Havelok the Dane: Kingship, Hunger, and Purveyance

Abstract

A consensus has developed that the ideology of Havelok the Dane is feudal and conservative, intended to present, in its likable protagonist, an apologia for kingly prerogative. Following those scholars who link the poem’s goals more closely to the reign of Edward I, this paper argues that Havelok’s insatiable hunger—and his sweet-tempered concern for the expenses it imposes on those who have fostered him—is a recognizable apologia for the royal prerogative of “purveyance,” the king’s right to buy or borrow at will from his subjects of all ranks foodstuffs and other provisions for the royal household. At the time scholars believe Havelok was written (Smithers: lxiv–lxxiii), this prerogative stirred a dangerous rancor in England, as the needs of the royal household were folded into the larger demands of simultaneous wars in Scotland and France. Purveyance was not established or reviewed by Parliament and was seen as arbitrary and oppressive, Refigured as Havelok’s preternatural hunger it was something spontaneous and rather funny, and the sincerity of Havelok’s efforts to make his providers whole by his own hard work suggest a response to the irritated demand of English subjects that their king “puisse vivre de soen.” The conservative message of the poem moves somewhat past the feudal to the “royalist” ideology of a centralizing monarchy.