Three Thirteenth-Century Declarations of English Rule: Over Aquitaine, Ireland and Wales

Abstract

In his paper, ‘On the Influence of Geoffrey of Monmouth in English History’, Walter Ullmann noted the existence in a fourteenth-century manuscript now in the Cambridge University Library of a short treatise containing declarations of the rights of the English crown to rule over Aquitaine, Ireland and Wales.¹ The declarations are recorded in between two treatises by the English Dominican Simon of Boraston, De mutabilitate mundi and De unitate et ordine ecclesiasticae potestatis, while the manuscript begins with another treatise by Boraston, De ordine iudiciario circa crimine corrigenda.² Ullmann also noted a second copy of the Declaration concerning Ireland, preserved in a fifteenth-century manuscript now in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. This manuscript, which also includes the three treatises by Boraston, was completed in or about 1430 by Cornelius Oesterwik in the Dominican convent at Oxford.³ Ullmann was, however, interested only in the Declaration on Ireland and did not examine either of the other two, on Aquitaine and on Wales. Neither did he succeed in dating the Declaration on Ireland, beyond noting that the last historical event mentioned in it was the Council of Lyon of 1245. This chapter will examine all three declarations and make some tentative suggestions as to date and authorship.