From Manuscript to Printed Text: Telling and Retelling the History of Edward II

Abstract

This chapter explains the relationships between four texts—two in manuscript and two in print—each of which presents a version of the history of King Edward II of England. All of these texts have been linked either directly or indirectly to Elizabeth Cary, and each one consists of a prose narrative that recounts the story of the troubled reign of this early fourteenth-century king who was murdered shortly after he was deposed in 1327 by his wife, Queen Isabel, and her reputed lover, the baronial magnate, Roger Mortimer. A longstanding controversy over questions of authorship and source texts has existed in recent scholarship on Cary in relation to two of these narratives, both of which were printed in 1680: The History of The Life, Reign, and Death of Edward II a folio volume, and The History Of the most Unfortunate Prince King Edward II an octavo published contemporaneously with the folio.¹ The octavo’s title page indicates that the history was found, we can assume in manuscript, “among the Papers of, and (supposed to be) Writ by the Right Honourable Henry Viscount Faulkland,” Cary’s husband. Whereas a consensus has been reached among Cary scholars that she composed the folio (which is attributed to “E.F.” on the title page and preface), some are reluctant to attribute authorship of the much shorter octavo to her.²