An Annotated Edition of Chaucer Belonging to Stephan Batman

This note introduces a copy of The Woorkes of Geffrey Chaucer (1561; STC 5076) formerly belonging to the writer, cleric, limner, and book-collector Stephan Batman (c. 1542–1584).¹ The volume is currently held at the Guildhall Library in London, where it has the shelf-mark SR 2.3.3. The words ‘Stephanus Batmanus | me possidet’ are written beneath the edition’s colophon in Batman’s cursive italic hand (sig. 3V8^v), along with a short booklist of medieval chronicles. The volume’s ownership inscription has been recorded by a Guildhall Library cataloguer on a typewritten pastedown, but scholars interested in Batman’s career have not hitherto noted the book’s existence.² There is also a poem of twenty-eight lines written on the rear flyleaf in Batman’s secretary hand, and at around seventy locations throughout the edition there are annotations, manicules, marginal markings, and line drawings. The preponderance of the written annotations and manicules are in Batman’s hand, and demonstrate some of his varied responses to Chaucer’s collected works.³

The characteristics of Batman’s secretary and cursive italic hands were described by Kate McLoughlin and Malcolm Parkes in the 1990s, and can be seen in the volume’s ownership inscription and booklist (Fig. 1).⁴ The entries in Batman’s cursive italic hand demonstrate his formation of minuscule g, in which the descender leans to the right (‘genelogia’); his flourished ligatures on st (‘statu’, ‘Cirsestria’); his interchangeable use of secretary and italic d; and his horizontal or straightened serifs on f, long s, and y (‘of malmesburi’, ‘Elyensis’). The English note in the booklist—‘This book woorthy of recorde’—is written in Batman’s secretary hand, and features his majuscule T beginning with a looping downstroke (‘This’); biting o graphs (‘book’ and ‘woorthy’); a downward flick on terminal f (‘of’); and a pen-lift in the formation of the looped ascender of secretary d (‘recorde’). A larger sample of this secretary hand is found in the poem on the rear flyleaf, which also features what McLoughlin and Parkes have identified as Batman’s distinctive orthography: a present participle in ‘-eng’ (‘gapeng’), doubled terminal consonants or vowels (‘mee’, ‘bee’, ‘remitt’, ‘fitt’), and words that typically terminate in ‘-all’ being spelled as ‘-awle’ or ‘-avle’ (‘fawle’, ‘beffavle’).⁵ Full transcriptions of the booklist and poem are provided below.

Fig. 1.

London, Guildhall Library, SR 2.3.3, sig. 3V8^v.

Reproduced by kind permission.

The volume contains twenty-seven marginal annotations in total, from single words to a rhymed quatrain. These annotations are written in Batman’s secretary or cursive italic hand, typically in a brownish-black ink. In two sequences of annotation, however, he uses a more distinctive purple ink, which interrupts the darker ink rather than overlapping with it (sigs. 2O4^r–2O6^r and sigs. S5^v–S6^v). The following notes are written in his cursive italic hand: ‘against workers | of Alcumine | and Alcumiste’ (sig. M1^r; Canterbury Tales, VIII. 1477–79);⁶ ‘Regulus’ (sig. S3^r; Boece, II. pr. 6, 70); ‘Exerses supposid | to be ye first finder | of ye chesse’ (sig. Y1^r; Book of the Duchess, 663–65); ‘/procede/’ (sig. Y2^r; 819–20); and ‘Cadmus bulded | thebes Anno Mundi /15/30 | continued yeres | Nere /3900/10/’ (sig. 3V8^r; Siege of Thebes, 4623). A handful of other annotations are in Batman’s secretary hand: ‘Riches drivs | awaye /nead/’ (sig. S6^v; Boece, III. pr. 3, 79); ‘frndship’ (sig. S5^v; Boece, III. pr. 2, 55); and ‘to | kinges | to | Beggers’ (sig. S5^v; Boece, III. pr. 2, 36–40). The use of purple ink confirms Batman’s responsibility for the words ‘/nota/’ or ‘not’ that appear in Boece (sig. S6^r; III. pr. 3, 35) and The Testament of Cresseid (sig. 2O4^v; 438, 461), while he also notes the year ‘/1255/’ as the date of Gérard de Borgo San Donnino’s heretical writings (sig. 2F5^r; Romaunt of the Rose, C. 7097). Additionally, Batman glosses the word...