‘Defaming the King: Reporting Disloyal Speech in Fourteenth-Century England’
July 2020
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Chapter
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Monarchy, State and Political Culture in England, 1300-1500: Essays in Honour of W. Mark Ormrod (Woodbridge, 2020)
Subjecthood in Fourteenth-Century England
January 2020
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Chapter
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Essays in Honour of W.M. Ormrod
Petitioners for royal pardon in fourteenth-century England
December 2018
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Chapter
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Petitions and Strategies of Persuasion in the Middle Ages
<p style="text-align:justify;"> Over the course of the fourteenth century approximately 38,000 letters patent of pardon were issued from the royal chancery, and numbers were increasing across the period, despite the dramatic fall in population after the Black Death in mid-century.1 This compares with approximately 800 petitions for (or relating to) pardon that survive in the collections of The National Archives.2 Thus barely 2 per cent of the pardons known to have been issued can be matched with a surviving written petition for pardon. Of course, it is unlikely that all written petitions have survived, and in some instances it is clear that there never was a written petition; supplicants or their representatives appealed for mercy in person. More usually, individuals who hoped for pardon received one on the recommendation of a trial judge after appearing in court.3 Indeed, it is important to note that these petitions do not represent the norm. It was more usual for a trial judge to recommend pardon in consideration of clear mitigating factors, and by the fourteenth century recognised procedures had been established for judges to recommend pardon and for the chancellor to grant one as a matter of course (de cursu) rather than involve the king directly by petitioning for his mercy (de gracia). But, for some people, taking the initiative themselves and petitioning for pardon seemed the most prudent course of action. They might do so if they feared arrest or if they were indignant at a ‘malicious accusation’ against them and sought to clear their name. If they were in prison awaiting trial or had already been outlawed they might seek a patron to act on their behalf rather than wait and trust in the lengthy and costly legal process. Sometimes they argued that they deserved pardon; on other occasions they admitted guilt, but appealed to the king to show mercy. For those who did decide to have a petition drawn up there were conventions to follow; by the fourteenth century a discrete culture of petitioning for pardon can be discerned. </p>
SBTMR
Littératie pragmatique et conscience politique dans l’Angleterre de la fin du Moyen Âge
March 2016
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Chapter
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Le Moyen Âge dans le texte, Cinq ans d'histoire textuelle au LAMOP
<p style="text-align:justify;"> Ces dernières années, les chercheurs anglophones ont de plus en plus reconnu l’utilité et l’importance de la littératie pragmatique, en tant que concept offrant de nouvelles perspectives sur la manière dont les sociétés médiévales ont interagi avec les textes. Les premières études qui ont introduit l’idée d’une littératie pragmatique auprès d’un auditoire anglophone ont été publiées dans les années 1970. Malcolm Parkes et Michael Clanchy, en particulier, ont fermement insisté sur la nécessité d’étudier la littératie médiévale et, ce faisant, ont introduit de nombreux historiens à des recherches qui avaient auparavant été du domaine des sciences sociales. </p>
SBTMR
The voices of royal subjects? Political speech in the judicial and governmental records of fourteenth-century England
January 2016
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Journal article
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Anales de la Universidad de Alicante. Historia Medieval
Pragmatic Literacy and Political Consciousness in Later Medieval England
August 2012
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Journal article
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Cahiers électroniques d’histoire textuelle du Laboratoire de Médiévistique Occidentale de Paris
The royal pardon
November 2009
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Book
Pioneering 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
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Chapter
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Peace and Protection in the Middle Ages
History
‘Grace for the rebels’: the role of the royal pardon in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381
January 2008
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Journal article
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Journal of Medieval History
This 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.