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This thesis is a modern spelling edition of unedited poems and song lyrics from British Library, Additional Manuscript 15233, and a cultural and sociological study of the collection. The manuscript contains music, poetry and fragments of drama attributed to John Redford, Organist, Almoner and Master of the Choristers at St. Paul's Cathedral c.1534–1547, as well as work by at least six other mid Tudor poets. The manuscript has systematically been cited as a ‘St. Paul’s miscellany’(because the main body of work within it is attributed to Redford), and despite its varied content, has been considered almost solely from the perspective of Early Modern drama. This thesis considers the manuscript anew: as a whole, rather than in parts divided along disciplinary lines, as an example of material culture, and separately from the well-researched centres of St. Paul’s and John Redford. Chapters one and two comprise a study of the physical makeup of the manuscript, demonstrating new evidence for its date, and suggesting that it is the product of an artistic network centred on the London parish church of St. Mary-at-Hill. Chapters three and four comprise new studies of the content of the manuscript. Chapter three examines The Play of Wit and Science, with particular attention to its bibliographical status, and its engagement with contemporary artistic debate in performance. It also demonstrates its importance as a source for two later sixteenth-century plays. Chapter four is a case study of a single poem from the manuscript. This demonstrates the overall significance of MS 15233 as a source for verse and song, uncovers a network of printers involved in the transmission of its contents, and calls into question the long-standing theory that the Elizabethan poet George Gascoigne was a contributor to the manuscript. The final chapter of the thesis comprises a modern spelling edition of the poems and song lyrics from MS 15233 with individual commentaries and textual apparatus. This thesis demonstrates that to examine MS 15233 purely in relation to St. Paul’s Cathedral and John Redford, and from any one perspective, is reductive, and that these approaches have caused evidence to be skewed, and scholars to miss more complex possibilities regarding its compilation and provenance.

Scholars recognise the importance of the Vulgate quotations in Langland's Piers Plowman, but few have investigated the relevance of the context of these biblical references: discussion of the Vulgate contexts has been very limited. Research for this thesis, examining every Bible quotation, context and associated materials, revealed a series of themes: Truth& was a major instance, but Baptism& and Ordination were also of considerable importance. Part one covers structure: chapter one surveys the history of Piers' criticism on the Bible; chapter two, Langland's use of Bible. Chapter three covers how Langland considers “Truth” contextually through sequential quotations in the first quarter of Piers. Part two deals with interpretation, and examines how Langland employs Bible frames of reference to explore two Sacraments: Baptism (chapter four), waymarks for Baptism (chapter five) and Ordination (chapter six).

The contention of the essay which follows is that the presumption that Wyatt's rhythm can be judged by standards which are impervious to the actual performance of his poetry, to the actual affects achieved and the 'meanings' thereby imparted, leads ineluctably to the rejection of Wyatt's poetry by prosodists and that the rejection of that presumption leads as rigourously to the conclusion that prosody (as that term is widely understood) has no role to play in the assessment of Wyatt's poetry. Evidence in favour of this conclusion is provided by the slight and previously unacknowledged testimony of the punctuation of two principal Wyatt manuscripts (transcripts of which are provided in vols. 2 and 3) and slightly reinforced by attention to the phrasal rhyme-scheme of some of the poems. The evidence is considered suggestive rather than conclusive, but by following through the suggestion of a non-quantitative rhythmical principle an attempt is made to show that in Wyatt's poetry there is a creative and dramatic significance indicative of a pervasive though limited set of preoccupations - metaphysical, political and psychological - within the poems. In conclusion it is maintained that, although no final placing of Wyatt can rest purely upon his rhythmical accomplishment, the approach to Wyatt's rhythm which has been proposed is important in that it reveals a presence of such basic and important preoccupations in the poems and these, set within but transforming the conventions of amour courtois, are finally adduced to establish Wyatt's place in relation to the sixteenth century.

This thesis offers the first extended study of British Library, MS Harley 1766 (c. 1450-60), an illustrated and much abridged version of Lydgate’s Fall of Princes (c. 1431-1438/39). Offering a holistic analysis of text, image, and paratextual features, it argues that the manuscript was the product of a Lydgate specialist and a team of associated artisans operating within Bury St. Edmunds during the 1450s and 1460s. Individual chapters explore the manuscript’s concern with promoting both Lydgate and Bury and identify a distinct rhetoric of idealised and stereotyped kings and queens, developed by the rearranged text and amplified through the design of the visual scheme. This thesis reads these motifs against Yorkist propaganda which fêted Edward IV and condemned both Henry VI and his queen, Margaret of Anjou. The connection between Yorkist propagandist themes and Harley 1766 is a direct result of the probable patronage of the manuscript by the Tyrell family, an East Anglian gentry family whose names repeatedly appear on the manuscript’s flyleaves. Commissioned as a direct response to their position as supporters of a deposed regime, Harley 1766 represents a political re-envisaging of the text designed for patrons seeking to realign themselves politically and ensure their safety in Yorkist England.

This thesis investigates the use to which William Langland puts the Glossa Ordinaria to authorise his vision of ethical, social and ecclesiastical reform in Piers Plowman. There was much in late fourteenth-century England to arouse the ire of the reformer and satirist and among Langland's targets was glossing the Bible. Yet the Bible was only available in glossed editions; so why and how did he differentiate between the Glossa Ordinaria and contemporary glossing? The answer seems to lie in the exploitative and dishonest use to which glossing was often put. Langland sees beyond that, however, recognising the ethical perils of linguistic diversity and more serious still, the lack of ethical content in, and even the antinomian tendencies of conventional (mostly Augustinian) understandings of some major Christian doctrines, such as predestination and free will, original sin, grace, the image of God in man, the Incarnation of Christ, and the relationship between wisdom, knowledge and love. This thesis examines the extent to which Langland deviates from these conventional understandings and revisits older understandings with more ethical productivity and a greater motivation for the laity to live ethically. He finds in the Gloss a source of such understandings.

This thesis examines the uses of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts in the 150 years immediately following the Norman Conquest. By focusing on the most common types of use evident in the manuscripts, it explores how readers actually interacted with books. It also treats manuscripts as cultural artefacts through which it is possible to observe the literary and social consequences of the Conquest. The Introduction summarises our current understanding of the literary culture of this transitional period. Chapter II, ‘Destruction and Conservation’, examines claims that Norman elites destroyed Anglo-Saxon manuscripts; finding these claims unjustified, it investigates the circumstances in which manuscripts were lost and identifies how readers evaluated the contents of pre-Conquest books. Chapter III, ‘The Movement of Pre-Conquest Manuscripts’, looks at the consequent loan, exchange and sale of pre-Conquest manuscripts after 1066. Chapter IV, ‘Updating Pre-Conquest Manuscripts’, discusses difficulties which Norman readers encountered with pre-Conquest books, including script, abbreviation, orthography and textual redaction, and examines how these technical features could be modernised. It also investigates more practical modernisations to liturgical books, chronicles and cartularies. Chapter V, ‘Glossing and Annotating’, concerns readers’ reactions to the texts found in pre-Conquest manuscripts, particularly vernacular homilies and translations. It argues that the post-Conquest classroom was essentially trilingual, though Latin became the lingua franca. Chapter VI, ‘Record-Keeping in Pre-Conquest Manuscripts’, explores the use of pre-Conquest manuscripts – copies of the gospels, liturgical books and patristic texts – as repositories for records. Chapter VII, ‘The Veneration of Pre-Conquest Manuscripts’, continues this exploration of the symbolic capital of pre-Conquest books by examining how Norman churchmen supported the veneration of particular manuscripts as secondary relics, and introduced new traditions regarding other books. The Conclusion refocuses the findings of this thesis on two key issues: early medieval reading practices and English literature between 1066 and 1200.