Kaeuper R.W. - Chivalry and violence in medieval europe (1999)(en)
.pdf108 |
The Link with RoyautŽ |
Such sentiments echo throughout the Dialogue of the Exchequer, by Richard FitzNigel, the Þrst administrative treatise written in Western European history (c. 1179). Although the work is mainly concerned with the technical operation of the royal exchequer, comments on the kingÕs role in keeping the peace surface frequently. Of Henry II, the author says: Ôfrom the beginning of his rule he gave his whole mind to crushing by all possible means those who rebelled against peace and were ÒfrowardÓ Õ.4 Rebelling against the king appears to this ofÞcial as rebellion against peace itself. Of the Assize of Clarendon, FitzNigel says: Ônobody must venture to oppose the kingÕs ordinance, made as it is in the interest of peaceÕ.5 He is sure royal power is sufÞcient to see that offenders will be punished and quotes approvingly a rhetorical question Þrst asked by Ovid and picked up by more than one medieval writer: ÔHave you forgotten that kingsÕ arms are long?Õ6
Preambles to statutes offer the carrot as well as the stick. Henry III announced in the Statute of Marlborough (1267) his intention to Ôprovide for the better estate of his realm of England, and for the more speedy administration of justice, as belongs to the ofÞce of a kingÕ. HenryÕs son, Edward I, likewise announced in his Statute of Gloucester (1278) a fuller administration of justice Ôas the good of the kingly ofÞce demandsÕ. The Þrst Statute of Westminster (1285) worried over Ôthe peace less kept and the laws less used, and the offenders less punished than they ought to be, so that the people feared the less to offendÕ. The king announced in the opening clause that the peace of the Church and of the land will henceforth be guarded and that common right will be done to all, rich and poor.7
When royal authority had been challenged, as in the mid-century baronial wars of the reign of Henry III, the language recording a recovery of the royal powers can become especially forceful and speciÞc. The Dictum of Kenilworth (1266) declared in its Þrst clause:
the most noble prince Henry, illustrious king of England shall have, fully receive and freely exercise his dominion, authority and royal power without impediment or contradiction of any one, whereby, contrary to the approved rights and laws and long established customs of the kingdom, the regal dignity might be offended; and that to the same lord king and to his lawful mandates and precepts full obedience and humble attention shall be given by all and singular the men of the same kingdom, both greater and lesser. And all and singular shall through writs seek justice in the court of the lord
4 Johnson, ed., tr., Dialogus de Scaccario, 75. The text contains many passing references on the royal duty of preserving the peace; e.g., p. 63.
5 Ibid., 101. See also p. 102 where the king is again identiÞed with the interests of peace. 6 Ibid., 84. As we saw in Chapter 1, Suger also used this image.
7 Statutes of the Realm, I, 19, 45, 26.
English Kingship, Chivalry, and Literature |
109 |
king and shall be answerable for justice, as was accustomed to be done up to the time of the recent disorders.
Clause 38 of this document is even more explicit about private quarrels. The royal government asserts: Ôno one will take private revenge on account of the disorders, nor will he procure or consent or tolerate that private revenge should be taken. And if any one takes private revenge, let him be punished by the court of the lord king.Õ8
The most revealing piece of evidence comes, however, from a simple phrase which began to appear during the Þrst quarter of the thirteenth century in writs of trespass and in informal legal complaints asking the crown to provide justice. One prospective plaintiff after another stated that some wrongdoer had come Ôby force and arms and against the lord kingÕs peace (vi et armis et contra pacem domini regis)Õ. Such litigants knew that these magic words would bring their cases into the royal courts.9 The message had Þltered through: the king would maintain his peace throughout the realm; his governance would supervise the use of arms within the realm.
Of course it was not really true; the kingÕs government could not do all that it claimed. The phrase came sometimes to be used as a key to open courtroom doors for cases that involved mere gentle fraud or illegal apple-picking, with no edged weapons glinting in the sunlight.10 The point remains, however, that royal claims became quite clearly recognized, even if only partially enforced. RoyautŽ within the realm of England meant sovereignty and a working monopoly of the means of violence associated with war.
That the English crown was serious about sovereignty of this sort appears in its efforts to control tournaments, to require licences for building castles, and to outlaw any insular version of the continental practice of ÔprivateÕ war. For a time it succeeded in making England seem to the high-spirited and chivalrous a dreary place without a good tournament circuit, as the oft-quoted passages from the biography of William Marshal state explicitly.11 But the maintenance of so hard a royal line was only temporary; by the fourteenth century English kings were joining in and leading the sport rather than continuing to prohibit so powerful a practice.12 Nevertheless, the English crown had at least taken steps to regulate this simulacrum of war.13
The royal insistence on licences Ôto crenelateÕÑthat is, to fortifyÑhad more long-range success. A staggering number of illicit or ÔadulterineÕ castles were pulled down, especially in the reign of Henry II; the policy of formal licences,
8 Ibid., I, 12Ð17. |
9 Harding, ÔPlaints and BillsÕ. |
10 Ibid. |
11Meyer, ed., Histoire, II, ll. 1533Ð48. Cf. Barber and Barker, Tournaments, 19Ð26.
12Kaeuper, War, Justice, and Public Order, 199Ð211, and the sources cited there.
13Keen, Nobles, Knights, 83Ð99. Cf. Kaeuper, War, Justice, and Public Order, 199Ð211.
110 |
The Link with RoyautŽ |
a recognition of the royal right to regulate, had become viable by the time of Henry III.14
The policy against war within the realmÑthat is, open warlike violence or even carrying offensive arms and riding with unfurled banners in full and joyous expectation of combatÑmet with greater success still, except, of course, for those times when an over-governed England erupted in civil war. With that exception, however, the concept of the kingÕs peace had real content and showed (within limitations inherent in medieval government) a genuine effort to translate royal ideals into fact.15
Did English knights cooperate? Chivalric ideas, whatever qualiÞcations about royal control they embodied, did little to prevent English knighthood from serving the crown regularly and loyally. If their military service is obvious, they also gave essential and unpaid help in law and administration; they sat on juries and inquests, on commissions of oyer and terminer, on commissions of roads and dikes, or of array; they acted as tax assessors and collectors. Some served as sheriffs, some as justices. Many of them eventually went to Westminster to sit in Parliament as Knights of the Shire. This range of services has been fully investigated in many historical studies.
Other facets of English knightly life, however, have been less often treated and have sometimes been denied. Although English knighthood could not claim a legal right of war within the realm, as in France, lords and knights turned to formally illegal acts of violence, on any scale they could manage, when the law did not serve or when the sense of urgency was simply too great. The results for public order could look rather like those we have noted for France.
In late thirteenth-century England three particular witnessesÑKing Edward I, the chronicler Pierre Langtoft, and the anonymous author of a broadside poemÑcommented from their quite different vantage points that the violence troubling the country seemed like the outbreak of war. Edward I added, signiÞcantly, that this illicit warlike violence Ôßouted the lordship of the kingÕ.16
Legal records show us that the knightly violence so prevalent in chivalric literature was (in somewhat more prosaic form, but without loss of essential enthusiasm) practised in everyday life, with serious consequences for public order. Only very slowly, only with mixed success, could the crown declare such action illegal; only more slowly still could the crown take effective action actually to restrict knightly violence within the realm.
14Kaeuper, War, Justice, and Public Order, 211Ð25.
15Ibid., 225Ð67. Waugh provides a good case study in ÔProÞts of ViolenceÕ.
16Sources and discussion in Kaeuper, ÔLaw and OrderÕ.
English Kingship, Chivalry, and Literature |
111 |
Of course, a search of records surviving from royal courts uncovers case after case of some villager or townsman attacking another with varying degrees of success and consequence; the margins of the parchment rolls are dotted with the letter ÔsÕ combined with a ligature, indicating that the accused was hanged (suspendatur) after conviction. These unfortunates were assuredly of sub-knightly status. In fact there can be no suggestion that court records on either side of the Channel mainly document crown action against the knightly.
We need feel no surprise. The dockets of courts in most societies are surely not Þlled with cases against those occupying the highest ranks in that society, charging them with some form of behaviour that they stoutly maintain is licit. Rather, we should take note that such cases appear at all in medieval royal records. The crown gradually sought to deÞne the warlike violence of the privileged as illicit and to take steps against it. Chivalric literature records the obvious sensitivities to such control.17
The Evidence of Literature
The particularities of medieval civilization in England produced not only a unique royautŽ and chevalerie, they generated a literature written in three languages: Latin, Anglo-Norman French, and Middle English. This literary evidence is complicated by questions about the groups or social levels that enjoyed these stories about kings, knights, and yeomen.18
Understanding this issue of audience means again recognizing a unique feature of medieval England: social structure was much more ßuid, much less rigidly hierarchical than that across the Channel. Lines of demarcation in the upper social ranks tended to blur, producing more community of feeling among all ranks of the privileged, from great lords through country knights and squires (sometimes even a notch below) and not excluding the more important mercantile layers.19 The pattern of landholding helps to explain this characteristic of English society; even the great held estates scattered widely by continental standards, where relatively compact territorial holdings were more common. A lord or a lordling who held a single manor here, partial rights to
17See the evidence and interpretation in Harding, ÔEarly Trailbaston ProceedingsÕ; Kaeuper,
War, Justice, and Public Order, 184Ð268.
18The theme of EnglandÕs differences is developed in Maddicott, ÔWhy was England Different?Õ and in Kaeuper, War, Justice, and Public Order, 315Ð47. The theme of audience is discussed in Mehl, Middle English Romances, 2Ð13; Barron, English Medieval Romance; Crane, Insular Romance; Green, Poets and Princepleasers; and Coss, ÔCultural DiffusionÕ.
19It is striking, for instance, to note the ease with which Sir John Clanvowe, a knight at the court of Edward III and Richard II, used mercantile images in his treatise, ÔThe Two WaysÕ: see Scattergood, ed., Sir John Clanvowe, 60Ð1.
112 |
The Link with RoyautŽ |
another there, and half a mill in another county would have a highly developed interest in the royal role in peacekeeping and in the details of the emerging common law. Kingship, the common law coming into being and into effect through royal courts, a particular pattern of estatesÑall helped to make the social and political context in England different from that on the other side of the Channel.
It comes as no surprise, then, to Þnd that the literature of this society reßected and helped to generate and generalize this unusual degree of royal capacity and social ßuidity. These factors surely help to explain, in turn, why there is less attention paid in English than in French literature to those troublesome, talented men of modest social status who carried wands of ofÞce and issued orders, no doubt in a voice just a bit too shrill. It certainly helps to explain why English literature, unlike French romances, does not stress the social and cultural separation of knights from everyone else.
The unusual qualities of the literature, however, have led some scholars to suggest that romances were written in twelfthand thirteenth-century England for bourgeois audiences, or for even humbler groups raising tankards in some tavern. Others have suggested, more convincingly, that the inßuence, as so often in the Middle Ages, came from the top of society, but that it is here mediated and diffused downward throughout privileged society generally by unique features of English social, tenurial, and political life.20
If we step aside from the details of such discussions, the important fact seems to be that there was not an exclusively chivalric literature in England on the pattern we have just considered in France, a literature which reinforced a strong sense of a caste or class of knights as different as they could imagine themselves to be from the sub-knightly. To the contrary, in England a ÔknightlyÕ point of view must be considered within a broader consensus of views informing the minds of those in the upper social layers, from substantial village landowners up the scale to the very great. In short, we must ask what privileged society in generalÑknights includedÑthought of the power of kingship advancing so inexorably and of the framework of law that kings and their advisers at least claimed to elaborate and enforce. Framing our questions in these terms, the literature patronized can show us the ideas celebrated, the questions debated.
This reading recalls another important historical fact: though kings and knights had differing agendas, only their cooperation allowed the early construction of something like sovereign power in England. Whatever quarrels
20 This is one of the themes of Crane, Insular Romance. For extended discussion of this issue in a single romance, see Bunt, ed., William of Palerne, 17Ð19.
English Kingship, Chivalry, and Literature |
113 |
were writ large in tumults and civil wars, kings and knights found much common ground, in concert with all other privileged groups in society.
The most famous tale from medieval Britain provides our best evidence. The oldest surviving tale of Robin Hood, the Geste, merges the social ranks of the knights with sturdy yeomen and places issues of law and justice Þrmly in the foreground.21 Robin Hood is not a knight; the text pointedly calls him Ôa gode yemanÕ. But he shows many qualities we associate with ideal knighthood. His prowess is constantly displayed and is never in question. His loyalty, seen in his steadfastness, contrasts with the Sheriff of Nottingham who breaks his sworn word. Robin dispenses largesse with an open hand, never mind that the wherewithal comes from othersÕ purses. The text showsÑand comments onÑ his courtesy time and again; he regularly removes his hood and drops to one knee in the presence of those of more exalted rank. He is devoted to the Blessed Virgin and will harm no company in which ladies are present. He dines not only on the royal venison, but on swans, pheasants, and other fowlÑ all elegant fare. In a faint parallel to King Arthur himself (who always delayed dinner until he learned of some marvel or adventure), he will not sit down to table before he has found some guest. His piety also requires him to hear three masses before dining.
Moreover, one axis around which the story revolves is RobinÕs aiding a knight, Sir Richard atte Lee, who, if poor, is clearly the genuine article, much admired. When Robin Hood, learning of his poverty, thinks out loud that his entry into knighthood must have been recent, that he has been forced into the rank (by Ôdistraint of knighthoodÕ) or has wasted his resources foolishly or wickedly, Sir Richard answers stoutly:
ÔI am none of those.Õ sayd the knyght. ÔBy God that made me;
An hundred wynter here before Myn auncestres knyghtes have be.Õ22
It comes as no surprise that Sir RichardÕs prowess, and that of his family, is quickly asserted. Financial troubles arose because his son killed Ôa knyght of Lancaster and a squyer boldeÕ in a tournament; the Þnancial drain of the effort ÔFor to save hym in his rightÕÑlegal costs, bribes, or an out-of-court settlement, we must assumeÑhas devastated his resources. The father has matched his sonÕs valour. Sir Richard has been a crusader and is considering it as an honourable outlet should he lose his lands to the wicked Abbot of St MaryÕs, as he fears. Called a false knight by the Abbot, he bristles:
21 Knight and Ohlgren, eds, Robin Hood. |
22 Ibid., Þt 47. |
114 The Link with RoyautŽ
ÔThou lyest,Õ then sayd the gentyll knyght, Abbot, in thy hall;
False knyght was I never. . . .
In ioustes and in tournement Full ferre than have I be,
And put my selfe as ferre in press As ony that ever I se.Õ23
He has endangered his body with the best, thrusting himself into the press of opposing warriors in the most worshipful way. Who can justly call a man of prowess false?26
Yet justice is far to seek, a state of affairs which has, of course, made Robin and his men outlaws in the Þrst place. The effective agents of the king in the region, the sheriff of the county, and the Ôhye justyce of EnglondeÕ are false to the core; the latter is even in the pay of Sir RichardÕs dread enemy, the Abbot of St MaryÕs, and wears his livery, as he openly tells the knight: ÔI am holde with the abbot, sayd the justyce, / Bothe with cloth and fee.Õ25 Robin HoodÕs largesse saves Sir Richard from ruin and their combined righteous violence checks the sheriff and his men. Yet the only hope for a lasting solution, even after Robin has put a clothyard shaft through the sheriff Õs body, rests with the king himself, with ÔEdward our comly kyngeÕ.26
Of course, once the king and the king of outlaws meet, in famous scenes of disguise and game-playing, all goes well. The king, recognizing RobinÕs qualities and his unfeigned devotion, forgives all and takes him back to court. Despite all local corruptions, the fountain of justice runs pure at the centre. Good yeomen (marked by chivalric qualities), a good knight, a good king, have brought right order back into the world.27
This concern for justice within several layers of society, coupled with an abiding belief in the role of the king, also appears prominently in the body of tales traditionally known as the Matter of England romances. These tales, written in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, show a consistent fascination with political arrangements and a concern for good royal governance grounded in law. In no small measure they are stories about kingship.28
23Knight and Ohlgren, eds, Robin Hood, Þts 114, 116.
24For prowess linked to loyalty and other qualities, see the discussion in Chapter 7.
25Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood, Þt 107.
26Ibid., Þt 353.
27This being an outlaw tale, Robin tires of court and goes back to the greenwood, and to his murky end as a victim of the Prioress of Kirklees. Yet the sense of basic resolution of justice and of peace between Robin and the king remains.
28For general discussions see Barron, English Medieval Romance, 63Ð89, and Crane, Insular Romance 1Ð92.
English Kingship, Chivalry, and Literature |
115 |
Order is secured by strong and wise kings: the theme appears indirectly, in speeches by leading characters, or directly, in outright admonitions to the audience. The author of Havelok the Dane, in a classic example that merits extensive quotation, gives his audience an idyllic picture of the conditions obtaining in a well-governed realm:
It was a king by are dawes,
That in his time were gode lawes He dede maken and full well holden;
. . .
He lovede God with all his might, And holy kirke and soth and right
. . .
Wreyeres and wrobberes made he falle And hated hem so man doth galle; Utlawes and theves made he binde, Alle that he might Þnde,
And heye hengen on gallwe-tree; For hem ne yede gold ne fee;
In that time a man that bore Well Þfty pund, I wot, or more, Of red gold upon his back,
In a male white or black,
Ne funde he non that him missaide, Ne with ivele on hond layde.
. . .
Thanne was Engelond at aise; Michel was swich a king to praise That held so Englond in grith!
(There was a king in former days who made and fully kept good laws. . . . With all his might he loved God and Holy Church and truth and right. . . . Traitors and robbers he brought low and hated them as much as gall; he bound all the thieves and outlaws he could catch and hanged them high on gallows, taking no gold or goods [in bribes]; at that time a man carrying Þfty pounds of gold or more in a black or white bag on his back found no one troubled him nor lay an evil hand on him. . . . Then was England at ease; such a king should be much praised, who held England in peace.)29
This imagined ßower of English kingship (ÔEngelondes blomeÕ, l. 63) so loved right himself and so hated wrong in others that he did uncompromising justice on anyone who dared trouble the fatherless, ÔWere it clerk or were it
29 Sands, Middle English Verse Romances, ll. 27Ð30, 35Ð6, 39Ð50, 59Ð61; my translation. An interesting argument for the importance of local legend in the origins of the text is given by Bradbury, ÔTraditional OriginsÕ.
116 |
The Link with RoyautŽ |
knightÕ (l. 77). Any man who troubled widows, ÔWere he nevre knight so strongÕ (l. 80), was soon fettered and jailed. Whoever shamed virgins swiftly suffered castration.
The references to knights catch our eye, and they continue. The king himself was Ôthe beste knight at nede / That evere mighte riden on stede / Or wepne wagge or folk ut ledeÕ (or bear weapons or lead folk out to war).30 Yet his licit mastery over other knights is explicitly and fulsomely praised:
Of knight ne havede he nevere drede
That he ne sprong forth so sparke of glede,
And lete him knawe of his hand-dede
Hu he couthe with wepne spede;
And other he refte him hors or wede,
Or made him sone handes sprede
And ÔLoverd merci! loude grede.Õ
(He feared no knight, so that he could spring forth like a spark from the coals and make him know the strength of his hand and how he handled weapons; he either deprived the knight of horse or harness or made him cry out loudly, with hands outspread [in submission], ÔMercy, Lord!Õ)31
In these passages royal correction of wrong serves to stabilize medieval English society. Yet many Anglo-Norman and Middle English poems dealing with kingship stress the other side of the coin and show instead the dangers of strong kings distorting the framework of the law as they blatantly effect their private will rather than communal good. In these tales, the hero, not the king, embodies this common good even as he pursues his own private ambition; only his triumph will bring back ideal stability and the good old law.32
Yet the hero usually becomes king himself, in the process reinforcing the valid and essential role of kingship: only let the right man wear the gold crown. HavelokÕs right could scarcely be in doubt: he emits a marvellous light while sleeping and bears a glowing birthmark in the shape of a cross on his right shoulder.33
30Sands, Middle English Verse Romances, ll. 87Ð99. The poem similarly praises Birkabein, King of Denmark, as ÔA riche king and swithe stark. / . . . He havede many knight and swain; / He was fair man and wight, / Of body he was the beste knight / That evere mighte leded ut here / Or stede onne ride or handlen spere.Õ (ll. 341Ð470)
31Ibid., ll. 90Ð7; my translation. The importance of hands as agents of prowess (or of submission) is noteworthy. See the discussion in Chapter 7.
32A more complex and much darker view appears in the Alliterative Morte Arthure, written in the late fourteenth century. See Brock, ed., Alliterative Morte Arthure. A good introductory sample of scholarly opinion appears in Gšller, Alliterative Morte Arthure.
33Sands, Verse Romances, ll. 586Ð610.
English Kingship, Chivalry, and Literature |
117 |
Villains often hold the throne at the start of the tales, however, and they can use the powerful and characteristic English machinery of government to ßatten all opposition. Early in Havelok, on the death of good king Athelwold, the throne is seized by Earl Goodrich (intended, perhaps, to evoke memories of the historical Earl Godwin and his son Harold late in Edward the ConfessorÕs reign). He puts trusted knights into key castles, and requires oaths of loyalty from Ôerles, baruns, lef and loth, / Of knightes, cherles, free and theweÕ. The administrative apparatus is then oiled and set in motion to transmit his will from the centre out into the green countryside:
Justises dede he maken newe
All Engelond to faren thorw
Fro Dovere into Rokesborw.
Schireves he sette, bedels, and greives,
Grith-sergeans with long gleives,
To yemen wilde wodes and pathes
Fro wicke men, that wolde don scathes,
And forto haven alle at his cry,
At his wille, at hise mercy,
That non durste been him again,
Erl ne barun, knight ne swain.
(He made new justices to ride through all England from Dover to Roxbourgh. He established sheriffs, beadles and stewards, peace serjeants with long swords to control wild woods and roads against evil men who would do harm, and to have all at his word, at his will, at his mercy, that none dare be against him, earl, baron, knight, or servant.)34
Here is the problem in a nutshell: a king who provides justices, sheriffs, peacekeepers, an entire force against Ôwicke menÕ, is himself one of the wicked. In effect, the plot reinforces the point, for Denmark, which also Þgures largely in the tale, represents a kingdom ruled by a wicked regent, Godard. It requires a remarkable hero to right matters on both sides of the seas, as Havelok does, in the end killing the wicked regent and burning Goodrich on earth as he was undoubtedly expected to burn in eternity.
The king may in other tales be legitimate and of good will, but badly informed or ill-served by local ofÞcials and corrupted law in the countryside. In the mid-fourteenth-century Tale of Gamelyn, for example, a hero whose birth puts him just at the margins of knightly status can only recover his landed heritage by three heroic displays of violence, Þnally overwhelming his evil brother John, who can manipulate the local agents of royal administration and
34 Ibid., ll. 263Ð73; my translation.