Dr Helen Lacey
Lecturer in Late Medieval History
Mansfield
Later medieval political culture, popular politics, the social context of the law, the archives of the late medieval English government.
I welcome the opportunity to work with graduates in any of these fields and am very happy to discuss possible projects with prospective applicants.
Research
Main interests in later medieval political culture, the social context of the law, the archives of the late medieval English government. New monograph: The Royal Pardon: Access to Mercy in Fourteenth Century England (Woodbridge, Boydell & Brewer Press, 2009).
Publications
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Subjecthood in Fourteenth-Century England
January 2020|Chapter|Essays in Honour of W.M. Ormrod -
Petitioners for Royal Pardon in Fourteenth-Century England
January 2018|Chapter|Petitions and Strategies of Persuasion in the Middle Ages The English Crown and the Church, c.1200–c.1550 -
Littératie pragmatique et conscience politique dans l’Angleterre de la fin du Moyen Âge
January 2016|Chapter|Le Moyen Âge dans le texte, Cinq ans d'histoire textuelle au LAMOP -
The voices of royal subjects? Political speech in the judicial and governmental records of fourteenth-century England
January 2016|Journal article|Anales de la Universidad de Alicante. Historia Medieval -
Pragmatic Literacy and Political Consciousness in Later Medieval England
August 2012|Journal article|Cahiers électroniques d’histoire textuelle du Laboratoire de Médiévistique Occidentale de Paris -
The royal pardon
November 2009|BookPioneering investigation of the royal pardon, looking at the wider implications it held beyond the purely legal. -
Protection and Immunity in Fourteenth-Century England
August 2009|Chapter|Peace and Protection in the Middle AgesHistory -
‘Grace for the rebels’: the role of the royal pardon in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381
January 2008|Journal article|Journal of Medieval HistoryThis article focuses on the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 as a means of examining some of the late medieval assumptions about the nature of royal mercy. Rather than adding to the weight of scholarship on the causes and characteristics of the Revolt, this article discusses the views on mercy (‘grace for the rebels’)1 that were reportedly expressed by all parties during the course of the rebellion. The first section analyses the chronicles and their references to discussion of pardon and mercy during the revolt itself. The second section examines the role of the royal pardon in the subsequent judicial proceedings in the Home Counties — who were the first recipients of pardon, and how were they able to secure royal grace? The final section then discusses the formulation of the pardon in the autumn parliament, and the debate surrounding the course of government policy in the wake of revolt on an unprecedented scale. This article seeks to demonstrate that the Crown and commons shared a common language of pardon, and understood that by framing their discussion in terms of royal grace, they were alluding to a particular kind of idealised relationship between the king and his subjects.