The Layman's Complaint and the Friar's Answer

Abstract

The two poems which I shall here transcribe and discuss have been often noticed but never printed. They appear as additions in a fifteenth century hand to a version of the late fourteenth century treatise Poor Caitiff, preserved in MS. St. John's College, Cambridge, G. 28 (195), itself of the fifteenth century. Besides our two poems, which appear on the front fly leaves, the margins contain numerous scribbles in one or more sixteenth century hands. The manuscript possesses marks of ownership by one John Graunge, who also owned another fifteenth century collection containing such Latin pieces as Expositio Symboli, Peter of Blois's De Amicitia Christiana, Speculum St. Eadmundi, and Decretum Abbreviatum, now preserved in the same library. The donor of our manuscript was Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, who gave it to the College in 1635.