John Shirley (scribe)

As a scribe of later Middle English literature, he is particularly known for transcribing works by John Lydgate and Geoffrey Chaucer.

He has not been identified with any of the numerous Shirleys recorded in the Stemmata Shirleiana,[a] but he was "a great traveller in divers countries", and on the monumental brass to his memory in St. Bartholomew-the-Less both he and his wife are pictured in the habit of pilgrims.

[3] Warwick returned to England between 1428 and 1430 as tutor to Henry VI, from whom Shirley received a new year's gift in 1428.

[3] Shirley both translated works from French and Latin and collected and annotated copies of contemporary vernacular authors, such as Chaucer and Lydgate.

[5] Shirley speaks of his own "symple understondynge", and, according to Skeat, he was "an amateur rather than a professional scribe"; but Richard Sellyng (fl.

[c][2] In Shirley's will, he asked to be buried in the lady chapel at St Bartholomew's Hospital, near his mother and first wife, Elizabeth.

Examples of Shirley's hand can be found at the digital project, Late Medieval English Scribes.