John Shirley's recipes and fifteenth-century celebrity endorsement

John Shirley’s career as secretary to Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, and his work as a London-based scribe, is well-known. Most critical attention has focussed on his copies of poems by Lydgate and Chaucer, some of which are those works’ only surviving witnesses, and the extensive introductory rubrics that Shirley attaches to them. This essay will focus on another type of material that he copied by considering recipes of all kinds: medical, culinary, household, etc. A few recipes occur in the volumes in his own hand: this small group of texts includes a recipe ‘for the stone’ in Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.20, said to have been used by the Duke of Lancaster, and another recipe ‘for proofing’ in London, British Library, Additional MS 16165 that was ‘proved for kings and princes. Similar connections with celebrities also characterise the larger collection of culinary recipes in London, British Library, Additional MS 5467 where some menus are included for particular banquets. I will also consider some other recipes and medical texts in other manuscripts that are not in Shirley’s own hand, but which have long headings of his characteristic style. An interest in medical material has been linked (most recently by Nicole Rice) to Shirley’s residence at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, and medical recipes have a widespread tendency to claim ‘Probatum’ (‘proved’). Shirley’s further claims of celebrity endorsement for the recipes he preserves will be explored. Were these truthful associations or more akin to puff pieces? This relates to the vexed question of the authenticity of the information Shirley provides about authorship and the circumstances of medieval textual production, and the essay will contribute to this ongoing debate.