Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England

311 Pages·2000·10.07 MB·English

by  Lesley A. Coote

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Prophecy and Public Affairs
in Later Medieval England
InthefirstgeneralsurveyofpoliticalprophecyinmedievalEnglandfor
almost a hundred years, Lesley Coote examines the nature of political
prophecy, its audience and its reception, from its emergence in the
twelfth century to the end of the Middle Ages. Working from original
manuscripts,sherevealsprophecytohavebeenamajorlanguageforthe
discussion of public affairs, enshrining ideas of ‘Englishness’ and a
‘national’ community, and introducing a great crusading hero-ruler, a
secondArthur,whowouldleadhispeopleintotheLastDays.
DrLesleyA.CooteisaResearchFellowintheDepartmentofEnglishat
theUniversityofHull.
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YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS
YorkMedievalPressispublishedbytheUniversityofYork’sCentreforMedieval
StudiesinassociationwithBoydell&BrewerLtd.Ourobjectiveisthepromotion
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EditorialBoard(1998–2001):
Prof.W.M.Ormrod(Chair;DeptofHistory)
DrP.P.A.Biller(DeptofHistory)
DrJ.W.Binns(DeptofEnglish&RelatedLiterature)
DrE.C.Norton(ArtHistory)
DrN.F.McDonald(DeptofEnglish&RelatedLiterature)
DrJ.D.Richards(DeptofArchaeology)
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PublicationsofYorkMedievalPressarelistedatthebackofthisvolume.
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Prophecy and Public Affairs
in Later Medieval England
Lesley A. Coote
YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS
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# LesleyA.Coote2000
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Coote,LesleyA.(LesleyAnn),1954–
ProphecyandpublicaffairsinlatermedievalEngland/LesleyA.Coote
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Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN 1-903153-03-4(hardback:alk.paper)
1. Englishliterature–MiddleEnglish,1100–1500–Historyandcriticism.
2. Politicsandliterature–GreatBritain–History–To1500. 3. GreatBritain–Politics
andgovernment–1154–1399. 4. GreatBritain–Politicsandgovernment–1399–
1485. 5. Nationalcharacteristics,English,inliterature. 6. Publicopinion–England
–History–To1500. 7. Arthurianromances–Appreciation–England.
8. Nationalism – England – History – To 1500. 9. Great Britain – History –
Prophecies. 10. Nationalisminliterature. 11. Propheciesinliterature.
12. Prophecyinliterature. 13. Heroesinliterature. I. Title.
PR275.P63C662001
820.9’358–dc21 00–042876
Thispublicationisprintedonacid-freepaper
TypesetbyJoshuaAssociatesLtd,Oxford
PrintedinGreatBritainby
StEdmundsburyPressLtd,BuryStEdmunds,Suffolk
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Abbreviations ix
Introduction 1
1 What is Political Prophecy? 13
2 The Second Arthur: The King as hero c. 1135–1307 43
3 Expectation and Disappointment 1307–1340 83
4 Debate and Crusade 1340–1399 121
5 The Imperial Hero 1399–1440 157
6 Cadwallader and the Angelic Voice: The Rationalization of
Chaos 1450–1485 195
Postscript 235
Handlist of Manuscripts 239
Bibliography 281
Index 297
v
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Ihavetoacknowledgetheoftenconsiderableassistanceofthelibrariansand
staff of all the libraries I have visited, and from whom I have requested
information. The staff of the three main repositories, the British Library, the
BodleianLibrary andthe Cambridge University Library, have beenparticu-
larly helpful.
I have also received help and support from particular individuals, and in
thisconnectionIwouldliketomentionDrKathrynKerby-Fulton,DrHenry
Hargreaves, Rev. John Proctor of Westminster College, Cambridge, and
particularly Dr Gillian Evans, without whom this project would never have
been begun. Above all, I am grateful to my son Jonathan, who has endured
much, and my husband David, who has endured very much, during the
preparation of this book.
Finally, my thanks to staff and colleagues at the Centre for Medieval
StudiesinYork,especiallyDrJamesBinns,forsurveyingmyLatintextsand
translations,andProfessorsMarkOrmrodandFelicityRiddy,forcreatingthe
atmosphereofstimulationandchallengewhichaworksuchasthisoneneeds
in order to ‘grow’.
vii
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ABBREVIATIONS
AHR American Historical Review
ANTS Anglo-Norman Text Society
BIHR Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research
BL London, British Library
BJRL Bulletin of the John Rylands Library
EETS Early English Text Society
EHR English Historical Review
ELN English Language Notes
JCWI Journal of the Courtauld and Warburg Institutes
NQ Notes and Queries
PP Past and Present
RS Rolls Series
TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
ix
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INTRODUCTION
Writingin1911,RupertTaylorremarkedthatpoliticalprophecy‘asatypeof
English literature’ had, as yet, received little attention.1 He noted that there
hadbeeneditionsandstudiesofparticulartexts,buttherehadbeennowork
on political prophecy in general. Many texts were still unedited, in manu-
script form only, and therefore were not readily available to the majority of
students and scholars.2 Taylor set out to remedy this situation himself, and
theresultingbookbecame,andstillremains,thestandardbackgroundwork
on political prophecy in medieval England. It has to be recognized that
Taylor was a pioneer in this field, the first scholar to identify political
prophecy as having a form and a purpose distinct from other species of
historical writing. On the other hand, the continued reliance upon Taylor’s
book as the ultimate reference for political prophecy in England is unfor-
tunate, as his work can now be seen to contain some fatal flaws. Taylor
studiedthesyntaxofthetexts,butwaschieflyinterestedintheirimageryand
symbolism. This gave the impression, shared by other scholars before and
since,thatprophecywasakindofcode,orpuzzle-language,puttogetherby
the initiated, in order that other initiated persons might then decipher it.
WritingsixtyyearsafterTaylor,BasilClarkesaidofthepropheciesintheVita
Merlini,‘theycanbetedious,apartfromtheinterestoftheformitself.Thereis
a cryptographic attraction in trying to identify references to current and
earlier personalities and events.’3 This ignored the fact that the message of
many prophetic texts was quite easy to discover, even to the uninitiated
reader. Taylor’s approach laid stress on the writer and the text, not on the
copyist, or the audience, many of whom themselves copied prophecies.
However, Taylor stressed two important points: that there was a certain
typeofprophetictextwhichwas‘political’;andthatGeoffreyofMonmouth
wasextremelyimportantinthedevelopmentofthesetexts.Havinginvented
the term ‘political prophecy’, Taylor classified it as a literary genre, a
classification which has been accepted ever since.
As Taylor admitted, there had been considerable interest in political
prophecies before 1911, leading to a series of editions of particular texts. In
thesecondhalfofthenineteenthcentury,therehadbeenconsiderableinterest
inthestudyofpoliticalliterature,includingprophecies,duringthecourseof
1 R.Taylor,ThePoliticalProphecyinEngland(NewYork,1911),p.1.
2 Havingsaidthis,mostofthetextsusedbyTaylorcamefrompublishededitions.
3 The Life of Merlin: Geoffrey of Monmouth Vita Merlini, ed. B. Clarke (Cardiff, 1973),
p.16.
1