John Audelay

John Audelay (or Awdelay; … – c. 1426) was an English priest and poet from Haughmond Abbey, in Shropshire; he is one of the few English poets of the period whose name is known to us. Some of the first Christmas carols recorded in English appear among his works.

The little that is known to us about Audelay's life comes mainly from Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 302. The manuscript contains the text of all sixty-two of his surviving poems. The dialect of Middle English used in MS Douce 302 is local to Staffordshire, and it has been suggested that Audelay may therefore have come from the Staffordshire village of Audley. However, the earliest biographical record of Audelay places him in London in 1417, when he was part of the household of Richard, 7th Baron Strange of Knockin.

Strange was made to do public penance for his involvement in a brawl at St Dunstan-in-the-East church on Easter Sunday in which a parishioner was killed, and was accompanied on his penance by Audelay, his chaplain. It has been suggested that the penitential character of Audelay's poetry may have been influenced by his desire to atone for his involvement in Strange's public shame: as the family's chaplain he would have felt particular responsibility.

According to a date noted in MS. Douce 302, by 1426 Audelay was in effective retirement as a chantry priest at Haughmond Abbey. In lines repeated several times throughout the manuscript, Audelay states that he was by that time very old, infirm, deaf, and blind. The manuscript concludes with the following lines of rather rough verse, perhaps composed by the scribe after Audelay's death:

(Translation: None must take this book away / Or cut out any page, I'll tell you why; / For it is sacrilege, sirs, I tell you / He will be accursed in the deed; / If you would have a copy / Ask leave, and you will have, / To pray especially for him / That made it [the book] to save your souls / John the blind Audelay; / He was the first priest [chaplain] to the Lord Strange / Of this chantry / That made this book by the grace of God / As he lay deaf, sick, and blind / On whose soul God have mercy)

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