ABSTRACT
The Book gives us, in a desultory way, one of the first extensive accounts of travels in England, though of travels mostly recalled about two decades after they had taken place. The recollections were selected and coloured by the need to explain and illustrate important stages in the development of Margery’s spiritual persona and to satisfy a very English need – the vindication of her orthodoxy, in case of any alarms or doubts experienced by the readers and auditors of her, at times, spectacular revelations. In the process, The Book is uniquely informative about some of the prelates whom she met, along with many other (usually unnamed) individuals. It outlines experiences in being dealt with by ecclesiastical and secular officials – an unusual sort of testimony for this period. It distils something of the diverse flavours of religious culture in urban and other settings, and a mode of their acculturation, in the evidence of the influences they sometimes exercised on Margery’s pious amalgam.
