John Weever’s Copies of Langland, Gower, and Chaucer

Abstract John Weever’s Ancient Fvnerall Monvments (1631) is among the most important witnesses to the early recovery and revaluation of the major Ricardian poets. This article inquires into the print or manuscript sources of the many quotations Weever supplies from these poets’ works. While Weever quotes Geoffrey Chaucer’s works from a printed source, as might be expected, his quotations from William Langland (maybe) and John Gower (certainly) reflect an engagement with manuscript sources. The article establishes on textual grounds that Weever quotes Chaucer exclusively from Thomas Speght’s 1602 edition; that Weever primarily quotes Piers Plowman from Owen Rogers’s 1561 printed edition; that Weever may or may not have consulted one of Robert Cotton’s Piers Plowman manuscripts; that Weever quotes Gower’s unpublished Latin from at least two Vox clamantis manuscripts, including at least one numbered among those that survive from Cotton’s library; and that Weever may have consulted the trilingual Trentham manuscript containing the unique text of Gower’s In Praise of Peace. The tentative conclusion that Weever borrowed the Trentham manuscript from someone for the purpose of consulting its text of In Praise of Peace fills a gap in the manuscript’s provenance and suggests avenues for further research into its early ownership.