Ruling Fourteenth-Century England

This excellent essay collection is a fitting tribute to the career of Professor Chris Given-Wilson, a leading medieval scholar since the 1980s. Given-Wilson has published widely and supervised numerous research students. The extent of his influence is evident from the contributors to this volume: an array of prominent medievalists who have worked closely with him over the years. The introduction situates Given-Wilson’s work among a generation of historians who shifted scholarly attention from socio-economic underpinnings to the ‘ideologies of power and realities of government’ in the Middle Ages. From his early work on the royal court and household, through to his studies of nobility and gentry, medieval chronicles and administrative records, Given-Wilson has made a profound contribution to our understanding of the period. The hallmark of his scholarship is meticulous research into historical records alongside expertise in language and textuality. The twelve articles that follow are arranged broadly chronologically, with the first six focused on finance, government, administration and rebellion in the reigns of Edward I and Edward II. The first article, fittingly, is written by Michael Prestwich, Given-Wilson’s doctoral supervisor. Prestwich offers a microscopic analysis of the vast quantity of exchequer and household accounts from the latter years of Edward I’s reign, concluding that this was an overly complex system that was hard to audit, but it did respond efficiently when needed, channelling funds via the wardrobe for war with Scotland (although it did let debts build up). This legacy of debt is examined in the next article, by Wendy Childs. The focus here is on economic activity under Edward II (although, as Childs argues, it is unlikely that ‘economic’ policy was a category of thought in the period). Childs emphasises the rhetoric of economic management in favour of the common good, detecting ‘a willingness to experiment with manipulating the economy on a national scale’ (p. 39). She emphasises the role of price-fixing and the suspension of the wool staple, against a backdrop of repeated years of famine and murrain in cattle. Next, Alison McHardy devotes her attention to the ‘golden age of king’s clerks’, men who had ‘portfolio careers’ moving in and out of Crown service. They invariably had a university education and jobs in diocesan administration or ecclesiastical law. The extent to which these men travelled is striking—going from London to Ireland, Gascony and the Channel Islands in royal service. McHardy mentions the preponderance of ‘northern’ clerks in Crown service (p. 64) and it would be fascinating to investigate this further (was there a Lincolnshire/South Yorkshire cadre?). McHardy concludes that these men and their pluralistic networks made England a much more ‘national’ country. She also cautions against assumptions of meritocracy: these men often got their status through connections and died rich

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