Bishop of Salisbury, Richard Poore, bishop from 1217 to 1229. Poore is said to have been born at Tarrent, he refounded the nunnery there, returned from Durham, whither he had been translated, came to Tarrent in his last sickness in 1237, and was buried there. But the mention of Tarrent is found only in the Latin version, and there only as the name of the nunnery where the sisters of Simon of Ghent were. We have no reason to suppose that the original author had any connection with Tarrent: and his connection with Tarrent is the sole claim which Poore possesses to the authorship of the Ancren Riwle.
In 1916 Father Vincent McNabb, O. P., put forward the claim that the author was a Dominican Friar, and probably Friar Robert Bacon.[1] In the first part of this theory, he was following J. B. Dalgairns, who, as Father McNabb points out, had written, in 1870, “the only thing that is certain is that it [the Rule] was written by a Dominican; for the list of prayers which the writer enumerates as having been in use among the lay brethren of his Order are nearly identical with those ordered in the Rule of St. Dominic.”[2] The passage upon which this theory rests runs:
Our lay bretheren say thus their hours: for Uhtsong (Matins) on work days (ferial days) eight and twenty Pater Nosters; on holy-days (feast-days) forty; for Evensong, fifteen; etc. … If any of you will do this, she followeth here, as in other observances, much of our order.[3]
Now, as Miss Allen points out, this passage is found only in one manuscript. That, in itself, is no fatal objection to its authenticity. For the Rule was written originally for the three recluses, and then was copied as a general book of devotion applicable to much wider circles; so it was quite natural that certain passages should come to be missed out in most copies. The serious objection is that this passage seems quite inconsistent with the Rule, as written for these three original recluses. These recluses were obviously able to read Latin, French, and English. The writer goes so far as to say; “Often, dear sisters, ye ought to pray less that ye may read more. Reading is good prayer.”[4] This, Mr. Macaulay remarks,[5] is “contrary to the usual teaching, but quite in harmony with the sound common sense of the Ancren Riwle.” And, in accordance
