Robert Thornton and His Books

The Yorkshire landowner Robert Thornton (c.1397- c.1465) copied the contents of two important manuscripts Lincoln Cathedral MS 91 (the Lincoln manuscript) and London British Library MS Additional 31042 (the London manuscript) in the middle decades of the fifteenth century. Viewed in combination his books comprise a rare repository of varied English and Latin literary religious and medical texts that survived the dissolution of the monasteries. Because of the extraordinary nature of his collected texts - Middle English romances alliterative verse (the alliterative Morte Arthure only exists here) lyrics and treatises of religion or medicine - editors and scholars have long been deeply interested in uncovering Thornton's habits as a private amateur scribe. The essays collected here provide for the first time a sustained focussed light on Thornton and his books. They examine such matters as what Thornton as a scribe made how he did it and why he did it placing him in a wider context and looking at the contents of the manuscripts.