The Life and Times of John Trevisa, Medieval Scholar
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The Life and Times of John Trevisa, Medieval Scholar

David C. Fowler

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The Life and Times of John Trevisa, Medieval Scholar

David C. Fowler

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John Trevisa (ca.1342-1402), perhaps the greatest of Middle English prose translators of Latin texts into English, was almost an exact contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer. Trevisa was born in Cornwall, studies at Oxford, and was instituted vicar of Berkeley, a position he held until his death. Over a period of thirty-five years eminent medievalist David Fowler has pieced together an account of Trevisa's life and times by diligently seeking out documents bearing on his activities and translations. This has resulted in a cultural history of fourtheenth-century England that ranges from the administrative, geographical, and linguistic status of Cornwall to the curriculum of medieval university education, and from religious and secular conflicts to the administration of a substantial provincial household and the role of its aristocratic keepers in the Hundred Years War. Fowler provides an analysis of Trevis's known translations the "Gospel of Nicodemus", "Dialogus inter Militem et Clericum", FitzRalph's "Defensio Curatorum", the "Polychronicon", "De Regimine Principum" and "De Proprietatibus Rerum." He also advances the hypothesis that Trevisa was one of the scholars responsible for the first complete translation of the scriptures into English: the Wycliffite Bible. An appendix contains a collection of biographical and historical references designed to illustrate Fowler's contention that Trevisa may have been responsible for the revisions of "Piers the Plowman" now known as the B and C texts.

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Year
2016
ISBN
9780295801339

1

CORNWALL

Even though there is no direct evidence concerning Trevisa’s life before his arrival in Oxford in 1362, commentators have not been slow to supply the needed information. The earliest writers say only that he was born in Cornwall: thus John Bale in 1557 (“genere ac patria Cornubiensis”), Holinshed in 1577 (“a Cornish man borne”), and Richard Carew in 1602, who speaks of “Crocadon, the mansion of Mr. Trevisa, a gentleman deriving himself from the ancient and well-deserving chronicler of that name.” Crocadon is in eastern Cornwall, and the occupant referred to is Peter Trevisa, who died in 1598. I have not been able to find any evidence to connect the Trevisa family with Crocadon before the sixteenth century, and it is clear that Carew says no more than that Peter Trevisa is a descendant of John. Nevertheless, in his Church History of Britain (1655), Thomas Fuller says that John Trevisa was “born at Crocadon in Cornwall.” Yet in his History of the Worthies of England (1662), he says: “John Trevisa was born at Caradock in this county” (i.e., Cornwall). Fuller either had second thoughts or this could simply be a slip, since I know of no place in Cornwall with that name. This aberration is echoed in Tanner (1748) and Towneley (1821), but most later commentators agree that John Trevisa was “born in 1326 at Crocadon in St. Mellion, near Saltash, Cornwall,” as the Dictionary of National Biography specifies. Since it is quite evident that the traditional assertion of Trevisa’s birthplace is founded on Fuller’s misinterpretation of Carew, we may now consider what evidence remains to support Trevisa’s Cornish origin, and whether it is possible to locate him geographically within the county.
That Trevisa comes from Cornwall is supported by his name, the record of his ordination, and some remarks in his notes to the Polychronicon. The name Trevisa means “lower town,” the element trev- being from the Indo-European root *treb found in Latin trabs, trabis (English thorpe, thrupp); -isa, ysa is a formation from the root represented by Latin pes, pedis (English foot), with characteristic loss of initial p in Celtic languages; see Pokorny (1959, pp. 790, 1090). It is interesting that the arms of the Trevisa family, as reported by Carew, are Gules, a Garbe Or (a wheat-sheaf in gold against a red background). Mr. Hooper once pointed out to me that many family emblems are based on puns, and offered the ingenious suggestion that the Trevisa sheaf may be intended as a pun in Cornish on -ysa, alluding to the Cornish word ys, “corn,” “grain.”
Trevisa’s initial attachment to Exeter College, Oxford, strongly suggests that he comes from Cornwall, since the county was then a part of the diocese of Exeter (Devon and Cornwall), and Exeter College had been founded by Bishop Walter Stapeldon in 1312 specifically for students from that area. The likelihood of the connection is increased by the stipulation in the record of Trevisa’s ordination (about which more later) that he was released from Exeter diocese by letters dimissory. Such letters were required when a candidate was being ordained outside his own diocese; and, as we shall see, Trevisa was in fact ordained in 1370 by Simon Sudbury, then bishop of London.
Apart from the name Trevisa, we have in two additions to the Polychronicon some indirect evidence that our translator comes specifically from Cornwall. Early in the Polychronicon, Higden lists the shires of England, omitting Cornwall, and citing as his source Alfred of Beverley (II, 91):
Trevisa. It is wonder why Alfred summeth the shires of England somedeal as a man that dreameth; for Alfred telleth the sum of shires in this manner: “There be in England six and thirty shires without Cornwall and without the islands.” Why sayeth he not in this manner? “. . . In England be seven and thirty shires, and so is Cornwall accounted with the other shires”; and that is skilful. For Cornwall is a shire of England . . . , and is departed in hundreds, and is ruled by the law of England, and holdeth shire days, as other shires do. If Alfred sayeth nay to that, he wot not what he maffleth.
This attitude, of course, contrasts sharply with that of modern British (and Scottish) groups that emphasize devolution and the preservation of regional differences. Trevisa had been introduced to an exciting new world when he departed from his home county, and he clearly was anxious that Cornwall become a part of that world.
In a later note, Trevisa referred to the parable of the wheat and tares (Matt. 13:25) as “the example of wheat and evre that some men clepeth darnel” (VII, 525). What the King James Bible of 1611 calls “tares” was translated in the Wyclif Bible (Early Version) as “darnel” or “code” (the latter used also by Chaucer). Trevisa’s word evre appears to be of Cornish origin, and in fact survives in the modern Cornish dialect (of English) variously spelled eaver, heaver(s), hayver(s), with cognates in Welsh (efrau) and Breton (ivre). Whatever its ultimate origin (Joseph Wright in his English Dialect Dictionary says Old French evraie/Modern French ivraie), it does seem to have been a genuine Cornish word known to Trevisa, a fragile reminder that his native language may have been Cornish rather than English.
In the fourteenth century the Cornish language was already strongly under the influence of English, especially in matters of vocabulary (like modern Welsh), an influence accelerated by the fact that Cornwall, unlike Wales, had no mountains to serve as a barrier to the Anglo-Saxon tide. But the decline of the language itself (though more investigation of this topic is needed) seems to have been very slow before the Reformation of the sixteenth century. Perhaps only in eastern Cornwall would English have established itself in the time of Trevisa. No doubt it was for this reason that R. Morton Nance, thinking (as we all did) of Trevisa as having been born at Crocadon in the east, raised the question (in conversation) whether Trevisa would have been able to speak Cornish. Obviously the specific place of Trevisa’s birth in the county is important to the determination of his native language, and so it is to this problem that we now turn.
In the period we are concerned with, a person’s name often provided a genuine clue to his place of birth, and such indeed would appear to be the case with Trevisa. There are, however, perhaps four localities in Cornwall identified by something like a form of that name. There is a Trevyssa in the parish of Towednack, Trevessa in St. Erth, Trevease in Constantine, and Trevessa in St. Enoder. Of these four, the least likely is Trevease in Constantine, which, in the fourteenth century, was spelled phonetically as Trefeas or Trefyas, showing that it is a different word altogether. But on phonological grounds, at least, the other three Trevessas are equally plausible.
Variations in spelling may or may not be significant. The alternation of i and y or v and w can often be ignored, but the replacement of -isa by -essa or -issa could be important. Oliver Padel (1985, pp. 237–38) suggests, for example, that the second element of Trevessa (St. Erth) may be derived from ussa “outermost,” perhaps because of the early variant spelling Trefussa in the Assize (Plea) Rolls (dated 1284). The same reasoning could be applied to Trevessa in St. Enoder, since Gover cites Trefussamur and Trefussabyan from the Calendar of Patent Rolls (1430), meaning Great and Little Trefussa in St. Enoder. The case of Trevyssa in Towednack differs in that the spelling is consistent in the two medieval sources cited by Gover: Feudal Aids in 1428 (Trevyssa), and the Lay Subsidy Rolls in 1523 (Trevissa). I ignore the questionable variant Trevidgia cited from an eighteenth-century map of Cornwall, though Gover for some reason treats this as the principal form of the place name. Nevertheless, I am inclined to set aside these orthographic variants, at least as they relate to St. Enoder, since, as we shall see, the spelling of both the place name and the family name in the documents mentioned below consistently supports the traditional form: Trevisa or Trevysa.
The eighteenth-century Cornish historian William Hals was the first to conjecture that the family name might be derived from Trevisa in St. Enoder. But support for this is hard to find, and Hals, as Charles Thomas remarks (1974), “cannot rank as a reliable historian.” There is evidence, however, some previously unnoted, of the existence of a Trevisa family in Cornwall in the fourteenth century, and this evidence consistently associates the family with Trevisa in St. Enoder. In the Register of John de Grandisson, bishop of Exeter, under the date 27 October 1328, Johannes de Treuysa is named (with several others) to a sequestration of the revenues of the late Master Richard Flamank, rector of the church of Roche. A further order in connection with this sequestration was issued on 12 November of the same year, and again John de Trevysa is mentioned. The date is much too early, of course, for us to suppose that this Trevysa could be our author (born ca. 1342); but the entries do suggest that a Trevisa family was residing at this time in central Cornwall. For if this John de Trevysa lived at Trevisa in St. Enoder, his home was less than ten miles southwest of the parish church of Roche, to which he was ordered for the sequestration. The late rector Richard Flamank, mentioned in the bishop’s order, bears the name of a venerable Cornish family, one branch of which had a residence in Goonrounson in St. Enoder, little more than a mile due east of Trevisa.
More decisive evidence appears in the Cornwall County Court Rolls in the Public Record Office (SC 2/161/74), for which reference I am greatly indebted to the late Derek Hall, former president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford (Hall 1978). John de Trevisa is mentioned in a number of court cases in the hundreds of Powder and Pyder. Most of the cases in which he is involved are listed under Pyder, the hundred in which Trevisa is situated, but one case (of particular interest here) is entered under Powder, since it appears that Trevisa’s cows strayed across the line into the town of Mitchell (m. 2):
Johnnes de Trevisa by attorney complains of Guy of St. Aubyn and William Aly appearing by attorney in a plea of the seizing of cattle. And thereof he complains that they unjustly seized six cows of the same John in the vill of Mitchell (Medesole) in a place which is called Goenmargh and impounded them at Arrallas (Argalles) etc. to his damage of one hundred shillings. And Guy avows the seizure for himself and for William for this, that he found them in the vill of Arrallas doing damage and not in the vill and place aforesaid, and prays that it may be investigated.
This entry is dated 5 July 1333 (7 Edward III), just five years after the sequestration (discussed above) ordered by Bishop Grandisson. It seems reasonable that this is the same John de Trevisa mentioned earlier, and it is even clearer that he is associated with Trevisa in St. Enoder, which is very near the town of Mitchell, where Trevisa alleges his cattle were seized.
Another person of some prominence in Cornwall in the fourteenth century was Ralph Trevisa, who was a member of parliament for Lostwithiel (1351), Liskeard (1357), Bodmin (1360), Lostwithiel again (1360, 1362), Helston (1368), Truro (1369), and Launceston (1370–71). It is not possible to deduce Ralph Trevisa’s home from his political career. But a list of rentals for the Berkeley manor of Tygembreth (Degembris) in Cornwall, which I found among the muniments in Berkeley Castle (Box 14.12), strongly suggests that this Ralph, like John before him, lived in St. Enoder. The list is written on parchment in a hand of the early fifteenth century, and appears to be a copy of an earlier list dating from the latter half of the fourteenth century, in the lifetime of our John (Fowler 1971).
My interest in the list was aroused when I observed that it represented a manor in central Cornwall, precisely the locale (as we have seen) for the activities of John de Trevisa in 1328 and 1333. The name of the manor, Tygembreth, was not familiar, but then I noticed that one of the places named was Trevisa: “The heirs of Ralph Trevisa hold one Cornish acre of land in Trevysa and two acres of land in Penscawen, and render per annum six shillings three pence, and suit of the common court and multure.” A total of thirty entries like this one go to make up the manor of Tygembreth, owned by the Berkeley family in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Furthermore, there can be no doubt that the Trevisa in question is the one in St. Enoder parish, the only place of that name in Cornwall with a Penscawen immediately adjoining; and all of the thirty places named in the roll form a tight cluster in the center of the county to the north and northwest of the town of Mitchell.
Other traceable names in this same rental clearly refer to contemporaries of the Ralph Trevisa cited under Trevysa and Penscawan. Thus Robert Tresawell died in 1388, as is evident from an inquisition taken in the eleventh year of Richard II. Robert Trevanyon appears to have been the son of Sir John Trevanyon, M.P. for Lostwithiel in the time of Edward III (died 1377). Ralph Kayell’s daughter was married in 1377. Finally, Thomas Peverell married Margaret Courtney about 1350. These four examples accord well with the dates established for Ralph Trevisa’s political career (1351–71).
The conclusions to be drawn from this recently discovered evidence are modest enough, but there are several points to be made of considerable significance for the life of John Trevisa. First, identification of his birthplace with Trevisa in St. Enoder is strengthened, while it seems possible that the various documents put us in touch with at least three generations of the family: John (1328–33), Ralph (1351–71), and John Trevisa himself (1342–1402). It likewise follows (recognizing the limits of our knowledge of the decline of the Cornish language) that if John was born in central Cornwall about 1342, his native language is likely to have been Cornish rather than English; or at the very least it is likely that he would have been able to speak and understand Cornish from an early age. Nor should we overlook the fact that a Berkeley was lord of the manor to which Trevisa belonged: we may even conjecture that it was this ownership of the Trevisa homestead that brought young John to the attention of the Berkeley family.
Thomas III was Lord Berkeley from 1326 until his death in 1361, and is the man who would certainly have been Trevisa’s original benefactor if indeed the Berkeley connection prompted his departure for Oxford. But with all of his lands and other responsibilities, would Lord Berkeley ever have bothered to visit a manor so remote as Tygembreth in Cornwall? Lord Ernle, author of English Farming Past and Present (revised, 1961), was one of the very few scholars early in this century who made use of the manorial records of Berkeley Castle, and he singles out Thomas III as a medieval prototype of “farmer George,” and an illustration of the maxim that “the master’s foot fats the soil” (pp. 31ff.). Hence it is not entirely fanciful to suppose that this lord actually visited his Cornish properties, there encountered Trevisa at an early age, and, as his benefactor, made it possible for him to study at Oxford and eventually to go to Berkeley and become chaplain to his grandson Thomas IV.
Where might Trevisa have received his initial training? By far the most important center of education in Cornwall from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries was the Collegiate Church of St. Thomas of Canterbury, otherwise known as the Collegiate Church of Glasney in Penryn. It was founded in 1265 by Walter Bronescombe, bishop of Exeter. Concerning the importance of Glasney, Thurston C. Peter in his history of the school (1903) has this to say (p. xiii):
It was the foundation here of the Collegiate Church of Glasney, in 1265, that gave Penryn its chief importance, and made it a place known all over England, and, indeed, Europe. The following pages will show how men came hither from all parts, and how those who were connected with the college travelled to and from Rome and elsewhere on the Continent. For three hundred years Glasney was a favourite establishment of the bishops of Exeter, and many men of high standing in the Church held prebends therein. It was a centre from which important orders were frequently promulgated, and excommunications pronounced, and indeed was the centre of Church life in West Cornwall.
The Collegiate Church of Glasney was allotted a faculty of thirteen secular canons, one of whom served as provost. Of particular interest for the present discussion is the manner in which these canons were supported. In general the bishops arranged for each canon to receive the living of one of the local parish churches, with the privilege of appointing a vicar to serve for him in the parish. This meant that during most of its history, Glasney College benefited from the income of some thirteen or more appropriated livings. As might be expected, a majority of the churches were in the vicinity of Penryn: St. Kea, St. Feock, Mylor, St. Gluvias, Budoc, Manaccan, and St. Sithney. Somewhat farther removed were St. Allen, Lanmorek (Mevagissey), and St. Goran. But the most remote parishes appropriated to Glasney were, to the west, Zennor and St. Just (in Penwith), and, to the northeast, St. Colan and St. Enoder.
The ties between St. Enoder parish and the Collegiate Church of Glasney strengthen the possibility that Trevisa went to school in Penryn. The living of St. Enoder was appropriated to Glasney virtually throughout the history of the college, from 1270 to the sixteenth century, and it seems to have been an especially desirable assignment. In 1271 the house formerly occupied by Walter, provost of Glasney, was allotted t...

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