Minot, Laurence

(?1300-?1352)

   What is known of Minot has been gleaned from his poems. The belief that he was born and bred in the northeast midlands of England is supported by the dialect he uses and his frequent reference of certain people in Yorkshire. Even his name is deduced from one poem, which starts, "Now Laurence Minot will begin...." The DNB states that the name Minot was a widely well-known Yorkshire and Norfolk name in the fourteenth century. Judging from the many spirited and patriotic war songs and poems of the English against the Scots and the French during the reign of Edward III, it can be safely assumed he was a soldier, or someone closely connected to the English army, possibly a minstrel. Some of his poems: "Bannockburn Avenged" (1333; the Battle of Bannockburn, 1314, was where Robert Bruce beat the English under Edward II, the father of Edward III), "Burgesses of Calais," "Sir Dauid Had of His Men Grete Loss," "The Battle of Halidon Hill" (1333), "The Battle of Neville's Cross" (1346), "The Siege of Calais" (1347), "The Taking of Guines" (1352).

   Sources: An Anthology of Catholic Poets. Shane Leslie, ed. Macmillan, 1952. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Book of Medieval English Verse. Celia Sisam and Kenneth Sisam, eds. Oxford University Press, 1970. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Poems of Laurence Minot. Richard H. Osberg, ed. Western Michigan University, 1996. The Poems of Laurence Minot. Second Edition. Clarendon Press, 1897. The Works of Laurence Minot (http://online.northumbria.ac.uk/faculties/art/humanities/cns/m-minot.html).