Royal Patronage and the Earls in the Reign of Edward I

1988

The purpose of this paper is to outline a tentative taxonomy and in the process to review the current state of the literature on the study of patronage and clientage in England in this period 1. Secondly, it also tries to indicate possible items to be included on an agenda for future research. In the process of pursuing these ends I hope that it will become evident that an approach to the period through the study of this topic may integrate a number of what are, at present, rather fragmented studies in political, religious and cultural history 2. More generally, the study of patronage provides an opportunity for communication between what over the past twenty years have evolved into rather isolated approaches to the period: the new social-historian lions may yet lay down with the political-history lambs (of both the traditional and the revisionist flocks) 1 This paper is much indebted to the stimulus received from the writings of a number of anthropologists and political scientists. See in particular, Michael Banton (ed.

Renaissance and Reformation, 1969

Renaissance et Réforme / 157 weakly impressionistic: "How much poorer the English pulpit would be without the learning ..."; "how dreary and dull" would the sermons be without the wit; how "unexciting" without the "psychological insights which abound in the preaching of the less conventional metaphysical preachers.

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Royal Studies Journal, 2019

In medieval England, the life of St. Edward the Confessor functioned as ideological myth; Henry III used it to show that the Plantagenet dynasty had reconciled two ‘nations’ within England after the Norman Conquest. Edward’s post-Conquest hagiography generally supports a sacralized monarchy and its prerogatives. However, a lesser-known, anonymous version of Edward’s life exists in Middle English verse and resists royalist mythmaking from a more populist perspective. In the South English Legendary and in several Middle English chronicles, a counter-tradition of writing about Edward continues to sacralize the saint-king but simultaneously positions him as a symbol of resistance to Plantagenet rule. In this tradition, the rhetoric of sacral kingship works unexpectedly: rather than sanctifying the authority of the ruling house, it reminds readers of a previous, dead monarch, whose claim to sanctity (the fulfillment of Edward’s famous prophecy of the green tree) should act as a check on the abuse of power by the presently-reigning dynasty. From this point of view, resistance to the Crown can be seen, not as discouraged and limited by the idea of sacral monarchy, but instead as partly motivated by it.

Luxus und Integration. Materielle Hofkultur Westeuropas vom 12. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Werner Paravicini

The survival of a body of evidence, remarkable for its time both in volume and in variety of type (not only administrative documents but also a good deal of courtly literature including histories, romances and Hofkritik), means that in the history of the royal and princely courts of Europe, the court of the Angevin kings of England holds a significant place: the first court that can be observed from a combination of angles. Moreover from Henry II to John these kings were among the wealthiest rulers in Western Europe.

The Journal of British Studies, 2005

Late Roman History Seminar, University of Oxford, 30 October 2014