The 'Hengwrt Chaucer'

Reference: Peniarth MS 392D

The 'Hengwrt Chaucer' is undoubtedly one of the greatest treasures of the National Library of Wales and one of the best known outside Wales. It is one of the most important texts of Geoffrey Chaucer's work to come down to us, and its importance has recently been magnified by the identification of its scribe as Adam Pinkhurst, one of Chaucer’s London-based associates. The manuscript may have been written at the end of the fourteenth century.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (born before 1346 - died 1400) is considered to be the best English poet of the Middle Ages. His genius was acknowledged during his lifetime and his influence on English literature can be traced throughout the fifteenth century. Many writers down the centuries have attempted to imitate his unique blend of wit and realism, his poetical genius and control of characterisation and dialogue, but most have failed. Chaucer's work is permeated by humour, often a rough, vulgar humour, and he even pokes fun at himself on several occasions.

The Canterbury Tales

The most famous of Chaucer’s works is the Canterbury Tales, which is an incomplete collection of stories or tales which are recounted by a group of characters who are travelling together on a pilgrimage to visit Thomas Becket's shrine at Canterbury. The thirty pilgrims are described in the General Prologue which also introduces the work's structure, namely that each pilgrim is expected to narrate two stories on their way to Canterbury and another two on the return journey, the best raconteur being rewarded with a free supper. The body of the work therefore contains two dozen tales, including two told by Chaucer himself. They all join together to create an outstandingly colourful and lively social drama.

The later history of the Hengwrt Chaucer

Later additions indicate that by the sixteenth century the manuscript had reached the Welsh Borders, for it belonged to Fouke Dutton, identified as a draper of Chester, who died in 1558. By the 1570s the manuscript was associated with the Banestar or Bannester family, also with Chester connections but whose three youngest children were born at Llanfair-is-gaer, near Caernarfon. A further memorandum, dated 1625, refers to Andrew Brereton (d. 1649) of Llanfair-is-gaer. The manuscript then found its way into the remarkable library of Robert Vaughan (c. 1592-1667) of Hengwrt, Meirionnydd. Vaughan's collection remained at Hengwrt until it was bequeathed in 1859 to W.W.E. Wynne of Peniarth. Wynne’s son sold the manuscripts in 1904 to Sir John Williams, and he in turn presented the Peniarth manuscripts, including the Hengwrt group, to the newly-established National Library of Wales in 1909. The ‘Hengwrt Chaucer’ has remained in the Library's care ever since, and was included, among other Peniarth manuscripts, on the UNESCO UK Memory of the World Register in 2010.

Copying the Hengwrt Chaucer

Until now, access to images of the Hengwrt Chaucer has been largely by means of:

1. printed monochrome images in The Canterbury Tales: a facsimile and transcription of the Hengwrt manuscript, with variants from the Ellesmere manuscript, edited by Paul C. Ruggiers (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979)
2. a monochrome microfilm copy, created in July 1995, for use by readers at the National Library of Wales
3. full-colour digital images at 225 dpi in a CD-Rom published by Scholarly Digital Editions in March 2001, and prepared jointly by the National Library of Wales and The Canterbury Tales Project, based at De Montfort University, Leicester.

It is hoped that users of these new web images will also access the additional resources presented in the above first and third sources.

Further reading

• John M. Manly and Edith Rickert, ‘The Hengwrt Manuscript of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales’, The National Library of Wales Journal, 1 (1939), 59-75.
• Norman F. Blake, The Canterbury Tales, edited from the Hengwrt Manuscript, York Medieval Texts, second series (London: Edward Arnold, 1980).
• Linne R. Mooney, ‘Chaucer's Scribe’, Speculum, 81 (2006), 97-138.
• Linne R. Mooney & Estelle Stubbs, Scribes and the City: London Guildhall clerks and the dissemination of Middle English literature (York: York Medieval Press, 2013).
• Website of the Late Medieval English Scribes project