Edward III

"By Fire and Sword:  Bellum Hostile and 'Civilians' in the Hundred Years War,” in Civilians in the Path of War, ed. Mark Grimsley and Clifford J. Rogers (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002): 33-78.  Examines the nature of and reasons for the use of violence against civilians during the Hundred Years War.

Shakespeare’s wordplay is known to be a distinctive feature of his writing, yet compared to the works of his middle and later years, little attention has been paid to the unique puns and quibbles of his early period. This essay examines the distinguishing features of Shakespearean wordplay in such early works as Arden of Faversham, Edward III, The Taming of the Shrew, Titus Andronicus, the Henry VI trilogy, and various early sonnets. As many of these works are of contested attribution, we hope to demonstrate that wordplay characteristic of Shakespeare can be used to help clarify authorship and chronology. Various features of puns across these early works, such as self-awareness, punning by higher-register characters, a focus on proper names, punning in moments of distress, and homographic wordplay, point toward a distinctly Shakespearean style, and reveal a writer unable to resist the linguistic pleasure of a quibble.

Published in "Fourteenth Century England", vol. VII, ed. M. Ormrod (2012).
This is about the lawyer from Toulouse Ramon Durand who served the king of England-duke of Aquitaine Edward II as lawyer, then as seneschal of Périgord and lieutenant of the seneschal of Gascony. He is more famous as seneschal of the Landes and has been one of the most important support of the king of England in Gascony. In this position he became knight and attempted to buy a lordship in the Basque Country. Sadly, he lost it to a cadet of the Albret family and was killed in the assault of a small town of the Landes in 1333.

As part of the transformation from PhD dissertation to book, one must transform the passive voice to the active voice.  As a result, I have started work on attempting to identify the specific people who were involved in embalming the kings and queens consort of England, 1216-1509.  This is very early days on this effort.

The impact and legacy of Scottish raiding of Northern England during the First Scottish War of Independence has been the subject of significant study. English evidence in particular provides quite detailed accounts of the extent of the raids of Robert Bruce and his commanders, the amount of money and goods taken, and the impact that such raids had on the economy and society of this region. Considerably less analysis has focused, however, on the raids undertaken by Scottish commanders during the next phase of conflict, in particular in the later 1330s and 1340s.

In part this is because the Neville’s Cross campaign (1346), which acts as an endpoint for this phase of raiding, casts a long shadow and affects the perception of this period of Scottish warfare. Moreover, the relatively short duration of this raiding phase has ensured that it remains a less-appreciated element in discussions of this period of Anglo-Scottish conflict. I would argue, however, that these raids deserve to be re-examined in order to better understand the nature, extent and impact of these attacks on the English countryside during a period when English focus was increasingly drawn towards France.

In particular, this paper will consider the depiction of these raids in English sources and the picture that the available evidence presents of these incursions. It is the contention of this paper that: the English north returned to something like the dark days of the 1310s, and that its people quite seamlessly recommenced paying protection money to Scottish raiders to be left in peace; that local lords could not be depended upon to defend the region from Scottish depredations; and that this was a period when the English crown largely abandoned the English north to its fate and northern Englishmen to deal with the Scots as best they could.

This thesis ultimately seeks to understand how and why the London armourers came to be so closely associated with the politics and uprisings of London’s controversial mayor, John Northampton (1381-1383). However, because the armourers were not incorporated as a combined guild until 1453, this thesis must first analyse how the armourers developed as an industry, and how their workshop, household, and socio-industrial networks and organisations developed and helped to inform their political identities. This is the first time that the fourteenth-century London armourers have been rigorously examined as a collective of constituent specialist industries, and this thesis contributes to an understanding of how late medieval small crafts developed outside of guilds.

Through examining armourers’ workshops, households, and socio-industrial networks, this thesis arrives at several important conclusions about the nature of the English industry in the fourteenth century which challenge existing scholarship. It finds evidence to explode scholarly myths that English armour was cheap and poorly made through lack of skill, that women did not participate in the industry, and that regulation of the industry was entirely imposed from outside. Finally, this study shows that the armourers were the most significant participants in the 1384 Mayoralty Riots because their workshop, household, and socio-industrial networks had all contributed to the development of a shared political identity, because Northampton’s opponent Nicholas Brembre attacked that identity, and because the Crown and City’s draconian policies towards the local armour market had grown increasingly severe prior to the riots. This thesis argues that the armourers’ political identity developed as an extension of their workshop, household, and socioindustrial identities and networks, and that each of these contributed to their overall organisational development outside of a guild structure.

This paper was submitted as my undergraduate dissertation in April 2014. The paper examines the armies raised by John of Gaunt, first duke of Lancaster, in 1373 and 1378. In particular, this work looks at the identifiable individuals who served directly under Gaunt.

This paper is a preliminary exploration of the social and economic situation in medieval Penzance leading to an examination what we know about Alice de Lisle and her family particularly their involvement in rebellion against Edward II, and finally presents Penzance's first and original market charter of 1332.

Published in "Les Cahiers du Bazadais", no. 187, December 2014.
This paper is about the family of Preissac whose elder members where nicknamed Soudan of la Trau. They were issued from a nephew of Pope Clement V and its most famous member has been Arnaut-Bernat IV de Preissac who became knight of the Garter c. 1380-1381. He was also present at the battles of Poitiers (1356), Cocherel (1364) and Najera (1367), and has participated at the expedition against the Tunisian town of Madhia (1390) led by the duke of Bourbon. There are some details about the siege of Mortagne-sur-Gironde (1377-8) and the murder of Owain of Wales, the last Welsh pretender of the principality of Wales.

The cases under the mid fourteenth-century labour legislation in Cheshire have been largely overlooked, partly because Cheshire was governed separately from the rest of England - at this time by Edward, the Black Prince, as earl of Chester. The other reason for this is that the records relating to this topic, in the Palatinate of Chester series (CHES) in the Public Record Office/National Archives, have been catalogued in a way that conceals their significance. This article lists all surviving sessions that contain indictments and presentments in the Cheshire courts, and attempts to show how in a county that lacked JPs the enforcement of this legislation came to differ markedly from the norm elsewhere.

Henry VIII is not now remembered for his military exploits, which were rather thin. However, it is important to examine the fact that this is how he wanted to be remembered, nonetheless. War with France was the established means by which a King of England could secure lasting renown. Henry V is the best example, thus he was a model for Henry VIII. This paper will reveal the continuing power of the medieval model of martial masculinity in the early sixteenth century as Henry VIII attempted to commemorate his status as a warrior king. This paper will also discuss Henry’s designs for a monumental effigy of him on horseback that would have immortalized his martial image and presented an idealised portrait of manhood for his posterity. Henry made powerful use of this tradition of visual representation of the royal person most famously commissioning portraits by Hans Holbein and one significant wall mural to commemorate the Tudor dynasty as he wanted it to be remembered. Finally, this paper will consider Henry’s public representation of chivalrous masculinity through his participation in tournaments, in which the king sought to establish himself as a legendary jouster. For Henry VIII wanted to be remembered as a military and chivalric hero, who had equalled and even surpassed the most virtuous deeds of the Lancastrians and Yorkists.

In this article, I explore the potential that Magian symbolism offered for Edward III's political purposes in the middle decades of the fourteenth century. Now most familiar as a symbol of devotion, the Three Kings' appeal as a legendary model of kingship has been ignored, and their prominence in Edward's reign should not be seen as merely incidental to his program of building a symbolic vocabulary of sacral kingship. The story of the Magi paired exotic mystical authority with a European currency that complemented his other, more Anglocentric, models of mythic kingship, St. George and Arthur. Edward's image-making program helps explain why the fourteenth century Historia Trium Regum might have attained such great popularity in England, how this text was likely read, and why several other works of fourteenth century art and literature attempt to link Magian symbolism with Plantagenet kingship. Within this context, we should read the Historia Trium Regum as a robustly political text, rather than only a devotional one. Reading the Historia as a work designed to appeal to the political imagination helps us understand a " Magian " model of kingship that was promoted under Edward, but has been glossed over by political historians because it amounted to little in terms of practical politics. It has been ignored by literary scholars as well, because it doesn't fit prevailing new historicist models of how sacral kingship operated ideologically.

La guerra forse più lunga della storia, durata oltre 100 anni, che la cronologia anglosassone suddivide in più fasi intervallate da periodi di interruzione se non di pace: dalla Guerra Edoardiana, alla Pace di Bretigny, alla Guerra Carolina, a quella dei Lancaster, alla fase finale in cui, tra gli altri, emerse la figura di Giovanna d'Arco.
In questa terza parte, dopo la pace relativa susseguita alla Guerra Carolina, la terza fase, quella della Guerra dei Lancaster (1415-1429)

Introduction of my dissertation, written under the direction of my mentor Richard W. Kaeuper at the University of Rochester, recently profiled by the AHA, http://blog.historians.org/2015/02/aha-member-spotlight-richard-w-kaeuper/. I also owe a lot to my friends and mentors Clifford J. Rogers and Andrew Ayton, although I strike out in a slightly different direction.

Published in "Le Moyen Âge", vol. CXVII (2011).
The collegiate church Saint-Seurin of Bordeaux have written several texts trying to prove Gascony sovereign status (united with England) towards the kingdom of France. In this context, a ceremony has been organized there in 1355 around the Black Prince before his expedition to Languedoc.

The stability, strength and effectiveness of English kingship depended, first and foremost, on the character, ability and experience of individual English monarchs.  Between 1377 and 1461, there were twenty-seven years of minority kingship in England, Richard II (1377-1389) and Henry VI (1422-1437). There was sustained disruption to English kingship in this period, which left the English kingdom vulnerable, which one argues that both of these monarchs were claimed to rule with either physical or mental disability during this period. These individuals, whatever their precise nature, according to Fraser, did have a profound effect on history.  No one is suggesting that history should be studied entirely through the lives of the king.  However, it is an important element that we do analyse the retrospective aspect that through the study of kingship, that we receive the understanding that  maintaining the image and reality of kingship was a basis for maintaining stability and social order in English government.

This article reconsiders the value of 'shorter' chronicles written in fourteenth-century England through a case study of the most popular of these, the Cronica bona et compendiosa, which survives in more manuscripts than most of the chronicles frequently used in scholarship. It examines the text's authorship and narrative to show what it can reveal about history writing and ideas of the past, especially as they relate to medieval readers. It demonstrates the text's influence on contemporary writers by showing how it was slightly adapted by the important chronicler Henry Knighton, which use has so far gone unnoticed. This article also includes an appendix listing twenty-three 'shorter' histories and their manuscripts, nearly all of which have not hitherto been identified.

Published in "Aquitaine Historique", 117 (2012).
This is paper about an administrative medieval entity named in Gascon "Comtau d'Ornon" and was situated at the south of Bordeaux. Originally a possession of the counts of Bordeaux, it has been thereafer owned by the lords of Blaye, then it has been bought by the king of England-duke of Aquitaine Edward I. This latter created there two new towns (bastides)  and one of them called Baa (name coming from the English place Bath) did not develop even if we have kept detailed accounts of its creation and surveying.

Although the Anglo-Gallic coin series has been previously, thoroughly and admirably covered by the 2015 Withers/Ford book The Anglo-Gallic Coins, many details relevant to the study of the gros au lion (of all regions) was not included in the book, nor in the previously published Duncan-Elias guide.

The Queen Mary Psalter (British Library, Royal MS. 2 B. VII), probably made c. 1310-20 for a royal recipient, is among the most lavishly illuminated manuscripts produced in late medieval England.  This study focuses principally on a single picture in the Psalter’s Old Testament preface showing the prophet Nathan’s reproof of a repentant King David, and it identifies in that picture what is ostensibly the earliest surviving depiction of St Edward’s Chair, now commonly known as the Coronation Chair, made at the end of the thirteenth century on the order of Edward I.  The drawing and its Anglo-Norman French caption are examined for the evidence they offer concerning a range of artistic and political issues, among them the chair’s possible use in the coronation of Edward II in 1308.  This study then widens its focus to consider the depiction in the preface of a second artifact associated with the coronation rite:  the dove-topped rod or virga, held by the Egyptian pharaoh in a scene in the Joseph story.  The essay concludes with speculations concerning the messages that these two topical treatments of biblical history might have conveyed to their presumed royal reader-viewer(s) about the nature and limits of royal authority.

The critical edition of The Principal Navigations is under contract with Oxford University Press in 14 volumes. It will provide an unparalleled resource for researchers and teachers working on early modern travel, trade and colonialism. The individual volumes will cover:

Vol 1. Medieval Voyages
Vol 2. Medieval Voyages and the English in Muscovy
Vol 3. Muscovy and Persian Travel
Vol 4. Russia, Iceland and Anglo-Spanish Relations
Vol 5. Medieval Travel and the Early Levant Trade
Vol 6. Levant Travels, South Asia, and Anglo-Ottoman Diplomacy
Vol 7. Travels to Africa and the Far East, and the Anglo-Spanish War
Vol 8. Maritime War with Spain, the Northwest Passage, and West Africa
Vol 9. The Northwest Passage, Travels to Newfoundland, and the Gulf of St Lawrence
Vol 10. Voyages to New France, Roanoke, and Florida
Vol 11. Voyages to New Mexico, California, and New Spain
Vol 12. West Indies Voyages
Vol 13. Travels to Guiana, Brazil, and the River Plate
Vol 14. The South Seas, Far East, and Spanish Trade and Navigation

Foregrounding the tensions between conscience and power, Shakespeare’s Edward III portrays an English monarch who ostensibly reforms after attempting to seduce a faithful female subject. The play, like other literary reincarnations of the legend of the Countess of Salisbury, affirms the primacy of keeping one’s word and the sacrament of marriage over obedience as a subject. The apparent self-mastery achieved by the king provides an illusory restoration of order and justice at the conclusion of Edward III. In this play, Shakespeare demystifies monarchy and royal self-representation to resurrect a past that honors the inner voice of conscience.

This conference paper examines the multifaceted nature of Edward III's campaigns in Scotland in 1336 and what lay behind this complex series of invasions. It also considers the Bruce Scottish response, and the extent to which this year involved the last big push by the English to achieve something out of his increasingly expensive and futile efforts in Scotland.

This article re-examines the unedited Durham Latin Prose ‘Brut’ chronicle and its manuscript tradition in light of the discovery of a previously unknown manuscript. The Durham ‘Brut’ covers the history of England from its legendary origins through the English victories over Scotland and France in 1346–47. The chronicle’s later years are related to those in two other important late-medieval chronicles, the Anonimalle Chronicle and the Lanercost Chronicle, and for a short section of John of Washington’s later chronicle. Only one witness of the Durham ‘Brut’ was known until 2011, when another was identified with a 1347–48 continuation in a seventeenth-century hand. This article identifies an additional medieval witness that also includes the continuation. This article examines all three manuscripts together to track their development through both layout and a word by word comparison of a section of the text (Edward III’s 1346 invasion of Normandy). This article will serve as a starting point for future editors of this neglected but important chronicle, written during a time of great change in English culture and national identity.

The town of Berwick-upon-Tweed sat in a particularly important position in regards its access to European markets and the continental trade that made it a rich Scottish burgh. When war began between England and Scotland in 1296, that geographical location-situated as it was along the Anglo-Scottish frontier and on the principal invasion route of English armies along the east coast-made it a prime target. Its early capture by the armies of Edward I in 1296 and the accompanying massacre of townspeople presaged the long-term importance of the town to both sides for both strategic and economic reasons, an importance that stretched on into the fifteenth century when it finally became part of England. This importance is reinforced by the fact that the Scottish recapture of the town in 1318 was not accompanied by the usual Brucean strategy of defensive dismantlement to deny its occupation by the English. Instead, the defences erected by Edward I were retained so that the town could be held by the Scottish crown and its revenues used to help finance the war effort and aid the Bruce government in its search for economic stability. This importance of the town to the Scots is reinforced by the determination with which the guardian of the kingdom in 1333, Archibald Douglas, sought to retain it when it was besieged by Anglo-Scottish forces in that year. While the Bruce Scots attempted to draw away the besiegers, the eventual and fateful decision to fight the battle of Halidon Hill to effect its relief surely proves that, for the Bruce Scots, as well as for Edward III and his Balliol allies, the town was crucial to their plans for the future. The English capture of the town in 1333, and its confirmation as English territory in early 1334, altered the political situation within the burgh for the third time in less than thirty years and had a very real impact on those who lived within it. This paper will consider what changed in this period and what effects this had on the local population as a result.

In this paper we will try to demonstrate that Jean Froissart
wanted to use the episode in his Chronicles detailing a skirmish which occurred in
York in 1327 between English archers and knights from Hainault as a summation
of his entire chivalric ideology. We will lay out several arguments for this, starting
with the narrative flow of the episode and the representation of the virtues
demonstrated during the description of events. We will then move on to the
relationship between Froissart’s account and the original material of Jean le Bel,
from which Froissart drew extensively. Next we will tackle the way Froissart
changed the details of the episode in the Rome MS of the Chronicles, as well as
the choice and representation of the protagonists and antagonists of the episode.
The final part of the argument will present an overview of scholarly opinions on
Froissart’s literary skill, techniques and innovation, which confirm that Froissart
was fully capable of coming up with the solution we propose.

This is a book chapter from Fourteenth Century England X, ed. Gwilym Dodd.  This work places Richard II's activities around the dead in context with the activities of his predecessors, Edward I and Edward III.  Richard's behavior was skewed by the presentation of Thomas Walsingham, affecting the king's post-mortem reputation.  Richard acted in the same continuity as his forebears and as his successors, Henry IV and Henry V.

Published in "Experts et expertises au Moyen Âge. Consilium quaeritur a perito", 42ème congrès de la SHMESP (Société des Historiens Médiévistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur), Oxford, 31 mars - 3 avril 2011, Paris, (2012).
This study is about the lawyers who worked for the kings of England in their relationship with the kings of France between 1259 and 1337, particularly in connection with the Parlement of Paris where Gascons were allowed to appeal a judicial decision of the kings of England or his officers. However, despite their expertise, these lawyers were unable to prevent the outbreaks of war between the kings of England and France, particularly the Hundred Years War.

UPDATE:
*FInally* getting this off the ground between work and personal duties:

The first monograph project, based in part on the dissertation. It focuses on Robert and William Ufford, their families, their social and military networks, and the way these networks changed over the course of about a century. In addition to filling a gap in the historiography of 14th-century England (there being no full-length study of the Uffords), the volume uses the Uffords as a way to revise accepted military, political, and social narratives of Edward III's reign. Look for it late 2019.

In the 1307 Statute of Carlisle, the lords in parliament complained vociferously about the “damnable payment” that French monasteries demanded as dues from their daughter-houses in England. In the statute they invoked their position as founders and patrons of these English houses, and asserted that patronal rights and the need of proper pastoral care for their subjects superseded any claims of allegiance from the monasteries’ motherhouses on the Continent. This paper examines the complicated relationships between the French abbeys, their English daughter-houses, and their English patrons during the reigns of Edward I, Edward II, and Edward III. It approaches these relationships by looking at parliamentary legislation against foreign religious, as well as highlighting the impact of prolonged warfare – particularly the Hundred Years War – upon the English abbeys and their patrons. The paper argues that the attempts by English patrons to limit the influence of foreign abbeys within England led to the gradual replacement of loyalties within their daughter-houses. Particularly under Edward III, foreign-owned abbeys within England began to shift their allegiances away from their French motherhouses, and instead to adopt a new English identity for themselves, which linked them to their English patrons.

Cleanliness Retribution is one of the sources that has the potential to increase Regional Original Income, especially in the implementation of Car Free Day in the “Bundaran Besar” Palangka Raya City. This can be seen from its contribution to the Regional Original Income which is quite large and always increases every year. This cleanliness levy serves to fulfill the routine needs of the regional treasury, regulate the health of the community and the environment, as well as to cover the costs of administering waste / cleaning services. This study aims to find out, analyze and describe how the implementation of Regional Regulations Regarding Cleaning Levies Against Creative Traders of Car Free Day in the “Bundaran Besar” Palangka Raya City. In addition, it is also to analyze the factors that influence the implementation of Regional Regulations concerning Cleaning Levies Against Creative Traders in the Car Free Day “Bundaran Besar” Palangka Raya City. The author uses the theory of policy implementation from George C. Edward III which consists of four indicators, namely communication, resources, disposition and bureaucratic structure. This study uses a Qualitative Approach with data collection techniques that include Observation, Interview and Documentation. From the results of the study, it was found that the Implementation of Regional Regulations concerning Hygiene Levies on Creative Traders of Car Free Day “Bundaran Besar” Palangka Raya City is still not optimal, so it still needs to be addressed.The conclusions from the research on the implementation of the Regional Regulations on Hygiene Levies Against Creative Traders of Car Free Day “Bundaran Besar” Palangka Raya City are still not optimal, this is caused by the first, the lack of supervision by the management agency so that it is prone to irregularities. Secondly, there was no socialization regarding the content and purpose of the Regional Regulations concerning Cleanliness retribution. Third, the management office is less aware of the potential for cleaning fees at the location.