Studies in the Vernon manuscript (review)

148 Reviews The conclusions reached by Ormrod all concern the polity. H e is content to leave the panoply of war, chivalry, culture and architecture to such as Allmand, Fowler and Juliet Vale. Ormrod emphasises that the emergence of the House of Commons, combining the interests both of the country gentry and the urban merchants, was of prime importance but within the King's control. However, the new will to demand redress of grievances before war taxation was approved by the C o m m o n s created a new element in constitutional development. Edward III was both uncommonly well financed and politically powerful. The isolation of the clergy into their own convocation, moreover, enhanced the king's political potential. Ormrod does well to emphasise the administrative changes, the professionalisation of the council, and the consolidation of financial reforms, which were fully as important as the better known parliamentary changes. He argues well for Edward's ability at getting his o w n way, through consensus and various forms of co-operation. In particular, his treatment of the nobility, their local influence, their inventiveness in creating trusts and entails to safeguard their landed inheritance, and their social aspirations, deals a series of telling thrusts against orthodoxy: 'Edward Ill's aim — and one of his greatest achievements — was to revive the tradition of aristocratic service destroyed in the civil wars and political conflicts of the 1320s ... His rapprochement with the magnates made him one of the foremost exponents of the art of political management in the whole of the later Middle Ages' (p. 120). Ormrod reinstates Edward III as a major king, not just a lucky conqueror of French armies in the mid century. He makes none of the extravagant claims for Edward that K. B. McFarlane made for Henry V, but his sober judgment that Edward should be at least short-listed 'to re-enter the august and select band of great medieval rulers' (p. 203) carries a great deal ofjustification. R. Ian Jack Department of History University of Sydney Pearsall, Derek, ed., Studies in the Vernon manuscript, Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 1990; cloth; pp. xii, 238; 3 plates; R.R.P. £35.00. This volume of essays, arising from the publication in 1987 of the facsimile of the Vernon manuscript (Bodleian Eng. Poet.a.l, hereafter 'V') and from the cunent interest in 'the primary documents of Middle English literature', shows, inter alia, how the availability of such facsimiles 'both stimulates and facilitates scholarship of a fundamentally important kind' (Introduction, pp. ix-x). There are fourteen essays, including Pearsall's introduction. Section one (general essays) contains a revised reprint of A. I. Doyle's 1974 essay on 'The shaping of the Vernon and Simeon manuscripts', followed by three other essays. Reviews 149 P. R. Robinson shows the appropriateness for V of Doyle's term 'coucher book' (primarily, a book large enough in size to need couching on a lectern; secondarily, one comprehensive in content and with illustrations intended for display). Thorlac Turville-Petre compares V with the Clopton manuscript (London University Library V.17), showing how both attest to 'an intense interest in religious writings in English' in the diocese of Worcester around 1400 (p. 42), an interest possibly sparked by a determination to resist Lollardy. N. F. Blake describes and analyses the contents of the manuscript, discussing the compiler's sources, methods, aims (to provide 'a complete Christian book for someone not in holy orders', p. 57), and intended audience (probably a house of nuns or a small semi-religious community of women, p. 58). S. S. Hussey looks specifically at part four of V, concluding that, in contrast to many other anthologies, its choice and anangement of texts is conscious rather than haphazard and that it promotes 'the mixed life' (p. 74); i.e., part active, part contemplative, rather than purely contemplative. Section two of the collection is devoted to the religious texts in the manuscript. Thomas Heffernan compares its version of the Northern Homily Cycle with other versions, and concludes that the version in V derives from a no longer extant exemplar that was distinct from both the other schools. Avril Henry gives a marvellously...