Similar Manuscripts: Genealogical manuscripts celebrating one's family history are fairly common throughout later medieval England. Many combine the twelfth century Compendium Historia in Genealogia Christi of Peter of Poitiers, a history of the world through the birth of Christ, with the British legends of Geoffrey of Monmouth and with more recent family records.

A fourteenth-century genealogy of the Mortimer family, the "Wigmore Manuscript," contains a Brut, a genealogy of the English kings, and a genealogy of the Mortimer family. It apparently was designed to advance the Mortimer family's claim to the throne of England in the later fourteenth century in preference to that of the descendants of John of Gaunt, presaging the Yorkists' genealogical arguments and appeal to the "British" heritage. Richard II had a pedigree that traced his descent from Noah. During the reign of Henry VI, when his marriage had not yet produced an heir, the succession was again an issue. Concerned that Richard, duke of York might present a strong case to be named the heir apparent, Henry VI's advisors produced a series of pedigrees, including some that omitted the son of Edward III from whom York could claim superior descent. Some surviving pedigrees of fifteenth-century nobility include genealogies of the Percy family, the Nevilles, and a remarkable document celebrating the achievements of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick.

In the case of Edward IV, the large number of surviving manuscripts suggests that they were consciously produced in large numbers as part of a program to influence the opinion of the nobility and the gentry as well as wealthier merchants, a group who in turn could influence large numbers of friends, supporters, and adherents. Some of these manuscripts are in Latin, others in English, and most of them begin with a version of a standard considerans text, in which the writer explains that considering the difficulty of reading old books and the limited time many have to study them, he will write a brief history of the world from Creation to Christ "to take away length from him that is weary and of little will, comfort and solace in form and figure to the bodily eye, and comfort and grace to them that are well-willed."

To this one fifteenth-century writer adds that "I behold that many men desire greatly to have knowledge of chronicles of kings that aforetime reigned in this land; therefore, I have put the names of them in this work, from Japhet the son of Noah lineally descending to Brutus the first king...and from him to Edward the fourth king of that name after the conquest of England." These manuscripts follow a standard format, with one large illustration showing the Fall of Man, and with minimal illustration thereafter.

Two genealogies depart significantly from this pattern. One is the manuscript explored here. The other, in the British Library, is a typological life of Edward IV. The term "typology" is usually reserved for religious studies, and refers to finding parallels between Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah and the life of Christ. In the "typological life of Edward IV," Old Testament episodes are paired visually with episodes from the life of Edward IV in five pairs of images presented side-by-side. An illustration of Joshua at the battle of Jericho, for example, is paired with an illustration of Edward IV in battle. In another, David the shepherd has a vision of three men, foreshadowing the Trinity. This is paired with Edward's vision of the three suns in the sky before the battle of Mortimer's Cross -- and the three suns in turn are paired with the three crowns of England, France, and Spain. In another pair, the infant Moses floating down the Nile in a woven basket foreshadows Edward's escape across the Channel to Calais.

Following the five pairs of illustrations, a genealogy of the kings of England since Henry III takes the form of a tree of Jesse, a popular medieval way of conveying Jesus' pedigree from the House of David and beyond. In this genealogy, though, the culmination is not Christ but Edward IV, who survives the attempts of the usurping Henries to lop off the branch from which he descends.

Further reading:

• The best review of genealogies of Edward IV can be found in Alison Allan, "Yorkist propaganda: Pedigree, prophecy and the 'British history' in the reign of Edward IV," in C. D. Ross (ed.), Patronage, Pedigree and Power in Later Medieval England, Alan Sutton, Rowman & Littlefield, 1979. Her notes identify seventeen of these genealogies, but not the Free Library manuscript.
• The quotations from the considerans text and the fifteenth-century continuator are from Bodleian Ms. Lyell 33, transcribed and rendered in modern English by the author.
• The "typological life of Edward IV" is found in British Library Harleian Ms. 7353. Scenes from the manuscript are reproduced in A. J. Pollard, Richard III and the Princes in the Tower, St. Martin's Press, 1991, pages 40, 41 and 53.

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