Abstract
When we engage in letter-writing at the present day, we do so for a variety of purposes. We may be conducting business, paying bills, making arrangements with people we do not know. Or we may be writing to family or friends, bringing them up to date on various items of news, keeping in touch so that when we next meet them we can simply pick up where we left off. Our use of language varies, from the formal and impersonal in the business letter, to a readiness to display our feelings and emotions in private correspondence. At the same time, we exercise a form of self-censorship, bearing in mind to whom we are writing, and adapting our style and subject-matter to the recipient. Our education and careers teach us a variety of ways in which to express ourselves, and we place great reliance on the written word, even though we realise its dangers.
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Notes
M.B. Parkes, ‘The Literacy of the Laity’ in Scribes, Scripts and Readers, ed. M. Parkes (London: Hambledon, 1991), pp. 275–97 (pp. 286–91); C.M. Meale, ‘“... alle the bokes that I haue of latyn, englisch, and frensch”: Laywomen and their Books in Late Medieval England’, in Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500, ed. C.M. Meale (Cambridge: CUP, 1993), pp. 128–58 (p. 133); N. Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry (London: Methuen, 1984), pp. 144, 156–63.
P. Payne and C. Barron, ‘The Letters and Life of Elizabeth Despenser, Lady Zouche (d.1408)’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 41 (1997), 126–56 (p. 140); V.M. O’Mara, ‘Female Scribal Ability and Scribal Activity in Late Medieval England: the Evidence?’, LSE, 27 (1996), 87–130 (pp. 91–6).
The development of trust in writing is discussed by M. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record (London: Edward Arnold, 1979), pp. 231–57; Parkes, p. 288.
PRO E101/512/10. Four letters and one bond were printed by E. Rickert, ‘Some English Personal Letters of 1402’, RES, 8 (1932), 257–63; and all the letters with a calendar of the other documents by Payne and Barron, pp. 146–52.
PRO SC1/51/24; the letters were printed by E. Rickert, ‘A Leaf from a Fourteenth-Century Letter Book’, Modern Philology, 25 (1927–8), 249–55.
Anglo-Norman Letters and Petitions from All Souls MS.182, ed. M.D. Legge, Anglo-Norman Text Society, 3 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1941).
The conventional format of fifteenth-century letters in English is discussed by N. Davis, ‘The Litera Troili and English Letters’, RES, 16 (1965), 233–44; ‘A Note on Pearl’, RES, 17 (1966), 403–5; ‘Style and Stereotype in Early English Letters’, LSE, 1 (1967), 7–17.
Rickert, ‘A Leaf’, pp. 253–4; the letter is quoted in translation and discussed by P. Coss, The Lady in Medieval England 1000–1500 (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1998), p. 66.
J.R. Lander, ‘Attainder and Forfeiture, 1453–1509’, HJ, 4 (1961), 119–51 (p. 119); reprinted in J.R. Lander, Crown and Nobility, 1450–1509 (London: Edward Arnold, 1976), pp. 127–58.
The Correspondence, Inventories, Account Rolls, and Law Proceedings of the Priory of Coldingham, ed. J. Raine (Surtees Society, 12, 1841), pp. 89–90. Joan was daughter of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford, and the second wife of Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland (d.1425); she died in 1440. The letter may well date from her widowhood.
M. Aston, Thomas Arundel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 172–3, 181–91, 194–200.
John I also asked for the payment to be remitted. M.A.E. Wood, Letters ofRoyal and Illustrious Ladies From the Twelfth Century to the Close ofMary’s Reign, 3 vols (London: Colburn, 1846), 1, pp. 78–81; Royal and Historical Letters during the Reign of H enrylV, ed. F.C. Hingeston, 2 vols, Rolls Series (1860), 2, pp. 83–102.
M. Jones, ‘The Fortunes of War: the Military Career of John Second Lord Bourchier (d.1400)’, Essex Archaeology and History, 26 (1995), 145–61 (p. 159).
BL Add. Roll 17208; Medieval Framlingham. Select Documents 1270–1524, ed. J. Ridgard (Suffolk Records Society, 27, 1985), pp. 86–128. Margaret was created duchess of Norfolk in 1399.
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Ward, J.C. (2001). Letter-Writing by English Noblewomen in the Early Fifteenth Century. In: Daybell, J. (eds) Early Modern Women’s Letter Writing, 1450–1700. Early Modern Literature in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230598669_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230598669_3
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