The Criteria for Scribal Attribution: Dublin, Trinity College MS 244 Reconsidered

Abstract

This article questions Alan J. Fletcher's recent attribution of the copying of Dublin, Trinity College MS 244 to the professional London scribe Adam Pynkhurst. A reconsideration of the palaeographical and linguistic evidence presented by Fletcher demonstrates that many of the idiosyncratic features of Pynkhurst's hand are missing from Trinity 244, while the features that they share are not sufficiently distinctive to support a claim for identity. The article also questions Fletcher's desire to associate the manuscript with a Pynkhurst ‘school’, arguing that the similarities he identifies lie in the Trinity Dublin scribe's use of a similar type of script, common to many vernacular manuscripts of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.