Below follows a note in English on the date of the death of Chaucer and of Gower, and their places of burial.
The first of the blank leaves at the end is covered with Latin anagrams on the names ‘Carolus Geddeius,’ ‘Carolus Geddie,’ or ‘Carolus Geddee,’ with this heading,
‘In nomen venerandi et annosi Amici sui Caroli Geddei Anagrammata,’
and ends with the couplet:
‘Serpit amor Jonathæ (Prisciano labe) Chirurgo
Mephiboshæ pedibus tam manibus genibus,’
which is not very intelligible, but is perhaps meant to indicate the name of the composer of the anagrams.
In the right-hand top corner of the next leaf there is written in what might be a fifteenth-century hand, ‘Will Sanders vn Just’ (the rest cut away).
As to the statement made by Fairfax that this book, meaning apparently this very copy, was presented by the author to Henry IV, it is hardly likely that he had any trustworthy authority for it. The book must evidently have been arranged for some such purpose; on the whole however it is more likely that this was not the actual presentation copy, but another written about the same time and left in the hands of the author. The copy intended for presentation to the king, if such a copy there were, would probably have been more elaborately ornamented; and moreover the Latin lines on the last leaf, ‘Henrici quarti’ &c., bear the appearance of having been added later. The poet there speaks of himself as having become blind ‘in the first year of king Henry IV,’ and of having entirely ceased to write in consequence; and in another version of the same lines, which is found in the Glasgow MS. of the Vox Clamantis, he dates his blindness from the second year of King Henry’s reign. In any case it seems clear that his blindness did not come on immediately after Henry’s accession; for the Cronica Tripertita, a work of considerable length, must have been written after the death of Richard II, which took place some five months after the accession of Henry IV. It would be quite in accordance with Gower’s usual practice to keep a copy of the book by him and add to it or alter it from time to time; the Fairfax MS. of the Confessio Amantis and the All Souls copy of the Vox Clamantis are examples of this mode of proceeding: and I should be rather disposed to think that this volume remained in the author’s hands than that it was presented to the king. As to its subsequent history, if we are to regard the signature ‘Rychemond’ on the second leaf as a genuine autograph of Henry VII while Earl of Richmond, it would seem that the book passed at some time into royal hands, but it can hardly have come to the Earl of Richmond by any succession from Henry IV. After this we know nothing definite until we find it in the hands of the ‘aged Charles Gedde’ of St. Andrews, by whom it was given, as we have seen, to Fairfax in 1656, and by Fairfax in the same year to his friend and kinsman Sir Thomas Gower, no doubt on the supposition that he belonged to the family of the poet. He must have been one of the Gowers of Stittenham, and from him it has passed by descent to its present possessor.
The text given by the MS. seems to be on the whole a very correct one. For the Cinkante Balades it is the only manuscript authority, but as regards the Traitié it may be compared with several other copies contemporary with the author, and it seems to give as good a text as any. There seems no reason to doubt that it was written in the lifetime of the author, who may however have been unable owing to his failing eyesight to correct it himself. It was nevertheless carefully revised after being written, as is shown by various erasures and corrections both in the French and the English portions. This corrector’s hand is apparently different from both the other hands which appear in the manuscript. The best proof however of the trustworthiness of the text is the fact that hardly any emendations are required either by the metre or the sense. The difficulties presented by the text of the Roxburghe edition vanish for the most part on collation of the MS., and the number of corrections actually made in this edition is very trifling.