460.

¹⁵ Knowles, D., ‘The Cultural Influence of English Medieval Monasticism’, Cambridge Historical Journal, 7, 3 (1943), 146–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶ Weiss, R., Humanism in England during the Fifteenth Century, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1957), 10Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Knowles, Religious Orders, iii, 460. Dobson, R. B., Durham Priory, 1400–1450 (Cambridge, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘English Monastic Cathedrals in the Fifteenth Century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, sixth series, 1 (1991), 151–72; R. B. Dobson, ‘The Monks of Canterbury in the Later Middle Ages, 1220–1540’, A History of Canterbury Cathedral, ed. P. Collinson, N. Ramsay and M. Sparks (Oxford, 1995), 69–153; J. Greatrex, ‘Monk Students from Norwich Cathedral Priory at Oxford and Cambridge, c. 1300 to 1530’, English Historical Review, 106 (1991), 555–83; idem, J. Greatrex, ‘Rabbits and Eels at High Table: Monks of Ely at the University of Cambridge, c. 1337–1539’, in Monasteries and Society in Medieval Britain, ed. B. J. Thompson, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 6 (Stamford, 1999), 312–28; B. F. Harvey, ‘The Monks of Westminster and the University of Oxford’, in The Reign of Richard II: Essays in Honour of May McKisack, ed. F. R. H. DuBoulay and C. M. Barron (1971), 108–30; idem, Living and Dying in England: The Monastic Experience, 1100–1500 (Oxford, 1993).

¹⁸ Prominent among these new research tools are: English Benedictine Libraries: The Shorter Catalogues, ed. R. W. Sharpe, J. Carley, K. Friis Jensen and A. G. Watson, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 4 (1996); Sharpe, R. W., A Handlist of the Latin Writers of Great Britain and Ireland to 1540 (Turnhout, 1997)Google Scholar; Thomson, R. M., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts in Worcester Cathedral Library (Cambridge, 2001)Google Scholar; Wenzel, S., Latin Sermon Collections from Later Medieval England (Cambridge, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For new light on the reception of humanism see D. G. Rundle, ‘On the Difference between Virtue and Weiss: Humanist Texts in England during the Fifteenth Century’, in Courts, Counties and the Capital in the Later Middle Ages, The Fifteenth-Century Series, 4 (Stroud, 1996), 181–203.

¹⁹ Knowles, D., The Monastic Order in England (Cambridge, 1940), 691Google Scholar; Dobson, ‘English Monastic Cathedrals’, 153. For research that has reached towards this goal see, for example, A. J. Piper, ‘The Names of the Durham Monks’, in The Durham Liber vitae and its Context, ed. D. W. Rollason, Regions and Regionalism in History, 1 (Woodbridge, 2004), 117–25; J. Greatrex, ‘‘Who Were the Monks of Rochester?’, in Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology at Rochester, ed. T. Ayers and T. W. T. Tatton-Brown, British Archaeological Association, Conference Transactions, 28 (Leeds, 2006), 205–17; B. Collett, ‘Holy Expectations: The Female Monastic Vocation in the Diocese of Winchester on the Eve of the Reformation’, in The Culture of Medieval English Monasticism, Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, 30 (Woodbridge, 2007), 147–65. Prosopographic studies have served to open up this perspective, notably Greatrex, J., A Biographical Register of the English Cathedral Priories, c. 1066–1540 (Oxford, 1996)Google Scholar; and The Heads of Religious Houses in England and Wales, III. 1377–1540, ed. D. M. Smith (Cambridge, 2008).

²⁰ This perspective is apparent in recent work on women religious: Lee, P., Nunneries, Learning, and Spirituality in Late Medieval English Society: The Dominican Priory of Dartford (York, 2001)Google Scholar; Erler, M., Women, Reading and Piety in Late Medieval England (Cambridge, 2002)Google Scholar.

²¹ J. I. Catto, ‘Wyclif and Wyclifism at Oxford, 1356–1430’, in A History of the University of Oxford, ii: Late Medieval Oxford, ed. J. I. Catto and T. A. R. Evans (Oxford, 1992), 175–261 at 206, 228–9. See also Documents Illustrating the General and Provincial Chapters of the English Black Monks, 1215–1540, ed. W. A. Pantin, Camden Society Third Series (3 vols., 1931–7), iii, 76–7; M. Harvey, ‘Adam Easton and the Condemnation of John Wyclif, 1377’, English Historical Review, 113 (1998), 321–54

²² The quaestio on the schism composed by the St Albans monk, Nicholas Radcliff, preserved in British Library (BL), Royal MS 6 d x, may have been commissioned by his abbot (and capitular president) Thomas de la Mare. See also A. B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to AD 1500 (BRUO) (3 vols., Oxford, 1957–9), iii, 1539.

²³ Wenzel, Latin Sermon Collections from Later Medieval England, especially, 278–87. See also A Macaronic Sermon Collection from Late Medieval England: Oxford MS Bodley 649, ed. P. J. Horner, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Studies and Texts, 153 (Toronto, 2006).

²⁴ Prior Thomas Chillenden of Christ Church, Canterbury, Abbot John Chinnock of Glastonbury and Thomas Clare of Bury and Thomas Rome of Durham Priory attended the council at Pisa; Abbot Richard Salford of Abingdon was present at his own expense; Abbot Thomas Spofford and Abbot William Colchester of Westminster Abbey attended Constance, where Abbot Chinnock may also have been present; Abbot Nicholas Frome of Glastonbury was at Basel. See M. Harvey, ‘English Views of the Reforms to be Undertaken at the General Councils, with Special Reference to the Proposals Made by Richard Ullerston’ (D.Phil. dissertation, University of Oxford, 1964), 262–3, 277–8. See also G. Masni, Sacrorum conciliorum. . .Collection (31 vols., Florence, 1759–62), xxvii, col. 349. See also Mavis E. Mate, ‘Chillenden, Thomas (d. 1411)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004), 38470; Memorials of King Henry VI. Official Correspondence of Thomas Benkynton, Secretary to Henry VI and Bishop of Bath and Wells, ed. G. Williams, Rolls Series, 56 (1872), ii. 259.

²⁵ BL, Arundel MS 11, fos. 34r–40v at 40r. It is worth noting Wheathampstead did not continue his essay beyond the calling of the Basel council.

²⁶ Memorials of St Edmund's Abbey, ed. T. Arnold, Rolls Series, 96 (3 vols., 1890–6), iii, 252–7.

²⁷ J. G. Greatrex, ‘Thomas Rudborne, Monk of Winchester, and the Council of Florence’, in Schism, Heresy and Religious Protest, ed. D. Baker, Papers Read at the 10th Summer Meeting and the 11th Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society (Cambridge, 1972), 171–6.

²⁸ Walsh, K., A Fourteenth-Century Scholar and Primate: Richard Fitzralph in Oxford, Avignon and Armagh (Oxford, 1981), 446–7Google Scholar.

²⁹ Harvey, M., Lay Religious Life in Late Medieval Durham (Woodbridge, 2006), 29–31, 33Google Scholar.

³⁰ Kerby-Fulton, K., Books under Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing in Late Medieval England (Notre Dame, 2006), 102Google Scholar.

³¹ Thomae Walsingham, quondam monachi S. Albani, Historia Anglicana, 1272–1381, ed. H. T. Riley (2 vols., 1863–4), i, 275, ii, 242–3.

³² Kerby-Fulton, Books under Suspicion, 202–3.

³³ J. Hogg, ‘Adam Easton's Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition, 6, ed. M. Glasscoe (Woodbridge, 2003), 213–40. For Easton's career see also Harvey, M., The English in Rome, 1362–1420: Portrait of an Expatriate Community (Cambridge, 1999), 188–212Google Scholar.

³⁴ Harvey, The English in Rome, 188–212.

³⁵ English Benedictine Libraries, ed. Sharpe et al., b108. 9–13 (632). This sequence of texts, works of John Acton, John Colt, Thomas Parker and Nicholas Ryssheton, dating from 1378, 1395–6, which may have been bound together in a single codex, was recorded at the abbey by John Leland in the 1530s but may have entered the book collection a century or more before. It is tempting to connect them with the intellectual legacy of Cardinal Simon Langham and the abbacy of William of Colchester (1387–1420).

³⁶ See especially The St Albans Chronicle, 1406–1420, ed. V. H. Galbraith (Oxford, 1937).

³⁷ Memorials of St Edmund's Abbey, ed. Arnold, iii, 255; Greatrex, ‘Thomas Rudborne’, 174.

³⁸ See, for example, Oxford, Oriel College, MS 15, a compilation made for Nicholas Fawkes of Glastonbury Abbey: Catto, J. I., ‘Some English Manuscripts of Wyclif's Latin Works’, in From Ockham to Wyclif, ed. Hudson, A. and Wilks, M., Studies in Church History, Subsidia, 5 (Oxford, 1987), 353–59 at 354, 357Google Scholar.

³⁹ Oxford, Bodl., Bodley MS 144, fo. 34r.

⁴⁰ Knowles, Religious Orders, ii, 178–84, 280–3, 369–70. Knowles doubts the influence of the Black Monks under the Lancastrians, but his account of Henry V's monastic foundations and his tally of monastic prelates in some way supports a counter-argument.

⁴¹ Emden, BRUO, iii, 1734, 2007.

⁴² Historia Anglicana, ed. Riley, ii, 337: ‘quod major pars praelatorum ac seniorum eiusdem ordinis defecisset effraenata juverntus eius tempore successisset’.

⁴³ For the role of graduates in the work of the chapters see, for example, those named as capitular visitors in 1393 and those selected as electors for the next chapter, Prior John Braby of Selby, William Islep, Thomas Merk and Thomas Shrewsbury, all Oxford men, while Braby and four further theologians, Thomas Bekenham, Thomas Camme, Thomas Grantham and Simon Southerey, were selected as electors for the next chapter: Chapters, ed. Pantin, ii, 92–3.

⁴⁴ See, for example, the preacher William Walden: ‘verbum Dei ibidem fructuose proposuit in Latinis’: Chapters, ed. Pantin, ii, 135. For the style of such sermons see S. Wenzel, ‘The Classics in Late Medieval Preaching’, in Medieval Antiquity, ed. A. Welkenhuysen, H. Braet and W. Verbeke, Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, Series 1, Studia xxiv (Louvain, 1995), 127–43.

⁴⁵ Chapters, ed. Pantin, ii, 107–8.

⁴⁶ For the careers of these three superiors see Emden, BRUO, iii, 1744, 2032–4. For Wessington see also Dobson, Durham Priory, 81–113. Although Wessington was forty-five at his election, he was younger than many of his predecessors in office and was promoted above the heads of elder colleagues: ibid., 89.

⁴⁷ For a summary of Elmham's career see S. E. Kelly, ‘Elmham, Thomas (b. 1364, d. in or after 1427)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 8734. His university career was apparently brief.

⁴⁸ Dobson, Durham Priory, 378–86; English Benedictine Libraries, ed. Sharpe et al., b88, b89, b90 (563–84).

⁴⁹ Newton was one of two commissioners appointed to supervise the reform of observance at Spofford's abbey in 1390. For Newton in York diocese see Hughes, J., Pastors and Visionaries: Religion and Secular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire (Woodbridge, 1988)Google Scholar, especially 178–83.

⁵⁰ Chapters, ed. Pantin, ii, 142.

⁵¹ Ibid., 180–2 at 182.

⁵² Notable among his donations was a deluxe copy of Thomas Netter's Doctrinale, now BL, Royal MS 8 g x ex dono identifying Gloucester College at fo. 204v.

⁵³ Emden, BRUO, iii, 1744; Registra quorundam abbatum monasterii S. Albani, qui sæculo XVmo. Floruere, ed. H. T. Riley, Rolls Series, 28/6 (1872–3), Registrum abbatiae Johannis Whethamstede, i, 317–22.

⁵⁴ Graham, R., ‘The English Province of the Order of Cluny in the Fifteenth Century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, fourth series, 7 (1926), 98–130Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Graham, ‘English Province of the Order of Cluny’, 109–20.

⁵⁶ For the provision of the Oxford studium see J. I. Catto, ‘The Cistercians in Oxford, 1280–1539’, in Benedictines in Oxford, ed. H. Wansbrough and A. Marett-Crosby (1997), 108–15.

⁵⁷ Letters from the English Abbots to the Chapter at Citeaux, 1442–1521, ed. C. H. Talbot, Camden Fourth Series, 4 (1967), 112–13.

⁵⁸ One of the last graduates of the Cistercian studium was also the most prominent: Gabriel Dunne of Stratford Langthorne progressed from Oxford to Louvain, to the abbacy of Buckfast, and, after the Dissolution, to a prebendary of St Paul's: Nicholas Orme, ‘Dunne, Gabriel (c. 1490–1558)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 7818.

⁵⁹ Chapters, ed. Pantin, ii, 187–220.

⁶⁰ Knowles, Religious Orders, ii, 43–5 at 45.

⁶¹ The most lengthy and perhaps the liveliest accounts are those recording the first and second abbacies of John Wheathampstead of St Albans: Annales monasterii S. Albani a Johanne Amundesham monacho ut videutr consripti AD 1421–1440, ed. H. T. Riley, Rolls Series, 28 (2 vols., 1870–1); Registrum quorundam abbatum monasterii S. Albani qui seaculo XVmo floruere, ed. H. T. Riley, Rolls Series, 28/6 (2 vols., 1872–3).

⁶² B. F. Harvey, ‘A Novice's Life at Westminster Abbey in the Century before the Dissolution’, in The Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England, ed. J. G. Clark (Woodbridge, 2002), 51–73.

⁶³ For the background to these canons see Knowles, Religious Orders, ii, 15. It was Summi magistri of Benedict XII that placed particular emphasis on the ‘primitive sciences’ of grammar, logic and philosophy, although the decretal Ne in agro had raised the matter as early as 1311: Chapters, ed. Pantin, i, 173–4.

⁶⁴ English Benedictine Libraries, ed. Sharpe et al., b30.7, b55.142a, b86.14a, b89.6a (139, 287, 553, 573); M. R. James, Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover. The Catalogues of the Libraries of Christ Church Priory and St. Augustine's Abbey at Canterbury and of St. Martin's Priory at Dover. Now First Collected and Published with an Introduction and Identifications of the Extant Remains (Cambridge, 1903) nos. 1408, 1412, 1415 (360–1), 1420, 1422 (367), 1456 (366), 1492 (376).

⁶⁵ Oxford, Bodl., Bodley MS 649, fo. 128r.

⁶⁶ For an impression of the authorities in arts employed in earlier generations see the fifteenth-century catalogue of the library of St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury: Ancient Libraries, 349–59, 361–3 (nos. 1279–1392, 417, 423). The same catalogue contains no fewer than six copies of Cicero's De officiis (pp. 304–5, nos. 1010–11, 1015, 1016, 1018) now perhaps more prominent in the linguistic preparation of the monks.

⁶⁷ BL, Royal MS 10 b ix, fos. 46v–52v, 53r–55r (there are further epigrams to fo. 55v).

⁶⁸ A volume recorded again at St Augustine's, Canterbury, may serve to exemplify the shift at least in the greater houses: owned by John Hawkhurst (d. by Feb. 1430), it held glosses on Horace's Odes, Epodes and Epistles and on Sallust: James, Ancient Libraries, no. 1451 (365) see also his books at nos. 1013 (304), 1477, 1479–80 (368). See also Emden, BRUO, ii, 890–1.

⁶⁹ Worcester Cathedral Chapter Library, MS q5 (fo. 78r).

⁷⁰ Oxford, Bodl., Rawlinson MS g 99. Legat's inscription is at flyleaf ix ult. v, the Heroides at 21r–65v. Legat also acquired copies of Cicero's De inventione and the pseudonymous Ad Herennium, which he had bound: BL, Harley MS 2624, fo. 2r.

⁷¹ For background see M. B. Parkes, ‘The Provision of Books’, in The History of the University of Oxford, ii: Late Medieval Oxford, ed. Catto and Evans, 407–83.

⁷² Worcester Cathedral Chapter Library, MS f 69 (fo. 363v).

⁷³ An instance of this novel approach to the ars dictaminis is offered by the Canterbury anthology, BL, Royal MS 10 b ix. For the teaching of dictamen in this period see Medieval Rhetorics of Prose Composition: Five English Artes dictandi and their Tradition, ed. M. Camargo (Binghamton, NY, 1995); M. Camargo ‘Beyond the libri catoniani: Models of Latin Prose Style at Oxford University, c. 1400’, Mediaeval Studies, 56 (1994), 165–87. For the trend in contemporary library catalogues see James, Ancient Libraries, 298 (nos. 951–66), 299–300. Tbe range of authorities here (St Augustine's, Canterbury) ran from Geoffrey of Vinsauf's Poetria nova to the letter book of the Canterbury monk John Mason, of which there were three copies available nos. 953–4, 966.

⁷⁴ BL, Harley MS 2268, fos. 3r-117r.

⁷⁵ BL, Royal MS 10 b ix. The manuscript was acquired by the Christ Church monk, Henry Cranbrook, in 1452, from one J. Hynder, who may also have been a monk of the house.

⁷⁶ Wheathampstead cited De claris mulieribus under the heading ‘Amor coniugalis’ in BL, Cotton MS Tiberius d v, Pt i, fo. 6r. His Palearium poetarum (partially preserved in BL, Add. MS 26764) was apparently modelled on Boccaccio's Genealogia deorum gentilium. A compilation for which Abbot Wheathampstead was at least partially responsible contains a brief accessus on Bruni which precedes an epitome of his De primo bello Punico: BL, Arundel MS 11, fo. 92r–99v at 92r.

⁷⁷ Worcester Cathedral Chapter Library, MS fos. 124, 203v–206v.

⁷⁸ Worcester Cathedral Chapter Library, MS Add x (11), a slip of parchment removed from MS f 140 (Ludolphus of Saxony).

⁷⁹ Canterbury College, Oxford, ed. W. A. Pantin, Oxford Historical Society, New Series, 6–8, 30 (4 vols., 1942–85), i, 21 (1501 catalogue).

⁸⁰ Ibid., 60–2 (1521 catalogue), 81 (Goldwell inventory), 105 (Bruni: catalogue of 1510).

⁸¹ English Benedictine Libraries, ed. Sharpe et al., b59. 24 (306).

⁸² See also Clark, J. G., ‘Print and Pre-Reformation Religion: The Benedictines and the Printing in England, c. 1470–1550’, in The Uses of Script and Print, 1400–1700, ed. Crick, J. and Walsham, A. (Cambridge, 2004), 71–92Google Scholar.

⁸³ An early example is the Tewkesbury book Oxford, Trinity College, MS 50 ‘ad utilitatem claustralium ibidem studentium’. See also, from St Albans, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 5 ‘in libraria conventus ad opus claustralium voluit remanere’.

⁸⁴ BL, Royal MS 10 b ix, fo. 44v. He was removed when war resuned.

⁸⁵ To be paid an annual rate of 13s 4d: Annales, ed. Riley, i, 110.

⁸⁶ For Wheathampstead's letters see Registrum, ed. Riley. For Joseph see The Letter Book of Robert Joseph, Monk-Scholar of Evesham and Gloucester College, Oxford, 1530–3, ed. H. Aveling and W. A. Pantin, Oxford Historical Society, New Series, 19 (Oxford, 1967).

⁸⁷ Formularies which Bear on the History of Oxford, c. 1204–1420, ed. H. E. Salter, W. A. Pantin and H. G. Richardson, Oxford Historical Society, New Series 4–5 (2 vols., Oxford, 1942), i, 238, ii, 304–6, 312–14, 317, 321; Chapters, ed. Pantin, iii, 27, 30–1, 53–5. These last were letters of business but in style and tone are no dissimilar from those of either Wheathampstead or Joseph.

⁸⁸ See, for example, the trilogy of letters, attributed to identifiable scholar monks, preserved in BL, Harley MS 5398, fos. 128r–131v. The incomplete satire of Canterbury College preserved in BL, Royal 10 b ix (fos. 32v–33v) might also be seen in the same mould: Canterbury College, Oxford, ed. Pantin, iii. 68–72.

⁸⁹ For Lawerne's model letters see Oxford, Bodl. Bodley MS 692, fos. 29v, 65r, 84r among others.

⁹⁰ The ‘expanded’ text of the De professione is now Oxford, Bodl., Bodley MS 496, fos. 207r–214r. The early fifteenth-century extract from Lawrence of Durham is found in BL, Add. MS 6162, fos. 8v–10v, a codex which may be connected with Wessington. For both see Sharpe, Latin writers, 108, 282, 360.

⁹¹ Perhaps inevitably, Abbot Wheathampstead's commonplacebooks are replete with commemorative verses of this kind. See, for example, Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 230, fos. 24v, 41r, 52v, 56v.

⁹² Letter Book of Robert Joseph, ed. Aveling and Pantin, 56–9 (Letter 47).

⁹³ See, for example, ibid., 23, 33, 124–7 (Letters 15, 25, 83).

⁹⁴ Ibid., 35–6 (Letter 28).

⁹⁵ Jacob, E. F., ‘Florida verborum venustas: Some Early Examples of Euphuism in England’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester, 17 (1933), 264–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹⁶ For Reading see A. Coates, English Medieval Books: The Reading Abbey Collections from Foundation to Dispersal (Oxford, 1999), 108–9. Ramsey also held a guide to Hebrew: English Benedictine Libraries, ed. Sharpe et al., b67, 53, 54 (337). For the Durham possibility see Dobson, Durham Priory, 372 and n. Dobson doubts a connection between the Durham monk, Robert Emyldon, and a page of Greek preserved in Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, McLean MS 169.

⁹⁷ James, Ancient Libraries, 201 (no. 92). There was also a Hebrew psalter (no. 89) three volumes apart in the same section of the library.

⁹⁸ BL, Harley MS 3100.

⁹⁹ English Benedictine Libraries, ed. Sharpe et al., b55.104 (282): Ambrosius Calepinus.

¹⁰⁰ Leiden, University Library, MS Bibl. Publ. Gr. 16. See also Coates, English Medieval Books, 109, 143.

¹⁰¹ Oxford, Bodl., Selden Supra MS 65, fo. 146r. See also Weiss, Humanism in England, 131.

¹⁰² For a summary biography see Emden, BRUO, iii, 1666–7; Weiss, Humanism in England, 153–9 at 154.

¹⁰³ BL, Add. MS 15673, fos. 3r–28v ascription on fo. 28v; James, Ancient Libraries, 163 (no. 284). See also p. 81 below.

¹⁰⁴ BL, Cotton MS Julius f vii, fo. 118r. See also Weiss, Humanism in England, 157; Bennett, J. W., ‘John Morer's Will: Thomas Linacre and Prior Sellyng's Greek Teaching’, Studies in the Renaissance, 15 (1968), 70–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰⁵ Coates, English Medieval Books, 110–12.

¹⁰⁶ BL, Royal MS 10 b ix, fos. 64v–67r, 68r–70v, 75v–79v.

¹⁰⁷ For Wheathampstead's references to these newly translated authorities in sections of his Granarium, see, for example, (BL, Cotton MS Tiberius d v, fos. 140r–v, 169v). See also Weiss, Humanism in England, 35–6; C. E. Hodge, ‘The Abbey of St Albans under John Whethamstede’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Manchester University, 1934), 234–460.

¹⁰⁸ The residual reference works in the greater conventual libraries do not reflect a working knowledge of the biblical language. Even Abbot Wheathampstead did not master it.

¹⁰⁹ Piper, A. J., ‘The Durham Monks and the Study of Scripture’, in The Culture of Medieval English Monasticism, ed. Clark, J. G. (Woodbridge, 2007), 86–103Google Scholar.

¹¹⁰ Ibid., 99.

¹¹¹ Pantin, W. A., ‘Abbot Kidderminster and Monastic Studies’, Downside Review, 47 (1929), 198–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹² Letter Book of Robert Joseph, ed. Aveling and Pantin, 15–18 (Letter 13).

¹¹³ Ibid., 26 (Letter 18).

¹¹⁴ For background see Christian Unity. The Council of Ferrara-Florence 1438/39–1989, ed. G. Alberigo, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 97 (Louvain, 1991), especially essays by H. Chadwick (229–39), G. R. Evans (177–85) and M. Harvey (202–23).

¹¹⁵ For George of Trebizond see Lohr, C. H., ‘Metaphysics’, in Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Schmidt, C. B., Skinner, Q., Kessler, E. and Kraye, J. (Cambridge, 1988), 537–638 at 561–3Google Scholar.

¹¹⁶ BL, Royal MS 5 a x.

¹¹⁷ Two copies survive: BL, Add. MS 15673. BL, Holkham MS Add. 47675. See also pp. 90, 92 below.

¹¹⁸ BL, Royal MS 2 e vi, fos. 102r, 129v.

¹¹⁹ BL, Royal MS 8 d xvii, fos. 3r, 75r.

¹²⁰ Letters and Papers Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII: Preserved in the Public Record Office, the British Museum, and Elsewhere in England, ed. J. S. Brewer, J. Gairdener and R. H. Brodie (22 vols. in 35, 1862–1935), ix, 747, 192.

¹²¹ Letter Book of Robert Joseph, ed. Aveling and Pantin, 33–4 (Letter 25). Joseph's correspondence with six monks of Hailes is preserved in the letter book; the letters also show a familiarity with Abbot Segar.

¹²² The Paisley book is now BL, Royal MS 13 e x. The Monk Bretton example appears in the inventory of books held by former brethren after the Dissolution: English Benedictine Libraries, ed. Sharpe et al., b55. 22 (271).

¹²³ BL, Arundel MS 11, fos. 177r–180r. Another of the abbot's commonplace books contains the form of profession of the minoresses: Oxford, Bodl., Bodley MS 585, fos. 48r–72r at fo. 52r.

¹²⁴ BL, Add. MS 50856, fos. 49r–69r; Canterbury College, Oxford, ed. Pantin, i, 85.

¹²⁵ The manuscript that may be associated with Wheathampstead is Oxford, Laud Misc. 215, the Imitatio being at fos. 1r–79r. The script, rubrication, decoration and mise en page are analagous to books known to have been produced under his supervision. The Tewkesbury manuscript is BL, Royal 8 c vii.

¹²⁶ At Durham, John Wessington compiled a narrative of the origins of the see that was ultimately settled at Durham (Oxford, Bodl., Laud Misc., MS 748); at St Albans, John Wheathampstead renewed the abbey's historical collections making fresh copies of such early texts as Matthew Paris's Vitae duorum Offarum (Oxford, Bodl., Bodley MS 585). The acta of the abbots collected in the Liber benefactorum (BL, Cotton MS Nero d vii) since the last quarter of the fourteenth century were continued down to the reign of Abbot Ramridge (1492–1521); at Westminster (John Flete) and Winchester (Thomas Rudborne) new narratives were made, with an emphasis on the formative years of the church and its community. It is worth noting signs of a similar impulse at major Cistercian houses, where early foundation histories were recopied (Fountains, Kirstall) and, in the case of Thomas Burton at Meaux, and John Brompton at Jervaulx, new narratives compiled: A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England, ii: c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (1982), 356–71, 392–8; N. R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain. A List of Surviving Books, Royal Historical Society, Guides and Handbooks, 3, 2nd edn (1964), 88, 107; Sharpe, Latin writers, 220.

¹²⁷ Pantin, W. A., ‘Some Medieval English Treatises on the Origins of Monasticism’, in Medieval Studies Presented to Rose Graham, ed. Ruffer, V. and Taylor, A. J. (Oxford, 1950), 189–215Google Scholar. See also a Durham compilation connected to Wessington, Oxford, Bodl., Laud Misc. 748, fos. 82r–83r; Wheathampstead's ‘essay’ Monachatus incorporated in his Granarium: BL, Arundel MS 11, fos. 107r–113v; Spofford's compilation, BL, Harley MS 2268, fos. 282r (title on 281r)–294r. BL, Cotton MS Cleopatra b ii, a composite which may be connected with Winchcombe, contains an anonymous annal of monastic foundations at fos. 42r–58v; there are others in BL, Add. MS 6162, fos. 26r–31v (Durham), and Oxford, Bodl., Bodley MS 832, fos. 180r–184v.

¹²⁸ The most striking examples are Wheathampstead (BL, Arundel MS 11, fos. 107r–113v), Andrew Aston at Bury (BL, Cotton MS Claudius a xii, fos. 142r–145r) and John Wessington (Dobson, Durham Priory, 381–2).

¹²⁹ Gransden, Historical Writing, ii, 342–424: ‘The conclusion cannot be avoided that the chronicle tradition of the religious houses was all but dead well before the end of the fifteenth century’ (424).

¹³⁰ For summary details of the known writings of these three see Sharpe, Latin Writers, 342–3, 344–5, 653–4.

¹³¹ See, for example, later medieval copies of the Regula Benedicti, bound with the rule of Basil: Oxford, Jesus College, MS 42 (Gloucester) and Oxford, Bodl. Lyell MS 19 (Canterbury, Christ Church).

¹³² For the superiors of this period animating a ‘theatre of memory’ with ‘visual counterpart[s] to cartularies and chronicles’ see J. M. Luxford, The Art and Architecture of English Benedictine Monasteries. A Patronage History, Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, 25 (Woodbridge, 2005), 68. For an example of this theatre at Durham see Rites of Durham, ed. J. Raine, Surtees Society (1842).

¹³³ For example, monks of Westminster presented for ordination in 1516 included Robert Bennett, Anthony Dunstan and William Gregory: Register Fitzjames, London, Guildhall Library, 9531/9, fos. 171r, 173r; among the monks of St Albans that signed the surrender on 5 Dec. 1539 were Richard Benett and Robert Gregory.

¹³⁴ The fruits of Spofford's reform are contained in the customary compiled for use at St Mary's Cambridge, St John's College, MS D 27. The text was printed in The Ordinal and Customary of the Abbey of Saint Mary, York St. John's College, Cambridge, MS. D.27, ed. L. McLachlan and J. B. L. Tolhurst, Henry Bradshaw Society, 78 (1936).

¹³⁵ Dobson Durham Priory, 110.

¹³⁶ Annales, ed. Riley, i, 101–16 at 102–7. Thomas Rowland appears to have sponsored the production of a printed breviary (STC 15792: 1528) which may reflect a measure of liturgical reform at the abbey.

¹³⁷ R. Bowers, ‘An Early Tudor Monastic Enterprise: Choral Polyphony for the Liturgical Service’, in The Culture of English Medieval Monasticism, ed. J. G. Clark (Woodbridge, 2007), 21–54.

¹³⁸ Cambridge, Trinity Hall MS 1. For examples of documents copied in ‘authentic’ script see fos. 21v, 22r, 23r, 24r. See also M. Hunter, ‘The Fascimiles in Thomas Elmham's History of St Augustine's, Canterbury’, The Library, fifth series, 28 (1973), 215–20; Gransden, Historical Writing, 353–5.

¹³⁹ See, for example, J. G. Clark, A Monastic Renaissance at St Albans: Thomas Walsingham and his Circle, c. 1350–c. 1440 (Oxford, 2004), 111–20. Books made at Worcester Priory between the late thirteenth century and the Dissolution were uniform both in their appearance and their low production values: Thomson, Descriptive Catalogue, xxv. Antonia Gransden has suggested that at Bury the brethren contributed only to the copying of ‘unpretentious’ books: A. Gransden, ‘Some Manuscripts in Cambridge from Bury St Edmunds Abbey: Exhibition Catalogue’, in Bury St Edmunds: Medieval Art, Architecture, Archaeology and Economy, ed. A. Gransden, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions, xx (1998), 228–85 at 239.

¹⁴⁰ Humanist scripts have been identified in the text and rubrics of several manuscripts held at Worcester Priory: f104 (ex libris); f124 (annotations in section six); f142 (titles). For Sellyng's hand see Canterbury College, Oxford, ed. Pantin, iv, 84.

¹⁴¹ For Kidderminister's books see, for example, Oxford, Bodl., Inc. d.g.5.2.1494/1 (Augustine: Basel, 1494); Oxford, Rawl. q.d.12 (Vitas patrum: Lyon, 1502).

¹⁴² Steinberg, S. H., ‘Instructions in Writing by Members of the Congregation of Melk’, Speculum, 16/2 (1941), 210–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴³ The early Tudor policy towards the monasteries requires further study. Early contributions include J. Gairdner, ‘Archbishop Morton and St Albans’, English Historical Review, 24 (1909), 91–6; D. Knowles, ‘The Case of St. Albans Abbey in 1490’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 3, 2 (1952), 144–58. See also Harper-Bill, C., ‘Archbishop John Morton and the Province of Canterbury, 1486–1500’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 29 (1978), 1–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴⁴ Weiss, R., ‘Piero del Monte, John Whethamstede and the Library of St Albans Abbey’, English Historical Review, 60 (1945), 339–406Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁵ BL, Royal MS 10 b ix, fo. 122r.

¹⁴⁶ Abbot Richard Bere of Glastonbury (1493–1525) was praised as a patron of learning by Erasmus and the prominent English Erasmian and court diplomat, Richard Pace: Emden, BRUO, i, 150.

¹⁴⁷ For Dygon see R. Bowers, ‘Dygon, John (c. 1482–1566?)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 8355.

¹⁴⁸ For Gwynneth see Emden, A. B., A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford, 1501–1540 (Oxford, 1974), 253–4Google Scholar. See also Clark, J. G., ‘Reformation and Reaction at St Albans Abbey, c. 1530–1558’, English Historical Review, 115 (2000), 297–328CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For John Essex see Emden, BRUO, 1501–1540, 193. See also Knowles, Religious Orders, iii, 95.

¹⁴⁹ S. F. Ryle, ‘Cox, Leonard, b. c. 1495, d. in or after 1549’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 6525.

¹⁵⁰ VCH Somerset, ii, 136; VCH Dorset, ii, 61; VCH Gloucestershire, ii, 420–1.

¹⁵¹ VCH Gloucestershire, ii, 420–1.

¹⁵² For Urswick see J. B. Trapp, ‘Urswick, Christopher (1448?–1522)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 28024. See also P. I. Kauffmann, ‘Polydore Vergil and the Strange Disappearance of Christopher Urswick’, Sixteenth-Century Journal, 17, 1 (1986), 69–85. Urswick's interest in the Cistercian tradition may have been initiated at Furness (Cumbria) where he is said to have received his early education (Huddelston was also a native of the region); Furness Abbey held the parish of Urswick, fewer than five miles distant. The prior of Hailes was Huddelston's confessor, the abbot his executor, and when he made his will he was resident in the precinct: The National Archives, PCC, Prob. 11/17, f. 164r.

¹⁵³ Stratford on Avon, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Leigh of Stoneleigh MSS, DR18/31/5. The first four unnumbered folios contain a copy of an indenture dated 7 Sept. 1521 detailing the obligations of the abbots of Hailes and Winchcombe to the school at the latter and the celebration of an obit for Lady Huddelston at the former. See also VCH Gloucestershire, ii, 420–1.

¹⁵⁴ Now held in Wells Cathedral Library, MSS 5 and 6. See Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, ed. N. R. Ker, I. C. Cunningham and A. J. Piper (5 vols., Oxford, 1969–2002), iv, 561–3.

¹⁵⁵ Now BL, Add. MS 15673 and BL, Holkham Add. MS 46575, Warham's book. See also Kauffmann, ‘Polydon Vergil’, esp. 75–85; Trapp, J. B., ‘Notes on Manuscripts Written by Pieter Meghen’, The Book Collector, 24, 1 (1975), 80–96Google Scholar.

¹⁵⁶ For this trend in the later Middle Ages see Thompson, B. J., ‘Monasteries and their Patrons at Foundation and Dissolution’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, sixth series, 4 (1994), 103–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵⁷ Chapters, ed. Pantin, iii, 124–36 (visitation of Malmesbury Abbey), 218–19, 262.