The Letters of Edward I: Political Communication in the Thirteenth Century 9781783274154, 1783274158

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The Letters of Edward I

This book situates letters within medieval theories of composition and habits of reception, to argue that even mundane letters of governance were rhetorical texts. It focuses on the example of Edward I of England, whose rhetorical prowess was noted, often critically, by contemporaries. It shows how the king’s correspondence varied in tone, vocabulary and structure across his reign and between recipients, revealing an unexpected dynamism of political discourse. Moving between historical context and close readings of individual letters, this volume identifies letter-writing as an art through which the king and his government attempted to negotiate and mould relationships with political communities and diplomatic interlocutors alike.

Political Communication in the Thirteenth Century

A

s formulaic in appearance as they are abundant in the archives, it is easy to underestimate the power of the letters generated by medieval governments, but these acts of communication were more than mere containers of information. Operating at the intersection of the spoken and the written, the performed and the observed, they produced a discourse that maximized royal authority and promoted solidarity between sender and recipient.

KATHLEEN NEAL is Lecturer in History at Monash University.

Kathleen B. Neal

Design: Toni Michelle Cover: Adapted from The National Archives seal, ref. DL10/206.

Kathleen B. Neal

The Letters of Edward I

The Letters of Edward I Political Communication in the Thirteenth Century

Kathleen B. Neal

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© Kathleen B. Neal 2021 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Kathleen B. Neal to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published 2021 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 978 1 78327 415 4 hardback ISBN 978 1 80010 110 4 ePDF

The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mount Hope Ave, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate Cover: Adapted from The National Archives seal, ref. DL10/206 Design: Toni Michelle

For Barry, who always asks the right questions; And for Henry, who always supports me, no matter the answers.

Contents List of Illustrations viii Preface ix Abbreviations x Introduction. Letters and the Language of Power

1

1. Royal Letters: The Authority of a Form

24

2. Rhetorical Refinement: Epistolary Editing and its Implications

50

3. Announcing the Message: Communities of Reception and Royal Ideology 75 4. ‘Dear Cousin’: Affect and Epistolarity beyond Borders

96

5. Keeping Friends Close: Strategies of Epistolary Alignment

125

6. Rhetoric under Strain: Re-writing Royal Epistolarity

150

Conclusion. Royal Epistolarity: The Voice of the King

180

Appendix 184 Bibliography 205 Acknowledgements 229 Index 232

vii

Illustrations Figure1. Map depicting the maximal extent of lands under Edward I’s dominion. Illustration by Cath D’Alton.

xviii

Figure 2. Draft letter of Edward I to certain barons of the Agenais, in the hand of Scribe W; SC 1/12/23. Reproduced by kind permission of The National Archives of the UK. Photograph by K. B. Neal.

61

Figure 3. Letter to Edward I from Eleanor de Montfort, showing punctuation for rhetoric; SC 1/17/2. Reproduced by kind permission of The National Archives of the UK. Photograph by K. B. Neal.

79

Figure 4. Graph showing the frequency of Edward I’s diplomatic letters extant in The National Archives; SC 1.

99

viii

Preface I have been thinking about medieval letters for over ten years. This book is a partial harvest of those labours. It is far from everything that could be said about letters, and probably not the last word I will have to say about them, either. There is so much to say about letters that it took me a long time to find a way to say something about them. This is not the book I thought I was writing when I began, and it probably bears only passing resemblance to the book that was originally contracted (sorry, Caroline). But, in the end, it gradually became the book I wanted to write. I hope that it will enable medieval royal letters to be viewed in a new way.

ix

Abbreviations Acta, ed. Kern

Acta Imperii Angliae et Franciae ab a. 1267 ad a. 1313: Dokumente vornehmlich zur Geschichte der auswärtigen Beziehungen Deutschlands in ausländischen Archiven, ed. F. Kern (Tübingen, 1911).

Admin. Ire.

H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, The Administration of Ireland, 1172–1377 (Dublin, 1963).

AHR

American Historical Review.

AND2

Anglo-Norman Dictionary.

Ann. Mon.

Annales Monastici, ed. H. R. Luard, RS 36, 5 vols (London, 1864–9).

ANS

Anglo-Norman Studies.

AWR

The Acts of Welsh Rulers, 1120–1283, ed. H. Pryce with C. Insley, Corrected edn (Cardiff, 2010).

Baldwin, Council

J. F. Baldwin, The King’s Council in England during the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1913).

Barker, Identities

R. Barker, Legitimating Identities: The Self-Presentations of Rulers and Subjects (Cambridge, 2001).

BIHR

Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research.

BJRL

Bulletin of the John Rylands Library.

BL

British Library, London.

BPHCTHS

Bulletin philologique et historique du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques.

Brodie, ‘Communication’

H. Brodie, ‘Punching above Gwynedd’s Weight: Llywelyn ap Gruffudd’s Diplomatic Communication and the Road to War in 1277’, Studia Celtica 53 (2019), 21–47.

x

ABBREVIATIONS

Burt, Governance

C. Burt, Edward I and the Governance of England, 1272–1307 (Cambridge, 2013).

CACW

Calendar of Ancient Correspondence Concerning Wales, ed. J. G. Edwards (Cardiff, 1935).

Camargo, Ars Dictaminis

M. Camargo, Ars Dictaminis / Ars Dictandi (Turnhout, 1991).

CCR

Calendar of the Close Rolls.

CDI

Calendar of Documents Relating to Ireland, 1171–1307, ed. H. S. Sweetman, 5 vols (London, 1875–86).

CDS

Calendar of Documents in the Public Record Office relating to Scotland, 1108–1509, ed. J. S. Bain, G. G. Simpson and J. D. Galbraith, 5 vols (Edinburgh, 1861–1970).

Chaplais, EDPMA

Chaplais, English Diplomatic Practice in the Middle Ages (London and New York, 2003).

CHJ

Cambridge Historical Journal.

CIPM

Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem.

Clanchy, Memory

M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1993).

Constable, Letters

G. Constable, Letters and Letter-Collections (Turnhout, 1976).

Constable, ‘Structure’

G. Constable, ‘The Structure of Medieval Society According to the Dictatores of the Twelfth Century’, Law, Church, and Society: Essays in Honor of Stephan Kuttner, ed. K. Pennington and R. Somerville (Philadelphia, 1977), 253–67.

Cotton, ed. Luard

Bartholomæi de Cotton, Monachi Norwicensis Historia Anglicana (A.D. 449–1298), ed. H. R. Luard, RS 16 (London, 1859).

CPR

Calendar of the Patent Rolls.

Crawford, Queens

Letters of the Queens of England 1100–1547, ed. A. Crawford (Stroud, 1994).

Crisis, ed. Prestwich

Documents Illustrating the Crisis of 1297–98 in England, ed. M. Prestwich, Camden Society, 4th ser., 24 (London, 1980).

xi

ABBREVIATIONS

Cron. maior.

De Antiquis Legibus Liber: Cronica Maiorum et Vicecomitum Londoniarum, ed. T. Stapleton, Camden Society, Old ser., 34 (London, 1846).

Crouch, Aristocracy

D. Crouch, The English Aristocracy, 1070–1272: A Social Transformation (New Haven, 2011).

DBMRR

Documents of the Baronial Movement of Reform and Rebellion, ed. R. E. Treharne and I. J. Sanders (Oxford, 1973).

Dipl. Docs

Diplomatic Documents Preserved in the Public Record Office, ed. P. Chaplais (London, 1964).

Dipl. Norv.

Diplomatarium Norvegicum: Oldbreve til Kundskab om Norges Indre og Ytre Forhold, Sprog, Slegter, Seder, Lovgivning og Rettergang i Middelalderen, 21 vols (Christiana, 1910).

DMLBS 

Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, ed. R. E. Latham et al., 17 fasc. (Oxford, 1975–2013).

Documents, ed. Sayles

Documents on the Affairs of Ireland before the King’s Council, ed. G. O. Sayles (Dublin, 1979).

Documents, ed. Stevenson

Documents Illustrative of the History of Scotland, ed. J. Stevenson, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1870).

Documents, ed. Stones

Anglo-Scottish Relations, 1174–1328: Some Selected Documents, ed. E. L. G. Stones, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1970).

Dodd, Justice

G. Dodd, Justice and Grace: Private Petitioning and the English Parliament in the Late Middle Ages (Oxford, 2007).

Duncan, Kingship

A. A. M. Duncan, The Kingship of the Scots, 842–1292: Succession and Independence, Reprint edn (Edinburgh, 2016).

EDD

English Diplomatic Documents, ed. P. Chaplais (London, 1971).

EHD

English Historical Documents 1189–1327, ed. and trans. H. Rothwell (London, 1975).

EHR

English Historical Review.

EMDP

English Medieval Diplomatic Practice, ed. P. Chaplais, 2 vols (London, 1975).

xii

ABBREVIATIONS

FCE

Fourteenth Century England, ed. N. Saul et al. (Woodbridge, 2000–).

Fleta

Fleta, ed. H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, 3 vols, Selden Society, 72, 89, 119 (London, 1955–83).

Fœdera

Fœdera, Conventiones, Litteræ, et Cujuscunque Generis Publica, ed. T. Rymer, 4 vols in 7 parts (Record Commission, 1816–69).

Gelting, ‘Reflections’

M. H. Gelting, ‘Reflections on the Insertion of Bureaucratic Structures in Medieval Clientelic Societies’, Law and Power in the Middle Ages: Proceedings of the Fourth Carlsberg Academy Conference on Medieval Legal History 2007, ed. P. Andersen, M. MünsterSwendsen and H. Vogt (Copenhagen, 2008), 257–68.

Grammar and Rhetoric

Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric: Language Arts and Literary Theory, AD 300–1475, ed. R. Copeland and I. Sluiter (Oxford, 2012).

Grévin, Rhétorique

B. Grévin, Rhétorique du pouvoir médiéval: Les lettres de Pierre de la Vigne et la formation du langage politique européen (XIIIe–XVe siècles) (Rome, 2013)

Guisborough, ed. Rothwell

The Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, ed. H. Rothwell, Camden Society, 3rd ser., 89 (London, 1957).

Hélary, ‘Les liens’

X. Hélary, ‘Les liens personnels entre les cours de France et d’Angleterre sous le règne de Philippe III, 1270–1285’, TCE 12 (2008), 75–89.

Hengham, Summae

Radulphi de Hengham: Summae, ed. W. H. Dunham Jr (Cambridge, 1932).

Hennings, ‘Language’

L. Hennings, ‘The Language of Kingship under Henry III: Civilian, Canonical, and Dictaminal Ideas in Practice, c. 1230–c. 1252’ (unpublished D.Phil. dissertation, University of Oxford, 2017).

Hist. J.

The Historical Journal.

Hist. Res.

Historical Research.

Hist. Soc. Res.

Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung.

Howell, Eleanor

M. Howell, Eleanor of Provence: Queenship in ThirteenthCentury England (Oxford, 1998).

IHS

Irish Historical Studies.

xiii

ABBREVIATIONS

Itinerary, ed. Gough

Itinerary of King Edward the First throughout his Reign, A.D. 1272–1307, Exhibiting his Movements so Far as they Are Recorded, ed. H. Gough, 2 vols (Paisley, 1900).

Itinerary, ed. Safford Itinerary of Edward I, ed. E. W. Safford, 3 vols (London, 1974–7). JBS

Journal of British Studies.

JEH

Journal of Ecclesiastical History.

JLH

Journal of Legal History.

JMH

Journal of Medieval History.

JRAS

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.

Language and Culture Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England c. 1100–c. 1500, ed. J. Wogan-Browne, C. Collette, M. Kowaleski, L. Mooney, A. Putter and D. Trotter (York, 2009). Latini, Rettorica

B. Latini, ‘Rettorica, ca. 1260’, Grammar and Rhetoric, 753–79.

Letters, ed. Wood

Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies of Great Britain: From the Commencement of the Twelfth Century to the Close of the Reign of Queen Mary, ed. M. A. E. Wood, 3 vols (London, 1846).

Lettres de rois

Lettres de rois, reines et autres personnages des cours de France et d’Angleterre: Depuis Louis VII jusqu’à Henri IV, tirées des archives de Londres, ed. J. J. ChampollionFigeac, 2 vols (Paris, 1839).

Lettres, ed. Tanquerey

Recueil de lettres anglo-françaises, ed. F. J. Tanquerey (Paris, 1916).

LHR

Law History Review.

Littere Wallie

Littere Wallie Preserved in Liber A in the Public Record Office, ed. J. G. Edwards (Cardiff, 1940).

LQR

Law Quarterly Review.

Maddicott, ‘Lessons’ J. R. Maddicott, ‘Edward I and the Lessons of Baronial Reform: Local Government, 1258–80’, TCE 1 (1986), 1–30. Maddicott, Origins

J. R. Maddicott, The Origins of the English Parliament, 924–1327 (Oxford, 2010).

xiv

ABBREVIATIONS

Maxwell-Lyte, Notes

H. C. Maxwell-Lyte, Historical Notes on the Use of the Great Seal of England (London, 1926).

McFarlane, Nobility

K. B. McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England: The Ford Lectures for 1953 and Related Studies (Oxford, 1973).

Medieval Petitions

Medieval Petitions: Grace and Grievance, ed. W. M. Ormrod, G. Dodd and A. Musson (York, 2009).

MIÖG

Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung.

Morris, Edward I

Marc Morris, A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain (London, 2008).

Morris, Wars

J. E. Morris, The Welsh Wars of Edward I (Stroud, 1996).

Murphy, Rhetoric

J. J. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1974); Reprint edn (Tempe, 2001).

Neal, ‘Discourse’

K. Neal, ‘Letters and Political Discourse under Edward I’, Edward I: New Interpretations, ed. A. King and A. M. Spencer (York, 2020), 143–62.

Neal, ‘Loyalty’

K. Neal, ‘From Letters to Loyalty: Aline la Despenser and the Meaning(s) of a Noblewoman’s Correspondence in Thirteenth-Century England’, Authority, Gender and Emotion in Late Medieval and Early Modern England, ed. S. Broomhall (Basingstoke, 2015), 18–33.

Neal, ‘Weapons’

K. Neal, ‘Words as Weapons in the Correspondence of Edward I with Llywelyn ap Gruffydd’, Parergon 30:1 (2013), 51–71.

Negotiating the Gift

Negotiating the Gift: Pre-Modern Figurations of Exchange, ed. G. Algazi, V. Groebner and B. Jussen (Göttingen, 2003).

NML

Nottingham Medieval Literatures.

NMS

Nottingham Medieval Studies.

ODNB

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004); (online edn, 2008, available at http://www.oxforddnb. com).

Prestwich, Edward I

M. Prestwich, Edward I, 2nd edn (London and New Haven, 1997). xv

ABBREVIATIONS

PRIAC

Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature.

Proc. Brit. Acad.

Proceedings of the British Academy.

PROME

Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, ed. C. GivenWilson et al. (Woodbridge, 2005) (available online at: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/ parliament-rolls-medieval).

PW

The Parliamentary Writs and Writs of Military Summons, ed. F. Palgrave, 2 vols in 4 parts, Record Commission (London, 1827–34).

Rationes Dictandi

Anonymous of Bologna, ‘Rationes Dictandi’, Three Medieval Rhetorical Arts, ed. and trans. J. J. Murphy (Tempe, 1971), 1–25.

RBPH

Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire.

Records, ed. Prynne

The History of King John, King Henry III, and the Most Illustrious King Edward the I…, ed. W. Prynne, 3 vols (London, 1670).

Ren. Quart.

Renaissance Quarterly.

RG

Rôles gascons, ed. M. Francisque and C. Bémont, 3 vols (Paris, 1886–1906).

Rhetoric and Renewal

Rhetoric and Renewal in the Latin West 1100–1540: Essays in Honour of John O. Ward, ed. C. J. Mews, C. J. Nederman and R. M. Thompson (Turnhout, 2003).

Richardson, ‘Office’ H. G. Richardson, ‘The Coronation in Medieval England: The Evolution of the Office and the Oath’, Traditio 16 (1960), 111–201. Rishanger, ed. Riley

Willelmi Rishanger, quondam Monachi S. Albani, et Quorundam Anonymorum, Chronica et Annales, Regnantibus Henrico Tertio et Edwardo Primo: A.D. 1259–1307, ed. H. T. Riley, RS 28 (London, 1865).

Rot. Scot.

Rotuli Scotiae in Turri Londonensi et in Domo Capitulari Westmonasteriensi, ed. D. MacPherson et al., 2 vols (London, 1814–19).

Royal Docs

English Royal Documents, King John–Henry VI, 1199–1461, ed. P. Chaplais (Oxford, 1971).

xvi

ABBREVIATIONS

Royal Letters

Royal and Other Historical Letters Illustrative of the Reign of Henry III, ed. W. W. Shirley, 2 vols, RS 27 (London, 1866).

RRS

Regesta Regum Scottorum, 1153–1424, ed. G. W. S. Barrow, et al. (Edinburgh, 1960–).

RS

Rolls Series.

Ruddick, ‘Limits’

A. C. Ruddick, ‘Gascony and the Limits of Medieval British Isles History’, Ireland and the English World in the Late Middle Ages, ed. B. Smith (Basingstoke, 2009), 68–88.

Sayles, Functions

G. O. Sayles, The Functions of the Medieval Parliament of England (London, 1988).

SHR

Scottish Historical Review.

Smith, Llywelyn 

J. B. Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales, New English edn (Cardiff, 2014).

Spencer, Nobility

A. M. Spencer, Nobility and Kingship in Medieval England: The Earls and Edward I, 1272–1307 (Cambridge, 2013).

TCE

Thirteenth Century England, ed. P. Coss et al. (Woodbridge, 1986–).

TCHS

Transactions of the Caernarfonshire Historical Society.

TNA

The National Archives, Kew.

TR

Treaty Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, ed. P. Chaplais and J. Ferguson, 2 vols (London, 1955–72).

TRHS

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society.

Tria Sunt

Anonymous, ‘Tria Sunt (after 1265, before 1400)’, Grammar and Rhetoric, 670–81.

Trivet, ed. Hog

Nicholai Triveti … Annales Sex Regum Angliae, ed. T. Hog, English Historical Society (London, 1845).

Vale, Legacy

M. Vale, The Angevin Legacy: The Origins of the Hundred Years War, 1250–1340, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1996).

Welsh Hist. Rev.

Welsh History Review.

WHR

Women’s History Review.

xvii

Figure 1. Maximal extent of lands under Edward I’s dominion.

Introduction Letters and the Language of Power This book is about language and how it is manipulated to sustain models of power and authority. It is also about the limits of the capacity of language to manipulate: the moments when rhetoric fails to achieve its goals. It explores these questions through the example of royal letters in the reign of Edward I of England. Letters such as these are an important manifestation of rhetoric as it developed in the later middle ages. Medieval rhetoric took many forms, each of which responded to the needs and pressures of its immediate context, while drawing on classical antecedents.1 It was not merely a matter of ‘style’, an aesthetic of purely decorative purpose. Although contemporaries debated the precise nature of the relationship, medieval rhetoric and politics were intimately entwined.2 Wherever the form, mode or extent of political participation was a living question, rhetoric had a crucial part to play in political culture.3 In the kingdom of Aragon, for example, in the context of external threats and internal dissension, the mode of assembly politics made royal speeches a rhetorical form of particular power and significance, and several of its kings became orators of note.4 In England, the emergence of parliament as a core political institution produced a related platform for a culture of political speech to flourish, especially from the fourteenth century when opposition to Edward II, the long military campaigns of the Hundred Years War, and the demographic fallout of the Black Death made achieving political consensus a difficult and pressing task.5 Even before this, however, letters constituted an important medium

1 The view that medieval rhetoric was merely a degenerate and fragmented (mis)understanding of classical rhetoric no longer holds sway, although this construction still informs some arguments on the periodization of the medieval and Renaissance respectively; see M. Camargo, ‘Defining Medieval Rhetoric’, Rhetoric and Renewal, 21–34 (argument summarized on pp. 21–2). 2 Grammar and Rhetoric, especially Part 5. 3 V. Cox, ‘Rhetoric and Medieval Politics’, The Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies (Oxford, 2017), 329–42. 4 See S. F. Cawsey, Kingship and Propaganda: Royal Eloquence and the Crown of Aragon c.1200– 1450 (Oxford, 2002). 5 Cox, ‘Rhetoric’, pp. 331–3; J. A. Doig, ‘Political Propaganda and Royal Proclamations in Late Medieval England’, Hist. Res. 71:176 (1998), 253–80.

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in which royal power was proclaimed and its relationship to a wider political community was negotiated. Medieval letters were highly structured, formal and formulaic documents, the parts and production of which had been theorized and taxonomized since at least the eleventh century.6 Mastery of the skills of producing them had to be taught,7 and offered a means of entry into service of the governing elites for men of lower status.8 Within the fundamentals of epistolary practice, and under the influence of increasingly professionalized legal systems, the English royal administration was one of many bureaucracies which generated a dizzying array of specialized forms, each with its own standards of structure, expression and application. Understanding of and proficiency in reproducing such norms were signs of belonging to the institutions of power. In other words, the art of medieval letter-writing, dictamen itself, was among the discourses that kept the powerful in power. It was oriented precisely towards the maintenance of the status quo, through the articulation and reinforcement of existing power structures and the ideologies that sustained them. It was, in Pierre Bourdieu’s terms, an ‘official language’.9 Although when he described this concept Bourdieu was discussing the nationalization of the French language and its place in modern state formation, his words have a familiar ring to anyone acquainted with the position of epistolary discourse in the government of medieval kingdoms. Both are ‘[p]roduced by authors who have the authority to write, [and] fixed and codified by grammarians and teachers who are also charged with the task of inculcating [their] mastery’, and therefore operate as codes ‘in the sense of a system of norms regulating linguistic practices’.10 Like Bourdieu’s ‘official language’, medieval epistolary forms not only expressed but naturalized certain social and political hierarchies and values. As David Matthews has put it, letters were ‘one element in an effort to bring something into being, to enact it in discourse’.11 It is a contention of this book that the letters of a medieval government constituted attempts to bring certain political relationships into being, and their discourse therefore reveals to us the shape of the ideal polity or polities that were desired. 6 On the development of the ars dictaminis, or art of letter-writing, see Camargo, Ars Dictaminis; Murphy, Rhetoric, chapter 5, especially pp. 203–38; Grammar and Rhetoric, especially Part 5. For the structure of letters and its relation to function see also chapter 1. 7 For examples used in teaching, and of students’ letters, see Formularies which Bear on the History of Oxford, c. 1204–1420, ed. H. E. Salter, W. A. Pantin and H. G. Richardson (Oxford, 1942); Lost Letters of Everyday Life: English Society, 1200–1250, ed. M. Carlin and D. Crouch (Philadelphia, 2013); C. H. Haskins, ‘The Life of Mediaeval Students as Illustrated by their Letters’, Studies in Mediaeval Culture (New York, 1929), 1–35. 8 I. Cornelius, ‘The Rhetoric of Advancement: Ars Dictaminis, Cursus, and Clerical Careerism in Late Medieval England’, NML 12 (2010), 289–330. 9 P. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge, 1991), especially pp. 44–6. 10 Ibid., p. 45. 11 D. Matthews, Writing to the King: Nation, Kingship and Literature in England, 1250–1350 (Cambridge, 2010), p. 28.

2

INTRODUCTION

Inevitably, in so doing, letters also reveal to us the shape of the anxieties and pressures to which medieval governments responded. Political arts: rhetoric and letters

Royal letters have typically been read from the perspective of administrative and legal history, or through diplomatic, the discipline of identifying specialized documentary forms.12 Studies of this nature have greatly advanced our understanding of the categories and standard forms of particular species of letter, and the chronology of their development. But in putting standards and standardization at the core of the analytic enterprise, such studies also tend not to be interested in the social or discursive functions or effects of letters. As Olivier Guyotjeannin put it, diplomatic has ‘established a corpus of formulas, and revealed habits and models which have conditioned the production of documentation’, but by reifying the act of categorization ‘risks a mere attention to nomenclature’.13 Because most of them are self-evidently formulaic, English royal letters have not traditionally been treated as rhetorical texts. The exceptions that prove this rule have come largely from scholars working in or on the peripheries of English royal engagement, where the reception of the king’s words had obviously political implications.14 The medieval approach to epistolarity, however, understood letters as explicitly rhetorical speech acts – a term I use advisedly. Letters constituted an intermediate oral-written medium, closely affiliated with the oratory of the ancients, and theorists discussed their structure and function in ways linked directly to the persuasive functions and parts of public speech as received from Cicero and other authorities. In other words, it is not only possible to read royal letters of the kind issued under Edward’s seals as rhetorical speech-texts, it is important to do so, because it reflects contemporary assumptions about their composition and communicative capacities. The relationship of medieval letter-writing to rhetoric, and of both to the political arts, was for a long time obscured by scholarly categorization of medieval rhetoric as ‘secondary’ – for which read imperfect and degenerate – to the ‘primary’, oral form of classical rhetoric which was to be ‘reborn’ in the

12

See, for instance, Chaplais, EDPMA; A. Giry, Manuel de diplomatique, Reprint edn (New York, 1965); E. Déprez, Études de diplomatique anglaise de l’avènement d’Edouard Ier à celui de Henri VII (1272–1485): Le sceau privé, le sceau secret, le signet (Paris, 1908). 13 O. Guyotjeannin, ‘The Expansion of Diplomatics as a Discipline’, American Archivist 59 (1996), 414–21 (p. 420). 14 There are some notable exceptions, often generated by scholars working in and on the peripheries of English political history; see, for example, H. Pryce, ‘Owain Gwynedd and Louis VII: The Franco-Welsh Diplomacy of the First Prince of Wales’, Welsh Hist. Rev. 19:1 (1998), 1–28; R. R. Davies, The King of England and the Prince of Wales, 1277–84: Law, Politics and Power (Cambridge, 2003); Brodie, ‘Communication’.

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Renaissance.15 In this construction, medieval rhetoric was merely a stylistic concern, and mainly narrative and literary in form and function, no deliberative or persuasive purpose being admitted. Such a view tended to take the ‘harmonizing’ nature of many medieval texts, noted by Jan Dumolyn, at face value, overlooking the persuasive work that such harmonizing was intended to perform.16 Viewing rhetoric as a stylistic matter also excluded formulaic texts such as royal letters from discussion since many scholars considered them to be devoid of ‘style’ (understood as an aesthetic priority), and subject to purely formulaic and pragmatic criteria of composition. Since the later-twentieth century, this view has gradually given way to an understanding of medieval rhetoric, and with it, medieval theories of letter-writing, that take account of the distinct socio-political and/or ecclesiastical contexts of its operation, making space to acknowledge the discursive work being undertaken.17 Martin Camargo, for instance, building on the foundations laid down by James Murphy, has established the artes dictandi as serious works in the rhetorical tradition.18 This historiographical shift in the study of letter-writing theory has yet to make its presence fully felt in studies of letter-writing practice.19 The pejorative view advanced by Giles Constable in 1976 of thirteenth-century letter-writing as ‘mechanical’ and ‘bureaucratic’, a poor cousin of the literary accomplishments of twelfth-century monastic epistles, still holds considerable sway.20 Aesthetic preferences aside, however, a more important question is whether a written form was fit for purpose, and how its structure and expression facilitated that end. As this book shows, the formulaic nature of thirteenth-century royal letters was far from barren of meaning or political potency. The stakes of acknowledging the rhetorical nature of royal letters are considerable. It opens these texts up to analysis as statements of position, and as markers of tension in contested power relations. According to Virginia Cox, the role of rhetoric in such circumstances was not merely ornamental; it was 15

See Camargo, ‘Defining Medieval Rhetoric’, pp. 22, 26–7, 31–2; Cox, ‘Rhetoric’, pp. 331, 338; V. Cox, ‘Ciceronian Rhetoric in Italy, 1260–1350’, Rhetorica 17 (1999), 239–88; Murphy, Rhetoric, pp. 269–355. 16 J. Dumolyn, ‘Political Communication and Political Power in the Middle Ages: A Conceptual Journey’, Edad Media 13 (2012), 33–55 (pp. 41–2, 45–7). 17 For this shift generally, see, for example, the contributions in Rhetoric and Renewal; J. O. Ward, Classical Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: The Medieval Rhetors and their Art 400–1300, with Manuscript Survey to 1500 CE (Leiden, 2018). 18 Camargo, ‘Defining Medieval Rhetoric’, pp. 26–7; Murphy, Rhetoric, especially pp. 269–355. For Camargo’s impact on the field, see Public Declamations: Essays on Medieval Rhetoric, Education, and Letters in Honour of Martin Camargo, ed. G. Donavin and D. Stodola (Turnhout, 2015). I adopt here the useful, although anachronistic distinction proposed by Camargo between the art of letter-writing (ars dictaminis) and its textual witnesses (artes dictandi); see Camargo, Ars Dictaminis, p. 20. 19 Important exceptions with implications for the English context are: Grévin, Rhétorique; Hennings, ‘Language’. 20 Constable, Letters, p. 37.

4

INTRODUCTION

both an agent in and a beneficiary of this politicizing process: an agent in that it served in negotiations between the crown and the increasingly assertive social groups below it; a beneficiary in that persuasive language came to enjoy an increasing salience as a signifier of rational, consensus-based government.21

The argument and analysis of this book proceed directly from the premise that we must take the rhetorical nature of letters seriously, even when they are ostensibly administrative and formulaic. The formulaic nature of the royal letter in the reign of Edward I was a factor considerably to its advantage as a vehicle of royal power and authority; nor did it prevent clerk or king from tailoring a particular letter to the peculiarities of its context. It is this insight that positions letters – among other contemporary platforms of socio-political negotiation such as petitions and parliaments – at the centre of political discourse.22 Letters in politics, letters as politics

Letters formed part of what Michael Clanchy famously termed the ‘literate mentality’ of medieval governments as they developed and exploited the written word to bring control and accountability – however metaphorical or even imaginary they may have been – to the project of territorial expansion and administrative domination.23 The written word in all its documentary forms became an expression and tool of authority, and the materiality of records, both individually and collectively, physically and conceptually, came to constitute part of the edifice of government. The letter is unusual in this pantheon of sources for medieval political culture in that it was not normally (or not mainly) a post factum account, composed with the intention of making sense of and justifying actions or decisions that had already occurred, or eulogizing the participants. Instead, a letter captured a moment that was explicitly in medias res, when only part of a story was known, and the outcome as yet unknowable.24 21

Cox, ‘Rhetoric’, p. 333. recent analysis has investigated the rhetorical vocabulary of English government in this period, but so far this has not taken specific account of the epistolary form as a constitutive factor. See, for example, A. Ruddick, ‘National Sentiment and Religious Vocabulary in Fourteenth-Century England’, JEH 60:1 (2009), 1–18; A. C. Ruddick, ‘National and Political Identity in Anglo-Scottish Relations, c. 1286–1377: A Governmental Perspective’, England and Scotland in the Fourteenth Century: New Perspectives, ed. A. King and M. Penman (Woodbridge, 2007), 196–215; A. C. Ruddick, ‘Ethnic Identity and Political Language in the King of England’s Dominions: A Fourteenth-Century Perspective’, The Fifteenth Century VI: Identity and Insurgency in the Late Middle Ages, ed. L. Clark (Woodbridge, 2006), 15–31; W. M. Ormrod, ‘The Use of English: Language, Law and Political Culture in Fourteenth-Century England’, Speculum 78 (2003), 750–87. 23 See Clanchy, Memory, especially chapter 1. 24 I exclude from consideration here ‘fictitious’ letters that were composed after the fact as if to represent such a moment of uncertainty, and thereby to perform some interpretive work, e.g. to represent an outcome as divinely foreknown or particular participants as 22 Considerable

5

THE LETTERS OF EDWARD I

Letters were one of the tools by which historical actors, here especially rulers, could seek to influence the flow of events. The construction of letters as a genre was oriented to this end. For this reason, it is essential to consider the epistolarity of correspondence as a fundamental constituent of its place in and reflection of political culture, rather than treating such texts merely as containers of information that happens to have travelled in an epistolary form.25 In any communication system, as Jan Dumolyn has observed, ‘the media are not merely technical tools, they are also socially-created structures associated with commonly understandable “codes”, shared codes of symbols, semiotic systems’.26 The apparatus of a letter – its structure and vocabulary, the rhetorical figures on which it called, the qualities of and socio-political distance between the correspondents that it articulated – all shaped its representation of events to date and informed its attempts to influence recipients and thereby to affect the future. The letter was thus at the centre of the development of a ‘European political language’, in Benoît Grévin’s phrase,27 and the form it took in Edward’s England was unique. This book is therefore as much, or more, about letters and ‘letter-ness’ as it is about Edward and his kingship. The former is necessary in order to interrogate the latter. Edward I’s apparent success at containing criticism from most of his magnates most of the time disguises the fact that this was undoubtedly a period in which political challenges, or at least tensions, affected royal power.28 The conditions proposed by Cox for an increasing role for rhetoric in the political sphere were certainly present.29 The outcome of earlier thirteenth-century English revolts and rebellions amounted to recognition that royal power was indeed negotiable and contested. Although King John and Henry III had been successful in mitigating the degree of oversight that rebel barons had sought to impose upon them, they had not been able to evade all forms of accountability.30 The revolts especially virtuous or prominent; see, for example, S. T. Parsons, ‘The Letters of Stephen of Blois Reconsidered’, Crusades 17 (2018), 1–29; T. W. Smith, ‘First Crusade Letters and Medieval Monastic Scribal Cultures’, JEH 71 (2020), 484–501. I thank Thomas Smith for providing me with an advance copy of his article. I reserve for another occasion discussion of the process by which letters became post factum records, such as through storage or enrolment, and the implications for their meaning and place in political culture that this entailed. 25 The concept of ‘epistolarity’ developed in literary studies as a means of probing the letter as a structuring device in fiction. The insights into letters as a genre generated by this approach have pertinent applications to political letter-writing of the kind examined here, especially by showing the necessity of attention to form as well as content. For its original formulation, see J. G. Altman, Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form (Columbus, 1982). 26 Dumolyn, ‘Political Communication’, p. 50. 27 ‘Langage politique européen’, Grévin, Rhétorique. 28 For general assessments of Edward’s rule, see Prestwich, Edward I; Morris, Edward I; Spencer, Nobility; Burt, Governance. 29 Cox, ‘Rhetoric’, pp. 331–2. 30 On baronial demands and their outcomes in John and Henry’s reigns, see J. C. Holt,

6

INTRODUCTION

of the thirteenth century in England were characterized by alliances between the interests of magnates, church and wider elements of the community: the knights, gentry and even peasantry, and occasionally the magnates of neighbouring domains such as Wales or Scotland.31 The concessions that rebels were able to extract from royal government were a function of the weight of the coalition of these interests. Baronial power increased as a result of their capacity to exploit the concerns of a broader political public to advance their own interests, producing an incentive for barons to advocate for the complaints of the lower orders and represent themselves as their champions. Consequently, monarchs were forced to acknowledge many rebel demands. For example, by the late-thirteenth century, royal government famously began to acknowledge the ‘community of the realm’ as a political force within England in the aftermath of the Barons’ Wars.32 In certain contexts, it became a rhetorically significant framing device for political demands and private requests for equity.33 Even as they made such concessions, however, monarchs sought to maximize their own power and limit the constraints that magnates and other members of the political community were able to enforce. Edward I was an agent of both these political processes, namely the negotiability and the reassertion of royal power. During his reign, efforts were made to broaden the accessibility of mechanisms of redress: the introduction of regular parliaments, the system of petitioning, the enquiries into and enforcement of accountability of royal officials.34 Many of these opportunities were extended graciously to his fideles in lands beyond England too.35 Yet all of these measures to meet the demands of the political community for means of negotiating with – and potentially limiting – royal power could also function as strategies for accruing legitimacy G. Garnett and J. Hudson, Magna Carta, 3rd edn (Cambridge, 2015); Maddicott, Origins, especially chapter 5; R. F. Treharne, The Baronial Plan of Reform, 1258–1263 (Ann Arbor, 1932); J. R. Maddicott, Simon de Montfort (Cambridge, 1994), chapter 5; S. T. Ambler, The Song of Simon de Montfort: The Life and Death of a Medieval Revolutionary (Oxford, 2019). 31 For an overview of revolt in this period, see C. Valente, The Theory and Practice of Revolt in Medieval England (Aldershot, 2003), chapters 3 and 4; L. Sunderland, Rebel Barons: Resisting Royal Power in Medieval Culture (Oxford, 2017), chapter 2. On the medieval conceptualization of revolt, and its recent historiography, see The Routledge History Handbook of Medieval Revolt, ed. J. Firnhaber-Baker and D. Schoenaers (London and New York, 2016), especially Firnhaber-Baker’s Introduction. 32 Maddicott, Origins, chapter 5. 33 W. M. Ormrod, ‘Murmur, Clamour and Noise: Voicing Complaint and Remedy in Petitions to the English Crown, c. 1300–1460’, Medieval Petitions, 135–55. 34 Dodd, Justice, chapter 2; Maddicott, Origins, chapters 5–6, but especially pp. 279, 294–5; P. A. Brand, ‘Edward I and the Judges: The “State Trials” of 1289–93’, TCE 1 (1986), 31–40. 35 For example, for mechanisms for receiving petitions from Gascony, Ireland and Scotland, see Ruddick, ‘Limits’; B. Hartland, ‘Edward I and Petitions Relating to Ireland’, TCE 9 (2003), 59–70; G. Dodd, ‘Sovereignty, Diplomacy and Petitioning: Scotland and the English Parliament in the First Half of the Fourteenth Century’, England and Scotland in the Fourteenth Century: New Perspectives, ed. A. King and M. A. Penman (Woodbridge, 2007), 172–95.

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and authority unto that power itself. By constructing the king himself as the giver of justice to all, by making his parliament the ultimate court of redress for all complainants, and by performing his willingness to hold officials accountable for wrongs against all his people, both high and low, Edward’s government deprived some of the rhetoric of reform of its radical power and gathered to itself the role of defender of the ‘community of the realm’,36 depriving the barons of an important source of political power. Nor were enquiries employed solely in response to complaints against official infractions; they were used extensively as a means of documenting and enforcing royal rights and franchises.37 Unlike parliamentary petitions, for example, letters of the kind I am concerned with in this book circulated almost exclusively among the aristocratic allies and official agents of the king; in other words, with the exception of diplomatic letters, royal government itself was the main audience of royal correspondence.38 Thus, letters, to borrow Rodney Barker’s evocative phrase, are part of the ‘secret garden’ of government.39 They have an immediate function of a mundane diplomatic, administrative or legal sort, which has typically been the focus, and sometimes even the limit of analysis. That is, they convey instructions or decisions that anticipate and are intended to provoke action by the allies and agents of government who receive them. They tell us who was appointed proctor in a foreign court or sheriff of a particular county, what purveyance was commanded for a certain campaign, or who was to have their day in court. Historians are adept at using letters as evidence for this kind of connection between intention and action, which is related intimately to the production of chronologies of political change. But letters also have a less tangible function, which may have been equally or even more important to contemporaries, namely as proclamations of ideology and identity that serve to legitimize government to itself, and bind its representatives to its purpose.40 Extending Barker’s suggestion to the diplomatic sphere, it will become clear that letters circulating in that community also performed a sort of legitimating function, but one premised on different categories of belonging, and reifying other ideals. When we notice that letters serve an ideological function for royal government, it becomes evident that their role in shaping and sustaining the relationship 36

See Maddicott, ‘Lessons’, pp. 16–19; Maddicott, Origins, pp. 279–83; Prestwich, Edward I, p. 109. 37 D. W. Sutherland, Quo Warranto Proceedings in the Reign of Edward I, 1278–1294 (Oxford, 1963), chapter 1; S. Raban, ‘Edward I’s Other Inquiries’, TCE 9 (2003), 43–57; H. M. Cam, The Hundred and the Hundred Rolls, Reprint edn (London, 1963), chapters 4–5; S. Raban, A Second Domesday? The Hundred Rolls of 1279–80 (Oxford, 2004), chapters 1–2. 38 The kind of letters patent in which the king addressed himself to a broad public – ‘all those who see or hear these letters’ – in a written proclamation, are not part of this discussion. 39 Barker, Identities, chapter 3. Barker here builds on the concept of political language put forward by Pocock; see J. G. A. Pocock, Political Thought and History: Essays on Theory and Method (Cambridge, 2009). 40 Here, after Barker, I take government to mean both rulers and the range of actors who upheld and performed the work of rule.

8

INTRODUCTION

between the monarch and his allies, councillors, officials and agents is among their most important purposes.41 As Barker has written, ‘not only is legitimation carried out by government, it is frequently carried out for government, and for the private satisfaction of government rather than for its public acclaim’ (my emphasis).42 By ‘private satisfaction’ here, Barker signifies an identity-affirming (or identity-building?) capacity of discourse through which participants experience the nature, value, virtue and exclusivity of their belonging. In fact, one might hypothesize that the expansion of certain forms of political participation during Edward’s reign generated in existing elites – whether aristocratic or official – a particular need for just such a reassurance of their special position. In the face of such changes, letters provided a vehicle for a discourse of privilege that circulated within existing networks of aristocratic sociability and government responsibility, re-inscribing the importance of old hierarchies that might otherwise seem to be pushed aside by new modes of political interaction. This certainly served royal interests, since it offered a competing narrative of political belonging that might disrupt developing affinities between political elites and the middle-to-lower orders, even while appearing to uphold them. The inclusion of outsiders in this epistolary circle was always exceptional. For example, Mary, widow of the late royal falconer, once received a royal letter instructing her to send the king his precious falcon, Marmaduke, by a trusted bearer known to the bird, but after this isolated instance she never appeared again among royal correspondents.43 Kings did not make a habit of communicating with such people, even when they had indirect links to the king himself. Most epistolary articulations of ideology were aimed at members of the governing class, and it was their solidarity – that of the barons and the king’s administrators – that was intended to be sustained thereby. With the exception of periods of reform and rebellion, much of the vocabulary of ‘popular’ politics was excluded from official correspondence.44 Its absence, I contend, was not accidental. Thus, while royal letters were unlike contemporary ‘public’ measures for asserting royal power by expanding government and its interaction with the political community, I suggest that they also had a role to play in the royal 41

Barker, after Weber, explores this move in some depth; see Barker, Identities, pp. 45–51; M. Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, 2 vols (London, 1978), 1. 42 Barker, Identities, p. 46; and references therein. 43 TNA, SC 1/13/147i, a draft privy seal letter: ‘R. a Marie que fou la feme monsire John de Merk. Nous vos savoms bon grie et vos mercioms mols de ce que vos aves fait bien garder bien nostre faucon Marmeduke, et vos mandoms et prioms que meisme le faucon nos enveez le plus haste que vos porrez que par aucun certain homme que le sache bien et aiseement porte purvoies envenant vers nous.’ Henceforth all manuscript references are to TNA collections unless otherwise stated. 44 The exception that proves the rule is the case of letters patent addressing the populace at large, where ‘public’ language was not uncommon. For the public proclamation of letters patent, see, for example, Doig, ‘Propaganda and Royal Proclamations’, p. 258; T. W. Machan, English in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2003), chapter 2.

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THE LETTERS OF EDWARD I

response to the political context of the late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth centuries. In the first place, their limited circulation within existing aristocratic and official networks made them an exclusive discourse, capable of signalling the special nature of the relationship between the king and certain elites. In the second, the dependence of epistolarity upon identifying and articulating the special, shared qualities of any sender–recipient relationship amplified the capacity of letters to articulate that special link. In addition to their quotidian purpose, then, letters were capable of operating as a seductive discourse of distinction, by which magnates on one hand, and royal officials on the other – both groups with reasons to ally themselves to a wider political community – were instead offered a vision of themselves in privileged unity with royal interests. The shifts in political ideology we might detect in royal letters are thus not the concerns of the ‘people’, but fundamental if subtle changes occurring within government and between rulers and those who carried out their rule. To recognize letters as a discourse of elites is not to say that consensus about political virtues or objectives necessarily existed among them, even if an important function of letters was to sustain their solidarity and commitment to the work of governing.45 In fact, read with care, royal letters provide an avenue to probe what Dumolyn has called the ‘harmonizing ideologies produced in most medieval texts’.46 Our first task is to notice that letters were explicitly crafted as harmonizing texts: to generate the appearance of consensus was one of their aims, in an effort to imagine it into being if it did not already exist. Some theorists openly advised the medieval letter-writer to avoid naming sites of contention, or articulating the perceived faults of their correspondents, lest they provoke an unwanted response.47 Instead, letter-writers should identify some ideological element about which there could be agreement, or some praiseworthy element of the recipient’s character, crafting it as the basis of the letter’s request. These ‘harmonizing’ strategies became more pronounced as the social distance between correspondents decreased and the stakes of engagement rose. There was less risk in writing harshly to a junior official than to an earl. Probing the patterns and vocabulary of these strategies allows us to identify the terms on which Edwardian government sought to rely in its interactions with certain individuals or sectors of the political community. This is the first step to inferring elements of tension in political relationships that may have been left unsaid. The effort entailed in articulating an ethos for binding the governing classes together was not an idle one. Certainly, habits of obedience and immersion in political society no doubt meant, as Susan Reynolds has observed, that the king did ‘not need to coerce most [people] for most of the time’.48 Nevertheless, 45

Ecclesiastical elites were, of course, among the crown’s correspondents, although I am not concerned with the particular nature of such letters in this book. 46 Dumolyn, ‘Political Communication’, p. 47. 47 See, for example, Rationes Dictandi, p. 17. 48 S. Reynolds, ‘Secular Power and Authority in the Middle Ages’, Power and Identity in the

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INTRODUCTION

in part because letters often travelled some distance to reach their recipients, who may have felt themselves to be sufficiently far away or of sufficiently small significance to avoid notice, simply ignoring royal commands was sometimes a possibility. Extant letters suggest that avoidance or delay, if not necessarily open disobedience, were not uncommon: royal commands were sometimes prefaced by remarks of surprise or displeasure that a previous letter had been insufficient to provoke the specified outcome. ‘We marvel greatly’, Edward told his cousin and captain in Scotland, Aymer de Valence, in August of 1306, ‘that we have not yet had any news concerning whether or not the bishop of Moray is taken, as we commanded some time ago by our letters.’49 Such complaints were not infrequent in royal correspondence, nor in other medieval letters.50 If this was a known possibility, it is little wonder that so much effort was put into constructing epistolary authority and persuasion. All correspondence, in fact, entailed such risk. Despite the relatively fixed, legalistic forms of royal letters, and their restricted circulation among ‘friends’, the possibility of miscommunication or even rejection of the message remained. Like rituals, or gifts, we may postulate generally accepted meanings for the exchange of letters, but there was always more ambiguity in the doing than the theory admits.51 The writs of summons by which Edward attempted to gather his forces for passage to the continent in 1297, for instance, were famously rejected by certain of his earls on the grounds that they were ‘insufficient’.52 Senders needed to be proactive in seizing their opportunities to circumscribe meaning when they foresaw challenges. The recognized norms of dictaminal construction were intended to provide a form of limitation on the recipient’s capacity to misunderstand, misconstrue, or find loopholes to exploit.53 Furthermore, the choice of ethos on which to rely, and the selection and arrangement of rhetorical parts and legal phrases within the letter were intended to maximize the probability of a positive reply. English royal clerks were expert in all these mechanisms for asserting the king’s will with authority. Middle Ages: Essays in Memory of Rees Davies, ed. H. Pryce and J. Watts (Oxford, 2007), 11–22 (p. 11). 49 SC 1/47/88: ‘nous avoms grant marveille, de ce qe nous navoms uncore nule novelle, le quel .. Levesque de Morreue est pris ou noun, de sicome nous mandasmes piecea par nos lettres’ ; see Appendix, no. 21. I follow the custom of thirteenth-century scribes in using a double punctus [..] to indicate a name omitted in the original text (usually because the sender was not certain of the name, and did not wish to risk invalidating an order by including incorrect or out-of-date information). 50 See, for example, Chaplais, EDPMA, p. 151 n. 493; B. Newman, ed., Voice of the Living Light: Hildegard of Bingen and her World (Berkeley, 1998), p. 26. 51 See, for example, P. Buc, The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific Theory (Princeton, 2001), pp. 3–11; G. Algazi, ‘Introduction: Doing Things with Gifts’, Negotiating the Gift, 9–27 (pp. 10–13). 52 ‘Articles of Grievance (Monstraunces), 1297’, EHD, 469–72. See also below, chapter 6. 53 On structural and other norms as means of ensuring an agreed frame of interpretation, see Eco, Limits, especially chapter 3. See also below, chapter 1.

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Yet the fact remains that the king’s interlocutors were not uniformly disposed towards a harmonious relationship with him, and the nature of many of the relationships on which the exchange of letters relied came under contestation during Edward’s reign. The magnates had interests of their own, and it required careful rhetorical and political management to keep them aligned with royal policy, particularly as generational change deprived Edward of the alliances of his youth, forged in adversity.54 Warfare periodically disrupted relationships and challenged loyalties for lordly elites and administrators alike. Conquest brought unwilling and dissatisfied peoples into the king’s epistolary jurisdiction, and the corruption of officials generated further unrest. Local officials met with competing imperatives when attempting to enact royal commands in resistant communities. Even the king’s closest clerks and administrators occasionally became the focus of royal ire when their actions or inactions brought the dignity or justice of the crown into disrepute. A confluence of such pressures disrupted the established modes of epistolary exchange in the last decade of Edward’s reign. In all such cases, the use of language by one or other party could become freighted with greater than usual significance as letters became a medium of negotiation for the relationship per se. The expression of ideals underpinning any epistolary relationship was shaped by such considerations. When royal letters adopt the posture or language of a ‘common good’, for example, this might be taken as a pertinent sign of a regime in need of broadening its claims to legitimacy, or of shifts in the ideological expectations of its chief audiences.55 In this way, royal correspondence in Edward’s name can be used as a barometer both of royal ideology, and of the nature of the pressures it was (or was felt to be) under in a given time or place and in the context of a specific exchange. The themes of discussion – changing use of thanks and encouragement, deployment of threats, qualities that were called upon to bind recipients to the king and his interests, and the apparent need to articulate the same – reflect not only the accomplished use of available repertoires of epistolary rhetoric, but the nature of the crown’s preoccupations and its concerns.56 The image of kingship that 54

On generational change among the earls, see Spencer, Nobility, pp. 239, 245, 247, 257. Generational change also disrupted Edward’s administration, with the death of Chancellor Robert Burnell long having been identified as a turning point in the operation and personnel of the chancery and, consequently, the significance of the wardrobe; see Tout, Chapters, 2, pp. 11–13, 60–5. For a fuller assessment of Burnell’s career, see R. Huscroft, ‘The Political and Personal Life of Robert Burnell, Chancellor of Edward I’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, King’s College London, 2001). 55 For ways in which the language of common interest was used by petitioners to the crown, see, for example, Ormrod, ‘Murmur, Clamour and Noise’, p. 152. 56 A related approach has profitably been applied to the question of English and other ‘ethnic’ identities within Edward’s domains by Andrea Ruddick; see, for example, Ruddick, ‘National Sentiment’; Ruddick, ‘National and Political Identity’; Ruddick, ‘Ethnic Identity’; A. C. Ruddick, English Identity and Political Culture in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge, 2013).

12

INTRODUCTION

Edward’s letters present is therefore also an image of his anxieties, certainly political, and perhaps also personal. In times of greatest pressure, we can also observe the oscillating scale of the epistolary network itself. Letters sometimes circulated only among those whom the king and his intimate clerks trusted to receive the king’s voice and respond positively.57 Relying as they did on the capacity of the sender to identify a mutually acceptable ethos to which to appeal, letters were poorly adapted to managing situations of genuine tension or conflict, unless their purpose was to give offence or to make an ostensive offer of peace, or where the sender was confident of their capacity to enforce – legally or physically – their will. To an attentive recipient, the king’s rhetoric was revelatory of both his claims to strength and his fears of weakness. The confident authority of Edward’s letters and of rulers like him was partly illusory. In fact, the effect of the rhythms and styles of expression of the ars dictaminis, and perhaps their intention, was to confer maximal authority on a moment of communication that was inherently uncertain and contingent. This is true to the extent that, in the absence of contradictory evidence, one can suppose a roughly proportional relationship between the dictaminal elaboration of a letter, and uncertainty and contingency of the circumstances or relations that it tried to influence.58 Simultaneously, the effect of adopting the writ as the immediate referent of all English royal letter-writing was to convey a useful, apparent fixedness and a sort of quasi-legal authority upon it. Both the legal language and formulaic nature of Edward’s letters were thus integrally part of the rhetorical attempt to impose a royal construction on events and recipients, making the whole appear sanctioned by tradition and enforceable in law. In other words, letters did not follow formulae simply for their own sake, but in order to benefit from an association with the formal, the authoritative. Furthermore, beyond the writs de cursu, royal letters rarely repeated formulae in their entirety, or did so unthinkingly: letters were to formulae as fantasias on a theme in which the divergences bear as much, if not more significance as the observances. The legal resonances of English epistolary forms were not always completely favourable to the king’s interests. Or rather, they could also be open to interpretation in favour of recipients, or of other parties. As a written document, a letter was more enduring than a merely spoken message, and could be consulted and read closely, and repeatedly, over time. One of Edward’s legal officials advised him, therefore, to ensure that there were no ‘obscurities, hesitations, doubts and damaging statements which might be interpreted against the king’ in his reply 57

See chapter 6. The elaboration of one particular section, the narratio, has been linked to doubtful reception and the need for persuasion in the case of imperial and papal letters in the thirteenth century. See L. Shepard, Courting Power: Persuasion and Politics in the Early Thirteenth Century (New York, 1999), especially chapter 1.

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to Pope Boniface VIII concerning Edward’s claims to sovereignty over Scotland.59 What resulted was an unusually long and detailed letter, designed to refute every Scottish accusation with a surfeit of evidence and to exclude the possibility of counter-claims.60 Even so, wary of the text being used against him, the king began his letter with the extraordinary disclaimer, ‘What follows we send to you not to be treated in the form or manner of a legal plea, but altogether extra-judicially, in order to set the mind of Your Holiness at rest.’61 Evidence from extant drafts shows how minutely royal clerks attended to the possibility of legal, political, or other loose ends: rearranging and replacing words, deleting infelicitous phrases, and redrafting whole sections until the expression was perfected.62 In such delicate contexts of exchange, but also inherently at all times, the king’s epistolary words could have unintended consequences if they left any legal loopholes for recipients to exploit. No wonder that the anonymous author of Fleta (c. 1290) observed that the king’s clerks in chancery should be ‘trustworthy and prudent clerks, who have sworn an oath to the king and have a wide experience in the laws and customs of England’.63 Replete as they were with legal, social and political significance, the production of royal letters could not be left to amateurs. The shape of the archive

The nature of the records of Edward’s government privileges the materials surviving in and about England. This book is therefore necessarily centred on English correspondents and interests, or at least on records that were produced and kept there – particularly those that made their way from the Tower of London to the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane, and thence to The National Archives at Kew. This was far from the totality of Edward’s epistolary interaction. As his letters proclaimed, Edward was king of England, lord of Ireland and duke of Aquitaine, sometimes ‘superior lord’ of Scotland, and, silently, the master of Wales, as well as, for a time, the count of Ponthieu, in right of his wife.64 He also corresponded with popes, kings, counts and khans across much of the known world,65 and with queens and countesses, many of

59

This summary of the advice comes from Chaplais, EDPMA, p. 80. The document is in EMDP, 1, pp. 59–60 n. 48. 60 Documents, ed. Stones, pp. 96–109. 61 Ibid., p. 96. 62 See chapter 2. 63 Fleta, 2, p. 123. 64 See Fig. 1, which shows the extent of lands that came under Edward’s control at one time or other during his reign. 65 For Edward’s correspondence with the Mongols, see J. Paviot, ‘England and the Mongols (c. 1260–1330)’, JRAS 3rd ser., 10:3 (2000), 305–18, and references therein.

14

INTRODUCTION

whom were his kin.66 His interests in each of these lands and polities varied widely and over time, and the production, storage and survival of letters in each sphere of interaction was uneven. The fact that the administration of Gascony and Ireland, for instance, took place largely under deputed seals in the hands of ‘men on the ground’, meant that only select materials made their way into central records. The fact that much correspondence concerning Scotland was produced and received by the wardrobe and chancery while on campaign in the north at York, Berwick and beyond, made the survival of anything but orders directed back to Westminster relatively unlikely.67 The selection principles – if they were not merely accidental – that led to certain letters and not others being preserved are not always clear. Meanwhile, many materials in the archives of Edward’s domains suffered loss and destruction, whether in the medieval past,68 or more recently.69 If the extant epistolary record of Edward’s kingship is fragmentary, its shape is nevertheless telling. The survival patterns of royal letters reveal a mainly internal discourse, defined by categories of kinship, allegiance, political belonging and, above all, acceptance of and engagement with Edward’s rule. In a sample of over 1,000 letters that survive in The National Archives as standalone documents,70 neither the chronological nor the socio-political distribution is even across the reign.71 The degree of concentration of certain types of letter, at certain times, certainly suggests that this reflects more than mere accidents of 66 On

Edward’s correspondence with royal women, see K. Neal, ‘Royal Women and Intra-Familial Diplomacy in Late Thirteenth-Century Anglo-French Relations’, WHR (forthcoming); A. Waag, ‘Forms and Formalities of Thirteenth-Century Queenship: A Comparative Study’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, King’s College London, 2019), passim, but especially pp. 81–2; Hélary, ‘Les liens’. 67 The survival of a significant number of drafts from certain periods of Edward’s Scottish campaigns and while he was in the Low Countries during 1297–8 also seems to suggest that an unknown number of wardrobe files made their way back into central storage over time. 68 G. P. Cuttino, ‘The Archives of Gascony under English Rule’, American Archivist 25:3 (1962), 315–21 (pp. 45–6); Raban, ‘Edward I’s Other Inquiries’, pp. 44–5. 69 Handbook and Select Calendar of Sources for Medieval Ireland in the National Archives of the United Kingdom, ed. P. Dryburgh and B. Smith (Dublin, 2004), pp. 16–18; CIRCLE: A Calendar of Irish Chancery Letters, c. 1244–1509, ed. P. Crooks (Dublin, 2012), Available at https://chancery.tcd.ie, Accessed 18 May 2020; S. Raban, England under Edward I and Edward II, 1259–1327 (Oxford, 2000), p. 107; N. Fryde, The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II, 1321–1326 (Cambridge, 1976), p. 10. 70 I focus on letters that survive individually, rather than in enrolments, since the purpose of the latter as records of content typically lead them to omit the epistolary framing that was important for the communicative moment, such as the address clause or salutatio. 71 I used Discovery, The National Archives online (https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov. uk) to identify all individually catalogued items identified as ‘letters’ in Edward’s name that were not writs de cursu or chancery warrants; I included letters that were transcripts associated with third-party petitions unless they were writs de cursu. The sample includes 1,044 items comprising originals, drafts and copies/transcripts of letters under the great or privy seals, in either Latin or French.

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THE LETTERS OF EDWARD I

survival. Either the king wrote mainly to certain categories of person, especially at certain times; or, equally significantly, his administration felt a need to preserve such documentary moments. Even given the uncertainties of survival, the distribution of extant epistolary engagement remains powerfully suggestive of the nature of epistolary work. Correspondence with the king’s officials in England dominates the sample. Over half of the surviving letters reflect correspondence with this group. The next most significant category of correspondents is diplomatic: the papacy and its agents, and the royal and aristocratic families of France, Scotland (to 1291), Norway, Aragon, Castile, Sicily, Jerusalem, the German lands and the Low Countries. Together, such recipients account for over a quarter of the sample, with France and the Low Countries dominating. By contrast, with the exception of military affairs, attention to the devolved administrations of Edward’s lands in Gascony, Ireland, Wales (from 1283)72 and Scotland (from 1292)73 each constitute only a small proportion of overall activity. The extant correspondence in Welsh and Irish contexts, although small, points to an important underpinning of political discourse in Edward’s polities: the relationship between epistolary inclusion and acknowledgement of the legitimacy of his governance. The king and his officials directed much of their epistolary efforts to their local agents in these western lands. By contrast, native leaders are poorly represented. In particular, very few native Irish kings (ríg) appear among the correspondents.74 Edward’s correspondence in Ireland was thus explicitly colonial in the sense of addressing itself exclusively to that section of the populace who identified with or as English, thus sharing certain rhetorical and political assumptions that underpinned their capacity for common discourse. The interface between those within English governance and those beyond it took place at a local social and sometimes military level, but rarely through epistolary discourse with the royal centre. Unlike the Irish ríg, the native princes of Wales, who tacitly accepted English authority, while sometimes railing against it, corresponded with the king of England and his representatives relatively frequently. In the Welsh case, a great deal of political work took place through the discourse of letters, in which the

72

Letters to the prince of Wales and lord of Powys before Edward’s conquest of Wales fall into an uneasy intermediate category, neither fully diplomatic nor fully domestic in its nature, reflecting the unusual constitutional relationship between the two lands. For a recent overview of Welsh history in this period, see D. Stephenson, The Rulers of Gwynedd and Powys (Cardiff, 2013); D. Stephenson, Medieval Wales c.1050–1332 (Cardiff, 2019). 73 Letters concerning the king’s military campaigns in Scotland I categorize as ‘English’ correspondence here, unless they were addressed to Scots, or members of Edward’s Scottish administration. 74 For example, see SC 1/18/211, printed in Fœdera, I.ii, p. 520; and SC 1/16/115, calendared in CDI, 2, no. 2362.

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INTRODUCTION

terms of Edward’s domination of Wales were repeatedly asserted before they were eventually brutally enforced.75 As well as being unevenly distributed among recipient groups, the king’s epistolary activity fluctuated with time and context. Diplomatic letters survive mainly from the first decade of his reign, peaking whenever the perennial question of the nature of English tenure in Gascony regained currency. Epistolarity in these moments was directed not only, or even primarily, at the kings of France, but at an adjacent group of allies both within and beyond the Capetian court, whose support and patronage, if secured, might influence the course of negotiations, or, in a last resort, mediate a resolution acceptable to both parties. By contrast, in the last decade of his life, over half of the king’s extant letters concern Scottish affairs.76 Unlike the Irish case, members of the Scottish aristocracy do feature as addressees in this correspondence, although once again his own officials were the chief recipients of the king’s letters. Edward wrote to John I, the recently installed king of Scots, and also to the earls of Buchan, Carrick, Dunbar and Ross, and he received surviving letters from the countess of Ross, Alexander of the Isles,77 and the earls of Carrick, Buchan, Mar and Strathearn. The royal messenger accounts imply that royal correspondence with the Scottish elite was more extensive than the extant letters prove.78 To address a letter to someone was to recognize and articulate a socio-political relationship. Edward’s epistolary engagement with the Scottish elite suggests that he acknowledged their importance to his supervision of the kingdom, at least until the Bruce rebellion of 1306. Even though, like Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, Scottish nobles may have found the nature of that relationship distasteful or unsatisfactory, to receive no letter would conceivably have been worse: it would have implied their irrelevance. Edward I: epistolary politician

Upon his coronation in 1274, Edward is reported to have removed his crown and vowed not to take it up again until the lands alienated from the crown during his father’s reign had been restored.79 The coronation oath bound the

75

See chapter 2. This includes 281 of 541 letters in Edward’s name from the period 1294–1307; figures drawn from https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk. 77 Alisdair Óg Mac Domhnaill. 78 See, for example, Documents, ed. Stevenson, 2, no. 345. 79 Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols (London, 1882), 2, p. cxvii; Maddicott, ‘Lessons’, p. 10 n. 57. See also the Hagnaby Chronicle: BL, Cotton MS Vespasian B XI, f. 27r, available at: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts (Accessed 22 August 2019). 76

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THE LETTERS OF EDWARD I

king to maintain the rights and franchises of the crown as well.80 This was not only a project of material renewal of royal resources, but an important exercise in rebuilding the authority and dignity that, in Edward’s view, had leaked away from the crown as a consequence of his father’s policies and the political disturbances of his reign. We can assume that, from the outset, he recognized rhetoric – and within it, epistolarity – as essential and useful tools in this effort. One of his earliest known acts after news about the death of his father reached him was to write to the mayor and community of London expressing his trust in their continuing loyal service.81 Edward enjoyed a contemporary reputation as a persuasive user of language. This was not always a positive view. The Dominican chronicler, Nicholas Trivet, described how, despite his ‘lisping tongue’, Edward did not lack ‘the eloquence effective to persuade in matters to be discussed’.82 The anonymous author of the Song of Lewes, a poem in favour of the rebellion against Edward’s father, Henry III, was more frank, regarding his words as duplicitous. He would make fine-sounding promises, but they could not be trusted; he could make everything seem like its opposite with his clever rhetoric. The poet warned his audience to be alert for Edward’s guile, and to doubt the apparent meaning of his ‘pleasant speech’: A lion by pride and fierceness, he is by inconstancy and changeableness a pard, changing his word and promise, cloaking himself by pleasant speech. When he is in a strait he promises whatever you wish, but as soon as he has escaped he renounces his promise. … The treachery or falsehood whereby he is advanced he calls prudence; the way whereby he arrives whither he will, crooked though it be, is regarded as straight; wrong gives him pleasure and is called right; whatever he likes he says is lawful, and he thinks that he is released from law, as though he were greater than the King.83

In the hands of such a man, letters were certainly powerful and potentially dangerous tools of political manipulation and perhaps even misrepresentation. Already, before his accession, Edward had begun to practise the art of political epistolarity. Shortly after the Battle of Evesham (4 August 1265) in which royal forces triumphed over the baronial army, for example, he performed what Maurice Powicke called his ‘first recorded act of state’,84 writing to his allies at court to advocate for letters to be sent offering the rebel garrison of Kenilworth peace on reasonable terms, ‘as they would not be reputed public enemies, or 80 E.

H. Kantorowicz, ‘Inalienability: A Note on Canonical Practice and the English Coronation Oath in the Thirteenth Century’, Speculum 29:3 (1954), 488–502 (p. 489); Richardson, ‘Office’, pp. 151, 160–1. 81 Cron. Maior., p. 158. 82 Trivet, ed. Hog, pp. 280–1. 83 The Song of Lewes, ed. C. L. Kingsford, Reprint edn (Oxford, 1965), p. 42. 84 F. M. Powicke, King Henry III and the Lord Edward, 2 vols (Oxford, 1947), 2, p. 504. For the letter, see SC 1/12/12, printed in Royal Letters, 2, pp. 289–90.

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INTRODUCTION

be disinherited, or lose their lives’.85 ‘And let that letter not be committed to anyone other than a religious man for bearing’, he advised, showing an already-developed awareness of the letter as part of a holistic rhetorical package, in which textual, material and performative signs of authority and good faith were jointly important for the success of its persuasive mission. The discourse of Edward’s internal correspondence with his officials, for example in Gascony, exposed a sometimes sharp distinction between how the king spoke about ruling to those who helped him rule, and the epistolary persona he projected towards the ruled themselves.86 Letters enabled him to speak, separately, to many different parties in the words they wanted to hear, but at the same time he was careful not to bind himself to unwanted commitments and, where possible, maintained the upper hand. It was a strategy that served him well over a long period, but equally one not without its risks. The royal epistolary persona was produced through the careful efforts of a trusted coterie of king’s clerks. Nevertheless, as I discuss more fully in chapter one, I maintain that it is possible and proper to speak of ‘Edward’s’ letters, and ‘the king’s voice’. The majority of these clerks spent their lives in royal service, typically beginning in the intimate confines of the royal household where they were closely supervised and inducted into the ways of royal secretarial work by their seniors, and by interaction with Edward himself.87 In the most sensitive or personal cases, the king himself might dictate his letter, or review drafts before sealing. The more secret the matter, the more likely it was that the number of personnel involved would be small, and senior both in rank and intimacy with the king.88 When political trouble stirred, the king’s control of his letters became even tighter. Advancement in his service within the wardrobe, the administrative department of the royal household that travelled with the king, and from there into other departments such as the chancery or exchequer frequently depended on the good impression, and the degree of internalization of the royal ethos and its proper expression, that a clerk made in a wardrobe role. Where clerks were brought in from outside, such as Stefano di San Giorgio, or Francesco d’Accorso, it was evidently because of the king’s admiration for and trust in 85

Edward’s suggested wording was closely followed in the letter subsequently issued by the chancery, see CPR 1258–1266, p. 488. Some of the rebels to whom it was addressed were successfully readmitted into Edward’s peace prior to the end of the Siege, suggesting that perhaps the letter had achieved its intended effect. For example, SC 1/8/20, in which Edward asked his father’s chancellor to issue the writs required to uphold his promises to protect lord John de Mucegros, formerly chief among the Kenilworth garrison, who had secured his peace; see Appendix, no. 1. For Edward’s letters prior to his royal accession, see R. Billaud, ‘The Lord Edward and the County of Chester: Lordship and Community, 1254–1272’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Canterbury Christ Church University, 2017), especially chapter 2. 86 See chapter 5. 87 The classical description is Tout, Chapters, 2, especially Sections II–III. 88 Conversely, the more public and performative a letter, the more likely that its production might become a moment of political theatre in itself; see chapter 3.

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THE LETTERS OF EDWARD I

their expertise in the entangled arts of law and dictamen.89 Hence, in addition to the many systems of accountability and oversight that were continuing to develop during this time,90 the authenticity of the royal epistolary voice was ensured by its production exclusively by men whose loyalty to and cultural immersion in royal interests and epistolary norms were unquestionable, who were sometimes, if not frequently, working in direct collaboration with Edward himself. The well-known expanding role of the wardrobe from c. 1290, and especially in wartime, also extended the king’s capacity for close involvement in royal epistolarity.91 The intervention of a scribal hand was no obstacle to the construction in letters of the king’s intended ‘self’, or his desired relation to the recipient. In fact, it was essential, for it enabled his will to be couched in professionally crafted words. The functional utility and political value of documentary culture – and within it epistolary production – for which the king’s clerks were indispensable, was well known to Edward’s contemporaries.92 But just as the rebels against King John had reacted to his harsh imposition of his legal rights with a demand for more law, rather than less,93 the later-thirteenth-century political community could not imagine a world without royal letters. Instead, they made the propriety of epistolary practice a recurring theme of reform.94 In 1244, for instance, the ‘Paper Constitution’ attempted to impose an independent chancellor upon Henry III, in order to ensure that writs were not allowed to be issued ‘against 89

On Stefano di San Giorgio, see B. Grévin, ‘Writing Techniques in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century England: The Role of the Sicilian and Papal Letter Collections as Practical Models for the Shaping of Royal Propaganda’, FCE 7 (2012), 1–30; Grévin, Rhétorique, pp. 404–15; F. Delle Donne, ‘Stefano di San Giorgio’, Treccani 94 (2019), Available at http:// www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/stefano-di-san-giorgio_(Dizionario-Biografico)/, Accessed 11 October 2019. On Francesco d’Accorso (a.k.a. Francis Accursius), see G. L. Haskins, ‘Three English Documents Relating to Francis Accursius’, LQR 54:213 (1938), 87–94; G. L. Haskins, ‘Francis Accursius: A New Document’, Speculum 13:1 (1938), 76–7; G. L. Haskins and E. H. Kantorowicz, ‘A Diplomatic Mission of Francis Accursius and his Oration before Pope Nicholas III’, EHR 58:232 (1943), 424–47. 90 For an important discussion of the development in England and elsewhere of accountability as a concept and a practice at this time, see J. Sabapathy, Officers and Accountability in Medieval England 1170–1300 (Oxford, 2014). 91 Tout, Chapters, 2, pp. 76–80, 131. 92 After Clanchy, Memory, royal documentary habits have been assumed to be the driving force in aristocratic adoption of a ‘literate mentality’, although the model has since been nuanced. 93 R. Huscroft, Ruling England 1042–1217 (London, 2016), p. 169; Holt, Garnett and Hudson, Magna Carta, especially chapter 5. 94 The fact that control of the chancery and the issuing of writs were not articles of complaint in 1215 is suggestive of the growth of royal administration, and epistolarity in particular, as effective and contentious tools of royal power between that date and the disturbances of Henry III’s reign in the mid-century. For the link between Henry III’s dictamen and the Second Barons’ War, see the forthcoming work of Lucy Hennings. I am grateful to Dr Hennings for stimulating discussions on the matter.

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INTRODUCTION

the Crown’ or ‘against justice’, i.e. in favour of private persons to the detriment of the purported interests of king or community.95 The baronial movement that formed around Edward’s uncle, Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester in the 1250s and ’60s similarly identified control of clerical appointments and epistolary work among their key demands for reform of the king’s bad practices. Henry III’s royal chancellor and the chancellor of lord Edward’s household were to become baronial appointments, to swear oaths of office dictated by committees of oversight appointed by the barons, and to be prohibited from applying Henry’s or Edward’s seals to any but the most routine writs, except on the advice and permission of the said committee(s).96 The conceptual scope of these new mechanisms of epistolary control show how acutely the baronial opposition understood the value of letters for both implementing royal policy and favour, and as propagandistic tools for proclaiming ideals of kingship and legitimacy. In 1258, and again during Henry and Edward’s captivity after the Battle of Lewes (14 May 1264), whenever the baronial party gained the upper hand, the distribution of letters reflecting their own construction of events and ideology quickly followed.97 Restoring the authority of royal letters and reasserting his control over the seal was among Henry III’s priorities after the royal restoration in 1265. His concerns over the damage done to his rights and to the validity of his royal epistolary persona are reflected in two letters he sent to the chapter at York in the days and weeks after the royal victory at Evesham (4 August 1265), overturning grants made in his name but ‘against his will’ to Montfort’s son Amaury, while the great seal had not been under his control.98 In 1272, he wrote 95

A. H. Hershey, ‘Justice and Bureaucracy: The English Royal Writ and “1258”’, EHR 113:453 (1998), 829–51 (p. 840); D. A. Carpenter, ‘Chancellor Ralph de Neville and Plans of Political Reform, 1215–1258’, TCE 2 (1988), 69–80. 96 DBMRR, pp. 94–5, 103, 7. On lord Edward specifically, see Billaud, ‘The Lord Edward and Chester’; and more recently, R. Billaud, ‘The Lord Edward and the Administration of Justice across his Apanage, 1254–72’, Edward I: New Interpretations, ed. A. King and A. M. Spencer (York, 2020), 9–23. 97 B. L. Wild, ‘A Captive King: Henry III between the Battles of Lewes and Evesham, 1264–5’, TCE 13 (2011), 41–56 (p. 42); D. A. Carpenter, ‘What Happened in 1258?’, War and Government in the Middle Ages, ed. J. Gillingham and J. C. Holt (Woodbridge, 1984), 109–17; reprinted in D. A. Carpenter, The Reign of Henry III (London, 1996), 183–98; Clanchy, Memory, pp. 222–3. For the contrary argument that royal letters of 1258 were not in fact driven by the will of Simon de Montfort, see Machan, English in the Middle Ages, p. 56. Machan’s argument seems to me to arise from a misunderstanding of the process of letter production and the use of the term ‘royal letters’ or ‘letters of the king’ which is a formal category as much as a claim to authorship. Machan is also incorrect to state that Montfort’s control over the seal did not develop until after the Battle of Lewes, as the king’s own letters of February 1264 testify. See DBMRR, pp. 217, 55; CPR, 1258–66, p. 380. 98 CPR, 1258–66, p. 436. Henry had to reissue his instruction six weeks later, perhaps indicating the degree of mistrust the chapter had in the authority of their new instructions; ibid., p. 451. There seems to be no particular evidence that the archbishop or chapter were particular partisans of the rebel cause. For example, despite the fact that the archbishop of

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THE LETTERS OF EDWARD I

to Pope Gregory X asking him to regard as fraudulent any letters purporting to be from him that might be produced at the Roman Curia by the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury.99 ‘No such letters can issue from our court unless they have first been registered’, the king explained, ‘[and] we have had our register searched about this case with the utmost care and diligence, and nothing whatsoever is to be found in it about the aforesaid letters’.100 Although the king’s assertion was incorrect, it nevertheless reveals the anxiety generated by disrupting the authoritative connection between king and letter. The problem persisted, and its impact was felt beyond Westminster too. After the old king’s death, for example, Llywelyn, prince of Wales, could allege that with Edward absent from the realm, letters issued by the hand of his chancellor could not be credited with true royal authority.101 The epistolary task facing Edward and his administrators upon his accession in November 1272 was thus two-fold. There was an urgent need to re-establish the reliability and authority of the royal epistolary persona; and there was an equally urgent need to establish the new monarch’s credentials of good kingship. The regime’s grasp of these twin imperatives is clear from the earliest letters of the reign. There can be no doubt of Edward’s own rhetorical skill, nor of his awareness of the need to surround himself with men who shared his understanding of the significance of words. The importance that Edward attached to the trustworthiness of his clerks only increased as his reign proceeded: the expanding role of the king’s wardrobe from 1290 not only facilitated flexibility in his military finances, but also enabled the ageing king to take a closer hold on the reigns of epistolary production.102 All of the above demonstrates how both the new king and his political community recognized letters and the personnel who produced them as important tools of governance. It is therefore incumbent on us to seek to understand their function. In pursuit of this goal, this book proceeds largely through case studies and close reading of epistolary rhetoric in context. The content of letters is only one of the factors of relevance, which also include questions such as the arrangement of names, the articulation of titles, the use or omission of key words and phrases, and how all of these things interact with the state of the York was appointed to the ecclesiastical committee reporting on church reform in 1264, he was not among the bishops subsequently censured by the crown for supporting Montfort: S. Ambler, ‘The Montfortian Bishops and the Justification of Conciliar Government in 1264’, Hist. Res. 85:228 (2012), 193–209; Maddicott, Montfort, p. 305. 99 Dipl. Docs, p. 304. 100 As translated in Clanchy, Memory, p. 70. See also CPR, 1266–1272, p. 704. 101 SC 1/19/22; calendared in CACW, p. 86. 102 See chapter 6. On the connection of the wardrobe to military finance, see Tout, Chapters, 2, pp. 131–45; Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 137–8. These connections are further illustrated in M. Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance under Edward I, Repr. edn (Aldershot, 1991); and R. W. Kaeuper, ‘Royal Finance and the Crisis of 1297’, Order and Innovation in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Joseph R. Strayer, ed. W. C. Jordan, B. McNab and T. F. Ruiz (Princeton, 1976), 103–10.

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INTRODUCTION

relationship between royal sender and recipient in each case. A close reading of epistolarity offers students of royal government a means of prising open the gap between the self-confident utterances of rulers and their secretariats, and the contingent realities of medieval power. In the case of Edward I, a ruler noted for his preference for ‘masterful’ politics, and ‘domination’,103 it allows us to lay bare the fragilities of his administration, and the awareness of those fragilities among the governing classes. Rather than attempting a comprehensive account of Edward’s epistolarity, I have therefore aimed to draw out what emerged through my research to be themes of greatest significance for political and diplomatic relations. What follows illustrates the ways in which royal letters constructed kinship and its attendant obligations as a means of navigating the choppy waters of diplomacy; how they policed the borders of Edward’s jurisdiction with a mixture of mollification and assertion of the king’s rights; how they attempted to reinforce the margins of his authority with a discourse of loyalty; how thanks and favour defined categories of political belonging by distinguishing between noble service and the duties of office; how the vocabulary of counsel was used to defuse noble dissatisfaction; and how command came to dominate an ever decreasing circle of epistolarity as war dragged on and the king’s finances, and with it his authority, waned. As difficulties mounted, the king tightened his grip on control of his clerks and their epistolary products, drawing the means of epistolary production ever closer to himself. In 1311, opponents to the rule of Edward II wrested the privy seal from direct royal control.104 There could hardly be a more striking acknowledgement of how trusty and intimate a tool of kingly power royal letter-writing had become in the period since 1272.

103 See,

for instance, K. B. McFarlane, ‘Had Edward I a “Policy” Towards the Earls?’, History and Theory 1 (1965), 145–59; Prestwich, Edward I, p. xi; R. R. Davies, Domination and Conquest: The Experience of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, 1100–1300 (Cambridge, 1990), p. 126; cf. Maddicott, ‘Lessons’, p. 30. 104 There is some debate as to whether this entailed establishing an independent office, or imposing a baronially appointed clerk as keeper of the seal; see Tout, Chapters, 5, p. 1; J. H. Trueman, ‘The Privy Seal and the English Ordinances of 1311’, Speculum 31:4 (1956), 611–25.

23

1 Royal Letters: The Authority of a Form The epistolary form offered rulers and their governments a medium of unique reach and flexibility for developing a language of authority, separately from the question of content. For English kings, authority appropriate to a range of communicative situations could be crafted from the admixture of various epistolary models. The king himself was a potent source of his epistolary authority, since letters ‘spoke’ in his voice, and stood for his presence. The immediate, English context also provided the model of the writ; an epistolary form developed in the context of kings as givers of law and mediators of legal process. From the continent came theories of letter-writing that offered models of other kinds of political and jurisdictional authority. From the papal curia came the system of rhythmic Latin prose known as the cursus curiae Romanae, or simply as the cursus, that had come to be associated with the highest registers of power. The uptake of continental influences in English royal letters was coincident with the effort to expand and reinforce royal authority, and accelerated during Edward’s reign. While there is no direct evidence of Edward’s personal direction of these changes, it is unlikely that they took place without his imprimatur. He certainly interested himself directly in the oversight, and even occasionally the dictation of his letters. The clerks of his administration were carefully selected and trained so that they became expert in blending and balancing available models to create both individual letters and a collective communicative discourse that broadcast maximal royal authority in each situation. Variations of structure, vocabulary, and even language selection allowed a range of registers to emerge in royal letters, each of which was tailored to its circumstances. Thus, while English royal letter-writing has sometimes been dismissed as insufficiently dictaminal and even crude according to the standards of continental dictatores, in this chapter I argue that the form of royal letters was well suited to its ultimate purpose – namely, that of crafting a discourse of prestige through inscribing royal authority and voicing royal commands – and that both king and clerk were actively engaged in this enterprise. The communicative function of letters, however, depended on securing the recipient’s goodwill. Thus, while letters enabled kings to articulate socio-political relationships as they wished them to be,1 royal power to shape political 1 Matthews,

Writing to the King, p. 28.

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ROYAL LETTERS: THE AUTHORIT Y OF A FORM

relationships through letters was not unlimited. Letters had to meet minimum standards of agreement with recipients’ expectations in order to succeed in their aims. Consequently, as recipients’ understanding of their relationship to the king shifted, so did royal epistolarity; otherwise it failed. The first person: genre, grammar and the king’s voice

Letters were of lesser dignity than formal documentary forms such as charters or treaties because of their relatively temporary relevance.2 Among the transient documentary forms intended to effect political, legal or social change, however, the letter was unique in the power of its grammatical positioning. Letters were always expressed in the first person,3 whereas, for instance, petitions developed a characteristic third-person format.4 The use of the third person in petitions fits within a suite of strategies that were oriented towards externalizing the petitioner’s complaint, making it one with wider, communal, and even abstract and ideological implications. W. Mark Ormrod has shown, for instance, how petitions could be crafted to express the ‘clamour’ of a problem, implying its coherence with ‘common’ complaint and linking its resolution with the communal good.5 Similar explanations can be advanced for the strategic citation of developing legal concepts such as equity, or the explicit mention of ‘reason’.6 Such discursive approaches to persuasion in petitions operated by conferring general worthiness upon the specific request. Framing the request in the third person, with its sense of objectivity, amplified these strategies of externalization and abstraction. Such strategies were not incidental to the petition as a form, or to what might be called ‘the petitionary situation’. As Gwilym Dodd and others have noted, the third-person position of the petition emphasized the dissociation of the petitioner from the processes by which the petition itself was advanced 2 Chaplais,

EDPMA, pp. 82, 246. Chaplais describes ‘letters missive’ as having ‘no legal value’, but as I maintain in this book, this was true only in the strictest sense: the discourse of English royal letters was consciously legalistic. 3 In the case of an inspeximus, the present epistolary ‘casing’ of an earlier document was always in the first person, even if the quoted text it confirmed was of another type; the shift between texts within the document was clearly signalled in words, and occasionally in language. The exception was the address clause, almost always a third-person construction, enabling both sender and addressee to be named and their full titles articulated. 4 There was a degree of instability in the form in the 1270s and 1280s. See, for example, SC 8/220/10979, a petition from the citizens of Canterbury in the form of a first-person letter, c. 1287. I use ‘petition’ for documents in this format addressed to the king in council or in parliament, distinguishing it from the petitio, or request/command clause of letters. 5 Ormrod, ‘Murmur, Clamour and Noise’, pp. 152, 154. 6 G. Dodd, ‘Reason, Conscience and Equity: Bishops as the King’s Judges in Later Medieval England’, History 99:335 (2014), 213–39; T. S. Haskett, ‘The Medieval English Court of Chancery’, LHR 14 (1996), 245–314.

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and considered.7 There was often a real sense in which petitioners tended to be excluded from the networks of sociability which lay at the heart of the petitioning process as it developed in England and extended to the king’s other domains.8 In fact, petitioning developed as a mechanism by which those without other routes of access to the king’s ear could, in theory, achieve it. As Ormrod has described: Petitioning came into practice as a recognisable process of complaint and remedy in the reign of Edward I precisely because of the need to provide means by which those whose problems were unsolvable by normal routes through the courts and/ or required the application of royal grace could gain access to the king’s personal discretion and dispensation [my emphasis].9

Access to the king, or rather lack of it, was therefore the fundamental premise of petitioning in the late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth centuries. The petitioner’s lack of access to the king could, equally, be a discursive strategy. As Paul Brand’s study of early petitions to Edward I suggests, in fact many petitioners came from social, political and ecclesiastical elites who had ample access to the king both in theory and in practice.10 They included, inter alia, the king’s brother, the earl of Lancaster, his cousin, the earl of Cornwall, and one of his daughters, Mary, a nun of Amesbury, the Wiltshire convent that received considerable royal preferment in the decades after the queen mother, Eleanor of Provence, retired there in widowhood.11 This seems to imply that framing a request in the third-person format of a petition was a way of situating oneself and one’s request as if one did not have recourse to other mechanisms; as if it were a public or common, rather than a private or personal concern; as if it were a matter of wider, abstract relevance. For those within the king’s networks, the benefits of framing a request in such ways in the context of rising ‘communal’ sentiment in politics could include, for example, avoiding the appearance of nepotism or corruption, and establishing for any potentially relevant publics the official and, above all, justified nature of the favour or grant sought.12 This may have been among the 7 Dodd, Justice, p. 314; G. Dodd, ‘Writing Wrongs: The Drafting of Supplications to the Crown in the Later Fourteenth Century’, Medium Aevum 80:2 (2011), 217–46; Ormrod, ‘Murmur, Clamour and Noise’, pp. 137–9. 8 For the processes of sorting and hearing petitions from Gascony, Ireland, etc., see Dodd, Justice; G. Dodd, ‘Sovereignty, Diplomacy and Petitioning’; B. Hartland, ‘Petitions Relating to Ireland’; Ruddick, ‘Limits’; G. Pépin, ‘Petitions from Gascony: Testimonies of a Special Relationship’, Medieval Petitions, 120–34. 9 Ormrod, ‘Murmur, Clamour and Noise’, p. 141. See also Maddicott, Origins, pp. 294–7. 10 P. Brand, ‘Understanding Early Petitions: An Analysis of the Content of Petitions to Parliament in the Reign of Edward I’, Medieval Petitions, 99–119. 11 For Mary’s petition see SC 8/275/13744, and PROME, 1305, Lent, Roll 12 Appendix, no. 8. On Eleanor of Provence’s move to Amesbury, see Howell, Eleanor, pp. 300–2. 12 For the importance of signalling the intended moral and social meanings of economic and other exchanges, see Algazi, ‘Introduction: Doing Things with Gifts’, p. 18.

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motives for the king’s brother in petitioning for the confirmation of grants made to him out of the former lands of Robert Ferrers, Earl of Derby, in the aftermath of the Barons’ Wars.13 Alternately, it could be a way of ensuring that grants with wide or common implications were bestowed in a ‘public’ forum of peers, such as parliament, or the king’s council; or that petitions to be forwarded on behalf of a third party were seen and recorded, publicly, to have been discharged. The latter probably applied to a 1284 request by Edmund of Cornwall, the king’s cousin, for a commission of oyer and terminer into the death of a certain ‘[Hugh de] Langthwaite killed in the forest of Knaresborough for the transgression of hunting there’.14 The deceased’s sister, Avice, had appealed to the king, and her case was here taken up by the earl, presumably in his role as lord of Knaresborough.15 These examples suggest that for petitioners who lacked access to the king by other means, the third-person petition aided them in framing a case justified in external and abstract terms such as the ‘common good’; and for petitioners with access to the king, the petitionary mode was selected for reasons that depended on and benefited from externalization, ‘publicness’ and/ or ‘commonness’. Like the third-person expression of petitions, the epistolary first person was not an insignificant or incidental framing device, but a discursive choice suitable to certain situations, and giving rise to specific rhetorical possibilities. Since Ambrose, the metaphor of the voice had been used to describe the letter’s work: ‘sermo absentium’, the speech of the absent’.16 While the rhetorical force of the third-person appeal lay in externalizing and depersonalizing it, the firstperson ‘voice’ articulated and amplified a personal and direct appeal. Letters often drew on abstract concepts of good, such as right, justice or equity, and constructed an appeal with reference to logos, that is, via reasoned argument. Nevertheless, framing letters as first-person appeals situated all epistolary persuasion simultaneously in pathos, the appeal via the affect of relationship and personal credibility. This, as we shall see, proved to be both a strength and a weakness of epistolarity as a tool of royal power. In consequence of their formal dependence on pathos, letters passed, or pretended to pass, only between correspondents who were connected in some interpersonal way.17 The nature of this connection was foregrounded in the vocabulary and structure of the letter. For example, a letter between kin would normally emphasize kinship by naming the connection, as well as by language 13

SC 8/219/10919. For the wider context of the claim, see Spencer, Nobility, pp. 182–4. SC 8/304/15196. 15 See also CPR, 1281–1292, p. 144. The decision of the council, recorded on the dorse, was that William de Hamelton should expedite the case. 16 Quoted in Constable, Letters, p. 13. 17 The connection could be personal or formal. For instance, early in March 1304, when news of the election of Benedict XI began to circulate, Edward informed his treasurer, Walter de Langton, that he could not write to the new pope until he had been formally informed by the latter of his papal name, see SC 1/13/114, printed in EMDP, 1, no. 319. 14

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that dramatized the affective links that should flow from kinship. A letter from Edward’s mother, Eleanor of Provence, for instance, urged him to show favour to Lady Eleanor de Percy by deferring a quo warranto case in which she had been summoned before the justices at York, pointing out that he should ‘do this thing the more readily because she was the king your father’s niece and is your cousin’.18 The Queen Mother also explained that Lady Percy ‘cannot well go there [to York] without her mother who is not lightly taken across country’, recapitulating the bond between mother and child with which the letter had begun – in an invocation of her own maternal relationship to the king, ‘our most dear son’. Amplifying the personal foundations that ran through the whole request, she concluded with the benediction, ‘To God we commend you.’19 The letter was thus structured by nested obligations of relationship: the King to the Queen Mother; the Queen Mother to Lady Percy; and Lady Percy to her mother in turn; not forgetting the additional relationship between the late king, Henry III, and his niece, Lady Percy, which, being mentioned, served to reinforce the importance of Edward acting upon all of the above-mentioned relationships, and reminded him, by inference, that Lady Percy was also his cousin.20 Similarly, a letter whose epistolary situation was grounded in ‘friendship’ would adopt a variety of signalling mechanisms to position its request within this framework. An example comes from a letter from Eleanor of Castile to Edward’s chancellor, Robert Burnell,21 in which she greeted him with ‘love’ and ‘affectionately’ entreated him ‘to give counsel and aid’ to remedy a transgression against the bearer of the letter, who was a serjeant of her ‘cousin’ Constance of Béarn.22 Reinforcing the friendly relationship on which her epistolary strategy depended, she concluded by both referencing their frequent, friendly

18

SC 1/16/195, translated in Sayles, Functions, p. 162. For other examples of Eleanor’s emphatically familial rhetoric in appeals to Edward, see SC 1/16/151, printed in Letters, ed. Wood, 1, p. 11; SC 1/16/157, translated in Crawford, Queens, p. 60; SC 1/16/202, printed in Lettres, ed. Tanquerey, no. 65. 20 The queen mother often emphasized familial obligations in her requests to the king and chancellor; see for example, SC 1/16/152 (for advancement for her cousin); 16/186 (on behalf of a former servant of Henry III). 21 SC 1/22/29, translated in Letters, ed. Wood, 1, pp. 46–7; Crawford, Queens, p. 74. I reject John Carmi Parsons’s suggestion that this letter was written by Eleanor of Provence, who never failed to use her formal position as mater regis in letters after Henry III’s death: it made no sense to abandon her strongest claim to a positive reception. See J. C. Parsons, Eleanor of Castile: Queen and Society in Thirteenth-Century England (New York, 1995), p. 39. For another example of a noblewoman using friendship as an epistolary device to approach a royal chancellor, see K. Neal, ‘Loyalty’, especially pp. 19, 26. 22 ‘Cousin’ was here used in its broad medieval sense of ‘kinsperson not otherwise defined’. Constance was the widow of Henry of Almain, Edward I’s paternal cousin; she had also previously been betrothed to Eleanor of Castile’s half-brother, Manuel, and was therefore the queen’s ‘kin’ twice over. 19

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correspondence in a flattering manner, and promising him future reciprocal favours.23 ‘For the confidence which we have in your benevolence’, she wrote, ‘is the cause why we so often direct to you our prayers on behalf of our friends. And may you for love of us give such diligence in this affair, that we may henceforth be bound to you by special favour.’24 Such a closing promise of favour signalled the sender’s willingness to enter or continue an ongoing clientelic, i.e. patronage-based relationship with the recipient, and was a common feature of letters that relied on ‘friendship’ (even among kin) to request assistance for the sender or for a third party. The concurrence of familial and friendly relationships became entangled elements of persuasive strategy here. Burnell should assist the queen because they are friends, because of her confidence in him, and because this will reinforce their friendly relationship into the future; the queen must assist the bearer of the letter because he is the servant of her cousin. Like all letters, then, the fundamental premise and discursive positioning of this letter rested on matters of relationship. This kind of relational argumentation was only fully available in the firstperson discourse of the epistolary form; it could not be rendered in the third-person voice of petitions, or not effectively so. As the above examples illustrate, the subject positions enabled by the first-person framing of the epistolary form could have powerful affective force. Because many relationships between the king and others were also legal and/or feudal ones, his letters could simultaneously exercise legal and lordly pressure through the grammatical opportunities of epistolarity. A vital source of royal epistolary authority, therefore, was the epistolary form itself: through it, letters spoke with the king’s voice. Writs: the letter of the law

Kings of England used their association with the law symbolically to demonstrate and reinforce their authority in many contexts: for example, in the coronation charter or oath, or in the practice of reissuing the laws of royal predecessors as a kind of monarchical contract.25 Kingship was construed as the root of justice, and therefore as the source of law which was the legitimate mechanism of justice.26 Such was the importance of this connection that it was explicitly 23

For the discourse of patronage and the significance of thanks in royal diplomatic letters, see chapter 4. 24 ‘Confidencia enim quam de vestra benevolencia gerimus est causa quod vobis ita frequenter pro amicis nostris dirigimus partes nostras. Talem … ad hoc amore nostro diligentia apponatis quod vobis proxime teneamur ad grates speciales’, as translated in Crawford, Queens, p. 74. 25 Richardson, ‘Office’, p. 163; Maddicott, Origins, pp. 98–100; P. R. Hyams, Rancor and Reconciliation in Medieval England (Ithaca, 2003), pp. 155–8. 26 There is a substantial literature on this connection. See, for example, E. H. Kantorowicz,

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articulated in the proclamation of Edward’s peace made in his name in his absence by his lieutenants and magnates upon the death of Henry III. In terms directly echoing those of the coronation oath, they announced that Edward was ‘hereafter the debtor to all and singular of the realm in the exhibition of justice and in the preservation of the peace’, and that ‘[t]he king is and will be prepared to exhibit justice, by the Lord’s will, to all and singular in all rights and things touching them against all persons whatsoever, great and small’.27 The connection between the king and the law was both a practical and an ideological one, and the writ was one of its important expressions. The writ had developed as a tool of royal power and an expression of royal authority in the pre-Conquest English kingdoms, and its forms were adopted and developed thereafter to exploit the ‘state-building’ and centralizing properties that royal control of law offered.28 By Edward’s reign it was a well-established epistolary template that exercised considerable influence over the style and production of all royal epistolarity. The forms of writ had been increasingly codified since the reign of Henry II (1154–89).29 The art of the legal administrator was to know which writ was suitable for which action. In the late-thirteenth century, several collections of writs and tracts on their correct composition and use were compiled.30 The proper organization of and relationship between the royal administration, civil actions and political assembly, for example, occupied the anonymous author of Fleta (c. 1290) during Edward’s reign.31 In the description of the royal chancery which preceded his discussion of the use of writs in civil action, the Fleta author noted that clerks of chancery needed to be men of legal learning The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology, with a New Preface by William Chester Jordan, New edn (Princeton, 1997); J. E. A. Jolliffe, Angevin Kingship, 2nd edn (London, 1963); F. Kern, Kingship and Law in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1923); J. Dale, Inauguration and Liturgical Kingship in the Long Twelfth Century: Male and Female Accession Rituals in England, France and the Empire (Woodbridge, 2019). 27 CPR, 1272–1279, p. 1; Fœdera, I.ii, p. 497. For the terms of the coronation oath, see H. G. Richardson, ‘The English Coronation Oath’, Speculum 24 (1949), 44–75; Richardson, ‘Office’. 28 Clanchy, Memory, passim, but especially Part I. 29 For the development of writs, see F. W. Maitland, Equity, also Forms of Action (Cambridge, 1916); R. C. Van Caenegem, Royal Writs in England from the Conquest to Glanvill, Selden Society, 77 (London, 1958–9). 30 See in particular, Hengham, Summae. For recent discussion, see T. J. McSweeney, ‘Creating a Literature for the King’s Courts in the Later Thirteenth Century: Hengham Magna, Fet Asaver, and Bracton’, JLH 37:1 (2016), 41–71; T. J. McSweeney, Priests of the Law: Roman Law and the Making of the Common Law’s First Professionals (Oxford, 2019), chapter 1. 31 Fleta, 2, see especially chapters 13 (‘Of the Chancery’) and 36 (‘Of the Clerks’). Various scholars have speculated as to the identity of Fleta, who may have been associated with the wardrobe, see E. H. Kantorowicz, ‘The Prologue to Fleta and the School of Petrus de Vinea’, Speculum 32 (1957), 231–49; N. Denholm-Young, ‘Who Wrote ‘Fleta’?’, EHR 58:229 (1943), 1–29; D. J. Seipp, ‘Fleta (fl. 1290–1300)’, ODNB.

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and experience.32 For Fleta, the English legal system was both a source and expression of royal power, and the chancery and exchequer, as the home of the king’s official secretariat with special responsibility for producing the written instruments of royal law, lay at its centre. Brevity was the soul of the writ: it was foreign to eloquence in the guise of elaboration or rhetorical invention. Its legal authority was wrapped up in its terseness, directness and precision of language. Fleta remarked that: Writs are called brevia because, since they are framed in like manner as a rule of law, they expound and explain ‘briefly’ and in few words the allegation of the plaintiff, just as a rule of law expresses briefly the matter of which it treats. Yet a writ should not be so brief as to fail to express the argument and force of the allegation. And some writs are framed to apply to particular cases, while others are ‘of course’ and have been approved by the council of the whole realm and, indeed, cannot be altered without its will and consent.33

Already by the time of the treatise known as Bracton (c. 1220–c. 1260), the smallest deviations from the standard form of writs, such as lack of precision in nominating the recipient, could invalidate a writ.34 The necessity of precision and completeness for the efficacy of royal writs was widely known, and indeed formed one of the expectations that recipients brought to engaging with royal epistolarity generally. Sometime in 1272–4, for example, the sheriff of Cumberland was forced to ask the chancellor for a new writ to enable him to inquire into various crown pleas in his county, explaining that the people had refused to cooperate with his investigation on the grounds that his existing writ did not specify an inquiry to be made.35 Legal completeness was not the only factor to be considered. According to Hengham Magna (c. 1260–c. 1272),36 the proper wording of writs included taking careful account of the vocabulary appropriate to rank and to the 32

Fleta, 2, pp. 123, 125. For the thirteenth-century chancery generally, see G. W. S. Barrow, ‘The English Royal Chancery in the Earlier 13th Century’, Archiv für Diplomatik 41 (1995), 241–8; G. Barraclough, ‘The English Royal Chancery and the Papal Chancery in the Reign of Henry III’, MIÖG 62 (1954), 365–78; D. A. Carpenter, ‘The English Royal Chancery in the Thirteenth Century’, Écrit et pouvoir dans les chancelleries médiévales: Espace français, espace anglais, ed. K. Fianu and D. J. Guth (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1997), 25–54; reprinted as D. A. Carpenter, ‘The English Royal Chancery in the Thirteenth Century’, English Government in the Thirteenth Century, ed. A. Jobson (Woodbridge, 2004), 49–69. 33 Fleta, 2, p. 123. 34 On the Laws and Customs of England, traditionally attributed to Henry Bratton, but now shown to be the work of multiple authors throughout the mid-thirteenth century, see Henry de Bratton (attr.), Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England, 3 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1977), 3, pp. 80–1. 35 SC 1/7/83, printed in Lettres, ed. Tanquerey, no. 9. 36 On the dating and authorship of Hengham Magna, see P. Brand, ‘Hengham Magna: A Thirteenth-Century English Common Law Treatise and its Composition’, The Making of the Common Law (London, 1992), 369–91; McSweeney, ‘Literature for the King’s Courts’, pp. 43–6.

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jurisdictional relationship between the king and recipient: the king should never use precipimus tibi when addressing members of the higher orders, for example, but always mandamus vobis, unless they were magnates external to his realm in which case other standards were to be applied.37 The issue here was that the imperative force of precipire was too direct and servile to be applied to peers – it described a relationship of simple command and direct subservience.38 By contrast, mandare encompassed a sense of honourable service, one that softened imperative force with more courteous and less servile connotations; moreover it should be paired with the polite, plural form of the second person, as a sign of respect.39 Neither form, however, was appropriate to the case of magnates from other realms, since they lay beyond the king’s jurisdiction to command, whether courteously or otherwise. In other words, the standards of writs were both legal and socio-political. Both aspects were important to the ultimate efficacy of the document. Fleta noted that every writ had to be checked for ‘form, writing, wording and spelling’; all had to be in order before the royal seal could be applied, and any defect subsequently discovered could bring the writ into suspicion and quash the action.40 As Fleta and others bore witness, letter-writing and the production of writs were intimately entwined in royal administration. Clerks in chancery, for example, produced writs de cursu as well as the king’s diplomatic and other official correspondence. Their exposure to and experience in legal forms and concerns generated a mentality in which a precise match between purpose and language was to be prioritized over elegance, and in which efficacy and authority were linked to a brief style. However, the resemblance between the writ and all other royal letter-writing was not merely an accident of clerical habit. Nor did it mean that royal letter-writing was merely rhetorically unsophisticated. The association between the king and the law, and the law and the writ, meant that the writ itself acquired associations of power of both legal and political kinds that were useful to royal letters generally. In other words, when royal epistolarity adopted the writ as its primary referent it was a rhetorical decision that conferred 37 Hengham, Summae, p. 3. ‘Quando autem scribitur in hoc casu archiepiscopo vel episcopo seu comiti vel alii magnati tunc si magnates illi fuerunt in regno tunc scribitur illis sicut aliis in eodem casu, excepto hoc, quod non dicitur, precipimus tibi, sed, mandamus vobis. Et si magnates illi fuerunt extra regnum tunc scribitur baliuis suis et patet forma vtriusque.’ Similar standards were transferred to the production of royal letters in French: prioms occupied a higher register than mandoms. 38 For example, see SC 1/61/28 (instructions for the dispersal of wine), Appendix, no. 6. 39 The literature on politeness as socio-political discourse is vast. For some pertinent examples, see P. Brown and S. C. Levinson, Politeness: Some Universals in Language Use (Cambridge, 1987); T. Nevalainen and H. Raumolin-Brunberg, ‘Constraints on Politeness: The Pragmatics of Address Formulae in Early English Correspondence’, Historical Pragmatics: Pragmatics and Beyond, ed. A. H. Jucker (Amsterdam, 1995), 541–601; S. Tiisala, ‘Power and Politeness: Languages and Salutation Formulas in Correspondence between Sweden and the German Hanse’, J. Historical Pragmatics 5:2 (2004), 193–206. 40 Fleta, 2, pp. 124–5.

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useful quasi-legal authority upon all of the king’s correspondence within his jurisdiction. By echoing the writ, the royal epistolary style constantly reinscribed the king’s authority by articulating his legal associations. Ars dictaminis: continental discourses of power

From the mid-thirteenth century, in addition to the established signifiers of epistolary authority such as the form and materiality of writs,41 English royal letter-writing also began to draw influence from other epistolary norms. In the course of the twelfth century two major traditions of continental ars dictaminis had developed with relatively distinct priorities.42 The French or Orléanais school, exemplified by the work of Bernard of Meung and Geoffrey Vinsauf, tended to emphasize poetic elegance in prose. The Bolognese school, by contrast, advocated a more pragmatic and political style, as befitted argument and persuasion in the context of Roman law. Bolognese dictamen, developed in connection with the ars notaria of the lawyer, was particularly influenced by the conflict between empire and papacy.43 In the heat of this crucible, it had become a style inherently associated with the highest registers of power. By the thirteenth century, a group of Italian dictatores centred on Capua, but with links to the papal and imperial chanceries, and to the new Angevin kingdom of Sicily that was forged at the boundary between them,44 began to marry the stylistic and 41

Materiality of letters is not a category of analysis in this book, but it did contribute to the authority of the epistolary artefact. For a recent survey of the materiality of royal seals in England, see E. Cwiertnia, A. Ailes and P. Dryburgh, ‘Analysis of the Materiality of Royal and Governmental Seals of England with a Focus on the Great Seals (1100–1300): Methodology and Findings’, A Companion to Seals in the Middle Ages, ed. L. J. Whatley (Leiden, 2019), 19–56. For the dignity of different methods of closure, for example, see Royal Docs, p. 19; Tout, Chapters, 5, pp. 130–2; Maxwell-Lyte, Notes, pp. 300–1. For the authority of seals generally, see B. Bedos-Rezak, ‘Medieval Identity: A Sign and a Concept’, AHR 105:5 (2000), 1489–533; B. M. Bedos-Rezak, When Ego Was Imago: Signs of Identity in the Middle Ages (Leiden, 2010). A complete study of the materiality of English royal letters is wanting. 42 For the ars dictaminis tradition generally, see Camargo, Ars Dictaminis; Ward, Classical Rhetoric, especially chapter 3. 43 E. H. Kantorowicz, ‘Petrus de Vinea in England’, MIÖG 51 (1937), 43–88; B. Grévin, ‘Les mystères rhétoriques de l’état médiéval : L’écriture du pouvoir en Europe occidentale (XIIIe– XVe siècle)’, Annales 63:2 (2008), 271–300 (pp. 276–8); Grévin, Rhétorique, especially part 3; Hennings, ‘Language’, pp. 266–9; G. van Dievoet, Les coutumiers: Les styles, les formulaires et les ‘artes notariae’ (Turnhout, 1986). 44 For the relevance of papal–imperial conflict in Sicily for mid-century English politics, see G. A. Loud, ‘The Kingdom of Sicily and the Kingdom of England, 1066–1266’, History 88:292 (2003), 540–67; D. A. Carpenter, ‘The Gold Treasure of Henry III’, TCE 1 (1986), 61–88; B. K. U. Weiler, Henry III of England and the Staufen Empire, 1216–1272 (Woodbridge, 2006), esp. ch. 7. For the Angevin kingdom after 1266, see J. Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou: Power, Kingship and State Making in Thirteenth-Century Europe (London, 1998); J. Dunbabin, The French in the Kingdom of Sicily, 1266–1305 (Cambridge, 2011).

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pragmatic elements of the two schools, producing a ‘third wave’ of dictaminal style of particular authority.45 It was this style that began to exercise a direct influence on royal epistolarity in England from the mid-thirteenth century. Bolognese–Capuan dictamen in England

Building on the work of Ernst H. Kantorowicz, Lucy Hennings has shown that the reign of Henry III was a watershed in the development of English royal epistolarity, when canon and Roman law, together with Bolognese–Capuan dictamen and its practitioners, began to influence the expression of royal letters.46 In the context of his efforts to perform an authority equal to that of his brothers-in-law, the king of France and the Holy Roman Emperor, to ingratiate himself with the Roman curia, and subsequently, to secure the Sicilian crown for his younger son, the timing of Henry’s openness to the most authoritative forms of continental epistolary discourse seems unlikely to be coincidental.47 The Sicilian Petrus de Vinea, in particular, exerted a lasting influence on English royal circles. He was a senior member of the imperial chancery who travelled to England as a representative of Emperor Frederick II to formalize the emperor’s marriage to Henry’s sister, Isabella. He was so valued by Henry III as an advisor and advocate that he was granted an annuity, which, as Kantorowicz showed, was actually paid for a number of years until he fell out of Henry’s personal favour.48 After Petrus’s death in 1249, a posthumous collection of Vinean letters, many of which addressed questions of imperial and papal power, remained popular in England,49 and has been shown to have influenced the expression of a number of royal letters on both diplomatic and

45 Kantorowicz, ‘Vinea in England’; F. Delle Donne, ‘Le dictamen capouan: Écoles rhétoriques et conventions historiographiques’, Le dictamen dans tous ses états, ed. B. Grévin and A.-M. Turcan-Verkerk (Turnhout, 2015), 191–207. 46 Hennings, ‘Language’, chapter 6. This built on a uniquely English tradition of involving intellectuals in royal administration; see C. J. Nederman, ‘The Origins of “Policy”: Fiscal Administration and Economic Principles in Later Twelfth-Century England’, Rhetoric and Renewal, 149–68. I thank Constant Mews for this point. 47 Lucy Hennings is preparing important work on the relationship between Henry’s political ambitions on the continent, the upheavals of his reign at home, and his approach to dictamen, which will no doubt clarify this suggestion further. I thank her for discussing it with me. For the related ambitions of Henry’s brother, Richard of Cornwall, to become Holy Roman Emperor on the death of Frederick II, see N. Vincent, ‘Richard, First Earl of Cornwall and King of Germany (1209–1272)’, ODNB; N. Denholm-Young, Richard of Cornwall (New York, 1947), chapter 6. 48 Kantorowicz, ‘Vinea in England’, pp. 59–60. 49 For the letter collection, see L’epistolario di Pier Della Vigna, ed. E. D’Angelo, A. Boccia, T. De Angelis, F. Delle Donne and R. Gamberini (Soveria Mannelli [Italy], 2014).

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domestic concerns.50 The epistolary collections of Thomas of Capua51 and Richard of Pofi52 similarly circulated with direct and indirect impact on English royal epistolarity.53 The fact that it was the Bolognese–Capuan tradition of dictamen that gained influence in England in the latter part of the thirteenth century is indicative of the work that royal letters were expected to do: the tradition was both practical and political. As Grévin succinctly put it, ‘often found in the same manuscripts, [the above three letter collections] distilled the ideological essence of two powers endowed with universal pretensions and an exceptional command of Latin phraseology: the papal theocracy and the Sicilian-based empire of the later Hohenstaufen’.54 Applied to the diplomatic stage, borrowings from the style they embodied enabled the king of England to project his majesty on equal terms with his fellow rulers;55 at home, its influence amplified the already considerable authority of the writ. Edward encouraged continental dictatores into his administration with, if anything, greater enthusiasm than his father. Although his motives for doing so were not made explicit, it is at the least suggestive that Edward brought one prominent dictator into his retinue as early as his return home from crusade, even before his famous coronation pledge to restore the dignity and rights of the English crown.56 His route via Sicily, Capua and Bologna,57 great centres 50

For example, Grévin, ‘Writing Techniques’, pp. 7–15; Grévin, ‘Les mystères’, p. 288; Grévin, Rhétorique, Part 3. 51 Vice-chancellor in the papal chancery, and later cardinal; active in the pontificates of Innocent III, Honorius III and Gregory IX. For his career, see Die Kampanische Briefsammlung (Paris Lat. 11867), ed. S. Tuczek (Hanover, 2010), p. 26; Handschriftenverzeichnis zur Briefsammlung des Thomas von Capua, ed. K. Stöbener, M. Thumser and H. M. Schaller (Wiesbaden, 2017). 52 On his career, see P. Herde, Diplomatik, Kanonistik, Paläographie: Studien zu den Historischen Grundwissenschaften (Stuttgart, 2008). 53 Grévin, ‘Writing Techniques’, pp. 2–3. 54 Ibid., p. 4. 55 The specific context in which Henry wanted Sicilian exempla for royal letters to promote the claim of his second son, Edmund, to the throne of Sicily has been discussed by Kantorowicz, but the models surely also had wider utility; see Kantorowicz, ‘Vinea in England’, pp. 66–7. 56 For what follows on Stefano di San Giorgio, see Grévin, Rhétorique, pp. 404–15; F. Delle Donne, ‘Stefano di San Giorgio’; Kantorowicz, ‘Prologue to Fleta’. Others have noted the importance of his career in Sicily, England and the papacy; for example, R. Weiss, ‘Cinque Lettere Inedite del Cardinale Benedetto Gaetani (Bonifacio VIII)’, Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia 3 (1949), 162–8; Kantorowicz, ‘Prologue to Fleta’; G.-F. Nüske, ‘Untersuchungen über das Personal de päpstlichen Kanzlei 1254–1304’, Archiv für Diplomatik 20 (1974), 39–240. 57 Itinerary, ed. Gough, 1, pp. 17–19. Edward’s transit through Bologna was not marked by any official acts and therefore is not noted by Gough, but it was noted in local histories; see M. Sarti and M. Fattorni, De Claris Archigymnasii Bononiensis Professoribus a Saeculo 11 Usque ad Saeculum 14, 2 vols (Bologna, 1888–96), 1, pp. 177–8.

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of epistolary and legal arts, was nothing if not fortuitous to a new king determined to exploit every avenue for asserting royal dignity. By 1274 Stefano di San Giorgio, a diplomat and epistolary stylist of the Angevin Sicilian court who was himself an associate of many of Petrus de Vinea’s circle and a student of de Vinea’s own disciple Nicola da Rocca, had been granted several benefices by the king. We may suspect that it was only the king’s own delayed return to England that prevented San Giorgio appearing in the rolls before this time. By 1279 he was employed in the wardrobe, the most intimate office of the king’s administration; while throughout the 1280s, despite returning once more to Italy, he undertook a number of diplomatic missions on Edward’s behalf. When he died in 1290, the Abbey of Monte Cassino, with which his family was associated, remembered him as ‘consiliarius et secretarius regum Anglie’.58 San Giorgio’s Laudes in praise of Edward has been shown to have exerted a direct influence on the prologue of none other than Fleta, closing the circle of legal–epistolary– political concerns in late-thirteenth-century England. From a manuscript of San Giorgio’s letters now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Benoît Grévin has identified several letters produced in Edward’s name in which San Giorgio’s hand may be detected;59 in chapter three I shall suggest others which have a bearing on Edward’s selective deployment of certain political rhetorics and perhaps mark the nascence of the king’s conscious engagement with the possibilities of Bolognese–Capuan dictamen for expressing his authority. San Giorgio’s influence in England was not unique. Edward’s secretariat was replete with men of continental training, whose networks gave him diplomatic access to papal and other courts and whose experience in the latest discourses of authority could be useful to him in the project of restoring the dignity of the English crown. San Giorgio’s English sojourn coincided with that of the great Bolognese legist Francesco d’Accurso, whom Edward brought into his circle in 1273 ‘so that he might employ both his work and his counsel in administering the affairs of the new realm’.60 Like San Giorgio, d’Accurso served Edward as both councillor and secretary. This work certainly involved legal, diplomatic and probably notarial advice;61 spheres that, as we have seen, overlapped with epistolary means of constructing authority. Several learned papal notaries also found welcome in Edward’s wardrobe and chancery, including, for instance, Mr John Bush and Mr John de Caen.62 The latter was closely involved in Edward’s 58

Quoted in Grévin, Rhétorique, p. 407. Ibid., pp. 411–12. For an edition of the MS, see Una silloge epistolare della seconda metà del XIII secolo. I “Dictamina” provenienti dall’Italia meridionale del MS. Paris, Bibl. Nat. Lat. 8567., ed. F. Delle Donne (Firenze, 2007). 60 ‘et eius consilio et opera uteretur in administrandis novi regni negotiis’; Sarti and Fattorni, De Claris Archigymnasii Bononiensis, 1, p. 177; Haskins, ‘Three Documents’, p. 87. 61 Haskins, ‘Three Documents’, pp. 89–90. 62 For a useful working list of Edward’s clerks, see the appendices in G. E. Saunders, ‘Bureaucrats and Centralized Bureaucracy under Edward I, 1272–1307’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University, 1989). There seem to have been two men known as John of 59

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documentary and diplomatic offensive against the Scots in the 1290s.63 When San Giorgio left England in the early 1280s, he did so as part of the entourage of Mr Hugh of Evesham, the recently appointed papal physician and cardinal-priest of San Lorenzo in Lucina who was himself a former royal clerk with university training.64 Both men remained official and unofficial agents on Edward’s behalf. The presence of so many experienced practitioners of Bolognese–Capuan dictamen and the associated ars notaria among Edward’s secretariat, and the legacy of Petrus de Vinea’s association with that of his father, served as conduits for continental approaches to epistolarity in English royal circles. Edward’s most senior clerks became intimately familiar with the influential letter collections of dictatores like Richard of Pofi, Thomas of Capua and Petrus de Vinea, combining and recombining elegant turns of phrase at will.65 Furthermore, it was during this time that many Italian artes dictandi, often bound together with formularies of exemplary material, made their way into England,66 signalling that the new attention to relationships between letter form and function was noticed beyond the court. This shift did not entail the abandonment of the writ as referent, however, since its authority was already so well established and suited to expressing royal authority in Edward’s domains, and since it already formed the framework for recipients’ epistolary expectations there. Instead, dictamen was married to the writ in an even more direct and pragmatic synthesis of epistolary style than that already achieved in Bolognese–Capuan dictamen; and this new synthesis manifested especially in the registers of correspondence most suitable for communication among the political classes. Cursus: the rhythm of authority

Another of the continental models of authoritative epistolarity was the system of rhythmic prose or cursus that had been established as a feature of ‘good’ Latin composition in the papal chancery since the middle of the twelfth century,

Caen in Edward’s service, both of whom were university-trained, see H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, ‘The King’s Ministers in Parliament, 1272–1377’, EHR 46:184 (1931), 529–50 (p. 544). 63 C. J. Neville, ‘Caen [de Cadomo], John (c. 1247–1310), Notary Public and Royal Official’, ODNB. 64 Kantorowicz, ‘Prologue to Fleta’, p. 237; F. Getz, ‘Evesham, Hugh of (d. 1287), Physician and Cardinal’, ODNB. 65 Grévin, ‘Writing Techniques’. 66 Kantorowicz, ‘Vinea in England’, p. 56. For the extent of surviving epistolary manuscripts in and from England, see E. J. Polak, Medieval and Renaissance Letter Treatises and Form Letters, 3 vols (Leiden, 1993–2015).

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but was soon adopted more widely in continental chanceries.67 Descriptions of the cursus were often integrated into general artes dictandi such that it was sometimes treated as a natural part of dictamen, or even synonymous with it. In the Libellus de arte dictandi rhetorice (c. 1181–5) often attributed to Peter of Blois and certainly composed in an English context, the author outlined the proper parts of letters and promised to explain to readers the secrets of the cursus.68 This rhythmic arrangement of prose, he claimed, was the papal chancery’s secret method of authentication. This was really no more than a claim to the special and exalted nature of the knowledge that he offered readers and potential patrons.69 Moreover, it was a dishonest one, since the discussion of the cursus that followed was in fact heavily influenced by French fashion;70 but such claims are themselves evidence for the authority that was already becoming attached to papal style. The cursus was ‘a system of rhythmical clausulae’,71 based initially on metrical, and later on accentual syllabic units. With particular attention to the end of clauses and sentences, cursus were to be selected according to written (and unwritten) rules of style. Each rhythm – for example, velox, the swift one; planus, the level one; tardus, the slow one – was to be selected such that when ‘read aloud, they would produce a sound pleasing to the ear’: some were appropriate only to brief pauses, others to the longer pause at the end of a sentence.72 The employment of the cursus was therefore implicitly linked to oral performance of a kind designed to impress. Letters in cursive style literally ‘sounded’ authoritative. It is easy to imagine the appeal of this aspect of epistolarity in Edward’s secretariat. The influence of the cursus on English epistolary style, especially under the great seal, grew from the late-twelfth to the mid-fourteenth centuries.73 As in the case of Bolognese–Capuan dictamen, a period of increasing influence in

67 N. Denholm-Young, ‘The Cursus in England’, Oxford Essays in Medieval History Presented to H. E. Salter, ed. M. Powicke (Oxford, 1934), 42–73 (p. 47); B. Grévin, ‘L’Empire d’une forme: Réflexions sur la place du cursus rythmique dans les pratiques d’écriture européennes à l’automne du moyen âge (XIIIe–XVe siècle)’, Parva pro magnis munera: Etudes de littérature latine tardo-antique et médiévale offertes à François Dolbeau par ses élèves, ed. M. Goullet (Turnhout, 2009), 857–81. 68 Peter of Blois (attr.), Libellus de Arts Dictandi Rhetorice, ed. M. Camargo (Binghamton, 1995), pp. 40–2. 69 Cornelius, ‘Rhetoric of Advancement’, pp. 313–15. The same claim, for similar purposes, was also made by the Forma dictandi often attributed to Albert of Morra, which may have been the source for the Libellus; see M. Camargo, ‘The Libellus de Arte Dictandi Rhetorice Attributed to Peter of Blois’, Speculum 59:1 (1984), 16–41. 70 The complex heritage of the Libellus is discussed in Camargo, ‘Libellus’, pp. 41–4. 71 Denholm-Young, ‘Cursus’, p. 42; Chaplais, EDPMA, pp. 113–15; A. C. Clark, The Cursus in Mediaeval and Vulgar Latin (Oxford, 1910), pp. 17–18. 72 Chaplais, EDPMA, p. 113. 73 Denholm-Young, ‘Cursus’, p. 42.

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English royal epistolarity can be traced to the reign of Henry III,74 accelerating in the reign of Edward I. By this means royal letters acquired some of the reflected glory of the rhythm’s papal associations. Its selective application in royal correspondence was related to the importance of the addressee, the imputed significance of the content, and the likelihood of public delivery; it also depended on scribal experience and exposure to the standards of the papal chancery, and on the language of the letter itself. The cursus applied only to Latin letters. Kings were more likely to direct their letters to be written with attention to the cursus when writing to the papacy, since the appreciation of the recipients could be more surely predicted; even then, it was more especially used when kings wanted to emphasize that they personally took the matter to heart.75 As I show in chapter three, however, it was also occasionally employed in ‘domestic’ contexts; its use always alerts us to performances of particular epistolary prestige. The shape of the letter

There is some debate as to the extent to which the ars dictaminis should be considered descriptive or prescriptive. Certainly, letters existed before the ars. Furthermore, as vernacular royal letters developed they were modelled closely upon it, even though the ars itself dealt strictly with composition in Latin.76 A lasting achievement of the Bolognese ars dictaminis from the eleventh century was to parse the letter as a form and taxonomize its parts, the better to identify the expressions and rhetorical strategies appropriate to each. Artes in this tradition typically pointed out that letters have five parts:77 a greeting (salutatio), within which there may be elaboration and multiplication of subclauses; an opening statement of rationale encouraging interpersonal commitment and a receptive frame of mind (called, variously, the arenga, exordium or captatio benevolentiae); a contextual statement outlining the premises (narratio); the main request or command (petitio); and a conclusion (conclusio), within which might occur various subparts such as a sanctio to exhort with praise or threats, and the formal authenticating apparatus of date and location as these became standardized.78 The five-part definition of a letter characterized discussion in many artes, although some admitted that not every letter contained all possible parts and 74

Hennings, ‘Language’, pp. 136–40, 274–92. EDPMA, pp. 116–17. 76 A vernacular literature on letter-writing developed later, heavily influenced by the ars; see Medieval Rhetorics of Prose Composition: Five English Artes Dictandi and their Tradition, ed. M. Camargo (Binghamton, 1995), pp. 23–5. 77 See Camargo, Ars Dictaminis. Camargo advocates the distinction I adopt here between the ars (theory) and artes (texts) in which it is discussed. 78 On the relationship between dating clauses and royal authority, see D. Broun, ‘The Absence of Regnal Years from the Dating Clause of Charters of Kings of Scots, 1195–1222’, ANS 25 (2003), 46–64; D. Broun, ‘Introduction’, The Reality Behind Charter Diplomatic in Anglo-Norman Britain, ed. D. Broun (Glasgow, 2011), xi–xvi. 75 Chaplais,

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that they need not all appear in the order given.79 The five parts of letters and their functions were related to the six parts of oratory in the Ciceronian mode, although not all of the dictatores took the same view of the relationship of dictamen to ancient rhetoric, or to the medieval study or practice of Rhetoric in the universities and schools.80 One who openly acknowledged the debt of medieval dictamen to Cicero was the Florentine Brunetto Latini, whose Rettorica (c. 1260) was in fact a translation and commentary on De inventione, paying special attention to its translation into epistolary form.81 Latini’s emphasis of the Ciceronian heritage of dictamen entailed the acknowledgement that all parts of the letter had persuasive functions, and that a letter was always therefore a rhetorical text aimed at resolving some ‘dispute’ even when none was apparent. This connected the ultimate end of the letter to the language of reason, a discourse of growing significance in law and politics.82 Using the example of love letters, Latini demonstrated that even letters between ‘friends’ inherently assume that the mind of the recipient requires to be moved. Thus, all letters were necessarily rhetorical acts. As Latini put it: whether or not there is a dispute involved, Tullius himself, in the text before us, strives to give instruction on speaking and writing according to the rules of rhetoric. Where it appears that Tullius provides instruction only about speaking in matters of dispute, the expositor [i.e. Latini himself] will apply his little talent to explaining so much, and so comprehensibly, that his friend will be able to understand how it applies to both kinds of material.83

Latini also gave a coherent account of the distinction between the medieval letter and Ciceronian oratory.84 For Latini, an important distinction was the fact that oratory presupposed a dialogue between speakers, in which argument and counter-argument evolved in response to each other, whereas in letters the ‘speaker’ spoke at a distance and the recipient was silent. Because of this, with all possible counter-arguments having been foreseen, the rhetoric of letters had to be oriented specifically to evoking the recipient’s goodwill in order to capitalize on this singular opportunity to convey the sender’s desire effectively. Every part of the letter was oriented to some aspect of this overriding imperative. Consequently, medieval letter-writing was founded on a form of reception theory that took for granted the importance of the recipient and her/his 79

Rationes Dictandi, pp. 20–4. See Murphy, Rhetoric, pp. 213–19; R. Copeland and I. Sluiter, ‘Part 5. Professional, Civic, and Scholastic Approaches to the Language Arts, ca. 1225–ca. 1272: Introduction’, Grammar and Rhetoric, pp. 284–698. 81 Latini, Rettorica. Latini was among the first to prepare vernacular works on rhetoric; for his French Li livre dou tresor, circulated widely in fourteenth-century England, see J. R. East, ‘Brunetto Latini’s Rhetoric of Letter Writing’, Quarterly Journal of Speech 54:3 (1968), 241–6; V. Cox, ‘Ciceronian Rhetoric in Italy, 1260–1350’, Rhetorica 17 (1999), 239–88. 82 Cox, ‘Rhetoric’, pp. 331–3. 83 Latini, Rettorica, p. 776. 84 Ibid., pp. 776–8. 80

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relationship to the sender, not only as an incidental matter of style but as a fundamental basis of production.85 It was insufficient simply to express a sender’s demands without considering the corresponding party, unless the intention was to give offence. The success of epistolary communication rested on securing the goodwill of the recipient; and this securing of goodwill in turn rested on articulating and emphasizing a sender–recipient relationship that was both credible and acceptable to the recipient. In other words, a letter’s attempts to express the recipient’s socio-political position and agency needed to balance the sender’s interests with the recipient’s own (assumed) sense of their place in the world. Structure and function

True to the rhetorical nature of letter-writing, the practical object of Bolognese– Capuan dictamen was not merely to describe the parts that letters ideally contained, but to identify and discuss how to produce connections between structure and function which could be exploited to generate persuasive epistolary texts, maximizing both the sender’s authority and the recipient’s goodwill. In this, as in its identification of parts, it had both descriptive and prescriptive aspects. In the case of English royal letters, this means that dictamen did not bring about the relationship between structure and function, but it did clarify it and describe a set of general norms that offered avenues for strengthening the composition. Within English royal epistolary practice, the application of these norms was adapted and shaped by local expectations, under the pre-existing influence of the writ, noted above. Dictatores often elaborated their discussion of the salutatio, such that it could occupy as much as half the work.86 There were important reasons behind such extended discussion. In the first place, its position as the opening statement of the letter gave the salutatio special importance in the overall project of securing the recipient’s goodwill. In the second, it embodied the importance 85

For a useful discussion of reception theory in a medieval context, see Eco, Limits, particularly chapter 3. 86 Murphy, Rhetoric, p. 240; M. Richardson, ‘The Ars Dictaminis, the Formulary, and Medieval Epistolary Practice’, Letter-Writing Manuals and Instruction from Antiquity to the Present: Historical and Bibliographical Studies, ed. C. Poster and L. C. Mitchell (Colombia, 2007), 52–66 (pp. 58–9). Discussions of the salutatio alone are also known, see, for example, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Fairfax 27, ff. 1–6, which is a short thirteenth- or fourteenth-century formulary collection prefaced by a discussion of the salutatio only. A number of the letters in this collection have been published, with prefatory discussion, in Lost Letters, ed. Carlin and Crouch. For further comment on the importance of salutationes, see Constable, ‘Structure’; R. G. Witt, ‘Medieval Ars Dictaminis and the Beginnings of Humanism: A New Construction of the Problem’, Ren. Quart. 35:1 (1982), 1–35. In secondary literature, the salutatio has also attracted focused descriptive attention; see C. D. Lanham, Salutatio Formulas in Latin Letters to 1200: Syntax, Style, and Theory (Munich, 1975); P. Krüger, Bedeutung und Entwicklung der Salutatio in den Mittelalterlichen Briefstellern bis zum 14. Jahrhundert (Greifswald, 1912).

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contemporaries attributed to differentiating among social and political ranks. As Latini explained: whoever greets the other person through the salutation of a letter seems already to have begun his exordium. … the salutation is the doorway of the epistle, that which illuminates, in an orderly fashion, the names and the merits of the person addressed, and the affection of the sender.87

Everything about the arrangement and expression of the salutatio was relevant to the project of capturing goodwill, and this included the ordering and description of sender and addressee respectively.88 Theorists all agreed that the representation of epistolary relationships must reflect the hierarchical nature of relationships in wider society.89 The more exalted correspondent’s name must be placed first, in the place of highest honour,90 while between equals, the sender should place his or her name second, as a mark of humility.91 Letters were always marked and shaped by signs of difference in status, however slight, because distinction was as fundamental to the nature of letters and their rhetorical effect as it was to all socio-political interaction and identity. Most dictatores set kings among the superior or exalted ranks of epistolary persons, second only to popes and emperors.92 Even among kings, distinctions of dignity and rank existed and were to be expressed.93 Artes occasionally prioritized archbishops and even bishops above lay rulers in their imagined hierarchies. In English practice, however, although royal letters observed special courtesies towards princes of the church, the king was always paramount in epistolary dignity and position when addressing the ecclesiastical lords of his own domains. It was only in writing to ‘foreign’ church dignitaries that his letters adopted the recommendations of the dictatores.94 Within his domains, the prior placement of the king’s name in every letter offered rhetorically valuable, recurrent opportunities to recapitulate his position as the head of the political community. In addition to ordering, the dictatores addressed the language of salutationes. They compiled lists of vocabulary appropriate to saluting every kind of person. For example, the Rationes Dictandi explained that when addressing prelates, or from rulers to the pope ‘there are particular terms which we are accustomed 87 Latini,

Rettorica, pp. 778–9. ‘[I]n a world of increasingly rigidly defined political hierarchies and relationships, intitulationes assumed an ever more significant role in establishing and demonstrating status and power’; C. Insley, ‘Kings, Lords, Charters and the Political Culture of Twelfth-Century Wales’, ANS 30 (2007), 133–53 (p. 145). 89 Constable, ‘Structure’, pp. 260–1. 90 Ibid.; Chaplais, EDPMA, pp. 102–5. 91 Constable, ‘Structure’, p. 257. 92 Ibid. 93 Ibid., p. 258. 94 See, for instance, SC 1/12/97, a form of letters to be sent to all cardinals; Fœdera, I.ii, p. 635; TR, 1, no. 149. 88

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to put in salutations …: “reverence”, “allegiance”, “devotion”, “obedience”, “servitude” and “servanthood”’.95 Conversely ‘when secular subjects write a salutation to their lords, they should not under any circumstances say “veneration” or “allegiance”, but they should say instead “service”, “compliance”, “servitude”, “loyalty”, “subordination” and the like’.96 In these concerns, the dictatores closely resembled the commentators on English law who noted the importance of observing the proper vocabulary attendant on the dignity and jurisdictional position of any recipient of the king’s writ. While the sender could attempt to impose their interpretation on the social world by the ordering of names and selection of vocabulary, the success of their strategy rested on whether it achieved at least minimal agreement with the recipient’s understanding of their relationship. As the author of the anonymous Tria Sunt (c. 1265–1400) explained, it was important that in letters: every sort of person should be described in such a way that the description causes the maximum support of belief to be extended and so that what is true or plausible is said about this person, according to the statement of Horace: Either follow the reputation or invent what is consistent with itself.97

Hence, it was incumbent upon senders in their letters to represent recipients in a manner that was recognizable, credible and consistent with the recipients’ own views. A good letter was like a mirror in which the recipient should be able to see her/himself. This is an important observation for unpacking the harmonizing nature of letters. Whereas most accounts of letter-writing focus on the sender and their interests (or on the structural assumptions of the dictatores), the need for letters to articulate a credible and acceptable image of the recipient means that their interests are also encoded in epistolary texts, albeit through the lens of the letter-writer’s assumptions. Every articulation of those interests performed some degree of negotiation between the parties. The other epistolary parts received less emphasis than the salutatio. Generally, the captatio benevolentiae and the narratio were accorded less attention than the salutatio, and the petitio and conclusio were afforded the barest of elaboration, if any.98 This was probably because they were subject to greater diversity according to a letter’s substance, and therefore more difficult to discuss in a satisfactory, standard form. The diversity of possibilities was better addressed by the formularies of exempla that frequently travelled together with the theoretical artes and could be tailored to a user’s circumstances.99 95

Rationes Dictandi, p. 10. Ibid., p. 14. 97 Tria Sunt, p. 678. On this text’s relationship to other contemporary artes, see M. Camargo, ‘Tria Sunt: The Long and the Short of Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Documentum de Modo et Arte Dictandi et Versificandi’, Speculum 74 (1999), 935–55. 98 Murphy, Rhetoric, p. 225. 99 The division between the theoretical ars dictaminis and the formularies that frequently accompany artes texts in manuscripts has often been treated as a clear and important one, 96

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Nevertheless, norms for the other parts of letters can be deduced from the theoretical literature. By its nature, the exordium or captatio benevolentiae was always a focal site for expressing the bases on which the sender hoped to secure the recipient’s support. Dictatores advocated adopting a classical aphorism or Biblical quotation that provided a meditation on the theme of the letter. Since persuasion was fundamental to the aim of the letter as a whole, however, theorists acknowledged that a discrete exordium might be omitted, and its essence diffused throughout the other parts.100 In the case of English royal letters, the task of persuasion was rarely entrusted to a specific exordium except in diplomatic correspondence of the highest register. In fact, most royal letters proceeded directly from salutatio to narratio; but this is far from implying that the rhetoric of persuasion was not necessary or valued. All parts were susceptible to modulation, according to the required degree of politeness and the nature of the relationship between sender and addressee, making them all potential sites of rhetorical emphasis and persuasive effort. Indeed, as the Rationes Dictandi noted, all parts of the letter were in fact reflexes of the captatio benevolentiae: ‘in the remaining parts of the letter a not inconsiderable goodwill is expressed again and again’.101 For example, because the stated purpose of the narratio was to specify the circumstances behind a given request, it provided an opportunity to suggest the reasonableness, legal probity or friendly affection that motivated the communication. In consequence, senders who anticipated their letter meeting resistance or disagreement often amplified this section, in an effort to supply the fullest and most incontestable justification possible. By the thirteenth century this characterization of the narratio as the crux of reasoned political argument had become important in the papal chancery, and elsewhere, as Laurie Shepard has shown.102 Attending closely to both the terminology and the degree of amplification of narrationes can therefore be a useful tool for the historian in probing both the terms of and anticipated need for justifying a given instruction. In other words, narrationes are an important site of political language and argumentation: the site where reasoning takes place in royal letters. This was certainly true of Edward’s letters. By custom, in laying out the context of the present exchange, the narratio of a reply recapitulated the premises of the letter or letters to which it responded. Such repetition did not necessarily imply agreement, as Leonard Boyle showed in a famous analysis of the correspondence of Innocent III on the question of vernacular scripture.103 Royal and other administrative letters exchanged in the privileging the status of the theoretical over the pragmatic. However, this dichotomy is increasingly recognized as false; see M. Camargo, ‘Defining Medieval Rhetoric’, Rhetoric and Renewal, 21–34. For an example of a thirteenth-century English formulary, see Lost Letters, ed. Carlin and Crouch. 100 Rationes Dictandi, pp. 16–18. 101 Ibid. 102 Shepard, Courting Power, p. 6. 103 L. E. Boyle, ‘Innocent III and Vernacular Versions of Scripture’, The Bible in the Medieval

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domains of Edward I also followed this habit, often, but not always, introducing quoted material with some variation of the remark, ‘we received your letter stating that …’. This was part of the rationality of the narratio. This, like all norms, could be selectively violated for rhetorical effect. The petitio was little discussed in the ars. The Rationes Dictandi dispensed with it briefly, explaining that ‘There are … nine species of petition: supplicatory or didactic or menacing or exhortative or hortatory or admonitory or advisory or reproving or even merely direct.’104 While these terms were not elaborated, they evidently pertained to different persuasive forms. Royal petitiones often opened with a clause of intent through which the subsequent remarks were to be understood, frequently expressed through a present-participial phrase.105 The language in which both this preface and the petitio itself were expressed bore some of the persuasive burden of the letter. For example, it could be dominated by ecclesiastical, legal or ‘feudal’ rhetoric, or a combination of the three.106 This reflected the fundamental authorities of medieval thought – moral (God, natural law), and humanist (consensus, common practice)107 – as well as the essentially patronal nature of medieval society by which all social relations and political alliances were founded on hierarchically arranged interpersonal relationships.108 Linguistic variation in the petitio can therefore reveal the balance between these different sources of authority that the king – or any sender – hoped to rely on in representing their case authoritatively and in securing the recipient’s goodwill.109 The verbs of command discussed in Hengham Magna were employed in the petitio: precipire or mandare, according to the register of politeness appropriate to the recipient’s rank. One higher register was available: letters of polite and courtly request adopted rogare (to ask), always with a polite plural pronoun and occasionally coupled with require (to seek, ask for) for even further polite refinement. The distinction between mandare and rogare was a legal one, as well as one of register. As implied by Hengham Magna, it could signify people or World: Essays in Memory of Beryl Smalley, ed. K. Walsh and D. Wood (Oxford, 1985), 97–107. 104 Rationes Dictandi, p.18. 105 For example, see SC 1/12/23, Appendix, no. 12. Alternately, a participial phrase could be used within the petitio, for example, to qualify or intensify command. 106 By ‘feudal’ here, I refer to the suite of vocabulary associated with the military, fiscal and social relationship of lords to their tenants; for example, fidelis/fidelitas, teneri in all its forms, auxilium, concilium, and even dilectus in certain constructions such as the phrase dilecto et fideli, commonly used to describe those in the king’s peace. For the parallel example of rhetorical positioning in petitions to the crown, see Dodd, Justice, chapter 9; T. S. Haskett, ‘Access to Grace: Bills, Justice and Governance in England, 1300–1500’, Suppliques et requêtes: Le gouvernement par la grâce en occident 12e–15e siècle, ed. H. Millet (Rome, 2003), 297–317. 107 N. Doe, Fundamental Authority in Late Medieval English Law (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 4–5. 108 Gelting, ‘Reflections’, pp. 260–1. 109 Doe, Fundamental Authority, pp. 5, 35, 83. For the influence of circulating persuasive discourses in law and governance in literature of the period, see W. Scase, Literature and Complaint in England, 1272–1553 (Oxford, 2008); especially chapter 5 for the relationship between legal plaint and the ars dictaminis as literary form.

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situations in which the king had no right to command because they lay outside his jurisdiction; it could also be adopted as a choice of register distinguishing request from command for persuasive effect.110 The persuasive and expressive range of the common petitionary verbs could be extended by association with a range of adverbial phrases that the royal writing offices developed over time. For example, recipients could be commanded ‘in the love and faith by which you are bound to us’, or ‘as you love our honour’, or – as in Edward’s draft letter to the rebels at Kenilworth castle – ‘as [you] would not be reputed public enemies, or be disinherited, or lose [your] lives’.111 The ideology emphasized by these intensifying phrases was a strong indicator of the crown’s anxieties: affective terms tended to imply confidence, while feudo-legal terms suggested the need to assert obligations in the face of perceived vulnerability. In the permutations and combinations of these possibilities, the expressive range of the king’s letters – however terse and formulaic they may have been – was nonetheless considerable. The significance of the narratio as a particular site of rhetorical justification and reasoning is thrown into relief by the fact that letters of the lowest register normally dispensed with both captatio benevolentiae and narratio altogether, instead proceeding directly to the petitio. The verb precipire tended to occur in letters of this sort.112 The absence of any apparatus of justification or attempt to secure goodwill through persuasion in such letters is indicative either of the low status of the recipient, or of the king’s assertion of pure command. When such commands were directed to recipients who ordinarily expected to be honoured with explanatory remarks, such as magnates or senior administrators, they could convey extreme degrees of royal displeasure or impatience. Languages of power

At the outset of Edward’s reign, royal epistolarity was a Latin discourse, but during his thirty-six years on the throne, French began to develop as a language of authority suitable to certain epistolary activities. This shift signalled a rise in the king’s personal superintendence of governance, rather than a less ‘official’ style.113 While French constituted a less formal register than Latin,114 it remained 110 See

p. 32, above. This range of registers was also noted in W. Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England, 3 vols, 5th edn (Oxford, 1891-1906), 2, pp. 140–1. 111 SC 1/12/12, printed in Royal Letters, 2, pp. 289–90. 112 For example, SC 1/61/28, Appendix, no. 6. 113 See chapter 6. 114 On language choice and its socio-political implications in thirteenth-century England, see S. Crane, ‘Social Aspects of Bilingualism in the Thirteenth Century’, TCE 6 (1997), 103–16; H. Suggett, ‘The Use of French in England in the Later Middle Ages: The Alexander Prize Essay’, TRHS 4th ser., 28 (1946), 61–83; M. C. Davidson, ‘Code-Switching and Authority in Late Medieval England’, Neophilologus 87:3 (2003), 473–86; W. Rothwell, ‘The Role of French in Thirteenth-Century England’, BJRL 58 (1976), 445–66; W. Rothwell, ‘Language

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emphatically a language of power. French was the vernacular of the royal court, a connection which may have contributed to its association with royal as opposed to baronial interests during the period of rebellion against Henry III. It was during that time that commissioning literature in English became a mark of rebel sympathies.115 Conversely, addressing letters in French to officers of royal administration may have constituted a deliberate performance of the sender’s royalist sympathy.116 Evidence for Edward’s letters being drafted in French is extant from the late 1270s.117 It has often been assumed that this was because kings had limited Latin literacy, and it was probably the case that dictation in French was a faster and easier exercise for most aristocratic senders. Occasionally, the survival of a final copy shows that the letter was ultimately translated into Latin for issue under the great seal,118 and this process of translation probably encouraged the parallel development of epistolary structure and phraseology in the two languages. By the 1280s, however, French began to be used as the language of the final letter itself, at first for privy seal letters issuing internal commands to royal officials,119 and then increasingly for internal letters to the king’s senior representatives.120 While members of the French court wrote to Edward in French, however, his diplomatic correspondence maintained a general commitment to the dignity of Latin.121 and Government in Medieval England’, Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur 93 (1983), 258–70; I. Short, ‘On Bilingualism in Anglo-Norman England’, Romance Philology 33:4 (1980), 467–79. 115 M. N. Taylor, ‘Aultre Manier de Language: English Usage as a Political Act in ThirteenthCentury England’, Medieval Multilingualism: The Francophone World and its Neighbours, ed. C. Kleinhenz and K. Busby (Turnhout, 2010), 107–26. 116 See Neal, ‘Loyalty’, pp. 27–8. 117 For example, SC 1/13/10, 23 and 106; letters drafted in early 1278 to Philippe III of France, and Edmund of Lancaster, the king’s brother, respectively. For the practice generally, see Chaplais, EDPMA, p. 97. 118 For example, SC 1/13/161–2; the latter is a French draft of the former, which is a draft translation of a set of diplomatic letters on the matter of payments due to Mr Peter Algotsson. The Latin draft is printed in Dipl. Norv., 19, pp. 421–2; Fœdera, I.ii, p. 786. See also below, pp. 114–16. 119 The earliest example I have located is dated 29 August 1279: SC 1/10/34B, an instruction to Mr John de Kirkby for a respite of distraint to knighthood to be issued. Internal commands issued in French increase in the early 1280s, especially during military campaigns; see, for example, SC 1/45/4 (8 May 1282), ordering payment of the Chester garrison; and SC 1/10/37 (20 March 1283[?]), instructing Mr John de Kirkby to deal with a petition. 120 For example, many letters to Edmund, earl of Cornwall, as regent, during Edward’s absence in Gascony, 1286–9; and many letters to Edward, the king’s son, as lieutenant in England during the king’s absence in the Low Countries in 1297–8. For discussion of the former, see Neal, ‘Discourse’, passim; for the latter, see chapter 6. 121 Diplomatic correspondence could be drafted in French, but was generally translated before sending. As Chaplais noted, occasional diplomatic letters enrolled in French were probably copied from drafts; see EDMPA, p. 132.

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The less formal register of French, combined with its use in privy seal letters in the latter half of Edward’s reign, coincided with the development of a new discourse of royal epistolarity. The link between the king’s voice and his epistolary persona was intensified in these letters, both by the close association between the privy seal and the king’s person, and by expression in the king’s vernacular. The lower register of such letters, freed from the moderating influence of the Latin ars dictaminis, facilitated the emergence of a discourse that was, if anything, even more commanding and authoritarian than before.122 Conclusion

As this chapter has shown, royal letters benefited from many converging sources of authority during Edward’s reign. While royal letters always had a certain authority by virtue of speaking with ‘the king’s voice’, Edward’s letters also borrowed the legal authority of the writ, and some of the aura of political power that was associated with continental dictamen and the rhythms of the cursus. The authority built up in the long tradition of Latin letters was at least partially transferred to royal letters in French as they became more common from c. 1290. Together, these models provided ways of expressing royal letters for maximal persuasive effect in every situation. Moreover, as we shall see, Edward himself was involved in managing the authoritative representation of his epistolary voice, and aware of the need to use it strategically.123 Consequently, he sometimes directed the production of his letters in person, by dictation or approving drafts; at other times, by superintending the efforts of others; and in general, by employing skilled and trustworthy clerical staff of rhetorical and legal experience. A royal letter was thus a document of considerable rhetorical force. The scale of the efforts to imbue epistolary utterances with this force, however, points to the anxiety at the heart of all communication, which was particularly acute for a king determined to reassert his royal dignity. The aim of dictaminal discourse was to produce the appearance of harmony between sender and addressee, the better to advance the sender’s desires. But, as the dictatores recognized, this aim entailed recognizing the possibility of disagreement. The recipient was a silent party of all epistolarity. The traditions and formulae of royal letters produced texts that maximized royal authority and constructed the royal persona as if it were in an unchanging relationship to its interlocutors, as if recipients were in natural agreement with its interests, and as if all its statements had the force of law. This was a rhetorical strategy: letters were deliberately ‘harmonizing’ texts, made to project a confident articulation of socio-political space and intention, in which the 122 See 123 See

chapter 6. chapter 2.

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king’s will was the will of all. Nevertheless, royal power to ‘enact’ political relationships through letters was not unlimited. If it were to be effective, it had to be tailored to recipients’ expectations. Some of these expectations were conditioned by the experience of engaging with royal government over time, such as acquaintance with the accepted standards of writs; but they were also affected by socio-political changes beyond epistolarity, such as tensions over the king’s demand for military service outre mer. Consequently, we can read between the lines of the confident utterances of letters, so formally shaped and carefully crafted, to reveal the pressures to which royal government assumed itself to be responding. They speak to who was included in or excluded from categories such as domini, consanguines or fideles; they define who was and who was not considered dilectus. In so doing, they proclaimed and promoted the characteristics around which certain groups understood their own collective identity or were understood by others to cohere; and the historical contingency of all of these factors. When we analyse the ethos of effective royal letters, we find an articulation of the current frontline in a living negotiation of the relationships fundamental to political society: the maximal point to which the interests of the monarch could be pushed, at that moment and in that precise matter, in presenting an image of the recipient. Charting this over time, and through a range of contexts, we can see how the nature and quality of recipients’ political belonging was constantly refigured, and the king’s authority promoted, sometimes – but not always – with success.

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2 Rhetorical Refinement: Epistolary Editing and its Implications The converging signifiers of authority in Edward’s royal letters meant that all the king’s epistolary utterances were freighted with potential legal, social, and political or diplomatic significance. In particular it was essential, as Master William of Sarden warned the king, to avoid any potential for his words to be used against him.1 The rules of dictamen, the template of the writ, and the experience of the king’s clerks provided ample models for framing letters in ways that observed traditional forms, but the precise expression of content still needed to be tailored carefully to its context. The processes of production of Edward’s correspondence systematized the oversight of drafting, and facilitated editing by senior clerks where potential problems occurred, a process to which the king himself was sometimes a party. Corrected drafts highlight those matters that were deemed to be of importance, sometimes revealing a multi-stage process of suggested corrections before the final text was agreed. The evidence of careful, even obsessive editing of epistolary language evident in Edward’s draft correspondence shows that manipulation of political language was a close concern of government in this period.2 Even while forms and formulae associated with authority set the limits of appropriate epistolarity, within these bounds royal rhetoric was deliberate, strategic and minutely managed according to the king’s legal, political and diplomatic goals. King, clerks and correction processes

Writing was a technical skill that medieval elites devolved to professionals where possible. The autograph letter had yet to assume its status as an act of special favour and intimacy in politics.3 Processes of medieval epistolary production 1

EMDP, 1, pp. 59–60 n. 48. For a later example of royal manipulation of the language of kingship in letters and other contexts, see N. Saul, ‘Richard II and the Vocabulary of Kingship’, EHR 110:438 (1995), 854–77. 3 For the significance of the autograph letter in early modern politics, see, for example, 2

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were therefore inherently collaborative. Even in relatively simple scriptoria, while the sender retained the status of author or ‘authority’ (auctor), the end product represented their composition (compositio) transferred to a scribe orally through dictation (dictatio), and transmitted into final written form by inscription (inscriptio) performed by the same or another scribe working from notes.4 Both the number and geographical distribution of offices producing royal letters and the volume of their work, however, far outstripped the supervisory capacity of any single ‘auctor’. Michael Clanchy evocatively demonstrated the increasing workload of Henry III’s English chancery by charting a ten-fold increase in its consumption of sealing wax between 1226–30 and 1265–71.5 The volume of chancery business in England alone continued to grow after Edward’s accession. By the 1320s, it was issuing as many as 29,000 writs de cursu annually.6 In addition, there were many other ‘deputed’ chanceries, and other offices such as the wardrobe and exchequer, all with epistolary roles.7 Consequently, Edward’s letters were subject to even more complex production pragmatics than most medieval letters, encompassing not one but many secretariats with partially distinct spheres of responsibility, operating under seals of varying dignity and formality, and often remote from the king’s presence. The complexity of the structures of royal epistolary production necessitated systems of oversight through which the work of junior clerks was checked and approved by their superiors, all of whom had been carefully inducted into the culture of royal administration. In the first instance, this system of production and editing ensured the authenticity of the king’s epistolary voice, but it could also be applied to the problem of maximizing the legal correctness and rhetorical efficacy of any given correspondence. The success of this arrangement was such that, in matters of routine significance, Edward trusted that his clerks could ably represent him using their own judgement and knowledge of appropriate epistolary forms.8 J. Daybell, ‘Material Meanings and the Social Signs of Manuscript Letters in Early Modern England’, Literature Compass 6:3 (2009), 647–67; R. Allinson, A Monarchy of Letters: Royal Correspondence and English Diplomacy in the Reign of Elizabeth I (New York, 2012), chapter 2. 4 G. Constable, ‘Dictators and Diplomats in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries: Medieval Epistolography and the Birth of Modern Bureaucracy’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 46 (1992), 37–46 (p. 40). 5 Clanchy, Memory, pp. 59–60, 78–80; Carpenter, ‘English Royal Chancery’, pp. 55–6. 6 Carpenter, ‘English Royal Chancery’, pp. 55–6. 7 Royal Docs, pp. 45–9. 8 See, for example, the very general nature of Edward’s instruction to his clerks Mr Thomas Bek and John de Kirkby in 1279: ‘We command you that, as much for our right as that of that cleric of ours, you make a writ of our great seal about these matters, adequate for his preservation, for the aforesaid Master John, or his emissary, directed to those whom it concerns in the necessary form.’ (‘Vobis mandamus, quod praedicto Magistro Johanni, vel nuncio suo, tam pro jure nostro quam ipsius clerici nostri salvando Brevia competentia de magno sigillo nostro, eis quorum interest dirigenda super praemissis in forma debita faciatis.’) Records, ed. Prynne, 3, p. 228.

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A system by which senior clerks were responsible for ensuring that royal letters met the king’s expected formal, rhetorical and legal standards before authentication with a seal had already emerged in the exchequer by the twelfth century,9 and operated in all of Edward’s secretariats for which we have contemporary description. Fleta described two broad ranks of chancery clerk operating under the chancellor.10 According to Fleta, senior chancery clerks or clerks of the ‘first rank’ fell into three types, with differing degrees of epistolary responsibility: the preceptores ordered the issue of writs de precepto, i.e. the instructions or commands least subject to standardized formulae; the prenotarii wrote them out; and others, perhaps best called ‘examinatores’, checked them for legal coherence and substance, ‘having regard to their form, writing, wording and spelling’, before dispatch.11 As a group, these senior clerks also oversaw the work of the junior clerks, who wrote the formulaic writs de cursu that were required for originating any legal action in the royal courts. Above them all, the chancellor bore ultimate responsibility for the work of all the king’s other seals used by his ‘deputies’ – such as the chancellors of Ireland or Gascony, excepting only the privy seal which remained in the wardrobe with the king. Thus, both senior and junior clerks were subject to the oversight of their peers or superiors, ensuring that all epistolary products issued under the great seal had the corporate approval of the king’s secretariat. This system also served to produce and reinforce a normative discourse for royal epistolarity, and to inculcate in royal clerks a shared ideology of service.12 Oversight and checking were accompanied by practices of sorting and delegating that ensured that the most important correspondence was dealt with by the most senior staff. In his analysis of the correspondence of Robert Burnell (chancellor, 1274–92), for example, Richard Huscroft described an organized process of delegated gate-keeping, through which incoming correspondence was assessed and sorted according to the import of the matter by certain clerks before being directed to others for action, or brought before an ‘office meeting’ with the chancellor or other supervising clerks for discussion and delegation of the task of reply.13 Parallels can be drawn between this and the process that developed around the receipt of parliamentary petitions as the volume of that work grew in the 9

Dialogus de Scaccario, and Constitutio Domus Regis: The Dialogue of the Exchequer, and the Establishment of the Royal Household, ed. E. Amt and S. D. Church (Oxford, 2007), pp. 18–19, 32–4. 10 Fleta, 2, pp. 123–6; Royal Docs, ed. Chaplais, pp. 20–2. 11 Fleta, 2, p. 125. 12 The identity and solidarity of administrators has increasingly been recognized as a theme of contemporary commentary; see Hershey, ‘Justice and Bureaucracy’; U. Kypta, ‘How to Be an Exchequer Clerk in the Twelfth Century: What the Dialogue of the Exchequer is Really About’, History 103:355 (2018), 199–222; Barker, Identities, chapter 3. 13 R. Huscroft, ‘The Correspondence of Robert Burnell, Bishop of Bath and Wells and Chancellor of Edward I’, Archives 25:102 (2000), 16–39 (pp. 35–6).

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late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth century. From at least 1280, petitions were submitted first to receivers, who ‘received’ the petition and determined its forward progress through the complaint–response mechanisms of the royal government. A petition might be answered or rejected immediately; directed to the chancellor, the exchequer or the justices of the Jews; or marked for the consideration of the king’s council, or of the king himself.14 The purpose of this system was to direct matters which were routine away from executive consideration which they did not warrant in order to preserve those energies for the most important matters. An analogous process probably operated in chancery, and elsewhere in royal administration, to ensure that only a small proportion of correspondence crossed the desks of the most senior clerks, with an even smaller proportion coming to the personal attention of the king or his most senior local representative. Similar processes of oversight and sorting probably operated in the wardrobe. Although no contemporary description of its work is extant, a hierarchy of clerks working there can be detected in the ordinances made to rationalize the size and costs of the household in 1279.15 It reduced to fifty individuals those who would be deemed eligible to claim bed and board. Among them were six senior wardrobe clerks, distinguished from general ‘clerks of the wardrobe’, ‘clerks of the king’s chapel’, and ‘clerks of the offices’.16 These senior clerks had the closest connection to the king’s personal administration, and the ordinance names many of them: the treasurer (later called the keeper) of the wardrobe, Mr Thomas Bek; the controller, Thomas Gunneys; an unnamed ‘clerk under the treasurer’, later known as the cofferer; Mr William Louth; the dictator Stefano di San Giorgio, noted above for his epistolary excellence and continental experience; and William Blyborough. Because of his administrative responsibilities, as well as his intimacy with the king, each of these men was a person of political substance with his own small clerical staff.17 The overall secretarial staff of the wardrobe was no doubt somewhat larger when these junior clerks were taken into account. During John Benstead’s tenure as controller, for example, at least three under-clerks worked to produce and enrol writs under the privy seal,18 and Benstead took seven clerks with him to copy ‘certain bills and memoranda’ when absent from court and away from the privy seal itself in 1299–1300.19 14 Dodd,

Justice, pp. 50–2, 57–8. For the growth of the household from the reign of Henry II, see B. Wild, ‘A Truly Royal Retinue: Using Wardrobe Rolls to Determine the Size and Composition of the Household of Henry III of England’, Court Historian 16:2 (2011), 127–57; C. Given-Wilson, The Royal Household and the King’s Affinity: Service, Politcs and Finance in England 1360–1413 (New Haven, 1986), pp. 258–9. For the 1279 ordinance, see Tout, Chapters, 2, pp. 158–63. 16 The latter had responsibility for overseeing the pantry, kitchen, marshalcy (stables) and carts (transport). 17 Tout, Chapters, 2, p. 29. 18 Ibid., p. 37. 19 Ibid., pp. 37–8. 15

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These men worked more closely with the king than any of his other officials, and it was to them that he entrusted his most intimate correspondence, under the privy seal. The association between the seal, the wardrobe, and the king’s conscience produced the reign’s most direct epistolary expressions of royal will, especially in the troubled period after c. 1290.20 At any one time, the senior clerks of the king’s chancery and wardrobe probably numbered no more than a dozen or so men, rising to perhaps two dozen when the deputed seals were taken into account. Across the thirty-six years of Edward’s reign, only about 400 king’s clerks were active in secretarial work, spread mainly across the itinerant wardrobe, and the chanceries of England and Ireland.21 Some of these men also worked at one time or another in Edward’s Gascon or Scottish administrations.22 Sixty-one king’s clerks found employment in the chancery during their careers, twenty-seven of whom rose to the first rank.23 As in the wardrobe, no more than five or six men held positions as chancery clerks of the first rank simultaneously. This was an elite administrative corps. Whatever their rank, all these clerks played a role in producing the king’s epistolary voice in a trustworthy, complete and well-chosen form. This relatively small group of men tended to spend their lives in royal service, working closely together and often honing their craft in the administration of the household before moving into other senior roles in government. Having been closely associated with the king’s person and having earned his personal trust, the king’s clerks were the ideal agents to produce his royal persona faithfully in letters. They had been exposed to and assimilated his ‘voice’, as the best secretaries were expected to do. The most senior among them were also members of his council.24 King’s clerks were therefore instrumental in not only implementing but also forming the ideology and policies that shaped Edward’s epistolarity. In matters of personal concern, or political and diplomatic significance, the king himself was personally involved in letter-writing, and may have been a party to the editorial discussions of his senior clerks. Aristocratic senders were expected to involve themselves in the documentary administration of their estates.25 By the late-thirteenth century a basic literate education may be assumed among 20

See chapter 6. ‘Bureaucrats’, pp. 335–46. Saunders focuses on English records of the exchequer, chancery, wardrobe and the royal courts, although he also notes where king’s clerks active in these departments were known to have held roles in the deputed offices of Gascony or Ireland, for example. Saunders also identifies a further 164 men who were granted the robes of a king’s clerk as a form of patronage rather than by the distinction of their work. 22 Such as Bertrand de Got, later Pope Clement V. See J. H. Denton, ‘Pope Clement V’s Early Career as a Royal Clerk’, EHR 83:327 (1968), 303–14. 23 Saunders, ‘Bureaucrats’, pp. 347–50. 24 Baldwin, Council, pp. 73–4; Tout, Chapters, 2, pp. 146–7. 25 Neal, ‘Loyalty’, pp. 20–1; ‘The Rules of Robert Grosseteste’, Walter of Henley and other treatises on estate management and accounting, ed. D. Oschinsky (Oxford, 1971), 388–407. 21 Saunders,

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those of noble or royal rank, meaning that it was at least theoretically possible for kings and lords to read and approve their letters.26 Furthermore, even those who could or did not read for themselves could approve letters aurally, an act with its own suite of political implications.27 We know that the queen mother, Eleanor of Provence, for instance, expected Edward to interest himself personally in the composition of important correspondence by listening to a draft in order to ensure its efficacy and appropriateness. In one of her many letters seeking Edward’s support and intervention in the matter of her Provençal inheritance, she enclosed a draft letter she had caused to be prepared in Edward’s name, asking him to ‘hear it, and if it please you, have it sealed, and if not, command it to be amended at your pleasure and sent quickly by you to your aunt, my lady of France’.28 Eleanor’s words suggest that even when royal letters were composed by an interested third party, much as charters were regularly written by scribes of the grantee, they had to pass an aural test of suitability. Only when royal letters ‘sounded right’ would the king’s seal be applied. Eleanor’s letter suggests that the king himself was sometimes involved in such evaluative work. There are also occasional indications that royal letters could be taken from dictation. It is unlikely, for instance, that the expletive ‘by God’s thigh’ (i.e. groin), in a draft letter to the queen’s physician was a clerical initiative.29 An unusual benediction in a letter to the teenage Edward of Caernarfon when he was acting as lieutenant in England during his father’s sojourn in the Low Countries in 1297 is also likely to have been a direct paternal statement.30 On other occasions the king’s initially ribald language was subsequently modified for the sake of propriety, such as when he criticized the earl of Dunbar using an especially scatological reference to the antihero of a well-known romance.31 26

V. H. Galbraith, ‘The Literacy of the Medieval English Kings’, Proc. Brit. Acad. 21 (1935), 201–38 (p. 215); McFarlane, Nobility, pp. 228–47; Clanchy, Memory, pp. 234–40. 27 See chapter 3. 28 SC 1/16/168, printed in Fœdera, I.ii, p. 611: ‘nos avoms fet feire une letre depar vos la quele nous vo envoions et voz prioms, que vos la vuillez oir, si ele vos plest, facez la seler, et si non, voillez commander, que ele soit amendee a vestre plesir, et per vos soit tost envoieea vostre autele ma dame de France’. On another occasion I propose to explore the question of such third-party composition of letters, and its relationship to the dynamics of charter production. 29 SC 1/12/204, printed in P. Chaplais, ‘Some Private Letters of Edward I’, EHR 77:302 (1962), 79–86 (p. 85); see also below, p. 177. 30 ‘a dieu chier fiuz qui vous gard’; SC 1/45/108 (29 December 1297, from Ghent). For further letters to the young Edward as lieutenant, see chapter 6, and documents in the Appendix. 31 SC 1/13/143, printed and translated in Documents, ed. Stevenson, 2, no. 632. The king’s initial phrase, ‘Tant come chien chye’ [While the dog shits], referred obliquely to La Chanson d’Augidier, described by Michael Prestwich as ‘a work of startling obscenity’. See M. Prestwich, ‘Edward I: A Chivalric King?’, Prowess, Piety and Public Order in Medieval Society, ed. C. M. Nakashian and D. P. Franke (Leiden, 2017), 265–85 (pp. 270–1); D. J. Conlon, ‘La Chanson

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And, in an angry draft of a reply to his mother, who had detained one of his household knights without permission, Edward’s pointed language was extensively edited and is now only partly decipherable.32 Evidence such as this shows clearly that Edward occasionally dictated his letters in real time, even if he, or others, later refined the language or structure of the missive. The king was also known to superintend the production of his letters from afar in cases of particular legal or diplomatic import. For example, in the summer of 1279, the king and queen travelled to France to settle the Treaty of Amiens, and to do homage for their new lordship of Ponthieu. Nevertheless, Edward continued to interest himself in epistolary affairs at home. He wrote to John de Kirkby, sending a letter close to be directed on to Helen de la Zouche, and instructing Kirkby to forward Helen’s reply without delay, no matter where the king might be.33 The enclosure does not survive, but probably concerned a plea against Helen by one of her sisters and co-heiresses of Roger de Quincy, which had been initiated earlier in the year.34 Management of relations among the baronial class remained on the king’s agenda even when he was absent from the realm.35 It was not uncommon for Edward and his administrators to discuss epistolary strategy, even at a distance. In 1304, for example, the treasurer Walter de Langton wrote to Edward recommending royal letters be sent to Edward’s son-in-law, the Duke of Brabant, and to Jan de Cuijk, his agent in Flanders, concerning action they should take to secure their promised fees. Edward thanked his treasurer for his work, but rejected his advice: it was inappropriate for him to write to these men, he said, since neither had written to him directly, but only to the treasurer.36 The treasurer should therefore respond himself. Edward then proceeded to issue precise and detailed instructions on the content of the letters for the treasurer to follow. It is thus evident that the king did not intend to ignore the matter, but he nevertheless withheld his own epistolary voice. It seems that he did not want to be seen to write spontaneously to either man, lest this give implicit assurances of a particular outcome; and moreover, that he considered it inappropriate for the superior party to initiate epistolary discussion on such matters unless granting special favour.

d’Audigier – A Scatological Parody of the Chansons de Geste’, NMS 33 (1989), 21–55. See also pp. 172–3, below. 32 Howell, Eleanor, pp. 297–8; SC 1/12/164 (unpublished). 33 SC 1/10/32; ‘Mittimus ad vos quandam litteram clausam Elene La Zouche directam mandantes quatinus [si] prefate Elene per aliquem de nunciis nostris die … ad nos referat ubicumque fuerimus responsam suam sine dilatione mittatis’. 34 See H. Kersey, ‘Aristocratic Female Inheritance and Property Holding in ThirteenthCentury England’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Canterbury Christ Church University, 2017), pp. 208–9. 35 See chapter 5, and also Neal, ‘Discourse’, pp. 150, 155–6. 36 The king’s reply survives: SC 1/13/114, printed in EMDP, 1, no. 319.

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Collaborative corrections

The work of one of the prenotarii in the English chancery during John Langton’s chancellorship (1292–1302), henceforth known as Scribe W, provides a useful illustration of the collaborative writing process of important political and diplomatic letters under the great seal.37 Scribe W’s distinctive hand is evident in a number of extant drafts, copies and transcripts of letters dated at Westminster in June of 1294, and August and October of 1295. By the evidence of those documents that can firmly be attributed to him,38 he worked exclusively on letters of diplomatic import at this time, composing, copying and preparing them for the great seal. His demonstrable epistolary activity centred on Edward’s machinations in response to the annexation of Gascony by his cousin, Philippe IV of France; indubitably matters of high significance. He wrote letters in which Edward appointed important diplomatic envoys, sought to activate vital intra-familial networks of patronage, negotiated significant alliances of both marital and martial kinds, and managed his relationship to the chief source of spiritual authority in western Christendom.39 He was therefore among the senior clerks of chancery; perhaps a master like the notarius regis in cancellaria sua, described in 1336 as having special responsibility for writing and enrolling documents of international character.40 Working on such high-status correspondence, normally when the king was in residence at Westminster,41 it is likely that his epistolary output was generated in collaboration with the king himself as well as his clerical colleagues. Drafts attributable to Scribe W show that he normally made corrections himself in the same phase of work as the initial inscriptio,42 before further editing was completed by another hand or hands. As a senior chancery clerk, Scribe W moved among men who were members of the king’s council, if he were not a councillor himself. As well as the usual processes of checking and oversight embedded in chancery practice, a clerk such as Scribe W could call on these men for advice on points of law or political rhetoric. They included the steward and chamberlain of the household, the keeper and controller of

37

I have derived this moniker from the scribe’s characteristic ‘w’. I am preparing a detailed examination of this scribe and his work with Anne Holloway, in which we hope to be able to make more concrete suggestions as to his identity. 38 In 1294: SC 1/12/48 i–iv (June 20); in 1295: SC 1/13/28 i–iv (August 12), SC 1/14/36 i–iii (August 14), SC 1/14/44 i–iv (October 16), and SC 1/12/23 (October 19); see also Appendix, nos 10–12. His work may also include some chancery drafts of lesser status from the 1280s, which exhibit less care and formality than his mature hand. 39 For discussion of a series of letters drafted by Scribe W in August 1295 to French kinswomen, see Neal, ‘Royal Women and Diplomacy’. 40 See Royal Docs., ed. Chaplais, p. 21. 41 Itinerary, ed. Gough, 2, pp. 118, 32, 34. 42 Autograph corrections are usually distinguishable by being in not only the same hand, but the same ink.

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the wardrobe, the chief clerks of chancery and wardrobe, and the justices of the king’s and common benches.43 Scribe W’s output suggests – at minimum – a small coterie of senior clerks in chancery, perhaps working in collaboration with the king himself, and certainly with each other, to ensure that the most appropriate and favourable royal persona was projected at times of heightened diplomatic sensitivity. The drafts of 16–19 October 1295 are a case in point. This was a critical period for diplomatic counsel and epistolary editing in English governmental circles. England had been at war with France over the control of Gascony since the previous year, but Edward had struggled to raise the necessary troops, his continental alliances were fragile, and rebellion in Wales had drained resources further.44 Envoys had been received from the pope in August with the mission of brokering a peace, a mission to which Edward had implied his commitment in letters drafted by Scribe W on 12 August seeking his kinswomen’s support in the Capetian court and deferring a meeting with his ally against France, Adolf of Nassau, king of the Romans.45 But on 8 October a former knight of Edward’s household, Thomas Turbeville, had been tried and executed for treason, having been shown to have conspired with the king of France to kidnap Edward and stir rebellions in Wales and Scotland, timed to coincide with a planned French invasion.46 A letter reportedly found on his person revealed the advanced extent of these plans. Moreover, John I of Scotland and many other Scottish nobles had failed to answer the king’s military summons to serve in his war on France;47 rather, representatives of the Scottish nobility were known to be negotiating with the French king, and would shortly conclude a formal alliance with him.48

43 Tout,

Chapters, 2, pp. 148–9; Baldwin, Council, 73–5, 79. On the Gascon Crisis, see Vale, Legacy, chapter 6; M. G. A. Vale, ‘The Gascon Nobility and the Anglo-French War, 1294–98’, War and Government in the Middle Ages, ed. J. Gillingham and J. C. Holt (Cambridge, 1984), 134–46; Neal, ‘Royal Women and Diplomacy’, passim. On the Welsh rebellion, see J. Griffiths, ‘The Revolt of Madog ap Llywelyn, 1294–5’, Trafodion 16 (1955), 12–25. 45 Neal, ‘Royal Women and Diplomacy’. Scribe W may also have been involved in drafting a letter to Adolf of Nassau in April of 1295, delaying a proposed meeting between himself and Edward; see SC 1/14/13, printed in TR, 1, no. 254. On Edward’s alliance with Adolf, see G. Barraclough, ‘Edward I and Adolf of Nassau: A Chapter of Mediaeval Diplomatic History’, CHJ 6 (1940), 225–62; M. Prestwich, ‘Edward I and Adolf of Nassau’, TCE 3 (1991), 127–36. 46 Cotton, ed. Luard, p. 306; J. G. Edwards, ‘The Treason of Thomas Tuberville, 1295’, Studies in Medieval History Presented to F. M. Powicke, ed. R. W. Hunt, W. A. Pantin and R. W. Southern (Oxford, 1948), 296–309; Morris, Edward I, pp. 283, 285. 47 For discussion of the summons, see chapter 6. 48 G. W. S. Barrow, Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland (Edinburgh, 2005), pp. 63–4. There is some question as to whether John I had agency in this, since he had reputedly been deprived of his royal authority by a committee of Scottish barons; see G. P. Stell, ‘John [John de Balliol] (c. 1248x50–1314), King of Scots’, ODNB. 44

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Scribe W was involved in at least four extant draft letters prepared in Edward’s name at this tense time: a set of three concerning the confiscation of towns and castles in Scotland,49 and another to the barons and others of the Agenais who were adhering to the King of France, asking them to return to his allegiance as their natural lord.50 Internal evidence in this case suggests that the scribe was working from another written document, since he accidentally copied out one line twice and later marked it for deletion; but he was not a simple copyist since he also made some autograph amendments to the text, which was then further amended and dated in another hand, presumably that of one of the examinatores mentioned by Fleta. We can thus situate him in a collaborative production context among the senior chancery clerks working with the king during a period of intense activity in Westminster. The amendments made to these letters by Scribe W and his collaborators were concerned mainly with the socio-political dynamics of rebuke, and with closing potential avenues of refusal or delay. A notable amendment made in a second hand to the letter of credence to John I, which introduced the royal representatives empowered to seize the castles and towns of Berwick, Roxburgh and Jedburgh, demoted the Scottish king from ‘Your Nobility’ to a simple ‘you’;51 a significant diplomatic insult which ostentatiously deprived him of the respect due to his rank. Other amendments in Scribe W’s hand reduced the presence of subordinate clauses and qualifying phrases, producing an overall effect that was considerably more direct and commanding. Such amendments may imply that the drafting process of this letter coincided with the arrival of intelligence from France concerning the developing Franco-Scottish alliance. John was certainly intended to feel the weight of Edward’s displeasure in this language. Meanwhile, an interlinear addition in Scribe W’s hand clarified that the king’s credence and its terms would apply to both envoys, or singly to either one of them. This clause, known as a quorum, which was common in letters of procuration, avoided the credence being invalidated by the failure of one or other named representative to appear.52 The king and his clerks wished to avoid the potential delay or opportunities for obstruction that such a situation might engender. Two other letters were prepared on the same sheet: letters patent empowering the proctors; and promising to return the towns and castles at the conclusion of the war with France. The second editorial hand also made various amendments to these drafts, mainly concerning harmonious word order, but also re-instating the appellation ‘illustrious’ for John I. The editorial committee 49

SC 1/14/44 i–iii, see Appendix, no. 11, and Rotuli Scotiae in Turri Londensi et in Domo Capitulari Westmonasteriensi Asservati, ed. D. MacPherson, J. Caley and W. Illingsworth, 2 vols (London, 1814), 1, p. 22b. 50 SC 1/12/23, see Appendix, no. 12 51 SC 1/14/44 i, del. ‘nobilitatem vestram’; ‘vos’ added interlinearly, see Appendix, no. 11. 52 G. P. Cuttino, English Diplomatic Administration, 1259–1339 (Oxford, 1971), p. 109; Chaplais, EDPMA, pp. 180–3. On envoys and ambassadors generally, see D. E. Queller, The Office of Ambassador in the Middle Ages (Princeton, 1967).

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in chancery evidently wished to avoid giving the Scottish public any (further) reason to reject the English king’s instructions by showing open disrespect for his proper title, even though the letter to the Scottish king himself had been amended to show disdain. Three days later, Scribe W drafted the above-mentioned letter to the barons of the Agenais (see Fig. 2). This was a delicate communication in which lords who had abandoned Edward’s allegiance were encouraged to return with promises of reward and recognition, tempered with the king’s righteous punishment for their disloyalty. If there were to be any potential for such a letter to succeed in its nominal aim, its rhetoric would need to be managed carefully. A second hand (perhaps the same one as in the Scottish letters, above) made various amendments that produced a more harmonious word order, especially in the important opening line of the captatio benevolentiae, and in the closing sanctio. Scribe W, meanwhile, attended to the persuasive vocabulary of the letter. He altered the opening participle of the petitio from ‘trusting’ (confidentes) to ‘hoping’ (sperantes), conveying a less commanding, more optative tone. He also introduced the explanatory phrase ‘to our manifest disherison’ to describe the injuries inflicted upon Edward’s rule in Gascony by the French king – a phrase calculated to appeal to the jealous maintenance of their rights of lordship that Gascons were stereotypically held to exercise. All of these amendments were included in the letters subsequently issued to twenty-six Agenais barons and recorded on the Gascon Roll.53 The work of Scribe W and his colleagues thus demonstrates the close attention to word order, vocabulary, register and content that was given to the production of Edward’s epistolary voice. Political editing: the Welsh example

If the example of Scribe W illustrates how the king and his top advisors attended to editorial amendments to sharpen rhetoric, express rebuke and intensify persuasion, earlier instances of drafting in the case of Anglo-Welsh correspondence reveal even more acutely how the government’s political concerns manifested in epistolary editing. In 1276–7 and 1282–3, Edward had first invaded and then completely conquered the principality of Wales ruled by Llywelyn ap Gruffydd. Between these two campaigns, Anglo-Welsh relations were dominated by the so-called ‘conflict of laws’, in which a legal dispute between two of Edward’s vassals – Llywelyn and his rival, Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn, lord of Powys – escalated rapidly into a wide-reaching political argument over the proper sphere of application of the laws of England, Wales and the March,54 implicitly threatening the king’s authority. 53

RG, 3, no. 4059. None of these men appear again in the Gascon Rolls during Edward’s reign, suggesting that these epistolary efforts failed. 54 A. D. Carr, ‘Anglo-Welsh Relations, 1066–1282’, England and her Neighbours, 1066–1453:

60

Figure 2. Draft letter in the hand of Scribe W, concerning the fealty of barons of the Agenais. The text has been corrected both by Scribe W and by another hand, illustrating the collaborative epistolary production processes of chancery. SC 1/12/23, dated 19 October [1295]. The text is given in Appendix, no. 12. Reproduced by kind permission of The National Archives of the UK. Photograph by K. B. Neal.

THE LETTERS OF EDWARD I

The king and the prince conducted a substantial and increasingly tense correspondence in the interbellum years through which the case progressively became a proxy for contesting the terms of the Anglo-Welsh relationship in general.55 Rees Davies observed that language became a key weapon in the metaphorical war between the two powers in this period.56 Elsewhere I have discussed in detail how this correspondence served to construct Edward as the dominant party, and impressed upon the prince his subordinate status.57 The evidence of drafting illustrates the regime’s political priorities in positioning itself in relation to both Welsh and English political demands. The importance of epistolary editing in this context was heightened by the fact that the conflict was built fundamentally on words and their interpretation. Consequently, even minute alterations of syntax, vocabulary and content in communication between the parties all bore potentially significant implications. The conflict originated in certain ambiguities in the Treaty of Aberconwy, 1277, settled at the closure of Edward’s first Welsh war.58 Although Llywelyn had been permitted to retain his title of prince of Wales, the treaty had released his senior vassals of fealty to him. These powerful men, including Llywelyn’s rival, Gruffydd, now held directly of the king. At the same time, however, the treaty granted that cases ‘arising in Wales’ were to be heard under Welsh law. This guarantee made legal process a mechanism by which Llywelyn could seek tacitly to expand the notional boundaries of ‘Wales’, which had been greatly reduced by his recent defeat.59 The case that brought this question to a head revolved around the upland region of Arwystli, an area long disputed between the rulers of Gwynedd and Powys, control of which was metonymically connected to supremacy in central Wales. Gruffydd had used his status as the English king’s ally to reclaim Arwystli from Llywelyn under cover of war in 1277.60 After the hostilities, Llywelyn attempted to regain control of Arwystli by an appeal in Edward’s Welsh assizes, which he argued should be heard under Welsh law as a case ‘arising in Wales’, Essays in Honour of Pierre Chaplais, ed. M. Jones and M. Vale (London and Ronceverte, 1989), 121–38. 55 See Neal, ‘Weapons’. Relevant letters have been printed (Llywelyn’s) or noted (Edward’s) in AWR, pp. 607–10. The whole correspondence is calendared in CACW. 56 Davies, King of England and Prince of Wales, p. 13. 57 Neal, ‘Weapons’, pp. 61–6. 58 Littere Wallie, pp. 118–22. 59 On Llywelyn, see Smith, Llywelyn, especially chapters 8 and 9. 60 For what follows see: Davies, King of England; Smith, Llywelyn, pp. 38–86; Powicke, King Henry III and the Lord Edward, 2, pp. 618–85; A. D. Carr, ‘A Debatable Land: Arwystli in the Middle Ages’, Montgomeryshire Collections 80 (1992), 39–54; The Welsh Assize Roll, 1277–84. Assize Roll, No. 1147 (Public Record Office), ed. J. Conway Davies (Cardiff, 1940), especially the Introduction; J. E. Lloyd, ‘Edward the First’s Commission of Enquiry of 1280–1: An Examination of its Origin and Purpose’, Y Cymmrodor 25 (1915), 1–20; J. B. Smith, ‘England and Wales: The Conflict of Laws’, TCE 7 (1999), 189–205.

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according to the recent treaty. Gruffydd countered that as he was a Marcher baron holding of the king, the case ‘arose’ in the March and he had a right to Marcher law. This was not, at first, a debate about national identity, but a tactical move to attempt to remove the case from Llywelyn’s initiative and control. The preliminary question of the law by which the case would be tried was so thorny and full of political implications, however, that it was never settled, and the substance of the case was never discussed. Both the personal and the political aspects of the question made it difficult for Edward to act. Llywelyn and Gruffydd were both linked by marriage to the royal family or household and could lay claim to being Edward’s tenants-in-chief,61 placing increased onus on the king to be seen to act, and to do so impartially. But at the heart of the matter lay questions about the nature of tenure and fealty sworn to him, and the extent and application of royal law – matters on which Edward was never willing to compromise. The prince made repeated and ultimately impotent appeals to Edward’s parliament for a determination. Instead, the king repeatedly stalled for time while taking advantage of every instance of appeal to assert the superiority of his own position. In the Michaelmas parliament of 1279, Edward and his council again considered the case, which had now been running for over a year.62 The product of these deliberations was a letter to the Welsh prince, conveying four aims. First, it confirmed Edward’s recent receipt of Llywelyn’s envoys. Second, it articulated the king’s present decision: an adjournment. Third, it justified that decision with reference to the inadequacy of the representatives Llywelyn had supplied; and fourth, it issued instructions concerning preparations for the deferred hearing, especially with respect to the representatives who should be sent. Three draft versions of this letter survive.63 The first was drawn up on 24 October, and two more on the following day.64 The fact that at least three drafts were made, and that at least two days were needed to refine the rhetoric of this letter are strong indications of the delicacy and difficulty of the situation, and the breadth of consultation that may have been needed. The matter certainly warranted legal as well as political and rhetorical consideration. The 61

Llywelyn married Edward’s cousin Eleanor de Montfort in 1279, while Gruffydd was married to Hawise Lestrange, daughter of one of the leading Marcher lords of Henry III’s reign, whose brothers were among Edward’s household knights. For the Lestrange family in royal service, see especially R. L. Ingamells, ‘The Household Knights of Edward I’, 2 vols (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Durham University, 1992), 1, pp. 37–8. 62 Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 186–7; PROME. 63 SC 1/13/121–3, see Appendix, no. 4. See also, CACW, ed. Edwards, pp. 58–9, where the distinctions between the three drafts are noted dismissively as ‘verbal differences’. I thank Michael Clanchy for his comments on an early draft of this analysis. 64 The final letter does not seem to have been enrolled on the Welsh, Patent or Close Rolls, and so the order of the two drafts dated 25 October and their completeness relative to the final text remains conjectural. I propose that SC 1/13/123 preceded 122 for reasons that will appear.

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amendments suggested, rejected and selected point to the council’s anxiety to project and protect royal authority, and its doubts about the best way in which to do so. Especially at issue were the framing of the justification for adjourning the matter, the nature of the prince’s representatives to be provided at the new hearing, and the role of the king and his council in deliberation. Every effort was made to remove opportunities for further appeals and complaints by the Welsh prince, and to assert the king’s political supremacy and procedural agency in the strongest terms possible without violating the norms of dictaminal politeness. The first draft cast the adjournment as a favour to the prince, no doubt in anticipation of his dissatisfaction at further delay.65 It explained that, while the king could, and perhaps should have proceeded to judgement against Llywelyn in various matters alleged against him by Gruffydd’s party, just as he would towards an undefended plaintiff, he had instead deferred the case when it appeared that Llywelyn’s attorneys were ‘insufficient to plead the matter in your case’. The first draft thus revealed one of the delaying tactics of the opposing party (to bring secondary allegations); placed responsibility for the delay on the inadequacy of the prince’s representatives; and represented the king as a gracious lord giving an unprepared plaintiff a second chance. The first draft then ordered Llywelyn to be present at the next parliament to be held at Westminster during Easter 1280, in person or through attorneys ‘sufficiently instructed and having full power [sufficienter instructos et plenam potestatem habentes] to do and receive what the king, through his council, according to God and justice [secundum deum et iusticium et de consilio nostro], would ordain’, whether in the law proposed by the prince or by his opponent. This draft was subject to considerable discussion. Annotations show that much of the explanation for the delay was considered for deletion or redrafting. Mention of the other party’s allegations was struck through, and the inadequacy of Llywelyn’s attorneys was rephrased as ‘not having your sufficient procuration [sufficientem procurationem vestram non habentes]’ in an interlinear note. The attorneys to be provided for the Easter parliament were first described as being insufficiently instructed in ‘in your case’ [in iure vestro]. This narrow conceptualization of sufficiency was struck out at a very early stage, perhaps during the first flow of dictatio, since the more general conditions of empowerment noted above were immediately added as part of the main text. A promise that the king’s forthcoming decision at Easter would provide ‘the fullness of justice’ [iustitie complementum] was also struck out, while references to the king’s decision operating through God and justice [secundum deum et iustitium] were added as an interlinear after-thought. A heavily edited sanctio warned the prince not to cause any further delay through his failure to provide sufficient proctors; an interlinear addition in this section suggested specifying that this sufficiency would consist of them being fully instructed in ‘use, and equity in law [rite et 65

SC 1/13/121, see Appendix, no. 4 (a).

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equitate lege]’, but this too was struck out. Such attention demonstrates a close collaboration between the legal and epistolary expertise in Edward’s secretariat. The retention of these and other amended drafts, and also of transcripts of letters eventually dispatched, sometimes annotated with the legal opinion on which they rested, implies that consultation of both texts and aspects of the rationale behind their rhetoric was considered desirable by Edward’s government. When preparing a letter from the king to the seneschal of Ulster in 1274, clerks seem to have consulted a letter of thanks received by Walter de Merton from the king in the previous year: the two letters share both a structuring sentiment and an unusual vocabulary.66 In another case, a transcript of the king’s letter to his justiciar in Ireland, Robert de Ufford, was prefaced to a memorandum on the matter of the law on which the king’s instruction in the letter was premised.67 In this case, the king had ordered the decision of the Irish courts to be overturned in favour of Amabilia Comyn, widow of the earl of Buchan. It was important for the correct legality of the decision to be encoded in both the letter and the records of government, as a precaution against accusations of impropriety. The royal government’s own records effectively served as a kind of enormous formulary, or letter collection, to which reference could be made and from which models could be drawn in refining rhetoric, or in mounting a defence of legal and political positions. Returning to the Welsh case, the annotations to the first draft of the king’s letter to Llywelyn show that the initial stage of editorial debate considered whether to avoid promising specific outcomes, even if this might otherwise provide opportunities to articulate the core principles of royal ideology – justice, right and equity. The latter was often a useful rhetorical position, but here it was not as important as ensuring that the initiative in the case remained with the king; a position that was in turn crucial for maintaining his position as the superior jurisdiction. It was also an important part of being seen to let law take its course. Making promises in writing that could not be delivered might provide later avenues for complaint that would undermine the king’s authority as ultimate arbiter. There was also considerable debate over the terminology and qualities that should apply to the prince’s representatives: should their powers be described in the emerging vocabulary of parliamentary representation? Moreover, should their present default be cast as a matter of fact or allegation? The second draft rejected many of the changes proposed by annotations on the first draft,68 reinstating much of the original text with only minor amendments to syntax for the sake of a more harmonious construction. It seems that by the following day the editors had decided that avoiding imputations of partisanship was an important priority. Rejecting the change proposed in the first round of drafting from ‘they did not seem sufficient to plead’ to 66

SC 1/7/90, printed in Fœdera, I.ii, p. 505. See also chapter 3. SC 1/14/67, calendared in CDS, 5, no. 44. 68 SC 1/13/123, see Appendix 4 (b). 67

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‘they did not have sufficient procuration’ enabled them to avoid implying the king’s inappropriate personal sympathy with, or affirmation of, the opposing party’s case. Instead, the second draft simply reported allegations to which reply could be made. Deliberation now focused on the nature of the representatives that the prince should be instructed to provide at Easter. The first draft had toyed with adopting the language of procuration, a concept borrowed from Roman law via the diplomatic sphere where it described the powers vested in a representative who was permitted the initiative to speak as himself – although in the interests of his principal – and whose independent negotiations were capable of reaching a conclusion which was binding upon his principal.69 In 1279, the royal government was in the process of adapting the language of diplomatic procuration for the purposes of parliamentary summons, for describing the powers vested in representatives of the shires to discuss and bind their communities to decisions such as the payment of taxation.70 Editing on the previous day had described the attorney’s ideal powers as ‘plena potestas’, full power, another concept caught up in the transference of Roman law to the parliamentary sphere during Edward’s reign.71 The decision to reject this language suggests that the editorial group did not want Llywelyn to send representatives of such power, who would be able to act as diplomatic negotiating partners on a more-or-less equal footing, but rather, simple attorneys for representation at court, whose power was limited to presenting their principal’s case and receiving the judgement of others. Especially since the case was to be heard in parliament, it may have been deemed crucial to distinguish the prince’s legal representatives in this case from the parliamentary representatives who would be summoned to counsel the king and consent to his requests. Instead, the second draft preferred to instruct the prince to provide ‘attorneys fully and sufficiently instructed in your case (in iure vestro), and knowing how ‘to speak perfectly and show [the prince’s] case in the premises’, whether the matter proceeded by the law (legem) proposed by Llywelyn or Gruffydd. This was a much more limited conceptualization of the 69 D.

E. Queller, ‘Thirteenth-Century Diplomatic Envoys: Nuncii and Procuratores’, Speculum 35:2 (1960), 196–213 (p. 204); G. Post, ‘Plena Potestas and Consent in Medieval Assemblies’, Traditio 1 (1943), 355–408. 70 The concept of procuration for representatives attending parliament was already in development in the mid-century, but had yet to be introduced into the developing form of writs of summons, which began to emerge in their standard form at this time. J. G. Edwards, ‘The Plena Potestas of English Parliamentary Representatives’, Oxford Essays in Medieval History Presented to H. E. Salter, ed. F. M. Powicke (Oxford, 1934), 141–54; reprinted as J. G. Edwards, ‘The Plena Potestas of English Parliamentary Representatives’, Historical Studies of the English Parliament, ed. E. B. Fryde and E. Miller, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1970), 1, 136–49 (pp. 137–8); Maddicott, Origins, 289–91; V. F. Snow, ‘The Evolution of Proctorial Representation in Medieval England’, American JLH 7:4 (1963), 319–39 (pp. 329–32). 71 On the origins of this concept in Roman and canon law concerning the question of consent, see Post, ‘Plena Potestas’.

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prince’s representation, and therefore of the process. It was not to be seen as a negotiation, but a determination. The redrafted sanctio urged the prince to ensure that the king’s delivery of ‘the fullness of justice’ to both Llywelyn and Gruffydd was not further delayed by any default of the prince or his attorneys. This subtle alteration reinstated the language of ‘justice’ to describe the king’s decisions in the case, now carefully framed as an equitable promise to both parties which highlighted the king’s special role, rather than an allusion to a specific outcome. The second draft also reconceptualized the process of determination more generally. Whereas the first draft spoke of the king ordering a certain outcome by the advice of his council, according to God and justice, the second draft simply instructed the prince to provide attorneys appropriately prepared for the matter to be advanced (fuerit procedendum) by either law. This amendment responded to concern that any aspect of the process that was committed to writing could become a focus of further complaint. By removing the king and his council from explicit discussion, the revised wording removed the conduct of their deliberation from potential contestation by the prince. Such deliberate omission of select details recurred as a rhetorical strategy in Anglo-Welsh relations, probably driven by awareness of the prince’s frequent recourse to complaint and appeal.72 Removing potentially contentious points from epistolary discussion and claiming the power and initiative to act also underpinned the third draft. Both of the first two drafts had raised the Treaty of Aberconwy – the peace lately entered between us and you (pace inter nos et vos inita) – as the source of the promise that ‘those matters which arise in the March should be determined by the law of the March, and those in Wales, by the law of Wales’. The third draft departed radically from this model, removing all mention of the treaty.73 By so doing, it represented the central decision over the application of laws as one of royal discretion and English conciliar deliberation. It also reintroduced the concept of the king being ‘led to order’ a given outcome ‘through his council’; a phrase which had been suggested in the first draft but removed from the second. Moreover, it directed the prince to provide attorneys such that through them, ‘our court may be made certain’ whether the case should proceed by the law of Hwyel Dda or the law preferred by Gruffydd. This amendment suggests that, on reflection, the editorial group considered it important to articulate the king’s right to use his court and his council as deliberating bodies. The removal of the treaty as a point of departure, instead situating it as a matter for consideration, also attempted to imply that the king’s conciliar bodies had freedom to determine the question, without restriction. These assertions of royal rights were softened in the third draft by a concession to diplomacy. A participial clause was introduced into the explanation in the 72 73

See Neal, ‘Weapons’, p. 63. SC 1/13/122, see Appendix no. 4 (c).

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narratio which emphasized the king’s goodwill towards the prince: he had deferred the case rather than proceeding to action, ‘wishing to provide for your indemnity in all things which we can do with honesty’. This amendment shows that the editors were aware of Llywelyn’s likely displeasure, and still sought to minimize it at this time, although not at the expense of the king’s authority. Epistolary editing in escalating tension

There is no record of the business of Edward’s Easter parliament in 1280,74 but it is clear from a complaint made by Llywelyn in July that there had been no substantive progress in the Arwystli case.75 The prince was driven to a new level of anger. On 6 July 1280 he wrote that he could not understand how Edward had failed to reach a decision on the matter in his recent parliament, given the ‘sound reasons’ presented by the prince’s attorneys and the supporting testimony of prelates, unless it was because ‘certain adversaries’ had poisoned the king’s mind against him. He complained that the drawn-out legal process was a burden of ‘labours and expenses’ to both himself and his men, and that ‘three years should suffice’ to determine the matter as ‘terms of the peace [i.e. the Treaty of Aberconwy] may make it clear to all’.76 In an addendum on a separate sheet he also sought resolution on a number of unrelated grievances concerning the actions of the king’s men against him.77 Far from goading the king to act in Llywelyn’s favour, however, these criticisms and complaints were more likely to have provoked his anger.78 They constituted a direct attack on the images of good kingship Edward had been carefully constructing around himself since the Barons’ Wars. They echoed the trope of ‘evil counsellors’ that had been levelled against Henry III.79 They implied corruption of Edward’s carefully managed process of counsel; misapplied law; and misled, unjust or disordered royal reasoning. This provoked one of the more direct and extensive epistolary articulations of kingship of his reign. It was drafted at King’s Langley just twelve days later; an indication of the significance attributed to the matter by the crown.80 74

PROME. For what follows, see Neal, ‘Weapons’, passim. 76 SC 1/19/28. Quotes from Llywelyn’s letters are given from the translation in AWR, ed. Pryce, pp. 607–10. For a recent analysis of Llywelyn’s correspondence, see Brodie, ‘Communication’. 77 SC 1/19/26. 78 It has been argued that this was intentional: lacking real power to resolve the situation in his favour, Llywelyn may have determined to make difficulties for Edward. See Smith, ‘Conflict of Laws’, pp. 202–4. 79 M. T. Clanchy, ‘Did Henry III Have a Policy?’ History 53 (1968), 207–19; Carpenter, ‘What Happened in 1258?’, p. 187. 80 SC 1/13/124, printed and translated in Neal, ‘Weapons’, pp. 68–71. 75

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The draft reply is structured in two parts. The first addressed the prince’s complaints concerning the parliamentary process of determination on Arwystli; the second, the prince’s other grievances. The former was much more heavily edited than the latter; a strong indication that it posed greater rhetorical and political challenges for Edward’s editorial group. Two substantial sections of the initial draft were marked for deletion in the course of editorial discussion. The first specified that a search of the royal records would be conducted ‘on the chance that those things which are still doubtful can be better settled and more lucidly’.81 The second, crossed out at a different stage of drafting, reprimanded the prince for questioning the king’s decision to consult his nobility: ‘Nor ought you rightly to wonder that we make use of the advice of the prelates and magnates of our realm in these as in other matters.’82 Amendments to the draft produced a text in which the king’s reply to the prince’s complaints became, rather than a narratio recapitulating the terms of the prince’s letter and situating the ensuing instructions, a kind of exordium in which the king articulated a powerful statement of royal power exercised in perfect concert with a conciliar magnate group. By this means, the king seized the epistolary initiative, and denied the prince’s evident frustration the legitimacy of being reiterated in a royal document.83 And, as you ,84 the said business is not so doubtful that we cannot always do, according to God and justice, those things that the prelates and magnates of our realm should think to counsel us in these and other matters, especially since no one can be in doubt that men so wise and diligent would give us any counsel that was dissonant with right or contrary to reason.85

The king’s determination to dominate the discourse can be detected in the extended narratio which formed the majority of the letter proper. Three aspects of the narratio are worthy of comment in this regard: its length, its foci and its omissions. By the thirteenth century, the narratio had assumed many of the functions of the exordium, the dictaminal section in which principles of action intended to encourage a receptive readership were outlined. In particular, as noted above, the narratio was often elaborate and detailed when disagreement between correspondents was anticipated.86 The narratio represents almost 80 per cent of this letter,87 suggesting that a hostile 81

The place of this comment in the drafting process has often been misrepresented. It was omitted without comment in the partial translation in Sayles, Functions, p. 169. It is given as part of the main text in CACW, ed. Edwards, pp. 59–60. 82 Sayles, Functions, p. 169; CACW, ed. Edwards, pp. 59–60. 83 Neal, ‘Weapons’, pp. 64–5. 84 The reading of the manuscript is obscure here. Only one or two letters can be identified with certainty. 85 Sayles’s translation ends without comment at this point, but in fact the letter continues. 86 Shepard, Courting Power, p. 6. 87 In Latin, the whole letter is 413 words; the narratio is 329 words long, i.e. 79.7 per cent

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reception was anticipated by royal and chancery circles, and that articulating an English construction of the issues was deemed important. Furthermore, because Edward’s letter survives in draft form, it provides an unusually direct insight into the ways in which words were manipulated within the standard epistolary scaffolding. Almost all of the annotations and amendments were confined to the opening section of the draft narratio, expressing the royal, English perspective, supporting the inference that this section was considered the most important or difficult part of the letter to compose. The construction of the situation articulated in this important section of narratio drew heavily on an existing English tradition of political philosophy and criticism, infused with Aristotelian sentiment that focused on counsel, consent and custom as the limiting forces which separated the true princeps from the tyrant.88 In the narratio of Edward’s letter to Llywelyn, ostensibly describing progress on the Arwystli issue to date, the king’s actions – through parliament – are construed as appropriate, proportionate, legitimate, just and in keeping with customary practice, and his discretion to act is constructed in accordance with three abstract or semi-abstract principles: God, justice and the advice of his great men. Its focal concepts were thus the terms around which so many ‘native’ English political conflicts had revolved. These ideals had been constants of political debate in England for at least a century, and continued to be important throughout Edward’s reign. The desirability of royal authority was never questioned in this tradition, only the manner of its execution and the definition of its limits. Thus, by these rhetorical inferences the king was presented as the perfect English monarch, acting through due process in harmony with his barons. In English terms, therefore, the opening of the narratio constituted a forceful statement of ethos, the rhetorical figure concerned with establishing the authority of the speaker/sender and his connection with the audience. There are clues, however, that the discourse of kingship here was not the same as in the king’s letters to his English nobility. A number of deletions and amendments indicate how closely elements of vocabulary were considered in this section. For instance, the word ‘equitati’ – equity – was replaced with the word ‘racioni’ – reason – in the description of the advice of the king’s magnates. Both these concepts were common and related tropes of medieval European kingship,89 so in some respects the distinction may not seem significant, but the of the text. 88 For general discussion of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century trends in English political theory and discourse, see C. J. Nederman, ‘The Royal Will and the Baronial Bridle’, Lineages of European Political Thought: Explorations along the Medieval/Modern Divide from John of Salisbury to Hegel (Washington, 2009), 81–98; C. J. Nederman, Political Thought in Early FourteenthCentury England: Treatises by Walter of Milemete, William of Pagula, and William of Ockham (Turnhout, 2002), pp. 1–14; Valente, Theory and Practice of Revolt, especially chapter 2. 89 Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, pp. 117–19; Valente, Theory and Practice of Revolt, p. 23; Kern, Kingship and Law, pp. 71–2.

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change was evidently considered worth making. In the Anglo-Welsh diplomatic context, to claim that the magnates’ advice was always consonant with equity was perhaps felt to leave too many loopholes open to Welsh challenge. Reason, however, was a quality with which no sensible person could quibble. The most cursory search of the chancery’s archives would have furnished ample evidence of Llywelyn’s ability to turn the king’s words against him, such as when he claimed he could not allow the justiciar of Chester to inquire into the corn in Anglesey because of ‘an obscure word’ in the empowering charter which he was waiting for the king to explain.90 Similarly, on another occasion, he had written to explain his delay in responding to a royal letter, arguing that he did not have enough members of his council with him to deliberate on the issue.91 In such ways, Llywelyn’s letters had subtly subverted the tropes of English royal epistolary discourse such as the centrality of counsel and the importance of legal precision. It is easy to envisage those closeted in council with the king, warning of the danger of providing any platform for further counterclaims. Objecting to reasonable advice, on the other hand, would only reveal the unreasonable nature of the complaint. The amendment of this single word thus served simultaneously to reduce opportunities for objection on the Welsh side, and to reinforce the image of Edward as a just and reasonable monarch. Such instances of editorial intervention demonstrate how attentive letter-writers were to the nuances of political language and the imposition of the dominant discourse. As in many texts, however, the omissions of this letter are as significant as the inclusions. Read against the letters which appear to have provoked it, Edward’s reply is notable for its silences which are heavy with significance because they transgress the standards of medieval epistolography. Composition of narrationes in replies operated under specific expectations, including the practice of quoting from the letter to which they responded.92 The narrationes of English royal correspondence normally quoted extensively from received letters, including in the latter part of the narratio under consideration here. Yet, notably, Llywelyn’s accusations against parliament and the king – that delays in settling the Arwystli case arose from bad faith, evil counsel and a general corruption of process and judgement – were not quoted or even paraphrased. Instead they were completely rephrased as positive assertions of good kingship from the English perspective. Arwystli, the centre of the whole ongoing dispute, was not mentioned by name but was merely implicit. This selective silence was as much a political statement as any of the vocabulary employed. The draft annotations reveal that direct references to Llywelyn’s complaints concerning the slow and possibly corrupt determination process concerning Arwystli were deliberately removed in the process of refining the rhetoric. As we 90 SC 1/22/96, calendared at CACW, ed. Edwards, pp. 111–12. It seems likely that this was both a strategy for obstructing the royal official, and a snide reference to the king’s recalcitrance on the matter of interpreting the Treaty of Aberconwy. 91 SC 1/30/139, printed in AWR, ed. Pryce, pp. 555–6. 92 Boyle, ‘Innocent III and Vernacular Scripture’, pp. 99–105.

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have seen, a sentence rebuking the prince for wondering that the king should consult his prelates and magnates was marked for deletion. This suggests a policy of epistolary construction in which the royal voice would appear proactive rather than reactive. It would not deign to respond to base accusations, but instead articulate its own position in positive terms. A promise to consult the royal records for any information that might clarify the matter was also deleted, despite the fact that such an enquiry was subsequently both ordered and accomplished.93 By deleting this reference, the letter’s composers could avoid conceding conceptual ground to Llywelyn through tacit admission that there were aspects of the matter not able to be settled through parliamentary counsel. Thus, inverting standard practice, Edward’s letter responded to Llywelyn’s effectively by turning it on its head. This divergence from normal epistolary practice also served to draw attention to itself – another aspect of the ostensive properties of epistolarity. In the royal reply, the Welsh complaint was met by an impenetrable wall of diplomatic formulae and legal concepts drawn from a centuries-long conversation about the nature of kingship conducted almost entirely on English terms. Llywelyn had been part of that conversation in the 1260s, allying himself with Simon de Montfort and later marrying his daughter, so he was not unfamiliar with its discourse.94 However, his interests had never really been at one with those of the king’s English barons; merely temporarily aligned. The language in which the king and his barons spoke to each other about kingship and justice was not truly his. If royal rhetoric could operate as a discourse signalling membership, here it had the force of exclusion. As a knowing recipient, Llywelyn would have understood the message: he was not a member of the king’s inner circle despite the formal courtesy paid to his rank. The heightened vocabulary of his frustration was allowed to achieve no force of precedent through repetition in an authorized epistolary vehicle of the royal voice, even through negation. This was one step in what Simon MeechamJones described as the ‘erasure’ of Wales and of Welsh voices from English discourse.95 While it would have been clear to Llywelyn that this was the king’s reply to his complaints and accusations, it would have been equally easy for him to interpret the meta-text of English dominance. The deliberate transgression of norms calling for citation in the narratio made it clear. The prince’s dependence and the firm assertion of royal power were further reinforced by the latter part of the narratio in which remedies for the specific grievances raised in Llywelyn’s letter and addendum were noted. The close connection between the rhetorical programmes in these two parts of the royal reply has not frequently been recognized,96 but it is strong. It served not only 93

Lloyd, ‘Commission of Enquiry’, p. 1. Montfort, pp. 212–13, 263, 289–90, 325. 95 S. Meecham-Jones, ‘Where Was Wales? The Erasure of Wales in Medieval English Culture’, Authority and Subjugation in Writing of Medieval Wales, ed. R. Kennedy and S. Meecham-Jones (New York, 2008), 27–55. 96 For instance, Sayles considered the two parts of the letter so distinct that he printed only 94 Maddicott,

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to strengthen Edward’s role as perfect monarch, but to reinforce Llywelyn’s status as vassal. This section of the letter responded directly and in detail to two specific matters relating to trespasses and distraints against Llywelyn and his men by English representatives, including Rhys ap Einion among the ‘king’s men’ of Genau’r-glyn,97 and the justiciar of Chester, Guncelin de Badlesmere.98 In the accustomed legal and administrative tones of chancery documentation, the royal reply outlined precisely who had been ordered to do what, specified lines of command and accountability, and provided for the breakdown or failure of the process by citing the king as the ultimate arbiter. When the king announced that he had instructed his bailiffs to inquire into matters, to summon the accused, to hear complaints against them and to order restitution, he was not merely providing a sought-for remedy; he was also performing his jurisdiction in minute detail. His was the power to command, inquire, summon, hear and resolve. The letter even construed Llywelyn’s own jurisdiction as a matter for royal direction: it was treated as no more than a lordly court. Welsh legal authority even over Welsh activities in Wales was treated as a devolution of royal power.99 If it could not be effective, the case would revert to the crown and to the king. Llywelyn’s grievances would be addressed, but no more urgently or specially than those of any of the other royal vassals involved. Once again, the prince was constructed as a person of rank, but not one of extraordinary superiority or privilege. The contrast between this detailed articulation of royal power and the letter’s silence on the core matters of Llywelyn’s ongoing grievance could hardly be more pointed. Such a reading of the silences and emphases of the narratio reveals the royal reply to be a more complex and combative document than might be assumed by readers unacquainted with its political and rhetorical context. The rhetoric was refined to convey a rebuttal of the prince’s insinuations without recognizing the legitimacy of his voice except where its complaints could be corralled within the systematic processes of royal justice. It was designed as an epistolary echo chamber for a discourse dominated by the English king and English interests. Conclusion

Royal letters were produced and refined by a community of clerical practice with close ties to the king himself, and the capacity to call upon the legal and epistolary expertise of senior royal officials and councillors. The systems that the first half; see Sayles, Functions, p. 169; cf. Neal, ‘Weapons’, pp. 65–7. 97 A commote in Ceredigion, i.e. modern Cardiganshire. 98 Some of these complaints remained on the list of Welsh grievances when popular uprising broke into the second Welsh war of Edward’s reign, in 1282. J. G. Edwards, ‘Introduction’, Littere Wallie, i–lxix (pp. i–lxix). 99 Some or all of these men, including Rhys ap Einion, may have been Welsh, irrespective of being described as ‘the king’s men’.

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organized the work of Edward’s many secretariats ensured that clerks were trained in royal style, all work was subject to checking and approval, and higher responsibility was conferred upon only the most trusted men. Although the volume of correspondence generated in Edward’s name far exceeded his personal capacity for oversight, he could therefore be confident in his clerks’ ability to construct his epistolary voice appropriately. The king nevertheless remained intimately involved in directing, dictating, auditing and editing his own correspondence when the matter was of particular personal or political import. The inclusions, deletions, amendments and silences discussed here demonstrate how closely royal epistolary language was curated by the king, his councillors and his clerks to manage the rhetorical, legal and political implications of the royal voice. While formulae and genre exercised a certain limiting force over the general appearance and expression of royal epistolarity, letters that were not merely writs de cursu were not simply applications of a formula. They were considered applications of formulaic possibilities to specific contexts, developed through consultation and collaboration between the king, his clerks and a wider community of participants, even including the members of his council or the barons in parliament. Royal letters constituted a powerful form of political language.

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3 Announcing the Message: Communities of Reception and Royal Ideology Medieval habits of textual engagement favoured aurality.1 In the case of epistolarity, not only the production but also the reception of letters entailed transformations between the spoken and written word which could be witnessed by others, enabling royal letters to proclaim their message to audiences beyond the specified addressee. As Martin Camargo has argued, letters are therefore more properly considered as ‘events, rather than objects … public, oral performances rather than private, written exchanges’.2 This had important implications for the capacity of royal letters to function as proclamations of ideology addressed to communities of reception that varied in size, emanating from the sender and the nominal recipient, respectively.3 Depending on the nature of the correspondence, its probable community of reception might be no bigger than the named recipient’s immediate retainers, or it might constitute the king’s council, the ‘community of the realm’ in its parliamentary form, or the whole possible public of ‘those who read and hear’. Awareness of the likely composition of the community of reception influenced the linguistic choice and rhetorical construction of royal letters, as well as the choice of seal and other material signs of register. A letter addressing a royal clerk working to provision the royal army in Wales, far from his fellows in the wardrobe, would be unlikely to reach beyond his immediate companions, and would therefore

1 Janet Coleman has described ‘aurality’ – a cultural mode characterized by the interdependent assumptions and practices of writing, reading and listening – as an elite habitus; see J. Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France (Cambridge, 1996); J. Coleman, ‘Aural Illumination: Books and Aurality in the Frontispieces to Bishop Chevrot’s Cité de Dieu’, Orality and Literacy in the Middle Ages, ed. M. Chinca and C. Young (Turnhout, 2005), 223–52; Clanchy, Memory, pp. 266–7. 2 M. Camargo, ‘Special Delivery: Were Medieval Letter Writers Trained in Performance?’, Rhetoric beyond Words: Delight and Persuasion in the Arts of the Middle Ages, ed. M. Carruthers (Cambridge, 2009), 173–89 (p. 173). 3 Reception of texts by third parties in this way has been posited as a form of literacy in itself, see M. Mostert, ‘Forgery and Trust’, Strategies of Writing: Studies on Text and Trust in the Middle Ages, ed. P. Schulte, M. Mostert and I. Van Renswoude (Turnhout, 2008), 37–59.

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merit little rhetorical elaboration.4 A much larger and more elite audience could be anticipated for a letter sent to the king’s lieutenant ordering him to enquire into matters of significance to the magnates, or a reply to the prince of Wales on a question of politico-legal import. Such opportunities provided useful platforms for ideological and political statements.5 The more closely the context of reception was associated with elite assemblies – such as parliaments, councils or chanceries – the more carefully the king’s epistolary commands tended to be crafted with such wider communities of reception in mind; for example, by reference to the values presumed to underpin the identity of that group, and the king’s relationship to them. In this way, letters not only communicated a specific message in a given moment, but, cumulatively, a discourse with which the king’s allies, peers and officials were encouraged to identify. Stage directions: punctuation for performance

Artes dictandi occasionally remarked upon the oral delivery of letters. In the thirteenth century, the dictatores Guido Faba and Bene of Florence both commented on the theory and practice of good epistolary performance. As Bene remarked, the delivery (pronuntiatio) of a letter concerned ‘management of voice, facial expression and gesture … so that the listener is won over and is led to belief through persuasion and his passions are kindled’.6 The voice … should harmonize with the subject matter, so that the matter may seem to be expressed in the best fashion. Facial expressions also should be altered in accord with the quality of the sentiment … so that the countenance also is taken to be an interpreter of the mind. Likewise, certain moderate gestures should be employed from time to time … that seem to suit the subject matter but in no way produce any impropriety in the speaker.7

Discussions of cursus also implicitly touched on performance, through the question of accentual rhythms and the placement and timing of pauses.8 The art of delivery was not a common topic of the artes, however, since their primary concern was the matter of composition. Delivery was a skill taught mainly by imitation.9 4

See, for example, a series of letters instructing the king’s clerk, William de Perton, alone and with colleagues, acting as victualler during Edward’s second Welsh war (1282–3): SC 1/13/178–80; 45/3–29; 61/27, 29; 62/82; and 63/30. Several are calendared in CACW. For SC 1/13/180, see Appendix, no. 5. 5 For example, see Neal, ‘Discourse’, pp. 58–9. On the general issue of proclaiming government ideology through internal correspondence, see Barker, Identities, chapter 3. 6 Bene of Florence, quoted in Camargo, ‘Special Delivery’, p. 177. 7 Ibid., p. 178. 8 Clark, Cursus, p. 18; Denholm-Young, ‘Cursus’, p. 43. 9 Camargo, ‘Special Delivery’, p. 176, which also provides substantial translated sections of Bene’s text.

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If the connection of epistolary rhetoric to vocalized performance – and thereby to aural reception – tended to be implicit rather than explicit in the artes, evidence nevertheless exists that letter-writers crafted their rhetoric on the assumption of oral performance and aural reception of their words. This can be detected in their use of rhythmic prose, and in epistolary materiality.10 As Malcolm Parkes has shown in the case of codices, punctuation could be employed as a tool of syntax to aid comprehension of sense, but it was also – even simultaneously – used as a species of stage direction, for instance indicating where the voice should be raised in order to convey to listeners that the sentence was not yet ended.11 The punctus elevatus (resembling an inverted semi-colon) and virgula suspensiva (resembling a subscript forward slash or type of comma) were often used for medial pauses, and the punctus itself, normally for longer pauses, although there was wide variety in practice.12 Litterae nobiliores (larger or ‘capital’ letters) were also used to mark the beginnings of clauses, and in the names and titles of dignitaries, aiding identification and emphasis. Punctuation in letters that survive in their original form often occupies an intermediate function between the syntactical and the performative, with the latter becoming more prominent when letters were most likely to be read aloud in solemn contexts. For example, in the following letter to Edward I from his cousin Eleanor de Montfort, princess of Wales, dispatched during the interbellum period between Edward’s two Welsh wars,13 punctuation served to highlight certain key phrases for emphatic performance by the reader.14 The letter was of considerable political importance to the Welsh court. Eleanor urged the king not to listen to malicious reports that she and her husband, the prince of Wales, were disloyal to him. She asked him to withhold his condemnation until he could learn the truth from their own words. In this letter,15 the punctus [.] was used for long pauses, including but not limited to the ends of sentences, while the punctus elevatus [· or ’] and the positura (resembling a punctus or colon followed by an apostrophe [.’ or :’]) were used for various shorter or medial pauses.16 Significantly, the punctus elevatus frequently 10

Visual representations of messengers delivering written as well as oral messages, complemented with gestures, also illustrate contemporary expectations. See, for example, BL, Royal MS 10 E IV, ff. 306r, 310r. 11 N. F. Palmer, ‘Manuscripts for Reading: The Material Evidence for the Use of Manuscripts Containing Middle High German Narrative Verse’, Orality and Literacy in the Middle Ages, ed. M. Chinca and C. Young (Turnhout, 2005), 67–102 (p. 81). 12 M. B. Parkes, Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West (Los Angeles, 1993); see especially his glossary of punctuation symbols and terms on pp. 301–7. 13 AWR, pp. 629–30. Pryce dates the letter to 1279–81, and most likely 1279. 14 The identity of Eleanor’s messenger in this case is not known, but messages from the prince of Wales are known to have been carried to the English king by senior clerics; see, for example, ibid., pp. 587, 602. 15 See Fig. 3. 16 Parkes, Pause and Effect, pp. 69, 73, 153, 306. For vocal modulation and delivery, see Camargo, ‘Special Delivery’, passim.

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occurred in positions which confound syntax, and therefore appears to have functioned mainly as a rhetorical marker, intended to facilitate oral performance. The punctuation of this letter implies that the salutatio, in particular, but also key phrases of the petitio, were intended to be delivered with a relatively slow deliberation, marked by modulation of the voice and extensive pausing for rhetorical effect. I have reproduced the Latin below, since the punctuation does not translate effectively into English syntax: Excellenti domini suo et consanguineo praedilecto domino .E. Dei gratia Regi Anglie . domino Hibernie . et duci Aquitanie . sua devote consanguinea . Alianora principissa Walliae domina Snaudonie . salutem cum ea quae decet sincera dilectione consanguineo tanto .’ et tam propinquo . Noverit vestra excellentia quod de vestro statu bonos et prosperos rumores scire desideramus . Ideo vestram excellentiam humiliter rogamus et attente . Quatinus pro amore nostro statum vestrum et si quae penes nos volueritis quae vestro cederint honori vel placuerint majestati nobis sicut consanguinéé vobis humili et promptae ad vestra beneplacita .’ significare velitis . quamquam ut audivimus hiis contraria ab aliquibus vestrae excellentiae de nobis sint relata . et tamen nullo modo credimus vos aliquibus de domino nostro vel nobis sinistra referentibus :’ fidem adhibere :’ donec a nobis sciretis si talia dicta continent veritatem .’ ex quo tantum honorem tantamque familiaritatem domino nostro et nobis quando ultimo Wigorn’ fuimus vestri gratia exibuistis . Quocirca quicquid circa haec vel alia quae volueritis nobis demandaretis paratae erimus semper pro viribus exequi et complere . Data apud Launmaes .viijo. die Julii .17

Notably, medial pauses, indicated by the positura, highlight two key phrases. The first, ‘et tam propinquo’, or ‘and so near [a relation]’, at the end of the salutatio would have served to draw attention to the main premise that Eleanor relied on in her request, namely, the closeness of her relationship to the king. The second, ‘fidem adhibere’, ‘giving faith’ or ‘trusting’, was even more significant. Although in the syntax of the letter, this phrase related to Edward not putting faith in the words of those who sought to misrepresent Eleanor and Llywelyn, the punctuation of the letter isolated ‘giving faith’, thereby emphasizing it. The messenger’s voice, pausing momentarily on this phrase, would call up echoes of the feudal vocabulary of obligation and ‘faith’ which, by implication, was the other important basis of Eleanor’s request.18 By clever use of the performative potential of the letter beyond the text, such strategies could convey 17

SC 1/17/2; printed, with nineteenth-century punctuation, in Fœdera, I.ii, p. 584, and with modern punctuation in AWR, no. 433. Here I have followed the manuscript. For translation, see Letters of Medieval Women, ed. A. Crawford (Thrupp, 2002), p. 137. Although the letter cannot confidently be dated more precisely than the period 1279–81, it is possible that it was sent at the same time as the prince’s letter alleging the bad faith of members of the king’s council (SC 1/19/28, 6 July 1280), discussed in chapter 2. 18 For further discussion of the concept of polytextual reading, in which reading stimulates memories of other texts, see S. Huot, ‘Polytextual Reading: The Meditative Reading of Real and Metaphorical Books’, Orality and Literacy in the Middle Ages, ed. M. Chinca and C. Young (Turnhout, 2005), 203–22.

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Figure 3. Letter from Eleanor de Montfort, concerning the relationship between the king and her husband, the prince of Wales. The letter has been punctuated to emphasize key rhetorical elements, see for instance the positurae employed in the second and sixth lines of text. SC 1/17/2, dated 8 July [1279–81]. Reproduced by kind permission of The National Archives of the UK. Photograph by K. B. Neal.

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multi-layered meanings tailored to amplify the most vital rhetorical points. Even in the absence of the cursus, which was really only a more developed form of the same strategy, rhetorical punctuation of this kind could invest the aurality of letters with particular persuasive power. Communities of reception

Oral performance and aural reception of letters such as the princess’s, above, enabled audiences beyond the nominal recipient to receive the message. This fact had considerable implications in the political sphere. It meant that letters could function not only to communicate between individuals, but to announce and encourage amity, or indeed enmity, between the sender, the recipient and their companions. Especially when combined with the dictaminal imperative of evoking goodwill in the recipient through a carefully articulated ethos, letters were therefore texts of significance for the political culture of the court, where they had the potential to shape communal opinion and influence the ideology and identity of specific elites.19 The significance of aural reception of letters in public contexts is reflected in twelfth- and thirteenth-century literary representations of the English royal court. Such representations show that communal listening to letters acted as a mechanism of cultural bonding among listeners. Public reading of letters was represented in texts such as romances, chronicles and histories, all of which were important mirrors of aristocratic identity.20 In such representations, reading letters aloud led to communal affront or approbation, and sometimes to communally sanctioned action. In the context of the imagined court, the ‘performance’ of the letter before an audience of the prince’s peers was part of the narrative by which those who heard it were distinguished in importance, loyalty, valour or other signifiers of belonging, from those who did not. As a literary device, epistolary reception served as a means of defining political (or other) communities and articulating their shared ideals. The widespread cultural understanding of the epistolary norms of the writ and other forms of royal correspondence created an audience with a practised appreciation of messages so conveyed. The function of letter-reading for defining membership of a certain political elite is illustrated by an episode in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum

19

Identity is a slippery concept. Here, borrowing from the categories described by Brubaker and Cooper, I use it to signify the sense of belonging to a group (‘groupness’) and the socio-political meaning of that belonging for members. See R. Brubaker and F. Cooper, ‘Beyond “Identity”’, Theory and Society 29:1 (2000), 1–47 (pp. 7–8). 20 On listening to literature in particular as an elite praxis with identity-forming power, see D. H. Green, Medieval Listening and Reading: The Primary Reception of German Literature, 800–1300 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 69, 196 and passim; Coleman, ‘Aural Illumination’.

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Britannie, one of the most popular histories of the period.21 In this episode, a letter from the Procurator of the Roman Republic summoning King Arthur to be tried for crimes against Rome was ‘read aloud in the presence of the kings and the leaders’, ultimately provoking those gathered to raise a massive army to march on Rome and avenge this offence to the king’s dignity and theirs.22 The proclamation of the letter provided an occasion for an exchange of counsel through which Arthur’s followers demonstrated their solidarity with him and their identity as members of his council.23 In Geoffrey’s tale, being admitted to the honour of hearing the Procurator’s letter was a sign of privileged inclusion in the royal council, and councillors demonstrated their understanding of belonging to this group and commitment to its ideology through their communal response to the epistolary text. Letter-reading was similarly a feature of the English royal court as represented in Matthew Paris’s Histoire de Seint Aedward le Rei, composed c. 1230–40, and dedicated to Eleanor of Provence.24 Two letters figured in an elaborate story describing the saint’s restoration of Westminster Abbey. This episode shows Paris’s rich understanding of the processes and socio-political implications of letter-writing and reading. Each one was ‘received’ by an audience chosen according to the status of the letter and the risks and benefits of broadcasting its contents. Hearing letters served to define at least two kinds of relationship to the royal centre, of varying intimacy and political status. Having vowed to make a pilgrimage to Rome, but dissuaded from travelling by his people who feared to lose him in the absence of an heir, King Edward sent envoys to Rome to seek absolution from his vow. Meanwhile, a holy hermit had a vision in which St Peter instructed him to tell the king that the pope had forgiven the vow, but that the king should instead restore the abbey church at Thorney as an act of piety.25 The hermit’s letter describing this vision arrived shortly before the papal bull announcing the outcome of the royal mission to Rome. It bore material signs of authority, being ‘written on parchment … [and] sealed with wax’.26 21

There are sixty-eight known thirteenth-century manuscripts, see J. Crick, The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth IV: Dissemination and Reception in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1991), pp. xi–xvi. 22 Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britannie, ed. L. Thorpe (London, 1966), pp. 231–5. 23 For the importance of the king’s council, see J. Hudson, ‘Henry I and Counsel’, The Medieval State: Essays Presented to James Campbell, ed. J. R. Maddicott and D. M. Palliser (London and Rio Grande, 2000), 109–26 (pp. 124–5). On the growing institutionalization of the council, see Baldwin, Council, chapter 4. 24 Matthew Paris, Histoire de Seint Aedward le Rei, ed. T. S. Fenster and J. Wogan-Browne (Tempe, 2008), pp. 3, 74–7; Howell, Eleanor, pp. 281–6. 25 ‘Bramble Island’, i.e. Westminster. 26 On the physical aspects of documentary authority, see B. Bedos-Rezak, ‘Diplomatic Sources and Medieval Documentary Practices: An Essay in Interpretive Methodology’, The Past and Future of Medieval Studies, ed. J. Van Engen (Notre Dame and London, 1994), 313–43.

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Nevertheless, it was initially suspected of being inappropriate for fully ‘public’ reception. To read the hermit’s letter aloud before the entire court posed a risk to political stability and the king’s honour. Therefore, those permitted to hear it were chosen carefully. Paris notes that the king initially read the hermit’s letter in closed council, not allowing it ‘to be seen or heard except in the company of those closest to him’.27 This select audience could be trusted to ‘hear’, and therefore to ‘read’, i.e. interpret, the letter with the king’s interests at heart. Their counsel would be important to him in deciding how to respond.28 In contrast, although for similar considerations, when the pope’s reply arrived from Rome, it was read openly, with the widest possible dissemination: The entire baronage assembled to hear this great message, and the messengers made their report, reading to everyone what they had in writing as well as the vision recorded and sent to the king by the holy hermit.29

The reading of the papal letter thus illustrates how recipients could manipulate a ‘theatre of reception’ for political purposes. Its proclamation in open assembly served to bind the hearers together as a political community centred on the king, while ensuring their communal recognition of his absolution from his vow of pilgrimage.30 At the same time, the hermit’s injunction was permitted to emerge safely into the wider knowledge of this baronial audience, having benefited from legitimation by the papal voice. In these two episodes, Paris articulated at least two different kinds of aural reception of letters: first, by a circumscribed ‘public’ of select and favoured individuals – a council – whose listening was partisan and helped to signify, to themselves and to others, their membership of a particular elite; second, by a broad and inclusive ‘public’ of the ‘entire baronage’, whose listening was significant in its metonymic figuration of the whole community of the realm. These ‘publics’ or audiences had different, if overlapping roles to play in making the meaning of letters manifest, and participation in them had potential to contribute to each person’s sense of belonging in a social and political world. The former represents what might be called ‘conciliar’ reading, in the sense that the reading/listening is undertaken both for the purpose of consideration by a council, and for obtaining its counsel. Such ‘reading’ characterized the reception of the prince of Wales’s complaints by the king and 27

Matthew Paris, ‘Histoire’, pp. 76–7. On the significance of the slippage between oral, aural and textual vocabulary in the terminology of epistolary production, reception and understanding, see Camargo, ‘Special Delivery’, pp. 175–6. 29 Matthew Paris, ‘Histoire’, p. 77. Note that, after its discussion in camera, and once the pope’s letter had legitimated the hermit’s vision, it too was able to be proclaimed publicly. 30 For the importance of public activities for fama, i.e. reputation, see Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe, ed. T. S. Fenster and D. L. Smail (Ithaca, 2003), especially the Introduction; D. L. Smail, The Consumption of Justice: Emotions, Publicity, and Legal Culture in Marseille, 1264–1423 (Ithaca, 2003), pp. 51–2. 28

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council in parliament, discussed in chapter two. In Paris’s description, those who took part in conciliar reading received or reinforced an understanding of themselves as a political elite, with privileged access to information, decisionmaking and the king’s person. Meanwhile, the latter form of reception might be considered ‘communal’ reading/listening; it might be chosen as a means of securing collective agreement, or of providing maximal publicity for epistolary exchanges of relevance to the political public. For both groups, the experience of being in the community of reception articulated and reinforced their sense of membership in another, politically relevant community, varying only in the exclusivity of such belonging. All these forms of epistolary reception were charged with hermeneutic potential. The papal letter’s creation, which Paris discussed as a means of emphasizing its authentic credentials, implies one further ‘community’: one that witnessed a letter’s production and ratified its intention. Paris tells us that the draft had been read aloud in the presence of the pope’s advisors, who all ‘affirmed and assented to it’; it was then registered, having been ‘read aloud, by common will and consent, to the plenary council’.31 While such a ‘community’ is related to the editorial group implied by the king’s drafts, discussed in chapter two, here I emphasize not its function in refining epistolary rhetoric, but the implications of participation in that process. Because it entailed assenting and bearing witness to the content of the letter, including its expression of ethos, this active form of epistolary ‘listening’ also served to reinforce ideological solidarity among participants. Paris records the public dissemination of letters in another, less direct way. In his Chronica Maiora and Historia Anglorum he frequently reproduced letters which, by implication, he had heard and seen in his monastery of St Albans, north of London. His familiarity with the physical form of the golden seal of the Holy Roman Emperor suggests that the letters themselves may have been brought to the monastery, and displayed and read there, rather than recited or summarized from memory, or circulated as copies.32 If so, either the king was at St Albans when the letters were first received, where Matthew or his fellows were among the initial community of reception, or he or his retinue sometimes caused letters to be re-read to new, significant audiences, even after the original moment of reception.33 Further circulation of letters in such ways 31

Matthew Paris, ‘Histoire’, p. 74. The editors suggest the council referred to here is the king’s council (see n. 139), but it seems more likely to me to refer to the papal council, which is called less than twenty lines earlier in the verse. This interpretation concurs with the documented processes of papal letter-writing; see B. Bombi, ‘Petitioning between England and Avignon in the First Half of the Fourteenth Century’, Medieval Petitions, 64–81 (pp. 67–8). 32 Matthew Paris, Historia Anglorum, ed. R. J. A. Giles (London, 1889), 1, p. 93; R. Vaughan, Matthew Paris (Cambridge, 1958), p. 256; B. Weiler, ‘Matthew Paris on the Writing of History’, JMH 35:3 (2009), 254–78. 33 Helen Birkett is preparing work on the medieval circulation of news, which will shed further light on these issues. The circulation of copies of letters as ‘newsletters’ in

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was presumably intended to invite wider solidarity with the recipient’s position, and to build public opinion for or against the sender. Large passages of Paris’s Historia Anglorum are told through the medium of letters which he claimed to reproduce in their entirety.34 It seems likely from their length and sheer convenience to his narrative that, insofar as they represent real letters, Paris exercised some editorial prerogative. However, in their form of address and date, and their general style, they are credible letters.35 Together with the imagery of publicly reading letters, to which he often returned, we can assume that this practice was as familiar to him in life as in literature. A letter enrolled among the earliest surviving Patent Rolls, which records public letter-reading and production, supports the inference that these were real practices in an English royal milieu, and not just literary inventions. The enrolled document is a letter patent withdrawing King John’s royal anger from Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, grandfather of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, who had offended him by seizing the lands of the king’s erstwhile ally, Gwenwynwyn ap Owain, while they were in the king’s hands. The king’s forgiveness was prompted by a letter from Llywelyn ap Iorwerth which does not survive. A striking amount of detail about its reception is recorded in the narratio of the patent it evoked. Llywelyn’s letter had been delivered to the king at Bristol on Christmas Eve, 1209, by the Welsh prince’s clerk, Osturcus. The patent records that the king ‘caused [Llywelyn’s letter] to be read before the lord bishops of Winchester and Bath; Walter de Gray, chancellor; Geoffrey fitz Peter, justiciar; William Briwer; Hugh, archdeacon of Wells; Roger Thorn; Gerard de Atyes; and [his] other fideles who were there present’.36 By implication, these men agreed to the king’s epistolary response, having heard the Welsh letter. This ‘witness list’ signified membership among the king’s counsellors both to those who participated in this epistolary theatre, and to thirteenth-century England for the purposes of propaganda, and to facilitate associated record-keeping, is certainly known; see, for example, D. A. Carpenter, The Battles of Lewes and Evesham 1264/1265 (Keele, 1987); A. Taylor, ‘Recalling Anglo-Scottish Relations in 1291: Historical Knowledge, Monastic Memory and the Edwardian Inquests’, TCE 16 (2017), 173–206; S. W. Dempsey, ‘The Evolution of Edward I’s ‘Historical’ Claim to Overlordship of Scotland, 1291–1301’, FCE 11 (2019), 1–29. 34 For example, his coverage of the schism between Eastern and Western Christendom, papal affairs, and the state of the church in Europe generally; in Matthew Paris, ‘Historia’, 1, pp. 95–116. 35 For Matthew rewriting documents, see Weiler, ‘Matthew Paris on History’, pp. 274–6; H.-E. Hilpert, Kaiser- und Papstbriefe in den Chronica Majora des Matthaeus Paris (Stuttgart, 1981), pp. 44–88. Note, however, that some have taken his reports effectively at face value; for example, J. M. Powell, ‘Patriarch Gerold and Frederick II: The Matthew Paris Letter (Medieval Crusade Propaganda or Forgery in the ‘Chronica Majora’ Re-Examined)’, JMH 25:1 (1999), 19–26; J. M. Powell, ‘Matthew Paris, the Lives of Muhammad, and the Dominicans’, Dei Gesta per Francos: Études sur les croisades dédiées à Jean Richard/Crusade Studies in Honour of Jean Richard, ed. M. Balard, B. Kedar and J. Riley-Smith (Aldershot, 2001), 65–9. 36 Rotuli Litterarum Patentium (London, 1835), 1, p. 88.

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anyone who read or heard the letter in which the list was included.37 Like public reading of letters in Paris’s Histoire, King John caused this letter to be read aloud to create a ritualized moment of conciliar epistolary production through which to bind, and to be seen to bind, his chief men to him. While involving such a conciliar group in receiving letters and planning replies was a normal process,38 it was unusual for letters to make the conciliar processes of reception and production manifest. Articulating it in this case was a purposeful act. Listing the many, elite witnesses both to the reading of Llywelyn’s letter and to the production of the royal pardon was calculated to signify the completeness of his submission and humiliation to Llywelyn, and to the community of reception joined with him in epistolary listening at his court. Edward was evidently not the first English monarch to use the performative potential of letters to his political advantage. Announcing royal ideology

A group of letters dispatched from France in August 1273 during the first major diplomatic mission of Edward’s reign shows how astutely he could use the capacity of letters to speak to multiple communities of reception and announce a royal ideology tailored to each, making use of the multiple sites of contact between the epistolary and other political modes.39 These were addressed to his interim chancellor, Walter de Merton, a faithful royal servant since his father’s reign, but they spoke also to Merton’s colleagues in the king’s government. They may even have ‘spoken’ to the French king and his court, who could have witnessed their production.40 Having received the news in January 1273 of his father’s death in the previous November, Edward emerged from a period of ‘bitterness of sorrow’, which he had endeavoured to bear ‘patiently’,41 into a new phase of active royal duties. He travelled from Sicily to France to negotiate and perform homage to his cousin Philippe III for the duchy of Aquitaine.42 At the successful 37

On the connection between witness lists and political affinity, see, for example, C. GivenWilson, ‘Royal Charter Witness Lists 1327–1399’, Medieval Prosopography 12 (1991), 35–93; E. Gemmill, ‘The King’s Companions: The Evidence of Royal Charter Witness Lists from the Reign of Edward I’, BJRL 83:3 (2001), 129–46. 38 See chapter 2. 39 I thank D. R. Cole for this point. 40 Letters were also sent to many other magnates of England, presumably bearing similar exhortations, but they do not survive. For these letters, see SC 1/29/103, ‘mitto vobis unam pixidem in qua fuit diverse littere diversa magnatibus Anglie ex parte dominum Rege desintate’. This letter is partly printed in P. Chaplais, ‘Le duché-pairie de Guyenne: L’hommage et les services féodaux de 1259 à 1303’, Annales du Midi 69 (1957), 5–38 (p. 18 n. 55). 41 Cron. Maior., p. 158. 42 Flores Historiarum, ed. H. R. Luard (London, 1890), 3, p. 31; Chaplais, ‘Le duché-pairie de

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conclusion of these negotiations, with the ceremony having been performed, Edward and Philippe signalled their concord by engaging in a period of intense and productive diplomacy. In the midst of this diplomatic activity, Edward’s letters articulated the priorities of his rule to Merton, and to other audiences both diplomatic and domestic. They were composed within days of concluding Edward’s homage, at Melun-sur-Seine, where the French court was in residence.43 The first of these letters announced the ethos of royal service in a form tailored for public consumption among the governing elites: Edward, by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland, and duke of Aquitaine, to his beloved clerk and chancellor, Walter de Merton: greetings. Upon your diligence [diligencia], which you have set around our affairs and our realm, we render you special thanks, asking [rogantes] that that which you have praiseworthily established [laudabiliter inchoastis] you might happily care to continue, causing justice [iusticia] to be exhibited to everyone in those things pertaining to your office, [and] inducing others to do so equally, sparing neither the condition nor status of anyone [non parcentes conditioni aut statui cujuscunque], so that the rigor of law [rigor iuris] might punish those whom the sweetness of equity [aequitatis suavitas] cannot restrain from injustice [iniusticia]. And to those things which you rightly [rite] do concerning these matters, we shall cause, with God’s support, the strength of most constant firmness to apply. Given at Melun-sur-Seine, the 9th day of August, in the first year of our reign.44

The structure of this letter set it apart from ordinary royal missives communicating a particular instruction. It lacked an itemized narratio setting out a narrow sphere of action; and its petitio was not a command for Merton to undertake a specific action but a general exhortation to maintain the ideals and duties of the chancellor’s role. Notably, it also adopted the highest register of royal epistolarity, honouring the chancellor with the verb rogare. As in all correspondence, the first audience of the letter was the one nominated by the salutatio: Merton himself. At its core was a concern to encourage him to embody the ideal official who prized justice above all, who distributed that justice equitably, without fear or favour, and who did not hesitate to wield the punitive possibilities of justice when required to correct those who would do otherwise. As the ars dictaminis held, this image of the recipient was intended to stimulate his goodwill by showing him an ideal but recognizable self, drawing forth a performance of and identification with those qualities.45 This was an image of the royal official to which Edward would return repeatedly, especially in episodes of enforcement.46 Exemplifying the type, Guyenne’, p. 18. The negotiations for this homage were protracted; see SC 1/29/88, 90 and 103, reports from Henry, a clerk, to an unnamed colleague in England on this and other news from France. 43 C. V. Langlois, Le règne de Philippe III le Hardi (Paris, 1887), p. 72. 44 SC 1/7/90, printed in Fœdera, I.ii, p. 505. 45 See chapter 1. 46 For example, in the so-called ‘state trials’; see State Trials of the Reign of Edward the First,

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Merton was to be an official who had, and took, responsibility for exhorting those under his authority to act likewise: to uphold and perpetuate the same ethos of royal service in his staff. In all this, he was a man who would do ‘rightly’ (rite), and in so doing, would find his work defended and supported by the full weight of royal authority. It was a significant moment for the king to address such an ideological letter to his principal representative in England, publicly honouring him and affirming royal support for his work. While the lawlessness that has been attributed to the period 1272–4 has probably been overstated,47 Edward’s accession to the throne in absentia created an unusual situation in which the transfer of power was realized in stages, each of which constituted a moment of heightened political tension, and each of which required a demonstration of royal authority. To manage the immediate transition, Edward’s lieutenants had appointed Merton to be chancellor; an experienced administrator and a reliable upholder of royal interests. He had held the office under Henry III and shown himself a loyal royal servant during the Second Barons’ War.48 His management of correspondence in Edward’s name had been scrupulous in its attention to due process, transparency and the limits of his authority, noting, for instance, that letters were produced ‘by the hand of W. de Merton’ and not the king himself.49 Merton’s chancellorship was nevertheless an interim measure, until the king’s return could enable a ministerial restructuring.50 Edward had been expected imminently; however, satisfied by reports received from England during his French sojourn, and with his relationship to Philippe III at least temporarily resolved, he postponed his return to England and took advantage of the opportunity to establish his rule in Gascony.51 It was significant, therefore, that 1289–1293, ed. T. F. Tout and H. Johnstone (London, 1906); Maddicott, ‘Lessons’, pp. 9–13. 47 R. Huscroft, ‘Robert Burnell and the Government of England, 1270–1274’, TCE 8 (2001), 59–70; cf. Maddicott, ‘Lessons’, pp. 1–5, 9–10. 48 C. A. F. Meekings, ‘Walter de Merton’, Fitznell’s Cartulary: A Calendar of Bodleian Library MS. Rawlinson B 430, ed. C. A. F. Meekings and P. Shearman (Guildford, 1968), lviii–lxxiv; Neal, ‘Loyalty’, pp. 24–5. 49 Merton’s hand appears as early as 29 November 1272 in a royal letter patent empowering proctors to take fealty from Llywelyn ap Gruffydd in the king’s absence, and on 7 December in a letter close to Maurice fitz Maurice, justiciar of Ireland, ordering him to proclaim and uphold the king’s peace there, see Fœdera, I.ii, p. 498. 50 Edward’s return in 1274 was followed almost immediately by Merton’s retirement and the appointment of the king’s long-term secretary, Robert Burnell, as chancellor; see Huscroft, ‘Political and Personal Life of Robert Burnell’, p. 77; Huscroft, ‘Burnell and Government’, p. 70. 51 Henry, a clerk, reported on the king’s satisfaction with his interim administration in July or August of 1273; see SC 1/29/88, ‘cum audisset status terre sue et gestum magnatum suorum secundum quod ea exponere sibi decuit, letus fuit et super hoc mirabiliter bene contentus’. For Edward’s departure soon afterwards for Gascony, see another of Henry’s reports; SC 1/29/103. Relevant extracts from both letters are printed in Chaplais, ‘Le duchépairie de Guyenne 1259–1303’, p. 18 n. 55. See also above, p. 85.

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the sanctio of his letter to Merton borrowed from the language of procuration that was used to empower legal representatives and bind the principal to their undertakings.52 Edward’s letter thus functioned on one level as an extension to Merton’s interim commission that could be presented as his warrant of royal authority. In this capacity, it addressed a particular, potential clerical audience beyond Merton himself: an audience of all the king’s clerks, before and over whom the king empowered his chancellor to act.53 The image of royal service constructed in this letter was infused with further legal significance. Its terms borrowed from the customary political language of England, and prefigured the oath that Edward himself took at his coronation.54 Even more directly, the qualities it recognized and encouraged echoed the principles encoded in the oath of office taken by royal councillors, among whom the chancellor held a special place. The oath as recorded c. 1257 probably did not differ in substance from that taken by the senior officials of Edward’s reign.55 They swore to: (i) give good counsel according to what seemed appropriate to the circumstances; (ii) reveal to no-one the secret business of the council, especially if evil could come of it; (iii) alienate nothing belonging to the crown; (iv) do justice to all irrespective of state, according to the laws and customs of the realm; (v) permit justice to be done freely to all who seek it, not allowing any impediment for fee or favour, by word or deed; (vi) accept no gifts or services from anyone in the king’s court or their bailiwick; and (vii) inform the council of any member of the council known or heard to have taken such gifts. Among these principles, the letter laid emphasis upon the impartiality and probity of the chancellor’s office and his duty to ensure the adherence of those under him to the same ideals. It therefore presented the chancellor as the head of a body of clerks and administrators oriented to upholding the ideal of justice

52

Queller, ‘Thirteenth-Century Diplomatic Envoys’, p. 208; Chaplais, EDPMA, pp. 64–8, 156–7. 53 The fact that the prince of Wales had expressed doubt, in writing, concerning the authenticity and authority of letters issued in Edward’s name as recently as 11 July 1273 seems unlikely to be coincidental. There was a need for such an authorizing statement from the king. See AWR, pp. 553–4, no. 376. 54 Kantorowicz, ‘Inalienability’, pp. 488–9; Richardson, ‘Office’, pp. 151, 160–1, 168. But note the emphasis of the oath of the sheriffs, for example, on preserving royal rights rather than on duties to behave justly towards royal subjects; this has been discussed by Maddicott, ‘Lessons’, p. 20. There is some doubt as to whether a set text was actually employed in the ceremony and Richardson was convinced that the actual oath would have been spoken in the vernacular (i.e. Anglo-Norman French), so we cannot assume that these precise words were used. On the use of the oath in politics of this period, see A. Spencer, ‘The Coronation Oath in English Politics, 1272–1399’, Political Society in Later Medieval England: A Festschrift for Christine Carpenter, ed. B. Thompson and J. Watts (Woodbridge, 2015), 38–54 (pp. 45–7). 55 Baldwin, Council, pp. 346–7; E. Campbell, ‘Oaths and Affirmations of Public Office under English Law: An Historical Retrospect’, JLH 21:3 (2000), 1–32 (pp. 2–3). For the oaths of other royal clerks, see Fleta, 2, p. 134.

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in the realm.56 Notably, it made no mention of the clauses that pertained to secret deliberations, the private affairs of the council, or even, the council’s responsibilities to the king. The ideology it expressed situated the chancellor as a public figure, in and for government, and its message was tailored to be received in that light. The focus of the letter suggests that those over whom it placed the chancellor as a leader and chief disciplinarian were an anticipated part of its audience. At the reading of the letter, Merton was no doubt accompanied by senior chancery clerks, perhaps also their junior colleagues and possibly one or more of the king’s lieutenants: Walter Giffard, archbishop of York, Roger Mortimer and Robert Burnell.57 The latter, who was Edward’s most trusted secretary and had been left behind to oversee Edward’s affairs,58 was almost certainly present. He and Merton were often addressed jointly in correspondence from the queen mother during her son’s absence59 and it is clear that he took a guiding role in the policy of the period.60 If Edward’s powerfully phrased letter of exhortation and encouragement were read in the presence of such a group, it would have served to articulate a structure and an ideology of government to which it invited them to commit, individually and collectively, articulating the bases of a culture of royal service the king wished to see embodied in his representatives and reminding them of the chancellor’s special role at their head. Like Arthur’s peers, or the magnates of St Edward’s council, participation in epistolary reception admitted hearers to membership of a group invested with the task of upholding the ideals of justice, law and equity. With encouragement came the reminder of the penalties of failure: the listening group also understood the powers vested in the chancellor to reprimand them with ‘the rigour of law’ if required to uphold justice in the realm. Thus, as well as an exhortation to the chancellor, the letter also functioned as a communication to the king’s English administration more broadly. The rhetorical expression of the letter itself confirms this assumption. An obvious sign that it was intended to be read aloud, publicly and even ceremonially, lay in its unusually extensive adoption of the rhythms of the cursus, 56

Cf. the image of iusticia as due process expressed in the king’s letters to his lieutenant, Edmund of Cornwall, in the late 1280s, Neal, ‘Discourse’, pp. 147–52. See also Appendix, nos 7–9. 57 The fourth lieutenant, the former justiciar Philip Basset, had died in 1271; A. Harding, ‘Burnell, Robert (d. 1292), Administrator and Bishop of Bath and Wells’, ODNB. 58 R. Huscroft, ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go? Robert Burnell, the Lord Edward’s Crusade and the Canterbury Vacancy of 1270–3’, NMS 45 (2001), 97–109. 59 See, for example, SC 1/7/10–14, 22/31. For Burnell’s dominant role in this correspondence, see Huscroft, ‘Correspondence’, pp. 26–7. After his appointment in October 1273 the two were often connected with the interim treasurer, Br Joseph de Chauncy, in this correspondence. For de Chauncy, see Z. E. Rokéah, ‘Chauncy [Cancy], Joseph of (b. in or before 1213, d. in or after 1283), Prior of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem in England and Royal Administrator’, ODNB. 60 Huscroft, ‘Burnell and Government’.

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the form of high-status prose composition favoured by papal and imperial chanceries. This style of composition, in which certain privileged accentual or rhythmic patterns were employed at the ends of phrases, or clausulae, was rarely adopted in internal English correspondence and only became commonplace in diplomatic correspondence in the fourteenth century.61 In this letter, however, all but two of the sixteen clausulae signified by the contemporary punctuation were marked by a cursus rhythm.62 It was an extremely solemn and high-status speech act, probably produced under the influence of one of the clerks Edward had brought into his retinue as he passed through Sicily at the start of 1273. It is suggestive that this letter was produced at a time shortly after the accomplished dictator Stefano di San Giorgio had joined the king’s service.63 This was exactly the kind of privileged epistolarity that his particular experience was intended to provide to Edward’s secretariat. As well as adopting this unusually formal and authoritative prosody, the letter employed a prestigious vocabulary, with connections to papal language that were well understood in the circles of English royal administration. Words such as laudabiliter held especially significant resonances in English ecclesiastical and political circles, where the papal bull, Laudabiliter, authorizing Henry II’s conquest of Ireland was known and accessible in copies of Gerald of Wales’s Expugnatio Hibernica.64 In combination with the unusual verb, inchoare, which was employed in this letter, laudabiliter had previously appeared in letters of at least three popes: Nicholas I,65 Alexander III66 and Honorius III.67 Two of these examples were of particular relevance in England. The letter from Alexander III to the prior and chapter of Canterbury praising 61

Denholm-Young, ‘Cursus’, p. 60; Chaplais, EDPMA, pp. 113–20. For awareness and use of papal models in the reign of Henry III, see Hennings, ‘Language’, chapter 6. 62 Of fifteen clausulae identified by contemporary punctuation in the MS, there were two planus, four tardus and eight velox endings. A further clausula identified on grammatical grounds alone showed no identifiable cursus rhythm, and was not punctuated in the manuscript. My thanks to Dr Lena Wahlgren-Smith and Dr Rob Cromarty for their advice on this question. 63 Unfortunately, this letter is not among the handful produced for Edward by San Giorgio and attested in Paris, BnF, MS lat. 8567, so the attribution cannot yet be confirmed; see Una silloge epistolare. 64 C. T. Veach, ‘Henry II and the Ideological Foundations of Angevin Rule in Ireland’, IHS 42:161 (2018), 1–25. For the text circulating in England, see Gerald of Wales, Expugnatio Hibernica, ed. J. F. Dimock (London, 1867), p. 317. The critical edition is Pontifica Hibernica: Medieval Papal Chancery Documents concerning Ireland, 640–1261, ed. M. P. Sheehy, 2 vols (Dublin, 1962), 1, pp. 15–16. The authenticity of the bull has been debated in modern times, but was unchallenged in the thirteenth century. Its use in royal and other propaganda in the 1290s is discussed in J. A. Watt, ‘Laudabiliter in Medieval Diplomacy and Propaganda’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record 5th ser., 87 (1957), 420–32. 65 See Corpus Corporum, https://bit.ly/30zFv0U (accessed 15 July 2019). 66 Ibid., https://bit.ly/32q9wlq (accessed 15 July 2019). 67 See Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. H. Denifle and E. Chatelain, 4 vols (Paris, 1889), 1, p. 95, no. 36.

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those members of their community who had stood with archbishop Becket in his ‘tribulations’ appears to have circulated as part of the early collection of decretals that found its way into the letter collection of Gilbert Foliot, former bishop of London and Hereford.68 Meanwhile, the letters of Honorius III were known in England as part of the letter collections associated with Petrus de Vinea and Thomas of Capua. English audiences had reason to understand this language as a vocabulary of special status. Such a high-status letter was ostentatiously intended as a proclamation to an audience much wider than its nominal one. The solemnity and graciousness of this letter were such that it had a lasting impact on the construction of royal letters thanking officials for their service. The king’s clerks, privy to the letter’s original reception, and those who had access to its written form, adapted it to express gratitude for service in a number of contexts thereafter. The first to do so was none other than Merton himself, in a letter by his hand in the king’s name to William fitz Warin, seneschal of Ulster, on 28 March 1274,69 in the context of his decisive suppression of a ‘rebellion’ there.70 Borrowing structure and a number of phrases from the king’s letter to him seven months earlier, this letter thanked the seneschal in the king’s name ‘for those matters in which you have born yourself indefatigably’, and exhorted him ‘that those things which you have begun so well [laudabiliter inchoastis] … you should care to bring to such an effect … that we may need to commend your fidelity and diligence for their merit’. In such ways, the ideology of royal letters circulated beyond their original communicative context. Further demonstrating the longevity of epistolary models circulating in royal administrative circles is a letter sent in Edward’s name to another Irish official, Robert de Ufford, justiciar, in c. 1277.71 Here, the king thanked his justiciar for his recent report: 68 J. H. Morey and C. N. L. Brooke, Gilbert Foliot and His Letters (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 230–3. For the text, see Gilberti ex Abbate Glocestriae Episcopi Primum Herefordiensis Deinde Londoniensis Epistolæ, ed. J. A. Giles, 2 vols (Oxford, 1845), 2, pp. 69–70. 69 SC 1/12/192, see Appendix, no. 2. 70 This terminology had undoubtedly been introduced into the government’s discourse by fitz Warin himself. The context was more complicated than this: the ‘rebels’ were a faction of Anglo-Irish lords and native Irish ríg united in their opposition to the imposition of fitz Warin as seneschal during the minority of the de Burgh heir by the justiciar, who was a personal enemy of the former seneschal, Henry de Mandeville; see E. Curtis, ‘The Macquillan or Mandeville Lords of the Route’, PRIAC 44 (1937), 99–113; A. J. Otway-Ruthven, A History of Medieval Ireland, 2nd edn (London, 1980), pp. 203–4; K. Simms, ‘The O Hanlons, the O Neills and the Anglo-Normans in Thirteenth-Century Armagh’, Seanchas Ardmhacha 9:1 (1978), 70–94. 71 SC 1/14/70, printed in Fœdera, I.ii, p. 540. Although the letter cannot be firmly dated more narrowly than the period 1276–81 on internal evidence, Rymer gave a date of 1277 on the basis of the ‘bundle’ of documents in the Tower in which it was to be found in the early nineteenth century. Letters were often bundled by regnal year, an organizational system that was disrupted by the production of the modern archive.

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Concerning the amelioration of state and peace in our land of Ireland, about which through your letters to us you have recently signified, we are happy and rejoice as greatly as possible;72 and, loudly commending your diligence in this matter, we hope that, with God’s help, you might continue more happily and forcefully in future those things which you have hitherto laudably begun [laudabiliter hactenus inchoastis] there, as much as you can.

As these examples show, the form as well as the ideology of royal correspondence was influential within the epistolary community. The authoritative ‘sound’ of this particular expression of gratitude shaped how clerks conceptualized the ideal letter of thanks to senior administrative figures, especially when the king’s gratitude had to be announced to distant audiences such as the Dublin administration, where the king himself never set foot. Attending to production

A final audience of significance in the case of the king’s letters to Merton in 1273 was the French king and his court. Just as the pope caused his draft letter to be read aloud for the acclamation and approval of his advisers in Paris’s Histoire, the production of Edward’s letter to his chancellor was probably intended to be witnessed. It is clear from Edward’s correspondence with Pope Gregory X, in which he announced his commitment to counsel, that he was anxious for the ideology of his rule to be known widely.73 Similarly, drafting or confirming his letter to Merton in the presence of the French court would have publicized the ideals of Edward’s nascent kingship to the most important diplomatic interlocutors of his reign. Such a production context is shown in the case of another letter to Merton composed on the following day. In it, Edward marked the satisfactory conclusion of his negotiations with Philippe III concerning the homage owed for Gascony by remitting his anger towards his aunt, the countess of Leicester, widow of Simon de Montfort, at Philippe’s instance: Edward, by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland and duke of Aquitaine, to his beloved cleric and chancellor, Walter de Merton, greeting. Whereas we, at the instance of the most serene prince and our dearest kinsman, Philippe, by the grace of God illustrious king of France, have withdrawn from Eleanor, countess of Leicester, all our indignation and rancour of spirit which we had conceived towards her on the occasion of the disturbance formerly obtaining in our kingdom, and we have admitted her to our grace and firm peace – as long as she should hold herself well and faithfully towards us and our fideles – and we have conceded to her that through her attorneys she may pursue her right, if, 72

This letter is tentatively identified as SC 1/21/137, see CDI, 2, no. 1400. SC 1/13/191, translated in Sayles, Functions, p. 141. See also PW, 1, pp. 381–2. In this letter, dated 19 June 1275, Edward impressed on the pope his commitment to taking counsel, and the duty to preserve royal rights imposed by his coronation oath.

73

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according to the customs of our realm, it should hold in these matters which she claims against us or others of our realm; we command you that, admitting that same countess to this concession of grace in this way, you should cause full justice in the foregoing to be done to her attorneys in her name. Given at Melun-surSeine, the 10th day of August, in the first year of our reign.74

The letter’s first order of business was to instruct Merton to carry through just such an act of equity and justice as the general exhortation of the previous day had encouraged. In this way, the two letters effectively formed a pair; they may even have been carried and arrived at Westminster under the same dispatch.75 In remitting his anger to his aunt, Edward did not waste the opportunity to remind the chancellor – and the wider epistolary audience of the royal clerks and council – of the just reasons for his original anger; the condition of the countess keeping faith henceforth; the requirement that all law conform to the customs of the realm; and the king himself as a fount of peace, grace and justice. These provisions and the ethos they exemplified were of great significance to the political elite, since they pertained to magnate rights and political relations. The Barons’ Wars had showed that the magnates wanted reliable and ‘just’ relations with the monarch, and measured mediation by him of their relations with each other. The king’s letter remitting anger to the countess articulated both these principles. If the audience at Westminster when this letter was received included men like Roger Mortimer – a personal enemy of the late earl of Leicester, but, equally, a baron with rights to protect – it conveyed to them both the specifics of the king’s grant to his aunt, and a general promise to act with equal moderation to all who held themselves ‘well and faithfully’ towards him. The narratio also explained carefully that the king’s grace in this matter proceeded directly from the intercession of his cousin, the king of France. For the French, therefore, the letter also contained a diplomatic message: that the kings of England and France were officially in concord, and that Edward had acted – and would act – favourably to advance the reasonable requests of his friends. Undertaking or acting upon intercession such as this commonly formed part of important political performances, such as at coronations and the conclusion of treaties.76 The outcome of these intercessory moments was often recorded in 74

SC 1/7/91, printed in M. A. Everett Green, Lives of the Princesses of England, 6 vols (London, 1850), 2, p. 456. For comment, see L. J. Wilkinson, Eleanor de Montfort: A Rebel Countess in Medieval England (London, 2012), pp. 134–5. 75 On messengers and their practices, see M. C. Hill, The King’s Messengers, 1199–1377 (London, 1961). 76 The queen’s function of interceding with the king at his coronation in order to provide a public opportunity for his mercy to be displayed has been discussed by several scholars. See, for instance, L. L. Huneycutt, ‘Intercession and the High Medieval Queen: The Esther Topos’, Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women, ed. J. Carpenter and S.-B. MacLean (Urbana, 1995), 126–46; P. Stafford, ‘Emma: The Powers of the Queen in the Eleventh Century’, Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe, ed. A. J. Duggan (Woodbridge, 1997), 3–26; A. A.

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epistolary form. In 1279, for example, Edward followed the successful resolution of his dispute with Philippe III over the control of the Agenais in the Treaty of Amiens with a display of gracious favour towards all the merchants of Amiens trading in England, again at Philippe’s request. He caused letters patent to be issued to this effect.77 The performative context of such acts suggests that epistolary production sometimes took place in the presence of the intercessor whose request it honoured. If so, it served an important function. As many letters requesting such patronage noted, it was important that advantage be ‘sensed’ to have been offered.78 In cases where the intercessor was not physically present, the king sometimes wrote to confirm that action had been taken;79 or conversely, to explain why he was unable to do so.80 To produce letters performing a positive response in public, in the presence of the intercessor, was an even more powerful gesture of grace, honouring both parties. Being seen and heard to produce letters affirming the relationship between the parties to their mutual benefit would have intensified their efficacy as diplomatic acts. Conclusion

The fact of the letter’s textual survival privileges analysis of written forms, but as this chapter has discussed, epistolarity also entailed an aural, performative aspect. Hearing letters was embedded in aristocratic and administrative culture, where it bore political and diplomatic significance. The capacity of letters to proclaim the specific messages of their content and the ideological messages of their rhetoric benefited from the habit of reading aloud. Statements about the sender–recipient relationship intended to evoke his or her goodwill could speak to others about the recipient’s importance in the king’s policies and the values of royal government. Further, the king could manipulate participation in epistolary reception of incoming letters to signify his partnership with members of a select reception community, be it the king’s council or the barons of his parliament, or to reinforce the special identity of his administrative elite. Collective production of letters likewise encouraged collective commitment to royal ideals, and could serve as an element of diplomatic theatre. Selecting certain audiences for the production of letters gave senders opportunities to encourage solidarity and signal status among their retinues and associates. Jordan, ‘Material Girls: Judith, Esther, Narrative Modes and Models of Queenship in the Windows of the Ste-Chapelle in Paris’, Word & Image 15:4 (1999), 337–50; L. Benz St. John, Three Medieval Queens: Queenship and the Crown in Fourteenth-Century England (Basingstoke, 2012). See also chapter 4. 77 CPR, 1272–1281, p. 319. 78 See chapter 4, and also Gelting, ‘Reflections’. 79 For example, see SC 1/13/161 i, printed in Dipl. Norv., 19, pp. 421–2. 80 For example, see SC 1/14/26, printed in Fœdera, I.ii, p. 568.

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When important letters were produced in ‘public’ contexts such as parliament, council or foreign courts, those who were invited to help craft or bear witness to royal words were invited to see themselves as privileged partners with the king in his epistolary acts. Royal letters reached a much wider audience, and with greater impact than a simple prosopography would imply.

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4 ‘Dear Cousin’: Affect and Epistolarity beyond Borders The relational nature of epistolarity and its capacity to activate affective bonds made it an essential tool in all interactions where senders sought to extend influence beyond the strict limits of their jurisdiction. As Hengham Magna observed, a separate epistolary language was reserved for such contexts.1 Where kings could not command, they might ask and seek to influence. Royal asking, however, required careful management and selective direction in order to avoid giving an impression of weakness. Diplomacy was the pre-eminent example: it depended heavily upon interpersonal relationships and alliances because it required rulers to act and negotiate beyond the sphere of their own legislative authority. It obtained its ends by persuasion. Diplomacy, evolving during Edward’s lifetime towards a system of professional representatives,2 depended heavily on aristocratic networks of goodwill that cut across ‘national’ boundaries. In the relational logic of diplomacy, the intermarriage practised among European elites in the Middle Ages was an important strategic mechanism for perpetuating networks among families who needed to maintain avenues of negotiation and exchange. Kinship did not offer automatic preferment in matters to be discussed, but provided a structural foundation for selective amplification and activation of ‘affective’ bonds that might influence the goodwill of relevant parties, potentially facilitating desired outcomes. With friendship and gratitude, it was one of the powerful rhetorical mechanisms by which moral obligation could be imposed and goodwill encouraged beyond the borders of a sender’s authority. This discourse was also adapted with varying success for use in domestic contexts where the king’s vassals and officials were asked to perform services beyond the norm.3 The English royal family was well positioned to exploit the opportunities of relational rhetoric in the diplomatic sphere. Generations of careful dynastic 1 Hengham,

Summae, p. 3. On the development of the office of ambassador, for example, see D. E. Queller, The Office of Ambassador in the Middle Ages (Princeton, 1967). On medieval English diplomatic strategy generally, see G. P. Cuttino, English Medieval Diplomacy (Bloomington, 1985). 3 See chapter 5. 2

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strategy connected Edward to most of the principal royal families of Europe, and many other senior aristocratic families within the kingdom of France and the quasi-independent principalities of the Low Countries and German lands.4 By the evidence of his extant correspondence, Edward did not call upon the entire network of his kinsmen and women as potential supporters and allies in diplomatic negotiations,5 but some received letters at important moments, and some became frequent correspondents, most notably his aunt, Marguerite of Provence, the dowager queen of France.6 Where relations did not already exist within this strategic network, Edward attempted to create them, betrothing and marrying his children with an eye to forging or renewing key alliances,7 and purchasing the support of other allies by extending favours in cash or kind.8 Letters played formal and informal roles in diplomacy across this network. The primary instrument of diplomacy was the spoken word entrusted to a nuncio or proctor, distinguished by their degree of freedom to speak on their own initiative and capacity to bind their principals with their words.9 It was often only after agreement had been reached on the important heads of debate by such representatives that terms would be committed to writing in a treaty or other solemn documentary form.10 In their formal role, letters appointed 4 For useful family trees, see Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 572–5. Note, however, that the agnatic focus of most genealogies obscures the many lines of marital alliance made by generations of royal daughters, which could be remembered and reactivated across generations; see Neal, ‘Royal Women and Diplomacy’. Edward had relatives both of blood and by marriage in royal and aristocratic families across Europe. For example, see the marriages and descendants of the daughters of Henry II, and Edward himself: L. J. Wilkinson, ‘Royal Daughters and Diplomacy at the Court of Edward I’, Edward I: New Interpretations, ed. A. King and A. Spencer (York, 2020), 84–104; C. M. Bowie, The Daughters of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine (Turnhout, 2014); H. Pym, ‘The Royal Daughters of England: The Office of Princess-ship 1270–1530’ (unpublished MA dissertation, University of Auckland, 2018), Available at http://hdl.handle. net/2292/37122, Accessed 30 May 2020. 5 For example, Edward’s great-nephew, Robert of Artois, grandson of his sister Beatrice, is notably absent from the records of correspondence between Edward and the French court; see Hélary, ‘Les liens’, p. 87. 6 Few of Edward’s letters to Marguerite are extant, but her substantial correspondence illustrates the scale of loss, see https://bit.ly/3gM93RS, Accessed 9 January 2020. The best account of Marguerite’s importance in English diplomatic networks is in Howell, Eleanor. Forthcoming work by Anaïs Waag will extend this considerably. As I discuss in Neal, ‘Royal Women and Diplomacy’, Marguerite’s biographers to date have tended to be hostile to her role in Anglo-French relations; see, for example E. Boutaric, ‘Marguerite de Provence: son caractère, son rôle politique’, Revue des questions historiques 3 (1867), 417–58; G. Sivéry, Marguerite de Provence: Une reine au temps des cathédrales (Paris, 1987). 7 Wilkinson, ‘Royal Daughters’, pp. 86–7. 8 For example, see E. B. Fryde, ‘Financial Resources of Edward I in the Netherlands, 1294–98: Main Problems and Some Comparisons with Edward III in 1337–40’, RBPH 40:4 (1962), 1168–87; Barraclough, ‘Edward and Adolf’, p. 256. 9 On this distinction, see Queller, Office of Ambassador, pp. 130–1; Queller, ‘ThirteenthCentury Diplomatic Envoys’, pp. 200, 204. 10 For an example of the shift between informal/oral and formal/written diplomacy gone

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and empowered such representatives, introducing them, conveying tokens of authenticity, and specifying the limits of their powers; they could also be used to instruct or report on negotiations and, finally, communicate their agreements. The formulae for such documents had a long history which forms part of standard accounts of diplomatic, and is not my focus here.11 Informally, letters operated to prepare the ground for diplomatic machinations or to celebrate moments of concord by reminding parties of their relationship and renewing mutual commitments. Into this category fall epistolary forms connected to patronage, intercession, ‘family news’ and ‘personal matters’. It was in such letters that relational rhetoric performed its important role in sustaining goodwill and keeping communication channels open. The fact that informal epistolarity of this kind was strategic and not frivolous or merely affective can be inferred from its uneven distribution. Edward used informal diplomatic correspondence to promote his interests in all the significant diplomatic enterprises of his reign. These moments depended on a rich exchange of epistolarity by which parties engaged the goodwill of potential allies in the hope of influencing the counsel and decision-making that would determine outcomes. The survival frequency of Edward’s diplomatic correspondence tends to coincide with periods of greatest tension between England and its powerful neighbour, France, especially in matters touching the English king’s tenure in the duchy of Gascony (see Fig. 4). In the late 1270s, for instance, a dispute with Gaston de Béarn threatened Anglo-French relations when Gaston brought a complaint against Edward in the French parlement.12 The affair, together with the prolonged negotiations over Edward’s seisin of the Agenais, forced Edward to activate all his connections with any power to influence the mood of the French court and led to the production of numerous letters to his friends and kin. Again in the period of crisis after Philippe IV’s annexation of Gascony in 1294, Edward made epistolary overtures to a network of allies and kin who could assist him. Both these periods are associated with clusters of extant correspondence. When peaceful relations were re-established, these too were signalled by informal forms of diplomatic correspondence. We have already seen how the production of letters could interact with moments of diplomatic theatre such as Edward’s conclusion of homage to Philippe III. On that occasion, wrong, see Neal, ‘Royal Women and Diplomacy’. In contrast, Hugh Brodie has shown that Llywelyn ap Gruffydd was unusual in his use of ‘diplomatic’ letters to make statements of argument and position; see Brodie, ‘Communication’, pp. 22–3. 11 For ‘diplomatic’ in this sense, see Chaplais, EDPMA; Giry, Manuel de diplomatique; Déprez, Études de diplomatique. 12 On Gaston’s rebellion in Gascony, and the ensuing case in the French court, see J. P. Trabut-Cussac, L’administration anglaise en Gascogne sous Henry III et Edouard I de 1254 à 1307 (Paris, 1972); J. B. Smith, ‘Adversaries of Edward I: Gaston de Béarn and Llywelyn ap Gruffudd’, Recognitions: Essays Presented to Edmund Fryde, ed. C. Richmond and I. M. W. Harvey (Aberystwyth, 1996), 55–88.

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Figure 4. Graph showing outgoing royal diplomatic correspondence during the reign of Edward I extant in SC 1. These letters mainly survive as drafts. Overall, the greatest proportion of this correspondence was directed to foreign royalty, often Edward’s kin. Peaks in Edward’s diplomatic engagement are frequently associated with periods of negotiation or tension over the question of his tenure in Gascony (1277–9; 1294–5; 1297–8; 1304), as well as his relationship to Scotland (1275–7; 1301; 1307). The king’s absence from the realm typically coincided with a lull in surviving diplomatic correspondence (e.g. 1272–4; 1286–9). Figures have been determined from a survey of the online catalogue, confirmed by viewing the manuscripts.

0

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10

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25

Edward I: Extant diplomatic letters (TNA, SC 1)

1307

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letters graciously extending remission of rancour to the countess of Leicester at Philippe’s instance announced to receptive audiences, both French and English, that the two kings had reached concord.13 Formal occasions such as the conclusion of treaties also called for public performative acts of intercession and patronage exercised by and between principals. Letters announcing such acts reasserted and restored the relationship in the eyes of the parties and a wider, witnessing public. Informal diplomatic letters depended on a minimal potential for goodwill, just as all epistolarity depended on the capacity to identify a shared ethos between sender and recipient. Therefore, while such letters may not all have signified ‘true friendship’ between the correspondents, they attest to the sender’s belief in the possibility of friendly relations. Where outright hostility existed, diplomatic letters did not, unless they were calculated to offend. Litterae de statu: empty of content, full of potential

Kinship was no guarantee of peace or concord, but it could encourage it. As Maurice Powicke observed, thirteenth-century politics was not divorced from ‘the interplay of personal relations’.14 One epistolary form that was exchanged almost exclusively among kin was litterae de statu: literally, letters concerning the ‘state’ or wellbeing of the correspondents. The purpose of these letters was not merely an exchange of ‘family news’, since they almost never provide actual detail, or reveal any illness, even though illness was not a taboo topic in diplomatic epistolarity.15 In its purest form, the letter de statu contained no other message; so much so that Xavier Hélary has described the letter de statu as ‘almost completely devoid of actual content’.16 But while true, this is a potentially deceptive characterization. By facilitating friendly relations among aristocratic kinship networks, this epistolary form was a bedrock of informal diplomatic correspondence. In a structure that was highly conserved across medieval Europe, such letters asked for news of the recipient, hoping that they were well, and offering similar tidings of the sender. A letter sent by Marguerite of Provence to Henry III, sometime during the period of reform and rebellion (1258–67) illustrates this: Marguerite by the grace of God queen of France, to her dearest brother Henry, by the grace of God illustrious king of England, greetings and sincere loving affection. Desiring with the mind’s whole desire to be informed about your 13

See chapter 3. F. M. Powicke, The Thirteenth Century, 1216–1307 (Oxford, 1953), p. 236. 15 For example, the king discussed his recent illness in a letter to Pope Gregory X in 1275: SC 1/13/191, in CCR, 1272–1279, pp. 197–8. 16 Hélary, ‘Les liens’, p. 83, ‘elle nous paraît presque vidée de tout contenu propre: aucune information n’en émerge, elle est la littera de statu par excellence’. 14

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state, we send this present [letter] to Your Sublimity, asking that – if those things which faithfully fulfil our goals should please you – you should wish to revive the innermost parts of our heart by informing us about that same state, from which may the hand of the Almighty not subtract the smallest part. Indeed, Your Serenity should know that prosperity smiles upon our lord king, and us, and all our children, by the bounteousness of the Lord. Farewell. Given at St. Germainen-Laye, on the Friday after Pentecost.17

Marguerite’s letter adopted a more flowery rhetoric than most litterae de statu, but its constituent parts were entirely commonplace: a courteous greeting highlighting mutual relationship; an expression of desire to know of the recipient’s wellbeing and the wish that it be good; an offer of news of oneself in return; a farewell. It was also possible for letters expressing some more substantive points to include a clause de statu, often in the position of the exordium or sanctio.18 The rhetoric of such letters amplified the inherent pathos of the epistolary form to craft an appeal to goodwill that was able to speak across borders and beyond the sender’s jurisdiction, wherever kinship existed. As in the case of Marguerite’s letter, above, litterae de statu did not normally discuss the premises of a particular epistolary context or express a specific request beyond the desire for a return of news: matters of context were to be inferred by the recipient, or may have been among the irrecoverable verbal messages committed to the messenger.19 While this has frustrated many generations of historians, it is an important feature of the format. The whole letter functioned as an elaborate captatio benevolentiae oriented towards unspecified and therefore open-ended requests, and encouraged the principle of ongoing communication. Because they did not normally articulate any request other than the desire for continuing friendly intercourse, these letters could be purely affective stimuli, with potent implications for the utility of relationships in the political or diplomatic spheres. By avoiding the implication of exploiting relationships for purely instrumental purposes, they could, paradoxically, enable them to be used all the more instrumentally.20 Such letters circulated among networks of related individuals, masquerading as purely personal correspondence. Although frequently catalogued as ‘personal matters’, they were often exchanged in the formative stages of diplomatic 17

SC 1/3/142, printed in EDD, no. 430. Letters from allies who were not kin sometimes employed a clause de statu; full litterae de statu seem to have been reserved for family members; see Hélary, ‘Les liens’, p. 85. 19 It is possible that such correspondence could act as a cover for secret messages delivered orally by the bearer, see Neal, ‘Royal Women and Diplomacy’. 20 On the impossibility of disentangling these two aspects of ‘friendship’, see P. Maddern, ‘“Best Trusted Friends”: The Concepts and Practices of Friendship in Fifteenth-Century Norfolk’, England in the Fifteenth Century, ed. N. Rogers (Stamford, 1994), 100–17; J. Haseldine, ‘Friendship Networks in Medieval Europe: New Models of a Political Relationship’, Amity 1:1 (2013), 69–88. Although Haseldine argues for a model in which friendship is a relationship distinct from the kinship activated in most litterae de statu, the two share the quality of being at once affective and effective bonds. 18

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negotiations in the prelude to or aftermath of warfare, mediated peace-making, or other moments of arbitration. In moments such as this, the inherent pathos of letters enabled them to activate affective connections in order to facilitate effective communication. Litterae de statu can therefore be read as instruments for opening channels of communication, and/or for keeping them open, when circumstances might otherwise threaten the relationship on which they depended. Although their content often represented them as dissociated from time and place – as if the friendly relations they evoked were equally timeless – this was nothing but one of Dumolyn’s ‘harmonizing’ strategies.21 In fact, the relationships they invoked were dynamic, and the letters always operated in awareness of that context. When litterae de statu can be tied to their epistolary situation we find that they are embedded in moments of acute diplomatic or political significance.22 For instance, a letter de statu from Henry III to his brother-in-law Louis IX on 5 February 1263 was sent during a reassertion of royal control between moments of baronial domination of both the king and the seal.23 The French king’s goodwill was evidently of potent relevance in such circumstances; at the end of the year he would be asked to arbitrate between the rebel and royal parties, ultimately finding in Henry’s favour in the Mise of Amiens. On the same day as his letter to Louis, Henry also wrote to his sister-in-law, Marguerite of Provence, the French king’s wife, begging her to advocate for peace with all her power and asking her to promote his crusading policy to her husband.24 Henry’s efforts to generate goodwill between himself and the French royal family were ultimately so successful that they outlived him, with Marguerite remaining one of Edward’s closest contacts and supporters in Paris until her death. This was not only an English strategy, but part of a ‘European political language’.25 Edward also received numerous litterae de statu at times when reinforcing open communication with him was prudent for the interests of his kin and allies within and beyond his realm. For instance, in 1278, as negotiations advanced in Paris concerning Edward’s control of the Agenais and a dispute with Gaston de Béarn, which had become entangled with the recurrent question of the nature of Edward’s Gascon tenure, he received two litterae de statu from his cousin, Pierre, count of Alençon.26 The timing of this commu21

Dumolyn, ‘Political Communication’, p. 47. The absence of contextual detail can make this a difficult task if there is no place–date given. 23 The letter is printed from the Close Rolls in Fœdera, I.i, p. 704; Royal Letters, 2, pp. 238–9. It is noticed with the incorrect date of 24 June 1263 in Hélary, ‘Les liens’, p. 82. For the context of this period, see A. Jobson, The First English Revolution: Simon de Montfort, Henry III and the Barons’ War (London, 2012), pp. 48–52; Maddicott, Montfort, pp. 203–15; Howell, Eleanor, p. 182. 24 Fœdera, I.i, p. 705; Royal Letters, 2, pp. 239–40. 25 ‘Un langage politique européen’: the term is Grévin’s; see Grévin, Rhétorique. 26 SC 1/14/152, 154; the latter is printed in Lettres des rois, 1, no. 213. On Edward’s dispute 22

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nication suggests that Pierre was acting as a particular supporter or informal go-between in Anglo-French relations at this time: he wanted Edward to know that he had friends in Paris. Similarly, between Edward’s two Welsh wars, he received litterae de statu from another cousin, Eleanor de Montfort, Lady of Snowdon and princess of Wales, who had vested interests in maintaining a working relationship with her kin across the Welsh border.27 Two examples demonstrate how critical such letters could be in Edward’s broader epistolary strategies: one from early in the pivotal Gascon Crisis of c. 1294–8 which led to open warfare between England and France, and another from 1304, when the peace settled between the two kingdoms with the pope’s mediation was finally reaching fulfilment. In 1294, a maritime disagreement quickly grew into a wider dispute over that perennial problem, the legal and lordly jurisdiction of Gascony. By the summer, the initially promising diplomatic efforts led by Jeanne of Navarre, queen of France, and her step-mother-in-law, Marie of Brabant for the French, and the king’s brother, Edmund, earl of Lancaster for the English, deteriorated into armed confrontation.28 A caesura in Anglo-French diplomatic relations also ensued, until the new pope, Boniface VIII, intervened to mediate a peace between the two kingdoms in mid-1295. On 12 August, among Edward’s earliest responses to the arrival of the papal legates at Westminster was a draft series of litterae de statu to the three living queens of France, all of whom were his kinswomen in some degree: his aunt, Marguerite of Provence, widow of Louis IX; Marie of Brabant, widow of his cousin, Philippe III; and Jeanne of Navarre, wife of Philippe IV and Edward’s step-niece, by virtue of his brother’s marriage to Blanche of Navarre.29 The draft letter to Marguerite stated: To the most serene lady and his dearest friend, the Lady Marguerite, by the grace of God illustrious queen of the French, Edward by the same grace, etc., greeting and prompt willingness to give thanks with sincere love. Desiring to hear good news of your state, which may the Lord cause always to be healthy, we require and ask Your Excellency that concerning that same state of yours you should wish to render us more certain whenever the opportunity should present itself to you. In order, therefore, to satisfy your desire concerning our state we notify Your Highness that, by the grace of God, we rejoice fully in the benefit of health, which we desire and hope to hear frequently concerning Your Serenity. Farewell.30

with Gaston over the latter’s claims to hold Béarn independently of the duke, see Smith, ‘Adversaries’; J. H. Ellis, ‘Gaston de Bearn: A Study in Anglo-Gascon Relations (1229–1290)’ (unpublished D.Phil. dissertation, University of Oxford, 1952). This correspondence is noticed in Hélary, ‘Les liens’, pp. 76, 79, 85. 27 SC 1/17/3, printed in Fœdera, I.ii, p. 587; AWR, no. 435. For Eleanor’s correspondence, see also chapter 2. 28 Neal, ‘Royal Women and Diplomacy’; Vale, Legacy, p. 188. See also below, pp. 152–4. 29 Jeanne had also been betrothed in childhood to Edward’s son Henry (d. 1274). 30 SC 1/13/28 i, printed in Lettres des rois, 1, no. 211.1, see also CCR, 1288–1296, p. 450.

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The letters to Marie and Jeanne closely resembled this template, with an additional clause suggesting that Edward proposed to overlook the failure of their recent diplomatic efforts.31 The extreme amplification of affective language can be seen in every phrase, from the salutatio to the conclusio, signifying the importance of pathos for the persuasive work being undertaken. One of the chancery’s most senior scribes drafted these three letters on a single sheet.32 A fourth item on the sheet was a letter of credence introducing an envoy to Edward’s most important ally against the French, the king of the Romans, on a mission which probably concerned a new delay in his and Edward’s proposed continental rendezvous.33 The diplomatic purpose of the litterae de statu sent to the three queens is indicated not only by this material coincidence and by the timing of this correspondence in the midst of a flurry of chancery documents concerning the English response to the papal legation, but also by their transmission under the great seal.34 The great seal was Edward’s most formal and solemn means of epistolary authentication and rendered the material artefact of the letter a most impressive and regal object. The seal had reached a diameter of almost four inches (100 mm) at this time, and would have been both fragile and difficult to conceal, suggesting that Edward planned for these letters to be received and witnessed publicly. If so, they served to proclaim in both word and substance the English king’s willingness to be on friendly terms with his female kin at the French court. At the same time, the familial and friendly rhetoric silently encouraged them to consider how they might best advance their kinsman’s interests, as they had attempted to do in the previous year. A similar situation arose in 1304 as the fallout of the Gascon Crisis at last inched towards a final settlement. Boniface VIII had negotiated a peace in 1298, which resulted in 1299 in Edward’s marriage to Margaret of France, half-sister of Philippe IV and daughter of Marie of Brabant, whose support Edward had sought in the previous decade. However, a number of issues remained outstanding, such as the English king’s alliance with the count of Flanders, who was at war with France, and the French king’s support for Edward’s enemies in Scotland. The new pope, Benedict XI, hoped to facilitate a final peace, and began mediation in 1303 to this end. Crucially, Benedict’s intervention freed Edward of the oaths of allegiance to Guy de Dampierre against French interests; 31

SC 1/13/28 ii–iii, printed in Lettres des rois, 1, no. 211.2–3: ‘et licet hiis diebus alique discordie sint suborte, non tamen attendimus erga personam vestram illustrem, idcirco quicquam contentionis habere quin nobis significare ponitis, cum vobis placuerit, que vestre fuerint placita voluntatis’. 32 This draft is in the hand of the protonotary, Scribe W; see chapter 2. 33 The letter to Adolf was sent on 14 August; see CCR, 1288–96, p. 450. The text is printed in Acta, ed. Kern, p. 73, no. 104. See also Barraclough, ‘Edward and Adolf’, p. 239; Neal, ‘Royal Women and Diplomacy’. 34 Chaplais found this curious, but he had not considered these letters as instrumental in the diplomatic process, see Chaplais, EDPMA, p. 96.

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an awkward obligation in the context of the Franco-Flemish war of 1303–4.35 This cleared the way for friendly relations to re-start. By early 1304, mediation had reached a stage in which the kings’ personal interaction was once again possible and desirable. In March or early April, Edward received French envoys in Fife where he was preparing to besiege Stirling Castle. Among them was a messenger from Marie of Brabant, now Edward’s mother-in-law, who used her unique maternal position to write to Edward on her step-son’s behalf, expressing a desire for the two kings to meet in person. Edward replied to his ‘dear mother’ in an extended litterae de statu on 7 April, saying that he would do so as soon as affairs on his side permitted it, and closing by offering and asking for an exchange of personal news.36 The conclusio of the letter expressed Edward’s desire ‘that you should wish to show us your state as often as you can, in good fashion, together with your will, which we are ready to do to [the best of] our power’. This opened the way for further communication, and further exchange of specific requests.37 Litterae de statu such as this operated in two main ways to centre pathos in diplomatic relations. First, they performed the friendliness of the sender towards the recipient; and second, they reminded the recipient of the existence and importance of their specific relationship, so that they would be all the more obliged to offer their support. In 1295 the wider diplomatic context was inimical to progress, and Edward’s attempt to activate the goodwill of his female kin in France led to no noticeable diplomatic advances. Landing in more fruitful soil, however, his mother-in-law’s letter in 1304 successfully seeded a new, intensive phase of diplomatic rapprochement. Over the next three days, Edward ordered his officials to support French efforts against his former Flemish ally with naval support and mercantile sanctions, provided that the French would cease to harbour Scottish dissidents.38 Edward sent the French emissaries home with a reply to their king, accompanied by litterae de statu to Philippe IV; Jeanne of Navarre; Charles of Valois, the French king’s brother; and his wife, Catherine, Empress of Constantinople.39 The rhetoric of these letters was calculated to do maximum honour to the recipients, reflecting the solemnity of this new moment of amity: 35

H. Kamp, ‘Arbitration and Mediation in the Conflicts around France and Flanders 1296–1305’, International Medieval Congress (Leeds, 2019). I thank Prof. Kamp for sharing the text of his presentation with me. On papal mediation generally, see B. Bombi, Anglo-Papal Relations in the Early Fourteenth Century: A Study in Medieval Diplomacy (Oxford, 2019). 36 SC 1/13/30, printed in EMDP, 1, no. 10a. The letter was drafted in French; it is not clear whether the fair copy was sent in French or Latin. 37 Marie sent the bishop of Soissons as her envoy to the king immediately thereafter, but his mission was curtailed at Wissant by illness, and the king wrote to say that if the matter of his message was the same, he had already given all the answer he could to the envoys of Philippe IV; see SC 1/13/31, printed in EMDP, 1, no. 10c. 38 Fœdera, I.ii, pp. 961–2. 39 SC 1/13/206, printed in EMDP, 1, no. 10b. These letters survive only in a French draft; it is not clear if they were sent in Latin or French.

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To the most high, most noble, and most powerful, our very dear and most beloved lord and cousin, Philippe, by the grace of God king of France, Edward, etc., greetings and all honour. Dearest lord, we thank you dearly40 for the kind letters which you have sent us; and we are happy about the good news that you have sent us about your state, which may God cause always to be good; and we pray you, dearest lord, that by messengers you should wish to send us certainty about it as often as you can in good fashion. And know, lord, concerning our own [state] that we were well and hearty, thanks to God, when this letter was made, the which it may please you to know. May Our Lord have you in his keeping.

Charles received a letter of the same format, while the ladies received similar letters with the addition of a sanctio encouraging them to command Edward at their pleasure. Normal diplomatic relations were thus proclaimed to have resumed, and the progress of future negotiations was encouraged. They were a mechanism for attempting to secure the goodwill of these four kinsmen and women, who were vital, individually and collectively, for the successful achievement of the peace in terms that would facilitate Edward’s interests in Scotland. Intercession and the flow of favour

When making diplomatic requests or putting arguments on their own account, kings rarely called upon patronage.41 Asking openly for favour not only risked putting a king under unacceptable obligations to another ruler, but could also imply that his own authority or resources were inadequate for his needs, diminishing his esteem. The asymmetrical relationship of patronage was ordinarily characterized by a patron of superior status, and an inferior client. Since diplomatic bargaining positions depended heavily on esteem, it could be potentially damaging for kings to adopt the client position. By contrast, intercessors could be of equal status with the patron, and intercession could be performed without loss of dignity or fama, in fact often leading to their increase.42 Interceding for others was an eminently suitable way to encourage goodwill in support of royal diplomacy, and to promote the diplomatic reputation of the king. Performing intercession showed goodwill towards the beneficiary, and reinforced relationships between intercessor and patron in ways that accrued honour to both. For this reason, intercession was sometimes incorporated into royal ceremonial to enable moments of performed mercy and largesse, such as in the case of ritualized intercession by queens with their husbands at the moment 40 Cherement, added above the line for molt, which has been struck through, amplifying the affective intensity of the rhetoric. 41 On patronage discourse generally, see P. D. McLean, The Art of the Network: Strategic Interaction and Patronage in Renaissance Florence (Durham, 2007). On the persistence of patronage within medieval bureaucratic structures, see Gelting, ‘Reflections’. 42 On the importance of fama for legitimacy and credibility, see T. S. Fenster and D. L. Smail, ‘Introduction’, Fama, ed. T. S. Fenster and D. L. Smail (Ithaca, 2003), 1–11.

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of coronation.43 Although queenly intercession was performed in a particularly gendered way, borrowing from the biblical model of Esther, intercession was not only a feminine activity. It was an expected part of demonstrating lordship and status by promoting the interests of one’s subordinates, dependants and allies.44 It was also commonly undertaken at critical junctures of diplomatic relations, whether in person or by letter. Interposing oneself into the flow of favour across borders and around networks at such moments brought goodwill in a form of diplomatic capital to the intercessor and affirmed relationships that could facilitate alliance and agreement. The circulation of letters of intercession defined networks of goodwill. During the 1278 negotiations concerning the case of Gaston de Béarn, for example, in addition to receiving multiple litterae de statu from his cousin, Pierre d’Alençon, Edward also received letters of intercession from a core group of his kin and other allies in the French court. In August, Pierre d’Alençon, together with Edward’s aunt, Marguerite of Provence; his mother-in-law, Jeanne of Dammartin, dowager queen of Castile and countess of Ponthieu; Jeanne’s second husband, Jean I de Nesle; Pierre’s wife Jeanne de Châtillon, also a royal connection;45 Jean II de Brienne, Edward’s cousin once removed; and the abbot of St Denis, Matthew de Vendôme, wrote to Edward seeking favour on behalf of the new archbishop of Rouen.46 Those who did not write were as notable as those who did: men like Robert of Artois, who were hostile to Edward and his policies, did not participate.47 No doubt it was in the archbishop’s interests to secure as many ‘character witnesses’ as possible in his request to be excused from crossing the Channel due to his great fear of the sea, but equally, it was timely for this group of contacts to reinforce their good relations with England and to invite Edward to consider them as friends. Against this background, negotiations between the French party and Edward’s envoys proceeded steadily. By December of the same year, facilitated by this group of supporters, both Edward’s case against Gaston and the related matter of the Agenais had advanced. This was signalled by a letter of intercession to Edward from Philippe III himself, on behalf of the merchants

43

Huneycutt, ‘Intercession’, p. 129; J. C. Parsons, ‘The Queen’s Intercession in ThirteenthCentury England’, Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women, ed. J. Carpenter and S.-B. MacLean (Urbana, 1995), 147–77 (pp. 155–6, 158, 161); Neal, ‘Royal Women and Diplomacy’. 44 Gelting, ‘Reflections’, pp. 260–1. Note, however, the instability that has been identified in the meaning of such exchanges, which can be simultaneously expected and contested; see Algazi, ‘Introduction: Doing Things with Gifts’, pp. 16–17; S. D. White, ‘Service for Fiefs or Fiefs for Service: The Politics of Reciprocity’, Negotiating the Gift, 63–98. 45 Jeanne’s uncle, John II of Brittany, had been married to Edward’s sister, Beatrice (d.1275), and was earl of Richmond. 46 Hélary, ‘Les liens’, pp. 76–7. 47 Ibid., pp. 87–8.

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of Rouen.48 Soon afterwards, Edward ratified an agreement negotiated on his behalf by his envoys.49 Thus, both litterae de statu and letters of intercession among networks of friends and kin coincided with periods of diplomatic significance. Although records do not link the exchange of such expressions of generosity and fellow feeling directly to diplomatic outcomes, they must have influenced the mood in which discussion occurred. To influence discussion, letters of intercession borrowed from a common rhetorical toolkit that could be adapted, following the general rules of dictamen, to the register appropriate to the circumstances. As in litterae de statu, the vocabulary and structure of the salutatio was optimized to emphasize relationships of dependency such as kinship, friendship or lordship, especially highlighting the role(s) relevant to the recipient’s capacity as potential grantor of patronage in each case.50 The narratio expressed the need and justification for the favour sought. The petitio requested the favour, making use of the most polite and flattering language appropriate to the station of the recipient. Often in the sanctio and occasionally in the narratio, references to debts of thanks occurred, situating the present request in a continuous and beneficial flow of exchange. Beyond their immediate material request, therefore, letters of intercession provided recipient–patrons with generous opportunities for displaying their lordship and largesse, and offered an open-ended relationship with the sender who promised future support or favour, much as did the ongoing exchange of family news in litterae de statu. What flowed between and was consumed by participants in this system was not merely the ownership of specific resources or advantages, but also forms of obligation, duty, honour, goodwill and promises of reciprocity.51 Like litterae de statu, intercessory discourse encouraged goodwill between the parties, but unlike litterae de statu, it was not restricted to kinship networks. The patronage relationships it activated could intersect with and reinforce all other forms of relation, such as kinship, friendship, alliance or feudal obligation. For example, in 1295, as Edward attempted to forge a northern alliance of the comital and ducal leaders of the Low Countries and German lands in the face of the French king’s annexation of Gascony, he undertook to arbitrate a number of long-running disputes between the counts of Flanders and Guelders.52 He communicated his decisions by letters to the count and countess of Flanders, 48

Several of these letters are printed: Fœdera, I.ii, p. 561; C. Brunel, ‘Documents sur le Pontieu conservés dans la collection de l’ancient correspondence au Public Record Office de Londres (1278–1337)’, BPHCTHS (1920), 231–77 (pp. 234–5); Lettres des rois, 1, no. 166. 49 CPR, 1272–1281, p. 298. 50 For a case study of such rhetoric outside royal discourse, see Neal, ‘Loyalty’. 51 I thank Lars Kjær for stimulating discussions on this point. For a recent overview of gift studies and its connection to patronage as a system of socio-political management, see contributions in Negotiating the Gift. 52 Barraclough, ‘Edward and Adolf’, p. 238.

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taking care to state the reputational benefits of what he asked of them. Since the count, Guy de Dampierre, had only recently been released from French custody where he had been kept for the offence of having betrothed his daughter to Edward’s son, Edward of Caernarfon,53 it was essential to show that his interests aligned with Edward’s latest plan. The king suggested that Count Guy should forgive a substantial part of a debt owed by Reginald, count of Guelders, and offer favourable terms of payment for the remainder so that the latter should ‘not find himself in difficulty’, also releasing his lands to him.54 This was an enormous request: Guy was encouraged to forgive Reginald the huge sum of 100,000 livres Tournois, as well as allowing favourable terms on the residuum. This would free the count of Guelders to support Edward’s military proposals. It was a substantial loss to expect anyone to bear, and especially so in light of Guy’s recent imprisonment. To placate Flanders, the king sought to avoid the appearance of pure self-interest, or of disproportionate favour towards Guelders. His decision was framed courteously as a matter of intercession from which Count Guy would gain honour and benefit. ‘We require and ask’, the king wrote, ‘that you should wish to cause the grace of remission or pardon to be done to him on [your] part, for our prayers and love’, laying emphasis on the lordly and Christian virtue of forgiveness that such an act would enable him to demonstrate. In addition, Edward promised that gratifying his request would place the king himself in the count’s debt, thereby offering him unspecified, future advantage to be called on at need: the sanctio closed with the assurance that ‘we shall be bound to give you thanks and grace [grates et gratias]’. The parallel royal letter to Countess Isabella also emphasized the gratitude that she could earn by mediating with her husband on this issue. Maintaining a firm hope, that through your mediation, the said matter on behalf of the said count can conveniently be expedited, we especially require and ask [requirimus et rogamus] Your Benevolence that towards your lord in this matter, for our prayers, you should wish to intercede yourself in such a way that the aforesaid count of Guelders may sense that our prayers, through the power of your said lord and you, have been profitable to him; for which we shall owe you special thanks [debeamus specialiter gratiari].

The slippage between the lexicon of gratitude and grace evident in both these letters was not accidental. Grace (gratia) was a quality especially associated with religious and royal authority, and with the capacity to act outside normal

53

Ibid., p. 237. Guy’s daughter, Philippa, was also detained in France to prevent the marriage being concluded. Guillaume de Nangis reported that she ‘remained [there] to be brought up with the king’s children’; see Guillaume de Nangis, Chronique latine de Guillaume de Nangis de 1113 à 1300 avec les continuations de cette chronique, 2 vols (Paris, 1843), 2, p. 287. 54 SC 1/12/196, printed in Fœdera, I.ii, p. 818. For this and the matching letter to Countess Isabelle, see also TR, 1, nos 252–3.

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administrative and judicial processes.55 The association between grace and gratitude was of particular use to rulers in marking the special and honourable nature of what was offered in return for patronage. Gratitude as diplomatic discourse

The rhetoric of gratitude had special properties that rendered it useful to the discourse of informal diplomatic correspondence. Rhetorical reinforcement of relationships required entering into some form of voluntary obligation to the other party. Gratitude and grace, linked together in the rhetoric of the king’s letter to Guy of Dampierre, quoted above, both functioned as useful signifiers of such obligations. Within his domains, Edward gave patronage, in the form of deer, oaks, jewels and other material favours, as a reward for service.56 It was an act undertaken in recognition of a duty done, in order to reinforce the asymmetrical bonds of lordship and encourage further service in future. In seeking favour on the part of others, and especially for himself, however, Edward needed to avoid the implications that what he gave in return was servile in any respect. Offering gratitude distinguished his voluntary, reciprocal obligation from service (i.e. those actions that could be demanded and to which one obliged oneself through acts of subservience such as homage or oaths of office). The fact that thanks was a form of voluntary obligation distinct from service can be confirmed by its association with the concept of the munus, such as in the following letter from Edward to Reginald, count of Guelders,57 in 1279: Edward by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland and duke of Aquitaine, to the noble man and his dearest friend, [R.] count of Guelders, greetings with sincere love. Whereas our dearest son Hartmann,58 son of the illustrious king of the Romans, approaches towards English parts at this time; we require and ask Your Belovedness from the heart that, with consideration of us, you should wish to show to him benevolence in feeling, and, when he should cross through your parts, if the matter should demand it, courtiers as needed; and enable free and safe passage for him and his household going with him through those parts of yours, should you be requested about this by him or his; in return for which we wish to pour forth (refundere) to you special obligations of thanks [specialia munera gratiarum]. Given at Brill, the eleventh day of April, in the seventh year of our reign.59 55

On the relationship between grace and justice in petitioning, see Dodd, Justice, pp. 232–8. Nobility, pp. 200–8; A. M. Spencer, ‘Royal Patronage and the Earls in the Reign of Edward I’, History 93:309 (2008), 20–40 (pp. 26–31). 57 Reginald was the cousin of Edward’s wife, Eleanor of Castile: their mothers were sisters. 58 Hartman was betrothed to Edward’s daughter, Joan, at this time, hence the language of paternal relationship. The marriage was delayed, and Hartman died in an accident in 1282 before it could be formalized. See J. C. Ward, ‘Joan [Joan of Acre], Countess of Hertford and Gloucester (1272–1307), Princess’, ODNB. 59 SC 1/13/61, printed in Fœdera, I.ii, p. 568. This letter was written in response to the 56 Spencer,

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The sanctio of this letter made clear the simultaneously extraordinary, voluntary and obligatory nature of the thanks Edward offered his ally. The phrase ‘specialia munera gratiarum’ with which it closed drew together these concepts. A munus was both a gift and a duty, that is, it combined elements of the voluntary and the obligatory such that it constituted a duty to give, without imposing a duty to give a particular thing.60 This was a form of reciprocity explicitly distinct from fealty which imposed duties to perform specific services. The distinction between promised thanks and service – and with it subordination – was further reinforced by the semantic and rhetorical association of thanks and grace, the special capacity of divinity and sovereignty to work, if they chose, outside the ordinary restraints of nature, law or custom.61 Just as the munus was both a gift and a duty, gratia was both a favour given/received, and divine or royal ‘grace’. The same elision of distinction between thanks, favour and divine (or royal) grace occurred in the parallel Anglo-Norman vocabulary in which some diplomatic letters – and many more domestic ones – were couched.62 The language of thanks, gift-giving, obligation and the exceptional were closely entangled semantically. For kings, these associations were especially useful rhetorical tools by which to maintain their authority in the course of making requests and offering favour in return. A king’s exercise of gratia, after all, demonstrated his exalted status and brought him honour, as well as doing favour to the recipient. A further benefit of employing thankful rhetoric within diplomatic exchange was its undefined quality. Thanks, like the munus, enjoined a duty to give, but not the substance of what was to be given, leaving the giver with a certain discretion over its nature and timing. A letter from one of Edward’s chief rhetoricians, the lawyer Francis d’Accorso, on behalf of one of his cousins who was being ‘fraudulently’ accused of legal misconduct, illustrates this. As was common among the administrative and political elite of Edward’s domains,63 the letter was addressed not to the king himself, but to one of his

suggestion of Hartmann’s father, Rudolph, king of the Romans, that it would be safer and more sensible for the young man to travel exclusively within friendly territory. Edward replied positively to Hartmann on the same day that he wrote to the count of Guelders to secure the arrangements. See Chaplais, EDPMA, pp. 219–20. 60 See ‘munus’ in DMLBS. The historical and linguistic significance of the munus in classical and medieval times has informed its use in modern political philosophy as an obligation to give, constituent of community and/or political relations; see L. Weir, ‘Roberto Espotiso’s Political Philosophy of the Gift’, Angelaki 18:3 (2013), 155–67. I thank Guy Halsall for drawing this point to my attention. 61 See ‘gratia’ in DMLBS. 62 See ‘grace1’, in AND2, Online edn, available at http://www.anglo-norman.net/D/grace[1], Accessed 28 August 2019. 63 For the tendency of noble letter-writers to seek favour from officials rather than the king, see Brodie, ‘Communication’, p. 22. The same is true of administrators themselves; see, for example, Huscroft, ‘Correspondence’, pp. 31–2.

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chief administrators, John de Kirkby, Edward’s effective vice-chancellor, and later treasurer.64 The letter laid out clearly how d’Accorso was bound to offer support to his cousin ‘when he should need to ask’, and that if Kirkby would provide aid and counsel to him now, ‘for love of [d’Accorso]’, then he would ‘be bound to return thanks (tenear regraciari) to you especially for that in [his] turn’.65 This letter, while conventional in its sentiments, was unusually clear about the interconnected nature of the obligation to intercede, the relationship on which the request to act was built, and the consequent reaffirmation of the bond between the asker and giver that would proceed from action. When it offered ‘thanks’, it was clearly offering to be similarly bound in future to act in favour of John ‘when he should need to ask’. The ambiguity of ‘thanks’ was particularly useful for a king whose resources for granting patronage were constrained.66 By not binding the king to a specific action or grant in return, it gave him leeway to delay, avoid or refuse to do reciprocal acts that were impolitic or inconsistent with royal dignity or law. Occasionally his letters made this clear by inviting his correspondent to command him in anything that he could ‘do well’, or what was ‘in our power’.67 This left him scope to argue – as he did on several occasions – that practicalities or priorities meant he had to refuse a specific request, while still leaving open the possibility of future return. For example, Edward cited the situation in Wales as an urgent priority when he excused himself from providing a subsidy to his aunt, Marguerite of Provence, for her war in Provence.68 Similarly, Edward explained that he was not yet able to give Pope Gregory X an answer on the matter of a papal tribute to be paid, since he had not been able to take counsel with his magnates, whose advice he was obliged by his coronation oath to seek.69 Nevertheless, refusing or delaying a response to intercession or direct requests for patronage needed careful justification. To do otherwise risked breaches of the real and epistolary relationships so carefully tended, and put one’s diplomatic and socio-political capital at risk. For example, when Guy of Dampierre requested him to take action to secure a debt owed to him by some English 64

M. Prestwich, ‘Kirkby, John (d. 1290)’, ODNB. SC 1/9/1, printed in G. L. Haskins, ‘Three Documents’, pp. 92–3. ‘Cum Chinum de Burgo latorem presentium meum consanguineum dilectum in sua iustitia tenear iuuare … cum fuerit neccesse requirere, placeat vobis amore mei suam petitionem exaudire, et in suis agendis consilium et auxilium sibi prebere fauorabile, scientes pro certo quod ille Spinellus de quo vobis dicet fraudulenter et maliciose a societate sua recessit unde cum dictus Chinus nichil aliud petat nisi iustum et honestum sibi si placet succurre velitis, ita quod preces meas sibi sentiat valituras, et quod vobis in meo reditu specialiter pro eodem tenear regraciari.’ 66 Spencer, ‘Royal Patronage’, p. 31. 67 For example, SC 1/12/115, to his mother-in-law, Jeanne of Dammartin, dowager queen of Castile and countess of Ponthieu (26 June 1278), printed in Fœdera, I.ii, p. 559. 68 SC 1/13/27, calendared in CACW, p. 56. 69 SC 1/13/191, translated in Sayles, Functions, p. 141; see also PW, 1, pp. 381–2. 65

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merchants, Edward wrote that he could not act without further particulars. However, he continued, if the count would send representatives to the next parliament and any of the other parties happened to be present, he would intercede so that the count’s affairs would be the better expedited.70 Refusal of patronage required careful management to avoid depleting political capital. Although the possibility of refusal or incapacity to respond in a specific way was inherent in the undefined nature of ‘thanks’, the act itself needed careful justification if it were to be accomplished without giving offence. For this reason, letters in which the king deferred or refused to undertake a specific request were frequently lengthy and replete with moral, political and occasionally legal reasoning. Very often, they also made other grants, and included patronage language of their own, as a means of reinforcing a relationship that might otherwise find itself damaged. For example, Charles of Salerno had been a friend and intercessor on behalf of Edward’s cousin Guy de Montfort, who was in exile on the continent having been involved in the murder of his and Edward’s cousin Henry of Almain in the wake of the baronial rebellion.71 He appears to have taken the opportunity of the Anglo-French negotiations in early 1279 as an opportunity to refresh his appeals. Although Edward’s relationship with Charles was good,72 he found he could not grant this request without insult to God, his royal dignity and the parliamentary community. His letter of 11 April 1279 was long, detailed and rich with affective description.73 He noted how Guy with his brothers and accomplices ‘thirsting for our blood, prepared mortal treacheries against the king, lord H[enry] our father, and us, and made war, whence there sprung disagreements of peoples and massacres of no small number of the populace’. His crimes included labouring ‘for the ruin of all our people and the subversion of the English realm’ as well as the murder of Henry of Almain, which Edward’s letter was careful to represent as the last and least in a list of more public crimes. His anger, in other words, was not personal, but political and just. Finally, he explained, he was unable to agree since Charles had made no proposal as to the means by which such reconciliation might take place, and Edward could certainly not attempt it without the counsel of his great men, who were also the victims of Guy’s offences. He offered only that, if Charles could offer a process that would satisfy God, the church and the magnates of his council, Edward would consider it. 70

SC 1/12/194, see Appendix, no. 3. Edward I, pp. 105–7; Prestwich, Edward I, p. 74. This act became notorious, earning Guy de Montfort a place in Dante’s vision of Hell, and mentions in many late medieval and Renaissance chronicles across Europe; see T. Dean, ‘Marriage and Mutilation: Vendetta in Late Medieval Italy’, Past and Present 157 (1997), 3–36 (pp. 27–8). 72 For their shared interest in tournaments, see D. Crouch, Tournament (London, 2005), pp. 37, 45, 77. For Edward’s subsequent advocacy for Charles during his captivity in Aragon, see Morris, Edward I, pp. 210–11, 216–17; Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 318–20. 73 SC 1/14/26, printed in Fœdera, I.ii, p. 568. 71 Morris,

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This refusal was not the end of the letter, however. The king’s ‘no’ was softened, deliberately, by making Charles a grant of free warren that he had apparently requested. Finally, the king shifted into the gracious register of patronage, to renew his relationship to Charles with requests for news and fresh offers for the future: Because the prosperity of your state greatly delights us, we ask Your Belovedness feelingly that you should care to send to us your state, which may God cause always to be prosperous, with frequent insinuations for our solace, whenever it should please your goodwill; indeed we wish always to be ready to do those things which we know to be appropriate to your honour.74

By this he signified that although this request had been refused, he hoped to maintain their friendly relationship, while subtly hinting that he was a better judge of the honourable course of action than his cousin.75 The best rhetoric was not always enough to preserve relationships when promises of thanks were not delivered. Indeed, we can suspect Edward of double dealing in some cases. His pard-like qualities came into play, for example, in the case of the king of Norway’s rights in Scotland.76 For several years, Edward made promises of friendship and support to Eirik IV, widower of his niece, Margaret of Scotland, and one-time competitor for the Scottish throne. In particular, in the course of the proceedings in the Great Cause, the competition for the throne of Scotland over which Edward exercised arbitration, he awarded to Eirik for his lifetime the rents from lands that would have been due to his late wife, and the arrears from these payments for the last three years. Despite many writs issued to this effect, securing these monies proved difficult. As these difficulties became evident, Eirik transferred the rights to some of the revenues payable in Scotland to Mr Peter Algotsson, his attorney, as repayment of various loans. Eirik and Algotsson both treated the fulfilment of this deal as a question of patronage, plying Edward with promises and fine gifts and encouraging him to secure it. Perhaps the arrival of a pair of fine gyrfalcons and a pair of goshawks from Algotsson caused Edward to feel obliged to act.77 But his difficulty was that Scotland was a separate territory, even if it

74

Ibid., ‘Ad haec, quia prosperitas status vestri plurimum nos delectat, dilectionem vestram rogamus attente, quatinus statum vestrum, quem Dominus prosperari faciat, crebris insinuationibus nobis ad nostri solacium, curetis demandare, cum vestrae beneplacito voluntatis; parati siquidem semper esse volumus ea facere, quae vestris honoribus noverimus convenire.’ 75 Charles of Salerno was the son of Charles of Anjou (brother of Louis IX of France) and Beatrice of Provence (sister of Edward’s mother, Eleanor of Provence and Marguerite of Provence, the dowager queen of France). 76 For what follows, see R. Nicholson, ‘The Franco-Scottish and Franco-Norwegian Treaties of 1295’, SHR 38:126 (1959), 114–32; K. Helle, ‘Norwegian Foreign Policy and the Maid of Norway’, SHR 69:188 (1990), 142–56. 77 Nicholson, ‘Franco-Scottish and Franco-Norwegian Treaties’, p. 126.

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were one over which he claimed superiority. He could not honourably be seen to command King John to act.78 Edward attempted to bluff his way out of this difficulty. In February of 1293, a set of letters were drafted in his name: first to King Eirik, second to John I of Scotland, and finally to Algotsson.79 In the letters to the Norwegians he adopted a high register, in which he gave the impression of having commanded the Scottish king to act, and offering – in default of Scottish justice – to take the matter into his own parliament, where the Scottish king was also summoned to appear, and there to ‘cause remedy to be made as much as we can by reason; for in these as in all things touching you, we will do freely what we can do for you in a good way, as our dear friend’.80 His letter carefully skirted the fact that King John had been summoned on other charges, not to answer the Norwegians. Consequently, Edward could not promise more than mediation at this time, yet the letter’s ambiguity allowed a promise of judgement to be assumed. He also adopted a carefully modulated exemption clause in his offer to do ‘as much as we can by reason … do for you in a good way’. These words – repeated in his letter to Algotsson – were usefully ambiguous as to whether the good in question was to be the beneficiary’s, or the king’s. They also hedged the king’s promises about with provisos and qualifications. Ranald Nicholson has observed that, despite the carefully constructed impression of acting vigorously upon his friends’ requests, Edward’s letter to King John ‘was politely, and by no means forcefully, expressed’.81 The Scottish king was asked (rogamus) ‘in a friendly way’ (amicabiliter) to arrange matters so that Algotsson might ‘be able in some way to approach his due, notwithstanding the suggestion of any others about the fact, if what he demands seems reasonable to you, and provided he is his true attorney’.82 There was a more commanding tone in this discourse than Nicholson recognized, but it was certainly not a forceful instruction, nor could it have been. In fact, Edward was bluffing both sides. He had no choice but to ask (rogamus) another king to act in his own realm if he were to maintain the image of Scottish sovereignty that in effect underpinned the prosecution of his own claims to overlordship at this time; but by the same token, he attempted to force the issue in Scotland by the pointed inclusion in the salutatio of his claim to be the ‘superior lord of the realm of Scotland’. Furthermore, as he had tended to 78

For the fraught rhetoric of command and request in Scotland after 1291, see chapter 6. SC 1/13/161 i–iii. All three letters, drafted on the same sheet, are printed in Dipl. Norv., 19, pp. 421–2. 80 ‘in quo tale remedium fieri faciemus, quale poterimus previa ratione. Nam in hiis et in aliis, vos tangentibus, faciemus libenter quod pro vobis, utpote pro caro amico nostro, facere poterimus bono modo’. 81 Nicholson, ‘Franco-Scottish and Franco-Norwegian Treaties’, p. 126. 82 ‘Vos amicabiliter rogamus, quatinus de negocio illo velitis taliter ordinare, quod prefatus Petrus modo debito sue approximare valeat racioni (non obstante suggestione ab aliis inde facta) si demanda sua vobis racionabilis videatur, et suus certus fuerit attornatus.’ 79

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do in his correspondence with the prince of Wales, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, he used words to imply that the Scottish king was really a functionary acting out the reasonable legal jurisdiction of the English king. The exhortation to act in a certain way provided that given criteria were met – that it seemed reasonable and met legal requirements for the appointment of attorneys – was no different in form from the instructions that Edward gave his regent, Edmund of Cornwall, or the lordly way in which he commanded Llywelyn to do justice in Wales or have his pleas brought into the English parliament on default.83 His letter to Scotland walked a fine rhetorical line between performing a right to command and maintaining a polite fantasy of Scottish regal independence. Ultimately, irrespective of the king’s clever wordplay, the Scots did not have the financial resources to meet Eirik’s dues and Edward’s parliament proved toothless in attempting to enforce his judgement. It merely confirmed the 1292 award, but made no new provision to meet Eirik’s (and therefore Algotsson’s) payments. When the emptiness of his promises became obvious to the Norwegians, they looked elsewhere for their alliances, entering anti-English treaties with both Scotland and France in 1295.84 As the dictatores had always known, fine words had to be supported by real ‘virtue’ – in other words, born out by deeds – if they were to be believed.85 The legalistic exemptions inherent in open promises of ‘thanks’ went only so far in protecting letter-writers from accusations of bad faith, especially when no alternate avenues of desirable favour presented themselves. Negotiating at the borders

Rhetorical elements characteristic of informal diplomatic correspondence were also important in navigating the relationship between royal powers within Britain. Prior to the death of the young Maid of Norway, heiress of Alexander III, in 1290, the aristocracies of England and Scotland were closely connected: many held lands on both sides of the border; connections that were often reinforced by marriage. Alexander himself was married to Edward’s sister, Margaret,86 and as a descendant of the earls of Huntingdon held substantial lands in England for which he owed service.87 Such aristocratic entanglement offered challenges for crafting a rhetoric that could distinguish service and sovereignty. Whereas diplomatic rhetoric of the kind discussed above often worked to elide boundaries and present friendship and kinship as untethered and 83

Neal, ‘Weapons’, pp. 65–6; Neal, ‘Discourse’, pp. 148–52. See also chapter 2. For illustrative documents, see Appendix, nos 7–9. 84 Nicholson, ‘Franco-Scottish and Franco-Norwegian Treaties’, pp. 129–30. 85 On the problem of hypocrisy in dictamen, see Geoffrey of Vinsauf, ‘Poetria Nova’, Grammar and Rhetoric, pp. 594–606; see also chapter 6. 86 N. H. Reid, ‘Alexander III (1241–1286), King of Scots’, ODNB. 87 His homage to Henry III and, later, Edward I explicitly excluded the Kingdom of Scotland; see Duncan, Kingship, pp. 154–64.

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unchanging states, Edward’s royal rhetoric in Scottish correspondence was forced to negotiate borders and articulate boundaries. Yet it was necessarily distinct from the discourse of his Welsh correspondence, in which the jurisdiction of Wales was subordinated to his own. A fusion of diplomatic and domestic forms served to navigate the delicate balance between friendship, kinship and kingship. Much as we have seen in the case of Anglo-French relations, Edward and Alexander proclaimed and acknowledged each other’s royal dignity and their mutual kinship by exchanging letters of intercession and enquiries concerning each other’s state. Their correspondence was a measure of the health of their diplomatic relationship. It showed their mutual willingness to engage in friendly intercourse and to promote constructive exchange. In 1275, when Alexander was only lately returned to Scotland from attending Edward’s coronation, and recently widowed, the Scottish king capitalized on his brother-in-law’s goodwill by writing to Edward to renew a request in favour of the seneschal of Scotland.88 With an impeccable command of the rhetoric of honourable intercession, Alexander’s letter appealed to kinship and affection, deployed flattery, and promised an emotional and instrumental return. It called Edward ‘our most beloved brother’, and sent ‘greetings and always an increase of sincere love’, ‘asking with more attentive affection’ that he would ‘deign to show favour and benignity for love of us’, and hoping to ‘be bound to give [him] fruitful thanks’ for his intervention. Alexander’s correspondence often appealed to the long and unwavering affection between the royal families, attempting to ensure the truth of this representation. The heart-rending language of the letter in which he informed Edward of the death of his son and asked for his support for Alexander’s daughter, Margaret, now his heir, also represented their bond of kinship as a warm and unbreakable one.89 The danger in which the Scottish royal family found itself demanded the most strenuous rhetorical as well as political efforts. Edward, too, used the register of aristocratic fraternity to correspond with the Scottish king, especially in smoothing over tensions such as those generated by the requirement for Alexander to do homage to him. In a letter of 5 June 1278, he thanked his brother-in-law for enquiring after his state, and sent word that ‘we, our queen, and our children, are currently enjoying full bodily health, with the blessing of the Almighty, which we have for a long time greatly hoped to [see] written, or better, heard, of you’.90 Such enquiries evoked their mutual membership in a network of privileged sociability.91 88

SC 1/20/145, printed in RRS, 4, no. 95. SC 1/20/162, printed in RRS, 4, no. 146. 90 SC 1/14/39, noted in CDS, 2, no. 121, ‘ut autem de statu nostro ut petistis, effici valeatis certiores, dilectioni vestre notum fiat, quod nos et regina nostra ac liberi nostri, benedictus altissimus, plena valeamus hiis diebus, corporis sospitate, quod de vobis longe magis scire quam audire puris … peroptamus’. 91 As, for example, in the letters addressed to Edward by his contacts in the French court; 89

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This polite clause de statu was inserted as a sanctio at the end of a long and detailed rehearsal of the exchange of messages and messengers between the two kings concerning Alexander’s journey south to do homage to Edward for his English lands. The question of homage was such a sensitive one that it was never mentioned explicitly in this letter, or indeed, several other extant letters concerning the advance mission of Alexander’s nuncios, or the king’s own journey. In fact, extensive negotiations had been required to determine not only where homage would be performed, but the nature of the homage to be given.92 Henry III had demanded homage from the young Alexander for the kingdom of Scotland when he came to Westminster as a boy in 1251, on the occasion of his marriage. He had refused then, and it was imperative for his royal dignity that no such homage should be extracted from him now. His nuncios, the bishop of St Andrew’s and William de Soulis, a knight and kinsman of the Scottish king, had been active since February of 1278, going between the parties to negotiate terms. At the time of the letter quoted above, they had been busy for four months, and it would be another four months until the kings met in person for the performance of the homage. Although relations were ostensibly cordial, they were also subject to heightened tension. The use of this kind of familiar rhetoric in such a context was undoubtedly intended to reassure the Scottish king, and to do him honour in order to promote goodwill. Narratives of Anglo-Scottish relations before 1286 often emphasize the degree of accord between the royal brothers-in-law, the better to highlight the rupture of due process and political principle constituted by Edward’s claim to overlordship in 1290.93 It is true that the relationship between Edward and Alexander was mainly cordial, and that the Scottish king enjoyed considerable favour at the English court after his willingness to support the royal cause at Evesham in 1265,94 and was an honoured guest at Edward’s coronation.95 The apparent friendliness of relations, however, was only one aspect of AngloScottish epistolarity to 1286. A close analysis shows that this discourse had long been marked by an intense attention to the borders between the diplomatic and domestic. Rhetoric was one of the tools that both sides used, skilfully, to defend and lay claim to their respective jurisdictions, and consequently, their distinct political identities, while moderating the potentially aggressive tone of these assertions by appeals to kinship and friendship. see Hélary, ‘Les liens’, p. 86. 92 The Scottish king’s nuncios, William Fraser, bishop of St Andrew’s, and Sir William de Soulis, went several times between them carrying letters and verbal messenges; see CDS, 2. The bishop also corresponded with Edward’s chancellor in pursuit of his mission; SC 1/23/81 (unpublished). 93 For narrative accounts of this period, see Morris, Edward I, pp. 231–3; Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 356–9. 94 Duncan, Kingship, p. 158. 95 Morris, Edward I, p. 129.

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Alexander’s English holdings imbricated him in the English epistolary world. A substantial portion of his surviving correspondence to Edward concerns his affairs as lord of Huntingdon, Tindale and Penrith.96 He wrote to request an exemption from the fifteenth being levied on his Cumberland manors;97 and, on another occasion, to announce his initiation of complaints against the sheriffs of Cumberland, Westmoreland and Yorkshire, where the bulk of his English lands lay.98 In this correspondence, his epistolary persona was never merely that of an English magnate. Both parties used letters carefully to negotiate the tensions inherent in their relationship, to defend the limits of their regality and to advance their claims in contested matters. In a letter of 29 December 1275, Alexander acknowledged Edward’s letters concerning an aid to be collected within his liberty of Tindale. Without directly refusing his lord’s instructions, however, he prevaricated, adopting a particularly royal posture to excuse himself. Echoing Edward’s own excuses to the pope only a few months earlier,99 he explained that ‘We are not able to respond clearly to Your Serenity, before we hold discussions with the magnates of our kingdom.’ He promised, however, that ‘when we have gathered and consulted our said magnates … we will arrange to respond clearly to your mandate as soon as we conveniently can’.100 By asserting the prerogative of counsel in this way, Alexander’s letter reiterated his royal status and attempted to move matters concerning his English lands into the realm of Scottish royal jurisdiction. Edward would have recognized this tactic, for it was one he employed himself on many an occasion. It was a rhetoric designed for articulating the fine line between one’s obligations born of structural relationships and the dignity of agency deriving from one’s office. Although it was a rhetorical means of attempting to extend that dignity and agency, it was one that signalled the intention to pursue negotiations in good faith.101 The appeal to counsel was ingenious, since it was not one that a reasonable lord in later medieval Europe could reasonably or honourably deny. The appeal to counsel confirms not only that there was substantial coherence in the political culture of the two kingdoms,102 but also that Scots with exposure 96

For Alexander’s lands in England, see M. F. Moore, The Lands of the Scottish Kings in England (London, 1973). For his correspondence, see RRS, 4. I thank Cynthia Neville for sharing the manuscript of this edition with me in advance of print. 97 SC 1/20/168 [c. 3 May 1275–c. 19 Mar 1286]. See RRS, 4, no. 170. 98 SC 1/20/157 [28 July 1279]. See RRS, 4, no. 123. 99 SC 1/13/191 [19 June 1275], translated in Sayles, Functions, p. 141. 100 SC 1/20/146, printed in RRS, 4, no. 96. 101 On the mutual investment in policing the borders, see C. Neville, ‘Anglo-Scottish Border Law and Practice’, North-East England in the Later Middle Ages, ed. C. D. Liddy and R. Britnell (Woodbridge, 2005), 43–56 (p. 47); C. J. Neville, ‘Keeping the Peace on the Northern Marches in the Later Middle Ages’, EHR 109:430 (1994), 1–25. 102 While the ‘Anglicization’ of the Scottish political elite has probably been overstated in the past, there were many assumptions in common. On the influence of English political culture on Scotland, see R. R. Davies, The First English Empire: Power and Identity in the

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to English epistolary norms were adept at employing them. This is seen in a letter of 20 April 1277, in which Alexander replied to a letter from Edward concerning a dispute between the English and Anglo-Scottish heirs of the late earl of Winchester.103 In this letter, Alexander expressed solidarity with his brother-in-law in disciplining infringements of royal dignity. The narratio of Alexander’s letter repeated the terms in which Edward’s letter had expressed the allegation that the actions of the Anglo-Scottish heirs had been ‘to the noticeable harm of [Edward’s] royal dignity and crown’. Alexander’s letter went on to adapt this rhetoric skilfully for its own ends, using the potential injury to the dignity of the English crown as an opportunity to assert the parallel dignity of the crown of Scotland. The petitio of Alexander’s letter framed his willingness to act in terms borrowed directly from Edward’s own. Mirroring the English complaint, Alexander promised to inquire into the matter, ‘desiring to preserve unharmed our royal dignity and your rights as our own in all things’ (my emphasis). Should he find that any people of his kingdom had acted in opposition ‘to your crown and dignity’, he would ‘restrain them … according to the laws and customs of our kingdom’. The slippage here between English royal dignity and Scottish law and customs was part of a rhetoric for guarding the boundary between them, even while paying due service to the requirements of friendly diplomacy. The combination of friendly and forceful rhetoric for articulating complaint was acutely evident in Alexander’s letter of 26 March 1279. The first two-thirds of the text comprised a highly elaborated letter de statu asking for news of Edward, his wife and their children, and offering news of the Scottish royal family in return. This emphatic opening served to couch in a softer light the central, critical issue of offences committed in the borders by Edward’s officials: And we propose, as soon as we conveniently can, after the feast of Easter next to come, to send our solemn nuncios into the presence of Your Serenity, so that they may explain more fully by word of mouth those things which by your bailiffs were recently done in our March, by which we feel ourselves unduly injured, which we do not believe the benevolence of Your Fraternity wishes us …; and from you obtain remedy on those things.104

British Isles, 1093–1343 (Oxford, 2000), p. 170. For more recent nuances on this view, see M. Hammond, ‘Introduction: The Paradox of Medieval Scotland, 1093–1286’, New Perspectives on Medieval Scotland, 1093–1286, ed. M. Hammond (Woodbridge, 2013), 1–52; M. Hammond, ‘Domination and Conquest? The Scottish Experience, 1100–1286’, The English Isles: Cultural Transmission and Political Conflict in Britain and Ireland, 1100–1500, ed. S. Duffy and S. Foran (Dublin, 2013), 68–83; A. Taylor, The Shape of the State in Medieval Scotland: 1124–1290 (Oxford, 2016), pp. 19, 446–9. 103 SC 1/20/149, printed in RRS, 4, no. 107. 104 SC 1/20/154, printed in Fœdera, I.ii, p. 531. ‘Proponimus etiam, quamcitus poterimus commode, post instans festum Pasche proximo venturum, nuncios nostros sollempnes ad praesentiam serenitatais vestrae destinare, ut ea, quae per ballivos vestros nuper acta fuerunt in marchia nostra, per quae sentimus nos indebite gravari, quod non credimus vestrae

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As in the case of Anglo-French relations, the settlement of Alexander’s homage had opened up a window of opportunity for friendly diplomatic discourse, which this letter keenly seized. Cross-border complaints were always treated seriously because they both threatened, and offered opportunities to reassert, the boundaries of one’s authority. Edward’s letters to his own northern officials as much as to Alexander III himself attended closely to the preservation of his rights, pushing them to their maximum extent while demonstrating appropriate respect to the Scottish side. We can see this in a letter sent to the bishop of Durham, in January 1279, in which Edward responded to a complaint from Alexander that a man of his retinue had been insulted, injured and robbed while passing through the county.105 The narratio of the English king’s command recapitulated the Scottish king’s complaint, but summarized the offence in such a way that it was removed, by stages, from an injury against a particular Scot to one against the king of Scotland, and thence to an injury against the English king. The ‘maltreatment’ and loss suffered by the man was said to be ‘to the anger of the aforesaid king, and the manifest mockery of our safe conduct’. The narratio thus cast the injury to Edward’s honour and offence against his written word as the principle concerns, silently passing over the Scotsman’s own injuries. Although the good relationship between the kings and the robust sovereignty of the Canmore dynasty made the context of this letter considerably more benign than Edward’s correspondence with the prince of Wales at this time,106 a similar strategy of selectively silencing certain complaints in order to seize the epistolary initiative can be detected here. The letter continued, ‘we do not wish to maintain the aforesaid transgression committed against our person to remain unpunished’ (my emphasis). Therefore, Edward told the bishop, we command you to cause the aforesaid transgression quickly and completely to be emended for the aforesaid king and his man, so that [your men] may fear to harm others in similar cases, and so that the aforesaid king might not have reason to complain on account of your default in this matter.

It closed with a sanctio threatening the bishop with distraint should he be negligent by forfeiture or remiss in his execution of the order. Much as in his brother-in-law’s correspondence, discussed above, the English king’s rhetorical manoeuvres in his letters claimed ownership of the offence and therefore the remedy. This was a bastion against the potentially dangerous implication that his judicial or political actions in the north were made under Scottish direction. Scottish magnates with lands in both kingdoms were fluent in the rhetoric of careful distinction between obligations. A surviving letter to Edward in fraternitatis benivolentiam nobis velle … viva voce plenius exponat, et a vobis remedium optineant super eisdem.’ 105 SC 1/13/87 i, printed in Fœdera, I.ii, p. 565. 106 See chapter 2.

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1282 from Alexander Comyn, earl of Buchan, concerning the second Welsh campaign, shows how fluent Scottish magnates were in the official language of English kingship.107 The king’s latest military summons had reached the earl after he had already accepted a commission from Alexander III on royal business in the northern Isles. He wrote to excuse himself from service in Wales, and promise to send his son in his stead. The letter expressed Comyn’s understanding of the importance of loyalty and the honour of all involved, and sought to construct the occasion as one in which all persons’ honour would be preserved: To the most high prince and his dearest lord, lord Edward by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland and duke of Aquitaine, his own, if it please him, in all things, Alexander Comyn, earl of Buchan and constable of Scotland, [sends] as much as he can of loyal service, reverence and honour. Your Highest Lordship should know that, before your letters came to us, by which you wished to command us that we should come to your aid against the Welsh, by the commandment of our lord of Scotland we had already taken the road to the northern Isles for some important business that touches him and his realm, which pains us much since we cannot desert that road, for our honour, to accomplish your commandment, for the honour of your lordship, the which may God keep and multiply in goodness. And, because we cannot come at your desire and your commandment, we pray that you should wish to receive Roger, our son, in our place, whom we send to you with our service in which we are bound to you for our lands in England, so that your pleasure and commandments may be done to all their power, and by us and all of ours, once we have attended to the aforesaid business. May you wish to command to us your pleasure in all things at any time, as though to your own liege and loyal man, as long as we endure. Farewell.108

The rhetoric of loyalty and honour deployed in this letter articulated a delicate line between the earl’s political identities as an English vassal and a Scottish magnate. It acknowledged the claims that both kings could make upon the earl, 107 SC

1/16/93, printed in Fœdera, I.ii, p. 611. ‘Au treshaut prince, & sun seigneur trescher, sire Edward, par la grace Deu, rey de Engleterre, seigneur de Irelaunde, & duc de Acquitaigne, le sen si lui plest, en tutes choses Alisaundre Cumyn, counte de Buchan, & conestable de Escoce, taunt cum il peut, de loal service, reverence & honurs. Sache vostre treshaut seignurie que, avant que vos lettres nus vindrent, par queles vus nus voliez commaunder qe nus venissums ove vus en vostre eyd encountre le Waleys, au commaundment de nostre seigneur de Escoce aviums enpris le chemyn envers les Illes loingteynes ver le Norz, pur grant busoingnes que tucherent lui & son reowme; dount mult nus peiss, que nus ne pussums destertre ceol chimyn, a nostre honus, pur vestre comaundement acomplir, al honur de vestre seignurie, que Deu gard & multeplie en biens. E, pur ceo que nus ne pouns venir a nostre desir & a vostre ccomaundment, vus priuns que vus volez receivre Roger nostre fiuz en nostre leu, le quel nus vus enviuns ove nostre service, que nus vus sumes tenuz pur noz terres de Engleterre, que vos plesirs & comaundemens ferra a tun sun poer, ensemblement od nus & tus les nos, quant nus i purruns entendre pur la busoingne avandite; vostre volente en tutes choses nus veiolez comaunder tutes hures, cum a vostre lige & leaus taunt cum nus duruns. Saluz.’

108 Ibid.

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and that both his and their honour was implicated in his response. Here, the choice was made to rest on the chronology of requests, neatly avoiding making any statements as to the relative superiority of either king’s jurisdiction, or implying a hierarchy of loyalties. In such ways, Scots who were also nobles of England used epistolary rhetoric to negotiate the degree of their incorporation in, and independence from, the English political community.109 While tension was not absent from Anglo-Scottish correspondence, the above examples show that both Edward and Alexander adopted a diplomatic rhetoric to cast disputes in a positive light and to represent them as capable of resolution among well-disposed kin, even while they each remained attentive to the need to assert their authority. This epistolary discourse was of a particular flavour, born of the fact that the two kings were brothers-in-law, but the careful recognition of boundaries and the attention to upholding the honour of all parties extended to the epistolary efforts of lesser lords as well. As Keith Stringer observed, the conflict that came to characterize the Anglo-Scots relationship in the fourteenth century was not the inevitable result of deep-seated incompatibilities, but the product of a rapid and profound deterioration in relations shaped by the particular conjuncture of the extinction of the ancient Scottish royal line and Edward I’s determined assault on Scottish liberties as he chose to disregard the established conventions of Anglo-Scottish diplomacy.110

It is true, as we shall see, that the discourse of English royal letters to Scots and Scotland after the death of the Maid was of a different order. Conclusion

The relational nature of all epistolarity made letters ideal vehicles for negotiating relationships outside a ruler’s jurisdiction using the rhetorical tools of kinship, affect, favour and gratitude. Where kings could not command, they must persuade, and the form of letters provided useful templates for undertaking this diplomatic endeavour. Certain kinds of informal diplomatic epistolarity wore their familial disguise so well that they have sometimes been mistaken for simple exchanges of family news, but their purpose was serious and substantive. They voiced, and thereby attempted to reinforce, the amicable foundations on which all diplomatic action relied. The production and reception of such letters in public contexts amplified their diplomatic effect. Letters of patronage and intercession served an important role in this discourse. Offers of assistance, whether represented as spontaneous or in 109 Alexander

III wrote at the same time to ask Edward to excuse the earl for his failure to serve in Wales. See SC 1/20/158, printed in Fœdera, I.ii, p. 610. 110 K. J. Stringer, ‘Scottish Foundations: Thirteenth-Century Perspectives’, Uniting the Kingdoms? The Making of British History, ed. A. Grant and K. J. Stringer (London, 1995), 85–108 (p. 85).

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response to intercessory requests, performed the sender’s willingness to remain on good terms and keep lines of communication open. Seeking and granting favour beyond one’s borders and without incurring the implication of subordination, however, required skilful manipulation of the language of patronage and grace. Edward showed himself to be adept at this, although even he failed to satisfy all parties when competing promises clashed. While the circulation of this correspondence does appear to have been restricted within networks of sociability, and perhaps even of experienced affection, it remained strategic. Where diplomatic friendship and kinship intersected with the bonds of fealty, the stakes of this harmonizing were even higher. The attentive friendliness with which Edward I and Alexander III addressed each other reflected the tensions inherent in negotiating their relationship as much as it did their personal connection. The language of informal diplomatic correspondence was as much a ‘harmonizing’ strategy as any other epistolary approach.

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5 Keeping Friends Close: Strategies of Epistolary Alignment Within the boundaries of royal authority, the king’s letters did not need to rely on the kind of friendly framing that characterized diplomatic epistolarity. As Susan Reynolds observed, obedience to royal government was founded on habit: having been accepted as ruler, a king did not have to enforce every instruction directly or violently.1 Being king weighted every interaction in his favour. It normally required considerable, prolonged provocation to bring about the kind of challenges to royal government that had occurred in the reigns of John and Henry III. Nevertheless, it was important to keep friends close, especially in the aftermath of open rebellion. A wise king cultivated the habit of obedience by regular reiteration of both his own legitimacy and the inextricable connection between his interests and those who upheld his rule.2 Such messages were vital to the commitment of administrators, the solidarity of the magnates and even the king’s own sense of his kingship.3 In the first two decades of Edward’s reign, his administration demonstrated a canny grasp of these imperatives, and was careful to manage and be seen to respond to the expectations of the magnates as a group and as representatives of the community of the realm. It was not accidental that the work of political alignment took place in letters. The norms of epistolary structure and expression were designed to identify and exploit shared values. As the dictatores taught, the efficacy of letters rested on a credible and worthy representation of sender and recipient respectively, and of their mutual aims.4 All of the structural and expressive advice of the ars dictaminis was geared toward this end. The perfect royal letter was a mirror in which both king and polity could recognize and take pride in themselves, their relationship and their joint labour. When this was achieved, letters were powerful political tools. By articulating a worthy kingship working in harmony 1 Reynolds, ‘Secular Power’, p. 11; see also Weber, Economy and Society, 1, pp. 54–5, where the sufficiency of the threat of violence, and of ‘psychic’ (psychological) forms of coercion for the maintenance of both political and hierocratic authority is discussed. 2 I am not concerned here with ‘popular’ opinion, which deserves its own discussion. 3 Barker, Identities, especially chapter 3. 4 See chapter 1.

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with a loyal aristocracy, letters could reinforce, if not generate, a commonality of purpose at the top of political society. Magnates did not constitute a large proportion of recipients of royal letters, the majority of which dealt with administrative questions. The archive of the king’s letters is dominated by his sheriffs, justices, escheators, clerks, envoys, treasurers, chancellors, seneschals and lieutenants. These recipients constituted a governing ‘elite’ even if they were not men of the highest status. The barons were typically addressed in royal letters only in the context of some particular role in warfare, or the administration of the realm or royal household.5 However, letters addressing them or their concerns were of considerable political significance. Writing the king’s ideology and policies required careful craftsmanship when communicating with this group of considerable individual and collective power. As Latini, after Cicero, noted, the epistolary situation lacked opportunities for the parties to adjust their positions and respond to questions or counter-arguments.6 The letter-writer needed to give careful consideration to the expectations and desires of the recipient to produce a persuasive text. For letters to foster political unity of purpose or support for the king’s policies, it was necessary for them to express a credible alignment between the king’s persona, royal intentions and recipients’ interests. The discourse of royal letters directed to different constituent polities within Edward’s domains could be adapted to local expectations and assumptions to this end. As Andrea Ruddick has demonstrated, the English crown sometimes chose strategically to emphasise the unity of its domains, but in fact the administrations of England (and Wales), Ireland, Gascony and, later, Scotland were distinct.7 This was reflected in administrative and legal organisation, as well as rhetorical norms.8 The ideological and rhetorical distinction between English and Gascon letters is particularly evident, reflecting the very different relationships Edward enjoyed with those polities. In England, Edward and his administration committed themselves to the effort of rhetorical alignment in the first two decades of his reign. Before the age of ‘crisis’, royal letters affirmed the king’s commitment to magnate participation in decision-making and demonstrated his commitment to due process. In Gascony, the discourse of the king’s correspondence centred on loyalty and protection of custom; a language that continued even after the annexation of the duchy by the king of France. The attention to moral and rational persuasion evidenced here gives the lie to the notion, much popularized by the legacy of K. B. McFarlane, that Edward always ‘preferred masterfulness

5 For their part, earls and barons did not write to the king except in some official capacity; see Brodie, ‘Communication’, p. 22. 6 Latini, Rettorica, p. 777. 7 This is neatly summarized in Ruddick, ‘Limits’, pp. 72–3. 8 Ruddick, ‘Limits’, pp. 71–2; Ruddick, ‘Ethnic Identity’, pp. 17–21; Ruddick, English Identity, chapter 4.

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to the arts of political management’.9 Epistolary rhetoric was among the tools by which he exercised political management, albeit unevenly in time and space. Epistolarity for the English polity

When Edward departed for crusade in 1270, planning had already taken place concerning the steps to be taken for securing his government in the event of Henry III’s death.10 This planning evidently included a language for proclaiming Edward’s peace and announcing the ethos of his government. When Henry died, in November 1272, Edward’s lieutenants were ready. The earliest announcements of his rule dispatched to the polities of England and Ireland in 1272–3 bound him to be ‘the debtor in justice to all’ in his realm, both high and low.11 At his coronation, on 19 August 1274, Edward famously promised to restore the rights of the crown, but he also restated his promise to be the ‘debtor in justice to all’, and further undertook not to ‘do anything that touches the crown of [our] realm without the counsel of the prelates and magnates’.12 The language of justice, duty and partnership became a recurring feature of correspondence on magnate concerns. These words and deeds presented a coherent and consistent political persona that appropriated the political demands articulated by the magnates in the period of reform and rebellion, representing them as royal initiatives.13 Among the earliest extant correspondence directly addressing magnates and their relationship to the king are Edward’s writs of summons for his first Welsh war in 1276–7.14 A careful alignment of royal and magnate interests was reflected in the writs’ confident tone and language of shared interests. The representation of partnership in these letters was founded on practice. The Welsh prince’s contumacy had been a topic of discussion at the Michaelmas parliament, which had concluded only a few weeks earlier, and agreement had already been reached.15 There was little need for genuinely persuasive rhetoric; 9 McFarlane, Nobility, p. 267. This dominant characterization is only now beginning to be challenged in earnest; see Spencer, Nobility, pp. 35–6. 10 R. Huscroft, ‘Burnell and Government’, pp. 61–6. 11 Fœdera, I.ii, pp. 497–8. 12 The precise text of Edward’s oath is not recorded, but this clause can be inferred from a letter to Gregory X in 1275; see Richardson, ‘Coronation Oath’, p. 49. 13 On the influence of reform on Edward’s political thinking and practice, see Maddicott, ‘Lessons’; Maddicott, Origins, pp. 277–99. This ventriloquism was not dissimilar to the strategy adopted by the regents of Henry III’s minority in reissuing Magna Carta in 1216, which recast the charter as a royal document; see D. Carpenter, Magna Carta (London, 2015), especially chapter 13. 14 Fœdera, I.ii, pp. 537–9. On the war generally, see Morris, Wars. Unfortunately, no record of the writs of summons to Edward’s first parliament in 1275 survive; see PROME. 15 PROME.

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instead, the writs served as an opportunity to announce the unity of the English polity and to encourage widespread, elite identification with the king’s aims. The form of the writ that was sent to the king’s English magnates consistently paired injuries against the king’s obedient subjects with offences against the king, forging a union between them. The narratio expressed royal confidence in the perfect alignment of magnate and royal interests. It explained how Llywelyn ap Gruffydd had invaded ‘our lands and those of our faithful men’, and that his actions were ‘to our prejudice and contempt and to the grave injury and manifest disinheritance of you and our other faithful men’.16 Llywelyn’s refusal to obey the king was presented as an injury done to normal feudal relations that would naturally be denounced by all right-thinking participants in political society: the Welsh were rebels against the king, in contempt of proper obedience to him. These were presented as crimes with natural implications for the wider community generally and for the king’s noble correspondents in particular, reinforcing their common cause and flattering their sense of the special royal– magnate relationship to which they belonged. The qualities promoted by this rhetoric included the shared interests of king and magnates, and the interdependence of faithfulness and honour among the elite. The writs’ language presented England’s military aristocracy with an image of itself naturally valuing obedience and loyalty to one’s lord, denouncing faithlessness towards him and acting to police the norms of elite society. Bound to the king in honour and faith, their injuries were represented as naturally his and vice versa. This construction amplified an ideology of mutually dependent honour and advantage. The king also used epistolary opportunities beyond warfare to represent himself standing shoulder to shoulder with his magnates, defending their right to give counsel and his right to take it. We have seen how suggestions of impropriety in parliamentary process and counsel provoked Edward into a forceful epistolary response to Llywelyn ap Gruffydd in 1280.17 This defence was offered to rebut the prince’s allegations of corruption, turning his accusations into positive statements of good kingship. Since the king’s counsellors were no doubt party both to the reception of the complaint and to the production of the reply, it served to reassure them of the king’s support. In witnessing how staunchly Edward defended their right to be part of politico-judicial process in the face of an aggressive critique, parliamentary barons and other members of the king’s council also understood their legitimate and valued position within the circle of his elite advisers. In the first half of Edward’s reign, most major changes of policy that are reflected in the epistolary record, and many less significant ones, were 16

Fœdera, I.ii, pp. 537–8. ‘terras nostras & fidelium nostrorum in partibus Marchiae invaserunt … in nostri prejudicium et contemptum, et vestri et aliorum fidelium nostrorum grave dampnum, et exheredationem manifestam’. 17 See chapter 2, and also Neal, ‘Weapons’, p. 55.

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accompanied by a re-articulation of this important element of his governing ideology. In 1277, when the council considered a request received from Ireland concerning the extension of English law to the king’s ‘faithful Irishmen’, the king’s reply to the Irish justiciar was heavily reinforced with conciliar language.18 Unusually, the native Irish political community was included in the possibility of elite partnership on this occasion.19 The king’s letter recounted that an offer of 8,000 marks had been made by the ‘community of Ireland’ for a grant of English law. As the narratio was eager to note, the king was favourable to the request because Irish law was ‘detestable to God’, and in consequence had initiated ‘fuller discussion and deliberation with our council’. After this it had seemed ‘expedient enough to us and our council to concede to them the use of English laws; as long as, however, the communal consensus of the populace, or in any case of the prelates and magnates of that land who are of goodwill, is uniformly of agreement’. In other words, Edward and his English magnates held discussion, and agreed to extend English law to the Irish only if consent could be shown on the Irish side. The emphasis on consensus, or failing that, upon majority agreement, continued into the petitio. The king commanded his justiciar to determine through diligent consultation and discussion the ‘will of the [Irish] people, prelates and magnates of goodwill’, and by this means to reach agreement ‘by the consent of all, or at least of the greater and more senior part of them’ on the ‘upper limit’ of the fee they would willingly pay and which would also be consonant with the king’s ‘honour and greater utility’. Having done so, de Ufford was to ‘come together with them about the foregoing in our name’ in order to establish the military service they would render in return when called upon. Such an extraordinary emphasis on the stages of conciliar negotiation was essential in this case in which all the parties were sensitive to possible losses of honour, advantage or prestige. It marked a potential moment of seismic change in the relations among elites as well as between the king and his different domains.20 Although the extension of English law to the Irish did not subse18

SC 1/14/70, printed in Fœdera, I.ii, p. 540. On the relations between the English government and Ireland generally, see P. Crooks, ‘State of the Union: Perspectives on English Imperialism in the Late Middle Ages’, Past and Present 212 (2011), 3–42; R. Frame, Colonial Ireland 1169–1369, 2nd edn (Dublin, 2012); Hartland, ‘Petitions Relating to Ireland’; Otway-Ruthven, History of Medieval Ireland; Admin. Ire. On the question of political identities within Ireland, see R. Frame, ‘“Les Engleys Nées en Irlande”: The English Political Identity in Medieval Ireland’, TRHS 6th ser., 3 (1993), 83–103; J. Gillingham, ‘Normanizing the English Invaders of Ireland’, Power and Identity in the Middle Ages: Essays in Memory of Rees Davies, ed. H. Pryce and J. Watts (Oxford, 2007), 85–97; J. Muldoon, Identity on the Medieval Irish Frontier: Degenerate Englishmen, Wild Irishmen, Middle Nations (Gainesville, 2003); J. Lydon, ‘Nation and Race in Medieval Ireland’, Concepts of National Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. S. Forde, L. Johnson and A. V. Murray (Leeds, 1995), 103–17. 20 This debate was proceeding at a similar time to the troublesome arguments over the 19

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quently take place, the letter reveals that, at least rhetorically, the king wished to school his justiciar in how to embody this offer of membership in his elite polity, and that, in principle, he was willing to extend noble mechanisms of political participation to the Irish ‘of goodwill’.21 The scale of the change this would have represented was reflected in the letter’s multiple assurances of counsel and consensus, which were doubtless intended to satisfy the king’s Anglo-Irish magnates as much as their English counterparts; the former were becoming increasingly protective of the prestigious identity that set them apart from the native Irish at this time. In such ways, partnership with his magnates in the work of governing was an important element of Edward’s epistolary rhetoric, especially in the period before c. 1290. Employing a discourse that represented him as a willing and active defender of the magnates’ special role, he encouraged their support of his policies. We need not imagine that Edward was entirely cynical in his use of such rhetoric, even though it was manifestly to his advantage in managing magnate demands. Especially as he established his kingship after a period of political turbulence followed by a long absence, it was a sensible strategy. It was also part of the story he often rehearsed, for his own benefit as much as others’, concerning the legitimacy and authority of his rule. As Peter Berger has discussed, the ‘lesson’ of legitimation can only be effective if both ‘teacher’ and ‘children’ believe. 22 There is every reason to suspect that in the early part of his reign Edward wished to be seen and to see himself as a king who valued partnership with the political elite in discussion and decision-making. This discourse of partnership was a powerful one in political terms, and Edward deliberately employed and encouraged a secretariat practised in wielding it. Nevertheless, it had unforeseen consequences in terms of magnates’ demand for participation. Elite appetite for involvement in royal decisions turned out to be unlimited: the more it was fed, the less it was sated. When the stakes were high, Edward’s epistolary persona responded to this with a two-fold application of Welsh and Marcher law to the Arwystli dispute. Edward’s experience in Wales may have encouraged him to let the matter drop; see A. Gwynn, ‘Edward I and the Proposed Purchase of English Law for the Irish, c. 1276–80’, TRHS 10 (1960), 111–27 (p. 126). For comparative discussion of English law in Wales and Ireland, and the matter of consent; see G. Dodd, ‘Law, Legislation, and Consent in the Plantagenet Empire: Wales and Ireland, 1272–1461’, JBS 56:2 (2017), 225–49. 21 On the offer generally, see G. Mac Niocaill, ‘The Interaction of the Laws’, The English in Medieval Ireland: Proceedings of the First Joint Meeting of the Royal Irish Academy and the British Academy, Dublin, 1982, ed. J. Lydon (Dublin, 1984), 105–17; J. Otway-Ruthven, ‘The Native Irish and English Law in Medieval Ireland’, IHS 7:25 (1950), 1–16. As Robin Frame has powerfully demonstrated, the Irish were no doubt acutely aware of their exclusion from the status group signifed by participation in norms of English law and governance; see Frame, ‘Les Engleys Nées en Irlande’, pp. 92, 94–5. On the later history of English law in Ireland, see G. J. Hand, English Law in Ireland 1290–1324 (Cambridge, 1967). 22 P. L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City, 1967), p. 31, quoted in Barker, Identities, p. 44.

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strategy: a more overt discourse of polite consultation and consensus, balanced by a growing use of terminology that sought to counteract the agency granted to magnates with an equal measure of binding and obligation. A clear example of these tendencies is provided by the writs of summons for Edward’s second Welsh campaign in 1282. This campaign was distinguished from that of 1276–7 in that the uprising was sudden and had been initiated not by declarations but by a surprise attack.23 In consequence, there had been no preliminary parliamentary debate, and no opportunity to secure in advance the kind of agreement on the premises that magnates demanded as their right.24 These writs of summons were not, therefore, merely formalizing an action already agreed between king and polity, but needed to undertake significant explanatory and persuasive work to secure agreement in the absence of discussion. The writs issued on 6 April 1282 were 10 per cent longer than the 1276 writs, already a suggestion that king and clerks anticipated some resistance among recipients.25 They were also distinct in adopting two moderating and intensifying phrases to strengthen the core petitionary verb, mandare: ‘asking affectionately’ (affectuose rogantes) and ‘in the fealty and love by which you are bound to us’ (in fide et dilectione quibus nobis tenemini).26 By these phrases, the petitio attempted to navigate both the magnates’ demand for acknowledgement of their special position, and the urgency of the king’s need. Neither the ‘asking’ nor ‘binding’ rhetorical strategies were deemed necessary in the 1276 writs, but became common in Edward’s military summons from 1282 as the administration adjusted its epistolary expression of the king’s ideal relationship to the English political elite.27 The introduction of a form of rogare, in particular, signalled an especially courtly recognition of their status. As we have seen, in its main conjugated form, this verb was usually reserved for the petitiones of letters to magnates beyond the king’s realm,28 although it was not unheard of in domestic contexts as a means of recognizing that the king’s instructions imposed some kind of extraordinary burden upon recipients or demanded a departure from standard practice. This language placed the correspondents on a new relative footing to the benefit of the recipient. A countervailing emphasis on obligation through the inclusion of a passive construction of tenere (to bind, hold) served to mitigate the increased autonomy that rogare might otherwise have conferred upon elites. The phrase reminded 23 Smith,

Llywelyn, p. 451; Morris, Wars, pp. 149–54. PROME. 25 On length as an indicator of the need for rational explanation, see chapter 1, and also Shepard, Courting Power, pp. 6–7. 26 Fœdera, I.ii, p. 603. 27 The discourse of honour offered to the king’s magnates in Gascony was of a different nature, see below, pp. 138–48. 28 Hengham, Summae, p. 3. 24

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the king’s vassals of the source of their duty to him. Although they might be considered allies, they remained bound to him in fealty and love, that is, by both legally-binding feudal oaths and a personal, affective commitment. A recipient who breached either of these bonds invited scorn, dishonour and ejection from the community of rightful peers. The extent of rhetorical means to constrain magnates to act according to the king’s command is evident in these writs and shows the crown’s response to shifting dynamics in the royal–magnate relationship. While they contained certain formulaic phrases, they were by no means fixed texts. Stage directions for magnate management

When the king was absent from his realm and directing his government remotely by epistolary means, the need to flatter magnate sensibilities generally increased. No regent’s authority equalled that of the king, making rhetorical tools of mediation more significant. Taking and being seen to take appropriate counsel for the legitimacy of royal actions was fundamental to the rhetoric of Edward’s letters to his regent – his cousin Edmund, earl of Cornwall – during an extended sojourn in Gascony in the period 1286–9.29 Contrary to the impression given by much of the historiography,30 the king maintained interest in the conduct of his government, and in Edmund’s performance as his representative, throughout this period, especially in matters falling beyond Cornwall’s routine authority or where possible miscarriages of justice placed the dignity of the crown in jeopardy. Letters were the ideal mechanism for this kind of ‘stage direction’. They enabled the king to instruct his regent in how to embody and express his kingship, whether in person or in letters in his name. Further, aural reception of his letters enabled the king to ‘speak’ to any other members of his council or chancery who happened to be present, and to guide their deliberations in his name.31 29

I have commented on this correspondence from the perspective of Edward’s concept of kingship in Neal, ‘Discourse’. Here I emphasize instead what it reveals about how the king anticipated and managed magnates’ priorities and expectations. 30 See, for example, Prestwich, Edward I, who addresses this period in a chapter focused on Edward as duke of Gascony, and the exercise of his rights there; and Spencer’s relatively dismissive account of Edward’s ‘attempt’ to provide for governance in his absence in Nobility, pp. 213–15. Burt’s discussion of the evidence for control and disorder in the localities of Warwickshire, Kent and Shropshire is an important exception; see Burt, Governance, chapter 7. See also Michael Ray’s unpublished biography of Edmund, available online, which dedicates a brief chapter to the regency period: M. Ray, ‘A Forgotten Hero? Edmund of Almain, Earl of Cornwall, 1249–1300’, Available at https://independent.academia.edu/ MichaelRay (Accessed 11 October 2016). 31 A ‘rump’ chancery was left to maintain ordinary business at Westminster using a seal of absence under the oversight of William de Hamelton, but the chancellor and the great seal accompanied the king to the continent. This in itself indicates his intention to remain an active part of epistolary governance during his absence; see CPR, 1281–1292, pp. 248, 318.

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The king’s direction of his regent was prompted mainly in response to approaches made to him by letter or in person on the continent, rather than a consistent policy of oversight. Of those matters brought to his attention during his absence, by no means all concerned the smooth maintenance of magnate relations, but many did. In those cases, he instructed his regent in letters in which the language of counsel was amplified. It operated as a mediating factor between the competing political imperatives of due process and the recognition of rank that was required to placate potential dissatisfaction among the elite. The pre-emptive deployment of conciliar language is seen clearly in a letter to Cornwall on 15 February of 1288 regarding a dispute over the reliability of accounting in the wardrobe of Bogo de Clare, the ecclesiastical brother of the earl of Gloucester and a notorious pluralist.32 Given the comital rank of the family involved, this was a dispute of high political significance. The king had received a complaint from Walter de Reingny, former keeper of the wardrobe in Bogo’s household. He claimed that Bogo had ‘incessantly harassed’ him by alleging errors of account before the exchequer, and disturbing him ‘wrongfully, to his manifest loss’, even after he had ‘presented his accounts, been given his allowances and made his final reckoning’.33 Adding insult to injury, he was still owed a significant amount by Bogo. The complaint placed the king in a difficult position. Having been petitioned for remedy, failure to act would incur damage to his royal authority and dignity, and moreover, was contrary to his obligations as monarch. Edward’s letter made this obligation clear. Here he returned to the foundational rhetorical trope of his reign, describing himself as ‘bound to give justice to all the inhabitants of our realm’.34 This phrase deliberately echoed Edward’s coronation oath, and through it the book of Romans, as the founding ethos of his response.35 Employing this phrase served to frame the following instruction as a matter of duty rather than royal will or favour. In this way, the king attempted to forestall any comital dissatisfaction with his response to a complaint against one of their number by a man of markedly lesser status. More particularly, it attempted to mitigate the displeasure of Bogo’s brother, Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester. The earl was in negotiations to conclude a marriage with Edward’s daughter Joan of Acre, a match that took place early in 1290 after Edward’s return to England.36 Gloucester, who had a propensity to create discord among the comital group, had already required careful management since the king’s departure, including by the 32

SC 1/12/147, translated in Sayles, Functions, p. 192. For Bogo, see H. Summerson, ‘Clare, Bogo de (1248–1294)’, ODNB; L. Kjær, ‘Magnates, Ritual and Commensality at Royal Assemblies: Bogo de Clare and Edward I’s Easter Parliament, 1285’, Edward I: New Interpretations, ed. A. King and A. Spencer (York, 2020), 66–83. 33 As quoted in Sayles, Functions, p. 192. 34 ‘singulis regni nostri incolis sumus iusticie debitores’ 35 Richardson, ‘Coronation Oath’. See also Romans 1:14. 36 For Joan, see Ward, ‘Joan of Acre’, ODNB.

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personal intervention of the queen mother. He had seized the opportunity offered by rebellion in Wales to extend his authority at the expense of the earl of Hereford.37 Edward could neither afford to provoke further tension between himself and Gloucester, nor generate additional comital dissatisfaction, by openly promoting a case against the de Clare family while he himself was unable to act as a steadying presence. Emphasizing this, royal correspondence on the Gloucester–Hereford dispute was another place in which the king’s duty to be ‘the debtor in justice’ appeared. 38 Having established that his instructions concerning de Reingny’s complaint proceeded from duty rather than special favour, the king ordered Cornwall to respond. In so doing, his letter was careful to unite the magnates with his representative as a deliberative body. Cornwall was commanded (mandamus) to ‘call before you the treasurer and barons as well as our justices of both benches and the other loyal members of our council in England who may happen to be then and there present’ and in the presence of this august company, hear the arguments of both parties. With all this being accomplished, he should cause due and speedy justice to be done in full to Walter as well as to Bogo on each and every one of the above said matters without further delay, no favours preventing it, lest – which God forbid – with so many distinguished and wise men assembled together, the parties should be seen to depart without sound redress.39

This powerful rhetoric served as both an instruction to Cornwall and a template for any correspondence he would need to issue on the matter. Its terms were intended to be disseminated widely among the elite, whether as members of a community of reception in the regent’s company, or of any related correspondence. Taking this wide circulation into account, the king’s letter highlighted counsel and cleverly flattered the wisdom of his counsellors, signifying the mutual interdependence of his honour and that of all his magnates, and the fundamental place of both for justice in the realm. It construed governance as a collaborative project in which both the king and his correspondents shared common goals. Consequently, the letter expressed a command that distributed the responsibility for difficult decision-making and acknowledged the nobility’s sense of its right to advise the king, diffusing potential tension. Moreover, the attention to the processes of resolution articulated in this letter reassured elites that, in any similar cases that might arise, their interests would likewise be protected by guarantees of due process in which they themselves were invited to participate. The specification of such an expansive counsel to be assembled in the case of the complaint of Walter de Reingny reflected the exalted status of the de Clares. But councils of lesser gravitas were also commanded by the king in matters 37 Spencer,

Nobility, pp. 214–15. Governance, p. 162. 39 Sayles, Functions, p. 192. 38 Burt,

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of lesser sensitivity, or touching the interests of less dignified members of the elite. For instance, a smaller but nonetheless important council was recommended in the king’s letter concerning a plea of two baronial women, Isabella de Clifford and her sister Idonea de Leybourne, written from Dax in Gascony on 1 September 1287.40 The two women were the co-heiresses of an adherent of the rebel Earl Simon de Montfort, Robert Vieuxpont, who died from wounds received at the Battle of Lewes in 1264; they were subsequently given in marriage to close allies of Edward.41 While not of comital rank, therefore, they were nonetheless personages of note, and their plea touched the interests of men among Edward’s noble allies. It called for careful management of elite sensibilities. The sisters claimed that justice had been denied them at the King’s Bench in a matter of advowson. The king responded by instructing the regent and council to ascertain whether proper procedure had taken place. Edmund should then take counsel with the treasurer, John de Kirkby, bishop of Ely, and ‘others of our council in that place’ in order to resolve the women’s complaint.42 In so doing, he was to be guided by notions of justice (iusticie), law (legem) and custom (consuetudinem), and by what the specified council considered necessary to be done (videritis faciendum). The scale of the council deemed relevant and the rhetoric of limitation set around their deliberations conveyed the king’s careful evaluation of the significance of the affair, and performed his respect for both the women’s status and that of the counsellors responding on his behalf. A range of such conciliar models calibrated to the socio-political degree of the parties and the potential of the matter to generate discord among his nobility in Edward’s absence was articulated in royal letters. Minimal counsel was required in a case of favour to be shown to the royal surgeon, Philip of Beauvais; the king simply instructed his regent to offer his own counsel to the beneficiary as required.43 In the more vexed question of the outcome to be reached on the matter of the Vieuxpont advowson, the king instructed Cornwall to assemble a wider council that included certain experienced administrators and ‘others of our council’.44 In the fraught matter of de Reingny’s complaint against Bogo de Clare, meanwhile, the king directed the fullest possible council to be gathered 40

SC 1/45/51, printed in Baldwin, Council, p. 264. Note that Baldwin’s edition abbreviates the formal entitulatio and greeting, which is given in full in the manuscript. 41 M. Prestwich, ‘Royal Patronage under Edward I’, TCE 1 (1986), 41–52 (pp. 42–3). 42 ‘vobis mandamus quod intellecto a prefatis Iusticiariis processu inde habito coram eis et convocatis si opus fuerit venerabili patre J. Eliensi episcopo Thesaurario nostro et aliis de consilio nostro ibidem, hinc inde fieri faciatis in placito predicto plene et celeris iusticie complementum, prout vos et alii de consilio nostro secundum legem et consuetudinem regni nostri videritis faciendum’; Baldwin, Council, p. 264. On de Kirkby’s long career in royal service, see Prestwich, ‘Kirkby, John’, ODNB. 43 SC 1/45/41, ‘Et si ipsum inquietari contingeret de manero antedicto dum sic nobis per preceptum nostrum assistum, consilium et remedium adhibere curetis, quale pro conservatione iuris sui magis videritis comportuum’. 44 SC 1/45/51; Baldwin, Council, p. 264.

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and consulted.45 In such ways, Edward’s letters responded to the possibility of elite resistance or dissatisfaction by amplifying the conciliar rhetoric of his epistolary persona, demonstrating an astute political sensibility. Granting favour for friends

Another core component of the construction of magnate identity in royal letters was the strategic deployment of favour to signal the king’s friendship and encourage goodwill among the elite. The capacity to grant favour was an essential characteristic of lordship in clientelic societies and remained important to concepts of lordship and kingship in England throughout the rise of so-called ‘bastard feudalism’ with its emphasis on contracted service for payment.46 The stock of land for permanent grants had been depleted in previous reigns, but Edward made many smaller gifts of wardships, marriages, deer, oaks, hunting rights and other personal favours.47 Letters were part of the system of making such tangible demonstrations of goodwill. They also conveyed a rhetoric of favour of a less tangible but no less important kind, which was crafted to reinforce elites’ sense of belonging to a privileged socio-political group. Within this discourse, feeling favour to have been shown was almost as important as any tangible gift or grant. Being seen to respond to complaints and pleas was an important part of this discourse. Favour could be signified by actions such as royal interventions that catalysed existing judicial processes, or held legal officers to account, facilitating beneficiaries’ progress within the judicial sphere. Edward’s epistolary instructions to do justice, such as for the Vieuxpont sisters, noted above, worked as demonstrations of royal favour of this type. They conveyed the king’s commitment to preserve the interests of those joined to him in the project of governance. There were strong connections between the sentiment of such letters, and the diplomatic discourse of intercession and patronage.48 Patronage correspondence among the interlinked Anglo-French nobility of the late-thirteenth century reflected the same relational imperative. The sanctio of such letters exhorted the recipient to just this end, asking that an action be undertaken to the extent that the beneficiary sensed the advantage of the sender’s intercession.49 Edward’s domestic letters of favour adopted such forms when they made interventions or 45

Quoted in Sayles, Functions, p. 192. Note, if lords had obligations to do and perform favour, requesting it also entailed accepting their lordship; see Gelting, ‘Reflections’, p. 261; G. Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor: Ritual and Political Order in Early Medieval France (Ithaca, 1992), pp. 46, 49. 47 See, for example, Prestwich, ‘Royal Patronage’, pp. 44–5; S. L. Waugh, The Lordship of England: Royal Wardships and Marriages in English Society and Politics, 1217–1327 (Princeton, 1988), particularly chapter 4; Spencer, ‘Royal Patronage’, pp. 26–9. 48 See chapter 4. 49 Hélary, ‘Les liens’, pp. 79–80; McLean, Art of the Network, chapter 6. 46

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requests on behalf of a third party, especially of high status or special personal significance to the king. For example, when Edward wrote to advance the interests of his surgeon, Philip of Beauvais, he called on Cornwall to act ‘such that [Philip] might not feel our service to be injurious to him’.50 Similarly, when the king was asked to provide ‘what grace and favour we can’ (quae possumus gratiam et favorem) for a certain Napoleon, cousin of Matteo Orsini, the cardinal deacon of Santa Maria in Portico, he forwarded the petition to Cornwall, expressing a desire for Napoleon to ‘sense the instance of the aforesaid cardinal to be of profit to him, as we wish’.51 Scrupulously recording the chain of intercession that had gone into producing a request was part of the language that reinforced royal–magnate bonds. It signified the king’s promise to all who might intercede with him that their efforts would be recognized. It ensured that all parties received due credit for their involvement and the beneficiary knew to whom they were obliged. As in the case of the king’s letter remitting his anger against the countess of Leicester in response to the intercession of Philippe III, those on behalf of whom such a letter of instruction was written may sometimes have borne witness to its production.52 When this occurred, beneficiaries themselves were among the intended audience of such sanctiones. Philip of Beauvais was with the king in Gascony when the letter in his favour was produced. Indeed, it was because the king could not spare him that he instructed his regent to indemnify Philip against harm in certain manors during his service. Edward’s exhortation to Cornwall offered Philip the assurance of a minimum standard of assistance; namely, that he would be sensible of it. To the community of reception at the other end of the epistolary exchange, this language also offered a message of comfort. It spoke of a king who would always seek to act such that those in his favour would feel the value of his friendship. The king’s favour to his friends was a theme he took care to impress frequently upon an epistolary audience of his partners in governance. This reinforcement was present in an instruction to Cornwall to withhold legal action against Robert de Leycestre, chaplain of the late Hugh of Evesham, cardinal of San Lorenzo in Lucina and a former royal clerk.53 Edward explained that he wanted to ‘show special favour’ to Robert, despite his recent transgressions against English law and custom, ‘for the sake of the affection which we had towards the lord Hugh, of good memory’.54 Such rhetoric served both to justify why Edward 50

‘ita quod obsequium nostrum dampnosum sibi non sensiat’, SC 1/45/41. The grant concerned is noted in CCR, 1279–1288, pp. 110–11. 51 ‘ita quod ipse instanciam Cardinalis praedicti sibi sensiat ut appetimus profuisse’, SC 1/45/63, printed in Records, ed. Prynne, 3, p. 1296. 52 See chapter 3. 53 Hugh had continued to undertake diplomatic missions for the king after his relocation to the papal chancery early in the 1280s, see Getz, ‘Evesham, Hugh of’, ODNB. 54 C 47/34/5/24, printed in Records, ed. Prynne, 3, p. 1293. ‘Voluntes ob affectionem quam erga bone memorie dominum Hugonem titulo Sancti Laurentii in Lucina Sancrosancte

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might choose to depart from the dictates of strict judicial process in a given case, and also to remind elites of the benefits of remaining committed to the king and his policies.55 It implied that they too might one day reap rewards. Gascon correspondence and the two-lord problem

The qualities of Edward’s jurisdiction in Gascony profoundly influenced the epistolarity he and his government directed there. The epistolary discourse in letters to Edward’s English elite established a core suite of ideas through which dialogue and political engagement could operate in mutually acceptable terms, such as justice, counsel and favour. But the conceptualization of these values in Edward’s English correspondence was distinctly royal and constructed with reference to a range of themes that, while sharing certain features with a pan-European ideology of kingship, were drawn particularly from a tradition of English political engagement and discussion. Gascony enjoyed a distinct constitutional situation, geographical removal from the royal-ducal centre and a unique local culture. Gascons were considered to have ‘subject-hood’ and to participate in what Ruddick has termed a transregional ‘allegiant identity’, but this remained distinct from sharing a ‘nationality’ with Edward’s English people.56 Royal clerks embodied the separateness of Gascony under the Plantagenet ‘umbrella’ by enrolling its correspondence and accounts separately from the core English business of chancery and exchequer.57 Unsurprisingly, this sense of separateness also drew a distinct epistolary discourse from the royal secretariat. The nature of royal-ducal tenure in Gascony was complex. The question of the respective powers of the kings of France and the English king-dukes, and the relationship between them, had been a persistent matter of military engagement and diplomatic anxiety throughout the late-twelfth and early-thirteenth centuries.58 By Edward’s reign, Gascony was all that remained of the enormous territory his grandfather, King John, had inherited on the continent. English lands in France had been dramatically reduced by the conquests of Philippe (II) Augustus at the beginning of the thirteenth century. By the Treaty of Paris Romane ecclesie nuper cardinalem habuimus, dilecto nobis Roberto de Leyc capellano qui predicti cardinalis dum vixit obsequiis intendebat, gratiam facere specialiem.’ Robert had initiated proceedings in the Roman Curia against Mr Walter de Robertsbridge, which was held to be contrary to English custom and royal jurisdiction. 55 Conversely, some letters made clear the consequences of losing favour. See, for instance, the mechanisms of reprimand the king ordered Cornwall to execute upon the archbishop of York discussed in Neal, ‘Discourse’, pp. 150–2. 56 Ruddick, ‘Ethnic Identity’, pp. 25–7; Ruddick, English Identity, pp. 229–39, 255–6, 315–16. 57 See RG, passim; Ruddick, ‘Limits’, pp. 72–3. For an overview of English administration in Gascony, the best starting point is still Trabut-Cussac’s L’administration anglaise. 58 Trabut-Cussac, L’administration anglaise, pp. 19–20, 51, 60, 78–9; Vale, Legacy, chapter 6.

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(1259), Edward’s father, Henry III, had formally relinquished his rights to Normandy, Anjou, Touraine, Maine and Poitou.59 This treaty, while confirming the English king’s right to Gascony, declared it to be held in homage to the king of France, rather than as an allod – that is, a ‘freehold’ – as English king-dukes had traditionally claimed. By this mechanism, French sovereignty and judicial supremacy over Gascony had been recognized officially, creating a situation which would become contentious in Edward’s reign. Conflicts encompassing the Gascon question reared their heads in 1277–9, and more violently in 1294–8, when the duchy was annexed by Philippe IV. Until 1299, while jurisdictional and constitutional arrangements reserved certain cases to the court of France,60 Gascons were the subjects of two kings, and, in effect, could choose the court that best suited their interests in a given plea. If the royal-ducal court failed to please, they could take their business to the royal court in Paris, conveying away not only any fees, but also considerable prestige, to the detriment of the king-duke’s finances and authority. Moreover, Gascon subjects could appeal against the decisions of the king-duke and against the king-duke himself at the court of France: a further source of potential injury to the royal-ducal dignity.61 While this was a greater source of conflict during the reign of Philippe IV (1285–1314) than his father (Philippe III, 1270–85), it remained a constant matter of concern to the English party. The reputation of Gascons was slippery and unreliable, but as Malcolm Vale has shown, this was a rational product of their unusual position as subjects of two very powerful lords.62 The great families of the region acknowledged obligations to both Capetian and Plantagenet overlords, and the balance they struck between the two depended on how best to secure their own interests between these powerful countervailing forces. A larger question of allegiance lay behind the immediate practicalities of their choice of courts of appeal. Gascons came under pressure from both parties for their loyalty from time to time, as the diplomatic relationship between the Capetian and Plantagenet crowns waxed and waned. The great Gascon lords, whose personal position was relatively secure in any case, might elect to change allegiances if it seemed likely to procure a better outcome for them and theirs.63 They adopted ‘intermediate Plantagenet

59

P. Chaplais, ‘The Making of the Treaty of Paris (1259) and the Royal Style’, EHR 67:263 (1952), 235–53. For the centrality of 1259 in later English constructions of the conflict, see P. Chaplais, ‘English Arguments Concerning the Feudal Status of Aquitaine in the Fourteenth Century’, Hist. Res. 21:64 (1948), 203–13. 60 Chaplais, ‘English Arguments’, p. 204. 61 See J. A. Kicklighter, ‘French Jurisdictional Supremacy in Gascony: One Aspect of the Ducal Government’s Response’, JMH 5 (1979), 127–34; Lodge, Gascony under English Rule, pp. 61–3, 65, 71, 78; Trabut-Cussac, L’administration anglaise, pp. 44, 54–5, 78, 80, 95. 62 M. Vale, ‘The Gascon Nobility and Crises of Loyalty, (1294–1337)’, La ‘France anglaise’ au moyen âge (Paris, 1988), 207–16. 63 Vale, ‘Gascon Loyalty’, pp. 208–9, 212.

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lordship … as a buffer against unwelcome intervention’ by the French crown, but did not necessarily commit their allegiance to it.64 The king-duke’s authority was much more firmly established among the lesser nobility, whose independent sources of wealth or power were limited and whose circumstances and local authority were materially increased by alliance with the English king-duke, and opportunities for appointment in his administration.65 It was this group who offered the most strident epistolary assertions of Edward’s power in the region. For instance, matching letters offering service in the Welsh war from two brothers, William and Stephen Ferriol, lords of Tonneins and bayles of that region, addressed Edward as their ‘highest and greatest lord of all the lords of this world’, and ‘highest lord among others’.66 The king-duke’s other titles were omitted, making the letters’ royal emphasis even more striking. This strategy was a common way of signalling loyal adherence to the king-duke among Gascons.67 The difficulties that the multiple sources of authority in the duchy presented for achieving smooth administration and governance were notorious among contemporaries. In 1298, Pope Boniface VIII observed that it suited the Gascons to have ‘multiple lords, since they cannot be as greatly burdened [by many] as by one’.68 As the pope’s comment implies, Gascons often found it useful to counter French incursions into their accustomed independence by appealing to Edward and his officials for redress, but equally, they might decide on the opposite strategy if royal-ducal demands were felt to exceed appropriate levels. Familiar with this challenge, Edward told his envoys, Robert Burnell and Otto de Grandison, travelling to the duchy in 1278, that ‘it is greatly necessary that each and every thing instituted, arranged, ordained and done there by you with them should be done completely securely, diligently and circumspectly, and affirmed by documents, sureties, penalties and any other kind of obligation whatsoever’.69 If they encountered recalcitrants, they were to confront them with their faults and proper actions, ‘eye to eye, to their faces’, in the hope

64

Ibid., p. 208.

65 Ibid. 66

SC 1/17/59: ‘suo altissimo ac maximo domino percun[c]tis aliis dominis istius mundi reverendo et etiam diligendo domino Hodoardo dei gratie regi anglie’; SC 1/17/60: ‘suo altissimo per aliis domini sui reverendo et honorato domino Hodoardo dei gratie regi anglie’. 67 For a similar letter from Bernard de Ceteyles, see SC 1/16/17, printed in Fœdera, I.ii, p. 797. 68 Quoted in J. G. Black, ‘Edward I and Gascony in 1300’, EHR 17:67 (1902), 522–7 (p. 523). See also Vale, ‘Gascon Loyalty’, p. 208. ‘Car tele est la manere de soutzmis qi voillent einsi avoir plusors seigneurs q’ils ne puissent mie moult estre greveez par un.’ 69 Fœdera, I.ii, p. 554; ‘valde necessarium fore credimus quod omnia et singula, ibidem per vos cum ipsis statuenda, componenda, ordinanda et facienda, adeo secure, diligenter et circumspecte fiant, et firmentur per scripturas, fidejussiones, poenas, et alia quaecumque obligationum genera’.

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that shame would return them to fidelity.70 Extreme measures were deemed necessary to hold Gascons to their word. The nature of the competing authorities in the region, and the pressures of local politics made courting and reinforcing the loyalty of Gascons a primary concern in governing the duchy. If Gascons transferred their loyalty to the king of France, Edward’s tenure would become unsustainable. This may explain the particular integration of native Gascons into the king-duke’s administration, as he sought ways to ensure their commitment to his regime; it also coloured his rhetoric. Unlike his Gascon vassals, the king-duke himself refrained from expressing his full royal persona in Gascon letters, where it would have risked a serious breach of Anglo-French relations. His language was typically one of request rather than command, and borrowed many of the tropes of diplomatic correspondence. His epistolary approach to them, unlike the frank instructions to his envoys, sought to flatter their pride and loyal self-image as a means of encouraging commitment. Edward made numerous visits to the duchy throughout his lifetime, and was acquainted with its culture.71 His epistolary rhetoric shows his familiarity with the complex factors underpinning loyalty among Gascons. Prominent among them was kinship, especially close blood relationships. Edward evidently could not generate such ties from nothing, but he could press on them where present. There were also other factors open to him to emphasize. Adherence to a lord or leader depended on their capacity to provide material support and protection, social esteem or advancement, judicial authority, and tradition, all of which could be deployed rhetorically. Gascon local organization and allegiance also depended on a sense of commonality, and communal actions and decisionmaking.72 Moreover, according to the customs current in Bigorre and Béarn, and the trans-Pyrenean region of which they were part, a lord did not receive the oaths of his subjects until he had sworn to uphold the fors, or customary laws and liberties.73 Such an exchange bore certain thematic similarities to recurrent English demands for ‘the Charters’ to be upheld or reissued in return for taxation, although those demands took place in the context of quite different political discussions.74

70

‘oculo ad oculum, frontibus eorumdem’ See Morris, Edward I, pp. 51, 53, 110, 217; Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 10, 174, 324–5; J. P. Trabut-Cussac, ‘Actes gascons dispersés émanant d’Edouard Ier d’Angleterre pendant son séjour en France, 1286–1289’, BPHCTHS (1962), 63–139. 72 T. N. Bisson, Assemblies and Representation in Languedoc in the Thirteenth Century (Princeton, 1964), pp. 76, 237, 239, 309. 73 Smith, ‘Adversaries’, p. 60. See also P. Rogé, Les anciens fors de Béarn: Études sur l’histoire du droit béarnais au moyen âge (Toulouse–Paris, 1908). 74 The reissues of 1216–17, 1225, 1234, 1237, 1265, 1266, 1270, 1297 and 1300–1 are discussed in Maddicott, Origins, pp. 107–8, 124, 133, 168, 173, 190–1, 196, 202, 263, 271, 303–4, 311, 315, 403, 439, 447, 457, 469. 71

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Edward’s letters reveal practical and rhetorical attention to these particularly Gascon themes, both as mechanisms of regular management and in his regime’s response to moments of crisis. His correspondence with the local officials and representatives who formed the bedrock of his authority in the duchy employed a rhetoric that imputed loyalty to his subjects and implicated it in their transactional relationship with him as king-duke. This strategy sought to bring loyalty into being, and to fortify it where it existed. In 1278, Edward sent a detailed letter to the citizens of Aquens (now Bagnèresde-Bigorre, dep. Hautes-Pyrénées), granting them specific legal privileges and officially withdrawing his rancour from them in respect of any appeals they had made against him in the court of France.75 Further, the letter offered specific political and administrative rights to the citizens under Edward’s authority: a right to communal representation via a committee and annual process for nominating a mayor (to be appointed by royal-ducal approval); and recognition and protection of their fors. Only in the conclusio, and in passing, did the letter raise the matter of what might be due to Edward in return: annual military service as required, couched in terms that cast it as universal and traditional, and therefore unquestionable.76 This letter, sent in the midst of the turmoil generated by the rebellion and subsequent legal proceedings of Gaston de Béarn,77 the chief seigneur of Bigorre, constituted a direct appeal to the loyalty of the lesser Aquensais, tailored to meet their expectations of good lordship. Edward’s promise to uphold the fors of the region and protect customary jurisdiction and practice constituted a perfectly tailored mechanism for encouraging the renewal of oaths of loyalty since this was the traditional promise of regional seigneurs. Such renewal of oaths was local practice in times of political uncertainty such as Gaston’s rebellion. An anonymous informant from the town had written to the king-duke in 1277 to warn him of brewing dissent and the agitation of the French king’s seneschal, and to report on the loyalty-reinforcing efforts of town authorities. At the first rumour of trouble, ‘immediately, on account of the great danger, we drew to you and bound by oaths and other means all the great men of the town, [and] they committed themselves entirely to do your will’.78 This prophylactic performance of loyalty was no doubt intended to curry favour and prevent the town becoming the focus of any royalducal retribution. 75

March 1278. RG, 2, pp. 46–7. ‘Si vero ipsorum indigeamus excercitu, iidem cives Aquenses nobis semel in anno infra portus et Garonam excercitum facient, prout et quando nobis illum facient alie nostre Vasconie civitates.’ This phrase constituted less than 8 per cent of the enrolled letter. 77 Gaston was the grandson of Alfonso II of Provence, who was Edward’s great-grandfather. For his rebellion against Edward, see Trabut-Cussac, L’administration anglaise, p. 43; Smith, ‘Adversaries’, pp. 68–9. 78 SC 1/5/93, printed in Royal Letters, 2, pp. 332–4: ‘statim propter magnum periculum attraximus ad vos et alligavimus juramentis et aliis modis aliquos de majoribus villae, qui se astrinxerunt ad vestram voluntatem faciendam omnino’. 76

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From the English perspective, Gascon loyalty could not simply be expected or demanded. It had to be argued for, by articulating it as an ideal and a proper course of action, and by specifying the personal consequences of failure. We can see this in a letter from Edward to Gaston de Béarn in 1282, after their rapprochement, seeking his service on behalf of Alfonso X of Castile who was facing civil dispute over the succession to his kingdom.79 Occupied with a rebellion in Wales, Edward could not go to Castile himself, or spare his English armies to aid his brother-in-law; he asked Gaston to go in his name. The letter opened not with a simple description of the uprising against Alfonso, but with a moral evaluation of it. ‘A certain man, from the land of our dearest brother in law, the lord king of Castile’, it read, ‘has risen up against him wickedly, and conducted himself faithlessly against his due fidelity.’80 It then proceeded to articulate Edward’s reasons for owing Alfonso assistance: because his brother-in-law had requested it; on account of a long-standing agreement existing between the realms since the reign of Henry III; and on account of the kinship between the two kings by virtue of Edward’s marriage to Alfonso’s half-sister, Eleanor of Castile. For all these reasons, Edward ‘considered [Alfonso] to need succour from our men of Gascony’.81 Furthermore, the letter pointed out that Gaston was also personally bound to Alfonso, and had borne him ‘full fidelity up to now’.82 This was a rather ironic comment, as Gaston had been implicated in inviting Alfonso to press his own claims to Gascony in the 1250s, but it did serve to highlight Gaston’s proper duty.83 These cumulative proofs of obligation afforded Edward leverage to ask (rogamus) Gaston to prepare himself and 100 knights of ‘Gascony and Agen’ to be ready when Alfonso should call. In addition, Edward offered to meet the expenses of the men’s stipends. The rhetoric of this request illustrates some of the similarities and distinctions of Edward’s epistolary engagement with elites across the polities under his dominion. Persuasion rather than command was generally the order of the day when matters touching magnate interests were at stake, but the terms of that persuasion varied. As we have seen, in the first half of his reign, Edward’s letters on English magnate affairs tended to highlight counsel and justice (both procedural and moral) as related appeals to a common ethos that bound the political community together.84 This letter to Gaston be Béarn, by contrast, emphasized fealty and trespasses against it as the core of its vocabulary and persuasive approach. It opposed the rebels’ wickedness in acting ‘faithlessly’ (infideliter) 79

SC 1/12/45, printed in Fœdera, I.ii, p. 620; see also Smith, ‘Adversaries’, p. 79. For an outline of the dispute, see B. Weiler, ‘Kings and Sons: Princely Rebellions and the Structures of Revolt in Western Europe, c.1170–c.1280’, Hist. Res. 82:215 (2009), 17–40. 80 Fœdera, I.ii, p. 620; ‘quidam, de terra sororii nostri karissimi, domini regis Castellae, nequiter insurrexerunt in ipsum, & contra fidelitatis suae debitum infideliter segesserunt’. 81 Ibid.; ‘de gente nostra Vasconiae sibi duximus succurrendum’. 82 Ibid.; ‘ipse de vobis gessit hactenus plenam fiduciam’. 83 Smith, ‘Adversaries’, p. 65. 84 Neal, ‘Discourse’, pp. 147–52, 155–8.

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against their proper ‘fidelity’ (fidelitatis) to the historic loyalty between Castile and England, represented by the agreement (foedus) that had ‘bound’ (astrinxit) the previous generation as much as the present one. Furthermore, it pointed to Gaston’s own obligation, and history, of ‘fidelity’ to Alfonso. Reminiscent of the writs of summons sent to English magnates in 1276, the rhetoric was that of confident alignment of interests and injuries. However, unlike 1276, this strategy sought to bring alignment into being where it was under question, rather than confirming existing agreement. Context coloured the text with a different hue. The rhetoric of summons to Gascon vassals in other contexts also reflected the special relationship of this polity to the crown, casting it as part of a continuum of loyalty, past and present.85 The use of the highly courteous verbal pairing ‘requirimus et rogamus’ – the highest register of epistolary politeness – indicated that their service would constitute a voluntary act, and it was asked of them through an elegant expression of its traditional nature and the promise of recognition and reward.86 This was closer to Edward’s diplomatic than domestic rhetoric of authority. Given that such letters would doubtless have been read and circulated among the compagnie of each knightly figure who received them, this would have been an effective way of broadcasting the king-duke’s favourable attitude and persona to a wide Gascon audience. In this way, Edward’s summons to Gascons reiterated his own and his secretariat’s understanding of the terms of local political engagement. This rhetoric was part of a successful political strategy at the local level: despite French forces dominating the duchy during the war of 1294–8,87 Gascons remained loyal to the king-duke in large numbers.88 Edward showed himself willing to recognize and reward the faithful service of Gascons, acknowledging an essential element of the local ideal of transactional loyalty. A number of draft letters, and several further entries in the Gascon Rolls, show the king-duke’s generosity to those wounded in his service during the war of 1294–8.89 In these letters to his seneschal, loyal Gascons are to be given any sustenance within what seems expedient to the king-duke’s council, 85

RG, 3, nos 3374, 3382–3. ‘quant carius possumus, vos requirimus et rogamus quatinus ad dictam terram nostram recuperandam, manutenendam et defendendam nos juvetis, sicut vos, et antecessores vestri nobis et antecessoribus nostris fecistis, omnibus temporibus retroactis; et in isto negocio taliter faciatis quod nos et nostri vobis teneamur, prout vobis ob bona servitia que nobis hactenus impendistis, recognoscimus nos teneri’. 87 For details of this conflict see Vale, Legacy, chapter 6; Neal, ‘Royal Women and Diplomacy’. 88 Vale’s figures indicate that only twenty senior figures defected to the French side; the lesser nobility mainly held for the king-duke. Furthermore, Patrice Barnabé has shown that even in cases where seigneurs changed allegiance, Edward was sometimes successful in holding the loyalty of their subordinates; see Vale, ‘Gascon Loyalty’, p. 210; P. Barnabé, ‘La compagnie dans l’Aquitaine plantagenêt: Essai sur une forme de solidarité (XIIIe–XIVe siècles)’, Annales du Midi 117:252 (2005), 461–82 (pp. 462, 466, 469, 471). 89 See, for instance, letters for Mr Bernard Fabri, canon of Bazas; Arnaud Guilem of Sensac; 86

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and which is commensurate with what has previously been given to ‘our fideli in England and Gascony’; a proclamation of unity and equivalence in political belonging between the two polities, defined by loyalty.90 A grant to Jean de Faro, for example, was to be upheld ‘if he chooses to remain in our service and to adhere constantly to us’.91 Having served faithfully alone was not enough; loyalty had to be maintained in order to merit Edward’s special grace. In this rhetoric, reward was not extended merely in recognition of services performed, but explicitly as a means of securing it for the future. Maintaining Gascon loyalty was fundamental not only to Edward’s control of the duchy but his capacity to rule elsewhere and to his diplomatic negotiating position. The king demonstrated this in a set of instructions sent on 27 November 1297 from Ghent to his teenage son, Edward of Caernarfon, who was acting as his lieutenant in England.92 The prince was charged to ‘apply good counsel’ to the matter of Gascony, as he loved the king’s honour; and also to advise how the king’s men there could best maintain it, in the context of a recent truce. Edward laid out how all this could be achieved in unusual detail, revealing how he understood the relationship between royal rhetoric and the delicate political realities of the duchy: By your letters also comfort them as much as you can, and entreat them greatly, so that they might wish to hold themselves as good men as they have always been in the past, and so that they shall make signs of a good declaration of accord that endures without France. Because if our adversaries behold that Gascony carries itself well, then our friends elsewhere will also carry themselves thus.93

This was a clear statement of the centrality of loyalty to Edward’s discourse of rulership in Gascony, and of its pivotal position in his conception of political relationships throughout his lands. In order to secure it, the prince was to deploy the full panoply of rhetorical flattery available: counsel, comfort and entreaty, and an appeal to the historical mythology of a loyal Gascon past; all the features of Edward’s own discourse there. All of this was to be done as soon as possible since, as the king warned his son, ‘you know well that the Gascons, unless they soon be comforted in good manner for [their] merit, may not be of good accord’.94 In other words, if Gascon loyalty were to be secured, it was vital that the prince, in the king-duke’s and Jean de Faro: RG, 3, pp. 315–6. See also SC 1/63/37, a note for similar draft letters on behalf of Peter de Buan; Jean Frembaud, citizen of Bordeaux; and Peter de Maignan. 90 Ibid., p. 315; ‘habito prius cum fidelibus nostris de Anglia et Vasconi’. 91 Ibid., p. 316; ‘si in nostro servicio commorari elegerit nobisque constanter adheserit’. 92 SC 1/45/103, see Appendix, no. 18. 93 ‘par vos letters les confortez ausint quantqe vous porrez, si es requerrez molt, quil se voillent tenir come bones gentz sicome il ont fait touz iours cea en arieres, e quil facent semblant de bon covyne, nomeement ceste sans Fraunce durant. Car si nos adversaires veent qe ceuz de Gascoigne se portent bien a ce qe nos amys par ailleurs se porteront ausint’ 94 ‘... vous saviegne bien de ceuz de Gascoigne, coment il soient par temps confortez en aucune bone manere car de merit ne puent il estre de bon covyne’.

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name, have letters made that allowed them to feel that their value had been appreciated fully and in a timely way. This loyalty, it was implied, was the crux of Edward’s diplomatic policy. The loyalty of Gascons in the face of the challenge presented by the French king would enable Edward to hold them up as an example of honour and service to the wavering English, and the rebellious Welsh and Scots. The effort to enhance Gascon loyalty through epistolary rhetoric was buttressed by a language of patronage. This served to elevate the underlying relationship to a conceptual realm that honoured both parties, amplifying the material rewards to be had. The king-duke’s letters of recognition for loyal service, noted above, constitute one expression of the rhetoric of reward characteristic of much Gascon correspondence. As Andrew Spencer has shown, Edward customarily rewarded exceptional service among his English nobility with high-status gifts such as deer and other ostensive signs of favour.95 His capacity to give significant gifts, such as lands, was no greater in Gascony than in England, but letters show Edward to have been adept at using words to create the impression of favour from relatively routine grants of authority, office or recompense. For example, his letter appointing Arnaud Caillau as mayor of Bordeaux in 1305 used gracious language to cast the appointment itself as a reward for service and virtue. ‘Having confidence, not unmerited, in your proven circumspection and law-worthiness’, it read, ‘and for the good and laudable service which you have devoted and can continue to devote to us in future, we make and constitute you our mayor of Bordeaux.’96 Royal letters to Gascony were more than usually determined to make patronage activity explicit. This was always the case to some extent in patronage discourse, as we have seen. However, Edward’s Gascon letters sometimes exemplified an even more elaborate attention to demonstrating patronage efforts. For instance, the king-duke’s reply to a request for aid from Geraud, comte of Armagnac and Fézensac in 1282, took care to itemize all the actions that had been taken to further the comte’s interests: Edward had written ‘with special instance’ to his advocates at the court of France to ‘assist you vigorously with their aid and counsel’; he had also instructed his seneschal of Gascony to ‘strive to bring the matter to a happy end’ and assist the advocates in their work; and finally, he had written to the king of France, asking him to ‘deal graciously’ with Geraud.97 Again, this was a feature closely reminiscent of 95 Spencer,

Nobility, p. 89. SC 1/12/56ii, printed in RG, 3, pp. 465–6; ‘de circumspectione et legalitate vestra comprobata non immerito confidentes et pro bono et laudabili servicio quod nobis impendistis et potestis impendere [in] futurum, vos facimus et constituimus majorera nostrum Burdegale’. 97 SC 1/12/38, a Latin draft, dated 18 November 1282; ‘advocatis etiam nostris in Curia Ffranc’ mandavimus et scripsimus instantia speciali quod vobis in negotio quod vos in dicta Curia iam contingit assistant viriliter cum consilio et auxilio salutari, quo magis idem negotium finem feliciter s…ari valeat adoptatum scripsimus etiam super hoc domino Johano 96

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Edward’s diplomatic discourse, placing Gascons in a privileged relationship to his epistolary persona. The privileged position of Gascony in Edward’s epistolary discourse was also reflected in the amplification of affective discourse dedicated to ‘comforting’ his vassals there. In 1294, for example, when the scale of the Gascon Crisis was just beginning to be understood in Westminster, the king wrote to those Gascon barons who had remained loyal, expressing his thanks for their solidarity, reassuring them of his, and offering an affective display of his distress for their struggle: The king to his beloved and faithful Amanieu de Lebreto, greetings.98 Among the many concerns by which we are constantly pressed these days, is the special care fervently intended by us towards succour for you, who for the assailing of our enemies and the defence of our right [iuris] and of our free patria have exerted your person manfully, as strenuously as liberally and prudently, to resist the invaders [hostibus]. Indeed, we suffer with you, whose courage [mentes], agitated by diverse disturbances, we note, while we, surrounded by various vexations, are compelled to experience a multiplicity of perplexities, anxieties and pressures. Hereafter we will be comforted and rejoice that, with fidelity being nourished, you upheld [extulistis] so laudably [laudabiliter] your reputation [fama] among the peoples, persisting constantly in the prosecution of the works begun [inchoasti], wherefore, behold, on account of this for your defence we have especially directed our dearest brother Edmund, earl of Lancaster, with a hundred knights [comitiva] of the magnates and nobles of our realm to parts of our duchy of Aquitaine, in whom, as much as in us, you should wish to trust and to provide those things which he will instruct you on our behalf; and have firm faith, without doubt, that we, together with our other faithful men, with all power [totis viribus], as we are bound, propose to be with you and never to fail [deficiemus] you, by the gift of God, in adversity. Given at Westminster, the 19th day of October.99

The letter drew once again on the template established by Edward’s extraordinary letter of thanks to Walter de Merton in 1273, which had itself been designed to reinforce his efforts in a time of tension.100 Astonishingly, a similar letter emphasizing the historic loyalty of Gascons and the reward that would flow from it was also sent at this time to those lords who had defected to the French. The favour they were promised was to be limited only by the king’s ‘fitting retribution’ for their recent lack of faith.101 de Greiliaco senescallo nostro Vasconie, quod dicotos advocatos nostros inducat specialiter ad premissa et finaliter domino regi France’ super negotio scripsimus memorato quod vobiscum velit agere super hoc graciose’. The last phrase, beginning ‘et finaliter’, is an interlineal addition. 98 The same letter was to be sent to seven named lords and a number of communities. 99 RG, 3, no. 4056. 100 See chapter 3. 101 SC 1/12/23, see Appendix, no. 12. This draft was prepared in chancery by Scribe W, indicating its superior diplomatic importance. The enrolled version is printed in RG, 3, no. 4059.

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Gascon correspondence featured prominently in the context in which such high-status rhetoric was redeployed, especially when loyalty was most directly threatened. A survey of the appearance of the word laudabiliter in the published Gascon Rolls of Edward’s reign shows a clear connection between crisis and praise in royal letters. Over 65 per cent of occurrences of the term in the years 1242–1307 fell during the Gascon Crisis, 1295–7.102 It was a measure of Edward’s acute anxiety over the potential loss of the duchy to the French. The work of keeping Gascons close required all the expertise of Edward’s secretariat, and all his political acumen. Conclusion

Epistolarity provided a useful tool for managing the relationship between the king and the lords of his domains that could be tailored to the expectations of local elites. The commitment of the king himself, and of his administration, to careful articulation of political alignment is evident in his correspondence. In England, royal letters proved powerful statements of political unity between the king and the English elite, especially in the first half of the reign. In tandem with deeds that demonstrated his commitment to the principles of the reform movement – such as due process, justice and counsel – Edward’s epistolary persona proclaimed his willing partnership with magnates. In turn, the construction of recipients in these letters represented them as the king’s natural partners in governance and in war, where royal interests were also always theirs. Although, in some respects, observance of the commands and requests made in these letters was a feature of habit rather than choice, the elite of the realm signalled their acceptance of the terms of relationship offered to them in letters when they responded positively to their demands. A distinct rhetorical toolkit for political management emerges from Edward’s Gascon correspondence. His epistolary persona in this polity was constructed around the related themes of loyalty and patronage; these were linked in both transactional and ideological ways. Command was eschewed for the courteous language of request, showing a scrupulous attention to the limits of ducal, as opposed to royal, authority. Edward’s strategy in Gascony was to offer swift comfort, demonstrable favour and praise for loyalty; to shame those who breached their promises; and to reinforce these rhetorical strategies pragmatically with oaths and documentation. While the differences between these discourses are marked, both represented harmonizing strategies in response to political pressure. In the case of the English barons, Edward’s epistolary attention to counsel reacted and contributed to an ever rising demand for participation in political process by 102 Twenty-six

overall, of which seventeen fall in the ‘Crisis’ years. Figures determined by a search of pdf copies of RG processed for full text via Optical Character Recogition (OCR).

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the elite. He promoted this ideology of partnership, while seeking to reinforce the boundaries of his independent authority to command by rhetorical means. In Gascony, the challenges of retaining loyalty were such that the king-duke’s letters rarely risked articulating the limits of magnate power. Instead, royal-ducal epistolarity emphasized the fidelity of Gascons, almost to absurdity, even while the internal discourse of his administration discussed their pard-like propensities. In both contexts, keeping friends close required all the skill the king’s clerks could muster.

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6 Rhetoric under Strain: Re-writing Royal Epistolarity In the 1270s and 1280s, royal epistolarity enjoyed substantial success in providing a discursive platform for promoting political harmony within the heartland of the king’s domains and facilitating friendly relations on the diplomatic stage. In the 1290s, by contrast, circumstances placed political and diplomatic dynamics under growing pressure, affecting the balance of epistolary power and disrupting the efficacy of the established discourse. The king and his clerks experimented with new forms of epistolarity that could continue to assert royal authority in these changed circumstances. Their experiments led ultimately to the emergence of a new, more commanding and less conciliar epistolary mode. The carefully calibrated royal ars dictaminis, with its attention to the perspective and priorities of the recipient, gave way to a direct and commanding form of letter-writing concerned primarily with asserting the king’s will. Expressed via the privy seal, such rhetoric was intimately associated with the king’s own voice and personal attention – an association that could be both flattering and threatening. This discourse would characterize the final decade of the reign. The tensions under which royal letter-writing was re-shaped in the 1290s were driven by both personal and political disturbances. Between 1290 and 1292, death deprived Edward of several of his closest companions and trusted advisors: his wife, Eleanor of Castile; his mother, Eleanor of Provence; and his chancellor and confidant, Robert Burnell. The loss of Gascony in 1294 damaged the king’s diplomatic prestige and his local political capital.1 The collapse of the royal bankers, the Riccardi of Lucca, further constrained his financial position, increasing his reliance on the goodwill and fiscal support of the nobility and the church.2 There was rebellion in Wales and dissatisfaction with royal government in Ireland.3 In 1295–6, the deaths of several of 1 Neal, ‘Royal Women and Diplomacy’; Vale, Legacy, pp. 177–9, 187–9. Vale, in particular, shows how Edward’s prestige as a diplomat and international arbitrator had been growing since the 1280s to the detriment of the Capetian crown. Events now reversed this trend. 2 Kaeuper, ‘Royal Finance’, pp. 107–9; R. Kaeuper, Bankers to the Crown: The Riccardi of Lucca and Edward I (Princeton, 1973), chapter 5; Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 402–4. 3 On the situation in Ireland, see R. Frame, ‘Historians, Aristocrats and Plantagenet Ireland, 1200–1360’, War, Government and Aristocracy in the British Isles c. 1150–1500, ed. C.

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Edward’s closest supporters among the earls, including his brother and uncle, unsettled Edward’s relationships with the elite: there were few men left who had forged their political careers and camaraderie with the king in his youth. The king’s emotional, financial, friendly and administrative networks were simultaneously disrupted. Edward’s friendly relationship with his northern neighbours was also thrown into turmoil, placing further demands upon his financial, military and socio-political capital. Alexander III’s granddaughter and heiress, Margaret, the Maid of Norway, became ill and died on her voyage to Scotland to assume the throne in 1290. This dynastic catastrophe generated significant political instability in Scotland.4 Partly in consequence of the fact that he had already undertaken to protect Margaret’s throne on her behalf and on behalf of his son, Edward of Caernarfon, who was betrothed to the girl, Edward was asked to mediate.5 He took full advantage of the opportunity, imposing a process of arbitration that enforced his superior authority and ultimately appointing a relatively minor baron of lands in county Durham, John Balliol, as the new Scottish king.6 Royal rhetoric in and about Scotland was re-directed to asserting claims to superior lordship of Scotland, which Edward forced upon the Scottish nobility in this moment of vulnerability. Against the backdrop of such turbulence, dissatisfaction with royal demands increased from as early as 1294, and persisted thereafter: the ‘crisis’ of 1297, when the earls of Norfolk and Hereford refused to serve the king on the continent, is the most famous but far from only example.7

Given-Wilson, A. Kettle and L. Scales (Woodbridge, 2008), 131–47 (pp. 140–1); K. J. Stringer, ‘Nobility and Identity in Medieval Britain and Ireland: The de Vescy Family, c. 1120–1314’, Britain and Ireland 900–1300: Insular Responses to Medieval European Change, ed. B. Smith (Cambridge and New York, 1999), 199–239 (pp. 234–5). On the Welsh revolt, see Griffiths, ‘Revolt of Madog ap Llywelyn’; M. Prestwich, ‘A New Account of the Welsh Campaign of 1294–95’, Welsh Hist. Rev. 6 (1972), 89–92. 4 On the consequences of Margaret’s death in Scotland and England, see G. W. S. Barrow, ‘A Kingdom in Crisis: Scotland and the Maid of Norway’, SHR 69:188 (1990), 120–41; A. A. M. Duncan, ‘Margaret [Called the Maid of Norway] (1282/3–1290), Queen-Designate of Scots’, ODNB; Helle, ‘Norwegian Foreign Policy’; M. Prestwich, ‘Edward I and the Maid of Norway’, SHR 69:188 (1990), 157–74. 5 This was certainly a construction of events that the English administration was keen to foster. 6 Edward I and the Throne of Scotland, 1290–1296: An Edition of the Record Sources for the Great Cause, ed. E. L. G. Stones and G. G. Simpson, 2 vols (Oxford, 1978), 1, p. 21; A. Duncan, ‘Revisiting Norham, May–June 1291’, War, Government and Aristocracy in the British Isles, c. 1150–1500, ed. C. Given-Wilson, A. Kettle and L. Scales (Woodbridge, 2008), 69–83. 7 See Crisis, ed. Prestwich, pp. 1–37; cf. A. King, ‘Crisis? What Crisis? 1297 and the Civil War that Never Was’, Edward I: New Interpretations, ed. A. King and A. M. Spencer (York, 2020), 163–84. Prestwich asserts (p. 37) that the ‘crisis’ of 1297 was not related to any underlying or ‘fundamental’ dissatisfaction with Edward’s governance; King’s argument, by contrast, is that dissatisfaction was real and fundamental, but was successfully contained and

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Correspondence in crisis: the balance shifts

The success of Edward’s epistolarity in the first two decades of his reign rested, as we have seen, on carefully cultivating those virtues of kingship that were prized by the political community, particularly in the aftermath of the Barons’ Wars: counsel, justice, due process and favour, all exercised and expressed in such a way as to construct a king in harmony with his barons, on whose support he could rely. Such rhetoric had limited capacity, however, to resolve real conflicts of priority or opinion between the royal sender and his correspondents. It depended on identifying and amplifying existing goodwill. It could not generate agreement out of rupture. Indeed, as the dictatores warned, if recipients detected hypocrisy or deceit in the sender’s words, it could fatally undermine the trust on which effective epistolarity depended, or at the very least prove a challenge to re-establishing smooth relations. An imbalanced epistolary ethos that failed to take – or be seen to take – account of recipients’ concerns, or showed inadequate respect for their status, risked breaches of both etiquette and allegiance. As the ‘Poetria nova’ (c. 1208–13) of Geoffrey of Vinsauf noted: Unless the inner ornament conforms to the outer requirement, the relationship between the two is worthless. Painting only the face of an expression results in a vile picture, a falsified thing, a faked form, a whitewashed wall, a verbal hypocrite which pretends to be something when it is nothing. Its form covers up its deformity; it vaunts itself outwardly but has no inner substance.8

Furthermore, one must avoid imputing dishonour, disgrace, jealousy or cowardice to one’s interlocutor, unless one intended to ‘lead … opponents into hatred, jealousy, or contention’.9 Fine rhetoric and elegant construction were inadequate to sustain the recipient’s belief and trust in the sender if words were not supported by action, or were inconsistent with recipients’ understanding of the sender’s character or deeds. When news that Philippe IV of France had successfully annexed Gascony reached Westminster early in 1294, it did more than cast doubt on Edward’s reputation for wise decision-making and skilful diplomacy. It also called into question the commitment to the principles of political interaction that his letters had previously been at pains to promote. Conflict had been brewing since the previous year,10 and the diplomatic negotiations that had failed so spectacularly to avert disaster had been held in secret. Few were privy to their conduct or conditions. The king’s envoy, his brother Edmund of Lancaster, had negotiated an agreement with Jeanne of Navarre and Marie of Brabant – two managed, such that no actual [armed, organized] ‘crisis’ eventuated. I am inclined to take King’s view. 8 Geoffrey of Vinsauf, ‘Poetria Nova’, p. 602. 9 Rationes Dictandi, p. 17. 10 Vale, Legacy, pp. 189–90; Neal, ‘Royal Women and Diplomacy’.

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of the royal brothers’ most prominent female relations at the French court – in which Gascony would be ceded to Philippe voluntarily, and received back under new and clearer terms of tenure, resolving the long-standing question of Gascon lordship. However, when the time came for control of Gascony to be returned to the English, Philippe denied all knowledge of the agreement. Rishanger reports that ‘thereupon, finding himself and his brother, the king of England, deceived, Edmund returned to England, and informed the King and his Council fully and certified them about the goings on’.11 The initial response in England had been outrage, as much at Edward as towards the French king.12 The situation was such a shambles that many chroniclers, presumably reflecting the bemusement of the English public, were driven to generate their own fantastical explanations. Rumours circulated that the debacle had been driven by Edward’s disordered desire for the French king’s young half-sister.13 The chronicler John Eversden went so far as to claim that the king’s relinquishment of Gascony had been done ‘unadvisedly’ in pursuance of the girl’s affections.14 Edmund’s personal account of the conduct of these negotiations, produced to defend his conduct after the planned exchange went horribly awry, was only slightly less shocking to the parliamentary community.15 Edmund had negotiated behind closed doors and agreed to keep the treaty concluded with his kinswomen secret, ostensibly in order to preserve the French king’s honour and avoid stirring up opposition at the French court before its terms could be completed.16 Secret missions were a customary diplomatic practice, and when

11

The episode is described in Willelmi Rishanger, Chronica et Annales, ed. H. T. Riley, RS 28 (London, 1865), pp. 140–2 (quote at p. 142: ‘Denique perpendens Edmundus, se, fratremque suum, Regem Anglise, delusos, reversus in Angliam, Regem et Consilium suum ad plenum informat et certificat de re gesta.’). See also Trivet, ed. Hog, pp. 329–31; Cotton, ed. Luard, p. 232; The Chronicle of Pierre de Langtoft, ed. T. Wright, 2 vols, RS 47 (London, 1868), 2, pp. 197–9. Trivet, and perhaps Rishanger, appear to have had access to Edmund’s account of proceedings, see n. 15 below, which may have been circulated as a newsletter; other contemporary accounts seem to know of its contents only indirectly and imperfectly; see W. M. Ormrod, ‘Love and War in 1294’, TCE 8 (2001), 143–52. 12 Morris, Edward I, pp. 269–70; Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 380–1; Ormrod, ‘Love and War’, pp. 147–8. 13 Ormrod, ‘Love and War’, pp. 144–5; Vale, Legacy, pp. 189–90; Neal, ‘Royal Women and Diplomacy’. 14 ‘inconsulte’; Florentii Wigorniensis Monachi Chronicon ex Chronicis, ed. B. Thorpe, 2 vols, English Historical Society (London, 1848–49), 2, pp. 269–70 (quote at p. 270). 15 Fœdera, I.ii, pp. 794. 16 Ibid. The earliest evidence for the king taking counsel with his barons on this issue comes from a report in an anonymous letter of 25 April 1294 (SC 1/32/44); see Ormrod, ‘Love and War’, p. 146 n. 18; M. C. L. Salt, ‘List of English Embassies to France, 1272–1307’, EHR 44:174 (1929), 263–78 (pp. 270–1). Edmund’s co-envoys, Hugh de Vere and John Lacy, were respectively the second son of the earl of Oxford and a king’s clerk, rather than high-ranking members of the baronage.

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things went smoothly they raised no questions.17 However, Edward’s barons had been led to expect and now demanded their right to advise and counsel the king, especially when taxation of any kind was concerned.18 When the campaign to regain the duchy became a matter of parliamentary discussion at Easter 1294,19 there was anger at baronial exclusion from the failed diplomatic efforts that had generated the ignominious loss of the territory and the present need for baronial support in the form of military service and funds.20 The objection to performing service in Gascony ultimately voiced by the earl of Arundel in 1295 was just one expression of dissatisfaction.21 More than ever, counsel became a sine qua non of magnate support. In this context, the capacity of the baronage to resist or question royal demands had increased, and a perfect alignment of purpose between the king and his magnates could not be assumed. Support for a military campaign was eventually agreed upon in the Easter parliament of 1294 and some of the king’s closest allies and most senior magnates began to muster forces and command supplies to be gathered.22 Yet the correspondence tells a story of simmering resistance. Sensing the seriousness of this disruption of political harmony, the king and his clerks attempted a rhetorical reinforcement of the royal right to command. In the writs of summons for Gascony sent to magnates in 1294–5, the crown at first abandoned its standard rhetoric of partnership and shared interests, and then sought to reinstate it when the initial writs failed to produce an adequate response.23 The king’s clerks were forced to issue not one but a veritable storm of writs throughout the following summer, and in several cases re-issued summonses to the same recipients.24 In addition, several parliamentary barons who were initially excused from service were subsequently summoned as well.25 These repeated efforts suggest that the initial writs had failed to summon the host. Epistolary rhetoric was not the only factor contributing to this military disaster, but it played its part.26 17

Neal, ‘Royal Women and Diplomacy’; EDPMA, pp. 203–17. Consent was demanded by ecclesiastical and lay barons alike; see H. S. Deighton, ‘Clerical Taxation by Consent, 1279–1301’, EHR 68:267 (1953), 161–92; Maddicott, Origins, pp. 276, 286, 288–92. 19 Cotton, ed. Luard, pp. 233–4; PROME. 20 Vale, Legacy, pp. 187–9; Morris, Edward I, pp. 269–70; Neal, ‘Royal Women and Diplomacy’. 21 Prestwich, Edward I, p. 384. 22 M. Morris, The Bigod Earls of Norfolk in the Thirteenth Century (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 155–6; Morris, Wars, pp. 241–2; Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 381–2, 406; PROME. 23 PW, 1, pp. 251–71. 24 Especially the Anglo-Irish and Scottish magnates, e.g. Theobald le Butler, PW, 1, pp. 259, 262–3. 25 PW, 1, p. 261. Roger de Huntingfield and several others who received the king’s summons of 16 July 1294 had been included in the schedule of those exempt from service directed to sheriffs on 14 June; see PW, 1, 259–60. 26 The king’s difficulties in fielding an army adequate for his Gascon campaign were exacerbated by a simultaneous uprising in Wales and a particularly stormy period of weather that 18

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The rhetorical experiment of the initial 1294 writs of summons for Gascony departed radically from epistolary custom and dictaminal norms. The number of writs that needed to be written out for sending in a short space of time might be argued to have led to hasty and unconsidered drafting, but this would be contrary to everything we have so far learned of the importance attached to royal epistolarity by Edward and his clerks, and the well-established processes of epistolary production. Letters on such a critical matter are unlikely to have issued from the chancery without, at minimum, royal knowledge and tacit approval. More likely, this was an attempt to develop a new discourse in which royal command superseded other considerations. It may even have been that Edward felt provoked by the unaccustomed resistance to his wishes, and the challenge to his popular reputation as a statesman. He may have felt it necessary to make a rhetorical show of force. This is the most likely explanation for the sudden abandonment of the habits of rhetorical gradation by rank, providing explanation and justification for actions and decisions with implications for the nobility, and highlighting the consensual and conciliar nature of the king’s policies. In contrast to these norms, in the writs issued in the second week of June, the crown adopted a template letter in which all recipients were represented as obliged to obey, making no allowance for status or position. There was no rhetorical distinction in the writs sent to Scottish and Irish earls, English barons, royal household knights, relatively minor tenants-in-chief, and the widows of some of Edward’s former confidants: all received summonses in the same direct wording, without modification for rank.27 Furthermore, these writs made little concession to explanation or persuasion. The narratio gave no rationale for war except that the king had ‘seen fit to initiate’ his passage to Gascony ‘from which the king of France maliciously proposes to disinherit us, for the succour of that land’.28 This brief justification lacked recognition of any recipient’s right or need to be given a full account of reasons for action. It represented the decision as belonging to the king alone; a right which Edward stubbornly maintained in the face of criticism of his recent diplomatic blunders. Such rhetoric stood in stark contrast to the letters of the previous decade, when magnate partnership had formed a cornerstone of royal policy and rhetoric.29 It made no effort to construct a shared interest in the campaign beyond labelling the French king’s actions ‘malicious’. This departure from long-standing practice cast the king’s commitment to the ideals and mechanisms of political assembly in a bad light. disrupted sea travel; see Morris, Wars, pp. 241–3; Morris, Edward I, pp. 275–6; Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 404–6; Griffiths, ‘Revolt of Madog ap Llywelyn’, pp. 12–13. 27 Fœdera, I.ii, pp. 803–4; PW, 1, p. 259. 28 Fœdera, I.ii, p. 803. ‘Quia ad terram nostram Vasconie, de qua Rex Francie maliciose nos exheredare proponit, passagium nostrum, in ejusdem terre succursum, jam duximum statuendum’. 29 See chapter 5; and also Neal, ‘Discourse’, passim.

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The petitio of the 1294 summons was constructed as a direct command, using the verb mandamus, intensified with an enjoining clause (firmiter injungantes) and a binding clause. In the latter, there was a further departure from the earlier formula by which mutual affective ties had been implied as the source of recipients’ natural and proper agreement with royal aims. Instead, a newly magisterial rhetoric was employed, binding recipients not through faith and love (in fide et dilectione) but through faith and homage (in fide et homagio). Each writ concluded with a brief sanctio, enjoining the recipient to ‘omit nothing’ in fulfilment of the king’s commands, but without any elaboration of persuasion on the grounds of love, trust, thanks or reward that had previously modified royal communication with the elite. These strategies were probably intended to articulate the gravity of the situation, but they also cast the sender–recipient relationship as one of subordination and duty rather than affect and partnership. The initial correspondence of the 1294 Gascon campaign thus articulated and thereby attempted to produce a dominant and commanding king in relation to a subordinate and obedient populace, undifferentiated by rank or jurisdiction. The recipients imagined here were not the king’s peers, advisors or friends; their interests and customary rights were entirely absent from the conceptualization of a newly homogenous relationship to the crown, defined according to feudo-legal obligation and directed solely by the king’s voluntas. It is little wonder, with so many principles of customary and persuasive epistolarity transgressed and in the context of challenges to royal credibility, that this met with little success. From Portsmouth, where he was impatiently awaiting troops, Edward issued further summonses during the ensuing weeks. However, there was no sign of rhetorical accommodation that might sweeten the bitter pill of command, or recognition that this strategy alienated the great men of the realm. No less a figure than John I, king of Scotland, was addressed in commanding terms almost identical to the earlier writs, with the further indignity that Edward’s titles were elaborated to include his claim to be ‘superior lord of Scotland’.30 Noting that John was summoned for service due ‘for lands and tenements in England’ only narrowly avoided the implication that Scotland itself was held in fief. This did little to mitigate the dishonourable subordination of his royal status that the writ implied.31 Given the familiarity of the Anglo-Scottish aristocracy with polite English epistolarity prior to 1286,32 this change of register must have been particularly jarring. After the failure of the first summons of 1294, it became clear in English royal circles that the assertion of command was proving a counter-productive 30

June 1294. See PW, 1, p. 261. For the ideological rhetoric of Anglo-Scots relations in this period, see A. C. Ruddick, ‘National and Political Identity’. 31 Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 372–3. For discussion of the relationship between Edward’s treatment of John I, and Philippe IV’s summons of Edward I to the parlement of Paris, see Morris, Edward I, pp. 265–6. 32 See chapter 4.

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rhetorical strategy and that a different epistolary approach was required. In the case of the Scottish aristocracy, a rhetoric of request modelled on diplomatic discourse was introduced.33 A suite of letters was issued to senior members of the nobility of Scotland on 29 June, in which the recipients were imagined in new and more honourable terms.34 The revised summons employed a similar hybrid rhetoric of obligation and courtesy to that which had begun to appear in 1282 in writs to English magnates. While reiterating the principle of obligation based on homage, a courteous use of rogare was adopted and extended, no longer as a moderating participle, but as a main verb. The revised petitio adopted the phrase requirimus et rogamus, the highest degree of polite and diplomatic language available in the royal epistolary lexicon. This language acknowledged (even if grudgingly) that service could not be commanded, but only requested of these recipients.35 But the damage had already been done: despite the expansive epistolary accommodations that they included, these writs too proved unsuccessful at raising adequate troops. The epistolary rhetoric of the revised Scottish writs sought to persuade by constructing the Scots as members of a wide, conciliar community of ‘friends’, whose interests were naturally united with those of the English monarch and crown, while granting that they sat outside the English polity proper.36 In emphasizing their commonality of interests and membership of a community of Edward’s ‘friends’, this rhetoric betrayed English anxiety about this very point. Indeed, as Julian Haseldine has argued, friendship was a rhetoric more frequently employed in letters of conflict as a means to ‘ameliorate tensions’, than among individuals with an intimate, personal connection.37 Talking of friendship could even lead to counter-productive signposting of the conflict one hoped to resolve. Perhaps to mitigate this possibility, the new Scottish writs were particularly careful to construct the courtliness and friendliness of the king’s relationship to this community, including elaborate sanctiones that repeatedly articulated the thanks 33

Although I do not discuss them here, the Anglo-Irish nobility was also summoned in similar terms. It was also at this time that summonses were issued to the parliamentary barons who had previously been exempt. See PW, 1, pp. 261–2. 34 Ibid., pp. 262–3. 35 The clerks who enrolled the revised writs noted tersely that such courtesies were not to be extended to certain recipients, such as Richard Siward and William de Ferrars, who while holding significant lands in Scotland were nevertheless to be summonsed principally in their capacity as English lords; ibid., p. 263. 36 For the oscillation between inclusion and differentiation of English royal discourse towards its non-English polities, see Ruddick, ‘Ethnic Identity’, especially pp. 24–8. For Edward’s failure to ‘build sufficiently firm relationships with a wide group within the Scottish political class’, see M. Brown, ‘Hearts and Bodies: Edward I and the Scottish Magnates, 1296–1307’, Edward I: New Interpretations, ed. A. King and A. M. Spencer (York, 2020), 105–24, and references therein (quote at p. 106). 37 J. Haseldine, ‘Friendship, Intimacy and Corporate Networking in the Twelfth Century: The Politics of Friendship in the Letters of Peter the Venerable’, EHR 126:519 (2011), 251–80 (p. 280).

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and commendation that would be due to them in return for their support, the honour they would acquire, and their love of the king and his interests. Belatedly recognizing its original blunder, the crown flattered certain Scottish nobles with particular rhetoric of distinction in the revised summons. In addressing Robert Bruce V, Lord of Annandale, the king called on him ‘as one who frequently devotes good and agreeable service to us’,38 singling him out as someone whose support for royal causes was praiseworthy and reliable. Meanwhile, in letters to a small number of the Scottish nobles, including Patrick VII of Dunbar, earl of March, personal elements of the relationship between sender and recipient were stressed, the king explaining that ‘your presence would better please us, with fewer men, than a greater number of men without you’.39 Other recipients, such as John ‘Black’ Comyn, earl of Buchan,40 however, continued to receive letters in which the sanctio enjoined them to ‘omit nothing’, retaining a particular emphasis upon command and obedience in their relationship to the king. The revised writs to the Scots generally recognized that these recipients had a unique political and legal relationship to the crown that warranted explanation, reasoning and persuasion concerning the need for war.41 They ostensibly presented an image of recipients with the right to choose to serve. However, the king and his clerks were apparently unwilling to concede certain ground. The case common to these letters was fundamentally a legal and ethical one, indicating the principal terms on which the king now expected to secure their support. It rested on the claim that the king of France had completely broken a treaty made between himself and Edward, and their peoples; a treaty which the king of England had observed faithfully. Even this concession to recipients’ concerns was grudging and qualified, however, as we shall see. Legal ideology was a common foundation of elite solidarity in European kingdoms, and, on one level, this reasoning was probably intended to persuade by constructing recipients as people who valued observance of law and legal commitments. It was a clever strategy; although domestic and international politics of the time might turn on matters of interpretation, in fact, there was widespread consensus on the importance of adhering to legal process. Even (or perhaps especially) rebellions against royal authority tended to be presented in terms of correcting legal transgressions or as defences of laws and lawfulness. The revised rhetoric cast the king as an especially trustworthy and lawful monarch, and one who had been wronged at law. Legal ideology was, however, a problematic ethos in the context of Edward’s continued prosecution of a legal domination of Scotland.42 Such a position 38

PW, 1, p. 263. Ibid. For this Patrick, see comments within F. Watson, ‘Dunbar, Patrick, Eighth Earl of Dunbar or of March, and Earl of Moray (1285–1369)’, ODNB. 40 F. Watson, ‘Comyn, John, Seventh Earl of Buchan (c. 1250–1308), Magnate’, ODNB. 41 Fœdera, I.ii, pp. 804–5. 42 On Edward’s approach to Scotland in these years, see Edward I and the Throne of Scotland, 39

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might have evoked quick sympathy and outrage from allies and was hard to refuse with honour. An appeal to feudal law through contumacy had underpinned the construction of magnate interests in Edward’s early summons to war in Wales. In the Scottish context, however, it conveyed a bitter reminder of Edward’s more unscrupulous practices. Since the earliest phase of his move to dominate Scotland, even before the Great Cause opened in May 1291, Edward displayed a cynical reliance on arguments from law and history to couch his claim in legitimacy.43 Letters survive in which he instructed the chapters and monasteries of England to pore over their records for any evidence that could help establish a precedent for this claim.44 Edward had been consistently at pains to document, demonstrate and signify the lawful bases of his actions in his Scottish dealings, even – and perhaps especially – when the outcomes were most likely to generate moral, social or political complaint.45 John I had already discovered that Edward was prepared to push his legal position to its fullest extent, summoning him to answer in English parliaments for Scottish affairs.46 These indignities were explained by reference to the king’s oft-mentioned duty to be ‘debtor in justice to all’ in his realm; a comforting frame of reference for English audiences, but one that represented the subjection of the Scottish king’s dignity to English political imperatives.47 Thus, for the Scots, the appeal to law in the revised writs was an implicit statement of their new and uncomfortably subordinate position. As he had done in correspondence with Llywelyn ap Gruffydd in the interbellum period in Wales,48 Edward encoded a statement of his ultimate superiority within his fine words of rational persuasion and formulaic process. Lacking a received language for communicating between sovereign kingdoms that were also linked by ‘overlordship’,49 the crown’s experiment with new, unsatisfactory modes of command contributed to further alienation among the Scots. Walter of 1290–1296, ed. Stones and Simpson; A. Taylor, ‘Recalling Anglo-Scottish Relations’; F. J. Watson, Under the Hammer: Edward I and Scotland, 1286–1306, Reprint edn (Edinburgh, 2005), chapter 2; G. W. S. Barrow, Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland, 4th edn (Edinburgh, 2005), chapter 3; Duncan, ‘Revisiting Norham’; Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 356–75. 43 E. L. G. Stones, ‘The Appeal to History in Anglo-Scottish Relations between 1291 and 1401: Part I’, Archives 9:41 (1969), 11–21; Taylor, ‘Recalling Anglo-Scottish Relations’, pp. 173–4, 192. 44 See, for example, SC 1/45/67, printed in Documents, ed. Stevenson, 2, no. 133, and SC 1/13/187, calendared in CDS, 2. nos 503–4. 45 Morris, Edward I, chapters 8–9; Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 366–9 ; Taylor, ‘Recalling AngloScottish Relations’, pp. 173–4. 46 Barrow, Robert Bruce, chapter 4; Morris, Edward I, chapter 8; Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 370–5. 47 Fœdera, I.ii, pp. 789, 792, 799. 48 Neal, ‘Weapons’, pp. 62–6. 49 S. W. Dempsey, ‘A Britain of Asymmetric Monarchies. Theorizing English Overlordship

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Guisborough noted that the Scottish nobility replied with nothing but ‘impotent and brief excuses’.50 By the following year, the Scots were in uprising, with most of those who had received the king’s writs in 1295 joining the rebellion against English overlordship.51 This situation was reflected in the king’s summons to the English magnates for a campaign against the Scots in 1295.52 In the aftermath of the Gascon debacle and with the failure of the 1294 writs fresh in the minds of royal clerks and king alike, royal letters attempted to demonstrate Edward’s commitment to partnership. The 1295 writs made some attempt to recapture the harmonizing discourse that had been efficacious earlier in the reign: both the narratio and petitio made reference to what would seem opportune to the king’s council, renewing the conciliar vocabulary of the previous decade. The introduction of this language into writs of summons was novel, and signalled an important concession to the recipient side of the royal epistolary relationship. The 1295 summons offered fully developed reasoning for war in Scotland, even though parliamentary discussion on the need for military action had recently taken place: the king’s Autumn Parliament had ended only a few days earlier.53 The explanatory effort was a form of concession, connected to the growing value of reasoning and rhetoric in political debate.54 It constructed recipients whose position in socio-political space warranted a full explanation of the king’s reasoning. Magnates’ compliance was thereby construed as resting as much on persuasion as on command. They were men who expected and were granted the right of deliberation. At the same time, however, there was no room for dissent and little time for discussion. The king’s concession to magnate expectations and interests was qualified. Following the failure of the 1294 writs and a tide of resistance to his military, fiscal and epistolary demands, Edward had been forced to demand fresh oaths of obedience; a fact of which he reminded his nobility here. The moral, legal and sacred nature of magnates’ commitment was emphasized to mitigate the possibility of delay, or worse, dissent. The narratio pointed out that ‘the king of Scotland has perpetrated many things against his due fealty, to the injury of the crown of our realm, to preserve and defend the integrity and wholeness of which you are obliged by a sacramental bond, as we have lately of Scotland and Wales in the Thirteenth Century’, Thirteenth Century Conference, (Cambridge, 2019). 50 Guisborough, ed. Rothwell, p. 264. 51 Michael Brown has shown how Edward’s failure to ‘build sufficiently firm relationships’ with the Scottish elite contributed to his failure to secure his lordship there: see Brown, ‘Hearts and Bodies’, p. 106. The present example shows how that failure began earlier than 1296. 52 P. A. Brand, ‘Edward I: Parliament of Autumn 1295, Introduction’, PROME; PW, 1, pp. 265–6. 53 PROME. 54 Cox, ‘Rhetoric’, p. 331; Shepard, Courting Power, pp. 6–7.

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received anew’.55 In this phrase, the effort to represent the alignment of royal and magnate interests was coloured with the implication that the baronage had to be compelled to assist. The rhetoric of these writs constituted an acknowledgement that the potential of elites to resist royal demands was real and dangerous. In an attempt to mitigate this risk, the king’s letters adopted a combination of explanation, reprimand and promises of reward. For instance, its sanctio affirmed the king’s complementary obligation to render thanks to his barons in return for meritorious service. This rearguard action to rebuild the relationship of mutual trust and advantage that had been the bedrock of effective political and epistolary relationships and action in the 1270s and 1280s revealed the fragility of elite unity, and the seriousness attached to the possibility of their dissent in royal circles. Nevertheless, many among the baronage remained generally unwilling to serve, with several pleading ill-health or other reasons to be excused.56 Perhaps, as Geoffrey of Vinsauf had warned,57 their scepticism had been aroused by the misalignment of the king’s epistolary promises and actions since the summer of 1294. Losing the audience: command, ‘crisis’ and epistolary misalignment

The dissatisfaction that can be detected in, and which was stoked by, the mishandled summonses of 1294–5 came to a head in the so-called ‘crisis’ of 1297. Although, as recent work by Andy King and Andrew Spencer has underlined, this ‘crisis’ was by no means a universal political uprising against Edward’s rule, and was in fact settled by normal political mechanisms rather than by civil warfare,58 it nevertheless constituted a period of genuine challenge to Edward’s earlier, easy authority. Problems facing royal finance in a time of war contributed heavily to the underlying dissatisfaction,59 but the political conflict was driven by a destabilization in royal–magnate relations. This is reflected in the fact that it was resolved by the re-issue of ‘the Charters’ – totems of the polity’s capacity to restrain the monarch.60 55

PW, 1, p. 265. In Prestwich’s terms, John de Warenne, ‘lacked enthusiasm’ for the command of Scotland; see Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 477–8 (quote at p. 477). His successor, Brian FitzAlan attempted to excuse himself on the grounds of poverty; see SC 1/17/62, printed in Documents, ed. Stevenson, 2, no. 466; F. Watson, ‘Fitzalan, Sir Brian (d. 1306), Baron’, ODNB; Morris, Edward I, p. 301. 57 See above, p. 152. 58 King, ‘What Crisis?’; Spencer, Nobility, pp. 227–45. 59 Kaeuper, ‘Royal Finance’; Prestwich, Edward I, chapter 16. 60 H. Rothwell, ‘The Confirmation of the Charters, 1297, Pt 1’, EHR 60:236 (1945), 16–35; H. Rothwell, ‘The Confirmation of the Charters, 1297, Pt 2’, EHR 60:237 (1945), 177–91; H. Rothwell, ‘The Confirmation of the Charters, 1297, Pt 3’, EHR 60:238 (1945), 300–15. 56

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The nominal cause of dissatisfaction was an unusual writ summoning Edward’s magnates to fight on the continent. It adopted a polite and diplomatic tone (rogamus), a novelty that introduced ambiguity even as it attempted to flatter magnate sensibilities. Further, it refused to specify the location of the campaign, or to assure them that he would take the field at their side.61 The earls of Norfolk and Hereford declared the writs ‘insufficient’ and refused to serve; they suspected the king, rightly, of using rhetorical trickery to disguise plans to split his forces between Gascony and the Low Countries. They noted, too, that the language of request made the service a matter of choice rather than obligation; an expression which they took to indicate the king’s awareness of the uncustomary and voluntary nature of the call.62 They withdrew from court and proceeded to obstruct efforts to raise a tax on wool by which to fund the expedition. The critique of the royal writ mounted by the earls of Norfolk and Hereford, and their supporters, shows how well acquainted with the norms of royal epistolarity they were; they understood how to ‘read’ the minute adaptations of rhetoric. It also indicates the scepticism with which they approached the platitudes of royal letters since Edward’s promises and actions had begun to diverge. Their specific defiance was symptomatic of a general call for the renegotiation of the king–magnate bond in the wake of the disastrous loss of Gascony in 1294; a call symbolized by increasing pressure for a reissue of the Charters as a sign of royal goodwill. In such a context, careful attention to a rhetoric of good kingship and strenuous efforts to prove the connection between the king’s words and deeds might have been sensible courses of action. Instead, a more autocratic royal rhetoric emerged in response to this rupture of elite political relations. The epistolary response to the situation reveals how acutely royal government felt Edward’s persona to be under threat. On 12 August 1297, the king attempted to exert control over the dissent that had begun to brew in the wider political community in response to the earls’ withdrawal.63 Undoubtedly, Norfolk and Hereford themselves were conducting a campaign of propaganda and public justification of their actions. The king’s proclamation, issued as a letter patent in French to all the sheriffs of England for maximal publicity, claimed that because ‘some people might say and give the people to understand things that are not true’, he would set the record straight.64 He proceeded to lay out an account of events that, misrepresenting some exchanges, showed him in a good light; taking counsel and acting with propriety. He denied having As Andy King has argued, this was likely undertaken at the king’s direction; see King, ‘What Crisis?’ pp. 176–8. 61 Prestwich, Edward I, p. 420. 62 ‘Articles of Grievance (Monstraunces), 1297’, EHD, 469–72. 63 Fœdera, I.ii, pp. 872–3, translated in ‘Royal Proclamation, 12 August 1297, Udimore’, EHD, 477–80. This proclamation appears to have been issued patent, in French, for maximum public reception. 64 See also Cotton, ed. Luard, pp. 330; King, ‘What Crisis?’ pp. 169–70.

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rejected or even having seen any ‘Articles’ that the earls claimed to have shown him, but his letter in fact revealed a detailed knowledge of their demands.65 The fact that this argument moved beyond the court to become a contest of public opinion was a sign of its significance. The king’s proclamation was intended to forge a bond directly between king and people, bypassing the earls’ support; but for those acquainted with royal rhetorical practice its tone and the unusually detailed account of his actions probably undermined that effort. The king protested too much. Two weeks later, although still unreconciled with Norfolk and Hereford, Edward departed on a long-delayed tour of the Low Countries, during which he attempted, with little success, to muster forces for his war on France from among his sons-in-law and other allies.66 The future Edward II, only thirteen at the time, was appointed lieutenant.67 The circumstances of the young prince’s regency were considerably more challenging than that of his cousin in the previous decade. The discontent in England, together with the multiple fronts to which Edward had directed military and diplomatic envoys, had reduced parliament to those who ‘stood about in the king’s chamber’, in the scathing estimation of Walter of Guisborough.68 The rupture of his relationships with Norfolk and Hereford and the fact that several of the comital group represented a new generation further deprived the king of a reliable cadre of noble leaders to whom he could confidently depute his government in England.69 Those on whom he could rely – such as the earls of Lincoln and Surrey – were already undertaking commissions in Gascony or Scotland. The younger Edward thus undertook his first important commission for his father with the support of a council comprised mainly of senior officials and clerks. The coincidence of this council’s relatively junior and administrative composition enabled the king to experiment with forms of epistolary authority once again. 65

Cf. ‘Articles of Grievance’. Edward I, pp. 298–300; Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 424–6. See also Prestwich, ‘Edward I and Adolf of Nassau’, pp. 127–8; Barraclough, ‘Edward and Adolf’, pp. 252–3; B. Lyon, ‘The Failed Flemish Campaign of Edward I in 1297: A Case Study of Efficient Logistics and Inadequate Military Planning’, Handelingen der Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent 59:1 (2005), 31–42; B. Lyon and M. Lyon, ‘The Logistics for Edward I’s Ill-Fated Campaign in Flanders (1297–1298)’, Handelingen der Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent 55:1 (2001), 77–91; Fryde, ‘Financial Resources’, pp. 1170–3. 67 H. Johnstone, Edward of Carnarvon, 1284–1307 (Manchester, 1946), pp. 35–43. The prince’s position as locum tenens may have been purely nominal. 68 Quoted in Morris, Edward I, p. 299. 69 The earls of Gloucester, Lancaster, Oxford and Pembroke all died in the years 1295–6, and there had been no earl of Devon since the death of Isabella de Forz in 1293. However, Spencer argues that the king’s relations to the comital class remained effective; see Nobility, especially chapter 8. Note that Morris argues Bigod had never been recognized by contemporaries as ‘an important or imposing figure’, and – perhaps somewhat unkindly – that his rise to political prominence in 1297 was effectively accidental, ‘for want of other candidates’. See Morris, Bigod Earls, pp. 189–90. 66 Morris,

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On 24 August 1297, aboard ship off Dover waiting to set sail for Flanders, the king sent parting instructions to his son under the privy seal that pressed his military and fiscal agenda forward, despite the forceful resistance of the earls of Norfolk and Hereford.70 It commanded the prince and his council to issue a proclamation concerning the levy and prise on wool that the earls had violently disrupted only two days before. It set forth in detail the arguments that were to occupy the narratio, articulating the grounds on which prise rested. This letter reveals the king’s uncompromising position. The barest minimum of initiative was permitted to the lieutenant’s administration to revise the king’s rhetoric. Edward concluded the petitio by noting that some discretion might be warranted: ‘we place the doing of this announcement at your discretion, so that it may be done as seems good to you’. Rather than seeking a rapprochement, however, he further developed the antagonistic interpretation of events that he had publicized in his proclamation of 12 August. Norfolk and Hereford could not have failed to notice that this proclamation granted the general public more explanation of the king’s need for war and finance than the writs of summons they had lately received.71 The proclamation reiterated the central issues of fealty and necessity, reinforcing them with threats of displeasure. In his anger, the king advocated the risky strategy, against which Vinsauf had warned,72 of pointing to the earls’ apparent faults, rather than attempting to locate common ground. First was lack of fealty. The new proclamation, to be circulated in letters patent of the great seal, was to remind ‘the said earls and all who are sworn to us’ of their obligation to carry out what the king had commanded, and not to impede or disturb ‘that which has been ordained for the sustenance of those who follow their liege lord, and of those who go with us’. The proclamation was intended, in other words, to impute disloyalty and dishonour directly to the earls and anyone else joining them in resistance to arrangements for the king’s continental campaign. Second was necessity, for the salvation of the king and his realm. This was both a moral and a legal argument, as the king’s attorneys explained to the pope.73 Necessity amplified the moral requirement of vassals to aid their lord. Furthermore, it provided legal grounds on which lords could make extraordinary demands of those vassals. 70

SC 1/45/76, printed in Crisis, ed. Prestwich, no. 129. Doig, ‘Political Propaganda’, p. 265; G. L. Harriss, ‘Aids, Loans and Benevolences’, Hist. J. 6:1 (1963), 1–19 (p. 5); King, ‘What Crisis?’, pp. 169–70. 72 See above, p. 152. 73 For necessitas in Edward’s argumentation, see G. Post, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought: Public Law and the State 1100–1322 (Princeton, 1964), pp. 251, 285, 320, 327. In the particular context of 1297, see Rothwell, ‘The Confirmation of the Charters, 1297, Pt 1’, p. 18. For its use in letters of Henry III, see Hennings, ‘Language’, pp. 240–5. Edward also attempted to use necessitas as the basis of an epistolary plea to certain barons of the Agenais to return to his fealty from the king of France, see SC 1/12/23, printed in RG, 3, no. 4059. This letter was drafted in Latin by Scribe W for the great seal; see Appendix, no. 12. 71

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The king’s letter advised that all these demands be enjoined upon the community ‘on the faith and homage they owe to us’ as they did ‘not wish to be accused of our disherison, and the injury of us and those who come with us, and of the realm also’. Further, they were not to do or say anything against the form of the proclamation, or to disrupt the king’s plans. Although he did not provide a true ‘form of letters’, Edward recommended forceful rhetoric and a considerable, punitive emphasis in the sanctio. The only concession he was prepared to make was to acknowledge that these were extraordinary requests that would not be considered to set a precedent for future demands. Letters to that effect were to be made available to all who desired them, for a fee. Royal letters survive at a higher frequency from this seven-month absence than from the three-year period of Edmund of Cornwall’s lieutenancy in 1286–9.74 They were characterized by a commanding epistolary discourse from which acknowledgement of discursive political process was almost entirely absent, and which permitted the prince and his council minimal initiative. Departing from the attention to counsel that Edward had paid to his correspondence in 1286–9, many of his letters in 1297–8 issued simple instructions to implement decisions he had already taken.75 This shift was facilitated by the composition of the lieutenant’s council: it was not a body to whom the courtesy of counsel needed always to be extended since there were few, if any, members of the nobility involved. The fact that many of these men owed their position to the king facilitated the expansion and development of the more commanding discourse that had been signalled in the 1294 writs of summons. Edward’s approach to providing legal remedy by letter during this period reflected the lesser dignity of the lieutenant’s council, and perhaps the king’s decreasing trust in the mechanisms of elite assembly to provide appropriate counsel and aid. Instead of encouraging resolution by discussion, even relatively minor matters were to be deferred until the king’s return. The king’s travelling secretariat adopted a common formula for concluding the many instructions of this kind that were issued from Ghent in the last months of 1297: legal actions against a given person were to be put in respite ‘until the return of the said [person] to England, or until we have commanded otherwise about it’.76 Where discretion was allowed to the prince, it was not the calibrated degree of conciliar action that Edward had recommended in the 1280s as a means of working and being seen to work with his magnates. Instead, the prince and council were merely instructed to inquire into the truth of allegations made 74

SC 1 contains fifty-two extant letters to Edmund in 1286–9, and forty-four letters to Edward of Caernarfon and his council in 1297–8. For illustrative letters from the latter period, see Appendix, nos 13–18, supplementing the documents printed in Crisis, ed. Prestwich. 75 SC 1/45/77, see Appendix, no. 13. 76 SC 1/45/100, see Appendix, no. 16: ‘les assises si les soient arraignees sicome est desus dit; preignent delai e soient mises en respit tant qe au retorner du dit Johan en Engleterre, ou tant qe nous en eoms autre chose commandee’. The letter is dated 18 November, 25 Edw I.

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to the king and outlined in the narratio of a particular letter. The actions that should be taken if allegations were found to be true were wholly or partly specified, again restricting the council’s capacity to direct royal governance and justice. In some instances, the king not only instructed cases to be deferred, but over-ruled judicial process to order the reseisin of properties or franchises allegedly taken from men in his service during their absence.77 Such instructions were a striking departure from the principles of Edward’s kingly discourse during his absence in Gascony in the 1280s. A new kind of favour also entered royal epistolary instruction: one closely linked to the transactional favour for loyalty seen in Gascon correspondence.78 Edward’s letters to Cornwall concerning actions to be taken in favour of petitioners or suppliants had revolved around a rhetoric of due process and counsel.79 Now, in his letters to his son, Edward linked favour increasingly to loyalty, and explicitly, to service. The prince and his council were instructed to arrange legal protection and restitution for many who had gone to Flanders in the king’s service. The similarities between this and the Gascon correspondence strongly imply increasing anxiety concerning the loyalty of the English polity. The increasingly authoritarian tone of royal letters at this time was accompanied by a rise in the rhetoric of grace. While this might seem counterintuitive, these ideological elements formed two sides of the same coin. In the 1280s, Edward had apparently been reluctant to exercise his extra-judicial powers, except in defence of the rights of the royal family itself.80 His letters had carefully constructed an image of the king founded on adherence to process, rather than circumvention of it. In his letters to the prince, however, royal grace was frequently cited. The special grace extended to those serving with the royal army paralleled the king’s pardon for homicide, which Edward had begun to exercise with greater enthusiasm at this time.81 On 25 October, Edward ordered the restoration of lands and tenements to four Scots serving with him in Flanders, which had been taken into his hands on account of the war in Scotland, ‘wishing to do them special grace’.82 The connection of his special grace to the quality of service became a common feature of Edward’s subsequent epistolary discourse. On 8 October, the king wrote in favour of Henry de Leybourne, who had been disseised of the manor of Byfleet by the executors of the king’s late clerk, Mr William de Montfort. Edward ordered that Henry, or his attorneys, be returned 77 Such was the case of Henry de Leybourne in the manor of Byfleet, which the king ordered to be returned to him or his representatives, in a letter of 8 October 1297, discussed further below, pp. 166–7. 78 See chapter 5. 79 Neal, ‘Discourse’, pp. 147–52, 155–8. 80 Ibid., pp. 160–1. 81 N. D. Hurnard, The King’s Pardon for Homicide before A.D. 1307 (Oxford, 1969), pp. 311–17; Prestwich, Edward I, p. 284. 82 SC 1/45/91, see Appendix, no. 15.

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‘without delay to the same state that he was when he departed for our service’, with respect to the disputed manor. This command was made, the narratio explained, ‘because it is appropriate that those who especially serve us should enjoy special grace in what they do for us (my emphasis)’.83 The polyptoton developed through the ‘specialness’ of both service and grace reinforced the connection between these ideals. Special grace implied evading or subverting normal judicial process by virtue of royal authority. The king also instructed his son to offer certain individuals favour that overrode the principle of equity. A telling example comes from Edward’s letter in favour of Geoffrey de Geneville of 1 October 1297. De Geneville, the king’s friend and former justiciar of Ireland, had recently accepted the position of marshall after the earl of Norfolk’s refusal to serve.84 According to a complaint submitted to the king, his franchises in Ireland had been infringed by the new justiciar, presumably including his lordship of Trim where he had the unique distinction of holding the four crown pleas of arson, treasure-trove, rape and forestalling.85 The morrow of All Souls had been set to hear this complaint before the chancellor, John Langton, and chief justice, Roger le Brabazon, but de Geneville was already with Edward on campaign. The king evidently had no time to spare for due judicial process, and no care to uphold the actions of the Irish justiciar at a time when de Geneville’s presence and support in Flanders was so vital. In consequence, the king overrode the processes of his court, and ordered the prince to ‘cause reason and right to be done with favour to our said Marshall, as much as, or more than if we and he were there in our own person [my emphasis]’.86 Proceeding from divine grace, royal grace was a power not limited by due process, or assembly politics. It was a special power, the exercise of which emphasized the king’s divine attributes and his right to rule. The rise of grace and its cousin special favour in royal epistolary rhetoric during a challenging period for royal authority served to make this point emphatically. Whereas the king’s instructions to Cornwall had been scrupulous in recommending judicial processes in which all parties could feel satisfied, his epistolary discourse was no longer concerned to be seen to be fair. Edward had, at least temporarily, abandoned his concern to be the ‘debtor in justice to all’. He had become instead the debtor in grace and favour only to those whose loyalty was unquestioned, and whose service was willing and active. It was notable that this discourse was 83

SC 1/45/84, printed in Crisis, ed. Prestwich, no. 147. ‘Geneville [Joinville], Geoffrey de, First Lord Geneville (1225x33–1314), Soldier and Administrator’, ODNB. 85 B. Hartland, ‘Vaucouleurs, Ludlow and Trim: The Role of Ireland in the Career of Geoffrey de Geneville (c. 1226–1314)’, IHS 32:128 (2001), 457–77 (p. 469). 86 SC 1/45/82, see Appendix, no. 14; ‘nous vueillantz qe bone e hastive dreiture sue ce li soit faite; vous mandoms qe al dit nostre Mareschal faciez faire en sa dreit querele reason e droiture oveque favour, tant avant ou plus qe si nous e li yfeussoms en propre persone. E ce ne soit leissezz.’ 84

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expressed in letters that were themselves more narrowly communicative than royal letters of the past: they were administrative mandates between king and functionary, rather than performative statements of alignment between king and polity. This set a precedent for royal epistolarity as it developed in the final decade of Edward’s reign. By mid-October, however, the prince and his council had been forced to agree to the ‘Confirmation of the Charters’, and on 5 November, the king ratified them.87 Having received royal letters and messengers to this effect, the council was able to secure the earls’ agreement to march on Scotland, where the earl of Surrey had recently met with an ignominious defeat at Stirling.88 While the political tensions in England eased, the king’s continental plans received a further blow: his main ally, Adolph of Nassau, king of the Romans, would not be joining him.89 In light of this news, the rhetorical imperatives shifted firmly in favour of the English political community once more, and royal letters began to make gestures towards the principles of partnership that had underpinned earlier discourse. From late November, Edward’s letters to the prince and his council began to call once more on the discourse of due processes of inquiry, giving counsel, and applying adequate and lawful remedies without transgressing the laws or customs of the realm. On 12 November, three letters with almost identical wording were sent in favour of two knights in Edward’s service who were facing actions of novel diseisin, instructing the prince to adjourn and put in respite those actions, if he should find that they had been brought as alleged.90 The latter qualification was a subtle but important shift towards due process compared to the letters of September and October, which had permitted the prince no initiative or jurisdiction even of confirming the claims of those to whom the king’s grace was to be shown. A letter in favour of Mr William de Leybourne, for example, also departed from the example of the king’s recent instructions to defer assizes and overturn judgements. Instead, it commanded the prince and his council to listen ‘carefully to their evidence and reasons’, and having done so to offer ‘sufficient’ counsel and redress.91 By not specifying an outcome or 87 J. G. Edwards, ‘Confirmatio Cartarum and Baronial Grievances in 1297’, EHR 58:230 (1943), 147–71; J. G. Edwards, ‘Confirmatio Cartarum and Baronial Grievances in 1297 (Continued)’, EHR 58:231 (1943), 273–300. This orthodoxy is now challenged by the cogent arguments of Andy King that the council had likely been pre-authorized to take this action by the king, before or during his journey to Flanders; see King, ‘What Crisis?’ pp. 171–2, 174–5, 177–8. 88 Morris, Edward I, pp. 303–5. 89 Barraclough, ‘Edward and Adolf’, pp. 251–3; Prestwich, ‘Edward I and Adolf of Nassau’, pp. 132–5. 90 SC 1/45/94–6. SC 1/45/95 is printed in Crisis, ed. Prestwich, no 167. I have confirmed from the MSS that the other two are identical, mutatis mutandis. Another, almost identical letter was sent on 18 November in favour of John Wadham and his wife Elizabeth, SC 1/45/100; see Appendix, no. 16. 91 SC 1/45/101; see Appendix, no. 17: ‘vous mandoms qe sa monstrance e ses resons bien

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response, this letter permitted the regency council considerably more initiative than hitherto. Royal letters also began to reaffirm the principle that the crown should do no wrong in giving redress. From 18 November, the introduction of a new rhetorical element renewed the legal boundaries of royal action. Edward commanded his son to ‘apply such counsel and redress as you can, without any wrongdoing (my emphasis)’, in the case of William de Leybourne so that ‘he may feel that remaining with us [in our service] accrued profit and avoided damage to him’.92 Here, the principle that service should incur no harm was further qualified by the concept that in restoring the rights and state of its vassals, the crown also should do no wrong. In other words, the boundaries of legal and political propriety were once more to be observed. The resumption of certain elements of normative political discourse in the king’s instructions to the council at this time supports the inference that his abandonment of these terms was not solely the practical result of the council’s administrative composition, but a reflection of wider political issues. By such signals, royal letters began to proclaim the king’s intent to re-establish a working relationship with his political community, resting upon due process and the observation of customary limits on royal grace and intervention. With the return of Norfolk and Hereford to royal peace, such rhetorical gestures had regained political importance. The resumption of a rhetoric of counsel was accompanied by a renewed emphasis on the procedural and customary limits of royal will. On 23 November, a letter instructed the prince and his council to examine and evaluate the evidence of personal debts due to John de Engaine, and to ‘cause the said debts to be raised and paid to the said John, or to his attorney in his name, with as much haste as you can, according to the laws and customs of our realm [my emphasis]’.93 In this renewed discourse, the favour to be received in return for loyal service to the king was no longer cast as a result of special grace, but as a proportional and just reward, and a fulfilment of the king’s natural obligation to his vassals. On 8 November, the king’s letter to the prince and his council in favour of Thomas de la Roche explained that ‘since we do not at all wish that he should incur damage for his good and loyal service, as according to reason he should not’, the prince should return his possession to the state in which it had been at his departure for the king’s service.94 By framing reward as justified by reason, this entendues, mettez y tien redrestement come vous porrez sans misprendremesprendre tant enfaciez, qe son estat sont sauvez en tien mander quil se pusse tenir apparez par reson, e quil apartenie qe sa demoere devers nostre le cregne profiter e mirent de damage’. The letter is dated 18 November, 25 Edw I. 92 SC 1/45/101; see Appendix, no. 17. 93 SC 1/45/102, ‘facez lever les dites dettes e paer au dit Johan, ou a son attorne en nomi de lui, le plus en haste qe vous porrez, selonc les leys e les usages de nostre Roiaume’. The letter is dated 23 November, 25 Edw I. 94 SC 1/45/93, printed in Crisis, ed. Prestwich, no. 166.

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rhetoric anticipated the attention and scrutiny of the elite political community, and represented the king as acting within its expected parameters. Royal letters re-articulated the principle that royal service should not be permitted to cause the king’s men any loss or detriment, but avoided recent assertions that service should lead to special grace. The normalization of political relations had led to a normalization of the rhetoric of reward. While the vocabulary of counsel and due process had returned, however, the king did not completely abandon his demanding tone. In fact, as counsel re-emerged in royal epistolarity, so did sanctiones emphasizing the necessity of compliance. Although the king’s letters at the beginning of the regency had been direct and commanding, none had included a sanctio. In contrast, after Edward’s ratification of the Charters, several letters did so, adopting the simple phrase ‘omit nothing in this’. In this way the king amplified his commanding voice in correspondence issued throughout November–January.95 Replacing partnership: service, satisfaction and displeasure

Early in Edward’s reign, as we have seen, royal discourse centred on partnership, which was developed through the concept of counsel and by the cumulative construction of shared interests between king, magnates and senior administrators. Although counsel had reappeared in certain correspondence after the Confirmation of the Charters in 1297, in the longer term, the king and his clerks sought a new ethos around which to structure royal epistolarity suitable for the more authoritarian approach to governance reflected in the increasing use of the privy seal. Satisfaction and displeasure developed as the twin pillars of this new discourse for directing and correcting the actions of royal officials, not as partners in, but instruments of royal decision-making. Satisfaction as transaction

After 1297, satisfaction became a common rhetoric by which the king attempted to encourage consistently loyal and obedient service in administrative and military affairs, affirming those who fulfilled the transactional requirements of their role. This was in sharp contrast to the years after Edward’s accession, in which epistolary expressions of thanks and approval for services had been rare and special occasions and gratitude was reserved primarily for the diplomatic sphere. Expressing thanks or satisfaction provided an opportunity to amplify those qualities that seemed most important in a given context, since saying ‘thank you’ begs the question ‘for what?’ Epistolary answers to that question inevitably pointed to the parts of the sender–recipient relationship that the 95

‘E ce ne lessez’, or sometimes ‘E ce ne lessez de fere’. For example, see SC 1/45/93, 98, 106 and 109 (unpublished).

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crown most valued at a given moment: generally, from the 1290s, the answer was obedience and fulfilment of specific commands. The letters in which the king expressed satisfaction in the final decade of his reign employed a lexicon that largely avoided terms associated directly with royal grace. The ‘thanks’ expressed in these letters was not the gratitude of royal grace, which marked an action as special, voluntary and exceptional, situating it beyond the king’s jurisdiction, or capacity to command.96 Instead, the king’s letters thanked (mercioms) recipients, or declared him satisfied (appaez) with their work. This language signified the king’s praise for duties done, situating those actions specifically within the recipient’s obligations. Employing this language enabled royal letters to promote desired habits of obedience. The king acknowledged the utility of giving thanks for reinforcing services rendered. He said as much in a letter to his captain in Scotland, his cousin Aymer de Valence, on 16 June 1306, in the aftermath of Robert Bruce’s withdrawal of homage to Edward and coronation as king of Scots. Expressing his delight in news of the capture of Robert Wishart, bishop of Glasgow, he wrote, ‘We pray you that you should warmly thank the good men of your company on our behalf for bearing themselves well in our service, and that you should comfort them in every good way that you can, so that they might better wish to carry on in our service and to make what good effort they can.’97 De Valence received several letters in which he was given such instructions. For instance, on 12 June 1306, Valence was told to pass on the king’s thanks to the ‘brothers Haliburton, for bearing themselves so well and loyally towards us, and we wish you to tell them on our part that if they put their effort and intent to good effect, we will be well minded to return their good service to them’.98 In the same letter, the king further ordered Valence to ‘say and make known similarly to our foresters of Selkirk, so that they shall serve us well and assiduously, and do it well’. Such letters instilled the utility of satisfaction as a tool of behavioural reinforcement in all Edward’s captains in the field. 96

Cf. gratitude and grace in diplomatic correspondence, see chapter 4. SC 1/47/82, ‘vous prions qe vous merciez cherement depar nous a vos bones gents qui sont en vostre compaignie de ce qil se sont si bien portez en nostre servise et que vous les confortez en totes les bones maneres qe vous porrez par quoi il eent meilleure volunte daler en nostre service et dyfaire le bon exploit quil porront’. Note that remarks such as this were regularly omitted from printed abstracts such as in CDS; see CDS, 2, no. 1786. Full transcripts of this and many letters on Scottish questions are in Palgrave’s transcripts, now at PRO 31. For this letter, see PRO 31/7/63, ff. 10–12. 98 SC 1/47/90, calendared in CDS, 2, no. 1782. ‘E vous mandrons qe vous merciez mout de par nous les .. freres de Haliburton de ceo qe eaux si sont si bien et si leaument portez devers nous, et volonsqe vous les diz de par nous, qe par quoi qe eaux mettent lur peine et lur entente de bien faire; qe nous sumes en grant volentee de lur rendre lur bon servise. E meismes ceo faites dire et saver a noz foresters de Selkirk par quei eaux leaument et peinblement nous servent et bien le facent.’ For the full text, see Appendix, no. 20 (b). I have also checked my transcript of the original against Palgrave’s transcript at PRO 31/7/63, ff. 58–9. 97

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Satisfaction of this kind became a key ideological touchstone of privy seal letters. Adopted as a common form of captatio benevolentiae, it framed the subsequent instruction as part of a continuum of good and obedient service. In a letter to Walter de Langton, bishop of Chester and treasurer, on 21 April 1304, Edward declared himself ‘satisfied’ with the news that Langton had dispatched certain monies as promised, before issuing new instructions.99 It also appeared in a new form of sanctio: favours were no longer to be done ‘so that [the beneficiary] senses our intervention to have been of benefit’, but ‘so that he may consider himself satisfied according to reason’.100 In this new rhetorical formulation of political relationships, mutual satisfaction grew from vassals’ assiduous pursuit of their duties at the king’s command, rather than alignment between the parties’ independent interests. As the king explained to the admiral and barons of the Cinque Ports in 1306: We have understood well by letters sent to us … that you have born yourselves well in our service … for which we are very grateful and thank you greatly; and we pray that hereafter you should take pains to continue what you have commenced so well, at all times better and better, such that by your good service and your diligence our affairs may be hastily concluded [in the] region where you are, by the aid of God. And we make known that concerning the things which you have done for us we intend [such] regard for you that you will consider yourself satisfied.101

There were substantial structural similarities between this letter and the letter of high-status and ostentatious thanks Edward had sent to Walter de Merton so many years earlier, but the underpinning ideology was quite different. Here, as in other privy seal letters of this period, the king’s repeated attention to satisfactory service revealed his anxiety about securing it. Royal displeasure

The opposite of satisfaction also increased in royal epistolary rhetoric after 1297. The register of privy seal letters facilitated new expressions of the king’s displeasure. Royal servants like the queen’s physician were not the only recipients to feel the weight of the king’s anger. Writing to Patrick, earl of Dunbar, in March 1304, the king exclaimed, ‘we have understood that you have hitherto delayed to proceed against our enemies … whereat we are much astonished why you proceed so slackly [against the Scots], unless it be to realize the proverb which is used when one finds fault’.102 In the revised draft, and Stevenson’s nineteenthcentury translation, the king used a bowdlerized reference to Audigier, the cowardly anti-hero in a scatological parody of the chanson de geste, to criticize the 99

SC 1/13/113, ‘nous nous tenoms molt bien appaez’. example, SC 1/45/120; see Appendix, no. 19. 101 SC 1/61/21; see Appendix, no. 22. 102 SC 1/13/143; printed and translated in Documents, ed. Stevenson, 2, no. 632. This Patrick was the seventh earl. 100 For

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earl: ‘When the war was finished, Audigier drew his sword.’ This was already an imputation of significant dishonour towards Dunbar, implying cowardice and callow self-interest on the battlefield. The king’s original words had been even more pointed and crass. Untranslated by Stevenson, a different phrase had originally been used to convey a similar sentiment: ‘while the dog shits [the wolf makes off to the woods]’.103 Edward is documented resorting to barbed, and sometimes obscene quips on other occasions of anger or contempt, such as when he handed over the administration of Scotland to John de Warenne in 1296, with the infamous words ‘a man does good business when he rids himself of a turd’.104 In this case, royal clerks managed to revise the rhetoric just enough to meet minimum standards of decorum before the letter was issued. Nevertheless, the point would have been well made, and clearly received, that the recipient was the object of royal anger, and that he could expect demands to be made all the more forcefully and masterfully until it was placated.105 This was a serious threat. In letters instructing Aymer de Valence, Edward articulated a ruthless intent to persecute his enemies so that others would ‘consider themselves satisfied’ to have been spared;106 and his aggressive treatment of the wives of Scottish rebels is infamous.107 The consequences of failing to ‘satisfy’ the king were serious indeed. The king’s suspicion towards the Scots, including those who had come into his peace, coloured all his correspondence on Scottish affairs after 1296. The king’s letters to Robert de Bruce, earl of Carrick and future king of Scots,108 are 103 The

substitution is noted and briefly discussed in Prestwich, ‘Chivalric King?’, pp. 270–1; see also above, p. 55. 104 Morris, Edward I, p. 301; Scalacronica by Sir Thomas Grey of Heton, Knight, ed. J. Stevenson (Edinburgh, 1836), p. 123; see also Sir Thomas Gray’s Scalacronica, 1272–1363, ed. A. King (Woodbridge, 2005). 105 It is not clear why Dunbar failed to take up his office as commissioner for Scotland, and withdrew from active participation in the Scottish war; see Watson, ‘Dunbar, Patrick, Eighth Earl of Dunbar’, ODNB. 106 SC 1/47/84, ‘E a celui ou a ceux a qi nous luons ses terres doner averons nous tieu regard de celes arson, destruction a estreppement quil sen tendront bien appaez par raisoun’. See S. W. G. B. Craig, Facsimiles of National Manuscripts of Scotland (Southampton, 1867), 2, p. xiv; calendared in CDS, 2, no. 1787. 107 C. J. Neville, ‘Widows of War: Edward I and the Women of Scotland during the War of Independence’, Wife and Widow in Medieval England, ed. S. S. Walker (Ann Arbor, 1993), 109–39. 108 There is some evidence to suggest that Robert de Brus, father of the future king of Scots, continued to use the title of earl of Carrick, after resigning the earldom to his son in 1292–3, until his death in late March–early April 1304. A letter addressed to Edward’s chancellor, William de Hamelton (SC 1/25/31), suggests that the elder Robert may have continued to use the title of earl as a courtesy during his lifetime. This letter of c. 1295 called for the swift resolution of the inquest post mortem into lands in Essex and elsewhere taken into the hands of the escheators ‘par la resun de la morte de nostre pere’. This can only have meant Robert de Brus, the competitor, grandfather of the future Robert I. Nevertheless, royal letters seem to have reserved the comital title for the younger Brus, to whom they certainly referred in letters

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a case in point. The earl came into Edward’s peace in 1302, but the language of commands addressed to him implies that the king continued to suspect Bruce’s constancy.109 A draft letter dated 16 April 1304 makes clear that Bruce had written to Edward with various complaints and excuses explaining his inability to provide great siege engines for Stirling. In his drafted reply, the king acknowledged the earl’s efforts to date, declaring himself ‘satisfied’ (nous vous savoms bon gre) with his work. However, the bulk of the letter was occupied with an extended petitio charging Bruce ‘especially … on no account [to] desist from using all the pains and deliberation you can’ to transport the great engine to Stirling, and provide stones, timber and lead necessary for its operation.110 Such warnings implied the king’s suspicion that Bruce’s efforts were not all they might be. His ‘satisfaction’ to date conveyed the latent threat that his satisfaction could be withdrawn. The letter bore few of the signals of polite discourse that had generally framed royal mandates in the past, and its use of the verb charger placed it firmly within the rhetoric of command typically associated with the king’s less elite officers, such as his purveyors and victuallers.111 It was only slightly more elaborate than the letter drafted on the same day to Sir John de Botetourt, a knight of the king’s household who had been dispatched to aid and advise Bruce, and probably to spy on him for the king.112 The king’s order (mander) to Botetourt commanded him to assist the earl in the matter of the engines and supplies, employing ‘all the pains and diligence possible, in order that the things come to us speedily’.113 Scots were not the only recipients to whom the king addressed his displeasure in his new discourse. In a sequence of letters on 12 June 1306, Edward thanked Aymer de Valence for laying waste the homes, goods and chattels of Simon Fraser and instructed him to do the same to anyone who might harbour him.114 In a postscript, the king refused to countenance de Valence’s request to grant confiscated lands to Walter de Beauchamp, and warned him forcefully that he did not wish any lands to be granted away until he himself could come to the

of 1304 discussing his military manoeuvres in and around Stirling, while his father was still in England; e.g. SC 1/13/131. See A. A. M. Duncan, ‘Brus [Bruce], Robert (VI) de, Earl of Carrick and Lord of Annandale (1243–1304), Magnate’, ODNB; Barrow, Bruce, 171. 109 The consequences of coming under such suspicion in the context of the Scottish conflict could be severe; witness the experience of William de Vescy ‘of Kildare’, discussed in Stringer, ‘Nobility and Identity’, p. 209. 110 SC 1/12/61, printed and translated in Documents, ed. Stevenson, 2, no. 641. 111 In royal letters, charger was to mander as precipire was to mandare. 112 R. Gorski, ‘Botetourt, John, First Lord Botetourt (d. 1324), Admiral’, ODNB; Ingamells, ‘The Household Knights of Edward I’, 2, p. 178. For Botetourt’s mission to Bruce, see SC 1/12/62, printed and translated in Documents, ed. Stevenson, 2, no. 638. 113 SC 1/12/70, printed and translated in Documents, ed. Stevenson, 2, no. 642. 114 SC 1/47/80; see Appendix, no. 20 (a). Postscripts to this letter are given in the Appendix, nos 20 (b) and (c).

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region and make the disbursement.115 Finally, in a cover note he explained that he was sending the above correspondence with his own messenger because the messenger who brought us your letters to which we respond to you by this, departed from us as soon as he had delivered them to us, and did not wait upon us on the day he had assigned, concerning which we are ill pleased [maupaez].116

Given all that he knew of Edward’s recent commitment to punish those who disobeyed him, such language must have struck fear into de Valence’s heart. Controlling discourse: the rise of the privy seal

The increasingly autocratic and commanding royal persona that emerged in Edward’s letters from the mid-1290s coincided with the king taking closer control of the reins of epistolary production by means of the privy seal. This phenomenon has already been noticed in the realm of war finance, but its capacity to facilitate experiments in new epistolary rhetoric and political positioning has been largely overlooked. As Tout observed, the ‘troubles of the last years of Edward I … allowed the wardrobe to assume the greatest share it ever took in the direction of the policy and finance of the English state’.117 The connection of the wardrobe to war finance has since been examined in depth.118 It allowed the king’s wardrobe gradually to accrue to itself executive powers over ordering, gathering and spending a variety of aids, and to escape from the scrutiny of normal accounting processes of the exchequer. The wardrobe, and by implication the king, also began to exercise ‘executive’ control over epistolary production. The great seal remained important for diplomatic correspondence and was required for certain types of writ, but its activities were ordered by warrant of the privy seal, at the direction of the keeper of the wardrobe and his clerks. Increasingly, domestic royal correspondence simply bypassed the chancery and operated directly from the wardrobe under the king’s watchful eye. The rise of the privy seal was partly driven by convenience. The wardrobe travelled with the king, who spent long periods away from Westminster and absent from England on campaign in the last decade of his life; the privy seal was close by and so Edward made use of it. This was not the full story, however, since Edward had sometimes decided to take the great seal and even the chancellor with him on his sojourns.119 Viewing the shift to the privy seal as a 115 SC

1/47/90; see Appendix, no. 20 (b). 1/47/91; see Appendix, no. 20 (c). 117 Tout, Chapters, 2, pp. 122, 131–45 (quote at p. 122). 118 Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance, pp. 151–203; Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 134–7. On the relationship between the wardrobe and exchequer at this time, see N. Barratt, ‘Finance on a Shoestring: The Exchequer in the Thirteenth Century’, English Government in the Thirteenth Century, ed. A. Jobson (Woodbridge, 2004), 71–86. 119 For example, to Gascony in 1286–9: Huscroft, ‘Political and Personal Life of Robert 116 SC

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purely pragmatic one, moreover, overlooks its connection to other changes in the king’s epistolary practice and policy. In the 1280s, such as during his absence in Gascony, the king intervened in governance by letter only when prompted by petitions or complaints, and rarely as a proactive expression of policy.120 Later, as his use of the privy seal expanded, so did his active engagement with epistolary avenues of governance. The volume of royal correspondence issuing instructions and asking for information increased.121 More letters originated from the king’s will, not only in response to others’. Their rhetoric also became more commanding and direct. The rise of the privy seal was not only an outcome, but a driver of this change in royal epistolarity that had consequences for the construction of political relations. The growing use of the privy seal generated both a material and a discursive shift. At a fraction of the size of its chancery equivalent, letters of the privy seal could be carried more secretly and delivered more privately than great seal letters.122 Such material features had practical implications. There was less likelihood of its message being broadcast, and therefore, less need to couch a message in an ethos designed for public consumption by reading aloud. Further, since privy seal letters were sent to ‘insiders’, they were not bound by the same rhetorical demands of formality and publicness as the great seal. They assumed the basic agreement that so much dictaminal effort was intended to produce or ensure. They could afford to be more direct and less defensive or explanatory. Consequently, they were an ideal vehicle for communicating direct commands in an authoritative tone to those whose obedience was not in question; and by so doing to reinforce that agreement, authority and obedience. This suited the king’s communicative intentions as the government sensed that alignment between royal interests and those of the wider political community was faltering. The close association between privy seal letters and the French of England developed during this period.123 Prior to 1290, Latin and French had both been used in correspondence under this seal.124 After 1294, however, almost Burnell’, pp. 100–4; Neal, ‘Discourse’, pp. 145, 148; Morris, Edward I, p. 204; Prestwich, Edward I, p. 323. 120 Neal, ‘Discourse’, p. 144. 121 For example, in the SC 1 class, the number of privy seal letters extant from 1290–1307 (368 letters) is 70 per cent greater than the number extant from 1272–89 (220 letters). To put it another way, prior to 1290, approximately twelve privy seal letters per annum survive in the SC 1 class; after 1290, that figure rises to over twenty per annum. Figures obtained from TNA’s online catalogue, verified and refined by viewing the manuscripts. 122 Edward’s privy seal was 1 inch (25 mm) in diameter, see Tout, Chapters, 5, p. 134. 123 Chaplais, EDPMA, p. 127. 124 The king and his administrators received correspondence in French from officials, aristocrats, members of the royal family and allies in the French court; see Neal, ‘Loyalty’, passim; Waag, ‘Forms and Formalities’, pp. 68–71, 167–8, 179, 198–202; Hélary, ‘Les liens’, p. 83. However, Edward’s outgoing correspondence was slow to adopt it, and did so sparingly before the 1290s. The earliest original privy seal letter in French I have identified is dated 29 August

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all surviving privy seal letters are in French. This may itself be an indication of the king’s closer superintendence of his correspondence. Although Edward probably understood Latin, especially the formulaic phrasing in which so much royal epistolarity was couched, he apparently preferred to draft his letters in French, leaving the act of translation to experienced clerks. The formality of the great seal seemed to demand a register of language that only Latin could provide.125 Much of the language of privy seal writs continued to employ direct substitutions for the customary Latin vocabulary of command (e.g., mandoms for mandamus). Under the privy seal, however, clerks could dispense with the time-consuming process of translation, and send letters as drafted in the king’s vernacular. This did not mean that no editing for rhetorical force or legal import took place,126 but that it could be accomplished more quickly. Given the volume of correspondence issued by the wardrobe in the years 1297–1307, this would certainly have been an advantage. Royal letters in French signified not only a less formal register of epistolarity, but a closer connection with the king himself. Being in receipt of French privy seal letters could be a sign of special membership in the king’s inner circle of governance, and the king’s personal attention to the matters discussed. The implication of personal royal attention to governance could have been welcome in a political culture which expressed regular suspicion of counsellors, especially foreign ones, who obstructed ‘proper’ discourse between king and nobility.127 However, it also imposed considerable responsibility upon recipients to act as directed, or to face the king’s displeasure. The king’s personal epistolary attention could function effectively as both a threat and a token of esteem: this too began to appear with greater frequency in his correspondence. Letters such as an instruction to the queen’s physician in 1305 incorporated Edward’s tendency to emphatic profanity, warning him that if he allowed the queen to travel before she had recovered from illness, ‘by God’s thigh, you will pay’.128 Releasing the king’s letters from the bonds of dictaminal formality opened up 1279, SC 1/10/34B, and was sent under white wax to John de Kirkby. French does not appear again in SC 1 letters under the privy seal until the second Welsh campaign in 1282 (SC 1/45/4, 8 May 1282). 125 Maxwell-Lyte, Notes, p. 51; Royal Docs, pp. 27–8. The question of the significance of linguistic register is a complex one; see W. M. Ormrod, ‘The Language of Complaint: Multilingualism and Petitioning in Later Medieval England’, Language and Culture, 31–43; W. Rothwell, ‘Role of French’; M. Vale, ‘Language, Politics and Society: The Uses of the Vernacular in the Later Middle Ages’, EHR 120:485 (2005), 15–34; J. Wogan-Browne, ‘General Introduction’, Language and Culture, 1–13. 126 Many examples attest to the practice of editing French drafts for the privy seal, see Appendix. 127 For the fact that Edward was unusually successful among thirteenth- and fourteenthcentury English kings in avoiding the charge of having taken evil counsel, see King, ‘What Crisis?’ pp. 178–9. 128 ‘E si vous la sueffrez plus tost travailler, par la quisse De vous le comperez.’: Chaplais, ‘Private Letters’, p. 85.

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royal rhetoric to stronger influence from Edward’s personality, and his linguistic and other whims. The rise of the privy seal was thus more than a pragmatic response to the king’s peripatetic military activities in the final years of his reign. It also signified a change in his use of royal letters as a medium of political interaction and a tool of governance. The king’s success in bringing epistolarity under his executive control, and the power of this tool of command, may be reflected in the fact that control of the privy seal emerged as a key political issue for opponents of Edward II; in 1311 the Office of the Privy Seal was established in order to remove the seal from the king’s direct control and reimpose a measure of administrative accountability on royal letter-writing.129 Conclusion

If successful epistolarity points to the frontiers of political relationships that were acceptable to Edward I’s elite correspondents, then letters that failed to achieve their goals speak eloquently of moments when the crown overstepped its contextually contingent authority to construct recipients according to its own designs. At such times, recipients of letters rejected the terms in which the nature of their political belonging and their position in socio-political space relative to the king were cast. Once such breaches of the epistolary relationship occurred, it became more difficult for royal letters to re-establish an authoritative discourse on the existing premises. Disruptions to the socio-political relationship also fatally disrupted the efficacy of existing epistolary habits. When senders were in a position of authority, like the king of England, they typically benefited from an increased capacity to dictate the terms of their relationship to recipients and, as I have outlined, this authority was often augmented by the underpinning assumptions and overt formulae of epistolarity. But, as the above examples show, this authority was not unlimited. The examples of the writs in 1294, especially those directed to the Scots nobility, show that the capacity of the sender to construct their ideal recipients in letters waxed and waned according to context. In 1294, the king’s diminished prestige and associated financial challenges undermined his epistolary authority at precisely the moment in which his letters attempted to amplify recipients’ obligations to him and diminish the conciliar agency which had been granted to them in earlier exchanges. The dissonance between this image of the elite and their own sense of their position and honour was profound, and their willingness to accept such a construction was weakened by the king’s own weakened position. We can infer both from the resistance to the 129 Tout, Chapters, 5, p. 1; cf. Trueman, ‘Privy Seal and 1311’, especially pp. 612, 625. Trueman contends that the privy seal had always been ‘official rather than personal’, and that Edward II retained ‘tenuous control’ of it after the Ordinances, suggesting that its reform was not intended by the Ordainers.

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writs of 1294, and the marked return of conciliar rhetoric in writs to the English nobility in 1295, that this was a core quality of their socio-political belonging that recipients had been unwilling to renounce. For all the power that was inherently vested in senders, therefore, recipients were, as dictatores had long acknowledged, an important and influential part of the construction of letters. Furthermore, once lost, the goodwill of recipients, the securing of which was the ultimate aim of all epistolarity, could prove very difficult to restore. As the revised Scottish writs of 1294 show us, even the most courteous language might be insufficient to convince recipients of a sender’s sincerity once the epistolary relationship was damaged. This was especially the case when external factors diminished the sender’s real political position. These contexts tended to draw recipients’ attention to the rhetorical strategies of letters and invite cynicism as to senders’ real intentions in representing recipients in favourable terms. Such cynicism underlay the rejection of the writs in 1297 by the earls of Norfolk and Hereford and their supporters; although the documents they received had been couched in the most polite register available to the crown, the lack of other anticipated details and the magnates’ recent experience of the king’s poor diplomatic judgement and failure to consult led them to suspect his intentions. In casting the relationship in courtly terms that acknowledged the recipients’ right to refuse, the 1297 writs had effectively allowed this possibility, and the earls took the offered opportunity to express their dissatisfaction. The ‘crisis’ of 1297, centred on questions of the nature of feudal military service that could be demanded, was certainly political; but it was also a crisis of confidence in the king’s epistolary persona and the construction of recipients that his letters conveyed. While recent scholarship has revised our evaluation of the ‘crisis’, it is clear from Edward’s response to these challenges to the established nature of epistolary exchange that the threat to his authority was considered serious. The king and his clerks extended their experiments in new rhetorical and discursive means of intensifying royal authority. With his traditional epistolary persona having lost its power, Edward turned to new expressive modes. His exploitation of the privy seal enabled him to conduct correspondence within the confines of the community of officials who could be trusted to obey, and to use a new rhetoric to intensify that obligation with signs of affirmation and censure. The ‘alignment’ on which Edward’s later correspondence relied for its effect was no longer the alignment of royal and magnate interests, but recipients’ understanding that the king’s command would be acknowledged if fulfilled, and punished if not. It was this discourse that earned the king his reputation for a ‘strongly autocratic temperament’,130 where previously he had been a champion of governance through partnership.

130 Prestwich,

Edward I, p. 436.

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Conclusion Royal Epistolarity: The Voice of the King Letters were among a king’s most powerful tools for expressing the ideal shape of his polity. The formulae from which they crafted their message were not merely ‘degraded and mechanical’ conveniences,1 hampering true expression. They were inherited forms of a powerfully authoritative tradition of epistolarity descended from classical antecedents and developed in the great chanceries of the papacy and empire. In England, these norms met and reinforced the received authority of the writ, in which the king’s position as the fount of justice in the realm was embodied and expressed. This book began from the conviction that formulae have meaning. In the case of English royal correspondence, this was literally true. Lawmen of the later-thirteenth century produced treatise upon treatise discussing the proper selection and wording of writs for certain forms of action. It was not only writs de cursu that followed formulae, however. Writs de precepto also borrowed from a restricted pool of royal rhetorical norms. The formulaic nature and the legal heritage of Edward’s letters were integral to the rhetorical attempt to impose a royal construction on events and recipients. Working within these linguistic and structural boundaries did not deprive royal letters of communicative force. Rather, it invested them with the power of an ‘official language’,2 sanctioned by tradition and enforceable in law, as recognizable in its materiality as in its expression. Within this ‘official language’, the smallest variation of rhetorical emphasis could convey shifts in royal policy, and the king’s relationship to his interlocutor(s). Royal clerks were acutely attentive to the possibility of legal or political problems in letters. The legal associations of letters could work against the king if any infelicities crept into his epistolary voice, conveying unwonted authority upon them. The regular work of royal clerks – selected and trained carefully under the supervision of the king and his most senior administrators for just this purpose – entailed selecting appropriate forms and styles; adjusting structure, vocabulary and idiom; and adding, deleting and redrafting to perfect the expression of the royal voice, tailored to every situation. Edward I’s grasp of the importance of this labour is reflected in his efforts to attract 1 Constable, 2 Bourdieu,

Letters, p. 37. Language and Power, p. 44.

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experienced clerks from outside the realm into his employment, and his commitment to promoting the careers of those who proved themselves in his administration. He intervened personally, even sometimes in absentia, to direct the representation of his voice in letters; and in challenging times he gathered control of epistolary production ever closer to himself. Edward was instinctively an epistolary king. Whereas, hitherto, letters of the kind that survive by the thousand in The National Archives of the United Kingdom have tended to be treated simply as carriers of information, the analysis presented here has shown that the epistolary form of letters was fundamental to their communicative intent and capacity, and is itself a crucial consideration in assessing the king’s political and diplomatic strategies and representations. The capacity of a letter to ‘speak’ in the king’s voice was inherent in its epistolary form; a feature integral to the position of the genre as a tool for managing diplomatic and domestic relationships alike. Letters spoke for the king, as sender, to each recipient according to the structuring qualities of his or her relationship to him, privileging his construction of that connection but normally making allowances for the expectations of his correspondents. They stood for his person, articulating his desires and promises, and inviting both nominal recipients and wider communities of reception into a union of interests with him. The link between the king’s voice and his letters invested his correspondence with a special power to flatter and persuade, sometimes, to offend, and when political alignment faltered, to threaten. Of course, royal letters were designed as ‘harmonizing’ texts,3 aimed at generating the appearance of consensus, in an effort to reinforce if not create it. The ideology they expressed represented a frozen moment in a dynamic negotiation between sender and recipient: a good letter captured the goodwill of the addressee by identifying and amplifying some shared virtue or goal. Their lexicon reflects the platform of political discourse on which the king was willing and able to engage his correspondents. When royal letters attempted to secure the goodwill of recipients from different sectors of the political community, their language demonstrates the qualities that were considered persuasive and important to reinforce in that epistolary situation. In order to succeed, the characterization of a given relationship in a letter needed to be credible and acceptable to both parties, but there was room for manipulation, and the balance of priorities shifted in response to wider political changes. Values such as counsel and justice mattered to the king, but his use of them in letters was a strategic choice, not an unchanging reflection of his essential personality, nor a merely mechanical parroting of stock phrases. Epistolary articulations of ideology were aimed principally at members of the governing class, and among their chief intentions was to sustain their solidarity with the king and the project of his governance. Shifts in the rhetoric and in underlying ideology of royal letters reflect fundamental changes occurring 3

Dumolyn, ‘Political Communication’, p. 47.

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within the polity and between the polity and the crown. The rhetorical habits and choices evident in the letters of a monarch such as Edward I reveal the nature of his ideal polities and the contours of his anxieties. It is evident from Edward’s letters addressing English matters that he began his reign with a commitment to upholding the principles of counsel, justice, equity and due process. The discourse of these years was driven as much by a need to legitimate his rule to himself,4 as by the need to mitigate the threat posed by the demands of reformers developed during his father’s reign. Even when his letters became more autocratic, and less willing to cede ground to the expectations and desires of recipients, his words continued to serve the vital purpose of legitimizing the king to himself. At the same time, they broadcast to the community of royal epistolary recipients the king’s increasing demands for ready, speedy and complete compliance with his commands. Absorbing the language of magnate demands into his epistolary discourse enabled Edward to articulate his ideology of governance as a royal initiative. Later in his reign, when the alignment of royal and magnate interests was placed under strain by a concatenation of circumstances that depleted the king’s political capital, his response was to reassert his power through a new language of command, limited by the poles of satisfaction and displeasure. Taking ‘executive’ control over royal letter-writing, by means of the privy seal, the king conducted his correspondence in the final decade of his reign not to represent himself in dialogue with his great men, but to demonstrate his personal attention to the minutest detail of governance and to impress on all his officials their duty to obey. The distinction between the discourse of royal letters addressing the various polities of his domain shows that letters were crafted with attention to the requirements of local context, even while operating within the formulaic norms of the writ. In Gascony, where the two-lord problem made securing loyalty a perennial question, letters conjured up the unwavering fidelity of Gascons, and offered favour in return. Edward I’s use of letters as a political and diplomatic tool for managing relationships both in peace and under pressure confirms his contemporary reputation as a powerful manipulator of words, but his judgement was not unfailing. In Wales, and later Scotland, where the relationship between jurisdictions was challenged, the aggressive assertion of English royal priorities and the ostentatious silencing of local concerns served as powerful assertions of royal power.5 Ultimately, however, such rhetoric probably contributed to the tide of political dissent that boiled over into armed conflict in both cases. We can read royal letters, in context, as markers of tension in the contested power relations of Edward’s reign. 4 Barker,

Identities, chapter 3. I will have more to say on Edward’s correspondence with the Anglo-Irish on another, dedicated occasion. Its discourse is a complex one, the nuances of which are not wholly captured by the discussion here. 5

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The inherently relational nature of letters was of signal importance for their role in managing the informal networks on which successful diplomacy relied. Operating beyond the boundaries of his capacity to command, the king needed every tool of persuasion and expression of affective commitment that epistolary rhetoric could provide. Letters were so exquisitely suited to this work that some relevant forms have been mistaken for communications of purely ‘personal’ significance. In epistolarity, however, the personal was fundamental to the political, and to every other possible subject position. Litterae de statu were only the most extreme examples of a mode of communication in which the intensification of affect and reinforcement of relationships were ends, not only in themselves, but for strengthening networks of sociability through which diplomatic advantage could be secured. Letters’ place in a theatre of epistolarity, both in production and reception, served to reinforce the king’s networks. The groups that he drew around himself in order to listen to incoming missives and give counsel in the composition of his replies marked participants’ membership in the personnel of his governance, bestowing prestige and status, and reinforcing political identities. Edward was also alert to the performative possibilities of letters’ composition and reception in foreign courts, where they could be used to proclaim his friendship and signify important developments in negotiations. The king’s correspondence communicated more meaning, to more people, than the nominal recipients can convey. As Martin Camargo argued, it is imperative to understand medieval letters as events or performances, rather than static texts.6 Letters were experienced, rather than simply read. This intensified their significance in Edward’s practice of political and diplomatic management. As this book has shown, royal letters were formulaic and yet simultaneously subject to modulation according to the king’s priorities and the expectations of recipients. It is clear, therefore, that the rhetoric and context of letters must equally inform any analysis of the policy or action they contain. The Edward articulated by his privy seal commands to military officials in the 1300s was not the Edward constructed in his statements of conciliar commitment circulated at the dawn of his reign in the 1270s; but both of these Edwards, and all the others in between, were products of an evolving epistolary situation. Edward’s pard-like capacity to tailor his words to the moment was noted by contemporaries. By taking this seriously, we are empowered to disentangle the many facets of his epistolary and political persona.

6

Camargo, ‘Special Delivery’, p. 173.

183

Appendix The following documents have been selected for inclusion from among those letters in the SC 1 series at TNA that have not previously been published, and are gathered here to illustrate the changing habits of rhetoric, language and sealing of royal epistolarity from the time of Edward’s first emergence into national politics, in the period of reform and rebellion, until the latter years of his reign. I have arranged them chronologically to facilitate such comparison, and attempted to represent a range of recipients so that other forms of comparison may be possible. Unless otherwise indicated, these are sent originals, rather than drafts or copies. Original letters from the king typically found their way into royal records by virtue of being sent to royal officials, and/or returned as evidence of actions taken. In the case of drafts, I have tried to identify other related drafts or final copies where possible. I have specified the use of the privy seal, seal of absence, and where the seal is unknown; all others are letters of the great seal. I have aimed to represent the text on the page thoroughly, so that the processes of production can be traced. I have expanded abbreviations except in names, places and dates, or where the expansion is uncertain. Inferred text has been marked with square brackets, while angle brackets indicate text that has been added, annotated or otherwise requires comment. Corrections, deletions and annotations are indicated in the notes. Text that cannot be inferred or is lost I have represented with an ellipsis, while I have preserved the habit of the scribes of representing missing information, especially names, with two puncti. In translation, I have tried to maintain a sense of the construction and arrangement of subclauses, rather than applying simplified modern English syntax, so that the structure and rhetorical parts of the letter remain evident.

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Lord Edward (before November 1272) 1. 1265, 23 September. Lord Edward to Walter Giffard: for security to be guaranteed for John de Mucegros. Dated at Winchester. Seal unknown. SC 1/8/20. Venerabili patri domino W dei gratia Bathoniensis & Wellensis Episcopo Edwardus illustri Regis Anglie primogenitus salutem, & amorem sincerum. Dilectus & fidelis noster dominus Johannes de Mucegras quamquam nobis alioquando resistebat; se nostris beneplacitis firmiter coaptavit. Et eidem promitti fecimus quod ipsum in persona & bonis suis Indempnem debuimus per omnia preservare. Quam propter vos rogamus quatinus ad observationem promissionis nostre eidem per Cancellarium domini R. patris nostri faciatis de securita se qualibus provideri. Valete. Dat’ Wint’ .xxiijo. die Septembris anno regni domini R. patris nostri .xLixo. [To the venerable father, lord W[alter], by the grace of God bishop of Bath & Wells, Edward, first-born son of the illustrious king of England [sends] greetings and sincere love. Although at one time our beloved and faithful John de Mucegros resisted us, he has brought himself firmly into our good will; and we have caused to be promised to him that we shall preserve him uninjured in his person and goods through all things; and on account of this we ask you, for the observation of our promise to him, that you cause his security regarding such things to be provided by the chancery of the lord king, our father. Farewell. Given at Winchester, the 23rd day of September, in the 49th year of the reign of the lord king, our father.]

Establishment (1274–86) 2. 1274, 28 March. Edward I to William fitz Warin, steward of Ulster: thanks for good work. Draft. ‘By the hand of Walter de Merton.’ Seal of absence. Dated at St Martin-le-Grand, London. SC 1/12/192. Edwardus dei gratia Rex Anglie Dominus Hibernie et Dux Aquitanie, dilecto et fideli suo Willelmo filio Warini senecallo suo Ulton’ salutem. Super eo quod circa custodiam et tuitionem terrarum nostrarum in hibernie que sunt in custodia vestra ,1 et etiam de eo quod in gwerra quam Henr’ de Maundevill’, Robertus de Maundevill’ et complices sui rebelles nostri contra nos moverunt in hibernie, viriliter vos habuistis, ipsos capiendo et incarcerando, ac in prisona custodiendo ut pro certo didicimus; vobis scimus multas grates, mandantes quod ea que per vos in hac parte ad nostram, et terre nostre predicte securitatem et rebellium nostrorum castigationem, bene inchoastis, taliter efficium mancipare, et dictos prisones in carcere custodire, curetis, quod fidelitatem et diligentam vestram exinde merito commendare debeamus. Non permittentes quod dicti prisones a carcere quoquo modo 2 deliberentur, nisi per legem et consuetudinem terre, et prout de nostre fuerit faciendum. Dat’ per manum W. de Merton, cancellarii nostri apud sanctum martinum magnum Lond’ .xxvij. die Marc’ anno regni nostri secundo. 1. 2.

Interlinear addition Interlinear addition

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[Edward, by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland, and duke of Aquitaine, to his beloved and faithful William fitz Warin, his seneschal of Ulster, greetings. Upon those matters which you have borne indefatigably concerning the keeping and protection of our lands in Ireland which are in your custody, and also because in the war that Henry de Mandeville and Robert de Mandeville and their accomplices, rebels against us, undertook in Ireland, you have manfully had them captured and incarcerated, and kept in prison, as we hear for certain, we give great thanks to you; mandating that you should care to keep the said prisoners incarcerated and to bring those things which you have begun so well in that region for the security of us and our aforesaid land, and for the castigation of our rebels, to such effect that we shall be bound to commend your fidelity and diligence for their merit in this; not permitting those said prisoners to be liberated from the prison in any way without our special mandate, unless by the law and customs of the land, and as may be caused to be done by us. Given by the hand of Walter de Merton, our chancellor, at St Martin-Le-Grand, London, the 27th day of March, in the second year of our reign.]

3. 1279, 30 March. Edward I to Guy de Dampierre, count of Flanders: he cannot do as he requests, as merchants’ names have not been given. Dated at Lechlade. SC 1/12/194. Edwardus dei gratia Rex Anglie Dominus Hibernie et Dux Aquitanie, Nobili viro Consanguineo & amico suo karissimo, G. Comiti Flandrie, salutem cum dilectione sincera. Super eo quod vos ea libenter facitis ut scripsistis, que nostre voluntatis existunt, et nostrum desideratis commodum et hororem1; dilectioni vestre grates referimus valde speciales parati semper ea cum favore prosequi et expediri iubere, que vestrum contingere sciverimus commodum et honorem. Ceterum, quia nec de 2 mercatoribus nostris3 de quibus nobis scripsistis nec etiam de summa debiti in quo eis tenemini, nobis constat, et insuper, quia litteras vestras de dicto negotio nobis transmissas, die 6 Cena domini recepimus; 7 facere non potuimus 8 quod, petistis. Verumptamen 9 aliquem de vestris, de quo confiditis, ad nos in instanti parleamento nostro, quod erit apud Westmonasterium a die Pasche in quindecim dies transmitatis, in cuius presentia, dictum negotium deduci possit, si forte mercatores illi accedant ad dictum parleamentum nostrum; – nos tunc partes nostras interponemus in premissis, prout ad opus vestrum magis crediderimus expedire. Dat’ apud Lechelad .xxx. die marcij anno regni nostri septimo.10 del. ‘sicut scimus’ Interlinear addition 3. del. ‘illis’; interlinear addition 4. del. ‘Jovis in’ 5. del. ‘ante’ 6. Interlinear addition 7. Interlinear addition 8. Interlinear addition 9. Interlinear addition 10. This letter is a later draft of SC 1/12/193.

1.

2.

[Edward, by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland and duke of Aquitaine, to the noble man, his cousin and dearest friend, G[uy], count of Flanders, greetings with

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sincere affection. Since, as you have written, you will willingly do those things that are of our will, and you desire our advantage and honour, we loudly give special thanks to your kindness, ever ready to pursue with favour and to command to be expedited those things which we know touch your advantage and honour. For the rest, because we are not certain about those merchants of ours concerning whom you wrote to us, nor about the amount of the debt in which you are bound to them, and, moreover, because we received your letters sent to us about the said business on the Wednesday immediately before the [feast of the] Lord’s Supper, we could not complete our [enquiry] at the time as you asked; nevertheless, if you should send one of your men in whom you trust to us at our coming parliament, which will be at Westminster on the fifteenth day after Easter, in whose presence the said matter can be conducted, if perchance those merchants should come to our said parliament, then we shall intervene our part in the foregoing in such a way that we believe shall greatly expedite your need. Given at Lechlade, the 30th day of March, in the seventh year of our reign.]

4 (a). 1279, 24 October. Edward I to Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, prince of Wales: the dispute between Llywelyn and Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn. Draft. Dated at Westminster. SC 1/13/121.1 Edwardus dei gratia Rex Anglie Dominus Hibernie et Dux Aquitanie, dilecto et fideli suo Lewelino filio Griffini principi Wallie salutem. Ea que attornati vestri coram nobis et consilio nostro in presenti parleamento nostro constituti pro vobis proponere voluerunt in placito – quod vertitur inter vos et2 nostrum Griffin’ filium Wennuwen de terre de Arewistly et aliis terris – unde contentio mota est inter vos et ipsum – audivimus diligenter. Et licet versus vos tamquam versus indefensum3 allegabat pro eo quod iidem attornati vestri4 5 potuissemus vel forte debuissemus potius secundum considerationem Curie nostre processisse; tamen hac vice sub dissimulatione fore censuimus transeundum. Et vos atque partem adversam adiornavimus usque ad proximum parleamentum nostrum quod erit apud Westmonasterium a die Pasche proximo futuro in tres septimanas ad faciendum et recipiendum quod iustitia suadebit in premissis. Et quia in pace inter nos et vos inita continetur, quod contentiones de hiis que contingunt in marchia secundum leges marchie et que in Wallia secundum leges Wallie debent terminari 6; vos ad dictam diem 7 coram nobis per vos vel per attornatos vestras8 sufficienter instructos et plenam potestatem habentes ad faciendum et recipiendum in lege illa que proponitur pro parte vestra vel in lege illa que pars dicti Griffini pro sua parte proponit quod 9 de consilio nostro duxerimus ordinandum.10 Ita quod pro defectu vestro aut # 11dilatio non fiat ulterior – quin* 13 fuerit faciendum. Teste me ipso apud Westmonasterium .xxiiij. die Octobris anno regni nostri septimo. # sufficientis procuratorii * sub qua lege14 procedi debeat in hac parte 1.

This and the following two documents represent a sequence of drafts of a single letter (discussed above, see pp. 63–8). They were formerly sewn together in a bundle. The first is heavily annotated and amended, while the latter two evince only minor additional amendments. I provide a translation of the final draft, probably SC 1/13/122, below.

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del. ‘dilectionem et fidelem’ del. ‘pluribus rationibus quas pars adversa contra partem vestram’ 4. del. ‘in dicto placito pro iure vestro minus sufficienter proponere videbant’ 5. Interlinear addition 6. Interlinear addition 7. Interlinear addition; replacing del. ‘estis’ 8. del. ‘in iure vestra’ 9. Interlinear addition 10. del. ‘et ulterius in hac parte debitum iustitie complementum’ 11. del. ‘huiusmodi attornatarum vestrarum’; interlinear addition, del. ‘rite et equitate lege plenius instructorum’ 12. del. ‘provideatur’ 13. del. ‘vobis et prefato Griffino fieri faciamus in premissis quod de iure’ 14. del. ‘agi vel’ 3.

4 (b). 1279, 25 October. Edward I to Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, prince of Wales: a later draft of SC1/13/121. Dated at Westminster. SC 1/13/123. Edwardus dei gratia Rex Anglie Dominus Hibernie et Dux Aquitanie, dilecto et fideli suo Lewelino filio Griffini Principi Wallie salutem. Ea que, attornati vestri, coram nobis et consilio nostro in presenti parleamento nostro constituti, nomine vestro, proponere voluerunt in placito quod vertitur inter vos et dilectionem et fidelem nostrum Griffinum filium Wenunwen de terre de Arwistly, et aliis terris unde contentio mota est inter vos et eum – audivimus diligenter. Et licet versus vos tamquam versus indefensum pluribus rationibus, quas pars adversa contra partem vestram allegabat pro eo quod iidem attornati vestri in dicto placito pro iure vestro minus sufficienter proponere videbantur potuissemus vel forte debuissimus potius secundum considerationem Curie nostre processisse, tamen hac vice sub dissimulatione in hac parte fore censuimus transferandum. Et vos atque partem adversam adiornavimus usque ad proximum parleamentum nostrum quod erit apud Westmonasterium, a die Pasche proximo futuro in tres septimanas ad faciendum et recipiendum in premissis quod iustitia suadebit. Et quia in pace inter nos et vos inita continetur, quod contentiones, de hiis, que contingunt in marchia secundum leges marchie et que in Wallia contingunt secundum leges Wallie debent terminari; sitis coram nobis ad predictam diem in propria persona vestra, vel per attornatos vestras in iure vestro plene et sufficienter instructos, qui perfecte dicere et pro parte vestra ostendere sciant utrum in premissis, secundum legem illam que proparte vestro proponitur an secundum legem illam que pars dicti Griffini pro parte sua proponit; fuerit procedendum. Ita quod pro defectu vestro aut huiusmodi attornatorum vestrorum, dilatio non fiat ulterior quin vobis et prefato Griffino fieri faciamus in premissis iusticie complementionem. Teste me ipso apud Westmonasterium .xxv. die Octobris, anno regni nostro septimo.

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4 (c). 1279, 25 October. Edward I to Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, prince of Wales: a later draft of SC1/13/121. Dated at Westminster. SC 1/13/122. Edwardus dei gratia Rex Anglie Dominus Hibernie et Dux Aquitanie, dilecto et fideli suo Lewelino filio Griffini Principi Wallie salutem. Ea, que, attornati vestri, coram nobis et consilio nostro in presenti parleamento nostro constituti, nomine vestro, proponere voluerunt in placito quod inter vos et dilectionem et fidelem nostrum Griffinum filium Wenunwen vertitur de terre de Arwystly, et aliis terris, unde contentio est inter vos et eum, audivimus diligenter. Quibus auditis, una cum hiis que pro parte predicti Griffini proponebantur ibidem, facta quas 1 petitione instanti ex parte sua, quod nos versus vos, tamquam versus indefensum ex causis pluribus, in quibus, iidem attornati vestri minus sufficienter in dicto placito, pro iure vestro, proponere videbantur, procederemus in premissis / Nos 2 indempnitati vestre, in omnibus, quibus honeste possuimus, prospici cupientes, licet secundum considerationem Curie nostre, eo modo, quo dictum est contra vos potuissemus ut forte debuissemus potius processisse; tamen in hac parte sub dissimulatione ista vice fore cesuimus transferendum; usque ad proximum parleamentum nostrum, quod erit apud Westmonasterium, a die Pasche proximo future in tres septimanas, quem diem parte vestre et etiam parte prefati Griffini, prefiximus ad faciendum et recipiendum in premissis quod iustitia suadebit. Et vos ad illam diem vestros attornatos, in iure vestro, adeo plene et sufficienter instructos3, ibidem transmittatis, quod pro vestro aut ipsorum defectu, ulterior proroganti non fiat, quin vobis et parti adverse fiat, quod de iure fuerit faciendum. Et tales pro vobis mittatis per quos, Curia nostra certiorari possit, an secundum legem Howel Da vel secundum legem illam, secundum quam, pars predicti Griffini, iudicium sibi fieri petit, procedi debeat in premissis. Nos enim ex tunc, quantum in nobis est, dictum negotium, sine debito, faciemus terminari. Teste me ipso apud Westmonasterium .xxv. die Octobris, anno regni nostro septimo. Endorsed: ad faciendum et recipiendum in lege illa que proponitur pro parti vestra, et in lege illa que pars dicti Grifini pro sua parte hic proponit et quod de consilio nostro duxerimus ordinandum.4 1.

Interlinear addition Word erased and struck out. 3. I suggest the endorsement was intended for insertion here. 4. Edwards assumed that the endorsement signified a memorandum of a complementary letter to Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn; see CACW, p. 59. It makes better sense as an insertion at note 3. 2

[Edward by the grace of God, king of England, lord of Ireland and duke of Aquitaine, to his beloved and faithful Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, prince of Wales, greetings. We have diligently heard those things which your attorneys have wished to put before us and our council in our presently constituted parliament, in the plea that is underway between you and our beloved and faithful Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn, concerning the land of Arwystli and other lands, about which there is contention between you and him. We have heard them together with those things which have been put forward in that place on the part of the said Gruffydd in a petition made to us on his behalf, that we ought to have proceeded against you in the above matter as we would against an undefended man, because of the many points in which your attorneys seemed less than sufficient to plead your case in that plea. We [however], desiring to provide for your indemnity in all

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things which we can honestly do, although according to the opinion of our court, we could and perhaps preferably ought to proceed against you as has been said; nevertheless we have decided on this occasion that this matter shall be postponed until our coming parliament, which will be at Westminster, three weeks after the coming Easter day, on which day we have set down to be done and undertaken on your part and that of the aforesaid Gruffydd in the foregoing what justice shall suggest. And you should send there on that day your attorneys, fully and sufficiently instructed for doing and undertaking your case in that law which is proposed on your behalf, and in that law which the part of the said Gruffydd proposes on his part, and which shall be led to be ordained by our counsel, so that there shall be no further delay by your default, or his, which would be adverse to you or to the opposite party. And you should send us such men on your behalf through whom our court may be made more certain whether it ought to proceed according to the law of Hywel Dda or according to that law according to which the part of the aforesaid Gruffydd seeks justice to be done to him in the foregoing. And then, as much as is in us, we will conclude the said matter without doubt. Witness myself, at Westminster, the 25th day of October, in the seventh year of our reign.]

5. 1282, 23 July. Edward I to William de Perton: instruction to provide for his dogs and their keepers. Privy seal. Dated at Carnarvon. SC 1/13/180. Edwardus dei gratia Rex Anglie Dominus Hibernie et Dux Aquitanie dilecto clerico suo Willelmo de Perton’ salutem. Mandamus vobis quod inveniatis triginta canibus nostris cum tribus custodibus eorum stipendia sua usque ad adventum nostrum apud Cestriam. Et custum quem ad hoc posueretis vobis allocari faciemus. Dat’ sub privato sigillo nostro, apud Kaernaervon .xxiij. die Jul’ anno regni nostro .xj. [Edward, by the grace of God, king of England, lord of Ireland and duke of Aquitaine, to his beloved clerk, William de Perton, greetings. We command you that you should find stipends for thirty of our dogs with three keepers of them, until our coming to Chester. And we shall cause to be allocated to you the cost which you put to this [purpose]. Given under our privy seal at Caernarfon, the 23rd day of June, in the 11th year of our reign.]

6. 1283, 20 June. Edward I to Nicholas Brusebon: instructions for the dispersal of wine. Dated at Rhuddlan. Privy Seal. SC 1/61/28. Edwardus dei gratia Rex Anglie Dominus Hibernie et Dux Aquitanie Nicholo de Brusebon, salutem. Precipimus tibi quod omnia vina nostra que dilectus et fidelis noster Grimbaldus Pauuncefot nuper dimisit in custodia tua in villa montis Gomeri, liberari facias domino Bathon’ et Wellen’ Episcopo de dono nostro, exceptis tamen illis quatuor doliis vinis que nuper dedimus servientibus nostris peditibus euntibus in exercitu nostro de Meyrumuth et uno dolio vini quod similiter dedimus Oweno filio Griffini ab Wenonwen, nisi iidem servientes et Owenus dolia predicta prius receperint. Dat’ sub sigillo nostro privato apud Rothelan. xx. die Juni anno regni nostri xjo. [Edward, by the grace of God, king of England, lord of Ireland and duke of Aquitaine, to Nicholas de Brusebon, greetings. We command you that all our wine which our beloved and faithful Grimbald de Pauncefoot recently sent into your custody in the town of

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Montgomery, you should cause to be released to the lord bishop of Bath and Wells, of our gift; excepting, however, those four tuns of wine that we recently gave to our foot soldiers going in our army from Merrymouth, and one tun of wine that we similarly gave to Owain son of Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn, unless those soldiers and Owain have previously received the said tuns. Given under our privy seal at Rhuddlan, the 20th day of June in the 11th year of our reign.]

Cornwall’s regency (1286–9) 7. 1286, 13 June. Edward I to Edmund, earl of Cornwall: deal with enclosed petition1 of the dean and chapter of Sauqueville. Dated at Paris. SC 1/20/124A. Edwardus dei gratia Rex Anglie Dominus Hibernie et Dux Aquitanie dilecto consanguineo suo Edmundi Comiti Cornub’ salutem. Requisivit 2 magnificus princeps Rex Francie, ut Decano et Capitulo ecclesie beate marie de Sauquevill’, super quibusdam redditibus arreragiis et debitis que eis debitur ut dictur in Anglie subveneri per ministros nostros seu Justiciarios curaremus, Et quia sumus et esse debemus iusticie debitores, ponderantes etiam requisitionem Regis Francie supradictam; vobis mandamus quatinus inspecta petitione Decani et Capituli predictorum presentibus interclusa comitatoque consiliariorum nostrorum assistentium vobis consilio, memoratis .. Decano et Capitulo, vel attornato ipsorum per viam qua poteritis breviorem suis Lite de plano fieri faciatis celeris iusticie complementum. Teste me ipso, Paris’ Tertiodecimo die Juni anno regni nostri quatrodecimo. 1.

SC 1/20/124, a petition in a French hand, to which the present letter was formerly sewn. Both were probably enclosed in SC 1/25/78. 2. Faded

[Edward, by the grace of God, king of England, lord of Ireland and duke of Aquitaine, to his beloved cousin Edmund, earl of Cornwall, greetings. The magnificent prince, the king of France, has requested of us that, through our ministers or justices, we should care to be of assistance to the dean and chapter of the church of the Blessed Mary of Sauqueville, concerning certain renders, arrears and debts which are due to them, as it is said, in England. And because we are and ought to be the debtor in justice, and considering the request of the aforesaid king of France, we you command that, with the enclosed petition of the said dean and chapter having been inspected, and with the accompanying counsel of our counsellors assisting you, by the briefer way you can, you should immediately cause the fullness of justice plainly and swiftly to be done for the mentioned .. dean, and chapter, or their attorney, in their case. Witnessed myself at Paris, the thirteenth day of June in the fourteenth year of our reign.]

8. 1286, 1 July. Edward I to Edmund, earl of Cornwall, lieutenant in England: he requires a certificate de causa capcionis for men imprisoned by Adam Gordon. Privy Seal. Dated at Paris. Endorsed with a memorandum of action taken. SC 1/45/33. Edwardus dei gratia Rex Anglie Dominus Hibernie et Dux Aquitanie, Dilecto Consanguineo et fideli suo Edmundo Comiti Cornub’ locum tenenti in eodem regno,

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salutem. Volentes de causa captionis Ricardi filii Juliane de Shakeleford, William filii Willielmi Toly, Stephani de Godalmynge, Johanis le clerk de Godalmyng’ et Henrici filii Godwyne de Haselmere, quos dilectus et fidelis noster Adam Gordon capi fecit ut dicitur, et in prisona nostra teneri plenius certiorari; vobis mandamus, quatinus a prefato Ade 1 faciatis inquiri, ob quam causam ipsos capi fecerint, et a quo tempore in prisona occasione huiusmodi detenti fuerint, et ubi, qualiter, et quo modo. Et quid inde inveneritis, nobis distincte et aperte per litteras vestras faciatis constare. Dat’ sub privato sigillo nostro Paris’ primo die Juli anno regni nostri Quartodecimo. Endorsed: Expeditus est.2 3averunt breve prefato Ad’ quod transiret Regem de premissis4 1.

Interlinear addition In one hand 3. Obscured by modern mounting 4. In another hand 2.

[Edward, by the grace of God, king of England, lord of Ireland and duke of Aquitaine, to his beloved cousin and vassal, Edmund, earl of Cornwall, his lieutenant in that realm, greetings. Wishing to be more fully informed concerning by what right our beloved and faithful Adam Gordon has caused to be seized, it is said, and held in our prison Richard son of Juliana de Shackleford, William son of William Tolly, Stephen de Godalming, John the clerk of Godalming, and Henry son of Godwyn of Haslemere, we command you that you should cause to be asked of the said Adam, and his subordinates, by what cause they had them captured, and from when they have had them detained for such a reason, and where, how and in what way. And whatever you discover about this, you should inform us fully and openly by your letters. Given under our privy seal at Paris on the first day of July, in the fourteenth year of our reign. Endorsed: It was done. They … the writ from the said Adam, which was sent to the king on the foregoing.]

9. 1287, 16 February. Edward I to Edmund earl of Cornwall, lieutenant of England: inquire into a complaint of rape. Privy Seal. Dated at the Temple of Planche-Torte. Endorsed with a memorandum of action taken. SC 1/45/42. Edwardus dei gratia Rex Anglie Dominus Hibernie et Dux Aquitanie, dilecto Consanguineo et fideli suo Edmundo Comiti Cornub’, tenenti locum suum [in eo]dem regno, salutem. Mandamus vobis, quod audita querela latricis presentium de raptu quem sibi asserit factum esse unde in 1 pro defectu iusticie 2 venit conqueri coram nobis, eidem fieri faciatis celeris iusticie conplementm. Ita quod ipsam materiam [non]3 habeat pro defectu iusticie ad nos iterum conquerendo venire. Caventes in super ne alii seu alie ad nos in casu consimili … … nostrum in regno nostro habere iusticiam inde possint 4 tam longinquis. Dat’ sub privato sigillo nostro apud Templum Plaunchetorte .xvj. die februar’ Anno regni nostri Quintodecimo. Endorsed: …dita fuit et [liberata] … in Cant’.5 1. Faded 2. Stained 3. Faded 4. 5.

Written over an erasure Partly obscured by modern mounting

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[Edward, by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland and duke of Aquitaine, to his beloved cousin and vassal Edmund, earl of Cornwall, his lieutenant in that realm, greetings. We command you that, with the complaint of the bearer of this letter having been heard concerning a rape which she asserts to have been done to her, whence in … … for lack of justice she came to complain before us, you should cause the fullness of justice quickly to be done for her, such that she might not again have occasion to come and complain to us for lack of justice, taking care in the above lest henceforth any man or woman in a similar case … … in our realm should have to come to such distant parts [in order] to have justice about it. Given under our privy seal at Temple Planchetorte, the 16th day of February, in the fifteenth year of our reign. Endorsed: … was heard and acquitted … at Canterbury.]

Years of crisis (1294–7) 10. 1294, 20 June. Drafts: i. Edward I to Anthony Bek, bishop of Durham: full power to negotiate a marriage between Edward his son and the daughter of the count of Flanders. ii. Edward I to Anthony Bek, bishop of Durham: full power to treat with Godfrey de Brabant. iii. Edward I to Guy de Dampierre, count of Flanders: credence for the bishop of Durham. iv. Edward I to Godfrey de Brabant: similar letters of credence. SC 1/12/48 i–ii.1 (i) Edwardus etc. venerabili in Christo patri .A. eadem gratia Episcopo Dunelmensis, salutem. De fildelitate et industria vestra fidei plenitudine obtinentes, ad tractandum nomine nostro, super Negotio Matrimonij, inter Edwardum, filium nostrum carissimum et heredem, et Philippam, filiam Nobilis viri, Guydonis Comitis Flandr’, et Marchionis Naminten’, deo auspice contrahendi, ac ad ipsum Negocium consummandum. In animam nostram iurandum, et ad omnia alia et singulam facienda, expedienda finaliter et complenda .. que huiusmodi Negocij qualitas exigit et requirit, plenam et liberam vobis damus tenore presentium potestatem. Ratum habentes et habituri et firmum, quicquid super tractatio eiusdem Negocij, et ipsius expedicionem finali duxeritis faciendo. In cuius rei testimonium etc. Dat’ apud Westmon’ .xx. die Junij anno .xx.jo – sigillatur.2 (ii) Edwardus etc. Venerabili in Christo patri etc. de fidelitate etc. obtinentes, ad tractandum cum Nobili viro, Gadefr’ de Brebant’ super certis conventionibus faciendis, et nomine nostro firmandis cum eo, ac ad alia facienda, que ad huiusmodi Negocium spectare noscuntur, plenam et liberam vobis damus tenore presentium potestatem. Ratum habentes et habituri et firmum, quicquid super eodem negotio fuerit per vos factum. In cuius Rei testimonium etc. Dat’ ut supra. (iii) Edwardus etc. Nobili viro et fideli suo .G. Comiti Flandr’ et Marchioni Namurten’, salutem et dilectionem sinceram. Cum 3 venerabili patri .A. dei gratia Episcopo Dunelmen’, exhibitori presentium, commisimus, super certis Negociis mentem nostram vobis plenius aperire, Nobilitatem vetram requirimus et rogamus quatinus, ea quod idem Episcopus 4 ex parte nostra, vobis 5 exponenda 6, velitis 7 indubilitabiliter credens, ac votino effectui mancipare. Dat’ ut supra. Sigillatur.8 (iv) Edwardus etc. Nobili viro, Godefrido de Brebant, salutem et dilectionem

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sinceram. Cum in ore venerabilis patris .A. dei gratia Episcopi Dunelmen’ quedam posiverimus, vobis9 vive vocis oraculo reseranda, Nobilitatem vestram requirimus et rogamus, quatinus hiis10 quod idem Espicopus ex parte nostra vobis exponet.11 velitis si placet fidem credulam adhibere. Dat’12 ut supra. – sigilatur.13 1.

All four letters are in the hand of Scribe W. The numbering of these drafts is a modern convention provided for convenience; it is not represented on the manuscript. The first of these letters was printed in La généalogie des comtes de Flandre depuis Baudouin bras de fer iusques à Philippe IV roy d’Espagne, ed. O. de Wree, 2 vols (Bruges, 1642–4), 2, p. 138, from a sent original in the Flemish archives, with minor differences. 2. Added in another hand and ink. 3. Word erased and struck through. 4. Interlinear addition 5. Interlinear addition 6. An interlinear addition at this point has been erased. 7. Interlinear addition 8. Added in another hand; probably the same as at n 2, above. 9. del. ‘ex parte nostram’ 10. del. ‘ea’ 11. del. ‘velitis indubitab’ 12. del. ‘etc’ 13. Added in another hand; probably the same as at notes 2 and 8, above.

[(i) Edward, etc., to the venerable father in Christ, A[nthony], by the same grace bishop of Durham, greetings. Maintaining a plenitude of faith in your fidelity and industry, we give to you by the tenor of these presents, full and free power to treat in our name upon the matter of the marriage between Edward, our dearest son and heir, and Philippa, daughter of the noble man, Guy, count of Flanders and marquis of Namur; of contracting – with God as patron – and bringing to fruition that matter; of swearing in our name; and in all and singular other matters to be done, finally procured, and completed, which the quality of a matter of this kind demands and requires; confirming and causing to be confirmed and made firm whatever you are led to do concerning the negotiation of this matter and its final achievement. Given at Westminster, the 20th day of June, in the 21st year of our reign. It is sealed. (ii) Edward, etc., to the venerable father in Christ, etc. Maintaining etc. in your fidelity, etc., we give to you by the tenor of these presents, full and free power to treat with the noble man Godfrey of Brabant on certain agreements to be made, and of confirming them with him in our name, and doing other things that may seem to pertain to matter of this kind; confirming and causing to be confirmed and made firm, whatever is caused to be done about this matter by you. In testimony of which, etc. Given as above. (iii) Edward, etc., to the noble man and his vassal, G[uy], count of Flanders and marquis of Namur, greetings and sincere affection. Whereas we have commissioned the venerable father A[nthony], by the grace of God bishop of Durham, presenter of this letter, to make clear more fully to you our mind on certain matters, we ask and require Your Nobility that, on those things which that same bishop will lead to be explained to you on these things on our behalf, you should wish, if it please you, trusting indubitably and in fulfilment of a vow, to carry to effect. Given as above. It is sealed. (iv) Edward, etc., to the noble man Godfrey of Brabant, greetings and sincere affection.

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Whereas we have placed certain things into the mouth of the venerable father A[nthony], by the grace of God bishop of Durham, to be revealed to you by word of mouth, we ask and require Your Nobility that you should wish, if it please you, to apply trusting faith to those things which the same bishop will explain to you on our behalf. Given as above. It is sealed.]

11. 1295, 16 October. Edward I to John I, king of Scotland: credence for his envoys. Draft. Dated at [Westminster]. SC 1/14/44 i. Edwardus etc. dilecto et fideli suo .J. eadem gratia Regi Scott’ illustri, salutem. Cum iniunxerimus venerabili1 patri .J. episcopo Carleolensi, et .. abbati de Novo monasterio, exhibitoribus presentium,2 aliqua que nos tangunt vobis3 vive vocis oraculo plenius exponenda; vos4 rogamus, mandantes quatinus ea que dicti Episcopus abbas, 5 ex parte nostra vobis exponent, velitis firmiter credere, et complere. Dat’.6 1.

‘in Christo’ is crossed through in the dark ink of the main hand (‘Scribe W’). ‘quedam vobis’ is crossed through in the dark ink of the main hand. 3. ‘ex parte nostra’ is crossed through in the dark ink of the main hand. 4. Interlinear addition in a second hand, replacing ‘Nobilitatem vestram’, which is crossed out in the lighter ink of the second hand. 5. Interlinear addition in the main hand 6. There are two other letters drafted on the same sheet, which are letters patent printed in Rotuli Scotiae in Turri Londensi et in Domo Capitulari Westmonasteriensi Asservati, ed. D. MacPherson, J. Caley and W. Illingsworth, 2 vols (London, 1814), 1, p. 22b. The Westminster place–date is derived from the enrolment of the third of three drafts. 2.

[Edward, etc., to his beloved and faithful John, by the same grace, illustrious king of Scotland, greetings. Since we have enjoined upon the venerable father John, bishop of Carlisle, and .. abbot of Newminster, presenters of this letter, to expound more fully to you by word of mouth any matters that touch upon us, we ask you, mandating that those things which the said bishop and abbot, or either of them, shall explain to you on our part, you should wish to trust firmly, and to complete. Given [etc.]]

12. 1295, 19 October. Edward I to the barons of the Agenais and others in Gascony, adherents of the king of France: the injuries done to him; give credence and aid to Edmund, earl of Lancaster. Dated at Westminster. SC 1/12/23. See also Fig. 2. Magnatibus de Agenesio 1 stant cum Rege Franc’. 2 ad tempora, in quibus erga nos vestre devotionis claritas prelucebat, et in quibus, more fidelis atque devoti, nos reverebamini, sicut dominum naturalem. 3 itaque vestre fidei constanciam non variabilem mutationem rerum vel temporum nec alicuius nubilo turbinis 4 in virum alterum permutandum, Nobilitatem vestram requirimus et rogamus, quatinus graves iniurias et enormes excessus, 5 sicut latius divulgatur, 6 illates moleste ferentes, ad supportanda nostra onera, et 7 defensionem nostri iuris, ac etiam tam nostram quam vestram prosequendum honorem, necessitatis tempore, providentie

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vestre bonitas non lentescat. Ita quod vobis honoris et laudis proveniat incrementium. Nosque devotionis vestre promptitudinem non sine retributionem condigna, multimodis actionibus gratarum prosequi debeamus ut autem 8 intentia nostra vobis pateat, ecce carissimum fratrem nostrum Edmundum Comitem Lancastrie ad partes ducatus nostri aquitanie duximus propter hoc specialiter destinandum9 10 tamquam 11 velitis credere, et parere hiis que vobis ex parte nostra duxerit et fecerit in premissis. 12 1.

Interlinear addition in the main hand (‘Scribe W’) Interlinear correction in a second hand. ‘Refert se memoria nostrum’ is crossed out in the lighter ink of the second hand. 3. Interlinear correction in a second hand, replacing ‘Confidentes’, which is underlined in the dark ink of the main hand. 4. Interlinear addition in the main hand 5. ‘illates’ is crossed through in the dark ink of the main hand. 6. Interlinear addition in the main hand 7. ‘tam nostram quam vetram prosequendum honorem’ is underlined in the dark ink of the main hand. Since the same phrase occurs below, it was evidently introduced by the scribe copying from an exemplum, but corrected in the course of writing. 8. Interlinear addition in the main hand 9. Corrected by the man hand from ‘dustr’, which is crossed through. 10. Interlinear correction in a second hand, replacing ‘cuius verbis’, which is crossed through in the lighter ink of the second hand. 11. Interlinear correction in a second hand; ‘ab ore nostro prolatis’ is then crossed through in the lighter ink of the second hand. 12. Added on the line in a second hand 2.

[To the magnates of the Agenais and other Gascons standing with the king of France. We recall to mind the times in which your clear devotion shone forth towards us, and in which you revered us in a manner of faith and devotion, as [your] natural lord; hoping, therefore, that you will not exchange your constancy of faith for the variable changing of things or times, nor from the cloud of any other storm [change] into another’s man, we require and ask Your Nobility that, bearing the grave injuries and enormous excesses distressingly brought against us, as lately divulged, to our manifest disherison – for the support of our burden and the defence of our law, and even for the pursuance of our as much as your honour – as the time necessitates, the goodness of your providence should not be weakened. Do so much that it may provide an increase of honour and praise to you; and we shall need to follow your promptness of devotion, though not without fitting retribution, with many actions of thanks. So that, moreover, our intention may be more plain to you, behold, we have directed our dearest brother Edmund, earl of Lancaster, to parts of our duchy of Aquitaine, especially sent on account of this, in whom as much as in us you should wish to trust, and obey, and do those things which he will instruct you on our behalf in the foregoing. Given at Westminster, the 19th day of October.]

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Edward of Caernarfon’s lieutenancy (August 1297–March 1298) 13. 1297, 28 August. Edward I to Edward his son, lieutenant in England, and his council: deal with the matter of pension. Privy Seal. Dated at Aardenburg. SC 1/45/77. Edward par la grace de dieu Roi Dengleterre Seigneur Dirland e Ducs Daquitaine; a Edward son chier fuiz e a son consail saluz. Nous vous envenoms enclose denz ces lettres la petition Robert de Langherst fuiz e heir Johan de Langherst, ensemblement ove nostre response qui nous enavoms faite. E vous mandoms qe vous facez metre la chose en oeuvre selonc la volunte qui nous enavoms la quele vous poez savoir par la dite response ————1 qui est escrite en dorse de la petition desusdite. Donees desouz nostre prive seal a Erdenburgh le .xxviij. iour daugst Lan de nostre regne vintisme quint. 1.

Deleted text, gap struck through

[Edward, by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland and duke of Aquitaine, to Edward his dear son, and his council, greetings. We send to you enclosed in this letter the petition of Robert de Langhurst, son and heir of John de Langhurst, together with our response that we have made about it. And we command you that you cause the matter to be arranged in a manner according to our will about this, which you may know by the said response which is written on the dorse of the petition above-said. Given under our privy seal at Aardenburg, the 28th day of August in the twenty-fifth year of our reign.]

14. 1297, 1 October. Edward I to Edward his son, lieutenant in England, and his council: assistance for Geoffrey de Geneville in a suit concerning his liberty in Ireland. Privy Seal. Dated at Ghent. SC 1/45/82. Edward par la grace de dieu Roi Dengleterre Seigneur Dirland e Ducs Daquitaine; a Edward son chier fuiz e nostre lieu tenant en Engleterre, a son consail saluz. Come a la monstrance nostre chier e loyal Geffrei de Genevill nostre Mareschal qui a nous se estoit pleint, qe nostre Justice Dirland estoit entree en sa franchise en celes parties, en grief preiudice de li e desheriteison; eussiens les parties aiournez devaunt Johan de Langeton nostre Chanceler e Roger le Brabanzon nostre Justice lendemeyn des almes, e le dit nostre mareschal, qui en nostre servise est la ou nous sumes, ne peusse ester al devauntdit iour. Nous vueillantz qe bone e hastive dreiture sur ce li soit faite; vous mandoms qe al dit nostre Mareschal faciez faire en sa dreit querele reason e droiture oveque favour, tant avant ou plus qe si nous e li yfeussoms en proper persone. E ce ne soit leissez. Donees desou nostre privie seal a Gaunt le quint ious de Octobre. Lan de nostre regne vintisme quint. [Edward, by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland and duke of Aquitaine, to Edward his dear son and our lieutenant in England, and to his council, greetings. Since on the petition of our dear and loyal Geoffrey de Geneville, our Marshall, who has complained to us that our Justiciar of Ireland has entered his franchises in those parts, to his great prejudice and disinheritance, we have allocated the parties a day before John de Langton, our chancellor, and Roger le Brabazon, our Justice, on the morrow

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of All Souls; and our said Marshall who is with us in our service cannot be there on the aforesaid day; we, wishing that good and swift right should be done to him about this, command you that you cause reason and right to be done with favour to our said Marshall in his just complaint, as much as, or more than if we and he were there in our own person. Given under our privy seal at Aardenburg, the 28th day of August in the twenty-fifth year of our reign.]

15. 1297, 25 October. Edward I to Edward his son, lieutenant in England, and his council: warrant for the release of the lands of Scots now serving in Flanders. Privy Seal. Dated at Ghent. SC 1/45/91. Edwardus dei gratia Rex Anglie Dominus Hibernie et Dux Aquitanie; Edwardus filio nostro karissimo, tenenti locum nostrum in Anglie, et eius consilio, salutem. Quia Michael Lescot [valetus]1, et Ric[ardu]s Mareschal, Ric[ardu]s de Pensby, et Duncanus Lescot, nobiscum in obsequio nostro in cismarinis partibus commorantur, Nos eis vo[lent]es2 gratiam fieri specialem vobis mandamus quod terras et tenementa predictorum Michelis, Ric[ard]i, Ric[ard]i et Duncani, tam in Anglie quam in Scotia constituta, que in manu nostra seu aliorum, occasione ultione guerre scotie existere dinoscuntur; sibi vel eorum in hac parte attornatis tenenda pro voluntate nostra deliberari faciatis. 3. Recepimus autem fidelitatem a quolibet eorundem et homagia, s… que pro terres et tenementis illis nobis debent ponendum duximus pro nostro libito in respectum. Dat’ sub privato sigillo nostro apud Gandanum .xxv. die Octobris anno regni nostri vicesimo quinto.4 1.

Uncertain reading; very faded

2. Hole 3. 4.

Interlinear addition in the same hand Formerly enclosed in C81/1532 no.6, with SC 1/45/90

[Edward, by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland and duke of Aquitaine, to Edward our dearest son, our lieutenant in England, and to his council, greetings. Whereas Michael the Scot, Richard Marshal, Richard de Pensby and Duncan the Scot are remaining with us in our business in foreign parts, we, wishing special grace to be done them, command you that you should cause the lands and tenements of the said Michael, Richard, Richard and Duncan, as much situated in England as Scotland, which are discovered to be in our hands or others’ on account of retribution for the war in Scotland, to be released to them or their attorneys to be held at our will; so much, that is to say, that thenceforth they may do to us and others from whom they hold those lands and tenements the customs and service due and customary from them. We have received, moreover, from a certain one of them, the fidelity and homage due to us for his lands and tenements, and we have decided to place him in respite at our pleasure. Given under our privy seal at Ghent, the 25th day of October in the twenty-fifth year of our reign.]

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16. 1297, 18 November. Edward I to his son Edward, lieutenant in England, and his council: warrant for a delay in assizes to which a man serving with him is party. Privy Seal. Dated at Ghent. SC 1/45/100. Edward par la grace de dieu, Roi Dengleterre, seigneur Dirlande e ducs Daquitaine; a Edward nostre chier fiuz, tenant nostre lieu en Engleterre, e a son consail; saluz. Pur ce qe nous avoms entenu qe Henri Tonere, Wautier Tonere e Agneis de Corston, ont arrainez diverses assises de nouvele disseisine vers nostre foial e loial Johan Wadam e Elizabeth sa femme le quel Johan demoert en nostre servise es parties ou nous sumes, daucunes choses dont meismes ceux Johan e Elizabeth feurent en possession al houre que meismes celi Johan se vient Dengleterre pur venire ovesque nous en nostre servise; vous mandoms qe vous facez mander as Justices qui sont assignent aprendre assises en le Conte ou les dites choses sont, sicome aucun par le dit Johan, vous porra plus pleinement monstrer, qui meismes les assises si eles soient arraignees sicome est desus dit; preignent delai e soient mises en respit tant qe au retorner du dit Johan en Engleterre, ou tant qe nous en eoms autre chose commandee. Donees souz nostre privie seal a Gant le .xviij. iour de Novembre Lan de nostre regne vintisme quint. [Edward, by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland and duke of Aquitaine, to Edward our dear son, our lieutenant in England, and to his council, greetings. Because we have heard that Henry Tonere, Walter Tonere and Agnes de Corston have arraigned various assizes of novel deseisin against our faithful and loyal John Wadham, who remains in our service where we are, and Elizabeth his wife, concerning some things of which the same John and Elizabeth were in peaceful possession at the time of the same John’s departure from England to come with us in our service; we command you that you should cause to be commanded to the justices who are assigned to take the assizes in the county where the said things are, as one of the said John’s men can more fully show you, that the same assizes, if they are arraigned as is above-said, should be adjourned and put in respite until the return of the said John to England, or until we command otherwise about it. Given under our privy seal at Ghent, the 18th day of November, in the 25th year of our reign.]

17. 1297, 18 November. Edward I to his son Edward, lieutenant in England, and his council: warrant for the protection of the estate of a man serving with him. Privy Seal. Dated at Ghent. SC 1/45/101. Edward par la grace de dieu, Roi Dengleterre, seigneur Dirlande e ducs Daquitaine; a Edward nostre chier fiuz, tenant nostre lieu en Engleterre, e a son consail; saluz. Come les executours du testament mestre William de Montfort iadis dean de leglise seint pool de Londres eent aucunes grevances faites a monsegnur Guilliam de Leibourn puis qil vynt cea outre en nostre servise, sicome gentz ses vous porront plus pleignement monstrer vous mandoms qe sa monstrance e ses resons bien entendues: mettez y tien consail e tien redrestement; come vous potez sanz mesprendre tant enfaciez, qe son estat sont sauvez en tien mander quil se pusse tenir appaiez par reson, e quil apartenie qe sa demoere devers nostre le cregne profiter e mirent de damage. Donees souz nostre privie seal a Gant le .xviij. iour de Novembre Lan de nostre regne xxv.

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[Edward, by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland and duke of Aquitaine, to Edward our dear son, our lieutenant in England, and to his council, greetings. As the executors of the will of Mr William de Montfort, late dean of the church of St Paul of London have caused certain injuries against my lord William de Leybourne since he came here in our service, as his men will be able to show you more fully, we command you that, having listened carefully to their evidence and reasons, you apply such counsel there and such redress as you can, without any wrongdoing, so that his state may be preserved in such a way that he can hold himself satisfied according to reason, and that he may feel that his remaining with us accrued him profit and avoided damage. Given under our privy seal at Ghent, the 18th day of November, in the 25th year of our reign.]

18. 1297, 27 November. Edward I to his son Edward, lieutenant in England, and his council: instructions for their attention to Gascon business. Privy Seal. Dated at Ghent. SC 1/45/103. Edward par la grace de dieu, Roi Dengleterre, seigneur Dirlande e ducs Daquitaine; a Edward nostre chier fiuz, tenant nostre lieu en Engleterre, e a son consail; saluz. Queux mandementz qe nous eoms faitz avers vous ore e autrefoiz; vous chargeoms especiaument, sicome vous volez sauver nostre honeur, qe vous mettez aucun bien consail en la busoigne de Gascoigne, coment nos gentz qui la sont, se peussent meyntenir celes parties dunt qe nos busoignes par de cea, soient mises en plus certeyn estat, qe eles ne sont uncore. E par vos letters les confortez ausint quantqe vous porrez, si es requerrez molt, quil se voillent tenir come bones gentz sicome il ont fait touz iours cea en arieres, e quil facent semblant de bon covyne, nomeement ceste sans fraunce durant. Car si nos adversaires veent qe ceuz de Gascoigne se portent bien a ce qe nos amys par ailleurs se porteront ausint; nous esperoms certeynement, qe nous traveroms bone issue de nostre busoigne. E pur ce vous saviegne bien de ceuz de Gascoigne, coment il soient par temps confortez en aucune bone manere car de merit ne puent il estre de bon covyne. Donees souz nostre privie seal a Gaunt Le .xxvij. iour de Novembre Lan de nostre regne vinte e sysme. [Edward, by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland and duke of Aquitaine, to Edward our dear son, our lieutenant in England, and to his council, greetings. On those commandments that we have made towards you now and previously we especially charge you, as you wish to save our honour, that you apply good counsel to the business of Gascony, so as our men who are there might be able to maintain those parts until our business in that case has been put in a more certain state than it already is; and by your letters also comfort them as much as you can, and entreat them greatly, that they might wish to hold themselves as good men, as they have always been in the past, and that they might make signs of a good union, especially one that remains firm without France. Because if our adversaries behold that Gascony carries itself well in this, and our friends elsewhere carry themselves likewise; we hope indeed that we shall reach a good conclusion to our business. And as you know well, Gascons, although they may at one time be comforted in a good manner for their merit, they may not act well. Given under our privy seal at Ghent, the 27th day of November, in the 26th year of our reign.]

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Edward, the autocrat (1299–1307) 19. 1300, 20 November. Edward I to Walter de Langton: assist the bearer, a forester in Selkirk. Privy Seal. Dated at Hereford. SC 1/45/120 Edward par la grace de dieu Roi Dengleterre seigneur Dirlaunde & Ducs Daquitaine al honurable peere au dieu .W. par la meisme grace Evesque de Cestre nostre Tresorer; saluz. Nous enveoms a vous Michel de Whittom porteur de ces lestres qui nadgueres 1 ardist ses meisons e ses autres choses en la forest de Selkirk, sicome nous vous contasmes autrefoiz sil vous en sovient. Et vous mandons que tauntque au faillaunt de la souffrance que nous avoms grantee a tenir as gentz de Escoce facez ordener de son vivre, en tieu manere quil sen peusse tenir appaez par reison. Don’ souz nostre prive seal a hereford le .xx. iour de Novembr’. Lan de nostre regne vint & noenisme comenceaunt. 1.

Interlinear addition

[Edward, by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland and duke of Aquitaine, to the honourable father in God, W[alter de Langton], by the same grace bishop of Chester, our treasurer, greetings. We send to you Michael de Whitton, bearer of this letter, who lately for love of us and for our service burned his houses and other goods in the forest of Selkirk, as we have told you previously, if you recall. And we command you that, whatever we have granted to the men of Scotland to hold until the end of the armistice, you cause to be ordained for his life, in such a way that he may think to hold himself satisfied according to reason. Given under our Privy Seal at Hereford, the 20th day of November at the beginning of the twenty-ninth year of our reign.]

20 (a). 1306, 12 June. Edward I to Aymer de Valence: the lands of Scots rebels are to be laid waste; other matters concerning Scotland. Dated at Watford. Privy Seal. SC 1/47/80. Edward par la grace de dieu Roy Dengleterre Seigneur Dirland et Ducs Daquitaine. A nostre cher cosin et feal Eymar de Valence; salutz. Nous avons bien entendu voz lettres, par les queles vous nous mandastes qe vous aviez ars les terres monseignur Simon Ffresel en la forest de Selkirk de qui nous vous savons bon gre, et vous mandons qe einsi le facez de touz noz enemis par la ou vous passerez, et auxi bien de ceaux qe tournerent contre nous en ceste guerre du Conte de Carrik et puis sont venuz a nostre pees, come de noz enemis et qe par cele pees ne soyent deportez ne garantiz, qe totes lur maisons terres, biens et chateaux, soyent ars, destruz et gastez, issi qe le dit Simon ne nul de noz autres enemis i peussent trover nule manere de restet, sicome il ount trove avant ces houres apres ce qe eaux se rendirent a nostre pees. E les autres qe se sont bien et leaument tenuz devers nos, facez honeurer, et eaux lur maisons lur terres biens et chateaux sauver. E vous mandons qe vous merciez mout de par nous les .. freres de Haliburton de ceo qe eaux e sont si bien et si leaument portez devers nous, et volons qe vous les ditz de par nous, qe par quoi qe eaux mettent lur peine et lur entente de bien faire; qe nous sumes en grant volentee de lur rendre lur bon servise. E meismes ceo, faites dire et saver a noz foresters de Selkirk par quei eaux leaument et peinblement nous servent et bien le facent. Don’

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soutz nostre prive seal a Watford en alaunt et venaunt devers vos quanqe nous purrons. Le .xij. jour de Juyn. Lan de nostre regne trentisme quart.1 1.

For postscripts, see below, nos 20 (b) and 20 (c).

[Edward, by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland and duke of Aquitaine, to our dear and faithful cousin Aymer de Valence. We have well understood your letters through which you have informed us that you have burnt the lands of Sir Simon Fraser in the forest of Selkirk, for which we give you great thanks. And we command that you do likewise to all our enemies wherever you should go, and also to those who turned against us in this war of the earl of Carrick and then came into our peace as our enemies, since in this peace they have neither been shown nor guaranteed mercy, and all their houses, lands, goods and castles should be burnt, destroyed and wasted, so that the said Simon or any of our other enemies shall find no manner of rest as that which they found before they returned themselves to our peace. And honour the others who hold themselves well and loyally towards us, save their houses, their lands, goods and castles. And we command that should you give great thanks from us to the brothers of Haliburton who held themselves so well and so loyally towards us, and we wish that you should tell them for us that they have put their effort and their intention to such good effect that we greatly wish to repay their good service. And similarly, tell and give our foresters of Selkirk to know how loyally and diligently they have served us and have done well. Given under our privy seal at Watford in going and coming to you inasmuch as we can, the 12th day of June, the 34th year of our reign.

20 (b). 1306, 12 June. Edward I to Aymer de Valence: a postscript to the above. SC 1/47/90. A ceo qe vous nous priez par mesmes les lettres qe nous voillouns doner a monseigneur Wautier de Beauchaump qe est ovek vous en nostre servise les terres monseigneur Gilbert de la Haye qe est countre nos; vous fesouns a saver qe nous ne biouns nules terres partir celes parties, taunt qe nous mesmes i veignons, mes adounk i aurons tiel regard de celes terres ou de autres, qe vous e li en devrez tenir apaiez par resoun. [As to what you ask us by the same letters, that we should wish to give to Sir Walter de Beauchamp, who is with you in our service, the lands of Sir Gilbert de la Haye who is against us; we give you to know that we do not wish to part with any lands in that region until we ourselves should come there, but then we shall have such regard for those lands or others, that you and he shall be bound to be satisfied about it according to reason.]

20 (c). 1306, 12 June. Edward I to Aymer de Valence: a postscript to the above. SC 1/47/91. Nous vous enveons estes noz lettres par un de noz messagers; car le messager qui nous porta voz lettres as queles nous vous responons par cestes deparist de nous tost apres qil les nous avoit baillees, et ne revint pas a nous, au jour quil avoit assis, de quoi nous fumes maupaez. [We are sending this our letter to you by one of our messengers, because the messenger who brought us your letters to which we respond to you by this, departed from us as soon

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as he had delivered them to us, and did not return to us on the day which was assigned, concerning which we were ill-pleased.]

21. 1306, 11 August. Edward I to Aymer de Valence: thanks for his work in Scotland; the capture of the bishop of Moray is urgently required. Dated at Lanchester. Privy Seal. SC 1/47/88. Edward par la grace de dieu Roi Dengleterre Seigneur Dirlaunde et Ducs Daquitanie; a nostre foial et loial Aymer de Valence nostre chier cousin; saluz. Nous avoms bien entendu, par vos lettres, qe vous nous enveastes darreinement comment vous avez mys les busoignes dela les montz en bon array, et y avez fait gardeins, pur la sauvete de celes parties de quoi nous vous savoms bon gre et vous mercions molt. Et sachez qe nous avoms grant marveille, de ce qe nous navoms uncore nule novelle, le quel .. Levesque de Morreue est pris ou noun, de sicome nous mandasmes piecea par nos lettres a vous, et au .. Conte de Ross, qe vous meissez tote la diligence qe vous peussiez bonement, comment il feust pris. Et par voz lettres et par le portur de cestes, nous facez savoir la certeinte de meisme .. Levesque, ensemblement, od totes les autres novelles qe vous verrez qe amander nous facent. Car nous voudriens molt aver le corps de meisme Levesqe, por la faire enveer en Engleterre, por sauvement et securement garder ausi comme nous avoms fait des Evesqes de Seint Andreu, et de Glasgu. Don’ souz nostre prive seal a Langecestre, le .xi. iour Daugst. Lan de nostre regne .xxxiij. [Edward by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland and duke of Aquitaine, to our faithful and loyal Aymer de Valence, our dear cousin, greetings. We have well understood by your letters, which you lately sent us, how you have put the affairs of the mountains in good order, and have placed guardians there for the safety of those parts, for which we know much gratitude and thank you greatly. And know that we greatly marvel that we have not yet had any news of whether or not .. the bishop of Murray is taken, as we commanded some time ago by our letters to you and to .. the earl of Ross that you should put all the diligence that you well can, such that he should be taken. And by your letters and by the bearer of this, you should give us to know for certain concerning the same .. bishop, together with all the other news which seems to you that they should tell us. Because we greatly wish to have custody1 of the same bishop, so that he can be sent into England, to be safely and securely guarded, just as we have done with the bishops of St Andrews and Glasgow. Given under our privy seal at Lanchester, on the 11th day of August, in the 33rd year of our reign.] 1.

Literally, the body

22. 1306, 16 September. Edward I to Gervase Adelard, admiral, and the barons of the Cinque Ports serving in the fleet: thanks for their good service, which he asks them to continue. Dated at Blenkinsop. Privy Seal. Draft. SC 1/61/21. R. 1 a Gerveys Adelard admiral et a touz noz autres [bar]ons de Cink Port qui sont en nostre service en la flete entre …ir et celes parties, saluz. Nous avoms bien entendu par lettres qe2 4, 6 puis qe vous venistes en7 lor8 compaignie, de qoi 9 nous vos ensavoms bon gre et vos mercioms molt et vos prioms

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qe ausint comme vous avez bien commence mettez peine continuer10 totes foiz de mienz en mienz issint qe par vostre bien service11 et vostre diligence noz biens puissent estre mesnees hastivement a 12 … es parties ou vous estes 13. Et vous fesons saver qe en les chos[es] qe vous avez afairre devers nos 15 16Car pur l[e bo]n servise qe vous nos avez faitz ore et autrefoiz 17 bone volunte a faire pro vous.  [Blenkin]shope .xvj. Sept[embre] 1.

Interlinear addition del. H…p Henri de Percy … … nous ad envees les bon consail qe vous nous avez fait 3. Interlinear addition within another addition 4. Interlinear addition 5. del. servise 6. Interlinear addition 7. del. sa 8. Interlinear addition 9. Interlinear addition 10. del. vaillez continuer 11. del. [bon] conseil 12. Interlinear addition 13. Interlinear addition 14. del. trovez … 15. Interlinear addition 16. del. vous tre … bien qe nous vos tenens appaez du bon service qe vous nos ore fait comme dessus est dite 17. Torn edge 2.

[The king, etc., to Gervais Adelard, admiral, and all our other barons of the Cinque Ports who are in our service in the fleet between … and these parts, greetings. We have well understood by letters which were sent to us by our good men who are in … … that you have borne yourselves well in our service while you were in his company, about which … …, for which we are very grateful and thank you greatly, and we pray that just as you have begun so well, you should take pains to continue, at all times better and better, so that by your good service and your diligence our affairs may be hastily concluded [in the] parts where you are, by the aid of God. And we make known to you that concerning the things which you have done for us we wish [to have such] regard for you that you shall be bound to hold yourself satisfied. Because of the [good] service that you have done us now and at other times we shall [be] of good will in acting towards you. Blenkinsop, the 16th of September.]

204

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Acknowledgements This book had its genesis in a conversation about letters with my old friend and teacher, W. Ann Trindade. I am grateful to her for her inspiration and kindness over twenty-five years and counting. Its germination and growth benefited immeasureably from the mentorship, guidance, close reading and advice of Barry Collett, Carolyn James, Clare Monagle, Constant Mews, David Garrioch, Ernest Koh, Julie Kalman, Mark Ormrod and Susan Broomhall; the constructive comments of the anonymous readers of Boydell and Brewer; and the wisdom of Caroline Palmer, editor extraordinaire. I am especially grateful to Caroline for her generosity and understanding in tough times. Its final form was shaped by productive conversations with Andrea Ruddick, Andy King, Anaïs Waag, Lucy Hennings, Thomas Smith, Lisa Benz and Lars Kjær; fellow members of the Monash University Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, especially Anne Holloway, Diana Jeske and John Crossley; the Oxford Early Career Writers’ Workshop; and the participants in a workshop on Medieval Letters and Letter Writing at King’s College London in 2019. All of them made me think differently and better about my ideas and my evidence. Parts of the discussion in this book have appeared in my published works: I am particularly grateful to the reviewers, editors and publishers of ‘Words as Weapons in the Correspondence of Edward I with Llywelyn ap Gruffydd’, Parergon 30:1 (2013), 51–71 for their input into the formation of ideas that are included here, and permission to reproduce them. Thanks also to The National Archives, UK, for permission to reproduce a number of images, and to Cath Dalton for her skilful graphics. The archival research on which this book is based could not have taken place without the support of the Menzies Centre’s Australian Bicentennial Scholarship, which enabled me to spend three months in The National Archives at Kew in 2011 when I first embarked on learning about medieval letters. I am also indebted to the generosity of David Carpenter, who kindly provided me with a base at King’s College London during my stay. The financial support of the Faculty of Arts and the School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies at Monash enabled me to continue work thereafter. The opportunity to spend a month writing and thinking as an Early Career Visiting Fellow of The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities (TORCH) proved invaluable in 2016, and I thank Sophie Marnette, Senia Paseta, and Vicky McGuinness 229

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for facilitating my visit and making me so welcome. In particular, I would like to thank the Monash Equity Office for awarding me an Advancing Women’s Research Success Grant in 2018, which enabled me to persevere while balancing the kind of heavy teaching and family caring roles that are so commonly borne by academic women everywhere. Many friends and colleagues contributed their time and knowledge in support of this book. I am indebted to the kind efforts of Richard Cassidy, Sophie Ambler and Lars Kjær for taking archival images and checking manuscript readings on my behalf when I was far from London; and to Lena WahlgrenSmith and Rob Cromarty for sharing their expertise on Latin cursus rhythms. I have also drawn deeply from the well of knowledge embodied in the Medieval and Early Modern Team at The National Archives (TNA), past and present, especially Paul Dryburgh, Sean Cunningham, James Ross and Jessica Nelson. The unsung work of the Map Reading Room staff at TNA has also been of the utmost help to me, including keeping documents on hand for me even when I forgot to re-order them for another day. I thank Áine Foley, Hugh Brodie, Matthew Hammond and Thomas W. Smith for providing me with copies of their publications; Marc Morris for sharing his notes on Edward I’s reign; Michael Clanchy and Hermann Kamp for sharing unpublished work; and Cynthia Neville for giving me advance access to her transcriptions of the letters of Alexander III of Scotland. I have also benefited greatly from the insight and coaching of Lisa Curtis-Wendlandt. Edward I’s government produced more extant records than a single person could read in a lifetime. Several people assisted with translation and transcription to expand the volume of materials I was able to consult. In particular, I thank Anne Holloway, Abigail Armstrong, and Kyly Walker, who each acted as my research assistant at various times. My own translation efforts were also substantively assisted by the advice of Emma Cavell, Jan Pinder Kathryn Smithies and Mark Cleary, and the Latin Reading Group at Monash. The wisdom of Paul Brand and Paul Hyams informed my understanding of particular points of legal administration and Law French. Naturally, errors of interpretation remain my own. Time is the thing that researchers most seem to lack, and I am very grateful to all who helped me make time, or to to use it more effectively. Rowena Hutson provided invaluable administrative and bibliographic support from Melbourne during my TORCH fellowship, and proved herself adept at making a researcher’s life run smoothly. I am also indebted to many exceptional history educators whose help relieved me of teaching duties at key moments, especially Annie Blachly, Dianne Hall, Erin Smith, Jamie Agland, Kate Aldred, Kathryn Smithies, Mimi Petrakis, Rosa Martorana, Steve Joyce and Tomas Zahora. Writing a book is difficult, often solitary work, perhaps especially for European medievalists working from the antipodes, and the support of fellow scholars and writers has been invaluable in overcoming challenges that seemed insurmountable alone. Charlotte Greenhalgh, Josh Specht, Agnieszka 230

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Sobocinska and Ruth Morgan have been a precious support network for me in this respect; as has the solidarity of the ‘Shut up and Write’ and #RemoteRetreat communities, both online and in the Matheson Library at Monash. The #MedievalTwitter crowd often answered my questions and put its ‘hive mind’ to the task of resolving research problems and resource queries in 24-hour, international time. Engaging with this global group of scholars often made the task feel both less onerous and more achievable. The collegiality and friendship of the medieval studies community, both staff and students, has sustained me throughout writing this book. There are literally more wonderful people than I can thank here by name. I simply thank you all for being friends, supporters, inspirations, and constructive critics, and apologize to all those who have gone un-named. Finally, I have been supported both emotionally and financially through the long journey towards this book by my parents, John and Sue; siblings Andy, Ro and Iain and their partners; family-in-law; and husband, Henry. Without them, this book could not have been written, or even conceived.

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Index Aardenburg, Low Countries  197, 198 Aberconwy, Treaty of (1277)  62, 67, 68, 71 n.90 Adelard, Gervase  203, 204 Adolf of Nassau, king of the Romans  58, 104 n.33 Agenais (French region)  59–60, 61, 94, 98, 102, 107, 164 n.73, 195–6 Agnes de Corston  199 Alexander III, pope  90 Alexander III, king of Scotland  116–21, 122, 123, 124, 151 Alexander of the Isles  17 Alfonso II, count of Provence  142 n.77 Alfonso X, king of Castile  143, 144 Algotsson, Peter  47 n.118, 114–15, 116 Allighieri, Dante  113 n.71 Amanieu de Lebreto  147 Amaury de Montfort  21 Ambrose of Milan, St  27 Amesbury, Wiltshire  26 Amiens, Mise of  102 Amiens, Treaty of (1279)  56, 94 Anglesey, Wales  71 Anglicization  119 n.102 Ap Gwenwynwyn, Gruffydd  60, 84, 187, 189, 191 Ap Iorwerth, Llywelyn  84 Ap Owain, Gwenwynwyn  84, 191 Aquens (Bagnères-de-Bigorre), France 142 Aquitaine, duchy of  14, 85, 147, 196 Aragon, kingdom of  1, 16, 113 n.72 Aristotelianism 70 ars dictaminis see dictamen, art of ars notaria  33, 37 Arthur, king  81, 89

Arwystli (Welsh region)  62, 68–9, 70, 71, 130 n.20, 189 attorneys  64, 66–7, 68, 92–3, 114, 115, 116, 164, 166, 169, 189, 190, 191, 198 Audigier 172–3 aurality  75, 80 Avice de Langthwaite  27 Aymer de Valence  11, 171, 173, 174, 201, 202, 203 bankers 150 Barons’ Wars  20 n.94, 27, 68, 87, 93, 152 Béarn, France  103 n.26, 141 Becket, Thomas, St, archbishop of Canterbury 91 Bek, Anthony, bishop of Durham  121, 193, 194 Bek, Thomas  51 n.8, 53 Bene of Florence  76 Benedict XI, pope  27 n.17, 104 Benstead, John  53 Bernard of Meung  33 Berwick-on-Tweed, Berwickshire  15, 59 Bigorre, France  141, 142 Black Death  1 Blenkinsopp, Northumberland  203, 204 Blyborough, William  53 Bogo de Clare  133–5 Bologna, Italy  53 Boniface VIII, pope  32, 121, 122, 158 Bordeaux, France  145 n.89, 164 Bourdieu, Pierre  20 Brabant, duke of  74 Bracton (treatise)  49

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INDEX

Brill, Buckinghamshire  110 Bristol 84 Briwer, William  84 Bruce (Brus), Robert V, lord of Annandale  158, 173 n.108 Bruce rebellion (1306)  17 Brusebon, Nicholas  190 bureacracy, medieval  20, 22, 106 n.41 Burnell, Robert, bishop of Bath and Wells  12 n.54, 28–9, 52, 87 n.50, 89, 140, 150 Bush, John  36 Byfleet, Surrey  166 Caillau, Arnaud  146 Canterbury, Kent  22, 25 n.4, 90, 193 captatio benevolentiae (epistolary part)  39, 41–4, 46, 60, 69, 101, 172 Capua, Italy  33, 35 Carrick, earl of see Robert I, king of Scotland Caernarfon, Wales  190 Castile, kingdom of  16, 143, 144 Catherine, empress of Constantinople 105 chancellors, royal see Bek, Thomas; Burnell, Robert, bishop of Bath and Wells; Giffard, Walter, archbishop of York; Grey, Walter de, archbishop of York; Hamelton, William de; Langton, John, bishop of Chichester; Merton, Walter de chancery  12 n.54, 14, 15, 19, 20 n.94, 30, 31, 32, 36, 51, 52–4, 57–8, 59, 60, 61, 70, 71, 73, 89, 104, 132, 138, 147 n.101, 155, 175, 176, 185 imperial 34 papal  35 n.51, 37, 38, 39, 44, 137 n.53 chancery warrants  15 n.71 Charles of Anjou  114 n.75 Charles of Salerno  113–14 Charles of Valois  105–6 charters  25, 55, 71, 141, 161, 162, 168, 170 coronation 29 Chester, Cheshire  47 n.119

Chester, justiciar of  71, 73 Chinus de Burgo  112 n.65 church, the  7, 42, 84 n.34, 113, 150 Cicero  3, 40, 126 Cinque Ports  172, 203, 204 clausulae  38, 90 clerks, royal  11, 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 36 n.62, 37, 50, 51–4, 57, 65, 74, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 126, 131, 138, 149, 150, 154, 155, 157 n.35, 158, 160, 163, 170, 173, 175, 177, 179, 180, 181 examinatores  52, 59 of chancery  30, 32, 54, 58, 59, 89 preceptores  52 prenotarii  52, 57 cofferer 53 commands, royal  11, 12, 23–4, 32, 46, 47, 59, 73, 76, 86, 115, 116, 121, 123, 129, 132, 134, 141, 143, 148, 149, 150, 154, 155–8, 159, 161, 164, 165, 167, 170–1, 172, 174, 175–8, 179, 182, 183 community of the realm  7, 8, 75, 82, 113, 125, 168, 169 Comyn, Alexander, earl of Buchan  17, 122 Comyn, Amabilia  65 Comyn, John, earl of Buchan  158 consensus  1, 5, 10, 45, 129–31, 158, 181 Constance of Béarn  28 corruption  12, 26, 68, 71, 128 council, king’s  25 n.4, 27, 53, 54, 57, 63–4, 66, 67, 71, 74, 75, 76, 81, 82–3, 88–9, 93, 94, 95, 113, 128–9, 132, 134–5, 144, 153, 160, 163, 164, 165, 166, 168–9, 189, 197, 198, 199, 200 credence, letters of  59, 104, 193, 195 crusade  35, 127 curia, papal  22, 24, 34, 138 n.54 see also chancery, papal cursus (prose style)  24, 37–9, 48, 76, 80, 89, 90 David de Moravia, bishop of Moray  11, 203

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INDEX

Dax, France  135 dictamen, art of (ars dictaminis)  2, 11, 13, 20, 24, 33–4, 38, 48, 50, 64, 69, 80, 86, 108, 125, 150, 155, 176, 177 Bolognese-Capuan school  34–7, 39–41 dictatores see Bene of Florence; Bernard of Meung; Faba, Guido; Latini, Brunetto; Nicola da Rocca; Peter of Blois; Petrus de Vinea; Richard of Pofi; Stefano di San Giorgio; Thomas of Capua; Vinsauf, Geoffrey diplomacy  23, 67, 86, 96, 97, 99, 106, 120, 123, 152, 183 diplomatic (discipline)  3 displeasure, royal  11, 46, 59, 164, 172–5, 177, 182 Dominicans 18 Dunbar, earl of see Patrick VII of Dunbar, earl of March Duncan the Scot  198 Edmund, earl of Cornwall  27, 47 n.120, 89 n.56, 116, 132, 135, 165, 191–3 Edmund Crouchback, earl of Lancaster  47 n.117, 103, 147, 152–3, 195–6 and kingdom of Sicily  35 n.55 Edward the Confessor, king of England  81, 89 Edward I, king of England accession  18, 19, 22, 51, 86, 87, 170 children see Edward of Caernarfon; Joan of Acre; Mary (daughter of Edward I) coronation  17–18, 30, 35, 88, 112, 117, 118, 127, 133 crisis of 1297  11, 55, 151, 161, 162, 170, 172, 179 crusading  35, 127 dictation of letters  19, 24, 48, 55–6, 74 family  63, 96, 98, 100, 108, 123, 166 see also Eleanor of Castile; Eleanor of Provence

in Low Countries see Low Countries persona  19, 21, 22, 48, 54, 58, 119, 126, 127, 130, 136, 141, 144, 147–8, 162, 175, 179 relationship with church see church, the rhetorical skill  18–19 wars see warfare Edward of Caernarfon (later Edward II, king of England)  55, 109, 145, 151, 165 n.74 lieutenancy in England  197–200 Eirik IV, king of Norway  114, 115, 116 Eleanor, countess of Leicester  92 Eleanor of Castile, queen of England  28, 110 n.57, 143, 150 Eleanor de Montfort, princess of Wales  63 n.61, 77–8, 79, 103 Eleanor of Provence, queen of England  26, 55, 81, 114 n.75, 150 Eleanor de Percy  28 envoys  57, 58, 59, 63, 81, 104, 105, 107, 108, 126, 140, 141, 152, 163, 195 emperors, Holy Roman  34, 42, 83 epistolarity  3, 6, 10, 17, 18, 20, 23, 25, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 46, 48, 49, 50, 52, 54, 72, 74, 75, 90, 94, 96–124, 125, 127–38, 148–9, 150–79, 180–3 epistolary practice, see letters, medieval Eversden, John  153 Evesham, battle of (1265)  18, 21, 118 exchequer  19, 31, 51, 52, 53, 54 n.21, 133, 138, 175 exordium (epistolary part) see captatio benevolentiae Faba, Guido  76 Fabri, Bernard  144 n.89 falconry  9, 114 favour, royal  21, 23, 26, 28, 29, 50, 56, 64, 65, 86, 94, 106–10, 111, 116, 117, 123–4, 133, 134, 135, 136–8, 146, 147, 148, 152, 166–70, 182, 187, 197–8 fealty  61, 62, 63, 87 n.49, 111, 124, 131, 132, 143, 160, 164

234

INDEX

Ferrers, Robert, earl of Derby  27 Ferriol, William  140 feudalism  29, 45, 78, 108, 128, 132, 159, 179 ‘bastard’ 136 first person, use of  25–9 FitzAlan, Brian  161 n.56 FitzPeter, Geoffrey  84 FitzWarin, William  91, 185–6 Flanders see Low Countries Fleta (treatise)  14, 30–2, 36, 52, 59 Foliot, Gilbert  91 France  16, 17, 34, 56, 58–9, 85, 86 n.42, 93, 97, 98, 103, 104, 105, 109 n.53, 116, 138–9, 142, 145, 146, 163, 200 Francesco d’Accorso  19, 36 Franco-Flemish War (1303–4)  105 Fraser, Simon  174, 202 Fraser, William, bishop of St Andrews 118 Frederick II, emperor  34 Frembaud, Jean  145 n.89 French language  2, 32 n.37, 46–8, 88 n.54, 162, 176–7 Gascon Crisis (1294–8)  103, 104 Gascon Rolls  60 Gascony  7 n.35, 15, 16, 17, 19, 26 n.8, 47 n.120, 52, 54, 57, 58, 87, 92, 98, 99, 102, 108, 126, 131 n.27, 132, 135, 137, 138–48, 149, 154, 155, 156, 163, 166, 175 n.119, 176, 182, 195, 196, 200 loss of  150, 152–3, 160, 162 Gaston de Béarn  98, 102, 107, 142, 143 Genau’r-glyn, Wales  73 Geoffrey de Geneville  167, 197 Geoffrey of Monmouth  80 Gerald of Wales  90 Gerard de Atyes  84 Geraud, count of Armagnac and Fézensac 146 Germany  16, 97, 108 Ghent, Low Countries  55 n.30, 145, 165, 197, 198, 199, 200 Giffard, Walter, archbishop of York  89, 185

gifts  11, 88, 114, 136, 146 Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester  133 Gilbert de la Haye  202 Godfrey de Brabant  193, 194 Gordon, Adam  191–2 grace, royal  26, 92–3, 94, 109, 110, 111, 124, 137, 145, 166–7, 168, 169, 170, 171 gratitude (rhetorical strategy)  86, 91–2, 96, 103, 106, 108, 109, 110–16, 117, 123, 147, 156, 157, 161, 170–2, 185–7, 195–6, 201–3 Great Cause  114, 159 Gregory X, pope  22, 35 n.51, 92, 100 n.15, 112, 127 n.12 Grey, Walter de, archbishop of York  21–2 n.98, 138 n.55 Grimbald de Pauncefoot  190 Guelders, Low Countries  108, 109, 110, 111 n.59 Guilem, Arnaud  144 n.89 Guillaume de Nangis  109 n.53 Guncelin de Badlesmere  73 Gunneys, Thomas  53 Guy de Dampierre, count of Flanders  104, 109, 110, 112, 187, 204, 211 Guy de Montfort  113 Hamelton, William de  27 n.15, 132 n.31, 173 n.108 Hartmann, prince  110 Helen de la Zouche  56 Hengham Magna (treatise)  31, 45, 96 Henry II, king of England  53 n.15, 90, 97 n.4 Henry III, king of England  6, 18, 20, 21, 28, 30, 34, 35 n.55, 39, 47, 51, 63 n.61, 68, 87, 100, 102, 116 n.87, 118, 125, 127, 139, 143, 164 n.73 Henry of Almain  113 Henry of Haslemere  192 Henry de Leybourne  166 Henry de Mandeville  186 Hereford, Herefordshire  201 Hereford, earl of  134, 151, 162, 163, 164, 169, 179 hierarchy 53

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Hohenstaufen dynasty  35 homage  56, 85, 86, 92, 98, 110, 116 n.87, 117–18, 121, 139, 156, 157, 198 Honorius III, pope  35 n.51, 90, 109 honour  32, 46, 82, 94, 105, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111, 114, 117, 118, 121, 122–3, 128, 129, 134, 145, 146, 153, 158, 159, 178, 187, 196, 200, 202 Hugh, archdeacon of Wells  84 Hugh of Evesham, cardinal  37, 137 Hugh de Langthwaite  27 Hugh de Vere  153 n.16 Hundred Years War  1 Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire   16, 119 Hywel Dda, law of see Welsh law

John I Balliol, king of Scotland  17, 58, 59–60, 115, 151, 156, 159, 195 John de Botetourt  174 John de Caen  36 John de Engaine  169 John of Godalming  192 John de Mucegros  19 n.85, 185 John de Warenne  161 n.56, 173 Joseph de Chauncy  89 n.59 Juliana de Shackleford  192 justice  12, 21, 27, 64, 65, 67, 69, 70, 72, 86, 88, 89, 93, 110 n.55, 115, 116, 127, 132, 133, 134, 135, 138, 143, 148, 152, 159, 166, 181, 182, 190, 191, 193 king as fount of  8, 29–30, 180

Idonea de Leybourne  135 Innocent III, pope  35 n.51, 44 inspeximus (document type)  25 n.3 Ireland  7 n.35, 15, 16, 26 n.8, 65, 87 n.49, 92, 126, 127, 129, 130 n.20, 150, 167, 186 Anglo-Norman invasion of  90 chancery of  52, 54 native kings of  16, 91 n.70, 129, 130 Irish law  129 Isabella, empress  34 Isabella de Clifford  109, 135 Isabella de Forz  163 n.69

Kenilworth, Warwickshire  18, 19 n.85, 46 kinship  15, 23, 27–8, 96, 100, 101, 108, 116, 117, 118, 123, 124, 141, 143 Kings Langley, Hertfordshire  68 kingship, ideas of  6, 12–13, 15, 21, 22, 29, 68, 70, 71, 72, 92, 117, 122, 125, 128, 130, 132, 136, 138, 152, 162 Kirkby, John de, bishop of Ely  47 n.119, 51 n.8, 56, 112, 135, 177 n.124 Knaresborough, forest of  27 knights  7, 118, 143 household  56, 58, 63 n.61, 144, 147, 155, 168, 174

Jan de Cuijk  56 Jean I de Nesle  107 Jean II de Brienne  107 Jean de Faro  145 Jean de Greiliac  147 n.97 Jeanne de Châtillon  107 Jeanne of Dammartin, queen of Castile  107, 112 n.67 Jeanne of Navarre, queen of France  103–4, 105, 152 Jedburgh, Scotland  59 Jerusalem, kingdom of  16 Jews, justices of the  53 Joan of Acre  110 n.58, 133 John, king of England  6, 20, 84, 85, 125, 138

Lacy, John  153 n.16 Lanchester, Co. Durham  203 Langton, John, bishop of Chichester  57, 167, 197 Langton, Walter de, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield  27 n.17, 56, 172, 201 Latin language  15 n.71, 24, 35, 37, 39, 46–8, 176–7 Latini, Brunetto  40, 42, 126 Laudabiliter (papal bull)  90 Le Brabazon, Roger  167, 197 Lechlade, Gloucestershire  186, 187 letters, medieval, see also epistolarity de statu 100–6

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INDEX

diplomatic  3, 8, 16–17, 32, 35, 36, 44, 47, 56, 57–8, 72, 85, 86, 90, 98, 99, 100, 102, 104, 106, 110, 111, 116, 121, 123–4, 125, 136, 141, 157, 181 drafting of  14, 19, 46, 47, 48, 50, 55, 57, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64–70, 71, 83, 92, 103, 104, 115, 144, 155, 172, 174, 177, 180, 184 elite nature of  2, 9–10, 12, 17, 75 n.1, 76, 80, 82, 85, 86, 111–12, 126, 128, 129–31, 133, 134–5, 136, 138, 143, 148–9, 156, 170, 178 formulas for  39–41 functions of  41–6 of intercession  93, 98, 100, 106–10, 112, 117, 123, 136–7 patent  8 n.38, 9 n.44, 59, 84, 87 n.49, 94, 162, 164, 195 performance of  75, 76–80, 183 structure of  2, 3–6, 24, 27, 41–6, 56, 69, 86, 91, 100, 108, 125, 180, 184 see also captatio benevolentiae; narratio; petitio; salutatio; sanctio (epistolary parts) Lewes, battle of (1264)  21, 135 Lincoln, earl of  163 Llanmaes, Wales  78 Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, prince of Wales  17, 22, 60, 62–8, 70, 71–3, 76, 78, 79, 82, 84–5, 87 n.48, 88 n.53, 98 n.10, 116, 121, 128, 159, 187, 188, 189 loans  109, 112, 114, 169 London  14, 18, 83, 185, 186, 200 lord mayor of  18 Louis IX, king of France  102, 103 Louth, William  53 Low Countries  16, 47 n.120, 55, 56, 97, 108, 109, 162, 163, 164, 166, 167 Ludham, Godfrey, archbishop of York  21 n.98 Magna Carta  127 n.13 magnates (barons, aristocracy)  6, 7, 10, 12, 30, 32, 46, 69, 70–1, 72, 76, 85 n.40, 89, 93, 112, 113, 119, 121–2, 125, 126, 127–8, 129–36,

137, 143, 144, 147, 148, 149, 154, 155, 157, 159, 160, 161, 162, 165, 170, 179, 182, 196 Maid of Norway see Margaret, the Maid of Norway Mar, earl of  17 Marches, Welsh  63, 130 n.20 Margaret, the Maid of Norway  116, 123, 151 Marguerite of Provence, queen of France  97, 100–1, 102, 103, 107, 112, 114 n.75 Marie of Brabant, queen of France  121, 122, 123, 170 Marshal, Richard  198 Mary (daughter of Edward I)  26 Mary de Merk  9 n.43 Matthew de Vendôme, abbot of St Denis 107 Melun-sur-Seine, France  86, 93 Merrymouth, Wales  191 Merton, Walter de  65, 85–8, 89, 91, 92, 93, 147, 172, 185, 186 Michael the Scot  198 Michael de Whitton  201 military service  49, 122, 129, 142, 154, 179 Monte Cassino, abbey of  36 Montgomery, Wales  191 Mortimer, Roger  89, 93 narratio (epistolary part)  13 n.58, 39, 43–6, 68, 69–73, 84, 86, 93, 108, 120, 121, 128, 129, 155, 160, 164, 166, 167 Nicholas I, pope  90 Nicola da Rocca  36 Norfolk, earl of  151, 162, 163, 164, 167, 169, 179 Norway  16, 114, 115, 116 notories, papal see curia, papal oaths  14, 21, 29, 104, 110, 132, 141, 142, 148, 160 coronation  17–18, 30, 88, 92 n.73, 112, 127 n.12, 133 oratory, see rhetoric Orsini, Matteo, cardinal  137

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INDEX

Osturcus 84 Otto de Grandison  140 overlordship  115, 118, 139, 159–60 oyer and terminer, commissions of  27 ‘Paper Constitution’ (1244)  20 pardon, royal power of  85, 109, 166 Paris, France  102, 103, 139, 156 n.31, 191, 192 Treaty of (1259)  138–9 Paris, Matthew  81–5, 92 Parliament  1, 5, 7–8, 25 n.4, 27, 52, 63, 64, 65–6, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75, 76, 83, 94, 95, 113, 115, 116, 127, 128, 131, 153–4, 157 n.33, 159, 160, 163, 187, 189, 190 Patent Rolls  63 n.64, 84 pathos  27, 101, 102, 104, 105 Patrick VII of Dunbar, earl of March  17, 55, 158, 172 patronage  17, 29, 54 n.21, 54, 94, 98, 100, 106, 108, 110, 112, 113, 114, 123, 124, 136, 146, 148 peace-making  13, 18, 19 n.85, 30, 58, 67, 68, 93, 100, 102–4, 106 Penrith, Cumbria  119 persuasion  3–5, 11, 13 n.58, 18, 19, 25, 27, 29, 33, 40, 41, 44, 45–6, 48, 60, 76, 80, 96, 104, 123, 126, 127, 131, 143, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 181, 183 Peter of Blois  38 Peter de Buan  145 n.89 Peter de Maignan  145 n.89 petitio (epistolary part)  25 n.4, 39, 43, 45–6, 60, 78, 86, 108, 120, 129, 131, 141, 156, 157, 160, 164, 174 petitions  5, 7, 8, 12 n.55, 15 n.71, 25–7, 29, 44, 45, 46, 47 n.119, 52–3, 110 n.55, 133, 137, 166, 176, 191, 197 Petrus de Vinea  34, 36, 37, 91 Philip of Beauvais  135, 137 Philippa de Dampierre  109 n.53, 194 Philippe II Augustus  138 Philippe III, king of France  47 n.117, 85, 86, 87, 92, 94, 98–9, 103, 139 Philippe IV, king of France  57, 98, 103,

104, 105–6, 107, 137, 139, 152, 153 Pierre, count of Alençon  102–3, 107 Planche-Torte, France  192, 193 Ponthieu, county of  14, 56 Portsmouth, Hampshire  156 Powys, lords of  16 n.72, 60, 62, 64 proctors  8, 59, 87 n.49, 97 punctuation  11 n.49, 76–80, 90, 184 purveyance 8 quo warranto (document type)  28 rape  167, 192, 193 rebellions  6, 9, 17, 18, 47, 58, 91, 98 n.12, 100, 113, 125, 127, 134, 142, 143, 150, 158, 160, 184 reception, communities of  75–95, 134, 137, 181 Reginald, count of Guelders  109, 110 Renaissance  1 n.1, 3–4 rhetoric  1, 3–5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 16, 18, 19, 22, 27, 31, 32, 36, 39–41, 42, 44–6, 48, 50–74, 75, 76–7, 78, 79, 80, 83, 89, 94, 96, 98, 101, 104, 105, 108, 110, 111, 114, 116–23, 126, 127, 128, 130–7, 141, 142–6, 148, 149, 150–79, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184 Rhuddlan, Wales  190, 191 Riccardi (bankers)  150 Richard de Pensby  198 Rishanger, William  153 Robert I Bruce, king of Scotland  35, 171, 173–4, 191, 220 Robert of Artois  97 n.5, 107 Robert de Langhurst  197 Richard of Pofi  35, 37 Robert de Leycestre  137 Robert de Mandeville  186 Robert de Ufford  65, 91, 129 Roger de Huntingfield  154 n.25 Roman law  33, 34, 66 Rome, Italy  81, 82 Ross, earl of  17, 203 Roxburgh, Scotland  59 Rudolph, king of the Romans  111 n.59

238

INDEX

St Albans, Hertfordshire  83 salutatio (epistolary part)  15 n.70, 39, 41–4, 78, 86, 104, 108, 115 sanctio (epistolary part)  39, 60, 64–5, 67, 88, 101, 106, 108, 109, 111, 118, 121, 136, 137, 156, 157–8, 161, 165, 170, 172 satisfaction, royal  9, 170–2, 174, 182 Sauqueville, France  191 Scotland  7, 11, 15, 16, 58, 59, 99, 104, 106, 114–23, 126, 151, 157, 158–60, 163, 166, 168, 171, 173, 182, 201, 203 Edward’s claim of sovereignty over  14, 156 scribes see clerks; ‘W’ (anonymous scribe) seals, royal  3, 15, 19, 32, 33 n.41, 51, 55, 75, 81, 83, 102 great seal  15 n.71, 21, 38, 47, 51 n.8, 52, 57, 104, 132 n.31, 164, 175, 177, 184 of absence  132 n.31, 185 privy seal  15 n.71, 23, 47, 48, 52, 53–4, 150, 164, 170, 172, 175–8, 179, 182, 183, 184, 190, 191, 192, 193, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203 secretariat, royal see chancery; wardrobe, royal Selkirk, Scotland  171, 201, 202 sheriffs  8, 31, 88 n.54, 119, 126, 154 n.25, 162 Sicily, kingdom of  16, 33, 35, 85, 90 Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester  21, 22 n.98, 72, 92, 135 Siward, Richard  157 Stefano di San Giorgio  19, 36, 53, 90 Stephen de Godalming  192 Stirling, Scotland  105, 168, 174 Strathearn, earl of  17 Surrey, earl of  163, 168 taxation  66, 141, 154, 162 Thomas of Capua  37, 91 tenure  17, 63, 98, 99, 102, 138, 141, 153 thanks see gratitude (epistolary strategy) Thomas de la Roche  169

Thorn, Roger  84 Tindale, Cumbria  119 titles, use of  22, 25 n.3, 77, 140, 156 Tolly, William  192 Tonere, Henry  199 Tonere, Walter  199 treasurer  27 n.17, 53, 56, 89 n.59, 112, 126, 134, 135, 172, 201 see also Joseph de Chauncy; Kirkby, John de, bishop of Ely; Langton, Walter de, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield Trim, Ireland  167 Trivet, Nicholas  18 Turbeville, Thomas  58 Ulster, seneschal of  65, 91, 185, 186 Vieuxpont, Robert  135, 136 Vinsauf, Geoffrey  33, 152, 161, 164 ‘W’ (anonymous scribe)  57–60, 61, 194, 195, 196 Wadham, Elizabeth  168 n.90, 199 Wadham, John  168 n.90, 199 Wales  7, 14, 16, 17, 58, 60, 72, 112, 117, 122, 123 n.109, 126, 130 n.20, 134, 143, 150, 154 n.26, 159, 182 see also Marches, Welsh; Welsh law Walter de Beauchamp  174, 204 Walter of Guisborough  159–60, 163 Walter de Reingny  133, 134, 135 Walter de Robertsbridge  138 n.54 wardrobe, royal  12 n.54, 15, 19, 20, 22, 36, 51, 52–4, 58, 75, 133, 175, 177 warfare (campaign)  1, 8, 12, 15, 16 n.73, 47 n.119, 60, 77, 102, 103, 122, 126, 128, 131, 154, 155, 156, 160, 161, 162, 164, 167, 175, 177 n.124 Watford, Hertfordshire  201, 202 Welsh law  60, 62, 67, 73, 75, 190 Westminster, Middlesex  15, 22, 57, 59, 64, 93, 103, 118, 132 n.31, 147, 152, 175, 187, 188, 189, 190, 194, 195, 196 abbey 81

239

INDEX

William de Ferrars  157 n.35 William de Leybourne  168, 169, 200 William de Montfort  166, 199, 200 William de Perton  76 n.4, 190 William of Sarden  50 William de Soulis  118 William de Vescy  174 n.109 Winchester, Hampshire  185 Winchester, earl of  120 Wishart, Robert, bishop of Glasgow  171, 203 Wissant 105

witnesses  75, 83, 84, 85, 92, 95, 100, 104, 107, 128, 137 Worcester, Worcestershire  78 writs  19 n.85, 20, 21, 29–33, 49, 53, 114, 132, 156, 157, 158, 159–62, 177, 178–9 de cursu  13, 15 n.71, 32, 51, 52, 74 de precepto  52, 180 of summons  11, 66 n.70, 127, 128, 131, 144, 154–5, 164, 165 York, Yorkshire  15, 21, 28

240