Abstract
A consensus has developed that the ideology of Havelok the Dane is feudal and conservative, intended to present, in its likable protagonist, an apologia for kingly prerogative. Following those scholars who link the poem’s goals more closely to the reign of Edward I, this paper argues that Havelok’s insatiable hunger—and his sweet-tempered concern for the expenses it imposes on those who have fostered him—is a recognizable apologia for the royal prerogative of “purveyance,” the king’s right to buy or borrow at will from his subjects of all ranks foodstuffs and other provisions for the royal household. At the time scholars believe Havelok was written (Smithers: lxiv–lxxiii), this prerogative stirred a dangerous rancor in England, as the needs of the royal household were folded into the larger demands of simultaneous wars in Scotland and France. Purveyance was not established or reviewed by Parliament and was seen as arbitrary and oppressive, Refigured as Havelok’s preternatural hunger it was something spontaneous and rather funny, and the sincerity of Havelok’s efforts to make his providers whole by his own hard work suggest a response to the irritated demand of English subjects that their king “puisse vivre de soen.” The conservative message of the poem moves somewhat past the feudal to the “royalist” ideology of a centralizing monarchy.
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Notes
In addition to Stuart’s analysis, the political alignment of the poem has been variously defined. Halverson (1971) argued that the poem addressed a non-noble audience, even emerging ‘from the lower levels, the peasant stratum’ (150). Hirsch (1977) countered, claiming that it tells ‘us not so much what the lower classes thought of the upper, as what the upper classes liked to think the lower classes thought of them’ (343); Crane (1986) saw a noble audience implied in the poem’s interest in land and personal title. Levine (1992) argued against a lower class audience because elements of decorum that distress us—the poem’s violence, for example—cannot be shown to have had the same effect on the upper classes of its time. Staines (1976: 602–23) narrowed the focus from nobility to the king himself, and is discussed in more detail later in this article. I cite the Havelok text of Smithers, with consultation of Skeat where noted.
Ordinances of 1311, cited by Jones: 308.
I follow Skeat and Sisam here in supplying ‘we’ rather than Smithers’s ‘he’ (i.e., ‘they’) for a missing word in the manuscript. Doing so makes the direct discourse begin here rather than in the following line as in Smithers.
In a note on lines 825–828, Smithers (1987: 114–115) notes two famines recorded in The Chronicle of Bury St. Edmunds 1212–1301 (Ed. A. Gransden, Nelson, 1964), one in 1258 and one in 1294. The second was nationwide and would be a recent event in the time the poem was written. ‘It would have been in character for the author of Hav. to bring in this sort of event form real life’.
I translate the text as given in Denton (1978), and reproduced as no. 98 in Prestwich (1980: 115–117). On the whole episode, see Salzman (1968: 126–145), Harriss (1975: 48–74), Prestwich (1972: 247–261, 1997: 401–435), Morris (2009: 292–300), Burt (2013: 177–205). The point about the misgivings of Edward’s opponents was made by Rothwell (1945:16–35).
He promised to reaffirm the Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest, though in 1299 he truncated the latter by omitting its commitment to a process of surveying the Royal Forests to determine which portions of them should be released to common use; see Prestwich (1972: 264; 1997: 520). He also made some concessions to a greater role for the consent of the realm in the establishment of taxes. He did this reluctantly because of his jealous regard for the prerogatives of the royal person, and on 29 December 1305 he got Pope Clement V to absolve him from his sworn commitments under the ‘Confirmations of the Charters and the Charter of the Forest’ of 1297. See Prestwich (1997: 547–548)
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Murtaugh, D.M. Havelok the Dane: Kingship, Hunger, and Purveyance. Neophilologus 100, 477–488 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-015-9471-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-015-9471-3