Note: “gl” refers to alternative translations of words preceded by or or either.

      In EV, forsooth did service for enim in the Latin (which occurs ninety-seven instances in the Vulgate Isaiah) and other words; in LV, thirty-six of the instances that remain are carried over from EV (fourteen translating enim, seventeen translating autem). Only one new forsooth has been added (Isaiah 7.9, corresponding to no Latin term), and in two cases EV forsooth has been replaced by forwhy (Isaiah 10.22, translating enim, and 10.25, translating autem), and one time forwhy replaces for in EV (Isaiah 11.9, translating Latin quia). Soothly replaces forsooth six times in LV, and adds one (Isaiah 43.19, utique, EV also). It can hardly be thought that Simple Creature’s influence has been at work here. But perhaps it was the use of forwhy twice in this book to translate enim that gave him the idea for his remark in GP (that forwhy is the rendering of enim when signifying cause).

      Up to this point, the LV team had omitted all of the prefatory material found in EV, but Simple Creature now proposed to contribute a prologue to Isaiah, which was accepted. The result fits his style, as we can see from a comparison with the EV Jerome prologue (Table 2.4).

Table 2.4. Or/Either and Forsooth in the Prologues to Isaiah

      We note that the new prologue has only one or, but this is doubtless a scribal stylistic improvement from either in the Royal manuscript, since the other collated manuscripts have either. Here is the sentence in which it occurs:

      Therfor men moten seke the treuthe of the text, and be war of goostli undurstonding ether moral fantasie, and 3ive not ful credence therto, no but it be groundid opinly in the text of Hooly Writ, in o place or* other, ethir in opin resoun that may not be avoided; for ellis it wole as likingly be applied to falsnesse as to treuthe, and it hath disseived grete men in oure daies, by over greet trist to her fantasies.¹⁰⁵ *ether FGKMNPQRSVUXY

      In this statement, Simple Creature’s Wycliffite leanings surface in a mild way, as Mary Dove points out.¹⁰⁶

      Dove calls this prologue a “Prologue to the Prophets,” in keeping with some of the manuscripts, and with Simple Creature’s own characterization of it in GP,¹⁰⁷ but more accurately it is only a “Prologue to Isaiah,” as is recognized in other manuscripts.¹⁰⁸

      The treatise beginning with the words The Holy Prophet David,¹⁰⁹ advocating the translation of the Bible into English, fits Simple Creature’s preference for either (seven times), but with a rather high incidence of or (two times). That the work is by the author of GP is suggested by Mary Dove, who says that the sentence “As Gregor and Grosted sein, to make unable curatis is the higheste wikkidnesse and tresun ayens God, and is lik sinne as to crucifie Crist” is a summary of part of GP chapter 10.¹¹⁰ Or, in keeping with my scenario here, we may judge it to be Simple Creature’s sketch of a sentiment that he will later expand in Five and Twenty Books. But in contrast to the larger treatise, his interest here is less on serious study of the Bible than in using it, as Dove says, “for comfort and consolation.”¹¹¹

      In his Prologue to Isaiah, Simple Creature promised, impersonally, to write a discourse on the four levels of meaning in the Scriptures to be placed at the beginning of the Bible: “Of these foure undurstondingis schal be seid pleinlier, if God wole, on the biginning of Genesis.”¹¹² This must have turned into a draft of GP, which in the final form begins with a very long summary of the Old Testament books and takes up the four senses of Scripture only in chapter 12.¹¹³ He originally intended to draw on Nicholas of Lyre’s commentary and other books, but at the time of his writing he did not have them to hand, and he was forced to rely instead on Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana “as a default source,” as Rita Copeland puts it, until a copy of Lyre arrived.¹¹⁴ In other words, he was writing at a place significantly removed from Oxford, or from ready access to Oxford’s libraries.¹¹⁵ I should add here that Augustine’s work was used for the same purpose by the author of a prologue to one of the Glossed Gospels, namely, the so-called Intermediate Matthew, an or speaker, whose biblical quotations resemble EV, whereas Simple Creature’s quotations in Five and Twenty Books are akin to LV and sometimes are direct quotations of LV. It is judged that both the authors draw on some longer source using Augustine’s work.¹¹⁶

      In contrast to Five and Twenty Books, which, as we have seen, was attached to very few MEB manuscripts, the Prologue to Isaiah is included in all twenty-one of the LV manuscripts containing Isaiah.¹¹⁷

      Since our analysis above indicates that Simple Creature’s style is not matched anywhere in the LV Old or New Testament, except for four books in the latter, we should conclude that he was not a major force behind the project, and a claim on his part to be the translator would not sit well with the real translators. Accordingly, it may be that GP as first submitted by him ended with chapter 14, and after it was spurned by the LV administrators, Simple Creature hatched the idea of adding a final chapter, a new treatise that we can call after its opening words, “Forasmuch as Christ Saith,” in which he takes credit for the whole enterprise. This is where he first identifies himself as our humble servant: “For these resons and othere, with comune charite to save alle men in oure rewme, whiche God wole have savid, a simple creature hath translatid the Bible out of Latin into English. First, this simple creature hadde myche travaile, with diverse felawis and helperis,” and so on.¹¹⁸ We can be sure that Simple Creatures’s “divers fellows and helpers”