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Numerous religious orders had a presence in Lynn
during the period of Margery’s activity.
Perhaps the most important from Margery’s perspective were the
Benedictines, who operated a small priory at Margery’s parish church, St.
Margaret’s; this priory was in turn under the authority of the Benedictine
house in Norwich, the head of
Margery’s diocese. Also in Lynn
were houses of the four major mendicant orders in late medieval Europe:
the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Carmelites, and the Augustinians. Although other minor orders of friars, such
as the Friars of the Sack, had periodically flowered in Lynn,
they were no longer present during Margery’s lifetime.
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Of course, Margery did not enjoy good relations with all
of these orders; the Franciscans in particular are displayed in her Book as consistently antagonistic, and
provided one of Margery’s chief ideological opponents, the Franciscan
preacher tentatively identified as William Melton (Meech
and Allen 321, n. 148/28-29). This
seems a sound reason to discount the Franciscans in general as possibilities
for the identity of Margery’s scribe.
The Dominicans, while not portrayed antagonistically, do not seem to
have any sort of special relationship with Margery in the course of her Book; although her first confessor was
an anchorite at the Dominican house, he dies early in the course of Margery’s
narrative, and Margery does not mention any other special relationships with
Dominicans, although at least one defends her against her Franciscan
detractor in chapter 68 of Book I.
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On the other hand, Margery was particularly close with Master
Alan, a prominent Carmelite in Lynn,
and spent a great deal of time at the Benedictine priory in the parish church
of Lynn, implying a very close
connection with these two orders. The
Augustinian house may also have been particularly favorable towards Margery,
and provides an interesting possible source of a scribe for her.
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This section of the website will attempt to present some basic
points of interest involving Margery and the religious orders in her town;
also, some important sources, both published and unpublished, will be
reviewed that could be used for further investigation into the question of
Margery’s interaction with the religious orders of Lynn.
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Margery and the
Benedictine Priory of Lynn
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Aside from her interaction with local parish priests, the
Benedictines at the priory in St. Margaret’s are some of the most-visited
religious officials throughout Margery’s narrative in her Book.
She is repeatedly shown at prayer in the church, and frequently is
allowed into the smaller chapels usually reserved for use by the resident
monks. Her primary confessor throughout
the majority of her spiritual enterprise, Robert
Spryngolde, was the priest in charge of St. Margaret’s, and this
certainly was a contributing factor in the high amount of time that Margery
seems to have spent there.
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Margery may have known another prominent person at St.
Margaret’s, although she does not point them out in her Book: Henry Hillen reports that from at
least 1427 to 1437, a Robert Brunham was the prior
of the Benedictine priory located at St. Margaret’s. Margery surely must have known Robert Brunham, having spent so much time throughout her life in
Lynn at St. Margaret’s and even
with the Benedictines there, but given the Book’s silence regarding him, there is no concrete evidence
linking this Robert Brunham to Margery. This is especially surprising given the
fact that the surname “Brunham,” which was not an
extremely common name, was in fact Margery’s own maiden name, possibly
implying a family relation. The Book’s neglect in mentioning such a
close relation at such a prominent place for Margery need not be taken as an
indication that Margery did not know Robert Brunham,
as mentions of family members, aside from her husband, son, and
daughter-in-law, are not plentiful throughout her writing, even given the
fact that she claims to have had fourteen children during the course of her
marriage to John Kempe.
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Aside from these two Roberts – Spryngolde and Brunham – it is difficult to pinpoint many other people
that Margery may have known at St. Margaret’s during her time there. The paucity of extant records following the
Reformation in England
yields relatively few names beyond those of bishops, priors, and the
occasional vicar/parish priest. The
registers in the King’s Lynn Library holdings date
from 1559 for baptisms, marriages, and burials, and the surviving records for
the other churches in Lynn, St.
Nicholas and St. John’s, begin
even later (1562 for St. Nicholas, and 1845 for St.
John’s). The
only extensive set of records are the bishop’s
registers, mostly indexed in Blomefield’s Topographical
History and its numerous
supplements (see the Norfolk Records Office’s website for more
information). Again, however, this
primarily yields only the names of the highest church officials in any given
area, thus missing the bulk of the names of priests and/or monks in Lynn, any of whom could have provided the
scribal labor for Margery’s work. Joan
Greatrix does provide a useful set of biographical
registers for cathedral priories in the province of Canterbury – of which Lynn was a part – but the closest cathedral
was in Norwich.
Since the priory at St. Margaret’s in Lynn received its monks directly
from the cathedral priory in Norwich, it is highly possible that Greatrix’s catalogue contains the name and a brief
biography of Margery’s scribe, if the scribe was a Benedictine in the priory
at St. Margaret’s, but without a complete list of names of resident monks
there, it is impossible to determine who could have been in Lynn at the right
time. If biographical records of the
residents of the St. Margaret’s priory could be located, the list would not
be long – the priory kept a steady population of only four resident monks from
the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries, up to its dissolution on April
6, 1539 (Heale 298, 312).
Barring any newly discovered records, however, it seems likely that
Margery’s scribe, if a Benedictine, is likely to remain anonymous.
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Margery and the
Carmelite Order
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In addition to the local Benedictines, Margery had
particularly close relations with the Carmelites in Lynn,
especially through her spiritual mentor Master
Alan, with whom she enjoyed an enduring and apparently very fulfilling
spiritual mentorship. While Master
Alan seems to have not survived into the late years of Margery’s recorded
career as a mystic, because of her close connection to this prominent member
of the Carmelite order Margery seems to have been welcomed into their fold;
the Book even records, in chapter
seventy-one, a vision that Margery had while wandering about the Carmelite
house in Lynn, implying that she had relatively free access to it. It is possible that Master Alan could have
induced a member of his order to act as a scribe for Margery, a task that may
have been of special interest given the order’s tendency towards interest in
contemplative theology, soon to flower in the reforms instituted by Teresa of
Avila.
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Surviving documentation on the Carmelites of Lynn is
scarce, however. Davis (71) lists a
surviving cartulary of the Carmelite house in Lynn from the late 14th
century, and although bequests to the Carmelites were very popular in wills
of the period, the Norfolk Records Office characterizes them as being “almost
invariably in general terms (‘lego Fratribus Carmelitis Lenne’…),” a feature that is unhelpful in identifying
particular members of the order that might have been Margery’s scribe.
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The Augustinian
house in Lynn
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Although Margery does not discuss Augustinian Friars in
great depth in the course of her Book,
the Augustinian house at Lynn provides
some intriguing contexts in which to view Margery’s production of her written
work. The one Augustinian, or Austin,
friar mentioned by Margery is in chapter sixty-eight of the first part of her
Book, who preaches in her defense
at his own house with “a gret audiens,”
including Margery herself (Meech and Allen
167). As in the case of the
Dominicans, mentioned above, this does not make the Augustinians prime
contenders for Margery’s scribal work, but as noted in the page on Margery’s
connections with one particular Augustinian, John Capgrave,
Margery could have cultivated a relationship with the Augustinians in her
area very late in her career, possibly giving her access to a small scriptorium
that Capgrave ran in Lynn (Lucas, 1973).
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This scriptorium does not seem to have been previously
mentioned in connection with Margery, but it provides one of the likeliest
outlets in Lynn for her writing
activities. Peter Lucas (1973) describes
several characteristics of this scriptorium, consisting of at least three
scribes in addition to Capgrave, who participated with him in producing
copies of Capgrave’s own works as well as those of
other authors (12-19). Capgrave left
instructions in his autograph manuscripts for other scribes to follow when
making copies of his works, as in the case of the De illustribus Henricis
(14), and commented on the work of his scribes in other manuscripts
(16). Knowing that this scriptorium
was present in Lynn and open for
business from outside contractors, as the introduction to Capgrave’s
Life of Saint Augustine shows, makes this a very tempting
place to locate Margery’s second scribe and the creation of the first full
version of her Book.
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Again, though, as in the case of Margery’s connections
with Benedictines and Carmelites, the lack of textual witnesses for
particular Augustinians in Margery’s Book
means that connections between her and the Augustinians of Lynn will remain
primarily conjectural.
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Home
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Bibliography
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Blomefield, Francis. An Essay Towards a Topographical
History of the County
of Norfolk, Containing
a Description of the Towns, Villages, and Hamlets. Fersfield,
1739-75. Electronic Reproduction available through Eighteenth Century
Collections Online.
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Davis,
G. R. C. Medieval Cartularies of Great Britain: A Short Catalogue. London:
Longmans, Green and Co., 1958.
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Goodman,
Anthony. Margery Kempe and Her World. London:
Longman, 2002.
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Greatrex, Joan. Biographical
Register of the English Cathedral Priories of the Province of Canterbury, c. 1066 to 1540. Oxford
University Press, 1997.
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Heale, Martin. The Dependent Priories of Medieval English
Monasteries. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2004.
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Hillen, Henry J. (Article on St. Margaret’s Church). No
date (c. 1900?)
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King’s
Lynn Library. Personal Communication. 14 Nov. – 15 Dec., 2006.
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Knowles,
David and Hadcock, R. Neville. Medieval Religious Houses, England and Wales.
London: Longman, 1971.
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Lucas, Peter
J. “John Capgrave, O.S.A. (1393-1464), Scribe and ‘Publisher.’” Transactions
of the Cambridge
Bibliographical Society 5 (1973): 1-35.
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---. “A
Bequest to the Austin Friars in the Will of John Spicer 1439-40: John Capgrave
O.S.A. (1393-1464), William Wellys (fl. 1434-40)
and Augustinian Learning at Lynn in the Fifteenth Century.” Norfolk Archaeology 41 (1993): 482-89.
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Meech, Sanford
Brown, and Allen, Hope Emily, eds. The Book of Margery Kempe. EETS no.
212. Oxford University
Press, 1940.
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Norfolk
Records Office. Personal Communication. 10 Oct. – 21 Oct., 2006.
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