A woman translator in the 15th century
A previous Dottie Tale looked at the history of Sopwell Priory in St Albans, but the women living there were only mentioned in passing. However, some of the women of spirit and intellect associated with the priory deserve a closer look. One of them is the first woman translator whose name is known: Dame Eleanor Hull (c.1394–1460). I wanted to find out more about her.
Family background
Dame Eleanor ancestors were the Malet family, who had held Enmore in Somerset since c.1100. As far as Dame Eleanor is concerned, let’s start with Baldwin Malet, her grandfather. He had served in France with Thomas Trevet[i]. Baldwin first married Elizabeth Trevet, a daughter of Thomas Trevet.[ii] They had a son, John Malet, who was Eleanor’s father. After Elizabeth’s death, Baldwin married Amicia Lyffe and they had another son, Hugh (d.1465). Baldwin Malet (d.1416) was involved in the local affairs of Enmore. In 1401, he obtained a grant of a Monday market and a three-day fair for his town.[iii] Baldwin died in 1416.
The marriage contract of Eleanor’s parents is extant and tells us that “Baldwin Malet, knight, and Lady Elizabeth, his wife” arranged in 1380 that John, Baldwin’s heir apparent, should marry Joan Hill (c.1370–1426), daughter of John Hill, justice of the King’s Bench, of Exeter.[iv]
Sir John Malet was a retainer of John of Gaunt as well as of Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV). He accompanied Henry on his “Reise” to Eastern Prussia in 1390-1391[v] and presumably visited Insterburg with him. The family’s connection to the House of Lancaster was to continue.
John died before 1395, predeceasing his father. His widow, Joan Hill, remarried three times.
Youth and marriage
It is not known when Dame Eleanor Hull was born. Given her parents’ marriage date and her father’s death, she was probably born in the late 1380s/early 1390s. She was her parents only child. We don’t know anything about her upbringing. However, as her later work shows, she must have enjoyed a better than average education, which included Latin and Anglo-Norman as well as a knowledge of spoken and written French.
It has been suggested that her education was under the influence of her uncle Robert Hill (c.1361-1423), older brother of Eleanor’s mother Joan. In 1394, Robert had married Isabel Fichet, who had inherited the manor of Spaxton, also in Somerset, as well as quite a few others. Robert and his wife lived at Spaxton. It is likely that, like his father, he was trained to be a lawyer. He was MP for Spaxton and compiler of the Hylle Cartulary.[vi] Spaxton is close to Enmore and it seems likely that the families stayed close. Robert would remember both his sister and niece in his will. Eleanor inherited a gold ring with a diamond. It was interesting that he referred to his sister still as “Lady Joan Malett” [vii] , although by that time she was married to her fourth husband.[viii]
Eleanor was a wealthy heiress, By 1410, she had married Sir John Hull. John Hull was also a retainer of John of Gaunt, later ambassador to Castile for both Henry IV and Henry V and was called “king’s esquire”. They had one son, Sir Edward Hull (c.1410-1453).
The first record we have of her is from 1413, when in the early years of her marriage, she asked for papal permission for a portable altar. She seems to have had a mind of her own, as in 1415 she requests the right to choose her own confessor.
By 1417, Eleanor was a servant of Joan of Navarre, Henry IV’s second wife. In that year she was granted 50 marks per annum for her service. She probably also had a connection to Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and his second wife Eleanor Cobham.
In February 1417, Eleanor, her husband, and their young son were admitted to the confraternity of St Albans Abbey. She and her family would frequently make gifts to the abbey.
Eleanor and Sopwell Priory
John Hull died c. 1420, when their son Edward was still a child. Unlike her mother, Eleanor did not marry again. Instead she would spend time at Sopwell Priory in Hertfordshire, a dependent house of St Albans Abbey, located only approx. 1 mile from the abbey. We don’t know the exact times of Eleanor’s stays at Sopwell. However, it seems likely that this arrangement lasted for quite some time, as in the national return for 1436 she is listed under Hertfordshire with an annual income from lands, rents and annuities of £ 86.[ix] Her relationship to Sopwell seems to have influenced her family. Her cousin John Hill, son of uncle Robert, made his will in 1434 and left 10 marks to the “nuns of Soppewyll [Herts]”.[x]
Cambridge University Library has a manuscript (CUL MS Kk 1.6) with two texts attributed to Eleanor: a translation of a commentary on The Seven Penitential Psalms and a translation of a collection of prayers and meditations. The original French texts have not been found. We know though that Eleanor had translated these texts, because this manuscript was assembled by Richard Fox (d.1454), a lay man employed by St Albans Abbey as “officer for literature and procurement of books”.[xi] He clearly states that the translations were by Eleanor Hull. It is assumed that she did them, while staying at Sopwell. So what was the attraction of Sopwell and St Albans? Her translations indicate that she had access to a wide range of books, which a monastic library could offer.[xii] And one of the best library could be found in St Albans.
At least from the days of the first post-Conquest abbot, Paul de Caen (1077-1093), the abbey had been famous as a centre of learning and for its manuscript production. Clark asserts that “this one Benedictine house had emerged perhaps the most sustained tradition of learning and literary production in the country”.[xiii]
This continued and in the fifteenth century, at the time of Eleanor’s residence at Sopwell, it was abbot John Wheathampstead, a famous scholar and lover of books, who made a big impact on the monastic library. He was first elected abbot in 1420. During this time, he travelled to Italy, via Cologne, where he obtained important privileges and dispensations for his abbey from the pope. He retired in 1440, but was re-elected in 1452. After his death in 1465, he was buried in a chantry chapel he had built at the abbey church. The chapel with his remains was re-discovered in 2018. He is credited with great contributions to the abbey library by having numerous books produced for its collection – in his first period alone he donated more than 87 volumes, at a total cost of more than £ 100. During his second abbacy, he commissioned a self-contained library building. All this probably with the help of Richard Fox, his “officer for literature and procurement of books”. He also donated a library for the students of his alma mater, Gloucester College in Oxford. He was a close friend of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, another well-known bibliophile. Wheathampstead regarded his library at St Alban as the best in the country.[xiv] What better place to attract a woman like Dame Eleanor Hull to Sopwell Priory.
Anglo-Norman – a language for nuns and lawyers
Eleanor’s knowledge of 13th-century Anglo-Norman is remarkable. Among women, this knowledge was normally limited to nuns, like those of Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire, which are recorded to have used a French which “is moche like the frenche that the common Lawe is writen in”.[xv]
Eleanor was not a nun, but she had quite a few connections to men who would have been well-versed in the language of the common law. There was her maternal grandfather, John Hill of Exeter, a Justice of the King’s Bench. As we have already seen, she had a close connection to her uncle Robert Hill. Most likely, he was also trained in law and certainly knew Anglo-Norman, as he used it in his Cartulary. In her will, she named Sir John Fortescue (c.1397–1479) as one of her executors, so she must have known him well. Fortescue was a chief justice and came like her mother’s family from Devon. And last but not least, there is Roger Huswyf (b.1395), Eleanor’s spiritual and legal adviser and long-term friend. Huswyf was a lawyer, who became a priest in 1430 and lived in St Albans. [xvi]
Translations
As mentioned above, we know that the translation of the Seven Penitential Psalms owned by Richard Fox had been done by Eleanor. It is not an original written by her, but rather a copy by various scribes. Partially by Richard Fox himself, another scribe was a monk of St Albans Abbey, who used the lovely penname Walter Plenus Amoris (= Fullalove).[xvii]
Not only did Eleanor stay at Sopwell Priory, when she made her translation, but it has also been suggested that she made them for the nuns of the priory. Her texts are addressed to a group of people, probably a religious community. The Benedictine priory of Sopwell fits perfectly, where her translations might have been read to the nuns for instance at meal times.[xviii] From there it somehow came into the possession of Richard Fox.
Sopwell Priory is attacked!
connection with Sopwell was not without excitement though: On 16 February 1427, the famous robber William Wawe and his band broke into Sopwell Priory. This quite sizable gang was active in parts of Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Hampshire. They were notorious for robbing clerics and religious houses. However, on this occasion they seem to have come specifically for Eleanor, for whom they “made urgent enquiries”. They were bitterly disappointed that she wasn’t there at the time. So they just grabbed a few valuable items and ran off. By this time the alarm had been raised and the townsmen were coming to help the nuns.[xix]
Edward Hull (c.1410-1453)
We only find mentions of Eleanor’s son Edward, once he was an adult. He was born c.1410. He served as sheriff of Somerset, Dorset and Devon at various times. From 1438, he was a squire and knight of the body. He was very much involved in the war in France from 1430 onwards, where in 1436, he was in the retinue of Richard, duke of York. From 1442 to 1453, he was constable of Bordeaux.
In 1442, he was included in a letter of protection to negotiate a marriage between Henry VI and a daughter of Jean IV, count of Armagnac. The other two were Sir Robert Roos and Thomas Beckington, at that stage the king’s secretary (later Bishop of Bath and Wells). The latter, on his way to Plymouth, stayed overnight with Edward at Enmore on 16 June 1442. Edward then returned to court. [xx] Whether Eleanor was there as well at that time is not mentioned.
The marriage plans between Henry VI and a daughter of the count of Armagnac came to nothing. When Henry married Margaret of Anjou two years later, both Eleanor and Edward attended the proxy wedding in France.
In 1447, Edward served as MP for Somerset. He married Margery, daughter of Thomas Lovell of Clevedon, at some time before 1441. He was killed in the battle of Castillon in 1453, leaving his mother as executrix of his will[xxi]. His wife was still alive in 1478, but there were no surviving children.
Later years
Even when not at Sopwell, Eleanor kept in contact with Roger Huswyf. In 1456 or 1457, they donated together a four-volume copy of the Postillae of Nicholas of Lyra to St Albans Abbey, for Roger’s use during his lifetime. These were very substantial volumes; it has been estimated that it would take the scribe 5 years to transcribe them and must have cost a lot of money. In her will of 1458, she leaves a Vulgate and a Latin psalter to Roger.
Five years after her son died, in 1458, she retired to the Benedictine priory of Cannington in Somerset. The priory was a popular retirement place for the ladies of this county.[xxii] Here she made her will, which she wrote in her own hand. She probably died in December 1460, as her will was proved on 2 January 1461. After her death, Enmore went to her uncle Hugh Malet (d.1465), the son from her grandfather Baldwin’s second marriage and remained in the Malet family until the 1680s[xxiii].
Further Reading:
Baggs, A.P. & M.C. Siraut (1992), ‘Enmore: Manors and other estates’, in: A History of the County of Somerset, vol. 6: Andersfield, Cannington, and North Petherton Hundreds (Bridgwater and Neighbouring Parishes), ed. R.W. Dunning & C.R. Elrington. London, pp. 37-41. British History Online URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/som/vol6/pp37-41
Barratt, A. (2003), ‘Dame Eleanor Hull: The Translator at Work’, Medium Aevum, vol. 72, no. 2, pp. 277-296
Barratt, A. (2004), ‘Hull [née Malet], Eleanor, Lady Hull (c.1394–1460)’, Oxford DNB (online 23 Sept. 2004) [last accessed online 11 Aug. 2021]
Barratt, A. (2012), ‘Women Translators’, in: The History of British Women’s Writing, 700-1500, vol. 1, ed. L.H. McAvoy & D. Watt. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 169-777
Blatt, H. (2018), ‘Reading temporally: Thomas of Erceldoune’s prophecy, Eleanor Hull’s Commentary on the penitential Psalms, and Thomas Norton’s Ordinal of alchemy’, in: Participatory reading in late-medieval England. Manchester University Press, pp.167-192 (here p. 186)
Lewis, P.S. (1958), ‘Sir John Fastolf’s Lawsuit over Titchwell 1448-55’, The Historical Journal, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1-20
Malet, A. (1885), Notices of an English Branch of the Malet Family. Harrisons & Sons, London, pp. 35-41
Moreton, C. (17 July 2019), ‘Medieval MP of the Month: John Howard, from the Battle of Castillon to the Battle of Bosworth’, The History of Parliament Blog. URL: https://thehistoryofparliament.wordpress.com/2019/07/17/medieval-mp-of-the-month-john-howard-from-the-battle-of-castillon-to-the-battle-of-bosworth/
Wedgwood, J.C. & A.D. Holt (1936), ‘Hull, Sir Edward, K.G. (1410-54), of Enmore’, in: History of Parliament 1439-1509. Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, pp. 481-482
[i] Green, D.S. (1998), ‘The household and military retinue of Edward the Black Prince’, Appendix. PhD Thesis, University of Nottingham, p. 183
[ii] According to Malet, p. 35, Elizabeth was the daughter of Thomas Trevet, although the Oxford DNB only lists two daughters, Anne and Joan (Sumption, J. (2008), ‘Trevet, Sir Thomas (c. 1350–1388)’, Oxford DNB [last accessed online 12 Jan. 2024])
[iii] Bush R. (1994), ‘Enmore’, in: Somerset: The Complete Guide. The Dovecote Press, p.95
[iv] Helmholz, R.H. (2007), ‘Marriage Contracts in Medieval England’, in: To Have and to Hold: Marrying and its Documentation in Western Christendom, 400–1600, ed. P.L. Reynolds & J. Witte. Cambridge University Press, pp. 260-286 (here 282-284)
[v] Smith, L.T. (ed) (1894), Expeditions to Prussia and the Holy Land made by Henry, earl of Derby in the Years 1390-1 and 1392-3. Camden Society, new series, vol. 52, pp. 112, 138
[vi] ‘Hill, Robert (c.1361-1423), of Spaxton, Som’, in: The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1386-1421, ed. J.S. Roskell, L. Clark, C. Rawcliffe. Boydell & Brewer, 1993. Online URL: https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1386-1421/member/hill-robert-1361-1423; Baggs, A.P. & M.C. Siraut (1992), ‘Spaxton: Manors and other estates’, in: A History of the County of Somerset, vol. 6: Andersfield, Cannington, and North Petherton Hundreds (Bridgwater and Neighbouring Parishes), ed. R.W. Dunning & C.R. Elrington. London, pp. 113-118. British History Online URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/som/vol6/pp113-118
[vii] ‘Will of Robert Hylle (1423)’, in: Somerset Medieval Wills, 1383-1500, ed. F.W. Weaver. Somerset Record Society, vol. 16 (1901), pp. 403-405
[viii] L.S. Woodger, ‘Luttrell, John (d.c.1421), of Carampton, Som’, in: The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1386-1421, ed. J.S. Roskell, L. Clark, C. Rawcliffe. Boydell & Brewer, 1993. Online URL: http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1386-1421/member/luttrell-john-1421
[ix] Gray, H.L. (1934), ‘Incomes from Land in England in 1436’, The English Historical Review, vol. 49, no. 196, pp. 607-639, esp. p. 634
[x] ‘1434. Will of John Hill’, in: Somerset Medieval Wills, 1501-1530, with some Somerset Wills preserved at Lambeth, ed. F.W. Weaver. Somerset Record Society, vol. 19 (1903), pp. 334-335. I am grateful to Stephen Kuta for helping me find this will.
[xi] Probert, A. (2023), ‘Richard Fox of St Albans: the life, work and connections of a fifteenth-century chronicler’, Medievalista, no. 34 (July – Dec. 2023), pp. 229-251, Do Rold, O. (2020), Paper in Medieval England: From Pulp to Fictions. Cambridge University Press, p. 137
[xii] Lawton, D. (2017), ‘Psalms as Public Interiorities: Eleanor Hull’s Voices’, in: The Psalms and Medieval English Literature: From the Conversion to the Reformation, ed. T. Atkin & F. Leneghan. D.S. Brewer, Cambridge, pp. 298-317 (here p. 316)
[xiii] Clark, J.G. (2007), ‘Thomas Walsingham Reconsidered: Books and Learning at Late-Medieval St. Albans’, Speculum, vol. 77, no. 3, pp. 832-860 (here p.832)
[xiv] Clark. J.G. (2022), ‘Whethamstede , John (c.1392–1465)’, Oxford DNB (online 9 June 2022); Owst, G.R. (1928), ‘Some Books and Book-Owners of Fifteenth-Century St Albans’, Transactions of the St Albans and Hertfordshire Architectural and Archaeological Society (1928), pp. 176-195
[xv] Quoted in: Pugh, R.B. & Elizabeth Crittall (ed) (1956), ‘Houses of Augustinian canonesses: Abbey of Lacock’, in: A History of the County of Wiltshire, vol. 3. London, pp. 303-316. British History Online URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/wilts/vol3/pp303-316
[xvi] Riley, H.T. (ed) (1870), Annales monasterii S. Albani a Johanne Amundesham, Vol. I (A.D. 1421-1440), pp. XXIV, 11, 49
[xvii] Carruthers, L. (1997), ‘Book Review: The Seven Psalms: A Commentary on the Penitential Psalms Translated from French into English by Dame Eleanor Hull’, The Journal of Theological Studies, vol. 48, issue 1, pp. 311-314
[xviii] Collerson, R.R.H. (2018), ‘The Penitential Psalms as a Focus Point for Lay Piety in Late Medieval England’, MA thesis, University of Sydney; Lawtoin, op.cit
[xix] Griffiths, R.A. (1977), ‘William Wawe and his gang’, Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club Archaeological Society, vol. 33, pp. 89-93; Page, W. (ed) (1971), ‘Houses of Benedictine nuns: Sopwell Priory’, in: A History of the County of Hertford, vol. 4. London, pp. 422-426. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/herts/vol4/pp422-426
[xx] Nicolas, N.H. (1828), A journal by one of the suite of Thomas Beckington, afterwards the bishop of Bath and Wells, during an embassy to negociate a marriage between Henry VI. and a daughter of the Count of Armagnac, A. D. MCCCCXLII. William Pickering, London, pp. II-VIII, 2
[xxi] Lyte, H.C. Maxwell & M.C, Burdett Dawes (ed) (1934), The Register of Thomas Beckington, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 1443-1465. Somerset Record Society, vol. 49, p. 224
[xxii] Page, W. (ed) (1911), ‘Houses of Benedictine nuns: The priory of Cannington’, in: A History of the County of Somerset, vol. 2. London, pp. 109-111. British History Online URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/som/vol2/pp109-111
[xxiii] Baggs, A.P. & M.C. Siraut (1992), ‘Enmore: Manors and other estates’, in: A History of the County of Somerset, vol. 6: Andersfield, Cannington, and North Petherton Hundreds (Bridgwater and Neighbouring Parishes), ed. R.W. Dunning & C.R.. Elrington. London, pp. 37-41. British History Online URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/som/vol6/pp37-41
(all links checked 14 Jan. 2024)
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