GEORGE ASHBY, COMPLAINT OF A PRISONER IN THE FLEET 1463: FOOTNOTES

1 Lines 15-16: But [except for them] no oath or declaration [of my worth to the king or the state] / Could be heard or taken down [in written form from such a supporter or reference] at any time

2 Nor [remembering] my showing kindness to them before

3 By chance by great wrong, and not because [you] deserve [it]

4 Not for the same thing (i.e., the offence) but [out] of a just sentence [for your sins generally]

5 But [act] as you would [if you] were before Him

GEORGE ASHBY, COMPLAINT OF A PRISONER IN THE FLEET 1463: EXPLANATORY NOTES

1-119 The opening two sections of the poem seem to be modeled on the first few sections of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, in which he complains to Lady Philosophy about the particulars of his situation.

1-14 The poem opens, as many late medieval English poems do, with a description of nature that has a direct relationship to the situation in which the speaker finds himself; the opening to Chaucer's CT is the most famous of such prologues, but, unlike Chaucer, Ashby chooses not a spring song, but a scene of blustery early autumn, when the natural world appears to be dying, an appropriate metaphor for a year-long imprisonment. So also Lydgate's TG, whose introduction sets the scene in mid-December, and later, Henryson's introduction to the Testament of Cresseid.

9 a gret commaundment of a lord. We have no way of knowing who sent Ashby to prison. It may even have been the king himself, who was, of course, the greatest of all earthly lords.

15-16 Ashby's point is that no one has come forward to help him in his need; Christ and the Virgin Mary (line 14) are his only consolation.

21-22 houses . . . woodes. / Because of my draught and my bryngyng up. The mention of houses in the plural and large trees suggests that Ashby was a well-off man; that his training and upbringing caused his misfortune suggests that a motive of his enemies might have been not just his political allegiance but perhaps jealousy or greed.

22 The word draught here means upbringing, too, perhaps in these instances meaning the political climate in which he was raised, favoring and serving the Lancastrian over the Yorkist faction in the Wars of the Roses.

35 pacience. This is the first mention of a concept that will become a recurrent theme, tolling like a bell throughout the later lines of the poem. John Scattergood points out that the autobiographical and the devotional/homiletic modes meet and mingle in this part of the poem, pointing to the"four types of assaults on a man" against which Chaucer's Parson arrays"foure manere of paciences" ("The Virtue of Patience," pp. 271-72).

36-42 David Lawton quotes these lines, commenting on their similarity to Hoccleve's description of being shunned by fellow clerks of the Privy Seal after his illness: "It is all but a direct quotation from Hoccleve's account of his nervous breakdown in his Complaint. We can scarcely conclude that Ashby's disappointment in his friends is merely conventional, not autobiographical. We may feel compelled to acknowledge that both Hoccleve's lament and Ashby's are in some sense paradigmatic, an appropriate Boethian suffering relayed through the Moralia in Job; but we have no cause to doubt its authenticity" (p. 773).

41 werkes of mercy. The seven (corporal) works of mercy are feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, harboring the stranger, visiting the sick, ministering to prisoners, and burying the dead. See Jeffrey, pp. 498-500.

44 unpayable det. Note that the debt is, at least in part, a result of the imprisonment, not the cause of it, since prisoners in the Fleet were often made to pay for their own maintenance.

50 At this point the speaker has reached the logical end of his train of thought. Now he must figure out who is ultimately to blame if he is to resolve the pain of the injustice he is suffering. He begins this exploration of his situation in the next stanza, beginning, as we so often do, with his childhood.

57-70 Ashby had been a clerk of the Office of the Signet, as he says here, for forty years; that is, the whole of the reign of Henry VI (from infancy) and his wife Margaret of Anjou. Here he points out that he had been one of the clerks who travelled with the king and queen even when they were abroad (when they took only a few of their most trusted clerks with them).

61 The duk of Gloucetre. Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, was the brother of Henry V and the uncle of Henry VI, who became king at the age of only nine months when his father succumbed to dysentery on the battlefield in France. Gloucester shared the running of the kingdom during Henry's minority with his brother John, duke of Bedford, who was largely responsible for the conduct of the war in France, so it was natural that, as a clerk in the Signet Office, Ashby would have worked for him until Henry VI was old enough to be crowned king of England. A number of writers addressed works to Gloucester, including John Lydgate and Thomas Hoccleve.

68 The image of Ashby "having pen and ink ever at his side" is very similar to the image of Chaucer with pencase (or"penner") hung around his neck (as in British Library MS Harley 4866) or held in his hand (the Harvard University, Houghton Library, portrait, used as the frontispiece for The Riverside Chaucer; or the Sloane portrait, National Portrait Gallery no. 532, among others) to signal his profession. For reproductions see Derek Pearsall's"Appendix I: The Chaucer Portraits," in his Life of Geoffrey Chaucer (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), esp. pp. 286, 298-302.

83 Fortune. This is the only mention of Fortune in the poem. Ashby actually removes Fortune as the agent that stands between God and man, seeming to act capri-ciously but actually carrying out God's will. Instead he deals directly with the relationship between God and man and man's responsibility to accept God's will without hesitation if he is to find peace in this world.

84 welth. The modern reader might be excused for thinking that the author was obsessed with wealth, but welth means not only monetary possession but hap-piness, good fortune, and prosperity in the broadest sense.

85-91 Yef I had in youth suffred any payne . . . I may leve hens in quyet and rest. Boethius makes this argument to Lady Philosophy: if I had not had it so good, I would not be suffering so much now that I have lost everything. We are meant to see the flaw in this argument immediately.

106-07 One of Lady Philosophy's final lessons is that ill fortune is really good fortune, for it teaches endurance. See here lines 134-35 and 153. Of course all fortune is ultimately illusory in this scheme of things, as we see in lines 160-61.

120-26 With this opening apostrophe (O thow creature, line 120), the speaker takes on the role of Lady Philosophy, who tells Boethius that he has forgotten who he is (1.pr2 and pr6), that is, a creature (creation) of God.

145 As in the scrypture ys specyfyed. Bateson (p. 5) suggests Zacharias 13:9 and Jeremias 6:30 as the passages to which Ashby probably refers. With his rhymes on gloryfyed/specyfyed, Ashby is showing off his ability to write Latinate verse (see also lines 224-29, 275-78, etc.).

155-203 One measure of Ashby's skill as a poet is his ability to handle the rhyme-royal stanza. In these seven stanzas he balances a series of oppositions and contrasts in an everchanging pattern that maintains the reader's interest through their varying rhythms and rhymes. (This kind of discourse is common in late medieval verse but is more usually arranged in couplets.) The odd number of lines in a rhyme-royal stanza lends itself to the kind of complicated patterns Ashby creates. First he states the overall problem in the first two (unrhymed) lines of the stanza: who suffers more than the privileged who are brought low? Then he restates the problem in a pair of 1-line rhetorical questions (lines 157-60, balanced in the next stanza [lines 166-67] by two lines beginning"Yef . . ."). He then follows two 2-line problems with a 3-line problem (lines 169-75). In the next stanza, he reverses the disposition of the matter over the verse-lines, beginning with a 3-line problem that matches the closing problem of the previous stanza, following it with two 2-line pairs (lines 176-82). Finally, he opens a stanza (lines 183-89) with a pair of"Yef . . ." lines, then concludes with a generalization (Thus welth ebbeth and floweth as the flood, line 185), which introduces the medieval version of the old rhyme"As a rule a man's a fool / When it's hot he wants it cool" (lines 186-96). Nor is he yet done, for he adds one more stanza (lines 197-203) that divides 2/3/2-a new pattern.

173 weddyd without any stryf. This line and the following simply name another inexplicable juxtaposition of contrasts, the happiness of a peaceful marriage with the sorrow of childlessness, without suggesting that there is a cause-effect relation between them.

175 If you are childless, you will be talked about widely (mocked) behind your back (i.e., at markets and fairs). Fairs, which are markets, brought people together who exchanged gossip as well as money and goods. That said, the poet's choice of the word feyres might have arisen from his need for a rhyme.

204 lyfe here ys but pilgremage. A reference to the common idea, borrowed ultimately from St. Augustine's City of God, that life on this earth is a journey toward one of two cities, the City of God, which is Heaven, or the city of the devil, Hell. Guillaume de Deguilleville wrote three long works based on this idea: The Pilgrimage of the Soul, The Pilgrimage of Human Life (or Man's Life), and The Pilgrimage of Jesus Christ. The first of these was hugely influential in the later Middle Ages all over Europe. Lydgate's translation of it may have been known to Ashby. Egeus in Chaucer's Knight's Tale also expresses this idea: "This world nys but a thurghfare ful of wo, / And we been pilgrymes, passynge to and fro" (CT I[A]2848-49).

222 a whele turnyng and mevyng. Fortune returns here briefly and indirectly in the form of her wheel.

239 Seynt John the Evangelist. The writer of the Gospel of John, often supposed to be Jesus' beloved disciple (see John 19:26). He is also traditionally identified with the writer of 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and Apocalypse.

241 Seynt John Baptist. John the Baptist was the son of Mary's cousin Elizabeth (Luke 1:5-80). He preached to the people concerning the coming of Jesus, and later baptized Him (Luke 3:1-38).

246 Job. The subject of the Old Testament book of Job, he was"tempted by God" at the suggestion of Satan. In order to prove that he would not renounce Him, God sent a series of calamities to Job, culminating in sores on his body and a group of friends who mocked him for his steadfastness in the face of suffering. We still speak of someone who has"the patience of Job."

270 maugré hys hed and hys maw. A proverbial expression that took many forms: maugre his visage, maugre his cheeks, etc. See Whiting M421.

271-73 This proverb (related to Whiting E169) derives ultimately from Ecclesiastes 3:1-15.

281-87 Here again Ashby shows his mastery of the rhyme-royal stanza. He balances blessyd (line 284) against wykkyd (line 287), while devoting the five middle lines to the good, alloting only one (the last) to the evil, and contrasting the two nicely in the closing couplet.

293 ryches cometh nat by labour. Here Ashby presents the flip side of his argument about injustice (and one not always heard): just as the poor and the weak are unjustly served, so are the wealthy and the powerful.

299-300 by pacience I may wyn batayle / Of my troubles and have the vyctory. The idea of patience as a weapon is foreign to modern thought, but it was a living idea for Milton in the seventeenth century and to writers in the fourteenth (e.g., William Langland) and in the fifteenth.

309 ff. Envoys are common in late medieval French and English poetry. An envoy might conclude a short poem such as a ballade, where it might be addressed to the lady to whom the lyric is addressed or to the lord of the puy or poetry contest in which it was presented. Longer poems also closed frequently with envoys, the best known probably being Chaucer's TC 5.1786:"Go, litel bok, go, litel myn tragedye." One of the closing rhetorical moves was often to ask the reader to correct what was defective in the work, as Ashby does in lines 328-29.

337-38 It is fairly unusual to find medieval poems that are signed and dated, though Charles d'Orléans did so, and John Gower, too, albeit by riddles. On the other hand, it is very common to end with a prayer. Scattergood suggests that the dating is a way of"seeking to ensure that he was not forgotten" (1993, p. 274).

344-50 The Explicit is remarkable in that it seems to depart from the message of the poem. If learning patience provides the way to overcome Fortune and reconcile oneself with God, it is difficult to see how prison can then be called a sepulture (line 344). It would appear that the lesson Ashby intends us to learn he has not yet completely internalized himself.

344 propurly. In this context it may mean simply"correctly" or"actually," but it may also have the further meaning"as I have experienced first hand" (see MED propreli[e, 1. [c]).

GEORGE ASHBY, COMPLAINT OF A PRISONER IN THE FLEET 1463: TEXTUAL NOTES

Abbreviations: MS: Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.3.19, fols. 41r-45v.

N.b.: Ferdinand Holthausen emended the text liberally to render the text more readable to his contemporaries. These emendations have not been listed in the textual notes.

Heading Prohemium Unius Prisonarij. Rubricated in MS.
1 MS: In right margin, written in a later hand: Written by George Asshby prisoner in the Fleet A.D. 1463.
At. MS: key letter but no initial.
8 MS: In right margin, rubricated: Nomen prisone.
21 woodes. wordes. Emended by Holthausen, with probable error marked in the notes by Bateson and Förster.
22 MS: In right margin, rubricated: Spoliacio Prisonarij.
25 MS: In right margin, rubricated: Nomen Prisonarij.
36 MS: In left margin, rubricated: Lamentacio prisonarij.
47 Without Goddes grace. We here agree with Förster's punctuation of this line, for logical reading's sake: the imprisonment itself occurred without God's grace (punctuating first half of the line to go with preceding line 47); its sooner ending will occur with God's grace, not without it (as would be the meaning without medial punctuation).
57 MS: In left margin, rubricated: Servicium prisonarij.
70 MS: This line appears at the beginning of the thirteenth stanza, just prior to line 85 on fol. 42r. Below and to the left of line 69 on fol. 41v is written a minuscule a to indicate the insertion point for the missing line, corresponding to a minuscule b to the left of the line on fol. 42r. That is, this stanza as written in the MS has only six lines and the thirteenth has eight lines. On possible explanations for this error, which are probably due to the change of copyists between folios, see Livingston.
85 See textual note to line 70, above.
92 thynketh. MS: thyg thynketh, with thyg marked for deletion.
95 noy. MS: nay.
99 nat. MS: na.
108 a soth. Förster and Holthausen read aseth, Bateman a feth.
120 MS: In left margin, rubricated in a frame,Ad sustinendum pacienciam in adversis.
183 be wele. MS: beseke (so emended as"be well" by all previous editors, for sense).
277 conforme. MS: the m has an extra minim.