A Revision of Two Letters from George Morley, Bishop of Winchester, to Jan van Vliet

...continues from previous page he says, to Guido: I composed a hymn, neglecting meter, so as not to fail the sense. There were, therefore, in the time of Bernard, those who composed poems without meter. Bede, in his history of our nation, contains many rhythmic poems. What shall I say of the Leonine verses a type of medieval Latin verse with internal rhyme, the mention of which is so frequent in the Middle Ages that it is a wonder it could have escaped you, and indeed, existed even before the Middle Ages. Whence it is evident that a certain judgment cannot be formed of the age of poems from their rhythms. And do not say that every Leonine verse has two parts, connected by rhythm; for those of which we are speaking are of such a kind that two or even three are closed with similarly sounding syllables. Poems of this kind are also ancient, as is evident from the cenotaph of Ethelbert, the first Christian King of the English:

Here King Ethelbert is enclosed in the sepulcher,
Purifying temples, certain, he goes to Christ without a winding path.

Take an example of another poem running with a similar rhythm:

Wenefréda, blessed Virgin, glorious in merits:
Assistants at your feasts, join to the joys of heaven.

Also these regarding the same Blessed Wenefréda Winifred:

A virgin blooming like a rose,
The bride of the Lamb, beautiful,
The precious martyr of Christ,
Winifred flourished.
Born from the Britons,
Firm in faith, joyful in hope,
Holy in act, pure in mind,
She was free from the stains of the world.

These, I hope, you will not say proceeded from the Scholastics; even if you did, it would be easy to prove the contrary from ancient records.

What then shall we say to Sixtus of Siena, whom you praise as the father of your error? Shall we concede that he was mistaken in a matter of fact? It seems he could say nothing else to the Republic than that among the Scholastics, rhythms were held in such high value that no account was taken of meter, whether because they did not understand the quantity of syllables, or because they despised it, or even rejected it. When to their age—