{"id":179,"date":"2015-07-09T16:00:49","date_gmt":"2015-07-09T20:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/?p=179"},"modified":"2017-10-12T11:42:57","modified_gmt":"2017-10-12T15:42:57","slug":"reading-chaucer-in-the-tower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/2015\/07\/09\/reading-chaucer-in-the-tower\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Chaucer in the Tower"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week<\/a>, I surveyed Chaucer’s representations of prison spaces throughout his corpus. Today, I consider one reader of Chaucer, for whom those images of imprisonment would have particularly resonated.<\/span><\/p>\n

In January of 1549, John Harington of Stepney and Kelston was arrested and sent to the Tower of London<\/span>.[1]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>Harington remained in the Tower with his master, Thomas Seymour (the brother of Henry VIII\u2019s third wife, Jane) for more than a year.[2]<\/sup><\/a><\/span> What was a literary-minded gentleman\/prisoner\u00a0to do with all of that time? Harington may have\u00a0read Chaucer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Harington was in the Tower following suspicion about the nature of Seymour’s relationship with the very young Princess Elizabeth.\u00a0<\/span>He\u00a0was also questioned regarding his own role in setting up a marriage between Lady Jane Grey, the nine-days queen, and the young King Edward VI.[3]<\/a>\u00a0<\/sup><\/p>\n

While in the Tower, Harington would have had access to books and illustrious, scholarly-minded company. The imprisoned Harington used this time to learn French, and he wrote a translation of Cicero\u2019s De Amicitia<\/i>.[4]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/sup><\/span>As he told Lady Catherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, in the dedication to his translation:<\/p>\n

\n

Wherby I tried prisonment of the body, to be the libertee of spirite … and in the ende quietnes of mind, the occasion of study.\u00a0[5]<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Though the 1550 date on the front of Harington\u2019s copy of Chaucer is not definitive evidence that he held the book while he was in the Tower, the long and idle days of imprisonment would haven given Harington the time he needed to thoroughly annotate his copy of William Thynne\u2019s 1542\u00a0<\/span>edition of Chaucer\u2019s complete works.\u00a0<\/span>Harington\u2019s copy is now housed at the University of Notre Dame\u2019s Hesburgh Library.[6]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/sup><\/p>\n

\"\"
John Harington’s dated signature on the opening\u00a0plate of William Thynne’s 1542 edition of Chaucer’s complete works. The inscription reads “non Amo’ chi non Ama.” University of Notre Dame, Hesburgh Library, XLarge PR 1850 1542.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nearly every page of the 1542 book shows evidence of Harington’s attentive reading. This post, of course, cannot cover everything involved in Harington’s copious marginal writing, but if readers are interested, they can consult\u00a0my more detailed article \u2014 \u201cReading Chaucer in the Tower: The Person Behind the Pen in an Early-Modern Copy of\u00a0Chaucer\u2019s Works” \u2014\u00a0<\/em>forthcoming in\u00a0The Journal of the Early Book Society<\/em>, volume 18.<\/p>\n

One of Harington’s\u00a0key concerns throughout was correcting ‘errors’ where he saw them in his book. He ‘corrects,’ or modernizes, spelling and adds commas or other marks of punctuation where he finds them appropriate.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Updating spelling in “The Knight’s Tale.” Harrington deletes “layde” and supplies “laid.” University of Notre Dame, Hesburgh Library, XLarge PR 1850 1542, f. xi.r<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Though these meticulous changes may make Harington seem a bit finicky, they reveal how closely he paid attention to every word on the page. He desired to improve his book, certainly an indication that he valued Chaucer.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
At times, even Harington’s annotations received meticulous corrections. Here, Harington marginally notes “a gate of ^whit^ marble in a description of the arena in “The Knight’s Tale.” University of Notre Dame, Hesburgh Library, XLarge PR 1850 1542, f. vi.r<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

However, his annotations are much more extensive than simple summary notes and spelling changes. Of particular interest to Harington was Chaucer\u2019s Boece<\/em>, a translation of Boethius\u2019s Consolation of Philosophy<\/em>. A full-page table of contents and summary precedes Boece on a blank verso page, and Harington marginally marks the translation throughout.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
The\u00a0table of contents and summary for Chaucer’s Boece. University of Notre Dame, Hesburgh Library, XLarge PR 1850 1542, f. ccxxxi.v<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That Boethius wrote the Consolation of Philosophy <\/i>while in prison\u00a0might have resonated with the imprisoned\u00a0Harington.[7]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/sup><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>The imprisoned gentleman may have found Boethius\u2019s discussions of free will, predestination, and changeable fortunes particularly relevant as he lamented the downturn\u00a0of his own fortunes in court. Certainly this was the case for the imprisoned King James I of Scotland when he wrote his prison poem The Kingis Quair<\/a>, <\/i>which drew on Boethius.[8]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

\"\"
Harington draws a manicule next to a passage concerning freewill in Chaucer’s Boece. University of Notre Dame, Hesburgh Library, XLarge PR 1850 1542, f. cclxi.v<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Overall, Harington, who also occasionally wrote his own poetry, was an attentive reader, finding solace in careful study. He was meticulous, academic, and thorough in his annotations, but, it would seem, he was also attentive to the book\u2019s correspondences\u00a0with his own life and experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mimi Ensley
\nPhD Candidate
\nDepartment of English
\nUniversity of Notre Dame<\/p>\n

Footnotes<\/h4>\n

1. Ruth Willard Hughey, John Harington of Stepney: Tudor gentleman<\/em> (Columbus, OH: Ohio State UP, 1971), 28.
\n2. Ibid., 29-30.
\n3. Ibid., 22-4. See also Harington’s entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:\u00a0http:\/\/www.oxforddnb.com\/view\/article\/12325<\/span><\/a>
\n4. Ibid., 31-2.
\n5. John Harington, “The booke of freendeship of Marcus Tullie Cicero,” in Hughey, John Harington<\/em>, 137.
\n6. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Workes, Newlye Printed: Wyth Dyuers Workes Whych Were Neuer in Print Before<\/em>, ed. William Thynne (London, 1542).
\n7. For a similar suggestion, see the brief description of Notre Dame\u2019s 1542 Thynne edition here: http:\/\/rarebooks.library.nd.edu\/exhibits\/fructus\/middle_english\/1542chaucer.html<\/a>
\n8. http:\/\/d.lib.rochester.edu\/teams\/text\/mooney-and-arn-kingis-quair-and-other-prison-poems-kingis-quair-introduction<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, I surveyed Chaucer’s representations of prison spaces throughout his corpus. Today, I consider one reader of Chaucer, for whom those images of imprisonment would have particularly resonated. In January of 1549, John Harington of Stepney and Kelston was arrested and sent to the Tower of London.[1]\u00a0Harington remained in the Tower with his master, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Reading Chaucer in the Tower”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1873,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[264204,56012,264216],"tags":[76067,75977,75961,75986,75988,75984,75956,73938,75998,76025,76045,88,67420,75985],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disciplines","category-english","category-manuscript-studies","tag-annotations","tag-boethius","tag-chaucer","tag-correction","tag-gloss","tag-john-harington","tag-literary-london","tag-manuscripts","tag-marginalia","tag-medieval-literature","tag-middle-english","tag-notre-dame","tag-prison","tag-tower-of-london"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1873"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":60,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3353,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/3353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}