The Fifteenth Century XIII: Exploring the Evidence: Commemoration, Administration and the Economy

267 Pages·2014·5.213 MB·English

by  Linda Clark (editor)

O T
f necessity, historians of the late CONTRIBUTORS
H
Middle Ages have to rely on an eclectic MARTIN ALLEN
E T H E
mix of sources, ranging from the few
CHRISTOPHER DYER
F
remaining medieval buildings, monuments,
DAVID HARRY
Fifteenth
illuminated manuscripts and miscellaneous i
SUSANNE JENKS
f
artefacts, to a substantial but often uncatalogued
MAUREEN JURKOWSKI t
body of documentary material, much of it born of
e
SIMON PAYLING
the medieval administrator’s penchant for record
e
EUAN ROGER
keeping. Exploring this evidence requires skills
n
CHRISTIAN STEER
in lateral thinking and interpretation – qualities C E N T U RY
which are manifested in this volume. Employing SHEILA SWEETINBURGH t
h
the copious legal records kept by the English MATTHEW WARD
Crown, one essay reveals the thinking behind
C
XIII
exceptions to pardons sold by successive kings,
E
while another, using clerical taxation returns, adds
N
colour to contemporary criticism of friars for
T
betraying their vows of poverty. Case studies of the
U
registers of two hospitals, one in London the other
in Canterbury, lead to insights into the relations R
Exploring the
of their administrators with civic and spiritual Y
authorities. A textual dissection of the epilogues Evidence:
in William Caxton’s early printed works focuses XIII
Commemoration,
on the universal desire for commemoration. Other
essays about royal livery collars and the English E Administration and
x
coinage are nourished by material remains, and p
lo the Economy
where contemporary records fail to survive, as
r
i
in the listing of burials in parish churches, notes n
g
kept by sixteenth-century heralds and antiquaries t
h
provide clues for novel identifications. The book- e

E
ends are exemplars of the historian’s craft: the
v
i
one, taking as its starting point the will of Ralph, d
e
Lord Cromwell, explores in forensic detail how n
c
his executors coped with their enormous task in a e
time of civil war; the other, by examining research
C
into the economy of fifteenth-century England
L
undertaken since the 1880s, provides an over-view A
R
which scholars of the period will find invaluable.
K Edited by
(
e
d LINDA CLARK
.)
an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF (GB) and
668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US)
www.boydellandbrewer.com
THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

VOLUME XIII
The Fifteenth Century
ISSN 1479–9871
General Editor
Dr. Linda Clark
Assistant Editor
Dr. Hannes Kleineke
Editorial Advisory Committee
Dr. Rowena Archer, University of Oxford
Professor Christine Carpenter, University of Cambridge
Professor Christopher Dyer, University of Leicester
Dr. David Grummitt, University of Kent
Professor Tony Pollard, University of Teesside
Professor Carole Rawcliffe, University of East Anglia
Dr. Benjamin Thompson, Somerville College, Oxford
Dr. John Watts, Corpus Christi College, Oxford
The series aims to provide a forum for the most recent research into the
political, social, religious and cultural history of the fifteenth century
in Britain and Europe. Contributions for future volumes are welcomed;
prospective contributors should consult the guidelines at the end of this
volume.
THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

XIII

EXPLORING THE EVIDENCE:

COMMEMORATION, ADMINISTRATION

AND THE ECONOMY

Edited by

LINDA CLARK

THE BOYDELL PRESS
© Contributors 2014

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.

First published 2014
The Boydell Press, Woodbridge

ISBN 978-1-84383-944-6

The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA
website: www.boydellandbrewer.com

A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library

This publication is printed on acid-free paper
from camera-ready copy supplied by the general editor
CONTENTS

List of Illustrations vi
Contributors vii
Preface ix
Abbreviations xiii
The ‘Grete Laboure and the Long and Troublous Tyme’: The Execution of 1
the Will of Ralph, Lord Cromwell, and the Foundation of Tattershall College
S.J. PAYLING
A Royal Grave in a Fifteenth-Century London Parish Church 31
CHRISTIAN STEER
The Livery Collar: Politics and Identity During the Fifteenth Century 41
MATTHEW WARD
William Caxton and Commemorative Culture in Fifteenth-Century England 63
DAVID HARRY
Blakberd’s Treasure: a Study in Fifteenth-Century Administration at St. 81
Bartholomew’s Hospital, London
EUAN C. ROGER
Placing the Hospital: The Production of St. Lawrence’s Hospital Registers in 109
Fifteenth-Century Canterbury
SHEILA SWEETINBURGH
Were Friars Paid Salaries? Evidence from Clerical Taxation Records 131
MAUREEN JURKOWSKI
Exceptions in General Pardons, 1399–1450 153
SUSANNE JENKS
The English Crown and the Coinage, 1399–1485 183
MARTIN ALLEN
England’s Economy in the Fifteenth Century 201
CHRISTOPHER DYER
Index 227
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Matthew Ward, The Livery Collar:Politics and Identity During the
Fifteenth Century
Fig. 1 Brass of Nicholas Kniveton (d.1500), All Saints’, 57
Mugginton (Derbys.). Photograph reproduced by
kind permission of the Reverend Canon Alan Harper.
Fig. 2 Portrait of Sir John Donne, Donne Triptych, Hans 58
Memling (c.1475). London, The National Gallery.
Fig. 3 A knight is awarded a collar by the king (c.1458). © 59
The British Library Board. BL, Add. MS 30946, f.
82v.
Fig. 4 The Lord Mayor’s Collar. Reproduced by kind 60
permission of the Lord Mayor of London and
Andrew Ford.
Fig. 5 Livery Collars in Derbyshire. After John Cary, 61
Cary’s New and Correct English Atlas(1787).

Maureen Jurkowski, Were Friars Paid Salaries? Evidence from Clerical
Taxation Records
Map 1 Lollards in Norfolk and Suffolk 151
Map 2 Churches and Chapels in Norfolk and Suffolk served 152
by Friars and Monastic Clergy, 1449.

Martin Allen, The English Crown and the Coinage, 1399–1485
Fig. 1 Edward IV gold ryal (1465–70), London mint, 182
obverse and reverse (Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge).
CONTRIBUTORS

Martin Allen is Senior Assistant Keeper in the Department of Coins and Medals,
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. His main area of research is English monetary
history from the tenth century to the seventeenth, and his latest book is Mints and
Money in Medieval England, published by Cambridge University Press in 2012.

Christopher Dyer is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Leicester,
and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. His most recent
book, A Country Merchant, 1495–1520. Trading and Farming at the End of the
Middle Ages, was published by Oxford University Press in 2012.

David Harry is a Teaching Fellow at the University of Bristol. He was awarded
his Ph.D. in 2013 on the subject of ‘Monastic Devotion and the Making of Lay
Piety in Medieval England’.

Susanne Jenks is an independent scholar of late fourteenth and fifteenth-century
English legal history and Vice-Administrator of the Anglo-American Legal
Tradition Website. Her latest book, co-edited with Jonathan Rose and Christopher
Whittick, is Laws, Lawyers and Texts. Studies in Medieval Legal History in
Honour of Paul Brand (Brill, 2013).

Maureen Jurkowski is an Honorary Research Fellow in the History Department
of University College London. She has published widely on the lollard heresy,
medieval and early modern taxation and monasticism, and is currently employed
by the University of York to edit the building accounts of St. Stephen’s Chapel,
Westminster.

Simon Payling is a Senior Research Fellow on the 1422–1504 section of the His-
tory of Parliament. His main research interests are late medieval land disputes and
marriage contracts.

Euan C. Roger is a full time research student at Royal Holloway, University of
London, working on a study of St. George’s Chapel and College, Windsor, in the
late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Other research interests include
fifteenth-century London medieval religious architecture and archaeology.

Christian Steer is preparing a monograph based on his Ph.D. thesis on ‘Burial and
Commemoration in Medieval London, c.1140–1540’. He has contributed a number
of articles on the lost monuments of the city. Together with Hannes Kleineke he
edited The Yorkist Age (Shaun Tyas, 2013).
viii Contributors
Sheila Sweetinburgh is an Associate Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern
Studies at the University of Kent. Her recent edited book, Negotiating the Political
in Northern European Urban Society, c.1400–1600 (Brepols, 2013), highlights her
research interests in the construction of individual and collective identity,
particularly in pre-modern towns. Using a case-study approach, she has published
extensively on Kent’s medieval hospitals.

Matthew Ward currently teaches medieval history at the University of Notting-
ham. His research focuses on political culture during the late fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries. He is preparing his Ph.D. thesis, ‘The Livery Collar: Politics
and Identity in Fifteenth-Century England’ (2013), for publication.
PREFACE

The evidence explored in this volume of The Fifteenth Century comes in a
refreshingly wide variety of guises. For the most part the sources are
contemporary: medieval tombs bearing sculpted effigies or monumental brasses,
paintings, coins (newly-minted in our period), even a livery collar still used by the
Lord Mayor of London. Chief among them are, of course, the enormous range of
documents preserved in The National Archives: records of the central law-courts
and chancery, of the exchequer – arising from taxation and the collection of
customs duties – and many miscellaneous survivals created to facilitate the
administration of private and ecclesiastical estates. The last, records of estate
administration, survive in profusion in other archives, too, which also contain
registers and cartularies compiled for hospitals and notes and drawings produced
by antiquaries and heralds. In addition, the fifteenth century is the earliest period to
allow its historians to examine printed books – the first works coming off an
English press, for which the mercer William Caxton was responsible. Evidence of
an entirely different sort, derived from the contemporary sources but at one remove
from them, emerges from data collected and analysed by historians themselves in
the course of the past 150 years, providing an opportunity for a long-needed fresh
look at their conclusions.
All these varieties of evidence are explored to good effect by the ten
contributors to the volume. Their essays illustrate the three themes of the title:
commemoration, administration and economy. With a starting-point of the will of
Ralph, Lord Cromwell, and his wish to be commemorated in perpetuity at a new
college founded at Tattershall, Simon Payling uses the evidence of lawsuits,
chronicles, letters and financial accounts to interpret the validity of the claims of
Cromwell’s heirs as set against the requirements of the testator, and appreciate the
herculean task faced by his executors. The notebooks of heralds, a unique burial
register and John Stow’s Survey of London help Christian Steer to identify
prestigious occupants of tombs in the London parish church of St. James
Garlickhithe, and to suggest reasons why this was the place chosen for their
commemoration. Matthew Ward’s interest in the livery collars granted by
Lancastrian, Yorkist and Tudor monarchs leads him from a study of their depiction
on tombs and in illustrations to a discussion of their symbolic meaning and
relevance in the context of the Wars of the Roses, cautioning other scholars against
making glib assumptions about political partisanship. The prologues and epilogues
Caxton inserted in the works he printed offer an insight into the way he and his
authors sought to be remembered by posterity; they are examined by David Harry
to reveal their didactic purposes. Euan Roger’s exploration of the cartularies
compiled for St. Bartholomew’s hospital in London enables him to study in detail
the personnel of the hospital, tenants resident in the precinct and the uses put to its
property. At the core of his essay is the work of a skilled administrator, John Cok,