Robert Mannyng

Robert Mannyng, (or Robert de Brunne; c. 1275 – c. 1338) was an English chronicler and Gilbertine canon. Mannyng provides a surprising amount of information about himself in his two known works, Handlyng Synne and Mannyng's Chronicle. In these two works, Mannyng tells of his residencies at the Gilbertine houses of Sempringham (near Bourne) and Sixhills, and also at the Gilbertine priory at Cambridge, St Edmund’s.

Quotes

• Als thai haf wryten and sayd
  Haf I alle in myn Inglis layd,
  In symple speche as I couthe,
  That is lightest in mannes mouthe.
  I mad noght for no disours,
  Ne for no seggers, no harpours,
  Bot for the luf of symple men
  That strange Inglis can not ken.
  • Chronicle, line 71.

• He felle dede doun colde as ony stone.
  • Thomas Hearne (ed.) Peter Langtoft's Chronicle, as Illustrated and Improv'd by Robert of Brunne (1725) vol. 1, p. 56.

Handlyng Synne (1901)

F. J. Furnivall, ed., Robert of Brunne’s Handlyng synne (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. Ltd., 1901), pp. 68-69, 234–8

• No thyng ys to man so dere
  As wommanys love yn gode manere.
  A gode womman is mannys blys.
  • Line 1905.

• There ys no solas undyr hevene
  Of al that a man may nevene
  That shuld a man so mochë glew
  As a gode womman that loveth trew.
  • Line 1909.

• And thy traveyle shalt thou sone ende,
  For to thy long home sone shalt thou wende.
  • Line 9193.

About Robert Mannyng

• The range of his sympathies and interests makes Handlyng Synne the best picture of English life before Langland and Chaucer.
  • Kenneth Sisam (ed.) Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose ([1921] 1955) p. 3.