texts (C 86, F 66) a previous direction to answer with good will, or with an alternative of "reading in a book." We find that the answering with good will, contemplated in these texts, might be made silently. It was to be "loud or still" (C 274, F 250): and this explanation is inserted at the answer in the Lord's Prayer after the canon, where the original text (B 490) gives the direction to answer, quite in an apologetic strain, because those who "know not this, are lewed men."

Text C was written, as we shall see, for the Cistercian monastery of Rievaulx in the Archdeaconry of Cleveland towards the middle of the fifteenth century, (1) and some further changes were introduced into the later text to adapt it for monastic use. Many of the monks were in holy orders, and others knew Latin, hence (C 31) they are told, if they could, to translate the service book into English, as the preferable alternative to using Dan Jeremy's English devotions, as no doubt he would have himself thought.

In C 73 is a various reading which seems to have been due to the mass being said in a conventual church, which was not frequented by strangers.(2) In the other five MSS. the prayer is that the mass should be for the souls' health of all who heard it, here for " our soulhele," that is, of all members of the order. (3)

Except that this text (C 351) supposes that the reader may minister as deacon at mass, (4) there is only one other ritual variation, but that is very significant of its conventual origin. In MSS. C, D, F, the priest is said to make an "end of his service" at the end of the mass and in all four others, the worshipper wends his way home after his final prayer; but in C 346 we have "that service," of the (1) Post, p. lxviii.

(2) This would apply to Cistercian churches in general, and not merely to Rievaulx on account of its solitary situation. It was forbidden to have a font or to baptize in a Cistercian church (Mart. I. 6). Women especially were excluded; and so rigidly, it would seem, as to require a papal dispensation for the relaxation of the rule. On the 2nd September, 1251, about a hundred years before this manuscript was written, Pope Innocent IV. allowed the Countess of Lincoln, "accompanied by three or five honest matrons to enter and hear service in the Cistercian monasteries in England. "-Raine, Archbishop Gray's Register, S. S. p. 209.

(3) As to C 89-90, see note, p. 216; and as to "sugettes," C 188, see note, p. 278.

(4) Note, p. 310.

priest, for another is to follow, and in C 356 the monk is directed to remain "God to pay," by taking part in the service for the hour which followed without an interval.(1)

THE MANUSCRIPTS.

The Mass Book has come down to us in three separate forms:I. As in texts B and E, which, as we have seen, keep closely to the original.

II. A, C, and D are in a revised form. The references to foreign ritual, and the translation of the Gloria in Excelsis, the Apostles' Creed and the Lord's Prayer have been left out: and the rubrics have been modified, as has been already specified; as have also the additional alterations to adapt text C for use in a monastery. III. Text F has been further adapted for English use by appointing a prayer to be said whilst the priest is vesting.

The manuscripts agree in speaking of the directions as rubrics, and the devotions as written in black letter, though as a matter of fact the rubrics are marked as such, only in texts B and F. They are written in the first person singular, and the reader is addressed as "Thou," except in an altered rubric in C (line 127), where the second person plural is substituted, evidently by a slip, which does not occur in other later manuscripts.

All the rubrics and the greater part of the devotions are written in rhyming couplets of four feet or accents,-some few of three only, and some three or four of the rhymes being only assonant.

The general confession is in the ordinary cowee, as the piece from the Vernon MS. in the Appendix, except that there we have the double cowee of twelve lines, instead of six, as here. (2) It will be seen that in text F an attempt has been made to change it into the more usual couplets, but with sorry success.

The creed is written in four-line staves with alternating rhymes. The first and third lines of four accents rhyme together, as do the second and fourth of two feet, or accents. In the prayer at the elevation in B and E, we have nine verses in an interwoven stave of one of the many arrangements of the rhyme, which were founded on (1) Note, p. 312.

MASS-BOOK.

(2) See as to this metre, note, p. 361.

Romance models, and are often to be met with in the English verse of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

MS. A.

Our MS. A is a fragment of 130 lines of the revised form of the Mass Book. Mr W. B. D. D. Turnbull, then an advocate at the Scotch bar,(1) well known for his antiquarian pursuits, and the founder and for many years the secretary of a kindred society, the Abbotsford Club, has already printed it under the title of "The Masse" with other pieces from the same MS.(2) This manuscript, he tells us in his introduction (p. vi), " is a small 4to volume of the 15th century, preserved in the Advocates' Library (Jac. v. 7. 27), consisting of 216 folios. It was from the same MS. that Mr. Weber printed the Huntyng of the Hare' in his collection of Metrical Romances."

The Reverend T. Milville Raven was good enough to give me a transcript for this edition, which had the advantage of being examined by Mr. Cosmo Innes.(3) I afterwards obtained copies of complete manuscripts, and consequently have not printed it at length, for it is both late and corrupt.

TEXT B.

This text is from the MS. in the King's Library, now in the British Museum, where it is catalogued as "Royal MS. 17 B. xvii." It is quoted by Mr. Maskell in his Ancient English Liturgies as the Museum manuscript.

The volume in which it is contained is described in Casley's Catalogue of the MSS. of the King's Library, 4to, London, p. 263,

(1) Some years later Mr Turnbull was called to the English bar, and edited The Buik of the Cronicles of Scotland for the Rolls Series in 1858. He was afterwards employed to calendar State Papers (Foreign Series) of the reigns of Edward VI and Mary, but gave up his appointment, though the highest testimony was borne to the fairness and ability with which he had done his work, in consequence of exceptions that were taken against the employ. ment of a man, who had become a Roman Catholic, in calendaring papers so much mixed up with the reformation. He died in 1863 in the fifty-second year of his age.

(2) The Visions of Tundale, together with Metrical Moralizations and other fragments of early poetry, hitherto unedited. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1843. The impression was restricted to one hundred and five copies.

(3) Note, page 245(1).

but by a singular carelessness, this piece is not specified, though it stands first in the volume, the first entry being "1. Speculum Utile istius Mundi, An English Poem, XV." [century], which we may account for, by our text having no title prefixed to it, and by the above title appearing in the colophon of the piece that follows it.

The volume was bound after the catalogue was printed, as appears by the date on the cover, "G. II. R. 1757." It had at one time belonged to John, Lord Lumley,(1) and his autograph, "Lumley," is on a blank leaf (fol. 1), but there is no other remaining clue to what might have been the history of the book.

There are nine other pieces; one of them, the last in the volume, seems to have been written by the same scribe, and in this there does not appear to be any trace of a northern dialect, which I mention, as a proof, if proof were wanting, that the northernisms in that text were not due to the scribe.(2)

The MS. is on vellum 7 by 5 inches, and is very neatly written. Date about 1375.

The rubrics are in a smaller character than the "black letter," but are not written in red, being only underlined in red throughout, except lines 520—523, 536—539, and 546-549, which are properly rubrics, and are so written in text F, but in this MS. are left unmarked.

The rubrics are further distinguished from the devotions by the initials being only two-line letters, except the capital thorn letter at the beginning; whereas the initials in the black letter devotions are all three-line, except the I (line 205) and two or three others as shown in the print.(3)

(1) His library was "noted for a choice collection of books" (Surtees' Durham, II. 159). He succeeded his grandfather John Lord Lumley in his estates, but not in his title, his father Sir George Lumley having been attainted and executed at Tyburn in 1537 for his share in Aske's rising. He was restored to the peerage in the first year of Edward VI; made a Knight of the Bath in the first year of Philip and Mary, and High Steward of the University of Oxford in 1558. He was himself a Cambridge man, and gave presents of books to both universities. He died in 1609 without issue, leaving his estates to his kinsman Richard Lumley, ancestor of the present Earl of Scarborough. (2) Ante, page lvii—lxi.

(3) The number of lines for the size of the "great" letters was a matter of express stipulation. See note (3), page 401.

The MS. was copied for the Society by Mr E. Brock, and the proof-sheets were collated with it by the editor, who, in any doubtful case, had the advantage of the opinions of Mr Thompson, now Keeper of the Manuscripts.

TEXT C.

This text is the last but one of sixteen pieces in a vellum MS. now in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford (C. C. C. MS. 155). It was written for the Cistercian Abbey of Rieval or Rievaulx, in the valley of the Rye, in the North Riding of Yorkshire; and is inscribed both at the beginning and the end as follows: "Liber beate Marie de Rieualle ex procuracione domini Willelmi Spenser, Abbatis eiusdem."

This inscription, taken in connection with the omission of the prayer for the queen, shows that the manuscript was written, probably in the scriptorium of the abbey, when it was added to the library— one of those rich monastic libraries of which there remains a catalogue, and that of the previous century, to prove how much has been lost.(1)

In line 183 the king and the lords of the land are prayed for; and as all the other manuscripts insert a prayer for the queen in this place, we can have no hesitation in explaining the omission by the fact of there being neither a queen consort nor a queen dowager at the time when the MS. was written. There was an interval of more than seven years, during the minority of Henry VI. and until his marriage with Margaret of Anjou in 1445, when there was no queen, Joan of Navarre, widow of Henry IV, having died in 1437, and his own mother, if she were still prayed for as queen after the exposure of her marriage with Owen Tudor, having died six months before her.

I have not succeeded in my search for the date of Abbot William Spenser's appointment. His predecessor was Henry Burton, a monk of Salley, who was confirmed on the 18th November, 1423; and he was succeeded by John Inkelay. His "free and voluntary resignation" is dated the 4th April, 1449,-Inkelay subscribing his "obedience" to the Archbishop of York on the 8th of the same month,(2)

(1) This is preserved in a 14th-century MS. in the library of Jesus College, Cambridge. N. B. 17, pp. 180-189. "Hi sunt libri sancte Marie Rievallensis." It is printed in Edward's Memoirs of Libraries, I. 333.

(2) Archbishop Kempe's Register, fcl. 420b.