Royal MS 8 C XVII

'PROPHETIA BRTDLYNGTON' (so title inserted by the librarian of St. Augustine's, Canterbury): the metrical prophecy and prose commentary printed by T. Wright in Political Poems, Rolls Series, i, p. I23. The canon who is supposed to be author of the poem, whether or not he be, as Wright supposes, a fiction by the commentator, cannot at any rate be identical with john of Twenge, Prior of Bridlington, who died in I379 and was the subject of a canonization-process in 139I. The commentary is dedicated to Humphrey de Bohun (here 'Bow', for Bown), Earl of Hereford, Essex, and Northampton, Constable of England and lord of Brecknock, and therefore dates between 1361 and 1373, and the commentator's name is concealed, as he says, 'sub salutacionis stylo', i. e. in the opening words 'Venerabili domino et mira magnitudine extollendo . . . et domino de Brekenok, Dei gratia humilitatis seruus si super consequencie notam capud miseracionis velitis adiungere nomen obscurum et obsequium salutare', where 'dei gratia' no doubt stands for john. The rest of the phrase can be so interpreted ('consequentiae nota'= ergo, 'caput miserationis'= m) as to support the name John Ergome, which is attached to the work by a 16th cent. hand in a Bodleian MS. (Digby 89); and an author of that name was an astronomer and Austin friar at York in 1372 (see M. R. james, 'Austin

Friars' Library, York', in Fasciculus Io. Willis Clark dicalus, Cambridge, 1909, p. 10). Another copy is in Cotton MS. Dom. A. IX, f. 17. The prophecy beg. 'Febribus infectus requies fuerat mihi lectus'. Vellum; ff. 22. 91/4 in. x 7 in. Late XIV cent. Gatherings. i16. ii6. Sec. fol. 'prophetia unde'. 'De librario s. Augustini-Can- - tuariensis', f. 1 (see M. R. James, Ancient Libraries of Cant., p. 532). Old Royal press-mark 'no. 716' (Westm. invent. of 1542, Add. MS. 25469, f. 33); invent. of 1661 (Roy. App. 86), f. 28 b; cat. of 1666, f. 20 b; CMA. 8462.