Court Poetry in Late Medieval England and Scotland

chapter 4

Translative senses: Alexander Barclay’sEclogues

and Gavin Douglas’sPalice of Honour

To move from Dunbar to Gavin Douglas is to take a considerable leap in
status and visibility within the Scottish court. Douglas presented his trans-
lation of theAeneidto his kinsman Henry, Lord Sinclair, after completing it
on July 22 , 1513 , nearly two months before the symbolically fraught battle of
Flodden. In the dedication, he refers to another poem,The Palice of Honour,
written twelve years before:

Toʒou, my Lord, quhat isthar mair to say?

Ressaueʒour wark desyrit mony a day;

Quharin also now am I fully quyt,

As twichand Venus, of myn ald promyt

Quhilk I hir maid weil twelfʒheristofor,

As wytnessith my Palyce of Honour,

Inthequhilk wark,ʒhe reid, on hand I tuke

Forto translait at hir instance a buke:

So haue I doyn abufe, asʒe may se,

Virgillis volumof hir son Enee,

Reducit, as I cowth, intill our tong.

Be glad, Ene, thy bell is hiely rong...^1

As we shall see,The Palicefeatures, near its close, a scene in which Venus
presents a“book”to Douglas, with a command to translate it. It has become
customary to present Douglas’sEneadosas the epitome of aristocratic and
proto-imperialist epic,^2 and the actualities of Douglas’s career would appear
to substantiate this. A younger son of thefifth earl of Angus and thus
connected to one of the most powerful of Scottish noble families, he was
installed as provost of the collegiate church of St. Giles in Edinburgh in
March 1503 , and it is commonly implied that his elevation to this office,
which was in the king’s gift, may have been prompted by his authorship of
The Paliceand its dedication to James IV. After James’s death at Flodden,
Douglas, from 1516 Bishop of Dunkeld, was entangled in the politics of a
royal minority and neighboring kingdoms, dying in exile in 1522.^3

87