The Devonshire MS is a verse miscellany from the 1530s and early 1540s, compiled by three women who attended the court of Anne Boleyn

Anne Boleyn

Anne Boleyn ;c.1501/1507 – 19 May 1536) was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536 as the second wife of Henry VIII of England and Marquess of Pembroke in her own right. Henry's marriage to Anne, and her subsequent execution, made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval that was the...

: Mary Shelton

Mary Shelton

Margaret Shelton and Mary Shelton were two sisters in Tudor England, one of whom may have been a mistress of King Henry VIII....

, Mary Fitzroy (née Howard), and Lady Margaret Douglas

Margaret Douglas

Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox was the daughter of Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, and Margaret Tudor, Queen Dowager of Scotland...

. Although the manuscript contains a number of original compositions, transcriptions, fragments and extracts of verse (including some from the medieval poets Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...

, Thomas Hoccleve, and Richard Roos), the majority of the verses recorded are those composed by Sir Thomas Wyatt, of which many are unique to the manuscript. As such, it is not only an important witness in the Canon of Wyatt's poetry, but also an artifact that reveals much about the role of women in literary production and manuscript circulation in the early Tudor period

Tudor period

The Tudor period usually refers to the period between 1485 and 1603, specifically in relation to the history of England. This coincides with the rule of the Tudor dynasty in England whose first monarch was Henry VII...

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