A Lancastrian Mirror for Princes: The Yale Law School New Statutes of England

Chapter One. The Yale New Statutes Manuscript and Medieval English Statute Books: Similarities and Differences

14 The Yale Law School manuscript of the Nova statuta Angliae (Goldman Library MS MssG +St11 no.1) contains almost four hundred leaves, so it offers many margins and centers for readers to explore. Modern readers coming to a manuscript copy of a medieval text discover the complexity and the potential to empower that the reading process offered in earlier times: letter forms and abbreviations in handmade books could be ambiguous, words might be rearranged or missing, and authorship could be uncertain; but medieval readers could select what texts, decoration, and illustrations were put into new manuscript books, and medieval readers often added to or removed texts or images from their books over time. Examining the layout and content of the text and decoration in a medieval manuscript, as well as the structure of the manuscript as a whole and the relationship of its components to other manuscripts, can help modern readers understand when, where, and for whom a medieval manuscript was made, as well as the process by which the texts within the manuscript were read. As Malcolm Parkes and Ian Doyle have argued, “Layout and decoration [in a medieval manuscript] function like punctuation: they are part of the presentation of a text which facilitates its use by a reader” (Parkes and Doyle 1978, 169). In this chapter, we will examine what evidence the Yale Nova statuta manuscript offers about when and where it was made, one The Yale New Statutes Manuscript and Medieval English Statute Books SiMilaritieS and differenceS • The Yale New Statutes Manuscript and Medieval English Statute Books 15 who made it, and how the parts of the manuscript construct several frames for its presentation of English law.1 We will also consider its relationship with developments in the history of medieval English statutes manuscripts. In the process, we will begin to see how the Yale manuscript transforms the New Statutes of England into a Lancastrian mirror for princes. There has been little consensus among scholars about the origins, contents , or significance of the Yale manuscript of the New Statutes of England. In 1975, noting the manuscript’s luxurious decoration and the appearance of Margaret of Anjou’s coat of arms in the border decoration, art historian Jane Hayward argued that the book was a wedding gift from Henry VI to Margaret in 1445 (Hayward 1975, 142). Hayward suggested that the statutes in the codex from the Parliaments after 1444–45 are additions that Margaret herself commissioned before she returned to France as a widow in 1476. Since Hayward published her comments, other scholars have offered alternative interpretations of the manuscript’s origins and significance. In 1978, art historians Walter Cahn and James Marrow dated the early parts of the manuscript to around 1460, fifteen years after Margaret’s marriage to Henry (Cahn and Marrow 1978, 240–41). As we will see, this dating of the manuscript fits the evidence much better than Hayward’s estimate. Though noting the appearance of Henry’s and Margaret’s arms, Cahn and Marrow did not link the presence of these arms with any royal commission or ownership of the manuscript. Cahn and Marrow also parted from Hayward in arguing that the manuscript’s series of historiated initials is similar to illustrations in other English statute books. While Cahn and Marrow revealed some of the links between the Yale Nova statuta and other copies of the text, their description masked important distinguishing features of the Yale manuscript, as well as possible connections between this manuscript’s illustrations and other medieval iconographic traditions. Differing statements about the manuscript’s dating and illustrations have continued to appear. In his catalogue of English legal manuscripts in the United States, legal historian John Hamilton Baker dated the core of the Yale Nova statuta to the 1450s, with later additions to 1484, and gave a full account of the manuscript’s post-medieval provenance; but he erroneously described this copy of the Nova statuta as containing six miniatures of kings in Parliament (Baker 1985, 73–74). The most extensive work on this manuscript thus far, however, has been by art historian Kathleen Scott. Over the course of several publications, she has pointed out associations between the Yale Nova A Lancastrian Mirror for Princes 16 statuta manuscript and other English manuscripts from the second half of the fifteenth century, including a group of Nova statuta manuscripts that follow a standardized layout for illustration and decoration...