Privy Seal Research Articles

New Light on the “Lunacy” of Sir George Buc

This essay presents new information from a manuscript newsletter of John Castle about the final year of Sir George Buc (1560–1622), historian of Richard III and Master of the Revels: his oft-noted “madness” was manifest as manuscript-based investigation of rabbinic sources that led to his denial of Jesus as Messiah. Such was the gravest form of apostasy in early Stuart England, and if legally pursued would likely have led to Buc’s execution. The official verdict of “lunacy” thus spared Buc’s life and conveniently spared the court the embarrassment of such a figure at its heart. Such a judgment was consistent with broader tendencies to treat various strains of heterodoxy as “madness.” The essay also considers this reported conversion in the context of more general interest in Hebraic sources in the 1610s and 1620s (and the attendant fears of “Judaizing”). The account of Buc’s situation is credible, in light of the general reliability of its source (Castle was a deputy clerk of the Privy Seal) and Buc’s well-known tendency to contrarian scholarly positions, as most famously evident in his history of King Richard III.

A Letter for Thomas Hoccleve?

When Henry V’s war machine trundled through France it was accompanied by a highly sophisticated mobile bureaucracy. Whereas earlier wars came with their own clerks, the extent and organizational depth of Henry’s overseas administrative structure was unprecedented. At its zenith the English government’s continental arm included a chancery branch in Rouen that supported a travelling royal council. The government branches most active in France were the Signet and the Privy Seal: in the years prior to Henry’s death in 1422, both writing offices had half of their staff in France, supporting the king and his lieutenants. There also exist numerous private letters sent to England by these clerks. One such letter was sent by John Offord on 6 June 1420 from the siege of Sens to an anonymous recipient in England. The original no longer survives; it was once probably contained in British Library, MS Cotton Caligula D. v. The manuscript was among those badly damaged by the fire of 1731 in Ashburnham House, where the Cotton Library was then located. Many folios in MS Cotton Caligula D. v. have survived, but all of them display burn marks around all four edges. However, Thomas Rymer transcribed and printed the letter in his Foedera.1 Occasionally, this letter is referenced in treatments of Henry’s marriage, Anglo-French relations in Paris, and the minutiae of the ensuing military campaign against the Dauphinist faction.2 The letter has been printed a number of times before, although it has never been edited.3

Психология власти в романе Хилари Мантел «Зеркало и свет»

The last novel of Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy is approached through the lens of the contemporary theory of power. As a historical novelist, Mantel opens up the mentality behind political and social forms of power under Tudor monarchy, the dominance of traditional medieval system and, in Cromwell’s attempt to create bureaucratic government, the emergence of power devoid of the coating of sacredness. The paper is focused, though, on what is seen as the novel’s central plot, the dynamics of interpersonal balance of power between king Henry VIII and his Lord Privy Seal. Seemingly, Cromwell enjoys his outstanding career, unique for a commoner, as long as Henry stands behind him, and once Henry has exhausted Cromwell, he gets rid of him. The main phases of dynamics between Henry and the central character are established, and each phase of the increase in Cromwell’s power and outward prestige is accompanied by the increase in his awareness of the dangers of his position, in case he fails to satisfy his master’s desires. In fact, Henry realizes that Cromwell presents a challenge to king’s power, comes to see him as a dangerous rival and executes Cromwell as such. Cromwell’s fate is destined to repeat that of his first master Cardinal Wolsey. Mantel’s artistry in implying and explicating this plot on the novel’s many levels is analyzed.

Author, Scribe, and Book in Late Medieval English Literature

Author, Scribe, and Book in Late Medieval English Literature

Thomas Hoccleve: Religious Reform, Transnational Poetics, and the Invention of Chaucer by Sebastian J. Langdell

Reviewed by: Thomas Hoccleve: Religious Reform, Transnational Poetics, and the Invention of Chaucer by Sebastian J. Langdell J. A. T. Smith Sebastian J. Langdell. Thomas Hoccleve: Religious Reform, Transnational Poetics, and the Invention of Chaucer. Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020 (paperback edition). Pp. x, 224. £90.00 cloth; £29.95 paper; £24.95 e-book. Like Thomas Hoccleve’s (1368–1426) own resistance to a “dichromatic mentality of error and correction” (15)—a social and political necessity in an early Lancastrian England that tied political legitimacy to religious orthodoxy—Sebastian Langdell’s book is one that resists simple characterization. As its title suggests, it works within several different strands of thought—fifteenth-century orthodoxy and heresy, Anglo-French political relations, and Chaucerian genealogies (i.e., poets who conceived of themselves as poetic heirs). As a study, however, Langdell’s book is not confined narrowly to those strands. Fundamentally, he offers a series of extended close readings primarily of Hoccleve’s major works (The Epistle of Cupid [1402], The Regiment of Princes [1410–11], and the Series [1419–26]) in dialogue with other key texts from the period broadly conceived (Christine de Pizan’s Epistre au dieu d’amours, Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, Langland’s Piers Plowman, and Dante’s Commedia, among others). He posits a “mediatory” approach for Hoccleve while elevating the poet’s status in the arena of late medieval English poetry, part of a recent trend in his poetic rehabilitation. In large measure, however, the book reads as a collection of distinct essays rather than as a synthetic whole with common purpose; two of the chapters, the first and the third, have been published in earlier forms in Medium Ævum and New Medieval Literatures respectively, and the final product continues to bear signs of that early division. Langdell states that his main purpose is to “[situate] Thomas Hoccleve as an individual who cultivates, throughout his works, the role of poetic [End Page 315] mediator—‘intermediary’ in the most virtuous sense, and also in the most explicitly Christian sense—and who uses his poetic works to engage with contemporary religious reform movements and religious debate” (1). What Langdell means, however, by Hoccleve’s approach as poetic mediator in “the most virtuous sense” or “explicitly Christian sense” is not immediately transparent. Only slowly during the course of the analysis does his meaning emerge: conciliatory conformance and submissiveness to the larger hierarchical and socially authoritative powers of king, Church, and popular opinion are, according to Langdell, a laudatory form of prudence. Why this is “the most virtuous” or “explicitly Christian” is unclear, since hope, faith, and charity are usually considered the highest of the Christian virtues, and the most laudable and distinctly Christian form of mediation is arguably saintly intercession or clerical pastoralism, not secular poetry. Nonetheless, Langdell links this desire for mediation to an amorphous fear on Hoccleve’s part of being cast out or punished for religious or political heterodoxy. In the first chapter, “‘What world is this? How vndirstande am I?’: Reading and Moralization in the Series,” Langdell considers the addition of moralizations from the Gesta Romanorum tradition to the tales in the Series against the backdrop of the Council of Constance (1414–18), arguing that the moralizations provide the accepted and monovalent readings that would ensure an orthodox hermeneutic in the face of theological scrutiny. By comparing the interrogatory process at Constance with an analogous moment of questioning in the Series, Langdell demonstrates how Hoccleve’s anxiety about being incompletely read or misread could be a sign of his own fears about heterodoxy. In aligning orthodoxy with interrogatory procedure at Constance, though, Langdell takes for granted that the approach of the Council of Constance necessarily indicated orthodox approbation, eliding the Hussite and Wycliffite rejections with conciliar authority. This assumption, however, is not necessarily justified. While many Englishmen were conciliarists, not all were. As Alexander Russell points out, moreover, while Hoccleve was working in the office of the Privy Seal at the same time that the Council of Constance took place, and while he would have presumably seen the Crown’s diplomatic instructions through the office of the Privy Seal...

Renesansne ploče s grbovima Matijaša Korvina i Aragonaca iz nekadašnjega kaštela u Senju

The paper discusses heraldic, cultural and art-historical aspects of two relief stone plaques from the former castle (Ožegovićianum) in Senj. Both plaques contain pairs of putti supporting leaf wreaths that surround specific heraldic representations. On the left panel it is the crowned coat of arms of the Neapolitan Aragon dynasty, recognizable by the characteristic alternation of fields with horizontal and vertical beams, stylized fleur-de-lis and multiple Jerusalem crosses. The more complex composition on the right plaque represents the Croatian-Hungarian lands under the rule of king Matthias Corvinus (Cluj-Napoca / Koloszvár, 1443. – Vienna, 1490; ruling: 1458-1490): its central place is occupied by a shield with four horizontal beams, surmounted by the royal crown and surrounded by six smaller coats of arms of Hungary (double cross); Dalmatia and Croatia (three crowned leopard heads); Beszterce (Bistriţa) County or the Bohemia (lion); the Hunyadi family (raven); Bulgaria or Slavonia (dog); and Galicia or Bosnia (crown). The arrangement and heraldic content of the coats of arms is identical to that of the so-called Second privy seal of Matthias Corvinus, of which an imprint in red wax is still kept in the City Museum in Senj. Given the above, the first coat of arms can be associated with Corvinus’ second wife, the Neapolitan princess Beatrice of Aragon (Naples, 1457-1508), whom the Hungarian-Croatian ruler married in 1476. This event also provides a firm terminus post quem for the Senj plaques, while their upper time limit is being determined by the Corvinus’ death in 1490. A comparative analysis of the Senj plaques (especially links with contemporary examples found in illuminated manuscripts) reveals their place in the context of the Pannonian Renaissance, testifying to the importance of Senj in the political and artistic topography of the Hungarian-Croatian Kingdom in the late 15th century.

The Handwriting of Fifteenth-Century Privy Seal and Council Clerks

Abstract Although most scholars of medieval English palaeography are familiar with the hand of the Privy Seal clerk and poet Thomas Hoccleve, almost nothing is known about the handwriting of his fellow clerks. This article is the first attempt to identify and describe the hands of a number of clerks who wrote for the Privy Seal and for the Council in the fifteenth century. In Part 1, I identify the handwriting of Hoccleve’s fellow clerks, including William Alberton, Henry Benet, John Claydon, John Hethe, John Offord, and Richard Priour, adding writs, letters, charters, and manuscripts in their hands. I also identify the hand of the Council clerk Richard Caudray and attribute further records to the Council and Privy Seal clerk Robert Frye. Part 2 offers a reconsideration of the features of Hoccleve’s handwriting in the light of the new findings. This article also identifies the scribal stints and hands in four documents produced by Privy Seal clerks: British Library, MS Add. 24,062 (Hoccleve’s Formulary); BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F. iii (Part 1 of the Book of the Council); BL, MS Harley 219; and Edinburgh University Library, MS 183 (Privy Seal and Signet formulary, or ‘Royal Letter Book’). This article reveals the extent to which Privy Seal clerks participated in the copying of literature and offers a more nuanced understanding of the varieties of the secretary script used by government scribes.

‘Hokclyff’ and the Will of William Hoton

Abstract There are two surviving copies of La Male Regle by Thomas Hoccleve, a lively account of his dissolute life as a clerk of the Privy Seal. One is part of an autograph manuscript of Hoccleve’s works in the Huntington Library, the other an incomplete version in Canterbury Cathedral Archives. Reference to a third copy survives in the will of William Hoton, proved in 1447. As well as La Male Regle, Hoton bequeathed a letter of Pharaoh, a chronicle and statutes, together with a mazer and pious donations. This information, coupled with records of Hoton’s family members, his burial place and associates, produces a profile of William Hoton linking him with the law and the book trade, and possibly with Neville’s Inn, the London town house used by a noble family to whose members Hoccleve addressed some of his poems. Hoton’s will also leads to a second individual who owned La Male Regle—the person who received it as a bequest, the common attorney and citizen, John Mordon. Neither Hoton nor Mordon has hitherto featured in discussions of the reception of the poem, which enjoyed a wider circulation than previously thought.

Kingship and good lordship in practice in late medieval England: Henry VII, the earl of Oxford and the case of John Hale, 1487

ABSTRACT This article opens up a neglected source-base for the study of late medieval England: royal writs under the privy seal to the chief justice of the King’s Bench ordering a halt to legal proceedings. These writs gave the king a greater degree of flexibility than simply pardoning someone, including allowing him the option of reopening cases. This article demonstrates the value of this neglected instrument of royal power by placing one example in a broader context. The case study focuses on a writ sent by Henry VII to his chief justice halting the case against John Hale, a yeoman, who was in the contingent of John de Vere, earl of Oxford, in the lead up to the Battle of Stoke. It illuminates the nature of kingship and good lordship in late medieval England, showing how the two ideas could interact for the benefit of king, lord and servant.

Sebastian J. Langdell. Thomas Hoccleve. Religious Reform, Transnational Poetics, and the Invention of Chaucer

For nearly 40 years Thomas Hoccleve toiled at the Privy Seal, a professional scribe stooping and staring ‘upon the sheepes skyn’ (The Regiment of Princes 1013). He rose to become one of the handful of senior clerks, and his sense of engagement with his profession is evidenced in the formulary of over a thousand documents, largely in French, some in Latin, he drew together late in his career. Nothing is known about him before he joined the Privy Seal and, whereas others of his contemporaries moved on to preferment, there he stayed. Apart from his work for the Privy Seal, his distinctive hand is recognized also in compilations he made of his own poetry. Presumably he had little time free to copy the works of other poets, though he did write but did not complete a small portion of the Trinity Confessio amantis, thus gaining the soubriquet Scribe E, and seemingly he contributed at least one addition to the Ellesmere Canterbury Tales.

\u2018Why \xfeat yee meeued been / can I nat knowe\u2019: Autobiography, Convention, and Discerning Doublenesse in Thomas Hoccleve\u2019s The Series

The secretary script of the Privy Seal looms large in the holographs of fifteenth-century clerk, Thomas Hoccleve—both in the written hand on the manuscript page, and the written-ness of his extraordinary quasi-autobiographical poetic productions. Most captivating, if little known, is Durham, University Library, MS Cosin V. iii. 9: witness to the verse collection known as The Series, in which disparate exemplary, confessional, and didactic texts are organised as the purported compositions of the ‘Thomas’ of the frame narrative. The stage seems set for an insight into medieval authorial anxiety, patronage, and even mental infirmity, of apparently unprecedented candour. Yet for all his disarming claims to ineloquence, insignificance, and (famously) ‘meetrynge amis’, Hoccleve is a poet creatively alive to the possibilities, and dangers, of self-identification. He adopts in his poetry the double visage of laureate, yet servant; public man, yet ostracised clerk. Though his speakers may really report autobiographical truths of the poet, the poet may frequently refer only to a namesake of himself—mediated through literary convention—in his speakers. Such is the focus of this article, which considers—adopting a narratologist vocabulary—Cosin V. iii. 9 as an example of a work, and artefact, that bears an almost Renaissance sense of the individual’s propensity to self-fashioning, but that is better encapsulated in a term of a distinctly medieval flavour, doublenesse. The discernment of such doublenesse, I suggest, offers a means of ascribing value to Hoccleve’s still neglected corpus that extends beyond historicism alone, and a pathway, perhaps, for an alternative view of literary authority in late medieval literature. In The Series, emotion is concealed behind convention, the maker behind his text; but despite Hoccleve’s diligent control over the words on the page, as for their interpretation by his audience, that, he must finally concede, ‘can I nat knowe’.

La Real Audiencia de Lima, el sello real y la garantía de la justicia (The Real Audiencia of Lima, the royal seal and ensuring justice)

In this paper, based on the Real Audiencia de Lima, we intend to highlight the crucial importance of audiencial institution in the context of the Indian administration. First we refer to the books and records of the Lima High Court, and the importance of conservation in the Indian political context. Then board the studio audience as depository Privy Seal, which was to represent the monarch himself, and he had the authority to issue rules on behalf of the king, and the king as if it had been signed. Finally, we will think about the judicial work of the Court, and the criteria under which it was considered that its judges could ensure that justice prevails.

The Making of Thomas Hoccleve’s “Series” by David Watt (review)

Reviewed by: The Making of Thomas Hoccleve’s “Series” by David Watt Elon Lang The Making of Thomas Hoccleve’s “Series” By David Watt. Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 2013. http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/M/bo14387537.html In The Making of Thomas Hoccleve’s “Series,” David Watt takes on one of Middle English literary scholarship’s persistent interpretive challenges: to characterize the thematic and formal unity in the sequence of disparate poems and other texts by the early fifteenth-century London poet Thomas Hoccleve that modern scholars simply dub the Series. Characterizing this compilation has been complicated by Hoccleve’s bibliographic record, which includes four surviving holograph manuscripts, one of which preserves a copy of the whole Series in Hoccleve’s own hand. Scholars have long been interested in the Series because of its pseudo-autobiographical narrative frame, in which a first person narrator named Thomas discusses the process of composing and assembling the book as it is being written—transforming it into something quite different from what he originally intended. This narrator also describes the process of recovering from a mental illness and reforming his moral reputation in his community, prompting numerous critics to analyze the Series in terms of Hoccleve’s psychology and rhetorical strategies. Watt, however, encourages us to view the narrative of Thomas’s ad hoc process of composition and compilation as a crucial part of the narrative of his illness and recovery. Watt argues that Thomas’s story about how his book changes over time as he imagines the needs of his readers serves as Hoccleve’s model for spiritual reform. Part of Watt’s argument is traditionally historicist, in which he reads the narratives of personal reform and textual assembly in the Series against the backdrop of the ecumenical Council of Konstanz (1414–1418) and its goal to reform the Church in the wake of the Great Schism. Hoccleve would have had this Council on his mind while writing parts of the Series due to his clerical work in England’s Office of the Privy Seal—through which the English government communicated with its ambassadors at the Council. While the conciliar context alone is an innovation in Hoccleve criticism, Watt grounds this reading in a detailed study of manuscript evidence to illustrate how Hoccleve conceptualized [End Page 134] the purpose of his texts and their functions for his readers. As such, Watt provides the most convincing account yet published on the formal and thematic unity of the Series. Watt finds this unity in the way the text dramatizes its “making”—its piecemeal assembly as both a composition and material book over time—as a model for personal moral reform. This model shows reform to be fraught with the same challenges as textual production: an individual’s own problems, external interventions by other people, and problems with unforeseen worldly circumstances. The strength of Watt’s argument is in how it rests on the premise that “the Series’ coherence as a unit of analysis depends on both literary and bibliographic principles” (14). With this multi-modal approach, Watt organizes his book into chapters that focus on each of the four surviving manuscripts that Hoccleve made himself, with a fifth chapter on one of the most significant scribal copies of the Series. In his first chapter, Watt considers how the various dedicatees of short occasional verses in Huntington Library MS HM 111 (which does not contain any part of the Series) compare with the audiences Hoccleve seems to envision for different parts of the Series. Watt’s comparisons reveal what he calls a “stratified” audience that includes members of the reading public, Hoccleve’s bureaucratic colleagues, and his noble patrons—each of whom were invited “to judge his texts by imagining how well they would have served the needs of other readers” (40). Although Watt does not consider this a call for empathy, he does suggest that an audience’s perception of other readers might lay the foundations for personal moral reform by considering other individuals as models. In the second chapter, Watt explains how fifteenth-century English readers voraciously sought redemption from sin in vernacular religious texts. As a representative example, Watt...

The Making of Thomas Hoccleve’s “Series” by David Watt (review)

Reviewed by: The Making of Thomas Hoccleve’s “Series” by David Watt Matthew Fisher David Watt, The Making of Thomas Hoccleve’s “Series.” Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2013. $99.95. Writing poetry about writing poetry is a temptation that few poets have resisted. Thomas Hoccleve is not among that select few. In the middle of [End Page 347] the twentieth century, Robert Graves dismissed “what passes as English poetry” as “the product of either careerism, or keeping one’s hand in: a choice between vulgarity and banality.” David Watt’s book, The Making of Thomas Hoccleve’s “Series,” attempts to uncover where along that spectrum we can place Hoccleve’s literary labor and its products as aesthetic and material propositions. Watt takes as his primary subject the process, not the product, of Hoccleve’s writing, and to that end interrogates its material remnants and the poetic fictions of its composition. Watt begins his book with a bold observation: “This is not the book I initially planned to write. The version of this book that I had in my head was never the version on the page in front of me” (1). Such a statement is honest, and draws attention to the chasms between intentionality and execution that are at the heart of all creative and critical endeavors. At the same time, Watt implies that the book escaped his control in some way. Though he thus sets up a parallel for his arguments about the complexities of Hoccleve’s compositional difficulties, it is a disturbing beginning. His frank honesty about the potential failures of process suggest that the product, too, may be problematic. The book offers a sustained engagement with the entirety of Hoccleve’s Series, and though many of its points are locally persuasive, it does not quite succeed in offering a critical framework that can make compelling sense of the gap between anticipation and execution it perceives in Hoccleve’s poetry. More successful is Watt’s attempt to focus on both the ephemeralities and the materialities of the poetic process. As Watt argues in the book’s introduction, “the Series offers a reflection on, not a reflection of, his [Hoccleve’s] conception of book production” (4). To this end, Watt marshals paleographical evidence along with careful close readings of the entirety of Hoccleve’s Series, a sequence of five distinct and interrelated Middle English poems, the best known of which are the first two, the “Complaint” and “Dialogue.” “Learn to Die” has occasioned some more recent criticism, but the remaining two poems, “The Tale of Jereslaus’s Wife” and “The Tale of Jonathas,” have warranted little critical attention over many years. A book-length study of Hoccleve’s Series is a welcome contribution to the field. Watt is to be commended for his sustained focus on Hoccleve’s complexly allusive poetry, and his careful encounter with the manuscript instantiations of that verse. The three autograph manuscripts of Hoccleve’s poetry (or possibly four, as Linne Mooney has recently argued in these pages) have been [End Page 348] disproportionately subject to the kind of paleographically and codico-logically grounded literary criticism that Watt assays. The first chapter of The Making attempts to construct Hoccleve’s likely audience “in and for the Series” through the lens of San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 111. Watt reads the claims of Hoccleve’s narrator persona “Thomas” as reflecting and responding to the issues faced by Hoccleve and his poetry, and its reception by a coterie readership among the clerks of the Privy Seal. Watt argues Hoccleve’s poems “are meant to circulate among those at work in the Privy Seal and elsewhere in Westminster Hall” (31). That “elsewhere” ultimately covers quite a bit of ground, deriving from Ethan Knapp’s exposition of Hoccleve’s bureaucratic vision and Emily Steiner’s Langlandian documentary imagination, and stretching back to the coterie audiences of Piers Plowman described by Steven Justice and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton and others. Watt asserts an imagined audience ranging from the king, to the upper echelons of the nobility, to Hoccleve’s fellow clerks. His depiction of a stratified and plural audience for the Series, its multiple valences carefully crafted...

Trilingualism in the Medieval English Bureaucracy: The Use—and Disuse—of Languages in the Fifteenth-Century Privy Seal Office

Trilingualism in the Medieval English Bureaucracy: The Use—and Disuse—of Languages in the Fifteenth-Century Privy Seal Office

The Production of Books in England 1350-1500 ed. by Alexandra Gillespie and Daniel Wakelin (review)

Reviewed by: The Production of Books in England 1350-1500 ed. by Alexandra Gillespie and Daniel Wakelin Lawrence Warner Gillespie, Alexandra and Daniel Wakelin, eds, The Production of Books in England 1350-1500 (Cambridge Studies in Palaeography and Codicology, 14), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011; hardback; pp. xx, 375; 43 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. £60.00; ISBN 9780521889797. This useful and beautiful book is intended as a supplement to, rather than a replacement for, the great 1989 Griffiths-Pearsall collection Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375-1475, and it succeeds admirably. Its major strength is its provision of expert advice on methodologies that often perplex the outsider. What were medieval English books made of? Orietta da Rold's 'Materials' tells us. How can we penetrate the complexities of dialectology? There is no better place than Simon Horobin's chapter 'Mapping the Words' to find out. The other topics include scribal practices, ordinatio, decorating the page, compiling the book, bookbinding, commercial organization, vernacular literary manuscripts, non-commercial book production, censorship, books beyond England, and English books and the continent. While each chapter dutifully surveys the major critical issues, most contributors show how their topic opens windows onto later medieval English culture and society. Da Rold's chapter concludes with a compelling treatment of the distribution of paper stocks in the Winchester Malory, which suggests 'that the scribes were working with loose tales, coming from separate manuscripts', a claim of no little consequence for the interpretation of Le Morte Darthur (p. 32). For Daniel Wakelin, the variety of letter forms in which even a single scribe's hand might be found is an index into the 'the social world in which writing unfolded' (p. 45). Deep into Jean-Pascal Pouzet's treatment of non-commercial book production, one finds a fascinating theorization of 'the creative importance of otium', manifested in Hoccleve's characterization of the 'trauaillous stilnesse' of the Privy Seal (pp. 234, 237). And Alexandra Gillespie's 'Bookbinding' polemically argues 'that binding research should not be the preserve of specialists, and that this is an ideal moment to make new connections between binding and the broader history of the book' (p. 158). These are just some of the exciting, large-scale claims hidden beneath the rather anodyne, and thus misleading, chapter titles. Indeed, one theme cautiously developed is the danger of granting too much heuristic force to any of the topics signalled in those titles. Fiona Somerset's study of censorship pushes this to the limit in its interrogation of 'censorship' as a definable critical category. Alteration such as erasure 'can be a form of secondary censorship in response to the threat of censure', she notes, 'but more generally it is a form of reader response (or authorial [End Page 245] reconsideration) with a wider range of possible causes' (p. 257). Two chapters later David Rundle, having catalogued continental scribes' stints in England, provides the 'salutary reminder that the provenance of a manuscript can be more complex than hasty assumptions suggest' (p. 284), echoing Simon Horobin's point about 'just how misleading' certain dialectal data sets can appear (p. 76). Not all is negative, of course. Throughout the collection enterprising readers will find concrete suggestions for further research. Da Rold points to the variation in parchment types and in inks in manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales (p. 21); Gillespie, to the archival records that might reveal more about later medieval binders, including women, who otherwise are few and far between herein (p. 159); Somerset, to the need for 'many more stories about shifts in book production in the fifteenth century and their causes' (p. 252); and Wendy Scase, in the volume's afterword, to the question of why it was 'that bureaucratic infrastructure, material and personnel met the needs of vernacular book production' (p. 297). A welcome antidote to one of the few qualms I had about The Production of Books in England 1350-1500 appears in Stephen Partridge's chapter 'Designing the Page', which concludes: 'The methods of textual criticism may have much to offer book history's consideration of page design' (p. 103). It is no surprise that codicology and book history must rely on extant...

Japan im Pazifischen Krieg: Herrschaftssystem, politische Willensbildung und Friedenssuche (review)

Reviewed by: Japan im Pazifischen Krieg: Herrschaftssystem, politische Willensbildung und Friedenssuche Peter Pantzer Japan im Pazifischen Krieg: Herrschaftssystem, politische Willensbildung und Friedenssuche. By Gerhard Krebs. Munich: Iudicium, 2010. 936 pages. Hardcover €98.00. Upon finishing this formidable tome of almost one thousand pages, my sense was that readers could only find it, as I did, emotionally stirring. The book—whose title translates into English as Japan in the Pacific War: The System of Government, the Political Decision-making Process, and the Quest for Peace—tells the story of the rise and fall, and the fortunes and misfortunes, of an influential Japanese elite—events constituting the most dramatic years in modern Japanese history. By choosing the ideals of civilization and enlightenment, Japan joined the West to become a responsible member of the international community, its diplomats an asset to the nation. The country then took a path that would lead to dire consequences. How did all this come about? Why, during the 1930s, did Japan turn so militaristic? Aggressive toward its neighbors and ruthlessly exploiting the interests of other powers, Japan justified its crimes with a litany of excuses about their necessity for security and prosperity while suffocating its population under the guise of patriotism. Gerhard Krebs focuses on the Pacific War and on the opportunities Japan missed to maintain a peaceful status quo. The book begins at a time when the clear leadership that circumstances called for was not forthcoming and foreign relations had become conspicuously messy. The government, under the control of the army and navy, who—as the constitution unfortunately allowed—overturned the cabinet ad libitum, was caught up in the wrong kind of choices. Britain and the United States could no longer accept Japan's expansionism to the south and into the Asian continent, especially not its undeclared war in China. The situation [End Page 193] was worsened by Japan's growing alignment with the totalitarian regime in Nazi Germany. It was obvious the country was playing with fire. Joined by the Netherlands, including the Dutch Indies, Britain and the United States imposed an embargo on imports, which hit Japan hard as it badly needed energy and natural resources. The sanctions were not intended as mere economic measures but were an unambiguous strategy to force Japan to abandon her belligerent actions. But by August 1941, when China had been at war for four years and Europe was fearful that its own war would widen, Japan's radical militarists were already bent on taking Japan even further along its hostile path. The book aims to analyze the decision-making processes and to offer a close-up view of the councils, boards, and governmental bodies that in one way or another served the public interest. In doing so, it draws attention to new sources that have only become available in recent years. They include material hitherto unknown, often because people were hesitant to go public with diaries and records—whether because they were unaware of their historical value or reluctant to reveal themselves in a bad light, or out of consideration for their colleagues and their families. The first chapter discusses the constitutional background and lays out the main players. Many democratic institutions still in existence are easily recognizable, though of course they were under pressure from the military at the time. The emperor was surrounded by a considerable body of court officials, among them the minister of the Imperial Household (kunaidaijin), the lord keeper of the privy seal (naidaijin), the lord high chamberlain (jijūchō), and the aide-de-camp to the emperor (jijūbukanchō), the highest attendant to report on military affairs. From 1933, it was customary for former prime ministers to be selected as jūshin, serving as informal advisers to the emperor and replacing the select group of elder statesmen who had performed that function as genrō, a designation established in the early days of the Meiji government. Also near to the emperor were the Privy Council (sūmitsuin), and last but not least the Imperial Princes, who did not always agree with the emperor but were in a favorable position to tell him the truth when circumstances required. The princes were respected and were...

The Prior of the Knights Hospitaller in Late Medieval England by Simon Phillips (review)

REVIEWS 295 connection between past and present. “Given the intrinsic nature of jihad to Islam it will never disappear, yet crusading has ended … for centuries we have actually seen just shadows of the crusades, not true shapes” (350–351). Whatever the contemporary intellectual and political interests may be, the continuity of crusading is principally emotional rather than chronological (310). Other scholars have been making this point for many years now, especially since September 11th , but their voices are often drowned out. Hopefully Holy Warriors , with its many strengths, will succeed in educating a wide audience. SAM ZENO CONEDERA, S.J. Simon Phillips, The Prior of the Knights Hospitaller in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press 2009) 224 pp. According to Simon Phillips, the Prior of the English Hospitallers in the Late Middle Ages ought to be viewed “as an Englishman first … with his first loyalty to the crown, and a Hospitaller second” (18). This is the fundamental argument of The Prior of the Knights Hospitaller in Late Medieval England, which seeks to overcome the excessive reliance of previous historians upon Maltese sources. Making extensive use of English materials, including crown archives, privy seal and council records, and treaty rolls, Phillips offers a revised understanding of the office of Prior during the Late Middle Ages, arguing that “the Prior was never as independent or active a crusader as is normally supposed, but neither did his office quite become a royal sinecure” (2). Prior of the Knights gives an account that is multi-faceted, synthetic, and supported by copious references; there remain, however, a few unanswered questions about the Prior’s role as a national statesman. The book also raises issues for further research, such as the role of “national” interests in the life of an international military order, and the need to reassess the English Hospitallers in light of local sources. Prior of the Knights Hospitaller is divided into five main chapters, each addressing a different aspect of the Prior’s activities: financier and treasurer, defender of the realm, international ambassador, national statesman, and role in the secularization of the order. The Prior had two major financial roles in England : as a provider and collector of funds, and, in three cases, as royal treasurer (25). Like the Templars before them, the Hospitallers had the responsibility of collecting and storing tax revenues, and their headquarters of Clerckenwell served as “a convenient local storage center for the crown to dip into” (31). The Priors’ effectiveness as providers and collectors of funds, as well as their personal honesty, probably contributed to the appointment of three of them as treasurers. Phillips speculates that Priors did not serve in this capacity more frequently because of their regular travels outside the country, and because the job entailed various hazards; Prior Hales was murdered while in office (43). Although the Hospitallers were theoretically exempt from military service to lay rulers, in practice things sometimes worked out otherwise: “[t]he Prior was expected to take up arms against other Christians for his king, but only on the grounds of the defense of the realm” (46). Phillips sees a trajectory in the Prior’s military role over the course of the Late Middle Ages: from traditional feudal service, to appointment to defensive military positions, to active participation in offensive campaigns (47). This change was tied to a broader shift in REVIEWS 296 military service towards a contractual model. From the mid-fourteenth century, the Prior was appointed to offices, such as admiral, normally reserved for the high nobility. This military service, says Phillips, seems to have led to the Prior’s political role at home and abroad (58). The Prior’s activities as international ambassador and national statesman are crucial for supporting the book’s claim that the Hospitallers “may have considered that their loyalty was due to their king first and their Order second” (91). The Prior exercised a diplomatic role for the crown from the late fourteenth century, but around the middle of the fifteenth it intensified, such that Phillips is inclined to place Prior Botyll (1440–1468) among the king’s core of diplomats (74). The timing of this change was crucial, for the increase of diplomatic...

Bureaucratic Verse: William Lyndwood, the Privy Seal, and the Form of The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye

This essay associates The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye with civilian bills, or libelli, and re-evaluates the immediate historical context surrounding the poem’s composition. The wealth and accuracy of economic, political, and legal information that is contained in the poem points to the poet’s intimate familiarity with the highest functions of the King’s writing offices at Westminster. This essay argues that The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye must have been composed from within the closest circle of Henry VI’s senior administrators. Thus, the poem formed part of the Privy Seal’s strategy to identify the adolescent monarch, who had only just begun to exercise the royal privilege of granting petitions, with a defence of Calais and an ideological pursuit of peace. Central to this process were William Lyndwood, Keeper of the Privy Seal, and Walter Hungerford, the poem’s sponsor. In addition to historical and circumstantial evidence, Lyndwood’s association with The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye is supported by the centrality the poem assigns to seals and documentary validity, its legal mode as a libellus, and its programmatic emphasis on peace and unity, which Lyndwood had championed in a parliamentary sermon of 1431.

Warrants under the signet in the reign of Edward IV

While fifteenth-century historians have long appreciated the importance of the signet and have incorporated it into their work on the politics and government of the time, the surviving warrants issued under the signet to the great and privy seals have not been studied in depth. By examining the surviving signet warrants in the files of the chancery and privy seal office, it is possible to detect some of the changes which were occurring in the governance of England with the overthrow of Henry VI and the accession of the Yorkists.