for whom the Ancren Riwle was composed might be identified with the tribus puellis, Emmæ videlicet et Gunildæ et Christinæ, to whom the hermitage of Kilburn was granted by the Abbot and convent of Westminster between 1127 and 1135. A brief summary cannot do justice to Miss Allen’s argument, and all interested in the Ancren Riwle must read her article.[1] In both cases the women are three inclusæ, young, noble, richly endowed, beadswomen, living under a master.[2] The Kilburn anchoresses had been “domicellæ cameræ” to “good Queen Maud,” the wife of Henry I., the daughter of St. Margaret of Scotland, and the niece of Edgar the Atheling. The name Gunhilda, Miss Allen remarks, suggests Anglo-Danish rather than Norman origin, and all three names occur in the family of Edward the Confessor. Now all this fits in excellently with the tone of the Ancren Riwle, which surprises us by being both English and courtly at a date when we do not expect to find those two things combined.
One of the greatest services rendered by Mr. Macaulay to the study of the Rule was his discovery that the best and probably the earliest manuscript (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 402) is itself a revision of the original Rule. This revision must have been made some time after the coming of the Friars to England, for it refers to “Our Friars Preachers and Our Friars Minors.”[3] Yet the manuscript thus revised is the most correct, and so Mr. Macaulay suggests a date not earlier, but not much later, than 1230. The compiler of this revision has in view a larger number of anchoresses than the original three. The reviser gives instruction with regard to a visitation from the Bishop—and his attitude to the Bishop is peculiarly gingerly. The anchoresses are instructed to “hie forthwith towards him, and sweetly beseech him, if he asketh to
- ↑ The Origin of the Ancren Riwle, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, xxxii. 1918, pp. 474–546.
- ↑ Miss Allen in Modern Language Review, xvi. 1921, pp. 316–322, The Ancren Riwle and Kilburn Priory.
- ↑ It is noteworthy that the original Rule nowhere speaks of “Friars.” This original Rule is found in Cotton Titus D. xviii. and in Cotton Nero A. xiv. (the latter manuscript contains the passage about the hours of “our lay bretheren” which is peculiar to itself, and demonstrably an interpolation). ‘These two manuscripts are of the first half of the thirteenth century. A rather later manuscript, Cotton Cleopatra C. vi. gives the original Rule, but with extracts from the later recension copied in the margin. Considering the bulk of the original Rule, the absence of any mention of “Friars” would seem strange, unless we date it before their arrival in England. This certainly, as Miss Allen remarks (p. 543), makes very difficult the theory of Father McNabb that a Friar is the author of the original Rule.
