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This book presents key texts relating to the political as well as to the broader socio-economic history of the reign of Edward II. Drawing on a wide range of narrative sources, especially the extensive chronicle accounts of the reign, the editors also introduce other important material, including parliamentary rolls, charters, court records and accounts. Together this gathering of sources allows the reader to navigate this troubled and eventful period in English medieval history. The volume is organised chronologically, guiding the reader from the moment of Edward II’s accession in 1307 until his removal from office in 1327 and his supposed death in the same year. The editors also introduce more thematic chapters throughout, addressing such key themes as royal finances and the state of the early fourteenth-century economy, the role of parliament, and political and military engagement with Scotland. In an introductory essay, the editors discuss previous historical work directed at the reign of Edward II and also outline the range of source types available to the historian of the reign. Each section of primary source is also introduced by the editors, who offer a contextual analysis in each instance.
considered merely fictional (‘fabula ficta’), it mixes truths and falsity (Epistula 2, lines 119–22, in Carmina, ed. Ogle and Schullian). He might mean historical truth, moral truth or both. My main sources for Edward and Piers are Harold F. Hutchison, Edward II: The Pliant King (London, 1971); J. S. Hamilton, Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall, 1307–1312: Politics and Patronage in the Reign of Edward II (Detroit and London, 1988); Pierre Chaplais, Piers Gaveston, Edward II’s Adoptive Brother (Oxford, 1994); and the anonymous Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. and trans. N. Denholm
chroniclers, such as the author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi , the most important chronicle for the reign in terms of its range and insight, offer us an immediate, if undoubtedly flawed, purchase on major political events and the high-status individuals directly involved in those events. Almost all the chronicles for the reign are published, and have been in some instances since the
greatest immediate importance was the one condemning Gaveston and calling for his permanent exile. The author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi quotes only this clause in his account of the Ordinances, noting that he refrained from including the full text of the Ordinances as this ‘would break the flow of this narrative and prove tedious to readers’. He also suggested that ‘the Ordinance which expelled Piers
their families. The execution of Thomas of Lancaster soon provoked a sympathetic reaction amongst the population more generally; poems [ 37a ] and other forms of artistic expression, such as wall paintings, 10 celebrating his perceived sacrifice, his saintliness and his likeness to St Thomas of Canterbury, appeared fairly speedily. Though the author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi detected a moral lesson
Maccabees’. 24 For those seeking an explanation of Richard’s tyranny, however, the irresistible exemplum was that of Rehoboam, king of Judah. Rehoboam was the biblical archetype of a tyrant, just as David and Solomon were types for the ideal Christian prince. His double dereliction, despising the counsels of the wise and heeding too much the advice of the young, rendered him a favourite recourse for medieval advice-givers. The author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi invoked his example at several points in his account of Edward’s reign, 25 while Archbishop Stratford
Thomae Wykes’, in Annales Monastici, ed. Henry Richards Luard, vol. 4 (London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1869), pp. 6–319 (pp. 259, 264). 13 London, BL, Add. MS 8835, fol. 42v. 14 Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. Wendy R. Childs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), pp. 130–1. 15 TNA: E 101/13/36, no. 38. In the event, the people of Nottingham were spared; the king never went there at, or close to, Easter. 16 Bartlett, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, pp. 141–2. 17 BL, Add. MS 8835, fol. 21. 18 Howard M. Colvin, Arnold J. Taylor and R. Allen Brown, The
, J. Bossy (ed.) (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 33–5. 116 Knowles, T.R.H.S . 5th series XXXII, pp. 37–41. 117 E.g., Vita Edwardi Secundi , N. Denholm-Young (ed.) (1957), p. 18, where de Montfort is described as having died for the cause of justice but is only ‘the noble man’. Note, too, the use of de Montfort’s struggle as a piece of anti- English polemic in Scotland. An early sixteenth-century Scottish source preserves the story that two horsemen appeared before the sacrist of Glastonbury on the eve of Bannockburn, saying that they were on their way to deal
–23). 20 Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims , 173–188. 21 Denholm-Young, Vita Edwardi Secundi , 17, 42. Despite early association with ecclesiastical resistance and ‘baronial conspiracies’, Becket’s shrine became specially linked to English kings, who worked ‘to cultivate the [connection]’ (Duggan, ‘Cult of Thomas of Canterbury’, 31–32). 22 Duggan, ‘Cult of Thomas of Canterbury’, 21, 23. ‘Prayers and readings’ provided for Cantilupe’s feast ‘bear close resemblance to those used for [Becket]’; Diocese of Hereford, Praying with the Saints , 29. 23 Finucane
). This is tabulated by Harriss, King, Parliament, pp. 523–4. 13 Edward’s wealth according to the chroniclers Two very different chronicles note Edward’s wealth. The Brut, often inaccurate on detail, is valuable for reports on contemporary opinions. The author of the Vita Edwardi