The Hengwrt Chaucer manuscript is an early-15th-century manuscript of the Canterbury Tales, held in the National Library of Wales, in Aberystwyth. It is an important source for Chaucer's text, and was possibly written by someone with access to an original authorial holograph, now lost.

The Hengwrt Chaucer is part of a collection called the Peniarth Manuscripts which is included by UNESCO in its UK Memory of the World Register, a list of documentary heritage which holds cultural significance specific to the UK.

History of the manuscript

thumb|Hengwrt, the seat of the Vaughan family, 1793

thumb|The opening folio of the Hengwrt Chaucer manuscript contains the beginning of the [[General Prologue.]]

The Hengwrt Chaucer has been in Wales for at least 400 years.

This was one of the collection of manuscripts amassed at the mansion of Hengwrt, near Dolgellau, Gwynedd, by Welsh antiquary Robert Vaughan (c.1592–1667); the collection later passed to the newly established National Library of Wales.

The Hengwrt manuscript's very early ownership is unknown, but recent research suggests that Chaucer himself may have partly supervised the making of the manuscript, before his death in October 1400, according to the Welsh newspaper The Western Mail.

By the 16th century it can be identified as belonging to Fouke Dutton, a draper of Chester who died in 1558. It then seems to have passed into the ownership of the Bannester family of Chester and Caernarfon, and through them was in the possession of an Andrew Brereton by 1625; by the middle of the 17th century it had been acquired by Vaughan.

Description

Peniarth MS 392 D contains 250 folios with a page size of around 29 x 20.5 centimetres (11½" x 8"). It is written on heavily stained and rather damaged parchment. Vermin have eaten around nine centimeters (3½") from the outer corners of the leaves. It is less complete than the Ellesmere manuscript, and the tales are in an order that is unique to itself. The main textual hand has been identified with one found in several other manuscripts of the period (see below); there are a number of other hands in the manuscript, including one of a person who attempted to fill in several gaps in the text. This has been tentatively identified as the hand of the poet Thomas Hoccleve.

There is some illumination in blue, gold and pink, used on the border and on initial letters at the opening of individual tales and prologues, but the manuscript contains no illustrations.

The scribe of the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts has been identified by Linne Mooney, a palaeographer at the University of York, as Adam Pinkhurst, a documented member of the Worshipful Company of Scriveners. The attribution has been widely accepted, and other manuscripts have since been added to Pinkhurst's scribal canon. However, other scholars, including Jane Roberts, who drew Mooney's attention to Pinkhurst in the first place, have expressed skepticism about the identification on various palaeographical, literary, and historical grounds.

Order

The tales are presented in the following order:

  1. General Prologue
  2. The Knight's Tale
  3. The Miller's Tale
  4. The Reeve's Tale
  5. The Cook's Tale
  6. The Wife of Bath’s Tale
  7. The Friar's Tale
  8. The Summoner's Tale
  9. The Monk's Tale
  10. The Nun's Priest's Tale
  11. The Manciple's Tale
  12. The Man of Law's Tale
  13. The Squire's Tale
  14. The Merchant's Tale
  15. The Franklin's Tale
  16. The Second Nun's Prologue and Tale
  17. The Clerk's Tale
  18. The Physician's Tale
  19. The Pardoner's Tale
  20. The Shipman's Tale
  21. The Prioress' Tale
  22. Sir Thopas
  23. The Tale of Melibee
  24. The Parson's Tale

See also

  • William Maurice (antiquary)
  • Robert Vaughan (antiquary)

References

  • Full digitized manuscript at the National Library of Wales