William of Shoreham
Of the many writers associated with Shoreham, little is known of the earliest – but we have a good sample of his poetry. William of Shoreham was born towards the end of the 1200s, half a century or so before the birth of Chaucer, and there are no records of his life in the village beyond the fact that his name suggests he grew up here. He would have attended a Shoreham Church about to undergo substantial renovations, but the west end of today’s nave – with its archway into the Tower – would have been familiar to him.
In about 1320 he became the vicar of Chart Sutton, near Maidstone, and it’s likely that before then he was a cleric a few miles away at Leeds Priory. A single unfinished manuscript of his work survives in the British Museum, consisting of seven poems written in a Kentish dialect. Three of them praise the Virgin Mary, and others offer teachings on Christian doctrine and living a godly life. Their simple rhyming verses would have translated scholarly ideas into something parishioners could understand, and perhaps some of the poems made their way back to Shoreham.
The meanings of sin and the Ten Commandments are among the topics, and the final part of the manuscript is a long reflection on some of the issues that exercised the everyday medieval mind. What happened to a baby who died before baptism? Why did God wait so long to send Christ into the world? How to deal with troubled marriages? The scribe who copied the verses into the surviving manuscript seemed to be none-too-scrupulous, so that corruptions of the originals abound. But later scholars transposed what we have into modern English, and below is an extract on the dangers of pride:
Pride sucks the flowers
Of wisdom and wit, Among ladies in bowers Does foul pride sit; Under cowl and cope Does foul pride hide; Though man is girt with rope Yet pride is inside. There is no one, whatever some may think, That some pride does not take; Nor none so proud, I know, As he who the world will forsake. For who is there that never desired On earth to be crowned, And who never yearned For the pomp all around? Who was never a rebel Against lord and master, Takes reproof with patience And does not back answer? Who was never tempted By a chance of glory, Or when praise came his way Did not make most of the story? Who never thought His praise should be sung For deeds that he wrought His friends all among? |