The Marginal Drawings in the fourteenth-century Cranston MS 1117, almost certainly Canterbury-provenanced

152 THE MARGINAL DRAWINGS IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY CRANSTON MS 1117, ALMOST CERTAINLY CANTERBURY-PROVENANCED julian luxford This article is about the marginal drawings in a Kentish manuscript belonging to the Cranston Library at Reigate parish church in Surrey (Item 1117). The manuscript, a compilation of historical texts, was probably made in the 1360s (this dating is justified below). It has 270 parchment leaves (ten more have been lost), medieval wooden covers, and measures 260×180mm.1 Altogether, there are fifty-one drawings (of which twenty are reproduced below) plus about half as many again of the hand-with-pointing-finger motifs often called manicules. The manicules, almost all in red ink and concentrated towards the end of the manuscript (there are twelve between fols 219 and 234), will not be included in the discussion. Like most images in late medieval books, the drawings in Cranston 1117 are mainly small, formally simple and inexpertly handled from the point of view of artistic technique. All of them illustrate in some way things mentioned in the adjacent text. Most were executed in the colour and shade of ink that was used for the text and/or rubrics of the pages on which they appear. It is thus safe to assume that they are integral images, i.e., images put into the manuscript when it was originally made, by those who did the writing. As many as six different scribes or rubricators were responsible for them (it is convenient, and seems reasonable, to call these people artists). As integral features, the drawings are evidence for attitudes to the role of images in both book-design and the consumption of content by book-users. (Had they been added later on, as late medieval drawings in manuscripts very often were, then they would instead be evidence for individual readers’ responses and, perhaps, assumptions about the decorum of book-use.) Review of this evidence is not the only reason for studying the drawings in Cranston 1117. As an illustrated production, the manuscript is unusual on three interrelated counts, each of which increases its historical and artefactual importance. First, the manuscript is a rare example of a medieval history-book with a large number of illustrations. Normally, and excluding genealogical rolls, English-made history-books have no text-related imagery, and where they do, the number of images is almost always fewer than ten. As anyone who works on this material knows, there are some attractive counterexamples, particularly from the later twelfth century and the thirteenth. These include manuscripts made by Matthew Paris (d.1259) at St Albans abbey, three copies of Gerald of Wales’s Topographia Hibernica (c.1220 and c.1260), certain manuscripts of the Flores Historiarum, a chronicle from THE MARGINAL DRAWINGS IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY CRANSTON MS 1117 153 Rochester cathedral priory produced around 1300 and a short version of the Brut chronicle (see below) in Anglo-Norman verse of c.1340.2 Cranston 1117 numbers with these, and is the more unusual for being a late medieval i nstance. A couple of fifteenth-century manuscripts of Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon with copious marginal imagery are the most obvious comparisons among surviving manuscripts after the mid-fourteenth century.3 Both share Cranston 1117’s second exceptional feature, that of having copious drawings of non-standard imagery. By contrast, fairly many late medieval history-books contain one or even several standard drawings, i.e., drawings associated with given historical texts by convention. For instance, according to such a convention, copies of the Polychronicon (a world history) sometimes have a world map, and often have an image or diagram representing Noah’s ark.4 Manuscripts of the Brut, an extremely popular chronicle of the kings of England, occasionally have images of famous English cities, always illustrating the same passages in the text.5 But the images in Cranston 1117 are not, with a few possible exceptions, found in other copies of the texts they accompany. In fact, twenty-seven of them are in sections of the manuscript for which no exemplar seems to have existed (the likelihood that parts of the manuscript are the chronicler’s autograph copy is mentioned below).6 These, and probably most of the others, are products of choice and imagination rather than rote copying. Some other English chronicle manuscripts have non-standard imagery, but in these the images are almost always singletons, or else additions by later users, rather than aspects of the original design.7 The third way in which the Cranston manuscript is exceptional is that of being an extremely rare example of a history-book with integral illustration done by several artists rather than one. Kathleen Scott, the great scholar of English fifteenth-century book-art, knew of no fifteenth-century example besides one of the Polychronicons mentioned above, and it is equally hard to think of later fourteenth-century cases.8 These features of the Cranston manuscript, and particularly the last one, seem to suggest that whoever ordered it to be made also requested that it be illustrated. Left to his own devices, a scribe or rubricator would not usually have volunteered himself for such work, making it the less likely that the number of people involved in this case would have done so. However, one should not suppose that the illustration was micromanaged by a controlling intelligence. There is nothing programmatic, or even consistent, about the drawings other than the basic fact that all respond an aspect of the main text or a marginal rubric. Nothing suggests that they were added to help readers memorise texts, a purpose often postulated for manuscript images; and although any of them could have served readers as a finding-aid (another commonly supposed purpose), there is little to suggest that this was the reason for inserting them.9 It seems more likely that the scribes, having licence to draw, did so where they chose, in response to things that interested them. Perhaps not everything arose from free choice. A few of the drawings, such as the crowned heads on fols 35r and 43r, may have been carried over from exemplar manuscripts along with the text. But most reflect the religious, political and cultural interests of those who made the manuscript, so that one detects, for example, local biases, a taste for the bizarre and ingenious, awareness of ethnic stereotypes, and fear of the plague. As such, and of course, the drawings echo themes in the text, but, as their makers realised, they represented the subjects they were designed to illustrate JULIAN LUXFORD 154 in ways uniquely available to imagery. For the modern scholar, they also reveal knowledge of current conventions in manuscript art on the part of individuals who were not trained artists. This is not, perhaps, very surprising – a medieval person did not need to be an artist to internalise imagery – but it bears on the receptionhistory of late medieval English art in a way that has hardly been investigated to date. With these basic justifications for studying the drawings made, the textual contents of Cranston 1117 and evidence for its Kentish provenance must now be set out. While the manuscript has been at Reigate since 1701, it seems originally to have been made by (and for) monks of Canterbury cathedral priory. There are six substantial texts, plus some shorter ones on peripheral leaves: the medieval binding indicates that the texts were brought together at an early date, at least, and probably from the outset. The main texts are: (1) a chronicle of the popes down to 1359 (fols 11r-124v); (2) another of Roman emperors, finishing in 1346 (fols 125r-141r); (3) biographies of the archbishops of Canterbury ending in 1366 (fols 142r-174v); (4, 5) a Brut chronicle in Latin in two sections (Brutus-William II and William I-Edward III) (fols 176r-207r and 208r-252r), the latter with a continuation from 1346 to 1365 by a local chronicler with a knowledge of Anglo-French politics (fols 252r-273r); (6) a short account of English affairs in Scotland from the Norman Conquest to 1346 (fols 274r-279v). Historical compendiums of this sort were not unusual in later medieval English monasteries, and something similar – with six historical texts including histories of the popes and Roman emperors – appears in the early fourteenth-century bookcatalogue made when Henry of Eastry (d.1331) was prior.10 Cranston 1117’s contents and structure have been catalogued by Neil Ker, and further clarified by Charity Scott-Stokes and Chris Given-Wilson, who edited the local continuation of the Brut.11 To date, these are the only scholars to have studied the manuscr ipt. Scott-Stokes and Given-Wilson have made the case for a Christ Church Canterbury provenance as convincingly as possible in light of the evidence.12 Their main grounds are the representation of the priory’s interests among the texts and the underlining of certain passages by early readers. Unusually, the argument for the provenance of the manuscript is bound up with that of authorship, because the author of the Brut continuation, and (probably) the concluding sections of three of the other texts, appears to have been one of the scribes.13 There are several other hands, of varying scribal competence, and the editors reasonably see this as evidence for production in the scriptorium of a religious house. This production was, it seems, simultaneous, or nearly so, for some of the hands appear in more than one section of the manuscript, and a later fourteenth-century date is suitable for all of them on palaeographical grounds. (Cranston 1117 is not, in other words, a Sammelband.) While entertaining the possibility that the continuation, and the manuscript, could be from Rochester, and that the author of the continuation THE MARGINAL DRAWINGS IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY CRANSTON MS 1117 155 might have been a secular clerk rather than a monk, they thought a Christ Church Canterbury provenance and monastic authorship ‘the most likely conclusion’. They were thus content to keep the name Anonymi Cantuariensis (‘Anonymous of Canterbury’) given to the continuator by its previous editor, James Tait. As suggested below, the case for a Christ Church Canterbury provenance appears to be further strengthened by some of the drawings. The continuation, or chronicle, of Anonymous of Canterbury is the unique source for certain historical events, and was worth re-editing because prior transcripts were based on a later, incomplete copy of the text.14 Scott-Stokes and Given- Wilson had the manuscript deposited in Cambridge University Library in 2004, to make work on it easier, and asked the author of this article for an opinion of its drawings. At the time, and from an art-historical angle, he considered the drawings of little interest, but he has since changed his mind about this.15 It remains true that, as noted, their artistic quality is low, but there is a growing tendency to look past amateurish handling when gauging the value of medieval images. Today, the job of investigating the artistry and distribution of the drawings, the choices they represent, and the relationship of Cranston 1117 to other illustrated chronicles from late medieval England looks worthwhile in the interests of understanding the manuscript as an object that was valuable to its owners both intrinsically and as a source of hard evidence. A word, finally, about the order in which the drawings are tackled here. A detailed catalogue raisonné is not required: some of the drawings will support very little attention. The main goals of reviewing the drawings are first, to suggest how they might have made the manuscript more edifying or enjoyable to use, in ways that admit their limitations as evidence, and second, to explain points of special historical and iconographic interest, all without repetition or undue lingering on minor details. With this in mind, the most efficient approach is to start by taking the drawings in order of appearance, but then discuss the occurrence, distribution and significance of different types of image (e.g. crowned heads, crosses) as they arise and where it is convenient to do so. In order to give a clear picture of quantity and distribution, a summary list of the drawings plus any text obviously associated with them is included as an Appendix. To make the essay more digestible, subheadings have been added at convenient points, but these are not meant to suggest any meaningful division among the drawings. Drawings in the papal history The first and longest of Cranston 1117’s texts is a copy of Bernard of Gui’s Cathalogus pontificum Romanorum. It is a compilation of material from various chronicles and contains much more than papal biography. Thus, the first two of the eleven drawings it contains, both representing crowned heads, relate to episodes in the lives of early Frankish rulers (fols 35r, 43r). They were added by the rubricator who worked in tandem with the scribe. The incidents to which the heads and their accompanying notes draw attention both involve ominous visions, and, as such, are the sort of thing late medieval monks might have been interested in. However, neither is plainly relevant to Kent, or England for that matter, and so it seems impossible to explain why these incidents were singled out for attention when many JULIAN LUXFORD 156 others of similar potential were not. This evokes the general caution, worth making at the outset, that any attempt to understand the interests of the makers and users of manuscripts on the basis of unsystematic marginalia should consider what was overlooked. Clearly, the point of doing so is not to try to explain absences, but only to temper any unguarded assumption that marginalia like those of Cranston 1117 provide anything like a definitive picture of such interests. In this case, one might guess that the vision of Charles Martel suffering in hell was singled out by a monk because it was revealed to another monk (St Eucherius); but this would not explain why, for instance, the death of the Venerable Bede (also a saint, and English, as well as a monk), reported lower down on the same page, was not noticed. A different methodological point, evoked by this reference to monastic interests, is that explanation of manuscript imagery on the basis of assumptions about provenance is inherently risky. For present purposes, this can only be acknowledged: for the avoidance of doubt, it may be underlined that the assumption of Kentish monastic provenance for Cranston 1117 which guides interpretation here is informed by strong, if not incontrovertible, evidence. Thus, it seems reasonable to think that the next drawing, of a tonsured figure covered in hair, was added because the text at which it points was sympathetic to monastic principles (fol. 46r) (Fig. 1). The reader is given an account of the eighth-century Burgundian saint Gangulphus, who gave up riches and worldly power to live as a hermit and was eventually martyred for his faith. Bias of another kind may underlie the relatively large drawing (17 lines, or 80 mm, high) of a pope on fol. 53r (Fig. 2). This marks an account of the fictional Pope Joan, who is called John IX and an Englishman (‘Iohannes ix nacione anglicus’), inserted between Leo IV (d.855) and Benedict III. Englishness probably governed the decision to draw, because this is the only illustration of a pope in the text. An account of the sorcery of Sylvester II (d.1003) is illustrated, but with a devil’s head rather than a pope’s, and a marginal instruction to ‘note how Pope Sylvester gave himself up to the devil’ (fol. 62r). This devil’s head is the first of three grotesque images inspired by opportunities to illustrate strange and bizarre things. The other two are found one above the other on fol. 65r in the form of a head with three faces, labelled ‘Gigans’ (‘Giant’), and a figure with two heads and four arms, labelled ‘Monstrum’ (which can mean both a monstrous creature and an omen) (Fig. 3). The first refers to the supposed discovery in Rome of the gigantic, embalmed body of Pallas, a hero of the Aeneid. As it was found in a cavernous tomb, the artist has surrounded it with a shaded arch. Nothing in the text justifies the representation of three faces rather than one. However, giants were occasionally represented with three faces: there is an example among the socalled fabulous races in an English bestiary made c.1270-90.16 Some such source evidently gave the artist the idea that a giant’s head could be distinguished from one of ordinary size – a distinction that would not otherwise appear in an amateur artist’s marginal drawing – by treating it in this odd way. This is evidence for a relatively sophisticated knowledge of images on the artist’s part. By contrast, the drawing of a two-headed figure below it need not have been based on anything except the text. This describes a woman, ‘or rather two women’, born with two heads, four arms, and double of everything down to the navel, but all as normal from the waist down to the feet. The account, here assigned to the time of Pope Victor II (1055-57), and tacitly reliant on a longer report by THE MARGINAL DRAWINGS IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY CRANSTON MS 1117 157 William of Malmesbury (d.c.1143), is of conjoined twins born in western France, but the story was transposed to England by another twelfth-century writer and is associated with that of the so-called Biddenden Maids.17 Awareness of this local case – Biddenden is about ten miles west of Ashford – may help to account for the drawing. The interest of such things in a Kentish (and monastic) milieu is further suggested by a marginal drawing done by a monk of St Augustine’s abbey in a copy of the Polychronicon (Cambridge University Library MS Ii.2.24, fol. 118r) to illustrate an account of conjoined female twins from Gascony. This image from St Augustine’s has less detail, showing only a sort of Janus-head with two faces, but the accompanying caption also refers to the twins as ‘monstrous’ (in neither case was this word taken from the chronicle text).18 Fig. 1 Figure, in profile, of a contorted, tonsured figure, appa rently covered in hair. Brown and red ink. JULIAN LUXFORD 158 Fig. 2 Standing figure of a pope, in robes and tiara, in three- quarter profile. Brown and red ink. THE MARGINAL DRAWINGS IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY CRANSTON MS 1117 159 Fig. 3 Grotesque head with three faces. Brown ink. Labelled ‘G igans’. (below) Figure of a woman with two heads and four arms. Labelled ‘Monstrum’. Brown ink with yellow tint. JULIAN LUXFORD 160 On fol. 78v there is a simpler image, representing an upright forearm and fist clutching a horizontal red spear. A box underneath it has ‘de passagio ultramarino’, a reference to the Third Crusade (1188) (Fig. 4). Clearly, this drawing is more abstract in relation to the text than those described above. It is by a different artist, who may have known other examples of this sort of allusion. It is superficially similar to the pictorial symbols devised by Ralph Diceto (d.c.1202) to identify subject-types in his chronicles.19 But the combination of two elements (arm and spear) plus the attached box with its written label, more nearly resembles certain hybrid symbols used by Matthew Paris in the margins of his Chronica Majora, or – a closer comparison – some of the symbols devised by exchequer clerks at Westminster from the later thirteenth century on as a way of encapsulating the subject-matter of collections of documents.20 The drawing may be more ingenious in relation to the text than appears at first sight. In the adjacent passage, it is mentioned that the crusaders took ‘the sign of the cross’ (‘signo crucis’): this term corresponds to the Tau-form of the drawing and may have influenced it. A simpler drawing of a Latin cross appears in relation to a later crusade on fol. 231v. A few leaves further on, on fol. 81v, are two full-length figures of tonsured clerics (Fig. 5). The larger of them is not in the ink of the text and hence may have added by a reader rather than a maker of the manuscript. It represents a frowning monk, holding a book and pointing out a particular place in the text. This text is about a mission of twelve Cistercian abbots to the south of France to preach the faith against Catharism. The figure points exactly to the word ‘fidem’, and the book may be taken as symbolic of both religious orthodoxy and the act of preaching. Conveniently, the white of the parchment ground corresponds to that of the Cistercian habit. The other, smaller, figure is in the ink of the text. It also has a book, plus the knotted cord that identifies it as a Franciscan. Located in the bottom right-hand corner of the page, and pointing towards the right, it directs attention to an account of the foundation of the Franciscan and Dominican orders that begins above it and continues onto fol. 82r. One cannot tell whether it was intended to represent St Francis specifically. The artist could easily have clarified this with a label or halo had it been thought to matter. Saints represented by marginal imagery usually have halos but need not do so. This is indicated by marginal drawings of St Dominic and St Francis in an early fifteenth-century copy of the Polychronicon (also inserted to mark the foundation of their orders: Oxford, Magdalen College Fig. 4 A vertical forearm and fist, the latter clutching a red spear hor izontally. Surmounting a box with the note ‘de passagio ultramarino’. Brown and red ink. THE MARGINAL DRAWINGS IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY CRANSTON MS 1117 161 Fig. 5 Figure of a cowled, tonsured monk, frowning and holding a book. Grey ink. (in tail-margin) Figure of a Franciscan friar, cowled and tonsured, with knotted cord around waist, holding a book. Brown ink JULIAN LUXFORD 162 MS 190, fol. 228r): neither has a halo but they are labelled ‘Sanctus Dominicus’ and ‘Sanctus Franciscus’ respectively. Drawings in the vitae of the archbishops of Canterbury and the Brut There is only one drawing in the chronicle of Roman emperors that follows the catalogue of popes, a small red cross to mark the battle of the Milvian Bridge (ad 312), where Constantine I had his famous vision of the cross (fol. 129r). This is one of four red-ink crosses in Cranston 1117, each of different form and significance. As already mentioned, one of these, on fol. 231v, marks an account of crusading in a later section of Cranston 1117. The other two are found in the third text, the anonymous Vitae archiepiscoporum Cantuariensium. One distinguishes an account of Pope John XXII’s deposition of Simon of Mepham and his elevation to archbishop of John Stratford from the see of Winchester (fol. 153v). It has three transverse arms, or bars (or two, with a stroke of the pen at the top), and was probably meant for a papal rather than archiepiscopal cross. The other is a larger drawing on fol. 171v of a cross with two arms (or one arm and a stroke of the pen at the top). This refers to an agreement made in 1353 according to which an archbishop of York could carry his cross erect in the Province of Canterbury under certain conditions, one being that he give a gold image of an archbishop, worth £40, to the shrine of St Thomas of Canterbury in the presence of the prior, subprior or some other monastic official (fol. 171v). The other four drawings among the lives of the archbishops are figure-busts. One is of a scholar, as it wears a skullcap and is combined with a note of ‘aula Oxoniensis’ in red: the text is about Archbishop Islip’s foundation of Canterbury Hall at the university in the early 1360s (fol. 173v). Otherwise, the busts have to do with plagues and the social disasters they caused. Two of the busts have conical hats, one referring to the onset of the Black Death, the other to the second wave of the plague in 1360 (fols 170v, 172v).21 The first is the more detailed: neck and face are enclosed in a sort of wimple and the hat is red with a cross on top (Fig. 6). Under the drawing, and attached to it so that it forms part of the same composition, is the note in red ink, ‘De prima mortalitate gentium’ (‘the first great mortality of the people’). These details, and the fact the drawing was done by someone who had lived through the first and second plagues, encourage the idea that the costume is in some way authentic. The fact that conical hats were thought symbolic of mass mortality is clarified by the appearance of a third such bust later on in Cranston 1117, next to a report of the great famine of 1315 (fol. 242v). The fourth bust in this section of the manuscript wears a mitre, and also appears on fol. 172v (Fig. 7). It marks a list of seven bishops of English and Welsh sees who died during the second plague, together with the names of their successors. This drawing is carefully and rather skilfully done: its lines are fluid enough to suggest a confident draftsman, and patches of red ink have been smudged onto the cheeks. To the art historian, at least, it evokes a head-shrine like that of St Thomas of Canterbury, although there is no evidence it was influenced by one. It has a smaller, less carefully drawn counterpart on fol. 269r, where the list is repeated. As noted above, the Brut chronicle in Cranston 1117 comes in two slightly overlapping parts, with Anonymous of Canterbury’s continuation making a third THE MARGINAL DRAWINGS IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY CRANSTON MS 1117 163 section. This continuation has the largest number of drawings of any section (twenty-one), while the two parts of the Brut have twelve between them. The Brut, which chronicled the kings of England from the first of them (the legendary Brutus, great grandson of the Trojan prince Aeneas), has survived in more English medieval copies than almost any other text.22 It was not usually illustrated, although some manuscripts have a crowned head representing Brutus in a margin at or near the beginning, and accounts of other kings may be emphasised in the same way. As noted already, schematic images of historic towns (London, York, Leicester, Canterbury, Winchester, Shaftesbury etc.) were also sometimes included. Fig. 6 Head in profile with conical red hat topped by a cross. B rown and red ink. Surmounting a box with the note ‘De prima mortalitatem gentium’ (‘the first great mortality of the people’). JULIAN LUXFORD 164 The history-book from Rochester mentioned above (Cotton MS Nero D. II, fols 2r-214r) has both types of image. Brutus is shown on fol. 14v, other kings on fols 19r, 20v, 21v, 22v etc., and cities on fols 18r, 20v-21v, and subsequently.23 By contrast, the Brut imagery in Cranston 1117 is idiosyncratic. The text starts with a crowned head, but of the king of Greece (so-called) rather than Brutus (fol. 176r). It has a label that reads ‘The king of Greece with thirty daughters’ (‘De Rege Grecie habente triginta filiabus’). This is because the text begins with a prologue which explains how Britain was originally populated by giants, the offspring of thirty Greek princesses who, exiled by their father, had mated with demons.24 No more kings are illustrated after this, and none of the cities either. The next image is a small, swaddled figure of Christ, coupled with a manicule and a rubric ‘De nativitate Jesu Christi’ (fol. 183v) (Fig. 8). Here, the chronicler interrupted his account of the British king Kembelyn to mention a momentous event that was worth illustrating both for its own sake and because it helped readers to orientate themselves in a narrative containing very few dates. This brings one to the most unusual image in Cranston 1117, which is also the largest and most technically accomplished (fol. 202r: Fig. 9). As Neil Ker pointed Fig. 7 Bust with a mitre, in three-quarter profile, looking at a djacent text. Brown and red ink. THE MARGINAL DRAWINGS IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY CRANSTON MS 1117 165 Fig. 8 An upright, swaddled figure and a manicule of roughly the same h eight. Red and brown ink. out, the leaf it occupies is a later insertion. The style of script and image both show that this leaf was added in the fifteenth century. Nothing is missing from the text, from which it would appear that the existing leaf replaced one that was somehow damaged. Such a leaf may or may not have included a version of the image, which represents an archer with a drawn bow, standing on top of a high Gothic pedestal and aiming his arrow into the text right where the murder of King Edmund Ironside (d.1016) is described. The whole image is in red ink, but not that of the textJULIAN LUXFORD 166 Fig. 9 A figure of an archer set on a tall Gothic pedestal: the archer ’s bow is drawn to take aim (as it were) at a passage of the text. Large (about 90mm high). Red ink: partially lost by cropping of the inserted leaf. rubrics. Rather, it is in the ink also used for the flourishing of a large initial that marks a chapter-division on the same page, and was pretty obviously inserted by the practiced calligrapher responsible for this flourishing. This fact makes it likely that the monk responsible for commissioning the new leaf (perhaps the precentor) asked that the image be included. It seems unlikely that the flourisher would have been reading the text or that he would have acted on his own initiative in this regard. Whatever the circumstances, the iconography was an odd and remarkable choice. For what the drawing shows is not an actual archer but, as the pedestal THE MARGINAL DRAWINGS IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY CRANSTON MS 1117 167 implies, a work of sculpture, and more specifically an automaton, designed to fire a deadly arrow when touched. The text frankly describes the drawing’s subject: ‘a beautiful image resembling an archer, holding in his hand a visibly bent bow with an arrow’ (‘unam pulcherimam ymaginem ad modum sagittarij in manu sua tenentem arcum extentum visibiliter cum sagitta’): the beauty of the object is reflected with apparent purpose in the quality of the drawing. Beguiled, the king touched the machine, with the inevitable result. The story is one of several medieval explanations of how Edmund Ironside died, and this appears to be the only known image of it.25 Indeed, the iconography of this king seems to be largely restricted to crowns in royal genealogies, although Matthew Paris depicted him doing battle with Canute, and also enthroned and with a shield covering his sinister side in allusion to his sobriquet.26 It is also a rare medieval attempt to represent an automaton.27 Possibly, if he did not take his cue from an earlier image on the discarded fol. 202, the artist had in mind a three-dimensional image he had seen, or – perhaps more likely – another flat image in a book. 28 Shortly after this come two drawings which testify to an enthusiasm for St Edward the Confessor that was typical of Benedictine monks. The first, on fol. 205v, takes the form of an oblong box with three rows of short, vertical marks on it and a large white disk hanging below from a tag (Fig. 10). This is intended to signify a written document with a seal attached. The drawing is neither complex Fig. 10 An oblong motif covered in small vertical strokes with a disc h anging from it by a tag. Represents a sealed charter. Brown ink with yellow tint. JULIAN LUXFORD 168 nor unusual: sealed charters were shown fairly often in medieval manuscripts.29 The interest here is mainly due to its collocation with a significant text that was composed and preserved at Canterbury, and also for the indication it gives of special concern – particularly comprehensible on the part of scribes – with written records. In the lower margin of the page, under the Brut’s account of Edward the Confessor (d.1066), a passage has been added to explain that this king was the first to seal charters with wax as a witness to their authenticity. The source for this addition was a short chronicle of English kings written by Gervase of Canterbury (d.c.1210), a Christ Church monk now famous for his account of the fire that destroyed the east end of the cathedral in 1174. The text in Cranston 1117 is practically identical to that found in the surviving manuscript of Gervase’s chronicle: the only difference is in the order of a couple of words.30 Possibly, the scribe of Cranston was working with a different, now lost, copy, or perhaps he introduced the variations himself. This, in any case, is further evidence in favour of a Christ Church provenance for the Cranston manuscript. The second drawing to do with Edward the Confessor comes up immediately afterwards, at the top of fol. 206r (Fig. 11). It is of a sprocket-like object, done in blue ink and a yellowish wash, with the label ‘de anulo Regis’ (‘the king’s ring’). This is a semblance of the ring given by St John the Evangelist to Edward (a Fig. 11 A ring with five points, or teeth, three of them with motifs atta ched, apparently intended to suggest pearls and a precious stone. Blue ink with yellow wash. THE MARGINAL DRAWINGS IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY CRANSTON MS 1117 169 famous miracle-story): the adjacent text notes that the king gave it to the abbot of Westminster, who put it with his abbey’s relics. It has been carefully done to show precious stones or pearls mounted in protruding collets, as they were on some showy medieval rings.31 Possibly, it was based on acquaintance with one of the rings of St Edward (there were two) kept with the other holy relics at Westminster.32 More likely, it reflects in some way a ring closer to home. Christ Church had a large collection of special rings, including three with black sapphires which belonged to the shrine of St Thomas.33 The drawing appears to include a black stone. The other images in the Brut can be mentioned more briefly. A red cross on fol. 231v has already been noticed, and an equally simple motif was drawn on fol. 213v, where a red arrow appears next to an account of the accidental death of King William II (1100). On fol. 238r there is a basic drawing of a standing figure in white habit and hood, with red ink smudged on the face and hands. An associated marginal rubric reads ‘de fratris minoribus’, although the figure does not have the knotted cord shown on fol. 81v. But the text is about a great sum of money – 40,000 gold florins and more – paid by the Franciscan order to the pope in 1299 to enable it to own real estate. The drawing may thus have had the polemical purpose of emphasising Franciscan interest in lucre: the presence of anti-fraternal verses written inside the front cover of Cranston 1117 supports this idea.34 The other four drawings are all single busts or heads. Two of them relate to events of special interest to Christ Church. Of these, the first, in red ink, represents a knight, and is accompanied by a heading ‘the knights who murdered blessed Thomas’ (‘de militibus qui interfecerunt beatam Thomam’: fol. 217v). The text names these four men and explains how the saint’s death was followed by dreadful portents. The second is a mitred bust, also in red, with the accompanying rubric ‘De priore Cantuariensis’ (fol. 226v). In this case, the text is about the forced resignation (here dated 1238) of the prior of Christ Church Canterbury – John of Chatham, though not personally named – and his subsequent entry into the Carthusian order.35 The other two heads are a grotesque red one next to a notice in the text about Saladin and the fall of Jerusalem in 1187, evidently meant for Saladin or his forces collectively (fol. 218r), and a small, hooded face with a label ‘contra religiosos’ (‘against religious men’) next to mention of the first statute of Mortmain (here dated 1280, correctly 1279), which outlawed the acquisition of land by the Church (fol. 234r). The label may purposely reflect the official title of the statute, De viris religiosis. Drawings in Anonymous of Canterbury’s continuation of the Brut Of the twenty-one drawings in the Brut continuation, ten are of crowned busts, eight relating to kings and two to queens. These busts are clearly associated by marginal notes and collocation with specific rulers or realms mentioned in the text. Their number reflects the chronicler’s interest in contemporary affairs, especially the claim of Edward III to the French throne and the earlier phases of the Hundred Years’ War. On fol. 247r there is a crowned head with two faces in profile, with the note ‘Generatio regum ffrancie’ (‘Genealogy of the kings of France’: Fig. 12). The text at this point, much underlined by an early reader, spells out Edward III’s claim by virtue of direct descent from Philip IV. This account of kings past and JULIAN LUXFORD 170 present, and future royal entitlement, explains the choice of a Janus-type head which embodies an idea of retrospect and prospect: this idea is also expressed where a two-faced image is used to personify the month of January in medieval liturgical calendars.36 The motif is not usually found in relation to genealogy. After this, the busts refer to specific rulers and their affairs. Two signify coronation, Philippa of Hainault’s as queen of England in 1330 (fol. 247v) and that of Charles V of France in 1364 (fol. 272r). In the latter, a hand holding the crown over the head Fig. 12 Crowned bust with two faces looking in opposite directions. Red and brown ink, yellow tint. THE MARGINAL DRAWINGS IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY CRANSTON MS 1117 171 has been added to clarify the meaning. Philippa’s bust is combined with a notice of her coronation that was accidentally left out of the main text and written in the margin: a hash symbol indicates the omission. The image may owe its existence to the scribe’s wish to advertise and offset what he considered an important mistake. Such ‘remedial’ images were added to compensate for scribal errors fairly often in late medieval English manuscripts.37 Another two busts mark out royal deaths, i.e., of Philip VI of France in 1351 (fol. 254r) and Isabella of France, Edward III’s mother, in 1358 (fol. 258v). Philip’s bust, in profile, is labelled ‘de morte P. Valoys’, rather than ‘rex Francie’, due to the chronicler’s recognition of Edward III as the proper king. Isabella, a daughter of Philip IV of France, mattered to the chronicler because her marriage to Edward II was the basis of her son’s claim to the French crown. Her bust, feminised by the addition of a wimple with the crown worn over it (as is Philippa of Hainault’s), is more deliberately expressive than the others (Fig. 13). Located in the outer top corner of the page, it is turned upwards and away from the text. If this pose was meant to be significant, and was not Fig. 13 Crowned bust, with a wimple, in three-quarter profile, looking upwards and to the left. Brown and red ink. JULIAN LUXFORD 172 simply a way of making the bust more interesting to look at in relation to others shown frontally or in profile, then it might be taken to refer to the migration of the queen’s soul from the earthly realm to the spiritual.38 The busts of the outgoing prior of Canterbury on fol. 226v and the departing John II on fol. 260v (see below) also face away from the text, as does that of the Becket-murderer on fol. 217v, where the adjacent text says that all four of the murderers were dead within four years of their crime. These examples encourage the unexpected idea that the artists intended to signify departure by orientating faces away from the text.39 Four of the crowned busts relate to the presence of foreign monarchs in England. In three instances, the ruler is John II of France, in whom the chronicler had a special interest. John’s arrival in London as a captive of the Battle of Poitiers is marked out by a frontal bust combined with a heading in red declaring ‘The arrival in London of the king of France’ (‘De adventu regis ffrancie Londoniensis’: fol. 256v). This arrival, which was also a triumphal entry for the Black Prince and other war heroes, was a pompous event, and attracted another drawing in the form of a small, hooded head, drawing attention to a passage about beautiful girls sprinkling gold leaf upon the captives. John II’s departure from England via Canterbury in 1360 is also marked by a crowned bust (fol. 260v): here, the text relates how the king gave a beautiful jewel worth 200 marks to St Thomas’s shrine in the cathedral and a jewelled brooch or buckle (‘nowche’) to the image of the Virgin in the crypt. The other bust relating to John is on fol. 271v – a page with three drawings on it – where his subsequent arrival in England in 1363, including a brief sojourn at Canterbury, is noticed (Fig. 14). On the following page (fol. 272r), the reception of his body at the cathedral and his exequies there are mentioned. Knowledge of these events, and the interest shown in them, are some of the best evidence for a Christ Church origin for the chronicle.40 The other bust signalling a foreign ruler’s presence in England also relates to Canterbury. It, too, is on fol. 271v, drawn next to an account of the visit of King Peter of Cyprus in 1363. Peter came to seek Edward III’s help to expel the ‘Saraceni et Turci’ who had taken his lands; the visit began with a stay in the city of Canterbury, and ended with his departure about six weeks later, which is also mentioned.41 But the same page has a drawing more specifically related to the interests of Christ Church than perhaps any other in the manuscript. This represents the shrine of St Thomas, as a gabled box with a lattice-patterned roof and finials in the form of crosses and a fleur-de-lis (Fig. 14). The vertical elevation is curtained with pleated drapery, and the whole is elevated on three legs above an undulating ground. The drapery is competently handled, and, unlike the bust of John II above it, the drawing may not be by the scribe. It stands next to the passage about John’s stay in Canterbury on route to London, which helps to identify the shrine for what it is. Effectively, the drawing belongs to a composition of signs that also includes the bust and a marginal rubric ‘de rege ffrancie’. As such, it recalls the honour and generosity shown by John to the shrine that is noted on fol. 260v. This seems the best way to account for the appearance of the image on fol. 271v, rather than at one of the points where the shrine is actually mentioned (as it is on fols 171v, 260v and 273r). The accuracy of this drawing is hard to assess, although probably it conveys little solid information. Of course, one should not expect forensic accuracy in a drawing like this. Marginal imagery usually presents its viewers with symbols and THE MARGINAL DRAWINGS IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY CRANSTON MS 1117 173 Fig. 14 Crowned bust, frontal, depicting French King John II. Brown and red ink. Accompanying marginal note (rubric): De Rege ffrancie’. (below) Shrine, mounted of three legs on an undulating ground. The vertical sides are draped, with a cross at each end of roof and fleur-de-lis crest at the centre. Brown ink with yellow tint. JULIAN LUXFORD 174 impressions rather than visual documents: one is struck by the difference that comes over Matthew Paris’s art when, on occasion, he draws for forensic purposes.42 The most one can reasonably look for in the Cranston drawing is an idea of the shrine informed by personal acquaintance with the object itself. The challenge is how to get at any information it might contain. As conventional indicators of elevation above ground, the undulations and three legs – things the shrine cannot have had – are insignificant. The shrine itself, rather than its substructure, was what interested the artist. But there is a lack of stable comparisons for what he shows. Frustratingly little is known about the actual appearance of St Thomas’s shrine, and nothing about the cover used to protect it.43 The most detailed images are embodied by base-metal ‘pilgrim-badges’ of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but these differ among themselves, and it is uncertain how reliable they are as witnesses. A couple of badges made during the same period as the Cranston manuscript also include a latticed roof. However, they purport to show the actual reliquary, whereas the gabled structure in the drawing, with its curtains and large finials, is likely an attempt to evoke the covered shrine. One is inclined to think that the curtains, at least, were simply adopted by the artist to evoke the mystery and hiddenness of the relics. Altar-blocks – which, like shrines, held relics – are shown similarly draped in some manuscripts, conveying an idea of occult sanctity as well as liturgically suitable dress.44 The artist may simply have followed a pictorial convention. Yet the possibility that he was guided by more than convention makes the Cranston drawing worth study alongside the other visual evidence for the shrine. To round out the picture of the visual interests of the manuscript’s makers, and of the manuscript’s value as a resource for the study of historiographical illustration, three more drawings in the continuation may be briefly mentioned. The first comes near the beginning, on fol. 243r, and shows a gallows in red ink with a figure in brown ink hanging from it. This refers to an account of the 1321 siege of Leeds castle, near Maidstone, by forces loyal to Edward II, and the execution by hanging of twelve members of the garrison after its capture (Fig. 15). The single figure is pars pro toto for the unlucky twelve. This is an unusual example in the Cranston manuscript of an attempt to summarise an event (as opposed to a person or thing) described in the text. Otherwise, only the archer on fol. 202r, and perhaps the monk on fol. 81v and swaddled Christ child on fol. 183v, are of this narrative sort. As a response to its textual subject, it is not unique in English medieval art. In his Chronica Majora, Matthew Paris drew a more detailed image of several men hanging on a similarly constructed gallows beside Bedford castle, referring to the execution of its garrison by royal forces in 1224.45 While it is extremely unlikely that the Cranston artist knew Matthew’s drawing, he also found the execution of a garrison pathetic enough to want to illustrate it. Unlike many of their late medieval contemporaries, the artists of Cranston 1117 did not try their hands at drawing architecture. The single exception – unless one counts the shrine drawing – is an image of a tower labelled ‘Caleys’ on fol. 253v, next to a notice of the siege of Calais by the English in 1346 (Fig. 16). In outline, this tower looks more like a table ornament (e.g., a covered cup with wide base) than a building. But its details expose a wish to encapsulate the ‘castle and town’ mentioned by the chronicler. One can recognise in it a barred gate, door with large hinges, battlements, machicolations and a gabled roof, set on an THE MARGINAL DRAWINGS IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY CRANSTON MS 1117 175 undulating base touched with blue to reflect a coastal setting. A hybrid motif of this sort was one way that a marginal artist could summarise a range of concepts in spite of limited space. Another was the collocation of two or more different motifs which added up to something contextually meaningful. This has already been suggested of the combination of crowned bust, rubric and shrine on fol. 271v, and there are franker examples of it on fols 248r and 263v. The latter is simply a crown plus (crude) fleur-de-lis, to signify the realm and kingship of France. The example on fol. 248r is more iconographically interesting and more revealing of contemporary thought. Here, the chronicler announces the birth of Edward of Woodstock (the Black Prince), the first son of King Edward III. There are two drawn motifs, i.e., a swaddled infant above a bust in profile with a black hood and a leering, surprised or enthusiastic face (Fig. 17). A marginal rubric states ‘De ortu domini Principis Wallie’ (‘The birth of the lord Prince of Wales’). One can tell by overlapping layers of ink that this was written before the bust, and by extension the infant, were added. A thin line was drawn to connect the two motifs to each other and to the rubric: one thus has a little clutch of signifiers united in a cause of common signification. Individually, the most curious thing here is the bust, which represents a stereotyped Welshman. This identification must be correct, as the text Fig. 15 Gallows, in the form of a yoke supported in the forked ends of two upright poles, with a figure hanging on it. Gallows in red ink, figure in brown. JULIAN LUXFORD 176 Fig. 16 A tower with gable, battlements, a hinged door, and rocks at the bottom. Brown, red and blue ink with yellow tint. Accompanying marginal label (rubric): ‘Caleys’ (Calais). provides no other candidate. Indeed, the chronicle does not mention Wales at all; this only happens in the rubric. Again, the bust is a pars pro toto, and the meaning of the whole is, clearly, that the infant is the prince of the Welsh. The pictorial stereotyping of Welsh people, along with Scots, Irish, and indeed of other ethnic and racial groups, is a sub-theme of manuscript imagery in the period, and has already come up in Cranston 1117 (fol. 218r). Other examples are found in some of the Exchequer documents mentioned previously, and in a range of historical and literary contexts including the history-book from Rochester also previously mentioned.46 THE MARGINAL DRAWINGS IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY CRANSTON MS 1117 177 Fig. 17 A swaddled infant, lying down, above a bust in a coif with a pea ked hood, in profile, looking at the text. The two motifs are connected by thin lines. Brown ink. Conclusion The general tendency to underrate images of the sort found in Cranston 1117 is partly due to the notion that they were included as a sort of punctuation or underlining exercise which did not distinctively enhance the processes of making and using books. Partly, too, it is – or has been until recently – a matter of how such drawings look. For reasons endemic to their methods, art historians, who are the accepted experts on manuscript imagery, have not devoted much attention to nonprofessional manuscript illustration. This is perfectly reasonable, as drawings like JULIAN LUXFORD 178 those studied here can add little or nothing to knowledge of the development and chronology of art as art is commonly understood. Historians of other stripes have also avoided them, either because they do not rate non-written sources as evidence, or because they feel unqualified to analyse images, or simply because they are sufficiently occupied with other things. Against this background, the reasonably detailed view offered by this essay suggests, at least, that images of this sort do in fact have the potential to inform knowledge in various ways. Perhaps most importantly, they can enrich the available view of a medieval book by shedding light on the concerns and knowledge of those who made it (or, if they are added drawings, those who used it). This is certainly true of the Cranston manuscript, which emerges from scrutiny of its images as a more interesting artefact as well as a more useful historical resource. APPENDIX: List of the fifty-one drawings in Cranston Library, Item 1117. Unless indicated, the drawings appear to be partially or wholly in the ink of the adjacent text or rubrication. All but one (fol. 81v) are in side margins. Cross-references to relevant page-numbers in the recent edition of the chronicle of Anonymous of Canterbury are given for the drawings which occur after fol. 251v. Most abbreviated Latin words are silently expanded: original capitalisation is retained. [Chronicle of the popes] 1. Fol. 35r. Crowned head, frontal. Red ink with yellow tint. Accompanying marginal note: ‘Nota de visione regis per sompnium’. Text is about a marvel seen by a servant while Guntram, king of the Franks (d.592), was sleeping on his lap. 2. Fol. 43r. Crowned head, frontal, in basic outline. Red ink with yellow tint. Accompanying marginal note: ‘Nota de rege dampnato’. Text is about a vision in which St Eucherius of Orleans saw Charles Martel, king of the Franks (d.741), suffering in hell. 3. Fol. 46r. Figure, in profile, of a contorted, tonsured figure, apparently covered in hair. Brown and red ink. Points to a passage in the text about St Gangulphus of Burgundy (d.760), martyr, a wealthy courtier who renounced the world to live as a hermit (Fig. 1). 4. Fol. 53r. Standing figure of a pope, in robes and tiara, in three-quarter profile. Large (17 lines high). Brown and red ink. Marks an account of the fictional Pope Joan, here called John IX and an Englishman (‘Iohannes ix nacione anglicus’) (Fig. 2). 5. Fol. 62r. Grotesque horned head, apparently with three faces. Brown ink. Accompanying marginal note: ‘Nota qualiter papa silvester tradidit se diaboli.’ Text is about how Pope Sylvester II (d. 1003) surrendered himself to the devil by practicing sorcery. THE MARGINAL DRAWINGS IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY CRANSTON MS 1117 179 6. Fol. 65r. Grotesque head with three faces. Brown ink. Labelled ‘Gigans’. Text is about the discovery in a cavern in Rome of the incorrupt body of the giant Pallas (associate of Aeneas), with a wound 4ft 6in. long in his breast (Fig. 3). 7. Fol. 65r. Figure of a woman with two heads and four arms. Brown ink with yellow tint. Labelled ‘Monstrum’. Text is about the appearance on the borders of Normandy and Brittany of ‘one or rather two women’, with two heads, four arms and two of everything else down to the waist, but below this, everything as normal (Fig. 3). 8. Fol. 78v. A vertical forearm and fist, the latter clutching a red spear horizontally. Surmounting a box with the note ‘de passagio ultramarino’. Brown and red ink. Text is about the instigation of the Third Crusade in 1188 (Fig. 4). 9. Fol. 81v. Figure of a cowled, tonsured monk, frowning and holding a book. Grey ink. Points to a passage in the text about the mission of twelve Cistercian abbots against the Albigensian heresy in 1206. Not in the ink of the text and perhaps added by a user of the manuscript (Fig. 5). 10. Fol. 81v. Figure of a Franciscan friar, cowled and tonsured, with knotted cord around waist, holding a book. Brown ink. In tail-margin: points right, indicating the contents of the following page. Text immediately above and at the top of fol. 82r is about the foundation of the Dominican and Franciscan orders (Fig. 5). 11. Fol. 115r. Crowned head, in profile. Brown ink, lightly sketched. Text is about the death of King Edward I and accession of Edward II in 1307. Added by a user of the manuscript. The crown is an imperial crown (closed at the top), which does not enter English art until the fifteenth century. The author believes that the sketch is almost certainly post-medieval. [Chronicle of the Roman emperors] 12. Fol. 129r: Cross, vertical, with a long staff, of Latin (not Chi- or Tau-Rho) form. Red ink. Text is about the Battle of the Milvian Bridge (ad 312), where Constantine I triumphed after having a vision of the cross. [Lives of the archbishops of Canterbury] 13. Fol. 153v. Cross with three transverse arms, or bars, set vertically. Red ink. Accompanying marginal note (rubric): ‘de electione in archiepiscopum sive postulatione’. Text is about the process by which Pope John XXII nominated John de Stratford to the archbishopric of Canterbury in 1333 after Simon Mepham’s excommunication. 14. Fol. 170v. Head in profile with conical red hat topped by a cross. Brown and red ink. Surmounting a box with the note ‘De prima mortalitatem gentium’. Text is about the beginning and effects of the Black Death in 1348 and 1349 (Fig. 6). 15. Fol. 171v. Cross with two transverse arms, meant for an archiepiscopal cross. JULIAN LUXFORD 180 Brown and red ink. Accompanying marginal note (rubric): ‘Pacificatio super crucis baiulatione’. Text is about the settlement in 1353 of an ancient dispute between the archbishops of Canterbury and York about the right of the latter to carry his cross erect in the Province of Canterbury. 16. Fol. 172v. Bust of a figure in a very tall conical hat, in profile, looking left at the rubric heading ‘Pestilencia’. Brown ink, lightly sketched in the inner margin. 17. Fol. 172v. Bust with a mitre, in three-quarter profile, looking at adjacent text. Brown and red ink. The text, headed ‘De morte episcoporum’ in red, is a list of the seven bishops of English and Welsh dioceses killed by the ‘secunda pestilentia’ of 1360 and their successors. The bishop of Rochester is mentioned first (Fig. 7). 18. Fol. 173v. Bust in a scholar’s cap, in profile, facing left (i.e. away from the text). Red and brown ink. Accompanying marginal note (rubric): ‘aula Oxoniensis’. Text is about the foundation ‘around’ 1363 by Archbishop Simon (Islip) of a hall for scholars, called ‘Aula Cantuariensis’ (this name underlined in red). [Brut chronicle, part 1] 19. Fol. 176r. A crowned bust, frontal. Red and brown ink with yellow tint. Accompanying marginal note (rubric): ‘De Rege Grecie habente triginta47 filiabus’. Text is about the banishment of thirty princesses to England, who mated with demons to produce a race of giants. (This text, ‘The origin of the giants’, is often found at the beginning of the prose Brut.) 20. Fol. 183v. An upright, swaddled figure and a manicule of roughly the same height. Red and brown ink. Accompanying marginal note (rubric): ‘De nativitate Jesu Christi’. Text notes the birth of Christ during the reign of the British king Kembelyn (Fig. 8). 21. Fol. 202r. A figure of an archer set on a tall Gothic pedestal: the archer’s bow is drawn to take aim (as it were) at a passage of the text. Large (about 90mm high). Red ink: partially lost by cropping of the leaf. Accompanying marginal note (rubric: partly lost): ‘De dolo con[ficto] Edmundum’.48 Text is about the treacherous murder of King Edmund II (Ironside: d.1016) by an image ingeniously made to shoot an arrow when touched (Fig. 9). 22. Fol. 205v. An oblong motif covered in small vertical strokes with a disc hanging from it by a tag. Represents a sealed charter. Brown ink with yellow tint. ‘Hic rex primo fecit apponi ceram in cartis in testimonium veritatis’. The text (an interpolation from Gervase of Canterbury’s Gesta regum) explains that Edward the Confessor (d.1066) was the first king of England to have wax seals put onto charters as a witness to their truthfulness (Fig. 10). 23. Fol. 206r. A ring with five points, or teeth (it looks like a cog), three of them with motifs attached, apparently intended to suggest pearls and a precious stone. Blue ink with yellow wash. Accompanying marginal note (rubric): ‘de anulo Regis’. Text is about the miraculous reception of a ring by St Edward the Confessor, and his gift of the ring to the abbot of Westminster (Fig. 11). THE MARGINAL DRAWINGS IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY CRANSTON MS 1117 181 [Brut chronicle, part 2] 24. Fol. 213v. Arrow, vertical, point down. Red ink. Text is about the accidental killing of King William II by Walter Tyrell. 25. Fol. 217v. Hooded head, small, in three-quarter profile, looking away from text. The hood is intended for a mail coif. Red ink. Accompanying heading (rubric): ‘de militibus qui interfecerunt beatam Thomam’. The text identifies the four knights who murdered St Thomas of Canterbury. 26. Fol. 218r. A grotesque head in profile, with exaggerated features and some sort of head-covering: stares at text. Red ink. Text is about the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187 and its consequences. 27. Fol. 226v. Mitred bust with a cross over it, small, in three-quarter profile, looking away from text. Red ink. Accompanying marginal note (rubric): ‘De priore Cantuariensis’. Text is about the forced resignation of the prior of Christ Church Canterbury and his subsequent entry into the Carthusian order. The head thus seems intended for John de Chetham, the prior in question. 28. Fol. 231v. Cross, upright. Red ink. Text is about the Eighth Crusade, specifically, the sea-voyage of Prince Edward (future King Edward I), Charles I Anjou, king of Sicily, and the ‘whole Christian army’ to Sicily and Edward’s peril off Tripoli. 29. Fol. 234r. Hooded face in three-quarter profile, looking at text. Brown ink. Accompanying marginal note (rubric): ‘Contra relig’’ (presumably ‘religiosos’, i.e. religious persons). Text is about the first statute of mortmain, here dated 1280. 30. Fol. 238r. Standing figure in cowl with hood up, looking at text; has no arms. Brown ink, but face and head lightly smudged with red ink. Accompanying marginal note (rubric): ‘de fratribus minoribus’. Text, dated 1299, is about an enormous payment made by the Franciscan order to the pope for the tenure of landed property. [Brut chronicle, part 2, continuation: chronicle of Anonymous of Canterbury] 31. Fol. 242v. A head with a tall conical hat, in profile, smile on face, looking away from the text. Brown ink; coupled with a manicule in brown and red ink. Adjacent text notes great mortality and barrenness of corn in England, with corn valued at 30s. per quarter (1315). The deaths of an earl of Warwick and a bishop of Winchester, and the election of the latter’s successor, are also noted here, but the head in conical hat is evidently a symbol of mass mortality (see above, fols 170v, 172v). 32. Fol. 243r. Gallows, in the form of a yoke supported in the forked ends of two upright poles, with a figure hanging on it. Gallows in red ink, figure in brown. Text is about the siege of Leeds castle (Kent) in 1321: the drawing is underneath a passage stating that twelve members of the garrison were hanged when the castle surrendered (Fig. 15). JULIAN LUXFORD 182 33. Fol. 247r. Crowned bust with two faces looking in opposite directions. Red and brown ink, yellow tint. Accompanying marginal note (rubric): ‘Generatio regum ffrancie’. Text notes the death of Charles IV of France in 1328, the succession of Philip VI, and gives the descent of the latter (Fig. 12). 34. Fol. 247v. Crowned bust, with a wimple, frontal. Brown ink. Surmounting a box with the note ‘Et anno dicti Regis quarto fuit dicta regina solempniter coronate die dominica ante carniprivium’. That is, Queen Philippa of Hainault was crowned on the Sunday before the beginning of Lent in the fourth year of Edward III’s reign. 35. Fol. 248r. A swaddled infant, lying down, above a bust in a coif with a pea ked hood, in profile, looking at the text. The two motifs are connected by thin lines. Brown ink. Accompanying marginal note (rubric): ‘De ortu domini Principis Wallie’. Text notes the birth, here dated 1330, of Edmund of Woodstock, the first son of King Edward III (and thus Prince of Wales) (Fig. 17). 36. Fol. 248r. A small bust in profile, evidently in armour, looking at text. Brown ink. Accompanying marginal notes (rubric): ‘de E. Balliol’ and ‘Scocie’. Text is about the invasion of Scotland by Edward Balliol and his army, here dated 1331. 37. Fol. 249v. A red triangular cap, with a border possibly meant to suggest ermine, and tassels. Brown and red ink. Accompanying marginal note (rubric): ‘de recessu Cardinalis’.49 The text is about the negotiations in 1338 of two cardinals with the archbishop of Canterbury and bishop of Durham over Edward III’s invasion of France, and the return of these cardinals to Rome when the negotiations proved fruitless. 38. Fol. 253v. A tower with gable, battlements, a hinged door, and rocks at the bottom. Brown, red and blue ink with yellow tint. Accompanying marginal label (rubric): ‘Caleys’. Text is about the siege of Calais by the English in 1346 (Fig. 16). [Chronicon Anonymi Cantuariensis, pp. 12-13.] 39. Fol. 254r. Crowned bust in profile, looking at text. Brown and red ink with yellow tint. Accompanying marginal note (rubric): ‘de morte P. Valoys’. Texts notes the death of Philip VI of France and succession of John II, both events dated 1351 (correctly, 1350). [Chronicon Anonymi Cantuariensis, pp. 16-17.] 40. Fol. 256v. Crowned bust, frontal. Brown, red and blue ink. Labelled in red on the breast: ‘Rex ffrancie’. Text is about the arrival of the captured French king, John II, in England, and specifically London, in 1357. [Chronicon Anonymi Cantuariensis, pp. 34-35.] 41. Fol. 256v. A small bust in hood or coif, frontal but looking off to the left-hand side. Brown and red ink with yellow tint. Text is about the triumphal parading of the king of France through Cheapside, particularly, the fact that two beautiful young girls sprinkled gold and silver leaf of the procession from a purposebuilt platform. [Chronicon Anonymi Cantuariensis, pp. 36-37.] THE MARGINAL DRAWINGS IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY CRANSTON MS 1117 183 42. Fol. 258v. Crowned bust, with a wimple, in three-quarter profile, looking upwards and to the left. Brown and red ink. Accompanying marginal note (rubric): ‘De morte Regine’. Text reports the death of Isabella of France, the queen mother, in 1358 (Fig. 13). [Chronicon Anonymi Cantuariensis, pp. 46-47.] 43. Fol. 260v. Crowned bust in profile, looking left and inclined downwards. Black and red ink. Accompanying marginal note (rubric): ‘Recessus regis Francorum de anglia’. Text is about the departure of John II from England in 1360 via Canterbury, where he gave sumptuous gifts to the shrine of St Thomas and image of the Virgin Mary in the crypt. [Chronicon Anonymi Cantuariensis, pp. 62-63, 64-65.] 44. Fol. 263v. A crown and a three-leaved plant with stem, evidently meant for a fleur-de-lis (symbolising France). Brown and red ink. Accompanying heading (rubric): ‘Renuncacio nominis Regis ffrancie & corone’. Text is of the twelfth of the articles of the peace between England and France published in 1361, including the renunciation by the king of England of any title or right to the crown or realm of France. [Chronicon Anonymi Cantuariensis, pp. 78-79.] 45. Fol. 269r. Bust with a mitre, in three-quarter profile, looking at adjacent text. Black and red ink. Accompanying marginal note (rubric): ‘De morte Episcoporum anglie’. Text gives the names of seven bishops of English and Welsh dioceses to die in the second wave of the plague, here dated 1360 (as on fol. 172v).50 [Chronicon Anonymi Cantuariensis, pp. 114-15, 116-17.] 46. Fol. 270r. Crowned bust in profile, looking at text. Brown and red ink. Accompanying marginal note (rubric): ‘Statuta bona edita’. Text gives excerpts from and abridgements of clauses of the statute of purveyance published in 1362, here ascribed to the beneficence of Edward III. [Chronicon Anonymi Cantuariensis, pp. 120-21.] 47. Fol. 271r. Tonsured head in profile, looking at text. Brown ink. Accompanying marginal note (rubric): ‘De Capellanis’. Text, an abridgement of one of the clauses of the 1362 statute, notes the setting of fees for parish and chantry chaplains (6 and 5 marks respectively). [Chronicon Anonymi Cantuariensis, pp. 126-27.] 48. Fol. 271v. Crowned bust in profile, looking left. Brown, red and mauve ink. Labelled ‘Rex Cipra’ in brown ink above; the same label in rubric underneath. Texts is about the entry of Peter, king of Cyprus, to the city of Canterbury, and thence to London, in 1363. [Chronicon Anonymi Cantuariensis, pp. 130-31.] 49. Fol. 271v. Crowned bust, frontal. Brown and red ink. Accompanying marginal note (rubric): De Rege ffrancie’. Text is about the arrival of King John II of France and his retinue in England in January 1364 (Fig. 14). [Chronicon Anonymi Cantuariensis, pp. 132-33.] 50. Fol. 271v. Shrine, mounted of three legs on an undulating ground. The vertical sides are draped, or curtained, the sloping roof has lozenges, a cross at each end and a large fleur-de-lis crest at the centre. Brown ink with yellow tint. JULIAN LUXFORD 184 Accompanying text mentions the two-day sojourn of the French king at Canterbury en route to London (Fig. 14). [Chronicon Anonymi Cantuariensis, pp. 132-33.] 51. Fol. 272r. Bust with crown held over it by a disembodied hand, frontal, but looking at the text. Brown and mauve ink. Labelled ‘Rex ffrancie’ in red (above) and ‘Karolus Rex f[francie]51 in brown on the right-hand side. Text notes the coronation of Charles V as king of France in 1364. [Chronicon Anonymi Cantuariensis, pp. 136-37.] acknowledgements The author is deeply grateful to Hilary Ely, Chairman of the Trustees of the Cranston Library, for generous access to the manuscript considered here, and for much helpful communication about it over several years. He also thanks Dinah Harris and Penelope Horsfall, trustees of the Library, for helping to supervise his visit on 5 May 2022 and for humouring him on the occasion. All the images in this article are published with the permission of the Trustees of the Cranston Library. endnotes 1 Fols 1-10 are missing: it is not known what they contained. 2 See e.g. S. Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora (Aldershot, 1987); N. J. Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts [I]: 1190-1250 (London, 1982), pp. 104-06 (nos 59a and 59b); idem, Early Gothic Manuscripts [II]: 1250-1285 (London, 1988), pp. 86-87 (no. 116); F. Schwizer, ‘Beards and Barbarians: Marginal Illustrations in Gerald of Wales’ “Topographia Hibernica”’, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 38 (2018), pp. 216-230; J. Collard, ‘Flores Historiarum Manuscripts: The Illumination of a Late Thirteenth-Century Chronicle Series’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 71 (2008), pp. 441-66; and, for an overview, L. Cleaver, Illuminated History Books in the Anglo-Norman World, 1066-1272 (Oxford, 2018). The Rochester chronicle is London, British Library (hereafter BL), Cotton MS Nero D. II, fols 2r-214r: it has had little study, but see Collard, ‘Flores Historiarum Manuscripts’, pp. 457-60. For the verse Brut, BL, Egerton MS 3028, fols 1r-63r, which has forty-eight images, see A. Jeffs, ‘Picture-books, Politics and Padagogy: Illustrating Histories for a Young Reader, 1338-40 (British Library, Egerton MS 3028)’ (unpubl. ph.d. thesis, University of Cambridge, 2020). 3 Eton College, MS 213; Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Takamiya MS 43. Oxford, Magdalen College MS 97, another fifteenth-century Polychronicon, might also be cited for the imagery of its catchword-frames. 4 K.L. Scott, ‘The Illustrations of the Takamiya Polychronicon’, in The Medieval Book and a Modern Collector: Essays in Honour of Toshiyuki Takamiya, ed. T. Matsuda, R.A. Linenthal and J. Scahill (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 161-78, at 161 n. 3. 5 For examples see J. Scattergood, ‘“The Eyes of Memory”: The Function of the Illustrations in Dublin, Trinity College Library MS 505’, Trivium, 36 (2006), pp. 203-26; idem, ‘Some Manuscript Versions of the Brut Chronicle in Trinity College Library’, in The Old Library Trinity College Dublin 1712-2012, ed. W.E. Vaughan (Dublin, 2013), pp. 40-54; Oxford, Bodleian Library MS 730, fols 9r, 10r. 6 That is, the drawing on fol. 129r, the five drawings between fols 170v and 173v, and the twentyone drawings between fols 242r and 272r. For these sections as authorial autograph see Chronicon Anonymi Cantuariensis: The Chronicle of Anonymous of Canterbury 1346-1365, ed. and trans. S. Scott-Stokes and C. Given-Wilson (Oxford, 2008), pp. xiv-xv: this is mentioned again below. 7 An example is BL, Royal MS 20 A XVIII, a fourteenth-century copy of a chronicle to which someone added a dozen or so non-standard drawings in the fifteenth century. THE MARGINAL DRAWINGS IN THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY CRANSTON MS 1117 185 8 Scott, ‘Illustrations of the Takamiya Polychronicon’, p. 175. Again, this judgement excludes genealogical rolls. 9 See e.g. K.L. Scott, ‘Mnemonic Aspects of Illustration in Later English Manuscripts’, Manuscripta, 54 (2010), pp. 49-63. 10 M.R. James, The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover (Cambridge, 1903), p. 49 (no. 285). For examples at St Augustine’s abbey see B. Barker-Benfield, St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, 3 vols, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 13 (London, 2008), II, pp. 928-29 (no. 896), 943-45 (no. 910), 1429-30 (no. 1516). 11 N.R. Ker and A.J. Piper, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries: Vol. IV, Paisley-York (Oxford, 1992), pp. 199-201; Chronicon Anonymi Cantuariensis, pp. xii-xvi, xix-lvi. 12 The evidence presented in this paragraph is largely drawn from Chronicon Anonymi Cantuariensis, pp. xiv-xx, xxxix-xlvii (quotation at xlvii). 13 It should go without saying that content alone could not determine provenance. Three other manuscripts containing the Brut continuation found in Cranston 1117 survive, but none is from Christ Church. 14 There are at least two such transcripts, only one of them published: Chronicon Anonymi Cantuariensis, p. xi. 15 This opinion is reported in the edition: Chronicon Anonymi Cantuariensis, p. xv n. 13. 16 London, Westminster Abbey Library MS 22, fol. 3r: illustrated in Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts [II], ill. 360. 17 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. R.A.B. Mynors, R.M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom, 2 vols (Oxford, 1998), I, p. 384. (Malmesbury’s chronicle was also the source for the story about Pallas’s body, although it does not explicitly refer to Pallas as a giant.) For the association of the twins with Kent, and Biddenden, see I. Short, ‘Literary Culture at the Court of Henry II’, in Henry II: New Interpretations, ed. C. Harper-Bill and N. Vincent (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 335-61 (at 336-37). 18 The note is: ‘Nota de muliere monstruoso ab umbilico sursum diuisa’. (‘Note the monstrous woman, divided from the navel [up]’). This was done by a St Augustine’s monk named Clement of Canterbury (alive 1463-95), on whom see Barker-Benfield, St Augustine’s Abbey, III, p. 1839; for the Cambridge manuscript, see ibid., II, 966. 19 See e.g. Cleaver, Illuminated History Books, pp. 86-93. 20 See e.g. Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, figs 66, 94, 97-100, 102, 103, 105 etc.; F. Palgrave, The Antient Kalendars and Inventories of the Treasury of His Majesty’s Exchequer, 3 vols (London, 1836); J. Luxford, ‘Drawing Ethnicity and Authority in the Plantagenet Exchequer’, in The Plantagenet Empire, ed. P. Crooks, D. Green and W.M. Ormrod (Donington, 2016), pp. 72-88. 21 1360, rather than 1361, is the date given twice in the manuscript (fols 172v, 269r). For a suggestion that this may be correct, see Chronicon Anonymi Cantuariensis, pp. 112-14 n. 256. 22 Most of these copies are in Middle English. Recognised Latin copies are much less common, but it is likely that most have simply not been noticed for what they are. An overview is L. M. Matheson, The Prose Brut: The Development of a Middle English Chronicle (Tempe, AZ, 1998), where the Latin Brut is discussed at pp. 37-47 (not, however, mentioning Cranston 1117). 23 Canterbury is shown in the lower margin on fol. 21v. 24 On this prologue in general, see J.P. Carley and J. Crick, ‘Constructing Albion’s Past: An Annotated Edition of De Origine Gigantum’, in Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition, ed. J.P. Carley (Woodbridge, 2001), pp. 347-418. 25 The author has searched extensively, although has not been able to see all the possible Brut manuscripts. For the other versions of Edmund’s death, see C.E. Wright, The Cultivation of Saga in Anglo-Saxon England (Edinburgh, 1939), pp. 185-86, 198-205. Wright was, however, innocent of the account of the story in the Brut, despite its inclusion in many Middle English copies of the text: see e.g. The Brut or the Chronicles of England, Part I, ed. F.W.D. Brie, Early English Text Society, o.s. 131 (Oxford, 1906), p. 120. 26 Lewis, Art of Matthew Paris, plate III and fig. 86. 27 For others, see e.g. E. R. Truitt, Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art (Philadelphia, PA, 2015). JULIAN LUXFORD 186 28 For comparisons in English fifteenth-century books, see e.g. BL, Additional MS 14848, fol. 240r (archer, forming part of a capital letter ‘A’, in a scene of the martyrdom of St Edmund); Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Takamiya MS 43, fol. 32v (marginal image of Nimrod, great-grandson of Noah, holding a bow and arrow). 29 E.g. Lewis 1987, figs 107, 109, 110, 159; Palgrave, Antient Kalendars, II, p. 105; Luxford, ‘Drawing Ethnicity and Authority’, pl. 3; Oxford, Magdalen College MS 154, fol. 1v; and many others. 30 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 438, fol. 84v; printed in The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols (London, 1879-80), II, p. 59. 31 E.g. that of Walter de Gray, archbishop of York (d.1255): see Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England 1200-1400, ed. J.J.G. Alexander and P. Binski (London, 1987), p. 482 (no. 635). 32 Recorded in 1479 thus: ‘Three Rynges of golde, two of seynt Edward, þe thrid of seynt Edmund of pounteney’ (Westminster Abbey Muniments 9478: a single-sheet inventory of relics). ‘seynt Edmund of pounteney’ refers, incidentally, to St Edmund of Abingdon, archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1240). 33 Inventories of Christchurch Canterbury, ed. J.W. Legg and W.H. St John Hope (Westminster, 1902), p. 71. 34 These verses are noticed in Chronicon Anonymi Cantuariensis, pp. xiii-xiv. 35 For the colourful story behind this resignation see C.R. Cheney, ‘Magna Carta Beati Thome: Another Canterbury Forgery’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 36 (1963), pp. 1-26. 36 E.g. Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts [I], pp. 62 (no. 15), 87 (no. 39); Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts [II], pp. 117 (no. 134), 136 (no. 151a), 167 (no. 167). 37 There are many in BL, Harley MS 612, a fifteenth-century manuscript of Bridgettine texts. Other English examples of the same period include BL, Arundel MS 38, fol. 65r; Kew, The National Archives, C 115/75, fol. 235r; OBL, MS Digby 227, fols 47r, 86r; this short list could be greatly enlarged. 38 It does not relate to anything on the previous page. 39 This could also be said of the scholar’s head on fol. 173v (where the idea would be that of leaving the monastery for Oxford), and the head in a conical hat on fol. 242v (where the subject is the great famine of 1315). 40 Chronica Johannis de Reading et Anonymi Cantuariensis, ed. J. Tait (Manchester, 1914), pp. 67-68. 41 This bust also faces outwards, perhaps in allusion to Peter’s departure; or perhaps it is a counterexample to the symbolism suggested above for the busts of Isabella of France and others. 42 Compare Lewis 1987, figs 23, 24, 37, 38, 40 (all precision drawings of objects at St Albans) with the handing of most of his other images. 43 For recent reviews of the evidence, including images of the badges mentioned below, see J. Jenkins, ‘Modelling the Cult of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 173 (2021), pp. 100-23; L. de Beer and N. Speakman, Thomas Becket: Murder and the Making of a Saint (London, 2021), pp. 121-26. 44 This may be why the drawing is identified as an altar in Chronicon Anonymi Cantuariensis, p. 132. (No altar is mentioned in the adjacent text.) For images of altars and habits of dressing them see e.g. P. Dearmer, Fifty Pictures of Gothic Altars (London, 1910); Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts [I], ill. 138 (a scene of St Thomas’s martyrdom painted c. 1200). 45 Lewis, Art of Matthew Paris, fig. 65. 46 For examples see Luxford, ‘Drawing Ethnicity and Authority’, pp. 83-86 and pls 7-11; BL, Cotton MS Nero D. II, fols 34v, 190v (Irish and Scots examples, not Welsh). 47 Written ‘xxx’. 48 ‘Conficto’ may be the wrong choice here; ‘conclusio’ would also be possible. Either way, the rubric would mean ‘The sad end of Edmund’. 49 Evidently this stands for ‘recessis Cardinales’, of whom there were certainly two. 50 While the dates agree, the chronicler did not simply copy the list on fol. 172v. Unlike the earlier list, he mistakenly calls Thomas de Lisle, bishop of Ely, ‘John de Lisle’, and supplies the bishop of London’s surname (‘de Northburgh’). 51 Most of the word has been cut off.