To keep up the momentum, I thought I would add a second post this week as a way of getting up-to-date. Moreover, having attended the Chaucer Lecture at the University of Kent last night, it reminded me of the ‘Books and Manuscripts’ strand at the Medieval Canterbury Weekend. For not only had Weekend participants witnessed two amazing lectures on Anglo-Saxon manuscripts by first Richard Gameson and then Michelle Brown late Saturday morning, but others had had the benefit of seeing copies of some of the earliest printed books in England from the late 15th century – a rare treat. These Canterbury Cathedral Library tours had been led by Karen Brayshaw, the librarian, who was able to discuss with participants matters regarding where, by whom and how these books had been printed. She had also been able to indicate how such books would have been part of the book culture circulating in London and cities such as Canterbury in the later Middle Ages, and how readers of such books as Dives and Pauper, and The Golden Legend were just the type of men (and women) who would have enjoyed Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, alongside more ‘worthy’ texts. As books in English rather than Latin, they were also prime examples of the reading matter discussed by Peter Brown during his talk last Sunday morning in the Kentish Barn. Again an appreciative audience was treated to a detailed (within the confines of a 50-minute lecture) assessment of what people wanted to read, as well as what people wanted to write. For the audience was/is crucial, especially when books were being produced for an increasingly discerning readership who wanted romances as well as ‘improving’ literature.

This point was made by Caroline Barron again last night, because, as she argued, the absence of romances, fables and similar stories as books in wills should not be taken as evidence that people did not read or own such texts. As the giver of this year’s Chaucer Lecture, Professor Barron was an obvious choice for Chaucer was first and foremost a Londoner and Caroline’s knowledge and understanding of medieval London is legendary. In addition, although one of the Lecture’s joint sponsors is English at Kent, the other is Medieval and Early Modern Studies and it is this meeting of academics from literature and history that is crucial for a more holistic understanding of the people in later medieval England. Perhaps one of the best examples of this fruitful co-operation and sharing of ideas involves Caroline herself through her influence on the works of Paul Strohm, one of the most exciting scholars currently active in medieval studies.

But to return to Caroline’s lecture, she led her audience through the evidence for the reading circles of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales that she believes were to be found in London and Southwark in the 1390s and early fifteenth century. This is extremely exciting because it extends these circles way beyond the aristocratic circles of the de lux surviving manuscripts and brings in what in Tudor times would be called members of ‘the middling sort’, men (and perhaps even women!) who could read English, who enjoyed story-telling and who were members of the fraternities linked to the city’s craft guilds. As Caroline explained, we can trace Geoffrey Chaucer’s early career but his ability as a royal servant seems to have meant that it all came to an end in 1386 when he stopped being controller of the king’s customs, and it is the next 14 years until his death in 1400 which may provide the clues to who was reading his works then and in the years after his death.

Now I’m not going to go into details here, I suggest you read Caroline’s account when it is published, but I want to give you a flavour of the type of people she talked about and the types of evidence she is drawing on. The first piece comes from the work of another expert in the field. Martha Carlin has found a debt case from Southwark that mentions a copy of a ‘certain book called Troilus’ that was involved in the settlement of a debt in 1394. Thomas Spencer, the man involved, was like Harry Bailly (Chaucer’s ‘Host’ of The Tabard inn) a Southwark innkeeper and such individuals were seen by contemporaries as respectable often prosperous men who might be Members of Parliament. Now Caroline believes it is perfectly feasible that Chaucer could have taken lodgings in one of these Southwark inns during the 1390s, a not uncommon action and if this was the case what better audience could one imagine than those who gathered there to enjoy a drink, to discuss current affairs, to listen to singers or musicians and to gather around a storyteller reading from his own works.

Moreover, in Thomas Spencer’s case he was also a scrivener and clerk, and an acquainance of John Brinchele who moved north of the Thames into London in 1398 to become clerk to the exceedingly prestigious fraternity of the tailors’ guild. Such a move brings into play Caroline’s second audience – the members of this guild who as well as operating as a communal self-help group met for fraternal services and feasts in Taylors’ Hall. These gatherings certainly involved minstrels and by locating several members, including John Brinchele, who amongst other items left a number of Chaucer’s works in his will (died 1420), it is seems perfectly reasonable to postulate that these pillars of London society would have read Chaucer’s works, perhaps in their own homes but equally communally, maybe at informal gatherings at the Taylors’ Hall or even as part of fraternal celebrations.

Nor may such readings have been confined to the senior fraternity of the tailors because the valets or yeomen also had their own, and their fraternal festival was on the feast day of the Beheading of St John the Baptist. Yet even more importantly Caroline believes the lifestyle of these valets is the critical factor because they lived in shared houses, an almost communal way of life that could lead to unruly behaviour, but might equally offer opportunities for the reading and listening to tales, including those of Chaucer. One of these junior tailors was Davy Brekenhok, another interesting individual who may indeed have been one of those who enjoyed the Canterbury Tales.

This idea of gatherings of often young men to read and hear Chaucer’s works may also apply to the inns of Chancery because it is possible to trace networks and links among a considerable number of chancery clerks during this period, including a reference to Richard Southworth’s bequest to another chancery clerk, John Stopyndon, of a copy of the Canterbury Tales. Furthermore, Thomas Hoccleve, another important poet and clerk as his day job, is known to have been acquainted with Chaucer and admired his works.

Thus, as Caroline discussed, she is postulating four reading circles, and she then added a fifth. Perhaps as a scholar of medieval London this may seem especially appropriate, because she thinks the foundation of the Guildhall Library in the 1420s by two mercers, Richard Whittington and William Bury, is no coincidence. Other personnel in this circle she believes included Thomas Chaucer, Geoffrey’s son, who was a far more successful civil servant than his father, was a member of the tailors’ fraternity, held on to the lease of his father’s house and is likely to have inherited his father’s manuscripts. In addition he was the chief executor of William Bury’s will and he had links to John Carpenter common clerk of London, who also had a large private library.

Now this careful detective work among the city and royal documents may never be sufficient to prove conclusively that Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales were read and enjoyed within these reading circles below the aristocracy, but, and it is a big but, it makes sense, the circumstantial evidence is good, and it opens up fascinating avenues into the lives of clerks, tailors, innkeepers and others who formed the bedrock of London and indeed late medieval urban society more broadly. Consequently, as over the weekend when we had heard on Friday about the St Augustine’s Gospels, on Saturday about Canterbury’s Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and the monastic scriptoria, and on Sunday about the rise of literature in a wide variety of forms that was written in English and other vernacular languages, the audience yesterday was treated to a brilliant expose of life in medieval England – an amazing feast of accessible scholarship!