Probably romances
were first bought to be copied and sold to augment the
monastic income; and more perhaps were sold than
preserved. Ascham avers that "in our fathers tyme
nothing was red, but bookes of fayned cheualrie, wherein a
man by redinge, shuld be led to none other ende, but
onely to manslaughter and baudrye.... These bokes
(as I haue heard say) were made the moste parte in Abbayes
and Monasteries, a very lickely and fit fruite of suche an
ydle and blynde kinde of lyuyne."[1] Thomas Nashe, in his
story of The Unfortunate Traveller, describes romances as
"the fantasticall dreams of those exiled Abbie lubbers,"
that is, the monks.[2] These writers were but echoing such
charges as that in Piers Plowman, which declares that a
friar was much better acquainted with the Rimes of Robin
Hood and Randal Erle of Chester than with his Paternoster.
A number of romances are indeed found in monastic
catalogues. The library at Glastonbury included four
romances (1248); that at Christ Church, Canterbury,
contained a few in late thirteenth century. Guy de Beauchamp
bequeathed romances to Bordesley Abbey (1315),
In the first year of the fifteenth century Peterborough had
some romances.
Pages:
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354