John Audelay

[2] 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.

[3] 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.

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) It is therefore possible that the manuscript either represents a collection of Audelay's poems assembled on his orders at the end of his life or that it was dictated by him.

[6] He occasionally takes on more secular themes, such as in a spirited poem in praise of Henry VI, and in a piece titled Cantalena de puericia, writes of the innocence of childhood, wishing he were a child again: Much of Audelay's poetry is concerned with the theme of repentance; he seems to have had a particular fondness for Saint Winifred, a saint enshrined at Shrewsbury Abbey, who was credited with both the power to free criminals from their shackles (perhaps significant in view of Audelay's possible feelings of guilt over Lestrange's transgression) and the power to cure blindness.

[9] The two most remarkable and accomplished poems in the manuscript are both long exercises in a late form of alliterative verse with a superimposed rhyme-scheme: Pater Noster and The Three Dead Kings.