Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry : compiled for the instruction of his daughters : translated from the original French into English in the reign of Henry VI / [by Geoffroy de La Tour Landry] ; edited ... with an introduction and notes by Thomas Wright

INTRODUCTION, BY THE LATE THOMAS WRIGHT.

THE feudal castle of La Tour-Landry, from which the author of the following book received his name, stood between Chollet and Vezins, in the part of the old province of Anjou which lay between Poitou and Brittany, where its ruins are still visible, consisting of a great donjon, or keep, said to date from the twelfth century. The family of our Knight appears to have been established there at least as early as that date. In the year 1200, a Landry de la Tour, lord of this place, is found engaged in a lawsuit relating to lands; and the names of different members of the family are met with not unfrequently during the thirteenth century. M. de Montaiglon, the editor of the original text of the Knight's "Book," who has investigated this question with laborious care, considers that the father of our author was Geoffroy de la Tour, spoken of at the beginning of the fourteenth century as lord of La Tour-Landry, Bourmont, La Galonière Loroux-Bottereau, and Cornouaille, and who, under the banner of the Count of Anjou in 1336, distinguished himself by his courage in the war with the English.

This Geoffroy de la Tour had two sons, our Geoffroy, who was the eldest, and another named Arquade, who is supposed to have been much younger than his brother. The latter, our Geoffroy de la Tour-Landry, appears from his own account to have been present at the seige of Aguillon in 1346. His name again appears in a military muster in 1363. We know that he married Jeanne de Rougé, younger daughter of Bonabes de Rougé, lord of Erval, vicomte of La Guerche, and chamberlain to the king, but we are unacquainted with the date of this marriage, though in 1371 and 1372, when he composed the following book, he must have been married a sufficient length of time to have sons and daughters of an age to require instruction of this kind.

The name of Geoffroy de la Tour occurs several times between the date of the compilation of his book and the end of the century. In 1378 he sent his contribution of men to the army employed in the siege of Cherbourg, but he did not serve in person on that occasion. In the document recording this fact, he is described as a knight banneret. In 1380 Geoffroy served in the war in Brittany, and we find him again in active service in the September of the year 1383. We learn from another document, that at this last date Geoffroy's first wife, Jeanné de Rougé, was still living; but she must have died within a few years afterwards, for at a subsequent date, which M. de Montaiglon places in 1389, he contracted a second marriage with Marguerite des Roches, lady of La Mothe de Pendu, the widow of Jean de Clerembault, knight. This is the latest mention of the name of our Knight which has yet been discovered among contemporary records; the date of his death is quite unknown, but it probably occurred at some period towards the end of the fourteenth century.

The descendants of Geoffrey de la Tour-Landry appear to have been all active in the turbulent times during which they lived, and through one of them the name became again rather curiously connected with literary history. The Knight of La Tour tells us that he had sons (in the plural); for at the beginning of the book now published he tells us in the original that he had compiled two books, "l'un pour mes filz, et l'autre pour mes filles ["Et pour ce ....ay-je fait, deux livres, l'un pour mes filz, et l'autre pour mes filles pour aprendre à rommancier."—Le Livre du Chevalier de la Tour, edited by M. de Montaiglon, p. 4. "And therfor y haue made .ij. bokes, one for my sones, an other for my doughtres, forto lerne hem to rede."—The Book of the Knight, English translation, p. 4 of the present, volume.] ;" and in two other passages of the present book, addressing his daughters, he refers to the book he had compiled for their brothers, "ou livre de voz frères ["Comme vous le trouverez plus à plain ou livre de voz frères."—Le Livre du Chev. de la Tour, chap. lxxxix. p. 175. "Si comme vous le trouverez ou livre que j'ai fait à voz frères." "As ye shal finde it more pleinly in the boke of youre bretheren."—The Book of the Knight, chap. Ixxxix. p. 115 of the present volume.] ." Caxton, in his printed translation, has given us at the

conclusion a little more precise information on the subject, when he makes the good Knight refer his daughters to the other book in the words, "as hit is reherced̛ in the booke of my two sonnes [See the present volume, p. 205.] ." The passage represented by these words of Caxton is not found in the known manuscripts of the French text; but we may be tolerably certain, from Caxton's known exactness, that it existed in the manuscript of which he made use, and we are justified in assuming that, at the time when Geoffroy de la Tour-Landry compiled this book, that is, in 1371, he had two sons. He has in no instance mentioned the number of his daughters, but the manuscripts of the original text are ornamented with illuminations, and in these the Knight is always represented as attended by three daughters, for which number the illuminators had no doubt satisfactory authority. Of the history of these daughters we know very little. One of them, Marie de la Tour-Landry, married, on the 1st of November, 1391, Gilles Clerembault, the son of her father's second wife by her former husband. Marie de la Tour left no issue, and died before 1400, as in that year Gilles Clerembault married a second wife.

This intermarriage of the two families appears to have been favourite idea of Geoffroy de la Tour-Landry, and was perhaps a mere question of family interest. Charles de la Tour-Landry, who was Geoffroy's eldest son, was married first to Jeanne de Soudé, but this union appears not to have lasted long, for, after her death, Charles married in January, 1389, Jeanne Clerembault, the daughter of his step-mother, and sister of his brother-in-law. Charles de la Tour-Landry was slain at the battle of Azincourt, in October, 1415. There is some confusion in the family history at this time, through the imperfection of the genealogies; but a Geoffroy de la Tour, who was at the siege of Parthenay in 1419, and a Hervé de la Tour, who served in the wars near the same period (his name occurs in 1415 and 1416), are conjectured to have been sons of the author of our book. Charles de la Tour-Landry

had five sons. The name of the eldest is uncertain, but he is said to have been with his father at Azincourt, and to have died of his wounds soon after the battle. As he died childless, his brother Pontus, the second son of Charles, remained the head of the family. The three other sons, Thibaud, Raoulet, and Louis, died without children. They had at least one sister, who formed a rather high matrimonial connection.

The family appears now to have been at its greatest height of prosperity and glory. Pontus de la Tour-Landry is cited as knight, lord of La Tour-Landry, of Bourmont, and of Loroux-Bottereau, and baron of Bouloir in the Vendômois; he appears in a record of the year 1424 as giving to the prior and convent of St. Jean of Anvers the tithe of grain in his estate of Cornouaille, and he seems to have held other considerable territories in Brittany and elsewhere. He was not unfrequently employed in public affairs, and was present at the battle of Formigrey in 1450. It is only necessary on the present occasion to say that Pontus had a daughter and a son, and that the latter, who was named Louis, had four sons, none of whom left issue; so that with them the male line of La Tour-Landry became extinct.

All the older great feudal families prided themselves on tracing their descent to the chieftains of the fabulous ages of society; and usually each of them had his family romance, which told the story of the primeval heroes of his house, and which was no doubt frequently read by his clerk or chaunted by his minstrel for the edification of his family and his guests. These formed what were called the Chansons or Romans de Geste, which were so numerous in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the period when feudalism had reached its greatest development. As feudalism was gradually falling from its original character, the composition of such family romances went out of fashion, and we know of but a small number of instances at periods subsequent to those just mentioned. Thus, at a much later date, in the latter half of the fourteenth century, the family of Lusignan gratified its pride by employing a writer

named Jean d'Arras to compile the romance of Melusine, according to which the lords of Lusignan derived their descent from the marriage of one of their great chiefs of early times with a fairy, named Melusine, who every Saturday took the form of a serpent. Pontus de la Tour-Landry was one of the very latest who imitated this example. Ambitious, probably, of rivalling the fame of the Lusignans, he appears to have employed some "clerk" like Jean d'Arras to compile the Roman de Ponthus, intending especially to glorify his own particular name. It is a romance of little merit, but appears to have been at one time rather popular, as it was often printed. Pontus is represented as having been the son of the king of Galicia and of his amours with the fair Sidonia, daughter of the king of Brittany, where part of the ancestral possessions of the lords of La Tour lay. Most of the distinguished companions of Ponthus came from this side of France, and the first of them, and the one who figures most prominently, bears the significant name of Landry de la Tour. The scene is laid in Galicia, Brittany, and England. It is curious now chiefly as forming an incident in the literary history of the Middle Ages.

Far differently interesting is the book which the great grandfather of the real Ponthus, our Geoffroy de la Tour-Landry, compiled himself for the instruction of his daughters. Its interest is the greater from the care its author has taken to make us acquainted with the circumstances and feelings under which it was composed. The good Knight had, as already stated, three daughters, who had been left motherless, and for whose success in the world he naturally felt anxiety. He undertook, therefore, to write a treatise for the purpose of instructing them in all those mental qualities which, in the fourteenth century, were looked upon as constituting the character of a pure and perfect lady. His care to inform his readers in all the particulars relating to the origin of his book is, indeed, quite curious. He lets us know the date when he began it, and that at which it was ended.

He says that the idea of it came into his head as he was indulging in somewhat melancholy pensiveness in his garden at the close of the month of April in the year 1371 [See p. 1 of the present volume.] ; and we learn from two other incidental statements in the original text that it was completed in the year 1372. In the forty-ninth chapter he tells an anecdote which, he says, happened in the same year in which he was writing —en cest an, qui est l'an mil trois cens lxxij [P. 103 of M. de Montaiglon's edition; it is omitted in the translation we here publish.] ; and in another passage he speaks of the battle of Crécy as having taken place twenty-six years ago—il y a xxvj ans; which, as that battle was fought on the 26th of August, 1346, would give us the same date of 1372. He further tells us in his introduction that he employed in compiling it two priests and two clerks [See p. 3 of the present volume.] , whose work appears to have consisted in collecting illustrative examples and anecdotes from different writers. Every one aquainted with medieval literature knows how general was this pratice of teaching morals and religion through popular stories and short historical narratives. M. de Montaiglon has further pointed out the fact that the author had commenced his book in the intention of following another practice which was very popular in the literature of this period—that of composing books of instruction in verse. He has shown that in the original the prologue was written in verse, and that the rhythm, and even in great part the rhymes of this verse, are preserved almost perfectly in writing it as prose, until nearly the end of this prologue, when the Knight suddenly tells his readers that it is his design to write it, not in verse, but in prose, that he might be able to write less diffusely, and more simply and easier to be understood: "que je ne veulx point mettre en rime, ainçoys le veulz mettre en prose, pour l'abrégier et mieulx entendre," or, as our English translation expresses it, "but y wolde not sette it in ryme, but in prose, forto abregge it, and that it might be beter and more

pleinly to be understond̛ [See p. 3 of the present volume.] ." A very large proportion of the stories given by Geoffroy de la Tour-Landry are taken from the Scriptures and from the lives of saints and other similar productions; but, like other moralists of his age, he adopted the stories of the fabliaux, and the tales of the popular conteur, whenever they seemed to suit his purpose, and in his choice he has not rejected some which were better fitted by their want of delicacy to the ears of his contemporaries than to those of modern times. There then existed very little of refinement in word or thought, and, in the best society, both sexes often conversed in terms and on subjects which are in strange discordance with our modern sentiments.

No doubt under the pretext of instructing his own daughters, Geoffroy's design was to write a treatise on the domestic education of women, and his plan appears to have extended still further, and to have been intended to embrace the other sex also. We learn positively from several passages in the present book, that he had already compiled a similar book for the use of his sons, and, from the way in which he speaks of it, the compilation of this other work must have preceded the book for the instruction of his daughters by some years. "And therefor," he says at the end of his prologue, "y have made .ij. bokes, one for my sones, an other for my doughtres [See p. 205 of the present volume.] ." In another place, in warning his daughters against drunkenness, he says, "as ye shal finde it more pleinly in the boke of youre bretheren [See p. 115 of the present volume.] ;" and again, at the close of the book, in Caxton's translation, the knight is made to say, "as hit is reherced in the booke of my two sonnes [See p. 4 of the present volume.] ." At least one other allusion to this book is found in the French text; yet, strange to say, nobody has ever heard of the existence of a copy of this treatise for the instruction of the Knight's sons, nor has any trace of it ever been discovered except in the mention of it in the book of which the translation is now published.

The book which Geoffroy de la Tour-Landry compiled for the instruction of his daughters, on the contrary, appears to have become extremely popular. Nearly a dozen copies of the original text are known to exist in manuscript, of which seven are in the Bibliothèque Impériale in Paris, and one in the Library of the British Museum. One or two of them date at least as far back as the beginning of the fifteenth century, and two are adorned with illuminations. In the year 1514, the first printed edition of the French text was published in Paris, by Guillaume Eustace, the king's printer. A second appeared no long time afterwards printed by the Veuve Jehan Trepperel, apparently copied from the edition of Guillaume Eustace. Both are very incorrect.

No other edition of the original text of this Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry was printed in French until it was included in 1854 by Jannet in the series so well known as the Bibliothèque Elzévirienne. This critical edition was produced under the care of one of the well-known scholars of the medieval literature of France, M. Anatole de Montaiglon, now Secretary of the École des Chartes. M. de Montaiglon has given us, in a very portable and convenient form, a good and correct text, formed chiefly upon the oldest of the manuscripts preserved in the Bibliothèque Impériale and upon the manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 19 C vii), collated more or less with the others. It is accompanied with notes, and with a rather elaborate introduction, to which I gladly refer my readers.

The popularity of this book soon extended to foreign lands, and it was translated into several languages. The two earliest printed translations appeared in Germany and England very nearly at. the same date. The German translation, made by a knight named Marquard vom Stein, was first printed in a folio volume at Bâle in 1493, under the title of Der Ritter vom Turn, von den Exempeln der Gotsforcht und Erberkeit (The Knight of the Tower, of Examples of Piety and Honour). It forms a large and very handsome volume, with a great number of engravings

on wood. The Book of the Knight of the Tower seems to have taken greatly in Germany, and it went through rather numerous editions between the date of this of Bâle and the middle of the sixteenth century. It has been reproduced much more recently, in fact so late as 1849, edited by Professor O. L. B. Wolff, as one of the Volumes of popular romances published by the bookseller Otto Wigand of Leipzig. The first edition in English, as we are informed in the colophon at the end, was translated by our first printer, William Caxton, and printed by him. He tells us himself, in this colophon, that the translation was finished on the first of June, 1483, and that the printing was completed on the last day of January, in the first year of the reign of King Richard III. As Richard III ascended the throne on the 26th of June, 1483; as the January in which the book was printed must have followed the June in which the translation was completed; and as we know that in the reckoning of this time the days from the 1st of January to the 25th of March were considered as belonging nominally to the former year and not to the year following, it means, of course, that Caxton's translation was printed and ready for publication on the 31st of January, 1484; so that the publication of the German translation had preceded it. I enter into these particulars merely because it has been asserted that the date of publication of Caxton's translation of the Knight of the Tower was January, 1483, and not January, 1484. It is a very singular circumstance that, although Caxton's translation of the Book appears to have been widely read in England in the sixteenth century, it was never reprinted.

There existed, however, an English translation of the Book of Geoffroy de la Tour-Landry long anterior to that of Caxton, though it was never printed. It is anonymous, and we have no means whatever of ascertaining the name of the author, or, in fact, anything whatever of its history. It is contained in a manuscript in the Harleian collection in the British Museum (MS. Harl. No. 1764) forming a large thin volume, in double columns,

in a good formal writing of the reign of King Henry VI, so that it is not only part of a manuscript made for a person of some rank and importance, but of a volume which no doubt contained other treatises. This translation is in many respects superior to that of Caxton. The latter is so strictly and often so nakedly literal, that in following the words Caxton has sometimes lost the sense of the original, and this is carried to such a degree that it would be easy to identify the particular manuscript which Caxton followed if it were in existence. The anonymous translation of our manuscript, on the contrary, displays much more freedom, and is more correct. This earlier translation, moreover, furnishes a far more elegant and interesting monument of the English language in the fifteenth century. It is for these reasons that I have chosen it for the text of the present volume. Unfortunately, it is an imperfect manuscript, for there are one or two lacunæ in the body of the work, and it is truncated at the end by nearly one-fifth of the whole. Under these circumstances, the only resource was to supply from Caxton's text the parts which are wanting in the inedited manuscript.

In other respects, I have endeavoured to give as good an edition of the original manuscript as I could, and I have added a few illustrative notes to such points as seemed to require explanation. In forming my text, I cannot but acknowledge with thanks the assistance I have received from the excellent transcript and collation made by William Rossiter, Esq., to whom also the reader owes the side-notes and head-lines

THOMAS WRIGHT. Sydney Street, Brompton,July 13, 1867