One of my recent college items contained an intriguing tidbit, telling a story of self-censorship in a time of political and religious upheaval in 16th century England.

Exeter College MS. 129 houses a version of John Lydgate’s The Seege of Troy, originating in late-15th century England. Lydgate was a Suffolk-born poet and monk who spent most of his life at the Benedictine monastery near Bury St Edmunds. He was an author of considerable output, exemplified in part by the Troy Book, or Siege of Troy, a recollection of the history of Troy and the Trojan War which consists of over 30,000 lines.¹ Commissioned by Prince Henry (later Henry V) in 1412, this eight-year work was Lydgate’s first major output and stands as “one of the most ambitious attempts in medieval vernacular poetry to recount the story of the Trojan war.”²

This specific copy of the Troy Book has a partially understood provenance. Believed to have been a product of the London book trade, the book passed through the hands of a ‘ser thomas‘ of the late 15th century, ‘howell ap John apparry’ in the mid-16th century, and Edward Morgan later in that same century. It bears markings which indicate it being part of Sir William Glynne’s library in the 17th century, before being bequeathed to Exeter College by Joseph Sandford in the latter part of the 18th century. The work is contained within an early 19th century binding common to many of Exeter’s manuscripts.³

Strictly speaking, neither Lydgate, nor his famous work, nor this object’s provenantial history are the chief focus of this blog post. The area of intrigue appears at the bottom of fol. 42v, where a curious omission means a line that originally read “devoide of põpe” has had its final word erased. The reason for this omission, according to Andrew Watson’s description of MS. 129, is down to a “royal proclamation of 1535”.⁴ The specific proclamation is of June 9, titled Yet once agayne by the Kynge to the shyryues,⁵ within which Henry VIII instructs “all the clergymen of his realm (bishops, ‘abbots, priors, deans, archdeacons, provosts, parsons, vicars, curates, and all other ecclesiastical persons’) to ‘preach the true and sincere word of God’ to the people on Sundays and on all important feast days,” in effect leaving them no choice but to acknowledge the King as the Supreme Head of the Church.⁶

The proclamation goes into more detail, demanding “scool maysters within hys sayde dioces” to ensure that all of their service books “wherin the sayde bysshop of Rome is named[…] vtterly to be abolysshed, eradicate, & rased out, and his name & memory to be neuer more (except to his contumelye and reproche) remembred, but perpetually suppressed & obscured.”⁷ Watson notes that the obedient owner of MS. 129 (possibly the aforementioned ‘ser thomas’) affronted with the title of the Bishop of Rome proudly at the bottom of fol. 42v, felt they had no choice but to erase the “põpe” in the catchword.

Unfortunately for the eraser, they appear to have fallen foul of an early modern palaeographical quirk: the tilde represented the shortening of a word, most often the omission of an ‘m’ or ‘n’,⁸ meaning what read “põpe” actually meant “pompe” and this act of censorship was wholly unnecessary. Perhaps, however, the owner fully understood the meaning of the word and was more wary of an unknowing apparatus of the state acquiring this book and misunderstanding the meaning themselves, landing the owner in hot water! Either way, what we are left with is a fascinating example of self-censorship and the impact of state influence in the nascent days of the Church of England’s establishment.

Notes and References

Blog post featured image: Portrait of John Lydgate published in 1820. Credit: J G Murray, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

1. Gray, D. (2004). Lydgate, John. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/17238 ↩︎
2. Edwards, R.R. (1998). Troy Book: Introduction. TEAMS Middle English Texts Series. Retrieved 18 September, 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20230517111037/https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/edwards-lydgate-troy-book-introduction ↩︎
3. University of Oxford (2020). Exeter College MS. 129. Medieval Manuscripts in Oxford Libraries. Retrieved 18 September, 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20220811000008/https://medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/manuscript_11066 ↩︎
4. Ibid. ↩︎
5. British Library (2021). England and Wales. Sovereign (1509-1547 : Henry VIII) Proclamations. 1535-06-09 Yet once agayne by the Kynge to the shyryues. ([London] : [s.n.], [1535]). English Short Title Catalogue. Retrieved 18 September, 2023, from http://estc.bl.uk/S108863 ↩︎
6. Society of Antiquities of London (2021). A Proclamation for the Abolishing of the Power of the Pope. Retrieved 18 September 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20211209113244/https://stories.sal.org.uk/henryviii/object/salproc1-78/ ↩︎
7. England and Wales. Sovereign (1509-1547 : Henry VIII). (1535). Yet once agayne by the kynge to the shyryues [Proclamations. 1535-06-09]. London: Retrieved 18 September, 2023, from https://www.proquest.com/books/yet-once-agayne-kynge-shyryues/docview/2240908846/se-2 ↩︎
8. University of Nottingham (2011). Letter forms and abbreviations. Retrieved 18 September 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20230509041634/https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/researchguidance/medievaldocuments/letterformsandabbreviations.aspx ↩︎