A New Document Relating to the Life of Robert Thornton

Robert Thornton is perhaps the most well-known manuscript compiler of late medieval England, and his two compilations can be counted among the most important textual witnesses to Middle English romance. Lincoln, Cathedral Library MS 91, often referred to as the Lincoln Thornton Manuscript, or even as the Thornton Manuscript, preserves nine romances, including the only surviving copies of Sir Percyvelle, the Prose Life of Alexander, and one of the masterpieces of the Alliterative Revival, the Morte Arthure.¹ Besides its romances, this manuscript also contains one of the most important collections of the works of the fourteenth-century Yorkshire mystic, Richard Rolle. The other manuscript we know to have been compiled by Thornton, London, British Library, Add. MS 31042, preserves four romances, including the only surviving copies of the Siege of Milan and Duke Roland and Sir Otuel of Spain, as well as the only copy of the alliterative poem Winner and Waster.²

Quite a number of codicological studies of Thornton's manuscripts have been published.³ Yet in spite of his significance to English literary history, there is a regrettable dearth of studies yielding new information about his life. Thomas Frognall Dibdin, the antiquarian who founded the Roxburghe Club, was the first in print to connect the Robert Thornton of the manuscripts with the lord of the manor of East Newton in the Wapentake of Ryedale in the North Riding of Yorkshire.⁴ Frederic Madden's introduction to his edition of Sir Gawayne, published in 1839 for the Bannatyne Club, reached the same conclusion.⁵ Subsequent to this, M. S. Ogden, in the introduction to her edition of the Liber de diversis medicinis, published in 1938, added further findings, proving the previous suggestions to be right.⁶ Finally George Keiser's two groundbreaking articles, published in 1979 and 1983, offered, from a variety of archival sources, definitive support for this identification.⁷ Recently I have uncovered a new document that sheds further light on the life and milieu of this important manuscript compiler. But before moving to a discussion of this document I shall briefly review the facts of Thornton's life and the evidence connecting him to the two manuscripts.

Appended to The Autobiography of Mrs Alice Thornton is a pedigree of the Thornton family, tracing her genealogy back to the early fourteenth century.⁸ This pedigree reveals that Robert Thornton, lord of East Newton, married Agnes in 1418, the same year in which his father died.⁹ If he gained possession of the manor of East Newton on his father's death, meaning he had reached the age of majority by 1418, then he was likely born late in the reign of Richard II. If The Autobiography is accurate, he was dead by 1465, for at that date the pedigree in its appendix attests that Thornton's second wife was re-married. Other documentary evidence shows that he had definitely passed away by 1474, for a deed dated 10 March, 14 Edward IV, lists him as deceased.¹⁰

On fol. 98^v of the Lincoln manuscript is written 'R. Thornton dictus qui scripsit sit benedictus'.¹¹ Both manuscripts appear to be written in this same hand, and so we can confidently conclude that the scribe is this same 'R. Thornton'.¹² Additional evidence connecting the Lincoln manuscript to Thornton can be found on fol. 23^v, where, as Virginia Everett noted, appears a rebus on the family name inside a four-line initial: someone, presumably Thornton, has here drawn a thorn bush and a barrel (i.e. thorn + tun).¹³

The most conclusive evidence tying these manuscripts to Robert Thornton of East Newton is found on fol. 49^v of the Lincoln manuscript, a leaf between the Prose Alexander and the Alliterative Morte Arthure that Thornton left blank and on which someone has written: 'Isto die natus ffuit Sancta Maria ante domini nostri Ihesu Christi Robertus Thornton in Ridayll anno domini m cccc liij.' Reference...