Wintonia, W. de

(fl 1270–1316). English cleric. His name signifies that he was from Winchester. In the 1270s and 1280s he was a member and, by 1281, sub-prior of Leominster Priory in Herefordshire. In the 1280s he carried out at least two assignments at its parent house in Reading, where he had probably begun his monastic career, and to which he may well have returned for an unknown period. He owned a music book probably written about 1290, which contained 164 polyphonic compositions, providing a generous cross-section of English polyphony of the later 13th century. Unfortunately the manuscript itself is lost, but there exists a detailed list of its contents, written by a late 13th-century hand and headed ‘Ordo li[bri] W. de Wint’, on ff.160v–161 of the manuscript that contains the rota Sumer is icumen in (GB-Lbl Harl.978). In 1316 he was in service as apparitor at the deanery in Pontesbury, Shropshire. (See also W. de Wycombe and R. de Burgate.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

B. Schofield: The Provenance and Date of “Sumer is Icumen In”’, MR, ix (1948), 81–6, esp. 82–3

J. Handschin: The Summer Canon and its Background’, MD, iii (1949), 55–94, esp. 91; v (1951), 65–113

ERNEST H. SANDERS