Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England, by Katherine J. Lewis

Abstract

Whereas English political life in the later middle ages was once mainly interpreted in terms of the pursuit of patronage and self-interest, a number of historians, including Christine Carpenter, Michael Hicks, Edward Powell and John F. Watts, have more recently emphasised the importance of values and principles in motivating political involvement and alignment. Yet, despite this revival of interest in the role of ideas in medieval political life, there has been relatively little discussion of either kingship as an office or the lives of individual kings in terms of contemporary ideas about gender. The fact that men are often seen as the unmarked case, as an ‘unexamined default’, means that while gender issues have loomed large in the study of medieval queenship, only now are historians beginning to respond to Mark Ormrod’s 2004 call for a ‘gendered reading’ of kings and kingship. Christopher Fletcher’s study of Richard II was pioneering in this regard (rev. ante, cxxv [2010], 686–8) and it is now followed by Katherine J. Lewis’s important account of the reigns of Henry V and Henry VI, which looks at the kings’ success or failure in terms of their ability to perform and project the mature masculinity expected of medieval rulers.