SHORTER CONTRIBUTIONS
THE REDISCOVERY OF MARGERY KEMPE: A FOOTNOTE
Hilton Kelliher
T H E year 1934 was truly an annus mirabilis for
English literary studies, when over the space of
three months during the summer and autumn
unique manuscripts of three major works were
brought to light. In July came the announcement by Walter Oakeshott of his discovery in
theFellowsLibrary at Winchester College of a
text of Le Morte d'Arthur differing in some
respects from that published by Caxton in
1485, but which later proved to have been in
his office at the time of printing.^ In August
Coleridge's autograph fair copy of an early
recension of Kubla Khan emerged from the
Monckton Milnes collection at Crewe Hall in
Derbyshire.^ In September a country house
near Chesterfield yielded The Book of Margery
Kempe, the autobiography of the fractious
Norfolk mystic and pilgrim that had until then
been known only from seven pages of extracts
published by Wynkyn de Worde about 1501.
Almost fifty years after its rediscovery the
Kempe manuscript came up at public auction
and was purchased by the British Library, thus
becoming the last of the trio to enter the
national collection.^
The final version of Margery Kempe's
spiritual autobiography was dictated to a priest
ofKing'sLynninJuly 1436. The present copy
was the work of an otherwise unknown scribe
who signed himself off with the words 'ihesu
mercy quod Salthows'.^ As with the Malory
manuscript, in which the fragment of an
indulgence used for repair provided a vital clue
to its early history, a document salvaged from
the original binding tells us something about
provenance and dating. This takes the form of
a letter of 1440 from Peter de Monte, notary
apostolic, reciting a faculty granted to an
incumbent of Soham in Cambridgeshire who
has been identified as William Buggy (d.
1442).^ Nevertheless the earliest clear indication of provenance remains the inscription
'Liber Montis Gracie. This boke is of
Mountegrace'on the vellum bifolium bound in
at the front of the volume. Perhaps significantly, it has been observed that the unusual
pattern of pricking in the manuscript is similar
to that in a collection of works by or attributed
to St Gregory that was copied at Mount Grace
in the mid-fifteenth century by the monk John
Awne (d. 1472-3).^ From the late fourteenth
century the Carthusians led the way in the
transmission of spiritual teaching. This particular Yorkshire priory was home to mystics
like Nicholas Love and Richard Methley, and
its library boasted several works belonging to
that tradition.'' Annotations made while the
manuscript was still in its care draw parallels
between the religious practices of Kempe and
Methley and, more specifically, mention a
vision experienced in 1485 by Prior John
Norton.
The whereabouts of the volume between its
removal from Mount Grace, which must have
taken place no later than the suppression of
1539, and the late eighteenth or early nine-
259
teenth century, when it surfaced in the hands
of the Bowdens in Derbyshire, have remained
a matter for conjecture. The standard account
of its more recent provenance is that published
in The Times of 30 September 1934 by Lt.-Col.
William Erdeswick Ignatius Butler-Bowden
(1880-1956), in whose family home of
Southgate House, Chesterfield, it had then
recently come to light.
Museum, to which she had donated the
relevant papers, sent a photocopy to this
Library following its acquisition of the manuscript. Thanks are also due to the former
Curator of the Lynn Museum, Elizabeth M.
James, and to her successor, Lindy Brewster.
Maurice Butler-Bowden wrote as follows (with
minor changes in presentation):
It may be remembered that we are a Catholic family
and I believe that, when the monasteries were being
destroyed, the monks sometimes gave valuable
books, vestments, &c., to such families in the hope
of preserving them. Though there is nothing to
prove it, this may have been the case with Margery
Kempe's manuscript, and the Carthusians of Mount
Grace may have given it to one of my family.
The manuscript has lain in a bookshelf in the
library of Pleasington Old Hall, Lancashire, next to
a missal of 1340 in the rite of York, ever since I can
remember. We used to look at it occasionally and
sometimes visitors read a page or two of it. About
two years ago I took it to Mr. van de Put, the
librarian at the Victoria and Albert Museum, who
showed It to Hope Emily Allen. She identified it as
Margery Kempe's lost autobiography. After the
identification of the manuscript I lent it for some
months to the British Museum, for the benefit of
experts there.
Records confirm that the manuscript was
placed on deposit for use in the Students'
Room of the Department of Manuscripts on
three occasions between September 1934 and
March 1937, in order to facilitate the work of
Professor Meech and Hope Emily Allen on the
scholarly edition that was published by the
Early English Text Society in 1940.^ The rest
of the story requires some qualification.
A circumstantial account of the recovery of
the manuscript is given in a letter that the
Colonel's eldest son, Captain Maurice
Erdeswick Butler-Bowden (b. 1910), R.N.,
O.B.E., wrote from Dapsland, Mayfield, in
Sussex, on 30 January 1970 to Mrs D. Winifred
Tuck of King's Lynn. Grateful thanks are
owed to Mrs Tuck whose researches elicited
this account, and at whose request the Lynn
260
... I cannot add much that you will not have gleaned
already from Professor R. W. Chambers' Introduction and my Father's Editor's Note in the edition
published by Jonathan Cape (bound in purple cloth)
in 1936, except perhaps to tell you the story of how
the leather bound manuscript was found :When in 1927 my grandfather died my Father (Lt
Col W. Butler Bowden) took over the family house
in Derbyshire. I was then only a Midshipman in the
Royal Navy (and wish I still could be). It was a
largish Georgian House with a big front hall which
we children liked because it could and did easily
provide room and surrounding space to have a full
sized Ping Pong table permanently rigged. The bats
& balls lived in a wall cupboard on one side of the
fireplace. One evening when some grown up friend
(X) of my Parents was staying, one of us trod on the
Ping Pong ball and my father went to the cupboard
to get out a replacement and it was soon apparent
that he was having difficulty in finding either a ball
or even the tube of balls. When our visitor (X) went
over to assist the reason for the difficulty was
obvious (we children knew it from experience).
There was in there an entirely undisciplined clutter
of smallish leather bound books. My father's retort
to the hopingly helpful but unproductive visitor was
'Look X I am going to put this whole '
' lot on
the bonfire tomorrow and then we may be able to
find Ping Pong balls & bats when we want them'. To
this X replied 'Willie, before you do anything so
suddenly may I ask an expert (Z) friend/
acquaintance of mine who knows about these things
to come and look through this cupboard, after all
there may be something of real interest there which
you may not at the moment realise'. To which my
Pa replied 'Yes, if you insist but they are all old
household account books but I cannot for the life of
me see why they were bound in leather - but if your
friend thinks his trip would be worth it I will
certainly give him a bed'.
After the usual exchange by letter & by telephone
(just) Z was duly met at the Station one evening in
time to change for dinner. The following morning may assume that the earlier provenance is
after breakfast Z got down to burrowing through the Derbyshire rather than the strongly Catholic
cupboard, and, some thirty minutes later called in area of mid-Lancashire.^^
on my Pa in his Study and said 'Thank you very
The pedigree of the Derbyshire Bowdens in
much for your hospitality, I think I will be away now
the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is
- 1 think I have found something more interesting
than I should have hoped for in my wildest dreams rather uncertain.^^ The family has been traced
- may I please take it down to London with me for as far back as George Bowden (b. 1537, and
closer study and so as to check the identification.' still living 1611) of Bowden Hall near ChapelMy father agreed and it turned out to be the en-le-Frith in the Peak District. He seems to
autobiography of Margery Kempe which the experts
have been an ancestor of Henry Bowden (d.
had been hoping for years would come to the surface
somewhere. There would seem to be a Lesson here 1665) of Beightonficlds in Barlborough which
especially in the present times when old & historic adjoins the parish of Clowne, where stands
(which ours wasn't) houses are being sold up etc. Southgate House which the later Henry (d.
The opening cover, leather & paper, of this bound 1833) was the first of the name to occupy. Both
manuscript had been eaten away presumably by a villages lie on the north-eastern border of the
mouse and my father had this expertly repaired.
A few remarks on the two accounts will not
mar this lively tale. The visiting friend ('X')
was evidently Charles Gibbs-Smith and the
expert (*Z') Albert Van de Put, both then on
the staff of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The actual identification was made by Hope
Emily Allen, already known for her work on
the hermit Richard Rolle. John Erdeswick
Butler-Bowden, the Captain's grandfather,
who died in 1929 (not 1927), was of mixed
Lancashire and Derbyshire descent. He owned
the manor and the New (not Old) Hall at
Pleasington, between Blackburn and Preston,
along with Southgate House, some miles to the
north east of Chesterfield.^ Although the family
had moved out of the Lancashire property long
before the time of the discovery, to judge from
the account given by the elder Butler-Bowden
the manuscript must have been at Pleasington
before the end of the century.^** This estate had
in 1777 passed after centuries of ownership by
the Ainsworths into that of another Lancashire
family, the Butlers. Since it came to the
Bowdens, by marriage, only in 1840-upon
which occasion they assumed the name ButlerBowden - and since two bookplates inside the
front cover can be identified as those of Henry
Bowden (1754-1833) of Southgate House, one
county, between Chesterfield and Worksop. It
happens that among the properties owned by
Mount Grace at its suppression was the
advowson of the nearby rectory of Beighton,
situated some seven miles north west of
Barlborough.^^ This had been alienated to the
Priory in 1456 by Sir James Strangways of
Harlsey Castle, Yorkshire, and his wife
Elizabeth.^* Beighton was, in fact, the only
advowson that belonged to the Priory in
Derbyshire, and indeed its sole possession in
the county at the Dissolution.
This offers at least a possible route by which
The Book of Margery Kempe could have
migrated at the suppression to the vicinity
where the Bowdens later settled.^^ It might,
perhaps, have been carried away by one of the
seventeen dispossessed monks of Mount Grace,
or have been borrowed or otherwise acquired
by a rector of Beighton somewhat before
that time. In 1535, at the time of the
great ecclesiastical survey commissioned by
Henry VIII, the incumbent was one Leonard
Lynley, who died in the year before the
surrender of December 1539.^^ His successor
would therefore have been the last rector to be
presented by the Prior, if not the first by the
Crown, to which the advowson seems initially
to have fallen. According to Joseph Foster's
'Index Ecclesiasticus' the incumbent on
261
13 May 1543 was William Saunderson, and by
14 July following Ralph Rogers.'^ Coincidentally, a John Saunderson was one of the
novices pensioned off from Mount Grace.
A further possibility is that the manuscript
fell to the new secular owners of the Priory.
The reversion and yearly rent of the site and
buildings were granted in 1540 to Strangways's
eponymous grandson who some months later
was licensed to alienate lands in Mount Grace
and Beighton to Thomas, ninth Lord Dacre.^®
In the very next year Dacre fell victim to
Henry VIII's blood-lust, and the wardship of
his infant son, who was to die in 1553, was
granted to the King.^^ The family honours
remained forfeit until restored to his brother by
Elizabeth I in 1558. Thereafter his successor,
Gregory, tenth Lord Dacre, granted the manor
and hall of Beighton in 1561 to Geofrey
Bosvile. The advowson seems after a while to
have been settled on the owners of the manor,
being granted to Robert and William Swift in
1544 and 1548. (Bosvile had himself granted
lands there to Robert Swift in 1547.^**) It then
descended through a daughter of Robert to
Frances Wortley who purchased the manor
from the Fiennes family. Lords Dacre of the
South, in 1570.'"
Whatever the precise route taken by The
Book of Margery Kempe, such transfers and
appropriations of monastic manuscripts were
common and are well attested.^^ But it is not
difficult to believe that, much as Colonel
Butler-Bowden suggested in 1934, a relic of
this nature might at some time subsequently
have been acquired and treasured by a recusant
family seated in the area.
1 First announced in The Times., 23 July 1934, and,
CO. Norfolk, in Dec. 1385 (BL, Stowe Charter
following its purchase from the Warden and
207).
Fellows of Winchester College on 26 March
5 The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. by Prof.
1976, now BL, Additional MS. 59678. Its history
Sanford Brown Meech, with prefatory note by
was discussed by Lotte Hellinga and the present
Hope Emily Allen, E.E.T.S., O.S., no. 212
writer in Toshiyuki Takamiya and Derek Brewer
(1940, for 1939), p. xliv. And see further A. B.
(eds.). Aspects of Malory, Arthurian Studies, no.
Emden, A Biographical Register of the University
i (Woodbridge, 1981; corrected repr. 1986), pp.
of Cambridge to 1500 (Cambridge, 1963), p. 104,
127-58.
col. a, where William Buggy, Bogy, or Buky,
M.A., B.Th., a Fellow of Corpus Christi College
2 First discussed in a letter of Alice D, Snyder to
from 1411/2 to 1417/8, is noted as having been
the Times Literary Supplement, 2 Aug. 1934, p.
admitted to the living of Soham on 8 April 1427.
541, and now BL, Additional MS. 50847, by
(Emden, however, misidentifies him as vicar of
purchase from the Marchioness of Crewe, 9 Dec.
Saham Toney in Norfolk.)
1961. For dating and provenance see further my
'The Kubla Khan manuscript and its first
6 By my colleague Andrew Prescott in his decollector', British Library Journal, xx (1994), pp.
scription of BL, Additional MS. 62450 (formerly
184-98.
Bradfer-Lawrence MS. 5) in The British Library,
Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts, New
3 Col. Butler-Bowden's piece in The Times of 30
Series, ig8i-ig85 (London, 1994), pt. i, pp.
Sept. 1934 is quoted below. The MS., purchased
at Messrs. Sotheby's sale of 24 June 1980, lot 58,
94-5is now numbered BL, Additional MS. 61823.
7 Dom David Knowles, The Religious Orders in
4 The name or signature of a 'Richardus
England (Cambridge, 1957), vol. ii, pp. 223-6;
Salthowus', written in a fifteenth-century hand,
and N. R. Ker, Mediaeval Libraries of Great
is seen in Cambridge University Library MS.
Britain, 2nd edn. (London, 1964), pp. 132, 283.
li.4.12, f. ii, in the space left for an illuminated
8 Volume labelled 'MSS on Loan in the Students'
initial. At f iv there occurs the ownershipRoom' in the archives of the Department covers
inscription of the monk Roger de Blicklingge:
the period 1920-1982. On pp. 73, 74 it is noted
one of this name witnessed a deed in Swardeston,
that the MS. was deposited by the owner,
262
through Mr Gibbs-Smith of the Victoria and
Albert Museum, on 24.ix.34 for 'Photostating
for Miss Allen', and collected by him on 4.xii.34,
having meanwhile been 'Taken by C. T.
Lamacraft for Repairs 28.9.34'. Again, entries
on pp. 83, 84 show that it was deposited for Miss
Allen and Prof. S. B. Meech, from 26.vi. to
23-x.i935i and on pp. 99, 100 for Miss M[abel]
Day, from 3i.iii to 29.iv.37.
9 W. Farrer and J. Brownbill (eds.), Victoria
County History of Lancashire., vol. vi (London,
1911), pp. 267, 268; and W. A. Abram, History
of Blackburn (Blackburn, 1877), pp. 612-21.
10 Between at least 1891 and 1913 it was occupied
by Sir William Henry Hornby, ist Bart., M.P.
for Blackburn, but by 1918 it is described as
unoccupied: see Kelly's Directory of Lancashire
for those years.
11 The Book of Margery Kempe, p. xxxii; the arms
may be compared with those given for Bowden
of Southgate House in Burke's General Armory
(London, 1884), p. 107, col. a.
12 Cf. Egerton MS. 996, f 39 (in Derbyshire
Visitation of 1611) with the account supplied by
John Butler Bowden in 1830 and printed in
Stephen Glover's History and Gazeteer of the
County of Derby, ed. Thomas Noble (Derby,
1833), vol. ii, pp. 338-9, and with Burke's
Landed Gentry (London, 1914), pp. 210-11.
13 W. Dugdale, Monasticon AngUcanum, ed. J.
Caley, H. Ellis and B. Bandinel (London,
1817-30), vol. vi, pt. I, p. 24.
14 E. Margaret Thompson, The Carthusian Order
in England (London, 1930), p. 235; and P.R.O.,
Calendar of Patent Rolls: Henry VI, vol. vi
(London, 1910), p. 277. See also BL, Egerton
Charter 2453. For Strangways see Dictionary of
National Biography, vol. lv (London, 1898), p.
29.
15 The priests and others are listed, with their
pensions, by Dugdale, op. cit., and in Yorkshire
Archaeological Journal, xviii (1904-5), pp- 261-3.
16 Record Commisssion, Valor Ecclesiasticus, td. ].
Caley, vol. iii (London, 1817), p. 177; a"^
Calendars of Wills and Administrations in the
Consistory Court of the Bishop of Lichfield and
Coventry, 1516-1652, ed. W. P. W. Phillimore,
Index Library, vol. vii (London, 1892), p. 66,
where Lynley's will is dated 1538.
17 Cambridge University Library Add. MS. 6745,
f 166.
r8 Thompson, op. cit., p. 237, citing P.R.O.,
Ministers' Accounts, no. 4630; and Letters and
Papers of...Henry VHI, vol. xvi (London, 1898),
p. 176, g.379(5i)19 Letters and Papers of... Henry VIII, vol. xvi,
nos. 954, 978.
20 BL, Egerton Charters 2456 and 2459, from the
Thoresby Park Papers of the Pierrepont family,
later owners of the manor.
21 BL, Additional MS. 6705, f. 21 v; and Glover,
op. cit., vol. ii, p. 112.
22 C. E. Wright, 'The Dispersal of the Libraries in
the Sixteenth Century', in Francis Wormald and
C. E. Wright, The English Library before ijoo
(London, 1958), pp. 148-75 (esp. pp. 159-61).
263