Kings, Knights and Bankers: The Collected Articles of Richard W. Kaeuper (Later Medieval Europe, 13) 9004280480, 9789004280489

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Kings, Knights and Bankers

Later Medieval Europe Managing Editor Douglas Biggs (University of Nebraska – Kearney) Editorial Board Kelly DeVries (Loyola University Maryland) William Chester Jordan (Princeton University) Cynthia J. Neville (Dalhousie University) Kathryn L. Reyerson (University of Minnesota)

VOLUME 13

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/lme



Kings, Knights and Bankers The Collected Articles of Richard W. Kaeuper Edited by

Christopher Guyol

LEIDEN | BOSTON

 Cover illustrations: Bankers in Siena, from the Cover of a Tax Registry, Italian School, (15th century), Archivio di Stato, Siena, Italy, Bridgeman Images and Detail of a miniature of a battle between Charles the Bald and his brothers. Royal 16 G vi, f. 219, British Library: http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/ illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=43992.

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1872-7875 isbn 978-90-04-28048-9 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-30265-5 (e-book) Copyright 2016 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.



Contents Abbreviations vii Introduction viii

Part 1 The English Crown and Italian Financiers Introduction to Part 1 3 1 The Societas Riccardorum and Economic Change 6 2 The Role of Italian Financiers in the Edwardian Conquest of Wales 19 3 Royal Finance and the Crisis of 1297 35 4 The Frescobaldi of Florence and the English Crown 43

Part 2 Law and Disorder Introduction to Part 2 95 5 Law and Order in Fourteenth-Century England: The Evidence of Special Commissions of Oyer and Terminer 98 6 An Historian’s Reading of The Tale of Gamelyn 157 7 Debating Law, Justice, and Constitutionalism 171 8 The King and the Fox: Reaction to the Role of Kingship in Tales of Reynard the Fox 184

vi

Contents

Part 3 Chivalry and Literature

Introduction to Part 3 201

9

Literature as Essential Evidence for Understanding Chivalry 204

10

William Marshal, Lancelot, and the Issue of Chivalric Identity 221

11

Chivalry in Barbour’s Bruce 243

12

Baudoin De Conde, Violence, and War 254

13

Chivalry: Fantasy and Fear 269

14

Chivalry and the ‘Civilizing Process’ 280

15

The Societal Role of Chivalry in Romance: Northwestern Europe 296

16

Telling it Like it Was? Mark Twain’s Rereading of Chivalry in Malory’s Morte Darthur 315

Part 4 Holy Warriors

Introduction to Part 4 329

17

Piety and Independence in Chivalric Religion 331

18

Chivalric Violence and Religious Valorization 342

19

John Ruskin, the Medieval Ordines, and Meritorious Suffering 361

20 Vengeance and Mercy in Chivalric Mentalité 377 Index 389

Abbreviations Manuscripts in Public Record Office, London c 47 C 66 e 13 E 30 E 101 E 143 E 159 E 175 E 356 E 368 E 372 E 401 E 403 E 404 S.C. 1

Chancery Miscellanea Patent Rolls Exchequer Plea Rolls Diplomatic Documents Exchequer Accounts Various Extents and Inquisitions King’s Remembrancer Memoranda Rolls Parliamentary and Council Proceedings Enrolled Customs Accounts Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer Memoranda Rolls Pipe Rolls Receipt Rolls Issue Rolls Writs and Warrants for Issue Special Collections, Ancient Correspondence

Printed Sources C.C.R. C.C.W. C.D.I. C.F.R. C.P.R.

Calendar of Close Rolls Calendar of Chancery Warrants Calendar of Documents Relating to Ireland Calendar of Fine Rolls Calendar of Patent Rolls

Introduction The personal consequences of violence are never forgotten in Richard Kaeuper’s work. Whether he is quoting the intimate letters of Italian financiers, listening to peasants devastated by violence, delving into the psyche of hardened tourneyers, or hearing the confessions of troubled aristocrats, it is the humanity of Kaeuper’s subjects, and the suffering that they endure, which stands at the fore. Next to the charts and graphs of exchequer receipts, necessary to any student of finance, there stand the plaints of the indebted and the taxed. Instead of looking at the medieval state as a faceless construction zone, in which bureaucratic structures rise like cold steel girders, Kaeuper makes sure that those affected by development are remembered. Nor does he treat the violence and feuding of the aristocracy as a victimless game, as if those cut asunder viewed their demise as a welcome sign of social regulation. Even when studying religion, Kaeuper makes sure that he acknowledges not only the prescriptive texts knights read, but also the violent lifestyle that knight led. Altogether, these articles provide a consistent portrait of a medieval world that is all too human. This collection will investigate four issues in turn. Part 1 is dedicated to the study of Italian finance and the medieval English state, a topic which will be familiar to readers of Kaeuper’s Bankers to the Crown. Part 2 turns to contemporary critiques of law and disorder, an issue already explored in War, Justice, and Public Order. Part 3 addresses the reality of knightly bloodshed and the implications of its literary manifestations in a manner worthy of Chivalry and Violence. Finally, Part 4 discusses the independent nature of knightly piety, a subject also investigated in Holy Warriors. In the hopes of aiding readers interested in the significance of Professor Kaeuper’s work, each section will contain a short introductory essay that relates the articles to follow to recent scholarship.

PART 1 The English Crown and Italian Financiers

∵

Introduction to Part 1 No student of Joseph Strayer and Edmund Fryde can doubt the impact of war on late medieval governance. But whereas Strayer, Kaeuper’s mentor at Princeton, spent a lifetime discussing the medieval origins of the modern state,1 and Fryde, his colleague and friend across the pond, wrote pioneering studies of fiscal policy,2 Kaeuper began his scholarly life as a student of merchant banking. In Bankers to the Crown, Kaeuper studied the economic developments that allowed the royal government of Edward I to operate on a larger scale than ever before. It might seem odd to consider a scholar most known for his studies of the chivalric mentalité as an historian interested in public finance. But Kaeuper’s eventual turn towards the study of violence is one for which careful readers of his earliest works would have been well prepared. For both Kaeuper and his mentors, to study the economic history of the late medieval state is also to study the history of warfare, that “chief emergency confronting medieval kings,” which “imposed the most sudden and severe strains on the royal finances.”3 The study of public finance, in this sense, leads us naturally to the study of violence. By the reign of Edward I, the economic revolution of the thirteenth century had already shaped a new fiscal world that fostered royal power. As Kaeuper acknowledges in “The Societas Riccardorum and Economic Change,” a study of the size, strength, and scale of a group of Italian bankers known as the Riccardi of Lucca, warfare strongly influenced a burgeoning trans-continental financial system. The focus here is on merchant bankers and their place within a thirteenthcentury economic revolution that continues to fascinate modern scholars.4 Central to Kaeuper’s analysis is the relationship between economic change and the course of royal warfare. “The Role of Italian Financiers” makes this clear. Kaeuper weaves precise dating of foreign loans with analysis of the conquest of Wales to demonstrate just how instrumental the Riccardi were to Edward I. This article thus provides a useful component of the larger history of the growing dominance of England within the British Isles,5 even as it helps us 1 See especially Joseph Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton, 1970); Joseph Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair (Princeton, 1980). 2 See especially Edmund Fryde, William de la Pole: Merchant and King’s Banker (London, 1988); Edmund Fryde, Studies in Medieval Trade and Finance (London, 1983). 3 Richard Kaeuper, Bankers to the Crown: The Riccardi of Lucca and Edward I (Princeton, 1973), 173 4 Richard Britnell and Bruce Campbell, A Commercialising Economy: England 1086 to c. 1300 (Manchester, 1995). 5 R.R. Davies, The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles, 1093–1343 (Oxford, 2000).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004302655_002

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understand the author’s nascent interest in the causes and consequences of state violence. To his study of public finance and costly conquests Kaeuper adds an analysis of the political repercussions of the crown’s changing fiscal state. The study of the Riccardi once again provides Kaeuper with an insightful perspective in “Royal Finance and the Crisis of 1297”, which relates Italian banking to baronial challenges to royal authority at the end of the thirteenth century. For Kaeuper, the crown’s troubles originated not with the Italian bankers, or even with the Welsh castles that they funded, but with Edward I’s overextension of the credit system that had served him so well. The king who had once harnessed the thirteenth-century commercial revolution to conquer Wales had pushed his Italian confederates too far. Kaeuper’s studies continue to inspire scholars interested in the late medieval English state and its financial apparatus. Adrian Bell, Chris Brooks and Tony Moore, in particular, have drawn upon Kaeuper’s work on medieval finance and the profit motives of Italian bankers,6 as well as his studies of the political implications of an evolving system of royal finance.7 They have supplemented his study of royal credit,8 demonstrating that the extent of Edward I’s reliance on bankers like the Riccardi was, if anything, even stronger than Kaeuper suggested.9 Historians now agree that the economic development of the English state required the use of Italian finance, and fed off the economic revolution of the thirteenth century, just as Kaeuper supposed.

6 Adrian Bell, Chris Brooks and Tony Moore, “Interest in Medieval Accounts: Examples from England, 1272–1340” in icma Centre Discussion Papers in Finance (Reading, 2008), 416; Michael Prestwich, “Italian Merchants in Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Century England” in The Dawn of Modern Banking (New Haven, 1979), 77–104. 7 Michael Prestwich, War, Politics, and Finance under Edward I (Totowa, 1972). 8 Adrian Bell, Chris Brooks and Tony Moore, “The Credit Relationship between Henry iii and Merchants of Douai and Ypres, 1247–70”, The Economic History Review 67 (2014), 123–145. For differing views on the political implications of royal debt, see Mark Ormrod, “Royal Finance in Thirteenth-Century England” in Thirteenth Century England V, ed. P.R. Coss and S. D. Lloyd (Woodbridge, 1995), 141–64 and Benjamin Wild, “Royal Finance under Henry iii: 1216–72,” The Economic History Review, 65 (2012), 1380–1402. 9 Adrian Bell, Chris Brooks and Tony Moore, “Credit Finance in Thirteenth-Century England: The Ricciardi of Lucca” in Thirteenth Century England xiii, eds. Janet Burton et al. (Woodbridge, 2011), 101–16. It was only after the decline of Italian investments in the English state that English mercantile capital rose in the fourteenth century. See Pamela Nightingale, “Alien Finance and the Development of the English Economy, 1285–1311”, Economic History Review 66 (2013), 477–96.

Introduction to Part 1

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But Kaeuper’s early work has more than an economic legacy. Although he appreciates the transition towards a tax state in England, which occurred precisely due to the fiscal challenges associated with royal warfare,10 he also challenges us to remember that the costs of royal warfare were always more than fiscal. In addition to divining and quantifying the numerical data that his Italian financiers provide, Kaeuper also ensures that the affect associated with their work is not lost when analyzing the cold hard numbers of exchequer records. In “The Frescobaldi of Florence,” in particular, Kaeuper mixes a clear analysis of the rise of this banking company with a cogent examination of bankers’ personal letters, which react to the political crisis of Edward ii’s reign. Continuing appreciation for the fiscal implications of Italian banking is here balanced with an investigation of the life and writings of those involved with state development. It would be just such an interest in the intersection of personal and institutional history that Kaeuper would continue to cultivate in his later work.

10

Mark Ormrod, “England in the Middle Ages” in The Rise of the Fiscal State, c. 1200–1815, ed. Richard Bonney (New York, 1999), 27–34.

chapter 1

The Societas Riccardorum and Economic Change1 *

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Among the Exchequer Accounts Various preserved in the Public Record Office, London, there is a package of letters written on heavy paper and bound up in brown wrapping and twine.2 On the top page some modern archivist has written “Italian” in a bold hand, almost as if in surprise; and on a letter from this set which has somehow strayed from its fellows, “diplomatic” is written in a similarly modern hand.3 The first archival notation is correct, for the letters are in fact written in a late thirteenth and early fourteenth century Tuscan version of Italian, but the second note reveals a natural error. In fact the letters do not represent diplomatic exchanges at all, but rather commercial correspondence, the business letters of merchant-bankers. They are in the English archives because of basic commercial developments in late thirteenth century Europe. Historians as a breed may suffer from a surfeit of revolutions, but we ought to recognize that distinguished economic historians of the Middle Ages speak legitimately of a commercial revolution in their era. Our particular set of letters found their way into the English archives because of this revolution. Some scholars would, in fact, date the changes exactly in the period when the letters were written, and it does seem that the changes were most pronounced then, the pace of development most swift.4 But other medievalists quite justifiably argue that the changes had been coming for some time and that the development evident at the end of the thirteenth century was a culmination of the economic progress of High Medieval Europe. The changes have been in preparation at least across the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.5 Perhaps the age in which the letters were written could | best be thought of as the cresting of a wave of economic growth and prosperity. Broad generalizations always shelter half-truths, but somewhere around the turn of the fourteenth century the * Previously published in David Lyle Jeffrey (ed.), By Things Seen: Reference and Recognition in Medieval Thought (Ottawa, 1979), 161–172. 1 This essay is largely based on several chapters from my monograph, Bankers to the Crown, the Riccardi of Lucca and Edward i (Princeton University Press, 1973). Complete documentation on the Riccardi will be found there. All manuscript references are to documents in the Public Record Office, London (pro). 2 pro, e 101/601/5. There are about twenty letters or fragments of letters. 3 pro, s c 1, 58 no. 20. There is another fragment of a letter in s c 1, 58 no. 15. 4 Raymond de Roover. Money, Banking and Credit in Mediaeval Bruges (1948), p. 11. 5 R.S. Lopez, Cambridge Economic History of Europe, 2, 335. Cf. his The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950–1350 (1971), Howard L. Adelson, Medieval Commerce (1962), Chapter 6. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004302655_003

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commercial prosperity and expansion of Medieval Europe came to a peak and then began to subside, giving way to stagnation and depression.6 More specifically we should note the role of the Italians in the medieval commercial revolution. “Italy was to the medieval economic progress,” Lopez suggests, “what England was to that of the 18th and 19th centuries. It was the cradle and pathfinder of the commercial revolution.”7 It is well known that in economic and urban development Northern Italy was the most advanced region of medieval Europe, the low countries taking second place. From sometime in the late eleventh century an important axis of trade connected these precocious areas. The Italians took the lead and in fact crossed the Alps in such numbers and in so many capacities that the movement has been termed an “Italian diaspora.”8 But instead of going directly to the far Northern markets, they traveled only as far as the famous fairs of Champagne,9 the great cycle of six fairs held just outside the gates of four towns in the county of Champagne (Troyes, Provins, Barsur-Aube, Lagny). These fairs were the nerve centers of long distance trade in the twelfth century. Here the Northern merchants met the Italians, buying and selling wool and woolen cloth above all. The Italians were also developing highly sophisticated commercial techniques, creating the economic expertise which would eventually change the fairs drastically. The timing of the development of these techniques is currently in dispute;10 the late thirteenth century result is not. Although many examples of advances in bookkeeping, communication, and transportation could be cited, perhaps one of the most important commercial 6

7 8 9

10

A heated controversy has developed over the nature of the late Medieval economy. For the majority view, emphasizing stagnation and depression see especially Michael Postan, Cambridge Economic History of Europe, 2, Chapter iv, “The Trade of Medieval Europe: the North,” Section iii, “The Age of Contraction,” and also R.S. Lopez in the same volume, Chapter v, “The Trade of Medieval Europe: the South,” Section ii, Part 3, “Depression and Recovery.” Cf. his Commercial Revolution, pp. 162–167. R.S. Lopez, “Hard Times and Investment in Culture,” The Renaissance: Six Essays (Harper Torchbook edition, 1962) p. 31. R.S. Lopez, Cambridge Economic History of Europe, 2, 316–317. For recent studies of the fairs see O. Verlinden, Cambridge Economic History of Europe, 3, Chapter iii, “Markets and Fairs”; Robert-Henri Bautier, “Les foires de Champagne: recherches sur une évolution historique,” Bulletin de la Société Jean Bodin, V, La Foire (1953); R.D. Face, “Techniques of Business in the Trade Between the Fairs of Champagne and the South of Europe in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” Economic History Review, series 2, no. 10 (1957–1958); Rosalind Kent Berlow, “The Development of Business Techniques Used at the Fairs of Champagne from the End of the Twelfth Century to the Middle of the Thirteenth Century,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 8 (1971). See the articles by R.D. Face and Rosalind Kent Berlow cited in the previous note.

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developments came in the area of contract or partnership.11 Older forms of partnership such as the | commenda gave way to the compagnia or societas. The ­commenda were a very limited kind of contract which linked a supplier of capital with a supplier of managerial skill; i.e. one man provided the money and the other took to the road as travelling merchant. The contract was severely limited in time (often to one voyage) and in liability (each partner being liable only for the amount of money involved in the contract). The new compagnia was more lasting and more sophisticated in that it associated several (usually many) merchants in a partnership lasting for years at a time. These partners who agreed to act together over a span of years were all active, i.e. they all contributed capital and managerial skill, receiving in return a share of profit proportional to their investment. In case of failure liability was unlimited, but if a partnership prospered the terms of agreement were extended or redrawn. By midthirteenth century the famous Italian companies, the merchant-banking societates which lasted for decades or even for several generations began to appear.12 They created a new pattern of commercial activity. The old travelling merchant, the caravan merchant who constantly wandered out from his home town with goods, began to be replaced; roving caravan trade (a pattern as old as history) was superseded by the great companies which established branches in the important trade centers. The societates planted their partners or factors all over Europe, carried on trade, and effected credit transfers through this network of branch offices.13 Clearly with this kind of organization the Italians did not need to limit themselves to the Champagne fairs, but could go directly after the business they wanted. They penetrated France, England, and the Low Countries and established agents there. They became leading wool merchants; they sold luxury goods in London, Paris, and Bruges. The Champagne fairs were gradually transformed into the center of the European money market. No longer essentially markets where goods were bought and sold, they developed instead as centers where merchants settled accounts and balanced their books on sales that took place elsewhere.14 11 12

13 14

R.S. Lopez, Cambridge Economic History of Europe, 2, 323ff.; Raymond de Roover, Money, Banking and Credit, pp. 12–13. Raymond de Roover provides a convenient list of these companies in Cambridge Economic History of Europe, 3, 75–76. Armando Sapori’s Le Marchand Italien au Moyen-Âge is a useful introduction to the Italian merchant-bankers. It has recently been translated into English by Patricia Ann Kennen. See the discussions by Raymond de Roover, in Money, Banking, and Credit, pp. 11–13, and Cambridge Economic History of Europe, 3, 42–43, 49, 70–74. In addition to the sources cited in the preceeding note, see O. Verlinden, Cambridge Economic History of Europe, 2, 132–133; E.B. and M.M. Fryde, ibid., Chapter vii, “Public Credit with Special Reference to North-Western Europe,” Section iii.

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Most of our evidence on these companies, certainly most case histories, date only from the fourteenth century. But there is a surprising amount of previously untapped material in the English archives on one particular firm in the last quarter of the thirteenth century. The company is that of the | Riccardi 163 of Lucca, the Societas Riccardorum de Luka.15 The letters mentioned at the beginning are theirs and form only a small part of the evidence from which their history can be reconstructed. Since they were bankers to Edward i from 1272–1294 they figure prominently in the miles of parchment, crowded with highly abbreviated Latin and old French, on which the details of royal finance are recorded. It would be a fairly safe wager that in any royal financial document from this period, selected at random, the Riccardi of Lucca will appear. Their activity as crown financiers means that the Riccardi are as much a part of the history of the English state as of the thirteenth century economy. Although our concern here is with the merchants as a societas, it is their involvement with government which provides evidence of their activities. The Riccardi, then, were one of the earliest of the companies coming into North-western Europe for which we can construct anything like a clear picture. This makes the company especially interesting, but it also means that the evidence will be more spotty than would be the case for a firm of the next century. In asking several basic questions about them, we must realize that the answers cannot be as complete as we wish. First we need to ask questions of size. How large was the company? How many branches? How many men? Over how large an area of Europe did they operate? International is an imprecise word to use in a period before there were nations, but the anachronism may be pardoned in emphasizing that the Riccardi were an international firm. The main office was naturally located in Lucca, and there were branches at the Roman curia, the Champagne fair towns, Nîmes, Bordeaux, Paris, Flanders, London, York, and Dublin. In fact there were likely more branches than surviving evidence shows, but it is clear that these merchants operated throughout a business network stretching from Tuscany to Ireland. It was no small feat to coordinate rational business activity across more than a thousand miles of bad roads, swift streams, mountain passes and competing political jurisdictions. The Riccardi did so above all through a constant stream of business letters. They had their own couriers: we read of Stephano, Rubino, and Bocco carrying letters, and there were probably others. We can 15

See Kaeuper, Bankers to the Crown, E.B. Fryde, Cambridge Economic History of Europe, 3, Chapter vii, Section iv; Emilio Re, “La Compagnia dei Riccardi in Inghilterra e il suo fallimento alla fine del secolo decimoterzo,” Archivio della Societa Romana de Storia Patria, 37 (1914).

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picture these men carrying bulky pouches stuffed with rolls of account, letters of exchange, copies of epistles to important clients, and the company letters themselves. If we figuratively open one of these pouches and read a paragraph of one of the business letters almost at random, the strongly international nature of the firm is emphasized:16 We tell you that, as you know, our men in Champagne have loaned to the Bonsignori of Siena a great amount of money, and they have told them to pay it back to | our men over there [in England] and in Ireland. Therefore, until now we have not known, nor have been paid back, either all or in part, nor how much you have gotten back. Therefore we ask you to let us know both how much you have received, and when, both you and the men in Ireland. And just as you should let us know, so you should also tell our men in France, because the companions of the Bonsignori, when our men in France ask them for that money, make excuses and say that they do not know if that money has been paid there or in Ireland, nor how much has been paid. Therefore do not fail to send word both to us and to them, so that if that money has not been paid we can recover it… Speak of this with their companions over there and have them and their companions in Ireland write to their companions in France.

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Here, in one transaction, we can see the networks of two firms stretching from Lucca and Siena across France and England to Ireland. In another paragraph we might find something more personal. When the London partners fired an unreliable agent the home office in Lucca agreed so heartily that they devoted nearly a page of one letter to raking the man over the coals. Here is merely a sample:17 Now it seems to us that he is so wicked and dangereous because of his wicked and lying tongue that you should warn your friends at court that he is not to be believed in anything he may say, as he is a drunkard, a liar, and wicked without any principles. Ghirardo Chimbardi who was assigned to a branch in Ireland showed the reaction we might expect from an Italian posted to Ireland. Not only did he complain, his father in Lucca plagued the leading partners, as they wrote to London, 16 17

pro, e 101/601/5 p. 5, letter of 5 December, 1297. pro, e 101/601/5 46d., undated letter.

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blaming us harshly and crying sorrowfully because of the fact that his son went to Ireland at the service of the company more than thirteen years ago; and he has spent no more than five months together with his wife since that time, so that he can very reasonably, and with many reasons, grieve much because of his assignment, and blame us.18 How many men would these operations from Tuscany to Ireland involve? The evidence in the English archives sheds only a little light on the continental branches, but it seems there might be no more than a dozen partners or agents in England at any time who were important enough to appear in government documents, with perhaps another three or four in Ireland. A list of about seventy-five names can be compiled for the entire period 1272–1294, but is probably not exhaustive. In any given period it would be unlikely that total Riccardi personnel in the British archives numbered more than thirty men. Surprisingly, this ranks the company as a large firm. In 1336 the Peruzzi, second largest company of the day, employed no more than ninety factors scattered throughout fifteen branches.19 In 1466 the Medici branch in Bruges had a staff of seven, including | two office boys.20 Both in geographical area and number of person- 165 nel these scope of Riccardi activity is impressive. This raises a second question: how strong was the company? What resources did the Riccardi command? As a standard for comparison we might take the famous Medici once again. Their main house and seven out of eight branches in 1458 had capital of about 30,000 florins.21 We cannot say what capital the Riccardi commanded, but there is indirect evidence of their resources in the boast made in one letter that at the height of their power they could borrow 100,000 or even 200,000 livres tournois at the Champagne fairs.22 This means a sum of approximately 160,000 to 320,000 florins. Should this claim be dismissed as mere exaggeration? The letter is internal company correspondence, not a letter for the eyes of some bishop, earl, or the king; the Riccardi had little reason to stretch the truth with each other. Moreover, the claim seems plausible 18 19

20 21 22

pro, e 101/601/5 p. 39d., letter of 3 November, 1301. Raymond de Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank (1963), p. 3. He mentions here and on p. 5 that the Medici never attained the size of the giant companies of the fourteenth century. The Accaiuoli company, third largest in fourteenth century Florence, had fifteen branches and employed forty-one factors, with two each in London and Bruges and one in Paris. See de Roover, Money, Banking and Credit, p. 39. Raymond de Roover, The Medici Bank, Its Organization, Management, Operations and Decline (1948), p. 23. R.S. Lopez, in The Renaissance: Six Essays, pp. 40–41. pro, e 101/601/5 p. 25, letter of 10 October, 1295.

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when we note that the Peruzzi in the early fourteenth century had a capital of more than 100,000 florins. More important, other evidence indicates that the Riccardi actually operated on this scale. Over a twenty-two year period they lent the English crown an average of more than £14,000 a year,23 a sum equivalent to 112,000 florins. In times of intense borrowing the sum was much higher, as for example in the king’s stay in Gascony, 1286–1289, when they lent at least £103,733.24 During the entire time they acted as crown financiers they were also money lenders to all ranks of society, sometimes investing as much as £2500 a year in private loans (roughly 20,000 florins).24 These sums take on more meaning when compared to the range of incomes in thirteenth century England. While an earl or a rich bishop might enjoy a landed annual income of some £2000, a skilled workman would earn less than £8 a year if he worked every week at 3 s. per week; for a common workman the figure is about £2, working six-day weeks all year, at 1½d. a day.25 The sizeable scale of Riccardi financial operations raises a related question. How was it possible for them to operate on so grand a scale? Of course it is important to remember at once that they were crown financiers and that the crown turned over basic sources of royal revenue to them. The resources of the English king quickly become involved in the question of their capital. On their loans to the government they were also apparently collecting interest rates which would make modern bankers weep with envy; as much as 33-⅓% seems to have been paid on the king’s outstanding | balance after periodic accountings.26 But royal resources and interest hardly give the entire answer. The crown wanted the Riccardi as financiers because they had significant resources beyond what it entrusted to them; had the Riccardi not possessed sizeable resources of their own there would have been little point in making them crown bankers. One additional source of funds came from their position as papal bankers. The centralizing papacy had developed its power to tax clergymen throughout Christendom, especially for the purposes of crusade. In the England of Edward i the money for the Holy Land was promised to the king whenever he would go on crusade, but the act of taking the cross and actually freeing himself for the 23 24

25 26

See the analysis in Kaeuper, Bankers to the Crown, Chapter ii, Section 4. Based on recognizances for debt in the King’s Remembrancer’s Memoranda Rolls (pro, e 159 series) and the Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer’s Memoranda Rolls (pro, e 368 series). There were additional private loans for which no recognizances were made. See Kaeuper, Bankers to the Crown, preface, and sources cited there. For the Riccardi accounts see Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1272–1281, pp. 131–132, pro, e 101/126/1, e 372/124 m. Id., e 372/134 m. 3, e 372/125 m. 1, e 372/133 m. 32d., e 372/134 m. 3, e 372/143 m. 35d., e 372/143 m. 35d. The question of interest is discussed in Kaeuper, Bankers to the Crown, Chapter ii, Section 3.

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venture were quite different matters. While Edward assured the pope of his good intentions, and prudently prohibited the export of the money from England, it had to be held in safe-keeping; naturally the pope turned to the Italian merchantbankers who were also his financiers and deposited the money with them. The Riccardi were not the only papal bankers in England and the money had to be divided among them all, but their share was at times as high as £13,000.27 The usefulness of this amount of ready cash need not be emphasized. Nor can we forget that the Riccardi were merchants as well as financiers. They were primarily wool merchants and our evidence at least suggests that they may have been the greatest wool merchants in England, exporting more of the prized English wool to continental looms than any other single company. The religious houses were especially prominent customers, and often contracted with the Italians to sell their wool for several years in advance in return for the cash they needed so badly.28 Their activities both as merchants and as bankers, then, help to explain their economic strength. But what do we know of the Riccardi as men? This third basic question is the most difficult. If we ask whether they drank French wine and loved their wives our sources, needless to say, fail. Only rarely do we learn something of the merchants’ personal lives, such as Matteo Rosciompelli’s fondness for hunting which led to his temporary arrest for taking hares in the king’s warren.29 In fact, one is not always even certain of the merchants’ names, for we have many of these Italian names | only in the Latin or French forms 167 given in the accounts and writs penned by English clerks, or in the translations of documents printed by modern scholars. The result can be awful. Matteo Rosciompelli once appears as Matthew Rogyumpel, and a much more important figure, Orlandino da Poggio, becomes Rouland de Podio, and the like. Certainly their personal appearance remains unknown. The name Orlandino da Poggio suggests to me a man tall, thin, and imperious; my wife insists he was short, fat, bald, and swarthy. But in more important ways we know fairly well what sort and condition of men we are considering. In the final analysis, whether they drank French wine 27

See the work of W.E. Lunt, Financial Relations of the Papacy with England to 1327 (1939), Appendix vi, and English Historical Review, 32 (1917), p. 87. 28 Kaeper, Bankers to the Crown, Chapter i, Section 2. For background on the wool trade in general see Eileen Power, The Wool Trade in Medieval English History (1941); R.J. Whitwell, “English Monasteries and the Wool Trade in the 13th Century,” Viertiljahrschift für Sozialund Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 2 (1904); Eleanora Carus-Wilson, Cambridge Economic History of Europe, 2, Chapter vi, “The Woolen Industry.” 29 Calendar of Close Rolls 1279–1288, p. 445.

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and loved their wives was much more important to them than to us. Above all we can see in them that worldly wise quality which seems so widespread by the end of the century. At a time when they were in severe trouble the Lucca partners wrote to London that the bishop of Durham (who was auditing their accounts with the crown) owed them 800 marks, “if you think you should mention it to him.”30 There can be no question of their shrewdness or toughness. The London Riccardi once accused the Lucca partners of giving way to the fault of sentiment and personal feeling. They responded:31 About the special consideration (sofferenza) which you say we have given to Ranuccio Ronsini…for which you blame us greatly, we tell you that what we have done we have not done out of love for him or because he is related to any one of us, or because of any request he might have made to us. Whatever we have allowed we have done for our benefit and not for his.

168

Perhaps this quality appears with special clarity in their dealings with John Pecham, the reform Archbishop of Canterbury. A Franciscan, “whose vows of poverty were not the most convenient preparation for the costliness of the archiepiscopal state,”32 Pecham borrowed 4000 marks from the Riccardi, but was unable to repay the loan on time. The merchants obtained a papal bull threatening the archbishop with excommunication, leading him to complain that he was being harassed by the saracenic cruelty of men aided by the devil.33 As this incident would lead us to believe, the piety of the Riccardi was of a fairly conventional sort and came mixed with a strong dash of pure acquisitiveness. The point had not yet been reached when a company could begin its books with the invocation “In the name of God and profit.” | That was to come in the fourteenth century.34 But the juxtaposition of religion and business in the Riccardi letters is jarring enough. At a time when the company was on the brink of disaster they wrote, “May God in his mercy not look at our sins, but rather may He look at the good that our ancestors have done, and grant grace 30 31 32 33

34

pro, e 101/601/5 p. 26d., letter of 10 October, 1295. pro, e 101/601/5 p. 5d., letter of 5 December, 1297. Dorothy Sutcliffe, “The Financial Condition of the See of Canterbury, 1279–1292,” Speculum, 10 (1935). See the Register Epistolarum of Peckham, cited by Sutcliffe, in Speculum, 10 (1935). The practice of securing bulls of excommunication against defaulting ecclesiastics was not uncommon. See Adolf Gottlob, “Kuriale Prälatenanleihen im 13. Jahrhundert,” Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, i (1903). See Raymond de Roover, “The Story of the Alberti Company of Florence, 1302–1348, as Revealed in Its Account Books,” Business History Review, 32 (1958), 46.

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to those who hurt us so that they may see the right way.”35 Such solemnities suitable for any sermon, however, often give way to another level of expression: “Let us hope in God and in the Virgin that shortly we will be in the position to give back to everyone in the same way as they have dealt with us. For the time being it is more suitable if we keep our mouths shut.”36 Or again: “Now may God through his mercy no longer look at our sins and may He have it in His heart and will that those who have to pay up the company, pay up.”37 When English officials apparently began to hint that a price would have to be paid for the return of their confiscated business records, the Riccardi decided they could not spend a large sum; they would hope in God, await grace from the pope, and meanwhile bribe with smaller sums “those people to whom a payment is useful.”38 Despite the divine majesty and papal grace, a few well-placed gifts would help. The question we would most like to ask of the Riccardi cannot be answered in any detail. Their attitude towards the ecclesiastical prohibition of usury and the suspicion churchmen traditionally felt for the world of commerce never appears in the letters. The merchants were clearly collecting interest on loans and were surely intelligent enough to know that despite all subterfuges and claims only for licit “damages,” the intent to commit usury, however subtle the evasion, was sinful in the law of the Church and in the eyes of God.39 Whatever agonizing introspection such knowledge produced was never, of course, discussed in business letters. If we can empathize with these merchants it would come largely at the time of their precipitous fall. To ask why so strong a company buckled and collapsed is to pose our final question about the Riccardi company. At the beginning of this century an Italian scholar, Emilio Re, outlined one of the only explanations of Riccardi failure ever to be offered, in one of the few studies of the Riccardi ever written.40 Re explained the company failure by a simple, cumulative series of misfortunes which gradually overtook them. Ruin began in 1291 when Philip the Fair arrested the Italians in France and | extorted large fines 169 from them, including the Riccardi. At the same time Edward i finally convinced 35 36 37 38 39

40

pro, e 101/601/5 p. 17, undated letter. pro, e 101/601/5 p. 18, undated letter. pro, e 101/601/5 p. 11, letter probably written in 1300. pro, e 101/601/5 p. 40, letter of 3 November, 1301. There is a large literature on the subject. See especially John T. Noonan, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury (1952), and T.P. McLaughlin, “The Teachings of the Canonists on Usury (xii, xiii and xiv Centuries),” Medieval Studies, 1 (1939). Re, “La Compagnia dei Riccardi,” Archivio della Societá Romana de Storia Patria, 37 (1914).

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the pope that he was a crusader and was given the sexennial crusade tax imposed on the clergy at the second council of Lyons; it was the fruit of eight years of patient negotiations at the curia. According to Re this hurt the Riccardi in that the money deposited with them was recalled and turned over to the English king. Other papal taxes deposited with Italians, those designated for the aid of Charles of Valois in Sicily, were similarly recalled about the same time and the result was again damaging to the Riccardi. In 1294 their troubles were multiplied when Edward i and Philip the Fair went to war over Gascony, a dress rehearsal for the Hundred Years War fought by their descendants. The war measures of both kings hurt the Riccardi: Edward i seized the wool of all foreign merchants; Philip arrested the Riccardi in France as agents of his enemy. Soon there was a classic “run on the bank” as depositors withdrew their money from the Riccardi in fear. Internal dissention completed the ruin as quarrels racked a failing company. The collapse in 1301 was a foregone conclusion, the result of a long, unmitigated slide to disaster which had begun a decade earlier. Although Re’s account is clearly argued and might seem credible, it can be shown that such an analysis is essentially wrong. The Riccardi retained their full financial strength up to 1294; they weathered the storms of 1291–1294 well – so well, in fact, that (to note only one piece of evidence) they could lend nearly £17,000 to Edward’s ambassadors in France in early 1294.41 Far from appearing as a company in the last stages of decline, they functioned normally as king’s bankers and great merchants in these years. Why, then, should the king break with them, as he did in the summer of 1294? Why were the Riccardi deprived of the royal revenues in their charge and then arrested, ending a relationship that had worked splendidly for more than two decades? If we look at official documents, we read again and again that the merchants were overwhelmingly in debt to the crown, owing so much that the king could take everything they had as partial payment. But in checking the specific list of charges drawn up against them42 one quickly discovers that the list is false, the kind of phony list that might be drawn up against any fallen royal official. Reading the Riccardi business letters then takes on a special importance. The letters were written in precisely this period of crisis, 1295– 1303; perhaps they might contain colorful denunciations of “the English Justinian,” or some interesting charges against the king of legend whose tomb bore the stern warning, pactum serva. Was he in fact a perfidious monarch who 41

42

pro, s c 8 file 260 no. 12970. There is other evidence to substantiate this conclusion, such as the loan of £10,000 for expenses of the royal household between 1 August and 18 November, 1293, pro, e 372/139 m. 6, c 81/7 no. 597, Calendar of Patent Rolls 1292–1301, p. 59. pro, e 372/143, e 372/129 m. 5d., e 368/70 m. 26, e 159/68 m. 83d.

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used the Riccardi for twenty-two years and then ruined them as an alternative to paying his | debts? The Riccardi letters can be searched in vain for such sen- 170 timents. The merchants write of Edward in terms of lavish respect:43 He must be quite willing to have us return to prosperity and honor, so that we might be able to serve him as we used to; for even if he looks to all the merchants in the world we are certain that he will not find there merchants who will serve him with as great a faith or love, or as willingly as we have served him, and will serve him even more so, if God puts us in the condition of being able to do so. In another letter the Riccardi in Lucca exhort their London partners to handle affairs there wisely, adding “and may God…give you the grace to do so that it may be to the honor of Milord the king, to whom God grant life and wealth, and to our safety, and also so that we may return to our former state and serve the king and the other lords as we formerly did.” Even more puzzling, not only did the merchants readily acknowledge their debt to the king, when they gave an estimate of how to repay it, the total was twice as large as the official charge. Their total obligation entered on the pipe roll was less than £30,000; the Riccardi estimated their indebtedness at about £60,000.44 The problem of interpretation seems formidable. How can we explain the apparently severe losses in 1291–1294, the normal operations of the company in these years, the 1294 arrest, and the merchants’ estimate of their indebtedness? A solution to the puzzle can be found if we reconsider one assumption. It has been assumed that when the pope granted Edward this tax, directed the Riccardi to collect it and deliver it to the king, that this was done.45 What would be the result if the Riccardi collected the money but simply kept it for Edward, as they and their fellow-countrymen had previously kept it for the pope? The Riccardi as papal and royal bankers often handled papal transfers for Edward; as crown financiers they had collected royal revenues for two decades as repayment for past loans and as a cushion against future demands. The proceeds of the crusade tax amounted to the enormous sum of 100,000 marks, or £66,666. If the Riccardi did keep this money for Edward they would surely have invested 43 44 45

pro, e 101/601/5 p. 27, letter of 10 October, 1295. pro, e 101/601/5 p. 26d., letter of 10 October, 1295. William Lunt thought that the Riccardi had paid the money to Edward, but with the painstaking accuracy characteristic of his work confessed in a footnote that “payment is not well attested in royal documents.” Financial Relations, p. 341 and note.

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it, perhaps sending much of the sum to the continent. They could not have anticipated the Anglo-French war of 1294; it caught them by surprise even as it caught Edward by surprise. For the Riccardi it was a disaster. Edward naturally wanted massive loans for his war chest, expecting the Riccardi to repeat their financing of his three earlier campaigns in Wales. But the war had split apart their two main areas of activity, preventing the old flow of business activity and credit across the Channel. Riccardi resources may well have been tied up in long range projects on both sides of the channel. When the king called for 171 his 100,000 marks and more, his financiers were relatively helpless. | Such a hypothesis fits all the evidence. If the Riccardi had just added £66,666 to their resources they could have easily handled the losses of 1291–1294; but after Edward’s demand for the money in 1294, they would owe him whatever they could not repay, leading to their estimate of about £60,000. This debt would not appear in exchequer records, for the money had never come within exchequer jurisdiction and accounting. We can picture Edward exploding in rage upon learning that in a major crisis his bankers were crippled. It is not surprising that he arrested the merchants and drew up a bogus list of charges against them; it is perhaps surprising that he did not send their bodies to the Tower and their heads to London bridge. Actually, the conditions of their arrest seem to have been mild, for although their goods and the debts owed them were taken by the crown, they were apparently not personally molested. Yet there is still poignancy in the Riccardi fall, as the wheel of fortune turned past their days of international business, the financing of armies and courts, and they fell headlong into bankruptcy and disgrace. By 1301 their seven-year struggle for survival was over and the firm was bankrupt. The date is not without its symbolic value. The fourteenth century would bring a long list of failures of the great societates, as on a wider scale it would bring plague and economic stagnation. If the Riccardi serve in one sense as exemplars of economic change in the High Middle Ages, of commercial expertise and relatively sophisticated credit, in another sense they show the fragility of thirteenth century credit structures and point toward the closing of the age of medieval com172 mercial revolution. |

chapter 2

The Role of Italian Financiers in the Edwardian Conquest of Wales *

The determination and vigour which characterized the Welsh campaigns of Edward i have often been noted. Whatever else may be said of the kingship or character of Edward, he unquestionably had talents of the first order as a military leader and organizer. As J.E. Morris has written of the Welsh wars: Edward was fighting against geography. His real skill is seen in his organization, not only of his men, but in a greater degree of his transport. He brought up carts and carters and woodmen who were impressed for the work and carefully guarded ne fugerent per viam, but paid for their services. He kept open communications by sea by means of a squadron from the Cinque Ports and, when these ships were dismissed, by boats. He had relay after relay of workmen to cut through the natural barrier of forests, and made a road along the coast from Chester to Conway, fortifying his base at each stage by way of Flint and Rhuddlan. The axe was his weapon as much as the lance and the bow… The conquest of Wales was effected by patience and resolution…1 To war against geographical difficulties as well as a patriotic enemy needs genius.2 In a similar vein, Sir F.M. Powicke has praised the ‘intelligence and energy’ which above all distinguish Edward’s Welsh campaigns from those of his father, Henry iii;3 he ranks the army which Edward led in his first Welsh expedition as the ‘best controlled, as it was the best led, that had been gathered in Britain since the Norman Conquest’.4 M.R. Powicke is even more emphatic: The army of Edward i achieved a balance between contractual, feudal and communal troops which exceeded anything achieved before or after. The most striking development of the reign was the great extension of the use of pay, and associated with it, the first extant military contracts.5 * 1 2 3 4 5

Previously published in The Welsh History Review, 6 (1973), 387–403. J.E. Morris, The Welsh Wars of Edward i (1901), p. 105. Ibid., p. 129. F.M. Powicke, The Thirteenth Century (1953), pp. 408–409. Ibid., p. 411. M.R. Powicke, Military Obligation in Medieval England: A Study in Liberty and Duty (1962), p. 97.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004302655_004

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This military policy was undoubtedly successful, but it was also, inevitably, expensive. Analyzing Edward’s methods, Morris succinctly wrote: ‘first we see his need of ready money’.6 Cash was needed to pay the cavalry (at daily wages ranging from 1s. to 4s.) | once the feudal term of service had expired, or when the men appeared in response to the king’s ‘affectionate request’ for service ad vadia nostra, as in the first and last summons of the 1282–83 war and in the only summons for the war against Rhys ap Maredudd. The companies of footmen and the gangs of labourers had also to be paid regularly, even if the men received only 2d. daily. But the great chain of new castles provides the most impressive and durable evidence for the cost of Edward’s drive and determination. These fortresses placed a seal on the Edwardian Conquest, but they cost as much as a modern government might spend to build a new fleet of nuclear submarines.7 The way in which Edward handled these financial problems, then, deserves further attention. How could the king be confident that cash would be available to meet the heavy and urgent charges of the Welsh campaigns? Much of the answer lies in a financial system based upon the Italian merchant-banking companies, the societates of Lombard and Tuscan merchants who were penetrating north-western Europe in the second half of the thirteenth century. The fine wool and the close papal relations of mid-thirteenth century England were strong attractions to these wool merchants who had already become papal financiers. With their sizeable resources and sophisticated financial techniques the companies established branches in London which prospered.8 At the outset of his reign, Edward i created a special relationship with one of these firms, the Riccardi of Lucca, entrusting his major revenue sources to them in return for a steady stream of loans.9 He was virtually assured of cash when and where he had need of it. As this highly successful relationship lasted twenty-two years (1272–94), the Riccardi were the king’s major bankers during the conquest of Wales, providing much of the needed financial flexibility for the compaigns of 1276–77, 1282–83, and also for the suppression of Rhys ap Maredudd’s revolt in 1287. The evidence for the financing of these campaigns 6 Morris, Welsh Wars, p. 138. 7 H.M. Colvin (ed.), The History of the King’s Works (2 vols., 1963), i, Chapter 5 (by R.A. Brown), Chapter 6 (by A.J. Taylor); vol. ii, appendix C; J.G. Edwards, ‘Edward i’s Castle-Building in Wales’, Proceedings of the British Academy, xxxii (1946), 15–81. 8 E.B. Fryde, in Cambridge Economic History of Europe, iii (1965), Chapter 7, Sections iii and iv. His bibliography provides a guide to the large number of works dealing with the role of Italian merchant-bankers in government finance. 9 See my book, Bankers to the Crown: the Riccardi of Lucca and Edward i (Princeton University Press, 1973).

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is less complete than we might wish; we cannot chart the incidence of every source of royal income to determine precisely how much revenue the king could spare for Wales at each | particular stage of a compaign. But the surviving 388 documents for the first two campaigns show in convincing, if general, terms the importance of the credit structure based on the Italians, and for 1287, when a more quantitative analysis is possible, this importance is confirmed. Among the orders and accounts for each campaign, there is ample evidence that Riccardi loans were frequently necessary and always convenient. In 1277 some of the Riccardi partners were directed to collect funds at York, bringing together a war chest ‘so that the king may have the same whenever he thinks fit to send for it’.10 Two leading members of the societas, Orlandino da Pogio and Riccardino Guidiccioni, were meanwhile active in London and Bristol providing funds for paymasters of troops in Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire. The Riccardi had been ordered to provide 2,000 marks (£1,333 6s. 8d.),11 but the needs of these paymasters were evidently greater than anticipated, for the account of one of them, Ralph de Broucton, records a receipt of £2,000.12 The merchants soon crossed into Wales and delivered £1,000 to the Household at Basingwerk, near the site where the walls of Flint castle were rising.13 Char­ acteristically, they made use of a royal safe-conduct to carry back to Chester the wool which they had bought from the abbot of Aberconway.14 Serving the king’s needs, even in the stress of wartime, never precluded close attention to their own business. In the second campaign, we again find clear traces of Riccardi activity. Their funds literally prepared the king himself for war. A roll of Wardrobe necessary expenditure details the payments they made for repair of Edward’s armour, his crossbows and tents, and their transport to Chester.15 Much more important, at the very outset of the campaign two loans reached the Wardrobe at Chester: £3,000 were delivered by Eliseo and £500 were sent from the Riccardi in Ireland.16 Once Edward had made the crucial decision to fight on through the winter, and had brought over a large corps of mercenaries from Gascony for this purpose, the Riccardi provided | £3,884 15s. 7d. out of the total of £7,618 2s. 389 10 11 12

13 14 15 16

Calendar of Close Rolls, 1272–1281, p. 215. Cited below as c.c.r. Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1272–1281, p. 218. Cited below as c.p.r. Public Record Office, Exchequer, k.r., Various Accounts, 3/20; Myvanwy Rhys (ed.), Ministers Accounts for West Wales, 1277–1306 (1936), part i, pp. 4, 7. For examples of payments made by Broucton, see J.G. Edwards (ed.), Littere Wallie (1940), p. 196 ff. p.r.o., Chancery, Miscellanea, 4/1, p. 37d. c.p.r., 1272–1281, p. 235. p.r.o., Exchequer, k.r., Var. Accts., 351/9. c.p.r., 1281–1292, p. 33.

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10d. paid to these ‘forerunners of d’Artagnan’.17 They also supplied one of the king’s paymasters and victuallers with £666 13s. 4d. out of the £2,221 12s. 8 21 d. which he spent,18 and made prests totalling £1,225 6s. 8d. to seventeen barons and knights who served in Wales.19 William Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, was loaned £500 on royal orders.20 After the end of the fighting, the marshal, Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk, collected 1,000 marks (£666 13s. 4d.) from them ‘in recompense of his damages and of his services in the last army of Wales’.21 Two pieces of evidence from this campaign of 1282–83 are particularly instructive. A letter from the Riccardi, preserved among the Ancient Correspondence, illustrates the critical nature of their loans. William Louth, the keeper of the Wardrobe, at one point failed to obtain badly needed funds from some merchants at Boston fair. When he turned to the Riccardi he was not disappointed; they sent £2,600, accompanied by a letter pointedly describing how arduously they were working on the king’s behalf.22 A second document, a paymaster’s account, shows that Riccardi loans were not only critical; they were also speedy. The king needed more ready money and wanted Vincent de Hilton to undertake the mission to the Riccardi in London. Hilton was in Carmarthen when Edward’s order reached him and, after he had found the king at Langernum he travelled on to London. When Hilton presented the king’s request to Baroncino Gualteri and Reyner Magiari, they provided £833 6s. 8d., hired four pack-horses with the baskets, canvas and cords needed to haul the money, and paid the wages of two mounted guards and four footmen to act as escort. A seven-day trip brought the treasure to Bristol where it was 17

18 19

20 21 22

p.r.o., Exchequer, k.r., Var. Accts., 3/27; Morris, Welsh Wars, pp. 186–189, citing p.r.o., Exchequer, k.r., Var. Accts., 4/6; Powicke, Thirteenth Century, p. 427. Nearly a third of the Riccardi money went to a merchant of Piacenza who had supplied a loan to the king’s recruiters in Gascony. p.r.o., Exchequer, k.r., Var. Accts., 4/5A. p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 138 m. 26d. These payments by the Riccardi in 1282– 1283 are listed in the expense section of the Wardrobe account for 1290, presumably as prests outstanding at the end of Louth’s last account. c.p.r., 1281–1292, p. 17. The king not only ordered the loan; he stood surety for its repayment in case the earl should fail. Ibid., p. 149. Ancient Correspondence, xix, no. 73. This is printed by T. Rymer in Foedera, i, ii, p. 644, with some errors in proper names. He dates the letter to 1284, but the reference to an excercitus places it during one of the Welsh wars and the Riccardi personnel involved indicates the campaign of 1282–1283. The mayor of London, Henry le Waleys, raised £400 by dipping into his own coffers and convincing his friends to do the same. This money was sent with the Riccardi loan under the guard of an escort provided by the mayor.

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transferred to a boat and shipped to Carmarthen at the king’s expense. For some unexplained reason | the shipment was delayed for four days at a port called ‘Krokerspulle’, and three men were set as a guard each night, but the money then was sent on to the king. What is remarkable is the speed of delivery; Hilton’s trip in search of the king, his trip to the Riccardi in London, and the return journey with the money required only forty-five days.23 During and after these two campaigns, Riccardi advances were also required to maintain the energetic programme of castle-building. Since, as J.G. Edwards has pointed out,24 the Wardrobe was the most important single source of funds for the castles, we may be sure that at least some of the many wartime Riccardi payments to Louth, keeper of the Wardrobe, went for builders’ wages and materials. For example, in 10–12 Edward I two king’s clerks received £3,940 for castles in north and west Wales ‘as well from the Wardrobe as from the merchants of Lucca’.25 Later payments of £20026 and £1,00027 followed. Irish revenues were a second major source of castle funds and here, too, the Riccardi were involved. In June of 1285 they were ordered to pay all present and future revenue from the Irish wool custom in their keeping to Richard de Abingdon, the king’s receiver in Wales ‘for the walling of towns, castles, and other the king’s works there’.28 Abingdon received 1,000 marks within seven months, the money going for works at ‘karnervan, coneway, cruk et hardelagh’ [i.e., Caernarvon, Conway, Criccieth, and Harlech].29 But the flow of Irish revenue may not have reached the works in time to meet costs, for in 1288 the Riccardi advanced £200 to the chamberlain of north Wales on the condition that the money be restored to them out of the first receipts from the proceeds of Ireland.30 Such delays perhaps influenced the arrangement made in the following year by which 4,000 marks (£2,666 13s. 4d.) of Irish revenues would be indirectly channelled to the Welsh castles. This sum was turned over to the Riccardi operating in Ireland, the London members of the firm acting as security. From the latter the barons of the Exchequer were to draw 4,000 marks for the | Welsh works; not, however, in one lump sum, but from time to time as the 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30

p.r.o., Chancery, Miscellanea, 2/4. Proceedings of the British Academy, xxxii (1946), 64. p.r.o., Exchequer, k.r., Var. Accts., 351/7. p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 136 m. 31d; k.r., Var. Accts., 35/22. p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 136m. 30, 31d. c.p.r., 1281–92, p. 170. For the writ of allocate to the treasurer and barons of the Irish Exchequer, see the Calendar of Documents Relating to Ireland, 1285–93, no. 248. Cited below as C.D.I. p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 131 m. 26d; 136 m. 33. p.r.o., Exchequer, k.r., Memoranda Roll, 159/61 m. 14d.

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progress of the works required.31 By this convenient arrangement the building force could be supplied with funds which would not have to be shipped with care and cost from Ireland. The traces of particular Riccardi advances for the campaigns and castles give an impression of the need for their wartime loans and the uses to which they were put. But English kings before Edward had occasionally negotiated loans for pressing campaign needs and contemporary kings were borrowing from bankers across the Channel.32 In order to evaluate the significance of the Riccardi as the financiers of the Conquest, and as a key to the unique financial system of a conquering king, we must attempt a more comprehensive and a more quantitative estimate of their loans. This means turning to the enrolled Wardrobe accounts. The duration of the first campaign conveniently coincides with the Wardrobe account for 5 Edward i (20 November 1276 to 19 November 1277). This account records a receipt of £22,476 from the merchants of Lucca.33 This figure takes on meaning when compared with the total war expenses in this account, £20,220,34 or J.E. Morris’s estimate of the total cost of the war, £23,149.35 Although estimating total costs for any medieval war is a hazardous undertaking, it is readily seen that Riccardi advances during this period were greater than the military expenses of the Wardrobe, the chief agency of war finance, and fell only slightly short of one rough estimate of the total cost of the campaign. Moreover, as Tout has pointed out, the enrolled Wardrobe account for 6 Edward i shows that the financial strain of this war continued to be felt well beyond its conclusion in November of 1277. The very moderate Wardrobe expenses in the account for the postwar period of this sixth regnal year were met only by borrowing from the Riccardi a further £18,233 5s. 6d. out of the total receipt of £19,316 7s. 3 21 d.36 This brings the Riccardi contribution to | £40,709 5s. 6d. out of a total Wardrobe receipt for 5 and 6 Edward i of £57,030 4s. 1 21 d. Admittedly these figures must be read with some caution. It must be emphasized that in both of these documents the Riccardi figures represent advances for all of the normal expenditures met by the Wardrobe and not merely for the 31 32

Ibid., 61 m. 5d. For the case of Philip the Fair and the Franzesi, see J.R. Strayer, ‘Italian Bankers and Philip the Fair’, Explorations in Economic History, vii (1969). Cf. E.B. Fryde, in Cambridge Economic History, iii, Chapter 7. 33 p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 123 m. 23. 34 T.F. Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England (6 vols., 1920–33), ii, 112–113. 35 Welsh Wars, p. 140. 36 Tout, Chapters, ii, 113.

25

The Role of Italian Financiers

special needs of war. Yet it is clearly the war costs which loom largest in Wardrobe  expenditure for this period and it can hardly be doubted that the merchants’ advances were negotiated to meet these requirements. This can be demonstrated by comparing the general accountings between king and banker with the Wardrobe accounts. Since an overview of the merchants’ account was  made covering the first four years of the reign up to Hilary (13 January) 1276,37 and a second accounting included the entire period up to Michaelmas (29 September) 1279,38 it is possible to make a comparison roughly between the four years before the war and the three years covering the war and its financial aftermath: Period

Riccardi loans

Riccardi receipts

1272–76 1276–79

£54,439 £146,938

£41,206 £139,272

In the period of the first war Riccardi activity jumped to three times its previous peacetime level. It is no exaggeration, then, to claim that the merchants of Lucca financed Edward’s first Welsh war. The same could be said of the second war, which was fought more fiercely and on a larger scale, requiring greater financial services from the king’s bankers. Because of the unprecedented magnitude of receipts and expenditure controlled by Wardrobe personnel, a special Wardrobe war account was created, running from Palm Sunday (22 March) 1282 to about 20 November 1284. In this period of two and one-half years the account records £101,621 received for the prosecution of the war.39 Yet this does not exhaust the Wardrobe war receipt, for the ordinary enrolled Wardrobe account for 11 and 12 Edward i is totally separate from this special account and contains further receipt and expenditure for Wales. The aggregate | receipt in the accounts comes to £204,573, although this was not, of course, all devoted to war finance.40 37 38 39 40

c.p.r., 1272–81, pp. 131–132. p.r.o., Exchequer, k.r., Var. Accts., 126/1. p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 136 m. 33; k.r., Var. Accts., 4/2. This account has been printed as an appendix to the Chronica Johannis de Oxenedes in the Rolls Series (1859). For the regular enrolled account, see p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 132 m. 5, 5d; k.r., Var. Accts., 351/10, is a particular roll of receipts. Tout noted that never again would the volume of Wardrobe transactions become so great until the stormy years after 1295: Chapters, ii, 115.

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The Riccardi contribution is considerable: they paid £39,196 into the special war fund, making nearly two-fifths of its total; and they paid £33,405 into the regular enrolled Wardrobe account.41 Once again it is useful to note that Morris’s estimate of total war costs was £60,046 for the campaign, or £98,421 if the costs of castle works are included.42 Powicke’s estimate, however, is much lower; he suggests a cost exceeding £60,000, including the work on castles.43 Although it is impossible to say with any confidence precisely how much of the war costs were met by Riccardi advances, their loans totalling £72,601 in 11 and 12 Edward i—even though they were not all used specifically for the war— clearly stand behind the massive effort which ended an independent Welsh principality. The revolt of Rhys ap Maredudd in 1287 provides the best documented case of the Riccardi role in war finance. Fortunately, the Italian advances are not buried in a highly generalized enrolled Wardrobe account, and it is possible to draw up a budget for the campaign, arriving at a quantitative evaluation of the Riccardi contribution. Rhys’s discontent erupted into revolt at a time when the king and the Wardrobe were on the continent. The usual agency for war finance, and the usual method of accounting for Riccardi expenditure, could not be used. Instead, a separate accounting for this campaign was held and a special Riccardi account was placed on the pipe roll. This absence of the Wardrobe (and the consequent change in the nature of the records) may be welcomed by the historian, but it can only have increased the nervousness of the regent, Edmund, earl of Cornwall. When the news of the rising reached him he could not quickly estimate the seriousness of the threat, a fact reflected by the size of the forces he assembled to strike at Dryslwyn castle, the seat of Rhys’s power. In his desire for the speedy assembly of an | overwhelming force, the regent replaced the feudal host with paid cavalry and fielded a large force of infantry as well. Nearly 24,000 men were involved in the six-week campaign which captured the castle and broke Rhys’s effort.44 To meet the expenses of this force the earl turned to the Riccardi. Within a month of the first fighting he wrote to the merchants ordering them to 41

Their advances are set down in several large sums, each charged on some major source of royal revenue, such as the customs, the mint, or a tax. We can be reasonably certain that the sums listed as Wardrobe receipts from revenues wholly or partly in Riccardi hands represent an accumulation of numerous short-term advances by the merchants which were only later charged to these revenues as the money became available. 42 Welsh Wars, pp. 196–197. 43 Thirteenth Century, p. 422. 44 Morris, Welsh Wars, pp. 204, 207, 217; Sir John Lloyd (ed.), A History of Carmarthenshire, Chapter 3, ‘The Late Middle Ages’, by D.L. Evans, pp. 205–206; Powicke, Thirteenth Century, p. 439; Tout, Chapters, ii, 116–17.

The Role of Italian Financiers

27

provide the paymasters of horse and foot with ‘all funds, either our money in your possession or money provided as loans for our business, or money procured in any other way’.45 Despite the absence of the Wardrobe, and without regard for the balance in the Treasury, the campaign could be mounted quickly and massively. This order gives dramatic evidence of the kind of flexibility provided by the Italians. The English government could fight now, pay later. As the troops took the field the Riccardi sent out their own tiny band of representatives. The merchants must have seemed most inconspicuous and inconsequential among the masses of men in the medieval panoply of war. They first went to Hereford to supply funds for the paymasters of the forces gathering there. In late July, Francesco Malisardi delivered £300 to William de Rye and Elias de Ford, on 25 July £300 to John de Monte Alto and Vincent de Hilton, and on 27 July £400 to Walter de Pedewarden and Master Thomas de Cantock.46 Perhaps about the same time Riccardo Guidiccioni, a leading member of the firm in England, paid the £21 15s. 0d. required for wages for footmen sent from Gloucester and provided £100 which Vincent de Hilton paid for wages in west Wales.47 Riccardo, however, left it to lesser members of the company to follow the armies into the battle zone. Only a small effort of imagination is needed to picture Francesco and Salomen shepherding the casks and bags of silver pennies on pack horses, while nervously scanning the surrounding hills. By 18 August they had reached Dryslwyn, for on that day they paid £500 to Monte Alto and Hilton | and an equal sum to Rye and Ford. On 28, 29, and 31 August further payments brought the total to £2,131 13s. 4d.48 There was much for them to see when not counting out coins: the castle was surrounded by the regent’s army, Richard the Engineer had a large stone-throwing machine in operation (his supplies bought with Riccardi money), and a mine was being dug beneath the defenders’ walls – a mine which unhappily for the sappers brought down the wall on their own heads. But by 5 September the castle was taken49 and 45

The original letter is preserved among the Ancient Correspondence, xiii, no. 63. It is quoted in the enrolled Riccardi account for the war, p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 132 m. 1, and is printed in calendar form in the Calendar of Various Chancery Rolls, Welsh Rolls, 1277–1326, cited below as c.c.r.v. Later orders directed the merchants to pay specific sums for war expenses to the king’s captains and officials. See c.c.r.v., pp. 316–319. 46 p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 132 m. 1; k.r., Var. Accts., 4/16, 17, 18. 47 p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 132 m. 1. Fifteen years later, when Exchequer officials questioned him about this sum, he replied that he had received it from the Riccardi at Gloucester. p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Memoranda Roll, 74 m. 15. 48 p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 132 m. 1; k.r., Var. Accts., 4/16, 17, 18. 49 Morris, Welsh Wars, pp. 212–213.

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most of the troops retired to Carmarthen, where they received back wages and were dismissed. The Riccardi paid for what seemed to be the closing expenses of the war. Salomen dispensed the money for the wages paid at Carmarthen on 13 September; Rye and Ford received £200, and £1,033 6s. 8d. went to Monte Alto and Hilton.50 Two months later, on 12 November, Riccardo Guidiccioni paid to Rye and Ford the £509 15s. 7d. which represented the ‘surplus’ of their expenses over receipts.51 An order of 14 November requested the Riccardi to pay specified sums to thirteen lords and knights who had led contingents of horsemen; the list includes £300 to Edmund Mortimer, £200 to William Beauchamp, £120 to Roger Mortimer, £100 to John de Warenne, and lesser sums to commanders of smaller troops.52 At Dryslwyn the Riccardi began providing money for the repair and rearmament of the castle; of the £1,936 5s. 1 21 d. spent before 1289 by the keeper of the castle, Alan Plukenet, Riccardi representatives furnished £718 13s. 4d.53 They also provided £100 out of £169 spent on new works and repairs needed at Carmarthen.54 But the fighting was not yet over; Rhys was still at large and he renewed hostilities in November. Although this outbreak was suppressed by local forces, the funds had to be provided by the regent. In early December Robert de Tibetot, justiciar of south Wales, relieved Dinefwr castle, which had been besieged by Rhys, and by the end of the month he was prepared to lay siege to Emlyn | castle, which had been seized by Rhys. Once again Richard the Engineer’s war machine was hauled into a threatening position and its stone ammunition piled up in abundance. It seems that after this show of force the garrison opened the castle gates without a struggle.55 Francesco and Salomen may have missed the military spectacle this time, but they provided £200 towards its cost, which eventually came to £554. The Riccardi money was on the scene about a week before the ‘siege’ began.56 After the castle was surrendered 50 51 52

p.r.o., Exchequer, k.r., Var. Accts., 4/16, 18. p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 132 m. 1. The order for payment and the schedule listing the recipients and the amount each was to have were copied into the Riccardi account for the war, p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 132 m. 1. They are also in c.c.r.v., pp. 316–317. Some of the contingents of horsemen must not have been up to full strength, because six of the commanders returned a part of their wages to the Riccardi, £256 13s. 4d. in all. These returned sums are listed in the Riccardi account and also in the Wardrobe account for 17 and 18 Edward i: Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 138 m. 26d. 53 Ibid., 134 m. 1d. 54 Ibid., 134 m. 2d; 133 m. 28. 55 Morris, Welsh Wars, pp. 215–216. 56 p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 133 m. 28.

The Role of Italian Financiers

29

Tibetot drew a further £60 from the merchants ad municionem castri de Dynavor.57 The accounts of Peter de la Mare, constable of Bristol castle, provide a significant postscript to the financing of this campaign. We learn that he supervised the shipment of 2,850 marks of Riccardi money from Bristol to London by water, and for the carting of 3,160 marks overland.58 This means that the Riccardi had sent 6,010 marks (more than £4,000) beyond the sum actually required for the war. Had the suppression of the rebellion proved to be a longer or more costly operation, the Riccardi funds would have been available. The actual cost of the campaign is probably not far from the £10,606 estimate of Morris.59 Out of this total no less than £8,288 can be traced to the Riccardi. They provided the wages of cavalry, infantry and workmen, plus a significant part of the costs of taking Dryslwyn and Emlyn castles.60 Furthermore, two years after the war had ended they repaid £639 12s. 6d. in small loans which the treasurer had obtained from various other Italian companies for the war chest.61 In the case of the 1287 campaign we can be reasonably certain that the Riccardi loans provided approximately 80 per cent of the funds needed. We can also determine how much they received from royal revenues ready at hand, i.e., how much of the king’s money bolstered their resources for the war. In their enrolled account the only receipts from the king’s money charged to them were £823 12s. 10d. from the Exchequer. Money extracted from the Jews | accounts for £430 of this sum, with a further £300 coming from the Canterbury mint.62 This indicates that the merchants received from Crown resources only about 10 per cent of what they provided for the campaign – eloquent testimony to the need for royal bankers. A later change in the book-keeping tends to obscure this fact. Their enrolled account was cancelled and in a general reckoning for the wool customs they were given discharges on customs revenue received in 1286–89; allowances for wages advanced to cavalry and infantry, £1,105 15s. and £6,116 14s. 3d. respectively, were written into this later account.63 This change is simply a 57 58 59 60

61 62 63

Ibid., 134 m. 2d. His total receipt for this purpose was £111 8s. 8d. Ibid., 133 m. 29. Welsh Wars, p. 219. Most of the Riccardi payments are found in their enrolled account, p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 132 m. 1. For the others, see ibid., 133 m. 28; 134 m. 1, 2d; k.r., Var. Accts., 4/21. The major charges not met by the Riccardi were a part of the cost of the garrison at Dryslwyn and the repairs and new works at Aberystwyth. Cf. Morris, Welsh Wars, p. 219. p.r.o., Exchequer, k.r., Var. Accts., 352/15. p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 132 m. 1. Ibid., 134 m. 3.

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matter of record-keeping; the revenue source to which Riccardi loans were later charged in no way alters the fact that in a critical time the company had  loaned funds which the regent would have been hard-pressed to find elsewhere. After examining Riccardi loans in the three Welsh campaigns it comes as no surprise to learn that the societas was sometimes strained to the limit by the king’s demands. An occasional surviving letter stresses the difficulty of finding the money to meet the many payments. One letter adds that the orders ‘thanks to God have been paid up to the present and will continue to be paid if in our power’.64 In another letter, written just after this war, the Riccardi complain that ‘every day orders to pay money come to us from the king so that we do not know which way to turn’.65 While a sceptical reader might discount this as professional poor-mouthing intended to impress a demanding king, there is other evidence to support the Riccardi groans, especially from the period of the extremely taxing war of 1282–83. Before and after this war, in 1281–82 and again in 1283–84, the total of their non-royal loans secured by debt recognizances in the Exchequer came to more than £2,500. In 1282–83 the amount of these loans is negligible.66 Evidently the strain of royal war finance was so great that the company leaders thought it prudent to suspend private loans. How were they able to manage the frequent and heavy demands which caused such strains? In the first place it must be remembered that while continually advancing money for the king’s needs they | were receiving significant sums from royal revenues in their keeping. Although royal income constantly fell behind royal needs – the basic reason for the employment of the bankers – the king’s revenues were basically sound. Edward I was not descending into ever deeper and ever more hopeless debt. The system ran on a fairly even keel, with a reasonably constant debt to the merchants constantly being repaid.67 Yet this running debt means that various royal revenues were received by the merchants as repayment for past loans, not as funds to meet current payments for the king. Even if a sum of money paid into the Wardrobe or into a paymaster’s hands had been received by the Riccardi in a customs port or from some tax collector, this still represents a loan from the king’s merchants. 64 65 66 67

Ancient Correspondence, xxxi, no. 44. The original letter is only partly legible. It has been printed in calendar form in C.D.I., 1285–1292, no. 166. Ancient Correspondence, xlviii, no. 74. p.r.o., Exchequer, k.r., Memoranda Roll, 55, 56, 57. Edward’s debt to the Riccardi in 1279 stood at £23,000; after the 1294 account it was £18,924. See p.r.o., Exchequer, k.r., Var. Accts., 126/1, and l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 143 m. 35d. respectively.

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During the first war the Riccardi were collecting the wool custom, which brought in about £10,950 annually;68 from the only tax being collected, the fifteenth of 1275, they received £74,599 between 1275 and 1279;69 the Exchequer paid them £10,000 in 1276–78.70 Yet there were many charges on these revenues and it is impossible to determine how much was available during the actual campaign. The evidence is somewhat better for the second Welsh war. From the clerical taxes granted in 1280, a fifteenth for three years in the province of Canterbury and a tenth for two years in the province of York, the Riccardi received £4,883 16s. by November 1284, a year after the end of the war.71 A subsidy for the war, negotiated in part by John Kirkby on his famous ‘begging tour’, brought the Riccardi £5,702 6s. 8d. from various lay and religious, towns and counties, and a further £4,000 from London.72 When Edward finally summoned a Parliament to meet in January of 1283 he was granted a thirtieth, from which the Riccardi, acting as central collectors in the Tower, received £15,602 3s. 1 21 d.73 Their total receipt of lay and clerical taxes during the second war comes to approximately £30,188. This was about one-third more than the customs, which stand second in importance. In the special, enrolled Wardrobe war account, allowances of £22,916 5s. 5d. were given to the merchants | out of customs duties received 399 between March 1282 and November 1284.74 Again, it must be remembered that while these revenues were largely collected during the war years they cannot be specifically identified as repayment for military loans. In both the first and second Welsh campaigns Edward not only channelled much of his own revenue to the Lucchese merchants, but he also cast covetous eyes on the tax for the crusade. This was the sexennial tenth collected by papal authority in England and kept on deposit in various churches until it could be used for a new expedition to the Holy Land. In the long run Edward’s designs brought the Riccardi much more worry than aid, but under the pressure of war the treasure was irresistibly tempting to the king. Since the Riccardi were papal as well as royal bankers he would not have to lay hands on the money directly; 68 69 70 71 72

73 74

p.r.o., Exchequer, k.r., Var. Accts., 126/1. p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 123 m. 23d.; l.t.r., Enrolled Accounts, Subsidies, 1. p.r.o., Exchequer of Receipt, Issue Rolls, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41. p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 120 m. 5; k.r., Var. Accts., 351/10. For orders concerning the collection of these taxes, see c.c.r.v., pp. 218–220, 249, 255, 278. p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 136 m. 33; k.r., Var. Accts., 4/2; Chancery, Petty Bag, H/2 nos. 51–52, 56–59, 65–67; c.c.r.v., pp. 220, 226–227, 237, 241–242; Edwards, Littere Wallie, pp. 147–149, nos. 260, 263; Powicke, Thirteenth Century, pp. 505–506. p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 136 m. 33; k.r., Var. Accts., 4/2; l.t.r., Enrolled Accounts, Subsidies, 4A. p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 136 m. 33; k.r., Var. Accts., 4/2; c.c.r.v., p. 213.

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if only he could manoeuvre the deposits into Riccardi keeping they could use the funds for immediate war needs and replace them in happier times. But when Edward tried to put this plan into effect in 1276, his motives were so transparent to the papal collectors that little came of his efforts.75 In the second war Edward took vigorous and open action. Angered by clerical procrastination over a badly needed grant, Edward ordered the seizure of the crusade money. This audacious act netted £29,237 18s. 9 21 d. of the ‘old money’ (coins struck before the 1279 recoinage) and £10,558 8s. 7 21 d. of the ‘new money’.76 A part of this rich haul was quickly transferred to the Riccardi to bolster their resources. Apparently they were handed all of the tax deposited in the new money, for when Edward decided to restore the tenth, after the war and the urgent financial pressure were nearly over, the Riccardi were ordered to return ‘the whole of the tenth taken in new money to those from whom it was received’.77 The consternation which this order caused in the company is reflected in a letter they sent to the king.78 Their partners in Italy had acknowledged receipt of the seized tax money before the pope himself, and now Edward had ordered repayment without a word about restoring £4,175 10s. 7 21 d. which they had turned over to him for war expenses. Their prayer that the king would save them from loss and | disgrace was answered; Edward repaid into church treasuries at the New Temple, Canterbury, Salisbury and Chichester the money which he had ‘borrowed’ by means of his bankers.79 In understanding how the Riccardi managed their massive loans it is much more important to consider their role as an intermediary between the Crown and the entire Italian merchant-banking community in London. During each war they raised no small part of the money advanced to the king by negotiating a series of loans from their fellow countrymen. Edward could thus draw not only on Riccardi funds, but could also, working through his bankers, tap the resources of a number of the major societates operating in England. The Welsh campaigns were supported by the most advanced financiers of western Europe. Early in 1277 Orlandino da Pogio was instructed to arrange loans from fifteen other Italian companies. He was given royal letters obligatory for a total of 75 76 77 78 79

W.E. Lunt, Financial Relations of the Papacy with England to 1327 (1939), p. 332; c.p.r., 1272–81, p. 214. Lunt, ‘A Papal Tenth levied in the British Isles from 1274 to 1280’, English Historical Review, xxxii (1917), 52–55. p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Enrolled Accounts, Subsidies, 4A m. 4; c.p.r., 1281–92, p. 70. The original is found in the Ancient Correspondence, xxxi, no. 44, in rather bad condition. It appears in calendar form in C.D.I., 1285–92, no. 166. See the previous note. Cf. Lunt, Financial Relations, pp. 336–337.

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13,150 marks (£8,766 13s. 4d.) from these merchant-bankers, with instructions to receive the money or restore the king’s bonds.80 Apparently two firms refused, but not only did the remainder provide the money; a few made additional loans and three non-Italian groups were added to the list. The Riccardi had done their work well. Their account for the fifteenth of 1275 shows that from the proceeds of this tax they repaid 17,250 marks (£11,500) to the other Italian firms. Additional loans from some firms rather than interest charges probably are responsible for this figure, which is considerably larger than the total of the original letters obligatory.81 But even when a healthy interest charge is subtracted from this total it represents a significant portion of the money which the Riccardi provided for the first campaign. The procedure had worked so well that as soon as the seriousness of the second war became apparent Edward and the Riccardi again combined their credit with the general Italian community. This time royal letters were issued to fourteen Italian companies and two groups of Cahorsins for loans totalling 11,875 marks (£7,916 13s. 4d.).82 But the seriousness of this war required the issue of a second series of bonds to seventeen Italian companies | and the men of Cahors for a further 13,000 marks (£8,666 13s. 4d.).83 And finally the Riccardi supervised a third series of bonds issued to nine firms for £3,900.84 Some adjustments in the number or amount of the loans were probably made, for in the enrolled Wardrobe account for 11 and 12 Edward I the total receipt from all three series of loans was recorded as £19,633 5s. 10d., somewhat less than the total of letters obligatory issued.85 Once again the indeterminate amount of interest allows us to say only that a sum of this order of magnitude strengthened Riccardi war resources considerably. By the time of Rhys ap Maredudd’s rebellion, the general Italian loans negotiated by the Riccardi were a familiar device. The records for the loans negotiated at this time are unusually obtuse, even for medieval financial documents; but it seems that there were two series of loans which brought the Riccardi a total of £3,333 6s. 8d., less the unknown interest charges.86 If we could disregard 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

c.p.r., 1272–1281, p. 214. p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 123 m. 23d; Chancery, Liberate Roll, 56. c.c.r.v., pp. 215–216. Interest charges were commonly written into the letters obligatory per se. Ibid., pp. 230–231. Ibid., pp. 272–273. For the order to issue one set of the letters patent, see Chancery, Warrants, 1691, no. 18. p.r.o., Exchequer, l.t.r., Pipe Roll, 130 m. 5. Some of the original bonds survive. See p.r.o., Chancery, Petty Bag, H/3, nos. 27–53. Cf. c.p.r., 1281–92, pp. 310–311; Chancery, Liberate Roll, 65 m. 4; c.c.r.v., pp. 309–311.

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interest charges this sum would represent about two-fifths of the Riccardi loans during the 1287 campaign. We must often be satisfied with approximations in investigating the role of Italian financiers in the Edwardian Conquest of Wales. Yet the limitations of medieval financial documents do not obscure the basic conclusion. The Conquest was achieved in no small measure because Edward I could back his military and organizational skill, his drive and determination, with financial resources of the Riccardi of Lucca and, through them, the resources of the major companies of Italian merchant-bankers operating in England. The financial flexibility which the Italians provided translated easily into military power in late-thirteenth century warfare and brought a new element into the age-old conflicts across the Welsh border.87 Edward I could defeat the traditional Welsh guerilla tactics; he could plan his operations with the assurance that cash in any reasonable amount could be obtained; he could continue a crucial campaign through the winter of 1282–83; he could hire crack Gascon mercenaries to fight that campaign; he could raise great fortresses | by threes 402 and fours in five or six seasons’, drawing on the labour force of all England.88 Orlandino da Pogio, Riccardo Guidiccioni, Francesco Malisardi and their fellows were in all probability unknown to any Welshmen, but it would be hard to 403 overestimate their importance in the ending of Welsh independence. | 87 88

See the comment of J. Beverley Smith, ‘The Origins of the Revolt of Rhys ap Maredudd’, The Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, xxi (1965), 159 n. 5. The quotation is from Edwards, Proceedings of the British Academy, xxxii (1946), 65. On the labour force, see ibid., pp. 60–61, and the chart in Colvin, King’s Works, i, 183, figure 25.

chapter 3

Royal Finance and the Crisis of 1297

*

In his sweeping analysis of English constitutional development, Bishop Stubbs accorded the crisis of 1297 a place of special honor and importance.1 It was, in his view, a critical turning-point in the slow evolution of the characteristic English political order based on a limited monarchy watched over by a popular parliament. Edward I’s work brought to completion the interaction between popular and royal forces which could be followed back in time to the efforts of Simon de Montfort, to the Magna Carta barons, to the solid achievements of Henry I and Henry ii, and even to the necessarily harsh Norman disciplining of the Anglo-Saxons’ racial urge for liberty. The great Edward in his wisdom consolidated the emerging English nation in parliament, completing its long education in self-government. In the late years of his reign, however, Edward played the tyrant, forced into this role by the unprecedented magnitude of his difficulties: war with Philip iv over Gascony; rebellion in Wales; war in Scotland. The nation he had patiently schooled in self-government taught its teacher a lesson in constitutionalism: Edward was forced to agree to the confirmation of the Charters in 1297. Parliamentary government was assured. Stubbs’ grand constitutional vision and his particular reading of the motivation of Edward I have long ceased to command belief as historical dogma,2 yet most historians continue to see the reign of Edward I as a pivotal period of English history. The great crisis of his reign thus retains its interest.3 Two decades of successful rule – the years which brought the conquest of Wales, * Previously published in William C. Jordan, Bruce McNab, and Teofilo F. Ruiz (eds.), Order and Innovation in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Joseph R. Strayer (Princeton, 1976), 103–110; 450–452. 1 Constitutional History of England, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1874–1878), vol. ii (3rd ed., 1887), pp. 138–165. Cf. the Introductory Sketch to the Select Charters and Other Illustrations of English Con­ stitutional History (9th ed., Oxford, 1913). 2 See Geoffrey Templeman, “Edward I and the Historians,” Cambridge Historical Journal 10 (1950), and my forthcoming historiographical article on Edward i. 3 H. Rothwell, “The Confirmation of the Charters, 1297,” English Historical Review, lx (1945), pp. 16–35, 177–191, 300–315, and his “Edward I and the Struggle for the Charters,” Studies in Medieval History Presented to F.M. Powicke (Oxford, 1948); F.M. Powicke, The Thirteenth Century (2nd ed., Oxford, 1962), pp. 644–683; J.G. Edwards, “Confirmatio Cartarum and Baronial Grievances in 1297,” English Historical Review, lviii (1943), pp. 147–169, 273–300; Bertie Wilkinson, The Constitutional History of England, 1216–1399, with select documents, 3 vols. (London, 1948–1959), vol. i, pp. 187–232; Michael Prestwich, War, Politics and Finances Under Edward I (Totowa, New Jersey, 1972), Chapters xi, xii. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004302655_005

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the great series of statutes, the continental diplomacy, the apparent resolution of the Scottish succession – were followed by the crisis which, as Rothwell has shown,4 lasted throughout the last decade of Edward’s life. Financial explanations have often figured prominently in analyses of the causes of Edward’s troubles, and one of these deserves close attention. | In a classic article published in 1946,5 J.G. Edwards thoroughly examined the impressive series of eight castles (five integrated with fortified towns) built by Edward I in mid-Wales and North Wales to insure the permanence of his conquest. Builth, Aberystwyth, Flint, and Rhuddlan arose after the campaign of 1277; Conway, Caernarvon, and Harlech were begun after the conquest in 1282– 1283; and Beaumaris, on the island of Anglesey, was started after the rebellion of 1292–1295. Rather than writing another familiar military or architectural analysis, Edwards was concerned to present the castle-building as the “medieval state-enterprise” of a king “wielding in his iron hand the whole resources of the most compactly centralized dominion of that day.”6 In answer to the four basic questions he posed, Edwards showed that (1) except at Caernarvon and Beaumaris, where work dragged on for decades, the castles were constructed in five to seven building “seasons” (the period roughly from April to November), with three or four of them going up simultaneously in and after 1277 and again in and after 1283; (2) the large work force required may have numbered as many as 4,000 men in 1283 and 1284, and it was collected by “tapping the labour-market over the greater part of England”;7 (3) recorded costs of the enterprise are hardly complete but “we may almost certainly take £80,000 as a safe notional figure for the total sum.…”;8 (4) these funds came primarily from the king’s wardrobe, with Irish revenue a second major source. In their essentials these conclusions still stand. Just as Edwards corrected earlier authors’ views,9 his own particulars have been somewhat revised and expanded by R. Allen Brown, H.M. Colvin, and A.J. Taylor, the authors of the massive study of royal building, The History of the King’s Works, the first two volumes of which deal with the Middle Ages.10 But what has received less 4 “Edward i and the Struggle for the Charters.” 5 “Edward i’s Castle-Building in Wales,” Proceedings of the British Academy, xxxii (1946), pp. 17–81. 6 Ibid., quotations from pp. 16 and 65, respectively. 7 Ibid., p. 61. 8 Ibid., p. 62. 9 Such as John E. Morris, for whose The Welsh Wars of Edward the First (Oxford, 1901), he expresses high praise. 10 The History of the King’s Works, general editor H.M. Colvin, 2 vols. (London, 1963), vol. I, chapters V and vi; vol. ii, chapter xiii and appendices C. I, ii, iii contain a vast store of information on the castles and associated works. The authors note that actually ten new castles were

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attention is the important conclusion which Edwards suggests must follow from expenditure of this magnitude: he posits the closest link between the castle-building and the great crisis of the reign. “Now this crisis,” he writes, “was not altogether of sudden growth: for although it had been hastened since 1294 by the coincidence of almost simultaneous wars with French and Welsh and Scots, it was largely the slow product of the costly enterprises of Edward’s reign as a whole. Among these | enterprises, none had more steadily devoured 104 his treasure than his castle-building in Wales.”11 These contentions have often been accepted12 and deserve closer examination. Was Edward falling ever more deeply into debt, with the castles acting as the great millstone? Was there a direct connection between castle-building and the crisis of 1297? Medieval state finance is a notoriously imprecise study, but we can find one of the clearest indicators of the condition of royal finance in late thirteenthcentury England in the king’s credit system – that is, in his working relationship with the great Italian societates, the merchant-banking companies drawn to England by papal finance and the wool trade. Throughout the first half of his reign, in 1272–1294, the Riccardi Company of Lucca13 (Societas Riccardorum de Luka) acted as the king’s bankers and virtually as a branch of royal government; they received major royal revenues, such as the wool custom and the

11

12

13

built (they add Ruthin and Hope to Edwards’ list of eight), that four “lordship” castles (Hawarden, Denbigh, Holt, and Chirk) were begun under general royal direction, and that substantial work was undertaken at three native Welsh castles that fell into royal hands (Dolwyddelan, Bere, Criccieth), as well as at several border fortresses which had served as English bases (Chester, Oswestry, Shrewsbury, Montgomery, St. Briavel’s). See vol. i, p. 293. “Castle-Building,” pp. 64–65. This seems to echo T.F. Tout’s assertion that “Edward formed so many great designs that he was always more and more in want of money. From this perpetual indebtedness spreng half the defects of Edward’s character, and more than half of the difficulties of his reign.” Edward i (London, 1893), p. 66. Helen Cam wrote in England Before Elizabeth (Harper Torchbook edn., New York, 1960), p. 113: “…all through his reign he was plunging deeper and deeper into debt. The wars of his father’s reign had bequeathed to him a deficit that he was never able to make good; his own crusade and his wars in Wales, Scotland and France increased it, and his attempts to realize some of the floating wealth of the realm involved him…in disputes with his subjects without materially improving the position.” The idea of cumulative indebtedness was not, of course, first stated by Edwards, nor by Tout (see previous note). William Stubbs wrote in 1882 that the king “inherited from his father a poverty which his own obligations, incurred during the Crusade, increased into a lifelong burden.” Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward ii, 2 vols. (Rolls Series, London, 1882), vol. i, p. c. See Richard W. Kaeuper, Bankers to the Crown, the Riccardi of Lucca and Edward I (Princeton, 1973) and the sources cited there, especially Edmund B. Fryde, “Public Credit, with Special Reference to North-Western Europe,” Cambridge Economic History, vol. iii (Cambridge, 1963), chapter vii. Cf. Michael Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance, Chapter ix.

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proceeds of taxation, and they provided substantial loans for almost any royal need. Riccardi loans were always useful and often essential for the great royal enterprises of the period, such as the campaigns in Wales, the king’s stay in Gascony in 1286–1289, the costly process of diplomacy and political marriage, and the still more persistent charges for the king’s works both in England and Wales. But Riccardi money also flowed in a small and constant stream to pay for household provisions, officials’ fees and the like. The steady stream of mandates for their payments kept the king’s debt to the societas at about £18,500 a year on the average, a sum nearly equivalent to half the annual average receipt of the wardrobe, the chief agency of government finance, in this same period. Edward’s total obligation to the company no doubt exceeded £410,000.14 English historians long assumed the baneful influence of this use of foreigners. William Stubbs complained that “from the very day of his accession Edward was financially in the hands of the Lombard bankers,” and he attributed the king’s problems with London to this Italian connection. His pressing financial need “forced him to the invention or development of a great system of customs duties in the collection of which he had to employ foreign agents.”15 T.F. Tout was no less plainly displeased with the reliance on Italians and | spoke of Edward being “compelled to make special terms with the Riccardi”; he was also distressed that the customs revenues were “directly paid over to Edward’s Italian creditors, who in practice farmed them, just as the modern creditors of a corrupt Oriental despot, or a bankrupt South American republic endeavour to collect part of the revenues of the debtor states into their own hands.”16 Yet far from revealing a rash and progressive plunge into debt or an unwise dependence on aliens, these astronomical figures are signs of a sensible and creative use of Italian expertise and credit resources by a king whose income was substantial but slow and irregular. The Riccardi were indeed expensive, apparently collecting a high rate of interest in addition to favors of a great variety; but the financial flexibility their ready cash allowed justified a cost which was in fact 14 15 16

See the tables and discussion in Kaeuper, Bankers to the Crown, pp. 124–131. The quotations are taken from his introduction to Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward ii, vol. i, pp. c–cii. The quotations appear in Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England, 6 vols. (Manchester, 1920–1933), vol. ii, pp. 117 and 113–114, respectively. Tout had first used the comparison to Oriental potentates and South American republics in The Place of the Reign of Edward ii in English History (Manchester, 1914), p. 38. He was equally negative toward the Italian companies in his earlier biography of Edward, in which he wrote of the king’s finding himself “helplessly in the hands of the greedy companies of Lombard bankers who had begun to push themselves into the position which had hitherto been monopolized by Jewish usurers.” Edward I, p. 66. Cf. pp. 83, 142.

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kept at a reasonable level. In 1279 Edward owed his financiers £23,000;17 in 1294 the debt was £18,924.18 In each case the sum was certainly less than the ordinary revenue collected by his government each year. Lending and repayment were going on constantly and simultaneously in a sophisticated system that allowed Edward to anticipate his income and to act accordingly. The English government was harnessing some of the power of the “commercial revolution” which was so actively at work in thirteenth-century Europe. The very existence of such a financial system raises serious objections to a view of cumulative indebtedness leading finally to the crisis of 1297. Quite to the contrary, the first half of the reign must be viewed as a resounding financial success. Riccardi cash, ultimately backed by the wealth of a prosperous country, tapped efficiently by an administration which still commanded a good deal of respect and confidence,19 paid for a significant part of the great enterprises Edward undertook, including the castles in Wales. It would be difficult to maintain that before the fall of the Riccardi in the summer of 1294 Edward’s finances were in serious disarray. Though his projects had been ambitious, the king had found sufficient resources to pay for them and had arranged the credit financing necessary to insure operating cash in any reasonable amount.20 Thus, in order for the castles to be viewed as a critical factor in the crisis, a major portion of their expense must have occurred | after 1294. But this is 106 plainly not the case. Evidence tabulated by Edwards himself, with the additions of Brown, Colvin, and Taylor, shows a recorded expenditure of approximately £60,900 before 1294, and only an additional £17,371 in 1294–1304.21 This means that nearly 80 percent of the castle expenses which could conceivably be linked with the outbreak of the great crisis of the reign had been met during the period of high financial success when the Riccardi were king’s bankers. In understanding the financial dimensions of the crisis of 1297 there is no need to posit a backlog of debt from the first half of the reign; events in 1294 and following years provide more than enough evidence for crippling financial problems. Caught in the vise-like grip of foreign and domestic crises, Edward 17 18 19

20 21

Public Record Office, E 101/126/1. All documentary references will be to manuscripts in the Public Record Office. E 372/142 m. 35d. The resentment which would produce a serious drop in the yield of taxation late in the reign had not yet begun. See F.M. Powicke, Thirteenth Century, pp. 524–527, Michael Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance, pp. 179–182, and the sources cited in both of these works. This is the thesis of Kaeuper, Bankers to the Crown. Cf. E.B. Fryde, “Public Credit,” p. 437, Tout, Chapters, ii, p. 112, and Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance, pp. 192–193, 218. Edwards “Castle-Building,” Appendix i, and King’s Works, ii, Appendix C.I.

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overreached his resources disastrously. Moreover, this overextension came at a time when his credit structure built upon the Riccardi Company had collapsed utterly. Recent works have shown the degree of royal extension in quantitative terms. Edmund B. Fryde22 estimates that Edward spent more than £200,000 in the first seventeen months of the wars with the French and Welsh. The overall estimate of Michael Prestwich is an astounding outlay of £750,000 on war between 1294 and early 1298.23 The size of this figure takes on meaning when it is compared to his estimate for the total amount of coined money currently circulating in the England of Edward I; Prestwich suggests that it did not exceed £1,000,000 and was probably nearer to £800,000.24 Edward’s wars with the French, the Scots, and the Welsh may thus have consumed a treasure nearly equivalent to the stock of circulating coin in his realm. Historians have long had some sense of Edward’s serious overextension,25 but his difficulties were vastly complicated by the fact that he incurred these enormous expenditures at the one period in his reign when he lacked a working financial relationship with an Italian societas. The Riccardi slide into bankruptcy began precisely when Edward most needed them.26 In fact, their difficulties must have become known to the king shortly after he learned of the duplicity of Philip the Fair over Gascony; war with France began officially with Edward’s renunciation of homage to the French king on June 18, 1294,27 and on July 29 the king’s bankers lost control of the woo | customs, the chief prop of their lending and the seal of their understanding with the crown throughout the first half of the reign.28 In the years of greatest challenge the credit system which had served him in all his plans for the past twenty-two years was in ruin. The Riccardi were neither easily nor quickly replaced.29 Both the shock the 22 Books of Prests of the King’s Wardrobe for 1294–5 (Oxford, 1962), p. 1. 23 War, Politics and Finance, p. 175. 24 “Edward i’s Monetary Policies and Their Consequences,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., xxii (1969), pp. 406–416. 25 Tout, Place of Edward ii, pp. 36–38; Fryde, “Public Credit,” pp. 457–458; J.G. Edwards, “Confirmatio Cartarum and Baronial Grievances in 1297,” English Historical Review, lviii (1943), pp. 157–160; Harry Rothwell, “Edward I and the Struggle for the Charters, 1297– 1305,” Studies in Medieval History Presented to Frederick Maurice Powicke (Oxford, 1948), pp. 322–323; Powicke, Thirteenth Century, chapter xiv; Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance, passim. 26 See the analysis in Kaeuper, Bankers to the Crown, Chapter v, Section 1. 27 Powicke, Thirteenth Century, p. 648. 28 E 159/68 m. 86d. 29 For what follows see Kaeuper, “The Frescobaldi of Florence and the English Crown,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, X (1973), pp. 45–95.

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king felt on the Riccardi collapse and the unwillingness of another Italian soci­ etas to play the Riccardi role delayed the reconstitution of a financial scheme based on the Italians. The Frescobaldi of Florence would begin to fill the Riccardi role on a limited scale only in 1299, and their lending approached the grand Riccardi scale only from about 1304. Thus, during the five critical years 1294–1299 Edward lacked a banker altogether; for the following five years, 1299–1304, Frescobaldi lending was regular, but never rose to Riccardi levels. An effective credit system required a new base; the 1274 wool custom on which the Riccardi system had been built was overcharged with debts during the years of great crisis. Only after the negotiation of the new custom with foreign merchants in 1303 was the reconstruction of an Italian relationship similar to that with the Riccardi really possible. How much relief could his bankers have given him in view of the scale of royal war expenditure in the crisis years? Would the survival of the Riccardi or the earlier significant engagement of the Frescobaldi have changed the financial picture considerably and eased the crisis? Any really satisfying answers are, of course, impossible since the effort brings us into the shadow world of what might have been. But we do know the aid actually supplied by the Riccardi and Frescobaldi at other times in the reign, and this gives us some measure of the loss inflicted by the absence of a banker. Over the first twenty-two years of the reign Riccardi loans, as we have seen, averaged about £18,500 annually (probably including interest), and in 1302–1310 Frescobaldi loans produced a royal debt of more than £15,300 annually.30 But in times of stress Italian support could provide considerably larger sums. During 1282–1284, years which brought Edward’s second campaign in Wales and the financial recovery period which followed, the merchants from Lucca advanced roughly £72,600.31 Shortly thereafter, in the three-year period | 1286–1289, during which Edward was on 108 the continent and the rebellion of Rhys ap Maredudd broke out in newly conquered Wales, their total was more than £112,000.32 In the little more than two and one-half years from late November of 1304 to July of 1307 Frescobaldi loans totaling £82,000 were charged on customs revenue alone.33 Support on this 30 31 32

33

Ibid., p. 72. E 372/130 mm. 5,5d. E 101/351/10. E 372/136 m. 33. E 101/4/2. Of this sum approximately £103,737 was owed for Gascon trip expenses. See Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1281–1292, p. 318, and the discussion in Kaeuper, Bankers to the Crown, pp. 95–96. The remaining sum of £8,300 was advanced for the suppression of the revolt. See E 372/132 m. 1, E 372/133 m. 28, E 372/134 mm. 1, 2d., E 101/4/21, and the discussion in Kaeuper, Bankers to the Crown, pp. 195–199. Kaeuper, “Frescobaldi,” p. 67.

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scale would have considerably eased the financial strains of the crisis years, especially since the Italian loans represented ready cash free from immediate political repercussions. Credit of, say, £115,000 or £125,000 would have exceeded the combined proceeds of several of the war taxes on movable property. Even if a societas could have provided only a portion of the funds needed, perhaps only 15 to 20 percent of the suggested total of £750,000 in 1294–1298, the highhanded nature of the king’s actions could have been mitigated, and certain famous and stormy scenes might have been played differently. It is tempting to argue that if we wish to find a critical financial factor in the crisis of Edward’s reign we should look not to the raising of great Welsh fortresses, but rather to the fall of an obscure group of Lucchese merchant-bankers.34 But although a functioning relationship with some Italian company would undoubtedly have eased the financial pressure, it cannot be argued that such a banker could have spun open the jaws of the vise. In fact, in these years of crisis Edward had gone beyond the limitations inherent in his credit system. For projects in reasonable consonance with his revenues the Italians could anticipate his sound income in handsome fashion; but expenditure ran off the scale in the mid-1290’s. “Thus tamely and ingloriously,” Tout suggested, “the great king’s reign came to an end with broken-down finances.” In one sense this is not true. Edward had re-established his credit structure and in the last few years of his life it worked once again smoothly and on a most helpful scale.35 But Frescobaldi lending to Edward I and to Edward ii (until they were expelled in the upheaval of 1311) could hardly mend the damage of that decade 1294– 1304 when this structure was totally or partially in ruin, and when war expenditure had soared so disastrously high. This combination of royal over-extension and Italian failure would darken the last years of the grim and determined old 109 king, leaving its mark in the adverse wardrobe | balances, the snarls and deficiencies of wardrobe records which Tout knew so thoroughly;36 and this combination would work its effects as well on the reign of the second and less 110 capable Edward. |

34 Chapters, vol. ii, p. 129. 35 Kaeuper, “Frescobaldi,” pp. 62–68. 36 In The Place of Edward ii, p. 38, he states unequivocally, “Probably no medieval king has left his finances in a more hopeless confusion than did the great Edward. Certainly none of them ever handed to his successor so heavy a task with such inadequate means to discharge it.”

chapter 4

The Frescobaldi of Florence and the English Crown1 From the closing decades of the thirteenth century into the middle years of the fourteenth century, as its subjects were adjusting to the painful necessity of recurrent taxation, the English monarchy depended for its smooth financial operation upon the great firms of Italian merchant-bankers in its employ, selecting its financiers from among the greatest firms of the time. The effects of the transalpine migration of Italians into northwest Europe, described by R.S. Lopez as an “Italian diaspora,”2 were felt in England no less than France and the Low Countries. In the mid-thirteenth century papal taxes and the finest wool in Europe acted as the twin magnets drawing the Italians, already papal bankers and ambitious wool merchants, to the island. Their financial expertise, resources, and networks of branches stretching from London to Tuscany, made the Italian companies not only significant businessmen, but also ideal bankers to lay and ecclesiastical lords and especially to the crown.3 Their loans to the king were always useful and often essential, allowing prompt * Previously published in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 10 (1973), 41–95. 1 This article was written with the cooperation of Dr. Edmund B. Fryde, University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, whose generous help is acknowledged with gratitude. I also wish to thank Professor Joseph R. Strayer, Princeton University, for his suggestions, and Professor Marvin Becker, University of Rochester, Michigan, for assistance with various matters Italian. All manuscript references are from the Public Record Office, London, unless otherwise stated. Research in the Public Record Office was made possible by two grants from the American Philosophical Society for the summers of 1968 and 1971. Professor Gino Corti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, translated the Frescobaldi business letters. 2 R.S. Lopez, “The Trade of Medieval Europe: The South,” in The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. ii (Cambridge, 1952), Chap. 5, p. 287 ff. For the Italians in England see E.B. Fryde, “Public Credit with Special Reference to North-Western Europe,” in ibid., vol. iii (1963), Chap. 7, Sec. 3 and 4. 3 There is abundant evidence on Frescobaldi business activity in the English archives. For their extensive wool purchases, especially from religious houses, sec, for example, e 159/68 mm. 82d., 87, 89; e 368/72 mm. 48d., 50. Their involvement in the sale of woolen cloth is well illustrated in their business letters, e.g., e 30/1488, pp. 4, 6. These business letters also show their extensive financial transactions with other Italian companies, as in s.c. 1, 49 Nos. 121, 177. Evidence on lending and occasional deposits is scattered throughout the recognitiones of the King’s Remembrancer and Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer Memoranda Rolls (see, for example, e 368/73 mm. 58 ff.). Cf. e 101/128/26 and c.p.r. 1317–1321, pp. 249–250. There are also many recognizances for debt on the close rolls.

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action without regard to the current reserve in the exchequer. Although Henry iii occasionally dealt with the Italians, only with Edward i do we find a systematic reliance on the credit facilities of the societates. For the first twenty-two years of his reign, 1272–1294, Edward drew extensively on the resources of the Riccardi of Lucca, especially in order to finance his conquest of Wales, the ambitious series of king’s | works, the continental diplomacy, and the persistent and essential requirements of the royal household. Continued financial flexibility of this sort would unquestionably have eased the years of crisis which Edward faced after 1294, but in the summer of that year, shortly after the French war opened, the Riccardi buckled and began to slide into bankruptcy and failure; they were obviously of no further use to the crown. Edward thus had to deal with his great domestic crisis and the nearly simultaneous wars in Wales, Gascony, and Scotland without the services of the merchant-bankers on whom he had relied for more than two decades.4 A replacement for the Riccardi was not easily or quickly found, and perhaps with Riccardi failure fresh in his mind Edward was not at once certain that a close, special relationship with a single firm was wise. Although the Frescobaldi5 would succeed to the Riccardi role as the king’s chief financiers, they were at first unable or unwilling to act on the Riccardi scale; their loans became regular only from 1299 and of significant size only from 1302, leaving a critical eightyear gap, 1294–1302. During these years between the Riccardi collapse and the establishment of a firm relationship with the Frescobaldi, Edward had to rely  on a somewhat unwieldy and somewhat unwilling collection of eleven companies, including in addition to the Frescobaldi Bianchi and Neri, the Spini, Amanati, Cerchi Bianchi and Neri, Bardi, Pulchi and Rembertini, and 4 The role of the Riccardi in government finance and the reasons for their failure are examined in detail in Richard W. Kaeuper, Bankers to the Crown, the Riccardi of Lucca and Edward i (Princeton, 1973). Cf. Fryde, “Public Credit,” pp. 456–457, and Michael Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance under Edward i (Totowa, N.J., 1972), Chap. 9. 5 On the Florentine background of the company see Armando Sapori, La Compagnia dei Frescobaldi in Inghilterra (Florence, 1947), pp. 1–2 n. 1, and Robert Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze (Italian translation of his Geschichte von Florenz by Giovanni Battista Klein; Florence, 1956), passim, especially vol. iv, part 2, pp. 368 ff. The early leaders of the company were Coppo Giuseppe, Coppo Cottenne, and Taldo Janiani, later replaced by Amerigo and Bettino Frescobaldi, sons of Berto, the paterfamilias who remained in Florence. Three younger sons of Berto are also found in England: Guglielmino, Giovanni, and Buonaccurso, all clerics. Guelfo, a bastard son of Berto, was active in company affairs in Gascony, and Piero, apparently also an illegitimate son of Berto, joined his half brothers in England. The Frescobaldi companies, unlike the Riccardi, seem to have been largely family enterprises, although important agents in England and Gascony were recruited from outside family ranks.

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Mozi – all Florentines – the Bellardi of Lucca and the Bonsignori of Siena. Of the two Frescobaldi companies the “whites” were much more important in England and by the time they became king’s bankers had either absorbed or bought out the “blacks.”6 The Frescobaldi Bianchi | provided more loans than 46 any of the other companies, but there is no evidence that, on analogy with the Riccardi, they acted as the link between the crown and the other companies. In the first half of the reign, when the Riccardi system was working smoothly, the royal bankers arranged loans from as many as fourteen Italian societates, placing the bonds and collecting the proceeds for the king’s business. Much of the cash needed to fund the campaigns which conquered Wales, for example, was obtained by the Riccardi in this manner.7 After 1294, however, when Edward was in more desperate straits, the Riccardi were facing ruin; to get badly needed loans the king could not rely on the old system. But he could nonetheless tap the wealth of the Italians operating in England on a reduced scale. A series of loans negotiated with the eleven companies between late 1294 and the summer of 1298 brought a total of £28,966 13s. 4d. into the royal coffers. Table  1 summarizes the basic information on these loans. Borrowing on this scale was useful, even if the loans represent a much smaller supply of cash than the Riccardi had provided for the great enterprises of the first half of the reign. But the Italian companies were evidently less than enthusiastic about the prospects of engaging in government finance; compulsion seems to have been necessary and could easily be made effective. Perhaps the merchants were threatened with expulsion and confiscation;8 certainly the crown ordered the seizure of wool purchased by both Frescobaldi companies, the Cerchi Bianchi and Neri, and the Bardi, thus impressing on the Italians the need for royal export licenses.9 The language used in government documents describing the 6 In their enrolled account of 1310 the Frescobaldi Bianchi answered for the loans and receipts of the Frescobaldi Neri. e 372/154 mm. 42, 42d. Cf. Sapori, La Compagnia, p. 9. According to Robert Davidsohn the white and black distinction had nothing to do with political divisions in Florence (i.e., the Guelph whites and blacks), but was simply a differentiation between two family companies. He suggests that the term Bianchi might simply reflect the blond hair of one company leader. In English documents the Frescobaldi Bianchi company is sometimes called that of Sir John Frescobaldi. Storia di Firenze, iv, part 2, p. 369. 7 Kaeuper, Bankers to the Crown, Chap. 4, Sec. 5. 8 This is the suggestion of Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance, p. 208. Cf. his comments on the low level of royal credit, pp. 215–216, and those of E.B. Fryde (ed.), Book of Prests of the King’s Wardrobe for 1294–1295 (Oxford, 1962), pp. li–lii. 9 On the wool policy and seizures see e 159/68 mm. 82, 82d., 86, 86d., 87, 88, 88d., 89; e 101/126/7; e 368/69 m. 84; e 143/5/5/25; e 356/1 m. 25.

48

£ 745 0 0* ....…............ 2,457 0 0* 2,132 0 0* 1,576 0 0* 1,030 0 0* 1,184 0 0* 4,000 0 0 876 0 0* 200 0 0 ....…............

£ 14,200 0 0

Spini Amanati Cerchi Neri Cerchi Bianchi Bardi Pulchi and Rembertini Mozi Frescobaldi Bianchi Frescobaldi Neri Bellardi Bonsignori

Total

£ 500 0 0

.…......... £ 500 0 0 .…......... .…......... .…......... .…......... .…......... .…......... .…......... .…......... .….........

Easter 12952

£ 1,333 6 8

£   333 6 8  333 6 8 .…............ .…............ .…............  333 6 8  333 6 8 .…............ .…............ .…............ .…............

October 12953

£  2,933   6 8

£  1,666 13 4 ….........…… 200 0 0 ….........…… ….........…… ….........…… 1,066 13 4 ….........…… ….........…… ….........…… ….........……

February 12974

£ 10,000 0 0

£   1,160 0 0 1,160 0 0 1,160 0 0 1,160 0 0 1,160 0 0 1,160 0 0 1,160 0 0 666 6 8 213 6 8 333 6 8 666 13 4

Summer 12985

£ 28,966 13 4

£   3,905   0 0 1,993   6 8 3,817   0 0 3,292   0 0 2,736   0 0 2,523   6 8 3,744     0 0 4,666     6 8 1,089   6 8 533   6 8 666 13 4

Company Total

Note: On all of these loans see Edward Bond, “Extracts from the Liberate Rolls, relative to Loans supplied by Italian Merchants, in the 13th and 14th Centuries,” Archaeologia, xxviii (1840). 1  e 101/126/8; e 159/71 mm. 99, 99d., 100, 101; e 401/132. Starred figures are those in the recognizance for £10,000, payable in two installments: the octave of St. Martin, in mid-November, 1294, and the Purification of the Virgin, February 2, 1295. 2 e 101/126/8. 3 e 101/126/8; e 401/138. 4 e 101/126/8; e 401/140; e 159/70 m. 105d. 5 e 101/126/8; e 401/143; e 159/71 m. 70d.; e 368/69 m. 14d|.

Michaelmas 1294–12951

Loans from the eleven companies, 1294–1298

Company

Table 4.1

46 chapter 4

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first set of loans indicates that they were forced. In Michaelmas term of 1294– 1295 representatives of the Frescobaldi appeared at the exchequer and acknowledged “for themselves | and their whole company, that they are held to pay to 47 the Lord king at the exchequer £2,000 at the coming Purification of the Blessed Mary [February 2, 1295]. And they obligate themselves and every one of their company for the whole sum and all their goods and chattels in whatsoever hands they may be found.” On the King’s Remembrancer’s Memoranda roll this formal recognizance immediately follows a list of seven additional firms expected to provide a total loan of £10,000, and so it may be the form of the obligation imposed on all the companies.10 A later receipt roll records the payment by the merchants of 10,000 marks, a part of the £10,000 “in which the same merchants are held to the king by their letters obligatory.”11 Further evidence that these are forced loans comes from the case of the Spini loan in the series from October, 1295. Their share, set at 2,500 marks (£1,666 13s. 4d.) was virtually seized by Edward. The bishop of Winchester, John of Pontoise, had previously deposited 2,000 marks with the Spini and since the king claimed the bishop had made over all his goods and possessions to the crown before journeying to Rome, he took this deposit from the Spini along with another 500 marks of the merchants’ own money “as a loan.” It must have been small comfort to the bishop and the merchants to learn that the king “can by no means spare his friends in so urgent a necessity” when he is acting “for the salvation and defense of the whole realm.” John of Pointoise’s treasurer would face much trouble, and the Spini even more, before the matter was settled and the money entirely repaid.12 10 11

12

e 368/68 mm. 64d., 84. See Fryde (ed.), Book of Prests, p. li and note 9. e 401/143; e 159/71 m. 70d.; e 368/69 m. 14d. Later records show the payment of 2,000 marks (July 30, 1298), 10,000 marks (August 10, 1298), and 3,000 marks (December 12, 1298) with a notation in each case that the sum is partial payment of the £10,000 “in which the same merchants are held to the king by their letters patent” (e 159/71 m. 70d.; e 368/ 69 m. 14d.). e 159/71 m. 23. The Spini were assigned customs revenues in London, Hull, and Boston to recover both their 500 marks and the bishop’s 2,000. Although they did receive the 500 marks, by 1298 only £13 16s. 0d. of the larger sum had been returned. To the bishop’s frequent complaints the king answered that nothing further could be done while the war lasted. For his refusal to bring the merchant’s letter obligatory before the exchequer officials, the bishop’s treasurer, Geoffrey of Farnham, was arrested. In a meeting of the councils of both king and bishop it was agreed that royal officials be allowed to see the letter “outside the court.” It was inspected at the Priory of St. Mary, Southwark, put in a coffer under the seals of Geoffrey and the officials, and given to the prior for safekeeping. See e 368/77 m. 55; e 368/79 mm. 66d., 109; e 368/81 mm. 9d., 30, 38d.; e 368/83 mm. 66d., 69.

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After 1298 some further loans were negotiated with the various | companies (beyond the £28,966) and again there is some evidence of the kind of pressure designed to make the merchants less unwilling to become crown creditors. The prohibition against bringing bad money (the notorious crockards and pollards) into the realm gave the king a convenient tool. In September, 1299, a letter close ordered that the members of nine societates “who are indicted for pollards and crockards and other like money brought by them into the realm, contrary to the king’s inhibition … shall mainpern for each society, as the king wishes to show the merchants favour so that they may more conveniently and freely exercise their merchandise in the meantime.”13 Undoubtedly the king’s true intentions became more clear one month later when all of these firms (with the exception of the Frescobaldi) lent the crown pollards worth 4,406l.5s. in the black money of Tours (£1,101 15s. 0d.).14 A pardon to all these firms was dated April 8, 1300; only three days later another loan from seven of the companies provided £1,900 for the London change.15 On July 21, 1300, the Spini were pardoned for a violation of the monetary prohibition; on the same day their loan of £500 for the London change was recorded in a letter patent.16 A certain amount of royal pressure, then, is evident for many of the loans, but Edward did make serious efforts to repay them. At Saint Albans on May 25, 1298, the debts were “recited,” the total obligation of £28,966 13s. 4d. noted, and means for repayment outlined. All royal repayment of the loans to that date was to be deducted and, for the remainder, the customs revenues in the following ports were assigned to the eleven companies: Berwick, Newcastle, Hull, Boston, Lynn, Yarmouth, Ipswich, Sandwich, London, Southampton, and Bristol. A representative of the merchants would act as customs controller in each of these major ports; he would have one foil of the cocket (customs) seal and was

13 14

15

16

C.C.R. 1296–1302, p. 271. The companies are the Frescobaldi, Cerchi Bianchi and Neri, Bardi, Mozi, Pulchi and Rembertini, Amanati. C 66/116 m. 6. c.p.r. 1292–1301, p. 447. October 22, 1299; the companies are the Pulchi and Rembertini, Bardi, Bonsignori, Cerchi Bianchi and Neri, Mozi, and Amanati. The conversion to sterling value is that given in the document. c.p.r. 1292–1301, pp. 504–505. The companies pardoned are the Frescobaldi, Cerchi Bianchi and Neri, Bardi, Mozi, Pulchi and Rembertini, Amanati, Bellardi, and Bonsignori. The firms lending are the Amanati, Mozi, Pulchi and Rembertini, Cerchi Bianchi and Neri, and Frescobaldi. The Mozi and Cerchi Neri loans of this date and the Cerchi Neri loan of October, 1299, were repaid only in 1310 (e 403/154). c.p.r. 1292–1301, pp. 528–529.

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to keep a counterroll as check on the customs collector.17 Despite | some initial 50 problems,18 the plan seems to have worked satisfactorily. By the time this sensible arrangement was made, however, repayment of the loans was already in progress. It began with customs allowances on the wool exported by the Italians and even before the Saint Albans meeting included sums from customs revenue as well. In 23 and 24 Edward i the London customers were given allowances for the customs due on wool exports by the Mozi, Frescobaldi Bianchi and Neri, Spini, Bardi, Cerchi Bianchi and Neri, Pulchi and Rembertini; they also paid £4,254 0s. 15d. to the entire group of eleven companies.19 Repayment for the Spini and Mozi loans of February, 1297, was to come from the custom on their own exported wool, or if this proved insufficient, from the custom paid by others.20 The specifics of repayment for the Frescobaldi share of these loans will serve as a more complete example. (See Table 2.) The Frescobaldi case illustrated the typical means of repayment, both free wool export and customs revenues. Their case is atypical, however, in that repayment was complete. Actually they received even more than their share for the loans from the eleven companies, the surplus undoubtedly going toward repayment of their many additional advances. Most of the companies were far from being this fortunate. By the summer of 1299 Edward had returned less than twothirds of the money lent by the Italians since 1294, i.e., less than £20,000 out of roughly £30,000.21 Even more discouraging for the companies was the dim prospect of further compensation; for in May, 1299, the king granted the merchants of Bayonne, to whom he was heavily indebted for the defense of Gascony, “the issues of the whole of the custom appertaining to the king on wools, hides and woolfells in England, Ireland, and Scotland, after that land is in good peace, to be 17 18

19 20 21

e 101/126/8; e 159/71 mm. 99, 99d., 100. I found no evidence that the Frescobaldi actually received revenues from Berwick or Bristol. In June, 1297, the companies complained that local customs collectors were placing serious obstacles in their way, requiring all the merchants to appear together rather than through an agent, and forcing them to seek the duties “from house to house and from place to place,” instead of turning it over to them at one fixed location (e 368/69 m. 96). Although the crown ordered an end to such practices, it could not always resist the temptation to divert badly needed customs funds away from the merchants. Hull customs, assigned to the Frescobaldi in October, 1297, were reported in January, 1298, to have been sent to Scotland (e 368/69 mm. 28, 62). e 372/149 m. 87d. For examples of similar allowances at Hull see ibid. m. 82d. e 159/70 m. 105d. I find a total of roughly £19,771 in the enrolled customs accounts: e 372/145; e 372/146; e 372/149. Cf. e 372/129; e 356/1.

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Table 4.2 Repayment of frescobaldi portion of the eleven companies loans Amount

Source

£ 1,308 10 10

                          500 0          0                             691 7        0                            353 6         8               1,284 10         5½                                    14 6           7¼                            111 7          4¾                                    26 13        8                                   32 13          3                                             5 16        6                                             3 18        6                                             3 6          8                                    16 11        0                                     36 11       6                                              7 8          4                              621 4          0

Hull customs rebates on exported wool (40s./sack), before May 6, 1298 Boston customs rebates on exported wool (40s./sack), before May 6, 1298 London customs rebates on exported wool (40s./sack), before May 6, 1298 Hull customs collectors 25 Edward i Boston customs collectors 25 Edward i Newcastle customs collectors 25 Edward i Collectors in various parts, before May 6, 1298 Hull collectors May 6–Pentecost, 27 Edward i London collectors May 6–Pentecost, 27 Edward i Boston collectors May 6–Pentecost, 27 Edward i Newcastle collectors May 6–Pentecost, 27 Edward i Sandwich collectors May 6–Pentecost, 27 Edward i Winchelsea collectors May 6–Pentecost, 27 Edward i Ipswich collectors May 6–Pentecost, 27 Edward i Yarmouth collectors May 6–Pentecost, 27 Edward i Lynn collectors May 6–Pentecost, 27 Edward i Southampton collectors May 6–Pentecost, 27 Edward i Hull Collectors 26, 27 Edward i

£ 6,404 5 2½

(Combined Frescobaldi Bianchi and Neri loans, £5,756 13s. 4d.)

1,114   17            5                             271   15        5

Note: See the enrolled Frescobaldi account, e 372/154 mm. 42, 42d. For orders concerning these payments see e 368/69 mm. 28, 62; e 368/70 mm. 100d., 110, 113. Customs revenue at Hull was temporarily diverted to the Scottish campaign between October, 1297, and January, 1298.

51

received by their assigns from Whitsunday next, until their debt is satisfied,” adding the firm assurance that “the king promises not in any manner to take the said custom out of their hands | contrary to this grant.”22 Only in October, 1305, did Edward return to the task of repaying the eleven companies, outlining a plan by which the Frescobaldi would share customs proceeds with their 22

c.p.r. 1292–1301, p. 414. Cf. C.C.R. 1296–1302, p. 338, where it is specified that they are not to receive crockards or pollards. For the account of the Bayonne merchants see e 372/152 B m. 26. They actually received control in the various ports at varying dates throughout the spring and early summer of 1299; see e 372/149.

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fellow countrymen after Easter of 1307.23 But nothing came of this plan (see below, pp. 64–65); for most of the societates a substantial portion of their loans must never have been repaid or, at best, have been repaid after many years of delay.24 | 52 The case of the Spini is illustrative. In April, 1307, only a few months before the king’s death, they petitioned for damages sustained by Edward’s great delay in repaying their loans.25 The result was new royal action, although it was taken by Edward ii. An assignment as collectors of the custom on wool, woolfells, and hides in Scotland was made in August, 1308, but it was obviously thought insufficient, for a supplementary grant of the issues of the royal silver mine in Devon was to retire 1,000 marks of their debt26 and a further 500 marks were to come from a sum owed the crown by the prior of Saint Albans.27 But the Scottish customs grant may not have become effective until March 15, 1309, when the assignment was repeated,28 and it certainly brought the Spini serious trouble. In accordance with the preliminary list of demands by the Ordainers that customs control be entrusted to natives and that foreign merchants be arrested, Edward ordered the arrest of the Spini in December, 1310, asserting that they had never accounted. Their accounting was later accepted and this brought their release, but not their full repayment. In May, 1313, nineteen years after their loans of 1294, they were still petitioning the crown for debts owed them by both Edward i and Edward ii.29 If the experience of dealing with the crown was less than satisfactory for the merchants of the eleven companies, neither can the arrangements have been fully acceptable to the crown. Royal needs for credit were much greater than the loose collection of firms had provided,30 and a means of encouraging these 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30

c.p.r. 1292–1301, pp. 386–387, 395–396. The letter refers to the merchants “some of whom have received part of what is due to them.” An order of July, 1309, concerning the £10,000 loan by the various companies could only have benefited the Frescobaldi whose account was then being audited (C.C.R. 1302–1313, p. 164). The Pulchi and Rembertini may have been repaid in October, 1309, for the Frescobaldi were given an allowance for £1,000 of customs revenue “upon their giving up the letters patent of the society of the Pulices and Rembertini of Florence…” (ibid., p. 180). e 368/77 m. 55. c.p.r. 1307–1313, p. 137. Cf. e 368/81 m. 30. e 368/79 m. 66d. The Saint Albans grant was made on April 16. Ibid., m. 109. e 368/81 mm. 9, 38d.; e 368/83 mm. 66d., 69. Similar information for the Bellardi is found in e 368/78 mm. 53d., 83, 85, 100. General discussions of Edward’s financial plight are found in E.B. Fryde, “Financial Resources of Edward i in the Netherlands, 1294–1298: Main Problems and Some

52

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loans more efficient than occasional, crude royal pressure was obviously needed. Edward was about ready to return to the “Riccardi system” in which a single societas functioned as royal financier and virtual agency of the government, bolstered with royal revenues in the expectation that large amounts of cash would be provided | whenever and wherever the king required.31 Edward’s decision to establish such a relationship with the Frescobaldi cannot be precisely dated with any confidence, but 1299 seems to mark a turning point. Before 1299 the only Frescobaldi loans of real significance were those associated with the eleven companies; other loans were small and infrequent. In 1299 the scale of the loans increased, and although it remained unimpressive by Riccardi standards, the incidence and regularity of Frescobaldi lending rose markedly.32 Contacts between royal agents and the merchants became more frequent, more a matter of course. It is not surprising, for example, to find Frescobaldi representatives going abroad on king’s business in April of this year.33 The king’s decision to hold an accounting with the Frescobaldi in 1299 (probably in late summer) may also be taken as evidence of this more regular relationship emerging between crown and merchants. Surviving records34

31

32 33

34

Comparisons with Edward iii in 1337–40,” Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, xl (1962), and Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance, pp. 171–175. Frescobaldi loans were used for the same broad purposes as Riccardi advances in 1272– 1294, to fund warfare and diplomacy above all, and to provide for the operation of the royal household. An attempt to analyze or even to document all Frescobaldi loans for these purposes would fill many pages, but a few examples can be given. When Walter Langton was on the Continent in 1296–1297, arranging for the alliance against Philip the Fair, the Frescobaldi provided £4,711 9s. 0d. (see e 101/127/5 No. 31). For the indenture between Langton and the merchants see e 101/308/19. G.P. Cuttino printed Langton’s account book in Studies in British History, xi, No. 2 (1941). They also provided much money for the Scottish campaigns. In Michaelmas term, 4 Edward ii, for example, they were being repaid the £2,000 loaned to the treasurer and sent by him to the king in Scotland for the household and for the current exercitus (e 403/155). The household of Prince Edward drew heavily on Frescobaldi funds (a loan of 10,000 marks to be drawn as need arose was arranged in 1302 [British Museum Additional ms 22, 923, p. 9d]) as did that of the queen (see e 101/676/57, where fourteen payments for her household totalling £834 are recorded in July, August, and September, 1300). The Frescobaldi accounts show this: e 101/126/11; e 101/126/15. See the suggestion of E.B. Fryde, “Public Credit,” p. 457. C.C.R. 1296–1302, p. 246. The constable of Dover castle is ordered to allow them to cross the channel with 1,000 marks or £1,000 to carry out unspecified business explained to them by the treasurer. e 101/126/13 gives both Frescobaldi receipts and expenses; e 101/126/11 expenses only; e 101/126/16 receipts only. There are minor variations in my transcriptions of the duplicated lists of figures which may reflect either my error, those of the exchequer clerks, or both.

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appear to be rough drafts: they are written in French rather than the more formal Latin; they show much marginal notation and cancellation; there are lists of receipts and expenses, but no totals, nor any final statement of the royal debt outstanding; there is no formal enrollment of the account on the pipe roll. Yet even these working drafts | of the account show that Frescobaldi advances 54 from 1294 to 1299 amounted to at least £15,588 and that receipts were only about £5,756 (not counting the free export of Frescobaldi wool). A letter patent of October 31, 1299, coming just a few months after the latest dated entries in the drafts (June, 1299), seems to be a statement of the king’s debt and interest resulting from the accounting. The Frescobaldi were owed £11,000. To collect this sum they were given all the issues of Ireland except for the customs (still in the hands of Bayonne merchants).35 Earlier in the year they had begun to lease the royal silver mines in Devon (discussed below, pp. 60–62).36 In 1299, then, Edward had shown his concern for their repayment and his eagerness to bolster their resources. This concern in the next few years would bring the Frescobaldi an opportunity to sell Riccardi wool seized in Ireland and to collect debts owed the Lucchesi there;37 it would also bring the promise of royal “gifts” of £1,000 (April, 1300) and £2,000 (April, 1301) in letters patent.38 But most significant was the commitment which accompanied the latter gift. In the same letter patent Edward promised the Frescobaldi the wool custom in England, Ireland, and Scotland once the Bayonne merchants and the other Gascon creditors were satisfied; and on the following day another letter patent added the issues of the lands of the late earl of Cornwall.39 The promise of customs revenue is especially significant, for the wool custom had formed the base on which the Riccardi credit system rested. The plan of committing all these revenues once again to a single Italian societas gives clear indication of the direction of Edward’s thought. He was apparently determined that it would be the direction of his heir’s thought as well. The grant was reissued in August, 1302, with the following additional clause: “And for their greater security the king has caused Edward, prince of Wales, his son, to accept this assignment as far as in him lies.” Once the Bayonne merchants were repaid the 35 36 37

38 39

c.p.r. 1292–1301, p. 449. Cf. e 13/23 m. 24d., and C.D.I. 1293–1301, pp. 319, 335, 345, 381–382; ibid., 1302–1307, pp. 4, 5, 23, 35, 53, 99. e 372/154 m. 42d.; e 368/70 m. 35; e 159/72 m. 28. e 368/72 m. 56d. Cf. C.D.I. 1293–1301, p. 370. The calendar gives the mistaken impression that the Frescobaldi would buy this wool. Actually the value was to be deducted from the king’s debt to them. c.p.r. 1292–1301, pp. 508 and 585 respectively. These gifts were actually paid. See British Museum 7966 A, p. 69d. c.p.r. 1292–1301, pp. 585–586.

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Frescobaldi were to recover not only their loans, but also £10,000 “granted to them for their losses through the delay of the payment of the same.”40 | A draft of this grant, preserved among the Parliamentary and Council Proceedings,41 shows how carefully the wording of the letter was considered. Many phrases were scratched out and altered; the clause in which Prince Edward obligated himself proved especially troublesome and was rewritten several times. Intimations of the king’s mortality were evidently a touchy subject. By this time Frescobaldi credit operations for the crown were of sufficient scale to warrant another accounting. The merchants certainly thought so, for in late July or August, 1302, they pointedly sent the king a very long list of their loans and payments and a very short list of their receipts.42 They claimed to have advanced 49,329 marks 9s. 4d. (£32,886 9s. 4d.) “puis q’il vous commenceront a servir.” All the evidence indicates that we should accept their statement as reasonably accurate. The merchants gave a detailed list only for “le plus grosses particules,” and then lumped together 12,439 marks 9s. 3d. in numerous additional small loans. The payment of each of the specific major sums can be verified from government records which seem to have been compiled in response to the Frescobaldi request. (See Table  3.) The total of small loans seems equally justified; a list of Frescobaldi payments in 1296–1301, drawn up by royal clerks, contains more than 11,900 marks in small loans.43 A figure on the order of £32,886 thus seems a reasonable estimate for Frescobaldi loans up to 1302. But if their petition was actually presented in late July or August, 1302, two previous accountings for much of the money had already taken place. In addition to the reckoning in the summer of 1299 there is clear evidence for at least an intended account in April, 1302. We have two duplicate Latin documents44 entitled “Indenture of Account made in the wardrobe of King Edward, illustrious king of England, at Shene, 13 April, the 30th year, with Bertino ffriscombaldi, Coppo Cottenne, Stoldo Angeler accounting in

40 41 42

43 44

Ibid., pp. 57–58. e 175/1/15 No. 3. C 47/13/1 No. 28. An abbreviated version is s.c. 1, 47 No. 120. This is printed in translation by R.J. Whitwell, “Italian Bankers and the English Crown,” in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, N.S. xvii (1903) p. 198. The latest date mentioned in the petition is July, 1302, and since there is no mention of the £10,000 gift of August 23, 1302, it is reasonable to date the document within these limits. I owe this suggestion to Edmund Fryde. Sewn to the petition are two small memoranda showing rough estimates of Frescobaldi receipts and debts, made by some royal clerk. On the dorse of one is written “et debentur eis 25,000 m.” e 101/126/15. e 101/126/21 and 22.

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Table 4.3 Frescobaldi petition, 1302 Major Advances Claimed (c47/13/1 no. 28, s.c. 1/47 no. 120)

Amount

Confirming Royal Documents

To bishop of Bath, 1294

£ 4,000 0 0

e 101/126, 11, 13, 8 e 372/154; e 401/132 e 159/71 e 101/126/8; e 401/143 Bond, Archaeologia 28 (1839) e 101/126/15 e 101/308/19 p17 e 101/127/5 no. 31 Cuttino, Studies in British History xi (1941) e 101/127/5 no. 44 e 101/126/13, 15 e 101/126/13, 15

Part of £10,000 loan from various companies, Summer, 1298

666 13 4

To Walter Langton, abroad, 24 and 25 Edward i

4,711   9 0

To redeem jewels pawned in Brabant, May, 1298 To Droxford at Ardenburg and Escluse, March, 1297 To Sandale, for Gascons, March, 1299 To Sir John de Renesse and the lord of Rhodes To a wardrobe clerk in Gascony To envoys at Montreuil To Bellardi, Paris, jewels for queen To cofferer of queen, for her household expenses, 1299 To Pascasius Vallentini

1,290     1 3

For Gascon wines, after Easter, 1300 To Spanish merchants, 1300, 1301 To merchants for cloth, 1300.

766  10       8 858      12 1           766   13 4

e 101/126/13, 15 e 101/126/13, 15

1,333     6 542  13    1,666   13 1,772   3

e 101/126/15 e 101/126/13, 15 e 101/126/15 e 101/126/15

8      4  4 5

926    11    6

   1,387        6           8 1,680        0           0 468      0          0

e 101/126/15 Johnstone, B.I.H.R. vi (1928) e 101/126/15 e 101/126/15 e 101/126/15

56 56

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the wardrobe for themselves and fellows of the ffriscombaldi of money received and also | paid in the name of the wardrobe by them 8 November 27th year to 13 April 30th year.” But only a list of Frescobaldi receipts is given and there is no indication of the seals to be expected on an indenture. As in the 1299 accounting, there is no evidence of a completed account on the pipe roll. But, again paralleling the 1299 account, not long after this “indenture” was written, a letter patent gave the merchants renewed assurances. The repeated customs grant with the gift of £10,000 and Prince Edward’s endorsement was dated August 23, 1302. It seems likely, then, that some accounting at least began in April and was either not completed or not effected. The Frescobaldi petition reviewing all their financial services | and losses would then represent a logical response of the merchants to an unsatisfactory audit, and the renewed customs grant with its “gift” of £10,000 may well show the king’s reply. Our evidence indicates that probably by 1299 and certainly by 1302 the Frescobaldi had become the king’s bankers, taking the place the Riccardi had once held. It is equally evident, though, that they had moved into this position slowly and that the scale of their lending was still considerably below that of the Riccardi. In 1299–1302 it was less than one-third as much as the over-all yearly average of the merchants of Lucca.45 If a more rewarding use of Italian credit potential was to be realized, changes would have to be made. Above all a sound method of repayment which could serve as a base for these loans would have to be reconstructed. This could not be achieved easily, for financial and political pressures on the crown had already tied up or negated the revenue sources used earlier in the reign to sustain Riccardi lending: parliamentary taxes on personal property were not a realistic possibility for political reasons; even more serious, the wool custom which had served Edward and the Riccardi so well was mortgaged to creditors from the war with Philip the Fair, namely John of Brabant and the merchants of Bayonne. Duke John ii of Brabant46 had been one of Edward’s important allies in his efforts to build a paid coalition to divert French pressure from the duchy, and so became an important creditor. After several changes in the plans for his payment, in February, 1297, Edward promised John £25,000 out of the customs 45

46

For the Riccardi see Kaeuper, Bankers to the Crown, Chap. 2, Sec. 4. The rough Frescobaldi average for the three years from the summer of 1299 to that of 1302 is obtained by deducting the advances in the account for 1294–1299 (e 101/126/11 and 13) from the total of £32,886 for 1294–1302. The yearly average for Riccardi loans was about £18,500; for the Frescobaldi in 1299–1302 it was roughly £5,766. See Bryce Lyon, “Une compte de l’echiquier relatif aux relations d’Edouard Ier d’Angleterre avec le duc Jean ii de Brabant,” Bulletin de la Commission Royale d’Histoire, cxx (1955).

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duties paid on wool exported from England by the merchants of his duchy.47 The sum was to be collected in three ports: London and Boston (£10,000 each) and Yarmouth (£5,000).48 A more serious drain on | customs revenues resulted 58 from Edward’s debts to various merchants of Bayonne who had provided much of the cash needed for the defense of Gascony. In the spring of 1299 they were allowed to place receivers in the various customs ports in England to act alongside local controllers. It did not seem likely that they would soon be repaid; in fact the list of obligations kept growing. In May, 1299, Edward promised that they would hold the customs until the debts of his nephew, John of Brittany, were satisfied; in April, 1300, additional Bayonne merchants were added to the list; in August of that year more Gascons had to be promised customs revenue after they substantiated their claim with letters patent from Henry de Lacy, earl of Lincoln, Edward’s former lieutenant in the duchy.49 Attempts to use sources of revenue other than the customs and taxes failed badly. Irish revenues pledged to the Frescobaldi in October, 1299, were supposed to bring the merchants £11,000, but in fact produced only £1,184 1s. 3d. by the end of 28 Edward i and a total of only £3,266 13s. 4 21 d. by 1310.50 Cambium (mint and exchange) profits were no more useful. Although the second great recoinage of Edward’s reign began in 1299, its profits brought the merchants even less revenue than Irish issues, at least before 1307. There can be no question that the Frescobaldi were closely involved in the recoinage: Coppo Cottenne was keeper of the changes at York and Exeter;51 the Irish change was similarly in Frescobaldi hands;52 members of the company delivered the dies 47 48

c.p.r. 1292–1301, pp. 134, 231–232. With the king’s permission the duke assigned the £5,000 at Yarmouth to the Frescobaldi, but by the summer of 1301 they had received only £813 13s. 3d. An effort by the king’s council to disallow the remainder of this debt brought a sharp rebuke from Edward, who nonetheless insisted on paying “at the longest and most easy terms they can obtain.” C.C.W. 1244–1326, pp. 130–131. 49 See c.p.r. 1292–1301, p. 418, C.C.R. 1296–1302, pp. 344, 550 respectively. The claims made in August were to be allowed if inspection showed the letters from the earl of Lincoln to be genuine. 50 These figures are taken from the final Frescobaldi account, e 372/154 mm. 42, 42d. Cf. C.D.I. 1293–1301, pp. 319, 335, 345, 381–382; ibid., 1302–1307, pp. 4–5, 23, 35, 53, 99. The Irish revenues formed one item in the Frescobaldi petition, discussed below, in which the merchants listed their losses and damages. 51 e 159/74 mm. 29, 67. e 368/72 m. 11. 52 C.D.I. 1293–1301, pp. 339, 349; ibid., 1302–1307, p. 47. C.C.R. 1296–1302, pp. 347, 551. e 101/288/30 m. 5. Tholosanus Donati of the company was exchanger with a salary of 20 marks a year and 10 marks annual expenses.

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to the Newcastle and Durham mints;53 they were licensed to buy pollards and crockards throughout the realm and in Ireland in order to bring these illegal coins into the exchanges.54 But although mint revenues in Newcastle, Hull, and York were formally committed to the Frescobaldi,55 only | very small sums of money seem to have been paid over to them before the opening of Edward ii’s reign. Their account made in the wardrobe in April, 1302, listed only £100 from York and Hull; John Sandale’s account for the London exchange in the same year showed only £200 paid to them.56 Of all the attempts to repay the Frescobaldi in this period by far the most troublesome for the crown was the silver mine at Birland in Devon. West country silver mining had been in progress from at least 1292 under the direction of various royal clerks,57 but a new activity is evident during the period of extreme financial pressure in the late 1290s; miners were impressed into royal service in 1295 and 1296,58 and as the work expanded, production rose dramatically.59 Here was apparently a good source of revenue to commit to the king’s bankers. By an indenture of agreement made April 18, 1299, the Frescobaldi became keepers of the mine, taking it at lease, the crown supplying the necessary utensils

53 54

e 159/73 m. 29d. e 368/71 m. 37d. c.p.r. 1292–1301, p. 505. C.D.I. 1293–1301, p. 349. Cf. Liber Quotidianus Contrarotulatoris Garderobae Anno Regni Regis Edwardi Primi Vicesimo Octavo (London, 1787) pp. 67–68. 55 e 101/282/30 m. 1. 56 e 101/126/21 and e 101/288/30 m. 12 respectively. When Sandale was ordered to compute all Frescobaldi receipts and deduct their expenses and payments into the exchequer and elsewhere, he reported (December 2, 1302) that the merchants “debent de claro domino nostro” £868 18s. 3¾d. (e 368/73 m. 11). 57 The early keepers were William of Wymundham, William de Aulton, and Walter de Maydenstan. See e 101/260/4; e 372/145 mm. 22, 23; e 372/143 m. 23. Cf. e 159/65 m. 38d. 58 For 1295 see c.p.r. 1292–1301, p. 179; C.C.R. 1288–1296, p. 504. King’s clerks were sent to Chester, Surrey, The Peak, Nottingham, Derby, Somerset, and Dorset to collect skilled men for the mines. For 1296: e 159/70 m. 100d.; e 368/69 m. 63d. In 1299 the Devon miners were given various exemptions and privileges, perhaps to counter dissatisfaction with their impressment (c.p.r. 1292–1301, p. 398). But the policy of impressing miners was continued by Edward ii. See C.C.R. 1307–1313, pp. 27, 91; c.p.r. 1307–1313, p. 61. 59 The following receipts for 1293–1297 were recorded in mine accounts for both Birland and Combe Martin in Devon (e 101/260/7). 21 Edward I £ 30 0s. 0d. 22 Edward I 344 17 7 23 Edward I 493 9 0 24 Edward I 735 10 4½ 25 Edward I 1,335 14 10

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and granting allowances for new houses and watercourses.60 The operations were of considerable scale, reference being made to “houses, mills, ponds, engines, buildings, vessels, granaries, enclosures, palings, walls, hays, dykes” and “other offices and necessaries.”61 To the work force already at the mine | 60 they added two masters and eighteen men at their own pay to supervise the mining and to transport the silver to London under royal safe-conduct.62 But nothing seemed to go as planned. The king had already experienced trouble at the mines when the controller, Walter de Maydenstan, had been accused of the imaginative offenses of striking his own farthings from a die which he kept and forging letters “as well apostolical as others.”63 Worse was to come. The Frescobaldi had managed the Devon mine for little more than a year when complaints came to the king’s ears both from and against the royal miners. A commission of oyer and terminer was appointed to investigate these plaints,64 and a later inquest found that in their determination to make the mine profitable the Frescobaldi were ruthlessly exploiting all the resources available to them. Continuing the policy of previous keepers, they took what they needed in men and matériel from the surrounding region, paying little heed to questions of ownership and right. The abbot of Buckland, who suffered most and complained most, was later upheld in his charges by a local jury. No less than 300 acres of the abbot’s woods had been totally devastated since the mine was opened, half of it during the Frescobaldi keepership; 500 acres of pasture had been taken over for draft animals from the mine, and the abbot’s beasts had been pressed into mine service; the Frescobaldi specifically had leveled buildings and courtyards on the abbot’s land, paying nothing for damages; they had even forced his serfs to work in the mines. Although the jury estimated his total damage at £642 13s. 4d., the exchequer would allow only £400, adding the promise that the outrages would never recur.65

60 61 62 63 64 65

See the enrollment of the agreement, e 372/154 m. 42d. Cf. e 159/72 m. 28; e 368/70 m. 35. c.p.r. 1292–1301, p. 625. Ibid., p. 410; ibid., 1301–1307, p. 513. c.p.r. 1307–1313, p. 95. e 368/79 m. 80d. The chief Frescobaldi agent seems to have been Lapo Gamberini (e 13/23; e 159/73 m. 59d.). e 159/72 m. 28d. c.p.r. 1292–1301, p. 410. This colorful offender ended his career as bishop of Worcester. c.p.r. 1292–1301, p. 548. The commission went to Thomas de Swansea, who was controller at the mine, and Gilbert de Knoville, sheriff of Devon, in May, 1300. e 368/73 mm. 17d., 18. Apparently the abbot’s woods were equally tempting to later keepers of the mine. In 1315 Edward ii had to issue another warning that the royal woods sufficed and the abbots were not to be bothered (e 368/85 m. 204).

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It is hardly surprising that by this time the Frescobaldi had been removed from control of the mines, and their account closed on February 26, 1301.66 Yet this did not bring an end to the trouble, for the merchants | persistently claimed that they had been cheated. The mine which they claimed to have taken at a lease of 13s. 4d. per last was actually worth no more than 10s. a last, causing their expenses in extracting and transporting silver to outweigh any profit. The commission appointed by Edward i67 to audit all Frescobaldi accounts reached no solution on the mine issue and the problem was inherited by Edward ii. Now even the amount of the original lease became an issue. That part of the 1299 indenture which bore the merchants seal and was kept by the crown set the charge at 20s. a last; but the part kept by the merchants under the king’s seal read only 1 mark, 13s. 4d. Despite the fact that this portion of the indenture showed a highly suspicious erasure and rewriting, Edward ii instructed exchequer officials in a privy seal letter that when the Frescobaldi accounted before them “cele rasure ne rescripture vous ne les chalangez.”68 They were to be charged no more for the mine lease than the current keeper, even if they had agreed to a higher rate.69 Thus, repercussions from the Frescobaldi control of the Devon mines were felt into the reign of Edward ii. But it was painfully clear even in 1302 that the 66

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e 372/154 m. 42d. A commission investigated the condition of the mines after the Frescobaldi were replaced (c.p.r. 1292–1301, p. 625). Swansea, the controller, was ordered to send full details on the conditions of the mines and Frescobaldi profits a few months after the Italians were removed. He sent a fairly full certification, but was unable to consult fully with the merchants who claimed that most of their records were kept in London (e 368/73 m. 11). Swansea replaced the Frescobaldi at the mine, becoming custos when they were removed (e 372/152 B). But Edward could not have been terribly upset by Frescobaldi methods, for three days earlier (February 23) when giving the mines to Swansea, he reserved for the Frescobaldi “une minere qil fount quere e ferront se eaux la pussent trouver la quele lour est graunte a quere e overer tut a lour custage.” They were not to be disturbed in any way, but it was understood “qu eux se portent bien e curteysement.” The Frescobaldi would bring in “Lombard” workers or would recruit others “en bone manere saunz enpirement ou amenusement des overours de altres miners en Deven’ e en Cornewaille.” The only royal control seems to have been that “le dit gardein sache e face enrouler lissue de cele minerc gant ele sera trouver taunt qe le dit Tresorer eit entre ly e les diz marchaunz la bosoigne plus pleinement ordeine.” No issues of a Frescobaldi mine appear in Swansea’s account, but they probably operated a mine at Martinstowe, for when Edward seized all their goods in 1311, their attorney there was arrested with ore containing both silver and lead (e 159/85 m. 70). c.p.r. 1301–1307, p. 513. C.C.R. 1307–1313, p. 95. e 368/79 m. 84. c.p.r. 1307–1313, p. 234. C.C.R. 1307–1313, p. 181.

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available royal revenues were insufficient for a revival of the Italian credit system as it had existed from 1272–1294. If the Frescobaldi were to lend on the Riccardi scale their repayment would have to be more speedy and certain and their resources would have to be amplified with a commitment of some regular and sizeable royal income. | 62 The creation of the new custom in 130370 must be viewed from the perspective of this problem. The first lasting expansion of customs duties came at a critical juncture in relations between the crown and the Frescobaldi. After various revenues committed to their charge and two accountings with them had proved highly unsatisfactory, the merchants had formally petitioned the crown for reimbursement. Not only were the revenues assigned clearly insufficient, others were not available: the old custom of 1275 was still committed to other creditors. A new custom would make the Frescobaldi relationship truly workable, just as the 1275 custom had laid the basis for the Riccardi relationship. If 1299 marked a turning point for crown and banker, 1303 did likewise. This is not to suggest that suddenly in 1303 Frescobaldi loans reached the Riccardi level; in fact they did not.71 But the new revenue provided by this addition to the customs first helped to clear away the obligations to the Bayonne merchants and then with both the old and new customs freed, made the substantial employment of the Frescobaldi possible. Documents from 1302 (the partial account and the merchants’ petition) allow a comparison of Frescobaldi loans in the periods roughly before and after the new custom. In the earlier period we have seen that Frescobaldi loans were less than one-third the over-all yearly average for the Riccardi; we will see that from 1302 to 1310 the Frescobaldi average rose to a figure approximating that of the Riccardi. Committing the old and new customs to the Frescobaldi made the difference. It may not be coincidental that in this period Bettino and Amerigo, sons of the family patriarch Berto, began to manage company affairs in England; the new level of involvement with the crown might have dictated this change to more highly placed leadership.72 | 63 70 71

72

See N.S.B. Gras, The Early English Customs System (Cambridge, Mass., 1918), pp. 67–71, and the documents printed pp. 257–414. In response to an order from the keeper of the wardrobe, the Frescobaldi sent a list of all their payments to the crown for the thirty-first regnal year (“touz des deners qe nous vous avons livereez en lan du Regne nostre seignur le roi trentisme primer”). The total is only £2,004 12s. 4d. (e 101/126/23). In 1306 the Frescobaldi and the other major Italian societales were summoned before the king’s council, required to provide the names of their partners in England and to give assurances that they would neither leave the realm nor export their goods, under penalty of confiscation. A close working relationship between crown and banker apparently did not prevent royal wariness of this sort. Yet it is equally significant that a baron of the

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The Carta Mercatoria, the quid pro quo which secured for Edward his new custom, was negotiated with an assembly of foreign merchants on February 1, 1303. In return for a long list of privileges which, in effect, gave foreign merchants an equal footing with natives in business transactions, the foreigners agreed to a 50 percent increase in the 1275 rates on exported wool, woolfells, and hides; new duties on wine, cloth, and wax; and an ad valorem duty (3d. per pound sterling) on all other imports or exports.73 Shortly after this agreement on February 10, 1303, the administrative arrangements for the new custom were outlined. The British coast was divided into a number of areas (at first fifteen, later consolidated) containing one major port each.74 A distinction was maintained between the new duties on wool, woolfells, and hides, and the charges on other exports and imports. The Gascon merchants were to be collectors of the latter (in addition to the old custom of 1275 still in their charge). But their agents were instructed to pay over to the Frescobaldi all the issues on wool, fells, and hides. Before the end of the month the Italians began to receive the revenues in eight important ports.75 Edward was evidently anxious to put the 1275 custom in Frescobaldi hands as well. Professing to think that the Bayonne merchants were satisfied, or nearly so, on February 10, 1304, Edward granted the Frescobaldi the old custom in all ports of England and Ireland, effective April 1.76 The merchants were to be repaid all of their loans and the sizeable royal gift of £10,000 as well, “granted them in compensation of their losses sustained by reason of the postponement

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exchequer, William de Carleton, stood surety for the Frescobaldi, while the representatives of other companies suffered imprisonment before giving in to royal demands (e 368/76 m. 37d.). Cooperation between Edward and the Frescobaldi seems much more important than compulsion. In 1303 the Frescobaldi in France had even acted as spies for the English king; they sent to Aymer de Valence a complete and highly interesting account of the June 24 meeting in Paris at which several speakers urged support of Philip iv in his quarrel with Boniface viii. See e 30/1343. F.M. Powicke, The Thirteenth Century (2nd ed., Oxford, 1962), pp. 630–631. C.F.R. 1272–1307, pp. 466–470. Only nine port areas were mentioned in October, 1304, and December, 1307, but these cover eleven of the original fifteen areas and include the most active ports. c.p.r. 1301–1307, pp. 262–263; ibid., 1307–1313, p. 28. For notification of the formal grant to the Frescobaldi by the king’s council (February 20) see C.f.R. 1272–1307, pp. 470–471. Cf. C.D.I. 1302–1307, p. 67, and C.f.R. 1272–1307, p. 475. In their enrolled account the dates for London, Newcastle, Ipswich, Yarmouth, and Lynn are February 20; Hull follows on February 23, Southampton on February 24, and Boston on February 26 (e 372/154 mm. 42, 42d.). e 368/75 m. 31; c.p.r. 1301–1307, p. 213; C.D.I. 1302–1307, pp. 68, 101. Cf. e 368/74 m. 41d.; C.c.R. 1302–1307, p. 147.

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of the said loans.” He was hurrying this most important royal source of revenue into his merchants’ hands, for the Gascons were far from being fully repaid. The Frescobaldi | paid them 2,500 marks in May,77 but five months later Edward 64 took away even the portion of new customs revenues which Gascons still controlled, the duties on imports and exports other than wool, fells, and hides, giving these to the Bellardi company in repayment for goods supplied to the wardrobe.78 If the Gascons took heart at the beginning of an accounting with the crown in October,79 their hopes were soon dashed, for Edward ignored the unpleasant fact of the Gascon debt for the rest of his reign. Edward ii in March, 1308, arranged for an annual payment of 1,000 marks from the Southampton customs, but he, too, seems to have found repayment of the old debt distasteful, for he cancelled the grant in May, then reinstituted it in June (now giving the Gascons half the customs in the port), and finally confirmed the grant in August, as if to make it certain in his own mind.80 The Bayonne merchants were still collecting half the Southampton old and new customs in 1311, when the Frescobaldi were expelled from England.81 The complete commitment of all the customs revenues to the Frescobaldi came only in Edward ii’s reign. After his father’s death Edward ii not only took all necessary steps to ensure continuity in Frescobaldi customs receipts,82 he also made their control complete by giving them the entire proceeds of the new custom in a grant dated June 27, 1309.83 One result of committing customs revenues to the Frescobaldi, and a further indication of the importance of this measure, was a new system of accounting between king and banker. From late 1304 until their ouster in 1311 77

78

79 80 81 82 83

The order was sent by letter patent, c.p.r. 1301–1307, p. 225; record of payment is found in the account of the Bayonne merchants, e 372/152 B m. 26. In 1306 they were still owed 2,500 marks for wages of their representatives sent to England to seek payment and later to collect customs duties (e 368/76 m. 54d.). e 368/75 m. 72. The ports are London, Ipswich, Yarmouth, Lynn, Boston, Hull, and Newcastle. Perhaps the port of Southampton remained in Gascon hands. On the following day the grant to the Frescobaldi was repeated, probably to reassure them and to prevent confusion (c.p.r. 1301–1307, pp. 262–263). But the language of the letter is confusing and seems to imply that this grant originated Frescobaldi control of the new custom duties on wool. We have seen that the Frescobaldi began receiving these in early 1303. There is mention of the account in October, 1304 (e 368/74 m. 58) and again in July, 1306 (e 368/76 m. 54d.; C.c.R. 1302–1307, pp. 407, 409). c.p.r. 1307–1313, pp. 60–61, 77. c.c.r. 1307–1313, p. 37. C.C.R. 1307–1313, p. 323. C.F.R. 1307–1319, pp. 11, 45. c.p.r. 1302–1313, p. 28. C.F.R. 1307–1319, pp. 44–45. C.c.R. 1307–1313, pp. 120, 180.

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the Frescobaldi were closely involved with the system of exchequer | tallies.84 Tout argued that this practice allowed the crown to stretch its badly needed resources by giving its creditors receipts for revenues before they had been collected; the creditor then had to collect from the appropriate receiver of revenues.85 Other historians have sharply questioned whether this system became operative in Edward’s reign and have emphasized instead the role of wardrobe receipts which could be exchanged for exchequer tallies.86 This view more accurately describes the system of account with the Frescobaldi. In their case, moreover, the creditor receiving a wardrobe bill or royal letter and the collector to whom it was to be delivered were virtually identical, since Frescobaldi agents acted as controllers to the collectors of the customs revenue and supervisors of the mint and exchange on which the tallies were drawn.87 In effect the tallies given to the merchants were discharges on revenues in their hands to repay loans to the crown, allowances to be presented whenever accounts between king and banker were heard at the exchequer. Edward ii ordered the exchequer officials to issue tallies to the Frescobaldi “as often as they shall bring letters patent or close or even a bill under the king’s privy seal for any payment to be made by them from the issues of the said customs by the king’s order…so that they may promptly make their account of the said customs by means of such tallies.”88 This use of tallies means that we must trace Frescobaldi lending through exchequer records, the receipt and issue rolls, rather than through the yearly accounts of the keeper of the wardrobe or the special enrolled customs accounts which recorded Riccardi activity in 1272–1294. Two specific examples will illustrate how the system worked. On October 14, 1306, a customs tally for £1,183 17s. 5d. was issued to the Frescobaldi as recorded in balancing entries on both the receipt and issue rolls under this date. In the receipt roll entry89 the sum is simply described as received from Berto Frescobaldi out of customs revenues. On the issue roll90 we find more specific information. Three sums made up the amount of the tally: one great 84 85 86 87 88 89 90

e 368/74 m. 41d., e 159/77 m. 61. See T.F. Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England, 6 vols. (Manchester, 1920–33), ii, 99–101. See Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance, pp. 157–158 and the authors cited in note 4, p. 157. Of course before they controlled the custom when the Frescobaldi were given receipts on the collectors they were in the position of any ordinary crown creditor. C.C.R. 1307–1313, p. 120, June 27, 1309. e 403/134. e 401/165.

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wardrobe bill contained £76 13s. 10d.; letters patent | recorded payments of 66 £1,000 to John Sandale, chamberlain of Scotland, at Bradel in Tynedale, on September 7, 1306; and £107 0s. 7d. to Ralph Stokes, keeper of the great wardrobe at London on August 22, 1306. The £1,000 is broken down into its components in a wardrobe book:91 £535 0s. 1d. went for wages in Scottish garrisons, £265 paid for wine supplied to the king “at Berwick and elsewhere,” and a further £200 is listed as paid for wine, without added information. Most of the money repaid in this tally was thus spent on the Scottish campaign, but the bill of the great wardrobe and the payment to Stokes cannot be traced.92 Usually Frescobaldi payments were charged on the writs of liberate by which the wardrobe was supplied with large sums from the exchequer.93 On May 17, 1306, a tally for £1,029 11s. 1½d. of customs revenue, for example, was issued to the merchants and charged to a wardrobe writ containing the lump sum of £20,000.94 The prompt commitment of customs revenues to the Frescobaldi and the new accounting system based largely on customs tallies both demonstrate how vitally important these revenues were as a base for Frescobaldi loans. But the most significant evidence is the scale of lending which could be charged on the customs, i.e., the amount of Frescobaldi lending ultimately funded by customs dues. In their 1310 enrolled account forty-six customs tallies are noted between November, 1304, and July, 1307, with a total of £81,974 12s. 9d.95 A separate enrolled customs account for 1309 and 1310 adds five tallies and £16,864 16s. 8d.96 Receipt and issue rolls not only confirm these figures, they provide three additional tallies, not listed in the accounts, with a total of £1,664 13s. 0d.97 The over-all total of Frescobaldi loans charged on customs revenues between 1304 and 1310 was thus £103,325 9s. 10d. The importance of customs revenues can further be measured by a comparison with other sources of royal income committed to the merchants. Lay and ecclesiastical taxes provided the only other really sizeable | sources of 67 91

British Museum Harleian ms 152, p. 1. Here the recipient is said to be Droxford, not Sandale. 92 Neither letter patent appears in the calendar, and I fail to find the £107 0s 7d. in Stokes account for the great wardrobe, 31–35 Edward i, British Museum Additional ms 35, 293. 93 Tout, Chapters, ii, 96–97. 94 e 403/132. 95 Correlating the receipt and issue rolls for this period I found virtually the same total, £81,968 11s. 9d. e 401/159 through 182; e 403/125 through 146. 96 e 372/154 m. 44. 97 e 401/193; e 403/157.

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repayment, and these brought the Frescobaldi only about £18,670,98 less than one-fifth the customs revenue. Out of a receipt of £100,367 in the merchants’ enrolled account of 1310, only about £13,702 came from sources other than the customs; the clerical tenth accounts for half of this. Clearly, Frescobaldi lending, as Riccardi lending earlier, was based on customs revenues; other royal revenue sources were insignificant by comparison.99 If customs revenues carried the main burden of repaying Frescobaldi loans and give some general idea of their scale, we still must try to arrive at rough totals. The usefulness of even an approximate quantitative analysis justifies the serious hazards which such medieval financial statistics inevitably entail. | The task is made more manageable for us by the accounting held in 1309 and 1310, but the process was a long and complicated one for the auditors and the 98 99

e 372/154 mm. 42, 42d.; e 101/126/9; e 159/75 mm. 59d., 66, 74; e 368/80 mm. 93, 115; e 368/81 m. 86; e 403/125, 128, 132, 146, 154, 155. Frescobaldi receipts from Gascony remain unknown, but could hardly have been sizeable. Early in 1305 they were promised the Gascon receivership if any aliens were chosen (c.p.r. 1301–1307, p. 317). Prince Edward was given the duchy in 1306 and in the following year named the Frescobaldi as receivers (Roles Gascons 1307–1317, ed. Yvres Renouard under supervision of Robert Fawtier [Paris, 1964], pp. xxii–xxiii), confirming as king what he had ordered as duke (c.p.r. 1307–1313, p. 72). Amerigo became constable of Bordeaux on April 6, 1309, and two days later named Hugolino Hugolini his agent to act in his place. (Roles Gascons 1307–1317, Nos. 222–225, 230–233; c.p.r. 1307–1313, p. 234). But the charges on Gascon revenues were heavy and many Frescobaldi payments were expected out of them (Roles Gascons 1307–1317, passim). On June 25, 1310, Edward significantly ordered that Amerigo was to retain the constableship until his expenses were balanced by receipts (c.p.r. 1307–1313, p. 234). Moreover on August 18, 1310, the king ordered the seneschal to deliver the issues of the customs from October 26, 1309, to a London merchant, William Servat, “notwithstanding any order made on behalf of the Frescobaldi or others” (C.F.R. 1307–1319, p. 70). The Frescobaldi were also receivers in Ponthieu and Montreuil from September 17, 1299, to May 14, 1308, when Edward gave the revenues to his queen. Hugolino Hugolini acted as receiver. Their accounts, justly described by Hilda Johnstone (Edward of Carnarvon [Manchester, 1946], pp. 65–66) as “well-kept…admirably clear both in form and content,” are preserved in the Public Record Office, along with some subsidiary documents. (See e 101/156/1, 2, 18, 19; e 101/157/15, 16; e 101/159/14, 15; e 101/160/9, 10; e 101/161/18, 19; e 101/162/2; e 101/619/2; e 101/653, unsorted.) The accounts show only two small allowances to the Frescobaldi out of these revenues: 245 marks and £298. An allowance of 8000 1. parisian was ordered in their Ponthieu account on October 7, 1309, to repay an old debt of Edward ii before he came to the throne (C.C.R. 1307–1313, p. 180), but this account was apparently never heard. Neither the Gascon nor Ponthieu accounts were enrolled with the other Frescobaldi accounts of 1310, and when the king was certified of the results of the general accounting, there was no mention of these revenues.

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merchants. The initiative for an account once again, as in 1302, came from the Frescobaldi, beginning even before the death of Edward i. In the Carlisle parliament of early 1307 they petitioned the king and council for repayment of their losses in royal service, specifying six major losses: (1) £10,000 for their many loans during more than ten years; (2) £10,000 for mass withdrawals of deposits by laymen and ecclesiastics, amounting to £50,000, as a result of news of their great loan in Flanders and Florence which was paid to “Borgonouns”;100 (3) £3,000 for keeping three or four factors occupied in England seeking payment from the king; (4) £10,000 for money loaned from July 15, 1302, to the time of the petition; (5) “sont damagez grossement” in trying to collect the £11,000 assigned to them in Ireland; (6) losses in connection with the Devon silver mine.101 Edward’s response was to appoint John Droxford, William Carleton, and John Kirkby to hear the merchants’ account; they were authorized to summon other merchants and to associate with themselves other members of the king’s council if they were needed. A brief delay in the original schedule may have been caused by the need to change the auditors, Droxford being otherwise occupied and Carleton ill, but in late June, “Wednesday in the vigil of the Apostles Peter and Paul,” the Frescobaldi came to the exchequer, armed with rolls and memoranda to account before John Benstead, chancellor of the exchequer, Hugh Nottingham, clerk, and the two remembrancers of the exchequer, John Kirkby and Walter of Norwich. The records brought by the Frescobaldi proved to be insufficient for the accounting ordered, however, and it was decided to summon the customs collectors and to obtain further information from the Irish exchequer. An order sent to Dublin is dated July 6, 1307.102 The death of Edward i on the following day brought this first attempt to a halt. Edward ii appointed new auditors, assigning the task to Walter Reynolds, his treasurer, John Sandale, chancellor of the exchequer, William Carleton, and John Kirkby, but he gave them incomplete | instructions and Kirkby died not 69 long after. In March, 1309, the treasurer and barons were ordered to make the audit,103 changes in the panel of auditors ceased, and a year-long process of accounting began, following the two-year process of merely getting started. The king worried over the account with almost maternal care, sending a stream 100 See Fryde, “Financial Resources of Edward i,” pp. 1174–1175 and notes. 101 The petition is printed in Charles Johnson, “An Italian Financial House in the Fourteenth Century,” Transactions of the St. Albon’s and Hertfordshire Architectural and Archaeological Society, N.S. I (1901–2), 332–334; it is summarized in c.p.r. 1301–1307, p. 513, but the calendar omits point 4 in this list. Cf. C.C.R. 1307–1313, p. 95. 102 e 368/77 m. 61, 87. 103 e 368/79 mm. 61, 87. C.C.R. 1307–1313, p. 95.

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of privy seal letters urging a speedy account, making sure that specific allowances were made, and the like. On May 9 he ordered the exchequer officials to charge only one-half mark (6s. 8d.) per sack on Frescobaldi wool exported at the time of his father’s maltolte of 40d. per sack, the concession being granted the Frescobaldi “for good and laudable service rendered.”104 By June 30 when he learned that the accounting had actually begun, the king prohibited the auditors from leaving London until the account was fully completed and enrolled, which they were to accomplish quickly.105 At least three similar attempts to hurry along the account were sent in the next year,106 along with repeated orders to give the merchants wages for customs collection, instructions concerning the Gascon and Ponthieu accounts and the Devon mines, information on receipts for secret purposes in chamber and wardrobe, and the like.107 Finally in the early summer of 1310, the account was completed and the king certified of the results.108 Full acquittances for their receipts were given the Frescobaldi on June 25 and July 4, along with an acknowledgment that the royal debt stood at £21,635 4s. 6½d. A further assignment on the customs in that amount was also issued on July 4.109 This royal obligation covered the results of | the general enrolled account for receipts and expenses prior to April 15, 1309, a customs account running from that date to April 19, 1310, and an 104 e 368/79 m. 83. c.p.r. 1307–1313, pp. 113, 119. 105 e 368/79 m. 83d. The order to the treasurer and barons reads “vous ne vous en lonyez hors de la vylle de Loundres qe le dist acounte seit pleynement renduz et parcheuyz.” 106 July 11, 1309: e 368/79 m. 86d.; April 23, 1310: e 368/80 m. 42 (cf. the letter of the treasurer to the barons of the exchequer, e 159/83 m. 22, printed in James Conway Davies, The Baronial Opposition to Edward ii [Cambridge, 1918], pp. 549–550); May 22, 1310: e 368/80 m. 43d. 107 e 368/80 mm. 10, 10d., 11d., 13, 42, 43, 47, 49, 49d. C.C.R. 1302–1313, pp. 180, 182, 184–185. C.C.W. 1244–1326, p. 304. c.p.r. 1307–1313, pp. 234, 278. 108 e 368/80 m. 59. The king owed them £21,635 after the 1310 account and it is hard to believe that their receipts since then had erased this debt and the additional loans of 1310–1311. The customs receipts for roughly one year, April 19, 1310 (when they accounted for customs receipts beyond those in the general enrolled account) to June 17, 1311, when they lost customs control, would not have exceeded £15,000; for April 15, 1309, to April 19, 1310, they were £14,767. Their Gascon and Ponthieu accounts had not been rendered in 1310, but we have already seen that Frescobaldi profits from them were probably not large. See note 98 above. 109 c.p.r. 1307–1313, pp. 234–235. The letter of June 25 concerns the old and new customs in England and Ireland, the Devon silver mines, receipts from the Irish treasury, the parliamentary tax of a fifteenth given to Edward i, and a clerical tenth – all received prior to April 15, 1309. The patent of July 4 extended the customs clearance to April 19, 1310. The exchequer officials, in a later inventory, described this acquittance as “very full (plenissimam)” (c.p.r. 1313–1317, p. 250).

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account for the Devon mines, but did not include the results of the cambium account, nor receipts and issues in Gascony or Ponthieu.110 These several accounts resulting from the 1309–1310 audit, then, form the core of any estimate of total indebtedness to the Frescobaldi by Edward i and Edward ii. Two major additions and corrections should be made. The receipt and issue rolls show four tallies beyond the enrolled accounts: one for the cambium and three for customs revenues; these must be added to the pipe roll figures. Second, since the general enrolled account seems rather sketchy for the early period of Frescobaldi activity, the merchants’ statement of loans prior to 1302 (which we have seen can be verified from royal records) ought to be used for the period 1294–1302. Consequently, sums in the enrolled account lent before 1302 should be eliminated and the corrected total added to the earlier Frescobaldi statement. Making these changes and additions to the documents of 1309 and 1310 gives a figure of £155,131 for the royal obligation to the Frescobaldi (loans and interest) between 1294 and 1311, as shown in Table 4.111 By dividing this whole period into two roughly equal eight-year | segments, 71 1294–1302 and 1302–1310, we can see not only the slow development of the scale of Frescobaldi loans but also the significant level reached after 1302. In the earlier period the royal obligation to the merchants came to little more than £4,000 a year. The average climbed a bit after 1299, but it was the regularity of the relationship, the number of small loans advanced without apparent compulsion, rather than the scale of lending which marks the significant change. The second period shows an annual average in excess of £15,300, more than three times that of the earlier period. Loans on this scale provided vitally important relief from the worst financial pressures which so troubled the first two Edwards. As Edmund Fryde has suggested, “the system of regular crown borrowing from major financiers was…still working fairly well when a political revolution in 1311 temporarily destroyed it.”112 We can see this disaster coming for several years along the parallel paths of lavish royal favor to the Frescobaldi and their great utility to the crown. The king’s privileged foreign bankers who provided him with so much financial flexibility could never survive the attempt to put the king in baronial leading strings. “The wealth of the Frescobaldi and their influence at court,” Fryde writes, “had made them many enemies. Also, in 110 Enrolled account: e 372/154 mm. 42, 42d. Supplementary customs account: ibid., m. 44. Mine account: ibid., m. 42d. Cambium account: ibid., m. 45. 111 For similar estimates see Fryde, “Public Credit,” pp. 457–458, Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance, p. 211. 112 Fryde, “Public Credit,” p. 458.

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Table 4.4 Total Frescobaldi loans

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Amount

Source

£ 81,972 11s. 9d. 16,864 16  8 1,664 13  0 6,195 19 11 1,117  0  0 3,829 17  6 32,886  9  4

Customs tallies, 1304–1309 in general enrolled account Tallies in Customs Account, 1309–1310 3 customs tallies beyond above accounts Tallies in cambium account, 1307–1310 1 cambium tally beyond above account Loans in August and September, 1310 (not in accounts) Loans 1294–1302

£ 155,531  8s. 2d.

Total

demanding their expulsion, the baronial opposition was trying to render Edward ii financially helpless.”113 As his relationship with the barons deteriorated, it was of course essential for Edward ii to protect his financiers. But it is hard to escape the conclusion that the fate of the Frescobaldi was also important to Edward in another dimension: it was one of those battlegrounds on which the king deliberately chose to test his will against the wills of his enemies. The flow of privileges to the merchants seems almost a self-conscious assertion of royal prerogative in the face of xenophobic opponents.114 A few months after his accession, in November, 1307, Edward ii gave the Frescobaldi access to exchequer procedure in cases of debts owed them. In fact these were to be collected “ausi come les noz dettes propres,” because of the good service rendered the crown, the payments still expected of them, and also “par la reson qil sont de nostre hostel.”115 At the same time | they were exempted from distraint for any debts except their own or those for which they were sureties; this privilege was reissued in December of that year and February of the next.116 “At the instance of Emeric de Friscombald” in March and April, 1308, a man accused in the death of another was pardoned

113 Ibid.; cf. Sapori, La Compagnia, pp. 44–45. 114 Edward i had, of course, given the Riccardi and the Frescobaldi many privileges, but under different circumstances. For examples of his grants, see c.p.r. 1292–1301, pp. 430, 504, 582; ibid. 1301–1307, p. 512; C.C.R. 1302–1307, p. 439; C.D.I. 1293–1301, p. 329. 115 e 368/78 m. 21d. 116 e 368/78 m. 20d. c.p.r. 1307–1313, pp. 19, 27, 157.

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and his goods restored.117 In June Amerigo became an English landholder, granted four manors in Lincolnshire, two in Dorset, and also a free court in the city of Lincoln. He was to pay a yearly rent of one penny for these six manors and was furthermore given permission to cut down the trees on these manors “without impeachment for waste.” Although this privilege was later suspended because of the complaints of Peter Malore and his wife who claimed rights in the property, Amerigo was soon given exemption from any claim for waste “notwithstanding the king’s former prohibition to him against committing waste or destruction.”118 Amerigo’s landholding was increased by a further grant in May, 1309, of two manors that had belonged to the Templars: Reydon in Essex, and Chelsen in Hereford. With Reydon came the “fructus et obvenciones” of the church of Reydon, taxed at an annual value of £20; the two manors were together worth £31 3s. 11¼d. The Frescobaldi would hold these manors and the church at farm, taking their profit from receipts beyond these exchequer valuations.119 By this time the royal concern for their profit was being shown even more clearly by the stream of privy seal orders concerning allowances and favors in their account (see pp. 69–70 above). The appointment of the Ordainers in March, 1310, did not dam the flood of privilege. As Edward sought to assert his control over the executive he ordered chancery and the great seal to travel with him (April 30), and changed chancellors when resistance resulted. Within a month he instructed the chancery clerks to renew under the great seal all privy seal letters in favor of Amerigo which either the merchant or his attorney would show. Ingelard de Warley, keeper of the wardrobe, was assigned to supervise the process.120 In July and again in November safe-conducts | were given to various Frescobaldi going 73 abroad on the king’s business.121 The insecurity of Frescobaldi goods was countered with a permission to the merchants to stay within the safety of the Tower, taking their goods with them behind its thick walls.122 On December 3 the chancellor was instructed that Frescobaldi nominees were to be presented to 117 c.p.r. 1307–1313, pp. 48, 113. C.C.R. 1307–1313, p. 23. The order was repeated in May, 1309 (c.p.r. 1307–1313, p. 113). 118 e 368/78 m. 68d. c.p.r. 1307–1313, pp. 84, 152, 276. C.C.R. 1307–1313, pp. 104, 152, 166. C.C.W. 1244–1326, p. 276. The manors in Lincolnshire were “Thoresweye, Styveton, Lyndewode, Carlesthorpe”; those in Devon were “Waye and Poudle.” 119 e 368/79 mm. 16d., 18. 120 C.C.W. 1244–1326, p. 317. May McKisack, The Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1959) pp. 10–11. 121 “Peter de Frescobaldis and his men” were going to France on unspecified royal business (c.p.r. 1307–1313, p. 270). 122 c.p.r. 1307–1313, p. 294. November 8, 1310.

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benefices in preference to any other clerks until such Frescobaldi nominees held ecclesiastical livings worth £300. Action on the orders followed the next year when Guglielmino received the church of Alvythele in the diocese of London on January 18 and the church of Stanhope in the diocese of Durham on March 6. Buonaccurso had already been given the church of North Cave in the diocese of York on February 2.123 Royal action against Frescobaldi debtors had apparently been pressed with vigor in the early winter of 1310, for on December 20 the king ordered the mayor and sheriffs of London to transfer to the Tower all Frescobaldi debtors detained in Newgate by royal writ or the merchants prosecution. There was no suitable place for hearing the accounts in Newgate, but in the Tower accounting could begin and all debtors held until they satisfied the king’s merchants.124 As this process began Edward pointedly regranted to Amerigo in a privy seal letter

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those privileges granted to him before the king empowered the prelates and barons to regulate the state of the kingdom, but of which he did not obtain letters patent, viz. exemption for life from all tallages, aids, wakes, and contributions of whatsoever kind, for his lands, tenements, rents, or other goods, or merchandise, within or without the city of London, to be levied for the king and his heirs, due and accustomed prises excepted; exemption also for him from being put on assizes, juries or recognisances; from being made mayor, sheriff, escheator, coroner, provost, alderman, or other minister of the king; and from any assessment which the commonalty of the city of London, or of any other place within the realm, may grant to the king.125 |

123 c.p.r. 1307–1313, pp. 293–294, 303, 320, 327. C.C.W. 1244–1326, pp. 340, 364–365. One of the Frescobaldi letters apparently sent from Florence to London January 6, 1312, refers to Buonaccurso’s recent visit to England and a discussion over how many benefices could be obtained. At this time Guglielmino was in England (S.C.1, 63 No. 184). Berto, the head of the Frescobaldi family, seems to have had an especially strong desire for his sons to enter the church; four of them did, not without some parental pressure. See Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, vol. iv Part 2, p. 591. 124 C.C.R. 1307–1313, p. 293. Charles Johnson, “Italian Financial House,” p. 324. 125 c.p.r. 1307–1313, p. 321, January 15. Similar letters were issued for Bettino and his son Pepe. On the same day the chancery clerks were ordered to search the rolls for a charter of franchises in London given to John de Sellingges and to issue a similar one for Amerigo and Bettino and Pepe. Edward had granted the merchants these rights before the appointment of the Ordainers, but had given them no charter. C.C.W. 1244–1326, p. 336. For good measure the grant of January 15 was repeated on January 18 (e 368/81 m. 31d.).

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Distraint against Frescobaldi debtors and regranted privileges were useful, but the close relations between king and banker can be seen in much more personal ways also. In a symbolic gesture Bettino and Amerigo “attorneys of all their company and lineages”, apparently gave the king formal possession of all their goods in Florence and throughout Tuscany. Edward, responding in like spirit, ordered the chancery to issue letters returning seizin to the Frescobaldi on December 3, 1310.126 Not long thereafter in another formal gesture he appointed their father Berto a member of his privy council, along with the bishop of Florence.127 The honor may have been lost on Berto who was at this time an ill and crotchety old man,128 but the meaning of the gesture, as of the others, is clear: Edward ii was assuring his merchant-bankers of his continued support despite the political upheavals all around them. But the king’s good will was a mixed blessing on the eve of revolt. The situation was obviously becoming intolerably dangerous for the chief partners of the societas. Amerigo and Bettino probably slipped out of England in November, 1310,129 and in February, 1311, Giovanni Frescobaldi, Filipo Frescobaldi, and three factors (Giovanni Berardi, Ranuccio Sapiti, and Fedo Pettieri) left under a royal safe-conduct to travel to Florence, ostensibly as king’s proctors seeking to recover the property of Berto, “king’s knight and counselor,” who according to the letter of safe-conduct had just died.130 But since Frescobaldi letters show that | Berto was still very much alive in 1312,131 this move was simply a ruse to 75 allow several Frescobaldi partners and factors to leave England legally without stirring up a controversy. 126 C.C.W. 1244–1326, p. 331. 127 c.p.r. 1307–1313, p. 305, January 15, 1311. 128 See s.c. 1, 63 No. 184. 129 e 30/1557. On November 8 Amerigo and Bettino were given royal protections, and on the same day Amerigo was permitted to render his accounts by deputy since he is said to be “engaged on the king’s business” (c.p.r. 1307–1313, p. 294). This looks as if Edward ii knew of their imminent departure. 130 c.p.r. 1307–1313, pp. 306, 320. Sapori makes the plausible suggestion that the appointment as king’s proctors to take possession of the goods of Berto and his sons Amerigo and Bettino may have been a formal compliance with the fifth ordinance, but could hardly have been serious in its intent. He writes, “Ma ć anche vero che non voremmo ritenere che Edoardo intendesse sul serio che, una volta attraversata la Manica e raggiunta Firenze, i Frescobaldi si affrettassero a reccogliere tutti i beni mobili dei loro parenti, e a far redigere atti legali per il sequestro degli immobili e tornassero subito a portare gli uni e gli altri a Londra!” (La Compagnia, p. 48). 131 s.c. 1, 58 No. 13. Davidsohn incorrectly dates Berto’s death in 1310 (Storia di Firenze, Chap. 4, Part 2, p. 710).

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The ruse worked well, but the Frescobaldi agents who remained in England to watch events and to salvage what they could of their fortunes132 soon realized the dangerous gap opening between Edward’s promises and the performance of his government. Control of the customs, always the foundation on which royal credit rested, was taken from their hands on June 17.133 When the Riccardi had lost the customs in 1294 it was the clearest sign of their fall. The Frescobaldi must have viewed this step in similar terms. Any hopes they had were temporarily dashed by an order for their arrest on July 6. While the king was in the north Gilbert de Clare, guardian of the realm, authorized the seizure of the merchants and their goods until they gave surety for a full accounting for all receipts of royal income. The letter patent, sent to the London mayor and sheriffs and a whole host of officials in English counties, in Ireland and Scotland, states that the king feared the merchants would flee the realm without accounting. A similar letter to the seneschal of Gascony ordered him to prevent the Frescobaldi from leaving the duchy and added the charge of debasing the king’s coinage.134 Some of the merchants must have escaped the arresting officers and hurried north to inform the king. Edward quickly revoked the arrest order in a letter sent to Gilbert de Clare, the chancellor, and exchequer officials, informing them that he has learned of the seizure, “de quoi nous nous merveilloms molt.” The Frescobaldi have assured him a full account and they were to be released; since the king had taken them | under his protection and defense, the merchants were not to be molested or aggrieved.135 Once again promises outreached performance. When the ordinances were published in the parliament which began in August, Ordinance 4 stipulated 132 They seem to have carried out their jobs with remarkable morale. Early in 1312 Barone wrote to Bettino and Pepe, “I have settled with the king [the Windsor visit discussed below] and I can now go freely all around, so that I can look after your business better than before. Thus let me know what I have to do and I shall do it with all my power” (e 30/1488, p. 1). Gherardo Rinucci wrote to Bettino in October of that year, “You thank me for what I did for you, but there is no use to thank me. Would to God I could do and say things of your utility and honor, as for myself I never will miss to be at your service, even if it would be for me the biggest danger” (e 30/1488, p. 9). Biagio Aldebrandino told Bettino in February of the following year he had sent a statement of payments made for the partners since they left and has even had time to buy clerical vestments requested: “I strolled about London and found two which will be ready within 3 weeks or a month at the most, and I think to get them at a price you will like” (s.c. 1, 58 No. 6A). 133 C.C.R. 1307–1313, p. 367. 134 C.F.R. 1307–1319, p. 96. 135 e 368/81 m. 65. C.C.R. 1307–1313, p. 367. The Calendar states that Bettino brought the news to the king, but since he had already left England we must assume that other merchants spoke on his behalf.

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native control of the customs; Ordinance 5 required the arrest of all alien merchants who had received customs or other royal revenues, until they had accounted; Ordinance 11 abolished the new custom of 1303; and Ordinance 21 specifically required the arrest of the Frescobaldi until they accounted, “non contresteant la conte qil se dient avoir renduz”; if they did not account before mid-October (“de denz la quinzein de la Seint Michel preschein avenir”), Amerigo was to be banished and held an enemy of the king and realm.136 On October 12, the day after the ordinances were sent out to the counties under the great seal, four letters were drawn up ordering the removal of Amerigo and his locum, Hugolino Hugolini, from the constableship of Bordeaux, and the arrest of all the Frescobaldi in Gascony. Three days later, “in full exchequer,” these letters bearing the great seal were committed to John Squrel, king’s serjeant, to be taken to the duchy. The arrest is ordered because the Frescobaldi “se a dicto regno nostro et aliis terris nostris, compoto suo non soluto, elongarunt, ac bona sua secum extra dominium et potestatem nostram detulerunt, et adhuc de die in diem deferri faciunt, in nostri contemptum et prejudicium manifestum.…”137 Does this letter, which later refers to the “malitiis praedicti Emerici et sociorum suorum praedictorum,” represent a change of attitude on Edward’s part, his true feelings toward merchants fleeing from his power? The order for their arrest in England, dated October 29, just after the time formally set by the ordinances for their accounting had expired, seems to be simply a formal enactment of Ordinances 5 and 21; the lands of Amerigo are to be seized by the escheator on this side of the Trent and the merchants and their goods seized, an ordinance having been made among the other ordinances … that the said Emery and his fellows…should come to the Exchequer within the quinzaine of Michalemas last to render account of all issues | of customs 77 and other things received by them, notwithstanding any account which they pretended to have rendered before, and that meanwhile they should be attached by their bodies with all their goods and that the lands of Emery should be taken into the king’s hand.138 A memoranda roll entry (dated December 20) refers to the arrest of Frescobaldi goods carried out by the sheriffs of London and Middlesex “by order of the 136 The ordinances are printed in The Statutes of the Realm, vol. I (London, 1810), pp. 157–167. 137 e 368/82 m. 19. e 159/85 m. 42. The letters are printed in Roles Gascons 1307–1317, pp. 158– 160 and T. Rymer, Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae…, 4 vols. (London, 1816–1869), ii, part 1, p. 146. 138 C.F.R. 1302–1319, p. 107. Sapori says of this action, “la stalla era stata chiusa dopo che i buoi erano fuggiti” (La Compagnia, p. 51).

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bishops, earls, and other proceres of the realm recently assigned by the king ad ordinand’ de statu reqni.”139 One of the surviving Frescobaldi letters confirms that the king was still most anxious to protect his merchants and to preserve the relationship with them. Barone, a factor of the company in England, wrote the following to Bettino and Pepe abroad:

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We inform you that the day after Christmas the king sent for me. He was in the park of Windsor, so that I went there and stayed four days. He warmly welcomed me and in the presence of the seneschal told me I could safely go and stay all over his kingdom wherever I would like, because he considered me his merchant and took myself under his protection. Besides he ordered Sir William of Melton to let me have any letter I would need, sealed with the great seal, and said to me “Be sure you shall find me the best lord you ever found.” Consequently I was and am very merry and content, and am convinced that Fiore spoke to him. Therefore seeing his affection towards me, I commenced to talk about you and to remind him of the services you made to the father…[illegible]…also to Fiore. And I begged him not to forget that, because you are never leaving his orders but intending to conform always with his will. And about this I spoke as well as I knew, and I seemed to see him not displeased for my words. And he said to me “Be informed that I have the things of Amerigo, which six carts could not carry; and such things are stored in a room of mine at Westminster. I wonder why Amerigo does not write me or does not inform me about his conditions. Therefore tell him to write me and to inform me whom I have to give his things, and I shall do according to his letter.” I cannot know which are those things that six carts could not carry, unless they are the spices which were taken away from our house when | Lotto was delivered. Anyway I think it good for you to write Amerigo about this matter and that he send a letter to inform about the facts of the curia and whom the said things are to be given. He can also say in his letter I gave this advice, and he has to thank the king for his good will towards him. And if you think it good, you can remind him to lend us one of his ships and to send the things to Bruges on that ship in the most secret way. And send me a copy of the letter you are writing him, so that I may be better informed about what I shall have to say.140

139 e 159/85 m. 46d. Predictably, in attempting to arrest the Frescobaldi, government agents seized men who had no connection with the company. See e 368/82 m. 21d.; e 159/85 m. 45. 140 e 30/1488, p. 1. Fiore is probably Guy Ferre, a royal favorite.

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As Edward walked with Barone in Windsor park, reassuring him, the Frescobaldi in Gascony were probably pacing the length of a tower cell in Bordeaux castle.141 The orders for their arrest had arrived “on the Monday before the feast of St. Martin [November 9], at twilight.” Two clerks assigned to act as temporary keepers of the constableship of Bordeaux, John Guicardi and Albert Medici, obviously nervous and unsure in their new position of authority, associated with themselves the locum of the seneschal and the mayor of Bordeaux, “pro saniori consilio habendo et auxilio fortiori.” With an armed force they moved toward Agenais and found Hugolino at Marmande. Confronted with the arrest order, Hugolino became irate and insisted he had royal letters annulling their mandate; when pressed he finally produced the letter close of July 27, 1310, which had revoked the previous arrest order from Gilbert de Clare. Guicardi and Medici were evidently worried by this letter and enclosed a copy of it with their report to John Samon, bishop of Norwich, one of the Ordainers, but they answered Hugolino’s bluster with the unimpeachable argument that the more recent order should be followed. Four other Frescobaldi agents were taken with Hugolino to Bordeaux castle: Guelfo Frescobaldi, illegitimate brother of Amerigo and Bettino, Gracio de Castro Florentino and Jacquetto Symonis, who had been receivers of the proceeds of the duchy for Amerigo, and an unnamed company messenger who had brought letters from Amerigo to Hugolino and his colleagues. Since these letters mention the return of Gaveston to England, “being unwilling to obey the ordinances of the barons of England (nolens | hobedire 79 ordinationi baronum Angliae),” we can assign late November, 1311, as their probable date.142 Fortunately the thorough clerks included a brief summary of the letters in their report and we learn something of Frescobaldi attitudes at this critical time in their fortunes. Amerigo had given up hope for their operations in England in the near future, saying that it was not useful to remain and that he did not currently plan to return. Bettino evidently shared his views and had already left England, meeting his brother in Bruges. The leaders of the company thought Gascony was also becoming too dangerous. Amerigo confessed 141 The report on their arrest by Gascon officials is found in a letter of December 4 sent by two clerks to the bishop of Norwich, one of the Lords Ordainers (e 30/1557). Edward Bond printed most of this letter in Archaeologia, xxviii (1840), 250–253. The portion he omits is of interest for the history of English administration in Gascony, but does not concern the Frescobaldi. Bond dated the letter 1312, but it was clearly written in 1311. 142 The earliest rumors of Gaveston’s return in England were on November 30. (See J.R. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster 1307–1322 [Oxford, 1970], p. 121). The clerks report was dated December 4.

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that he could not help the agents there as he once did “when he and the Earl [Gaveston] had their state and power,” but he professed still to hold the faint hope that Edward ii and Gaveston might yet win. His doubts that the Ordainers would again act against the Frescobaldi in Gascony and order their arrest must have made droll reading for the merchants in Bordeaux castle, if in fact the letters reached them before the arresting officials. Perhaps more representative of Amerigo’s actual reading of their situation is the set of instructions, apparently in the second of the letters, telling Guelfo to send out of the duchy all of the money and goods he can; he is not to omit doing this “for all the world.”143 If Guelfo lacked cash for purchases he was to buy at any price on credit, charging the goods on the customs or on Gascon bailiffs, even if it meant paying double prices for a tun of wine. Amerigo wanted 1,000 tuns of wine sent “in the name of God and all saints, without delay,” and he clearly expected that the company would not long be in Gascony to face demands for payment. Guelfo was not to risk any arrest which threatened to be permanent (unlike that of July), but Amerigo hoped he could carry out the instructions without any danger. His final orders to his brother were that under no circumstances should he make any payments for the king or any living man, save by order of Amerigo himself or Bettino. The plans were, of course, useless, for the intended recipients were already imprisoned, stoutly refusing to recognize the authority of the current constable to force them to come to account. As Guicardi wrote to the English exchequer: “les Lombardz de la compagnie de ffriscombaud sunt detenuz en prison a Burdeauxe e ne voillent accounter si le conestable q’ ore est ne usl especial maundement pur ceo qil dient q’ il unt tenu le office de la conestable e | issint le conestable q’ ore est ne les poet destreindre de rendre account com pier a pier ne eit commandement.”144 Bettino tried to free them by an appeal to Guy Ferre to speak with the king,145 but they were finally sent to England by royal order in March, 1312, to appear before the king’s council in parliament. The lieutenant of the new ­constable of Bordeaux, Master Jordan Moraunt, committed Hugolino, Guelfo, and Gracio to a Thomas Faron of Rye, master of the ship “Lespisinghorn of 143 The clerks’ summary does not distinguish between the two letters and so it is likely that the more pessimistic orders were in the second and later letter. 144 e 30/1578. 145 s.c. 1, 49, No. 165. Having already informed “his dearest lord” about the “imprisonment and insult and charges” to the Frescobaldi in Gascony, in this letter he begs “most warmly that you recommend them to our most illustrious lord the king of England, so that they can receive back all writings, books, letters and anything else of which they were unjustly deprived, in order to enable them to give a faithful and diligent account as duty requires.”

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Winchelsea,” along with a guard of six serjeants to watch the prisoners, an advance of cash and an understanding that an accounting for his expenses would be held in England. After being on ship for fifteen days the Frescobaldi and their guards, led by Faron, rode on hired horses from Dover to London, taking three days for the trip. Faron duly presented the prisoners to the king’s council on March 29 and the same day they were committed to the Tower for safekeeping.146 Although their new quarters were undoubtedly as bleak as their old, Guelfo and Gracio were released in the spring of 1314. They had found mainpernors and Antonio Pessagno, Edward’s new banker, announced to exchequer officials that in order to render account “deliberentur per manucapcionem essendi ad voluntatem Regis.”147 Although Hugolino alone was now held in the Tower, he too did not remain a prisoner long. Edmund Mariny, the lieutenant of John Crumbwell, constable of the Tower, was supposed to bring him before the exchequer barons on the Tuesday after the Nativity of Saint John Baptist in late June. But he came empty-handed, admitting “se non habere ipsum Hugon’ adiciendo ipsem evasisse sine scitu et voluntate sua a custodia sua.” For his failure Edmund was himself temporarily imprisoned in the Tower, but Hugolino was not to be found.148 Perhaps it is justifiable to suspect that a king whose position was much strengthened by the summer of 1314 (before Bannockburn) found ways to unlock cell doors in the Tower. Admittedly, Edward’s attitude toward the Frescobaldi must have been complex in these years, and dissension within the company complicated | the situation greatly. The king’s view may have hardened somewhat against the merchants once they were clearly ruined and unable to help a financially hardpressed crown. Edward ii was probably not averse to collecting something from their goods and debtors in England, and there were many English officials who would urge a hostile policy. Writing from the papal court to Henry Beaumont, another specific victim of the Ordainers, Bettino sent elaborately phrased hopes for good news about the prosperity of the king and his reign, and his desire for the downfall of “traitors who call themselves defenders of the said our lord the king.” He assured Beaumont that he and all his relatives were prepared to do all which would please Edward, adding that “we are able to say justly that not by our lord the king aforesaid was evil done for good but by his officials, by all means powerful adversaries of ours, whence I appeal to your

146 e 368/83 m. 47. Jacquetto is not mentioned. 147 e 368/84 m. 72. 148 e 368/84 m. 94d.

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lordship to intercede.”149 Another letter sent February 16, 1313, by Biagio Aldebrandino in London to Bettino and Pepe provides a specific case in point: Ser Giovanni de Sendale [John Sandale] is angry with me, and I managed things in such a way with Ser Menente that he [Sandale] changed and showed good face to me while the earl [Gaveston] was alive, but afterwards he never turned his face to me and got troubled in seeing me. I tried to know the reason through his friends, but I could not and he does not want to look at me. …I am worried about that because he is a great lord and could harm me. May God avert this from his heart.150 The enmity of the man who to some degree took their place as crown banker, the Genoese Antonio Pessagno, may have been especially trouble-some. In the same letter Biagio worried over the dangerous combination of his hostility and his influence on Edward:

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Concerning Antolino Pizzagna I tell you for certain he dislikes you, does not dread you at all, and endeavors to harm you and to speak badly of you as much as he can, and if he cannot speak in person he sends word. And in my presence he talked so badly of you that he | deeply hurt my heart. He is now in such a condition that he fears nobody, and what he wants is made in the court. The other day the king and his council donated him 5000 pounds by assigning him the customs of…[illegible]…and St. Botulph [i.e., Boston], and in Gascony 6000 marks on the custom of Bordeaux, 12,000 marks on the tenth and on the said customs for another big sum. In conclusion, he does what he wants and he pleases everybody and is so generous in the court towards the great and the small so that everybody likes him. They have also got the tin of Cornwall, which assignment gives him a profit per year of two thousand sterling pounds. Now he and his brother have sent to Genoa, by will of the king, for their wives, and he is going to buy the tower of William Servat, and there is someone who says he has got it already. Mister Amari from Valenza helps him and 149 s.c. 1, 58 No. 14, 14d., probably written in October, 1312. Davidsohn knew of this letter and paraphrased parts of it (Storia di Firenze, Vol. iv, part 2, pp. 712, 714 [although it is not cited on the latter page]). Sapori does not cite the letter. 150 s.c. 1, 58 No. 6B, C. The Ser Manente mentioned is obscure, but might be the leading partner of the Manenti company, fellow Florentines. On August 30, 1310, Sandale suppressed his dislike sufficiently to borrow 100 marks from Lapo della Bruna of the company, bringing his debt with them to £340 (e 101/127/5 No. 16).

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backs him with all his forces and he runs as never did the earl of Cornwall, and the court is led according to his judgment and will, so you can see how things can be changed. Biagio was certainly worried about the attitude of the king and the risks he took in carrying on Frescobaldi business in England. Amerigo had instructed him to try to collect from certain debtors, but he told Bettino and Pepe, “I dare not ask for [payment] because it is too dangerous because of the prohibition of the king and of lack of profit. So that where I cannot do your advantage I would like not to do things for which I had to be censured by the king and to suffer damage.”151 The weakness of their position was increased by apparently serious dissension within the company. If Edward was still listening to the Frescobaldi he may have heard a confusion of voices.152 Although a failing company would give ample cause for disputes, the exact role of several Frescobaldi agents remains obscure. On February 9, 1312, several months after the arrest order based on the ordinances, a privy seal letter informed exchequer officials that the king has learned that “Lapo de la Brune and Merlyn de Sene” and others had secretly been sending Frescobaldi goods | out of the realm. The Frescobaldi had, of course, been doing just that. Barone’s letter of January 8, 1312, suggested a shipment to Bruges “in the most secret way,” and Armando Sapori has several interesting pages on Frescobaldi smuggling.153 But were men such as Lapo della Bruna and Merlino acting for the company or for themselves? In the same letter Barone expressed serious doubts about Lapo’s loyalty: You, Pepe, write to me to speak to Lapo and to help and advise him. As a matter of fact, I speak to him many times a day and am always ready to give him any advice and help I can, but I would like to find him more 151 In this letter he also claims he has gotten a letter patent from the king “by which I or my property never could be charged for the Frescobaldi company. After you left, I applied to him [i.e., the king] for that and told how my property had been sequestrated, and this happened in the past Lent. Therefore he ordered me to have a writ from the sheriffs of London to release as many goods of mine as they had sealed. The sheriffs complied with the order of the king. …” 152 On August 4, 1312, Amerigo instructed Bernardino via letter to tell Biagio to “behave properly towards me and my things, as it is his duty, and that he return to me what he has of mine, for he knows he was for me the most reliable man in the world, and I want to see if he continues to be so. And tell him that my friendship could be useful for some case which could happen. …” (s.c. 1, 49 No. 164). 153 e 30/1488, p. 1. Sapori, La Compagnia, pp. 50–52, 60–61, 69.

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constant and determined than I see him. About your facts he does not say anything, on the contrary he always bewares of me and when he talks with me, he shuns and one cannot know the truth from his mouth. He undermines me in order to get from me all he can, and I, for fear he could relate your facts to others, do not say anything. On the contrary I show having heard nothing from you.154

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Piero Frescobaldi’s role is even more uncertain, for it was “Petrus de ffriscobaldis” who brought the privy seal letter accusing Lapo and Merlino to the exchequer and who sought its implementation on behalf of the king, “asserens se venisse de Rege de partibus Eboracum die hesterna sero.”155 The king’s letter stated that the guilty were to be arrested by the advice of John Crumbwell, keeper of the Tower, “et de nostre cher valet Pierres de ffriscobaud.” Before an impressive array of officials Piero provided names of additional suspect merchants: “Perottum de Treye, Philip de Beeg, Franciscum de Regge, Jacobum de Myne et ffalcum de Kyngeston.” But the order for their arrest brought slight results: Lapo had already fled, and of the others only Francisco and Falco were taken. Despite the former’s denial Piero insisted that Francisco and Lapo had secretly collaborated in sending out money and goods and even gold and silver vessels worth more than 200 marks. After investigation it was decided Francisco was at least an accomplice and he was sent to the Tower. Falco’s testimony proved more interesting. Although he too denied any personal role, insisting he was only Lapo’s servant, he did know that Lapo had taken wool and moveable goods out of the merchants’ London house before he fled, dealing with a certain Geoffrey of Brittany. To Falco’s questions Lapo had answered that he had an agreement with | certain sheriffs of London for storing and exporting cloth and other goods. He also sent Falco away so that he could be in the Frescobaldi house alone, but told him not to see anything suspect in this. Because Piero was satisfied with his testimony and because of his good reputation, Falco was released. His serious implication of the London sheriffs apparently fell on deaf ears. But Piero insisted that Geoffrey, who had first fled abroad with Lapo, was now in Kent, and that Jacopo was hiding somewhere in Devon. Again a search was made, but with no results, and Piero did not pursue the matter.156 154 e 30/1488, p. 1. 155 For Picro to speak about Frescobaldi goods was especially anomalous, since only a few months earlier, on December 20, 1311, the council had been informed that the king wished Piero’s three horses, his robes and armor returned to him (e 159/85 m. 46d.). 156 e 30/1488, pp. 7, 8, 8d.; e 159/85 m. 17d.; e 368/82 m. 35.

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To say the least the episode is puzzling. Had Piero lost his nerve under pressure, or is it possible that the king was acting against dissident Frescobaldi factors on Piero’s advice? Some of the company agents in England did not think so. Gherardo Rinucci wrote to Bettino, “Don’t forget that owing to Piero Frescobaldi’s kindness, I think I shall not be able to remain over here, because he bears a grudge against me, so far as I understand, and quite recently he got a writ against me.” Speaking of a certain sum of money he writes that “the king had the money by the messenger of Piero Frescobaldi.”157 A letter sent to Amerigo by Rinaldo Berardi on March 29 comments on the recent seizure. Writing from Bruges, Rinaldo relates that Lapo has left London “for fear of Piero (pro paure di Piero).”158 In the critical sentences that follow most words are nearly illegible, but it seems reference is made to a secret writing (lo scrito arcana), royal favor, and wool seizure. When legibility returns Rinaldo is narrating the seizure of Frescobaldi goods: all over London … everyone who has goods of the Frescobaldi had to present them to the Court, under penalty of body and property. Therefore the things the Lucchese owned were lost and sent over to the king, as well as the 15 slabs of wax which Merlino had, while the house was all broken down. Then Simone Guidi mounted the horse along with two king’s serjeants and they went towards Berwick [Everiche]. Piero and Giovanni are at Stanford. They wanted to capture him enchained, according to ser Giovanni’s report, before the King, so that Giovanni begged for God’s sake not to abandon him nor Cambino Folberti, as Piero promised to make recognizance at Berwick for what Ghiotto had  to have in England. Therefore he recommended to the serjeants, under penalty to be condemned to death, | to present himself before 85 the King at Berwick, and thus they left him to go towards the King. But I am afraid if he goes to the Court he is going to suffer more than we do not want. Now you can see in what situation we are … [several illegible lines follow]. A smaller page attached to the letter provides further detail, although there are once again the obscurities and frustrating gaps. After mentioning Perotto, one of the merchants accused by Piero, this page continues:

157 e 30/1488, p. 9. October 18, 1312. 158 e 30/1488, pp. 7, 8, 8d. Lapo went via Bruges to meet Bettino at the papal court (ibid., pp. 10, 10d.).

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Afterwards he [antecedent unknown] came closer and wanted Simone Guidi to be arrested, and also Merlino and the brother-in-law and other persons … [illegible]. Simone Guidi went to the king and got letters to arrest Piero with all the property belonging to the Frescobaldi, and I am informed that the king did so because Piero promised to give him … [illegible] … £20,000 … [illegible] … so that I am afraid he has to suffer a lot. Simone and the serjeants went to London, but they did not find Piero because he had gone toward the Court along with Giovanni Manieri. As soon as they entered Piero’s room they took off all the things there were.

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Some of the details in these confusing passages come into sharper focus when several characters are identified. Simone Guidi was a member of the Florentine company of the Cerchi Neri159 and may have had some scores to settle with the Frescobaldi. Ser Giovanni Manieri is John Maners who, as an executor of the will of Guy Bonaventura, was associated with Cambino Fulberti, an attorney of Guy’s widow Constantia. They might well appeal to Piero not to abandon them; in 1309, debts owed to them for the late Guy had been formally recorded as owed to Amerigo and Piero, “on account of the favour that they then had in the king’s court.” Since these debts were now being seized along with other debts owed the Frescobaldi, they were desperately anxious for the king to be informed of the true nature of their deal with the merchants.160 But important questions remain unanswered. Are we dealing in these two passages with a single incident or a series of events? Did the action take place before or after Piero brought the privy seal letter to the exchequer? Was there some secret understanding between Piero and Edward? Had Edward’s protection of the company finally evaporated? Even the simple and odious label of informant is hard to pin on Piero | confidently. In a letter to Bettino, Biagio Aldebrandino writes that when he visited their abandoned London house he wanted Piero and Giovanni Canigiani to accompany him to witness what he found there. “I did not find anything except two uqqie [boxes or drawers?], the counter and other petty things, estimated at circa 30 solidi in all. I found my uqqie with the keys broken into the lock and pulled out, and all things of value stolen from there. Lapo did all that.”161 But despite the lacunae and difficulties in the evidence it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Piero was at least temporarily acting against the interests of his societas on behalf of a king who had decided to recover whatever he could 159 C.C.R. 1296–1302, pp. 354, 475; ibid., 1307–1313, pp. 482–483; c.p.r. 1307–1313, pp. 498, 500– 502, 518. 160 C.C.R. 1307–1313, pp. 167, 222, 459, 569. 161 s.c. 1, 58 No. 6A.

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from the wreck of his financiers fortunes in England. Piero may have been less than enthusiastic in his role at times. On March 9 the king ordered the sheriffs of London (perhaps on Simone Guidi’s urging, as in Rinaldo’s letter?) to “cause Peter de Frescobaldis, merchant of the society of the Frescobaldi of Florence, and with all the goods of the said merchants in his custody to be led to the king without delay.”162 But on April 20, 1312, the king was levying Frescobaldi debts as his own “according to the information of the king’s yeoman Peter de Friscobaldis,” and at the same time tried to recover gold and silver vessels taken from Frescobaldi goods stored in the Tower with Piero’s help.163 His resistance to playing informer, if any, was hardly heroic. Other members of the company may have been suspected of disloyal action—Lapo della Bruna certainly was—but only Piero became the king’s yeoman and informant. The Frescobaldi flight from England could easily conjure up melodramatic scenes of precipitous haste on moonless nights, of lathered horses with riders casting furtive glances over their shoulders; but nothing could be further from the truth. In 1311 Frescobaldi fortunes in England were ruined, but as Charles Johnson and Sapori have shown in detail,164 the merchants planned and executed an orderly withdrawal, moving personnel and as much of their goods as was possible by stages from London to Bruges, then to the papal court (at Vienne for the church council and then at Avignon), and finally on to Florence. They maintained composure in the face of disaster; their letters resolutely maintain a positive tone, | despite all the company setbacks. Occasionally there is even a jarring note of joviality. Amerigo closed a letter to Bernardino by asking, “Tell me something, what kind of life is that of the lady of charm? Be merry.”165 In a similar vein Pepe wrote to an unidentified partner, “Tell me when you like me to call upon you for a day, on condition that I shall eat as much as Goccia lay on the table.”166 The leading partners fared well during the “flight,” if their diet is any indication; men who dined on eels and muscatel, lobsters, fresh pike, almonds and figs had not surrendered their appetites to fear.167 Nor had they lost their acute sense of business. 162 C.C.R. 1307–1313, p. 415. 163 e 368/82 m. 53. C.C.R. 1307–1313, p. 420. 164 Johnson, “Italian Financial House,” pp. 327–332. Sapori, La Compagnia, pp. 58–70. Both use the Frescobaldi account book preserved in the Public Record Office, e 101/10/127. Sapori prints this “Tercius liber mercatorum de ffriscobaldis” on pp. 85–136. 165 s.c. 1, 49 No. 164. 166 e 30/1488, p. 3. 167 Account book printed by Sapori, La Compagnia, pp. 85 ff. Perhaps the rich diet explains the “una libra e meza di stomatico” purchased by Pepe’s order.

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Amerigo and Bettino probably left England in November, 1310, traveling separately, but meeting in Bruges.168 Amerigo may have remained in Bruges for a year before he went on to take charge in Florence, arriving there on the opening day of Lent in 1312.169 Although Berto was still alive, he seems to have been extremely irritable and nearly incapacitated. Buonaccorso, in a letter written several months before Amerigo’s arrival informed two partners that “since I arrived to Florence, Messer Berto never did get up because of his gout and his leg’s pain and of other dangerous illnesses … he is angry because of his illness and of the news he hears which is so bad you could not believe.”170 Bettino left Bruges on December 29 and traveled slowly to Vienne by way of Basle, Saint Geoire, and Bourgoin, arriving at the papal court only by mid-April.171 He kept a watchful eye on the company cloth business and once in Vienne contracted with other Italians to carry cloth safely across France; the company of Totto Giuochi and Giache da Certaldo were to have one-third of the profit from the cloth, but the contract also specified that if the French king or some French lord stopped or delayed shipment, the liability for damages or loss of the cloth remained with the shipper.172 There were compelling reasons for an even greater concern over a shipment of raw wool. As Sapori has shown, the merchants somehow | managed to slip past Tower guards a hoard of gold and silver vessels, apparently a portion of their goods placed there for safekeeping in 1310. While Edward was questioning Piero about “certain gold and silver vessels to the value of £500” placed in the Tower and “cloigned thence,” the treasure was actually in transit across France, safely hidden within ordinary bales of wool.173 In the Frescobaldi account book these are discreetly referred to as the “Il balle della decta lane ove entrò nostre care cose.” These “very dear things” had left England in September, 1312, in the care of Guglielmino and Buonaccurso who arranged for an evaluation of their worth by the Bardi in Paris. Then Bettino and Pepe with three factors and six servants trav-

168 Amerigo’s letter to Guelfo in Gascony, seized by English officials before December 4 was written from abroad (e 30/1557). 169 e 30/1488, p. 7. Johnson, “Italian Financial House,” p. 331. Sapori, La Compagnia, p. 60. Amerigo returned to Avignon for a few days in September, 1312. 170 s.c. 1, 63 No. 184. 171 Johnson, “Italian Financial House,” pp. 327–328. Sapori, La Compagnia, pp. 60–61. 172 See the contract, e 30/1488, p. 6, dated March 30, 1312. 173 Sapori, La Compagnia, p. 51. A Frescobaldi letter indicates that some precious vessels were similarly hidden in bales of wool and sent by sea from Bruges. As Lapo and Guiduccio wrote to Bettino, “we left in the galley…one bale, inside which are 8 sacks and 8 bautti and one package containing 8 large basins and four works marked with the Portinari mark, and written in their name” (e 30/1488, p. 10).

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eled with them to safeguard their unusually valuable wool. After an inspection and repacking at Bourgoin, the wool was sent on via Vienne and Avignon to Marseilles and thence by ship to Florence, arriving there in October.174 Most of the partners and factors remained at Vienne, where they pressed a lawsuit against the Peruzzi company in the marshalsea of the papal court.175 At the same time two missions (February 25–March 28, and March 28–June 4, 1312) were sent to Gascony in a vain attempt to free the imprisoned representatives of the company in Bordeaux. It took courage to enter Gascony still in a state of turmoil after the Anglo-French war; despite safe-conducts Jacopo had his horse stolen by soldiers at La Réole and also lost his hat to them (a loss he promptly charged to the company).176 By the time these missions failed the council of Vienne had ended, and the Frescobaldi had followed the papal court on to Avignon, where they rented a house from May 22 until November 1.177 Here their troubles began to close in on them. The arrival at the curia of Walter Langton, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, former royal treasurer,178 brought the | merchants face to face with a haughty 89 and resourceful opponent, full of hatred for Piers Gaveston and all those associated with him. Not only were the Frescobaldi tainted by that association, Langton also harbored a specific grudge because his considerable deposits with the company (1,000 marks and 2,000 gold florins) had been turned over to the king at the time of his fall from favor. A draft of a letter sent by Bettino to Henry Beaumont gives his version of the encounter at the curia, and can be supplemented with other evidence.179 Langton approached Bettino disingenuously asking for a loan and insisting his need was urgent. Bettino’s refusal was linked to his frank analysis of Langton’s character, which he seems to have made explicit to the bishop. At this Langton indulged in a gloating and vindictive speech about the death of Gaveston, “concerning which he puffed himself up with great vanity,” and apparently suggested many others in England should similarly be eliminated. Bettino assured Beaumont that he had argued with Langton, but the only result was that the bishop, “possessing his accustomed malice,” sought the arrest of the Frescobaldi by papal officers, baiting his request with the suggestion that the 174 Sapori, La Compagnia, pp. 50–52, 60–61, 69, and the printed account book pp. 115, 118. 175 Johnson, “Italian Financial House,” pp. 328–329. Sapori, La Compagnia, p. 73. 176 Sapori, La Compagnia, pp. 64–66. Johnson, “Italian Financial House,” pp. 328–330. 177 Sapori, La Compagnia, pp. 63–64. Johnson, “Italian Financial House,” pp. 330–331. 178 On Walter Langton see Alice Beardwood, “The Trial of Walter Langton, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, 1307–1312,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, N.S. 54, part 3 (1964). 179 s.c. 1, 58 No. 14. Cf. Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, Vol. iv, part 2, p. 714.

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money owing to him be paid to the papal camera. The pope’s serjeants moved quickly and caught Bettino ill in bed; he was arrested and the house and its contents sealed on October 24. The seal was hardly airtight, however, for by bribing the arresting officers the merchants were able to get their goods out of the house for shipment by their agent Cornacchino Cornacchini.180 Bettino insisted that Langton “knows well our said lord the king forced Emericus to pay to him the goods of the said bishop which the same our lord the king took into his own hands at the time when the bishop himself was imprisoned because of his evil deeds,” and was equally insistent that “our lord the king well knows that Emericus at the time he paid had letters of acquittance for the said payment sealed with his great seal.”181 But Langton’s imperious reply was that the king had no legal right to his goods and had acted unjustly. His confidence of victory was increased by the fact that he had sent the queen fine cloths and jewels from the curia. Bettino closed the letter with a long groaning recital of grievances and appeal for help. So much had gone wrong: enemies of the king have acted in violation of the memory of the earl of Cornwall and, though he wished it were not so, have even murdered the earl; the Frescobaldi have been arrested despite God and most certain promises; Amerigo has been banished and Guelfo arrested; | their books have been seized to their great damage and to the detraction of the royal honor and justice and majesty. Thus Bettino appealed to Beaumont “as if to my lord, in words of truth.” Hopes that Beaumont could sway the king toward some dramatic act of salvation were ill-founded, for while the Frescobaldi were under arrest at Langton’s suit, two emissaries from Edward arrived in Avignon, seeking their extradition.182 Five advocates, one of them apparently Petrarch’s father, had already been hired by the Frescobaldi for the struggle with Langton; their work was now vastly increased. They seem to have performed well for Bettino was freed and of the others only Pepe and Lapo were held for the king, who had sent a second request specifically seeking the arrest of Pepe and Lapo on March 22, 1313. What the majesty of the law could not accomplish was apparently effected by the more humble bribe. Cornacchino Cornacchini was freed by payments to papal guards in December, 1312, and Pepe may later have been similarly freed. Only Lapo was actually extradited to England and even there he found friends. By 1315 he had 180 Sapori, La Compagnia, p. 67. 181 His claim is valid. See c.p.r. 1307–1313, pp. 177–178. 182 Their letter from the king dated December 3, 1312, is printed in Sapori, La Compagnia, pp. 52–53. For what follows see ibid., pp. 68–70, Johnson, “Italian Financial House,” pp. 331–332; Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze. Vol. iv, part 2, pp. 712 ff. The expenses of one of Edward’s agents are recorded in e 404/482/10/5.

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escaped imprisonment, for on January 30 one Geoffrey Nichole was released from the Tower where he had been held “upon a charge of aiding the escape of Lapys del Brun, a merchant of the society of the Friscobaldi, from the custody of the mayor and sheriffs of London.…”183 Sapori is no doubt justified in suggesting that virtually all the Frescobaldi returned to their native city, and that likewise most of their goods salvaged from the wreck of their English fortunes returned home, many through the agency of friends and letters of exchange.184 After 1312 our evidence on the Frescobaldi tapers off to a thin trail of intriguing uncertainties. An agent of the company whose name is given as John Kanysan, and who had been held in the Tower, was released in February, 1315, on condition that he remain in London to collect debts owed the Frescobaldi in part payment of their debt to the crown.185 In March, 1316, a safe-conduct was issued “for themerchants and proctors whom the merchants of the society of the Friscobaldi are sending to the realm to render their account to the king…,”186 and it seemsthe royal orders of the following August instructing the council to inspect the | memoranda touching the crown and Frescobaldi were a step toward a settling of accounts.187 What negotiations or understandings prompted these steps remain uncertain, but it is unlikely that any Frescobaldi partners or proctors crossed the Channel; if they did they left no trace in the extant evidence. A year later, in August, 1317, when Edward ordered the letters and muniments of the company sent to the exchequer, a detailed list was conveniently placed on the patent roll.188 The list seems to represent a significant part of the Frescobaldi business archives in England, but it tells us nothing new about their fate once they were no longer royal bankers. Most tantalizing of all is a piece of evidence which Sapori prints in an appendix to his study, but strangely does not use in his own analysis. The document is an undated legal opinion by Oldrado da Ponte, one of the advocates in the hire of the company, arguing against the extradition sought by the English king of Piero Frescobaldi from the papal court.189 Having evidently escaped as 183 C.C.R. 1313–1318, p. 142. 184 Sapori, La Compagnia, pp. 70–71. 185 e 368/85 m. 60. 186 c.p.r. 1313–1317, p. 445. 187 C.C.R. 1313–1318, p. 429. “Francis de Regio” who brought the memoranda to the council was one of the men accused by Piero of secretly taking away Frescobaldi goods (e 159/85). In the letter close he is described as “fully informed concerning these matters, as he alleges”; the council is to hear what he will explain to them. 188 c.p.r. 1317–1321, pp. 248–250. 189 The document is printed as Appendix ii of Sapori, La Compagnia, pp. 80–81. On p. 70, Sapori states that all the Frescobaldi returned to Florence “ad eccezione forse di Pietro

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far as Avignon and having apparently convinced his partners that despite his actions his heart had always been in the right place, one suspects that Piero was able to return to Florence. No evidence indicates that the pope agreed to the extradition. There may thus have been a complete reunion of Berto’s sons in Florence, but the life of the societas came to an end in 1315.190 The family continued to play a prominent part in Florentine life; individual members of the company may have salvaged some wealth, and other members of the family continued to carry on mercantile and banking operations. But the company which had served Edward i and Edward ii was ruined. | Frescobaldi, del quale non abbiamo più notizie dopo la data del suo arresto.” One of Oldrado’s arguments indicates that Piero was illegitimate and thus not financially responsible for Frescobaldi debts in the same way as Berto’s other sons. 190 Little information is available on the failure of the company. It is mentioned by E.B. Fryde in “Public Credit,” p. 458, and by Raymond de Roover, Money, Banking and Credit in Medieval Bruges (Cambridge, Mass., 1948), p. 31.

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Appendix: The Frescobaldi Letters

A series of Frescobaldi letters from the period of their fall is preserved in the Public Record Office, a part of the business archives of the company seized by the crown. (For the similar Riccardi series, see Kaeuper, Bankers to the Crown, Appendix to Chap. 1). A royal inventory of 1318 lists “forty three letters close directed to the merchants of the Friscobaldi by their society touching private matters of the said society, of which the king is ignorant” (c.p.r. 1317–1321, p.  250); but only about nineteen have survived (seventeen legible letters or parts of letters, one contract, one illegible letter): s.c. 1, 49 No. 177

June 18, 1311

e 30/1577 (government summary of two letters) s.c. 1, 63 No. 184

probably late November, 1311 January 6, 1312 (1311, Florentine style)

s.c. 1, 49 No. 165 e 30/1488, p. 1 e 30/1488, p. 4

late 1311 or early 1312 January 8, 1312 (1311, Florentine style) March 29, 1312

e 30/1488, pp. 7, 8, 8d.

March 29, 1312

e 30/1488, p. 6

March 30, 1312

e 30/1488, p. 3

probably February or March, 1312 probably late March, 1312 Lapo and Guiduccio to Bettino (Bruges) August 4, 1312 Amerigo to Bernardino

e 30/1488, pp. 10, 10d. s.c. 1, 49 No. 164

Guglielmino (Avignon) to Amerigo Amerigo to Guelfo (Gascony) Buonaccurso (Florence) to Sir Andrea and Guglielmino (London) Bettino to Guy Ferre Barone (London) to Bettino and Pepe No heading. May be only last page of a letter. Dorse indicates either to or from Bettino. | Rinaldo Berardi to Amerigo (Bruges) Contract for cloth shipment by Totto Giuochi and Giache de Certaldo Pepe is sender

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s.c. 1, 58 No. 13

October 11 and 18, 1312

e 30/1488, p. 9

October 18, 1312

e 30/1488, pp. 5, 5d.

December 17, probably 1312 December 19, 1312 February 16, 1313 (1312, Florentine style)

s.c. 1, 49 No. 121 s.c. 1, 58 No. 6A, B, C

s.c. 1, 63 No. 180

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nearly illegible

Actually three letters sent by Buonaccurso and Guglielmino to unknown recipient: copy of Berto’s letter to them (October 11); copy of note from Amerigo which they enclosed with Berto’s letter; their own letter (October 18) Gherardo Rinucci (London) to Bettino Last page only. Sent to Bettino from England Bettino to Amerigo | Biagio Aldebrandino (London) to Bettino and Pepe

The series is fragmentary and the letters often contain frustrating evidence of what is lost, as when Rinaldo Berardi writes to Amerigo (e 30/1488, p. 8) that “in the said letter [now lost] I wrote you in detail about the facts of England, so that here it is no use to repeat that.” Sometimes the writers hint at information given orally, as Buonaccurso and Guglielmino write in another letter (s.c. 1, 58 No. 13): “Feo arrived to Genoa with the said letters and told us more news by mouth, which we think you know. But even if you do not know, we are not going to write it here for fear this letter comes to bad hands.” The care taken with the letters is shown in the same document, Berto informing his sons “this letter has been unsealed and resealed, therefore don’t wonder.” The tone of the letters is often frank, e.g., Biagio writing to Bettino informed him that “Sir Orlando has come over there … with a tart he has taken with him from Stivitona” (s.c. 1, 58 No. 6C). |

PART 2 Law and Disorder

∵

Introduction to Part 2 War amplifies disorder. This is the central claim of Kaeuper’s War, Justice, and Public Order, a work that has done so much to shape our understanding of the late medieval English state. But since its publication, the contrast that this work drew between a War State and a Law State has been the subject of a great deal of debate. A number of scholars have argued that the crown’s pursuit of military victories fostered a stronger relationship between the royal government and the political community of the realm.1 Far from diminishing  the capacity of the crown, war if anything provided a catalyst for state growth,2 as Mark Ormrod and Anthony Musson have argued in their study of a fourteenthcentury evolution of governance.3 From this perspective, the maintenance and evolution of a new sociopolitical order deserves emphasis, perhaps moreso than the violence that fueled it. Although Kaeuper does not dismiss royal efforts to preserve property rights and empower autonomous individuals,4 he has continued to insist that the crown’s evolving relationship with the political community also depended upon a vocal concern with the deficiencies of the state. He would remind us that a rosy picture of fiscal and judicial development under the aegis of the English crown cannot be readily reconciled with contemporary critiques of disorder evident in statutes and literature. Kaeuper’s critical reply is based not only upon his thorough understanding of the legal history of the English state, but also upon his consideration of the literary responses to judicial culture and the violence with which it is associated. From a Kaeuperian perspective, it is necessary to treat contemporary critiques of government seriously, lest scholars forget the human consequences of violence in their efforts to understand administrative change. The following articles offer measured contribution to the continuing debate over the growth of governance and its relationship with contemporary violence. 1 See especially Gerald Harriss, “Political Society and the Growth of Government in Late Medieval England”, Past and Present 138 (1993), 28–57. 2 Christine Carpenter, “War, Government and Governance in England in the Later Middle Ages” in The Fifteenth Century vii: Conflicts, Consequences and the Crown in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Linda Clark (Woodbridge, 2007), 2. 3 Anthony Musson and Mark Ormrod, The Evolution of English Justice: Law, Politics, and Society in the Fourteenth Century (New York, 1999); Cf., Caroline Burt, “The Demise of the General Eyre in the Reign of Edward I,” The English Historical Review, 120 (2005), 1–14. 4 Howard Kaminsky, “The Noble Feud in the Later Middle Ages,” Past & Present 177 (2002), 55–83.

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Introduction to Part 2

“Law and Order in Fourteenth-Century England” examines the manner in which legal experimentation was inspired by the perception of disorder. Kaeuper carefully evaluates contemporary cries against extortionate oyer and t­ erminer commissions, which served private interests throughout the early-fourteenth century. Some scholars might argue, of course, that Kaeuper’s evidence merely proves the continuing links between public and private power. They would certainly not take as critical a view of the crown’s ultimate reliance on those beneath it for the preservation of local peace.5 But “An Historian’s Reading of The Tale of Gamelyn” offers an insightful reply to these concerns. Tales of corruption and judicial violence would have been familiar to Gamelyn’s audience, one which acknowledged, but did not necessarily like, that attempts at arbitration could degenerate into armed brawls.6 Certainly this tale was not written to express an optimistic understanding of administrative and judicial progress, which historians critical of Kaeuper’s perspective so often voice. It remains open to question how we are to interpret laments against the failings of royal justice. To say that government initiatives failed to meet the rising expectations of the political community is not to assume that those promoting public order always failed.7 But Kaeuper also knows that contemporaries worried about the problematic relationship between governance and private interests, a problem he explores in “The King and the Fox.” The cunning and malice evident in Renard the Fox, and the titular character’s blatant disrespect for royal or clerical strictures, provides strong evidence of the corrosive influence of an all-pervasive culture of private violence upon the functioning of governing institutions. Attempts to reform the violence of Renard and his ilk were necessarily weak, worthy of suspicion and ridicule, precisely because reform could not be initiated without the participation of those so in need of reform. Even as knights fought amongst themselves, they also acted as officials and lords under the legitimating mantle of custom, crown, and cross. Despite evidence of an expectation of cooperation between knighthood and

5 Anthony Musson, Public Order and Law Enforcement: The Local Administration of Criminal Justice, 1294–1350 (Woodbridge, 1996), 257–278; Gwilym Dodd, “Corruption in the FourteenthCentury State,” International Journal of Public Administration, 34 (2011), 720–730. 6 Cf., Edward Powell, “Arbitration and the Law in England in the Late Middle Ages: The Alexander Prize Essay”, Transactions of the Royal Historical society, 5th series, 33 (1983), 57. 7 Cf., Justine Firnhaber-Baker, “Seigneurial War and Royal Power in Later Medieval Southern France”, Past and Present 208 (2010), 37–76; Justine Firnhaber-Baker, “Techniques of Seigneurial War”, Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010), 90–103.

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kingship,8 literary evidence here reveals a deep-seated fear of the inability of the crown to fully control its agents. Throughout these essays, Kaeuper reminds historians that they cannot limit themselves to the study of law and justice as institutional qualities abstracted from affect-laden human experience. As Kaeuper concludes in “Debating Law, Justice and Constitutionalism,” the evolution of governance did not lead to the historical experience of peace. We might analyze late medieval society as an evolving social system, but our external perspective does not excuse us from studying critiques of the operation of medieval law in practice. With an understanding of the limitations inherent in the pursuit of public order in mind, it becomes possible to reevaluate the relationship between law and war. Contemporaries perceived and felt the consequences of violence. They knew that the desire to resolve social conflict could stand at odds with praise for the violent pursuit of vengeance. Moreover, in times of war, the public presence of violence and its destabilizing influence was amplified. Not only did the energy devoted to warfare diminish attention paid to the administration of justice,9 the government’s willingness and ability to promote peace was inherently limited by a chivalric culture that prized the pursuit of personal vengeance. Indeed, the romances knights read hardly seemed to register the existence of any system of courts with their gradually expanding jurisdiction.10 To understand the limited nature of any government’s evolution, then, it is necessary to turn to the study of chivalric ideology. In this sense, the articles that follow provide a useful prelude to Kaeuper’s study of chivalry.

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Maurice Keen, “Chivalry and English Kingship in the Later Middle Ages” in War, Government and Aristocracy in the British Isles, c. 1150–1500, ed. Maurice Keen (Woodbridge, 2008), 250–266. Pamela Nightingale, “The Intervention of the Crown and the Effectiveness of the Sheriff in the Execution of Judicial Writs, c. 1355–15300, Historical Review, 123 (2008), 16–17. Richard Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1999), p. 106.

chapter 5

Law and Order in Fourteenth-Century England: The Evidence of Special Commissions of Oyer and Terminer1

i

The hundreds of files of Ancient Petitions in the Public Record Office, London, contain scores of petitions like the following, which was sent to king and council, probably in 1327, by John de Bannebury, farmer of the Church of Hackney in Middlesex: On the Friday before last midlent there came to Hackney Richard Catel, kinsman of Master Richard de Baldock, in a monk’s habit, calling himself Brother Muf, and John de Sabrychtheswith [i.e. Sawbridgeworth, Herts.], calling himself Brother Cuf, who entered the parsonage and told John, farmer of the benefice, that their abbot, Brother Puf, and his convent wanted to visit John within a week and put the parsonage to the torch, and that the money of the farm of the parsonage would be taken against their coming, if he wished to avoid damage and save his life. And then then next day they returned with Henry He…iz of Asschwall, Roger de Stevenhath of Lovel, William le Chaumberlain, Master Richard de Baldock, and others unknown to do what they had threatened, and John, fearing for his life, ran for the constables of the peace, raised the hue and cry, made signal for aid, and gathered the whole community of the town so that they were disturbed in their purpose. They returned Thursday in Easter week to John’s house, broke in, bound John, his wife and all his household, beat and ill-treated them, took £40 cash and valuables worth £20 to John’s damage of £40. And because he would make a complaint concerning these damages, they were alarmed and greatly fearful of what * Previously published in Speculum, 54 (1979), 734–784. 1 I owe special thanks for specific references and the invaluable help of general discussion to the late C.A.F. Meekings, Alan Harding, John Maddicott, Edmund Fryde, and Bernard McLane. Research in London was made possible by a Younger Humanist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities; during completion of the study I was greatly assisted by a grant from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. All of this help is gratefully acknowledged.

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they had done, and they wished to justify their deed by other devices, and by conspiracy and maintenance of Master Robert de Baldock, Master Richard de Baldock and Sir Roger de Waltham and John Fot, esquire of the said Sir Roger, and John Cullying, they falsely informed our lord the king who then was [i.e. Edward ii] that the said John de Bannebury and the people of Hackney had robbed them of gold, silver, and other valuables to a sum of 1,000m. The king granted a commission of oyer and terminer to Master Robert and Master Richard aforesaid, who procured justices who wore their robes and took their fees, namely John de Canterbrigg, John Bever, and Geoffrey Atte Legh. And the aforesaid Masters Robert and Richard de Baldock sent their letters to all the people in the county warning that none should be so foolish as to be against them and they ordered and sent armed men to kill John de Bannebury so that he could not remain in his own home nor come before the justices so that he has to pay £40 to Master Richard de Baldock aforesaid and the vicar of Hackney has had to pay | 100m. and John de Tuwe £10 and the 734 other people of the town 100m. Whence he seeks, for God, a remedy.2 The pseudo monks Brothers Muf, Cuf, and Puf bring us immediately into contact with the seamy side of the legal world in fourteenth-century England: charges of violence of almost cartoon quality, extortion, maintenance, procured judges in livery, special commissions. The document also reminds us that we can never know the truth about incidents recorded only in centuries-old partisan statements. Historians have long commented on the problems of law and order in late medieval England,3 and some have suggested that from the late years of Edward I these problems caused a new level of concern. From the 1290s they see an outbreak of violence and illegality which stands out even when viewed against the background of disorder endemic in medieval society.4 2 sc8/31/1539. Calendar of Patent Rolls 1324–1327 (hereafter cited as cpr), p. 287. The reference in the petition to “our lord king who then was” suggests a date of 1327 or later, rather than 1326 as indicated on the guard of the document. All mss cited in following notes are in the Public Record Office, London. 3 A recent general overview with an excellent bibliography is provided by John Bellamy, Crime and Public Order in England in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1973). 4 G.O. Sayles, ed., Select Cases in the Court of King’s Bench (1272–1422), 7 vols. (Selden Society 55, 1936; 57, 1938; 58, 1939; 74, 1955; 76, 1957; 82, 1965; 88, 1971). See Select Cases (Edward ii), 4:liii– lv, lxvi; Select Cases (Edward iii), 6:xxvi; and Sayles’s The Court of King’s Bench in Law and History (Selden Society Lecture, 1959), pp. 12–13. Alan Harding, The Law Courts of Medieval England (London, 1973), Chapter 3; see also Harding’s introduction to his “Early Trailbaston Proceedings from the Lincoln Roll of 1305,” in Medieval Legal Records, ed. R.F. Hunnisett and

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The discussion has sometimes turned on the possibility of demonstrating that crime, violence, and disorder were beginning to increase from the late thirteenth century, but a quantitative approach to this question is unlikely to convince. Even if each and every mile of legal parchment in the Public Record Office were published and analyzed, not only would we find enormous gaps in the evidence, we would also remain uncertain if our evidence represents an absolute increase in crime, or merely an increase in the number of cases coming into the purview of the royal court, or both processes happening at the same time.5 The idea of a crisis in order and justice, however, need not be linked to the impossible task of counting specific crimes over centuries. We have clear and abundant evidence of a contemporary sense of crisis, and what makes this evidence all the more impressive is the variety of witnesses in agreement.| Gov­ ernment records, especially preambles to statutes and commissions, are most frequently cited. Already in 1275 the preamble to the first statute of Westminster worried over “the peace less kept and the laws less used, and the offenders less punished, than they ought to be.”6 A decade later the statute of Winchester opened with the somber statement that “from day to day, robberies, murders, burnings more often are committed than heretofore.”7 The Articuli super cartas of 1300 declared that this statute had been ineffective: “there are more evildoers in the land than formerly, and robberies, burnings, and murders are committed innumerably (sanz nombre) and the peace is less well kept because the statute that the king caused to be made recently at Winchester has not been kept.”8 The trailbaston commissions of 1305 fulminated against the “numerous evildoers and disturbers of our peace” who wander about the countryside committing murders, outrages, burnings, and other great offenses night and day, to the great peril both of local inhabitants and travellers.9 The commissions of later trailbaston justices continued the portrayal of disorder; horrible

5

6 7 8 9

J.B. Post (London, 1978). Michael Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance Under Edward i (Totowa, New Jersey, 1972), pp. 287–290. Ralph Pugh, “Some Reflections of a Medieval Criminologist,” Proceedings of the British Academy 59 (1973), 83–104. N. Denholm-Young, History and Heraldry (Oxford, 1965), pp. 125–127. For a much older statement of the theme of disorder see F.M. Nichols, “Original Documents Illustrative of the Administration of the Criminal Law in the time of Edward i; With Observations,” Archaeologia 40, pt. 1 (1866), 89–105. As J.T. Rosenthal comments, “Mediaeval society was always one ready to resort both to violence and to law,” Nottinghaṁ shire Mediaeval Studies 14 (1970), 84. See also the comment by G.O. Sayles, Select Cases (Richard ii, Henry iv, and Henry v), 7:xxxvi. Statutes of the Realm, 1:26. Ibid., p. 96. Ibid., p. 140. c66/125, c66/126.

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felonies and trespasses are being committed, criminal confederacies have been formed “in lesionem pacis nostre et terorem populi nostri.”10 In themselves such public statements are suspect; the language of disorder quickly becomes formulaic11 and may exaggerate the disorder as a means of emphasizing the virtue of whatever royal action is proposed. Moreoever, we must ask if violence per se is increasing or merely the evidence recording violence. If the statutes and other types of royal documents which register concern about public order existed in any volume before the reign of Edward I, might we not question the idea of a crisis late in the century? Fortunately, we are not limited to such evidence. Alongside the dire analyses of royal documents we must set the equally grim estimates of chroniclers and polemicists. In the late years of Edward I, Peter Langtoft, to cite the most famous example, concluded his description of armed bands, brawlers, and conspirators with this striking prediction: “If this turbulence is not stopped, general warfare may be the result.”12 Similarly the anonymous author of the | bitter poem on the introduction of the trailbaston commissions of 736 1305 predicted that these very measures taken by the crown in the interests of order might produce a virtual state of war: “If God does not prevent it, I believe war will flare up.”13 Before we dismiss Langtoft’s statement as the wild exaggeration of a chronicler or discount the trailbaston poet’s voice as a merely prejudiced polemicist, we must set alongside their prophecies the opinion of Edward I himself, expressed not for public effect in the windy preamble to some statute, but in a private communication recorded on the King’s Remembrancer Memoranda Roll. The king characterized the trailbaston ordinance of 1305 as enacted “to suppress the disorders, tumults, and outrages of the past, which were like the start of war and which flouted the lordship of the king.”14 We read Langtoft’s “une 10 11

c66/153. The orders sent to King’s Bench on 6 June 1330 repeat line for line the 23 November 1304 writ which initiated the trailbaston proceedings; Sayles, Select Cases (Edward ii), 4:lxv. The stereotyped language in the commissions to justices of the peace is discussed by Marguerite Gollancz, Rolls of Northamptonshire Sessions of the Peace (Northamptonshire Record Society, 1940), pp. xiii–xiv, 8. Yet even such stereotyped language may on occasion describe real problems, as E.L.G. Stones notes of the crimes of the Folvilles, “The Folvilles of Ashby-Folville, Leicestershire, and Their Associates in Crime, 1326–1341,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser. 7 (1957), 131. 12 See Langtoft’s Chronicle (Rolls Series 47, 1866–1868), 2:361: “si en la riot ne seit fet desturbance, Une commune guere si levera par chaunce.” 13 “Si Dieu ne prenge garde, je quy qe sourdra guere.” Isabel S.T. Aspin, ed., Anglo-Norman Political Songs (Anglo-Norman Text Society 11, 1953), p. 69. 14 Sayles, Select Cases (Edward ii), 4:lvi, quoting from kr Memoranda Roll 79, Trinity Recorda, m.41d. The original French (not quoted by Sayles) reads, “les riots et les outrages

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commune guere” and the trailbaston poet’s “qe sourdra guere” more seriously once we have read King Edward’s “come commencement de guerre.” Moreover such language, which is found throughout the fourteenth century in government documents, is echoed by the late decades of the century in popular literature. Some of the ballads not only portray a society wracked by violence, but also reveal an attitude toward the outlaws that is uneasily compounded of fear and respect, while the attitude toward law enforcement is suspicious or even hostile. True justice is often dispensed in the popular literature only by the virtuous outlaw, not by the corrupt official.15 Moreover, the evidence for serious problems of law and justice is not limited to contemporary opinion; we must also note contemporary action. From the late thirteenth century there is a marked change and experimentation in the forms and agencies responsible for order; institutions are altered in order to deal with the sense of crisis evident in public and private opinion.16 In other words, whether or not crime was increasing on some absolute scale, the old means of control were viewed by contemporaries as inadequate. We must be sensitive to a changing social threshold for the perception of violence and toleration of disorder.| One of the major structural changes taking place across the late thirteenth century and first half of the fourteenth century was the end of the general eyre.17 Despite sporadic efforts to revive the eyre later, the abandonment of Edward I’s

15

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17

faitz que feurent come comencement de guerre et a la desobeissaunce de la seigneurie le Roy.” This statement is printed in Calendar of Close Rolls 1302–1307 (hereafter cited as ccr), pp. 454–455. For an introduction to this vast topic see M.H. Keen, The Outlaws of Medieval Legend (London, 1961), and the subsequent series of articles by J.C. Holt, R.H. Hilton, and Keen in Past and Present. R.B. Dobson and J. Taylor provide an overview of scholarly debate on Robin Hood ballads in Northern History 7 (1972), 1–30. A fascinating thesis on Robin Hood is presented by John Maddicott in “The Birth and Setting of the Ballads of Robin Hood,” English Historical Review 93 (1978), 276–299. Historians of law will also find much of interest to them in the tale of Gamelyn; see Donald B. Sands, ed., Middle English Verse Romances (New York, 1966). For example the experiments with keepers of the peace, the law-enforcement measures of the 1285 statute of Winchester; the proliferation of special, ad hoc commissions, the trailbaston commissions, the increased activity of King’s Bench, the justices of the peace. C.A.F. Meekings commented on the end of the eyre and the development of peace commissions in his unpublished “List to Gaol Delivery Rolls and Files,” which he kindly made available to me in the Public Record Office. The quotations which follow are taken from the introduction to that “List.” Cf. Bertha H. Putnam, “Transformation of the Keepers of the Peace into Justices of the Peace,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th ser. 12 (1929), 20. Alan Harding provides an informative discussion of fourteenth-century legal change in Law Courts, Chapter 3.

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second eyre in 1294 marks, in the opinion of C.A.F. Meekings, “the effective end of the common pleas eyre as an integral part of the fabric of judicial administration.” Other forms had to be devised “to do those things in the criminal field which had been done by the eyre and still needed doing.” One such judicial experiment was the increased role taken by King’s Bench in trespass litigation, although the subject still awaits thorough investigation.18 Another experiment is evident in the slow and erratic transformation by which the keepers of the peace became justices of the peace, a phenomenon well studied by Bertha Putnam, Alan Harding and others.19 Yet another attempt is evident in the trailbastons, the general commissions first issued in 1305 to hear and determine a wide range of felonies, trespasses, and other offenses. After a long period of relative neglect, trailbaston has recently been studied by Alan Harding and Ralph Pugh.20 Yet trailbaston is only one important type of the whole set of commissions of oyer and terminer (i.e. to “hear” and “determine” cases). The sizeable body of such commissions has been largely neglected by historians,21 for reasons easily identified. Had the oyer and terminer records survived in bulk, they would have left a significant archival deposit of obvious and immediate interest to legal and social historians. Where full records are by chance preserved for a few cases, we can take the measure of the documentation now largely lost. A special, ad hoc commission hearing two simultaneous cases concerning the archbishop of Canterbury in 1323, for example, | consists of a file of sixty-six pieces.22 738 Unfortunately the commissions did not leave a surviving archival class in the Public Record Office; we have the actual judicial process for only a tiny fraction 18

See the comments of G.O. Sayles, in his introductions to Select Cases (Edward i), 2, and Select Cases (Edward ii), 4. 19 Putnam, “Transformation,” pp. 19–48; Kent Keepers of the Peace, 1316–1317 (Kent Archaeological Society Records Branch 13, 1933); and “Shire Officials: Keepers of the Peace and Justices of the Peace,” The English Government at Work, 3, ed. W.H. Dunham, W.A. Morris, and J.F. Willard (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), pp. 182–217; Proceedings before the Justices of the Peace in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (London, 1938). Alan Harding, “The Origins and Early History of the Keeper of the Peace,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th Ser. 10 (1960), 85–109. See also Elizabeth G. Kimball, “A Bibliography of the Printed Records of the Justices of the Peace for Counties,” The University of Toronto Law Journal 6 (1945–1946), 401–413. 20 Harding, “Early Trailbaston Proceedings”; Ralph Pugh, The London Trailbaston of 1305 (London, 1976). 21 Outside of brief comments in standard works on legal history, there is an unpublished M. Phil. Dissertation (University of London, 1967) by Judith Brenda Avrutick, “Commissions of Oyer and Terminer in Fifteenth Century England.” 22 Just 1/1146/6. Cf. cpr 1321–1324, pp. 217–218. Another well-documented case, Just 1/798/5, consists of two membranes of enrollment and eighteen membranes of files.

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of the commissions enrolled in such great number on the dorse of the patent rolls, perhaps 150 out of many thousands.23 Thus we know that many commissions were issued, but we can discover and read the records of relatively few judicial sessions conducted by oyer and terminer justices. Moreover, since the commissions varied widely in type and scope, they constitute an unwieldy subject for investigation. After the notorious robbery of the treasury of the king’s wardrobe in the Chapter House at Westminster in 1303, oyer and terminer justices were named to look into that spectacular crime.24 When in 1317, Agnes, late the wife of Geoffrey de Brighewalton, accused Thomas de Folquardeby of renouncing his promise of marriage, beating her evilly, carrying her naked from her house, and robbing her goods, the justices she sought were no less empowered to hear and determine the trespass inflicted on her.25 There existed, in other words, not the two clear categories, general and special, of standard textbooks on legal history, but rather a broad continuum of oyer and terminer commissions: at one end of the scale the general commissions gave justices broad powers to punish an entire class of offences over whole counties or sets of counties (as in trailbastons); at the other end of the scale the special commissions were ad hoc, usually obtained by the complaint of private persons relating one specific offence in one specific locale (or at least involving a closely restricted geographical and jurisdictional scope).26 Although justices were commissioned to hear and determine charges of felony, such as appeals for deaths, the great majority of the justiceries were concerned with the more nebulous category of trespass, legal territory only recently occupied by the royal courts.27 The entire class of oyer and terminer commissions thus constitutes a vast category, diffuse in legal and social importance. But within this class we can isolate a large, important, and coherent group—the special commissions concerned

23

24 25 26 27

These records were found through the generous assistance of Mr. C.A.F. Meekings, who allowed me to use a partial list he had compiled as well as the many volumes of the Calendar of Patent Rolls in which he had made marginal notes giving references to the manuscript sources within the Just 1 class of the Public Record Office. Just 1/890. cpr 1301–1307, p. 198. T.F. Tout, Collected Papers, 3 (Manchester, 1934), Chapter 4 and the sources cited there. c81/103/4543A and B. Calendar of Chancery Warrants 1244–1326 (hereafter cited as ccw), p. 481. Occasionally an ex officio commission was given a basically administrative task; see, for example, cpr 1345–1348, p. 321. Sayles, introduction to Select Cases (Edward I), 2; Alan Harding, “Plaints and Bills in the History of English Law, Mainly in the Period 1250–1350,” Legal History Studies 1972, ed. Dafydd Jenkins (Cardiff, 1975). Cf. W.S. Thompson, A Lincolnshire Assize Roll for 1298 (Lincolnshire Record Society, 1944), pp. cxii–cxiii.

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primarily with the new royal jurisdiction in trespass. We must | study these spe- 739 cial, ad hoc commissions by combining the scattered evidence available: individual petitions for and against the commissions (querelae, bills, plaints), common petitions in Parliament, statutes, enrollments of commissions issued, and all surviving processes. An attempt to combine this scattered evidence seems justified; special commissions of oyer and terminer have been little studied, and yet were of great importance to litigants during the reigns of the three Edwards. For a century men sought them eagerly, used them vigorously, and complained about them bitterly to the king, council, and Parliament.28 The effort to determine their significance must begin with the patent rolls. Along with other judicial commissions, oyer and terminers were enrolled on the dorse of the patent rolls; but unlike most other commissions, these were fortunately included in the printed calendars. Can we trust the calendars to provide an accurate list of the commissions issued for each regnal year? Comparison between patent rolls and calender for several regnal years shows that the calendar in general is accurate; any individual entries in doubt can be read in manuscript. But did Chancery issue commissions which it never enrolled? Omissions undoubtedly occurred, as was true of any class of letters patent,29 but in all the evidence which refers to commissions of oyer and terminer (hundreds of petitions, indirect references and letters patent or close, scores of surviving processes) over a period of nearly a century, only a few commissions issued but not enrolled have appeared.30 The calendars can thus be used to get a rough indication of incidence of special commissions of oyer and terminer. When this evidence is charted on a simple graph, several useful points emerge.31 The great surge of commissions after the 1270s clearly marks the | reigns 740 28

29 30

31

Alan Harding even suggests that “it must have looked at the beginning of the 14th century as though the English judicial system was being reorganized around the bill and the commission of oyer and terminer” (“Plaints and Bills,” p. 79). See Bertie Wilkinson’s discussion in The English Government at Work, 1, ed. J.F. Willard and W.A. Morris (Cambridge, Mass., 1940), pp. 173–174. It can be shown that a commission of 15 March 1315 (Just 1/1367 m.12), one of 13 December 1331 (Chetham Society, n.s. 8, 1885), and one of 28 June 1336 (Just 1/403/14) were issued but not enrolled. The graph provides some sense of the scale and broad trends of special oyer and terminer activity. These goals can be achieved even though figures for any single year must be considered approximate rather than absolute totals. Sometimes an enrolled commission was reissued and enrolled again, with changes in the justices or in the description of the wrong suffered by the plaintiff. We will see that such changes often reflect an effort to block or cripple a justicerie; likewise the letters patent associating one or more justices to an original panel may well reflect the urgent request of a plaintiff or (less common) a defendant. Therefore such reissued commissions and associations have been counted as

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280 240 200 160 120 80 40 0

741

1272

1272

1290

1300

1310

1320

1330

1340

1350

1360

1370 1380

Figure 5.1  Special Commissions of Oyer and Terminer Issued 1272–1377. |

of the three Edwards as the heyday of the special commissions of oyer and terminer. In very rough terms, the number of commissions climbs markedly, but with curious drops, from late Edward I well into Edward ii’s reign, declines suddenly, and then comes to a new peak at the opening of Edward iii’s reign, before beginning a gradual decline across the second half of the century. additions to the original commission. Each is an indicator of significant oyer and terminer activity. The counting also requires a constant distinction between general and special commissions, but oyer and terminers present a spectrum rather than two categories always and easily differentiated. The determining criteria were the localism and specificity of the commission; a special commission reflects a charge by one person or a small group, within one locality. The problems of applying these criteria are reduced by the large number of commissions issued ex querela; all these clearly belong to the category of special commissions. The graph is arranged by regnal rather than calendar years. For Edward I and Edward iii the coincidence between regnal and calendar years (Edward I: November 20 of one year to November 19 of next; Edward iii: January 25 to January 24) is sufficiently close to use calendar years as a convenient shorthand notation in the graph. For Edward ii (July 8 to next July 7) the year on the graph must be read differently: 1316, for example, means July 1316–July 1317. Since kings did not conveniently die on anniversaries of their coronations, the final regnal year in each reign includes commissions issued over less than a full year. In the early years of Edward I the commissions seem to spill over from their proper location on the dorse of the roll onto the front side; by the reign of Edward ii virtually all commissions are copied on the dorse of the roll.

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Even a crude chart of this sort raises several questions. We need to know (1) who wanted the commissions? (2) why were they wanted? (3) why did the number of commissions issued rise or decline suddenly at various times? (4) what effect did the great flourishing of the commissions have on the perilous state of the peace?

ii

The third question will be considered first. But before analyzing the fluctuations in the number of commissions of oyer and terminer we must explain why the commissions suddenly appeared in 1275.32 In origin oyer and terminer seems closely linked to an impressive set of overall changes in the governance of the realm inaugurated by Edward I after his return from crusade and direct assumption of government in 1274.33 He created a sophisticated financial system based on Italian mercantile credit, with the new wool custom (1275) serving as collateral; he investigated local government through the swift inquests conducted in 1274–75, with results apparent in the reforms of the first statute of Westminster (1275), the new articles of the eyre (1278), and the change of sheriffs (1278). At the same time that he attempted better regulation of the notorious local officialdom, and commonly chose local men rather than his intimate servants as sheriffs,34 the king enacted the Statute of Jews in 1275 in favor of the small landowners | often indebted to Jewish moneylenders. Even more important, from 742 1275 Edward welcomed in his frequent Parliaments the complaints or petitions of all his subjects who felt aggrieved. The support of the knightly class was a crucial ingredient in royal success and it can be argued that Edward took these steps in part to secure that support.35 We must view oyer and terminer in this  context. The initial surge of the commissions and the doubling in their number over the next few years, 1275–1279, locate the beginnings of the oyer and 32 The cpr shows only a few commissions issued in each of the final years of the reign of Henry iii. 33 For the financial system see Richard W. Kaeuper, Bankers to the Crown: The Riccardi of Lucca and Edward I (Princeton, 1973), Chapters 2 and 3. On the inquests of 1274–1275 and subsequent changes, see Helen Cam, Studies in the Hundred Rolls (Oxford, 1921), and The Hundred and the Hundred Rolls (London, 1930). An excellent discussion of the querela is given by Harding, “Plaints and Bills.” On Edward I and the knightly class see M.M. Postan, The Medieval Economy and Society (Berkeley, 1972), pp. 162–165. 34 D.A. Carpenter, “The Decline of the Curial Sheriff in England, 1194–1258,” English Historical Review 91 (1976), 1. 35 Postan, Medieval Economy and Society, p. 165.

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terminer experiment directly in this period of intense royal reform; moreover, the use of the commissions in the countryside to relieve the mounting pressure of litigation in the royal courts (especially trespass cases brought by plaint or petition) fits well with what we know of Edward’s governmental policy. The oyer and terminer experiment, in other words, begins as one piece of a much larger pattern involving the long history of the informal querela (or plaint, or petition), the important judicial function of Parliament, and the active kingship of Edward i; it was arguably one of a series of measures by which Edward sought to placate and make use of the ambitions and discontents of the gentry so apparent in the troubles of his father’s reign. Why, then, the fluctuations in the number of commissions issued which begin in this reign? We can probably attribute the moderate decline between 1278 and 1283 to the first general eyre of the reign; we could similarly relate the sudden surge in 1283 to the temporary suspension of the eyre during the second Welsh War, 1282–1283. The precipitous drop over the next few years undoubtedly reflects the resumption of the eyre and probably as well the statutory regulations introduced by Westminster ii c.29.36 Again the number of commissions returned to about 50 per year and again it dropped significantly during an eyre, Edward’s second general eyre in 1292–1294. The last several years of the thirteenth century and the opening several years of the fourteenth century brought a fairly steady rise punctuated by the sizable total for 1298. The drop after 1305 coincides perfectly with the first trailbaston. Two possible explanations suggest themselves when the number of commissions rises or falls significantly: either the demand for special justiceries has changed (as numbers of petitioners increase, or shift interest to other courts), or the willingness of the king’s government to issue large numbers of commissions has changed. Throughout the reign of Edward i the relationship between the numbers of special commissions of oyer and terminer and the great countrywide inquests indicates the former explanation; demand for the commissions, more than governmental willingness to provide them, appears to change. During each period when the realm was visited by a general eyre or trailbaston, | the number of special commissions issued by Chancery dropped dramatically. Clearly the justiceries were taking on some of the litigation that would otherwise have come before eyre or trailbaston justices and were thus relieving some of the severe pressure on the royal court structure, especially the pressure of trespass litigation.37 The crown certainly did not check the growth in the commissions and initially encouraged their use as a relief for the 36 37

Statutes of the Realm, 1:85. See Harding, “Plaints and Bills.”

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court structure. But by 1285, only a decade after the initial expansion in their use, a stream of complaint forced the crown to realize that the commissions could be overworked and that they could be abused. The statute of Westminster issued in that year stated (c.29): the writ of trespass ad audiendum et terminandum shall henceforth not be granted before any justices other than justices of either bench or justices in eyre, except for heinous trespass where it is necessary to provide speedy remedy, and the lord king has seen fit to issue it of his special grace: nor, moreover, shall the writ ad audiendum et terminandum henceforth be issued for appeals before justices except in a special case and for certain cause at the lord king’s command: But lest those appealed or indicted be kept for a long time in prison, they shall have the writ de odio et atia as is stated in Magna Carta and other statutes.38 Across the first decade of the reign of Edward ii the proliferation of the commissions can only be termed spectacular. The second countrywide trailbaston in 1313–1316 had absolutely no effect on the rising popularity of oyer and terminer; in fact a peak of about 270 commissions was reached in 1318. By this time the commissions had generated an impulse and a clientele of their own; litigants chose oyer and terminers even when itinerant commissions provided an alternative. During this period we might suspect a close link between the popularity of the commissions and the political trouble studied most recently by John Maddicott and J.R.S. Phillips, as well as some more tenuous link with the natural disasters studied by Ian Kershaw.39 But beginning in 1319 the number of commissions first fell to roughly half the figure reached in the peak years, and then plunged to the lowest level in the reign during Edward ii’s last regnal year. Had the petitioners suddenly declined in number or gone to other courts? Had government policy radically changed? Probably both supply and demand were affected in the late years of the reign. Supply may have been altered first as the more fluid and changing regime of Edward’s middle years, susceptible to varying pressures and interests, gave way 38 39

Statutes of the Realm, 1:85. J.R. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster (Oxford, 1970); J.R.S. Phillips, Aymer de Valence (Oxford, 1972); Ian Kershaw, “The Great Famine and Agrarian Crisis in England, 1315–1322,” Past and Present 59 (1972), 3–49. The link between economic distress and crime has been studied from gaol delivery records by Barbara Hanawalt, “Economic Influences on the Pattern of Crime in England, 1300–1348,” American Journal of Legal History 18 (1974), 281–297.

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to the Despenser hegemony of the later years.40 The number of powerful special commissions formerly issued more freely by Chancery might well have been restricted once the single-minded control of an openly partisan regime was established. Certainly the wishes of the Despensers can be observed in surviving evidence on the commissions, and it is | unlikely that petitions contrary to their wishes had any hope of success.41 The downward trend in oyer and terminer might then have been intensified by the willingness of another court to hear the kinds of cases for which oyer and terminer justices were so often sought; King’s Bench, as G.O. Sayles has argued, entered the mainstream of criminal law from the middle of Edward ii’s reign.42 Among other changes, from 1318 the justices of King’s Bench began to hear bills more systematically than before; from 1323 the King’s Bench functioning “by way of trailbaston” acted as a court of first instance for the trial of indictments concerning both trespasses and felonies. If the example of Lincolnshire can be generalized, from 1324 trespass cases heard coram rege increased two-fold and in some years three-fold above the level of the previous quarter of a century.43 Taken in combination, the change in regime and the new activity of King’s Bench help to explain the drop in our chart. The sudden peak of approximately 270 commissions in 1327 is easily attributed to the upheaval of Edward ii’s deposition and the advent of a totally new regime.44 For the following three years the decline, which is both remarkable and persistent, lends credence to those scholars who argue that Mortimer and Isabella launched an unusually serious executive effort to improve the state of peace. Historians have not generally given their approbation to this temporary regime initiated by a usurper and paramour, but the effort at reform seems real, even if the novelty of some specific measures may have been exaggerated.45 40 41

42 43 44 45

The most recent treatment is found in Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster, Chapters 7, 8, and Phillips, Aymer de Valence, Chapter 6. See below pp. 778–780. For examples of requests for commissions to act against the Despensers or their men see sc8/56/2781, sc8/84/4184, sc8/111/5536. Each request is denied. It was also the opinion of contemporary chroniclers that the Despensers answered petitions as they wished. See Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster, p. 261 and notes 6, 7, 8. Select Cases (Edward ii), 4:lvii ff., lxxxiv. Based on the unpublished Ph.D. dissertation of Bernard W. McLane, “The Royal Courts and the Problem of Disorder in Lincolnshire, 1290–1341” (University of Rochester, 1979). The rash of commissions did not escape the notice of T.F. Tout; see his Collected Papers, 3:157. See Dorothy Hughes, A Study of the Social and Constitutional Tendencies in the Early Years of Edward iii (London, 1915), Chapter 11 and especially p. 212; Helen Cam, “The General Eyres of 1329–1330,” English Historical Review 39 (1924), 241–252; Bertha Putnam, “Transformation,” pp. 24–33, and also her The Place in Legal History of Sir William

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According to Helen Cam, the speech of Geoffrey le Scrope, presiding justice at the opening of the eyre in 1329, “professes to describe a concerted policy carried out, if not by the ill-famed Mortimer, at least under his auspices.”46 To the fourfold program Cam found in this speech—appointment of guardians of the peace; strict laws against highway robbers, armed gangs, and maintainors; general commissions of oyer and terminer of wide scope; the attempt to revive the general | eyre, 1329–1330—we can add a fifth step: a largely successful effort to 745 halt and reverse the proliferating use of oyer and terminer commissions. The second clause of the statute published in the 1328 Parliament at Northampton renewed the formal conditions for oyer and terminer commissions which had first been issued in Westminster ii of 1285. Much more direct and decisive was the decision to cancel all those oyer and terminers which failed to satisfy the statutory requirements. That this decision was taken after serious discussion appears from the response to several petitions presented in that Parliament. John de Bohun, earl of Hereford and Essex, who had requested justices to hear and determine offenses on one of his manors, was assigned justices merely to inquire and to certify the treasurer and barons of the Exchequer so that the case could be determined before them according to Exchequer practice. This response was made “purce qe en le parlement ore esteant sount par comeun assent suspenduz les Justiceries de oyer and terminer si noun en cas ou estatut le soeffre.”47 An even more informative response was given to a petition from some burgesses of Scarborough, against whom an oyer and terminer had been obtained—by common consent all oyer and terminers issued contrary to the statute but not yet begun were cancelled, while those which had begun sessions were to be adjourned to King’s Bench.48 It is hardly surprising that the suspension

46 47 48

Shareshull, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench 1350–1361 (Cambridge, 1950), p. 60. A note of caution is sounded by E.L.G. Stones in “Sir Geoffrey le Scrope (c. 1285–1346), Chief Justice of the King’s Bench,” English Historical Review 270 (1954), 1–17. G.O. Sayles insists that the measures were “ineffectual, an unimaginative and futile imitation of the plan of 1305.” See his Court of King’s Bench, p. 14, and his introductions to Select Cases (Edward ii), 4:lxiii– lxv, and Select Cases (Edward iii), 6:ix–xii. Cam, “General Eyres,” p. 243. sc8/93/4625. Rotuli Parliamentorum, 2:28: “Par ceo qe accord par le Roi et son Conseil en Parlement, qe touz les oiers et terminers grauntez countre fourme de Statut, en quel est contenue qe  oiers et terminers ne soient grauntez fors qe devant le Justices de l’un Bank et de l’autre, ou les Justices errantz, qe sount unkore a attainer, seient meintenent repellez, et de ceaux qe sont attainer qe les proces veignent devant les Justices en la place le Roi. …” The commission against the Scarborough burgesses was to be dealt with according to this formula.

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was not rigorously enforced in every case. John de Breouse, who had obtained justices just before Parliament met and then wanted to change them a few months after Parliament rose, was able to get his commission renewed.49 But the effect of the parliamentary accord is evident in our chart. These effects, however, were felt only for the few years of the Mortimer regime; the significantly higher level of oyer and terminer activity from 1330 indicates that whatever measures the government of the young Edward iii saw fit to take in a continuing program to improve the state of the peace, the unusually strict regulation of the special justiceries begun under the Mortimer regime was at an end. By the 1340s and 1350s, however, the commissions slowly decline. We cannot look to statutory regulation as the cause, for the vigorous executive action briefly displayed under Isabella and Mortimer did not continue. The crown answered private and common petitions against oyer and terminer abuses by vague promises and pious declarations that former statutes should | be observed in all their force.50 We could more reasonably look to the availability and use of other courts, especially the court held by the justice of the peace; as he gradually evolved from the less powerful keeper of the peace, the justice of the peace acquired powers to hear and determine the cases brought before him.51 Another alternative for litigants was the increased number of general commissions of oyer and terminer in which the charge given judges included many types of cases within an entire county or group of counties. By the fifteenth century these general commissions seem to have absorbed some of the cases for which special justiceries were so eagerly sought and so readily granted in the fourteenth century.52 We may suspect, although the detailed work has yet to be done, that the increased activity of King’s Bench provided another outlet for problems once brought before oyer and terminer justices.53 We may suspect a similar increase in conciliar jurisdiction. After 1346, when the writs quibusdam certis de causis and sub poena gave the council two effective summonses, petitioners responded by seeking in increasing numbers to bring their opponents before the king’s council.54 Even the population decline 49

50 51 52 53 54

sc8/33/1643. cpr 1327–1330, pp. 289, 354–355. Sir William Harleston, an important chancery clerk and frequent keeper of the great seal, had given Breouse a renewed commission by letters patent, but the chancellor was hesitant about these letters (“les queux le chaunceller ne voleit pas accepter pur le statut qest novel fait”). See below pp. 773–774. See n. 19 above. There is much useful information in Avrutick, “Commissions of Oyer and Terminer.” See above, p. 745. See J.F. Baldwin, The King’s Council (Oxford, 1913), pp. 288–289. Examples of petitioners requesting conciliar action on their charges are found in sc8/63/3126, sc8/64/3183, sc8/300/14969.

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cannot be ignored as a force reducing the numbers of commissions. King’s Bench business fell after the plague55; perhaps the oyer and terminer decline also reflects the ravages of the Black Death.

iii

Fluctuations in the numbers of the commissions and in attitudes toward them bring us to the first question posed above: cui bono? Who wanted the commissions? At whose initiative and to whose benefit were they issued? As already suggested, the initial surge of the commissions of oyer and terminer probably represents deliberate crown policy, a device favored by Edward I in the broad strategy of his governance. But even in a more restricted and immediate sense the special commissions were useful to the crown.56 In oyer and terminer the king found a handy means of dealing with the misdeeds of royal officials, trespasses on royal estates, and assaults against the king’s own men and goods.57 Edward ii had special reasons to order an oyer and terminer for Bartholomew de Birchull, king’s bailiff of Newbottle; when Birchull tried to arrest some wrongdoers in Northampton who had beaten | his carters on the road to the city, 747 he was himself assaulted by townsmen who chased him in fear of his life towards the sanctuary of a church. As Birchull vividly recalled in his petition, “the common cry therewith was ‘At him! At him! He is the king’s man’ (E la comune crie fut par tant, A luy A luy, Il est ou roy).”58 But the crown much more frequently prescribed commissions of oyer and terminer for the legal ills of subjects. To some petitions which simply seek an unspecified remedy, the answer, recorded in an endorsement, directs the chancellor to issue a commission of oyer and terminer,59 or at least to offer that option among others.60 Most petitioners needed no urging. Popular pressure was undoubtedly the most significant factor in the expansion of special commissions of oyer and terminer. Private parties persistently channeled a stream of querelae towards the king and council, seeking justices to hear and 55

56 57 58 59 60

See the statistics in Sayles, Select Cases (Edward iii), 6: Appendix I, and the comments by Stones, “The Folvilles of Ashby-Folville,” pp. 117–136. I owe these references, as well as those in the previous note, to Dr. J.R. Maddicott. As noted p. 16. c81/68/1014; sc1/38/40. cpr 1343–1345, pp. 278, 285. c81/66/873. ccw 1244–1326, pp. 308–309. cpr 1307–1313, p. 251. For examples, see sc8/69/3402 (ca. 1316), sc8/42/2057 (1302), sc8/126/6284 (ca. 1330), sc8/59/2945 (1289–1290), c81/77/1925–1926, c81/96/3867–3868, Rot. Parl., 1:376, 2:44. For examples see sc8/136/6760, sc8/46/2252, Rot. Parl., 2:396.

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determine their particular complaints about trespasses done to them.61 Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of these petitions are scattered through the files of Ancient Petitions, Chancery Warrants, and Ancient Correspondence which survive from the reigns of the first three Edwards. Enrolled commissions give a similar impression of the close link between the flood of complaints and the proliferation of the special commissions. For the reign of Edward ii, more than 75% of the enrolled special oyer and terminer commissions were issued ex querela.62 In short, once the crown showed its willingness to issue the special commissions in significant numbers, a popular demand (of perhaps unexpected proportions) quickly developed. If we analyze the social ranks within this swelling number of plaintiffs, the results should be doubly useful: we can learn what social groups turned most often to oyer and terminer in their litigation, and by following their use of the justiceries over a century, we can get some rough sense of the diffusion of a new legal device through the ranks of privileged society. We can determine, in other words, whether the impressive expansion in the use of the commissions was brought about by a proportional increase in the numbers of plaintiffs within the social ranks which first obtained commissions, in the initial phase following 1275, or by an expansion in only some of those ranks, or by the addition of altogether new social groups of plaintiffs who had not initially obtained commissions. The problems and uncertainties of such an analysis are formidable. Many medieval Englishmen resist social categorization even more successfully than | they withstood court summonses. Moreover, the sheer numbers involved are daunting. An attempt to categorize the social status of every plaintiff recorded in enrolled commissions between 1275 and 1377 would cost a researcher some part of his eyesight and no small part of his sanity. But a sample of commissions issued during twelve years, in four three-year groups (3, 4, and 5 Edward I, November 1274–November 1277; 27, 28, and 29 Edward I, November 1298–November 1301; 10, 11, and 12 Edward ii, July 1316–July 1319; 32, 33, and 34 Edward iii, January 1358–January 1361), reveals interesting patterns.63 61 62

63

The most useful discussion is Harding, “Plaints and Bills.” Private petitions must also stand behind many commissions which are not stated to have been issued ex querela. The commission to hear and determine the murder of John Burfield in 1328 appears in cpr 1327–1330, p. 289, to be ex officio; but it was actually obtained by petition of John de Breouse (sc8/33/1643). Burfield had been squire to Breouse. The importance of a count and classification of plaintiffs lies in the general pattern which can be discovered, rather than in the establishment of incontrovertible figures within any single category. In the analysis which follows, the highest status among several plaintiffs seeking a single petition has determined the classification of that commission; close relatives of the great (such as wives or sons of great lords) have been counted among the

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In the period of their initial flourishing (1275–1278), the number of commissions issued simply in the crown interest was relatively small (8% of total). Each of three groups obtained double this number of commissions (15–17%): the great secular and ecclesiastical lords (earls, barons, archbishops, bishops, major crown servants), the lesser lords and gentry (knights, lords of manors, important local crown servants, king’s clerks), and the heads of religious communities (abbots, priors, deans of cathedral chapters). But the largest single group of plaintiffs was drawn from the ranks of merchants and townsmen. A quarter of the enrolled commissions was issued to English townsmen and English and foreign merchants. Out of these numerous categories, three broadly defined groups seem important: (1) the great lords, secular and ecclesiastical, including major Crown servants; (2) a middling rank beginning with the knights, heads of religious communities, and holders of ecclesiastical benefices and extending downward to “franklins, esquires, and yeomen”64; (3) the merchants and townsmen. In 1275–1278, and in all the following sample years, these three broad categories account for the vast majority of oyer and terminer plaintiffs (78–90%). The following table shows the rough percentage of the total enrolled commissions held by each category in the sets of sample years: | 749

1275–1277 1299–1301 1316–1319 1358–1360

64

Great Lords

Gentry

Merchants/Townsmen

16% 23% 15% 15%

45% 52% 68% 53%

25% 13%  7% 10%

great. The major sources used were F. Palgrave, ed., Parliamentary Writs and Writs of Military Summons, 2 vols. in 4 (London, 1827–1834), the relevant calendars of Patent, Close, and Fine Rolls, the Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, and a range of secondary sources including Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster; Phillips, Aymer de Valence; Gwyn Williams, Medieval London (London, 1963); T.F. Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England, 6 vols. (Manchester, 1920–1923); N. Denholm-Young, The Country Gentry in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1969). This follows the general category of Denholm-Young, Country Gentry, Chapter 1. The cautions of K.B. McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1973), Chapter 1, are important; for any individual figure, wealth may be more significant than rank. However, in establishing the general trends regarding broad social categories for large numbers of men, a rough coincidence between rank and influence may be assumed, especially since ranks in royal service are correlated with social rank. Determination of wealth for all plaintiffs in the sample years would, moreover, be clearly impossible.

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A clear pattern emerges from these figures. Predictably the group of men at the top of society obtained commissions in proportion to their influence rather than their numbers; as the total volume of commissions rose dramatically, the great secular and ecclesiastical lords maintained or even increased their share, as in 1299–1301. Great lords and major crown servants always accounted for a substantial minority of the oyer and terminer plaintiffs. More surprising is the fall in the percentage of commissions issued to merchants and townsmen at the very time when the oyer and terminer phenomenon was at its peak. There is no urban or mercantile component in the great increase of the commissions across the late years of Edward I and the reign of Edward ii. This proliferation can be chiefly attributed, as our chart shows, to the vigor of gentry plaintiffs. Such men as knights and wealthy landowners, and their relatives who served as the heads of religious communities or as local officials, were given a rising percentage of a dramatically increasing number of commissions. Even when in 1358–1360 the total number of commissions issued to all plaintiffs returned approximately to the level of 1275–1277, this group obtained more than half of the total. This evidence suggests a gradual diffusion of a new and powerfully useful legal device into the ranks of country society. Great lords and a small number of sophisticated townsmen realized its potential at once, and brought their opponents before oyer and terminer justices. But the expanding market for the commissions was to be found below the ranks of the very great, and outside of town walls. In fact the largest share of the rise seems attributable not only to the gentry, but increasingly to the lower ranks within this broad category.65 If raw figures culled from medieval sources must always be analyzed with care, this caution is particularly appropriate for statistics drawn from special commissions characterized by wire-pulling and corruption. Every oyer and terminer was not of equal consequence; the interest represented by any commission may have extended beyond the plaintiff whose injuries are so graphically detailed in a petition. Above all, a simple count cannot fully show the role played by great lords in oyer and terminer. Many commissions issued to gentry plaintiffs must reflect the influence of their lords at court, | whether or not the enrollment notes that the justices were given “at the insistence” of the lord or 65

The percentage of plaintiffs for whom little or no information beyond their commission can be found increases steadily across the four sets of sample years, rising from 5%–7% of total commissions in the reign of Edward I to roughly 25% in the reigns of Edward ii and Edward iii. In a rough way this trend can be taken to indicate increased participation by plaintiffs of lower status than the knights and other substantial gentry whose activities find more frequent record in royal documents such as grants, pardons, commissions of array, commissions of the peace, etc.

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states that the commission was warranted “by the information” brought to Chancery by some powerful figure who has come from the king. Such magnate influence in securing special commissions is scarcely surprising in “this amorphous world, where bribery and corruption merged imperceptibly with backstairs influence and the traditional exercise of patronage.”66 Not only is the century of oyer and terminer an age of bastard feudalism, of good lordship in general, it also coincides with the heyday of the retaining of justices and other crown servants by magnates, as J.R. Maddicott has demonstrated.67 Oyer and terminer was thus no intruder in a world in which legal favors often flowed like a fountain of patronage from the king to select magnates and from them to their retainers, relatives, and friends in the countryside. Yet the mediating role of a magnate was by no means always present, and even where it can be shown or assumed, the justices were still acting on behalf of the petitioner of gentry status, smiting his enemies, recovering his losses. At the very least there were two interested parties in a commission sought, for instance, by a local knight and obtained for him from Chancery by his lord, and in other cases the local knight seems to have been able to obtain his commission directly. As Mr. B.W. McLane has shown,68 Robert Godsfield, a minor Lincolnshire knight free of any ties to a magnate, was able to obtain no fewer than 20 oyer and terminer commissions against a wide range of opponents in a period of twenty-five years. Of course a lord might himself obtain an oyer and terminer against some personal enemy formally in the name of one of his gentry retainers. But from the mass of evidence examined the opposite situation seems even more likely: the issues for which oyer and terminers were sought, often through the network of lordship, appear regularly to be local gentry quarrels; occasionally a commission issued in favor of a magnate might actually be a suit brought by one of his retainers. According to a petition from William la Olde, his opponent William de Cusance (who was then treasurer of the earl of Chester, the future Edward iii) obtained a commission of oyer and terminer against Olde in the name of the earl and nominated himself as a justice. When the commission was issued, Cusance sat in judgment on his enemy as a royal judge.69 66 67 68 69

J.R. Maddicott, Law and Lordship: Royal Justices as Retainers in Thirteenth and Fourteenth Century England (Past and Present Supplement 4, 1978), p. 2. Ibid., especially pp. 25, 59. In Chapter 4 of his unpublished Ph.D dissertation (n. 43 above). sc8/63/3134. cpr 1324–1327, p. 225. The case is by no means unique. John Molyns similarly had himself named oyer and terminer justice on behalf of plaintiffs, according to the 1341 inquest (Just 1/74 m. 11d., Just 1/78 A m. 25).

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Moreover, it was not merely the magnates and their followers who were able to use oyer and terminer. We have seen that townsmen, living in “little nests of disorder,”70 were quick to realize the potential in oyer and terminer | and readily obtained commissions. They eagerly sought and vigorously prosecuted special justiceries against feudal lords,71 fellow citizens,72 or burgesses from rival towns.73 They skillfully named the justices they wanted, often pleaded poverty in an attempt to obtain a commission without a fine, and prudently linked their interest with crown concerns wherever possible. The resourceful Jordan le Peintre even seems to have caught the ear of Edward I as the king passed through the cemetery of St. Pauls, London, and obtained an oral promise of a commission to hear and determine all plaints against Richer de Refham, the former alderman and future mayor.74 Knowledge and use of oyer and terminer process occasionally extended even to those seeking escape from the taint and obligations of villein status; several cases of such suits are preserved among surviving evidence from a wide range of fourteenth-century dates.75 It is scarcely surprising that in each case those perilously close to unfree status should fail in suits brought before oyer and terminer justices. Our interest may rather be drawn to the capacity of these plaintiffs to obtain the commissions against opponents so vastly superior in status and power. Thus the link between oyer and terminer and a roughly defined middling social rank, suggested by our figures above, seems valid, despite all necessary qualifications. At the height of their popularity, a sizeable majority of the commissions, by whatever channels of influence they were obtained, seem to have reflected in large measure the countryside disputes of the gentry.

70 71

The phrase is borrowed from Dorothy Hughes, Early Years of Edward iii, p. 224. For example, sc8/58/2890, community of Lynn vs. the bishop of Norwich, probably in the reign of Edward I. 72 For example, sc8/87/4326 (Winterton, 1320); sc8/43/2103 (Canterbury, 1324); sc8/246/ 12290 (Bridgenorth, 1353–1354). 73 For example, sc1/16/135 (Dunwich and Oreford, 1280); sc8/120/5974–5976 (London, Great Yarmouth, ca. 1333); sc8/59/2901–2907 (London, Great Yarmouth, 1334). 74 sc8/327/E787. He reminded the king of his promise in this petition. Jordan was acting on behalf of numerous people who thought themselves wronged by Richer de Refham. On Refham see Gwyn Williams, Medieval London, pp. 328–329. 75 Just 1/947/1, cpr 1301–1307, p. 473 (five tenants of the prior of Ogbourne, 1306); sc8/296/14796, cpr 1334–1338 (a tenant of the prior of Takeleye, 1336); sc8/45/2212, Rot. Parl., 2:191 (two tenants of the bishop of Ely, 1347).

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Moreoever, we cannot forget that justices, as well as plaintiffs, had an interest in oyer and terminer litigation.76 As suggested below, the profits made by presiding over oyer and terminer suits may well have attracted prospective justices, and if the justiceries were as often used in countryside feuding as is suggested below, the justices themselves may have felt incentives beyond the purely mercenary. According to the second statute of Westminster, c.29, the group from which oyer and terminer justices could be selected was restricted to justices of either bench or justices of eyre. By any strict construction of its intent, the statute was not at all followed, as a sample of commissions for several years shows (3 Edward I, 1275; 28 Edward I, 1300; 10 Edward ii, 1316–1317). | Almost no commis- 752 sions were staffed entirely by justices who met the statutory qualifications. Some effort to adhere to the spirit if not the letter of the statute, however, appears to have motivated the litigants who sought commissions and the crown officers who authorized them. A large and increasing number of commissions included in the panel of several justices at least one man who met the statutory qualifications: 53% of commissions in 1275 so qualified; the number rose to 66% in 1300; it reached 75% in 1316–1317. Yet the majority of justices, either taken in the aggregate or as members of the panel in any single case, were not central government professionals drawn from the King’s Bench, Common Pleas, Chancery, or Exchequer. The proportion of those royal professionals among oyer and terminer justices seems to have steadily declined (68% in 1275, 42% in 1300, 32% in 1316–1317). Indeed, the small group of such professionals could hardly have sustained the doubling in the number of commissions which came within fifteen years of the statutory regulation, let alone the four-fold increase reached by the reign of Edward ii. The numbers of appointments to justiceries of necessity, rose dramatically: 3 Edward i (1275) 28 Edward i (1300) 10 Edward ii (1316–1317)

78 appointments (to 38 men) 140 appointments (to 65 men) 596 appointments (to 178 men)

Although earls, archbishops, and bishops might settle scores through the special commissions, they almost never joined a panel themselves. Barons, by

76

In a letter of 1308, a justice, Peter Mallore, informed the chancellor that the king wished him to be assigned in a particular commission: sc1/35/68, 68A.

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contrast, constituted a substantial minority of justices during the years of increasing oyer and terminer activity (perhaps 8–10% in 1300, 1316–1317). But the great numbers of plaints also required the commissioning of justices drawn from the same social ranks that provided knights of the shire, commissioners and later justices of the peace, purveyors, and the like. They were obviously willing to serve, as appears from the following table listing the numbers of men of this status and the total oyer and terminer appointments given them77: 3 Edward i (1275) 28 Edward i (1300) 10 Edward ii (1316–17)

24 appointments (to 9 men) 51 appointments (to 29 men) 186 appointments (to 75 men)

Gentry enthusiasm for oyer and terminer clearly encompassed a willingness, perhaps even an eagerness, not only to bring suit as plaintiffs but also to serve as justices. 753

iv

Why were the justiceries so attractive to so many petitioners? This was our second question. Were they especially speedy? Plaintiffs sometimes did not | think so, and one chaplain complained circa 1330 that he had been suing oyer and terminer writs against his assailant for seven years.78 Surviving records of cases heard before oyer and terminer justices show that common law procedure was followed, with the attendant essoins, the persistent problem of sheriffs and bailiffs who dragged their feet, the juries who failed to appear.79 77

78 79

In 3 Edward i more than three-quarters of the justices were named to only one or two commissions (and half were named to only one). In 28 Edward I the figures are comparable. For 10 Edward iii those named to three or fewer commissions equalled threequarters of the total; about one-third of the justices served on a single commission. sc8/91/4517. A case concerning trespasses in a park belonging to the earl of Pembroke, for example, required 14 sessions covering a year, 21 June 1319 to 1321 July 1320. There were repeated delays because jurors did not appear; the sheriff failed to act claiming writs reached him too late; once exigent was begun against the defendants it did not lead to outlawry at the fifth county court because the “senatores” of the county were unwilling to proceed in the absence of the coroner. Yet the result of the proceedings was a knight jailed, more than a dozen other men finally outlawed, and an assessment of the earl’s damages at £2,000: Just 1/299/2.

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Even the justices themselves sometimes failed to appear, being absent on the king’s business as a clerk always dutifully explained.80 But surviving records also show that relative to the almost glacial movement in other courts, process before oyer and terminer justices was swift.81 Alice Beaumont requested oyer and terminer justices in 1309 “pur plus hastivement fere adrester un trespas qe a ly e a ses genz est fet.”82 The prior and convent of Castleacre closed their querela in 1320 with an appeal for “remedie hastif par oyer e terminer.”83 Robert Walwayn, bailiff of Scarborough, petitioned for a special commission in 1316 “issint qe hastive remedie peusse estre fait.”84 Such descriptions are justified repeatedly by surviving records. James Beuflour obtained a commission to hear and determine his case on 11 July 1320. Only four days elapsed before sessions began, and by 28 January 1321 the justices’ eight sessions had produced significant results: Beuflour on that date issued a release for all action against seven of the nine defendants and also released all actions concerning a bond for £1,000 given jointly by four of them.85 William Creye, charging an assault by John de Scathebury and his son John, got an oyer and terminer on 21 July 1312. The justices began their investigation on 13 September and continued through six sessions, ending with a conviction and an award of 20m. on 24 June 1313.86 The master of the Hospital of St. John, Brook Street, was given oyer and terminer justices on 14 April 1304. By 17 July, three months later, he | had won his recovery and damages against 754 several men found guilty of breaking into his home.87 The reason for such speed is not that any procedural shortcuts were involved; rather, in an ad hoc process the justices usually began promptly—commonly within a month or two after the commission was issued—and kept at their work. As a rough rule the number of justices tended to increase from two in early Edward I to 80

81

82 83 84 85 86 87

For example, Just 1/69: a case has been continued through several sessions until the Thursday after Michaelmas octave, “Ad quem diem loquela remansit sine die propter absenciam Justic’ tunc alibi per preceptum domini Regis existentium.” “Law is so lordelich,” as Piers Plowman knew, “and loth to make ende” (B. Text, Passus iii). But as Donald Sutherland comments, “quick justice was the new ideal. Edward I’s statutes professed time and again that their purpose was ‘to speed justice.’ …”: The Assize of Novel Disseisin (Oxford, 1973), p. 131. sc8/240/11968. Rot. Parl., 2:47. sc8/193/9605. Just 1/21. ccr 1318–1321, p. 336. Cf. sc8/32/1569, sc8/4/178, Rot. Parl., 1:382, cpr 1317–1321, pp. 535–536. Just 1/557/5. cpr 1307–1313, p. 530. Just 1/270/2. cpr 1301–1307, p. 276.

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three or more by early Edward ii. Since the letters patent naming several justices authorized a quorum to act if all could not, delay was easily avoided.88 Surviving records of actual cases indicate that a plaintiff could often have satisfaction within a year, sometimes within a matter of months. Such speed was important, even in an age in which long lawsuits had a certain entertainment value as ritualized violence. But obviously success was primary; a plaintiff could get little pleasure and less profit from the speedy acquittal of his opponent. More important than the speed of the proceedings alone was the likelihood of success. The success rate cannot be demonstrated statistically. Out of the thousands of commissions issued only about 150 actual records of proceedings survive, and a great number of these are incomplete.89 It is at least interesting to note that only 22 acquittals have been found in this surviving evidence. Of these, the plaintiff failed to prosecute in 10 cases (though—to anticipate—some of these may have been settled to the plaintiff’s full satisfaction out of court), and five of the remaining 12 cases failed because the plaintiff was found to be unfree; one other failed because the plaintiff was excommunicated.90 Our sample is too small, but even if it were larger a simple counting of convictions would miss an important point. A plaintiff’s purpose in an oyer and 88

89

90

For example, the case of assault on Master John de Brouser, archdeacon of Essex, for which five justices are named in the commission of 1340 (John de Shardelowe, William Scot, William Gifford, Hugh de Saxham, and John Fermer): cpr 1338–1340, pp. 557–558. The first six sessions were held before Shardelowe, Gifford, and Saxham, the seventh before Scot, Gifford, and Saxham, the eighth through eleventh sittings before Scot and Saxham: Just 1/862/3. For the general form of the commissions see Registrum Omnium Brevium (London, 1643), pp. 123 ff. The small proportion of cases reaching final settlement is, of course, hardly unique to special commissions of oyer and terminer. The same situation obtained in King’s Bench; see Sayles’s comment in Select Cases (Edward I), 2:cvi. A similar comment on common pleas is given by N. Neilson in English Government at Work, 3:274. The ten appeals in which plaintiffs failed to prosecute are Just 1 nos. 1222 m. 15d (1276), 1244 m. 38d. (1281), 1551/1m. 1d. (1283), 1267 m. 10 (1285), 1258B m. 7 (1285), 1317 mm. 3, 3d (1300), 512 B (1314—three simultaneous commissions about a single incident), 535/5 (1323). The five justiceries ended because of the unfree status of the plaintiff are found in Just 1/947/1, (1306—all five cases were heard simultaneously). The failure due to the excommunicated plaintiff is Just 1/1367 m. 2 (1322). Of the remaining six failures, one was a case of rape (Just 1/403/14, 1336), one an appeal for a death (Just 1/1258A m. 6d., 1282), three were charges of assault or robbery (Just 1/1286 m. 52, in 1291, Just 1/69 in 1310, Just 1/1367 m. 9 in 1314), and one—actually a special commission of gaol delivery—was obtained by Shrewsbury townsmen after an initial inquest had charged and gaoled two men “to the prejudice of the liberty of the town” (Just 1/754/1).

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terminer justicerie need not have been to prosecute each defendant to | the end. 755 The very appearance of powerful justices to act on his behalf at a location he may have chosen could produce an out-of-court settlement. In the many cases which simply end without formal decision in surviving records we may suspect that some informal settlement has satisfied the plaintiff. Although we can hardly expect our records to reveal such out-of-court settlements, occasionally evidence comes to light, as in the action brought by the prior of St. Mary, Lancaster, against Sir Adam Banaster in 1330. The prior obtained his commission in December 1330. One month later the parties executed an indenture—in no way linked formally to the justicerie—giving the prior precisely those rights which were in dispute.91 The case James Beuflour sued against several defendants in 1320 had brought these defendants through fear of outlawry to accept a jury. Here the record ends on 8 December. But by 28 January of 1321 Beuflour had received satisfaction from seven of the nine defendants; on that day his release was enrolled in Chancery.92 In the 1341 inquest jurors of several Buckinghamshire hundreds related that the notorious John Molyns had arranged a fraudulent oyer and terminer which continued until the defendants bought off Molyns’s suit and, so the jurors thought, paid John Inge, Molyns’ justice, as well.93 Just after the fall of the Despensers, John Yorge claimed that the Elder Despenser kept him imprisoned by a false justicerie until he wrote a formal quitclaim for a manor which Despenser had already seized by force.94 The out-of-court settlement, though it might optimistically be called in legal as well as literary sources a “loveday,” was in fact often the collapse of the defendant under the pressure and intimidation of a stronger opponent.95 An oyer and terminer was the ideal agency for generating the necessary pressure.

91

92 93 94 95

sc8/58/2858. Henry Fishwick, “The History of the Parish of Poulton-le-Fylde in the County of Lancaster,” Chetham Society, n.s., 8 (1885), 5–6, 209–210. The indenture, at least as printed, contains an error of date, equating 1330 with 4 Edward iii (the fourth regnal year ran from 25 January 1330 to 1424 January 1331). The Anno Domini date is more likely to be in error than the regnal year since the indenture refers to an action of trespass already begun by the prior. sc8/32/1569, Just 1/21, ccr 1318–1323, p. 336. Just 1/78A, mm. 27, 37. sc8/172/8558. See Josephine Waters Bennett, “The Medieval Loveday,” Speculum 33 (1958), 351–370. She cites both legal and literary sources which denounce lovedays as occasions for oppression. The petition of John de Bannebury quoted at the beginning of this study implies this kind of settlement: John states he was afraid to appear before the justices, yet he records the payments made by defendants to plaintiffs.

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Whether he won his case in court or through a more informal settlement out of court, the successful plaintiff could extract a sizeable sum of money from his defeated opponent. Among the qualities that most endeared oyer and terminer to influential litigants we must include not only speed and favorable decisions, but also these enormous awards of damages. Surviving processes indicate that sums in the range of several hundred pounds were common, and that awards of several thousand pounds were occasionally | made, to knights as well as earls.96 A defendant was sometimes imprisoned until he had paid the damages,97 but the awards could be effective even if the plaintiff did not collect the last penny. Some welcome cash would be realized, but a plaintiff might value more the damage done to an opponent’s inclination to resist, and to his financial base for resistance. A standing debt might transform a dangerous enemy into a merely disaffected neighbor; a crushing debt might convince him to convey some coveted manor or collection of rights in order to secure a release.98 The justices may have had their own reasons for aiding such a process by means of large awards: if, as some contemporaries suspected, justices received some portion of the damages awarded (in addition to the gifts which inevitably accompanied medieval litigation), their readiness to provide generous compensation for plaintiffs is readily appreciated.99 96

97

98

99

For examples of such damages awarded knights see Just 1/857, 1200 marks against one defendant, 5000 marks against another, to Robert de Benhele; Just 1/1367 mm. 7, 8, £3500 to John de Olney; Just 1/798/3, £1000 to Robert Martyn of Jevelton. For examples of damages to earls see Just 1/792, £5000 to Hugh Despenser, Senior; Just 1/299/2, £2000 to the earl of Pembroke. A sampling of damages awarded in 30 Just 1 cases gave an average in excess of £600. A 1315 parliamentary petition complained that damages were awarded at the will of the plaintiff; as examples, sums of £200, £400, or even 1000 m. are cited for trespasses where compensation of 20 d. would be fair: Rot. Parl., 1:290. The practice is especially clear in Just 1/108/6 and Just 1/947/6. See also sc8/296/14770 and ccr 1327–30, p. 456. Other means of assuring payment might be arranged. Occasionally the defendant executed a “recognition” for debt similar to those enrolled on the Exchequer memoranda rolls; see Just 1/1267 m. 18. See, for example, the case of John Yorge and the elder Despenser, sc8/172/8558. A parliamentary petition from the reign of Edward iii complains that false trespass charges before oyer and terminer or other justices produce such outrageous damage settlements that defendants must sell their lands in order to satisfy the plaintiffs. For the original, see sc8/79/3930; this is printed in Rot. Parl., 2:407, Annis incertis Edward iii. The statutory result seems to be Statutes of the Realm, 1:253, 1 Edward iii. A parliamentary petition in the reign of Edward iii complained that some justices were given lifetime powers of oyer and terminer with one-third of the total profits of the

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How were the speedy convictions and handsome damages so often obtained by the plaintiff? We must note above all that in oyer and terminer plaintiffs found an ad hoc commission readily open to influence.100 A commission | could be obtained by informal petition—a plaint or querela, or bill—sent to the chancellor or to king and council, often in time of Parliament. No known evidence indicates by what actual standards the decision to issue a commission was taken. The official position, that commissions of oyer and terminer were issued only for great and horrible trespasses where speedy remedy was required, is contradicted by a steady flow of individual complaints and by recurrent parliamentary petitions which charge that justices were given easily, usually maliciously, and even for trivial causes.101 Any petitioner with a real or imagined wrong who could pay for a commission and who could operate within the network of court influence could obtain an oyer and terminer. Although the letters patent were not costly, the Chancery often charged an additional fine which might be large enough to restrict commissions to petitioners of at least moderate wealth.102 But the commission sessions guaranteed them: Rot. Parl., 2:286. Popular belief held that the beaten defendant had to buy off the justice as well as the plaintiff; see Just 1/78A mm. 27, 37. 100 Such a conclusion is buttressed by even a cursory glance at the other special commissions which flourished in the period, such as the ad hoc commissions to hear various assizes or to deliver gaols. Oyer and terminer was not the only form of special commission which allowed plaintiffs to select their own justices and to influence the site and nature of the proceeding so effectively that defendants sent cries of outrage to the crown. Numerous requests for specified justices to hear assizes of novel disseisin (e.g., sc8/194/9676, sc8/328/ E870, sc1/24/115, sc1/26/38 and 152, sc1/29/135 and 184, sc1/36/5) and mort d’ancestor (e.g., sc8/140/6979) have been preserved, along with complaints of prejudice and procured judges (e.g., sc8/137/6822, sc8/158/7891, sc8/193/9618, sc1/23/67, sc1/37/56, c81/129/7174). The difference in petitions concerning gaol delivery is simply that the defendant often requested the justices (for instances of prisoners petitioning for specific justices see sc8/32/ E495, sc8/32/1591, sc8/65/3213, sc8/158/7864, sc8/316/233). Even the judicial personnel of commissions of weights and measures (e.g., sc1/40/140 and 140A) and commissions de walliis et fossatis (e.g., sc8/92/4563, cpr 1317–1321, p. 278) could be the subject of petition and counterpetition. Influence was easily and readily brought to bear across the whole spectrum of special, ad hoc commissions which proliferated as the general eyre declined. 101 For the statutes and common petitions see below pp. 773–774. 102 Fines of a half mark, 10 shillings, or 20 shillings were common: e.g., Just 1/392/1 (1343), Just 1/862/5 (1348), Just 1/340/1 (1325), Just 1/978/2 (1311). Occasionally much larger fines, such as 100 shillings are found: e.g., cpr 1292–1301, p. 620; ibid., 1301–1307, pp. 268–269. Examples of the low great-seal fees charged for many chancery documents are given in Pierre Chaplais, English Royal Documents (Oxford, 1971), p. 22 and the sources cited there.

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would probably be granted unless some opponent with equal or greater influence at court prevented it. We may attribute authorizing power to the amorphous “court” rather than to any more specific administrative body. Since oyer and terminer justices were commissioned by letters patent, any official or office with competence to move the great seal, or to warrant the issue of letters under the great seal by privy seal letter, could satisfy the petitioner who requested a special justicerie. Such a list includes the king, king and council, the council alone, the chancellor acting with a few councillors, or the chancellor alone.103 Chancery and council were, in fact, only gradually becoming distinguished, and the chancellor sat on the council as one of the most important members.104 | A plaintiff could exercise influence in numerous ways, but his most certain course was to name his own justices. He could not quite say, then, with the hero Gamelyn in the contemporary romance, I will be justice this day  domes to deme God spede me this day   at my newe werk!105 But he had achieved the next best. With great frequency a petitioner not only relates a trespass in his querela, but also requests the specific justices he wants to hear and determine the offense. A plaintiff’s hand-picked nominees could then sit in judgment on his opponent, armed with the powers and legitimacy of the king’s justice. Alice the wife of John of Newton presented just such a 103 English Government at Work, 1:52–57, 162–205. 104 The king’s orders to Chancery might be preemptory, as were those of Edward I in 1304, c81/44/4379. Less vigorous royal letters might be altered by the council, as in 1315, when Edward ii named three justices to hear and determine offences by Sir John de Segrave; the council decided to add a fourth justice as a member of the quorum: c49/4/13, printed by James Conway Davies, The Baronial Opposition to Edward ii (Cambridge, 1918), Appendix 91. Often the crown left the chancellor wide discretion. In 1301 Edward I suggested several justices in response to a petition but added the qualifying phrase, “ou autres selonc votre descretion.” c81/23/2299. Often the royal order simply informs the chancellor that a commission is to go to “aliquos dilectos et fideles nostros quos ad hoc idoneos esse intellexeritis,” as in c81/21B/2053B. For general background see Bertie Wilkinson in English Government at Work, 1:167–205, and James Willard’s comments, ibid., pp. 52–77. Only a small proportion of the total number of commissions recorded on the Patent Rolls indicate privy seal authorization, and since in many of even this small number of instances the chancellor is authorized to name the justices, the powerful role of the chancellor is apparent. 105 Lines 826–827, ed. Sands, Verse Romances, pp. 178–179.

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petition to the crown in 1311. Her husband had been empanelled in an assize of novel disseisin which had gone against William fitz Richard de la Chambre. The result was a visit by William and three others who threw John into the street, beat him, broke his arms, and told him clearly that he got his treatment “pur ceo qe il dit le verdit.” They promised that each juror would get the same. The bailiff of the earl of Richmond had taken an inquest which revealed that Richard de la Chambre and Maud his wife had ordered the assault and received the guilty afterwards, “dunc ele prie a nostre seignur le Roi quele puisse aver bref pur le dit John de Neuton son baron devant monsire Johan de Idle e Sire Huwe de Louthre e Thomas de ffyssheburn ou deus de eux Denquerre e de oyer e de terminer qe si grant trespas e despit fet au Roi ne seit despuni.”106 John de Borewalle’s petition,107 written in the same year, was undoubtedly submitted with even more confidence of success for not only was John assaulted while on Chancery business, he also had an especially close link with Robert de Clitheroe, a Chancery clerk. John’s enemies, in a vain effort to prevent his attendance at the “Court of Hambury” (the hundred court of Henbury, co. Worcester) where he had important business, sent him a forged letter (purportedly from Clitheroe) instructing him to go immediately to Winchester. When this ploy failed they turned to more direct means: John was severely beaten and warned against any further service for the Chancery. Predictably, Clitheroe headed John’s request for a panel of oyer and terminer justices: Jeo vous pri pur lamour de deu cher Seygnour deci cum Jeo ay resu ceste mal par la resun de vous ke vous me veylet graunter une Justicirie et aver une oyer e terminer. E ke syre Robert de Cliderhowe e Syre Richard de Harleye par vostre grant grace porrent eytre me justices. Such requests are scattered liberally through the Ancient Petitions (S.C.8), the Ancient Correspondence (S.C.1), and the Chancery Warrants (C.81) in | the 759 Public Record Office. Plaintiffs may well have selected justices even though their petition did not specify the names. A 1328 petition from the abbot and convent of Abingdon, for example, was endorsed with a council recommendation that the abbot should come in Chancery and advise how he could best be

106 sc8/240/11973. She was granted her commission, with two of the three justices she requested being named: cpr 1307–1313, p. 420. 107 sc1/35/87, cpr 1307–1313, p. 371. John de Borewalle (or Burwell) and his chief opponent, Henry fitz Geoffrey of Hanbury, are mentioned in V.C.H. Worcestershire, 3. John was given the two justices he requested.

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aided.108 The bishop of Exeter, seeking a replacement for a justice delayed by royal business, asked Edward I’s chancellor, Robert Burnell, to give credence to his dear and familiar clerk, Master Gervase de Crediton, whom he was sending to discuss the arrangements for the justicerie.109 On behalf of his successor Edward ii ordered the chancellor to select justices who were not from that region (obviously following the bishop’s request) and gave instructions to take the bishop’s full advice.110 In 1316 John Sandale, the chancellor, ordered oyer and terminer commissioners in favor of Thomas de Furnivall. Full details, he wrote, would be brought by John de Donecastre (“prout dominus Johannes de Donecastre vos super hoc informabit plenius oretenus”). The plaintiff’s influence appears when the chancellor instructed that the same John be named a justice in the case.111 Similarly indirect evidence of a plaintiff’s role in choice of justices comes from Robert de Bourghchier’s oyer and terminer in 1341; his attorney in the case was one John de Teye; one justice appointed was William de Teye.112 By 1360 the Crown, openly recognizing the abuse, declared in a statute that in oyer and terminer “the justices which shall be thereto assigned be named by the court, and not by the party.”113 That litigants should have actively participated in the selection of justices in their own cases need occasion little surprise and should arouse no modern moral indignation. A similar opportunity had been available in the courts of papal judges delegate for two centuries.114 Moreover, we have been taught that even Edward I, the “English Justinian,” regarded the law not as an abstract set of principles but rather as a mass of technicalities to be wrenched and maneuvered to his advantage.115 Most litigants who paid for letters | appointing 108 109 110 111 112

sc8/88/4379. cpr 1327–1330, pp. 221–222, 237. sc1/22/135. c81/93/3512. sc1/28/199. Just 1/270/10. cpr 1340–1343, p. 202. For a similar case late in the century see R.L. Storey, “Liveries and Commissions of the Peace 1388–1390,” in The Reign of Richard ii, ed. F.R.H. Du Boulay and Caroline M. Baron (London, 1975). 113 Statutes of the Realm, 1:365. 114 For the operation of the system of judges delegate, and civilian and canonist thought on the system, see Jane E. Sayers, Papal Judges Delegate in the Province of Canterbury, 1198– 1254 (London, 1971); Linda Fowler, “Recusatio Iudicis in Civilian and Canonist Thought,” Studia Gratiana 15 (1972), Post Scripta, pp. 719–85; and Richard Helmholz, “Canonists and Standards of Impartiality for Papal Judges Delegate,” Traditio 25 (1969), 386–404. 115 T.F.T. Plucknett, The Legislation of Edward I (Oxford, 1949), p. 1. Cam, The Hundred and the Hundred Rolls, p. 35. The attitude was not, of course, limited to the king. See Alice Beardwood’s comment on Walter Langton, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield and royal

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special commissioners presumably wanted something beyond simple impartiality in the justices named. In the absence of any other means of payment we can only surmise that plaintiffs saw to the justices’ expenses and entertainment, as was the common practice in both secular and ecclesiastical courts.116 They may often have done more. According to the charges raised in the 1341 inquest,117 John and Isabella Chetendon procured the services of the notorious John Molyns as oyer and terminer justice for £30. Robert Martyn paid him £20 for favor as justice, although he apparently did not procure his appointment (and Molyns demonstrated a certain impartiality by taking £5 from his opponent as well). The judgement in such cases was said to be “ad voluntatem ipsius johannis” and the jurors were repeatedly described as being “in manu sua propria,” or “de tenentibus et adherentibus prefati Johannis de Molyns.” Later in the reign a parliamentary petition denounced the supposed royal appointment of justices who had lifetime powers to hear and determine and who received one-third of all profits from their cases: “la tierce partie de les issues, fins, et amercimentz, et biens forfaitz, et toutz autres profitz sourdantz de lour Sessions.”118 The matter-of-fact language of many petitions reflects the plaintiff’s assumption that the justices he names will be routinely commissioned; some plaintiffs, after relating the trespass done to them, merely list the justices, in easy confidence that they will be commissioned. Endorsements and enrolled commissions show that such confidence was usually not misplaced. Often the panel of three or four justices commissioned by letter patent reflected their wishes exactly119; in other cases the petitioner’s request was accepted for nearly all the justices.120

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treasurer, in “The Trial of Walter Langton, Bishop of Lichfield, 1307–1312,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s. 54 Part 3 (1964), 36. See, for example, F.J. Pegues, “A Monastic Society at Law in the Kent Eyre of 1313–1314,” English Historical Review 87 (1972), 548–564; W.C. Bolland, The General Eyre (Cambridge, 1922), pp. 91–94; Helmholz, “Canonists,” p. 396. Bertha Putnam carefully estimated the payments given Sir William Shareshull for his various legal services, but thought the evidence on payments for commissions too slight even for an estimate. However, if the specific fees she records for several general oyer and terminer commissions provide a rough guide to fees on special commissions, the work was lucrative. See Sir William Shareshull, p. 89. Just 1/74 m. 11d., 78A passim, 770 m. 9d. Rot. Parl., 2:286, 38 Edward iii. For example, sc8/87/4331; c81/11/1041, cpr 1292–1301, p. 218; sc8/241/12033, cpr 1334–1338, p. 141. For example, sc1/37/55, cpr 1317–1321, p. 542; sc8/193/9624, c81/14/1304, cpr 1292–1301, p. 376.

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A plaintiff with any influence not only might select the original judges in his own case, but also, if a justicerie were delayed by the absence of one or more justices, handpick replacements and avoid further delay. Edmund, earl of Lancaster, wrote in 1280 to inform Robert Burnell, the chancellor, that the justices assigned to hear and determine trespasses in his forest and chases in two counties had never appeared. “Nous vous prions chierement,” he wrote, “qe en leu de ceux deux nous voillez doner Sir Rauf de Hengham et mon Sir Robert le Waleis.” Burnel obliged him with a new commission | naming these replacements.121 When Isabella de Kent’s first oyer and terminer failed (probably in the reign of Edward ii), Baldwin de Beaupre wrote on her behalf to the treasurer suggesting several new justices who could carry out the hearing.122 The Elder Despenser imperiously informed the chancellor in 1323 that he was to renew a commission issued in favor of his retainer John de Handlo and enter the names Handlo would send; the original justices Despenser had procured for him met three times but then were delayed.123 At about the same time the mayor and substantial burgesses of Winchester petitioned that Henry Spigurnel and William de Harding be urged to return to their hearings and end the “grant peril” to the townsmen caused by their delay.124 Similarly the burgesses of Bristol urged the king to hurry on their assigned justices “en haste a un certun Jour” or, if they were detained, to provide others.125 One unknown letter writer wisely requested in advance that his justices “ne soient destourbez en…grosses bosoignes.”126 It is hardly surprising that justices were sometimes delayed; more noteworthy is that plaintiffs expected the crown to prod justices into speedy action or even to provide new and more available justices if their original panel proved in any way unsatisfactory. Although some plaintiffs’ tactics fell short of honesty,127 in other instances the change of justices was obtained with ease and with complete candor. In 1284 Master Richard Lynol, archdeacon of Northumberland, learned through a friend that John de Lythgraines, one justice assigned, had stated frankly that he could do Lynol no good in the case, because of his ties to the defendant. The chancellor granted the subsequent request for a replacement.128 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128

sc1/22/203. sc8/81/4034. sc8/296/14800, cpr 1321–1324, p. 319. sc8/327/E810. sc8/228/11357, dated 1323. sc1/21/119. sc8/323/E563; see also sc8/323/E569, and cpr 1307–1313, pp. 536–537. sc1/22/172. cpr 1281–1292, p. 141.

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To name his own justices did not guarantee a plaintiff success, but it must have gone far towards securing the desired results. Since the justices were empowered to set the dates and venue for all their sessions, a procured ­justice could select an inconvenient time and threatening location for the defendant. Such a justice would, in the words of a 1315 parliamentary petition, set a day of which the defendant is not informed by the sheriff or his bailiffs (who are procured to take part in the fraud) or if the defendant is informed the notice is so short he cannot attend and another day is given the defendant in some inconvenient upland village in which his adversary will have such great power that the defendant dares not go there. …129 Although relief was promised in response to this petition, complaints of the same sort continued. In 1331 the tenants of Stainton Waddingham in Lincolnshire | complained that Sir Eble Lestraunge’s procured oyer and termi- 762 ner justices held their sessions at Horncastle “pres le Chastel et la seignore le dit sire Eble de Bolyngbrok” where the defendants feared to go; the undersheriff wore Sir Eble’s robes and took his fees, and the jurors he impaneled would all be Sir Eble’s tenants. They prayed their lord, the earl of Cornwall, to get their case removed to King’s Bench “ou ils puront salvement venir saunz mal avoir de lour corps et avoir counseil de gentz de ley pour lour donant de pleder ove le dit Sire Eble et passer par gentz de mesme le visne ou le fait se fist.”130 In 1347 the bishop of Ely claimed his opponents procured a commission in Norfolk where a jury could have no knowledge of the facts of the case.131 In 1354 William Heron petitioned that an oyer and terminer against him held sessions in county Northumberland where his opponent, Robert d’Oggle, was so powerful that “les gentz du ditz pais ne seront oseez pur poure du dit Robert e de ces alliez a dire la verite.”132 Once sessions were being held the justices’ procedural powers gave them ample opportunity to aid a party they favored. Sir Robert Aguillon told king and council in 1278 that he and others were indicted before Stephen de Penchester and Thomas de Sandwich of hunting in John de Warenne’s chase at

129 130 131 132

Rot. Parl., 1:290. sc1/42/60. cpr 1330–1334, pp. 131–132. sc8/45/2212. sc8/186/9258. cpr 1354–1356, p. 128.

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Clers, Sussex.133 Penchester and Sandwich ordered the seizure of the bodies, goods, and chattels of those indicted, e ce al primer jour apres le enqueste, e ke il ust les cors a Kingestone a foreyne Cunte; a quel jour les attachez jeterent asoynes e les Justices ne le voyleyent aluer, mes amercierent lour meynepernours a lur volunte demeyne, encontre la custume del Reaume.

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Furthermore, exceeding the power of their commission, the justices inquired broadly about the earl’s chases (not distinguishing whether he had free chases or not), brushed aside Robert’s assertion of ancient hunting rights, and harangued the jury (“carkarent les jurats”) to convict him. Similar complaints can be found repeatedly in surviving petitions, confirming an impression of the power of justices.134 They determined the character | of the jury by selecting the county or the part of the county from which it could be drawn135 or by insisting that it contain knights;136 they threatened individual jurors who showed independent judgment;137 they ruled on the legal rights

133 Printed in Rot. Parl., 1:3. For the commission see cpr 1272–1281, p. 284. For similar evidence for a petition of Amice, sister of Fulk Lestrange and widow of Sir Richard Fitz Symond, see sc8/123/6115 (?1322). 134 A contemporary treatise, Placita Corone or La Corone Pledee devant Justices, ed. J.M. Kaye (Seldon Society Supplementary Series 4, 1966) indicates a powerfully aggressive role for the judge. Kaye thinks the treatise was written for “the class of unlearned local magnates, civil servants and others from whom justices of oyer and terminer and gaol delivery were drawn, and also presumably for such officials as sheriffs, coroners, and bailiffs who had to perform subsidiary duties connected with court hearings” (p. xxiii). He also notes that “the day had not yet arrived when justices could consider it their duty to act as impartial arbiters between crown and prisoners and to ensure that every point in a prisoner’s favour was taken. Rather they were the crown, and the emphasis was on speedy and efficient clearing of the lists, not on abstract justice” (p. xxxvi). Many oyer and terminer justices appear to have identified with the plaintiff rather than the crown. 135 For example sc8/32/1595, cpr 1321–1324, pp. 315, 380. Cf. sc8/31/1503; this case involves justices in a special assize of novel disseisin, but the parallel with special oyer and terminers is instructive. 136 For example, Just 1/308/m. 6d. The attorney of the bishop of Hereford insists that his master, as a baron, ought to have knights on the jury in a case involving trespassers in his wood. The justices agreed. 137 In addition to Robert Aquillon’s case (Rot Parl., 1:3) already cited, see c81/231/9595. One juror who refused to agree with the others was imprisoned in chains from Thursday after Pentecost 10 Edward iii to Friday after Hillary.

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confirmed on burgesses138 and West Country tin miners by their charters;139 they ruled on the admissibility of acquittances presented by defendants;140 sometimes they alone decided on damages, sometimes with the jury.141 Contemporaries were convinced that the attitude of the justices was critically important to their case,142 and it would seem they were correct. Reliance on the stalwart independence of jurors was usually visionary. Too many jurors knew of experiences similar to that of the Lincoln burgess who was robbed, beaten, and held for ransom by a knight whom he had indicted; the burgess was released to spread the word to his fellow jurors: any caught outside the city walls would be killed, or at least would lose a limb (“nul des autres qi furent en la dite enquest od lui neschaperunt qil ne serrunt tuez ou a meyns chescun de eux perdra un membre ou qil serrount trouez dehors la dite cite de Nicole”).143 | 764 We can better appreciate the dominant position held by an influential litigant who has gotten a commission if we consider the alternatives open to his opponent. How could a defendant respond when an oyer and terminer was 138 139 140 141

For example, Just 1/612/2. cpr 1313–1317, pp. 57–58. For example, Just 1/109, Just 1/129/1. For example, Just 1/557/8 (1344–45), KB138/73, 74 (1322). The jury is often mentioned in connection with assessment of damages: Just 1/299/2, Just 1/798/3, Just 1/1367 m. 12; occasionally only a list of “dampna” is given, without mention of the participation of judge or jury, as in Just 1/403/5. But petitioners regularly assume the justices’ role was critically important: e.g., sc8/232/E563, sc8/31/1539, Rot. Parl., 1:290. Even if jury action was formally necessary, we must raise the question of jurors’ independence in setting damages no less than in deciding guilt or innocence. See the case W.C. Bolland cites from the London eyre in 1321; an initial assessment of 100s. damages suggested by jurors was changed into an award of twenty marks under pressure from the chief justice of the eyre: The General Eyre, pp. 86–87. Cf. G.O. Sayles’s comments on damages in trespass cases before King’s Bench in Select Cases (Edward I), 2:cxi, and on the power of judges in Select Cases (Edward ii), 4:lxxxii–lxxxiii. 142 As when Nicholas de Menill, former sheriff of Yorkshire, petitioned Edward ii against false charges brought by his disaffected undersheriff, Simon de Wakefield, before hostile justices: “Et Sire devaunt touz autres serray ie prest de respondre a touz qe se voudront pleindre et espoir, sire, qe garres ne serront trovez pleignauntz de moy si ie eye Justices nyent suspecionouses” (sc8/192/9599; cf. c81/94/3643, cpr 1313–1317, pp. 401, 419, 493). 143 sc8/130/6498. Probably in the reign of Edward ii: the knight is Henry de Staunton; the juror, John de Newcastle of Lincoln. Even when jurors occasionally did prove intractable, the power of justices might be felt. John, the vicar of Camberwell, claimed (probably late in the reign of Edward I) that his opponent “procura … tant qil out Justices a sa volunte,” but then found prospective jurors in Southwerk disinclined to convict John. The justices then, John claimed, simply prevented any replevin or delivery. At the time of his petition John had been imprisoned for a year and a half. sc8/329/E935.

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sued against him? Were any countermeasures likely to insure a successful defense? Some defendants predictably abandoned legal process altogether and relied on naked force or threats against the justices, the sheriffs who executed their orders, or the plaintiffs and their men. When the unsavory Robert de Vere, constable of Rockingham Castle and keeper of Rockingham Forest, found himself a defendant in two cases in 1332 to hear and determine charges against his official conduct, he tried to discourage one plaintiff, the abbot of Pipewell, by ambushing him. With several knights and twenty-five armed men behind him Vere also brazenly confronted one of the justices, William la Zouche of Haringworth, on the road from Rothwell. In a stormy scene Vere told him, “You wish to destroy me, but before I am destroyed I shall destroy all those who intend to destroy me, whatever their rank or estate may be.”144 An oyer and terminer session held at Louth in 1354 was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Robert Darcy, “chivaler,” who entered the hall with drawn sword, seized the justice by the throat, and would have killed him had others present not intervened (“at which the king is not without reason disturbed”).145 We need not be surprised that even justices armed with power to hear and determine feared to act against one of the powerful criminal gangs such as that led by the Folvilles,146 but a single local lord might try to overawe a defendant. The abbot of Burton-on-Trent in Staffordshire had obtained justices late in 1354 to hear and determine the trespasses against his religious house by Sir William de Meynell. But Meynell’s response was more violence and threats. He put the religious house virtually under seige and threatened to burn down the abbey and all its manors if they began their suit; if not stopped, the abbot claimed, 144 Just 1/1411B m. 3d., cpr 1330–1334, p. 235. The jurors account reads, “et idem Robertus imposuit dicto Willelmo quod ipsum vellet destruere dicens quod antequam ipse destruetur destrueret omnes illos que eum destruere voluerunt cuiuscumque condicionis seu status existerent.” Cf. Stones, “The Folvilles,” p. 124. 145 cpr, 1354–1358, p. 166. 146 Henry le fitz Henry de Hockele complained ca. 1333–1334 that the Folville gang took his goods, seized his wife, and detained her to his damage of 1000 marks. Although he was given an oyer and terminer commission, the justices—evidently prudent men—were unwilling to act, and Henry was menaced life and limb. sc8/52/2532, 2579, CPR 1330–1334, p. 505. Of course no other justices had much greater success against such gangs. When the general eyre of 1329 was begun, Isabella, widow of Sir William de Chuton, brought suit against the members of the Coterel gang for the death of her husband. But James Coterel appeared before the bar with more than eighty armed men “et fut acquite.” Isabella could not challenge the fraudulent proceedings for fear of her life. sc8/257/12808. The gangs are discussed by Stones, “The Folvilles,” and John Bellamy, “The Coterel Gang: An Anatomy of a Band of Fourteenth-Century Criminals,” English Historical Review 79 (1964), 698–717.

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Meynell will destroy forever the abbey and all the surrounding countryside.147 In 1283 when William de Rothingh, sheriff of Norfolk | and Suffolk, arrested sev­ 765 eral citizens of Ipswich indicted in an oyer and terminer, he soon found himself assaulted in full county court by what seemed to him the entire town. In fear of his life the sheriff handed over the indictments to the townsmen, and for good measure made fine with them in the form of two barrels of wine.148 Jurors were, of course, more vulnerable than justices or sheriffs. In 1328 the parson of Barkeston Church, Lincolnshire, hired a local knight, William de Parys, to disrupt the oyer and terminer brought against him by the prioress of Stikeswald. For a fee of £5 Parys threatened all the jurors and assaulted several of them, so that they were prevented from coming before the justices.149 Yet litigants who combatted oyer and terminers with force had to be confident they could maintain superior naked force against an opponent indefinitely; their violence would easily be made cause for further complaints to the crown and further suits in the king’s courts.150 In fact we may suspect that plaintiffs were often as ready and capable as defendants in combining violence and litigation; oyer and terminer was by no means a legal weapon used essentially by the weak to counterbalance the physical coercion of the strong. The classic case is a dispute between the prior of Christchurch Canterbury and his tenants at Monks Risborough (Bucks). The prior was accused not only of procuring John Molyns and John Inge as prejudiced justices, but of relying as well on Molyns’s capacity for violence. Molyns lived up to his reputation by—among much else—bringing ten resisting tenants, well bound, in two carts to the priory, where they were imprisoned in conditions which caused the deaths of two men.151 Thus it was probably less common and less effective for a defendant to draw his sword than to open his bag of legal tricks. Almost never could a defendant obtain his own oyer and terminer; the plaintiff had usually secured that weapon for himself.152 But the defendant might rely on a completely independent suit 147 sc8/246/12298, printed in Ṡelect Cases before the King’s Council, ed. I.S. Leadam and J.F. Baldwin (Selden Society 35, 1918) p. 41. See Baldwin’s comments, ibid., pp. lxxiv–lxxvi, and also cpr 1354–1358, pp. 164, 229–230. The king and council would not hear the abbot’s case but did given him a new commission with a larger panel of justices. 148 Just 1/824, cpr 1281–1291, p. 91. For a similar case at Ipswich in 1294, in which a fearful sheriff delayed acting and finally sent his bailiff, see Just 1/1286 mm. 39, 40, 41. 149 According to the inquest jurors of the south riding of Lindsey, before the justices of trailbaston: Just 1/516/28. Mr. B.W. McLane supplied a transcript of this inquest. 150 A good example is found in KB27/286/189d, of which B.W. McLane supplied a transcript. 151 Just 1/74 m. 15d., Just 1/75 m. 6d. 152 This general impression was more closely tested for the three most active oyer and terminer years, 10, 11, 12 Edward ii (July 1316 to July 1319). Only two or three cases could be found

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brought before some other court.153 The weakness of such a maneuver, as we have already noted, was the speed and power with which an oyer and terminer could strike. Only an assize of novel disseisin | was likely to match the speed of oyer and terminer,154 and the relatively low level of complaint against malicious prosecution by novel disseisin, in comparison with the flow of petitions and regular statutory monitoring of oyer and terminer, suggests that litigants considered the special justicerie a particularly heavy piece of legal artillery.155 Of course the most effective defense would be to block the very appointment of an opponent’s commission. Between the king or chancellor and the very powerful an understanding must simply have existed. Petitioners who sought special justices against Despenser retainers, for example, were usually informed that the ordinary procedures of the common law were sufficient in their cases.156 Other influential men might try the tactic for particular quarrels, as did Master Guy de la Val, the king’s cousin, when in 1311 his men occupied the Church of Maidstone, which he claimed against Master Stephen de Heselingfeld. Among the eight special requests Guy hurried off to the keeper of the realm and the chancellor, one sought to forestall the expected request for an oyer and terminer in favor of his opponent: “et qe nul bref de oyir et determiner par la porchaz de la otre partie ne isse hors de la chancellerie contre less avantdites gentz.”157 A few years earlier the earl of Lincoln had interceded with Edward I to prevent any oyer and terminer being issued concerning in which any individual was both plaintiff and defendant in justiceries commissioned during these years. 153 Thomas Moygne of Abingdon, and his wife Muriel, complained ca. 1320 that their enemies were attempting to block their two novel disseisins and an oyer and terminer by a false appeal of robbery: sc8/296/4786; cpr 1324–1327, p. 544; ccr 1318–1323, p. 279. 154 Sutherland, The Assize of Novel Disseisen, pp. 126 ff., discusses the speed of the assize in this period. 155 The second statute of Westminster, which attempted to limit the use of oyer and terminer and to assure the commissioning of justices above suspicion (c.29), in another clause praised the assize of novel disseisin: “There is no other writ…that gives plaintiffs such quick justice as does the writ of novel disseisin” (c.25). An interesting assessment of the power of oyer and terminer in relation to a trespass writ in Common Pleas is provided by a commission issued in 1277. A plaintiff who had brought suit against three defendants, “not being able without danger to prosecute his suit before the justices of the bench on account of the deadly threats [of the defendants],” was given a justicerie instead: cpr 1272–1281, p. 245. 156 See, for example, sc8/56/2781, sc8/84/4154, sc8/11/5536. 157 c81/77/1903, 1904. ccw 1244–1326, p. 353. While the response to this request was positive, to some of Guy’s other requests the answer given was “Il ne peut estre fait sanz mesprendre.” For another case see sc1/38/40.

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a felony committed by John de Tadenham.158 But only a very few could so easily prevent a hostile commission. If a defendant could not stop the commissioning of oyer and terminer justices against him, he might try to quash the justicerie by special request. He could usually find legal grounds; since the repeated statutory regulation was little heeded, most commissions violated the strict requirements of legality. This was precisely the line taken by Joan, widow of Ralph Basset of Drayton, in an attempt to counter Hugh Meynell’s justicerie in 1346. After pointedly reminding the chancellor of the “plusours estatutz” which established | the standards for 767 legitimate oyer and terminers (“qe nul oier et terminer soit grante si noun par horrible trespas et ce devant Justice dun Baunk ou dautre”) she assured him the commission purchased against her failed to meet these standards and should be stopped. But the answer, endorsed on her petition, stated that the commission could not possibly be withdrawn as she requested: “Puis qe les commissions sont issuez, homme ne les puisse en ciele manere repeller.”159 Even figures of great power might be turned down. The earl of Surrey petitioned Edward ii in 1320 to suspend a commission sitting against his people by the procurement of Maud de Neirford; the plaintiff was her son John and all the justices wore her robes and took her fees as members of her council. Far from granting the earl’s request that any suit proceed only by common law, the chancellor was directed to reissue the commission against the earl’s men.160 Obviously a plaintiff with friends at court would learn of his opponent’s action and could petition against the defendant’s request for a writ of supersedeas.161 Some wise plaintiffs, aware of the usual countermoves of defendants, anticipated hostile requests in their original petition for a justicerie. In 1376  John de Derwentwater, sheriff of Cumberland, asked that his oyer and 158 c81/52/5170, 32 Edward I. The operative phrase in Edward’s letter to the chancellor reads, “ne sueffrey en nule manere qe Justicerie de oyr e de terminer cele felonie … saunz soulement le cours de la commune ley seit purchatez en nostre chancellerie tantqe vous aiez sur ceo especial mandement de nous.” If a commission has already been issued, it is to be suspended: “meisme le purchaz facez contremander sanz delay.” 159 sc8/32/1551. cpr 1345–1348, p. 183. In 1305 the townsmen of Norwich at least temporarily blocked the commission obtained by the prior and convent of Holy Trinity; their best argument seems to have been that the land in dispute was in the king’s seisin. sc8/219/1094, sc8/264/13165, sc8/130/6487, c81/33/3341, 3342, cpr 1301–1307, p. 351, ccr 1302–1307, pp. 44–45. 160 sc8/87/4348. Maude had been Warenne’s mistress but now hated him since he had “ouste de sa companye Maud de Nerforde.” The original commission was dated 1 December 1320, cpr 1317–1321, p. 474; it was reissued on 8 July 1320, ibid., p. 537. 161 See Rot. Parl., 1:300.

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terminer justices be commissioned “sanz estre repelle per ashun supersedeas et qe les ditez mefesours ne soient deliverez en le mene temps per nulle brief de replegiari et si ascun tiel brief soit maunde qil soit repelle.”162 Some defendants more successfully attempted to nullify a suspect oyer and terminer by requesting that the case be adjourned to King’s Bench or to king and council. The abbot of Waltham, for example, used this tactic successfully against an opponent who had, he claimed, bought a favorable justice and procured an approver who would fasely appeal him of robberies in two counties.163 Most of the cases appealed from oyer and terminer justiceries were brought coram rege, where many defendants could state in the words of the tenants of Stainton Waddingham “they could go without fear of bodily harm.”164 But getting a writ to bring the record and process coram rege did not ensure the speedy transfer of the case, nor its success in the higher court. Oyer and terminer justices who were habitually swift in pressing a plaintiff’s | case could be evasive and dilatory when a defendant tried to take the case away from their jurisdiction to King’s Bench. Maurice de Berkeleye, the hand-picked justice of John Bottiler in 1312–1313, boasted to an oyer and terminer defendant that no record would ever be sent to King’s Bench, nor could any other remedy be found.165 William le Clerk of Kyme faced more subtle resistance in early 1327. When writs were sent to one justice, Robert Darcy, he always answered that as a military man (“homme darmes”) he felt uncertain about legal matters and that his companion, William de la Launde, who was a man of law, should respond; Launde in turn answered that Darcy had been the chief justice in the case (“qe monsire Robert fust chief justice”) and that it was really up to him to send forward the record and process. Moreoever, William le Clerk informed the chancellor, he was still imprisoned at Lincoln, although the value of his goods fully covered the damages assessed against him in the case. In response, the chancellor ordered the sheriff to distrain the principal justice to answer for contempt and to send a writ to the justices about the damages and imprisonment “si le proces soit tiel qil receiuent vne.”166 A skillful plaintiff, however, might even be able to arrange his oyer and terminer process so that appeal to King’s Bench was virtually impossible, as the citizens of Scarborough charged in 1328. When a justicerie obtained by Alexander de Berwick produced no 162 163 164 165 166

sc8/108/5375. c81/100/4283–4285, ccw 1244–1326, pp. 472–473. sc1/42/60. sc8/323/E563. Cf. sc8/323/E569 and cpr 1307–1313, pp. 536–537. sc8/296/14770, printed in Select Cases (Edward I), 2:cxxvi. Cf. cpr 1327–1330, p. 79. ccr 1327–1330, p. 456.

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indictments—presumably through the reluctance of a local inquest—the justices inquired of juries impaneled in “foreign” wapentakes and at once received 22 indictments of wealthy citizens. The townsmen protested a violation of their franchise, but the exception was not allowed. The justices did not conclude the case, however; the intent was to leave the accused “toutz jours in respite per cautele qe bref de remener le Record ne poet servir avant juggement rendu.” Apparently the legal pressure of a standing indictment was sufficient for Alexander de Berwick’s purposes, or those of the justices themselves.167 Even when the defendant brought his case coram rege, the results might be disheartening. Edmund de Impynghe, convicted of a trespass in a justicerie brought by Richard de Stirthorp and Richard le Carter late in the reign of Edward ii, at first won an acquittal in King’s Bench, but when the plaintiffs reopened the case, Edmund was found guilty and the damages awarded the plaintiffs were increased from an original £20 to £55.168 | 769 Most defendants seem to have harbored little hope that they could quash a hostile commission. But they continued to struggle with a resilience as notable as it usually was ineffectual, unless the defendant enjoyed a superior local position. A powerful defendant might be able to corrupt the panel of jurors so completely that the justices obtained by his less potent adversaries would give up in frustration; this tactic was successfully employed by the abbot of Abingdon against the local townsmen in 1363.169 Other defendants tried to change the site of the sessions170 or, more commonly, to change all or at least some of the 167 Rot. Parl., 2:28; cpr 1327–1330, p. 276. 168 KB27/258/214, 214d. KB27/262/181d. This reference was supplied by B.W. McLane whose examination of Lincolnshire cases in King’s Bench rolls for 1290–1341 produced evidence for the following conclusions. Of the several hundred oyer and terminers issued to Lincolnshire plaintiffs in this half century, only eight cases were reviewed coram rege. Seven of these cases were brought by plaintiffs; the single defendant was Edmund Impynghe. Five of the seven plaintiffs were seeking full payment of damages awarded them; one tried unsuccessfully to convict a defendant of a felony (after a previous failure before oyer and terminer justices); one brought a similar charge of felony, but failed to prosecute. This evidence is discussed in Mr. McLane’s unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. 169 Gabrielle Lambrick, “The Impeachment of the Abbot of Abingdon in 1368,” English Historical Review 82 (1967), especially pp. 251, 261–262, 267–268 for comments on the 1363 commission. Where the parties were less unequally matched the justices would be more likely to resist pressure. See the petition of William de Sutton (ca. 1327) which describes how friends of the defendant “manacerent les ditz Justices par ceo quils ne voloyent assenter a vne enquest suspecionouse.” But the justices were not cowed. sc8/73/3623. 170 As Peter Buckskin was able to do when John Botetort sued an oyer and terminer against him c. 1323. Peter purchased a writ ordering the justices to sit only at Norwich, where Peter had his allies and where the inquest jurors would know nothing of the offense.

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justices assigned.171 John of Kent made such a plea in 1301; citing his past good service in the king’s wars, and promising continued good service all his days, he claimed that he could be heard with fairness if the king would replace hostile, procured justices with Roger Brabazon and Roger de Hengham, “qe ne sount suspecionous a la une partie ne a lautre.” The king believed him and changed the panel “ex certis causis.”172 Earlier in the reign the burgesses of Dunwich won a slighter success—they obtained an association of one justice to the original pair named and seem to have fended off their opponent’s pressures to remove the new man.173 But defendants could by no means count on any degree of success in changing justices. An associate justice added by a defendant might subsequently be removed,174 no doubt after a plaintiff had exercised his influence. In fact any change was likely to reflect to the wishes of the | plaintiff, for as we have already observed, a slow or unsuitable set of justices was frequently altered on the plaintiff’s petition.175 Obviously the ability to change the commissioned justices depended on a litigant’s influence at court, and where opponents were fairly equally matched the chancellor, or king and council, might be faced with a dilemma. Edward ii confronted this problem late in 1319 concerning a commission Bartholomew de Badlesmere obtained to hear and determine his charge that the men of John de Brittany, earl of Richmond, had assaulted his wife and servants. When the Botetort charged his justices could only come to the city armed “countre la pees” for fear of the armed townsmen who had already once beaten John and the original panel of jurors. sc8/35/1731. The commission was reissued with two additional justices associated with the original three, but the site of their sessions is unknown. 171 A plaintiff who was not careful to specify the justices he wanted might find, in fact, that his opponent had beaten him to it. William of Ouneby, chaplain, complained in 1332 that his oyer and terminer against those who had assaulted him was stymied by the maintenance of the abbot of Ramsey, whose letters had gone to the justices assigned. His request for justices “qe ne sunt pas de la affinite le dit abbe” was denied and the original commission was reissued. sc8/194/9692, cpr 1330–1334, pp. 351, 443. 172 sc8/55/2701. cpr 1292–1301, p. 627. Cf. sc8/55/2705A, B, ccr 1302–1307, p. 295. 173 sc8/137/6828. cpr 1272–1281, p. 470, cpr 1281–1292, p. 42. 174 Edward ii informed the chancellor in 1316 that the justice added by the abbot of Croyland, the defendant in a justicerie obtained by Richard de Ayremynne, king’s clerk, was to be removed; the original justices were then to proceed. c81/95/3734, ccw 1244–1326, p. 446. For a similar case in the reign of Edward I see c81/34/3441. 175 For other examples of changes initiated by plaintiffs see sc1/28/17, cpr 1307–1313, pp. 547, 602 (possibly the commissions resulting from the petition); sc8/33/1643, cpr 1327–1330 pp. 354–355. See sc8/87/4319 for a case of novel disseisin in which the defendant purchased an association for a justice who blocked all action until the plaintiff was able to remove him.

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earl evidently intervened, an accord was arranged in the king’s presence: Badlesmere should have the justices he wished, but the earl would be allowed to associate with them justices suitable to him; thus Badlesmere retained his original three justices and John of Brittany added two others.176 A canonist observing this accord under royal sponsorship might easily have conceived of the legal process transpiring before him in terms of a well-known device of the Court Christian, the recusatio iudicis, or challenging of a judge;177 in fact ecclesiastics with any knowledge of canon law might have viewed oyer and terminer procedure as a parallel in secular courts to the ecclesiastical procedures governing papal judges delegate.178 For two centuries their appeals to the papal court had been delegated to local churchmen who were selected for each case, often on the suggestion of the plaintiff, and who were not necessarily professional judges. Since this ad hoc appointment of judges raised the problem of impartiality in a critical fashion, canonists devoted much thought to the proper standards for a judge delegate and carefully established those circumstances in which a litigant might challenge a judge—namely, if the judge was not of suitable personal status (an excommunicate, a minor, a woman, etc.), if the judge did not hold an ecclesiastical dignity, and if the judge had a prejudice or personal interest | in the case (as lord, vassal, relative, or previous advocate of 771 one party, or if bribery or preexistent enmity was apparent). The procedures of papal judges delegate seem clearly to have formed a part of the legal atmosphere in which the commissions of oyer and terminer originated and flourished, and the specific provisions for challenges of judges may have encouraged litigants in 176 This information is contained in a letter sent to the chancellor by an unknown writer “depar nostre seignur le Roi.” sc1/36/149 (3 December 1319). The operative phrases are “qe monsir Bartholomeu ust Justices convenable tels come il volet nomer et qe le counte de Richemund ust a cele busoigne associe Justices convenables tiels come il volet nomer.” For the commission and association see cpr 1317–1321, pp. 467–468. The only other case encountered in which oyer and terminer is so clearly a form of arbitration is the dispute between the archbishop of Canterbury and the earl of Gloucester in 23 Edward i. The bishop of Durham was commissioned to hear and determine the case (“a trier et terminer”) when the four arbiters chosen by the parties were unsuccessful. c81/10/970. Cf. cpr 1292–1301, p. 152. This was by no means the usual form of commission, but rather indicates the wide range of cases for which justices might from time to time be given power to hear and determine. 177 See especially Helmholz, “Canonists,” upon which I have drawn extensively for what follows. Cf. Fowler, “Recusatio Iudicis.” For a general discussion of judges delegate in England see Jane E. Sayers, Papal Judges Delegate in the Province of Canterbury, 1198–1254 (London, 1971). 178 Fowler, “Recusatio Iudicis,” pp. 782–783, n. 289.

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their attempts to add or eliminate justices in the special commissions. Yet it would be a mistake to view oyer and terminer simply as another example of secular appropriation of some piece of the legal apparatus of the church. The thinking and intent represented by the ecclesiastical procedure seems quite different from oyer and terminer. Regular and formal procedures were provided in cases before judges delegate to secure the acquiescence of both parties to a panel of judges who could thus achieve lasting compromise. A good judge in the view of the canonists took as one of his important functions the arrangement of an amicable agreement; the usual “extreme reluctance of the canon law to force important litigation to a conclusion without the acquiescence of both parties to a dispute” is evident.179 In oyer and terminer by contrast, there was no formal means of challenging a justice; many litigants did not even possess the amalgam of courage and optimism needed to make the attempt, and those who did had no assurance that their request would even be heard, let alone evaluated according to a carefully reasoned and open body of standards. Only litigants who could produce the requisite influence at court could hope to challenge the justices commissioned to judge their case. Moreover, the purpose of most oyer and terminer cases seems hardly to have been amicable compromise; it would be difficult to believe that this was the intention of the plaintiffs who petitioned for the commissions or of the court which granted them. If the oyer and terminers represent any borrowing from an ecclesiastical form, they represent an appropriation with significantly different intent and without the careful safeguards of recusatio judicis. Once a justicerie had gone against them, what recourse was open to defendants? They seem to have forged letters of acquittal with some regularity,180 but the justices could rule on these letters and generally disallowed them. With more reason defendants might hope to influence the sheriff or his underlings whose duty it was to carry out the judgment and collect damages. Early in Edward I’s reign Sir Renaud de Bedhampton won his oyer and terminer case against trespassers in his park, but had to petition the crown to try to get the sheriff to act on the justices’ orders.181 In 1320 Jacaunce de Merk won damages of £1100 before oyer and terminer justices, only to find that the sheriff of Essex had released the prisoners before they paid.182 But most defendants would 179 Helmholz, “Canonists,” p. 398. Cf. Bennett, “The Medieval Loveday,” p. 370. 180 See, for example, a case from 1322, kb 138/73, 74; a case from 1325, Just 1/535/6; a case from 1344, Just 1/557/8. 181 sc8/137/6811. 182 sc8/86/4284. Sheriffs were fined for their failures (as in Just 1/1249 m. 39, Just 1/209, m. 2, in which sheriffs are each amerced £20 and a bailiff £5), but the threat of fines did not

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find, as the framers of the 1315 parliamentary | petition stated, that the sheriff 772 had been procured to take part in the fraud. We can only conclude that vigorous though a defendant might be, the odds remained clearly in favor of any plaintiff who had gotten a commission. Most defendants would have sighed in envy if they listened to the speech of Gamelyn, triumphant in the romance over procured justices, corrupt jurors, and crooked sheriffs: This day they shuln been hanged  that been on thy quest; And the justice bothe  that is jugge-man And the sherreve bothe—  thurgh him it bigan.183 Of the archvillain, the malicious plaintiff, the poet assured his listeners that his corrupting money had failed. He was hanged by the neck  and nought by the purs. The reality must almost always have differed from the wish-fulfillment of the romance. A plaintiff with the influence to get a special commission could generally fight off countermeasures. Only if oyer and terminers were generally successful, and thus commonly feared, would the constant flow of complaints and repeated statutory regulation make any sense. As we have seen, ten years after the initial expansion in their use the second statute of Westminster (1285) restricted the commissions to cases of “horrible” trespasses and special appeals for which the king, of his special grace, wanted to provide speedy remedy; the justices were to be chosen only from either bench or the justices in eyre.184 In 1315, the answer to the parliamentary petition, examined below, reaffirmed this clause, stressing sworn and discrete justices, who are not suspect.185 A statute in the opening year of Edward iii’s reign promised that for the first time the writ of attaint could be prevent the problem of their failure to act on justices’ orders. For cases in which sheriffs allowed defendants to go free before damages were collected, see sc8/4284, sc8/74/3678. Parties could, of course, approach sheriffs at an earlier stage in the proceedings. For example, in an oyer and terminer concerning the death of William Detling in 1304, the sheriff apparently tried to protect one of those indicted, a member of his household, by returning a prejudiced jury of 24. The coroner was ordered to impanel a jury of 44 men. Just 1/404/3. cpr 1301–1307, p. 283. 183 Lines 842–844, ed. Sands, Verse Romances, p. 179. 184 Statutes of the Realm, 1:85. 185 Rot. Parl., 1:290.

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obtained in oyer and terminer cases; this enactment apparently was in response to a petition from “many great men and others,” complaining that oyer and terminers have been used maliciously to seize the lands of defendants by assessing such outrageous damages that they must turn over the coveted estates in order to satisfy the victorious plaintiff.186 | Yet a further petition in 1354 complained of the abuses of imprisonment in oyer and terminers and requested that writs of attaint be made available to those imprisoned while action was still pending against other codefendants.187 The second clause of the 1328 Statute of Northampton contained an admission that oyer and terminers had been granted in violation of the original statutory form, and once again strict regulation was pledged.188 A decade later another common petition set forth at length the evils of a royal practice of naming lifetime justices of oyer and terminer who collected one-third of all the “issues, fines, amercements and forfeited goods and all other profits arising from their sessions.”189 A 1360 statute ordered obedience to earlier regulations and stipulated that the court, not the plaintiff, would name all justices in the future.190 In 1380 a common petition returned to the evil of oyer and terminers granted too easily, contrary to statute; the king ignored a suggestion that three reputable men be required to swear with the plaintiff that the charge was true and promised merely that past statutes would be enforced.191 Only three years passed before the same complaint was presented again in a common petition, only to receive a similarly lame response from the king.192 The thrust of all of our evidence—enrolled commissions, individual and common petitions, statutes—is clear. Special commissions of oyer and terminer were sought because they were speedy and brutally effective; the justiceries provided a plaintiff with these advantages because of the influence he could exercise on the selection of justices and, through them, on every phase of the proceedings. 186 The original petition is sc8/79/3930; it is printed in Rot. Parl., 2:407; for the statute see Statutes of the Realm, 1:253. (1 Edward iii, c.6.) 187 Rot. Parl., 2:259. 188 Statutes of the Realm, 1:258. 189 Rot. Parl., 2:286. 190 Statutes of the Realm, 1:365. 191 Rot. Parl., 3:94. 192 Rot. Parl., 2:161. An individual petition presented in Parliament within a year or two of this common petition asked for an annulment of one particular commission and then concluded more generally with a request that “null oier et termyner soit grante desore enavant sanz ceo qe soit examyne qe la suggestioun soit veritable selonc le statute ent fait.” sc8/143/7129. There is no endorsement.

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The final question suggested by our graph is the most important: what role did the special commissions play in the disorder of the period and the efforts to combat it? We have seen that oyer and terminers initially relieved the mounting pressure on the overworked and inadequate machinery of justice; and, although we cannot read the minds of Edward I and his advisers, we may assume that some contribution to the state of public order was also intended. Throughout the period some of the commissions must have achieved these laudatory goals, providing in every corner of the realm swift redress for legitimate grievances, a powerful legal process to replace or suppress a cycle of alternating acts of violence. This would seem to be true of | a 1313 riot in Lynn. John 774 de Montalt, lord of part of the town, claimed that the prior of Lynn and scores of townsmen assaulted him when he tried to collect his tolls and dues. The mob had pursued Montalt and his men to his inn, besieged it, captured and beat his men. Montalt himself was compelled by threat of death to release all actions against the citizens, grant them the appointment of a bailiff to collect his dues, and demise these profits to the townsmen for 21 years. All this was put in writing and sealed. Finally, Montalt was forced to stand on a market stall, acknowledge to the assembled crowd that the writings were his, swear to observe them all on the Host conveniently provided by a chaplain, and execute a written obligation for £2,000 as a penalty to be paid in the event he violated the agreements. When they were brought before Montalt’s oyer and terminer justices the townsmen first claimed chartered rights and then blandly suggested that after an unfortunate quarrel Montalt had acted of his own free will in dismantling his lordship over the city. Montalt’s sense of outrage can be gauged by his estimate of damages, £200,000 to the king, and £100,000 to himself. The jurors clearly did not believe feudal lords climbed atop market stalls freely to waive their rights over townsmen; they substantiated Montalt’s account of the assault. The court, however, set his damages at £8,000 (only somewhat less unreasonable than Montalt’s original claim), and the surviving record shows that several hundred pounds were in fact collected during the sessions.193 All incidents reported so dramatically in the case may not be true, but an oyer and terminer does seem to have replaced some possibly brutal reaction by Montalt. The bitter eloquence of private and common petitions, and the solemn regulation of repeated statutes, however, point to usefulness of a quite 193 Just 1/612/2, cpr 1313–1317, pp. 57–58. The damages awarded included the recognizance for £2,000.

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different order and provide ample warning against any optimistic reading of oyer and terminer as a buttress of order and justice. In the final analysis we cannot know with certainty whether oyer and terminer increased or reduced the incidents of violence that so worried fourteenth-century Englishmen. Neither can we know at a distance of six centuries whether petitioners’ charges were truthful or mere malicious prosecution. But we must note that the very flexibility of oyer and terminer, the pronounced ad hoc quality of the commissions and their accessibility to gross influence, placed them near the top of the list of those “multifarious and subtle means adopted to make the law itself become an instrument of injustice.”194 As K.B. McFarlane suggested, disorder in the late Middle Ages had to assume subtler forms: “It being no longer possible, at any rate most of the time, to settle a dispute out of court by open violence, it was necessary to have recourse to legal guile. Men in fact found it safer to pervert the law than to break it.”195 Going a step further one could argue that in the case of oyer and terminer, | legal guile was commonly a supplement to outright violence rather than a substitute, simply one rather more subtle weapon in the whole arsenal being employed. This latter point is well illustrated by the case of Andrew de la Gove, prior of Takeleye. His petition relates that in 1336 he ousted William Wychard from an unfree tenement because he was a rebel and refused to render the payments owed (“purce qil fut rebel e retynt ses custumes”). On the advice of his worldlywise London relatives William obtained oyer and terminer justices against the prior. Their sessions were held at Stratford-atte-Bow, conveniently close to London (“forsque treys leues de la Cite de Londres”) and on the first day William’s cooperative relatives brought out a great force against the prior, “e le quistrent en son ostele demene pur laver decole a quel temps il eschapa apeyne en son bat outre Tamise en Kent.” While the prior was rowed in haste over the Thames, a packed inquest assessed William’s damages at 540m. The prior was certain his enemies had bought the sheriff and that the jurors had been brought from distant parts and paid well—some 20s., some 40s.—for their travel and their perjury. To ensure their triumph, William’s party had brought strangers into the county who lurked in woods and lanes asking shepherds about the movements of the prior and his men. When his steward was killed, Andrew’s men were completely paralyzed by fear. The prior’s pleas to the chancellor as “fountain of all remedy” produced an order to the keepers of the peace to do their duty, the replacement of Master John de Hildesle, the most suspect judge, by John de Shardelowe, and finally the transfer of the case to King’s Bench. 194 The phrase is borrowed from G.O. Sayles, Select Cases (Edward iii), 3:liv. 195 The Nobility of Later Medieval England, p. 115.

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Moreoever, the crown commissioned three men to conduct an inquest and imprison all those who attacked the prior, preventing his appearance before the justices. The combative William Wychard, refusing to acknowledge defeat, continued to petition the crown for justice and, for good measure, brought an action of novel disseisin against Andrew. By 1338, since the religious house had been taken into the king’s hands as an alien priory, the issue of royal rights was intruded into an already complex quarrel.196 We may suspect that William Wychard was ultimately unsuccessful, but his vigorous mix of oyer and terminer, novel disseisin, and outright violence is instructive. After reading his case, or the great number of similar cases, one cannot readily believe that the commissions functioned as simple substitutes for violence. | 776 It seems much more likely that in general commissions of oyer and terminer provided especially convenient and powerful weapons in the local disputes and feuds which mark the period. A 1315 petition to the king in Parliament provides a veritable summary and catalogue of the malicious uses to which the commissions could be put: The community of the people of his realm show our lord the king that great evils and oppressions against the law are done to many of the people of the land because commissions to hear and determine trespasses are granted more lightly and more commonly than they used to be, against the common law. For when a great lord or powerful man wants to injure someone, he fabricates a [charge of] trespass against him or he maintains someone to whom a trespass has been done, and purchases commissions of oyer and terminer to people favorable to him and suspect to his adversary, who are willing to do whatever he wants, and they will set a day of which the defendant is not informed by the sheriff or bailiffs, who are procured to be a part of the fraud, or if the defendant is informed the notice is so short he cannot attend; and he is thus grievously amerced, namely £20, 20m. or £10 at the will of the plaintiff, and another day is 196 sc8/296/14796, cpr 1334–1338, pp. 356. The presentment jurors of numerous hundreds in the sweeping 1341 inquest confirmed the prior’s charge of a procured commission and noted that since he had to flee his lands “pro timore” he could not appear before the justices to defend his legal right. The mob which came seeking his head was evidently a body of about eighty armed men sent by the sheriff (procured by Wychard’s friends) to seize him. The prior was put in exigent “to the great damage of his house.” Presentment jurors named John de Hildesleye, one of Wychard’s oyer and terminer justices, as the arranger of most of these illegalities, but he was acquitted when brought before the inquest jurors. Just 1/258 mm. 3, 12. The later actions can be observed indirectly in cpr 1334–1338, pp. 365, 443, ccr 1337–1339, pp. 504, 523.

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given the defendant in some inconvenient upland village in which his adversary will have such great power that the defendant dares not go there for fear of his body, nor can he have counsel there for fear of this same power. And so he is fined three or four times the value of his chattels, i.e., a common man £120 for a single default, 100m. or £40, more or less depending on the plaintiff’s urgency. And if the defendant comes on the set day he will either receive bodily injury or he will have to give satisfaction beyond his capacity at the plaintiff’s will, or jurors will be procured from distant parts who know nothing of the trespass by which the dependent will be convicted of a trespass even though he is guiltless, and the damages set at the will of his adversary, i.e., in a trespass for which damages of 20s. would be enough, £200, £400, and sometimes 1000m. And if the defendant is seized, he will be thrust into prison and will remain there until he has paid every penny, so that he must sell his land or his friends must pay, if he is ever to get out. And if he escapes arrest, he will be put in exigent and exiled forever; because of this the said community prays a remedy in this matter, and that it might be at Common Law, for otherwise many of the people of England will be ruined and disenherited, contrary to reason.197

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Were the farmers of this petition indulging in dramatic exaggeration to make their point more effectively? The evidence suggests, to the contrary, that this petition describes the effects of the justiceries as commonly experienced. Individual petitions provide corroborative detail to the sweeping assertions of the common petition. A complaint from the earl of Cornwall’s tenants of Stainton Waddingham (in the lordship of Kirton, Lincolnshire), reads almost like a paraphrase of parts of the common petition. As they informed their lord and his council in 1331, shortly before Michaelmas the men of Sir Eble Lestrange who had gone to take forcible possession of the church of West Rasen came to their village and assaulted Master Nicholas de Okam, the parson of the village, and the servants who were with him. In the fight which ensued when Okam’s chaplain and his friends came to the rescue, one of Sir Eble’s party, Walter | Crispyn, “a common county quarreler (un comun contekour du pays)” was killed and the others were so roughly handled that they fled. But the great company of Sir Eble’s men occupying the church, and Sir Eble himself, then at Halton, threatened to come the next evening and put the entire village to the torch. In great fear the 197 Rot. Parl., 1:290.

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tenants appealed for help from the bailiff of Kirton, John of Westminster.198 Since he was ill, the bailiff instructed his subbailiff to take steps to resist any assault. Thwarted in his direct assault, Sir Eble bought a commission of oyer and terminer against all the tenants, rich and poor, naming as justices men who wore his robes and took his fees. Their sessions (as we have already noted) were held at Horncaster near Sir Eble’s castle and lordship of Bolingbroke, where the undersheriff and jury were all in his power and where knowledge of the great injuries he and his men had done to his enemies was so widespread that only a greater lord would dare oppose him (“kar en cels parties est il tant redoute pur les grantz mals qe il et les soems ont fait a plusours gentz qe nul ne lui ose contrester si ne fust plus grant seignur”).199 As the Stainton Waddingham case shows, plaintiffs might seek oyer and terminers as a means of covering up their own crimes and blocking any legal response by their victims. Aggressor and victim could be reversed in a plaint and a justicerie procured to convict the defendant as perpetrator of the wrong he had, in fact, suffered.200 Some litigants were even more maliciously ingenious in their use of the commissions. In 1320, James Beuflour arranged at the first session of his special justicerie for John Swavesy, “soun garzoun domene,” to appear and confess that he and Robert de Bayouse were guilty of the trespass charge against them, “par quey cele evidence dona il au pays qe il [Bayouse] fut ateint du trespas a damage de mil livers.” Bayouse complained bitterly about such fraudulent oyer and terminers, which had been prohibited in the past, but he got no results.201 The two Despensers, however, were probably the masters in malicious ­prosecution through oyer and terminer. One charge in the long list of justifications for their exile specified that the Despensers had “caused to be appointed 198 He was in fact Queen Isabella’s bailiff and at that time the men of Stainton Wadingham were the queen’s tenants, as they carefully explained. 199 sc1/42/60. cpr 1330–1334, pp. 131–132. 200 See the dispute between John Tubbe and the prior of Huntingdon in ca. 1381–1382 (sc8/143/7129). The case of Roger de Birthorp and the prior of Sempringham in the reign of Edward ii may be similar (sc8/34/1671). The use of oyer and terminers against victims of his previous wrongdoing was charged against John Molyns by the inquests of numerous hundreds in 1341 (Just 1/74, 75). Cf. the petition of John de Hanbury quoted in full at the beginning of this study. 201 sc8/32/1569. The endorsement on his petition reads “Illud quod factum est est per processum legis. Idcirco nichil.” The process for this case survives (Just 1/21) and makes his charges plausible. Cf. cpr 1317–1321, pp. 535–536, ccr 1318–1323, p. 336. Another petition from Bayouse, seeking relief from exigent, is endorsed “Adeat coram Justic’ coram quibus placitum est et ibi fiat petitio sua.” sc8/4/178.

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justices not learned in the law of the land to hear and determine | things touching the Great Men and People of the Realm.”202 This charge seems to be an early example of English understatement, as the experience of many contemporaries shows. John Yorge had the misfortune of being in possession of a manor which the Elder Despenser coveted. Hugh Despenser and several allies, John claimed, ejected him and then brought an oyer and terminer against him; John and his son Thomas were indicted and imprisoned until they quitclaimed the manor to Hugh Despenser.203 Roger de Birthorpe similarly claimed he lost a manor through Despenser’s fraudulent oyer and terminer, which set damages at 500m. So fearful was Birthorpe that he fled to Ireland. In his absence he was outlawed and Despenser’s friend Henry de Beaumont took his manor of Birthorpe, worth £40 annually.204 When the Senior Despenser brought an oyer and terminer against John Mautravers Jr., his action struck such terror in Mautravers Sr. that the latter came to court himself, fearful that he might be outlawed along with his son. His assessment of the power and intent of his commission was sound; damages against his son were assessed at £5,000.205 Some of the men associated with the Despensers were no less brazen in their use of the special commissions. Ralph de Wedon, frequently the subject of irate petitions,206 was accused by Eve, the widow of Robert Hanekasherd of Chesham, of pressuring her to bring a false plaint for death of her husband before oyer and terminer justices.207 But Wedon himself could not be touched by oyer and terminers requested against him, as several victims of his actions learned.208 Geoffrey Fitzwaryn, who had shown the courage to indict Wedon 202 203 204 205 206

Statutes of the Realm, 1:182. sc8/172/8558. sc8/34/1671. Just 1/792 mm. 1,3,4,6,7,8. cpr 1321–1324, pp. 165, 168. In a petition of ca. 1326, Geoffrey le Fauconer, recently vicar of the church of Chesham, charged that Wedon and others by conspiracy brought an appeal against him in the county of Buckingham (probably not before oyer and terminer justices) “en le noun de une Agneys de Beaumond qe unqors ne fut vewe ne conue.” With the connivance of the then undersheriff, Piers de la Rokele, Geoffrey was imprisoned until he gave over certain tithes to the abbot of Leicester, who had paid Wedon £10 for his services. Geoffrey was then unable to obtain any remedy because Baldock maintained Wedon. sc8/47/2308. 207 sc8/50/2493. cpr 1317–1321, pp. 548, 550. 208 sc8/84/4152. The people of three hundreds in the county of Buckingham requested that “loials Justices soient assegnez a oier e terminer a destruere la fause alliaunce de sire Rauf de Wedon.” He had recently been indicted of homicides, murders, conspiracies, and other offences, but he was protected by the maintenance of “Sire Despenser le Piere e Sire Hughe le fuiz e mestre Robert de Baudak Chanceller e per brocage de Johan de Toucestr e Symon Laghman qi furent od le Roy e pristrent fee du dit Sire Rauf pur estre ses brokurs

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for the death of Alice de Beauchamp, charged that Wedon promised Hugh Despenser the Younger £20 annually and was presented with a royal pardon. Wedon then came to Geoffrey’s home to settle scores and would have killed him had he not been able to escape “by the grace of | God, half naked (il les 779 eschapa par la grace de Dieu mi sanz draps).” Wedon and friends vented their frustrated anger by burning Geoffrey’s house. Geoffrey then sued a writ “as is provided in the statute of Winchester” to inquire concerning the felony, but although the inquest provided corroboration of his account, Baldock maintained Wedon so that Geoffrey could get no justice. His appeal to king and council for oyer and terminer justices brought no further result.209 The parties in urban feuds needed no lessons from the countryside in the use of oyer and terminer. For example, the disputes among the rich, poor, and middling burgesses, which troubled Scarborough across at least the first thirteen years of the reign of Edward ii, had been first brought before the Exchequer court in 1307 and remained before that court, pending judgment, for six years.210 Robert Walwayn, king’s bailiff, who had brought this suit in the Exchequer, soon decided to seek an oyer and terminer as supplement to or substitute for this process. If his charges contained any truth, Walwayn had good reason; he had been dragged through the streets by the hair of his head, his house had been robbed and its walls broken through, a minor heiress in his custody had been abducted, and his enemies had gotten what modern gangsters would term a contract on his life, paying the considerable sum of £20 to the man who was to eliminate him. “All this for the service of the king,” as Walwayn dryly observed. Much negotiation seems to stand behind the framing devers les segnurs desusditz en mauveys ensample de gentz e mauvoyse coveigne e en grant destruction de tut le pais.” The endorsement records their dashed hopes; they are to sue at common law. 209 sc8/111/5536. 210 For what follows see sc8/193/9616. Walwayn’s petition for speedy judgement in the Exchequer court, 1316, originally enclosed in c81/94/3608; sc8/193/9605 (a petition from Walwayn for an oyer and terminer, 1316, also originally enclosed in c81/94/3608); and cpr 1313–1317, pp. 493–494, 586–587, 593. The petition concerning the exchequer process describes the conflicts in the town as “entre les menes gentz e les riches e les peures”; the oyer and terminer petition refers to the “confederacioun” or “couygne” of the wealthy. In addition to the commission which dealt with Walwayn’s personal plaint, another was issued (to other justices) to hear and determine the more general offenses Walwayn described. The general situation in Scarborough is briefly mentioned by Charles W. Colby in “The Growth of Oligarchy in English Towns,” English Historical Review 5 (1890), 646. Trouble between the social groups continued, or was revived, in the opening years of Edward iii. See above, p. 746.

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of the commissions and selection of justices, but eventually two separate commissions apparently dealt with Walwayn’s charges. The crown may not have anticipated how easily the special commission of oyer and terminer could become an adjunct or even a spur to countryside and urban quarreling. Yet an unfortunate example had been set by the king himself. Special oyer and terminer commissions were one means Edward ii chose to pursue his personal vendetta against Walter Langton, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield. In mid-September 1310 he ordered the chancellor, Sir William Bereford, and Sir Henry de Scrope to consult with Matthew del Eschekier and John de Ely, to devise “all the ways and means by which one can trouble the said bishop by the law and custom of our realm (toutes les voies et les maneres par queux hom peusse grever le dit Evesque per la ley et | lusage de nostre Roialme).” They were to issue commissions of oyer and terminer at the suit of Matthew and John with Bereford and Scrope as justices, and they were to arrange the business “as well and as swiftly as you and our Justices together can arrange without any manner of delay, upon the fidelity you owe us, for this business is as dear to our heart as it could be (si bien et si reddement come entre vous et noz dites Justices saverez ordener et deviser sanz nulle manere de desport sur la foi qe vous nous devez car nous lavoms tant a cuer come nous pooms.)” In fact, one set of commissions had already been issued on the complaint of Matthew and others in May, but a new series was soon forthcoming in September and October, and yet another round was at least contemplated in January 1312. This new set included a change of justices requested by one of the plaintiffs, William de Knapton, and also commissions to two additional plaintiffs at his request.211 In his unwittingly ironic phrase Edward ii summarized the effect not only of the special commissions he was arranging with such gusto against an old enemy, but also the general effect of the entire class of special oyer and terminer commissions. The phrase “by the law and custom of the realm” came readily to the king’s mind, for it was part of the standard guarantee of fair practice given, for example, in response to petitions: let the matter in question be settled in accordance with the time-honored practices of common law. Only in this instance the meaning was inverted: do all damage possible under formal cover of law. In this latter sense the phrase fits oyer and terminer perfectly. 211 For the September and October commissions see cpr 1307–1313, pp. 259 ff., 314; for the requests of Knapton, c81/70/1237, 1238, ccw 1244–1326, p. 326. The January commissions are ordered in a schedule found in c81/74/1688, 1689, ccw 1244–1326, pp. 339–340, but these were either not issued or not enrolled. For general background see Alice Beardwood, “The Trial of Walter Langton, Bishop of Lichfield, 1307–1312,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s. 54, Part 3 (1964).

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Thus the use of oyer and terminer for malicious suits and county feuding seems more significant than any possible contribution it may have provided to order. If the success of a legal system depends ultimately upon the attitude of those who use it, oyer and terminer must be counted a negative force in fourteenth-century English Law; whether or not we could ever prove its exact link with violence, measured on some hypothetical scale, it must have contributed forcefully to the distrust and disillusionment with the law so apparent in popular literature and popular action by the end of the century.212

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Special commissions of oyer and terminer were important in English legal, social, and political history for nearly a hundred years. We must try to see them in a broad context, for the commissions touched some of the basic themes and most persistent problems troubling monarchy and society. In | England, as across 781 the Channel, the high medieval state had developed as a law state. English kings from Henry ii through Edward I took increased responsibility for settling the disputes that troubled their subjects; they brought new legal categories and new layers of the social hierarchy into the purview of the king’s court. In the process the crown reaped rich harvests of prestige and wealth. Royal success was even registered by the reform programs of the thirteenth-century baronial opposition. On the field of Runneymede the barons demanded still more royal justice. Likewise after the mid-century movement of reform and civil war, the crown was left in a stronger and more active legal position. Co-opting important elements of the critics’ position, the king’s courts elaborated legal mechanisms to deal with the plaints of subjects who felt much aggrieved by their neighbors and rivals, much oppressed by the rough actions of the expanding corps of government agents. The aspirations and complaints of lesser local men, of the gentry, hardly ignored in the movement for the Great Charter, came into sharper focus in the struggles with Henry iii. But the gentry and their concerns would become even more prominent under Henry’s son. Edward I brought an active and successful royal role in law to its medieval peak through his remarkable legislation and strenuous governance. Though it was by no means his exclusive concern, Edward directed many of his measures toward the needs of those middling strata in the counties so important to his government. Yet the reign of Edward I also shows the beginnings of a change that would work its effects long after his death. We cannot suppose that in the fourteenth 212 See n. 15 above.

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century men lost their deeply ingrained habit of recourse to the royal courts; to the contrary, the sheer bulk of legal records argues an increasing demand for access to the king’s courts. It has been strongly suggested that the very press of business crushed the general eyre under its weight.213 But if the popular demand so apparent across the twelfth and thirteenth centuries continued through the fourteenth century, the significant royal initiative in law and the generous degree of royal success in law clearly waned. The older judicial machinery based on the eyre was transformed and replaced piecemeal. New devices, and particularly the special commissions of oyer and terminer, represented a new trend which, whatever the short-term fluctuations, would culminate by the middle of the century in the triumph of the justices of the peace. Well before the victory of the justices of the peace, however, prominent local men, with or without magnate patronage, were sampling the delights of managing the king’s justice for specific disputes in their own locales, both as oyer and terminer plaintiffs and and as justices. There was probably no capacity and certainly no desire on the part of the powerful and privileged to overturn the royal system of justice, but the system could to some degree be turned around and made more accommodating, | more directly and easily responsive to the interests of privileged local society. Courts operated with a relatively high degree of central control could give way to a much greater local control of the royal legal mechanism, as the oyer and terminer justiceries show. The very great could number central court justices among their retainers and might confidently expect good legal advice and the somewhat less legal benefits of good lordship.214 Lesser men had to turn to ad hoc expedients. Moreover, in order to meet the judicial expectations it had generated or encouraged the English government had to relinquish some control over its legal powers to local lords and knights. The alternative, any sizeable effort to deal with increased legal business by expanding the number of central court personnel, would have violated the centuries-long tradition of unpaid local service supervised by a small corps of central justices, and the cost would have exceeded the tolerance of those social groups whose consent was required.215 Even before royal activism in law waned, the royal efforts to maintain and encourage the peace had ceased to be successful. Again we can look to the evidence from special commissions. We can read the oyer and terminer documents as evidence that the special commissions did initially provide judicial 213 See, in addition to the sources cited in note 15 above, Maddicott, Law and Lordship, pp. 59–71, 85–88. 214 Maddicott, Law and Lordship, passim. 215 See especially John P. Dawson, A History of Lay Judges (Cambridge, Mass., 1960).

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outlets for some part of the flood of litigation which had already generated destructive pressures. But a medieval government attempting to relieve pressure on existing courts by providing special commissions is analogous to a modern government building superhighways to relieve traffic pressures: the remedy exacerbated the problems, especially since the use of the commissions brought consequences which were unexpected in their scale, if not in their very nature. Of course we must recognize that more royal law, more central court activity, and more royal activism need not be a formula for better justice and a less troubled social and political order. As M.T. Clanchy has warned, “It might even be argued that royal power contributed to disorder and that the judicial authority of the crown was a public nuisance.”216 Is this point especially appropriate for the fourteenth century and the special commissions? Royal action ostensibly carried out in the name of justice and order could be counterproductive in the twelfth century no less than in the fourteenth century. We need hardly assume that in the golden age of the thirteenth century eyre judges dispensed even-handed justice to virtuous litigants. Yet there was a significant difference between the effects of the eyre or the general itinerant commissions (such as trailbaston) which, in part, replaced the eyre, and the special ad hoc commissions, of which oyer and terminer was primary. All bands of justices sent out from Westminster were feared and disliked by ordinary folk and caused nervous concern even among the | great— 783 their coming meant searching inquiries, and financial exactions inevitably followed. The grandsons of peasants who fled to the woods when eyre justices appeared probably took to the same paths in terror when trailbaston justices approached; even lordly monks might make elaborate preparations for counsel and hospitality.217 We can find complaints of malicious prosecution before eyre or trailbaston justices, and we can suspect influence by the powerful even when it is not patently evident. But the burden of complaint was the generally oppresive and specifically extortionate nature of the eyre, and complaint was not limited to one social group. In contrast to the grumbling and nervousness about the eyre found generally throughout society, the social provenance of complaint against oyer and terminer is naturally more sharply focused; despite some interesting exceptions, the justiceries were a device of the ranks of privileged society, especially of the knightly families whose role in violence and

216 M.T. Clanchy, “Law, Government and Society in Medieval England,” History 59 (1974), 78. 217 Franklin Pegues, “A Monastic Society.”

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disorder has often caused comment.218 More important, complaint against oyer and terminer was almost invariably a charge of injustice effected by gross influence; the opportunity, as we have seen, was vastly greater in the justiceries than in the eyre. Eyre justices might be swayed by a bag of silver coins or by prudent assessment of relative power and influence between litigants; occasionally they might be the feedmen of some magnate coming before them and would hear his case while wearing his livery; but they had not in most cases been handpicked by the plaintiff and they did not hold sessions in the shadow of the plaintiff’s castle. Thus without idealizing the eyre we may apply Dr. Clanchy’s warning more clearly to the special commissions. In short, oyer and terminer shows us how the attempt of the crown to find substitutes for the eyre or supplements for continuing itinerant panels of justices actually magnified the problem of disorder by providing a mechanism easily used for malicious prosecution. On balance the commissions seem to have contributed more to countryside disorder and suspicion of the legal mechanism than to order and confidence in the king’s justice, and in time—a fairly short time—the crown arguably knew it. The marked reluctance of the king’s government to entrust countryside judicial authority to the justices of the peace must be in some measure a reaction to the multiple problems and endless complaints associated with the oyer and terminer experiment. | 218 See, most recently, S.L. Waugh, “The Profits of Violence: The Minor Gentry in the Rebellion of 1321–1322 in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire,” Speculum 52 (1977), 843–869.

chapter 6

An Historian’s Reading of The Tale of Gamelyn1 The anonymous mid-xiv-century Tale of Gamelyn provides an excellent example of the value of the close reading of a mediaeval poem in its historical context. Although not much studied today, Gamelyn was popular in its time.2 Perhaps it may be classified as a romance if we view the genre as including ‘first attempts at secular fiction’ which provide ‘insight into secular taste largely unburdened by the religiosity of the time, relatively free of the pretence of courtly love’.3 But it may simply be unclassifiable.4 Gamelyn is essentially at Midlands poem, written somewhat to the north of London but not far from the London area, perhaps about 1350.5 The plot is simple.6 After his father’s death, Gamelyn is cheated out of his inheritance by his wicked eldest brother, John. (The virtuous middle brother, Sir Ote, does not appear until the tale is three-quarters told.) Gamelyn the young, in his innocence, is slow to complain. When the truth finally comes to him, he challenges his brother’s conduct and there follows a good brawl. Smooth words from John seem to make all right; but after winning a local wrestling contest, Gamelyn brings in ‘all manner men’ from the fair to celebrate his triumph at a feast which runs a full seven days – supplied of course, from his brother’s cellars and larders. Gamelyn’s store of brotherly love, however, is not yet exhausted. Because his smooth-speaking brother explains that he swore (in the heat of the fight) to bind Gamelyn hand and foot, Gamelyn submits, lest his brother be made a public liar. * Previously published in Medium Aevum, 52 (1983), 51–62. 1 All quotations are from W.W. Skeat (ed.), The Tale of Gamelyn (Oxford, 1884). For their help with this article I am grateful to Thomas Hahn, Russell Peck, Edward Wilson, Maurice Keen, Carl Schmidt, John Maddicott, Paul Hyams and Michael Clanchy. Support from the H.F. Guggenheim Foundation is also gratefully acknowledged. 2 Neil Daniel, ‘The Tale of Gamelyn: a New Edition’ (Dissertation Abstrats, xxviii (1967), 2241A–2242A) lists 25 extant mss; Stacey Waters, in an unpublished survey (kindly provided by Edward Wilson), lists 26. Even if the abundance of surviving texts is due to Chaucer’s interest in reworking the tale, and its consequent incorporation in many Canterbury Tales mss, the popularity of the poem is evident (cf. D.B. Sands (ed.), Middle English Verse Romances (New York, 1966), p. 154). 3 D.B. Sands’ comments in his introduction to ME Verse Romances, pp. vii–viii. 4 The suggestion of Carl Schmidt. See the criteria for romances in A.V.C. Schmidt and Nicolas Jacobs (eds), Middle English Romances, 2 vols (London, 1980), i, 1–7. 5 Skeat, pp. xvi–xvii, xxxv; Sands, p. 156, and the sources cited there. 6 A good summary is given by Maurice Keen, The Outlaws of Medieval Legend (London, 1961), Chapter vii. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004302655_009

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Once he has been securely bound, Gamelyn is declared mad; he is chained to a post in the hall where he is something like the centrepiece for a Sunday banquet attended by a host of heartless Churchmen. But Adam Spencer, a faithful old family attended by a host of heartless Churchmen. But Adam Spencer, a faithful old family retainer, frees him and a splendid fight scene ensues. Gamelyn and Adam even beat off the first posse of 24 men sent by the sheriff, but when confronted by a second and larger posse the two take to the woods and join a band of outlaws. Meanwhile his brother John, who appropriately becomes sheriff, arrest Gamelyn, who had boldly appeared in the shire court. The family circle is completed when Sir Ote enters, curses John, and stands surety for Gamelyn’s appearance before the justices. While he waits for this session, Gamelyn fills his days and hours robbing ecclesiastics. Then, in the climactic scene, Gamelyn appears with his men, surrounds the court and settles all scores. In their introduction to Select Cases of Procedure Without Writ Under Henry iii, H.G. Richardson and G.O. Sayles suggest that the historian who looks into legal records will be correct in expecting to find

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the undercurrent of violence which runs so strongly beneath nearly every story, will expect to find the word passing so quickly to the blow, to find how near to men’s hands are weapons of war, how apt they are to right their wrongs in their own fashion, how cheap life is and how cheap | liberty. For this is the very stuff of medieval society, not a distorted view of it as seen from a criminal court.7 As even a brief summary of the plot suggests, this is likewise the very stuff of The Tale of Gamelyn. Incidents of violence crowd the lines of the romance and create an atmosphere punctuated by the sound of oaken staves thwacking ribs and cracking bones. Gamelyn first shows his mettle when his false brother’s men ‘fette staues Gamelyn to bete’ (118) but are driven into a heap as Gamelyn ‘leyde on good woon’ with a handy pestle (125). At the county ‘wrastling’ which soon follows, Gamelyn breaks his opponent’s arm and three ribs; the arm appropriately gives ‘a gret crak’ (246). When the porter resists the entry of the victorious Gamelyn, who has returned with friends to the family manor, his neck is broken by one mighty blow from Gamelyn, who then drops the lifeless body seven fathoms into the well. Other potential nay-sayers are told they can follow him (289–309). The poet devotes at least 50 lines to a blow-by-blow account of the scene in which Gamelyn and the trusty Adam Spencer use two oaken staves to ‘sprinkle holy water’ and ‘confer orders’ on the heads and bodies of the Churchmen collected to witness Gamelyn the bound madman standing 7 Selden Society, 60 (London, 1941), p. clxix.

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in the hall during the Sunday feast. The battered clerics have to be carted home on wagons, stacked like cordwood: Thider they come rydyng · iolily with swaynes, And hom aʒen they were i-lad · in cartes and in waynes, (527–8) In the course of this mêlée, Gamelyn’s powerful strokes break his brother’s backbone. The arrival of the sheriff’s men, far from ending the violence, actually enlivens it. Gamelyn with ‘a good cart staf’, and Adam with ‘another gret staf’ set to work on their would-be captors. When five of them lie beaten on the ground, the rest ‘setten feet on erthe and bygone fle’. Only the arrival of the sheriff himself ‘with a gret route’ cools the temperature of the action; but not for long. The tale ends in an orgy of violence which nearly fills the last 100 lines. Gamelyn and his fellow outlaws attack the stacked court sitting against him, Gamelyn splits open the justice’s cheek bone and breaks his arm before hanging him, Brother John the sheriff and the procured jurors ‘To weyuen with the ropes/and with the wynde drye’ (880). This tale of repeated beatings, graphically and even gleefully told, cannot be simply characterized as a colourful example of ‘typical mediaeval violence;’ for in important ways the violence of the tale is peculiar to xiv-century England. It even seems to be characteristic of one particular (if broad) social stratum. The violence in a poem such as The Song of Roland is that of the mounted warrior with lance, sword and shield; in Gamelyn the action takes place on foot, the weapon is the humble staff. We have moved from the world of emergent high mediaeval French chivalry to the late mediaeval English countryside where the county gentry and yeomen are the actors. In other words the figures in Gamelyn (and presumably those who predominate in the audience interested in the tale) seem to come from| 52 the amorphous social level of minor landowners, lesser knights and retainers – those who might at most hobnob with the prior of a nearby religious house and know the sheriff, but whose horizons are essentially local. Gamelyn acts ‘heroically’ in one scene after another, yet he fights with a cart staff, rather than with the aristocratic sword or lance. When his brother calls him ‘gadeling’, Gamelyn replies not that he is a knight but that he is ‘born of a lady and geten of a knight’ (106–9). He takes off his shoes and ‘wrastles’. The family seat he finally wins seems no great pile, but more likely a manor house (the barn on one side of the courtyard, the entries closed by simple gates, without drawbridge or portcullis).8

8 The action in the tale could easily take place in a simple enclosure with hall, barn, stables, sheds around a courtyard, closed by the gate Gamelyn kicks down, and crowned by a ‘litel toret’ or two such as that from which John watches Gamelyn and friends feasting and drinking (329–30). See Keen’s comment in Outlaws, p. 82.

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If, as suggested, this piece of imaginative literature portrays violence and revenge on the edges of privileged society, the picture can be reproduced from the very different sources more familiar to the historian. Innumerable plea rolls from the Public Record Office could be cited, but more informative accounts are found in a class of documents less often consulted. Anyone who reads through some portion of the thousands of petitions against injustice (preserved among the class of Ancient Petitions, sc8, in the Record Office) sent to the Crown in this period will probably conclude that the Gamelyn author expertly conveys the tone of country society and faithfully mirrors contemporary practices and attitudes regarding law and order.9 The oaken staves, the beatings, the broken bones so prominent in the tale appear again and again the the petitions, reproducing its atmosphere in striking fashion.10 John of Massingham, for example, was brutally assaulted in the Norfolk village of Wynbodesham while eating with his mother ‘in the peace of God and in the peace of our Lord and Kind’. Suddenly, he charged, the door was broken down and men led by ‘Sir Thomas Ingaldesthorp, knight, who is keeper and maintainer of the peace in Norfold and Suffolk’ seized John by the neck and hair and beat him savagely, breaking his bones. When his mother tried to 9

10

Edgar F. Shannon, Jr. (‘Mediaeval law in The Tale of Gamelyn’, Speculum, xxvi (1951), 458), pointed out that the tale is an ‘exact portrayal of the functionings of mediaeval English law’, and provides a useful discussion of the practices of land inheritance, outlawry, mainprise, and the intimidation of jurors and judges. The present study is more particularly concerned with the xiv-century combination of violence and litigation and the attitude towards law implied by such behavior. It might be noted, however, that modern editions of the tale continue to err on legal matters. D.B. Sands’ otherwise excellent edition, for example, incorrectly suggests (following Skeat, p. 46) that Gamelyn (in l. 714) announces he will go into the next county to avoid his brother’s authority as sheriff; the phrase ‘atte nexte shire’ actually means ‘at the next shire court’. Similarly in l. 698 he misses a reference to the writ de odio et atia and in l. 745 a reference to gaol delivery. In l. 709 the Baillie refers not to a bailiff’s office, but to the office of sheriff itself. Moreover, the graphic evidence of the petitions is in line with the grey statistics culled from court rolls. In the Norfolk gaol delivery rolls for 1307–1316, for example, Barbara Hanawalt found the staff was used in 27% of homicides (Crime in East Anglia in the Fourteenth Century: Norfolk Gaol Delivery Rolls, 1307–1316, Norfolk Record Society, 44 ([Norwich], 1976), p. 11). Cf. the many references to beatings, common beaters, etc., in Marguerite Gollancz, Rolls of Northamptonshire Sessions of the Peace: Role of the Supervisors, 1314–1316; Roll of the Keepers of the Peace, 1320, Northamptonsire Record Society, 11 (Kettering, 1940), Passim. Alan Harding comments on ‘the bizarre and methodical brutality’ he found in trailbaston records: ‘Early trailbaston proceedings from the Lincoln roll of 1305’. In Medieval Legal Records Edited in Memory of C.A.F. Meekings, ed. By R.F. Hunnisett and J.B. Post (London, 1978), pp. 147–148.

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raise the hue and cry she was herself beaten almost to death. John was then imprisoned by Sir Thomas, who coveted some of his land, until John gave the knight a sealed bond for $20.11 In a similar display of violence, Robert Walyweyn’s enemies dragged him through the streets of Scarborough by the hair of his head; he claimed these enemies had got, in modern gangster terms, a ‘contract out on him’.12 John de Cheshull and bearen to the point of death and kept from his home, in fear of his life, for a year and a half.13 Henry of Lincoln, a notorious Lincolnshire knight, caught on of the jurors who had indicted him a criminal inquest, stole his horse, beat the man soundly, and warned him that any of the other jurors caught outside the safety of Lincoln town walls would be killed ‘or at least will lose a limb’.14 Not all the hundreds of surviving petitions record pure and exact truth. It can easily be shown that much of the language of legal plaint and court record is exaggerated or formulaic. A case in point is the set of appeals brought in a Edward ii by Margaret, widow of Robert de Esnyington, against eighteen men for the murder of her husband.15 She described the weapon of each assailant and the fatal | wound inflicted in precise detail; she even recalled the lengths 53 and thickness of the bows, the wood they were made from, the hand with which the assailant held them, the type and length of the arrow fired, etc. Obviously such circumstantial detail for each of the eighteen accused reveals the formal requirements of appeal for murder rather than a woman possessed of a photographic memory. The historian’s evidence, though it deals with actual people and most likely with actual situations, may be no more ‘real’ or ‘objective’ than the Gamelyn story. But there is close correspondence between the literary and historical evidence, and parallels in general tone and specific incident. Both types of document reflect the violence affecting county society, particularly at the (roughly) gentry level, which since the early years of the century had provoked the royal administration into issuing the famous trailbaston commissions.16 Periodically from 1305 the Crown commissioned panels 11

12 13 14 15 16

Public Record Office, sc8/158/7851, 7852; Calendar of Patent Rolls 1313–1317, p. 431; Public Record Office, c81/93/3580. All mss cited below will be found in the Public Record Office, London. Further citations of the Calendar of Patent Rolls will be abbreviated cpr. sc8/193/9616; c81/94/3608; sc8/193/9605; cpr 1313–1317, pp. 493–4, 586–587, 593. sc8/39/1921. sc8/130/6498. Printed in William Salt Archaeological Society Collections, 10, ed. by George Wrottesley (Exeter, 1889), pp. 16–19. For recent work o trailbaston, see Alan Harding, ‘Early trailbaston proceedings from the Lincoln Roll of 1305’ (cf. n. 10 above); Ralph Pugh, The London Trailbaston of 1305 (London, 1976).

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of justices to hear and determine a broad range of criminal offences. But these commissions received their popular name by dealing particularly with the ‘trailbastons’, the vagrants and outlaws armed with great staves who terrorized the countryside with their assaults and beatings.17 The outlaw bands such as that which Gamelyn first joins and then leads, or the more famous band of Robin Hood with which it is linked, have been the subject of historical studies. The Folvilles and the Coterels18 were the most famous gangs; but other, perhaps smaller, gangs seem constantly to have been forming and disbanding. The process of outlawry, so frequent in mediaeval English courts, produced men on the run who could easily join an established gang or start a new brand.19 In the 1330s, for example, Roger de Wendesley led such a gand in the Peak each time mustered a band of notorious thieves who committed robberies and collected protection money by falsely claiming powers to arrest people by the authority of letters in their possession.20 Wendesley’s gang, a sizeable one, engaged in robbery and extortion on a fairly broad scale. But Mabel, widow of Sir William Bradshaw, probably placed her husband’s murderers in the same mental category of outlaw since they remained at large ‘threatening those whom they have injured in the past so that they have not dared to follow their plaints against them and their accomplices in the King’s court’.21 We may reasonably suppose that an audience listening to the Greenwood portion of The Tale of Gamelyn could easily follow the account of outlaws and supply parallels from their own or their neighbours’ experience. In Gamelyn as in the ballads, the officials who pursue these outlaws are hopelessly corrupt and use office only for personal ends. Justice is so perverted that the outlaw must take on the role of judge if right is to be done at all. After trying to cheat him out of his rightfull inheritance, Gamelyn’s brother (with a backbone remarkably healed) becomes sheriff, secures Gamelyn’s indictment

17

See the comment of F.W. Maitland, Memoranda de Parliamento, Rolls Series, 98 (London, 1893), p. liii. 18 Keen, passim; E.L.G. Stones, ‘The Folvilles of Ashby-Folville, Leicestershire, and their associates in crime, 1326–1341’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, vii (1957) 117–136; J.G. Bellamy, ‘The Coterel gang: an anatomy of a band of fourteenth-century criminals’, ehr, lxxix (1964), 698–717. 19 J.G. Bellamy, Crime and Public Order in England in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1973), pp. 69–70 and Chapter iii generally. 20 sc8/51/2516 (c. 1334). Roger broke out of Nottingham gaol and Queen Philippa’s castle of High Peak. He closed his successful criminal career by obtaining a royal pardon on the false grounds of war service against the Scots. Cf. cpr 1330–1334, pp. 145, 388. 21 sc8/296/14769; cpr 1330–1334, pp. 572–3.

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and his formal outlawry, and soon has bribed a jury which can be counted on 54 to find Gamelyn guilty: | The false knight his brother · yuel not he thryue! For he was fast aboute · bothe day and other, For to hyre the quest · hangen his brother. (784–6) The royal justice who hears the case (probably under a general or special commission of gaol delivery or oyer and terminer) is no better than the sheriff; the poet seems simply to assume that he is as biased as the sheriff and inquest, without bothering to denounce him in specific terms. Only when Gamelyn and his outlaws arrive to overawe the court does justice truly appear. Gamelyn’s principle is simple: We wil slee the giltyf · and lat the other go. ……… For I wil be Iustice this · domes for to deme. God spede me this day · at my newe werk! (822, 826–7) The ‘work’ proceeds with brutal efficiency. Gamely leads his outlaws into the hall where the court is sitting, assaults the justice, cleaves his cheekbone and throws him over the bar, breaking his arm. Once Gamelyn has replaced him in the seat of justice, the true villains are judged by a jury of Gamelyn’s own men. The guilty soon hang and the innocent Sir Ote is set free. Moreover, the justice of Gamelyn’s cause – and even of his extreme measures in defence of his rights – is soon recognized by the highest authority. Like the Robin Hood ballads, the Tale of Gamelyn ends with royal approval of right order in the countryside, secured by the right people: Sir Ote was eldest · and Gamelyn was ʒing, They wenten with here frendes · euen to the kyng. They made pees with the kyng · of the best assise; They kyng loued well sir Ote · and made him Iustise. And after, the kyng made Gamely · bothe in est and west, Chelf Isutice · of al his fre forest; Alle his wighte ʒonge men · the kyng forʒaf here gilt, And sithen in good office · the kyng hem hath i-pilt. (887–94) Historical evidence shows that more than a century before Cade stated the view so clearly in 1450, many Englishmen believed that ‘the law servyth of nowght

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ellys in these days, but for to do wrong, for nothing is sped almost but false maters by colour of the law for mede, drede and favor’.22 Jurors like those hired to convict Gamelyn appear again and again in petitions and court records. ‘By their great gifts they procured a false jury’, the petitioner regularly charges.23 ‘He procured a panel of men from distant parts (loyntyme gentz) and gave some of them 20s., some of them 40s.’24 This brings to mind the example in Bromyard’s Summa Predicantium: the jurors, asked if they are in accord, repond: ‘No. Some of us got 40s., some only 20s.’25 Often the inducement for jurors came from fear rather than greed. The common people of the country of York charged that contrary to statutory provision juries and assizes were | empanelled with poor people ‘who do not dare to tell the truth for fear of the great, who are maintainers’.26 John de Cheshull who, as we have already noted, was beaten ‘until his life was despaired of’, likewise claimed that threats prevented him form getting and honest jury; his assailants circulated letters to men throughout the getting an honest jury; his assailants circulated letters to men throughout the country, ‘that not one should be so foolhardy as to indict the said Sir Edmond or any of his men’.27 Jurors who disregarded such pressure might find, as did John Fitzhugh, that imprisonment in chains awaited those who could not act encounter concience.28 Gamelyn’s wicked brother become wicked sheriff would also strike writers of petitions as entirely credible. Sheriffs and their subordinates were notorious for their misdeeds (Langland pictured Lady Meed setting off for Westminster riding a sheriff, newly shod). More than one trailbaston commission was charged with the responsibility of investigating their illegalities and oppressions.29 Royal inquests seem to have effected little change, however. Early in the reign of Edward ii petitioners claimed that convicted sherffs ‘par lour subtilteez’ had obtained royal pardons, and that any new men chosen to replace 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

Quoted in John Alford, ‘Literature and law in medieval England’, pmla, xcii (1977), 948. sc8/143/7135: ‘par lour grant dounes procurent un faux enqueste’. sc8/296/14796. Quoted in John A. Yunck, The Lineage of Lady Meed (Notre Dame, Indiana, 1963), p. 249. sc8/152/7592. sc8/39/1921. c81/231/9595. Bellamy (p. 20) notes: ‘More likely than anyone else to suffer from threats or overt violence were the jurors’. 29 E.g., cpr 1313–17, pp. 243–244; cpr 1317–21, pp. 548–549; just 1/332, just 1/254 contain clear and representative charges against sheriffs and their subordinates from the 1314 inquest. In general see W.A. Morris, The Medieval English Sheriff to 1300 (Manchester, 1927), Chapter x; Geoffrey Templeman, The Sheriffs of Warwickshire in the Thirteenth Century, Dugdale Society Occasional Papers, 7 (Oxford, 1948), pp. 3–50.

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dismissed sheriffs were of the same sort as their predecessors.30 Sheriffs wore the robes and took the fees of magnates;31 they empanelled false juries; they ignored writs delivered to them for executions.32 The people of the country of Lincoln presented a fairly comprehensive list of grievances. When Sir Robert Breton was sheriff, he and his brothers and other subordinates accused those they hated of trespass, imprisoned them, held them to ransom, entered their homes, broke open their chambers and chests, seized and carried away their goods. They also seized horses and carts on the excuse that they were carrying off goods belonging to Thomas of Lancaster (recently executed for rebellion); they took food for castles without paying for it, and seized food throughout the county by claiming a royal purveyance commission.33 In fact the sheriff portrayed in The Tale of Gamelyn pales in evil inventiveness before such actual sheriffs as one in 1318 who collected pavage (a tax for road construction and repair) by virtue of a sealed commission of the peace which he found lying on the ground after someone had passed on the road.34 The audience of Gamelyn could hardly have considered the evil sheriff in the tale a caricature. As we have already noted, the justice in the tale is assumed to be corrupt, a point a view which could easily be taken by the author and accepted by his audience. Justices sent out into the countryside on authority from Westminster were frequently accused of gross favouritism and injustice. Complaints are plentiful against justices on eyre and justices of tailbaston; sometimes the men of a justices into their pays.35 But the volume of complaint rises significantly when we consider the ad hoc commissions which flourished in the xiv century after the general eyre had virtually ceased.36 The justice in The Tale of Gamelyn could easily be one of these special justices sitting under special commission of gaol delivery, or special commission of oyer and terminer. | 56 Of course complaint against all types of justices was more frequent than outright assault. Yet there are enough recorded instances of violence against sitting justices, sometimes coupled with parodies of court procedure, to show 30 31 32 33 34 35

36

sc8/80/3959, 3960. c49/4/20. sc8/122/6067; sc8/45/2228. sc8/124/6161. sc8/75/3723. sc8/76/3785; sc8/64/3189; sc8/32/1587; sc8/294/14669; sc8/105/5223, 5224; sc8/193/9610; sc8/265/13216; c81/54/5421. B.H. Putnam cites a number of printed sources in Proceedings Before the Justices of the Peace in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (London, 1938), p. xlvii. Richard W. Kaeuper. ‘Law and order in fourteenth-century England: the evidence of special commissions of oyer and terminer’, Speculum, liv (1979), 734–84.

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that the Gamelyn poet was not ‘making up’ a climactic courtroom scene without any reference to real life.37 A striking case of ‘enacted parody’ in the city of Ipswich may, in fact, have preceded the tale by only a few years. In 1344, when the justices of King’s Bench has completed sessions in Ipswich, a great crowd of friends of the accused murderers gathered on the steps of the town hall where they solemnly summoned the departed justices to appear before them under pain of heavy fines specified for eath ‘in contempt of the king and in mockery of the king’s justice and ministers in his service’. They had previously brought food, drink and gifts to the accused in sanctuary ‘and sang so many sangs of rejoicing in their honour there that it was as if God had come down from heaven’.38 Parody of royal justice is likewise apparent in the letters which more than one outlaw wrote in the royal style; Lionel ‘king of the rout of raveners’ is the most famous practitioner.39 But response to the arrival of royal justices often went beyond parody to the level of violence seen in the conclusion of Gamelyn. In 1354 Sir William Darcy’s assault differed from Gamelyn’s only in its ultimate failure; he made various hostile assaults on [one of the justices] in hall where they were sitting for judgment and with drawn sword before all the people would have killed him, whom he took violently by the throat, if he had not been prevented by others and would likewise have killed other serjeants and ministers of the king if not prevented.40 Others were more completely successful. Angered by an adjournment in a land dispute touching a relative, Sir John Deyvil of Egmanton, with the support of other knights and squires, broke up a meeting of the county court for Lincolnshire in 1301.41 The sheriff of Cornwall was assaulted in his county court in 1325, drawing from a contemporary the succinct observation ‘le paiis est si perilous’.42 Sir Roger Swynerton and his relatives surrounded a Stafford court hall, forcibly closed the doors and by threats stopped the action being brought 37

38 39 40 41 42

Even the physical description of the court setting matches what we know from legal source—as crowded hall, seated justices, a bar before which prisoners are brought. Cf. Ralph Pugh’s description of a session before justices of gaol delivery: Imprisonment in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 308ff. G.O. Sayles, Select Cases in the Court of King’s Bench, Vol vi: Edward iii, Selden Society, 82 (London, 1965), pp. xxvii, 37f. Bellamy, p. 76. cpr 1354–1358, p. 166. Harding, pp. 146, 154–6. sc1/49/122.

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against them by an old enemy.43 Oyer and terminer sessions were similarly ended at Tredington, Worcestershire in 1347 by a large band of armed men. Two Justices of the Peace at Eynsham in 1350 were attacked by a gang described as madmen or men possessed by evil spirits. The sheriff of Norfolk was assaulted in full county court by what he claimed was the entire town of Ipswich; he escaped without injury only by handing over the indictments which offended the townsmen, and by rolling out two barrels of wine.44 B.W. McLane has found evidene of similar courtroom assaults on royal bailiffs and town constables in Lincolnshire.45 At the other end of the judicial hierarchy, Richard Willoughby, Chief Justice of King’s Bench, was kidnapped by outlaws in 1332,46 another justice of this court was abused on his way to court in 1340,47 another chief justice was vilified before his friends in his own house by an intruder who fought his way out, and yet another justice was stabbed in the belly in 1359, while walking along Fleet Street to a council meeting. | 57 Of course, as some instances show, the overawing of corrupt officialdom may not have been so neatly and lastingly effected in life as in literature. But there is a more significant divergence between the literary text and the histrorical records. As we have seen, the author of Gamelyn is firmly on the side of righteous outlaws and describes their violence with approval and even with relish. The writers of petitions, of the other hand, regularly complain that the violence and injustice done them by their neighbours, who have taken the law into their own hands, or disregarded the law entirely can be corrected within the legal structure. Might the type of hero featured in a tale like Gamelyn reappear as the villain in the petitions? When the framers of a petition ‘from the common people of the realm’ complain ‘qe plusours Riche gentz sunt auxi com reys en lour paiis demayne’,48 should we picture the wicked brother and his cronies, or the righteous Sir Ote, Gamelyn and their friends? Our two types of evidence confront us with a central paradox in the history of law and public order in xiv-century England. Of course the writers of both types of evidence assume that the King is the ultimate dispenser of justice and, in some sense, the final guarantor of order.49 But the divergence, when we go 43 44 45

The three cases which follow are cited in Bellamy, p. 19. just 1/824; cpr 1281–1291, p. 91. ‘The royal courts and the problem of disorder in Lincolnshire, 1290–1341’ (unpub. Ph.D. diss., University of Rochester, ny, 1979), p. 100. 46 Details are provided in the articles by Stones and Bellamy cited in n. 17 above. 47 Sayles (pp. xxvi–xxvii) cites the three cases which follow. 48 sc8/80/3956. 49 Keen, passim.

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beyond these common but misty beliefs, is real enough. On the one hand the petitions illustrate the belief that recourse to royal courts was useful; in fact this general conviction is documented by the increasing bulk of nearly all royal court records. These legal records actually become so voluminous by the xiv century that the historian can scarcely begin to sift through and interpret all of them. The increase in legal business reflected in these lengthy parchment rolls seems to argue a growing confidence in the King’s courts. On the other hand, as The Tale of Gamelyn illustrates, corrupted justice is probably the favourite topic of xiv-century complaint.50 In fact, we meet this theme not only in satirical poetry but in the economical, unadorned prose of the petitions. The writers both of the popular tales and of the numerous petitions share a profound sense of the failure of royal justice as practised in the countryside. But there is a distinct difference between pleading that some remedy be supplied by the King’s regular official and cheering on a hero who beats judges, hangs sheriffs and jurors and sets things to rights on his own. What view of the King’s law and the King’s courts any particular group of xiv-century Englishmen held is clearly no simple questions. A learned clerk might explain eloquently and in detail that all law is ultimately a reflection of divine law, and perhaps this view in varying degrees informed the thoughts of most men, whenever they thought about law as an abstraction. But we are informed that even the great law-giving king Edward i (or his advisers), who could speak grandly about the benefits of good law in preambles to statutes, nonetheless generally viewed the law ‘as a mass of technicalities which might be ingeniously combined to secure his litigants of his time’.51 In fact, a greet many litigants were willing to go further and energetically pursue extra-legal violence in easy combination with their ingenious | and persistent litigation. Far from replacing the ambush and midnight thrashing, lawsuits seem to have been viewed as an additional weapon.52 If we assume that this extremely pragmatic view was widely held, then our paradox disappears – we can accept both an increase in litigation and a heightened perception of violence. Vigorously seeking their particular aims, litigants brought their opponents into royal courts in increasing numbers; they bribed 50 51

52

Alford, p. 942. T.F.T. Plucknett, The Legislation of Edward i (Oxford, 1949), p. 1. Of Edward’s treasurer, Walter Langton, Alice Beardwood wrote: ‘He knew the law…so well that he did not so much ignore it as take advantage of its intricacies and loopholes for his own advantage, much as Edward i did’ (The Trial of Walter Langton, Bishop of Lichfield, 1307–1312, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s., 54: iii (Philadelphia, 1964), p. 36). An especially instructive case is the career of Robert Godsfield, a minor Lincolnshire knight, discussed at length by McLane, Chapter iv.

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or threatened jurors, sheriff and justices wherever possible; they threatened opponents with acts of violence and often carried these out to ensure success; and they complained bitterly about the state of royal justice whenever the law awarded victory to their opponents. A view such as this certainly accords with what we can guess about the author and audience of Gamelyn, as well as about the writers of our petitions. The history of the mediaeval English monarchy as a law-state here intersects with the origins of one strain of English literature. If, as John Yunck argued, the commercial revolution of the high Middle Ages stands behind the flourishing ‘Meed’ satire of the xiv century,53 we might advance the parallel argument that behind the concern over law and injustice (so often found in xiv-century literature) stand the jurisdictional pretensions and problems of the English Government, which had generated or encouraged judicial business and judicial expectations beyond its capacities. By the xiv century the English State had created a court system capable of handing out decisions to a relatively large body of plaintiffs; socially this court system reached down through the privileged strata to the level of the lesser gentry or even lower. Likewise the State had helped to create some minimal level of expectation of order and justice. Gamelyn provides an invaluable view of just how minimal that level might be in the eyes of ordinary county gentlemen and their followers and reminds us with what reluctance they gave up a vision of vigorous self-help, blessed, after the fact, by an understanding king.54 But the very existence of a satirical literature argues some popular conception of justice beyond naked self-interest, just as the miles of court rolls argue some limited surrender (or, better, transformation) of the impulse towards brutal self-help. Many men must have held some rather dim and uneasy notion that law ought to be more impartial than it was, or at least that recourse to law ought to be a more total replacement of the assault and ambush than it was. The existence of such views in minds by and large committed to a position that law and courts existed simply to help one acquire goods and smite enemies could well have sharpened a sense of satire in poets and their audiences.55 53 Yunch, passim. 54 An interesting example is provided by the volume of royal pardons sought and granted. See Naomi D. Hurnard, The King’s Pardon for Homicide before 1307 (Oxford, 1969). 55 The modern films idealizing outlaws and popular histories of organized crime may seem to suggest that attitudes towards law, right and force found in Gamelyn could be found in more than one age. But the particular combination of age-old belief in self-helf with a slowly growing acceptance of the justice of the State seems especially appropriate to the xiv century, a critical period in the early history of the Western state as a law-state. It seems especially appropriate as well to an emerging satirical literature in the vernacular which recognizes how uneasily these attitudes are blended in xiv-century society.

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In fact this amalgam of outranged idealism and pure pragmatism with regard to the law is a salient characteristic of The Tale of Gamelyn. The idealism apparent in the portrayal of main characters and in the narrative of events is often balanced by an unblinking realism. The author harbours few romantic notations in presenting the motives of old Adam Spencer, for example. Adam frees his master Gamelyn, not because of idealized feudal loyalty, but in return for a promise of reward: | He vnlokked Gamelyn · bothe hands and feet, In hope of auauncement · that he him byheet. (417–18) The servants feel both affection and fear after witnessing Gamelyn’s initial fight with his brother’s men: Some for Gamelynes loue · and some for his eyʒe, Alle they drowe by halues · tho he gan to pleyʒe. (129–30) The servants again come to Gamelyn’s side for mix4ed reasons after he has broken his evil brother’s back: What some for here loue · and some for here awe, Alle the seruantz serued hem · of the beste lawe. (543–4) Likewise, fear plays a key role when Gamelyn replace the justice in the file scene: Durste non to Gamelyn · seye but good, For ferd of the company · that without stood. (853–4)

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The parallel between the attitude towards Gamelyn revealed by these lines and the attitude towards actual xiv-century gangs studied by E.L.G. Stones and John Bellamy is noteworthy.56 The literary and the historical evidence thus combine to support the conclusion that far from despairing of the King’s justice, men wanted more of it; but they knew from bitter experience how badly it was working in the countryside, how easily it was sawyed, how often litigation had to be supplemented by a laying on of hands which was far from apostolic. So they flocked to the King’s courts, kept a good cart staff at hand, and listened with great delight to a tale like that of Gamelyn. | 56

See n. 18 above.

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Debating Law, Justice and Constitutionalism Half a century ago, William Caroll Bark proclaimed that “In the tribe of the historians Pirenne belongs to the most blessed, for he raised questions.”1 Claiming no blessing and certainly none to equal that owed Pirenne, I simply wish to raise a series of five large and contentious questions about our important themes. I pose these as possible ways forward as we continue to ask how people in Medieval England were actually governed, how laws were made and if they were effective, and what popular response resulted at particular historical periods (particularly during periodic crises) and at various social levels. While I cannot pretend to offer definitive answers to my questions, I will rest content if the outcome is general agreement that these issues at least remain open and worthy of continuing discussion. The most crucial question in my set concerns evidence: we must ask how we secure representative evidence and what types of evidence are admissible. All else depends on responses to these components of the first question, for any scholar’s stance on these issues will largely determine an approach to the entire remaining set of questions. How to identify convincingly representative evidence is far from selfevident. What documentation and how much of it do we need to prove or even discern a pattern or trend showing stasis or change in society and culture? This issue may be particularly troubling in the earliest years of our investigation from which so much of the evidentiary deposit has eroded; yet even by the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, estimating the incidence and seriousness of vivid but scattered evidence on the actual operation of the law and on countryside or urban violence and disorder – to take an active volcano of a case in point – remains at issue. Rigorous quantification of criminal charges and conviction rates seemed a hopeful approach a quarter century ago; but it proved a deeply disappointing enterprise. Stuffing long membranes of crackling parchment from the Public Record Office (now the National Archives at Kew) into the maw of a computer, however vigorously and even heroically attempted, has not led to broad | agreement.2 Of course surviving runs of evidence are 1 * Previously published in Richard Kaeuper, Paul Dingman, and Peter Sposato (eds.), Law, Governance, and Justice: New Views on Medieval Constitutionalism, (Leiden, 2013), 1–14. 1 Origins of the Medieval World (Stanford, 1958), p. 6. 2 Among heroic efforts, see James Given, Society and Homicide in Thirteenth-Century England (Stanford, 1977) and Barbara Hannawalt, Crime and Communities in Medieval England, 1300– 1348 (Cambridge, 1979). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004302655_010

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­fragmentary, but yet more important, the result – even from complete and comparable records, if we had them – might well register patterns of prosecution stemming from political or fiscal goals rather than the unmediated levels of wrongdoing and violence we seek. Surely the same is true of crime statistics in our more numerate modern age with its better-preserved records (at least before the invention of the shredding machine). Moreover, we might well doubt if disorder is coterminous with crime. Should we not consider a layer of elite violence that was less rigorously and less regularly prosecuted than the quotidian misdeeds of unprivileged felons? Though the latter fill up so many membranes of surviving sheepskin with their attacks on bodies and theft of goods, this scarcely means that those in elite social ranks were holding prayer meetings and sipping tea. Lurking in the shadows is an intensifier not always openly acknowledged. Where we search for evidence may depend on how we think law is created. Do we conceive of law as in some sense self-generating and evolutionary, that is, as an intellectual system motivated largely by its own internal logic and an unfolding of its inherent principles?3 Or do we rather consider that law, like truth, is the daughter of time, a creation largely of exogenous historical forces at work in each era, that law is to some degree even expressly designed for the benefit of certain groups in that era.4 The gap between interpretive positions yawns widely here. Does this gap result from clear evidence or does some intellectual or social or even moral predisposition determine the positions firmly held at either end of the field of debate? When we talk about the emerging apparatus of state and its relationship to ideas and ideals of justice, do we read centuries-old evidence with any degree of objectivity – that is, without any stain whatsoever from our modern notions of the efficacy and proper role of 2 the state in our own era? Such concerns have worried historians since | their inquiries began; but, of course, the crown of recent cautions is justly worn by our colleagues in literary fields. Scholarly views are equally divergent when we turn to the second component of my first question on evidence. Can we – indeed, must we – make use of medieval imaginative literary works? The tribe of historians (to echo Bark), may walk more comfortably in company with literary colleagues now that the 3 A point of view articulated in sfc Milsom, Historical Foundations of the Common Law (London, 1969), and the numerous studies of Anthony J. Musson, for example, Medieval Law in Context: The Growth of Legal Consciousness from Magna Carta to the Peasants’ Revolt (Manchester, 2001). 4 An example is Alan Harding, The Law-Courts of Medieval England (London, 1973). Discussion of this issue appears in Peter Coss, ed., The Moral World of the Law (Cambridge, 2000); see especially the Introduction by the editor.

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most intense phase of the so-called literary turn has undergone if not death at least transfiguration; we are happily less likely to focus on postmodern theory now that a variety of forms of cultural studies seem to have edged out what could have become a more divisive set of theoretical inclinations. Reasonable hopes suggest that we can find a common language and energetically pursue slippery meaning in all our texts, whether poems or chronicles, charters, court rolls or writs. As even the reluctant among historians edge toward agreement on the use of imaginative literary texts, how can we apply their evidence to social, political and legal analysis?5 Over centuries imaginative writing surely heaped up a glittering and accumulating pile of evidentiary ore. My impression is that Anglo-Saxonists have mined this ore and Anglo-Normanists perhaps less fully (not enjoying so secure a foothold in university departments).6 As scholars of later medieval English culture confront the impressive corpus of texts that form such a feature of the era they study, discussion becomes more voluminous and also more vexed. Are we witnessing actual trends in society or simply an increase in surviving evidence? The wide social sweep of this later medieval literary production is beyond doubt: we have works high and low, ranging from Chaucer, Gower and Langland, through a splendid body of insular romance and Robin Hood tales to scurrilous screeds which Owst accurately labeled the literature of satire and complaint.7 Since all these texts are imaginative literature their use troubles some historians trying to understand how law | and gov­ 3 ernance operated. Again, discussion turns on whether evidence is acceptable, truly and broadly representative. Corrosive complaint literature in particular might be discounted as the voice of dissatisfied and disappointed individuals

5 Examples in Stephen Justice, Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381 (Berkeley, 1994) and in the works of Paul Strohm, e.g. Hochon’s Arrow: the Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton, 1992) and England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation, 1399–1422 (New Haven, 1998). 6 For notable exceptions, see the several texts edited by Brian Merrilees; cf M. Dominica Legge. Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background (Oxford, 1963), which remains the basic overview. Both scholars note the need for much further work. 7 The sheer volume of work on the most prominent figures of Middle English literature defies citation. Romance texts are conveniently approached in the teams series, gen. ed., Russell A. Peck. For the body of complaint literature, see Gerald Robert Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England (Oxford, 1961) and Thomas Wright’s Political Songs of England: from the reign of John to that of Edward ii, with a new introduction by Peter Coss (Cambridge, 1996). A good introduction to the Robin Hood and outlaw stories is Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren, eds., Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales (Kalamazoo, 1997).

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rather than a general social outcry.8 Yet it is also possible to read these works as the voice of widespread discontent, finally seeping through cracks in that mute wall which obscures so much of our apprehension of a distant past.9 This discussion, also, may be rooted too deeply in semi-conscious assumptions about human nature and the nature of human institutions for any resolution. It might help, however, to ask if our imaginative literature appears to stand in consonance with other types of evidence, especially if that additional evidence is less controversial. Converging lines of evidence emanating from widely differing source types could lend credence each to the other. The process would approximate triangulation in land surveying. In this effort, we could, for example, consider whether one line of sight can align the complaint literature, the Robin Hood stories, and the Great Rising of 1381. That the Great Rising cannot be consigned solely to departments of economic history may perhaps be taken as a given; some have argued that the fundamental issue for the rebels was broader even than their genuine economic grievances, that at the base of the complaint stands the very idea of justice itself, or rather a sense of the threat posed by ineffective or corrupted justice.10 Such a case draws upon wide swaths of evidence: targets chosen by the rebels, their reported demands, the worried and recriminatory speeches voiced in the parliament following the upheaval.11 Misgovernance and injustice, some contemporaries worried, had been pervasive and incendiary. These worries, this argument 4 holds, troubled thoughts on the minds and consciences of those who produced | imaginative literature. Could we situate some romances along this line of sight or in this triangulation? Could the Lady Meed section of the great poem Piers Plowman stand in this evidentiary conjuncture? What of passages from moral Gower? Or is all this effort merely force-fitting an interpretation belied by better evidence garnered elsewhere? 8

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This point of view is strongly asserted in Anthony Musson and W.M. Ormrod, The Evolution of English Justice: law, politics, and society in the fourteenth century (Basingstoke, Hampshire, 1999), which heavily discounts contemporary outcries against the operation of the law and denies even the validity of criticism by those living under the law. A case I advanced in War, Justice and Public Order (Oxford, 1988) pp. 315–347. I draw on the broad notion of general crisis advanced by the distinguished Polish historian Frantisek Graus in “The Crisis of the Middle Ages and the Hussites,” in Steven Ozment, ed., The Reformation in Medieval Perspective (Chicago, 1971), pp. 76–103, especially at pp. 81–82. R.B. Dobson provides an excellent introduction to the rising in The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 (London, 1983). Edmund Fryde provides concise and thoughtful analysis in The Great Rising (Saffron Walden, 1981). Survey of evidence in Fryde, Great Rising. I argued a similar case in War, Justice, and Public Order, pp. 347–372.

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What result obtains if we seek such lines of sight in analogous historical cases involving literature and the widespread response to law and governance? I have argued that the highly popular twelfth-century animal fables featuring Reynard the Fox wonderfully reveal complex attitudes that greeted the flowering of at least quasi-effective governance in north-western Europe of the third quarter of the twelfth century.12 Of course the legal work of Henry ii likely comes into view, if only obliquely and off stage to the left. Tales of Reynard indicate the agency of the crown was broadly desired, even as it was feared and mercilessly caricatured. It seemed ineffectual for insuring genuine peace and hopeless at taming the ardor for self-help among the powerful in society. And in my more extensive study of chivalry (which, rather than the law, has occupied me for a few decades) I have found essential evidence in chanson de geste and romance, and in the only slightly less imaginative chivalric biographies and vernacular manuals.13 Here, too, evidence lines up and interpretation includes – indeed, depends upon – imaginative texts. Though we lack the mass of memoirs, newspapers, and personal letters of later eras, we can, I suggest, remedy some gaps in our evidence by careful use of bodies of literature so rich in comment on leading issues of the day. If this literature strays from the literal and descriptive, is it not an unexcelled source for identifying prescriptive values among people whose mental processes we are trying to reconstruct? What would we not give to visit the hall of (say) some local gentleman on a wintry night when, as a little sleet rattles against the shutters inadequately covering windows, goblets are generously refilled, a work of literature is read out, and the medieval love of | debate takes hold of the group as they consider the 5 important issues of the day raised by the text. As much as we might like to linger and listen, the second general question calls insistently for attention, and it promises to be no less unsettling than the first. How can we talk about the state of public order in any era of medieval English history? The question may seem abstract and free-floating and will naturally spur the rhetorical response, compared to what? Yet we can scarcely avoid the issue altogether; I know that our books and I would wager that our 12

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Kaeuper, “The King and the Fox: Reactions to the Role of Kingship in Tales of Reynard the Fox,” in Anthony J. Musson, ed., Expectations of the Law in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2001), pp. 9–23. Summaries of my case for the use of literary evidence in the interpretation of chivalry appear in “The Social Meaning of Chivalry in Romance,” Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, ed. Roberta Krueger, (Cambridge, 2000) and “Literature as the Key to Chivalric Ideology,” Journal of Medieval Military History iv (2006). I discuss the role of imaginative literature in the religious ideology of chivalry in Holy Warriors: the Religious Ideology of Chivalry (Philadelphia, 2009), pp. 94–116.

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lectures are punctuated with quick assessments of relative peace and order or claims for the social, political, and even cultural role of violence and lawlessness. A suitable framework for such analysis is as badly needed as it is difficult to construct. One possible approach (which will not win universal agreement) can be suggested. For any period under review we could happily abandon all efforts to recover the absolute incidence of crime within clear definitional categories; we could even abandon – as impossible – an attempt somehow to measure the incidence of violence committed by the elite in feuds, dispossessions, acts of vengeance and other creative forms. Instead, the gold standard for assessment could become the view held by contemporaries, if we can recover that. The framework would thus become the expectations and reactions of contemporaries, their own sense of how much of a problem exists, how troubling violent actions were to them, and how well the law confronted these problems. We would want to know if people of more than one status thought it possible and likely to obtain justice, and, of course, what they meant by that potent noun. Such views clearly would not be fixed over time, space, or social status, but would vary with a changing social threshold for acceptable violence and any perception of rank injustice. Though, again, not all would agree, it may be of interest and even significance to recall some evidence pointed out decades ago: that at the end of the thirteenth century or first years of the fourteenth century three quite different voices spoke their concern about widespread violence troubling the realm.14 The chronicler Peter Langtoft worried that the turbulence in society would erupt in general warfare within the realm: “une commune guerre si levera.” An anonymous poet writing a tract about Trailbaston proceedings at about the 6 same time, made the same prediction, | fearing that disorder indicated “that war will arise: qu sourdra guere.” He is, of course, referring to an internal sort of warfare. If “prejudiced chronicler” and “hostile pamphleteer” is our growling response, we can read the comment of Edward i himself, confided in a private administrative letter (entered on the Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer Memoranda Roll); he charged that his royal administration needed to act vigorously because of the “disorders, tumults and outrages” in the realm, “which were like the start of war (come commencement de guerre) and which flouted the lordship of the king.” What do we make of witnesses of such varied character agreeing on the seriousness of the problem and even employing such strikingly similar language? Can this evidence and more be situated along one of 14

Full reference citations and discussion in Kaeuper, “Law and Order in Fourteenth-Century England: the Evidence of Special Commissions of Oyer and Terminer,” Speculum 54 (1979), pp. 734–784.

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those lines of sight posited earlier? Or is this interesting but outlying evidence, indicative of a problem troubling only a few years of the reign of a vigorous king largely successful in law as well as war? Though these queries could easily detain us further, we must hurry on to the third of my proposed questions. There is no avoiding a consideration of the role played by the gentry in the operations of the common law.15 Can we reconstruct how they viewed the law, served it, and used it? Can we doubt that an enhanced role in enforcing law in the countryside during the later Middle Ages was placed in their willing hands? If it was, how did countryside law and justice fare? We engage in understatement to label these issues difficult and controversial, for it means understanding what happened after the old and sclerotic general eyre for all pleas died and, over time, the Justices of the Peace emerged. The vigor of the gentry has gained for them high praise for loyal and public-spirited work from eminent modern scholarship.16 Other scholarship warns that the law could be used as sword no less than shield or judicial balance pans and reminds us also of gentry feuding as an established phenomenon.17 We might at least wonder whether their aggressive and personal use of legal powers (eagerly accepted) should be thought surprising. A rising group is garnering authority to match local social prominence: would not newfound capacity in the legal system prove an almost irresistible means of enhancing such prominence? | 7 Discussion on such points readily circles back to issues of representative evidence and perhaps will even take ultimate root in a particular view of human nature conditioned by study of its proclivities over centuries. Yet the question, I hope, is fairly posed: From this combination of service and thrusting ambition how do we derive insight into gentry mentalité? Are known instances of their willingness to use the law as a tool against rivals or, indeed, willingness to bypass law and resort to violence, merely vigorous and exceptional cases? What do we make, for instance, of the flourishing criminal gangs which included not only yeomen, but gentry and even a sprinkling of priests?18 Should we consider them an epiphenomenon of little significance? Does this 15

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Peter Coss, Lordship, Knighthood and Legality: a Study in English Society (Cambridge, 1991) and Origins of the English Gentry (Cambridge, 2003); Nigel Saul, Knights and esquires: the Gloucestershire gentry in the fourteenth century (Oxford, 1981). An argument prominent in Musson and Ormrod, The Evolution of English Justice. S.L. Waugh, “The Profits of Violence: The Minor Gentry in the Rebellion of 1321–1322 in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire,” Speculum 52 (1977), pp. 843–869. The classic study is E.L.G. Stones, “The Folvilles of Ashby-Folville and their Associates in Crime,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Fifth Series, Vol. 7 (1957), pp. 117–136. Other gangs were at work; see see John G. Bellamy, “The Coterel Gang: An Anatomy of a Band of Fourteenth-Century Criminals,” English Historical Review 79 (1964), 698–717. Smaller gangs appear in legal records but have not attracted the attention of these two bands.

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include those folk of elite status who hired them to effect their ironclad will outside of legal channels? Do the famous Paston Letters open a much-needed window on the violence and attitudes toward legal process among the gentry, or does peering through that glass distort any general view? No claim has been made that these questions get easier or less contentious as we proceed. Difficulties in recreating mentalité stick to us like brambles as we try to walk our way through such contentious fields. Resorting to the sound medieval mechanism of confession, I willingly state that my own impression of the crucial intersection of gentry, law, and justice was first formed from a close study of special (i.e., ad hoc) commissions of oyer and terminer.19 Useful evidence exists not only in records of commissions granted, but also in hundreds of petitions, now deposited in the sc8 category of the National Archives. Reading these stained and faded slips of parchment took nine months out of my life, if not some portion of my eyesight. Though my investigation was not focused on social groups, this study drew evidence from across the realm over a period of a hundred years, from the 1270s to the 1370s, and it caught a good many of roughly gentry status in its net. The petitions reveal not only serious violence among the elite, but also that all who could, from gentry upwards in the social hierarchy, abused these powerful commissions heroically. Many petitions, in fact, seek not the granting of a 8 commission, but redress from | one an opponent obtained against them. In outraged tones they complain that enemies have invented the offenses charged and then selected as justices – this could be done – their relatives, friends, lords, or tenurial dependents, and that the venue chosen was beneath hostile castle walls so that they feared even to attend meetings of the ad hoc court. Some add graphically that posted notices have warned all living in the neighborhood not to be so foolish as to give testimony against the powerful plaintiffs who are, of course, actively distorting the intention of the commissions. Counter-arguments again can be raised. Some scholarship worries that the petitions embody inflated charges, or that violence is claimed only to get a simple land case into the royal jurisdiction: by stating that an enemy came “vi et armis et contra pacem domini Regis (by force and arms and against the king’s peace)” the case comes into crown jurisdiction, even if the charge continues that the accused “picked apples in my orchard.” Where lies the interpretive balance? How significant is such evidence? One response would insist that even exaggerated or manipulated appeals to the crown for or against these commissions enhance our understanding of how relatively elite members of society viewed and used law. Not all petitions 19

Kaeuper, “Law and Order in Fourteenth-Century England,” Speculum 54 (1979), 734–784.

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can be discounted as fictions, of course, and whatever the truth content of any petition, legal process seems regularly to have been wielded as a cudgel by the elite who see law not merely as a high responsibility for communal order and harmony, but as a tool in endless maneuvering for advantage. Such evidence – more confession – makes it difficult for me to conceive of men of the gentry as ideal agents for securing justice in the countryside while acting as sturdy pillars of a smoothly functioning legal order that altruistically guaranteed general countryside satisfaction. Of course, once begun, confession flows on: extensive work on chivalry (often based, of course, on the massive body of literary sources), has led me to  characterize the ethos of the chivalric as centered on prowess and a touchy  sense of honor.20 And prowess means really good work with edged weaponry – nothing ethereal, nothing Victorian. I have argued that we must recognize in this code a deep investment in the vigorous taking of vengeance. If, as I think, this tough chivalric ethos formed the elite lay esprit de corps, will not tension stand between the use of law and the use of force to achieve what is ardently desired? And, as a code of thought | and action giving identity to the 9 lay elite, would not those aspiring to gentry status (or higher) absorb much from this code, as practiced by their betters? If the role of the gentry provokes dispute, so does that of the crown. This brings us to the fourth general question. Is the kingpin of justice truly to be found in the king, or at least in the royal administration?21 Over the centuries does his degree of engagement with issues of law change the situation in the countryside during his reign? Does law work more efficiently, even more equitably, when he resides in the realm than during periods of his absences? Must those who give any positive response to such questions wear a placard labeling them as “king’s friends,” an interpretive group against which we have had ample warning?22 In the midst of much debate, one line of argument seems at least clear, although whether convincing or not depends, once again, on our view of the 20 21

22

An argument advanced in Chivalry and Violence (Oxford, 1999) and in numerous articles. An excellent discussion of the foundational legal role of Henry ii appears in W.L. Warren, Henry ii (Berkeley, 1973). For the greater debate over the legal role of later medieval kingship see Christine Carpenter, Locality and Polity: a Study of Warwichshire Landed Society, c. 1401–1499 (Cambridge, 1992); and Wars of the Roses: Politics and the Constitution in England, c. 1437–1509 (Cambridge, 1997). G.L. Harris, King, Parliament and Finance (Oxford, 1975), Henry v: the Practice of Kingship (Oxford, 1986), Shaping the Nation: England 1360– 1460 (Oxford, 2005), Rowena Archer and Simon Walker, eds., Rulers and Ruled in Late Medieval England (London, 1995). K.B. MacFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1973), pp. 2–3.

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evidence of literature. Across roughly four of the centuries within our purview, works of imaginative literature focus like lasers on the king’s role in securing justice in society. This emphasis seems beyond cavil in the foundational work, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, written in the early twelfth century, and in his translators and adaptors into French and Middle English written in the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries, by Wace and Lawman respectively.23 Praise is unstintingly heaped upon those who provide peace and make good law while wearing the crown. That these kings – including Arthur, of course – are most likely all imaginary does not reduce the cultural implications of such consistent emphasis, nor of such praise for royal success. And this pattern continues. We could think of numerous romances written in Middle English from the late thirteenth century onwards that present an 10 evergreen hope for a strong royal hand enforcing law and ensuring | justice, an involvement that will yield countryside peace. My own favorites are Havelock the Dane and the Tale of Gamelyn.24 A brief summary of lines near the opening of the former can remind us of the flavor of these works as commentary on kingship and law. In earlier times, a king named Athelwold made and fully kept good laws, so that he was loved by all social ranks. A pious man who loved Church, truth and justice, he hated all law-breakers and had them hanged, never being deterred by bribes. The result was a land so safe a man could go about with fifty pounds of cash on his person. “Thanne was Englond at hayse,” the poet rejoices, and bestows a benediction on the king: “He was Englondes blome.”25 He was also thought to be without a rival: no lord from there to Rome dared abuse his people and no knight brought fear to the king’s heart. Any offending knight lost horse and garments and might be forced to spread his hands in humble supplication to the king, loudly petitioning, “Lord, be merciful.”26 To be sure, a great range of contemporary concerns surface in these poems, but the emphasis on the crucial fusion of kingship and law remains striking. What is more, this imaginative literature once again finds a parallel in another sort of evidence, in this case the official voice of the crown intoned in its own self-presentation. Royal propaganda regularly asserts that the king will do just 23

Geofffrey of Monmouth. History of the Kings of Britain, trans. Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth, 1966); Judith Weiss, ed. and trans., Wace’s Roman de Brut: a history of the British: text and translation (Exeter, 2002); W.R.J. Barron and S.C. Weinberg, eds., Lazamon. Brut, or Hystoria Britonum Edition and translation (New York, 1995). 24 For Havelok the Dane, see Ronald B. Herzman, Graham Drake, and Eve Salisbury, eds., Four Romances of England (Kalamazoo, 1999) pp. 73–187; for Gamelyn, see Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren, eds., Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Romances (Kalamazoo, 1997), pp. 184–227. 25 Havelok the Dane, Lines 27–63, with the quotation at line 63. 26 Ibid., Lines 64–96, with the quotation, “‘Louerd, merci!’” at line 96.

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what literary works hope and expect from him. Preambles to statutes make a rich source, repeatedly asserting that the king is mindful of problems of justice and peace and promising that he will take bold steps to secure peace in the realm.27 This particular evidentiary line of sight could be lengthened. Passages from Gower could be quoted to this effect, and we could turn once more to the conclusion of the unforgettable trial scene Langland wrote for Lady Meed. Since in that poem and in so many others, the answer to a pressing socio-legal problem is to run tell the king, I confess again: I have labeled this tendency to hurry to the king with major issues the Chicken Little Syndrome in early English history. | 11 Yet do we not also find a dark shadow crossing this sunny and hopeful view of kingship in late medieval literary works? If hopes and promises persist, a new tone of doubt about the outcome of royal justice is voiced, along with severe, even bitter, critiques directed at the agents of royal power who should ideally act as fair instruments of justice. The Tale of Gamelyn ends with matters at last being put right by the king, yet the functioning of judicial process looks dreadful until that final resolution through violence; the court scene includes an assault on the jury, justices, and sheriff, all of whom end up hanged by the hero and his stout followers. The king’s blessing comes after this fact. The tale does not seem an unqualified endorsement of the status quo, even if royal blessing descends after the attack on a royal court – a fantasy in the poem surely divorced from life, though assaults on royal courts were no fantasy.28 The popular Robin Hood stories of more than a century later similarly feature a corrupted apparatus of the law which is only corrected late in the day by the king’s personal intervention. And, as A.J. Pollard has emphasized, the hero defies even “Edward our comely king” at the end of the Geste.29 Unsurprisingly, the corpus of satire and complaint literature registers an even darker tone. Do important studies of the retaining of justices suggest such critiques have a genuine social basis? And can we find any parallels to the hated officials pilloried in the tales of Robin Hood? There are, of course, highly suggestive studies on both of these points.30 We can also ponder once again how in hot anger the rebels of 1381 surged against those behind or beneath the king even as he 27 28 29 30

As can readily be determined from an examination of the first volume of The Statutes of the Realm (London 1810–24). Many cases cited in R.W. Kaeuper, “Law and Order in Fourteenth-Century England: the Evidence of Special Commissions of Oyer and Terminer,” Speculum 54 (1970). Anthony Pollard, Imagining Robin Hood: the late-medieval stories in historical context (London, 2004), p. 217. See the following works of John Maddicott: The English Peasantry and the Demands of the Crown (Oxford, 1975); Law and Lordship: Royal Justices as Retainers in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1978); “The Birth and Setting of the Robin Hood Ballads,” English Historical Review xciii (1978), 376–399.

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remained a revered figure, unharmed. Do imaginative literature and known historical figures and events thus come convincingly together again in a line of interpretive sight? Only one question remains on my list, and though it might involve even more complexity than I posited in a book now more than twenty years old, I will present this final question in short form. Is there any profit to be gained from discussing the relationship between war and our cluster of law, justice, and governance? Was the relationship between these forces under the late 12 Anglo-Saxon kings similar to that under Henry ii or that | under Edward iii or Edward iv? Of course all medieval kings made both law and war, but does growing capacity in the emerging state mean that both major crown interests move in tandem – and in the clear interests of justice that contemporaries would recognize – or can they differ significantly enough in emphasis and resources allotted them to alter conditions in society at large? Can external war even be a means of securing more social peace at home, by draining off ardent spirits to exercise their talents among the mountains of Wales, the expanse of Scotland or Ireland, or – more continuously and significantly – the green fields of France? In thinking about this issue I frankly ponder whether a moral aversion to war in nearly all forms and circumstances stands in the way of my attempts to analyze a society that gloried in war and saw it blessed by the very hand of God. Although I strive for scholarly objectivity, I strongly suspect that other scholars would willingly provide estimates of my success. I know that casting moral judgments on medieval kings reflects as much on us as on them; yet we must surely look analytically and unblinkingly at the consequences of their work at warfare, within the realm, within the British Isles, and beyond its borders. And I believe that such scrutiny could use the telescope as well as the microscope. That is, we need not limit our analysis of the effects of war to understandings circulating at that time. Or, rather, scholars must surely rely on bifocal vision, and not merely with advancing age: one lens to peer through the eyes of those we study; another to broaden the view in order to take in more than they saw. Exclusive use of one lens or the other will arguably not satisfy; every scholar will critically examine the relative reliance on these two lenses by colleagues. Of course so many new lines of inquiry open as we turn our lenses onto warfare. The issue is not merely the relative allocation of resources to the pursuit of war or justice. Returning warriors may well have had some impact on countryside peace and lawfulness. Having in foreign parts been engaged in activities that were illegal within the realm, how would they behave upon

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returning home?31 Likewise, we could learn more about the relatively common practice of royal pardons (often remarkably comprehensive) gained by good service in the king’s war. What effects on a judicial culture result when vigorous licit violence outside the realm can wipe the slate clean of charges of illicit violence at home? Even in a society | accustomed to war and invested in war, 13 would not plaintiffs feel outraged as they learned that their anxious waiting for the return of a defendant had been in vain as he landed on English soil, fulsome parchment pardon in hand? As the questions on my list overlap and intertwine, I hope to have brought them into sharper relief through new intersections and conjunctures. It seems worth the effort to analyze the problems integrally and systemically – not merely in deeply grooved specialized lines of subdisciplines, not as brief chronological segments, not isolated within historical or literary disciplines. | 14 31

A point emphasized by H.J. Hewitt in The Organization of War Under Edward iii 1338–62 (New York, 1966).

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The King and the Fox: Reaction to the Role of Kingship in Tales of Reynard the Fox

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By the late twelfth century the power of kingship on both sides of the Channel had become a dynamic force in a society vibrant with change. Capetian and Angevin monarchs increased their power, and royal systems of law broadened their outreach into society. Royal governance and law, no less than socio-economic and demographic change, the eruptions of popular piety, the growth of vernacular literatures, the rise of universities, both shaped and reflected High Medieval Europe. The French abbot and royal counsellor Suger and the English Exchequer official, Richard FitzNigel, both quote Ovid’s maxim that king’s have long arms.1 If scholars have established the broad landscape of these changes and mapped the particular place of royal activism within them, they have perhaps drawn up fewer charts indicating the social response to royal activism. To raise this question is not to speak naively of what ‘the people’ thought, but rather to seek the reaction of a significant (and growing) body of those with some political capacity. The question comes the more readily to mind after reading the fascinating recent book of Richard Firth Green on the shift from the world of troth to the more administrative and ‘scientific’ world of truth.2 Finding adequate sources involves us in difficulties, since we lack the copious pamphlets, letters, diaries – to say nothing of the newspapers – available to our modern colleagues. Yet High Medieval literature can (if read carefully) open chinks in the wall that seems to separate us from our medieval past. Vernacular stories told about Reynard the Fox (written in Old French) provide just such a vantage point. Granted, much scholarship has been lavished on Reynard the Fox, but it | has tended to focus on the stories as lively works of imaginative literature or, on the other hand, has closely elucidated particular points of legal procedure.3 * Previously published in Anthony Musson (ed.), Expectations of the Law in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2001), 9–21. 1 H. Waquet, ed., La Vie de Louis vi, le Gros (Paris, 1929), pp. 180–1; C. Johnson, ed., trans., Dialogus de Scaccario: The Dialogue of the Exchequer, revised by F.E.L. Carter and D.E. Greenway (Oxford, 1983), p. 84. 2 A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Riccardian England (Philadelphia, 1999). 3 Ample citations in K. Varty, The Roman de Renart: A Guide to Scholarly Work (Lanham, Md, 1998).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004302655_011

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I have no interest in (indeed no competence for) studying these stories for their aesthetic or structural (or post-structural) qualities, their delineation of character, their use of Aesop. Likewise, I leave the tough nuts and bolts of procedure to legal specialists.4 Instead, I want to show how these stories give us precious evidence about the social reception of the vigorous work of kings and their administrations. First, the basic nature of these stories must be briefly reviewed.5 In the late twelfth century and first half of the thirteenth approximately 26 tales about Reynard the Fox appear (or, rather, that number survives).6 Scholars posit as many as 20 anonymous authors. Several specific attributions, namely to Pierre de Saint Cloud, ‘a priest from La-Croix-en-Brie’ and Richard de Lison, remain names only. No fewer than 15 of these tales (and it is upon these that I will concentrate) were written in roughly the final quarter of the twelfth century (between 1174 and 1205) for an audience that evidently could not get enough of them. So popular were the stories that the Old French word for fox, goupil yields to the eponymous reynard. The chief quality of Reynard, which is, of course ‘foxiness’ or trickery in all its forms, is conveyed by the noun renardie. The collection of tales is traditionally called the Roman de Renart, and all of the tales are considered branches of the romance (numbered variously, according to more than one scholarly schema); but no genre classification, romance or other, truly fits.7 These are simply animal tales, with beasts acting in the rural world of field, forests, and farms, constantly hunting for food, but by a marvelous twist the animals regularly morph into humans, only to appear as animals again a few lines later. The changes are swift, almost like alternating current. The only characters who are unwaveringly people are peasants. The changeable characters are élite animal/humans, spurring on their horses, going on pilgrimage, holding courts, making war with banners snapping in the wind. Reynard’s den, a fox’s hole in the earth in one passage, will suddenly mushroom into a great fortress, Maupertuis, a few lines later. The effects are extraordinary. No less extraordinary, especially for any reader lost in the foggy, pre-Raphaelite | vision of the Middle Ages, is the mud-slinging. Nothing escapes being hit, not even relics, pilgrimage, confession, crusade. Reynard at one point wipes his posterior with his crusader’s garb and hurls it into the Lion King’s face.8 Sex is 4 E.g. J. Graven, Le Procès criminel du Roman de Renart (Geneva, 1950). 5 What follows draws upon introductions to several recent scholarly editions: J. Dufournet and A. Méline, Le Roman de Renart, 2 vols (Paris, 1985); D.D.R. Owen, The Romance of Reynard the Fox (Oxford, 1994); A. Strubel, R. Bellon, D. Boutet, and S. Lefèvre, Le Roman de Renart (Paris, 1998). 6 The exact number of existing tales actually varies as combinations of tales appear in some collections. 7 I follow the numbering scheme of the Dufournet and Méline edition of Le Roman de Renart. 8 Ibid., i. p. 118.

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treated as a joke or as conquest, with the victim formally protesting but usually compliant. Hersent the she-wolf, who is the quasi-compliant victim of Reynard’s semi-rape declares in court, ‘so help me God, Reynard never did anything to me that he wouldn’t have done to his mother’ (Ne se Damledex me secore,/ C’onques Renart de moi ne fist/ Que de sa mere ne feïst), a statement which one suspects is not particularly limiting.9 A few lines later, she declares she has done nothing that a nun would not do! In one story (Branch vii) Reynard actually eats his confessor, having previously devoured this bird’s four young sons. What has any of this to do with kingship and law? Risking the charge that as an earnest German-American I am simply misreading sophisticated humeur gaulois (Kultur versus Civilisation again), I think the case can be made. It is, admittedly, something of an uphill climb, since the scholarly consensus (especially from some literary critics) insists that there is no moral purpose in the stories, there are no identifiable targets, certainly no heroes, and absolutely no reforming ideal. In short, there is no real social correlation, only literary free play, a game of parody directed at courtly forms, and more specifically at chanson de geste.10 Though I join in the denial of straightforward morality, or a clear set of heroes and villains, and I, too, find no unidirectional steering towards a clear goal, I think these tales convey powerful social comment which is too important to be ignored by students of High Medieval society. In fact, stories of Reynard the Fox, written in this age of intense governmental growth (the age of Louis vii and Philip Augustus, and of the inescapable influence of Henry ii) can be read as a doubly significant socio-political commentary. First, they pinpoint a pressing set of problems troubling society; and, secondly, they react to what kings are doing and how royal law is working. To claim so much is not, of course, to insist that all tales have equal social or political depth, though perhaps half the tales deal closely with legal issues and courtroom scenes, and all contain language of interest. Nor does this theme require a belief that all readers got beyond laughing at animals shifting into humans as they fool each other, lead their enemies endlessly into traps, and enact chase scenes that could be filmed by Hollywood. Medieval no less than modern readers must have chuckled with vast pleasure to visualize a fast pursuit led by Tardy the Snail, the king’s standard-bearer, or to hear in a list of peasants’ dogs chasing 9 10

Translation from Owen, Reynard the Fox, p. 7; original French in Dufournet and Méline, eds, Roman de Renart, p. 48. An argument most forcefully made by K. Gravdal, Vilain and Courtois: Transgressive Parody in French Literature of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1989), pp. 81–112.

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Reynard back to safety in his den such names |as Merlin, Crazy Lady, and, sim- 11 ply, Stud.11 Granted, the author of Branch iv says in opening his story:12 I have something to tell you that will make you laugh; for the truth is, as I know well, that you have no wish for a sermon or to hear the life of some holy saint. What you want is not that at all, but something to amuse you. (Or me convient tel chose dire/ Dont je vous puisse fere rire;/ Qar je sai bien, ce est la pure./ Que de sarmon n’avés vos cure/ Ne de cors seint oir la vie./ De ce ne vos prent nule envie./ Mais de tel chose qui vos plese.) Slapstick humor, often rather cruel, need carry no deep social message; but it may, and I suspect that the popularity of the tales rested not only on broad humour, but on laughing (perhaps nervously, perhaps bitterly) at a cluster of serious problems impinging on daily life. If, as prominent literary scholars write, the stories of Reynard reached all who listened to the jongleurs, an historian can claim that they likewise found audience among all touched by the broadening reach of the king’s government in an age of much violence.13 The prominence of a technical vocabulary of law and war throughout the branches of the poem in itself suggests this connection. Any list of such terms would include felony, treason, ordeal, judicial duel, gage of battle, homicide, sealed letters, safe conduct, mercenaries, truce, clamor, hostages, oaths sworn on relics, formal feudal defiance, portcullis, catapult, mangonel, barbican. At least one pencil was dulled circling the noun ‘vengeance’ and the verb ‘to avenge’ in my copies of the texts. The central problem is indeed violence, especially as linked with essential shame/fame values and issues of distributive justice. What in this rapidly developing society is to prevent the strong from dominating the weak, even from devouring the weak? What is to prevent them from taking from the weak what they want of the good things in life? Is this not at least one reason for the constant blurring of the distinction between animals and humans, in Armand Strubel’s admirable phrase ‘[l]a dialectique de l’anthropomorphisme et du zoomorphisme’?14 The authors seem to suggest that people are really just animals, that this conjoined courtly/forest world is indistinguishably ‘nature red in tooth and claw’, as Tennyson tersely said. Perhaps the human element of 11

Dufournet and Méline, eds, Roman de Renart, i. pp. 394, 396, 398; lively renderings of the dogs’ names are given in Patricia Terry, ed., trans., Reynard the Fox (Boston, 1983), pp. 89–92. 12 Owen, Reynard the Fox, p. 81; Dufournet and Méline, eds, Roman de Renart, i. p. 308. 13 Strubel et al., Le Roman de Renart, p. xxi; Owen, Reynard the Fox, p. xi. 14 Ibid., p. xxvi.

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intelligence actually intensifies the evil, through renardie, the trickery and deception made possible by human rationality and slippery human speech. Animal ferocity joins forces in these stories not only with the instinctive cunning of animals, but also with malicious human cunning. We could justifiably term this a Hobbesian world avant la lettre. It is assuredly the twelfth-century world of the guerre privée, of private war and | bitter, destructive feud, so prominent in discussions of peace as we enter the High Middle Ages. Through one lens these animal fights are just such – animals do that; but through another lens they surely serve as representations of war in the twelfth-century sense, guerre privée – lords (and their imitators) do that. The quarrel between Reynard and Ysengrin the Wolf, so central to all of these tales, for example, is termed la querre… Qui moult dura et moult fu dure (the war which lasted so long and was so harsh).15 In a late tale (Branch xi) Reynard even fights the ultimate guerre privée, a fully-fledged war against his king, Noble the Lion, portrayed in so enthusiastic an epic style that I wonder if this branch does not pass beyond anything parodic into something participatory – that is, into epic itself. Kinship, that tough and flexible network of bonds that anthropologists tell us preserves some sort of peace in many non-state societies, appears here to be largely a part of the problem. Far from exercising any restraining and corrective force, kinship either fails to prevent violence or enters into the formula of injustice. In one story after another Reynard tries to trick, and sometimes even to eat, other animals who seem to be his kin. ‘“Cousin Reynard”, Chantecler calls out to the fox, “you’re not trying to play a trick on me?” “No, never”, said Reynard’ (Dist Chantecler: ‘Renart cosin,/ Volés me vos trere a engin?’/ –‘Certes’, ce dist Renars, ‘non voil’).16 The elaborate trap actually set in King Noble’s court for Reynard himself in Branch Va depends on collective action by the gathered friends and kinsmen of his enemies.17 Ysingrin’s force for this affair includes strangers, friends ‘and all his relatives’ (son parenté).18 Yet in the opening of Branch v Reynard reminds Ysingrin himself that he is his nephew: ‘Vostre niez sui.’19 In Branch viii he even claims that Hersent, Ysingrin’s wife, is his sister.20 Grimbert the badger’s hatred of Bruin the bear stems at least in part from the latter’s close kinship to Reynard.21 On occasion, love, at least love of the sort 15 Dufournet and Méline, eds, Roman de Renart, i. p. 208. 16 Owen, Reynard the Fox, p. 57; Dufournet and Méline, eds, Roman de Renart, i. p. 224. 17 Owen, Reynard the Fox, pp. 102–143; Dufournet and Méline, eds, Roman de Renart, i. pp. 386, 388. 18 Ibid., i. p. 388. 19 Ibid., i. p. 336. 20 Ibid., ii. p. 60: Hersent la bele ma seror. 21 Ibid., i. p. 390.

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which should bind kin, actually baits the trap. Reynard tries (and fails) to eat a titmouse by offering her a kiss. He is, we learn, godfather to her son.22 However the emphasis falls, as we would expect, not on the ancient role of kinship, but on the strikingly new activism of kings and the royal legal apparatus in confronting issues of peace. Reynard himself points out this role in Branch ii, speaking to the Titmouse:23 | 13 His majesty, Noble the lion has now proclaimed universal peace, which, please God, will last for a long time. He has had it proclaimed throughout his land and had his vassals swear that it would be maintained unbroken. The ordinary folk are very happy at this, because now there will be throughout many territories no more quarrels, affrays, or mortal warfare; and the animals, large and small, will be quite free of them, thanks be to God! (Mesire Nobles li lions/ A or par tot la pes juree,/ Se Dex plaist, qui aura duree;/ Par sa terre l’a fait jurer/ Et a ses homes afier/ Que soit gardee et meintenue/ molt lie en est la gent menue,/ Car or carront par plusors terres/ Plez et noises et mortex guerres,/ Et les bestes grans et petites,/ La merci Deu, seront bien quites.’). Of course Reynard is citing the king’s peace in an attempt to disable the caution of an intended victim, and he soon declares that apparently not all have got the word as he flees from pursuing hounds; but the statement about the royal court stands as significant evidence. In a related branch, (Va) Ysengrin the Wolf, Reynard’s inveterate enemy, declares his belief in the efficacy of the king’s court as an agency of peace: It’s at Noble the lion’s court that cases are brought and heard regarding mortal battles and disputes. Let’s go there and put our charge against Reynard: he might well soon make amends, perhaps by judicial combat. … Reynard’s outrageous deed will cost him dear, if I can get him in the royal court (En la cort Noble le lion/ Tient on les plez et les oiances/ Des mortex gueres et des tences;/ La nos alons de lui clamer:/ Bien le porra tost amender,/ De ce puet estre champeté… Mar vit Renars son grant desroi,/ Sel puis tenir a cort de roi).24 Bruin the Bear joins the chorus, proclaiming to the Lion king in Branch i: 22 Owen, Reynard the Fox, pp. 59–61; Dufournet and Méline, eds, Le Roman de Renart, i. pp. 232, 234, 236. 23 Owen, Reynard the Fox, p. 60; Dufournet and Méline, eds, Le Roman de Renart, i. p. 232. 24 Owen, Reynard the Fox, p. 92; Dufournet and Méline, eds, Le Roman de Renart, i. p. 348.

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you are prince of this land; you must make peace in this war! Whoever you hate, we will hate and we’ll stand on your side. If Ysengrin brings a plaint against Reynard, give a judgment; that’s the best course you can follow (Mes vos estes prince de terre:/ Si metés pes en ceste guerre!/ Metés pes entre vos barons:/ Qui vos harrez, nos le harrons,/ Et meintendron de vostre part./ S’Isengrins se pleint de Renart,/ Fetes le jugement seoir:/ C’est li meuz que g’en puis veoir). The most outspoken, and hilarious, speech in favor of royal judicial activism, however, comes when Ysengrin brings suit for the rape of his wife by Reynard. Noble asks for legal advice from a visitor to his court, the papal legate, a camel, who speaks in an almost untranslatable jumble of Latin, Italian, and French.25 If the garbled language is humorous, the sentiments are interesting:26 ‘Monsignore’ he said ‘audite!’ In Decretalibus, libro tre, De concordia officiales Item matrimoniales | Quando sunt adulterante Abscondito or in flagrante, Primo: interrogazione! If to the accuzatione Responsio does not satisfy: Numquam criminalis sit! And do unto him as you see fit. Ergo ego te commendo Sua fortuna confiscendo Let Reynard take his paenitentia Mea culpa magna gratia: Aut aflame him to damnation! Res ipse loquitor, Rex, what is a ruler for? Law revilers, come questo, Better to dispatch them presto By Christ’s corpus, legislate! Handing judgments wise and straight,

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25 26

What follows is Patricia Terry’s imaginative, if not literal, version: Reynard the Fox (Boston, 1983), pp. 70–71. Dufournet and Méline, eds, Le Roman de Renart, i. p. 358.

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Sia benedicto, monsignore, By God’s cross, in tut’onore! Never will you be buon rex Unless your vita is for lex. (Quare, mesire, me audite!/ Nos trobat en decrez escrite/ En la rebrice publicate/ De matrimoine vilate:/ Primes le doiz examinar/ Et s’il ne se puet espurgar,/ Grevar le puez si con te place,/ Que il a grant cose mesface./ Hec est en la mie sentence:/ S’estar ne velt en amendance,/ Dissique parmane conmune/ Uneverse soe pecune,/ O lapidar lo cors o ardre/ De l’aversier de la Renarde!/ Et vos si mostre si bon rege:/ Se est qui destruie la lege). If such talk does not always stir regality to swift action, the sight of a hen horribly mangled by Reynard and carried in solemn procession into the royal court does. The lion roars so fiercely that the entire court trembles and poor Coward the hare suffers a fever for two days. King Noble swears to take memorable vengeance for the outrageous homicide, for the shame brought upon him as sovereign, and for the breaking of the peace.27 If a plethora of voices call for the king to guarantee peace in the realm, and if his regal roar sends shivers through the ranks of his quarrelsome vassals, why is the solution not thus found?28 Why do the tales not come to a royalist moral, | a 15 voice for imposed or at least arbitrated settlements in the king’s court? The answer, I think, lies not in the imperatives of pure literary play determining the form, improbably shaping or even restricting the sentiments of writers and audience, but in genuine fears about the functioning of royal courts, fears which flow into the texts from a very real social world.29 Time and again the 27 Owen, Reynard the Fox, p. 10; Dufournet and Méline, eds, Le Roman de Renart, i. pp. 60, 62. 28 It is interesting to note that by the early fourteenth century the stories seem to stand in comfortable relationship with Capetian regality. Scenes from Reynard’s life were staged (intermixed with scenes from the life of Christ, no less) during the 1313 Pentecost feast in Paris. Nancy Freeman Regalado argues that these scenes were intended to popularize political concerns about good government. Crowds jeering the fallen finance minister Enguerran de Marigny, whose disgrace and execution came not long thereafter, called out ‘Avant, Renart’ (‘Staging the Roman de Renart: Medieval Theater and the Diffusion of Political Concerns into Popular Culture’, Mediaevalia 18 (1995), pp. 111–142). In his study of the workings of the law in these stories, J. Graven (La Procès criminel, p. 121) concluded that although trickery trumps justice: ‘l’idéal de justice y transparait pourtant sans cesse comme chose belle et noble, digne de tous les soins, de la tête de l’État du Roi au dernier des vilains’. 29 For a different view, see x. Kawa-Topor, ‘L’image du roi dans le Roman de Renart’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 36 (1993), pp. 263–280.

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texts show how thin is the hope that this royalist solution will truly make the world right, how bitter (despite the humour) is the realisation of writers and readers or hearers that a whole constellation of forces deform royal justice and to a serious degree negate the royal power needed for its enforcement. First of all, the royal court simply fails to work well, as is apparent in the frequent court scenes that punctuate the action of the tales. Reynard himself announces the theme when (in Branch vii) he reflects, over the bones and feathers of an innocent hen he has just enjoyed, ‘that is the way things are; and it often happens at court that the innocent party is the one who gets punished’ (Mes bien savés qui ausic vet/ Qu’il avient bien souent a cort/ Que tex ne peche qui encort).30 He speaks even more frankly in Branch ix when he boasts:31 I’m a past master in litigation, by my faith in Saint Pampalion! I’ve brought many a tricky case in Noble the lion’s court, frequently turning right into wrong and even more often wrong into right: That’s common practice (Je sui bon mestre de plaider,/ Foi que doi seint Pampalion:/ En la cort Noble le lion/ Ai ge meü meint aspre plet/ Et meintes fois de droit tort fet,/ Et molt sovent de tort le droit:/ Ensi covient souvent qui soit).

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Trouble in a court scene often begins with quarreling over procedure and especially over issues of fairness. What witnesses are to be believed? How many are required? Can a vassal be condemned before his side has been heard? Can a wife testify in a plea involving her husband? How much is owed to the high status of a plaintiff or defendant? Should compensation be accepted for even serious offenses? Vastly complicating all such questions, Reynard regularly presses the claims of his loyalty and good service to King Noble as a potent extra-judicial factor in his favour. Royal prudence may occasionally edge out gratitude. The wily little fox is also, branch after branch asserts, a powerful vassal whose aid the king needs. Tibert the Cat, anxious to get Reynard a favorable hearing in hopes of avoiding Reynard’s wrath, pointedly asks the king, ‘Do you know what I can tell you about Reynard? In your land you have scarcely any baron better | at waging war or standing against his enemies or who has done so to greater effect’ (Savés que de Renart puis fire?/ N’avés vairez en vostre terre/ Baron meus sache fere gerre/ Ne contrester ses enemies/ Ne qui meuz s’en soit entremis).32 It is no surprise that Noble himself asserts to his barons in Branch i, ‘You are wrong to prejudge Reynard… I don’t dislike Reynard so much…provided he’s prepared to keep on 30 Owen, Reynard the Fox, p. 131; Dufournet and Méline, eds, Roman de Renart, ii. p. 12. 31 Owen, Reynard the Fox, p. 154; Dufournet and Méline, eds, Roman de Renart, ii. p. 104. 32 Owen, Reynard the Fox, p. 180; Dufournet and Méline, eds, Roman de Renart, ii. p. 200.

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my right side’ (Vos avés tort/ Qui Renart volez forsjuger… Renart ne hé ge mie tant,/ Por rien qu’en li voist sus metant,/ Que je le voille encor honir,/ S’il se voult a moi abonir).33 When Reynard finally puts in an appearance in court in this branch, he significantly greets Noble with these words: ‘King… I salute you as one who has given you better service than any baron in your company’ (Roi…je vos salu/ Con cil qui plus vos a valu/ Que baron qui soit en l’enpire).34 Everyone knows, Grimbert the badger argues, that Reynard is courtly and full of prowess (prouse et courtois);35 he can be a great help to the king, ‘for you’ve no one bolder in your service’ (Qar n’avés plus hardi serjant).36 Noble formally insists on even-handed treatment, saying of Reynard (in Branch Va) ‘He is certainly a noble, distinguished person but will nevertheless be treated according to the rules of my house’ (Certes prouz est et afaitiez,/ Et neporquant il ert traitiez/ Selonc l’esgart de ma meson),37 but no animal/vassal, no modern reader can seriously believe in the king’s fairness. The issue becomes especially hopeless once Reynard cures Noble of a threatening illness, by faking a trip to Salerno, stealing herbs, and demanding generous helpings of the hides of his enemies to effect his cure. The king’s gratitude rolls on endlessly, through branch after branch, even after Reynard (possibly borrowing an Arthurian theme) takes over throne and queen while the king is absent, fighting ‘Saracens’. The business of the court is thus foiled not only by straightforward problems of procedure, but by the firm planting of renardie near its heart. The fact or fear of violence further erodes the court’s effectiveness. Scholars who have long argued that courtroom pleading supplemented rather than replaced open violence would appreciate Noble’s first statement upon recovery from his illness. He joyously tells Reynard ‘I’m cured. I thank you five hundred times… You can make war on anyone you want!’ ( Je suis garis,/ Je vos en rent cinc cent mercis/ E si vos saisi de ma terre:/ Qui vos voudroiz si aura guerre).38 The vassals who form Noble’s court know this truth even before Noble proclaims it. On another of the many times Reynard is summoned before the king:39 | 17 Everybody keeps silent and listens, alarmed for fear that, should he pass an adverse judgment on Reynard, the latter, given the chance and 33 Owen, Reynard the Fox, p. 8; Dufournet and Méline, eds, Roman de Renart, i. p. 54. 34 Owen, Reynard the Fox, p. 22; Dufournet and Méline, eds, Roman de Renart, i. p. 104. 35 Owen, Reynard the Fox, p. 25; Dufournet and Méline, eds, Roman de Renart, i. p. 112. 36 Ibid. 37 Owen, Reynard the Fox, p. 94; Dufournet and Méline, eds, Roman de Renart, i. p. 356. 38 Owen, Reynard the Fox, p. 201; Dufournet and Méline, eds, Roman de Renart, ii. p. 276. 39 Owen, Reynard the Fox, pp. 178–179; Dufournet and Méline, eds, Roman de Renart, ii. p. 194.

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occasion, will do him equal harm, whatever precautions he takes (Chascun a la teste enclinee./ Molt sont forment pensif et morne/ Del jugement trestuit a orne./ Onques n’i osa un sol grondre,/ Li uns let a l’autre respondre./ Chascun se test, chascun escote,/ Chascun se crent, chascun se dote,/ S’il fet sor Renart jugement/ Si qu’il li tort a nuisement,/ Autretel honte le fera/ ( Ja si bien ne s’en gardera)/ S’il en puet liu ne aise avoir). The solid base that supports Reynard’s power is his great castle of Maupertuis. When it is a castle and not a fox’s earthy den, Maupertuis is surrounded by deep water-filled moats and strong walls, with gates protected by portcullis and barbican. Catapults and mangonels stand ready on its walls; the cellars of the keep are loaded with provisions to last a seven-year siege. Leaving this stronghold for the king’s court, he provides his sons with a vision of sturdy independence:40 ‘Children of high lineage,’ he said, ‘whatever may happen to me, be watchful to hold my castles, against counts, against the king; for months to come you will find no count, prince or castellan able to deprive you of so much as one woolen thread’ (Enfant…d’haut lignaje,/ Pensez de mes casteax tenir,/ Queque de moi doie avenir,/ Contre contes et contre rois,/ Que vos ne troverés des mois/ Conte, prince ne chasteleine/ Qui vos forface un fil de leine). Yet beyond the safety of Maupertuis Reynard must himself fear violence, even in the theoretically peaceful space of the royal court. His enemies are never satisfied with the speed, the fairness, or the outcome of proceedings there. Thus, the legal process nearly always degenerates into a brawl ended only by a wild chase which frees Reynard to practice renardie another day. In one memorable scene, Reynard is to be ambushed in court as he swears his innocence on a holy relic, a tooth of the dog Roenel. Of course when the fox notices that the holy relic is firmly attached to the powerful jaw of a dog only feigning death, he sprints for home. The fox escapes, but any ideal of justice seems the real victim. The author of Branch xvi admits as much. After relating how Ysengrin and Reynard made peace he editorialises:41 They have made peace, such as it is, and pledged it before the king; but it will not last very long, because it is impossible for them not to bear a mutual grudge, and rancour will always exist between them. I would not 40 Dufournet and Méline, eds, Roman de Renart, i. p. 98; my translation. 41 Owen, Reynard the Fox, p. 236; Dufournet and Méline, eds, Roman de Renart, ii. p. 416.

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give a fig for this peace, for, as God’s my saviour it is a peace after the fashion of Reynard, who never gave up his trickery and will not abandon it now (Pes ont fete quele qu’el soit,/ Devant le roi l’ont afiee,/ Mes moult aura corte duree,/ Quar il ne puet estre a nul fuer/ Que l’uns n’ait l’autre contre cuer,/ Ne ja ne seront sanz rancune./ Ne donroie pas une prune/ En la pes, quar, se Diex me gart,/ Voirs est que c’est la pes Renart/ Qui einz ne fina de trichier,/ Encor ne le veult pas lessier). | 18 Yet the king himself is obviously far from blameless in the degree of failure attributable to his court. If his hands are tied somewhat by considerations of realpolitik, he sometimes seems simply to be tired, to lack the vigour and courage needed to confront his beastly vassals.42 In Branch i, he is, we learn, ‘weary’ (estoit lassez) of the court proceedings,43 not knowing, of course, that he has many thousands of lines yet to go. Hoping for a swift resolution of Reynard’s case in Branch Va, he laughingly says: ‘Indeed, by all the saints in Bethlehem, a thousand pounds would not make me as happy as I am to be rid of this case’ ( Ja, par les seinz de Baulïant,/ Ne fusse si liez por mil livres/ Con de ce que j’en sui delivres).44 In a scene in Branch xiv, Reynard has got Primaut the Wolf, Ysengrin’s brother, dead drunk, has scandalously fed him host wafers in a church, and tonsured him rather thoroughly – down to the ears, in fact (using a razor and a bowl into which he has urinated), and then got him to ring the church bells prior to Primaut’s performance of some sacrilegious parody of a mass. Of course the priest and assorted villagers gather and beat Primaut nearly to death. After two more tricks and thorough beatings, Primaut decides to kill Reynard. The Fox’s verbal self-defense is fascinating:45 God bless me! Says Reynard. It’s not very sensible of you to hit me without provocation; that is very wrong of you. Just because I’m so small, you beat me and insult me. That’s a sin. God help me! And I swear to you I’ll go and lay a complaint against you before the king and queen and everybody. Why are you so violent? (Ce Dex bien me fache,/ Vos n’estes mie bien senés/ Qui ci ilueques me batés/ Sans forfet:ce est mesprison/ Por ce se je sui petis hom,/ Si me batés et ledengiés./ Si m’ait Dex, ce est pechés./ Et par la foi que je vos doi,/ Je me’en irei clamer au rei/ Et a la roine et a touz./ Por quoi estes vos si estos?) 42

See, in general, Edward Peters, The Shadow King; rex inutilis in medieval law and literature (New Haven, 1970). 43 Owen, Reynard the Fox, p. 9; Dufournet and Méline, eds, Roman de Renart, i. p. 56. 44 Owen, Reynard the Fox, p. 101; Dufournet and Méline, eds, Roman de Renart, i. p. 382. 45 Owen, Reynard the Fox, p. 214; Dufournet and Méline, eds, Roman de Renart, ii. p. 336.

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When Primaut’s threats continue, Reynard modifies his defense:46 If you killed me just now, you’d be made to answer for it. I have children, and admirable ones they are; and if they got to know it, they’d quickly send your soul from your body. Unless you flee the country, you’ll never get off with a ransom! (Se vos m’avies ore ocis,/ Je ai enfans et de grant pris/ Qui bien tost, se il le savoient,/ L’ame de se cors vos trairoient./ Se hors du pais ne fuieez./ Ja raençon n’i aureés!) 19

In these few lines, in peril as so often, Reynard calls upon both the king’s law and the threat of kin vengeance. Neither does him much good at first.47 | Primaut flew into a rage. Fuming with anger, he seized Reynard by the collar, threw him to the ground, jumped on his stomach, and gave his belly a good pounding. Now Reynard is very afraid, terrified of being done to death… [He] meekly implores him to have mercy for the love of God and His holy name and in the hope of absolution (Lors n’ot en lui que corocher,/ Par la chevechaille l’a pris/ Come cil qui est d’ire espris./ Contre terre l’a trebuché,/ Sor le ventre li a marché,/ Durement li fole la pance./ Or est Renars en grant dotance,/ Molt ot grant poor de morir./ Et Primauz commence a ferir/ Durement qu’il ne se feint mie;/ Et Renars doucement li crie/ Merci por Dé et por son non/ (Si me doinst Dex confessïon)/ Que onques rien ne li forsfist). As Primaut dithers about this religious appeal, Reynard reverts to both possible worldly solutions: crown and kin:48 ‘…if I come out of this, I shall go off to appeal to the king and to my sons and wife and my lady the queen.’ Hearing what he said about going to appeal to the king, Primaut was highly alarmed. ‘Reynard,’ he says, ‘what you’ve done to me shall be forgiven, and I’ll let you off this time’ (‘Mes se de ci puis escaper,/ Ge m’en irai au roi clamer/ Et a mes filz et a ma feme/ Et a la reïne ma dame.’ Quant Primauz l’a oï parler/ Del roi a qui s’ira clamer,/ Durement en fu esfreé./ ‘Renart, or te seit pardoné’). It is, of course, a mistake. Reynard promptly gets Primaut caught in a trap which Reynard convinces him is a reliquary, holding the bones of a most holy 46 Ibid. 47 Owen, Reynard the Fox, p. 214; Dufournet and Méline, eds, Roman de Renart, ii. p. 338. 48 Owen, Reynard the Fox, p. 215; Dufournet and Méline, eds, Roman de Renart, ii. p. 338.

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man. There he leaves the poor wolf caught until his foot rots. Reynard piously tells Primaut that he is a perjurer, and thus the saint will not release him.49 Is this merely a cartoon, ‘Roadrunner and Coyote in the Twelfth Century’? It can be concluded that it is indeed more than this by noting the larger body of evidence into which the Roman de Renart fits. We know as a matter of archival record that royal courts were increasingly accepted in late twelfth- and thirteenth-century France, as they already had been in England. Any investigator reading rolls or registers documenting cases brought before the king’s justices could add corroborative detail here: cases flow into royal courts, clearly indicating a belief in their usefulness, if not exactly in their abstract fairness. One branch of the Reynard story after another records this hope, even though it also records fears and uncertainties. These fears and uncertainties are also important. The Roman de Renart comes to life in a world in which chanson de geste is flourishing. Epic, we must recall, is the very form that critics suggest the Reynard branches parody. It seems to me equally important to argue that the chansons and Renart share a point of view, a fiercely divided point of view. I have argued elsewhere that chanson de geste is firmly of two minds about the arrival of really powerful | kingship and what was for the time effective royal systems of law.50 20 One epic after another, and especially those in the Cycle of the Rebel Barons, splits right down the middle ideologically, praising the rightful, superior power of kings, preaching obedience to these rulers, and then celebrating lordly independence, vengeance, and joyful mayhem, carried out with edged weaponry and firebrands on a truly epic scale. Is it not interesting that both the Roman de Renart and the phenomenon of chanson de geste are spawned and nurtured basically in Capetian rather than Plantagenet regions? This pattern supports an argument that kingship developed its capacities on somewhat different timetables in these two political spheres.51 In other words, the Roman de Renart contributes powerfully to the sense that, when they were new (and this was later in Capetian than in Plantagenet territories), kingship and royal law generated a powerful mixture of hope and fear. Serious social problems of violence and justice might just be ameliorated, but the need for watchful suspicion, even bitter denunciation, tempered such hopes as royalist solutions started, faltered, and showed a damnable combination of weakness and misdirected power. | 21

49 Owen, Reynard the Fox, p. 216; Dufournet and Méline, eds, Roman de Renart, ii. p. 342, 344. 50 This argument is developed in R.W. Kaeuper, War, Justice and Public Order: England and France in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1988), pp. 316–325. 51 Ibid., passim.

PART 3 Chivalry and Literature

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Introduction to Part 3 Medieval knights claimed a right to violent self-help that made it difficult to live peacefully.1 They not only thought of force as a means to getting their way,2 they also used violence to prove their worth.3 If a nobleman was someone who was not laughed at by his neighbors,4 his sword ensured that no smirks would be seen. Chivalric literature tells us just how essential violence was within aristocratic culture. As Kaeuper argues in “Literature as Essential Evidence,” the ideals reflected in chivalric literature, however fantastic their contents, overlap with the real behavior of medieval knights. It was to demonstrate this correspondence between the real and the imagined that Kaeuper wrote “William Marshal, Lancelot, and the Issue of Chivalric Identity,” “Chivalry in Barbour’s Bruce,” and “Baudoin de Conde: Violence, Chivalry, and War.” Kaeuper’s reliance on literature has been the subject of sharp critique. David Crouch, in particular, has been wary of treating literary evidence as ­representative of aristocratic culture as a whole.5 But we need not judge the fantastical nature of chivalric literature as a sign of its impracticality. If knights imitated chivalric ideals, it was not out of rational or logical imperatives, but also because the chivalric narratives with which they were familiar had a charismatic influence. In Stephen Jaeger’s words, “ideal figures in fantasy world seduce readers to believe in and imitate that world and its values – whether they lead to insolvable moral entanglements or to love and happiness, to destruction or to elevation.”6 As Kaeuper concludes in “Chivalry: Fantasy and Fear”, chivalric literature did not merely provide an escapist fantasy. Rather, it is precisely the fictionality of romance that allows it to convey “the moral reality” of an aristocratic class.7 1 Richard Kaeuper, War, Justice, and Public Order: England and France in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1988), 185, 188. 2 Richard Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1999), 159. 3 Craig Taylor, Chivalry and the Ideals of Knighthood during the Hundred Years War (Cambridge, 2013), 108; Ruth Karras, From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia, 2003), 20–66. 4 David Crouch, The English Aristocracy: 1070–1272: A Social Transformation (New Haven, 2010), 193. 5 But Cf., Crouch, English Aristocracy, 119. 6 Stephen Jaeger, “Book Burning at Don Quixote’s” in Courtly Arts and the Art of Courtliness, eds., Busby and Kleinhenz (Cambridge, 2006), 23. 7 Laura Ashe, “William Marshal, Lancelot and Arthur: Chivalry and Kingship,” Anglo-Norman Studies 30 (2008), 22.

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It thus matters that, in the world of chanson de geste and romance, “might” can be equated with “right” and the individual worth of knights depends upon victory in combat.8 Through literature, knights looked beyond the pillage and siege that characterized warfare in practice, and towards representations of combat that validated and legitimated their profession and the cult of prowess that stood at its heart.9 Chivalric works, in this light, reflects an audience’s consistent admiration for the gore and devastation attributable to their profession. They idealized and magnified their violence through their cultural productions. As for the reality to which chivalric ideals responded, it remains open to question whether the violent norms of chivalric knights disrupted society. Some scholars prefer to argue that feuding helped to order medieval political society, and that we can study aristocratic violence in structural terms without concerning ourselves overmuch with affect.10 However, as Warren Brown has warned us, the idea that violence had a regulating influence on society presupposes agreement as to when and how it should be used. Different norms could be invoked in different conflicts, and knights had to negotiate a multitude of complex cultural boundaries.11 With this argument Paul Hyams would agree, in so far as emotional responses to perceived slights do not simply reflect wellestablished rules that everyone acknowledged. If there was peace in the feud, it was “neither automatic and easy nor ever comfortable and complete.”12 Knights certainly knew that they had to learn how to avenge perceived wrongs in a socially acceptable way. The path to their instrumental goals demanded careful consideration of cultural norms,13 and it was through literature that the implications of violence on aristocratic identity were worked out. 8 9

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Catherine Hanley, War and Combat, 1150–1270: The Evidence from Old French Literature (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 104–162, 225. Richard Abels, “Cultural Representations of Warfare in the Middle Ages: The Morgan Picture Bible” in Crusading and Warfare in the Middle Ages, ed. Simon Jon and Nicholas Morton (Burlington, 2014), 13–36. Philippa Maddern, Violence and Social Order: East Anglia 1422–1442 (Oxford, 1992); Cf., Richard Kaeuper’s review of this work in The American Historical Review 9 (1994), 217–218. Warren Brown, Violence in Medieval Europe (Harlow, 2011), 9, 17–20. Paul Hyams, “Neither Unnatural nor Wholly Negative: The Future of Medieval Vengeance” in Vengeance in the Middle Ages: Emotion, Religion and Feud, eds. Susanna Throop and Paul Hyams, 220. Cf., Paul Hyams, “Was There Really Such a Thing as Feud” in Vengeance in the Middle Ages: Emotion, Religion and Feud, eds. Susanna Throop and Paul Hyams, 151–176; Taylor, Chivalry and the Ideals of Knighthood, 131; Crouch, English Aristocracy, 116, 123.

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Armed with Kaeuper’s understanding of chivalric violence and its literary underpinnings, it becomes difficult to think of knights as discriminating, rational actors more focused on reclaiming castles and lands than they were on pursuing vengeance.14 As Kaeuper argues in “Chivalry and the Civilizing Process,” the reflexive use of violence was normative for medieval knights. Honor was worth so much that knights who found themselves affronted could insist upon their right to settle disputes at sword-point. It was prowess that rested at the heart of the chivalric life, and which often acted as a rival to any “courtly” values that encouraged restraint.15 The fact that chivalric literature so often meditates on the problematic repercussions of violence should give those seeking to find a peace within the feud ample reason to pause. As Kaeuper concludes in “The Societal Role of Chivalry,” knights continued to admire literary representations of fantastic violence however disruptive its repercussions might have been in practice. Kaeuper knows all too well the foundational role of violence in the formation of societies. As he argues in “Telling It Like It Was?” we should not mistake Victorian images of knightly civility for true representations of humanity as it was. For a medieval knight, it was ultimately public displays of prowess that provided the key to honor, that “veritable currency of chivalric life, the glittering reward earned by the valorous as a result of their exertions, their hazarding of their bodies.”16 It remains difficult to understand how an appreciation for public order could have been reconciled with the violent affect that rested at the foundation of chivalric culture.17

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For a different perspective, see Dominique Barthélemy “Feudal War in Tenth-Century France,” in Vengeance in the Middle Ages: Emotion, Religion and Feud, eds. Susanna Throop and Paul Hyams, 105–114. 15 Cf., Stephen Jaeger, “Origins of Courtliness after 25 Years”, Haskins Society Journal 21 (2010), 191, 212–214. 16 Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence, 129–130. 17 For a view of anger as an essential component of an “enduring discourse” of political competition, see Stephen White, “The Politics of Anger” in Anger’s Past; The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages, ed. Barbara Rosenwein (Ithaca, 1998), 142. Cf., Barbara Rosenwein, “Worrying about Emotions in History”, The American Historical Review, 107 (2002), 823, 825.

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Literature as Essential Evidence for Understanding Chivalry A former colleague used to insist that there are really only two questions we need to ask: “says who?” and “so what?” Were we to refine these admittedly rough questions into “what are our legitimate sources?” and “how do they help us understand the past?” we might secure more general agreement. But rough or smooth, we are stuck with them and they continue to generate useful debate. These are the questions I want to address in relationship to chivalry, a topic of great interest to all medievalists and certainly to the members of De Re Militari. I expect to generate debate. In the process I will likely have to draw on evidence I have tapped before, but who can doubt in the twenty-first century that recycling is a virtue? My general position will be known to any who have read books and articles I have written,1 but just for clarity let me announce a thesis, that sine qua non that is so often merely sine in student essays – and, yes, in the occasional professional paper. I am convinced of the legitimacy of reading chivalric literature as historical evidence; I believe that use of these sources is, in fact, necessary to an understanding of chivalry; and I take chivalry to be the basic organizing code of the lay elite of Europe for perhaps half a millennium. The issues at hand are not trivial. Of course the validity as historical evidence of some chivalric literature is not at all under serious debate. Chronicles, of crusade or otherwise, will not likely be denounced as a useless class of documents, nor will chivalric biography, certainly not (say) l’Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal. Perhaps even the vernacular manuals would find supporters among most historians. I sincerely hope that this is true, just to take an example at random, of the Livre de chevalerie of Geoffroi de Charny. As with all evidence, these sources must be used with critical caution and matched for fit against other pieces of evidence, rather * Previously published in The Journal of Medieval Military History, 5 (2007), 1–15. 1 War, Justice and Public Order (Oxford, 1988), pp. 184–269; with Elspeth Kennedy, The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny: Text, Context and Translation (Philadelphia, 1996); Chivalry and Violence (Oxford, 1999); “Chivalry and the Civilizing Process,” in Richard Kaeuper, ed., Violence in Medieval Society (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2000); “The Social Meaning of Chivalry in Romance,” in Roberta L. Krueger, ed., Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance (Cambridge, 2000); “Chivalric Violence and Religious Valorization” (in Japanese and English) in Courtiers and Warriors: Comparative Historical Perspectives (Kyoto, 2004).

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like redeeming medieval English exchequer tallies. Or, to draw an image from surveying | rather than finance, the process is rather like establishing points by triangulation: we are more certain when we take several lines of sight. What I am sure causes some furrowed brows and head shaking is the imaginative literature, all those chansons de geste, that towering, misty mountain of romance. The adjective, of course, gives the key to the objection: these texts are imaginative. Don’t historians, like that venerable cop, Joe Friday, just want the facts? Can historians, indeed should historians use these texts that might be discounted as fantasies or escapist dreams? At this point the evidentiary question and the interpretive question – the “says who?” and the “so what?” – begin to converge, as surely they must always converge. Sources are licit if they enhance our understanding of the past – that is, if they add to what we know without flatly contradicting much else we are fairly sure that we know. These sources, in short, should add new dimensions to our understanding of the past. They will not simply reproduce what historians still consider the reality of past occurrences, but they surely should open new vantage points from which to view, and reconstruct, that past, legitimately considered as ideas and values no less than actions. We might first usefully perform the coup de grace on some old notions that stand in the way. Surely the entire genre of chanson de geste is of significance to an investigation of chivalry. We are not limited to what is generally considered the more refined literary form – i.e. romance – alone. These epics were written as chivalry came into being and continued to be written – and read, or heard – as it became the dominant set of ideas and practices for the lay elite. It would likewise be hard to continue arguing that knights listened to chansons de geste, pounding the table and slopping alcoholic fluid from waving goblets, while their ladies read romance chastely in their secluded chambers. We know that knights read or heard romance; they mention romance themes and characters in their own writings; they both inserted their practices and ideas into romance and drew them from romance; they patronized the writing of romance; some of them wrote romance themselves. Both chanson and romance stand valorized to be read as evidence by historians of chivalry. Of course our sense of the legitimacy and utility of any set of sources will naturally be shaped by the questions for which we are seeking answers. The venerated Marc Bloch noted that “It would be sheer fantasy to imagine that for each historical problem there is a unique type of document with a specific sort of use.”2 Yet some documents provide rich veins of ore going off in one direction rather than another. One type of text may tell us the route of an army, the 2 The Historian’s Craft, trans. Peter Putnam (New York, 1965), p. 67.

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nature of command decisions, or the course of a fight. Others, however, allow us to get inside the warrior’s heads, to learn their formative assumptions, their framework for interpreting the world. After all, chivalric ideas provided the lens through which the lay elite understood violence and honor, status, piety, material possessions, gender relationships – not a list of topics likely to be 2 shunted aside by any | historian. Imaginative literature (joined by some chronicles and vernacular treatises) tells us about what Marc Bloch and his fellows valued as mentalité provided we read with skill and caution. A text, after all, may present a more or less glowing ideal for knighthood, rather than reveal common practice; and the ideals in any case may emanate more from a clerical or a knightly perspective. Reform is a constant goal, if advanced from various perspectives, both knightly and clerical. We must avoid what in Biblical studies is termed literalism or fundamentalism. Scholars read all texts critically and analytically. Or rather they should. Have not many scholars read Ramon Lull’s late thirteenth-century text on chivalry3 as a straight-forward eulogy of the knightly role in society, never noticing the evidence of subterranean fears that tormented him and led him (in other works) to ask, “Who in the world does more harm than knights?” and to assert flatly “they are the devil’s servants”?4 It should be evident (and I have argued this elsewhere) that we must read these texts both prescriptively and descriptively, as statements of what an author wants chivalry to be no less than what he or she recognizes it is. Each reading brings benefits. Knowing the difference is crucial. The structure of the work, even in small details, can provide what may not appear anywhere else. I first encountered “the French mode of turning” as a jousting technique from literature – apparently after a first pass with lances, skilled French knights pulled the horse up short, turned, and got momentum to hit the opponent hard as he was just recovering speed from a gradual turn. Of course the larger insights, about mentalité, bring larger rewards. Yet this goal may sound more difficult and idiosyncratic than its actual practice proves to be. Repeatedly I have taken classes of graduates and – more often – undergraduates through a series of chansons and romances. With only a few classes under their belts, they acquire the technique and begin to analyze, distinguishing the prescriptive from the descriptive, and interpreting especially the former, in historical context. What they are learning is hardly the death of the author, but rather the birth of the author. They learn that texts do not write themselves. They come to see points of view, programs, valorizations. In the Couronnement de Louis the imagined (and unnamed) pope offers the

3 Libre del ordre de cavalleria, trans. Brian R. Price (Union City, California, 2001). 4 Quoted in Jocelyn N. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms (Oxford, 1976), p. 60.

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imagined hero Guillaume d’Orange the following religious benefits to encourage his fight with the dread pagan champion, Corsolt: …you may eat meat every single day for the rest of your life and take as many wives as you have a mind to. You will never commit any sin however wicked (so long as you avoid any act of treason) that will not be discounted, all the days of your life, and you shall have your lodging in paradise…Saint Gabriel himself will show you the way.5 Students hardly need to be told that this is not an interaction between pope and knight wie es eigentlich gewesen. Not one has ever suspected that polygamy | received papal approval. Yet the scene is not impossibly far from 3 reality, either. When, in a chronicle of the Albigensian crusade, Count Raymond of Toulouse meets with Pope Innocent iii they get along so well that the pontiff allows him to touch the face of Christ imprinted on the Veronica and “absolved him of all the sins he had committed until that moment.”6 The sharper students note that tell-tale inclusion of treason as the only unforgivable sin: this is not, they recognize, the actual clerical view. The sharpest readers go on to realize that this passage presents a cleric as created by knightly fantasy. We might compare the famous passage of William of Newburg in which Roger of Salisbury, who could apparently rattle off a mass at top speed, was declared the best chaplain for knights.7 And it is the fantasy that counts. We can almost hear knightly minds at work: “Would it not be splendid if all clerics were like this, understanding of our hard lives, generous, forgiving, hard only on those detestable traitors?” Hearing the list of proffered benefits, the imagined William of the epic can only gasp, “Ah! God help us!…never was there a more generous-hearted cleric!”8 The very language of chivalric literature can open vistas, both through close attention to meanings of particular words and phrases and through its exuberant valorizations. Here, from the vast Vulgate or Lancelot-Grail Cycle of prose romances, is a knight who has first seen Lancelot at his characteristic work in a tournament. The stunned witness tells his wife, [I]t takes a lot more to be a worthy man than I thought it did this morning. I’ve learned so much today that I believe there’s only one truly worthy 5 Ernest Langlois, ed., Le Couronnement de Louis (Paris, 1924–1925); David Hoggan, trans., in Glanville-Price, ed., William of Orange: Four Old French Epics; see laisse 18. 6 Janet Shirley, The Song of the Cathar Wars (Aldershot, 2000), p. 31. 7 William of Newburgh, The History of English Affairs, vol. 1, ed. and trans. P.G. Walsh and M.J. Kennedy (Warminster, Wiltshire, 1988), pp. 56–57. 8 See note 5.

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man in the whole world. I saw the one I’m talking about prove himself so well against knights today that I don’t believe any mortal man since chivalry was first established has done such marvelous deeds as he did today.9 What were these deeds? He elaborates: I could recount more than a thousand fine blows, for I followed that knight every step to witness the marvelous deeds he did. I saw him kill five knights and five men-at-arms with five blows so swift that he nearly cut horses and knights in two. As for my own experience, I can tell you he split my shield in two, cleaved my saddle and my horse in half at the shoulders, all with a single blow…I saw him kill four knights with one thrust of his lance…If it were up to me, he’d never leave me. I’d keep him with me always, because I couldn’t hold a richer treasure.10 I believe this qualifies as exuberant valorization. Though a strong example, it is in no way uncharacteristic. No reader of thousands of pages of chivalric literature could deny, I submit, that prowess was the central element in the complex 4 compound that formed chivalry.| Why, then, the skeptic might reasonably ask, does this hyperbolic language – four knights skewered like chunks of lamb on a shishkabob – not appear in “real” historical sources such as reliable chronicles? Why are sword strokes not followed anatomically in a serious work such as the Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal? Imaginative literature is merely fantastic, some might conclude. In answer, first, I would insist again that the literary works are indeed significant because they are, in part, fantastic, or at least imagined. They show us fantasies that knights obviously appreciated. We know knights listened to, patronized and enjoyed a literature in which they appeared larger than life, in which their life and death issues were explored and debated as crucially significant, in which they could fight all day, magnificently hacking their way through body parts and even whole bodies – human and equine – and then be revived by magic potions. This is, indeed, not realistic, but what is at issue is more than the technical capacity of muscle-driven swords to cut armor and bodies as described. Secondly, we must be cautious in asserting that such scenes are absolutely missing from what some might consider more safely “historical” sources. Even in Marshal’s Histoire some skulls are split, brains spill, entrails drag on the ground as in chansons. Yet if these details do not fill scores 9

Alexandre Micha, Lancelot, 9 vols. (Geneva, 1978–1983), 4:198, trans. William Kibler in Norris Lacy, gen. ed., Lancelot-Grail, 5 vols. (New York, 1993–1996), 3:161. 10 Micha, Lancelot, 4:198–199, trans. Kibler in Lacy, gen. ed., Lancelot-Grail, 3:161–162.

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of descriptive lines of fighting, it is surely because the author of the Histoire (Jean the Anonymous, as Duby would name him) thinks of himself as an historian. He regularly declares that he cannot repeat what he does not know.11 We can add that only the all-knowing authors of romance can follow each lance through the body to the spleen and specify that some fine sword blow split the skull all the way to the chin rather than merely to the eyes or the teeth. The historian or chronicler must be content to say who fought well on a crowded, confused and dusty field, and how the fight finally went. His historian assures us that William “hammered like a blacksmith on iron,” that others “hack like carpenters” on enemies, that opponents are “battered and badly mauled” by “fine blows.”12 Yet as the author cautions in recounting one fight, “it would take more than this day’s length for me to tell one by one of all the fine blows dealt.”13 That there was a knightly audience for works that could follow blows anatomically – in chanson and romance, where it could be satisfyingly imagined – is significant information about the ethos of chivalry. For specific language, we should turn from violence straight up to that timeless classic mixture, sex and violence. The medieval version was shaken, not stirred. In the Histoire outlining his career, his enemies accuse William Marshal of fornicating with the queen, the wife of the Young King, son of Henry ii. The sentence describing this is (and you must pardon the author’s French no less than mine) “il le fait a la reïne.”14 Literally, he makes it with, or does it to the queen. | The verb is that multi-purpose term, faire. What strikes me as highly 5 interesting is that this same verb is used in another passage when royalist knights daily sally forth from Winchester castle besieged by the Empress Matilda. The Old French phrase tells us they rushed out “por faire chevalerie.”15 Literally read, again, this means to make or do chivalry. Both fighting and making love are described by the same verb, faire. A knight can do chivalry and make love using the same verb. This is still true in Sir Thomas Malory’s day. In late fifteenth-century English the phrase is “have adoo.” To “have adoo” with a knight means to fight him. To “have adoo” with a woman means to copulate with her.16 Modern vulgar phrases unfortunately come to mind, but there is nothing new under the sun, or on television screen, stage, or the pages of some

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A.J. Holden and S. Gregory, ed. and trans., Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal. History of William Marshal (London, 2002), 1:54–55, 180–183, 226–227, 252–253, 334–335. 12 For this and similar language, see ibid., 18–19, 22–23, 50–53, 196–197, 257. 13 Ibid., 54–55. 14 Ibid., 266, line 5244. 15 Ibid., 10, line 176. 16 Vinaver, Malory. Works (2nd ed., Oxford, 1971), passim.

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magazines. That this mentality is at work in the Middle Ages significantly reduces temptations to idealize chivalry or reduce it to an abstracted and idealized courtly love. Such insights have been randomly chosen, though their ranks could be stiffened with enough fresh recruits to fill the space available here. Instead, I would like to focus attention on how chivalric literature helps advance our understanding of knighthood in relation to the two major governing and legislating institutions of the medieval world, the realms of clergie and royauté (what we in our haste often call church and state). What insights can chivalric literature give us about the relationship of knighthood with the ideals promulgated by learned clerics and by royalist clerks and administrators? One of my favorite romances, the mid-fourteenth-century Middle English Tale of Gamelyn, speaks informatively to the tension between chivalerie and royauté and this even in England where royal power was more securely established than across the Channel.17 We touch here on a large and contentious historical question, the role of the knights and gentry in governance and law. My point is simply to argue – against what seems to be emerging as orthodoxy – that there is a genuine historical issue to be considered here. The knights and gentry, I submit, were not simply loyal and stalwart agents of public order and royal authority who manfully shouldered the burdens of local governance, and did so fairly and equitably. Of course Gamelyn is not finally an anti-royal hero; the king’s ultimate legitimizing authority is accepted. Yet the chivalric sense of relative independence from the constraints of royal justice informs the very structure and many a statement made within this popular romance (and many others). The hero takes justice into his own hands at the end of the tale, hanging the sheriff and jury, corrupt of course, and hurling the bribed judge symbolically over the bar of justice, breaking his arm (having already smashed his cheekbone) as a preliminary to hanging the bastard. All have been “convicted” by a jury of Gamelyn’s own followers who overawe everyone else present. An appreciative | and understanding king approves of this violent selfhelp. The tales of Robin Hood hover on the horizon. Other English texts speak to the need for royal justice and explicitly buttress the royal role, even against those of knightly rank. The Middle English Havelock the Dane (written in the late thirteenth century) will come readily to mind. At the very outset of the poem the idealized king has produced Edenic peace by being not only tough and regal, but a super knight: 17

Stephen Knight and Thomas Olgren, eds., Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales (Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1997), pp. 184–227; cf. Kaeuper, “An Historian’s Reading of the Tale of Gamelyn,” Medium Aevum 52 (1983), 51–62.

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He was the beste knight at nede That evere mighte ridden on stede Or wepne wagge or folk ut lede; Of knight ne havede he nevere drede That he ne sprong forth so sparke of glede, And lete him knawe of hise hand-dede – Hu he couthe with wepne spede: And other he refte him hors or wede, Or made him sone handes sprede And “Loverd, merci! Loude grede.”18 Parallels from chronicles, administrative and legal records abound. Meetings of most royal courts ran as smoothly as such occasions can, though a minority report might be written by Reynard the Fox.19 Occasionally some thoroughly historical courts were surrounded and overawed or even overwhelmed by bands composed of knights and gentry or groups led by them.20 It is important that chivalric romance provides some sense of the touchy knightly feeling for jurisdictional independence. Clearly such feelings persisted as an undercurrent only to erupt now and then like an artesian spring. In other words, romance shows us a debate, tensions. Not only do knights serve kings, they maintain a sense that their own licit role, their rights, overlap with aspects of royal power, and cannot be infringed. On some days they simply enjoy exercising power, often swords in hand. Imaginative literature – even animal fable in the case of Reynard the Fox – shows us an important historical reality. To ignore it is to deprive ourselves of useful evidence. The knight Bertelay in the early thirteenth-century Old French Vulgate Cycle could sympathize with Gamelyn – or Reynard.21 This imagined knight killed an | imagined enemy without first approaching his imagined king to 7 obtain justice. King Leodagan assures his knight that he would not have ruled 18 19

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Ronald Herzman, Graham Drake, and Eve Salisbury, eds., Four Romances of England (Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1999), 87. Interpretation and a full range of texts cited in Kaeuper, “The King and the Fox: Tales of Reynard the Fox and French Kingship in the Twelfth Century,” in Anthony Musson, ed., Expectations of the Law in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2001). Telling examples and good commentary are given by G.O. Sayles in Select Cases in the Court of King’s Bench (1272–1422), 7 vols., Selden Society 55 (1936), 57 (1938), 58 (1939), 74 (1955), 76 (1957) 82 (1965) 88 (1971). The following discussion draws on “The Story of Merlin,” trans. Rupert T. Pickens in Lacy, gen. ed., Lancelot-Grail, 1:339–341; for the Old French see H. Oskar Sommer, ed., Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances, 7 vols. (Washington, d.c., 1909), 2:310–313.

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against him, had he sought justice. His offense lay in taking justice into his own hands. Bertelay, in response, asserts personal loyalty, but also his right to personal independent action: “Sir, say what you will,” he tells the king, “but I have never done you any wrong, nor will I ever, God willing.” The king’s court thinks otherwise and convicts him of treason: for “justice was not his to mete out.” Even the reluctant judges who condemned Ganelon in the Chanson de Roland might be called upon for confirmation: Ganelon’s defense matches Bertelay’s, after all.22 Imagined figures and dialogue, indeed, yet I could also cite the very historical French lord who shouted out in fury to the court trying him that the jurisdiction of the bailli, the count and the king did not matter to him so much as one large turd (unam magnam stercus).23 Some literary sources portray stout attitudes of independence to both clerical and royalist claims simultaneously. In the twelfth-century Old French Chanson d’Aspremont the wonderfully combative character Duke Girart of Burgundy snarls against both the Gregorian claims of the Church and the monarchical claims of the Capetians (projected here onto the Carolingian monarchy of Charlemagne). In response to Archbishop Turpin’s request for military aid against pagan invaders, he trumpets his own independence: Across my own realm I have my own priests: Never for baptisms or any Christian service Do we need the pope’s authority; I’ll make a pope myself, should I so please! In all my possessions whatsoever I hold not the value of one shelled egg From any earthly man, but from the Lord God alone. Your king will never be loved by me Unless he is kneeling down at my feet.24 The relationship of the chivalric to governance is not simple. Knighthood was scarcely hostile to every act of governance on the part of kings or clerics. Medieval governing institutions, it must be said plainly, could not have emerged without cooperation from the knights. Yet sensing the powerful surge of old currents of independence is useful. Raoul de Cambrai, another twelfth-century epic, decries the destruction of churches and the burning of nuns; yet it cannot 22 23 24

Gerald J. Brault, ed. and trans., Chanson de Roland, laisses 270–291. Actes du Parlement de Paris 1st ser., ed. E. Boutaric, 2 vols. (Paris, 1863–1867), vol. 2, number 7916 (1327). Louis Brandin, ed., La Chanson d’Aspremont (Paris, 1970), lines 1164–1174, my translation.

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restrain the voice of celebration recounting great deeds carried out heroically with edged weaponry, whatever carping criticisms clerics might make.25| Chivalry lived in a world of conflicting ideals, as its literature showed. I confess that the informatively imperfect fit of medieval Christianity and medieval chivalry fascinates me most of all. This is – and herewith another confession – the subject of a book I have been dragging toward conclusion for a number of years. All that I can do here is to suggest a few of the ways in which reading imaginative chivalric literature alongside the more prescriptive clerical treatises reveals tensions and complications. If such readings show the significant distance between these two realms of thought, they likewise emphasize the selective chivalric appropriation of clerical ideals. These texts, that is, expand our sense of the sheer power and unshakeable sense of rectitude embedded in chivalry as the elite lay ethos. Chivalry indeed borrowed chapter and verse from clerical thought, but the knights and those who wrote for them adapted what they took and took it, finally, on their own terms. Thus I think R.W. Southern made one of his rare errors of interpretation when he declared that “there was no such thing as a lay esprit de corps.”26 I submit that a close reading of chivalric literature helps us to see that chivalry was precisely the lay elite’s esprit de corps. It is declared “the highest order God has formed and made” by Chretien de Troyes in his twelfth-century Conte du Graal, for example.27 Geoffroi de Charny in his vernacular manual of the mid-fourteenth century edges as close to that position as a prudent man can come without open offense.28 The mythology of chivalry – the Nine Worthies, all the genealogies of knights, even, so to speak, of tables – emerges from literary sources. Maurice Keen’s fine chapter on this subject underscores the point. His footnotes cite one literary source after another. And he likewise reminds us that our understanding of chivalry must be “tonal.”29 Chivalric literature, I submit, gives us the tonality. Consider for a moment human hands, the work they do, what they accomplish and symbolize. In the passage from Havelock the Dane quoted above, the king was said to be so mighty of his hands that he could force even obstreperous knights to bow low and spread their hands in supplication of mercy. Hand symbolism is surely revealing. The hands of the priest bless; they even perform the central miracle of the faith at the altar, transforming earthly elements into 25 26 27 28 29

Sara Kay, ed., tr., Raoul de Cambrai (Oxford, 1992). Western Society and the Church (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1970), p. 39. Nigel Bryant, ed. and trans., Perceval: The Story of the Grail (Cambridge, 1988), p. 19. R. Kaeuper and E. Kennedy, The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny (Philadelphia, 1996), pp. 162–167. Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven, 1984), pp. 102–124.

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God’s body and blood. Consider, then, the hands of the knight. They are enfolded by those of his lord in the classic act of homage; they grip sword and lance and perform the great deeds and fine blows so tirelessly praised in so many lines of literature. Can these rough warrior hands be joined with the softer hands of clerics under the aegis of medieval religion? The comments of Abbot Suger, written into his Deeds of Louis the Fat, are informative. He links sacerdotal hands with the mass, knightly hands with the pollution of blood: “If 9 hands made holy by the | body and blood of the Lord are placed in homage beneath a layman’s hands which reek with blood from a sword, then the holy orders and sacred anointing are degraded.”30 At the coronation of Louis le Gros, Suger speaks specifically of the sword the lay hands hold. He relates that the Archbishop of Sens and his suffragan bishops …annointed him with the oil of the most sacred unction and said the mass of thanks-giving. He took from him the sword of secular knighthood, and girded him with the ecclesiastical sword for the punishment of evildoers, and joyfully crowned him with the diadem of the kingdom.31 Suger will later assert that in his warring against the peace breakers and local tyrants Louis “piously slaughtered the impious.”32 He uses the same phrase for men a busy Louis has authorized to kill a band of traitors, even adding, “No one could doubt that the hand of God sped so swift a revenge.”33 Here God’s hand works through the king’s hand, even through his knights’ hands. Knights may have needed little encouragement to believe the virtue of their handiwork as attested by the constant references to killing “avec mes mains” (with their own hands) throughout the pages of the Vulgate Cycle or “with myne owne handes” in the Morte Darthur of Thomas Malory. Yet the complications and tensions cannot be kept at bay when these works are compared to worried and critical clerical views. When twelfth-century scholars (recalling some lines from Lucan) said Richard Lion-Heart was only happy when his achievements were marked by the blood of his enemies, were they only showing off latinate classicism?34 The fear of blood pollution – more broadly, of disorder – looms like a dark 30

Richard Cusimano and John Moorhead, ed. and trans., Suger. The Deeds of Louis the Fat (Washington, d.c., 1992), p. 50. 31 Cusimano and Moorhead, Suger. The Deeds of Louis the Fat, p. 63. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 See the famous words of Gerald of Wales: Thomas Wright, ed. and trans., The Historical Works of Geraldus Cambrensis (London, 1887), p. 160.

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cloud. Straightforward fears about knightly handiwork and public order can bring on thunder and lightning, in chivalric romance. In the vast romance Lancelot within the Vulgate Cycle, Bors is taken – along with other knights – into a castle chamber to be shown a marvel.35 A knight is lying abed with his two hands covered by a rich cloth. When it is removed, the select audience see that his sword is firmly stuck in one hand – he cannot release it – and that the blade is firmly rammed through the palm of the other hand. Since only the best knight in the world (the standard formula in romance) can pull the sword free, all present ambitiously try and all fail, only causing increased pain and misery to the knight in the bed. The gathered knights fall to arguing about which knight in the world is, in fact, the best, and so is needed for the release of the poor fellow in bed. Of course their quarrel spills over into the field outside where they settle the question | of best fighter, by fighting. Bors (championing the cause of Lancelot as tops) squares off against a knight unrecognized by him (but who actually is his fellow Round Table knight Sagramore), who has championed Sir Gawain. Beaten to a bloody pulp, Sagramore concedes the strength of the case for Lancelot. The wounded knight in the chamber deplores their fighting, but is pointedly admonished that the combat is over the issue of his own relief. I submit to you that this is a marvelously complex piece of symbolism, but that it is not suggestive of an ideology simply conducive to public order. King Bors’ sword, as you will recall, is significantly named “Wrathful” in the Story of Merlin in the Vulgate Cycle.36 This small detail could pass unnoticed or be thought insignificant until we reflect for a moment that wrath is one of the Seven Deadly Sins and is routinely denounced in sermon and treatise; priests were instructed to question sinners about feelings of wrath in the process leading to confession. How did a later medieval knight react to each sense of the word? The query could be repeated with many other actions carried out by a knight’s hands. One of the proofs of the great Lancelot’s prowess is the fate of those who feel the stunning blows he delivers with lance or sword either in battle or in the tournaments so little removed from battle. Authors admiringly report that those who do not die outright (a consequence of Lancelot’s sword cleaving them to the chin or into the chest) are at least maimed for life. In Malory’s colorful language, “the moste party of them never throoft thereafter.”37 By contrast, Middle English clerical denunciations of tournaments specify as 35

For what follows, see Micha, ed., Lancelot, 2:177–182; Krueger, trans., “Lancelot,” in Lacy, gen. ed., Lancelot-Grail, 4:50–52. 36 Sommer, ed., Vulgate Version, 2:234; Rupert T. Pickens, trans., in Lacy, gen. ed., LancelotGrail, 1:296 (the name of the sword is mentioned twice). 37 Vinaver, Malory. Works, p. 156.

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one aspect of their utter sinfulness that many men are maimed so that they never thrive afterwards.38 It would be just barely possible that one or two readers still consider the So What question slighted in my discussion. Let me convince them beyond cavil with a brief approach to two concluding questions. First, did knights – even if we accept that they heard or read romance – really recognize or care about tensions between the practice of their profession and the religion that animated so much in their society? I think they did. It is helpful to remember that we are not simply dealing with the timeless issue of soldiers and war in relationship with religion. Unlike modern soldiers who may be conscripted from peacetime occupations for temporary service in military or naval forces, knights were professional warriors who defined their status and place in the world by their right to bear and use arms. At the end of a lifetime of fighting, as is well known, many knights decided that it would be prudent to die in the rough garb of some religious order; many more who did not take that dramatic step at least endowed or enriched monastic houses in order to gain salvific prayers. It is likewise helpful to remember in an age in 11 which hell has receded markedly how | vivid its presence was to all medieval folk. They knew what potentially awaited them as sinners, that the slightest pain in purgatory (as a Middle English sermon stated) was worse than a year of the most excruciating torment in this world; they knew when they thought of hell that, as another Middle English sermon stated sweetly, “soul may never for pain die.”39 They walked into churches beneath carved portals with the messages clear; they sat beneath vivid wall paintings that could occupy even a mind that wandered during a sermon. Can chivalric literature add to the impression gained from these well-known sources? By its very nature the evidence is scattered and must be culled, but it is convincing. Knights sometimes seem to be whistling past the graveyard, trying not to think about their role in widespread destruction and the shedding of human blood, about retribution and final justice. Medieval men who proudly and selfconsciously proclaimed that they lived by the sword might well have felt some mental caution and agitation – if they were at all thoughtful – upon reading or hearing a homily on the fifth commandment, precepts from the Sermon on the Mount, or Christ’s stern and famous words to Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane about the fate of those who live by the sword. The message of sermons and 38 39

See e.g. the comments of Richard Rolle: Paul F. Theiner, ed. and trans., The Contra Amatores Mundi of Richard Rolle, (Berkeley, ca, 1968), pp. 96, 181. Robert Mannyng of Brunne, Handlyng Synne, ed. Idelle Sullens (Binghamton, ny, 1983), line 3284.

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homilies was buttressed, of course, by the continual admonitions to practice self-examination and confession. Though they worked steadily to repress any compunctions generated by their own genuine piety or by clerical admonition, a species of spiritual fear nevertheless comes to the surface with surprising clarity. At a crucial point during the crusading expedition that captured Lisbon in the mid twelfth century – as part of what we simplify and call the second crusade – “a portent appeared among the Flemings.” It was the practice for a priest, after the completion of mass, to distribute blessed bread to the warriors. But on this Sunday, the blessed bread was bloody, and when [the priest] directed that it be purged with a knife, it was found to be as permeated with blood as flesh which can never be cut without bleeding.40 To a modern historian what is more remarkable is the moral drawn from the incident by the writer of this chronicle, a cleric who appears to have been quite close to the men at arms he served and, in fact, a spokesman for their views: And some, interpreting it, said that this fierce and indomitable people, covetous of the goods of others, although at the moment under the guise of a pilgrimage and religion, had not yet put away the thirst for human blood.41 Issues involving looting are significant throughout this chronicle. Sensitivity to the issue may have been heightened by Muslim taunts hurled at the crusaders | in debate. “Labeling your ambition zeal for righteousness,” they charge, 12 “you misrepresent vices as virtues.”42 Are the Muslims being allowed to speak in this chronicle some of the inner fears that troubled the crusaders themselves – fears about bloodlust and looting? Such critiques can easily be given to outsiders, raising issues without the inconvenience or even danger of endorsing them. A link comes in the sermon preached by the priest who seems to have written the chronicle. Though with more caution, he probed similar issues. His sermon reminded the warriors that since they have followed Christ and accepted poverty, they must not trust in oppression or become vain in robbery.43 The priest saw a beam in their eyes; did they perhaps feel a mote, 40

Charles Wendell David, trans., The Conquest of Lisbon, with foreword by Jonathan Phillips (New York, 2001), pp. 134–135. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid., pp. 120–121. 43 Ibid, pp. 152–153.

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even after an agreement with the Portuguese king that he would possess the city only after they had looted it to their satisfaction?44 Did they think about this in church, or while lying awake late at night, or in confession? Worrying deathbed speeches are put into the mouths of historical knights by chroniclers and were likewise attributed to the imagined ideal knightly figures in romance. Galehaut, one of the dominant and most admired figures early in the thirteenth-century Lancelot, tries to convince a wise man to reveal to him the moment of his death. He wants to be prepared, he says, “since I have committed many wrongs in my life, destroying cities, killing people, dispossessing and banishing people.”45 Master Elias, the wise man, agrees that this must be true, “for any man who has conquered as much as you have must have a heavy burden of sins, and it’s no wonder.”46 Bernier, a major figure in the long Old French chanson Raoul de Cambrai expresses similar worries about sin, killing, and atonement. He, too, seeks wise advice – in this case from a select group of his courtiers: Advise me, barons…for God’s sake. I am frightened at the thought of the sins I have committed, and alarmed at the number of people I have killed. Raoul [his lord] was among them, and that weighs on me indeed. I intend to go to Saint-Gilles at once and pray to the saint to intercede on my behalf with God our lord and king.47 In the late medieval Middle English Awntyrs of Arthur a ghostly apparition (who is, we learn, the Queen’s mother come from the other world) rises dramatically from a northern tarn to warn Gawain and Queen Guenevere (who have strayed from their hunting party) of the yawning gap that separates the practices of the Round Table from fundamental precepts of Christianity. Gawain takes advantage 13 of this visitor from the beyond to ask a revealing question. He says to this ghost:| How shal we fare, quod the freke, that fonden to fight, And thus defoulen the folke on fele kinges londes, And riches over reymes withouten eny right, Wynen worship in were thorgh wightnesse of hondes?48 44 Ibid., pp. 110–111. 45 Micha, Lancelot, 1:61, trans. Samuel N. Rosenberg in Lacy, gen. ed., Lancelot-Grail, 2:254. 46 Ibid. 47 Kay, ed. and trans., Raoul de Cambrai, pp. 386–387. 48 Lines 261–312: Thomas Hahn, Sir Gawain: Eleven Romances and Tales (Kalamazoo, mi, 1995), pp. 186–187.

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What he hears in response from the fearsome spirit is a prediction of the fall of the Round Table. Occasionally chronicles report incidents in which knights speak to a particular unease over killing their fellow-Christians. Josserand de Brancion, as Joinville tells, came away with the prize for valor in each of thirty-six battles and skirmishes in which he had taken part. Yet after one Franco-German fight that took place on a Good Friday, he entered a church he had saved from destruction, fell dramatically upon his knees before the altar and prayed aloud in Joinville’s presence: “Lord…I pray Thee to have mercy on me, and take me out of these wars among Christians in which I have spent a great part of my life; and grant that I may die in Thy service, and so come to enjoy Thy kingdom in paradise.”49 The scene is real and immediate. One can almost hear the armor clank as the knight falls to his knees in anguished prayer. A fourteenth-century miracle story praising Saint Martial makes a similar point. In the campaigning of the Hundred Years War, an English squire went out plundering with his men in the region of Limoges, but was unexpectedly thrown into the raging Dordogne River when his horse harness suddenly snapped. Sinking to certain death beneath the rushing water, he made two quick promises: first, he would offer a certain weight of wax for himself and his horse when Saint Martial’s head was displayed in its sanctuary; second, he would never take up arms again against any Christian. At once, he sensed that a man led him, followed by his fortunate horse, safely out of the water. (The story is told, by the way, in a collection of St Martial’s miracles, not in some text with a particular bias against war or killing.)50 And we are led to our last point by returning to our basic opening issue. Does this approach to the So What question on literary sources broadly enrich our historical understanding? I would emphasize that we gain a crucial sense of the sheer power of chivalric ideas functioning indeed as the lay elite’s esprit de corps. These ideas intersect creatively with those of Church and State; they also sometimes contest ideas of Church and State. But what we see is how vital the ideas are, how independent the knights could be wherever ideas and practices that form structural members of chivalry fall under criticism. Knights can come to terms with the emerging state, though on some lines they remain touchy and | dangerous. Formally pious – undoubtedly in some 14 49 50

Natallis de Wailly, ed., Joinville. Histoire de Saint Louis (Paris, n.d.), 152; M.R.B. Shaw, ed. and trans., Joinville and Villehardouin, Chronicles of the Crusades (Baltimore, 1963), p. 235. Jean-Loup Lemaitre, “Les miracles de saint Martial accomplis lors de l’ostention de 1388,” Bulletin de la Société archéologique et historique du Limousin 102 (1975) 67–139, at 106–107. Discussed in Michael Goodich, Violence and Miracles, 135–136.

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instances genuinely and deeply pious – they can co-opt religious ideals to valorize their profession, twisting the borrowed ideas almost beyond recognition in the process. And they can worry late at night, late in life. Thus our literary sources, far from beguiling us with mere fantasy, show the direction and complexity of thought among those who functioned as the necessary armed force within a religious society busily seeking right order through clerical and kingly leadership. But we need to remember that the knights thought they were leaders, too. If their world was increasingly ordered by governing institutions of church and state, they were not simple supporters or opponents. Or perhaps they were both simultaneously, animated as they were by the worship of prowess as well as the worship of God.|

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William Marshal, Lancelot, and the Issue of Chivalric Identity In searching for a better understanding of chivalric identity, we might well begin in the year 1911. Though perhaps not a date that often attracts medievalists’ close consideration, 1911 repays attention, for in that year the first Handbook for Boys was published by the Boy Scouts of America.1 This original Handbook (a facsimile of which I obtained via the Internet) presented in Chapter 6 a concise “History of Chivalry,” sixteen pages packed with enthusiastic explanation and wonderful illustrations. That first edition (the title page appears as Figure  10.1, overleaf) numbered 300,000 copies; the print run climbed tenfold to three million in the second edition of 1914, so that the Handbook had circulated in a good many copies by 1925, when, sadly, the chapter on chivalry vanished. By then, I believe, it had done its work on an entire generation or more. We may be interested in the 1911 Handbook, however, more as a reflection than as a cause. The underlying conception of chivalry it presented was not the Handbook’s own creation, but rather a splendidly American twist on views solidly established in the Victorian world. A few illustrations and quotations from the text will make the point better than any summary. The account opens with a representation of an “Ancient Knight” (Figure 10.2) and these words: A little over fifteen hundred years ago the great order of knighthood and chivalry was founded. The reason for this was the feeling on the part of the best men of that day that it was the duty of the stronger to help the weak. (237) If the date raises eyebrows – chivalry beginning in the fifth century – even some modern accounts preserve the sentiment that chivalry was beneficent and protective. Yet, as the Handbook history qualifies the picture: | 1 Of course in those days there also lived men who called themselves knights, but who had none of the desire for service that inspired Arthur and the others .… Chivalry then was a revolt against their brutal acts and ignorance, * Previously published in Essays in Medieval Studies, 22 (2005), 1–19. 1 Boy Scouts of America: Handbook for Boys (np, 1976). Original edition published by Doubleday, Garden City, New York. Subsequent references to this edition are given by page number in the text.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004302655_014

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Figure 10.1   

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and a protest against the continuation of the idea that might was right .…. Of course this struggle of right against wrong was not confined to the days in which chivalry was born. (237) | Here the point is driven home with a fine representation of a Pilgrim Father, and the text links this figure with chivalry (Figure 10.3):

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Figure 10.2   

When the Pilgrim Fathers founded the American colonies, the work of Arthur and Alfred and the other great men of ancient days was renewed and extended and fitted to the new conditions and times. With the English settlements of Raleigh and Captain John Smith we might almost say that a new race of men was born and a new kind of knight was developed (238). This new race of the chivalrous swiftly crosses the Appalachian Mountains in the figure of the pioneer (Figure 10.4): | 3 No set of men … showed this spirit of chivalry more than our pioneers beyond the Alleghenies. In their work and service they paralleled very closely the knights of the Round Table, but whereas Arthur’s knights were dressed in suits of armor, the American pioneers were dressed in

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Figure 10.3   

buckskin. They did, however, the very same things which ancient chivalry had done, clearing the forests of wild animals, suppressing the outlaws and bullies and thieves of their day, and enforcing a proper respect for women. Like the old knights they often were compelled to do their work amid scenes of great bloodshed, although they loved to live in peace. (239) The theme comes to its peak, of course, with the link to modern Boy Scouts, drawn as Modern Knights, successors to chivalry of old (Figure 10.5):

4

Just as the life of the pioneers was different from that of the knights of the Round Table, and as they each practiced chivalry in keeping with their own surroundings, so the life of today is different from both, but the need of chivalry is very much the same. Might still tries to make right.… So today there is a demand for a modern type of chivalry. It is for this reason that Boy Scouts of America have come into being. (240) |

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Figure 10.4   

Perhaps there is no better example of chivalry than the life and experience of Abraham Lincoln, the greatest of all our American men. (241) Lincoln is shown twice (Figures 10.6 and 10.7), in the second figure to illustrate the ideal of Using Every Opportunity: He split rails for a livelihood, and fought his way upward by hard work, finally achieving for himself an education in the law, becoming an advocate in the courts of Illinois. (241) The case is complete and is summarized: Thus we see that chivalry is not a virtue that had its beginning long ago and merely lived a short time, becoming a mere story. Chivalry began in the far-distant past out of the desire to help others, and the knights of the olden days did this as best they could. Now the privilege and responsibility comes to the boys of today, and the voices of the knights

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Figure 10.8   

of the olden times and of the hardy pioneers of our own country are urging the boys of today to do the right thing, in a gentlemanly way, for the sake of those about them. All of those men, whether knights or pioneers, had an unwritten code, somewhat like our scout-law, and their motto was very much like the motto of the Boy Scouts, “Be Prepared.” (243)| 5 The history completes the virtues required with discussions of Good Manners (Figure 10.8): Cheerfulness (superbly embodied in Figure 10.9). Character (shown by a scout saving a child from a mad dog in Figure 10.10). | 6 Religion (seen in the classic case of a scout helping an old lady across the street in Figure 10.11). No medievalist can be unaware of the venerable and fascinating Victorian ideals that stand behind the chivalric history in the Handbook. Limitations of space and the watchfulness of copyright lawyers prevent me from presenting another round of illustrations, featuring pre-Raphaelite paintings of Galahad with bowed head bathed in a soft, heavenly light, or water colors showing truly

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Figure 10.9   

Figure 10.10   

stout Victorian gents stuffed into armor and preparing to revive the tournament at Eglinton in 1839. My initial point thankfully requires no further illustrations. We must at all costs avoid that besetting sin of much scholarship, reading history backwards; we must with hands on hearts swear to eschew faux chivalry, even in the survey

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Figure 10.11   

course, where it cannot be listed amongst the uncomplicated Forces for Order we outline on the board for students who are, newcomers all, pondering the High or Later Middle Ages. In short, we must solemnly pledge to each other that we will interpret the chivalry of the Middle Ages only by using genuinely medieval sources and never confuse Victorian efforts to solve the problem of vigorous males, or the “boy problem,” with the complex of attitudes and behaviors at work between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries in Europe. Medieval chivalry, in short, was clearly not Victorian good guy-ism. While the glow of purity still illuminates our faces, let us turn, then, to medieval evidence in order to understand chivalric identity. The problem is that so much of this genuine medieval evidence is literary and so thrusts us back into difficulties of interpretation. Can imaginative literature show us real life in the past? Must we not at minimum recognize that this literature is sometimes prescriptive, sometimes descriptive, and often an untidy mix of both? Do not texts – chansons de geste and romance alike – in one set of lines show us how knights acted and then a few lines later show how some author truly wished they would behave, the better to advance an ideal of society he or she has in mind? I submit that we must recognize both the | prescriptive and descriptive 7

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stances as immensely interesting and informative for our analysis and that we must strive to disentangle them. Could we perhaps avoid any problems by setting an historical source for chivalric identity alongside an imaginative literary source and then attempt a comparison? In a moment of mental aberration, a scholar might even propose to do this, might even suggest a comparison using the very real model knight Guillaume le Maréchal and the thoroughly imagined hero Lancelot du Lac. A sane scholar would recognize the problems at once. Which Lancelot is to be chosen? Who could naively think the Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal – an authorized biography commissioned by his son – could be read as an account of what actually happened in his eventful life?2 Yet the comparison is tempting. The late Georges Duby perceptively argued that the Histoire represents the autobiography of an illiterate man; it is built on modules of story-telling that the great Marshal himself provided to his household.3 Are these stories true, in the sense of being factual? David Crouch has helpfully reminded us that in his youth William undoubtedly heard many a literary work and likely memorized bits.4 Both Crouch and Duby suggest a contamination from romance in the Histoire.5 I submit that a concern for absolute factual accuracy withers when we consider the possibilities of insight into the mentalité of the greatest knight at the end of the twelfth century and the opening decades of the thirteenth. And when we recall that the biography was written in the second decade of the thirteenth century, picking our Lancelot out of the crowd becomes easy. The romance text Lancelot, the first component of the famous Vulgate or Lancelot-Grail Cycle of prose romances, was written between 1215 and 1220, and the entire cycle of five romances and various continuations was completed in about another decade; the biography

2 The older text edited by Paul Meyer, Histoire du Guillaume le Maréchal, 3 vols. (Paris, Librairie Renouard, 1891–1901) is now supplanted by an edition and translation in process: Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal/History of William Marshal, 3 vols., ed. A.J. Holden, translated by S. Gregory, with historical notes by D. Crouch. The first two volumes have appeared (London, 2002, 2004), providing the text; the historical notes will appear in the third volume. 3 Georges Duby, William Marshal, the Flower of Chivalry, tr. Richard Howard (New York, 1985), pp. 31–36. 4 David Crouch, William Marshal: Court, Career and Chivalry in the Angevin Empire, 1147–1219 (London, 1990), p. 23. 5 Crouch, William Marshal, pp. 6–8; Duby, William Marshal, p. 43 (regarding the accusation of an affair with the wife of the Young King).

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of the Marshal was written between 1226 and 1229.6 In short, Histoire and romance cycle are roughly contemporary. That the romance Lancelot came first does not necessitate a belief in unidirectional influence from literature to written Life. Stories of the exploits of William Marshal were surely circulating in every center claiming to function as a court for decades before the prose romance Lancelot was composed. Our analog here is not with direct current, flowing from battery through switch to glowing light bulb, but rather with something closer to alternating current: like electrons in a circuit, ideas were zapping back and forth between a life lived – and talked about elaborately before it was set down on the page – and a life imagined in romance. Close comparison between the Marshal and Lancelot is assuredly difficult; but perhaps the effort is not irremediably insane. What is called for is a large-scale undertaking – which may tempt me some day – or better, may tempt someone more qualified. What is possible in present circumstances is a severely limited inquiry. I will compare the Marshal and Lancelot through an approach to two themes of chivalric identity only: the role of prowess and the nature of knightly piety. Were there world enough and time, I would add the theme of love; but that would blow fuses as well as limits of space. |In each comparison I also want to consider whether a chivalric virtue 8 is praised in a straight-forward manner, or whether we find fears and countercurrents of reforming energy also at work. To begin this process, I quote, from deep in the Vulgate Cycle, an imagined knight describing to his wife the imagined deeds of the mythical hero Lancelot in a tournament that took place in the author’s mind: [I]t takes a lot more to be a worthy man than I thought it did this morning. I’ve learned so much today that I believe there’s only one truly worthy man in the whole world. I saw the one I’m talking about prove himself so well against knights today that I don’t believe any mortal man since chivalry was first established has done such marvelous deeds as he did today.7

6 For the original Old French text see Alexandre Micha, ed., Lancelot, 9 vols. (Geneva, 1978–83). A convenient and excellent English translation appears in Norris Lacy, general editor, Lancelot-Grail, The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post Vulgate in Translation, 5 vols. (New York, 1993–96). Translations of the Lancelot text are made by Samuel N. Rosenberg, Carelton W. Carroll, Roberta L. Krueger, and William W. Kibler in vols. 2 and 3. For the dating of the Histoire, see Crouch, op. cit., p. 2. 7 Micha, ed., Lancelot, 4:198; translated by Kibler in Lacy, ed., Lancelot-Grail, 3:161.

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He leaves his good wife in no doubt about the nature of the marvelous deeds that prove a man’s worth: I could count more than a thousand fine blows, for I followed that knight every step to witness the marvelous deeds that he did; I saw him kill five knights and five men-at-arms with five blows so swift that he nearly cut horse and knights in two. As for my own experience, I can tell you he split my shield in two, cleaved my saddle and cut my horse in half at the shoulders, all with a single blow. … I saw him kill five knights with one thrust of his lance. …if it were up to me, he’d never leave me. I’d keep him with me always, because I couldn’t hold a dearer treasure.8 Romance exaggeration, some will mutter darkly. And, indeed, this is splendid hyperbolic prose. Do not the qualities ascribed to the ideal hero, however, reveal powerful ideals from the society that created him? And consider the following lines from William Marshal’s Histoire. They tell how the court of the Young King Henry received another knight’s report of a particularly splendid tournament fought between Ressons and Gournay; it was won handily – almost single handedly – by the Marshal, of course. When some at court doubt that a single man could win so decisively, a knight, who was an eye-witness, speaks out: … I want to tell you that what this young man has told you is true, for I was there, I saw it, and I know. I can tell you all about it in great detail.9 His details turn out to be disappointingly indirect; he specifies that seeing how well the Marshal did brought stunning offers from great lords who sought to retain so valiant a man: they offered hundreds of livres, entire cities, even the hand of a beautiful daughter or sister.10 We can however fill in the blanks, somewhat narrowing the gap between Histoire and romance; the poet has 9 already assured us that |Marshal by himself rescued the Count of Saint-Pol from seven knights striving to capture him – granted, not quite so vigorous a picture as five knights skewered on a lance like chunks of meat on a shish kabob.11 Moreover, the author declares that the clash of knights has been sav8 9 10 11

Micha, ed., Lancelot, 4:198-9, translated by Kibler in Lacy, ed., Lancelot-Grail, 3:161–162. Holden and Gregory, eds., Histoire, lines 6247–6250. Ibid., lines 6257–6298. Ibid., lines 6080–6084.

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age, that the blows on armor would have drowned out even God’s thunder – a phrase borrowed from epic.12 The death rate in romance and the bloody anatomical specificity of the blows that produced it may indeed be hyperbolic. Yet they provide invaluable information on chivalric mentalité if not actual mortality figures for the extreme sport of tournament. Even more important, the passages in both romance and historical biography point to the veritable fusion of chivalry and prowess.13 It is no mere coincidence that the hero of each source proudly bore scars of conflict with edged weaponry on his body. Lancelot is often identified by them when – as periodically happens – he goes mad and runs naked in the woods. Prowess is intensely physical and corporal. Both sources unceasingly laud this central quality of highly physical prowess as a formative element in chivalric identity. And they emphasize a prowess that is far from the knighthood pictured in ethereal pre-Raphaelite paintings; it is exercised sword or lance in hand, it disables with stunning blows and grievous wounds all who stand in the way, or at least disheartens opponents so fully that the prudent give way. In hopes of converting stubborn doubters, I will quote a few passages from the texts we are examining, lines that tirelessly exalt the great hero engaged in such actions. For the moment I will not identify the hero or the source that presents him: First passage: What a deadly companion they found him to be As he cut a swathe through the throng. Many he found who let him through, for the blows that he dealt were so violent that they were greatly feared, coming as they did with such force behind them. The dishes he served up to them were not to their liking! Whether it was to their taste or not, he assailed them properly paying them back more than he owed them. My lords I can tell you for certain that one brave man’s prowess puts heart into a whole great army. 12 13

Ibid., lines 6072–6078. A theme elaborated in Richard W. Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1999), pp. 121–160.

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Second passage: Never mind who was to grieve and suffer as a result, he launched himself once more into the tournament, where he performed so prodigiously that everyone marveled| at the strength and amazing ability that enabled him to smash through the throng.

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Third passage: He launched into their ranks like a lion amidst oxen. Any man he struck had no protection from coif, helmet, or ventail: he struck and hammered like a woodcutter on oak trees. Many said: “Who is this savage, Who so demolishes the men on our side?” Fourth passage: He drew out his sword like an expert swordsman and delivered heavy blows to the right and to the left, felling knights and horses with blows of the sword blade and by the hilt. He grabbed men by the hoods of mail and by the edge of their shields; he pulled helmets from heads; and he hit and shoved and pounded and struck with his limbs and horse, for he was very skilled in doing all that a great knight must do. The first three passages all come from the historical biographer; we hear of William Marshal cutting his teeth – more likely the teeth of others – in his first fight at Drincourt, and then see him in later tournaments.14 The final passage (in the elegant translation of Roberta Krueger) pictures Lancelot at work in the Vulgate romance.15 I submit to you that all these passages convey a highly congruent sense of chivalric identity solidly based on prowess. The game could go on with many other passages from romance and Histoire. William’s 14 15

Holden and Gregory, eds., Histoire, first passage at lines 920–933; second at lines 1488– 1493; third at lines 2953–2961. Lacy, ed., Lancelot-Grail, 3:30; original French in Micha, ed., Lancelot, 2:99.

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biographer plainly states, for example, that groups of knights daily sallied out at the siege of Winchester, por faire chevalerie, to perform chivalry.16 Yet we must be cautious. Writers of romance and the author of Marshal’s biography truly gush with praise as their model knights exhibit prowess. Yet the romance authors at least, while recognizing the centrality of prowess, debate exactly how this quality is to work and what principles or indeed whose sage advice is to guide it. Does all prowess yield worship (a potent term lent to me by Malory)? Can a worthy knight ever misdirect his strong arm wielding the sword? Are clerics the supreme guides? I believe that – could we ask them – most knights would agree that the core of their profession rested on prowess that yields honor. I have elsewhere called to the witness box in sturdy defense of that idea not only William Marshal, but Geoffroi de Charny (the leading French knight of the mid-fourteenth century and author of an important vernacular treatise on chivalry) and Thomas Malory (the |late fifteenth-century strenuous knight and author of chivalry’s 11 great summa).17 In effect, these three practicing knight/authors show us the veritable identification of chivalry with prowess. Yet if Marshal’s authorized biography simply praises prowess without qualification, the other two in this trinity, Charny and Malory, reveal the complexities. Charny asserts that “there are no small feats of arms, but only great and good ones.”18 Yet, with evident disgust, he denounces arms-bearers who wear armor but are not really good men-at-arms. These dishonest, disorderly men make war without reason and seize, rob and wound people without the proper defiance. Such men, he sternly warns, are unworthy to live or to enjoy the company of truly good men-at-arms. The pains and hardships these men incur in fighting are not signs of their virtue, but a foretaste of the greater pains that await them in Hell.19 Proof of Malory’s intense admiration for prowess could again occupy us for many hours. Yet even he follows his French sources in worry over killing within the knightly fellowship and ends his great account on a battlefield littered with the bodies of nearly all the major characters and soaked in the blood of most of the supporting cast as well. 16 Holden and Gregory, eds., Histoire, line 176. 17 Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence, pp. 280–97. For Charny’s text see Kaeuper and Elspeth Kennedy, The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charni: Text, Context and Translation (Philadelphia, 1996) or the same authors’ A Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry (Philadelphia, 2005). The text of Malory cited is Eugene Vinaver, ed., The Works of Sir Thomas Malory (Oxford, 1977). 18 Kaeuper and Kennedy, Book of Chivalry, pp. 86–87. 19 Ibid., pp. 176–81.

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Behind these knight/authors, moreover, stand a host of tonsured clerics. If they wrote the chansons and the romances, they also preached, catechized, and tried to guide the hands that wielded swords. The fundamental identifying quality of chivalry is prowess, but it works under constant debate and insistent claims of guidance. Fears and doubts are richly elaborated even in the romances of the Vulgate Cycle that detail the career of the great Lancelot. These component romances take more than one stance, forming an immense romance Sic et Non debating the essence of chivalry through the very architecture of the cycle, no less than through particular incidents and conversations. The Quest of the Holy Grail from that cycle often weighs in on the non side as it tries to direct chivalry away from the worldly and courtly values of prowess and love – mere chevalerie terriene – toward the spiritual quest of chevalerie celestiele. Pauline Matarasso famously called the Quest an anti-romance, although I think there are most assuredly romance validations of chivalry within its overarching critique: the hermit to whom Lancelot confesses, promising no more adulterous sex, is overjoyed, but he swiftly outfits the great warrior with horse and arms (the hermit’s brother is, after all, a knight) so that Lancelot can return to a life of valorous violence.20 Yet not many pages later we find Lancelot, almost playing his parody in the Monty Python film, preparing to charge the gate of the Grail castle. It takes a fiery hand from heaven to knock the sword from his own hand, as The Voice intones a warning against reliance on human prowess.21 Balin in the Merlin Continuation is presented as the knight with the greatest prowess of them all. Yet he sets one disaster after another in motion; in an unforgettable scene he unwittingly seizes the lance of Longinus, the very weapon thrust into Christ’s side on the cross, and rams it into the genitals of the Grail keeper, outraging God – and presumably, the Grail keeper – who in vengeance enacted on the divine scale blights the Kingdom of Listenois so badly it becomes the 12 Waste | Land. We are told that Balin figures our mother Eve, balanced by Lancelot’s son Galahad who later in the cycle figures Christ our savior.22 Knighthood seems to rest uneasily on a sharp sword edge of valorization/ denunciation. To the extent that the Quest critiques Lancelot, Sir Thomas Malory strikes back, exculpating his hero after his failure on the Grail quest, 20

21 22

Pauline Matarasso, The Redemption of Chivalry (Geneva, 1979), pp. 242–243; on Lancelot confessing to the hermit see Burns translation in Lacy, ed., Lancelot-Grail, 4:24, of Albert Pauphilet, ed., La Queste del saint grail (Paris, 1921), pp. 70–71. Vinaver, ed., Malory. Works, p. 596. Gaston Paris and Jakob Ulrich, eds., Merlin, 1:212–25, 233–61, 276–80; Asher, trans., in Lacy, ed., Lancelot-Grail 5, Chs. 8, 10–13, 16–23.

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after his swift return to sexual liaison with the Queen, by means of his own “Tale of Sir Urry.” In this striking account, God himself works a miracle through Lancelot’s sinful hands.23 We could fill pages with examples and debate over the positions they support. Chrétien de Troyes in his lively romance Yvain, the Knight of the Lion even proposes a new model knighthood, with heroes using their great prowess not for vainglory and personal revenge, but only in service.24 St. Bernard surely waits just off stage, rhetorically urging that he be allowed to weigh in, heavily and richly Latinate, to make a case only for Templars and select crusaders.25 Geoffroi de Charny threatens to storm the stage from the other direction. Restraints on time require a quieting of the debate over the proper role of prowess and mandate an attempt to generalize. Our questions have scampered like rabbits out of holes in the field: What was medieval chivalry? Who decided in the Middle Ages? How do we moderns decide? The case advanced here has suggested that if chivalry was not Victorian good guy-ism, neither was its embrace of prowess monolithic, static, or free from debate. We cannot, that is, establish a simple list of chivalric qualities that stood beyond contemporary medieval debate – not even a list headed by a simple and unassailable notion of prowess that yields honor – in confidence that we have settled the matter of chivalric identity. If my argument at this point seems simple, I believe it is none the less important. We must in any case move on to cross a second field of assertion and tension as we explore knightly identity: we must turn, that is, to the contested connections between knighthood and piety. There can be little doubt that William Marshal and Lancelot lived and breathed certain forms of aristocratic lay piety. Each of our model knights constantly garnishes his speech with references to God, divine aid, and the divine will. Marshal’s language often has rather more of an edge; he even occasionally swore “By God’s sword (or lance, glaive).”26 But both heroes acknowledge that they live in a providential world. They owe God something in return for his gracious endowments to them and his frequent help. 23 24 25

26

Vinaver, ed., Malory. Works, pp. 663–669. William W. Kibler, ed., tr., The Knight with the Lion (New York, 1985). For the Latin text of Bernard’s tract for the Templars see Jean Leclercq and H. Rochais, eds., Bernard of Clairvaux. Opera (Rome, 1963); Conrad Greenia provides a translation in Daniel O’Donovan and Conrad Greenia, eds., The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux, vii, Treatises iii: On Grace and Free Choice, Praise of the New Knighthood (Kalamazoo, 1977). E.g., Holden and Gregory, eds., Histoire, lines 6806, 8443.

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Religious foundations established in gratitude cannot be an option for a largely landless Lancelot, of course, and pious generosity of this form would scarcely serve to shape a romance plot-line. The Marshal, we know, founded three houses of monks or canons, temporarily left the tournament circuit to go as a pilgrim to the shrine of the Three Kings in Cologne, and went on crusade to fulfill the obligation bequeathed to him by the Young King, Henry ii’s son, on his deathbed.27 Hard as it is to probe the depths of a knight’s soul, we have at least a vague sense that an awareness of mortality, perhaps coupled with a sense of sin, overcame the Marshal while on that crusade; his modern biogra13 phers speculate on the spiritual |crisis that drove him while in the Holy Land to arrange a death-bed entry into the order of Knights Templar. They note as well that his vow to found one religious house if spared was made from the stormtossed deck of a ship in the turbulent Irish Channel.28 Lancelot, of course, joined the quest of the Holy Grail, albeit with more enthusiasm than success, and after heart-felt confession and an enthusiastic donning of a penitential hair shirt beneath bright mail ended his life as hermit and priest in a humble hut housing an ascetic company that included the Archbishop of Canterbury. Yet what strikes me most about the piety of both knights is how thoroughly it is bonded to their prowess, almost engulfed by it. It is through their Godgiven prowess that they right all wrongs, settle all uncertainties. To question any matter close to them is to end up carved, pierced and bleeding on some field of honor. Most famously these matters relate to their honor or the honor of the woman they are said to love. Without violating my own oath to steer clear of love in this paper, I must recall to your attention the involvement of each of our heroes with a queen. Marshal’s Histoire says his enemies accused him of being the lover of his lord’s wife, that is, of Margaret the wife of the Young King. His response is to offer to prove innocence by fighting three men on three successive days. He tops this by even stating a willingness to impair his sword hand by allowing any finger to be cut off at his lord’s choice before the combats. And this is not the sole time he offers a fight to prove his virtue. Challenged at the court of the ever-suspicious King John, he likewise offers battle in a hall that suddenly and prudently goes silent.29 How much he resembles Lancelot at such moments – or perhaps how much Lancelot plays Marshal in his romances. Who could forget how regularly Lancelot offers to fight any 27 Crouch, William Marshal, pp. 49, 185–194. 28 Ibid., pp. 49–52; and see Georges Duby, William Marshal, tr. Richard Howard, pp. 12–15; and Sidney Painter, William Marshal (Baltimore, 1932), pp. 55–56. 29 Holden and Gregory, eds., Histoire, 1, lines 5127–5510, 5730–5841; 2, lines 13149–13247, discussed in Crouch, William Marshal, pp. 87–88.

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accuser, and especially any accuser threatening the good name of the Queen (over the adultery in which he, of course, features prominently)? Is there not an echo centuries later in Malory’s picture of Lancelot offering to fight the wicked Meleagaunce over Guenevere’s sexual rectitude – though this time not involving Lancelot – by removing all armor from his head and the left side of his body and by tying his left hand behind his back?30 Is this not a confidence in personal prowess ultimately rooted in a great gift from the generous Lord of Hosts? Are these offers all not a special form of the idea of trial by battle, God proving his truth through the strong arms and even the tied or maimed hands of his good warriors? Some might be troubled by a recollection that the Fourth Lateran Council had acted authoritatively against priestly blessings of trial by battle at just this time; but let us cast doubts aside for the moment. So much evidence anchors the religiosity of both Marshal and Lancelot. Such heroes, textbooks tell our students, were loyal and protective sons of Holy Mother Church. In fact, if – as argued – chivalry fused with prowess, it was likewise in itself a form of lay piety, a practiced, lived form of religion for knights for whom piety was not so much doctrinal as a living tissue of valorizations of identity, profession, status and social dominance (no less than a key to the afterlife). Yet we must again exercise caution. Recognizing that the great knights are | 14 pious, we have also to appreciate the serious tensions and even contradictions built into this second foundational layer of chivalric identity. How difficult it might be to combine chivalry and medieval Christianity appears with clarity in the pages of the Histoire and Vulgate Cycle themselves. To set up this sense of tension I want to borrow a technical term from the circle of my grandfather and his friends. One of these men swore so vigorously – in a chaste and classically theological vein – that he characterized another man in that circle as “indegoddampendent,” inserting the oath amongst the syllables. If slightly qualified as Selective Indegoddampendence (to be abbreviated by scholars as sigp), I suggest that this word deserves a place among our terms of art. Knights were prudent, pious and loyal sons of the Church – thus the qualifier, Selective; yet on any matter that closely touched essential chivalric interests, they were truly Indegoddampendent, as the careers and attitudes of both Marshal and Lancelot make abundantly clear. Of course sigp will take slightly differing forms in each source, as is only to be expected from different types of writing. The spirit remains the same. Who can forget the dismissal of clerical strictures against the essential ­chivalric sport of tournament made by the great Marshal in his deathbed 30

Vinaver, ed., Malory. Works, p. 662.

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c­ onversation with one of his household knights? – certainly no one who has endured one of my talks, for I quote it as regularly as a preacher with a favorite Biblical passage. As all scholars recognize, the factual veracity of the Histoire is forever under examination, but I would wager much on the faithful record of William’s response to his knight, who has asked about the rectitude of tourney, attacked by clerics. William Marshal says, Churchmen are too hard on us, Shaving us too closely ……………………………… I believe that I can do no more as regards God than give myself up to him, as a penitent for all the sins I have committed and all the wrongs I have done. They might well wish to push me, but they can push me no further: either their argument is wrong on this score or no man can find salvation.31

15

Surely this is the authentic voice of knighthood; surely this is sigp in a pure form. Lancelot probably shows the quality more in his actions than in his terse pronouncements. At least we can assume that his famous adultery was no less vigorous than it was contrary to religious teachings. He recognizes that his actions constitute sin, but only very late in the game, at about the same time as he blames | himself for achieving all his great deeds with edged weaponry through the inspiration of Guenevere rather than God, the beneficent giver of such great prowess.32 It is, moreover, not without interest that his successive rescues of the Queen – I draw here on Malory’s chronology – move progressively downward on any graph charting their moral clarity and rectitude. Lancelot first saves her from the absolutely false charge of killing Sir Patrice with the poisoned apple. In the kingdom of Gore he saves her from the charge of sleeping with Arthur’s wounded knights, knowing that the particular charge is wrong since she was sleeping with him that night. In the great crisis of the Arthurian story, he saves her from the horrors of the 31 32

Holden and Gregory, eds., Histoire, 2, lines 18481–18496. Burns, trans., in Lacy, ed., Lancelot-Grail, 4:21–24; Pauphilet, ed., Queste del saint grail, pp. 61–70.

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stake, knowing that the charge of adultery is, in fact, true. Even on the quest for the Holy Grail he has been slow to catch the real point of a truly spiritual enterprise as promulgated by idealist clerics. Again I fear that his vigor and physicality bring the Monty Python parody easily to mind. Granted, he is far from the hopelessness of Gawain, and Malory notoriously forgives him, but Malory’s case is for Lancelot as the best of sinful knights; arguably, Malory thinks Lancelot the only practical model merely worldly knights could have. Does not the sharp and shining image of Galahad shave them too closely? At points the gap opens into a chasm. More than once, Marshal’s biographer piously proclaims knighthood an honor granted by God. Only a few score lines distant from one of these declarations, he presents King Henry swearing “by the birth of Christ” to take vengeance on his enemies.33 Without claiming authority as a theologian, I confess that this oath looks like an inversion of basic Christian ideals to me. With the aid of assistants much more versed in computers than I, electronic word searches of many texts are in process, including the Lancelot-Grail cycle and the Histoire.34 The results of such searches will require much interpretation, but I am struck by the virtual absence of the terms Hell or Purgatory from the first volume of the newly edited Histoire (which deals with the Marshal’s knight-errantry), and from the vast Vulgate Lancelot as well (where there are only six references to Hell and none to Purgatory in a text of 738,000 words). In both romance and Histoire clerics are thin on the ground also, at least as spiritual authorities. By and large clerics appear in the early Histoire only as political figures. Though they are unsurprisingly much more numerous in the Lancelot, clerics in orders are outnumbered by hermits by about ten to one. And since hermits represent the religious figures of choice in chivalric literature, the finding seems interesting. These hermits appeal because they are heroic in the austerity of their lives; moreover, they are often former knights now retired to forest hostels; in their simple households knights can be housed, occasionally houseled, and often given instruction or an interpretation of their disturbing dreams, by men who fully understand them and their tough vocation, that is, by men who will not shave them too closely. 33 34

Holden and Gregory, eds., Histoire, 1, lines 428–429. My warm thanks for this work go to Michael Egolf and Christopher Guyol. I wish also to thank Norris Lacy, the general editor of the Garland Lancelot-Grail volumes and each of the translators who contributed to the five volumes for their collegiality in providing all surviving computer discs of their work. Thanks also to Craig Nakashian, who edited this text and its illustrations for publication.

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William Marshal and Lancelot, romance and chivalric biography, prowess and piety – the links for chivalric identity are intriguing, although we have barely scratched the surface on only two elements making up chivalric iden16 tity. My hope | is to have encouraged the conviction that going further requires our careful use of literary sources no less than evidence long considered historical. In the process we will find that our writers – whether biographers of historical figures or creators of imaginary heroes – agree in no small measure on what elements are essential to chivalric identity. Yet as they approach the divinity or the devil in the details, tensions mount and certainly enliven the discussion. This does not mean that we are left with some form of deconstructive French relativism avant la lettre. If the texts are “conflicted” it is because the society is conflicted, because it is so hard to fit the men with swords and status neatly into the ideal for society emerging in the High Middle Ages, even when presenting them through a somewhat sanitized biography or an absolutely imagined romance hero. It makes a splendid challenge to read back through these texts to find the flesh and blood of chivalry and to encounter the 17 world that made and feared it. |

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Chivalry in Barbour’s Bruce1 It would be easy to doubt that chivalry actually touched the very real world of the Age of Barbour were we to conceive of chivalry as a collection of fanciful or even fantastic gestures and games or as a set of gilded ideals that somehow made the practice of warriors kinder and gentler. There would then be no need to ask what serious work it performed in that world. In opposition to such views I would like to encourage recognition of the highly practical role that chivalry actually played within its broad societal configurations. If it was, as I have been arguing for some time, the elite lay esprit de corps, it did the important work of explaining, justifying, and guiding the lives of a significant segment of the European elite for nearly half a millennium. Granted, this point of view will be discounted by those who do not believe ideas to have been generally important in history, as also by those who consider chivalry some form of frippery floating insubstantially across the really formative and motive issues of this world. However, two paths could lead us (however rushed the pace) at least into the foothills of this mountain range of topics. One path I have mapped elsewhere.2 The complex religious ideology of chivalry combined pious accommodation with sturdy independence in relationship to medieval Christianity. Knights and knighthood had necessarily to be fitted into the evolving religious society of High and Late Medieval Europe. A religious ideology of chivalry cannot be dismissed as a light dusting of powdered sugar atop a societal cake since it was of the very substance of the cake itself. Such an ideological achievement represents practical work in an exact sense of the term. The second path will be the road more traveled in this brief study. It leads to a focus on the practicality of chivalry as it animates so much of Barbour’s Bruce.3 I tread warily here and without claims to being a close student of Scottish history or the Bruce. But my longstanding interest in chivalric texts carried the day as I finished a straight-through reading of Barbour’s great poem. The hope is that few would consider this text anything but practical in intent. * Previously unpublished. 1 I owe many thanks to Samuel Claussen for his skillful assistance in preparing this study. 2 For a full discussion see Richard Kaeuper, Holy Warriors: The Religious Ideology of Chivalry (Philadelphia, 2009). 3 The political atmosphere at the time of composition is discussed in Thea Summerfield, “Barbour’s Bruce: Compilation in Retrospect” in Writing War: Medieval Literary Responses to Warfare, eds Corinne Saunders, Francoise Le Saux, and Neil Thomas (Brewer, Cambridge, 2004), 107–125.

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This is not to say it is objective history (whatever that might be), but rather that it is solidly directed at real life problems in a time of continuing danger in the Scottish realm. If chivalry as presented by John Barbour looks practical, it surely will look practical more generally. Any distance between this practical text and the imaginative writing of romance would, of course, have surprised Barbour himself. Famously, he termed his own work a romance and declared later that the many martial deeds of Edward Bruce would in themselves make a fine romance.4 Terminology used almost casually underscores the point. Throughout the Bruce Barbour speaks admiringly of King Robert and other heroes placing themselves in aventure in a most praiseworthy and chivalric manner.5 He likewise relies on techniques used in romance and chivalric vernacular manuals written both before and after his own time; whether or not he had read the component works of the great French Vulgate or Lancelot-Grail cycle of Arthurian romance, or the treatise of Geoffroi de Charny – and though he could not, obviously have read the great summation of Thomas Malory – the important point remains that he regularly talks their language.6 If we can believe Barbour, and some historians do not, King Robert read romance to his lads to buck up their spirit while crossing Loch Lomond.7 Like the incomparable Lancelot in romance, Robert Bruce’s sword blows split heads right through to the shoulders (helmets affording no protection). The king’s famous splitting of the head of Sir Henry Bohun “till ye harnys” at Bannockburn is but one case in point.8 And after all his martial feats, King Robert is formally shy about each great accomplishment, even though it has so often been inflicted on multiple opponents, in just the manner approved in Lancelot or in a hero of Chrétien de Troyes. Anticipating Malory in particular, Barbour seems always to keep a scorecard in hand, noting who did best, settling the ranking of knights (based on their boldness and success in fighting), especially when that knight is Robert or Edward Bruce or Sir James Douglas. Fighting for a crown in Ireland, Edward Bruce (with his own hand we are assured) beat the man who was called the best of all Ireland and thus 4 Matthew P. McDiarmid and James A.C. Stevenson, eds, Barbour’s Bruce, 3 vols (Scottish Text Society, Edinburgh,1980, 1981, 1985), Book ix, lines 496–497. This edition will be cited as Barbour’s Bruce with books of the text itself (rather than volumes) provided in roman numerals and line numbers in Arabic numerals. 5 For example, Barbour’s Bruce, v, 243. 6 See Norris Lacy, gen. ed, Lancelot-Grail: the Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in translation, 5 vols (Garland, 1993–1996); Richard W. Kaeuper and Elspeth Kennedy, The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986); Eugene Vinaver, ed, Malory. Works (Oxford, 1947). 7 Barbour’s Bruce, iii 438ff. 8 Ibid, xii, 50–56.

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moves up one major slot on Barbour’s scoreboard.9 When Sir Giles d’Argentine decides not to accept the English retreat at Bannockburn and instead charges determinedly to his death upon the Scots’ spears, Barbour laments his death, for he was the third best knight known in his day.10 Sir Ingraham d’Umfraville, living in Galloway, showed such high prowess that his worship surpassed that of most men.11 Ralph of Cobham, Barbour assures readers, was at one point renowned as best of hand in all England.12 And we will shortly encounter Barbour’s praise overflowing for King Robert as best of them all, having dispatched fourteen enemies in single combat. Even noting these parallels the Bruce shares with the world of romance leads us to question exactly what Barbour means when he uses the word chivalry. The accepted view about use of this term generally in medieval writing posits several distinct meanings. Among those the notion of chivalry as people – that is as armored troops on some campaign – appears regularly in the Bruce, as when Neill Bruce is said to have “gadryt grret chewalry and towart Scotland went in hy”.13 Such usage is relatively common; but there is in the Bruce and elsewhere by far a more frequent meaning attributed to chivalry which deserves some emphasis: regularly, chivalry, in the Bruce (as elsewhere) means notable combat, great feats or deeds of arms boldly achieved. Chivalry is in this sense a physical act that is done; others see it done and praise it so regularly that any adequate sampling of examples would overflow this brief paper. Whether we can consider all King Robert’s doughty deeds historical as reported I leave to more informed analysts of Scottish history. Yet what strikes me again is a presentation of King Robert’s prowess that could bear comparison with deeds attributed to Lancelot in romance literature. This is chivalry performed as prowess. One time as he overcomes three enemies set on his death, Robert Bruce is clearly said to have done great chivalry.14 The great King Arthur, Barbour tells us, conquered the British Isles through his chivalry.15 Sir James Douglas does chivalry on his enemies’ bodies around the castles of Roxburgh and Jedburgh.16 Young English knights eager to begin battle at Bannockburn are characterized as jolly and “3arnand to do chewalry”.17 9 Ibid, xv, 2050–2059. 10 Ibid, xiii, 320–323. 11 Ibid, ix, 507–509. 12 Ibid, xviii, 429–455. 13 Ibid, iv, 1867–1868. 14 Ibid, vi, 11, my emphasis. 15 Ibid, i, 550. 16 Ibid, x, 342–349; my emphasis. 17 Ibid, xi, 531, my emphasis.

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As if to ensure that readers sense pure physicality in chivalry, Barbour constantly refers specifically to acts of prowess carried out by the knights’ own hands This language has already appeared in lines quoted: great feats of chivalry are enacted as knights grip and direct sword, lance or ax. Edward Bruce is more than once termed a great or noble knight of his hands.18 The quality is admired even in the enemy. The English leader Aymer de Valence is “wyse and wycht/ And off his hand a worthy knycht”;19 and another Englishman, William Deyncourt, is “A knycht hardy of hart and hand.”20 Scores of such examples could be cited. Yet noting these important characterizations in no way implies a claim that Barber’s view of chivalry is either simple or even consistent. So much of its interest actually stems, in fact, from being neither simple nor even consistent. The text is peppered with tensions and contradictions about what constitutes chivalry and how it works in the world. Here, in my view, appears another quality the Bruce shares with much chivalric literature generally. It leaves us uncomfortable. Medieval systems of any kind – whether their coloration is imagined carefree pre-Raphaelite bright or dark as Monty Python muck – are supposed to be consistent! Should we not, however, be guided by a moment’s reflection upon any ethos or ideology that we encounter in other ages? Obvious modern cases come swiftly to mind. Did not Russian international socialism compete uneasily with continuing Russian nationalism? Do capitalists who lavish praise on competition not rush, cash in hand, to governments, seeking protection against free competition? I hope not to sound excessively cynical; I am not saying simply that fallible mortals fail to live up to their ideals. Rather, I suggest that systems of thought are likely to incorporate contradictory or even competing ideals, each truly held. Thus I will plead not guilty to the charge of cynicism and in self-defense suggest that one virtue in any system of belief, explanation and guidance is that it can contain contradiction; such a system must cover all needs while maintaining a satisfying sense of valorization among its practitioners. It must, in short, be malleable. Let me repeat that this is no argument that ideals are simply cavalierly and culpably tossed aside; a whole battery of ideals obviously mattered in chivalry. But they could not always be upheld and practiced simultaneously and with equivalence of commitment. We ought to apply such views to chivalry more often than we do. A core of beliefs and practices, it is true, can likely be identified across space and time – as a start, I would 18 Ibid, ix, 485; xv, 205. 19 Ibid, ii, 200–203. 20 Ibid, xi, 576.

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suggest the prowess that yields honor operating within a religious framework of meritorious suffering – but there will be debate among the practitioners (no less than among historians), the pressure of exigent circumstances will shave some ideals and inflate others. Barbour shows us chivalry functioning in just this fashion and a highly practical framework it seems to have been. We can find one simple case in point in Barbour’s splendid poem by looking at the remarkable combination he achieves between chivalric internationalism and early Scots nationalism. No reader of Barbour can doubt the importance of patriotism or nationalism in his work, even if some qualifier must be set before the noun, even if we have learned to avoid imposing nineteenth-century frameworks on a fourteenth-century world-view. Yet the high deeds of Anglo-Scots or even English knights are also given their due. Either Barbour himself praises all great men of chivalry and the deeds that so help to define them or he willingly quotes contemporaries who speak to the worship they have earned. Caught in a surprise attack by the Douglas, Sir Philip de Mowbray shows “gret worschip” by setting spurs into his fine warhorse and escaping;21 the Scots “prisyt him full gretumly/ And lovyt fast his chewalry”.22 French knights captured among the English host at Byland are honored and released by Robert Bruce who realizes, after questioning them, that they came out of “gret worship and bounte” (“for to se ye fechting her”);23 their very knightliness naturally would not allow them to stay out of the fight, but they bore no ill will to the Scots and could go home in safety. Geoffroi de Charny would undoubtedly have heartily approved both the travel to get to the scene of the action and the royal forgiveness when knights simply happened to end up on the losing side. All good fighting is rightly attractive in chivalrous eyes, but is all fighting by the chivalrous truly good? Does chivalry in Barbour mean always fighting fair – and how is fair fighting defined? Does “pure chivalry” require, as modern students usually insist, that combat be conducted in the open and without undue advantage to one side? Does Barbour proceed to write as if he had a wellthumbed copy of the Marquis of Queensbury rules in his pocket? I submit that any such inflexible standards would surprise and puzzle many combatants on both sides and leave Barbour himself staring guardedly at his questioner. The Bruce is in no small measure a story of men slain “forowtyn mercy”24, of attempted – and rather sneaky – assassination plots against King Robert (once while he was en route to the privy), of ambushes by the virtuous Scots and their 21 Ibid, viii, 78–79. 22 Ibid, viii, 105–106. 23 Ibid, xviii, 528–529. 24 As in Ibid, vi, 443.

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night attacks up castle or town walls to the mortal surprise of those within. Moreover, Barbour openly addresses issues of just this sort. To him, chivalric “myght” and “slyght” are not stark alternatives, but the two trump cards in a winning chivalric hand. Barbour gives his hero a speech to this effect when he decides to attack an unsuspecting garrison at Turnberry: the Scots may be able, he says, to kill all the Englishmen while they are sleeping. He perhaps feels some compulsion to justify such an attempt, but he assures his men that no one will reprove them for “werrayour na fors suld ma/ Quheyer he mycht overcum his fa/ Throw strenth or throw sutelte./ Bot yar gud faith ay halden be”.25 Exactly how good faith is maintained while eviscerating a sleeping enemy remains a bit murky to me. Yet the evidence and even the specific language, is priceless. I suspect here an ideological affirmation is being employed to paper over a deep crack.26 And the garrison was, in fact, overwhelmed in the manner proposed. There is, of course, much more evidence along similar lines. James Douglas later slaughters much of an English garrison while they are outside their castle attending church on Palm Sunday.27 It seems appropriate that, in another instance, Barbour admits cognitive (though not moral) uncertainty about Douglas taking Douglas castle from his foes, “Quhethyr it wes through strength or slycht”.28 Later, the Scots think that Edinburgh can only be taken by a combination of “slycht” mixed with “hy chewalry”, which proves to be true.29 Yet when Robert Bruce is confronted with three assassins armed with bows, and he armed only with a sword and his body unarmored, he shames these men by saying they are three to one and plan to attack him with distance weapons. They agree that this can win them no honor. With aid from his powerful hunting dog, King Robert proceeds to kill all three at a distance easily crossed by his sword.30 At a later point, Barbour says he will not detail one Scots raid into northern England because there was no chivalry done. I feel confident he means not that their ravaging actions were contrary to chivalry, but that no memorable feats of arms call out for description and high praise.31 25 26

See in book v, the speech beginning at line 71, with quotation at lines 85–88. Thea Summerfield discusses this issue as a retrospective view in response to some later fourteenth-century criticism of Robert’s methods of fighting; see her discussion in Summerfield, “Barbour’s Bruce”, pp 112–116, and the sources she cites. 27 Ibid, v, 355 ff. 28 Ibid, viii, 595. 29 Ibid, x, 520–522: the term “body” in this statement has caused difficulties; see the editors’ note. 30 Ibid, vii, 401–495. 31 Ibid, xiii, 749–751.

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Analysis of this sort leads readily to another level of tension within Barbour’s thinking about chivalry: restraints on prowess, or the proper guidance of prowess. Repeatedly, the text shows concern about limitations on the central chivalric quality of knightly prowess. Can boldness of spirit and sheer physical vigor carry a great warrior beyond reasonable bounds? Was excess (famously denounced in some French chansons de geste) ever a problem and could it trouble the chivalric careers of his great hero or those closely tied to him?32 The issue arises classically in the famous scene of King Robert defending a ford against pursuing enemies in Book vi, where the incident fills more than three hundred lines of verse. Protecting his followers who have gone ahead, the king puts no fewer than fourteen bloodied bodies of their enemies into the river before his foes give up and his own men return to sing his praise, joined in the text by Barbour who can scarcely contain his adulation: A der God quha had yen bene by & sene hove he sa hardyly Adressyt hym agane yaim all I wate weile yat yai suld him call Ye best yat levyt in his day… & giff I ye suth sall say I herd never in na tym gane Ane stynt sa mony him allane.33 In effect, Barbour takes the chivalric scorecard he always keeps close to hand, tears it into confetti and throws it into the air, rejoicing. Yet he has more to say, even after he offers a flow of comparisons to military heroes from ancient history. And there is an open element of worry in his voice. Could the king’s feat be considered brash or even showy? Worship is a wonderful goal, Barbour repeats: it is hard-won, and leads to love for the hero; but the great man must be guided by “wyt” in his exercise of his astonishing prowess. The quest for worship can fail at either of two extremes and the great knight must steer between them; he must avoid both foolhardiness (Fule-hardymement) and its opposite, cowardice (cowartys).34 Having “wyt” or “mesur” requires finding a prudent mean between these extremes and Robert Bruce found that mean, we learn. In the case at hand, the king knew that the ford was so narrow that only two enemies could attack at once, and he knew that he could beat 32 Any reading of Raoul de Cambrai shows the concern for excess, for example. 33 Barbour’s Bruce, vi, 173–180. 34 Ibid, vi, 339–340.

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such pairs as they attacked. With Barbour’s classical examples still resonating in the air about us, we might be tempted to detect re-discovered Aristotelianism in this discussion of the mean between extremes. Caution is advisable: “mesur” is a theme of the magnificent twelfth-century chanson Raoul de Cambrai among other sources that could be cited. In any case, the issue is important to Barbour who returns to it more than once: sometimes in a species of shorthand, as when he reminds his audience that Robert Bruce was both “wyse” and “wycht”,35 sometimes more explicitly, as in his discussion of what he sees as arrogance in Robert’s brother, Edward, who fatally lacked “mesur.”36 There can be no chivalry without prowess, but that great warrior quality must be intermixed and governed with directive and restraining qualities – a point of view with which the contemporary model knight and author Geoffroi de Charny would have heartily agreed, as would the earlier authors of the Vulgate Cycle of Arthurian romance who show even Lancelot sometimes requiring restraint, at times almost physical restraint, when his chivalric ardor is afire. To say “wyt” governs “chewalry” is not to write out a chemical formula with all reagents of known and constant valence. The statement rather opens a discussion among medieval writers and sets parameters for debate. In order to move toward a close, we can circle back to the beginning and think at least briefly about the large topic of the operative practicality joining chivalry and religion in the Bruce. Does religion function practically, as a buttress to chivalry, in the poem? Do any tensions crackle even if it carries out this function? Does the role of religion fit neatly into the broad framework proposed for the interaction of chivalry and religion I suggested in Holy Warriors?37 As in so much chivalric writing, the clergy in a dominating role and the allencompassing quotidian apparatus of the church is not much in evidence. The bishop who blessed the Bruce cause after his killing of John Comyn gets a line and Barbour heartily approves of a fighting bishop of Dunkeldy.38 The only mention of sacraments is the masses heard by the Scots as each day of battle opens at Bannockburn39 and penance and prayer among Edward Bruce’s men during Lent in Ireland.40 Yet – again, as in so much chivalric literature – the 35 Ibid, vii, 424. 36 The formula “hardy, wyse and wycht” is applied to Edward Bruce in ix, 50, but soon changes. See ix, 655 ff; xvi, 317; xviii, 175–184. And see also the comment on the bold (and fatal) behavior of Deyncourt at Bannockbourn, which, though praised, is contrasted to the caution of most English knights on that field. See xi, 577–593. 37 Kaeuper, Holy Warriors. 38 xvi, 580–590. 39 Ibid, xi, 383; xii, 213. 40 Ibid, xv, 100.

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warriors have little doubt about God’s presence in their lives and work; the result is that religious valorization swirls like beneficent insence through the entire poem. It can come as no surprise that Barbour sees divine will in the success of King Robert and the cause of Scottish independence. It is somewhat more interesting for our inquiry to note how much Barbour links the prowess of his hero specifically with God’s gift and blessing. Bruce is asked as he readies himself to face the host of enemies trying to cross the fateful ford (discussed above) who will support him against so many foes – “‘Schir,’ said yai, ‘quha sall vith 3ow be [?]’” Bruce replies (in Barbour’s memorable words), “‘God, forouten ma.’”41 After a triumph over two would-be assassins, Bruce similarly attributes his victory to “God & my hand” and Barbour emphasizes the linkage by adding that the King won “throw Goddis grace”42 Divine help is likewise seen in the great victory at Bannockburn. In fact, Barbour intones, “‘quhar God helpys quhat ma withstand [?]’”.43 Can I claim the Bruce, then, as a pillar of evidence supporting the analysis of Holy Warriors? The elements of religious ideology that so interest me are, in fact, all present; but they do not fuse in this poem, for reasons that I find understandable. Chivalry in the Bruce unquestionably entails pain and travail, terms used so often they defy citation. As much as Geoffroi de Charny or any writer of twelfth-century chanson de geste (or, indeed any of hundreds of other chivalric texts), Barbour finds the knightly life filled with struggle and physical suffering on campaign and in the heat of battle. This could easily be read simply as a measure of the heroic devotion to the recovery of his kingdom from English control. Undoubtedly the suffering is emphasized for just that purpose; but I think it worthwhile to note that this emphasis on knightly travail and suffering is common coin of chivalric literature in general. It is a marker of the chivalric ordo, In fact, the various ordines compete on the basis of the suffering entailed on their socio-functional group; for the suffering is sent, significantly, by God, who ordained all such foundational groups in society. Persevering despite the painful physical costs, stout warriors fighting for the right receive divine help. Barbour states this explicitly. Just after he has completed his introduction, telling lines appear that outline his themes. The reader is to know that he writes of men: …yat war in gret distress And assayit full gret hardyness 41 Ibid, vi, 88–89. 42 Ibid, vii, 492–495. 43 Ibid, xi, 210.

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Or yai mycht cum till yar entent, Bot syne our Lord sic grace yaim sent Yat yai syne throw yat gret valour Come till gret hycht & till honour, Magre yar fayis euerilkane Yat war so fele yat ay till ane Off yaim yai war weill a thowsand, Bot wuhar God helpys quhat may withstnand[?]44 This is close to an idea of salvation through meritorious suffering within the order of chivalry as it operates within the framework of divine wisdom. Yet the pain and travail of the fighters does not specifically reduce the sins inevitable in so much destruction and bloodshed (with Christian folk dying on both sides, of course). Particular circumstances and goals in this text halt the process short of the fusion that I take to be more widespread within chivalric culture in medieval Europe generally. The final goal in the wars of independence must necessarily be so much more worldly than in other struggles – without loss of divine blessing, Barbour would insist. Perhaps exaggeration rather than untruth is involved in speculating about the idea of Scots freedom representing a collective salvation. The fighting is in so fine a cause that it would be difficult to conceive of its punishingly physical demands as necessary to exculpate its sins. Worship is both a great gift of God and a treasure secured by pain and travail in using the “mycht” bestowed by God on his warriors – even to select enemies who are Anglo-Scots, English, or French, If some tension or paradox intrudes here, it is simply and pragmatically shoved aside. Yet at the end of his life King Robert’s thoughts ineluctably turn back to sin, to the slaughter of his co-religionists, to scenes hard to erase from the mind of homesteads spouting flames and thick black smoke across the north of England. He knows that sin is sadly inevitable in the Order of Chivalry, and is most assuredly exculpated among the knighthood by other fighting. And the most unambiguous form that such fighting can take is against God’s enemies on crusade. James Douglas famously promises the dying Robert Bruce to carry his heart into that very combat, earning the king crusading credits. By this time I think many warriors had come to understand that all of their hard fighting in godly causes – and they engaged in no other kind – counted toward the profit side in the great balance beam weighing sin versus merit in the economy of salvation, but crusade retained special status. 44 Ibid, i, 445–456.

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If the vast body of chivalric texts taken as a whole extends crusader blessings to all good warriors (as argued in Holy Warriors), few individual chivalric texts make a complete case for the strikingly original and complex religious ideology of chivalry. Achieving that construct required the whole corpus of chivalric literature. Each individual text responds to the imperatives driving its production. My reading of the Bruce suggests that the religious dimension is no less practical than all the others considered in this slight study of that grand poem.

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Baudoin De Conde, Violence, Chivalry, and War1 An historian might, with respect, offer two plaints to his colleagues in literature. I use the medieval French legal term to suggest a statement presented for adjudication, even a petition, rather than a mere complaint. My first plaint asks these colleagues to accept that historians understand the importance of texts in which ideas are revealed, even if no dates or events are established. Literary scholars, I find, often think our interest is limited to the physically and chronologically factual. Yet a second plaint urges recognition of the historian’s unwavering emphasis on context, no less than text, in understanding the past. As an historian deeply committed to the use of literary evidence in understanding mentalité, I will pay heed to these two plaints in an effort to shine some needed light on one particular medieval author through analysis of one of his works. This writer is Baudoin de Condé who was – and this offers an  additional qualifying factor in choosing him – well served by splendid ­nineteenth-century textual scholars to whose editorial services we owe so much. The first of these scholar/editors is Achille Jubinal, whose Nouveau recueil de contes, dits, fabliaux, et autres pieces inédits appeared in two volumes in 1839–42.2 This collection first brought Baudoin de Condé to my attention, or rather made me aware of one of his poems, “Le Conte du Bacheler”, 480 lines of octosyllabic couplets. Jubinal did not, in fact, know the identity of the author of this work, which he printed as anonymous. He gave call numbers from the old “Archives de roi, Paris” for the single manuscript he used. Puzzles such as this must be thought of as fun, even if somewhat tedious fun. However, problems of authorship and modern archival sources for the poem were soon solved, for I turned for support to Elspeth Kennedy. She quickly discovered the author, became fascinated by the text, and agreed to a joint venture, a miniature version of our collaboration on Geoffroi de Charny, completed earlier.3 * Previously unpublished. 1 My thanks to Peter Sposato for assistance with Italian sources and to Brian Flemming for personally obtaining photocopies of manuscripts from the Brussels archives. 2 Nouveau recueil de contes, dits, fabliaux, et autres pièces inédites des XIIIe, XIVe et XVe siècles, pour faire sulte aux collections Legrand d’Aussy, Barbazan et Méon. Mis au jour pour la première fois (Paris, 1839, 1842). The poem to be examined appears in the first volume. 3 Richard W. Kaeuper and Elspeth Kennedy, The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny:Text, Context and Translation (Philadelphia, 1996).

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Soon we had Baudoin’s poems edited by Auguste Scheler, published in 1866. Scheler knew the identity of the author and published all his surviving poems (along with those of his son, Jean de Cndé) in a three-volume edition entitled Dits et contes du Baudoin de Condé et de son fils Jean de Condé.4 Condé fis has, in fact, been more studied than Condé pere; such relative neglect provides all the more reason to focus on a poem by the father. Elspeth Kennedy made swift work of examining the few surviving manuscripts of “Le Bacheler” that I sent her from the Brussels archive and she collated these with a manuscript she consulted in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris (once the 1839 reference numbers had been modernized into usable call numbers at the Bibliotheque Nationale).5 She had basically established the French text and had drafted a preliminary English translation at the time of her death in 2006. The present study revives what I can of our joint venture, with grateful acknowl­edgement of her essential work and with a dedication of this small paper to her vast legacy. May the text of “Le Bacheler” someday receive the facing page French/English edition that we had planned. Little enough is known about Baudoin, beyond what he tells us in some of his poems or reveals in his language.6 His birthplace was likely a small town in Hainault; he writes in a Picard dialect. More significantly he stands in that long tradition of patronage provided by the comital family of Flanders, within that period covering the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries that has been claimed as a worthy forerunner of the more famous Burgundian court of the fifteenth century.7 His active career likely centered on the four decades 1240–80, basically during the comital reign of Margaret and (from 1252) that of her son Gui de Dampierre, who maintained a separate court well before the death of his mother. Baudoin fulsomely praises Countess Margaret in his poem “L’Olifant,” ascribing to her the moral qualities thought to characterize the elephant, a species of comparative praise that would probably fall flat with modern women of power.8 He reveals no direct link to Gui, though Gui seems to have been the more active in supporting literary production. 4 Dits et contes de Baudouin de Condé et de son fils Jean de Condé, publiés d’après les manuscrits de Bruxelles, Turin, Rome, Paris, et Vienne et accompagnés de variantes et de notes explicatives, 3 vols (Brussels, 1866–67). 5 Paris, bnf. fr. 12467 (formerly Supp. fr. 428); Brussels, Bibliotheque Royale, Bacheler fr1593 and fr1634. 6 General discussion of Baudoin in the introduction to Scheler, Dits et contes de Baudoin de Condé and in Saverio Panuzio, Baudoin de Condé: ideologia e scritura (Fasano, 1992). Many thanks to Peter Sposato who provided valuable help in my reading of this text. 7 What follows draws on Mary D. Stanger, “Literary Patronage at the Medieval Court of Flanders,” French Studies, xi (1957), pp. 214–229 and the introduction to Scheler, Dits et contes. 8 The poem is printed in Scheler, Dits et contes, pp. 233–243.

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We know more about the cultural inclinations of these Flemish courts than about Baudoin’s precise relationship with them. Chivalry, romance, history and crusade greatly interested those at court and, perhaps especially under Margaret and her mother Joan before her, religious themes were prominent in literary works that they enjoyed and sometimes sponsored. General court popularity is assumed for the poems of Baudoin at the time they were composed and for some time after.9 Badouin’s poem, a didactic treatise, readily fits these pious interests. He takes a high moral tone in his chosen forms of contes and dits. This moralizing may even have been a family poetic tradition, as it also appears in the works of his son Jean de Condé; at least it may represent their steady adaptation to the desires of patrons, if not the personal aesthetic and pious inclination of the authors.10 In company with most of what we characterize as chivalric literature, “Le Bacheler” speaks broadly to issues of the elite warrior profession, but the poem also resonates with particularities of local culture, revealing particular themes and concerns. Some of what Baudoin says, in other words, might be heard with interest and approval in any age within the long history of chivalry and throughout the wide swath of Europe that it covered; yet interesting particularities reflect his own time and place. Analysis of “Le Bacheler” must take both dimensions into account as we observe Baudoin instructing the young knight how to advance in his status and profession. The aspiring knight can swiftly earn the honorable title of bachelor and should then move forward to becoming a worthy man, a prudhomme, the title and status that interested many medieval writers and has stimulated the close scholarship of David Crouch.11 As so many other authors, Baudoin writes prescriptively; he thinks of chivalry as he wants it to be, a noble profession, indeed an ordo, one of the fundamental socio-professional groups ordained by divine wisdom for the proper functioning of an ideal human social order. Baudoin regularly refers to chivalry in terms such as “la haute ordre” or “la haute ordene.” Of course, he borrows such conceptions and language from clerical formulations as did so many authors who wrote about chivalry in a great variety of forms: manuals, chivalric biographies, 9

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In the Bibliotheque Royale, Brussels, one manuscript containing Baudoin’s poetry bears four names written in a different and later hand: Hereford, Holland, Cliffort, and Stury. Scheler, Dites et contes, p xiv. It would, of course, be interesting if these great arms bearers had owned and appreciated this chivalric poem, or been otherwise linked to it by some owner of the text. On Jean de Condé, see Jacques Ribard, Un Ménestrel du XIVe Siècle: Jean de Condé (Geneva, 1969). See, for example, The Birth of Nobility : Constructing Aristocracy in England and France : 900-130 (New York, 2005).

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or works of imaginative literature. All insist that a young knight entering this profession must be aware of its high standards and live up to them fully. Ultimately – if somewhat indirectly – Baudoin’s text, like so many others, is rooted in religious valorization of the noble profession of knighthood. God is the creator and sustainer of chivalry. Divine support is assumed in the text without much need of being explicitly asserted; it forms the substratum of Baudoin’s argument. The very terminology of ordo implies divine approbation, of course, but the language of the poem constantly makes the same case in other ways as well. Baudoin pointedly states early on that if God hates all forms of evil, so indeed do all men of worth;12 chivalry can tolerate no wickedness in the hearts of its practitioners. Even the honor they show to ladies is rooted in their reverence for the Mother of God.13 They must understand that God is the giver of the great convergence of “physical beauty, strength, intelligence and valour”14 and is as well the giver of victory; his approval must be sought by the young knight seeking to move along the steep path to great renown. Scripture is piously, if only generically, cited as the source of proof that good deeds by knights inspire more of the same, just as evil deeds tend to reproduce evil.15 As a capstone to the good deeds of arms in his career, the young knight is admonished to please God by fighting the unbelievers; having served the world well he is to serve God even more loyally. If only he does this well, God will thank him royally.16 In Baudoin’s schema the path the knight must follow to success seems clear no less than strait. 12 13

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Lines 26–27: “God hate all forms of evil as do all men of worth (Car Diex het vilonnie toute,/ Aussi font toutes bones gens).” Lines 79–85: “I would also say to the knight that he must prepare his heart to honour all ladies if he wants to retain his honour. He should do this for two reasons that I will inform you of./ The first is for the sake of the Mother of God (.Si di encor au chevalier/ Qu’il doit son cuer apareillier/ A toutes dames honnorer/ S’il veut en honnour demorer./ Pour.ii. choses le doit on faire./ Qe je vous vueil dire et retraire./ Pour la mere Dieu, ce est l’une).” Lines 255–257: “God brings together-physical beauty, strength, intelligence and valour in the heart of a noble man of power (Dieus ensamble adresce/ Biauté, force, sanz et proesce/ En cuer de haut home puissant).” Lines 221–225: “the Scriptures tell us that one good deed attracts another, and one evil deed brings another to those who abandon themselves to wrongdoing (Et l’escripture nous retrait/ C’une bone oevre l’autre atrait,/ Et li uns pechiez l’autre donne/ A celui qui s’i abandonne).” Lines 410–13: “I want the young knight to understand that if he has served this world well, God deserves to be served even more loyally. Let the young knight do this so splendidly that God will thank him royally. (Tant [vuel] au bacheler aprendre/ Que se le sieccle a bien servi,/ Ancor a Dieus miex [desservi]/ Que bien le serve et loiaument, Et le fasce si

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What worries Baudoin most in keeping aspiring knights on this narrow path to success is the likelihood that the vile sin of avarice will divert them, bringing death to all the fine qualities he admires in the knighthood he idolizes. His relentless warnings against avarice clearly emerge from the particular social world in which he wrote. The young aspirant knights he addressed lived in a world of bustling commerce and burgeoning cities growing wealthy on trade, especially the manufacture and sale of woolen cloth. Around the courts he served hummed the attractions of a life spent in making money. Such a diversion could truly give much cause for worry to an advocate of ideal chivalric virtues. Modern readers of Joseph Conrad might be pardoned for recalling his corrosive lines about the generic “sepulchral city” in this region whose denizens scurry about merely “to filch a little more money from each other.” Baudoin could scarcely have agreed more or worried more. If Baudoin’s general views could easily blend into the colorful backdrop of contemporary discussions on chivalry, his particular obsession with avarice reveals the importance of his local context. His writing illustrates an important feature of medieval thought on chivalry at many other times and in other regions of Europe; broad ideas and local particularities blended constantly. Such particularities enlivened chivalry, rather than proving that no general phenomenon with that name existed. Every regional specialist studying the Middle Ages can point to this blend; Medieval Italy will come to mind a clear case in point.17 It is fascinating to note that Baudoin’s intense focus on avarice, though rooted in socio-economic regionalism, returns to the mainstream of chivalric dis­ cussion as he elaborates the cause for his horror at its pernicious effects. He is  certain that avarice poisons prowess; avarice diverts young recruits from that central and universal chivalric pursuit, the display of prowess that yields honor.18 As he says, in the avaricious man prowess melts like snow in sunshine.19 A ­ cautious and calculating concern for amassing wealth is diametrically opposed to a vigorous life in arms. Following the siren song of money could deflect a knight from the essential commitment to chivalry, for he must completely devote his strong body, his indomitable spirit, and all his wealth and

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roiaument)”. Line 415: “Que Dieus l’en sache roial gré.” Kennedy’s initial editorial emendation appear in square brackets here. Forthcoming work by Peter Sposato will elaborate this Italian case. Since prowess seems to be inseparably linked with other virtues within chivalry, these virtues, too, are threatened. Where avarice reigns, important chivalric virtues disappear. A knight afflicted with avarice will, for example, display none of the crucial largess that should grace his household. Lines 172–173: “com la [nois] remet/ Quant li chaus du soloil l’atant.”

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possessions to boldly following his career at arms. At his first tournament he must “put his body and all he has into it” in order to win.20 By doing so he has earned the honorable title of bachelor. Except for encountering a more vigorous and skilled opponent, the enemy that could prevent such a triumph is obviously avarice, acting as it so often does with its dread ally, sloth. As he states directly, “avarice is opposed to prowess” but “prowess comes from daring and desires to spend daringly.”21 An endorsement of liberal elite spending is unsurprising, coming from a trouvere who richly appreciated the generosity of patrons; yet Baudoin’s argument has an ideological dimension beyond a writer’s self-interest. He tells the young aspirants that t the follower of avarice will “never have a good day in the field” and will “never again strike a good blow (il n’en fera mes biau cop).”22 Significantly, and cleverly, Baudoin likewise associates sloth with vainglory, contrasting it with the genuine valor he repeatedly glorifies.23 The impact of such lines on an audience of aspirants for the glories of knighthood can well be imagined, and clearly was intended. They are being assured, in as many ways as Baudoin’s octosyllabic couplets can devise, that prowess and its close ally largess will, by contrast, carry all before them to the glories of high renown and honor. Baudoin’s idealism and morality, that is, direct the young knight toward a physically vigorous life of arms, never away from it. Qualities praised in addition to prowess appear, of course, but far from acting as counter balances offsetting martial skill and effort, in effect they promote or fuse with prowess or are revealed by its vigorous presence. Basic piety and moral idealism, that is, do not prevent or even reduce a highly physical conception of chivalry in “Le Bacheler.” The sense of chivalry in the poem is based on warrior practice, on deeds of arms. This is decidedly no Pre-Raphaelite view of knighthood, not a view in which prowess appears as some regrettable afterthought to a knight’s worthiness shown through non-physical virtues which stand higher on an abstract hierarchical list. Baudoin’s knight takes the right road “in order to become more valiant (De plus en plus preus devenir).”24 Baudoin’s approach appears clearly as he takes his young hero onto the tournament field: Then he goes to exchange blows in the great tournament and conducts himself o nobly and fights so magnificently that he throws the battle into 20 21 22 23 24

Lines 112–113. Lines 142–145. Line 168. Lines 203–204: “Vainglory comes from sloth (Car çaus qui chascent gloire vaine/ Vient il de pereceuse vaine).” Line 228.

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turmoil. And prowess inspires him to turn the helmet [of his enemy] into an anvil and the sword [in his own hand] into a hammer;…and he defends himself within the shield as if he has long been living a life at arms, for nature which teaches all creatures and makes them all behave according to their nature, makes him conduct himself so splendidly that everyone trembles before him. And the cries of the heralds draw attention to the knight who turns from the place of combat where he has defeated all opponents, and the tournament moves towards him. Then the battle starts again, and he, on his warhorse, is planted like a tower in the middle of the group and strikes with his sword in hand…. There he is attacked from all sides, and he defends himself like a leopard and flings himself into performing great deeds. And great prowess that gives him the strength and the courage to defend himself enables him to split helmets and shields and bring knights to the earth.25 As the knight defeats his enemies with an active sword, Baudoin’s active pen is ceaselessly slashing at avarice and sloth as he lauds prowess that yields honor. His boldly aggressive hero is not thinking of chivalry as a metaphor for spiritual progress; his is no practice of “chivalerie celestiele” in the footsteps of Galahad. Nor is he focussed on possessions. Honor is uppermost in his mind. He does not stop to make valuable captives of the knights he defeats nor collect their costly mounts. As ever, Baudoin’s praise shows his tireless didactic impulse. Of his imagined hero he says, “His arm clears a way for him wherever he wants to go. And he does not concern himself with collecting what he has won, for he has no interest in that.”26 Since his knight must have the wealth that enables the costly practice of arms and the requisite dispensing of largess, a virtue also insisted upon by Baudoin, the disdain for financial benefits from the tournament raises questions he does not resolve. Yet his disdain for mere possessions at this point in his argument hardly licenses historians to declare that the “truly” chivalrous disdained possessions. Baudoin’s localized focus must be recognized, not generalized. Baudoin, in fact, returns obsessively to the broad virtues of honor and prowess that hold almost universal sway in chivalric writing. In company with these medieval writers he foreshadows no Victorian dreams of chivalry free from all materiality and only regretfully violent in the altruistic search for justice.27 The 25 26 27

Lines 288–317. Line 320–325. As we will see below, he recognizes that a knight must have sufficient wealth and landed income to sustain a life in arms.

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chivalry he exalts seeks self advancement inscribed on the great and public slate of renown, what all medieval warriors recognized as honor, what Sir Thomas Malory would famously, centuries later, term ‘worshyppe’, based on “dedes ful actual.”28 The great deeds a knight performs are not charitable acts in the abstract, not metaphors for spiritual struggle, but stunning physical acts of courage and combat that win honor at the expense of defeated opponents. Assigning priority to prowess as enacted as the key to honor does not imply exclusivity; Baudoin, of course, suggests that knighthood requires fine sociocultural and mental qualities. He wants aspirant knights to get the entire range of virtues in proper balance. Many qualities necessarily fuse in the good knightly attitude and practice of the worthy man, which are to be free of all evil.29 The impulse to practice largess is necessary. Wisdom is also highly desired. Likewise, courage is necessary to the successful practice of prowess. Baudoin is certain that courage and other virtues come from the heart, which determines action. Perhaps unsurprising in a court poet, he considers the crucial chivalric heart (the fountainhead of so many virtues) to be a genetic inheritance; knights are born from knightly stock. Yet he obviously wants to see the young aspirant shaped properly by essential didactic poems such as “Le Bacheler”. Near the end of his poem Baudoin, in a brief passage, pictures a noble road along which one chivalric quality leads to another and the knight becomes a loyal man of worth. This path significantly begins with prowess and adds confidence, uprightness, boldness, worthiness, courtesy and generosity, ending with the statement “and if he remains true to his prowess, he should spend all his youth in the maintaining of the practice of arms to the degree that he can sustain.” Like successive destinations along the road, each individual quality brings readers or listeners to the next; but each is necessary and none is superseded by what follows. In Baudoin’s view highly desired qualities accumulate, more than they advance from inferior to superior, correcting the one before. In other words, prowess is the first link in an interlocked chain of virtues and is mentioned again at its concluding link. Ever fundamental to Baudoin’s conception, prowess is never a regrettable quality being corrected by other chivalric virtues. Rather, the need for knightly prowess is always present, always a part of any chain of virtues. Early in “Le Bacheler” he advises the young knight to be 28

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Worship, in various spellings appears throughout Eugene Vinaver, ed, Malory. Works; “dedes ful actual” appears at p. 23. The assumption of genetic origins and transmission of chivalric qualities is striking in this passage. Discussed in Panuzio, Baudoin de Condé, pp. 36–39. The absence of the term mesure from this text is thus somewhat surprising.

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full of fun provided it cannot be misinterpreted, for he should not set his heart on anything which could affect his reputation as he should be seen to be in keeping with the order to which he belongs, brave, and loyal and of good conduct. The knight may be gentle and humble and speaking little, pure in body without and within, and he must take the bit between his teeth for the order of chivalry; he should love the practice of knighthood, avoid all bad conduct, and follow the practice of arms everywhere….30 By urging the knight, in a remarkable image, to take the chivalric bit between his teeth, Baudoin guides us away from more abstract and less physical virtues as key elements in chivalry. “High is the renown and even more the deeds to be achieved”, Baudoin intones.31 He has already asserted that “when valour and physical strength match one another in one person, no one, however valiant, but without the physical strength, can rival this.”32 The worthy knight bachelor combines the right body and heart – and even sufficient landed income; he is then “in a position to provide for the practice of arms in an appropriate way.”33 Significantly, the text ends with the maxim that “All those who perform great deeds are men of worth.” In short, this poem does not advocate a world moving away from prowess toward non-violent courtesy in the manner famously proposed by Norbert Elias.34 In many ways Baudoin’s approach and values resemble those generally animating other authors of chivalric texts. His resemblance to Geoffroi de Charny, who practiced and wrote about knighthood a century later, can be striking.35 In company with Charny he shows a resolute focus on knightly prowess and a conviction that all knights should ideally strive to earn the status of prudhomme; likewise he expresses utter scorn for sloth, and voices a clear injunction to aspiring knights to commit all mental and material resources to a life of physical valor.

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Lines 91–106 “(Li jouenes chevaliers nouviaus/ Doit estre plains de tous reviaus/ U on ne puist nul mal reprendre,/ Car a son cuer ne se doit prendre/ Cose qui le puist empirer,/ Ains se doit en lui remirer,/ Selon l’ordre, quels il doit estre:/ Preus et larges et de biel estre,/ Affiert bien que soit chevaliers,/ Dous et humbles et peu parliers,/ Nes dou corsdefors et dedans,/ Et doit rendre le frain as dens/ Por l’ordre de chevalerie,/ Et doit amer bachelerie/ Et tous maus usages fuïr/ Et les armes partout sivir).” Line 408. Lines 255–258. See lines 260–265. The Civilizing Process, I: The History of Manners; ii: Power and Civility, tr. Edmund Jepcott (New York, 1982). Richard W. Kaeuper and Elspeth Kennedy, The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny (Philadelphia, 1996).

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We have already noted his distinctive fixation on avoiding avarice, which claimed no particular importance in Charny’s work. Yet the great divide separating his views from those held by Charny (and a host of others) comes with the fundamental topic of war. Charny clearly shows an avid embrace of war; he elevates war as the highest expression of the exercise of arms essential to knighthood. War in Charny’s treatises expresses more than any lesser combat (such as the joust or tournament) the dedication to physical vigor and unstinting effort that both he and Baudoin so admired in knighthood. By contrast, Baudoin simply does not talk about war. He accepts and extols knightly violence, but limits his discussion to tournament and the sanctified fighting of the crusade, with no consideration of the warfare of skirmish, raid, siege, and open battle of his day. This silence in Baudoin resonates – in this text and indeed, if my strong impression is correct, in all of his writing. Since “Le Bacheler” is a poem inclined to belabor its author’s arguments, any omission seems startling.36 That his literary predecessors and contemporary writers featured war, or at least spoke openly about it, leaves Baudoin in significant isolation. The great company of chivalric authors offered a spectrum of approaches to discussing warfare that ranged from fawning glorification to some degree of moral uncertainty. For the vast majority the choice was not in doubt. Most writers, whether consciously or not, obscured the widespread horrors of war behind an opaque screen of celebrated chivalric valor; they assume ideal knightly rectitude and award glowing praise to showy deeds of arms on battlefields or campaign trails; they laud conquerors (unless their own side has suffered conquest). Such an emphasis stirs no surprise. Pacifism was no option for Baudoin or any other contemporary poet. In general, the need for warfare and vigorous chivalric valor formed unquestioned verities of medieval thought. If rigorous religious criteria in theory framed all issues touching war and violence in the interests of justice and Christian caritas, the lay elite formed a military ordo with the knights defined as lifelong warriors in the divine plan; they blended a good deal of professional independence into their undoubted piety.37 Far from being citizen soldiers called out of peacetime occupations, 36

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Scholars could point to a number of such omissions. For example, Baudoin discusses chivalry with no mention of love and only a passing reference to ladies. Equally absent is any trace of standard calls for knightly protection of vulnerable widows and orphans, or even any calls on knighthood to support the work and protect the personnel and possessions of Holy Church. Perhaps no single author ever takes up all themes touching his interests in an individual poem or even in an entire body of poetry. Each of these absences seems significant, but I will take up only one, the disappearance of war, with a hope to return to the others in a later study. See RW Kaeuper, Holy Warriors; the Religious Ideology of chivalry (Philadelphia, 2009).

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the knights constituted a life-long caste defined and elevated by deeds of arms which they were to undertake joyfully and, during outbreaks of peace, actively to seek out. “Le Bacheler” follows the mainstream in asserting that their martial vigor no less than their status was considered a licit practice no less than a genetic inheritance rooted in the divine plan. The Lord of Hosts was with them, no less than the Prince of Peace. In short, most chivalric writers choose to discuss warfare with little sense of moral critique of its aristocratic leaders. Little concern was generally expressed in these works for the sub-knightly who suffered as the fighting swept around their lives, homes, and livelihood. That chivalric literature embodied reform ideas – a case I have advanced for years – in no way suggests that such reform had much to do with the warriors’ treatment of the population at large.38 The common patterns of chivalric literature, in fact, portray warfare as limited to arms bearers clashing in isolation from the general population; often, no inhabitants seem to live or work in the vales, meadows and forests in which massed warriors fight and through which knights on quest roam in romance. In one sense chansons de geste may seem “realistic” in their unsparing focus on the damage warfare entailed, yet the unswerving lens is fixed on damage inflicted on the bodies of participating warriors. Even if their merits and claims for regard are written in their own blood, the very scale of their deeds elevates them to a status of super-heroes worthy of admiration and emulation. Less attention went to points of view about war that clustered near the other end of the interpretive spectrum on war, yet the greater complexity of their attitudes appears especially in great literary works and must register in analysis. Their authors worry about war, often in prudent whispers rather than shouts. Sometimes they show an awareness of damage to the noncombatant population and the need for restraint by the knights; traces of moral outrage at losses imposed on the poor may even be found.39 Scattered portrayals of sheer devastated countryside embodied in the unforgettable image of wasteland will be familiar to any reader of the vast Lancelot-Grail cycle of romances or other works. Moreover, relevant opinion about war was embodied in works outside of any imaginative literary canon. Baudoin could easily have known of the remarkable effort being made in his lifetime – especially after the legislation of the Fourth Lateran Council – to generate a broad range of moral reforms in 38

39

Again, great works may be an exception, as might be argued for Chrétien de Troyes’ “Yvain.” Yet warfare is casually described in this romance and, in the dramatic encounters at the magic spring, is described in terms of natural phenomena. See laisses 51–53 of “Raoul de Cambrai,” giving the advice of Raoul’s mother to limit the effects of warfare, as an example.

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society through expansion of the sacramental system of confession and penance. This great church council must have provoked interest and discussion at the Flemish court (no less than did the Battle of Bouvines about the same time, discussed below). Some evidence suggests a general diffusion of these ideals among the French aristocracy.40 Handbooks for confessors that multiplied dramatically in Baudoin’s generation in their desire to induce moral introspection, urged confessors to pose frank questions to knights seeking absolution: the arms bearers could be asked if they had killed clerics, burned churches, or advised lords to undertake unjust warfare. Such efforts, when added to strains of uneasiness evident in chivalric literature, suggest that many thoughtful lay and clerical folk must have entertained thoughts about moral compromises that would require clear explanation when they stood before the throne of divine judgment.41 Cultural recognition of the dark realities of warfare flowed like a subterranean steam, rising to the surface of conscious recognition only occasionally – in some lines of a few epics, in some romance images, in prescriptive clerical texts in which pastoral concerns are uppermost, or where scholar /theologians labored to square the circle enclosing divine will and the human propensity for violence. Un-blinkered views of war constituted a minority report, important but far from representing the main thrust of elite opinion. Most authors prudently praised chivalry in terms its practitioners could appreciate, with the addition of reform measures to which knighthood in general could reasonably subscribe. An ironclad need to shower praise on the lay elite, even in – perhaps especially in – warfare apparently moved most writers. Though we cannot know what Baudoin read in his study or heard during evenings of conversation at the court of Countess Margaret, it seems fair to assume that a range of options on the subject of war, however lopsided the balance of opinion, was open to him. Did he simply brush aside all such ideas and not think of war at all? In fact, our author slips a bit once in “Le Bacheler” with a comment that lets a reader know he is thinking of war. Baudoin insists 40

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John W. Baldwin, “From the Ordeal to Confession” in Handling Sin: Confession in the Middle Ages, ed Peter Biller and A.J. Minnis (Woobridge, 1998), pp. 191–211 and Richard W. Kaeuper, Holy Warriors: the Religious Ideology of Chivalry (Philadelphia, 2009) pp. 167–194. See the general discussion in John W. Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants (Princeton, 1970), especially at pp. 145–53. Cf. Kaeuper, Holy Warriors, passim. In a paper delivered at a conference on Medieval War and Violence at the Center for Medieval Studies, Univrsity of Bergen, Bergen, Norway, in September, 2011, Diana Tyson delivered an informative paper on occasional French verse showing awareness of what she characterized as the “worm’s eye view” of the consequences of warfare.

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that chivalry “is not a way for plunder, nor for cowardice, nor any weakness.”42 Plunder (rapine) is the revealing term; it can scarcely be interpreted as profit won in tournament, for plunder comes from war. It might justly be considered the most violent and socially disruptive form that knightly avarice could take. This single mention of a consequence of warfare flashes like a lightning stroke which suddenly illuminates a battlefield or campaign trail marked by devastated villages, but then is gone as quickly. Warfare flashes in Baudoin’s mind, but is not mentioned; plunder seems to have appeared unwittingly, as one of a short list of undesirable traits in knights. That Baudoin, a confirmed moralist, does not speak to the existence of war, let alone address its moral perils, raises intriguing issues. If he explicitly believes that chivalry should eschew all forms of evil, the content of this evil is left unspecified, except, of course, for avarice and sloth and, at one point, cowardice (to be corrected by the knight becoming more skilled in arms and thus feared by enemies).43 Baudoin’s attention is drawn much more toward assuring knightly vigor than to specifying particular wrongs that the arms bearers should avoid as vigorous warriors in society. In one sense Baudoin joins the company of medieval moralists (and their modern descendants) who focus remains resolutely fixed on elite males as individuals and on their full achievement of the career and status they seek and deserve as ideal warriors. Almost no attention is given to consideration of the social role – especially none to the social dangers of their violence or any problems professional knightly vigor might produce. The explanation for Baudoin’s silence can scarcely rest on any unfamiliarity with warfare beyond the crusade. Flanders had long experienced conflicts and Baudoin may have been a small child when the great battle of Bouvines was fought on Flemish soil in 1214. With Flemish interests defeated and a count of Flanders captured, he undoubtedly grew up seeing the effects of war and hearing the stories, amidst continuing quarrels. He was very much alive and coming to the height of a literary career during the several conflicts collectively called “the war of the succession of Flanders and Hainault.”44 Fighting convulsed he court which he served as the heirs from successive marriages of the 42 43 44

Lines 374–375. See lines 56–65. On the conflicts at issue, see the classic account of Henri Pirenne, Histoire de Belgique, 7 vols. (Brussels, 1862–1935), vol i, pp. 250–255; a modern summary account is provided by Kelly Devries in Oxford History of Warfare and Military Technology, 3 vols (Oxford, 2010), vol ii, pp. 537–538. My thanks to Kelly devries for advice on this conflict and the complex history from which it arose.

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Countess Margaret, the families of Dampierre and Avesnes, vigorously competed for control of both counties after 1244. The fighting drew in the German anti-king William of Holland for a time and later brought Charles of Anjou (brother of Louis ix) into the conflict as well. Gui of Dampierre was captured in a decisive battle of 1253 and Charles of Anjou nearly died in a later skirmish. Baudoin understood the impact of warfare intertwined with the profession of knighthood. Of course his court patrons were likewise painfully aware of consequences wrought by war, given the terrible conflicts of the recent past. If poet and patron could agree that vigorous knighthood remained necessary, Baudoin’s silence could have been mandated by recollections at court of these external and internal conflicts better thrust out of memory. Baudoin’s personal views on warfare may well remain more hidden from us than the inclinations of his patrons. Perhaps fearing that knighthood centered on the court he knew was being drained of potential recruits by seductive avarice and lethal sloth, Baudoin hesitated to raise deeply troublesome questions or to picture disturbing scenes; perhaps he thus avoided the images splashed with a bloody and visceral brush onto the mental canvas in chanson de geste. Similarly, no talk of wasteland would encourage his young recruits. Complex moral qualms about just warfare could best be left to confessors. Of course he was unwilling to leave the campaign against avarice, often enacted through usury, to those same confessors. Though such analysis of courtly realism implies no censure, questions remain about the possible impact from Baudoin’s silence on warfare and his relationship to the great tradition of chivalric literature, with its continual interest in reform.45 Though modern scholars have praised him as a forthright critic of the mores of contemporary noblemen,46 this view requires caution. His advice to young knights to strive for renown while avoiding avarice and sloth would not have dangerously elevated blood pressures among his intended audience of aspirants, with a surrounding court beaming approval. We might even speculate about the likely impact of his writing on views about warfare held by his audience. To vigorously self-assertive and professionally violent 45

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The range of literary opinion – from the creation of military heroes to carefully-worded and often oblique critiques of the behavior of the lay elite – are discussed in essays collected in Writing War: Medieval Literary Responses to Warfare, ed Corinne Saunders, Francoise Le Saux, and Neil Thomas (Woodbridge, 2004). In the Histoire litteraire de la France xxiii (1856), p. 267, P. Paris declares that Baudoin wrote to inform and reform, not to please. This view was largely endorsed in 1992 by Panuzio, Badoin de Condé, pp. 19–78.

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young men his praise of knightly valor and violence may have remained uppermost; silence on warfare may have simply been taken to imply consent. Qui tacet consentire videtur. More certain is the recognition that both a broad commonality and some diversity of views will combine in writers on chivalry from whom we learn. All of these authors will speak with admiration about the glowing ethos and martial practice of chivalry which encompasses elite arms bearers throughout the world that they know, and which they imagine had graced the great warriors in the classical past recorded in the books on their library shelves. The continuum of warrior qualities had, they were sure, originated in pre-Christian times and then came to be especially blessed by Christ, the Virgin, and all saints under the New Law. Great deeds of prowess will always enoble a knight and earn him the honor that is more precious even than life; he will exercise the largess that is a social marker of high status; and the ideal knight will balance all expectations in a courtois style of life as a worthy man. Variations in particular times and places need cause no concern – except to historians many centuries after the fact. In the heavenly hall that they imagined as their reward, Baudoin’s knights could, with respect and deference, approach Geoffroi de Charny or William Marshal, or Roland and Oliver, and over a glass of superb wine discuss the vitality of their knightly order.

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Chivalry: Fantasy and Fear School books teach that chivalry internalized restraints in noble males: it was the noble code of noble men in shining armour who used minimal force to right wrongs, preserve religion, and protect those regarded as weak. Chivalry entered into the formula of forces producing what historians often label High Medieval civilization, that time from the later eleventh century, if not earlier, when remarkable socio-economic, political, religious and intellectual activity is so evident in Europe: Charles Homer Haskins’s ‘renaissance of the twelfth century’, Marc Bloch’s ‘second feudal age’, Roberto Lopez’s ‘age of commercial revolution’, Sir Richard Southern’s age of ‘medieval humanism’.1 Chivalry could easily be viewed as a purely positive force for order. Yet it could be argued that chivalry was an ambivalent force, inextricably involved with the violence troubling a developing society.2 The best evidence comes from medieval chivalric literature, especially chansons de geste, romance, chivalric biography and vernacular manuals. Here are gilded fantasies about ideal chivalry, brutal fantasies about the sheer power of warriors wielding edged weapons, and a complex interplay of fantasy, idealized and feared, over the effects of omnipresent violence. The fear sometimes informs and shapes the fantasy in these medieval texts; but much modern writing on chivalry resonates only to aspects of the medieval ideal that appeal to contemporary sensibilities. Such a view generates its own soft-hued modern fantasy about the Middle Ages, missing the crucial importance of violence altogether. Yet as Rosemary Jackson has argued, fantasy as a literature of desire simultaneously expresses and expels desire, revealing dark areas in the dominant order of society.3 The violence inherent in chivalry – desired, feared and debated – makes a good case in point. 62 This chapter will contrast an idealized view of knightly powers in the | thirteenth-­ century Lancelot do Lac with three more ambivalent works: the Perlesvaus, the Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, and the Merlin Continuation. * Previously published in Ceri Sullivan and Barbara White (eds.), Writing and Fantasy (London, 1999), 62–73. 1 Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1927); Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, trans. L.A. Manyon (Chicago, 1961); Roberto Lopez, The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages (New York, 1971); Richard W. Southern, Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford, 1970). 2 A theme developed in my book, Chivalry and the Problem of Violence, forthcoming from Clarendon Press, Oxford. 3 Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion (London, 1981), pp. 2–4, 15, 26. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004302655_017

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Medieval writers used the term chivalry in three distinct but related ways: great deeds done with edged weapons; the body of men who did those deeds (meaning all those in one particular location or even all knights considered as an ‘order’ in society); and, more broadly, the code animating such men, their ideals and ideal practices. The range of meanings steers us away from simplistic readings of a single chivalric practice set against a single chivalric ideal. There was probably – within flexible limits – a fairly common chivalric practice over centuries.4 William Marshal, the model knight of the late twelfth century, whose life is told in a fascinating contemporary biography, would perfectly understand Geoffroi de Charny, the leading French knight of the mid-­fourteenth century, who wrote The Book of Chivalry, an important handbook for knights, and Sir Thomas Malory, the active knight and author of the famous Morte Darthur in the late fifteenth century.5 Yet moving beyond a core of beliefs – martial prowess winning honour, piety embodied in ideal knightly practice and expiatory suffering, the mutual inspiration of prowess and love – there is no single theory, no detailed code agreed upon by all. Royal administrators, monks, bishops, scholars, and the knights themselves all had plans for what chivalry should ideally be. The focus in their debates over the three-fold usage of the term chivalry falls on prowess, on the expert, bloody, sweaty, muscular work done with sword and lance. Chivalry was one of the problems in medieval Europe, not just one of its creative solutions to problems. Modern commentators avoid concentrating on the actual prowess so essential to chivalry, wanting the Middle Ages to be less violent, chivalry to function as escapist fantasy. But prowess as the central strand of chivalry means hacking, slashing and eviscerating all opponents. The young Arthurian heroes in The Story of Merlin in the Lancelot-Grail Cycle have fought so well in a battle against the Saxons ‘that their arms and legs and the heads and manes of their horses were dripping with blood and gore’. They are described as having done ‘many a beautiful deed of knighthood and struck many a handsome 4 As Maurice Keen claims for the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, Chivalry (New Haven, 1984). 5 Marshal’s life studied in Sidney Painter, William Marshal, Knight-Errant, Baron and Regent of England (Baltimore, 1933); Georges Duby, William Marshal, the Flower of Chivalry, trans. R. Howard (London, 1986); David Crouch, William Marshal: Court, Career and Chivalry in the Angevin Empire, 1147–1219 (Harlow, 1990). The French original has at present not been translated into English. On Charny: Richard W. Kaeuper and Elspeth Kennedy, The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny: Text, Context and Translation (Philadelphia, 1996). The bibliography on Malory is immense; see Page West Life, Sir Thomas Malory and the Morte Darthur: A Survey of Scholarship and Annotated Bibliography (Charlottesville, 1980). For his great book, see The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, ed. Eugene Vinaver, 3rd edn, 3 vols, revised by P.J.C. Field (Oxford, 1990).

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blow for which everyone should hold them in high esteem’.6 A maiden whose rights Bors defends in the Lancelot (Vulgate Cycle) gives him a white | banner to 63 attach to his lance. After combat with her enemies, Bors ‘saw that the banner which had been white before, was scarlet with blood, and he was overjoyed’.7 A knight who has seen Lancelot perform in a tournament, in the Lancelot (Vulgate Cycle), can scarcely find words sufficient to praise his prowess: it takes a lot more to be a worthy man than I thought it did this morning. I’ve learned so much today that I believe there’s only one truly worthy man in the whole world. I saw the one I’m talking about prove himself so well against knights today that I don’t believe any mortal man since chivalry was first established has done such marvelous deeds as he did today. He explains explicitly what these marvels were: I could recount more than a thousand fine blows, for I followed that knight every step to witness the marvelous deeds he did; I saw him kill five knights and five men-at-arms with five blows so swift that he nearly cut horses and knights in two. As for my own experience, I can tell you he split my shield in two, cleaved my saddle and cut my horse in half at the shoulders, all with a single blow … I saw him kill four knights with one thrust of his lance … if it were up to me, he’d never leave me. I’d keep him with me always, because I couldn’t hold a richer treasure.8 All of the ambiguity about violence pivots on knightly prowess. Is all knightly violence licit and admirable? Should it be praised? Should it be stopped? Can it be channelled? Does God approve? Does it prove a knight’s masculinity? We can examine the idealistic fantasy through a splendid conversation in the Lancelot do Lac, written early in the thirteenth century. Lancelot is instructed in chivalry by his foster mother, the Lady of the Lake. Her teaching and the responses evoked from the young Lancelot by her Socratic questions paint an ideal representation of chivalry.9 In the misty past, 6

7 8 9

The Story of Merlin, trans. Rupert T. Pickens, in Lancelot–Grail, The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation, Norris J. Lacy, gen. ed., 5 vols (New York, 1993– 1996), vol. 1, p. 268. Lancelot Part iv, trans. Roberta Krueger, in Lancelot-Grail, vol. 3, pp. 42–43. Lancelot Part v, trans. William W. Kibler, in Lancelot-Grail, vol. 3, pp. 161–162. The quotations that follow are drawn from Lancelot of the Lake trans. Corin Corley (Oxford, 1989), pp. 50–58.

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envy and greed began to grow in the world, and force began to overcome justice … And when the weak could no longer withstand or hold our against the strong, they established protectors and defenders over themselves, to protect the weak and the peaceful and no maintain their rights and to deter the strong from their wrong-doing and outrageous behaviour. |

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So ‘the big and the strong and the handsome and the nimble and the loyal and the valorous and the courageous, those who were full of the qualities of the heart and of the body’ were elected as knights. Each knight learned that he must be courteous without baseness, gracious without cruelty, compassionate towards the needy, generous and prepared to help those in need, and ready and prepared to confound robbers and killers … a fair judge without love or hate. [He must not] for fear of death do anything which can be seen as shameful; rather he should be more afraid of suffering shame than of suffering death. There is a moral core in a knight, chivalry is a quality of the heart rather than the body. Asked to differentiate these qualities of heart and body, Lancelot answers: It seems to me that a man can have the qualities of the heart even if he cannot have those of the body, for a man can be courteous and wise and gracious and loyal and valorous and generous and courageous – all these are virtues of the heart – though he cannot be big and robust and agile and handsome and attractive … qualities of the body … that a man brings … with him out of his mother’s womb when he is born. We moderns might expect this analysis to conclude that a kind and pacific man is worth more than a mere warrior. But Lancelot takes this line of thought in a different direction, as Geoffroi de Charny would a century and a half later.10 He tells his Lady: ‘so I believe that it is only indolence which prevents a

10

Charny’s leitmotif is ‘he who does more is of greater worth’. Kaeuper and Kennedy, The Book of Chivalry, pp. 86–99.

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man from being valorous, for I have often heard you yourself say that it is the heart alone which makes a man of valor’. Since all men are descended from one man and one woman, he has already asked her, rhetorically, how one would become noble except through prowess? The Lady of the Lake concludes their conversation with an insistence that the knight was established to protect the Holy Church, and gives a long set of symbolic interpretations of each piece of knightly equipment: the shield symbolizes the knightly protection of the Holy Church from robbers and pagans, and so on. The Lancelot do Lac was influential, leaving its traces across much later writing on chivalry, including the important book of Ramon Llull. His Book of the Order of Chivalry, published in | Catalan and translated quickly into 65 French before Caxton’s English translation, presents again a myth of origins in which chivalry appears in the role of saviour after a Fall; his book likewise gives idealized, symbolic interpretations of each piece of knightly gear.11 Writing near the end of the thirteenth century, Llull thinks chivalry so important it should be taught in schools. Chivalry and learning must cooperate; if the science of the knights and that of the clerks both flourished, all would go well in the world. His comment brings readily to mind the famous words of the great romance writer Chrétien de Troyes in the opening of his romance Cligés: this our books have taught us, that Greece once stood preeminent in both chivalry and learning. Then chivalry proceeded to Rome in company with the highest learning. Now they have come into France. God grant that they be sustained here and their stay be so pleasing that the honor that has stopped here in France never depart.12 The ideal sounds familiar to us, through its presence in many books, having sometimes slipped almost unnoticed, in its hazy, pre-Raphaelite colouration, from the realm of fantasy into the supposedly sharper interpretion of actual historical representation. Does the ideal blot out fears about the proud violence of knights? These fears show up with convincing regularity, and sometimes with stunning effect. The early-thirteenth-century romance Per-lesvaus; the High Book of the Grail 11 12

The Book of the Ordre of Chyvalry, ed. Alfred T.P. Byles (London, 1926), presents Caxton’s English translation. The Complete Romances of Chrétien de Troyes, trans. David Staines (Bloomington, Ind., 1990), p. 87.

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more than once introduces huge, terrifying knights in black armour.13 We first see these dread figures through the eyes of Perceval’s sister when she comes to the Perilous Cemetery. As the maiden peered around the graveyard from where she stood among the tombs, she saw that it was surrounded by knights, all black, with burning, flaming lances, and they came at each other with such a din and tumult that it seemed as though the whole forest were crumbling. Many wielded swords as red as flame, and were attacking one another and hewing off hands and feet and noses and heads and faces; the sound of their blows was great indeed…

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Later in the story when Arthur, Lancelot and Gawain journey on a Grail pilgrimage they find themselves in the midst of a dense forest without the accommodation that usually appears in such | stories as if on cue. After sending a squire up a tree to try to discover some sign of hospitality in the engulfing darkness, they move toward an open fire he has sighted in the distance. The fire is burning inexplicably, they find, in the ruined courtyard of a fortified but deserted manor house. When they send the squire in search of food for the horses, he returns in utter terror, having in the dark stumbled into a chamber filled with fragments of butchered knights’ bodies. Suddenly a maiden appears in the courtyard, bearing on her shoulders half a dead man. For her sins against knighthood this unfortunate maiden has had to ‘carry to that chamber all the knights who were killed in this forest and guard them here at the manor, all alone without company’. She warns the Round Table companions against a fearsome band of knights who will come at night, ‘black they are, and foul and terrible, and no-one knows where they come from. They fight one another furiously, and the combat is long.’ On her advice Lancelot draws a magic circle all around the house with his sword – just in time, for the demon knights came galloping through the forest, at such a furious speed that it sounded as though the forest were being uprooted. Then they rode into the manor, clutching blazing firebrands which they hurled at one another; into the house they rode, fighting, and made as if to approach the knights, but they could not go near them, and had to aim the firebrands at the king and his company from a distance. 13

The following quotations appear in The High Book of the Grail: A Translation of the Thirteenth Century Romance of Perlesvaus, trans. Nigel Bryant (Totowa, New Jersey, 1978), p. 144, and pp. 176–178.

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Though the maiden warns Lancelot not to step outside the protective magic of his circle, with characterestic valour he attacks the knights. Inspired by his example, Arthur and Gawain join in; swords swing, sparks and hot coals fly, the evil are defeated. As the swords of the heroes cut through them, they screamed like demons and the whole forest resounded, and as they fell to the ground and could endure no more, both they and their horses turned to filth and ashes, and black demons rose from their bodies in the form of crows. With hardly a moment’s rest Arthur, Lancelot and Gawain confront another band, ‘even blacker men, bearing blazing lances wrapped in flames, and many were carrying the bodies of knights whom they had killed in the forest’. Flinging 67 down the bodies they | demand of the maiden that she deal with them as with all the others. She refuses, declaring her penance done. They attack the three companions, seeking revenge for their defeated fellows; the combat is terrible until a bell sounded by a hermit saying mass causes them to flee suddenly. Near the end of the romance shapes that are apparently these same demon knights put in a final, chilling appearance. Lancelot at the Perilous Chapel, came to the door of the chapel, and there in the graveyard he thought he saw huge and terrible knights mounted on horseback, ready for combat, and they seemed to be staring at him, watching him. These astonishing and terrifying images have been read in the framework of elaborate religious symbolism so evident in this romance. This imagery works in other dimensions as well. Jackson’s recognition that fantasy uncovers the ‘dark areas’ of the ‘dominant order’ could scarcely be better illustrated than in the portrayal of these demon knights lurking in the forest shadows or suddenly emerging to hack at each other and at the innocent with their flaming weaponry. Their appearance in the Perlesvaus takes on even more force when we consider that the author seems to be drawing the raw material of his images from a folkloristic tradition known as ‘la Mesnie Hellequin’ or Herlequin’s Hunt, a wild nocturnal ride by a hunting party or armed host across the countryside. The use of such images in this romance calls to mind what Marjorie Chibnall called ‘one of the most unforgettable passages in the Ecclesiastical History’ of the twelfth-century chronicler Orderic Vitalis.14 14

Orderic Vitalis. The Ecclesiastical History ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall, 6 vols (Oxford, 1969–1980), vol. 4, pp. xxxix–xl; the following quotations appear in this volume, pp. 236–251.

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Orderic tells us the story given to him in person by Walchelin, a priest who claimed to have witnessed the fearful procession on the first night of January 1091, while returning from a visit to a sick parishioner. Hearing them approach, Walchelin mistook the noise to mean a troublesome contemporary force, the household troops of Robert of Bellême, on their way to the siege of Courcy, and feared being ‘shamefully robbed’. His initial fear is useful evidence in itself. What happened was yet more terrifying, however, for he saw pass before him in the clear moonlight not an army of mortals, but four troops of tormented spirits: first commoners on foot, then women riding side-saddle, then a great 68 troop of clergy and monks, all groaning under torments. The last troop was | a great army of knights, in which no colour was visible save blackness and flickering fire. All rode upon huge horses, fully armed as if they were galloping to battle and carrying jet-black standards. To the watching priest these forms are thoroughly real, recalling Todorov’s distinction between the truly marvellous or supernatural in fantasy and the merely uncanny or psychological.15 Wanting proof that he had actually seen ‘Herlechin’s rabble’, the priest foolishly tried to seize one of the coal-black horses, which easily galloped off. His yet more foolish second attempt brought an attack by four of the demon knights. Orderic assures us that he saw the scar on the priest’s throat caused by the knight’s grasp, ‘burning him like fire’. One of the knights who proved to be the cleric’s dead brother, who spared Walchelin, told him of the torments the ghostly knights suffer, and begged for his priestly prayers as his hope for relief: I have endured severe punishment for the great sins with which I am heavily burdened. The arms which we bear are red-hot, and offend us with an appalling stench, weighing us down with intolerable weight, and burning with everlasting fire. Up to now I have suffered unspeakable torture from those punishments. But when you were ordained in England and sang your first Mass for the faithful departed your father Ralph escaped from his punishments and my shield, which caused me great pain, fell from me. As you see I still carry this sword, but I look in faith for release from this burden within the year.

15

Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, trans. Richard Howard (Cleveland, Ohio, 1973), pp. 41–57.

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Walchelin noticed what seemed to him ‘a mass of blood like a human head’ around his brother’s heels where his knightly spurs would attach. It is not blood, he learns, but fire, burning and weighing down the knight as if he were carrying the Mont Saint-Michel. His brother explains: because I used bright, sharp spurs in my eager haste to shed blood I am justly condemned to carry this enormous load on my heels, which is such an intolerable burden that I cannot convey to anyone the extent of my sufferings. The knight’s message is clear: ‘Living men should constantly have these things in mind’. It seems likely that the author of the Perlevaus, a century later, had them much in mind. Both he and Orderic | testify vividly to a fear of knightly 69 violence at the deepest level of human psychology. Both writers show the fear that can accompany desire in fantasy. An image of similar vividness and power, much better known, involves a ‘dolorous stroke’ with frightful consequences to whole kingdoms. The incident points us toward the significant theme of wasteland, of terrible and sweeping devastation. As portrayed in the story of Balain, contained within the PostVulgate Merlin Continuation (written probably soon after 1240), the dolorous stroke gives us particularly useful evidence of fears generated by knightly violence and the devastation it causes.16 This story is all the more powerful for being a part of a major structural contrast built into this cycle: Balain, the source of misery and misfortune, is set opposite Galahad, the bringer of joy and release; the Unfortunate Knight stands on one side, the Good Knight on the other. Balain brings into being the oppressive ‘adventures’ of the Grail when he wounds King Pellehan; Galahad lifts this curse when he cures him. In a society accustomed to thinking about fall and redemption, it seems significant that Balain is compared to Eve, Perceval to Christ. Doggedly pursued by an invisible knight who repeatedly kills his companions without warning, Balain finally finds the man in conveniently visible form at the castle where King Pellehan is holding court. Wasting no time, Balain kills his enemy with a sword stroke, splitting the man from his head down through his chest. King Pelleham is even more outraged at this act of vengeance in his court than Arthur was when Balain had similarly killed a lady in his presence. In his hot wrath King Pellehan personally attacks Balain with a great pole and

16

The Merlin Continuation, trans. Martha Asher, in Lancelot–Grail, vol. 4, chs 8, 10–13, 16–23.

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breaks the knight’s sword. A wild chase through the castle ensues, with Balain searching in desperation for any weapon to resist the pursuing king. Disregarding an unearthly voice warning him not to enter so holy a place, Balain rushes into a marvellous and sweet-smelling room containing a silver table upon which stands a gold and silver vessel. A lance suspended miraculously in mid air, point down, is poised over this vessel. Ignoring another voice of warning, Balain seizes the lance just in time to thrust it into the genitals (‘through both thighs’) of King Pellehan who falls to the floor grievously wounded. Although it first seemed to Balain that this stroke was justified, his error becomes progressively clear. This time Balain cannot ignore the voice 70 which trumpets the following sentence, | the entire castle trembling all the while as if the world were coming to an end: Now begin the adventures and marvels of the Kingdom of Adventures which will not cease until a high price is paid for soiled, befouled hands having touched the Holy Lance and wounded the most honored of princes and the High Master will avenge it on those who have not deserved it. Balain has, of course, seized the sacred lance that pierced the side of Christ on the cross, the Lance of Longinus, and has used it against the king into whose care God had entrusted the keeping of the Holy Grail. The result – certainly miraculous rather than merely uncanny – approximates an atomic bomb explosion, with rings of gradually decreasing devastation. A great part of the castle wall falls; hundreds within the castle die from pure fear; in the surrounding town many die and others are maimed and wounded as houses tumble into rubble; no one dares to enter the castle for several days, as a sense of divine wrath akin to radiation lingers. Merlin finally leads people back into the site, accompanied by a priest wearing ‘the armor of Jesus Christ’, which alone will guarantee them safe entry. Finding Balain, Merlin leads him out, even providing him with the necessary mount. Everywhere he rides the prospect is cheerless: as he rode through the land, he found the trees down and broken and grain destroyed and all things laid waste, as if lightning had struck in each place, and unquestionably it had struck in many places, though not everywhere. He found half the people in the villages dead, both bourgeois and knights, and he found laborers dead in the fields. What can I tell you? He found the kingdom of Listinois so totally destroyed that it was later called by everyone the Kingdom of Waste Land and the Kingdom of Strange Land, because everywhere the land had become so strange and wasted.

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So powerful and complex an incident as the dolorous stroke can only be considered a polyvalent symbol. Yet we can see immediately its significance for our inquiry. A man who is recognized as one of the best knights in the world takes perhaps understandable vengeance for unprovoked attacks. Fleeing for his life, weaponless, he commits the great sin. A knight, whatever his good qualities, | has laid profane hands on the weapon that pierced God in the 71 course of divine redemption and has used it in his private quarrel to wound one of his fellow knights and one of God’s chosen agents. Devastation, like lightning – or war – blots out or blights the lives of innocent people throughout an entire region. Pure knightly prowess, highly praised at the opening of this story, has produced these stunning results near its close. Balain must not be viewed in isolation in this work, of course. At the other end of the scale of knighthood, in other works of the great Vulgate or Lancelot– Grail Cycle, stands his counter, Galahad, the Good Knight, being everything, achieving everything his clerical creators wanted in knights.17 Perhaps it puts us in mind of the word-play regularly employed by clerical reformers interested in chivalry. Was chivalry to be considered militia (idealized, pure knighthood), or simply malitia (evil)? In important works of literature, medieval society engaged with the basic issue of violence through the mode of fantasy. Knightly obsession with the hands-on violence of personal prowess was celebrated in accounts of superhuman strokes with sword and lance. The obvious dangers of knightly violence were more indirectly but no less powerfully portrayed in accounts of a dolorous stroke or demon knights. In works like the Lancelot do Lac authors proposed fantasies of ideal chivalry which upheld social order and never troubled it. The nineteenth century may have brought the flowering of fantasy, but six or seven centuries earlier fantasy was already rooted in social realities through a literature which not only presented fundamental truths about society, but also tested them by raising troubling questions.18 | 72

17

For the story of Galahad, see The Quest for the Holy Grail, trans. E. Jane Burns, in Lancelot– Grail, vol. 4. 18 Jackson, Fantasy, pp. 2–3, 15.

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Chivalry and the ‘Civilizing Process’ If medievalists were asked to name scholars who were writing exceptionally important work in the later 1930s, we can guess what names would be prominent. Marc Bloch would likely head the list, or perhaps Henri Pirenne; Carl Erdmann would soon join them as names multiplied. That of Norbert Elias would probably not appear, and yet this fascinating German sociologist (whose Über den Prozess der Zivilisation was written in the same year as Bloch’s Société Féodale) has raised questions of considerable significance for the topic of violence in Medieval society.1 I confess to more interest in his questions than his answers, especially since determining exactly what he did say, which qualifications to set against sweeping themes stated much more boldly, turns out to be a daunting enterprise. Helen Cam’s praise of Bishop Stubbs as ‘the perfect hedger’ comes easily to mind.2 It seems safe to say, minimally, that he argued for a long-range civilizing process at work in European history, which one scholar has concisely characterized as ‘the historicizing of Freudian concepts of the super-ego’.3 An increasingly complex network of social relations and the increasingly centralized force of political power produced an internalization of restraints in individuals, with gradual changes in manners and in the level of violence experienced in everyday life. If all qualifications are swept aside, it seems this process really began after the Middle Ages. Medieval folk lacked foresight and were prone to wild swings of mood; knights in particular were a problem, most of them being at the end of the Middle Ages no less bloodthirsty, ‘wild, cruel, prone to violent outbreaks and 21 abandoned to the joy of the moment’ than they had been half a millenium | earlier.4 Only slowly, at the end of the Middle Ages and especially during the Early Modern era, could nodal points of authority produce the ‘courticization’ of warriors (a term that sounded better in the original German, Verhölichung). * Previously published in Richard Kaeuper (ed.), Violence in Medieval Society Woodbridge, 2000), 21–35. 1 Über den Prozess der Zivilisation (Basel: Haus zum Falken, 1939). English translation by Edmund Jephcott, The Civilizing Process. Volume i: The History of Manners (New York: Pantheon, 1978); The Civilizing Process. Volume ii: Power and Civility (New York: Pantheon, 1982). 2 Quoted by Sir John Goronwy Edwards in William Stubbs (London: Historical Association, 1952), 7. Edwards praises Stubbs’s ‘characteristic caution’ as more than mere hedging; defenders of Elias would, of course, make the same case. 3 Daniel Gordon, Citizens Without Sovereignty: Equality and Sociability in French Thought, 1670–1789 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 89. 4 Elias, Power and Civility, 72.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004302655_018

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Elias began his analysis by drawing creatively on the humble books of manners written in the Early Modern period; his first volume, based on this evidence, is unfortunately often read without a look at the second, which broadens out into the significantly larger issues which have proved to be stimulating and controversial. ‘The Norbert Elias industry continues to flourish,’ Anthony Giddens wrote a few years ago, perhaps with something less than enthusiasm.5 Entire issues of sociological journals have been devoted to debates over his ideas; among many modern historians of crime, he even seems to be edging out Michel Foucault (though that may be hard to believe), in no small part because he provides a general interpretation for those unconvinced by the modernization hypothesis of crime (i.e. the idea that the triumph of bourgeois society increased crime, shifting its focus from violence to theft).6 C. Stephen Jaeger, one of the few medievalists to draw on Elias’s work, added to his own book, The Origins of Courtliness, the significant subtitle Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals.7 The work of other scholars, Matthew Strickland and John Gillingham, for example, also intersects with Elias’s ideas on knights, though both would emphatically deny Elias’s claim that knights regularly slaughtered or at least mutilated prisoners. We can hope that other medievalists will join the discussion, because the questions Elias poses are so obviously significant. Did a civilizing process, reducing the violent tenor of life, begin only after the Middle Ages? Was there a medieval mentalité or habitus which discouraged forethought in individual people and encouraged violence through wild mood swings, bountiful joy giving way to boundless fury? Were warriors formerly fueled by bloodlust tamed by a process of ‘courticization’? I rediscovered Norbert Elias8 only when in the finishing stages of a very large book, Chivalry and Violence, soon to be published.9 Elias’s books had seemed hopelessly general and outdated to me when I read at them, in a desultory way, years ago. On rereading, I see that I am at least following him in asking some of the same questions. In fact, the evidence I am primarily using is an extension (both chronological and thematic) of the evidence Elias began 5 American Journal of Sociology 98 (1992), 388. 6 E.g. Eric A. Johnson and Eric H. Monkkonen, eds, The Civilization of Crime: Violence in Town and Country since the Middle Ages (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996). Stephen Mennel provides an introduction to study of Elias in Norbert Elias: Civilization and the Human Self-image (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989). For journal issue dedicated to Elias, see Theory, Culture and Society 12, Number 3 (August, 1995). 7 The Origins of Courtliness: Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals, 939–1210 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985). 8 After a helpful nudge from Daniel Moses, to whom I am grateful. 9 Chivalry and Violence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, forthcoming).

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with – those | books of manners. For in addition to chronicles, my evidence comes mainly from as much chivalric literature as I could read over a span of about a decade – chanson de geste, romance, vernacular manuals, and chivalric biography – hundreds of works, many thousands of pages. For their contemporaries, these works, I argue, present important ideals, raise troubling questions, and often suggest, with greater or lesser degrees of subtlety, paths of reform. They form a vast, unexcelled, and (where historians are concerned) little-used body of evidence for the relationship between chivalry and anything like a civilizing process. I propose just such an inquiry here, using one work of chivalric literature as at least a test-case in a vast field. Even a portion of the Lancelot, the huge central romance in the anonymous Vulgate or Lancelot–Grail cycle of prose romances written early in the thirteenth century, makes a good source for this inquiry. The entire Old French text has been rigorously edited both by H. Oskar Sommer and Alexandre Micha.10 In the five volume set of Lancelot–Grail only recently published by Garland, Roberta Krueger has provided a fine idiomatic English translation of the sample which I will use.11 Even this sample is a hefty text: all of Micha’s volume ii and half of Sommer’s Volume Four in quarto. Moreover, these pages show much of the range of romance writing, for the text incorporates a condensation of Chrétien de Troyes’s Lancelot or Chevalier de la charette in its opening, it tells of Gawain’s first experience at the grail castle near its end, and in between it relates the episodic adventures of several heroes of the Round Table, especially Bors the Dispossessed, Sagremore the Unruly, and Dodinel the Wildman. As the very names of these heroes might suggest, this is a text replete with acts of violence. Precisely how violent can, I hope, be demonstrated beyond cavil by a simple count of the jousts, single combats, or fights of a knight against small groups of opponents, either knights or footmen. In this text of about 400 pages in duodecimo (Micha), about 200 pages in quarto (Sommer), about 100 pages in double-column quarto (Krueger), I find something approaching a hundred individually described combats, most of them carefully, some of them elaborately, presented.12 10

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Alexandre Micha, ed., Lancelot: roman en prose du XIIIe siècle, 9 vols (Geneva: Droz, 1978– 83); H. Oskar Sommer, ed., Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances, vols. 3, 4, 5 (Washington, dc: Carnegie Institution, 1910–12). Norris Lacy, gen. ed., Lancelot–Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation. iii: Lancelot Part iv, trans. Roberta L. Krueger (New York: Garland, 1995), 3–110. At least 87 such fights occur in this text and another 6 are reported.

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It is useful to recall that nearly all of these fights involve a first stage of combat on horseback with lances, often with one or both men unhorsed and wounded, followed (if both survive) by lengthy combat with swords on foot, one man finally being hacked into submission (his usual position at this point being | flat on his back, helmet ripped off, the mail protecting his vulnerable 23 throat torn away, his face pounded into bloody pulp by a sword pommel). It is true that the language describing these fights is not as anatomically destructive as that in many chansons de geste. No knight in this text, that is to say, trips over his own entrails spilling out from a wound. But – again, limiting ourselves to quantifiable instances – at least eight skulls are split (some to the eyes, some to the teeth, some to the chin), eight unhorsed men are deliberately crushed by the huge hooves of the victor’s war-horse (so that they faint in agony, repeatedly), five decapitations take place, two entire shoulders are hewn away, three hands are cut off, three arms are severed at various lengths, one knight is thrown into a blazing fire and two knights are catapulted to sudden death. One woman is painfully bound in iron bands by a knight; one is kept for years in a tub of boiling water by God, one is narrowly missed by a hurled lance. Women are frequently abducted and we hear at one point of forty rapes. Four knights are wounded by miraculous weapons. Beyond these readily enumerable acts there are reports of three private wars (with, in one case, 100 casualties on one side, and with 500 deaths from poison in another). We are also given four active tournaments, full of general and largely nonquantifiable violence. In one, to provide the flavor, Lancelot kills the first man he encounters with his lance and then, sword drawn, struck to the right and the left, killing horses and knights all at the same time, cutting feet and hands, heads and arms, shoulders and thighs, striking down those above him whenever he met them, and leaving a sorrowful wake behind him, so that the whole earth was bathed in blood wherever he passed.13 The violence crowds nearly all of the pages. In what we might call ‘Sagremore’s busy day’, this hero first fights with a disguised Bors, is unhorsed and overridden ‘until his heart nearly burst in his chest’.14 Despite his wounds, he goes off seeking food for the Queen and her party and encounters a knight singing in front of his tent. On sight they joust; shattering lances, they keep their 13 14

Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 37; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 126. What follows appears in Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 76–81; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 279–305.

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s­ addles and get to work with swords, sparks flying from helms, shields hewn. Sagremore’s opponent senses he will lose and flees. Riding on through the forest, Sagremore meets a royal huntsman who is also fleeing, having been wounded by two knights in a quarrel over a hound. Sagremore unhorses one of the pursuing knights and knocks him flat with his horse as he tries to remount; the second man strikes him from behind and with two blows Sagremore first cracks the front of his helmet and then splits his head down to the eyes. The other opponent prudently surrenders. Riding on again, he encounters a dwarf in front of a tent who momentarily stuns his horse with a huge mace. In response he picks up the dwarf by the hair, hurls him to the ground, and rides over him, crushing one thigh. He enters 24 the | tent, fascinated by the beautiful lady standing by it, but finds another Round Table hero, Calogrenant, in chains (having been captured while unarmed). After he sounds the horn which brings Calogrenant’s captors on the scene, Sagremore jousts with one named Marglan and then begins the standard sword fight. In medias res another knight appears who carries off Marglan’s lady from the tent, causing Marglan to stop fighting and agree to free Calogrenant while Sagremore pursues the abductor. Chasing the knight and purloined lady, he comes upon a set of tents with a knight who insists that he joust; Sagremore unhorses him and gets directions. He finds the abducted lady in a tent with three knights. Sagremore gives the knights no greeting; speaking only to the lady he announces that he has come to rescue her. One of the knights responds by throwing a knife which pierces Sagremore’s hauberk a full handspan into his shoulder. Sagremore repays him by splitting his head all the way to the teeth. The next opponent loses his ear and entire shoulder to a great sword blow, apparently as he tries to reach his armor. The others flee and Sagremore returns the lady in safety, though it’s nip and tuck for a bit as a group of twelve knights challenge Sagremore until all realize they are old friends. He reaches his destination, the manor of Mathamas, an enemy of Camelot, where he gets the one fight he has expected from the outset in order to obtain the provisions needed by the Queen’s party. Twenty knights overwhelm him, though only after he has despatched several and wounded more. Captured, he almost goes crazy with hunger and the cold that characteristically came upon him after the heat of battle. A busy day, indeed. A few pages earlier, Bors rescues his boyhood friend Lambegue from knightly captors; fighting in a churchyard, he cleaves one head, this blow going all the way to the chin, kills a second man, and maims a third. A rescued Lambegue tells the story of his capture: a hunter’s arrow which missed a boar mortally wounded his companion. The wounded man had strength to run his lance through the offending hunter, but was swiftly beheaded by this man’s master.

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Lambegue avenged the dishonor done to himself by the killing of his companion in hispresence by killing the killer, but was soon captured by knights of the killer’s family. A misshot arrow in this case has caused these reciprocal slayings which leave five knights dead and one maimed.15 Although such stories could be multiplied, since incidents are plentiful in the text, the more pressing issue is to try to determine what attitude the writer and his audience took toward this persistent, reflexive, reciprocal violence as the staple of adventure and the means for solving virtually every problem. Such evidence as we can extract is slippery, making the task complex, though not impossible. We can be sure that the text praises prowess, meaning by that the will, sheer strength and endurance and actual physical capacity with edged weapons by which one knight completely dominates another. In fact, time and again chivalry is virtually equated with prowess. Lancelot is encouraged to participate in a | tournament, for example, by being told that the occasion will offer ‘great crowds of people and wonderful deeds of chivalry’ (molt plenté de gent et molt bele chevalerie).16 Late in the romance, Gawain tells the keeper of Joseph of Arimat-hea’s broken sword that Lancelot, ‘the best knight in the world’, will accomplish the adventure of uniting the pieces, ‘if what is needed is human prowess’. Here ‘le meillor chevalier del monde’ is equated with the greatest ‘mortel proesce’.17 It is most certainly a bloody, sweaty business. Bors is given a white banner by the Lady of Hungerford Castle to carry into the fighting over her cause. Emerging, victorious of course, from the battle he finds the banner has been stained red with the blood of her enemies, ‘and he was overjoyed’ (et il en est molt liez).18 During his busy day, Sagremore is at one point closely inspected by one of his worthy opponents. This man noticed that his shield had been completely destroyed by lances and swords, and he saw that his hauberk was broken in several spots; he looked at Sagremore himself, bloodied with his own blood and with the blood of others. He had great respect for him, for he thought no knight deserving of greater esteem [kar il ne porroit plus chevalier proisier].19 15 16 17 18 19

Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 70–71; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 255–260. Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 115; Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 34. Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 91; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 339. Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 43; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 149. Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 71; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 291.

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Witnessing great prowess can make a man all but foam in praise. Having just seen Lancelot with a single swordstroke send Meleagant’s helmeted head flying across the field, Kay cannot contain himself, but jumps up to exclaim Ah, my lord, we welcome you above all the other knights in the world as the flower of earthly chivalry! You have proved your valor here and elsewhere.20 Lancelot has, of course, been engaged in proving just that repeatedly in this text. At the Tournament at Pomeglai he drew out his sword like an expert swordsman and delivered heavy blows to the right and the left, felling knights and horses with blows of the sword blade and the hilt. He grabbed men by their hoods of mail and by the edge of their shields, he pulled helmets from heads and hit and shoved and pounded and struck with his limbs and his horse, for he was very skilled in doing all that a great knight must do.21 Shortly thereafter he encounters knights who hate the Queen. He unhorses the first and ‘rode over his body until the knight fainted in his great agony’. His lance breaks in unhorsing the second, but his sword is soon through the helmet and 26 into the brain of the third man, who ‘collapsed, feeling the agony of death’. | Then Lancelot plunged into the midst of the others, shattering their shields and helmets, breaking the mail of the hauberks at the shoulders and arms, dividing and scattering them with his sword which cut deftly.… He accomplished such marvelous exploits by his great prowess that everyone was astounded.22 Though often disguised by wearing unaccustomed armor, Lancelot is regularly recognized by his blows with sword and lance. Those who survive his prowess feel forever honored. Women fall in love with him, sight unseen, just by hearing his prowess described. When a false report of his death circulates, a knight asks why go on ‘when the knight who was supposed to surpass all earthly prowess has died’ – he at least swoons repeatedly.23 Guinevere laments in similar terms, 20 Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 32; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 107. 21 Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 30; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 99. 22 Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 35; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 117–118. 23 Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 83; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 309.

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Oh, worthy man in whom all earthly prowess resided, how could a sword be so cruel and so treacherous as to extinguish the great reputation of your valor?24 Lancelot himself, temporarily following the body of his beloved friend Galehaut towards the tomb at the Dolorous Guard, laments in terms now familiar. Lancelot escorted the body at night for some distance, weeping and lamenting his companion’s prowess and his valor.25 At another point Lancelot fears a wounded knight (who turns out to be Banin) will die from injuries in combat; it would be a shame if you die, he assures the knight, ‘kar molt estiés pros’ (‘because you are so valiant’ – or even – ‘so full of prowess’).26 Yet the enthusiastic valorization of prowess in such passages (evidence which, again, could be multiplied) is not all that this text has to say on this score. At times word and deed deliver warning rather than praise; at some points fear of the results of knightly prowess seems to outrun even the desire to glorify hardy strokes with sword and lance. The messages can be delivered imaginatively, sometimes even unforgetably. On his way to a tournament, Bors meets a maiden who promises him, in typical romance terms, ‘the most marvelous adventure that you’ve ever seen’.27 She adds that if he fulfills the adventure he can claim to be the best knight in the world. Though he adds many disclaimers about knowing he is not the best, Bors follows her into a castle chamber where a knight – tall, but thin and pale – is resting in a bed with a silk cloth covering his arms. Removal of the silk reveals, | a sword that he held in his hands by the hilt. But he held it against his will; rather, it was stuck to his hand so that he could never remove it. The tip was plunged through the other palm so that the blade extended a good half foot out the other side. Bors is told that only the best knight can extract the sword and free this man.  Other knights have come into the chamber to see the marvel and 24 25 26 27

Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 84, Sommer, ed., Vulgate Version, iv, 315. Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 61; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 218. Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 66; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 239. For what follows, see Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 50–52; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 177–182.

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e­ nthusiastically try their best to extract the sword, but manage only to increase the sufferer’s pain by their efforts. When Bors intones that success must await the best knight in the world, one knight who has tugged at the sword in failure, announces that Bors must be thinking of Sir Gawain. We learn the reason for his advocacy only at the end of the tale: this knight is Agravain, Gawain’s brother. Bors will not hear of it and champions the pre-eminence of his cousin Lancelot. Both Agra-vain and Bors argue for the best on the basis of prowess, of course. Bors thinks none could oppose Lancelot if ‘there were going to be heads cut off’. Agravain angrily asserts ‘No one has been born who could defeat Sir Gawain in battle.’ When the incognito Agravain asks for proof, Bors asserts he could prove it against a better knight than he. These hot words propel both knights outdoors and into their saddles, as the blighted knight sighs ineffectually from his bed, ‘Alas, good lords…give up this fight, because it would be begun over nothing.’ They fight on horseback, they fight on foot. Bors finally flattens Agravain, exposes his head and throat, sword at the ready. Agravain is still reluctant to yield, so Bors encourages him with a blow from his sword handle causing blood to spurt from his face. With an ugly grimace, Agravain must say the hated words: Lancelot is tops. He must also find Lancelot and ask pardon for the dishonor done him. This Agravain will do, after the two months needed for recovery. The victorious Bors is led back into the chamber where the blighted knight repeats his critical view: ‘Indeed, my lord, the two of you have fought too hard about a trifle’ (literally ‘for nothing’, ‘por noient’). Bors will not agree: ‘God help me, lord, that’s not so. Rather, we fought about the best knight in the world and whoever denies it would hardly be wise.’ He pointedly reminds the knight of his own close interest in this issue. The force of the critique can scarcely be missed. A knight who cannot get his sword out of his hands lies helpless and wan with that very sword piercing his own body. Hand symbolism seems especially potent when we note that this text more than once stresses the role of violence carried out with a man’s own hands. Lambegue boasts to Lancelot that he defeated and dispatched an enemy ‘with my own hands’.28 Hector assures a nervous lady that her enemy is truly dead; ‘Yes, indeed; I killed him with my own hands’ ( je meïsmes l’ocis de mes mains).29 Meleagant swears he will not let Lancelot escape from Gore but 28 will | kill him with his own two hands.30 Far from some species of generalship removed from the sweaty, bloody fray, prowess means cutting your enemy with your own hands. 28 29 30

Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 260: ‘je le conquis et ocis a mes mains’. Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 105; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 398. Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 25; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 80.

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The knight lying in bed with a self-inflicted wound may, however, remind us of the cartoon strip ‘Pogo’ with its memorable dictum, ‘We have met the enemy and they are us.’ Any doubt that the scene embodies a critique of prowess vanishes when this knight, speaking from personal experience, pours cold water on the idea of two knights fighting to prove which of their heroes fights best. Yet the technique adopted in this mini-tale is surely fascinating: a powerful critique of the touchy recourse to violence to solve any issue is made palatable by a cautious, perhaps prudent, framing assertion of the value of fighting by a hero who stands bloody and victorious, and by the promise that the best knight of all (i.e. the knight of greatest prowess) will release the stricken man. Exactly how hearers or readers reacted is beyond our certain knowledge. Any scholar would give much to eavesdrop on the conversation which followed a reading of this text. We can usefully remember, at least, that tales like this often formed the basis of an evening’s entertainment for those in privileged society; as they discussed the scenes, is it not likely that they debated basic issues raised by incidents such as this? After all, we know that the set of romances that form the Vulgate Cycle present more than one point of view on the love of Lancelot and Guinevere; scholars have even argued that there is an internal debate on earthly love within the cycle.31 Why not an internal debate within individual works on the causes, scale, and consequences of the knightly prowess so highly prized in high society? Such a debate, it seems to me, is better explained by the pressing force of societal issues, rather than any Derridian indeterminacy in a conflicted text. At this point ideals of courtoisie cry out for a place in the discussion. Yet we must listen with considerable care and caution as voices speak of courtesy in this romance. The relationship of courtesy to prowess is crucially important for our inquiry, but it can be misread, especially with ideas of the ‘courticization’ of warriors in the air. It would be easy to imagine courtesy a purely exterior force, foreign to prowess, and imposed on knights by the non-knightly, in the abstract interests of peace. 31

The range of scholarly opinion can be seen in the following: Jean Frappier, ‘Le graal et la chevalerie’, Romania 75 (1954), 165–210; Fanni Bogdanow, The Romance of the Grail (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1966); Pauline Matarasso, The Redemption of Chivalry: A Study of the Quest del saint graal (Geneva: Droz, 1979); Emanuèle Baumgartner, L’arbre et le pain: essai sur la Queste del saint graal (Paris: Société d’edition d’enseignement supérieur, 1981); Elspeth Kennedy, Lancelot and the Grail (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986); Fanni Bogdanow, ‘An Interpretation of the Meaning and Purpose of theVulgate Queste del saint graal in the Light of the Mystical Theology of St Bernard’, in Alison Adams, Armel H. Diverres, Karen Stern and Kenneth Varty, eds, The Changing Face of Arthurian Romance (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1986), 23–46.

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Perhaps our romance shows best what courtesy involves in a negative image – |the actions of Marigart the Red, whom Hector virtuously defeats.32 In fact, after a long fight, at first evenly matched, Hector manages to cut off the hand of his opponent so that it flies off, still gripping its sword, and then, when Marigart refuses to surrender, severs his neck ‘making his head fly off farther than a lance length’. Two of Marigart’s evil customs stand out. Since he feels he has such great prowess, he fights with all the knights whose fate leads them here. Whenever he has defeated anyone, he has him stripped naked and dragged through all the streets of the town. The second evil custom involves the daughters of Marigart’s submissively fearful men. As they tell Hector, not a month goes by that he doesn’t take one of our daughters, providing that she’s a virgin, and rape her and then release her to his serving boys to use as a whore. He has disgraced more than forty maidens this way. We can obviously deduce basic ideas of courtesy by simply inverting these negative images. One injunction is that the courteous do not rape (at least do not rape gentlewomen). They do not even kiss a gentlewoman without her permission. A knight encountered in the forest takes into his arms a maiden Lancelot is conducting and tries roughly to kiss her. Lancelot speaks the message: Go away, sir knight. This is not courtly behavior! Cursed be whoever gave you leave to assault young women who want nothing to do with you!33 Combining these messages with the high value placed on the compelling love of Lancelot and Guenevere in the opening section adapted from Chrétien’s Lancelot, we could be tempted to say that courtesy requires a high regard for women and even a close interest in women as experienced through the marvel of mutual romantic love. The remainder of the text, however, provides little support for such truly broad notions of courtesy along romantic and gendered lines. Overall, we can find little else that could conceivably fit under a rubric of ‘courtly love’. This is not what this text is about.

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For what follows see Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 103–104; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 389–395. Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 68–69; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 249–250.

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Knights protect ladies, of course, usually from other knights. Not many pages into the text the practice is even formulated as the custom of the imagined kingdom of Logres, but it shows a significant twist: The customs of the Kingdom of Logres are such that if a lady or a maiden travels by herself, she fears no one. But if she travels in the company of a knight and another knight can win her in battle, the winner can take a lady or maiden in any way he desires [a son talant] without incurring shame or blame.34 | 30 Here, even rape seems to be justified, so long as it is preceded by a victorious display of prowess. Women are transferred from the possession of one male to another; they frequently appear as prizes, to be won in tournaments. Certainly the knights think they please ladies by laying the prizes of prowess at their dainty feet. Twelve victors in a tournament, asked by the daughter of King Bran-degorre what they would do for her, respond with revealing pledges: one promises never to sleep naked with a woman until he has beat three knights and sent them to her; another promises he will rape the most beautiful woman he can find, fighting all who oppose him and sending them defeated to her; others promise to send her the armor, horses, or even heads of the defeated. One pledges to ride in drag. It may not be unfair to suggest that all these pledges reveal a self-referential quality, more likely emerging from the competitive code of the knights than from the innermost wishes of the maiden. The sustained and sustaining love of Lancelot and the Queen, borrowed from the Charette, remains exceptional.35 Much more emphasis is placed on the second broad imperative of courtesy revealed by the story of Marigart the Red. Knights must treat other knights properly, especially when engaged in combat with edged weaponry. If this general ideal is clearer than the details of its application, on one point advice never wavers: a knight spares an opponent who yields. ‘Lancelot had the custom,’ the text instructs, ‘of never killing a knight who begged for mercy, unless he had sworn beforehand to do so, or unless he could not avoid it.’36 Meliaduc the Black, one of many to benefit from this forbearance, calls out to Lancelot, in effect, that as the best knight in the world his great prowess should be matched by generous pity. He is spared.37 34 35 36 37

Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 10; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 24. Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 54; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 189–193. Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 19; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 56. Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 36; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 56.

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Where there seems to be instability in the point of view, we will often find the use of horses at issue. Men who climb down from their war-horses to fight a dismounted or unhorsed opponent are pointedly called courteous, though even the great heroes do not invariably follow this rule and sometimes need to be reminded. Argodra the Red, fighting a judicial duel with Lancelot, is unhorsed but sees the mounted Lancelot coming at him; he kills Lancelot’s horse and sings out sarcastically that Lancelot is ‘molt cortois’ to keep him company on foot. Lancelot splits his head to the ears and then, for good measure, decapitates him.38 The knights in this romance certainly use their great horses to trample a fallen opponent (or at least to knock him flat as he tries to remount); they are charged with no discourtesy. Fighting a group of knights hostile to the Queen, Lancelot knocks the first from his saddle and, in standard form, rides over him 31 until he is crushed and faints in great agony.39 Fighting incognito, Bors rides | over Sagremore, after unhorsing him in a fight over the Queen stemming from a foolish vow he has taken.40 Facing ten knights in a row before Hungerford Castle, Bors unhorses the first and again rides over him until the man surrenders; but after unhorsing the second, he ‘dismounted because he did not want to attack from horseback’. In fact, he finds the man dead, his windpipe crushed as his horse toppled onto him.41 Bors is upset at this, the text says, because he never wanted to kill a knight. This can only mean he lived in constant regret, judging from the body count of his opponents, mounting page after page. Yet the ideal of courteously giving up mounted advantage is made repeatedly, by means of one hero after another, alongside examples of the accepted practice of riding over opponents. We can find similar disparities concerning weapons. Even Meleagant throws aside his lance to fight sword against sword with Lancelot. Yet knights who lose or break swords during the fight must do the best they can, usually by converting a shattered shield into an offensive weapon. Some passages preach against use of superior numbers in a courteous fight. We have seen that outside Hungerford Castle, the besieging force sends ten knights against Bors. Yet their leader specifies that they attack one at a time: he reasons that they will have a chance to wear down Bors, but will incur no dishonor. Radically unequal strength of another sort is an issue when Sagremore disables the dwarf who, as previously noted, had struck his horse; a maiden 38 39 40 41

Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 67–68; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 244–246. Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 35; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 117. Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 73–74; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 270. Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 44; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 152–153.

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who sees him knock down the dwarf and ride over him reproaches Sagremore for his uncourtly act: ‘vos n’est mie cortois’ (you’re not at all courtly), she says. He responds that he would avenge the blow to his horse, even had it been delivered by Lancelot or Gawain, rather than a misshapen dwarf.42 This claim sounds perilously akin to a boast, and there are many other similarly bold statements made by heroes in this text. Yet time and again a message is delivered in favor of humility as a renowned knight downplays his martial abilities or accomplishments. These fall roughly into the pattern familiar from old ‘Westerns’ on film: ‘Shucks, ma’am,’twern’t nothin.’ Lancelot modestly tells the prisoners in Gorre that should he die they would be rescued by Sir Gawain, ‘who is a much more valiant knight than I’.43 Bors is so lauded after winning a tournament at the Castle of the Borderlands that he blushes red with embarrassment; of course, as we learn, that only makes him more handsome. The celebration after his victory leaves him ‘more annoyed than pleased’.44 The inhabitants of Hungerford Castle praise his deliverance so elaborately that ‘it bothered him, for he did not think his hosts should have done so much’.45 These modest traits are ascribed, of course, to knights who spend nearly every waking | moment in adventures, seeking renown through competitive 32 prowess, sending defeated prisoners in a stream to announce their glorious victories publicly at court. If the ideas behind all these particular passages seem shifting and open to debate, we might return to the possibility that such was indeed their purpose. I think questions are being raised about topics of considerable social relevance. Perhaps even more important, we can see that a broad framework stands behind all these particular passages. Knightly life is ideally guided by a concern for standards, even if the particulars are constantly under discussion. Virtues cluster in this framework: being cortois is buttressed by being loial; each involves not only the correctness but also the predictability, the regularity of behavior so essential in organized – dare I say civilized – life. Such observations lead us back through the pages of the Lancelot to the idea of a ‘civilizing process’ rooted in chivalry, where two final issues demand attention – one relatively easy, the other relatively hard. We must first consider whether our text provides a clear window into the past as a representative sample of the vast body of chivalric literature. This is the easy question. Of course no single text can be considered representative, but I would argue that 42 43 44 45

Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 76; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 282. Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 17; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 49. Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 53; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 186–187. Krueger, trans., Lancelot Part iv, 72; Micha, ed., Lancelot, ii, 263.

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the basic ideas and values we have found here appear in hundreds of other works written during several centuries. These works, too, promote and emphasize the worship of prowess, which is simultaneously valorized and channeled by a cluster of other ideals centered on loiauté and cortoisie – just as they draw on religious justifications which have stood largely outside the scope of this paper. Of course details vary from one work to the next, but the broad framework of values in our text would mesh well with that of many others.46 The hard question is how well the values of chivalric literature mesh with the ideas of Norbert Elias on violence and manners in medieval society. Only one or two suggestions can be made within the limits of this paper. In company with most medievalists, I would quarrel with Elias’s assertion that medieval people essentially lacked foresight and internal restraint. Though their modes of dealing with bodily processes were distinctly non-modern, as were their demonstrations of grief – hair-pulling, face scratching, fainting no longer being the mode – their literature shows a relentless concern with propagating highly formal behaviors of the sort that really mattered to them. The wild mood-swings that Elias notes in medieval life (and that anyone can find in chivalric literature) seem to me to be demonstrations of the fine emotion expected of refined people within a distinct code, rather than the absence of any code. As Dorothy Sayers noted years ago, ‘The idea that a strong man should react to great…calamities by a slight compression of the lips and by silently throwing his cigarette into the fireplace is of very recent origin.’47 Medieval society looks to me like a world in which we would expect to find an 33 elaborate code of manners; it is a world in | search of order in every conceivable dimension – social, political, intellectual, religious, economic. That ordering habit of mind is surely important, however much we recognize a gap between the ideal and the actual. In one sense chivalry fits into this effort and is often written up as such in textbooks and lecture notes. The snag comes, of course, from the central place given in chivalry to the veritable worship of prowess, eliminating any hope that we could simply categorize chivalry safely in the column headed ‘Forces for Order in Medieval Society’. I doubt whether the norms of courtoisie worked in an uncomplicated way in the interests of peace. I doubt in general whether highly mannered societies are necessarily more peaceful societies as assumed by Norbert Elias. Romeo and Juliet lived in a highly mannered, highly violent society; the American South in the nineteenth century strikes me as a highly mannered, 46 47

See Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence, forthcoming. Dorothy L. Sayers, in the introduction to her translation of The Song of Roland (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957), 15.

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highly violent society – as does medieval Europe. The elites of these societies subscribed unwaveringly to honor and, as the anthropologists assure us, such societies tend to be violent. ‘The ultimate vindication of honour,’ as Julian PittRivers proclaimed, ‘lies in physical violence.’48 The highly refined and wellmannered in an honor society know that when honor is challenged the proper response is to draw the broadsword or rapier, load the Colt revolver or grab the rope. Certainly in our sample text, as in all the chivalric literature I have read, honor is tirelessly portrayed as won by thoroughly physical acts of prowess. And as we have seen in our text, much of the concern in discussions of courtesy itself revolves around the proper exercise of violence, rather than any hope for its elimination. The maintenance of honor and status is the concern, rather than the increase of peace in the abstract. We need not think of ideals of courtesy as somehow a foreign force, external to chivalry, created and advanced only by those outside its ranks; we cannot think of courtesy acting simply as an agency to restrain all those sword and lance blows which we find so distasteful. Moreover, our sample text shows us that the social reach of courtesy is quite circumscribed. With the possible exception of that unfortunate dwarf, the concern works entirely within the group. The courtois passages usually speak to fights of knight versus knight, and almost never to what we know was the staple of medieval warfare: knight versus the sub-knightly through the relentless ravaging, looting, and arson inflicted on countryfolk, townspeople, merchants, and clerics.49 Chivalry had nothing at all to do with the majority of the people living in medieval Europe. It could only function as a most ambivalent force for peace because it was so complicit in the violence that troubled a developing society. Even an increasingly courteous chivalry was fully compatible with and partially | responsible for the practice of armed self-help, vengeance and pri- 34 vate war which knights carried on with enthusiasm for centuries; it formed no barrier to the highly destructive campaigning by the armies of powerful protostates as England and France filled more than a hundred years of later medieval history with their costly and destructive warfare. | 35

48 49

Julian Pitt-Rivers, ‘Honour and Social Status’, in J.G. Peristiany, ed., Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 29. Matthew Strickland, War and Chivalry: The Conduct and Perception of War in England and Normandy, 1066–1217 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); cf. Kaeuper, War, Justice and Public Order: England and France in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 77–117.

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The Societal Role of Chivalry in Romance: Northwestern Europe What did medieval people mean when they used the word “chivalry” (Latin, militia, French, chevalerie)? The simplest sense was hardy deeds in a fight with edged weapons. A second meaning was social, the body of knights in one place or even all knights, thought of as a distinct group. The third meaning, more abstract, referred to their ideas and ideals, to chivalry as the ethos of the knights. All three senses of the word appear (often intertwined) in romance literature, one of our best (if least used) sources on medieval society. Yet the historian reading romance in order to understand chivalry faces difficult questions. Historians still believe that by careful use of evidence a “real” medieval world can be partially recovered; yet how can romance, which seems so totally “unreal,” form a part of this evidence? Some scholars have thought that since it is imaginative literature, romance must be discounted as merely escapist storytelling. Some have considered the chivalry portrayed in its pages dreamlike, a thin veil pulled over the realities of a harsh world,1 and completely divorced from grinding social tensions or violence. An audience limited by gender would further reduce the importance of romance as historical evidence by cutting readership in half – picturing men reading (or listening in hall to) chansons de geste with their endless war and tenurial disputes; women in chamber reading the more psychological romances with love interest. This chapter takes a different view on all these points. As Elspeth Kennedy has shown, knights in the very real world referred frequently and familiarly to these works of literature. A “two-way traffic” connected these men of war, law, and politics with Arthurian romance no less than chanson de geste.2 Many owned copies of these texts. Some, such as the father of the famous legist Philippe de Beaumanoir, even wrote romance themselves.3 Geoffroi de Charny, * Previously published in Roberta Krueger (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance (Cambridge, 2000), 97–114. 1 Johan Huizinga, Autumn of the Middle Ages, tr. Rodney J. Peyton and Ulrich Mammitzsch (University of Chicago Press, 1996). 2 Elspeth Kennedy, “The Knight as Reader of Arthurian Romance,” in Culture and the King: The Social Implications of the Arthurian Legend, ed. M.B. Shichtman and J.P. Carley (Binghamton: State University of New York Press, 1994). 3 Bernard Gicquel, “Le Jehan le Blond de Philippe de Rémi peut-il être une source du Willehalm von Orlens?” Romania, 102 (1981), 306–323.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004302655_019

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the leading French knight of the mid-fourteenth century and author of a didactic manual called The Book of Chivalry,4 apparently knew romances like the Lancelot do Lac5 and wrote of men who might love Queen Guenevere.6 In addition to borrowing from the imagery of the Ordene de chevalerie7 (another vernacular didactic manual), Ramon Llull, who wrote the most popular book on | chivalry in the Middle Ages, likewise drew heavily on thirteenth- 97 century prose romances.8 Moreover, the romances include enough of combat and war, of the detailed effects of sword strokes on armor and the human body beneath, of the particulars of feudal relationships, and of the tactical maneuvers that lead to victory, to lead us to conclude that these texts were meant for knights as well as ladies. Their conduct also shows that the literature is reaching knights, as students of chivalry have shown in case after case. Larry D. Benson’s examination of the tournament in the romances of Chrétien de Troyes and in the biography of William Marshal, for example, concluded that we have on the tournament field an excellent case of the interplay of life and art impossible if knights were not deeply steeped in chivalric romance as well as chanson.9 Authors of historical accounts of the knights’ actions sense no gap between what they describe and accounts in imaginative literature; often they stress the links between the two. John Barbour (d. 1395) terms his chronicle of Robert Bruce a “romanys.”10 Both Barbour and Sir Thomas Gray assure us that if all the deeds of Edward Bruce in Ireland were set down they would make a fine romance.11 Other active knights shared the sentiment. Robert Bruce often told “auld storys” to his men in trying times, to buck them up. According to his 4

5 6 7 8 9

10 11

Printed in Richard W. Kaeuper and Elspeth Kennedy, The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny: Text, Context and Translation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996). Elspeth Kennedy, ed., Lancelot do Lac (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980); Corin Corley, tr., Lancelot of the Lake (Oxford University Press, 1989). Kaeuper and Kennedy, The Book of Chivalry, 118–119. Keith Busby, ed., Raoul de Hodenc, Le roman des eles. The Anonymous Ordene de chevalerie (Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 1983). Alfred T.P. Byles, tr., The Book of the Ordre of Chyvalry (London, 1926). “The Tournament in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes and L’Histoire de Guillaume Le Maréchal,” in Larry D. Benson, John Leyerle, eds., Chivalric Literature (University of Toronto Press, 1989), 1–24. Cf. Richard Barber and Juliet Barker, Tournaments, Jousts, Chivalry and Pageants in the Middle Ages (New York: Wiedenfield, 1989). McDiarmid and Stevenson, eds., Barbour’s Bruce, 3 vols. sts (Edinburgh, 1980–85), 1. 446. Sir Herbert Maxwell, tr., Scalacronica: The Reigns of Edward I, Edward ii, and Edward iii as recorded by Sir Thomas Gray (Glasgow, Madehose, 1907), 57.

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biographer, during a tedious passage over Loch Lomond he merrily read out passages from the romance of Fierabras.12 Knights, in sum, say that they have read this literature, they show that they have read it by using it in their own writings, and they show by their actions that they have read it and are bringing it into their lives. To understand how the chivalry discussed in romance was an active social force, not merely a gossamer veil of escapism, we need to recall what basic forces were stirring in the age in which chivalry emerged. By the twelfth century (some historians would insist a good deal before) Europe had entered the era of intense activity and accomplishment we often call the High or Central Middle Ages – Marc Bloch’s Second Feudal Age, Charles Homer Haskins’s Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, R.W. Southern’s era of Medieval Humanism.13 Among much else the era saw socio-economic and demographic growth, a surge in the piety of laypeople, the reform in the Church, and the early formation of the Western state. If full of vigor and constructive energy, this society certainly faced all the problems associated with rapid growth, new wealth, new social groupings and structures. Can any measure of distributive justice be found? What violence is licit, what illicit? Who decides and exercises violence? Does God bless any violence? How should gendered relationships be structured? What is piety and who governs its exercise? The list could be considerably extended. Chivalry (in one of its meanings or another) deals with all these matters. Its expression in romance literature is no simple “mirror to society” but an 98 active | social force. To read chivalry in romance simply as a set of personal qualities in a knight risks reducing chivalry to a “micro” force; it was, in fact, a “macro” force doing major social work. As the practice and ideal code of the dominant strata of lay society for roughly half a millennium (say, from the late eleventh to the sixteenth centuries), it became the framework for debate about how the dominant laypeople should live, love, govern, fight, and practice piety – real issues with real consequences. Romance literature, one of the major purveyors of chivalric ideals, thus becomes the locus of debate about such basic social issues. The tension crackles. Romance is not simply a literature of celebration or agreement; it is a literature of debate, criticism, reform. We can at least sense the force and importance of these debates in romance by following

12 13

McDiarmid and Stevenson, eds., Barbour’s Bruce, 1. 267–270. Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, tr. L.A. Manyon (University of Chicago Press, 1961), 59–72; Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (New York: Meridian, 1957); R.W. Southern, Medieval Humanism and Other Essays (Oxford: Blackwell, 1970), 29–61.

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three lines of investigation, recognizing how much these interlock and that others are possible and fruitful.14

Chivalry, Romance and Violence

The violence of the medieval world would astound a modern time-traveler. There is good evidence that many medieval people, too – however small the minority of pacifists among them – saw this violence as a problem distorting the more ordered society they were creating: they say so repeatedly in their writings; they instituted a peace movement in the late tenth century; during the following centuries they strengthened judicial institutions in the search for peace.15 Textbook-level surveys often portray chivalry as an uncomplicated species of solution to this problem: the knights internalized a code of restraint and matters got better. The actual situation was considerably less straightforward. Some scholars have recently advanced convincing arguments that the advent of chivalry did, indeed, bring changes in warfare. In contrast to an earlier era, the taking of prisoners (and ransoms) usually replaced mass slaughters; a clearer set of conventions regulated the fate of those besieged.16 Yet war as conducted by the chivalrous still meant raiding and ravaging more than setpiece battle. Given the looting and widespread destruction (especially by fire), the general population may not have especially noticed much improvement as towns and villages were torched, bridges were broken, populations were forced to migrate, vines were cut, shipping was sunk or burned. Even if romances miss tactical and organizational changes in the method of conducting war, the fierce side of the ideology of chivalry seems important in thinking about the problem of public order in general. For in one of its most significant dimensions, chivalry meant the worship of prowess, and prowess 14 15

16

Issues of gender would make a fourth topic; see the essays in this volume by Roberta Krueger and Sarah Kay. The Peace of God: Social Violence and Religious Response in France around the Year 1000, ed. Thomas Head and Richard Landes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992); Richard W. Kaeuper, War, Justice and Social Order: England and France in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford University Press, 1988). John Gillingham, “1066 and the Introduction of Chivalry into England,” in Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy, ed. George Garnet and John Hudson (Cambridge University Press, 1994), 31–56; Matthew Strickland, War and Chivalry: The Conduct and Perception of War in England and Normandy, 1066–1217 (Cambridge University Press, 1996).

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(whatever gentler qualities idealists wanted to associate with it) meant beating an opponent with really good hacking and thrusting. Chivalry was a code | of violence in defense of a prickly sense of honor (and the honorable acquisition of loot to be distributed in open-handed largess) just as thoroughly as it was a code of restraint. The term “deeds of chivalry” (often literally chevaleries) is tirelessly used in romance to describe heroic work with lance and sword. In his Book of Chivalry, the practicing knight Geoffroi de Charny establishes a scale of merit based on knightly prowess: individual jousting in tournament is good, free-form fighting in the melée of tournament teams is better, but real war (involving both previous types) is best. “Qui plus fait, miex vault” (“He who does more is of greater worth”), is Charny’s leitmotif. The “doing” is, of course, done with edged weaponry. Characters in romance deliver fawning praise for this sort of “doing.” A knight who has seen Lancelot perform in a tournament (in the Lancelot) can scarcely find words sufficient to praise his prowess: vos am puis je dire plus de .M., car je l’aloie touz jorz sivant por veoir les merveilles qu’il faisoit; si li vi occirre a V. cox V. chevaliers et V. sergenz si vistement quiil fandoit pres que par mi les chevax et les chevaliers et de moi meesmes vos di je quiil fandi mon escu en .II. moitiez et trancha ma sele et coupa mon cheval par mi les espaules, et tot a .I. sol cop…je li vi abatre a .I. retrous de lance . III. chevaliers…se la force en estoit moie, il ne se partiroit ja de moi, ainz le tandroie avec moi, car plus riche tresor ne porroie je mie tenir. [I could recount more than a thousand fine blows, for I followed that knight every step to witness the marvelous deeds he did; I saw him kill five knights and five men-at-arms with five blows so swift that he nearly cut horses and knights in two. As for my own experience, I can tell you he split my shield in two, cleaved my saddle and cut my horse in half at the shoulders, all with a single blow…I saw him kill four knights with one thrust of his lance …if it were up to me, he’d never leave me. I’d keep him with me always, because I couldn’t hold a richer treasure.]17 What is at issue here is not a set of idealized abstractions but the bloody, sweaty, muscular work Sir Thomas Malory called “dedys [deeds] full actuall.”18 17

18

William W. Kibler, tr., Lancelot Part V, 161–162, in Norris Lacy, gen. ed., Lancelot-Grail 5 vols. (New York, 1993–96); Alexandre Micha, ed., Lancelot, 9 vols. (Geneva: Droz, 1979), vol. 4, 198–199. Eugene Vinaver, ed., Malory, Works (Oxford University Press, 1971), 23.

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Such deeds leave combatants “waggyng, staggerynge, pantyng, blowyng, and bledyng.”19 We need to remember that all of this violence was effected by a knight’s own skilled hands; chivalry was not simply a species of officership distanced from the bloody work with swords and spears. Summing up hundreds of years of this tradition, Sir Thomas Malory, writing his Morte Darthur in the late fifteenth century, refers time and again to the wondrous work done by his knights’ hands, firmly gripping their weapons. We are assured that Lancelot has won Joyeuse Garde, his refuge, “with his owne hondis,” that Arthur “was emperor himself through dignity of his hands,” that Arthur awaits a tournament where “[the knights] shall…preve whoo shall be beste of his hondis.”20 We hear Outelake of Wentelonde proudly stating his claim to a lady: “thys lady I gate be my prouesse of hondis and armys thys day at Arthurs court.”21 Such hands wield a | lance or sword well. Seeing King Pellinore cut Outelake of Wentelonde 100 down to the chin with a single swordstroke, Meliot de Logurs declines to fight “with such a knyght of proues …”22 Chronicle and biography – traditional “historical” sources – speak the same language as romance: all show the same emphasis on the knights’ bloody handson work. In a characteristic romance passage from The Story of Merlin, the young Arthurian heroes (Sagremor, Galescalin, Agravain, Gaheret, Guerrehet) have fought so well in a battle against the Saxons that “lor bras et lor pies et les crins et les testes de lor cheuaus degoutoient tout del sane et des cheueles” (“their arms and legs and the heads and manes of their horses were dripping with blood and gore”). They are described as having “fait mainte bele cheualerie et de biaus cops tant que prisier et loer les en droit on et vous tenir pour tels comme vous estes” (“done many a beautiful deed of knighthood and struck many a handsome blow, for which everyone should hold them in high esteem”).23 In his biographical chronicle John Barbour praises Edward Bruce, the brother of the Scottish king, as “off [of] his hand a nobill knycht,” and assures us Robert Bruce slew fourteen Englishmen at a ford “vif [with] his hand.”24 Barbour’s praise could come from the pages of romance: 19 20 21 22 23 24

Ibid., 198. Ibid., 415–416, iii. Ibid., 72. Ibid., 72–73. Malory draws on a long-held belief. See, e.g. Roberta Krueger, tr., Lancelot Part iv, 71; Micha, ed., Lancelot, vol. 1, 260. Rupert T. Pickens, tr., The Story of Merlin (Vol. 1 of Lancelot-Grail, gen. ed. Norris Lacy), 268; Sommer, ed., Vulgate Version, vol 2, 185. McDiarmid and Stevenson, eds., Barbour’s Bruce, ix.486; vi.313.

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A der God quha had yen bene by & sene hove he sa hardyly Adressyt hym agane yaim all I wate weile yat yai suld him call Ye best yat levyt in his day.25 [Dear God! Whoever had been there and seen how he stoutly set himself against them all, I know well he would call him the best alive in his day.]

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Barbour similarly stresses the bloody character of such fighting, writing of grass red with blood, of swords bloody to the hilt, of heraldic devices on armor so smeared with blood they cannot be read.26 Gerald of Wales unforgettably characterized Richard I of England as not only “fierce in his encounters in arms,” but “only happy when he marked his steps with blood.”27 The historian of Lion-Heart’s crusade more than once records Richard hewing off enemy heads and displaying them as trophies in camp, or riding into camp after a night of skirmishing with more Muslim.heads hanging from his saddle.28 Such trophies were not limited to crusading; after the bloody battle of Evesham (1265) during an English civil war, the head and testicles of the defeated Simon de Montfort were sent as a gift to Lady Wigmore.29 The biography of the greatest knight at the turn of the thirteenth century, the Histoire de Guilliame le Maréchal,30 is a veritable hymn to prowess as the defining quality of chivalry. The author heaps praise on William for his great deeds of arms and records encomiums to his prowess from leaders of lay and | clerical society alike. Chivalry becomes prowess pure and simple time and again in his pages. At the siege of Winchester, for example, he tells us that groups of knights sallied forth each day “to do chivalry” (“por faire chevalerie”).31 The knight can do chivalry just as he can make love: it has this dimension as a 25 26 27 28

29 30

31

Ibid., vi.67–180; 1. 315 notes that fourteen were slain “with his hand.” Ibid., ii.366–370; x.687; xiii.183–185. Thomas Wright, ed., The Historical Works of Giraldus Cambrensis (London: Bell, 1887), 160. James Morton Hubert and John L. La Monte, tr., Crusade of Richard Lion-Heart by Ambroise (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941), 7439–7440; Gaston Paris, L’Histoire de la guerre sainte par Ambroise (Paris, 1897). John Maddicott, Simon de Montfort (Cambridge University Press, 1994), 344. Meyer, ed., L’histoire de Guillaume le Maréshal, 2 vols. (Paris: Renouard, 1891, 1894). No English translation is available, but see Sidney Painter, William Marshal: Knight-Errant, Baron, and Regent of England (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1933), and Georges Duby, William Marshal; the Flower of Chivalry, tr. Richard Howard (New York: Pantheon, 1985). Meyer, ed., Histoire, 176. My italics.

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physical process. At the battle of Lincoln, says the biographer, the French did not have to look far to “find chivalry,” the quality here again clearly equated with prowess on the battlefield. Knighting the Young King, the eldest son of Henry ii, William asks God to grant him prowess and to keep him in honor and high dignity. The author also tells us it was right for William to be the “master” of the young king while he prepared for this day because William increased his pupil’s prowess.32 Nearly two centuries later Froissart, the ardent chronicler of chivalry at work in the Hundred Years War, asserted that “Si comme la busce ne poet ardoir sans feu, ne poet le gentilz horns venir a parfait honneur ne a la glore dou monde sans proece” (“as firewood cannot burn without flame, neither can a gentleman achieve perfect honor nor worldly renown without prowess”).33 If all of this valorization of chivalric violence tells us something important about how knights liked to conceptualize their role, so do the calls for restraint, the dark fears about the effects of war and violence.34 A writer sometimes creates a specific image of unusual power and vividness, conveying across the centuries the elemental fear created by knightly violence. The author of the Perlesvaus (written in the early years of the thirteenth century) produces just such an image in the huge, knights in black armor who appear more than once in the pages of his romance.35 We first see these dread figures through the eyes of Perceval’s sister when she comes to the Perilous Cemetery: La damoisele esgarde tout environ le cimetire la ou ele estoit entre les sarques, si le voit avironé de chevaliers toz noirs; et avoient glaives ardanz et enblambez, et venoient li un vers les autres, et fesoient tel esfrois et tel noise que ce sembloit que toute la forest acraventast. Li plusor tenoient espees toutes rouges autresi comme de feu, et s’entrecoroient seure et s’entrecoupoient et poinz et piez et nés et testes et viaires, et estoit le fereiz molt granz … [As the maiden peered around the graveyard from where she stood among the tombs, she saw that it was surrounded by knights, all black, 32 33 34 35

Ibid., 16830–16833 (battle at Lincoln), 2088–2089 (knighting), 2635–2636 (increase of prowess). Quoted in Siméon Luce, Chroniques de J. Froissart (Paris: Renouard, 1879), vol. 1, 2. R. Howard Bloch, Medieval French Literature and Law (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 63–107. The several quotations that follow come from Nigel Bryant, tr., The High Book of the Grail (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1971), 144, 176–78,221; W.A. Nitze and T.A. Jenkins, Le Haut livre du Graal; Perlesvaus, 2 vols. (University of Chicago Press, 1932), 222–223, 274–278, 344.

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with burning, flaming lances, and they came at each other with such a din and tumult that it seemed as though the whole forest were crumbling. Many wielded swords as red as flame, and were attacking one another and hewing off hands and feet and noses and heads and faces; the sound of their blows was great indeed…]

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Bertran de Born, an active southern French knight and poet of the later twelfth century, declared that “War is no noble word when it’s waged without fire and blood.”36 We can be sure that the English king Henry V agreed; speaking two | centuries later he declared that “War without fire is like sausages without mustard.”37 This sentiment was far from theoretical, as shown by accounts of repeated fourteenth-century English raids in the French countryside. Campaigning of this sort is reflected in another haunting literary image, the terre gaste, the land laid waste. In his Perceval, Chrétien de Troyes pictures entire regions desolated by knightly warfare. The beautiful Blancheflor tells Perceval, who seeks lodging in her castle, that she has been besieged by a knightly enemy through winter and summer; her garrison of knights has been cut down by violent death and capture. The siege has produced a veritable wasteland in this region: streets stand deserted, houses and even churches lie in ruins.38 Even more significantly, when Chrétien presents a world cursed by the hero’s failure to ask the right questions of the Fisher King, questions which would have cured the king and restored his pacific rule, he reveals a cursed land that seems to be afflicted by war: ladies will be widowed, lands will be laid waste, girls will be left in distress and orphaned, and many knights will die.39 The Chandos Herald, writing the life of the Black Prince late in the fourteenth century, tells his readers how his master’s host behaved between the Seine and the Somme during their invasion: “Mais les Englois poier iaux esbatre/ Misent tout en feu et a flame. La firent mainte veve dame/ Et maint povre enfant orfayn (the English to disport themselves/ put everything to fire and flame./ There they made many a widowed lady/ and many a poor child orphan”).40 36 37

38 39 40

Paden, Stankovitch, Staeblein, eds., The Poems of the Troubadour Bertran de Born (Berkeley: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 358–359. Quoted in John Gillingham, “Richard I and the Science of War in the Middle Ages,” in J. Gillingham and J.C. Holt, eds. War and Government in the Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 1984), 85. Nigel Bryant, tr., Perceval, the Story of the Grail (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1982), 20; William Roach, ed., Le Roman de Perceval (Paris: Droz, 1959), 1749–1770. Bryant, tr. Perceval, 50; Roach, ed., Perceval, 4675–4683. Pope and C. Lodge, eds. and trs., Life of the Black Prince (Oxford University Press, 1910), 236–239.

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Orderic Vitalis (the twelfth-century Norman chronicler) tells an even more striking story in Book xii of his Ecclesiastical History. On a raiding expedition which yielded an important prisoner and much booty, Richer of Laigle “did something that deserves to be remembered for ever”: While country people from Grace and the villages around were following the raiders and were planning to buy back their stock or recover it somehow, the spirited knights [animosi milites] wheeled round and charged them, and when they turned tail and fled continued in pursuit. The peasants had no means of defending themselves against a mailed squadron and were not near any stronghold where they could fly for refuge, but they saw a wooden crucifix by the side of the road and all flung themselves down together on the ground in front of it. At the sight Richer was moved by the fear of God, and for sweet love of his Saviour dutifully respected his cross. He commanded his men to spare all the terrified peasants and to turn back…for fear of being hindered in some way. So the honourable man, in awe of his Creator, spared about a hundred villagers, from whom he might have extorted a great price if he had been so irreverent as to capture them.41 Not seizing the bodies of the peasants whose homes he has already looted (out of respect for the potent symbol of the cross) earns him eternal remembrance and the adjective “honorable” or “noble” (nobilis); indirectly, Orderic speaks volumes about ordinary practice and the fears it generated. | 103

Romance, Chivalry, and Piety

Their lives may have featured showy acts of violence, but knights were thoroughly pious. As the chivalric example par excellence in the late twelfth century, William Marshal went on pilgrimage to Cologne, fought as a crusader, founded a religious house, and died in the robe of a Templar, having made provision to be received into the order years before. His biographer records William’s belief that all his knightly achievement was the personal gift of God.42 Geoffroi de Charny (more than a century later) similarly went on crusade, and founded a religious house. Through a sheaf of requested papal licenses we 41 42

Marjorie Chibnal, ed., tr., The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, 6 vols. (Oxford University Press, 1969–1980), vol. 6, 250–251. Meyer, ed., Histoire, 6171–6192, 7274–7287, 9285–9290, 18216–18406.

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can sense his piety no less than his influence: he had the right to a portable altar, the right to receive full remission of temporal punishment for sin from his confessor when facing death, the right to hear a first Mass of the day before sunrise, the right to have a family cemetery alongside the church he founded. He was more famously the first documented owner of the Shroud of Turin.43 As readers of his Book of Chivalry, we know in detail how thoroughly he agreed with William Marshal’s belief in God as the fountainhead of all chivalric honor. Charny sets out this formula time and again. A healthy mixture of fear and gratitude can be the only proper response on the part of knights. Romance reinforced this orthodoxy. It reminded knights of the undeniable function of priests in the sacramental system of which the knights were willing, prudent participants. They knew that they needed priests as conduits for divine grace, especially at critical, liminal points in life. Knights in this literature regularly state their fear of dying without confession.44 In the Lancelot, Arthur himself, thinking that he is about to die, cries out, “‘diex vraie confession quar iou me muir’” (“‘Oh, God! Confession! The time has come!’”).45 In Chrétien’s Perceval one key injunction the hero hears from his mother as he starts out into the world is to go to church or chapel to hear Mass regularly.46 When Galahad passed a chapel, as readers of the Quest of the Holy Grail learned, “il tourna cele part pour oir messe car li anuioit moult quant il ne looit cascun ior” (“he turned towards it for he was really troubled if a day passed without hearing Mass”).47 Lancelot in the Mort Artu regularly hears Mass, says the proper prayers “einsi comme chevaliers crestiens doit fere” (“as a Christian knight should”), and confesses to an archbishop before his single combat with Gawain.48 Balain and his brother, dying tragically from their mutually inflicted wounds, take the sacrament and beg Christ for forgiveness of their sins “tele que chevalier crestiie doivent” (“as any Christian knights should”).49 In fact, in our literary evidence knights seem to swim in a sea of piety, using religious language even in situations that strike modern sensibilities as purely secular. “En non Deu, vos lo verroiz ja comme lo plus bel et lo miauz taillié | 43 44

Kaeuper and Kennedy, The Book of Chivalry, 5–48. E.g., Carroll, tr., Lancelot Part ii (vol. 2 of Lancelot-Grail, gen. ed. Norris Lacy), 219; Sommer, ed., Vulgate Version, vol. 3, 396. 45 Rosenberg, tr., Lancelot Part iii (vol. 2 of Lancelot-Grail, gen. ed. Norris Lacy), 276. Sommer, ed., Vulgate Version, vol. 4, 76. 46 Roach, ed., Perceval, 567–94. 47 Sommer, Vulgate Version, vol. 6, 34. 48 Jean Frappier, ed., La Mort le Roi Artu, 3rd ed. (Geneva: Droz, 1964), 11–12; 169. 49 Gaston Paris and Jacob Ulrich, eds. Merlin, vol. 2, 56.

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quevos onques veissiez au mien espooir” (“In God’s name, I think you will find him the most comely and well-made youth you have ever seen”), Sir Yvain says to the Queen, speaking of Lancelot in the Lancelot do Lac.50 All knights in romance seem to swear constantly by some favorite saint, or by the relics in some church near at hand. The Marshal, Charny, and their cousins in romance were model knights, however, and not simply model Christians. In company with all knights, they lived by the sword, and the founder of their religion had said some troubling words about such lives. We might well expect that the opposition of piety and violence is the nub of tension. Yet if it is often a nagging worry, it is not the focus of tension, for in their ethos the knights combined their violence and their piety rather handily. Prowess, as knights like Geoffroi de Charny knew, is a gift of God and like all divine gifts must be used well. God, as the greatest chivalric lord, grants worthy men a chance to earn honor, the reward for their strenuous effort. In return, the knight had ideally to follow common standards for a good, religious, layman. Powerfully present even if seldom stated explicitly is the corollary that God will understand and forgive the slips that mar the moral scorecards of his good knights, especially since the very toughness of their lives functions as a form of penance. Malory tells us that on the Grail quest Gawain heard more about his sins (especially his heedless killings) from a hermit-confessor than he wanted, and so hurried off, using the excuse that his companion, Sir Ector, was waiting for him. He had already explained to the hermit that he could accept no penance: “I may do no penaunce, for we knyghtes adventures many tymes suffir grete woo and payne.”51 The real tension emerges rather from the mixture of lay piety and lay independence within chivalric ideology, that is, between the eagerness of the knights to be, and to be recognized as, good Christians and their distinct unwillingness to be dominated by clerics (necessary sacramental specialists though clerics might be). Knights did not simply and obediently bow before clerical authority and, bereft of any ideas of their own, absorb the lessons and patterns for their lives urged on them by their brothers, sisters, and cousins wearing tonsures and veils. They absorbed such ideas as were broadly compatible with the virtual worship of prowess and with the high sense of their own divinely approved status and mission; they likewise downplayed or simply ignored most strictures that were not compatible with their sense of honor and entitlement. If sometimes the yawning gap separating the two systems of belief

50 51

Kennedy, ed., Lancelot do Lac, 156; Corley, tr., Lancelot of the Lake, 70. Vinaver, ed., Malory, Works, 535, 563.

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stimulated inspired writing (as in the Quest of the Holy Grail, or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), more often the gap was simply, willfully, not seen. At its most vigorous, knightly independence can take the form of blistering blasts of anti-clericism. Romance can even picture physical assaults on the clergy. | Gamelyn, the son of a knight in a fourteenth-century English romance, spends an enjoyable afternoon cracking the tonsured pates and clerical bones of a host of heartless churchmen come to feast with his wicked brother who has shamefully defrauded him; he cheerfully specializes in robbing clerics while outlawed for this deed.52 The themes of piety and independence may appear most clearly in the sacred mythology chivalry constructed for itself. Since it is pictured as originating in the age and circle of Christ himself, before any clerical hierarchy had even come into being, the element of independence is obvious; yet this knightly mythology also drew on the associative piety and valorization produced by correlations and allusions, by similarities in typologies with the priestly mythology. Some of the most interesting stories written into this mythology concerned Perceval, Galahad and the Grail. In the body of romance which establishes their careers both Perceval and Galahad live up to the expectations raised by their high lineage, a blood line going back to the great knight Joseph of Arimathea, who cared for the entombment of that most precious relic in the world, the body of Christ, and who cared as well for that most famous sacerdotal object, the Holy Grail. In fact, in the loose and allusive way in which these romances so often suggest parallels with sacred mythology, Perceval and Galahad recall the functions of Christ himself, or at least those of his functions which would appeal most readily to knights. In the Quest of the Holy Grail, Galahad enters Arthur’s hall in a scene filled with signs of Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit; he wears Christ’s colors; his greeting to the knights is, “Peace be with you,” the words Christ spoke to his disciples when he met them in the upper room after the resurrection. Religious valorization of this intensity comes from authors who walk the border – only as thick as a penstroke – between the pious and the unthinkable. These, after all, are knights for whom God performs miracles. Galahad brings healing to a man lame for ten years near the end of the Quest.53 Even Lancelot’s blood performs if not quite a miracle, a marvelous cure when it

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Sands, ed., Middle English Verse Romances (New York: Holt, Rinehard, Winston, 1966), 169–71, 177, discussed in Kaeuper, “An Historian’s Reading of the Tale of Gamelyn,” Medium Aevum, 52 (1983), 51–62. Pauphilet, ed., Queste del Saint Graal (Paris: Champion, 1923), 275–76.

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restores Agravain in the Lancelot do Lac.54 In Malory’s Morte Darthur Lancelot heals the grievously wounded Sir Urré simply by a laying on of hands.55 Less dramatic, yet equally illustrative, is the creation of the famous nine worthies (using three sets of the sacred threes so prevalent in Christian thought). These great heroes across the centuries extended chivalric roots back not only into the Classical past but into the soil of Ancient Israel: the most recent set was, of course, medieval European (Arthur, Charlemagne, and the crusader Godfrey of Bouillon); behind them stood three “knights” from Classical history (Hector, Alexander, Julius Caesar); the earliest set came from Jewish history (Joshua, David, Judas Maccabeus). This fusion of JudaeoChristian and Classical history gave chivalry the most ancient and most venerable lineage possible.| 106 Sometimes the same effect was achieved not by anchoring accounts of origins in historical time and personage, as with the nine worthies, but by presenting them as standing essentially outside of time, as mythical “events” which could explain and justify chivalry, even though they could not be placed on any chronological line that began with Adam and Eve in the earthly paradise. In his vastly influential book on chivalry (which in this instance as others seems to draw on the Lancelot do Lac), Ramon Llull presented a human Fall from virtue redeemed by the creation of chivalry in just such a distant, misty and unspecified past. To ensure order and virtue the human race was divided into thousands and the knight was chosen as literally one out of a thousand as the most noble and most fit to rule and fight.56 Christine de Pisan, writing in the early fifteenth century, similarly posited the creation of chivalry as one antidote to a world gone wrong. Knighthood is, in fact, to “keep and defend the prince, the country and the common good.”57

Romance, Chivalry, and the Governance of Kings

Kings and knights had much in common. By the High Middle Ages kings (joined by all lay lords) considered themselves knights; the knights had long 54 55 56 57

Kennedy, ed., Lancelot do Lac, 539. Vinaver, ed., Malory, Works, 663–671. Alfred T.P. Byles, ed., The Book of the Ordre of Chyvalry (London: eets, 1926), 14–18. Kennedy, ed., Lancelot do Lac, 142–43; Corley, tr., Lancelot of the Lake, 52. S. Solente, ed., Le livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V par Christine de Pisan, 2 vols. (Paris: Champion, 1936), vol. 1, 111–116.

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thought themselves quasi-independent kinglets. If the king led in war, settled sticky disputes among his chivalrous followers (when they voluntarily brought them to him), and troubled them as little as possible in their own estates, all could go smoothly. This is the ideal pattern usually projected in romance and in didactic s manuals. In one of his books, Ramon Llull described chivalry as “the disposition with which the knight helps the prince maintain justice”; his Book of the Ordre of Chyvalry announces that all knights should truly rule territories, the obvious f shortage of such territories alone preventing this world order.58 In his own Book of Chivalry (written for the French king’s new Order of the Star) Geoffroi de Charny included a long list of questions and answers illustrating ideal royal rule.59 One romance after another shows this accepted link between kings and their knights. A wise man-at-arms in the Lancelot do Lac defends Arthur’s kingship to a doubting Claudas: “car ce cist seus horn estoit morz, ge ne voi que ja mais meist chevalerie ne tenist gentillece lo ou ele est” (“for if that man were to die, I do not know who could ever preserve knighthood and uphold noble conduct”).60 The Story of Merlin takes the same line, asserting that able kings secure order; rebellions against Arthur’s father, Uther Pendragon, had increased with the king’s age and weakness.61 The Lancelot makes a similar point: the land was sorely troubled by disorders while Arthur was imprisoned by the False Guenevere: | quant le baron de bertaigne se virent sans seignous si commenchierent a guerroier li vm econtre lautre mez li haut homme du pais ne le porent souffrir. [Now seeing their land without a master, the barons began to war with one another, though this was unbearable to the worthy and noble among them who sought only the general good.]62 As so often, the position is summed up by Malory, who admires “stabylité” in the political order no less than in love. The link between Arthur and Lancelot, 58 59 60 61 62

Ars Brevis in Anthony Bonner, tr., Selected Works of Ramon Llull, 2 vols. (Princeton University Press, 1985), 624. Byles. tr., Book of the Ordre of Chyvalry, 27. Kaeuper and Kennedy, The Book of Chivalry, 138–147. Kennedy, ed., Lancelot do Lac, 35. Sommer, ed., Vulgate Version, vol. 2, 77. Rosenberg, tr., Lancelot Part iii, 265: Sommer, ed., Vulgate Version, vol. 4, 51.

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the great king and the great knight, is crucial. In the Morte Darthur when that link has snapped, all the knights worry: “For we all undirstonde, in thys realme woll be no quyett, but ever debate and stryff, now the felyshyp of the Rounde Table ys brokyn. For by the noble felyshyp of the Rounde Table was kynge Arthur upborne, and by their nobeles the kynge and all the realme was ever in quyet and reste. And a grete parte,” they sayde all, “was because of youre moste nobeles, sir Launcelot.”63 Of course, since it was the imminent shattering of the Round Table that occasioned this credo, we are led to look again for basic tensions at work in chivalry. If the illicit love of Lancelot and Guenevere usually captures most of our attention in Arthurian romance, we can recognize that kin rivalry and knightly competitiveness contribute powerfully to the destructiveness at work throughout the later romances in the Vulgate or Lancelot-Grail cycle and in Malory’s great book. Guenevere’s father, King Leodagan, “who was a good ruler and lawgiver,” condemns the knight Bertelay for slaying another knight even though he had followed the proper forms by breaking faith with the man and openly threatening him with death.64 Asked about the killing, Bertelay insisted on his right to kill any man who called him a criminal, once he had broken faith with that man. The defense is, of course, that of Ganelon in the Chanson de Roland of perhaps a century earlier: taking revenge against an enemy openly is no crime against a king. What have kings to do with this anyway? Charlemagne’s answer in the great epic, validated by a trial by combat which reveals the will of God, emphasizes public good over private revenge and leads to Ganelon’s terrible death as a traitor.65 King Leodagan’s position, though milder, would have pleased Charlemagne; the king told Bertelay that he was mistaken; he should have sought justice in the royal court, where he would have been treated fairly. Bertelay’s reply assures personal loyalty but asserts private right: “‘Sire fait il vous dites uostre uolente mais encontre vous ne mesfis ie onques riens ne ia ne ferai se dieu plaist.’” (“‘Sir,’ he said, ‘say what you will, but I have never done you any wrong, nor will I ever, God willing’”). But King Leodagan’s court, composed for this case of King Arthur, King Ban, King Bors, and seven distinguished | 108 63 64 65

Vinaver, ed., Malory, Works, 698–699. The following is drawn from Pickens, tr., The Story of Merlin, 339–341; Sommer, ed., Vulgate Version, vol. 2, 310–313. See laisses 270–291.

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knights, orders Bertelay disinherited and exiled. King Ban, speaking for the court, explains the decision: por ce quil prist la iustice sor lui del cheualier quil ochist et par nuit car la iustice nestoit mie sieue. [The reason is that he took it upon himself to judge the knight he killed, and at night, but justice was not his to mete out.] Bertelay goes off into exile, accompanied by a handsome following of knights who had benefited from his largess, “car moult avoit este boins cheualiers et uiguereus” (“for he had been a good and strong knight”). Early in the Merlin Continuation (much concerned with “firsts,” with the origins of chivalric customs) a squire asks Arthur to take vengeance for his lord, killed in what the king calls the first of “these trials of one knight against another.” The squire tells Arthur that as king by God’s grace he has sworn to right “tous les mesfais que on feroit en ta terre, fust chevaliers ou autres” (“the misdeeds that anyone – a knight or any other person – did in the land”). Arthur goes in person to confront the killer, who turns out to be Pellinor. Before the inevitable joust, Arthur and Pellinor assert contradictory views about individual right to violence and royal responsibility: Arthur raises the fundamental issue of licit violence, asking the knight by what right he insists on fighting all who would use the forest passage. Pellinor, addressing Arthur as a knight, asserts a knight’s right: “Sire chevaliers,” fait il, “jou meesmes em pris le congie sur moi sans auctorité et sans grasce d’autrui” (“Sir knight…I gave myself leave to do this, without authority or grace from anyone else.”) Arthur will not accept such a sense of private right, tells the knight he is wrong, and orders him never again be so bold as to undertake such a thing.66 Such royalism is praised in the Middle English Havelok the Dane, which states specifically that a model king enforced order even against knights: Of kniht ne havede ne never drede That he ne sprong forth so sparke of glede, And lete him knawe of hise hand-dede, Hu he couthe with wepne spede; 66

Asher, tr., Merlin Continuation (vol. 4 of Lancelot-Grail, gen. ed. Norris Lacy), 175, 179; Gaston Paris and Jacob Ulrich, eds., Merlin, roman en prose du XIIIe siécle (Paris: Firman Didot, 1986), 174, 188.

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And other he refte him hors or wede, Or made him sone handes sprede, And “louerd, merci!” loude grede.67 (90–96) [He had no fear of any knight that prevented him from shooting out like a spark from a coal to let him know the deeds of his hands, how he could use weapons. He either confiscated the man’s horse and gear or made him cower, hands outspread, loudly crying out, “Mercy, Lord.”] | 109 All such cases in literature reinforce the debate over licit violence and royal sovereignty that appears so prominent in these centuries. Kings and their administrators often show that they considered knightly violence in the form of feud and private war the core of the problem of public order in their realms. Even Ramon Llull, traditionally the voice of chivalric idealism, agreed. In a work now seldom read he refers to knights as “Devil’s ministers,” and asks pointedly “Who is there in the world who does as much harm as knights?”68 Many flesh and blood people in this era could have enthusiastically seconded such a question. The chronicler Orderic Vitalis, as we have seen, worried over knightly violence, as did the royal advisor and biographer Abbot Suger of St. Denis; so did the notary who compulsively penned the famous account of the anarchy following the murder of Charles, Count of Flanders in 1127.69 The villagers of Cagnocles whose homes were burnt out by Giles de Busigny in a private war in 1298 could add their voices,70 as could all the French villagers looted, abused, left homeless by the raids of English armies sweeping across the countryside in the next century. No doubt we would hear vigorous phrases from John of Massingham who, in 1316, claimed to have been sitting at dinner with his mother in a little English village, “in the peace of God and in the peace of our lord the King,” when the door was suddenly smashed by a gang led by “Sir Thomas de Ingaldesthorp, knight, constable and keeper of the peace…and other unknown evildoers.”71 67 68

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Donald B. Sands, Middle English Verse Romance (New York, 1966). Quoted in Jocelin Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, 1250–1516 (Oxford University Press, 1976), 60, from the Book of Contemplation. The Catalan, kindly supplied by Prof. Hillgarth in correspondence, reads: “E doncs, Sènyer, qui és lo mon qui tant de mal faça com cavallers?” Chibnall, ed. and tr., Ecclesiastical History; Henri Waquet, ed. and tr., La Vie de Louis VI le Gros (Paris: Champion, 1929); James Bruce Ross, tr., The Murder of Charles the Good (New York: Harper, 1967). Robert Fossier, “Fortunes et infortunes paysannes au Cambrésis,” in Economies et sociétés au moyen âge (Paris, 1973), 171–82. From an unpublished “ancient petition” (SC 8) in the Public Record Office, London.

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If the ironic implications for knighthood are interesting, so are the phrases about peace being guaranteed by God and the king. Despite their active leadership in war beyond the borders, kings were regarded within their realms as the guarantors of the peace on earth desired by God. Increasingly their involvement took specific legal form as they worked to extend their peace, to provide mechanisms for the resolution of disputes, to control castle-building and – most significant for our themes – to limit private war. Inevitably, the sense of royal sovereignty taking on legal form clashed with the chivalric ethos, so clearly expressed in romance.72 In the very long run, the autonomy and proud prowess of the chivalrous would be mastered by the emergent state. In the short run, the tensions again crackled. | Suggestions for Further Reading

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Barren, W.R.J. English Medieval Romance. London: Longman, 1987. Bloch, R. Howard. Medieval French Literature and Law. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. Crane, Susan. Insular Romance: Politics, Faith, and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. Crouch, David. William Marshal: Court, Career and Chivalry in the Angevin Empire, 1147–1219. London: Longman. 1990. Duby Georges. The Chivalrous Society, tr. Cynthia Postan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. Gravdal, Kathryn Ravishing Maidens: Writing Rape in Medieval French Literature and Law. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. Kaeuper, Richard W. War, Justice and Public Order: England and France in the Later Middle Ages. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Kaeuper, Richard W., and Elspeth Kennedy, The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny: Text, Context and Translation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. Keen, Maurice. Chivalry. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. |

72 Kaeuper, War, Justice and Public Order, 134–269.

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Telling it Like it Was? Mark Twain’s Rereading of Chivalry in Malory’s Morte Darthur

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Malory makes an appropriate background subject for a contribution to this volume of essays, since his Morte Darthur retells and reshapes a vast body of older chivalric works, both French and English, to his own purpose and taste. In turn, Twain’s fascinating and darkly humorous retelling of Malory in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court does the same, in the process revealing – as all retellings inevitably do – much about his own state of mind, much about his own crisis of belief in the standard verities of his own time, perhaps in verities of any time at all.1 Scholars interested in Twain and in late nineteenth-century American intellectual history have thus made much of Twain’s book, though little enough of that analysis can be touched upon in this essay. But might we as medieval scholars learn anything about the civilization we spend our lives studying by a close reading of Twain’s retelling of Malory’s retelling of classic chivalric literature? The answer would at first glance seem to be straightforwardly negative. Twain, it takes no particular expertise to recognize, really did not know much about the Middle Ages. He snips, discards, stitches, and sometimes makes up out of whole cloth, retailoring the age of Arthur. A Connecticut Yankee in particular makes a huge, personal target of most things medieval, and Twain repeatedly blasts ideas and institutions that he hates and fears. His prominent attack on | slavery, for example, owes more to the American South of his youth than to medieval England (where slavery had disappeared by the eleventh century).2 His sulphurous attacks on the medieval Church and religion miss more than I could even touch on – the character of universities as clerical institutions, the patronage given by churchmen to scholars and artists, the vast and * Previously published in Thomas Hahn and Alan Lupack (eds.), Retelling Tales: Essays in Honor of Russell Peck (Woodbridge, 1997), 179–190. 1 See the fascinating discussion of Justin Kaplan in his biography, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, rewritten as “The Yankee and the Machine: Mark Twain’s Perfectable World,” in Kaplan, ed., Mark Twain, A Profile, 211–229. 2 He could claim that his subject is sixth-century Britain, but of course it is really the Middle Ages of Malory and his sources, that is, the developed medieval civilization of the twelfth to fifteenth centuries. The costumes in which he dresses his characters have even a sixteenthcentury quality.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004302655_020

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growing popular piety that can scarcely be dismissed as inauthentic or as merely cynical control, exercised top-down. In general, Twain’s picture of medieval ignorance and tyranny vis-à-vis nineteenth-century science and limited government misses some of the significant medieval contributions to – indeed, even origins of – these very phenomena. The Western love-affair with technology, for example, or the creation not only of sovereign states, but of constitutional states as well can be securely traced back into the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth centuries. The western love affair with love, of course, begins in those very same centuries. Twain was, in fact, well aware that his account was not truly historical; he slipped slyly past that hurdle in his preface by admitting that not all of the evils he decried were actually medieval. Yet, he suggests, “One is quite justified in inferring that wherever one of these laws or customs was lacking in that remote time, its place was competently filled by a worse one.”3 I think at some level he knew better. Early in the book he describes the Yankee as standing “at the very spring and source of the second great period of the world’s history” (presumably the medieval after the Classical), from which vantage point he “could see the trickling stream of that history gather, and deepen and broaden, and roll its mighty tides down the far centuries.” Yet such recognition is generally swamped by the even mightier surges of egalitarian hatred he feels for all elites, for all privilege, for any form of tyranny. He hates the medieval Church, as he hates any unified, established church: “it makes a mighty power, the mightiest conceivable, and then when it by and by gets into selfish hands, as it is always bound to do, it means death to human liberty, and paralysis to human thought” (cy 47). Moreover, it failed to make what he characteristically terms “the ornamental ranks” truly good. “1 will say this | much for the nobility,” the Yankee declares, “that, tyrannical, murderous, rapacious and morally rotten as they were, they were deeply and enthusiastically religious” (cy 82). Twain uses a special pot of vitriol when he dips his pen to write of chivalry. He loathed all its forms and appearances in the medieval past just as he had come to hate all its survivals or revivals in the South of his youth. Religion does not make the knights good; chivalry does not make them even useful. Not that the Yankee does not try. He teaches them baseball as a substitute for tournament (those “ridiculous human bullfights” [cy 41]); he gives them signboards to wear, advertising various products; he transforms the Round Table into a stock exchange. But at one point he falls to 3 From the “Preface” to Connecticut Yankee.

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thinking about what a pity it was that men with such superb strength – strength enabling them to stand up cased in cruelly burdensome iron and drenched with perspiration, and hack and batter and bang each other for six hours on a stretch – should not have been born at a time when they could put it to some useful purpose. Take a jackass, for instance; a jackass has that kind of strength, and puts it to a useful purpose, and is valuable to this world because he is a jackass; but a nobleman is not valuable because he is a jackass. (cy 75) When not comparing them to jackasses – or even more elaborately, to swine, as when the Yankee and the Lady Alisaunde (“Sandy”) go on quest – Twain pictures the knights as children, savages, or even tame animals. In his first moments at court the Yankee thinks of the chivalrous as “White Indians,” and not long after he elaborates: The fact is, it is just a sort of polished up court of Comanches, and there isn’t a squaw in it who doesn’t stand ready at the dropping of a hat to desert to the buck with the biggest string of scalps at his belt. (cy 72) Twain, who makes it clear in this passage that he is definitely not p.c., clearly thinks these chivalrous folk are not civilized. The women among the elite earn no higher marks. The crowd gathered to watch a tournament showed “high animal spirits, innocent indecencies of language, and a happy-hearted indifference to morals.” You never saw such people. Those banks of beautiful ladies, shining in their barbaric splendors, would see a knight sprawl from his horse in the lists, with a lance shaft the thickness of your ankle clean through him, and the blood spouting, and instead of fainting they would clap their hands and crowd each other for a better view. (cy 42)| 181 Thus when the Yankee issues his grand challenge against the entire chivalry of England at the end of the book, he gloats in significant language: “Knighterrantry was a doomed institution. The march of civilization was begun” (cy 240). In an unforgettable passage written into Life on the Mississippi, Twain even blamed the American Civil War on Sir Walter Scott because southerners read the novels and played at chivalry.4 4 Life on the Mississippi 327–328: “Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern character, as it existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible for the war. It seems a little

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Of course Twain sometimes will himself play at least with chivalric language. As a man who truly loved original and picturesque language, he assuredly loved the language of Sir Thomas Malory. The Yankee – or at least his creator – can become almost intoxicated on infusions of Malory’s language, which he quotes repeatedly on one pretext or another. He decides after living some time in Camelot that the “Arkansas journalism” of the newspaper he founded is a bit too flip.5 When Sir Lancelot and his fellows appear in the nick of time (stylishly pedaling bicycles, no less), to rescue the Yankee and King Arthur from slavery and death, the Yankee’s words of welcome are in the “high style” (cy 230–231). Let it be said that his discovery of Malory took place in a bookstore one rainy day in Rochester, one of Twain’s stops on a joint speaking tour with George Washington Cable. Twain, Cable, and Ozias Pond (brother of their manager) soon amused each other in hotels and on trains by conversing in the infectious language of Malory’s book (Gerber 116). In a letter, Twain called Malory’s language “absolute English,” and he said that he considered the eulogy for Lancelot in the closing pages of the Morte Darthur to be equalled only by the Gettysburg Address. “for tender eloquence and simplicity” (Lauber, Mark Twain’s Inventions 179–180). As narrator, Twain tells us at the beginning of Connecticut Yankee that he “dipped into old Sir Thomas Malory’s enchanting book and fed at its rich feast of prodigies and adventures, breathed-in the fragrance of its obsolete names, and dreamed again” (cy 2).| Twain’s descriptions of the imagined medieval countryside likewise tend to the sylvan, idyllic, suggesting that this world could attract as well as revolt him. At the start of his own quest for adventure, the Yankee says he and Sandy dreamed along through glades in a mist of green light that got its tint from the sundrenched roof of leaves overhead, and by our feet the clearest and coldest of runlets went frisking and gossiping over its reefs and making a sort of whispering music comfortable to hear; and at times we left the world behind. (cy 56–57) I think, in fact, that Twain was firmly of a mind and a half about the medieval world. He was torn, but not right down the middle. When he awakens in harsh toward a dead man to say that we never should have had any war but for Sir Walter, and yet something of a plausible argument might, perhaps, be made in support of that wild proposition.” 5 cy 155–177. The Yankee admits “there was too lightsome a tone of flippancy all through the paper. It was plain I had undergone a considerable change without noticing it. I found myself unpleasantly affected by pert little irrelevancies which would have seemed but proper and airy graces of speech at an earlier period of my life.”

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Camelot, after his time travel (brought on by “a misunderstanding conducted with crowbars” [cy 5]) the Yankee mistakes Arthur’s court for an insane asylum. Yet he soon finds himself oscillating uneasily between dismissive contempt and a species of grudging admiration. Though he complains that “There did not seem to be brains enough in the entire nursery, so to speak, to bait a fishhook with,” he soon also muses, “There was a fine manliness observable in almost every face, and in some a certain loftiness and sweetness that rebuked your belittling criticisms and stilled them” (cy 14). This is the Twain who accepted an honorary degree from Oxford University, and then wore the gorgeous robe while rocking on his porch, and on occasion while marching in the Independence Day parade in Elmira.6 Most of the time he hated the entire sphere of things medieval;7 yet sometimes he was drawn, ineluctably, into admiration for some piece of this old world. Twain sometimes half-saw alternatives or even partial critiques of modernity in this medieval world so familiar and yet so foreign. In fact, many scholars agree that Connecticut Yankee is clearly if not selfconsciously a critique of nineteenth-century society as well as so obvious a debunking of medieval society.8 This ambiguity accounts | for the endless com- 183 plexity and ambiguity in its pages. Twain even admitted to Dan Beard, his illustrator, that the Yankee was, in fact, a perfect ignoramus; he is the boss of a machine shop; he can build a locomotive or a colt’s revolver; he can put up and run a telegraph line, but he’s an ignoramus nevertheless. (See Spofford 15–18) As the Yankee uses his superior knowledge to become The Boss in Arthurian England, and begins secretly to create an entire industrial complex, he reflects, that Unsuspected by this dark land, I had the civilization of the nineteenth century booming under its very nose. …There it was, as sure a fact, and as substantial a fact as any serene volcano, standing innocent with its 6 A fine photograph of Twain posing in his gown appears on the cover of the Mark Twain Journal 24.1 (1986). 7 See, for example, David W. Noble, The Eternal Adam and the New World Garden; David L.Vanderwerken, “The Triumph of Medievalism in Pudd’nhead Wilson.” In Life on the Mississippi, Twain dismisses chivalry as “absurd” (42) and “grotesque” (285). 8 See the surveys of views in Susan K. Harris, Mark Twain’s Escape from Time: A Study of Patterns and Images 44–46, in Reid Maynard, “Mark Twain’s Ambivalent Yankee,” the brief article by Kenneth Andersen, “The Ending of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” in the same volume, p. 21, and John C. Gerber, Mark Twain 115–29.

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smokeless summit in the blue sky and giving no sign of the rising hell in its bowels. (cy 48)

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A volcano about to erupt hell will not strike most readers as an unadulterated image of progress, even in “this dark land.” At its best, or when Twain is so moved, Arthurian Britain seems dreamlike, out of the world and time, a mental construct which some scholars associate with Twain’s rosy recollections of his carefree boyhood days in Hannibal.9 The ambiance of Camelot seems at first to him “lovely as a dream.” A ten-year-old girl he passes “walked indolently along, with a mind at rest, its peace reflected in her innocent face” (cy 7). Of course the Yankee’s efforts to lead Arthurian England to rational, technological, and democratic bliss hardly result in that great nineteenth-century goal, progress. Horrific violence fills the end of the book, although up to the battle itself Twain can scarcely stop dispensing humor, however dark in tone. With England under interdict, an ecclesiastical committee, come to secure the Yankee’s submission, enters the minefield where it crosses the road. “Did the committee make a report?” asks the Yankee. “Yes,” his number two man tells him, “You could have heard it a mile” (cy 158). Besieged, the Yankee’s force of fifty-two boys – equipped (in Merlin’s cave) with proto-machine guns, a dynamite minefield and rings of powerfully electrified fence – efficiently and economically slaughters 25,000 men, the entire force of English knighthood.10 The | Yankee grants that the knights make “a fine sight” as they approach, before they are blown into “homogeneous protoplasm, with alloys of iron and buttons” (cy 263–264). Can we not read the pages describing this mayhem as some sort of an indictment of just where technological modernity might lead? The Yankee has at the beginning of the book described his accomplishment in his prior life at the Colt Arms Factory as having “learned to make everything; guns, revolvers, cannon, boilers, engines, all sorts of labor-saving machinery” (cy 4). This imagined massacre of the massed chivalry of England shows us how the fears fostered by nineteenth-century technological change informed Twain’s rereading of Malory. The victors, sitting behind their electrified fences and smoking gatling guns, are actually doomed. “We were in a trap, you see, a trap of our own making.” Sickness was spreading from the thousands of rotting corpses encased in blackened and shattered armor. Movement was impossible: 9 10

Kaplan, “The Yankee and the Machine” 218. Cf. John Lauber, The Inventions of Mark Twain 257. Recent scholarly reactions to this technological slaughter are given by Harris, Mark Twain’s Escape from Time, 53n.3.

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If we stayed where we were, our dead would kill us; if we moved out of our defenses, we should no longer be invincible. We had conquered. In turn we were conquered. (cy 271–272) In the closing pages of the book, “Final P.S. by M.T.,” Twain puts down the Yankee’s manuscript in which he, and we, have been reading the demise of the medieval world. He looks out on his own world: The rain had almost ceased, the world was grey and sad, the exhausted storm was sighing and sobbing itself to rest. (cy 273) Like others of his age, if with more force, Twain felt torn by the moral dilemmas that the Glorious Century, the Age of the Machine, had produced. As Kaplan has shown, Twain’s own disastrous investment in the hopelessly complex Paige typesetter gave him a deeply personal reason for ambiguity over The Machine (Kaplan, “The Yankee and the Machine”). But what of our rereading as medievalists?11 If Twain at least intuitively fears the technological volcano of his own age, and if we know he invents or misreads so much in the medieval world, why turn to him when thinking about one of his favorite targets, that defining medieval phenomenon, chivalry? Surprisingly, Twain can be a great help. The constant danger in interpreting chivalry, as in understanding all of medieval civilization, is | that we romanti- 185 cize – and thus falsify and trivialize – a significant body of human experience. This danger is especially pronounced when analyzing the phenomenon of chivalry. Chivalry as practiced and discussed in the Middle Ages was a most serious and powerful force, far more significant than the somewhat trivialized survivals or revivals in the nineteenth or even twentieth centuries might indicate. It provided a framework for discussion of several of the most basic questions asked in any society. First, how do we control violence? What violence is licit, what illicit? Who defines these categories? Who enforces these definitions? Secondly, how do we assure the right distribution of what we might term in technical language “the goodies” in society? What is distributive justice? Third, how do we manage sexual relations and drives in an ordered, rational society? Chivalry stands at the intersection of all of these high voltage lines; it functions as some confusing, even contradictory combination of transformer, resistor, rheostat, voltage booster. It hums and crackles with power, because it 11

What follows draws on Chivalry and the Problem of Violence, a book manuscript I have completed.

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defines and legitimizes, praises and tries to reform behavior on all of these lines. Who cuts and kills? Why? Under what justification? With divine blessing? Who dominates the social hierarchy? Why? With divine blessing? Who truly loves and what does it mean in their lives? For nearly half a millennium of European history chivalry was the organizing set of ideals and practices guiding the lives of the dominant strata in society. Chivalry was how they made sense of conflict, religion, honor, status, love, how they defined themselves and their privileged place in society. Even beyond the Middle Ages chivalry has been a central force in shaping how we came to think in Western society about basic issues. In that sense – not as men opening doors for women – it runs its long course, perhaps into the present. What has Twain to do with all such? Twain’s view is refreshing in that it suggests a stance – a healthy, skeptical, American stance – that shakes free of the veneration that so often clings to studies of chivalry, even today.12 The tendency is to take the idealizing, reformist literature of chivalry as descriptive, to read the texts as if they simply told us how knights behaved, rather than how the authors desperately wanted them to behave. In short we often read texts which are so largely prescriptive as if they were simply descriptive. Twain will have none of it. We should listen to his Yankee again, | here as he first observes Arthur’s court, having been brought there as a prisoner: As a rule the speech and behavior of these people were gracious and courtly; and I noticed that they were good and serious listeners when anybody was telling anything – I mean in a dogfightless interval. And plainly, too, they were a childlike and innocent lot; telling lies of the stateliest pattern with a most gentle and winning naivety, and ready and willing to listen to anybody else’s lie, and believe it, too. It was hard to associate them with anything cruel or dreadful; and yet they dealt in tales of blood and suffering with a guileless relish that made me almost forget to shudder. (cy 13) There is much here for which almost any modern reader will reproach Twain: the smug assumption of cultural superiority on behalf of his own kind is especially evident. But we cannot let that blot obscure his useful point: we must not forget to shudder. We must not forget, in short, that knights used their edged weapons in acts of bloody, sweaty, prowess. They were not simply symbols of  the good or collections of idealized virtues, not Everyman, assuredly not 12 In Life on the Mississippi, he warns specifically against the “maudlin Middle Age romanticism here in the midst of the plainest and sturdiest and infinitely greatest and worthiest of all the centuries the world has ever seen…” (286).

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cutouts from pre-Raphaelite paintings. Behind the idealizations of important and even glorious texts such as Malory’s Morte Darthur, stands a reality which Twain’s Yankee sees with an unblinking eye: I was not the only prisoner present. There were twenty or more. Poor devils, many of them were maimed, hacked, or carved in a frightful way; and their hair, their faces, their clothing, were caked with black and stiffened drenchings of blood. They were suffering sharp physical pain, of course, and weariness.…(cy 13) If such a passage produces a shudder, it should enable analysis, not prevent it. An occasional, salutary shudder does not mean we must judge chivalry by modern liberal standards, or indeed that we should judge it at all. It means rather that we can avoid being blinded by the light reflecting off shining armor – or by the gilt-edged pages of great texts – and should manage instead to look at the social effects of chivalry as dispassionately as possible. Surely the scholar shudders not because the Middle Ages were hopeless, not because they failed to be the nineteenth century or the twentieth century, but because they were at once a time of such significant growth in so many areas of human endeavor – literature, architecture, land clearance, commerce, banking, urbanization, universities, natural philosophy, technology, romantic love, law and governance – and yet a time of such terrifying violence, much of it | carried out enthusiastically by the leaders of society, both at home and 187 abroad. Their literature shows that the violence was socially disruptive, that the level of violence bothered medieval people, that they saw the violence as a problem to be controlled. Our reading of Twain can help us remember that chivalry, and chivalric literature, stand precisely at this ragged juncture between high achievement and bloody violence, that it should be analyzed in this context. Far from a frivolous diversion from the real, tough problems of social life, chivalry was a fascinating and complex mixture of both the disease diagnosed and the cure ideally recommended. As a code of honor it was necessarily and of essence a code of violence; prowess is the great chivalric virtue, tirelessly praised in Malory as in all chivalric literature; and we must not forget that prowess means heavy work with edged weapons (which “were not an alternate form of jewelry,” as one of my students sagely observed). Twain recognized the fact, with his characteristic ambiguity: …these murderous adventures…were simple duels between strangers – people who had never even been introduced to each other, and between

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whom existed no cause of offense whatever. Many a time I had seen a couple of boys, strangers, meet by chance, and say simultaneously, “I can lick you,” and go at it on the spot; but I had always imagined until now, that that sort of thing belonged to children only, and was a sign and mark of childhood; but here were these big boobies sticking to it and taking pride in it clear up into full age and beyond. Yet there was something very engaging about these great simplehearted creatures, something attractive and lovable. (cy 14)

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As a reform program, of course, chivalry insisted on violence channeled, on violence guided primarily by internalized standards working in the knights themselves. The Yankee was sure it would never work: “Man of prowess – yes, that is the man to please them,” he tells Sandy. “Man of brains – that is a thing they never think of” (cy 72). Historically, medieval churchmen tried to be the great guide to the proper set of internalized standards. My sense is that the knights accepted the valorization of religion and experienced sudden deafness when the clerical claims of control were voiced. Ultimately, of course, the restraining force had to come from the mature power of monarchical government whose growth was so prominent a feature of medieval history. If the result of state power was more peace within the realm, the sad truth was that it also meant more war between realms, conducted on a grander scale, as the waxing royal powers of organization and taxation showed warlords what could really be done. | That success in controlling the violence of the chivalric layers of society was so mixed simply reminds us of the magnitude of the problem central to chivalry, the problem of violence in human society. A study of chivalry, moreover, serves as a sobering reminder of the likelihood that basic human problems on this order of magnitude are seldom solved, but merely managed with varying degrees of what will look like failure on any ideal scale. | Works Cited Anderson, Kenneth. “The Ending of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.” The Mark Twain Journal 14 (Summer, 1969): 21. Gerber, John C. Mark Twain. Boston: Twayne, 1988. Harris, Susan K. Mark Twain’s Escape from Time. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1982. Kaplan, Justin. Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966.

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———. “The Yankee and the Machine: Mark Twain’s Perfectable World.” Mark Twain, A Profile. Ed. Justin Kaplan. New York: Hill and Wang, 1967. 211–29. Lauber, John. The Making of Mark Twain. New York: American Heritage, 1985. ———. The Inventions of Mark Twain. New York: Hill and Wang, 1990. Maynard, Reid. “Mark Twain’s Ambivalent Yankee.” The Mark Twain Journal 14 (Winter, 1968–69): 1–5. Noble, David W. The Eternal Adam and the New World Garden. New York: Braziller, 1968. Spofford, William K. “Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee: An Ignoramus Nevertheless.” The Mark Twain Journal 15 (Summer, 1970): 15–18. Twain, Mark. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. NewYork: Bantam, 1981. ———. Life on the Mississippi. New York: Penguin, 1984. Vanderwerken, David L. “TheTriumph of Medievalism in Pudd’nhead Wilson.” The Mark Twain Journal 18 (Summer, 1977): 7–11. Wechter, Dixon, ed. Mark Twain to Mrs. Fairbanks. San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1949. | 190

PART 4 Holy Warriors

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Introduction to Part 4 Medieval military professionals saw within religion a means to sanctifying their profession.1 The clergy may have inspired knightly religious aspirations, but they did not determine them.2 Instead, when clerical authors attempted to use knightly respect for Christian ideals to reform an ordo of bellatores, they opened the door to lay appropriation of religious ideology.3 Knights drew upon spirituality in battle, mixing religious symbolism with the iconography of honor and status.4 The blood knights spilt could be associated with that of Christ, and their own “meritorious suffering” could be likened to that of their savior.5 In the eyes of their God, grueling campaigns and tough battles weighed in knights’ favor on the Day of Judgment to come.6 Both “Piety and Independence in Chivalric Religion” and “Chivalric Violence and Religious Valorization” discuss knightly attempts to defend the religious value of their profession. Knights appropriated a Christian emphasis on asceticism and treated the suffering they endured on campaign as a form of martyrdom. Militia, far from being malitia, became for them a form of imitatio Christi. As Kaeuper concludes in “John Ruskin, the Medieval Ordines, and Meritorious Suffering,” although knights did embrace a form of heroic asceticism, in a manner the clergy might admire, they continued to justify an ordo enamored by the independent display of prowess. That violence could be considered an integral component of knightly piety may appear paradoxical, if not hypocritical, to any modern audience that would associate Christian religion with the desire to turn swords into plowshares. Certainly knights did struggle to balance their need to take vengeance, and so soothe their slighted honor, with the desire to show Christian mercy to their vanquished opponents. But they did not think of vengeance as sinful simply because mercy was divine. As Kaeuper concludes in ‘Vengeance and Mercy in Chivalric Mentalité’, knights could consider both the wrath and peace of God as necessary components of their profession. 1 Richard Kaeuper, Holy Warriors: The Religious Ideology of Chivalry (Philadelphia, 2009), p. 256. 2 To paraphrase James MacGregor, “Negotiating Knightly Piety: The Cult of the Warrior-Saints in the West, ca. 1070–ca. 1200”, Church History 73 (2004), 345. 3 Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence, p. 86. 4 Robert Jones, Bloodied Banners: Martial Display on the Medieval Battlefield (Woodbridge, 2010), 145–159. 5 Kaeuper, Holy Warriors, p. 115. 6 Kaeuper, Holy Warriors, p. 133.

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The idea that warriors had their own independent understanding of Christian belief, one that might valorize their lifestyle, complements recent studies of the medieval clergy that are also interested in the intersection of medieval religion and violence. Even as knights worried about salvation without rejecting violence, militant clerics subscribed in turn to chivalric values. For bishops, military engagements could become a key component of their profession.7 Clerics also promoted military-saints who might form aristocratic piety in a manner that knights would appreciate.8 Even monks supported royal warfare and praised the violence of knights in Christian terms.9 It is to this chorus of voices interested in clerical engagement with violence that Kaeuper adds his counterpoint, one that complements scholarship devoted to the militarism of clerics with a study of the religiosity of knights. It follows from Kaeuper’s argument that the prescriptive message of reformist clerics cannot be credited with the creation of gentlemen-bureaucrats. Rather, the links knights drew between violence and religion represent a “Gordian knot” that could not be easily unraveled.10

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Craig Nakashian, “The Political and Military Agency of Ecclesiastical Leaders in AngloNorman England: 1066–1154,” The Journal of Medieval Military History, 12 (2014), 51–80. 8 Katherine Allen Smith, “Saints in Shining Armour,” Speculum, 83 (2008), 572–602. 9 Christopher Guyol, “Let Them See What God Can Do: Chivalry in the St Albans Chronicle”, forthcoming. 10 Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence, p. 86.

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Piety and Independence in Chivalric Religion In the third act of “Der Rosenkavalier” (by Ricard Strauss, with libretto by Hugo von Hofmannstal) the Marschellin frankly says of Baron Ochs “Er ist, mein’ ich, ein Kavalier? Da wird Er sich halt gar nichts denken.” Her stark, sweeping, and comic claim can readily pose an important question for all who investigate chivalry, or even a set of questions. Did the medieval knighthood think much or deeply along religious lines? What was the origin of their ideas, the authority validating them? And how, in fact, did the knights shape their religious ideas in the midst of the complex and violent world in which they lived? Piety, as all might agree, is a challenging compound of elements (perhaps the chemists would insist we term it a mixture): behind formalized acts and a range of actions taken in the world must stand more or less abstract ideas. Yet the linkage is often difficult to discern and the elements sometimes appear contradictory. Obviously we must exercise caution. Many years ago Marc Bloch warned against separating the human subjects of our research into Latinized boxes labeled homo religiosus, homo œconomicus, or homo politicus. As an example, he asked rhetorically if the medieval merchant (who daily violated economic ethics elaborated by rigorous canon law) did not with genuine piety kneel before a statue of Our Lady that same evening. With equal justification he could have selected the knights and expressed doubt that their evident piety surfaced merely when they gazed fearfully toward death and the judgment to follow.1 Such wise warning leads me, on one hand, to deny any goal of closely calibrating the depth of genuine spirituality in a large group of men over a vast span of time and space. It would prove difficult even to attempt such calibration for particular individuals. Paraphrasing the first Queen Elizabeth, I can happily disavow a belief that I can open windows into men’s souls collectively or individually. Yet, equally important, seeing the knighthood in the flesh and in the round surely requires understanding their undoubted religiosity. I think 201 that we can – indeed, should – analyze the connective tissue that bound | chivalry and religion in an organic whole. This effort will require us to use all available evidence, including legislation from governing institutions both lay and ecclesiastical, chivalric biography, vernacular manuals, and (I am convinced) imaginative literature, along with confession manuals for priests, and the great and under-utilized mass of exempla and sermon stories aimed at knights and heard and read by them. * Previously published in Martin Aurell and Catalina Girbea (eds.), Chevalerie et christianisme au xii et xiiie siècles (Rennes, 2011), 201–210. 1 M. Bloch, Apologie pour l’histoire, ou métier d’historien, Paris, 1949, pp. 76–77. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004302655_022

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Granted, our most obvious evidence comes from formally pious acts. A plenitude of evidence still exists in the landscape no less than in libraries and in archival fonds: Foundations and endowments of religious houses; tomb monuments and brasses, the chapels that seem a requirement for every château or maison forte. To these we can quickly add collections of relics and, in time, devotional books as well; and we will think of pilgrimage and, of course, the armed pilgrimage of crusade; or the suppression and fearsome elimination of heretics by knightly hands that were as willing as they were strong. All such evidence cannot be swiftly discounted by stating the obvious fact that knightly behavior deviated, often dramatically, from some ideal religious principles. On such a hard standard for behavior, few lay folk, and only a slightly larger minority of clerics, would qualify as truly religious in any age known to historical inquiry. Conservative medieval clerics agreed. One of my favorite sermon exempla specifies that of 30,000 people who died a single day in the twelfth century, only St Bernard of Clairvaux and the Dean of Langres were admitted directly to heaven; three other faithful believers were sent to be cleansed in the sulfurous fires of purgatory, and the remaining 29,995 went straight to hell.2 The cleric who penned this uncompromising moral tale – and many of his fellows – would have worried about knightly anticlericalism which, it is true, remains an undoubted and well documented fact of life. Tough and critical views of clerics undoubtedly animated many knights, at least occasionally, if not continuously.3 This reflex may seem almost automatic: when given an admonitory rap on the knee by the clerical doctors of their souls, the knights kicked. Yet does not this reflexive anticlericalism so often stem from competition between ordinees? May it not even be attributed, in fact, to disappointed piety? However vigorous, moreover, rivalry between the clerical and knightly orders never reached mutual non-acceptance, and seems so seldom to have resulted from stark disbelief or unconcern for religious issues.4 As a rule, anticlericalism thus stopped well short of antisacerdotalism. To be sure, the sensitivities of a clerical elite remained touchy | on the fundamental importance of their mediatory and directive role. Yet sharp anticlericalism so often mingled characteristically and companionably with staunch piety and a broad acceptance of the essential role of the clerics. 2 British Library Additional ms 21147, folio 24. 3 Though the fact of knightly anticlericalism is often noted, few systematic studies exist. But see P.S. Noble, “Anti-clericalism in the feudal epic,” The Medieval Alexander Legend and Romance Epic, ed. P. Noble, L. Polak and C. Isoz, Millwood, ny, 1982, pp. 149–158. 4 Discussed in R. Kaeuper, Holy Warriors: The Religious Ideology of Chivalry, Philadelphia, 2009, pp. 147–162.

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Thus the knights hardly seem immune or hostile to religious ideas; they did not simply get on with fighting, chasing stags, boar, and women or concentrate exclusively on moving pieces on the chessboard of court intrigue, unencumbered by anything resembling serious religious ideas of their own. They considered themselves good Christians and with good reasons. If we can agree on this much, greater rewards – and greater dangers – lie along the path that leads toward understanding the content and origins of these knightly ideas about religion, particularly as they relate to clerical direction and control. It would be so easy to analyze a church composed only of clerics and a world of ideas generated by them alone!5 A point of view dangerously close to this line of thought would dismiss a quest for specifically knightly piety. It would ask: Were knights not simply “faithful sons of holy mother church”? Were their religious ideas not merely standard issue, the ideas of all medieval Christians? Did they not in an uncomplicated manner absorb their fundamental religious ideas passively, as these were dispensed by helpful if insistent clerics? My goal in this essay is to question such simplistic interpretations and at least to indicate evidence and argument pointing toward a chivalric religiosity that was more nuanced and complex, without, in the knightly view, any loss of genuine piety or orthodoxy. Knightly religion demanded specificity because knightly life involved specificity: it involved practices that edged dangerously close to moral dangers. Many knights recognized a specific need to valorize their hard profession – a framework that would satisfy themselves as well as others – and one that would justify their hard actions in a violent world and their elite status in Christian society.6 They necessarily lived and acted in a terrifying and tangible world in which moral absolutes shaded with disturbing swiftness into grey doubts. The degree of involvement of knights in imagining such a framework arguably varied with the mental and spiritual formation of particular figures, but the profession of knighthood in general must have subscribed to a broadly similar set of views, despite obvious and inevitable variations in individuals. Religious terms would naturally inform such a framework among men who assumed that they were good Christians. The resulting chivalric dimension of religion – a lived variety of lay piety – was surely more subtle 5 Classic accounts of lay spirituality in general appears in A. Vauchez, The Laity in the Middle Ages, D.E. Bornstein (dir.), M.J. Schneider (trans.), Notre Dame, in, 1993, and R.W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages, Harmondsworth, uk, 1970. Much of the vast scholarly literature touching on crusade could be cited to make similar points. 6 Geoffroi de Charny provides an excellent case in point. See R.W. Kaeuper and E. Kennedy, The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny, Philadelphia, 1996. Cf. Kaeuper, Holy Warriors.…

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and is | happily so much more interesting a subject for study than reductive views would suggest. The key to a closer understanding of chivalric religion, I am convinced, is to be found in the intersection of three broad lines of evidence and interpretation.7 First, we must recognize the deep and even fierce sense of professionalism that characterized the knighthood. In their view, far from standing opposed by their religion, this professional practice enacted a crucial form of their active piety. Second, our analysis must likewise incorporate the sheer knightly confidence and independence that stands as a part of or a parallel aspect to their undoubted piety. Independence and confidence led them, to no small degree, to act on matters of crucial importance to them as authors of their own code, or at the very least, this independence allowed them to assume a right to draw upon ideas advanced by both clerics and lay reformers in a highly selective manner. In short they assumed a right to ignore some advice given them, some demands made of them; without violating the call to piety they could truly absorb only those ideas they found important and congenial. Ideas that contradicted or troubled their warrior professionalism and elite status could be piously disregarded. Third, it is crucial to recognize that the formation of chivalric religion took place within a cultural atmosphere obsessed with meritorious suffering and especially with bodily asceticism as a means of earning divine love and forgiveness for sin. If, medieval religion in general emphasized asceticism, meritorious suffering played a particular role in chivalric religious thought. Peasants were taught to bear their hard toil with patience and humility. The monks and clerics might at least claim the physical hardship of chastity. The merchants were left with very little in the way of physical or heroic asceticism. Significantly, these were the very qualities that knighthood proudly claimed for their own ordo. As we will see, their suffering, splendidly heroic in its achievements and intensely physical in its process, solved an essential problem for them: it gave major help in reconciling their violent lives with divine grace and forgiveness in a manner and to a degree completely foreign to other ordines. These formative lines of knightly piety did not, it is also important to recognize, operate without persistent tensions, complications and even contradictions. It could not be otherwise. Indeed, their very function arguably grew out of such disruptive tendencies in a set of ideas important to them. What had the religion of Christ (as formulated in the Sermon on the Mount) to do with a warrior code, with the virtual worship of the demigod prowess, with looting, killing, and vengeance? The knights subscribed to a religion whose founder 7 Full discussion of these views and presentation of the evidence for them appear in Kaeuper, Holy Warriors…, passim.

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had spoken powerfully of love, peace, meekness, and forgiveness, and who had also spoken hard words about the fate of | those who live by the sword. How 204 could these elite males nonetheless live by the sword and proudly construct a self-definition based on enthusiastic and skillful use of edged weaponry in the violent pursuit of honor, loot, and vengeance? The question is raised to investigate their formation of ideas, not their morality in the abstract. That the problem of violence and the sacred is unique neither to Christianity nor to the Middle Ages I take for granted. These intractable issues seem sadly common around the globe at all times and intrude themselves into our daily news broadcasts.8 Yet if the generality of these tensions makes the issue broadly significant, the specific intensity of the problem in chivalric religion gives our inquiry particular potential. Sometimes the omnipresent tension merely flits like a ghostly presence through medieval texts and is not even overtly recognized; at other times it is the elephant in the room. This tension will haunt (or lumber through) all three broad frames of chivalric thought whose intersection formed the religion of knighthood.9 We can conveniently consider the third basic evidentiary and interpretive line first since the powerful role of asceticism may be the most immediately surprising force to shape chivalric religion.10 Generally, we associate a high regard for asceticism with the religious and think of the monks and especially those hermits and anchorites who distressed their bodies creatively in fervent hopes of thereby meriting God’s love. Such asceticism is not the topos we immediately associate with the proud and dominant chivalric layer in society which gloried in the physical strength and skill of their bodies which won them showy glory and reward. Yet the knights tirelessly emphasized their grievous bodily suffering on wearisome campaign and in hard-fought battle. This fixation fills much chivalric literature and so soon as the knights’ own 8

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M. Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, Berkeley, 2000; R.S. Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, violence, and Reconciliation, Lanyham, Md, 2000; O.J. McTernan, Violence in God’s Name: Religion in an Age of Conflict, Maryknoll, ny, 2003; C. Selengut, Sacred fury: Religious Violence, Walnut Creek, ca, 2003; W. Hamblet, The Sacred Monstrous: a Reflection on Violence in Human Communities, Lanham, Md, 2004. That this issue was significant both to thoughtful clerics and knights is argued in Kaeuper, Holy Warriors…, pp. 1–37. John Baldwin masterfully discusses the intellectual wrestling of clerics with war and violence on the part of early thirteenth-century clerical reformers in Masters, Princes, and Merchants, Princeton, 1970, pp. 205–228. E. Auerbach, “Gloria Passionis,” Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, New York, 1965; E. Cohen, “Towards a History of European Physical Sensibility: Pain in the Later Middle Ages,” Science in Context 8, 1995, pp. 47–74, and idem, “The Animated Pain of the Body,” American Historical Review 105, 2000, pp. 36–68.

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words reach us they speak plainly and constantly to the essential asceticism of their profession. Twelfth century chansons de geste intensely visualize their suffering. Line upon line, laisse upon laisse, present the heroes languishing from multiple wounds, fainting from hunger and thirst; often holding their intestines within their slashed bodies with their own hands while vomiting blood. And their closely detailed sufferings are rewarded by the Lord of Hosts. | When the release of death finally arrives (the medium of opera comes once again to mind), it brings them the glorious crown of martyrdom and an honored seat in the banquer hall of heaven.11 Even romance, traditionally characterized as more cheerful, less stained in blood and gore, supplies blood and gore aplenty; The physical demands of quest generate vivid descriptions of pain and anguish as heroes struggle to triumph, even to survive.12 After hours of hacking with broadswords – this is not fencing – the ground is soaked with precious chivalric blood, while sparkling rings of shattered mail shine amid the red pools. Battles that surely qualify as epic still rage in romance, and they can put thousands of men’s bodies and lives at risk. To cross swords with a romance hero such as Lancelot is to risk his blade hewing off an arm or leg, or splitting a helmet and penetrating into the brain, to the chin or even the chest cavity. Objections may be raised that none of this is possible with the weaponry of the day; but of course the significance lies in a narrative that is not accurately anatomical but deeply ideological. Not all talk in romance is of love, though we naturally gravitate towards such talk as modern interpreters. And the point is strongly reinforced when we can analyze not only what was written for the knights but what was written by them. Even a casual reader of the Livre de chevalerie by Geoffroi de Charny, perhaps the most admired French knight of the mid-fourteenth century, gains an impression of the importance Charny places on the sheer sufferings of active knighthood. Although he constantly reminds French knighthood about the dangers, hardships and sufferings they must endure, he insists on perseverance with cheerfulness and bold confidence. Are all such sufferings not meritorious? In one remarkable passage he even claims chivalric victory in ascetic competition with the clerics, the supposed masters of the practices. The Lord of Hosts who gives the knights their strength and endurance fully appreciates and rewards their suffering.

11 E.g. La Chanson d’Aspremont; chanson de geste du xii siècle, ed. L. Brandin, Paris, 1919. 12 Numerous examples are provided in R.W. Kaeuper, “Chivalry and the ‘Civilizing Process’,” Violence in Medieval Society, R.W. Kaeuper (dir.), Woodbridge, Suffolk, uk, 2000.

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That an insistence on meritorious suffering suffuses chivalric literature generally deserves emphasis: As we have noted, chansons, romance, and vernacular manuals all assume that knightly suffering brings divine approval. Warrior qualities, used well, carry out the will of God and enter positively into the economy of salvation. To recognize this fact is not to argue that no doubts and concerns about knightly fighting as a means of accumulating religious merit troubled the minds of clerical intellectuals or indeed reforming minds encased in iron helms. Debate and impulses for reform, no less than valorization, are a characteristic of chivalric literature. Even Geoffroi de Charny (writing in a time of crisis for French knighthood) worried about arms-bearers who do not live up to standards; romance is | filled with what I have taken elsewhere to be top- 206 ics for debate about proper chivalric behavior.13 Yet our evidence documents knightly assertion of virtue achieved through their hard practice of their profession; its known and dangerous consequences for knightly bodies in the world do not eliminate its even greater and more glorious consequences in the world to come. Yet the elephant in the room would trumpet disconcertingly. The entire set of knightly ideas, that is, did not coincide easily and harmoniously. How could chivalric ideology (a proud celebration of bodily strength and muscular triumph) combine so effectively with the intense cultural investment in asceticism that suffused a religion with underlying commitments to peace and forgiveness? For understanding we must turn to our remaining two major interpretive frames, chivalric independence and professionalism, and observe these forces shaping chivalric piety. They manage to quiet the elephant, so to speak, even if they could not push it quite out of the room altogether, silencing all doubts and misgivings. Knightly professionalism leads us at once to consider the ordines, those socio-professional groups originating in the divine master plan for the proper functioning of Christian society. Although their exact designation and number became rather fluid by the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the knighthood no less than the clergy always claim elite ranking on any list. In short, the warriors’ work no less than that of the priests was ordained by the Lord of Hosts who could be counted on to appreciate their good service. Scholarly doubts are sometimes expressed as to the seriousness with which knights identified with their ordo, but professionalism fused with manifest piety in the  course of the twelfth century and by later medieval centuries the term itself (ordo, ordre or Hygh Ordre) appears almost reflexively on both sides of the Channel. Charny at mid-fourteenth century refers constantly to the 13

A theme of R.W. Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe, Oxford, 1999.

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knighthood as an order and Sir Thomas Malory in the late fifteenth century seems unable to write more than a few pages without the term and concept. Both were, of course, practicing knights no less than authors. Clerical intellectuals propagated the idea of a knightly order which obviously carried a prescriptive charge: the knights are being encouraged to behave according to a set of high standards. Yet even here I want to emphasize the degree of chivalric independence. The knights were selective in what they accepted and incorporated into their defining body of ideas and ideals. This degree of independence (in their view not antithetical to piety) is crucial. My strong impression is that they absorbed the high praise given to the idea of the High Order more readily than they bowed unhesitatingly to strictures on behavior; indeed, injunctions that impinged in any significant way on their professionalism were likely to fall on deaf ears. They | enthusiastically continued to hold tournaments denounced by churchmen; they absorbed crusade propaganda creatively and selectively; they fought their fellow Christians on battlefields where they expected victory, even when papal emissaries stood between the two armies advocating peace. In their eyes pride could not be reduced to one of the seven deadly sins, always to be avoided. Even more significant for the role of confidence and independence in the creation of chivalric religious ideology, their advocates (and this must be a mixed set of clerics and knights) found ideological goldmines.in a series of basic issues currently under debate by theologians. Their technique was to appropriate principles from both sides of these current arguments, in the process gaining double benefits. Three examples that have interested me can only be touched upon here.14 (1) Soteriology is basic: precisely how did Christ achieve salvation for humanity – by conquering the Devil who was seen as an opponent with legitimate rights over sinners who had traitorously become his vassals, or as the suffering servant of St Anselm’s famous scheme? Significantly, both views in fact persist throughout the chivalric centuries even if we moderns know that the formula of Anselm finally triumphed. And the knights claim the merits available from both explanations; they suffer like Christ the servant and they triumph as he did, as warriors. The Christus-miles link develops remarkably and – sadly (in the eyes of a modern progressive) – apparently without a touch of conscious irony. (2) Theologians were also at work interpreting the theological significance of human labor. Is labor imposed as ­punishment for sin, a view that resounded in the harsh decree of expulsion from Eden (and no doubt thundered from many a pulpit thereafter), or is it a natural human function through which faithful laborers can progress toward 14

The full case for such an interpretation appears in Kaeuper, Holy Warriors.

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redemption in God’s great plan? Again both options appeal in chivalric thought. How fervently knights want their hard labor on campaign and in battle to counterbalance their grievous sins; yet how ideal to be a member of an ordo with such righteous labor assigned to them by God, who blesses the work and the doer. The hard labor of knighthood, in short, becomes a form of penance in an age that devoted much thought to penance. As all these lines of thought overlap and intersect we are led easily to the third point. (3) Confession and penance, central pillars of the ecclesiastical edifice of pious practice, were likewise under debate as chivalric ideology took shape. The historical taxonomy of these sacraments is changing under current scholarly investigation, but to state contrasts baldly, in an ancient form confession was highly infrequent and penance could be truly heroic in its intensity and physicality.15 By the thirteenth century some voices advocated a more spiritual | understanding of the 208 sacramental process, with at least annual confession (especially after the famous decree of the fourth Lateran Council). These thinkers wanted to reduce penance to acts that showed the sinner’s acceptance of the essential mediatory role of the church. Here the knighthood found much that was useful, as well as some need for resistance. The heroic interpretation of penance readily fit their warrior ideal: hard knightly labor on campaign and in battle counted as penitential. Yet they may well have shown much more reluctance for a regimen that formally expected them regularly to kneel before a parish priest and humbly whisper their sins into his ear, responding to a set of probing questions he asked them. This humbling process and these priestly queries touched a nerve: professionalism and status were at issue. Copious evidence is hard to unearth, but knightly resistance can be surmised from the number of exempla and miracle stories written for preachers (and put into books for the laity) that stress the need for compliance. In short, the knights are so urgently admonished to recognize the benefits and make regular confession that I am led to wonder if the clerics did not encounter resistance. Truly powerful knights, of course, could rely on their own chaplains; these confessors were members of their master’s household, wore his robes and took his fees. Confession to such men in private would significantly alter the dynamics of the process. If the argument for appropriation of these major bi-polar theological issues is acepted, we can recognize at once what remarkable benefits descended upon the knightly order in medieval society. William James observed in The Varieties of Religious Experience that “the impulse to sacrifice” may be “the 15

See, for example, A New History of Penance, A. Firey (dir.), Leiden, 2008, and idem, A Contrite Heart: Prosecution and redemption in the Carolingian Empire, Leiden, 2009 and the works copiously cited in these book.

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main religious phenomenon” and he describes “the undiluted ascetic spirit” as “the passion of self-contempt wreaking itself on the poor flesh.”16 Medieval asceticism usually involved giving up something truly important: clerics (in theory) gave up sex; the zealous among them renounced individual freedom and will, along with all physical comforts; women (as Caroline Bynum has taught us) sometimes gave up food.17 But the knights can have it both ways with regard to suffering and warrior violence. What chivalric ideology did with sacrifice and the poor flesh is surely a remarkable tour de force. They almost silence [d the elephant in the room and nearly managed to exclude it. Occupying the high ground on both sides of debated issues so close to the organizational heart of their society, they acquired significant ideological power, the power inherent in these competing ideals. Are they not both victors and victims? Selfexalters and self-abasers? Do they not practice the immitatio Christi in suffering and also in triumph? In so doing are they not storing up treasures in heaven? 209 They could praise hands-on prowess as the glorious and even pious practice | of their beautiful bodies, while, of course, they ensured their status, won foaming praise and glittering loot. They could groan over their sufferings in hard campaigns and battles in which their bodies might well be bruised, cut, and broken. The very exercise of their professional labor thus helped to secure the pardon for its inseparable wrongs. God himself gave them the great physical strength and capacity by which their dominance in the world was secured. Yet he was also appeased when they suffered meritoriously, in a good cause, as did his son on the cross at Calvary. Thus bodily superiority proved sword in hand and celebrated in both epic and romance literature with pride and style, stood alongside the sacrifice and suffering of hazarding the body, risking all, being on the receiving end of all that edged weaponry. The chivalrous were thus laying a claim to participate in the dominant religious paradigm of their culture, one based on suffering and bodily atonement, which was essentially clerical and specifically monastic in origin. At the same time they were enthusiastic practitioners of a warrior paradigm based on prowess, honor, vengeance and bodily exaltation (which seem to be staples of the eternal warrior code and specifically that originating for them in the early Germanic West). This degree of confident lay independence within an undoubted knightly piety is worth emphasizing because it did such major social and cultural work. Without this combination of attitudes (working within the ascetic atmosphere of meritorious suffering) how would the spokesmen for chivalry have managed 16 17

W. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, New York, 1961, pp. 243–244. C. Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages, Berkeley, 1982, pp. 82–109.

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to square the circle? How could they manipulate the malleable language of religious imagery, or imagine that looting, burning, cutting and killing, vengeance-taking (and prideful boasting over the results) could ever be considered to be a form of imitatio Christi, even when both sides in a fight were Christian? If the lay medieval elite were unquestionably shaped by religion, it is important to recognize how much masterful shaping of religion they practiced in their own interests. | 210

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Chivalric Violence and Religious Valorization Last summer I worked in the new British Library in London, reading sermon stories collected for preachers and readers (lay and clerical) in beautiful manuscript books dating from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. Of course I read those I thought most important first. So on the afternoon of the final day, I opened a book, a small folio volume, that contained only stories I had already read in other manuscripts. My thought was that I would find nothing new. To my great surprise, what I discovered as I opened the book at random was the wonderful manuscript illumination you see on the screen. It was drawn before 1250. The right-hand page shows a mounted thirteenth-century knight in full armor. At the top of the page, the Latin inscription quotes the Book of Job in the Hebrew Bible: “Militia est vita hominis super terram: the life of humans on earth is militia.” This final Latin word can mean hard struggle, or warfare, or knighthood. I became so excited that I went out into the courtyard to pace, and almost grabbed a passing stranger to tell him the important news. The knight is a symbol of the chivalric struggle mentioned in the biblical quotation. Each part of his equipment is labeled with a religious meaning. The terms are not those used by by St Paul (in a well known passage which exorts the believer to put on the whole armor of God). Neither are they the symbols used by the most popular writer of a manual on chivalry, the Catallan Ramon Llull. They have been chosen by the writer or illustrator. The knight is, for example, firmly seated in the Christian religion. His lance is perseverance. In each comer of his shield is a member of the Christian Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the lines converging in the center of the shield as Deus (God). His sword is the word of God. Even the parts of the horse are assigned religious meanings. Overhead, an angel descends from stylized heaven bearing a crown. It is not, I think, a royal crown, but rather the crown of victory won by the knight in his determined struggle. All doubt is removed by the inscription on the band held in the angel’s right hand. It is taken from St Paul and says roughly “Only he who fights the good fight wins a crown.” Equally interesting, the angel holds in its left hand a set of scrolls; on these are written, at least in abbreviated form, some of the famous sayings of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, the so-called “beatitudes:” blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy; blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth; blessed are the peacemakers. We might already at this point sense some tension between the determined, armed knight and these mild, pacific sentiments from the Sermon on the Mount. * Previously published in Courtiers and Warriors: Comparative Historical Perspectives on Ruling, Authority, and Civilization (Kyoto, 2003), 489–508. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004302655_023

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The eye of the knight (as I hope you can see) is firmly set on what is coming against him on the left page. This is a composite illumination, uniting the two folio pages. The names of these hideous demons cannot be read in the picture, because their names are hidden by the page curving into the binding. But as soon as one counts them, it is obvious that they represent the seven deadly sins. Each grotesque figure is backed by figures representing its supporting sins in a wonderfully medieval hierarchical pattern. Avarice, a chief sin, is for example backed up by a smaller demon labeled usury. The knight does have allies, the seven cardinal virtues pictured as doves, who are ranked before him on his side of the illustration. But the knight and the devils easily capture our eye. I submit to you that this illustration, splendid as it is, must be read as apiece of propaganda, one which clerics would surely advance as an ideal for knighthood and which knights might be happy to accept, perhaps even to pay for handsomely. But it is most emphatically not a realistic picture, not a description of what knights actually were or what they actually did. This is illustration is prescriptive rather than descriptive. We would, I believe, make a great error if we were to accept as realistic this idealized and wishful view that flattered warrior sensibilities as it tried to direct warrior energies. I will only assert this point of view for now, but will return to it shortly. For now, let me supplement this manuscript illustration with two simple stories of the sort I found in those books in the British Library. A religious writer, a friar named Thomas of Cantimpré around the midthirteenth century wrote a book with the unforgetable title of Bonum universale de apibus (The Common Good from Bees). He was one of a group of ­thirteenth century natural philosophers and he thought that bees achieved a harmonious society that humans should emulate. Actually his book is largely a collection of stories told to friars by confessing sinners… He provides my first story, which came to him from a fellow friar to whom the widow of a knight had made a confession. So much for the “seal of the confessional”. This powerful German knight, devoted to tournament, apparently had died in one; at least Thomas says, “he died as miserably as he had lived (mortuus est autem miserabiliter sicut vixit).” His holy and devout widow, with much weeping (absolutely required in confession stories), told her spiritual father of a vision given her of her departed husband. His exact location was not specified, but he was surrounded by a great gathering of demons who performed a devilish version of the arming ceremony. They first outfitted him with caligas, heavy soldier’s shoes–using spikes that penetrated from the soles of his feet to his head. Next came the knightly hauberk, the suit of chain-link armor, secured to his body again with spikes that pierced him through, this time front to back and back to front His great helmet was then nailed to his head, with spikes tearing through

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Figure 4.18

his body all the way to his feet The shield they hung from his neck had a weight sufficient to shatter all his limbs. Apparently, after toumeying the knight had been accustomed to relax with a soothing bath, followed by recreational sex with some willing young woman. The demons in the vision dunk him in a tub of flames and then stretch him out on an incandescent iron bed where the sexual partner provided was a horrible toad (buffonis illius horribilis). His widow told her confessor that she was never quit of the terrifying vision. I think you will agree beyond question that this story constitutes a severe critique of knighthood and a stem warning to knights. A second story, written just a bit before Thomas’s book, is of a quite different sort. Caesarius of Heisterbach, a German friar, in his splendid collection of miracle stories tells of a dying lord who hears a commotion in the adjoining room. Asking the cause, he learns that his nephew is trying to rape some woman there, and she is proving difficult The dying knight is a lover of justice and unhesitatingly pronounces, “Hang him.” The household knights only pretend to obey, fearing consequences after the old man’s imminent death. But as he lingers, he catches a view of his nephew very much alive. Calling the young man close to his bedside he plunges a dagger into him. At the point of his own death,

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shortly thereafter, he is visited by a bishop come to hear his confession. Noting that the knight has omitted the killing of his nephew in recounting his sins, the bishop refuses to give him the host, the consecrated bread transformed into the saving body of Christ, and walks to the door. The old knight triumphantly tells the bishop to look within his pyx (the carrying box) for the host. The host is missing there, but lies on the knight’s tongue. God has understood the knight’s virtue and has given him the saving sacrament, even though the bishop did not. The range of opinion is stark. Knights are disruptive and dangerous, deserving divine wrath. Knights are valued and understood by God, even when their actions violate religious norms. Clerics loved the Latin word play that pitted militia (chivalry, or hard service) vs. malitia (evildoing). Granted, medievalists have long known this dichotomy existed. But my current work comes at these issues from a different angle. It asks what religion meant to medieval knights themselves. By what mental route, even by what specific language, could knights bridge the chasm? They subscribed to a religion whose founder had spoken of peace, of non-vengeance, and who had once said that those who lived by the sword would die by the sword. Nonetheless these knights lived by the sword and proudly constructed a self-definition based on enthusiastic and skillful use of edged weaponry in the violent pursuit of honor? That the problem of violence and the sacred is not unique to Christianity nor to the Middle Ages I take for granted. The problems seem sadly common in world history running right into our daily newspapers. In one sense the generality of the tensions makes an inquiry that much more significant. In another sense, the specific intensity of the problem in the Middle Ages gives an inquiry particular potential. This is a test case worth investigating. In the very age in which chivalry was born the Medieval Church was taking on its most characteristic forms and elaborating its most characteristic ideas. A close and informed comparison between Medieval European chivalry and Japanese bushido seems long overdue. I can only offer what I hope will be some insights on the European side of such a comparison. Context is isurely mportant if we are not to misunderstand the issues. The European Middle Ages–far from being lost in Monty Python darkness and muck, or bathed in carefree, glowing, pre-Raphaelite colors–represents the birth of Europe, its glories and failures, warts and all. Especially the central period, from (say) the late 11th to the early 14th centuries strikes all who study these centuries closely as an era far from static: these centuries saw dramatic increases in population, urbanization, trade, popular religious enthusiasm, episcopal and papal government, royal administration, systems of lay and ecclesiastical law, the rise of university education, of vernacular literature, Romanesque and Gothic architecture, natural philosophy, romantic love, and even technology. Some dark age!

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Yet change on this scale produces problems. So does the persistence of old ideas into a new social and cultural setting. One case of the latter, I believe, is the troublesome heritage of the warrior ethos and practices surviving from the collapse of the Roman world and the Germanic migrations. Medieval Europe, I have argued (against some spirited opposition) had a problem of violence. A society rapidly developing on so many lines of human activity struggled to come to terms with violence; and the problem was intensified because this violence was considered noble and heroic and could be carried out by private right. This is not, that is, simply an issue of crime in a modem sense, but rather privatized violence infused into the upper ranges of the social hierarchy by the collapse of effective large-scale political authority. Medieval states slowly emerged, let it be said, and took preserving public peace as one of their goals. Sadly, they and their descendants into modem times have taken fighting with their neighbors as another of their goals. In textbook accounts chivalry usually comes into the picture here, without ambiguity, as a force for peace and order. It is usually sketched as an internalization of restraint among the warriors, knocking off the rough edges and making them proto-gentlemen. Violence and war, in this view, would be less likely, or at least kinder and gentler. After investing a decade in reading the literature knights regularly patronized and read, or heard, (thousands of pages of chanson de geste, romance, chivalric biography, vernacular manuals), I have tried to complicate this common picture in a book called Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe. This book argues that chivalry in fact enters as much into the problem of violence as it provides a solution; that chivalry was deeply, essentially complicit. Moreover, I think contemporaries knew this; the recognition is not merely historical hindsight but can be recovered from medieval texts. We need to remember that in these medieval texts chivalry could take any of three distinct, if related, meanings. The first was really good work with edged weapons, thrusting with lance, hacking, chopping and eviscerating with sword. Second, it could mean a distinct body of knights on some field or occasion, or indeed, more broadly, the entire body of knights. Third, it could mean the ideal code by which these men guided their thought and practice. Though we moderns rush past the first meaning in our understandable hurry to focus on more abstract, more appealing qualities, the medievals really did admire good work with lance and sword–men beating other men by this bloody, sweaty, muscular work. What is at issue is less a set of idealized abstractions than what Malory called “dedys full actuall.” Such deeds leave combatants “waggyng, staggerynge, pantyng, blowyng, and bledyng (shaking, staggering, panting, blowing and bleeding).”

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A knight who has seen Lancelot perform in a tournament (late in the cyclic prose Lancelot, an important thirteenth-century romance) can scarcely find words sufficient to praise his prowess: …it takes a lot more to be a worthy man than I thought it did this morning. I’ve learned so much today that I believe there’s only one truly worthy man in the whole world. I saw the one I’m talking about prove himself so well against knights today that I don’t believe any mortal man since chivalry was first established has done such marvelous deeds as he did today. He explains explicitly what these marvels were: I could recount more than a thousand fine blows, for I followed that knight every step to witness the marvelous deeds he did; I saw him kill five knights and five men-at-arms with five blows so swift that he nearly cut horses and knights in two. As for my own experience, I can tell you he split my shield in two, cleaved my saddle and cut my horse in half at the shoulders, all with a single blow… I saw him kill four knights with one thrust of his lance.…if it were up to me, he’d never leave me. I’d keep him with me always, because I couldn’t hold a richer treasure. Such praise is not limited to imaginative literature. Historical accounts laud deeds that even Lancelot would find sufficiently honorable. If the late Medieval Scottish hero Robert Bruce’s most noted feat of prowess was to split the helmeted head of an English lord, Henry de Bohun, at the opening of the battle of Bannockbum (1314), John Barbour (his chronicler/biographer) also shows us Bruce all alone defending a narrow river ford against a large body of English knights who can only come at him singly. “Strang wtrageous curage he had, (his strong courage was astonishing).” Barbour proclaims proudly as the number of bodies in the water mounts; after Bruce has killed six men, the English hesitate, until exhorted by one of their knights who shouts that they must redeem their honor and that. Bruce cannot last. But he does. When telling how Bruce’s own men finally appear and count fourteen slain, Barbour breaks into fulsome praise: “Dear God! Whoever had been there and seen how he stoutly set himself against them all, I know well he would call him the best alive in his day.” Gerald of Wales, one of the most widely-read authors of a century and a half earlier, obviously feels similarly high esteem for the Anglo-Norman knight Meiler fitz Henry fighting against the Irish:

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surrounded by the enemy on every side, [he] drew his sword and charging the band, boldly cut his way through them, chopping here a hand and there an arm, besides hewing through heads and shoulders and thus rejoined his friends on the plain unhurt, though he brought away three Irish spears stuck in his horse, and two in his shield. Scores of other passages could be quoted, but I trust the point is clear. Even considered as a code of honor, chivalry is permeated by valorized violence. Prowess produces honor, for as the noted English anthropologist Julian PittRivers has said tersely, “the ultimate vindication of honour lies in physical violence.” We should note in passing that it worried medieval writers. There is a strong undercurrent of fear and reform working counter to all this praise, and I have tried to analyze such efforts elsewhere, but to follow that line of thought would take us off track. For our present inquiry we have seen that the praise of heroic prowess was essential to chivalric identity. This could have serious consequences in a rapidly developing society that eagerly sought order in so many dimensions of life–governance, law, philosphy, architecture. It also led to tensions in Medieval Christianity. With this in mind, we can come back to our basic questions: how could the religion of Christ be squared with the veritable worship of prowess in chivalric ideology? Are knights so immune trom religion that they do not care, or willfully do not see a contradiction? Or does a more subtle negotiation take place? The most fruitful line of approach, I am convinced, lies in examining the obsession of medieval Christianity with suffering, especially with sheer bodily asceticism. I believe that Esther Cohen, a scholar at the University of Tel Aviv, has aptly characterized this cultural obsession. She writes of the “philopassionism” of the Medieval West in the centuries that interest us, that is the positive embracing of pain and suffering as good, rather than their avoidance or transcendance (more frequently found historically). The extreme languageof this cultural phenomenon appears in St Bernard of Clairvaux’s description of the martyr For he does not feel his own wounds when he contemplates those of Christ. The martyr stands rejoicing and triumphant, even though his body is torn to pieces, and when his side is ripped open by the sword, not only with courage but even with joy he sees the blood which he has consecrated to God gush forth from his body. But where now is the sou71 of the martyr? Truly in a safe place…in the bowels of Christ, where it has enter4ed, indeed, through his open wounds…And this is the fruit of love, not of insensibility.

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Even more tersely, St Catherine of Siena urged in one of her letters, “Delight in Christ crucified, delight in suffering. Be a glutton for abuse–for Christ crucified. Let your heart and soul be grafted into the tree of the most holy cross–with Christ crucified. Make his wounds your home.” This is not the language or the sentiment that one associates with the proud and dominant chivalric layer in Medieval European society. In search of understanding, I want to present some of the best evidence I know for the connection between chivalry and meritorious asceticism, drawn from two midfourteenth century treatises actually written by practicing, strenuous knights, Henry of Lancaster, an Englishman, and Geoffroi de Charny, a Frenchman. Each was involved in the constant, hard campaigning of the first phase (1337–1360) of the Hundred Years War between the French and the English crowns. Although they may never have crossed swords in any engagement, they were often present in the same theatres of war and did meet as envoys for a series of negotiations to secure a truce in 1347. The chivalric standing of each appears in his selection as an original member of his sovereign’s knightly order: Lancaster joining the Order of the Garter, Charny the Order of the Star. The piety of each is dramatically registered by a valued possession: Henry cherished a thorn from Christ’s crown of thorns; Geoffroi owned what we now know as the Shroud of Turin. Each author, then, is the real thing–a prominent and pious chivalric figure whose book presents more than a narrowly personal statement. Henry, first duke of Lancaster wrote the Livre de seyntz medicines (The Book of Holy Remedies) in 1354. The book was meant to be read by his friends, and was later owned by other prominent, strenuous knights, underscoring our sense of the work as a statement highly valued in chivalric circles. This is, I believe, an authentic view from a knight considered a model by other knights. Lancaster’s book pictures his ears, eyes, nose, mouth, hands, feet and heart as each afflicted by all the seven deadly sins, which allows for enough combinations and permutations to delight any scholastic. The notes Oxford scholar of Old French M. Dominica Legge suggested that the work may have been produced as a form of penance. I fear some readers who struggle through its turgid prose and allegory gone to seed–244 pages in Anglo-Norman French–may think it penance to read. Lancaster’s biographer, Kenneth Fowler, in a classic understatement declares the book “not remarkable as a work of literature.” Even its editor, E.J. Amould, who tries to like it, declares the work “laborious”, “long-winded and repetitive.” But it is vastly informative. Any reader who persists would know that it was written by a knight, even if we lacked Henry’s announcement of authorship (his name written backwards in a final gesture of abject humility) at the conclusion of the work. The text crackles with feudal or chivalric terminology of wounds, war, courts, castles, siege, ransom, treason, safe-conduct, and the like.

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Only a few pages into the text Lancaster addresses our issues, in a passage worthy of full quotation: I pray you, Lord for the love in which you took on human form, pardon my sins and watch over me, dearest Lord, that henceforth I be able to resemble you in some ways, if wretched food for worms such as I can resemble so noble a king as the king of heaven, earth, sea, and all that is therein. And if, dearest Lord, I have in this life any persecution for you touching body, possessions, or companions, or of any other sort, I pray, dearest Lord, that I may endure willingly for love of you, and since you, Lord, so willingly suffered such pains for me on earth, I pray, Lord, that I may resemble you insofar as I can find in my hard heart to suffer willingly for you such afflictions, labors, pains, as you choose and not merely to win a prize [guerdon] nor to offset my sins, but purely for love of you, as you, Lord, have done for love of me. Here we encounter a knight declaring his willingness to suffer in imitatio Christi (following Christ’s example). He wants, ideally, to suffer out of pure, mimetic love, but the specific denial that his goal is merely to offset sins through suffering is glaring, and speaks to common perceptions. This text has never been digitized and a word count is impossible; but hardly necessary. Any reader will quickly learn that the leitmotif of this text is suffering. At the top of the scale God’s suffering through Christ redeems humanity. The descriptions of Christ’s torments during his passion, to a modern eye, pass the bounds of propriety and point like a signpost towards late Medieval crucifixes from which we have all perhaps averted our gaze, crosses bearing a twisted, abused, bleeding dead body of Christ. I’ll spare you any quotations from Lancaster. The sufferings of Christ’s mother, the Blessed Virgin, are imaginatively reproduced and fill whole pages; her tears, shed at each indignity visited upon her son, like warm white wine, cleanse the sinner’s wounds and prepare them for the healing ointment of Christ’s sacrificial blood. The sufferings of saints, and especially the martyrs, get at least honorable if rather generic mention. But at the bottom of this hierarchy even human suffering, when endured in good causes and motivated by the right intent, yields some measure of satisfaction for the unmanageable debt owed for sin. Sir Henry wants to suffer for the lord he sometimes calls “Sire Dieux (Sir God).” Wishing to avoid pride, he says he would henceforth serve not worldly inconsequentialities or worse, but God “en perils et en peyne.” For his great sins, he declares “I would put myself in pain, so that I might find some way to please you, sweetest Lord.” In fact, his suffering must in some infinitesimal measure not only resemble but repay Christ’s own suffering, as he recognizes:

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I pray you, Lord…that I might so suffer all pains and sorrows patiently for love of You, sweet Lord, to repay you some part of what I owe for the most horrendous griefs, pains and vilanies that you suffered, Lord, so graciously for wretched me Or, again, he prays, That I can understand that through the slight pain I endure on earth I am quit of the great pains of hell. This is a good deal (Ceo serroit une bon marchandise) as for a little suffering in this world, which is nothing to endure, one can escape the pains of hell, which are so terrible and joyless: and a man certainly cannot earn more by well enduring your gift of suffering than to have by this a reduction of the pains of purgatory. These sentiments come from the pen of a man who refers regularly to “my wretched body (cheitif corps), and who says that his body deserves literally to be boiled, fried, and roasted in hell (en enfern boiller, roster et frire). The ascetic, religious sentiment could not be clearer, but is there any chivalric connection here? Is it likely that any knight, a joyful practitioner of prowess–as proudly physical a creed as I can imagine–would sincerely denigrate the body and long for its sufferings? Do such sentiments not emanate from clerics rather than knights and is not Henry of Lancaster merely aping such language as his confessor might use? Even that would be evidence of interest, of course, but I want to suggest that much more is at work. In the first place the imaginative context that he has constructed for his work must be kept in mind. The sites of sin for which cures are needed he describes as wounds (not fevers to be cured or boils to be lanced). And wounds come from weapons. Henry sometimes also speaks of fractures (viles brisures), which I am sure he did not imagine resulting from an unfortunate tumble down a castte staircase. The context of combat in this treatise directs our reading. Moreover, Duke Henry sometimes reveals his train of thought marvelously, if indirectly. In discussing how the tears shed by the Blessed Virgin will wash his own wounds, he comes to nasal wounds, a topic which puts him in mind of the blows that struck Christ’s nose during his scourging. He comments, in all piety, that Christ’s nose must have looked like that of an habitual toumeyer, and that his mouth must have been discolored and beaten out of shape. Warming to his topic, he says that indeed Christ did fight in a tournament–and won it by conquering the Devil, securing life for humanity. In Lancaster’s imagination, Christ and his knights share the suffering caused bu such blows. It seems to me not too much to claim, then, that Henry of Lancaster conceives of the strenuous knightly life itself as a form of penance acceptable, even

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pleasing, in God’s eyes as satisfaction for sin. In its own way, militia (chivalry) is a form of the imitatio Christi (following Christ’s example). We should note, above all, that Henry of Lancaster is not talking about crusade. Although he had personally gone on more than one crusading venture, and although he does mention pilgrimage with some regularity, never in his treatise does he specify fighting the unbelievers; his references to pilgrimage seem to indicate travel to sacred places, not the armed pilgrimage that was crusade. He thinks that the hard life and the hard blows that knights endure repay some of their vast debt to God, even, we must assume, if that means the campaigning of what we would call the Hundred Years War, rather than any crusade in the Mediterranean or in company with the knights of theTeutonic order. It is knighthood in general that represents a life of expiatory suffering, not crusade solely. This point of view emerges even more clearly in the second treatise I want to put in evidence, that written by Henry’s contemporary, Geoffroi de Charny, the leading French knight of the age and author of a Livre de chevalerie (Book of Chivalry), available in paperback in an excellent modem edition! Charny was in the fullest sense a strenuous knight who apparently wrote this treatise for what was intended to be a grand, new, royal chivalric society, the Company or Order of the Star of King John of France (1350–64). Only the utter failure of this order under the hammer blows of defeat suffered by French knighthood in this phase of the Hundred Year’s War, I believe, condemned Charny’s treatise to obscurity in its own time. However, in company with Lancaster’s book, it has much to tell us. If Henry of Lancaster wrote a religious treatise for which chivalry functions as a subtext, Geoffroi de Charny wrote a chivalric treatise with intensely religious overtones. Thus in analyzing knightly religion in Charny we can reverse the process by which we approached Henry’s book. There we looked for religiously significant suffering and then found a link with knighthood. Now, with the Book of Chivalry we must first examine Charny’s emphasis on suffering through knighthood, and then turn to find the linkage with religious expiation. In company with Lancaster, Charny undoubtedly thinks physical suffering is good, the mere body is nothing. In fact, he refers regularly to the wretched body (cheitiz corps), using the very phrase beloved by Lancaster. They could sing harmonious duets on the dangers of sloth, although for formally distinct goals. Charny’s part would include truly vigorous denunciations of self-indulgent concern over choice dishes, fine wines, the best sauces; he can denounce soft beds, white linens, and sleeping late, in language that would do credit to a crusty monastic reformer. Lancaster, we should note, would add his voice especially against the vice of gluttony; he was a noted gourmet, though he denounces this delight as a sin, and was suffering from gout when he wrote his treatise.

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“Too great a desire to cosset the body is against all good,” is Charny’s summary statement covering all forms of bodily indulgence. Instead, the obvious goal in life is vigorous military effort, disciplining the body, taking the endless risks and suffering that campaigning entails without fear or complaint. Charny even advocates embracing the dangers and pains with joy at the opportunity for doing deeds that will secure a man the immortality of human memory. It will also, he says, secure a man the sighs and admiration of soft ladies. Yet the emphasis is on masculine physical effort, struggle and heroic suffering. The very process of getting to the scene of serious military action is worthy; as long as one travels to fight, he is honored by Charny: For indeed no one can travel so far without being many times in physical danger. We should for this reason honor such men-at-arms who at great expense, hardship and grave peril undertake to travel. [90-l] Although he warns that “The practice of arms is hard, stressful and perilous to endure,” he insists that for good men “strength of purpose and cheerfulness of heart make it possible to bear all of these things gladly and confidently, and all this painful effort seems nothing to them.” To some extent bodily suffering and effort represent goods in themselves; but they must be seen as the necessary accompaniments of what I have argued is to Charny the greatest masculine quality, prowess. Skillful, courageous, hands-on violence, the bloody and sweaty work of fighting superbly at close quarters with edged weapons is the glorious means of securing honor, which Charny (in company with all professional fighting men in all ages) knows is well worth purchasing at the price of mere pain or even death. Prowess and honor as a linked pair represent the highest human achievement. Suffering is good because it is bonded to prowess which secures honor. At the very opening of his book he constructs an ascending scale of the several modes of fighting. All are worthy since they demonstrate prowess and yield honor, but some are more worthy than others. Individual encounters in jousting are good, tourney (involving groups of combatants) is better, war is clearly best Tournament, for example, is better than individual jousting, not only because it involves more equipment and expenditure but because it also entails “physical hardship (travail de corps), crushing and wounding and sometimes danger of death.” Obviously, real warfare involves even more effort and greater danger of death. As Charny says concisely, “By good battles good bodies are proved (par les bonnes journees sont esprouvez les bons corps).” These good men who prove their worth with their bodies in combat bear a heavy burden as models for the rest, a burden carried only with “great effort

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and endurance, in fearful danger and with great diligence.” Their great deeds of prowess, have been accomplished only through suffering great hardship, making strenuous efforts, and enduring fearful physical perils and the loss of friends whose deaths they have witnessed in many great battles in which they have taken part; these experiences have often filled their hearts with great distress and strong emotion. We should recall here Henry of Lancaster’s identical comment on “suffering of body, of goods, of friends.” Charny laments that he can hardly tell fully of the lives of such good men, “hard as they have been and still are.” But men of worth “do not care what suffering they have to endure.” Charny lives so fully within this code that he cannot understand men who fail to realize the need for prowess, suffering, and honor. How vexing and shameful it must be, he muses, to reach old age without doing great deeds. Near the end of his treatise he provides a capsule statement one more time, in the hopes of reaching his audience with a message that seems to him not only vitally important, but self-evident: And if you want to continue to achieve great deeds, exert yourself, take up arms, fight as you should, go everywhere across both land and sea and through many different countries, without fearing any peril and without sparing your wretched body, which you should hold to be of little account, caring only for your soul and for living an honourable life.” Here, as elsewhere, he pairs the soul with honor, raising our question of the relationship between between basic religious belief and the putatively secular triad of prowess, honor, and military suffering. What is the connection in Charny’s view? Of course Charny is convinced, in the first place, that God is the source of a knight’s prowess. As every good and perfect gift, it comes from above. Possessing the qualities of a great man-at-arms has nothing to do with mere fickle fortune. For, if you have the reputation of a good man at arms, through which you are exalted and honored, and you have deserved this by your great exertions, by the perils you have faced and by your courage, and Our Lord has in his mercy allowed you to perform the deeds from which you have gained

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such a reputation, such benefits are not benefits of fortune but…by right should last.” The pious response, as Charny insists tirelessly, must be to thank God heartily for the great gift and to use it well. But are the hard life and valorous suffering of a knight religiously meritorious? Do they enter into the calculations that figure so prominently in the medieval economy of salvation–sin balanced by atonement – by the fourteenth century? With a vengeance, Charny asserts that the knightly life counts. He first approaches this topic when opening a discussion of the various orders (divinely intended ranks or groupings) in society. The several specifically religious orders, he grants, pray for themselves and others and disdain the world and the flesh appropriately. Yet “they are spared the physical danger and the strenuous effort of going out onto the field of battle to take up arms, and are also spared the threat of death.” After wandering off topic to describe the knighting ceremony he returns to this theme and declares knighthood to be the most rigorous order of all, especially for those who keep it well. Though tough regulations constrain eating and sleeping and require vigils of the religious, this is all nothing in comparison with the suffering to be endured in the order of knighthood. For whoever might want to consider the hardships, pains, discomforts, fears, perils, broken bones, and wounds which the good knights who uphold the order of knighthood as they should endure and have to suffer frequently, there is no religious order in which as much is suffered as has to be endured by these good knights who go in search of deeds of arms in the right way. Like the monks, they suffer severe restrictions on eating and sleeping, but “when they would be secure from danger they may be defeated or killed or captured and wounded and struggling to recover,” and to this daunting list must be added the perils of travel, shipwreck and robbers. “And where are the orders [of monks] which could suffer as much?” Charny asks rhetorically and in triumph. “Indeed,” he says, capping his argument, “in this order of knighthood one can well save the soul and bring honour to the body.” Charny completes his case by denouncing “those who perform deeds of arms more for glory in the world than for the salvation of the soul,” and praises “those who perform deeds of arms more to gain God’s grace and for the salvation of the soul than for glory in this world.” “Their noble souls,” he is convinced, “will be set in paradise to all eternity, and their persons will be forever honored.” The parallelism between salvation and honor achieved by prowess is complete. By

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working the body, by hazarding the body in deeds of prowess, the merely physical is transcended, in one direction to achieve glorious and imperishable honor, in another direction to help conduct the soul through purgatory to join its glorified body in paradise. Henry of Lancaster termed this the safe-conduct which leads to joy “sans fyn (without end).” Like Lancaster, Charny is thinking about the knightly life in general, not about crusading. Again, like Lancaster, who went as a crusader against Moors in Spain and in North Africa, and (during a lull in the European war) against Slavs in Prussia, Charny went on crusade to Anatolia in 1345 (again, during a slow time in the Hundred Years War), and termed such fighting “righteous, holy, certain and sure.” But in no way does either knightly writer privilege crusade. Charny is, in fact, careful to assure his readers that they can fight in all proper wars without danger to their souls. This insistence in both of our fourteenth-century knights is significant. Crusade ideology as developed by clerics traditionally distinguished between the sinful fighting of knights at home and their redemptive and meritorious battles with the enemies of the faith. Yet all their arduous travel, all their privations, all the dangers and suffering in fights with worthy opponents in licit causes seemed to Lancaster and Charny to prove their love for God, and to repay some portion of their debt for sin which had necessitated Christ’s sacrificial love. This line of thought, which seems so logical and necessary to Charny and  Lancaster, will probably strike any modem, investigator who harbors ­liberal religious views as unfortunate, to say the least Cutting, killing, and destroying–whatever the personal suffering or risks involved–will not seem like religiously meritorious practices to most of us. In fact, it did not seem so to some medieval writers. But their views represent a minority opinion. Most medieval scholars and theologians held views on warfare and the will of God that modem people find difficult. Hewing to strictly historical investigation, we should think what remarkable benefits this line of thought guaranteed the knightly order in medieval society. William James writes in The Varieties of Religious Experience that “the impulse to sacrifice” may be “the main religious phenomenon” and he describes “the undiluted ascetic spirit” as “the passion of self-contempt wreaking itself on the poor flesh.” Medieval asceticism usually involved giving up something truly important: clerics gave up sex; women (as Caroline Bynum has taught us) sometimes gave up food. But the knights can have it both ways with regard to suffering and violence. What chivalric ideology did with sacrifice and the poor flesh is surely a remarkable tour de force. The knights acquire turf on both sides of a great divide; they work both sides of a basic contradiction; and this yields power. Are they not both victors and victims, self-exalters and self-

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abasers? They can praise hands-on prowess as the glorious practice of their beautiful bodies, which, of course, ensures their status as it wins them foaming praise and glittering loot They can groan over their sufferings in hard campaigns and battles in which their bodies may be bruised, cut, and broken. The very exercise of their professional labor thus helps to secure the pardon for its inseparable wrongs. God himself gives them the great physical strength and capacity by which their dominance in the world is secured. Yet he is also pleased when they suffer meritoriously, in a good cause, as did his son. Thus bodily superiority proved sword in hand and celebrated in both epic and romantic literature with pride and style, stands alongside the sacrifice and suffering of hazarding the body, risking all, being on the receiving end of all that edged weaponry. The chivalrous are laying a claim to participate in the dominant religious paradigm, based on suffering and bodily atonement, which is essentially clerical and specifically monastic in origin. At the same time they are enthusiastic practitioners of a chivalric paradigm based on prowess, honor and bodily exaltation (which seems to be the eternal warrior code and specifically that originating for them in the Germanic West). Yet though the lines of thought seem contradictory, they in fact, merge, for chivalry in its religious dimension becomes knightly practice in good causes, suffering in atonement for sin and thanking God for the strength to do it all. And doing all that chivalry entails seems truly glorious to the knights, whatever the qualifications necessitated by religious sentiment. Surely Henry of Lancaster did not truly believe he was a worm. Many a religious order stood ready to accept a noble ex-worm. Some knights did, indeed, take that step and became monks, classically when age and infirmity had largely closed a vigorous chivalric career. Most knights, however, clearly remained in their status. I mean no disrespect to Henry of Lancaster, a man whose piety must have been real and whose emotions were surely powerfully focussed in a religious vein. But I think he wants to have it both ways. He wants to be a powerful lord who can (as he confesses) stretch out his beautiful legs in the stirrups of his great horse on the tourney field or the battlefield; he also wants to relate the sufferings he endures as a knight to the passion of Christ. His piety need not be thought foreign to chivalry, but it surely stands near the end point of any scale measuring its incidence among knights. Charny, I believe, scores more typically on that scale. He is so convinced of the rectitude of his chivalric life, so happy God has given it to him, so sure his own sufferings are meritorious that he does not even sense the gap he is bridging. Context, again, is important. The ideas so forcefully advanced by Lancaster and Charny emerged from a world of thought that had for several centuries stressed meritorious suffering. Late Medieval piety focussed on the Passion of

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Christ, on his wounds and suffering. Sinners were encouraged to feel contrition, to confess regularly to their priest, and to do private acts of penance assigned by him. Theologians discussed the nature of sin and satisfaction through meritorious corporal suffering: they emphasize that the process could begin in this world and continued in the next. It would behoove a sinner to get started on making satisfaction. At the same time clerics were more clearly defining purgatory as a place of cleansing suffering before a sinner could reach heaven. Theologians also thought about the laity and how their work might fit into a religious society. In other words they discussed the how divisions of lay society, and the nature of the characteristic work in each might fulfill God’s will. Since these socio-professional divisions are often based on the type of work done, the discussions often analyze various forms of labor. Chivalric deeds of arms, feats of prowess are, of course, all forms of work–the tools simply seem unusual to us, and the work likely distasteful. Charny, for example, asserts that “in all good, necessary, and traditional professions anyone can lose or save his soul as he wills.” I wish I had the time and the means of measuring just how often Lancaster and Charny employ some form of the noun “work”, or the verb “to work”. As these authors tell us, knights work the body physically; they perform perilous work, and the like. You may think that I have ignored the most obvious factor in the environment of ideas–crusade. The clerics undeniably came to an accomodation with knighthood, through the preaching of crusade. Scholars have long argued that the impact of a growing crusade ideology can scarcely be overestimated. The link with meritorious suffering is evident Think, for example of the knight pictured in a sermon story as sailing off on crusade. As the shoreline recedes, he deliberately watches his family standing on the beach fade from sight, thinking the selfimposed torture will increase his spiritual merit. Or think of the knight in another sermon story who has been struck in the head by a Saracen crossbow bolt; he dismisses the pleas of his friends that they know a physician who can remove the bolt; he wants it left in place, arguing that it will stand him in good stead on the Day of Judgment. Crusading brought meritorious suffering. The idea that God loved his warriors for their suffering and death in fighting unbelievers likely gives us chills today. It was, of course, powerful in European history in its time. Yet we must be careful about making crusade the sum total of a formal ideology of knighthood. Most knights in Medieval Europe were not crusaders. Even our model knights, Lancaster and Charny, who were indeed crusaders, did not base their idea of meritorious suffering on crusade. Ther ideas, as we have seen, argue an asceticism based on the knightly life in general, not on crusade solely. In coming to a close, I want to emphasize an important factor in the interaction of ideas. If I were a chemist I might term it the catalyst making the

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reaction work. What I have in mind is the formative attitude of the knights to religious truth and authority. Scholars have emphasized anticlericalism and heresy for generations; more recently some have advanced counter-arguments insisting on loyal and enthusiastic orthodoxy at the parish (that is, the local) level on the very eve of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. I want to suggest another emphasis. The knights were indeed loyal (and prudent) participants in the sacramental system of the medieval church. These warriors whose literature emphasized their hands-on violence, knew how to respect the work done by the priests’ hands. They followed most of the standard forms prescribed for lay people and they staunchly opposed heresy. As both Lancaster and Charny show us, they could be immensely and verbosely pious. But certain modes of thought and ways of life were crucial to the knights, and on such issues they required accomodation – or at least tacit non-interference – from the Medieval church. In fact, on such issues I am convinced that they knew God was on their side, and that he would understand. He was, of course, the Lord of battles, whose vengeance was a wonder to behold and a thrill to hear described. The knights imagined that their relationship with Dominus Deus (the Lord God) was ideally like that which should obtain with dominus rex (the lord king). Both sovereigns had, sadly, created troublesome if necessary ranks of official mediators (often of no great social status) who stood between the good knights and their good Lord–that is, the clergy and all of those fussy royal bureaucrats, both sets armed with endless parchment books or rolls scribbled with Latin, and outlining a restrictive world of do’s and don’ts. The ways of the Lord are truly inscrutable. If the world were really right, the knights would simply circumvent all these bureaucrats and relate to the Lord God or to the lord king directly and personally on the basis of their good and hard service. Since in actual life neither the Lord God nor the Lord King had continued this imagined and idealized primal arrangement, prudence required the knights to cooperate with the intermediaries as much as possible. But wherever bureaucratic or ecclesiastical restraints cut into chivalric flesh, the knights refused to comply, indeed to believe that they should comply, and this refusal was backed by that fundamental, proud sense of a personal understanding with the God of hosts. In a mass of evidence that could be brought in proof, the fate of tournament provides the classic case in point. No scholar doubts that this was the quintessential knightly sport, essential to chivalric self-definition. Clerical opposition is likewise a well-established historical fact, as my opening story from the Book of Bees illustrated. Sermon exempla and miracles regularly claim that tournaments are the spawning ground for every one of the seven deadly sins. Sometimes in a typically clerical fashion the writer plays with words to assert

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that toumeyers should better be called tormentors. These arguments roll on across the medieval centuries and even beyond. I have found them still laid out for preachers as late as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Of course clerics had clearly lost the fight by the time of our two pious knights, Lancaster and Charny, both of whom assume tournament to be a licit part of the chivalric life. Lancaster was an avid toumeyer and in the midst of all his pious contrition on all other topics he manages to say that knightly pleasures such as tournament and dancing are not evil in themselves. Two of Charny’s rungs on the ladder of chivalric perfection, as we saw, involve individual jousting or the more virtuous meleé. More than a century earlier, the dying William Marshal, the model knight of the late twelfth century, was reminded by Sir Henry Fitzgerald, one of his household knights, that the Church required him to give back what he had taken on the tournament field. Here is his response: Henri, listen to me for a while. The clerks are too hard on us. They shave us too closely. For I have captured five hundred knights whose arms, horses, and entire equipment I have appropriated. If for this reason the kingdom of God is closed to me, I can co nothing about it, for I cannot return them. I can do no more for God than to give myself to him, repenting all my sins, all the evil I have done. Unless [the clergy] desire my damnation, they must ask no more. But their teaching is false–or no one could be saved. To this speech John d’Erlée, the Marshal’s friend, responded, “Milord, this is the very truth.” This degree of lay independence is worth emphasizing because it does such major social or cultural work. Without it how would the spokesmen for chivalry (and this must be a mixed set of clerics and knights) have managed to square the circle? How could they manipulate the maleable language of religious imagery, or imagine that the hard work of campaigning, the discipline and the risks of hands-on cutting and thrusting can be a form of imitatio Christi, even when both sides in a fight are Christian? Marshal’s deathbed pronouncement speaks volumes about a lay independence that, moreover, has a long future with some rattling implications. Perhaps the final chapter of the book I have in mind will have to be entitled “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Chivalry.” But that is another paper.

chapter 19

John Ruskin, the Medieval Ordines, and Meritorious Suffering Ardent admiration for all things medieval among the eminent Victorians constitutes a well-known phenomenon of our cultural past. Evidence of this deep appreciation, often coupled with a desire for emulation, appears prominently in nineteenth-century art and architecture, in imaginative literature, and in the remarkably voluminous corpus of scholarship on medieval subjects that the Victorians produced. To a sometimes surprising degree, modern historians still live within the orbs of light and shade created by this fascination of the nineteenth century for the Middle Ages and perhaps for the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in particular. Sometimes the legacy is happily acknowledged by modern scholars as when, to take only one example, a basic text of a medieval chronicle edited by William Stubbs or one of his eminent colleagues associated with the famous “Rolls Series” is cited with confidence as well as gratitude. At other times modern scholars hurry determinedly away from the nineteenth-century legacy, usually in complete disagreement with its views, but perhaps sometimes merely in fear that the dread epithet “Victorian” might stain their own interpretations and diminish their standing in the academy. Over the decades, investigating medieval law and justice (often in collaboration with Paul Hyams at the Medieval Congresses at Western Michigan University) and then studying chivalry through various enterprises of books, articles and conferences, has made me keenly aware of the great debt owed to our Victorian predecessors. It has also shown me the periodic necessity to chisel through Victorian encrustations in order to reach genuinely medieval attitudes and institutions. The study of chivalry as the defining code of one of the medieval ordines (those socio-professional groups originating in the divine plan for human society) provides an important case in point. Were that thick enclosing shell of Victorian interpretation left intact, the medieval warrior code of chivalry would continue to resemble a public school ethos that the elite might graciously extend downwards throughout the social pyramid to solve the seemingly eternal problems caused by overflowing male vigor. Yet my goal in this small essay moves in a quite different direction: I wish to acknowledge and build upon a remarkable Victorian insight that can usefully inform not only understanding of chivalry, but of the medieval social orders * Previously published in Reading Medieval Studies, 40 (2015), 176–192. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004302655_024

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in  general. This insight appears in a pivotal work of that complex Victorian giant John Ruskin. We all recognize Ruskin as an accomplished artist, as the father of modern study of art history, and as a truly trenchant social critic. Likewise we acknowledge his fascination and infatuation with the Middle Ages. My modest claim here is that in one particular dimension, not always recognized, Ruskin’s analysis can prove fruitful for modern medievalists; for in discussing characteristics of true professions in his own era Ruskin points us to formative characteristics of the medieval ordines in the process clarifying the role and relationship of the first two ordines, those of the clerics and knights, as well as their formal distance from the mere merchants, unsteadily situated within the third ordo, that of workers. Perhaps it is no surprise that he produced insightful views about medieval society. His neo-medieval sensibilities in general readily appear, as, for example in his support of the pre-Rephaelite painters. Ruskin’s own political and social constitution also seems relevant; since his own lifetime observers have commented on his truly remarkable combination of radicalism and conservatism, his compound of the Tory and the socialist. Though he suggests that mercantile and industrial enterprise should in ideal form be incorporated into a framework of public good, his fundamental critique remains more robust than any hopes expressed. Unstoppable as his commitment to social justice remained, however, he firmly believed in a society ordered as a hierarchy of cooperative status groups: each must be characterized by a merited sense of self-worth embodied in doing good and disciplined work, and each must show proper deference within the established social order. Only thus could the great goal of common good be achieved. His ideal Victorian society was not far from the medieval ideal society of ordines. Achieving such goals in mid-nineteenth century England would, however, require significant changes in conceptions of wealth, and in relations between laborers and employers; it would mean serious consideration of social affection rather than any primary stress on constant, self-interested competition at the expense of others – neighbors, employees, or servants. Certainly his ideal would shun any views that reduced humans to merely greedy animals. His mixture of standards, could they have been enacted, puts one in mind of the lapidary phrase W.L. Warren used to characterize Henry ii, “a conservative who made a revolution.”1 By stating even such a mixed set of views in the mid-Victorian world of commercial and industrial capitalism, Ruskin certainly provoked denunciations for his radicalism. When in 1860 he published a series of articles in Cornhill Magazine, under the title “Unto this Last,”2 furious outcries of protest showed 1 W.L. Warren, Henry ii (Berkeley, 1973), p. 380. 2 The Cornhill Magazine i–ii (June–December, 1860), pp. 155–164.

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that he had drawn blood. Undaunted, in 1862 he published the essays as a small separate book, with the same title.3 Despite its obscurity, the title recalls the parable of the laborers in the vineyard in the New Testament and underscores Ruskin’s lifelong concern for social justice. At his funeral in 1900 a pall bearing that same title as a motto would be prominently draped across his coffin.4 The broad thrust of his attack on contemporary theories of “political economy” and on the social and cultural consequences of commercial and industrial capitalism slowly reached and influenced many readers, among them Tolstoy, the leaders of the early British Labour Party, and the young Gandhi, who translated Ruskin’s book into the Gujarati language. Passages of particular interest to medievalists appear near the end of the first of his four essays. Ruskin asks the reason for “the general lowness of estimate in which the profession of commerce is held, as compared with that of arms.” “Philosophically,” he muses, it does not, at first sight, appear reasonable (many writers have endeavoured to prove it unreasonable) that a peaceable and rational person, whose trade is buying and selling, should be held in less honour than an unpeaceable and often irrational person, whose trade is slaying. Nevertheless, the consent of mankind has always, in spite of the philosophers, given precedence to the soldier.5 Giving force to his own inquiry, he adds, unsparingly, “And this is right.”6 Moreover, his formal puzzlement as to the differential status accorded men of arms and men of commerce and industry was no merely rhetorical question, for he supplied reasons for arriving at his own answer. Straightforwardly he states that the worthiness of soldiers appears in their being willing and capable of self-sacrifice; merchants do not exhibit this basic trait. He strengthens his case by arguing further that “the soldier’s trade, verily and essentially, is not slaying, but being slain.”7 Despite all faults of recklessness, 3 Unto this Last. Four essays on the first principles of political economy (London, 1862). Ruskin announced that despite the essays having been “reproached in a violent manner” he was presenting them again as “the truest, rightest-worded, and most serviceable things that I have ever written.” (Preface, p. vi). 4 The line quoted in the title appears in Matthew xx, 14. My thanks to Alan Unsworth for discovering that this pall is preserved in the Ruskin Gallery of the Ruskin Museum at Coniston, Cumbria, uk. 5 Unto this Last, p. 25. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid.

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put him in a fortress breach, with all the pleasures of the world behind him, and only death and his duty in front of him, he will keep his face to the front; and he knows that this choice may be put to him at any moment, and has beforehand taken his part – virtually takes such part continually – does, in reality, die daily.8 Ruskin knows he is presenting an ideal type of military figure. The brash version of the man of arms he terms a “bravo” who, he observes, indeed follows a trade of slaying and thus is rightly held in no more respect than the merchant. But self-sacrificing service forms the being of the ideal military figure who “holds his life at the service of the State.”9 In fact, all true professions, Ruskin declares famously and more generally, have a “due occasion of death,” a point of resolute and willing self sacrifice in the interests of standards and of the common good that will require “voluntary loss.” In theory, five great professions are at issue: those of Soldier, Pastor, Physician, Lawyer and Merchant. Each of the first four would suffer death rather than abandon ideal standards associated with their profession: defense, true instruction, healing, or ensuring justice in the nation. But of the merchant he pointedly asks, “what is his ‘due occasion’ of death?”10 This question is indeed rhetorical: he leaves it hanging like a noose dangling from a gallows at the end of his paragraph with its list of ideal professions.

From Ruskin’s Analysis into the Middle Ages

This emphasis on true professions and especially on the military and clerical orders in contrast to the merchants highlights Ruskin’s essentially medieval views on so basic a topic. By stressing self-sacrifice and suffering – even, finally, the willingness to die11 – Ruskin reproduced a key element in the valorization of the two elite medieval ordines, and reproduced as well the formal medieval distrust of the merchants who could claim nothing of the sort and who thus stood beyond glowing valorization in formulations of the divine plan. 8 9 10 11

Ibid., p. 26. Ibid., p. 25. Ibid., p. 32. Examples are provided in Richard W. Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1999), 134–135. It should be noted, however, that the willingness for death comes from a personal sense of completion rather than any concern for the common good. Here the medieval and the Victorian views collide.

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Meritorious suffering, in short, constitutes a key insight informing Ruskin’s analysis. It is a sharply-etched Victorian insight worth pursuing in our effort to understand the society of the Middle Ages. Formative medieval thought focused relentlessly on self-sacrifice and suffering. Suffering was sent from God and, if willingly endured by sinful humans, became redemptive.12 Such suffering was expected and appreciated by the divine Father who could only reconcile with sinful humankind because of the supreme suffering and willing sacrifice of his only Son. All knew that ceaseless human sin required constant human suffering and self-sacrifice as atoning repayment. It would necessarily be corporal suffering, for the physicality that pervaded medieval assumptions could not be gainsaid; in this world holiness inhered in saints’ bones and possessions, the granting of a fief was represented by a lord handing over some material object such as a clod of dirt to his vassal; and even in the afterlife the soul was given a certain corporality so that the sinner might suffer intense if redeeming physical torments in Purgatory for years or purely punishing torments in Hell for eternity.13 Since sin inflicted a societal as well as a personal stain, certain activities, however necessary they might seem to be, would spoil the purity that was desired or even demanded by a divine power whose awesome vengeance was regularly acknowledged and indeed celebrated (if with somewhat quavering heart and voice). Purity in religion and thus stability in society was threatened by pollutants; neutralizing them constituted major social work, a process Ruskin would have understood and appreciated. We can identify the major pollutants even without reference to recondite theory. Three human activities come readily to mind: having sex, shedding human blood, and handling money. If each activity seems necessary, or at least inevitable, each could only be viewed with deep fear and suspicion. Of course these pollutants were inseparably linked with the classic ordines, for the clerics obsessed over sexual purity in themselves and others, the knights shed blood within a dark cloud of violence, rapine and theft, and the merchants especially handled the money, such filthy lucre multiplying their sin as their profits multiplied through usury. The required antidote to each pollutant was obviously found in strong doses of ascetic practice, willingly performed, at least by the members of the elite orders. Each ordo must ideally practice a specific compensatory and highly 12 13

See the fascinating discussion in Esther Cohen. “Towards a History of European Physical Sensibility: Pain in the Later Middle Ages,” Science in Context 8 (1995), 47–74. Caroline Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality; an Essay on Religion in Late Mmedieval Europe (New York, 2011).

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corporal form of asceticism, for physical suffering willingly endured in the world purged the pollutant. The process would continue to completion in the next world, but as an encouragement, suffering endured in this world was regularly noted to be meritorious without reaching the horrific levels to be anticipated in the afterworld. It would be prudent to pay some portion of the dreadful tab now, while in the world.14 As we will see – again with a nod of appreciation from Ruskin, centuries later – the first order, the clerics and monks, and the second order of knighthood could carry out a practice considered fully appropriate to their vocations. What of the merchants? Although they would be the object of as much attention as their social betters, they were only suspect members within the third ordo, that of the workers. Clerical intellectuals likely much preferred to think of this third order as constituted by the massive corpus of simple and stalwart farmers, whose asceticism would be obvious to anyone observing them plowing deep soil as sleet fell. If their social function could not be doubted by anyone seated at q bountiful table, their asceticism likely seemed simply necessary, without serving as remedy for any fundamental pollutant. That demanding and socially crucial work was reserved for others. Worries about priests and warriors surely abounded, even in elite circles; but these fears seem to pale in comparison with the decided unhappiness over the merchants. As in the analysis of Ruskin, merchants lacked any meritorious asceticism to counteract the polluting exercise of their profession. Thus the link between pollutant and meritorious asceticism differs markedly from one group to another. The case of the clerics is clearest: a physical problem involving bodies is met with an ascetic solution. Clerics dealt with polluting sexuality that so disturbed them by stressing celibacy as the detoxifying discipline of the body. It was difficult to achieve but was vigorously stressed in the wake of the ambitious late eleventh-century church reform. Formally required for clerics, it could be suggested for lay folk, though with little expectation of success.15 The obsessive insistence on sexual purity as a form of discipline and meritorious sacrifice, evident from so many twelfth-century sources, can perhaps nowhere better be appreciated than in The Jewel of the Church (Gemma Ecclesiastica) by that most 14

15

Sermon exempla often make the point: see bl Royal 7di, f.138; bl Additional 159, f 6b; bl Royal 12E I f 159. Duke Henry of Lancaster in “Le livre de seyntz medecines” suggested that this represents “a bargain (une bon marchandise).” For this view and other instances of such sentiments see Richard W. Kaeuper, Holy Warriors: the Religious Ideology of Chivalry (Philadelphia, 2009), 40, 236. André Vauchez discusses cases of voluntary lay chastity in thirteenth century in The Laity in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, Indiana, 1993), 185–204.

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prolific and popular writer of the age, Gerald of Wales.16 His book, as he tells us with characteristic modesty, was much appreciated by no less an ecclesiastical authority than pope Innocent iii. Gerald sounds the theme of celibacy tirelessly and, significantly discusses the struggle in military and highly ascetic language. “Resist the desires of the flesh manfully. Dry up the springs of lust through fervor of the spirit. The greater the struggle, the greater the crown.”17 He admonishes: “Know, then, that if a man does not punish [himself], God will do so.”18 And the explicitly military terminology continues: “No crown is given unless the struggle of a fierce battle has taken place.”19 In fact, he says, “We ought to fight courageously against the strong desires of the flesh; we must suffer [with Christ] if we are to reign with him.”20 Monks must recognize that “life on earth is a warfare and a continuous conflict with the enemy.”21 He summarizes for his brothers the teaching of St. Paul: As Christ offered the Father His entire body as a victim for us, generously exposing Himself to pains, to spittle, to stripes, to chains, to blows, to insults, and finally to the ignominious gibbet of the cross, so we should crucify our bodies to the world for His sake and willingly exposing ourselves to abstinences and insults and persecutions, devote our bodies completely to the service of God.22 A few lines later Gerald approvingly quotes St. Jerome, “You are effeminate soldiers if you desire to be crowned without a struggle, for no one will be crowned unless he fights manfully.”23 Within the cloister, even within the priesthood, life is interpreted as a species of spiritual warfare, with celibacy as the key to salvific ascetic discipline. So many voices echoed the refrain. “That a priest needs to be pure” Thomas of Cobham’s Summa Confessorum declares in the early thirteenth century, “is so obvious that is hardly needs saying”.24 John Pecham in Ignorantia Sacerdotium 16 Gerald of Wales. The Jewel of the Church, tr. John Hagen (Leiden, 1979). 17 Ibid., p. 146. 18 Ibid., p. 150. Cite…. The discrepancy in human and divine capacity to punish is often specifically contrasted in sermon exempla…..[cite or quote]. 19 Ibid., p. 153. 20 Ibid., p. 160. 21 Ibid., pp. 158–159. 22 Ibid., p. 202. 23 Ibid., p. 203. 24 Quoted in Shinners and Dohar, Pastors and the Care of Souls in Medieval England (Notre Dame, 1998), p. 9.

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(1281) states that although holy orders are a form of perfection; marriage is a sacrament for the imperfect. True heroic endurance, in other words, graces the celibates.25 Clearly clerics and monks were expected to give up something important and thereby gain God’s favor. Sometimes the clerics saw themselves standing apart from all lay people, whether of chivalric or mercantile stamp. In one sense this is only an instance of the rivalry of groups often noted as an aspect of High Medieval social thought no less than a fact of social interaction.26 From a highly theoretical perspective clerics could lump knights and merchants together; certainly both groups of lay folk were troublesome and morally dangerous. One of the standard exempla appearing in numerous collections of moral tales asks the question, how many demons does it take to watch such and such a site? The answer always specifies that many are required to keep watch over a monastery, filled with a multitude of true souls whose possible slippage from grace must be prevented, but only one need watch some other site (the target of the story), since its inhabitants are already given over to the power of the devil.27 Significantly, though this targeted site may be a town gate or marketplace, it may also be a castle. Both the knights’ violence and the merchant’s usury – and the sexual morality of both – troubled society and offended divine order in the world. Often when thinking of the knighthood clerics focused on revulsion from blood pollution. In his Deeds of Louis the Fat, Abbot Suger of St Denis quotes Pope Paschal ii who declared that knights’ hands are stained by blood from the sword.28 And in describing the coronation of his hero Louis the Fat, as King of France, Abbot Suger significantly distinguished between the merely secular sword of knighthood from the ecclesiastical sword used righteously to correct evildoers. In the coronation ceremony, he insists, Louis exchanged one sword for the other.29 Perhaps something of the loathing of blood pollution was again at work in the minds of both Suger and Gerald of Wales when they described the German Emperor and Richard Lion-Heart, respectively, as happy only when they could mark their triumphs by walking in the blood of their enemies.30 Bernard of Clairvaux, in his treatise for the Knights Templar, denounced 25 26 27 28 29 30

Ibid, 131–132. Caroline Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1982 ) 82–109. See, for example, bl Additional 32678 f 80b; bl Additional 11284 f 90b; bl Egerton 1117 f 179b. Suger. Deeds of Louis the Fat, tr Richard Cusimano and John Moorhead (Washington, dc, 1992), 50. Deeds, 63. Deeds, 5, quoting Lucan. {Gerald?}.

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merely worldly knighthood – the vast majority of knights, of course, – as stained with murder, while the Knights Templar piously killed evil. Were the net to be spread beyond worries specifically focused on blood pollution to sweep up clerical attacks on the violence, pillage, theft, rape and arson that so often accompanied blood pollution, the catch would be too great to haul into this small vessel of an essay. Of course balance was necessary; clerics were keenly aware how much they needed a warrior elite in a dangerous world. Their formal fears and revulsion remain informative. All the more important, then, that these warriors possessed a compensating asceticism to offset their pollution.The knightly vocation required suffering in actions that were both corporally grievous and highly meritorious in the eyes of their Creator. Modern scholarship easily misses this insistence on knightly asceticism because we are so accustomed to viewing the warriors as dominant and triumphant, resplendent in unblemished and un-bloodied shining armor, loaded with loot and besieged by desirable ladies. Our analysis must carefully absorb their own sense of just how much they suffered on campaign by land and sea and how hard it was to engage in close fighting with edged weaponry wielded by foes as strong, determined, and skilled as themselves. Their keen sense of suffering, matched by equally keen certitude that it is finally redemptive, fills many lines of imaginative chivalric literature and is embedded in more than one chivalric handbook or treatise. Geoffroi de Charny, the leading knight of mid-fourteenth-century France may represent the clearest spokesman. He even tiptoes – and he is a man who characteristically strides – toward an assertion that knightly suffering exceeds that of the clerics.31 A veteran’s flanking attack against clerical assertions of superiority, his claim hints that more suffering means more merit with God. John Ruskin almost certainly never read a word of Charny’s treatise, yet his views on the ideal military vocation find their distant but remarkably close ancestor in Charny’s impassioned claim that, one could well say truly that of all the men in the world, of whatever estate, whether religious or lay, none have as great a need to be a good Christian to the highest degree nor to have such true devoutness in their hearts nor to lead a life of such integrity and to carry out all their undertakings loyally and with good judgment as do these good men-at-arms who have the will to pursue this calling, as has been set out above, wisely and according to God’s will. For there is in such men no firm purpose to 31

Richard W. Kaeuper and Elspeth Kennedy, The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny (Philadelphia, 1996). 174–177.

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cling to life; they should rather show firmness in the face of death and be prepared to meet it at any time, for it often happens that these people die without the leisure to fall ill of fever or other physical ailments from which a person might suffer for a long time and reflect on his past deeds. Indeed, let anyone consider all these perilous adventures which may in a brief span be encountered by these men-at-arms who choose to make the appropriate personal and physical effort to achieve the high reputation for valor which is of such great worth and is in accord with the will of God. It is indeed so prized, praised, and honored that one can say in all certainty that of all the conditions of this world, it is the one above all others in which one would be required to live with the constant thought of facing death at any hour on any day; for of all conditions it is the one in which one’s life is least secure, for it is a life spent in great effort and endurance and perilous adventure arising from others’ hate and envy, where many would like to cause one’s death.32 Charny intones this resonant set of claims just after he has praised the clerics for their own vocation. No knight could be more orthodox or verbosely pious in his views. Yet his stout justification for his own ordo could not be more clearly made: their pious suffering, their service and willingness to die are valorizing. The knights can claim meritorious suffering in the very exercise of their hard profession, a point to which we will want to return. In the grand medieval scheme, as in Ruskin’s analysis, however, the merchants must simply take heavy criticism in formal analysis. It might seem easy to claim a straightforward and obvious reason for this disparity by turning to their lower social status. In the view both of the medieval and (to a different degree) even the Victorians this status was suspect. Members of the upper clergy of course shared elite status with the knighthood. Both elite groups could look down privileged noses at bustling men of trade and finance, however much each elite group in daily life drew eagerly upon the skills and ready cash that merchants possessed. Both knights and clerics would have much appreciated the sharp thrust of Ruskin’s argument denigrating the merchants; disdain for them was, after all, one of their areas of solid agreement. Whatever their own disputes and rivalries, knights and clerics came from the same social layers and whether in youth they took up arms or served at the altar thoughts themselves marvelously superior to those who went into trade. Yet ideological as well as social criteria clearly entered the equation. The merchants polluted but offered no detoxification via ascetic practices. 32

Kaeuper and Kennedy, Book of Chivalry, pp. 182–185.

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The knights, for all their faults, clearly could be better fitted than the usurers whose profession required no asceticism that might offset their usury. Imaginative literature shows the chivalric attitude clearly. In the vast fourteenth-century romance Perceforest, Troylus fears “that he was going to grow dull-witted living in leisured ease like a merchant. – and felt he should be going in search of adventure like other worthy knights.” He soon finds plenty of grueling combat to test himself.33 Intense disapproval of usury reinforced the sense of social superiority, with the clerics pinning the detestable designation of usurer on all who lived by trade. If usury had long been suspect, the twelfth century brought a new focus and a new intensity of condemnation, seen in the enactments of the Lateran councils of 1139 and 1179.34 The Parisian circle of Peter the Chanter, a group of theologians especially concerned with issues of social ethics, played a particularly prominent role through preaching campaigns and through influence in ecclesiastical legislation late in the twelfth century and into the early decades of the thirteenth century. They seem to have pioneered the use of vivid sermon exempla to castigate the usurers, often showing them in full evil in life and in final confusion upon their deathbeds.35 Jacques de Vitry, a renowned preacher and member of this Parisian intellectual circle, could on the one hand include the merchants in “the multiform types of men” who “have special rules and institutions differing from each other according to the different types of talents entrusted to them by the Lord, so that the one body of the church is put together under its head, Christ, out of people of differing conditions.”36 Yet he could, on the other hand, approvingly tell a story of a cleric who wanted to “show to all how ignominious was the profession of usury, which no one would dare publicly to confess.” This cleric announced in his sermon, “I wish to absolve you according to the trades and professions of each.” Beginning with the smiths, he then called on all the men present to rise craft by craft; but when he asked for the usurers to rise to receive absolution, for shame no one dared stand up, “but all hid themselves for shame, and were derided, and put to confusion by the others for not daring to confess 33 34 35

36

Nigel Bryant, tr, Perceforest (Cambridge, 2011), 209. John W. Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants: the Social Views of Peter the Chanter and his Circle, two volumes (Princeton, 1970), vol. i, 296–311. Etienne de Bourbon, for example, sets forth a striking contrast between the pious death of Louis ix and the death of a usurer: A Lecoy de la Marche, ed.. Amecdptes historique, legends, et apologues tires du receuils inedites de Etienne de Bourbon (Paris, 1877), p. 63. See Vitry’s “Sermones vulgares”, 344–442 cited in Giles Constable, Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought (New York, 1995), p. 330.

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their profession.”37 Another preacher, Eudes de Châteauroux, disparagingly compared the townsmen and usurers to the good knights who were taking the cross. Unlike the knights who showed their thorough trust in God, these townsmen do not want to join the movement “and what is more they aim to deprive those who join up of their inheritance”. Yet, Eudes exults, “the authority will always stay with the nobles, whether or not the usurers who devour them want it.”38 Caesarius of Heisterbach, in one of his miracle stories, tells of Gottschalk the usurer who had redeemed a crusading vow on the cheap, paying less than he should on the pretence that he was a poor man. Worse, he loudly boasted of his success later in tavern talk, and taunted “pilgrims” who actually planned to honor their vows and go on crusade: “You fools,” he would say, “are going to cross the sea and waste your substance, and expose your lives to all kinds of dangers, while I, for the five marks with which I redeemed my vow, shall stay at home with my wife and children, and get as good a reward as you.”39 Gottschalk is negating the very ascetic basis of crusading. Of course, Caesarius assures us, he went to hell, where he exchanged his comfortable tavern bench for unending pain in a burning chair. It is noteworthy that suffering in hell he witnesses the punishment of a noted knight who had stolen a heffer from a poor widow. The man had refused contrition and confession and had been buried in consecrated ground only after his widow had bribed the priest [i 76–78]. In hell he is gored eternally by the stolen heffer.40 Yet the knights are usually more favored than the merchants. A Jacques de Vitry stories tells of a knight who, while crossing a bridge in Paris, hears a wealthy burgher blaspheming God. He punishes the man with a terrible blow to the mouth, breaking the offender’s teeth. Brought before the king of France to answer for this action, the knight says that he would be unable to bear hearing his earthly king reviled, how much more should he revenge his heavenly king. The earthly king honors and releases him and ignores the burgher’s claim.41 The general 37

Jacques de Vitry, The Exempla or Illustrative Storied from the Sermones Vulgares of Jacques de Vitry, ed. Thomas Frederick Crane (London: 1890), 76, 206–207. 38 Quoted in Christoph Maier, Crusade Propaganda and Ideology: Model Sermons for the Preaching of the Cross (New York: 2000), 147–149. 39 Caesarius of Heisterbach, The Dialogue on Miracles of Caesarius of Heisterbach, ed. and trans. H. von E. Scott and C.C. Swinton Bland, vol. 1, (London: 1929), 77. 40 Ibid., 78. 41 Vitry, Exempla, 91, 221–222.

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attitude appears concisely in an account of social origins written into an anonymous fourteenth-century collection of religious tales and fables, God created three divisions of humanity: The three types [genera] of people God made are the clerics, the knights, and the workers. And the fourth group, the townsmen and usurers, were thought up by the Devil. They are not clerics, because they do not know letters; they are not knights, because they do not know how to bear arms; they are not workers because they are not engaged in human labor – the devil works them! Likewise the merchants are among men like the drones among bees who do not make honey, nor carry fruit, but do harm to the bees. Similarly the merchants oppress the clerics, supply the knights, and shake down the workers, and because on no day do they serve, they suffer idleness and injure many. For this reason Solomon said that idleness begets all evil.42 If not good theology, this is powerfully revealing social commentary. The final moments of a usurer’s life were often negatively caricatured in sermon stories and collections of moral tales. In the throes of death they lose speech, but momentarily recover only to ask about their money. Their bodies rest uneasily in consecrated ground and may have to be moved, as heavenly warnings suggest. Exhumed, one is found to share his coffin with a disgusting toad that is busily stuffing a coin into his lifeless mouth.43 Another, whose dead body is examined, strangely has no heart; it is found, of course, resting securely in his money chest.44 The story contrasts sharply with that reporting the examination of the heart of a pious knight who had died while on crusade – on the Mount of Olives, in fact: his heart was found to contain a tiny but massively significant golden crucifix. In a later version of this story his heart is even found to be quartered and bleeding; it bears a concise inscription in gold: “Jesus est 42

43 44

bl Harley 268 f 29: “Tria sunt genera hominun que fecit deus: clericos, milites, et laborantes et quartus genus excogitavit diabolus, s[cilicet] burgenses et usurarios, qui non clerici quia nescierunt litteras, non sunt milites quia nesciunt arma portare, non sunt laborabtes quia in labore humanum non sunt et diabolus eos laborabat. Item burgenses sunt inter hominess sicut busones inter apes qui nec mellificant nec frucaferant set apibus nocent. Similiter burgenses clericos opprimunt, milites exornant, laborantes excutiunt et quia die nullo serviunt otium tolunt et pluribus nocent. Propterea dicit salamon otiositas parit omne malum.” bl Royal 7D1 f 129. bl Additional 27909 B f 93b, column 2.

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amor meus.”45 One suspects that John Ruskin might have appreciated these harsh stories directed at greedy and self-centered materialism, incapable of self-sacrifice. Of course social life was never so simple as formal analysis portrayed it. In fact, if the medieval church feared the dangers of both knights and merchants, it undeniably needed both; and was taking steps toward careful accommodation with chivalric and mercantile functions essential to a rapidly developing society. Over time knighthood acquired noble status and came to be tirelessly lauded, even as it was urged insistently to accept clerical direction, to act in the interests of justice at home, and to enlist on crusades (both at home and abroad). If their blood pollution troubled thoughtful minds, much of the violence in which it blood was spilled had to be recognized as licit and most knights accommodated as holy warriors.46 Though to a lesser degree, canon lawyers found ways of integrating the merchants into medieval Christian society, usury and all. Even popes enthusiastically took loans from the greatest of them, and paid them interest under one cover or another. Across Europe their gifts to churches were welcomed and accepted, whatever the disapproving sermon exempla might say. The commercial and financial take-off of high medieval Europe was not stopped cold by measures against usury.47 But the clerics who emphasized their own asceticism could scarcely – in their abstract formulations – appreciate the merchants who had none; and they came to accept the knights whose function involved heroism and ascetic sacrifice, even though it earned them glory in this world and God’s good will in the next.; but it was a harder task to find escape hatches for the usurers on the issue of redemptive suffering – indeed of being willing to suffer. Merchants were never heroic figures with a recognized discipline or voluntary self-sacrifice; and they certainly could claim no meritorious corporal suffering. Despite all pragmatic accommodation, then, clerics hammered home the point repeatedly. An evocative miracle story in a collection of Odo of Cheriton (a thirteenth century writer popular long after his death) tells that on his wedding day a usurer passed beneath the portal of a church bearing a stone figure of a usurer. At just that moment the heavy stone purse clutched by the figure broke loose and in its fall struck and killed the man.48 It is hard to imagine a parallel story being told of a knight killed by at stone sword falling from a 45 46 47 48

bl Harley 239 f 234. For a somewhat similar exemplum see bl Additional 18364 f 41b. Richard W. Kaeuper, Holy Warriors (Philadelphia, 2009). See the seminal study by John Baldwin, “The Medieval Merchant at the Bar of Canon Law.” Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters 44 (1959), 287–299. bl Arundel 231 f 81b. The story was also told by Etienne de Bourbon: see A Lecoy de la Marche, ed.. Amecdptes historique, legends, et apologues tires du receuils inedites de Etienne de Bourbon (Paris, 1877), p. 60.

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­ ilitary statue on a church façade. Likewise, gifts to the church from knights m (however obtained) were accepted in these stories with honor and thanks, even by clerics who must have known that the source might be morally tainted (as their other writings suggest). But the oats a usurer gave to a priest in a moral tale is found to be full of serpents.49 Significantly, in another moral tale the alms of a miserly, money-hungry knight similarly turn to serpents which, in this case, are said to devour him.50 Some taless told against full-time usurers seem warnings against any clerical softness in treatment of these sinners: one vivid tale pictures a usurer, who has endowed a church and secured a prime burial spot before the altar, rising suddenly from his grave to beat the frightened monks with a candlestick snatched from the altar; even re-burying his body outside the churchyard secures them no peace, for the man haunts the neighborhood. Finally the monks realize that they must return his endowments, earned by foul usury.51 The wise course is suggested in one of Jacques de Vitry’s sermon exemplum: a usurer is refused burial even in the church cemetery by a stern parish priest. When the usurer’s friends protest, the priest puts the corpse on the back of an ass and suggests the will of God be done. Straightaway the beast carries its load to the gallows where robbers are hanged and shakes it off into a dunghill under the gallows, where the priest resolutely leaves it.52 By contrast, knightly spokesmen asserted confidence in their own ordo that even their clerical cousins would not dismiss. Geoffroi de Charny – a vigorous, practicing knight – wrote in his major mid-fourteenth century treatise, a knight can save himself in his profession of arms, if other great sins do not intervene.53 And he was not the first to insist on the possibilities of salvation in a knightly “calling.” In the 1170s Etienne de Fougères, bishop of Rennes, wrote in his Livre des Manières that the knight …can save himself in his order if nothing is found to cause him remorse. But if he wants to murder traitorously or deceitfully destroy or kill, then he must indeed be expelled from the order, have his sword removed, be harshly punished spurs removed and be thrown out from among the knights.54

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Additional 1128, f 3b. bl Harley 2391 f 167; cf bl Additional 18364 f 43b in which a usurious knight is punished with serpents. 51 bl Arundel 506, f 27, column 2. 52 Vitry, Exempla, 158. 53 Kaeuper and Kennedy, Book of Chivalry, pp. 164–165. 54 Etienne de Fougeres, Le livredes manieres, ed. R. Anthony Lodge (Geneva, 1979) pp. 13–14.

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The bishop who penned these lines looked at knights with unblinkered vision. But it is worth noting that even the disqualifying sins are violations of the true form of lay “labor” within the order, rather than offenses drawn from an ecclesiastical catalogue. Thus, if we think of three basic pollutants that might be remedied by the asceticism of three socio-professional groups a highly revealing pattern emerges. If the clerics suffered physically in dealing with the toxin of sexuality, they won high praise and divine approval. The merchants who ran their hands lovingly through piles of polluting coin practiced no physical asceticism at all and, soundly excoriated on earth, faced an uncertain spiritual future. The knights, however, got the best of both worlds. Despite engaging in blood pollution, their suffering on arduous campaign and in hard fighting–ever in good causes, of course – won them the loot and praise that sustained their dominant position in society and bolstered their hope of yet more glory in the halls of heaven. Though he was worrying about the effects of commercial and industrial expansion in his own age and anguished over desecration of the “green and pleasant land” he loved, John Ruskin, ever attuned to the medieval world, reproduced in his mid-nineteenth century writing a core set of basically medieval values. If these are worthy of scholarly note as a critique of Victorian society, they likewise illuminate medieval frameworks for society not always fully explored. Much gratitude is owed Ruskin for these insights, a splendid instance of the Victorian world understanding the medieval world. Caution must, of course, accompany gratitude. Ruskin’s elite professions are given pure motives and show ultimate concern for the common good. That Ruskin naturally wished these values to guide his own Victorian society is apparent; yet as hardheaded historians we need not mistake the ideal for reality either in the medieval past he loved or the Victorian world with which he struggled throughout a troubled lifetime. As always our inheritance from the Victorians is generous, but must be accepted with great care.

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Vengeance and Mercy in Chivalric Mentalité* That the lust for vengeance is a potent historical force cannot be doubted. Vengeance may rank among the most basic human emotions – after food and shelter, and perhaps standing closely tied with sex. Whether or not modern society has altered so blatantly evident an historical commitment remains an open question. For the Middle Ages we can inquire if a cultural commitment to vengeance represented a straightforward and overwhelming fact of life, or if such notions produced doubts and fears among elite males. To be more precise, I want to inquire about the role of vengeance (and its allies) within a dominant high and late medieval chivalric mentalité. Among the knighthood was vengeance significantly feared and condemned, or was it rather considered (with apologies to Sellar and Yeatman) a Good Thing, a moral duty and a pillar of a justly ordered society? To pose such questions about the chivalrous seems reasonable and important, given their power and prominence in medieval society. Such an inquiry should in a small way complement work of recent scholars, especially Paul Hyams and Stephen White, and may unearth additional and useful veins of ore spreading out in other directions beneath the surface of the medieval landscape.1 All such digging, I must emphasize, can only be preliminary and will be limited to north-western Europe. Vengeance is a tough topic, intellectually as well as morally. Evidence on the views clerics advanced is surely abundant, if complex, and must largely be taken for granted here, with only a brief glance. Many among the tonsured advanced a line of thought obviously contesting the practice of vengeance; they pressed a message of forgiveness and mercy upon the warriors with style 168 and vigour. A flow of ideas on peace and forbearance | came insistently to the knights in the liturgy, in art, in sermons, in preparation for confession. Each time they repeated the Lord’s Prayer they intoned a need for forgiveness of those who wronged them. * Essential help with word searches was conducted by Paul Dingman and Peter Sposato. I wish to thank them both for their assistance. This article was previously published in T. B. Lambert and David Rollason (eds.), Peace and Protection in the Middle Ages (Toronto, 2009), 168–180. 1 See White’s essays collected as Feuding and Peacemaking in Eleventh-Century France (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005) and Paul Hyams, Rancor and Reconciliation in Medieval England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003).

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An especially telling source may be found in collections of short, memorable moral tales or exempla that knights would have heard in sermons and later read in handbooks produced for the laity.2 Their potential impact can be assessed in an exemplum told repeatedly – I found nearly a dozen retellings in the beautiful manuscript books filled with exempla in the British Library.3 The basic story (though there are multiple variants) presents a knight who has suffered a terrible wrong from another (in some versions this enemy has slain his father). He is now besieged in his castle by this same enemy. On Good Friday this wronged and besieged knight sees his hated foe riding past his castle. Suddenly infused with the forgiving spirit of Christ, our knight issues forth from the castle, not to attack, but to forgive his highly surprised enemy of all wrongs. In fact, they not only make peace on his initiative, but ride to church together. As the forgiving knight approaches the crucifix standing in the apse of the local church, miraculously the cross bows and the Crucified stretches out his arms to embrace and kiss the man who has proved himself truly Christ’s knight through forgiveness. This merciful knight’s tale must have been widely used in sermons, as some of its sources are handbooks of materials for the use of preachers. Yet any reader of the abundant evidence knows that ecclesiastics did not uniformly and consistently condemn vengeance. Tensions in their views readily formed from the full range of sacred sources. Ancient stories told of God’s own awesome vengeance, whether executed in a flash by divine fiat or through a people who acted on his behalf. As members of a veritable culture of vengeance medieval clerics could easily share its values and find | religious valorization for them. The problem arose, of course, because of the powerful New Testament emphasis on forgiveness and forbearance, standing against both tradition and human nature. If clerics sometimes transmitted a mixed message 2 In London, British Library, ms Harley 268, fol. 173, one man has survived a murderous attack that killed his two brothers. Though reluctant, at the point of death he is finally convinced by a priest to forgive the killers. He is thus saved from Hell. In London, British Library, ms Additional 1128, fol. 78b, a death in tournament remains unforgiven until the Pope informs the vengeful man that he sees the Devil riding on his shoulder. 3 See the following London, British Library, manuscripts: Arundel 506, fol. 5; Arundel 406, fol. 26b, col 2; Additional 22283, fol. 14b, col 2; Additional 18351, fol. 12b, col 2; Additional 18346, fol. 117; Additional 27336, fol. 8; Additional 11384; Harley 2391, fol. 221; Harley 2385, fol. 65, col 2; Burney 361, fol. 154. Several Middle English manuals give the story for readers and priests hearing confessions. See Idelle Sullens, ed., Robert Mannyng of Brunne (Binghamton, ny: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1983), lines 3797–3916, and also Siegfried Wenzel, ed., Fasciculus Morum: A Fourteenth-Century Preaching Handbook (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989), 134–135.

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on vengeful prowess, they could scarcely ignore the peace and forgiveness infused into the central message of the founder of their religion. Grasping clerical opinion in its entirety is thus challenging, but how much more difficult the case of the knighthood. Can we know much of their thought and how it translated into action? I will advance two working hypotheses. First, that we can learn much of what we need to know from chivalric literature – imaginative chansons and romances – works that the knights read, patronized, and sometimes wrote themselves. To this we can add vernacular manuals, chronicles, and biographies (that may be only slightly less imaginative). Elsewhere I have made a case that this literature is both prescriptive and descriptive, that the two modes can usually be sorted out, and that both are significant for analysis.4 As a second hypothesis here, I think we should pay attention in our searching to a close family group of ideas related to vengeance. This means looking especially at prowess as it links to shame and honour. Although prowess is not identical with vengeance, of course, it is a first cousin and so often represents a vigorous response to a perceived wrong that carries a threat of shame, and thus a challenge to all-important honour. Wrath, one of the seven deadly sins, likewise joins this family circle. The relationships are significant: as the anthropologist Julian Pitt-Rivers noted decades ago, in a lapidary sentence, “the ultimate vindication of honour lies in physical violence.”5 Knighthood realized vengeance through acts of prowess aimed at wiping out shame (often while in a state of wrath). Wrongs disorder the world and stain the individual (and his kin) with shame. Blood calls for blood, wrong for wrong. Vengeance wipes the slate clean and reorders a disordered world. Spade in hand, then, with two hypotheses hung in a bag slung over our back, we turn to digging in the literary fields for evidence. We might first approach the fertile soil of imaginative literature through that magnificent chanson, Raoul de Cambrai. The existing text combines a Raoul I written | by the mid-twelfth cen- 170 tury and revised probably in the late twelfth century and an expanded text known as Raoul ii likely from the second decade of the thirteenth century.6 To search for vengeance in Raoul I is to play the glutton at a smorgasbord. This is a 4 The case is made most explicitly in “Literature as the Key to Chivalric Ideology,” Journal of Medieval Military History 5 (2006): 1–15; a more general discussion appears in Richard W. Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) and in my forthcoming book, Holy Warriors (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press). 5 Julian Pitt-Rivers, “Honour and Social Status,” in Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society, ed. J.G. Peristiany (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965), 19–77; quotation at 30. 6 See the fine edition of Sara Kay for text and discussion of compositional periods: Raoul de Cambrai (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).

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poem of vengeance, repeatedly proclaimed as a virtue and exultantly described, until, as Sara Kay has noted, all the leading male characters having been killed, the text closes. There are, indeed, warnings against the “hom desreez,” the man out of measure; but the drumbeat of the poem sounds for hot-blooded revenge. “Sir Raoul,” his barons assure him, “it is small wonder if [Bernier] is angry. He has served you with his sword and you have ill requited him. You have burnt his mother in her church, and, as for him, you have broken his head. God’s curse on anyone who blames him if he wishes to avenge himself.”7 But citing examples would quickly exceed the limits of this brief study. Raoul ii shows more ambiguity. Standard cries for revenge appear, but the contrast with the earlier text is striking in that calls for mercy and forgiveness also appear. Such forbearance is linked, significantly, with divine mercy in general and with the Passion of Christ particularly. Near the end of the epic Bernier, for example, recalls the forgiveness Christ gave Longinus, the Roman centurion whose lance pierced his own side on Calvary; Bernier cites it as his model for forgiving his hated enemy, Guerri the Red. What did contemporary warriors think as they heard this poem? It is not simply some clerical screed: there is enough highly valorized violence to satisfy the most avid. Turning to the classic chivalric biography may not quite be leaving the sphere of imaginative literature. To what extent the Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal joins the category could spark a quite separate debate.8 All that I want to establish here is how well this splendid source, too, informs our inquiry. Some form of the root veng appears in the text seventeen times by my count; in sixteen cases the word expresses what a knight wanted to do or actually accomplished; the remaining case is an invocation to God to take divine vengeance on William’s enemies himself. God also receives thanks for graciously allowing Marshal and his men to take vengeance on the French invaders under Prince Louis. In passing, the text notes that by their fighting, crusaders to the East, in turn, avenge the shame inflicted on God by unbelievers. Adjectives modifying the noun “revenge” include “violent,” “rightful,” and “savage.” Causes for revenge include claims of harm, damage, and shame inflicted. Those men who fail under these affronts | to take revenge in the approved manner are characterized as “nanny goats” or the “lily-livered.” References to mercy are not lacking; but they are less numerous and mainly relate to a quality that an individual, mindful of sin and wrong in himself, fervently hopes to find in God. At several points someone is said to be “in mercy,” especially in the 7 Kay, Raoul de Cambrai, laisse 85. 8 A.J. Holden, S. Gregory and D. Crouch, eds., History of William Marshal, 3 vols. (London, 2002–2006).

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king’s mercy or in William’s mercy (i.e., totally at their will). Once or twice a man asks for mercy in God’s name. Echoing Raoul de Cambrai, patience, forbearance and moderation are once at least declared to be admirable qualities; and the Marshal is himself praised as a generous man who shows mercy, for example, to those who opposed him in Ireland. He shows another sort of mercy to the poor fellow who tried to steal his great warhorse one dark evening while Marshal attended an urban eve-of-tournament party. Caught red-handed in a dark nearby street, the hapless thief suffers a blow from the Marshal’s baton so severe that one of his eyes flies out; at which point he calls for mercy in God’s name, as William’s retainers suggest hanging him. But the Marshal mercifully says what he has already done is enough.9 I believe this is the point of the story, and I think we will find this pattern interesting in a moment. Briefly, and simply to get another voice emanating from active knighthood, I turned to an old acquaintance, Geoffroi de Charny and his mid-fourteenthcentury Livre de chevalerie of 1351 – a vernacular manual on the practice of chivalry. The surprise was to find only one reference to vengeance in his manual. The significance of his single remark, however, lies in its very casualness. In listing desired characteristics in a knight Charny says in passing (almost as if it were obvious) that the knight will take “cruel vengeance” against his enemies. He lived by his words: a man who grievously betrayed him ended up in displayed quarters after capture.10 The sampling so far is admittedly slight and would need much support in order to indicate any trend. Yet it does at least point to the deep commitment of knighthood to hot-blooded vengeance, and suggests the possibility of more complex ideas at work in their minds. If the tension – perhaps rather the paradox – rises to the level of consciousness, how could they deal with it? Would they even try? By far the richest source for unearthing plentiful evidence is the immense field of romance writing, and within that huge field the Vulgate or LancelotGrail cycle – all of it (five major romances and their continuations), | thousands 172 of pages on chivalric behaviour and ideals, a grand chivalric summa written in the early decades of the thirteenth century and widely copied and read.11 9 10

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The incident occupies lines 4319–4450 in Holden, Gregory, Crouch, History of William Marshal. Richard W. Kaeuper and Elspeth Kennedy, The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 138–139, and 10–12 (for Charny’s disposal of the enemy). In the discussion that follows I will generally use the Old French edition of H. Oskar Sommer, The Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances, 8 vols. (Washington: Carnegie

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No reader of the Vulgate Cycle can miss the striking emphasis on vengeance in the five romances and their continuations. From awful majesty at the apex of the hierarchy of authority in the universe, God takes vengeance that will be long remembered by mere mortals. In fact, immediately after the most dramatic display in the cycle, that which follows the infamous “Dolorous Stroke” in the Merlin Continuation (to be considered in a moment), the divine wrath operates almost like an atom bomb, with concentric rings of devastation rolling outward, leaving behind a wasteland over three kingdoms. God is at this point appropriately named The Supreme Avenger (sovrains vengieres).12 He demands, moreover, that humans (or at least the right humans) do their best to follow his example and carry out righteous vengeance themselves. However distantly, his good knights act on his behalf, as his instruments in a world beset by sin. In the History of the Holy Grail the Roman Vespasian is shown avenging Christ against the Jews; crusaders are seen as avenging the shame later done to Christ in that same Holy Land by Saracens. Early in the Quest of the Holy Grail God’s vengeance on King Bademagu – for a rash act he has committed – comes in the form of a White Knight who roughly unhorses Bademagu before disappearing.13 Divine vengeance on Christians is regularly seen as penance for sin, establishing a link of the first importance in an era placing renewed emphasis on penance (following the Fourth Lateran Council). Bertelay, a knight implicated in the treasonous False Guinevere episode in The Story of Merlin, stoically requests that King Arthur take terrible vengeance on his body, knowing that his earthly pains will reduce yet more terrifying torments that he must suffer in the afterlife, as divine vengeance is enacted.14 | Repeatedly, good vengeance is valorized. At the Castle Carcelois the Grail companions are suddenly attacked by knights whom they summarily slaughter. What follows is a little debate scene among the heroes about the morality of revenge. Though Bors thinks they have acted well, the great and good Galahad worries over their agency in slaughtering the knights whose bodies lie Institution of Washington, 1908–16), and will quote the lively English translations of a team of scholars working under the general editorship of Norris J. Lacy, Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Vulgate and Post Vulgate Cycle in Translation (New York: Garland Publishing, 1993–96); I will give the name of the translator of the particular work being quoted within parentheses. 12 Lacy, Lancelot-Grail, 4: 214 (Martha Asher). For the French, see Gaston Paris and Jacob Ulrich, eds., Merlin: Roman en prose, 2 vols. (Paris: Société des Anciens Texts Français, 1886), 2: 232. 13 Sommer, Vulgate Version, 6: 21–22. 14 Lacy, Lancelot-Grail, 2: 277 (Samuel N. Rosenberg); Alexandre Micha, Lancelot: roman en prose du XIIIe siècle, 9 vols. (Geneva: Libraririe Droz, 1978–83), 1: 163.

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heaped about: “If they had wronged Our Lord, we would not be the ones to take revenge, but the Lord himself, who waits until the sinner recognizes his error.”15 His statement echoes the well-known divine Biblical claim: “vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord” (Romans 12:19). Such scruples are quickly brushed aside by a priest in a white robe who suddenly appears in the castle courtyard – carrying the corpus domini in a chalice no less – to inform Galahad that his actions, and not his doubts, are correct. Among much else, he assures the Grail knights that they have accomplished the finest deed that a knight has ever done. God has directed them to this spot and this action and the slain were irremediably evil. The setting, however, need not be a hyper-evil castle beset by unsurpassed Grail Companions. Most of the action throughout the Vulgate Cycle takes place in court or forest settings with rather quotidian combats; but even in these fights the vengeance is counted as righteous. Sagremore, late in the massive romance Lancelot, is sure that he would be wicked in the sight of God if he failed to take vengeance for a maiden in his care.16 And, as we will see, concepts of earthly justice inform the vengeance-taking no less than conceptions of the divine will in which they are ultimately rooted. Yet the motivation is by no means limited to such abstract principles. Hotblooded wrath animates revenge time and again. Knights say they will die if they cannot take vengeance, or fear they will die too soon and miss the chance.17 The sword of the model knight Bors in The Story of Merlin is tellingly named Wrathful (couroucesse sespee).18 A wise old Master Elias in the Lancelot assures the great knight Galehaut that he knows a cure for a sick heart: | 174 The sick heart is cured by avenging the wrong done to it, and then it is wholly changed and returned to health. Imagine that someone tomorrow mocked and insulted you; your heart would not find peace till it were freed of the shame, and that, by giving hurt for hurt. If it were well avenged, 15

For the incident and quotations see Lacy, Lancelot-Grail, 4: 72–74 (E. Jane Burns); Sommer, Vulgate Version, 6: 163–165: “Mais il ont este par auenture vne gent mescreant. Si ont tant mesfait a nostre signor quil ne voloit mie quil fuissent plus en vie. Et por ce nous enuoia il chi por aus destruire . vous ne dites mie asses fait galaad . & sil mesfisent a nostre signor la veniance nest pas a nos a prendre. Mais a celi qui atent tant que li pec[h]ieres se reconnoisse.” 16 Lacy, Lancelot-Grail, 3: 124 (Wukkuan W., Kibler). 17 Lacy, Lancelot-Grail, 3: 66 (Roberta L. Krueger). 18 Sommer, Vulgate Version, 2: 235. Sharp clerical attacks on the sin of wrath can be found readily. See, e.g., Woodburn O. Ross, ed., Middle English Sermons, eets, o.s., 209 (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), 51.

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it would be rid of the filth and poison clogging it, just like a man freed of worry and anger.19

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The impulse to vengeance is so clearly visceral, perhaps even glandular. The evidence appears to be straightforward and clear: among powerful chivalrous ranks vengeance achieved through prowess ranks as an honourable right and duty for the bellatores; as God takes holy vengeance on humans for sin, his good warriors on earth wipe out wrongs, harm and shame inflicted on them, edged weaponry in hand. From this evidence it seems that no problem troubles them, no yawning gap appears between ideal and actual, (to be seen as troublesome); no paradox seems to disturb the focus of their minds and strong sword-arms on the honourable taking of revenge. What of the voices for mercy, then? Early in the first romance of the cycle the symbolism of the bishop’s staff is explained in significant terms: “This crozier you are holding in your hand symbolizes two things, vengeance and mercy: vengeance because it is pointed at the bottom; mercy, because it is curved on top.”20 We need to look further in the massive fonds of evidence in the Vulgate Cycle. The architecture of several of the constituent romances makes strong statements about mercy as well as vengeance. The clearest case appears in the magnificent final romance, the Death of King Arthur. As the perceptive Jean Frappier has elegantly and convincingly argued, this work might with equal justification be entitled “The Spiritual Rise of Lancelot.”21 What drives this romance is a set of contrasting ideas about vengeance: Gawain relentlessly demands Lancelot’s blood to avenge that of his brothers, spilled by Lancelot in his famous | rescue of Guenevere from the stake. In single combat Lancelot repeatedly frustrates Gawain’s fury by purely defensive fighting. In the melee of general combat Lancelot even unhorses King Arthur; but against the strident advice of his brothers to end the king’s life and thus end the great war, he mercifully does the disabled Arthur no harm and even helps him to remount. 19 Lacy, Lancelot-Grail, 2: 250 (Samuel N. Rosenberg); Sommer, Vulgate Version, 4: 20: “Ore y a autres maladies dont on prent medecines Car quant li cuers est malades dedens de duel et dire . ou daucune honte qui au cors a este faite si en puet on bien venir a garison par ueniance prendre del forfait. Car qui vous feroit vilonnie li cuers ne seroit iamais a aise deuant ce que vous en series vengies . Chest de rendre honte por honte Et lors series deliures de lordure et del venin qui en vous seroit. Aussi com li homs seroit fors des pensees quant il est aquites de ses detes.” 20 Lacy, Lancelot-Grail, 1: 27 (Carol J. Chase); Sommer, Vulgate Version, 1: 38: “Chel baston que tu tiens en ta main senestre senefie . ij . coses . ueniance & misericorde. veniance por ce que il est poignans par desous . misericorde por ce que il est corbes desus.” 21 Jean Frappier, Étude sur la Mort le Roi Artu (Geneva: Libraririe Droz, 1961).

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Lancelot had failed to achieve the ideal of celestial chivalry in the Grail Quest, but here he rises above the culture of vengeance to a level of spiritual nobility. Was not at least the negative side of this message – the anti-vengeance theme – delivered earlier in the cycle in the infamous incident of the “Dolorous Stroke” involving vengeance and counter vengeance?22 Against direct divine warning, the knight Balin seizes the holy lance of Longinus that had pierced Christ’s side, completing the ultimate divine act of mercy, as it hovers miraculously in mid-air, dripping blood into a chalice – and rams it into the genitals of King Pellehan, the Grail keeper, who is coming at him furiously to avenge the killing of Garlan, the king’s brother, in his own court. Balin has been lauded as the knight of greatest prowess earlier in the tale; he had taken what all would consider justified revenge on Garlan who, as an invisible foe, had put his lance through men under Balin’s protection. And King Pellehan, the Grail keeper, would likewise be considered fully justified in smiting Balin for violating the peace of his court and killing his brother in his presence. Yet consider what happens. As noted before, something like an atomic explosion lays waste three kingdoms as God takes final vengeance, surely an act that challenges the two merely human acts of vengeance that preceded it (however much they are valorized by earthly standards). God’s response has been sparked by Balin’s rash and hot-blooded act: a profane man with blood on his hands uses the Holy Lance of redemption (we might almost say the Lance of non-violence) in a private quarrel. Certainly the results are disastrous as God ends the cycle of human violence with stunning revenge of his own, which by definition must be just. What is more, throughout all the romances in the cycle the knights often associate God with mercy. God is said to be the fount of mercy, the father of pity and forgiveness. And it seems worthy of note that knights frequently swear they will achieve some goal “by God’s mercy.” Of course sometimes, just to complicate matters, it is revenge that they wish to achieve. And this very term, mercy, in all of its uses in the cycle, serves as a window through which we can glimpse ideas at work in knightly minds. There is a pattern for the display of mercy infused into nearly all of the | romances, a pattern 176 that is tirelessly repeated in individual combat – hundreds of times. Here is a classic case from the Merlin Continuation; in this instance the knight Tor works the formula on each of two knights whom he has just unhorsed, in jousting that has left his lance projecting through the shoulder of one opponent: When Tor saw them both on the ground, he took his sword, for he wanted to be able to bring them both to defeat. He ran at the first, who had already 22

See Lacy, Lancelot-Grail, 4: 211–214 (Martha Asher); Paris and Ulrich, Merlin, 2: 24–32.

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got up and gave him such a great blow on the helmet that he stunned him completely and made him fall on his two hands on the ground. Then he rode over him on horseback, bruising him severely and the knight fainted with agony. Tor, who did not want to stop until the other cried mercy, dismounted. When he had tied his horse to a tree, he ran to the man he had ridden down, tore his helmet off his head, threw it away, and cried that he would kill him if he did not own himself defeated. The other, who had come out of his faint and saw himself in danger of death, cried mercy, for he saw that otherwise he could not escape. “Now swear,” said Tor, “to yield yourself prisoner where I will send you.” He swore. Then Tor left him and ran to the other one, who was all bruised from the hard fall he had had, and he gave him such a great blow on his helmet with his sword held in both hands that he made his eyes start out of his head and stunned him completely, so that he fell face down on the green grass and had no strength to get up. Tor seized his helmet and pulled hard on it, but he could not pull it off his head because the laces were very good. When he saw this, he cut the laces with his sword and drew it off his head. When the other saw his head bare but for his mail cap, he was afraid to die and cried mercy, seeing himself overcome. “Now swear,” said Tor, “to yield yourself prisoner where I will send you.” He promised, seeing that he could not escape otherwise. Tor left him then and said to him and his companion, “‘My lords, you are my prisoners.’ ‘This is true,’ they said.”23 | 23 Lacy, Lancelot-Grail, 4: 234 (Martha Asher); Paris and Ulrich, Merlin, 2: 103–104: “Quant il les voit ansdeus a terre, il met le main a l’espee, car il bee que il les peuust ansdeus mener a outranche, si keurt sus au premier qui ja estoit relevés et li doune par mi le hyaume si grant caup qu’il l’estourdist tout et le fait flatir a terre d’ambes-deus les paumes. Après li vait par dessus le cors tout a cheval si que tout le debrise, et cil se pasme de l’angoisse qu’il sent. Et Tor descent, qui a tant ne s’en vaurra mie tenir se il ne crie merchi. Et quant il est descendus et il a son cheval atachié a un arbre, il keurt a chelui qu’il avoit defoulet, se li esrache le hyaume de la teste et le giete en voies et li crie qu’il l’ochirra s’il ne se tient a outré. Et cil qui fu revenus de pasmisons et se vit en perii de mort si crie merchi, car il voit bien que autrement ne porroit il eschaper. « Ore fiancé, » fait Tor « a tenir prison lau je t’envoierai. » Et cil li fianche. Et il le laist maintenant, et court a l’autre qui tous estoit debrisiés del dur cheoir qu’il ot fait, et il li donne de s’espee par mi le hyaume a deus puins si grant caup que il li fait les ieus estinceler en la teste et l’estourdist tout, si que chius chiet as dens sour l’erbe vert ne n’a pooir de soi relever, et il l’ahiert erramment au hyaume et tire fort, et ne li puet esrachier dou chief, car moult estoient boin li lach. Et quant il vit chou, il li trenche a I’espee les las et li oste del chief. Et quant cil voit sa test nue fors de sa coife de fer, il a paour de morir, si crie mierchi, conme cil ki se voit au desous. Et Tor li dist : « Tu n’avras ja mierchi se tu ne fiances a tenir prison la ou je t’envoierai. » Et cil li fiancé,

Vengeance and Mercy in Chivalric Mentalité

387

Techniques vary: usually a text specifies that the ventail or neck armour is turned down to expose the throat; sometimes pounding of the exposed head and face with the pommel of the sword is considered effective. For those seeking mercy, a kneeling posture seems to be recommended, along with an address to the victor that begins, “Noble knight.” But the results are similar. For one party, defeat precedes mercy; for the other party, mercy follows a display of victorious power. Mercy, it is important to note, does not mean forgiveness. Rather, it means that vengeance is taken only up to the point of securing honour, wiping out shame, and expending wrath through prowess. The process (with a few exceptions) stops short of death for the defeated. The bloodied opponent is reduced to begging, in shame, for his life, which is granted from a plenitude of physical power. There is a legal term hovering in the atmosphere, I think. To be in the king’s mercy, of course, was to be amerced totally at the king’s will. The defeated in romance regularly promise, kneeling or flat out on the ground, helmet gone, swordless, armour stripped from a bare neck, with the victor’s sharp sword raised over them, that they will do whatever will satisfy the victor. But the dominant mode is social rather than legal: begging for mercy involves shame – unless, the texts make clear, one is begging God or Lancelot: the power of either is too overwhelming to impose any shame for defeat. Other exceptions occur. A false and forsworn knight need not be given mercy, but should be made to die in sorrow and shame. The door to interpretation is clearly left ajar. Yet the formula is routinely displayed in action, and is prescriptively invoked by the authors no less than the self-interested figures kneeling in fear of death before their conquerors. I would like to term this general pattern of defeat and mercy the Romance Compromise and identify it as a constituent of knightly ideology. After all, it carries out important ideological work: the danger of a disruptive paradox between mercy and vengeance is averted. Knights can have their | vengeance – and by not 178 killing their enemy with a final swift sword stroke, they can consider themselves blessed participants in an economy of mercy, imitating their ultimate Lord in their earthly combats. How closely ideology linked with life will be the question naturally troubling all empirical minds. So serious an issue undoubtedly deserves more than the cursory glance possible at the end of this paper; yet the question cannot be completely shoved under the rug with the usual academic disclaimers. Does it matter that romance presents such a pattern? One link between the Romance Compromise and a world of very real medieval warriors might be found in a phenomenon emphasized by Matthew qui bien voit qu’il n’en puet autrement eschaper. Et il le laisse maintenant et dist a lui et a son compaingnon : « Signeur, vous estes mi prison. » « Verités est, » font il.”

388

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Strickland and John Gillingham. Both have argued the increasing likelihood during the High Middle Ages that prisoners would not be slaughtered after their defeat in battle.24 Did the compromise on vengeance and mercy form the religious and moral underpinnings for this significant phenomenon? Debate would focus on the relative weights of fairly abstract ideas and the pragmatic business of ransoms, military tactics – or prudence. While leaving tough tactical issues to specialists more adept at their discussion, I remain convinced that ideas in general mattered to the knighthood and that it is important for us to try to understand how they worked in the chivalric world. The process cannot have been simple and unidirectional; if an analogy is needed, alternating current works better than direct current for the flow of ideas. We can well suspect (as in the case of William Marshal) that real-world knightly exploits and views made considerable contributions to the ideas represented in chivalric literature, even if the writer wore a tonsure. The relationship between the ideas of clerics and knights can only have been complex. All ideas did not originate in clerical minds, to be force-fed to thick warriors obstinately trying to remain secular. Nor were all knights simply loyal and unwaveringly obedient sons of Holy Mother Church. They assuredly had deeply-held ideals of their own, including religious and moral principles. At important points chasms divided essential elements of the knightly professional ethic from the demanding principles of their religion. The writers who composed for them and spoke to them in all the forms of their literature had their work cut out for them; they had to build bridges over the chasms.25 We should strive to | understand these ideological bridging structures and how well they worked. If we succeed we will ensure a more nuanced view of the lay elite within medieval society. |

24

25

Matthew Strickland, War and Chivalry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); John Gillingham, “1066 and the Introduction of Chivalry into England,” in George Garnet and John Hudson, eds., Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). These themes feature in my forthcoming book, Holy Warriors (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press). A good example of this bridging work involving vengeance and mercy appears in an exemplum of Etienne de Bourbon in which a dead knight’s body laid out on a marvellous ship comes to Arthur’s court. The body bears a message calling for vengeance on the killer. Etienne notes that although vengeance is not the letter of the Gospel, just revenge here should be taken, for Christ was himself “pugil noster in navicula crucis.” See A. Lecoy de la Marche, ed., Anecdotes historiques (Paris, 1877), 86–87.

Index Arthur 180, 221, 223, 240, 245, 274–75, 277, 301, 306, 308–12, 316, 318–19, 322, 382, 384 asceticism 238, 330, 334–37, 340, 348–49, 351, 356, 365–67, 369, 370–72, 374, 376 assize 72, 164 of novel disseisin 127, 136, 147 Avignon 85, 87–88, 90–91 bankers 9, 12–13, 16–18, 20, 24–25, 29–34, 37–45, 56, 58, 69, 73, 89, 91 Bannockburn, battle of 79, 244–45, 250–51 Barbour, John 201, 243–53, 297, 301, 302, 347 Beauchamp, William, earl of Warwick 22, 28 Beaumanoir, Philippe de 296 Benson, Larry D. 297 Beuflour, James 121, 123, 149 Bloch, Marc 205–06, 269, 280, 298, 331 Bordeaux 9, 75, 77–78, 80, 87 Bors 215, 271, 282–85, 287–88, 292–93, 311, 382–83 Bruce, Edward 244, 246, 250, 297, 301 Bruce, Robert 243–45, 247–52, 297, 301, 347 Bruges 8, 11, 76–77, 81, 83, 85–86, 91 Bynum, Caroline 340, 356 Caesarius of Heisterbach 344, 372 Cam, Helen 111, 280 castles 20, 21, 23–24, 26–29, 36–37, 39, 77–78, 134, 149, 156, 165, 178, 194, 203, 209, 215, 236, 245, 248, 277–78, 282, 285, 287, 292–93, 304, 314, 349, 368, 378, 382–83 chancery 71, 73, 105, 108, 110, 114, 117, 119, 123, 125–27 Chanson d’Aspremont 212 Chanson de geste 175, 186, 197, 202, 205–06, 208–09, 229, 236, 249–51, 267, 269, 282–83, 296–97, 311, 336–37, 346, 379 Chanson de Roland (Song of Roland) 159, 212, 311 Charlemagne 212, 309, 311 Charles the Good 313

Charles of Anjou 267 Charles of Valois 16 Charny, Geoffroi de 204, 213, 235, 237, 244, 247, 250–51, 254, 262–63, 268, 270, 272, 298, 300, 305–07, 310, 314, 336–37, 349, 352–60, 369–70, 375, 381 canon law 141–42, 331, 345, 361, 374 Chaucer, Geoffrey 173 Clairvaux, Bernard of 237, 332, 348, 368 Clanchy, M. T. 155–56 Cobham, Thomas 367 Cohen, Esther 348 Cologne 238, 305 commercial revolution 3–7, 18, 169 confession 178–79, 185, 213, 215, 217–18, 238, 265, 306, 331, 339, 343, 345, 372, 377 courtliness 157, 186–87, 193, 203, 210, 236, 267–68, 281, 289–90, 293–95, 322 courtly love 157, 210, 290 crusade 12, 16–17, 31–32, 107, 185, 204, 207, 217, 237–38, 252–53, 256, 263, 266, 302, 306, 309, 332, 338, 352, 356, 358, 372–74, 380, 382 crusaders 217, 237, 358, 380, 382 Crouch, David 201, 230, 256, 314 Despensers 110, 123, 149, 150 Douglas, Sir James 244, 245, 247–48, 252 Dublin 9, 67 Duby, Georges 209, 230, 314 Edward i 9, 12–13, 15–26, 30–34, 35–42, 44–45, 47–49, 50–52, 54, 56, 57, 60, 62–63, 67, 71–75, 77, 90, 99, 101–02, 107–08, 113, 116, 118, 121, 128, 136, 139, 140, 142, 145, 153, 168, 176 Edward ii 5, 42, 51–54, 56, 58, 60, 62–64, 67, 69, 70, 73, 78–81, 84, 86, 88–90, 99, 109–10, 116, 122, 128, 130, 137, 151–52, 161, 164 Edward iii 112, 117, 143, 182 Edward iv 182 Edwards, J.G. 36–37 Elias, Norbert 262, 280–81, 294, 383

390

Index

exchequer 6, 18, 23, 29, 30–31, 44, 47, 59–60, 64–65, 67–68, 70–71, 74–75, 78–79, 81–82, 84, 89, 111, 119, 151, 184, 205 exemplum 18, 321–22, 339, 359, 368, 371, 374, 378 eyre 102–03, 107–09, 111, 119, 143, 154–56, 165, 177

Henry V 304 Henry of Lancaster 349–52, 354, 356–60 Henry, the young king 232, 238 History of the Kings of Britain 180 Hundred Years War 16, 219, 303, 349, 352, 356 Hyams, Paul 203, 361, 378

fairs 7–8, 11, 17, 61 feud 119, 147, 151, 153, 176–77, 187–88, 202–03, 313. See also private war feudalism 19–20, 26, 117–18, 170, 187, 270, 297–98, 349 bastard feudalism 117 finance 5, 9, 24–26, 30, 37–39, 42, 44–45, 205, 370 customs 23, 29–31, 37–38, 40–41, 48–51, 53, 56–57, 61–70, 72, 74–75, 78, 80, 107 Flanders 9, 67, 255, 266, 313 Florence 5, 41, 67, 73, 85–86, 87 France 8, 10, 15–16, 40, 43, 86, 182, 197, 273, 295, 352, 368–69, 372 Frappier, Jean 384 Foucault, Michel 281 Fougères, Etienne de 375–76

Innocent iii 207, 367

gaol delivery 163, 165 Gascony 12, 16, 21, 35, 38, 40, 44, 49, 55, 57, 69, 74–75, 77–78, 80, 87, 91 Gawain 215, 218, 241, 274–75, 282, 285, 288, 293, 306–07, 384 gentry 108, 115–18, 120, 153, 159, 161, 169, 177–79, 210–11 Gerald of Wales 302, 347, 367, 368 Giddens, Anthony 281 Gillingham, John 281, 388 Gower, John 173–74, 181 Gray, Sir Thomas 297 Great Rising of 1381 174, 181 Green, Richard Firth 185 Guenevere 218, 239–40, 290, 297, 310–11, 384 Harding, Alan 103 Haskins, Charles Homer 267, 298 Havelock the Dane 180, 210, 213 Henry I 35 Henry ii 35, 153, 175, 182, 186, 209, 238, 241, 303, 362 Henry iii 19, 44, 153

Jaeger, C. Stephen 202, 281 James, William 339, 356 justices, retaining of 117, 181 Justices of the peace 103, 120, 154, 156, 167, 177 Kay, Sara 380 keepers of the peace 112, 313 Keen, Maurice 213, 314 Kennedy, Elspeth 255–6-, 296, 314 kingship 19, 97, 108, 180–1, 184, 186, 197, 310 Lancelot 202, 215, 230–31, 233–34, 236–42, 244–45, 250, 264, 271–72, 274–75, 279, 282–83, 285–93, 300–01, 306–11, 318, 336, 347, 384–85, 387 Langland, William 164, 173, 181 Lateran Councils 371 Fourth Lateran Council 239, 264, 339, 382 Legge, M. Dominica 349 livery 99, 156 Livre de chevalerie 204, 235–36, 352, 381 Llull, Ramon 206, 273, 297, 309–10, 313, 342 London 8–10, 14, 17–18, 20–23, 29, 31–32, 38, 43, 48–49, 57–59, 65, 68, 72, 74–75, 79–80, 82–85, 89, 98, 118, 146, 158, 342 Louis vi 214, 368 Louis vii 186 Louis viii 380 Louis ix 267 Low Countries 7–8, 43 Maddicott, J. R. 109, 117 Magna Carta 35, 109 maintenance 95, 99, 295

391

Index Malory, Sir Thomas 209, 214–15, 235–36, 239–41, 244, 261, 270, 300–01, 307, 309–11, 315, 318, 320, 323, 338, 346 Maredudd, Rhys ap 20, 26, 28, 33, 41 Marshal, William 202, 204, 209, 230–32, 234–35, 237–42, 246, 268, 270, 297, 302–03, 305–07, 360, 380–81, 388 McFarlane, K.B. 146 Meleagant 239, 286, 288, 292 Merlin 187, 278, 320 Merlin Continuation 236, 269, 277, 312, 382, 385 Molyns, John 123, 129, 135 Montfort, Simon de 35, 302 Ordainers 51, 71, 77–79 Ordene de chevalerie 297 Order of the Star 310, 349, 352 Order of the Garter 349 Orderic Vitalis 269, 275–6, 277, 305, 313 ordo/ordines 251, 256, 257, 263, 329–30, 334, 337, 339, 361–62, 364–66, 370, 375 Parliament 31, 35, 54, 56, 67, 74, 78, 105, 107–08, 111–12, 125, 129, 131, 143, 147, 174 Paris 8–9, 86, 254–55, 371–72 Paschal ii 368 Paul 67, 342, 367 Pellehan 277–8, 385 penance 250, 265, 275, 307, 339, 351–52, 358, 382 petitions 54, 56, 61, 105, 107–17, 121, 125–27, 129–32, 136–37, 140, 142–44, 147–48, 150, 152, 160–61, 164, 167–69, 178–80, 254 Perceval 274, 277, 303, 304 Perlevaus; the High Book of the Grail 269, 275, 303 Philip ii, Augustus 186 Philip iv 15–16, 35, 40, 56 piety 14, 184, 206, 217, 231, 237–39, 242, 259, 263, 270, 298, 306–08, 316, 319, 330, 332–34, 337–38, 340, 349, 351, 357 lay piety 237, 239, 307, 333 Pirenne, Henri 171, 280 Pisan, Christine de 309 Pitt-Rivers, Julian 295, 348, 379 Pollard, A.J. 181 ports 19, 48, 57, 62

pre-Raphaelite 185, 227, 233, 246, 259, 273, 323, 345 private war 188, 283, 295, 313–14. See also feud Public Record Office 6, 91, 98, 100, 103, 127, 160, 171 Quest of the Holy Grail 236, 306, 308 rape 186, 190, 283, 290–91, 314, 344, 369 Raoul de Cambrai 212, 218, 250, 379–81 ravaging (looting/pillaging/laying waste)  202, 217, 248, 295, 299, 334, 341, 369 religious orders 216, 355, 357 houses/foundations 13, 115, 116, 134, 147, 159, 238, 305, 332 Reynard the fox 96, 175, 184–97, 211 Roman de Renart 185 Richard I 214, 302 Robin Hood 162–63, 173–74, 181, 210 Ruskin, John 330, 361–376 safe-conduct 21, 59, 71, 73, 87, 89, 187, 349, 356 Sagremore 282–85, 292–93, 383 Sayles, G.O. 110, 158 sheriff 72, 74–75, 82, 85, 89, 107, 120, 131, 134–35, 137–38, 142, 146–47, 149, 158–59, 162–69, 181, 210 siege 28, 194, 202, 209, 235, 263, 276, 302, 304, 349 Southern, Sir Richard 270 statute 35, 100, 107, 128, 145, 168, 181 of Winchester (1285) 100–01, 151 of Westminster (1275) 107, 109, 119 of Westminster (1285) 111, 143 of Northampton (1328) 144 Story of Merlin, The 215, 270, 301, 310, 382–83 Strickland, Matthew 281, 387–8 Stubbs, Bishop William 34, 35, 38, 280, 361–62 Suger, Abbot of St Denis 185, 214, 313, 368 taxation 38, 43, 324 Thomas of Cantimpré 343–44 tournament 207, 215, 228, 231–34, 238–39, 259–60, 263, 266, 271, 283, 285–87, 291, 293, 297, 300–01, 316–17, 338, 343, 347, 351, 353, 359–60, 381

392 Tout, T.F. 24, 38, 42, 64 trade 7–8, 37, 258, 345, 363, 370–71 trailbaston 100–04, 108–10, 135, 161–62, 164, 176 Troyes, Chrétien de 213, 237, 244, 273, 282, 297, 304, 306, 308 Valence, Aymer de 246, 368 vengeance 197, 203, 236, 241, 276, 279, 295, 312, 330, 334–35, 340–41, 345, 355, 359, 365, 377–81

Index Victorian 179, 203, 222, 227–29, 237, 260, 361–62, 365, 370, 376 Vienne 85–87 Vitry, Jacques de 371–72, 375 warfare 3–6, 34, 97, 101, 176, 182, 189, 202, 263–68, 295, 299, 304, 330, 342, 353, 356, 367 White, Stephen 378 William of Holland 267 William of Newburgh 208