The Book of Margery Kempe (37 page)

3
.   A mark was worth thirteen shillings and fourpence.

4
.   This evidently refers to requisitioning of ships for Henry Vs second expedition to France in 1417.

1
.   Probably 10 June 1417.

2
.   Possibly Newcastle under Lyme, in Staffordshire, rather than Newcastle upon Tyne, in that Thomas accompanies Margery as far as Leicester and Melton Mowbray (chapter 49), but apparently not on her subsequent travels to Lincoln and York.

3
.   Thomas Peverel, Bishop of Worcester 1407-19. He came of a Suffolk family, which explains his knowledge of Margery's father. He was responsible for the conviction on a charge of heresy of the Lollard John Badby, who was burned in 1410. The bishops of Worcester had a manor near Bristol at Henbury, Gloucestershire.

4
.   If Margery waited six weeks from Whitsun, she probably sailed for Santiago in early July. She was evidently away twenty-six days.

5
.   The Cistercian abbey of Hailes in Gloucestershire boasted a relic of the Holy Blood. ‘By the blood of Crist that is in Hayles' is among the oaths Chaucer's Pardoner preaches against in his tale. ‘All that remains above ground is the shell of the cloister … The surviving architectural detail is of very high quality …' D. Verey,
Buildings of England: Gloucestershire; The Cotswolds,
Penguin, 1970.

1
.   According to extant records, the Mayor of Leicester between Michaelmas Day 1416 and Michaelmas Day 1417 was one John Arnesby.

1
.   All Saints Church, which still stands in High Cross Street, Leicester.

2
.   Richard Rothley, who succeeded Philip Repyngdon in the abbacy in 1405, on the latter's appointment as Bishop of Lincoln.

3
.   Possibly the Dean of either of the two colleges of St Mary the Less or St Mary the Greater.

4
.   Questions about the sacrament might expose a suspected Lollard, but Margery's answer is orthodox.

5
.   Genesis xviii, 21.

6
.   In 1399 Richard II had prohibited the entry into England of ‘a new
sect of certain people dressed in white clothes and pretending a great holiness', probably the Flagellant
Albi
or
Bianchi,
who had entered Italy from France in 1399.

1
.   A house of Augustinian canons dedicated to St Mary; only the foundations now remain.

2
.   Leaving Bristol in late July or early August (chapter 45), Margery thus probably left Leicester in late August or early September 1417.

1
.   Probably the Eve of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, 7 September 1417; fasting at such a time would be customary piety.

2
.   cf. Matthew vii, 15 (‘Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves').

1
.   Genesis i, 22 (‘Be fruitful, and multiply …'); held by some heretics to justify free love.

2
.   John Aclom has not been identified.

3
.   John Kendale was a vicar choral, not a canon, of York Minster at this time; each canon delegated some or all of his duties in the church to his own vicar choral, hence Margery's confusion.

4
.   Perhaps one of the two chaplains of the Chantry of All Saints, established on the south side of the Lady Chapel in 1413 by Archbishop Bowet, near to the tomb he had built for himself.

5
.   i.e. the Chapterhouse which still stands.

6
.   William Fitzherbert, Archbishop of York (d. 1154); miracles were reported at his tomb in the Minster, and he was canonized in 1227; his relics were translated to a new shrine in 1281. There was a strong cult of the saint at York.

7
.   The palace of Archbishops of York at Cawood, south of York. ‘AH that remains is the tall Gatehouse …' (built later than Margery's visit) (Pevsner,
The Buildings of England: Yorkshire: The West Biding,
Penguin, 1959).

1
.   Henry Bowet, Archbishop of York 1407-23; he showed zeal against the Lollards. He is also said to have had a great reputation for hospitality and sumptuous housekeeping.

2
.   St John of Bridlington (d. 1379), Prior of the Augustinian canons of Bridlington, who combined his official duties with a life of fervent prayer, and had the gift of tears. Miracles were reported at his tomb, and he was canonized in 1401. His confessor, William Sleightholme (referred to by Margery as ‘Sleytham' in chapter 53), was himself reported to be a worker of miracles.

3
.   Luke xi, 27-8.

4
.   i.e. that like various contemporary Lollard women, Margery has been studying scripture. See C. Cross, ‘ “Great Reasoners in Scripture”: The Activities of Women Lollards 1380-1530', in
Medieval Women,
ed. D. Baker (Oxford, 1978), pp. 359-80.

5
.   I Corinthians xiv, 34-5.

6
.   i.e. six shillings and eightpence.

1
.   John, Duke of Bedford (1389-1435), third son of Henry IV, and at this time Lieutenant of the kingdom, during Henry V's absence in France.

1
.   i.e. the Chapterhouse no longer extant at Beverley Minster.

2
.   cf. Matthew v, 48.

3
.   Margery is here accused of being the spiritual daughter of the contemporary arch-Lollard, Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham. Pronounced a heretic by Archbishop Arundel in 1413, Oldcastle escaped from the Tower and was in hiding in his home county of Herefordshire until recaptured late in 1417. He was hanged and burnt as an outlaw, traitor and heretic on 14 December 1417, in the presence of the Duke of Bedford.

4
.   i.e. because Lollards disapproved of pilgrimages.

5
.   Joan de Beaufort (d. 1440), Countess of Westmorland, daughter of
John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford, sister of Cardinal Beaufort and aunt of the Duke of Bedford.

6
.   Elizabeth, daughter of Joan de Beaufort, who married John de Greystoke.

7
.   Margery is probably speaking in the autumn of 1417, and left for Jerusalem in 1413.

8
.   Margery will have remembered that St Bridget ‘had a laughing face' (chapter 39).

9
.   It is noticeable how many events in her life are remembered by Margery as occurring on Fridays, the day of Christ's Passion.

1
.   Matthew x, 19-20.

2
.   West Lynn, on the west bank of the River Ouse, just across the river from Lynn itself.

3
.   Arundel's successor, Henry Chichele, Archbishop of Canterbury 1414-43.

1
.   Referring to the old custom by which all those moving house within the same district did so on the same day.

2
.   Extant records mention him as an early fifteenth-century Prior of Lynn.

3
.   Archbishop Chichele's letter is more liberal than Arundel's allowance of Sunday communion (chapter 16).

4
.   At the end of Holy Week the crucifix was customarily wrapped in silk and buried with the Host in the Easter Sepulchre (a special recess with tomb-chest for the purpose, usually in the wall of the chancel), and a vigil was then kept.

5
.   One Mount Grace annotator comments in the MS margin ‘
langor amoris
,' i.e. the languishing of love.

6
.   Actually, it has not been written before. Margery has said that her eight years of illness (which evidently started several years after the visit to Jerusalem when her cries began) were followed by increased cryings (chapter 56).

7
.   The Mount Grace annotator notes in the margin ‘petite et accipietis', referring to John xvi, 24 (‘ask, and ye shall receive …').

1
.   Luke xix, 41-4.

2
.   i.e. the
Revelations
of St Bridget of Sweden, probably Hilton's
Scale of Perfection,
the pseudo-Bonaventuran
Stimulus Amoris,
and Richard Rolle's
Incendium Amoris.
On the books known to Margery, see Introduction, p. 15ff

1
.   cf. the anxiety of Julian of Norwich: ‘Another part of our same belief is that many creatures will be damned … all these shall be condemned to hell everlastingly, as Holy Church teaches me to believe. This being so I thought it quite impossible that everything should turn out well, as our Lord was now showing me'
(Revelations of Divine Love,
tr. C Wolters, Penguin, 1966, chapter 32).

1
.   Richard of Caister died on 29 March 1420. Miracles were reputed to have happened at his tomb, which was a place of pilgrimage.

2
.   i.e. an image of the Virgin seated with the dead body of Christ in her lap. For evidence that such images were fairly common in fifteenth-century England, see ‘The History of the Pietà', in R. Woolf,
The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages
(Oxford. 1968), pp. 392-4.

3
.   This priest – who is never named by Margery – probably thus came to Lynn about 1413.

1
.   A marginal note in the MS in chapter 63 (see below), names the friar as ‘Melton', perhaps identifying Margery's enemy as the Franciscan preacher William Melton, although the authority of the note remains doubtful.

2
.   The other chapel-of-ease in the parish of St Margaret's, Lynn.

3
.   Presumably Master Alan and Master Robert Spryngolde.

1
.   25 July; the year is uncertain.

2
.   On Mary of Oignies, see Introduction, p. 18ff.

3
.   Perhaps a Middle English translation of the
Stimulus Amoris;
cf.
The Prickynge of Love,
ed. H. Kane (Salzburg, 1983), chapter 2, p. 20.

4
.   i.e. Richard Rolle. See
The Fire of Love,
tr. C. Wolters (Penguin, 1972), chapter 34: ‘And his shout, excited and bursting out from the core of his longing love, goes up, of course, to his Maker … I have not the wit to describe this shout or its magnitude …'

5
.   St Elizabeth of Hungary (1207-31). Happily married to the Landgrave of Thuringia, after his death on crusade in 1227 she became a Franciscan tertiary, devoting herself to the care of the poor and sick and to a life of austerity. Canonized in 1235, her relics at Marburg were a popular object of pilgrimage.

1
.   From the Old French
gesine,
‘childbed'; a chapel in St Margaret's Church devoted to the Nativity.

2
.   Here an annotator writes ‘
nota contra Melton
' in the MS margin; see chapter 61, n. 1.

3
.   Margery perhaps looks forward here to her own sainthood.

4
.   cf. chapter 8.

1
.   Matthew vii, 12.

1
.   Margery has not recorded this revelation; St Paul is quoted against her at her examination in chapter 52.

1
.   This fire is recorded as having happened on 23 January 1420/1421.

2
.   Probably Robert Spryngolde.

3
.   Note Margery's caution in divulging her revelations.

1
.   A Dominican, Thomas Constance, is mentioned in contemporary records.

2
.   Presumably Mary of Oignies; see chapter 62.

1
.   i.e. Prior Thomas Hevingham; see chapter 57.

2
.   John Wakering (d. 1425), consecrated Bishop of Norwich in 1416.

3
.   i.e. Alan of Lynn and Robert Spryngolde.

4
.   Thomas Netter (d. 1430), elected Provincial Prior of the English Carmelites in a council held at Yarmouth in 1414, and one of the English representatives at the Council of Constance. He had taken a prominent part in the prosecution of the Lollards and had been present at the examination of Oldcastle before Archbishop Arundel in 1413. He is also recorded as a special patron of women recluses and an encourager of holy women, although disapproving of publicity for them.

5
.   Neither has been positively identified, although a Thomas Andrew was presented as rector of St Peter Hungate, Norwich, in 145 7, and a John Amy was presented as Vicar of Appleton (1417) and Sedgeford (1426), both villages in north-west Norfolk, not far from Lynn.

6
.   Not identified.

1
.   Probably Thomas Netter; see chapter 69, n. 4.

1
.   Extant records identify the two Priors in this episode as Thomas Hevingham and his successor, John Derham.

2
.   Henry V died in France on 31 August 1422.

3
.   Henry Beaufort (d. 1447), son of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford, half-brother of Henry IV; Bishop of Winchester 1405-47; nominated a cardinal in 1426, and later referred to by Margery as a cardinal (Book II, chapter 9), suggesting the present incident preceded his elevation.

1
.   Romans viii, 28.

1
.   In the MS margin a fifteenth-century note: ‘Father M. was wont so to doo', referring to the Mount Grace mystic, Richard Methley.

2
.   Recalling our Lord's words to Margery on her way from Jerusalem, which may well have taken place on the feast of the Translation of St Nicholas (9 May), although Margery did not specify this in chapter 30.