The Epistle of Othea to Hector: The Boke of Knyghthode

The English version here printed for the first time of Christine de Pisan’s “Épître d’Othéa la deesse à Hector” is taken from a MS. which is believed to be unique, and which, if not actually the original, can be very little removed from it. The volume of which it forms a part is numbered MS. 253 in the valuable library of the Marquis of Bath at Longleat, but how or when it found its way thither it is impossible to say. There is little doubt, however, that it was acquired at least as early as the time of Thomas Thynne, first Viscount Weymouth, who died in 1714, and it is not unlikely that it has been at Longleat ever since the house was built by Sir John Thynne in the latter part of the 16th century. It is a small vellum folio, 9¾ inches by 7, in modern binding, and in its present state it consists of ninety-five leaves, the first seventy-five of which are occupied by the work in question and the remainder by an English poem or series of poems, probably also translated from the French, in which love is compared with the growth of a tree. The hand appears to be the same throughout and of a date about the middle of the 15th century. As may be seen from the page here reproduced, it is fairly neat and regular, but it is hardly the hand of a professional book-scribe, the type being that more commonly found in correspondence and business documents of the period. As to ornament, there is none whatever; for, although blank spaces were left for rubrics and initials, and in a few instances apparently for miniatures as well, for some reason they were never filled in. But the deficiencies of the MS. in this respect are of less practical importance than the mutilation inflicted later upon the text. In the main article, and consequently in this edition of it, there are two lacunæ, one of a single leaf and the other of a whole quire of eight, while the supplementary matter has been shorn both of its first leaf and of an unknown number at the end. Nor is the mischief confined to the loss of these portions of the text. Probably, as in the case of another work by the same translator, there was a colophon which would have given interesting particulars of the origin of the whole MS., and unfortunately this also has perished. As the translator has been identified and as specimens of his handwriting are available for comparison, the question whether the copy is in his autograph is easily decided in the negative, but beyond this little can be ascertained of its history. For reasons which will appear further on it is a tempting supposition that it is the “Boke de Othea, text and glose ... in quayers” (sc. quires), which is included in an “Inventory off Englysshe boks” belonging to John Paston the younger (?) in the time of Edward IV. (after 1474). If, however, the latter MS. in its turn was identical with the “Othea pistill” which one William Ebesham wrote for Sir John Paston at a cost of 7sh. 2d. about 1469, it contained no more than forty-three leaves. In the margin of f. 75b is an entry, made about 1500, of a certificate of the banns of marriage, real or imaginary, of William Stretford and Joyce Helle, the certifying minister being William Houson, curate; and from scribblings on f. 50 and elsewhere it may be inferred that at a later date in the 16th century the MS. was in the hands of a certain William Porter, who, to judge from the nature of his entries, was perhaps a scrivener’s clerk.