The Earldom Endowments of 1337: Political Thought and the Practice of Kingship in Late Medieval England

Abstract

Abstract This article examines Edward III’s earldom creations of March 1337 and the endowments given to these earls by Edward III in order to support their newly acquired rank. It re-evaluates the form of these grants and the governmental processes they stimulated within a context of ideological assumptions about the inalienability of the lands and rights thought to pertain to the Crown by contemporaries, as applicable to the English polity of the mid-fourteenth century. By viewing the grants of 1337 within this intellectual, political and economic context, this article argues that the endowments supporting the earldom creations were shaped by the pressures of inalienability and public finance; that these ideas were highly prominent; and that political practice in the mid-fourteenth century correlated to and reinforced the validity and importance of these concepts. Ultimately, this article uses the example of the earldom creations of 1337 and the endowments given in support of these elevations to demonstrate the mutual interdependence of comital and royal power in mid-fourteenth century England and to show how ideas concerning political structures paralleled and grew out of political practices.