Reinventing Medieval Liturgy in Victorian England: Thomas Frederick Simmons and the Lay Folks' Mass Book (Medievalism, 26) 9781783277483, 9781805431022, 1783277483

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 VOLUME XXVI

Reinventing Medieval Liturgy in Victorian England  

ISSN 2043-8230 Series Editors Karl Fugelso Chris Jones Medievalism aims to provide a forum for monographs and collections devoted to the burgeoning and highly dynamic multi-disciplinary field of medievalism studies: that is, work investigating the influence and appearance of `the medieval’ in the society and culture of later ages. Titles within the series investigate the post-medieval construction and manifestations of the Middle Ages – attitudes towards, and uses and meanings of, ‘the medieval’ – in all fields of culture, from politics and international relations, literature, history, architecture, and ceremonial ritual to film and the visual arts. It welcomes a wide range of topics, from historiographical subjects to revivalism, with the emphasis always firmly on what the idea of ‘the medieval’ has variously meant and continues to mean; it is founded on the belief that scholars interested in the Middle Ages can and should communicate their research both beyond and within the academic community of medievalists, and on the continuing relevance and presence of ‘the medieval’ in the contemporary world. New proposals are welcomed. They may be sent directly to the editors or the publishers at the addresses given below. Professor Karl Fugelso Art Department Towson University 3103 Center for the Arts 8000 York Road Towson, MD 21252-0001 USA [email protected]

Professor Chris Jones Department of English University of Utah LNCO, Rm 3500 255 S Central Campus Drive Salt Lake City, UT 84112 USA [email protected]

Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9 Woodbridge Suffolk IP12 3DF UK

Previous volumes in this series are printed at the back of this book

Reinventing Medieval Liturgy in Victorian England Thomas Frederick Simmons and The Lay Folks’ Mass Book David Jasper and Jeremy J. Smith

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© David Jasper and Jeremy J. Smith 2023 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of David Jasper and Jeremy J. Smith to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2023 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 978 1 78327 748 3 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 80543 102 2 (ePDF) The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620-2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate Full credit details are provided in the captions to the plates at the end of this volume. The authors and publisher are grateful to all the institutions and individuals for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any omission, and the publisher will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions Cover image: The York Minster Chapter House, where from 1861 the Northern Convocation held its meetings. Thomas Frederick Simmons was a major contributor to discussions. From Richard John King (ed), Handbook to the Cathedrals of England, Northern Division, Part I (York - Ripon - Carlisle) (London: John Murray, 1869), Plate VII. Courtesy of HathiTrust

‘And see what comes of the present plan; how a navvy drops into a church by accident, and there he has to sit like a fish out of water, through that hour’s service, staring or sleeping, before he can hear a word that he understands; and, sir, when the sermon does come at last, it’s not many of them can make much out of those fine book-words and long sentences. Why don’t they have a short, simple service, now and then, that might catch the ears of the roughs and the blowens, without tiring out the poor thoughtless creatures’ patience, as they do now?’ Charles Kingsley, Yeast: A Problem (London, 1848)

OED blowen n., slang. Origin uncertain. ‘A wench, trull.’ 1819 J. H. VAUX New Vocab. Flash Lang. in Memoirs II. 156  Blowen, a prostitute; a woman who cohabits with a man without marriage. 1823 LD. BYRON Don Juan: Canto XI xix. 112  With black-eyed Sal (his blowing). 1851 C. KINGSLEY Yeast xi  A short simple service..that might catch the ears of the roughs and the blowens.* *OED gives the date of the publication in book form. Yeast first appeared in 1848, as a serial in Fraser’s Magazine.

For Alison and Elaine

Contents List of Plates Preface A note on citations List of abbreviations

Introduction: Imagining the Past

xi xiii xv xvii 1

1. Thomas Frederick Simmons and The Lay Folks’ Mass Book

13

2. Re-imagining Medieval Devotion: Nineteenth-Century Conceptions of the English Church

27

3. Simmons and the Early English Text Society

51

4. Simmons as Editor: The Philologist

67

5. Simmons as Editor: The Liturgist

95

6. Simmons as Parish Priest, and Liturgical Reform in the Victorian Church of England

119

7. The Afterlives of The Lay Folks’ Mass Book

145



165

Conclusion: Liturgical Moments in Time

Plates Appendix I: The Lay Folks’ Mass Book: Text and Translation Appendix II: The Lay Folks’ Mass Book and the Sarum Rite Bibliography Index

169 181 221 235 249

Plates 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

The title-page of Thomas F. Simmons ed., The Lay Folks’ Mass Book (1879) 169 London, British Library, MS Royal 17.B.xvii, folio 7r. The B-version of The Lay Folks’ Mass Book 170 Simmons ed., The Lay Folks’ Mass Book (1879), pp. 22–3 171 Simmons ed., The Lay Folks’ Mass Book (1879), pp. 304–5 172 York Minster Library, MS Additional 375, pp. 488–9: an opening from one of Simmons’ detailed working notebooks 173 William Maskell, The Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England, second edition (1846), p. 122 174 St Mary’s, South Dalton: external view 175 St Mary’s, South Dalton: the interior of the church 176 St Mary’s, South Dalton: the memorial window for Harriet and Thomas Simmons 177 St Mary’s, South Dalton: under construction c. 1860 178 From Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin’s Contrasts (1836) 179 The alms-houses next to St Mary’s, South Dalton 180

Full credit details are provided in the captions to the images in the text. The authors and publisher are grateful to all the institutions and individuals for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any omission, and the publisher will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.

Preface This book had its beginnings some years ago when we were both teaching at the University of Glasgow. A battered volume in the liturgical library of the late Dean Ronald Jasper of York Minster entitled The Lay Folks’ Mass Book attracted our attention. It drew us towards the forgotten figure of its editor, Thomas Frederick Simmons – liturgist, churchman, second-generation Tractarian parish priest, philologist, and one of the earliest members of the Early English Text Society – and to the late medieval poem that lies at the heart of this study. This study of the text now known as The Lay Folk’s Mass Book, and of its editing for the Early English Text Society (EETS) in 1879 by Canon Thomas Frederick Simmons, is by two authors coming from very different academic backgrounds. David Jasper is a student of the relationship between theology and literature, with a particular interest in the nineteenth century, and is thus at home in the ecclesiastical – and indeed wider cultural – world of Canon Simmons and his church. Jeremy Smith specialises in English philology, with a particular interest in late medieval and early modern textual cultures. Our project brings these two different disciplinary perspectives and their readerships into articulation, hoping to develop new insights into the Victorian encounter with the Middle Ages, with relevance to contemporary liturgical and medieval studies. Many people have helped us towards the completion of this book over the years. We thank in particular the staff of the following: the Archives Service of the East Riding of Yorkshire in Beverley; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the Borthwick Institute for Archives in the University of York; the British Library, London; Cambridge University Library; the Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield; the Library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford; Glasgow University Library; the Libraries of Gonville and Caius and Newnham Colleges, Cambridge; the Hull History Centre of the University of Hull; Liverpool University Library; the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; York Minster Library. Warm thanks are due to the present Lord Hotham and to Giles Peacock, current Church Wardens of St Mary’s Church, South Dalton (as it is again), for their patience and generosity during our visits to their magnificent church, and our endless questions. For some years we have benefited enormously from the distinguished work of the History of Liturgy Seminar of the Institute of Historical Research, London, and in particular the help of Helen Gittos, John Harper, and Jeremy Davies.

xiv

Preface

Some of our early findings were published in an article in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History (October 2019). We warmly thank the editors of the journal and their readers. Countless individuals have helped and advised us over the years we have devoted to this project. In particular we are grateful to Bridget Nichols and Wendy Scase, who read earlier drafts and were kind to them, and to Robert Gillies, Christopher Irvine, Gordon Jeanes, Ian Johnson, Ann Loades, Sue Powell, Bryan Spinks, John Thompson, and William Whyte. Thanks are also due to our anonymous readers whose wise advice enhanced the book considerably. Our task has been made much easier by the kindness and professionalism of Caroline Palmer and the staff of our publisher Boydell and Brewer. Above all we owe a huge debt of gratitude to our long-suffering partners Alison and Elaine who have lived with a preoccupation and borne without complaint the company of a third party: the learned, sometimes irascible, Victorian cleric, Canon Thomas Frederick Simmons. We hope the dedication is some small recompense. David Jasper Jeremy Smith Glasgow and Shotley Bridge, 2023

A note on citations Citations from The Lay Folks’ Mass Book in the body of the book are taken from Thomas Frederick Simmons’ edition (1879). A fresh diplomatic edition of the B-version is offered in Appendix I.

Abbreviations BCP CPB CQR DIMEV EDD EETS EETS ES EETS OS LALME LFC LFMB LFPB NED NIMEV ODCC ODNB OED

Book of Common Prayer Convocation Prayer Book Church Quarterly Review Digital Index of Middle English Verse: www.dimev.net/index. html, last consulted 2 September 2022 English Dialect Dictionary Early English Text Society: users.ox.ac.uk/~eets/, last consulted 2 September 2022 Early English Text Society, Extra Series Early English Text Society, Original Series Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English: www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ ihd/elalme/elalme.html, last consulted 2 September 2022 Lay Folks’ Catechism Lay Folks’ Mass Book Lay Folks’ Prayer Book New English Dictionary [later = OED] Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards, A New Index of Middle English Verse (London, 2005) Andrew Louth (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, fourth edition (Oxford, 2022) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: www-oxforddnb-com, last consulted 24 February 2023 Oxford English Dictionary: www-oed-com, last consulted 24 February 2023

Introduction: Imagining the Past Cracking the codes

T

his book is an exercise in what may be termed recursion: a reconstruction of the cultural and theological significance of Victorian recuperations of medieval liturgical and devotional practice. This task is pursued through a case-study: a Victorian clergyman’s edition – still regarded by scholars as authoritative – of a late Middle English poem, a guide to the liturgy of the Eucharist now known as The Lay Folks’ Mass Book (hence LFMB). The title is the invention of the Victorian clergyman, Thomas Frederick Simmons, who edited it for the Early English Text Society in 1879.1 This case-study is then used to allow for reflections on the ways in which Victorian and late medieval religious life and practice were connected. In sum, we are trying to re-engage – from a twenty-first century perspective – with a dialogue between medieval past and Victorian present. This dialogue, we believe, demands the distinct perspectives – medievalist and philological, Victorianist and theological – with which our different disciplinary formations have provided us, and which have inspired us to undertake the collaboration of which this book is the outcome. Why is such an exercise, seemingly convoluted, worthwhile? Despite valiant twentieth- and twenty-first-century attempts at rehabilitation, the Victorian clergyman has from the outset tended to become in popular (and indeed sometimes ‘highbrow’) culture a target for satirical attack or mockery, from Charlotte Brontë and Trollope through Oscar Wilde, Lytton Strachey and beyond. In Shirley (1849), for instance, Brontë wrote of ‘an abundant shower of curates’ raining upon the north of England. These young followers of the Oxford Movement were in her view ‘the present successors of the apostles, disciples of Dr. Pusey and tools of the Propaganda, [who] were at that time being hatched under cradle-blankets, or undergoing regeneration by nursery-baptism in wash-hand-basins’.2 And, a few years later, Anthony Trollope in Barchester Towers (1857) lampooned evangelical clergy in the figure of the Rev Obadiah Slope. Moreover, as we shall see, with the rise of professional academic practice, especially encouraged in England by contact and sometimes rivalry with the great German-speaking universities at the end of Thomas F. Simmons (ed.), The Lay Folks’ Mass Book, EETS OS 71 (London, 1879). An online version, last consulted 28 July 2022, appears at https://archive.org/details/ layfolksmassbook00simmuoft/page/n545/mode/2up. 2 Charlotte Brontë, Shirley: A Tale [1849] (London, 1926), pp. 1–2. 1

2

Reinventing Medieval Liturgy in Victorian England

the nineteenth century, it became commonplace to dismiss the scholarly efforts of learned Church of England clerics. The study of medieval liturgy today has become to a large extent (if not exclusively) the province of academic historians,3 and the academic pursuit of ‘medievalism’ has largely focused on discourses separated from the religious and devotional expressions so central to medieval culture. Meanwhile, present-day Christian liturgical practice and revision, driven by ecumenicism, has on the one hand generally sought contemporary relevance through (for instance) discussions on inclusive language, and, on the other, engagement with those common roots perceived to be found largely in the early church of the first few centuries of the Christian era. All these developments can be considered positive in terms of human progress, but they mean that the study of liturgy and devotional literature today has a very different flavour from its equivalent in the later nineteenth century. Nevertheless, despite these liturgical and academic gains, it is an argument of this book that dismissals of past traditions of scholarship miss (or have lost) something important about the role of history in relation to religion. The great world religions – Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam – are all profoundly historical both in their formation, in their practices, and in their enduring dialogue with their founding figures, and this engagement with the past requires ongoing interpretation. As Diarmaid MacCulloch has put it: Even those who see the Christian story as just that – a series of stories – may find sanity in the experience of wonder: the ability to listen and contemplate. It would be very surprising if this religion, so youthful, yet so varied in its historical experience, had now revealed all its secrets.4

We will argue that viewing a seemingly obscure medieval text, witnessed in a variety of forms, through a Victorian lens offers additional opportunities for new insights of the kind MacCulloch suggests are to be found. Listening to and contemplating past dialogues, and then adding our own perceptions to this ongoing discourse, can be seen positively as a significant contribution to the understanding of religious, and more broadly societal, evolution, and thus an enhancement of ‘religious literacy’. We also argue that any discussion of Victorian medievalism cannot afford to neglect or underestimate ecclesiological, liturgical and spiritual dimensions. It is easy to be dismissive of the frequent Victorian recourse to pre-Reformation principles, but the argument was powerful and effective within the largely rural parishes of England. Simmons’ liturgical and editorial labours might be described as part of what Sheridan Gilley has called ‘a new romantic feeling for the past, a new tenderness for Anglican parochial life, a sturdy Protestantism not unsympathetic to monasticism and the Middle Ages’.5 There are of course major challenges to such an enterprise, since both the Middle English poem and the Victorian clergyman necessarily existed in societies which 3 See, for example, the highly successful History of Liturgy Seminar, convened at present by Helen Gittos and run from the Institute of Historical Research, London. 4 Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity (Harmondsworth, 2009), p. 1016. 5 Sheridan Gilley, Introduction to John Keble, The Christian Year [1827] (London, 1971), p. xv.

Introduction: Imagining the Past

3

are distinct not just materially but also imaginatively and intellectually from the present-day. Although past discourses are not as incomprehensible to modern audiences as the imagined speech of Wittgenstein’s lion,6 it is nevertheless all too easy to misunderstand those discourses through bringing to them anachronistic sympathies and sensibilities. We cannot, after all, encounter Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in the same way as those people who attended the first public performance in Vienna in 1808, bringing their own socio-cultural contexts and preconceptions with them.7 Similarly, reconstructing medieval or Victorian encounters with the liturgy, as with religion more generally, demands not just description but also determined acts of historical imagination: cracking the codes of the past.

On medievalism Medievalism – the fascination with the ‘medieval’ – is a flourishing activity in the present-day academy, sporting its own journal, Studies in Medievalism, and indeed manifested not only in university syllabuses, but also by the series in which the current book is published. In short, scholars have become interested in – and challenged by – the ways in which different ideologies have constructed particular narratives about the medieval past. Dialogue between past and present has been a persistent concern of humanity, but medievalism is generally seen – inspired by the cultural dominance of Sir Walter Scott – as primarily a Romantic and Victorian phenomenon, even if there were significant precursors in earlier centuries. Scholars of English literature might refer to Scott’s The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) and Ivanhoe (1819), Keats’s The Eve of St Agnes (1819) and Tennyson’s The Idylls of the King (1855–74), while historians of art and architectural historians may pay attention to the output of the Pre-Raphaelites, of William Morris and the Kelmscott Press, or to the building of the Houses of Parliament, with its underpinning ‘Merrie England’ ideology most thoroughly expressed in Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin’s essay Contrasts (1836).8 More recently, there has been considerable agonising amongst medievalists about unsavoury, far-right fascination with the medieval past expressed through (e.g.) the deployment of runic or rune-like symbols as part of a perverted fake-antiquarian aesthetic, or the use of the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ as code for white supremacist claims.9 6 In his Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford, 1953), Ludwig Wittgenstein famously said that ‘if a lion could speak, we could not understand him.’ 7 It met with a very tepid reception at its first performance. Goethe, notoriously, considered the symphony to be a ‘threat to civilisation’ as he understood it. See https://www. theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2011/oct/26/beethovens-fifth-riccardo-chailly, last consulted 23 February 2023. 8 Augustus W. N. Pugin, Contrasts, or a parallel between the noble edifices of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and similar buildings of the present day; shewing the present decay of taste (London, 1836). See also Rosemary Hill, God’s Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain (London, 2007). 9 See for instance https://www.paccsresearch.org.uk/blog/mythologizing-the-medievalethnonational-symbolism-by-far-right-extremists/#:~:text=Firstly%2C%20the%20adoption %20of%20ethno-symbols%20through%20medievalism%20is,opposition%20to%20how%20

4

Reinventing Medieval Liturgy in Victorian England

And medievalism has persisted in what might loosely be referred to as ‘popular culture’; The Lord of the Rings both in its novel-form and in its afterlife in film is, as widely accepted, underpinned by J. R. R. Tolkien’s philological expertise as an academic medievalist, while the television series Game of Thrones and the online game World of Warcraft are overtly inspired by medieval tropes. However, it is remarkable how the recent growth of interest in the reception of ‘the medieval’ has shown comparatively little regard for matters religious, and more specifically liturgical, though these issues saturated every aspect of medieval life. Liturgical practices in the Middle Ages preoccupied Anglican high churchmen in the second half of the nineteenth century, as revision of the Prayer Book was undertaken to meet perceived contemporary spiritual needs. However, as we shall see, such matters are barely mentioned in recent authoritative (and excellent) surveys. The literary recovery of medieval England has been exceptionally well served by works such as David Matthews’ The Making of Middle English.10 However, this publication, along with Matthews’ later Medievalism: A Critical History,11 and other useful outlines such as the Cambridge Companion to Medievalism,12 although all outstanding surveys, make almost no mention of religion or the Church: the Oxford Movement and Tractarianism, about which we will have a great deal to say, merit but three passing references in Matthews’s 2015 volume, for instance, and are only briefly addressed in Michael Alexander’s valuable Medievalism.13 Indeed even the authoritative Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism14 pays comparatively little attention to serious matters of concern to the church except, perhaps, in the question of the gothic revival in church architecture; and even in this last publication the reasons for this astonishing – and of course in many places still very visible – attempt to express theology in stone repay further exploration.15 In sum, research on medievalism, as currently practised, seems to be concentrated on those features of epic and romance they%20view%20it%20as%20being., last consulted 27 July 2022. See also W. Trent Foley, Bede and the Beginnings of English Racism (Turnhout, 2022). 10 David Matthews, The Making of Middle English, 1765–1910 (Minnesota, 1999); see also his accompanying volume, viz. David Matthews (ed.), The Invention of Middle English: an anthology of primary sources (University Park, 2000). 11 David Matthews, Medievalism: A Critical History (Cambridge, 2015). 12 Louise D’Arcens (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Medievalism (Cambridge, 2016). 13 Michael Alexander, Medievalism: The Middle Ages in Modern England (New Haven, 2007): see his discussion of Newman on pp. 92–7, and some apposite comments on pp. 182–3. 14 Joanne Parker and Corinna Wagner (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism (Oxford, 2020). This important collection includes Graham Parry’s ‘Validating the English Church’, on medievalism before 1750 in relation to Anglicanism’s cultural formation (pp. 53–68), but that chapter deals with an earlier period. An equally interesting chapter in the Handbook on the Oxford Movement and medievalism is Dominic Janes, ‘The Oxford Movement, asceticism, and sexual desire’, pp. 353–69. However, as the title indicates, the focus of this latter article is to do with Victorian views on medieval monasticism and sainthood in relation to ‘contemporary constructions of gender and forms of sexual desire’ (p. 353): a reflexion again of twenty-first century preoccupations. It may be noted that ‘liturgy’ does not appear in the Oxford volume’s index. 15 See William Whyte, ‘Ecclesiastical Gothic Revivalism’ in Parker and Wagner (eds), Oxford Handbook, pp. 432–46, and the same author’s Unlocking the Church: the lost secrets of Victorian sacred space (Oxford, 2019).

Introduction: Imagining the Past

5

that speak to present-day aesthetic preferences: something that would have pleased one of its great Victorian (and atheist) practitioners, William Morris, whose writings were seminal for Tolkien and others.16 The one area where present-day research seems to be generally lacking – oddly, given its dominance in medieval culture – is in religious expression. The Victorians certainly would have found this omission surprising, since some of the most disruptive elements in their religious life were profoundly medievalist in idiom. There are several possible reasons for this lacuna. First, the Victorian scholarship at the heart of this book, derived largely from the Oxford Movement, and expressed through the Movement’s Tracts for the Times,17 was linked to a passionately-held vision of the Church of England as ‘catholic and apostolic’, claiming authority through its continuity with the ancient church: a ‘living’ tradition of Christian worship. John Henry Newman (1801–90), arguably the most influential English religious leader of the whole century, wrote in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864) of the importance for the Oxford Movement of ‘the literary influence of Walter Scott, who turned men’s minds in the direction of the middle ages’,18 and examples of where this ‘direction’ took contemporary religious writers are easy to find. We will shortly note powerful medievalism in the verse of Isaac Williams (1802–65), and how Williams in turn influenced, for instance, John Mason Neale (1818–66), the major contributor to Hymns Ancient and Modern and Benjamin Webb (1819–85). Neale and Webb turned an ecclesiological spotlight on the medieval period, above all through their translation of the first book of Bishop William Durandus’ (c.1230–1296) hugely important Rationale Divinorum, written between 1286 and 1295, which had a profound effect on both church architecture and the forms of Anglican worship in the nineteenth century.19 Other examples include John Purchas’ extremely popular and overtly ritualistic manual the Directorium Anglicanum (London, 1858), subsequently heavily revised by F. G. Lee (London, 1865), which was a comprehensive guide to vestments, ceremonial and ritualist liturgical practice. And there is William Dansey’s

16 Even though, of course, Tolkien’s sincere commitment to Roman Catholicism has been much discussed. See, for example, Humphrey Carpenter, J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography (London, 1977), and Lisa Coutras, Tolkien’s Theology of Beauty (New York, 2016). 17 The Oxford Movement (1833–1845) is so-called because it emerged from a group of clergy associated with the University of Oxford, who published during these years a series of controversial and widely-circulated papers known as The Tracts for the Times (thus ‘Tractarian’). Leading figures in the Movement were John Keble (1792–1866), John Henry Newman (1801–1890), Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800–1882) and others based in Oxford, who aimed to ‘restore a sense of Catholicity’ to Anglicanism (MacCulloch, History, p. 840). Its beginning is usually dated to Keble’s Assize Sermon on ‘National Apostasy’ of 1833, although as we shall see in later chapters there were several precursors. The Movement looked back to the High Church ideals of the seventeenth century, and its vision of a catholic and apostolic English church led to a revival of interest in primitive and medieval Christianity and liturgical practice. 18 Ian Ker (ed.), J. H. Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua [1864] (Harmondsworth, 1994), p. 99. 19 John M. Neale and Benjamin Webb (trans.), The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments: a translation of the first book of the Rationale Divinorum Officiorum (Leeds, 1843).

6

Reinventing Medieval Liturgy in Victorian England

lavishly presented Horae Decanicae Rurales,20 a compilation of ‘900 pages of medieval ecclesiastical lore in heavy, archaic, Gothic typeface’ brought together in 1835 to offer historical precedents for diocesan reform as a counterweight to Sir Robert Peel’s appointment of a centralising Ecclesiastical Commission. Such activities were not simply ‘nostalgic antiquarianism, nor even an attempt to defend Old Corruption by medieval precedent’,21 but serious attempts to effect diocesan revival by appeal to medieval principles. Some of these extravagances were not met uncritically; William Palmer’s Origines Liturgicae (London, 1832), to be considered in more detail in chapter 2, for instance, was a piece of meticulous scholarship linking the Church of England and its Prayer Book with the Church of earlier days. Yet Palmer was very much a serious scholar of his time. In George Herring’s words: He [Palmer] no more assumed that nineteenth-century Anglican clergy should start to wear disused medieval vestments than modern legislators should don purple-edged togas in Parliament in imitation of the Roman Senate.22

Nevertheless, the medievalist impulse underpins the nineteenth century’s very considerable ecclesiastical interest in medieval liturgies. The publication of the extraordinary scholarly editions of the medieval missals (as well as breviaries, ordinals and consuetudinaries) according to the Uses of Sarum, York, Hereford and others by William Maskell (1814–90), F. H. Dickinson (1812–90), William Henderson (1819– 1905) and Walter Howard Frere (1863–1938), culminated in the founding in 1890 of the Henry Bradshaw Society ‘for the purpose of printing liturgical MSS and rare editions of service books and illustrative documents’.23 This ‘Tractarian’ view is now largely dismissed by more recent students of the history of liturgy; moreover, most present-day academic researchers on medievalism bring (understandably) to the table their own disciplinary formation in literary or historical studies, with consequent cultural preoccupations. As a result, the liturgical obsessions of the Victorians can seem bizarre and ‘irrelevant’; the terrible

20 The full title of Dansey’s work in two volumes, first published in London in 1835, is Horae Decanicae Rurales, Being an attempt to illustrate the name, title, and functions of rural deans, with remarks on the rise and fall of rural bishops. 21 Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad and Dangerous People? England, 1783–1846 (Oxford, 2006), p. 478. 22 Herring, Oxford Movement in Practice, p. 193. See further George Herring, ‘Devotional and liturgical renewal: ritualism and Protestant reaction’, in Stewart J. Brown, Peter B. Nockles and James Pereiro (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Oxford Movement (Oxford, 2017), pp. 398–409. See also, more generally, Frances Knight, ‘The influence of the Oxford Movement in the parishes, c. 1833–1860’, in Paul Vaiss (ed.), Newman: From Oxford to the People (Leominster, 1996), pp. 127–40. 23 The Society was founded to commemorate the great Henry Bradshaw (1831–1886), who in addition to being a key figure in the history and development of (e.g.) Cambridge University Library was also a distinguished liturgiologist, although much of his liturgical research was passed to other scholars to publish. The Society still exists as a vigorous scholarly community. See https://henrybradshawsociety.org/, last accessed on 14 April 2022; see also chapter 7 below.

Introduction: Imagining the Past

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twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, with their accompanying modernist and postmodernist uncertainties, have intervened. Furthermore, Anglican liturgical interest and scholarship in the twentieth century, especially from 1928, after which Parliament ceased to have any serious interest in church or liturgical matters,24 subsequently moved away from the medieval to an almost exclusive and ecumenical attention to the liturgy of the Early Church. In the early 1920s, for instance, the Malines Conversations25 (which included Bishop Walter Howard Frere26) were held, apart from the first, under the acknowledgment of both the Holy See and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Liturgical revision in the Church of England was changing from the Victorian concern for rubrical change in the Prayer Book.27 Paul Bradshaw has also written about the shift towards ‘a different method of doing liturgical revision’ in the earlier part of the twentieth century, later further influenced by the Second Vatican Council and its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of 1963.28 All that is, of course, another story, but it has left the great 24 In 1928 a revision of the Book of Common Prayer, approved the previous year by the Church Assembly (precursor of the present-day General Synod of the Church of England), was submitted – as was required by law – to the British Parliament for approval. Although passed by the House of Lords, the proposed revision was rejected by the House of Commons, being fiercely attacked most notably by William Joynson-Hicks (1865–1932), generally referred to by contemporaries as ‘Jix’. Jix was a Conservative politician known for his extreme evangelical views, his interest in technology and (at least early in his political career) for antisemitism, who somehow – despite his numerous eccentricities – ended up as home secretary in the administration of Stanley Baldwin. Many at the time regarded Jix as a figure of fun, but he had his supporters. Lord Beaverbrook summed him up well: ‘He is one of those curious products you sometimes get in politics … a man who is thought a fool by his colleagues, a fine fellow by the private member, and a romantic hero by the chairman of the local Conservative Association’ (cited ODNB). However, the Anglican episcopate – probably illegally – subsequently authorised the ‘permissive use’ of the 1928 revision even without parliamentary approval. 25 These ‘Conversations’, ultimately halted by Pope Pius XI, were meetings between Anglican and sympathetic Roman Catholic theologians at Malines, Belgium, held between 1921 and 1925. They were the initiative of the second Viscount Halifax (1839–1934), a leading ecumenist who in 1868, at Pusey’s request, had become the president of the English Church Union, a grouping ‘founded in 1860 to maintain the Catholic heritage of the Church of England’ (ODNB). 26 See Walter Howard Frere, Recollections of Malines (London, 1935). We will encounter Frere again later in this book. He was one of the most distinguished liturgical scholars of his generation, producing among many other works the two-volume The Use of Sarum (Cambridge, 1898, 1901). In 1894, Frere – whose sole relaxation was music – also edited the music of the Sarum Mass in the Graduale Sarisburiense: A Reproduction in Facsimile of a Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century (London, 1894). He later became bishop of Truro, but insisted on retaining the simplicity of life associated with his monastic calling; he returned to Mirfield towards the end of his life. He is particularly associated with ecumenical discussions with the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions, of which Malines was one. 27 Bryan Spinks has noted that Frere’s correspondence from 1806 to 1907 reflects this shift from rubrical concerns towards ‘proper liturgical revision.’ See further R. C. D. Jasper (ed.), Walter Howard Frere: His Correspondence on Liturgical Revision and Construction (London, 1954), pp. 5–25. 28 Paul Bradshaw, ‘Liturgical Development: From Common Prayer to Uncommon Worship’, in Stephen Platten and Christopher Woods (eds), Comfortable Words: Polity, Piety and the Book of Common Prayer (Norwich, 2012), pp. 121–32.

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Victorian texts of medieval liturgy and their clerical editors more or less stranded, and goes some way to explain why the LFMB (along with many other texts besides) has never been re-edited.29 Finally, as academic engagement in the reception of the Middle Ages has developed in one direction, so interest in such matters within the church has largely disappeared. Clergy like Thomas Frederick Simmons, who provides the case-study at the heart of this book, hardly now exist in the Church of England, which has largely lost its ordained men (and they were in the nineteenth century all men) who combined energetic parochial duties with considerable scholarship – and who, more crucially, saw these activities as complementary. Simmons’ ‘academic’ life was based in parish ministry not the university, and he lived at a time in the Church of England before the ‘professional academic’ was both more specialised and distinct from the world of the parish. As a result, relatively little attention has been given to the confluence of medievalism, romanticism and ecclesiology in the Church of England of the Tractarians and their largely parochial, clerical successors. Just as, in its concern for its catholic and apostolic nature, Anglican Oxford was turning back to such sources as the Parisian Breviary,30 so the poems of John Keble (1792–1866) in The Christian Year (1827) and Isaac Williams (1802–65) in The Cathedral (1838) were linking a devotion to the Book of Common Prayer with a pietistic romanticism that, like Pugin, looked back to an idealised Middle Ages, its devotional literature and its liturgies. Williams’ verses were explicitly linked to the exploration of an imagined Gothic cathedral, and these developments coincided with the early building of churches in the English Gothic style. Similar manifestations appeared in contemporary fiction. Thus, in 1844, a youthful Charlotte Yonge (1823–1901), in her early novel Abbeychurch, or Self-Control and Self-Conceit, combined her parody of ‘modern sensation novels’ (containing endless discussions of medieval romances31) with the consecration of a new church in the ‘Early English style’. Built to replace an inadequate earlier church, and with its ‘tall white spire’, pulpit cloth and embroidery, the fictional Rev Woodbourne’s new church in Abbeychurch anticipates almost uncannily the building of John Loughborough Pearson’s St Mary’s church, built between 1858 and 1861 in Simmons’ East Riding parish. Each church, fictional and real, is built in the image of a medieval church and yet wholly for new purposes of public worship in the nineteenth-century Church of England. We should not of course be surprised by such concerns. This was an age in which handbooks, manuals and literature for the literate laity to assist people in their There is an exception to this neglect, for Simmons’ edition of what he called the B-version (surviving in London, British Library, MS Royal 17 B. XVII, for which see Appendix I below) has been recently used in a remarkable experiment in reconstructing and re-enacting medieval liturgy, by John Harper and a team from Bangor University. See chapter 7 below. 30 See O. W. Jones, Isaac Williams and His Circle (London, 1971), p. 25. 31 In one such discussion, the novel’s central character, Elizabeth Woodbourne, remarks, ‘I believe such stories as Ivanhoe were what taught me to like history.’ See Charlotte Yonge, Abbeychurch [1844] 1872 edition, reprinted (without pagination) by Yurita Press, New York, 2015. 29

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spiritual and ‘inner religious lives’ were flourishing. Established Anglican writers such as Charlotte Yonge, it seems under the close tutelage of John Keble, produced regular literary fare for the devout. Thus, throughout the 1860s, Yonge’s journal, the Monthly Packet of Evening Readings for Members of the English Church, was widely distributed and read, especially by women.32 To aid and instruct aspiring young clergy – an echo of John Mirk’s fourteenth-century Instructions for Parish Priests33 – there were Edward Monro’s Parochial Work (Oxford and London, 1850), Henry Newland’s Confirmation and First Communion (London, 1854), and W. E. Heygate’s Ember Hours (London, 1857). More directed towards the laity were such aids to worship as The Child’s Church Service (1874) and Edwin Walker’s The Casket (1895). Especially widely read and used by Anglican priests was Peter Medd’s The Priest to the Altar, Chiefly after the Ancient English use of Sarum (London, 1861).34 Thomas Frederick Simmons’ interests and practices were located firmly in these cultural and societal and ecclesiastical contexts. His astonishing Gothic Revival church at South Dalton was a physical expression of the claim for catholic apostolicity of the English Church: a dynamic and – both for him and for many of his contemporaries – urgent Victorian liturgical engagement with a living medieval tradition. Simmons’ intense private scholarship, indicated by his assiduous annotated reading and note-keeping, his contributions to the national church in which he was a prominent actor, his vigorous work in his parish and the surrounding areas: all these activities were of a piece with the building in which he served his calling, alongside his labours on LFMB. His editorial work proceeded from a profound sense of a lively tradition of English liturgy of which he himself and his church in South Dalton were a part. Simmons was fully aware, however, of contemporary trends, frequently referring to tensions (somewhat apologetically) between academic and clerical matters in his edition. Indeed, matters were resolved a few years later as, on the one hand, English35 universities gradually ‘professionalised’ themselves on the German model and, on the other, the English Church in its parish ministry became, by and large, less of a learned institution. Simmons’ edition of the LFMB appeared therefore at a moment of cultural transition. Moreover, its contents, rhetorical expression, and contemporary reception – as we shall see – reflected the complexities that taxed a church which had a profound concern for the spiritual and worshiping life of its contemporary lay people, yet sought answers through learned engagement with a largely imagined, pre-Reformation medieval past. Simmons’ edition of LFMB was, in cultural terms, of a piece with his magnificent Gothic-revival church of St Mary at 32 See, for example, Mrs Eckley’s ‘A Hymn for Holy Communion’, The Monthly Packet of Evening Readings, New Series (September, 1867), pp. 209–10. This is followed by an essay on ‘The Canticles in Matins and Evensong.’ 33 Edited for EETS by Edward Peacock in 1868 (OS 33). 34 See pp. 132–3 below. It may be noted the third, revised and enlarged edition of Medd’s work was published in 1879, the year of the publication of Simmons’ edition of the LFMB. Peter Medd (1829–1908) was inter alia an important figure in the foundation of Keble College Oxford, becoming a senior member of its council in 1871. 35 The use here of the term ‘English’ is intentional; things had for some time worked differently in Scotland, and there were similar though distinctive developments in Wales and in Ireland.

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Dalton Holme, in which Simmons served for almost all his long ministry: a building at once ancient and wholly modern. Our overall aim in this book, therefore, is to engage with this past scholarship, as an act of imaginative recuperation. We have tried throughout to approach both medieval text and its Victorian editor with sympathy rather than scepticism, attempting to reconstruct what they were both trying to achieve – and why it mattered to them – and to offer (insofar as we can) an objective assessment of that achievement. The nineteenth-century scholarship described is, we are fully aware, mistaken in many ways, but it is our view that it also ‘got’ the Middle Ages in ways that present-day researchers have, perhaps, missed. Lost and found Underpinning our discussion is an elegiac sense that, with the disappearance of scholar-clergy such as Thomas Frederick Simmons, able to combine academic learning in multiple disciplines with parochial and national service in and through their Church, something has been lost, or at any rate occluded.36 It may be that the spoor of their activity can only be traced in the dusty volumes of biography and history that lurk in the ‘reserve collections’ of university libraries, and cathedral and county archives, which we have consulted so frequently for our project. But that view may be overly pessimistic, for while working on this book we were mindful of how some of the spirit of The Lay Folks’ Mass Book, and of Simmons, can still be detected in pockets of Anglicanism: a point with which we will conclude this Introduction. Our friend Dr Robert Gillies, formerly bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney, has given us this glimpse of his childhood memories of attending his parish church in rural Lincolnshire: I was brought up in north-east Lincolnshire in the 1950s and 1960s, even then significantly secularised and with the local church (St Margaret of Antioch, Habrough37) having little or no impact on the village of about three hundred people. One Methodist church had closed, the remaining one was dying. In the regular congregation of twelve to fourteen at the parish church – I was the youngest; my mother being next in age. All others were retired. The vicar was an old-fashioned high-church individual who instilled in me a sense of the real presence of God in the sacred space of church and its worship. When he trained me as the altar server he and I processed direct from the sacristy to altar with due reverencing on the way and, arriving at the altar, I knelt to his left 36 There are signs, however, that is situation may be changing. We had more-or-less completed work on this book when Tobias A. Karlowicz published his remarkable study The Sacramental Vision of Edward Bouverie Pusey (London, 2022), which demonstrates very clearly how Tractarian theology, undergirded with the Aristotelian concept of phronesis, combined a profound concern for theology and doctrine with a deep liturgical spirituality and energetic pastoral practice. Thomas Frederick Simmons’ career, therefore, lies within an Anglican tradition, including Pusey and indeed his great mentor William Palmer, that is at once learned and practical: a combination expressed in his edition of LFMB. 37 The church was restored in 1869, a few years after the building of St Mary’s.

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whilst he bowed profoundly. He and I then recited in soft voice a form of preparation for priest and server which included him making a general confession after which I voiced a form of absolution; this was then repeated with me confessing and he voicing the absolution. Through the whole of this the congregation, behind us, knelt in silence participating through their prayers. It lasted some minutes. And then the rubrics for serving were very much the sort of thing Simmons would have recognised: the precise way the altar book was moved from the south side of the altar to the north side before the gospel was read – and it was read towards the north-west. And then there was the precise way the elements were presented to the vicar at the offertory and likewise the ablution of vessels and priest’s fingers after the administration of communion. The altar book was then returned to the south side of the altar, and of course most of this was done in silence though there could be a ‘covering’ hymn at the offertory.38

Bishop Gillies might almost be describing Canon Simmons in this ‘old-fashioned high church individual’: the vicar of his childhood memories.

38

We are indebted to Bishop Gillies for permission to reproduce this material.

1 Thomas Frederick Simmons and The Lay Folks’ Mass Book

Thomas Frederick Simmons (1815–84)

T

homas Frederick Simmons, churchman, liturgist, and textual editor, was born in Woolwich, Kent, into a military family, the eldest son of twelve children of a captain in the Royal Artillery, another Thomas Frederick Simmons (d. 1842). The father was a prolific writer on military matters whose most successful work, running through some seven editions, was The Constitution and Practice of Courts Martial (London, 1830).1 Of the younger Thomas Frederick’s eight brothers, six were army officers, most notably General Sir John Lintorn Arabin Simmons (1821–1903), a highly distinguished soldier whose later appointments included governor of the Royal Arsenal and Military Academy at Woolwich, colonel-commandant of the Royal Engineers, and chief technical military adviser for the British delegation at the Congress of Berlin (1878).2 Another brother, Major Egbert Simmons, was killed at the Siege of Lucknow in 1857 while in temporary command of the 5th Fusiliers.3 The younger Thomas Frederick was educated at Winchester College, matriculating as ‘post-master’ at Merton College, Oxford in 1832 or 1833.4 However, he left Merton The elder Thomas Frederick’s other publications included Remarks on the Promotion of the Officers of the Corps of Artillery in the British Service (London, 1819) and Ideas as to the Effect of Heavy Ordnance directed against and applied by Ships of War (London, 1837). His interest in the Royal Navy was shared by Lord Hotham, Canon Simmons’ patron at Dalton Holme. 2 Sir John Simmons was, according to ODNB, born at Langford, Somerset. He is mentioned in the vestry records of St Mary’s, Dalton Holme, as one of Simmons’ executors after the latter’s death in 1884. 3 As recorded – in a lengthy footnote – in the younger Thomas Frederick’s editor’s preface to the sixth edition of Courts Martial (London, 1873), pp. v–vi. 4 Much of this information derives from John Foster, Alumni Oxoniensis (Oxford, 1891), and Crockford’s Clerical Directory (London, 1858–). The relevant entry in the latter for 1865, p. 558, reads as follows: ‘SIMMONS, Thomas Frederick, Dalton Holme Rectory, Beverley, Yorks. – Ox. Merton Postmaster, 1832; Worc. Coll. B.A. 1848, M.A. 1859; Deac. 1848 and Pr. 1849 by Bp of Ox.; R. of Dalton Holme, Dio. York, 1861. (Patron, Lord Hotham; R’s Inc. 462l and Ho; Pop.506.) Formerly C. of Buford [sic] 1848–52; V. of Atwick 1852–3; R. of South Dalton 1853–61; P.C. of Holme-on-the-Wolds 1854–61.’ A few extra details can be 1

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in 1834 to pursue a career in the army, like his brothers;5 on 6 November 1840 a ‘Lieut. T. F. Simmons’ of the 72 Foot not only obtained a Certificate of Qualification from the Royal Military College at Sandhurst but was also commended with two others for: having extended their acquirements into the highest branches of Mathematical Science, farther than any Officers had ever done before them at the Institution, the Board marked their sense of the very superior merits and talents of the three, by awarding them all the highest Class of Certificate of Qualification which had ever been given at the College. 6

Simmons seems to have been a successful soldier, becoming like his father a specialist on legal procedures in the military, although before the Crimean War (1853–56) graduates from the College, being ‘experts’, seem to have been discriminated against by the more gentlemanly officers who achieved rank through purchase. Nevertheless, although he left the army and later returned to Oxford and eventually a career in the church, graduating from Worcester College with a BA in 1848 and supplicating for his MA in 1859, Simmons never lost his interest in army matters. He continued, as an act of filial piety and with the encouragement of leading generals of the period (including Lord Raglan, the commander of the British army in the Crimea), to regularly revise his father’s Courts Martial. On the title page of the sixth edition (London, 1873) the younger Thomas Frederick is referred to not only as ‘M.A. Oxford’ and ‘M.C.C. Sandhurst’7 but also as ‘Sometime Major of Brigade, North Eastern District, and Deputy Judge Advocate’.8 culled from the entry in Alumni Oxoniensis, viz. ‘Simmons, Thomas Frederick, 1s. ‘Thomas F.,’ of Woolwich, Kent, arm. Merton Coll., matric. 28 June, 1833, aged 18, postmaster 1833–4; B.A. from Worcester Coll. 1848, M.A. 1859, vicar of Atwick 1852–3, perp. curate Holme-on-the-Wolds 1854–61, preb. of York 1869, rector of Dalton Holme, Yorks, 1853, until his death 26 Sep., 1884.’ South Dalton and Holme-on-the-Wolds together make up the present-day parish of Dalton Holme; Atwick, where Simmons was vicar before his relocation, is a coastal village in Holderness, also in the East Riding. A presumed relative, the splendidly-named Melmoth Arthur Lintorn Simmons, precedes Thomas Frederick in the 1865 Crockford’s list. Melmoth’s entry in Alumni Oxoniensis gives his dates as 1834–1894; his father was Charles Tynte Simmons, rector of Shipham, Somerset, where Melmoth was from 1874 himself rector. The unusual middle name ‘Lintorn’ – Sir John married his cousin, Ellen Lintorn Simmons from near Bristol – along with the Somerset connection (see note 2 above) suggests that Melmoth was a close relation of Thomas Frederick, possibly a cousin. 5 Simmons’ interests in military customs were perhaps further encouraged during his visits to eastern Europe: ‘In Russia the gospels, or rather the gorgeous and often jewelled binding, is kissed by all, from the Tzar to the private soldier and the moujic’ (ed., LFMB, p. 221). Simmons’ distinguished brother, Sir John, was widely travelled in eastern Europe. He had served as a leading adviser to the Turkish army during the Crimean War (1853–6), and subsequently as a commissioner for establishing the new Asian frontier between Turkey and Russia. Sir John was British consul in Warsaw, then part of the Russian Empire, in 1858–60: a position of considerable importance and sensitivity (ODNB). 6 https://sandhurstcollection.co.uk/online-collection/internal-printed-publications/ nominal-rolls/1841/1351789, last accessed 1 March 2023. 7 It seems to be an abbreviation for ‘Military Commissioning Course’ (priv. comm. John Macleod). 8 Judge Advocate is an historic title for judges who have no advocacy role but preside at Court Martials and have certain other legal functions within the military justice system.

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Worcester College, perhaps significantly given Simmons’ later interests, had been a leading centre for liturgical studies, notable through the presence of William Palmer, author of Origines Liturgicae (London, 1832) of which much will be said later.9 Simmons was ordained deacon in 1848, serving his title as curate of Beeford in the East Riding of Yorkshire.10 After a short period at Atwick, a coastal village in Holderness, he moved in 1853 to the parish of Dalton Holme, also in the East Riding, under the patronage of General Lord Hotham, and was later made a canon of York Minster. He remained as rector of Dalton Holme until his death in 1884. Of Simmons’ marriage to Harriet we know little, other than that she was considerably older than Simmons, and that there were no surviving children.11 Simmons left only one published sermon, the staple record of the Anglican cleric: his funeral oration for Lord Hotham, his patron, delivered on 10 June, 1872. Nevertheless, there are material remains that assist us in tracking his career, above all his magnificent church of St Mary’s, built in Simmons’ time in the English gothic style by John Loughborough Pearson (1817–97); Pearson had been the architect of Truro Cathedral and such notable ‘ritualist’ churches as St Michael’s, Croydon, described by Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner in their Architectural Guide to York and the East Riding as ‘one of Pearson’s finest’.12 Both Thomas Frederick and Harriet Simmons are commemorated in a splendid memorial window in the south transept of their church. In addition, there are many paper records that offer insights into Simmons’ clerical career. We can reconstruct a fair amount of his life from his Notes for LFMB, where there are glimpses of him in the Bodleian Library, the British Museum and once, intriguingly, in the cathedral at Warsaw in Poland, then part of the Russian Empire: Simmons was evidently a well-travelled man. Whilst there, as recorded in the notes to LFMB, he witnessed at close quarters the visit of Emperor Alexander II in 1859. Alexander (1818–81) was the ‘Tsar Liberator’ who had abolished serfdom and had (albeit sporadically) devolved a degree of power to non-Russian parts of It is however probable that Palmer himself, who married in 1839 and had therefore according to university statutes to resign his fellowship, had left the college by the time of Simmons’ arrival. Palmer was presented to the incumbency of Whitchurch Canonicorum, Dorset in 1846 (ODNB). Like Simmons, he served quietly in his parish for many years. 10 Crockford’s Directory (1865) cites this location as ‘Buford’ but no such place exists in England; it seems to be a misinterpretation of Simmons’ handwriting. He was for his curacy based at the Chapel of St James, Lissett, in the parish of Beeford in the East Riding. A census record for 1851, signed by him in his capacity as a curate, can be found in The National Archives, Kew: Home Office – Ecclesiastical Census Returns, HO 129/524, Bridlington, number 10. 11 According to the church’s burial register, Harriet died at the age of 84, on 5 January 1884, and is buried in the churchyard at South Dalton. The register also records that Simmons died in Langford, East Somerset, in September 1884, some seven months after his wife, and his death was registered at Axbridge in the same county; he may have moved there to be near the rest of his family. However, his funeral was conducted by his successor as rector of Dalton Holme, Frederick Jackson, a month later, suggesting that his body was taken north after his death. Simmons was probably therefore buried at St Mary’s, along with his wife. His gravemarker, sadly, seems to have disappeared. 12 Quoted in Jeremy Morris, ‘The regional growth of Tractarianism: some reflections’, in Paul Vaiss (ed.), From Oxford to the People (Leominster, 1996), pp. 141–59, p. 149. 9

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his realm. He was also sensitive to distinct religious orientations. In a remarkable footnote, Simmons records the occasion of Alexander’s visit to the Roman Catholic cathedral in Warsaw: When he presented himself at the great western door, and was met by the clergy in procession, he crossed himself with the Latin cross, and long before he reached the step of the altar, near which I happened to be standing, the fact was passed from mouth to mouth … one did not need to be a liturgiologist to enter into the hopeful augury, which the emperor’s Polish subjects drew from this condescension to their religious feelings, their hopes too soon to be doomed to disappointment by the abortive attempt at revolution in 1861.13

‘The Latin cross’ – crossing oneself first from left to right, with fingers extended – was a twelfth-century Roman Catholic innovation, apparently reflecting Christ’s movement from hell (i.e. left) to the side of God the Father (on the right). Orthodox Christians retained the older right-left movement. The Tsar’s choice was therefore a recognition of the confessional orientation of the majority of his Polish subjects; and it is fascinating that Simmons was not only present when it occurred (and in an apparently privileged position in the cathedral) but also appreciative of its symbolic power, when it was explained to him by a Roman Catholic friend. In addition to Simmons’ work for the Early English Text Society, there are a few contributions from him to high-profile journals such as the Contemporary Review and The Churchman. Several letters written to Simmons survive in the collection of his papers in the York Minster Library and Archives which make it clear that he regularly received requests for liturgical advice on such matters as the churching of unmarried women, the consecration of churches, and who may be qualified to receive Communion. He was also active in charitable work, notably in contributions towards a Female Penitentiary and ‘training’ for destitute boys in nearby Hull, and in the building and development of alms-houses in his village next to the church. Furthermore, Convocation minutes show that Simmons was a regular and respected speaker at the Anglican Northern Convocation, recently (and with some controversy) re-established in 1861; books and notes from his Oxford student days and later were left to York Minster Library; and there are surviving parish records from his time at St Mary’s, mostly now kept in the East Riding Archives, although some still remain in the church’s vestry. The vestry records, all in Simmons’ own handwriting, and the visitation records of his archbishop, William Thomson of York (1819–90), give insights into what was clearly a thriving parish, albeit one with a depressingly high quotient of infant mortality and deaths of women in childbirth. The registers of services prior to 1911 seem sadly not to have survived14 and there is comparatively little explicit evidence in the records of Simmons’ churchmanship, beyond the fact that there were services 13 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, pp. 208–9 (emphases added). It seems likely that Simmons was visiting his brother, who was then serving as British Consul in the city. See footnote 5 above. 14 We have not been able to trace the service registers for St Mary’s during Simmons’ incumbency, though the baptismal and funeral registers for the nineteenth century do survive in the church vestry.

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on holy days and in Lent, a forcefully-expressed requirement that any local Methodists should attend Holy Communion in St Mary’s (which they did), a firm adherence to the Book of Common Prayer, and the establishment of a surpliced choir supplied with Hymns Ancient and Modern. The copies of Prayer Books, surplices and hymn books, like the church building itself, were all funded by Lord Hotham. The vestry record of accounts for 25 May 1872, states that £1 12s 6d had been paid for hymn books to be left in church. Surpliced choirs – i.e. a body of men and boys dressed in cassocks, wearing white surplices or cottas, and seated in the church’s chancel – and Hymns Ancient and Modern are both ‘high church’ signifiers at this period.15 However, Simmons is not included in George Herring’s list of Tractarian/Anglo-Catholic parish clergy from 1840 to 1870.16 The Church Quarterly Review, which reviewed Simmons’ edition of LFMB, is often characterised as a ‘high church’ publication. However, amongst the other journals with which Simmons was connected and to which he contributed, the Contemporary Review, a church-minded publication dealing with controversial theological and scientific subjects, was more eclectic in its orientation,17 and The Churchman was avowedly Evangelical. Simmons clearly felt able to engage intellectually across the Anglican spectrum of churchmanship. Indeed, the terms ‘Tractarian’, ‘Anglo-Catholic’, ‘Evangelical’ and so on, commonly deployed to identify distinct parties within the Church of England, are notoriously porous, for too long rather falsely characterised in the aggressively-expressed review essay entitled ‘Church Parties’, of 1853 by William John Conybeare (1818–57).18 Conybeare, a combative clergyman and author,19 dismissed the majority of Tractarian parish clergy as 15 See K. Theodore Hoppen, The Mid-Victorian Generation 1846–1886 (Oxford, 1998), p. 463: ‘When the Revd W. J. E. Bennett built St Barnabas at Pimlico in 1850 with rood screen, stone altar, and lots of stained glass, and in it deployed surpliced choirs, candles, incense, and the like, plain-clothed policemen had to be posted inside to prevent disorder.’ For a clear summary of the varieties of Anglicanism in the Victorian period, still with their descendants in the present-day Church of England, see MacCulloch, History, pp. 838–46. By Simmons’ day three rough groupings had emerged: ‘low church’ Evangelicals, who emphasised the church’s Protestant heritage; ‘high church’ Anglo-Catholics, inspired originally by the Tracts for the Times (thus, as we have seen, ‘Tractarian’); and a ‘Broad Church’ middle ground ‘whose adherents were more than a little impatient with the extremes’ (MacCulloch, History, p. 845). These groupings, as now, often overlapped, and Anglo-Catholicism ranged from an ‘extreme’ form that ‘delighted in being more Roman than the Pope’ (MacCulloch, History, pp. 843–4) to more ‘moderate’ practices. Anglo-Catholics were especially vigorous at missions ‘in settings of urban squalor’ (MacCulloch, History, p. 845), activities with which Simmons’ work in Hull aligned. As we shall see shortly, however, Simmons – clearly confident in his own confessional orientation – felt able to take a distinctive approach, and it is hard to pigeonhole him as a straightforward Anglo-Catholic (if, indeed, such ever existed). 16 George Herring, The Oxford Movement in Practice: the Tractarian Parochial World from the 1830s to the 1870s (Oxford, 2016), pp. 251–352. 17 The 1867 number, in addition to Simmons’ paper, included articles on ‘Popular [sic] Geology’, Robert Browning, a proposal for decimal coinage, and an article on public schools. 18 William John Conybeare, ‘Church Parties’, Edinburgh Review, October 1853, pp. 285–342. 19 Conybeare was famous – indeed notorious – as an acerbic reviewer and controversialist; his only novel, the enticingly-titled Perversion, or, The Causes and Consequences of Infidelity: A Tale for the Times (London, 1856) included what the ODNB describes as a ‘blunt portrayal

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Young and silly partisans… they have learnt by rote a set of phrases for which they shout… and the noise made by all this astonished those who know how few are the makers of it … in this multiplying mirror the image of a single Tractarian is transformed into an assembly of divines; and a little knot of ambitious curates pass themselves off on a dazzled public as the leaders of ecclesiastical opinion.20

Such a scathing verdict, on the evidence of the written records of his activity, hardly describes Simmons. As befitted a Wykehamist, he was clearly an earnest and diligent student at Worcester College, annotating his textbooks with considerable assiduity. He had a precocious early interest in liturgy and its history, as evidenced by two volumes of Notebooks, signed and dated 25 March, 1847 (the year before his graduation). Here, there are references to William Maskell on the Mozarabic Rite,21 a detailed discussion of the Gallican Rites from the time of Charlemagne, and notes on the Use of Sarum; significantly, these student notes lament the destruction of ancient service books at the Reformation.22 Simmons’ early interest in medieval rites is evident from later notes on a publication of the Catholic Book Society dated 1852 (while he was a curate in Beeford), with further notes made in 1867, entitled ‘The Ordinary of the Mass, Including the Proper of the Mass of the Blessed Trinity’,23 which Simmons dates at 1560, noting from it ‘the Anglican idea of common prayer’, compared by him to the pre-Reformation Uses of York (Ebor), Bangor and Sarum. There are clear references here to his work on the LFMB, here dated (with the title of of homoeroticism in an Anglo-Catholic Oxford tutor’. One anonymous reviewer, describing the work as ‘both intolerant and irreverent’, commented that ‘We sincerely lament that so well-furnished a combatant as the author of “Perversion” should have descended into this arena, and we trust we may never see him there again’ (Edinburgh Review, October 1856, p. 530). The supplementary subtitle for the novel is maybe an echo of the Oxford Movement’s Tracts for the Times. Conybeare belonged to a remarkable family that combined service in the church with geology and antiquarianism. His uncle John Josias (1779–1824), for instance, was not only a Somerset vicar but also a geologist – he collaborated with his brother, William John’s father William Daniel (1787–1857), on the creation of geological maps – and the editor of texts in Old English. John Josias’s Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry appeared posthumously in 1826, completed by his brother. For John Josias’s career, see Robyn Bray, ‘“A scholar, a gentleman, and a Christian”: John Josias Conybeare (1779–1824) and his Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry (1826)’, PhD Glasgow, 2013. 20 Conybeare, ‘Church Parties’, pp. 314–18. 21 The Mozarabic Rite is the term used somewhat broadly for the liturgies of the Iberian Peninsula until about the eleventh century. 22 York Minster Library, MS Add 208/1–2. The discussion of Gallicanism is significant, and will be returned to later in this book. Despite Simmons’ identification of a distinctive Gallican church at the time of Charlemagne, most scholars now hold that Gallicanism – the demand for a national, state-regulated church that would somehow manage not to break with Rome – first emerged (as its name suggests) in France during the religious conflicts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The term ‘Anglican’, originally a disparaging term deployed by James VI (see OED sv. Anglican; see also MacCulloch, History, p. 648), had been paired – satirically – with ‘Gallican’ as early as the beginning of the eighteenth century. However, ‘Anglican’ became common currency amongst the Tractarians, who, conceiving of the word as a ‘pleasing echo’ of ‘Gallican’, saw it as suggesting ‘a Church which combined a truly Catholic character with a national focus … which might – just might – acknowledge the primacy of a properly ordered papacy’ (MacCulloch, History, p. 840). 23 York Minster Library, MS Add 375.

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‘The Layfolks’ Mss Bk’) to 1360, alongside an ‘English Prymer’ of 1390. At one point Simmons quite explicitly rejects any attempt to explain the liturgy of the Latin Mass ‘with reference to our Anglican idea of common prayer’, because of ‘the prayers being in a tongue not understanded of the people, and in later times so large a portion of the service having been said secrete brought about a state of things’24 quite distinct from Anglican practice. There is also in the Minster Library collection an annotated English and Greek Bible, dated by Simmons to 1842–8 and signed on the title page by no less an authority than John Keble.25 Simmons’ notebooks also provide evidence of ownership of F. H. Dickinson’s List of Printed Service Books according to the Ancient Uses of the Anglican Church (London, 1850), F. G. Lee’s revision of John Purchas’s Directorium Anglicanum (London, 1865), and frequent references to the Oxford Movement’s Tracts for the Times – notably Edward Bouverie Pusey’s famous (indeed notorious) Tract 81 on Eucharistic Sacrifice – and Lyra Apostolica (Derby, 1836).26 Perhaps most important is a heavily annotated Prayer Book (an edition published in 1850) which Simmons clearly used throughout his life as there are entries as late as 1872,27 and it is indicative of an early interest in the history of the Prayer Book ‘and the reforms which are needed in it’.28 In sum, the evidence suggests that Simmons was a serious and deeply learned Prayer Book cleric, an avowed ‘clergyman of the reformed Church’. Arguably he was what might be called an Evangelical Catholic, as first described by Yngve Brilioth in a still-influential study, who traced the line from the Irish scholar and lay theologian Alexander Knox (1757–1831), a High Churchman who had nevertheless been an early friend of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, and Bishop John Jebb (1775–1833), the tutor to the young William Palmer before his removal from Ireland to Oxford. Only when ecclesiasticism was penetrated by the religious force which Evangelicalism contained, especially in its older form, could it once more become formative. To have accomplished this fusion is what gives Alexander Knox his importance in the history of English theology. Along with Knox must be mentioned his friend and pupil, John Jebb,29 Bishop of Limerick, more than Knox perhaps a High Churchman of older type, but in all essentials sharing his views, and sometimes

Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 474. York Minster Library, MS Add 207/1. 26 There is also evidence in these notebooks of his correspondence with Frederick J. Furnivall, founder of EETS; see further chapter 3 below. 27 Relating to the Act for the Amendment of the Act of Uniformity (1872), sometimes known as the ‘Shortened Services Act’ since it allowed for shorter versions of morning and evening prayer. Parliament was involved since, as is of course the case even now, the Church of England is by law established. The matter clearly concerned Simmons deeply. 28 York Minster Library, MS Add 373. 29 Jebb was the first patron of William Palmer before he left Ireland for Oxford. See also Brilioth’s Eucharistic Faith and Practice, Evangelical and Catholic (London, 1930). Although these publications are now somewhat elderly, Brilioth remains a much-quoted figure in Oxford Movement studies. 24 25

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doing little more than repeating them. These two men may in a marked degree be called the forerunners of the Oxford Movement…30

The contents of Simmons’ periodical publications are in this context worth some investigation. ‘The North Side of the Lord’s Table’ and ‘Standing Before the Lord’s Table’ appeared in two numbers of the Contemporary Review (October 1866 and January 1867),31 and two lengthy articles were published in the Evangelical journal The Churchman (January and June, 1882) shortly before his death, on the subject of ‘oblation’. These two latter, which link Simmons to the later arguments of the great liturgist Walter Howard Frere and others on the superiority (and antiquity) of the Eucharistic canon of the 1549 version of the Book of Common Prayer over that of 1662, were republished together as a pamphlet entitled Alms and Oblations (London, 1882).32 In this form the papers were reviewed in the Church Quarterly Review (January 1883) as the work of ‘this eminent liturgical scholar’ which ‘has been done thoroughly, and as few could have done it’. They were later to be noted by Bishop John Dowden as the work of ‘the learned liturgist, the late Canon T. F. Simmons’.33 Simmons’ involvement in the liturgical debates of the day is further evidenced by a signed and annotated text of the 1872 Act for the Amendment of the Act of Uniformity. In short, this now forgotten Victorian clergyman was, it seems, a liturgical scholar of considerable repute among his contemporaries: a fine example of the many Anglican parish clergy of distinction who might be termed second-generation Tractarians.34 These were men of broad sympathies, devoted to the English Church, 30 In The Anglican Revival (London, 1925), p. 45. A more recent discussion is Dieter Voll, Catholic Evangelicalism (London, 1963). 31 These items taken together were a response to The North Side of the Altar (London, 1865), a pamphlet by the ritualist Richard Frederick Littledale (1833–90). Having disposed of Littledale’s historical arguments, Simmons not only refers directly to Article XXXIV ‘Of the Traditions of the Church’ but expresses himself as ‘thankful for these examples of firmness in high places’ (‘North Side’, p. 281) that Littledale was unhappy about. Further relevant works by Littledale include Ritualists not Romanists (London, 1876), and The Law of Ritual (London, n.d.). Littledale was one of the most prolific Church of England writers on ritualism and a fervent defender of the Ornaments Rubric in the BCP as permitting ceremonial that predated the 1549 reforms in the English Church. Though a clergyman, chronic ill health prevented him from exercising parochial duties, yet he was a considerable influence on the poet Christina Rossetti and a writer of hymns that are still sung today, the best-known being ‘Come down, O Love Divine.’ Littledale’s ritual extremism did not commend itself to the conservative ‘Prayer Book’ Simmons. (See further Littledale’s entry in the ODNB). 32 For Frere and the others, see chapter 7 below. The pamphlet was succeeded by another from Simmons the following year: The Meaning of the word Oblations in the Book of Common Prayer. A rejoinder to the Dean of Chester [J. S. Howson] (London, 1883). For a discussion, see a review article, itself entitled ‘Alms and Oblations’, in the Church Quarterly Review. 33 John Dowden, Further Studies in the Prayer Book (London, 1908), p. 176. Dowden (1840–1910) was Bishop of Edinburgh from 1886, and himself a distinguished liturgist, whose annotated 1884 edition of the Scottish Episcopalian communion office was regarded as authoritative. Dowden, a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, was while there recognised ‘for his attachment to the theology of the Oxford Movement. Although reverencing John Henry Newman, he was never attracted to ritualist extremes’ (ODNB). 34 See Herring, Oxford Movement in Practice; see also Bruce D. Griffith, with Jason R. Radcliff, Grace and Incarnation: The Oxford Movement’s Shaping of the Character of Modern Anglicanism (Eugene, 2020), pp. 158ff.

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but often, like Simmons, engaged in a wider recuperation of medieval English religious culture. It is in this context that the rediscovery of the medieval poem which we now know as LFMB must be understood. The Lay Folks’ Mass Book (1879) LFMB survives in nine known manuscript witnesses dating from between c.1375 and c.1500, and is of some 630 lines in its fullest form; it was never printed until the nineteenth century, as far as is known. The manuscripts containing LFMB are as follows: A Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Advocates’ 19.3.1, folios 57r–58v B London, British Library, MS Royal 17.B.xvii, folios 3r–13r C Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 155, folios 252v–68r D Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg 5.31, folios 1r–5v E Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 84/166 (Part II), pages 173–9 F Cambridge, Newnham College, MS 900.4 (olim Yates Thompson), folios 104v–9v G Cambridge, University Library, MS Ii.4.9, folios 55v–60r H Liverpool, University Library, MS F.4.9, folios 203v–7v I London, British Library, MS Additional 36523, folios 88r–93r

Of these witnesses, Simmons knew of six (A–F).35 The manuscripts containing B and E are the oldest, datable by script to the late fourteenth century; the other manuscripts all date from the fifteenth century. As will be discussed later in this book, these versions present different forms of the text, some radically distinct from the others, with different functions for those who originally encountered them: a common pattern of textual manifestation in the late medieval world. LFMB – there is no title in any of its witnesses – is written, mostly, in rough couplets and iambic tetrameter. It is a devotional work, composed as a gloss or paratext for those attending mass, alternating prayers with descriptions of the distinct actions undertaken by celebrant and congregation. It is thus a kind of vernacular librettocum-versified prayer book, presenting materials carefully aligned in sequence with each stage in the liturgy of the mass.

35 Simmons’ attention was drawn to B through his reading of Maskell, and had identified C and E in ‘Barnard’s Catalogus Librorum MSS. Angliae et Hiberniae, a book which at the end of nearly two hundred years remains without a second edition’ (ed., LFMB, p. xi). Edward Bernard (1638–97) was primarily a mathematician and Arabist; ‘Bernard’s catalogue’, which was published in Oxford in 1697 after Bernard’s death, was so-called because it resulted from a proposal made by him in 1694 (ODNB). Simmons’ spelling of his name is not now accepted. Simmons heard about the A and D versions from Frederick Furnivall (who was informed of the latter by Henry Bradshaw), while ‘Professor [Walter W.] Skeat placed at my disposal his own transcript of our text F’ (p. xi), presumably through interaction with Henry Yates Thompson (1838–1928), the eminent collector. See further chapter 4 below.

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There is uncertainty about the poem’s genesis. Simmons speculates about the author of a presumed lost French original, ‘Dan Jeremy’ (or ‘dam Ieremy’36 as he is referred to in the poem), who was a ‘deuoute mon & a religyus’ (LFMB, B-version, lines 18–19), and the author of LFMB emphasises that his work is a translation: ‘when I vp-on þo boke know hit,/ In-til englishe þus I draw hit’ (31–2). There is little certainty, however, about the identity of ‘dam Ieremy’, or even whether he really existed. The C- and D-versions confuse him (ludicrously) with the better-known ‘seynte Ierome’, the translator of the Vulgate. Simmons suggested that the author of the presumed French original was Jeremias, canon of Rouen and archdeacon of Cleveland, who was recorded as being in the train of Thurstan, archbishop of York (c.1070–1140), although he admits that this identification is ‘not conclusive’ and possibly a ‘mere guess’.37 Indeed, if there was indeed a French original it seems more likely to have been a by-product of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which not only formulated the doctrine of transubstantiation38 but also emphasised pastoral care; such matters were promulgated in thirteenth-century England by vigorous bishops such as Robert Grosseteste (c.1170–1253).39 There is however no evidence40 that the Middle English LFMB was composed much before the oldest (and, with E, fullest) surviving version, i.e. B, which dates from the end of the fourteenth century.41 Given the attested fourteenth- and fifteenth-century interest in English liturgical paratexts, the reconstruction of a complex source-history for LFMB42 seems unnecessary, although it is, in the light of what has been said so far, interesting that Simmons was keen to uncover it in the interests of the catholic continuity of the ‘English Church’, and that a connexion with Rouen is especially attractive to him. The contents of LFMB can be briefly summarised from the B-version, where the scribe alternates between text underlined in red (‘rubricated’) ink describing the celebrant’s actions during the Mass and directing the congregation’s movements, and text without underlining used for prayers and meditations for the latter’s use. 36 The Middle English honorific dam, or dan, is derived from Latin dominus via Old French. According to OED’s citations, the term was primarily applied to members of religious orders (cf. present-day French dom); in Early Modern English it was extended in meaning to refer to distinguished people generally (cf. present-day Spanish don), especially literary writers. According to the still-unrevised entry in the OED, the ‘modern affected application to poets appears to be after Spenser’s “Dan Chaucer”’; Tennyson, in 1832, refers to ‘Dan Chaucer, the first warbler’ (A Dream of Fair Women, 1832). Simmons’ choice of ‘Dan’ in his discussions reflects his antiquarian background. 37 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, pp. xl–xlix, at xl. 38 That is, the belief in the ‘real presence’ in the Eucharist which the Church of England officially considered ‘repugnant to the plain words of Scripture’, to cite article XXVIII of the church’s Thirty-Nine Articles. 39 See Michael Prestwich, Plantagenet England 1225–1360 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 99–100. Grosseteste, among his numerous other accomplishments, composed verse in French: Le château d’amour was designed to instruct the laity in Christian theology, and was a source for the Cursor Mundi, a spiritual history of humankind in some 30,000 words dating from c.1300. See Kari Sajavaara, ‘The use of Robert Grossetesse’s Château d’Amour as a source for the Cursor Mundi: additional evidence’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 68 (1967), pp. 184–93. 40 Despite the claim made, following Simmons, by Jennifer Garrison, Challenging Communion: The Eucharist and Middle English Literature (Columbus, 2017), p. 32. 41 In his notebooks, now in York Minster Library, Simmons dates it at 1360. 42 As followed in Garrison, Challenging Communion, pp. 460–2.

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It is thus a kind of (alternative) prayer book, carefully aligned with the stages of the Mass.43 In the B-version, after a brief reference to the importance of the Mass, and how LFMB came to be composed, the poet describes how the priest, once vested, begins the celebration with his own confession; the congregation is then to make their own general confession, followed by the priest’s absolution and the reading of the gospel, during which the laity is urged to think on the redeemer, saying a prayer for grace ‘in þi mynde/ als þou shalt after wryten fynde’ (B-version, lines 185–6), repeated ‘oft in þi þoght’ (line 193). Each stage in the Mass is subsequently described, interspersed with prayers for the congregation to use. The recitation of the (‘peoples’) Creed – the priest would be at the same time silently reciting the Nicene version – is followed by the offertory, and the priest’s lavabo, during which the congregation is to think on their sins; the prayer to God to receive the sacrifice while the priest says his ‘priuey (i.e. secreta) prayers’ (line 280; see also line 299); then summary headings for the core canon of the Mass, as uttered by the celebrant: per omnia, sursum corda, sanctus and in excelsis (the congregation is to repeat these words with a ‘stille steuen’ in the vernacular, line 312); a general prayer, followed by the sacring and elevation during which the congregation offer, alongside paternoster and credo, a prayer (one taken from Richard Rolle’s The Form of Living is supplied, though ‘in lettir./þou may chaun[g]e44 hit for a bettir’, lines 427–8);45 the Bidding Prayers, i.e. intercessory prayers for mercy, and for the souls of the dead; and finally the Lord’s Prayer, the pax, a prayer for grace and (in case of sudden death46) for the Mass to stand in place of absolution, followed by the dismissal. At the end of the B-version, the congregation is told that it is good to look from time to time at the robryk (i.e. ‘rubric’, line 624), ‘to con [the prayers] with-outen boke’ (line 625). Simmons’ edition presented full texts of four versions (B, C, E and F) in what might be termed ‘modified diplomatic’ fashion, i.e. transcriptions, but with ‘modern’ interpretative punctuation. Two other copies (A, D) were referenced in textual notes. An attempt is made to reflect the systematic rubrication and capitalisation of the original witnesses through the deployment of bold and engrossed type. The A and D versions were however edited in full a few years later by, respectively, the American professor Gordon Hall Gerould (1877–1953) and Karl Bülbring (1863–1917), professor of English at the University of Bonn. The B-version was subsequently re-edited by Carl Horstman (1851–?1896),47 with slightly different punctuation and a difference in layout that 43 A revised edition of the B-version is provided in Appendix I, together with a translation. Appendix II compares the LFMB with the Sarum Mass; this last is derived (for reasons indicated there) from Frederick Warren (trans), The Sarum Missal in English (London, 1913). 44 MS reads chaunc[.]; see Appendix I. 45 Richard Rolle, the ‘Yorkshire Hermit’ and prolific religious author, died in 1349. His works survive in ‘some 479 manuscripts written between 1390 and 1500, and in ten sixteenthand early seventeenth-century printed editions’ (ODNB). Rolle’s English Prose Treatises were published by EETS in 1866, with further works published in 1896. 46 See Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400– 1580, second edition (New Haven, 2005), p. 120. 47 Carl Horstman (1851–1896) – or Horstmann, as his name is often spelled – is described on the title page of the collection in which LFMB appears as ‘Late Professor in the University of Berlin’: Carl Horstman (ed.), Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole and his Followers, two volumes, (New York, 1895–6) (for some of Horstman’s correspondence,

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changed the lineation of the text. Horstman’s edition is not really an advance on Simmons’, although he did supply further lightly edited texts from the same manuscript. Simmons’ editorial efforts have, when discussed at all, been subject over the years to somewhat hostile scrutiny from the burgeoning (and germanically-linked) academic community. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Gerould, then based at Bryn Mawr but later at Princeton, sounded a note of warning that prefigured criticism to come: ‘It is only fair to say that Canon Simmons, from the antiquarian and ecclesiastical point of view so admirable an editor, may not himself have seen the MS from which he quotes.’48 And even aspects of the edition that Gerould singled out for praise have come to be dismissed as sterner approaches to medieval studies increasingly dominated the learned landscape. Susan Powell, for instance, one of the most important and knowledgeable present-day students of late medieval English religious texts, has referred somewhat dismissively to Simmons’ ‘fey antiquarianism’.49 Yet, interestingly, Simmons’ edition has never been replaced. It is of course always hard to make any argument from an absence, but two possible reasons leap to mind. First, the variety of forms in which LFMB survives indicates that the goal of so many present-day editors – the ‘critical edition’, representing in however abstract a way the author’s original conception of the text in question – is simply not to be had. Secondly, liturgical paratexts such as LFMB, a humble, thoroughly orthodox poem designed primarily for use by the devout laity, for the most part in simple couplets, do not readily meet current criteria of literary excellence, or offer opportunities for radical critical reinterpretation. For whatever reason Simmons’ edition of LFMB remains a monument to his considerable scholarship, but of a particular kind, sustained alongside his pastoral duties as a parish priest, and rooted in his own time and indeed place. And it is possible that it is time for Simmons’ achievement to be reappraised, along with other antiquarians (as he is described, significantly, by Gerould and Powell, both professional academics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries respectively). The great Romantic and Victorian antiquarians above all desired to enter into the imaginative world of the past,50 and they would have recognised what Simmons was trying to do when they read, in the preface to his edition, the following: My attention was in the first instance drawn to the British Museum MS [i.e. the Royal MS containing the B-version of LFMB] by Mr. Maskell’s extracts from it in the notes of his Ancient English Liturgies. It was one of the first books I asked for see https://archives.trin.cam.ac.uk/index.php/horstmann-carl-1851-1896-or-later-editor-ofearly-english-texts, last consulted 20 November 2022). He was an energetic editor of Middle English texts, with a special interest in the works of Rolle; indeed, his ascriptions to that writer are now regarded as overenthusiastic (see Hope Emily Allen, Writings ascribed to Richard Rolle, Oxford, 1927). The versions of LFMB edited by Gerould and Bülbring were published in two numbers of the impeccably-Germanic journal Englische Studien, as follows: Gordon H. Gerould, ‘The Lay-Folks’ Mass-Book from MS Gg V.31, Cambridge University Library’, Englische Studien 33 (1904), pp. 1–26; Karl Bülbring, ‘Das Lay-Folks’ Mass-Book in der Handschrift der Advocates Library in Edinburgh’, Englische Studien 35 (1905), pp. 29–33. 48 Gerould, ‘The Lay-Folks’ Mass-Book from MS Gg V.31’, p. 2. 49 Susan Powell, ‘The transmission and circulation of The Lay Folks’ Catechism’, in A. J. Minnis (ed.), Late medieval religious texts and their transmission: essays in honour of A. I. Doyle (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 67–84, p. 69. 50 Rosemary Hill, Time’s Witness: History in the Age of Romanticism (London, 2021), p. 5.

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on my next visit to the Reading-room, and, besides its curious ritual information, I was much struck by the fact that it was the only document I had met with that enables us to know the prayers which the unlearned of our forefathers used at mass, and by the light it threw upon their inner religious life from a point of view different from that of the many medieval sermons that have come down to us.51

Simmons wished to reconstruct this ‘inner religious life’, and to that end his antiquarian approach was in its own way illuminating. His attempt (rarely undertaken today) to capture the pragmatic characteristics of the manuscripts he was editing, and his addition of numerous ‘Notes and Illustrations’ – including editions of numerous other devotional works he considered relevant for reconstructing late medieval religion – may be taken as a precursor of present-day ‘cultural mapping’. In so doing he approached his material not only synchronically in terms of the medieval past, but also diachronically in linking it to later practice, including that of his own time: a true descendant of the Romantics, he had a ‘lived relationship’ with history.52 Antiquarianism has had for many years a bad press, especially since the academisation of learning that emerged – especially in Germany – towards the end of the nineteenth century. However, recently Rosemary Hill has urged us to retrieve such antiquarianism from what she describes as ‘the condescension of posterity’: Later generations of professional historians have not generally cared to acknowledge their debt to antiquarianism, perhaps because they see the antiquaries like embarrassing elderly relatives whom one would rather keep out of sight.53

Within such a re-evaluation, the ‘evocative’ element in the editions by Simmons and others deserves, it could be argued, revisiting. Much of this book deals with biographical and textual detail: a discussion of how the various witnesses for LFMB functioned in the late medieval world, and how Simmons and his contemporaries sought to rework medieval idioms to suit nineteenth-century imperatives. But underpinning it all is the general theme identified at the beginning of this chapter: an attempt to capture something of a dialogue between the past and the more distant past, and, we hope, to offer a dialogue also with present-day concerns. Our book argues not only that Simmons and his contemporaries were constrained by their own time and its perspectives, but also how what they were trying to do, with great seriousness, was in many ways something that their medieval precursors would have understood, and indeed valued.

Simmons (ed.), LFMB, pp. ix–x. Stephen Bann, The Inventions of History (Manchester, 1990), p. 102, cited Hill, Time’s Witness, p. 5 53 Hill, Time’s Witness, p. 8. 51

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2 Re-imagining Medieval Devotion: Nineteenth-Century Conceptions of the English Church

The Origins of the Prayer Book

S

immons’ engagement with the LFMB was profoundly linked to his understanding of the ‘catholic and apostolic’ Church of England, driven by a powerful historical imagination. All historians, liturgists and theologians necessarily see the past from their own perspectives, and it is therefore unsurprising that this imagination derived from Simmons’ own cultural formation in Oxford. This culture was infused with a Romantic conception of the Middle Ages, derived from earlier antiquarianism, but specifically directed to liturgical theology and ecclesiology.1 Within it, it might be said, Simmons, as a parish priest trying to develop the devotional life of his own parishioners, was seeking in the LFMB something with the authority and status of the Prayer Book itself. It was, after all, part of the later medieval tradition from which the Anglican Prayer Book emerged in the middle of the sixteenth century. Where this culture largely derived from is illustrated by what may now be perceived as a significant event in nineteenth-century English church history. In 1823, Oxford’s Regius Professor of Divinity, Charles Lloyd (1784–1829), later to become Bishop of Oxford (1827–9), delivered a course of private lectures on the history of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (hence BCP).2 His earnest audience of university graduates and students included figures who later, through their involvement in the Oxford Movement, were to become influential, indeed dominant, in nineteenth-century English religious life: John Henry Newman (whom we have already encountered), Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800–82), Richard Hurrell Froude (1803–36), Isaac Williams (1802–65), Robert Isaac Wilberforce (1802–57) and Frederick Oakley (1802–80).

1 For a recent comprehensive discussion, see Hill, Time’s Witness; for a general survey within a wider setting, see Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People?, especially pp. 468–75. For an even broader overview, see MacCulloch, History of Christianity, pp. 838–46. 2 R. C. D. Jasper, The Development of the Anglican Liturgy, 1662–1980 (London, 1989), pp. 41–2.

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Lloyd’s influence on his students was profound. Indeed, he was also instrumental, a couple of years later, in causing Pusey to study theology in Germany: a key event in the Oxford Movement’s evolution. In these lectures, Lloyd sought to demonstrate that the sources of the Church of England’s BCP were both primitive and medieval, implying the continuity of the English Church from pre- to post-Reformation times. His listeners were encouraged to study the medieval Breviary and Missal, and both Newman and Pusey began to use the Roman Breviary in the 1830s.3 Lloyd’s scholarly engagement with the sources of the BCP also had a significant posthumous afterlife. After his death in 1829, Lloyd’s papers passed to a fellowOxfordian William Palmer of Worcester College,4 who drew on them extensively for his seminal Origines Liturgicae (1832), a work to which we will return in some detail shortly. Lloyd’s arguments for this liturgical continuity were not new. They had already appeared, for instance, in Charles Wheatly’s The Church of England Man’s Companion; or, A Rational Illustration of Harmony, Excellency, and Usefulness of the Book of Common Prayer &c. (London, 1710). This work was hugely influential; there were no fewer than thirteen editions of Wheatly’s book published in the nineteenth century (albeit with abbreviated titles), the last appearing as late as 1890.5 Wheatly (1686–1742) was a high-churchman of an eighteenth-century type whose orientation was in some ways aligned with contemporary ‘non-jurors’,6 although he was, as is clear from his prefaces and dedications, comfortable with contemporary constitutional arrangements. He became ‘[a]rguably the leading liturgical scholar of his generation’ (ODNB). Wheatly drew on earlier work on the BCP by Hamon L’Estrange (1605–60), Anthony Sparrow (1612–85),7 William Nicholls (1664–1712) and others. His primary goal, as set forth in the preface to the corrected 1710 edition of his book, was to argue against the dissenting emphasis on extempore prayer with a comprehensive assertion of the validity of what he referred to as ‘pre-compos’d set forms’; his response was based on detailed reference to scripture, the church fathers, and ecclesiastical 3 Bryan D. Spinks, ‘The Transition from “Excellent Liturgy” to being “Too Narrow for the Religious Life of the Present Generation”: The Book of Common Prayer in the Nineteenth Century’, in Stephen Platten and Christopher Woods (eds), Comfortable Words: Polity and Piety and the Book of Common Prayer (Norwich, 2012), pp. 98–120. See also Lida E. Ellsworth, Charles Lowder and the Ritualist Movement (London, 1982), pp. 8–10. 4 The papers were passed to Palmer by Lloyd’s successor as Regius Professor of Divinity, Edward Burton (1794–1836), described in ODNB as ‘an energetic but not innovative scholar’. 5 Six editions were printed in Wheatly’s lifetime, the last in 1729. 6 ‘Non-jurors’ were those clergy in the Church of England who refused to take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary after the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688, and were thus excluded from their benefices. Non-jurors were traditionalists; many (known as ‘usagers’) wished to restore the 1549 BCP, the version closer to late medieval and pre-Reformation practice than later versions. 7 Sparrow’s career is perhaps exemplary of the character of these scholars. While at Queen’s College Oxford in 1640–1, Sparrow was accused of having a ‘close association with the scandalous disclosures of popish doctrine and adornments corrupting a number of colleges and their chapels’ (ODNB); in 1637 he had published a notorious sermon on confession of a ‘frankly papist’ character. Ejected from his positions under the Commonwealth, he was reinstated with the Restoration of 1660, ending his career as Bishop of Norwich.

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tradition. Wheatly is clear about the virtues of ‘our Excellent Liturgy’, which he describes as ‘reform’d from Popish abuses, and to be perform’d in the English Tongue’, but his arguments throughout draw attention to its continuities with ancient liturgies, and these arguments he continued to develop in the later editions that emerged in his lifetime. Thus, in the much-expanded fifth edition of 1728, Wheatly wrote as follows: 8

For it was not the design of our reformers, (nor indeed ought it to have been,) to introduce a new form of worship into the Church, but to correct and amend the old one; and to purge it from those gross corruptions which had gradually crept into it, and so to render the divine service more agreeable to the Scriptures, and to the doctrine and practice of the primitive Church in the best and purest ages of Christianity.9

Wheatly, as a good Anglican, emphasised therefore the ways in which the BCP aligned with this ‘primitive pattern’.10 Such positions were however further extended by Lloyd and Palmer, who – while accepting the necessity of the Reformation – found much of value in medieval religious expression. As the latter put it in Origines Liturgicae, the BCP was produced in essential continuity with earlier liturgies, emphasising the ‘origin and antiquity of our Services’.11 It was Palmer’s book that the ecclesiastical historian and high-church clergyman John Henry Overton (1835–1903) later described as ‘the chief factor in the preparation for the movement which was fast approaching’.12 This development was the Oxford Movement, which was accompanied by a vigorous programme of polemical publication, addressed variously to clergy, people and scholars: the ninety Tracts for the Times (1833–41). The Tracts sought to sustain the integrity of the BCP, laying emphasis on the Apostolic Succession, on the ancient rites and teachings of the Christian church, and also – significantly for our purposes – on the medieval church and its liturgy. Newman’s Tract 75 (1839), for instance, is concerned with ‘the Roman Breviary as embodying the substance of the devotional services of the Church Catholic’. Defending his presentation of selections from the Breviary, Newman affirms that it ‘lies in the circumstance, that our own daily Service is confessedly formed upon the Breviary; so that an inspection of the latter will be found materially to illustrate and explain our own Prayer-Book’.13 The Tracts were not the only publications to express such agendas. In the words of the liturgist Geoffrey Cuming, ‘Oxford became the source of a flood of liturgical reprints.’14 Many of these new editions provided materials for histories of the BCP, such as Francis Proctor’s History of the Book of Common Prayer (1854, revised Charles Wheatly, The Church of England Man’s Companion; or a Rational Illustration of the Harmony, Excellency, and Usefulness of the Book of Common Prayer, &c (Oxford, 1710), n.p. 9 Charles Wheatly, A Rational Illustration of the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England (London, 1728), p. 24. 10 Wheatly, Rational Illustration, p. 35 11 William Palmer, Origines Liturgicae, or, Antiquities of the English Ritual, 2 Vols [1832], fourth edition (London, 1845), p. vii. 12 J. H. Overton, The Anglican Revival (London, 1897), p. 23. 13 Tracts for the Times, Vol. III (London and Oxford, 1839), Tract 75, p. 2. 14 G. J. Cuming, A History of Anglican Liturgy, second edition (London, 1982), p. 148. 8

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by Walter Howard Frere in 1901), and in William Keeling’s Liturgicae Britannicae (1851), which provided parallel texts of the BCPs of 1549, 1552, 1559, 1604 (the Liturgy as revised after the Hampton Court Conference), and 1662, and also the Scottish Liturgy, as authorised by Charles I in 1637. Accompanying such works were publications not only by Palmer but also by the likes of the liturgical scholars William Maskell, Francis Dickinson and later William Henderson. The writings of these men reflected growing interest in pre-Reformation liturgical practice, above all that of the Sarum Use that dominated the late medieval English religious landscape. Such interests aligned with the wider cultural fascination with the Middle Ages, fed imaginatively by the literary influence of Sir Walter Scott and his novels. Relevant here are Newman’s words on Scott, in his deeply personal Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864), which he cites from an article he contributed to the British Critic in 1839: an article, wrote Newman, that ‘contains the last words which I ever spoke as an Anglican to Anglicans’.15 As has already been mentioned, Newman considered that Scott had ‘turned men’s minds in the direction of the Middle Ages’.16 Newman quotes his own article thus: The general need … of something deeper and more attractive, than what had offered itself elsewhere, may be considered to have led to his [Scott’s] popularity; and by means of his popularity he re-acted on his readers, stimulating their mental thirst, feeding their hopes, setting before them visions, which, when once seen, are not easily forgotten, and silently indoctrinating them with nobler ideas, which might afterwards be appealed to as first principles.17

As this quotation shows, Newman was well aware of the power of the imagination and feeling in the practice of worship and liturgy. This awareness was a temperamental orientation that eventually caused him to break from Palmer, whom he regarded as a conservative and whose ‘beau ideal in ecclesiastical action was a board of safe, sound, sensible men’ (ODNB). Newman’s later theological trajectory took him, of course, to Roman Catholicism, a direction that Palmer never took. Nowhere is this imaginative engagement with the past better expressed than in what might be regarded as the Cambridge equivalent of the Oxford Movement, which added an architectural element to the vision of the church. In 1839, two undergraduates, John Mason Neale (1818–66) and Benjamin Webb (1819–85), founded the Cambridge Camden Society,18 which in 1845 became the Ecclesiological Society; within four years the Society had amongst its patrons two archbishops, sixteen bishops, and numerous peers and Members of Parliament. J. H. Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua (London, 1864), p. 182. See Introduction above, p. 5. 17 Newman, Apologia, p. 185. 18 Neale and Webb’s society is not to be confused with another, distinct Camden Society founded in the previous year, which devoted itself to printing texts of historical interest; this society eventually merged with the Royal Historical Society, though the name survives in the Camden Series of RHS publications. The fifth set of Camden Series publications, which began in 1993, is still in progress. 15

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The Society’s journal, The Ecclesiologist, drew upon the Romantic fervour for things medieval for its programme of church building and restoration. The material setting of the liturgy had always been a matter of concern, and it is no coincidence that in his expanded 1728 edition of Rational Illustration of the Book of Common Prayer, Wheatly had included as a frontispiece a ground-plan of what he called a ‘primitive’ church, with chancel separated from ‘the Body of the Church’ by ‘The Holy Gates’ and ‘The Rails of the Chancel’.20 But in 1843 – as we have seen21 – Neale and Webb went much further, by publishing a translation of the first book of Bishop William Durandus’ (1230–1296) Rationale Divinorum Officiorum (1286–1291). The new translation of the first book of this compendium of liturgical practices, under the title The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments, was hugely influential. As James F. White has written, ‘it is difficult to overestimate the importance of this work for it materially changed the course of ecclesiology’.22 Neale and Webb’s Introductory Essay is entitled ‘Sacramentality: A Principle of Ecclesiastical Design’. They discovered in Durandus a conception of church architecture that was founded upon a clear principle, viz. ‘sacramentality’, which they defined as ‘that characteristic which so strikingly distinguishes ancient ecclesiastical architecture from our own’: 19

…contact with the Church endues with a new sanctity, and elevates every form and every principle of art: so in a peculiar sense the sacred end to which church architecture is subservient, elevates and sanctifies that reality which must be a condition of its goodness in common with all good architecture; in short, raises this principle of Reality into one of Sacramentality.23

Sacramentality brought architecture and theology together, ‘combining the physical and metaphysical. What a church looked like was also what it meant.’24 Neale and Webb’s ideas aligned in many ways with those of arguably the most radical and influential architect of the nineteenth century.25 In 1836, seven years before Neale and Webb’s translation of Durandus appeared, Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812–52) self-published a seeming-slight work entitled Contrasts; or a Parallel between the Noble Edifices of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, and

The term ecclesiology first appeared (spelled as Ecclesialogy), according to OED, in the journal The British Critic in 1837, where it was defined as ‘a science which may treat of the proper construction and operations of the Church’. The British Critic, always a high-church publication, was for many years dominated by the group known as the ‘Hackney Phalanx’ (see below p. 35). By 1837 it had become a house-publication for the Tractarians, publishing work by Newman, Pusey and William Ward. OED’s primary definition of ecclesiology captures an apparent later narrowing of the term’s meaning, viz. ‘The science relating to the church or to churches; now usually, the science of church building and decoration’; but it is clear from the citations that architecture and theology were seen as inextricably linked. 20 Wheatly, Rational Illustration, p.i. 21 See p. 5 above. 22 James F. White, The Cambridge Movement: The Ecclesiologists and the Gothic Revival (Cambridge, 1962), p. 68. 23 Neale and Webb, The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments, p. xxviii. 24 Hill, Time’s Witness, p. 261. 25 Rosemary Hill, God’s Architect (Harmondsworth, 2007). 19

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Similar Buildings of the Present Day; Shewing the Present Decay of Taste.26 Pugin begins his book by describing the ‘feeling’ which produced the great churches of the later Middle Ages, and contrasts that with the ‘pillage and destruction’ that took place under Henry VIII and the ‘new religion’ of Edward VI. He concludes with a lament for ‘the present degraded state’ of modern churches and the ‘wretched state of architecture’ of the present time. The very first sentence of Contrasts strikes the tone for the whole work: ‘On comparing the Architectural Works of the present Century with those of the Middle Ages, the wonderful superiority of the latter must strike every attentive observer.’27 It mattered to Pugin that any church he designed: …was arranged like a medieval church, rather than a modern ‘preaching box’. Each separate part proclaimed its function – the nave for the laity, the chancel for the clergy. The altar, not the pulpit, was the focus. In the interior every element seems under tension, as if on the point of springing yet further upward.28

Despite the similarities, however, Neale and Webb nevertheless felt that Pugin had not grasped the heart of the matter. While acknowledging Pugin’s importance as both architect and theorist, they considered that he had missed, in his discussion of the church architecture of the Middle Ages, the importance of ‘sacramentality’, whereby physical form and action were aligned symbolically with theological function: Mr Pugin does not seem in his books to recognize the particular principle which we have enunciated. We have shewn that his law about Reality is true so far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. … he does not seem to have discerned that as contact with the Church endues with a new sanctity, and elevates every form and every principle of art: so in a peculiar sense the sacred end to which Church architecture is subservient, elevates and sanctifies that reality which must be a condition of its goodness in common with all good architecture; in short, raises this principle of Reality into one of Sacramentality. We should be sorry to assert that Mr Pugin does not feel this, though we are not aware that he has expressed it in his writings: but in his most lasting writings, his churches namely, it is clear that the principle, if not intentionally even, and if only incompletely, has not been without a great influence on that master mind.29

William Whyte has shown30 that, although the origins of the Victorian development of ecclesiastical architecture reached back well into the eighteenth century, it was in the 1830s in England (and later in Scotland) that it was linked with a theological, Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, Contrasts (London, 1836). Pugin, Contrasts, p. 1. Pearson, the architect of St Mary’s, Dalton Holme, regarded Pugin as his early master, though he later moved away from Pugin’s influence. Unlike Pugin, Pearson remained a devout Anglican. See Anthony Quiney, John Loughborough Pearson (New Haven, 1979), pp. 16, 38. 28 Hill, God’s Architect, p. 193. 29 Neale and Webb, Symbolism, p. xxviii. 30 William Whyte, ‘Ecclesiastical Gothic Revivalism’, in Joanne Parker and Corinna Wagner (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism (Oxford, 2020), pp. 432–46. See further William Whyte, Unlocking the Church: The Lost Secrets of Victorian Sacred Space (Oxford, 2017). 26 27

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ecclesiological and liturgical revival drawing on the medievalist impulses of the Oxford Movement: The rising tide of High Church revival within Anglicanism created an increasingly congenial environment for ecclesiology and even for Pugin. Their celebration of medieval church architecture chimed with the fascination for pre-Reformation theology which characterized the contemporary Oxford (or Tractarian) Movement, a group of academics who sought to emphasize the catholicity of the Church of England. In truth, some leading Tractarians were little interested in neo-medieval art, but many of their followers and still more of their successors were. The result was that the ritualists, High Church Reformers, and their allies not just in the Church of England but the episcopal Church of Scotland – and even with the Presbyterian Church of Scotland – came to believe that Gothic architecture was not just typologically but also theologically appropriate.31

Whyte further shifts the emphasis away from ‘grand narratives about the rise of Romanticism’ to a more parochial context: I’ve also questioned the assumption that either the Cambridge Ecclesiologists or Oxford Tractarians single-handedly effected this change. Rather, what we’ve traced is literally more parochial but in reality more profound shifts: new ideas about the nature of architecture and of faith; a growing belief in the didactic and emotional power of the material world.32

As a devout parish priest Thomas Frederick Simmons was one of these ‘successors’ of the Oxford Movement and the Cambridge ecclesiologists. Simmons’ magnificent English neo-Gothic church of St Mary’s, completed in 1861 in a manner that combines picturesque elegance and sublime grandeur, was fully in line with ecclesiological principles. By that time, ‘[the] belief that in a Gothic church, of any date, the spiritual meaning of Christianity was embodied [had sunk] deep into the national psyche’.33 St Mary’s is an astonishing building in the ‘Early English’ style, whose spire, over two hundred feet high, is the tallest in the East Riding. The building is embellished with intricate carvings in stone and wood, the elaborate font is decorated with Minton34 tiles, and the chancel is dominated by a fine stained-glass window depicting the Last Judgement: all features that align it with the sacramental ideology recommended by Neale and Webb. It even incorporates in its fabric stones and other items from its medieval predecessor, whose few remains can still be seen in the churchyard (the ruin of the old church was finally demolished in 1988). St Mary’s church is in sum a physical assertion of the belief, regularly asserted since the Reformation, in a continuous independent English church that dated from St Augustine’s foundation at Canterbury in 597 CE. The building of St Mary’s and many others like Whyte, ‘Ecclesiastical Gothic Revivalism’, p. 437. Whyte, Unlocking the Church, pp. 125–6. 33 Hill, Time’s Witness, p. 263. 34 Minton’s pottery firm was founded in Staffordshire in 1793 and became the leading ceramic factory in Europe during the Victorian period. Many designs were from medieval origins. 31

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it, built or restored, set within the Church of England, was an assertion of Anglicanism’s ownership of its medieval patrimony.35 Another aspect of this appropriation, relevant as we shall see for our understanding of the ‘cultural map’ for Simmons’ edition of LFMB, is to do with Anglican liturgical revision in the later nineteenth century. From the perfect satisfaction with ‘the excellency of the liturgy’ of the Church of England expressed by Bishop William Van Mildert (1765–1836), in a sermon of 1797,36 the Church of England in the nineteenth century shifted towards a sense of the pastoral need for an expansion of the BCP, looking back, not least, to its pre-Reformation roots. In short, in Neale’s words in 1863, ‘the revision, or rather enlargement of the Prayer-book, is a work which cannot be much longer delayed’.37 A key source for such revision was William Palmer’s Origines Liturgicae of 1832, which, developing the rich and diverse origins of BCP, and learning from Charles Wheatly, asserted not one but four great parent rites, all apostolic in origin.38 It is to Palmer’s work, so important for Simmons’ cultural formation, that we now turn.

The Victorian recovery of medieval liturgies (1): William Palmer By the second half of the nineteenth century, the theological energy of the Oxford Movement and the ecclesiological vigour of the Cambridge Movement combined in the Church of England for an enlargement of provisions of BCP and its demands for the uniformity of public worship. The Tracts for the Times, which initially called for no change in BCP, looked back not only to early Church liturgies, but also to the medieval liturgies of the English Church. A little later, theological interests turned more liturgical and pastoral, and initiated a drive for the expansion of the provision of public worship. The foundations of such revision, for Neale, were perfectly clear. They must be based on the ancient traditions of the ‘English Church’ and its catholic and apostolic continuity reaching far back before the Reformation. In short, Neale states (using an interesting analogy that privileges the medieval above the antique), it is to be hoped that reformers will not ‘build on a classical chapel to a Middle Pointed church’.39 In making his case for the expansion and revision of BCP, Neale acknowledges Archbishop Richard Chenevix Trench’s philological study English Past and Present (1855):40 a connection that adds a new dimension to the matter of liturgical revision. Trench’s first lecture is a description of English as a ‘composite language’, beginning As we will see, Simmons’ editing of the medieval LFMB is of a piece with the building of his church: an assertion of continuity with the past. 36 At the time Van Mildert, the future bishop of Durham, was rector of St Mary-le-Bow, London, and a prominent member of the Hackney Phalanx; see below p. 38. See Bryan D. Spinks, The Rise and Fall of the Incomparable Liturgy, Alcuin Club Collections 92 (London, 2017), p. 80. 37 J. M. Neale, Essays on Liturgiology and Church History (London, 1863), p. 225. 38 Jasper, Development of the Anglican Liturgy, p. 42. 39 Neale, Essays, p. 226. 40 Richard Chenevix Trench, English Past and Present [1855] (London, 1927). 35

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with ‘the speech of Chaucer’s age’. Trench, in his youth a radical associate of the great Anglo-Saxonist John Mitchell Kemble (1807–57), was an early member of EETS and the Philological Society, and was deeply involved with the origins of the OED.42 Trench (1807–86) became, when archbishop of Dublin, a controversial figure, referred to by his enemies as ‘Puseyite Trench’. He had served his curacy in 1833–4 at Hadleigh, Suffolk, under Hugh James Rose (1795–1838), a leader of the group of Anglican high churchmen known as the Hackney Phalanx, and while there had attended the Hadleigh Conference, a Tractarian event convened to consider the issues raised by Keble’s Assize Sermon. The reference to Trench’s book is significant, and points to issues discussed later in this book. For Trench, as it was for EETS’s founders such as Furnivall and Skeat, and indeed for Simmons, the careful editing of early English texts was a key to the recovery of a national heritage and a proper sense of the continuity of culture through the reclamation of texts. In the words of David Matthews: 41

One of the subtle shifts in the scholarship seen in the EETS editions is from a conception of medieval literature as alien, attractively exotic but far removed from modern history and modern aesthetics, to medieval literature as the cradle of modern literature, as continuous, in an unbroken chain with modernity.43

Matthews’ insight could be profitably extended, since this shift was not simply a literary concern. Given that by far the greater proportion of surviving late medieval texts are religious in content, this ‘unbroken chain’ was perceived in a profoundly ecclesiological and liturgical light by scholars and churchmen like Simmons, whose work finally marked the shift from the realms of antiquarianism to the scholarly editing of ancient texts. As has already been noted, nineteenth-century editing of medieval liturgical and liturgically related texts is generally now viewed with some scholarly scepticism – an ‘amateur’ occupation as it has been described44 – yet the extraordinary achievements of Victorian scholarship should not be underestimated. Part of the difficulty for modern scholarship lies in the Victorian tendency to assume that there was a perfect ‘original’ for every text. Matthew Cheung Salisbury sums up present-day views thus: … most of the early editions which have attained canonical status were produced at a time when scholars were particularly preoccupied with the re-discovery of ancient texts in their most genuine and incorrupt form (a tendency occasionally still seen), whereas the increasingly professionalised and ‘scientific’ disciplines of

Trench, English Past and Present, p. 7. See, e.g., Simon Winchester, The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford, 2003), pp. 47–50; for Trench and Kemble, see also p. 61. 43 Matthews, The Making of Middle English, p. 155. 44 Matthew Cheung Salisbury, Worship in Medieval England (Leeds, 2018), p. 66. 41

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history, philology, musicology, and indeed ‘medieval studies’, have more recently insisted on an approach that is more faithful to the evidence.45

This view is arguably over-harsh. Certainly, Simmons himself was perfectly well aware of the variety of manuscripts of the LFMB, and how they were modified for various functions and circumstances. However, what is interesting is that Cheung Salisbury’s list of disciplines omits liturgiology, a concern that was at the heart of the Oxford Movement’s engagement with the medieval past. The vigour of nineteenth-century liturgical studies is well-illustrated by William Palmer’s Origines Liturgicae (Oxford, 1832). The Origines was undoubtedly one of the most important publications on the subject in the nineteenth century, exercising, as we have seen, an enormous influence on the course of the Oxford Movement, and it continued to be cited for many years (not least in Simmons’ edition of LFMB). William Patrick Palmer (1803–85) was born in Ireland and was, like Simmons, from a military family. Educated at Trinity College Dublin, he was ordained as an Anglican clergyman and tutored by the high-churchman John Jebb, Bishop of Limerick. Jebb, along with his teacher Alexander Knox, were once credited as being the real originators of the Oxford Movement. In the words of G. T. Stokes in the Contemporary Review in 1887, ‘Wesley begat Knox, and Knox begat Jebb, and Jebb begat Rose, and Pusey and Newman.’46 More significant, perhaps, was Palmer’s departure from Ireland to England, for he moved to Oxford in 1828, proceeded to his MA at Magdalen College in 1829, and thence to a fellowship in 1831 at Worcester College, from which Simmons was in a few years also to graduate.47 Jebb, it seems, had encouraged the move; Palmer had already begun work on the medieval origins of Anglican liturgy back in 1826, and intended to pursue his researches using Oxford’s resources. He seems to have set these interests aside at first when he discovered that Bishop Lloyd had been working on the topic, but Lloyd’s death, and Palmer’s acquisition of his notes, caused him to redouble his efforts. Origines Liturgicae thus draws heavily on the work of Lloyd. Underlying its somewhat dry prose is the clear argument for the apostolic continuity of the English Church dating back to Augustine of Canterbury’s mission and through the Reformation.48 In Palmer’s words: …. Although our liturgy and other offices were corrected and improved, chiefly after the example of the ancient Gallican, Spanish, Alexandrian, and Oriental, yet See Matthew Cheung Salisbury, ‘Rethinking the Uses of Sarum and York: A Historiographical Essay’, in Helen Gittos and Sarah Hamilton (eds), Understanding Medieval Liturgy: Essays in Interpretation (London, 2016), pp. 103–22, p. 104. 46 Quoted in Brilioth, The Anglican Revival, p. 331. 47 He is not to be confused with William Palmer (1811–1879) of Magdalen College. 48 See James Kirby, Historians and the Church of England: Religion and Historical Scholarship, 1870–1920 (Oxford, 2016), p. 86. See also Gittos and Hamilton (eds), Understanding Medieval Liturgy, pp. 6–7: ‘In the Church of England, the proponents of the emerging High Church movement sought to emphasize their Church’s descent from the universal Church, and the continuities between its practices and those of the late medieval period.’ 45

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the greater portion of our prayers have been continually retained and used by the church of England for more than twelve hundred years.49

At the time of their publication the originality of Palmer’s weighty volumes was questioned.50 Nevertheless Origines Liturgicae was a hugely influential work, and has retained its reputation as ‘by far the best book in the English language on the neglected theme of the history and significance of Anglican liturgical offices’.51 In addition to his use of Lloyd’s work, Palmer drew heavily on the antiquarian researchers of the eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries. Amongst the latter of particular importance were Joseph Bingham’s (c.1668–1723) Origines Ecclesiasticae in ten volumes (London, 1708–22), reprinted in 1834, which also influenced Newman, Williams and other writers of the Tracts for the Times;52 Richard Gough’s (1735–1809) A Catalogue of the Books Relating to British Topography, and Saxon and Northern Literature (Oxford, 1814) and Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain (London, 1796–9); Thomas Frognall Dibdin’s (1776–1847) vast yet incomplete Bibliographical Decameron, or, Ten Days Pleasant Discourse upon Illuminated Manuscripts (London, 1817); and David Wilkins’ Concilia Magna Britannicae et Hiberniae (London, 1737). Such works were the currency of the great antiquarian enterprises of the Enlightenment and Romantic periods.53 Moreover, Palmer drew upon a wealth of earlier British and European liturgical scholarship, much of it from the Counter-Reformation, that was also to be of importance for Simmons, who was (on the evidence of his notes) an inveterate follower-up of references. We have already encountered Charles Wheatly’s Rational Illustration of the Book of Common Prayer, and the tradition of scholarly Prayer Book studies which begins with Hamon L’Estrange’s Alliance of Divine Offices (London, 1659), which argues for the connection between the Anglican liturgy and the ‘usage of the Primitive Church long before the Popish Masse was ever dreamt of ’. In addition, Palmer drew widely upon the European traditions of liturgical scholarship, in particular the French Benedictine scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.54 49 Palmer, Origines Liturgicae, Vol. 1, p. 189. See further Peter B. Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760–1857 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 219–20. 50 [P. Le Page Renouf], The Character of the Rev. William Palmer, M.A. of Worcester College, as a Controversialist (London, 1843), pp. 50–1. See also the more recent work of William Seth Adams, ‘William Palmer’s Narrative of Events: the First History of the Tracts for the Times’, in J. E. Booty (ed.), The Divine Drama in Liturgy and History: Essays in Honor of Horton Davies (Alison Park, Pa., 1984), pp. 81–106. 51 Peter B. Nockles in ODNB. 52 ‘Newman… rejoins both the ethos and the practice of the primitive Church, chiefly by his considerable dependence on Joseph Bingham’s Origines Ecclesiasticae (1708–22)’: Placid Murray (ed.), John Henry Newman: Sermons, 1824–1843, Vol. 1. Sermons on the Liturgy and Sacraments and on Christ the Mediator (Oxford, 1991), p. v. 53 See further Hill, Time’s Witness, for the context to these works, including especially discussions of Dibdin and Gough. 54 Key sources were Euchologium sive Rituale Graecorum (Venice, 1647), by the French Dominican and historian of Eastern liturgies, Jacques Goar (1601–53); Eusèbe Renaudot’s (1646–1720) Liturgiarum orientalium collectio (Paris, 1715–16); Edmond Martène (1654– 1739), a French Benedictine, and his great works De Antiquis Ecclesiae Ritibus (Rouen, 1700) and (with Ursin Durand) Voyages Litteraire de deux Religieux Bénédictins (Paris, 1717);

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Palmer’s Origines quickly attracted the attention of Hugh James Rose, a leader in the ‘Hackney Phalanx’. Rose invited Palmer to contribute to the newly-founded British Magazine, a monthly theological publication, and Palmer was thereby drawn into the beginnings of the Oxford Movement. Nevertheless, the shy and reserved Palmer, described by Newman as ‘the only really learned man among us’, maintained a cautious and conservative distance from the Movement’s leaders: something that they observed. Indeed, as early as 1838, shortly before Palmer’s marriage, Newman wrote of him in a letter to John William Bowden that ‘good fellow as he is, he has never been one of our own’.55 Palmer was in turn suspicious of the Tracts for their lack of moderation, a view expressed in his Narrative of Events connected with the publication of the Tracts for the Times, with Reflections on Existing Tendencies to Romanism, and on the Present Duties and Prospects of Members of the Church (Oxford, 1843), a work in which Palmer yet expresses hope for a rejuvenated Church of England: … it is impossible not to advert in a spirit of deep thankfulness to the prospects of the Church, and the progress of Christian principles and practice. Who shall say that much has not been done within the last ten years? And what may we not humbly expect from the blessing of God on the patient, and humble, and persevering endeavours for personal and general improvement? A Theology deepened and invigorated; a Church daily awakening more and more to her sense of her privileges and responsibilities; a Clergy more zealous, more self-denying, more holy; a laity more interested in the great concerns of time and eternity; Churches more fully attended; sacraments and divine offices more frequently and fervently partaken.56

Given that Palmer, like John Keble, left Oxford for a subsequent lifetime in parochial ministry, this description might also well fit such a man as Simmons: a cautious and scholarly establishment clergyman, devoted to his people, to church and parish and to learning. Palmer also shared with Simmons a quality of dry seriousness, leading Newman to remark of Palmer’s great Treatise on the Church of Christ (London, 1838) that it was merely ‘a useful reference book for facts and nothing more’ (ODNB). But it was in this work that Palmer laboriously expounded the ‘branch theory’ of the church whereby the Church of England is described as a legitimate branch of the church catholic alongside the Roman and Greek traditions. Palmer, like Simmons,

another Benedictine scholar, Jean Mabillon (1632–1707) and his Acta Sanctorum (Paris, 1685); Giuseppe Catalani (‘Catalano’, 1698–1764), a Hieronymite monk, whose numerous works on the Roman liturgy include Pontificale Romanum (1738–40, reprinted in Paris in 1850), a foundational source for the Roman Rite; and Jean-Baptiste Le Brun des Marettes (better known as the Sieur de Moléon) (1651–1731) and his Voyages Liturgiques de France (Paris, 1718). 55 John Henry Newman (ed. Gerard Tracey), Letters and Diaries, 1837–1838. Vol. 6 (Oxford, 1984), p. 337. 56 William Palmer, A Narrative of Events Connected with the Publication of the Tracts for the Times, with Reflections on Existing Tendencies to Romanism (Oxford, 1843), p. 87.

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was a faithful son of the Reformation and defended the Church of England and validity of Anglican orders in the face of Roman Catholic objections: 57

Amongst the various deceptive arguments by which the ministers of the Romish schism have endeavoured to pervert the weak from the communion of the church, there is not one which has been urged with such unwearied assiduity, art, and audacity, as that which affects the validity of the English ordinations.58

Palmer distinguished clearly between sound Anglican principles and the more extreme Romanising tendencies that became more vocal in the Church after Newman’s resignation as vicar of St Mary’s, Oxford in 1843, and his subsequent conversion to Roman Catholicism. The roots of Palmer’s argument lay in his research into the ancient and medieval origins of the BCP and the historical continuity of English public worship. In his Narrative of Events, Palmer asserts that he had ‘devoted great attention to the study of the ancient liturgies’59 in reaching his position in the English Church. In Origines Liturgicae, he affirms that the English Reformation was not a disturbance of the Church’s Catholicity but rather a clearing away of Roman abuses within the liturgy.60 Palmer states clearly that: The English Prayer-Book was not composed within a few years, nor by a few men: it has descended to us with the improvements and the approbation of many centuries; and they who truly feel the calm and sublime elevation of our hymns and prayers, participate in the spirit of primitive devotion … There is scarcely a portion of our Prayer Book which cannot in some way be traced to ancient offices.61

The second volume of Origines is more directly relevant to our argument here, a substantial part of it being taken up with a commentary on ‘the Holy Communion, or Liturgy’.62 Palmer is quite clear from the outset that the English tradition is to be distinguished from that of Rome:

57 Simmons explicitly states that ‘I am a clergyman of the reformed Church, and… I am one of those “who according to the order of our Holy Reformation have deliberately and with good reason renounced the errors, corruptions, and superstitions, as well as the Papal Tyranny, which once here prevailed”’ (LFMB, p. xiv); see chapter 4 below, p. 69. Simmons draws here on the Form of Prayer as used daily at the Northern Convocation of York, of which he was a member from 1874. 58 William Palmer, A Treatise on the Church of Christ [London, 1838], second ‘London Edition’ (New York, 1841), Vol. II, p. 427. 59 Palmer, A Narrative of Events, p. 24. 60 Palmer was far distant from the position of extremists such as Richard Hurrell Froude (1803–1836), who famously remarked that ‘the Reformation was a limb badly set – it must be broken again in order to be righted’. Froude, ‘attracted by the medievalism of Robert Southey and Walter Scott[,] … looked back to an age when the church seemed to constitute an integral part of an organic and harmonious feudal society’ (ODNB). The reference to Scott is of course significant. 61 Palmer, Origines Liturgicae (1845), I, p. vi. 62 Palmer, Origines Liturgicae (1845), II, pp. 1–166.

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It will be seen that Romanists are loud in their hostility to our liturgy, which in form and substance rather resembles the ancient Gallican, Spanish, Egyptian, and Oriental liturgies than the Roman.63

Clearly there are moments in his argument when Palmer skates on thin ice, not least in his defence of the accusation that in the BCP ‘there is no invocation of the Holy Ghost’, i.e. the epiclesis, that section in the eucharistic prayer when the Holy Spirit is invoked to bless elements or communicants. Palmer’s response to this query is at best vague, asserting that there is ‘no trace’ of an epiclesis in the ancient liturgies of Milan, Italy and Rome,64 and he goes on to remark, not entirely persuasively: I argue… that it is not essential to pray expressly for the Holy Ghost to sanctify the elements; because it is not essential in prayer to mention to God the means by which he is to accomplish the end which we pray for.65

Palmer’s commentary on the service of Holy Communion clearly anticipates in several places the detailed discussion provided by Simmons in his edition of LFMB. For example, quoting the liturgies of Sarum, York and Hereford, Palmer notes: In the liturgy of the church of England before the reformation, the priest confessed his sins before the choir, or people, who prayed for him when he had concluded. The people then confessed their sins, and in turn the priest implored the divine benediction upon them. We have now united these confessions.66

We note the same pattern in the LFMB in which the priest confesses before the people as they kneel (B-version, lines 40–5), and then the lay people confess their sins (lines 55–8) and are shriven by the priest. Finally, Palmer is frequently at pains to suggest the ancient French origins of medieval English liturgical practice. For example, Palmer points out that the benediction at the conclusion of the marriage rite in Salisbury and York ‘is also found in a pontifical of the monastery of Lyre, in France, seven hundred years old’.67 It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Palmer’s views, and others like them, lie behind Simmons’ view that the ‘dam Ieremy’, mentioned at the beginning of the LFMB as the author of the text from which the poem is derived (B-version, line 18), is an Archdeacon Jeremias, a twelfth-century canon of Rouen and later archdeacon of Cleveland. Simmons

63 Palmer, Origines Liturgicae (1845), II, p. 2. This view has been dismissed by Matthew Cheung Salisbury, who rejects ‘the aspiration that the Church of England, and its liturgy, had an ancient and noble origin equal to and distinct from the Roman Rite as it had developed in continental Europe. This is of course not true’ (Worship, pp. 30–1). Neither Palmer nor Simmons are quite this categorical. Palmer’s phrase here is measured: ‘rather resembles.’ William Maskell also, in his The Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England (London, 1844), includes the Roman Liturgy printed in parallel with the uses of Sarum, York, Hereford and Bangor. 64 Palmer, Origines Liturgicae (1845), II, p. 137. 65 Palmer, Origines Liturgicae (1845), II, p. 138. 66 Palmer, Origines Liturgicae (1845), II, pp. 105–6. 67 Palmer, Origines Liturgicae (1845), II, p. 222.

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admits that ‘this is a mere guess, I am ready to admit’, but that he should have looked for a French, and particularly a Rouen connection, is suggestive.69 Palmer and later Simmons, were not alone in thinking of the French roots of the English medieval liturgy; thus, for instance, Harford Pearson in his Sarum Missal, in English (1868), states that ‘the Use of Rouen and the Use of Sarum70 were almost identical in the eleventh century’.71 This surmise, however, was dismissed later by Edmund Bishop in his 1893 essay ‘Holy Week Rites of Sarum, Hereford and Rouen Compared’: 68

In regard to the relation of Rouen and York, the late canon Simmons touched on the questions in various passages of his Lay Folks’ Mass Book. It has often been stated, and in some quarters taken as a fact, that special connexion exists between Rouen and Sarum, but no detailed proof has been offered.72

Bishop points out that the ‘use of Sarum’ in the eleventh century ‘must be mere matter of conjecture’, and further that ‘the particular resemblance pointed to by Mr. Pearson are no more than items, which, practically speaking, formed part of the substructure of all the late mediaeval uses’.73 Unlike Bishop, Palmer and Simmons were not primarily academic scholars (though Bishop never held a university position).74 They were first and foremost churchmen, clergymen of the Church of England at a time when, in the words of Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. xl; see p. 22 above. See also the discussion of Gallicanism in chapter 1 above, p. 18. It is possible, consciously or unconsciously, that Simmons may also have been influenced also by the Romantic medievalism of Sir Walter Scott and others who made imaginative reconstructions of England after the Norman Conquest as a land of native Saxons and newly rich French masters. Simmons wrote, with overtones of the imaginary medieval world of Ivanhoe: ‘In the middle of the twelfth century a book of prayers in English would have been of small use, even if the notion had not been offensive, to the stranger lords of the newly-built castles and crenelated manors, and their foreign retainers. Some eighty years had passed since the Normans had invaded this country, but their successors were still in the position of an army cantoned among a subject population, rather than the fellow-countrymen of their English vassals.’ An English translation for genteel use, Simmons would argue, would have been from a much later date. 70 The term ‘use’ is described in the ODCC as, ‘in liturgiology, a local modification of the standard (esp. the Roman) rite.’ It refers to the range of service books for, variously, the Sarum (Salisbury), Ebor (York), Hereford, Lincoln, etc, ‘uses’. These include the missal and the breviary. 71 A. Harford Pearson, The Sarum Missal, done into English [1868], second edition (London, 1884), p. xxiii. Simmons does not refer to Pearson’s work, but clearly the view was ‘in the air’ while he was working on LFMB. It is nevertheless an interesting fact that Rouen, a centre for French printing in the late fifteenth/early sixteenth century, was the location for large-scale printing of Sarum missals for the English book-trade. 72 Edmund Bishop, ‘Holy Week Rites of Sarum, Hereford and Rouen Compared’, in Liturgica Historica: Papers on the Liturgy and Religious Life of the Western Church [1918] (Oxford, 1962), p. 277. 73 Bishop, ‘Holy Week Rites’. See also Richard W. Pfaff, The Liturgy in Medieval England (Oxford, 2009), p. 461. 74 For much of his life Bishop worked in the Education Office. See Nigel Abercrombie, The Life and Work of Edmund Bishop (London, 1959). 68 69

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James Kirby, the ‘idea of the Church of England as a learned church provides us with an alternative conceptual framework for understanding the relationship between religion and knowledge in the nineteenth century’.75 Within this conceptual framework their scholarly achievements in the field of liturgy and worship were remarkable. William Palmer carried this vision into a parochial ministry, for more than twenty years serving as vicar of Whitchurch Canonicorum in Dorset between 1846 and 1869. History is almost entirely silent about Palmer’s career during these years, Peter Nockles remarking that ‘there is little evidence for Palmer’s life as a country pastor, but he always remained concerned with the church’s spiritual efficiency as well as her theological orthodoxy’.76 His life, a lived form of the doctrine of reserve, is an example, like Simmons’, of a kind of scholarship that flourishes when hidden within the ministry of the church which he served. The Victorian recovery of medieval liturgies (2): William Maskell The second seminal figure in early Victorian Anglican liturgiology was William Maskell (1814–90), who in 1844 published the Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England, and, two years later, the massive three-volume Monumenta ritualia ecclesiae Anglicanae (London, 1846). These works established Maskell as the leading authority on medieval liturgical history, a position he did not lose even after his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1850. This conversion was the direct result of the decision reached in the notorious ‘Gorham case’ (1847), during which Maskell was serving as the bishop of Exeter’s domestic chaplain and assistant in the examination of the Rev George Cornelius Gorham (1787–1857); Gorham was an evangelical who was deemed by his bishop, the formidable high churchman Henry Phillpotts, to hold unsound views on the efficacy of infant baptism. Maskell’s Ancient Liturgy provided parallel texts of the medieval Mass in Latin ‘according to the uses of Sarum, York, Hereford and Bangor and the Roman Liturgy’, and it remained the standard reference point for scholars until the Burntisland edition (by Francis Henry Dickinson) of the Sarum Missal, and the York and Hereford Missals edited by William George Henderson.77 It was Maskell’s Ancient Liturgy of the English Church which first introduced Simmons to the LFMB. As was noted in chapter 1, Simmons’ ‘attention was … drawn to the British Museum MS [i.e. the B-version] by Mr. Maskell’s extract from it …’78 And, in the third revised edition of The Ancient Liturgy (1882), Maskell acknowledges Simmons’ work, noting the EETS edition: … admirably edited by the Rev. T. F. Simmons, canon of York, with an excellent introduction and an appendix of very valuable and learned notes. Canon Simmons calls it ‘the Lay Folks mass book’.79 Kirby, Historians and the Church of England, p. 2. ODNB. 77 Simmons describes Henderson, who was to become Dean of Carlisle, as his friend; see below, p. 48. 78 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. ix. 79 Maskell, The Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England (1882 edition), p. 14. 75

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There was clearly mutual respect. Maskell, ‘a man of considerable literary and conversational powers’,80 was a year older than Simmons. He graduated with his BA from University College, Oxford in 1836, taking holy orders in 1837 as a deacon in the Church of England. After serving as Bishop Phillpotts’ domestic chaplain he was, until his conversion, briefly vicar of St Mary’s Torquay, though plagued by ‘anguished reflection’ as a result of the Gorham Case. Like Newman, whom he had consulted about his problems, Maskell converted to Roman Catholicism, but although by then a widower, he did not take Roman Catholic orders, and indeed later married for a second time. He remained somewhat independent in his views, later clashing with Cardinal Henry Manning on the teaching of papal infallibility. Personally wealthy through an inheritance, he was a significant collector of antiquities and books, and in 1855 he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, a position he held until shortly before his death. Maskell’s published works placed, and indeed place, him at the forefront of scholars of the medieval liturgical uses of the English church. The Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England prints the Latin eucharistic liturgies of Sarum, York, Hereford and Bangor together with the ‘Roman Liturgy’ in parallel columns.81 Unlike Palmer, who seems to have worked from secondary materials, Maskell pursued the texts that he reprinted through extensive first-hand research of manuscripts and printed copies, principally in the British Museum and the Bodleian Library in Oxford, but also including copies he owned himself.82 Texts used are as follows: 1. Roman: printed edition by Plantin, Antwerp, 1759. 2. Hereford: ‘taken from an edition of that missal in the Bodleian Library’. The supposition that the Hereford missal was only printed once is questioned by Maskell. In 1846, Maskell notes three surviving copies, two in the Bodleian and one in St John’s College, Oxford. None of them are ‘perfect’. A fourth was discovered in 1855 which ‘proved to be perfect’. It is now, he notes, in the British Museum (now the British Library). 3. York: taken from a copy owned by Maskell. He notes a fragment in the British Museum of 1516, and a copy in St John’s College, Cambridge. 4. Sarum: For the Sarum rite Maskell looks back to a fifteenth-century ‘missale in usum D.Pauli’, tracing the ‘old use of St Paul’s’ as that of Sarum in Barking monastery, Essex (about 1390), and by Bishop Grandisson in Exeter (in the statutes of the collegiate church of St Mary at Ottery, drawn up in 1339). 1492 (Rouen) edition owned by Maskell.

ODNB. R. J. Urquhart describes Maskell’s texts as ‘incomplete and sometimes confusing’ (Ceremonies of the Sarum Missal, London, 2021), p. xxi. This verdict seems a little hard, given the originality of Maskell’s work. 82 Oddly, and unlike Simmons, Maskell does not provide library shelfmarks for his sources: a tiresome omission that indicates the uncertain state of scholarly practice at the time. 80 81

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5. Bangor: No printed copy ‘has been discovered’. Maskell used a manuscript dating from about 1400 which is ‘undoubtedly an English missal, and not strictly according to the uses either of Sarum, York, or Hereford’.83 Several points are to be noted here. First, Maskell is well aware of the scholarly need to gather, compare and contrast a number of manuscripts and early printed editions, even if he is unhelpfully vague as to the copies he consults. Such close study of the primary materials led Maskell to prefigure points later made by (among others) Matthew Cheung Salisbury;84 he is thus perfectly clear about the instability and diversity of the liturgical texts, concluding that: according to these various uses of Sarum, York, Bangor, Hereford and Lincoln (various yet harmonious) the holy eucharist was celebrated in England until the year 1547, the first of king Edward the sixth.85

Nevertheless, at the same time, he remained convinced, unlike Salisbury and, for that matter (as we shall see) Francis Dickinson, that there is a ‘perfect’ form of each of the missals which, no doubt, assiduous scholarship would eventually unearth.86 However, there is an important aspect of Maskell’s programme of research that we might suppose not to be generally shared by the austere concerns of present-day academic liturgiologists. At the conclusion of his Preface to The Ancient Liturgy Maskell notes that ‘studies of this kind must not be looked upon as merely antiquarian or even historical, but as of the highest importance in their relation to questions concerning doctrine’.87 Maskell stresses how the medieval liturgies, and the continuity of worship through the Prayer Books of the sixteenth century, have contemporary relevance within a living, indeed, revived Anglican tradition: That temper of mind we may trust is rapidly passing away in which English clergymen have feared to come in contact, as with unholy things, with the ancient liturgies and offices (which are indeed the monuments) of the English church.88

For Maskell, who was, we should recall, writing before his conversion to Roman Catholicism, such ‘monuments’ are not something inert, but part of a living tradition Urquhart, Ceremonies, p. lxxix. Salisbury, ‘Rethinking the Uses of Sarum and York’, pp. 105–7. Salisbury refers back to the eighteenth-century antiquarian Richard Gough (1735–1809) in the second volume of his British Topography (new edition, 1780). Gough notes the ‘great diversity in saying and singing in late medieval English liturgies.’ 85 The Ancient Liturgy, p. lxxi. 86 Simmons himself was depressed by his inability to find ‘the original from which [LFMB] had been translated’, despite ‘the trouble’ he had given to authorities ‘in the British Museum, the Bodleian, the University Library at Cambridge, the public libraries at Paris and Edinburgh, the Lambeth Library, the libraries at Durham, Lincoln, and other cathedrals in this country, at Ushaw and other Roman Catholic colleges, or in the libraries at Rouen and Caen, where, from the Norman origin of the treatise, it seemed not impossible that a copy may have found its way at the revolution among the spoils of some Norman monastery or manor house’ (Simmons ed., LFMB, pp. x–xi). 87 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. lxxxiii. 88 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. lxxxiii. 83

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of worship that continued to the present day. For that reason he stresses, as a highchurch Anglican, that the BCP ‘is founded upon and draws its origin’89 from the medieval uses reprinted in his book. Things were rather different when Maskell, towards the end of his life and well after his conversion to Roman Catholicism, published his 1882 edition of The Ancient Liturgy. First, in that later edition, Maskell quotes extensively in his footnotes – no fewer than eighteen times – from Simmons’ edition of LFMB as illustrative of the words and actions of the lay people at every point in the mass. And at the end of his volume he prints the Anglican ‘Order of the Communion’ of 1548, and ‘The Supper of the Lorde’ of 1549 in order to stress their continuity with the earlier rites. Of one thing Maskell is quite clear: that the Anglican clergy have always stood in need of precisely the theological and liturgical learning that he and Simmons offered and demonstrated so well. He writes as follows, with rather weary superiority (and indeed ignoring his own preliminary admonition as to the impropriety of addressing ministers in what he, as now a Roman Catholic, would regard as a heretical body): It would be highly improper for me to presume to offer any opinion upon the general state of theological learning among Anglican clergy of our own day. During the last fifty years there has been a great improvement. But looking further back, it may fairly be a question whether the illiterate priests of the thirteenth century might not easily have been overmatched in numbers by the rectors and curates of the eighteenth; and most certainly the penalty for ignorance was not so sharply and carefully administered by bishops or deans in their visitations. To mention one example within my own memory. The rector of a small and remote parish in Dorset, a neighbour of mine about the year 1838, reading the second evening lesson, told his congregation that St Paul besought Philemon for his ‘son, one Simus, whom he had begotten in his bonds’.90

Anglican clergy, it is implied, have undergone something of an ‘improvement’, and one of the ‘improved’ is clearly Simmons.91 The Victorian recovery of medieval liturgies (3): Francis Dickinson In the present context the researches of Francis Henry Dickinson (1813–90) are also relevant. Dickinson, who became High Sheriff of Somerset, was not ordained, but as one of the founders of Wells Theological College was clearly a serious-minded and indeed learned layman. He also had a major interest in the history of liturgy. Thus, in 1850, Dickinson published A List of Printed Service Books, According to the Uses of Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. lxxxiv. Maskell, Ancient Liturgy (1882), pp. 253–4. ‘I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds’ (Philemon, v. 10). 91 Though by 1899 Percy Dearmer, in his much-reprinted The Parson’s Handbook (London, 1899 and later editions), was to write of ‘the want of liturgical knowledge among the clergy’ (p. 1); see also p. 10 above. Perhaps even then the later Victorian scholar cleric of which Simmons was a fine example was beginning to fade from amongst the parish priests of the Church of England. 89

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the Anglican Church (London, 1850): a brief but valuable work owned and cited by Simmons, while his great work, the Missale as usum insignis et praeclarae ecclesiae Sarum, published in fascicles over more than twenty years (Burntisland, 1861–83), has been described by Richard Pfaff as ‘the first modern edition of a medieval English service book’.92 The Preface to Dickinson’s completed work on the Sarum Missal bears close inspection. Dickinson, with the assistance of an Oxford-educated priest of Burntisland in Fife, Scotland, G. H. Forbes,93 until the latter’s death in 1875, regarded his work in the light of three objects: 1. Light would be thrown on the history of the Prayer Book. 2. Insight would be obtained of the religious practices of our forefathers. 3. Assistance would be given to enable us to make out the Ritual and Services of the early Church.94

Notably, then, Dickinson’s first object is essentially the same as William Palmer’s in Origines Liturgicae fifty years before: to establish the roots of the BCP. At the very outset Dickinson thanks two fellow labourers in liturgical studies: William Henderson and, as by now we will not be surprised to learn, Thomas Frederick Simmons.95 In accordance with what had now become an established mode of thought, Dickinson places the drive to produce the liturgical texts of the medieval church in the context of, first, the contemporary living liturgy of the Anglican Church, and, secondly, the perceived need for proper and informed scholarship of the medieval period as the Victorian Church of England continued to face a time of liturgical controversy. Dickinson wrote: The progress of Liturgical and Ceremonial studies is most remarkable. Some 30 years back, this undertaking seemed a hopeless one altogether, and an ill-judged combat with uncongenial times.96

But times had, it seems, changed. We can very briefly reconstruct why such matters had become urgent at the time Dickinson was writing, for it was an especially fraught period in the Victorian church. In 1877, the Rev Arthur Tooth (1839–1931) had been imprisoned for contempt of court, having been accused of practices deemed ‘popish’ under Disraeli’s Public Worship Regulation Act (1874). His arrest was accompanied by riots and fisticuffs. And in 1880 the Rev Thomas Pelham Dale (1821–92) found himself briefly in Holloway prison, under a writ of significavit triggered by his ‘ritualism’. Unrepentant, Dale issued afterwards a controversial pamphlet, The St Vedast Case: Pfaff, The Liturgy, p. 9. Forbes, who died in 1875 before the completion of the Missale edition, was the founder of the Pitsligo Press, Burntisland. He was the brother of the Tractarian Bishop of Brechin, Alexander Forbes (1817–1875). 94 Dickinson (ed.), Missale, p. i. 95 Dickinson (ed,), Missale, p. iii. 96 Dickinson (ed.), Missale, p. xiii. 92 93

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a Remonstrance Addressed to All True Evangelicals (London, 1881). Such events were the setting for the reconvening of the ancient Convocations of Canterbury and York, and with moves to revise the 1662 BCP and make it more adaptable for the contemporary church. These developments led to the Royal Commission on Ritual (1867–70), the Act of Uniformity Amendment Act (1872), and eventually the Convocation Prayer Book of 1880.97 Dickinson mentions particularly the ritualist controversies which had prompted arguments over the interpretation of the Ornaments Rubric98 in the BCP, but behind these are the more serious theological and liturgical matters that were of concern during and after the Oxford Movement. It was these which brought about the need for more precise scholarly knowledge of the liturgical and devotional practice of the pre-Reformation church. The doctrine of the Eucharist, and the changes of view about it, must always be matter of interesting historical study, and cannot be dissociated from the externals connected with it and the rest of the Divine Service.99

The list of scholars thanked by Dickinson is significant, including John Mason Neale of the Ecclesiological Society, whom we have already encountered; A. J. B. Beresford Hope, MP and lay author of Worship in the Church of England (London, 1874); John David Chambers, author of Divine Worship in England in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries Contrasted and Adapted to that of the Nineteenth (London, 1877); H. O. Coxe of the Bodleian Library, author of Forms of Bidding Prayer (Oxford, 1840) (a work used by Simmons); and – significantly – Henry Bradshaw of Cambridge University Library.100 Dickinson’s massive Sarum Missal is an extraordinary work of erudition, acknowledging the huge variations in both the manuscript and printed texts of the liturgy. In his 1913 Alcuin Club two-volume edition of The Sarum Missal in English, Frederick E. Warren points out that the only modern reprint of the Latin [printed] For more detail see below, chapter 6. The Ornaments Rubric appears in the BCP before the Order for Morning Prayer. It reads: ‘And here is to be noted, that such Ornaments of the Church, and of the Ministers thereof, at all Times of their Ministration, shall be retained, and be in use, as were in this Church of England, by the Authority of Parliament, in the Second Year of the Reign of King Edward the Sixth.’ Edward VI was crowned on 20 February, 1547. The Act of Uniformity was passed on 21 January 1549 (requiring the Prayer Book to be in use by Whitsunday of the same year, viz. 9 June, 1549). What, then, is precisely meant by the ‘Second Year’ of the King’s reign? The timing was at the heart of the debate as to what was and what was not permitted with regard to ‘ornaments’ in the liturgy. In essence, was its reference prior to or subsequent upon the 1549 Prayer Book? 99 Dickinson (ed.), Missale, p. xiv. For a rather more recent discussion, see further Alf Härdelin, The Tractarian Understanding of the Eucharist (Uppsala, 1965). 100 Alexander Beresford Hope (1820–87) was a Conservative Member of Parliament and a founding member, with Neale, of the Cambridge Camden Society (i.e. the Ecclesiological Society). He was active in Parliamentary debates on Prayer Book revision. John David Chambers was a prolific author on medieval liturgical texts. We already encountered Henry Bradshaw in chapter 1; we will be returning to the Henry Bradshaw Society in some detail in chapter 7. 97

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Sarum Missal is in Dickinson’s work, being a reprint of the 1526 edition, published in Paris. The fact that Warren uses this edition for his translation does not indicate that he assumed that this was the ‘standard’ edition, but merely representative of the manifold versions of Sarum that have survived in manuscripts. The Victorian recovery of medieval liturgies (4): William Henderson The fourth English Victorian liturgist to be discussed in this chapter is arguably the one closest in interests to Simmons; indeed, the two men were (again) on friendly terms. William George Henderson (1819–1905) was between 1862 and 1884 headmaster of Leeds Grammar School, being appointed Dean of Carlisle Cathedral in 1884 on Gladstone’s recommendation. Henderson’s background was rather similar to Simmons’ (his father was a vice-admiral, and he was educated at Oxford). However, his publishing record was stronger. He was an active member of the Surtees Society,101 publishing in two volumes the Missale ad usum insignis ecclesiae Eboracensis (Durham, 1874). He also edited a Hereford missal in 1874 and in 1875, again for the Surtees Society, the Liber Pontificalis of Archbishop Christopher Bainbridge of York. Henderson’s study of the York Missal has been praised by Richard Pfaff, who reports that ‘Henderson seems to have conducted an amazingly thorough research’102 of seven manuscript and five printed York missals, most of them of the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, and his edition remains, according to Pfaff, ‘still-standard’, even if Henderson was, Pfaff remarks, perhaps rather condescendingly, ‘not a professional scholar in the modern sense’.103 Originally, however, Simmons was to have undertaken the editing of the York Missale, and it seems he had done a considerable amount of work on the transcription of the York Missal before Henderson took it on for the Surtees Society. In his Appendix I of the LFMB he writes, with a degree of humility while also emphasising how he saw his work as a communal endeavour: I follow the fashion of not retaining the mediaeval [sic] spelling of the Latin of the following extracts though I had been very careful to do so in making my transcript some years ago, when I had undertaken to edit the York Missal, if the Surtees Society did not take it in hand. My friend Dr. Henderson has now edited it for the society, and relieved me from my engagement, to my great satisfaction, and very much to the greater advantage of liturgical students.104

Appendix I of the LFMB is a Latin and English ‘verbal rendering’ of the York Mass for Trinity Sunday taken by Simmons from a manuscript in the York Minster Library (MS XVI A. 9). Simmons reports that he had made a transcript of this text The Surtees Society was founded in 1834 and continues to the present time. It is concerned with publishing documents relating to the region between the Humber and the Forth, roughly the ancient kingdom of Northumbria. 102 Pfaff, The Liturgy, p. 451. 103 Pfaff, The Liturgy, p. 446. 104 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 354. 101

Nineteenth-Century Conceptions of the English Church

many years previously, prior to Henderson’s publication in 1874. Simmons writes that

105

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Of his translation

… as my object was simply to convey to the English reader the grammatical force of the Latin, I have not been tempted to make a vain effort to emulate the rhythmical flow of the revisers of our old service-books, which is essential to any translation for liturgical use; but I have used the prayer-book rendering of the parts which they retained.106

From this survey of four key Victorian editors of liturgical texts, all deeply engaged on topics close to Simmons’ heart, it will be clear that these were erudite, profoundly learned men, who took their editorial tasks very seriously indeed. Such erudition was in their case, of course, devoted to Latin works: Latin was after all the language of international higher learning, and editors of texts in Latin drew upon a great tradition that went back to at least the end of the Middle Ages.107 Editing texts in the vernacular languages – as Simmons was to do – had until comparatively recently been considered a rather subsidiary activity, and only began to be addressed seriously by the antiquarians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; but even then there remained conflicted approaches to their study. By the 1860s and 1870s, however, things were changing. In the next chapter one of the great Victorian acts of scholarly endeavour, the editing of medieval English texts, will be brought under review.

Simmons (ed.) LFMB, pp. xiii, 352. Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. xiii. 107 See further Leighton Reynolds and Nigel G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: a guide to the transmission of Greek and Latin Literature, third edition (Oxford, 2013), especially chapters 4 and 5. 105

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3 Simmons and the Early English Text Society

The Early English Text Society and its nineteenth-century editors

T

homas Frederick Simmons was, therefore, a clergyman whose theological and ecclesiastical formation was derived from the Oxford Movement and its aftermath. However, he is remembered, if at all now, for something that he might be presumed to have thought of as a secondary, if complementary, part of his life: as an editor for EETS. Simmons was demonstrably an active member of the contemporary EETS community. He subscribed to all its volumes, and commented regularly in his edition on its policies and on discussions with the Society’s worthies.1 It is to the place of EETS in Simmons’ life and times that we will now turn. EETS remains today the most academically-prestigious locus for the publication of editions of Old and Middle English literary texts, as proudly claimed on its website: ‘Without EETS editions, study of medieval English texts would hardly be possible’.2 Those undertaking such study are clearly conceived of as being a particular kind of person; as the website goes on to state: ‘Editions [of EETS] are directed at a scholarly readership rather than a popular one; though they normally provide a glossary and notes, no translation is provided.’ ‘Popular’ is, perhaps understandably, undefined by EETS. In the twenty-first century, ‘scholarly’ would seem to equate to the world of the ‘professional academic’, and most present-day subscribers to EETS are university libraries, or researchers and students affiliated to universities, or scholars working in such specialised fields as academic librarianship or historical lexicography. This last group include researchers employed by the great historical dictionaries of record, such as the Oxford English Dictionary (hence OED), the Middle English Dictionary, and the Dictionaries of Old English and Scots Language. Comparatively few (even though there are a few still) are ‘independent scholars’. In 1864, however, when EETS was created, things were rather different. The founding figures of EETS – Frederick James Furnivall (1825–1910), Richard Morris (1833–94) and Walter Skeat (1835–1912) – were considerably more various in their Thus, for instance, he describes how, although some theological discussion cannot be avoided in his edition, ‘this is altogether beyond the scope of the Society’ (Simmons ed., LFMB, p. xiv). 2 https://users.ox.ac.uk/~eets/index.html, last consulted 8 September 2021. 1

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backgrounds than the current members of the Society’s Council, all of whom are practising or retired university academics.3 Of these three founding fathers, Skeat was the only one who would (almost certainly) have taken a position on that august body in present-day conditions. Although ordained and briefly holding curacies in Norfolk and Surrey, Skeat was essentially a professional ‘don’, who began as a university lecturer in mathematics (he had been ‘fourteenth wrangler’4 in 1858) but ended his career as Cambridge’s first Elrington and Bosworth Professor of AngloSaxon. His editions of Chaucer and, more particularly Langland, were for many years standard, and his thinking (inter alia) on many editorial matters remains hugely influential. Furnivall was different, for he was never a man of means. His only long-term employment was as a part-time legal conveyancer, and as a lecturer, more-or-less from its foundation in 1854, at the Working Men’s College then situated on Red Lion Street in Holborn, in London. For much of his career, Furnivall lived in some poverty, supported uncertainly by small inheritances and investments, a situation that became exacerbated after his separation from his wife in 1883. His many scholarly enterprises, most notably his leadership in the development of the Philological Society’s New English Dictionary (NED, later ‘Oxford’, hence OED), and his founding of numerous literary societies in addition to EETS, were largely funded by subscription. Although possessing considerable charm, Furnivall had a fiery personality. A quarrel with the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) over Shakespeare’s putative authorship of Henry VIII and Edward III led Furnivall in 1879 to publish a ‘scurrilous pamphlet’ in which he renamed the poet ‘Pigsbrook’, on etymological principles;5 and the testy Sir Frederic Madden (1801–73), the great antiquarian and librarian of the British Museum, referred to Furnivall in his diary as a ‘jackanapes’ and ‘coxcomb’ whose ‘style of writing is thoroughly disgusting, and his ignorance is on a par with his bad taste’.6 In early life Furnivall was an active Christian Socialist, a group that included F. D. Maurice, Charles Kingsley, John Ludlow and others. However, his later agnosticism – which he enjoyed expressing publicly and with ‘manly’ vigour7 – and his somewhat rackety private life would have precluded his appointDetails of the careers of all three men are supplied by ODNB, and references there cited. Furnivall’s career has been authoritatively described in William Benzie, Dr F. J. Furnivall: Victorian Scholar Adventurer (Norman, 1983). 4 That is, he was awarded a first-class degree in mathematics in his final examinations, fourteenth in order of merit. 5 The dispute, which ran from 1877 onwards, did neither man credit. Swinburne responded by referring to Furnivall as ‘Brothelsdyke’ and ‘Fartiwell’, while Furnivall – perhaps unsurprisingly an enthusiastic teetotaller – published snide comments about the poet’s drinking (Swinburne’s alcoholism was well-known, although from 1879 the condition was being brought under control through his removal to The Pines, Putney Hill, and the care of Theodore Watts-Dunton.) The dispute led, it seems, to the collapse of the New Shakespere [sic] Society, which Swinburne referred to as the ‘Shitspeare Society’; see Benzie, Furnivall, p. 202. 6 Benzie, Furnivall, pp. 130–1. For Madden’s background, see Hill, Time’s Witness, especially pp. 38–9. 7 ‘George Bernard Shaw once remarked that Furnivall was an agnostic because “he could not forgive Jesus for not putting up a fight in Gethsemane”’ (Benzie, Furnivall, p. 195). 3

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ment to a position in a Victorian university, although he was eventually awarded honorary degrees by Oxford and Berlin. Nevertheless, despite his abandonment of Christian belief and his personal life-choices, more conventional figures such as Skeat never seem, at least publicly, to have wavered in their admiration for him.8 Furnivall was in close touch with Simmons during the editing of the LFMB for the EETS, and indeed later with the prominent religiously-minded layman Edmund Bishop, with regard to the EETS edition of The Lay Folks’ Prayer Book (1895). These eminently respectable men clearly felt able to look past the great personage’s foibles. By contrast with Furnivall, and like Simmons, Richard Morris was profoundly and personally engaged in religion. Morris began his career as an elementary schoolteacher and amateur philologist. His humble origins – his father was a hatter, and his wife the daughter of a coachman – seem to have precluded his attendance at a university. Later however he was ordained, and in 1870 awarded a Lambeth LLD by Archbishop Archibald Campbell Tait, followed by an honorary Oxford MA in 1874. This latter conferment coincided with his election as president of the Philological Society, an acknowledgement of his scholarly reputation. In addition to editing numerous works for EETS, including a massive and still unsurpassed parallel-text edition of the Middle English Cursor Mundi, the eleventh most-cited work in the OED, Morris published several textbooks, and in later years became an authority on Pali, the sacred Buddhist language. He seems to have been a cheerful man, much-liked by contemporaries, although there are some uncertainties about his family circumstances. His ODNB entry is vague about the numbers of his siblings, or indeed his progeny (‘at least five daughters and one son’). The social background of members of EETS in the late nineteenth century seems to have reflected the mixed backgrounds of these founding figures. Although the Society’s records were largely lost in the Blitz during World War II, it is something of an exaggeration to claim – as EETS’s website currently states – that ‘no details about nineteenth-century membership are available’. Anthony Singleton,9 for instance, has reconstructed the financial and professional tribulations from which the Society suffered in the early days, and several nineteenth-century EETS publications contain extensive subscription lists, allowing us to reconstruct the discourse community for 8 Skeat’s discreet memoir of Furnivall, printed in a memorial volume, includes a spoof Chaucerian poem in his honour; see John Munro (ed.), Frederick James Furnivall: A Volume of Personal Record (Oxford, 1911), pp. 178–9. Some contemporaries were less tolerant, such as another EETS editor, Lucy Toulmin Smith (1838–1911), a remarkable freelance researcher who in 1894 would become the librarian at Manchester College, the ‘dissenting’ foundation that had relocated to Oxford the previous year. Toulmin Smith was a formidable AngloAmerican scholar, descended from a long line of prominent Unitarians (and thus inheriting an exceptionally strong moral compass). In 1882 she wrote to the great lexicographer James Murray as follows: ‘… there is a much worse thing which I must tell you, tho’ odious to me. Furnivall is being separated from his wife, at his own desire, as he has become infatuated with a young girl … I tell you this for the sake of the poor innocent wronged wife.’ Murray was so shocked that he stuck stamp paper over Toulmin Smith’s signature (Benzie, Furnivall, pp. 29–30). Nevertheless, it may be noted that even Toulmin Smith (along with Murray) felt moved to subscribe to Furnivall’s anonymously edited Festschrift: An English Miscellany presented to Dr Furnivall in honour of his seventy-fifth birthday (Oxford, 1901). 9 Anthony Singleton, ‘The Early English Text Society in the nineteenth century: an organizational history’, Review of English Studies 56 (2005), pp. 90–118.

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whom the Society catered.10 Also given in these early lists are the names of subscribers to the ‘Extra Series’, which began in parallel with the ‘Original Series’ as a locus for the appropriate ‘re-editing’ of texts where earlier editions were deemed inadequate. This Extra Series began with a mere twenty-four subscribers, among whom is the name of the ‘Rev T. F. Simmons’. And a few years later in 1874, on the eve of Morris’ election to the presidency of the Philological Society, we find an extensive list (dated ‘31st Dec., 1873’) included in the first volume of Morris’ Cursor Mundi, which gives a clear impression of the growing membership and interests of those involved.11 In the beginning, EETS was governed by a Committee of Management, which a few years later developed into the Society’s Council. By the end of 1873, for instance, just under a decade after EETS’s founding, Furnivall had become the Society’s Director, a position that still exists, while the Treasurer – another post still maintained today – was Henry Wheatley, an antiquarian and librarian for the Royal Society as well as the editor, in 1865, of one of the very first EETS volumes: Alexander Hume’s Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue, a work on spelling reform from 1617 that survives only in manuscript.12 In these early days Morris and Skeat were both members of the Committee, and by 1873, they had been joined by James (later Sir James) Murray from the NED, and two now-legendary figures in (inter alia) phonetic science and English historical linguistics, Alexander Ellis (1814–90) and Henry Sweet (1845–1912).13 The Committee of Management also included such men as William Aldis Wright (1831–1914), Librarian and Vice-Master of Trinity 10 The earliest list available appears in Edward Peacock (ed.), John Myrc’s Instructions for Parish Priests, EETS, OS 33 (London, 1868). 11 For further discussion of the changing pattern of EETS subscribers, see Matthews, Making of Middle English, pp. 159–60. Some of the enthusiastic amateurs, referenced by Matthews, who had subscribed back at the Society’s beginnings, such as Robert Rumney (’Esq.’) of the Ardwick Chemical Works near Manchester, or George Muntz of the Albion Tube Works, Birmingham, seem to have fallen by the wayside by 1873. Such men seem to have seen EETS as an opportunity for personal growth: ‘Furnivall must have been greatly cheered to discover in 1867 that one little mutual-improvement club in Sunderland made up of six workmen – a cork-cutter, two wood-carvers in the shipyards, a watchmaker, an engine fitter, and a painter of photographs – was specializing in collecting old ballads. Their ambition was to subscribe to the publications of the Early English Text Society “so soon as work gets better”’ (Benzie, Furnivall, p. 130 fn, and reference there cited). 12 Wheatley’s is still the sole edition. Hume’s work is being investigated by Molly Campbell for a forthcoming Glasgow PhD. 13 Sweet was notoriously another ‘difficult’ character, whose personal aggressiveness and poor performance in Oxford ‘Greats’ weighed heavily in his career against his honorary doctorates from Heidelberg (awarded in 1875, only two years after his fourth-class undergraduate degree), and from Glasgow, awarded in 1892. Sweet’s attempt to found a university in North Oxford on German principles, despite or perhaps because of his general dislike of the German university system, was a predictable failure. He eventually achieved his first academic post as reader in phonetics at Oxford, but had to wait until 1901, when he was fifty-six. Mike MacMahon, who composed the ODNB entry for Sweet and is currently completing the first-ever full critical biography, has noted a collection in the Bodleian of unpublished novels by Sweet, describing how clever men with fourth-class degrees failed to be offered fellowships in Oxbridge colleges. See M. K. C. MacMahon, ‘Henry Sweet as a novelist’, Revista Canaria de Estudias Ingleses 10 (1985), pp. 217–21. In addition to his writings on phonetics, Sweet remains well-known to generations of undergraduates for his Anglo-Saxon Primer and Anglo-Saxon Reader, both still in print.

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College, Cambridge and editor of Shakespeare, and the Rev Rawson Lumby, Norrisian and later Lady Margaret professor of Divinity at Cambridge, a leading biblical scholar who edited several volumes for EETS, starting with King Horn, Floriz and Blauncheflur, and The Assumption of Our Lady in 1866. Such men as Aldis Wright and Rawson Lumby would of course, like Skeat, not be entirely out of place on the present-day Council of EETS. And indeed, by 1873, there were numerous prominent individual academic subscribers. Well-known figures appeared on this list, such as the polymath Max Müller, orientalist, Taylorian professor of modern European languages and scholar of comparative religion at Oxford, and David Laing, the great Scottish antiquary and Signet librarian. ‘RUSKIN, Prof. John LL.D., Corpus Christi College, Oxford’ is singled out as purchasing no fewer than ‘10 sets’; Ruskin, the famed art historian and Slade Professor of Fine Art since 1869, had been made an honorary fellow of Corpus in 1871, and was a longstanding personal friend of Furnivall’s. The Icelandic lexicographer Guðbrandr Vigfússon, at the time based in Oxford,14 was another subscriber, while the Empire was represented by, for example, ‘TARKHAD, A. Esq’. of Rajkoomar (Rajkumar) College in Rajkot, India, an institution founded in 1868 for the education of the local princely order. Other academic figures from overseas included the runologist George Stephens of Copenhagen, the lexicographer Francis Stratmann of Krefeld, Bernhard ten Brink of the recently-renamed Kaiser-Wilhelm-Universität at Strassburg (Strasbourg) – the first professor of English to be formally appointed on the continent of Europe, and soon to become a leading authority on Chaucer – and Julius Zupitza, then at Vienna but shortly to be appointed to the chair of English Philology at Berlin. Zupitza was later to become an important editor for another of Furnivall’s enterprises, the Chaucer Society. Similarly, the lengthy list of institutional subscribers could in many cases be replicated at the beginning of the twenty-first century. By 1873, a series of familiar university names had appeared: Amherst, Harvard and Yale, Northwestern University in Illinois, and the University of Wisconsin in the USA; Melbourne in Australia and Toronto in Canada; various Cambridge and Oxford colleges; University College London; the university libraries of Queen’s University Belfast (then Queen’s College), Manchester (then Owen’s College), Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews; the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; and several European university libraries, viz. Christiania (Oslo) in Norway, Göttingen, Leipzig and Tübingen in Germany, and St Petersburg in Russia. Other British institutional subscribers with learned affiliations or aspirations included the Athenaeum and Reform Clubs, the Roman Catholic seminary at Oscott, the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society, Sion College in London, and the Royal Library at Windsor. However, even as the 1870s progressed, many other names on the EETS lists were still figures from public life with either no or only tangential current direct or indirect links to institutions of ‘higher learning’. It is worth noting that the academic

The printers of the 1873 list struggled with spelling his name, which appears as ‘Gðbrandr’. 14

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study of English language and literature, in England at least,15 was still generally pursued outside a university context. One Committee member in 1873, for instance, was Henry Hucks Gibbs, who had edited The Romance of the Chevelere Assigne for EETS in 1868. Gibbs may have been a member of council of Keble College Oxford, but he was primarily a wealthy banker, landowner and politician, who in addition to distinction as a bibliophile was a prominent Anglican high churchman, becoming a trustee of the English Church Union. It was probably these last affiliations that had led to his connection with Keble College, whose foundation in 1870, as its name suggests, was closely associated with the Oxford Movement. Gibbs was to be raised to the peerage in 1896. As a ‘city’ Conservative and prominent churchman, Gibbs’ views were a long way from those of the agnostic, socialist Furnivall, whose major motivation in his numerous enterprises seems to have been on reconstructing the ‘social condition of the English people in the past’.16 That difference of opinions does not seem to have been an impediment to their working together. Indeed, in 1873 Gibbs supported Furnivall strongly in an unsuccessful application for the post of secretary to the Royal Academy of Arts.17 Other Committee members included Danby Fry, an author of well-received legal textbooks (both Gibbs and Fry were NED contributors),18 and the farmer-antiquarian Edward Peacock. Peacock, flagged on the title page of his publication as ‘F.S.A.’, had edited Mirk’s Instructions for Parish Priests for EETS in 1868. Such ‘outsiders’ abounded on the general list of subscribers as well. In 1873, the world of literature was present in the figures of Anthony Trollope, together with his older brother, also a writer, Thomas Trollope (1811–92). Alfred Tennyson, not yet a peer, was entered as ‘TENNYSON, Alfred, Esq. D.C.L., Farringford, Isle of Wight’. The aristocracy was represented by the Marquess of Bute, the Earl of Derby, and the Dukes of Devonshire and of Manchester. Major-General Newton Martin Curtis, of Ogdensburg, St Lawrence, New York, a distinguished Union general in the American 15 Things were different in Scotland; see Robert Crawford, Devolving English Literature (Oxford, 1998). John Nichol, the first Regius Professor of English Language and Literature at Glasgow, was appointed in 1862. Nichol was not a subscriber to EETS in 1873; his enthusiasms were for what is now known as American literature, and for the formal teaching of ‘English composition’. He was also a friend of Swinburne, which was perhaps another reason for his not subscribing (ODNB). 16 Cited Singleton, ‘The Early English Text Society’, p. 95, note 15. 17 Benzie, Furnivall, p. 175, note 184. 18 Fry, like many contemporaries, was also an enthusiast for spelling-reform. George Bernard Shaw’s interest in the topic is well-known, and numerous other examples could be cited from a later date, such as dr cecil reddie’s league for the abolition of capital-letters (see Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey, London, 1994, p. 35). Despite a signal lack of success, the drive for spelling reform has persisted. For instance, a chair supposed to be primarily devoted to the topic at the University of Manchester was substantially endowed by the politician Montefiore Follick (1887–1958), a legacy which – with that flexibility that universities generally show in accepting cash from slightly awkward donors – Manchester somehow continues to accommodate. In 1870 Fry delivered a paper for the Transactions of the Philological Society, prefixed by the following note: ‘In the following pajes, dhe words ar spelt in conformity widh dhose chanjes which are suggested for immediate adoption. Furdher chanjes must await dhe result ov fuller discussion’ (Benzie, Furnivall, p. 266). Perhaps needless to say, Fry’s system has never been adopted.

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Civil War, appeared for the military, as did Colonel Edward James, also of Ogdensburg. James was by this time, however, primarily a well-known attorney, and the legal profession was further represented, inter alia, by Edward Sullivan of Dublin, Master of the Rolls in Ireland. Located in the Punjab in northern India was ‘DAMES, M.L., Esq., C.S., Assistant Commissioner’ at Karnal, while another colonial subscriber was a J. D. Campbell of Mauritius. A few – very few – women are listed, all referred to as ‘Miss’: Edith Coleridge (‘Hanwell Rectory, Middlesex’ – grand-daughter of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and sister of the philologist Herbert), Elsie Day (‘12, Princess Terrace, Kilburn, N.W.’), and Mercy Hibbard (‘Willow Bank, Whalley Range, Manchester’).19 But a remarkable proportion of these early subscribers – no fewer than sixty-six by 1868 – consisted of Anglican clergy. Most of these individuals were parish priests, interspersed with the occasional bishop, archdeacon and ordained schoolmaster. Early clergy subscribers listed under the letters ‘B’ and ‘C’, for example, included the Rev. J. Baron (Rectory, Upper Scudamore, Warminster, Wilts), Rev William Barrack (Dollar Institution, Dollar), Rev Alfred Barrett (Carshalton House, Surrey), Rev W. R. Bell (Laithkirk Vicarage, Mickleton, near Darlington), Rev William Binns (Birkenhead), Rev W. L. Blacklet (North Waltham Rectory, Micheldever, Hants), Rev William Edward Buckley (Rectory, Middleton Cheney, Banbury), Rev W. B. Caparn (Draycot Vicarage, Weston-super-Mare), Rev George Christian (Uppingham, Rutland), Rev Samuel Clark (Eaton Bishop Rectory, Hereford), Rev Lord Alwyn Compton (Chadstone, Northants), Rev Thomas Cox (The Heath, near Halifax), and Rev John S. Craig (Maryport, Cumberland). And in the group listed under ‘S’, alongside Rev Canon T. F. Simmons (Dalton Holme, Beverley), we find Rev S. J. W. Samuels (Headmaster, Northampton Grammar School), Rev W. H. Sewell (Yaxley Vicarage, Eye, Suffolk), Rev John Slatter (Strealey Vicarage, Reading), Rev S. Alfred Steithal (107, Upper Brook Street, Manchester), Rev W. D. Sweeting (Minster Precincts, Peterborough), and Rev Henry Symons (The Close, Norwich). Many of these men, like Simmons himself, seem typically to have combined serious learning with long-term commitment to their parishes. One might note for instance Francis Proctor (1812–1905), author of the History of the Book of Common Prayer (London, 1855, revised by W. H. Frere in 1901), and rector of Witton, Norfolk from 1847 until his death: an incumbency of some fifty-eight years. Another was the Rev J. C. Atkinson (1814–1900), vicar of Danby near Yarm in Yorkshire, not so very far from Simmons’ parish of Dalton Holme. Ordained in 1841, Atkinson moved to Danby in 1847, remaining there until his death: an incumbency of fifty-three years. An energetic parish priest, Atkinson also became a noted authority on dialect studies and local folklore, as well as becoming an amateur archaeologist and a 19 Other women, such as Eleanor Marx (1855–98), Karl’s radical daughter, are known to have served as transcribers and secretaries for Furnivall’s various literary ventures. Furnivall’s attraction throughout his life to young women, especially servants, is well-attested, both through his close association with them in his various societies, and also through his sporting activities. These interests combined with his foundation, in 1896, of the Hammersmith Sculling Club for working-class girls. See further Benzie, Furnivall, and Matthews, Making of Middle English, especially pp. 141–5. Furnivall was of course unusual in acknowledging female input to his researches. Simmons, by contrast, never once mentions his wife in any of his publications.

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recorder of Whitby’s monastic records. The ODNB notes that his ‘scholarly activity was an integral part of his Christian ministry’. Like Simmons, Atkinson was made a canon of York. We are reminded by the careers of such men that, during the nineteenth century if not before, learning had become something of an expectation for churchmen. After all, Pusey himself, following from his visits to Germany in 1825 and 1826, had warned against the ‘rationalism’ of the German universities;20 and – although holding an academic position at Christ Church, Oxford – Pusey had been profoundly committed to the idea of the Church of England as a learned institution that flourished in academic pursuits, both theological and otherwise, outside the frameworks of university and college.21 Clergy in parish ministry could frequently therefore be profoundly learned. The minutes of the Northern Convocation, to be discussed in chapter 6, abound in scholarly patristic references and the discussion of the niceties of Greek grammar. Yet the careers of these men, most of them graduates of Oxford, Cambridge or Durham, were primarily outside a university setting. Similar commitment to both religion and learning could be found in other, perhaps more socially-prominent clerical subscribers to EETS. Thus in the subscribers’ list of 1879, the year of LFMB’s publication, appears not only the ritualist Anglican priest Alexander Heriot Mackonochie (1825–87) of the newly built St Alban’s, Holborn,22 but also the entire Dean and Chapter of Norwich Cathedral. Back in 1868, the list had included Richard Chenevix Trench, archbishop of Dublin and quondam Dean of Westminster, but also – as we saw in chapter 2 – famously a leading philologist. There is also Joseph Bosworth (1787–1876), for many years vicar of Little Horwood in Buckinghamshire and later Rawlinson Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, and author with T. N. Toller of what is still the only complete dictionary of Old English (universally known as ‘Bosworth-Toller’). And subscribers in 1873 included the Lord Bishop of Chichester, unnamed in the list; this man was Richard Durnford (1802–95), a high churchman though ‘no ritualist’ (ODNB), whose main interests outside classical scholarship seem to have been natural history and – even at an advanced age – mountaineering. Perhaps one of the most colourful of these early clerical subscribers to EETS, recorded in both the 1868 and 1873 lists, was Connop Thirlwall (1797–1875), Bishop of St David’s and translator of the German philosopher and liberal theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834). Many years before Thirlwall had distinguished himself not only as an authority on German theology but also as an institutional radical reformer, favouring the admission of dissenters to Oxford and Cambridge, the abolition of Jewish civil disabilities, the establishment near Dublin of the new Roman Catholic institution of higher learning, Maynooth College, and the disestablishment of the Anglican Church of Ireland. (He was the only member of the Geoffrey Rowell, The Vision Glorious (Oxford, 1983), p. 73. See Kirby, Historians and the Church of England, p. 2. The character of the Reverend Francis Arabin in Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Towers (1857) is perhaps a reflection of such men. Arabin is portrayed as a brilliant scholar, a fellow of the fictitious Lazarus College, Oxford, and someone who almost followed – but didn’t – Newman from Anglicanism into the Roman Catholic church, choosing instead to marry a wealthy widow and become Dean of Barchester. 22 Mackonochie (or Machonochie: see p. 128 below) was repeatedly prosecuted for ritualist practices from 1867 onwards, resigning from St Alban’s in 1882. 20 21

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bench of Church of England bishops to do so.) Later he become more conventional in his views, though he continued to express them with considerable forcefulness. His eight-volume History of Greece (London, 1835–44) was regarded as authoritative. Notoriously, however, he combined his learning with personal aggression and unpopularity within his diocese: ‘Popular rumour had it that his dog was trained to know and bite curates.’23 Despite this unfortunate habit – albeit only ascribed to him by hearsay, although that the accusation was made at all is suggestive – Thirlwall was on friendly terms with various high-profile public figures such as Richard Monckton Milnes, politician, collector of facetiae, and Keats’ biographer.24 By 1879, however, when Simmons’ edition of LFMB appeared, the constituency of the EETS was beginning to change, and these changes accelerated as the century drew to a close. As the universities of Britain – gradually, often under protest, and in halting fashion, as seems often the case with long-lived institutions – responded to the challenge of research-focused bodies of higher learning overseas, most notably in Germany, the EETS list by the end of the century was already looking very different. By 1897, fifteen years after Simmons’ death, not only was the list of subscribers very much longer, but almost half were academic or public institutions, largely in Britain and the United States, though many as well, as we might expect, were in Germany. They now included, in addition to those already cited, Columbia University, New York; Detroit Public Library; Exeter College, Oxford; Freiburg University Library; Haverford College, Pennsylvania; Kansas University Library; the Mitchell Library, Glasgow; St John’s College, Cambridge; and numerous other universities including London, Minnesota, Aberdeen, Virginia, and Uppsala. In this august company, the posthumous publication by the EETS in 1901 of Simmons’ Lay Folks’ Catechism, a work completed after his death by his friend Canon Henry Edward Nolloth, seems something of a throwback. Nolloth, vicar of Beverley Minster, appears to have added little to Simmons’ notes, which are sketchy and limited compared with those supplied for LFMB. Academia in sum was becoming increasingly professionalised,25 and it was harder to combine a career in the church with specialised academic pursuits. Editing for EETS In modern parlance, then, it is possible to reconstruct, on the basis of these subscription lists, the ‘discourse community’ for EETS in the late 1860s and 1870s, that is, to reconstruct a communicative network that engaged with a common world-view and expressed its ideologies in mutually comprehensible ways. Some of these individuals, however, went a step further, forming what is widely termed

ODNB. As Lord Houghton of ‘16, Upper Brook Street, W.’, Monckton Milnes (1809–85) was another 1873 subscriber. Notoriously, in 1861, Monckton Milnes, a soi-disant ‘Puseyite sceptic’ (and unsuccessful suitor to Florence Nightingale), had given Swinburne access to his ‘exotic library’ at Fryston in Yorkshire, and introduced him to the works of de Sade (ODNB). In his case the link with Swinburne does not seem to have deterred him from subscribing to EETS. 25 See for instance the comments in Gerould, ‘The Lay Folks’ Mass Book’, p. 2, already cited in chapter 1, p. 24. 23

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‘a community of practice’, engaged on a mutual endeavour by becoming editors of EETS publications. In the early years most of these EETS editors – given that at the time very few chairs in English philology existed in Britain – were enthusiastic amateurs, generally drawn from the list of subscribers. Thus, for instance, the offering for 1873 was an edition of the Middle English translation of Palladius on Husbandrie by another member of the Committee of Management, the Rev Barton Lodge, whose affiliation is given on the title page as ‘Rector of St Mary Magdalen, Colchester’. As well as producing numerous editions himself, Furnivall recruited many such individuals, and the results have been subsequently severely criticised: Much of the work published by [Furnivall’s] societies was carelessly done, either by Furnivall himself or by the untrained amateurs that he casually recruited. John Gross has remarked that Furnivall was ‘one of the great rock-blasting entrepreneurs of Victorian scholarship, the kind of man who if his energies had taken another turn might have covered a continent with railways’ … when he became interested in a historical or philological subject, Furnivall threw himself into it with a ferocious intensity and rarely paid much attention to the nuances of scholarly technique … Furnivall’s work as a textual scholar, though impressive in its sheer bulk …, must be regarded as decidedly uneven.26 Even so, it is noticeable how many of these early editions, such as Palladius, Hume’s Orthographie, or even for that matter LFMB, have yet to be superseded. And it is also worth remembering in this context that, although ‘correct’ editing of the classics was already well under way in enlightened circles at the beginning of the eighteenth century, it was in Britain only uncertainly applied to medieval vernacular works. Richard Bentley (1662–1742), for instance, a founding figure of British textual criticism, had focused his efforts on the editing of such writers as Cicero, Horace, Lucretius and Terence, and his one published attempt at editing a non-classical writer, his ‘absurdly interventionist’27 edition of John Milton’s Paradise Lost (London, 1732), attracted considerable scorn from contemporaries. Bentley never completed his projected edition of the Bible, although he developed some of the now-accepted notions (archetype, recension) that were to be deployed by Benjamin F. Westcott (1825–1901) and Fenton J. A. Hort (1828–92) in their The New Testament in the Original Greek (Cambridge, 1881), a work that shook the Victorian conception of the Bible.28 Vernacular texts were by contrast for some time open to the kind of ‘creative’ or ‘polished’ editing undertaken by, for example, Thomas Percy, whose Reliques of Ancient Poetry (London, 1765) presented medieval (and fake-medieval) verses freely modified to cater for contemporary tastes. Even Walter Scott’s edition of Sir Tristrem (Edinburgh, 1804), which offered an ambitious body of paratextual material that ODNB. Vincent Gillespie and Anne Hudson (eds), Probable truth: editing medieval texts from Britain in the twenty-first century (Turnhout, 2013), p. 2. 28 See Reynolds and Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, and references there cited, for an authoritative history of textual criticism, with definitions of key notions. For Biblical studies, see Stephen Neill, The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861–1986, second edition (Oxford, 1988). 26 27

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prefigured many later editorial practices, allowed for a modern pastiche ‘completion’ of a poem which was deemed to be defective.29 In 1823, Scott presided over the formation of the Bannatyne Club, an antiquarian society whose goal was the publication of medieval and early modern Scottish texts. The Bannatyne was one among a number of such clubs for amateur antiquarians, often graced by a smattering of aristocrats, such as the Surtees, the Maitland and the Roxburghe. Siân Echard has drawn attention to publications such as Thomas Whitaker’s notorious edition of Piers Plowman (London, 1813) for the Roxburghe Club, described by Isaac D’Israeli in 1841 as ‘the most magnificent and frightful volume that was ever beheld in the black letter’.30 As this description suggests, the members of these clubs, many of them with a background in antiquarian connoisseurship,31 were intensely interested in the aesthetics of the texts they worked with, something which more austere contemporaries complained about. For instance, when Thomas Johnes (1748–1816), the wealthy Welsh antiquarian, published a modern translation of Jean Froissart’s Old French Chronicle, he complained about the anonymous criticism it attracted from the legendary Edinburgh Review. ‘I suspect’, he wrote in 1805 to an Edinburgh friend, ‘your reviewer is some young man who has not read much, nor is very learned in books but, smitten with the love of Black letter, sees nothing beautiful but in that’. The ‘young man’ in question was Walter Scott.32 However, there were changes afoot. Percy’s idiosyncratic (to modern tastes) approach had already been criticised by sterner successors such as Thomas Ritson.33 Thomas Tyrwhitt’s scholarly edition of Chaucer (1775) still influences present-day presentations of the poet’s works, and the fine edition of Beowulf (1833) by John Mitchell Kemble – in his time a close friend of Richard Chevenix Trench34 – set new standards for the editing of Old English.35 Kemble, who had married the daughter of the German philologist and folklorist Jakob Grimm (1785–1863), was necessarily in close touch with the latest trends in German scholarship, where the great Karl Lachmann (1793–1851) had developed his ideas on textual criticism, notably applied in editions of the Middle High German poets Walther von der Vogelweide (1827) and Wolfram von Eschenbach (1833). It is in the light of these developments that the scholarly foundations of EETS can be located. Writing in 1911, in a memorial volume for the great man, Skeat attributed to Furnivall the initial ‘discovery’ that led to the founding of the Society: His discovery amounted to this: that our earliest authors had not been sufficiently exploited, and that many highly important manuscripts had been incorrectly printed and insufficiently glossed, and many more had never been printed at all, See Smith, Transforming Early English, chapter 6. See Siân Echard, Printing the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 2008), p. 12. 31 See Hill, Time’s Witness, passim, for general background. 32 Echard, Printing, p. 12. 33 See Joseph Ritson (ed.), A Select Collection of English Songs (London, 1783). 34 In a way that prefigured the involvement of literary Britons in the International Brigades a century later, Kemble – a leading figure in the newly-formed Cambridge Apostles and a radical in politics – had in 1830 joined Trench in an ill-fated expedition to Spain to assist in the deposition of Ferdinand VII. 35 See further Smith, Transforming Early English, and references there cited. 29

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and were practically unknown. Having made this all-important discovery, he promptly applied the right remedy by founding the Early English Text Society, which has entirely altered the situation by giving us accurate texts and useful glossaries, abounding with exact references that render most valuable information immediately available.36

Furnivall, in sum, was pointing forward to a new age of ‘objective’ scholarship of the kind that was emerging during the course of the nineteenth century. He envisaged the outputs of EETS as replacing the ‘polished’, revisionist approaches of earlier antiquarians to be found in the outputs of such organisations as the Bannatyne Club and the Surtees Society. Such organisations primarily catered for a clientele of connoisseurs, many of them aristocratic, for whom aesthetic considerations outweighed scholarly accuracy.37 Skeat’s remarkable work for EETS on Piers Plowman exemplifies this new approach, notably his reconstruction of the stages in the creation of the poem now known as the A-, B- and C-texts, and his formidable scholarship continues to be admired; and his careful attempts to collate and emend the complex witnesses for this baffling poem align well with the modern insight that an edition ‘should not strive to be a quasi-imitation, but must recognize its own mediatedness – a principle established in the 1830s, reiterated as a tenet of the EETS, and underlying all modern editions’.38 Nevertheless, there are features of EETS editions from the period – and indeed for some time afterwards – that still evoke the antiquarian inheritance, and these features appear in Simmons’ edition of LFMB. Although he introduced ‘modern’ punctuation, albeit in a way that present-day editors might regard as more rhetorical than grammatical, he also attempted to capture in his edition elements of textual presentation in his source-manuscripts, deploying engrossed letters to flag litterae notabiliores, pilcrows to represent paraph marks, and bold lettering to indicate rubrication or underlining in the original witnesses. Comparable ‘antiquarian’ practices may be detected in, say, Richard Morris’ much larger (30,000 lines), multi-volume parallel-text edition for EETS of the Middle English Cursor Mundi (London, 1870–1878), and indeed in many other contemporary EETS editions. Elements of these practices persisted for some time in EETS editions, notably in the retention of blackletter for title pages and front covers; a good example is J. R. R. Tolkien’s EETS diplomatic edition (London, 1962) of Ancrene Wisse, which also reflected in its transcription the litterae notabiliores and punctuation of the source-manuscript, viz. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 402. However, this practice has since changed, as the society has gradually shaken off its antiquarian roots. Eric Dobson’s sister-edition of Ancrene Riwle (London, 1972), a diplomatic presentation of another witness for the text, also for EETS and from exactly a decade later, presented the title of the work in a modern roman typeface: a discreet Munro (ed.), Frederick James Furnivall, p. 177. For a fascinating account of the processes involved here, see Matthews, Making of Middle English, especially chapter 6. The presentational approaches involved in the polishing of older texts in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are discussed further in Smith, Transforming Early English. 38 Matthews, Making of Middle English, p. 151. 36 37

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visual acknowledgement of scholarly – and perhaps wider socio-cultural – progress during the intervening years. Significantly, present-day EETS editors tend not only to impose (insofar as they can) ‘modern’ punctuation but also, in line with current editorial practice, modern practices of capitalisation and layout. It would appear that even editions of the Tolkien/Dobson type are considered to be part of the society’s past rather than its present.39 Other presentational modes adopted in the early years of EETS, too, have found less favour amongst subsequent generations of editors. Skeat’s edition of the three texts of Piers Plowman was in a sense an elaboration (and a highly sophisticated one) of other parallel-text presentations, based on the apparently-humble transcribing of manuscript-witnesses in ‘diplomatic’ (as opposed to ‘critical’) formats.40 Again, a good example here is Morris’ edition of the various manuscripts of the Cursor Mundi, where the distinct usages of the various witnesses were presented in parallel columns. Similar productions from around the same time include the Six-Text Edition (1868) of the Canterbury Tales, published by Furnivall’s Chaucer Society, which offered diplomatic transcriptions of six important early fifteenth-century copies of the poem.41 Simmons’ edition of LFMB, which presents a set of texts in parallel, was clearly modelled in part on Morris’ Cursor Mundi, which he references in many places in his notes, even though – as we shall see – he went well beyond Morris, in a way comparable with the practices of Palmer and Maskell, in the ambition of his annotation of what was a much shorter text. Parallel-text editions, however, were already attracting criticism at the time. Henry Bradshaw (1831–1886), the great Cambridge librarian, may have been on friendly terms with Furnivall but he worried about ‘printing in that harum-scarum way’.42 And they are – like the attempt to reflect litterae notabiliores – no longer favoured by EETS, presumably again being seen as dating from a much earlier

39 The ongoing production of electronic transcriptions, of course, may change this situation; for a discussion, see Smith, Transforming Early English, especially chapter 6. 40 A critical edition aims to reconstruct the author’s original intention, while presenting the text in a way that makes it easy – or easier – for a present-day reader to make sense of it. The critical editor proceeds by a process known as recension: comparing the surviving witnesses of a text (collation), identifying obvious errors/non-original readings and using them to work out the witnesses’ genetic relationships (typically expressed by means of a ‘family tree’ or stemma codicum), and reconstructing thereby their common ancestor (the archetype). The archetype is then used as the basis for the critical edition, entailing further editing to identify and revise remaining readings perceived to be non-original, and to impose present-day conventions of layout, including modern punctuation. A diplomatic edition reflects, in typographic form, the spellings, punctuation and layout of a particular manuscript witness of a text, going beyond a simple facsimile to offer interpretations of letter-forms. No attempt is made by the diplomatic editor to correct possible non-original readings, although there is often discussion of the issues in footnotes or prefatory material. Diplomatic editions are thus a distinct hermeneutic act, intended to solve the problems presented by a particular witness. 41 See for a recent discussion Helen Spencer, ‘F. J. Furnivall’s Six of the Best: the Six-Text Canterbury Tales and the Chaucer Society’, Review of English Studies new series 66 (2015), pp. 601–23. 42 Cited Benzie, Furnivall, p. 167.

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period in the Society’s history.43 Nevertheless it is certainly the case that the presentation of parallel texts, which may at first sight seem to reflect editorial timidity and a refusal to exercise critical judgement, does capture something rather important about the nature of medieval texts, especially in the vernacular. It is clear for instance that medieval scribes quite frequently considered themselves to be creative partners in the textual enterprise, intervening to improve (from their own perspectives) the work they were copying. In reality the notion of ‘textual truth’, ‘correctness’ or ‘authenticity’ is a fluid one, open for negotiation as texts are recuperated at different times.44 The reason is that medieval religious texts in the vernacular seem to have been especially prone to radical reworking both in their own times and indeed in later centuries. Margaret Aston and Anne Hudson have, for instance, ably described how reworkings of Wycliffite materials in particular were produced throughout the sixteenth century, as perceived precursors of the new style of religion.45 Such reworkings are particularly common in liturgical texts, whether in the vernacular or in Latin. Richard Gameson, writing on the fourteenth-century Goldwell Missal (Durham University Library, MS Ushaw 18) from southern England, has described its numerous changes, supplements and corrections as the Missal is customised to different uses and conditions.46 To put this matter another way, Edmund Bishop asserts that ‘No one can deal with mediaeval “uses” without finding that the written document would often be unintelligible or even wrongly interpreted, without reference to the living rite.’47 In such circumstances, the presentation of parallel versions becomes a defensible editorial response. Morris was clearly aware of how the various versions of Cursor 43 The only late manifestation in EETS’s publications seems to be the printing (1944– 2000) of editions of Ancrene Wisse/Ancrene Riwle, a text that survives not only in nine Middle English versions ranging in date from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries but also in medieval translations into Latin and French. However, developments in online editing seem to be changing this pattern. 44 The starting-point for all discussions of textual criticism, with currency well beyond the Greek and Latin texts on which it is focused, remains Reynolds and Wilson, Scribes and Scholars. Relevant essays also appear in Alastair Minnis and Charlotte Brewer (eds), Crux and Controversy in Middle English Textual Criticism (Woodbridge, 1992), and in Gillespie and Hudson, Probable Truth (some of which are cited above). Tim W. Machan, Textual Criticism and Middle English Texts (Charlottesville, VA, 1994) remains foundational, as does E. Talbot Donaldson’s classic essay, ‘The psychology of editors of Middle English texts’, in Speaking of Chaucer (London, 1970), pp. 102–18. For further discussion, see Smith Transforming Early English, passim. 45 One example, viz. The Examination of Master William Thorpe, an account of the interrogation of a Lollard by Archbishop Thomas Arundel, survives in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson C.208 from the early fifteenth century. This text was subsequently printed in Antwerp in 1530, and later incorporated (as chapter 91) into John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments (London, 1563). 46 Richard Gameson, Literature and Devotion in Later Medieval England (Durham, 2021), p. 87. 47 Quoted in Anthony Ward SM and Cuthbert Johnson OSB, ‘The Henry Bradshaw Society: Its Birth and First Decade, 1890–1900,’ Ephemerides Liturgicae (1990), pp. 187–200, cited from https://henrybradshawsociety.org/history/, last accessed on 2 February 2022 (emphases added).

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Mundi had been modified for the use of different audiences in different dialect areas;48 Middle English dialectal variation was substantially marked in the written as well as in the spoken modes. Moreover, an editor like Simmons, sensitive as he undoubtedly would have been to the notion of the liturgy as a living rite, would have appreciated how the various versions of the LFMB were the outcomes of the individual settings within which they functioned. It is to Simmons’ activities as an editor that we now turn.

48 We might note the traditional distinction between ‘Northern’ and ‘Southern’ versions of the poem. For details, see the important study by John Thompson, Cursor Mundi: The Poem, Texts and Contexts (Oxford, 1997).

4 Simmons as Editor: The Philologist

Showing his working

A

t the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century the practice of textual criticism remains as racked by controversy as it has always been. However, one positive outcome of the various debates currently circulating has been an increasing habit of reflection on the editorial craft. Tim Machan, for instance, has called for ‘editorial and interpretive self-conscious[ness, and] … greater historical sensibility in an activity that is inherently historical’1 and his views have, with pithy perceptiveness, been more recently echoed by Derek Pearsall: ‘the only rule that all scholarly editors and editors of critical editions must observe is – Show your working, as we used to be exhorted when we were doing maths problems at school’.2 There is above all an awareness that the editorial process is not, and never has been, ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’ but is rather a hermeneutic act constrained by the conditions of publication dominant at the time of the edition’s creation, and, perhaps even more importantly, the edition’s intended audience. Simmons himself would have agreed with all these sentiments. His inheritance from the Oxford Movement included, as we have seen, an engagement with history, linked to their concern for the catholic and apostolic nature of the English church; Newman had, for instance (and rather unfairly), criticised his high-church predecessors for their ‘lack of historical sense’.3 And Simmons was impressively explicit about his editorial practice, even if his manner of expression is somewhat personal for the austere critical and editorial tastes of the present day: unsurprisingly, perhaps, given his immersion in the pressing liturgical and theological debates of his time. For it is possible, on the basis of ‘The Editor’s Preface’ that he placed at the beginning of his edition, to reconstruct in detail how he set about his editorial task. Simmons tells us that his attention was drawn to LFMB by William Maskell, who took extracts from what was to become Simmons’ B-version4 and reprinted them in his book The Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England (1844): a parallel text of the Machan, Textual Criticism, p. 193. Derek Pearsall, ‘Variants vs Variance’, in Gillespie and Hudson (eds), Probable Truth, pp. 197–20, p. 205. 3 See Vivian Green, Religion at Oxford and Cambridge (London, 1964), p. 258. 4 In London, British Library, MS Royal 17 B. xvii: see chapter 1 above. 1

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eucharistic rites of Sarum, York, Hereford and Bangor, and the Roman Liturgy.5 Simmons also mentions his projected edition of Archbishop Thoresby’s Catechism in English, which, later published as the Lay Folks’ Catechism, remained unfinished at his death and was completed by his friend and fellow Yorkshire clergyman, Henry Edward Nolloth. The York Bidding Prayers are included as ‘the only devotions in English which were used publicly in our churches before the reformation’.6 Simmons saw his first task, having been ‘asked to help in the work of this Society [i.e. EETS]’,7 as being to identify his witnesses, apologising for the delay in publishing the work which was caused ‘chiefly in the hope of finding the needful manuscripts’.8 He acknowledges the role of EETS as a learned society whose members contribute corporately to its programme of publication, urging other editors and subscribers to contact him if further materials come to light; he clearly sees himself as engaging with an identifiable discourse community. As was discussed in chapter 1, he is honest about his primary motives in undertaking the work: … beside its curious ritual information, I was much struck by the fact that [LFMB] was the only document I had met with that enables us to know the prayers which the unlearned of our forefathers used at mass, and by the light it threw upon their inner religious life from a point of view different from that afforded by the many mediaeval sermons that have come down to us … 9

In other words, Simmons is deploying that essential skill of a historian, the exercise of imagination. Simmons in sum is interested in the contemporary reception of LFMB: how it supplied evidence for the prayer-life of ‘the unlearned of our forefathers’. This concern with textual reception underpins the discussion that follows. As we shall see, Simmons was profoundly engaged, in a way that present-day scholarship would generally applaud, with the manuscript record; but he also saw this body of material as part of a ‘living’ tradition, as demonstrated not only by repeated references to his own parish work in the notes to his edition, but also by his deployment of historical learning in his major contributions to debates within his church, not least in his significant interventions in the debates of the Northern Convocation. Simmons’ notes in the LFMB, as well as his glossary, indicate that he almost certainly possessed a complete run of EETS publications from their beginning in 1864,10 and it is thus not surprising that he clearly understood the eclectic discourse community for which the Society catered. He seems to have made a study of the subscribers’ lists that EETS in those days, as we have seen, so helpfully supplied. It is thus also unsurprising that he was sensitive to the sensibilities (and indeed limitations) of other EETS members, as demonstrated in the following passage: A second edition of Maskell’s book was published in 1882, which refers to Simmons’ edition of LFMB; see p. 24 above. 6 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. xii. 7 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. x. 8 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. ix. 9 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, pp. ix–x. 10 The EETS editions explicitly referred to by Simmons in his notes to the LFMB are listed as a separate section in the Bibliography. 5

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In these and the other pieces here brought together, as in all monuments of the religious life and feeling of our forefathers, there is much to be noted from a theological point of view. This is altogether beyond the scope of the Society …11

A little later he goes on to state that, given that ‘the list will show that there are members who do not belong to the Church of England’: I have been careful to avoid the expression of my own opinion upon points which are the subject of religious controversy; and I have done this, – not because I have not formed opinions in respect to them, but because I had long arrived at very definite conclusions, and I thought I had no right to obtrude them upon my fellow members, who had not joined the Society in the expectation of any such encounter.12

Simmons states his own position with considerable honesty, indeed ‘showing his working’ in ideological terms. He states clearly that he is ‘a clergyman of the reformed Church’ who, using the language of the Form of Prayer ‘still’ used at the opening of Convocation, has ‘renounced’ inter alia ‘the Papal Tyranny’. In a carefully phrased, and significant, footnote he appends the following personal statement: As, for this once, I have allowed myself to give utterance to my own view of one side of the teaching of this Church of England, I venture to add the remaining words of this prayer, which equally express my feeling as to the other: ‘so that we may all constantly hold fast the Apostolical and truly Catholic Faith, and may duly serve Thee without fear, and with a pure worship.13

Simmons’ theological views are thus clear: essentially conservative and deeply sacramental, in the manner of his earlier mentor Maskell, or for that matter Keble and Newman (the last when still an Anglican). It seems that the primary impulse that drove him to edit LFMB and the associated texts derived from a scholarship rooted in Christian liturgical scholarship and practice. Presenting the text Examination of the witnesses for LFMB shows that like many vernacular works of religious instruction from the period it was regarded as a living text, open for revision depending on contingent circumstances. The fullest version is B, from which most citations of the work are made (including the outline in chapter 1 above). The nearest to the B-version in form is E, which is of around the same length and has almost the same contents, although the scribe does not deploy the sophisticated paleographical distinction between descriptions of the priest’s actions and instructions to the congregation, underlined in red ink, and prayer-material for the congregation’s use is not so distinguished. There are therefore no references to a

11 12 13

Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. xiv. Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. xv. Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. xv.

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robryk. The E-scribe also replaces the word cros with a cross-sign, indicating a further slightly distinct approach to the visual pragmatics of the text and its physical enactment. A second group identified by Simmons, i.e. the C-, D-, and F-versions, offers a shorter form of the text which reduces the material describing the priest’s actions and the postures to be adopted by the congregation. This group also reduces formal elements potentially extraneous to the core elements of the Mass. The vernacular versification of the Apostles’ Creed, for instance, is omitted, as is the hymn-like ‘Ioy be vnto god in heuen’, which occupies lines 119–48 in the B- and E-versions, and also the prayer for the Mass to stand in place of absolution in case of sudden death. The F-version, like B in appearance if like C in contents, deploys rubrication to mark the ‘action’ passages in the text, with black ink elsewhere; the C- and D-versions restrict themselves to coloured initials to mark sections. The F-version has in addition a shorter, modified opening, ‘[a]dapted’, argues Simmons, ‘to the practice of smaller churches and chapels in England, where the priest vested before the people’.15 Eamon Duffy, however, indicates that the practice of vesting in front of the congregation was customary on weekdays.16 The F-version also includes some extra ‘link’ lines (e.g., ‘Whanne confiteor thus is done/ Pater-noster folweth sone’, 61–2), and also an expanded Latin version of the Ave. The A-version belongs to this second group, but is a fragment only, with modified forms of the opening prayers, and various other minor changes in phraseology (e.g. it replaces C’s ‘Ioy and louuynge’, line 100, with ‘Ioy and blys’). The A-version’s coverage equates to the first 128 lines of C, after the priest’s lavabo, and ends with an additional couplet, suggesting that A was conceived of as being a poem of preparation for the canon of the Mass – the introductory rites and the liturgy of the word (‘the Mass of the catechumens’) – rather than a comprehensive libretto covering the entire ritual: 14

þo holy goste þat is on hyght Sende hus grace to leue ryght

Amen Explicit

14 W. H. Frere (The Principles of Religious Ceremonial, London, 1906, pp. 186–7) commented on the lack of rubrics in liturgical texts before the Reformation: The actual Service-books of the earlier days remained devoid of much rubric. The prereformation books after that date varied widely as to the extent to which they included rubric. If they contained but little, it was because the cere-monial was adequately regulated by tradition, or by customs, which might or might not, have been codified in a formal book of ceremonial directions, distinct from the Service-books. Even when there was much rubric, the directions were far from being complete, or even from aiming at completeness. The rubrics, as at Sarum, might contemplate High Mass, and leave the ordinary Masses of priest and serving-clerk to go on apart from rubrical regulation. It may be further noted, as will be discussed further in chapter 6, that almost all the debates in the Northern Convocation in which Simmons took an active part after 1874 concerned the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer. As has been noted, Simmons’ edition attempted to mark rubrication in the original manuscripts through the deployment of bold typeface. 15 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 3. 16 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 123. The review of the LFMB in the Church Quarterly Review (January, 1880), p. 446, notes that ‘in England, there were no vestries except in the sanctuary.’ It would be difficult to substantiate entirely such a claim.

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Of the three versions unknown to Simmons, H belong to Simmons’ second group, as does the I-version, although the latter deploys, fairly frequently, a modified phraseology. The impression left by H is of a free local reworking while sustaining an overall structure rather like that of C. Unlike C, however, the I-version deploys red ink as a guide for readers, in the manner of F, although the scribe retains C’s opening. The G-version is a further departure from the models of B and C. Described in the New Index of Middle English Verse as beginning imperfectly,17 closer examination shows G to be, rather, a much more radical revision representing yet another conception of the poem. The G-version removes the material of instruction that appears in rubricated form in B, and like the second group excludes the Apostles’ Creed and the Gloria (interestingly, though, a vernacular Apostles’ Creed appears elsewhere in the manuscript, as will be indicated below). However, G also cuts back considerably some of the later prayers, for instance following B’s suggestion of ‘a bettir’ usage by replacing the prayer at the elevation with a much shorter one: U Elcom’ lorde in forme of bred for me thov suffryd harde dede And thv bar’ the crowne of thorne late me neuer be for lorn’

In sum, the G-version has been prepared with a distinct function, as a prayer-resource rather than a full vernacular libretto. Modifications of this kind align with other practices in the production of vernacular religious texts in late medieval England. As Fiona Somerset has pointed out, … late medieval religious writing in England more generally had magpie tendencies, prompted or facilitated by the circulation of loose leaves and unbound booklets from which material could readily be recopied or excerpted within other books.18

Indeed, the B- and E-versions of LFMB both themselves display this habit. As has already been noted, the levation-prayer ‘Loued be þu kyng’19 is in origin a lyric that appeared earlier in the Yorkshire mystical writer Richard Rolle’s guide composed originally for the recluse Margaret Kirkby, The Form of Living.20 Other examples of such practices abound. Thus, for instance, John Mirk’s Festial began life at the end of the fourteenth century as a sermon-cycle for parish use, but later appeared, in both manuscript and print, as a work for ‘private’ devotion.21 Similar practices can be seen in the production of manuscripts of better-known literary works such as Langland’s Piers Plowman or Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, exemplifying what has 17 Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards, A New Index of Middle English Verse (London, 2005), p. 234, item 3507. See also the online Digital Index of Middle English Verse (= DIMEV), item 2205 (https://www.dimev.net/record.php?recID=2205, last consulted 28 November 2022). 18 Fiona Somerset, Feeling like Saints (Ithaca, 2013), p. 74. 19 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 40. 20 B, 428ff. See Rosemary Woolf, English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1968), p. 380. 21 See e.g. Susan Powell, ‘What Caxton did to the Festial’, Journal of the Early Book Society 11 (1997), pp. 48–77; Susan Powell (ed.), John Mirk’s Festial, EETS OS 334 and 335 (Oxford, 2009–11). See also Jeremy J. Smith, ‘Punctuating Mirk’s Festial: a Scottish text and its

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been called ‘a textual culture of creative adaptation’.22 The reworking of LFMB is thus very far from being unique in this respect. It is also important to recall that the production of LFMB took place in a world where texts were transmitted in bespoke fashion, in handwritten form and often in combination with other texts. The manuscripts thus produced were the site of complex interaction between authors and scribes, while of course, in the case of the liturgy itself, sustaining a fundamentally fixed core around which a degree of minor variation was acceptable.23 As Malcolm Parkes once famously put it, therefore, ‘Before the advent of printing a text left its author and fell among scribes’.24 Simmons was perfectly well aware of this characteristic of medieval textual culture. Some scribes copied for others who had their own bespoke requirements for the books thus produced; others copied for themselves. Copying too required exemplars, and access to exemplars presented complex challenges. As a result, the witnesses for LFMB and texts like it were not individual authorly expressions, but rather the outcomes of discrete communities of practice. Literary creativity – the ‘making of books’, as St Bonaventura famously put it25 – was therefore inevitably a negotiation, constrained by the contexts in which the various copies were produced. Simmons’ edition of The Lay Folks’ Mass Book was published for the EETS in 1879 by N. Trübner and Co. in Ludgate Hill, London: the usual publisher for EETS at that time. Significantly, as we will later see (given Simmons’ engagement with it), it appeared a year before the publication of the proposed Convocation Prayer Book.26 The full and (to present-day tastes) somewhat wordy title given to the edition was The Lay Folks’ Mass Book, or, The Manner of Hearing Mass, with Rubrics and Devotions for the People, in Four Texts, and Offices in English, according to the Use of York. From Manuscripts of the Xth to the XVth Century, with Appendix, Notes, and Glossary. Simmons is generally presumed to have named the LFMB, since the title is not attested in any of the medieval manuscript-witnesses; indeed, in his Editor’s Preface Simmons indicates that the poem’s title has been ‘adopted to indicate its purpose’.27 Apart from four versions of the LFMB, Simmons’ edition includes Bidding Prayers according to the York Use,28 derived from various sources. He prints, for comparative purposes, an Old English version,29 and a selection of other prayers: from a manual implications’, in Martha Driver and Veronica O’Mara (eds), Preaching the Word in Manuscript and Print in Late Medieval England: essays in honour of Susan Powell (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 161–92, and references there cited. 22 Somerset, Feeling like Saints, p. 89. 23 See the discussion of the Goldwell Missal on p. 64 above. 24 Malcolm Parkes, Pause and Effect: a history of punctuation in the west (London, 1992), p. 70. 25 See Alistair Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship (Philadelphia, 1984). 26 For the Convocation Prayer Book (London, 1880), see chapter 6 below, pp. 133–4. 27 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. ix. 28 Simmons acknowledges Coxe’s Forms of the Bidding Prayer; Henry Coxe (1811–81), who was an Oxford contemporary of Simmons’, is now best known as an important figure in the development of the Bodleian, both as cataloguer and eventually Librarian. 29 For which see Neil Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1959), pp. 468–9, item 402 (f)). Ker dates this portion of the manuscript, simply referred to as the York Minster manuscript, to the first half of the eleventh century. The manuscript as a

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then owned by Sir John Lawson (now Harvard, University Library, MS Widener 1);30 two prayers from the ‘York Manual’ in York Minster Library (MS XVI.M.4);31 and a fifth from Wynkyn de Worde’s 1509–10 edition of the York Missal, derived from the copy in Ripon Cathedral. The final text in the edition proper is a fifteenth-century York Hours of the Cross in English and Latin from York Minster Library MS XVI.K.6, a miscellany of devotional texts dating from around 1420.32 Simmons also printed, in Appendices, a range of other texts he considered to be related to LFMB: the York Order of the Mass for Trinity Sunday from York Minster MS XVI.A.9, in Latin with a modern English translation;33 four ‘authorized’ expositions of the Mass in English, dated by Simmons to 1357–1515, from John Thoresby’s catechism and the trial of the heretic Sir John Oldcastle, and two short passages from de Worde’s edition of Mirk’s Festial (1515); the Praeparatio Eucharistiae, or an English work on preparation before receiving the sacrament, dated by Simmons to 1400;34 a poem on The Manner and Mede of the Mass from the well-known Vernon Manuscript in the Bodleian, later reprinted, with Simmons’ marginal commentary, in Furnivall’s The Minor Poems of the Vernon MS (London, 1901); and the Merita Missae from London, British Library, MS Cotton Titus A.xxvi, which he ascribes (erroneously, it seems) to the fifteenth-century monk-poet John Lydgate; Lydgate’s Venus-Mass, a parody of the mass addressed to Cupid, is supplied in notes. Simmons’ approach to textual presentation in all cases was primarily in line with Furnivallian practice. Marginal summaries of the kind found in many contemporary EETS volumes (notably Morris’ Cursor Mundi) are appended to the B-version. Although Simmons imposes present-day punctuation, he otherwise presents a broadly diplomatic set of transcriptions. Again he is pleasingly explicit about his editorial approach: In printing the texts and direct quotations from English MSS., every care has been taken to reproduce the original, except that the punctuation has not uniformly been retained unless when it is so expressly noted. The use of capital letters has been followed; and where contractions are printed at length, the words or letters so expanded are shewn in italic. All additions are printed in italic in brackets – [broad-faced] where there is a hole in the MS, or when the surface of the vellum has been worn whole dates a little earlier, around 1000, which is presumably the reason that Simmons dated the prayers as well to the tenth century; the bulk of its contents consists of a Latin Gospels, with Old English materials (documents, sermons and these bidding prayers) added. 30 Simmons acknowledges a transcription by Henderson (ed., LFMB, p. 330). 31 LALME locates the Manual to the city of York, assigning it the Linguistic Profile (LP) number 1002. 32 LALME, although not assigning an LP number to the text in the manuscript, notes that the ‘Calendar is distinctively of York, and contains reference to the parish of All Saints, Pavement, in that city. Language [Northern Middle English], quite possibly of York.’ All Saints, Pavement in York is a fourteenth-century foundation, restored several times in the nineteenth century. The major restoration took place in 1887. 33 W. G. Henderson’s two-volume Missale as usum insignis ecclesiae Eboracensis was published in 1874, for the Surtees Society. For Simmons’ friendship with Henderson, see p. 48 above. 34 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1286, localised by LALME to Northamptonshire as LP4276; LALME refers to the text, erroneously, as LFMB.

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away; and [ordinary type] when they supply what is supposed to be an omission of the scribe.35

In addition, and in line with antiquarian aesthetics, Simmons made an attempt to reproduce the pattern and relative size of engrossed letters in the manuscripts. Rubricated sections, and those where red underlining is deployed, are represented in the edition through the use of bold typeface and occasional emendations in the body of the text are accompanied by footnotes offering the manuscript-readings. Paraphs/pilcrows (capitulum-marks) were not deployed in the texts of the LFMB known to Simmons, but he reproduces them in some of the texts he edits in the Appendices. He also supplies a full glossary, which includes sporadic citations from other EETS editions and from Morris’ edition of The Prick of Conscience, edited in 1863 (thus in pre-EETS days) for the Philological Society. However – as discussed in chapter 1 – there is an extra element that Simmons brought to the table. Earlier in the Preface he regrets that he could not find ‘the original treatise’, by which we later discover he means the presumed French original, and he concludes the Preface with a plea for information about ‘any additional MSS. of the texts of the Mass-Book …, or any information as to the French original, or the author’.36 As we have seen, Simmons seems to have spent a good deal of time in enquiries with librarians both in England and in France, notably at Rouen and Caen, in the hope of finding a Norman original, and in later footnotes he thanks ‘M. [Charles de Robillard] de Beaurepaire’, the ‘learned’ editor of the Archives du Département de la Seine Inférieure for his ‘readiness to help an absolute stranger’. His discussions furthermore demonstrate his dependence on the work of Edmond Martène of Rouen (1654–1739), the great French Benedictine historian and liturgist.37 Simmons’ interest in this presumed Norman-French original is an ongoing theme in his paratextual material, and his motivation for this engagement is clear. Such a connection would align with the Gallican tradition of the church as distinct from the Roman rite, which was seen by scholars such as Palmer as an example of the different ways – the ‘branches’, as they referred to them – through which the catholic tradition of the church could be traced. The term Gallican Rite refers loosely to all the non-Roman rites of the early western church,38 Simmons directing our attention particularly to the early Rouen missal printed by Martène in De Antiquis Ecclesiae Ritibus IV (Rouen, 1700–02). As was also indicated in chapter 1, Simmons considers B to be a copy of an earlier English translation from the French ‘subjected to systematic verbal alterations at the hands of a midland scribe of the fourteenth century’. Despite this presumed act of scribal reworking, however, he believed, on the basis of a comparison with the E-text, which he judged to be ‘an independent transcript by a west-midland scribe of a Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. xv. Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. xvi. 37 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. xlv; see also p. xxxv. 38 Andrew Louth (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, fourth edition (Oxford, 2022) (ODCC), Vol. 1, pp. 753–4; see also W. S. Porter, The Gallican Rite (Studies in Eucharistic Faith and Practice) (London, 1958). For Gallicanism, see also p. 18 above, note 22, and references there cited. 35

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hundred years later’, that the B-version left ‘us in no doubt as to the tenour [sic] of the original translation’. Simmons goes on to argue that further reference to other versions that ‘had undergone a ritual revision’, viz. texts A, C, D and F, would make it possible ‘to restore the verbal forms, if a textus restitutus were the object of the Society’.39 Simmons clearly spent a good deal of time in archives and libraries, during which he received a considerable assistance from others.40 References to personal discussions with Furnivall abound,41 showing Simmons’ tolerance of Furnivall’s personal idiosyncrasies. Other figures are also mentioned. Edward Maunde Thompson (1840–1929), then keeper of manuscripts in the British Museum, is frequently cited in Simmons’ notes as a skilled interpreter of difficult readings in the manuscripts.42 As was still fairly common in this early period, Simmons drew upon the assistance of amanuenses, some very distinguished, although he made a point of collating texts himself wherever possible. Whether he himself transcribed texts is uncertain. He thanks ‘Mr E. Brock’ who had transcribed the B-version ‘for the Society’,43 and ‘Professor Skeat [who] placed at my disposal his own transcript of text F’.44 He also refers to ‘obtain[ing]’ transcripts of other MSS, and later in the edition he describes with some scrupulousness how they were secured, thanking the ‘Reverend T. Milville Raven’ for a transcript of the A-version (with ‘the advantage of being examined by Mr. Cosmo Innes’, the great antiquary and advocate), and ‘Mr George Parker of the Bodleian’ for the C-version; more vaguely, he thanks ‘the Revd Denis Hall, of the University Library’, who ‘procured’ the transcription of the E-version and ‘collated’ (i.e. checked) it against the manuscript. (The actual transcriber of the E-version is unknown, as is what was precisely involved in Hall’s ‘procurement’.) The A-version had already been edited, in 1843, for the Abbotsford Club by its founder, ‘Mr W. B. D. D. Turnbull, then an advocate at the Scotch bar and well known for his antiquarian pursuits’. In a characteristically ecumenical footnote, Simmons describes how, ‘though the highest testimony was borne to the fairness and ability with which he had done his work’, Turnbull gave up a later appointment to ‘calendar’ the State Papers of Edward VI and Mary ‘in consequence of exceptions that were taken against the employment of a man, who had become a Roman Catholic, in calendaring papers so much mixed up in the reformation. He died in 1863 in the fifty-second year of his age’.45 Other persons singled out by All quotations in this paragraph are from Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. ix. We note references to ‘my friends’, e.g. Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. xi. 41 See, e,g,, Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 162. 42 Thompson was himself an expert editor of historical manuscripts as well as a distinguished cataloguer and paleographer. He was later to become a dynamic head of the British Museum, which until 1973 included its library. He was knighted in 1898. A stickler for appearances, Thompson insisted that senior staff should wear top hats in galleries, and an assistant keeper was rebuked for riding a bicycle in the street (see further ODNB). 43 ‘Mr E. Brock’ was Edmund Brock (1841–1921), a reader for Cambridge University Press (ODNB), who had edited the alliterative Morte Darthure for EETS back in 1865: one of the Society’s earliest publications. The phraseology ‘for the Society’ is interesting, as another sign that Simmons clearly thought of himself (even though he did not use the expression) as a member of the community of practice that constituted EETS. 44 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. xi. 45 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. lxvi. 39

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name for their help include – unsurprisingly – Simmons’ friend the ‘Reverend W. G. Henderson of ‘Leeds Grammar-School’, who transcribed one of the additional texts presented as an Appendix in Simmons’ edition,46 and was not yet dean of Carlisle. Such acknowledgements, and indeed reports of other private discussions, persist into the substantial ‘Notes and Illustrations’ that accompany the edited texts. An extended note on vestments47 recalls a challenge – ‘very courteously’ expressed – from ‘Mr Scudamore’, i.e. the high-churchman William Edward Scudamore (1813–81), whose bestselling manual of devotions Steps to the Altar (London, 1846) appeared in sixty-seven editions by 1887,48 and whose scholarly credentials were established with his massive commentary on the Holy Communion service of the Church of England, Notitia eucharistica (London, 1872). Scudamore, who seems to have had access to unpublished proof-sheets for Simmons’ edition of LFMB, disputed the interpretation of the word clothe in the B-version, which he glossed as ‘altar-cloth’, whereas Simmons interpreted the form as ‘chasuble’;49 indeed he is firm, typically so, in dismissing Scudamore’s thoughts. The anonymous ‘Roman Catholic friend’ who was present with Simmons in Warsaw Cathedral is another such person.50 And a full account (albeit largely expressed in a single if convoluted sentence) is offered of an encounter with William Maskell in the Bodleian, where Simmons, to his evident satisfaction, was able to correct the great man.51 Simmons as a textual scholar Simmons’ hypothesis about Dan Jeremy and the French origins of the text in Rouen has been dismissed, probably correctly, by more recent scholarship,52 and his underlying concern – which he shared with many contemporary high church Anglicans – to situate the English liturgy in the Gallican tradition in order to separate it from Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 354. Simmons (ed.), LFMB, pp. 175–9. 48 The subtitle for this work was ‘A Manual of Devotions for the Blessed Eucharist’, described in the Notice as of such simplicity that it may be ‘useful to a larger class than can profit by the excellent preparatory offices in common use.’ In other words, Scudamore like Simmons was interested in lay worship. 49 See further chapter 5 below, p. 97. 50 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, pp. 208–9; Simmons’ experiences in the Russian Empire are referenced again later, viz. Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 221. 51 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 231: ‘ Acceptum sit omnipotenti Deo, hoc sacrificium novum.’ Sarum.‘Acceptum sit sacrificium istud omnipotenti Deo.’ Ebor. Cf. ‘Et novi testamenti novam docuit oblationem, quam ecclesia ab apostolis accipiens, in universo mundo. offert Deo.’ Iren. adv. Haeres, IV. c.32. In case any of my readers should turn to Maskell’s ‘Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England’ – which is still the most available, as until the publication of the Burntisland edition of the Sarum, and Dr Henderson’s editions of the York and Hereford Missals, it was the only book on this subject within the reach of the student at a distance from our great libraries, – I may mention that by a curious misprint at page 56 the words here quoted from the Sarum use are altogether omitted; nor had Mr Maskell’s attention been called to it, until I happened to point it out to him a few years ago when we met at the Bodleian Library, where the means of verification were abundantly at hand and were at once resorted to. 52 See, for example, Pfaff, Liturgy in Medieval England, p. 461. 46 47

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‘Popish’ tendencies has been questioned by Matthew Cheung Salisbury and others. Nevertheless, his philological and textual work on the six manuscripts of the LFMB that were available to him remains a genuine scholarly achievement. In his Introduction, Simmons gives detailed and perceptive descriptions of the manuscripts,54 dividing them into three separate groups: 53

1. His versions B (which is the text found by Maskell) and E ‘keep closely to the original’.55 2. His versions A, C and D are ‘in a revised form’, omitting the translations of the Apostles’ Creed, the Gloria and the Lord’s Prayer. 3. His version F is further adapted for English use, adding a prayer to be said while the priest is vesting. Simmons provides a detailed description of each version in turn. Version C is of particular interest as, Simmons asserts, ‘It was written for the Cistercian Abbey of Rieval or Rievaulx, in the valley of the Rye, in the North Riding of Yorkshire.’56 By internal evidence relating to prayer for the king (line 183), Simmons dates the manuscript in the first half of the fifteenth century in line with the evidence (at both beginning and end of the version) relating the book to the time of Abbot William Spenser. Simmons is dismissive of the E-version’s authority: The scribe has made many mistakes, some of which are pointed out in the notes, from ignorance of northern or archaic forms. He has also made the most unaccountable transpositions, not at the beginning of a page, for there are catch-words

Matthew Cheung Salisbury has written: ‘[Edmund] Bishop rightly understood that the Anglican, mainly High Church, preoccupation with discovering the origin and nature of “Sarum Use” was caused by the aspiration that the Church of England, and its liturgy, had an ancient and noble origin equal to and distinct from the Roman Rite as it had developed in continental Europe. This of course is not true, and Bishop knew it’ (Worship in Medieval England, pp. 30–1). Salisbury is quite possibly referring particularly to Bishop’s essay ‘Holy Week Rites of Sarum, Hereford and Rouen Compared’ in Liturgica Historica (Oxford, 1918 [1962]), pp. 276–300. It is true that Bishop here refers to Simmons’ thesis on the Rouen origins of the LFMB, and states that ‘no detailed proof has been offered’ regarding the link between Sarum and Rouen (p. 277). Nevertheless, Salisbury’s use of the Roman Catholic Bishop to argue for the close connections between all the European ‘Roman’ rites does not perhaps do full credit to the nuances of Bishop’s arguments. 54 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, pp. lxv–lxxi. 55 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. lxv. 56 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. lxviii. On folio 2v of the manuscript, in a large formal textura hand, appears the following inscription: L iber beate Marie de Rieualle ex procuracione domini Willelmi Spenser. Abbatis eiusdem. The ex libris inscription ‘Liber … Rievall[is]’ is clear evidence that the book was at the great Cistercian foundation of Rievaulx, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, even if it was not physically copied there, or indeed originally produced for the abbey’s use; see further Appendix I. See also Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, p. 149. 53

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throughout – and apparently without any suspicion on his part that they are utterly destructive of the sense.57

Simmons’ descriptions make it plain that, despite his unfounded theory of a textual ‘original’,58 he was aware of how LFMB was a ‘living text’, regularly adapted for use in different regions of England, and for different contexts, both monastic and lay. Furthermore, the additional texts printed with the LFMB – the prayers and order of Mass from the York Use, the Merita Missae ascribed to Lydgate, and so on – indicate that Simmons was concerned to establish the LFMB as a text in context, both in cathedral and parish worship as well as in the literature of lay devotion and instruction. Such descriptions of textual fluidity are entirely in line with present-day thinking about the ways in which medieval works were modified as their socio-cultural functions changed over time and space: Simmons’ discussion therefore prefigures much modern scholarship.59 Sometimes, however, Simmons’ paratextual materials strike the present-day reader as rather peculiar, as in for instance the Index entries Flower pots on altars, and Fonts, Drain under.60 The former entry refers to a quotation from a travelling Roman Catholic (but very English) clergyman, writing in 1813, who refers61 to ‘tabernacles, reliquaries, statues, or flower-pots … superfluities, which are too often to be observed on the altars of Catholic churches, [that] owe their introduction to the fond devotion of nuns or nun-like friars’. The entry on drains recalls how Simmons had occasion to examine ‘a so-called well, which had lately been uncovered in Beverley Minster … [that] probably served to drain off what was poured into a piscina’.62 In a footnote to this footnote (Simmons enjoys nesting his discussions) and with reference to the building of St Mary’s, South Dalton, he tells us that ‘A similar drain or well, about 3 feet deep, and 18 inches across, but lined with rubble walling, was found in the parish where this is written, when we were building the new church, and had to take down the font in the old one.’ The significance of drains in this context may seem obscure, but is explained in the Directorium Anglicanum, the ritualist manual of directions ‘according to the ancient use of the Church of England’: The piscina is a stone basin with an orifice and drain to carry away the water which has been used at the washing of the priest’s hands in accordance with Psalm xxvi. 6, and for rinsing the chalice after the purifications, and is one of the appurtenances of an altar which in ancient times was never dispensed with.63 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. lxx. This was also the general assumption made by biblical scholars studying the origins of the gospel texts. 59 See for instance Fiona Somerset’s comment on the ‘magpie tendencies’ of medieval copyists and compilers, referenced on p. 72 above. 60 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 452. 61 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 174. Simmons quotes from the Rev John Chetwode Eustace, A Classical Tour through Italy (London, 1813) which describes how ‘the toys and playthings of that harmless race’ are deployed on the altar. Distaste for such items seems to have persisted for many years with ‘evangelical catholics’; Ronald Jasper, liturgist and father of one of the present authors, always disliked flowers on the altar ‘where they have no business to be’ (priv.comm.). 62 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 305. 63 Purchas, rev. Lee, Directorium Anglicanum, p. 10. A copy of the Directorium was in Simmons’ library. 57

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However, even the reference to the medieval drain displaced by his fine new church can be seen as relevant to the concerns that underpin the edition, for Simmons, invariably thinking historically, is always keen to connect past and present, even in terms of sacramental plumbing. And a similar pattern can be seen at work in Simmons’ philological discussions. Rather unnerving for more precise scholars are such statements as the following: I cannot lay my hand on the passage, but I well recollect that in some of Dr Morris’ works I first met with the remark, which I took possession of at once, and have used as my touchstone ever since, that plurals in -es, -en, and -eth, were respectively marks of Northern, Midland or Southern dialect.64

The lack of referencing may be amateurish by modern standards. However, the general point made is quite correct, and this typology of verbal inflexions is still considered a broadly diagnostic feature for these Middle English dialects. And Simmons can be sophisticated, in present-day terms, in his linguistic statements, as, for instance, in the discussion of the C-version, where he offers the following brief account: In respect to the dialect, as might have been expected in a Yorkshire Abbey, it is unquestionably northern as to the verbal and participial endings, though there are many indications of the change that was taking place in northern literary English by the adoption of southern forms. For example, though we have at (C 278), the preposition to sometimes replaces till, fro is used as well as fra, gode and gude; boke and buke, oon and noon as well as a, ane, and nane; so and also, with swa and alswa. Sere is retained for the rhyme, though many replaces it in the middle of the line, as ever does ay, but both words were perhaps becoming obsolete.65

This discussion is a fair account of what later scholars would term a Mischsprache, or mixed dialect, in which northern forms are in co-variation with the (uncertainly) emerging written standard language. The choice of forms is well made, and would be found in a modern EETS edition; till and fra, along with sere, are traditionally held to be derived from Norse;66 gude and buke (with as the reflex of Old English ō) are indexical for northern English and Scots usage in the late fourteenth/early fifteenth centuries, as is as the reflex of Old English/Old Norse ā, in ane, nane, swa, alswa. The reference to Norse-derived sere being ‘retained for the rhyme’ relates to Simmons’ (undoubtedly correct) view that LFMB originated in a northern dialect area, but he is also aware that, when not constrained by rhyme, scribes felt free to ‘translate’ Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. lx. Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. lxix. 66 Later scholarship, however, has noted the occurrence of the form til ‘to’ in the earliest versions of Caedmon’s Hymn, presented in the Old Northumbrian dialect of Old English and inserted into manuscripts of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History that pre-date the Viking invasions. It is possible therefore that til is ‘native’ Old English rather than a later Norse loanword, although it is also worth recalling that Old Northumbrian, like Old Mercian, derives from the variety of West Germanic, viz. Anglian, that was current before the Anglo-Saxon invasions in areas immediately adjacent to the those where the ancestors of Norse were spoken; til may thus be a loan predating the Adventus Saxonum. 64 65

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the language of their exemplar into their ‘own’ language. Indeed, in his acceptance of the scribe as a valuable informant about – indeed, intervener in – LFMB, Simmons shows himself to be a precursor of the focus on scribal reception/transmission that has been dominant among medieval Anglicists since the late 1970s. Simmons has then, it would appear, clearly read and digested up-to-date philological works; he also writes of his ‘own study of northern English, as a living language, for the last five-and-twenty years’.67 There is a great deal of such discussion, demonstrating that Simmons was au fait with contemporary understanding of both Middle English and contemporary dialectology, regularly referring to EETS and other editions and to his own encounters with nineteenth-century northern English dialect; he was a member of the English Dialect Society,68 and he was clearly deeply engaged with that group’s interests. A good example is the following, from his glossary (which reminds us of one of EETS’s original functions, the provision of material from which the OED could quote): NEDLYNG, adv. of need, of necessity, B 521. “þan nedly behoves be punyst syn.” P.C. 2864. NEDLYNGES, C 292. See NEDLYNG. This and other adverbs in the same form, as hardlings, mostlings, are still in general use in the East Riding.

The reference to ‘P.C.’ – not listed in Simmons’ ‘Table of Abbreviations’ to his edition – is to the long and widely circulated Middle English poem The Prick of Conscience, in Richard Morris’s ground-breaking Philological Society edition of 1863 (which predated and arguably even inspired the founding of EETS).69 But Simmons is here, it seems, also a good witness of the dialect of his own time. Joseph and Elizabeth Mary Wright, in their authoritative English Dialect Dictionary (= EDD, Oxford, 1898–1905), recorded the form in Yorkshire in 1903: ‘Thoo’d needlins be shamm’d o’ thi-sen ti talk sike talk.’70 And OED sv. needlings adv., which cites LFMB as well as EDD, refers to the form as ‘English regional (Yorkshire) in later use. Now rare.’ Similar examples abound in Simmons’ notes, where he repeatedly draws attention to how the language of LFMB and other medieval texts can be connected to usages current in his own day. Thus Simmons refers to fremd as ‘still in daily use as a north-country word’;71 how ‘Kirk-garth is more common in Yorkshire in the present day, where church-yard has not displaced it’;72 Ponce for Pontius (Pilate) ‘still lingers in our cottages’;73 and ‘stegh … we still have in the north, in the sense of mounting Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 182. According to an anonymous reviewer in the Church Quarterly Review No. 18, Vol. IX, 1880, p. 442. 69 Richard Morris (ed.), The Prick of Conscience (Stimulus Conscientiae), a Northumbrian Poem by Richard Rolle de Hampole (Berlin, 1863). The ascription to Rolle, which was made in several early manuscripts, is no longer accepted. See further Robert E. Lewis and Angus McIntosh, A Descriptive Guide to the Manuscripts of the Prick of Conscience (Oxford, 1982), especially p. 4 and references there cited. 70 ‘You should necessarily be ashamed of yourself to utter such speech.’ 71 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 194. 72 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 339. 73 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 223. 67

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up, and more particularly by the help of a stee or ladder’. In such citations, Simmons is clearly drawing extensively on his parochial experience. Thus he refers to how the word bairn is used to refer to the child Jesus, ‘in utter unconsciousness of any meaning, and most certainly without thought of irreverence, for otherwise, as the parish priest, I should not have heard it as often as I have in the mouths of God-fearing and devout old Christian men and women.’75 And the following extended anecdote connects with these interests: 74

It is curious to notice the persistence of dialectic [sic] forms. Though the ‘which art’ of the Lord’s Prayer has been printed in our English Bibles and the Prayer Book for more than three hundred years, there are very many cottages in the East Riding where ‘Our Father, that is in heaven’ is the home-use, the ‘which art’, or, too often, a meaningless ‘witchhard’, being confined to the school and the church, the fact being, that neither word is to be found in the country-side vocabulary. Some years ago, in a class of farm-servants, I heard one of them explaining to a lad, who had asked him the meaning of ‘which art’, that it was ‘old-fashioned for “that is”, like a many places in the Bible.’ The explanation was so much to the point that I did not remark upon his incorrect philology at the moment, though it has been a hint to me ever since not to neglect the explanation myself.76

We may be amused by Simmons’ resisting the attempt to correct the farm-servant’s ‘philology’. Nevertheless we are reminded by such references how the distinction between historical and modern linguistic studies, often made in present-day scholarship, would have seemed bizarre to another contemporary, the great Joseph Wright (1855–1930), who, often in collaboration with his wife Elizabeth (1863/4–1957), combined the production of major and still-useful textbooks of Old and Middle English, and of Gothic, with the largest survey of modern English dialects yet undertaken. The Wrights’ endeavours eventually resulted in the multi-volume (and still hugely valuable) EDD.77 And the Wrights were not alone. Such a survey had been begun by Walter Skeat, who in 1873 had founded the English Dialect Society as an endeavour parallel to EETS; Simmons was, as already indicated, a member. The English Dialect Society disappeared in 1896, but the Yorkshire Dialect Society, whose local focus would surely have pleased Simmons, was founded the following year, with Joseph Wright as one of its first vice-presidents.78 Simmons was clearly therefore profoundly Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 224. Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 311. 76 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, pp. 293–4. 77 EDD’s value continues to be recognised, not least by its recently being placed online with enhanced functionality; see https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/english-dialectdictionary-online/C27A123BF4633796D0D8B5821C9C50BA, last consulted 29 July 2022. 78 Wright famously never lost his Yorkshire accent and usage, although references in his writings indicate that he was only too aware of how his professional development had distanced himself from his roots. Wright’s story is a useful corrective to the somewhat patronising tone of Simmons’ anecdote. His career took him from illiteracy until the age of fifteen – he had started work at the age of six, as a donkey-boy at a quarry in Windhill in the West Riding, not that far from Simmons’ parish – to the Oxford Professorship of Comparative Philology, in succession to Max Müller. In 1897, he published a groundbreaking 74 75

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engaged with the language of the folk around him, albeit necessarily (because of his class-background, and indeed profession) as in some sense an outsider.79 It is a curiously interesting fact that the rise of sociolinguistics, with its emphasis on real-time study of linguistic change, and of corpus linguistics with its ability to analyse vast bodies of recorded utterances, has reinstated the link between historical and modern linguistic study, something Simmons, like Wright, would have wholly accepted; and it is a common practice of sociolinguists to embed themselves within the community in which they are researching.80 But Simmons was also embedded in another community, of nineteenth-century clergymen of learning, theologians and liturgists, that accepted the link between past and present in relation to other agendas. Some of these men were involved in the other ‘lay folks’ texts with which Simmons and his collaborators were concerned; it is to these latter texts that we now turn. Catechism and Primer As already noted, ‘LFMB’ was Simmons’ title, intended to align the text with other works which he and like-minded colleagues were involved in editing for EETS: The Lay Folks’ Catechism (1901)81 and The Lay Folks’ Prayer Book (1895–7).82 All three works, as their Victorian titles suggest, were clearly seen by their editors as being linked, and in their prefaces these editors made the connections explicit. The first was Simmons’ LFMB, while the second was The Prymer or Lay Folks’ Prayer Book, edited by Henry Littlehales in two volumes (hence LFPB: 1895, 1897). The third edition was The Lay Folk’s Catechism (hence LFC: 1901), which Simmons had begun but which as was completed, after Simmons’ death, by his fellow canon of York and vicar of Beverley Minster, Henry Edward Nolloth.83 Nolloth and Littlehales both clearly saw their editorial work as of a piece with Simmons’ in the LFMB. Later scholarship, however, has shown the three works to be rather distinct in purpose, although the titles these works have been given are not, it may be argued, entirely misdirected: all three texts, it seems, were intended for use by pious folk, some lay, some religious, whose linguistic medium was only or primarily English grammar of the Windhill dialect – his own dialect – for the Philological Society. Wright was incidentally a major figure in the professionalisation of academic life, having been elected to ‘the Club’, a (small) group of Oxford academics who sought greater prominence for research on the German model; Wright gave evidence to the Asquith commission on Oxbridge reform (1919–22), making exactly these points. See Elizabeth Mary Wright, The Life of Joseph Wright (London, 1932). 79 Simmons too – like most clergy are still – was necessarily in some sense detached from his community, because ‘different’ in both background and, more often than not, education. 80 Examples include the research of James and Lesley Milroy in Belfast in the 1970s, and indeed the work of our colleague Jennifer Smith, herself from Buckie, in north-east Scotland. See e.g. Lesley Milroy, Language and Social Networks (Oxford 1980); Jennifer Smith and Mercedes Durham, Sociolinguistic Variation in Children’s Language (Cambridge, 2020). 81 Thomas F. Simmons and Henry E. Nolloth (eds), The Lay Folks’ Catechism (London, 1901). 82 Henry Littlehales (ed.), The Prymer, or Lay-Folks’ Prayer Book (London, 1895–7). 83 Nolloth seems to have undertaken this work as an act of friendship and piety, apologising in his preface for the delay in completing his task and emphasising his own inadequacy.

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rather than Latin. All three texts responded to what, in the later medieval period, had become ‘the enhanced prestige of English, the interests of an increasingly literate laity in more advanced matters of theology than the rudiments of Christian behaviour, and dissatisfaction with the Church, expressed by orthodox and heterodox alike’.84 Their appearance aligns with what has been called the ‘imaginative intensity’ of late medieval Catholic and pre-Reformation devotion,85 celebrated by Eamon Duffy: The fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries in England witnessed a period of massive catechetical enterprise on the part not only of the bishops and parochial clergy … but also on the part of members of religious orders and private individuals. … liturgy, ritual, and traditional religious forms and imagery remained central to lay religion into the 1540s and beyond … 86

The LFPB – which has not yet received as much attention as it deserves – is one of the numerous primers that emerged in the late medieval period, designed to inform the prayer-life of the pious, both lay and religious.87 The LFC was a manual of late medieval religious instruction prepared by the Benedictine monk John Gaytryge, at the behest of John Thoresby (d.1373), archbishop of York, who had reaffirmed the importance of basic religious instruction for the ‘helpe of euery persoone þat þenkiþ to be saued’.88 LFC can be linked in contents to the long Middle English religious poem Speculum Vitae, a translation of a French prose work once ascribed to William of Nassington,89 as part of a distinctive Yorkshire religious culture of the late fourteenth century.90 It was repeatedly revised for different purposes, although the view that one of these versions was associated with the Lollard movement, a ‘premature reformation’ then deemed by the authorities to be heretical, is no longer generally accepted.91 However, although all three texts were in origins quite different, their importance, as a group, for Victorian clergyman-editors in the Church of England is apparent. Taken together they correlate broadly with three parts of the Book of Common Prayer that would have been used on an almost-daily basis in the church or in the church-maintained schools of the late nineteenth century, viz. the Daily Office, the Spencer, English Preaching, p. 14. Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 593. 86 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 2–3, 5. 87 See e.g. Eamon Duffy, Marking the Hours (New Haven, 2006), and Edmund Bishop’s extended essay in Littlehales, Primer. On later printed primers see Charles Butterworth, The English Primers 1529–1545 (Philadelphia, 1953). 88 Margaret Connolly, ‘Books for the “helpe of euery persoone þat þenkiþ to be saued”: six devotional anthologies from fifteenth-century London’, Yearbook of English Studies 33 (2003), 170–81. 89 See now Ralph Hanna (ed.), Speculum Vitae, EETS OS 331 (Oxford, 2009). 90 The two texts survive together in Nottingham, University Library, MS WLC/LM/9. See Pamela Greig, ‘The Lay Folks’ Catechism: an edition’, PhD Nottingham, 2018; see also Powell, ‘Transmission and Circulation of The Lay Folks’ Catechism’. 91 See Anne Hudson, ‘A new look at The Lay Folks’ Catechism’, Viator 16 (1985), pp. 243– 58; see also more generally her The Premature Reformation (Oxford, 1988). However, further study may bring about some revision of this view. 84 85

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Holy Communion, and the Catechism (services such as marriages, funerals baptisms, ordinations etc are ‘occasional’). Simmons, Nolloth and Littlehales, therefore, were looking for the medieval precursor of the Anglican Prayer Book, and by bringing LFMB, LFPB and LFC together, they had in some sense ‘invented’ it. They were editors for EETS, but they also saw these texts as prefiguring their own carefully-nuanced nineteenth-century Anglican ecclesiological and theological orientation. Nolloth, therefore, explicitly describes LFC as ‘a fitting companion’ to LFMB. He characterises LFMB as supplying ‘the “lex Orandi” … of the Church of our forefathers in mediæval times’ while LFC, along with LFPB, supplied the ‘“Lex Credendi”’.92 And in their book The Old Service-Books of the English Church (1904), Littlehales and another collaborator, Christopher Wordsworth,93 devote some pages to Simmons’ ‘excellent edition’ of LFMB as part of their last chapter on ‘Miscellaneous Subjects’. As an aid for ‘intelligent laity to appreciate the service on which they gave attendance’ they link the LFMB, as had Simmons before them, with the Ancrene Riwle and the Mirroure of our Lady, as well as the ‘Medes (Merita) of the Mass’, then ascribed to Lydgate, and Chaucer’s ‘Parson’s Tale’ together with ‘many others who wrote in English’.94 Littlehales and Wordsworth clearly linked their interest in LFPB with Simmons’ LFMB. LFC was published for EETS in 1901. Simmons began work on the edition, but after his death in 1884 it was first passed to the Wycliffe scholar F. D. Matthew (1838–1918)95 to complete the work. However, Matthew subsequently handed the task on to be completed by Nolloth.96 The full title of the EETS edition is, like that of LFMB, wordy: The Lay Folks’ Catechism, or, the English and Latin Versions of Archbishop’s Thoresby’s Instruction for the People; Together with a Wycliffite Adaptation of the Same, and the Corresponding Canons of the Council of Lambeth.

Nolloth and Simmons (eds), LFC, p. vii. Christopher Wordsworth (1848–1938) was a major figure in Anglican ecclesiastical circles, a sometime fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge and a prebendary of Salisbury Cathedral. His father and grandfather confusingly both shared his forename. Grandfather Christopher (1774–1846) was the poet William Wordsworth’s younger brother, and master of Trinity College Cambridge. His father, also named Christopher (1807–1885), was an energetic bishop of Lincoln. His older brother John (1843–1911) was bishop of Salisbury. Wordsworth’s career shows him to have been a conventional, successful Victorian clergyman; his work carried forward well into the twentieth century. 94 Wordsworth and Littlehales, Old Service-Books, pp. 284–6. 95 F. D. Matthew was the editor for EETS of the English Works of Wyclif Hitherto Unprinted (London, 1880). In the following year Furnivall launched another of his literary-historical ventures, the Wyclif Society (with his characteristic energy he also founded the Browning Society in the same year). The Wyclif Society was intended to print Wycliffe’s Latin manuscripts, and Furnivall did not himself contribute an edition (see Benzie, Furnivall, pp. 254–5). 96 The only other published work by Nolloth is a short history of Beverley Minster, published after his retirement in 1921. A second edition of this work, published in 1930, has a Prefatory Note by his brother C. F. Nolloth, who notes that ‘the great Church on which, for over forty years, he had lavished so much care and devotion had always been in his thoughts since his retirement.’ A third edition was published in January 1952, ‘amended, enlarged and edited’ by J. R. Forster, and with another Prefatory Note by Nolloth’s nephew W. H. Rigg, himself a former Vicar of Beverley Minster, and Archdeacon of Bodmin. 92 93

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It is immediately apparent from a scrutiny of this edition that Canon Nolloth was a rather less careful and less learned scholar than Simmons. It is impossible now to know what Simmons left of the uncompleted work at his death, but the notes printed in 1901 have a slapdash and often ambiguous quality that is far below the standard of LFMB. Nolloth was all too conscious of his deficiencies, and remarked in his own Prefatory Note to the Catechism that ‘I am but too well aware how illequipped a town-clergyman, who can only follow up literary pursuits of this kind in the brief intervals of a busy life, must inevitably prove.’97 It would appear that the rather slight Introduction to the EETS edition is by Nolloth, much of it devoted to the history of catechetical teaching from the time of the Early Church, while the edited text itself is probably largely the work of Simmons.98 The edition comprises four texts as follows, with the numbers and sigla of the manuscript-witnesses, and detailed titles, given to them by the editors:99 I.

Text T: ‘The English of Archbishop Thoresby’s Instruction or Catechism for the People, from the authentic copy in his register at York.’ The shelf-mark is not given in the edition; it is now York, Borthwick Institute, MS R.I.11.100

II. Text C: ‘The Original Latin of No. I, as approved by the council or convocation of the clergy of the diocese and province of York, A.D.1357, from Thoresby’s register.’ See I above. III. Text L: ‘A Wycliffite Adaptation of the Catechism, with Latin rubrics, put forth under the name of Archbishop Thoresby, from the Lambeth MS., No. 408; and additions [within brackets] from York Minster MS., XVI.L.12.’101 IV. Text P: ‘The Corresponding canons of the Council of Lambeth, under Archbishop Peckham, A.D.1281.’ The introduction may have been slight, but it has points of interest that indicate the editors’ primary motivations in undertaking the work. Nolloth grounds the LFC

Nolloth and Simmons (eds), LFC, p. viii. See further Powell, ‘The Transmission and Circulation of The Lay Folks’ Catechism’, p. 69, note 7. 99 Nolloth and Simmons (eds), LFC, p. 1. 100 Other texts are now known. DIMEV (item 671) records LFC in the following additional places: Cambridge, Sidney Sussex College MS 55; Cambridge, Trinity College B.10.12; Cambridge, University Library MS Dd.12.39; Lincoln, Cathedral Library 91 (Robert Thornton’s MS); London, British Library, MSS Additional 24202 and 25006, MS Arundel 507, and MS Harley 1022; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Don. c.13 and Rawlinson C.288; Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 155 (where LFC appears immediately before LFMB); and Oxford, Queen’s College MS 389B. Hudson, ‘New look’, pp. 245–6 adds two more primary witnesses, viz. Nottingham, University Library, MS Middleton LM 9, and Paris, Bibliothèque Ste Genevieve MS 3390, and relegates CUL Dd.12.39 to a second group of seven manuscripts ‘in which an extract or extracts only were included’; she also records another six manuscripts ‘which have a significantly reworked text.’ None of these last witnesses are like the Lambeth text, which she considers textually entirely distinct, and ‘lack[ing] any kind of theological consistency’ (p. 258); the York Minster text she considers distinct again. 101 These two witnesses are cited in DIMEV, item 672. 97

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in the work of Archbishop Thoresby of York, and the latter’s concern to correct the abuses committed by both clergy and laity.102 He suggests: In his anxiety to amend the ignorance and neglect of the parish-priests, and the consequent godlessness of their flocks, the Archbishop put forth the Catechism printed in this volume. It was issued both in Latin and in English, – the latter of the simplest variety, so as to be understood by the most uncultured of the laity.103

Things, however, as we shall see, were not quite so simple. For a start, the English ‘translation’ hardly reflects the Latin text, being much longer and, in Nolloth’s words, ‘evidently for the sake of fuller explanation and clearer understanding by the lay-folk’.104 The verse of the English is, indeed, ‘rude’, barely qualifying as verse, its author identified by Nolloth as one John de Taystek, a monk of St Mary’s Abbey at York. Nolloth links the English version of the Catechism with Archbishop Thoresby’s ‘use of miracle-plays in the furtherance of his scheme of popular instruction’105 following the institution of the festival of Corpus Christi by Urban IV in 1263. Text L in the EETS volume is considered by Nolloth (and presumably Simmons) to be a Wycliffite adaptation of LFC, ‘probably from the hand of the reformer himself ’.106 On its origins, Simmons and Nolloth appear to have disagreed. Nolloth argues that it was rendered by Wycliffe with the knowledge and consent of Thoresby himself. Simmons, on the other hand, seems to have regarded it as a forgery, drawing elements from the Archbishop’s works and placing them in the context of work that he would have repudiated. This Wycliffite connection, however, is no longer accepted by more recent scholarship. Anne Hudson has observed that the failure of the Lambeth witness to remove references to pardons is ‘particularly striking’ since ‘pardons were anathema to Lollards, and are regularly ridiculed in the most outspoken terms in genuine Lollard writings’.107 Simmons and Nolloth, it would seem, were always sympathetic to at least elements of Lollardy, since Wycliffe and his associates were seen as precursors of ‘our Holy Reformation’.108 The EETS edition of LFC has not fared well at the hands of more recent scholarly criticism. Susan Powell, like Hudson, summarily dismisses the claimed Lollard connexions for the Lambeth text, and writes: The English version of Thoresby’s Injunctions appears in his Register without title or author, yet it is known to us as The Lay Folks’ Catechism and its author as John Nolloth cites also Wilkins, Concilia Magnae Britanniae, Vol III – Wilkins was one of the antiquarians consulted by William Palmer – and the ‘Constitutions of Archbishop Thoresby’ (1357), promulgated in the same year as LFC, and designed to check clerical and lay abuse; see LFC, p. xv. 103 Nolloth and Simmons (eds), LFC, p. xv. 104 Nolloth and Simmons (eds), LFC, p. xvii. 105 Nolloth and Simmons (eds), LFC, p. xviii. 106 Nolloth and Simmons (eds), LFC, p. xx. 107 Hudson, ‘New look’, p. 254. 108 See above p. 39, note 57. Simmons adapts this phrase from the form of daily prayers used at the opening of the York Northern Convocation of which he was a member from 1874. See Simmons (ed.), LFMB, pp. xiv–xv. 102

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Gaytryge. The title is editorial and presumably intended to match other publications of the EETS, The Lay Folks [sic] Mass-Book and The Lay Folks’ Prayer Book. Canon Nolloth, when he took over his friend’s work on his death, had reservations about the title, though they are not quite the reservations we would have today. How far the work is and is not a catechism for layfolk is obvious … neither the word ‘layfolk’ nor ‘catechism’ is wholly accurate.109

This somewhat damning verdict perhaps needs some qualification. Simmons and Nolloth were perfectly aware that LFC comprised instructions for layfolk to be offered by the priest (as is the case in the catechism in the BCP.)110 Nor is it true that this work did not follow the structure of a catechism, such as is to be found in the Instructions for Parish Priests by the impeccably orthodox Augustinian canon John Mirk (c.1382–c.1414). In both LFC and Mirk’s book instruction begins with the Paternoster, then the Ave and the Apostles’ Creed, and includes the Ten Commandments. Despite its limitations, therefore, there are positive things to be said concerning Simmons’ and Nolloth’s edition of LFC. Although, as has been said, they are far less comprehensive and scholarly than those supplied for LFMB, the Notes to LFC do bear some evidence of originating with Simmons and being somewhat scrambled by Nolloth. There are numerous familiar literary references from works well known to Simmons, and once again, there is sensitivity to the particular readership of the EETS. In connection with the so-called Lady Psalter referred to in line 220, a footnote expresses the hope that ‘it may not be unacceptable to the members of the E.E.T. Society, if I add some extracts from an English legend, which is not later than the end of the thirteenth century.’111 But there are also some interesting comments that attest to other more contemporary agendas, since, like Simmons’ edition of LFMB, the edition of LFC should be seen within the life of the Church of England in the late nineteenth and at the turn of the twentieth century. It dates from a time when Anglican writers like Pearcy Dearmer were encouraging clergy to revive the practice of catechism. In his widely read Parson’s Handbook (1899), Dearmer writes: The rubric directs that the Curate shall ‘diligently upon Sundays and Holy-days, after the second lesson at Evening Prayer, openly in the church instruct and examine’ some children ‘in some part of the catechism.’ Canon 59 not only insists upon this catechism on Sundays and Holy-days, and orders parents and masters to send those in their charge, but also orders the Bishop to inflict excommunication, for a

Powell, ‘Transmission and Circulation’, pp. 68–9. There is evidence from Archbishop Thomson’s Visitation report that Simmons regularly used the Catechism from BCP in his parish of Dalton Holme. 111 Nolloth and Simmons (eds), LFC, p. 109: the Lady Psalter, according to Simmons and Nolloth, ‘was so called because it included the repetition of a hundred and fifty Ave Mary’s in accordance with the number of the psalms.’ The legend referred to occurs in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Digby 86, a well-known ‘friars’ miscellany’ (see Malcolm Parkes and Judith Tschann, Facsimile of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 86 (Oxford, 1997)), and is reprinted in the notes to the Nolloth and Simmons’ edition of LFC. 109 110

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third offence, on any Minister who neglects his duty herein… It is a pity that this rubric should have fallen into such abeyance.112

Dearmer further notes, simply and somewhat drily, that ‘the clergy do not try.’113 His bibliography to the Handbook includes the LFMB, and not surprisingly omits the LFC, as the edition of the latter was published two years after the first edition of Dearmer’s work. (It does include, however, Peacock’s edition of Mirk’s Instructions for Parish Priests.) As parish priests, despite Dearmer’s structures, Simmons and Nolloth seem to have been extremely conscientious in their catechetical duties. Nolloth completed and published Simmons’ work on the LFC at a time when the instruction of the laity and an awareness of their spiritual needs was growing in the Church of England: a time just preceding another great period of liturgical revisionary work leading up to what was to be the Prayer Book crisis of 1927/28. In this context, we might observe a comment in the edition of LFC on the English Lord’s Prayer, drawing attention to the omission of the concluding doxology.114 This element was only introduced into the Prayer Book in 1661, ‘and then [according to Simmons and Nolloth] probably because it was in the Authorized Version. It is omitted in the Revision of 1881.’115 Quite what this revision of 1881 refers to is unclear, since the doxology is certainly present in the Lord’s Prayer of the Convocation Prayer Book of 1880.116 The remaining edition under review, LFPB, can be similarly contextualised. In 1891/2, Henry Littlehales, outside the aegis of EETS, published the text of an English Prymer, from Cambridge, St John’s College MS G.24, his full title being The Prymer, or, Prayer-Book of the Lay People in the Middle Ages, in English Dating about 1400 A.D.117 Littlehales, of whom surprisingly little is known,118 noted, following Maskell and prefiguring Eamon Duffy’s discussion over a century later, the far more numerous examples of the Latin version of the Prymer.119

Quoted from the third edition of Dearmer, The Parson’s Handbook (London, 1903), p. 387. Dearmer, Handbook (1903), p. 388. 114 Nolloth and Simmons (ed.), LFC, p. 11, line 161. See Matthew 6: 13. 115 Nolloth and Simmons (ed.), LFC, p. 105. 116 See especially the discussion in Jasper, Prayer Book Revision in England; for further discussion see chapter 6 below. 117 The work (like the EETS edition) appeared in two volumes. 118 Henry Littlehales, though clearly closely connected with the ‘community of practice’ under review, as witnessed by his collaborative activities, seems to have been a rather shadowy figure on the margins of both philological and ecclesiastical circles. According to the databases available, he appears to have been an alumnus of neither Oxford nor Cambridge. He is regularly recorded as an EETS subscriber, and he was later to compile Furnivall’s bibliography for his Festschrift, An English Miscellany (1901). Later still, as we have seen, he collaborated with Christopher Wordsworth on Old Service Books (1904). However, he modestly forbore in his prefaces to indicate any other affiliation or biographical information than his residing at one time in Chancery Lane (which might suggest a legal background), and at another in Bexleyheath. 119 There are several more recent studies of the Prymer, principally Charles Butterworth, The English Primers (1529–1545) (Philadelphia, 1953). Butterworth, however, is concerned only with printed Primers of the sixteenth century. Even more recently Duffy, Marking the Hours, makes the same connection between the Prymer and books of hours, describing the Prymers as ‘religious handbooks’ modelled on the books of hours of our Lady. 112

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Littlehales returned to the English text of the Prymer in 1895, this time for EETS, with an accompanying extensive essay, entitled ‘The Origin of the Prymer’, by the Roman Catholic layman Edmund Bishop.120 Littlehales’ new edition was entitled simply The Prymer, or, Lay Folks’ Prayer Book (hence LFPB), adopting more clearly a formulation similar to Simmons’, and this time he used as his base-text a slightly later manuscript than in the earlier edition: Cambridge, University Library, MS Dd xi.82.121 Littlehales describes the English Prymer in his Preface as ‘the common mediaeval Prayer-book’, remarking that ‘there is every reason to believe that the text is a good one.’122 He acknowledges his debt in particular to Furnivall, and it was Furnivall who posed the questions that prompt Bishop’s introductory essay.123 Furnivall – as have seen, no liturgical scholar and someone, at least in later life, of ‘radical’ religious views – had asked Bishop: The point I want to know is – if a man took the Prymer to church, would he hear the same service or set of services in Latin? Is the Prymer a translation of a public service-book, or one of private devotion, or partly of both?124

In response Edmund Bishop points out that the elements of LFPB are virtually unvarying: the Office of the Blessed Virgin, the Office of the Dead, the Penitential and Gradual Psalms, the Litany, and Commendations. The key paragraph in Bishop’s essay is as follows: It is unfortunate that MS. Prymers should, in Libraries, be classed as Books of Hours, or Horae. The MSS. so called, whether they contain the common contents of the Prymer, or whether they contain any kind of Hour Office, are as a rule all classed together under that heading, though in most cases they prove to be Prymers. Many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of instances occur of mediaeval allusions to the Prymer, Primer or Primarium; but there are, I think, very few contemporary allusions to Books of Hours or Horae.125 Edmund Bishop (1846–1917) was a liturgical historian who began his working life as private secretary to Thomas Carlyle, but spent most of his subsequent career working at the Education Department of the Privy Council Office. Despite these comparatively humble and supportive roles, however, Bishop was demonstrably a man of very considerable intellectual ambition and intense personal religious conviction who could never be content with life as a Victorian civil servant. As ‘one of the last great English autodidacts’ (ODNB), he became a founding member of the Henry Bradshaw Society, and a leader in contemporary liturgical studies. What attracted Bishop to such activities seems clear. Underpinning his historical activities was an urgent engagement with contemporary religious controversy. Bishop was not only a devout Roman Catholic, who had converted in 1867 and spent much time at Downside Abbey, but also a ‘modernist’ and friend of Baron von Hügel, out of sympathy with the anti-modernism of Pope Pius X (1835–1914). As Bishop stated in 1908, ‘I am an irredeemable modernist from long before the days when modernism was thought of ’ (Abercrombie, Edmund Bishop, p. 382, cited ODNB). Catholic modernism emphasised inter alia the role of a learned laity, and it is no coincidence that Bishop was interested in a text which included ‘lay folk’ in its title. 121 The manuscript is dated to the second decade of the fifteenth century. 122 The EETS edition is here cited: Littlehales (ed.), LFPB, p. vii. 123 This essay was reprinted in Edmund Bishop’s Liturgica Historica, pp. 211–37. 124 Edmund Bishop, ‘On the Origin of the Prymer’, in Littlehales (ed.), LFPB, p. xii. 125 Bishop, ‘On the Origin of the Prymer’, p. xliii. 120

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Bishop’s argument is lengthy and carefully constructed. His historical narrative begins in the late eighth century with St Benedict of Aniane (c.750–821), whose mode of life resembled ‘in many respects the first Cistercian austerity of later times.’126 LFPB, therefore has its origins, first, within the monastic tradition, and second, from the elaboration of worship around the Hours, rather than from the Hours themselves. St Benedict of Ariane added to the monks’ tasks by requiring extra psalms and devotions in addition to the liturgical Hours. Citing – in Simmons’ manner – the authority of Edmond Martène in volume 1 of his authoritative De antiquis ecclesiae ritibus,127 Bishop added further to the regular Divine Office ‘a daily recital of the office of the dead.’128 In conclusion, by 950–1000, Bishop writes: With the exception of the Office of the Blessed Virgin and the “commendations,” the whole groundwork of the Prymer (and something more, the office of All Saints) forms in the monasteries a series of supplemental daily prayers in addition to the old authorized, and still the only official service, the Divine Office of the day.129

We begin to see, then, an answer to Furnivall’s first question: whether the person who takes his Prymer to Church would hear the same service as his English text provides. The answer is clearly a negative. Bishop elaborates on this point at some length. His conclusion is clear: the LFPB has its origins not in the secular Church but in the monastic tradition, consisting in ‘those devotional accretions to the Divine Office itself, invented first by the piety of individuals for the use of monks in their monasteries.’130 What this meant for the late medieval layman attending church is suggested by one Arthur Chapman, a blacksmith of Wolsingham in Weardale near Durham on 3 February, 1570, who is reported to have said that he was redinge of an ynglish boke, or prymer, while as the priest was saying of his service no myndynge what the preist redd, but tendynge his own boke and praier.131

What, then, emerges from Bishop’s essay on the origin and function of the LFPB in this EETS edition bears a striking resemblance to LFMB’s function in the liturgical life of late medieval England. Both were books of devotion to be primarily used alongside and simultaneous with the public, Latin liturgy of the Church. In the frequently reprinted Constituciones provinciales ecclesiae anglica[a]e (1430)132 Bishop Lyndwood of St David’s (c.1375–21/22 October 1446) gives various reasons why the Bishop, ‘On the Origin of the Prymer’, p. xiii. The four volumes of Martène’s De antiquis ecclesiae ritibus were revised and expanded and republished in Venice in 1736–38. 128 Bishop, ‘On the Origin of the Prymer’, p. xix. 129 Bishop, ‘On the Origin of the Prymer’, p. xxi. 130 Bishop, ‘On the Origin of the Prymer’, p. xxxvii. 131 Quoted Henry Littlehales, ‘Some Historical Notes’, LFPB, Vol. II, p. xliv. The quotation is drawn from Depositions and other Ecclesiastical Proceedings from the Court of Durham, Surtees Society (1845), pp. 231–2. 132 The Provinciale was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1496 and frequently thereafter. The 1679 Oxford edition is generally regarded as the best. It was reprinted as late as 1968. 126 127

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Canon of the Mass was said silently by the priest. His third reason is that this was to prevent any interruption of the prayers of the laity.133 P. S. Barnwell suggests that: What The Lay Folks’ Mass Book and the shorter guide in the Merita Missae of John Lydgate suggest is not that the laity were excluded or passive, but that there was a programme for their participation: it is not recorded in the Missal, the liturgical book, because that was specifically for the priest, but that did not make it insignificant.134

It would seem that LFPB, to an extent at least, served a similar purpose for the offices as found in the Church’s Breviary.135 Nor is it insignificant that these two quite separate works should find themselves brought together in the late nineteenth-century publications of the EETS under the common title of books of the ‘lay folks’ of the Church, at a time when liturgical reform was in the air and a renewed sense of the unity of the worshipping community of the Church, both priest and laity, was being recovered and acknowledged. There is clear evidence that sung Matins and Evensong were part of the regular public worship of St Mary’s in the later years of Simmons’ time as rector. Some final general points may be made in this chapter about not only Simmons as an editor but also those who felt the impact of his edition, and indeed those other editors, such as Littlehales and Nolloth, who clearly shared elements of, if not all of, his editorial goals. First, he clearly saw himself as a member of an international antiquarian-philological community of practice that stretched across Britain and beyond. Secondly, he was, as an editor interested in textual reception and as a linguist who observed the usage of his parishioners, one of those scholars who pointed forward to approaches to research that would become dominant a century later. But thirdly – linked to both the former points – the evidence from his edition of LFMB is that Simmons saw past and present as in dynamic and ecclesial articulation, and this third point was something he shared with other members of the group. All the texts under review were seen by their editors in the context of the life and liturgical practices of the Church, both locally and nationally, in the past and in the present. LFMB, LFC and LFPB were envisaged as living texts demanding imaginative and scholarly attention in the on-going liturgical life of the English Church. It is to Simmons as a liturgist that we will turn in the following chapter.

Barnwell, Paul S., ‘The nature of late medieval worship: the mass’, in Harper et al. (eds), Late Medieval Liturgies Enacted, pp. 207–18, 211. See also Bernard Lord Manning, The People’s Faith in the Time of Wyclif (Cambridge, 1919), p. 9, the Mass being said in silence ‘ne impediatur populus orare.’ 134 Barnwell, ‘Nature of Late Medieval Worship’, p. 211. 135 See ‘The structure of The Lay Folks’ Prayer Book’ at the end of this chapter. 133

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A note on the structure of The Lay Folks’ Prayer Book The structure of LFPB as edited by Littlehales closely follows that of other English Prymers. This is not to ignore that there are variations in Prymers that accord with the Use of Sarum. Indeed, Littlehales abandons Simmons’ idea of a single ‘original’ text, acknowledging that variations are a part of the manuscript tradition, ‘being clearly intentional, not the result of accident’.136 In short, there is no ‘original’ text of LFPB. The structure, however, is more or less constant. It consists of: The Hours

The Seven Penitential Psalms The Fifteen Gradual Psalms The Litany The Office for the Dead Commendations

Matins Lauds (with Prime, Tierce, Sext, and None) Evensong Compline

Placebo (Vespers) Dirige (Matins) Dirige (Lauds)

Littlehales acknowledges in some detail the variety and complexity of the medieval manuscript prymers in a series of seven essays following Bishop’s essay on the origins of LFPB in volume II of the EETS edition. They are as follows: Some Historical Notes The Distribution of the Psalms of the Prymer An attempt to define the structure of the Prymer according to the Uses of Sarum and York The Structure of the Prymer Secundum Usum or Consuetudinum Anglie The Structure of the Eleventh-Century Versions of the Hours of the Blessed Virgin Mary The Structure of the Durham Prymer (Brit. Mus. MS., Harl. 1804) Table Showing the Reading of Six Sarum Prymers (Littlehales (ed.), LFPB, Vol. II: contents page) As we move from these handwritten to printed Prymers, however, the text becomes both more fixed and subject to ‘authorization.’ The next step would be towards not the variety of the Middle Ages but the conformity of 1549 Prayer Book and is successors up to 1662. On 29 May, 1545, the first printed edition of the Primer of Henry VIII was published by Richard Grafton.137 Within the year there were a further ten editions in English, two in English and Latin, and one in Latin. The book was clearly intended to be part of the educational system of the day as well as a book of devotions for older people. On 6 May, 1545, King Henry VIII set up an injunction describing its purpose, that we:

136 137

Littlehales, The Prymer, Part I, Preface, p. viii. Butterworth, English Primers, pp. 256–75.

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have set furth this Primer through out al places of our said realms and dominions aswell of the elder people, as also of the youth, for their common and ordinarye praiers, willyng, commaundyng, and streightly chargyng, that for the better bringing up of youth in the knowledge of their dutye towards God, their prince, & all other in their degree, every schoolemaster & bringer up of yong beginners in lernyng, next after their A.B.C. nowe by us also set furth, do teache this Primer or boke of ordinary praiers unto them in Englishe …138

Latin, it would appear, was still at this stage very much the preferred language for devotion and worship. Thus LFPB is clearly not intended to be an accompaniment to public worship. Nevertheless, as with the LFMB, its origins lie in the formal liturgy of the Church, from which lay folk, either in church, alongside the priestly liturgy, or at home in private devotion, might sustain their religious lives.

Quoted in Butterworth, English Primers, p. 257, reporting the printer’s statement at the beginning of the Primer. 138

5 Simmons as Editor: The Liturgist

Sources for Simmons’ liturgical commentaries

I

n chapter 4 we addressed Simmons’ editing of the LFMB largely from the perspective of his editorial activities as a philologist and active member of the EETS. Simmons, who was as we have seen mindful of the literary and non-theological concerns of the EETS,1 had drawn for many of his references in his notes upon the growing contemporary interest in the Middle English poetry of Chaucer, Langland, Gower, Lydgate and others. He also referred to such canonical literary critics as Thomas Warton and his substantial History of English Poetry (London, 1774–81) with its significant emphasis on medieval literature; modern literary scholarship now tends to dismiss the work of Warton, though David Matthews has credited him with opening up historical criticism, at a time when there were few scholarly guides to offer professional assistance.2 But Simmons also engaged in depth – in a way which shows an interest prefiguring twentieth-century attempts to effect a synergy between literature and theology – with a substantial body of writing on the history of liturgy. In addition to the work of Palmer, Maskell, Dickinson and Henderson – all discussed in chapter 2 above – he made considerable use of both continental and British sources for medieval liturgical study that these earlier authorities had themselves referred to: Mabillon, Martène, Bingham, Gough, and Dibdin, and – of special interest to Simmons for his writings on the early liturgical traditions of Rouen – Le Brun des Marettes. Other continental writers, many of them also used by Palmer and Maskell, to which Simmons makes frequent reference include Goar, Renaudot, and the Italian theologians Catalani and Zaccaria.3 Simmons’ liturgical reading is revealed especially in the comprehensive set of ‘Notes and Illustrations’ that appear on pp. 155–401 of his edition: an astonishingly 1 On matters of ‘religious controversy’, Simmons remarks (ed., LFMB, p. xv) that ‘I thought I had not right to obtrude them upon my fellow members [of the EETS], who had not joined the Society in the expectation of any such encounter.’ 2 Matthews, The Making of Middle English, p. xvi. 3 See chapter 2 above, pp. 37–8. Dibdin was also a clergyman, and a founding member of the Roxburghe Club. The dilettante nature of his work is suggested by the full title of his work: Ten Pleasant Days Discourse upon Illuminated Manuscripts, and Subjects Connected with Early Engraving, Typography, and Bibliography. Maskell had dismissed the work of Gough and Dibdin with some contempt:

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large body of material given that the longest version of LFMB, the B-text, is a mere 630 lines. Simmons’ notes are made complicated by themselves being supplied with a considerable battery of footnotes (themselves occasionally supplemented by footnotes). Their content is very different not only in length but also from not being restricted to the philological focus supplied by, for instance, Richard Morris or Walter Skeat for their near-contemporary editions of Cursor Mundi or Piers Plowman. Simmons in sum was attempting to deploy, with reference to a vernacular text, the same degree of attention, range and ambition that editors such as Maskell had afforded Latin medieval liturgical texts. There is a case to be made that, for the ecclesiastical and clerical readership that still made up a substantial proportion of EETS’s subscribers, such attention to the vernacular would be perceived as innovative. In the remainder of this chapter a substantial selection of Simmons’ notes will be analysed, with a view to identifying in detail the kinds of liturgical scholarship and interests with which he was engaging. The following analysis is ordered according to the late medieval structuring of the mass, viz. the fore-mass, consisting of preparation including confession and the liturgy of the word, the sacrifice-mass, consisting of offertory rites, eucharistic prayers, the post-communion and dismissal. Simmons’ liturgical commentaries Preparation Simmons provides lengthy notes at this point in his commentary, on kneeling (pp. 162–3) and an even longer discussion on vestments (pp. 163–8, and also pp. 175–9); we are reminded here of the significant controversies on such matters in the Anglican church of the 1870s. Simmons’ starting-point for his note on kneeling is the phrase ‘vpon thi knees’ (F, line 10; see also B, lines 53, 150), where he notes that both knees are referred to. Furnivall had drawn Simmons’ attention to John Palsgrave’s (d.1554) French textbook of 1530, in which the writer has referred to an apparent difference in customs between the English and the French: ‘The men of this countray knele vpon one knee when they here masse, but the frenche men knele vpon bothe.’ Simmons is puzzled by this statement, although prepared to accept that Palsgrave, who had lived in both France and England, was a good observer both of language and culture, something confirmed by later scholarship.4 Nevertheless he remains unconvinced as to the significance of this supposed difference, which he … there are two more authors who have touched upon the subject of old English service books: I am certainly bound to notice them, though they are certainly not likely to be referred to for this purpose. These are Gough and Dr. Dibdin. There is this to be said for the commentators who are mentioned above, that not having ventured much they have in proportion made few mistakes, and so do not in that way mislead: but here we must complain of most egregious blunders. Yet perhaps Gough only is to be blamed, for Dr. Dibdin has but copied his statements and complacently (as upon a matter of no consequence) repeated his errors. Gough’s ‘errors’, according to Maskell, stemmed from sheer carelessness, though Simmons refers on several occasions to his and to Dibdin’s work, and indeed Gough was widely referred to for his early work on the regional differences of the York and Sarum Uses. See Maskell, Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, second edition, volume 1 (Oxford, 1882), pp. ix–x. 4 See Gabriele Stein, John Palsgrave as Renaissance Linguist (Oxford, 1997).

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did not consider – given the date of Palsgrave’s observation, before the break with Rome – to be a product of reformed religion. Indeed he offers various contemporary citations, including from John Mirk’s Festial and the anonymous Babees Book, in addition to LFMB, to suggest that both knees, not one, were always used in the English church. Interestingly, Simmons’ note suggests that he had definite views on correct postures in church: ‘the one knee of our forefathers is no more to be attributed to any ecclesiastical authority than the sitting and lounging of some of their descendants can be laid to the want of rubrics directing them to kneel.’5 We might note here the somewhat pejorative reference to ‘sitting and lounging’ on the part of ‘some of their descendants’ (presumably referring to what Simmons regarded as the deplorably lackadaisical practices of some Victorian congregations). The section on vestments is much longer, and falls into two sections. Simmons’ starting-point is again taken from the F-version, which refers to the people kneeling ‘The whiles he [i.e. the priest] doth in his westemente’ (F, line 12). Simmons notes that this practice where the priest vested before the people was an adaptation for ‘smaller churches and chapels in England’. He is clearly fascinated by the topic, since he then proceeds to cite another poem, Lydgate’s Vertue of the Masse, now generally referred to as Interpretacio Misse,6 in which vestments are described in detail, each being given theological significance.7 This reference leads Simmons to offer an extended discussion of the terms used for vestments (chasuble, alb, amice etc.). He discusses in detail the process of vesting, which, in the Rouen (and Lincoln) use was done before the priest approaches the altar (except for the chasuble). These notes attracted the interest of the attentive reviewer in Church Quarterly Review (hence CQR), who noted that in English churches there were no vestries for the clergy except in the sanctuary itself; clearly this seeming-abstruse matter was felt to be of interest to CQR readers.8 The rest of Simmons’ discussion ranges similarly widely, including a learned account of the history of storage-arrangements for vestments, in which he draws upon various sources, many from the city of York (where he would presumably have had easy access to church records), and including a reference to how aumbries for vestments were sometimes positioned beneath wooden altars. He is also interested in ‘the custom of taking the vestments from off the altar in the case of bishops’, which he considers of ‘early origin’; and, in another indication of his willingness to deploy cosmopolitan knowledge, he refers to how ‘the Lutheran ministers in Denmark and Norway not only wear the chasuble at the administration of the sacraments, but they still take it from the northern part of the altar’. Vestments are returned to in Simmons’ notes to the B-version, lines 34–6. Having discussed the adornment of medieval altars (‘when þo auter is al dight’, line 33) – especially the ‘marked absence of the numerous adornments which may be seen on modern altars’ – he interprets the lines ‘þen [he] takes in bothe his Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 162. See https://www.dimev.net/record.php?recID=6820#wit-6820-9, last consulted 25 July 2022, for details. 7 On the ritual of vesting in the Roman Rite, see Joseph A. Jungmann (trans. and rev. Francis Brunner), The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development (New York, 1959), pp. 197–9. 8 ‘Lay Folk’s [sic] Prayer Books’, Church Quarterly Review, January 1880, pp. 429–40, 446. 5

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hende/a clothe o-pon þo auter ende’ (lines 35–6) as meaning that the priest, having donned all other vestments, then assumes the chasuble (clothe). Simmons offers a lengthy argument to account for his interpretation of clothe as ‘chasuble’, referring to references in York archdiocesan documents available to him. He then uses the identification to support his view that the poem derived from a French original, citing Le Brun des Marettes’s Voyages Liturgiques de France (1713). The Voyages describes how in the Gallican church, which claimed ‘independence from Roman centralization’,9 priests assumed the chasuble at a later stage in the mass. The next extended discussion within this opening sequence deals with another matter of current interest to Anglo-Catholics: confession. Once vested (except for the chasuble) the priest makes his confession to the people while the ‘clerks’ confess to him,10 and then the priest absolves all, ‘lered & lewed’ (B, 50), who are willing to confess. Simmons then deviates to refer to how, according to such fifteenth-century authorities as the Boke of Curtasye (printed in Furnivall’s edition of The Babees Book), it is indicated that the people should learn a series of prayers, including the ‘“Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John” – still handed on by tradition in many an old-fashioned cottage’, the Confiteor and the Miseratur.11 Simmons points out that the Miseratur is at once a prayer of the people for the priest, and of the priest for the people after their confessions before Mass.12 Mirk’s Instructions for Parish Priests had recounted in detail that the priest should ensure that certain prayers are learnt by heart, with English verse translations provided: the Paternoster, the Ave Maria and the Apostle’s Creed.13 These prayers, learnt by heart, are repeated many times, almost in the manner of a rosary, during the course of the LFMB. many saien confiteor. were als gode saie þis þer-for.

(B, 63–4)

Simmons comments on these lines that ‘it seems to have been a received opinion that there was a quasi-sacramental benefit in the Latin – one of three so-called sacred languages – even if not “understanded of the people.”’14 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 177. See above, Preface, for a modern example of this practice as recounted by Bishop Robert Gillies. 11 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 181. See Frederick J. Furnivall (ed.), The Babees Book: Early English Meals and Manners, EETS OS 32 (London, 1868), p. 303; see further Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, pp. 203–6, where the ancient tradition of confession by the priest, answered by the deacon, is shown to extend to the people. 12 Simmons, (ed.), LFMB, p. 181. 13 See Peacock’s edition for EETS of Myrc [sic], Instructions for Parish Priests, pp. 13–16. The Apostles’ Creed was known as the ‘lesse crede’ or English Creed that, as stated in the Myroure of oure Ladye, ‘each man is bound to can [i.e. ‘know’] and say.’ The longer Nicene Creed was called the mass creed (Symbolum patrum). See further Nolloth and Simmons (eds), LFC, p. 110, and another EETS edition: John Henry Blunt (ed.), Myroure of Oure Ladye, containing a Devotional Treatise on Divine Service, EETS ES 19 (London, 1873), p. 311. More generally, see Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 117–26; see also Ramie Targoff, Common Prayer: The Language of Public Devotion in Early Modern England (Chicago, 2001). 14 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 185. 9

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Lines 65–82 of the B-version of the LFMB are a verse form of confession in English, in which the prayers of Mary and the priest are asked for by the people; the people also, in turn, pray for the priest. Here, on somewhat flimsy evidence, Simmons argues for the influence of Rouen on this confession, drawing upon the work of Edmond Martène, and of Martène’s teacher Mabillon.15 Simmons here puts forward – ‘bespeak[ing] the patience of my reader’ – an important part of evidence for his claim of a Rouen origin for his text, albeit they qualified as ‘small coincidences’. Simmons notes in the text of LFMB verbal parallels with the Rouen use of the thirteenth century not to be found in other missals, such as those of Sarum, York or Paris. The liturgy of the word The confession is followed (B, 82) in LFMB with the simple prompts ‘Pater. aue. credo’, and then ‘þo prest begynnes office of messe’, (B, 86)16 at which point the altar book is moved from the south to the north end of the altar. In the Sarum Missal, as translated into English from Dickinson’s edition by Frederick E. Warren, a detailed rubric directs this positioning.17 Simmons was, it should be remarked, deeply interested in such matters; we have already mentioned that he had published a lengthy article in the Contemporary Review (January, 1867) entitled ‘Standing Before the Lord’s Table’ on what he calls the ‘rubrical determination of the celebrant’s position’,18 attacking the views of Richard Littledale.19 At this point in the liturgy, when the Gloria in excelsis would normally be sung, in the LFMB (B, 91–114) there is inserted a prayer by the people for both priest and people that they may be clear in conscience and free from temptations. Similar prayers at this moment are to be found in the Vernon Manner and Mede of the Mass,20 and in the Vertue of the Masse that Simmons – following contemporary views on its authorship – ascribed to the poet and monk John Lydgate (c.1370–c.1451). On ‘hegh festis, or on holy days’ (B, 115), however, the Gloria is to be sung or said, and an English version is given (B, 119–48), or, as Simmons expresses it, ‘a farce [i.e. insertion] in English’.21 The B-version’s lines 11–23 are quoted by Maskell in his Simmons’ references, it may be noted, in his discussion of the confiteor are as literary as they are theological, making linguistic comparisons with Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, as well as with Middle English devotional works such as Richard Rolle’s (c.1300–49) mystical writings, and Robert Mannyng of Brunne’s (d. in or after 1338) confessional manual Handling Synne (a translation of the Anglo-Norman Manuel de Pechiez). Handling Synne was edited for the EETS in two volumes by Furnivall, but not published until 1901/1903. 16 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 10. 17 See an Alcuin Club publication: Frederick Warren (trans.), The Sarum Missal in English (London, 1913), Vol. 1, p. 29. Caxton’s Noble History of the Exposition of the Mass, printed at the end of the Golden Legend (1483), indicates that the priest ‘draweth himself to the right part or side of the altar, signifying how God when he had taken our humanity, after his passion, by the virtue of his resurrection he translated him to the right hand of the Father.’ 18 Simmons, ‘Standing Before the Lord’s Table’, p. 4. 19 Littledale, North-Side of the Altar. Simmons’ review of this pamphlet first appeared, anonymously, in the Contemporary Review, October 1866, pp. 256–82. 20 See F. J. Furnivall (ed.), The Minor Poems of the Vernon Ms (London, 1901), p. 498, lines 192–208. 21 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 14. 15

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Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England (1844) as an addendum to the Latin of the Sarum Rite (Ordinarium Missae). Maskell notes of the Gloria that ‘very anciently, and indeed it has been supposed up to the year 1000, only bishops were permitted to say this hymn, except on easter-day when priests also were allowed’.22 Clearly by the time of the LFMB, the laity were perceived to be participants – though perhaps silent ones – in the Gloria, albeit in an English translation. The Gloria in the LFMB begins with an added line (120): Ioy be vnto god in heuen, with alkyns myrthe þat men may neuen; and pese in erthe alle men vnstille.

(B, 119–21)23

Simmons notes that this added (‘farced’) line, known in French as brodé, was common practice, and occurs also in LFMB’s version of the Apostles Creed. Indeed, he further notes that the rubric of the Sarum Missal directs that the canticle be sung ‘cum sua farsura’, though under the authority of Pope Pius V in 1570, such farsurae in the Roman Mass were abolished.24 In Simmons’ C-version, in the manuscript that was at one time at the Cistercian Abbey at Rievaulx, a distinction is made between those capable of reading the Latin and those who ‘kan noghte rede ne saye’ (C, line 89), who must resort to saying the pater-noster. Simmons again draws on the authority of Edmond Martène who suggests that the canticle was said simultaneously in both Latin and the vernacular with ‘one voice’ (consona voce).25 Simmons adds that ‘the laity in this country from very early times took part in the service of the church’.26 The people continue with their pater-nosters during the reading of the collects and epistle, until they stand for the reading of the gospel (B, 154). Until this point the people have been kneeling, an English custom for prayer, though this is noted by Martène as the custom in France also until the seventeenth century when the French reverted to their practice of standing for prayer. For the gospel reading, the Maskell, Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England, pp. 35–6. Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 14. 24 See further Maskell, Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England, p. 37. Christopher Wordsworth and Henry Littlehales (Old Service-Books, pp. 206–7) note that such additions of farsurae ‘lingered on in the case of the Kyrie eleyson and Gloria in excelsis till the sixteenth century’, and were provided with music in the book called the Troper; see also W. H. Frere (ed.), The Winchester Troper (London, 1894), another Bradshaw Society publication. It seems highly unlikely that the farsura in the LFMB would be included in such tropers. Again, Simmons likes to supplement his liturgical references with English literary parallels; thus, regarding the word ‘myrthe’ (B, 120), Simmons quotes a similar use in the Towneley Mysteries, ‘re-discovered’ in the eighteenth century and referred to by Thomas Warton in his History of English Poetry (1774–81). Moreover, to illustrate the English of this Gloria, Simmons draws widely upon literary sources, including Shakespeare in Coriolanus and As You Like It. 25 See also the Flemish theologian George Cassander (1513–66), Liturgica de ritu et ordine Dominicae coenae celebrandae (Cologne, 1558). Maskell notes that before the use of the Ave, a pater-noster was effectively a rosary – a string of beads used for numbering prayers. In 1399, Eleanor of Gloucester left her mother in her will ‘a pair of paternosters of coral’, and Chaucer’s prioress wore a ‘paire of bedes’ of coral about her arm; see Maskell, Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, Vol. III, p. liv., also noted by Simmons. 26 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 200. 22 23

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book is ‘flitted’ (i.e. moved) to the north end of the altar. Simmons draws again on the Rouen use, as described by Mabillon, which suggests that this practice is to make room for the chalice and paten brought by the sub-deacon from the vestry after the epistle. He notes that ‘this ceremony was abolished at the reformation’ although some clergy continued with this use after 1540.28 Before the commencement of the gospel the reader, either celebrant or deacon, makes a sign of the cross upon the text and then on his own face with his thumb (B, 157–9). This appears to be a common practice and noted also in Virtue of the Mass. Simmons comments that by the end of the fourteenth century it was customary for the ‘educated classes’ to follow the epistles and gospels in an English translation, using a book of the gospels (or even the whole of the New Testament) provided with lectionary tables to find the appointed portion. He quotes a Prymer printed by Thomas Petyt of London in 1543 that is entitled, ‘The Prymer in] Englysh and Latyn, after the Use of Sarum, set out at length with manye goodly prayers, &., with the Epystels and Gospels on every Sonday and holye daye in the Yeare.29 However, the assumption in the LFMB appears to be that the layperson does not understand the word of Scripture read in Latin, but rather simultaneously meditates in English on the redemptive work of Christ, saying a prayer that is for the strength to keep and do God’s will (B, 187–92). The practice as described in the LFMB (B, 185–186) is quoted at length by Maskell in his parallel text of the Ordinarium Missae (Sarum, Bangor and Ebor [York]) as being definitive.30 After the gospel is read and another sign of the cross is made, the creed is said, the English being provided for a form of the Apostles’ Creed.31 Clearly the creed is not said at every celebration of the Mass, but only ‘som tyme’ (B, 197). The rubrics of the English rites as to the solemn days when the creed is to be said vary somewhat but no detail of such variance is given in the LFMB.32 It seems that the Nicene Creed said by the priest in Latin and the Apostles’ Creed said by the layfolk in English were recited simultaneously, ‘when þai saie hore [theirs], loke þou saie þine’ (B, 198). The Myroure of oure Ladye distinguishes the three creeds, beginning with the ‘crede of the apostels, that eche man ys bounde to can [know] and to say’33 and which provides an easy summary of doctrine. The second is the ‘masse crede’, i.e. the Nicene Creed. And the third is the Quicunque vult, which ‘was 27

27 Langforde’s Meditacyons suggests that the two ends of the altar represent the division between the Jews and the Gentiles; see Wickham Legg, Tracts on the Mass, p. 20. 28 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 205. 29 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, pp. 213–14. Petyt’s edition dates from before the appearance of Archbishop Cranmer’s first Prayer Book of 1549. The appearance of this book may be linked to Cranmer’s gradual attempt to replace Latin with English during the early 1540s when he was ‘cautiously nibbling away at the edges of the liturgy before a main thrust against the Latin mass’ (Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, New Haven, 1996, p. 332). 30 Maskell, Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England, p. 70. 31 Maskell notes that, between the gospel and the creed, indulgences, excommunications and banns of marriage were proclaimed, drawing upon the authority of Bingham’s Origines Ecclesiasticae (1808–22); however, there is no mention of these ceremonial announcements in the LFMB. 32 See Maskell, Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England, p. 74 for all variations in rubrics. 33 The Myroure of oure Ladye, p. 311.

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made by a holy bysshop called Athanasius ageynste herysyes also’.34 Simmons betrays something of his conservative character as a scholar and country parson in his note that the LFMB’s ‘pounce pilat’ (B, 217) ‘still lingers in our cottages as the form ‘Ponce Pilate’ and was not changed to Pontius Pilate in the English Book of Common Prayer until 1661. ‘Perhaps’, Simmons muses, ‘some new-fangled classicist will protest against Pilate, and propose a further change to the Latin Pontius Pilatus in full’.35 Towards the end of the English version of the Apostles’ Creed in the B-version of LFMB appear the following lines (233–40 in Simmons’ edition): wel I trow in þo holi gost, And holi kirc þat is so gode; And so I trow þat housel es bothe flesshe & blode; of my synnes, forgyfnes, If I wil mende; vp-risyng als-so of my flesshe, and lyf with-outen ende.

The note on these lines is one of the longest in Simmons’ commentary – he refers to them as ‘perhaps … the most noteworthy passage in the treatise’ – and certainly the most suggestive theologically and liturgically. It is worth comparing the equivalent lines in the Latin version of the Creed: Credo in spiritum sanctum, sanctam ecclesiam catholicam, sanctorum communionem remissionem peccatorum carnis resurrectionem, The Myroure of oure Ladye, p. 312. Geoffrey Cuming notes that in Cranmer’s 1549 Prayer Book, the first Prayer Book of Edward VI, the Quicunque vult ‘was certainly an afterthought’ in the daily offices (A History of Anglican Liturgy, p. 50). The use of the Athanasian Creed was vigorously discussed in the nineteenth century, forming part of the early discussions of the Royal Commission on Ritual in 1867 and debated after the Shortened Services Act of 1872. The English Church Union, a Tractarian group, opposed any tampering with the Athanasian Creed, while others opposed particularly the damnatory clauses. See P. T. Marsh, The Victorian Church in Decline: Archbishop Tait and the Church of England, 1868– 82 (Pittsburgh, 1969), pp. 40–51, and Jasper, Prayer Book Revision in England, 1800–1900, pp. 103–114. Upon the publication of the fourth report of the Royal Commission on Ritual, Archbishop Archibald Campbell Tait (1811–82) wrote that it would have been ‘wiser had the Commissioners decided that the Creed in question, valuable and most important as are its direct doctrinal statements, should not retain its place in the Public Service of the Church’ (Randall Thomas Davidson and William Benham, Life of Archibald Campbell Tait: Archbishop of Canterbury, London, 1891, Vol. 2, p. 128). Tait was archbishop from 1869 until his death. He was deeply scarred by an appalling sequence of family bereavements; five young daughters died from scarlet fever in 1856, and both his wife, to whom he was devoted, and only son died in 1878. He struggled throughout the 1870s to maintain a middle way between AngloCatholicism and liberalism. 35 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 223. 34

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vitam aeternam.

36

The key phrase in LFMB is ‘And so I trow þat housel es/ bothe flesshe & blode’, a ‘farced’ version of sanctorum communionem.37 Described by Simmons as a ‘literary curiosity’ this glossing is clearly a reference to the doctrine of transubstantiation and the real presence, first fully formulated at the Lateran Council of 1215 and confirmed, as Simmons states, at the council of Constance in 1415. In the context of the Apostles’ Creed the author of the LFMB, says Simmons, ‘had gone against the whole current of ecclesiastical tradition’, which sustains the sense ‘communion of saints’. Simmons notes that the author of the LFMB seems to have understood the word ‘sanctorum’ in the creed (sanctorum communionem) as a neuter instead of a masculine form, and therefore to be translated as ‘the sanctified’ rather than ‘saints’; in this interpretation Simmons follows Mabillon and Martène, who note a history of reference to ‘the holy gifts after consecration’. Simmons rather oddly defends LFMB’s version as ‘a legitimate exercise of scholastic ingenuity, or mystical profoundness’.38 This statement of credal belief seems likely to exclude the possibility that the LFMB has Lollard origins, something that Simmons was interested in.39 It is clear that at least until 1377, John Wycliffe (c.1330–84) maintained an entirely orthodox view of the doctrine of transubstantiation, and it is only in his late work De Eucharistia that he finds the doctrine philosophically unsound, though his own theology on the matter is notoriously unclear. In the words of one modern commentator on Wycliffe, Richard Rex, ‘if God could not be made a liar by the doctrine of transubstantiation, neither could Christ have been lying when he said, “This is my body.” But if the eucharistic bread was still what it looked like, namely bread, how could he have been telling the truth?’40

36 ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the remission of sins, the resurrection of the body, [and] life everlasting.’ The Apostles’ Creed in the Book of Common Prayer of 1552 reads: ‘I beleue in the holy ghost. The holy Catholique Churche. The Communion of sainctes.’ There is no Apostles’ Creed for Morning and Evening Prayer in the 1549 Prayer Book. 37 OED, in its updated entry, defines housel as ‘the consecrated elements at the Communion; the Mass or Eucharist; the administration or receiving of the Eucharist’, including the line from LFMB (B, 235) as one of its citations, dating the text to ‘a1400’, but with the ‘date of composition’ given as ‘?c1300’: presumably following Simmons’ views on the origin of the text. The word seems to have been regarded by many protestants in the 1560s as part of a specialised Roman Catholic vocabulary; OED supplies a citation from Thomas Becon, in his A Comparison of the Lordes Supper & Popish Masse: ‘To celebrate the Lordes Supper, or as the Papistes terme it, to take their Hushel, or to receaue their maker.’ Simmons would quite possibly have encountered the word in John Lingard’s Antiquities of the AngloSaxon Church, first published in Newcastle in 1806 and frequently reprinted in the nineteenth century. Simmons would, however, have almost certainly disapproved of Lingard, who was a Roman Catholic priest and historian, and his views on the continuity between early medieval Christians and the English Roman Catholics of the nineteenth century. 38 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 225. 39 As already noted, Simmons’ interest in the Lollards is evident in his papers still preserved in York Minster Library, and in his editing of LFC. 40 Wycliffe, it seems, would tease his opponents with the question, ‘What is the round white thing?’ Richard Rex, The Lollards (London, 2002), pp. 44–5.

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The issues raised in Simmons’ notes were clearly live matters for his contemporaries. It is perhaps significant that early in his discussion – which is of a kind that will disconcert a present-day user of editions of Middle English texts – he has a long paragraph discussing John Henry Newman’s recent and somewhat convoluted explanation for the omission of an explicit statement about the real presence in the creeds. Simmons, like the Anglican Newman of Tract 90 (1841), is deliberately, and probably necessarily vague as to the precise meaning of the ‘real presence’ of Christ in the Eucharist, writing that ‘we may fully admit the fact that the creeds are silent as to the doctrine’.41 Newman had written of Anglican theology as expressed in the Thirty-Nine Articles as ‘framed on the principle of leaving open large questions’ and ‘are silent about their adjustment’.42 Before his conversion to Roman Catholicism, however, Newman, drawing upon the writings of Bishop Jeremy Taylor, Archbishop Ussher and other Caroline divines had vigorously rejected the ‘shocking’ doctrine of transubstantiation wherein the body of Christ ‘is a body or substance of a certain extension and bulk in space’.43 Newman, after his departure from the Church of England, of course accepted transubstantiation as a matter of faith: ‘the omission is owing to the ancient disciplina arcani, which withheld the sacred mystery from catechumens and heathen, to whom the creed is known’.44 ‘However contrary this may be’, adds the staunchly Anglican Simmons, somewhat sardonically … to the principles of sound criticism universally professed, if not uniformly practised, at the present time, the forcing of any meaning which could be drawn from words, without reference to the context, or the subject matter to which they referred, would in those days have been regarded as a legitimate exercise of scholastic ingenuity, or mystical profoundness.45

There are two points to be noted here. First, Simmons is well aware, both here and elsewhere in his Notes, of the diversity of practice in the Church of England of his day, even though uniformity with the Prayer Book was expected. Second, he is sensitive to the medieval context of the LFMB and its relative freedom in glossing the Latin of the liturgical original. Furthermore, by quoting from Newman and his Grammar of Assent,46 Simmons engages, if rather circumspectly, with the doctrine of the real presence in the Eucharist, much debated in the Tractarian and post-Tractarian Church

Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 225. J. H. Newman, Tract 90: Remarks on Certain Passages in the Thirty-Nine Articles (London, 1841), p. 81. 43 Newman, Tract 90, p. 47. See further Härdelin, The Tractarian Understanding of the Eucharist, pp. 183–98, ‘Real Presence and Transubstantiation.’ 44 Quoted in Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 225. The reference is to Newman’s An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (London, 1870), p. 141. 45 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 225. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Simmons had Newman in mind when he wrote these words. 46 Newman’s Grammar of Assent was a mature work of his Roman Catholic period. It is significant that Simmons was so well acquainted with it. 41

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of England. Having admitted the truth that the creeds are silent as to the doctrine, Simmons notes that it is ‘all the more curious’ that in the LFMB an article of the Creed is ‘pressed into service in support – or at least as a statement – of the doctrine, that “flesh and blood” were present under each of the two species of bread and wine’.48 It should be noted that this interpretation of the word sanctorum in the Creed is not by any means unique to the LFMB. Simmons cites Mabillon’s discussion in the Ordo Romanus,49 and perhaps more significantly, he refers to Charles Abel Heurtley’s50 Harmonia Symbolica: A Collection of Creeds belonging to the Ancient Western Church, and to the Mediaeval English Church (Oxford, 1858). Heurtley’s edition contains a tri-lingual Creed (Latin, French and English) that he dated to 1125,51 which reads: 47

Halegan hiniennesse; La communiun des seintes choses; Sanctorum communionem.52

And Simmons also quotes a further instance from Skeat’s edition of the Wycliffite satire Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede of the late fourteenth century,53 viz: And to the sacrament also, that sothfast God on is. Fullich his fleche & his blode … 47 See further Härdelin, The Tractarian Understanding of the Eucharist, especially ‘The Eucharistic Presence’, pp. 123–222. See also Brilioth, Eucharistic Faith and Practice, and more recently, somewhat revising Härdelin’s position, Karlowicz, The Sacramental Vision of Edward Bouverie Pusey. 48 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 225. 49 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 225, Note 2. 50 Charles Abel Heurtley (1806–95), whose unusual surname derived from his Huguenot ancestry, was Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford. A sincere evangelical, who had protested at Cardinal Manning’s being afforded precedence at an Oxford ceremony, he was nevertheless a thoughtful man open to new ideas. His ODNB entry offers this assessment of his character: ‘Learned, courteous, retiring, reading and thinking much, but writing little, Heurtley represented the older type of Oxford scholar, whose influence depended rather upon his personal relations with members of the university than upon the effect of his written works on the world at large.’ Interestingly, and relevant to the discussion of transubstantiation and real presence, he took part in a trial that rivalled the Gorham Case for notoriety: he was a theological assessor on the ecclesiastical court that tried the Tractarian Archdeacon George Denison (1805–96) for unsound views on the eucharist, viz. on the nature of the real presence. Denison was a high-profile figure who continued to cause controversy throughout his career; he staged, for instance, a dramatic walkout at the Canterbury Convocation of 1872. 51 Heurtley notes that the reading is from a manuscript he refers to as ‘(R. 17)’ in Trinity College, Cambridge. He seems to be referring to the Eadwine Psalter, now Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.17.1, for which see https://em1060.stanford.edu/manuscript/cambridgetrinity-college-r-17-1, last consulted 29 August 2022. The Psalter is now dated to the middle of the twelfth century. 52 Heurtley, Harmonia Symbolica, p. 93. 53 There were several nineteenth-century editions of this alliterative poem, the earlier being that of Thomas Bensley in 1814. W. W. Skeat produced an edition for EETS (1867). We might also compare the prose work Jack Upland, edited by Skeat in Chaucerian and Other Pieces (Oxford, 1897); for a more recent edition, see P. L. Heyworth (ed.), Jack Upland, Friar Daw’s Reply, and Upland’s Rejoinder (Oxford, 1968).

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Simmons notes that these lines were omitted in a printing of the Crede in the last year of the reign of Edward VI – 1553 – as being inconsistent with the then authoritative English Forty-Two Articles.54 It will be recalled that Cranmer’s last sermon, delivered in Oxford immediately prior to his burning at the stake, ended with a denial of the Real Presence.55 There were some attentive readers of notes (and notes to notes) in the Anglican communion of the late nineteenth century, and Simmons’ comments on the eucharist, hidden away in an edition of a hitherto obscure Middle English text, had an impact. In a review of Darwell Stone’s History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, J. H. Srawley notes Stone’s dissent from the view that ‘the Eucharistic doctrine of the mediaeval Western Church was wholly or mainly mechanical and carnal’.56 Srawley goes on to suggest that Stone does not give sufficient weight ‘to the influence of popular conceptions and practices on a period when religion was one of the most living interests in Europe’, and proceeds to quote from the LFMB (B, 596–7: ‘we praye þis messe vs stande in stede/ of shrift, & als of housel-brede’). In short, being present at the Mass and seeing the consecrated elements as they are elevated by the priest is as effective as receiving them, a belief and practice into which, in Srawley’s words, ‘the cruder elements of popular religion had largely obtruded themselves’.57 Simmons would return to the issues involving transubstantiation and real presence later in his notes. The sacrifice-mass The next stage of LFMB is the heart of the liturgy: the offertory followed by the canon of the mass. Offertories interested Simmons, as demonstrated in his other publications. Although he states – as he regularly does – that he is unwilling to enter further into doctrinal discussion which, ‘according to the view which the writer has taken of the duties as an editor for a mixed society, ought to have no place in the publications of the E. E. T. Society’,58 he cannot restrain himself from quoting from Bishop Heber’s Epiphany Hymn, ‘Vainly we offer each ample oblation…’.59 In the LFMB a prayer in English is supplied to be used by the laity at the Offertory, and while the priest is cleansing his hands in water (mentioned only in texts C and F) an offering is made by the layperson, described by Simmons (but not in the

Later to be replaced by the Thirty-Nine Articles. See for a dramatic account MacCulloch, Cranmer, p. 603. 56 J. H. Srawley, review of Darwell Stone, A History of the Doctrine of the Eucharist, 2 vols (London, 1909), quoting from Vol. 1, p. 397 (Journal of Theological Studies, Vol. 11, No. 41, October, 1909, pp. 101–4). 57 Srawley, review of Stone, p. 103. The same point is made in Merita Missae, pp. 123–8, which affirms that to be present when the priest is receiving the bread and wine is to ‘be hoslyd as welle as he.’ It appears that in later use the term ‘housel’d’ is used exclusively of the viaticum. See Hamlet 1: 5, line 77, when the Ghost laments that he died ‘unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled.’ (Shakespeare’s use of the ‘catholic’ housel is intriguing, though in the seventeenth century the term was used fairly freely by e.g. Archbishop Ussher; see OED citations.) The authors thank Dr Bridget Nichols for her advice on this point. 58 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 232. 59 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 233. 54 55

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poem itself) as a ‘mass penny’, though this is voluntary (‘Offer or leeue, wheþer þe lyst’ [B, 243]).61 The prayer begins with a reference to the gifts of the ‘thre kynges’ in Bethlehem, and to the offering also of prayers. The praying of the pater-noster and the prayer of penitence, made at the bidding of the priest, is quoted in full from the B-version by Maskell at this point in the Ordinarium Missae.62 Simmons has a lengthy note on the custom whereby the people bring the bread and wine to the table; it appears that this custom had fallen into disuse by the time of the LFMB. He draws attention to a passage in Langforde’s Meditations in the Time of the Mass, an early sixteenth-century manuscript-tract, which instructs the people that ‘at the offertory when the prest doith taik the Chalice and holde yt vp and formys the Oblatyon…. Haue medytatyon how our Lord the Sauyour of All mankynd most wyllfully offerd hymselff to hys Eternall father to be the sacrifice and oblacyon for mans Redemptyon’.63 Simmons then proceeds to one of his lengthy parallels that – again to present-day readers – might seem unnecessarily digressive. He refers (inter alia) to Martène’s Voyage Littéraire on the practice of the offertory in a church in the diocese of Basle as well as more general practice in the western Church after St Ambrose, and finally an example of the offertory in Chaucer’s Wife of Bath which is seen in a competitive spirit, the Wife being angry about anyone who precedes her at the offertory.64 An odd example of the offering of the bread and wine by the people, although it is strictly by postulant nuns, is drawn from Maskell’s Monumenta Ritualia, dated soon after 1500; it is derived from a manuscript describing the order of consecration of nuns, viz. Cambridge, University Library MS Mm. 3. 13, linked to Bishop Fox of Winchester. The rubric reads: 60

Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 237. Simmons has another lengthy note on the verb leeue in which he draws upon Chaucer’s ‘matchless picture of the ‘pore parsoun’’ (Simmons ed., LFMB, p. 229). He remarks that the intransitive use of this verb, which he describes as ‘a neuter verb, to leave (remanere), rather than in the active sense, to leave (relinquere)’, was falling out of use in the fifteenth century. This statement is confirmed in a recent revised entry for leave (v.1) in OED, sense I.6(b) ‘intransitive with object understood, expressing the second of two alternative actions. Obsolete.’ LFMB is cited, as is Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and a Middle English saint’s life. The latest entry is in a heading from the courtesy-book known as The Book of St Albans (1486): ‘That an hauke vse hir craft all the seson to flye or lefe.’ 62 Maskell, Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England, p. 93. On p. 231 of his edition Simmons adds his somewhat triumphant note of a personal encounter with William Maskell in the Bodleian Library, and a conversation regarding some Latin words ‘acceptum sit omnipotenti Deo, hoc sacrificium novum’) omitted from Maskell’s version of the Sarum Rite in his Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England. (For the anecdote in full, see above chapter 4, note 51.) Simmons may have been correct in pointing out the omission, yet nevertheless the words continue to be omitted in the third (1882) edition of Maskell’s book, printed after the publication of the LFMB. 63 Langforde, Meditatyons for goostly exercise, in Legg, Tracts on the Mass, p. 23. We might compare the Book of Common Prayer (1549), ‘… who made there (by his one oblacion once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblacion, and satysfaccyon, for the sinnes of the whole worlde….’ (Cummings ed., The Book of Common Prayer, p. 30). The sole copy of Langforde’s Meditatyons is Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Wood empt 17. 64 See Geoffrey Chaucer, General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, in Larry Benson (gen ed.), The Riverside Chaucer (Oxford, 1987), p. 30, lines 449–52. 60 61

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Every virgin shall have a long sudary or towel upon both hir handys, and in the right hande she shall have a patine with an host: and in the lefty hande a curette with wyne. And then commyng by ordre to offer, they shall shyft the hoste fromme theyr patines to the patine thayt the deacon holdeth, and then delyver thyr cruettes to the bishop, kyssyng hys hande.65

Simmons also refers to the fourteenth-century English poem Jack Uplande, drawing upon Thomas Wright’s Rolls Series text in Political Poems and Songs (London, 1859– 61), concerning the clerical abuse of saying Mass simply to receive the mass penny.66 Further discussion is treated in the same thorough manner. The reference to the three kings in the prayer of the people at the offertory looks back, says Simmons, to the ancient tradition in the Church that the visitors to the infant Christ (Matthew 2: 1–12) were kings – first found in Tertullian, who calls them ‘fere reges’, ‘almost kings’67 – and that there were three in number, first mentioned by Origen. There are Collects and prayers to the three kings in the Horae of both Sarum and York. Simmons’ notes on the kings run to five pages, ending with lengthy references to the Cursor Mundi, ‘Hampole’ (Richard Rolle), and the Metrical Homilies. And, notes Simmons, the custom of the priest’s handwashing after the offertory (B-text, line 261) is prescribed in all English uses and other western liturgies except the Ambrosian;68 here Simmons refers to the writings of Thomas Beccon or Becon (c.1511–1567) and his work Displaying of the Popish Mass (1559).69 Simmons’ comments on Becon are revealing about his own ideological position. Having been a chaplain in Cranmer’s household and a contributor to Cranmer’s Homilies,70 Becon was imprisoned as a heretic under Queen Mary, fleeing to Europe in 1554, where he taught at Marburg University. Under Queen Elizabeth he returned to England and appointed to a canonry at Canterbury, where his theological position became increasingly aligned with the extreme Protestantism of Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531), the Swiss Reformation leader. In his day Becon was a widely-read writer, his work described in the ODNB as ‘homely and colloquial’, but Simmons is unforgiving in his judgments on Becon’s expression. Although he frequently refers to Becon’s work Displaying of the Popish Mass, Simmons comments on Becon’s ‘scurrilous violence’, stating that there ‘is no excuse for his gross obscenity – judging from what has been allowed to remain in the expurgate edition of the Parker Society’.71 Simmons then prints his description of the hand-washing and the Orate, but omitting what is described as the ‘more offensive ribaldry’. Maskell, Monumenta Ritualia, second edition (1882), Vol. III, p. 354. Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 240. 67 Tertullian, Adv. Judaeos 9, and Adv. Marcion 3:13. 68 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 252. 69 Reprinted Cambridge, 1844. 70 The Two Books of Homilies Appointed to be Read in Churches were edited by John Griffiths, and published in Oxford in 1859. In 1841, Griffiths (1805–85) had helped formulate and had signed a memorable protest against the notorious Tract 90 of Tracts for the Times, Newman’s controversial examination of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England that emphasised their Catholic basis. Griffiths was university archivist, and for some years an unpopular Warden of Wadham College (ODNB). 71 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 220. The Parker Society published Becon’s work in 1843 under the editorship of John Ayre. 65

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After the offertory the layperson in the LFMB, having struck himself on the breast, is bidden to pray for the priest, though unworthy to do so because of his sinfulness. Simmons notes here that ‘there is a marked absence in Dan Jeremy of the tone of sacerdotal arrogance, which was common among his contemporaries’.72 In response to the priest’s Orate, the people are to say a prayer which in some, possibly later versions (C and F) is omitted, perhaps suggestive of the diminishing role of the people in the liturgy over time (B, 275–8): Þo holi gost in þe light, & sende in-to þe right. Reule þi hert & þi speking to gods worship & his louyng.

Simmons notes that the Eastern rite has no mention of the words of the people at this moment, and remarks that there was a steady ‘process of excluding the laity from a participation in the service’. In the Roman missal of the nineteenth century the priest is required to answer himself.73 Before the Preface the priest says ‘his priuey prayers’ (B, 280), while the people kneel and say a prayer to God to receive this sacrifice, in English, with upstretched hands. This ‘priuey prayer’ of the priest is clearly the secretae or secretae orationes of the Roman mass, the conclusion of which is indicated by the words ‘per omnia saecula saeculorum’ spoken aloud by the priest (aperta voce) at which sign the people give him their attention. This rubric appears in both the Sarum and Bangor rites, but is omitted from the York missal.74 This is the moment in the liturgy of ‘this solempne sacrifice’ (B, 288), which Simmons, echoing the post-communion prayer in BCP, calls ‘the oblation of the bread and wine as a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving’.75 In the BCP (1662) Order of Holy Communion, the prayer after the Lord’s Prayer which follows upon communion begins with a petition to the Father ‘mercifully to accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving’.76 The B-version (306–9) indicates the beginning of the Preface: þen he begynnes per omnia, And sithen sursum corda. At þo ende [he] sayes sanctus thryese, In excelsis he neuens twyese.77

Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 254. Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 257. In the Ordinary of the mass in the Sarum missal, the response is ‘made by as clerk privately’ the priest having asked ‘in a low voice’ that the people ‘pray for me, that my and your sacrifice may be alike acceptable to the Lord our God’ (Warren trans., The Sarum Missal in English, Vol I, p. 33). See also Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, pp. 352–5. 74 See Maskell, The Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England, p. 102. 75 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 268. 76 Cummings (ed.), The Book of Common Prayer, p. 403. 77 Maskell quotes these lines from the LFMB (B) to accompany the Ordinarium Missae of Sarum, Bangor and Ebor (York): The Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England, pp. 102–3. 72 73

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During the Latin Preface, the layperson is bidden to say an English prayer of thanksgiving, mirroring the Preface and Sanctus as a prayer that accompanies the song of the angels (‘þere with aungels for to syng’ [B, 324]). Here Simmons also refers to the Myroure of Oure Ladye, though in that work, after the Secret, the sisters of Syon merely respond with ‘Amen’.78 Simmons draws on ancient precedent to indicate the practice of the people singing the Sanctus in Martène’s De Antiquis Ecclesiae and Archbishop (of York) Egbert’s eighth-century Pontifical. There is no reference in the LFMB to variable seasonal Prefaces as appointed in Sarum Use (somewhat differently in York and Hereford).79 But the elaborate prayer of the people in English (B, 336 ff.), Simmons remarks, ‘corresponds with the main divisions of the canon, [although] its greater fulness and particularity shows that it is not borrowed from it’.80 The divisions are: i.

Thanksgiving for mercies received

ii. A prayer for grace iii. Prayer for all estates and for everlasting life. Such prayers are, in effect, a Litany, ‘supplied in parish churches by the bidding prayers’. As we have seen, Simmons gives five examples of bidding prayers according to the York use after the text of the poem of the LFMB.81 While the people pray (B, 336 ff.) we come to the canon, or what Simmons calls the ‘still-mass’,82 which had long been said by the priest in silence under the rule of the disciplina arcani, only the gestures of the priest indicating to the laypeople the nature of his devotions.83 While this is being silently said by the priest in Latin (and therefore, in a sense, for most people doubly hidden), the people’s prayer begins with thanks for the blessings of this life received from God from whom ‘al my lyue & al my lyuynge’ (B, 346) come. Prayers for the forgiveness of sins are followed by intercessions for the Church, King and nobility.84 The Myroure of Oure Ladye, p. 329. The Sarum Missal in English, pp. 34–40. 80 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 273. 81 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, pp. 61–80. Forms of Bidding Prayer were edited by H O Coxe (1840), though Coxe largely draws upon sixteenth-century examples. Much of Simmons’ commentary is drawn from material in Coxe’s Forms of Bidding Prayer. 82 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 274. Richard Morris (ed.), Old English Homilies and Homiletic Treatises of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, EETS OS 53 (London, 1867–73), refers also to the early English term swimesse from swigan or swigian, ‘to be silent’. German still has the term stille Messe to describe the low mass. 83 See also Newman’s discussion of disciplina arcani (below, pp. 153–4). On the ancient practice of disciplina arcani, stemming from the Greek pagan mysteries, see Edward Yarnold SJ, The Awe Inspiring Rites of Initiation (Slough, 1971), pp. 50–4. 84 On the element of intercession in the Mass the practice of the Church has varied, though the orationes solemnes of Good Friday are a very early surviving example of the prayers of the faithful at the beginning of the Mass. E. C. Whitaker has noted that by the sixth century, their place was taken by a litany of Eastern origin, of which the kyries is a relic. See E. C. Whitaker, ‘Bidding Prayer’, in J. G. Davies, A New Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship (London, 1986), pp. 91–2. After about a century this litany disappeared and with it 78

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All the texts of LFMB in Simmons’ edition except B – the version of LFMB, of course, used by Maskell – include a prayer for the Pope (B, 362 simply prays for bishops, priests and clerks). Simmons understands this omission as probably the result of the supposed translation of B from the French original which was written at a time when there was a vacancy in the See of Rome;85 another possibility, he suggests, is of Lollard influence upon the text.86 Prayers for all people include petitions for those held captive and the ‘deserit’ (i.e. ‘disinherited’: B, 379), which, notes Simmons, ‘Must have been a large class in times of rebellion, and other troubles so frequent in the middle ages.’87 At the end of the prayers a paternoster is to be said (B, 398), followed by the ‘sacring-bell’: þen tyme is nere of sakring, A litel belle men oyse to ryng.

(B, 400–1)

Simmons uses this reference for another lengthy note, describing how in his view the origin of the elevation of the sacrament dates from the eleventh century, and the ringing of the bell was formally recognised by Pope Honorius III in 1219, though with evidence for earlier use.88 Simmons considers the ceremony to have been practised first in France, another piece of evidence for his assertion of LFMB’s French origins. Simmons’ interest in this use of a sacring-bell, for the bell rung at the elevation of the host, is in contemporary terms significant. At the time of his edition the term sacring-bell seems chiefly to have been used in antiquarian contexts; OED’s citations from 1846 and 1884, the only usages recorded from the nineteenth century, are both historical references,89 and there is no mention of it in Palmer’s Origines Liturgicae. Moreover, the Directorium Anglicanum, a key resource for aspiring ritualist clergy that was in Simmons’ own library,90 makes no mention of the bell being rung at the elevation, stating only that: ‘The rising, the Celebrant should at once elevate IT with

almost all elements of intercession in the Western liturgy until the so-called bidding of the bedes (literally, ‘praying of the prayers’) in the medieval office of prone. The bidding of the bedes appears in the Sarum Processional and is to an extent taken up into the suffrages of the Prayer Book of 1549. By the fourteenth century such bidding prayers covered the full range of intercession, including for all people in their various callings, and were extremely flexible. The prayers that we find in the LFMB may be taken as a fairly typical example of biddings of their time. See R. C. D. Jasper and Paul F. Bradshaw, A Companion to the Alternative Service Book (London, 1986), p. 121, and F. E. Brightman, The English Rite, Vol. II (London, 1915), ‘Appendix: The Bidding of the Bedes’, pp. 1020–57. 85 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, pp. lii, 276. 86 See also Margaret Deanesly, The Lollard Bible (Cambridge, 1920 [1966]), pp. 212–14. Deanesly, however, accepts without criticism Simmons’ thesis as to the twelfth-century Rouen origin of the LFMB, dating the earliest translation into English at about 1300. See chapter 1 above, p. 22, for a contrary view on the origins of the text. 87 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 278. 88 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 281. 89 The two citations are from Richard Hart’s Ecclesiastical Records of England, Ireland and Scotland (Cambridge, 1846), p. 225, and from a short historical item about a rediscovered ruin in Cornwall, ‘A Lost Church’, in The Sunday at Home: A Family Magazine for Sabbath Reading (London, 1884), p. 225. 90 See p. 78, note 63 above.

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the first finger and thumb of both hands, for the worship of the Faithful.’91 However, a slightly later work, Notes on Ceremonial from the Antient English Office Books, with The Order of Holy Communion and Ritual Directions (1888), does mention the bell as part of the ‘office of Clerk and Cross-bearer’: At the Sanctus and at the consecration and elevation of both the Host and Chalice, he will ring the bell provided for the purpose.92

The use of the bell to draw attention to the elevated host seems to have been limited amongst the Anglican ritualists of the nineteenth century, though not entirely unknown. The elevation itself was also something that concerned Simmons. A modern historian of the liturgy, Joseph Jungmann, has commented that: Many bishops were concerned lest the people adore the bread, and so about 1210 a decree of the Bishop of Paris introduced the regulation which determined everywhere that the priest should elevate the Host only after the words of consecration, and so high then that all might see and adore.93

However, Simmons notes the ‘peculiarity of the Anglican ritual [in the Sarum, York, and Hereford uses], which continued to be prescribed by the rubrics in the time of Queen Mary…, and that is the elevation or ‘heaving’ of the host before the Qui pridie [thus before consecration] (B, 406).94 The LFMB indicates that the laypeople are at liberty to pray as they wish at the elevation (‘als lykes best þe to take/ sondry men prayes sere’ [B, 419–20]), and Simmons quotes, as is his custom, many other sources to illustrate a similar variety: Langforde’s Meditacyons, the Vertue of the Mass, and Mirk’s Instructions for Parish Priests.95 In addition a pater-noster and creed are to be added (B, 423), and two prayers in English are provided, though liberty is granted to change ‘hit for a bettir’ (B, 427). These prayers are a blessing of Christ for his good gifts, and for mercy (B, 428–51). Simmons acknowledges the advice and correction of Furnivall at this point, ‘with his extensive knowledge of English manuscripts’.96 The C- and F-ver-

91 Lee (rev. ed.), Directorium Anglicanum, p. 76. George Herring has recently noted that the Directorium provided ‘an invaluable tool’ across ‘a range of ceremonial usages, largely extinct in Anglican practice for generations’ and established itself ‘as the standard reference for [aspiring Ritualists] for the rest of the century’: Herring, ‘Devotional and Liturgical Renewal’, p. 403. 92 Notes on Ceremonial (London, 1888), p. 91. No author is named for this work, which seems to have been a practical handbook compiled for the use of priests in the Church of England. 93 Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, p. 90. 94 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 283. Simmons’ comment is noted as authoritative by Warren in The Sarum Missal in English, Part 1, p. 44 95 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, pp. 284–5. 96 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 286.

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sions at this point indicates that after the elevation the priest should spread his arms in the form of a cross.97 Simmons cites lines from a poem in the Vernon Manuscript: After, þe prest his armes sprede he In tokenynge he dyed vppon þe tre For me and al mon-kunne.98

No mention of this custom is made in the B-version of LFMB, and indeed little further reference to the Canon of the Mass. Rather, the lay-people are bidden to pray for their parents and families and for the dead and souls in purgatory99 that they also might participate in this mass (B, 463). In the F-version here are provided two prose Latin prayers.100 Continuing with pater-nosters, the people then stand when they hear the priest say the words ‘per omnia secula’ (B, 482), together with the pater-noster aloud, to which the people respond in Latin: ‘Set libera nos a malo, amen’ (B, 489).101 The LFMB is clear that there is no necessity to understand the Latin of these words even from the pater-noster. hit were no need þe þis to ken, for who con not þis are lewed men.

(B, 490–1)

The adjective lewed generally indicated in Middle English a layperson, not in holy orders, though by the thirteenth century it was beginning to be attached more broadly to a person who was unlearned or untaught (OED). Simmons has a note on the phrase lewed men, which he interprets as implying ‘a reproof to those who did not answer; and would seem to point to the decay of the custom of the people’s responding’.102 However, it is perfectly clear that understanding the Latin words of the Mass is not an issue with regard to the laity’s private devotions, even if later in the sixteenth century Cranmer mocks the unintelligible Latin liturgy as: See further Ernest Beresford-Cooke, The Sign of the Cross in the Western Liturgies (London, 1907), p. 1, which notes Minucius Felix (d. c.250): ‘Crucis signum est, cum homo porrectis manibus Deum pura mente veneratur.’ 98 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 289; cf. Frederick J. Furnivall (ed.) The Minor Poems of the Vernon MS, part II, EETS OS 117 (London, 1901), p. 508, lines 586–8. 99 Article XXII in BCP (1662) denounces the ‘Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory’ as ‘a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God.’ In Tract 90 (1841) of Tracts for the Times, J. H. Newman observes, with characteristic subtlety, that ‘the first remark that occurs on perusing this Article is, that the doctrine objected to is “the Romish doctrine.” For instance, no one would suppose that the Calvinistic doctrine containing purgatory…. Is spoken against.’ In 1841, Newman affirmed his opposition to ‘the dominant errors of Rome’, and that ‘the doctrine of the Old Church must live and speak in the Anglican formularies, in the 39 Articles.’ J. H. Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua (London, 1864), p. 231. See also Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton, 2001); Daniel Swift, Shakespeare’s Common Prayers: The Book of Common Prayer and the Elizabethan Age (Oxford, 2013). 100 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 287. 101 Maskell, Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England, pp. 154–5, which quotes these lines from the LFMB at some length. 102 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 294. 97

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More like a game and a fond play to be laughed at of all men, to hear the priest speak aloud to the people in Latin, and the people listen with their ears to hear; and some walking up and down in the church, some saying other prayers in Latin, and none understandeth other.103

As regards the matter of the people responding to the priest in the saying of the pater-noster, Simmons notes that in the Prayer Books of 1552 and 1662, a rubric before the Lord’s Prayer said after the communion reads, ‘Then shall the Priest say the Lord’s Prayer, the people repeating after him every Petition.’ He further comments somewhat severely on contemporary Anglican practice in the nineteenth century that ‘to this day it is disobeyed in churches when it is said by the priest alone at the beginning of the Holy Communion’.104 There were lengthy debates in the Northern Convocation, in which Simmons took an active part, on the question of the communal utterance of the Lord’s Prayer.105 It is therefore relevant that LFMB then provides a translation of the Lord’s Prayer into English, after which the people are bidden to continue listening as the priest repeats aloud the Agnus three times (B, 508). This is followed, presumably, by the words Dona nobis pacem, which LFMB glosses as ‘he spekis of pese’ (B, 509). This is the occasion for further prayer by the laity while the priest continues the Pax in Latin, for peace cannot be achieved if we are not in charity with God, self and neighbour. The prayer (B, 516 ff.) is essentially a translation of the Agnus, followed by a short meditation on the threefold nature of love: first to God, then to the self, and finally to neighbour. Traditionally the ‘kiss of peace’, to use Simmons’ term, preceded the administration of Holy Communion, as noted in the Myroure of Oure Ladye: This salutacio of pece is sayde betwyxte the preste & the quier before the receyuynge of the sacramente, in token that yt may not worthily be receyued but in peace and in charite.106

Simmons, citing Le Brun des Marettes, at this point describes how the pax was largely abandoned in France after the Reformation because of quarrels over precedence. In addition, he gives, from the notes to the EETS edition of Mirk’s Instructions for Parish Priests, a quotation from Sir Thomas More as to ‘how men fell at variance for kissing of the peace, or goyng before in procession, or setting of their wiues pewes in the church’.107 After the prayer for the love of God, self and all people (‘Neghtburs, seruandes & ilk sugete’ [B, 554]), another pater-noster is said while the priest is rynsande (i.e. ‘rinsing’: B, 575) and then flyttis (B, 578) the mass-book to the south end of the altar: an occasion for Simmons to provide another lengthy note. (Maskell had already John Edmund Coxe (ed.), Thomas Cranmer: Miscellaneous Writings and Letters (Cambridge, 1846), p. 180. At this point Simmons, with some relevance, makes a philological observation on the usage of ‘a class of farm-servants’; see p. 294 of his edition, discussed in chapter 4 above, p. 81. 104 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 293. 105 See chapter 6, p. 125. 106 The Myroure of Oure Ladye, p. 331. 107 Instructions for Parish Priests, p. 74. 103

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quoted these lines as part of a Note to the rubric, in both Sarum and Bangor, on the rinsing or washing of the hands.)108 The English translation of the Sarum Rite reads: ‘and the priest shall rinse his hands, lest any relics of the body or blood remain on his fingers, or in the chalice’.109 Simmons in addition cites the Liber de Ecclesiasticis Officiis of John Bishop of Avranches (before 1070), which indicates that ‘an acolyte brought another chalice to the priest to clean his fingers (alterum calicem sacerdoti ad mundandos digitos).110 He also gives a reference in Le Brun’s Voyages Liturgiques of this ‘French’ practice, which, Simmons assumes, must have been known to the ‘Dan Jeremy’ of the assumed original French LFMB. The earliest English record, according to Simmons, can be dated at 1200 in a canon of a provincial council at Westminster.111 Moreover, Simmons tells us, in a footnote to his note, that he visited Beverley Minster (the church of the Canon Nolloth who, as we saw, was to complete Simmons’ edition of the Lay Folks’ Catechism) in May 1877 to see a well which was uncovered during repairs made to the floor near the altar. This well, says Simmons, ‘probably served to drain off what was poured into a piscina in the floor’.112 And in a footnote to this footnote – the page in question in the edition is exceptionally elaborately laid out – he tells us that: A similar drain or well, about 3 feet deep, and 18 inches across, but lined with rubble walling, was found in the parish where this is written, when we were building the new church, and had to take down the font in the old one.113

We might observe even in such an apparently trivial matter Simmons’ need to draw connexions between medieval past and Victorian present. After this rinsing, or ablution, by the priest, the layperson is instructed to pray that all be protected from dangers (B, 584 ff.), and that the mass that has been celebrated may stand as an absolution of sins (B, 596–7): ‘we praye þis messe vs stande in stede/ of shrift, & als of housel-brede’. This reference to housel-brede prompts the following note from Simmons, returning to the issue of transubstantiation he had discussed earlier: When Dan Jeremy’s treatise was translated into the English, the doctrine of transubstantiation had long been declared by authority, and our author…not only accepted it, but that of concomitance114 also, though the name ‘transubstantiation’ was hardly in use in his day, and ‘concomitance’ most certainly not until long afterwards.115

Simmons, as we have seen,116 would have encountered rather a complex view of transubstantiation through his Oxford connections with leaders of the Tractarian Maskell, The Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England, p. 191. Warren, The Sarum Missal in English, Part 1, p. 54. 110 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 303. 111 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 304. 112 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 305. For Simmons on drains, see also p. 78, above. 113 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 305. 114 The OED quotes a reference of 1535 on ‘concomitance’: ‘the coexistence of the body and blood of Christ in each of the eucharistic elements.’ 115 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 308. 116 See p. 104 above. 108

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movement; the issues were clearly ones in which he felt the keenest interest, indicated by his returning to them again at this later point in his notes. The problem for Anglicans in the Anglo-Catholic tradition is Article XXVIII of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion in the Book of Common Prayer, which seems explicit: Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of Bread and Wine) in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by holy Writ; but it is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture.

However, various ingenious attempts were made to add nuance to this challenging formulation. Among the earliest of the Tracts was a reprint of Bishop Cosin’s The History of Popish Transubstantiation (Tracts 27–8, 1834), and the principal Tract on the Eucharist was by Pusey (Tract 81, 1837). While clearly affirming the real presence of Christ in the sacramental elements of bread and wine, Bishop Cosin also reaffirms that the ‘doctrine of Transubstantiation is contained neither in Scripture nor in the writings of the Fathers’.117 In his unpublished manuscript On the Use of Primitive Ecclesiastical Terms in Discoursing of Holy Communion (1834, Keble College Library), John Keble opposes both ‘the cold unscriptural notion of a mere commemorative rite’ and also transubstantiation.118 The basis of the early Tractarian rejection of the doctrine of transubstantiation lay in the appeal to Antiquity, where it is not to be found, as opposed to the more suspect Roman theory of development. This is the basis of Newman’s argument in Tract 71 entitled On the Controversy with the Romanists (1835).119 The Anglican Newman, however, was not prepared to admit precisely that the doctrine was an error, but only that it could not be imposed on the Church. Three years later in a sermon entitled The Eucharistic Presence (1838), Newman admitted that transubstantiation ‘shows how great the gift really is’.120 The term ‘concomitance’, Simmons admits, would have been unknown to the author of the LFMB, the classic exposition of it being by Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae III, 76, 1 and 2) where it is explained that ‘by virtue of the sacrament’ the bread is changed into Christ’s body and the wine into his blood, but ‘by natural concomitance’ Christ’s soul and his divinity are inseparable from both his body and his blood.121 The dismissal At this point in LFMB, the layperson is instructed to kneel and keep repeating the pater-noster until the priest utters the words ‘ite, misa est’ or ‘benedicamus’ (B, 603–5). Simmons describes how B, lines 610 ff. are an expansion of the Deo gratias; perhaps, he argues, this usage was suggested by the Benedicite which originates in the (Apocryphal) song of praise by Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego in the fiery Tracts for the Times. Vol. I for 1833–4 (London, 1838), Tract 28, p. 1. Quoted in Härdelin, Tractarian Understanding of the Eucharist, p. 184. 119 Tracts for the Times. Vol. III for 1835–6 (London, 1839). See also Härdelin, Tractarian Understanding of the Eucharist, p. 185. 120 Quoted in Härdelin, Tractarian Understanding of the Eucharist, p. 189. See Härdelin more generally for later more favourable Tractarian views on transubstantiation, pp. 188–90. 121 See E. J. Yarnold, ‘Concomitance’, in Alan Richardson and John Bowden (eds), A New Dictionary of Christian Theology (London, 1983), p. 115. 117

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furnace, and used from the earliest times in Christian worship. In the Thanksgiving after Mass in the Sarum Rite we find: ‘Let us sing the song of the three children, which they sang in the furnace of fire as a thanksgiving unto the Lord.’123 In the final blessing (B, 617), Simmons draws attention to resemblances with the Eastern liturgy, and specifically the liturgy of St Chrysostom.124 He does not here mention – but almost certainly knew – the recent work of J. M. Neale and his editing of The Liturgies of S. Mark, S. James, S. Clement, S. Chrysostom, S. Basil, or, According to the use of the Churches of Alexandria, Jerusalem, Constantinople (1875). Neale was, inter alia, the principal founder of the Anglican and Eastern Orthodox Churches Union, in 1854,125 and edited Hymns of the Eastern Church (1865); early Anglican ecumenism tended to look towards the churches of the East rather than Rome, and thus Simmons’ assertion of the ‘resemblance between this mass-book and the Eastern liturgy’126 is not therefore without significance for contemporaries. This survey of Simmons’ liturgical notes is necessarily not exhaustive; many others could have been analysed. However, enough has been described here to give some flavour of Simmons’ methodology, and indeed of his ideological and theological framing. 122

122 Greek additions to Daniel, ‘The Song of the Three Jews’ (between Daniel 3:23 and 3:24): The New Oxford Annotated Bible (NRSV) (Oxford, 2010), pp. 1544–7. 123 Warren, The Sarum Missal in English, Part 1, p. 57. Simmons notes that it is present in the Sarum, York and Rouen rites, but not in Hereford: (ed.), LFMB, p. 310. According to Maskell, it is likely that the people would not have left until they heard the words of the priest, ‘Placeat tibi’, though its repetition was left to the discretion of the priest (The Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England, p. 201). 124 See F. E. Brightman, Liturgies Eastern and Western, Vol. 1, Eastern Liturgies (Oxford, 1896), pp. 398–9. Brightman’s work was an updating of part of the earlier work of C. E. Hammond, Liturgies Eastern and Western (Oxford, 1888). See also Ronald C. D. Jasper and G. J. Cuming (ed. Paul F. Bradshaw and Maxwell E. Johnson), Prayers of the Eucharist: Early and Reformed, fourth edition (Collegeville, 2019), p. 171: The Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, ‘Prayer (behind the ambo).’ 125 Later renamed the Anglican and Eastern Churches Association. 126 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 312.

6 Simmons as Parish Priest, and Liturgical Reform in the Victorian Church of England

Simmons as parish priest, 1853–1884

O

n 25 January 1853, Thomas Frederick Simmons was licensed as perpetual curate of Holme-on-the-Wolds in the East Riding of Yorkshire; he had clearly been identified as the man to develop the projected new parish of Dalton Holme, which included not only Holme-on-the-Wolds but also nearby South Dalton, both part of the great Hotham estate. Between 1840 and 1876 some 1,727 new churches were built in England,1 and not least among them was the grand parish church of St Mary, South Dalton. The old church of St Peter’s was in poor condition2 and on 15 March 1858 work was begun on a new church fifty yards north of the old building. Lavishly financed by the third Baron Hotham,3 St Mary’s Church was completed in 1861 and on 6 August in the same year, the benefices of Holme-on-the-Wolds and South Dalton were officially united, with Simmons instituted as the Rector of Dalton Holme. General Beaumont Hotham (1794–1870), Simmons’ patron, was a distinguished soldier – a veteran of the Battle of Waterloo – and it seems probable that military connections through Simmons’ father and brother brought him to Dalton Holme. Lord Hotham was unmarried, devout,4 and eccentric, and local gossip maintained that he spent his entire fortune on the church to prevent his nephew from inheriting it.5 Though hardly the lot, Hotham did spend the enormous sum of £25,000 on the new church of St Mary’s. The church was further extended in 1872. 1 ‘Returns Showing the Number of Churches (including Cathedrals) in every Diocese in England which have been Built or Restored at a Cost exceeding £500 since the year 1840’, Journals of the House of Commons 131, 1876. 2 It was completely demolished when work on the new church was completed. 3 The manor of South Dalton had belonged to the Hotham family since 1680. Its records date back to 730 CE when King Osred gave the manor and church to the collegiate church of St John of Beverley. Beverley is some ten miles away. 4 Simmons preached at Lord Hotham’s funeral, his sermon being published as ‘Christ Jesus Came into the World to Save Sinners’ (Beverley, 1872). He records how Beaumont Hotham would spend hours on his knees in the family vault of his new church. 5 Anthony Quiney, John Loughborough Pearson (New Haven, 1979), p. 57.

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John Loughborough Pearson, the architect, was – as already noted6 – an admired builder of churches in the English Gothic style, later to be known for his work in the Early English style at St Augustine’s, Kilburn (1871), as architect of Truro Cathedral (1880), and for his restorations at Westminster Abbey. Pearson had become a member of the Ecclesiological Society only in 1859, but his work at Dalton Holme quickly attracted the Society’s attention and approval. A review (February, 1862) of St Mary’s Church in The Ecclesiologist praised Pearson’s work, albeit with some qualifications: The style is Middle-Pointed, of strictly English character, and of a very ornate type…. The absence of a stone roof (considering the sumptuousness of the structure) and of colour, constructional or otherwise, is however, to be regretted.7

Pearson was personally a devout man, and his being chosen as the architect of St Mary’s church was not without significance. He followed, and in some respect even surpassed, Pugin and was strongly influenced by the writings of John Ruskin in The Seven Lamps of Architecture (London, 1849). Ruskin’s essay, though hardly original, was important in making popularly available the principles espoused by the Cambridge Camden Society, based upon seven principles of English gothic architecture: sacrifice, truth, power, beauty, life, memory and obedience. As well as influencing the work of Pearson, Ruskin’s essay had a powerful effect on the architect William Butterfield and his design for All Saints, Margaret Street, a major centre for Tractarian worship8 built between 1850 and 1859, just prior to the building of St Mary’s South Dalton One of Pearson’s most important early clients was the wealthy Tractarian Sir Charles Anderson, who had been educated at Oriel College Oxford (the college of Keble and Newman). Anderson was a prominent member of the Ecclesiological Society, author of Ancient Models: Containing Some Remarks on Church-Building Addressed to the Laity (London, 1840), and his family owned extensive estates in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.9 Through the influence of Anderson, Pearson was appointed architect of Lincoln Cathedral and learnt as a result of his extensive restorations of ancient churches the importance of historical continuity. In 1853 he was elected as Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. In his building of St Mary’s, for which he also designed the fittings and furnishings, Pearson demonstrated an informed understanding of spaces intended for Tractarian forms of worship on the principles of unity and continuity. Thoroughly modern, St Mary’s was at the same time ‘medieval’, and Pearson wrote to Lord Hotham in words of which Pugin himself would have approved:

See p. 33 above. Anon., ‘New Churches’, The Ecclesiologist, February 1862, pp. 60–1. See also http:// www.english-church-architecture.net/east%20riding%20of%20yorkshire/south%20dalton/ south%20dalton.htm, last consulted 29 August 2022. 8 Its first vicar, William Upton Richards (1811–73) was ‘a committed Tractarian and a close friend of E. B. Pusey’ (ODNB). 9 Quiney, Pearson, p. 39. 6 7

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My wish is to make the church look as well as possible and that the several things in it should bear a proportion to it and to one another and appear to be designed for the positions they are severally placed in it.10

Perhaps also significant was Pearson’s attraction to the church architecture of Rouen as also mentioned by Ruskin in The Seven Lamps of Architecture: another possible link to Simmons’ theory of the origins of the LFMB. St Mary’s, South Dalton was, and remains, a magnificent example of Early English style church architecture, both inside and outside. The 1861 census records that there were 32 stonemasons and craftsmen employed upon it, in a village of some 328 people. Nor was Pearson’s care for liturgical space wasted on Simmons. With the later addition of an organ and choir vestry it provided the new rector with a magnificent setting for public worship. It was at once medieval in tone and utterly modern in the post-Tractarian Church of England, designed for forms of worship that reflect his liturgical scholarship and in particular, as we shall see shortly, Simmons’ concern for the part played by lay people in worship. And as he worked within his new church, so Simmons was editing the LFMB. Simmons was, it seems, an exemplary parish priest. Although a self-confessed clergyman of the Reformation Church of England, he also shared Pugin’s vision of the late medieval Church with its care in the parish for the local poor and when ‘village priests were looked on as pastors of the people’.11 A revealing snapshot of Simmons’ parish ministry at Dalton Holme is to be found in Archbishop William Thomson’s Visitation Returns for the diocese of York of 1865.12 From these we learn that each Sunday and on principal Holy Days and at Ascension there was a service with sermon at 10.30 a.m., with an afternoon service at 3.00 p.m. in summer and 2.50 p.m. in winter. After the second lesson in the afternoon service during Lent (and also during the week for school children) there was catechism based on the gospels, lessons and other portions of scripture. Simmons reports that attendance at church is ‘steadily increasing’ and the Sunday adult congregation averages 80, ‘which is a great increase upon the numbers a few years since, and more by one half than before the parishes were united’. The total congregation of adults and children each Sunday averaged 130, more than one third of the total population (506 in the 1861 census) of the two villages. Altogether, and in contrast to ‘former neglect’, nearly half of the population of the parish attended church once in the day on Sundays. In sum, the Archbishop’s Visitation portrays a thriving parish in contrast to the neglect of former years, with a splendid new church, evening schools and active involvement in such local institutions as the new Hull Infirmary. All this activity is borne out by the Vestry Books and Church Warden’s Accounts, written in Simmons’ bold hand.13

East Riding County Record Office DDHO/48/236, quoted in Quiney, p. 59. Pugin, Contrasts, p. 23. 12 See Ruth Larsen and Edward Royle, Archbishop Thomson’s Visitation Returns for the Diocese of York, 1865, Borthwick Texts and Studies 34 (York, 2006). 13 Vestry Book and Church Warden’s Accounts, St Mary’s Dalton Holme, 1863–83: East Riding of Yorkshire Archives, Treasure House, Beverley, PE54/t32. Following the death of Simmons in 1884, while still rector, the curate-in-charge was the Rev Frederick Jackson, who 10 11

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Lord Hotham and his successors continued to be generous benefactors, and under Canon Simmons this money was not wasted. On 6 April 1869, 66 candidates for confirmation were presented to the Archbishop and the church and its rector gave generously for the support of the poor and the sick. Clearly Simmons was no reclusive scholar. True, on a substantial stipend and with a grand rectory and glebe, he and Harriet must have lived very comfortably. Nevertheless, his was not a life of leisured retirement; Simmons was clearly an extremely conscientious and indeed successful pastor who took his parish duties very seriously, even as he devoted himself to his work on the LFMB. Of particular note in Simmons’ Vestry Book entries are those relating to the purchase of hymn books and the establishment of a robed choir. On 29 September, 1872, we are told that ‘the Rector stated that a strong desire had been expressed that “Hymns Ancient and Modern” should be used in this parish, and Lord Hotham offered to provide a complete supply – it was unanimously agreed to accept his Lordship’s offer’. It was further understood, however, that any hymns ‘which are open to objections’ should not be used.14 Furthermore, on 21 April 1878, and again paid for by Lord Hotham, a new ‘quire’ vestry was completed, ‘an organ having been placed in the organ chamber’. In the same month the organ was first used in divine service, accompanying a robed parish choir.15 Some of the music books from the late nineteenth century survive even today in St Mary’s, giving a clear indication of not only the form of public worship but a suggestion that choral music was of a commendably high standard. There are anthems for Easter, harvest festival and saints’ days by noted church musicians of the day such as Edward Bunnett (1834–1923), Sir John Frederick Bridge (1844–1924) and Berthold Tours (1838–1897), numerous contemporary settings of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis for choral evensong, and choral settings of the kyrie, creed and sanctus as well as the offertory sentences for sung Holy Communion. Given the marked decline in church attendance at St Mary’s after Simmons’ death in 1884, it seems probable that this ambitious repertoire relates to his time in the 1870s and early 1880s.16 Clearly Simmons was eager for lay involvement in worship, and the use of Hymns Ancient and Modern is particularly significant. Hymns A&M17 was published in 1861 – the same year as the consecration of St Mary’s church – and within seven years had sold four and a half million copies. The liturgist Walter Howard Frere edited an Historical Edition in 1909, and the New Standard Edition continues in seems to have been a less formidable personality than his predecessor. The congregation diminished rapidly in Jackson’s time and by the early twentieth century attendance on a Sunday was just under 40. 14 It is not stated what such ‘objections’ might be. Possibly they may have been hymns whose theology, such as of the atonement, ran counter to the doctrines upheld in the Tracts for the Times. 15 On 4 September 1884, it was agreed that ‘two guineas be paid for washing the surplices of the men and boys of the choir.’ 16 Sadly, the service registers for the time do not seem to have survived. We are nevertheless most grateful to the current church wardens of St Mary’s for generously granting us access to music and records that remain in the church. 17 William Henry Monk (ed.), Hymns Ancient and Modern (London, 1861).

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print to this day. Its original guiding light was another high church Anglican parish priest, Sir Henry Williams Baker, squire and vicar of Monkland, Herefordshire, best remembered now for his Tractarian version of the Twenty-Third Psalm, ‘The King of love my shepherd is.’ The principal contributor to the 1861 edition was John Mason Neale, over sixty of his hymns and translations being included. The majority of these hymns were translations from the Greek or Latin of ancient or medieval origins. Of these amongst the best known are ‘Jerusalem the golden’ – a translation of Bernard of Morlaix’s (or Cluny)18 (c.1100–c.1150) Urbs Sion aurea – and ‘Lights abode, celestial Salem’, a translation from Thomas à Kempis (c.1380–1471). In short, and in the medieval spirit of the LFMB, Simmons’ parishioners were singing the hymns of the medieval church in a building that was medieval in conception even as it was modern in construction. Parallels between Simmons’ and Neale’s activities are not hard to find. J. R. Watson in The English Hymn (1997) suggests that: Neale was engaged in a massive and innovative project, an attempt to swing the writing and appreciation of hymns away from a post-Reformation individualism into a nobler and deeper impersonality.19

In 1865, Neale published Hymns, Chiefly Medieval, on the Joys and Glories of Paradise, drawing largely upon the literature of the late medieval English church, reprinting lines, for example, from the fifteenth-century Prick of Conscience, recently edited by Richard Morris and, as we have seen, a work frequently referred to by Simmons in his edition of LFMB: Ther is lyf without ony deth, And there is youthe without ony elde, And ther is alle manner welthe to welde; And ther is rest without ony travaille.20

Neale was concerned that his hymns should be widely sung in congregations, and the essence of his hymn writing lies in its clarity and simple statement of the fundamentals of the Christian faith. At the same time his hymn translations were rooted in his interest in recovering ancient liturgical practices, and he described his hymns as to be ‘sung between the Epistle and Gospel in the Mass, or, more precisely, ‘hymns whose origin is to be looked for in the Alleluia of the Gradual sung between the Epistle and Gospel’.21 There are clear liturgical echoes here of the world of the LFMB. In Hymns A&M Bernard of Morlaix is called ‘Bernard of Murles’; see John Julian, A Dictionary of Hymnology, Revised Edition (London, 1907), p. 137. It should be noted that John Julian (1839–1913), editor of this still valuable dictionary of hymnology was, like Simmons, a Yorkshire parish priest, becoming a prebendary of York Minster in 1901. His great Dictionary was first published in 1892. The new organ in the north transept of St Mary’s stands as clear evidence of how important music and the congregational hymn were in the late Victorian, post-Tractarian Church of England. 19 J. R. Watson, The English Hymn: A Critical and Historical Study (Oxford, 1997), p. 379. 20 Quoted in Watson, The English Hymn, p. 376. 21 J. M. Neale, quoted in Julian, A Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 787. 18

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Thus we see the significance of the purchase of copies of Hymns A&M and of choral music in Dalton Holme. Public worship in Simmons’ new ‘medieval’ church was flourishing. His new organ in the north transept was a means to encourage his parishioners and choir to participate in the liturgy. Neale’s medieval hymns were a means of teaching and developing the spiritual life of his people, even while, as a scholar, Simmons was recovering through his study of the LFMB something of the prayers and ‘inner religious life’22 of their late medieval forebears. Although we are not suggesting that Simmons tried to model his services at St Mary’s in the manner suggested by the medieval uses and the LFMB, it seems at least probable that these services were impacted by his medievalist interests. Two important matters need to be carefully borne in mind. Unlike, for example, the Roman Catholic Edmund Bishop, who regarded the English Reformation as a catastrophic severance of the Church of England from the true Catholic faith, Simmons, together with most other late Tractarian clergy, was convinced of the pre-Reformation continuity and ancient origins of the particular liturgical tradition in the ‘English Church’, preserved above all in the 1549 Prayer Book. Simmons would argue that a work like the LFMB, to use Edmund Bishop’s words, was an example of ‘not mere antiquarian survivals of a dead past but … historical records of a living rite’. Furthermore, just as Simmons in his edition was seeking ‘to know the prayers which the unlearned of our forefathers used at mass’23 and rediscover something of the inner religious life of the people of late medieval England, so in his own parish and its worship he was actively promoting such renewed spirituality and liturgical participation amongst his own people: those same local people who frequently feature in his learned notes and references, as we have seen. In short, Simmons was engaged in what he understood to be a living tradition of worship and his work on the LFMB was neither simply an antiquarian exercise nor coldly ‘academic’. And this engagement was part of a larger pattern in Anglican worship, to which we now turn. The Reform of the Book of Common Prayer in the Nineteenth Century An article in The British Critic (April 1840), entitled ‘The Church Service’, noted: The Liturgies of Rome and Paris were, until very recently, sealed books to the Protestant world. We well remember that when Bishop Lloyd began his lectures, twelve years since, it was hardly possible to procure copies of them… But now Mr. Parker of Oxford finds it worth his while to import a considerable number of copies both of the Roman and Parisian Breviaries every year; whence we infer… that the ancient Services are coming to be studies, not merely as a matter of literature, but for the purposes of private devotion.24

Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. x. Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. ix. 24 The British Critic, April 1840, pp. 249–76, p. 251. This publication had by this date become a major Tractarian journal. Its editor 1838–41 was John Henry Newman, who was succeeded by his brother-in-law, Thomas Mozley. The British Critic ceased publication in 1843. 22 23

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At the same time the BCP, although it lay at the very heart of Anglican identity,25 was coming to seem to be inadequate for the pastoral and spiritual needs of the nineteenth-century Church. The intellectualism of the Oxford Movement and the Tractarians and their doctrinal rather than liturgical approach to prayer and worship presented problems, not least with regards the demands of the lay people of the Church. In the words of Ronald Jasper: The Prayer Book arranged for the daily recitation of Bible and Psalter which was demanded of the clergy; but these arrangements were far from ideal for the average layman, who only came to church on Sundays. It was therefore a doubtful proposition to oppose both change and abridgement.26 If the Prayer Book had been a manual exclusively for the clergy, who were – in theory at least – possessed of a certain degree of theological learning and discernment, the policy of ‘No change’ was perhaps defensible: but where it had to serve the needs of simple layfolk too, the policy indicated a failure on the part of the Tract writers to appreciate both their needs and limitations.27

These issues continued to engage serious-minded clergy and layfolk throughout the nineteenth century, and by the 1870s the tension Jasper outlines had if anything grown more acute. And in addressing this tension Simmons – and his edition of LFMB – had a surprisingly prominent role. From 1874, Simmons’ principal public platform in the Church was the Northern Convocation of York. The two ancient convocations of the Church of England, long languishing in disuse, were revived in the nineteenth century, Canterbury in 1852 and York in 1861. Earlier in the century there had been a distinct lack of clerical enthusiasm for the convocations, but this changed with the Tractarians and, after the débacle of the Gorham judgment in 1850, Robert Wilberforce, Archdeacon of the East Riding of Yorkshire and perhaps the most learned of the Tractarians,28 pressed for their revival.29 The ancient convocations were welcomed by the Tractarians as the true voice of the ‘English catholic church’. They were an obvious platform On 25 April 1797, William Van Mildert, the future Bishop of Durham, preached a sermon entitled ‘The Excellency of the Liturgy, and the Advantages of Being Educated in the Doctrine and Principle, of the Church of England.’ Van Mildert rejected any demands for change or improvement of the BCP, stating: ‘Upon the preservation, therefore, of our excellent Liturgy in its present improved state, must depend, in a great measure, the preservation of the Church of England’ (quoted in Spinks, ‘The Transition from “Excellent Liturgy”’, pp. 98–9). 26 Early impetus for Prayer Book revision and change came largely from the more evangelical and liberal wing of the Church of England which sought abridgment of the liturgy in the interests of popular use. 27 Jasper, Prayer Book Revision in England, 1800–1900, p. 44. 28 E. L. Mascall called Wilberforce ‘theologically perhaps the greatest of the Tractarians’ (quoted in Härdelin, Tractarian Understanding of the Eucharist, p. 141). From 1840 Wilberforce was rector of Burton Agnes, near Beverley and thus would have been a close neighbour of Simmons, except that he converted to the Roman Catholic church in 1854, and died in 1857. There is mention of his son William Francis Wilberforce (1833–1905), also a clergyman, in the records of St Mary’s, and he was clearly known to Simmons. 29 See D. A. Jennings, Revival of the Convocation of York, Borthwick Papers 47 (University of York, 1975). 25

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for the discussion of Prayer Book revision and to this the smaller York Convocation was the principal contributor, for, in the words of Ronald Jasper: It possessed a most learned liturgical scholar in Canon T. F. Simmons of York, and his influence was much more penetrating in the smaller Northern body than it would have been in that of Canterbury. This was obvious at several points.30

To the activities of the York Convocation we shall turn in due course, but first the larger national context must be established. In 1867 a Royal Commission on Ritual was appointed to address matters of ritual in public worship and the increasing – and much-debated – use of vestments, incense and other ‘ritual’ practices. In 1858, as has already been noted,31 the Rev John Purchas had published the Directorium Anglicanum, Being a Manual of Directions for the right celebration of the Holy Communion, for the Saying of Matins and Evensong, and the Performance of other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, according to the ancient use of the Church of England. It was revised and expanded in 1865 by the eccentric Rev Frederick G. Lee who is described by S. L. Ollard as ‘a voluminous author and a good antiquary, but so far from being a scholar that he never graduated from his own University of Oxford’.32 Nevertheless the work was widely used within ritualist circles in the Church of England, and the Directorium took a clear position on the vexed matter of the interpretation of the Ornaments Rubric,33 arguing that the second year of Edward VI’s reign ran from 28 January 1548 to 28 January 1549, and therefore the ancient uses and ornaments in church still pertained. The rubric read that ‘such Ornaments of the Church and of Ministers thereof, shall be retained and be in Use, as was in this Church of England by authority of Parliament, in the Second Year of the Reign of King Edward the Sixth’.34 Becoming a standard reference work for ritualists,35 the Directorium lacked solid liturgical scholarship, yet it stated at the outset what was becoming increasingly obvious: that the rubrics of the BCP were insufficient and they ‘never were intended for a complete Directorium’.36 To this matter the Royal Commission now addressed itself. And by 1870 in the Commission’s fourth and final report, it was clear that, although its total achievements were slight, its work did represent the first official break from the ideal of the ‘one Use’ of the Prayer Book, the Commission stating that ‘we have recommended alterations which may give facilities for adapting the services of the Church to the wants and circumstances of different congregations.’37 Indeed, from the very Jasper, Prayer Book Revision, p. 125. See p. 19 above. 32 S. L. Ollard, A Short History of the Oxford Movement [1915] (London, 1963), p. 142. Simmons, as we have seen (p. 111) owned a copy of the Directorium. 33 See p. 47, note 98 above. 34 BCP: rubric at the beginning of ‘The Order for Morning and Evening Prayer.’ 35 See p. 112, note 91 above. George Herring has written of it that ‘aspiring Ritualists now had an invaluable tool, and the Directorium was to establish itself as the standard reference for them for the rest of the century’ (‘Devotional and Liturgical Renewal’, p. 403). 36 Directorium Anglicanum (1866 edition), p. vi. 37 Quoted in Cuming, A History of Anglican Liturgy, p. 154. 30 31

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beginning, although the Commission failed to gain much favour from either ritualists or anti-ritualists, its proposals were deliberately elastic. ‘Restraint’ in the conduct of public worship was desirable, but it was left unclear what that precisely meant. The use of vestments was not specifically prohibited. In short, the principle of the singularity of worship as stated in the Preface to the BCP was effectively questioned. The fourth and final Report of the Royal Commission on Ritual was published on 31 August 1870, and shortly after that the bishops, led by Archbishop Tait, referred its findings and their possible implementation to the Convocations. The result was the Act of Uniformity Amendment Act of 1872, usually known as the Shortened Services Act.38 Although the Act was passed with the approval of both Convocations of Canterbury and York it was generally ill received by high church clergy (amongst whom one must assume was numbered Canon Simmons). The Shortened Services Act did not actually change the BCP, but rather adapted its provisions in the interests of flexibility. Thus, for example, shortened forms of Morning and Evening Prayer were now allowed during the week in parish churches. Some twenty-five years after the Act was passed, J. Wickham Legg wrote an essay entitled ‘The Act of 1972 and its Shortened, Hurried, and Extra-Liturgical Services’ in which he commented as follows, significantly linking liturgy and architecture: The Book of Common Prayer and Wren’s work at St Paul’s have one or two features in common. Both have something of a mediaeval basis; neither belongs to the golden age of liturgy or of architecture; and yet no one has ever touched either of them without spoiling it.39

Furthermore, Wickham Legg continues, ‘this hurried mode of saying the service is not liked by the better layfolk.’40 However, un-liturgical and inept though it was, the Shortened Services Act did provide for a measure of adaptability in public worship, recognising the need for church services to conform to the changing demands of a laity constrained by the responsibilities of work and family commitments. Perceived as, to a degree, a return to a more medieval practice,41 it awaited the Convocations’ more liturgically literate debates of the later 1870s to seek to adapt the rubrics of the Prayer Book to suit contemporary demands. Simmons owned a copy of the text of this Act. J. Wickham Legg (ed.), Some Principles and Services of the Prayer-Book Historically Considered (London, 1899), p. 130. 40 Wickham Legg, Some Principles, p. 149. It is not clear what he meant by the term ‘better’. 41 Ronald Jasper deplored the return to medieval chaos suggested by the 1872 Act: On the whole the Act undid much that the Prayer Book had originally set out to do. At the end of the Middle Ages there had been both a tendency to interrupt too frequently the regular recitation of Bible and Psalter and also a ‘great diversity in saying and singing in Churches within this Realm.’ The Prayer Book had attempted to achieve some semblance of order. But now the Church was given official leave to return to its former state of chaos (Prayer Book Revision, p. 117). This statement, however, requires some qualification. Simmons learnt from his work on the LFMB and late medieval liturgical practice that Prayer Book revision might not involve a disturbance of liturgical principles of practice but rather a rubrical shift that would bring the laity into greater participation in worship in a manner closer to the medieval roots of Prayer Book worship. 38 39

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Before these debates took place, however, in 1874, the question of ritualism came to a head in the English Parliament with the passing of the Public Worship Regulation Act, which the prime minister Benjamin Disraeli described as ‘a bill to put down ritualism’:42 an event which James Bentley has more recently described as a unique moment in the ‘interaction of politics, theology, and popular religion’.43 Politically this legal act was the last time that the question of religion occupied the entire attention of the British Parliament, and the passage of the Bill through Parliament had been secured by Archbishop Tait, the anti-ritualist archbishop of Canterbury, without consultation with the Convocations of Canterbury or York.44 Thus the State was seen to be in control of the Church’s worship, and at the direct behest of the Archbishop. It is clear that Simmons was alert to the trials and tribulations of the ritualist clergy, though he would hardly have sympathised with the excesses of their liturgical practices and was certainly never in any danger of imprisonment for his forms of worship in St Mary’s. In his Notes to the LFMB, for example, he comments on the use of the term ‘goddes borde’ for the Lord’s Table in the pre-Reformation English church. Never one to allow the episcopate to remain unchallenged if he felt it was lacking in proper learning, and noting that it has wrongly been asserted in the ‘controversial literature of the last few years’ that this term does not pre-date 1548, Simmons comments: This mistake nevertheless appears to have passed unchallenged by my lords, episcopal and legal, and by the counsel engaged in the proceedings before the judicial committee of the Privy Council in the case of Martin v. Machonochie. See the shorthand writer’s notes, 20 Nov. 1868. Fourth Report of the Ritual Commission, Folio, 1870, p. 229.45

Simmons was referring, albeit obliquely, to a notorious ritualist case, Martin v. Machonochie, in what were turbulent times. As we have seen, during the 1870s and after the 1874 Act, Anglican clergy were being tried, condemned and imprisoned for ritualist practices.46 This difficult situation was the context within which the Convocations of Canterbury and York flexed their muscles in the matter of church government, and the issue of public worship and the Prayer Book.

Quoted in Jasper, Prayer Book Revision, p. 119. James Bentley, Ritualism and Politics in Victorian Britain (Oxford, 1978), p. vii. 44 Wickham Legg wrote of ‘the mischief done to the Book of Common Prayer by the unfortunate acts passed during the disastrous pontificate of Dr. Tait’ (Some Principles and Services, p. 130). See further Marsh, The Victorian Church in Decline. 45 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 358. Under the Church Discipline Act of 1840, Fr. A. H. Machonochie – or Mackonochie – was suspended from office on 25 November, 1870 for elevating the host above his head, using a mixed chalice and altar lights, censing objects and people, and kneeling during the prayer of consecration. Machonochie was, as we have seen (see p. 58), an EETS subscriber in 1879. 46 See above, p. 46. 42 43

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Simmons and the York Convocation from 1874 The revival of the two ancient convocations of Canterbury and York provided the church with the most serious and consistent platform for the discussion of liturgical matters following the work of the Royal Commission. Simmons was active in the York Convocation from 1874 as one of the two representatives of the East Riding of Yorkshire. Debates particularly focused on rubrical revisions to the Prayer Book; the liturgical provisions of Book itself were not to be changed. At his first meeting on 11 March 1874, Simmons – who at the time, significantly, was working on his edition of LFMB – demonstrated his consistent concern for the involvement of the laity in church matters and public worship, as he argued for an element of lay ‘co-operation’ in the wholly clerical constitutions of Convocation. ‘Convocation must change’, he announced.47 Simmons quickly became a formidable voice in Convocation debates. By May 1874, he was involved in a debate relating to the Public Worship Regulation Bill which was then before Parliament. His pastoral concern for the laity is made quite clear as he sought to clarify and expand the meaning of the term ‘parishioner’, opposing any idea of a ‘communicant test’ which would, he asserted, be the mixing of holy things with a quarrel. His forthright and precise style, shed of niceties, is clear. For example, he declined to join a vote of thanks to the two primates for their work, remarking curtly that ‘they were not assembled to exchange courtesies’.48 His debating style was nevertheless always learned and considered. A solid Prayer Book man, Simmons was not opposed to change when it had proper historical precedent. He played an important part in a long debate on the position of the priest at the altar during Communion, arguing for an ‘optional position’49 and reporting that, with a reference presumably to his work on the LFMB, ‘he had recently had occasion, for another purpose, to look at a great number of mss. of the century before the Reformation’.50 Never afraid about correcting the archbishop or other senior clergy, Simmons was quite obviously the most learned liturgist in the York Convocation, his proposals and changes to rubrics clearly looking forward to what was to become the Convocation Prayer Book of 1880. Simmons’ work on LFMB quite evidently influenced his contributions to Convocation, e.g. relating to the saying of the Lord’s Prayer by the priest and people at the end of the prayer of oblation.51 In his Notes to the LFMB, Simmons, ever the stickler for rules, makes observation of the ancient practice of saying the Lord’s Prayer as a communal utterance of priest and people, and that in 1662: …the primitive practice was restored, in every place, where the Lord’s Prayer occurs, a rubric directing – though to this day it is disobeyed in churches when it is said by the priest alone at the beginning of the Holy Communion – that the people shall repeat it with the priest…52 47 York Journal of Convocation, Vol. II (London, 1874), p. 86. Copies of the Journal are held in the Borthwick Institute, University of York. 48 York Journal of Convocation, p. 151. 49 See also Simmons’ long and closely argued article, ‘Standing Before the Lord’s Table’. 50 York Journal of Convocation, 1875 (London, 1876), p. 38. 51 Cf. LFMB, B, 491 ff. 52 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 293.

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Simmons, it was reported, proposed to Convocation a rubrical change: That the words ‘the Lord’s Prayer’ should be followed by these: ‘The people kneeling and repeating every petition in the Lord’s Prayer with him.’ He wished to carry out the Rubric introduced in 1661, in order that the Lord’s Prayer wheresoever used in Divine Service might be said by everyone.53

In the face of some opposition, Simmons argued that the practice of saying the Lord’s Prayer by the minister alone was part of the ‘old Roman rule’, and that according to the ‘Anglo-Saxon Church and the Greek Church of today’ it was essentially a prayer of the congregation. Within the English tradition he also cites the authority of Bishop Cosin (1594–1672). During his period of service on the York Convocation, Simmons never missed a single meeting, his time concluding with the appearance of the Convocation Prayer Book of 1880, never approved for use but which has been described as ‘the last serious contribution to liturgical reform in the nineteenth century’.54 In the midst of these Convocation debates an important essay entitled ‘Liturgical Revision’ was published in the Church Quarterly Review for October 1876.55 Although, as was the custom in the Review, the article is anonymous, it seems not impossible that it was by Canon Simmons as it bears many of the signs of his style, his brand of liturgical conservatism and his preoccupations. It was clearly written in the wake of the Royal Commission on Ritual (1867). With some academic testiness (to which Simmons was prone) the article remarks that: The New Lectionary of 1871, the Shortened Services Act, the debates in the Convocation of Canterbury on rubrical amendments, none of them marked by any sufficient care or knowledge, and all fraught with at least the possibility of serious consequences, are examples of formal and recognised inroads on the Act of Uniformity.56

Having established the need for liturgical revision on the basis of the inability of the BCP to provide for all ‘the spiritual needs of the Church of England’, the article proceeds to address the direction of revision, either ‘that of conservative and recuperative addition, or that of further evisceration, ceremonial or doctrinal’.57 Understanding the Prayer Book as uniquely ‘a lay manual of devotion’ in the vernacular, this book, the essay affirms, has ensured that ‘the Church of England is the only historical Church which has retained in any real sense the ancient notion of congregational and responsive worship’.58 In a significant turn of phrase, the article acknowledges the Prayer Book as ‘the volume which contains the devotions known and acceptable to the millions of

York Journal of Convocation, 1876, p. 51. Jasper, Prayer Book Revision, p. 126. 55 ‘Liturgical Revision’, Church Quarterly Review, October 1876, pp. 34–63. The Review was first published in October 1875 at the instigation of Dean Church of St Paul’s Cathedral. Its stated aim was ‘to be worthily representative of the teaching and position of the Church of England’; its ethos was clearly high church. 56 ‘Liturgical Revision’, p. 34. 57 ‘Liturgical Revision’, p. 35. 58 ‘Liturgical Revision’, p. 35. 53

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Anglican layfolk’. The essay acknowledges that the Holy Communion service of 1662 is a ‘lamentable declension’60 from 1549. But even more than this, ‘the first Book of Edward VI [was] itself but meagre compared with the earlier Liturgies whence it was derived’.61 This reference, of course, is in part to the liturgies of Sarum, York (Ebor) and so on, but perhaps also the rich liturgical and devotional material, both clerical and lay, from the later Middle Ages, of which LFMB is a part. In the matter of liturgical revision, the article makes it clear that the Oxford Movement, although its initial stages were ‘literary’ rather than ‘active’, was different from other such movements such as those of Wesley or the Evangelical revival associated with the Clapham Sect,62 inasmuch as its concern was with ‘the corporate life of the Church, and not that of the individual mind or soul’.63 Early Tractarian reforms of the liturgy were accused of being hurried and careless, ‘often crude, hasty, indiscreet, palaeozoic, and incredibly foolish’.64 But they did testify to a remarkable new growth in the Church of England, such as now required much more intelligent and well-informed liturgical scholarship to enlarge its spiritual provision. Simmons, in the late 1870s, was one of those providing precisely such scholarship. The article then returns to the question of the limitations of the BCP as it tries ‘to cover a vast area with a very limited quantity of material’.65 Inasmuch as it serves as the daily office book of the Church of England the Prayer Book provides for only two daily offices, whereas the Breviary provides for eight.66 But any kind of simple return to the demands of the offices found in the Breviary is out of the question, given the current laxity of clergy in the saying of only two daily offices (Morning and Evening Prayer), and indications in the Shortened Services Act (1872) that further proliferation of daily services would be impossible: indeed, quite the opposite. Thus the problem is twofold: that relating to the discipline of clergy, and to the provision of suitable and manageable prayers for the laity. The article expresses this issue, significantly, in this way: 59

… the problem remains unsolved of how to provide for the wants of two different congregations, partly consisting of the same persons, in one church on a single afternoon or evening.67 ‘Liturgical Revision’, p. 36. ‘Liturgical Revision’, p. 37. 61 ‘Liturgical Revision’, p. 37. 62 See Stephen Tomkins, The Clapham Sect (Oxford, 2010). 63 ‘Liturgical Revision’, p. 40. 64 ‘Liturgical Revision’, p. 40. The OED cites the first use of the word palaeozoic from a geological work from 1838, referring to the earliest primitive forms of life, but figurative usages seem only to have emerged in the 1860s. The reviewer was very up-to-date. 65 ‘Liturgical Revision’, p. 42. 66 We might see here a rationale for exploring the Prymer as a pre-1549 ‘lay folks prayer book’, given its relation to Books of Hours. In his essay ‘On the Origin of the Prymer’ (in Littlehales’ EETS edition of the Lay Folks’ Prayer Book) Edmund Bishop questions at length the direct correlation of the Prymer with Books of Hours, such as is assumed more recently in Duffy, Marking the Hours. See above, p. 89. 67 ‘Liturgical Revision’, p. 45. The emphasis on the place of the laity in liturgical worship might also recall J. H. Newman’s great essay ‘On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine’, The Rambler, July 1859, pp. 198–230. 59

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The answer was to return to the ancient breviaries and service books of the Church and draw riches from them very much as Cranmer had done in 1549, but also thereby finding new riches for today’s lay person. In other words, scholars needed to begin to research what provisions were made for layfolk alongside the clerical offices and Mass prior to 1549: in short, the demands of modern worship seemed to be leading towards what would shortly be provided in the editions of the EETS, and there designated, a ‘layfolks’ mass book’ and a ‘layfolks’ prayer book’.68 The suggestion is also made that more emphasis should be laid on encouraging lay people to memorize prayers, just as the catechism of Archbishop Thoresby69 (like Mirk’s Instructions to Parish Priests) required clergy to teach the laity to learn by heart the Paternoster, the Ave and the Creed. Responsorial and antiphonal worship is to be encouraged to foster lay participation. Further provision of Collects than those available in the BCP is desirable to provide for ‘particular needs’70 though work on this matter, drawing upon the riches of the pre-Reformation tradition, was already available in William Bright’s Ancient Collects and other Prayers, Selected for Devotional use from Various Rituals (Oxford, 1861).71 The CQR essay is clear that conformity to the Church of England should not imply ‘rigid uniformity’ in the matter of liturgy and worship and on this basis decries the Public Worship Regulation Act of 1874. In conclusion, the essay returns once again to the theme of liturgical revision being upon the basis of ‘historical precedent’ which avoids ‘newfangledness’.72 Revision of the Prayer Book, therefore, was increasingly seen as urgent, and the debates to which Simmons – and indeed the CQR reviewer, if not Simmons – contributed were indicating the problem, and something of the direction of travel. Bryan Spinks has noted: As second-generation Tractarianism developed into Anglo-Catholicism, the Prayer Book rites were found inadequate and were supplemented or even replaced with liturgy from catholic sources.73

Spinks cites in particular authors we have met before, including Peter Medd’s The Priest to the Altar (London, 1861),74 Frederick George Lee’s The Altar Book (London, 1867),75 and Orby Shipley’s The Ritual of the Altar (London, 1870).76 Other influential 68 See also above, pp. 130–1, and The People’s Mass Book, probably the work of E. T. M. Walker in 1895. 69 See Nolloth and Simmons (eds), LFC. 70 CQR, October 1876, III.5, p. 50. 71 Bright cites as his authorities works also familiar to Simmons, and indeed to Palmer and Maskell: Mabillon, Martène, Maskell, Renaudot and Neale. 72 CQR, October 1876, III.5, p. 55. 73 Spinks, ‘The Transition from “Excellent Liturgy”’, p. 117. See also Mark Dalby, Anglican Missals and their Canons: 1549, Interim Rite and Roman (Alcuin/GROW) (Cambridge, 1998). 74 The Priest to the Altar was reprinted as late as 1910, the third revised edition being published in 1879, the same year as the LFMB. 75 Lee was, as we have seen, the editor of the revised edition of the Directorium Anglicanum. 76 Shipley, an Anglican priest, converted to Roman Catholicism in 1878. He edited The Church and the World (London, 1866), containing essays on ritualism by R. F. Littledale, Baring-Gould and others. Shipley’s own essay was a learned comparison of the communion

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works cited by Spinks include A. H. Stanton’s Catholic Prayers for Church of England People (London, 1880), and the anonymous Notes on Ceremonial from the Antient [sic] English Office Books with the Order of Holy Communion (London, 1888). Of these Medd’s work is, perhaps, the most significant. Described in the ODNB as a clergyman of ‘mildly Tractarian views’, Medd was, like Simmons, a parish priest until his death in 1908, having turned down preferment to the see of Brechin in 1875. The full title of his altar book is The Priest to the Altar, or, Aids to the Devout Celebration of Holy Communion, Chiefly after the Ancient English Use of Sarum, providing the text of the Prayer Book service with additional prayers and rubrics for the guidance of the priest. It is printed as an altar book for use in public worship, and contains the texts of the 1549 Communion Office as well as the liturgies of the Scottish Episcopal Church (1637) and of the American Episcopal Church. Congregational hymns, many from Hymns A&M, are added at the end. Providing for the devotions of the priest, The Priest to the Altar demonstrates clear similarities with the LFMB, in the devotions before the service and the addition of prayers drawn from the Sarum Use and other ancient missals. Scholarly and liturgically precise it is not at all impossible to imagine a clergyman like Simmons drawing on such a work. The Convocation Prayer Book of 1880 is, in many respects, a summary of the liturgical deliberations of the two Convocations in the 1870s. Its full title is: The Convocation Prayer Book, being the Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, according to the Use of the Church of England: with altered Rubrics, showing what would be the condition of the book if amended in conformity with the recommendations of the Convocations of Canterbury and York, contained in Reports presented to Her Majesty the Queen in the Year 1879.

From the evidence of his participation in the debates of the York Convocation and his work on the LFMB, it is clear that Simmons was a significant figure in the production of the Convocation Prayer Book. There are even identifiable echoes of his commentary on the LFMB in some of the suggested ‘altered rubrics’ in the order of Holy Communion in the Book. For example: 1. At the commencement of the service of Holy Communion are added the words: ‘The Priest standing at the North Side of the Table, shall the say the Lord’s Prayer with the Collect following, the people kneeling.’ The word ‘York’ follows the addition (cf. LFMB, B, 91ff and 149ff, and Simmons’ marginal note for the latter: ‘They kneel and say pater-nosters all through the collects and epistle’). 2. ‘Then shall be sung or said the Creed following; the people still standing’ (cf. LFMB, B, 205ff).

liturgies of 1549 and 1662, demonstrating the medieval origins and liturgical superiority of the former, and anticipating arguments of Frere and others later in the century.

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3. After all have communicated: ‘Then shall the Priest say the Lord’s Prayer, the people [kneeling and] repeating after him every petition’ (BCP, 1662; York Convocation omits the added ‘kneeling’: in the LFMB the people are standing (cf. LFMB, B, 483: ‘I wold þou stode vp-right’).77 4. Concluding rubrics: York replaces ‘Offertory’ with ‘Collection of Alms and other devotions of the people’ (cf. LFMB, B, 241ff). It is very clear that the majority of recommended alterations in the Convocation Prayer Book (which possessed no kind of authority in the Church) are from the York Convocation; and many, as we have seen, bear signs of Simmons’ input, drawing on his study of the LFMB.78 Overall the relatively modest proposals suggested in the Convocation Prayer Book were a move in the direction of ‘greater flexibility in services’.79 In other words, it was a modest move away from the Reformation principle of uniformity in the Church of England, reflecting (inter alia) the kind of flexibility seen in the versions of LFMB. The Convocation Prayer Book’s publication in 1880 was, perhaps, the last significant act of liturgical reform in the nineteenth century and certainly the last until the later work of Frere, Brightman and others. It is to their work that we will now turn. The End of the Nineteenth Century At the turn of the new century two major Anglican liturgical scholars, both of whom we have already met, in many ways picked up and continued the work of Simmons: Walter Howard Frere (1863–1938) and Frank Edward Brightman (1856–1932). In an essay on Brightman’s monumental two-volume work The English Rite (London, 1915), Frere recalls the Church to the ‘spirit of conservative reform’ that embraces the Prayer Book of 1549.80 Ten years before this essay was written, Frere, who had worked extensively in the field of the medieval English Uses,81 published a book entitled The Principles of Religious Ceremonial (London, 1906), to be followed by Some Principles of Liturgical Reform (London, 1911). In the first of these volumes reference is made on a number of occasions to Simmons’ edition of the LFMB.82 Early in his career, Frere had produced an edition of medieval offices for the use of students at his old theological college at Wells. This interest in medieval liturgy remained with him and underlay his future work on the contemporary reform of the Prayer Book. In establishing his principles of liturgical reform, Frere made an See the discussion in York Convocation on the use of the Lord’s Prayer above, p. 130. See Jasper, Prayer Book Revision on England, p. 125. 79 Jasper, The Development of Anglican Liturgy, p. 61. 80 Walter Howard Frere (eds. J. H. Arnold and E. G. P. Wyatt), A Collection of His Papers on Liturgical and Historical Subjects (Alcuin Club) (Oxford, 1940), p. 107. The paper was originally published as ‘The English Rite’, Church Quarterly Review, Vol. 82, July 1916. 81 In 1901 Frere published his massive two-volume work on the Use of Sarum, and in 1906 edited, with G. W. Hart, Daniel Rock’s The Church of Our Fathers on the Sarum Rite, first published in 1849. 82 Frere, Principles of Religious Ceremonial, pp. 136, 137; see also Frere’s Some Principles of Liturgical Reform (London, 1911), passim. 77 78

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important point at the outset, and one that might as easily be made today. It is nothing but an innovation in worship at least since the Reformation, he suggests, that ‘the congregation should actively take its share in the worship and know all that is going on’. Indeed, in public worship there is a complex interaction between the priest and the laity, each with a particular role. Frere continued: Primitive Worship made much of the opposite principle: it veiled the most solemn acts, consigned to silence some of the most important words; and instead of aiming that all should be intent on one thing, it aimed rather at providing different actions for different classes of people, so that each had his part, and was less concerned with what others were doing.83

In rather simpler terms and in a discussion of the LFMB, Bernard Lord Manning made the same point in his essay The People’s Faith in the Time of Wyclif (1919), writing that ‘the object of The Lay Folks’ Mass Book was… not to make the congregation understand what the priest was saying. Two devotions, one lay and one clerical, were to proceed at the same time. According to Lyndwood,84 who quoted an early fourteenth-century writer, the Canon of the Mass was said in silence ne impediatur populus orare’ (‘lest the people be impeded in their prayer’).85 It is a quite different understanding of public worship from one in which the lay people either listen attentively to the words of the priest or else follow the service in the words printed in books.86 A great deal of Frere’s book on liturgical revision is taken up with the argument for the return of the shape of the 1549 Holy Communion – after the ‘blunder’ that is 1661 (1662) – following the revisions of 1552 which distorted and fragmented the shape of the eucharistic canon. Two things in particular may be mentioned here. In the context of a dismissal of what he calls the ‘unfortunate’ Shortened Services Act of 1872, Frere offers a lengthy discussion of the proper use of the Lord’s Prayer in liturgical worship, reminiscent of Simmons’ contributions to the York Convocation and his notes in the LFMB. Frere wrote: In the Holy Eucharist it [the Lord’s Prayer] is the climax of the Canon or Prayer of Consecration, for all other prayer only leads up to this; and here especially the petition for daily bread, which from very early Christian tradition is linked with the Communion, has a fullness of application and an appropriateness that cannot be overlooked. Its displacement in our service [1662] is a blunder of the first order; in some other way to be considered later on, this must be repaired.87

Frere, Some Principles of Liturgical Reform, p. 14. William Lyndwood, Bishop of St David’s (c.1375–1446) is best remembered for his Provinciale, a commentary on ecclesiastical decrees enacted in English provincial councils under the presidency of the Archbishops of Canterbury. 85 Manning, The People’s Faith, p. 9. For a more recent and developed version of this point on ‘multiple’ acts of worship in one service, see Barnwell, ‘The Nature of Late Medieval Worship: The Mass’, pp. 207–18. 86 See also Nicholas Orme, Going to Church in Medieval England (New Haven, 2021), pp. 361–4. 87 Frere, Some Principles of Liturgical Reform, p, 134. 83

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The parallel is clear. In the LFMB, the layfolk are to listen for the priest concluding the Prayer of Oblation (‘per omnia secula al on hight’: B, 482). They are now bidden to stand up, and the priest says the Pater noster, the Lord’s Prayer, in a loud voice (‘with hegh steuen’: B, 484) with the people responding to the Latin when they hear the prompt ‘temptacionem/ set libera nos a malo, amen’ (B, 488–9), In short, here in the LFMB is the Lord’s Prayer set precisely as in 1549, at the climax of the canon and said by both priest and people – and exactly as Frere proposes in preference to the ‘blunder’ of the re-ordered 1662 BCP. But more can be said concerning Frere’s comments on the order of the canon, and its connexions with LFMB. In Some Principles of Liturgical Reform, Frere offers a provisional ‘rearrangement’ of the 1662 Canon, bearing 1549 closely in mind.88 The following table indicates (a) Frere’s proposal, (b) 1549, (c) 1662, and (d) LFMB (B-version):

a Frere

b 1549

c 1662

d LFMB B (line number)

Comfortable Words Prayer of Humble Access Sursum corda, etc. Preface and Sanctus Prayer of Consecration Prayer of Oblation Lord’s Prayer

Offertory

Comfortable Words

Offering of Mass penny (242)

Sursum corda, etc. Preface and Sanctus (Intercession [Church Militant]) Prayer of Consecration Prayer of Oblation Lord’s Prayer

Sursum corda, etc Preface and Sanctus Prayer of Humble Access Prayer of Consecration Communion Lord’s Prayer Prayer of Oblation

Secreta (280) Sursum Corda (307) Sanctus (308) (Layfolks’ Intercessions) (328) Prayer of Consecration (398) Prayer of Oblation (477) Lord’s Prayer (480)

It should be admitted that here the canon of the LFMB has been of necessity reconstructed from the Latin ‘prompts’ (probably from the Sarum use, though Simmons would have preferred the Use of York) supplied for the benefit of the layfolk who presumably do not understand Latin. Nevertheless, it is clear that Frere is, as one would expect, closely following the order of 1549 (and therefore Sarum and the earlier medieval uses), the preferred order, as we have seen, of most liturgically literate scholars in the broad Tractarian tradition in the nineteenth century. Second, it is further clear that the reconstructed canon of the LFMB is close to that of 1549, which includes the intercessory prayers (in 1662 called the prayer for ‘the whole state of Christ’s Church militant here in earth’) that in the LFMB the people say simultaneously with the priest who is saying, largely silently, the canon of the Mass. In 1662 this prayer is moved to a place earlier in the service (with the Offertory) after the Creed. Third, the odd one out amongst the versions is clearly 1662, which alone separates the Prayer of Consecration from the Prayer of Oblation, placing the 88

Frere, Some Principles of Liturgical Reform, p. 191.

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Lord’s Prayer (and the Prayer of Oblation) after the Communion itself. Thus, only in 1662 is the Lord’s Prayer not, as Frere puts it, ‘in its proper position… at the climax of the service’.89 Finally, it should be noted that the reconstructed canon of the LFMB follows closely the Canon Missae (Canon of the Mass) in both the Sarum and the York Uses as reconstructed by Maskell and others in the nineteenth century.90 Frere was, as we have seen, not only a scholar but Superior of the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield from 1902–13 and again from 1916–22, then bishop of Truro from 1923. In short, like Simmons, he was a scholar-cleric of the old school. He was also a high churchman, and again like Simmons, involved in national discussions in the church, being at the centre of liturgical discussion in the Church of England in the early years of the twentieth century, a member of the ill-fated Archbishops’ Advisory Committee on Liturgical Questions91 and at the heart of the liturgical arguments in the church in the turbulent years leading up to 1927, and the debacle of 1928.92 In all his debates Frere shows himself to be drawing on the same principles as regards the canon of the eucharist as Simmons had done in the 1870s. He reaches back to what he calls ‘the oldest and most universal liturgical tradition’ in the English Church while remaining firmly concerned with the practical liturgical needs of the Church as opposed to the primarily doctrinal concerns of the Tractarians. The isolation of the Prayer of Consecration (and thus the words of Institution) in 1662 he describes as ‘more Roman than Rome’,93 and, like Simmons before him, he steadfastly resists all Romanising tendencies. One final point is worth making. Frere was firmly of the opinion that ‘the act of consecration is spread over the whole prayer [of Consecration] rather than limited to one formula [the words of Institution]’. Far from being a matter of difficulty ‘this is one of its chief glories’.94 Inasmuch as the canon can be reconstructed from the LFMB and given its concerns for the piety of the layfolk in their attendance upon it, the same principle can only be deduced from it. Thus, the recovery of the late medieval poem which Simmons entitled in 1879 as The Lay Folks’ Mass Book, together with the two later further EETS publications of The Lay Folks’ Prayer Book and The Lay Folks’ Catechism, were not merely acts of antiquarian interest. They were at the very heart of the late Tractarian liturgical revival Frere, Some Principles of Liturgical Reform, p. 124. See Maskell, Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England, pp. 134–55, and Warren (trans.), The Sarum Missal in English, pp. 42–9. 91 See Jasper (ed.), Walter Howard Frere: His Correspondence on Liturgical Revision and Construction, Chapter II, ‘The Advisory Committee on Liturgical Questions’, pp. 26–55. Other members of the Advisory Committee included Professor Swete, Brightman, Christopher Wordsworth and Percy Dearmer. It should be said that during these years the scholarly voices were less and less heard as the political power of the bishops became predominant in liturgical debates. 7 92 See p. 7 above, footnote 24. 93 Frere, Some Principles of Liturgical Reform, p. 187. See also Jasper, Walter Howard Frere: His Correspondence, p. 56. 94 Jasper, Walter Howard Frere: His Correspondence, p. 121. See also, p. 60, on Frere writing in 1915 on the liturgical difficulties of ‘the imbalanced prominence of the Words of Institution’ as effecting consecration. 89

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and debates within the Church of England in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and indeed, played their part in later liturgical reform in the twentieth century.95 Nineteenth-century debates and anxieties concerning ‘Romanizing tendencies’ in the English Church after the Oxford Movement (and the secession of Newman, Wilberforce and others) clearly affected Simmons. These concerns prompted and shaded (for both good and ill) his particular interpretation of the medieval poem, as he laboriously sought to fit it into his sense (along with many others) of the recovery of the catholic and apostolic English (rather than Roman) tradition dating back centuries before the Reformation and feeding into the Prayer Book of 1549, from which the subsequent Book of 1552, and all those that followed were perceived as a sad falling away. Furthermore, after the doctrinal debates of the Tractarians, Simmons was one of those who, as a clergyman and a scholar, held liturgical and practical principles to be of primary importance in a Church of clergy and laity. In 1904, a Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline was appointed to ‘inquire into the alleged prevalence of breaches or neglect of the Law relating to the conduct of Divine Service in the Church of England and to the ornaments and fittings of Churches’.96 Its findings ran to five volumes, published in 1906. The Report of the Royal Commission owed much to Francis Paget (1851–1911), Bishop of Oxford, and exhaustively details the departures in practice in the Church of England from the BCP. This disorder would, no doubt, have appalled Canon Simmons and his attention to liturgical detail in the worship of the Church and the religious life of its people. The Report writes, in summary: The law is also broken by many irregular practices which have attained lesser, and widely different, degrees of prevalence. Some of these are omissions, others err in the direction of excess.97

As we have noted already, modern medieval scholarship has not been kind to clergymen scholars like Simmons, or the Victorian editors of medieval liturgical texts like Maskell or Dickinson. Their principles were driven by liturgical passion in a living tradition which undoubtedly at times led them to wrong conclusions. But they were liturgically well informed and dedicated their learning to the well-being of the church they served. And as the church drew its clergy away from learning, so the study of texts like the LFMB became less absorbed into the living tradition of worship – and something was undoubtedly lost. At the beginning of the widely used Parson’s Handbook, first published in 1899, Percy Dearmer does not mince his words:

95 In some respects, Simmons could even be said to look forward to a standard work like A. G. Hebert’s Liturgy and Society: The Function of the Church in the modern World (London, 1935). Hebert was a member of the Society of the Sacred Mission, an Anglican religious order founded in 1893. Its building, Kelham Hall, was built by George Gilbert Scott between 1859 and 1862, at exactly the same time as St Mary’s at Dalton Holme. 96 Report of the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline (1906), quoted in Cuming, History of Anglican Liturgy, p. 162. 97 Report of the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline, quoted in Cuming, History of Anglican Liturgy, p. 163.

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The object of this Handbook is to help, in however humble a way, towards remedying the lamentable confusion, lawlessness, and vulgarity which are conspicuous in the Church at this time. The confusion is due to the want of liturgical knowledge among the clergy, and of consistent example among those in authority.98

Simmons (whom Dearmer refers to more than once) had only been dead for fifteen years when these words were written; and they would have appalled him. The two main conclusions of the 1906 Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline in its report, can be connected firmly to the guiding principles followed by Simmons: expansive, conservative and disciplined. The report, in Bryan Spinks’ words, ‘paved the way for the 1662 Book of Common Prayer to lose its monopoly as the sole legal form of worship in the Church of England’, leading to the abortive proposal of 1927/1928,99 and eventually to the Alternative Service Book of 1980. The conclusions were as follows: First, the law of public worship in the Church of England is too narrow for the religious life of the present generation. It needlessly condemns much which a great section of Church people, including many of her most devoted members, value… secondly, the machinery for discipline has broken down… it is important that the law should be reformed, that it should admit of reasonable elasticity, and that the means of enforcing it should be improved; but, above all, it is necessary that it should be obeyed.100

It was in this spirit that Simmons worked, combining his labours as a parish priest, as an authoritative voice on the northern Convocation of York, and as a scholar working on the EETS edition of the LFMB. All these activities are connected. Of course, this activity was not at all to recreate or re-enact the medieval world of the LFMB. Nevertheless, it is clear that Simmons’ editorial work on the poem, together with his unfinished work on LFC, contributed directly to his significant contribution to liturgical revision. This contribution was also expressed in Simmons’ parochial work at Dalton Holme, both in terms of his conduct of worship and his catechetical teaching of his people as evidenced in Archbishop Thomson’s visitation records. And as we have seen there is evidence that the LFMB edition left some mark on the proposed rubrical changes in the 1880 Convocation Prayer Book. Furthermore, it is also apparent from the later work of Frere in particular that Simmons’ edition of the LFMB continued to be an important text for Anglican liturgical scholarship and revision up to the time of the 1927–28 Prayer Book controversy, mentioned repeatedly and with respect in the writings of Frere, Brightman, Stone, Wordsworth, Dowden and others. Frere’s arguments for a return to the canon of the 1549 Communion liturgy were in accord with the liturgical views of Simmons as of more extreme ritualists like Orby Shipley, and in fact were to bear fruit in the

Dearmer, The Parson’s Handbook (London, 1903), p. 1. As just noted, for an account see p. 7, footnote 24. 100 Report of the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline, p. 52, quoted in Cuming, History of Anglican Liturgy, p. 163. 98

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worship of the Church of England much later in the twentieth century in the processes leading up to the publication of the Alternative Service Book in 1980. But generally, after 1928, the attention of liturgical scholars and reformers shifted away from the liturgies of the late medieval English Church to more ecumenical concerns (leading eventually to Vatican II), and finally to a return to the liturgies of the Early Church, above all Hippolytus’ Apostolic Tradition.101 On the other hand, the EETS and the wider study of medieval texts and manuscripts became more professional and university-based, and therefore less ‘living’, rather than church and liturgically based, and the age of Simmons, Palmer, Maskell and Henderson itself passed into history. In the process, something was of course gained, but, in addition, something was lost.

101 See, for example, Jasper and Cuming, Prayers of the Eucharist, Early and Reformed [1975]. Dom Gregory Dix’s classic text The Shape of the Liturgy (Westminster, 1945), a work of more than 750 pages, does not reach any discussion of the medieval period until page 546.

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A note on the 1549 Book of Common Prayer, the first Prayer Book of King Edward VI The origins and sources of the 1549 Prayer Book are complex and well researched. Still perhaps the most detailed description is to be found in F. E. Brightman’s The English Rite (London, 1915), to be briefly discussed below.102 The purpose of the following note is not to repeat these descriptions, but to outline liturgical scholarship in the nineteenth century on the subject as a background to Simmons’ edition of the LFMB in 1879, and the role of late medieval liturgical practice and piety in the evolution of the BCP and the subsequent Anglican liturgical tradition. G. J. Cuming notes the speed at which the committee responsible for the Book of 1549, that first assembled in Chertsey Abbey on 9 September 1548, worked. Not only had much groundwork been done (for example, the Litany of 1544, and the Holy Communion of 1548), but a great deal of material was drawn from existing liturgical material, both English and continental. Cuming notes that ‘practically every word of Mattins and Evensong was already in print in English in The King’s Primer’.103 Most significantly, Cuming suggests that in the office of Mattins, ‘the first four pairs of preces which follow [the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer] are taken from the Bidding of the Bedes, which would be more familiar to the laity than the versions of the Breviary’.104 Using the reformed Breviary of Cardinal Quiñones (undertaken at the direction of Clement VII), Cranmer went far beyond Quiñones ‘in simplifying and abridging the medieval services’.105 With regard to Holy Communion, entitled in 1549, ‘The Supper of the Lorde and the Holy Communion, commonly called the Masse’,106 Cranmer follows almost exactly the order of the Sarum rite, and thus the order as far as it can be reconstructed in the LFMB. In addition, Cuming indicates evidence of the use of early fifteenth century devotional vernacular manuals, naming in particular William Bond’s The Pilgrimage of Perfection (1526),107 thus indicating Cranmer’s readiness to use such material from popular piety in his liturgy. Cuming finally emphasises the conservative nature of 1549: Medieval practice in the matter of attendance is continued: all must attend weekly, but need communicate only once a year; during divine service the congregation are to occupy themselves ‘with devout prayer or godly silence and meditation’.108

Even so, the inherently conservative reaction to the 1549 book went as far as the Western Rebellion when armed crowds met on Bodmin Moor in protest against the new Book. In Sampford Courtenay in Devon on 9 and 10 June 1549, for instance, the parish priest was forced to abandon his introduction of the new book and ‘the defiant Brightman, The English Rite, Vol. 1, pp. lxxviii – cxxx. Cuming, History of Anglican Liturgy, p. 46. 104 Cuming, History of Anglican Liturgy, p. 50. See further Coxe, Forms of Bidding Prayer, and – for texts – Simmons (ed.), LFMB, pp. 61–80. 105 Cuming, History of Anglican Liturgy, p. 51. 106 ‘The Supper of the Lorde’ is the name for the service given by Hermann von Wied. ‘The Masse’ is both medieval and Lutheran, and ‘Holy Communion’ is the vernacular name for the first time applied to the whole service. 107 Cited in Cuming, History of Anglican Liturgy, p. 54. 108 Cuming, History of Anglican Liturgy, p. 58 (emphases added). 102 103

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reintroduction of the old rite sparked widespread enthusiasm throughout Devon’.109 Conservatism, then as now, is perhaps the major hurdle facing any liturgical reformer. One small, but highly significant critical debate is of some significance for the ordering to be found in the LFMB. G. J. Cuming, and even more definitively and recently Diarmaid MacCulloch, have sought to correct Brightman’s contention that as the canon of the Sarum rite contained a fourfold offering (of the eucharistic elements, of thanksgiving, of Christ, and of the whole Church), Cranmer’s 1549 rite still contained a threefold offering (of Christ ‘once offered’, of thanksgiving, and of the whole Church.) Cuming describes the 1549 rite as limited to two offerings only, these being the offering of Christ ‘once only’ on the cross and then conflating the offering of thanksgiving and of the whole Church. In other words, the offering of Christ ‘then’ and of the Church ‘now’ are to be clearly separated.110 However, this was an argument made by Cranmer himself in his Defence of the Sacrament only in 1550, when already the more radical liturgy of 1552 was being considered. It does not therefore relate to the earlier rite of 1549. Furthermore, the threefold structure of the canon of 1549 not only relates closely to Sarum, but the presence of the intercessory prayer (later to be known as the ‘Prayer for the whole state of Christ’s Church militant here in earth’) directly after the Preface and before the prayer of consecration would be entirely familiar to the layfolk of the LFMB as they are encouraged to pray for Church, king and country while the priest is speaking (in Latin, and silently) the words of the canon (LFMB, B, lines 360 ff.). Bishop John Dowden’s The Workmanship of the Prayer Book (London, 1899) begins with a clear statement, quoting the authority of Henry Barclay Swete’s Church Services and Service Books before the Reformation (London, 1896): ‘The English Prayer Book is, in the main, a revision of pre-Reformation service books.’111 Dowden refers to the medieval abuses of doctrine that required amending, but also the complexity and elaboration of the services ‘intended to be understood and taken part in by the general body of the lay people’.112 In this, and in his later work Further Studies in the Prayer Book (London, 1908), Dowden refers on a number of occasions to Simmons and to his edition of the LFMB as an authority and measure by which late medieval liturgical practice should be judged.113 Dowden draws attention to the Preface of the 1549 Book as important in establishing principles of liturgical MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, p. 430. See MacCulloch, pp. 412–13. See also, Colin Buchanan, What did Cranmer think he was doing? (Bramcote, 1976), p. 18. 111 John Dowden, The Workmanship of the Prayer Book (London, 1899), p. 15. For Dowden, see p. 22, note 33 above. 112 Dowden, The Workmanship of the Prayer Book, p. 15. 113 Dowden, The Workmanship of the Prayer Book, pp. 98, 109. In the latter reference, Dowden notes the custom indicated in the LFMB that while the priest says the Nicene Creed, the lay folk say the Apostles’ Creed, noting, ‘It was probably as sensible a direction as could be given at the time; but we have all, clergy and people, much cause to be thankful that now the whole body of the faithful can with one voice join in the one great Creed, which is the utterance of the faith of the West and East alike.’ Clearly Dowden subscribes to the view that liturgy should be adaptable to the needs of time and place and should be ‘sensible’. References to ‘the learned liturgist’ Simmons and the LFMB appear at several points in Dowden’s Further Studies in the Prayer Book (London, 1908), viz. pp. 85, 176, 189. 109 110

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practice and revision. This Preface confirms the two great ‘inconveniences’ of late medieval liturgical practice in England: the first that the services were in Latin ‘so that they have heard with their ears only; and their hearts, spirit and mind have not been edified thereby’. Second, there was great diversity of practice in Salisbury, Hereford, Bangor, York and Lincoln, and ‘now from henceforth all the realm shall have but one use’. Nevertheless, although the ‘decent order of the ancient fathers’ should be maintained in true catholic and apostolic manner, the principle of continuity and development must be observed. In short, the 1549 Prayer Book is not a radical break from previous practice, but a proper development from it and an opportunity to eliminate doctrinal and practical abuses. Its essential conservatism liturgically, if not always doctrinally, should be acknowledged, while recognising that (to quote from the first sentence of the Preface of 1549): There was never anything by the wit of man so well devised, or so surely established, which (in continuance of time) hath not been corrupted: as (among other things) it may plainly appear by the common prayers in the Church, commonly called divine service. 114

Liturgy is a practical exercise that needs, like all things, revision and amendment from time to time, while yet holding fast to ancient traditions. Dowden notes at some length also the influence of Cardinal Quiñones on Cranmer and 1549, the very Preface just quoted from being in part a direct quotation from that of Quiñones himself. Liturgical revision in 1549 was not simply the making Protestant an erstwhile Catholic liturgy, but Cranmer’s principles of revision were derived in great part from the work of a liturgical reformer in the Roman Catholic Church, working at the behest of the Pope. There remains a brief mention to be made of Leighton Pullan’s The History of the Book of Common Prayer (London, 1901), published as a volume in the Oxford Library of Practical Theology edited by W. C. E. Newbolt and Darwell Stone. Pullan mentions Simmons’ long note on the variation of the Apostles’ Creed,115 though without adopting the reference to Heurtley’s Harmonica Symbolica (1858) that indicates that the LFMB’s replacement of the company of saints with the blessed sacrament (‘Credo in… sanctorum communionem’) was by no means unique. Pullan examines in some detail the new English ‘Order’ of the mass, published on 8 March, 1548, and very largely incorporated into the BCP of 1549, noting that: The ‘supper of the Lord and the Holy Communion, commonly called the Mass’ was almost wholly adapted from the Sarum Missal, except that it incorporated the Order of the Communion of 1548 after the consecration of the elements.116

G. J. Cuming centres the liturgical debates in the Church of England in the early years of the twentieth century on three figures we have regularly encountered in 114 115 116

The First Prayer Book of King Edward VI, pp. 3–5. At Simmons (ed.), LFMB, pp. 225–8. Leighton Pullan, The History of the Book of Common Prayer (London, 1901), p. 87.

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this narrative: Frere, Dearmer and Brightman. All were members of the Alcuin Club. Brightman’s parallel texts of 1549, 1552 and 1662 (with a further column for ‘sources’) was a natural descendant of earlier works such as Edward Cardwell’s The Two Books of Common Prayer (Oxford, 1838) and William Keeling’s Liturgiae Britannicae (London, 1842) and, from a far more scholarly perspective, the work of Charles Wheatly in the early eighteenth and William Palmer in the early nineteenth century. Brightman’s edition remains a standard reference work, though to a certain degree now overtaken by Brian Cummings’ The Book of Common Prayer: The Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662 (Oxford, 2011).117 Referring the reader to Dom Gasquet and Edmund Bishop’s Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer (1890), Brightman describes Cranmer’s work on the canon of the mass before and including 1549 as ‘experimental’.118 Brightman gives six principal sources for the Order of Communion and the offices of the 1549 Book: 1, Holy Scripture; 2, ‘the traditional Latin rite’; 3, the Mozarabic and Eastern Orthodox rites (in some small part); 4, continental Catholic reforming documents, above all Quiñones; 5, the Litany of 1544 (with the Communion of 1548, omitting certain elements such as invocations of the saints and three collects); 6, Lutheran sources. Brightman makes it perfectly clear that there is a natural liturgical (if not always doctrinal) progression from Sarum to 1549, although it is a simplification in both rite and ceremony. One further small point should be made that is relevant to the medieval manuscripts of the LFMB and other liturgical texts. Earlier Latin printed books had rubrics in red throughout, as does the Litany of 1544. ‘But the book of 1549 has red only in the preliminary matter and the kalendar…, the rubrics elsewhere being distinguished only by smaller type.119 This will be taken up later,120 noting here only Proctor and Frere’s comment that in 1549 ‘rubric was a novelty’, and that old books and late medieval books ‘were equally destitute’.121 Beyond the end of the nineteenth century, and culminating in the wrangles over the Proposed Prayer Book of 1927–8,122 these discussions of the medieval background to the 1549 Prayer Book and its liturgy, within which Simmons played a not insignificant part, rather faded away and fell into the hands of academics who were not clergy.

117 It should be noted, interestingly, that Brian Cummings is a professor of English literature rather than a liturgist. He is perhaps best known for his splendid book concerned with literature and theology, The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace (Oxford, 2002). 118 Brightman, The English Rite, Vol. 1, p. lxxvi. 119 Brightman, The English Rite, Vol. 1, p. lxxxiv. 120 See Appendix I below for a discussion of rubrication in the B-version of LFMB. 121 Francis Proctor (rev. Walter Howard Frere), A New History of the Book of Common Prayer (London, 1949), p. 470. 122 For a brief account of this see Jasper, The Development of the Anglican Liturgy, 1662– 1980, pp. 113–46, ‘The Proposed Prayer Book of 1927–8.’

7 The Afterlives of The Lay Folks’ Mass Book

The Church Quarterly Review

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hat Simmons’ work was taken very seriously in his time is evidenced by a lengthy and – in accordance with contemporary fashion – anonymous review of his edition, in the Church Quarterly Review (CQR), the highchurch journal encountered in the previous chapter.1 Discussion of Simmons’ work is there linked to reviews of the work of Maskell (Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicanae), of Henderson on the York Rite, and of H. T. Kingdon (Vice-Principal of what was then Salisbury Theological College), and of the third Marquess of Bute.2 Beginning with the Roman liturgy, and ‘books provided for the use of Roman Catholic laymen in England’,3 the CQR review goes on to observe that ‘since the early days of the Catholic revival, the study of our early insular services has received considerable impulse’.4 Reference is made to Palmer’s Origines Liturgicae, and to the recognition by Isaac Williams that attention to the Sarum Use quickly dispels the false assumption of ‘innovations on the part of the Reformers’. After Newman in 1839, Williams had brought to popular attention ‘the hymns of a nearer continental Breviary (the Parisian, no longer now a living use.)’ The developing understanding of the history and forms of the BCP is noted alongside such works as Scudamore’s Notitia Eucharistica (1866), Medd’s The Priest to the Altar (1861),5 John Fuller Russell’s (1813–1884) Hierurgia Anglicana, published for the Cambridge Camden 1 ‘Lay Folk’s [sic] Prayer-Books’, Church Quarterly Review, Vol. IX, No. 18, January 1880, pp. 429–40. 2 We have met Maskell and Henderson on several occasions before. Kingdon’s publication was a short paper entitled An Early Vernacular Service, read to the Wiltshire Archaeological Society in 1877. It deals with four lines of Middle English verse, with accompanying musical notation. These lines appear as an addition on folio 159b to Salisbury, Cathedral Chapter Library, MS 152 (the Arlingham Breviary), for which see https://collections. salisburycathedral.org.uk/download?id=9390, last consulted 30 August 2022. John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, third Marquess of Bute (1847–1900), was a prominent Roman Catholic convert. His translation of The Roman Breviary (two volumes, London and Edinburgh, 1879), reviewed in CQR, was his most ambitious literary project (ODNB). 3 ‘Lay Folk’s Prayer Books’, p. 432. 4 ‘Lay Folk’s Prayer Books’, p. 434. 5 For Scudamore, see p. 76 above; for Medd, see p. 133. A third revised edition of A Priest to the Altar was published in 1879, the same year as the LFMB.

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Society in 1848, (and re-edited by Vernon Staley in 1902),6 and – another work already referred to – Proctor’s History of the Book of Common Prayer (1855), which remains even today in authoritative use through its substantial revision by Walter Howard Frere (1901).7 The CQR review-article continues with a substantial bibliographical commentary on nineteenth-century scholarship in the medieval English liturgical tradition, beginning with Francis Henry Dickinson’s still useful List of Printed Service Books, According to the Ancient Uses of the Anglican Church (London, 1850),8 and with texts of breviaries, missals and pontifical published by the Bannatyne Club, and, in particular, the Surtees Society. Significant also is the publication of C. Walker’s Sarum Missal in English.9 The writer in the CQR, like most of his contemporaries and unlike their modern successors, accepts Simmons’ thesis about the identity of ‘Dan Jeremy’ and the French origin of the LFMB in Rouen without question, and also acknowledges Simmons’ interest in language and dialect. The review follows Simmons’ lead in assuming that the work was ‘adapted for gentlefolk who had retainers’, and that ‘It points to a time when the Mass was rather more congregational in character than it afterwards became.’10 Somewhat unlike Bernard Lord Manning’s almost complete separation of the liturgy of the priest and people, CQR follows Simmons closely in recognising that the rubrics more particularly ‘direct the worshippers’ attention to the action of the priest and his words’.11 Simmons’ sensitivity to historical liturgical niceties is acknowledged by CQR, which appreciates such delicate observations as, for example, Simmons’ discussion of the use of wooden rather than stone altars before the Reformation, his identification of passages from the missal translated in LFMB, or his lengthy note12 on the ‘curious farsura’ relating to the doctrine of the real presence at the end of the English translation of the Apostles’ Creed. CQR also applauds Simmons’ more detailed claims that different versions of the LFMB suggest changes from the original Rouen use13 to the English use. One rather marvels,

6 Russell was one of the first Cambridge students to engage with the Oxford Movement; he was a prominent Ecclesiologist, and a council member of the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Archaeological Institute. His last church appointment was as rector of Greenhithe in Kent, a position which he held from 1856 to his death. In the 1848 Preface to the Hierurgia Anglicana, which deals primarily with the post-Reformation Anglican Church, we read of ‘the observance by the Elizabethan and Caroline prelates and clergy, and in particular, by Andrewes, Laud, and Cosin, of many uses practised by the medieval Church, and about which the reformed office-book is wholly silent’ (from Vernon Slaley [ed.] second edition, part 1, London, 1902, p. xvii). 7 For Frere, see above p. 137. Francis Proctor (1847–1900) is described on the title page as ‘Vicar of Witton, Norfolk’; as we have seen, he was an EETS subscriber in 1873. 8 For Dickinson, see p. 45 above. 9 Charles Walker (trans.), The Liturgy of the Church of Sarum (London, 1868); see also the later Warren (trans.), Sarum Missal in English. Apart from the work of Maskell, the Sarum Missal in Latin was not published in full until 1861. 10 ‘Lay Folk’s Prayer Books’, p. 444. 11 ‘Lay Folk’s Prayer Books’, p. 444; see Manning, People’s Faith in the Time of Wyclif. 12 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, pp. 222–7. 13 It is noted that this Rouen rite was also used in Lincoln in the eleventh century.

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from an early twenty-first-century perspective, at the presumed scholarly readership of the CQR, as implied by statements such as follows: A possible reminiscence of the Gallican Collectio post Sanctus is noted at p. 272 [of the LFMB], and the similarity between the private intercessions at the Canon and the Eucharistic litanies of the Greek Church cannot fail to strike the reader.14

CQR concludes its lengthy article with the following observation, interesting in the context of the growing interest in liturgical revision in later nineteenth-century England: … we have before us already a highly interesting collection of material which bears witness to the religious cravings of the less learned people of England for prayers intelligible to themselves – in the fifteenth century and before it.15

In this statement, CQR is following the clear suggestion offered by Simmons at the beginning of his Introduction to his edition, where, assuming the principle of lex orandi, lex credendi, he remarks that although the LFMB has no ecclesiastical authority, nevertheless, ‘the common prayers may be accepted as the best evidence of the creed of a church’.16 Although, following Simmons himself, CQR fully appreciated the largely secular nature of EETS and understood that ‘theological controversy is carefully avoided out of respect to the character of the Society for which he edits’,17 it is clear that at least one group of readers – subscribers to CQR were profoundly interested in liturgical revision – saw in the LFMB something that spoke to their own distinctive agendas. Moreover, although much of Simmons’ editorial practice aligned with contemporary ideas on textual editing of the kind characteristic of the early years of EETS, it is also clear from the way he presented his edition that he was keen, even if sotto voce, to address this liturgically-engaged audience as well. Simmons, then, was part of a lively and scholarly contemporary Anglican revival of interest in early and pre-Reformation English liturgy, as has been flagged in earlier chapters of this book, and he was clearly widely respected for his scholarship both in and beyond the Church, as the CQR writer suggests. After Simmons In 1890, six years after the death of Canon Simmons, the Henry Bradshaw Society was founded, its guiding light being J. Wickham Legg (1843–1921), a physician turned liturgist and a prominent Anglican layman.18 Amongst its early membership was a ‘Lay Folk’s Prayer Books’, p. 447. ‘Lay Folk’s Prayer Books’, p. 448. 16 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. xvii. We might compare Newman, ‘On Consulting the Laity in Matters of Doctrine’,, in which Newman comments that ‘their [the laity’s] belief is sought for as a testimony to that apostolical tradition, on which alone any doctrine whatsoever can be defined.’ 17 ‘Lay Folk’s Prayer Books’, p. 445. 18 Christopher Irvine has written of a group of Anglican liturgical scholars of the time which ‘includes those like John Wickham Legg, Pearcy Dearmer and Vernon Staley, who, though limited by their antiquarian fascination and narrow vision of English religious 14 15

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galaxy of Anglican clergy and scholars including Christopher Wordsworth, Brightman,19 and the young Frere, already (as we have seen) a monk of the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield, Yorkshire.20 Among the Society’s early supporters in the Anglican hierarchy were the archbishop of Canterbury (E. W. Benson) and the bishops of Oxford, Durham, Carlisle and Salisbury, among many others.21 The Society’s early proposals for editing included work from figures like Simmons’ old friend, Dean W. G. Henderson of Carlisle (for the Hereford Breviary, twelfth-century Pontificals and the Hours of York, Durham and Sarum), W. C. Bishop (Bangor Antiphoner) and Wickham Legg himself (The Westminster Missal). This learned society for the study of liturgy, taking its name from the distinguished Cambridge librarian, was thus still rooted in the life of the Church of England rather than the universities and academy. Early meetings of the group were held, significantly perhaps, in the premises of the Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, and in the Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster Abbey. Such men made an eager audience for Simmons’ work on LFMB, and his edition continued, in the decades after his death, to be much cited, as in Christopher Wordsworth and Henry Littlehales in The Old Service-Books of the English Church (London, 1904), who refer to Simmons’ ‘excellent edition’ of the LFMB.22 Similarly, John Dowden, in Further Studies in the Prayer Book (London, 1908) quotes at length from LFMB (p. 236) in relationship to the question of ‘alms and oblations’.23 The LFMB is briefly mentioned in Percy Dearmer’s widely read Parson’s Handbook (London, 1899), a work that attempted ‘to recall the church to the native English tradition (‘the English Use’) in matters of liturgy and ceremonial rather than imitating Roman

practice, were concerned with the setting and conduct of worship.’ Introduction to Christopher Irvine (ed.), They Shaped Our Worship: Essays on Anglican Liturgists (London, 1998), p. 2. This verdict perhaps rather underplays Wickham Legg’s considerable scholarship. Wickham Legg (1843–1921) had as indicated a career of two parts, the first being as a leading medical practitioner whose treatise on Haemophilia (1872) became a standard work. He retired because of ill health in 1887, devoting himself after then to liturgical scholarship, where he swiftly achieved comparable distinction. 19 Frank Edward Brightman (1856–1932) was ordained as a priest in 1885, but spent much of his career (1884–1902) as a librarian at Pusey House, subsequently being appointed to a fellowship at Magdalen College where he stayed for the rest of his life. During debates on the revision of the Prayer Book in 1927 a devastating article from his pen in the Church Quarterly Review influenced church opinion, being critical of almost every change in the book: ‘Among the new contents of the book I seem to have noticed three things, and perhaps only three, which are of real distinction’ (ODNB). 20 We have encountered Walter Howard Frere (1863–1938) on several occasions already. In addition to his ecumenical work, he was a major figure in the prayer-book revisions that distressed Brightman. 21 See Ward and Johnson, ‘The Henry Bradshaw Society’. Today the Henry Bradshaw Society is comprised almost entirely of professional academics, but even in the twentieth century its presidents included such distinguished Anglican clerics as the liturgist Canon E. C. Ratcliff, the Very Rev Eric Milner-White, Dean of York, and Bishop John R. H. Moorman. The Rev Professor Henry Chadwick spanned both worlds of church and academy. 22 Wordsworth and Littlehales, The Old Service-Books of the English Church, pp. 284–6. 23 Dowden, Further Studies in the Prayer Book, p. 189. For Dowden, see above p. 22, footnote 33.

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Catholic usages’ (ODNB). And Bernard Lord Manning, in his prize-winning essay The People’s Faith in the Time of Wyclif (Cambridge, 1917), relied heavily on the LFMB for his account of the popular reception and understanding of the Mass in the late Middle Ages; he thus fully accepted Simmons’ raison d’etre for the title. For Manning, LFMB illustrated how the Mass of the priest and the Mass of the people were two almost discrete and simultaneous events in one. He then – anticipating later ‘re-enactments’ of medieval uses by John Harper and others26 – argued as follows: 24

25

The Lay Folks’ Mass Book was not a translation of the liturgy. It rested on a theory that the priest and the layman ought to approach God, not by the same, but by different ways. Even their creeds were not identical; the priest used the Nicene formula, the people an English version of the Apostles Creed.27 Some of the prayers were adapted from the liturgy; and some parts, like the Gloria in Excelsis, Sursum Corda, and Agnus Dei were translated and expanded. To translate the whole of the liturgy would have been regarded as an act of desecration. Though some of it might be rendered into English with propriety, there was a deep-rooted feeling against any such treatment of the more sacred parts.28

The purpose of the LFMB, then, according to Manning, was not to explain to the lay people what the priest was saying in Latin, but was written that, in Simmons’ words, ‘the more educated class’29 could say their prayers in the context of a Mass that, perhaps surprisingly, ‘remained unintelligible and uninteresting’.30 One of the most interesting discussions of Simmons’ LFMB is in the History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (London, 1909) by Darwell Stone (1859–1941). Stone uses LFMB to exemplify ‘the way in which practical effect was given to the doctrine ordinarily held in the thirteenth century’, accepting entirely uncritically Simmons’ thesis as to the Rouen origin of the work.31 Stone was a leading conservative, Anglo-Catholic high churchman – he preferred the formula ‘English Catholic’ – who at the time he wrote his magnum opus was Principal of Pusey House, founded in Dearmer (1867–1936) was a remarkable man: a Christian Socialist, and an enthusiastic member of the Alcuin Club (founded 1897), he was deeply interested in the connexion between religion and art, became professor of ecclesiastical art at King’s College London, and was even made an honorary Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Towards the end of his life, as a canon of Westminster Abbey, he became well-known as a broadcaster of services for children (see e.g. https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/c69ee307fa4d488a9217a95ac194fdf6, last consulted 1 August 2022). His son Geoffrey (1893–1996) was a distinguished Great War poet. 25 Manning (1892–1941) was a fellow of Jesus College Cambridge and university lecturer in medieval history. One of the most eminent historians of religion of his day, he was a ‘staunch’ Congregationalist, but ‘possessed the ecumenical mind to a pre-eminent degree’ (ODNB). 26 See below, p. 160. 27 See also Heurtley, Harmonia Symbolica, quoted in Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 226. For Heurtley, see p. 104, note 50 above. 28 Manning, People’s Faith, pp. 8–9. 29 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. xxvii. 30 Manning, People’s Faith, p. 9. 31 Stone, A History, Vol. 1, pp. 356–9. Stone describes how ‘the LFMB was written by Dan Jeremy, who may have been Canon of Rouen and afterwards Archdeacon of Cleveland, in French probably in the twelfth century’ (p. 356). 24

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1884 to commemorate one of the Oxford Movement’s greatest adherents.32 For Stone, LFMB provided direct evidence for pre-Reformation liturgical practice for ‘the way in which practical effect was given to the doctrine [of transubstantiation] ordinarily held in the thirteenth century [sic]’ .33 In particular, Stone noted how the LFMB describes the housel as both flesh and blood, and that during the consecration the people are requested to kneel at the elevation and ‘do reverence to Christ’s own presence’ with directions as to how they should pray. Unlike Simmons, Stone wrote extensively on the matter of ecclesiology and the sacraments, in particular the Eucharist, drawing on William Palmer’s Treatise on the Church of Christ (London, 1838) and its ‘branch theory’,34 with its principles of unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity. From Stone, whom Cross describes as ‘a true son of the Oxford Movement’,35 we perceive a churchmanship that might well be close to that of Simmons himself, understanding the Church of England as drawing in both theology and devotion from patristic and medieval sources. For Stone, despite any faults or anomalies, the English Church was indeed a ‘fragment of the church universal’, its life rooted in the Eucharist and its central place in Christian history and devotion. In Darwell Stone’s developed ecclesiology there are clearly echoes of Simmons and his engagement, as a devout Anglican, in the devotional life of the pre-Reformation English Church, as manifested in LFMB. Other views of the work of Simmons and his friends were more nuanced in their engagement with the past. One early adherent of the Henry Bradshaw Society is in this context of particular note: the deeply learned Catholic layman and liturgist Edmund Bishop, who had contributed as we have seen an important essay to Littlehales’ edition of LFPB.36 He was not the only Roman Catholic to support the new society, others including Dom (later Cardinal) Aidan Gasquet, with whom Bishop wrote Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer (London, 1891), Mgr. Louis Duchesne,37 and others. But the question of Edmund Bishop’s place amongst the officers of the new society quickly became an issue after efforts were made at the meeting in the Jerusalem Chamber on 25 October, 1890 to confine the offices of the new 32 See further F. L. Cross, Darwell Stone: Churchman and Counsellor (Westminster, 1943), Chapter III, ‘The Creed of an English Catholic’, pp. 36–74. 33 Stone, A History, Vol. 1, pp. 356–9; cf. LFMB, B-version, line 403. In the 1549 Prayer Book the elevation is expressly forbidden, at the offertory the priest turning to the altar ‘without any elevacion, or shewing the Sacrament to the people’ (Cummings ed., The Book of Common Prayer, p. 31). It will be observed how Stone focuses on the elevation. 34 See p. 74 above. Palmer’s ‘branch theory’ was referred to by Stone in a sermon preached in Brighton in 1896. See further Cross, Darwell Stone, pp. 55ff, which deals with Palmer’s Treatise on the Church of Christ, and the ‘branch theory’. Cross remarks that ‘Stone made this doctrine his own’ (p. 56). 35 Cross, Darwell Stone, p. 65. 36 Edmund Bishop (1846–1917) started his career as a civil servant, but combined his day-job with sustained research in the British Museum; subsequent publications established his reputation as a brilliant medieval historian. He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1867. After retiring from the civil service in 1885 he became closely associated with the Benedictine community at Downside, where he spent much time. 37 Author of Christian Worship, Its Origin and Evolution: A Study of the Latin Liturgy up to the Time of Charlemagne (London, 1903). Originally written in French, Duchesne’s study was quickly translated into English and became a standard text.

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Society to Protestants (effectively Anglicans) only. As a result, on 17 November Bishop wrote to Wickham Legg, with whom he was personally on friendly terms, that he was not able to accept an invitation to serve on the Council of the Society on the following grounds. The materials, he wrote in his letter, which ‘the Society proposes to itself to deal with are not mere antiquarian survivals of a dead past but are historical records of a living rite’.39 Legg would certainly not have disagreed with this. Liturgy could properly only be studied as a living tradition within the continuing life of the church and its public worship. It cannot be rightly considered outside this context. (Simmons, at this point, would no doubt have further heartily agreed with Edmund Bishop.) But Bishop then goes on in his letter to Wickham Legg: 38

No one can deal with mediaeval ‘uses’ without finding that the written document would often be unintelligible or even wrongly interpreted, without reference to the living rite. On looking over the proposed list of officers for the coming year I find, with the exception of Delisle40 (who is remote) and myself, exclusively the names of those who – it is a matter of simple and undeniable fact – are separated from this tradition by a chasm of more than three centuries of – to touch the matter with a light hand – disuse and neglect.

Bishop, the Roman Catholic, was, of course, referring to the Protestant condition of the Church of England. Quite simply, the discontinuity and liturgical rupture effected by the English Reformation invalidated, at least in Bishop’s eyes, the Anglican scholars and churchmen from participation in the ‘living’ tradition of the Western liturgy. Wickham Legg’s position as an Anglican, hardly surprisingly, was rather different. In his edition of Cranmer’s Liturgical Projects, published for the Henry Bradshaw Society in 1915, Legg wrote of the true continuity of the ‘English’ tradition, summarising his thinking about the ‘change of rite’ in the 1549 Prayer Book: In Cranmer’s time the Roman and the local Breviaries, like that of Sarum, had departed from [the ideal of continuous reading of Scripture and the Psalms], and yet it is possible to detect the original scheme in the books of the period, whether written or printed, containing the Divine Service; though hardly to be found in the daily practice of the clergy, for the overfilling of the Calendar with festivals had caused the weekly recitation of the whole psalter to cease, and the lessons from the Bible to be replaced by the legends of the saints. Thus a very grave departure from the original purpose of the Divine Service had been brought into the Western Church.41

In short, it was, at least according to Wickham Legg, in the Roman tradition that the liturgy and offices had broken down under the weight of accretions, Cranmer’s

See Abercrombie, The Life and Work of Edmund Bishop, p. 162. These exclusivist efforts were ultimately unsuccessful. 39 Ward and Johnson, ‘The Henry Bradshaw Society’. 40 Léopold Delisle (1826–1910) was the director of the Department of Manuscripts at the Bibliothèque nationale and a noted student of medieval manuscripts. 41 Quoted in Salisbury, Worship in Medieval England, pp. 26–7. 38

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simplified English liturgy of 1549, on the other hand, recovering the ‘original purpose’ of the liturgy in essential continuity with ancient traditions.42 This was, of course, the position argued vigorously by many high-church Anglican scholars and certainly shared by Simmons, with their further focus on the ‘Gallican’ tradition and the English Uses as distinct from the Roman Rite.43 (Bishop, like Pfaff after him, was dismissive of Simmons’ link between Rouen and the York Use in the LFMB, and by other Anglican scholars of the close connection between Rouen and Sarum.44) In 1866 the eccentric but learned Orby Shipley wrote an extended essay comparing and contrasting the liturgies of 1549 and 1662 which describes Cranmer’s first Prayer Book and its liturgy of Holy Communion ‘commonly called the Masse’ as ‘a desirable prize for Churchmen to strive after’ as it brings ‘the later English liturgy into stricter conformity with the earlier Sarum Use’. Shipley laments ‘how sadly the order and arrangement of the first English Communion Service has been departed from’.45 Very much the same argument for the desirability for recovering the order and canonical coherence of 1549 was made by W. H. Frere in his book Some Principles of Liturgical Reform (1911). Significantly Frere suggests that there are two distinct groups of people who would benefit from the restoration of the 1549 canon with its roots in the medieval rite, after the ‘blunders’ and dislocations to be found in the 1662 Prayer Book: The first [group] consists of simple people, who naturally find the Eucharist the easiest of our services to follow, because of its dramatic action, but are thrown out by its present dislocation…. The second set of people who are hurt by the present Order consists of a growing number of clergy and others who are barely able to be satisfied with the jejuneness of our Consecration Prayer.46

Frere emphasises both the continuity of ‘English rite’ with its medieval predecessors – and its distinctiveness. He writes, stressing the essential ‘simplicity’ of the English tradition: The English rite, though it proceeds in the main from the mediaeval Latin rites, has a distinctive character of its own… The early mediaeval ritual was as full of 42 We might compare the Roman Catholic Louis Bouyer (trans. Charles Underhill), Eucharist (Notre Dame, 1968): ‘The Eucharist buried under untraditional formularies and interpretations’, pp. 381–4. 43 As already noted (see p. 77 above, footnote 53), Matthew Cheung Salisbury has pointed out that this ‘English’ continuity was ‘not true, and Bishop knew it… As he was a Catholic convert, this was both amusing and annoying to him, and his antipathy to Anglican historians is recorded in some of his writings’ (Worship in Medieval England, p. 31). Bishop’s argument is found most fully in the papers which comprise his Liturgica Historica: Papers on the Liturgy and Religious Life of the Western Church. 44 Bishop, ‘Holy Week Rites of Sarum, Hereford and Rouen Compared’, in Liturgica Historica, p. 277. 45 Orby Shipley, ‘The Liturgies of 1549 and 1662 Contrasted and Compared’, in Shipley (ed.) The Church and the World: Essays on Questions of the Day (London, 1866), pp. 502–48, pp. 505, 512. 46 Frere, Some Principles, pp. 192, 193.

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ornament as a rich Gothic building…. One great characteristic of the English rite is its return to massive and even bare simplicity.47

Frere, then, is arguing for both the living connection between the liturgy of the late medieval English church and yet also the difference in the experience of the worshippers before and after the bridge of the Reformation. In his recovery of the LFMB, similarly, Simmons was aware that this text was to be understood in the context of a distinct experience of public worship which changed with the imposition of English in public worship after 1549, with the Act of Uniformity of 1549, and with the greater availability of the printed word in a society increasingly able to access books and read them. Frere was perfectly well aware of the clear distinction between the clerical and the lay roles in the medieval Mass. They had different parts to play: From the nature of the case, there has always been a distinction between the ministerial and the congregational part of the service… The celebrant had necessarily his ministers to attend on him, some sharing with him in the recitation of the service, some ministering in the ceremonies accompanying the rite, some singing the music which alternated with the lessons and the prayers; while the congregation itself… had its own gradations, and took a greater or a smaller part in the service accordingly.48

Simmons would have fully understood what is being said here. As a late Tractarian clergyman he was entirely conscious of the distinction between the priestly celebrant and the laity, and given the Tractarian emphasis on the disciplina arcani,49 of the need to preserve the mystery of the sacrament. Indeed, as Isaac Williams made clear in Tracts 80 and 87, ‘On Reserve in Communicating Religious Knowledge’ (1837, 1840), the ‘want of reverence’ so prevalent in the modern world was destructive and the ‘sacred principle more than ever needed’ in the church. The mystery of the sacrament must remain. Indeed there is good reason to believe that Simmons drew deeply on Williams’s controversial50 tracts on reserve. Both men were committed to the parochial life of the Church together with the fundamental place of the sacraments in it. In Tract 80 Williams writes of the proper virtues of the building of new churches in words that might have resonated with Simmons during the building of St Mary’s: It is indeed one of the most natural expressions of a heart rightly disposed, as offerings made to GOD, arising in Him, and resting in Him as their end; and therefore there can be no means of promoting the cause of religion higher and better than such. They must ever bring down a blessing, as putting the cause into Frere, Some Principles, p. 13. Frere, The Principles of Religious Ceremonial, p. 34. 49 See Isaac Williams, Tract 80, ‘On Reserve in Communicating Religious Knowledge’ (1838), https://victorianweb.org/religion/tracts/tract80.html, last consulted 24 November 2022. 50 The controversy arose from the title of the tracts (which was Newman’s) rather than the content. It was felt by some that Williams was holding the Church back from the proper proclamation of the gospel. Others, like Bishop Connop Thirlwall, Bishop of S. David’s, understood perfectly what Williams was saying. 47

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His Hands, as oblations made to God, and having reference to Him alone; and which of course cannot be too costly and expensive in proportion to our own habits of life.51

Throughout his two tracts on reserve Williams emphasises his belief in the catholic and apostolic Church of England, the principle of discipline and the ‘want of reverence now prevailing’ in the Church. Labouring at his desk and in the parish in his quiet corner of Yorkshire, such principles of Tractarian reserve are close to the life and work of Simmons. Simmons’ concern for the worship of the layfolk far from detracts from his adherence to the Tractarian concern for reserve. In his Arians of the Fourth Century (London, 1833), Newman had emphasized the ancient disciplina arcani as a safeguard against formality in public worship and for the preservation of the mysteries of the faith, while Williams frequently refers to the necessary reserve in the pastoral ministry of both John Keble and his younger brother Thomas. As Williams wrote in his Autobiography (1892): ‘I had now been in the habit of reading Origen’s “Commentaries on the Gospels” and there observed how much he alluded to a mysterious holding back of religious truth, such as I had always been struck with in the conduct of the Kebles.’52 When he was a student at Worcester College, Oxford, Simmons appears to have known John Keble, and his own later ministry in Dalton Holme has a similar quality of reserve and under-statedness. Neither Simmons nor Walter Howard Frere were unaware of the considerable differences between medieval and post-Reformation worship in England. Nicholas Orme, in Going to Church in Medieval England (2021), comments on the great English Litany demanded by Henry VIII in 1544,53 and the kind of public worship that it prompted. The Litany, which Brightman described as ‘one of the magnificencies of Christendom’, was the first finished piece of liturgy written in English and used in public.54 Orme writes: Its shorter length, about half an hour, allowed it to be added to the morning services, and the use of English, it was hoped, would cause people to understand it better and pray more fervently. Clergy and choirs were to sing the words to a simple plainsong setting by Thomas Bertelet.55 Literate people were to read them quietly from books as they followed, while the unlettered were told to listen to the words and pray them in their hearts.56

Williams, Tract 80. Isaac Williams (ed. George Prevost), Autobiography (London, 1892), quoted in O. W. Jones, Isaac Williams and His Circle (London, 1971), p. 32. 53 See Brightman, The English Rite, Vol. 1, pp. lviii–lxviii. 54 Brightman notes of Cranmer’s work on the 1544 Litany, ‘He was not original, but, as the Litany is enough to prove, he had an extraordinary power of absorbing and improving other peoples’ work’ (The English Rite, Vol. 1, p. lxvii). 55 Thomas Bertelet (Berthelet) (died 1555) was King’s Printer under Henry VIII, printing such important books as The Bishops’ Book and The King’s Book. 56 Orme, Going to Church in Medieval England, pp. 362–3. 51

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The differences from the form and manner of late medieval worship as described by Frere and Manning are quite plain. After the Reformation the minister and people are engaged in the same task and with the same words. No longer are there words spoken in a largely unknown language and largely inaudibly, lest the peoples’ prayer be impeded. The music was simple enough for an untrained choir, such as that of Simmons in Dalton Holme in the late 1870s. The people were to follow the words spoken by the minister, and pray with them. Simmons and modern liturgical scholarship As we have seen, later scholarship has been less than sympathetic to Simmons’ achievement. Richard W. Pfaff, in his magisterial study of the liturgy in medieval England is sceptical concerning what he calls Simmons’ ‘postulations’ regarding the poem’s French origins and the identity of ‘Dan Jeremy’ as both a canon of Rouen by 1157 and archdeacon of Cleveland in the archdiocese of York by 1171. In Pfaff ’s words: Major questions appear at once as to the soundness of these inferences; but if they should be correct – above all, if ‘Jeremy’s’ putative original is a text of the last third of the twelfth century, and if the Englishing was done without serious alteration of the ritual detail of the original – then LFMB might help in pointing to an earlier stratum of liturgy at York than the extant service books allow us to reach. These are, however, large ‘ifs’, and the whole chain of reasoning needs to be treated with caution.57

This may indeed be the case. However, not only was such postulating more the scholarly manner of the period, Simmons was also a clergyman of his time. His eagerness to establish the Gallican origins of the York liturgy (as opposed to the Roman) is understandable, and not unusual, within the politics (particularly as regards the Roman Catholic Church) of the post-Tractarian Church of England. More comprehensively, Matthew Cheung Salisbury has largely dismissed the scholarly foundations of Simmons and his contemporaries. Looking back to the earlier work in medieval liturgy of Richard Gough (1735–1809) and others in the eighteenth century, Salisbury remarks: The late Victorian interest in antiquarian work was an excellent stimulus for amateur liturgical research, particularly from members of the High Church faction in the Church of England, who, for reasons of establishing the distinctiveness and integrity of the Church in/of England within the universal Church, were concerned with establishing the lineage of their own worship from the general origins of Western Christianity.58

Pfaff, The Liturgy in Medieval England, p. 461. Salisbury, Worship in Medieval England, p. 27: Salisbury, ‘Rethinking the Uses of Sarum and York: A Historiographical Essay’, in Gittos and Hamilton (eds), Understanding Medieval Liturgy, pp. 105–13. 57

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However, the present-day connotations of the term ‘amateur’ need to be challenged. Simmons was, as we have demonstrated in detail in chapter 5, in the conditions of his time a highly learned liturgist who also developed substantial skills as a philologist, medievalist, and editor. He saw such activities as central to his clerical profession. It is, of course, the case, as Salisbury suggests, that the Victorian enterprise of establishing singular and authoritative texts of the Sarum or York Uses neglected the fluidity of medieval liturgical texts and their variety of practices. Nevertheless, the ecclesiological concern to defend the apostolic continuity of the English Church and its survival through the Reformation, which was at least as old, in liturgical scholarship, as Charles Wheatly’s Rational Illustration of the Book of Common Prayer (1710), was, despite its undoubted Romanticism, precisely an ecclesial intervention in liturgical and medieval scholarship. The separation of the academic study of medieval liturgical and religious texts from the living liturgical life of the Church has been achieved at some cost, and rather misses the point. Stuart Piggott, in his book Ruins in a Landscape: Essays in Antiquarianism (1976), attacked the work of the Cambridge Camden Society and in particular John Mason Neale and Benjamin Webb, whom Piggott dismisses as ‘vehement, tactless, and arrogant… [with] a hideous consciousness of their own liturgical superiority’.59 This attack seems unfair. As we have seen, Neale and Webb’s translation of the first book of Durandus’ Rationale Divinorum Officiorum (circa 1290), published in 1843, was a landmark in ecclesiology, opening a door also on the work of Amalarius of Metz, Alcuin, Agobard, Amalarius of Reves and others. Its introductory essay entitled ‘Sacramentality: a Principle of Ecclesiastical Design’, already discussed, was a key work in the introduction of Romantic principles into the theology and revival of the Victorian Church.60 Recent studies of the cult of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral suggest a close link between the architecture and fabric of the church building and the figure of Becket himself, with a much greater sense of the unity of liturgical worship and sacred space and building than is assumed by Piggott.61 It was something, perhaps, understood by Simmons in the building of St Mary’s church, his participation in Prayer Book revision, and the editing of the LFMB: all seen as connected enterprises. It is the case that, despite the academic reservations of modern scholarship, the major nineteenth-century editions of medieval English liturgical texts remain in use today and have not, by and large, been replaced. The academic issues highlighted by Salisbury arise from a quite different age of professional scholarship distinct from the devout ecclesial and imaginative realm of Simmons and his contemporaries. Simmons, Littlehales and Nolloth, and others in their community of practice, were scholars with a serious purpose, and they to a large degree inhabited in a living way the theological and liturgical world that they were exploring in their medieval texts. Indeed, they felt themselves to be its heirs. Piggott, Ruins in a Landscape, p. 178. See p. 32 above. See further White, The Cambridge Movement, pp. 68–70. 61 See, e.g., John Jenkins, ‘Modelling the cult of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 25 (2020), pp. 1–20. 59

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Yet that did not make them lesser scholars, but rather prompted an imaginative engagement, which, in the case of Simmons, led to a scholarly application that was, in its way, rather remarkable. Simmons was a learned man of his time – in theology and liturgy, as well as philology and literature, the latter two largely self-taught – who was far from the increasingly secular world of the academy, but practised what he taught in his parochial ministry. In his hands, and in the nineteenth-century context of Anglicanism’s renewed liturgical energy after the Oxford Movement, the LFMB found new life outside the walls of the universities and even the sometimes eccentric world of the EETS. In the final section of this chapter we turn to modern liturgical attempts to recover, re-enact and revive the liturgy of the world in which the LFMB was born and flourished, and to the questions to which it gives rise. In this task, Simmons’ edition of LFMB plays, as we shall see, an important role. Modern Re-enactments of Medieval Uses Nicholas Orme asks the apparently simple question: Who went to church in medieval England, and what happened when they went? Reviewing these questions… it must be admitted there are difficulties in providing answers.62

We know a lot about the contents of manuscripts containing works on the mass, how they circulated and who owned them.63 But what actually happened in the liturgy of the church? It needs to be remembered that the liturgical Uses we have so often referred to in the course of this book – York, Hereford, Bangor and above all Sarum – in both manuscript and later printed versions, were essentially for cathedral worship, and how they were adapted and ‘edited’ for the generally much more meagre (and varied) resources of parish churches is virtually unrecorded. Worship in cathedrals, also, was often adapted with congregations and laypeople in mind hardly at all. Furthermore, the 9,500-odd parishes churches and many more chapels that represent the Church in England at about 1300 were far from uniform in size, resources, furnishings and indeed congregations. There was little uniformity, therefore, in the worship of the Church in England. Something of the issues raised can be discerned from close examination of the manuscript evidence. We have already seen, in Richard Gameson’s description of the fourteenth-century Goldwell Missal64 of the Sarum Use from southern England, the changes that a liturgical manuscript could be subject to prior to the Act of Uniformity of 1549. Corrections, additions, substitutions, multiple supplements (the most substantial being four quires of Sequences, folios 465–96) and a reordering, almost all neatly done, attest to extensive use and customisation of the volume, starting at an

Orme, Going to Church in Medieval England, p. 400. See further Smith, ‘Manuscripts of The Lay Folks’ Mass Book’, passim. 64 See p. 64 above. James Goldwell, the earliest recorded owner of this missal, was a prebendary and later Dean of Salisbury Cathedral from 1462. 62 63

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early date and continuing well into the fifteenth century.65 In sum, the mass was not one unchanging set of formulae but a living and necessarily varied liturgy. An area where research is still developing is to do with how the inner lives of users of such texts were engaged by them. To take another example: New Haven, Yale University, MS Beinecke Library 317 is a book dated to around 1500 and associated with the Bridgettines of Syon Abbey and the Charterhouse at Sheen, on the other side of the river Thames.66 The Beinecke manuscript contains two works on the mass, including the first substantial item in the book, occupying folios 1v–3v. This poem, described in the library catalogue as ‘The thirty-four virtues of the mass’,67 was edited by Simmons as The Virtues of the Mass. In the Beinecke manuscript it is accompanied by Roman numerals in the margin to identify each virtue, and is followed by a prose commentary (‘Yette moreovire vnto the confirmacyoun of thise vertues aforeseid’). Similarly, The Mede and Manere of the Mass, also edited by Simmons, which appears on folios 22r-27v, is immediately followed by a prose work ‘yn confirmacyioun of the medys and merytes of theym that deuoutly here their masse’. That the book was read with care is indicated by an anxious addition, by a later hand, on folio 5r: This book to hym that lovyth god and the helth of his owen soule is bettyre than eny erthly tresoure. And so wolle he say that redyth or heryth hit. ffor with out the knowlych of the matere that is wryten in this booke/ no man may fle evyll and do wele. the which is don for love or drede. or payne or ioye. vt patebit.68

This additional statement in the Beinecke manuscript is interesting in several ways. One obvious thing to note is its reference to ‘the helth of [the reader’s/hearer’s] owen soule’, and suggests that the book had a comparable devotional function: reading and/or hearing was to lead to inner rumination. Texts like those in the Beinecke MS, and indeed LFMB, offer us windows into the reception of the mass in the late medieval period. Even so, penetrating these windows requires further imaginative effort: an effort of a kind that Simmons, always keen to reconstruct the ‘religious life and feeling of our forefathers’,69 would have appreciated. In this context it is worth investigating some fascinating recent attempts to ‘re-enact’ the late medieval mass in England. These attempts have challenged those participating in them. Eleanor G. McCullough dedicated her doctoral studies at York University to the participation Gameson, Literature and Devotion in Later Medieval England, p. 87. See Laura Saetveit Miles, ‘Beinecke MS 317 and its new witness to the Latin door verses from London Charterhouse: a story of Carthusian and Birgittine [sic] literary exchange’, in Jennifer Brown and Nicole Rice (eds), Manuscript Culture and Devotional Traditions: Essays in Honour of Michael G. Sargeant (York, 2021), pp. 3–24. 67 Expanded therefore from what seems to be the original thirty. 68 This passage was then struck out by a later scribe and the statement added: ‘Beware of fals englysshe.’ It is a puzzling annotation. Laura Saetveit Miles has plausibly suggested that ‘Perhaps this was a faithful monastic reader protecting his pre-Reformation book in a postReformation climate by making a somewhat perfunctory gesture of bringing it in line with Protestant protocols’ (‘Beinecke MS 317’, p. 14). 69 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. xiv. 65

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of laypeople in medieval liturgy and devotion, but her experience of the ‘performance’ of a Mass according to the York Use in 2009 left her feeling, at best, a distant observer. Partly alienated by the Latin, she keenly felt the vast gap between priest and lay people as she sought to engage with the priestly liturgy rather than follow her own prayers and devotions. … I felt like an onlooker, gazing at the spectacle from the outsider’s perspective, rather than a participating member of the Church. Sitting or standing in virtual silence for the whole of the service meant I was absorbed with the music, words, gestures and incense, but [..] also served to emphasize my inability to engage with the ceremony.70

Now this frame of mind is very much that of a modern, post-Reformation worshipper, expecting to be ‘engaged’ by what is being said and done, the rich prayers and devotions of the medieval layfolk as we find them in the LFMB being replaced here simply by the attentive silence of the ‘onlooker’. Almost all medieval churches would have had screens between the chancel and the nave, separating the place for the priest from that of the people who would therefore have often been limited to glimpses and scents of the mystery, together with hearing occasional words in Latin.71 Only towards the end of the twelfth century with the growth of the doctrine of the Real Presence in the sacramental element,72 did the arch in the screen become enlarged to permit a clearer view of the elevated Host. Nevertheless, even then, it is clear that the laity in the nave were not encouraged to ‘engage’ in the manner referred to, and indeed expected, by McCullough.73 The sacred mystery was shrouded in distance and reserve. Medieval public worship would undoubtedly have seemed extremely strange to a modern Anglican brought up on the BCP and its successors in the twentieth century. Not only was there no uniform text of the Mass which was in Latin, but most of the priest’s words were spoken silently. P. S. Barnwell has calculated that of the 3,500 words of the Lady Mass, some 72 per cent of the words spoken or chanted by the priest in the Mass were unheard by the people,74 who were thus concerned with their own devotions. Such ‘polyphony’ – or ‘polytextuality’, as Barnwell has called it75 – was inherent in medieval culture. In Barnwell’s words concerning this culture as a whole:

Eleanor G. McCullough, ‘Praying the Passion: Laypeople’s Participation in the Medieval Liturgy and Devotion’, PhD York, 2011, p. 203. 71 A clear sense of this division can be seen in the films from the research project Experience of Worship in Late medieval Cathedral and Parish Church initiated at Bangor University, 2009–2013. See www.experienceofworship.org.uk, last consulted 30 August 2022. 72 This doctrine, of course, was, as we have seen, increasingly important to Tractarians in the nineteenth century. Keble in his unpublished Tract on the Eucharist (1834) dismisses the ‘cold unscriptural notion of a mere commemorative rite’ (quoted in Härdelin, Tractarian Understanding of the Eucharist, p. 184). 73 See Orme, Going to Church, p. 94. 74 Barnwell, ‘The Nature of Late Medieval Worship’, p. 210. 75 Barnwell, ‘The Nature of Late Medieval Worship’, p. 217. 70

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Complementary, interlocking, strands of activity and thought were not particular to the liturgy, enhanced by the melismatic polyphony with which the liturgy itself was enriched during the same period, but were characteristic of culture in the later Middle Ages.76

In short there was a culture of polytextuality quite alien to later largely monologic Prayer Book worship and later Protestant culture in England. Such polytextuality is, as we have seen, a feature of the world of LFMB, and it is perhaps therefore no surprise that interest in this text has recently been re-awakened, intriguingly in practice-led liturgical research that (re)integrates religious expression and academic rigour. Between 2010 and 2013 a group of investigators led by John Harper of Bangor University collaborated with clergy based at Salisbury Cathedral and other religious bodies to re-enact medieval liturgy, specifically the Sarum Use that dominated the English church in the fifteenth century, with a view to better understanding how worship was experienced in the late Middle Ages.77 The purpose of the project was to enact a group of late medieval liturgies in two sites – Salisbury Cathedral and the small reconstructed medieval parish church of St Teilo at St Fagans: the National History Museum near Cardiff in Wales. Re-enactments raise all sorts of questions about how far it is possible for a ‘modern’ person truly to experience the ‘medieval’ world, and the researchers were aware of the difficulty. To assist them in addressing these ‘hermeneutic’78 challenges the researchers sought a contemporary guide, and they chose LFMB, described by them as ‘a handbook of how the laity should act during Mass’.79 Although they did not give details on which part of Simmons’ edition of LFMB was used, it seems from internal references that they chose the B-version. Following this re-enactment of the Mass according to the Sarum Use, both priest and laity offered their reflections on the experience. From the perspective of the priest, the celebrant, Canon Jeremy Davies, commented on the isolation which he experienced. He wrote: For the priest, cocooned in his cell of private prayer (despite the far-reaching implications of what he was about), there were occasional moments of synthesis as the overlapping movements of the liturgy coincided. But even the climax of the

Barnwell, ‘The Nature of Late Medieval Worship’, p. 217. Harper et al. (eds), Late Medieval Liturgies Enacted. 78 Nils Holger Petersen, ‘Reconciling the historical and the contemporary in liturgical enactment’, in Harper et al. (eds), Late Medieval Liturgies Enacted, pp. 273–84, p. 276. 79 Barnwell, ‘The Nature of Late Medieval Worship’, p. 207. 76

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rite, when Host and cup are elevated for all to see and venerate, is followed by the priest’s solitary consumption of the sacred elements.81 80

These ‘moments of synthesis’ are all too clear in the LFMB, when the people, prompted by word (in Latin) and/or priestly action, mould their separate devotions onto the priestly experience. But at the same time, as McCullough noted, there is little or nothing of the post-Reformation emphasis on the personal experience or response of each worshipper. As is clear from a work like Duffy’s Voices of Morebath (2001) – despite its rather gentle romanticising of the late medieval community – the medieval parish was a unified congregation whose corporate lives intermingled in ways difficult to replicate today.82 Another interesting response was reported by the research student attached to the project, Judith Aveling, who described herself as ‘a modern, historically informed lay woman and practising Christian’.83 Aveling, ‘as one accustomed to “traditional” worship’,84 found the experience of taking part in the re-enactment ‘unsettling’; ‘fragmentation between priest and people’ meant ‘two sets of people pursued two very different (albeit complementary) forms of worship [sic] with very different purposes, where the celebrant and his assistants, as one team, “did” the worship’.85 More positively, Aveling describes, as her experience of the enactment developed, how what might seem a ‘“one-man” show’ was: only possible and effective thanks to the prayers and intentions of those supporting and engaging with him. This experience was neither excluding nor restricting; on the contrary, it was liberating: I felt released from something of the pressure to think and behave in a certain way. For instance, the priest saying the Canon for our benefit allowed me to concentrate on my private devotions …86

What Aveling describes not only fits very well – at least in one way – with the ‘polyphonic’ element found in LFMB, but her experience also, fascinatingly, would seem ‘There is a moment of radical change in the 1549 Holy Communion service before the Prayer of Oblation when the rubric reads, ‘These words before rehersed are to be saied, turning still to the Altar, without any eleuacion, or shewing the Sacrament to the people.’ Thus the laity are deprived of a key moment in the medieval Mass when the sacrament, the real presence, is ‘elevated’ and shown to them’ (Cummings ed., The Book of Common Prayer, p. 31). 81 Jeremy Davies, ‘The Celebrant Reflects: Theological and Spiritual Priorities Expressed through Sarum Use’, in Harper et al. (eds), Late Medieval Liturgies Enacted, pp. 219–24, p. 221. Davies comments on the familiarity of the Mass in Latin to one who knows the words of the Prayer Book, and the addition of an epiclesis to 1549 which was absent from the preReformation Roman rite (p. 223). 82 Perhaps – and it is hard to avoid noting Simmons’ comments on parallels between the lives of his farmhand parishioners and those ‘forefathers’ he refers to – the medieval congregation’s experience would have been closer to that of the small rural community of Dalton Holme. For most of Simmons’ parishioners the world would have extended no further than Beverley, a mere ten miles away. 83 Keith Beasley, Judith Aveling and John Francis Moss, ‘Reflections on the enactments: voices from the nave’, in Harper et al. (eds), Late Medieval Liturgies Enacted, pp. 255–72, p. 256. 84 Beasley et al., ‘Reflections’, p. 260. 85 Beasley et al., ‘Reflections’, p. 262. 86 Beasley et al., ‘Reflections’, p. 263. 80

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to capture what inspired Simmons to undertake his edition, when he first encountered the B-version of the poem. Simmons’ focus on the laity, both medieval and contemporary is regularly expressed in his edition, and he would have been, we might suspect, delighted to have encountered Aveling’s response; in some ways the practice-led research undertaken by Harper’s team would seem to be a fulfilment of what Simmons had prefigured in his edition over a century before, in his recovery of the LFMB as part of a ‘living tradition’ of worship within the English Church.87 But we might also note the statement about the ‘celebrant worshipping on behalf of the laity’.88 The medieval Mass was something that was done for the laity, and like McCullough, Aveling is left wondering precisely what she is supposed to do, how to ‘participate’ in the priestly act. There is, in Aveling’s response, a profoundly modern sense of self and indeed of concern that the largely silent priest might not even be trustworthy. How could one know? Even Christ is sensed as solitary as the Mass is felt, in Aveling’s words, to be ‘more powerfully symbolic of Christ’s solitary self-sacrifice upon the cross’.89 But if the dissociation between priest and people is a matter for modern individualistic puzzlement, in one way Aveling is correct in her sense of the late medieval Mass: that the priest says the Canon not with the people but for the people. The Mass is present ex opere operato, but what she is not able to appreciate is the way in which this Real Presence becomes a space in which the people, too, make their particular devotions. It is possible that in the late Tractarian Church of England, with its renewed sense of the real presence in the sacrament, this may have been less of a problem.90 In this space is to be realised the world of the LFMB. The lay person is not simply a passive recipient of the priest’s words and actions. Furthermore, the intense self-consciousness of the modern worshipper probably finds it impossible to recover the total, non-cognitive immersion of the medieval lay person in the matter of religion at the heart of which was the Mass. Although there will have been varieties of devotion, human nature being what it is, religion was in no sense a compulsion, as it was to become after 1549, but rather an entire context for living and dying, outside which there was, quite simply, nothing. For the laity the Mass was not to be understood but to be seen, felt, perhaps smelt and to a degree heard. One of the Bangor team, Nils Holger Petersen, drew attention to ‘two opposite and – in my view – equally necessary basic assumptions’:

87 ‘The English Church’ was a term frequently used in the nineteenth century. It continued to be a favourite term in the early twentieth century with such scholars as Darwell Stone. 88 Beasley et al., ‘Reflections’, p. 262. 89 Beasley et al., ‘Reflections’, p. 263. 90 Härdelin, Tractarian Understanding of the Eucharist, p. 147: ‘The sacramental principle, the very foundation of the whole Tractarian edifice, thus naturally led the Tractarians to belief in a real presence clearly connected with the elements. What was conceived and first tentatively applied in Newman’s earlier sermons was gradually developed by him and others during the following years. Its final fruit, as far as the eucharist is concerned, we can see in Wilberforce’s theory of sacramental identity.’ (The reference is to Robert L. Wilberforce, The Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, London, 1853).

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1. We must assume the otherness of the materials and the period in question. We cannot go back in time, thus we must realise that we have no direct access to the experiences or thoughts of the past. They are irretrievably lost, except through our own mediations … 2. But we must also assume a likeness between human beings of the historical past and of our own time. Without the assumption of such a likeness it does not even make sense to try to interpret historical materials ….91

The difficulty for Petersen is in reconciling these two opposite assumptions, and here the liturgical sense of a ‘living rite’ is perhaps the key that he misses. The liturgy lives through the ages in the life of the worshipping community of the Church. Both Edmund Bishop and Thomas Frederick Simmons, in their different ways, Catholic and Protestant, were profoundly persuaded of the necessary and catholic continuity of Christian liturgy, and it is within this life that the LFMB finds a recovered energy if but briefly in the late Victorian Anglican church and Simmons’ sense of the piety of his lay people in Dalton Holme. Much of the paratextual material supplied by Simmons was designed to address exactly the hermeneutic challenges offered by Petersen: connecting the past and the present in a living dialogue. What happened during the English Reformation in the early years of the sixteenth century involved the introduction of a new understanding of the Church and thus of religion itself in the lives of common men and women in which the term ‘common’ is central. Worship was now to be according to the rubrics of the BCP, and the relationship between priest (or perhaps minister) and people is now quite different from that known previously. The key word after 1549 is uniformity, imposed, indeed, by the secular law. The Prefatory essay in the Prayer Book (usually thought to have been the work of Archbishop Cranmer himself) stresses the medieval lack of liturgical uniformity. From now on the political power of the Crown and parliament – a power significant in the Church at least until the 1927–8 Prayer Book crisis, though already on the wane in the later nineteenth century92 – enforced with considerable success the uniformity of every parish church and imposed a single form of Holy Communion to the words of which the laity were required to be attentive, and in which the spoken word rather than the action was primary. No longer was there a culture of polytextuality and multiple actions of priest and people, but a single action in which the priest led the people, being in theory if not always in practice, with rather than for the people. At least after the 1559 Prayer Book of Queen Elizabeth I, the doctrine of the real presence, so central to the later medieval Mass, was left at best ambivalent, and deliberately so. In the words of administration when the bread – and of course, now, wine – are administered to the people (an experience that was both rare and unusual for the medieval lay person) the minister says: The bodie of our lord Jesu Christ which was geven for thee, preserve thy body and soule unto everlastinge life, and take and eate this, in remembraunce that

91 92

Petersen, ‘Reconciling the historical and the contemporary’, p. 276. See Marsh, The Victorian Church in Decline.

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Christ died for thee, and feede on him in thine heart by faith with thankesgevynge. (Italics added.)93

The deliberate doctrinal ambiguity – the elements upon which we feed being received by faith in the heart – was to become characteristic of Anglicanism, though it still allowed space for the doctrine of the real presence in the eucharist, so central to Tractarian theology in the nineteenth century. In short, the imposition of the BCP by the middle of the sixteenth century brought to an end the world in which the LFMB lived, and perhaps even thrived. Actually, and sometimes in the face of violent popular opposition, this liturgical world was already under threat and to an extent dying before 1549. And so what is the real significance for Simmons, so profoundly a Prayer Book Anglican – indeed the Tracts for the Times themselves were essentially an extended theological defence of the BCP – of so medieval and pre-Reformation a work of liturgical devotion as the LFMB? We have seen how the Shortened Services Act of 1872 disturbed and unsettled the uniformity of the Prayer Book, and how churchmen like J. M. Neale perceived the need for greater richness and variety in the Church’s worship. But there was something more than this for Simmons. On a number of occasions his interventions in the York Convocation after 1874 indicate clearly his concern for the participation of lay people (exclusively at that time lay men, it has to be admitted) in the public worship of the Church. Lay people should speak and fully participate in such central prayers as the Lord’s Prayer as a part of the great tradition of the church’s liturgy. Simmons’ purchase of copies of Hymns Ancient and Modern and his establishment of a surpliced choir in St Mary’s, Dalton Holme are clearly indicative of his concern to involve laypeople in the liturgy through the singing of responses and, more congregationally, the singing of hymns. Such lay involvement was to develop in different ways in the liturgical changes of the twentieth century: but that is another story.

93

From the 1559 version, as edited in Cummings (ed.), The Book of Common Prayer, p. 137.

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s we have seen, the later years of the nineteenth century saw numerous popular publications by Church of England clergymen of works intended to provide commentary and assistance to both laity and priests in their participation in the liturgy of Holy Communion. Non-Eucharistic services and offices were catered for by books like The Priest’s Prayer Book, with a brief pontifical (London, 1864) by R. F. Littledale and J. E. Vaux, both ritualist clergymen, which was repeatedly reprinted into the twentieth century following considerable enlargement in 1870. This was designed as ‘an Appendix to the Book of Common Prayer’,1 intended as a pastoral aid for parish clergy. To assist the laity and ‘intended chiefly for such as do not communicate oftener than once a month’2 there was – as we have seen – W. E. Scudamore’s Steps to the Altar: A Manual of Devotions for the Blessed Eucharist (London, 1866). Echoes of the LFMB are clear in this often-reprinted manual in which Scudamore, on at least one occasion (as we have seen) the victim of Simmons’ scholarly correction, offers, very much in the spirit of the LFMB, ‘a few directions for the behaviour of the communicant to accompany the devotions provided for use during the celebration’.3 And we have already referred on several occasions to Medd’s widely-used The Priest to the Altar, drawing largely on ‘the ancient English Use of Sarum’, of which the revised and enlarged third edition was published in the same year as Simmons’ LFMB, viz. 1879. But perhaps the most significant and enduring of works in the tradition of the LFMB was a product of the eighteenth century, though regularly reprinted for over a century afterwards: Bishop Thomas Wilson’s A Short Instruction for the True Understanding of the Lord’s Supper (London, 1734). Thomas Wilson (1663–1755), Bishop of Sodor and Man from 1697 to 1755, was a notable churchman who was known and loved for his scholarship, his piety and his pastoral energy. Among many other good works Wilson built libraries for the 1 2 3

Preface to The Priest’s Prayer Book, fourth edition (London, 1870), p. v. Scudamore, Steps to the Altar, p. vi. Scudamore, Steps to the Altar, p. v.

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education of his people on the Isle of Man. His Sacra privata – a collection of personal prayers – were widely read until the early twentieth century, running through twenty-four publications (ten of them in the USA) between 1796 and 1903, including an Oxford edition with an introduction by a young John Henry Newman. No less than twelve of the Tracts for the Times4 were drawn directly from Wilson’s writings, including excerpts from the Sacra privata, while in other Tracts he is repeatedly referred to. A two-volume biography was written by John Keble (1863), Keble’s own biographer writing that ‘the Bishop [Wilson] was a special favourite of his, and he entered on the work heartily’.5 But perhaps Wilson’s most popular and enduring work was his simple layperson’s guide to Lord’s Supper of 1734, of which the full title is: A Short and Plain Instruction for the Better Understanding of the Lord’s Supper; with the Necessary Preparation required; For the Benefit of Young Communicants, and of Such as Have Not Well Considered this Holy Ordinance: to which is annexed, The Office of Holy Communion, With Proper Helps and Directions for joining in every part thereof with Understanding and Profit.

The work was translated into Manx (1757), French (1817) and Welsh (1846), and continued to be published and used into the twentieth century. Wilson’s Short and Plain Instruction (as it was later called) has many similarities to the late medieval poem that Simmons called LFMB. The bishop’s book is written in simple and clear English, a book of instruction and spiritual help for the ‘unlearned’. In a note written for his fellow clergy, Bishop Wilson writes that in celebrating Holy Communion: this Service ought to be performed with the greatest deliberation as well as devotion, that the unlearned, who are generally the greatest number, may be edified as well as instructed.6

Wilson provides clear and simple teaching for the layfolk with prayers of preparation before the service begins, and then a kind of commentary on the 1662 liturgy of Holy Communion, printed in parallel texts. There are correspondences with the LFMB everywhere, even though Bishop Wilson was very unlikely to have known the medieval poem. It is, in short, part of a living tradition of worship. He suggests to his reader that private devotions be made ‘in secret’ to avoid disturbing other worshipers. Nor should the reader strain to try and simply repeat long and complex prayers that were hard to understand. Simply say ‘Amen’ at the end of each prayer, says the Bishop, meanwhile keeping ‘your mind intent upon your devotions’.7 It is enough that the prayers are said. Repentance and intention to amend life are stressed as necessary preliminaries to the sacrament. Simplified prayers alongside the difficult prayers of the liturgy, especially during the canon, are suggested, but if others are more suitable Viz., Tracts 37, 39, 42, 44, 46, 48, 50, 53, 55, 62, 65, 70. J. T. Coleridge, A Memoir of the Rev. John Keble M.A., second edition (London, 1869), Vol. 2, p. 362. 6 Thomas Wilson, A Short and Plain Instruction, new edition (London, nd.), p. 60. 7 Wilson, A Short and Plain Instruction, p. 59. 4 5

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then they may be used, ‘that you may obey the following commands of God with cheerfulness’.8 But the prayers of the laity are clearly to be said, even ‘in secret’, as a kind of antiphon to the prescribed liturgy. For example, after the recitation of the Creed, Wilson comments, ‘Now you will have time to say secretly’: – Lord, increase my faith: – Grant that I may die in this faith, and in the communion of thy holy Church; and be united to Thee and to all thy members, by a faith and charity that shall never end.9

In short more than one thing is going on in the celebration of the sacrament by the priest and the prayers of the people who are present, and yet this complex act is deeply communal. Wilson’s reader is bidden to make intercession, listing the subjects which are very close to the prayers to be said by the medieval laity during the canon of the Mass in the LFMB: for the monarch and ‘governors’, for bishops and pastors, for all Christians, for those in error, for those in prison or poverty, for the sick, for widows and fatherless children, for friends and relations – and finally for our enemies.10 Wilson concludes his short work of about one hundred and fifty pages with a paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer and finally with suggestions for family devotions to be said at home. It will be apparent that the similarities between Wilson’s hugely popular work and the LFMB are considerable. It seems highly likely that Canon Simmons would have been aware of the bishop’s writings, which were very widely known in the nineteenth century, and we also know from Simmons’ notebooks that he read the Tracts for Times assiduously. His work can therefore be seen as part of a communal enterprise on the part of Anglican churchmen; Simmons’ concern for the continuity of the English Church and his work for EETS on the LFMB was the recovery of a chapter in a still living spiritual, sacramental and pastoral tradition of educating the unlearned laity, linking the life of the fourteenth-/fifteenth-century pre-Reformation English church with that of the later Tractarian Church of England in the nineteenth century. It is a truism often repeated in studies of English religious poetry that Chaucer’s ‘poor parson’ has a great deal in common with the ideal of a parish priest today.11 Continuity in the traditions of the church is always more important than difference, and we can trace this parochial and pastoral figure through George Herbert in the seventeenth century to Michael Ramsey and others in the twentieth century.12 If Herbert’s much loved work The Priest to the Temple: or, The Country Parson, his Character and Rule of Holy Life (1632) shines a light on the ministry of the parish priest, then it is the layfolk who are the heart of Bishop Wilson’s A Short Instruction for the True Understanding of the Lord’s Supper. Both works, from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries respectively, remain pertinent for that parish ministry of which Wilson, A Short and Plain Instruction, p. 65. Wilson, A Short and Plain Instruction, p. 75. 10 Wilson, A Short and Plain Instruction, pp. 137–8. 11 See David Scott, ‘Pastoral Tradition in Religious Poetry’, in Andrew W. Hass, David Jasper and Elisabeth Jay (eds), The Oxford Handbook of English Literature and Theology (Oxford, 2007), pp. 726–41. 12 See also Rowan Williams, Anglican Identities (London, 2004), on figures in the English Church from William Tyndale and Richard Hooker to William Temple and John A. T. Robinson. 8

9

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the incumbency of Canon Simmons in Dalton Holme was such a shining example in the nineteenth century. And much later in a standard work on Anglicanism, Roger Lloyd’s The Church of England in the Twentieth Century (1946), it could be affirmed: The level of the whole Church can never rise higher than the level of its parish clergy… it is the parish church, not the Lambeth Conference or the Church Assembly, which really makes the history of the English Church…The life of the parish is Church History.13

Simmons, too, was self-consciously in this tradition, and in his hands the LFMB came alive again at a time when parsons like him were promoting a revival of life in the Anglican tradition that drew in the participation of the laity – in singing hymns, in robed choirs, in corporate prayer, in reading scripture aloud in public – as never before in the Reformation Church of England. At least, as never before, until we go back to the pre-Reformation church of LFMB and, recreated by Simmons, Littlehales and others, the church of the LFPB and the LFC. A visitor to St Mary’s church today, tucked away as it is in a quiet corner of the East Riding, finds it difficult to imagine the huge congregations of people who came, week by week, to listen to Canon Simmons preach and join with him in the service of Holy Communion, Evensong and the offices of the church. It is even more difficult to enter imaginatively into the English church for which the versions of LFMB were copied, a time when the whole of life from birth to death was governed by Christian belief and practice, with the Mass at its heart. However, it is possible, through examining Simmons’ dialogue with this medieval text, to grasp something of these lost yet linked worlds, bound together by a common faith and a continuity that more recent professionalised scholarship has, for its own reasons, occluded.

Roger Lloyd, The Church of England in the Twentieth Century (London, 1946), quoted in A. Tindal Hart, The Country Priest in English History (London, 1959), p. 162. 13

Plate 1.  The title-page of Thomas F. Simmons ed., The Lay Folks’ Mass Book (1879), illustrating the hierarchy of typefaces adopted in the edition. JJS’s copy, reproduced by permission of the Council of the Early English Text Society.

Plate 2.  London, British Library, MS Royal 17.B.xvii, folio 7r. The B-version of The Lay Folks’ Mass Book is generally accepted as the earliest surviving witness for the poem, and has become the usual reference-point for later discussions. © British Library Board, London: reproduced by permission.

Plate 3.  Simmons ed., The Lay Folks’ Mass Book (1879), pp. 22–3. This opening exemplifies how Simmons presented parallel versions of the poem, including an attempt, through the use of bold typeface and engrossed lettering, to reflect the usage of the medieval witnesses. Lines 241ff in the B-version correspond to the upper half of the manuscript original in Plate 2. JJS’s copy, reproduced by permission of the Council of the Early English Text Society.

Plate 4.  Simmons ed., The Lay Folks’ Mass Book (1879), pp. 304–5. Part of Simmons’ lengthy notes on the washing of the chalice at the eucharist, including his discussion of the importance of drains and ‘wells’ as piscinas to carry away ablutions (see chapters 4 and 5 above). JJS’s copy, reproduced by permission of the Council of the Early English Text Society.

Plate 5.  York Minster Library, MS Additional 375, pp. 488–9: an opening from one of Simmons’ detailed working notebooks. Reproduced by permission of York Minster Library.

Plate 6.  William Maskell, The Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England, second edition (1846). Maskell’s presentational techniques in this edition (much enhanced from the first edition of 1844) were in many ways a model for Simmons’. The two men were on friendly terms. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Archives & Special Collections: Euing Da-e.16, p. 122.

Plate 7.  St Mary’s, South Dalton. The spire of Pearson’s great church, at 63 metres, is the highest in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Photo: DJ.

Plate 8.  St Mary’s, South Dalton: the interior of the church, taken from the nave looking towards the high altar. Its appearance has hardly changed since Simmons’ time. The pews are intricately carved with flowers, fruit, lizards and dragons, in the manner of marginalia in an illuminated medieval psalter. Photo: DJ.

Plate 9.  St Mary’s, South Dalton: the memorial window for Harriet and Thomas Simmons. Its illustrative programme emphasises clerical learning. Three Biblical figures dominate the body of the window: the priest Melchizedek, St John the Baptist, and St Stephen the deacon, accompanied on the right by St Augustine, bishop of Hippo. In the lower half of the window, and separated from these four by angels bearing scrolls, appears a sequence of four panels depicting Mary teaching the child Jesus to read. Photo: DJ.

Plate 10.  St Mary’s, South Dalton: under construction c. 1860, with the old church of St Peter (of which nothing now remains) being demolished nearby. One of the figures in the foreground is probably Simmons himself. The original photograph is now in the East Riding Archives, Beverley, PE54/11/1. Reproduced by permission of the Churchwardens, St Mary’s, South Dalton.

Plate 11.  From Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin’s Contrasts (1836): ‘Contrasted Residences for the Poor’. In this illustration, Pugin’s agenda is fully on display, comparing contemporary ugliness and societal cruelty with an imagined medieval beauty and charity. One of the ranges in the lower frame consists of alms-houses. From the unpaginated plates in the second edition (London: Charles Dolman, 1841). By permission of the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh: Cv.1/2.3, under the Creative Commons 4.0 International Public License, for which see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.

Plate 12.  The almshouses next to St Mary’s, South Dalton. A plaque records their construction: +to the glory of god and in memory of charles lord hotham these four cottages for the comfort of the aged or infirm of this united parish of dalton holme are built by his brother A∙D∙1873. The cottages, built while Simmons was rector, are bungalows; the dormer windows in the roofs are decorative. The resemblance to the alms-houses in Contrasts might be noted (see Plate 11). Photo: DJ.

Appendix I The Lay Folks’ Mass Book: Text and Translation

T

his Appendix offers a new edition, and translation, of LFMB as it appears in London, British Library, MS Royal 17.B.xvii, folios 3r-13r, i.e. witness B in Simmons’ edition. Readers wishing to compare the readings and layout adopted in Simmons’ edition – which is generally cited in the body of this book, thus acknowledging its achievement – can find it online at https://archive.org/details/ layfolksmassbook00simmuoft, last accessed 30 August 2022. For further details of all witnesses for LFMB, and full discussion with references, see Jeremy J. Smith, ‘The manuscripts of the Middle English Lay Folks’ Mass Book in context’, Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 56 (2021), pp. 361–85. This version of the text was also re-edited by Carl Horstman, Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole and his Followers (London, 1896), volume 2, pp. 3–8, with slightly different punctuation and lineation, and one significant difference in layout (see note to line 432). Horstman also edited other texts from the same manuscript. His commentary on LFMB is restricted to some minor marginal notes, and a few emendations of accidentals; his substantive emendations are almost all derived from Simmons. He also made an attempt, not generally accepted, to assign the poem to Rolle’s authorship, on the basis of the quotation from The Form of Living, and of his view that ‘the contents have a close relation to R. Rolle and his favourite themes … very likely he is the author of most [of the pieces in the manuscript]’ (p. 1).1 1 The text of Horstman’s second volume is accessible at https://archive.org/details/ yorkshirewriters02roll, last consulted 10 August 2022. Horstman’s complete heading (p. 1) reads as follows: Ed. by Simmons Lay Folks Mass Book EETS 1879, with the younger Mss. : Auchinlec (ed. in Turnbul Vision of Tundale), Corp. Chr. Coll. Oxf. 155 (written in Rievaux in Yorkshire), Cambr. Gg. V. 31 (northern), Cajus Coll. 84 (West Midland), Ms. Yates Thompson of Thingwall Liverpool (West Midland); of these, Ms. Reg. and Cajus Coll. represent the original, as intended for use in the chapels and oratories of the great, Ms. Thompson an adaptation for general use, the rest an adaptation for use in monasteries. The poem professes to be a translation from “Dan Ieremy”, an unknown author, who probably wrote in French. Now one of the prayers (that at the levation, v. 428 436) is identical with a poem in R. Rolle’s “Form of living” (cf. I p. 30), a fact which goes far to support R. Rolle’s authorship of the Mass poem, the more so as it was designed for the chapels of the great, and not for monasteries. – The directions, red underlined in the Ms. (orig. written in red), are called “rubrics” in the poem, the prayers black letter”. Some prayers for mass are amongst the Vernon poems.

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As indicated in chapter 1, the B-version of LFMB, along with the E-version2, offers the most complete witness for the poem. B seems to be in addition the oldest of all versions, surviving in a manuscript copied at the end of the fourteenth century, according to the British Library catalogue (Simmons dates the manuscript to c.1360, which seems a little early). The manuscript containing B is a miscellany, described in the British Library catalogue as ‘theological works in prose and verse, chiefly in northern English’.3 LFMB is the first item in the manuscript, and is followed by a pair of lyrics (also found in the Vernon Manuscript), and then by the religious poem Speculum Guy of Warwick. In this last work, Guy – depicted as a pious layman seeking religious instruction – is advised about various basic points of Christian belief by the (by this time) equally legendary figure of Alcuin, whose Liber de virtutibus et viciis (c.800 CE) is a distant source.4 The original Liber was composed for Guido of Tours, whose name conveniently allowed him to be identified with the romance hero, ‘England’s other Arthur’.5 The remainder of the manuscript contains a miscellany of Latin and English works dealing with penitential issues, and ends with a prophecy of Antichrist and a collection of moral sentences. The language of the B-version of LFMB, as Linguistic Profile (LP) 3, has been localised by the Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (hence LALME) in north-east Derbyshire near Mosborough (now a suburb of Sheffield, and since 1974 part of Yorkshire). And the A-6, C-7, D-8, E- and H-9 versions all survive in manuscripts whose language has also been localised by LALME to the north or The reference to the Auchinleck manuscript is puzzling, and the dialectal assignments need modification in the light of later research; see below. There is also a preliminary footnote on p. 1, thus: This Ms., vellum, 4o, one of the earliest containing works of R. Rolle, does not give the author’s name, except that the a [sic] Latin tracts (Spec. peccatoris, and Emend. pecc.) are ascribed to him by a modern hand. The dialect is mixed and impure. However, the contents have a close relation to R. Rolle and his favourite themes, and very likely he is the author of most of them; though it is difficult to decide what he may have to do with N. 2 and 3, which were originally composed in a southern dialect. Forms like mon con stond, ho (= she), hom = them), hore, bo (= be), en as ending of the Plur. Praes. &c., are characteristic of the scribe, who is a West-Midland man. Final g, t, c, f have little dashes. 2 Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 84/166 (Part II), pp. 173–9. 3 See https://searcharchives.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/display.do?tabs=details Tab&ct=display&fn=search&doc=IAMS040-002107306&indx=1&recIds=IAMS040002107306&recIdxs=0&elementId=0&renderMode=poppedOut&displayMode=full&frbr Version=&frbg=&&dscnt=0&scp.scps=scope%3A%28BL%29&mode=Basic&vid=IAMS_ VU2&srt=rank&tab=local&vl(freeText0)=Royal%2017%20B%20xvii&dum=true& dstmp=1654713342202, last consulted 8 June 2022. 4 Alcuin (c.740–804) was, in addition to being a church leader, royal counsellor and poet, a distinguished liturgist, Frankish prelate and the confidant of Charlemagne, who referred to him as ‘the most learned teacher of our country’ (ODNB). He was much admired by Amalarius of Metz (c.775–c.850). 5 A. S. G. Edwards, ‘The Speculum Guy de Warwick and Lydgate’s Guy of Warwick: the non-romance Middle English tradition’, in Rosalind Field and Alison Wiggins (eds), Guy of Warwick: Icon and Ancestor (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 81–93. 6 Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Advocates’ 19.3.1, folios 57–8v. 7 Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 155, folios 252v–68r. 8 Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg 5.31, folios 1r–5v. 9 Liverpool, University Library, MS F.4.9, folios 203v–7v.

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north midlands of England, in terms that Simmons, as a skilled student of English dialects among his other gifts, would have appreciated.10 Thus, the language of the manuscript containing the A-text is localisable to the Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire border. The language of the manuscript containing the C-version was localised by LALME to the North Riding of Yorkshire, while the language of all three hands in the manuscript of the E-version, according to LALME, ‘belongs to Derbys[hire]’. The D-version, not assigned an LP number by LALME, is nevertheless recorded there as being written in a variety of northern Middle English,11 albeit otherwise ‘colourless’. And LALME considered the language of the H-version (= LP 460) to be from Yorkshire, albeit the West Riding. Such localisations are supported by non-linguistic evidence of provenance. The placing of the A-text is supported by the appearance of the name Heege in several places in the volume, apparently the scribe’s surname, suggesting that he came from present-day Heage in Derbyshire. Other evidence of early provenance is a reference to Gibsmere in the neighbouring county of Nottinghamshire, and the manuscript’s post-reformation ownership by the Sherbrook family of Oxton, Nottinghamshire, which is half-way between Gibsmere and Heage. The Sherbrooks seem to have moved to Oxton in 1551 from Shirebrook in northeast Derbyshire. The manuscript containing the C-version (= LP 7) has the strongest evidence of provenance. On folio 2v of the book, in a large formal textura hand, appears the following inscription: L iber beate Marie de Rieualle ex procuracione domini Willelmi Spenser. Abbatis eiusdem.

In addition, the ex libris inscription Liber … Rievall[is] is clear evidence that the manuscript was at the great Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx, in the North Riding of Yorkshire; William Spenser resigned as abbot in 1448.12 This inscription is the basis for Simmons’ statement that the text ‘was written for the Cistercian Abbey of Rieval or Rievaulx’.13 The inscription is repeated at the back of the book, on folio 274v, but with beate and abbatis expanded. It is clear (although not explicitly stated by Horstman described the dialect of the MS as ‘mixed and impure’ (p. 1); he believed that the scribe was ‘a West-Midland man’. However, Simmons’ view is more in line with LALME’s localisation; it seems likely that the connexions with Derbyshire and Yorkshire added to the attractions of the text for this East Riding clergyman. The remaining witnesses are Cambridge, Newnham College, MS 900.4 (olim Yates Thompson), folios 104v–9v = F; Cambridge, University Library, MS Ii.4.9, folios 55v–60r (begins imperfectly) = G; and London, British Library, MS Additional 36523, folios 88r–93r = I. G’s language (as LP 621) was localised by LALME to Norfolk, a localisation that aligns with numerous early marks of ownership found in the MS. The language of both F and I is not especially dialectally distinctive, best described as ‘colourless south-east midland’: the usage that was to become the basis of the future standard language. Evidence for early provenance is lacking in the two MSS containing these latter witnesses. 11 Simmons describes this linguistic variety as ‘purer Northern’: Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. lxix. 12 See Ker, Medieval Libraries, p. 149; see also Simmons, LFMB, p. lxviii, and p. 77 above. 13 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. lxviii. 10

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LALME’s authors) that this inscription is the reason LALME used the manuscript as an ‘anchor-text’ for the early stages of their survey, subsequently ‘fitting’ their other texts around them.14 There are no detectable marks indicating ownership in the manuscript containing the D-version, which is the closest textually to C;15 it seems likely that any such indications were lost when the book was rebound in the eighteenth century. However, there is more evidence for early ownership of the manuscript containing the E-text; this version16 survives in a composite manuscript, containing sections ranging from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. Part II of the manuscript is a distinct booklet which seems to date from the early fifteenth century. LFMB is the first item in the booklet, followed by a macaronic lyric (Saluator mundi domine), a calendar of saints’ feasts, and a version of the Proverbs of Solomon, a widely-circulated English didactic poem that famously appeared on the wall above a window at Grafton Manor, Worcestershire.17 The remaining leaves of the booklet are filled in with notes on the calendar, and with various medical items, on urine and on blood-letting; the other booklets in the manuscript are all medicas, and Montague Rhodes James, the distinguished cataloguer, considered that one of the hands on the flyleaf was that of John Argentine (d.1508), the royal physician and provost of King’s College, Cambridge.18 However, there are some earlier indications, in that two of the manuscript’s flyleaves ‘are composed of an account roll of a monastery in or near Derby dated 23 Hen. VI’ (i.e. 1444),19 possibly the Cluniac priory of St James. The manuscript containing the B-version was (according to an inscription on folio 3r) in the collection of John, Lord Lumley (c.1533–1609), and from there passed to the Royal collection, now in the British Library. Lumley, a major Elizabethan book-collector, came from a great northern family devoted to traditional religion; his father was executed in 1537 for taking part in the Pilgrimage of Grace. Lumley was himself a committed Roman Catholic, involved in the Ridolfi Plot, a 1571 conspiracy to assassinate Elizabeth I in favour of Mary Stuart; he subsequently spent time in the Tower of London, although he was released in 1573. Through his first marriage he eventually inherited Nonsuch Palace in Surrey, but that estate was laden with debts and later passed to the queen. Lumley’s own family-wealth derived from his northern estates, notably coal mines in County Durham, and towards the end of his life he spent most of his time at Lumley Castle near Chester-le-Street.

14 For an account of the ‘fit’-technique adopted for LALME, see Michael Benskin, ‘The “fit”technique explained’, in Felicity Riddy (ed.), Regionalism in Late Medieval Manuscripts and Texts: essays celebrating the publication of A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 9–26. 15 According to Gerould, ‘The Lay Folks’ Mass Book’. 16 For a description, see Montague R. James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Gonville and Caius College (Cambridge, 1907), pp. 79–82. Simmons repeatedly criticises the ‘muddle-headed’ scribe of the E-version, who, he writes in his Introduction, ‘has made many mistakes… apparently without any suspicion on his part that they are utterly destructive of the sense’ (Simmons ed., LFMB, p. lxx). 17 See Boffey and Edwards, New Index, p. 210, item 3170, and references there cited. 18 James, Descriptive Catalogue, p. 79. 19 According to James, Descriptive Catalogue, p. 79.

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Before then the book seems, on the evidence of names written on several folios, to have travelled to East Anglia. The earliest external evidence of provenance is a fifteenth-century hand that records the name ‘Nich. Anger of Hiclilgham de parochia de Halys’. ‘Hiclilgham’ is generally interpreted as Heckingham, and the parochia is that of Hales to the south-east of Norwich in Norfolk; the two villages have traditionally been linked within a single parish. Other early names include John Carlet, Edward Banyster and John Radclyff, none of whom can be identified with any certainty. Another name, however, is ‘Kattryng Houses off Moullyne in Kent’ (folio 107v); it is just possible that Moullyne is Malling in Kent, home of an abbey of Benedictine nuns whose library contained both Latin and vernacular materials.20 Malling is just over 30 miles from Cheam, where Lumley’s great palace of Nonsuch was situated. Such evidence of provenance as is supplied by the manuscripts of LFMB reminds us that the late medieval period saw the emergence not only of ‘literate cults’ such as that of the Holy Name,21 but also of what has been referred to as a ‘literate environment’,22 in which books were prototypically a resource for communal, often household reading. Some people would commonly listen, while others would read aloud. We know, for instance, that devotional reading at meal-times was a family activity encouraged in the aristocratic Beauchamp circle: Let the book be brought to the table as readily as the bread. And lest the tongue speak vain or hurtful things, let there be reading, now by one, now by another, and by your children as soon as they can read […]. Expound something in the vernacular which may edify your wife and others.23

And such behaviour was also clearly possible in rather humbler households than Beauchamp’s, which nevertheless shared in a similar culture of oral performance and aural reception. For instance, Margery Kempe (c.1378-after 1438) was the daughter of the mayor of Bishop’s (later King’s) Lynn. According to her autobiography, probably dictated to her son,24 she listened to English works of devotion read to her by a priest. And the suspected heretic Joan Baker was quoted, in the early sixteenth century, as saying that ‘she cold here a better sermond at home in hur

See David Bell, What Nuns Read: books and libraries in medieval English nunneries (Kalamazoo, 1995), pp. 152–3. Malling Abbey was reconstituted as a foundation of Anglican Benedictine nuns in the early twentieth century; see http://mallingabbey.org/index.html, last accessed 26 February 2023. 21 Judith Aveling, ‘The Holy Name of Jesus: a literate cult?’, in Harper et al. (eds), Late Medieval Liturgies Enacted, pp. 191–204. 22 Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500–1700 (Oxford, 2000), passim. 23 Cited in Ryan Perry, ‘The Clopton manuscript and the Beauchamp affinity: patronage and reception issues in a West Midlands reading community’, in Scase (ed.), Making of the Vernon Manuscript, pp. 131–59, p. 156, and references there cited. The document in which this passage occurs was probably written for John Throckmorton, head of council for Richard Beauchamp (1382–1489), Earl of Warwick. 24 Sebastian Sobecki, ‘“The writyng of this tretys”: Margery Kempe’s son and the authorship of her book’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 37 (2015), pp. 257–83. 20

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howse than any doctor or prist colde make at Powlis crosse or any other place’.25 It seems likely that the kind of texts encountered by Kempe and Baker were taken from volumes such as the ‘common profit’ books designed for sharing vernacular works of devotion, as represented in the fifteenth century by the London merchant John Colop’s collection of mystical and Lollard texts (now Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff.6.31),26 or the major collection of devotional works in English assembled, as a kind of lending library, in London’s Guildhall.27 Such textual engagement points forward, even if only very uncertainly, to practices that became commonplace in the Reformation.28 But it also reflects the centrality of the Mass in the lives of the laity. The career of Margery Kempe, whose autobiography records an obsessive attendance at church services, is possibly an extreme case, but there is considerable evidence for the absolute centrality and importance of the Mass in everyday life, as expressed forcefully in the opening lines of LFMB, here quoted from folio 1r of Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg 5.31 (= Simmons D). The placing of LFMB at the beginning of this substantial devotional anthology-manuscript reflects the centrality of the Mass to the entire collection: Þe worthieste thyng mast of gudnes In þis werlde þan es þe messe In all þe bokes of haly kyrke þat haly men þat tyme gune wyrke þe messe es praysed many falde þe vertues of þt myght neuer be tald ffore yf athousand clerkes dyd noght ells Efter þat þase bukes telles But talde þe vertues of mes syngyng And þe profite of þe messe heryng ȝit suld þai neuer by fyft partie ffor all þaire craft ȝa all þaire arte Tel þe vertoue med and pardoune To þam þat wt deuociune In clennes and gud entente

As Claire Cross and Paul Barnwell have stated, ‘The Mass exercised a defining influence upon the life of the late middle ages, affecting clergy and laity alike’.29 The docAnne Hudson, ‘“Springing cockel in our clene corn”: Lollard preaching in England around 1400’, in Scott Waugh and Pieter Diehl (eds), Christendom and its Discontents (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 132–47, p. 132. 26 See Wendy Scase, ‘Reginald Pecock, John Carpenter, and John Colop’s “CommonProfit” books: aspects of book ownership and circulation in fifteenth-century London’, Medium Ævum 61 (1992), pp. 261–74. 27 For details of this ongoing project, see https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/whittingtonsgift/, last accessed 20 April 2022. 28 Orme, Going to Church, pp. 370–1. 29 Claire Cross and Paul Barnwell, ‘The Mass in its urban setting’, in Paul Barnwell, Claire Cross and Ann Rycraft (eds), Mass and Parish in Late Medieval England: the Use of York (Reading, 2005), pp. 13–26, 13. 25

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trine of transubstantiation – adopted by the fourth Lateran Council of 1215 – meant that the bread and wine, transformed into the actual body and blood of Christ, were treated within increasing reverence: ‘The potency of the Host was such that it was popularly believed that no-one would fall ill or die on the day that he saw it; this encouraged people to try and attend a Mass every day’.30 One of Margery Kempe’s experiences captures something of how the sacrament was perceived: On a day as þis creatur was heryng hir Messe, a ȝong man and a good prest heldyng up þe Sacrament in his handys ouyr hys hed, þe Sacrament schok & flekeryd to & fro as a dowe flekeryth wyth hir wengys. &, whan he held up þe chelys wyth þe precyows Sacrament, þe chalys mevyd to & fro as it xuld a fallyn owt of hys handys.31

Furthermore, the doctrine of purgatory, adopted at the Second Council of Lyon in 1274, encouraged the belief that intercessory Masses had the power to release individual souls from posthumous purgation of sins. Thus, funding for ‘soul Masses’, often celebrated by dedicated chantry priests, therefore became a pressing concern. Although practices certainly varied depending on locality, there is evidence from numerous sources that worship, notably the Mass, was ongoing on a near-continual basis in parish churches: During the day time, churches were almost continuously used by the parish priest, by the stipendiary ministers who served its chantries, and by the laity; most had several Masses daily, and incidental services on many days. In addition, the nave of the church could be the setting for much social activity, including funeral wakes and anniversary feasts and ‘church ales’ to raise money for the church. In these very different ways, parish religion with its very particular festivals and other observances both conferred a unique sense of identity upon each parish and at the same time helped to integrate it into the wider community of the locality and of Christian Europe.32

The edition of the B-version of LFMB presented here, based on a fresh examination of the manuscript, differs from Simmons’ edition in being transcribed diplomatically; it is thus possible, through comparisons, to identify Simmons’ interventions.33 Thus the punctuation (or lack of punctuation) in the MS is reproduced, in this case mostly the punctus , which generally appears at line-ends. Virgules are deployed less commonly, sometimes doubled . Capitals are reproduced as they appear in the manuscript. Decorated letters cannot be easily reproduced, for typographical reasons; in such cases, a rather clumsy convention has been used, whereby the form in question is emboldened and a gap is left to indicate the space it occupies, e.g. G od for þi godnes. in þo bigynnyng of þis mes. 30 31 32 33

Cross and Barnwell, ‘The Mass’, p. 14. Sanford Meech (ed.), The Book of Margery Kempe, EETS OS 212 (London, 1940), p. 47. Cross and Barnwell, ‘The Mass’, p. 16. For a definition of the term diplomatic, see p. 63, note 40 above.

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graunt alle yate hit shal here. of conscience be clene & clere.

Spelling is given exactly as in the witness concerned, including the original distribution of u and v, i and j. The letter y and the letter þ (‘thorn’) are not distinguished in the scribe’s handwriting (distinguishing, or failing to distinguish, thorn from y has a philological implication in Middle English and Older Scots); however, to assist readers thorn is here deployed as appropriate. Omitted or damaged letters are marked by rows of dots, e.g. […]; Simmons’ and Horstman’s suggested readings for these lacunae, based on comparison with other versions of the poem, are recorded here in footnotes (in the footnotes, S = Simmons, H = Horstman). In accordance with usual practice, we have used italics in transcriptions to indicate contractions where it is clear what is intended by the scribe. We have however generally not expanded ‘function’ words such as þt, wt, & (i.e. that, with, and) etc, where the context makes the meaning clear, but where possible alternative expansions (e.g. þet, wyth, ant) are attested in Middle English. Superscript and non-superscript abbreviations (e.g. þt beside þt) are both found in the witness, and are recorded as they appear in the manuscript. The emboldened sections represent elements that are underlined in red (and thus partially ‘rubricated’) in the original MS; it will be noted that these sections are instructions to the reader, while the unrubricated sections, which are slightly engrossed in comparison with the underlined passages, offer wordings for prayers etc; the two elements in the text of LFMB are therefore visually distinguished by the scribe. In this edition line-numbering for the text is provided, as are notes on points of difficulty or special features of the presentation in the MS. An illustration from the manuscript (folios 6v–7r) appears as Plate 2. The lineation of the text below differs a little from Simmons’ (and indeed Horstman’s), but it is hoped that readers using Simmons’ edition will not be overly confused; however, Simmons’ lineation of B is indicated in italics from the point (line 208 onwards) where it diverges from the text presented here.





[folio 3r] Þ

o worthyest þing most of godnesse. In al þis world is þo messe. In alle þo bokes of holy kyrc. þate holy men þt34 tyme con wyrc þo m[…………]raysed mony folde.35 þo v[…………]ght neuer be [.]olde.36 for if [………..] clerkes [……….] ellis.37 after þt [……….] tellis.38

5

H suggests emending þt to þar. When referring to H’s edition, ‘emends’ = a change is made in the body of the text, ‘suggests emending’ = a change is suggested in a footnote. 35 S, H: þo m[esse is p]raysed mony-folde. 36 S, H: þo [vertus mi]ght neuer be [t]olde. 37 S: for if [thousand] clerkes d[id nogh]t ellis; H supplies a thousand. 38 S, H: After þat [þo boke] tellis. 34

Appendix I



bot tolde [……….] messe syngynge. and þo p[……….]esse herynge.40 ȝit shuld þa[……..] fift parte.41 for al þaire wt & alle þaire arte. telle þo vertu [….]des & pardoun42 to hom þt [………] in.43 In clennes [……….]ent44 dos worship […] þis sacrament.45 In boke fynde I46 of ane. dam leremy was his name. a deuoute mon & a religyus In his boke he spekis þus. he saies þou shulde gode tent take þt þu at þo messe no ianglyng make. grett saumpel he settis þer to. whi hit is ful ille to do. als so he telles þo manere. how þou shulde þi messe here. when þo preste saies he or if he singe. to him þou gyue gode herknynge when þo preste praies in priuete. tyme of prayere is þen to þe. [folio 3v] when I vpon þo boke know47 hit. In til englishe þus I draw hit. when þo auter is al dight. & þo preste is reuysht right. þen […] takes in bothe his hende.48 a clothe o pon þo auter ende. and comes obac a litel doune. dos hit o pon him al aboune. alle men knelen bot he stondes and haldes to god vp bothe his hondes þere or he þo messe bi gynne. wil he meke him for his synne. til alle þo folk he shryues him þare.

39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

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S, H: but tolde [þo vertus of] messe syngynge. S, H: and þo [profet of m]esse herynge. S, H: ȝit shuld þa[i never þo] fift parte. S: telle þo vertu [me]des & pardoun; H emends vertu to vertues. S, H: to hom þat [with deuocyo]un. S, H: In clennes [and in gode ent]ent. S, H: dos worship [to] þis sacrament. H inserts [writen] after I, presumably for metrical reasons. H suggests emending know to knew. S, H: Þen [he] takes in bothe his hende.

10

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20

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40

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of alle his synnes lesse & mare. so dos þo clerk49 a gayn to him. shryuen hym þere of al hor synn. and askes god forgyuenes. or þai bigynne to here þo mes. þo preste assoyles hom þere belyue. lered & lewed þt wil hom shryue. & knowe to god þt þai are ille. wheþer hit be in loude or stille. þerfore knelande on þi knese. als þou bisyde þe oþer sese. shryue þe þere of alle þi synnes. bigynnande þus when he bigynnes. als next binethe þis robrik standes. and þer wt ioyntly hold þi handes. and þt hit so may be eke to pater and aue. [folio 4r] and or þou ryse þu leue þi crede. al þo better may þou spede. many saien corfiteor50. were als gode saie þis þer for. I kno [….] od ful of myght.51 & […….]odir mayden bright.52 & […….]alouse lere.53 & […….]ore gostly.54 þt […….]ynned largely.55 In mony synnes sere. In thoght in speche & in delite. In worde & werk. I am to wite. and worth to blame. þerfore I praie saynt mary. and alle halouse haly. In gods name. and þo preste to praye for me. þt god haue merci & pyte. for his man hede.

45

50

55

60

65

70

75

H emends to clerk[is]; the emendation seems unnecessary to me. S, H both emend MS corfiteor to confiteor. 51 S, H: I know [to Go]d ful of myght. 52 S, H: & [to his] modir mayden bright. 53 S, H: & [to all h]alouse here. 54 S, H: & [to þe fa]dre gastly. H considers that gastly was originally gostly, with a corrective loop added later; that interpretation is possible, but the ink seems the same to me. 55 S, H: þat I [have s]ynned largely. 49 50

Appendix I

of my wreched synfulnes & gyue me grace & forgyuenes. of my mys dede. Pater . aue . credo W hen þou þi crede þus has done. vpon þi fete þou stande vp sone. for bi þis tyme als I gesse. þo prest bigynnes office of messe. or ellis he standes turnande his boke at þo south auter noke. euen // so þen56 // stondande. wolde I þt þu were þis sayande. [folio 4v] G od for þi godnes. in þo bigynnyng of þis mes. graunt alle þate hit shal here. of conscience be clene & clere. lord saue þo prest þt hit shal say. fro temptacions to day. þt he be clene in dede & þoght. þt yuel spiritis noy him noght. þat he fulfille þis sacrament. wt clene [..]t & gode entent.57 first heghly to þin honoure. þt souerayne is of al socoure. & to þi modir mayden clene. & to þi halouse alle bi dene. & to alle þt heres hit soul hele. helpe & grace & al kyns wele. and to alle þate we haue in mynde. sib[…..]mde bi ony kynde.58 g[…….]d graunt hom for þis messe.59 of[….]e hore synnes forgyfnesse.60 and rest & fele þt / lastus ay. to cristen soules passed away. and til vs alle þi socoure sende. & bring vs to ioy wt outen ende. Amen. O n hegh festis or on holy dayes. when so men outher synges or sayes. gloria in excelsis in hor mes. saie þou þen als here wryten es. 56 57 58 59 60

H emends to þen so. S supplies hert for MS […]t. H silently adopts S’s emendation. S, H: sib [or fre]mde by ony kynde. S, H: go[d lo]rd graunt hom for þis messe S supplies alle for MS […]e. H silently adopts S’s reading.

191

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85

90

95

100

105

110

115

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I oy be vnto god in heuen. wt alkyns myrthe þt men may neuen. [folio 5r] and pese in erthe alle men vntille. þt rightwis are & of gode wille. we loue61 þe lord god almyghty. and als we blesse þe bisyly. we worsh[….] als worthi es.62 & makes […..] þe more & les.63 we than […….]d of al þi grace.64 for þo g[……….] þt þou hase.65 oure lord [……] god oure kind heuenly.66 oure god and oure fadir almyghty. oure lord þo son of god of heuen. Ihesu crist comly to neuen. oure lord lamb of god name we þe. & son of god þi fadir fre. þou þt wostis67 þo worlds synne. haue mercie on vs more & mynne. þou þt wostis þo worlds wrake. oure praiere in þis tyme þou take. þou þt sittes on þi fadir right hande. wt merci help vs here lyuande. for þou art holly68 made of none. bot of þi selue & lord alone. þou art þo heghest of wisdam most. Ihesu crist wt þo holy gost wonand wt þo fadre of heuen. in more ioy þen mon may neuen. vnto þt ioy ihesu vs ken thorght prayere of þi modre amen. A nd when þou has þis al done. knele doun on þi knese sone. [folio 5v] If þai singe messe or if þai saie. þi pater noster reherce alwaie. til deken or prest þo gospel rede. 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

The letter has been inserted by caret after the in loue, as noted by H. S, H: we worsh[ip þe], als worthi es. S, H: & makes [ioy to] þe more & les. S, H: we than[k þe go]d of al þi grace. S, H: for þo g[rete ioy] þat þou hase, S, H: oure lord, [oure] god, oure king heuenly, H suggests emending to wastis. H emends to holy.

120

125

130

135

140

145

150

Appendix I

stonde vp þen & take gode hede. for þen þo prest flyttes his boke. north to þt oþer auter noke. and makes a cros vpon þo letter. wt his thoume he spedes þo bette[.]69 and sithen anoþer open70 his face. for he has mikel nede of grace. for þen an erthly mon shal neuen. þo wordes of ihesu71 crist gods son of heuen. bothe þo reders & þo herers72. has mykil nede me þenk of lerers. how þai shulde rede & þai shulde here. þo wordes of god so leue & dere. Men aght to haue ful mikel drede. when þai shuld here or els hit rede. and loue als so vnto þt swete. þt wt þoo wordes oure bale wold bete. bot syn oure matir is of hering. þer of newe shal be oure lering. Clerkes heren on a manere. bot lewed men bos anoþer lere. At þo bigynnyng tent þou take. a large cros on þe þou make. stonde & saye on þis manere. als þou may se wryten here. I n þo name of fadre & son & þo holi gost. a sothfast god of mightis most. [folio 6r] Bi73 gods worde welcome to me. Ioy & louyng74 lord be to þe. W hils hit is red speke þou noght/. bot þenk on him þt dere þe boght/. Sayande þus in þi [……] mynde.75 als þou shalt after wryten fynde. I hesu m[….]ue graunt me þi grace.76

193

155

160

165

170

175

180

185

S reads bette[r] for bette[.]. H silently adopts S’s reading. H emends to opon. 71 H considers ihesu to be omitted, but it is there in the MS. 72 The second in herers is inserted with a caret. 73 S considers MS bi [sic] to be an error, and in a marginal note suggests emending to be. H agrees. 74 The letter has been inserted by caret before the in louyng, as noted by H. 75 [……] = erasure in MS, not indicated by S; H notes the erasure, but simply suggests that a word is missing, possibly my. 76 S reads myne without indicating the erased letters; three to four letters seem to be missing between and . H suggests emending to my loue, which makes sense in context. 69 70

Appendix I

194

and of […]mendment might & space.77 þi word to kepe & do þi wille. þo gode to chese & leeue þo ille. and þt hit so may be. Gode ihesu graunt hit me. Amen. R eherce þis oft in þi þoght. to þo gosple be don for gete hit noght. Som where bisyde when hit is done. þou make a cros and kys hit sone./ Men oen to saie þo crede som tyme. when þai saie hore. loke þou saie þine. þis þt folouse in englishe lettre. I wolde þou sayde hit for þo bettre. bot þai say hore say þou non ellis. bot do forthe after als þis boke tellis. here to loke þou take gode hede. for here is wryten þin englyshe crede. I trow in god fader of might/ þt alle has wroght/ heuen & erthe day & night/ and alle of noght/ And in ihesu þt gods son is al onely/78 bothe god & mon lord endles/79

[folio 6v]80 In him trow I. thurgh mekenes of þo holy gast. þat was so milde. he lyght in mary mayden chast. be come a childe. vnder pounce pilat pyned he was vs forto saue. done on cros & deed he was. layde in his graue. þo soul of him went in to helle. þo sothe to say. vp he rose in flesshe & felle yo thryd day. he stegh til heuen wt woundis wide. thurgh his pouste81

190

195

200 203 205

210 212

215

220 224 225

S, H read amendment for [.]mendment, without indication of damage. S gives al onely a line to itself, thus accounting for an extra line in his lineation, but the MS is as above. 79 A later hand has repeated this line at the foot of the page, with pen-flourishes. 80 A red star of David has been pasted, on this page, to the top left of the text. 81 As noted by H, the in pouste is inserted superscript, with two small lines underneath. 77 78

Appendix I

Now sittes o pon his fader right syde. In mageste. þeþin shal he come vs alle to deme. In his manhede. qwyk & ded alle þt has ben. In adam sede. Wel I trow in þo holi gost And holi kirc þt is so gode And so I trow þt housel es. bothe flesshe & blode of my synnes82 forgyfnes If I wil mende. vp risyng als so of my flesshe. and lyf wt outen ende. A fter þat fast at hande. [folio 7r] Comes þo tyme of offrande. Offer or leeue wheþer þe lyst. how þou shulde praye I wold þou wyst. I whyls þou stondes I rede þou saye. Als next is wryten god to paye. I hesu þt was in bethlem borne. and thre kynges come þe by forne. þai offerd gold ensense & myrre. and þou forsoke none of þirre. bot wissed hom wele alle thre. home a gayne to hor contre Right so oure offrandes þt we offer. and oure praieres þt we profer. þou take lorde to þi louyng. & be oure helpe in alkyn thyng. þt alle perels be for done. oure gode ȝernynges þou graunt vs sone. of al oure mys þou vs amende. in al oure nede vs socoure sende. AMEN. S aye pater noster ȝit vp standande. al þo tyme þo prest is wasshande. Til after wasshing þo preste wil loute. þo auter & sithen turne aboute. þen he askes wt stille steuen. Ilk monnes prayers to god of heuen. Take gode kepe vnto þo prest.

195

230 233 235

240 242

245

250 253 255

260

265

S indicates in a marginal note that the MS reads (erroneously) fynnes for synnes, but the ‘long’ seems clear to me. H simply offers synnes. 82

196

Appendix I

When he him turnes knoc on þi brest. And þenk þen for þi synn. þou art noght worthe to pray for hymm. bot when þou prayes god lokes þi wille. [folio 7v] If hit be gode forgetis þin ille. for þi wt hope in his mercie. answere þo prest wt þis in hie. Þ o holi gost in þe light. & sende in to þe right. Reule þi hert & þi speking. to gods worship & his louyng. Þ en þo prest gos to his boke. his priuey prayers forto loke. knele þou doun & say þen þis. þt next in blak wryten is. hit wil þi prayere mykel amende. If þou wil holde vp bothe þi hende. To god wt gode deuocioun. when þou sayes þis resoun. G od resayue þi seruyce. and þis solempne sacrifice. for þo prest & for vs alle. þt now are here or here be shalle. þis messe to here or worship do. þo sakring to se or pray þerto and for alle þt lyuen in gods name. þt þai haue helpe fro synne & shame. And for þo soules þt hethen are past. þat þai haue rest þt ay shal last. AMEN PATER NOSTER. AUE MARIA. CREDO. L oke pater noster þou be sayande. whils þo preste is priuey prayande. þo prest wil after in þat place. Remow him a litel space. [folio 8r] To he come til þe auter myddis. stande vp þou83 als men þe biddis. hert & body & ilk a dele. take gode kepe & here him wele. þen he begynnes per omnia. And sithen sursum corda.

83

H suggests emending þou to þen.

268 270

275

280 284 285

290 293 295

300

304 305

Appendix I

At þo ende sayes sanctus thryese. In excelsis he neuens twyese. Als fast als euer þt he has done. loke þt þou be redy sone. and seye þese wordis wt stille steuen. priuely to god of heuen. I n world of worlds wt outen endyng. þanked be ihesu my kyng. Al my hert I gyue hit þe. grete right hit is þt hit so be. wt al my wille I worship þe. Ihesu blessid mot þou be. wt al my hert I þank hit þe. þo gode þt þou has done to me. swete ihesu graunt me now þis. þat I may come vn to þi blis. þere wt aungels for to syng. þis swete song of þi louyng. sanctus: sanctus: sanctus: Ihesu graunt þt hit be þus. Amen.85 W hen þis is sayde knele þou doune. and þt wyth gode deuocioune. Of al gode þou thonk god þan. And pray als so for ilk a man.

197

84

[folio 8v] Of ilk state86 and ilk degre. So wil þo law of charite. for þi wt outen taryinge. on þis wise be þi sayinge. L ord honourd mot þou be. wt al my hert I worship þe. I þonk þe lord als me wele owe. Of more gode þen I con knowe. þat I haue of þe resayued. Syn þo tyme I was consayued. My lyue me lymmes þou has me lent. my right witt þou has me sent. þou has me keped of þi grace. fro sere perils in mony place. Al my lyue & al my lyuynge. holly haue I of þi gynynge. þou boght me dere wt þi blode. 84 85 86

310 312

315

320 324 325

330 332

335

340 344 345

S supplies [he] after ende, but there is no gap in the MS. H does not adopt this emendation. Amen is engrossed as well as being underlined in red. S, H read [a]state, but there is no gap in the MS.

198

Appendix I

and dyed for me o pon þo rode. I haue done a gaynes þi wille. synnes mony grete & ille. þou art redy of þi godnesse. for to graunt me forgyuenesse. Of [….]87 godes and mony moo. I þonk þe lord I praye als soo. þat al my gylt þou me for gyue. and be me helpe whils I shal lyue. And gyue me grace for to etchewe. to do þt þing þt me shulde rewe. And gyue me wille ay wel to wirk. Lord þenk on þe state of holy kirk. [folio 9r] And þo [….]88 bishops prestes & clerkes. þt þai be keped in alle gode werkes. þo kyng þo quene þo lordes of þo lande. þt þai be wele mayntenande. hore states in alle godnesse. and reule þo folk in rightwisnesse. Oure sib men and oure wele willandes. Oure frendes tenandes & seruandes. Olde men childer & alle wymmen. marchandes men of craft & tilmen. Riche men & pore grete & smalle. I pray þe lord for hom alle. þt þai be keped specialy. In gode hele & lyue haly. To hom þt are in ille lyue. In sclaunder myscounforth or in stryue. seke or prisonde or o pon þo see. pore exilde deserit if þer be. til alle hom þou sende socoure. to þi worship and þin honoure. Alle þt are in gode lyue to day. & clenly lyuen to þi pay. kepe hom lord fro alle foly. and fro alle synne for þi mercy. And gyue hom grace to last & lende.

350 353 355

360 362

365

370 373 375

380 384 385

S inserts [þes] for this erasure; H offers [þere]. S misses recording any erasure, but pope is just about visible in the MS; as in many of the Royal manuscripts, an attempt has been made, post-Reformation, to remove the word through scraping the parchment. The form pope appears at this point in other witnesses, e.g. the E-version. H keeps pope in the text, but indicates that it has been ‘erased’ (presumably an abbreviation for ‘an attempt at erasure’). 87

88

Appendix I

In þi seruyce to hor ende. þis world þt turnes mony wayes. make god til vs in alle oure dayes. þo weders grete & vnstable. lord make gode & sesonable. [folio 9v] þo froytes of þe erthe make plenteuus.89 als þou sees best ordayn for vs. swilk grace til vs þou sende. þt in oure last day at oure ende. when þis worlde & we shal seuer. Bring vs til ioy þt lastis euer. Amen. L oke pater noster þou be sayande. to þo chalyce he be saynande. þen tyme is nere of sakring. A litel belle men oyse to ryng. þen shal you do reuerence. to ihesu crist awen presence. þt may lese alle baleful bandes. knelande hold vp bothe þi handes. And so þo leuacioun þou be halde. for þat is he þt iudas salde. and sithen was scourged & don on rode. and for mankynde þere shad his blode. and dyed & ros & went to heuen. and ȝit shal come to deme vs even. Ilk mon aftur he has done. þt same es he þou lokes opone. þis is þo trouthe of holy kirk. who trowes noght þis mone sitt ful myrk. forþi I rede wt gode entent. þt þou biholde þis sacrament. swilk prayere þen you make. als lykes best þe to take. sondry men prayes sere. Ilk mon on his best manere. [folio 10r] Short prayere shulde be wt outen drede. and þer wt pater noster & þo crede. If þou of aue90 be vn puruayde.

199

390 392

395

400 404 405

410 413 415

420 422

89 As noted by H, the form plentuus is a correction of plenteuos. Judging by the ink, this correction was undertaken by the original scribe. 90 MS reads aue; S suggests emending to ane.

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Appendix I

I set here aue91 þt may by sayde. þof I merk hit here in lettir. þou may chaunc[.]92 hit for a bettir. L oued be þu kyng/ & þanked be þu kyng/. & blessid be þu kyng/ ihesu al my ioying/. of alle þi gyftes gode/ þt for me spilt þi and dyed opon þo rode. |blode.93 you gyue me grace to sing/ þo song of þi louing/. pater noster aue maria Credo.94 W hen þou has sayde al þi crede. þis short prayere I rede þou rede. þt next is wryten in blak letter. ful mykel shal þou fare þo better. L ord als þou con & als þou wille. haue mercie of me þt has don ille. for what so þou wt me wil do I holde me payde to stonde þer to. þi merci ihesu wold I haue. and I for ferdnes durst hit craue. bot þou bids aske & we shal haue. swete ihesu make me saue. And gyue me witt & wisdame right/ to loue þe lord wt al my might/. W hen þou has made þis orison. þen shal yow wt deuocion. Make þi prayeres in þt stede. for alle þi frendes þt are dede. [folio 10v] And for alle cristen soules sake. swilk prayere shal þou make. L ord for þi holy grace. here oure prayers in þis place. graunt now lord for oure prayere. þt cristen soules þate passed here.95 fro þis lyue þt synful esse. þat ilk one haue part of þis messe.

425 428–9 430 438 435

440 448 445

450 456

455

As in previous line, MS reads aue; S suggests emending to ane. S reads chaun[g]e, with an emendation, H notes the MS reading, and emends to chaun[ge]. 93 The scribe has run on the form blode to the end of the following line because of lack of space, preceded by a vertical line to indicate its appropriate position. 94 S assigns different line numbers to each half-line distinguished here; thus pater … Credo is line 437 in his edition. H has a footnote: ‘written in long lines (2 vv. In one); the metrical structure has been misunderstood by Simmons. Same poem see [volume] I p. 30’: a reference to The Form of Living, also edited by H. See p. 181 above. 95 H in footnote glosses here with ‘= ere’, presumably interpreting ere as meaning ‘formerly’. 91

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Appendix I

for hore soules I pray derly. þate I shal neuen serly. þt þis messe may be hore mede. helpe & hele fro alkyns drede. fader soule moder soule breþer dere. Sisters soules sib men & oþer sere. þate vs gode wolde of vs gode did. or ony kyndnes vntil vs kid and til alle in purgatory pyne. þis messe be mede & medicyne. til alle cristen soules hely.96 graunt þi grace & þi mercy. forgyue hom alle hor trespasse. lese hore bondes & let hom passe. fro al kyns pyne and al care. In til þo ioy þt lastis euer mare. AMEN. L oke pater noster þou be prayande Ay to þou here þo preste be sayande per omnia secula al on hight. þen I wold þou stode vp right. for he wil saie wt hegh steuen. pater noster to god of heuen. [folio 11r] herken him wt gode wille. and whils he saies hold þe stille. bot answere at temptacionem. set libera nos a malo amen. hit were no nede þe þis to ken. for who con not þis are lewed men. when þis is done saye priuely. other prayer none þer by. pater noster first in laten. and sithen in englishe als here is wryten. F ader oure þat is in heuen. blessid be þi name to neuen. Come to vs þi kyngdome. In heuen & erthe þi wille be done. oure ilk day bred graunt vs to day. and oure mysdedes forgyue vs ay. als we do hom þt trespasus.97

201

460 467 465 472 470

475 482 480

485 492 490

495 502

96 H suggests emending hely to hally, but the reading (because of the rhyme) remains difficult. S’s glossary interprets hely as ‘holy’. The remaining witnesses do not resolve the issue; the C-, D- and H-texts have haly, the E-text holly, the F-text holi, the G-text holy, and the I-text hoolly. 97 S, H emend trespasus to trespas us.

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Appendix I

right so haue merci vp on vs. and lede vs in no foundynge. bot shild vs fro al wicked þinge. Amen.98 Þ en eft sone þo preste wil saye. stande stille & herken him al waye. he saies agnus99 thryse or he cese. þo last worde he spekis of pese. In þe þt pese may noght be. If þou be oute of charyte. þen is gode of god to craue. þat þou charyte may haue. þere when þo prest pax wil kis. knele þou & praye þen þis. [folio 11v] G ods lamb þt best may. do þo synne of þis world a way. of vs haue merci & pite. and graunt vs pese & charite. for in charyte are thre kyns loues. þt to parfite pese nedlyng behoues. þe first loue is certenly. to loue þo lord souerenly.100 þer fore I pray þe god of myght. þou make my loue both day & nyght. sykerly sett euer ilk dele. soueranly to loue þe wele. þt be þi myght & gouernynge. I be euer in101 ȝernynge. soueranly þe to pay. In al þt euer I con or may. and prest be I erly & late. to my degre & myn astate. alle gode dedes to fulfylle. & to eschewe all þat are ille. þo secunde is a priue loue. þt is nedeful to my behoue. þo whilk loue is propirly.

500

505 512 510

515 522 520

525 532 530

Amen is engrossed. Agnus is engrossed. 100 H notes a small flourish at the bottom of the lobe in þo, and therefore reinterprets the word as a correction, yielding a pronoun ‘thee’; thus the line is taken to read ‘to loue þe, lord, souerenly’, in place of S’s ‘to loue þo lord soueranly’. The line does seem to contain a difficult reading, and it may be noted other versions regularly deploy a possessive pronoun ‘thy’, e.g. F’s ‘To lowe thi lord souereynly’. 101 Simmons inserts [þi] at this point, but there is no gap in the MS. 98

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Appendix I

by twix my soule & my body. þerfore make you gode lorde. my body & my soule of one a corde. þt ayther part by one assent. serue þe wt gode entent. let neuer my body do þt ille. þt hit may my soule spille. [folio 12r] þe thrid loue is wt outen doute. to loue ilk neghtbur me aboute. and of þt loue for no þing cese. þerfore I pray þe prince of pese. þt þou wil make als þou may best my hert to be in pese & rest. & redy to loue alle maner of men. My sib men namely þen. Neghtburs seruandes & ilk sugete. felouse frendes none to forgete. bot loue ilkone bothe for & nere. als my selue wt hert clere. and turne hore hertis so to me. þt we may fully frendis be. þt I of hor gode & þai of myne. haue ay ioy wt hert fyne. als I pray for my selue here. graunt so til oþer on selue manere. so þt ilk mon loue wele othere. as he were his owne broþere. swilk loue among vs be. þt we be wel loued of þe. þt be þis holy sacrament. þt now is here in present. and be þo vertu of þis messe. we mot haue forgyuenesse. of al oure gilt & al oure mys. & be þi help come to þis102 blis. Amen.103 L oke pater noster þou be sayande. I whils þo preste is rynsande. [folio 12v] When þo preste has rinsynge done. opon þi fete þou stonde vp sone.

203

535

544 540

548 545

550 557 555

560 567 565

570 576

102 H emends to þi, following the reading in C, viz. thy; see also þi in D, þi in I. The E-, F-, G- and H-texts have variants on to blysse, with neither possessive pronoun nor determiner. 103 Amen is engrossed.

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Appendix I

þen þo clerk flyttis þo boke. agayne to ye south auter noke. þo preste turnes til his seruyce. and saies forthe more of his office. þen wt outen tarying. on þis wyse be þi saying. J hesu104 my king I pray to þe. bow doun þin eren of pyte. And here my prayer in þis place. gode lord for þi holi grace. for me & alle þate here ere. þat þou vs kepe fro alkyns were. þat may byfalle on ony way. In oure dedes do to day. wheþer we ryde or be goande. lyg/ or sitt/ or if we stande. what sodan chaunce þt comes vs tille. oþerwayse þen were oure wille. we praye þis messe vs stande in stede. of shrift & als of housel brede. And ihesu for þi woundes fyue. wys vs þo waye of rightwis lyue. Amen.105 W hen þis is saide knele doun sone. saye pater noster til messe be done. for þo messe is noght sest. or tyme of ite misa106 est. þen when þou heris say ite. or benedicamus if hit be. [folio 13r] þen is þo messe al done. bot ȝit þis prayere þou make right sone. after hit wele þou may. In gods name wende þi way. G od107 be þonked of alle his werkes. od be þonked of prestes & clerkes. od be þonked of ilk a mon. and I þonke god als I con. I thonk god of his godnesse. And nomely now of þis messe. and of alle þo prayers þt here are prayde.

575

580 587 585

590 598 595

600

608 605

610

Capital J runs down to þat me byfalle, in left margin. Amen is engrossed. 106 misa (sic) for missa. 107 The capital occupies space over the three lines. Guide letters () for the decorator appear at the beginning of each line, but there is no room for each to be decorated. 104 105

Appendix I



pray I to god þt he be payde. In mynde of god here I me blesse.108 with my blessyng god sende me hesse. In nomine patris & filii & spiritus sancti.109 Amen. Pater noster. Aue maria: Credo.110 H ow þou at þo messe þi tym[.]111 shuld spende. haue I told now wil I ende. þo robryk is gode vm while to loke. þo praiers to con wt outen boke. hit is skille wt outen doute. þt ilk mon messe loue & loute. for of alle in þis world þen is þo messe. þo worthiest þing most of godnesse. Explicit. Amen fiat112

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Translation The following literal translation, aligned with the lines of the B-version of LFMB given above, is offered to assist readers. Present-day punctuation has been inserted to assist in the understanding of sentence-structure, with the proviso that Middle English sentences were very different in comparison with present-day ‘educated’ usage, which latter is derived from later prescriptive notions of pithiness and balance. Inserted elements deployed to assist present-day readers’ comprehension are marked by italics, as are some in-line interpretative notes, derived from Simmons’ edition, on sacramental features. The worthiest thing, greatest in goodness, In all this world, is the Mass. In all the books of Holy Church That holy men, at one time, have written, The Mass is praised in many ways. The virtue of the Mass could never be counted, Even if a thousand scholars did nothing else,

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108 H suggests emending to blisse, following the C-text, and making a better rhyme with the more-commonly attested form his (MS hesse) for ‘his’; H nevertheless keeps hesse and does not suggest an emendation. Hesse is a slightly odd form, though LALME records hes etc in various records and localities, and the Middle English Dictionary (MED) cites hesse both from the B-version of LFMB and from a poem in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 102; see https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/bibliography/BIB4745?rid=HYP. 2474.19990513T124835, last consulted 10 August 2022. Blesse would make sense in context; S offers a marginal gloss, viz. ‘Crossing thyself, in memory of Christ, ask the blessing of the Blessed’. 109 In nomine … Credo: engrossed in MS. The text reads spiritus sancti rather than the expected spiriti sancti. 110 Pater … Credo: engrossed in MS. 111 Neither S nor H notice the erased letter here. 112 Explicit … fiat: engrossed in MS.

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In accordance with what the book says, Except describe the virtues of singing Mass, And the profit from hearing Mass, Even so they should never the fifth part – For all their intelligence and all their skill – Describe concerning the virtue, rewards and pardon For those who with devotion, With purity and in good intent Give worship to this sacrament. I find written in a book concerning one Whose name was Dom Jeremy, A devout and religious man. In his book he speaks in this way; He says, you ought to pay special heed That you make no chattering during Mass: To that end he offers a fine exemplary narrative As to why it is very bad to do so. He also describes the manner In which you ought to hear your Mass. When the priest speaks, or if he sings, You may pay close attention to him. When the priest prays secretly Then is the time of prayer for you. When I came upon the book, I put it into English. When the altar is entirely prepared, And the priest is properly dressed, He then takes in both his hands A cloth [Simmons: chasuble] at the altar’s end And he steps back a little way And puts it entirely around himself. All people kneel, but he stands, And holds up to God both his hands; Then, before he begins the Mass, He will humble himself for his sin; He confesses there to all the folk Concerning all his sins both less and greater: In the same way do the clerks in response to him Confess there concerning all their sin, And ask God for forgiveness, Before they begin to hear the Mass. The priest absolves them there quickly, Literate and illiterate, whoever wishes to confess, And to acknowledge to God that they are bad, Whether it be aloud or quietly. Therefore, kneeling on your knees,

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Just as you may see the other person beside you, Confess there all your sins, Beginning thus when he begins, As is clear in this rubric below. And with that put your hands together; And, that it can be so, Also say a Paternoster and an Ave, And before you stand up, say your creed, You may prosper all the better. Many say Confiteor – It would also be good to say this – I confess to God, full of power, And to the pure virgin his mother, And to all saints here, And to you, spiritual father, That I have sinned greatly, In many diverse sins: In thought, in speech, and in pleasure. In word and deed I am guilty, And am worthy of blame; Therefore I beg holy Mary And all the holy saints, In God’s name, And the priest, to pray for me That God may have mercy and pity on me, Through his incarnation, On my wretched sinfulness, And give me grace and forgiveness For my misdeeds.   Paternoster, Ave, Credo. When you have thus performed your Creed, Immediately you may get up on your feet, For by this time, as I suppose, The priest is beginning the office of the Mass; Or else he stands turning the pages of his book At the south end of the altar. Even then, still standing, I would wish that you were saying this: God, for your goodness, At the beginning of this Mass Grant that all who shall hear it Be clean and clear in conscience; Lord, save the priest who must say it (i.e. the Mass) From temptations this day, That he may be clean in deed and thought, And that no evil spirits trouble him, So that he may carry out this sacrament

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With a pure heart and good intention, First highly to your honour, Who is sovereign of all our help; And to your mother, the pure virgin, And besides to all your saints; And to all who hear it, healing of the soul, Help and grace and every kind of well-being; And to all whom we have in mind, Related or unrelated of any kind, May the good Lord grant them, because of this Mass, Forgiveness for all their sins; And rest and peace that always lasts For Christian souls who have passed away; And to us all send your assistance And bring us to joy without end. Amen. On high feasts or holy days, Whenever men either sing or say ‘Gloria in excelsis’ in their Mass, Then you say as is written here: Joy be to God in heaven With every kind of joy that people can name, And peace on earth to all people Who are righteous, and of good will. We love you, Lord God almighty And also we fervently bless you, We worship you, as is worthy, And glorify [lit. make joy to] you, both greater and lesser folk. We thank you, God, for all your grace, For the great glory that you have, Our Lord, our God, our Heavenly King, Our God, and our Father Almighty Our Lord, the son of God of heaven, Jesus Christ, beautiful to name, Our Lord, Lamb of God, we name you, And Son of God, your bounteous Father. You who purge the sin of the world, Have mercy on us, greater and lesser; You who purge the world’s punishment, May you receive our prayer at this time. You that sit at the right hand of your Father May you mercifully help us living here, For you are holy, created by no-one, Except from yourself, and only Lord. You are the highest, greatest of wisdom, Jesus Christ with the Holy Spirit, Dwelling with the Father of Heaven,

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In greater joy than man can name; Reveal to us that joy, Jesus, Through the prayer of your Mother. Amen. And when you have done all this, Immediately kneel down on your knees. Whether they sing or say the Mass, Repeat your paternoster always Until the deacon or priest may read the gospel. Stand up then and pay close attention; For when the priest moves his book Northwards to the other side of the altar, And makes a cross on the letter With his thumb, he succeeds the better, And afterwards another on his face; For he has much need of grace, For when an earthly man has to utter The words of Jesus Christ, the Son of the God of heaven, Both the readers and the listeners It seems to me, have much need of teachers, How they ought to read and how they ought to hear The words of God, so pleasing and beloved. People ought to have very great dread When they have to hear or else read them, And love also for that dear one That with those words would want to remedy our suffering. But since our business is concerning listening, Our teaching must now be about that. Scholars hear in one way, But unlearned men need to learn in another way. At the beginning may you take heed, And make a large cross on yourself, Stand and say in this manner As you can see written here: In the name of the Father, and Son, and the Holy Spirit, A true God greatest in powers; May God’s word be welcome to me; May glory and love be to you, lord. While it is being read, you may not speak, But think on him who redeemed you so dearly, Saying thus in your mind, As you shall find written hereafter: Jesus mine, grant me your grace And strength and time for amendment, To keep your word and do your will, To choose the good and leave the evil, and that it so may be

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Good Jesus, grant it to me. Amen. Repeat this often in your mind Do not forget it until the Gospel is done; At some point as well, when it is finished, May you make a cross, and kiss it immediately. Men ought to say the Creed at a certain time; When others say theirs, take care to say your own; This that follows in English writing, I wish you would say it, for the better. Unless they say theirs, say nothing else, But do henceforth as this book tells you. May you take good heed to look here, For here is written your English creed. I believe in God, Father of might, Who has created everything, Heaven and earth, day and night And everything from nothing. And in Jesus, who is God’s Son alone Both God and man, everlasting Lord, In him I believe. Through the gentleness of the Holy Spirit, That was so merciful, He alighted in Mary, chaste virgin, Having become a child; He was tormented under Pontius Pilate In order to save us, Placed on a cross, and he was dead, Laid in his grave. His soul went into hell, To tell the truth; In flesh and body up he rose On the third day; He climbed to heaven with gaping wounds Through his power; Now he sits at his Father’s right side In majesty; Thence shall he come to judge us all, Appearing in his manhood, The living and the dead, all who derive From the seed of Adam. Firmly I believe in the Holy Spirit, And Holy Church that is so good; And further I believe that the consecrated elements Are both flesh and blood, And forgiveness for my sins, If I will repent,

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And the resurrection also of my flesh And life without end. After that, closely following, Comes the time of the offering. Offer or leave it, whichever pleases you; How you ought to pray, I would want you to know. While you are standing, I advise you to say What is next written, to please God. Jesus, who was born in Bethlehem, And three kings came before you, They offered gold, incense and myrrh, And you did not refuse anything of theirs, But directed all three of them safely Back home to their own country. Just so our offerings that we offer, And our prayers which we proffer, Accept them, Lord, as for the love of you, And be our help in every thing, That all dangers be completely done away with; May you grant our good desires immediately, May you redeem all our misdeeds, And send us help for all our needs. Amen. Say a paternoster, still standing up, At the time when the priest is washing, Until after the washing the priest will bow to The altar, and then turn around. Then he asks in a quiet voice For each person’s prayers to the God of heaven. Pay close attention to the priest, When he turns himself round, beat your breast, And think then, because of your sin, That you are not worthy to pray for him, But when you pray, God perceives your desire, If it be good, and sets aside your sin. Therefore, with hope in his mercy, Answer the priest loudly with this: May the Holy Spirit come down into you And send you in the right way, Direct your heart and your speaking To God’s worship and his love. When the priest turns to his book In order to look for his private prayers. You may then kneel down and then say this That is next written in black letters: It will much amend your praying If you will hold up both your hands

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To God with good devotion, When you say this prayer: God receive your service And this solemn sacrifice, On behalf of the priest and for us all Who are now here, or shall be here To hear this Mass, or undertake worship, To see the sacrament, or pray to it; And for all that live in God’s name That they may have help from sin and shame, And for the souls that have departed from here, That they shall have rest that must always last. Amen. Paternoster: Ave Maria: Credo. Make sure that you are saying the paternoster While the priest is praying privately. Afterwards the priest, in that place, Will remove himself a little Until he comes to the middle of the altar. Raise up as men command you, Heart and body and every part; Pay close attention and listen to him carefully. When he begins per omnia And then sursum corda. At the end he says sanctus three times And utters in excelsis twice. As soon as ever he has done that Make sure that you are at once ready And say these words in a quiet voice, Privately, to the God of heaven. In world of worlds without end May you be thanked, Jesus my king. I give all my heart to you, It is very right that it should be so. With all my will I worship you, Jesus, may you be blessed. With all my heart I thank you for it, That is, the good that you have done for me; Sweet Jesus, grant me now this, That I may come to your bliss, There with angels to sing This sweet song of your love Sanctus: sanctus: sanctus. Jesus grant that it be so. Amen. When this has been said, kneel down And that with goodly devotion. May you thank God for all goodness

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And pray also for each man Of each estate, and each degree, As the law of charity desires. Therefore, without tarrying May your speech be in this manner. Lord, honoured must you be, With all my heart I worship you. I thank you, Lord, as I well ought, For more goodness than I can conceive of, That I have received from you, Since the time when I was conceived. You have granted me my life, and my limbs, And you have sent me my right understanding. You have kept me through your grace From diverse perils in many places. All my life and all my possessions I derive entirely from your giving. Dearly you bought me with your blood, And died for me upon the cross. I have committed, against your will, Many sins, both great and wicked. You are ready, through your goodness. To grant me forgiveness. For these good things, and many more, I thank you, Lord. I pray also That you may forgive me my guilt And be my help as long as I live. And give me grace to eschew That which I must regret, And give me the desire always to do good. Lord, think on the state of holy church And the bishops, priests and clerks, That they may be sustained in all good works. And the king, the queen, the lords of the land, That they may be properly upholding Their estates in all goodness, And rule the people in righteousness. Our kinsmen, and our well-wishers, Our friends, tenants, and servants, Old men, children, and all women, Merchants, men of skill, and labourers, Men rich and poor, great and small, I pray to you, Lord, for them all, That they may be specially sustained In good health and holy life. To those who are in miserable living,

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In slander, discomfort, or in strife, Sick or imprisoned, or upon the sea, Poor, exiled, dispossessed, if any there be, May you send your help to them all For your worship and your honour. All who are in good standing today, And live purely for your pleasure, Keep them, Lord, from all folly, And through your mercy from all sin, And give them grace to endure and abide In your service to their end. This world that turns in many ways May you make good for us through all our days; The weather, strong and unstable, May you make, Lord, good and seasonable. May you make plentiful the fruits of the earth. As you best perceive, arrange for us, May you send such grace to us That in our last day, at our end, When this world and we ourselves will part Bring us to glory that always lasts. Amen. Make sure that you are saying a paternoster When he may be making the sign of the cross over the chalice: When the time of consecration is approaching Men are accustomed to ring a little bell. Then you must do reverence To Jesus Christ’s own presence, That he may loosen all our fearful chains; Kneeling, hold up both your hands, And in this way you may behold the elevation, For that is he whom Judas sold, And then was scourged and placed on the cross, And for humankind there shed his blood, And died and rose and went to heaven And still shall come to judge us impartially, Each man in accordance with what he has done That same is he upon whom you are looking. This is the truth of Holy Church, Whoever does not believe this must sit in complete darkness; Therefore I advise, with good intent, That you may regard this sacrament. Such prayers then you may make As is most pleasing for you to adopt. Different people pray variously Each person according to his best manner. Short prayer ought to be used without fear,

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And alongside paternoster and the creed. If you are unprovided with one I set one here that can be said; Though I mark it here in letters You can change it for a better one. May you be beloved, King, And may you be thanked, King; And may you be blessed, King; Jesus, all my joy, For all your good gifts; Who for me shed your blood, And died upon the cross. May you give me grace to sing the song of your loving. Pater noster; ave Maria; Credo. When you have said all of your creed I advise you to read this short prayer That is next written in black lettering; You must do very much the better for it. Lord, insofar as you can and as you may wish, Have mercy on me, who has done evil; For whatever you wish to do with me I consider myself deserving to receive it. Jesus, I would want to have your mercy. And I dare beg for it out of fear, For you bid us to ask, and we shall have. Sweet Jesus, make me safe, And give me intelligence and true wisdom To love you, Lord, with all my strength. When you have made this prayer Then you must bow down with devotion, Make your prayers at that point For all your friends who are dead, And for the sake of all Christian souls; Such a prayer you must make. Lord, for your holy grace, Hear our prayers in this place, Grant now, Lord, for our prayer, That Christian souls, that have departed from here, From this life, which is full of sin, That each one may have part of this Mass; For their souls I pray fervently, Which I must variously name, That this Mass may be their remedy, Help and healing from all manner of dread, Soul of father, soul of mother, dear brethren, Souls of sisters, kinsmen and diverse others, Who wished us well or did us good Or showed us any kindness; And to all in torment of purgatory

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May this Mass be remedy and medicine; And to all holy Christian souls Grant your grace and your mercy, Forgive them all their trespasses, Loose their bonds, and let them pass From all kinds of suffering and all suffering Into the joy that lasts evermore. Amen. Make sure you are praying the paternoster Continually until you may hear the priest saying Per omnia secula very loudly; Then I would wish that you stood upright, For he will say in a loud voice Paternoster to the God of heaven. Listen to him with a good will, And while he speaks, keep yourself quiet, But answer at temptacionem Sed libera nos a malo, amen. There is no need for you to understand this For whoever do not know this are unlearned people. When this is done, say privately No other prayer thereby; Paternoster first in Latin, And then in English, as it is written here. Our Father, that is in heaven Blessed may it be to utter your name. May your kingdom come to us. In heaven and on earth may your will be done. On each of our days grant us daily bread And forgive us our misdeeds always, As we do those that trespass against us, And exactly so have mercy upon us And lead us into no temptation, But shield us from all wicked things. Amen. Then forthwith the priest will speak, Stand still, and listen to him always. He says agnus thrice before he stops, The last word he speaks is of peace. That peace cannot be in you If you are lacking charity. Then it is good to beg of God That you can have charity. There, when the priest will kiss the pax, Kneel down and pray then in this way: Lamb of God, that best can Do away with the sin of this world, On us have mercy and pity,

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And grant us peace and charity. For in charity are three kinds of love That of necessity belong to perfect peace. Certainly the first love is To love the Lord above all. Therefore I pray to you, God of might, That you make my love, both day and night Securely set in every part Above all to love you well, That by your might and governance, I may ever be for you desirous To please you above all As much as I am able or can. And may I be eager, early and late, According to my degree and my estate To carry out all good deeds, And to avoid those that are evil. The second is a secret love, That is needful for my wants, The love that is properly Between my soul and my body. Therefore, good Lord, make My body and my soul of one accord, So that either part by a single agreement May serve you with good intention. Let never my body do that sin So that it can injure my soul. The third love is without doubt, To love each neighbour around me, And not cease for any reason in that love. Therefore, I pray to you, prince of peace, That you will make, as best you can, My heart to be in peace and quiet And be ready to love all manner of people, Especially my kinsfolk, then Neighbours, servants, and every inferior, Fellows, friends, none to forget, But love each one, both far and near, As myself, with a clear heart, And so turn their hearts to me, So that we may be wholly friends, That I of their good, and they of mine Have always joy with glad heart. As I pray for myself here, Grant so to others in like manner, So that each person loves the other well

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As if he were his own brother. May such love among us be That we be well loved by you; That by this holy sacrament That now is present here, And by the virtue of this Mass We might have forgiveness For all our guilt and all our misdoing And by your help come to this bliss. Amen. Make sure you are saying a paternoster While the priest is rinsing (i.e. at the ablutions). When the priest has finished rinsing Immediately you may stand up on your feet. Then the clerk moves the book Back to the south side of the altar, The priest turns to his service And utters more from his office. Then without delay Your speech may be in this manner. Jesus, my King, I pray to you, Bow down your ears of pity, And hear my prayer in this place. Good Lord, for your holy grace For me and for all that are here That you keep us from all kinds of strife That may befall us in any way, In our deeds which we do today Whether we ride, or are travelling, Lie down or sit, or if we are standing, Whatever sudden chance may come to us In any way against our will We pray that this Mass stand us in place Of shrift, and also of the sacrament-bread. And, Jesus, for your five wounds, Guide us on the way of righteous life. Amen. When this is said, immediately kneel down, Say the paternoster until the Mass is finished For the Mass is not ended Until the time of ite, misa est. Then when you hear him say ite Or benedicamus, if so it be, Then is the Mass all done, But still you may make this prayer at once, And, after it, you may well In God’s name, wend your way. May God be thanked for all his works,

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May God be thanked for priests and clerks, May God be thanked for everyone, And I thank God insofar as I am able. I thank God for his goodness, And especially now for this Mass, And for all the prayers that here are prayed, I pray to God that he be pleased. In thinking of God here I bless myself, In response to my blessing, may God send me his. In nomine patris and filii and spiritus sancti. Amen. Pater noster. Ave maria. Credo. How you at the Mass ought to spend your time I have told: now I will end. The rubric is good at times attend to The prayers to learn without book. It is doubtless reason That each person may love and honour the Mass, For of all things in this world, the Mass is then The worthiest thing, of most goodness. Explicit. Amen. fiat.

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Appendix II The Lay Folks’ Mass Book and the Sarum Rite

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he Salisbury, or Sarum, ‘use’ was ‘the local modification of the Roman rite in use during the Middle Ages at the cathedral church of Salisbury’ (ODCC). Traditionally ascribed to St Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury (d.1099), it is, in fact, much later. By 1457 it was claimed that it was used in public worship throughout most of England, Wales and Ireland, and it furnished the primary material for the 1549 Book of Common Prayer. The most comprehensive modern edition of the ‘Use of Sarum’ (not including the Missal) remains that edited in two volumes by W. H. Frere in 1898 and 1901. The purpose of this appendix is to illustrate many of the contentions of this book. The following parallel analysis of the LFMB and the Sarum Mass is, it has to be admitted, a necessarily artificial exercise. Simmons, it is true, linked the LFMB more closely with the York (Ebor) rite, since he was keen to make connexions between his Yorkshire parish and the usage of the metropolitan see, but the text aligns more closely in many ways to that of Salisbury (Sarum). Present-day indications of the provenance of versions of LFMB, however, show that it was circulated across a wide area of the north midlands as well as Yorkshire (see Appendix I). Apart from Simmons’ edition of the LFMB we have deliberately used nineteenthor early twentieth-century editions of the Sarum Missal in Latin and in English translation, as these texts were understood and revivified in the Victorian period. The LFMB is not, of course, a liturgical text as such, but rather a vernacular guide for those attending the Latin Mass. Simmons, as we have seen, was perfectly well aware that this late medieval form of public worship should not be understood or viewed through the lens of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Nevertheless, in the context of Victorian medievalism and the Tractarian sense of the catholic continuity of the English Church, learned churchmen like Simmons, many of them devout parish priests, moved from the early Tractarian emphasis on doctrine to a growing and living sense of liturgy and later ritual. It was in this context, and with the increasing awareness of the English medieval rites through the work of Maskell, Dickinson, Henderson and others, that the LFMB once more played a living part in the life of the late Victorian Church of England and indeed, through the work of the EETS in the wider cultural life of educated society. It is clear that the lay experience of the late medieval Mass in England was primarily visual rather than verbal, beyond picking up cues from the Latin when the priest was speaking audibly. The change to a more largely verbal culture in worship after the Reformation has been documented at length by Joseph Leo Koerner. Joseph Koerner notes

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that even Martin Luther, following the terminology of St Augustine, was wont to call the sacraments ‘visible words’ that are perceivable in ‘an act and a thing’.1 Certainly in the LFMB the ‘people marked the priest’s reading and action’,2 above all when the host was elevated above the head of the priest and shown to the congregation an action that is expressly forbidden by the more Protestant reformers of the 1549 BCP.3 As we have seen, it has become clear from the work of John Harper, Eleanor McCullough and others that the experience of the laity in the celebration of the Mass in late medieval worship in England is difficult for a modern congregation to comprehend.4 P. S. Barnwell has indicated that: Of the 3,500 words of the Lady Mass, 72 per cent were chanted by the priest unheard by the laity. When there were other clergy and singers, the former sang 12 per cent and the latter 16 percent. A fifth of the 3,500 words was recited by the clergy in the vestry before and after the body of the service; of the remainder of the liturgy, two thirds of the words chanted by the priest in the body of the church with the laity potentially present were unheard, 650, nearly a quarter, consisting of the Canon of the Mass.5

Clearly for a modern Anglican congregation, brought up in the tradition of the BCP, the medieval Mass presents a problem. Even if the medieval layperson understood Latin, that is barely relevant as most of the words were entirely inaudible. There were certainly moments of visual drama, above all at the elevation of the elements during the reciting of the Canon. But what he or she was actually to do remains unclear. As we turn to Thomas Frederick Simmons and the nineteenth-century Church of England we find the role of the laity in public worship again an issue, even if in rather a different way. Let us, then, focus upon a particular moment that involves Canon Simmons. On February 26, 1875, Simmons was involved in a debate in the northern Convocation of York on the revision of Prayer Book rubrics in the light of the Royal Commission on Ritual which had first sat in 1867. First, Simmons had strongly made the point that often those reading in church were inaudible, and suggested an addition to the rubrics that those reading should always face the people. Second, in a revision of 1662, Simmons suggested that the word ‘Minister’ should be replaced by ‘he that readeth’, ‘with the exact purpose of sanctioning the practice of allowing laymen to read the lessons’.6 Thus, if the medieval Mass was deliberately inaudible, the liturgy of the Prayer Book had also become practically inaudible in the nineteenth century through bad habit of clergy mumbling or facing away from the Joseph Leo Koerner, The Reformation of the Image (London, 2004), p. 43. Stanley Morison, English Prayer Books (Cambridge, 1949), p. 61. 3 Before the prayer of oblation in the Book of 1549 there is the rubric: ‘These words before rehersed are to be saied, turning still to the Altar, without any elevacion, or shewing the Sacrament to the people’ (Cummings ed., The Book of Common Prayer, p. 31). 4 See Harper et al. (eds), Late Medieval Liturgies Enacted; McCullough, Praying the Passion. The work of Pamela King in The York Mystery Cycle and the Worship of the City (Cambridge, 2006) relates more particularly to the English civic mystery cycle in York, and is therefore not directly relevant here. 5 Barnwell, ‘The Nature of Late Medieval Worship: The Mass’, p. 210. 6 Journal of [York] Convocation, 1875 (London, 1876), 26 February, 1875, p. 158. 1

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congregation. Secondly, Simmons was eager here, and elsewhere, to find a role for the laity (or at least laymen) within the liturgy. It was within this context that he was drawn into his work on the LFMB, and the role of the laity in the medieval church. Here, it was the LFMB that provided an answer to the question, what was the lay person supposed to be doing during the Mass. In the textual analysis offered in this Appendix we align the LFMB with a medieval Use as illustrative of the two elements in worship that were happening simultaneously. Both Francis Dickinson in his meticulous Burntisland edition of the Sarum Missal (referred to in this Appendix simply as ‘Dickinson’), and indeed Simmons, were perfectly well aware of the instabilities of the medieval textual traditions, not least in the matter of liturgy when use varied according to place and circumstance. There is, in effect, no such thing as the Sarum Mass or the LFMB, but a potentially infinite set of variants on a common base. It has to be admitted, therefore, that this appendix assumes a textual stability that ill reflects the actual varieties of practice, and is the consequence of a series of editorial decisions by ourselves and by others. As far as the LFMB is concerned we here follow Simmons’ B-version. Second, rather than the York rite assumed by Simmons, we have matched the practice of the laity with the Sarum rite, as being by far the most widespread in late medieval England. Furthermore, that has been stabilised by referring to the English translation of Frederick E. Warren, published by the Alcuin Club in 1913 (referred to in this Appendix simply as ‘Warren’). Warren’s translation draws upon Dickinson, and is from the folio printed edition of 1526. Dickinson used the copy in Cambridge University Library (MS Vel. A. 52. 3).7 There is another ‘perfect copy’ (Warren’s description) in the Bodleian Library (Gough Missals, MS 23). There is, in short, an editorially-constructed quality to the following comparison between the action and words of the priest at the Mass, and those of the layfolk in their prayers and devotion parallel to the Mass and its Canon. In this culture of what Barnwell has called ‘polytextuality’8 (as opposed to the ‘monotextuality’ of the BCP tradition and in the nineteenth-century Anglican Church) two simultaneous and closely related liturgical ‘events’ are taking place at the same time, the one said largely in silence so as not to impede the prayers of the other, but upon which those very prayers depended for efficacy. In the following analysis, discussion of the content of LFMB is presented in normal type, while that concerning the Sarum Use is in bold. Citations from LFMB are from Simmons’ edition, and his lineation is used here.  At the beginning of his Introduction to the LFMB, Simmons sets the tone of his position by assuming that although the work has no ecclesiastical authority, nevertheless, ‘the common prayers may be accepted as the best evidence of the creed of a church.’9 The LFMB in its B-text form, first known to William Maskell, begins See Dickinson, A List of Printed Service Books, p. 17. Barnwell, ‘The Nature of Late Medieval Worship: The Mass’, p. 217. 9 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. xvii. See also Newman, ‘On Consulting the Laity in Matters of Doctrine’, cited on p. 147, footnote 16 above. 7

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with a statement of the value and mystery of the Mass, and the profit for the laity of ‘messe herynge’ (B, 10). Simmons’ notes that ‘when this treatise was written ‘the congregation was expected to answer the priest to a greater extent than was the case when ‘mass became an exclusively clerical service’.10 The book of ‘Dan Ieremy’ warns the layfolk against chattering (‘ianglyng’) during the Mass (B, 22), advising instead that they pay attention either when the priest speaks, or else when he prays silently, to engage in their own prayers and devotions (B, 29–30). The layfolk never simply do nothing. As the priest puts on the ‘clothe o-pon þo auter ende’ (B, 36, which Simmons describes as the chasuble), the layfolk kneel while the priest stands.11 He makes his confession to the people, who in their turn confess to him after which he absolves them both ‘lered & lewed’ (B, 50, i.e. learned and unlearned). They remain kneeling with hands held together, adding each a ‘pater and aue’ (B, 60, i.e. a Lord’s Prayer and an Ave). This is not quite the order of the Mass in the Sarum Use according to Maskell and after him Dickinson and Warren. While the priest is vesting he says the Veni Creator, followed by the Collect for Purity,12 the approach to the altar – introibo ad altare,13 the Kyrie, Paternoster and Ave,14 and then the confession of the ‘ministers’.15 Finally the priest himself makes his confession to which the ‘ministers’ say ‘Amen’. LFMB (B, 65ff.) are a general confession in English, of which, Simmons remarks, there are ‘many forms’ in the Western Church.16 The English form in the LFMB is longer than either the Latin or English of Maskell and Dickinson/Warren. ‘The Book of Curtasye’ (printed in F. J. Furnivall’s EETS edition of The Babees Book [1868]) indicates that people should learn by heart the Confiteor and Miseratur,17 as an exercise in ‘manners’. The people are now bidden to stand (B, 84) while the priest begins the ‘office of messe’ (B, 86), standing at the south end of the altar and turning his book to begin. The Sarum rite18 here has a complex series of seasonal instructions for the priest, his minister (deacon, sub-deacon), during which they say ‘privately’ the Gradual, Alleluya, or Sequence, or Tract. The sub-deacon then prepares the Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 158. Another text, probably early sixteenth-century, Langforde’s Meditatyons for goostly exercise in the tyme of the masse, promotes careful watching and listening of the priest’s actions and words by the layperson, who is guided to meditate upon what each element of the Mass signifies. See, J. Wickham Legg, Tracts on the Mass. Henry Bradshaw Society XXVII (London, 1904), pp. 19–29. No doubt also Simmons is writing this in the context of his contributions to the York Convocation in 1875, arguing for more lay participation in what was then an almost exclusively clerical liturgy from the BCP. 11 In his notes, Simmons describes the ritual of vesting in Rouen (and Lincoln) which was done before the priest approach the altar – except for the chasuble. 12 Dickinson, Missale ad Usum Ecclesiae Sarum, p. 579; Warren, The Sarum Missal, I, p. 20. 13 Maskell, The Ancient Liturgy, p. 8. 14 Maskell, The Ancient Liturgy, p. 10. 15 Dickinson, Missale, p. 580; Warren, Sarum Missal, pp. 21–2. Presumably the ‘clerkes’, whom Simmons describes as simply ‘learned men’, not necessarily clerical. See Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 157. 16 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 186. 17 The Babees Book, p. 303. 18 Dickinson, Missale, pp. 581–3; Warren, Sarum Missal, pp. 23–5. 10

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bread and wine of the ‘administration of the Eucharist’. During this period the layfolk would, of course, hear nothing. This period of silence and preparation would explain the need for the prayer of the laity, to fill the time (B, 91ff.). After confession it is a prayer that the consciences of all, both priest and people, may be clear (B, 93–4) and without sin.20 It is largely a prayer for the priest as he would at this point be seen (with any assistant ‘ministers’ in larger churches) preparing the elements. It is thus a joint act, in a sense, of priest and people. The prayer is expanded to embrace the ‘soul hele’ (B, 105) – soul’s health – of kindred, and ‘alle þate we haue in mynde’ (B, 107), both those alive and those departed. As the service moves on to the ‘gloria in excelsis’ (B, 117), Simmons notes that ‘it seems to have been a received opinion that there was a quasi-sacramental benefit in the Latin – one of three so-called sacred languages – though not ‘understanded of the people’.21 The Gloria is said or sung on ‘hegh festis, or on haly days’ (B, 115). The Sarum rite22 has an elaborate rubric on varieties of intonation for the Gloria for different festivals. (Dickinson prints the plainchant. Warren notes (p. 25): ‘We have omitted the music for all these openings, which is printed in the original text.’) The chant is ‘said both by the quire, and the Priest and his ministers at the altar, together with its farsings…’ A farse (med Lat. farsa) is a vernacular amplification in the liturgy.23 Simmons’ marginal notes to the LFMB indicates that the layfolk saying the Gloria in English (so that presumably the Latin and English version are said simultaneously), said ‘as here written with a farce in English’.24 The Gloria in English begins (B, 119–21) with an added line (italicised here): 19

Ioy be vnto god in heuen, with alkyns myrthe, þat men may neuen; and pese in erthe, alle men vntille.

Simmons notes that this added or farced (stuffed) line was common practice (known in French as brodé), occurring also in the Apostles’ Creed of the LFMB.25 Simmons draws on the authority of Edmond Martène who suggests that in the thirteenth century the canticle was said simultaneously in both Latin and the vernacular with

Maskell, The Ancient Liturgy, pp. 22–36. Part of this prayer is quoted in Maskell, The Ancient Liturgy, pp. 35–6. 21 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 185. Judith Maltby comments on the West Country riots after the promulgation of the 1549 Prayer Book, that the people were ‘comparing the new service to a “Christmas game” as it enacted the fundamental shift to the language of worship from Latin to the vernacular’ (Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England, Cambridge, 1998, p. 6. The Bridgettine sisters of Syon were also advised, in the fifteenth-century Myroure of our Ladye, that saying the offices in English rather than Latin was admissible but not wholly desirable (London, 1873, p. 71). 22 Dickinson, Missale, pp. 583–6; Warren, Sarum Missal, pp. 24–6. 23 Dickinson, Missale, p. 585; Warren, Sarum Missal, p. 26. OED farse n: ‘An amplificatory phrase inserted into a liturgical formula; also, each of the hortatory or explanatory passages in the vernacular interpolated between the Latin sentences in chanting the lesson or epistle.’ 24 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 14. 25 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 196 19

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‘one voice’ (consona voce). Simmons adds to this that ‘the laity in this country from very early times took part in the service of the church’.26 After the Gloria, the LFMB instructs the laity to kneel and say repeated paternosters (B, 152), while the deacon or priest who is to read the gospel ‘flyttes’ the altar book to the north end of the altar. Simmons adds to the LFMB that the paternosters are said ‘all through the collects and epistle’.27 In fact his marginal commentary seems much better suited to the C-version of LFMB, ‘written for a religious house’, rather than the B-version; C refers to the priest and ‘Hys office, prayere, and pistille [i.e. epistle]’ (C, 85). Maskell notes that the laity’s use of the repeated Ave or Paternoster was effectively like a rosary.28 He quotes the LFMB for the ‘flytting’ of the book to the north end and the reading of the gospel29 (B, 155ff.), though in a different transliteration from Simmons’ edition of B. The English translation of Sarum here has little text but a great deal of rubrical instruction for the priest, deacon, clerks and ‘quire’. While the laity repeat the paternoster, ‘all clerks’ stand for the Epistle, the Gradual, and Alleluya or Tract.30 All turn towards the reader of the Gospel.31 At the Gospel there are clear visual signs made by the priest for the laity to note. The priest makes the sign of the cross with his thumb on the text (B, 158). He has ‘mikel nede of grace’ (B, 160) in the reading of the Gospel, for these are the words of Jesus Christ. At the Gospel everyone is to stand, make the sign of the cross on themselves, and say the English words (B, 179–182): In þo name of fadre, & son, & þo holi gost, a sothfast god of mightis most; Bi gods worde welcome to me; Ioy & louyng, lord, be to þe.

As the Gospel is read the laity are to listen even to the Latin (‘oure matir is of hering’: B, 171) and are to meditate on him ‘þat dere þe boght’ (B, 184), followed by a short English prayer for strength and amendment of life. When the Gospel is finished, once again the sign of the cross is to be made by everyone.32 The Creed then follows. In the Sarum rite, the Gradual, Alleluya, or Sequence, or Tract are said ‘privately by the priest and his ministers’, at which point ‘the subdeacon shall receive the bread and wine and water with the chalice, and shall prepare them for the administration of the Eucharist.’33 Maskell notes, emphasising the variety in liturgical celebration, that ‘Some writers seem to make this the beginning of the Missa fidelium34…. [but this] depends on whether the creed be said or not, either at certain seasons as in the majority of churches, or as in others, not at Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 200. Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 16. 28 Maskell, Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, Vol. III, p. liv. 29 Maskell, The Ancient Liturgy, p. 70. 30 Dickinson, Missale, p. 586; Warren, Sarum Missal, p. 26. 31 Dickinson, Missale, p. 587; Warren, Sarum Missal, p. 27. 32 Maskell, The Ancient Liturgy, p. 76, quotes again from the LFMB, B-version, lines 195ff. 33 Dickinson, Missale, p. 587; Warren, Sarum Missal, p. 27. 34 Maskell cites Le Brun, and also Martin Gerbert (1720–93), liturgist, musicologist and Prince-Abbot of Saint-Blaise. 26 27

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all.’ Maskell here quotes the lines in the LFMB concerning the voluntary offering of the people (B, 241–3) – an ancient custom ‘still observed in all parochial masses in Roman catholic churches’ – which come after the English Creed in the LFMB. In the Dickinson (and Warren) text of Sarum, the sequence is that a Memory (memorial for the dead) is said by the priest, followed by no more than seven collects, Epistle, Gospel (read from the left-hand side [south] of the altar) after which ‘one of the candlebearers shall bring the bread, and the wine, and the water, which are arranged for the administration of the Eucharist’.36 We now move to the Creed.37 We have already noted the lengthy discussion by Simmons of the English Creed in the LFMB.38 In the LFMB it is immediately followed by a reference to the voluntary offering of the laity, which is accompanied by a prayer. This begins with a reference to the gifts given by the ‘thre kynges’ to Jesus in Bethlehem (B, 247–9), and asks that our prayers and offering may be received, the Lord granting our good desires (‘ȝernynges’) and help in the amendment of our lives (B, 257–60). According to Dickinson, the Sarum rite at the Offertory instructs the priest to place ‘the chalice with the patten and the sacrifice’ (calicem cum patena et sacrificio) on the altar, with the accompanying prayer by the priest: 35

Suscipe, Sancta Trinitas, hanc oblationem, quam ego indignus peccator offero in honore tuo, beatae Mariae et omnium sanctorum tuorum, pro peccatis et offensionibus meis: et pro salute vivorum et requie omnium fidelium defunctorum. In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti acceptum sit omnipotenti Deo hoc sacrificium novum. Receive, O Holy Trinity, this oblation, which I an unworthy sinner offer in thy honour, and in that of blessed Mary and all thy saints, for my sins and offences, and for the salvation of the living, and for the repose of the faithful departed. May this new sacrifice be acceptable to almighty God, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.39

Thus, the prayer of the laity at the Offertory, in English, is almost identical to the prayer of the priest in Latin. Then paternosters are said by the laity while the priest washes his hands (lavabo) and turns to the people to ask the laity for their prayers. In response the laity are bidden to ‘knoc on þi brest’ (B, 268), admitting that, for their sins they are not worthy to pray for the priest except by God’s mercy. The prayer of the people to the Holy Ghost for the priest is given in English (lines 274–7). Then Maskell, The Ancient Liturgy, p. 78. Dickinson, Missale, p. 589; Warren, Sarum Missal, p. 29. 37 In Myroure of Oure Ladye there is an account of three Creeds – the Apostles’, the Nicene and the Athanasian; see the EETS edition, pp. 311–13. The Apostles’ Creed, is in English ‘that eche man ys bounde to can and to say.’ The Nicene is also called the ‘Masse Crede’, said by the priest in Latin. 38 See above p. 100. 39 Dickinson, Missale, p. 593; Warren, Sarum Missal, pp. 30–1. See also Maskell, The Ancient Liturgy pp. 80–2. 35

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the priest, referring to his book, prays silently and the layfolk are to kneel and holding up both their hands and pray that God will receive the solemn sacrifice, praying both for the priest and all present (line 288). The laity and their prayers, in a real sense, support and uphold the priest celebrating the Mass. Their prayer in English is given in full. It is both for the living and for the dead, including for ‘þo soules þat hethen are past’ (B, 294), and for their eternal rest. The prayer concludes with a Paternoster, an Ave and a Creed (B, 297). The priest meanwhile is praying silently and moves to the middle of the altar. At this point the layfolk stand up, in both heart and body, praying that God be with the priest. The Sarum rite instructs the priest to turn to the people and say to them ‘in a low voice’ (tacita voce dicat40): Orate, fratres and sorores pro me, ut meum pariterque vestrum acceptum sit Domino Deo nostro sacrificium. Brethren and sisters pray for me, that my and your sacrifice may be alike acceptable to the Lord our God.41

The prayers of priest and people intermingle in mutual support. He continues to bid them pray for the departed, again in a low voice, a response being sung by a clerk that they may have eternal rest. Returning to the altar the priest says the Secrets, asking again for the prayers of the people and ending with a loud voice, ‘World without end’ (Per omnia saecula saeculorum).42 This is exactly the pattern in the LFMB (B, 306–7), as the priest begins, with uplifted hands, the Sursum Corda: ‘Lift up your hearts’: þen he begynnes per omnia, And sithen sursum corda.

Thus we see that the preparation for the Canon of the Mass is in the form of a dialogue between priest and people, each praying for the other and for the departed and joining in a common sacrifice. It is not simply the priest and a silent and inactive laity. The LFMB indicates to the layfolk the Latin words that they are to listen for and respond to. The English prayer of the layfolk then follows the pattern of thanksgiving ending in participation in the Sanctus that is sung with the angels (B, 323–7): þat I may come vn-to þi blis, þere with aungels for to syng þis swete song of þi louyng. sanctus: sanctus: sanctus: Ihesu graunt þat hit be þus. Amen.

Maskell, The Ancient Liturgy, p. 98. Dickinson, Missale, p. 595; Warren, Sarum Missal, p. 33. 42 Dickinson, Missale, p. 596; Warren, Sarum Missal, p. 34. See also Maskell, The Ancient Liturgy, p. 106. 40 41

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When the priest begins the Canon of the Mass the people are bidden to kneel. After the priest’s Sursum Corda in the Sarum Use, Prefaces according to the season and festival are said. There is no mention of seasonal Prefaces in the LFMB. The ferial Preface,43 provided with plainchant by Dickinson, concludes with the Sanctus at which point the priest signs himself on the face with the sign of the cross. The priest and people together say the Sanctus.44 The Sanctus having been said, this is the sign for the layfolk to kneel as the priest begins the Canon. Then they begin the intercessions,45 ‘of ilk [a]state, and ilk degre’ (B, 332). The intercessions follow a clear pattern, beginning with thanks for life, limb and ‘right witt’ (B, 343). All these gifts are from Jesus, the redeemer, who grants forgiveness (B, 353). Having asked forgiveness for past sins and help to avoid them in the future, intercessions are offered for the church, its bishops, priests and clerks (B, 362); for the king and the nobility (B, 364); for kinsfolk (‘sib men’, B, 368), friends, servants, old men, children, women (B, 369–70). Prayers are then offered for all estates (merchants, farmers, rich and poor) (B, 371–2), for the sick, for prisoners and those in exile (B, 378–9), for the world and for good weather (B, 388–90). At the ‘sakring’ (B, 400) – the ringing of a bell at the elevation of the Host46 – the layfolk are to say the Paternoster and do reverence ‘to ihesu crist awen presence’ (B, 403). They are to kneel and hold up both hands and behold the Redeemer (B, 405 ff.). This is the truth of the church, and as the layfolk behold the sacrament, so they are bidden to pray freely, each as they can, and without further direction, ‘Ilk mon on his best manere’ (B, 421). This is the first time that free prayer, without a text to be learnt, has been permitted, at this most sacred moment. However, if nothing comes of this, a set prayer is also then provided (B, 428ff.), a prayer of praising and blessing of Christ concluding with the Paternoster, the Ave and the Credo (B, 437). After the Creed has been uttered, there is a short prayer for mercy for the time after the elevation, followed by a short prayer for the dead and ‘alle cristen soules’ (B, 456). Following the Sanctus, the Sarum rite moves on to the Canon of the Mass.47 Maskell has a note on the stability and continuity of the Canon which has ‘remained the same from the end of the sixth century to the present time’. Maskell quotes the words of the Benedictine monk and theologian Walafrid Strabo (ninth century) and then he continues: Dickinson, Missale, p. 608; Warren, Sarum Missal, pp. 40–1 See LFMB, B, 325; Dickinson, Missale, p. 609; Warren, Sarum Missal, p. 41; Maskell, The Ancient Liturgy, p. 110 45 See Simmons (ed.), LFMB, pp. 61–80, ‘Bidding Prayers according to the Use of York’. See also H. O. Coxe, Forms of Bidding Prayer (Oxford, 1840). The earliest bidding prayer cited by Coxe is from the diocese of Worcester, 1349. He concludes with the form of prayer ‘at present used in the University Pulpit, in Oxford.’ At this time Newman was in his last years in the Church of England as vicar of the University church in Oxford. 46 Simmons dates the origin of the elevation as in the eleventh century (Simmons ed., LFMB, p. 281). It was expressly forbidden in the 1549 Prayer Book, together with any ‘shewing the Sacrament to the people.’ Brian Cummings notes that ‘by forbidding the elevation the BCP eliminated participation in the Mass as it was popularly understood, and also removed its spiritual benefit’ (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 702). 47 Dickinson, Missale, pp. 614–30; Warren, Sarum Missal, pp. 42–55; Maskell, The Ancient Liturgy, pp. 112 ff. 43

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We may be sure that in the spirit of its arrangement and in the character and general language of its prayers and ceremonies the canon of the mass up to the apostolic age did not differ from the canon as it was observed for nearly a thousand years in the church of England before the reformation, and as it still is in the Roman catholic church throughout the world.48

The canon in the Sarum rite begins with a prayer of oblation, accompanied by directions for the priest to make the sign of the cross three times over the chalice and bread. The priest then (while the layfolk are engaged in intercession for the Church, the king and the world), follows the same pattern of intercession for the church, family, parishioners and all Christian people. The rubric, which Warren notes is not found in many ‘editions’ of the Sarum Missal, instructs the priest to be brief, however, ‘on account of possible distractions of mind’.49 The memory of Mary and the saints is then reverenced, followed by a prayer to the Lord ‘graciously to accept this oblation of our service’.50 Making the sign of the cross over the bread and wine, the priest elevates the host (the ‘sakring’51), following the actions and words of Christ at the Last Supper. The words are to be said in one breath, and the host elevated ‘so that it can be seen by the people’.52 The same is then done with the chalice, and this is followed by the remembrance (anamnesis) – ‘Unde et memores, Domine, nos tui servi sed et plebs, tua sancta ejusdem Christi Filii tui Domini Dei nostri tam beatae passionis, necnon et ab inferis resurrectionis, sed et in coelos gloriosae ascensionis’ (‘We thy servants together with thy holy people, calling to mind both the blessed passion… and also his resurrection… together with his glorious ascension.’)53 Making five signs of the cross, the priest asks that these gifts may be accepted. He concludes with prayers for the dead, praying for them by name, and for all ‘sinful servants’ together with the apostles and martyrs and concluding with the doxology.54 During these very visual prayers, the layfolk are bidden to pray for the dead ‘þat ilk one haue part of þis messe’ (B, 463).55 Thus while the people are praying for their departed parents and kinsfolk, as well as for souls in purgatory (B, 472), the priest is Maskell, The Ancient Liturgy, p. 112. By the second edition of his book Maskell had converted to Roman Catholicism. However, despite Simmons’ insistence on the continuity of the English tradition through the French and Gallican rites, as opposed to the ‘Roman’, Maskell’s comment, which must have been well known to Simmons, is in opposition to the point made by Matthew Cheung Salisbury that Simmons and other Anglicans were simply wrong in placing the origin of the Sarum Use as quite distinct from the Roman Rite. The essential unity of the canon as described by Maskell does not seem in question. See Cheung Salisbury, Worship in Medieval England, pp. 30–1. 49 Dickinson, Missale, p. 614; Warren, Sarum Missal, p. 43. The Latin rubric reads, ‘Consulo tamen, ut nullus ibidem nimis immoretur.’ 50 Dickinson, Missale, p. 615; Warren, Sarum Missal, p. 44. 51 LFMB, B, 398ff. Simmons’ marginal note reads here: ‘At the ringing of the sacring bell do reverence to the presence of Christ.’ 52 Dickinson, Missale, pp. 616–17; Warren, Sarum Missal, p. 45. 53 Dickinson, Missale, p. 617; Warren, Sarum Missal, p. 46. 54 Dickinson, Missale, p. 619; Warren, Sarum Missal, p. 48. 55 Maskell, The Ancient Liturgy, p. 148, quotes lines from the LFMB to indicate that in their prayers for the dead, priest and people are at one. 48

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praying for the souls of the dead in the same way. The peoples’ prayers, concluding with the Paternoster (B, 480), continue until they hear the Latin conclusion to the doxology (B, 481–2): Ay to þou here þo preste be sayande per omnia secula al on hight, þen I wold þou stode vp-right.

Immediately after the doxology, the priest says the Lord’s Prayer, in the Sarum rite, the quire responding (Chorus respondeat56), ‘But deliver us from evil’, to which the priest adds silently, ‘Amen.’ In the LFMB, the layfolk listen to the priest as he speaks the Lord’s Prayer aloud (‘with hegh steuen’: B, 484) until he reaches the word ‘temptacionem’ at which point all the layfolk (not simply the quire) respond in Latin (B, 489–491): set libera nos a malo amen. hit were no nede þe þis to ken, for who con not þis are lewed men.

They are bidden to say the Paternoster first in Latin and then in English, a translation being provided in B, 496ff. It seems clear, then, that at the very heart of the canon, the layfolk keep to some Latin, even if it is not understood. They are then instructed to continue standing and listen to the priest (B, 507). This manner of priest and people saying the Lord’s Prayer antiphonally was clearly of great importance to Simmons. The footnote to B, 488 reads: This manner of saying the Lord’s Prayer was continued at the Reformation, the people answering, “But deliver us from evil,” except at the beginning of matins, and at the beginning of the Holy Communion, when the Lord’s Prayer was said by the priest alone. In 1552, when the Lord’s Prayer was inserted in the service after all had communicated, the priest was directed to say it, “the people repeating after him every petition;” and in 1662 the primitive practice was restored, in every place, where the Lord’s Prayer occurs, a rubric directing – though to this day it is disobeyed in churches when it is said by the priest alone at the beginning of Holy Communion – that the people shall repeat it with the priest after the Absolution at morning prayer, “and wheresoever else it is used in divine service.”57

This issue, as we have seen, had already been a matter of concern for Simmons in the York Convocation debate of February 16, 1876, when he had proposed an amendment to the Prayer Book rubric. The record of the Journal of Convocation for that day reads: That the words ‘the Lord’s Prayer’ should be followed by these: ‘The people kneeling and repeating every petition in the Lord’s Prayer with him.’ He [Simmons] 56 57

Maskell, The Ancient Liturgy, p. 154. Simmons (ed.), LFMB, pp. 292–3.

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wished to carry out the Rubric introduced in 1661, in order that the Lord’s Prayer wheresoever used in Divine Service might be said by everyone.58

Simmons’ amendment appears in the revised rubrics of the Convocation Prayer Book of 1880, ascribed there to the York Convocation. His acerbic footnote in the LFMB may thus be plausibly linked to his participation in larger debates of liturgical revision in the Church of England. The priest takes the paten and makes a sign of the cross with it. The priest then breaks the bread into three pieces (the fraction), saying ‘The peace of the Lord be with you always.’ The quire responds, ‘And with thy spirit.’59 The Agnus Dei is said silently by the deacon and subdeacon. The order seems to be slightly different in the LFMB. The layfolk are bidden to listen as the Agnus is said three times (B, 508; presumably, then, audibly) followed by the Peace (B, 509): ‘þo last worde he spekis of pese.’ When the priest kisses the pax (B, 514),60 the layfolk are to kneel. Simmons suggests that the pax-board originated in England in the 13 century.61 As the Peace originally preceded the administration of the Communion, so the kissing of the pax-board becomes, in effect, the layfolks’ communion, their only moment of physical contact with the priest and his actions with chalice and paten. The Myroure of Oure Ladye notes: ‘The salutacio of pece is sayde betwyxte the preste & the quier before the receuvynge of the sacramente in token that yt may not worthily be recyued but in peace and in charite.’62 While the priest is communicating, the layfolk remain kneeling, praying for peace and charity. The prayer in English is in effect an extended meditation on the threefold Agnus Dei. Charity is described as threefold. ‘Charyte’ (B, 520) is used in the more ancient sense of love, beginning with the love of God, and by extension the love of neighbour (and thence to the more modern sense of the term ‘charity’). The first part of charity is to love God (B, 522ff.). The second is to love self (B, 536ff.), the body and soul being of one accord. The third is to love your neighbour (B, 546ff.). The identity of the neighbour is described clearly as in neighbours, servants, friends and kinsfolk, ‘none to forgete’ (B, 555). The prayer concludes with an expansion to love for all people, said in the presence of the sacrament (B, 568–9): þat be þis holy sacrament, þat now is here in present … Journal of York Convocation, 1876 (London, 1876), p. 51. Dickinson, Missale, p. 624; Warren, Sarum Missal, p. 50; Maskell, The Ancient Liturgy, p. 164. 60 The pax-board was ‘a significant article in the medieval parish church.’ Sally Harper describes its use in ‘Clothing the Space: Making and Using the Artefacts and Vestments’, Harper et al. Late Medieval Liturgie, pp. 63–78, and especially p. 74: ‘It was effectively the only means of physical contact between the people and the action of the priest at the altar. The priest kisses the rim of the chalice with the consecrated wine… and then kisses the Pax-board offering the Peace of the Church.’ 61 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 296. References here are given from Lydgate and Becon. Simmons also cites Edward Peacock’s EETS (1868) edition of John Myrc’s Instructions for Parish Priests, p. 74, referring to Sir Thomas More and ‘how men fell at varyance for kissing of the pax.’ 62 The Myroure of Oure Ladye, p. 331. 58

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233

At the Peace, the priest prays for worthiness to receive the sacrament. The pax is carried to the quire by the deacon. Before communicating, the priest prays silently beginning ‘Ave in aeternam…’ It is a prayer of adoration and for salvation from sin in Christ.64 The priest then communicates himself. Maskell notes that ‘It will be observed that the English uses differ in the form at the priest’s receiving. When laity communicated there was also considerable variety in the words used.’65 It might be surmised, therefore, that Dickinson’s construction of words is far from definitive. After the communion, the subdeacon pours wine and water into the chalice so that the priest may rinse his hands to cleanse them from any fragments of the elements remaining. The LFMB indicates that while the priest is rinsing his hands the layfolk say the Paternoster (B, 574–5). Simmons suggested that the practice of rinsing is dated at 1200 as recorded in a provincial canon at Westminster.66 But he also links it to an earlier practice in France. It is a sign that the layfolk should stand while the book is ‘flytted’ (B, 578) to the south end of the altar. Then the priest turns ‘til his seruyce/ and saies forthe more of his office’ (B, 580–1). The Sarum rite states that the Postcommunion consists of saying the same number of Collects as were said before the Epistle. At the end of Postcommunion the priest makes the sign of the cross on his forehead and turns to the people. While the priest is saying the Postcommunion prayers, the layfolk pray for safety during the hours of the coming day, in all their deeds, whether riding, lying, sitting or standing, asking for protection whatever ‘sodan chaunce þat comes vs tille’ (B, 594). The reference here to ‘housel-brede’ (B, 597) prompts a note from Simmons on the matter of transubstantiation. He acknowledges that ‘When Dan Jeremy’s treatise was translated into English the doctrine of transubstantiation had long been declared by authority… though the name “transubstantiation” was hardly in use in his day.’67 The prayer is that the mass should act as a protection instead of absolution and what Simmons calls ‘viaticum’ (‘housel-brede’). The layfolk then kneel and say Paternosters until the mass is ended, indicated by the Latin ‘ite, misa est’ or else ‘benedicamus’ (B, 603–5).68 This follows precisely the Sarum rite, the priest saying: ‘Dominus Vobiscum. Deinde diaconus, Benedicamus Domino. Alio vero tempore dicitur, Ite, missa est.’ (‘The Lord be with you. The shall the deacon say, Let us bless the Lord. At other times the words used are, Depart, the mass is finished.’).69 The Sarum rite 63

Dickinson, Missale, p. 624; Warren, Sarum Missal, p. 51; Maskell, The Ancient Liturgy, p. 168. 64 Dickinson, Missale, p. 626, Warren, Sarum Missal, p. 53. 65 Maskell, The Ancient Liturgy, p. 180. 66 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 304. 67 Simmons (ed.), LFMB, p. 308. See further Härdelin, The Tractarian Understanding of the Eucharist. 68 Cf. Myroure, p. 332. 69 Dickinson, Missale, p. 629; Warren, Sarum Missal, p. 55. Warren notes that the exact translation of ‘ite, missa est’, is uncertain. 63

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indicates that the dismissal is spoken facing the people, the blessing facing the altar. It is followed by a Collect said silently by the priest. After the dismissal, the layfolk are to say a prayer of thanksgiving to God (B, 610ff.), concluding with a Latin line (B, 620), ‘In nomine patris & filii & spiritus sancti. Amen.’ It concludes with a Paternoster, Ave and Credo (B, 621). A few concluding lines suggest that it is good to learn the prayers here given by heart (‘with-outen boke’: line 625). The Sarum rite concludes with prayers of thanksgiving after the Mass, said after the priest has taken off his chasuble et alia indumenta sacerdotalia (‘his other sacerdotal vestments’). This is after the departure of the layfolk.

Bibliography Online resources and works of reference Alumni Oxoniensis (Oxford, 1891) Crockford’s Clerical Directory (London, 1865) Digital Index of Middle English Verse: www.dimev.net/index.html, last consulted 23 January 2023 Experience of Worship Project: www.experienceofworship.org.uk Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English: www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/elalme/elalme.html, last consulted 23 January 2023 Manuscripts of the West Midlands Project: www.dhi.ac.uk/mwm/, last consulted 23 January 2023 The New Oxford Annotated Bible (NRSV) (Oxford, 2010) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: www-oxforddnb-com, last consulted 23 January 2023 Oxford English Dictionary: www-oed-com, last consulted 23 January 2023 The Sandhurst Collection: https://sandhurstcollection.co.uk/online-collection/, last consulted 1 March 2023 Tracts for the Times (London, 1838) Whittington’s Gift Project: blogs.kent.ac.uk.whittingtonsgift/, last consulted 23 January 2023 Boffey, Julia, and A. S. G. Edwards, A New Index of Middle English Verse (London, 2005) Davies, J. G. (ed.), A New Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship (London, 1986) Julian, John, A Dictionary of Hymnology, revised edition (London, 1907) Louth, Andrew (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, fourth edition in 2 Volumes (Oxford, 2022) Richardson, Alan, and John Bowden, A New Dictionary of Christian Theology (London, 1983) Returns Showing the Number of Churches (including Cathedrals) in every Diocese in England which have been Built or Restored at a Cost exceeding £500 since the year 1840, Journals of the House of Commons 131 (London, 1876) Journal of York Convocation 1859–1889

Archives Borthwick Institute, University of York: Journal of York Convocation (London, 1874, 1875–6) East Riding of Yorkshire Archives, The Treasure House, Beverley: Dalton Holme (South Dalton), St Mary’s Parish Records, 1694–2011 (PE54) Kew, The National Archives: Home Office – Ecclesiastical Census Returns, HO 129/524, Bridlington, number 10 (census records, 1851) St Mary’s Church, South Dalton: Burial Register The Sandhurst Collection: https://sandhurstcollection.co.uk/online-collection/internalprinted-publications/nominal-rolls/1841/1351789, last accessed 1 March 2023 University of Hull, Hull History Centre: papers of the Hotham Family (UDDHO/20/8/48)

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Index Abbeychurch (Yonge)  8 Abbotsford Club  75 Act of Uniformity Amendment Act (‘Shortened Services Act’)  19, 20, 47, 102, 127, 130, 131, 135, 164 Actes and Monuments (Foxe)  64 Alcuin, archbishop of York  182 Alcuin Club  47, 144, 223 Alexander II, Emperor  15–16 All Saints, Pavement, York  73 Alliance of Divine Offices (L’Estrange)  37 Alms and Oblations (Simmons)  20 Altar Book, The (Lee)  132 Alternative Service Book (1980)  139 Ambrose, St  107 American Episcopal Church  133 Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England (Maskell)  40, 42–5, 67–8, 76, 100, 107 Ancrene Riwle [see also Ancrene Wisse] 84 Ancrene Wisse [see also Ancrene Riwle] (ed. Tolkien) 62–3  Anscombe, G. E. M.  3 Antiquarianism 25 Antiquaries, Society of  43 Apologia Pro Vita Sua (Newman)  5, 30 Apostolic Tradition, The (Hippolytus)  140 Aquinas, St Thomas  116 Archbishops’ Advisory Committee on Liturgical Questions  137 Architectural Guide to York and the East Riding (Cherry and Pevsner)  15 Argentine, John  184 Arians of the Fourth Century (Newman) 154 Arundel, Archbishop Thomas  64 Assize Sermon (Keble)  35 Aston, Margaret  64 Athanasius, St  102  Atkinson, J. C.  57

Auchinleck MS  182 Augustine of Canterbury, St  33, 36 Autobiography (Williams)  154 Aveling, Judith  161, 162 Babees Book, The (ed. Furnivall)  97, 98, 224 Baker, Sir Henry Williams  123 Baker, Joan  185–6 Bangor, Use of  44 Bannatyne Club  61, 62, 146 Barchester Towers (Trollope)  1, 58 Barnwell, P. S.  91, 159, 186, 222 Beaurepaire, Charles de Robillard de  74 Beccon, Thomas [Becon]  108 Becket, St Thomas  156 Beethoven, Ludwig van  3 Beinecke MS (Beinecke Library 317)  158 Benedicite 116–17 Benedict of Aniane, St  90 Benedictine liturgists, French  37–8 Bentley, James  128 Bentley, Richard  60 Beowulf (ed. Kemble)  61 Beresford Hope, A. J. B.  47 Bertelet, Thomas [Berthelet]  154 Beverley Minster  59, 82, 84 Bidding Prayer [Bidding of the Bedes]  23, 68, 72, 110–11, 141, 229 Bingham, Joseph  37, 95 Bishop, Edmund  41, 64, 77, 89–90, 124, 144, 150–1, 152, 163 Bishop, W. C.  148 Bodleian Library, Oxford  15, 43, 47, 72, 76 Boke of Curtasye 98 Book of Common Prayer  7, 17, 19, 20, 34, 39, 40, 44, 45, 46, 69, 83, 87, 102, 103, 104, 114, 116, 139, 159, 221, 222 Ornaments Rubric  47 Reform of  124–8, 129–34

250

Index

Book of Common Prayer (1549)  20, 45, 92, 124, 131, 133, 138, 141–4, 152, 161, 221, 222 Holy Communion  135–7 Origins of  27–9 Book of Common Prayer (1559)  163–4, 229 Books of Hours  89–90 Bosworth, Joseph  58 Bouyer, Louis  152 Bowden, John William  38 Bradshaw, Henry  6, 21, 47, 63 Bradshaw, Paul  7 Branch theory of Catholicism  38, 150 Breviary, Roman  28, 29, 91, 124, 131, 145 Bridge, Sir John Frederick  122 Brightman, Frank Edward  134, 137, 142, 144, 148 Brilioth, Yngve  19 Brink, Bernhard ten  55 British Critic, The  31, 124 British Magazine, The 38 Brock, Edmund  75 Brontë, Charlotte  1 Brun des Marettes, Jean-Baptiste le [Sieur de Moléon]  95, 98, 114 Bülbring, Karl  23 Bunnett, Edward  122 Bute, Marquis of  145 Caedmon’s Hymns 79 Cambridge Apostles  61 Cambridge Camden Society [see also Ecclesiological Society]  30–1, 145–6, 156 Cambridge Companion to Medievalism (ed. D’Arcens) 4  Cambridge Movement, The  30–1, 33, 34 Canterbury Tales, The (Chaucer)  71, 99 Cardwell, Edward  144 Casquet, The (Walker)  9 Cassander, George  100 Catalani, Giuseppi  95 Catalogus Librorum Mss. Anglicae et Hiberniae (Bernard)  21 Catechism in English (Archbishop Thoresby) 68 Cathedral, The (Williams) 8 Catholic Book Society  18 Catholic Prayers for Church of England People (Stanton)  133

Chambers, John David  47 Chapman, Arthur  90 Charterhouse at Sheen  158 Chasuble 98 Chaucer, Geoffrey  35, 61, 71, 84, 95, 107 Child’s Church Service, The 9 Christian Year, The (Keble)  8 Chrysostom, Liturgy of  117 Church of England in the Twentieth Century, The (Lloyd)  168 Church of Our Fathers, The (Rock, ed. Frere and Hart)  134 ‘Church Parties’ (Conybeare)  17–18 Church Quarterly Review, The  17, 20, 69, 80, 97, 130, 145–7 Church Services and Service Books before the Reformation (Dowden)  142 Churchman, The  16, 17, 20 Clapham Sect  131 Classical Tour through Italy, A, (Chetwode) 78 Colop, John  186 Concilia Magna Britannicae et Hiberniae (Wilkins)  37, 86 Concomitance  115, 116 Confirmation and First Communion (Newland) 9 Constitution and Practice of Courts Martial, The (Simmons [Senior])  13, 14 Constitutiones provinciales (Lyndwood) 90–1 Contemporary Review, The  16, 17, 20, 36, 99 Contrasts (Pugin)  3, 31–2 Convocation Prayer Book  47, 72, 88, 129, 130, 133–4, 139, 232  Convocations of Canterbury and York  47, 127, 128, 129  Conybeare, William John  17–18 Corpus Christi  86 Cosin, Bishop John  116, 130 Coxe, H. O.  47, 72 Cranmer, Archbishop Thomas  112–13, 141, 142, 144, 151–2 Cranmer’s Liturgical Projects (Wickham Legg) 151 Creed – Apostles and Nicene  98, 101, 102–5, 142, 146, 227 Critical edition  63 Cuming, Geoffrey J.  29, 141, 143 Cummings, Brian  144

Index Cursor Mundi (ed. Morris)  22, 53, 54, 62, 63, 64–5, 73, 96, 108  Dale, Thomas Pelham  46–7 Dalton Holme [Holme-on-the-Wolds, South Dalton]  15, 119, 121, 124, 154, 155, 161, 164, 168 ‘Dan Jeremy’ [LFMB]  22, 40, 76, 109, 115, 146, 149, 155, 181, 224, 233 Davies, Jeremy  160–1 De Antiquis Ecclesiae Ritibus (Martène)  74, 110 De Eucharistia (Wycliffe)  103 Dearmer, Percy  45, 87–8, 137, 149 Defence of the Sacrament (Cranmer)  142 Dictionaries of Old English and Scots Language 51 Dibdin, Thomas Frognall  37, 95, 96 Dickinson, F. H.  6, 30, 44, 45–8, 95, 99, 138 and Sarum Use  223–34 Diplomatic edition  63 Directorium Anglicanum (Purchas)  5, 19, 78, 111, 112, 126 Disciplina Arcani [on reserve]  104, 110, 153–4 Displaying of the Popish Mass (Beccon) 108 Disraeli, Benjamin  46, 128 Dobson, Eric  62–3 Dowden, Bishop John  20, 142–3 Dream of Fair Women, A (Tennyson)  22 Duchesne, Louis  150 Duffy, Eamon  83, 88 Durandus, Bishop William  5, 31, 156 Durnford, Bishop Richard  58  Early English style architecture  121 Early English Text Society [EETS]  1, 16, 35, 68, 87, 95, 96, 106, 137, 140, 147 History and early membership  51–9 Editing for  59–65 East Riding Archives [Beverley]  16 Ecclesiastical History (Bede) 79 Ecclesiological Society, The [formerly the Cambridge Camden Society]  47, 120 Ecclesiologist, The  31, 120 Ecclesiology  31, 33 Edinburgh Review, The 61 Edward VI, King  32, 44, 47, 75, 102, 126, 141

251

Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer (Gasquet and Bishop)  144, 150 Egbert, Archbishop  110 Elevation of the Sacrament  222, 229 Ellis, Alexander  54 Ember Hours (Heygate) 9 English Dialect Dictionary (J. and E. M. Wright) 80 English Dialect Society  80, 81 English Past and Present (Trench)  34–5 English Rite, The (Brightman)  134, 141 Epiclesis 40 Eschenbach, Wolfram von  61 L’Estrange, Hamon  28, 37 Evangelical Catholic  19 Eve of St Agnes, The (Keats)  3 Farsura  100, 146, 225 Festial (Mirk)  71, 73, 97 Forbes, Bishop Alexander  46 Forbes, G. H.  46 Form of Living, The (Rolle)  23, 71, 181, 200 Forms of Bidding Prayer (Coxe)  47, 72 Forty-Two Articles  106 Frere, Bishop Walter Howard  6, 7, 20, 57, 69, 122, 134–7, 148, 152, 153 Froissart, Jean  61 Froude, Richard Hurrell  27, 39 Fry, Danby  56 Furnivall, Frederick J.  19, 21, 35, 51, 52–3, 56, 57, 60, 61–2, 75, 89, 96, 112 Further Studies in the Prayer Book (Dowden)  142, 148 Gallican Rite/Tradition  18, 36, 40, 41, 74, 76, 98, 147, 152, 155, 230 Gameson, Richard  64, 157 Gasquet, Dom Aidan  150 Gaytryge, John [John de Taystek]  83, 86 Gerould, Gordon Hall  23, 24 Gibbs, Henry Hucks  56 Gillies, Bishop Robert  10 Gilley, Sheridan  2 Gladstone, William Ewart  48 Gloria in excelsis  99, 100, 225 Goar, Jacques  95 Going to Church in Medieval England (Orme) 154 Golden Legend, The (Caxton)  99 Goldwell Missal  64, 157

252

Index

Gorham Judgment  42, 43, 125 Gough, Richard  37, 95, 96, 155 Gower, John  95 Grafton, Richard  92 Grammar of Assent, The (Newman)  104 Grimm, Jakob  61 Grosseteste, Bishop Robert  22 Hackney Phalanx  31, 34, 35, 38 Halifax, Viscount Charles Lindley Wood  7 Handling Synne (Mannyng of Brun)  99 Harmonia Symbolica: A Collection of Creeds (Heurtley)  105, 143, 149 Harper, John  8, 149, 160, 162, 222 Heber, Bishop Reginald  106 Henderson, William  6, 30, 42, 46, 48–9, 76, 140, 145, 148 Henry VIII, King  32, 92–3, 154 Henry Bradshaw Society  6, 147–8, 150–1 Herbert, George  167 Hereford, Use of  43, 48 Herring, George  6, 17 Heurtley, Charles Abel  105, 143 Hierurgia Anglicana (Russell)  145 Hill, Rosemary  25 History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, A (Stone)  106, 149 History of English Poetry (Warton)  95, 100 History of Greece (Thirlwall)  59 History of the Book of Common Prayer (Proctor and Frere)  29–30, 57, 146 History of the Book of Common Prayer (Pullan) 143 Homilies, Two Books of (ed. Griffiths)  108 Honorius III, Pope  111 Horae Decanicae Rurales (Dansey) 5–6 Horstmann, Carl  23–4, 181, 187 Editing of LFMB (footnotes)  188–205 Hort, Fenton J. A.  60 Hotham, Third Baron [General Beaumont]  15, 17, 119, 122 Hours of the Cross 73 Housel/housel-brede  103, 106, 115 Hudson, Anne  64, 84 Hume, Alexander  54, 60 Hymns Ancient and Modern  5, 17, 122, 133, 164 Hymns Chiefly Medieval (Neale)  123 Hymns of the Eastern Church (Neale)  117 Idylls of the King (Tennyson) 3

Innes, Cosmo  75 Instructions for Parish Priests (Mirk. ed. Peacock)  9, 56, 87, 98, 112, 114, 232  Ivanhoe (Scott)  3, 41 Jack Uplande  105, 108 Jackson, Frederick  15 James, Rhodes  184 Jasper, R. C. D.  78, 125, 126, 127 Jebb, Bishop John  19, 36 Johnes, Thomas  61 Joynson-Hicks, William [‘Jix’]  7 Julian, John  123 Jungmann, Joseph  112 Keble, John  9, 19, 38, 69, 116, 154, 166 Kelham Hall  138 Kemble, John Mitchell  35 Kempe, Margery  185–6, 187 King’s Primer, The 141 Kingdom, H. T.  145 Kingsley, Charles  52 Kirby, James  42 Kirkby, Margaret  71 Knox, Alexander  19, 36 Koerner, Joseph Leo  221–2 Lachmann, Karl  61 Lady Psalter  87 Langland, William  71, 95 Lateran Council, Fourth (1215)  22 Lay Folks’ Catechism, The (ed. Simmons and Nolloth)  68, 82–8, 115, 138, 139 Lay Folks’ Mass Book, The (LFMB) (ed. Simmons)  8, 9, 10, 17, 18–19, 27, 34, 36, 40, 41, 42, 48, 84, 88, 123, 124, 125, 128, 129, 134, 135, 137, 139, 141, 142, 143, 146, 147, 149, 153, 165 Manuscripts and contents  21–5, 70 and EETS  53, 58, 59, 60, 65 Edited by Simmons (philology)  67–82 B-version  67, 69, 73, 74–5, 76, 97–8, 99–117 passim, (with Sarum) 223–34 C-version 79 Liturgical structure  95–117 passim and modern liturgical re-enactments 157–64 Text (B) and translation  181–219

Index E-version, Simmons on  184 and Sarum Rite  221–34 Lay Folks’ Prayer Book, The [see also Prymer] (ed. Littlehales)  82, 83, 87, 88–91, 138 Structure of  92–3 Lay of the Last Minstrel, The (Scott)  3 Lee, Frederick G.  5, 19, 126 Lewed  112 Liber de virtutibus et viciis (Alcuin)  182 Liber Pontificalis [Archbishop Bainbridge] (ed. Henderson)  48 Lingard, John  103 Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English (LALME) 182–3 List of Printed Service Books (Dickinson)  19, 45–6, 146 Litany, The  154 Littledale, Richard F.  99, 165 Littlehales, Henry  84, 88–91, 156 Liturgicae Britannicae (Keeling)  30, 144 ‘Liturgical Revision’ (CQR)  130–2 Liturgies of S. Mark, etc. (Neale)  117 Lloyd, Bishop Charles  27–8, 36, 37 Lodge, Barton  60 Lollards/lollardy  64, 83, 84, 103, 111, 186 Lord of the Rings, The (Tolkien) 4 Lord’s Prayer [Paternoster]  81, 88, 129–30, 231 Ludlow, John  52 Lumby, Rawson  55 Lumley, John Lord  184–5 Luther, Martin  222 Lydgate, John  73, 84, 95, 97, 99 Lyndwood, Bishop William  90–1, 135 Lyra Apostolica (Newman et al.)  19 Lyre, France  40 Mabillon, Jean  95, 99, 101, 103, 105 MacCulloch, Diarmaid  2, 142 McCullough, Eleanor G.  158–9, 162, 222 Machan, Tim  67 Mackonochie, Alexander Heriot [Machonochie]  58, 128 Madden, Sir Frederick  52 Maitland Club  61 Making of Middle English, The (Matthews) 4 Malines Conversations  7 Manner and Mede of the Mass, The 73, 99, 158

253

Manning, Bernard Lord  135, 146, 149 Manning, Cardinal Henry  43 Mannyng of Brunne, Robert  99 Martène, Edmond  74, 90, 95, 99, 100, 103, 107, 110 Martin v. Machonochie  128 Marx, Eleanor  57 Maskell, William  6, 18, 21, 24, 30, 40, 42–5, 63, 67, 68, 69, 76, 95, 96, 99–100, 101, 107, 137, 138, 140, 145 and Sarum Use  124–34 Matthew, F. D.  84 Matthews, David  35, 95 Maurice, F. D.  52 Maynooth College  58 Medd, Peter  9, 133 Medievalism 3–8 Medievalism (Alexander)  4 Medievalism (Matthews) 4 Meditations in the Time of the Mass (Langforde)  101, 107, 112 Merita Missae  73, 78, 84, 91, 106 Merton College, Oxford  13 Middle English  80, 81, 95, 188 Middle English Dictionary 51 Milnes, Richard Monckton  59 Minor Poems of the Vernon Ms (ed. Furnivall)  73, 99 Minton pottery  33 Mirfield, Community of the Resurrection 137 Mirk, John [Myrc]  71, 87 Mirroure of Oure Ladye (ed. Blunt)  84, 101, 102, 227, 232 Missale as usum insignis ecclesiae Eboracensis (Henderson)  48, 73 Missale as usum insignis et praeclarae ecclesiae Sarum (Dickinson)  46, 221–34 Monthly Packet of Evening Readings, The (ed. Yonge)  9 Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicanae (Maskell)  42, 96, 100, 107 More, Sir Thomas  114 Morris, Richard  51, 53, 54, 62, 63, 64–5, 79, 96 Morris, William  3, 5 Mozarabic Rite  18 Müller, Max  55, 81 Murray, Sir James  53

254

Index

Narrative of Events connected with the publication of the Tracts, A (Palmer) 38 Neale, John Mason  5, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 47, 117, 123, 156 New English Dictionary [later OED]  52 Newman, John Henry  5, 27, 29, 30, 31, 37, 38, 39, 69, 104, 116, 124, 138, 145, 154, 229 Nicholls, William  28 Nichols, Bridget  106 Noble History of the Exposition of the Mass (Caxton) 99 Nolloth, Henry Edward  59, 68, 82–8, 115, 156 Non-jurors 28 North Side of the Altar, The (Littledale)  20, 99 ‘North Side of the Lord’s Table, The’ (Simmons) 20 Notes on Ceremonial from the Antient English Office Books  112, 133 Notitia Eucharistica (Scudamore)  76, 145 Oakley, Frederick  27 Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Briton Tongue (Hume)  54, 60 Offertory 227 Old English  79, 81 Old Service Books of the English Church, The (Wordsworth and Littlehales)  84, 88, 100, 148 Oldcastle, Sir John  73 Ollard, S. L.  126 On Consulting the Laity (Newman)  147 On the Use of Primitive Ecclesiastical Terms (Keble) 116 Origines Ecclesiasticae (Bingham)  37, 101 Origines Liturgicae (Palmer)  6, 15, 28, 29, 34–42, 46, 111, 145 Orme, Nicholas  157 Ornaments rubric (BCP)  47, 126 Orthodox church  117 Osmond, St  221 Overton, John Henry  29 Oxford English Dictionary [OED]  51, 80 Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism (eds. Parker and Wagner)  4  Oxford Movement  4, 5, 29, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 56, 67, 125, 131, 138, 146, 150, 157

Paget, Bishop Francis  138 Palladius on Husbandrie 60 Palmer, William  6, 15, 19, 28, 29, 30, 34–42, 43, 63, 74, 95, 140, 144, 150 Palsgrave, John  96 Paradise Lost (Milton)  60 Parker Society  108 Parks, Malcolm  72 Parochial Work (Monro)  9 Parson’s Handbook, The (Dearmer)  45, 87–8, 138–9, 148 ‘Parson’s Tale, The’ (Chaucer)  84 Pax/pax-board  114, 232, 233 Peacock, Edward  56, 88 Pearsall, Derek  67 Pearson, Harford  41 Pearson, John Loughborough  15, 32, 120–1 Peel, Sir Robert  6 People’s Faith in the Time of Wyclif (Manning) 135 Percy, Thomas  60, 61 Perversion (Conybeare)  17–18 Petersen, Nils Holger  162–3 Petyt, Thomas  101 Pfaff, Richard  46, 48, 155 Phillpotts, Bishop Henry  42 Philological Society  35, 53, 54, 74, 80, 82 Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede (ed. Skeat) 105 Piers Plowman (Langland)  71, 96 Piers Plowman (ed. Skeat)  62, 63 Piers Plowman (ed. Whitaker)  61 Pilgrimage of Perfection, The (Bond)  141 Piscina  78, 115 Political Poems and Songs (ed. Wright)  108 Polytextuality  159–60, 223 Pontius Pilate  102 Powell, Susan  24 Prayer Book Crisis, 1927, 1928  88, 137, 139, 144 Preparatio Eucharisticae 73 Prick of Conscience (ed. Morris)  74, 80, 123 Priest to the Altar, The (Medd)  9, 132, 145, 165 Priest to the Temple, The (Herbert)  167 Priest’s Prayer Book (Littledale and Vaux) 165 Principles of Religious Ceremonial, The (Frere) 134 Proctor, Francis  29, 57 Proverbs of Solomon 184

Index Prymer [see also LFPB]  19, 88, 89–91, 92–3, 101 Public Worship Regulation Act (1874)  46, 127–8, 131 Pugin, Augustus Welby Northmore  3, 8, 31–2, 121 Pullan, Leighton  143 Purchas, John  126 Purgatory  112, 187 Pusey, Edward Bouverie  1, 19, 27, 28, 31–2, 33, 58 Quiñones, Cardinal Francisco de  141, 143 Ramsey, Archbishop Michael  167 Rational Illustration of the Book of Common Prayer, A (Wheatly)  28, 31, 37, 156 Rationale Divinorum (Durandus)  5, 31, 156 Raven, T. Milville  75 Real Presence, Doctrine of [see also, transubstantiation]  22, 104, 159, 163 Reformation in England  163  Reliques of Antient Poetry (Percy)  60 Renaudot, Eusèbe  95 Rex, Richard  103 Rievaulx, Cistercian Abbey of [C-version LFMB]  77, 100, 183 Ripon Cathedral  73 Ritson, Thomas  61 Ritual of the Altar, The (Shipley)  132 Ritualism 128 Rolle, Richard  23, 71, 80, 99, 108, 181, 182  Romanticism  33, 41, 156 Rose, Hugh James  35, 38 Rouen, France  22, 41, 74, 76, 77, 97, 99, 111, 146, 149 Roxburghe Club  61, 95 Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline 138–9 Royal Commission on Ritual (1867– 70)  47, 102, 126–7, 222 Royal Military College, Woolwich  14 Rubrics 69 Ruins in a Landscape (Piggott)  156 Ruskin, John  55, 121 Russell, John Fuller  145 Sacra privata (Wilson)  166 Sacramental Vision of Edward Bouverie Pusey, The (Karlowicz)  10 Sacramentality  31, 32, 156, 162

255

Sacring-bell  111–12, 229 St Mary’s Abbey, York  86 St Mary’s Church, South Dalton  9–10, 15, 16, 17, 33, 78, 91, 119–21, 138, 153, 156 St Teilo at St Fagans  160 Salisbury Cathedral  160 Salisbury, Matthew Cheung  35, 44, 77, 152, 155–6, 230 Sanctorum communionem 103 Sarum, Use /Missal  6, 18, 30, 41, 43, 46, 77, 99, 100, 101, 115, 136, 141, 144, 145, 152, 157, 221–34 Sarum Missal in English (Pearson)  41 Sarum Missal in English (Walker) 146 Sarum Missal in English (Warren)  99, 221–34 Scott, Sir Walter  5, 30, 39, 41, 60–1 Scudamore, William Edward  76 Secreta orationes 109 Seven Lamps of Architecture, The (Ruskin) 121 Shakespeare, William  100, 106 Shaw, George Bernard  52, 56 Shipley, Orby  132–3, 139, 152 Shirley (Brontë)  1 Short and Plain Instruction, A (Wilson) 165–7 Shortened Services Act see Act of Uniformity Amendment Act Simmons, Egbert  13 Simmons, Harriet  15, 122 Simmons, Sir John Lintorn Arabin  13, 14 Simmons, Thomas Frederick  1, 2, 8, 9–10, 22, 23, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48–9, 57, 58, 86, 91, 125, 128, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 149, 150, 153, 158, 162, 163, 164, 168, 221, 222 Family and education  13–21 Editing of LFMB  24–5 Parish priest  27, 119–24 Clergyman of reformed Church  39, 69 and EETS  51, 53, 54, 59, 62, 65 Philologist  67–91 passim Editing of LFC  82–8 Liturgist and the LFMB  95–117 passim York Convocation  129–34, 135 CQR review  146, 147 and modern liturgical scholarship 155–7 LFMB and Sarum Use  223–34

256

Index

Simmons, Thomas Frederick [senior]  13 Singleton, Anthony  53 Sir Tristrem (Scott)  60–1 Skeat, Walter W.  21, 35, 51–2, 53, 54, 55, 61, 62, 63, 75, 81, 96, 105 Society of Antiquaries  148 Some Principles of Liturgical Reform (Frere)  134, 135, 136, 152 Somerset, Fiona  70 South Dalton  9 Southey, Robert  39 Sparrow, Bishop Anthony  28 Speculum Guy of Warwick 182 Speculum Vitae 83 Spenser, Abbot William  77, 183 Spinks, Bryan  7, 132–3, 139 Srawley, J. H.  106 Staley, Vernon  146 ‘Standing Before the Lord’s Table’ (Simmons)  20, 99, 129  Steps to the Altar (Scudamore)  76, 165 Stokes, G. T.  36 Stone, Darwell  106, 143, 149–50 Stratmann, Francis  55 Surtees Society  48, 61, 62 Sweet, Henry  54 Swete, Henry Barclay  137, 142 Swinburne, Algernon  52, 56, 59 Syon Abbey, Bridgettines of  158, 225 Tait, Archbishop Archibald Campbell  53, 102, 127, 128 Taylor, Bishop Jeremy  104 Tennyson, Alfred Lord  56 Tertullian 108 Thirlwall, Bishop Connop  58–9, 153 Thirty-Nine Articles  22, 108, 116 Thompson, Edward Maunde  75 Thompson, Henry Yates  21 Thomson, Archbishop William  16, 121, 122, 139 Thoresby, Archbishop John  83, 86 Tolkien, J. R. R.  5, 62 Toller, T. N.  58 Tooth, Arthur  46 Toulmin Smith, Lucy  53 Tours, Berthold  122 Towneley Mysteries  100 Tract 71 (Newman)  116 Tracts 80, 87 (Williams)  153

Tract 81 (Pusey)  19, 116 Tract 90 (Newman) 104 Tractarianism  4, 6, 8, 17–18, 20, 33, 123, 125, 131, 136, 137, 138, 154, 162 Tracts for the Times  5, 19, 29, 34, 38, 122, 164, 166, 167 Transubstantiation [see also, Real Presence]  104, 115–16, 187 Treatise on the Church of Christ (Palmer)  38, 150 Trench, Archbishop Richard Chenevix  34–5, 58, 61 Trinity College, Dublin  36 Troilus and Criseyde (Chaucer)  107 Trollope, Anthony  1, 56, 58 Trollope, Thomas  56 Turnbull, W. B. D. D.  75 Tyrwhitt, Thomas  61 Uniformity, Act of (1549)  157 Uses (Sarum, Ebor, Hereford, etc.)  6, 18, 40, 41, 42–5, 68, 96, 101, 108, 109, 110, 112, 117, 143, 157 Ussher, Archbishop James  104 Van Mildert, Bishop William  34, 125 Vatican Council, Second  7 Venus Mass  73 Vernon MS  112, 182 Vertue of the Mass [Interpretacio Misse] (Lydgate)  97, 99, 101, 112 Vestry 69 Vigfússon, Guõbrandr  55 Virtues of the Mass [Virtutes Missae] 158 Vogelweide, Walther von der  61 Voices of Morebath (Duffy)  161 Voyage Littéraire (Martène)  107 Voyages Liturgique de France (Le Brun des Marette)  98, 115 Walafrid Strabo  229 Ward, William  31 Warren, Frederick E.  47, 99 and Sarum Use  223–34 Warsaw, Poland  15–16, 76 Warton, Thomas  95, 100 Watson, J. R.  123 Webb, Benjamin  5, 30, 31, 32, 33, 156 Wells Theological College  45  Wesley, John  19, 36, 131

Index Westcott, Bishop B. J.  60 Western Rebellion (1549)  141–2 Wheatley, Henry  54 Wheatly, Charles  28–9, 31, 37, 144 Whitaker, Thomas  61 Whitchurch Canonicorum  42 White, James F.  31 Whyte, William  32–3 Wickham Legg, J.  127, 147, 148, 151 Wilberforce, Robert Isaac  27, 125 Wilberforce, William Francis  125, 138 Wilkins, David  37 William of Nassington  83 Williams, Isaac  5, 27, 37, 145, 153–4 Wilson, Bishop Thomas  165–7 Winchester College  13 Winchester Troper, The (Frere)  100 Worcester College, Oxford  14, 15, 18, 28, 36, 154 Worde, Wynkyn de  73, 90 Wordsworth, Christopher  84, 137, 148

257

Workmanship of the Prayer Book, The (Dowden) 142 Wright, Joseph  81–2 Wright, William Aldis  54–5 Wyclif Society  84 Wycliffe, John  64, 86, 103, 105 Yonge, Charlotte  8–9 York Convocation  16, 39, 58, 68, 69, 86, 114, 125, 126, 129–34, 135, 139, 164, 222, 224, 231–2 York Minster Library and Archives  16, 19, 48, 73 York, Use of  43, 48, 72, 78, 136, 155, 159, 221 Yorkshire Dialect Society  81 Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle (Horstmann) 181 Zaccaria, Francesco Antonio  95 Zupitza, Julius  55

Medievalism I Anglo-Saxon Culture and the Modern Imagination edited by David Clark and Nicholas Perkins II Medievalist Enlightenment: From Charles Perrault to Jean-Jacques Rousseau Alicia C. Montoya III Memory and Myths of the Norman Conquest Siobhan Brownlie IV Comic Medievalism: Laughing at the Middle Ages Louise D’Arcens V Medievalism: Key Critical Terms edited by Elizabeth Emery and Richard Utz VI Medievalism: A Critical History David Matthews VII Chivalry and the Medieval Past edited by Katie Stevenson and Barbara Gribling VIII Georgian Gothic: Medievalist Architecture, Furniture and Interiors, 1730–1840 Peter N. Lindfield IX Petrarch and the Literary Culture of Nineteenth-Century France: Translation, Appropriation, Transformation Jennifer Rushworth X Medievalism, Politics and Mass Media: Appropriating the Middle Ages in the Twenty-First Century Andrew B. R. Elliott XI Translating Early Medieval Poetry: Transformation, Reception, Interpretation edited by Tom Birkett and Kirsty March-Lyons XII Medievalism in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones Shiloh Carroll

XIII William Morris and the Icelandic Sagas Ian Felce XIV Derek Jarman’s Medieval Modern Robert Mills XV François Villon in English Poetry: Translation and Influence Claire Pascolini-Campbell XVI Neomedievalism, Popular Culture, and the Academy: From Tolkien to Game of Thrones KellyAnn Fitzpatrick XVII Medievalism in English Canadian Literature: From Richardson to Atwood edited by M. J. Toswell and Anna Czarnowus XVIII Anglo-Saxonism and the Idea of Englishness in Eighteenth-Century Britain Dustin M. Frazier Wood XIX Subaltern Medievalisms: Medievalism ‘from below’ in Nineteenth-Century Britain edited by David Matthews and Michael Sanders XX Medievalist Traditions in Nineteenth-Century British Culture: Celebrating the Calendar Year Clare A. Simmons XXI Old English Medievalism: Reception and Recreation in the 20th and 21st Centuries edited by Rachel A. Fletcher, Thijs Porck and Oliver M. Traxel XXII International Medievalisms: From Nationalism to Activism edited by Mary Boyle XXIII Old English Scholarship in the Seventeenth Century: Medievalism and National Crisis Rebecca Brackmann XXIV Medievalism in Nineteenth-Century Belgium: The 1848 Monument to Godfrey of Bouillon Simon John

XXV National Medievalism in the Twenty-First Century: Switzerland and Great Britain Matthias D. Berger