The literary manuscripts and literary patronage of the Beauchamp and Neville families in the Late Middle Ages, 1390-1500

McGoldrick, Lynne (1985) The literary manuscripts and literary patronage of the Beauchamp and Neville families in the Late Middle Ages, 1390-1500. Doctoral thesis, Newcastle Polytechnic.

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Abstract

This thesis is an examination of the literary manuscripts and literary patronage of the Beauchamp and Neville families from the late fourteenth century to the end of the fifteenth century. The evidence for such a study is scattered among a number of primary and secondary sources including manuscripts, inventories, wills, editions of texts, and studies devoted to the art, history and literature of the medieval period in general.
The first chapter discusses the background to the study, including the education of the nobility in the later middle ages, their literary and cultural interests as shown by the evidence of extant manuscripts and books in wills, and noting critical work in this area. The second chapter outlines the historical and genealogical backgrounds of the two families, highlighting individual members of each family who figure in later chapters as patrons and owners of manuscripts, and giving a brief summary of the manuscripts and patronage of each family.
The third and fourth chapters deal respectively with the extant Beauchamp and the extant Neville manuscripts, paying particular attennon to contents, provenance, language, and the circumstances in which a manuscript was commissioned or acquired.
The fifth and sixth chapters deal with different aspects of
literary patronage. Chapter five concentrates on the Beauchamp family and their 'household' patronage, which focusses upon a number of cases where social and literary patronage coincide and household and commercial expertise are combined. An interest is noted here in family ancestry and history, particularly during times of political uncertainty. Chapter six is a discussion of the more 'public' patronage of members of the two families drawn from the examples of Hoccleve, Lydgate and Caxton, which suggest the continuing importance to many authors of
signs of aristocratic approval or support, as well as a certain conventionality of aristocratic taste.

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