Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester: A Biography

by Kenneth Hotham Vickers

Whatever may have been the plans of Henry IV. for his youngest son, they ceased to be effective on his death. Almost immediately after that event we find Humphrey carving out an active life for himself, and embarking on that varied and interesting career which was only to end with the tragedy of Bury. Yet the seeds had been sown. Never throughout his life was the scholar quite swamped by the politician; his scholarly instincts, nurtured in youth, survived to form a source of refreshment and interest in the days of political misfortune. Nevertheless this early training gives no clue to the originality of Humphrey’s genius as a scholar. Whence was it that he drew the inspiration which enabled him to begin a new era in the development of the human intellect in England? He had been trained in the dry-as-dust learning of the Middle Ages—no other system was then known in England—he had been brought up on a mental diet of law and theology seasoned with rhetoric; to our knowledge he never had any opportunity of imbibing the new ideas which slowly and feebly were climbing the Alps preparatory to the conquest of the Western world; at that time he had never been out of England, he was never to visit Italy. Yet stage by stage he outgrew the teaching of the ancient schoolmen, and reached out to pick the fairest flowers of Greek learning. In him we find a new spirit of inquiry, a desire for a wider knowledge of the human mind. He was a son of the Renaissance before ever that movement had sent its missionaries to the last outpost of mediæval lore. There was no teacher to point the way for Humphrey, and we must fall back on his inherent originality to explain the phenomenon. With no promptings from the scholars of the new methods, he devoted himself to their patronage; he himself became a teacher before ever he was taught. As an apostle of progress Humphrey stands alone among his fellow-countrymen, and we must hesitate to deny him a place amongst the honoured disciples of Petrarch. What Petrarch did for the world, Humphrey did for England.

GLOUCESTER AND THE ITALIANS

Dead and cold as England was to the new message which the Renaissance had to teach humanity, it was natural that Humphrey should look to Italy for help in his endeavours to study the forces which were being reborn to give a character to the history of the future. Perhaps the most interesting page in his history, therefore, deals with his relations to the Italian humanists of his day; from them he borrowed something of the spirit which was then becoming the most important element in Italian life, something of that polish of refined scholarship which marks out the humanistic scholar from the student of the Middle Ages. The effect on English scholars of his time was visible, and Æneas Sylvius was not slow to notice it. Writing to Adam Moleyns in answer to a letter from that distinguished Englishman, he complimented him in somewhat condescending language on his style; he marvelled how the reformed Latin style had thus early reached England, and then proceeded to give praise where praise was due. ‘For this progress’—he wrote—‘thanks are due to the illustrious Duke of Gloucester, who zealously received polite learning into your country. I hear that he cultivates poets and venerates orators, and hereby many Englishmen have become really eloquent. For as are princes so are servants, who improve by imitating their masters.’[1179] Æneas showed no inclination to dwell on the virtues of Humphrey when narrating his relations with Jacqueline, so this praise from him deserves close attention, doubly so, as it must have been in no way pleasant to the recipient of the letter, who was one of the faction so bitterly opposed to Gloucester.

Humphrey, therefore, was instrumental in bringing the fruits of the Italian scholarship to England, and he did this in two ways. He induced some of those who had drunk of the new spring of intellectual life which flowed from the teaching of Chrysoloras to come to England and enter his service, and he also entered into communication with some of the leading humanists who remained in Italy, and employed them on translations of the Greek classics which were sent to England. In England Greek was an unknown language, even as it had been in Italy until the last decade of the fourteenth century, and it was only by means of translations made by men who had a competent knowledge of Greek, that the great philosophical treatises of Aristotle and Plato could be read by Gloucester and his friends. Italy at this time was embarking on that period in the history of Humanism which we may call the age of translation and arrangement, the age when a minute knowledge of the language of ancient Greece and a new critical faculty, born of the emancipation from the hereditary theology of the Middle Ages, produced a band of scholars who devoted their time to interpreting the ideas of the past to the awakening intelligence of the present. These men, with all their ardour for study, were not, and could not afford to be, entirely disinterested in their work; to live, they must be paid for their translations, and in an age when the art of printing had not come to simplify the reproduction of books, they were compelled to appeal to some particular patron to reward them for their toil, and to him in return they dedicated their books. Many such patrons were to be found among the princes of Italy, but outside that country they were not common, and Humphrey stood out prominently amongst those patrons who were not Italians. We cannot tell what first led him to embark on this career, for he had, it would seem, no knowledge of Italy or the Italians, when Poggio came to England, and he had probably at this time evinced no desire to embark on the most interesting phase of his later life. Not once does Poggio make even the most distant allusion to Gloucester, either during his visit to England or after his return to Italy in the autumn of 1423,[1180] and we cannot attribute this entirely to his connection with the Duke’s great rival.

ZANO OF BAYEUX

Humphrey’s introduction to the Italian Humanists was due to his friendship with Zano Castiglione, Bishop of Bayeux, a Frenchman by birth, but descended from a famous Italian family. This prelate had visited England, and had there become acquainted with the man who was to be instrumental in bringing Italian scholarship to this country. A token of their friendship is still extant at Paris in a manuscript collection of the letters of Cicero presented by Zano to the Duke of Gloucester.[1181]

In 1434 Zano was sent to the Council of Basel as representative of Henry VI., and he took with him a commission from Humphrey to purchase for him as many books as he could, especially such as had been written by Guarino, the famous schoolmaster of Ferrara, and by Leonardo Bruni, the biographer of Dante and Petrarch, whose reputation had already reached the Duke in London.[1182] At Basel the Bishop came to know Francesco Picolpasso, Archbishop of Milan, a scholarly ecclesiastic, who had relations with all the leading Italian Humanists; and when he followed the adjourned Council to Florence, this acquaintance became particularly useful to him in view of his commission. In Florence Zano spent a year, and we gather from the statements of Italian scholars, later to be detailed, that he there devoted much of his time to singing the praises of the English prince who took such an interest in literary matters. Of his commission to buy books we hear no more, though it is probable that when he returned to England especially to see Humphrey,[1183] he did not go empty-handed. It is possible that Gloucester, though already a collector of books, had not as yet thought of becoming the direct patron of foreign scholars, and that his commission to Zano bore far other and more important fruit than he had contemplated. Thus his original interest in scholarship was moulded by the turn of events, and the chance which took Zano from Basel to Florence laid the foundations of one of the most important phases of the Duke’s career. From this time forward Humphrey continued to be in close relationship with several of the best-known Humanists of the Italian Renaissance.

LEONARDO BRUNI

The first of these scholars to correspond with the new English patron was Leonardo Bruni, better known by his title of Aretinus, taken from Arezzo, the city of his birth. We have no evidence that Zano’s visit was the direct cause of his connection with the Duke, but the fact that the latter had specially mentioned a desire for his works when Zano went to Basel points to a strong probability that this was the case. It is probable that Zano had sent over to England this author’s translation of Aristotle’s Ethics; at any rate, it was after reading it that Humphrey wrote and suggested that Bruni should undertake the Politics,[1184] and in due course they were translated and dedicated to the Duke. In a manuscript copy of this translation in the Bodleian Library we find the dedication, and following it a letter from the author to Gloucester, which is in no sense a dedicatory epistle, but evidently written after the despatch of the volume to its destination, and later placed at the beginning of a copy of the original work.

In this letter Bruni rejoices to hear of the arrival of his translation of the books of Aristotle, which he had undertaken at the Duke’s request and suggestion, and to know that both Gloucester’s desire, expressed in several letters, has been fulfilled, and his own promise redeemed. He is convinced that Gloucester will have already read the book, and he may be sure that he has therein read the very words of Aristotle. To Gloucester’s action is due any value to the world in general that this translation may have, for it was undertaken at his request, and finished under pressure from him. In its completed form it stands as a monument to Gloucester’s love of learning.[1185] Throughout this letter we can see the shadow of Gloucester’s character; eager and impetuous in matters political, he displayed the same characteristic when he turned his mind to scholarship and learning; the same enthusiasm which took him to Hainault led him to harass Bruni till the coveted book was ready. Perhaps his eagerness to keep this shifty humanist to his work was well advised, else he might not have got the book at all, for almost immediately afterwards the dedication was changed, and that which Bruni had declared would be a monument to Gloucester’s glory, became by a stroke of the pen a monument to the glory of Pope Eugenius IV.[1186] The reason for this sudden change of patron is probably to be found in the almost universal greediness of the Italian Humanists, though the gossiping old bookseller Vespasiano ascribes it to the fact that Bruni thought that his work was not sufficiently appreciated[1187]—perhaps a polite way of putting the same truth.