66

(Qui pridie, &c.) appears to refer to this or some similar rubric :Hæc ver a dicitur Alexander Papa primus addidisse, ut præmissum est."(1)

P. 106, 1. 30. Hic tangat hostiam. The Sarum rubrics before the words of institution are as follows: "Et postea elevet paululum,(2) dicens, tibi gratias agens, benedixit, fregit, Hic tangat hostiam dicens, deditque discipulis suis."(3) This touching is not crossing, nor was it to be understood of breaking the bread. A rubric of the Sarum manual of 1554 explains that some silly fellows (“fatui”) did so, but that the Church consecrates before breaking, and so does otherwise than as Christ did-" sic aliter facit Ecclesia, quam Christus fecit."(4)

P. 108, l. 8. Feceritis. This, of course, with a change of tense, is the "Hoc facite" of the Vulgate, and the roūto moiɛire of the Greek; and, therefore, whatever English verb would render those phrases would equally render this. I venture to say this here, because my alternative rendering ("or offer ") has been objected to,mainly on controversial grounds,—and may be objected to again, when the completed work is in the hands of the public. Now, I was well aware that the rendering of this phrase had been a subject of controversy, but I had undertaken to give "a verbal rendering," and as I thought that as a matter of grammatical construction it fairly admitted of both renderings, I did not attempt to choose between them on doctrinal considerations, and therefore gave them both; and for so doing I have the example of the authorized version, where the very phrase occurs, Numbers xxix, 39, in reference to sacrifices at the feast of tabernacles. The Hebrew is wy, and the Septuagint Taura ToσETE. The Vulgate renders, "Hæc offeretis," and our translators, "These things ye shall do," and in the margin, “or offer."

P. 116, 1. 1. The MS. contains no rubric for the formal rinsing of the chalice and of the priest's hands, though no doubt the innovation had been adopted at York when it was written. See note, p. 301-7.

(1) Rationale, 4, lxi, 1.

(2) "Hic elevet hostiam dicens."-Sherborne Missal, p. 383. See note as to the prohibition of this elevation of the ur consecrated host, after the practice of elevating the consecrated host had been established.-Ante, p. 283. (3) Miss. Sar., 618. (4) Ib.

APPENDIX II.

P. 118, 1. 8. When I drew attention (p. 173, n. 2) to this place and the reason for marking a cross, I had not noticed that Mr Way (P.P, p. li. n.) mentions the sign of the cross being found after certain words of ill omen in the Promptorium, thus: "Diabolus, the deuel. Demon, the deuel."

P. 120, 1. 13. levyth. See note, p. 312.

1. 33. eventually burned. Meanwhile he had succeeded in making his escape from the Tower into Wales. There is some uncertainty as to his movements during the intervening four years, but having been again committed to the Tower, he was brought before the Lords in parliament assembled on the 13th December, 1417, and sentenced not only to be burned as a traitor to God and "heretic noterement approvee et adjuggee," but also to be hung as a traitor to the king and his realm. The sentence was carried into effect on the 18th December, when he was drawn on a hurdle to St Giles' Fields, and there hung in chains, and "burnt hanging "—ars pendant—in the terms of his sentence as recorded in the rolls of parliament.

P. 121, 1. 6. "perfore penk 3e, clene prestis, hou moche ze be holden to God, pat 3af zou power to sacre his owene preciouse body and blood of breed and wyn, whiche power he grauntid nevere to his owene modir ne aungel of hevene."-Wyclif, Works, III, p. 288-9.

1. 18. goddes borde. It has been frequently asserted in the controversial literature of the last few years-sometimes as a reproach, and sometimes to the praise of the revisers of the service books of the Church of England in 1548—that they then for the first time used the name of God's board, or the Lord's table, or the holy table, in relation to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Without going out of our own country, or referring to the writings of the fathers or to the Eastern liturgies, which men who undertake to write dogmatically on these subjects ought to know something about, the mere fact of the occurrence of this phrase in a book, up to that date, so largely used by the clergy as the Festival, is enough to prove the contrary. (1) Elfric in his paschal homily speaks of Christ's "beod" (beard). The old English homily for

(1) This mistake nevertheless appears to have passed unchallenged by my lords, episcopal and legal, and by the counsel engaged in the proceedings before the judicial committee of the Privy Council in the case of Martin e. Machonochie. See the shorthand writer's notes, 20th Nov. 1868. Fourth Report of the Ritual Commission, Folio, 1870, p. 229.

Easter-day of the twelfth century, edited by Dr Morris, exhorts "pat holie bord bugen and þat bred bruken "-go to the holy board, and partake of the bread;(1) and farther on, "þanne muge we bicumeliche to godes bord bugen, and his bode wurdliche bruken "-then may we go meetly to God's board, and worthily partake of his body.(2) In the early part of the fourteenth century we find the phrase in the Ayenbite very much in the same counection in respect to clerks in holy orders-bishops, priests, deacons, and subdeacons, and Dan Michel explains it of the wyeued (weofod) or altar: "Yet eft hi ssolle by more clene / and more holy /uor pet hi seruep at godes borde of his coupe / of his breade and of his wyne and of his mete. Godes table is pe wyeued. pe coupe is pe chalis. his bread and his wyn: pet is his propre bodi and his propre blod."(3)

In the quotation from Lydgate (ante, p. 233) he speaks of the "Altar, called God's board."

In Robert of Brunne's Langtoft (4) we have

"Richard at Godes bord His messe had and his rights."

But there is no need to multiply quotations, and I have noted a great many where the phrase is used in this connection; forinstead of being never used-the wonder would have been that it had not been in every day use, when in the prayer used in our Church in the eighth century at the dedication of an altar, in the earliest York Pontifical, was as follows: "Presta ut in hac mensa sint tibi libamina accepta, sint grata, sint pinguia et Spiritus Sancti tui semper rore perfusa; "(5) and the same words occur in the latest York Pontifical, in the sixteenth century, though meantime the words, "in honorem sancti ill," have crept in before the "consecramus."(6) Nor was it only in the service books, but we find the same things in the canon law of the Church. The Legantine Constitutions of Othobon, afterward Pope Adrian V, passed in a "Concilium Anglicanum," of both provinces decreed (Tit. III. De Consecratione): “Domus Dei materiali subjecto non differens a privatis, per mysterium dedicationis invisibile fit templum domini, ad expiationem delictorum et divinam miseri

(1) 2nd Series, p. 94.

(2) Ib. 98.

(3) Dan Michel's Ayenbite of Inwyt, Morris, E. E. T. S., 1866, p. 235-6. (4) Langtoft's Chronicle, Hearne, p. 182.

(5) Benedictio vel Consecratio Altaris, Archbishop Egbert's Pontifical, Greenwell, p. 40-1.

(6) Archbishop Bainbridge's Pontifical, Henderson, p. 328. There is a separate prayer for the" Consecratio tabula," or the stone slab which formed the top of the altar. The words quoted also occur in the more elaborated office for the consecration of an altar, according to the existing Roman pontifical of Pope Benedict XIV, where we have “in cujus (sc. Dei) honorem ac beatissimæ Virginis Mariæ et omnium Sanctorum."

cordiam implorandam : UT IN EA FIT MENSA, (1) in qua panis vivus, qui de cœlo descendit pro vivorum et mortuorum suffragiis, inanducatur."

APPENDIX III.

This piece was copied for the Society by Mr George Parker of the Bodleian, and he also read the proofs with the original. The manuscript from which it is taken is Ashm. 1286:-"A handsome and valuable quarto MS., consisting of 257 leaves of vellum, gilt at the edges, written about the year 1400, in a fair text hand, in columns, with fair margins, and adorned with frequent rubrics, and painted capitals and borders. Begins with A treatise of The Love of God; and Ends with A special Confessyoun."(2) The MS. was very probably written for a favourer of Lollard opinions, as it contains (fol. 32-108) "he Pore Caytyf." There is little to remark as to the dialect. It does not appear to have been tampered with, and is midland, with some southern forms, and (p. 122, 1. 29) an instance of the northern participial ending.

P. 127, 1. 10. I can seye = eye can see. Cf. 1 Cor. ii, 9. The scribe may have been writing from dictation, and have understood "I can say "—say with the pronunciation sey, see p. 314.

Cf. Hampole's rendering of the Vulgate :

"Eghe moght never se, ne ere here,

Ne in-tylle mans hert come pe ioyes sere

þat God has ordaynd þare and dight

Tylle alle pat here lufes him ryghte."-P. C. 7793-6.

APPENDIX IV.

The celebrated Vernon manuscript of the Bodleian has supplied this piece. It is No. 121 of Mr Halliwell's account of the manuscript. It consists of 688 lines, and extends from Fol. 302, b, col. 1, to Fol. 303, b, col. 3; and has been copied for the Society by Mr George Parker, who had already copied Mr Skeat's A-text of Piers Plowman from the same manuscript. I collated his copy with the manuscript-a very unnecessary piece of trouble, as I had no occasion to make an

(1) The gloss of Johannes de Athonia (John Acton) is "Mensa. Id est Altare."-Oxon. 1679, p. 83.

(2) Catalogue of the Ashmolean MSS., W. H. Black, Oxford, 1845, p. 1051.

alteration of a letter-and Mr Parker has since read the proofs with the MS.

The date of the Vernon MS. is about 1375, but I am aisposed to think that the original must be at least a century older, and that our text is a confused and very fragmentary copy. There can be no doubt that it has been very much mutilated, were it only in the process of southernizing the northern dialect. The creed has been omitted (1. 484), though (1. 485-508) fragments of an "exposition" of the creed are retained. The lines which are reprinted, pp. 362, 363, have been repeated, probably from the combination of different copies; and very possibly the lesson and exemplum, which does not occur in Audelay or the Harleian MS. (1. 436-448), may have been a later insertion, with tacit reference to Wycliff's translation of the Bible, and Lollard dissatisfaction at the gospel being read in an unknown tongue.

The metre is that which was called "cowee or versus caudati, of which we have already had an example in the confession in the Massbook (p. 8). It was so called from having kowes, pendants or tails(1)— that is, shorter lines between the couplets,--which are "coupled" or rhyme together. In this piece we have the double cowee, or staves of twelve verses, four rhyming couplets of four feet or accents in each line, followed by a line of three accents. The two couples of cowes or tails are intended to rhyme together, except that (1. 469 and 559) the copyist in order to get rid of northern forms has broken the longer stave into the more common one of two of six lines each. (2) Although

(1) Kowes from the O.F. coe or keue (queue). The involved style of this piece fully justifies what Robert of Brunne says in the prologue to his Chronicle of the metre in the hands of the makers of his day. He explains the different principle upon which he has rendered his original :

"In simple speche as I couthe,
þat is lightest in mannes mouth
I mad nought for no disours,
Ne for no seggers no harpours;
Bot for the luf of simple meй,
þat strange Inglis can not ken:

I made it not for to be praysed,
Bot at þe lewed men were aysed
If it were made in ryme couwee,
Or in strangere, or enterlace,
þat rede Inglis, it ere inowe,

þat couthe not haf coppled a kowe,
þat outhere in couwee or in baston,
Som suld haf ben fordon,

So þat fele men þat it herde

Suld not witte howe þat it ferde."

Hearne's Works (reprint), III, p. xcix. (2) The northern -ande is retained in the tail-rhyme (1. 665), because if it had been altered to suffrynge, as the others, it would not have rhymed with hande.