By his patronage of Oxford and his gifts of books Humphrey had inspired his immediate successors to carry on his work, and to bring together the materials for future generations to use. His work was crowned when Greek came to be taught in England. He himself had known no Greek, Grey and his friends had known but not imparted it; it remained for William Selling of All Souls at Canterbury, and Thomas Linacre, William Grocyn, and Thomas Latimer at Oxford, to bring this language and the literature which it voiced to the knowledge of educated Englishmen. Linacre, perhaps even more than his fellows, was cast in the mould that Humphrey would have approved. Like Humphrey, he was a man of immensely wide interests, not the dry-as-dust scholar, but the man of the world; like Humphrey, he was a special student of medicine, a science which owed its development in Italy to the discovery of the works of Hippocrates. At the same time he, more than any one else, completed the edifice of which Humphrey had built the foundations. Again we can trace the direct influence of the Duke. This last band of scholars who finally established the new learning in England were, like their predecessors, all Oxonians. The University which Gloucester had started on the way of good things was the parent of the new school of thought, it carried on the work of its great patron. It is to the lasting fame of this indifferent politician that through him the humanities came to be taught in England, that through him Oxford was induced to lead the van in introducing the new culture. We are apt to forget the debt we owe to the work of these early intellectual reformers, and to minimise the influence of the ideas they introduced on every aspect of our lives. Yet reflection will give its due meed of praise to their laborious efforts, and if it goes far enough back, will, like the Bidding Prayer read from the pulpit of the University Church, place Duke Humphrey’s name first on the list of benefactors.
GLOUCESTER’S TITLE TO FAME
It is a relief to turn from the stormy political career of Duke Humphrey to that sphere of his activity where undiluted praise can be given; to forget that public life which was marred by instability and prejudice, and to admire that industry which won him a great reputation both with his contemporaries and with posterity. Yet we must not forget that many of the qualities which led him to court disaster in public life were due to his leanings towards a life of study. The circumstances of his life and the tendencies of his age were against him. A student by nature and a politician by birth, he had too much ambition and too little restraint to choose the better path, and confine his energies to spreading the gospel of the new learning. The man of letters is seldom wise in adopting a life of political activity, and the case of Humphrey was in some ways repeated later in the life of Bacon. Even if we place the Duke of Gloucester amongst the worst types of political criminals—and we have no adequate reason for so doing—we must accord him a position of honour amongst those to whom posterity should be grateful. By those who have laboured under the shadow of his personality in the Library which preserves his name the memory of the ‘Good Duke’ must be cherished as an inspiration. They indeed must catch something of the spirit which enabled Hearne to speak of him as ‘that religious, good and learned prince whose handwriting I us’d, whenever I saw it in the Bodleian Library ... to show a particular sort of respect to, as some little Remains of a truly great Man, one that was both a Scholar himself, and the chiefest Promoter of Learning and Scholars at that time.’[1400]
The first page of the Renaissance in England consists of the life of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and all who value the inspiration to be drawn from the new era in human thought which dates from that great movement, must respect the memory of this great Lancastrian Prince.
APPENDIX A
BOOKS ONCE BELONGING TO GLOUCESTER STILL EXTANT
The dispersion of a Library is in all cases unfortunate, but most especially so when it serves as a monument to a great personality. Even as Petrarch’s two hundred manuscripts are scattered and lost so that not forty of them can be now identified, so Duke Humphrey’s private library and the books he presented to Oxford, which in all must have numbered five hundred at least, are now recognisable only in a very few instances. Only three of the manuscripts given to Oxford repose now on the shelves of the Bodleian, and these have not continued there since the days when they were transferred thither from the chests of Cobham’s Library. The first of these is a copy of the letters of Nicholas de Clemenges (Hatton MS., 36), a French theologian and Rector of the University of Paris, who died about 1440. The book was a present to Gloucester from one of the Canons of Rouen, and formed part of his last donation. The first folio has been torn out, but the opening words of the second are ‘O nos,’ which corresponds to the entry in the University indenture, though the scribe by a slip of the pen has transcribed it ‘O vos’ (Epist. Acad., 235). The last folio bears the Duke’s inscription, ‘Cest livre est A moy Homfrey duc de Gloucestre du don maistre Guillaum erare docteur en theologie chanoyne de Ram.’ A still more interesting volume in the same library is that which contains the Letters of the Younger Pliny (Bodley MS., Auct. F. 2, 23, at present on view in glass case No. 1), probably one of the books sent over from Italy by Candido. It also bears the Duke’s autograph, ‘Cest livre est A moy Homfrey duc de Gloucestre,’ and formed part of the same gift as the letters of Nicholas de Clemenges (Epist. Acad., 235). Both these manuscripts were in private hands in the seventeenth century, the former owned by Henry Holford of Long Stanton, the latter by Dr. Robert Master, Bishop of Lichfield. Notes to this effect are appended in the respective manuscripts.
A more doubtful authenticity attaches to a third manuscript in the Bodleian Library, which contains Bruni’s translations of Aristotle’s Politics (Bodley MS., 2143 [Auct. F. 27]). Therein is contained a dedication to Humphrey and the letter from the translator quoted in the text (see p. 352). At the end there is an erased and unrestorable inscription placed exactly in the position that Humphrey almost invariably used for his autograph. Unfortunately the two first folios of the text proper are missing, though the prefatory letter is intact, but in no case did the University scribes count the folios from anywhere but the beginning of the book itself, all prefatory matter being disregarded. The possibility of proving that this is the actual volume presented to Oxford is thus removed, and when we remember that the terms of the letter preceding the translation show that the original copy had reached its destination before this letter was written, we must doubt that this was the volume received from Italy. Possibly, and almost probably, this manuscript in the Bodleian was a copy of the original translation, made by one of Gloucester’s secretaries, with the letter written by Bruni introduced by way of preface. Two other manuscripts in the Bodleian Library are copies of work given by Humphrey to Oxford, one the ‘De Regimine Principum’ of Egidius (Hatton MS., 15), the other the moral treatise dedicated by Piero del Monte to the Duke (Bodley MS., 3618 [E. Museo, 119]). Neither of these belonged to Gloucester, nor do they correspond to their fellows in the indenture. By a strange error another manuscript in the same Library, containing the last six books of the historical anecdotes of Valerius Maximus and notes thereon (Bodley MS., F. infra, i. 1), has been numbered among Gloucester’s books (Macray, Annals of the Bodleian). The mistake probably arose from the fact that the Duke’s arms appear on the first folio, but an inscription plainly refutes the theory, and shows that the book was given ‘ad usum scolarium studencium Oxonie’ by Abbot Wheathampsted. It was given therefore for the use of the ‘scholars’ of the University, and the presence of the arms is explicable, if we remember that Humphrey was Wheathampsted’s friend and patron, and that another copy of this book was probably given by the Abbot to Gloucester. It is even possible that the copying of the book was undertaken at Gloucester’s suggestion, and that his arms were placed there in token of this.