LAURENCE

MINOT (fl. 1333—1352)  , English poet, the author of eleven battle-songs, first published by Joseph Ritson in 1795 as Poems on Interesting Events in the reign of King Edward III . They had been discovered by Thomas Tyrwhitt in a MS . (Cotton Galba, E . IX., British Museum) which bore on the fly-leaf the misleading inscription: " Chaucer, Exemplar emendate scriptum." It dates from the beginning of the 15th century . The authorship of Laurence Minot's eleven songs is fixed by the opening of the fifth: " Minot with mowth had menid to make," and in VII . 20, " Now Laurence Minot will begin." The poems were evidently written contemporaneously with the events they describe . The first celebrates the English triumph at Halidon Hill (1333), and the last the capture of Guines (1352) . The writer is animated by an ardent personal admiration for Edward III. and a savage joy in the triumphs of the English over their enemies . The technical difficulty of his metres and the comparatively even quality of the work led to the inference that Minot had written other songs, but none have come to light . Nothing whatever is known of his life, but the minuteness of his information suggests that he accompanied Edward on some of his campaigns . Though his name proves him to have been of Norman birth, he writes vigorous and idiomatic English of the northern dialect with some admixture of midland forms . His poems areinstinct with a fierce national feeling, which has been accepted as an index of the union of interests between the Norman and English elements arising out of common dangers and common successes .

There are excellent

editions of Minot's poems by Wilhelm Scholle (Quellen and Forschungen, vol. lii., Strasburg, 1884), with notes on etymology and metre, and by Mr J . Hall (Clarendon Press, 2nd ed., 1897) . Mr Hall is inclined to include as his work the " Hymn to Jesus Christ and the Virgin " (Religious Pieces, Early English Text Society, No . 26, p . 76), on the grounds of similarity of style and language . See also T . Wright, Political Poems and Songs (Rolls series, 1859) .