31
Chapter 1
The Manuscript and Print Contexts of Barbour’s Bruce
EMILY WINGFIELD
Evidence suggests that Barbour’s Bruce circulated widely in early fifteenth-century Scotland
– it was used directly by Wyntoun in his Original Chronicle (c.1408–20),1 drawn upon in The
Buik of Alexander (c.1438), and cited by Bower in his Scotichronicon (c.1441–47) – but its
earliest manuscript witnesses date from 1487 and 1489, thus over one hundred years after the
poem’s composition.2 The earliest surviving printed edition was produced much later still in
1571 by the Edinburgh printer, Robert Lekpreuik (fl.1561–81), for the printer and bookseller,
Henry Charteris (d.1599) (STC 1377.5).3
This chapter examines the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century manuscript and early print
contexts of The Bruce in further detail. It begins with a full description of the two manuscript
witnesses – Cambridge, St John’s College, MS G.23 (1487) and Edinburgh, National Library
of Scotland, MS Advocates’ 19.2.2 (1489) – followed by an analysis of their scribes, owners
and readers. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between the two manuscripts and
to the vexed identity of their scribe (/s).
The second half of the chapter provides a full description of the 1571 print and
focuses in particular upon the relationship of this text to the fifteenth-century manuscript
witnesses. It also considers evidence for now-lost manuscript and print witnesses and
concludes with a brief analysis of later prints and editions.
Cambridge, St John’s College, MS G.23
Cambridge, St John’s College, MS G.23 (olim 191) (MS C) is the earlier of the poem’s two
surviving manuscript witnesses, and is internally dated to 1487. In addition to The Bruce, this
paper manuscript, measuring c. 21 x 15 cm, also contains a version of the mid-fifteenthcentury Scottish advisory poem known as The Thewis of Gudwomen (fols 164r–7v)4 and a
See Barbour’s Bruce (McDiarmid), I, pp. 111–18.
This phenomenon is common to a number of Older Scots texts. See R.J. Lyall, ‘Books and Book Owners in
Fifteenth-Century Scotland’, in Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375–1475, ed. Jeremy Griffiths and
Derek Pearsall (Cambridge, 1989; reissued 2007), pp. 239–56 (pp. 240–1).
3
The sole surviving copy of the print is now New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, W.1.B.15586. The National
Library of Scotland has a photostat copy (F6.f.7).
4
The poem is here headed ‘documenta matris ad filiam’. Another version survives in Part 6 (fols 49 r–53r) of
Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk.1.5 (a composite manuscript containing, amongst other items, the Older
Scots romance, Lancelot of the Laik). The scribe names himself on fol. 12r as one (as yet unidentified) ‘V de F’.
An adapted version of the poem also occurs within Sir Gilbert Hay’s c.1460 Buik of King Alexander the
1
2
32
Scotticized version of John Lydgate’s Dietary (167v–8v).5 Traces of red ink on the right hand
margin of fol. 168v suggest that a further text (/s) may also once have followed.
The manuscript has been collated by its cataloguer, M.R. James: a12, b12 both lost, c12
(wants 1), d12, e12, f14, g12 - 1212, o12 (wants 11, 12).6 The loss of the manuscript’s first two
gatherings means that The Bruce is acephalous, beginning at Book IV, line 57. The text is
copied in single columns, at an average of between 42 and 45 lines per page.
The scribe – whom I shall discuss in further detail below – identifies himself and
dates his work (28 August 1487) in a colophon at the end of The Bruce:
Explicit liber excellentissimi et/ nobilissimi principis roberti de broyss
scottorum regis illustrissimi qui quidem liber scriptus fuit et finitus in
vigilia sancti Johannis baptiste viz. decollacio eiusdem per manum J. de R
capellani Annon domini Millesimo quadringentesimo octogesimo
septimo.
This colophon is then followed by an epitaph:
Epitaphium regis roberti broyss
Hic iacet inuictus Robertus Rex benedictus
Qui sua gesta legit reperit quot bella peregit.
Ad libertatem deduxit per probitatem
Regnum Scottorum: nunc uiuit in arce polorum7
Conquerour (lines 8478–8596). See further S. Mapstone, ‘The Scots Buke of Phisnomy and Sir Gilbert Hay’, in
The Renaissance in Scotland: Studies in Literature, Religion, History and Culture Offered to John Durkan, ed.
A.A. MacDonald et al, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 54 (Leiden, 1994), pp. 1–44 and K. Saldanha, ‘The
Thewis of Gudwomen: Middle Scots Moral Advice with European Connections?’, in The European Sun:
Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Scottish Language and
Literature, ed. G. Caie et al. (East Linton, 2001), pp. 288–99.
5
Scots versions of the Dietary were also copied in the early sixteenth century onto a blank space in the
Makculloch Manuscript (Edinburgh, University Library, MS Laing 205, fol. 190r–v), and c.1568 into the
Bannatyne Manuscript (Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Advocates’ 1.1.6, fols. 73 r–4r). For the
circulation of Lydgate’s verse in Scotland more widely see: William Sweet, ‘Lydgate and Scottish Lydgateans’,
unpublished Ph.D thesis (University of Oxford, 2009) pp. 142–59 and A.S.G. Edwards, ‘Lydgate in Scotland’,
Nottingham Medieval Studies 54 (2010), 185–94. Also, P.H. Nichols, ‘William Dunbar as a Scottish
Lydgatean’, PMLA 46 (1931), 214–24; ‘Lydgate’s Influence on the Aureate Terms of the Scottish Chaucerians’,
PMLA 47 (1932), 516–22.
6
M.R. James, Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of St John's College, Cambridge
(Cambridge, 1913), MS 191.
7
‘Here lies the invincible blessed King Robert./ Whoever reads about his feats will repeat the many battles he
fought./ By his integrity he guided to liberty/ the kingdom of the Scots. May he now live in Heaven.’
33
An almost identical epitaph appears as an addition to Book XIII, chapter 14, in the working
copy of Walter Bower’s Scotichronicon (c.1441–7) (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College
Library, MS 171, fol. 278r). Bower may have derived the epitaph from Barbour’s Bruce since
he refers to this text in his chronicle, but it perhaps ultimately derives from Robert’s tomb in
Dunfermline Abbey.8
As is the case with most Older Scots literary manuscripts of this date, MS C contains
very little in the way of decoration or embellishment, with the exception of 116 rubricated
initial letters (usually 2-lines high), which highlight narrative division/ transition. Visible
guide-letters and traces of red ink on those pages opposite the red initials suggest that
rubrication took place after the main text had been copied.
MS C also contains 39 rubrics,9 written either at the top of a page, or alongside the
specific lines of text to which they refer, which draw attention to narrative developments and
particular elements of the plot, for example: fol. 26v (IV.99ff) ‘How prynce eduard of yngland
assegit kyndrwmy’; fol. 147v (alongside XIX.224–7) ‘þe ded of gud schir valtere steward’.
These are written by the scribe, and outlined in red. There is also a scribal ‘nota versus’ next
to the Latin verses at IV.247–8,10 accompanied by a reader’s annotation, ‘Rex cadet etc’. A
scribal ‘Nota bene’ on fol. 63r next to VIII.430–2 also draws attention to Douglas’ victories,
whilst a reader has written ‘nota de ogle’ on fol. 149r next to a description of Robert Ogill at
XIX.361.
There is hardly any trace of the manuscript’s early ownership, with the exception of
the few marginal annotations or notae in a (most probably sixteenth-century) hand noted
above, and a series of pentrials (also in a sixteenth-century hand) on fols 99r and 129v. That in
the right margin of fol. 99r reads ‘Hee is [a] Roge and kn[a]ve that outh [=owns] t[his] Boke
and I warant a nere papis[t]’, and that upside down at the bottom of on fol. 129 v reads ‘Hee is
a knave that owe {owns] thes booke’. The latter scurrilous pentrial appears to have been
signed by one ‘valtere’.
Thus, all we know of the manuscript’s later history, prior to its accession by St John’s
College, is derived from the bookplates on the inside cover of the front binding. These reveal
Chron. Bower (Watt), VI, 50–1, 191. Similar epitaphs were assigned to King Arthur in Lydgate’s Fall of
Princes, the Alliterative Morte Arthur and Malory’s Le Morte Darthur. See Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte
Darthur, ed. S.H.A. Shepherd (New York and London, 2004), p. 689.
9
All of these rubrics are in the vernacular with the exception of the final rubric on fol. 158 r, next to X.251–4:
‘Obitus reoberti brusis regis scocie’.
10
These Latin verses are also found in Bower’s Scotichronicon, Book IX, chapter XVIII. McDiarmid and
Stevenson suggest that Bower probably derived them from Barbour, who in turn drew on Guillaume le Breton’s
Latin prose chronicle. See Barbour’s Bruce, ed. McDiarmid and Stevenson, I, 76–7.
8
34
that the manuscript was owned in the late sixteenth century or early seventeenth century by
the Church of England clergyman, religious controversialist, and bibliophile, William
Crashaw (bap.1572, d.1625–6).11 The manuscript, together with several hundred other
manuscripts and printed books, was then lodged with Crashaw’s collegian, Henry
Wriothesley, third earl of Southampton (1573–1624), through whose widow and son
(Thomas) they eventually reached the newly built library at St John’s.12
Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates’ MS 19.2.2 (1)
Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS 19.2.2 (1) (MS E) is a paper manuscript
measuring c.26 x 19cm. It was originally bound with the only surviving copy of Hary’s
Wallace (Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS 19.2.2 (2)), but since 1967 – when the
composite manuscript was broken down for repair – the two texts have been bound
separately.
Evidence uncovered during the re-binding process – including differing watermarks
and foliation – suggests that each poem originally formed a separate volume,13 but they seem
to have become companions at an early stage of their history since both texts are signed by
the same sixteenth-century reader, William Burnet, and bear the same worm holes.14 Both
texts were also copied by the same scribe (discussed in further detail below) in 1488
(Wallace) and 1489 (Bruce).
William Crashaw’s son was the poet Robert Crashaw (1612/14–1648). For further information on Crashaw’s
book-collection see P. J. Wallis, ‘The library of William Crashawe’, Transactions of the Cambridge
Bibliographical Society 2 (1954–58), 213–28 and R. M. Fisher, ‘William Crashawe's Library at the Middle
Temple’, The Library, 5th ser., 30 (1975), 116–24.
12
The manuscript contains the book-plate of Henry’s son, Thomas (1608–1667), who was himself educated at
John’s in 1625–26. It is worth noting here that Henry’s wife was Elizabeth Vernon, one of Queen Elizabeth’s
maids of honour; the couple’s secret marriage incurred the displeasure of the monarch and as a result they were
temporarily imprisoned. Henry Wriothesley is, however, perhaps best known for being Shakespeare’s shadowy
‘patron’; Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece were dedicated to him, and some scholars have speculated
that he may be the enigmatic (male) addressee of the first seventeen sonnets. See G.P. Akrigg, Shakespeare and
the Earl of Southampton (London, 1968); M. Heinemann, ‘Rebel Lords, Popular Playwrights, and Political
Culture: Notes on the Jacobean Patronage of the Earl of Southampton’, Year Book of English Studies 21 (1991),
63–86; Shakespeare’s Poems: Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece and The Shorter Poems, ed. Katherine
Duncan-Jones and Henry Woudhuysen, Arden Shakespeare, 3 rd edn (London, 2007)), esp. pp. 26–31; John
Klause, Shakespeare, the Earl, and the Jesuit (Madison, NJ, 2008);Shakespeare’s Sonnets, ed. Katherine
Duncan Jones, Arden Shakespeare, 3rd edn (London, 2010), pp. 19, 22, 33, 52–3.
13
As outlined in Ian C. Cunningham, ‘Bruce and Wallace (National Library of Scotland Advocates’ Manuscript
19.2.2), Edinburgh Bibliographical Society Transactions 4 (1974), 247–52.
14
Fol. 70v of the Bruce and the first page of the Wallace also bear the same inscription/ pentrial: ‘Jesus salvatour
ex issu mihi exponere/ Ad finem dignum librum perdue atque benignum’ See further The Bruce and Wallace,
ed. John Jamieson, 2 vols (Glasgow,1869), II, p. viii.
11
35
The manuscript, now bound in a modern binding of blue calf, has been collated, on
the basis of watermarks, by Ian. C. Cunningham: 2 (modern) leaves, a12, b20 (wants 19,20),
c16, d14, e10 (wants 9,10). The poem is written in double columns and covers fols. 1ra to fol.
70ra. It is accompanied by seventy-two rubrics written (by the scribe), mostly, at the bottom
of a column of text, but occasionally either at the head of a page or in the margin. There are
traces of several other rubrics at the bottom of each page, which suggests that the
manuscript’s leaves were cropped at some point in their history. Of the 72 surviving/legible
rubrics, 17 are in Latin;15 the first 3 and remaining 52 rubrics are in the vernacular.16 There are
an additional 35 marginal notes, marks or comments – also mainly written by the scribe –
which draw attention to particular characters or events,17 whilst the word exemplum appears
five times to highlight the poet’s reference to a classical figure or authority. 18 Space is also
left for 120 (2-line) rubricated initials marking narrative division or development.
This copy of the poem begins with a formal incipit:
Incipit liber compositus per magistrum Ihoannem Barber, Archidiaconum
Abyrdonensem: de gestis, bellis, et virtutibus domini Roberti de Brwyss,
regis Scocie illustrissimi, et de conquestu regni Scocie per eundem, et de
domino Iacobo de Douglas. (fol. 1r)
It then ends with a lengthy colophon:
Finitur codicellus de virtutibus et actibus bellicosis, viz. domini Roberti
Broyss, quondam Scottorum regis illustrissimi, raptim scriptus per me
Iohannem Ramsay, ex iussu venerabilis & circumspecti viri, viz. magistri
Symonis Lochmalony de Ouchtirmunsye, vicarij bene digni, Anno domini
millesimo quadringentesimo octuagesimo nono.
Anima domini Roberti Bruyss, et anime omnium fidelium defunctorum
per Dei misericordiam, requiescant in pace. Amen, Amen, Amen.
One of these rubrics is in fact macronic: ‘Hic Henricus Percy fleys in Ingland’ (fol. 16 rb).
It is interesting to note that the rubrics appear to stop on fol. 52 r. There may have been subsequent rubrics
which were lost when the manuscript was cropped, but since rubrics are visible on earlier pages, this is unlikely.
One is therefore left to wonder why the final ‘chapters’ of the poem were not given headings. Perhaps the
scribe’s exemplar was incomplete, or he simply did not get round to copying the later headings.
17
For example ‘Thebes’ on fol. 7ra next to II.531; ‘ploratus’ on fol.10ra next to III.521 (on women weeping);
‘þe quhele of fortune’ on fol. 46rb next o XIII.647.
18
For example: fol. 8vb next to III.277/8 (Caesar); fol. 9 va next to III.438 (Ferumbras); fol. 15rb next to
IV.739.40 (Aristotle); fol. 15rb next to IV.755/6 (St Paul); fol. 36rb X.705ff (Alexander the Great).
15
16
36
Desine grande loqui, frangit deus omne superbum;
Magna cadunt, inflata crepant, tumefacta premuntur;
Scandunt celsa humiles, trahuntur ad yma feroces;
Vincit opus verbum, minuit iactantia famam,
Per ea viscera Marie Virginis que portauerunt eterni
patris filium. Amen
As discussed in further detail below, the colophon reveals that the manuscript was copied in
1489 by one John Ramsay at the request of Simon Lochmalony, vicar of Auchtermoonzie
(Fife). A prayer for the soul of Robert Bruce and the faithful departed is then offered,
followed by a series of four previously un-discussed verses on the subject of pride and a
concluding invocation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The first three lines beginning ‘desine
grande loqui’ (‘An end to thy big talk! God breaks down all arrogance. Greatness falls; the
bubble bursts; swollen pride is flattened; the lowly ascent to high places and the proud are
reduced to low degree’), appear alone in the Psychomachia, a poem of just over one thousand
lines by the late antique Latin poet, Prudentius, which describes a battle between vice and
virtue for control of man’s soul. 19
The fourth line, beginning ‘Vincit opus verbum’ (‘Let
deeds surpass words, boasting diminishes fame’), appears first in the c. 1200 Poetria Nova of
Geoffrey of Vinsauf,21 but does also appear at a later date in a Latin medical work by the
fourteenth-century surgeon, John of Arderne (b.1307/8, d. in or after 1377), known as the
Practica of fistula in ano.22 All four lines of verse appear together, as here, in the c. 1401
19
Psychomachia in Prudentius: With an English Translation, ed. and trans. H.J. Thomson, 2 vols (London and
Cambridge, MA, 1949–53), I, 298, lines 285, 286, 291 and translation p. 299.
21
Geoffroi de Vinsauf, ‘Poetria Nova’, in Les Arts Poétiques du XIIeet XIIIe Siècle, ed. Edmond Faral (Paris:
Honoré Champion), pp. 194-262 (p. 206, l. 303). Margaret F. Nims, ed. and trans. Poetria nova of Geoffrey of
Vinsauf (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1967), p. 27 (ll. 303-4). As a point of interest, one
might note here the use made by Barbour throughout The Bruce of the kinds of persuasive speech discussed by
Vinsauf and other medieval rhetorical treatises. See Bernice W. Kliman, ‘Speech as a Mirror of “Sapientia” and
“Fortitudo” in Barbour’s “Bruce”’, Medium Aevum, 44 (1975), 151-61.
22
This text is devoted to the treatment of anal fistula and related diseases of the colon and rectum for which
Arderne became famous. It begins with a catalogue of those persons Arderne successfully treated followed by a
section – from which the line quoted in MS E derives – on the qualities of a successful surgeon, including
modesty and sobriety. The signs and symptoms of anal abscesses and fistula are then described, along with
details of soothing creams and ointments, and a graphic description of the operation itself. The work proved to
be very popular – a large number of Latin manuscripts survive as well as four separate Middle English
translations – and was still in use throughout the seventeenth century. The manuscripts themselves are,
furthermore, notable for their array of marginal, full- and half-page illustrations, which were designed by
Arderne himself. See Peter Murray Jones, ‘Arderne, John (b.1307/8, d. in or after 1377)’, Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/636, accessed 20
Dec 2012]; J. Arderne, Treatises of Fistula in Ano Haemorrhoids and Clysters, ed. D'A. Power, EETS, original
37
Sophilogium of Jacques le Grand (Legrand) or Jacobus Magnus (c. 1360-1415), an
Augustinian monk and preacher at the court of the French king Charles VI.23 This work
proved to be very popular, surviving in over one hundred manuscripts, and so it is quite
possible that this text was the source of the four lines in the colophon to MS E. Their
musings on the dangers of pride, whilst not directly related to the contents of The Bruce, do
nevertheless reflect its general thematic concerns with issues of good private and public
governance, and might even recall the narrator’s more specific criticism of Edward Bruce for
‘sucquedry’ (pride) in Book 16 (l. 331).
It remains to consider MS E’s ownership. We know, first of all, that the manuscript
was commissioned by Simon Lochmalony, who was, as discussed elsewhere in this volume
in greater detail by Michael Brown, vicar of Auchtermoonzie (now Moonzie), in Fife. Marks
of subsequent ownership are found on fol. 70v:

This buk pertenis to ane honorabill man wm burnat off ester slowy

This Buik pertenis to ane honorable/ Man Alexander Burnet of Leys qui/ longos viuet
lotosque [dies?]

Alexander burnet of kynnesky/ withe my hand

Efter Mr Robertus Jaffray

Alexander burnat/ with my hand at the pene lef/ at the command of my maister

Alexander burnat wt my hand at ye pen led
As Skeat has discussed, the Lochmalony family was (for reasons not fully explained)
represented by Alexander Leys between 1529 and 1574. His younger sons were William of
Easter Slowie and Alexander of Kynneskie. The latter’s daughter, Christian, married
Alexander Jaffray of Kingswells in 1579.24 The manuscript thus remained within the family
of its original patron throughout the sixteenth century, but nothing else is known of its history
prior to its accession by the Advocates’ Library (sometime prior to 1786).
ser., 139 (London, 1910). p. 4; H. E. Ussery, Chaucer's Physician: Medicine and Literature in FourteenthCentury England (New Orleans, 1971), 62–9; P. M. Jones, ‘Four Middle English translations of John of
Arderne’, in Latin and Vernacular Studies in Late Medieval Manuscripts, ed. A. Minnis (Cambridge, 1989), pp.
61–89.
23
Evencio Beltran, L’ídéal de sagesse d’après Jacques Legrand (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1989).
24
The Bruce (Skeat), I, p. lxxiii.
38
The Relationship between MS C and E
The first issue to be addressed is one that has continually vexed critics and editors, namely
whether MS C’s ‘J. de R.’ was the same person as MS E’s ‘Iohannem Ramsay’ and therefore
whether the two manuscripts were copied by the same. Solving this critical conundrum
should simply involve comparing the hand of both manuscripts, but MS E was, by the
scribe’s own admission, ‘raptim scriptus’ (‘hastily written’). It accordingly appears to be
written in a much more cursive and changeable hand than MS C,25 but shared copying cannot
be ruled out since the speed of copying would of course affect the aspect of the hand.26
My own careful comparison of the two manuscripts and their handwriting leads me to
conclude that they do share a scribe. At first glance, the rapid hand copying most of MS E’s
text certainly appears very different from that copying MS C, but the script of the formal
incipits and explicits in both manuscripts is identical. This script moreover matches that of
those surviving documents copied by the Fife notary, John Ramsay, discussed in further
detail below.
And yet, even though the two manuscripts are copied by the same scribe, the text
within them remains noticeably different, suggesting that Ramsay had access to two different
exemplars of the poem when working in 1487 and 1489. As Skeat has noted, MS C contains
many lines omitted in E (mainly due to eye-skip and hasty copying), but C also lacks lines
found in E. As such, despite the fact that the MS C is acephalous, it contains some 80 lines
not in E, and E some 39 lines not in C.27 In addition, from Book IV line 57 onwards, where it
begins, MS C contains 29 rubricated initials not in MS E, whilst MS E contains gaps for six
initials not in C. The rubrics/ headings in each manuscript are also more or less unique. MS
E’s Latin rubrics do not appear in MS C, but MS C contains many more rubrics (and often
longer ones too) in the latter books of the poem. Indeed, rubrics do not appear in MS E after
around fol. 52r. There are, however, a number of similar rubrics across the two manuscripts,
such as ‘Heire Kyng Robert passis our ye month’ (MS E, fol. 28ra) and ‘how þe gud kyng
25
Frequent changes of pen and ink are visible throughout the manuscript.
In his edition of The Wallace, McDiarmid argued that the two manuscripts of The Bruce were copied by
different scribes, whereas Skeat proposed that they shared a scribe. See The Bruce (Skeat), I, p. lxviii and
Hary’s Wallace (Vita nobilissimi defensoris Scotie Wilelmi Wallace militis), ed. M.P. McDairmid, 2 vols, STS,
4th ser., 4, 5 (Edinburgh, 1968–69), I, p. ix.
27
The Bruce (Skeat), I, p. lxviii–lxx.
26
39
robert þe bruce passit north be-ȝonde þe month’ (MS C, fol. 63r), which would suggest that at
least some of the rubrics might be authorial, whilst others are more probably scribal
additions.28
John Ramsay
Several attempts have been made to identify the scribe, John Ramsay. James Scott in The
Metrical History of Sir William Wallace (1790) suggested that he was the John Ramsay of the
Carthusian order near Perth who later rose to be prior of the convent, a theory repeated by
Jamieson, but there is no evidence for this.29 There is, similarly, no evidence to support J.T.T.
Brown’s convoluted identification of the scribe with Sir John Ramsay, Ross Herald, 30 whom
Brown in turn links with the ‘Schir Iohne the Ros’ listed in William Dunbar’s Lament for the
Makeris.31 Rather, as McDiarmid first suggested, there is far more to suggest that John
Ramsay be connected with Fife.32
Michael Brown and I have independently explored this possibility and reached the
same conclusions. Perhaps the most significant discovery is the identification of the hand of
MSS C and E with two documents copied by the Fife notary public, John Ramsay:
Edinburgh, University Library, Laing Charters, 223 and Edinburgh, National Records of
Scotland, MS GD 82/33. As Michael Brown has detailed elsewhere in this volume, Ramsay
produced the first of these instruments for one Alexander Ramsay of Brackmont in 1493
whilst the second (dated August 1495) records an agreement between Henry Pitcairn of that
ilk and Christian, daughter of the late John Ramsay of Colluthie.
There is, furthermore, a relatively large body of evidence pointing towards a familial
association between this John Ramsay and Simon Lochmalony. Thus, as Michael Brown has
Compare R. James Goldstein: ‘The rubrics, however, may have been part of an earlier manuscript tradition,
and need not have originated with the scribes of the surviving MSS’. R. James Goldstein, ‘“The Matter of
Scotland”: Historiography and Historical Verse in Medieval Scotland’, unpublished Ph.D thesis (University of
Virginia, 1987), p. 368.
29
The Metrical History of Sir William Wallace, [ed. James Scott], 3 vols (R. Murison & Son, 1790), III,
appendix v, pp. 4–9; The Bruce and The Wallace, ed. Jamieson, I, pp. xix–xxii.
30
Caroline Proctor also tentatively links the scribe of MS C with John Ramsay, Lord Bothwell, for whom a
copy of Maino’s Regimen Sanitatis was compiled in 1487 (Bethesda, National Library of Medicine, MS.E 29,
fol. 1r) but there is no evidence to support this. See Caroline Proctor, ‘Physician to the Bruce: Maino de Manieri
in Scotland’, SHR 86:1 (2007), 16–26 (pp. 23–4).
31
J.T.T. Brown, The Wallace and the Bruce Restudied (Bonn, 1890), pp. 58–85. As part of his theory, Brown
also erroneously identified the hand of MSS C and E with that copying some proverbial verses in the
parliamentary records of 1497–8 (which Brown dated 1468) (now NRS, MS PA 5/6). For Dunbar’s poem see
The Poems of William Dunbar, ed. P. Bawcutt, 2 vols (Glasgow, 1998), I, 93–7, line 83, II, 336–7.
32
Barbour’s Bruce, ed. McDiarmid and Stevenson, I, 65.
28
310
also noted, the notary John Ramsay witnesses an agreement (dated April 1495) concerning
the marriage of Laurence Ramsay of Downfield’s son, John, and Henry Pitcairn’s sister,
Elizabeth, which was also witnessed by David Lochmalony. There are, furthermore,
numerous entries in the Sheriff Court Book of Fife from the first decade of the sixteenth
century in which members of the extended Ramsay family sit as members of a jury with
Alexander Lochmalony of that ilk.33 One of these assizes also involves a Walter Arnot,
whilst sitting on another we find a William Ramsay of Brackmont. As we have seen, John
Ramsay produced an instrument for an Alexander Ramsay of Brackmont in 1493 whilst (as
Michael Brown details) a John Ramsay notary public witnessed a charter from Robert Forret
of that ilk to Walter Arnot of Balbertane in 1491.34 We can therefore, as Michael Brown has
done elsewhere in this volume, begin to paint a portrait of a closely associated familial,
professional and literary community active in Fife from the 1490s throughout the first
decades of the sixteenth century.
Yet further detail can be added to this portrait if we examine the Sheriff Court Book of
Fife. Here, the Alexander Lochmalony mentioned above appears on several occasions on
assizes with one Florimund or Florentine Martin of Giblieston and also with one Alexander
Borthwick.35 This is significant because the title-page of the only surviving copy of Dunbar’s
The Goldyn Targe printed by Scotland’s first printers, Walter Chepman and Andrew Myllar,
contains the following ex libris: ‘liber Florentini mertyn <.....> borthuyk’. Sally Mapstone
has proposed that we identify this Florentine Martin with the man of the same name who
frequently appears in The Sheriff Court Book of Fife as a jury member during the 1510s,
1520s and 1530s, whilst I have elsewhere suggested that the word ‘borthuyk’ following
Martin’s name might refer to the Alexander Borthwick also serving on assizes in the same
decade.36
A demonstrable and tantalizing link can thus be drawn not just between the scribe and
reader of The Bruce, but also between the scribe and reader of The Bruce and Scotland’s first
printers, Chepman and Myllar, and with this in mind, I turn now to the poem’s print history.
33
The Sheriff Court Book of Fife, 1515–1522, ed. William Croft Dickinson (Edinburgh, 1928), pp. 8, 22, 32–3,
86, 97, 99, 106, 110, 122, 132, 154, 165–6, 187, 193, 207, 211, 213, 224 and 246.
34
See below 00–00.
35
Sheriff Court Book, pp. 2–3, 52, 187.
36
‘Introduction’ to The Chepman and Myllar Prints: Digital Facsimiles with Introduction, Headnotes and
Transcription, gen. ed. S. Mapstone (Edinburgh: STS and NLS, 2008), p. 8; E. Wingfield, ‘The Manuscript and
Print Contexts of Older Scots Romance’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (University of Oxford, 2010), pp. 234–5.
311
The Early Print History of The Bruce
The earliest surviving printed edition of Barbour’s Bruce, now housed in New York, Pierpont
Morgan Library, W.1.B.15586 (STC 1377.5; Aldis 98),37 is thought to have been printed in
1571 by Robert Lekpreuik for the printer and bookseller, Henry Charteris.38 It is a quartosized volume, consisting of 212 pages, gathered in 8s. A woodcut on the last leaf depicts the
figures of a man and woman in profile. It originates in Schott’s 1522 Strasbourg edition of
Johannes ab Indagine’s Chiromantia.39 This was translated as Briefe Introductions Vnto the
Art of Chiromancy and Physiognomy by Fabian Withers and printed by John Day for Richard
Jugge in London in 1558 (STC 14075.5) using the same woodcut. Day was involved with
Lekpreuik in the publishing of Buchanan’s Ane Detectioun of […] Marie Quene of Scottis
(1572) (STC 3981; Aldis 107); the title-pages of Lekpreuik’s 1572 Scottish edition were in
fact printed in London by Day, who then shipped the sheets to Scotland, along with a number
of his woodcuts and alphabets.40 It is therefore possible that this particular woodcut travelled
to Scotland around the same time. It was also used in 1571 by the printer John Scot in his
reissue of the works of David Lyndsay (STC 15659; Aldis 103) and again by Charteris in his
two 1597 editions of Lyndsay’s works (STC 15664.3; Aldis 297.5).
Little is known about the career of the printer Robert Lekpreuik before 1561 but from
then until 1581 he was active in Edinburgh as a printer, bookseller and bookbinder,41 and he
was particularly associated with the Reformed Party from whom he received financial
support and for whom he printed a number of religious works.42 In 1562, for instance, the
General Assembly lent him £200 towards the purchase of irons, ink, paper and labour to
37
This print is not available to view on Early English Books Online but the National Library of Scotland hold
photostats (F.6.f.7). The presence of the two (possibly connected) names on the same copy might imply some
kind of joint or shared ownership.
38
The surviving copy is imperfect and is now prefaced by a laid in title page, privately printed by David Laing
in the nineteenth century.
39
P.B. Watry, ‘Sixteenth-Century Printing Types and Ornaments of Scotland with an Introductory Survey of the
Scottish Book Trade’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (University of Oxford, 1992), woodcut 21, p. 98.
40
Watry, ‘Sixteenth-Century Printing Types’, pp. 38–9.
41
98 items printed by Lekpreuik appear in Aldis. Lekpreuik is described as ‘buikbinder’ in the 1580 Edinburgh
Burgh Records. See Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, ed. J.D. Marwick et al., 14 vols
(Edinburgh: Scottish Burgh Records Society, 1869–1987), p. 177. See also R. Dickson and J.P. Edmond,
Annals of Scottish Printing from the Introduction of the Art in 1507 to the Beginning of the Seventeenth Century
(Cambridge, 1890), p. 206; E.G. Duff, ‘Some Early Scottish Book-Bindings and Collectors’, Scottish Historical
Review 4 (1906–07), 430–42 (p. 438); W. Smith Mitchell, A History of Scottish Bookbinding, 1432 to 1650
(Edinburgh, 1955), pp. 16–17, 42–3, plate 13.
42
Dickson and Edmond, Annals of Scottish Printing, pp. 198–272; Watry, ‘Sixteenth-Century Printing Types’,
pp. 31–40; A.J. Mann, The Scottish Book Trade 1500–1720: Print Commerce and Print Control in Early
Modern Scotland (East Linton, 2000), passim; T.H. Henderson, ‘Lekpreuik, Robert (fl. 1561–1581)’, revised
Martin
Holt
Dotterweich,
Oxford
Dictionary
of
National
Biography,
2004
[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1614, accessed 13 July 2008].
312
enable him print the Psalms,43 and he received further financial support in 1569/70 in the
form of an annual kirk pension of £50.44
In 1564/5 Lekpreuik was authorised under the Privy Seal to print the Acts of Queen
Mary and of her predecessor’s parliaments,45 and in 1567/8 he was created ‘our soverane
lordis imprentar’ and given a monopoly over the production of a series of books, including a
revised version of the Donatus grammar.46 In April of the same year he was licensed to print
‘the Inglis Bybill, prentit of before at Geneva’, but he never completed this, most probably
due to lack of funds.47
Lekpreuik’s designation as King’s printer was the result of his alliance with the
‘King’s men’ and Reformed Party during the Marian Civil War (1567–73). He soon fell foul
of the authorities, however, on account of the fluctuating political situation. In June 1570, for
instance, he was cautioned for printing without a licence. 48 The works for which he was
cautioned are likely to have been the many invective broadsides written by the Protestant poet
and satirist Robert Sempill (d.1595?).49 In 1571, the courtier and diplomat William Maitland
of Lethington (1525x30–73) feared that Lekpreuik would print George Buchanan’s
Chamaeleon (1570) in which Maitland was the object of significant satire. 50 Maitland
planned to arrest Lekpreuik but he escaped before this could happen. 51 Soon after, he issued
prints from Stirling where the court of Prince James was in residence and, in 1572, he was
found in St. Andrews where he was cautioned by the Regent Morton to once again ‘desist and
ceis fra all forder prenting of [unlicenced] ballatis or bukis’.52 Upon his return to Edinburgh
he printed, in January 1573/4, John Davidson’s Ane Dialog or Mutuall Talking Betuix a Clerk
and ane Courteour Concerning Four Parische Kirks till ane Minister (STC 6323; Aldis 124).
He printed this anonymously, without a licence, and was subsequently punished under the
1551 Act against Printers.53 His property was confiscated and he was imprisoned in
43
Dickson and Edmond, Annals of Scottish Printing, p. 199.
Dickson and Edmond, Annals of Scottish Printing, p. 199.
45
Dickson and Edmond, Annals of Scottish Printing, p. 201; RSS 1556–67, Part I, no. 1987, Part II, no. 2615.
Compare RSS 1567–74 nos. 997, 2044.
46
RSS 1567–74, no. 111.
47
RSS 1567–74, no. 230.
48
Dickson and Edmond, Annals of Scottish Printing, pp. 202–3.
49
Satirical Poems at the Time of the Reformation, ed. J. Cranstoun, STS, 1st Ser., 20, 24, 28, 30 (Edinburgh and
London, 1889–91), II, pp. liv–ix.
50
McFarlane (1981), pp. 336–7. No copy of Lekpreuik’s print survives, but it seems that the pamphlet did
circulate and was known in England. See Bawcutt (1998), pp. 64–5.
51
I.D. McFarlane, Buchanan (London, 1981), p. 337.
52
TA 1566–74, p. 312. The record refers to one ‘Alexander Lekprevik, prentar’, but Robert is meant.
53
Dickson and Edmond, Annals of Scottish Printing, p. 205; APS, II, 488–9 (c. 26); Mann, Scottish Book Trade,
pp. 115, 141, 171.
44
313
Edinburgh Castle. He did not publish again until 1581 and it is likely that he died sometime
shortly after that date.54
In addition to printing religious and political texts in association with the Reformed
party, Lekpreuik was also patronised during the early years of the 1570s by the bookseller
(and later printer) Henry Charteris (d.1599) for whom he printed not just The Bruce, but also
The Actis and Deidis of the Illuster and Vailȝeand Campioun, Sir William Wallace (STC
13149; Aldis 82)55 and Henryson’s The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian (STC 185;
Aldis 83) in 1570.
It is interesting to note that Lekpreuik also printed The Wallace for Charteris. Unlike
The Bruce, fragments of an earlier printed edition of the latter text, produced by Chepman
and Myllar c. 1509, do survive (STC 13148; Aldis 10).56 Craigie notes that ‘[t]he text of the
fragments, while agreeing in all essentials with the edition of 1570, is inferior to it in many
points [...]. At times, however, it has more correct readings, agreeing with those of the
manuscript’.57 McDiarmid further adds ‘The relation of F [the fragments] and its derivative, L
[Lekpreuik’s print] to Ramsay’s manuscript [...] is that of a later and much more corrupt
manuscript to an early and usually reliable one’.58 Thus, the two printed editions of The
Wallace, although not identical, are related, but they are not derived from the extant
manuscript. Instead, they represent a now-lost manuscript tradition.
There is reason to believe that a similar textual history lies behind Lekpreuik’s Bruce.
In his facsimile edition of Lekpreuik’s 1572 print (STC 5487; Aldis 113) of the Older Scots
romance, Rauf Coilyear, William Beattie found it ‘tempting to conjecture […] that Rauf may
have been printed by predecessors of Lekpreuik, and particularly by Chepman and Myllar,
who put out editions of two alliterative poems, Golagrus and the Howlat’.59 It is similarly
tempting to conjecture that The Bruce might have been printed by Chepman and Myllar given
that they printed another poem on the Wars of Independence. Charteris furthermore reports in
his preface to the 1571 edition of The Bruce that he has ‘gatherit togider all the Copyis that I
54
Mann, Scottish Book Trade, p. 184.
The only surviving copy of the Lekpreuik/ Charteris Wallace (London, British Library C.39.d.24) is said to
have been owned by Queen Elizabeth I.
56
The Wallace fragments are housed in the Mitchell Library, Glasgow and Cambridge University Library
(Syn.3.50.3)
57
The Actis and Deidis of Schir William Wallace 1570, ed. William A. Craigie, STS, 3rd ser., 12 (New York:
Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1940), appendix.
58
Hary's Wallace: (Vita nobilissimi defensoris Scotie Wilelmi Wallace militis), ed. M.P. McDiarmid, STS, 4th
ser., 4–5 (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1968), I, x.
59
The Taill of Rauf Coilyear: Printed by Robert Lekpreuik at St. Andrews in 1572, ed. W. Beattie (Edinburgh:
National Library of Scotland, 1966), pp. iv–v.
55
314
culd haue, auld and new, baith written in Paper Royall, and alswa writtin in Parchiament,
quhairof the Capitall Letteris wer all Luminit, and decorit with gold, (quihilk is ane
certificatioun, quhat opinioun, and estimatioun our predecessouris hes had of this buke)’. 60
Whilst this is most probably in part a marketing device, it is not impossible that Charteris had
seen other now-lost manuscripts (and prints) of the poem, and it is particularly interesting that
he should emphasise their high-end, decorated nature. The two surviving witnesses of the
poem are far from costly productions, but one imagines that earlier (presentation)
manuscripts of the poem might well have been far more lavish.
Relationship of the Print to MSS C and E
The 1571 print begins with the heading, Ԧ The actis and/ Lyfe of the maist Victorious
Conque-/rour, Robert Bruce, king of Scotland./ Quhairin alswa ar contenit the martiall/ dedis
of the Vailȝeand Princes: Ed-/ward Bruce, Schir James Douglas: / Erle Thomas Randell,
Walter/ Stewart, and sindrie/ vtheris’.61 The text is punctuated by 187 two- or three-line
initials, with paraph marks next to a further three, and 97 rubrics, printed in blank space left
between lines of text, and signalled either with a paraph mark, or pointing hand. With the
exception of two in Latin,62 all of the rubrics are in the vernacular and, rather interestingly,
almost all of those from V.334/5 onwards are rhyming couplets: e.g. ‘how Dowglas in Sanct
Brydis kirk,/ With the Inglismen can wirk’.
25 of the print’s two- or three-line line initial letters are found in MS C but not in MS
E; 2 are found in MS E but not in MS C. A number of the lines omitted in MS E but found in
MS C are also present in the print, whilst most of the print’s rubrics, although unique,
correspond more often and closely with those in MS C than MS E. This would therefore
suggest that the textual tradition lying behind the print descends from MS C rather than MS
E.
As noted, however, the print nevertheless retains a number of unique features.
Perhaps most notably, after Book X, line 430, the printed edition has twelve lines not present
in either MSS C or E which describe Douglas’ hurling of Bruce’s casketed heart before him
in battle. These lines appear to be non-authorial, since they contain rhymes not found
60
The Bruce (1571), p. iiiv.
The colophon reads ‘Heir endis the buik of ye Nobillest king/ That euer in Scotland ȝit did Ring:/ Callit king
Robert the Bruce,/ That was maist worthy of all Ruce./ And of ye nobil, & gude Lord Dowglas,/ And mony man
yet with yame was’.
62
Before II.178: ‘Coronatio Regis Roberti’; and on 35 v ‘Versus Belli de Bosbek’.
61
315
elsewhere in the poem, but it is unclear precisely when they were interpolated. Since the
same lines appear in Richard Holland’s Buke of the Howlat the interpolation most likely took
place after the composition of that poem (c.1448), although it is of course possible that the
appearance of these lines in an earlier now-lost manuscript of the poem influenced Holland.63
The print’s rhyming rubrics are a further unique feature. Five similar rhyming rubrics
occur in Alexander Arbuthnet’s c.1580 edition of the octosyllabic ‘buik of the most noble and
valiant Conquerour Alexander the grit’ (NIMEV 3923) (Aldis 165; STC 321.5),64 thought to
have been printed, like The Bruce, for Charteris:65
1. Heir Emyndus makis praying/ To the douze pers to warn the king
(A iiijr, p. 7)
2. Heir the furriours and thair fais,/ Assemblis and grete melle mais
(B viir, p. 29)
3. How ȝoung Pirrus lord of Montflour/ Reskeuit his men and wan
honour (C iiiv, p. 38)
4. Heir Arreste throw sare praying,/ Went to warne Alexander the
King (E iv, p. 66).
5. Heir beginnys the Avous (R viir, p. 253).
Rhyming rubrics are also found in Andrew Wyntoun’s Original Chronicle (c.1408–24).66
These are designed to divide and neatly structure the narrative and they often address the
reader (e.g. Book II, Chapter V, ‘Þis chapter sal tel ȝow richt/ Of Iosophis wit and his
forsycht’). Furthermore, their appearance in the fifteenth-century witnesses of the Chronicle
is striking; in British Library, MS Royal 17.D.XX, for instance, they are written in red ink
using a large display script and the ensuing text begins with a red or blue initial. Since all
three texts were composed at a relatively contemporary date, between c.1375 and c.1438, it is
entirely possible that their rhyming rubrics originated either with their authors, or in early
manuscript traditions, although it is equally possible that they are later scribal inventions. For
now, the jury must remain out on this matter.
Conclusions
63
The Bruce (McDiarmid), p. 109. For an edition of The Howlat see Longer Scottish Poems Volume One 1375–
1650, ed. P. Bawcutt and F. Riddy (Edinburgh, 1987), pp. 43–84. See also M. Stewart, ‘Holland of the Howlat’,
IR, 23 (1973), 3–15; N. Royan, ‘‘‘Mark your Meroure be Me’’: Richard Holland’s Buke of the Howlat’, in A
Companion to Medieval Scottish Poetry, ed. P. Bawcutt and J. Hadley Williams (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 49–62.
64
The Buik of Alexander, ed. R.L. Graeme Ritchie, 4 vols, STS, 2 nd ser., 12, 17, 21, 25 (Edinburgh and London,
1921–29).
65
Watry, ‘Sixteenth-Century Printing Types’, p. 49.
66
Chron. Wyntoun (Amours), II, 167.
316
The above chapter has endeavoured to provide a comprehensive history of the fifteenth- and
sixteenth-century manuscript and print contexts of Barbour’s Bruce. It has demonstrated that
the two manuscripts, although textually distinct from one another and derived from different
exemplars, were copied by the same scribe, the Fife notary public John Ramsay. MS E was,
furthermore, copied by Ramsay for Simon Lochmalony, vicar of Auchtermoonzie, and there
is extensive external evidence linking the wider members of the Ramsay and Lochmalony
families. The two families are moreover linked to Florentine Martin of Giblieston and
Alexander Borthwick, whose names appear on the surviving copy of Chepman and Myllar’s
printed edition of Dunbar’s Goldyn Targe. Such information enables us to begin to discern
the outlines of a familial, professional and literary network based in Fife at the end of the
fifteenth and opening of the sixteenth century. It also supports the possibility of Chepman and
Myllar having produced a now-lost edition of The Bruce to complement their nowfragmentary edition of The Wallace.
Further printed editions of The Bruce appear throughout the seventeenth century.
Thomas Finalyson was granted ‘the onlie privilige and libertie of imprinting the Book of
King Robert the Bruce’ in 1611 but there is no evidence that he took advantage of this.
Instead, Andrew Hart printed the second known edition in 1616, and a further edition in
1620. His edition was followed by a 1648 edition produced in Edinburgh by Gedeon
Lithgow, an edition of 1665 produced in Glasgow by Robert Sanders, another edition
produced in Glasgow in 1672, an edition printed in Edinburgh by Freebairn in 1730 and an
edition printed in Glasgow by Carmichael and Miller in 1737. The first ‘critical edition’ by
Pinkerton was published in three octavo volumes in 1790, followed by Jamieson’s 1820
edition, reprinted in 1869, and an octavo edition by the Spalding Club in 1856 (edited by
Cosmo Innes). The latter was the first to collate the Edinburgh and Cambridge manuscripts.
Editions by Skeat for the EETS and STS followed (in 1870 and 1894, respectively), as well
as an edition in 1909 by MacKenzie.67 Later twentieth-century editions include that by
McDiarmid and Stevenson for the STS (1980–85), and Duncan’s 1997 edition for Canongate,
which was reissued in 2007.68
R. McKinlay, ‘Barbour’s Bruce’, Records of the Glasgow Bibliographical Society 6 (1916–17, 1917–18), 20–
38. See also George M. Brunsden, ‘Aspects of Scotland’s Social, Political and Cultural Scene in the Late
Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries, as Mirrored in the Wallace and Bruce Tradition’, in The Polar
Twins, ed. Edward J. Cowan and Douglas Gifford (Edinburgh, 1999), pp. 75–113.
68
The Bruce, ed. A.A.M. Duncan, Canongate Classics, 78 (Edinburgh: Canongate Books Ltd., 1997; reprinted
2007)
67
317
These editions are further complemented by adaptations of the poem, such as John
Harvey’s 1729 Life of Robert Bruce (re-issued in 1769 as The Bruciad) and Patrick Gordon’s
Famous History of the Renown’d and Valiant Prince Robert, sirnamed Bruce (published in
Dordecht in 1615). The latter text contains a very interesting preface in which Gordon
discussed his sources. He does not name The Bruce but instead claims to have used a ‘book
of virgine parchement’ (sig. iiv) brought to his notice by his friend David Farquharson. He
states that this was ‘old and torne and almost inlegeable in manie places vanting leaves yet
hade it the beginning and hade bein sett doune by a monk in the abey of melros, called Peter
Fenton in the year of god one thousand thrie hundredth sixtie nyne [...]’ (sigs ii v–iiir), adding
‘it was in old ryme like to Chaucer, but vanting in manie parts and in especial from the field
of Bannochburne fourth it wanted all the rest almost, so that it could not be gotten to the
press’ (si. iiir). As Sally Mapstone has noted, ‘This supplementary but fragmentary text
sounds [...] like Barbour’s Bruce [...]but Gordon distances it from Barbour’s poem by
attributing it to [a] Melrose monk Fenton’, of whom, no record survives. It is therefore most
likely that Gordon was using Barbour’s Bruce, but that he did not wish this to be known.69
In addition to the manuscript brought by Farquharson, Gordon had access to an ‘old
printid book’ (sig. iir) which he described as ‘so euill composd that I culd bring it to no good
method’. This may be Lekpreuik’s 1571 edition, or – more tantalizingly – an even earlier
print. Indeed, Gordon’s preface with its reference to an early print and manuscript on ‘virgine
parchement’ is very much like Charteris’ claim in the preface to Lekpreuik’s 1571 edition of
The Bruce to have seen lost manuscript ‘baith written in Paper Royall, and alswa writtin in
Parchiament’. Such claims may not be entirely trustworthy, but even if only half-true, they
certainly suggest that The Bruce was far more popular than its two surviving manuscripts and
one surviving sixteenth-century print, suggest.
In scholarship to date it is common to compare the number of witnesses of The Bruce
to those of The Wallace. Thus, Brunsden compares the ‘[t]hirty-seven editions of the Wallace
[...] from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries [...] as opposed to 12 printings
of John Barbour’s epic’ and notes that during the period 1700 to 1750 only one edition of The
Bruce appears to have been printed compared to eleven of The Wallace.70 Noting that The
Wallace survives in a much earlier print than The Bruce, McKinlay moreover concludes: ‘It
may of course be a tribute to the greater popularity of Wallace as a national hero, and to the
S. Mapstone, ‘Afterword’, in Langage cleir illumynate: Scottish poetry from Barbour to Drummond, 1375–
1630, ed. N. Royan (Amsterdam, 2007), pp. 207–19 (p. 211).
70
Brunsden, ‘Aspects of Scotland’s Social, Political and Cultural Scene’, p. 88.
69
318
more perfervid patriotism of the author, that Blind Harry’s poem should have been first in
circulation’.71 My findings in this chapter would suggest instead that we need to rethink our
interpretation of the textual history of The Bruce.
71
McKinlay, ‘Barbour’s Bruce’, p. 23.
319