English Prose Treatises of Richard Rolle De Hampole

1866. Edited from Robert Thornton's MS. The treatises in this volume were taken from a miscellaneous collection of Poems, Tracts, Prayers, and Medical Receipts, made by Thornton, archdeacon of Bedford, in the earlier half of the fifteenth century. These religious tracts are valuable in two ways. First, as illustrating the teaching given to the people (the unlered or lewed) in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and second as genuine specimens of the old Northumbrian dialect-perhaps the finest form of the ancient English tongue. The present volume contains only those which are attributed to Richard Rolle, the hermit of Hampole.