8 - The First Emergence of the Ricardian Confessio: Morgan M. 690

Summary

Among the longstanding puzzles for Gower scholarship is the emergence of Confessio Amantis manuscripts dedicated to Richard II. Deluxe copies for London patrons were first produced during the reign of Richard's replacement and probable bane, Henry IV, at a time when Gower himself was writing notably partisan poetry for the Lancastrian regime. Along with the elite of Lancastrian London, even the sons of Henry owned copies promoting this apparent regime confusion. The earliest surviving copy associated with Ricardian Confessios, Morgan MS M. 690, offers compelling evidence of a ‘late state’ model for Gower's poetry that would solve the puzzle. Gower's great poem did go through the political changes for which it is famous, but the proving ground for those changes in our manuscript evidence was the crucible of early Lancastrian rule after the great rupture of 1399. This period also constituted the poetic crucible for Gower's late career, whose alchemy transformed him into a laureate veering perilously close to loyalist pamphleteer as the Confessio came before the public of London and, eventually, England. Morgan M. 690 represents a pivotal point in this crucial period of disruption after 1400 for the contending versions of the Confessio dedicated to Henry and Richard.

Although longstanding narratives about Gower's creation process for the Confessio place the poem's genesis in the late 1380s or early 1390s during the reign of Richard II, the manuscript evidence does not begin until after Henry IV had deposed Richard in 1399. Nor does this evidence offer any clear candidate for a Ricardian Confessio datable before Morgan M. 690, although speculation about such an original began with Gower's first great editor, George Macaulay. Bodl., MS Fairfax 3, one of the two earliest surviving Confessios, underwent revisions probably beginning around 1400 and extending beyond Gower's death in 1408. These revisions included replacing the opening folio (once) and closing section (twice); both contain dedication passages to Henry in the manuscript's surviving form. This change quite naturally invited speculation, beginning with Macaulay, that the revisions were intended to replace dedications to Richard with dedications to the newly-crowned Henry.