Abstract
If there was one political issue on which almost everyone living in late medieval England may be assumed to have had some opinion, it was kingship. The problem for the historian is therefore very much the same as that which confronted the rulers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: namely, to decide which of the many paradigms of medieval monarchy might be most fruitfully pursued. The modern tradition of historical biography tends to concentrate on the rise of administrative kingship and to assess the success or failure of later medieval rulers not so much on the basis of their great deeds as on the degree of commitment they demonstrated to the often mundane business of government. In one sense, of course, there is no doubt that the king’s role as governor and political manager was crucial to the stability and popularity of his regime. The disadvantage of the modern tendency towards objective analysis and quantification, however, is that it tends to omit the mystique that surrounded medieval monarchy and the fact that a large proportion of the king’s subjects judged him on often very subjective criteria.
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Notes
E. Venables and A. R. Maddison (eds), The Chronicle of Louth Park Abbey (Horncastle: privately printed, 1891) p. 41.
C. Given-Wilson (ed.), Chronicles of the Revolution 1397–1400 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993) p. 172.
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A. P. Baldwin, The Theme of Government in Piers Plowman (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1981);
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J:-P. Genet (ed.), Four Political Tracts of the Later Middle Ages, Camden Soc., 4th series 18 (London, 1977). See also
G. L. Harriss, ‘Introduction’, in G. L. Harriss (ed.), Henry V: The Practice of Kingship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985) pp. 1–29.
J. Alexander and P. Binski (eds), Age of Chivalry (London: Royal Academy, 1987);
J. W. McKenna, ‘Henry VI and the Dual Monarchy’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 28 (1965) pp. 145–62.
M. Prestwich, ‘The Piety of Edward I’, in W. M. Ormrod (ed.), England in the Thirteenth Century (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1985) pp. 125–6;
W. M. Ormrod, ‘The Personal Religion of Edward III’, Speculum, 64 (1989) pp. 862–5.
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C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) pp. 3–7, 630–4, with references.
W. M. Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Government of England, c. 1346-c. 1356’, University of Oxford D.Phil. thesis (1984) p. 90;
A. L. Brown, ‘The Authorization of Letters under the Great Seal’, BIHR, 37 (1964) pp. 153–4.
P. C. Saunders, ‘Royal Ecclesiastical Patronage in England, 1199–1351’, University of Oxford D.Phil. thesis (1978) pp. 251–4, Appendix I.
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G. Holmes, The Good Parliament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975) p. 156; Griffiths, King and Country, pp. 3–4.
For what follows, see C. Given-Wilson, The Royal Household and the King’s Affinity (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986) pp. 110–4 1;
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For what follows, see J. Dunbabin, ‘Government’, in J. H. Burns (ed.), The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) pp. 477–519.
EHD, 3, p. 525; H. G. Richardson, ‘The English Coronation Oath’, Speculum, 24 (1949) pp. 44–75.
M. McKisack, The Fourteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959) pp. 5–6;
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For what follows, see Dunbabin, ‘Government’, p. 492; J. G. Bellamy, The Law of Treason in England in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).
For the contrary view, see W. H. Dunham and C. T. Wood, ‘The Right to Rule in England’, American Historical Review, 81 (1976) pp. 7 38–61; and, for a rebuff,
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S. B. Chrimes and A. L. Brown (eds), Select Documents of English Constitutional History1307–1485 (London: A. & C. Black, 1961) p. 5; Dunbabin, ‘Government’, pp. 500–1. For the citation of the 1308 protestation in 1321, see
N. Pronay and J. Taylor (eds), Parliamentary Texts of the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980) pp. 156–9.
Chrimes and Brown (eds), Select Documents, pp. 37–8; W. Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England, 4th edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906) vol. 3, pp. 383–4;
E. M. Peters, The Shadow King (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970).
See A. Tuck, Crown and Nobility 1272–1461 (London: Fontana, 1985) p. 93, with references. For the (unlikely) possibility of Edward II’s escape, see
G. P. Cuttino and T. W. Lyman, ‘Where is Edward II?’, Speculum, 53 (1978) pp. 522–44.
M. V. Clarke, Medieval Representation and Consent (London: Longman, 1936) pp. 173–95.
EHD, 4, pp. 72–3; J. R. Lumby (ed.), Chronicon Henrici Knighton, Rolls Series 92 (London, 1889–95) vol. 2, p. 219.
M. V. Clarke, Fourteenth Century Studies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937) pp. 91–5.
In addition to the attempted canonisation of Edward II, see the neglected parliamentary declaration of 1391 (T. F. Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1920–33) vol. 3, p. 474) that provides the context for article 17 of the deposition articles (Given-Wilson (ed.), Chronicles of the Revolution, p. 178).
C. Ross, Edward IV (London: Methuen, 1974) pp. 27–38.
P. S. Lewis, ‘Two Pieces of Fifteenth-century Political Iconography’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 27 (1964) pp. 319–20;
R. H. Robbins (ed.), Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), pp. 174–5.
C. Richmond, ‘The Nobility and the Wars of the Roses’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 21 (1977) pp. 71–85.
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© 1995 W. M. Ormrod
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Ormrod, W.M. (1995). Political Issues: Kingship. In: Political Life in Medieval England, 1300–1450. British History in Perspective. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24128-6_4
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