The Chaworth Roll
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A very rare 700-year-old manuscript history of the Kings of England that belonged to the same family from the 14th to the 20th century will be exhibited by Sam Fogg, 15d Clifford Street, London Wl, from Thursday 3 to Thursday 24 March 2005. The genealogical roll, made in England in the 1320s for a member of the Chaworth family, traces the royal succession from Egbert, ‘the first king of all England’ who reigned from 829 to 839, to Edward II (reigned 1307-1327). Sometime between 1399 and 1413 a continuation was added, updating the genealogy from Edward III (reigned 1327-1377) to Henry IV (reigned 1399-1413). The Chaworth Roll is the finest manuscript of its type to appear on the market for more than thirty years and will be offered for sale by Sam Fogg for a six-figure sum.
Most of the roll is the work of a single artist, dubbed the Chaworth Master, whose confident, delicately tinted drawings demonstrate the influence of the distinctive technique of the Queen Mary Master, the anonymous illuminator of the magnificent Queen Mary Psalter in the British Library (Royal 2 B VII). The roll is 6.5 meters long, 24.5 cm wide and consists of nine parchment membranes glued end to end. Approximately thirty such genealogies produced in England in the decades between 1271 and 1327 survive. Within this group, the Chaworth Roll is especially close in style and content to three others, one in the Bodleian Library and two in Cambridge University Library, but is in far better condition than those.
Such rolls were made for members of an increasingly literate aristocracy whose appetite for popular history flourished in 14th century England. This example provides a succinct overview of English history seasoned with tales of traitors, piety, battles, saints, sinners and incidents of divine intervention - a medieval equivalent of a popular modern television series on the monarchy. Written in Anglo-Norman French, which was still the dominant language of the aristocracy in the 1320s, its pithy and memorable texts grab the reader’s attention and summarise the highlights of each monarch’s reign.
The Chaworth Roll begins with two diagrammatic maps and a magnificent Wheel of Fortune. Placed between the maps, Lady Fortune stands with her hands poised on the wheel’s spokes ready to give it a spin. Figures drawn around the circumference of the wheel illustrate Fortune’s cycle. Seated at the top is a crowned king, holding a sword and sceptre. As the wheel turns, his crown slips and he tumbles downward, until at the bottom he lies naked. He then rises up again, first holding a coin, then – his dignity restored – holding a comb and mirror, and finally as a noble gentleman with a hooded gown and a hawk perched on his wrist. Five verses accompany the wheel. In the text inscribed inside the wheel, Lady Fortune says ‘Let me be called Lady Fortune: I govern everyone, rich and poor, and all people are under my command. Some I wish to raise up, others I reduce to poverty. […] No-one will escape death.’
Above Lady Fortune is a very unusual schematic map of the Roman roads of Britain, including Watling Street, Hermin Street and Fosse Way, with the prevailing winds and the cardinal points inscribed in medallions around the perimeter. The map provides a snapshot of England in the time immediately before the reign of King Egbert. Below the Wheel of Fortune is a diagram of the seven Saxon kingdoms derived from a design of the St Albans monk Matthew Paris. In circa 829 these kingdoms, known as the Saxon Heptarchy (Wessex, Sussex, Kent, Essex, East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria), were unified by Egbert, King of Wessex. This map, therefore, is a diagram of the political landscape at the time of Egbert, the first king represented on the genealogy that follows. Egbert spent some time at the court of King Charlemagne the Great in France and later ‘vigorously conquered in battle the entire lordship of England from all the other kings’.
The genealogy then proceeds through the Anglo-Saxons, Normans, and Angevins to the reign of the Plantagenet King Edward II. Full-length seated portraits of the kings and their offspring are depicted in medallions, connected to one another by green bands. Among the tales of military prowess, condemnations of weak leadership and moral turpitude, praise for godliness and harrowing accounts of treachery and misfortune, some kings are utterly condemned. The text on William Rufus reads: ‘In the year of grace 1087, King William reigned after his father. He went to hunt in the New Forest; he was spied upon by Walter Tirel, wounded by an arrow, and died. He committed every day as much evil as he could. He was bad towards strangers, worse towards those close to him, and three times as hurtful towards himself. All things that please God displeased him. He died and was buried in Winchester’.
By contrast, the end of the text on Edward I, known as ‘the Hammer of the Scots’, reads: ‘This King Edward reigned for thirty four years and nine months, vanquished all his enemies and conquered Wales, Scotland and Gascony. In all his actions he was just and very merciful. He was buried in Westminster’.
Previously attributed to the patronage of Maud de Chaworth (d. 1322), wife of Henry Plantagenet (1281-1345) and great-grandmother of Henry IV, new research suggests that the patron of this roll is more likely to have been her cousin, Sir Thomas Chaworth (1290-1347). Sir Thomas may have commissioned one genealogical roll for each of the four children named in his will, explaining the close relationship between the Chaworth, Bodleian and two Cambridge rolls. Sir Thomas’s great-grandson, also called Sir Thomas Chaworth (1380-1459), was a parliamentarian and bibliophile. Sometime between 1399 and 1413, he probably commissioned the continuation of the roll that carried the genealogy forward from Edward III to the reign of Henry IV. The Chaworth Roll remained in the possession of the Chaworth-Musters family, descendents of the medieval Chaworths, until 1988. Since 1988 it has been in a private European collection.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a richly illustrated monograph with an essay by Dr Alixe Bovey and contributions from Dr Olivier de Laborderie and Dr Marigold Norbye. Dr Bovey is a Canadian-born specialist in medieval art. After finishing her PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art, she worked for several years as a curator at the British Library.
