County and Community in Medieval England

Gwilym Dodd

doi:10.1093/ehr/cez187

Abstract

Abstract The ‘county community’ is something of a hot potato amongst late medieval political historians. Since the publication of an influential article by Christine Carpenter in 1994, in which she condemned the county community as anachronistic and conceptually flawed, research on the political structures of late medieval England has mostly avoided the term and the idea. In other fields, the methodological challenges and conceptual complexities underpinning the idea of ‘community’ have been embraced and new, more nuanced understandings of how medieval people organised and represented themselves collectively have been achieved. It is now time for historians of politics and government in late medieval England to move beyond reductionist arguments about the existence or otherwise of county communities to investigate the assumptions and social realities that lay behind contemporary references to the ‘commonalty’, ‘commons’ or ‘people’ of one or more counties. This discussion offers the first in-depth analysis of the single most important evidence for grass-roots expressions of county solidarity: county community petitions. It argues that the county was not merely the creation of administrative expedience on the part of the Crown, but provided the basis for real and meaningful expressions of collective identity and corporate action locally. What underpinned the concept of the ‘county community’, and what gave it particular strength, was its inclusivity and flexibility. The discussion concludes by considering the particular circumstances of the early fourteenth century which helped stimulate a culture of corporate identity and self-help on the basis of the county unit.

Highlights

The following are two typical ‘county community’ petitions from the first half of the fourteenth century, presented in the parliaments of 1322 and 1344 respectively: 1. To our lord the king and to his council, the community of the county of Lincolnshire [la communalte du conte de Nicole] ask that he should have regard for the mischiefs and losses that have occurred and still occur as a result of animal murrain, flooding of low-lying land, failure of corn and because people have been taken and put to ransom by the king’s enemies and rebels, and many have abandoned their lands and houses, through malice and for fear of these enemies, so that much of the land of the county is unsown
Robert Darcy and Piers Breton are demanding 4,000 well-armed foot-soldiers from the community, with ten shillings per soldier for expenses, which amounts to 8,000 li, including their armour, which sum, with the aforesaid charge, the county cannot afford without being destroyed forever
To our lord the king and his council pray the commons of the county of Bedfordshire [la commune de counte de Bed’] and Thomas, son and heir of Thomas de Studeley; [they state that] Henry Chalfont, sheriff of Bedfordshire, has given our lord the king and his council to understand that he has not levied, or been able to levy, more than 60s of the common fine of 100 marks at which Thomas de Studeley was assessed in the said county, after Thomas’s death he seized goods and chattels worth 100 marks and more, as he has acknowledged, and as is on record in the exchequer

Summary

Introduction

The following are two typical ‘county community’ petitions from the first half of the fourteenth century, presented in the parliaments of 1322 and 1344 respectively: 1. To our lord the king and to his council, the community of the county of Lincolnshire [la communalte du conte de Nicole] ask that he should have regard for the mischiefs and losses that have occurred and still occur as a result of animal murrain, flooding of low-lying land, failure of corn and because people have been taken and put to ransom by the king’s enemies and rebels, and many have abandoned their lands and houses, through malice and for fear of these enemies, so that much of the land of the county is unsown.

Results

Conclusion