Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, series 3, volume 17: Essays in Memory of Paul E. Szarmach 9781802700527, 9781802701081

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Memories of Viking Age Cultural Contact: England in the Íslendingasögur
Expressions of Cultural Disability: Navigating (Non)Normativity in the Hebrew–Italian Melekh Artus (King Artus)
“All the rancour and enmity between us”. The War Between Richard, Earl Marshal, and King Henry III: Its Origins and Resolution
Travers and Trappe in the Palace of Pandarus: A Note
Travers and Trappe in the Palace of Pandarus: A Note
Benedictine Devotion to England’s Saints: Thomas de la Mare, John of Tynemouth, and the Sanctilogium in Cotton Tiberius E. i
The Rise of Admission by Apprenticeship Among the Freemen of Norwich, 1365–1415
Nuns on the Run, or the “Sturdy and Wilful Dames” of Syon Abbey and their Disobedience to the Tudor State ca. 1530–1600
Taking the Tour: Heritage Management in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

Citation preview

STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE HISTORY

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STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE HISTORY Series 3 | Vol. 17

ESSAYS IN MEMORY OF PAUL E. SZARMACH

Edited by

JOEL T. ROSENTHAL and VIRGINIA BLANTON

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. © 2023, Arc Humanities Press, Leeds

The authors assert their moral right to be identified as the authors of their part of this work.

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CONTENTS

List of Illustrations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Introduction JOEL T. ROSENTHAL and VIRGINIA BLANTON. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Memories of Viking Age Cultural Contact: England in the Íslendingasögur MATTHEW FIRTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Expressions of Cultural Disability: Navigating (Non)Normativity in the Hebrew–Italian Melekh Artus (King Artus) MIRIAMNE ARA KRUMMEL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 “All the rancour and enmity between us”. The War Between Richard, Earl Marshal, and King Henry III: Its Origins and Resolution LINDA E. MITCHELL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Royal Consumption and Gifts of Deer in Thirteenth-Century England ROBIN S. OGGINS and JEAN B. OGGINS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Travers and Trappe in the Palace of Pandarus: A Note MARY-JO ARN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Benedictine Devotion to England’s Saints: Thomas de la Mare, John of Tynemouth, and the Sanctilogium in Cotton Tiberius E. i VIRGINIA BLANTON. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 The Rise of Admission by Apprenticeship Among the Freemen of Norwich, 1365–1415 RUTH FROST. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

vi

Contents

Nuns on the Run, or the “Sturdy and Wilful Dames” of Syon Abbey and their Disobedience to the Tudor State ca. 1530–1600 VIRGINIA BAINBRIDGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Taking the Tour: Heritage Management in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court SANDY FEINSTEIN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Tables Table 1.1: Saga and þættir (select) accounts of trading with England.��������������������������������� 6

Table 1.2: Saga and þættir (select) accounts of settlement in England.���������������������������� 12

Table 1.3: Saga and þættir (select) accounts of mercenaries and poets in England. �� 17 Table 1.4: Saga, Landnámabók and þættir (select) accounts of Anglo-Scandinavian political interaction. �������������������������������������������������������������� 24

Table 4.1: Gifts of deer by group – John.����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 75 Table 4.2: Gifts of deer by group – Henry III. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 77 Table 4.3: Gifts of deer by group – Edward I. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 79

Table 7.1: Admission fines for entrances to the freedom of Norwich, 1365 to 1414. ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 129 Table 7.2. Analysis of Admission Fines by Occupational Divisions, 1365–1414.����� 130

Figures Figure 3.1: The Family of William le Marshal and Isabella de Clare —Children and Grandchildren.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 46 Figure 3.2: Richard Marshal table — Connections to the Braose Family. �������������������������� 49

Figure 6.1: Life of Edward the Confessor, London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius E. i., fol. 6r.����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 107 Figure 6.2: Multispectral image of ex dono in MS Cotton Tiberius E i, f. 6r.

����������������� 108

INTRODUCTION JOEL T. ROSENTHAL and VIRGINIA BLANTON

When the Medi­eval Academy of America met in Boston in 2016, Bob Bjork from

Arizona State’s Center for Medi­eval & Renaissance Studies said that Studies in Medi­eval and Renaissance History, which they had published for some years, was in need of a new editor. Independently, Paul Szarmach and Joel Rosenthal indicated an interest in taking this on. Then they discovered their mutual interest and, since they were old friends who had co-edited a number of projects and as a team had run an international conference, they offered to be joint or co-editors. This was an easy pairing, as Paul’s special interest was Old English literature and he also had a broad knowledge, from a career of editing and administering, of a vast range of medi­eval topics. And Joel, though primarily a social historian of the later Middle Ages, had also worked a bit on Anglo-Saxon and early medi­ eval history. Together they co-edited four volumes of the series (Volume 16 is forthcoming). But before they could really turn to Volume 17, which would have been their last, Paul died. This made a memorial volume of the series, both a professional and a serious personal obligation. As Joel needed a co-editor—especially since he wanted to solicit contributions from Paul’s primary area of expertise—he turned to Virginia Blanton. She is Curators’ Distinguished Professor in the Department of English, University of Missouri, Kansas City. Paul had been her doctoral supervisor at SUNY Binghamton. She and Helene Scheck had co-edited (Inter)Texts: Studies in Early Anglo-Saxon Culture Presented to Paul E. Szarmach, and she knew both Paul’s field of concentration and many of the scholars with whom he had had so much contact and influence. Our invitation to publish this volume with memorial tributes to Paul Szarmach from colleagues, students, and old friends met with so much interest, it became necessary to divide the essays into two volumes. Vol. 17 includes several essays that had been submitted and accepted while Paul still was able to read and approve them, as well as five others in his memory. Vol. 18, which will conclude Joel’s stint as editor of SMRH, will fittingly close the chapter on his long-time collaboration with Paul. ________________________________

NOTA BENE — SMRH Vol. 17 and subsequent volumes will be published by Arc Humanities Press. Beginning with Vol. 19, the journal will be titled Studies in Medi­eval and Renaissance Sources. To continue or start a subscription, please contact the Journals Manager Rob Edwards at [email protected].

MEMORIES OF VIKING AGE CULTURAL CONTACT ENGLAND IN THE ÍSLENDINGASÖGUR

MATTHEW FIRTH

Matthew Firth is an Associate Lecturer in medieval studies at Flinders University, South Australia. His dissertation focused on the sagas of Icelanders, their depictions of pre-Norman English kingship, and the ways in which these were shaped by the processes of cultural memory. His ongoing research interests center on the reception and adaption of England’s pre-Norman past in the history writing of societies in later times and distant places.

English histories and

chronicles of the Viking Age (ca. 793–ca. 1066) are clear on the presence of Scandinavians on English shores. In these, Anglo-Scandinavian cultural interaction is usually characterized by conflict, defined by the actions of viking raiders and marauding Scandinavian armies, by their conquests and settlement in England’s east and north. However, this is a one-sided perspective. There is no comparable Scandinavian record for the period. The Scandinavian cultures which contributed to the viking phenomenon left little record of how they self-identified or perceived their own actions. Nonetheless, it may be possible to reconstruct some sense of a Scandinavian perception of Viking Age cultural contact with England from later texts. Scandinavian literacy and the writing of the Scandinavian past flourished from the latetwelfth century,1 and Iceland was a locus for this activity. One corpus of texts which takes a particular interest in the events of the Viking Age is that of the Íslendingasögur (sagas of Icelanders). The Íslendingasögur comprise some forty-odd texts, most authored in the thirteenth century, all written in Old Norse-Icelandic vernacular, that relate the lives of Iceland’s leading figures and families from the time that Scandinavian settlers arrived on the island ca. 870, through to the mid-eleventh century. While these are stories couched in literary conventions that make them difficult as historical sources, they nonetheless purport to be histories. Íslendingasögur narratives frequently intersect with historical events and figures of the Viking Age North Sea world, and this extends to England. Norwegians and Icelanders were, according to the Íslendingasögur, common visitors there, the corpus recording no fewer than thirty such journeys. This study surveys Íslendingasögur references to England, categorizing the intent of the cultural contact they imply. Here, travel to England is rarely characterized as “viking,” but tends to be in aid of trade and commerce with, travel to, or settlement

1  Following Lesley Abrams, the term “Scandinavian” is used here in an “inclusive sense,” encompassing Iceland as a society with linguistic and cultural origins in the Scandinavian “homelands,” most particularly Norway. See Lesley Abrams, “Diaspora and Identity in the Viking Age,” Early Medi­eval Europe 20, no. 1 (2012): 17–38, at 18.

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Matthew Firth

within, established communities. Where such activity does take on a martial aspect, as in the adventures of the skáld Egill Skallagrí�msson, Bjǫrn Hí�tdœlakappi, and Gunnlaugr Ormstungu, the Icelanders usually take on a role in service to the English king, rather than as an antagonist or aggressor. Of course, some of this is invention. The period from the settlement of Iceland to the end of the Viking Age was integral to Icelandic identity. It was in this time that the unique foundations of Icelandic society were set: a social order based on law and lacking in kings. By the time the sagas were put to text in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, however, this social order was either crumbling or had crumbled, with Iceland accepting Norwegian overlordship in 1262. As a result, the Íslendingasögur often take on a nostalgic aspect: heroes like Egill, Bjǫrn, and Gunnlaugr serve as metaphors for a perceived era of Icelandic agency and exceptionalism; the refuge and relative prosperity offered by England serves as a contrast to the political inequities often observed in Norway. The Íslendingasögur may purport to be histories, its episodes of Anglo-Scandinavian interaction may have roots in historical events, but they also display the editorial innovations of generations of storytellers. Yet it remains that there are over thirty accounts of Anglo-Scandinavian interaction in the Íslendingasögur, and that, of these, only one provides a clear example of viking activity in England. When the full scale of these references is considered, it seems improbable that this reflects an exclusively thirteenth- or fourteenth-century worldview. It is unlikely that, in a corpus of texts composed by disparate authors over the length of a century, nearly every memory of Viking Age raiding in England would be forgotten, rehabilitated or expunged if such existed in the first place. The Íslendingasögur present England as more than a site of intercultural conflict: it is a place of intercultural exchange. And the manner of such interactions illuminates Icelandic perceptions of, and serves to create a more complete picture of, Anglo-Scandinavian cultural contact in the Viking Age. The England of the sagas participates within the same regional, economic, political, and cultural landscapes as do the Scandinavian travellers who visit its ports, courts, and communities. The Old Norse-Icelandic words for England (England) and English (enskr) are relatively straight-forward identifiers. These do not always carry narrative weight, nor do they necessarily denote an English location for the described events. The man (or men) named Þórir Englandsfari (England-trader), for example, appears in two þættir (short stories), one set in Iceland, the other in Norway, neither hinting at his connections to England beyond his sobriquet.2 Yet even such fleeting references offer a glimpse into a worldview that normalized Anglo-Scandinavian interaction. Other examples provide more robust material on which to draw. Egils saga Skallagrímssonar and Gunnlaugs 2  Gunnars þáttr Þiðrandabana 1–2, Í� slenzk fornrit (Í� F) XI, ed. Jón Jóhannesson (Reykjaví�k: Hið í�slenzka fornritafélag [HÍ�F], 1950), 195–211, at 195–6; Halldórs þáttr Snorrasonar inn Síðari 2, Í�F V, ed. Einar Ó� l. Sveinsson (Reykjaví�k: HÍ� F, 1934), 265–77, at 267. Sources printed in Í� F volumes are cited by chapter number after their first use. The þættir, usually found embedded within the konungasögur (kings’ sagas), fall outside the premise of this article, though their intersections with the Íslendingasögur and/or Viking Age England are noted where relevant.



Memories of Viking Age Cultural Contact

3

saga Ormstungu contain extensive episodes set within England which, accuracy notwithstanding, provide great insight into how the region was perceived. However, not all terms that may encompass England are as unambiguous as England and enskr, and one such is the word Vestrlǫnd. Though occasionally translated as “England,” Vestrlǫnd more accurately refers to the wider Anglo-Celtic Isles. It is true that vestr or westward journeys can at times be intended to reference England in particular, as seen in the first stanza of Egill’s hǫfuðlausn, or head-ransom poem.3 This, however, is only identified from the explicit reference to England in the second stanza, alongside the prose framing of the verse in those redactions of the saga where it appears.4 Given the extent of Norse settlement in Ireland, Shetland, Orkney, and the Hebrides, alongside that which occurred in Northumbria and East Anglia, it cannot be taken for granted that stand-alone references to Vesturlǫnd or vestr travel are intended to include England. As such, this survey is limited to episodes in which the words England and enskr appear, or in which English locations such as London and York can be confidently identified.

History and Memory

Of course, the question must be asked as to what extent thirteenth-century Icelandic literary texts can be used to identify the attitudes toward England of earlier centuries. Historicity in the Íslendingasögur is a much-contested idea.5 Approaching the Íslendingasögur as reliable historical sources, or seeking unambiguous historical narrative in their pages, are fraught pursuits. The seeker is destined to arrive at the same conclusion as Gabriel Turville-Petre who, in his 1976 analysis of English history and Old Norse-Icelandic skaldic verse, concluded that they “can tell us little about the history of England, but the history of England may give us confidence in the authenticity of some skaldic verses.”6 In other words, any historical evidence in the sagas can most often only be recognized in the light of external historical sources. Yet it is possible to be overly sceptical in this regard. Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, for example, suggests “er der ingen genuine historiske kendsgerninger i islændingesagaene” (there are 3  Egils saga Skallagrímssonar 60 (st. 1), Í�F II, ed. Sigurður Nordal (Reykjaví�k: HÍ�F, 1933), 185.

4  Egils saga 60 (st. 2). On the transmission of Egill’s long poems, see Svanhildur Ó� skarsdóttir, “Egil Strikes Again: Textual Variation and the Seventeenth-Century Reworkings of Egil’s Saga,” in Egil the Viking Poet: New Approaches to Egil’s saga, ed. Laurence de Looze, Jón Karl Helgason, Russell Poole, and Torfi H. Tulinius (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 175–98 at 176–8. While this chapter relies on the normalized Í� F editions of the texts to produce a broad survey of the Íslendingasögur corpus, it should be noted that many of the sagas survive in multiple manu­scripts and often vary between redactions.

5  For an overview, see, Ralph O’Connor, “History and Fiction,” in The Routledge Research Companion to the Medi­eval Icelandic Sagas, ed. Á� rmann Jakobsson and Sverrir Jakobsson (London: Routledge, 2017), 88–110, at 88–89. See also Paul Bibire, “On Reading the Icelandic Sagas: Approaches to Old Icelandic Texts,” in West Over Sea: Studies in Scandinavian Sea-borne Expansion and Settlement Before 1300, ed. Beverley Ballin Smith, Simon Taylor, and Gareth Williams (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 1–18; Gí�sli Sigurðsson, The Medi­eval Icelandic Saga and Oral Tradition: A Discourse of Method (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 17–50. 6  E. O. G. Turville-Petre, Scaldic Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), lxx.

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no genuine historical facts in the Íslendingasögur).7 Sørensen’s position is that, what “historical facts” may be found are always subordinated to literary purpose. However, as Ralph O’Connor points out, medi­eval historio­graphy defies attempts to neatly separate “history” from “literature,” or to establish the primacy of either: “the NorseIcelandic saga emerged as a form of historio­graphy” in which the real and the imagined work together to construct meaning and to communicate experience.8 Moreover, historical facts are certainly identifiable. For example, despite the literary aspects of the English passages of Egils saga, there is nothing objectively incorrect in their observations that Æthelstan (r. 924–939) was king of England, that there was significant Scandinavian settlement around York, and that Æthelstan experienced resistance to his rule there. As Vésteinn Ó� lason observes: The Íslendingasögur are written as histories, that is, they refer to historical personages, some events they describe are known to be historical, and their action takes place within real geo­graphy (mainly in Iceland) and is conditioned by Icelandic social and political structures.9

How the Íslendingasögur portray such historical people, events, and places may display misunderstanding or invention, yet they also indicate societal perceptions of them. Historicity is not solely invested in “genuine historical facts,” but can be sought in the transmission of experience, in intra-corpus textual correlation, and in cultural memory—a society’s inter-generational recollection of a shared past. This last is more of a process than a static phenomenon. Each new generation in a society re-evaluates and reinvents its past as events are forgotten, perceptions change, and societal values evolve. There is little doubt that this is a process that lies behind the composition of the sagas as written texts. Yet it remains that cultural memory still draws from a societal storehouse of knowledge,10 and it is scarcely credible that thirty different saga accounts invented instances of Anglo-Scandinavian interaction that were entirely untethered from cultural memory of lived experience. Geraldine Barnes highlights that the writers of the sagas had a clear understanding of England’s importance within Scandinavian trade networks, while Magnús Fjalldal concludes Icelanders of the thirteenth century had little direct contact with England.11 7  Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, Fortælling og ære: Studier i Islændingesagaerne (Å� rhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 1993), 19.

8  O’Connor, “History and Fiction,” 88–91. See also Vésteinn Ó� lason, “The Icelandic Saga as a Kind of Literature with Special Reference to its Representation of Reality,” in Learning and Understanding in the Old Norse World: Essays in Honour of Margaret Clunies Ross, ed. Judy Quinn, Kate Heslop, and Tarrin Wills, (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 27–47 at 27–29. 9  Vésteinn Ó� lason, “The Icelandic Saga as a Kind of Literature,” 34.

10  Pernille Hermann, “Concepts of Memory and Approaches to the Past in Medi­eval Icelandic Literature,” Scandinavian Studies 81, no. 3 (2009): 287–308.

11  Geraldine Barnes, “The Medi­eval Anglophile: England and Its Rulers in Old Norse History and Saga,” Parergon 10, no. 2 (1992): 11–25, at 25; Magnús Fjalldal, Anglo-Saxon England in Icelandic Medi­eval Texts (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 124.



Memories of Viking Age Cultural Contact

5

Where Fjalldal goes astray is in suggesting that Icelandic knowledge of England could only have been obtained via contact with Norwegians in the thirteenth century. In his view, this indirect and late transmission of experience accounts for the introduction of error into depictions of England, exemplified by England’s fundamentally Scandinavian character in the sagas.12 This discounts three factors. Firstly, Icelanders had a reputation in the Middle Ages for collecting and storing knowledge from across Scandinavia, even before the arrival of literacy. 13 Thus, while certain information did no doubt derive from contact with other Scandinavian societies, this could have entered Icelandic cultural memory much earlier than the thirteenth century. Secondly, the introduction of error and invention may also be a product of transmission over time. There is, in principle, no reason to doubt the careers of Icelandic adventurers like Egill and Gunnlaugr, but their bio­graphies surely became exaggerated as retold over the centuries. Finally, England’s Scandinavian complexion in the Íslendingasögur, rather than a lack of knowledge, may represent an awareness by later Icelanders that Viking Age England had been a constituent part of the Scandinavian world. Certainly, the cumulative effect of Íslendingasögur accounts of Anglo-Scandinavian cultural contact is to give the impression of normalized, even mundane, interactions. This is not to say that such episodes lack in evident and engaging fictions: Gunnlaugr duels a berserkr on behalf of King Æthelred II (r. 978–1014/1016); Bjǫrn slays a dragon while defending the retinue of King Knútr (Cnut) (r. 1017–1035),14 from which it can be seen that England in some ways becomes a place of alterity in the Íslendingasögur. This is not an uncommon motif, and most foreign lands take on an element of the fantastic or “other.”15 This speaks to that nostalgic element of the sagas, and is designed to create meaning for thirteenth-century Icelanders: the kings and monsters of the outside world sit in contradistinction to an idealized Viking Age Iceland of civilization and self-determination. Yet England is also a familiar place, and this at a more fundamental level. Here Scandinavians could trade and participate in economic life, could settle or stop a while on their travels, could seek employment with the king as a mercenary or a poet. It is difficult to ascribe a thirteenth-century Icelandic agenda to such normalized interactions with an island that had, as Fjalldal identifies, become politically and culturally distant over time. As such, in the Anglo-Scandinavian inter­ actions of the Íslendingasögur, it is perhaps possible to catch some glimpse of a Viking Age Scandinavian perspective of such intercultural contact. 12  Fjalldal, Anglo-Saxon England, 123–4.

13  See for example, Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum Pr.i.4, ed. Karsten Friis-Jensen and trans. Peter Fisher (Oxford: Clarendon, 2015), 1:6–7; Theodoricus Monachus, Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium, in Monumenta historica Norvegæ, ed. Gustav Storm (Christiana [Oslo]: Brøgger, 1880), 3. 14  Egils saga 53–54; Bjarnar saga Hítdœlakappa 5, Í�F III, ed. Sigurður Nordal and Guðni Jónsson (Reykjaví�k: HÍ�F, 1938), 111–211, at 124–5; Gunnlaugs saga Ormstungu 7, Í�F III, ed. Sigurður Nordal and Guðni Jónsson (Reykjaví�k: HÍ�F, 1938), 49–107, at 72–74.

15  Jesse Byock, Medi­eval Iceland: Society, Sagas, and Power (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 8–9; William H. Norman, Barbarians in the Sagas of Icelanders: Homegrown Stereotypes and Foreign Influences (London: Routledge, 2022), 18–21.

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Table 1.1: Saga and þættir (select) accounts of trading with England.16

Text

Egils saga

Grettis saga Gull-Þóris saga Hallfreðar saga vandræðaskálds Hallfreðar saga vandræðaskálds Heiðarvíga saga

Laxdœla saga Gunnars þáttr Þiðrandabana Gull-Ásu-Þórðar þáttr Halldórs þáttr Snorrasonar inn Síðari Þorsteins þáttr uxafóts

Chapter(s) Summary

17–8 22 6 1 7 14 41, 43 1

1 3

Composition Setting Date Date

Trading trip to England returns with high-quality cargo. Ship seized on arrival in Norway. Cf. Landnámabók S29.

1220–1230

ca. 890

Servant sent from Norway to England on apparent trade trip.

1310–1320 1300–1350

ca. 1015

ca. 1220

961–965

ca. 1220

ca. 1000

1200–1210

ca. 1015

1230–1260

ca. 995

1230–1260

ca. 1015

ca. 1215

ca. 1110

ca.1220

ca. 1050

1230–1260

ca. 995

Norwegian sent on a mission to acquire goods in England. Norwegian brothers establish themselves as merchants via Anglo-Norwegian trade.

Merchant arrives in Norway from England. An Icelander recounts being robbed of his silver while in an English marketplace.

England singled out for its good markets. One trading partner goes, returns with goods.

A man named Þórir Englandsfari, killed in a debt/trade motivated feud in Iceland.

Norwegian financier of successful trade mission to England. A man named Þórir Englandsfari, now elderly, but a successful trader in earlier years.

Norwegian merchant who traded in England.

ca. 890

Trade and Economic Activity

Trade and economic activity are common elements in depictions of England in the Íslendingasögur, with seven primary examples observable across the corpus (Table 1.1). The texts portray the English as belonging to the same trade networks as the Norwegians and ergo the Icelanders, if not always directly so. This is not an invention

16  Dates in all tables are approximate, setting date derived from text content, composition date from Í� F commentaries, the latter after Vésteinn Ó� lason, “Family Sagas,” in A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature, ed. Rory McTurk (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 114–5.



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of the thirteenth century. The archaeo­logical record serves as an external witness to Anglo-Scandinavian trade in the Viking Age: finds of Scandinavian luxury goods in England, and of English luxury goods and specie in Scandinavia.17 This latter, moreover, raises the intriguing possibility that English coins may have served a mnemonic function, prompting and perpetuating Scandinavian cultural memory of kings like Æthelstan and Æthelred, who feature within the Íslendingasögur and whose coins have been found throughout the Scandinavian world.18 The sagas depict such activity as a part of the rhythm of everyday life in the Viking Age. While the quality of the goods obtained in England or the wealth acquired by doing business there is at times remarked, the trade activity in itself is unremarkable and never provided narrative detail. Further, though these journeys to England often occur at critical narrative junctures, the fact England was their destination serves no direct narrative purpose. Frisia or Francia could easily stand in its stead as trading destinations without truly altering the saga accounts. This points to two conclusions. Firstly, that England was understood to be a common port of call for Viking Age traders. Secondly, that it is coded within the Íslendingasögur as a place of abundance, specifically evoked within descriptions of successful trading activity. A number of merchants within the Íslendingasögur, primarily Norwegians, make their fortunes in England, and the quality or quantity of goods obtained there is often noted. This is a common theme among the accounts of such activity listed in Table 1.1. The example found in the early chapters of Egils saga is perhaps the most notable among these, due to its external attestation, for the crucial part the episode plays within the narrative, and for the details of the products traded. It is worth noting that Egils saga takes a greater interest in England and events there than any other Íslendingasögur, and Egill himself spends two extended periods in English courts. The episode in chapters 17–18, however, occurs before Egill’s birth, sometime around the year 890. Its background is inherently complex. In essence, Þórólfr Kveldúlfsson, Egill’s uncle, had gone into the service of the Norwegian King Haraldr inn hárfagri (fairhair) (ca. 880–ca. 930), but the two had fallen out, the king wary of Þórólfr’s growing wealth and influence. At this juncture of the story, Þórólfr has sent ship on a trade mission to England with a cargo of stockfish, hides, and a large variety of furs. Þórólfr obtained these goods trading in Kvenland and fishing in Vágar, both in the Sámi lands in the north of modern Norway and Finland, and raiding with allies from the region into Kirjálaland, or Karelia on the Finno-Russian border.19 The saga states that trade in England was good, and the ship set out for Norway in autumn, laden with wheat, honey, wine, and

17  Abrams, “Diaspora and Identity,” 28–30; Jane F. Kershaw, Viking Identities: Scandinavian Jewellery in England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 125–8, 181–6; Elina Screen, “Coins as an Indicator of Communications between the British Isles and Scandinavia in the Viking Age,” in Viking-Age Trade: Silver, Slaves and Gotland, ed. Jacek Gruszczyński, Marek Jankowiak, and Jonathan Shepard (London: Routledge, 2020), 377–95. 18  Mark Blackburn and Kenneth Jonsson, “The Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman Element of North European Coin Finds,” in Viking-Age Coinage in the Northern Lands, ed. M. A. S. Blackburn and D. M. Metcalf (Oxford: British Archaeo­logical Reports, 1981), 1:201–51. 19  The Kven-Karelian conflict described in chaps. 14 and 17 of Egils saga has been argued to fit

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cloth.20 In the meantime, however, the king had become convinced that Þórólfr’s trade goods were his due by right and, as a result, the ship was seized on return to Norway, along with its cargo which, the saga states, “að það var stórfé” (was of great value).21 The seizing of Þórólfr’s ship and its valuable goods is also attested in Landnámabók, or The Book of Settlements, a compilation of around 400 stories of Iceland’s early Norwegian settlers and their families. Here it is relayed in the context of the story’s aftermath, and the arrival of Þórólfr’s family in Iceland. The confiscation of the ship set in motion a series of actions and reactions that would see Þórólfr dead and his brother Skallagrí�mr and father Kveldúlfr fleeing to Iceland in the face of an enraged king. On their way out of Norway, the two men decide to lie in wait for the ship “er Haraldur konungur lét taka fyrir Þórólfi, þá er menn hans voru nýkomnir af Englandi” (that King Harald had taken from Þórólfr when his men returned with it from England).22 Clearly, this venture to England occupied a significant place in traditions of Egill’s family’s settlement in Iceland. Notably, England appears as an element of another settlement era narrative, this one found in the early fourteenth-century Gull-Þóris saga. Set again during Haraldr’s reign, an Icelandic adventurer named Þórir, whose family had settled around Breiðafjǫrðr, goes adventuring in Norway and Sweden. As he sets out from Sweden to return to Iceland, it is stated that Þórir “sendi Rekkal til Englands með annað skip” (sent Rekkal to England in another ship).23 Rekkal is not mentioned in the text again, which may imply he was sent to settle in England, but a trading journey on behalf of his master is just as plausible granted he is earlier described as a servant and no particular fidelity, status, or deed is implied that would warrant the gift of a ship. Returning to Egils saga, the goods mentioned, both those taken to England and those acquired there, are in line with what is known of both Norwegian and English trade in the period. Alongside the stockfish, a known commodity of tenth- and eleventh-century Norwegian trade, the outgoing trading ship is said to be laden with four different types of hide or fur, either obtained peacefully in Kvenland or through force in Kirjálaland. Fur commodities fit well with the known production and trading activities of both the Sámi and Karelian peoples in the Viking Age.24 Scandinavian merchants actively traded in the commodity, and England was both a net importer of best within a twelfth- or thirteenth-century political context as opposed to the late ninth-century setting of the saga. Mikko Häme, “Egilin saagan lapinkuvan ajoituksesta,” Faravid 3 (1979): 69–82. 20  Egils saga 17.

21  Egils saga 18.

22  Landnámabók S29, Í�F I, ed. Jakob Benediktsson (Reykjaví�k: HÍ�F, 1968), 68–9, cf. Egils saga 27. On the relationship between Egils saga and Landnámabók, see Sveinbjörn Rafnsson, “Landnámabók and its Sturlubók Version,” in Sturla Þórðarson: Skald, Chieftain and Lawman, ed. Jón Viðar Sigurðsson and Sverrir Jakobsson (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 44–55, at 52–53. 23  Gull-Þóris saga (as Þorskfirðinga saga), Í�F XIII, ed. Þórhallur Vilmundarson and Bjarni Vilhjálms­ son, (Reykjaví�k: HÍ�F, 1991), 173–227, at 191.

24  Mervi Koskela Vasaru, “Bjarmaland and Interaction in the North of Europe from the Viking Age until the Early Middle Ages,” Journal of Northern Studies 6, no. 2 (2012): 46–48, 51–54; Inger Zachrisson, “The Sámi and their Interaction with the Nordic Peoples,” in The Viking World, ed. Stefan Brink and Neil Price (London: Routledge, 2008), 34–37.



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furs and a locus for their onward trade. Likewise, England’s merchants and its larger markets traded in the luxury products of more temperate regions as well as locally produced surplus staples: goods such as wheat, honey, wine, and cloth.25 As such, the seemingly extraneous information Egils saga supplies for the trade mission is in fact contextualizing detail consistent with a Viking Age setting; both the English destination and the goods traded there lend the episode a certain verisimilitude. The example of Anglo-Scandinavian trade contact from Laxdœla saga is less detailed than that of Egils saga, but still illuminating. It adheres to the idea that England is a wealthy place in which Scandinavians do well. This section of Laxdœla saga has a strong focus on the Christianization of Norway and Iceland, granted it is set at the court of the proselytising Norwegian King Ó� láfr Tryggvason (r. 995–1000). The Icelandic protagonist, Kjartan Ó� lafsson, is found discussing plans for a mission to England because, “því� að þangað er nú góð kaupstefna kristnum mönnum” (there are good trading markets there for Christian men).26 The king, however, sees through this apparent artifice and gives Kjartan an ultimatum: either undertake a missionary journey to Iceland to convert his kinsmen, or remain in Ó� láfr’s service in Norway. Kjartan opts for the latter, claiming to wish to avoid conflict with his kinsmen, but perhaps also out of a desire to maintain some control over the sought-after trade. The king’s decision does not appear to have included Kjartan’s trading partner, Kálfr, as two chapters later it is stated that Kálfr returned from England and overwintered in Norway with their ship and trade goods.27 No indication is made that the goods were traded there, and the two men set out for Iceland come spring, implying the goods were intended for trade or use there. That English goods were traded in Iceland is also suggested by Gunnars þáttr Þiðrandabana, which records Þórir Englandsfari as trading in Iceland’s eastern quarter. Trade partnerships such as that of Kjartan and Kálfr are not uncommon in the Íslendingasögur, and could take several forms. These could be between equals who both undertook the venture, which was clearly Kjartan and Kálfr’s original intent in Laxdœla saga. This is the kind of partnership seen between the brothers Ó� ttar and Á� valdi in Hallfreðar saga vandræðaskálds. Wary of the shifting political circumstances in Norway, they sell their lands to purchase trade goods, following which “Þrjá vetur eða fjóra voru þeir í� siglingum til Englands og áttu þá stórfé” (They sailed to England over the next three or four seasons, becoming very wealthy).28 The brothers ultimately settle in Iceland, having obtained enough wealth for each to purchase his own farmland. An arrangement between equal partners may perhaps also be seen later in Hallfreðar saga, when a man named Audgisl approaches Hallfreðr himself in the southern Norwegian trading post of Konungahella to request his company in an onward eastern 25  S. R. H. Jones, “Transaction Costs, Institutional Change, and the Emergence of a Market Economy in Later Anglo-Saxon England,” Economic History Review (1993): 658–78. 26  Laxdœla saga 41, Í�F V, ed. Einar Ó� l. Sveinsson (Reykjaví�k: HÍ�F, 1934), 124–5. 27  Laxdœla saga 41.

28  Hallfreðar saga vandræðaskálds 1, Í� F VIII, ed. Einar Ó� l. Sveinsson (Reykjaví�k: HÍ� F, 1939), 135–200, at 137–8.

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journey.29 Although, this passage can also be read as Audgisl simply employing Hallfreðr; Audgisl has just arrived from England and tells Hallfreðr “og skortir mig eigi fé” (and I do not lack money). On which topic, trade partnerships could be between financiers and merchants. This is seen in Gull-Ásu-Þórðar þáttr, when a Norwegian woman named Asa finances an English trade voyage for an Icelander named Þórd in return for a split of the profits.30 Finally, as in Egils saga and Gull-Þóris saga, trade partnerships could also take the form of a merchant financing a trip helmed by a trusted captain or servant. This is also observed in Grettis saga, where one of Grettir’s early antagonists, a man named Bjǫrn is sent to England on behalf of a Norwegian landholder. Little is said of the trade that occurred or the goods acquired, though it may be assumed as having been successful given that Bjǫrn is in a position to offer Grettir financial compensation when confronted by the Icelander upon his return to Norway (not that it dissuaded Grettir from killing Bjǫrn).31 There are three final mentions of England, though all three fall to some degree outside the canon of Íslendingasögur. The first is an odd tale from Heiðarvíga saga in which a man named Gí�sli Þorsteinsson, attending the Alþingi in Iceland, recounts having sat in a marketplace in England with his purse beside him, only for it to be stolen.32 Heiðarvíga saga’s passages set in England require some scepticism. The opening chapters of the saga were destroyed in the Copenhagen fire of 1728, and were subsequently reconstructed by the scribe Jón Ó� lafsson from his memory and notes. All three English episodes in the saga occur within this material, the region nowhere mentioned in the rest of the saga. Gí�sli’s story, moreover, falls somewhat outside the usual themes of Íslendingasögur depictions of Anglo-Scandinavian trade: that it was a normal part of commerce within the North Sea region, and that England was affluent place where Scandinavian merchants could attain valuable goods and wealth. In contrast, two final examples taken from þættir exemplify both. Perceptions of the value of English trade are epitomized by the Þórir Englandsfari of Halldórs þáttr Snorrasonar inn Síðari, whose trading in England was apparently so integral to his identity as to give him his sobriquet. The þáttr describes him as “hafði verið hinn mesti kaupmaður” (having been the greatest merchant). In turn, the commonplace nature of Anglo-Scandinavian trade is typified by Ivar Erlingason who, in Þorsteins þáttr uxafóts, is said to have made his living by trading between England, Denmark and Iceland.33 When such examples from the Íslendingaþættir are taken together with those of the Íslendingasögur, what comes into focus is a significant and robust tradition of normalized and ongoing Anglo-Scandinavian trade throughout the Viking Age. 29  Hallfreðar saga 7.

30  Gull-Ásu-Þórðar þáttr, Í�F XI, ed. Jón Jóhannesson (Reykjaví�k: HÍ�F, 1950), 337–49, at 340–2. 31  Grettis saga 22, Í�F VII, ed. Guðni Jónsson (Reykjaví�k: HÍ�F, 1936), 78–79.

32  Heiðarvíga saga 14, Í� F III, eds. Sigurður Nordal and Guðni Jónsson (Reykjaví�k: HÍ� F, 1938), 213–328, at 257–8. 33  Þorsteins þáttur uxafóts 3, Í� F XIII, ed. Þórhallur Vilmundarson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson, (Reykjaví�k: HÍ�F, 1991), 339–70, at 346.



Travellers and Settlers

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Scandinavian settlement in the Anglo-Celtic Isles is a well-known and well-recorded phenomenon. Those most famous instances of it in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, however, find no place in the Íslendingasögur. The coalition of Scandinavian forces known as the hæþen here (Heathen Army), which drove Norwegian and Danish settlement in England, arrived there ca. 865, apparently bent on conquest. York fell to them the following year, subsequently becoming an important Scandinavian population center and trading port. A decade of campaigning against the English followed, with the Scandinavians ultimately settling in Northumbria around the year 876, and doing the same four years later in East Anglia.34 Icelandic involvement in these events is unrecorded, and such involvement would be anachronistic. The settlement of Iceland was a more-or-less simultaneous event, presumably driven by the same impulses that saw Norwegians and Danes settle throughout the Insular world in the late-ninth century. The Íslendingasögur are largely aware of the historical or traditional timelines within which they operate. Even if these do not always marry with historical chrono­logy as attested elsewhere, the broad strokes of events are usually put in the correct order. Thus, for example, Egill’s first visit to England, which dates to the year 937, is foregrounded by a brief contextualising chapter that states “Norðimbraland … hǫfðu haft að fornu Danakonungar” (Northumbria … had belonged to Danish kings of old), and that all those of standing in the region were of Danish descent.35 This awareness that large-scale Scandinavian settlement of England pre-dated, or at least was coeval, with the Icelandic Settlement period, has a wider effect on the world of the Íslendingasögur. Scandinavian émigrés and travellers do not enter a war zone, or an England of simmering Anglo-Scandinavian conflict, but rather seek the island out as a place of safety and settled communities. The corpus record ten examples that can be so categorized (Table 1.2). With this understood, it needs to be acknowledged that the Íslendingasögur rarely differentiate between Anglo-Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon England. Occasionally a location is given—Egill visits the court of Eirí�kr blóðøx (bloodaxe) in York, Gunnlaugr attends Æthelred’s court in London—but such specificity is rare.36 York, for example, is named in Egils saga alone of the Íslendingasögur, being mentioned five times. Notably, however, one of those examples is within Arinbjarnarkviða, a poem understood to be authentic to the tenth century (if not perhaps composed by Egill himself),37 demonstrating the saga was working within a framework of earlier memory or knowledge. In turn, London is only mentioned by name in Egils saga and Gunnlaugs saga, in both 34  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC) MS D 865, 876, 880, ed. G. P. Cubbin (Cambridge: Brewer, 1996), 24, 26–27.

35  Egils saga 51, cf. Snorri Sturluson, Hákonar saga Góða, Heimskringla, Í� F XXVI, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson (Reykjaví�k: HÍ�F, 1945), 152–3. 36  Egils saga 60; Gunnlaugs saga 7.

37  Egils saga 80; Matthew Townend, Viking Age Yorkshire (Pickering: Blackthorn, 2014), 76–77.

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Table 1.2: Saga and þættir (select) accounts of settlement in England.

Text

Brennu-Njáls saga Brennu-Njáls saga Egils saga

5 159 60

Egils saga

60–3, 80

Egils saga

65

Gísla saga Súrssonar Grettis saga Heiðarvíga saga Heiðarvíga saga Þórðar saga hreðu (fragment)

Composition Date

Setting Date

A Norwegian named Sóti divulges a plan to flee to England as a refuge from his enemies.

1275–1285

ca. 965

Eiríkr blóðøx is made subregulus in Northumbria by King Æthelstan; settles in York with followers.

1275–1285

ca. 1014

1220–1230

ca. 947

1220–1230

ca. 948

Norwegian woman seeks news of her brother, family, and friends who had settled in England.

1220–1230

ca. 949

Events located in the summer Óláfr II Haraldsson arrived from England to claim the Norwegian kingship.

ca. 1250

ca. 961

1310–1320

1015

A feud begun in Iceland spills over to Norway, from where one participant escapes to England.

1200–1210

ca. 1012

1200–1210

ca. 1014

1300–1350

946–947

Chapter(s) Summary

8 38 12 13 3

Icelandic pilgrim returns from Rome, via Normandy, England, Wales, and Scotland.

Egill runs aground in the Humber, travels to York, finds Arinbjǫrn and family resident there, attends Eiríkr’s court.

Norwegian trader now living in England.

A young Icelander departs for England to join a monastery.

Summary of Eiríkr blóðøx’s exile from Norway and rule in North­ umbria as found in Egils saga. Cf. for example Hákonar saga, 152; Historia Norwegie xii

instances as a place where the English king could be found,38 while the region of Northumbria is only named in Egils saga and certain fragments of Þórðar saga hreðu, with both texts linking it to Eirí�kr’s rulership in the area. 39 As such, identified locations 38  Egils saga 63; Gunnlaugs saga 6–7.

39  Egils saga 51–52, 60; (Brot af) Þórðar saga hreðu 3, Í�F XIV, ed. Jóhannes Halldórsson (Reykjaví�k: HÍ� F, 1959), 227–47. at 236–37. This section of Þórðar saga as printed in Í� F XIV is taken from Reykjaví�k MS AM 486 4 4to.



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within England seem to be connected with specific individuals or stories; otherwise the Íslendingasögur use the term England as a catchall. This may reflect a flattening of detail over time through the transmission of saga narratives. Alternatively, it may be a co-opting of the political world in which the sagas were written, with distinctions between Scandinavian and Saxon England having become increasingly irrelevant in the centuries after the Norman Conquest. Whatever its origin, the result is that in almost all instances it is impossible to know whether settlers and travellers were seeking out Scandinavian or English communities. And a similar interpretation can be applied to the episodes of trade we have discussed. While Hamwic (Southampton) was a well-established emporium, and London too increasingly so, Scandinavian traders may have preferred to do their business in the more familiar environment of the Scandinavian ports of York or even Grimsby. There is, yet again, something of a commonplace aspect to the way these episodes are treated in the Íslendingasögur, and the majority of the above-listed examples constitute little more than statements that someone intended to settle in England, or did settle in England, or travelled through England. These can be briefly addressed, beginning with accounts of settlement. There is, in these, the thread of an idea that England may provide refuge from feud and political machinations in Iceland and Norway. It was both far enough away from Scandinavia to be free from immediate danger, and familiar enough to be a home. Thus, when a man named Sóti raises the ire of the Norwegian queen-mother Gunnhildr in Brennu-Njáls saga, he articulates a plan to flee to England.40 Apparently aware that this would put him out of her reach, Gunnhildr arranges to have him killed before he can depart. A similar impulse lies behind the flight of the Icelander Kolskeggr as he departs Norway for England in Heiðarvíga saga (though he is successful), and even Eirí�kr blóðøx’s settlement in York could be so characterized. These two episodes are considered in more detail below. Finally, there is the example of the Norwegian merchant Sigurðr in Gísla saga Súrssonar who had made England his home.41 He was partnered in trade with an Icelandic merchant but gathered enough wealth in England to operate without that financial support, and so the Icelander heads to England to meet with Sigurðr and arrange the cessation of the partnership. Turning to travel episodes, only two examples appear to treat England as a mere stop within a broader journey. Firstly, Kári, the only survivor of the climactic hallburning in Brennu-Njáls saga, goes on pilgrimage to Rome in the last chapter of the epic. The saga author provides a curiously extended description of his return route to Iceland, stating that Kári went overland to Normandy, sailed to Dover, continued westward to Cornwall, along the Welsh coast, through the Hebrides, and overwintered in Caithness.42 Secondly, Grettis saga mentions that Ó� láfr II Haraldsson (r. 1015–1028) “kom vestan af Englandi” (came from England in the west) to claim the Norwegian 40  Brennu-Njáls saga 5, Í�F XII, ed. Einar Ó� l. Sveinsson (Reykjaví�k: HÍ�F, 1954), 19.

41  Gísla saga Súrssonar 8, Í�F VI, ed. Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson (Reykjaví�k: HÍ�F, 1943), 3–118, at 27–29. 42  Brennu-Njáls saga 159.

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throne.43 No additional information is given regarding his time there, and the statement assumes certain knowledge; its primary intent is to locate the narrative on a timeline around the year 1015. Various Old Norse-Icelandic texts outside the Íslendingasögur corpus relay that Ó� láfr’s activities in England took on military aspect, either as a raider or as Æthelred’s ally in the face of invading Danish forces.44 This is not, however, how it is framed in Grettis saga. Moreover, the tradition of Ó� láfr’s campaigning in England is entirely absent from the Íslendingasögur (as well as from the English historical record). Here England is nothing more than a place to and from which Ó� láfr has travelled, fitting in with wider Íslendingasögur characterizations of England as a place of order rather than of conflict. The episodes found in Heiðarvíga saga warrant singling out. The flight of Kolskeggr is reminiscent of that plotted by Sóti in Brennu-Njáls saga, his motivation—to escape the threat posed by the kin of a man he had been party to killing in Iceland—is entirely plausible.45 Indeed, of the three episodes set in England in that material of the saga reconstructed by Jón Ó� lafsson, this is the most creditable, comfortably conforming to the intertextual archetypes of the Íslendingasögur. The primary reason to cast doubt on the authenticity of this episode is not in the content itself, but rather in the identification of England as Kolskeggr’s destination. Jón Ó� lafsson’s gloss of the word England with the phrase “að mig minnir” (as I recall), suggests he was not wholly certain of this fact himself. More interesting, however, is the final English episode of Heiðarvíga saga. Here a young Icelander named Guðlaugr is described as demonstrating an unusual reluctance to perform his expected role in avenging the killing of a family member. This moment occurs just after Guðlaugr finishes his daily prayers, and his expression in speaking to his father is said to be remarkable.46 Whether the implication is that the young man had undergone a religious experience, or rather that his expression reflects his inner turmoil as he contends between secular and religious obligation, is unclear. The episode dates to only around a decade after Iceland’s conversion, and Guðlaugr is clearly an analogue for Iceland’s own shifting ethos and the tension inherent in expectations that traditional feud vengeance would be set aside for prayerful contemplation.47 For Guðlaugr, that tension is resolved when he leaves Iceland for England to enter a monastery. While a fair number of Íslendingasögur contain narratives situated at this moment in Icelandic history, this one is unusual, both for its outcome, and for the 43  Grettis saga 38.

44  See Sverre Bagge, “Warrior, King, and Saint: The Medi­eval Histories about St. Ó� láfr Haraldsson,” Journal of English and Germanic Phililogy 109, no. 3 (2010): 281–321, esp. 288–90. See also Jan Ragnar Hagland and Bruce Watson, “Fact or Folklore: The Viking Attack on London Bridge,” London Archaeo­logist 12 (2005): 328–33. 45  Heiðarvíga saga 13.

46  Heiðarvíga saga 12.

47  Thomas D. Hill, “Guðlaugr Snorrason: The Red Faced Saint and the Refusal of Violence,” Scandinavian Studies 67, no. 2 (1995): 145–52, cf. William Sayers, “The Honor of Guðlaugr Snorrason and Einarr Þambarskelfir: A Reply,” Scandinavian Studies 67, no. 4 (1995): 536–44.



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unsubtlety of its moralising. Ultimately, much like the story of the money stolen in the English marketplace, this episode of Heiðarvíga saga is a more-or-less unprecedented in the corpus of Íslendingasögur. This suggests a later interpolation, most likely via the eighteenth-century reconstruction of the saga’s opening chapters. It is also worth pausing on King Eirí�kr blóðøx’s purported kingship in York. This is one of the more discussed episodes of the Íslendingasögur in Anglophone scholarship, offering a tantalizing glimpse into a period of political upheaval in the north that is poorly served by English sources. However, the key debates around whether King Eirí�kr blóðøx is the same King Yric of York mentioned in the Chronicles, the chrono­logy of the to-and-fro of the Yorkish crown in the mid-tenth century, and the reliability of Egils saga as a historical source are beyond the scope of this article (or indeed any single article).48 What is of specific interest here is that the settlement of Eirí�kr and his retinue as recounted in Egils saga, toes the line of violent conquest, or traditional viking activity. In its broad strokes, this is a well-attested story, widely represented across the konungasögur, or kings’ sagas. In essence, Eirí�kr is deposed as King of Norway by his half-brother Hákon inn góði (the good) (ca. 934–961), flees into exile with his wife Gunnhildr, arrives in England where he is welcomed by Æthelstan and, in most accounts, is also provided some sort of territorial authority in Northumbria.49 Beyond this, certain details such as the route he took to arrive in England, his activities before he got there, and so on, are wont to change. As told by Egils saga, Eirí�kr headed first for Orkney, then raided in Scotland before heading further south to raid in England. It is told that Æthelstan met him there with a large army and arranged a settlement whereby Eirí�kr would rule in his name in York, and defend England from the Scots and Irish.50 In large part, the narrative of Eirí�kr’s arrival in England hews closely to that found in Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla.51 However, it does omit the widely told detail that Æthelstan required Eirí�kr and his retinue to be baptized before taking up his offer. Such a detail can even be found in certain fragmentary redactions of the Íslendingasaga, Þórðar saga hreðu.52 This implies both a subservience on the part of Eirí�kr and a mastery of the situation by Æthelstan that is not necessarily evident in Egils saga. It may simply be the case here that the Egils saga author did not wish to extend the 48  For summary overviews, see Clare Downham, “The Chrono­logy of the Last Scandinavian Kings of York, AD 937–954,” Northern History 40 (2003): 27–51; Townend, Viking Age Yorkshire, 74–84; Alex Woolf, “Erik Bloodaxe Revisited,” Northern History 34 (1998): 189–93. 49  For example, Ágrip af Nóregskonungasǫgum vii, ed. M. J. Driscoll, 2nd ed. (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 2008), 16–17; Historia Norwegie xii, ed. Inger Ekrem and Lars Boje Mortensen and trans. Peter Fisher (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 2006), 80–83; Snorri Sturluson, Hákonar saga, 152–3; Theodoricus Monachus, Historia 7. Theodoricus does not record that Eirí�kr was given any particular authority in England. 50  Egils saga 60.

51  On the links between Heimskringla and Egils saga, see Melissa A. Berman, “Egils saga and Heims­kringla,” Scandinavian Studies 54, no. 1 (1982): 21–50; Margaret Cormack, “Egils saga, Heims­ kringla, and the Daughter of Eirí�kr blóðøx,” alvíssmál 10 (2001), 61–68. 52  Þórðar saga hreðu 3. See also, for example, Snorri Sturluson, Hákonar saga, 152.

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redemption of baptism to Eirí�kr and Gunnhildr. The royal couple serve as Egill’s primary antagonists for much of the saga, with the latter being shown to have magical powers. It should also be noted that the detail that Eirí�kr raided into England does not have broad uptake outside of Egils saga. While Þórðar saga hreðu does state that Eirí�kr became a víking, this is placed after his baptism in England. This would seem to concur with Snorri’s statement that, once having obtained overlordship of Northumbria, Eirí�kr used it as a base to raid into Scotland, the Hebrides, Wales, and Ireland. Violent though this may be, this is an act of a settled group. At its core, Egils saga’s account of the Norwegian presence in Northumbria is a narrative of settlement. When Egill later runs aground in the Humber and heads to York to seek out his ally Arinbjǫrn, who had arrived with Eirí�kr, he finds his friend possessed of a house and a hall in the town. In turn, he finds Eirí�kr similarly, though presumably more sumptuously, housed.53 Wider scale of the settlement of Eirí�kr’s followers in the region is then later implied when Egill returns to Norway. There he meets with Arinbjǫrn’s sister, who “spurði að Arinbirni, bróður sí�num, og enn að fleirum frændum sí�num og vinum, þeim er til Englands höfðu farið með Arinbirni” (asked about her brother Arinbjǫrn, and about her family and her friends that had accompanied him to England).54 The apparent ease with which Egils saga assumes the Norwegian émigrés integrated within Yorkish society is reminiscent of the confidence that other Scandinavian travellers and settlers seem to have had when they set out for England. It was a place where Scandinavians could expect refuge and welcome, a place at once distant and familiar, a dynamic that suggests the term England in the Íslendingasögur, at least as it pertains to trade, travel, and settlement, may be most safely understood to mean Anglo-Scandinavian England.

Mercenaries and skáld

England is also represented as a place where an ambitious man could find employment, whether as a mercenary or as a skáld, a court poet. Unlike traders and travellers, these are overwhelmingly Icelanders. Much of this activity can be safely assumed to be occurring in the south, where the English court was most often to be found. Many of these tales gather around those periods of most intense Anglo-Scandinavian military interaction: not viking raids but invasion. A not insignificant number of Icelanders find themselves present in England around the time of Knútr’s conquest in 1016, and the attempted conquest by the Norwegian King Haraldr harðráði (hard-ruler) (1046–1066) in 1066. It naturally makes sense that men from all over the Scandinavian world would have joined these kings in their campaigns, and there is certainly evidence from Knútr’s invasion that such mercenary armies were well-paid.55 Moreover, Scandinavian mercenary service was not limited to the armies of Scandinavian lords; 53  Egils saga 60–61.

54  Egils saga 65.

55  ASC MS D 1018.



Memories of Viking Age Cultural Contact

Table 1.3: Saga and þættir (select) accounts of mercenaries and poets in England.

Text

Bjarnar saga Hítdœlakappa

Egils saga

Egils saga

Fóstbræðra saga

Grettis saga

Gunnlaugs saga Ormstungu Gunnlaugs saga Ormstungu

Kormáks saga

Ljósvetninga saga

Valla-Ljóts saga

Sneglu-Halla þáttr Þorsteins þáttr forvitna

17

Composition Date

Setting Date

Bjǫrn joins the retinue of King Knútr, protects his travel companions from a dragon attack.

1215–1230

ca. 1016

Egill is welcomed back into Æthelstan’s court in London in 62–63, 80 the aftermath of his meeting with Eiríkr.

1220–1230

937

1220–1230

ca. 948

Earl Eiríkr Hákonarson joins Knútr’s retinue in preparation for conquest in England.

ca. 1200

ca. 1016

1310–1320

1014– 1015

Gunnlaugr is welcomed back into Æthelred’s court, is ordered to remain lest Knútr seek to invade.

1270–1280

ca. 1003

1270–1280

ca. 1004

ca. 960 (verse)

ca. 960

1230–1250

1066

1220–1240

ca. 1020

ca. 1220

1066

ca. 1220

1066

Chapter(s) Summary

5 50–55

8

19 7–8 10 3 31 8 8–9  

Egill, his brother, and his men fight alongside Æthelstan at the Battle of Brunanburh/Vínheiðr.

Þormóðr Kolbrúnarskáld is well-rewarded for his verses by hǫfðingjar (chieftains) in England.

Gunnlaugr joins Æthelred’s court, speaks verse for the king and also fights a duel on his behalf.

Lausavísa 8, a love poem, describes the worth of its subject as being equal to all England. Brandr Gunnsteinsson joins Haraldr harðráði’s invasion of England, dies there.

Icelander flees feud for the safety of England, joins the royal guard (þingamannalið).

Halli joins the court of King Harold Godwinson (r. 1066), recites a verse for him and is rewarded.

Þorstein joins Haraldr harðráði’s invasion of England, dies there.

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both Æthelstan and Æthelred are known to have employed Scandinavian forces.56 This provides a context in which the two most extensive episodes set in England among the Íslendingasögur could have occurred: Egill serving in the armies of King Æthelstan and Gunnlaugr serving in the court of King Æthelred. Egill and Gunnlaugr are not just fighters, they are poets. A remarkable number of episodes set in England involve skáld, seven of the ten total Íslendingasögur examples from the listed in Table 1.3. In the Scandinavian worldview, the ability to compose good, complex skaldic verse was a route into a king’s retinue. There is certainly a great deal of evidence for this occurring in Scandinavia, but Fjalldal has posited that the Íslendingasögur application of this convention to English courts is little more than trope or motif. He suggests that this demonstrates a lack of knowledge regarding Viking Age England in thirteenth-century Iceland, with the English simply being coopted into the Scandinavian world.57 This is, however, a much-contested idea and Matthew Townend has been influential in arguing that Scandinavian traditions of skaldic composition would have been comprehensible within the English intellectual milieu.58 The breadth of examples from across the Íslendingasögur certainly suggest Icelanders believed this to be the case. The listed examples of mercenary and skaldic service are perhaps best dealt with chrono­logically, which returns the discussion immediately to Egils saga. The events of Egill’s first visit to Æthelstan’s court occurs before his already-discussed arrival in Eirí�kr’s Yorkish court. Despite his impressive skaldic credentials, the suggestion that he composed a long-form drápa poem for the king, and the delivery of a few lausavísur—single stanza compositions—Egill’s service in Æthelstan’s company is almost entirely mercenary in nature. Briefly told, Egill, his brother Þorolfr, and their men are raiding along the Frisian coast when they hear that Æthelstan is seeking men. Æthelstan welcomes them and, as an interesting and surely deliberate contrast to Eirí�kr, the brothers do accept a sort of pseudo-baptism, the prima signatio, which allowed them full association with Christians without necessitating conversion. Æthelstan’s need for men derives from the aggressions of the King of Scots in northern England, and Æthelstan places Egill and Þorolfr in charge of the Scandinavian division of his army.59 This is surely an exaggeration on the part of the saga, providing the Icelandic heroes outsized influence in the outcome of events. After some to-and-fro, the battle finally commences at a place the saga names Ví�nheiðr, and it is widely accepted that this is 56  Richard Abels, “Household Men, Mercenaries, and Vikings in Anglo-Saxon England,” in Mer­ cenaries and Paid Men: The Mercenary Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. John France (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 143–65, at 147–8, 155–9; Sarah Foot, Æthelstan: The First King of England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 179–83; Levi Roach, Æthelred the Unready (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 193–5. 57  Fjalldal, Anglo-Saxon England, 3–11, cf. Matthew Firth, “Æthelred II ‘the Unready’ and the Role of Kingship in Gunnlaugs saga Ormstungu,” The Court Historian 25, no. 1 (2020): 1–14. 58  Matthew Townend, Language and History in Viking Age England: Linguistic Relations Between Speakers of Old Norse and Old English (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), 150–3. 59  Egils saga 50–52.



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the famed Battle of Brunanburh of 937.60 Egill is central to Æthelstan’s resultant victory, but his brother is killed in the fighting. Þorolfr’s death is an interesting moment, as it leads to an external source that may indicate some veracity to the tale. The brothers’ participation in the battle, and Þorolfr’s death, are recounted in the poem Íslendingadrápa by Haukr Valdí�sarson, which Jónas Kristjánsson dates to the twelfth century.61 That this predates Egils saga provides some evidence of a pre-existing tradition of the brothers fighting in England, although it cannot be taken as proof for circulation contemporary with the event. The death of Þorolfr also puts Egill on trajectory to establishing a relationship with Æthelstan. He attends the English court following the battle, where he speaks a number of lausavísur, primarily lamenting his brother. Following a certain amount of posturing on both sides, Æthelstan rewards or compensates Egill with a gold arm ring and two chests of silver. Egill retained those chests for his entire life, burying them in his old age in Mosfell. In a coda to the main text, the saga author states that enskir peningar (English coins) are still found in the area after heavy thaws.62 Egill also gained an additional two arm rings and a royal cloak from Æthelstan during this visit, these a reward for his drápa, fitting the Icelander at least in part into the mold of the courtly skáld. The saga states the Icelander and the English king parted in friendship as Egill set out first for Norway and then for Iceland. Nonetheless, Egill would be back in only a few short years, seeking the safety of Æthelstan’s court in London in the aftermath of his audience with Eirí�kr in York, where the Icelander bought his life with his hǫfuðlausn. This is another tenth-century composition that establishes a longer tradition of Egill’s involvement in English affairs than the saga itself provides, with England being mentioned in the second stanza as the location of events.63 At Æthelstan’s court, the English king seeks to employ Egill as a commander in his armies, though Egill declines. As the men part company for the last time, Æthelstan provides Egill a vessel laden with trade or consumer goods, wheat and honeybeing named among the cargo.64 The next examples come from the reign of Æthelred, and fit more precisely within the skáld archetype, though an argument can be made that Gunnlaugr also served in a mercenary capacity in Æthelred’s court. Gunnlaugr’s arrival in the English royal court has generated much discussion. This is mainly because, having been granted access 60  A. Keith Kelly, “Truth and a Good Story: Egils saga and Brunanburh,” in The Battle of Brunanburh: A Casebook, ed. Michael Livingstone (Exeter: The University of Exeter Press, 2011), 305–14; Ian McDougall, “Discretion and Deceit: A Re-examination of a Military Stratagem in Egils Saga,” in The Middle Ages in the Northwest, ed. Tom Scott and Pat Starkey (Oxford: Leopard’s Head, 1995), 109–42. 61  Haukr Valdí�sarson, Íslendingadrápa st. 9–10, in Den Norsk-Islandske Skjaldedigtning, ed. Finnur Jónsson (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1912), 1:557; Jónas Kristjánsson, ‘Íslendingadrápa and Oral Tradition’, Gripla 1 (1975): 83–88. 62  Egils saga 88.

63  Egils saga 61; Townend, Viking Age Yorkshire, 74–84. 64  Egils saga 63.

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to the king, Gunnlaugr immediately delivers a drápa in dróttkvætt measure, a complex composition that would presume native proficiency with Old Norse.65 Æthelred seemingly appreciates and understands the verse, rewarding the skáld with a fine cloak and admitting him to his retinue. As a result, this passage has become the locus for ongoing debate around Old Norse-Old English mutual intelligibility.66 It seems clear that thirteenth-century Icelanders understood that the two languages were to a degree mutually intelligible, and Egill’s interactions with Æthelstan can be used as further evidence of this. While there may be a degree to which the sagas smooth over difficulties of communication, or such were forgotten in narrative transmission—the logistics of translation hardly make for riveting story telling—something of a consensus has formed around the idea that Old Norse and Old English were at the very least mutually compatible.67 Nonetheless, there remains something of a Scandinavian feel to England in Gunnlaugr’s first visit to the royal court. The antagonist of this episode is that most archetypal of Scandinavian villains, a berserkr, and the resolution that most archetypal Scandinavian trial of arms, the hólmganga. With Æthelred’s advice, Gunnlaugr emerges victorious from the duel, gaining a sword from the king. He departs from England shortly thereafter with the promise he would return. Æthelred gives him a gold arm ring on their parting. There is not much substance to Gunnlaugr’s second visit to Æthelred’s court. Æthelred has not released the skáld from his service and so, when war threatens, he refuses to let the Icelander depart England. The threat the king fears is an invasion by Knútr. The timeline here is garbled. According to the saga’s internal chrono­logy, Gunnlaugr must have been in the English court around the year 1004, a full decade before Knútr mounts any campaign in England.68 While traditional Icelandic chrono­logies allow for some leeway outside of establish historical timelines, the assertion that Knútr may have invaded as early as 1004 falls beyond even these. It seems most probable that the saga recalls the raids of Sveinn tjúguskegg (fork-beard) in 1003–1004, which still fall within Æthelred’s reign, but in its transmission the saga conflated these with the more famous invasions of Sveinn’s son, Knútr, in 1015/16. Either way, the attack does not eventuate and Gunnlaugr does little during his second visit to Æthelred’s court, and no reward for his service is noted.69 The remaining examples are less robust. Kormáks saga provides a chrono­logical and thematic outlier, this being a poetic reference to England in a verse rather than a 65  Gunnlaugs saga 7.

66  Fjalldal, Anglo-Saxon England, 3–11; Townend, Language and History, 150–3; Matthew Townend, “Pre-Cnut Praise-Poetry in Viking Age England,” The Review of English Studies 51 (2000): 349–70, at 351, 356.

67  See for example, William Moulton, “Mutual Intelligibility among Speakers of Early Germanic Dialects,” in Germania: Comparative Studies in the Old Germanic Languages and Literatures, ed. Daniel G. Calder and Craig Christy (Wolfeboro: Brewer, 1988), 9–28, at 15–18; Townend, Language and History, 150–4; Þórhallur Eyþórsson, “Hvaða mál talaði Egill Skalla-Grí�msson á Englandi?” Málfríður 18, no. 1 (2002): 21–26. 68  Firth, “Æthelred II ‘the Unready,’” 11–12.

69  Gunnlaugs saga 10.



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concrete episode of Anglo-Scandinavian interaction. This stanza is one of Kormákr’s lausavísur, and serves as an excellent example of Old Norse love poetry. It is most likely authentic to the tenth century, and may well have even been composed by Kormákr himself.70 Like Egill’s Arinbjarnarkviða and hǫfuðlausn, this demonstrates that the sagas draw on the memories and knowledge of past generations. There is here, however, less specificity. Arinbjarnarkviða’s mention of York serves as evidence for both Arinbjǫrn and Eirí�kr’s presence there, and hǫfuðlausn likewise attests to Eirí�kr’s presence in England. Kormákr’s lausavísa, in contrast, simply uses England as a metaphor for the value of the woman he desires, and this alongside a number of other places including Iceland and Denmark. The phrasing that the woman in question was “verð es Engla jarðar” (worth as much as the land of the English), may suggest this to be another, earlier, example of the prevalent perception that England was a place of wealth. Returning to our chrono­logy, the next examples come from the reign of King Knútr. Perhaps the most interesting is the episode of Bjarnar saga Hítdœlakappa where Bjǫrn slays his dragon, one of only two appearances of a living dragon in the Íslendingasögur (the other being in Gull-Þóris saga).71 This act is prefaced with the information that Bjǫrn had gone west to England, had found welcome and respect there, and spent two years in the retinue of King Knútr. The dragon episode is told as an event within these two years while Bjǫrn was travelling in Knútr’s retinue at sea. In short, the dragon attacks the travelling court, and Bjǫrn slays it with a single stroke. This is by far the most fantastic element of any Íslendingasögur episode set in England. The twofold effect of the passage, moreover, argues for it to be a thirteenth-century authorial insertion. Firstly, the dragon marks out England’s alterity, as already noted. Few sagas so clearly delineate the boundary between the order of Icelandic civilization and the wild and unruly world over the seas as Bjarnar saga. The narrative intent of Bjǫrn’s travels is the establishing of his heroic credentials, and monsters are most likely to be found beyond Icelandic shores. Secondly, Bjǫrn’s dragon slaying places him among an elite group of Germanic warriors, clearly establishing him within a heroic class.72 Taken as a whole, the episode gives the sense of a nostalgic construct that embodies a longing for the heroes and exceptionalism of an idealized Icelandic past. That Bjǫrn’s heroics were done in the service of Knútr inn ríki (the great) only augments this fact. Knútr rewards the Icelander with a ship and money, placing Bjǫrn’s service in the same mould as Egill and Gunnlaugr, though there is no evidence that he performs as a skáld. The episodes referencing or alluding to Knútr in Valla-Ljóts saga and Grettis saga are substantially more prosaic. Like some of the settlers already discussed in Valla70  Kormáks saga, Í�F VIII, ed. Einar Ó� l. Sveinsson (Reykjaví�k: HÍ�F, 1939), 204–302, at 213; Russell Poole, “Composition Transmission Performance: The First Ten lausavísur in Kormáks saga,” alvíssmál 7 (1997): 37–60. 71  Bjarnar saga 5.

72  Á� rmann Jakobsson, “Enter the Dragon: Legendary Saga Courage and the Birth of the Hero,” in Making History: Essays on the Fornaldarsögur, ed. Martin Arnold and Alison Finlay (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 2010), 33–52.

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Ljóts saga, Eyjólfr Þorsteinsson flees Iceland in the face of potential vengeance for his actions during a feud cycle. Eyjólfr is said to have sought refuge in England, where he joined the þingamannalið, the hired personal guard of the king established by Knútr in 1018.73 In Grettis saga, Knútr only appears as a temporal marker to indicate the timeline within which the saga is set. The chapter in question opens with the statement “Þetta sumar hið næsta bjóst Eirí�kr jarl Hákonarson úr landi vestur til Englands á fund Knúts konungs” (The following summer, Earl Eirí�kr Hákonarson set out west to England to meet with King Knútr).74 This event, Earl Eirí�kr’s abdication of his authority in Norway and joining in with Knútr’s English invasion, dates the passage to 1014–1015. Curiously, there is also an episode of Fóstbræðra saga set around the same time, in which Þormóðr Kolbrúnarskáld travels from Ireland to England, though no mention is made of Knútr. The saga states that Þormóðr spoke some of his poetry in England, and “þægi þar góðar gjafir af höfðingjum” (received good gifts from the chieftains there).75 The vagueness of this assertion may suggest a lack of awareness of the English political situation at this time. It is also the case that Þormóðr rather unusually arrives from the west rather than the east, away from most Viking Age English royal centers. Þormóðr perhaps then found welcome at the regional court of some unknown English lord. Lastly, Knútr makes a brief appearance toward the end of one redaction of Ljosvetninga saga, when an Icelander named Oddi Grí�msson seeks audience and financial support from the king. However, it is unclear whether Knútr is then resident in England or in Denmark and, moreover, the episode is irreconcilably out of sequence with events at this point of the saga. Either it is a non sequitur coda to the main text, or Knútr’s kingship is being portrayed as contemporaneous with that of Haraldr harðráði around 1066.76 This finally brings the discussion to the small cluster of references to events right at the end of the Viking Age and the Norwegian King Haraldr harðráði’s ill-fated invasion of England. Ljosvetninga saga introduces an Icelander named Bárðr in its second generation and, in the final chapter of the aforementioned redaction, recounts that he followed Haraldr to England and “Þar féll Brandur með konungi” (there Brandr fell alongside the king).77 Þorsteins þáttr forvitna likewise recounts that its titular character died alongside Haraldr during the invasion.78 Sneglu-Halla þáttr also recounts an Icelander attending the court of Haraldr’s vanquisher, the English King Harold God73  Valla-Ljóts saga 8, Í�F IX, ed. Jónas Kristjánsson (Reykjaví�k: HÍ�F, 1956), 233–60, at 255. 74  Grettis saga 19.

75  Fóstbræðra saga 8, Í� F VI, ed. Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson (Reykjaví�k: HÍ� F, 1943), 121–276, at 159. 76  Ljosvetninga saga 31, Í�F X, ed. Björn Sigfússon (Reykjaví�k: HÍ�F, 1956), 3–106, at 103–6. On this passage, see Yoav Tirosh, “On the Receiving End: The Role of Scholarship, Memory, and Genre in Constructing Ljósvetninga saga,” (PhD diss., Háskóli Í�slands, University of Iceland, 2019), 163–5, 204–5, 269. 77  Ljosvetninga saga 31.

78  Þorsteins þáttr forvitna, Í�F XIII, ed. Þórhallur Vilmundarson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson, (Reykjaví�k: HÍ�F, 1991), 433–47, at 437.



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winson. Halli, like so many other figures of the Íslendingasögur, sought refuge in England, in this instance having made himself unwelcome in Denmark. In the mould of Gunnlaugr, Halli is welcomed directly into the royal court where he offers a drápa for the king, and the king offers a reward in return.79 In truth, there is nothing inherently implausible about any of the episodes of mercenary or skaldic service in England and all are eminently credible in context. Indeed, even Bjǫrn’s service in Knútr’s retinue, perhaps as a part of his þingamannalið, is plausible if the dragon is removed from the narrative. Bjǫrn’s is a rare instance where narrative detail is provided for an episode of such service in England, with Egill and Gunnlaugr as the primary examples. These bio­graphical vignettes are undoubtedly exaggerated but there is little reason to doubt the historicity of the frameworks in which they are constructed. Men like Egill, Gunnlaugr, and Bjǫrn are historical figures, their deeds are placed within the context of a historical England. English kings are known to have employed Scandinavian mercenaries, and there is no reason why the occasional Icelander may not have numbered among them. Indeed, this is perhaps the sort of adventure that would be stored in Icelandic cultural memory and would have attracted a saga narrative. Icelanders are, likewise, known to have served in noble courts throughout the North Sea world as skáld. The examples of such activity in England as surveyed here represent these realities, even if individual narratives have been augmented to the extent that their heroes are portrayed as the personal companions of kings. It is here that the adaptations of later generations, of narrative transmission are observed. Icelandic heroes are put to the service of Icelandic identity, drawing on a nostalgic perception of the Viking Age as an era of Icelandic exceptionalism, when Icelandic heroes travelled the world, visited kings, and slew their monsters. Yet, underlying this construct, there remains that fundamental theme of England as a place of wealth and opportunity.

England’s Place in the Íslendingasögur

Of course, not all interactions are so readily categorized, though only two examples from the Íslendingasögur fall outside of the framework proposed here (Table 1.4). However, it must also be acknowledged that certain examples of violent interaction do exist. The raiders emanating from Scandinavia and Scandinavian settlements were not the fabrications of overactive clerical imaginations, even if they may have been exaggerated. That Eirí�kr’s claiming of the Norwegian crown seems to come under the pressure exerted by his own raiding in northern England has already been noted. But Eirí�kr’s settlement with Æthelstan is also characteristic of the kind of diplomacy that was going on between England and its Scandinavian neighbors. There is some evidence for such among the Íslendingasögur and associated texts though, among those that focus on the fortunes of Iceland’s leading families, it is one that falls outside the corpus—Landnámabók—that provides the richest examples in this regard. Iceland, a society without institutional kingship and limited direct interaction with England, 79  Sneglu-Halla þáttr 8–9, Í�F IX, ed. Jónas Kristjánsson (Reykjaví�k: HÍ�F, 1956), 263–95, at 290–1.

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Table 1.4: Saga, Landnámabók and þættir (select) accounts of Anglo-Scandinavian political interaction.

Text

Brennu-Njáls saga Egils saga Gísla saga Súrssonar (etc.) Kormáks saga

Egils þáttr SíðuHallssonar

Landnámabók

Landnámabók

Landnámabók

Chapter(s) Summary 5

60 1

27 2 S2, H2 S177, H143 S309, H270

Politics: Norwegian King Hákon inn góði (the Good) named as Aðalsteinsfóstri (Æthelstan’s foster-son).

Raiding: Brothers go raiding in Ireland, Wales, England and Scotland. Politics: Knútr gathering troops in England instead of treating with the Norwegian king in Denmark.

Politics: King Alfred the Great (r. 871–889) identified as King of England during the settlement of Iceland.

Politics: An English earl named Hunda-Steinar marries one of the descendants of Ragnarr loðbrók.

Politics: Identifies Rollo as conqueror of Normandy, that England’s post-Conquest kings descend from him.

Composition Setting Date Date

1220–1230

937

ca. 1220

ca. 970

ca. 1220

ca. 1025

1279–1280 (Sturlubók)

ca. 970

1279–1280 (Sturlubók)

ca. 820

1279–1280 (Sturlubók)

ca. 911/ 13th c.

had little direct involvement in the wrangling of kings and their emissaries. Likewise, though it is clear that Icelanders did engage in viking activity—Egill and Bjǫrn, for example, both spend time raiding around the Baltic—it seems this almost never extended to England. Across the entire Íslendingasögur corpus, only one example demonstrates proactive and targeted raiding activity in England. References to King Hákon inn góði as Hákon Aðalsteinsfóstri constitute what is perhaps the most pervasive example of England’s political ties to Scandinavia, at once a subtle yet overt acknowledgment of those regional connections. That King Hákon of Norway was fostered in the English court of King Æthelstan is a very widely held tradition across Scandinavian histories, konungasögur and Íslendingasögur. There are various accounts outside of the Íslendingasögur as to how this arrangement came to be, and it is worth noting that Heimskringla states Æthelstan and Hákon’s father Haraldr inn hárfagri had been friends,80 but within the texts references are usually limited to 80  Snorri Sturluson, Hákonar saga, 152.



Memories of Viking Age Cultural Contact

25

the use of the sobriquet. This is another example where the sagas presume a degree of knowledge on the part of the readers, and point to a general awareness of diplomatic ties between Norway and England in the Viking Age, even if such are not explicitly stated. That awareness is also evident in those examples from Landnámabók and Egils þáttr Síðu-Hallssonar, which, far from being remarkable, show something of the prosaic nature of England’s involvements within wider Scandinavian political networks.81 This chapter has surveyed every locatable instance of Anglo-Scandinavian interaction among the Íslendingasögur and across a select number of þættir. Of the more than thirty examples cited, Kormáks saga alone provides a clear instance of viking raiding on English shores. Right at the saga’s conclusion, as it builds toward Kormákr’s death at the hands of a Scottish troll, the saga states “En þeir bræður herjuðu um Í� rland, Bretland, England, Skotland og þóttu hinir ágætustu menn” (the brothers raided in Ireland, Wales, England, and Scotland, and were thought of as the best of men).82 The saga goes on to state that the Kormákr and his brother founded Scarborough in Yorkshire. Historically, this has no basis, but contextually it implies that Kormákr settled in Anglo-Scandinavian England for a time, and from there raided throughout the AngloCeltic Isles. This is reminiscent of how Snorri describes Eirí�kr’s actions in the region83 and perhaps, lacking an agreement like Eirí�kr’s with the English king, Kormákr also saw Saxon England as a fair target for looting. The statement that Kormákr and his brother were still well thought of is also an interesting one. Just who thought well of them is not made clear, and perhaps this was a statement intended for the saga audience, countering any potential negative judgment of viking activity in the Viking Age. If then moral judgment was not intended to be attached to raiding activity, it seems unlikely that its near absence from the instances of Anglo-Scandinavian interaction in the Íslendingasögur constitutes deliberate omission. Rather, raiding activity was simply perceived as a very limited part of Scandinavian activity on English shores. In the end, the overwhelming sense of the England of the Íslendingasögur is of a settled and wealthy place where trade, travel, settlement, and employment could be pursued. Travel to England is here rarely characterized as viking or raiding. It is scarcely credible that this reflects only a thirteenth- or fourteenth-century perspective of the English kingdom when the full scale of Íslendingasögur references to the region are taken into account. It is implausible that, across a corpus of forty texts that lacked common authors or a centralized authorial system, in which England otherwise frequently appears, nearly every instance of raiding in England could have been forgotten or expunged in transmission had such existed in the first place. The implication here is that Viking Age Scandinavians understood England to be a place of intercultural exchange. While this could be violent at times, Viking Age Icelanders and Norwegians more commonly saw England’s ports, courts, and communities as both places of refuge and opportunity, places at once distant and familiar. 81  Egils þáttr Síðu-Hallssonar, Í� F XIII, ed. Þórhallur Vilmundarson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson, (Reykjaví�k: HÍ�F, 1991), 371–93, at 376–7. 82  Kormáks saga 27.

83  Snorri Sturluson, Hákonar saga, 152.

EXPRESSIONS OF CULTURAL DISABILITY NAVIGATING (NON)NORMATIVITY IN THE HEBREW–ITALIAN MELEKH ARTUS (KING ARTUS)

MIRIAMNE ARA KRUMMEL

Miriamne Ara Krummel is professor of English at the University of Dayton, where she teaches courses in medi­eval studies, disability studies, and Jewish studies. Her essays have appeared in Exemplaria, postmedi­eval, Shofar, and Literature Compass. Her most recent book, The Medi­eval Postcolonial Jew: In and Out of Time (University of Michigan Press, 2022), addresses how Jewish temporality figures nonnormatively in Anno domini or A.D. time. A 2017 book Krummel co-edited with Tison Pugh, Jews in Medi­eval England: Teaching Representations of the Other, won the 2019 Idaho State University Teaching Literature Book Award. She is currently drafting her next book, An Introduction to English Jewish Literature in Medi­eval England, 900s–1400s, for the series New Perspectives on Medi­eval Literature: Authors and Traditions (University of Florida Press).

Paul Szarmach first

changed medi­eval studies from his position at SUNY Binghamton and then from his seat in Western Michigan. I met Dr. Szarmach in April 1996 when I attended, as a graduate student just beginning her doctoral studies, the Seventh Annual Conference of Romance Languages and Literatures at SUNY Binghamton. I delivered a paper on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that reflected on Gawain’s being designated the “pentangle knight,” carrying about him the mark of þe pentangle nwe that denotes þe endeles knot, trawþe, and circles back to King Solomon.1 Fascinated by the discovery that “pentangle” appears for the first time in Middle English in SGGK, I intended to work on an argument for both this paper and then later for my dissertation that linked the pentangle as expressing a type of temporal infinity that circled back to the Jewish Magen David or six-pointed star. In the late 1990s, I had also started developing an interest in postcolonial and critical race studies that figured in the backdrop of my paper. I remember Dr. Szarmach’s offering me suggestions about the paper’s future directions, though my doctoral studies later turned more forcefully toward Jewish Studies and the work of such writers as Meir ben Elijah of Norwich. Rather than digging up and attempting to update the SGGK paper to honor him, I have decided to contribute a different essay about another Arthurian text: the Hebrew–Italian, Melekh Artus, or King Artus. The essay that follows serves as my expression of gratitude for Paul Szarmach’s commitment to Medi­eval Studies. May his memory be for a blessing. * * *

1  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, 2nd ed, ed. Norman Davis (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968), lines 636, 630, 626, 625, respectively.

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Melekh Artus is an unusual text that captures a remarkable episode in medi­eval Jewish culture. Sometime around 1279 in the A.D. calendar or 39 in the Jewish calendar,2 a writer, author, or scribe—all roles apply to the translator who worked on this HebrewItalian Arthurian Romance—Jewished or translated a now lost, Christian romance.3 Beginning with the Melekh-author’s revealing that he suffers from psycho­logical disabilities, Melekh Artus then takes some more introductory space in the text to discuss and make an argument for the value of secular stories in affording audiences a site where they can access intellectual and psycho­logical healing. In making this presentation about emotional stability and psychic pleasure, Melekh Artus becomes invested in pointing out that non-learned texts “are not idle talk” but are rather “excellent and distinguished” (13). In fact, the Melekh-author has grand hopes for his romance, intending to attract “sinners” who “will learn the paths of repentance [‫ דרכי ההתשובה‬or derekhi ha’teshuvah]…and will return to the Name [‫ אל השם‬or al ha-Shem]” (12–13). Aiming to address both “the history of Lancelot” and “the history of King Artus” (13, 15), Melekh Artus or L’Distruzione unfolds in a few stages. The first, detailed above, speaks of disabilities and fabulistic tales; the second details Arthur’s birth. After mentioning a minor cataclysm that has befallen the Round Table, the third stage of Melekh Artus delves into a “traditional” (but Jewished) romance featuring Lancelot del Lac. After carefully situating Lancelot’s heritage in the House of David, an Arthurian story begins that features Lancelot as the brave and socially just hero—Lancelot announces, “‘our honor will increase if we help the outside group” (43). These moments are followed by a fabled Arthurian tournament that is interrupted in mid-sentence with the words, “all were amazed…” (49) and is never to continue again. Essentially koshering a Christian text, the incomplete or unfinished Melekh Artus enables a Hebrew-reading Jewish audience the opportunity to gain access to an Arthurian story that was only culturally available to the dominant Christian culture. The work of the Melekh-author has remained silently tucked away in Vatican Library Codex Hebrew Urbino 48 (Cod. Vat. Hebr. Urbino 48), folios 75–77.4 Six hundred years went by before Abraham Berliner first brought this medi­eval treasure out 2  Curt Leviant, ed. and trans, Melekh Artus (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 9n2, explains how to calculate the date in the Jewish calendar by adding 5000 to the 39. On the issue of dating and its important role in medi­eval culture, see Kathleen Davis, Periodization and Sovereignty: How Ideas of Feudalism and Secularization Govern the Politics of Time (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); and Miriamne Ara Krummel, The Medi­eval Postcolonial Jew, In and Out of Time (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2022, esp. 1–33). 3  Leviant, Melekh Artus, refers to the author of this translation or “Hebrew Romance” (1) as a “scribe” (61–70). For the extensive work done in bringing this Arthurian romance to a Hebrew reading public, I hereinafter refer to the author as the Melekh-author. The poetic text is cited parenthetically in the body of my essay, but Leviant’s editorial material will be cited in the footnotes. The romance is considered Hebrew–Italian because there are a few transliterated Italian words sprinkled into the Hebrew. Some translations from the Hebrew to the English are my own.

4  Leviant, Melekh Artus, explains that the Hebrew-Italian Arthur story spans four folios and thirteen lines of a fifth (5). On this subject, see also Benjamin Richler and Malachai Beir-Arié, eds. Hebrew Manu­scripts in the Vatican Library Catalogue (Rome: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2008), 630–1.



Expressions of Cultural Disability

29

of its silence. In an 1885 supplement, Ozar Tov (Wondrous Story or Otsar Tov, ‫אוצר‬ ‫ )טוב‬to the German journal, Magazin für jüdische Geschichte und Literatur, Berliner offered his transcription of the Hebrew–Italian fragment, which he named Melekh Artus as “‫[ ”מלך ארטוש‬King Artus].5 From that point, things continued apace. In 1893, Moritz Steinschneider gave the text the German name, “König Artus,” or King Artus.6 And then in 1909, Moses Gaster published an English translation of Melekh Artus along with a short but informative introduction that opened with a lament of the translation’s unfinished state: “Unfortunately the translator, or rather perhaps the copyist, has broken off in the middle, and the history itself is very brief.”7 Nearly one hundred years later in 2003, Curt Leviant published a modern edition of the thirteenth-century Melekh Artus with scholarly footnotes and a facing-page translation followed by four chapters that place the Hebrew–Italian extract in its cultural milieu.8 My modest contribution involves bringing Jewish Studies and Disabilities Studies to bear on the incredible Melekh Artus. The essay that follows investigates Melekh Artus as a medi­ eval gem that narrates stories of disability and captures the remarkable work of the Melekh-author in translating an Arthurian romance out of the normative culture and into a nonnormative one. Koshering an unkosher (Christian) text, however, is not the only important labor introduced by Melekh Artus.9 The Melekh-author deploys key texts critical to the Jewish tradition and resists his own potential erasure as a psychically disabled member of the medi­eval crip culture. While doing this work, the Melekhauthor reveals a personal story of physical and cultural disabilities that emerge as the translator-copyist-author shares the two key reasons for working on this project: one involves the Melekh-author’s cultural identity or Jewishness; the other involves the Melekh-author’s psychic condition or mental handicap(s).10 Through the labor of

5  For the transcription, see Abraham Berliner, “ ‫מלך ארטוש‬,” Otsar Tov in Magazin für jüdische Geschichte und Literatur (Berlin, 1885), 1–11. 6  Moritz Steinschneider, Hebräische Übersetzungen des Mittelalters (Berlin, 1893), 967–9, at 967.

7  Moses Gaster, “The History of the Destruction of the Round Table as Told in Hebrew in the Year 1279,” Folklore 20, no. 3 (1909): 272–94, at 272. Gaster’s translation extends from 277–94 of his article. Pain and loss frame the work of the Melekh-author. Abraham Berliner may have opted to bequeath this Hebrew-Italian fragment the name of ‫ מלך ארטוש‬or Melekh Artus, but the scribe marks his translation with the Italian word, “L’Distruzione.” The so-called Melekh-author is reflecting on the destruction and hardship that he likens to that of the First Temple’s destruction in 70 C.E. 8  Leviant, Melekh Artus, 1–2, describes his work as both updating and correcting Berliner’s 1885 edition.

9  The Melekh-author wants to reveal this labor as purposeful and necessary as directly connected to his self-medicating and as indirectly making Jews familiar with the enjoyable stories in another tradition. On the issue of labor and its value, see Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues, ed. Sarah Harasym (New York: Routledge, 1990), esp. 95–98. 10  This essay is engaged in a project similar to Tory Vandeventer Pearman’s Women and Disability in Medi­eval Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). As Pearman seeks to query and challenge the view of medi­eval women’s expressions of “physical and moral deficiencies” (154), I mean to pause over the issues that the Melekh-author navigates as a disabled Jew who is also a Jewish scholar interested in transcribing (popular Christian) Arthurian romance into a Jewish temporality.

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Miriamne Ara Krummel

Melekh Artus, the Melekh-author translates a Christian Arthurian romance into a Jewish drama by introducing three distinctive directions that the Hebrew-Italian story navigates simultaneously: Arthuriana, translation studies, and Jewish temporality.

A Jewish Arthur Story: A Tale of Wonder

The Jewish community’s temporal landscape is central to the project of the Melekhauthor. Strategically using the Hebrew word, ‫ תולדות‬or toldot, meaning “history,” “generations,” and “descent,” Melekh Artus wittingly brings in the language and ideas of the Hebrew Bible to inform his Arthurian Romance. ‫ אלה תולדות‬or “This is the line of,” a phrase that invokes Noah’s epical genealogy in Genesis 6:9, 10:1, and 11:10; this biblical phrase is purposively echoed in Melekh Artus with ‫אלה תולדות מסיר לנצולוט‬ (aleh toldot m’sir Lancelot) or “This is the history of Sir Lancelot” (12–13) and again in ‫( סדר תולדות המלך ארטוש‬seder toldot Ha-Melekh Artus) or “The story of the history of King Artus” (14–15).11 In this way the Melekh-author uses Jewish scholarly discourse to translate a Christian text to appeal to a Jewish audience. Pushing back against the categorization of Melekh Artus’s emerging from the desk of a culturally handicapped writer hailing from an allegedly “disjunctive, ‘borderline’…partial, minority” culture, the romance of Melekh Artus shows its readers that Jews can access the narratives of the “national culture” and transcribe those national narratives into Jewish temporality.12 In an act of resistance, the Melekh-author scripts the suppressed and marginalized Jewish temporality as capable of being a part of the national conversation about Arthuriana. Until this moment when the Melekh Artus appears, the narrative relationship between Christian and Jewish temporalities evolved around the formation of sacred Christian texts and a translation project that essentially worked to colonize a sacred Jewish text, the Tanakh, and to repurpose that sacred Jewish text as a central component in the Christian canon.13 Thereinafter known as the Old Testament, or existing solely as a precursor to the New Testament, the Tanakh becomes an example of the “polemics of sameness” that “promotes the erasure of continuing Judaism and 11  See Leviant, Melekh Artus, 13n12. The biblical passages are taken from the JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1999/5759).

12  Homi K. Bhabha, “Culture’s In-Between,” in Questions of Cultural Identity, ed. Stuart Hall and Paul Du Gay (London: Sage, 1996), 53–60, at 56, discusses the borderline position of marginalized cultures and identities.

13  On the notion of colonizing, see Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987); and Lisa Lampert-Weissig, Medi­eval Literature and Postcolonial Studies (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), esp. 1–30. In regard to colonizing—or mining—Jewish texts, see Israel Jacob Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. Barbara Harshav and Jonathan Chipman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), esp. 1–30; Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medi­eval Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), esp. 24–65; and Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medi­eval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982).



Expressions of Cultural Disability

31

living Jews.”14 In the process of postcolonial translation, all things Jewish became the same as or were perceived as having always been Christian. The first change to the tradition of translation involves recasting a Christian romance as a Jewish story. The Melekh Artus counters this process of reterritorializing Jewish things by rendering a Christian text into a Jewish one. The process of imitating the actions of the colonizer is evident in the episodes involving Lancelot’s genealogy, Lancelot’s naming episode, and the erstwhile Christmas feast.15 Even more, the translation of a Lancelot story reveals to readers how easily a Christian text can become a Jewish narrative.16 Two of the episodes of the Lancelot story borrowed by Melekh Artus are Christianly figuring moments from the Vulgate cycle that are rendered into Jewish temporality; a third episode involves looping a Jewish heritage into Lancelot’s genealogy. Episode One describes the moment of Lancelot’s naming. Melekh Artus opts to omit a Christian story and, instead, actively directs readers to another text rather than getting entangled in something that is difficult to transcribe into Jewish temporality— namely, the Joyous Gard and its subsequent story of the love affair with Guenevere and the search for the Holy Grail.17 The reference to an external text reads as a traditional suggestion to turn to another book to increase one’s personal library: “[t]he reason why he was called del Lac [ ‫ לנצולוט דללק‬or Lancelot del Lac] is it not written in the book concerning him? There you will also find when his name was made known to him” (12–15). This other book, the French Vulgate, is more closely linked to the Italian Mort Artu that has not survived and the text from which the Melekh-author may have pulled this Lancelot story. There in the Vulgate, the full story of Lancelot explains that after overcoming “la dolerouse garde” (the Joyous Gard), Lancelot’s identity as the son of King Ban de Benoyc (“li fiex au roi ban de benoyc”) is first revealed at Arthur’s court (“premierement conneus a court”).18 The Melekh Artus, instead, in Episode Two spends narrative time tracing Lancelot’s genealogy beyond King Bano of Benoic ( ‫המלך בנו‬ 14  Adrienne Williams Boyarin, The Christian Jew and the Unmarked Jewess: The Polemics of Sameness in Medi­eval English Anti-Judaism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021), 224.

15  Melekh Artus is most likely built on a now-lost Italian Arthurian romance and materializes as a story about King Arthur’s knight, Lancelot; see Leviant, Melekh Artus, 6. 16  Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 323–7.

17  Peggy McCracken’s discussion of the Vulgate cycle in “The Old French Vulgate Cycle,” The Cambridge Companion to Medi­eval French Literature, ed. Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 35–47, brings me to see many touch points between the Melekh Artus and the French Vulgate, which could have been a source for the now-lost Italian text from which Melekh Artus drew its narrative. In addition to the temporal links, both Arthur stories are thirteenth-century narratives: the Melekh Artus, 1279; the Vulgate stories, “between 1220 and 1240” (35). McCracken’s work inadvertently points toward places where the Melekh-author might have been invited in. For instance, did the Melekh-author sense the Vulgate’s subtext of “keeping and discovering secrets” (45)? The Melekh-author, after all, maintains secrets about identity and disability, the initial interests in the Arthur story. Or perhaps the Melekh-author becomes engaged by the “tension between what must be and what might have been” (46)? 18  The Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances, ed. H. Oskar Sommer, vol. III (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution, 1910), 196–7.

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Miriamne Ara Krummel

‫ מבנואיק‬or Ha’Melekh Bano M’Benoic) to reveal that in Lancelot’s maternal line—the

woman whom King Bano married and who birthed Lancelot—can claim to be one of the “scions of the House of David [‫ בית דוד‬or Beit David]” (12–13). Being able to track down such a link to the House of David, as Curt Leviant notes, strikes “a sympathetic note…at the outset for the reader in Hebrew,” who will liken such a genealogical connection as an incontrovertible link to Jewish nobility.19 A third moment of Jewishing the Christian romance occurs when the Melekh-author transcribes the festivities around “noel” and “pentecoste” into an echo of a traditional Purim feast that celebrates Queen Esther’s acts of rescuing the Persian Jews from the evil plots of Haman through the line, “Then the king made a great feast [ ‫המלך משתה‬ ‫ גדול‬or Ha-Melekh Mishtah Gadol] for all the people and all the princes” (17).20 Having previously written the Jews into some of the celebration in a neighboring line that links Lancelot’s lineage to the House of David, Jewish readers can participate in Lancelot’s, albeit misguided, affections for the Duchess Izerna and also, through a quoted line from Esther 2:18, join with “all the people and all the princes” (‫לכל העמים והשרים‬ or L’khol Ha-ahmim V’hashrim) and indirectly experience a memory of celebrating Purim festivities and the joys of a great feast, ‫ משתה גדול‬or Mishtah Gadol (16–17). Interestingly, the imprudent love for the Duchess Izerna (‫ הדוכסית איזרנא‬or Ha-Doksith Yzerna) remains in the Melekh Artus, but with a notable, although perhaps easily overlooked, difference (16–17). In the Vulgate, the title of the character, ygerne, appears less definitively, for Ygerne is described as “ygerne la feme au duc”—the woman of the duke—rather than as a singular agent who claims the title of “Duchess” herself as she does in Melekh Artus, being known as “the Duchess Izerna” (‫)הדוכסית איזרנא‬.21 After infusing a Christian romance with Jewish temporality, the Melekh-author continues to express quiet subversion by advocating for “a measure of relaxation and relief” from the labors of “Torah-study” (‫ )בעיסקי תורה‬and “worldly pursuits” (‫בעיסקי‬ ‫ ;דרך ארץ‬10–11) as the only method of purposeful intellectual pursuit.22 Jewishing the Arthurian Romance to create Melekh Artus involves hard labor that is not superficial 19  Leviant, Melekh Artus, 13n13.

20  The Melekh-author brings a line from Esther (2:18) into his text to replace the language of the Vulgate story. While perhaps not claiming the purchase that a passage from the Torah might, the Megillat Esther does pull on important Jewish texts and its roots. The relevant part of Megillat Esther reads (‫ המלך משתה גדול לכל־שריו ועבריו את משתה אסתר‬or Ha-Melekh Mishtah Gadol Lechal‫־‬ Sarav Va’Avdav et Mishtah Ester); see Megillat Esther: The Masoretic Hebrew Text, ed. and trans. Robert Gordis (New York: Rabbinical Assembly, 1974), 2:18. See also Leviant, Melekh Artus, 17n22; and Sommer, Vulgate, vol. II, 56–59. Many thanks to librarians Chris Tangeman at the University of Dayton and Beth Bringman at the Methodist Theo­logical School for helping me gain access to this megillah. 21  There was a growing change of perceptions toward female Jews after the crusades that began in 1096 in the Rhineland: Jewish women started being given more agentic roles—even those outside the home. On this subject, Simcha Goldin, Jewish Women in Europe in the Middle Ages: A Quiet Revolution (New York: Manchester University Press, 2011), esp. 224–33.

22  In a sense the Melekh-author is challenging the “masterword” of a student as one always already deeply ingrained in Torah study. On “masterwords,” see Spivak, The Post-Colonial Critic, 104.



Expressions of Cultural Disability

33

“relief.” In fact, the Melekh-author aims to prove that there is also value in secular writings that are not part of the Torah. In this dramatic and even potentially culturally distruptive view, the Melekh-author selects, out of all the options he might have chosen, an Arthur story born in and belonging to the Christian world. Possibly building the Melekh Artus on the now lost Italian version of the Mort Artu, the Melekh-author seeks to advocate for the psychic value in taking a moment of rest from “Torah-study” and as always already the opposite of “worldly pursuits” (‫ דרך ארץ‬or derekh eretz / direction of the earth).23 These Jewished texts of the Christian earth, the Melekh-author means to show and tries to convincingly argue, offer a reader’s soul or spirit a psychically valuable “measure of relaxation and relief” (10–11). The other purpose of the translation, Jewishing a Christian text or changing well instituted national narratives such as the Arthur story, proves that Jewish culture can be simultaneously entertained and educated by the “vernacular” ( ‫ לעז‬or la’az)—that is, the national culture which surrounds the Jews, the speakers of Hebrew or ‫( עברי‬evri, 8–9).24

The Labor of Cultural Translation

In a Christian society and with a text framed by Christian temporality, Jewish time, Jewish cultural practices, and even just general ways of being Jewish are inherent disabilities. The anonymous author of Melekh Artus purposively selects this effort of working to translate Arthuriana, an ultimately Christian narrative about King Arthur, from the “vernacular” (‫ לעז‬or la’az) into the Hebrew (‫ עברי‬or evri) as a way of healing his psychic disability that he outs as wrought with troubling or “perplexed thoughts” (9). Opening with only one cultural calendar by marking time as “the year 39” (‫ ט״ל‬or tet‫״‬lamed), the Melekh-author both intentionally foregrounds a Jewish calendar and forcefully situates Melekh Artus in Jewish time.25 The calendar by which the Melekhauthor situates the Hebrew–Italian translation foregrounds another disability—a cultural one. This choice of dating is important to the healing that the Melekh-author is engaged in, for the Melekh-author has decided to confront and work through the trauma of disability with his translation efforts: “Therefore, I have translated these conversations for myself in order to calm my mind, mitigate my grief, and dispel somewhat the bad times I have experienced” (11). The year 39 figures as an immediate expression of postcolonial resistance by confronting normative time as existing outside of and apart from his Jewished tale. The Melekh Artus intends to confront “idle” or “profane” matter with “wisdom” or ‫( חכמה‬khokhmah) (10–11). Invoking an important 23  Eleven Arthurian romances existed in medi­eval Italian. One of those eleven romances, L’illustre et famosa istoria di Lancillotto del Lago che fu at tempo del re Artu, shares aspects of the Mort Artu of the Vulgate cycle: see James Douglas Bruce, The Evolution of Arthurian Romance from the Beginnings Down to the Year 1300, vol. II, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1928), 293–4. 24  On the topic of the national refrain, see Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 311–23.

25  As 9n2 of Melekh Artus explains, 5000 needs to be added to the 39 to get us to the calendar year 5039 in the Jewish calendar, which is the equivalent of 1279 in the Christian calendar. On the Jewish calendar in the Christian one, see Miriamne Ara Krummel, The Medi­eval Postcolonial Jew, In and Out of Time, esp. the introduction, 1–28.

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rabbi “of blessed memory [‫ ”]ע״ה‬in the Jewish tradition, Rabbi (or Ramban) Johanan ben Zakkai (‫ )רבי יוחנן בן זכאי‬for “not disdain[ing] the knowledge of fox fables [‫משלי‬ ‫ שועלים‬or mishlei shualim], washer’s parables or the speech of palm trees” (10–11), the Melekh-author hopes that “[n]o intelligent person can rebuke me for” (11) translating a Christian Arthurian romance into Hebrew as was believed to have been true of Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai.26 By transcribing an Arthurian story into Jewish temporality, the Melekh-author presumably intends to follow the learned steps of Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai and aims to empower Jews to become spiritually healed with Melekh Artus. Dressed up as a medi­eval Esther narrative, the Melekh Artus works as a type of translation that harkens back to the work of Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai and translates a Jewished popular narrative about an important king in medi­eval Christian myth to share a fun tale, like Rabbi Johanan’s fable, to motivate “the spiritual recovery of Israel after the destruction of the Temple” (11n3).27 The labor of cultural translation presumably helps the Melekh-author to climb out of a disabled mental state and write Jewish temporality into the medi­eval mythos. The Arthurian tradition of knightly romance, as a result of this exercise, not only gets (re)positioned in Jewish time but also transports Jewish culture into the Arthurian kingdom with its alleged round table and equal governing system, where presumably the Melekh-author will be able to inhabit a calmer mind, find less grief, and land in better times. The Hebrew-Italian Arthurian narrator is not a posterchild of “the disabled person,” and neither is the Melekh Artus a traditional Hebrew translation.28 To this end of healing an unsettled psyche, the translator of Melekh Artus faces down cultural disability as a Jew who desires to translate an ultimately Christian story even though the Melekh-author is anxious about the appearance of the poetic translation. After all, the Melekh-author’s creative efforts depart from the Jewish scriptural tradition of Talmudic scholarship and Biblical commentary and introduce a new form of medicine—that is, having the act of translation work to heal a troubled psyche. But this act of translation does even more: the Melekh-author expresses the need to write Jews into the national narrative—the Arthur story—as a way of bringing Jews into the normative culture and as an act of overcoming loss and becoming part of a larger (and imagined, perhaps, as healthier?) temporality with a better beginning, middle, and end.29 Certainly, there are many hurdles to overcome in this project. One of those evident hurdles 26  On this matter of Rabbi ben Zakkai’s learning, see Leviant, Melekh Artus, 11nn3–4.

27  See also Leviant, Melekh Artus, 11nn3–4.

28  On this subject of not being a traditional model of the disabled individual, see Merri Lisa Johnson and Robert McRuer, “Introduction: Cripistemo­logies and the Masturbating Girl,” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 8, no. 2 (2014): 245–55. On the idea of posterchildren of disability, see also Miriamne Ara Krummel, “Am I MS?” in Embodied Rhetorics, ed. Cynthia LewieckiWilson and James C. Wilson (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2001), 61–77.

29  These ideas are drawn from Patricia Clare Ingham, Sovereign Fantasies: Arthurian Romance and the Making of Britain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 224–6. See also Louise Olga Fradenburg, “Voice Memorial: Loss and Reparation in Chaucer’s Poetry,” Exemplaria 2, no. 1 (1990): 169–202.



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is that Melekh Artus exists as a romance, breaking from the usual traditional routes of Hebrew translation from philosophy, science, medicine, history, or even the fox fables of Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai or Berakhiah ha Nakdan.30 A second hurdle, related to the first, is that the Melekh-author hopes not to encounter accusations of frivolity—of becoming involved in “neither idle nor profane talk” (11). And while the substantive cultural obstructions may be daunting, there is yet a third obstacle—namely, overcoming psycho­logical disabilities.

The Third Hurdle: Fixing Broken Things

Moses Gaster focuses on the condition of the manu­script that is “broken off in the middle,” thus underscoring the text’s incompleteness or unfinished state.31 Despite this condition, the cultural translation actually presents itself as an artifact that expresses the unique desires of a Jewish writer’s affections for and ownership of a Christian romance. Even more, before the manu­script does end, an internal drama of disability resonates as Lanç ( ‫ לנץ‬or Lantz) overcomes disability and continues his defense of those who cannot defend themselves: although “Lanç’s spear was broken,” the knighthero discovers that with “his sword,” he can still “strike left and right, and fell many knights…to do wondrous deeds of valor in the field” (49). Melekh Artus ends with Lanç’s surmounting all the tournament’s challenges in order to defend “the outside group” because, as he expresses, “it will not be to our honor if we help or join the stronger side [‫ החזקים‬or Ha-Khazikim]” (43). In scripting Lanç as moving away from the source of power, the Hebrew translator echoes the performance of masked identities in Purim festivities as that evoked in the “great feast [‫ ”]משתה הגדול‬or mishtah hagadol (16–17). Melekh Artus. Just as the culturally established Lancelot, in his (Purim?) disguise as the unknown Lanç, outs himself as willingly protecting “the outside group” by providing this powerless group with access to “strength” and “valor,” the translator interprets / translates medi­eval Arthuriana for a Jewish audience. In this way the storyteller of Melekh Artus—who doubles as the Jewish translator of a Christian romance—brings the nondominant group to touch the power gifted them by Lancelot / Lanç as a part of a Jewishly appropriate upside-down Purim festivity. The cultural handicaps of nondominance become surmountable as a Christian story transforms into a Jewish text. In fact, ably navigating a Christian text, the Melekh-author brings that text to a Jewish audience by replacing Christian moments with Jewish echoes. One example of this act of koshering, as it were, occurs when the translator-copyist deftly removes the matter of Christmas and attending mass and fills that vacuum with references to Isaiah and to the Purim story (16–17). A second example involves the child-hero, born of Uter and Izerna, being given the Hebrew name Artusin, “called Artusin [ ‫]שמו ארטושין‬, that is, born through the power of art [ ‫ ארטי‬or arti] (22–23, 23n30). Interestingly, this moment also circles back to Merlin’s wondrous efforts at 30  On the fox fables, or Mishlei Shulalim of Berakhiah ha-Nakdan, see the edition translated by Moses Hadas, Fables of a Jewish Aesop (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967). 31  Gaster, “The History of the Destruction of the Round Table,” 272.

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disguising Uter, which we are told Merlin makes possible “through his art” or Merlin’s artfulness [‫ מרלין בחכמתו‬or Merlin b’khokhmato] (18–19). A third example is not visible for the non-Hebrew reader and involves the word, “saints,” which become Kedoshim (‫ )הקדושים‬or “holy ones” (30–31) in the Hebrew text. The fourth example also brings us to vocabulary choices when the traditional reference to a Grail becomes mention of a Dish or tamchuy (‫)התמחוי‬, which is a charity bowl (24–25, 25n33). This manu­script shows itself not to be broken but rather testifies to careful and likely psychically productive labor. While we cannot properly diagnose the reason for the incompleteness of Melekh Artus, we do know that the Melekh-author’s use of the Italian language suggests positive encounters with his immediate vernacular world.32 The Melekh-author imports a text from an “alien” culture, as Gad Freudenthal characterizes the cultures outside the Jewish tradition by working with texts from a genre—a romance—that has hitherto remained untouched.33 Because of prolonged contact with the Arabic culture, most translators worked with Arabic texts, translating those texts into Hebrew; another albeit less popular translation route involved translations from Latin into Hebrew.34 This experience with Arthuriana outside the customary avenues of likely encounter echoes the experiences of Moses Maimonides, a Jewish scholar who also participates in this act of cultural exchange when he translates Guide of the Perplexed. 35 Maimonides’s experience as a cultural outsider—as someone who is forced to occupy a disabled space in a queer time or a “divergent temporality”—provides the backdrop for my visions of the Melekh-author, whose Judaizing acts not only embrace disabled time but also reorder “normative modes of ordering.”36 The Melekh32  Barbara Garvin and Bernard D. Cooperman, eds. “Introduction,” in The Jews of Italy: Memory and Identity (Bethesda: University Press of Maryland, 2000), 16. Gaster’s introduction explains that “about fifteen Romance words have been retained in the Hebrew, exclusive of the names of the principal persons” (275). Leviant provides one such example: a capperone or 45–44 ‫הקפירון‬.

33  Gad Freudenthal, “‘Arav and Edom as Cultural Resources for Medi­eval Judaism: Contrasting Attitudes Toward Arabic and Latin Learning in the Midi and in Italy,” in Latin Medi­eval Jewish Identities: Iberia and Beyond, ed. Carmen Caballero-Navas and Esperanza Alfonso (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 123. 34  Freudenthal, “‘Arav and Edom as Cultural Resources,” 123–56.

35  Moses ben Maimon, or, as he is also known by the larger social world, Moses Maimonides, lived from 1135 to 1204. Despite a life of exilic wanderings, Maimonides composed The Guide of the Perplexed because he was invested in illustrating that Aristotle’s Ancient Greek philosophy spoke to the Jewish tradition. Maimonides was born in Cordova, but he and his family were forced to flee in 1148 and adopted the life of exiles until their wanderings ended in Cairo, Egypt. See Joshua Weinstein, Maimonides the Educator (New York: Pedagogic Library, 1970), 16–21. 36  Richard H. Godden, “Getting Medi­eval in Real Time,” postmedi­eval 2 (2011): 267–77, at 268. The time of the Other is always already queerly out of time because being Other is synonymous with “inhabiting a different time than other people” (268). My use of the word “queer” is informed by Carolyn Dinshaw’s categorizing “queer” outside of such terms as “gay,” “homosexual,” “odd,” or “different” and, instead, adopting Dinshaw’s use of “queer” to challenge normativity and as a way of expressing a deeper, richer, more complicated time outside the linear “empty and homogeneous” temporality of normativity: How Soon Is Now?: Medi­eval Texts, Amateur Readers, and the Queerness of Time (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), 4.



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author seems to be aware of occupying space in a queerly disabled time by opening the Hebrew–Italian romance with a clear awareness that Jews live in another temporality. Jewish time is Other than Christian time: a tet ( ‫ )ט‬and a lamed (‫ )ל‬are used to form 39 or ‫—ט״ל‬with the tet synonymous with “9” and the lamed with “30.” Articulating Jewish time involves a shorthand that is not as visually complete as annus domini temporality—a 5000 needs to be added to the Jewish date. When the Melekh-author breaks with normative culture by translating “from the vernacular [‫ ]לעז‬into Hebrew [‫]עברי‬,” the Melekh-author embraces temporal nonnormativity and separates the text from the standard timescape. Ultimately the most queer act of Judaizing Christian Romance in Melekh Artus appears in fully situating L’Distruzione in the “intense-world” of cripistemo­logies.37 Surviving as one fascinating example of the marriage between a queer Jewish (non) normativity and medi­eval crip culture, Melekh Artus faces a number of handicaps in an attempt to Judaize the able-bodied, well navigated, and deeply entrenched world of Christian dominance. For a brief moment, try travelling back in time to the late nineteenth century and Moritz Steinschneider’s German translation of Abraham Berliner’s Hebrew name. Recall that Steinschneider is the one who first named the manu­script in a “Western” (or normative) language or script. I think Steinschneider’s choice is instructive. Certainly, the German word, “König” or king, appears throughout the extract in Hebrew as ‫ מלך‬or melekh, but at least half of what the Hebrew translator presents is a story of Lancelot’s actions. So why did Berliner name the discovery, Melekh Artus and Steinschneider “König Artus”? Deconstructing Berliner’s and Steinschneider’s choices provides us with one reason for the Hebrew translator’s work. The impossible desire for King Arthur’s perpetuity as Rex Quondam, rexque futurus offers a stability to Jews in a perpetually unstable world. Certainly, the life of a medi­ eval Italian Jew before the sixteenth century was far better than that of a medi­eval Jew from Provence, the Rhineland, or Spain, but we must be cautious about ascribing too much comfort to the life of an Italian medi­eval Jew because there were persecutions.38 The hero of the Hebrew translator’s extract, Lancelot/Lanç, outs himself as a knight who will protect the powerless: “‘it will not be to our honor if we help or join the stronger side….our honor will increase if we help the outside group, which is less strong, and thereby our strength and valor will be known’” (43). In these words, the Melekh-author becomes a spectral Lanç who honors the outsiders and gives strength to the weak. Lanç rhetorically transforms into the proverbial missing limb (or disabled psyche) that the Melekh-author does not possess when Lanç proclaims that assisting 37  Something in their world is delivering an intensity of experiences that the Melekh-author cannot work through alone without embarking on this translation. On these matters of “intense-world” experiences and information overload, see Merri Lisa Johnson and Robert McRuer, “Introduction: Cripistemo­logies,” at 245–6. The Melekh-author experiences L’Distruzione as an overload of data, of life, as an “intense-world” or “excess” (245n1).

38  See David Abulafia, “The Aragonese Kings of Naples and the Jews,” in The Jews of Italy: Memory and Identity, ed. Bernard D. Cooperman and Barbara Garvin (Bethesda: University Press of Maryland, 2000), 82–105, esp. 82–85. On the Rhineland, see Robert Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).

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“the outside group, which is less strong” is a noble and notable act that need not worry over the traditional route of receiving accolades from the larger community. Does the Arthur story work for Berliner, Steinschneider, and the Melekh-author to provide an “intangible specter of ability” so that these (Jewish) authors/critics can depart from a disabled nonnormative temporality to walk virtually into a vibrant normative text?39 Certainly, stories about Arthur—and his knights—fascinate. That fascination brings us to the quiet joy that even modern Jews, like Berliner, Steinschneider, and Gaster, possess—perhaps even secretively and privately celebrating the Melekhauthor’s act of bridging the acceptable Jewish and the feared Christian empire that threatens to make any act of translation impossible. In closing, I want to circle back to Gaster’s word, “unfortunate” and his (inadvertent?) expression of hidden pleasure tucked behind and concealed within his lament. He succumbs to sadness for a lack of future pleasure of a finished piece of Jewished Arthuriana that perpetually entertains with kosher stories of noble knights who rescue the beleaguered and distressed. Perhaps, Gaster mourns the loss of the Italian-Hebrew Arthur story, cathecting what he imagines it could be if it were complete, full, unbroken, able-bodied. While readers never discover whether the “bad time” that the Melekh-author references at the outset is caused by a chemical disorder, a local pogrom, or a failed relationship, one thing is for certain: stories of King Arthur and his knight Lancelot function as a restorative both for readers now and also for the medi­eval translator then.

39  I adopt my phrase, “intangible specter of ability,” from Robert McRuer, Crip Theory (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 199–200. I use “intangible specter of ability” to signify that Arthurian romance is very visible, recognized, and expected. The translator-copyist’s language and images signify as temporally broken, as occupying a queer time, as embodying a Jewish translation of a vibrant (normative) text.

“ALL THE RANCOUR AND ENMITY BETWEEN US” THE WAR BETWEEN RICHARD, EARL MARSHAL, AND KING HENRY III: ITS ORIGINS AND RESOLUTION

LINDA E. MITCHELL

Linda E. Mitchell is Emerita Professor of History and the Emerita Martha Jane Phillips Starr Missouri Distinguished Endowed Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Her published work has focused significantly on members of the extended Marshal family, especially after the division in 1245 of the Earldom of Pembroke and the Lordship of Leinster among thirteen coheirs of the estates. Her most recent books are Joan de Valence: The Life and Influence of a Thirteenth-Century Noblewoman (Palgrave, 2017) and The Marshal Consanguinity: Kinship, Affinity, and the Creation of a Socio-Political Network, 1190–1400 (Brill, forthcoming).

Sometime in the summer of the year 1233, the first major conflict of the conflict-

heavy reign of King Henry III (r. 1216–1272) began. The newly-belted Earl of Pembroke, Lord of Leinster in Ireland and of Striguil on the border of Wales and England, Richard Marshal, who inherited the titles from his older brother, William II Marshal (d. 1231), apparently objected to a number of activities and decisions of the young king, perhaps including the growing influence of Bishop of Winchester Peter des Roches and his nephew (or son), Peter de Rivaux, that affected the lives and careers of both friends and allies, such as the Earl of Kent, Hubert de Burgh, and Earl Richard’s own liegeman, Gilbert Basset. Simmering below the surface for a number of months, the conflict broke out into a fully-fledged rebellion in October 1233, when the Earl Marshal brought an armed force to a parlay with the king at High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. The king’s attempts to control the growing antagonism between himself and the earl were unsuccessful. Earl Richard fled to Wales, joined forces with the Prince of Gwynedd, Llewelyn ab Iorwerth, burned the town of Shrewsbury on the mid-Wales border, and then escaped to Ireland. The rebellion raged for a few months, primarily in Wales and the Marches, led by the allies of the Earl Marshal and the sometime support of Prince Llewelyn. In Ireland, Earl Richard was wounded in a skirmish that took place on the Curragh, in County Kildare. Taken prisoner and placed under guard at his own Kilkenny Castle, Richard succumbed to an infection and died in April 1234. His allies had already begun negotiations with the king to end the rebellion at the time of his death, but King Henry—stunned into contrition by the sudden demise of his most powerful magnate—apparently agreed to concessions and welcomed the rebels to return to his grace, which they did with some alacrity.1 1  This outline of the conflict is more or less what one reads in general histories of the reign of Henry III. I will be parsing and re-narratizing the event on the basis of the various kinds of sources utilized by historians when discussing details of the rebellion throughout this chapter.

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Following the death in Ireland of this “rebel and enemy of the king,” a letter close dated 30 May 1234, written to the sheriff of Berkshire and copied to the sheriffs of thirteen other counties, the justiciar of Ireland, and constables of castles throughout the southern half of Wales, reported that Gilbert Marshal and his two remaining brothers, Walter and Anselm, were received back into the King’s grace and all anger toward them was remitted. Gilbert, the heir to his older brother Richard, presented his homage to the king and he and his brothers were to have re-seisin of their estates throughout England, Ireland, and Wales.2 In addition, earlier in May, on the 18th, Eve Marshal widow of William de Braose, whose estates—both dower and maritagium— had also been seised into the king’s hand, received a safe conduct to come to “speak” with the king, and was re-seised of her estates upon submitting her homage to the king and being admitted back into his grace.3 A couple months later, in July 1234, she was also given permission to request an “aid” from her knights and feofees in order to discharge her debts to the king.4 Over the course of the year after his death, the Marshal brothers and sisters and adherents of Earl Richard were brought back into the royal fold through a combination of the payment of indemnities, promises of good behavior, and royal benefices and gifts. In all the documents—especially the extensive collections of letters close and patent and the fine rolls that were created by the royal chancery—the king remarks on the need to neutralize the “rancour and enmity” caused by his “war with Earl Richard Marshal.” Nevertheless, verifiable details of what started this war, how it proceeded, and how it was resolved are hard to find and even harder to imagine as constituting such a degree of distress as to warrant the term “war” when describing the conflict between the king and his greatest magnate. Moreover, few literary and historical sources chronicle the process of this war or consider its aftermath as significant. In a reign as long and volatile as that of Henry III, a conflict that lasted less than a year and was resolved apparently to mutually significant levels of satisfaction is easily overlooked. It should not be, because all of the elements of the far more historically famous “Barons’ Wars” of 1258–1260 and the subsequent rebellion of Earl of Leicester Simon de Montfort that ended with the Battle of Evesham in 1265 existed in 1233–1234, formed the basis of the disgruntlement of the Earl Marshal, and were resolved far more amicably and speedily than the much-lauded Dictum of Kenilworth, attributed usually to Henry’s son Lord Edward rather than to the unpopular king himself. This chapter focuses on revisiting and revisioning the circumstances and contexts surrounding the rebellion, the war itself—what little can be discussed about it—and the strategies used by King Henry III to reassert royal authority over the rebels while at the same time reasserting a constructive and amicable relationship between the crown and the baronage. In particular, I will be investigating the ways in which personal issues, such as conflicts over inheritance, the assignment of dower, and various 2  Close Rolls, Henry III, 1231–1234 (London: HMSO, 1905), 435–36 and ff. Hereafter, CR.

3  CR, 1231–1234, 414–25, 437; Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1232–1247 (London: HMSO, 1906), 46, 52. Hereafter, CPR. 4  CPR, 1232–1247, 59.



“All the rancour and enmity between us”

41

perceived slights, became political, and how the Marshal kinship unit of brothers, sisters, in-laws, and cousins affected the process of the rebellion and its outcome. The “war” between Earl Richard Marshal and the king was far more a family affair, in a family notable, ironically, for its unswerving loyalty to king and crown. That the family under discussion also included members of the royal kin unit itself was not insignificant when related to the ways in which the rebellion developed and how it was concluded and ameliorated.

The Historians Weigh In: Roger of Wendover and the Tewkesbury Chronicler Establish the Historical Record; Modern Historians Fall in Line

Historians—both medi­eval and modern—have generally paid little attention to this brief episode in the early years of Henry III’s “adult” rule, after he attained his majority in 1225 and before his marriage to Eleanor of Provence in 1236. Two accounts— one created by Roger of Wendover in his Flores historiarum and that of the Annals of Tewkesbury—present the foundations upon which later historians have built.5 The St. Albans historians Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris describe the rebellion as an example of Henry III’s fecklessness and his growing dependence on “alien” counsellors, a charge continually laid at his feet. The Tewkesbury annals are more focused on the depredations of the rebellion in Wales, in large part because of the connections of Tewkesbury to the Clare earls of Gloucester and Hertford, who were lords of Glamorgan. Roger of Wendover provides the most detailed, if tendentious, account of Richard Marshal’s rebellion, and it forms the center of all modern historical assessments.6 Roger presents a morality tale: the corrupt foreign counsellors who influence a naï�ve and immature monarch are pitted against a heroic warrior figure whose destruction occurred because of the faithlessness of his vassals and the invidious choices of a king who is vulnerable to flattery. All the usual serio-comic elements appear throughout, including a foreshadowing of Earl Richard’s end made by his prescient sister, Isabelle Marshal, widow of Earl Gilbert de Clare and wife of Earl Richard of Cornwall—and 5  The standard editions of Roger of Wendover are the Latin edition, Rogeri de Wendover Chronica, sive Flores historiarum, ed. Henry O. Coxe, 4 vols. (London: HMSO, 1842) and the English translation based on it, Roger of Wendover’s Flowers of History, trans. J. A. Giles, 2 vols. (London: Bohn, 1849). The later Rolls series edition of the FH, ed. Henry G. Hewlett, 3 vols (London: Eyre and Spottiswode, for HMSO, 1889) includes only the years 1154–1235. The standard edition of the Tewkesbury Annals is the Rolls Series edition compiled in Annales Monastici, vol. 1, edited by Henry R. Luard (London, 1864). Matthew Paris, in his Chronica Majora, copied, adapted, and supplemented Wendover’s history. See Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, ed. H. R. Luard, Rolls Series, 7 vols (London, 1876), which includes not only his adaptation of Wendover’s FH, but also the work of the continuator of Matthew Paris after his death in 1259, who has been identified as William Rishinger. 6  Roger’s narrative is interspersed with the other events of the period, from the death of Earl William II Marshal. Roger of Wendover, FH, 4:213–317; in English, Wendover (Giles), 2:536–97.

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therefore sister-in-law to the king himself.7 The drama also includes various cameo and bit-players, including Gilbert Basset, Richard Siward, and Llewelyn ab Iorwerth, who spice up the narrative. The story, as it is told in these historical narratives, is melodramatic and filled with information derived largely from hearsay and gossip.8 Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester, and his son/nephew, Peter de Rivaux, plot to overthrow the chancellor Earl Hubert de Burgh, who has the ear of the king and is suspicious of “foreign” influence on him. Barons in both Wales and Ireland are restive because of worries that Henry will not protect them against the incursions of Llewelyn ab Iorwerth in Wales and the Irish insurgents in the Lordship of Ireland: they see him as overly pious and more interested in building and decorating royal residences than in protecting his kingdom, aided by his growing reliance on the “foreigners” Bishop Peter and Peter de Rivaux. After a disastrous and expensive military campaign in Brittany and the death of the respected Earl William Marshal the Younger, his natural successor both in terms of the earldom of Pembroke and leadership of the baronial party, Richard Marshal, is rebuffed by the king (on the advice of the Peters) and his succession is delayed for some months. At the same time, the plot to get rid of Hubert de Burgh is set in motion. Hubert is summoned to court. He is summarily arrested and imprisoned in Devizes Castle and is forced to relinquish his estates, which are handed over to Peter de Rivaux. His wife, Margaret of Scotland, and daughter, Megotta, flee to Scotland to the protection of their royal kin. Enter Richard Marshal, who is newly installed as earl of Pembroke. One of his vassals, Gilbert Basset, has been ill treated by the king and he seeks redress for him; he is also concerned about the safety of his associate Earl Hubert, imprisoned at Devizes. Richard is summoned to court to negotiate with the king but is warned by his sister, Isabelle, newly married to Earl Richard of Cornwall (Henry III’s younger brother), that the two Peters intend for him to wind up like Hubert de Burgh, so he instead flees to Wales. The king amasses an army while Richard’s supporters arm themselves. They effect a rescue of Earl Hubert, who joins the rebellion. Castles are besieged, towns—including Shrewsbury—are attacked and burned. Richard Marshal heads to Ireland, where Peter de Rivaux has been busy turning his tenants against him, aided by the villainous Fitzgeralds, led by the new justiciar Maurice Fitzgerald, 7  Roger of Wendover, FH, 4:270–71; Wendover (Giles), 2:569. See, also, in a slightly different version, Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, 3:247. Interestingly, this is the only component in the narrative viewed with suspicion by David Carpenter, who consistently refuses to mention the presence of women in Wendover’s narrative and in the chancery records surrounding the rebellion. I discuss the activities of the Marshal sisters Isabelle and Eve in several articles, most recently, “The Most Perfect Knight’s Countess: Isabella de Clare, Her Daughters, and Women’s Exercise of Power and Influence, 1190–ca. 1250,” in Medi­eval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100–1400: Moving Beyond the Exceptionalist Debate, ed. Heather J. Tanner (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 45–66. 8  An entertaining and accessible version, based mostly on chancery records and the chronicle sources, can be found on the website Medi­eval News: Niall O’Brien, “Richard Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, and the Battle of the Curragh,” http://celtic2realms-medi­evalnews.blogspot. com/2018/12/richard-marshal-earl-of-pembroke-and.html.



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and their associates who have always plotted to break free of the Marshal overlordship in Leinster. Richard proclaims that he is fighting the king’s evil counsellors, not the king, and that he is defending the Great Charter’s presentation of liberties such as due process and the rights of the baronage to act as advisors to the king. Henry negotiates with Richard’s representatives in Wales and the Marches while Peter de Rivaux plots the murder of the earl. Richard is wounded in battle on the Curragh, captured and imprisoned in his own Kilkenny Castle. The wound is healing but, mysteriously, it suddenly worsens after a visit from a physician and Richard dies on April 15, 1234. Although Richard’s death is, according to Roger of Wendover, suspicious, once he is deceased virtually all conflict ends and reconciliation between the crown and the baronage progresses rapidly. Indeed, King Henry is so horrified by the earl’s death that he undergoes a complete conversion to the side of baronial justice and, repentant and ashamed, makes moves to remove the “foreign” influences from his court. The Tewkesbury annalist’s version of events, focusing as it does on the rebellion in Wales and the March, has less to do with psycho­logical profiles of the respective actors and more on the destruction caused by the rebel and royal armies. As a result, the narrative is far briefer but nonetheless is used widely by modern historians discussing the events in Wales and the March. These narratives have been adopted more or less wholesale by historians who relate the episode in their texts. Differences arise concerning the relative culpability of the king in the downfall of Hubert de Burgh, as well as the connections between resistance to Marshal overlordship in Leinster and the death of Earl Richard and the role of the complex relationships between the Braose lords of Gower, the Clare lords of Glamorgan, and the Lacy lords of Ewyas with the Marshals. Nevertheless, the dominant themes adopted are consistently the ones introduced, for the most part, by Roger of Wendover. The earliest thorough discussion of the rebellion was made by F. M. Powicke, in King Henry III and the Lord Edward.9 Powicke, who remarks that in many ways this rebellion and its resolution were more important to the progress of baronial-royal relations in the thirteenth century than the later rebellions of 1258–1265,10 presents the events as reflecting the aspirational ideals of Magna Carta. The very fact that Earl Richard and his friends were defending a cause and not aiming at power ought to give it a place in history which the revolutionary action of the earl of Leicester has appropriated; for Earl Richard and the bishops who came to his support were seeking to maintain the conception of kingship which was implicit in the Charter of Liberties and was vigorously upheld in the schools and in all the numerous treatises on the rights and duties of a king.11

Powicke, writing in the years immediately following the defeat of fascism and witnessing the rise of Soviet authoritarianism in Europe, thus falls in line with the morality

9  F. M. Powicke, King Henry III and the Lord Edward: The Community of the Realm in the Thirteenth Century, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1947), 1:125–44; 2:742–9. 10  Powicke, Henry III and Lord Edward, 1:143.

11  Powicke, Henry III and Lord Edward, 1:144.

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tale articulated by Roger of Wendover, even expanding on it to present a morality tale for his own time. For him, Earl Richard Marshal’s war with Henry III encapsulates the conflicts between democracy and autocracy; as anachronistic as this now sounds, it was a compelling narrative in intellectual circles in the 1940s and 1950s. David Carpenter provides the most detailed modern treatment of the rebellion, interweaving the chronicle account with chancery documents.12 He takes as his starting point, however, an acceptance of the narrative arc introduced in Roger of Wendover’s Flores and mirrored by Powicke in King Henry III and the Lord Edward. Carpenter accepts without question the tradition of identifying conflicts between the crown and the baronage as “feudal” issues in which the players are always male and the issues at hand are overtly “political” and “public” according to standard definitions of these terms. This arc is similarly accepted by another recent treatment of the rebellion by R. F. Walker.13 Indeed, the lasting and persistent historical reputation of Henry III as a “bad” king who deserved the multitude of aspersions cast upon him in life and after death has a great deal to do with the disappearance of this episode in historical analysis, because it does not underscore Henry’s reputation as a dithering, overly-pious numbskull tied to the apron-strings of his forbiddingly alpha wife, Eleanor of Provence. Henry was apparently caught by surprise by Earl Richard’s opposition, but he was neither indecisive nor ineffective at quelling the disturbance—which collapsed as soon as Earl Richard died in Ireland—and he was also generous and sober with his erstwhile enemies, the earl’s followers and his family. Even if the current historical analysis of this episode toggles between a depiction of King Henry as malleable naï�f and King Henry as malevolent spider, a broader look at the evidence and a certain level of scepticism directed at the most common tropes can change the perspectives surrounding all the actors in this rather sordid affair. Walker, in his article on the followers of Earl Richard Marshal, reconstructs the rebellion as coming in three distinct phases; Carpenter, in his account, refers to the “First” and “Second” wars of Richard Marshal. I believe that the developmental process of the rebellion was in fact longer and more convoluted than Walker and Carpenter claim, in part because they looked only at named male adherents who appear in the Close and Patent Rolls as involved in the activities of the rebellious earl, and not at the complicated family relationships that preceded the rebellion and, I suspect, contributed to Earl Richard’s feelings of ill-usage. Three circumstances arose long before the “official” beginning of the rebellion in 1233: the ongoing conflict between the Braoses, Marshals, and Llewelyn ab Iorwerth and his eldest son Dafydd ap Llewe12  In his magisterial first volume of the reign of Henry III, which supersedes his earlier The Minority of Henry III (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), the short period of events leading up to the rebellion, the rebellion, and the brief aftermath occupies much of the narrative, close to 150 pages. See D. A. Carpenter, Henry III, 1207–1258: The Rise to Power and Personal Rule (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020), 88–233. 13  R. F. Walker, “The Supporters of Richard Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, in the Rebellion of 1233–1234,” The Welsh History Review 17, no. 1 (1994): 41–65.



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lyn over lands in Gower and Glamorgan, which also involved the Clares as lords of Glamorgan through the matriline; the litigation pursued by Richard Marshal and his wife, Gervaise de Dinan, over Gervaise’s inheritance, which began before he succeeded to the earldom; and the dower assignment made by King Henry III to his sister, Eleanor, widow of Earl William II Marshal and the negotiations that this entailed. It is also important to note that Earl Hubert de Burgh, who is often seen as the fulcrum around which Earl Richard’s rebellion rotated, had a hand in these events, as both justiciar and keeper of the Three Castles known as the Trilateral (Grosmont, Skenfrith, and White Castle) in Monmouthshire, an area where the Marshals and Braoses had tangential and contingent power through marriage and tenurial alliances with the Clare, Cantilupe, and Lacy families. In other words, the foundations of Earl Richard’s rebellion had been laid long before the machinations of Bishop Peter des Roches and of his nephew/son Peter de Rivaux, who are often cited as the driving forces behind the royal position with respect to Hubert de Burgh, and the political and tenurial troubles of Gilbert Basset. In addition, the motivations surrounding his rebellion were probably far less ideo­logical and far more personal, having more to do with the maintenance of his estates and the protection of his family than with philosophical debates regarding royal and baronial prerogative.14 These, however, are buried in chancery documents and the rolls of the Curia Regis and were not the kinds of things to which Roger of Wendover was privy. In addition, the usual concerns of baronial families—distribution of estates, marriage of children, provisions for widows—did not have the romantic and heroic resonances required for a medi­eval morality tale.

Setting the Stage: The Marshals 1219–1231

The death of Earl William Marshal the Elder in 1219 would not have been, in any other family, an event that received more than a brief mention in the usual news outlets of the early thirteenth century; that is, monastic chronicles such as those of St. Alban’s and the so-called Westminster Chronicle. The stature of the Earl Marshal, however, as well as hindsight of medi­eval historians reflecting on the ultimate division of the vast earldom of Pembroke and the lordships of Striguil and Leinster among a plenitude of co-heirs in 1245, made the old earl’s death far more significant than those of others— such as, for example, Ranulph de Blundeville, earl of Chester, who succeeded the Earl Marshal as one of the mentors of the young king—even when their deaths caused a similar upheaval in the ranks of the magnates. Earl William’s heir was his eldest son, Earl William the Younger (or William II, as I refer to him here), a man in his late twenties at the time of his father’s death,

14  This is indeed quite similar to the motives underlying the creation of the baronial party that invented the Great Charter. If one considers that the most important provisions—those that form the first ten or so capitulae—have to do with the specific protections of family and estates that most elites were concerned about, and the idealistic concerns about “speedy justice” come much farther down the line, then it makes sense to investigate the personal reasons underlying Richard’s remarkable decision to rebel.

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Figure 3.1: The Family of William le Marshal and Isabella de Clare—Children and Grandchildren.

but already a widower, his first wife, Alice de Bethune, having died sometime before 1219. William the Younger was the eldest child of ten siblings, but he was the only son to have been married at the time of their father’s death (see Figure 3.1). The two middle sons, Gilbert and Walter, were both destined for professions in the church, with Gilbert receiving prebends from the king at a very early age.15 The youngest boy, Anselm, was the youngest of the children and likely not even ten years old at the time of his father’s death. Unlike the Marshal sons, four of the five Marshal daughters were already married by 1219 and all proved both fertile and productive with respect to their maternal and marital obligations. The youngest daughter, Joan, would soon be married to a minor baron, Warin de Munchensy, whose political affiliations tied him more to the younger Earl William than to the father. During the tenure of Earl William II (d. 1231), the fortunes of the Marshal family blossomed. In 1222 Earl William remarried, to the barely adolescent sister of King Henry III, Princess Eleanor. His older sisters, Maud and Isabelle, had married the

15  See, for example, references to Gilbert as “Doctor” in 1226, as well as grants of livings in the diocese of Canterbury (Wingeham) in 1228 and requests for prebends to be granted to him once a vacancy occurs in 1230 and 1232. Patent Rolls, Henry III, 1225–1232 (London: HMSO, 1903), 30, 203, 323 342–3, 501. Hereafter PR, date, page(s). (This volume was prepared before the decision to calendar, in English, all subsequent volumes, so it resembles the Close Rolls volumes of the reign of Henry III in that all entries are transcribed in full and not translated.) It is also significant that Gilbert did not marry until after he inherited Pembroke, Striguil, and Leinster. One of the more ironic moments in his history is that Gilbert was also the only brother to have successfully sired a child—his illegitimate daughter Isabel. Walter, although he was assigned Goodrich Castle and Sturminster as a subfeofee of his brother, William II, also was unmarried until he became Earl of Pembroke.



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wealthiest eligible members of the magnate class: Maud to Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk (d. 1225) and Isabelle to Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester (d. 1230) through his mother, Amicia FitzWilliam, and Earl of Hertford through his father, Richard de Clare. Both marriages proved of relatively short duration, but long enough to produce a sufficiency of children. Both women proceeded to remarry—Maud to William de Warenne, earl of Surrey, and Isabelle to Henry III’s younger brother, Richard, soon to be created earl of Cornwall and count of Poitou. Within a few short years of the death of Earl William the Elder, therefore, two children were officially in-laws of the young king who had been their father’s ward—and the king himself was not yet married. Indeed, Henry III’s marriage to Eleanor of Provence would not occur until 1236; his child bride was not even born at the time of the marriage of the young earl to her future sister-inlaw, and barely a toddler when Dowager Countess Isabelle wed Richard of Cornwall. This familial relationship might not seem politically significant but, in fact, it was. The young King Henry’s delayed marriage—he was twenty-nine when he finally wed the thirteen-year-old Eleanor in 1236—meant that his two younger siblings were married long before he was, and their spouses thus became as intimate as birth-siblings might have been. Moreover, the relationship between Henry and his guardian, the old Earl William, had been important to his development and it is very likely that the death of the earl in 1219, when Henry was eleven or twelve years old, affected him deeply. Even the marriage of Dowager Countess Maud to William de Warenne, which occurred around 1225 following the death of Hugh Bigod, brought another Marshal into the royal family, as the Warennes were related (illegitimately) to the royal family and Henry and Richard both were close to their comital cousins. Historians both contemporary and modern have remarked on the ways in which Henry III’s longing for a large and intimate family unit affected his relationships with the baronage; with the elder Marshal siblings as in-laws he was able to enjoy the pleasures of an instant doubling of his kin, long before his bride was to bring her Savoyard relations with her or his half-siblings, the Lusignans, were to arrive from France. Earl William II seems to have been stamped from the same mould as his parent: he was a loyal and seemingly diligent supporter of the young king during the remainder of his minority and into the king’s early years of independent rule. Henry’s trust in him extended to naming William as justiciar of Ireland in 1226, at a time when the situation in the Irish lordship was volatile.16 The removal of Earl William to Dublin and Leinster was useful in other ways as well: he was tasked with quelling conflict and dissent in Ireland, led by Marshal neighbors—and often competitors—the Lacy lords of Meath, and also safely out of the way with respect to problems that had arisen in Wales between the marcher barons—led by Earl William and his close associate William de Braose lord of Gower—and the re-energized Llewelyn ab Iorwerth, prince of North Wales and lord of Snowdon. The insertion of Earl William as a buffer between 16  PR, 1225–1232, 47, 58, 59, 80–83, 94–95, 122. What is interesting is that Henry III seems to have been reluctant to see Earl William II leave to take up his post, despite his appointment, as he expresses concern about his leaving for Ireland in 1226 and requires guarantees of his loyalty in exchange for letters of protection and safe passage.

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the crown and the Lacys in Ireland also served a function in Wales, as the Braoses and Lacys had intermarried in the previous generation, and William’s own sister, Eve, was married to William de Braose. Relations between the Welsh prince and the Braoses in Gower, although equally familial, were nonetheless far less cordial than those between the Braoses and the Lacys. The insertion of other Anglo-Norman barons into the region, in particular the marriage of Earl William Marshal’s eldest sister, Maud, to Hugh Bigod, earl of Norfolk, and her subsequent remarriage, following Hugh’s death in 1225, to William Warenne, earl of Surrey, and the second-eldest sister, Isabelle, to, first, Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester and Hertford, and second, to Richard earl of Cornwall, Henry III’s brother, supplied the Marshals of Pembroke with powerful support throughout the southern portion of England and into the border counties. Other marriages, such as that of the third sister, Sibyl, to William Ferrers, future earl of Derby, had less effect on the fortunes of the earls Marshal—the longevity of William Ferrers’ father would deprive him of the bulk of the earldom until his death in 1247, two years after the death of the last male Marshal earls and many years after the death of Sibyl—but the marriages that occurred in the next generation of Ferrers-Marshal kin, in particular the marriage of Isabelle Ferrers to Gilbert Basset,17 did pull the Derby connection back into the Pembroke orbit, as Gilbert Basset was a liegeman of the Marshal earls, as well as being an important royal official with a close connection to the young king’s court. These interlocking familial and political connections—Anglo-Norman, Welsh, Cambro-Norman, and Anglo-Irish—were not simply the typical maneuverings of elite families in the British Isles. They were carefully constructed forms of diplomacy, land management, and political strategizing, involving both the men and the women in each of these families. Their mutual cooperation and collaboration were necessary to ensure the stability of the regions they controlled, and the breakdown of family ties could significantly disrupt that stability. This is, I think, what occurred in the period between the decline and death of Earl William II Marshal and the accession of his brother and heir, Richard. When compounded by fairly clear indications of animosity and resentment between the young Henry III and the slightly older Earl Richard—a departure from the cordial relations between the king and his brother-in-law—the recipe for rebellion was devised.

The Conflict Over Caerleon, Glamorgan, and Gower: Llewelyn vs. the Braoses and Marshals

The Braose family, which controlled Brecon, Abergavenny, and Gower in Wales, and Bramber in Sussex, had utilized a byzantine strategy of marriage alliances with the native Welsh princes of the region in order to consolidate and protect their lands from incursion. That it was only partially successful has a great deal to do with the ways in which Anglo-Norman, Cambro-Norman, and Welsh marriage alliances differed, and 17  This occurred after the death of Earl Richard Marshal, but was nonetheless significant in cementing the relationship between the Bassets and the Marshal kinship.



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Figure 3.2: Connections of the Braose Family.

the ways in which familial connections were made. The Braoses (See Figure 3.2— Braose Family) were blessed with large and seemingly hardy families, which gave the heads of the different branches the ability to parcel out sons and daughters widely. Some of these alliances—such as that between Walter Lacy of Ludlow and Meath and Margery Braose, daughter of William Braose and Maud de St. Valery,18 proved to be long-lasting. Others were more short-lived and problematic. The three-way alliances that proved to be the most durable, however, were between the Braoses, the Lacys, and the Clares, and through them, the Marshals. Earl Richard Marshal seems to have relied on this triangle of alliances through landed and marital interests, especially as two of his sisters were married to two sides of this relational triangle. The castle of Caerleon, under liege control of the elder Earl William Marshal by right of his wife, Countess Isabella, was one of the properties the Earl and Countess had used to connect “native” Welsh liege tenants to their banner: it was parceled out to one Morgan, an ally of Llewelyn ab Iorwerth, who changed his legal moniker to Morgan of Caerleon as a result. Caerleon and its sister bailiwick, Caerwent, were not seen as strategically important by the Marshals, who controlled both Striguil/Chepstow and Usk on one side of the Severn-Wye border, and Goodrich on the other.19 These three castles sandwiched Caerleon between the Marshals and their allies the Clares, 18  Sister of both Bishop Giles de Braose and Reginald de Braose.

19  Goodrich, from the succession of William the Younger, was assigned to Walter Marshal, the fourth brother, who held it as a tenant of his older brothers.

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whose caput in Wales was Cardiff and whose control over Glamorgan extended to Swansea and the opening to the Gower peninsula. An unidentified incident between Morgan and his Marshal lord precipitated a series of lawsuits around 1226 into which Llewelyn ab Iorwerth inserted himself, apparently as the advocate and ally of Morgan.20 Because Henry III was trying, with little success, to keep the peace in Glamorgan and Gower, he demanded that the parties adhere to a truce, which was negotiated by Earl Hubert de Burgh, and which also involved Earl Gilbert de Clare and William Braose as interested parties. The marriage of Joan, Henry III’s half-sister, to Llewelyn further cemented the relationships, as this meant that Earl William II was, through his marriage to Princess Eleanor, brother-inlaw to Llewelyn and Joan. Llewelyn’s ambitions to disrupt the territory guarding the Severn estuary were stymied by the truce, which all adherents signed. His interest in acquiring the area of West Glamorgan—from Swansea, to what became Caerphilly—led to incursions into Clare-held lands right at the time when Earl Gilbert de Clare was involved in the war in Brittany, and where he died in 1230, leaving a very young heir, Earl Richard de Clare (b. 1222), whose wardship was acquired by his uncle, Earl William II Marshal. At the same time, Llewelyn was working to consolidate his alliances with the Braoses of Abergavenny, proposing a marriage between Isabelle, the eldest daughter of William Braose (Llewelyn’s step-grandson) and Eve Marshal, and his son Dafydd.21 It was during those negotiations in 1230 that William Braose was caught inflagrante with Llewelyn’s wife, Joan, arrested, and summarily executed, leaving William’s widow, Eve, to complete the marriage negotiations.22 More truces were drawn up, with other magnates of the region becoming involved, including William Braose’s father, Reginald, who had married Llewelyn’s daughter Gwladys Ddu after his first wife’s death.23 Reginald was himself embroiled in litigation with his nephew John Braose over Bramber and Gower, and Llewelyn was supporting John’s claim against his. Earl William II Marshal was granted custody of the four 20  PR, 1225–1232, 58, 59, 80–83. This is discussed briefly in Carpenter, Henry III. Morgan, despite his ties to both Earl Richard and Llewelyn, joined the royalist side, making fealty to the king and using that opportunity to attack—with his mother—Usk Castle in September 1233. CR, 1231–1234, 322, 323; Calendar of Patent Rolls, Henry III, 1232–1247 (London: HMSO, 1906), 24. Hereafter, CPR. 21  This is clearly within the proscribed degrees of consanguinity, but the marriage of close cousins in Welsh law was not seen as unlawful, in large part because it was the only way to retain the continuity of territory in the context of the radical partible inheritance laws of Wales. There were, in fact, three marriages of Llewelyn’s children to Braose family members, including the marriage of Reginald Braose to Gwladys Ddu, which, although it did not produce any children, set the stage for yet another series of alliances with the Mortimers of Wigmore, as her second husband was Ralph Mortimer, and her own son, Roger, married Reginald’s granddaughter, Maud Braose. See table 3.2. 22  See Linda E. Mitchell, Portraits of Medi­eval Women: Family, Marriage, and Politics in England, 1225–1350 (New York: Palgrave, 2003), chap. 4, 43–56, and Mitchell, “Most Perfect Knight’s Countess.” 23  Reginald’s first wife was Grecia de Briwerre.



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Braose heiresses and their lands, further ensuring the dominance of the Marshals in the region between Pembroke and Striguil.24 Henry III was anxious to preserve the peace between the Welsh prince and the marcher barons of Glamorgan and Gower. The Marshals had acted as useful representatives of royal power in that region, but the death of William II in 1231 led Henry III to make changes to the structures of power that might have soured his relations with the new Earl of Pembroke. Although Richard Marshal could have reasonably expected to acquire control over both the Clare and the Braose guardianships, Henry instead removed them from the direct Marshal orbit and placed both under the control of Earl Richard of Cornwall—Richard Marshal’s brother-in-law and the young Richard de Clare’s stepfather—and Hubert de Burgh.25 It is not clear why Henry moved to bifurcate power in South Wales in this way. Although most historians seem to follow Roger of Wendover’s lead in believing this to be the work of Hubert de Burgh, and after his fall from grace, Peter de Rivaux, the exquisitely complicated family dynamics that were enmeshing the royal and Marshal families at the time might have been far more compelling to the king than the political machinations of his advisors. Henry’s intimates in the years before his marriage were his now-widowed sister Eleanor, whose late husband Earl William II might have served in the role of older brother, and his new sister-in-law, Isabelle Marshal, married now to his younger brother. Yet another Marshal sibling—their sister Eve—was the widow of the executed William de Braose. Similar familial ties embroiled the house of Llewelyn with the Marshals, Braoses, and English royal family. Even while trying to placate the new earl, who was eager to gain control of his inheritance, other family issues might have pressed on Henry, suggesting that Glamorgan and Gower might be in safer hands under the wings of the Marshal women rather than of their brother.26 Henry probably made a rational and sensible move in depositing the Clare and Braose lands and heirs into more neutral, and perhaps, in the persons of Isabelle and Eve, more affectionate, hands. This turned out not to be the case either with Hubert de Burgh, who is considered to have abused his position by, in 1235 or 1236, marrying the young Richard de Clare to his daughter Megotta, or with Peter de Rivaux, a far more sinister character. But ultimately, the person who had a right to feel at least a little aggrieved was Richard Marshal. Interestingly, his sisters seem to have agreed. In addition, conflicts were brewing in Ireland, especially in Meath (controlled by the Lacys), Kildare (under Marshal tenure), and Ulster, which was contested between the de Burghs of Connacht and the cadet branch of the Lacys. Tenants of the Marshals—in particular the Ridelsfords27—became embroiled in these conflicts, not necessarily on the side of their lord, Earl Richard. Replacing Earl William II as justiciar 24  PR, 1225–1232, 339, 377, 398; CR, 1227–1231, 353, 359, 454.

25  PR, 1225–1232, 428. Mentioned briefly by Carpenter, Henry III.

26  Eve ultimately seems to have had control over the marriages of her daughters. She was forced to take over the marriage negotiations with Llewelyn over the union between Dafydd ap Llewelyn and her daughter Isabelle after her husband’s demise. 27  Emelina de Ridelsford eventually married Earl of Ulster, Walter de Lacy.

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of Ireland with a Marshal feofee, Maurice fitzGerald, also encouraged to some extent a fracturing of Marshal authority in Leinster by promoting the Geraldines as peers. Earl Richard had significant support among many of his tenants in Leinster, but the Geraldines were a wild card in all of them, and the Lacys operated as both allies and competitors of their Marshal neighbors. Earl Richard’s attention was thus bifurcated between two conflict zones—Glamorgan, Gwent, and Gower, and Leinster, Meath, and Ulster. In both regions, he seems to have considered the king as impinging on his authority and throwing up barriers to his ability to resolve the conflicts. Henry III seems to have felt the same way.

Richard and Gervaise Marshal and Her Inheritance

Historians who mention the rebellion of Richard Marshal and the era surrounding it are silent about his marriage to Gervaise de Dinan, also known as Gervaise de Vitré, but this marriage, contracted in 1222, has a great deal to do with Richard’s original place in the Marshal family’s political agenda while his older brother was still alive. After William II’s death, the issues surrounding Richard’s divided loyalties between the king of England and Louis VIII, the king of France, were complicated significantly by Gervaise’s landed status as the Lady of Dinan, as well as by ongoing litigation over her inheritance in England, which also seems to have created tension between Henry III and Earl Richard Marshal.28 Gervaise de Dinan was the daughter and heir of Alain de Vitré, lord of Dinan, and Clémence de Fougères. Clémence, herself, after Alain’s death in 1197, married in ca. 1200 the newly-divorced Earl of Chester, Ranulf de Blundeville, a close associate of Earl William I Marshal and eventual ally of Earl William II.29 Gervaise, born ca. 1190, was married twice before her marriage to Richard Marshal, first to Juhel de Mayenne (d. 1220) and second to Geoffroi de Rohan (d. 1221). She had three daughters from her first marriage, only one of whom produced progeny.30

28  In a letter patent to “all” in Ireland dated 25 May 1231, the king states explicitly that Henry believes Richard to be a liegeman of the king of France and therefore is technically an enemy of the English king. He further commands the tenants of the lordship of Leinster to make fealty to the king through his justiciar, Hubert de Burgh, and Waleran Teutonicus, who has custody of the Leinster estates and castles. This was not resolved until Richard submitted his homage to the king in August 1231. PR, 1225–1232, 435–6; CR, 1227–1231, 541, 542, 561. 29  It is possible, at least according to some more obscure sources, that Clémence was abducted by Earl Ranulf but it is impossible to verify this. After his death in 1232, Clémence seems to have remained in England, dying at around age 78 in 1252. See CR, 1231–1234, 123, 176, 189, 263–6; CR, 1234–1237, 245, 336, 373, 375, 466. Although Ranulf died without issue, Clémence is identified as having an heir, Ralf, who was likely her great-grandson. He was a minor at the time of her death. 30  Isabelle (d. 1256) married twice, but produced no heirs. Marguerite (d. before 1256) was succeeded by her son Alain d’Avangour; Jeanne, the youngest, died without progeny in 1246. See Bertrand de Brousillon, La Maison de Laval, 1020–1605, 5 vols (Paris, 1895), 1:286–9; 5:12–7, 23.



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Richard’s marriage to a wealthy and prominent heiress with a proven record of fecundity, whose estates were located in Brittany and Normandy,31 and whose mother was the wife of the earl of Chester, had to have been a deliberate strategy by the Marshals to establish a cadet-branch power bloc in Normandy and Brittany at a time when, only a few years after the death of their parents, neither William II nor Richard would have anticipated the former’s death and the inheritance of the latter. Historians such as David Carpenter identify Henry III’s reluctance in releasing the Pembroke and Leinster estates to Richard in 1231 as stemming from the king’s worry about Richard having sworn fealty to Louis VIII and therefore having divided loyalties, though they fail to mention that this had more to do with Richard’s assumption of the lordship of Dinan by right of his wife.32 Gervaise was an heiress in England as well as France—her father seems to have been granted some relatively minor estates at some time prior to her marriage—and these also proved to be contentious. Gervaise also seems to have claimed dower in other properties in England, which could have been granted because of her previous marriages. Between Michaelmas 1225 and Easter 1233 the couple initiated or tried to litigate a number of suits.33 Most were paused in 1230 because of the French campaign, in which Richard participated in the entourage of his brother Earl William II, and ultimately none were resolved. One reason why their lack of success might have been a contributing factor in the rebellion was Henry III’s apparent interference in three suits in 1229, in which he commanded that they appear in person, and the loss of two other suits which were prosecuted after the king’s respites for service had expired, but Richard (and probably Gervaise) seems still to have been overseas. The last attempt, in early 1233, to recover properties Gervaise claimed by right, also failed, after which all litigation ceased.34 Henry III’s reluctance to encourage this litigation—no entries are complete enough to determine any of the arguments made as to Gervaise’s claim—might have had more to do with the defendants in these suits, who were loyal royal servants, such as Hamo 31  Clémence’s inherited estates were in Normandy; although Gervaise did not outlive her mother, she would have been recognized as the heir to the Fougères estates. 32  Carpenter mentions his wife was an heiress, but fails to mention her by name or investigate this issue.

33  Curia Regis Rolls, 9–10 Henry III (London, HMSO, 1957), 174; Curia Regis Rolls, 11–4, Henry III (London, HMSO, 1959), 57, 226, 358, 382, 497; Curia Regis Rolls, 14–7, Henry III (London, HMSO, 1961), 134, 241, 478; Curia Regis Rolls, 17–221 Henry III (London: HMSO, 1972), 8; see also, CR, 1227–1231, 334, 347.

34  It is probable that Gervaise returned to France soon after Richard’s death, as she made a substantial donation to the Abbey of Notre Dame du Tronchet in 1234; she died between 1238 and 1244 and was buried at the Abbey of Saint-Magloire de Léhon; a marble effigy is identified as representing her. See Michel Pelé, Les édifices religieux dolois, le Benedictins du Tronchet (Rennes, 1975–2009), 5. http://clergedol.free.fr/etudes-pdf/abbaye-du-Tronchet.pdf. In addition, the only chancery reference to her after Earl Richard’s death is a letter close in which the king concedes all lands which had belonged to Gervaise in Northamptonshire be transferred to Gilbert de Segrave. She therefore seems to have given up on any litigation in which the couple were engaged at the time of the rebellion. CR, 1231–1234, 427.

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Peche, and the children of the Earl of Essex, Geoffrey fitzPeter. The lords of Dinan and the Vitré family had never been particularly reliable allies of the English king; the Fougères had actually supported the claims of Arthur of Brittany against Henry’s own father.35 Henry III’s mother, Isabelle of Angoulême, was friendly with Gervaise’s family—she was staying at Dinan in 123036—but the problematic triangle between the Marshals, the Earl of Chester, and the lords of Dinan and Vitré and their spouses placed Henry III at a disadvantage in trying to placate these disparate and warring parties. In addition, following Ranulf de Blundeville’s death in 1232, Henry took pains to placate Clémence, his widow, and Gervaise’s mother, assigning her dower quickly and thereby ensuring her support in the complicated divisions of the Chester and Lincoln estates.37 This support, while engaging in somewhat passive-aggressive delaying of Gervaise and Richard’s litigation, might have rankled the younger couple.

Countess Eleanor and Earl Richard: Dower Settlements and Conflict

One of the most overlooked aspects of Richard’s tenure as earl of Pembroke has to do with the ways in which Henry III tried to manage the dower assignment of his sister, Eleanor, dowager countess. Henry proved to be significantly anxious to keep his sister happy, content, and enriched. Numerous entries in the Close Rolls outline generous gifts of deer, wine, and timber made with clockwork regularity to the young countess; Henry was not nearly as generous to Richard in his gift-giving. The main conflict, however, involved the assignment of Eleanor’s dower. Henry III was scrupulous about adhering to Magna Carta requirements that dower assignments be made within forty days of the death of the husband. When the actual assignment was not possible to complete in that given space of time, he assigned manors to the widow as maintenance until the full assessment of the estate and the dower assignment could be completed.38 The earldom of Pembroke, however, was complicated by the fact that significant portions of the comital estates—those in Wales and to some extent in Ireland—lay in areas where “the king’s writ did not run”: they were not subject to Common Law stipulations as to dower because of their Marcher or Palatine status. As a result, the portions of the Marshal estates that were dowerable were under dispute. Within days of Earl William II’s death, Henry assigned a number of manors to the widowed Eleanor, including properties that he granted her in life tenure beyond her 35  According to Carpenter, Andre de Vitré was a sworn enemy of the Earl of Chester; see Carpenter, Henry III, 87–89, 100–1. As Clémence was married to the earl it is hard to parse this relationship. Andre de Vitré was the son of Emma de Dinan, daughter of Alain de Dinan, who was also the grandfather of Alain de Vitré, Gervaise’s father and Clémence’s first husband. This means that Andrew and Gervaise were second cousins and potentially contenders for the lordship of Vitré. 36  According to Carpenter.

37  CR, 1231–1234, 123, 176, 189, 263–4; CR, 1234–1237, 245, 336, 373, 375, 466.

38  As seen in the assignments made to Clémence de Fougères in 1232 after Ranulf de Blundeville’s death.



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dower.39 He then began to pressure Earl Richard about assigning dower in Wales and Ireland, including castles, although he did take care not to demand that she hold any estates identified as caput to the earldom or the lordships of Leinster and Striguil.40 Nevertheless, Henry assigned some of the most productive and wealthiest manors to his sister, ones that Earl Richard probably relied on for income, since the Irish and Pembroke estates were prestigious but largely unprofitable. Indeed, Eleanor received her dower months before Richard’s comital estates were turned over to him. It is likely that Eleanor was involved in the negotiations herself, because at one point, in 1232, Richard offered up an extensive list of Irish manors and appurtenances as her dower in Ireland, which would suggest that he was willing to turn over a very substantial portion of the Irish estates.41 This seems to have been rejected by both the king and Eleanor, however, because soon after Henry and Richard seal an agreement to give Eleanor £400 in cash per annum as the equivalent of her dower in Ireland and— according to the chancery entry—Wales. The negotiations did not end there, however, and she received even more of the most profitable manors in England as dower, along with lucrative benefices, guardianships, and advowsons.42 In this era before the establishment of complete inquisitions post mortem, it is impossible to determine the actual value of the Marshal estates in 1231. Clearly, if £400 p.a. accurately reflected what would constitute the “reasonable third” of the estates in Ireland (identifying this amount as also including dower in Wales soon dropped out of the chancery rolls and this was identified only as Eleanor’s dower in Ireland) then the annual income from Leinster must have been assessed as about £1,200 per annum. In later assessments of the Irish estates, especially in 1245–1248, when the Marshal inheritance was divided among multiple heirs, the total assessed value of Leinster approached about £1,700 p.a., which prompted further litigation at mid-century, as Eleanor’s dower remained at the original rate of £400 p.a.43 Henry III was accused, in the midst of the baronial conflicts at mid-century, of overendowing favorite widows—especially Maud de Lacy de Clare, widow of Earl Richard de Clare—and the heirs were often stymied in litigating against the widows for admeasurement. It is entirely likely that Henry’s assessment of what his sister needed as dower from the earldom of Pembroke and other Marshal estates was significantly more than the “reasonable third” stipulated by Magna Carta and the Statute of Merton that followed it. In future years Eleanor could be seen as notoriously acquisitive, espe39  These included the manors Baldwin de Béthune had assigned to William II at the time of his marriage to Baldwin’s daughter, Alice. See CR, 1227–1231, 492, 498, 518, 520, 528, 555. 40  CR, 1227–1231, 502.

41  CR, 1231–1234, 144–5 and The Acts and Letters of the Marshal Family, Marshals of England and Earls of Pembroke, 1145–1248, ed. David Crouch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Royal Historical Society, 2015), no. 189, 325–6. 42  CR, 1231–1234, 174.

43  See James Lydon, “The Expansion and Consolidation of the Colony, 1215–54,” in A New History of Ireland, vol. 2, Medi­eval Ireland 1169–1534, ed. Art Cosgrove (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 156–78, at 168–9.

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cially after she married Earl Simon de Montfort, and her targets were almost always members of the Marshal family. It seems that Earl Richard tried to placate his sister-in-law, but the financial demands placed upon him—including shouldering his dead brother’s debts without access to any of the lucrative estates Countess Eleanor held in dower—were significant and, he might have felt, punitive. He apparently ran into difficulties fulfilling his promise of £200 twice a year very soon after the settlement with Countess Eleanor because, in June 1233, the king ordered a distraint on his estates for failing to pay her the amount owed at Easter; he might have defaulted on the previous payment as well.44 Although the conflicts over Eleanor’s dower do not factor into official and chronicle presentations of the reasons why Richard rebelled, they could in fact have contributed significantly to the earl’s feelings of ill-usage and his anger at the king’s interference in areas—Wales and Ireland—where his sovereignty was less secure.

Earl Hubert de Burgh, The Three Castles, and The Rebellion

Most historians—medi­eval and modern—identify the king’s reliance on Bishop Peter des Roches, his growing reliance on Peter de Rivaux, and his growing animosity toward Earl Hubert de Burgh, Henry’s original justiciar, as one of the tipping points in Earl Richard Marshal’s determination to flout royal authority.45 Indeed, as mentioned above, the St Alban’s chroniclers state that Richard fled to Ireland upon being told by his sister, Isabelle, that the king “would do to you what he did to Earl Hubert de Burgh.” At stake was more than the loss of status of an old friend and ally of the Marshals. More significant was the control Hubert had over Isabelle’s son, Earl Richard de Clare, and his estates, and Hubert’s own control over the three castles known as the Trilateral—Grosmont, Skenfrith, and White Castle—which controlled the defence of the mid-Wales border. When Earl of Gloucester and Hertford Gilbert de Clare, first husband of Isabelle Marshal, died, their young son’s custody was granted to his uncle, Earl William II, in conjunction with Earl Hubert. When Isabelle remarried, her second husband Earl Richard of Cornwall, joined the other two as co-guardians of the boy and his estates. When Earl William II died, his brother Richard was not granted his share of the custody, which instead was split between Richard of Cornwall and Hubert. Concern about the stability of key components of the Clare estates in eastern Wales and the Border was paramount in the eyes of the king. Cardiff, along with the important diocese of Llandaff, as well as the area of the Trilateral in the gateway to midWales, were experiencing incursions from Llewelyn and his allies. The king wanted to keep the peace along the border but was also anxious not to cement too much power in the hands of the Marshals, whose control of Striguil sandwiched the Clare holdings. This seems not to have been as much an issue during the tenure of Earl William II, whose relationship with the king was considerably friendlier. It might have been the 44  CR, 1231–1234, 233, 310.

45  Carpenter devotes significant space to this issue in Henry III, 58–164.



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case that King Henry mistrusted the volatility of Earl Richard Marshal and that this encouraged him to divide authority along the Welsh border. Peter de Rivaux’s acquisition of the Trilateral seems to have been one of the precipitating moments for Earl Richard Marshal. Although historians claim that the revolt was because of opposition to “foreigners” gaining influence—Peter de Rivaux, like his “uncle” Peter des Roches, was identified as a Poitevan—this argument really is specious. The baronage in England, Wales, and Ireland was scarcely homogeneous and none identified themselves as “English” in a way that separated them from their own relations in southern France, Normandy, and Anjou. Indeed, Richard Marshal as well as the Marshals’ future rival, Simon de Montfort, who appeared in England in 1229 trying to claim his inheritance of the earldom of Leicester, could both be identified as “foreigners” because of their significant landed interests in France. The issue was not between “natives” and “foreigners” but, rather, between people with long-held alliances along the Welsh Marches, and royal officials thought of as interlopers. Peter de Rivaux was definitely the latter. King Henry was sensible to this potential for conflict and took steps to, as he probably thought, neutralize it by making changes to custodial arrangements concerning the Clare and Braose heirs. Apparently, however, baronial animus directed at Peter de Rivaux and the perceived ill treatment of Gilbert Basset, as well as of Hubert de Burgh, seems to have precipitated the rebellion. Although the exact nature of the conflict is not clear from the extant sources, it is clear that the barons and the king were at odds by the summer of 1233, and that August proved the tipping point, as indicated in a Close Roll entry in which Baldwin de Bethune provides pledges for his faithful service and protests that he was not with the Earl Marshal at Wycombe “with horses and arms.”46 According to Carpenter, the disseisin of Gilbert Basset earlier in 1233 precipitated the crisis, with relations worsening until the Earl Marshal’s call to arms at High Wycombe in August.47 The problem that arises in reconstructing the motivations underlying the rebellion is that no formal document—a Great Charter or Provisions of Oxford—outlining the earl’s specific grievances exists, and the chronicle narratives cannot be considered entirely reliable. What is clear is that everyone implicated in the rebellion had close familial and affinal ties to Earl Richard Marshal and those who supported the king had compelling material reasons for doing so, including Earl Richard’s disgruntled sister-in-law, Dowager Countess Eleanor, who benefited almost immediately.48 Henry’s aggressive response to the High Wycombe episode drove Earl Richard and his followers to sue for peace,49 but the calm was short-lived, as by the end of Sep46  There are many such entries; this provides an example. CR, 1231–1234, 253.

47  Carpenter, Henry III, 127–30, 135–8. Carpenter relies on Wendover for the narrative. See also, The Fine Rolls Project, Roll C 60/32, 17 Henry III, nos. 295–97, 311–4, 318–9, 341–2, 368–9, https:// finerollshenry3.org.uk/content/calendar/roll_032.html. 48  She received custody of some of Richard Siward’s lands and sheriffs received orders not to meddle in her Marshal estates. CR, 1231–1234, 275, 343. 49  CR, 1227–1231, 259, 260, 262, 266, 278, 280. See, also, Carpenter, Henry III, 137–8.

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tember/early October the rebellion was heating up again. The king moved swiftly to co-opt his brother, Richard of Cornwall, whose allegiance wavered between Henry and his brother-in-law, Earl Richard Marshal. In October, however, he acquired custody of both the Earl Marshal’s estates in several English counties and those of Gilbert Basset in Wiltshire.50 This proved too tempting and Richard of Cornwall threw in his lot with the king.51 The sequence of events, narrated skillfully by Carpenter and based largely on the story told by Wendover and Matthew Paris—who, Carpenter claims, heard it directly from Hubert de Burgh52—is part of the best-known version of this episode, and is presented in detail above. Although the king was able to neutralize the rebellion in England by co-opting many of Earl Richard’s baronial supporters, including his nephew, Earl Roger Bigod, Marshal support in Wales53 and Earl Richard’s decision to ally with Llewelyn ab Iorwerth perpetuated the rebellion. In addition, one of the main stipulations of the barons when the rebellion ended was the dismissal of both Bishop Peter des Roches and Peter de Rivaux. Although he died in the process, Earl Richard Marshal, “the last of the great Anglo-Norman barons” and “precursor of Simon de Montfort”54 had, by all standard accounts, won the war. But what, indeed, was won? Was the removal of two influential advisors and the re-establishment of the importance of the baronial council worth the death of the earl and the significant destruction of property, including the burning of Shrewsbury? By all accounts, the death of Earl Richard Marshal chastened the king and drove him to dispose of his “alien” ministers and return to his “native” advisors. Nevertheless, the drive of the king seems far more to have focused on putting the entire nine months of war and rebellion behind him and to return to a more peaceful status quo ante bellum. The lists of Earl Richard’s adherents indicate that, even if he was to a large extent abandoned by his peers, he had broad support among his tenants and subfeofees in both Wales and Ireland. This support was not universal, however, and some tenants used the rebellion as an opportunity to pull away from the dominance of the Marshal family. This occurred especially in Ireland, where the Ridelsfords and many of the Geraldines apparently remained loyal to the crown against their liege in Leinster. This availed them little, however, until the division of Leinster in 1245 provided them with far more autonomy, as the lordship was divided among thirteen different coheirs. According to both Carpenter and Walker, the invasion of Earl Richard and Llewelyn into Gower and Glamorgan was a tactical maneuver that they had long planned. The reasons behind the invasion, especially into Glamorgan, of Earl Richard and his followers probably had more to do with his attempt to gain control over the wardship 50  CR, 1231–1234, 281.

51  See Carpenter, Henry III, 140–3, who refers to the events of August to October as the “First Marshal War.” 52  Carpenter, Henry III, 143–53, especially 145.

53  Unmentioned by Carpenter or the chroniclers was the fact that this support in Wales was bolstered by Earl Richard’s widowed sister, Eve Braose. 54  Carpenter, Henry III, 152.



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and lands of his nephew, Richard de Clare, and which had been enjoyed by his older brother William II, than outright conquest. The motives behind Llewelyn’s moves are more opaque, although his ambitions for gaining access to Gower, either through conquest or through marriage—as his son and heir Dafydd had just married Isabel de Braose, eldest daughter and clearly future heir to at least a quarter of the Braose estates—were always at the forefront of his dealings with the Braoses. It might have been that allying with Earl Richard Marshal suited Llewelyn’s purposes; his support seems to have been entirely equivocal and to have dissipated rapidly once Gower and Glamorgan were defended. Although there were few peers of Earl Richard Marshal who joined the rebellion, his support among his tenants and personal household, as well as among many members of his kin, seems to have been strong. In particular, the support of his siblings and of Gilbert Basset, a future family member by marriage, persisted until the rebellion died with Richard himself. It is not clear whether they considered his cause particularly just, or whether their personal relationships with the Earl Marshal overrode their political pragmatism. Walker, in his article on the adherents of Earl Richard, points out that there were relatively few adherents who hailed from the Marshal’s estates in England; he ascribes lukewarm attitudes to the tenants of these estates. There might be another reason for the desultory response to Earl Richard’s call to arms: Countess Eleanor’s control of so many of the English estates in dower. Operating as a contingent landholder does not necessarily mean that her tenants could not have overridden her authority and joined the rebellion, but Eleanor’s proximity to the king might have been a real deterrent. King Henry’s protectiveness with respect to his sister might have brought the war to those estates, with dire consequences for their income. It might have been a deliberate choice for Eleanor’s tenants to remain neutral.

The Aftermath

King Henry’s relationship with Gilbert Marshal was the exact opposite of his relationship with Earl Richard. He seems to have been consistently friendly and close to Earl Gilbert, providing him with benefices while he remained on the church-professional trajectory.55 After the rebellion, Gilbert and his younger brothers returned to the royal fold with seeming ease and within weeks saw a return of their estates and injunctions against others engaging in waste or destruction of them.56 Generous gifts of timber, hunting and fishing privileges, and wine soon followed.57 Henry even gave Gilbert animals and fish to stock his private fishweirs and parklands. This friendship eventually extended to Henry’s enthusiastic blessing of the marriage, in July 1235, of Earl Gilbert and Margery, the younger sister of King Alexander III of Scotland (whose sister Margaret was the widow of Hubert de Burgh, and who was once a marriage pros55  As mentioned above, p. 46.

56  CR, 1231–1234, 435–36, 439, 564–6; CPR, 1232–1247, 45, 46, 48, 53, 57, 65–66, 70, 87, 88, 89. 57  CR, 1234–1237, 2, 4, 28, 40. Walter and Anselm were also included in the gifts.

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pect for the king himself).58 The king’s alarm at Earl Gilbert’s enthusiasm for tournaments prompted numerous sharply-worded reprimands in the Patent Rolls between 1234 and Gilbert’s death in 1241.59 As Gilbert was the only Marshal son whose ability to father children had been demonstrated—he had an illegitimate daughter, Isabel, whom he married to Rhys ap Maelgwyn of Deheubarth60—if he had survived and successfully provided an heir, the history of the British Isles in the thirteenth century would have been very different. Within about two years, all the adherents of Earl Richard Marshal had been brought back into the royal fold. Henry was generous about permitting re-seisin of forfeited lands and perquisites at reasonable cost. One tactic he had deployed—the seizing of forest privileges from the adherents—found its way into the Curia Regis in the years after the war, as supporters of the Earl Marshal sought to regain their forest rights. Remarkably little litigation actually accrued over the forfeiture of whole estates. This suggests that the king did not always seize entire landed interests, except when adherents were particularly recalcitrant. King Henry’s measured response to the rebellion, despite the rhetoric of referring to it in chancery documents as a “war” between the king and Earl Richard Marshal, provides a very different picture of the young king than that often presented, especially by hostile chronicle sources. Instead of an impetuous, volatile adolescent, Henry seems to have been a pragmatic, strategic, and clear-thinking adult. Although most of the post-rebellion strategies were undoubtedly the product of consultation with members of his council and court, the strategies Henry adopted to quell the distress of the Marshal’s adherents and to calm the tempers of the Marshal family, in general significantly resembled the strategies that would be utilized in the Dictum of Kenilworth after the much larger and more dangerous war between the king and Earl Simon de Montfort. Another aspect of King Henry’s measured response was his rapid return to presenting his sister Eleanor with frequent, valuable, and numerous proofs of his affection. Gifts of venery, fish, and other appurtenances in the royal gift returned to Eleanor’s hands with all due speed after the death of Earl Richard Marshal. Earl Gilbert was instructed, as well, to abide by the agreement made over the cash dower and, despite being embroiled in significant levels of debt, he took steps to provide.61 Eleanor does not seem to have been satisfied, however. 58  CPR, 1232–1247, 126.

59  For example, CPR, 1232–1247, 67–68, 70.

60  Isabel’s mother is unknown, but the arrangement suggests strongly that she might have been Welsh. The marriage was designed to cement an alliance between the House of Deheubarth and the Earls of Pembroke against Llewelyn ab Iorwerth. It is entirely unclear as to whether this marriage was successful on any level. Curia Regis Rolls, 1237–1242 (vol. 16) (London: HMSO, 1979), 287, reproduced in Acts and Letters of the Marshal Family, 373–4.

61  Extensive entries in CPR, 1232–1247, 125–6 detail Gilbert’s attempts to placate Countess Eleanor.



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It is possible that the king’s generosity toward his sister was based upon an agreement that she would remain unmarried; her vow of chastity was well-publicized and she even raised one of her nieces-by-marriage, Joan de Munchensy, in her household for a few years after the death of her mother, Joan Marshal.62 Although Henry proclaimed himself “well pleased” with the marriage of Eleanor and Earl Simon de Montfort, this was not an arrangement that had been made by the king. And it could be that his displeasure in her decision to take her marital future into her own hands resulted in a significant limiting of the king’s generosity. After her marriage, there were rather fewer entries in the Close Rolls for distribution of largess to Countess Eleanor. Moreover, the £400 p.a. cash settlement for Eleanor’s Irish dower was deemed insufficient by her new husband and the couple set out to litigate for a greater share in the Marshal inheritance. Ironically, therefore, although over two decades would accrue between the end of the rebellion of Earl Richard Marshal and the beginning of the rise of Earl Simon de Montfort to power, it could be that the person whose feelings of ill-usage persisted was not a Marshal heir, but rather, the king’s acquisitive sister and her equally acquisitive spouse. Henry’s generosity to her might have been one of the goads that led to Earl Richard’s rebellion. The king’s refusal to add more substantially to her enrichment beyond what he had always been prepared to do might have been a goad to Earl Simon to do so as well. After the rebellion of Earl Richard Marshal, the Marshal kin unit—brothers, sisters, and their spouses and children—settled into a far more predictable pattern of support for the crown, until the troubles of 1258 divided them generationally, at least for a time, between royalists and supporters of Earl Simon. Indeed, the king and his sons were able to succeed in quelling the crises at mid-century only because of the support of Marshal heirs and their affinities: the family strategy established by old Earl William and Countess Isabella was upheld in the long run by their grandchildren and, eventually, great-grandchildren. It broke down again in the reign of Edward II, but for a solid eighty or so years, the connections between the royals and the Marshals did not significantly waver. Often maligned as a not-so-useful idiot, King Henry III was able to salvage this relationship, snatching victory from the depths of Earl Richard Marshal’s grave. He did so by being contrite, by admitting his faults, and by striving to reverse the harm he—perhaps under the influence of the two Peters—had wrought. So what, ultimately, prompted Earl Richard to rebel? Carpenter states that, although initially motivated by self-interest, Earl Richard came to see the problems between crown and baronage from a more elevated and ideo­logical perspective. I admit that I have my doubts that this could operate as a real motivator for either him or his family. Earl Richard had a host of personal frustrations and grievances against Henry III that festered even before his brother William II’s death in 1231 and that led to the levy of “horses and arms” at High Wycombe. It is fairly clear that there was a personality clash between the two men; it is also fairly clear that Henry III’s worry about placating 62  See, Linda E. Mitchell, Joan de Valence: The Life and Influence of a Thirteenth-Century Noble­ woman (New York: Palgrave, 2017), esp. chap. 1.

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his widowed sister and his younger brother, his anxiety regarding Hubert de Burgh’s control over young Richard de Clare, his preferential treatment of Gervaise de Dinan’s twice-widowed mother, Clémence, following the death of Earl Ranulf of Chester, and his concern about Richard’s loyalty to the king of France, led him to support others’s claims over those of the Earl Marshal and his wife. All of these cracks in the plaster of royal-magnate relations seem petty if taken individually, but piled on top of each other, and in a short period of a few years, could compel someone as volatile as Earl Richard to, at the very least, strenuously complain—which he apparently did. The insult to his devoted affine, Gilbert Basset, and the attack on Hubert de Burgh might have overtopped what he perceived as personal injuries, leading to a decision to make a show of force, which, in turn, led to an all-out rebellion when Henry III reacted with anger and aggression against him. By presenting Earl Richard Marshal as a heroic figure, the St. Alban’s chroniclers and others who wrote about this episode were able to create an almost biblical contrast between the earl and the king. Henry III was not popular among the historians of the thirteenth century. Their characterizations of him as immature, simple-minded, and pious but with a nasty streak inherited from his execrable father, needed constant tending and the regular juxtaposition of this inferior king with his superior subjects (including his crusading brother, Richard of Cornwall). Their narratives are extremely compelling and attractive and fall nicely into a hermeneutic circle that modern historians, writing with an eye to posterity and with a foreshadowing of future events and ideo­logies, create. Earl Richard Marshal was not a hero, but he was a man with legitimate grievances, ones which were poorly managed by his sovereign. The escalation of these grievances into issues of national importance was perhaps the work of Peter des Roches and Peter de Rivaux, but it could have been that the sheer number of smaller conflicts added up to one large mess. It is entirely possible that the outcome—directed by Henry III in a way that pulled his magnates back into agreement with him and with each other and that ameliorated the harm done in the months of the rebellion—would have been the same had Richard not died in Ireland. The benevolence Henry showed to Richard’s surviving brothers, Gilbert, Walter, and Anselm, and his sister, Eve, could have been even more powerful had it been displayed toward Earl Richard himself. Whatever motivated the king to take the steps necessary to quell the rebellion, he did so with apparent alacrity. Thus, the king took all the necessary steps to nullify “all the rancour and enmity between us”—and he should get some credit for doing so.

ROYAL CONSUMPTION AND GIFTS OF DEER IN THIRTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND ROBIN S. OGGINS and JEAN B. OGGINS Robin S. Oggins is Associate Professor Emeritus of Binghamton University, where he taught medi­eval history for forty years. For more than half of them, he was a colleague of Paul Szarmach. He and Paul taught a number of courses together and he succeeded Paul as director of CEMERS. He is the author of The Kings and Their Hawks: Falconry in Medi­eval England (Yale, 2008).

Jean B. Oggins is a research psycho­logist who has published quantitative and qualitative research in psycho­logy, socio­logy, social work, and medicine. Her research has dealt primarily with well-being and health, providing health care and social services, and the role of gender, age, and ethnicity in psycho­logy, health, and health care.

Deer were among

the most prized animals hunted in medi­eval Europe. Contemporary hunting treatises described the rituals of the deer hunt and the chase was celebrated in both literature and in art.1 Deer were protected and preserved, served at important feasts, and given as royal gifts. This chapter will concern itself with how deer were used by the thirteenth-century English kings for food and as gifts. The main sources for this subject are the English public records. Among the problems in analyzing them are missing records, changes in what was recorded, and undercounting. Many of the records for King John’s reign were lost when part of his baggage train was caught in

1  For example, The Hunting Book of Gaston Phébus: Manuscrit français 616, Bibliothèque nationale, Introduction by Marcel Thomas and François Avril, Commentary by Wilhel Schlag (London: Harvey Miller, 1998), henceforth GP; Anne Rooney, Hunting in Middle English Literature (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1993); Linda Woolley, Medi­eval Life and Leisure in the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries (London: V&A Publications, 2002), 13; and Kathryn A. Smith, The Taymouth Hours (London: British Museum, 2012), 158–9. For a good survey of both the ritual and the vocabulary of hunting see William Perry Marvin, Hunting Law and Ritual in Medi­eval English Literature (Cambridge: Brewer, 2006), 97–130. On ritual see also Marcelle Thiébaux, The Stag of Love: The Chase in Medi­eval Literature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), 35–40, and Susan Crane, “Ritual Aspects of the Hunt à Force” in Barbara A. Hanawalt and Lisa J. Kiser, eds., Engaging with Nature: Essays on the Natural World in Medi­eval and Early Modern Europe (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 63–84. Standard secondary works on medi­eval hunting include Richard Almond, Medi­eval Hunting (Phoenix Mill: Sutton, 2003); John Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk: The Art of Medi­eval Hunting (New York: St. Martin’s, 1988), and Emma Griffin, Blood Sport: Hunting in Britain since 1066 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). For hunting in King John’s reign see Hugh M. Thomas, Power and Pleasure: Court Life Under King John, 1199–1216 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). See also Jean Birrell, “Hunting and the Royal Forest,” in Simonetta Cavachiocchi, ed., L’uomo e la Foresta Secc. XIII-XVIII, Settimane di Studi 27, Instituto Internationale di Storia Economia F. Datini Prato (Florence: Le Monnier, 1996), 437–57, and Jean Birrell, “Procuring, Preparing, and Serving Venison in Late Medi­eval England,” in C. M. Woolgar, D. Serjeantson, and T. Waldron, ed., Food in Medi­eval England: Diet and Nutrition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 176–88.

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a tidal estuary. The Close Rolls for 23 Henry III (1238–1239) are missing and a number of Edward I’s Wardrobe Books have not survived. In all three reigns there are years in which there were no records of deer ordered. In both John and Edward’s reigns payments were made to huntsmen for their wages and the expenses of their dogs, but what was hunted and where were seldom recorded. In Henry’s reign the numbers and types of dog were generally omitted. In all three reigns there were instances of hunters being sent to hunt deer without quantities or gender stipulated. Clearly the totals of recorded deer are a good deal less than the number actually taken or given as gifts. Nevertheless surviving material is sufficient to indicate general trends, identify huntsmen, note who received royal gifts, and the like.2 William I established the framework within which deer hunting operated in medi­ eval England. William, it is said, “loved the stags dearly as though he had been their father.” To enhance his sport William brought Norman forest law and forest courts to England. The Anglo-Saxon kings had had their own hunting preserves. William expanded these greatly and made them subject to severe restrictions to preserve game and to reserve it for his own pursuit. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded: He set apart a vast deer preserve and imposed laws concerning it. Whoever slew a hart or hind Was to be blinded.3

The Deer and the Places They Were Hunted The extent of the royal forests was substantial. Charles Young notes, “In the thirteenth century the area in the royal forest has been worked out to have covered approximately one-fourth of the land area of England, and the forests by that time were somewhat reduced from their greatest extent.”4 Much forest law was promulgated with deer in mind. The four protected animals of the forest were the red deer, the fallow 2  For missing documents see The Magna Carta Project, https://magnacarta.cmp.uea.ac.uk/; Close Rolls of the Reign of Henry III Preserved in the Public Record Office, 14 vols. (London: HMSO, 1902–1938), hereafter, ClRH, 4:148–9; Descriptive List of Wardrobe Books (Public Record Office and British Library) Edward I-Edward IV, List and Index Society, vol. 168 (London, 1980), 3–51, 185–6; and List of Documents relating to the Household and Wardrobe: John to Edward I (London: HMSO, 1964). For John’s payments, e.g. T. Duffus Hardy, ed., Rotuli de Liberate ac de Misis et Praestitis, Regnante Johanne (London: Eyre and Spottiswode, 1844), 248–51; for Henry’s e.g. ClRH, 7: 282–6; for Edward’s e.g. E101/351/11. For missing numbers of deer ordered, e.g. ClRH, 1: 206–7, 288, 588; and ClRH, 7: 64 (“all the bucks that can be found in Inglewood Forest”). For missing gender see E32/349 #8 (“100 bucks or does”). 3  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. G. N. Garmonsway (London: Dent, 1953), 221, and see N. J. Sykes, “The Impact of the Normans on Hunting Practises in England,” in C. M. Woolgar, D. Serjeantson, and T. Waldron, ed., Food in Medi­eval England: Diet and Nutrition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 162–75. 4  Charles R. Young, The Royal Forests of Medi­eval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979), 5. In medi­eval England a forest was an area of jurisdiction, not, as today, a heavily wooded area.



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deer, the roe deer, and the boar. Prohibitions against cutting trees or clearing undergrowth were designed to preserve a source of food for the deer and their woodland cover. Dogs kept in or near the forest were maimed to prevent their running deer.5 The forest and the royal parks then were where the king, and those he gave permission to, hunted. Others might hunt deer in chases, private parks, or hays. A chase was in effect a private forest, an area “in which the beasts of the forest were preserved, but which were nevertheless not subject to the whole body of the forest law.”6 Some chases had been part of a forest before being given away by a king, and owners of chases had some of the same legal rights the kings had in the forest. Parks were enclosed areas in which deer could be kept. Both private individuals and the kings had deer parks, and some of both kinds were located within royal forests and hence subject to forest law. Parks outside royal forests were not subject to forest law. The kings issued licenses for parks, and men could be fined for creating a park without a royal license.7 The word “hay” was used in several different senses, which has led to some confusion. Current thinking is that hays were earthworks used to keep or trap game or possibly temporary traps.8 There were three varieties of deer in England in the later Middle Ages. The red deer (Cervus elaphus) was the largest mammal in Britain. Red deer in the Middle Ages were significantly larger than they are today. Currently stags (or harts) can weigh as much as 420 pounds and stand up to four and a half feet at the shoulder (withers). Hinds stand up to four feet at the shoulder and can weigh over 250 pounds. Fallow deer (Dama dama) were re-introduced to England by the Normans not long after the Conquest. Essentially they “were semi-agricultural animals, not roaming the countryside but enclosed in parks or protected in Forests.”9 The maximum weight of fallow bucks is a little over 200 pounds and the height at the shoulder roughly three feet. Does are slightly shorter and their maximum weight is around 130 pounds.10 The smallest and scarcest medi­eval English deer was the roe deer (Capreolus capreolus). The maximum 5  On the medi­eval English forest generally see Young, Royal Forests, G. T. Turner, Select Pleas of the Forest, Selden Society, 13 (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1901); J. Charles Cox, The Royal Forests of England (London: Methuen, 1905); Charles Petit-Dutaillis, “The Forest,” in Studies and Notes Supplementary to Stubbs’ Constitutional History, trans. W. E. Rhodes, 3 vols. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1908–1929), 2:147–251; and Raymond K. J. Grant, The Royal Forests of England (Phoenis [sic] Mill: Sutton, 1991). 6  Turner, Select Pleas, cix.

7  Turner, Select Pleas, cix–cxvi, cxxii; Young, Royal Forests, 45–46, 96–97; and see James Bond, “Forests, Chases, Warrens, and Parks in Medi­eval Wessex,” in Michael Aston and Carenza Lewis, eds., The Medi­eval Landscape of Wessex, Oxbow Mono­graph, 46 (Oxford: Oxbow, 1994), 115–58, and S. A. Mileson, Parks in Medi­eval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

8  Mileson, Parks, 134n44.

9  Oliver Rackham, The History of the Countryside (London: Dent, 1986), 49.

10  Naomi Sykes, “The Introduction of Fallow Deer to Britain: A Zoo­l ogical Perspective,” Environmental Archaeo­logy 9 (2004): 75–83, and Derek Yalden, The History of British Mammals (London: Poyser, 1986), 153–6. The British Deer Society’s range of height at the shoulder for fallow bucks is 84–94 cm. (3337”), the range of weight is 46–94 kg. (101–207 lbs.); does’ heights are given

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weight of roebucks is seventy pounds; the maximum height at the shoulder roughly two-and-a-half feet. Does are slightly smaller. According to the Master of Game, “The flesh of the roebuck is the most wholesome to eat of any other wild beast’s flesh.11 Fallow deer were the most common of the three varieties. Of the 35,996 deer ordered by thirteenth-century English kings 72 percent (26,070) were fallow, 23 percent (8,212) were red deer, and 3.5 percent were roes (1,257).12 Fallow and red deer for the kings’ table were generally caught by royal huntsmen. Roes however might be bought for holiday feasts. In eleven recorded instances between 1225 and 1252, 687 roes were purchased, more than half (55 percent) of the total ordered for all three reigns.13 The places where deer were taken varied with particular kings. As S. D. Church noted, the hunt tended to follow the king.14 Henry spent most of his reign in central and southern England; Edward was more frequently in the north. But the differences in percentages of deer from particular areas is not that great. Henry ordered 11 percent (3,509) of his deer from the location of the modern six northernmost English counties. Edward’s total for the same area was 14.5 percent (626). The most deer ordered from a single forest, for all three kings, came from the Forest of Dean (1,752). Other large sources were Havering Park, Forest, and Wood (1,534), Inglewood Forest (1,244), the New Forest (1,191), Braydon Forest (1,119) and Chute Forest (1,045). at 73–91 cm. (29–36”) and weights at 35–56 kg. (77–124 lbs.). “Fallow Deer,” The British Deer Society, https://bds.org.uk/information-advice/about-deer/deer-species/fallow-deer/.

11  The British Deer Society lists a range of 60–75 cm. (24–30”) for the height of roebucks at the shoulder, with “males slightly larger than females.” The range of roes’ weights is given at 10–25 kg. (22–55 lbs.). “Roe Deer,” The British Deer Society, https://bds.org.uk/information-advice/aboutdeer/deer-species/roe-deer/. Edward of Norwich, The Master of Game, William A. Baillie-Grohman and F. N. Baillie-Grohman, eds. (1909; reprint, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), hereafter MG, 43–4. 12  Four hundred fifty-seven deer (1 percent) were not identified by type.

13  The main sources for this and subsequent information are the Close Rolls (Record Commission, Rotuli litterarum clausarum in Turri Londinensi asservati, Thomas Duffus Hardy, ed., 2 vols. [London: Eyre and Spottiswode, 1833–1844], hereafter RLC; ClRH, Great Britain, Public Record Office, Calendar of the Close Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office: Edward I, 5 vols. [London: HMSO, 1900–1908], hereafter ClRE); the Liberate Rolls (Great Britain, Public Record Office, Calendar of the Liberate Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, Henry III, 6 vols. [London: HMSO, 1916–1964], hereafter LibR); the Pipe Rolls, (published [Publications of the Pipe Roll Society] and unpublished [Great Britain: National Archives E372/69–153], available online at AngloAmerican Legal Tradition, http://aalt.law.uh.edu, henceforth Pipe; and the “Rotulus Misæ Anno Regni Regis Johannis Quatri Decimi,” in Documents Illustrative of English History in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, Henry Cole, ed. (London Eyre and Spottiswode, 1844), hereafter Cole. Other records including the Patent Rolls and the Household and Wardrobe accounts have also been consulted. For royal purchases of deer see RLC, 2; LibR, 6: 286, Pipe, 80; LibR, 1: 465–6; LibR, 2: 50; Pipe, 90; LibR, 3: 233, 251, 368 (where bucks are also noted); ClRH 6, 250 and ClRH, 7: 64.

14  S. D. Church, “Some Aspects of the Royal Itinerary in the Twelfth Century,” Thirteenth Century England XI (2005), 31–45, at 37. Church provides a close comparison of the movements of King John and the royal hunt in 1212–1213 (pp. 37–38). For a map of “A Simplified Royal Itinerary, 1199–1307, Showing Frequent Visits to Castles and Houses in the Royal Forests,” see Mileson, Parks, 23.



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Deer from non-royal areas during the vacancies of bishoprics and the minority of heirs amounted to almost 10 percent (3,422) of total orders. Most woodland from which substantial numbers of deer were taken had herds of both fallow and red deer. The largest orders of fallow deer came from central, eastern, and southern England, while the greatest numbers of red deer came from Cumberland, Derbyshire and Yorkshire. Red deer comprised 93 percent of all deer taken in both Cumberland and Derbyshire. For York the percentage was 58 percent. Roes were scattered. The largest numbers attributable to specific areas came from Yorkshire (120) and Hampshire (65 + 22 from Chute Forest).15 Roes made up all the deer taken in the Hay of Hereford and 73 percent of the deer taken in Eversley Forest, Hampshire. Most roes however were purchased (56 percent) or taken from non-royal lands (14 percent). Deer were generally hunted seasonally: male deer from Easter to Michaelmas (29 September), female deer from mid-September to Candlemas (2 February) though there were orders for both kinds at other times as well. Female deer generally give birth in May and June, which affected when they were hunted.16 The underlying objectives for deer in both forests and parks were to maintain numbers and physical condition and to protect them against adverse circumstances. Occasionally, royal huntsmen were forbidden to hunt in areas where deer were scarce and food might be provided for deer in the winter. In 1474, the Scottish parliament prohibited hunting deer during storms or when snow was on the ground.17 There also seems to have been a policy of selecting deer by gender from some forests, particularly red deer. While the over-all ratio of stags taken to hinds was 80 percent, 930 stags were taken from the Forest of the Peak, 355 stags from Cumberland County, and 240 stags from Cheshire Forest, but with no hinds taken in these three locations. On the other hand, 150 hinds and no stags came from Galtres Forest and 31 stags and 168 hinds from Grovely Forest. Deer taken from parks also provide evidence of a deliberate selection strategy. Very few red or roe deer came from parks: 1 percent and 0 percent (59 and 0 of 3,472) respectively, as compared to 23 percent and 3.5 percent from all sources. This may be explained in part by the location of royal parks, most of which were in areas where fallow deer predominated. More striking is the difference in ratios of bucks to does. The ratio of bucks to does taken from all areas was 58 percent; from parks it was 40 percent. When parks were restocked more does were included for the sake of breeding.18 15  Part of Chute Forest was in Wiltshire.

16  Lib,1: 485. See “Seasons of Hunting” in the appendix to The Master of Game, 253–5. While most royal orders came within the indicated periods, both male and female deer were ordered in almost all months. For a prohibition of hunting after Michaelmas see LibR, 1: 485. See also Reproductive Seasonality in Deer, http://www.ansciwisc.edu. 17  For prohibitions, e.g. ClRH, 3: 23, 534, in 1256, the Park of Havering was said to have been destroyed when 100 does were taken by Guy de Lusignan and Robert Mares, ClRH, 9: 262–3. For feeding in winter, ClRH, 6: 414, and LibR, 4: 108–9; for the Scottish Parliament, see John M. Gilbert, Hunting and Hunting Reserves in Medi­eval Scotland (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1979), 44.

18  In sixteen instances of restocking, from 1232 to 1278, 541 does and 232 bucks were shifted from one park or forest area to another.

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Consequently more does were available for hunting in parks. Parks only provided 11% of orders of deer, but several parks were drawn on for substantial numbers of deer, notably Havering (1,069 + 100 from Havering and Hadleigh Parks), Woodstock (632), and Guildford (351). One wonders how wild the deer kept in parks were. They were protected from their natural enemies, and sheds and food might be provided during the winter. Jean Birrel uses the phrase “deer farming.” Park deer were probably more approachable than unenclosed deer. There are even contemporary references to tame deer. A letter close of Henry III refers to “cervum regis domesticum de castro Glouc,” and according to one fourteenth-century tale, “a tame stag in England, accustomed to eat bread and drink beer, falls into a pit when drunk and breaks his leg, he refuses beer ever after.”19

Types of Deer Hunting

Deer hunting could be for sport, or for food and skins. The two types might overlap. On various occasions brothers of the king and select others, including relatively modest royal servants, were allowed to take deer for Henry III’s larder. Conversely, poachers who killed the king’s deer might also have gotten a good deal of enjoyment from the chase.20 Hunting for sport was a mark of social prestige. Only the upper classes had the leisure to pursue a sport for its own sake. Training in hunting was part of the education of young nobles. As David Crouch notes, with the emergence and definition of an English noble class such “indicators of a noble lifestyle” as “hunting one’s forests” became “much more sophisticated, exclusive, and self-conscious during the twelfth century.”21 In the later Middle Ages, as the middle classes acquired wealth and leisure time, deer hunting became increasingly ritualized. For example, there was a proper way of carving up a dead deer, which included the kinds of cuts the huntsmen and valets would make, the specific parts of the deer that were to be removed, and the people to whom they would be given. There was even a prescribed order according to which parts of the carcass were to be carried on the homeward procession. Both hunting and falconry developed specialized vocabularies and manuals to elucidate 19  Mileson, Parks, 77–78; Jean Birrell, “Deer and Deer Farming in Medi­eval England,” Agricultural History Review, 40, no. 2 (1992): 112–26; ClRH, 1: 537; J. A. Herbert, Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manu­scripts in the British Museum, vol. 3 (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1910), 3: 646. In “Deer as Pets and Prey in Medi­eval England,” a paper given at the Medi­eval Congress at Kalamazoo in 2010, Ryan R. Judkins gives some additional examples.

20  In 1252 Robert de Neville, later sheriff of Northumberland, and twenty-six associates, including the abbot of Byland, the prior of Newburgh, and the cellarer of St. Leonard, York, were sent to aid the seneschal of Galtres Forest in taking deer for the royal Christmas (CLRH, 7: 186). On poaching see Jean Birrell, “Who Poached the King’s Deer: A Study in Thirteenth Century Crime,” Midland History 7 (1982): 9–25, and Jean Birrell, “Peasant Deer Poachers in the Medi­eval Forest,” in R. Britnell and J. Hatcher, eds., Progress and Problems in Medi­eval England: Essays in Honour of Edward Miller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 68–88.

21  David Crouch, The English Aristocracy, 1070–1272: A Social Transformation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 193.



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procedure and language. One who did not follow proper form or use correct termino­ logy was immediately exposed as a social upstart.22 The two main methods of hunting deer were the drive, also known as bow and stable hunting, and the chase. At a drive hunters took up a waiting position, called a “tryst,” and later a “stand,” and the deer were driven toward them by beaters or by servants using unleashed dogs. The hunters, often accompanied by dogs of their own, would kill the deer by throwing spears or shooting arrows. The numbers of both men and deer involved could be considerable. The sixteenth-century Scottish Bishop John Leslie wrote that in a drive the beaters “might include 500 to 1000 men [who] would drive the deer in from a radius of 10 to 20 miles to a narrow valley where the lords and noblemen waited.” To get so many men would involve resources beyond a king’s or noble’s normal household and certain tenants on the lands of the bishop of Durham were required to provide this service when drives were held. A variation on the drive would be to combine it with a form of stalking. Hunters would wait along deer trails while the deer were driven in their direction. As J. C. Russell notes: Theoretically, the hunters are in no danger of shooting each other, since each hunter shoots along one trail only…. But if a second line of hunters were to be posted behind the first line, its arrows might easily endanger the line ahead. The idea would be for this second line to stop or chase wounded deer not killed by the first line. But deer often move very fast: an archer would usually have only one shot. He might even tend to shoot at anything up the trail which moved…. This type of hunt then emphasized personal prowess of the archers rather than interest in following the stags.

Russell suggests that such hunts may have led to the deaths while hunting of William II, of Robert Curthose’s son Richard, of Miles of Gloucester, Earl of Hereford, and of Malcolm Moreville, all of whom were killed by arrows before the mid-twelfth century. In later years this kind of hunting was no longer practiced.23 The three main ways of chasing deer were stalking, coursing, and par force hunting. All could involve hunting either a single animal or a small group. There were two kinds of stalking. The first consisted of following a deer with a dog trained to locate by scent. The second kind was to wait at a deer crossing or up in a tree, possibly in some sort of camouflage or hidden behind a stalking horse. This type of waiting was also a method frequently used by poachers.24 Coursing generally took place in open 22  In general see the references in note 1 above, and David Burnley Courtliness and Literature in Medi­eval England (London: Longman, 1998), 106. For reasons for this formalization see Nicholas Orme, “Medi­eval Hunting: Fact and Fancy,” in Chaucer’s England: Literature in Historical Context, ed. Barbara Hanawalt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 133–53, at 141.

23  Josiah C. Russell, “Death Along the Deer Trails,” in Twelfth Century Studies (New York: AMS, 1978), 76–82.

24  MG, 188–93; Almond, Medi­eval Hunting, 82–4; Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk, chap. 3; Gilbert, Hunting and Hunting Reserves, 55; Griffin, Blood Sport, 51; Hazlitt, Tenures of Land, 176, 345; Boldon Buke, William Greenwell, ed., Surtees Society, 25 (Durham: Andrews, 1852), 2–37. For a contemporary description of a drive see the account in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, trans. Burton Raffel (New York: Mentor, 2009), 90–91, 93–94, 97–98, 105–6.

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country. It consisted of running game down with greyhounds (who hunt by sight) with hunters following on horseback. The greyhounds would attack the deer, hold on, and be dragged along, while the deer had its throat torn and legs dislocated. 25 The last form, par force hunting, was considered the most noble. The full phrase is par force des chiens (by force of dogs) and can be thought of as a combination of coursing and stalking: chasing deer uses scenting dogs, whereas in coursing only running dogs are used. Par force hunting was the most frequently practiced type of sport in most of Europe, though the drive seems to have been more important in Anglo-Saxon England and medi­eval Scotland.26 The purpose of par force hunting was to bag the biggest possible deer. Before the hunt started a huntsman was sent out, accompanied by a scenting dog trained not to bark, to locate a suitable quarry. On the huntsman’s return he told the assembled hunters what he had found and they decided which of the possible animals to pursue. The master huntsman then arranged for relays of dogs to be placed at strategic locations. A horn was blown, the deer was raised, and the hunt was underway. The deer was chased by the relays of dogs until finally cornered and killed.27 But although the treatises, art, and literature were concerned with sport, most deer hunting was probably done for food by professional huntsmen. There is no precise information about the methods used by the royal huntsmen. Various record entries suggest that all kinds of methods may have been used. Large numbers of dogs and the presence of a number of archers may indicate drives. Orders to hunt “two great stags” and “a famous stag” suggest par force hunting. But the usual methods used were stalking and coursing. 28 Huntsmen were generally sent out in pairs though numbers could vary. Often the same men worked together, in some cases over many years.29 The regular royal huntsmen seem to have specialized in taking particular varieties of deer. Ninety- two percent of the deer Henry de Candover and the men he hunted with took were fallow (4,803 of 5,193), but his relatives Philip, Richard, and William and their men took more red deer: 76 percent (2,323 of 3,070), 25  MG, 142, 63; Gilbert, Hunting and Hunting Reserves, 56.

26  MG, 58.

27  MG, 130–80.

28  On 15 September 1212, expenses were paid for two nights for 300 greyhounds and eleven bercelets sent from Nottingham to Salvata; on 20 September 1212, 335 greyhounds were paid for four days during which they went from Northampton to Waltham at the precept of King John. On a number of occasions in 1212–1213 the royal huntsmen Ferling Venator, Roger Blundell, and Thomas Brademar were paid for provisions for over 200 dogs (Cole, 241, 243, 248, 250, 253). For archers RLC, 1, 123; E/101/351/11, f. 2 and E101/351/20, f. 2. For the stags see ClRH, 5: 191, 224. For a full description of a group of royal huntsmen, their assistants, and their dogs from May to December 1212, see Church, “Some Aspects of the Royal Itinerary,” 37–38. 29  For example, John le Fol and Master Guido hunted together from 1225 to 1229. After the latter’s disappearance from the records, John’s regular partner from 1229 to 1245 was Philip of Candover. From 1245 to 1255 Philip was accompanied by Richard of Candover, who, in turn, was partnered by William of Candover (Philip’s son) from 1256 to 1272 (ClRH, passim).



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75 percent (3,658 of 4,861) and 72 percent (1,264 of 1,752) respectively.30 A variety of dogs accompanied the huntsmen. These included scenting dogs (limers, bercelets, and brachets); running dogs (greyhounds, canes currentes), stag hounds (canes cervettis) for red deer, and buck hounds (canes damerettis) for fallow.31 Packs of dogs could be quite large. On 2 July 1212, Ferling Venator was paid for the expenses of 258 greyhounds, twenty-five canes de mota (generic hounds), and for the wages of sixty keepers. On 15 September, the payment was for 300 greyhounds, sixtyfour keepers, eleven bercelets, and two grooms to keep the bercelets. A 1214 order provided that each dog handler in a specific group should be responsible for four greyhounds, but in practice the number of handlers per dog varied.32 Numbers of deer to be taken ranged from the 240 bucks ordered from the late Earl of Gloucester’s lands in 1262 to a single “famous stag.” Across all three reigns the average number of deer ordered from a single group of huntsmen was around thirty. At times qualifications were made: deer to be hunted were “does fit to be chased,” “all fat bucks,” and in 1242, “venison…which is not good and fat enough to send to the king beyond seas” was sent to Prince Edward.33 Killed deer were salted and shipped in barrels, sometimes to where the king was, sometimes to Westminster, and at other times to the local sheriff, who would send the deer on when required. Often venison was sent to the kings when they were overseas. Sometimes live deer, caught in nets, were taken, presumably to stock parks.34

Deer For Royal Consumption

The total recorded number of deer ordered by the three kings was 35,996: 917 by John, 30,769 by Henry, and 4,310 by Edward. For reasons noted earlier, the number is misleading. Perhaps the best indicator of royal consumption is the 29,238 deer ordered by Henry III between 1233 and 1271, on average, 750 deer a year during this period. The greatest number ordered in any of those years was the 1,688 ordered in 1251; the smallest the sixty-five ordered in 1235, though an additional 150 were recorded in 1235–1236. Forty percent (12,164) of Henry’s orders throughout his reign were designated for holidays and for two designated celebrations. Of these 43 percent (5,183) 30  The numbers of deer taken are for the groups to which the named huntsmen belonged. Some­ times the men named here hunted together. 31  Thomas, Power and Pleasure, 26–27; Turner, Select Pleas, 134–6, 138–9, 141, 144.

32  Cole, 235, 241; RLC, 1, 206. In John’s reign there was roughly one keeper for every nine dogs; the median was six, but grooms might also help with the dogs. 33  LibR,1: 282; RLC, 1, 123; LibR, 2: 144.

34  In John’s reign game carts are noted, e.g. RLC, 1, 15. 16. 18, 19, and (for details of a cart) 141. For deer sent overseas, e.g. RLC, 1, 206 and LibR, 4: 160. For stags “to be sent day by day as they are taken,” see LibR, 2: 256, for deer to be carried “to the king wherever he is” LibR, 2: 263, and for deer to be “kept safely until the king shall otherwise order” LibR, 1: 266–7. In 1239 the Guardians of the Bishopric of Winchester were compensated for “chines and loins of 15 does and twelve roebucks put in bread and sent to the king against Easter” (LibR 1, 390). For live deer see LibR, 6: 163, ClRE, 2: 498. Live deer were also taken for restocking parks, ClRH, 7: 313–4, 453. For the role of the forest warden in the general process see Grant, Royal Forests, 102.

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were for Christmas, 37 percent (4,518) for the two holidays of St. Edward, nine percent (1065) for Whitsun, five percent (654) for Easter, and smaller amounts for various other religious feast days. Henry also ordered 119 deer for the purifications of Queen Eleanor in 1239 and 1254 and forty deer for a meeting of Parliament in 1260. The kinds of deer served up on the various holidays is significant. Eighty-two percent (4,233) of the Christmas deer were female, as were 86 percent (651 of 757) of those for the Deposition of St. Edward (5 January), while 97 percent (3,385 of 3,501) of the deer for the Translation of St. Edward (13 October) and 66 percent (704) of the deer for Whitsun were male. Almost 70 percent (794) of the 1,142 roes ordered were for holidays, notably 388 for Whitsun (36 percent of all deer ordered for that holiday) and 196 (30 percent of all deer ordered) for Easter.35 Although the amount of venison ordered was large, it is doubtful if many members of the court got to taste it. There are no relevant documents for the thirteenth century, but a royal household ordinance of 1525–1526 limited venison to “the King’s Majesty and the Queen’s Grace.”36 Deer were also important as a prestige food for non-royal households. The household of Bishop Swinfield consumed forty deer between 30 September 1289 and 23 July 1290. Archbishop Boniface of Savoy, whose estates included deer parks, entered into an agreement with John Fitz Alan to provide him with twentysix deer yearly. It may be noted that Boniface’s parks were sufficiently well-stocked for Henry to take 179 deer from them in the two years following Boniface’s death. One gathers that when venison was available, the very well to do ate it fairly regularly; the less fortunate served it only on special occasions.37

Royal Gifts Involving Hunting

The English kings made several kinds of deer-related gifts. The most frequent were the deer themselves: venison for the table or, less frequently, live deer to stock parks. Other gifts included allowances to hunt in the royal forest or in royal parks, permissions to establish parks or build deer leaps, and tithes of deer. These gifts were significant types of royal patronage. Owning a deer park or serving deer at a feast were important symbols of status. Being allowed to hunt was a gift of pleasure as well as a

35  These are all figures for Henry. There is no information for John and very limited information for Edward. In seven years between 1274 and 1280, the latter ordered 189 does and seven bucks for Christmas, and twelve bucks and fifteen does for one Easter, ClRE, 1: 140, 261, 277, 486; 2, PatRE,1: 260.

36  On this and examples of late-medi­eval consumption of venison by nobles and churchmen, see Robin S. Oggins, “Game in the Medi­eval English Diet,” Studies in Medi­eval and Renaissance History, 3rd ser., 5 (2008): 201–17.

37  Robin S. Oggins, “Game in the Medi­eval English Diet.” For Swinfield see A Roll of the Household Expenses of Richard de Swinfield, Bishop of Hereford, 2 vols., ed. John Webb, Camden Society, o. s. (London: Camden Society, 1853–1855), 1: 3–108. For Boniface’s compact see ClRE, 1: 34–5; for the deer taken by the king, LibR, 6: 138, 165; ClRH, 14: 221–2, 232, 311, 360, 385.



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mark of importance. While all gifts could be seen as royal rewards, they also implied bonds of obligation.38 Over one hundred park licenses were granted during the thirteenth century.39 Grants were also made for deer leaps: “gaps in the perimeter fence with pits on the inside, allowing deer to jump into the park, but not to get back out.”40 Tithes were granted on occasion but most grants were only for a single year’s tithe. The exception was a reconfirmation of a grant of Henry II to the church and canons of St. Mary’s Salisbury for all the tithes of the New Forest, Pauncet, Bokholt, Andvre and Husseburne and all the forests of Wilts, Dorset and Berks of…all the tithes of the said forest of all venison except the tithe of venison taken with the buckstall (stabilia) in the forest of Wyndesovre; and granting that the tithe of such venison, so often as it is taken, shall be delivered to the messenger of the said canons bearing these letters.41

In several cases the grants were for arrears; in three cases the tithes were noted as continuations of grants by previous kings. Most grants were to monastic houses, the exceptions being to the Bishop of London and the church and canons of Salisbury. Tithes were for specific counties or forests and only nineteen of sixty entries had numbers of deer specified. The greatest tithe recorded was the thirteen does the Abbot of Peterborough received from Kingscliff Forest in September 1264, but the average tithe was seven deer and the Abbot of St. Mary’s, York, got only one stag in 1244.42 Though tithe deer were technically patronage, recipients no doubt regarded them as their due. There were three legal ways by which people could hunt on royal lands. They could be given permission to hunt in a particular forest, generally for a given period of time.43 They could be allowed to take a specific number of deer for themselves, or they could be sent to hunt deer for the king. Those of higher rank might have additional opportunities. The Charter of the Forest in 1217 (Chapter 11) made specific provision for any archbishop, bishop, earl, or baron passing through the king’s forest to take one or two beasts by view of the forester. In the 1225 version of the Charter, it was limited to occasions when they were going to the king on his order or returning after doing so.44 38  Thomas, Power and Pleasure, 42–43, 173. See also C. M. Woolgar, “Gifts of Food in Late Medi­eval England,” Journal of Medi­eval History 37 (2011), 6–18; and Lars Kjær, “Food, Drink, and Ritualised Communication in the Household of Eleanor de Montfort, February to August 1265,” Journal of Medi­eval History 37 (2011), 75–89. 39  Mileson, Parks, 128, fig. 19.

40  Mileson, Parks, 33; e.g. CPRH. 4: 194, 484; 6: 177; and see CPRE, 439, in which the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield is granted a deer leap 200 feet broad. 41  CPRH, 6: 399–400.

42  ClRH, 12: 365; ClRH, 5: 223.

43  Sometimes there might be restrictions. William Brewer, for example, was allowed to hunt in the New Forest in 1219, but without bows or greyhounds, RLC, 1, 327. 44  David Crook, “The Taking of Venison in the Forest of Essex, 1198 to 1207,” Essex Archaeo­logy and History, 26 (1995): 126–32, at 129, citing Turner, Select Pleas, xi, n. 2.

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King John was particularly generous in allowing people to take deer for themselves. The total recorded number he specified was 1,334, as compared to 876 by Henry and 188 by Edward, both of whom had considerably longer reigns. Eighty-five percent (1,134 deer) of the data for John comes from a single surviving forest document recording deer taken in the Forest of Essex between 1198 and 1207.45 This suggests that the actual number of permissions John gave was considerably more. John allowed greater numbers of deer to be taken than his successors. Geoffrey Fitz Peter, Earl of Essex, was allotted 455 deer in three gifts; Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury, was allowed 188 in two gifts, and two other major beneficiaries received eighty-nine and sixty-two deer respectively.46 The most deer Henry permitted others to take at one time were the fifty stipulated for Edward of Abingdon, Archbishop of Canterbury in 1235, while Edward’s maximum allowance was twenty-five.47 If one averages numbers of deer per permit, John’s figure is twenty-two, Henry’s nine, and Edward’s seven. It should be noted that the grantees did not necessarily take the deer themselves. Some of Henry’s grants included such phrases as “his huntsman may take” and “her men may take them.”48 Allowing people to hunt for the king was a way of getting more deer while also providing entertainment. During Henry III’s reign, deer were taken for the king by not only the royal huntsmen but by a great range of others. These included Henry’s brother, Richard Earl of Cornwall, two half-brothers, William de Valence and William Longespée, Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, Earl Warenne, the justiciar, the Justice of Chester, sheriffs, guardians of vacant episcopal sees, forest officials, and, significantly, a number of men from the royal household.49 Among them were royal valets, king’s yeomen, a porter, the king’s pantler, and a royal butler (pincernam).50 At least one of these men hunted frequently for the king. Robert de Mares, identified both as a royal valet and a king’s yeoman, was sent to hunt deer forty-one times between 1240 and 1256 and he and the groups he was associated with were assigned to bring back 1,081 deer.51 While royal huntsmen usually went out in pairs, the valets at times went out in groups of six.52 Clearly, being allowed to hunt on royal land was a recognized fringe benefit for at least some members of the royal household. 45  Commented on and transcribed by Crook in “The Taking of Venison in the Forest of Essex.”

46  Crook, “The Taking of Venison in the Forest of Essex,” 130–3. 47  ClRH, 3: 116; ClRE, 3: 108. 48  ClRH, 4: 205; 10: 258–59.

49  For Richard of Cornwall see LibR, 2: 314; 4: 272; ClRH, 6: 160, 322, and 7: 101, where he was allowed ten bucks for himself. For William de Valence, ClRH, 6: 327. For William Longespée, CLRH, 2: 47. For Roger Bigod, ClRH, 9: 120, 124. For Earl Warenne ClRH, 9: 335. For the justiciar, ClRH, 12: 166. For the Justice of Chester, LibR, 2: 70.

50  For royal valets, e.g. ClRH, 1: 311; 5: 534; 8: 52. For king’s yeomen, ClRH, 4:195; LibR, 2: 364. For Francis the Porter ClRH, 11: 66. For Francigenam, king’s pantler, ClRH, 6: 322. For John de Somerset, pincernam regis, ClRH, 10: 432. 51  ClRH, 4: 195, 383 and ClRH, 4–9 passim.

52  ClRH, 3: 229; 6: 467; 9: 55.



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The total number of deer given was 27,432: 3,049 by John, 18,790 by Henry, and 5,593 by Edward. The gifts fell into two categories: live deer for stocking parks and deer for consumption. Individuals might receive one kind or both. Here too King John was particularly generous. In all he made ninety-nine grants, more than thirty deer per grant. Twelve of those gifts were for 1,030 live deer, on average eighty-six deer per grant. All but twenty were for fallow deer. The most gifts of deer John made in a year came in 1213, the year, he made peace with the papacy. In that year John gave out 1,047 deer, almost seven times the previous high of 153 in 1203. On 18 July 1213, John “issued a charter stating that he had sworn…to obey the terms of the peace [with the pope].” On 24–25 July, he made gifts to four of the “exiled” bishops. Hugh of Wells, Bishop of Lincoln, received 300 deer; Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Eustace, Bishop of Ely, each got fifty; and twenty-two deer went to William of SainteMere-Eglise, Bishop of London. In November John made further grants of 200 deer to Langton and 100 to Hugh of Wells.53 Table 4.1 shows how bishops fared particularly well compared to other groups. Table 4.1: Gifts of deer by group – John. Some recipients are classified in more than one group.

Groups Extended royal family

Nobles

Barons

Knights

Recipients

Gifts

Deer

Average deer per person

Average deer per gift

3

4

33

11

8

14 20 4

25 30 4

1008 443

72

22

40

15

62

15.5

15.5

1148

128

77

Clergy

13

22

1209

Monastic orders

2

5

57

28.5

11

3

1.5

1.5

Bishops

9

15

Royal service

32

53

1487

All gifts

65

99

3049

Women (both countesses)

2

2

93

46 47

55

28 31

Men in royal service benefitted much more than those who were not. The four nobles in royal service received 577 deer, 57 percent of the total for the group. The twelve barons in royal service got 348, 78.5 percent for the group. The two knights in royal service got 44 deer (71 percent), the other two knights eighteen. It is also worth noting how few knights got gifts. Clergy made up some 20 percent of the recipients. Two archbishops of Canterbury were major beneficiaries: Stephen Langton received 250 deer, Hubert Walter 208. The Archbishop of Dublin got thirty. Hugh of Wells, Bishop 53  Sidney Painter, The Reign of King John (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1940), 194–95, RLC, 1, 138, 146, 154, 179.

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of Lincoln, got the most deer at 400. Other episcopal recipients were the bishops of Bath, Coventry (bishop-elect), Ely, London, and Worcester. The Master of the Temple received three gifts of thirty-six deer; the Prior of the Hospitallers, two of twenty-one. The other two clerical recipients, Thomas de Neville and John, clerk of Plessy, received single gifts of two deer each. Of John’s total gifts, 94 percent were fallow, six percent red, and he made a lone gift of four roes. More does (800) were given than bucks (757); the ratio of stags to hinds was three to one (124 to 40). With a much longer reign and fewer lost records, it is not surprising that Henry gave away more than four times the recorded number of live deer for parks than his father did: 4,864 in 329 grants. Most deer given were fallow (4,758–97.5 percent), and does (3,304) outnumbered bucks (1,109) by three to one.54 Eighty-four red deer and 37 roes were among those given. Including live deer Henry gave away 18,790 deer in 3,483 gifts, an average of 5.4 deer per gift. Seventy-three deer were not identified by variety. Fallow deer made up 88 percent of the gifts with 55 percent bucks (8,799/7,178), 539 fallow deer having no gender specified. Red deer comprised 10.5 percent of the total, with, as in John’s case, roughly three stags given to each hind (1,503/454). Of the 238 roes given (1.3 percent), the ratio of male to female was 87 percent (180/28) with thirty gender unspecified. Table 4.2 shows that on average, people higher in the social hierarchy in Henry’s reign received more gifts per person and more deer per gift. The royal family and extended family did best, followed by nobles, barons, and knights respectively. Bishops fared about as well as nobles. Clergy and people in royal service had similar numbers of deer gifts per person and deer per gift. Henry’s individual grants were smaller than John’s. Henry’s largest single gift was for 120 live deer to the Queen’s uncle, Philip of Savoy, Count of Flanders, in December 1238. Another gift was for 100 deer, one was for ninety, five for sixty, and the rest were for fifty or fewer. However, some recipients received multiple gifts over the years and the extended royal family did especially well. Henry’s brother, Richard of Cornwall, was given 691 deer in twenty-seven separate grants; Henry’s sister Eleanor got 402 in forty-two gifts; Peter of Savoy, 352 deer in twelve; the king’s half-brother, William de Valence, 224 in fourteen; the king’s uncle, Aymer de Valence, eighty-six deer in five gifts; and among the non-royals, Roger de Quincy received 288 in thirty-three, and Gilbert Marshal 244 in fourteen. As in John’s case, people in royal service received significantly more than those who were not. Henry’s gifts went to a broad range of royal servants: the constable of Dover; royal clerks and chaplains; a servant of the chapel; the royal almoner, physician, and surgeon; Reginald, tailor of the wardrobe; royal valets; and royal hawkers and falconers. Wives and mothers were given deer, as was the nephew of the legate. Some deer were given in alms: the legs and haunches of ten hinds to the Hospital of St. John’s, Oxford, and ten deer to the poor in the hospital of Bindon. 54  Most gifts of live deer in all three reigns have greater numbers of females than males in order to facilitate breeding. In Henry’s over-all total of gifts, does (7,696) outnumbered bucks (3,874) by almost two to one.



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Table 4.2: Gifts of deer by group – Henry III. Some recipients are classified in more than one group.

Groups

Royal family

Extended family

Average deer Average per person deer per gift

Recipients

Gifts

Deer

7

84

1041

149

12.4 7.6

26

212

2472

95

Nobles

53

352

2682

51

Knights

177

579

1985

11

Bishops

65

Barons Clergy

Abbots

Abbesses*

68

254 36

11

324 855 348 156 18

Royal service

397

1800

Wives

113

235

Household Women All gifts

171 145

1009

784 389

3483

1480 4774 2743 1118 61

8707 3416 725

1859

18790

22 19 42 31 6

22 19 6

13 19

* If we disregard the eight gifts of twenty-five deer to Ela Longespée, a royal relative by marriage, the average number of deer given to each abbess, in a single gift, is 3.6.

11.6 4.6 3.4 5.6 7.9 7.2

3.4 4.8 4.4 3.1 4.8 5.4

Outside the royal and extended royal family, gifts to women tended to be substantially fewer than those to men. The exceptions were where women held power in their own right. But Henry did not forget women. Unlike John and Edward, Henry made 235 gifts to 113 women, specifically designated as wives. The largest gift was for twentyeight deer; most of the gifts were modest. Sixty-four of the women received only a single gift and most of them were small: forty of them were for one or two deer. While reasons for royal gifts of game were generally not recorded, some were noted, and those were often for festive occasions. William Cornhill received sixty-four deer for his consecration as bishop of Coventry; and Henry Lexington was given twenty brockets (young bucks) or does for his installation feast at Lincoln.55 Richard, abbot of Cerne, got seven does for his benediction, while Constance, abbess of Wherwell, received two bucks for her installation. Gilbert Marshal served thirty royal deer at the feast of his knighting; William de Longespée got nine for his. Two stags were given to the two sons of Sybil Giffard to celebrate their Oxford inception, lecturing in law; Ela, countess of Salisbury, received a buck for the nuptial feast of the former earl’s daughter, Marie; the wife of Hugh de Plessis was given two does for her lying-in; the wife of Nicholas de 55  RLC, 1, 182; ClRH, 8: 54. In all, Henry gave deer to forty-nine of eighty bishops of English sees, counting offices, and not including nominations that were quashed. He also gave deer to bishops of Bazas, Glasgow, Llandaff, Meath, Ossery, and to three archbishops of Dublin.

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Haudlo was sent three bucks for her churching; and the Bishop of Carlisle, ill at Reading, was sent two roes. Henry also gave relatively modest numbers of deer to people for a number of years: enough venison to be featured at an annual feast. Geoffrey de Langley received sixteen deer in seven years between 1246 and 1252. The greatest number in any year was four. His wife, Matilda was given twenty-four deer in eleven gifts between 1238 and 1255. Guy de Rochfort received thirty-four deer in eleven different years between 1248 to 1263. His highest number in any given year was six. Nicholas de Cogenhoe received twenty-two deer in ten years between 1254 and 1272. The year he received five was probably to make up for the previous year when there were none.56 Henry gave deer for recipients to celebrate Christmas, Easter, Whitsun, the Assumption of the Virgin, the feast for the translation of St. Thomas Martyr, the feast of St. Benedict, the feast of St. Peter in Chains, and the feast of St. Edmund. Eighty-eight percent of the deer given away were fallow deer, ten percent red deer, and only one percent roes. This compares to 74 percent fallow deer, twenty-three percent red deer, and three percent roes ordered for the royal household. Edward gave away 1,107 live deer in fifty-four gifts, an average of 20.5 deer per gift. The largest single gift was 100 deer to Gilbert de Umfraville. Queen Eleanor received one gift of eighty-four, and all the other gifts were for forty and under. Fallow deer (1,073) made up 97 percent of the total. Four hinds and no stags were given out and all thirty roes went to the Queen.57 In total Edward gave away 5,593 deer. Five percent (283) were unspecified. Of the remainder 90 percent (4,788) were fallow, seven percent (361) red, and three percent (161) were roe. The male-to-female ratio of fallow deer (3,181/1,414) was 69 percent, for stags to hinds (331/30) it was 92 percent, and for roe deer (154/7) it was 96 percent. Edward’s largest gifts were 109 to Prince Edward, 100 to Pope Clement V, and the gifts of 100 and eighty-four live deer previously mentioned. Queen Eleanor received 204 deer in six gifts. Men in royal service did well: Edward’s chief councilor, Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, received 133 deer in three gifts; The Lord Chancellor, Robert Burnell, got eighty deer in four. The greatest number of deer given in a single year was 460 in 1283, and from 1298 on, gifts were fewer than 100 a year except for 1306, the year of the gift to Pope Clement. Table 4.3 shows that Edward’s gifts to the royal family, the extended royal family, and to women were greater than Henry’s. Gifts to nobles, knights, and people in royal service were somewhat less.

56  ClRH, 5: 179 (Cerne); 10: 376 (Wherwell); 2: 440 (Marshal); 2: 210–1 (Longespée); 6: 459; (Giffard); RLC, 2, 200 (Salisbury); ClRH, 14: 171 (de Plessis); 11:108 (Haudro); LibR, 2: 236; ClRH, 5–7 (Langley); 6–12 (de Rochfort); 8–14 (Cogenhoe).

57  ClRE, 1–6 passim. All the Queen’s roes came from the estates of the Bishop of Winchester. ClRE, 2: 142, 148. Among them were a white roe doe and five white roebucks.



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Table 4.3: Gifts of deer by group – Edward I. Some recipients are classified in more than one group.

Recipients

Gifts

Deer

Average deer per person

Average deer per gift

Royal family

7

15

389

56

26

Nobles

19

66

789

42

12

1249

11

6

Groups Extended family Barons

9

40

27

119

Knights

113

207

Bishops

22

67

Abbots

9

Clergy

75

Monastic ordersa b

2

506

811

153

1437

12

12

22

56

20

19

11

241

26

11

6

353

2416

14

Womend

35

51

756

22

All groups

35

328

83

675

9

34

167

Household

7

751

Royal service c

19

721

5593

21

17

6

7

9

15 8

The Master of the Temple and the Prior of the Hospitallers each received one gift of six deer.

a

Edward gave no deer to abbesses.

b c

Four members of the royal household received twenty-nine gifts of 414 deer. The other thirty-one received fifty-four gifts of 307 deer, an average of nineteen deer per person and six deer per gift.

If one subtracts the 526 deer given to four queens, a princess, and two countesses in seventeen gifts, the other twenty-seven women received thirty-four gifts of 230 deer, on average nine deer per woman and seven deer per gift.

d

Overview

The total number of orders for and gifts of deer for all three kings was 63,428: 52,750 (83.2 percent) came from forests, 4,135 (6.5 percent) from non-royal lands, and 4,036 (6.3 percent) from royal parks.58 The forests from which the most deer came were Essex (3,391), Dean (2,937), Braydon (2,408), and Rockingham (2,042). All provided mostly fallow deer with percentages ranging from 99 percent (Rockingham) to 84 percent (Dean). Each also furnished some red deer. Dean supplied thirty-nine roes, Rockingham, six, Essex and Braydon, none. Most forests supplied roughly equal numbers of bucks and does, but in a few cases the ratio was roughly two bucks to each doe.59 The main sources for red deer were in northern England: Inglewood (1,832), the Peak (943), and Pickering (745). Virtually all large forests except Selwood pro58  During various episcopal vacancies during Henry III’s reign, 939 deer were taken from the Bishop of Winchester’s estates. 59  Dean 1591/815; Rockingham 1559/926; the New Forest 1138/540; Wychwood 736/330.

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vided some red deer. The number of stags taken was generally greater than the number of hinds; an extreme case was Inglewood, from which 1583 stags and only 249 hinds were drawn. The greatest number of roes were purchased (572); the next greatest number (239) came from non-royal lands, followed by the Hay of Hereford with eighty-eight. As one would expect, the very large orders or gifts of deer were either taken mostly from royal forests or parks with large herds or from non-royal lands. The largest number of deer given by all three kings went to people of high rank.

Why did the kings make gifts and what effects did those gifts have?

Gift exchange was an important part of medi­eval life. Largesse was one of the virtues of the nobility, and when in the early 1250s Henry III reduced royal expenditure, he was criticized accordingly. Kings were expected to be generous.60 Royal gifts took many forms. The most obvious were land, offices, privileges, and money. Deer were in a secondary category which did not result in financial gain. Other such gifts included royal gifts of robes, wine, trees, and of fish from the royal vivaria. At times when deer were given, other secondary gifts might be bestowed as well. The kings made gifts to assert their power, to gain or maintain influence, as marks of favor, to reward royal service, out of benevolence, and, in the case of the Church, for “the purchase of paradise.”61 Gift-giving was a complex process which might involve any or a combination of several motives. A number of John’s gifts were flamboyant and served to magnify his importance as well as attempting to fulfill some other purpose. Thomas says John’s grants of deer “had an important role in the relationship between king and magnates.”62 John’s gifts of large numbers of deer to formerly exiled bishops were no doubt attempts to regain their loyalty. A similar motive may have been behind a series of gifts of red deer to a number of barons in 1215. A gift of eighty deer to the Count of Guines served to shore up an alliance.63 It is significant that few of John’s gifts went to unimportant people. The noteworthy features of Henry’s gift-giving were his lavishing deer on his family and his gifts to politically unimportant people. The latter perhaps was a reflection of Henry’s piety and his gifts to the poor. The reasons given for various gifts show a concern for events in the lives of the recipients, something not found in either John’s or Edward’s records. But the majority of Henry’s gifts seem to have been for the pur60  On largesse as expressed in the history of William Marshal, see David Crouch, The English Aristocracy 1070–1272: A Social Transformation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 201–2. On Matthew Paris’s criticism of Henry, see David Carpenter, Henry III: The Rise to Power and Personal Rule 1207–1258 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020), 396. On gifts in general and royal gifts in particular, see Thomas, Power and Pleasure, 41–42 and chap. 8. On Henry’s gifts see Carpenter, Henry III, 392–6.

61  Joel Rosenthal’s book of that title deals with a later period, but his conclusions equally apply to the thirteenth century. For the thirteenth century see Virginia A. Cole’s doctoral dissertation, “Royal Almsgiving in Medi­eval England,” (Binghamton University, 2002). 62  Thomas, Power and Pleasure, 42.

63  Thomas, Power and Pleasure, 41.



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pose of keeping things running smoothly. As Carpenter writes: “At its best the cycle of gift-giving bonded together the court, smoothed Henry’s relations with bishops and barons, and played an important part in international diplomacy.”64 Most of Henry’s and Edward’s gifts were more modest than John’s, but many were repeated. Their individual gifts of live deer were ample to restock a park. The gifts of venison could enhance a particular occasion. Gifts of deer seem to have become rewards for loyalty and good service rather than inducements. With the increase in the number of parks during the thirteenth century, more people had access to deer. The substantial royal disafforestment of the period reduced restrictions on those whose parks had been in royal forests.65 Deer were still prized, but seem to have become more available and perhaps more taken for granted. As we have seen, there were a number of different kinds of deer-related gifts. Among them were the various royal permissions: to have a deer park, to build a deer leap, to hunt for oneself or for the king in the royal forest. The outright gifts were live deer or venison. All conferred prestige, but in many cases the gifts merely reinforced existing status. How much of a practical difference did it make for a man who has his own deer park to hunt in the royal forest? For those in the higher ranks of society the gifts and privileges served as additional status markers and as signs of a positive relationship with the king. At the lower levels of society—knights, men in royal service, lesser clergy—gifts of deer could enhance memorable occasions and elevate the recipients above their contemporaries.

Summary and Conclusion

Deer were an important resource in the thirteenth-century reigns of kings John, Henry III, and Edward I. Large numbers of deer supplied royal feasts year-round, were given as gifts to a broad range of royal subjects, and provided markers of social status for those subjects, whether the deer were received live or as venison. The large numbers of deer required large numbers of forest officials, as well as huntsmen and dogs. Various expedients were used to preserve deer for the hunt: seasonal hunting, prohibitions, restocking, feeding, and selecting appropriate locations and numbers and types of deer at different times. These actions suggest a significant eco­logical awareness. By the later Middle Ages hunting had become less hazardous. The eleventh- and twelfth-century hunt which Russell describes is a far cry from the later version in which the dogs did most of the work. Of other game animals, the bear was extinct, and, according to Oliver Rackham, the wild boar was as well. Wolves were hunted to exterminate vermin, not normally as sport, and other varieties of hunting did not involve much danger.66 All this suggests another reason for the importance of the deer hunt 64  Carpenter, Henry III, 396.

65  Grant, Royal Forests, 133–65.

66  “The wild swine is last heard of in England, except as a beast of the park, around 1260,” Oliver Rackham, Ancient Woodland: I’s History Vegetation and Uses in England (London: Edward Arnold, 1980), 133. “Sustained wolf hunting in medi­eval England was predominantly conducted by royal

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and of deer as the hunt’s representation. The later Middle Ages was a period in which people sought to connect themselves with the past: an era of at times mythical nostalgia. One thinks of the Round Table, of genealogies going back to such legendary heroes as Guy of Warwick, and of chivalric orders such as the Order of the Garter. One can see this same attitude in connection with deer: as symbolizing an era in which hunting was dangerous and a test of manhood, and as an attempt to validate one’s own importance by evoking a heroic image from the past.

officials and opportunistic trappers,” Aleksander Pluskowski, Wolves and Wilderness in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), 105.



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Appendix A: Orders and Gifts of Deer across the Three Reigns DEER ORDERED

Total N

N%

ORDERS TOTAL

35,996

917

Fallow

72.4%

65.7%

Red

34.3%

Not specified

1.2%

Roe

GIFTS OF DEER

3.5%

John

N%

GIFTS TOTAL

27,432

3,049

Fallow

24,204

94%

2502

Not specified

420

Roe

403

56%

84%

6%

4 roes 0.2%

71.3%

23.5% 3.7%

1.5%

John

N

Red

N%

M:F%

30,769

34.3%

Total

Henry

M:F%

N%

59.8%

79.8%

99.5%

M:F%

18,790 51%

77%

88%

11% !%

0%

M:F%

4310

Henry

M:F%

Edward N% 81.9%

15.4% 2.7%

49.3%

74.4%

30.4%

Edward N%

M:F%

5.593 55%

86%

87%

3%

77%

7%

0.5%

69%

92%

96%

Note: The tables do not include orders where specific numbers of deer were not mentioned. M:F refers to male-female ratio and does not include cases where gender was not indicated.

Appendix B: Future Work To the best of our knowledge, no one has yet done a systematic study of royal gifts of land, titles, or money. Before these are done, it would be impossible to do a comprehensive survey of gift-giving. A more promising area of study would be two of the other secondary gifts: trees and wine. The kings made many gifts of both, and individual studies would round out our knowledge of this area of royal patronage. One thing we did not do in this chapter was trace the effects of deer hunting on individual royal forests and parks. That and the numbers and kinds of trees given by the kings could provide information on both the state and development of those bodies. In the same way, comparing the numbers, dates, and kinds of deer taken from particular places could provide new information on their eco­logy. We are hoping to put online the material on which this chapter is based, thus giving scholars an opportunity to more easily accomplish some of these projects.

TRAVERS AND TRAPPE IN THE PALACE OF PANDARUS A NOTE

MARY-JO ARN

Mary-Jo Arn is an independent scholar who writes primarily about the life and work of the fifteenth-century French duke, Charles d’Orléans.

Chaucer presents his audience with many puzzles, but in addition to the puzzles he intends, we encounter many that are unintended, some of them the result of information simply left out because it was unnecessary for his fourteenth-century audience. Other puzzles arise from modern assumptions, misunderstandings, and mistranslations. Still others are the result of our unwillingness (or inability) to fault Chaucer himself for anything in his poetry that does not seem to make sense: Chaucer never makes a mistake.1 In this brief note, I will consider a number of these unintended puzzles, not with an eye to eliminating them, but in order to clarify our vision of a scene that has puzzled too many of us for too long. The floor plan of Pandarus’s living quarters in book 3 of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, and the subsequent placement of the two main actors of the plot on the night of their love’s consummation, has been subject to more than one analysis, but so far the explanations presented have been unconvincing because they do not always square with what the text says (or doesn’t say). This is not to say that there is some “key” to the questions that will open the door to some definite answers. Any attempt to present a reasonable hypothesis about what Pandarus is up to will involve some speculation. Chaucer is evidently not interested primarily in the clarity of Pandarus’s presentation (3. 659–72), still less in any kind of realism, but rather in its effectiveness in aiding Pandarus to carry out his plan for serving his friend Troilus. Nor is Chaucer required to satisfy our expectations. The best a reader can do, then, is to use what we do know to throw some light on what we do not know, what we think we know, what we are not sure we know—while being cautious not to put undue weight on scattered details that might not bear it. To begin with Pandarus himself, it would be useful to look at him from an angle not often reflected in the literature about the poem. Pandarus is a wealthy Trojan aristocrat and Pandarus’s Troy is Chaucer’s version of fourteenth-century London (or perhaps some other European city Chaucer had visited). John Schofield describes a lavish medi­eval house in London, befitting “a high official with much business and

1  A. C. Spearing confronts this problem splendidly in his companion volumes: Textual Subjectivity: The Encoding of Subjectivity in Medi­eval Narratives and Lyrics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); and Medi­eval Auto­graphies: The ‘I’ of the Text, The Conway Lectures in Medi­eval Studies 2008 (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012).

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many retainers,” a description that would suit Pandarus very well.2 Although we do not get detailed references to his wealth, we can derive the evidence that he is very well off from the financial status of his niece Criseyde, who lives in a richly furnished paleys. Note her stool of jasper topped by a gold-embroidered cushion (2.1228–29), her paved parlour (2.82), her spacious garden (2.813–19, 1114–19), and her sizeable retinue of noble ladies (2.818–19; 3.596–68).3 Pandarus also lives in an urban palace, though the word paleys is not used of it. He travels in very high circles. He is a presence in the Trojan Parliament4 and exceptionally close friends with one of the greatest warriors in Troy who is also the king’s son: Troilus. He is also on familiar terms with other members of the royal family, the princes Deiphobus and Paris (and his paramour Helen), and with their Lycian ally King Sarpedon, among others. He is also brother to Calchas who, before his betrayal, held the knowledge of the future of the kingdom in his hands. What is more, he is an advisor to the king himself. This Pandare, that of all the day biforn Ne myghte han comen Troilus to se, ... For with the kyng Priam al day was he, So that it lay nought in his libertee Nowher to gon…(5.281–82, 284–86).

So whatever we may think about his personality or his actions—and however much we may enjoy laughing at him—it is important to realize that he is utterly different from any character in the Canterbury Tales. This is another world altogether. It is unthinkable that a man of such importance, in an age that put such strong emphasis on the display of social status, would not have a household that matched his image of his social and political distinction (note his pleasure in his associations with the royal family). Failing to place Pandarus in the proper social context can cause problems in interpreting his actions. For instance, Saul N. Brody suggests that Pandarus “seems to have no retinue,”5 and certainly Chaucer mentions no such retinue. Why not? Surely because he had no reason to. No aristocrat in late medi­eval England traveled anywhere without an entourage, a train of servants, attendants, and companions, some or all perhaps in livery. Being surrounded at all times by followers was a measure of status. There were clearly times when only a small train was called for, perhaps a personal servant, 2  John Schofield, London 1100–1600: The Archaeo­logy of a Capital City, Studies in the Archaeo­logy of Medi­eval Europe (Sheffield: Equinox, 2011), 66.

3  Magnates’ London homes were often referred to as “places” (MED 6(a) or inns (what we might call mansions), but in the modern literature they are commonly referred to as town houses. On the use of floor tiles in elite London homes, see John Schofield, Medi­eval London Houses (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 112–3.

4  “Pandare, which that in the parlement / Hadde herd what every lord and burgeys seyde . . .” (4.344–45).

5  Saul N. Brody, “Making a Play for Criseyde: The Staging of Pandarus’s House in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde,” Speculum 73 (1998): 115–40, at 120.



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a clerk, a guard, but the upper classes never moved about unaccompanied. To do so would be to declare oneself a person of lower rank. It has often been observed that privacy in the sense of being alone was practically unknown among the late medi­eval English elite, urban and rural, whether at home or abroad. Chaucer had ample reason to enumerate the retinue of Pandarus’s niece when she travels from her palace to his, but when Pandarus attempts to lift Troilus’s spirits by a visit to the most hospitable host they can think of, “forth to Sarpedoun they wente” (5.434); there is no mention of a retinue to accompany either of them, though a prince would not have gone anywhere, not even across the city, without at least a small body of servants, retainers, and companions. Chaucer simply had no reason to mention it. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Only when the wounded Troilus returns from the battlefield triumphant does it become useful to the poet to mention that he rides with al his folk (2.619–620), in this case his troops riding in a cavalcade of two columns. As Anthony Emery put it, in his study of Dartington Hall, “…all…survivals [speaking of buildings] whether ruined or not, should be enlivened by decoration, furniture, and bright colours and peopled with rich dresses, etiquette, and an elaborate ceremonial.”6 This is not to say that we should posit a host of details for Pandarus’s person and dwelling, but that we have a responsibility to learn something of the milieu out of which Chaucer’s work was written. The scene under consideration, in which Pandarus invites his niece Criseyde to dinner and then convinces her to spend the night in order to introduce Troilus into her bedroom, takes place in and around the inn where Pandarus lives in Troy. Let us first consider what sort of place Chaucer asks us to imagine. Two scholars have attempted to describe the specific setting of the action: R. M. Smyser, in his article “The Domestic Background of Troilus and Criseyde” (1956), and Saul N. Brody, in “Making a Play for Criseyde” (1998).7 Brody envisions the dwelling of Pandarus as a small place: “He lived modestly in a small house”; and he posits only two rooms (one of them the great hall) on the main floor.8 Smyser’s description is not so explicitly limited. The emphasis of scholarly work on the hall-plus-chamber arrangement in historical castles, town houses, and manors has created this image in many people’s minds of simple, often small, living arrangements. Residences were in fact of many sizes and frequently increased in size with increased social standing and with the passing years.9 This con6  Anthony Emery, Dartington Hall (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970), 137.

7  R. M. Smyser, “The Domestic Background of Troilus and Criseyde,” Speculum 31, no. 2 (1956): 297–315; Brody, “Making a Play.” Both deal with a number of other issues as well.

8  Brody, “Making a Play,” 120n17. He also describes it as “like a small manor house” (119n10). The fact that no other rooms are mentioned does not imply that there are no other rooms. We see only two rooms in Criseyde’s home (parlor and closet), but that does not mean that she has no others.

9  See John Schofield, “Urban Housing in England,” in The Age of Transition: The Archaeo­logy of English Culture 1400–1600 (Oxford: Oxbow, 1997), 127–31. Although scholars write about halland-chamber as if a dwelling contained only one chamber, in fact larger lodgings generally had more than one room called a chamber, whether it was a bedchamber or a chamber for some other use. It is perhaps unnecessary to rehearse the general arrangement of spaces in medi­eval elite dwellings. All of this is adequately dealt with, including Smyser’s article.

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cept of limited space has been reinforced by our lack of knowledge of precise numbers and arrangements of rooms in the ruins of residences that survive. To make interpretation even more difficult, most of the magnates’ estates in London have disappeared completely over the centuries.10 However, written evidence of their existence is fairly plentiful. We know that in the course of the later Middle Ages, “a remarkable transformation in domestic accommodation and the use of space” meant more chambers and more amenities such as wall fireplaces and privies.11 The fourteenth, and even more the fifteenth, century saw a proliferation of rooms and even suites of rooms in the residences of the wealthy; configurations and locations of rooms other than the hall and chamber were extremely varied, as a look at Margaret Wood’s examples makes abundantly clear.12 Many descriptions in Chaucer’s account of interiors lead an unsuspecting modern reader astray because of what they leave out. Chaucer’s original audience is expected to know or surmise, for instance, that the city dwellings of the London elite (some of which Chaucer must have seen), and so those of the Trojan aristocracy, contained more rooms than are named, perhaps many more. The residences of Troilus, Pandarus, Criseyde, and Deiphobus are reasonably envisioned as urban town houses or magnates’ inns.13 So, while not vast, Pandarus’s lodging should certainly be viewed as spacious and well appointed. 10  Fortunately, an analogous kind of structure has had more survivals, both in print and in wood and stone: the bishop’s palace (see Schofield, London 1100–1600, 61). These can give us some idea of the sort of luxury in which men important to the realm might live, one constant measure of urban luxury being space. For general information and maps, see Caroline M. Barron, “Centres of Conspicuous Consumption: The Aristocratic Town House in London 1200–1550,” London Journal 20 (1995): 1–16; rpt. in Medi­eval London: Collected Papers of Caroline M. Barron. Research in Medi­eval and Early Modern Culture 18 (Kalamazoo: Medi­eval Institute Publications, 2017), 421–8; Patricia Croot, “A Place in Town in Medi­eval and Early Modern Westminster: The Origins and History of the Palaces in the Strand,” The London Journal 39 (2014): 85–101.

11  See Emery, Discovering Medi­eval Houses in England and Wales (Princes Risborough: Shire, 2007), 123–4. “A magnate’s inn would concentrate on a grand hall for show, and a principal suite of chambers for himself…and axillary suites for his entourage and guests” (Anthony Quiney, Town Houses of Medi­eval Britain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 200. To take a remarkable fifteenth-century example of the burgeoning of living spaces, though admittedly not in an urban setting, Sir John Fastolf’s Caister Castle in Norfolk had something like fifty rooms, with twenty-eight sleeping rooms, and a total of thirty-nine beds (C. M. Woolgar, The Great Household in Late Medi­eval England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 63–67). Perhaps more to the point, that great London inn, Coldharbour, “had at least forty rooms in 1485, and possibly more” (Penelope Eames, “Documentary Evidence Concerning the Character and Use of Domestic Furnishings in England in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” Furniture History 7 (1971): 41–60, at 54). For a partial list of rooms, see Schofield, Medi­eval London Houses, 107–8). I am not suggesting that Pandarus lived in such magnificent dwellings as these, but simply that they existed and Chaucer might have well known of them.

12  Margaret Wood, The English Mediaeval House (London: Dent, 1965; rpt. Harper and Row, 1983). 13  See Wood, The English Mediaeval House, 55, 61, 67. It is not my concern here to posit a precise plan of any urban town house, such as whether one or another room was supposed to be on the ground floor or on the floor above it.



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Smyser deals with the buildings, gardens, and customs of the times as reflected in Chaucer’s poem, and much of his work is very useful. Following a general description of a typical urban “mansion” (297–300), he describes some of the arrangements of space in Criseyde’s paleys, then in that of Troilus. Finally, he takes up the “dinner party” at Pandarus’s own dwelling, on the night in which Pandarus leads Troilus to Criseyde’s bed, explaining the estres of the place thus: Criseyde will sleep in the room Pandarus usually occupies, which adjoins the (great) hall. The ladies who accompanied Criseyde will sleep in the upper end of the hall (middle chamber), once the table at which Criseyde and Pandarus and others have dined is removed for the night. They will be separated by a travers from an area in the lower end of the hall where Pandarus himself will sleep (outer house).14 Smyser offers no source for his explanation of this use of the hall except for a reference to Root’s edition of Troilus and Criseyde.15 Root does indeed explain the situation in this way, but the only source he offers is the definition of the word “traverse” in the NED (s.v. traverse sb. IV 13): “A curtain or screen placed crosswise, or drawn across a room, hall, or theatre; also a partition of wood, a screen of lattice-work, or the like.”16 Root provides no evidence regarding who slept where in the medi­eval household, so we have no source on which to base the notion that a travers is a curtain that divides the hall in two to provide a kind of dormitory for aristocratic visitors. In spite of this, Root’s has become the standard way of explaining the night’s sleeping arrangements (taken up by Brody, among others). But how likely is it that such an aristocrat as we know Pandarus to be, who treats his niece with great care and deference, would bed her female entourage on the floor of his great hall? To flesh out the picture slightly, we are asked to imagine that the servants, having removed the trestle tables and benches, have brought in pailets or liters, shallow wooden trundle beds with thin mattresses generally stuffed with straw (as most beds were) on which the noblewoman and her attendants might sleep.17 To complicate this picture, Pandarus refers to the place where the ladies are to sleep as a chaumber (3.666), which this is decidedly not.18 Brody explains the situation thus: “The details given by Chaucer reveal that the main floor of Pandarus’s house is divided into a large hall and a single, smaller private room…the ‘litel closet’…, and that Pandarus 14  Smyser, “Domestic Background,” 305–6.

15  Robert Kilburn Root, ed., Book of Troilus and Criseyde (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1926; rpt. 2017), note to lines 659–68, page 475.

16  NED = A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford, 1884–1928); MED = Middle English Dictionary, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-engish-dictionary/dictionary; AND = Anglo-Norman Dictionary, https://anglo-norman.net; and DMF = Dictionnaire du Moyen Français, http://www.zeus.atilf.fr/dmf/. 17  For such a bed, see Eames, “Documentary Evidence,” 46.

18  That Pandarus distinguishes clearly between chamber and hall is evident in 3.856, where he says, “whan a chaumbre afire is or an halle….” As Michael Thompson notes, “What strikes one most about the literary works of the time…is the sharp distinction now drawn between hall and chamber...” (The Medi­eval Hall: The Basis of Secular Domestic Life, 600–1600 AD (Aldershot: Scolar, 1995), 116).

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had no place else to put both himself and Criseyde’s companions but the hall” (120), but provides no evidence for his interpretation. This is simply not the case. The place to begin is with what we know about where people slept in a wealthy medi­eval household in England/Troy. Many people associated with a noble household did sleep in the hall in the fourteenth century,19 especially when the hall was separated into aisled bays (later innovations in roof carpentry made these aisles unnecessary even in very large halls and they are generally absent in fifteenth-century halls).20 The increase in household size in this period resulted in “the use of the bays for sleeping accommodation…”21 Household grooms (stable boys) generally slept in the stables or in an attached building. Cooks and kitchen boys often slept in the kitchen. In general, household servants—“the help”—slept wherever they could find a place, and the hall (which had been cleared of all the furniture and was often warmer than other places) offered sleeping space to those who could find some. Chris Given-Wilson writes of the royal household a description that suits noble households further down the social scale: It was in the hall, too, that many of the lesser servants slept. Sleeping arrangements in general seem to have been very informal . . ., but those who did not sleep in the hall probably distributed themselves around the passageways and vestibules, huddled in winter around the great fireplaces, lying on their straw mats (pallets) which may have been single or double.22

Add to this the fact that the sleepers were all male. The number of women in a medi­eval noble household was extremely low. “The larger these [elite] households became, the smaller proportion of women they contained,”23 apart, of course, from the lady of the house and her staff, who would have slept in or very near her bedchamber. The female contingent of an elite household generally consisted of cooks, laundresses, personal servants of a lady, if there were one, and no more. Thompson suggests that women did not even eat in the hall with the rest of the household.24 Wives of married household staff lived away from the master’s residence.25 Surrounded by common men—this is 19  Thompson, The Medi­eval Hall, 104–5.

20  “…from the late twelfth to the early fourteenth century, aisle arcades were more or less de rigueur at the highest social level for a main hall [though] at lower social levels there were plenty of halls without aisles before 1350…” (Thompson, The Medi­eval Hall, 103–4).

21  Thompson, The Medi­eval Hall, 104–5. Aristocratic halls “certainly continued to be used for sleeping by the lower members of the household” through the later fourteenth century (The Medi­ eval Hall, 105). “In a hall the floor was of either stamped earth or mortar, more comfortable for walking or sleeping on, strewn with reed or grass or straw” (The Medi­eval Hall, 145). 22  Chris Given-Wilson, The Royal Household and the King’s Affinity: Service, Politics and Finance in England 1360–1413 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 60. 23  Quiney, Town Houses, 50.

24  Thompson, The Medi­eval Hall, 114.

25  Given-Wilson describes a situation in which “men were forbidden to keep their wives at court (The Royal Household, 60). It is a truism that noble households imitated the royal household in many ways (though at a smaller scale).



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a most unlikely setting for the sleeping space for Criseyde’s niece Antigone and the noble ladies and ladies in waiting who accompanied Criseyde, although the men who came with them (“a certein of hire owen men,” 3.596) to insure their safety in the streets of Troy after dark, might well have bedded down there.26 So sleeping the ladies in the hall simply doesn’t work. The Smyser-Root plan has another major flaw, too. Pandarus assures Criseyde that he will sleep very nearby (“we sul nat liggen far asonder,” 660). If he is sleeping at the far end of the hall from her, however (presuming, quite reasonably, that the bedchamber of Pandarus is located in the usual position just the other side of the wall from the upper end of the hall), he is hardly next door. Should anything happen that requires his attention, in order to reach her he would have either to travel through the sleeping quarters of Criseyde’s ladies or to exit the hall and walk around the building to reenter it (or go up or down any accessible stairs).27 Smyser refers to the object that divides the hall as a curtain; Brody calls it a curtain or screen. So what is the travers (or traversein)? Before moving further into the possible arrangement of sleeping quarters, it is worth considering the various meanings of travers and which of these might apply to Chaucer’s interior: MED 2a: A screen, partition, or curtain that is placed or drawn across a room or part of a room to create an enclosed or private space.

With the possible exception of a quotation from Lydgate, the meanings of screen or partition are not really represented in the examples provided by the MED.28 Travers 26  Kate Mertes estimates that all the members of a noble household (from top to bottom) might number between about forty and eighty bodies, so we must think about a significant amount of available sleeping space, in The English Noble Household 1250–1600: Good Governance and Politic Rule, Family, Sexuality and Social Relations in Past Times (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), Appendix C, 218.

27  In 1953, Francis P. Magoun, under the headword Troy, proposed an arrangement of the chambers in the residence of Pandarus that avoided all these problems, but created another (“Chaucer’s Ancient and Biblical World,” in Mediaeval Studies, 15 (1953): 107–36, at 135). In his diagram, Criseyde and Troilus are in adjoining rooms on one side of a corridor (with a door between the two rooms), while the Ladies-in-Waiting and Pandare are lodged on the other side of that corridor (with no door between them). But elite medi­eval dwellings did not contain interior hallways except between the hall and the kitchen areas at the lower end of the hall (as Smyser knew, 300), so this arrangement of spaces is not possible. We are therefore still left to imagine three rooms (Criseyde, Pandarus, the ladies) all adjoined in some way, and Troilus’s room adjoining that of Criseyde. The exception is that exterior halls or passageways might connect buildings. Diagrams of this arrangement are plentiful. The use of corridors was slow to develop, as may have struck anyone who has toured many of the great post-medi­eval homes of England. Visitors might begin in a corner room and from there walk from room to room to room (sometimes eight or ten in a row) in order to get to the opposite corner of the edifice. (Servants’ entrances and exits were generally hidden and certainly did contain passages and narrow stairs.) ME passage means something else entirely. See Margaret Wood, The English Mediaeval House, 335–56.

28  “At the dore he cam not in; but at some travas, lych a theffe” (MED: a1605 (?a1430) Lydg. Pilgr. (Stw 952(2). 17973). The word screen (or screens) was commonly used to refer to the partition across the lower end of the hall (one section of which could sometimes be movable), separating it from the buttery, the pantry, and the kitchen (see Thompson, The Medi­eval Hall, 149–50), but that

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most often refers to an item made of cloth which can be “drawn” across a space, room, etc. They are sometimes listed in inventories in close association with cushions and curtains.29 The MED lists two such: [7 tapets of white] worstede..quirteyns [with a] travers [of white] tarteryn. (MED: 1400 Inquis. Miscel. (PRO) 7.78)

Item, lego eidem domino..meum lectum blodium de aras cum tribus curtayns, unum trawas de tartren. (MED: 1446 Will York in Sur. Soc. 30121)The word traversyn (traversein) is recorded in the MED with the same or very similar meaning.30 These items are luxury goods usually made of silk (tarteryn, sarsinett, satyn, sandall31) and often brightly colored and/or decorated.32

For making of ij travasses of grene sarsinett..iij s. (MED: 1480 Wardrobe Acc. Edw. IV in Nicolas PPExp.126)

is clearly not meant here. On the whole question of screens, see L. F. Salzman, Building in England Down to 1540: A Documentary History (Oxford: Clarendon, 1952, 1992), 260–2, where screens may have hinges or doors through them, and so could not be “drawn” as a travers is. Also Wood, English Mediaeval House, “The Screen,” 143–5. See also The Boke of Curtasye, where a screne is placed (not drawn) in the chamber to y-saue þo hete, line 462, 314. Nicholas Harris Nicolas conflates the “curtain” (xi, 126, 132, 136, 142, 144) with the “enclosure” (259) in his Index to Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York: Wardrobe Accounts of Edward the Fourth (London, 1830). For the latter, see also Henry Algernon Percy, The Regulations and Establishment of the Household of Henry Algernon Percy, the Fifth Earl of Northumberland (London, 1827), 436–7, and elsewhere. It does, however, sometimes refer to some sort of temporary enclosure within a room or church into which an elite person can withdraw (OED 3b; MED s.v. travers 2b); as such, it is more commonly found in very late medi­eval and early modern texts than in those of this period. 29  The distinction between curtin and travers is most unclear. Curtains that are part of a hung bed are fairly easy to distinguish. The distinction might be between a curtain that is fixed and a travers that can be drawn across a space or room.

30  [3] curtyns [and a] traversyn [of white] tartaryn (MED: 1397 Inquis. Miscel. (PRO) 6.169). Cp. medi­eval French travers (in = bolster (DMF s.v. travers n. II. B3), a word that survives into modern French (traversin de lit) but does not appear in the AND and does not seem to carry that meaning in Middle English. A trave, with which it is sometimes confused, is a wooden construction designed to restrain a horse while being shod (see MilT 3282). 31  See Gale Owen-Crocker, The Lexis of Cloth and Clothing Project, http://lexisproject.arts. manchester.ac.uk/: s.v. tartarin; s.v. sarsenet; s.v. satin; s.v. sendal.

32  In the inventory of the property of the Earl of Arundel drawn up when the king seized his possessions in 1397, we find traverses of bawdekyn and sandall (L. F. Salzman, “The Property of the Earl of Arundel, 1397,” Sussex Archaeo­logical Collections 91 (1953): 32–52; see also The Lexis of Cloth and Clothing s.v. baldachin). For the complete inventory, see British History Online > Parliament Rolls of Medi­eval England, https://www.british-history.ac.uk. They might also be made occasionally of bokeram or carde (The Lexis of Cloth and Clothing, s.v. buckram; s.v. carde). These can be found in the Arundel inventory in Francis Palgrave, Antient Kalendars and Inventories of the Treasury of his Majesty’s Exchequer, vol. 3 (London, 1836), 303–4, items 46 and 48. L. F. Salzman, however, mistakes the travers for a coverlet, calling it a “cross-cloth” (“The Property of the Earl of Arundel, 1397,” Sussex Archaeo­logical Collections 91 (1953): 3–52, at 49–50). The word “coverlet” is a good Middle English word, used alongside travers in the inventory—as are “valance” and “bolster,” both on occasion used (mistakenly, I think) to translate travers or traversin in inventories.



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Ad unum travasyn de tartarin blu et albo pale faciendum et ligandum cum rubant serico [silk].33

3 ‘quirteyns’ with a ‘travers’ of white ‘tarteryn’ with the same design (opere) of ‘raggedstavis’ (MED: C. Inq. Misc File 278 (37). I Henry IV [1400] #166, 78)34

If its function was to provide some degree of privacy for sleeping, the categories of hall sleepers—“the lower orders,” retainers of a visiting lord, knights, incidental travelers. etc.35—should tell us that such a luxury (a silk curtain) would offer little gendered privacy for the nyne or ten ladies.36 A very large curtain drawn all the way across a great hall would at least have to be of some heavier fabric such as worsted (wool) that would withstand rough or regular handling. We might well wonder whether there is any visual evidence of such a curtain attached somehow to the wall of a great hall so that it can be so drawn. Depictions of scenes in great halls, usually in the scenes of feasting, are plentiful in medi­eval manu­scripts. They are often exceedingly detailed, depicting every scrap of patterned cloth, every display of plate, every loaf of bread and knife and goblet, every dog, every servingman, every fashionable gown. What does not seem to appear is such a curtain or any kind of fittings for such a curtain.37 Medi­eval halls and chambers often served many functions. Courts as well as feasts—or dances—might be held in the great hall. But when the furniture was removed from the hall (the tabletops hung on the wall, the benches removed), some sort of device would have to remain if a curtain was regularly drawn across the room, yet no depiction of such a device seems to have survived. What is more, inventories of fabrics for use in the great hall, commonly referred to as “halling” in surviving records, generally include tapestries, but never (as far as I have been able to discover) include traverses. Instead, in late medi­eval lists and inventories of possessions, the word nearly always appears among the linens of the bedchamber.38 Ad faciendum vnum trauersyn de syndon de triple rub. pro camera ipsius. (MED: 1345–9 Wardrobe Acc. Edw. III (1) in Archaeol. vol. 31, 36)39

33  See The Lexis of Cloth and Clothing, s.v. pall and s.v. sericum. W. Paley Baildon, “The Trousseaux of Princess Philippa, Wife of Eric, King of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden,” Archaeo­logia 67 (1915): 163–88, at 182. This is from the Wardrobe Account drawn up for the youngest daughter of Henry IV in 1406. 34  This is an inventory of the goods of John, late earl of Huntingdon, drawn up at Dartington.

35  Emery, Discovering Medi­eval Houses, 120, 123.

36  Woolgar notes the exceptional situation of the lack of evidence that the two halls in Caister Castle were ever slept in (The Great Household, 64–65).

37  See, e.g. http://parismuseescollections.paris.fr/fr/petit-palais/oeuvres/livre-des-conquesteset-faits-d-alexandre#infos-principales or plates 20 and 21 in Eames, “Documentary Evidence.”

38  In the late Middle Ages the word “bed” [called a hung bed, consisting of tester, celour, curtains, and coverlet, see Eames, “Documentary Evidence,” 41] referred to all the soft goods in and around the bed (a bit more inclusive than our word bedding), including various cushions and the mattress or featherbed; the bed frame (what we would call the bed) was rarely mentioned.

39  The Lexis of Cloth and Clothing, s.v. sindon. Nicholas Harris Nicolas, “Observations on the

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Likewise, in a 1416 detailing of “Preparations of beds at Eltham, the Tower of London, Westminster, and Windsor, &c., for the reception of the dukes of Orleans and Bourbon and other French prisoners,” mention is made of “Curtyns, Travers, Linth, Fustians, Panes, Blanket, Coopertor, & Tapetes de Worsted, Pailet, Canvas, Fetherbeddes, Materas, & alia diversa Res & Necessaria…” (Rymer, Fœdera IX, 334). It would seem that a travers is an item reserved for elite households, such as Trojan palaces, and perhaps for those aspiring to join the elite. The inclusion of the travers among the chamber linens suggests that its use was for privacy, not in the hall, but in some other room/chamber. Chaucer himself offers some confirmation of this idea in his description of the marriage of January and May in the Merchant’s Tale. After the wedding feast, …departed is this lusty route Fro Januarie, with thank on every syde. Hoom to hir houses lustily they ryde, Where as they doon hir thynges as hem leste, And whan they sye hir tyme, goon to reste. Soone after that…. [having drunk his fill of manly fortifications] …to his privee freendes thus seyde he: “For Goddes love, as soone as it may be, Lat voyden all this hous in curteys wyse.” And they han doon right as he wol devyse. Men drynken and the travers drawe anon. The bryde was broght abedde as stille as stoon; And whan the bed was with the preest yblessed, Out of the chambre hath every wight hym dressed... (MerchT 1800–1805, 1813–20)40

The majority of the wedding guests have departed, leaving only a few of January’s privee freendes, who are invited to remain. Nothing is said about where this afterparty takes place (nor is Chaucer required to tell us), but what follows makes clear that it was not in the hall, but in January’s bedchamber. January asks that the rest of them Institution of the Most Noble Order of the Garter,” Archaeo­logia 31 (1846): 5–163, at 36. In the inventory of the goods of Henry VI, drawn up in October of 1423, no fewer than eight traverses are mentioned, one of red satin (item 547) mentioned alongside cushions of red and gold; one of green tartarin (item 712), mentioned alongside curtains and beds, one of red and green striped tartarin (item 728), with matching curtains; and one of unspecified material (item 712), with matching curtains. Only two are mentioned without such associations: two of red tartarin (items 730 and 732) and one of blue tartarin (item 731). In addition, one of blue satin (item 686) is mentioned, alongside components of a fabulous bed decorated with images of alaunts (hunting dogs). According to Lisa Monnas, “The matching bed furnishings and screening curtain (traverse) were all made of blue satin stamped in gold with alaunts, valued at £80 (“Reading English Royal Inventories: Furnishings and Clothing in the Inventory of King Henry V (r. 1413–1422),” in Inventories of Textiles—Textiles in Inventories: Studies on Late Medi­eval and Early Modern Culture, ed. Thomas Ertl and Barbara Karl (Gottingen: V&R Unipress/Vienna University Press, 2017), 89–109, at 99).

40  All quotations are from The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry Benson. 3rd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987).



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leave. At that point, they drink the voidé (a separate event that signals the end of the festivities).41 The travers is drawn and the bride is led to the bed, presumably while the priest intones his (brief ) blessing, witnessed by the special wedding guests. At that point, the guests who have remained excuse themselves from the chamber, leaving January and May together in the marriage bed. It was not at all unusual for groups of people to gather in a man’s (or a woman’s) chamber rather than in the hall—which was often reserved for more formal or official occasions—for a variety of purposes.42 For instance, after a great feast on the night of his assassination in 1437, James I of Scotland was enjoying himself with his knights and squires in his chaumbur and did not wish to be disturbed.43 Witheine schorte tyme aftyr this [feast] the king being in his chaumbur, talkyng and playing with his lordes and squieres that were aboute hym, speke of many diuerse maters. (55–56)

At which point a woman came to his chamber door and was turned away.

Wytheinne an owre after [that] the king askyde [for] the voyde and dranke[,] the travers in the chaumbre edrawe, and euere man departid and went to rest [leaving only the queen and her ladies]. Than Robert Stuard, that was right famulier with the kinge and had al his commandementtes in the chaumbur, was the last that departyd. And he knewe wele the fals trayson that was purposud and was consentted therto, and therefore lefte the doores of the kinges chaumbr opyn,…. (57).

In the Boke of Curtasye, to take another example, the author instructs the reader that the grooms of the chamber must prepare the bedchamber for sleeping, setting wax candles on the fireplace so that men may see “to voide, that dronkyn is.”44 This is not to say that the voidé was never consumed in the hall, but that it was at least as likely to be taken in the bedchamber (as in Chaucer’s tale quoted above). 41  The voide (voydé, voidee) has often been explained (by Smyser, among others) as a final drink of wine, often accompanied by some sort of sweet tidbit, just before bed. The custom is obviously related to the “voiding” or emptying of the establishment by all who will not be sleeping there. Smyser, however, suggests that the voiding of the hall in this tale was not complete, that some guests lingered afterward in the hall (“drinking of a voidee…drawing of the travers…voiding of the hall,” 306), but Chaucer does not really say that. Most of the guests leave. January asks that the rest of them leave. At that point the inner circle partakes of the final drink, the voide that signals the end of the evening. The bride is led to the bed, and at that point the remaining guests leave the chamber. For the text of the blessing, see Robert P. Miller, ed., Chaucer: Sources and Backgrounds (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 383. 42  The image of Christine de Pisan presenting her book to Queen Isabeau in her bedchamber surrounded by her ladies is well known.

43  The courtiers were, among other things, “…pleying at the chesse, at the tables, in reding of romannse, in singing, in pyping, in harpyng, and in oþer solaces of plessaunce and dysporte” (John Shirley, trans., The Dethe of the Kynge of Scotis: A New Edition, ed. and trans. Margaret Connolly, The Scottish Historical Review 71, no. 191/192 (1992), pts. 1 and 2, 46–69, at 56). See MED voide n. (2): a1475 (a1456). 44  In Babees Book: Early English Meals and Manners, ed. F. J. Furnivall, EETS o.s. 32 (London: Trübner, 1868; rpt. Oxford, EETS, 1997), 314, lines 465–72.

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As we have seen in the James I text, such a room, or chaumbur, could fulfill more than one function. It could serve as a sleeping room, but it might also be used as a space for entertainment or for office space, a guest room, a reception room, a meeting room, or a dining room, often adjoined to a garderobe (privy) and perhaps even a private chapel, and usually supplied with a fireplace.45 The owner’s chamber was often the most luxurious room in the house, a fact Chaucer surely expects his audience to know. So if we now know that Pandarus did not propose that Criseyde’s female relatives and ladies in waiting sleep on the floor of the great hall (or on pallets thereon), and if we are now agreed in the lack of feasibility of the Smyser-Root plan, what are we left with? The answer to the question of where is the travers? is that it is most likely in a chamber and most unlikely to be anywhere in a Great Hall. Its function is very likely related to privacy, but a brief look at medi­eval concepts of privacy could be useful here. The chamber itself could offer various kinds of privacy. One important way it did so was by limiting access of outsiders to its owner (or to Criseyde). Even in the Merchant’s Tale, not all the wedding guests are invited into the chamber on the wedding night. This kind of social privacy might exclude people of the wrong class or with the wrong associations or simply with inadequate proximity to whatever sort of business was at hand. It might also limit the flow of information, as in the very encounter now about to take place. This could also be seen as personal privacy, as Criseyde’s closet afforded her so that she could read a love letter from Troilus. Then of course there is visual privacy born of modesty, as could be afforded by the drawing of a traverse. To return to Chaucer’s account, Pandarus assigns his “closet” to Criseyde for the night. The word closet used here and in describing a room in Criseyde’s paleys is easily confused by readers with the modern storage space of that name. The medi­eval closet is so called for its exclusivity, not its size or simplicity, as Smyser knew (301). In C. M. Woolgar’s words, “Separation was a mark of status and honour, not of modesty.”46 He means social privacy as I have defined it, but what Pandarus is offering Criseyde when he offers her his own chamber (in addition to honor) is personal privacy, which in this case translates to safety from dishonor. Just as he will act as wardein of her ladies, so he will guard her reputation. We know nothing about the size of Criseyde’s closet, but Pandarus refers to his most private (and so most safe) space, his inner sanctum, as litel. It does, however, have a hung bed, a fireplace with a spot for sitting by it, and most likely a window, and once we have entered the space, it certainly does not seem to be at all cramped.47 (We might reasonably imagine the fireplace settle to be a decent distance from the bed.) In the spirit of “the newe joie and al the feste” (653), surely my chaumbre (788) might well become my litel closet yonder. Pace Brody, who twice uses 45  Hence the need for mostly portable furniture. See Emery, Discovering Medi­eval Houses, 125. See also Eames, “Documentary Evidence,” 53. 46  Woolgar, The Great Household, 48–50; see also 61.

47  Josephine A. Koster refers to it as “Pandarus’ well-appointed bedroom suite” in “Privitee, Habitus, and Proximity: Conduct and Domestic Space in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde,” Essays in Medi­eval Studies 24 (2007): 79–91, at 87.



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the word modest in relation to Pandarus,48 it is difficult to see Pandarus as in any way a modest man. In fact, his description of his chamber is actually an excellent display of false modesty (a bit of wit) perhaps designed by Chaucer to please or amuse Criseyde and certainly to characterize the speaker.49 So what was the ground plan Chaucer had in mind for Pandarus’s inn? Pandarus has invited Criseyde for dinner on the evening of a torrential rainstorm, so he asks her to stay the night, planning by this ruse to introduce Troilus into her bed. This is what the poet tells us: Pandarus, if goodly hadde he myght, He wolde han hyed hire to bedde fayn, And seyde, “… This were a weder for to slepen inne— And that I rede us soone to bygynne. “And nece, woot ye wher I wol yow leye, For that we shul nat liggen far asonder, And for ye neither shullen, dar I seye, Heren noyse of reynes nor of thonder? By God, right in my litel closet yonder. And I wol in that outer hous allone Be wardein of youre wommen everichone, “And in this myddel chaumbre that ye se Shal youre wommen slepen, wel and softe; And there I seyde shal youreselven be; And if ye liggen well to-nyght, com ofte, And careth nought what weder is alofte. The wyn anon, and whan so that yow leste, So go we slepe: I trowe it be the beste.” (lines 654–72) “Here at this closet dore withoute, Right overthwart, youre wommen liggen alle, That whom yow list of hem ye may here calle.” (lines 684–86)

Once they are all settled for the night,

He thought he wolde upon his werk bigynne, And gan the stuwe doore al softe unpynne…

(lines 697–98)

48  Of Pandarus’s dwelling (Brody, “Making a Play,” 120n17) and of his potential modesty in relation to the location of his bath (124).

49  Brody explains Chaucer’s use of my chaumbre (788) in reference to Troilus’s imagined arrival as referring to the stewe, in which (based on no evidence in the poem) he places Pandarus’s bed (126–27). It is less complicated and just as plausible to take the words of the text as they stand. If, in the imagined plot, Troilus were to come to Pandarus, why would he not expect to find him in his own bedchamber, since of course Troilus would have no idea that Criseyde was present at all? Since the whole thing never happened, it is unnecessary to explain it away. Pandarus is here employing the same “utter glibness” that Brody himself discerns and that carries him through the whole episode. If we still need an explanation, Pandarus is in the room adjoining the chamber and so could have heard Troilus arrive—but Chaucer does not give Criseyde a chance to think all this through, and she is anyway in a state of alarm caused by this whole turn of events.

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This cryptic passage contains all the information we have about the building. There is a great deal that we do not know, details that Chaucer could easily have provided had he chosen to (and this is not a dream poem in which inexplicable things happen frequently).50 The ladies are assigned to the “myddel chaumbre,” but a word like myddel cannot be meaningful without some reference point with which to orient it. However, “outer house” (“house” meaning place, room, chamber) could well be another way of saying “outer chamber.” The phrase is well attested in Middle English, meaning the chamber further away, the one beyond the one just spoken of, a phrase that Criseyde might well be imagined to have understood perfectly, though it may not be so clear to us. We know that the stewe/stuwe where Troilus is waiting (see below) adjoins Pandarus’s chamber, in which Criseyde is to sleep. We are fairly sure that the ladies are accommodated just on the other side (but not which side) of one wall of that chamber, in a room Pandarus calls the middle chamber. We also know that Pandarus, if we assume that he is telling the truth, is planning to sleep in a room “nat…far asonder” from that in which Criseyde sleeps, “in that outer hous allone.” His sleeping room adjoins that of Criseyde and that of her ladies, here designated this middel chaumbre— a room connected “right overthwart” by a door into Criseyde’s bedroom.51 A middle implies something on both sides or ends, yet the ladies cannot be positioned between Pandarus and Criseyde. Pandarus must be “next to” Criseyde and also “next to” the ladies, which is an impossibility, if the ladies are “next to” Criseyde. So we simply cannot have “a straight line of sleeping compartments,” as Smyser proposes (306). More we cannot know for certain. There is a significant amount of evidence that Chaucer did not want to let (or had no interest in letting) his audience know precisely how the spaces were arranged. For instance, when Pandarus had everyone settled in their places, he “gan the stuwe doore…unpynne” (698), but we have no idea from where he started or what route he took to get to the little room in which Troilus has been holed up for much of the day waiting for this moment. Given that it is his own house and that the rainstorm is an extremely loud one, it would seem simple enough for Pandarus to go through the closet to the door of the stuwe without waking Criseyde, who is asleep in his bed surrounded by curtains, but there may be other possibilities. The ladies must have been assigned to a room adjoining that of Pandarus’s sleeping room (the outer house), and he must have assigned himself a room adjoining theirs, if he was to be their wardein (665). 50  For instance, where are we to assume that Troilus sees Criseyde arrive—outside in the street or inside in the hall or in some other room (lines 600–1)? An interior window would be unusual, though not utterly impossible. Smyser thought it looked out into the street (308). Brody thought that Chaucer was following Boccaccio in making it an indoor see-through (118). See Schofield, “The Fabric and Furnishings of the London House, 1200–1600,” in Medi­eval London Houses, 95–133.

51  Koster posits an open door between Criseyde and her ladies covered by the travers, behind which Pandarus steps to close the door when he arrives, Troilus in tow. However, she also says that Criseyde’s “bedchamber will be shared by her women,” which does not really seem possible in her scheme (“Privitee, Habitus, and Proximity,” 87).



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One implication of this arrangement is clear. At some point a select company has moved from the hall to a more intimate and probably more comfortable chamber. Nothing unusual about that. That chamber could be Pandarus’s bedchamber or some other chamber. We might imagine that all the guests moved when “after soper gonnen they to rise” (610), and in their new surroundings they sang and played and told tales (614). Or it may have taken place after Criseyde attempts to take her leave and is talked out of it, and then the afterparty begins (653). This move would probably have concerned his medi­eval audience less than it concerns us. Whenever it was, once Pandarus has settled the sleeping arrangements, …hereafter soone The voide dronke, and the travers drawe anon Gan every wight that hadde nought to done More in the place out of the chaumbre gon…

It is not possible to say exactly where in the bedchamber the travers was located, but that hardly matters. If we read the chaumbre as referring to the same space as the closet, then The voide dronke, and travers drawe… Tho Pandarus, hire em, right as hym oughte, With wommen swiche as were hire most aboute, Ful glad unto hire beddes syde hire broughte, And took his leve, and gan ful lowe loute, And seyde, “here at this closet dore… (674, 680–84)

Having drawn the travers, he leads her and a very small group of her attendants to the bedside, where he leaves her in their hands to help her prepare for bed, pointing out that the place where they will be sleeping will be right there (pointing to the door). When he said earlier that “in this myddel chaumbre that ye se / Shal youre wommen slepen,” he is telling her that she will be within sight of her ladies. This is at least one possibility. It is worth considering the question of whether Chaucer was even attempting to give the reader an exact understanding of the arrangement of rooms or whether he was indulging in a bit of mystification that accords with the tendency of Pandarus to complicate what might actually be quite simple. Brody refers to Pandarus’s “utter confidence in his glibness” (128). Would understanding the precise layout of Pandarus’s dwelling add anything at all to our appreciation or understanding of the scene he presents? Earlier in this scene, Pandarus says to Criseyde, “this is youre owen hous” (635), which, given their very friendly long-term relationship, implies that she is intimately familiar with the place. The entire explanation that follows is presented in the form of his address to her. It is of utmost importance to bear in mind that Pandarus is not here speaking to the assembled company—even less to us—but to Criseyde herself (“And nece, woot ye wher I wol yow leye…we…I…my…youre…ye…“ etc., 659–72), who (we are told) knows her uncle’s place like the back of her hand. In order to effect his plan of making her available for a meeting with Troilus, he needs to convince her that she will be perfectly safe if she follows his instructions, but he does not need to explain the layout of the house to her (much as we wish he would, for our benefit).

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He need only gesture in the most general way to the organization of the company for the night. Chaucer’s Pandarus is at this point at his most masterful and his most manipulative. This strikes me as something like a shell game, in which the walnut shells are shifted back and forth at lightning speed, then suddenly stopped so that the onlooker can guess what the con man has done. If this is the case, it makes little difference where one or another chamber is located precisely as long as the relationship between the various locations is maintained (Troilus/Criseyde, Criseyde/ladies, ladies/Pandarus, Criseyde/Pandarus). What we do know is that none of the principal actors sleeps somewhere in the hall, away from the domestic quarters. The implication of the whole description is that they are arranged close to one another, but not so close as to interfere with the trap that Pandarus is planning to spring.

* * * There is, however, one remaining problematic detail in the arrangements: the stewe and its accompanying trappe. The stewe itself has caused more ink to be spilled than necessary. Small rooms adjacent to bedchambers in houses of the elite were not uncommon. They are sometimes used as dressing rooms or wardrobes52; sometimes they functioned as oratories; but they might just as well have been used as small spaces in which to bathe, since baths, even for the nobility, were taken in tubs filled with heated water by household servants and emptied afterward by the same.53 A generation or so after Chaucer, Sir John Fastolf had a “chamber” at Caister that was “a suite of three rooms: a bedchamber, with a withdraught [inner, private room] and a stew- (or bath- ) house.”54 However it was furnished and whether it was heated or not, the stewe was a conveniently small room next to the lord’s bedchamber. What about trapdoors? To judge from the very few examples of the term trappedore, the editors of the MED present (three, apart from this passage, one of them in a bell tower), trapdoors were not common in residential areas of late medi­eval living spaces.55 They were much used below such spaces, however, in the undercroft or cellar; Wood notes a “hinged flap” that gives access from the undercroft to the street.56 According to Woolgar, “trap-doors to cellars were ubiquitous.”57 But because he understood the stewe to allow access to the bedchamber only through a trapdoor, Brody went to great lengths to explain how it worked—locating the stewe on the floor below 52  Wood, The English Mediaeval House, 381.

53  Wood, The English Mediaeval House, 371–3. Brody suggested as much himself (“Making a Play,” 121). 54  Woolgar, The Great Household, 65.

55  L. F. Salzman says only, “Trap-doors are occasionally referred to; as for instance at Banstead in 1372, when hinges were provided ‘for a door called trappedore’” (Building in England, 255). Smyser’s citation of Turner’s Domestic Architecture, 1.84 (1815) to the effect that Henry III had a trapdoor between his bedchamber and his chapel (on a lower floor) removed and replaced by a spiral staircase in the mid-thirteenth century is not, I think, relevant here. 56  Wood, The English Mediaeval House, 81, 89. 57  Woolgar, Medi­eval London Houses, 111.



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the closet and providing access by the use of a ladder.58 However, from what we know of medi­eval dwellings, this seems on the face of it most unlikely, and for a number of reasons. Why would a man plan a house with a bath in such a position vis-à-vis his bedchamber? How would the servants fill and empty the bathtub if they had to negotiate a ladder carrying large vessels of water and armloads of clothing to do so?59 Perhaps more importantly, why would Chaucer insert such a complication into his story at this critical juncture? Chaucer does not seem to imply that these complications even exist. He certainly never mentions a ladder or other mode of access to a room on a lower floor. And with that word he [Pandarus] gan undon a trappe, And Troilus he brought in by the lappe. (741–42)

Brody justified Chaucer’s statement thus:

The unstated premise [in Root-Robinson] seems to be that in lines 741 and 742 Chaucer describes all the action involved in moving from the trap door into the room. That may be so, but it is not necessarily so. Chaucer, who presents the architectural details in an offhand way, presumably because his audience did not need explanations of them, may have assumed that his audience understood how one entered a room through a trap door.60

But Brody glosses over the extreme compression of the action involved. A word. A gesture. And Pandarus is leading Troilus forward in the dark. The description does not fit well with the necessary actions. That he would omit the complexity of the procedure involved, after all the detail that precedes it (put this furred cloke on over your shirt, follow me, but let me go first) is remarkable. But notice that Chaucer does not mention a door here at all, only a trappe. Remember, too, that a little earlier, when he went to fetch Troilus, he “gan the stuwe doore al softe unpynne” (698), and then “withouten lenger lette” sat down beside Troilus.61 No trapdoors, no ladders. Immediate access to the anxiously waiting prince. To backtrack a little, Brody himself notes that F. N. Robinson, following Root, “glosses trappe as ‘probably a trap-door in the floor or possibly a secret entrance in the paneling.’”62 The second of these ideas Brody dismisses out of hand on the basis of the MED’s failure to offer any definition of trappe-dore other than the obvious one, 58  Brody, “Making a Play,” 115–7. The very complexity of the explanations he devises here and elsewhere argue against his solutions.

59  Smyser raised the same objection: “the fact that Pandarus leads Troilus by the ‘lappe’ of his cloak weighs heavily against our supposing that the two went up or down steep stairs or a ladder” (“Domestic Background,” 308), a statement that Brody found unconvincing.

60  Brody, “Making a Play,” 123. Note that he here conflates Pandarus’s “offhand” account, for which he has clear motivation, with that of the poet.

61  If the trapdoor that Brody supposes leads down to the stuwe, Pandarus would not, of course, need to go through a door to get to it (see Brody, “Making a Play,” 117), but Smyser writes: “Pandarus goes to the ‘stewe’ …, unfastens the door, and sits down… (“Domestic Background,” 307). How can these be reconciled? 62  F. N. Robinson, ed., The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), 825. Root’s note is where Mary Ernestine Whitmore, among many others, found the idea: Medi­eval

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identical to the modern term.63 But if Chaucer is referring to a door here, why does he call it a trappe—a word not, apparently, used elsewhere in this way?64 The door to the stewe is referred to three times: the stuwe doore (698), a trappe (741), and this secre trappe dore (759, the hyphen is editorial).65 So what is it exactly and how does it function?66 Brody makes much of the fact that Pandarus must unpynne the door. Why, he asks, would Pandarus “have pinned it shut” (124–25)? Why, indeed, if it is a trapdoor—especially a “secre” trapdoor? In fact, given its position in the floor, why should the trapdoor have any kind of lock or latch at all (intruders could hardly access the bedchamber through the stewe), and why would such an intruder into the bedchamber have wanted to enter the stewe? This simply does not make sense, and this does not seem to be the sort of productive puzzle Chaucer might have wanted to present to his audience. The lack of physical or written evidence of the details of medi­eval interiors such as doors, leads inevitably to some amount of speculation, aided by a dose of logic. If trapdoors were not to be found in the residential areas of medi­eval dwellings, what else might the word trappe mean? The MED is once again of little help. A trappe is a snare or device or contrivance used to limit freedom of movement. What sort of medi­eval trap might we find to see if it offered a clue of any kind? A simple one comes readily to mind. On the right leaf of the Mérode Altarpiece, Joseph the carpenter, father of Jesus, sits at his workbench, where he has just completed work on a mousetrap.67 The extreme detail of the painting shows us that the trap, like modern traps, operates as if by a spring (rather than the more ancient mechanisms that depend on gravity), by means of a twisted cord.68 If spring-loaded devices were as common as mouseEnglish Domestic Life and Amusements in the Works of Chaucer (New York: Cooper Square, 1972), 32 and 73, n1 (PhD diss., Catholic University of America, 1937). 63  Brody, “Making a Play,” 123.

64  Years ago I asked a major scholar of English manu­scripts about a definition in the MED that did not seem to make sense to me. He replied that he never looked at definitions in that dictionary. He just read all the quotations and made up his own mind about what the word meant. There is something to be said for such an approach. Dictionaries are made by people who gather information about both headwords and definitions out of sources available to them. No lexico­grapher, however well informed, would claim absolute certainty or completeness. 65  Brody imagines two doors into the stewe in order to make his complex plan work, but that seems entirely unlikely in such a small room and has no textual justification.

66  There is a great deal that we do not know about medi­eval interior doors, since almost none survive; they have gone the way of the rest of most medi­eval rooms, ruined or remodeled out of existence. According to Schofield, we know a good deal more about medi­eval windows than medi­ eval doors (apart from the fact that many windows or at least window frames survive because they are on exterior walls), due to the extensive litigation surrounding windows and corresponding lack of it surrounding (interior) doors (Medi­eval London Houses, 109).

67  Attributed to the workshop of Robert Campin (ca. 1427–1432), Annunciation Triptych, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/470304.

68  For an explanation of how it worked, see the explanation of “The following trappe for mice” in David C. Drummond, “Unmasking Mascall’s Mouse Traps,” Proceedings of the Fifteenth Vertebrate Pest Conference 1992, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 229–35, at 233, The Digital Commons @



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traps and ironwork was a highly developed and highly regarded skill, then why not a spring-loaded door latch/lock, a trappe perhaps being another name for a springloc?69 The modern English word “catch” for such a mechanism makes a good parallel to the relationship that could exist between a trap and such a device. A “trap” door, then, would be a door with a latch or lock, perhaps of a special kind, that could be pynned or unpynned (the word can mean lock or just fasten, latch). In that case, the door need not be located in the floor, but could be in a wall. But there is more. This is a secre door, one that the casual visitor (or even Criseyde) would not see or expect (unwist of hem alle, 758). Now Root’s suggestion begins to make better sense. Perhaps this is a vertical door with some sort of (?special) lock or latch and invisible to the eye either because it is disguised by some sort of painted cloth (which might match others around the room) or by paneling or because it is curtained off or covered by a tapestry.70 It makes no particular sense to refer to a door as a trappe, but if the word refers to a special sort of lock or latch (“he gan undon a trappe”), it makes much better sense. The movements of the characters in book three of Chaucer’s great poem present the reader with a series of knotty (if minor) problems, in a key scene in which we are intensely interested and to which we have been very attentive. Still, however explained, it makes little difference to the final outcome of the proceedings. Pandarus will arrange everything so that it works, whether we understand all its ins and outs or not. And it does work—spectacularly well. This is Pandarus’s moment of glory, having fooled every single person involved in the action. There is a lingering sense about the scene that he (or the puppetmaster who created him) is fooling us as well. And just as anyone suspicious enough to think he or she has been fooled looks ever more closely at what he believes got him into the position he finds himself in, so scholars of a certain turn of mind have analyzed and reanalyzed the “facts” of Pandarus’s machinations as Chaucer presents them. The uncomfortable truth is that we do not have enough facts to make perfect sense of the scenes in Pandarus’s palace, but we have enough now for a persuasive sense of how this moment in the plot is achieved.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/vpc15/23. See also David C. Drummond, “The Mérode Mouse Trap and the Missing Clicket,” Tools & Trades 10 (1998): 37–40.

69  See Salzman, Building in England, 302. For an example of a spring-loaded lock at the Victoria and Albert Museum, see #851–1893, which was made in Germany ca. 1500: https://collections. vam.ac.uk/item/O380334/lock-unknown/. Compare with illustration #3 on “Springs,” Historical Locks, https://www.historicallocks.com/en/site/h/locks-and-techno­l ogy/springs-in-locks/ springs-/. 70  See Schofield, Medi­eval London Houses, 128–33.

BENEDICTINE DEVOTION TO ENGLAND’S SAINTS THOMAS DE LA MARE, JOHN OF TYNEMOUTH, AND THE SANCTILOGIUM IN COTTON TIBERIUS E. I

VIRGINIA BLANTON Virginia Blanton is University of Missouri Curators’ Distinguished Professor of English Language and Literature. She is co-editor of the three-volume series Nuns’ Literacies in Medi­eval Europe (2013–2017) and author of Signs of Devotion: The Cult of St. Æthelthryth in Medi­eval England, 695–1615 (2007). She is also a founding member of the multidisciplinary NEH-funded team, CODICES, which conducts optical, chemical, and computational analyses of manu­scripts and early printed books: http://daedalus.umkc.edu/CODICES/.

The following article confirms a suspected provenance for MS Cotton Tiberius

E. i and suggests a rationale for its production and use, even as it contributes to scholarship about Anglo-Latin hagio­graphy, monastic history, devotional reading, and the afterlives of medi­eval manu­scripts. I wish to acknowledge here a substantial debt to my mentor and fiercest champion, Paul E. Szarmach, who long ago put before me a Cottonian manu­script containing insular saints—and in doing so changed the pole star by which I have charted my academic career. His last “ask” was for a contribution to this issue of Studies in Medi­eval and Renaissance History, and while I can never repay him for all he has done, this is a small credit in the account ledger. It is, perhaps, a particularly apropos essay for this memorial volume, as it focuses on an astute and canny administrator and his patronage of a book of prose saints’ lives. In 1696, William Nicolson, Bishop of Carlisle, printed a manu­script donor inscription that specified Abbot Thomas de la Mare of St. Albans (ca. 1309–1396, abbot 1349– 1396) gifted the book to a dependency, Redbourn Priory.1 From that point forward, 1  William Nicolson, English Historical Library (London: Abell Swall, 1696), II.31. Bishop Nicolson was the first to print the inscription but it had been recorded previously, first by Nicholas Roscarrock (1549–1634?) in Cambridge, Cambridge University Library Additional MS 3041 and again in 1637 by Augustine Baker (1575–1641) in Oxford, Jesus College, MS 77. C. H. Talbot reconstructed the inscription from post-medi­eval notices, but it is unclear if he actually saw the inscription himself: The Life of Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth Century Recluse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959; reprint, Toronto: University of Toronto Press for the Medi­eval Academy of America, 1998), 1n2. Of note, James P. Carley indicates that Tiberius E. i was numbered 845 in a 1542 list of the king’s manu­scripts at Westminster Palace and listed as “Sanctilogium Iohannis de Anglia,” but this number has not been discovered because of the damage to the manu­script. He also indicates that John Bale called the manu­script, which he saw, “Sanctio­logium Ioannis Anglici.” See James P. Carley, ed., The Libraries of King Henry VIII, Corpus of British Medi­eval Library Catalogues (London: The British Library in association with The British Academy, 2000), 167 and 261. I am grateful to Dr. Carley, who not only shared his work on Tiberius E. i, but also offered suggestions to improve my discussion: “The Royal Library as A Source for Sir Robert Cotton’s Collection: A Preliminary List

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the collection of saints’ lives in London, British Library Cotton MS Tiberius E. i, has been assigned to Redbourn, even as the book’s association with Abbot Thomas has been endorsed, despite the inscription being lost when the book was damaged in the 1731 Asburnham House fire.2 Remnants of the book vary from complete leaves with slightly burned edges to brittle fragments. During conservation, each of the relatively intact folios, which shrank and buckled in the heat of the fire, was spliced to allow it to lie flat. Now inlaid on paper mounts and bound in two volumes, these leaves (with a text block of 265 x 175 mm) can again be read, albeit with lacunae.3 A contemporary index at the opening of the first volume (I.2r–5v) is compromised, but the legibility of the surviving leaves makes it possible to ascertain that the two volumes contain John of Tynemouth’s Sanctilogium Angliae, Walliae, Scotiae, et Hiberniae, a compendium of insular saints in calendar order by feast beginning with 5 January (I.6r–13r), the feast of Edward the Confessor, and running through to 30 December, the feast of Egwin. Folio 6r (Figure 6.1) opens the collection and is uniquely ornamented by a large, eight-line puzzle initial and a foliate penwork border. Its current state is typical of the codex’s disfigurement.4 Rubrics and decorative scrollwork are accentuated by the translucent nature of the leaf, which was gelatinized by heat.5 This folio also demonstrates how the fire affected the manu­script’s decoration, where the blue ink deteriorated while the red was vibrantly enhanced. There are no of Acquisitions,” The British Library Journal 18, no. 1 (1992), 52–73, at 56; (reprinted in Sir Robert Cotton as Collector: Essays on an Early Stuart Courtier and His Legacy, ed. C. J. Wright (London: British Library, 1997), 208–29, at 211). See also Colin G. C. Tite, The Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton’s Library: Formation, Cataloguing, Use (London: British Library, 2003), 111–2.

2  “Fire, fire! The Tragic Burning of the Cotton Library,” The British Library Medi­eval Manu­scripts Blog, https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanu­scripts/2016/10/fire-fire-the-tragic-burning-of-thecotton-library.html.

3  Measurements of the manu­script are approximate, as it was compromised by the burnt edges and buckling from heat. The leaf size currently is approximately 320 x 200 mm, as indicated in the manu­script description: “John Tynemouth, Sanctilogium Angliae, Walliae, Scotiae et Hiberniae, Cotton MS Tiberius E i,” The British Library Archives and Manu­scripts Catalogue https://searcharchives.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?fn=search&ct=search&init ialSearch=true&mode=Basic&tab=local&indx=1&dum=true&srt=rank&vid=IAMS_VU2&frbg=&vl %28freeText0%29=tiberius+e+i&scp.scps=scope%3A%28BL%29.

4  By comparison, the opening of the Legenda aurea in London, British Library, Stowe MS 49, fol. 2r (a Westminster book of saints’ lives), shows a similar layout in two columns with a large puzzle initial in red with blue penwork flourishing. The alternating blue and red waterfalls that make up the border are suggestive about the border in Tiberius E. i, where the red ink remains but the blue has disintegrated. Of interest, the Westminster collection of saints’ lives, like Tiberius E. i, includes an inscription in the lower margin.

5  Christina Duffy, “Burnt Cotton Collection Survey Enables Digitisation Prioritisation.” British Library Collection Care Blog, 9 October 2014. https://blogs.bl.uk/collectioncare/2014/10/ burnt-cotton-collection-survey-enables-digitisation-prioritisation.html. For details on the earliest conservation efforts, see Andrew Prescott, “‘Their Present Miserable State of Cremation’: The Restoration of the Cotton Library,” in Sir Robert Cotton as Collector: Essays on an Early Stuart Courtier and His Legacy, ed. C. J. Wright (London: British Library Publications, 1997), 391–454, which is available: http://www.uky.edu/~kiernan/eBeo_archives/articles90s/ajp-pms.htm.



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Figure 6.1: Life of Edward the Confessor, London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius E. i., fol. 6r. Photo­graph by Virginia Blanton.

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Figure 6.2: Multispectral image of ex dono in MS Cotton Tiberius E i, f. 6r, captured by Dr Christina Duffy, Conservation Research Imaging Scientist, The British Library. Reproduced by permission of The British Library.

obvious ownership marks, yet when viewed under ultraviolet light, a portion of the inscription written in black ink is visible in the lower margin (Figure 6.2): (H)unc librum dedit dompnus Thomas de la M(are abbas monasterii S. Albani Anglorum) prothomartiris, deo et ecclesiae beati Amphibali (de Redburn, ut fratres ibidem in cursu ex)istentes per eius lecturam poterint celestibus instrui, (et per Sanctorum exempla virtutibus insigniri).6

This book was given by Lord Thomas de la Mare, abbot of the monastery of St. Albans, first martyr of the English, to God and to the Church of Blessed Amphibalus of Redbourn, so that brothers living there on retreat might be built up by spiritual matters through their reading and instilled with virtues through the examples of the Saints.

This inscription, which is in a different hand from that of the legendary, stretches across the lower margin beneath two columns of text.7 The scribe left room for a two6  Letters and words in parens indicate missing text, which has been augmented by Bishop Nicolson’s inscription, though there are a few insignificant differences between Nicholson’s record and the surviving text. Translation is mine. While the inscription is only visible under ultraviolet light, its shadow is visible in a photo taken without UV (Figure 6.1). Christina Duffy, Imaging Scientist at the British Library, very kindly conducted multispectral imaging on fol. 6r, which is Figure 6.2. I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Duffy and to Dr. Julian Harrison for coordinating this investigation and granting permission to reproduce the image.

7  A similar inscription is found in another fourteenth-century collection of saints’ lives gifted to Redbourn by Abbot John Whethamstede (abbot 1420–1440, 1452–1465), which is now London, British Library, MS Royal 13 D. ix: “Hunc librum providit venerabilis pater dompnus Joh[ann]es Wheth[a]mstede abbas monasterii s[an]c[t]i Albani sacre theo­logie professor prioratui Redburne et monachis ibidem cursum capientib[us] Quem qui alienaverit anathema sit” (fol. 1v). The legendary, which is alternately called the Sanctilogium Guidonis or Speculum legendarum, was compiled by Gui de Châtres, abbot of St. Denis. Carley notes the significance of Royal 13 D. ix’s inventory number, “No. 846” in the Westminster List, as it immediately follows Tiberius E. i, No. 845. On this point, see Carley, “The Royal Library as a Source,” 56 (or p. 211 in the reprint). The inscription in Royal 13 D. ix, which is not made by the same hand as that in Tiberius E. i, can be viewed online: http://www.bl.uk/manu­scripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Royal_MS_13_D_IX. See also “Sanctilogium Guidonis — Redbourn, Hertfordshire,” Medi­eval Libraries of Great Britain, 3, The University of



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line decorative initial (‘H’) that was never added. Below the decorative border of the text block, the ex dono is both a commemoration and a directive from the abbot to his monks who enjoyed respite from strict observance at Redbourn, a few miles north of St. Albans, for a month at a time.8 Confirmation of the book’s association with Thomas de la Mare allows us to reflect on the purpose of this gift. As the inscription stresses, reading itself is defined as an important activity for Benedictine monks on retreat. The monks’ edification is framed in terms of exemplary spiritual vocations that might reenergize their own. The following draws together various codico­logical and historical details to uncover why Abbot Thomas considered John of Tynemouth’s Sanctilogium imperative devotional reading and how this gift seems to have been part of a larger initiative regarding the necessity of monastic study, intellectual enrichment, and liturgical correctness among the Benedictines.9 Engagement with the lives of native saints seems to be a key component of the edification Thomas expected of his community, and his desire may well have been the reason this unusual collection of insular saints had such a long-lasting influence. The compiler of this legendary is an enigma. Bio­graphical details about John of Tynemouth are incredibly sparse given his robust oeuvre. He was a prolific writer interested in the liturgical cycle of the sanctorale, having also produced a chronicle titled Historia aurea (an ecclesiastical history of holy figures up until 1347, extant in two complete copies and a partial one),10 a lectionary of the use of Sarum (now lost, Oxford http://mlgb3.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/mlgb/book/4611/?search_term=redbourn&page_size=All. As James G. Clark notes in A Monastic Renaissance at St Albans: Thomas Walsingham and his Circle c. 1350–1440, Oxford Historical Mono­graphs (Oxford: Clarendon, 2004), 85, the variety of hands evident in St. Albans ex dono inscriptions indicate that there was not a single monk assigned to writing such inscriptions. The hand is much like William Wyche’s in Thomas of Walsingham’s Liber benefactorum Sancti Albani, preserved in London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero D. vii, f. 138v: http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/illmanus/cottmanucoll/j/largeimage75416.html. For a discussion of St. Albans style, see Clark, 116.

8  “Houses of Benedictine Monks: Redbourn Priory,” in A History of the County of Hertford, vol. 4, ed. William Page (London: Victoria County History, 1971), 416–9, British History Online, http:// www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/herts/vol4/pp416–419; and Dom David Knowles and R. Neville Hadcock, Medi­eval Religious Houses: England and Wales (London: Longman, 1971), 56 and 74. For details on how Redbourn was used, see a translation of “The Constitutions of Abbot Richard for the Brethren Staying at Redbourn,” in Michelle Still, The Abbot and the Rule: Religious Life at St Albans, 1290–1349, Church, Faith and Culture in the Medi­eval West (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 268–70. The initial set up was that a rotation of three monks of St. Albans would stay at Redbourn for a month at a time for fresh air and exercise, but they were required to follow the horarium, including daily mass. 9  On the history of Benedictines in England, as well as the Order’s prescriptions for learning, see James G. Clark, The Benedictines in the Middle Ages, Monastic Orders (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011), 83–91. See also Dom David Knowles, The Monastic Order in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950). 10  The complete manu­scripts of the Historia aurea include London, Lambeth Palace Library, Lambeth MSS 10, 11, and 12 (from Durham), and Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MSS 5 and 6 (from St. Albans). Part two of the Historia aurea is included in Bury St. Edmund’s manu­script, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 240, which also contains some of the lives from John’s legendary.

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presumably focused on lections of native saints), and a martyro­logy (of which only a portion is extant in a Bury manu­script, but Thomas Tanner indicated that St. Albans had a copy of it).11 Often assumed to have been a monk of St. Albans, John’s vocation cannot be ascertained.12 Henry de Kirkstede (ca. 1314–ca. 1378), the librarian monk at Bury St. Edmunds, called him “Ioannes Anglicus, vicarius de Tynmouth” and attributed to him the four books named above, along with “Opus seruorum Dei” and a multitude of Biblical commentaries and allegorical works.13 Of these, a Bury manu­script includes part two of the Historia aurea and references another of Bury’s manu­scripts, a “Legenda de sanctis Angliae.” It seems more than probable this reference is to John’s Sanctilogium, but it is unlikely that it might be identified as the fifteenth-century copy in London, British Library, MS Cotton Otho D. ix.14 Be that as it may, John’s voluminous

Important scholarship on the Historia aurea includes: Vivian Hunter Galbraith, “The Historia aurea of John, Vicar of Tynemouth, and the Sources of the St. Albans Chronicle (1327–1377),” in Essays in History Presented to Reginald Lane Pool, ed. H. W. C. Davis (Oxford: Clarendon, 1927; reprint, Freeport: Books for Libraries, 1967), 379–98; and corrections to Galbraith by James G. Clark, “Thomas Walsingham Reconsidered: Books and Learning at Late-Medi­eval St. Albans,” Speculum 77, no. 3 (2002), 832–60.

11  John Taylor, “Tynemouth, John (fl. c. 1350),” Oxford Dictionary of National Bio­graphy, Oxford University Press, 2004 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27466, and Michael Lapidge and Rosalind Love, “England and Wales (600–1550),” in Hagio­graphies: International History of the Latin and Vernacular Hagio­graphical Literature in the West from its Origins to 1550, ed. Guy Philippart, Corpus Christianorum, vol. 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 305–9. The collection’s modern editor discusses the relationship of the saints’ lives common to the Sanctilogium, the martyro­logy, and the Historia aurea in Nova Legenda Anglie: As Collected by John of Tynemouth, John Capgrave, and Others, and First Printed with New Lives by Wynkyn de Worde, AD 1516, ed. Carl Horstman, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1901), lii–liii. He writes that “the same lives, stories, &c., are found in the same, or almost the same words….” For Tanner’s note about John’s martyro­logy at St. Albans, see Horstman, vol. 1, liv. 12  Horstman draws this conclusion in Nova Legenda Anglie, vol. 1, xii.

13  Henry de Kirkstede’s Catalogus Scriptorum Ecclesiæ is recorded by John Bale, Index Britanniae Scriptorum, ed. Reginald Lane Poole, with Mary Bateson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1902), 176–7; which has a modern edition: Henry of Kirkestede, Catalogus de libris autenticis et apocrifis, ed. Richard H. Rouse and Mary A. Rouse, Corpus of British Medi­eval Library Catalogues, 11 (London: The British Library in association with The British Academy, 2004), #341 on pp. 342–3. See also Manfred Görlach, The Kalendre of the Newe Legende of Englande, Middle English Texts, 27 (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 1994), 8–10, who notes that John of Tynemouth is called “Iohannes Anglicus” in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 240, and “Iohannes Peccator” in London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 10. To this can be added that he is called “John Prest” in CCCC MSS 5–6, and John of York in Thomas Swalwell’s additions to a Durham historio­graphy in London, Lincoln’s Inn, MS Hale 114, f. 94v. For the latter attribution, see A. J. Piper, “Thomas Swalwell: Monk, Archivist and Bibliophile (d. 1539),” in Books and Collectors 1200–1700: Essays Presented to Andrew Watson, ed. James P. Carley and Colin G. C. Tite (London: The British Library, 1997), 71–100, at 99n139. John’s oeuvre is outlined by Lapidge and Love, “England and Wales (600–1550),” 306. See also H. H. E. Craster, “The Parish of Tynemouth,” in History of Northumberland, ed. Edward Bateson and others, vol. 8 (Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Andrew Reid, 1907), 127n1. John was also called “Iohannes Historio­ graphus,” as noted by John Larkin, “John of Tynemouth,” in Encyclopedia of the Medi­eval Chronicle, ed. Graeme Dunphy (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 939. 14  Richard Sharpe, “Reconstructing the Medi­eval Library of Bury St. Edmunds Abbey: The Lost Catalogue of Henry of Kirkstead,” in Bury St. Edmunds: Medi­eval Art, Architecture, Archaeo­logy, and



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output makes it remarkable that so little is known about him. Henry de Kirkstede indicated that John was alive in 1366, but it is his reference to John’s appointment as vicar of Tynemouth that helps explain a few practical matters as related to Thomas de la Mare and the St. Albans/Redbourn Sanctilogium.15 The living at the parish of Tynemouth was financially viable—in 1292 the vicar earned forty marks and the rectory’s endowment was £111 12s 10d.—and included the assistance of a chaplain and clerk.16 These attendants would have been very helpful in maintaining the spiritualities while John travelled (and one wonders if they were put to work copying for him). The dates of John’s itinerancy are unknown, but to secure such a broad range of vitae, he would have had to roam widely, as no legendary solely about insular saints is known to have existed before that point. Within the lives, John offers several revealing comments, indicating he visited Ely, Canterbury, and London, as well as Glastonbury and Monmouth. The Benedictine libraries at Christ Church, Canterbury, Ely, Glastonbury, and Monmouth would have been rich resources for collecting saints’ lives (and other materials related to the sanctorale).17 As Michael Lapidge and Rosalind Love demonstrate, John drew upon the major Latin hagio­ graphers of England, including “Bede, Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, Eadmer and Osbern of Canterbury, Aelred of Rievaulx, William of Malmesbury, Reginald of Coldingham, and others.”18 As a direct consequence of his work in Benedictine libraries, the Sanctilogium contains a preponderance of saints culted by English Benedictines. It is the survival of his efforts in several recensions that illustrate how his collecting shaped Benedictine devotion. Where Henry de Kirkstede used the title Sanctilogium Angliae, Walliae, Scotiae, et Hiberniae, Wynkyn de Worde named his 1516 edition Nova Legenda Anglie, a title he justified by the subjection of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales to English rule.19

Economy, ed. Antonia Gransden, The British Archaeo­logical Association Conference Transactions, 20 (Leeds: British Archaeo­logical Association, 1998), 204–18, at 212 (H.55) and 215 (S.146). H.55 is identified as Bodley 240; S.146 is untraced. The reference in Bodley 240 to a “Legenda de sanctis Angliae” is unlikely to denote the copy in Cotton Otho D. ix, which shows a decided preference for the archbishops of Canterbury. It is possible, of course, that an earlier copy of John’s Sanctilogium was in the library at Bury, prior to the destruction of Bury books and documents in the riots of 1327–1321, and another replaced it. For this history of Bury, see Rouse and Rouse, ed., Catalogus, xliv, lxxvi.

15  Craster, “Parish of Tynemouth,” 126, suggests John might have been John de Barneburgh, who became vicar ca. 1308, or his immediate successors, John de Howyk or John de Howorth. 16  Craster, “Parish of Tynemouth,” 125–6.

17  For an indication of the scope of learning in Benedictine monasteries, see English Benedictine Libraries: The Shorter Catalogues, ed. Andrew G. Watson, James P. Carley, Richard Sharpe, and Rodney M. Thompson, Corpus of Medi­eval Library Catalogues (London: The British Library, 1996).

18  Lapidge and Love, “England and Wales (600–1550),” 306. See also Horstman’s introduction in which he describes John’s sources and his travels, vol. 1, xxxi and li, respectively.

19  Wynkyn de Worde’s edition includes fifteen additional saints, as well as a different life of Ursula from that in Tiberius E. i. Horstman based his 1901 edition on Wynkyn de Worde’s 1516 edition, and, where necessary, checked Tiberius E. i and Tanner 15. Differences between Wynkyn de Worde’s edition, Tiberius E. i, and Tanner 15 are outlined by the collection’s second editor, Horstman, Nova Legenda Anglie, vol. 1, i–xix.

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The printed edition was arranged in alpha order by saint’s feast, following a precedent established by an unknown intermediary who reorganized the collection, replaced the lives of Richard and Ursula with new ones, slimmed down the number of narrations, and removed the collects and antiphons that augmented the saints’ lives in Tiberius E. i. Four fifteenth-century manu­scripts contain the Sanctilogium: Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Cod. St. Georgen 12 (before 1439), which was copied by Stephen Dodesham for Syon Abbey; London, British Library, Cotton MS Otho D. ix (s. xv med), provenance unknown, but its highly-decorated first folio suggests a community of some status; York, York Minster Library MS XVI G 23 (1454), which was likely made for York Minster by the itinerant scribe Henry Mere, who signs his name several times; and Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Tanner 15 (1499), which, according to the colophon on f. 581r, was copied by Jacobus Neell (or Neel) for Thomas Goldstone, prior of Christ Church, Canterbury (prior 1449–1468).20 The survival of this compendium of saints’ lives among a range of monasteries offers proof of the circulation of John’s Sanctilogium well beyond St. Albans/Redbourn, and suggests the importance of insular lives among a network of high-status and influential monastic communities. Wynkyn de Worde’s assertion about this being an “English” collection sets the stage for thinking about the legendary as one that broadly honored local saints, that is, those who could be considered part of the “English pantheon,” as opposed to those like Cecilia and John the Baptist who were celebrated universally. An accounting of the 156 entries in the Sanctilogium illustrates that the lion share of the collection (eighty-eight) concern English saints, that is, saints who were native to the geo­graphical area defined as England, even if they became missionaries or founders of communities in other locales (such as Cuthbert and Boniface). By focusing on each saint’s native homeland, one finds that Welsh and Irish saints are reasonably well represented at twenty-one and eighteen, respectively (no doubt because so many Irish saints were instrumental in establishing the early church in England). Six are Cornish, three are British, but only one is Scottish. Otherwise, the collection contains émigrés who were culted in England, adopted under the umbrella of the English Church: eight Romans; five Franks; three Danes; two Bretons; and one Frisian. When one considers gender, one finds some 127 of the lives focus on male saints; only twenty-nine honor females. Access to source material accounts for a range of figures, the Romans being well documented at Christ Church, Canterbury, for example, or the Welsh/Cornish saints in London, British Library, Cotton MS Vespasian A. xiv, a collection of Welsh saints written at Monmouth Priory, for another.21 The focus on English sanctity rather than a widespread accounting of saints across the insular tradition is telling. Tynemouth’s location on the border with Scotland might make the paucity of Scottish saints surprising: only Mungo (Kentigern, as he was known to the Welsh, d. 614) is native to Scotland: the other two ostensible saints from Scotland are Ninian and Margaret, both Irish and English transplants.22 20  Along with Tiberius E. i, these manu­scripts are the focus of a mono­graph-in-progress on the Sanctilogium of which the present essay is a part. 21  Lapidge and Love, “England and Wales (600–1550),” 305.

22  On the northern legendary, see Eva von Contzen, The Scottish Legendary: Towards a Poetics



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The few Scottish saints are no doubt related to the history of Christianization north of the border, but are also directly related to English colonization—and to the association of John’s local parish with Tynemouth Priory, which was positioned just north of the Tyne River, directly in the cross-hairs of the English/Scottish wars. Tynemouth Priory, which was allowed to build a crenellated wall in 1296, held an important geo­graphical position at the mouth of the Tyne.23 During the wars with Scotland, English magnates argued that the fortified Tynemouth Priory was a royal castle and prison, a charge Thomas de la Mare, who served as prior from 1340–1349, refuted.24 He lobbied for and received confirmation from King Edward III (r. 1327–1377) that the prior was the “sole authority within its walls.”25 That authority was reinforced by an eighty-person garrison that had been instituted before 1314 when Robert the Bruce attacked.26 This political strife—which affected the priory and its environs in so many ways—may well have dictated some of John’s ethno­graphical choices. As a local parish priest, whose benefice was assigned by the Prior of Tynemouth (who was in turn appointed by the Abbot of St. Albans), John would have had good reason to focus his attention on native luminaries who were associated with English Benedictine monasteries, in particular. As a parochial priest whose diocesan authority was the Bishop of Durham, but who was subject to the Prior of Tynemouth (and by extension to the Abbot of St. Albans), he very much owed his allegiance to the English Church. Travel to monasteries in Scotland would have been perilous for a priest who was so clearly allied within the English ecclesiastical framework.27 of Hagio­graphic Narration (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016). The insertion of genealogies of Oswin and Margaret in the lower margins of Tiberius E. i—and the lack of any ornamentation of Alban and Amphibalus, the patrons of St. Albans and Redbourn—might indicate that the book was made by St. Albans monks at Tynemouth, who were trained in the St. Albans style, but it is also possible to conclude that the genealogies were included to illustrate to the St. Albans/Redbourn community the importance of Oswin, the patron of Tynemouth, and Margaret, whose husband Malcolm III was first buried at Tynemouth Priory. Their daughter was a benefactor of Tynemouth in commemoration of her father, as Lois L. Huneycutt observes in Matilda of Scotland: A Study in Medi­eval Queenship (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003), 119–20. Catherine Keene indicates that Malcolm was buried hastily at Tynemouth, but later his son, King Alexander, removed his body to Margaret’s foundation of Dumferline where she was buried. See Catherine Keene, Saint Margaret, Queen of the Scots: A Life in Perspective, The New Middle Ages Series (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 157 and 191.

23  Gesta abbatam monasterii St Albanii, ed. Henry Thomas Riley, Rerum Britannicarum, Medii Ævi Scriptores, 3 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1867–1869), II.371–72. On Tynemouth Priory in general, see Knowles and Hadcock, Medi­eval Religious Houses, 57 and 78. 24  Craster, “Parish of Tynemouth, 92.

25  Craster, “Parish of Tynemouth,” 83, 95, and 156.

26  For excellent overhead photo­graphs of the site and reconstructions of the buildings, see “History of Tynemouth Priory and Castle,” English Heritage, https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/ visit/places/tynemouth-priory-and-castle/history/.

27  Craster, “Parish of Tynemouth,” 73. The vicar was under the spiritual direction of the Bishop of Durham, who held jurisdiction over the parish (and therefore the nave of the priory church), but as the appointee of the Prior of Tynemouth, who shared the priory church with the monks, he was subject to the prior—and by extension, his superior, the Abbot of St. Albans.

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So how does a collection organized by a northern priest become so important to Benedictine interests throughout England? The connection appears to be centered on John’s role as vicar of the parish church, which was in the nave of the conventual church of Tynemouth Priory, a smaller Benedictine monastery of fifteen monks. 28 As prior of this community, Thomas de la Mare was proactive in a number of ways, defending the priory’s rights, enhancing the priory buildings, and insisting upon the intellectual maturity of his monks. Thomas’s focus on education was coupled with building an intellectual community of scholars across the northeast, and he may have cultivated John of Tynemouth as part of this effort. John Taylor suggests it was Thomas de la Mare who encouraged John to write the Historia aurea, but I suspect Thomas’s collaborative with John was more extensive.29 As prior of Tynemouth, Thomas was already thinking about what would be needed to meet the requirements of observance instituted by his superior, Michael Mentmore (abbot 1336–1349).30 If John were already at work on the Sanctilogium, the support of a clerical leader like Thomas de la Mare would have made John’s project in collecting and abbreviating so many saints’ lives far easier, and one wonders if Prior Thomas gave John the benefice as a means to support his many writing projects.31 It is possible too that Thomas commissioned the collection of saints’ lives. Details about Thomas’s abbacy help fill in a few pieces of the puzzle, even as codico­logical evidence in Tiberius E. i offers additional clues. Thomas de la Mare was “bonus bono, sanctus sancto, prudens prudenti, sapiens sapienti,” as his anonymous bio­grapher in the Gesta abbatam monasterii St Albanii describes him.32 There is no doubt that such high praise stemmed from his vigorous defense of his monastery’s rights, as well as his protection of the Benedictine Order. Thomas was aristocratic, well-connected, and well educated—and from a family committed to religious life. His siblings included brothers William of the Canons Regular, Richard, an Augustinian monk at Thetford, John, a monk at St. Albans, and a sister, Dionisia, who was a Benedictine nun at the St. Albans’s dependency of St. Mary de Pré (a community that Thomas decreed should only admit literate women, and one he 28  Craster, “Parish of Tynemouth,” 35 and 73.

29  Taylor, “Tynemouth, John (fl. c. 1350).” Taylor’s argument is a strong one. One difficulty has been that a copy of John’s Historia aurea was only made at St. Albans after Thomas de la Mare’s death in 1396, but that does not preclude there being one available there before that time, perhaps in Thomas de la Mare’s personal library, as Tiberius E. i seems to have been before he gave it to Redbourn.

30  William Sidney Gibson, citing Newcome’s History of S. Alban’s, shows that Thomas’s efforts were an extension of his predecessor: “about 1338 Abbat Michael de Mentmore ordained certain rules of the regulation of the abbey and injoined a better order and observance than had been practiced theretofore,” in The History of the Monastery at Tynemouth in the Diocese of Durham, vol. 2 (London: Pickering, 1847), 44n17. 31  Gibson first suggested the idea that Thomas de la Mare instigated the compilation but also believed that John of Tynemouth dedicated the work to him. See The History of the Monastery at Tynemouth, vol 2, 53. 32  Gesta abbatam, II.371–2.



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supplied with service books after he became abbot).33 Thomas’s Latinity was praised, as was his preaching and his singing.34 After his novitiate, he was made chaplain to the Prior of Wymondham, a dependency of St. Albans.35 Later, he became Cellarer and Kitchener at St. Albans—positions that would have provided good training for later administrative roles—before being appointed Prior of Tynemouth.36 Thomas was renowned for his litigiousness, vigorously resisting secular incursions on monastic properties. The Gesta abbatum recounts multiple conflicts with barons and lords, demonstrating Thomas had no fear of going head-to-head with powerful adversaries. He demanded royal or papal assistance, as needed, to get restitution. He was also attentive to the maintenance of the priory’s (and later the abbey’s) buildings, expending large sums on construction projects.37 His bio­grapher specifies that in nine years as Prior of Tynemouth, Thomas spent three years contesting infringements on the priory, three years on building projects, and three years focused on preaching.38 The prior was also proactive in organizing a network of monks and scholars; as James G. Clark indicates, he encouraged the monks to engage in intellectual activities and invited scholars from nearby houses to teach and preach to the community. He forged especially close links with the monks and scholars in the circle of the archbishop of York, John Thoresby, and with the Augustinian friars at the York convent, one of whom, Dr. John Waldeby, later dedicated a series of homilies on the apostles creed to de la Mare.39

Once Thomas was elected Abbot of St. Albans, he set to work regulating every aspect of monastic life, but was particularly focused on how the Divine Office should be performed.40 His reforming zeal was not always popular, especially with monks from other Benedictine houses, for when he, as President of the General Chapter, instituted these new Constitutions in 1352,41 the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury refused to attend 33  Gesta abbatam, II.371–3, 401–2. Thomas also insisted that they be able to write their own profession. See also “Houses of Benedictine Nuns: St. Mary de Pre Priory, St. Albans,” in A History of the County of Hertford, vol. 4, ed. William Page (London: Victoria County History, 1971), 428–32, British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/herts/vol4/pp428–432.

34  Gesta abbatum, III.409.

35  Gesta abbatam, II.373–5.

36  On the roles of the Cellarer (maintained the food and drink inventory) and Kitchener (ensured the preparation and delivery of foodstuffs), see Knowles, The Monastic Order in England, 424–30. 37  Gesta abbatum, II.379–80.

38  Gesta abbatum, II.380.

39  James G. Clark, “Thomas de la Mare,” Oxford Dictionary of National Bio­graphy, vol. 36 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 620–2, at 620. For a general history of the abbey, see “St. Albans Abbey: History,” in A History of the County of Hertford, vol. 2, ed. William Page (London: Victoria County History, 1908), 483–8, British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/herts/ vol2/pp483–488; and “Houses of Benedictine Monks: St. Albans Abbey: After the Conquest,” in A History of the County of Hertford, vol. 4 (London: Victoria County History, 1971), 372–416, British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/herts/vol4/pp372–416. 40  Gesta abbatum, II.396.

41  Gesta abbatum, II.447.

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the general chapter until rebuked by the Black Prince (1330–1376).42 John of Gaunt (1340–1399) intervened on the part of Christ Church and facilitated an exemption from future attendance.43 Edward III trumped this development by giving Thomas the right to visit monasteries on his behalf, and the abbot insisted upon reforms at Abingdon, Battle, Chester (even removing the offending abbot), Eynsham, and Reading, among others.44 At his own expense, Thomas brought monks from other houses to St. Albans to be trained properly in monastic discipline, as he much preferred the singing of his own monks.45 In one instance, he settled a dispute at Bury St. Edmunds and brought two querulous monks to St. Albans to dissipate the wrangle.46 His own monks were not always pleased with the rigor of Thomas’ reforms, and some left St. Albans never to return.47 The Gesta abbatum records in full Abbot Thomas’s Constitutions, which are exacting about performance aspects of the Divine Office (i.e., sing this, not that) and the saints’ histories that must be memorized, including those for Alban, Benedict, Gregory, and Oswin, the patron of Tynemouth.48 In particular, Thomas stressed the necessity of reading full commemorations of the saints regularly, especially those for Alban and Oswin, and the importance of the correct pronunciation of Latin words.49 The detailed nature of the Constitutions, which also prescribe the roles of obedientiaries, the requirements of novices, and the health practices of the monks, is exhaustive, revealing a discerning and thorough mind. Thomas’s attention to minute detail seems to have been equally impressive and intolerable to peers and monks alike.50 But the abbot’s insistence on university education for the Black monks is noteworthy.51 Thomas not only stressed the importance of financing a significant proportion of each community’s membership at Oxford or Cambridge,52 but he also addressed eligibility (not old monks),53 responsibilities of the Prior of Students,54 and the requirement that Benedictine monks not study under Doctors who were not Benedictine.55 Thomas modeled this directive by paying for accommodation at Gloucester College, Oxford (demarcated for Benedictines), where his own monks were celebrated for their learning.56 42  Gesta abbatum, II.403.

43  Gesta abbatum, II.404.

44  Gesta abbatum, II.405–6.

45  Gesta abbatum, II.401, 406. 46  Gesta abbatum, II.407. 47  Gesta abbatum, II.415.

48  Gesta abbatum, II.424–5. 49  Gesta abbatum, II.427.

50  Gesta abbatum, II.429–30. 51  Gesta abbatum, III.391.

52  Gesta abbatum, II.461–2. 53  Gesta abbatum, II.463. 54  Gesta abbatum, II.459. 55  Gesta abbatum, II.465.

56  Gesta abbatum, III.391, 410.



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Abbot Thomas’s commitment to liturgical correctness and monastic education reflects his own educational background and training. The bio­grapher stresses he was an excellent singer, had admirable Latin, was well trained in ars dictaminis, and wrote a speedy, if messy, hand.57 Books were key to the success of the regulations Thomas introduced: new service books that followed his decreed Ordinal and devotional books that would enhance the monks’ intellectual world were essential. Thomas had his own library of books, and he was a patron not only of learning but also book production at St. Albans.58 Clark indicates that the success of Thomas Walsingham as precentor was directly related to Thomas de la Mare’s commitment to employing professional scribes and limners and providing the materials and space to aid St. Albans in regaining its reputation as a premiere locale for book production.59 Key to this initiative was Thomas’s ability to realize a goal of his predecessor, Abbot Mentmore: the establishment of a scriptorium at St. Albans: domus Scriptoriae sumptibus ipsius Abbatis, et industria Domini Thomae de Walsingham tunc Cantoris et Scriptorarii a fundamentis constructa; libri etiam per ipsum et suos conscripti empti, et reparati et librariæ Conventus et Studii sui deputati.60

the writing room was built from the ground up at the expense of the abbot and by the design of then cantor and chief copyist Master Thomas de Walsingham and books were also purchased and repaired by him and his deputies.61

Clark stresses that Thomas de la Mare, like Mentmore, “gave special emphasis to the capitular statute of 1277 concerning the occupation of monks in the cloister ‘in scribendo, corriegendo, illuminando, et ligando’” and that it was in the late 1370s to early 1380s that the scriptorium was constructed.62 Further, Clark indicates, based on a survey of books produced in this period, that this was when Tiberius E. i was produced. It was a working copy for the benefit of readers. The scripts [in books of this era] are less formal and more cursive than before and there is minimal decoration…. In fact, these books have more in common with the typical secular schoolbook of the period….”63

57  Gesta abbatum, III.410.

58  For a list of the books in the library at St. Albans, see “St. Albans, Hertfordshire,” Medi­eval Libraries of Great Britain, 3, The University of Oxford http://mlgb3.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/mlgb/?search_ term=St%20Albans,%20Hertfordshire,%20Benedictine%20abbey%20of%20St%20Alban&field_ to_search=medi­eval_library&page_size=500; Rodney M. Thompson, Manu­scripts from St Albans Abbey 1066–1235, 2 vols. (Woodbridge: Brewer for the University of Tasmania, 1982); and R. W. Hunt, “The Library of the Abbey of St Albans,” in Medi­eval Scribes, Manu­scripts, and Libraries: Essays Presented to N. R. Ker, ed. M. B. Parkes and Andrew G. Watson (London: Scolar, 1978), 251–77. 59  Clark, A Monastic Renaissance, 97–108. 60  Gesta abbatum, III.392–3.

61  On the role of the cantor (or precentor) who was usually the best scholar and musician in charge of writing and illumination of books, as well as choral service, see Knowles “The Administration of the Monastery,” 428–9. The cantor’s deputies or succentors would assist in the production of books.

62  The Gesta abbatum is not clear on the date. In A Monastic Renaissance, 99, Clark suggests that the scriptorium was built in the 1380s, but in his entry for the Oxford Dictionary of National Bio­ graphy, Clark indicates it was in the 1370s: “Thomas de la Mare,” 621. 63  Clark, A Monastic Renaissance, 103–4.

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Where several of the books made in this period remained in Abbot Thomas’s private library, Tiberius E. i was given to Redbourn, a place of respite for the monks and also for the abbot, who is described as having a particular fondness for the small cell. According to his bio­graphy, Thomas liked to spend time at Redbourn, and built himself a study and a place for his books.64 He also rebuilt the chapel at Redbourn, often rang the bell for Matins, and would sing the mass on Sundays and principal feasts.65 Abbot Thomas’s gifts to the community included vestments, utensils, benches, and cushions, as well as a gradual for daily mass and a “Legenda plenaria de Sanctis quibus per anni circulum celebramus.”66 This description, which seems to refer to Tiberius E. i, is striking. The detail that this legendary is “full of saints by which we can celebrate throughout the liturgical year” is in accordance with the calendrical organization of feasts in the manu­script, which would have been a useful book alongside the gradual for observing the Divine Office. As noted above, Tiberius E. i contains a significant number of narrations that would have been advantageous for preaching sermons. A given life would also have been read in full on the saint’s feast day, and lessons would have been drawn from it for the responses needed for Nocturns.67 Further, the inclusion of antiphons and collects for many of the saints is an indication that Tiberius E. i was a working liturgical book, as well as a devotional.68 John of Tynemouth’s martyro­logy and lectionary, moreover, would have been complementary books to this legendary, as was the Historia aurea, which included various saints’ lives from his collection and placed them within the temporal narrative. That part of the martyro­logy and some of the saints’ lives accompany the second half of the Historia aurea in a Bury St. Edmunds manu­script, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 240, suggests that they circulated together, perhaps as part of Thomas de la Mare’s reforming Constitutions. When one considers Thomas de la Mare’s influence on the size and scope of Tiberius E. i, it may simply have been that John’s Sanctilogium met the requirements for liturgical correctness, but given Abbot Thomas’s execution of monastic reform and education, it seems far more likely that the Sanctilogium was a necessary commission, one that helped meet the high ideals that the President of the General Chapter imagined for the English Benedictines.

64  Gesta abbatum, II.399.

65  Gesta abbatum, II.400–1. 66  Gesta abbatum, II.399.

67  See Thomas J. Heffernan, “The Liturgy and the Literature of Saints’ Lives,” in The Liturgy of the Medi­eval Church, ed. Thomas J. Heffernan and E. Ann Matter (Kalamazoo: Medi­eval Institute Publications for The Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages, 2001), 73–105.

68  Sally Harper, “Traces of Lost Late Medi­eval Offices?: The Sanctilogium Angliae, Walliae, Scotiae, et Hiberniae of John of Tynemouth (fl. 1350),” in Essays on the History of English Music in Honour of John Caldwell: Sources, Style, Performance, Historio­graphy, ed. Emma Hornby and David Maw (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010), 1–21.

THE RISE OF ADMISSION BY APPRENTICESHIP AMONG THE FREEMEN OF NORWICH, 1365–1415 RUTH FROST

Ruth Frost is an associate professor of History at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus. She has written about late medi­eval Norwich’s urban elite, on the pledges of incoming Norwich citizens, and on Geoffrey Spirleng, common clerk of Norwich and a courtholder in the late fifteenth century.

In 1415 the mayor, sheriffs, and citizens of Norwich agreed upon a composition, or

constitution, that specified who would choose elected officials and established electoral processes.1 Among its other provisions, it included stipulations related to the city’s privileges of citizenship, or freedom, and to its crafts.2 Christian Liddy argues that “pressure from the crafts lay behind the sealing” of the composition.3 This study investigates how the crafts were able to influence the constitution’s creation and contents. Information about the crafts’ formal activities is sparse for the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, and few Norwich apprenticeship indentures survive before 1512.4 By the early fourteenth century, however, civic officials had established 13s. 4d. as the fine for freemen (citizens) entering by apprenticeship,5 and 20s. as the fine for “foreigners” entering by purchase, also called redemption.6 While Andrew King has analyzed the occupational structure of the Norwich citizenry from 1317 to 1549, this is the first 1  The Oxford English Dictionary notes the archaic or obsolete definition of “composition”: “a mutual agreement or arrangement between two parties, a contract.” OED Online, https://www.oed. com/view/Entry/37795?redirectedFrom=Composition. All subsequent references to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) are to the OED Online. 2  William Hudson and John Cottingham Tingey, eds., Records of the City of Norwich, 2 vols. (Norwich, 1906–1910), 1:105–8. Hereafter cited as RCN. Hudson and Tingey’s translations are used throughout this study unless otherwise indicated. The OED defines “freedom” as “The right of participating in the privileges attached to citizenship of a town or city.” “Freedom, n. 14b,” OED Online, https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/74395?rskey=wSURw5&result=1&isAdvanced=false.

3  Christian D. Liddy, Contesting the City: The Politics of Citizenship in English Towns, 1250–1530 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 45. For Liddy’s analysis of the Composition of 1415, see 195–203. 4  RCN, 2:xlvii.

5  Fine: a fee or charge paid for any privilege. Obsolete. “fine, n.1.” OED Online, https://www.oed. com/view/Entry/70359?rskey=88V3Ep&result=1. 6  A “foreigner” was someone who either came to Norwich from elsewhere, or who lived in Norwich, but was not the son of a citizen or a former apprentice.

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analysis of how men entered the freedom prior to 1415.7 This investigation contributes to a wider conversation on urban citizenship in late medi­eval England. It shows that entry by apprenticeship was popular amongst Norwich freemen much earlier than in other contemporary English towns and cities aside from London, and it contends that the increasing use of apprenticeship as the means by which men accessed the freedom occurred because the city’s crafts grew in presence and influence in the decades leading up to the Composition of 1415. Whereas in the 1360s most men entered the freedom as foreigners, by 1414 most freemen entered the freedom as former apprentices, with a link to at least one other citizen, their past master, and perhaps links to citizens who had been fellow apprentices in the same or neighboring workshops. When the mercantile elite that dominated the city’s highest offices and the “commonalty” of other citizens agreed to arbitration to solve internecine disputes in 1414, the wider body of citizens, many of them bound by craft ties, acted as a collective to voice their displeasure. Their arguments and influence helped give the crafts a central role within the city’s new constitution. This study follows a long line of analyses of the freedom of medi­eval English towns and cities, analyses that use documents concerning admissions to the freedom for varied purposes and, sometimes, to much debate.8 This particular study is unusual because it employs admissions fines to determine the means by which men became Norwich citizens. With a population of about 8,000 in the 1370s, Norwich was an important regional center, and it would grow in population and importance over the course of the fifteenth century.9 By analyzing the means by which men entered the Norwich freedom, this chapter contributes to an ongoing conversation about citizenship, crafts, oligarchy, politics, and the freedom of late medi­eval English towns and cities, and it provides points for comparisons with towns and cities elsewhere and in other periods.10 Throughout medi­eval and early modern Europe, an inhabitant of a town or city was not automatically a citizen. As Christian Liddy argues,

7  King analyzed admissions by occupation, but not admissions by fine: A. King, “The Merchant Class and Borough Finances in Later Medi­eval Norwich,” PhD diss. (University of Oxford, 1989), particularly chap. 3, 38–115, and table 3.1: Entries to the Freedom of Norwich, 1317–1549.

8  For some examples see R. B. Dobson, “Admissions to the Freedom of York in the Later Middle Ages,” Economic History Review 26, no. 1 (1973): 1–22; Maryanne Kowaleski, “The Commercial Dominance of a Medi­eval Provincial Oligarchy: Exeter in the Late Fourteenth Century,” in The English Medi­eval Town: A Reader in English Urban History, 1200–1540, ed. R. Holt and G. Rosser (London: Longman, 1990), 185–89; John Patten, “Urban Occupations in Pre-Industrial England,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geo­graphers 2, no. 3 (1977): 297–9; J. F. Pound, “The Validity of the Freemen’s Lists: Some Norwich Evidence,’” Economic History Review, n. s., 34, no. 1 (1981): 48–59. For the dangers of using the freedom registers to estimate population, see D. G. Shaw, The Creation of a Community: The City of Wells in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 54. For a summary of debates about the analysis of the freedom lists, see Liddy, Contesting the City, 24.

9  Penelope Dunn, “Trade,” in Medi­eval Norwich, ed. Carole Rawcliffe and Richard Wilson (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2005), 214.

10  For an historio­graphical essay with extensive references about oligarchy, conflict, and citizen­ ship in medi­eval England and Europe, see Liddy, Contesting the City, 1–19.

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Citizenship was the major fault line within urban society: between foreigners and strangers, on the one hand, and, depending upon whether the settlement was a town or a city (a distinction determined in this period by the presence of a cathedral), burgesses and citizens, on the other. The categories of “foreigner” and “stranger” were interchangeable terms, signifying not only the “other,” but, more accurately, the “outsider.”11

To be a citizen was to be an insider. In Norwich, as in other English towns and cities, being an insider meant having the right to enjoy the benefits that accompanied citizenship. Citizenship was an urban, exclusive, and overwhelmingly male privilege. Only two women took up the Norwich freedom between 1365 and 1415.12 The benefits and burdens associated with the freedom varied from town to town. In Norwich, Penelope Dunn observes, officially only freemen were permitted to engage in wholesale transactions. The commercial privileges of citizenship in Norwich included the right to trade retail in the city, to set up a shop, to take apprentices and to be exempt from paying tolls on goods going in and out of the city and through the port of Yarmouth.13

For those who entered the freedom, citizenship brought numerous responsibilities as well as benefits. The responsibilities of citizenship included the possibility of performing a variety of elected and appointed tasks. Citizens collected taxes, held minor or major offices, served on committees, and discharged other duties. A fifteenth-century copy of the oath for “them that ben made Citeȝens”14 reveals that upon entry a freeman swore to maintain and sustain the franchise and liberties of Norwich; acknowledge only his own goods (as opposed to passing another’s goods off as his own and trading on that person’s behalf); obey all other ordinances within the city of Norwich; be “buxum” or obedient to the mayor and “alle oyer governes”; pay taxes and tallages; and serve in civic offices if elected.15 Norwich was typical in having its freemen comprise a minority of its residents, and in having men dominate its citizenry.16 In both Norwich and York no more than 11  Liddy, Contesting the City, 21.

12  Petronilla de Bokenham was fined 20s. in 1366–1367, and Isabella de Weston was charged 26s. 8d. for the privilege in 1367–1368; Assembly minutes roll, 14 September 1365–1369, Norfolk Record Office, Norwich City Records 8d/1. Hereafter cited as NRO, NCR 8d/1. Because only two women took up the franchise during these decades, this study uses masculine pronouns. For female citizens elsewhere, see Liddy, Contesting the City, 22–23. In York, the women “represented just 1.3 per cent of all recorded entrants” between 1272 and 1510: Sarah Rees Jones, “Women and Citizenship in Later Medi­eval York,” in The Routledge History Handbook of Gender and the Urban Experience, ed. Deborah Simonton (London: Routledge, 2017), 173. 13  Dunn, “Trade,” 231.

14  RCN, 1:129.

15  RCN, 1:129. For more on the duties and rights of citizenship in Norwich see RCN, 2:xxix, and for obligations and privileges in general, see Liddy, Contesting the City, 40–44. 16  Liddy, Contesting the City, 22–23.

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one in three adult males were freemen.17 In London, by comparison, about twenty-five per cent of the male residents who were not “aliens, secular and religious clergy, royal servants and members of aristocratic households” or boys were citizens in 1450.18 In 1377, less than a quarter of Exeter householders entered its freedom – just four per cent of its entire population.19 An average of thirty-two people entered the freedom of Norwich each year between 1365 and 1414. This average belies the variation in intake that occurred in Norwich from year to year. Variations occurred for a multitude of reasons, including plague, or economic depression, or the enforcement of new civic ordinances or royal imperatives.20 Between 1365 and 1414, the yearly admissions numbers ranged from four entrants in 1368–1369, during which year a plague raged through the city, to eighty-four in 1379–1380,21 which followed a concerted effort by the city to impel men to be citizens, in part to subsidize an ambitious property expansion program and control trade.22 In some years, civic officials exerted pressure on non-citizens to join the freedom, but officials also seemed to have accepted many cases of trading outside the franchise. Records of the leet courts for 1375 and 1391 reveal that people traded despite not being citizens, and then paid fines in court as a sort of extra-franchise licensing system.23 Some of the people fined in the leet courts were too poor or lacked sufficient standing to qualify for the freedom, and many were women and thus unlikely to become citizens.24 There were others, however, who probably preferred to pay recurring fines and avoid the burdens associated with citizenship.25 A number of those fined in the leet courts had apprentices in their workshops but did not possess the freedom of the city. In 1374–1375, John Silkman was fined 2s. for buying, selling, and having an apprentice without being a citizen, for example.26 In 1391, fifty-two people were amerced for exercising their crafts without being citizens, as well as for having apprentices.27 By the late fourteenth century, levying fines as a form of licensing was a long-standing Norwich practice.28 The Composition of 1415 17  Penelope Dunn, “After the Black Death: Society and Economy in Late Fourteenth-Century Norwich,” PhD diss. (University of East Anglia, 2003), 88.

18  Caroline Barron, “London 1300–1450,” in The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Vol. 1, 600–1540, ed. D. M. Palliser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 400.

19  Maryanne Kowaleski, Local Markets and Regional Trade in Medi­eval Exeter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 96. 20  Dunn, “Trade,” 213–4.

21  Old Free Book, 1317–1549, NRO, NCR 17c/1, fols. 35r, 36r, 36v (hereafter cited as NCR 17c/1); NRO, NCR 8d/1; NRO, NCR 8d/4/2. 22  Dunn, “Trade,” 214. 23  Dunn, “Trade,” 233.

24  In 1375, for example, Alice Wigemaker and Agnes Bookbynder were fined 2s. and 12d., respectively, for buying and selling without being citizens: RCN, 1:382. 25  Dunn, “After the Black Death,” 71.

26  RCN, 1:382. 27  RCN, 1:385.

28  Samantha Sagui, “The Business of the Leet Courts in Medi­eval Norwich, 1288–1391,” in Town

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tacitly referred to this process when it stated that all “foreins” that held shops in the city and had apprentices could continue to enjoy the use of their shop and apprentices “under tribut and amercyement as it haþ ben afor tyme used” as long as they took no other apprentices until they were enfranchised.29 In the late fourteenth century, four bailiffs led the government of Norwich, overseeing the business of the city and paying its annual fee farm to the king. The bailiffs held the highest offices in the city until 1404, when a royal charter of incorporation made Norwich a county separate from Norfolk, and replaced the four bailiffs with a mayor and two sheriffs.30 Twenty-four electors, citizens who represented the city’s four leets or wards, chose the bailiffs.31 In addition, the electors chose twenty-four other citizens each year to serve as an advisory council for the bailiffs, and many of these twenty-four served as bailiffs at some point.32 Men who served as bailiffs or on the council of twenty-four tended to be wealthy, and many were merchants. In 1388, for example, Thomas Hert “paid customs on imports worth £519 15s. in that year.”33 Hert served as a bailiff four times between 1372 and 1397.34 Four other Norwich men, three of whom served as bailiffs at least once, also imported goods worth over £150 in 1388.35 These men were not unusual: men who held the highest civic positions between 1365 and 1414 were, with few exceptions, among the wealthiest in Norwich.36 Norwich was typical in having its civic leaders be wealthy: the highest office holders in late fourteenth-century Exeter, for example, “were distinguished not only by their political power, but also by their wealth.”37 The aldermen of fifteenth-century London Courts and Urban Society in Late Medi­eval England, 1250–1500, ed. Richard Goddard and Teresa Phipps (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2019), 127, and table 6.2 on 134.

29  RCN, 1:105. A foreigner could, however, take an apprentice if it was his child’s or his wife’s, or if he practiced a craft that could not be done alone: RCN, 1:106. 30  Benjamin R. McRee, “Peacemaking and Its Limits in Late Medi­eval Norwich,” English Historical Review 109, no. 433 (1994): 831–66, at 847. 31  McRee, “Peacemaking,” 838.

32  McRee, “Peacemaking,” 836. Fifty-seven of the sixty-nine men elected as bailiffs between 1355 and 1384 held the position one or two times. The remaining twelve men held it three or more times, 836. 33  Dunn, “Trade,” 390n59.

34  Hamon Le Strange, Norfolk Official Lists from the Earliest Period to the Present Day (Norwich: Goose, 1890), 97–98.

35  Dunn, “Trade,” 221. For examples of some bailiffs who were active in the property market in the late fourteenth century, see Penny Dunn, “Financial Reform in Late Medi­eval Norwich: Evidence from an Urban Cartulary,” in Medi­eval East Anglia, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), 99–114, at 106–8.

36  Dunn, “After the Black Death,” 96, 98–9. After 1417, the twenty-four were called aldermen, and they continued to be a wealthy group throughout the fifteenth century. During that century, mercers, grocers, and drapers dominated the aldermanry and mayoralty. See Ruth Frost, “The Urban Elite,” in Medi­eval Norwich, ed. Rawcliffe and Wilson, 235–53, at 239. Not all wealthy members of the city’s elite were office holders, however. See Frost, “The Urban Elite,” 242. 37  Kowaleski, Local Markets, 101.

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came from that city’s wealthiest citizens.38 In York, Beverley, and Hull, wealthy merchants dominated the civic elites.39 Throughout late medi­eval England, leading citizens were sometimes called upon for royal loans, as well as advice, and were expected to help meet unforeseen financial costs or travel on civic business more readily than citizens of lesser wealth. Penny Dunn observes that affluent Norwich citizens were “expected to contribute generously toward charitable works, not to mention the costs of the day-to-day running of the city and the annual payment of its fee farm, which stood at £128 2s. 4d. in the late fourteenth century.”40 Contemporary documents identify the Norwich men who collectively served as bailiffs and members of the twentyfour by various names, including men of estate or “les gents destate,” probi homines, bons gents, and prudhommes.41 They saw themselves, and were often viewed as, the leading and most substantial citizens of Norwich. As we shall see, between 1365 and 1415, the elite periodically clashed with the remaining citizens, a group that was significantly larger in number.42 But because the electors for the twenty-four included a “substantial representation of commoners,” as Ben McRee points out, “members of Norwich’s elite could not act as a self-perpetuating group, but had to rely upon their political inferiors, or at least the better part of their inferiors, for elevation to their rank.”43 The commons or commonalty, made up of the wider body of citizens, had the right to attend civic assemblies and to give or withhold assent to the decisions of the bailiffs and twenty-four. Assembly meetings were also central to the initial act of most new citizens: accompanied by their pledges, prospective citizens, except for those entering by patrimony, came before the congregation or assembly to swear their oaths as freemen in front of other citizens and to agree to pay their entry fine.44 As in other contemporary English towns and cities, in Norwich new citizens typically entered the freedom by one of three means: redemption (purchase), patrimony 38  Sylvia L. Thrupp, The Merchant Class of Medi­eval London, 1300–1500 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948; reprint, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989), 81.

39  Jenny Kermode, Medi­e val Merchants: York, Beverley, and Hull in the Later Middle Ages, Cambridge Studies in Medi­eval Life and Thought, 4th ser. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 39–40. 40  Dunn, “Trade,” 214.

41  RCN, 1:xxxvi-xxxviii, 32, 71, and 230 for some examples. For a discussion of the two groups of citizens within Norwich, including the terms probi homines and bon gents, see McRee, “Peacemaking,” 835–6.

42  As Penny Dunn notes, “only men of sufficient wealth could afford to become members of the franchise.” Dunn, “After the Black Death,” 67–68. 43  McRee, “Peacemaking,” 838.

44  For examples of entrances in September 1365, see RCN, 1: 265, and for the oath, see RCN,1:129. In the late fourteenth century, most men paid their fines by installments and brought one or more pledges with them as sureties. A man who paid his fine immediately did not need a pledge. Between 1365 and 1386, only nine per cent of the entrants with surviving admissions fees named no pledge at all: Ruth Frost, “The Evolution of Personal Pledging for the Freemen of Norwich, 1365–1441,” Quidditas 39 (2018), 94–119, at 100.

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(inheritance), or apprenticeship.45 Entrants by patrimony became citizens because their fathers were citizens. Unlike entrants by redemption and apprenticeship, men entering by patrimony paid no entrance fee, and they were not required to come before the assembly and swear the freeman’s oath. All other new citizens, however, acknowledged their admissions fines and swore their oaths before the common assembly. In the early fourteenth century, the Book of Customs enumerated minimum admissions fines of one mark (13s. 4d.) for a former apprentice, and 20s. for a foreigner who had not been an “apprentice in the city.”46 While the Book of Customs noted that men could pay more if they were of sufficient means,47 in practice this happened rarely, as Table 7.1 below reveals. The Book of Customs stipulated that each entry had to be enrolled “in a Roll indented and duplicated,” with “the fine of the entrant and his pledges and the term of his payment and the year and day.”48 Only a single freedom roll survives, for men who became freemen between October 1319 and September 1319.49 The roll contains the entrances of twenty-three men, and it identifies each man’s fine.50 With five exceptions, the fines accord with the fees articulated in the Book of Customs: sixteen men paid 13s. 4d., and two men paid 20s. Of the remaining five men, three paid fines between 13s. 4d. and 20s., and two paid fines over 20s.51 In 1319–1320, admission by appren45  Admissions also occurred via gift, patronage, or service, but in Norwich, as in Exeter, these entries were comparatively uncommon. For Norwich, see table 7.1, below, and for Exeter see Kowaleski, Local Markets, 97. In Norwich, the Old Free Book notes few entrances by patrimony prior to its reorganization in 1451, after which it records patrimony more reliably: NRO, NCR 17c/1. Patrimony was under-reported in York’s freedom register during the fourteenth century, as well. See Dobson, “Admissions,” 8.

46  RCN, 1:179. Chapter 36 of the Book of Customs stipulated that no one may “merchandise in the city who makes his residence in the same unless he be at lot and scot of the city and contribute to the common aids of the same,” and that a “peer of the city” (parem ciuitatis) had to be free and not a serf: RCN, 1:178. It also stated that a new citizen “shall find good security that within a year of his reception as a peer he will obtain for himself a fixed habitation, unless he had one before in the city, to dwell in the same with his family and let him bring his movable goods to the said city.” RCN, 1:180. 47  RCN, 1:179.

48  RCN, 1:180.

49  Roll of entries of Norwich freemen 1319–1320, in the Manuscripts of Sir Thomas Phillipps, NRO, PHI 510, 578X2. While the roll names twenty-three men, the Old Free Book identifies twentyfour entries for 1318–1319: John de Berton, cordwainer, appears in the Old Free Book, but not in the freedom roll. As with all Old Free Book entries for the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the register’s admissions record for John de Berton does not include a fine. NRO, NCR 17c/1, fol. 30r. 50  The roll not only names the amount each man was to pay, but it also outlines his payment schedule. Ten were to pay immediately, eleven in two installments, one man in three installments, and one man in four. See NRO, PHI 510, 578X2.

51  NRO, PHI 510, 578X2. The freedom roll of 1319–1320 records even more information: fourteen of the twenty-three men had a year and a day to move into a house in the city and to be in lot and scot, and sixteen men were forbidden from being common itinerant sellers of corn (communis traventarius bladi). Ten men received both stipulations, and only three men had neither stipulation next to their names. None of this information is found in any surviving assembly roll.

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ticeship predominated as the means by which men entered the Norwich freedom. As no other admissions fines survive prior to 1365, however, it is unknown whether or not the preponderance of entrants by apprenticeship in 1319–1320 was an anomaly. Assembly rolls of minutes survive starting in 1365, and they survive sporadically for the rest of the fourteenth century into the fifteenth century. The assembly minutes identify the date of the congregation before which an individual freeman appeared and swore his oath, the freeman’s name, occupation (if given), names of pledges, fee, and the dates he agreed to pay his instalments unless he elected to pay immediately. When they survive, the treasurers’s rolls also reveal the fines levied on individual freemen.52 In contrast, the Liber Introitus Civium of Norwich, commonly called the Old Free Book, lists just the citizen’s name and, for the majority of men in the late fourteenth century, his occupation, but rarely lists the dates of admission prior to 1451.53 The Old Free Book reveals the occupations for 67.6 percent of all entrants between 1379 and 1399, for example.54 Begun in the 1380s, the Old Free Book includes retroactive entries going back to 1317, although it lacks entries for much of the 1330s and 1350s, as well as for the early 1360s. Its yearly lists begin with the names of the city’s bailiffs and the regnal year, and run from Michaelmas to Michaelmas. The entries are usually, but not always, in the same order in which they appear in the assembly minutes. The register’s organization remained unchanged until 1451, when civic officials re-ordered the Old Free Book and grouped entrances by craft. After its restructuring, the entries in the Old Free Book clearly note which men entered by apprenticeship, and name their former masters.55 Between 1365 and 1415, however, no entry within the Old Free Book includes the word “apprentice” to show that a freeman entered by apprenticeship, nor does any entry within an assembly or a treasurers’s roll explicitly state that a man entered by apprenticeship. The admission fines in the assembly and treasurers’s rolls therefore provide the sole means of determining whether a citizen entered by apprenticeship or by redemption during those years. Whole or partial assembly minute rolls survive for 1365–1369, 1372–1374, 1377–1382, 1384–1386, and 1413–1414.56 Treasurers’ rolls with the admission payments of individual freemen survive for 1398–1401, and for 1406–1414.57 Together, these sources provide entry fines for over 700 citizens between 1365 and 1414. 52  City treasurers/chamberlains engrossed and draft account rolls, NRO, NCR 7a/15–30. Hereafter cited as NRO, NCR 7a.

53  The Old Free Book provides the dates of the congregations for four years in the 1370s: NRO, NCR 17c/1, fols. 35v–36r. 54  King, “Merchant Class and Borough Finances,” 70–71.

55  The Old Free Book either underreports or fails to identify former apprentices in its entries for 1473 through 1477: see Ruth Frost, “A Brief Note on Geoffrey Spirleng, Co-Scribe of MS Hunter 197 (U.1.1), and His Compilation of the Old Free Book of Norwich, NRO, NCR Case 17c,” Journal of the Early Book Society (2016): 241–8, at 242. 56  NRO, NCR 8d/1–9.

57  NRO, NCR 7a/15–30. Earlier treasurers’ rolls only contain summaries of receipts.

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The fees recorded in the assembly and treasurers’ rolls reveal whether a new freeman entered as an apprentice or a foreigner. With relatively few exceptions, the admissions fines found in the assembly minutes for the 1360s and early 1370s are for 13s. 4d. or 20s., the amounts specified in the Book of Customs earlier in the fourteenth century. Men who paid 13s. 4d. entered by virtue of having served an apprenticeship to a Norwich citizen, whereas people who paid 20s. were foreigners. In 1378, however, the civic elite wanted to expand the city’s property holdings, and in order to raise money the assembly agreed to double the entrance fees to 26s. 8d. for apprentices and 40s. for foreigners.58 These doubled fees prevailed in the 1380s, and evidence suggests that they may have continued through 1414 and into the 1420s.59 While the Old Free Book does not indicate which freemen entered by apprenticeship prior to 1451, a few anomalous entries within the assembly minutes provide reassurance, if reassurance is needed, that the admissions fees reveal whether a man entered by apprenticeship or by redemption. Two admissions entries in the assembly roll for 1414 contain atypical descriptions. One describes Henry Smyth as the servant of Thomas Cok, and lists Cok as Smyth’s pledge. The other identifies William Knapton as the former servant of John Cambrigg, and names Cambrigg as one of Knapton’s two pledges.60 Each man paid the fee for admission by apprenticeship, and it is likely that Smyth had been Cok’s apprentice and Knapton had been Cambrigg’s. Furthermore, between 1437 and 1439, the assembly proceedings explicitly and unexpectedly describe nineteen entering freemen as apprentices, noting that each man was charged 13s. 4d. for his entry into the freedom. In addition, the proceedings specifically describe eight men as “not apprentices,” noting that the entrance fee of 20s.

58  See Dunn, “Financial Reform,” 102-4, for the acquisition of city properties.

59  NRO, NCR 7a/15, a treasurers’ roll, shows doubled fines for September 1398–September 1399. These fines are written on a separate piece of parchment attached to the roll. No assembly minutes roll survives from September 1386 until October 1413. The surviving assembly roll for 1413–1414 shows doubled admissions fines, but the overlapping treasurers’ roll does not: NRO, NCR 8d/9 and NRO, NCR 7a/29. The assembly roll for 27 September 1420–27 May 1426 also contains doubled fines compared to the treasurers’ rolls: see NRO, NCR 8d/10, and NRO, NCR 7a/34–37. In the 1360s–1380s, the assembly rolls noted how much of the fine would go to the bailiffs, and how much would go to the community. See the entry of James Jakes in 1365 for an example of the division: RCN, 1:264. Perhaps the treasurers’ rolls after 1404 list only the entrance fees paid to the community, as opposed to the fines paid to the sheriff, whereas the assembly roll for 1413–1414 gives the total fine. This merits further research. It is likely that the doubled fines recorded in the 1410s and 1420s were to help pay for civic improvements such as the New Mills. In 1429–1430, the city paid 100 marks to two carpenters to construct the four water mills, for example. See RCN, 2: 67. 60  NRO, NCR, 8d/9, entry for 9 February 1 Henry V (1414). The abbreviation s’ denotes servant in both entries. According to the assembly roll, each paid 26s. 8d., thus entering as an apprentice. The Old Free Book identifies both men as mercers: NRO, NCR 17c/1, fol. 43r. In contrast to the assembly roll, the treasurer roll indicates that the men paid 13s. 4d. for their fines: NRO, NCR 7a/29. Whether they paid 13s. 4d. or 26s. 8d., they entered the freedom by apprenticeship. Chapter 39 of the Book of Customs states that “no fellow-citizen or peer of the city may receive his servant into partnership in making merchandise by buying and selling under whatever pretext before the servant has solemnly made his entry and become a peer of the city, nor as his apprentice in order that he may make gain to his own proper use or share gain with his said master.” RCN, 1:185.

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Table 7.1: Admission fines for entrances to the freedom of Norwich, 1365 to 1414*.

Years

Paid standard fine for Paid standard fine for apprenticeship (13s. 4d. or redemption (20s. or 40s., depending on year) 26s. 8d., depending on year)

Patrimony

1365–1369 1372–1374

40

-

Subtotal 1365–1374

10

75

50 (31.8%)

94 (59.9%)

-

1381–1382

21

13

-

Subtotal 1381–1386

61 (48.0%)

32

2

45 (35.4%)

4 (3.2 %)

1384–1386 1398–1301

40 45

19

2

1406–1314

43

-

Subtotal 1398–1414

196

241 (57.8%)

167 (40.0%)

-

TOTAL

352 (50.2%)

306 (43.7%)

-

4 (0.57%)

124

* Both Table 7.1 and Table 7.2 are drawn from information in the Old Free Book, the assembly rolls, and the treasurers’s rolls: NRO, NCR 17c/1, fols. 34v–37v; NRO, NCR 8d/1, 8d/2/1–3, 8d/5, 8d/6, 8d/7, 8d/8, 8d/9; and NRO, NCR 7a/15, 7a/16, 7a/17, 7a/19, 7a/20, 7a/21, 7a/22, 7a/23, 7a/24, 7a/25, 7a/28 and 7a/29. Although it happens infrequently, entries in the Old Free Book do not always agree with entries in the assembly minutes or treasurers’s rolls. Sometimes the minutes or treasurers’s rolls give an occupation that the Old Free Book lacks, for example. In a few cases, the minutes record an entrance that is not found within the Old Free Book. ** Three sergeants were admitted free of charge. See NRO, NCR 8d/5.

was levied on each man.61 The descriptions for these anomalous entries from 1414 and 1437–1439 confirm that the fines of 13s. 4d. or 26s. 8d. correspond to entries by apprenticeship, whereas fines of 20s. or 40s. correspond to admissions by redemption. As Table 7.1 shows, the stability of the fines – whether 13s. 4d. and 20s., or the doubled fines of 26s. 8d. and 40s. – allows for confident statements about how many men gained admission as apprentices and how many as foreigners.62 We can see that the vast majority of men paid the standard admissions fines. Never very large, the number of men who paid higher fines—men like Richard Qwhyte of Bury St. Edmunds, and Eustace Rous, who agreed to pay 60s. and 80s. in 1385–1386 respectively, decreased over the course of this study.63 Of the citizens whose admissions fines survive, 7.9 per-

61  Assembly proceedings book, June 1436–March 1491, NRO, NCR 16d/1, fols. 9v, 10r, and 11r. Hereafter cited as NRO, NCR 16d/1. The assembly proceedings identify the masters of Thomas Alman, Thomas Elis, and Thomas Methewold: NRO, NCR 16/d/1, fol. 9v.

62  As evidence of only three fines survives for 1378–1379, and as evidence of only forty-one of eighty-four fines survives for 1379–1380, these years are not included in tables 7.1 or 7.2. Of the forty-one surviving fines for 1379–1380, seven were for 26. 8d.; 30 were for 40s.; three were for 53s. 4d.; and one was for 80s. NRO, NCR 17c/1, fols. 36r, 36v; NRO, NCR 8d/4. 63  NRO, NCR 17c/1, fols. 34v–43r; NRO, NCR 8d/8. That same assembly roll notes that the lister

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Paid a nonstandard fine

No fine charged

In OFB (NRO, NCR 17c/1) but not in AR (NRO, NCR 8d) or TR (NRO, NCR 7a)

By mayor

Total number admitted

10

-

-

3 (1.9%)

3**

8 (6.3%)

-

39

3 (2.4%)

8

-

6 (4.7%)

-

-

-

157

-

-

-

126

10 (6.4%)

-

1

88

-

6 -

2

31

-

127 328

1

-

1

1 (0.24%)

1

1 (0.24%)

5

6 (1.4%)

1

-

89

1 (0.24%)

417

17 (2.4%)

4 (0.57%)

17 (2.4%)

1 (0.14%)

701

cent of men admitted as apprentices and as foreigners agreed to pay admission fees higher than the standard rates in 1365–1369, and 6.8 per cent acquiesced to fees higher than the already doubled rates in 1384–1386, but only one person—0.57 percent of the entrants —agreed to pay a higher fine in 1406–1414. The data suggest that the bailiffs (and their successors) charged higher fees when they could, but they did not do it frequently. After 1406, when apprentices dominated admissions and fewer foreigners entered the freedom, the mayor and sheriffs rarely collected higher fees. As Table 7.1 starkly reveals, admissions by patrimony or inheritance were rarely recorded before 1414. It seems that the Old Free Book only recorded entries in the rare cases when a citizen came before the assembly to prove that he was entitled to citizenship by patrimony.64 Penny Dunn estimates that approximately twenty per cent of the citizens known from deeds in the late fourteenth century entered by patrimony.65 After the Old Free Book’s mid-fifteenth-century reconfiguration, the clerk began not only to identify entrants who had been apprentices of citizens, but also to include entrants by patrimony. Between 1451 and 1491, 14.2 percent of new freemen entered the Norwich freedom by patrimony. In comparison, seven per cent of Exeter’s freemen entered by patrimony in 1350–1399, and 3.75 per cent in 1400–1499. In York, “less than 8 per cent of all registered freemen were admitted by patrimony” between 1398 and 1401, as well as between 1409 and 1418, while fourteen per cent of York’s (dyer) Ralph de Brook agreed to the enormous sum of 120s. for his admission. However, the Old Free Book does not record his entrance.

64  Both examples are from the 1380s: NRO, NCR 8d/6 (St. Neots); NRO, NCR 8d/8 (Martyn); NRO, NCR 17c/1, fols. 36v (St Neots) and 37r (Martyn). 65  Dunn, “After the Black Death,” 84.

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Table 7.2. Analysis of Admission Fines by Occupational Divisions, 1365–1414. In this chart, “uncertain” refers to fines other than the two standard fines for entry by apprentice­ship (13s. 4d. or 26s. 8d.) and for redemption (20s. or 40s.), to entries that are missing or obscured in the assembly rolls, or to the single entrance “per maiorem” made in 1406–1414.

1365–1369

1372–1374

Apprentice

-

-

Patrimony

-

-

ARTISTS

Redemption BUILDING

-

1381–1382, 1384–1386 1398–1401

1406–1414

-

-

1

1

-

-

-

1

-

2

Apprentice

2

-

2

2

6

Uncertain

1

-

1

-

-

Redemption CLERICAL AND LEGAL Apprentice

2

-

2

3

6

-

-

1

-

-

1

Apprentice

2

1

19

12

44

Uncertain

-

-

2

-

1

Redemption

CLOTH PRODUCTION Redemption CLOTHING AND ACCESSORIES

-

8

Apprentice

3

Uncertain

1

Redemption DISTRIBUTION Apprentice

Redemption

LEATHER PRODUCTION Apprentice

Redemption

-

3

7

-

-

1

1

3

2

6

-

7

2

-

6

-

16

4

30

-

-

6

14

-

3

3

20

1

2

-

9

-

1

1

-

3

1

15

9

6

Table continued opposite

The Rise of Apprenticeships Among the Freemen of Norwich, 1365–1415

1381–1382, 1384–1386 1398–1401

131

1365–1369

1372–1374

1

-

2

2

-

Apprentice

2

-

4

3

8

Patrimony

-

-

1

-

-

LEATHER WORK Apprentice

Redemption

METAL WORK Redemption

1

-

-

1

Apprentice

1

-

2

1

6

Service (fee waived)

-

-

3

-

-

Redemption

PROVISIONS

-

-

1

3

-

5

MISCELLANEOUS SERVICES

2

-

1406–1414

-

5

3

Apprentice

5

-

6

2

28

Uncertain

-

-

-

-

1

Redemption TRANSPORT Apprentice

1

-

-

-

4

-

3

-

16

-

Redemption

2

1

1

1

2

Apprentice

Redemption

-

6

-

1

2

2

Apprentice

23

7

16

14

38

Uncertain

9

-

4

-

4

WOOD, HORN AND BONE

NO OCCUPATION GIVEN Redemption

35

-

12

2

19

-

9

1

37

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f­ reemen entered by inheritance between 1479 and 1488.66 Some Norwich men undertook apprenticeships even though their fathers were citizens, and as they did not come before the assembly, this information usually does not appear between 1365 and 1415.67 Entries in the Old Free Book after 1451 somewhat underrepresent admissions by inheritance: the entry for John Pynchamor, an alderman from 1488–1499, is not in the register of freedoms, for example, yet Pynchamor was a citizen.68 Nevertheless, the Old Free Book provides a much more accurate picture of admissions by patrimony after 1451 than before that year. As Table 7.1 shows, the proportion of men entering the freedom by apprenticeship grew as the fourteenth century waned. While entrances by redemption decisively exceeded those by apprenticeship between 1365 and 1369, and again between 1372 and 1374, admissions by apprenticeship and redemption were more evenly matched during 1381–1386 and 1398–1401. Between 1406 and 1414, however, admissions by apprenticeship took a significant lead over entries by purchase, and by 1414 more freemen entered the freedom by apprenticeship than by redemption. 69 The surviving admissions fines thus enable the identification of over 350 individual men who entered by apprenticeship between 1365 and 1414. As most apprentices within the city did not become citizens, this study only identifies a subset of men who served apprenticeships in late medi­eval Norwich. Nevertheless, as few apprenticeship indentures survive prior to 1512,70 and as information about apprentices is mostly limited 66  Dobson, “Admissions,” 10.

67  The tailor Robert Granewey (or Granenowe), for example, had two apprentices, Thomas Jekkys and Richard Ray, whose fathers were citizens and who became citizens in the 1460s. While the Old Free Book notes that each entered by patrimony, it also indicates that each man had been an apprentice of Granewey. See NRO, NCR 17c/1, fols. 53r (Granenowe), and 75r (Ray and Jekkys). For the varied spellings of Granewey’s name, see Timothy Hawes, ed., An Index to Norwich City Officers 1453–1835, Norfolk Genealogy, vol. 21 (Norwich: Norfolk and Norwich Genealogical Society, 1989), 71, under “Granowe.” The Craft Ordinances of 1449 state that a citizen’s son who served as an apprentice within the city would enter the freedom paying only 1d. to the clerk: RCN, 2:291.

68  Hawes, ed., Index to Norwich City Officers, 125 (Pynchamor). Pynchamor may have been the son or grandson of the smith John Pynchamor, who entered the freedom in 1418–1419: NRO, NCR 17c/1, fol. 44v and NRO, NCR 7a/32.

69  Entries by apprenticeship predominated for the rest of the fifteenth century. For 1415 through 1441, admissions fines survive for nearly 500 men, of whom sixty-seven percent entered the freedom of Norwich by apprenticeship, and thirty-three per cent entered by redemption. The extant sources also reveal seventeen men who entered by the prerogative of the mayor during this time (NRO, NCR 8d/10, NRO, NCR 7a/30–39, 41–42, and NRO, NCR 16d/1, fols. 8r–14v.). Furthermore, between 1451 and 1491, 47.3 percent of new citizens entered by apprenticeship; 33.1 percent by redemption; 14.2 percent by patrimony; and 5.4 percent by gift, service, or patronage. The figures for 1451–1491 pertain to the admissions of about 1100 men and are found within the Old Free Book, NRO, NCR 17c/a; the assembly books of proceedings, NRO, NCR 16d/1 and 16d/2; treasurers’ rolls NRO, NCR 7a/44–47; and chamberlains’s accounts NRO, NCR 18a/2 and 18a/3. As noted above, the Old Free Book underreports or omits references to apprenticeship for much of the 1470s and 1480s, so the assembly proceedings must be consulted. 70  RCN, 2:xlvii. For an indenture from 1291, see RCN, 1:245–47, and one from 1405, see RCN, 2:28–9. The admissions fines for 1415–1441 also reveal the names of about 325 men who entered

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to isolated references in wills, deeds, and court documents, the identification of men who had been apprentices contributes to a greater understanding of apprenticeship in late medi­eval Norwich.71 Where they survive, occupational identifications allow us to compare the means by which men within the same occupation entered the freedom of Norwich. The following table (Table 7.2) compares the entrances of freemen by apprenticeship and redemption, sorting them by the broad occupational divisions employed by Elizabeth Rutledge in her analysis of Norwich inhabitants with known occupations, 1275–1348.72 As the data show, a substantial minority of entering freemen whose fees survive— thirty-three percent—have no occupations attached to their names. It was not until around 1424 that the Old Free Book started to record the occupations of all, or nearly all, new citizens.73 Table 7.2 shows that between 1406 and 1414, admission by apprenticeship predominated amongst new freemen in all occupational fields with more than ten entrants except for transportation and building. Starting in the 1380s, increasing numbers of textile workers entered the freedom. Penny Dunn notes, “textile manufacture came to equal if not surpass the cloth finishing trades in importance for the Norwich economy.”74 Many more former apprentices than foreigners entered the freedom in fields involving cloth production as well as clothing and accessories in 1406–1414. During that period, men admitted by apprenticeship outnumbered men admitted by redemption amongst the listers (dyers), worsted weavers, weavers, tailors, and cordwainers. Only amongst the fullers were men admitted by apprenticeship and foreigners admitted by redemption closely matched. It is difficult to compare the means by which men entered the Norwich freedom to the means used in other English towns or cities between 1365 and 1414, as the “classic tripartite division” of entrances by patrimony, apprenticeship, and redemption often do not survive in other freedom registers for this period.75 Records do survive for Exeter, and they show that eight per cent of new freemen entered by apprenticeship in 1350–1399, and seventeen per cent entered by apprenticeship in 1400–1449. Between 1350 and 1399, three-quarters of the freemen of Exeter were admitted by redemption.76 In York, admissions by redemption decisively prevailed over apprenticeship between 1482 and 1487,77 and it is likely that entrances by foreigners preby apprenticeship: NRO, NCR 7a/30–32, 34–39, 41–42; NRO, NCR 8d/10; and NRO, NCR 16d/1, fols. 8r–14v.

71  An examination of deeds and leet court rolls might reveal information about the relationships between some freemen and their pledges. 72  Elizabeth Rutledge, “Economic Life,” in Medi­eval Norwich, 155–88, at 168–72. 73  King, “Merchant Class and Borough Finances,” 70.

74  Dunn, “Trade,” 216.

75  Dobson, “Admissions,” 19.

76  Kowaleski, Local Markets, 97, table 3. Kowaleski refers to entries by redemption or purchase as entries by fine. In Wells, seventeen percent of new citizens were admitted by apprenticeship between 1473 and 1533: Shaw, Creation of a Community, 144.

77  Only 28.2 percent of the York freemen were admitted by apprenticeship in 1482–1487: Dobson,

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vailed there in the 1380s, as well. Despite the presence of craftsmen in York’s outer governing council, Barrie Dobson notes, the mayor and aldermen “retained the ability to admit large numbers of freemen prepared to pay for the privilege rather than acquire it by right of birth or apprenticeship.”78 He also argues that because the mayor and aldermen could admit foreigners “on payment of a variable entry-fine,” the ruling elite were freed “from the necessity of tying their own admissions policy too tightly to the often restrictive labour demands of the York crafts.”79 In comparison, the vast majority of freemen of Norwich paid standard rather than variable admissions fines, and by 1414, former apprentices took up the freedom more often than foreigners, suggesting that the crafts exerted influence when it came to admissions to the freedom. Maryanne Kowaleski argues that the preponderance of admissions by purchase shows not only Exeter’s need to replace citizens felled by plague, but also reflects the “still fledgling state of the apprenticeship and craft institutions” before 1450.80 In contrast to Exeter, by 1415 apprenticeship in Norwich had clearly moved from a “fledgling state” to a robust one, at least amongst the minority of residents that comprised the citizenry. The aforementioned interpretations of the relationships between crafts, governments, and the freedom in York and Exeter suggest that it is necessary to examine the relationships between crafts, guilds, and political gatekeepers in Norwich in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. It is to this that we now turn. Information about craft associations in Norwich is patchy prior to 1449, when the same set of ordinances was imposed on all crafts.81 Some of the earliest references attest to tensions between the civic elite and members of craft associations. Between 1288 and 1293, civic officials amerced the cobblers, fullers, saddlers, and tanners because they had guilds.82 The Norwich bailiffs felt that those associations reduced the city’s income by deciding punishments and levying fines for cases that rightly belonged in the bailiffs’ court.83 There is no indication that the fines stopped the crafts’ activities, however, and the civic officials apparently decided that a better approach was to regulate the crafts more explicitly.84 By the early fourteenth century, civic leaders chose searchers or overseers to ensure the quality of craft production, mandating “Admissions,” 19, drawn from table 1. 78  Dobson, “Admissions,” 19.

79  Dobson, “Admissions,” 18.

80  Kowaleski, Local Markets, 99.

81  RCN, 2:278–96. The promulgation of the Craft Ordinances of 1449 followed a period of civic disorder. See RCN,1:lxxxiii–xcvii, and 2:xlviii. For an overview of the development of craft guilds in other contemporary English towns and cities, see J. Kermode, “The Greater Towns 1300–1540,” in Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol. 1, ed. Palliser, 441–66, at 450. 82  RCN, 2:xxii. For fourteenth-century English fullers’ guilds, see Milan Pajic, “The Fortunes of Urban Fullers in Fourteenth-Century England,” Historical Research 93, no. 260 (May 2020): 227–51.

83  The third charter of Henry III (25 March 1256) states, “And that no Gild henceforth be held in the city to the detriment of the said city.” (‘Et quod nulla Gilda decetero teneatur in ciuitate predicta ad detrimentum eiusdem ciuitatis.’) See RCN, 1:18. 84  RCN, 2:xxii.

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at least four searches a year of “every craft or industry used in the city.” According to the Book of Customs, the bailiffs and twenty-four, rather than practitioners of the craft, were to choose between two and four searchers for each craft.85 Miscreants identified during a search were to go before the bailiffs and twenty-four, and these civic officials—not fellow craftsmen—would “exact due and sufficient amends thereof.”86 By the first quarter of the fourteenth century, leading civic officials were thus involved with the important business of punishing fraudulent production and practices in crafts, and the civic coffers, not the crafts, received the fines. Aside from references in the Book of Customs, little documentation survives regarding Norwich craft associations in the early fourteenth century. More is known for the latter part of the century, largely because in 1388 the Crown required all craft and religious guilds to submit returns to Chancery enumerating what property they held, how they were organized, and why they existed.87 There is no way of knowing whether the surviving guild returns represent all of the occupational guilds present in Norwich in 1389. Of the extant Norwich returns that contain occupational links, “none deals with apprenticeship, or the regulation of labour, or production.” 88 Six guild returns articulate explicit occupational ties: the tailors (begun in 1350); the carpenters (begun in 1375); the “peltyers” or furriers (begun in 1376); the saddlers’ and spurriers’ guild (commenced in 1385); the candlemakers, and the barbers, neither of which give a start date. In addition, the guild of St Michael, for “artificers and operatives,” filed a return.89 John Cottingham Tingey argues that the “paltry” return of the St. Michael’s guild suggests that by 1389, it was “in a moribund state, owing to the various crafts forming their particular gilds, and deserting the parent one.”90 The wealthy Gild of the Annunciation also filed a return, and while it does not make its ties explicit, Tingey convincingly argues that by the late fourteenth century the Annunciation fraternity was an association of merchants.91 Although the exact number of occupational guilds active earlier in the 1360s is unknown, minutes for one common assembly suggest that a range existed within the city. The assembly minutes of 25 May 1369, report that the “whole Community” sought 85  RCN, 1:192–3. 86  RCN, 1:193.

87  C. M. Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages: Government and People 1200–1500 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 208. For London returns, see 208–9.

88  D. A. Durkee, “Social Mobility and the Worsted Weavers of Norwich, c.1450–1530,” PhD diss. (University of Durham, 2017), 176. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur. ac.uk/12208/

89  J. Toulmin Smith, ed., English Gilds (London, 1870), 27 (barbers); 28–32 (‘peltyers’); 33–36 (tailors); 37–39 (carpenters); 42–44 (sadlers and spurriers); J.C. Tingey, “The Hitherto Unpublished Certificates of Norwich Gilds,” Norfolk Archaeo­logy 16, no. 3 (1907): 285–6 (St. Michael’s), and 305 (candlemakers). 90  Tingey, “Hitherto Unpublished Certificates,” 285.

91  Tingey, “Hitherto Unpublished Certificates,” 274. The return states that the guild was so old no one remembered when it began: Tingey, “Hitherto Unpublished Certificates,” 275 and 289.

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to alter the election procedures and to have the bailiffs, twenty-four, and treasurers chosen “by the advice of the good men and the better of the crafts.”92 The resolution was not implemented, but had it succeeded it would have altered the electorate from the twenty-four electors chosen from all citizens, to the self-defined elite of the city.93 The minutes do not provide any background or identify the initiators of the resolution. As McRee notes, “The ordinance was never put into practice, and the changes it might have produced in the city’s political complexion never occurred.”94 Had it been implemented, the change would have moved the elections away from the geo­ graphical boundaries of the wards, and it would have introduced a “new role” for the crafts.95 Citizens may have opposed the move away from ward representation, thus contributing to the plan’s failure. It is also possible that citizens who were not part of the “good men and the better of the crafts” objected to the loss of their votes and voices, and that is why the proposed electoral changes did not get implemented.96 Whatever the motivation behind it or the reasons for its failure, the 1369 resolution suggests a hierarchy of crafts within Norwich: if there were “better” crafts, there were lesser ones, as well. The 1369 reference to the “better crafts” almost certainly involved the Gild of the Annunciation, which acted as the de facto guild merchant in Norwich in the late fourteenth century.97 Notes Penelope Dunn, “The wealthiest late fourteenth-century merchants were, without exception, prominent members of the ruling elite.”98 The return made by the guild of the Annunciation in 1389 identified Walter Bixton and Henry Lomynour as its wardens.99 While no direct evidence survives to show that Bixton and Lomynour agitated for the “better crafts” in 1369, Bixton was a bailiff that year. 100 Nearly a decade later the two men were indisputably involved in a secret plan by Norwich’s elite to shore up their control over city affairs.101 Both men had extensive experience in Norwich’s government and were actively involved within it in the 1360s and beyond.102 Around the very beginning of 92  McRee, “Peacemaking,” 838–9 for the translation. As Hudson notes, the resolution does not appear in the minutes for the same assembly that are contained in the assembly roll: RCN, 1:xlviii. Rather, it may be found in the Book of Customs, NRO, NCR 17b/1, fol. 65d. 93  McRee, “Peacemaking,” 839.

94  McRee, “Peacemaking,” 839. 95  McRee, “Peacemaking,” 839.

96  As McRee points out, there is ambiguity in the minutes’ phrasing: “les meilliors de mesters de la cite” translated as crafts by Hudson might instead refer to craftsmen: “Peacemaking,” 839n1. 97  Tingey, “Hitherto Unpublished Certificates,” 270, 274.

98  Dunn, “Trade,” 227.

99  Tingey, “Hitherto Unpublished Certificates,” 274. 100  Le Strange, Norfolk Official Lists, 97.

101  Twenty men, nineteen of whom served as a bailiff at least once in their careers, each gave 40s. to help pay Lomynour’s and Bixton’s expenses. See McRee, “Peacemaking,” 840; NRO, NRO, NCR 8d/3/1. Thomas de Boughton, the one man of the twenty who never served as bailiff, was subsequently elected treasurer in 1379: NRO, NCR 8d/4/2. 102  Tingey, “Hitherto Unpublished Certificates,” 274–5. For bio­graphies of each, see The History

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1378, the assembly elected Bixton and Lomynour to go to London to get the city’s charter approved by Richard II and “increase our liberties as they may be able.”103 The assembly minutes neither reveal what “liberties” needed to be increased, nor provide any further context.104 Lomynour and Bixton travelled to London in early 1378 to petition the royal council on the city’s behalf, and in October, the duo, serving together as the city’s members of Parliament, traveled to Gloucester and petitioned Parliament on behalf of the “citizens of Norwich.”105 The parliamentary petition alleges that many members of the commons had been “extremely troublesome.” Because of this, the petitioners sought “greater and stronger authority amongst the said citizens,” and requested that the four bailiffs and twentyfour (or their majority) be given the power to “amend and correct such remedies and ordinances” at their discretion “for the common benefit of the people.” 106 The petition, which received parliamentary approval and was subsequently confirmed in a 1380 charter, asks for power to be vested entirely in the bailiffs and twenty-four, thus depriving the commons, or wider body of citizens, of their right to approve or dismiss the decisions of the bailiffs and twenty-four. It is unclear whether or how the commons had been “troublesome” in the 1370s. McRee argues that members of the elite sought heightened powers to have on hand in case the members of the common assembly balked at ambitious plans to expand the property holdings of the city and augment “civic control over trade.”107 Because no widespread opposition surfaced, the bailiffs and twenty-four did not use their newfound privileges, and the provisions of the charter escaped the commons’ attention until the early fifteenth century. As we shall see, when the commons heard about it decades later, they were greatly displeased. Perhaps because the elite did not use their new powers, the city survived the revolts of 1381 relatively unscathed. McRee argues, “The city’s ability to weather the storm of 1381 with a minimum of disruption suggests that citizens were generally satisfied with existing political arrangements.”108 No assembly records survive from 1386 to 1413, which is unfortunate as we lack a record of the assembly’s activities dur-

of Parliament website: http://www.histparl.ac.uk/volume/1386–1421/member/bixtonwalter–14034 for Bixton, and https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1386–1421/ member/limner-lomynour-henry–1409 for Lomynour (Limner). Both Lomynour and Bixton had their houses attacked in 1381: see Dunn, “Financial Reform,” 112. 103  NRO, NCR 8d/3/1; RCN, 1:271; McRee, “Peacemaking,” 840.

104  NRO, NCR 8d/3/1; RCN, 1:271; McRee, “Peacemaking,” 840.

105  “1378 October,” in The Parliament Rolls of Medi­eval England, 1275–1504, vol. 6, Richard II 1377–1384, ed. G. Martin and C. Given-Wilson (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), 8–9 under #38. For another discussion of the 1378 petition and 1380 charter, see Dunn, “Financial Reform,” 111–2. 106  Parliament Rolls, 6:88–9.

107  McRee, “Peacemaking,” 842. During the 1370s, the city bore many financial burdens, some imposed from outside, and others imposed from within. In 1370, Norwich advanced Edward III three loans totalling £866 13s. 4d., and later that decade the citizens submitted two petitions asking for their “reasonable payment”: R. McCallum, “Loans from English Provincial Towns to the Crown During the Reigns of Edward II and Edward III,” Historical Research 91, no. 254 (2018): 614, 622. 108  McRee, “Peacemaking,” 844.

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ing a time of continued property expansion and momentous political change. In 1404, after years of lobbying, the bailiffs, twenty-four, and other members of the elite succeeded in obtaining a royal charter of incorporation: Norwich became the fourth city to receive royal approval to be its own, separate county, distinct from the wider county surrounding it. The charter gave Norwich the right to have a mayor and two sheriffs instead of four bailiffs.109 The council of twenty-four continued, but shortly after the charter’s issue, the assembly was reduced to an eighty-person council of citizens “to sit at all common assemblies by themselves.”110 Whereas before 1404 all citizens could attend an assembly, and all could vote to approve or disapprove the decisions of the twenty-four, after this resolution passed only a minority of citizens was allowed to attend most assemblies. Given the absence of assembly minutes, it is impossible to gauge the motivation behind the creation of the council. On the surface, it seems like a move to concentrate power in the few rather than the many. Nearly a century earlier, however, Chapter 45 in the Book of Customs addressed the problem of men not attending meetings despite having been summoned, and decreed that twelve, ten, or eight “de melioribus et discrecioribus eiusdem ciuitatis” should be assigned from each leet to attend and discuss civic business. If they defaulted without reasonable cause, they would pay a 2s. fine.111 No evidence survives to suggest that this was a regular practice in the fourteenth century, and the potential numbers of men involved—a minimum of thirty-two, and a maximum of forty—do not align with the council of twentyfour. In October 1372, the common assembly established rules for attendance, perhaps to ensure attendance around tax collection time. A member of the advisory council absent without “reasonable cause” was to pay 2s., whereas a craftsman absent without an acceptable excuse was to pay 12d.112 The reference to craftsmen is puzzling as there was no common council in 1372. It seems unlikely that all citizens were expected to attend the common assemblies, but the reference suggests that some craftsmen were expected to be present at common assembly meetings in 1372. It is possible that the 1372 ordinance refers to the practice outlined in Chapter 45 of the Book of Customs, and that this practice was reintroduced when assembly attendance was likely to be low. It may be, therefore, that the 1404 creation of an eighty-person council was an attempt to ensure reliable attendance at assembly meetings.113 Although most citizens’ 109  RCN, 1:31–36. Bristol (1373), York (1396), and Newcastle (1400) preceded Norwich in receiving county status. S. H. Rigby and Elizabeth Ewan, “Government, Power and Authority 1300–1540,” in Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol. 1, ed. Palliser, 291–312, at 298–9. For a lucid outline of the civic government in the fourteenth century, see McRee, “Peacemaking,” 836–8. 110  RCN, 1:lxii. The assembly roll has since been lost, and Hudson, editor of the first volume, cites the antiquarian Francis Blomefield as his source. 111  RCN, 1: 191–2.

112  Christian D. Liddy, “Who Decides? Urban Councils and Consensus in the Late Middle Ages,” Social History 46, no. 4 (2021): 406–34, at 430.

113  The common councillor swore in his oath that he would attend meetings when summoned, unless he had a reasonable excuse. The oath for the successors to the twenty-four, the aldermen, does not survive. See RCN, 1:122; Liddy, “Who Decides,” 415.

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opportunities to attend the assembly shrank in 1404, their opportunities to serve as minor officials expanded. As Philippa Maddern observes, “After the city’s incorporation in 1404, at least 155 officials every year staffed an impressive political and legal bureaucracy.”114 While the 1404 charter established that a mayor and two sheriffs would head Norwich’s government, and that they should be chosen annually, the charter did not outline what role the twenty-four or the assembly of citizens should play in civic government, nor stipulate how elections should be conducted for the mayor and sheriffs.115 A number of disputed elections ensued,116 and by 1412, according to the eighteenthcentury antiquarian Francis Blomefield, “the city was in great disorder, occasioned by the disputes between the Commons and the Mayor, and the 24 of his council, in relation to the election of the mayors, sheriffs, and other officers of the corporation.”117 In late 1413 the commons and the elite attempted to quell dissension by agreeing upon a new electoral process.118 Neither side seems to have been happy with the result, however, and by April 1414, each faction submitted documents to the arbiter, Sir Thomas Erpingham, that reveal widespread distrust of the other side.119 On the one hand, the “greater part of the citizens and Commonalty” wanted all “liberties and franchises” that had been “granted and confirmed to the Citizens and Commonalty of the City of Norwich” to be “guarded and observed in all points.”120 They condemned the article within Richard II’s 1380 charter that permitted the twenty-four to govern on their own, asserting that the charter had been obtained without the commonalty’s knowledge or approval, and declaring that the assent of the commonalty, not just the assent of the elite, was necessary to approve legislation and “ought to have been made by right and reason.”121 They alleged that the prudhommes had disrupted the election of 1406 by appointing the elite’s candidate as mayor, deposing the man elected by the commonalty.122 They argued further that the clerk and two sergeants “ought to be chosen by the Commonalty at the common assembly and without the common assembly they ought not to be removed.”123 Throughout the document, the “greater part of the 114  Maddern, “Order and Disorder,” in Medi­eval Norwich, ed. Rawcliffe, 192.

115  RCN, 1:31; McRee, “Peacemaking,” 847. 116  McRee, “Peacemaking,” 847–8.

117  Francis Blomefield, “The City of Norwich, Chapter 18: Of the City in Henry V’s Time,” in An Essay Towards a Topo­graphical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 3, the History of the City and County of Norwich, Part I (London: Miller, 1806), 126–36. British History Online, http://www. british-history.ac.uk/topo­graphical-hist-norfolk/vol3/pp126–136.

118  McRee, “Peacemaking,” 848–9.

119  RCN, 1:lxviii. For the complaints, see RCN, 1:66–77; for the reply see RCN, 1:77–93, and for the composition, see RCN, 1:93–108. The complaints by the commons and the response by the elite were written in French, whereas the composition was written in English. 120  RCN, 1:67–8.

121  RCN, 1:68–9. 122  RCN, 1:71. 123  RCN, 1:77.

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citizens and of the Commonalty” repeatedly referred to the “commonalty,” or commons of citizens, its contributions, and its expectations. The “greater part,” referring to the common councillors and the wider body of citizens, articulated their grievances, identified their rights and their threatened privileges, and alleged that the prudhommes worked against the greater good of the commonalty of citizens and, indeed, against all the “common people.”124 The complainants also alleged that the prudhommes purchased cloth outside the Worstedseld, in violation of an ordinance of 1388 stipulating that all cloths produced within Norfolk or Norwich had to be bought or sold in the Worstedseld.125 By 1414, according to the greater part of the citizens and commonalty, the prudhommes traded cloth illegally outside the seld, to the detriment of “le commune tresor.”126 In the 1390s the Worstedseld had raised an annual average of at least £18 for civic coffers, but revenue from the seld declined by 1406.127 The commons may have objected to this lost income not just on principle, but also because the city had ongoing building projects. Between 1408 and 1412, for example, the Guildhall was built, and civic projects continued after 1414 with the construction of a new market cross in 1417 and the New Mills in 1432.128 While the prudhommes’s actions allegedly took revenue away from the city, city officials also appear to have imposed extra burdens on incoming citizens through the use of doubled fines. As noted above, in 1413–1414, new entrants to the freedom were charged the doubled admissions fines of 26s. 8d. and 40s. that had been established in 1378.129 The commons may have resented the willingness of leading merchants and citizens to deprive the city of revenue by trading outside the seld on the one hand, while many of those same men were the officials that levied doubled admissions fines on the other. In their written response to the complaints of the commonalty, the sheriffs, twentyfour, and “other sufficient persons” tried to minimize the complaints as coming from “certain riotous persons of the Commonalty.”130 They argued that in 1378 their predecessors requested the provisions to vest legislative power in the twenty-four in case there had been a “sudden coming of the grandees of the Realm,” and to avoid the “mischiefs and slanders” that occurred if all the bailiffs and twenty-four were not present 124  RCN, 1:76. The “common people” were cited in an allegation made against the recorder, the city’s legal advisor.

125  RCN, 1:74–5; Dunn, “Trade,” 216. The Worstedseld had been established by civic leaders for this purpose in the late fourteenth century: Dunn, “Financial Reform,” 103.

126  RCN, 1:74–5. The complaint also refers to members of the “bachelery” as buying and selling outside the seld. For a discussion of that term, see RCN, 1:lxxiv–lxxvi. Tingey argues that members of the bachelery had a “close relationship” with the Gild of the Annunciation, which was dominated by merchants, “even if the two were not identical”: Tingey, “Hitherto Unpublished Certificates,” 279. 127  Dunn, “Financial Reform,” 110. 128  Dunn, “Financial Reform,” 113.

129  NRO, NCR 8d/9; NRO, NCR 7a/29. 130  RCN, 1:78.

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in the assembly.131 Moreover, the prudhommes bemoaned the commonalty’s effrontery in arguing “that every person of the smallest reputation in the said city should have as much authority and power in all the elections and other affairs within the same city as have the more sufficient persons of the said city.” 132 The prudhommes alleged that this weakened and subverted the good customs that had long been used.133 Their reputation, status, and wealth mattered to the elite, and they defended them vigorously. In addition, they disputed the commons’ account of the election of 1406.134 All told, the prudhommes alleged that their opponents, “by their confederacies assemblies and alliances” had made it difficult for the elite to govern.135 Most strikingly, the prudhommes argued that the word “commonalty” ought to be removed from the 1404 charter of Henry IV.136 This excision would have altered the 1404 charter quite considerably, especially as that charter explicitly confirmed that the citizens and commonalty, as well as the mayor and sheriffs, should have and exercise all the “franchises.”137 In their rebuttal of the commons’ complaints, the prudhommes, dominated by merchants, sought to repudiate the commons, dominated by craftsmen, and block their participation in most facets of the city’s governance. Confronted by vitriol and distrust on both sides, Sir Thomas Erpingham appears to have chosen a middle ground. His arbitration does not survive, but in February, 1415, “ye Mair Shreves and the Comonalte be ye hool assent of alle ye Cite,” sealed the composition.138 The agreement’s moderate tone probably reflects Erpingham’s influence, and suggests that “he believed each party deserved a significant role in city government and that it was his duty as arbitrator to see that power was divided equitably between them.”139 The composition describes in detail how elections were to be conducted. The mayor, sheriffs, twenty-four, common councillors, and “alle ye Citeȝyns Dwellers wit inne ye same Cite” would attend the mayoral election, although non-citizens were barred from attending.140 The agreement stipulated that the “electorate comprised all the freemen of the town. Attendance at the mayor’s election was a concrete expression of the freeman’s citizenship; of his membership of the civic community and of his possession of the civic franchise.”141 The composition painstakingly established how and when elections were to be held, establishing a bipartisan approach to the elections of 131  RCN, 1:79–80. 132  RCN, 1:81. 133  RCN, 1:81.

134  RCN, 1:84–8. 135  RCN, 1:91. 136  RCN, 1:82.

137  RCN, 1:33, 36.

138  RCN, 1:108. As Hudson’s note on p. 108 points out, the twenty-four “having no Seal of their own are included among the Commonalty.” 139  McRee, “Peacemaking,” 851. 140  RCN, 1:94.

141  Liddy, Contesting the City, 102.

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all the many offices to ensure one group of citizens did not dominate at the expense of another.142 The mayor and the twenty-four were to elect one sheriff each year, for example, while the commons of citizens (including common councillors) would elect the other sheriff.143 The composition referred to a common council of sixty, reduced from eighty, chosen yearly by all citizens in each of the four wards.144 It gave the common council, which contained many craftsmen, the authority to approve all legislation: the twenty-four “shal no þyng do ne make yt may bynde or charge ye Cite wit owte ye assent of ye Commonaunte.”145 In this case the “Commonaunte” meant the common council. The provision of the 1380 charter that placed legislative powers in the hands of the twenty-four, and that proved so contentious once the commons found out about it after 1404, was thus overturned in 1415. In addition to spelling out election procedures, the methods to be deployed for apportioning and collecting taxes, and other issues, the Composition of 1415 addressed matters related to the crafts and to citizenship. The surviving complaints of the commons and response of the prudhommes did not raise issues around citizenship or crafts, but the composition delves into them in some detail, suggesting another way the crafts may have influenced its contents. First and foremost was the search. In contrast to the fourteenth-century Book of Customs, the composition established that the individual crafts, rather than civic officials, would choose their searchers.146 Whereas before only civic officials decided the fines levied for fraudulent or shoddy work,147 starting in 1415 the masters of the craft, the mayor, and other “mo suffisant men of ye same craft” would determine the fines, with half the money going to the sheriffs, and half to the masters of the craft.148 Dobson notes, “To an extent now hard to appreciate and often unduly neglected by historians of craft guilds, it was this power of search which probably did more than anything to bind the craft together.”149 In agreeing that the crafts would have control over the search, the probi homines helped strengthen the crafts. The composition also devoted considerable space to apprentices, suggesting that both the crafts and civic officials were keen to try to standardize the institution of apprenticeship. After 1415, for example, an apprentice had to serve a minimum 142  RCN, 1:94–104; McRee, “Peacemaking,” 852; Liddy, Contesting the City, 198–9. 143  RCN, 1:96–7.

144  RCN, 1:98–100. While yearly elections were to be held for the twenty-four, the composition established that the members, called aldermen after the 1417 charter of Henry V, were elected for life (“stande perpetuel”) except for reasonable cause, “as thei doon in London.” See RCN,1:lxx, 36–37 (charter); 97 (composition). 145  RCN, 1:98.

146  RCN, 1:105, 193. 147  RCN, 1:193. 148  RCN, 1:105.

149  R. B. Dobson, “The Tailors of Medi­eval York: From Craft to Company,” in The Merchant Taylors of York, ed. R. B. Dobson and D. M. Smith, Borthwick Texts and Studies, 33 (York: Borthwick, 2006), 23–51, at 25.

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term of seven years, after which, “be record of his maister or elles be acquytance or be another suffisant Record,” the apprentice was to enter the freedom, paying 6s. 8d. to the sheriffs, 6s. 8d. to the chamberlains, and 6d. to the clerk.150 The composition clearly stated the expectation that successful apprentices would become citizens, even though all who agreed to it must have known from experience that only a portion of former apprentices would enter the freedom. In a departure from the fourteenth-century Book of Customs, the composition also stipulated that henceforth “alle manere of men,” which included foreigners, were to enroll in a craft if they were to enter the freedom; prior to 1415, a foreigner did not have to have craft membership in order to be a citizen.151 For his entrance, the foreigner had to pay the craft 3s 4d. (40d.), and pay the “Chambr” at least 20s. “and more after ye quantite of his good as it may acorde wit ye Chamberleyn.”152 In articulating the minimum fines of 13s. 4d. for apprentices and 20s. for foreigners due to the sheriffs and commonalty, the composition upheld the admissions fines stipulated a century earlier in the Book of Customs.153 The Composition of 1415 explicitly and implicitly recognized the commonalty of all citizens, and the importance of the crafts. It did not privilege the few that made up the elite at the expense of the many. Writing of the relationship between guilds and civic governments, Dobson observes, “There is no doubt, as soon as evidence begins to survive, that English town councils were at pains to exercise close supervision on both the internal constitutional as well as the economic activities of the craft guilds.”154 The composition establishes some of the oversight that the Norwich mayor, sheriffs, and twenty-four and common councillors had over the “internal constitutional” activities of its guilds, but the agreement also increased the autonomy of the crafts in some important ways. The Composition of 1415 affirmed the place of craftsmen within the city’s common council and at the yearly elections, established the crafts’ autonomy to choose their own searchers, acknowledged the crafts’ responsibility to apprentices, mandated craft affiliation, and urged foreigners to take up the freedom. Although created within and for Norwich, the composition contains frequent references to London, citing its governmental structure, electoral practices, and crafts, and it refers implicitly to the London practice of enrolling citizens through the crafts. 150  RCN, 1:106. Some of these provisions were reiterated in the Craft Ordinances of 1449. For example, the mid-century ordinances called for a seven-year minimum term for apprentices “from this tyme forth.” RCN, 2:291. For a discussion of the evolution of the offices and responsibilities of the treasurers and chamberlains, see RCN, 2:xl–xlii.

151  RCN, 1: 106 and 179. The composition gave shop-holding foreigners two years and a day to enter the freedom: RCN, 1:106.

152  RCN, 1:107. The fees of 13s. 4d. and 20s. thus remained the same, at least in the composition. As already noted, disparities between the assembly and treasurers’ rolls suggest that in actuality the fines were doubled into the 1420s.

153  RCN, 1:106–7. Six men were to be chosen to join the chamberlains in receiving new “burgeyses”: RCN, 1:107. This contrasts with the Book of Customs, which decreed that twelve men should be chosen to examine and receive new citizens: RCN, 1:179. In practice, the men continued to go before the assembly to swear their oaths. 154  Dobson, “Tailors,” 25.

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The 1415 composition voices “the expectation that all current and future citizens ‘shal be enrolled under a craft and be assent of a Craft.’”155 As Liddy notes, this stipulation makes it “impossible to believe that the crafts of Norwich did not know that this was the system that worked in the capital.”156 While apprenticeship was the most common path to citizenship in both Norwich and London by 1415, the practice evolved differently in each city. In thirteenth-century London, the aldermen had control of entrances to the freedom within their wards, and the crafts had little say in who entered unless the entrant had been an apprentice.157 This changed in 1312, when the London mayor, aldermen, and representatives from every craft or mystery agreed that from then on foreigners would “have to be certified by merchants or craftsmen of the business which they wished to pursue;” this was reiterated in a royal charter of 1319.158 Caroline Barron observes that after the London crafts took control over admissions to the freedom, “apprenticeship became the much more usual route” to citizenship in that city.159 In Norwich, in contrast, apprenticeship was the most common route to the freedom by 1414, yet the crafts did not have formal control over entrance to the freedom at this time. While the citizenry of all late medi­eval English towns and cities consisted of apprentices, foreigners (whether born in that town or city, or outside it), sons of citizens, and men who entered by service or gift, the precise mix within the freedom of an individual town or city was unique, dependent on local economic, political, demo­ graphic, and other variables. So too was the relationship between apprentices, crafts, guilds, and politics. In York, for example, the mayor and aldermen often admitted foreigners and asked for fines of varying rates.160 In Norwich, entrance fines rarely varied between 1365 and 1414 or, indeed, after 1414. When those present at the common assembly doubled the fines in the late 1370s, they doubled them for all entering citizens who paid admission fees. Norwich admitted fewer than half as many citizens each year as did the rulers of York,161 and this may signify that Norwich crafts were keen to limit competition, whereas York officials were keen to gather admissions fines. Writing of York, Heather Swanson argues that the “craft guilds can be seen as a deliberate and artificial construct of the medi­eval urban authorities,”162 and that guilds had a “policing role as agents of the civic authorities.”163 Although some have 155  Liddy, Contesting the City, 45. 156  Liddy, Contesting the City, 45.

157  Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages, 205. 158  Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages, 205. 159  Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages, 205. 160  Dobson, “Admissions,” 18.

161  Dobson, “Admissions,” 16. As Dobson observes, York admitted ninety-seven men on average every year between 1350 and 1449, 2.

162  Heather Swanson, “The Illusion of Economic Structure: Craft Guilds in Late Medi­eval English Towns,” Past and Present 121 (1988): 29–48, at 31. 163  Swanson, “Illusion of Economic Structure,” 30.

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debated her assertions, Swanson’s arguments have been influential. 164 This study argues that her contentions do not apply to Norwich crafts between 1365 and 1414, as the craft associations developed in the late fourteenth century with comparatively little civic interference. The 1369 attempt to elevate the “better” crafts within the civic government did not succeed, and because the elite did not use the new provisions it received from parliament and the crown in 1378 and 1380, craftsmen and other citizens attending the common assemblies continued to approve the decisions of the bailiffs and twenty-four. By the time the commons learned of the contents of the 1380 charter sometime after 1404, the composition of the citizenry had changed. Foreigners, whether immigrants to Norwich or inhabitants whose fathers were not citizens, no longer predominated amongst new entrants to the citizenry: freemen who entered as former apprentices of Norwich citizens did. Whether entering by apprenticeship or by redemption, a prospective freemen had to prove that he had sufficient goods (de quantitate bonorum suorum) to uphold the duties of citizenship.165 A foreigner entering the freedom in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries did not need to have anyone’s support or testimony, whereas in order for an apprentice to be admitted as a freeman, he had to have the support of his master and neighborhood.166 The Old Free Book unusually but helpfully reveals that in 1379–1380 three men—a baker, a smith, and a weaver—each proved by the testimony of his neighbors that he was a “peer of the city.”167 Before he entered the freedom, then, the former apprentice’s links to the citizen who had been his master and to his neighbors (and fellow craftsmen) were made explicit and public. An entrant by apprenticeship entered the citizenry as an insider rather than an outsider. The data provided by the surviving admissions fines show a clear trajectory: admissions by apprenticeship gained ground within the Norwich citizenry by 1401, and predominated by 1414. These findings apply only to a portion of apprentices within late medi­eval Norwich. Judging from the experience of sixteenth-century Norwich worsted weavers, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries many apprentices chose not to become citizens, and others died during or after their term, or returned to their homes to begin working for themselves.168 While the admissions fines allow us to identify former apprentices, the extant sources explicitly identify only three former 164  G. Rosser, “Crafts, Guilds, and the Negotiation of Work in the Medi­eval Town,” Past and Present 154, no. 1 (1997): 3–31, at 6. 165  RCN, 1:179.

166  “Et nullus apprenticius admittatur ad parem ciuitatis nisi bonum habeat testimonium de domino suo et visneto illius.” RCN, 1:179.

167  “probatum fuit par Civitatis per bonos et legalis vicinis.” NRO, NCR 17c/1, fol. 36v., for the entries of Thomas Glovere, Andrew de Aylisham, and Robert de Buxton. Admissions fines are not extant for these men, but given the similarity of the language to that in chap. 36 of the Book of Customs, it seems likely they entered by apprenticeship.

168  Durkee, “Social Mobility and the Worsted Weavers,” 216. Patrick Wallis estimates that 43 percent of London apprentices became freemen of that city around 1450: Wallis, “Apprenticeship and Training in Premodern England,” Journal of Economic History 68, no. 3 (2008): 832–61, at 839.

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masters prior to 1451, and thus the sources are of limited help in identifying social networks of apprentices.169 The study’s findings nevertheless offer new information about apprenticeship within Norwich and show that the path to citizenship in Norwich deviated in significant ways from the paths in Exeter, London, and York. By 1415 the configuration of the citizenry of Norwich resembled that of London more than York or Exeter as most Norwich freemen entered by apprenticeship rather than by redemption. John Cottingham Tingey, Norwich’s honorary archivist in the early twentieth century, made an extensive examination of civic documents, and observed that “it seems that the crafts, beyond that their work was supervised, were almost entirely neglected until 1415.”170 Free from excessive civic oversight, the crafts and their guilds increased their range and presence in Norwich and within its body of freemen between 1365 and 1414. By the time the prudhommes tried to challenge the assembly’s role and power after 1404, former apprentices with craft affiliations had achieved prominence amongst the body of citizens. These men, identified by the admissions fines of 13s. 4d. or 26s. 8d. that were levied upon them, came of age within workshops run by craftsmen, and many may have been privy to conversations about civic politics between their masters and other citizens. Before they became freemen in their own right, many apprentices watched their masters go off to attend assembly meetings, or vote in yearly elections, or perhaps even protest contested elections. When the commonalty of citizens sought arbitration against the mayor, sheriffs, twenty-four, and other members of the elite in 1414, that commonalty, filled with many members with craft affiliations, presented their case collectively and, it seems, convincingly. Because of the strong presence of craftsmen within Norwich’s citizenry, underscored by the high numbers of men who entered the freedom by apprenticeship, the Norwich crafts could and did apply the pressure that led to the sealing of the composition in 1415, and by doing so they secured the interests of both the crafts and the commonalty.

169  NRO, NCR 16d/1, fol. 9v. 170  RCN, 2:xliv.

NUNS ON THE RUN, OR THE “STURDY AND WILFUL DAMES” OF SYON ABBEY AND THEIR DISOBEDIENCE TO THE TUDOR STATE CA. 1530–1600

Virginia Bainbridge lives in Oxford and is an honorary research fellow of Exeter University Department of History. She has published several articles on the history of Syon Abbey. She is the author of Gilds in the Medi­eval Countryside: Cambridgeshire ca. 1350–1550 (1996), and is completing a book to be called Prayer and Power: The Birgittine Nuns of Syon Abbey ca. 1400–1600.

VIRGINIA BAINBRIDGE

Syon Abbey, a House of Prayer for England’s Royal Dynasties ca. 1415–1559

In 1535, Sr. Agnes Smythe of Syon was called “a sturdy dame and a wilful” by Henry

VIII’s officer for voicing opposition to Royal Supremacy over the Anglican Church.1 This is one of three recorded incidents of defiance by the nuns which took place at this turbulent time. They lift the veil on life within the strict enclosure of this reformist community and reveal that the sisters, not just the more celebrated brothers, rejected Henry VIII’s new policy.2 That same year, the nuns were said to have met Queen Anne Boleyn’s visit to Syon with passive disobedience, refusing to allow her in to distribute Protestant

*  This research received initial funding through the V. H. Galbraith Fellowship 1996–1998, St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, and a visiting fellowship at Max Planck Institut für Geschichte, Göttingen, Germany, 1998. It continued alongside full-time work for the Victoria County History and other projects. This chapter was completed with a grant from Richard III & Yorkist History Trust: https:// richardiiiandyht.org.uk, together with related papers: “Lives of the Sisters of Syon Abbey ca. 1415–1539,” Medi­eval People 36 (for 2021, 2022), 22–66, and “Lives of the Brothers of Syon Abbey ca. 1415–1539,” Medi­eval People 37 (forthcoming 2023). I am revising my published articles into a book called Prayer and Power. A “Who’s Who of Syon Abbey,” a print or digital edition of the bio­ graphies, is also planned. Names and dates of death are from: Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS F.4.23: Syon Obituary fols. 7r–12v; London, British Library, MS Additional 22285, Syon Martiloge. Obits from both MSS are published by: Claes Gejrot, ed., The Martiloge of Syon Abbey: The Texts Relevant to the History of the English Birgittines (Stockholm: Sällskapet Runica et Mediævalia, 2015). Further dates of death are from: Lisbon, Bibliotheca Nacional, MS (A. 3–2) No 69: Catalogus Defunctorum, tam Fratrum quam Sororum Monasterii de Sion, ca. 1415–1693. Bio­graphies are available on request and further information is welcome. 1  Letters & Papers of Henry VIII (London: HMSO, 1886), IX:986.

2  This behavior amounted to treason and led to the martyrdom of Syon priest Richard Reynolds

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literature.3 After his officers had failed, Henry VIII’s minister Thomas Cromwell ordered Syon’s steward, Andrew, Lord Windsor, to secure his kinswomen’s submission to the Royal Supremacy, and they again refused.4 To discover how such opposition to their royal master could have arisen in this model religious community, this study explores the fifteenth-century origins of Syon’s defiance of the Tudor state and its consequences in the sixteenth century. In 1415, the Lancastrian king Henry V founded Syon Abbey as the only British house of the Order of St. Savior, popularly known as the Birgittines. 5 St. Birgitta of Sweden (1303–1373), a relative of the Swedish royal family, established her order for nuns as part of a wider movement for church reform and renewal.6 Henry V founded Syon to invoke the saint’s support for the English victory she had prophesied in the Hundred Years’ War against France.7 The foundation was important diplomatically, as it followed the 1406 marriage of his sister Philippa to Eric of Pomerania, ruler of Sweden.8 The Birgittines and the Carthusians were the leading religious orders sponsored by Northern Europe’s rulers to promote Humanist church reform.9 Syon Abbey was a house of prayer for all the royal dynasties of the Wars of the Roses, Lancaster, York, and Tudor. Each regime populated Syon with religious from loyal families to pray for them, up to sixty sisters and up to twenty-five brothers who provided the sacraments.10 After a period of decline following Henry V’s early death and his son Henry VI’s transfer of patronage to his own foundations, Syon commemorated the first Yorkist king Edward at Tyburn in 1535 (beatified 1886, canonized 1970), and lay brother Thomas Brownell in Newgate Jail in 1537.

3  “William Latymer’s Chronickille of Anne Bulleyne,” ed. Maria Dowling, Camden Miscellany 30, Camden 4th ser., 39 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1990), 23–65. 4  L&P Henry VIII, IX:954.

5  George Aungier, The History and Antiquities of Syon Monastery (London: Nichols, 1840); Victoria County History (VCH), of Middlesex, vol. I (London: Oxford University Press for the University of London, Institute of Historical Research [Hereafter, OUP/UL/IHR for VCH volumes], 1969), 182–91; “Syon Abbey,” by F. R. Johnston; revised edn. The Religious Houses of London and Middlesex, ed. Caroline M. Barron and Matthew Davies (London: OUP/UL/IHR , 2007), 279–90; Edward A. Jones, England’s Last Medi­eval Monastery: Syon Abbey 1415–2015 (Leominster: Gracewing, 2015).

6  Bridget Morris, Saint Birgitta of Sweden (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1999); James Hogg, ed., The Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure, vol. 1 (Salzburg: Universität Salzburg, Institut für Anglistik & Amerikanistik, 2003), 78, (fols.63r/v); vol. 2 (1978), 50–1(fols.63r/v), Regula Salvatoris (RS) chap. 20, the Order as the first fruits of reform; Tore Nyberg, Birgittinische Klostergründungen des Mittelalters (Gleerup: Leiden, 1965); Virginia Bainbridge, “The Bridgettines and Major Trends in Religious Devotion 1400–1600,” Birgittiana 19 (2005), 225–40. 7  Clare Sahlin, Birgitta of Sweden and the Voice of Prophecy (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2001), 1–12.

8  Michael Tait, A Fair Place: Syon Abbey 1415–1539 (Amazon CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, Marston Gate, 2013), 33–110; Claes Gejrot, ed., Diarium Vadstenense, Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, 33 (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1988). 9  Virginia Bainbridge, “Women and the Transmission of Religious Culture ca. 1400–1600,” Birgittiana 3 (1997), 55–76.

10  Bainbridge, “Brothers of Syon Abbey”; while the brothers’ route to Syon lay primarily through education, some shared patrons and family networks with the sisters.



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IV as its second founder. His generosity placed it on a secure financial footing, and he introduced new patrons from the mercantile elite which had brought him to power.11 Patronage transferred smoothly from the Yorkists to the Tudors on the marriage of Edward’s daughter, Elizabeth of York, to Henry VII, the first Tudor monarch. Henry’s powerful mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort (d. 1509), lay behind the profession of more than twenty sisters and brothers.12 Syon Abbey was located near the city of London in the neighboring county of Middlesex. While relatively few sisters were aristocrats, most were drawn from leading gentry and merchant families in royal service. In Syon’s early years such families travelled south in the retinues of new dynasties. By the midfifteenth century the courtier and administrative elite was settled around London in the Home Counties and along the Thames Valley. Syon Abbey’s assent to Henry VIII’s Royal Supremacy was important to him because the Birgittines had been confidants of the royal family for over a century. However, the sisters and brothers followed St. Birgitta’s example: they too were born into powerful families, they had strong vocations and they were unafraid to “tell truth to power.” Members of the elite chose different paths in response to the Reformation, but many of the families of Syon’s religious and supporters remained committed to Roman Catholicism.13 A general increase in record-keeping by 1500 provides more information on these families. The life of Agnes Smythe (d. ca. 1553)14 shared common themes with other sisters of her time. Her family originated in Lancashire and included wealthy merchants based in the midland city of Coventry. One William Smythe and his wife were fifteenth-century “Special Benefactors” of Syon.15 Agnes’s uncle Bishop William Smythe (ca. 1460–1513), was educated at Oxford through the patronage of Thomas Stanley (d. 1504),16 first earl of Derby, and husband of Lady Margaret Beaufort. His administrative service to the Tudor regime was rewarded by appointment as Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield in 1492, and Bishop of Lincoln in 1496. He endowed schools at Lichfield and Farnworth, and a fellowship at Oriel College, Oxford in 1507. In 1512 11  Virginia Bainbridge, “Syon Abbey and Nation Building: Patronage by Political Elites and their Regional Affinities in England and Wales ca. 1415–1558,” in Continuity and Change, ed. Elin Andersson, Claes Gejrot, Edward A. Jones, and Mia Å� kestam (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, 2017), 128–44.

12  Susan Powell, The Birgittines of Syon Abbey: Preaching and Print (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), explores Beaufort’s relations with Syon Abbey. See also Bainbridge, “Sisters of Syon Abbey.” 13  Mark Bence-Jones, The Catholic Families (London: Constable, 1992), many remained Catholic up to and beyond Roman Catholic Emancipation in 1829.

14  Mary Erler, “Syon’s Special Benefactors and Friends,” Birgittiana 2 (1996): 217–20; Exeter University Library, MS 95: Canon John Rory Fletcher’s MSS, Vol. XII:124; History of Parliament 1509–1558, 3 vols., ed. S. T. Bindoff (London: Secker and Warburg, 1982), Smith [Smythe], Thomas II (1522–1591], 340–41; L&P Henry VIII, IX:986; VCH Lancaster, vol. 3 (London: Constable, 1907), 394–5.

15  Gejrot, ed., Martiloge, 135–43, list of “Special Benefactors and Friends,” mainly from Edward IV’s reign, at 138–9 for Smythe.

16  G. E. Cokayne, Gibbs, Vicary, Doubleday, et al. The Complete Peerage, 12 vols. (London: St. Catherine, 1910–1959), IV:205–15.

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he co-founded Brasenose College, Oxford with Syon’s Steward Sir Richard Sutton (d. 1524). Mary Erler’s research revealed that Agnes’s sister, Joan (d. 1530), was the wife of Richard Marler (d. 1526), Coventry draper and mayor in 1509. He was one of the richest English merchants of his day and a generous benefactor to the poor. In widowhood Joan became a vowess and lived in the precincts of Syon Abbey. She made Agnes overseer of her will, which included bequests to Syon and other charities. In 1535 Agnes earned her description as “a sturdy dame and a willful” because she warned her sisters not to hand over the convent seal. She knew from her family business background and her time as a Syon treasuress (1523–1528), that this would prevent Thomas Cromwell’s legal disposal of abbey property.

Syon Abbey’s Abbesses and Prioresses and their Kinship Networks

In the third incident of sisterly disobedience, the nuns refused to submit to the Royal Supremacy even when Andrew Windsor was sent to persuade his kinswomen.17 The question here is who were his kinswomen?18 Syon’s early sixteenth-century abbesses and prioresses represented important networks of patrons and religious. Abbess Elizabeth Gibbs (abbess 1497–1518), was central to a group of Syon religious from the port city of Exeter and its West Country hinterland. Abbess Constance Browne (1518–1520),19 belonged to the powerful Danvers family network of Special Benefactors from the Thames Valley. They held leading roles in government and trade, were patrons of Oxford University, and participated in the Humanist culture of Yorkist and Tudor royal courts. It was only a matter of time before pressure from this network influenced the appointment of a family member to high office within the monastery. The children of Sir John Danvers (d. ca. 1449), and his wife Dame Joan (née Bruley, d. 1458), included Robert, who oversaw Archbishop Chichele’s foundation of All Souls; Thomas who oversaw Bishop Wayneflete of Winchester’s foundation of Magdalen College, Oxford; and Agnes, Abbess Browne’s grandmother.20 Abbess Agnes Jordan (1520–ca. 1545–1546), was the sister of Isabel Jordan (d. by 1533), prioress of Wilton

17  Aungier, Syon, 87; L&P Henry VIII, IX:954.

18  I am grateful to Sue Powell for asking me this question and opening up a new line of research.

19  Greater London Record Office, Reg. FitzJames, dioc. London, Guildhall MS 9531/9, fols.130v– 132r, election; Aungier, Syon, 81–2; David N. Bell, What Nuns Read: Books and Libraries in Medi­ eval English Nunneries (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1995), 199; Alan Davidson, “Roman Catholicism in Oxfordshire ca. 1580–1640” (PhD. diss., Bristol University, 1970), 70; Fletcher, XII:80–1; Tait, A Fair Place, 160, 418–20; VCH Oxfordshire, vol. 5 (London: OUP/UL/IHR, 1957), 168–77.

20  Francis Macnamara, Memorials of the Danvers Family (London: Hardy and Page, 1895), chaps. 4–7, family tree opp. 295; VCH Oxfordshire, V (OUP/UL/IHR, 1990), 168–77; Virginia Bainbridge, “Syon Abbey: Women and Learning,” in Syon Abbey and its Books ca. 1400–1700, ed. Edward A. Jones and Alexandra Walsham (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010), 95–7; Bainbridge “Syon Abbey and Nation Building,” 136–7.



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Abbey, Wiltshire. Isabel was said to be “ancient, wise and discreet” in 1528 when she was elected abbess of Wilton in preference to Anne Boleyn’s candidate.21 The three early sixteenth-century prioresses came from aristocratic families, perhaps as a consolation for not becoming abbess, a role which demanded business skills over breeding. Prioress Anne de la Pole (b. 1476, professed by 1495, d. 25 April 1501), was the daughter of Sir John de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, a niece of Edward IV and Richard III, and aunt of Queen Elizabeth of York. In 1495, her grandmother, Cecily of York, left her three books in English: The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Christ by Bonaventura; Hilton’s Mixed Life; and The Revelations of St. Birgitta. A Processional made for Syon Abbey may also have belonged to her. Book owning was confined to the wealthiest circles and Anne was one of the few Syon nuns who owned more than one book.22 Prioress Eleanor Scrope (prioress 1501–1513), was the daughter of Henry, fourth baron Scrope of Bolton, Yorkshire and his wife Elizabeth. The Scropes were early supporters of the cult of St. Birgitta and of Syon Abbey. Ladies of the Scope family were book owners and eager participants in pious women’s intellectual circles.23 The answer to the question of who were Andrew Windsor’s kinswomen starts with his sister, Prioress Margaret Windsor (b. ca. 1488, professed 1506, prioress 1513–1545/6),24 a goddaughter of Lady Margaret Beaufort.25 The Windsors were an ancient Middlesex family, related by marriage to many of Syon’s fifteenth- and sixteenth-century patrons and religious. Margaret Windsor’s kinship network was especially strong in the Thames Valley through her father Thomas Windsor of Stanwell (d.

21  TNA, PRO: PCC/Prob 11, Alen 4, will of Agnes Jordan; Peter Cunich, “The Brothers of Syon 1420–1695,” in Syon Abbey and its Books, 39–81, at 68, 70; Mary Erler, Women, Reading and Piety in Late Medi­eval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 121; Fletcher, XII: 110–1, 116–7; HoP 1509–1558, 78–80, Peckham family; L&P Henry VIII, IV (ii):1853–54; L&P Henry VIII, XIV (ii):424, 425, 427; VCH Buckinghamshire, vol. 3 (London: St. Catherine, 1925), 260; VCH Wiltshire, vol. III (London, 1956), 239, 242.

22  C. A. J. Armstrong, “The Piety of Cicely, Duchess of York,” in England, France, and Burgundy in the Fifteenth Century (London: Hambledon, 1983), 135–56; Aungier, Syon, 80; Bell, What Nuns Read, 199, 209–10; Fletcher XII:71–2; David Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948–1959), II:133.

23  Aungier, Syon, 51–52; Caroline Barron and Mary Erler, “The Making of Syon Abbey’s Altar Table of Our Lady ca. 1490–96,” in England and the Continent in the Middle Ages, ed. J. Mitchell and M. Moran (Shaun Tyas: Stamford, 2000), 318–35, and plates 321–2; Erler, Women, Reading, and Piety, 46; Fletcher, XII:84–5; Tait, A Fair Place, 164.

24  Bainbridge, “Syon Abbey: Women and Learning,” 95–97; Bell, What Nuns Read, 183, 192, 193–4; Complete Peerage, XII:792–4; Cunich, “Brothers of Syon,” 70; Erler, Women, Reading, and Piety, 149, 182; Fletcher, XII:114, 117–8; Jessica Freeman, “The Political Community of Fifteenth-Century Middlesex,” (PhD diss., London University, 2002), 38, 49, 56, 136, 142, 312; Harleian Society (London: College of Arms, 1869–), XLII, Surrey, 186–7; History of Parliament 1386–1421, 4 vols., ed. J. S. Roskell, L. Clark, and C. Rawcliffe (Stroud: Sutton, 1992), Andrews, James (d. 1434) and son John, 32–34; Macnamara, Danvers Family, chaps. 4–7, at 171; Colin Richmond, “The Sulyard Papers,” in England in the Fifteenth Century, ed. D. Williams (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1987), 199–228, at 208n, 226–8; Tait, A Fair Place, 164. 25  Powell, Birgittines of Syon Abbey: Preaching and Print, 215–7. Margaret Windsor was a god­ daughter and gentlewoman of Margaret Beaufort, who sponsored her profession at Syon in 1506.

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1485),26 and in East Anglia through her mother, Elizabeth Andrews from Suffolk.27 Her brother Andrew (cr. baron Windsor 1529, d. 1543), a Renaissance scholar, married Elizabeth, daughter of Erasmus’s patron Sir William Blount, lord Mountjoy, linking Margaret to the heart of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon’s Humanist court. Margaret is known to have had four books, A Devout Treatise called the Tree and 12 Fruits of the Holy Ghost (London, 1534–1535); a French translation of Boccacio’s De La Ruine des Nobles Hommes et Femmes (Lyons, 1483); and a manu­script psalter commissioned by her brother Andrew, requesting prayers and containing two portraits in her Birgittine habit. He left her a large annuity of £80 6s. 8d. to pray for him and their parents. Her maternal aunt, Anne Sulyard Bourchier (d. 1519), left a fourth book, a prayer book, “to Dame Margaret Windsor of Syon,” to pray for her and a pair of gold prayer beads to her sister Elizabeth, Margaret’s mother. Margaret’s East Anglian kinship network included great aunts Sr. Helen Wyche, Special Benefactor, Alice Wyche, and her Essex cousins and contemporaries at Syon, Srs. Margaret Bourchier and Bridget Sulyard. Her Suffolk cousins at Syon were Srs. Anne and Mary Drury, Joan Rush, and Confessor General John Copinger (d. ca. 1537–1538).28 The Windsors were related to the Danvers family network. Margaret Windsor’s Thames Valley cousins at Syon included Srs. Alice Langston, Elizabeth Danvers, and Anne Dauntsey [Dauncere], whose kinsman William Dauncere (d. 1548), married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas More.29 Thomas Cromwell put pressure on Andrew Windsor because he and the prioress were related to so many Syon religious and supporters. After 1539 Prioress Windsor presided over a group of religious on her family estates, including her cousins Anne Dauntsey and Joan Rush, lay sisters Margaret Walker and Elizabeth Crouchley,30 and the learned Deacon Thomas Prescius (d. 1544)31 to serve them. A later Sr. Margaret Windsor, named after her aunt the prioress, joined Syon in exile.32 Henry VIII took revenge on his former friend Andrew Windsor for his betrayal. He was forced to exchange his family estate at Stanwell for lands in Gloucestershire far removed from court and capital.33 26  HoP 1509–1558, 21–4, Dauntsey; Macnamara, Danvers Family, chaps. 4–7, family tree opp. 295.

27  HoP 1386–1421, Andrews, John; HoP 1509–1558, Sulyard, John; Richmond, “Sulyard Papers,” 199–228.

28  Fletcher, XII:105–6; Cunich, “Brothers of Syon,” 60–69; (Corpus of British Medi­eval Library Catalogues IX, London: The British Library and The British Academy, 2001), 573; Knowles, III:213; L&P Henry VIII, III:2062, VIII:78, IX:986, X:213, XI:501, XIV (ii):424, 425, 427; Tait, A Fair Place, 499, 518–22.

29  Fletcher, XII:114, 145; HoP 1509–1558, 21–4, Dauntsey; Macnamara, Danvers Family, 229–34, pedigree opp. 295. 30  Bell, What Nuns Read, 180–1; Fletcher, XII:114, 146.

31  Aungier, Syon, 90; Bell, What Nuns Read, 200–1; Cunich, “Brothers of Syon,” 70–1; Fletcher, XII:114, 152; Gillespie, ed., Syon Library, 584; Tait, A Fair Place, 558–9.

32  Lisbon Obit List, fo. 33r; Aungier, 99–100; Adam Hamilton, The Angel of Syon: The Life and Martyrdom of Blessed Richard Reynolds (London: Sands, 1905), plate opp. 97; John Morris, ed., The Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, 3 vols. (London: Burns and Oates, 1872–1877), II:372, 471. 33  L&P Henry VIII, XVII:167; VCH Middlesex, III (OUP/UL/IHR, 1962), 36–41.



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Syon sisters generally came from devout families that provided more than one vocation to the religious life. Margaret Beaufort’s cultural patronage created a steady stream of recruits from political allies of the Tudor dynasty. Margaret Windsor and her contemporaries, including the Amersham, Elrington, Newdigate, Rede, and Urswick sisters, were closely related to courtiers and senior administrators in church and state. Their families embraced the church reform promoted by English monarchs and spread it to wider circles by establishing chantries, gilds, almshouses, and schools. Their commitment to religious reform, the founding mission of the Birgittine Order, set them against Henry VIII’s new Protestant policies. Abbess Gibbs was best known for commissioning Musica Ecclesiastica, the first English translation of The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. This guide for devout lay and religious people is one of the most popular spiritual classics for both Roman Catholics and Protestants.34 Her parents, John and Margaret Gibbs, endowed a chantry in Exeter Cathedral, and her maternal cousins at Syon included Srs. Anne, Elizabeth, and Margaret, and Fr. Nicholas Edward. The next generation of recruits from Exeter included Sr. Edith Reynolds and Syon’s martyr, St. Richard Reynolds.35 Conservative families sent increasing numbers of recruits to Syon and other elite nunneries. For the first time in Syon’s history nearly all sixty places for nuns were filled in the early sixteenth century. In 1518 there were fifty-six sisters and half of fifty-two sisters pensioned in 1539 were professed after 1518.36 At Romsey Abbey in Hampshire a third of the nuns were professed in 1534, after reform by Bishop Fox of Winchester (1487–1528), assisted by Fr. Richard Whitford before he entered Syon.37 The brothers had a greater public profile than their enclosed sisters, so became famous for opposition to Henry VIII’s Reformation, culminating in the martyrdom of St. Richard Reynolds and Lay Brother Thomas Brownell. In the 1530s the sisters too began to show their political dissent within the enclosure.

Syon Abbey’s Survival, Post-1539 Groups and their Support Networks

Abbess Jordan ably guided Syon through the troubled 1530s, providing stability during three changes of confessor general. In 1539 she oversaw the division of the community into small groups led by senior sisters and brothers to provide the sacraments and this 34  Bell, What Nuns Read, 186; Fletcher, XII:29, 79–80; inf. from Mother Abbess, 2005; Mary Erler, “The Early Sixteenth Century at Syon: Richard Whitford and Elizabeth Gibbs,” in Manu­script Culture and Medi­eval Devotional Traditions: Essays in Honor of Michael. G. Sargent, ed. Jennifer N. Brown and Nicole Rice (York: York Medi­eval, 2021), 310–26. It was copied by William Darker, a monk at Henry V’s other foundation, the Sheen Charterhouse. 35  Hamilton, Angel of Syon; “Reynolds, Richard [Saint Richard Reynolds], d. 1535),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Bio­graphy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), hereafter ODNB.

36  Aungier, Syon, offers: a 1518 list of sisters present at Abbess Browne’s election, 81–82; a 1539 pension list, 89–90; and a 1557 list of pre–1539 religious, 97–98.

37  “Benedictine Abbey of Romsey,” VCH Hampshire, vol. 2 (London: Victoria County History, 1903: reprint, London: Dawsons, 1973), 126–32; Barry Collett, ed., Female Monastic Life in Early Tudor England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002).

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laid the foundation for Syon’s survival. They followed the Rule in the homes of family and friends. The support of their kinship networks was needed now more than ever. The six largest groups were located in the Thames Valley and Home Counties where Syon’s main support was: Abbess Jordan and Fr. Anthony Little in Buckinghamshire; Prioress Windsor and Fr. Prescius in Middlesex, also Treasuress Margaret Dely and Fr. John Green; the Fetiplace cousins in the Yate household in Berkshire; Sacristan Bridget FitzHerbert and Fr. John Stewkyn in the Bettenham household in Kent; and Clemence Tresham and Fr. Whitford in Lord Mountjoy’s household.38 Groups disbanded as older religious died, but they were swiftly reconfigured. Other sisters lived in ones and twos. Retirement to live with fellow religious was common in England after the Dissolution of the monasteries.39 Abbess Jordan presided over Syon’s largest post–1539 group at Southlands, a substantial house in the parish of Denham, Buckinghamshire, until her death ca. 1544–1546.40 She leased the house from Sir Edmund and Robert Peckham. Jordan was a local surname so she may have come from the area or been related to the Peckhams. Furthermore, she chose Denham because Westminster Abbey had estates there before 1539 and the locals remained supportive to religious life.41 The community at Southlands included eleven Syon religious who had professed before 1539, known from government records. New recruits are glimpsed in other sources: the name of Br. James Stock was written in a fifteenth-century Syon processional with those of Srs. Thomasina Grove and Mary Nevel.42 Their days were devoted to religious services and to individual prayer and study. The household therefore included servants, both men and women, who did the work of making food and drink and procuring domestic necessities. The community was apparently professing new Birgittines: Robert Brown (d. ca. 1545), pensioned as a lay-brother in 1539, was ordained while living at Southlands and commemorated as a priest in Syon Martiloge.43 Abbess Jordan’s will shows her knowledge of managing a large gentry household, provides a partial inventory of the belongings of the religious community, and reveals many details of how they used the accommodation. Southlands in the mid-sixteenth century was a two-storied building, perhaps with attic rooms. The will mentions three main areas of communal or public space, firstly the hall and chapel area, secondly 38  Cunich, “Brothers of Syon,” 69–72.

39  Geoffrey Baskerville, English Monks and the Suppression of the Monasteries (London: Cape, 1937), 218–26; Mary Erler, Reading and Writing During the Dissolution 1530–1558 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 72–78.

40  Peter Cunich, “The Syon Household at Denham, 1539–1550,” Studies in Church History 50 (2014), 174–87. 41  Westminster was one of three religious houses re-founded by Queen Mary, VCH London, vol. 1 (London, 1909), 433–57; with Sheen Charterhouse, VCH Surrey, vol. 2 (London, 1967), 89–94; and Syon Abbey. 42  Bell, What Nuns Read, 197.

43  TNA, PRO, PCC/Prob 11, Alen 4, will of Agnes Jordan; Aungier, Syon, 90; Fletcher, XII:109, 110, 154; L&P Henry VIII, III:2062; Cunich, “Brothers of Syon,” 61–62, 70–71.



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the parlor and guest room, and thirdly outhouses grouped around a kitchen courtyard. In addition, there were private chambers and sleeping quarters. These included a dormitory above the hall where the maidens slept: either maid servants, or more likely young women receiving an education, and novices, as in the post–1539 Fetiplace group. Br. James Stock and Joanne Stock [Stoke] may have been relatives of Abbess Jordan, who left 40s., a gold ring, and her own bedding and furniture to Joanne.44 This generous bequest and prayers for Joanne’s soul if she died before the age of eighteen implies kinship. Father Confessor Anthony Little’s room was off the chapel and near the hall where chapel paraphernalia was kept. The household apparently included his relatives John Maugreve, Elizabeth Maugreve, and her brother also named Anthony Little. Abbess Jordan’s will was carefully crafted and shows the Birgittines were highly organized and already preparing to move on after her death. The will is part inventory of fittings to be left for the Peckhams, and part packing list. Six senior Syon religious: Fr. Little, Srs. Margery Covert, Birgit Sulyard, Dorothy Slyght, Mary Neville, and Mary Watnoo [Wettenhall], were left altar furnishings and religious images, together with coffers and chests for their onward journeys. Each could set up a chapel wherever they went. Her will shows both care for the well-being of her household and neighbors, and purposeful planning to ensure the survival of Roman Catholicism through her religious, local priests, and money for educating boys to follow them. After Abbess Jordan’s death, the sisters, and later Fr. Little, joined Abbess Palmer and the group living with the Birgittines of Mariatroon at Dendermonde, Flanders. Agnes Jordan is commemorated by a small brass in Denham Church in her habit.45 The Fetiplace family, brought to life in Mary Erler’s important work, was part of Syon’s network of Thames Valley courtiers.46 Dorothy Gutrington [Codrington] (née Fetiplace), was the first to be professed as a young widow in 1523, 47 followed by her sister Eleanor,48 their cousin Ursula Fetiplace,49 and nieces Susan Purefoy,50 and Elizabeth Yate.51 Dorothy, Eleanor, and their widowed sister Lady Susan Kingston 44  TNA, PRO, PCC/Prob 11, Alen 4, will of Agnes Jordan; Bell, What Nuns Read, 197.

45  Denham Church is near Pinewood Studios and features regularly in Midsomer Murders, the cult TV detective series. 46  Erler, Women, Reading, and Piety, 85–99.

47  TNA, PRO: Prob. 11/24, 99v; Aungier, Syon, 535; Fletcher, XII:112; Gillespie, ed., Syon Library, 568; Harleian Soc. LVI, Berkshire, I:28; VCH Berkshire, vol. IV (London: Constable, 1924), 237–8.

48  Bell, What Nuns Read, 176–7, 194, 196; Fletcher, XII:112–3, 131–5; Gillespie, ed., Syon Library, 568; Harleian Soc. LVI, Berkshire, I:28; Tait, A Fair Place, 341; VCH Berkshire, IV:237–8, 393–8. 49  Davidson, “Oxfordshire,” 136–8; Fletcher, XII:112–3, 131–5; VCH Berkshire, IV:237–8, 393–98.

50  Bell, What Nuns Read, 190–1; Fletcher, XII:112, 115, 131–5; Harleian Soc. II, Leicestershire, 35–36; VCH Buckinghamshire, vol. 4 (London, 1927), 223–6.

51  Bell, What Nuns Read, 197–8; Hugh Bowler, ed., Recusants in the Exchequer Pipe Rolls 1581–1592, Catholic Record Society, 71 (Southampton: Catholic Record Society, 1986), 198–9, Yate family; Fletcher, XII:112–3, 131–5; Harleian Soc. LVI: Berkshire, I:60; Ann Hutchison, “Beyond the Margins: The Recusant Bridgettines,” in Studies in St. Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, II, ed. James Hogg (Salzburg: Universität Salzburg, Institut für Anglistik and Amerikanistik, 1993), 267–84, at 273; VCH Berkshire, IV:285–94, 453–60.

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(d. 1540), who left money for a school, were the older half-sisters of Renaissance scholar Sir Thomas Elyot, translator of Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier. He dedicated his translation of Cyprian’s Sermon on Mortality to the sisters in 1534, the year Eleanor and Susan were professed. The five cousins, at least four additional Syon sisters, and new recruits all lived at Buckland Manor, Berkshire, the home of another sister Mary (née Fetiplace) and her husband James Yate, the parents of Sr. Elizabeth. In 1557, all five cousins were solemnly reinclosed at Syon. In 1559, Dorothy, Eleanor, and Susan followed Abbess Palmer into exile. Ursula and Elizabeth remained in England apparently leading a clandestine nunnery which sent recruits to Syon in exile. Dorothy and her female relatives were models of Renaissance learning, associated with many of Syon’s surviving manu­scripts and printed books. Like other highly educated women of their time, their learning led not to Protestantism, but to Roman Catholic reform.

Syon Abbey, Queen Mary Tudor, and her Political Networks

Queen Mary (1553–1558) was the last British monarch to be commemorated in the Syon Martiloge and her reign was pivotal in the story of Syon Abbey. Many of the religious conservatives gathered around her, her closest political allies in court and council, were patrons of Syon and sustained the community once Mary’s short reign had ended. Catherine Palmer (b. 1490–1498, d. 1576, Malines, Flanders), abbess during Mary’s reign, was another highly educated, well-connected, and resourceful woman who became abbess of Syon.52 She could read Latin and English and is known to have owned three books: The Chastising of God’s Children (Westminster, 1493), also inscribed with the name of Sr. Edith Morepath; Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection (Westminster, 1494); and a Latin translation of Johannes Tauler’s Complete Works (Co­logne, 1548). She was a powerful personality and came from a family of courtiers, members of Parliament, and diplomats, which gave her the skills to unite the community and take it in a new direction. Catherine Palmer and her family illustrate many of the political and religious themes of the unsettled mid-Tudor period. The Palmer family were longestablished on Syon’s Sussex estates, where they founded a chantry in Angmering Church. Catherine was the daughter of Sir Edward Palmer and Alice, daughter of Sir William Clement of Igtham Mote, Kent. The family rose to national prominence in the service of the Tudors, but were divided by the political and religious changes of the 52  Bell, What Nuns Read, 182–3; William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, VI (London, 1830), 540–4; Cunich, “Brothers of Syon,” 70–73; Erler, Women, Reading, and Piety, 121, 125, 148; Erler, Reading and Writing During the Dissolution, 107–25; Fletcher, XII:111, 138–43; Peter Guilday, English Catholic Refugees on the Continent 1558–1795, vol. 1 (London: Longmans, 1914), 56–57, 59; Hamilton, Angel of Syon, 102–4; Edward Hasted, History and Topo­graphical Survey of the County of Kent, V (Canterbury, 1798), 33–45, “Ightham,” http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/ vol5/pp33–45; HoP 1509–1558, 50–56, Palmer family; F. R. Johnston, Syon Abbey: A Short History (South Brent: Syon Abbey, 1964), 10; Peter Cunich, “Palmer, Katherine (d. 1576),” https//:doi. org/10.1093/ref:odnb/96817; David Grummitt, “Palmer, Sir Henry (d. 1576),” ODNB; M. M. Norris, “Palmer, Sir Thomas (b. after 1496, d. 1553),” ODNB.



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mid-sixteenth century. Two of Catherine’s uncles, and two brothers, Sir John Palmer (ca. 1495–1563), and Sir Henry Palmer (ca. 1496–1559), were members of Parliament. Her brother, Sir Thomas Palmer (d. 1553), became a gentleman of Henry VIII’s Privy Chamber, but was executed early in Mary’s reign with the Duke of Northumberland for supporting Lady Jane Grey’s claim to the throne. Relatives were involved in military and diplomatic missions in the Low Countries. Like other Roman Catholic exiles in the reign of Edward VI, Catherine Palmer used her diplomatic connections to travel to the Low Countries ca. 1550.53 There she entered Syon’s sister house, the Birgittine monastery of Mariatroon in the town of Dendermonde in Flanders. Other sisters joined her as post–1539 groups folded. After Abbess Jordan died, Catherine was elected abbess (ca. 1546–1576), and returned to England to collect more sisters. Her sophisticated background provided her with diplomatic skills: in 1554 Cardinal Pole visited her at Dendermonde to discuss Syon’s return to England under Queen Mary. After this, aided by Searcher (later Prioress) Rose Paget, she began the process of gathering the scattered members of the community together. Queen Mary’s generous funding made Syon Abbey’s return to its former site at Isleworth possible. The 1557 snapshot of the community is the formal charter listing all the Birgittines professed before 1539 who were solemnly reinclosed in 1557. It does not name later recruits who were enclosed with them. A third of the 1539 community, twenty-one of seventy-three religious, eighteen sisters and three brothers, were reinclosed in 1557. They had followed their vocations in private and in exile for nearly twenty years before they saw Roman Catholicism restored. Reinclosure was all too brief, but the stories of the last four sisters who were buried at Syon in 1557 illustrate their lives after 1539. Joan Dene lived in the household of Sir George Gifford, member of Parliament of Middle Clendon, Buckinghamshire, where she taught Latin to Gifford’s daughters and niece Barbara Sexten. Gifford’s eight-year-old nephew, Thomas Colwell, gave a Latin oration before Thomas Cromwell, who had stayed there during a Royal progress in 1539. Gifford later received a pension from Queen Mary for loyalty to her and he became chamberlain to Anne of Cleves. Barbara married Thomas Colwell, who died for his faith in the Fleet prison in 1593.54 Elizabeth Fawks joined Treasuress FitzHerbert’s group in 1539. She probably came from the same Yorkshire family as Guy Fawkes, a leader of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605.55 Mary Neville was the notaress for Abbess Jordan’s group and received a gift of chapel furnishings in her will.56 After Abbess Jordan died, Mary joined Abbess Palmer’s group at Mariatroon. 53  Erler, Reading and Writing During the Dissolution, 121–3.

54  Aungier, Syon, 81–82; Fletcher XII:136; Historical Manu­script Commission, Twelfth Report, pt. 4: “MSS of Duke of Rutland,” (London: HMSO, 1888–1905), I:307–14; HoP 1509–1558, 212–3.

55  Fletcher XII:77–8, Vaux, recte Fawkes, see 114. Elizabeth Fawkes was confused with Anne Vaux [Vux], who was not pensioned in 1539. Both received pensions in 1556.

56  TNA, PRO, PCC/Prob 11, Alen 4, will of Agnes Jordan; Bell, What Nuns Read, 187, 197; Erler, Women, Reading, and Piety, 125, 133; Fletcher, XII:109–11, 146; Macnamara, Danvers Family, 272, 281; Veronica O’Mara, “A Syon Scribe Revealed by Her Signature: Mary Nevel and her Manu­scripts,”

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Joan Rush, one of Prioress Windsor’s companions, was the last sister to be buried at old Syon.57 Following Syon’s second suppression, the Birgittines, led by Abbess Palmer and other religious, travelled into exile in the Low Countries in the retinue of Gómez Suárez de Figueroa, duke of Feria, the retiring Spanish Ambassador. His wife Jane Dormer, and her cousin Sir Francis Englefield, one of Mary’s privy councillors, were both descended from Special Benefactors and related to Syon religious. They remained two of the community’s most important patrons and became leaders of exiled English Catholics at the Spanish royal court. The story of Syon’s wanderings, surviving poverty and religious warfare in the Low Countries and Northern France, is well-known.58 Abbess Palmer led her community from Mariatroon to Isleworth and back again in 1559, then on to their own convent of Hemstede at Zurich Zee (1564–1568). Her diplomatic skills were in evidence again in 1564 when she negotiated a “Charter of Continuity” from Pope Pius IV, which ratified Syon Abbey’s continuity from its foundation by Henry V through any changes of residence. Syon relocated within Flanders to Mishagen 1568–1571, to Antwerp 1571–1572, and to Malines in 1572, where Abbess Palmer died in 1576 after a Calvinist mob broke into the monastic enclosure. Recruitment to Syon Abbey peaked on the eve of the Reformation: sixty-five sisters died in the forty years from 1500 to 1539. A further forty-three sisters died in post–1539 groups or in retirement in1540–1559, making a total of 108 sisters who died from 1500 to 1559. By 1559, all but a handful of the fifty-six sisters present at Abbess Browne’s election in 1518 were dead, as the aging generation from the peak of Syon’s recruitment had come to an end. The oldest sisters tended to stay in England rather than go into exile. One of them was Sr. Clemence Tresham (d. 1567), the daughter of John Tresham of Rushton, Northamptonshire, and sister of Sir Thomas Tresham (cr. Grand Prior, Order of St. John of Jerusalem 1557; d. 1559), a leading supporter of Queen Mary. Clemence was reinclosed in 1557, but did not go into exile in 1559.59 Instead, she built a house on her family estate at Rushton. There, according to Dugdale, she was “abbess” of a group of Syon religious. She owned three books: a book of hours; a psalter inherited from Rose Tresham, which later passed to the Yate family; and the Works of Thomas à Kempis (Paris, 1523). A marble effigy of her in her habit lay in St. Peter’s Church until 1799, alongside her brother Sir Thomas in his robes. They represented the old order of reformed Marian Catholicism. The family remained in Continuity and Change, ed. Elin Andersson, Claes Gejrot, Edward A. Jones, and Mia Å� kestam (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, 2017), 283–308. 57  Fletcher, XII:114, 33; HoP 1509–1558, Rush; Richmond, “Sulyard Papers,” 204.

58  Jones, England’s Last Medi­eval Monastery; Hutchison, “Beyond the Margins,” 267–84; Virginia Bainbridge, “Propaganda and the Supernatural: The Bridgettine Nuns of Syon Abbey in Exile ca. 1539–1630,” in Women on the Move: Refugees, Migration, and Exile, ed. Fiona Reid and Kath Holden (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), 25–41.

59  Aungier, Syon, 100; Bell, What Nuns Read, 184–85; CRS 71 (1986), 175–6; Dugdale, Monasticon, VI:540–4; Erler, Women, Reading, and Piety, 142, 146, 148–9; Fletcher, XII:114, 126–7; Thomas Fuller, Worthies of England, 3 vols. (London: Tegg, 1837), II:277–80.



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loyal to Rome and Clemence’s great nephew Francis Tresham (ca. 1567–1605) was executed for his part in the Gunpowder Plot. Catherine Palmer and the sisters who carried Syon’s mission forward into exile were younger and perhaps more radical than those who remained in their family homes. Their youth and strength of vocation propelled them with Abbess Palmer into the next phase of Syon’s story.

Syon Abbey in Exile and English Roman Catholic Networks ca. 1559–1600

Many Syon families remained loyal to Roman Catholicism in the later sixteenth century and became leading recusants in their counties. As the political background darkened for English Roman Catholics in the course of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, the families of the nuns became increasingly involved in political as well as religious dissent. Relatives participated in political uprisings and were martyred, either executed for their faith, or they died in squalid prison conditions. Syon recruited fewer sisters and brothers in exile after 1559. Their lives reveal how closely their vocations were tied to English politics. Strong leadership from the abbesses, confessors general, and prioresses held the community together in exile. Abbess Palmer’s two prioresses, Rose Paget and Margaret Sanders, came from influential families. Rose was probably the sister of William, Lord Paget and member of Parliament (1506–1563), a senior counsellor to Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Queen Mary.60 His wife Anne (d. 1590), the daughter and heiress of Henry Preston of Westmoreland, was a relative of future abbess Elizabeth Preston (d. after 1622). Their son Thomas, Lord Paget (d. 1590), was convicted of Recusancy and his lands at West Drayton, Middlesex, and elsewhere were confiscated. Syon’s supporter Charles Paget (d. 1612) was a dangerous Roman Catholic activist, living in exile from 1581 in Paris, Rouen, and Brussels. He was implicated in the Babington Plot of 1586. In 1582, his mother Anne, Lady Paget (d. 1587), was suspected of harboring Fr. Anthony Tyrell, a priest on the English Mission, on his escape from jail. Tyrell, the brother of lay sister Gertrude Tyrrell, was also involved in the Babington Plot. Margaret Sander (d. 1576) was the daughter of William and Elizabeth Sander of Aston, Surrey, and was related to Confessor General Stephen Sander (d. 1513). Her siblings were Sr. Elizabeth Sander, whose story of imprisonment and escape is well known, and Dr. Nicholas Sander (d. 1581), the Roman Catholic polemical author who died in Ireland on a military campaign against Queen Elizabeth.61 After 1559, the Fetiplace group was central to Syon’s survival. It was apparently led by Elizabeth Yate at her family home of Buckland Manor, Berkshire, and at other Yate properties in Berkshire and Oxfordshire. She was last recorded in 1588, living 60  Bell, What Nuns Read, 196; Cunich, “Brothers of Syon,” 71; Fletcher, XII:131–2; HoP 1509–1558, 42–46, Paget, William; VCH Middlesex, III:191–5, 204–5. 61  Fletcher, XII:157–8; Joseph Gillow, Bio­graphical Dictionary of English Catholics, 5 vols. (London: Burns and Oates, 1885–7; index vol. London: St. Francis, 1985), V:475; Jenna Lay, “Sander [Sanders, Saunders], Elizabeth (d. 1607),” https//:doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/105928; T. F. Mayer, “Sander [Sanders], Nicholas (ca. 1530–1581), ODNB.

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at Kencott Manor, Oxfordshire.62 The most compelling evidence for this clandestine nunnery lies in the names the Syon sisters wrote in manu­scripts and books allocated for their use. Books from old Syon and various post–1539 Syon groups passed to the Fetiplace group, like Clemence Tresham’s family prayer book. The books passed on to Syon in exile and returned to England with the community in the nineteenth century.63 The existence of the nunnery was revealed publicly in 1580. In 1578, Abbess Birgitta Rooke (1576–1594)64 and Confessor General Thomas Williams had taken the difficult decision to send the younger nuns back to England when the community was nearing starvation at Malines. Buckland Manor became a refuge for some of these sisters, including that feisty firebrand, Elizabeth Sander. The community’s exposure was in part due to the activities of Elizabeth Sander and other radical young Catholics, betrayed by a member of the Elyot family. In 1580 seven Syon sisters were captured at Lyford Grange, the home of Francis Yate, while attending Mass celebrated by Jesuit Edmund Campion (executed 1581), perhaps a nephew of Sr. Margery Campion (d. 1519). In 1580 Elizabeth Sander was helping to distribute Edmund Campion’s Brag or Challenge, which drew attention to the underground printing press at Stonor Park, South Oxfordshire. She was imprisoned in 1581 and 1582 with her relative Erasmus Sanders, but escaped both times. After imprisonment and many adventures, she made her way back to Syon in France in 1587.65 Her survival for so long shows her resilience and the strength of recusant family networks. She described her experiences in a series of letters to her kinsman and fellow exile, Sir Francis Englefield. Two Syon sisters captured with Edmund Campion, Juliana Harman66 and Katherine Kingsmill,67 were not so lucky. They both died in Reading Castle Jail ca. 1584, adding two more martyrs to Syon’s name. Juliana Harman may have been the daughter of Edmund Harman (d. 1569), the London barber-surgeon whose family are commemorated by a carved stone chest tomb in Burford Church, Oxfordshire, and related to John Harman, Bishop of Exeter 1519–1551, deprived of office by Edward VI, and restored to it by Queen Mary in 1553. Burford was close to the Yate family estates in Berkshire and Oxfordshire, suggesting that Juliana joined Syon through them. She and Katherine were two of the younger nuns sent back to England in 1578. After 1539, 62  CRS 71 (1986), 198, Elizabeth Yate, “Spinster” of Kencott, Oxfordshire, 1586.

63  Christopher de Hamel, Syon Abbey: The Library of the Bridgettine Nuns and their Peregrinations after the Reformation (London: Roxburgh Club, 1991); Bell, What Nuns Read.

64  Aungier, Syon, 108–9; Bainbridge “Propaganda and the Supernatural,” 34–35; Fletcher, XII:165–6; Gillespie, ed., Syon Library, 586.

65  CRS V (1908), 140–2; CRS 71 (1986), 148–9; Fletcher, XII:157–59; Gillow, English Catholics, V:475; Hutchison, “Beyond the Margins,” 268–72; Lay, “Sander, Elizabeth.”

66  CRS 71 (1986), 77n; Fletcher, XII:162; Hutchison, “Beyond the Margins,” 268, 273; VCH Berkshire, vol. 2 (London, 1907), 37.

67  CRS 71 (1986), 77n, 102–3; Erler, Women, Reading, and Piety, 72–74; Erler, Reading and Writing During the Dissolution, 72–74, Morphita Kingsmill; Fletcher, XII:162; Hutchison, “Beyond the Margins,” 268, 273; VCH Berkshire, II:37.



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the patrons of Hampshire nunneries reformed by Bishop Fox and Fr. Whitford transferred their support to Syon and sent their daughters there. Katherine Kingsmill was one of several post-Reformation Hampshire sisters: she was the niece of Morphita Kingsmill, last Abbess of Wherwell nunnery; Frances Shelley (d. 1594) was a relative of Elizabeth Shelley, last abbess of St. Mary’s Abbey, the Nunnaminster;68 and the family of Mary Tichborne (d. 1614) were servants of the house.69 The mothers of Frances Shelley and Mary Tichborne helped Elizabeth Sander when she was imprisoned in Winchester Castle.

Syon Abbey in 1587, “A Supplication made for Poor Syon”

In 1580, Abbess Rooke and Fr. Williams relocated Syon from war-torn Flanders to Normandy, only to endure two sieges of their new home city of Rouen in the French Wars of Religion. Part of the mission of the younger nuns in 1578 had been to raise funds in England. In 1587, Abbess Rooke and Confessor General Joseph Foster launched a new fundraising initiative. They printed “A Supplication made for Poor Syon” addressed to “all charitable and well-disposed catholics,” signed by thirty religious: twenty-four sisters, six brothers, and eleven English patrons.70 The “Supplication” recounted the dangers and poverty Syon faced after exile and reminded readers that it was then “the only religious convent remaining of our country.” What it omitted to mention was the political radicalism of this company of “religious virgins and brethren.” Several of the younger nuns sent back to England in 1578, like Prioress Ursula Horde and Elizabeth Sander, managed to return and signed the “Supplication.” Prioress Horde represents her generation of sisters.71 Her family was part of the preReformation clerical and intellectual elite and produced many vocations to religious and educational institutions. She was the daughter of Alan Horde (d. 1554), a senior Middle Temple lawyer and Dorothy Roberts. The family had estates in several counties: Shropshire, Surrey, and at Cote in Bampton parish, Oxfordshire, where they held clandestine Roman Catholic worship.72 Alan’s brother, Dr. Edmund Horde, was a fellow of All Souls’ College, Oxford. As the Bishop of Lincoln’s commissary, he visited Littlemore Priory, Oxford, in 1517 to investigate mismanagement by the prioress. In 1539, as

68  CRS 71 (1986), 152–3; Baskerville, English Monks, 207, 220; Erler, Women, Reading, and Piety, 38; Fletcher, XII:175–6; HoP 1509–1558, 308–12, Shelley; Hutchison, “Beyond the Margins,” 280, 282; Morris, ed., Troubles, I:51; II:372–3; III, ch. ix, 26, 39; VCH Hampshire, II:122–6, Nunnaminster, VCH Hampshire. vol. 3 (London: Victoria County History, 1908), 85–93.

69  CRS 71 (1986), 170; Fletcher, XII:174–5; HoP 1509–1558, 467, Tichborne, Nicholas; Hutchison, “Beyond the Margins,” 280, 282; Morris, ed., Troubles, I, chap. 9; II:143; VCH Hampshire II:22–26, Nunnaminster, VCH Hampshire, III:58–62, 336–8. 70  “A Supplication made for Poor Syon,” in Records of the English Catholics under the Penal Laws, vol. I, ed. Fathers of the London Oratory and T. F. Knox (London: Nutt, 1878), 360–2.

71  Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1547–1580 (London: HMSO, 1856), 688; CRS 71 (1986), 87–88; Davidson, “Oxfordshire,” 178, 256–59, 409; Fletcher XII:58–60; Harleian Soc. XLII, Surrey, 22–23; Hutchison, “Beyond the Margins,” 281–2; Knowles, Religious Orders, III:238. 72  VCH Oxfordshire, vol. 13 (London: OUP/UL/IHR, 1990), 66–69.

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prior of Hinton Charterhouse, Somerset, he reluctantly accepted the Royal Supremacy and surrendered his house on legal advice from his brother. After the Reformation the family were heavily involved in Roman Catholic resistance. Ursula probably joined Syon through the Fetiplace group and returned there in 1578. She is first recorded attending an illegal Mass in Oxford in 1579. In 1580, her cousin William Horde from the Winchester branch of the family was imprisoned with Elizabeth Sander for distributing Campion’s Challenge and later helped her escape. Almost half the sisters who signed the “Supplication” in 1587 came from the Thames Valley, mainly Oxfordshire, and the Home Counties, where support for Syon was strongest before the Reformation. In terms of social composition, several came from courtier families who remained close to the royal family. Lady Margaret Beaufort’s in-laws, the Stanley earls of Derby, remained Roman Catholic after the Reformation and continued to support Syon in exile. The Stanleys lay behind vocations from their Oxfordshire manor of Eynsham: future Abbess Elizabeth Hart, Chantress Margery Hart, and their brother, the Jesuit John Hart (d. 1594), who was imprisoned with Edmund Campion.73 Another Oxfordshire sister was Joan Greenwood, the niece of George Napper (d. 1610), of Holywell, Oxford, who was martyred for his faith. Her brother Thomas Greenwood married Grace More, a granddaughter of Thomas More.74 The signatories included Margaret Windsor’s relatives Dorothy Fowler and Gertrude Tyrrell from an Essex courtier family, as well as Hampshire sisters Frances Shelley and Mary Tichborne. East Anglian sisters included Anne Martyn, from a family of London mercers with Suffolk estates.75 Her brother Roger Martin (d. 1615) wrote the well-known lament “The Spoil of Melford Church” on the passing of Roman Catholic worship and ritual. Elizabeth Shelton was a Norfolk cousin of Queen Elizabeth, being the daughter of Sir John Shelton (d. 1530) and Anne, daughter of Sir William Boleyn. Her relative Mr. Shelton also signed the “Supplication.” 76 Future abbesses Barbara and Anne Wiseman, both educated in Latin and Greek, came from another Essex family of Roman Catholic activists. 77 In 1598, their mother, Jane Vaughan, was sentenced to death 73  G. Martin Murphy, “Hart, John (d. 1586),” ODNB; Davidson, “Oxfordshire,” 117–18, 264–5, 293–5, 384: Fletcher, XII:167–68; Henry Foley, ed. Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, 7 vols. in 8 (London: Burns and Oates, 1875–1883), V:18, 24; Guilday, English Catholic Refugees, 60; Morris, ed., Troubles, II:28–34; VCH Oxfordshire, XII:133, 152. 74  Fletcher, XII:169; Harleian Soc. V, Oxfordshire, 256; Martin Wood, The Family and Descendants of St. Thomas More (Leominster: Gracewing, 2008), 144–50.

75  CRS 71 (1986), 117–8; Fletcher, XII:170–1; David Dymond and Clive Paine, eds., The Spoil of Melford Church: The Reformation in a Suffolk Parish (Ipswich: Salient, 1992). 76  Fletcher, XII:172; Foley, VI:734; Hamilton, Angel of Syon, plate opp. 97.

77  Lisbon Obit List, fols. 5v, 31v, 32r; CRS 9, Miscellanea VII (1911), 1–12; Fletcher, XII: 171–2; Guilday, English Catholic Refugees, 378–9; de Hamel, ed., Syon Abbey Library, 6; Adam Hamilton, ed., Chronicle of the English Augustinian Canonesses of St. Monica’s at Louvain, 1548–1644, 2 vols. (London: Sands, 1904–1906), I, end pages, Wiseman pedigree; Harleian Soc. XIII: Essex, I:18; Morris, ed., Troubles, I:7, 256; II:57–8, 268; Claire Walker, “Wiseman [neé Vaughan], Jane (d. 1610), ODNB.



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for her illegal activities by peine fort et dur, suffocation by heavy weights placed on the chest. She was reprieved by Queen Elizabeth, her cousin. Of their brothers, William wrote several devotional books, Thomas and John became Jesuits, and Robert died fighting against Protestant forces in the Low Countries. Their sisters were Jane (d. 1633), the first Prioress, and Bridget (d. 1627), a nun at St. Monica’s house of Augustinian Canonesses, Louvain. The Wiseman family priest, the Lancashire Jesuit Fr. John Gerard, wrote a gripping account of his work on the English Mission, his capture, imprisonment in the Tower of London, and escape. 78 His sister Elizabeth Gerard was another signatory of Syon’s “Supplication.”79 It seems that Syon’s royal connections made it hard to prevent the women of elite families from choosing to live as nuns in exile. Queen Elizabeth’s government increased Recusancy fines to discourage families from remaining Roman Catholic and so they lost wealth and status. The families of Syon religious were involved in all the Roman Catholic revolts of Elizabeth’s reign. The women were affected by the “push and pull” factors of migration: some families fled for their lives after armed revolt, some women followed their vocations into exile, and some exiles entered Syon because poverty had reduced their options.80 Cicily Arundell was the daughter of Sir John Arundell of Lanherne, Cornwall (d. 1590), and his wife Anne, daughter of Edward Stanley, earl of Derby.81 Sir John’s household at Lanherne, a center of Cornish Recusancy, was forcibly dispersed in 1579 following the capture of his priest, Cuthbert Mayne. Sir John was fined and imprisoned in the Tower of London until 1586. He was forbidden from returning to Cornwall amidst fears of West Country rebellion against the Tudor state. He lived under house arrest on his Middlesex estates for the rest of his life, apart from time imprisoned at Ely in early 1590. Cicily was professed by 1587 when she signed the “Supplication.” She joined Syon after her Anglican half-brother John, Lord Stourton (d. 1588),82 appeared to the family priest Fr. John Cornelius when saying mass for his soul, begging for his family’s prayers from Purgatory. Cicily’s sisters Dorothy and Gertrude planned to join the Birgittines, but Dorothy had a vision of the martyred Fr. Cornelius, which inspired 78  John Gerard, The Autobio­graphy of a Hunted Priest, ed. Philip Caramine (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2012).

79  CRS 71 (1986), 67; Fletcher, XII:173; The History of Parliament Online, http://www. historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1558–1603/member/gerard-sir-thomas–1601. 80  Several gentry women joined Syon as lay sisters in this period, perhaps because they lacked dowries.

81  Fletcher, XII:46–47; Burke, Peerage, Baronetage, and Knightage (London: Burke, 1878), 46–47; Richard Challoner, Memoirs of Missionary Priests 1577–1684, rev. ed. (London: London Burns, Oates, and Washbourne, 1924), 198–202; HoP 1509–1558, 334–5, Stephen Wright, “Arundell family (per. 1435–1590),” ODNB; Kate Aughterson, “Arundell, Dorothy (1559–1560),” ODNB; Hamilton, Angel of Syon, plate opp. p. 97; J. J. Howard and H. F. Burke, ed. Genealogical Collections Illustrating the History of Roman Catholic Families of England (London, 1887), III:191–3, 229; Hutchison, “Beyond the Margins,” 271, 282; Morris, Troubles, I:138n.; II:127–30.

82  Complete Peerage, XII:308–9; Peter Marshall, Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 242–5.

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them to become founder-members of the English Benedictine convent at Brussels in 1598. Charles Arundell, probably a cousin, was a prominent member of an association of young English Catholics. Northern sisters of this time included Anne Markenfield, whose Yorkshire family fled into exile after the failure of the Northern Revolt in 1569. In exile, Anne joined the retinue of Ann, Countess of Northumberland (d. 1596), a leader of the revolt whose daughter, Lady Mary Percy (1570–1643), was the foundress of the English Benedictine convent at Brussels. Anne Markenfield’s vocation may have been influenced by her aunt Sr. Margaret Conyers (d. 1539–1553).83 The repercussions of Recusancy may have ended Jane Barlow’s marriage prospects. In 1561 young Jane was betrothed to Thomas Ashton of Croston (d. 1622), who later made another marriage. Her father, Alexander Barlow (d. 1584) of Barlow Hill, Lancashire, died for his faith in prison, or just after his release. Jane was a nun at Syon by 1583 when she wrote from Rouen. Three of her nephews became Benedictine monks, including Ambrose Barlow (executed 1641).84 The production of martyrs linked many Syon families in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Fr. Foster’s parents and sister-in-law died in York Castle Jail in the early 1580s. His extended family included Syon sisters Clare Foster and Frances Holtby, Lucy and Margaret Johnson, and Anne Wharton. Relatives of Syon religious Robert Catesby (d. 1605), Francis Tresham (d. 1605), and exile Charles Paget (d. 1612), were involved in the Throckmorton Plot of 1583, which aimed to put Queen Elizabeth’s cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots on the throne. The Babington Plot of 1586 had the same aim. Afterwards lay sister Gertrude Tyrrell’s brother, Fr. Anthony Tyrrell, “four times a Catholic and three times a Protestant,” betrayed friends and family under torture, including Edward Windsor.85 The risings and the retribution of the English state resulted in the failure of armed Roman Catholic revolt. The womenfolk of families involved, like Gertrude Tyrrell, turned to prayer. Recruitment of both sisters and brothers rose in the later sixteenth century because Syon was the only English-speaking religious community until 1598. Abbess Rooke died in 1594 shortly before Syon left Rouen for Portugal and a lavish public funeral celebrated her role in the Roman Catholic life of the city. The community, which sailed from danger in Rouen to Lisbon in 1594, numbered twenty-nine: twenty-two sisters and seven brothers.86 At Lisbon, it was not long before Syon re-established itself with a new circle of Portuguese royal, noble, and mercantile patrons. Recruitment of sisters rose, and by 1622 the community numbered thirty-seven: thirty-three sisters and four brothers.87 83  Aungier, Syon, 99–100; Fletcher, XII:168–69; Harleian Soc. XVI: Yorkshire, 196–7.

84  BL Add MS, 12477, fol. 120v; CRS 71 (1986), 15; Fletcher, XII:170; Gillow, English Catholics, I:130–1; Harleian Soc. XIII: Essex, 1–2, Barley; HoP 1509–1558, 381–2, Barlow, Alexander; VCH Lancaster, vol. 6 (London, 1911), 95.

85  Aungier, Syon, 102–3; Fletcher, XII:174; CRS 71 (1986), 178; Harleian Soc. XIII: Essex, 15–16; Morris, ed., Troubles, II:291–5, 364–5, 372, 471; Richmond, “Sulyard Papers,” 198–228. 86  Fletcher, XVIII:125.

87  Thomas Robinson, Anatomy of the English Nunnery at Lisbon (1622), list reprinted in Aungier, Syon, 99–100.



Conclusion

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This chapter has explored the background of Syon Abbey’s disobedience to the Tudor state. It began with Birgitta herself, an outspoken member of the Swedish royal family, and critic of corrupt popes and princes through her political prophecies. She planned her Order to work for church reform within Europe’s elites and her monasteries functioned as “pressure groups” to achieve this goal. The Birgittines were renowned for their holiness and learning and the usurping dynasties of fifteenth-century England patronized Syon Abbey to help legitimize their regimes. The nuns came from influential families close to the crown, which gave them a sense of agency. Their vocations gave them added strength to “tell truth to power” in the 1530s, and they rejected English Protestantism in favor of exile. The Syon Abbey Prosopo­graphy Project provided evidence that patronage passed down through generations of fifteenth-century courtier families into the later sixteenth century. Syon families were especially devout and they embraced crown sponsorship of pre-Reformation church reform. They founded chantries, gilds, almshouses, and schools to spread reform to their parish communities. Syon was part of the faction which supported Katherine of Aragon, and regrouped around her daughter Queen Mary during her brief reign. The price of loyalty to Roman Catholicism in Queen Elizabeth’s reign was family division, betrayal, martyrdom, and exile. New generations of English Catholics, including Syon nuns, were involved in political revolt. The community’s most important patronage networks remained in the Thames Valley and the Home Counties, but also in the West Country and the North, where uprisings supported traditional religion. This study reveals how close Syon’s Catholic supporters were to the Crown: Tudor relatives the Stanleys, the Vaughans, and Boleyns, and longserving courtier families. Some avoided the harshest penalties for disobedience and there was tacit toleration of courtier women who went abroad to live as nuns. Syon was founded with many of the features of reformed Roman Catholic religious life: strict enclosure, uniform habits, piety, and learning. The women professed at Syon after 1539 embarked on lives of adventure—for better and worse. Collectively they made an important contribution to the survival of English Roman Catholicism and the European revival of religious orders. The families of Syon religious were among the founders of new English-speaking nunneries in the Low Countries: the Arundells of the Benedictine Convent at Brussels in 1598; the Woodfords and Wisemans of St. Monica’s Augustinian Canonesses at Louvain in 1609. The arrival of the Birgittines in Lisbon in 1594 caused excitement in the atmosphere of religious fervor in the Spanish dominions. The romantic story of their wanderings, their royal foundation by Henry V, their stay at Mariatroon founded by his cousin, Isabella of Portugal, duchess of Burgundy, all reached court circles in Valladolid. There Syon’s arrival inspired Marina de Escobar, an associate of Teresa of Avila, to found a new branch of the Birgittine Order which flourished in Spain and the New World.88 88  Sr. Patricia O. SS. S., “Marina de Escobar 1554–1633,” in Studies in St. Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, II, ed. James Hogg (Salzburg: Universität Salzburg, Institut für Anglistik and Amerikanistik, 1993), 65–83, see 72, 83.

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Appendix: Three Snapshots of the Syon Sisters [omitting the names of the brothers] 1. 1539: Aungier, Syon Monastery, 89–90, from Willis’s Mitred Abbeys II.136, “Religious at the Dissolution with an account of their pensions.” Abbess – Agnes Jordan – £200 pension (d. 30 January 1545/1546, Denham, Buckinghamshire)

Prioress – Margaret Wyndesor [Windsor] – 150 marks (d. 25 December n.d. 1545/1546, Middlesex) Treasuress – Margaret Dely – £13 6s. 8d. (d. 10 October 1561, Isleworth, Middlesex) Sacristan – Bridget Fitzherbert – £10 (d. n.d. ca. 1545) Senior Sisters - £8 pension

Chamberess – Bryget Bellgrave (d. 14 February n.d. ca. 1556) Elyzabeth Edwards (d. 10 October n.d. after 1539) Johanne Stranguisshe (d. 13 January n.d. after 1539) Margaret Showldame (d. 3 January n.d. after 1539) Elyzabeth Straunge (d. 25 June n.d. ca. 1556) Elyzabeth Strykeland (d. 25 January 1540)

Sisters - £6 13s. 4d. pension Margaret Bougchier (d. 2 August n.d. ca. 1553) Dorothye Slyghte (d. 4 March n.d. after 1559) Agnes Smythe (d. 1 December n.d. ca. 1553) Johanne Judd (d. 16 February n.d. ca. 1544) Alys Lyster (d. 26 February n.d. after 1539) Clemence Tresham (d. 11 September 1567, Rushton, Northamptonshire) Parnell Damport [Davenport] (d. 10 April n.d. ca. 1540) Breget Sulyard (d. 29 September n.d. ca. 1546)

Sisters - £6 pension Kateryne Somerfeld (d. 7 February n.d. by 1553) Kateryne Breerton [Brereton] (d. 10 April n.d. ca. 1540) Elysabeth Ogle (d. 15 January n.d. ca. 1556) Agnes Meret (d. 17 December 1558) Efame Elamer (d. 20 January n.d. after 1539) Johanne Russhe (d. 29 November/20 December 1557, bur. at Syon) Alice Jaye (d. 8 October n.d. by 1553) Margaret Conyers (d. 14 April n.d. after 1539) Elysabeth Mountague [Monton] (d. 17 July n.d. ca. 1545) Anne Unkye (d. 27 July 1558) Susan Purferaye (d. 24 December 1570 Mishagen, Belgium) Elener Feteplace (d. 15 July 1565 Zurich Zee, Belgium) Rosse Paget (d. 4 January n.d. after 1559) Margaret Elerton (d. 8 September n.d. ca. 1553) Margerye Coverte (d. 18 November 1555, Mariatroon, Belgium)



the “Sturdy and Wilful Dames” of Syon Abbey

Johanne Deyne (d. 23 August 1557, bur. at Syon) Mary Dennehame (d. n.d. ca. 1556) Mary Whetnoo [Wettenhall] (d. 12 May n.d. after 1559) Dorothy Codryngton [Godrington] (d. 26 April 1586, Rouen, France) Anne Edwards (d. 20 July n.d. ca. 1545) Elyonor Pegge (d. 19 November n.d. ca. 1556) Kateryne Palmer (d. 19 December 1576, Malines, Belgium) Elizabeth Knottysford [Knutsford] (d. 31 October 1558) Margaret Luptone (d. 9 December n.d. ca. 1545) Alice Betenhame (d. n.d. ca. 1556) Ursula Fetyplace (d. 28 November n.d. after 1559) Elizabeth Fauxe [Fawks] (d. 27 August 1557, bur. at Syon) Elizabeth Yatts [Yate] (d. n.d. after 1559, fl. 1586–1588) Dorothie Bettman (d. n.d. ca. 1556) Audrey [Etheldreda] Dely (d. 19 April 1579) Anne Dauncere (d. 9 May 1567, Zurich Zee, Belgium) Margaret Monyngton (d. 31 July 1572 Antwerp, Belgium) Marye Nevell (d. 17 October 1557/1558, bur. at Syon) Alice Elerton (d. 14 September n.d. ca. 1556)

Lay Sisters (£2 13s. 4d.) Alyce Pulton (d. 9 December n.d. ca. 1556) Alyce Senosse (d. 15 March n.d. ca. 1556) Elizabeth Cruchely (d. n.d. ca. 1556) Margery Walker (d. n.d. ca. 1557) 56 sisters [1 abbess, 1 prioress, 50 sisters, 4 lay srs.]; 17 brothers [8 priests, 4 deacons, 5 lay brs.] Total = 73 professed religious

2. 1557: Aungier, Syon Monastery, 98, from Bishop Bonner’s Register,

Diocese of London, f. 419, “Sisters and Brothers dispersed in England, gathered together by Catharine Palmer.”

Abbess Catharine Palmer (d. 19 December 1576, Malines, Belgium) Searcher Rose Pachett (d. 4 Jan. n.d. after 1559)

Sisters Anna Vux [Vaux] (d. n.d. after 1559) Clementia Tresham (d. 11 Sept. 1567, Rushton, Northamptonshire) Margaret Dely (d. 10 October 1561) Joan Deane (d. 23 August 1557, bur. at Syon) Dorothy – [Codrington] (d. 26 April 1586, Rouen, France) Mary Wattnoo [Wettenhall] (d. 12 May n.d. after 1559) Agnes Merytte (d. 17 December 1558) Elynor Fetiplace (d. 15 July 1565, Zurich Zee, Belgium) Ursula Fetiplace (d. 28 November n.d. after 1559)

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Elizabeth Yate (d. n.d. after 1559, fl. 1586–8) Awdrye [Etheldreda] Delye (d. 19 April 1579) Margaret Mannyngton (d. 31 July 1572, Antwerp, Belgium) Anne Damsey [Dauntsey] (d. 9 May 1567, Zurich Zee) Dorothy Slighte (d. 4 March n.d. after 1559) Mary Nevell (d. 17 October 1557/1558, bur. at Syon) Susan Purefey (d. 24 December 1570, Mishagen, Belgium) 18 sisters [1 abbess, 1 searcher, 16 sisters]; 3 brothers [2 priests, 1 lay brother] Total = 21 religious professed before 1539 [recruits after 1539 not recorded here]

3. 1587: “A Supplication made for Poor Syon”, in T. F. Knox and others, ed., Records of the English Catholics under the Penal Laws I (London: David Nutt, 1878), 360–2. Abbess Birgitt Rooke (d. 6 January 1594, Rouen, France) Prioress Ursula Hord (d. 9 June 1598)

Sisters Elisabeth Saunders (d. 1 August 1607) Angela Aliaga (d. 5 October 1597) Elisabeth Hart (d. 25 June 1609) Margery Hart (d. 23 July 1628) Elisabeth Preston (d. 25 February n.d. after 1622) Anne Markenfeld [Markenfield] (d. 10 August 1626) John [Joan] Greenwood (d. 27 August 1607) Cicilie Arundell (d. 25 February 1623) Jean Barloo [Jane Barley] (d. 2 May 1592/3) Anne Martyn (d. 16 February 1629) Anne Wyseman (d. 4 December 1650) Barbara Wyseman (d. 7 December 1649) Elisabeth Shelton (d. 6 February 1625) Grace Berige (d. 26 July 1626) Elisabeth Gerart [Gerard] (d. 19 August 1607) Anne Wharton (d. 5 January1632) Gertrude Terill (Lay sister, d. 29 July 1598) Elisabetha Gallard (d. by 1594) Marye Tytchborne (d. 6 October 1614) Francys Shelly (d. 14 July 1594) Dorothy Fowler (d. 27 October 1655) Francy Santhyllare (d. by 1594) 24 sisters [1 abbess, 1 prioress, 22 sisters]; 6 brothers [1 confessor, 5 priests, 1 lay brother] Total = 30 professed religious at Rouen.

TAKING THE TOUR HERITAGE MANAGEMENT IN A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT

SANDY FEINSTEIN

Sandy Feinstein is Professor of English at Penn State Berks. Although she has published an essay on reading Twain’s Connecticut Yankee during Covid, more typically she writes on medi­eval and early modern literature, including Chrétien’s Lancelot, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnall, Gower, Chaucer, Malory, and the Second Shepherd’s Play. She published on most of those authors or works after attending Paul Szarmach’s NEH Institute, “Arthur of Avalon.”

Mark Twain begins

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court with a preface justifying anachronism, that the “laws and customs” are “historical,” as are the episodes “used to illustrate them.”1 He explains, “One is quite justified in inferring that whatever one of these laws or customs was lacking in that remote time, its place was competently filled by a worse one.” The genesis of the ideas informing my argument share Twain’s spirit of reconciling histories that may at first seem anomalous. In 1988, I attended an NEH Institute, “Arthur of Avalon,” directed by Paul Szarmach at the State University of New York at Binghamton. It was, as its name suggests, medi­evalist rather than medi­eval and included two field trips: one to Mark Twain’s summer house, part of Quarry Farm, in Elmira, New York; and the other to the Morgan Library in New York City, where William Voelkle shared numerous medi­eval manu­scripts as well as his expertise. This past summer, I visited Mark Twain’s house in Hartford and William Gillette’s “folly” in nearby East Haddam, Connecticut, and had a sense that the latter had recreated Camelot as modernized by Twain’s Hartford born and bred character, Hank Morgan. The actor and the writer knew each other. Were my assumptions historical? Does it matter? Or, rather, did it matter to Twain? What matters to an argument about tourism and heritage management in Twain’s novel, where he, as I am doing here, reflect on why we visit old castles, renovated castles, follies, ruins, and museums associated with someone else’s history? Twain was writing about his own time, informed by his experiences, as I am writing about mine, partly informed by Paul’s decision to make visiting Mark Twain’s studio part of a program for understanding Arthur of Avalon. Requiescas in pace, Paulus.

1  Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, ed. Bernard L. Stein (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), i. All references and quotations are from this edition and will be cited in text by page numbers.

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Introduction

Warwick Castle and the Warwick Arms, the latter where the tourists M. T. and the stranger—Hank—lodge, begin the novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, as part of the “Word of Explanation” that frames a more extended tour of medi­eval England described in the manu­script M. T. receives from his fellow traveler. These two tours, of the historic Warwick Castle and fictional Camelot, together show how heritage management “works,” what it does, and how it was done in Twain’s time. Indeed, it is tempting to see the novel as the travel book about England that Twain initially planned to write but abandoned.2 In 1879, seven years after visiting Warwick Castle, he wrote, “England was not ‘a good text for hilarious literature’ since there was nothing to satirize—or at least nothing that was not just as bad at home.”3 By the time he wrote his Arthurian novel, more than ten years after his initial plans to write a travel book about England, his attitude to tourism—as well as to the places he visited, including England—had changed.4 Jeffrey Alan Melton, for one, has examined Twain’s changing views on the negative impact of tourism from Innocents Abroad to Following the Equator. In the early travel book, Twain, he notes, criticizes acts of vandalism against physical objects, for example, the marring of monuments with graffiti (Chapter 29) or the filching of fragments from famous sites as souvenirs (Chapters 15, 45). Both acts alter the physical landscape: one by inscribing the present on the past; the other by removing evidence of the past from the present. These acts and their implications, however, pale beside what Twain later ascribes to the oblivious tourist and the effects of tourism: injustice and oppression legitimating imperialist behaviors or the status quo.5 Expanding on 2  Robert M. Rodney, Mark Twain Overseas (Washington, DC: Three Continents, 1993), 80; and Howard G. Baetzhold, Mark Twain and John Bull (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970), 19. 3  Baetzhold, Mark Twain and John Bull, 19.

4  Baetzhold argues this point, one that has not been challenged since its 1970 publication. Succeeding works have discussed Twain’s developing antipathy. See, for example, John Carlos Rowe, “How the Boss Played the Game: Twain’s Critique of Imperialism in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” in The Cambridge Companion to Mark Twain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995): 175–92; and Reinaldo Silva, “From Colonial Myopia to Cosmopolitan Clear-sightedness and Back Again: Twain’s Imperial Relapses in Backward, Rural Societies,” Mark Twain Annual 10 (2012): 91–108. Those who do examine travel in Connecticut Yankee, focus on time travel; see, for example, Rüdiger Heinze, “Time Travel and Counterfactuality in Literature and Film,” in linguae & literae, ed. Peter Auer, Gesa von Essen, and Werner Frick (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011), 216, 218–220. Among the earliest scholars to consider Twain’s attitude to travel literature is George H. Herrick, “Mark Twain: Reader and Critic of Travel Literature,” Mark Twain Journal 10, no. 1 (1955): 9–10, 22–23. For a more recent discussion on the subject, see Roy Morris, Jr., American Vandal: Mark Twain Abroad (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2015), 238, who mentions that Twain’s “fiction, no less than his nonfiction, frequently revolves around the act of travel,” noting that “Hank Morgan, the Connecticut Yankee, traverses both time and space,” but that is all he says of the novel and its connection to travel. 5  Jeffrey Alan Melton, Mark Twain, Travel Books, and Tourism (Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 2002), 139.



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this idea, Peter Messent argues that Twain shows he is “aware of the way tourism both affects and promotes a false version of the countries it colonizes, and the mutual part guest and host play as this occurs.”6 Though other scholars have argued that Connecticut Yankee anticipates Twain’s disillusion and changing political positions given voice in his last travel book, Following the Equator, they have not considered the novel specifically in light of tourism and the business of heritage management.7 What Messent argues for Twain in A Tramp Abroad may be seen twenty years later represented in the novel’s central character, Hank Morgan. Hank is the unintended visitor who becomes “the Boss,” reinventing Arthur’s mythical kingdom for his own purposes. That is, he exhibits the behaviors of the tourist as well as those who curate tours, and, therefore, history. Though initially a tourist by happenstance and necessity, Hank becomes a tour promoter with an agenda: the varied tourist events he orchestrates, what he calls “spectacles,” are used to undermine the power of others—of Merlin, of the church, of the knights—and to reinforce his own. As the Boss over King Arthur’s Britain, Hank discovers, explores, restores, markets, and appropriates representative tourist sites—a tower, a holy fountain, and a cave. His actions “play with and subvert meanings” that, in turn, interrogate the “packaged tourist experience” itself.8 In so doing, Twain reveals his own ambivalence to the business of popular tourism, not unlike his ambivalence to medi­evalism—the appropriation of the Middle Ages—that, similar to the wave of American travel abroad, crested at the same time.9 Both, medi­evalism and tourism, are forms of heritage management, which means they shape history, whether deliberately or as a side effect of the stories they tell. As such, they typically serve and perpetuate ruling class values, values that Twain increasingly challenged in his writing. The first scene of the novel bears closer examination for how it lays the foundation for the representation and treatment of the Arthurian tour—and its tour guide—that follow.

6  Peter Messent, “Tramps and Tourists: Europe in Mark Twain’s ‘A Tramp Abroad,’” The Yearbook of English Studies 34 (2004): 138–54, at 148.

7  See, for example, Rowe, “How the Boss Played the Game”; and Silva, “From Colonial Myopia to Cosmopolitan Clear-sightedness and Back Again.”

8  Joanne Dybiec, “Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad as a Post-Tourist Travelogue,” in Meta­ morphoses of Travel Writing: Across Theories, Genres, Centuries, and Literary Traditions, ed. Grzegorz Moroz and Jolanta Sztachelska (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), 78–87, at 80. 9  David Matthews, Medi­evalism (Cambridge: Brewer, 2015), 50, notes “Twenty years on from Ivanhoe and more than half a century on from Percy and Warton, there was extraordinary interest in the Middle Ages, at least in elite culture.” This is a time period roughly paralleling increased American tourism in Europe, its rise and fall. See also Jeffrey Steinbrink, “Why the Innocents Went Abroad: Mark Twain and American Tourism in the Late Nineteenth Century,” American Literary Realism, 1870–1910 16, no. 2 (1983), 278–86, at 280, remarking that “a genuine tourist trade developed in the 1870s and 1880s.”

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Warwick Castle and Warwick Inn Twain is a literary archeo­logist, exposing the antiquarians’ nationalistic impulses while interrogating the ideo­logies of preservation by examining what gets displaced and replaced, what distorted and what erased. His concerns extend well beyond the “dig” that exposes compelling physical ruins: his narrative offers insight into their use, preservation, restoration or reconstruction, and representation by the dominant culture. He shows how managers of cultural heritage, and those who write about it, like popular authors of romance and guidebooks, are complicit in distorting the past and, thus, expectations in the present. His traveler Hank, as Twain himself did, challenges what he hears and sees in misleadingly packaged and displayed history. The novel begins with the voice of M. T., Twain’s authorial persona, by describing part of a tour of Warwick Castle. M. T.’s representation of the tour—and positioning among his fellow tourists—immediately suggests the “(auto-)ironic distancing” Dybiec discusses in Innocents Abroad: M. T. says of himself and another tourist, “We fell together in the tail of the herd that was being shown through” (1). Despite being stragglers, the narrator and the stranger, like the other tourists, are led like sheep or cattle; they are “shown through,” with the passive voice reinforcing how, as tourists, they do not control the experience. Even though they follow, the two tourists “in the tail” are represented as more than shepherded laggards, for, through M. T.’s reconstruction of his experience, readers “hear” him actively taking in the guide’s words describing a suit of armor. The guide offers information that seems basic—date, the anachronistic bullet hole and a theory for it—were it not for the ascribed mythic context, that of King Arthur and his Knights. He says, “‘Ancient hauberk, date of the sixth century, time of King Arthur and the Round Table; said to have belonged to the knight Sir Sagramore le Desirous; observe the round hole through the chain mail in the left breast; can’t be accounted for; supposed to have been done with a bullet since invention of firearms—perhaps maliciously by Cromwell’s soldiers’” (2). We can assume that this is the official story, provided by an official guide of the Castle. Rote spiel or not, the anonymous guide’s style contributes to his authority and, thus, that of his claims: his correct use of the terms for armor (“hauberk,” “chain mail”); a clipped, matter-of-fact series of clauses; the use of an imperative (“observe”); historical knowledge, e.g. that firearms postdate the sixth century and that Cromwell’s soldiers, a millennium later, had them; an admittance of gaps in the record; and, lastly, distinguishing between fact and surmise in his word choice (“supposed,” “said to have,” “perhaps”). Though a bullet hole could be blamed on any English battle since the invention of firearms, the guide cites a specific historical context, the Civil War that pitted royalists supporting King Charles I against Puritans supporting Cromwell: the bullet hole, he hypothesizes, was made by one of Cromwell’s followers, and it goes without his saying that it would have been in the fight against the monarchy and its “rightful” king. Within the walls of this royal castle, the guide’s story draws attention to a past that included treason, but also victory over those who sought to overthrow the monarchy; no mention is made of the castle being a Cromwellian stronghold or



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the reason it wasn’t destroyed.10 Compared to the stranger, the tourists that make up the herd are silent, a credulous audience, foreshadowing the behavior of the medi­eval pilgrims—characterized as tourists themselves—and encountered in the course of Hank’s story.11 The stranger, ostensibly one of the tourists, faintly disputes the guide’s narrative, setting up a competing history. As conveyed by M. T., the stranger also sounds authoritative: “My acquaintance smiled—not a modern smile, but one that must have gone out of general use many, many centuries ago—and muttered, apparently to himself: ‘Wit ye well, I saw it done.’ Then, after a pause, added, ‘I did it myself.’” (2). His speech contrasts with the guide’s careful patter: the mix of medi­eval archaisms and contemporary English constructions, the claim of being an eyewitness, and his otherworldliness. His assertions allude to one of the spectacles masterminded by him that he has recorded in the manu­script he will later offer M. T. at the Warwick Arms (2). Like Warwick Castle, the Warwick Arms appears to be an attractive, comfortable haven, as Baedeker’s—and Twain—might have described desirable tourist accommodations.12 Here, after the castle tour, M. T. makes himself comfortable with a drink and Malory’s medi­eval book about King Arthur.13 This cozy scene provides a touchstone for an ideal of tourist accommodation, one that contrasts markedly with the medi­ eval habitations that greet the stranger-tourist when he arrives at Camelot. Before the reader learns the worst Camelot has to offer, a dungeon, and the best, a castle suite, the stranger, a guest at the same inn, knocks at M. T.’s door, is welcomed in, and, encouraged with some whiskey, to speak. The story he tells begins with how he came to be at King Arthur’s court and what followed from there (4). When the stranger tires, he tells M. T. that he has kept a journal, which he later “turned into a book,” the manu­ script of which he gives to M. T. to read (4–6). Thus, M. T. embodies two kinds of tourists: active and armchair travelers, as Twain himself was. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Hank’s manu­script, serves as the latter’s guidebook to Camelot and its area sites, one pointing out assorted insufficiencies and disappointments from a nineteenth-century American perspective: prim10  Allison Lockwood, Passionate Pilgrims: The American Traveler in Great Britain, 1800–1914 (New York: Cornwall, 1981), 82–83. 11  Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad, chap. XXXVIII, refers to these kinds of tourists as “the herd,” and in both the novel and the travel book, the word suggests an undifferentiated mass of people who follow without challenging what they see or hear. Later in the novel, he refers to the pilgrims seeking the Holy Fountain as a herd as well (195). 12  Stein, ed., A Connecticut Yankee, 457n.2.20, notes Baedeker’s approbation and the likelihood of Twain having stayed there, based on one of his postcards.

13  The excerpted story from Malory features Lancelot secretly switching his armor for Sir Kay’s. Lancelot, the greatest knight in Malory’s Morte Darthur, intends to help Sir Kay travel unmolested by knights seeking honor, while giving himself opportunities to show off his skills against those who might challenge Kay, but not himself. This particular story is important not only for setting up Sir Kay’s capture of Hank and the story he embellishes to describe it, but also for introducing how characters are used to manipulate narrative and perceptions; it is not just history that gets manipulated.

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itive living conditions at all levels of society, the brutality of “medi­eval history,” and abuses of rank and privilege inscribed in unconscionable laws and practices (109–12; 239–42; 287; 346). In other words, this Yankee guidebook offers a behind-the-scenestour. Eschewing the idealizing of mythic characters and historical artifacts of his contemporaries—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Sir Walter Scott, and the Pre-Raphaelites, among others—Twain draws attention to the liabilities of romanticizing the Middle Ages.14 With Hank as our guide, readers are redirected to what is left out of the increasingly popular stories of medi­eval derring-do, as well as what is omitted from travel guides extolling idyllic landscapes and imposing historical monuments.15 Hank’s manu­script—our novel—juxtaposes nineteenth-century tourists’ basic needs against those of residents. The comforts of the Warwick Arms stand in stark contrast to every form of lodging experienced by Hank as an accidental tourist in medi­ eval England, from the most humble abode of a charcoal burner (295) to Camelot’s second most desirable suite (52). Hank’s recorded impressions of King Arthur’s Castle also contrast the published tourist accounts of Warwick Castle’s attractive rooms and comfy furnishings.16 Most significantly, Hank includes what travel guides and histories of the day avoided acknowledging, the ubiquity of the poor and their condition, from dress to diet, limited prospects and insufficient housing, in short, unjust treatment as law and custom.17 14  See Stein, ed. Connecticut Yankee, 458n21, remarking Dan Beard’s illustration of Merlin, modeled on Tennyson, as highlighting “the book’s satirical stance toward literature that idealized feudal values”; Baetzhold, Mark Twain and John Bull, 71–72, in his discussion of Life on the Mississippi, notes Twain’s frustration with Scott’s “sham castles” and “their evocation of a sentimental and debilitating romanticism, devotion to which effectively prevented progress.” Anita Obermeier, “Medi­eval Narrative Conventions and the Putative Antimedi­evalism of Twain’s Connecticut Yankee,” in Reinventing the Middle Ages: Constructions of the Medi­eval in the Modern Periods, vol. 1, ed. William F. Gentrup (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), 223–39, at 230 and 237, argues that Twain’s target is not medi­eval literature, but “contemporary renditions of the Middle Ages—such as Tennyson’s, Lanier’s, Lowell’s, and Scott’s”; she concludes by acknowledging Twain’s ambivalence to the medi­ eval romance tradition.

15  In his travel works and essays, Twain was critical of travel writers and historians who idealized sites for whatever reason. See, for example, Herrick, “Mark Twain Reader and Critic,” 9, writing, “It was Mark Twain’s contention that some, biased by their reverence for the Holy Land, wrote inaccurately; that others, fearing unpopularity if they did otherwise, painted it in magical terms; and that still others simply wished to deceive.” 16  Quoted in Lockwood, Passionate Pilgrims, 83.

17  Twain’s concern for the poor and how to ameliorate their condition has been addressed by H. Bruce Franklin, “Traveling in Time with Mark Twain” in American Literature and Science (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), 157–71, at 158, who discusses the failure of time travel and time loops to replace the “hard conditions for the laboring and defenseless poor” of “bygone times in England” with “the life of modern Christendom and modern civilization—to the advantage of the latter, of course”; also, Lee Clark Mitchell, “Lines, Circles, Time Loops, and Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” Nineteenth-Century Literature 54 (1999): 230–48, at 234, who claims the novel is Twain’s “most ambitious fictional attempt to redeem history, to show the triumph of democratic ideals and techno­logical expertise over chivalric assumptions that were tauto­logical and self-confirming.” My focus is on related issues in relation to tourism and medi­evalism.



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Popular medi­eval and medi­evalist romances, like nineteenth-century travel itineraries and guidebooks, also adhere to an idealized narrative that erases historical realities and replaces them with the picturesque: cathedrals and churches without parishioners, castles void of harried, put-upon servants, idyllic landscapes dotted with trees or ruins rather than peasants, slaves, or even children. Twain’s own outrage at these omissions, and what is promulgated as a consequence of them, informs Hank’s diatribes on those estates foregrounded in history and romance, namely the privileged noble and clerical classes. Correcting the mytho­logy, the novel reintroduces those commonly expunged from romance and travel literature. While travelers might expect to be warned about the inconveniences and poverty of sites on their itinerary or guided tours, if only to prepare themselves for them, readers of romance have no such expectation or need: idealization is a convention of the genre. For Hank, and it would seem for Twain, the romance depiction of aristocratic society and its values is not only a compelling misrepresentation, but dangerous for justifying and, therefore, for perpetuating injustice in his own time. Hank, as powerful as he becomes in King Arthur’s kingdom, cannot fully rectify these injustices; indeed, he contributes to them. Through this character and the “Word of Explanation,” then, Twain draws attention to how “heritage management”—that is, the way tourist sites are displayed, packaged, represented, and decontextualized—can be used for profit and power to sustain myths that support the cultural values of the elite and the status quo. Accordingly, Twain interrogates England’s nineteenth-century cultural heritage industries: preservation, tourism, the sites themselves, the official story that gets told, and the interrelationship among these. Their purview then included castle tours, orchestrated events, Roman towers destroyed and reconstructed, pilgrimages to famous abbeys, with, as Twain suggests, these acts of preservation or invention lacking sufficient context. Hank Morgan, as we shall see, will have little patience, never mind respect, for England’s heritage or the values represented by its most important tourist sites; and Mark Twain, in his preface, seems to share some of his character’s disdain for how a country shapes its self-serving narrative through tours not unlike the one of Warwick Castle that opens the novel. Twain’s own interest and participation in touring the historical artifacts of England do not discount or negate his awareness of how heritage sites have been used and continued to be used to distort a country’s history: omissions, erasure, and even deliberate misrepresentation inevitably, his novel shows, serve the interests of those in power.

Setting and Sites

Camelot: Arthur’s Castle The “stranger’s history,” extracted by M. T. after “a pipe and a chair” and four whiskeys, begins with matter-of-fact background information that provides the personal and cultural context for what will be his unique medi­eval experience: his origins (Hartford, Connecticut), his class (blacksmithing father; horse doctor uncle), and his own trade, which includes what he learned at “the great Colt arms-factory,” where, as he tells

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us, one of the employees he supervised knocked him out with a crowbar. This information suggests the distance between the American who will be our guide and the conventional gentleman travelers and antiquarians of the time.18 Jeffrey Steinbrink distinguishes between what he calls “The post-war American tourist”— the eponymous Connecticut Yankee—and “his pre-war counterpart”: “Typically, he was less genteel, less familiar with the process of living within long-standing traditions, less often classically educated, less often the master of a language other than his own … quite unabashedly—and identifiably—American.”19 This new kind of tourist “tended to place his confidence in himself, in his country, and in the sufficiency of the present rather than the sanctity of the past; he was curious, active, and acquisitive.” 20 The Connecticut Yankee is this new kind of tourist. How the Yankee Hank travels back in time and across the ocean is singular, too, for he does not travel by boat or coach—a fantasy for any who like Twain had been jostled, delayed, and sickened by the available transit options of the time.21 As Hank explains to M. T., he simply awakes to find himself “under an oak tree, on the grass, with a whole beautiful and broad landscape” into which enters “a fellow fresh out of a picture book” (5) wearing armor and speaking archaic English. His first view of Camelot is similarly idyllic: the castle rises “with towers and turrets, the first,” Hank says, he “had ever seen, out of a picture” (6). The “vast gray fortress” on a hill past “a valley by a winding river” typifies the generalized landscape of romance. The knight identifies the sight as “Camelot” (6, 10). Hank’s description of King Arthur’s castle and his court is more detailed than the one of the historical, albeit modernized, post-Norman Warwick Castle that figures in the novel’s “Word of Explanation.” The clipped patter of secondhand information relayed by a tour guide is replaced by Hank’s expansive chronicle of his firsthand experiences in medi­eval Camelot. Hank’s correction of the official account of the provenance of a Warwick Castle artifact introduces an alternative history, one to be embellished with his accounts of how he changed the function and the importance of other heritage sites. Thus, historic Warwick Castle serves as a foil to Camelot. Pictures of castles, such as those Hank mentions as having been his only experience of them (6), provide another foil and point of reference. Both draw attention to the gaps between the realities of medi­eval castle life and nineteenth-century restoration and romanticization. 18  Morris, American Vandal, 14–20, quotes Henry James and Ralph Waldo Emerson bemoaning the type of American going abroad. 19  Steinbrink, “Why the Innocents Went Abroad,” 279, marks “the phenomenon of middle-class American tourism,” which he says “became something of an epidemic” in the thirty years after the publication of Twain’s Innocents Abroad. 20  Steinbrink, “Why the Innocents Went Abroad,” 279.

21  See, for example, A Tramp Abroad, chap. XXXV, where Twain expiates on a cushioned Alpine litter borne by two porters as the most comfortable of available conveyances, or Innocents Abroad, chap. III, on storms he experienced at sea.



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Less impressed with the imposing castle after entering it, Hank is struck first by its size and lack of light, its crude construction and simple design: the castle, he says, is “very lofty, lofty; so lofty that the banners depending from the arched beams and girders away up there floated in a sort of twilight …. The floor was of big stone flags, laid in black and white squares, rather battered by age and use, and needing repair” (19). His disappointed expectations, set up by pictures of castles, extend to the artifacts within: he remarks the “huge tapestries … with horses shaped like those children cut out of paper or create in gingerbread; with men on them in scale armor whose scales are represented by round holes—so that the man’s coat looks as if it had been done with a biscuit-punch” (19); size alone dominates his appreciation for “an oaken table which they called the Table Round … as large as a circus ring” (19). According to Mark Storey, “These narrative allusions operate, on one level, in similar ways to the ironic analogies that Twain had used in his early travel writing, puncturing the grand pomposity of feudal England at the same time as marking our historical distance from it.”22 Kim Moreland, focusing on Twain’s response to American medi­evalism in particular, remarks the author’s seemingly contradictory “intense and explicitly articulated objection” and his “almost unwilling and frequently unacknowledged attraction to this tradition.”23 Hank Morgan voices his author’s objections to the frustrations of travel that are heightened by his character’s prior experience with castles being limited to the pictures he had seen (6), which give no indication of what is to be found inside one. 24 Though had he toured Warwick Castle before rather than after finding himself in Camelot, Hank would not have been any better prepared for what medi­eval castles offered their original residents. Despite being lodged in Camelot’s “choicest suite of apartments” (52), he complains that As for conveniences, properly speaking, there weren’t any. I mean little conveniences; it is the conveniences that make the real comfort of life. The big oaken chairs, graced with rude carvings, were well enough, but that was the stopping place. There was no soap, no matches, no looking glass—except a metal one, about as powerful as a pail of water ….

22  Mark Storey, “Huck Finn and Hank go to the Circus: Mark Twain under Barnum’s Big Top,” European Journal of American Culture 29, no. 3 (2011): 217–28, at 225. At least when it comes to Twain’s references to one famous artifact of King Arthur’s court, namely the Round Table, his travel writing does not serve to deflate “the grand pomposity of feudal England.” In A Tramp Abroad, chap. XI, this artifact is used as a metaphor to represent size, as in, “A round table as large as King Arthur’s.” Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad, chap. XXI, invokes the sword Excalibur, but the use reinforces what he calls a legend, rather than skewering any feudal pretensions.

23  Kim Moreland, The Medi­evalist Impulse in American Literature (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996), 25.

24  Shirley Foster, “Americans and Anti-Tourism,” in Literary Tourism and Nineteenth-Century Culture, ed. Nicola J. Watson (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2009), 175–83, at 176, notes the different ways visitors—she is speaking of tourists to literary sites—responded to the disappointments, which included ignoring the “deficiencies, [and] continuing to offer unqualified veneration at hallowed sites,” while others acknowledged “the constructed and codified nature of such cultural sanctification.” What she says with regard to the sites themselves also holds true for more basic disappointments when it comes to food and lodging. Twain rarely ignored the deficiencies of either kind and, indeed, satirizes such “veneration” and “cultural sanctification.”

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There was no gas, there were no candles; a bronze dish half full of boarding-house butter, with a blazing rag floating in it was the thing that produced what was regarded as light …. There were no books, pen, paper, or ink; and no glass in the opening they believed to be windows …. But perhaps the worst of all was, that there wasn’t any sugar, coffee, tea, or tobacco. (52, 54)

Like the stereotypical tourist discussed by Melton, Hank, not unlike his creator during his own travels, is dismayed and discomfited by the shortcomings of his living conditions abroad.25 In Innocents Abroad, Twain describes the lodging offered him in Shechem, for example, and says he could have “slept in the largest of the houses; but there were some little drawbacks: it was populous with vermin, it had a dirt floor, it was in no respect cleanly, and there was a family of goats in the only bedroom, and two donkeys in the parlor.”26 Unlike Twain, Hank Morgan cannot terminate his overseas experience at will and so settles in, determined to change the environment in order to supply his needs while he is there. King Arthur’s castle is the first among a number of sites that Hank describes and then adapts to his needs. It makes little difference, though, how dark or primitive Camelot would have been in the Middle Ages; being mythic and adaptable has made it indestructible, no matter the devastation visited upon its denizens.27 The best Hank—or Twain—can do is offer an alternative view of familiar historical sites, or those resembling them, and, perhaps, make would-be tourists more conscious of their experience as they laugh warily along the way. Roman Ruins: Merlin’s Tower

By contrast to King Arthur’s legendary castle, Merlin’s “ancient stone tower” (56) is not a traditional romance site, though structures like it would become increasingly important to defining and promoting England’s heritage culture. Merlin’s ancient Roman tower evokes the milecastles and turrets of Hadrian’s Wall, the latest mustsee on a traveler’s nineteenth-century itinerary. Indicating their rising popularity are publications such as John Collingwood Bruce’s Wallet-Book of the Roman Wall, a Guide to Pilgrims Journeying along the Barrier of the Lower Isthmus, “with maps and illustrations,” and three editions in four years.28 As early as the eighteenth century, William Stukely, working to prevent the wall’s proposed destruction, urged his countrymen to tour the sites of their heritage (111–12).29 Merlin’s tower, “Roman, and four hundred 25  Melton, Mark Twain, Travel Books, and Tourism, 24.

26  Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad, chap. LII.

27  Twain’s response to York suggests as much, as indicated by Baetzhold, Mark Twain and John Bull, 16, noting the author’s association of the medi­eval city with King Arthur and the Saxons, quoted from a letter to Mrs. Jervis Langdon.

28  John Collingwood Bruce, The Wallet-Book of the Roman Wall: A Guide to Pilgrims Journeying along the Barrier of the Lower Isthmus, 1863, was recognized as having authored “the best work” on the wall in a review appearing in The Literary Examiner, 15 August 1863, Nineteenth Century British Newspapers. 29  David Boyd Haycock, William Stukely: Science, Religion, and Archaeo­logy in Eighteenth-Century



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years old,” (56) is an example of that heritage, one that Hank destroys as part of a dramatic event intended to draw huge audiences to witness his power (56–59). In the eighteenth century, as in Hank’s putative sixth, political interests and asserting territorial claims took precedence over preservation. As Michael Shanks, an archeo­logist, explains: This has long been a troubled region. Immediately before me, looking back down into the image, is the eighteenth-century Military Road, much of it built on the Roman wall itself. The Jacobite rebellions of the Scottish Stuarts in 1715 and 1745 had threatened the Hanoverian monarchy in England. Their failure brought widespread state effort to control land and community. Military infrastructures, roads and forts, were built, the land was mapped, local culture was suppressed and people evicted from their homes in Scotland. And for centuries these had been ‘debatable lands’, contested, undecided, between the warring states of Scotland and England.30

The English government buried England’s Roman heritage to serve its own immediate interests. In so doing, it displayed no apparent regard for that heritage.31 England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002), 111–2. There are numerous stories describing personal acts considered destructive in their time, which have been recorded because they yielded artifacts thought to be important and worth preserving. See, for example, “Roman Altars, Coins, &c.,” The Newcastle Courant, 12 February 1841, Nineteenth Century British Newspapers, reporting “The discovery of all these antiquities are due to the credit of Mr R. Shanks, proprietor of North Middleton, and of this station, and other estates in the valley of Chesterhope. He found them in digging for stones in the grass-grown ruins of a Roman bath, and at the south-east corner of the high and mouldering walls and towers of this antient, but lone, and now uninhabited station.” “A Visit to the Wall of Hadrian,” Glasgow Herald, 7 December 1859, Nineteenth Century British Newspapers, provides a general history of the destruction and its then present state. On John Clayton’s efforts to preserve the Roman Wall, see, for example, Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, An Account of the Roman Antiquities Preserved in the Museum of Chesters, Northumberland to which is added a Series of Chapters Describing the Excavations made by the late John Clayton, Esquire, F.S.A., at Cilurnum, Procolitia, Borcovicus, and other Sites on the Roman Wall (London: Gilbert and Rivington, 1903), 4–6, 11–3.

30  Michael Shanks, ‘“Let Me Tell You About Hadrian’s Wall’…Heritage, Performance, Design,” Reinwardt Memorial Lecture, 11 May 2012, 10, http://web.stanford.edu/~mshanks/ MichaelShanks/files/797391.pdf.

31  See, for example, Anthony Burton, Hadrian’s Wall Path (London: Aurum, 2012), 23, who bluntly says, “With a total disregard for history, much of the new road was built right on top of the line of the Roman Wall.” It may be no coincidence that the first thing Hank comes upon during his quest is the lord’s men working on a road (109). In fact, the preservation efforts that saved Hadrian’s Wall came to serve as a point of comparison to argue for attention to other neglected archeo­logical sites. See, for example, arguments for the preservation of the wall of Antonius in “General News,” “A Buried Town,” The New Castle Courant, etc., 24 December 1869, Nineteenth Century British Newspapers; and an argument for preservation more generally in “Manchester Old and New,” Manchester Times, 16 February 1889, Nineteenth Century British Newspapers. See also The Tourist’s Shilling Guide to Warwick and Neighbourhood (1859; rpt. 1865, 1870, and 1880, with “Shilling” dropped from the title), 22, the chapter on Warwick Castle, that begins with a Mr. Knight exclaiming, “‘It is a rare consolation … for the lover of his country’s monuments to turn from castles made into prisons, and abbeys into stables, to such a glorious relic of ‘Old England,’ as Warwick Castle.’”

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Like the Hanoverians, Hank also sets little store by that heritage. Therefore, when Hank decides to blow up Merlin’s Roman tower, he doesn’t consider its picturesque qualities or its historicity. Hank, a practical Yankee, is no antiquarian: he has no interest in preserving old things, be they historic structures, archaic language (210–13), or outdated laws (239–42). There is no small irony in the tower being identified with Merlin, a Briton, one of the natives the wall was originally built by the Romans to keep out, or of its being destroyed by Hank, an unexpected invader from Britain’s future colony. The American Hank obliterates the Roman tower with his nineteenth-century techno­logies, as the English had with theirs of a century earlier; but despite those monuments of the imperial past’s material culture being destroyed, the ruins will be recast—quite literally—to serve specific ends: of displaying power and garnering profit that sustain or undermine myths of cultural heritage. Here, Hank exhibits his power by replacing the original tower representing the conquering Romans and the reestablished British represented by its most famous magician. In the nineteenth century, it is the restoration the Yankee masterminds that signifies a former colony’s power in the process of developing new myths to stand along old ones (59–63, 68–69). Hank’s rebuilding of Merlin’s tower also shows the Yankee’s burgeoning control over the landscape and iconic heritage sites. While Hank implies he is doing something for Merlin (59), restoration erases all evidence of his own petty but spectacular act of vengeful destruction. Not unlike the idealizing of bloody battles in medi­evalist chivalric romance literature that Twain’s Arthurian story satirizes, the dazzling entertainments Hank orchestrates redirect attention from the violence inflicted to the drama of spectacle. Hank knows that power lies in the effect. As he says when planning one of his “miracles”: “ … play your effects for all they are worth. I know the value of these things, for I know human nature. You can’t throw too much style into a miracle. It costs trouble, and work, and sometimes money; but it pays in the end” (219). The model could be medi­eval romance, where the sens, or reason, can be lost in the matière, or story; in other words, reality and ethical behavior are at the forefront of neither. Hank banks on what he knows of human nature to calculated effect: dramatically destroying the tower with all its powerful historical and mythic associations demonstrates the superiority of his own powers. Moreover, having “had the government rebuild” (59) the original suggests how far his influence and authority extend—to governance itself. The towers along Hadrian’s Wall would also be restored, if not entirely rebuilt, by the British government and private citizens to serve more than antiquarian interests in the age of empire and tourism. Their restoration served commerce and signified power, much as Hank’s destruction and restoration of Merlin’s tower does. Additionally, however, the tower’s vulnerability magnifies the shifts in its purpose: as a Roman defensive structure and, later, as a refuge for native magic, it has outlived its practical usefulness. Instead, it has become an advertisement for Hank’s power and achievements: that he can destroy and rebuild, leaving his imprint on Britain’s history, or how it could be interpreted.



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Pilgrimage: The Valley of Holiness and its Fountain

The business of heritage management is made explicit in the Valley of Holiness, which Hank decides to visit after meeting a group of pilgrims, “a pleasant, friendly sociable herd” (195), on the way to the site. His curiosity is piqued by the economics of this kind of tourism.32 Asking his companion Sandy about the site’s history, he learns about the region’s early need for water, the miraculous appearance of a stream, the building of a bath and subsequent cessation of the flowing water that begins again only after the bath is destroyed and the religious community gives up washing (196–97).33 A tourist attraction is thus born. Hank, too, turns obstacles into opportunities. The pilgrims’ journey to this fountain is “nearly finished” when “they learned the main thing they had come for had ceased to exist” (204). Being human beings, as Hank explains it, they don’t “turn back and get at something profitable” (204); rather, upon learning that what they sought no longer exists, “they were as much as forty times as anxious now to see the place where it had used to be” (204). That insight informs his own intentions to make the most of the situation. Hank uses what he learns of the pilgrimage’s purpose—to be blessed by the hermits and drink the waters for absolution—to monetize and secularize the site, making it more like a tourist experience than a religious one. To begin, Hank is methodical in assessing the site’s resources and how best to exploit them. He and Sandy devote an afternoon to being tourists, drifting “from hermit to hermit,” including “one of the supremely great ones …. a mighty celebrity” whose “fame had penetrated all Christendom” for the manner of his prayer, “bowing his body ceaselessly and rapidly almost to his feet” (213). Rather than instill in him reverence, Hank calculates the utility of all that unused energy and its commercial potential. He says, “It seemed a pity to have all this power going to waste,” so he uses it to make souvenir shirts “that sold like smoke to pilgrims” (214).34 While economically exploiting those who consciously reject society and its materialism mocks individual religious practices, it also suggests the amorality of those who profit from others with or without their consent. It is no coincidence that preceding their arrival at the Holy Fountain, Hank and the pilgrims encounter a company of slaves being driven to their new owners (199). 32  Adrian R. Bell and Richard S. Dale, “The Medi­eval Pilgrimage Business,” Enterprise and Society 12 (2011): 601–27, at 602, discuss how “the local shrine managers marketed their patron saint and took in large-scale offerings,” as well as the economic activity generated by “provision of accommodation, food and wine, transport, banking, and pilgrimage badges” that “constituted an important economic activity, sometimes involving complex commercial relationships between the private sector and local church authorities.”

33  Baths figure prominently in Twain’s travel narratives as key sites or as something frustratingly hard to find. See, for example, A Tramp Abroad, chap. XXI, the healing baths at Leuke and in Innocents Abroad, chap. XLIX, the Ancient Baths, including the baths at Caracalla, Nero’s bath, the baths of Pompeii, and others.

34  Steinbrink, “Why the Innocents Went Abroad,” 283, writes that the Gilded Age tourists Twain observed “longed for souvenirs, memorabilia, and any other treasure they might somehow cart away.” Morris, American Vandal, 45, 49, 58, reveals Twain as an inveterate souvenir collector.

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Fixing the fountain results in more than profit for the church and kingdom: it adds to the abbey’s reputation; and, therefore, it solders Hank’s renown as well. Though it is a relatively simple matter of repairing a leak by mending the wall (218), Hank allows a monk to believe otherwise because “Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising …. In two days the solicitude would be booming” (210–11). In this way, Hank uses his skills not only to repair the well, but to orchestrate an event intended to draw “250 acres of people” (219) to the site (220). Inflating the difficulty of the repair also serves to highlight his power against Merlin’s. As he did when he destroyed Merlin’s Tower, he uses performance to his advantage, knowing from experience that “you want to make all the properties impressive to the public eye” (219). With colorful fireworks displays and dramatic presentation, the show played to “an “avalanche of people” (220), making it an unequivocal success. As Hank learns from his companion, the fountain was already a famous heritage site. References to its date and the historical context of the bath—originally Roman, like Merlin’s tower—reinforce this point (201). Hank’s restoration of the bath and his urging of the abbot to use it, in effect, alters its mytho­logy as a symbol of asceticism. The bath’s original destruction, from which followed the miraculous return of water, had initially made the site “a celebrated place” (196), drawing visitors the world over. When Hank restores the bath and its flowing waters to the Valley of Holiness, he undercuts its historical relevance even while expanding its audience and commercial potential. Hank’s repair of the bath and the destruction of Merlin’s tower both draw attention to the motivations behind restoration, preservation, and heritage management: profit, power, ideo­logy. And Hank explicitly recognizes the potential profit in these heritage sites. Yet his initiatives to reap a profit also highlight how tourism distracts tourists from seeing exploitative practices perpetuated by powerful individuals and institutions, whether the church or the government. One striking example mentioned earlier occurs on the way to the pilgrimage site. Just after Hank meets and joins the pilgrims, the group encounters slaves chained to one another and being beaten by the master when they don’t keep up. These pilgrims, on their way to a religious site, note the expert use of the master’s whip, as if a show were being performed for them; the consequences and import of that expertise are altogether lost on them (199). Hank ascribes their behavior to the “ossifying” of “human feeling wrought by slavery itself” (200). But spectacle and voyeurism, however intended, desensitize, too, diminishing, or at least shifting attention from the real and the human, whether a slave or a would-be saint.

Merlin’s Cave

The novel’s final scene contrasts with the picturesque pastoral that Hank first describes on originally awaking in medi­eval Camelot (5). In contrast to a sunny meadow, Hank’s final view of Camelot will be from within a cave. The appropriated site is Merlin’s “old cave … the big one” (420), which has been retrofit with the latest modern weaponry, transforming it into a bunker and, ultimately, a catacomb. From the height of power Hank gained from having destroyed Merlin’s Roman tower, his fall will also come from an obliterating destructive act, not of a physical structure but of a people.



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Like the Roman towers of the ancient past, Merlin’s former cave is used here for military purposes; unlike them, it signifies not only a physical border, but a mythical borderland as well. It is from this space that Hank destroys 30,000 knights with his nineteenth-century techno­logical know-how. But despite being well-fortified by electric fences, Gatling guns, and trenches, Merlin is able to bypass extensive checkpoints and access the cave by simply disguising himself: he appears at its entrance as a starving old peasant woman offering her services (442–43) to Hank and his young male allies who have all become trapped by the multitudes they have killed with their advanced weaponry. Hank’s last spectacle, all-out war, lays bare the potential disaster of playing effects for all they are worth without considering their impact on the living. In the end, Merlin’s magic is less destructive: Merlin does not kill Hank or the boys, so far as we know. Magic is, more importantly, effective in defeating his nemesis: by sending Hank forward in time to his own century, where we originally met him and where he will die with sentimental memories of the family he left behind in Camelot (445-47). Ironically, Malory, the author M. T. uses throughout the novel (2-4, 26–28, 127–34, 175–77, 258–59, 415–17), includes a tale about how Merlin succumbs to a lady’s charms that leave him helplessly suspended in time.35 Twain, rewriting Malory, reempowers Merlin in the guise of a humble woman, enabling him to deceive Hank and his young allies. Hank cannot save himself, the boys, or what he has tried to change in the culture. As seemingly easy as it was for Hank to restyle the physical environment of the Middle Ages, he has far more difficulty defeating his indefatigable adversary: for Hank’s victories over Merlin are only temporary, in much the same way that Arthur’s kingdom is only ever temporarily betrayed and defeated. Twain suggests that some mytho­l ogies—biblical, Roman, Arthurian—survive regardless of logic, injustice, defeat, or physical annihilation. Merlin is one of those seemingly indestructible mythical characters. He exists apart from his originating culture and habitations. Indeed, Merlin’s ability to adapt, or be adapted, Twain suggests, is what makes it impossible, in the end, for Hank to recognize or defeat him. By the nineteenth century, Merlin, like the kingdom with which he is identified, had developed mythic resilience and was already contributing to a cottage industry of literary tourism. Merlin’s Cave, for example, according to Kathleen Coyne Kelly, “acquired its name sometime in the late nineteenth century,” a name she ascribes to Alfred, Lord Tennyson; however, she continues, before Tennyson visited “in 1848 and 1862, the largely unexcavated site of Tintagel was already a busy tourist destination.”36 The Arthurian legend’s very popularity contributed to remaking the landscape as part 35  Sir Thomas Malory, Morte Darthur, “Merlin,” IV, ed. Eugène Vinaver (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 77, lines 10–16, the Lady of the Lake leaves Merlin forever “undir a grete stone.” Cf. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King, “Merlin and Vivien,” A Variorum Edition of Idylls of the King (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), lines, 965–8, where Vivien encases Merlin in an oak. 36  Kathleen Coyne Kelly, “The Eco-Tourist, English Heritage, and Arthurian Legend: Walking with Thoreau,” Arthuriana 23, no. 1 (2013): 20–39, at 29.

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of the myth. Another site known as King Arthur’s Cave was also popular in the nineteenth century.37 One contemporary pamphlet has this to say about the site near Hayon-Wye just south and west of Carlisle: “Victorian and Edwardian naturalists were fascinated by the Doward Hills. This large limestone cave, known as King Arthur’s Cave, held a particular draw”38; and it still does, as I saw for myself.

Conclusion

Through myths and modernization, Twain’s medi­evalist novel offers an alternative heritage tour of England, a counter-narrative that includes those oppressed by monarchy and the myths that glorify it, making its continued power seem like dark magic in the New World of democracy. Twain seems to know that “History is invented as a tourist site is born.”39 Creating spectacles, restoring castles and abbeys, and repackaging sites all manipulate history and make it, as Hank consciously attempts to do. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court addresses injustice, poverty, and disease, among other medi­eval and modern ills. Before Hank leaves on an ill-fated cruise to cure his ill child (402), he lists his achievements in Arthur’s Kingdom: “Slavery was dead and gone; all men were equal before the law; taxation had been equalized” (397). His next plans included overthrowing the Catholic Church and creating a republic (398–99). Yet the kind of destruction Hank visits on the region to accomplish these goals is little different in effect, if not worse in magnitude, than those perpetrated by the monarchy and the church. He has forgotten what he first noticed when he saw prisoners like himself paraded before the king and court in Camelot: then he thought, ‘“The rascals—they have served other people so, in their day; it being their own turn, now, they were not expecting any better treatment than this; so their philosophical bearing is not an outcome of mental training, intellectual fortitude, reasoning; it is mere animal training; they are white Indians” (20). Had Hank, too, become a “white Indian,” perpetrating on the knights what he has accused them of doing: attacking those that attacked him? Or, are they, and he, performing animals? Or, is the American more enlightened, a democratic impresario who has misjudged his audience when he advertised his latest effect (427, 434–35)? Finally, what are the costs of miscalculation? Twain only answers the last question. The costs are loss, death, and delusion: Hank is separated from his wife and child; 30,000 knights die; his closest ally and “fiftytwo fresh, bright, well educated, clean-minded British boys” die, too (426); and, he is 37  Caves became popular tourist sites, some specifically for their Arthurian associations or simply because their names evoked Arthuriana. See, for example, E. W. Allen, The Antiquarian (London, 1871), Google Books, 161; also the site known as “Merlin’s Cave” in Cornwall, “King Arthur in North Cornwall,” This is North Cornwall, http://www.thisisnorthcornwall.co.uk/king_arthur.html), is said to be beneath Tintagel Castle.

38  King Arthur’s Cave, “Head for the Hillforts,” Wye Valley, https://www.wyevalleyaonb.org.uk/ download/702/. 39  Kelly, “The Eco-Tourist,” 29, whose words I quote.



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alone, delirious, and dying when M. T. enters his room at the Warwick Arms after reading the manu­script (409, 438–40, 445–47). Repackaged as myths, legends, and mustsee monuments, even massacres serve their purpose: implicating passive tourists and readers or waking them to how history is shaped, as if by magic.