The Trinity Gower D Scribe ( fl. 1390–1420), often referred to simply as Scribe D, was a professional scribe and copyist of literary

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in ...

s active during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century in London, England. Although his real name long remained unknown, Scribe D has been described as "so well known to students of late

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...

manuscripts that he hardly needs any introduction".Thaisen, J. "The Trinity Gower D Scribe's Two ''Canterbury Tales'' Manuscripts Revisited", in Mooney & Connolly, ''Design and distribution of late medieval manuscripts in England'', Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2008, p.41

Identification and conjectured biography

Scribe D was first identified in the 1970s by Ian Doyle and Malcolm Parkes, who noticed that the same scribal hand occurred in a range of prestige manuscripts of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century date.Doyle, A. I. and Parkes, M. B. "The Production of Copies of the Canterbury Tales and Confessio Amantis in the Early Fifteenth Century" in Parkes and Watson (eds), ''Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts and Libraries'', London, 1978, pp.163–210 The hand has been characterised as "Anglicana formata at its best"; restrained, traditional and rather austere, with a slight influence of

secretary hand Secretary hand is a style of European handwriting developed in the early sixteenth century that remained common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for writing English, German, Welsh and Gaelic. History Predominating before the dominance ...

.Parkes, M. B. ''Their hands before our eyes: a closer look at scribes'', Ashgate Publishing, 2008, p.111 The manuscripts in which this hand appears show that Scribe D was active between the 1390s and 1420s.Thaisen, p.42 The spellings used by Scribe D have suggested to some critics that his original dialect was that of the south-west Midlands of England, particularly north

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see H ...

;Thaisen, p.42 Kerby-Fulton has suggested that Scribe D can be regarded as one of a class of "'reasonably educated men' who came up from the provinces seeking their fortunes, Dick Whittington style".Kerby-Fulton, K. Written work: ''Langland, Labor, and Authorship'', Publisher University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997, p.118 More recent scholarship has proposed he was in fact a Londoner influenced by his extensive work with manuscripts from the south-west Midlands, such as those of Langland.Horobin, Simon, and Daniel W. Mosser. "Scribe D’s SW Midlands Roots: A Reconsideration". ''Neuphilologische Mitteilungen'' 106 (2005): 289–305. His particular specialisation in the works of

John Gower John Gower (; c. 1330 – October 1408) was an English poet, a contemporary of William Langland and the Pearl Poet, and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer. He is remembered primarily for three major works, the '' Mirour de l'Omme'', '' Vo ...

seems to have resulted in him picking up several unusual word forms used by Gower, who had a London ("East Midlands") dialect with idiosyncratic Suffolk and

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

influences, and subsequently using them when copying the works of Geoffrey Chaucer.Transcript of discussion on "Manuscript Studies and Literary Geography", in Laing & Nicholson (eds) ''Speaking in our tongues: proceedings of a colloquium on medieval dialectology'', Boydell & Brewer, 1994, p.113 One of Scribe D's earliest identified works, based on the style of the illumination used in the manuscript, is the important "C text" of

William Langland William Langland (; la, Willielmus de Langland; 1332 – c. 1386) is the presumed author of a work of Middle English alliterative verse generally known as ''Piers Plowman'', an allegory with a complex variety of religious themes. The poem tr ...

's '' Piers Plowman'', contained in University of London MS. v.88. This contains scribal editing of "real skill" in addition to unique material written either by a "Langland enthusiast" or Langland himself.Benson, C. D. ''Public Piers Plowman: modern scholarship and late medieval English culture'', Penn State, 2004, p.66 It may be significant that Scribe D's first surviving commission was for ''Piers Plowman'', a work written in the same south-west Midland dialect that he could have spoken himself. Once established in London, Scribe D may have worked with other professional scribes. He is known to have worked on the same manuscript, the "Trinity Gower" manuscript, as the scribe of the Ellesmere and Hengwrt manuscripts of the ''

Canterbury Tales ''The Canterbury Tales'' ( enm, Tales of Caunterbury) is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's ''magnum opus ...

'' and either both men or the bookseller they worked for seem to have had good links to the London literary world, being able to obtain high-quality draft copies of texts. Another of the scribes working on the Trinity Gower was

Thomas Hoccleve Thomas Hoccleve or Occleve (1368 or 1369–1426) was an English poet and clerk, who became a key figure in 15th-century Middle English literature. His ''Regement of Princes or De Regimine Principum'' is a homily on virtues and vices, written for ...

, himself a poet and an admirer (and possibly friend) of Chaucer. Some scholars, such as Estelle Stubbs, have argued that Scribe D and his colleagues may, rather than trying to assemble the ''Canterbury Tales'' after Chaucer's death in 1400, have been steadily revising and recopying manuscripts in several stages with possible authorial supervision or input.Stubbs, E. "'Here's One I Prepared Earlier': The Work of Scribe D on Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 198", Review of English Studies (2007) 58 (234): 133–153 In recent years, Scribe D has been tentatively identified by Mooney and Stubbs as John Marchaunt, active as

Town Clerk of London The Town Clerk of London is an important position that has existed since the 13th century in the City of London, England. Originally the role was to take the minutes of London council meetings, but over the years the holder's role has gathered re ...

between 1380 and 1417;SCRIBE D=JOHN MARCHAUNT
A Digital Catalogue of the pre 1500 Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales in 2018, however, Lawrence Warner argued that the Marchaunt identification had no evidentiary support: there are no substantial documents known to be in Marchaunt's hand with which to compare these records, which seem to have been identified as Scribe D's on the assumption that he was Marchaunt rather than the other way around. Mooney and Stubbs also cite the appearance of the name 'Jhon Marcant' in the margin of a Canterbury Tales manuscript by Scribe D as evidence that a later reader knew who the scribe was, but both this and a second marginal entry ('Jhon Marka') in the manuscript appear next to passages concerning jealousy and thus provide no evidence regarding the scribe's identity.Lawrence Warner, ''Chaucer's Scribes: London Textual Production, 1384–1432'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 97–103).

Manuscripts attributed to Scribe D

*London University Library v. 88 (the so-called "

Ilchester Ilchester is a village and civil parish, situated on the River Yeo or Ivel, five miles north of Yeovil, in the English county of Somerset. Originally a Roman town, and later a market town, Ilchester has a rich medieval history and was a nota ...

manuscript" of '' Piers Plowman'', regarded as possibly Scribe D's earliest work). *Cambridge, Trinity R.3.2 (quires 9, 15–19) (''

Confessio Amantis ''Confessio Amantis'' ("The Lover's Confession") is a 33,000-line Middle English poem by John Gower, which uses the confession made by an ageing lover to the chaplain of Venus as a frame story for a collection of shorter narrative poems. Accord ...

'') *British Library, Egerton 1991 (''Confessio Amantis'') *Columbia University, Plimpton 265 (''Confessio Amantis'') *Oxford, Bodley 294 (''Confessio Amantis'') *Oxford, Bodley 902 (''Confessio Amantis'') *Oxford, Christ Church 148 (''Confessio Amantis'') *Princeton, Taylor 5 (''Confessio Amantis'') *British Library, Add. 27944 (

John Trevisa 350px, John Trevisa (or John of Trevisa; la, Ioannes Trevisa; fl. 1342–1402 AD) was a Cornish writer and translator. Trevisa was born at Trevessa in the parish of St Enoder in mid-Cornwall, in Britain and was a native Cornish speaker. He w ...

's translation of ''De proprietatibus rerum'') *British Library, Harley MS. 7334 (''

'') *Oxford, Corpus Christi 198 (''Canterbury Tales'')

References

{{Authority control Medieval European scribes Medieval literature 15th-century English writers 16th-century English writers The Canterbury Tales