Abstract
Given the prevalence of unequal relationships between men in later medieval England and the honor attached to being in the highest levels of service, to neglect a consideration of the presence of retaining in late medieval English literature leaves our understanding of these works imperfect at best. Through literature, authors both echo and add to the parliamentary voices that historians have long examined as sources of information about retaining. Unequal relationships between middle- and upper-class men profited and affected a wide swath of society by the final years of the fourteenth century, yet authors came down strongly against retaining. But perhaps counterintuitively, the response gradually improved; by the eve of the Wars of the Roses, when retainer armies plagued the English political structure, poets extol the virtues of this type of service, even when they are clearly aware of its drawbacks.
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Notes
I develop my argument about Melibee being read as an accord in “Maintaining Love through Accord.” For more on accords and arbitrations, see Lorraine Attreed, “Arbitration and the Growth of Urban Liberties in Late Medieval England,” Journal of British Studies 31 (1992): 205–35
Josephine W. Bennett, “The Mediaeval Loveday,” Speculum 33 (1958): 351–70
Michael Clanchy, “Law and Love in the Middle Ages,” in Disputes and Settlements, ed. John Bossy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 47–67
Michael Myers, “The Failure of Conflict Resolution and the Limits of Arbitration in King’s Lynn 1405–1416,” in Traditions and Transformations in Late Medieval England, ed. Sharon Michalove and Douglas Biggs (Boston: Brill, 2002), pp. 81–107
Simon J. Payling, “Law and Arbitration in Nottinghamshire 1399–1461,” in People, Politics, and Community in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Joel Rosenthal and Colin Richmond (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), pp. 140–60
Edward Powell, “Arbitration and the Law in England in the Late Middle Ages,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser. 33 (1983): 49–67
Carole Rawcliffe, “The Great Lord as Peacekeeper: Arbitration by English Noblemen and Their Councils in the Later Middle Ages,” in Law and Social Change in British History, ed. J.A. Guy and H.G. Beale (London: Royal Historical Society, 1984), pp. 34–54
Ian Rowney, “Arbitration in Gentry Disputes of the Later Middle Ages,” History 67 (1982): 367–74.
David Smith, “Disputes and Settlements in Medieval Wales: The Role of Arbitration,” The English Historical Review 106 (1991): 835–60
David Tilsey, “Arbitration in Gentry Disputes: The Case of Bucklow Hundred in Cheshire, 1400–1465,” in Courts, Counties, and the Capital in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Diana E.S. Dunn (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), pp. 53–70.
Traditionally this scene is referred to as the “Rat Parliament”; however, “court” might be a better term, as court has connotations on both the national and the local level, whereas parliament restricts interpretation to the national scale. Citations to the three recen-sions are as follows: George Kane, ed. Piers Plowman: The A-Version (London: University of London Press, 1960)
Derek Pearsall, ed. Piers Plowman the C-text, 1978 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1999)
A.V.C. Schmidt, ed. The Vision of Piers Plowman, 1995 (London: J.M. Dent, 1998).
A. Prol. 17. The Piers Plowman portions of this chapter are based on ideas from Kathleen E. Kennedy, “Retaining Men (and a Retaining Woman) in Piers Plowman,” 20 (2006): 191–214
Lees points out that Meed did not have to be female, and therefore in making her so, Langland is setting his text up to deal with her gender (p. 115). Clare Lees, “Gender and Exchange in Piers Plowman,” in Class and Gender in Early English Literature, ed. Britton J. Harwood and Gillian Overing (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994), pp. 112–30.
I am in favor of the revisionist chronology supported by Warner and other Langland critics. Traditionally, critics ascribe the A text to the later 1360s, B to the later 1370s, and C to the later 1380s. Revisionists have moved these dates forward to before 1377, the late 1380s, and 1390, respectively, and Warner goes further in promoting an A, ur-B, C, B release. Lawrence Warner, “The Ur-B of Piers Plowman and the Earliest Production of C and B,” Yearbook of Langland Studies 16 (2002): 3–39.
For critics studying Meed’s agency, see especially Fowler, “Civil Death” and Stephanie Trigg, “The Traffic in Medieval Women: Alice Perrers, Feminist Criticism and Piers Plowman,” Yearbook of Langland Studies 12 (1998): 5–29. For a recent exploration of Alice Perrers using documentary evidence, see Mark Ormrod, “Who Was Alice Perrers?” Chaucer Review 40 (2006): 219–29.
B. 2. 46, 73, 72–107. See Anna Baldwin, The Theme of Government in Piers Plowman (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1981)
B. 3. 13–24, emphasis mine. Judges were prohibited formally from taking retainers, finally, in 1384 (3 Stat. 8 RII c. 3), and notions of how ethical it was for a judge to be retained were changing over the years to which the various recensions of Piers Plowman date. Recently J.A. Burrow assumed this transaction represented an outright bribe, “Lady Meed and the Power of Money,” Medium Ævum 74 (2005): 113–18.
J.R. Maddicott, Law and Lordship: Royal Justices as Retainers in Thirteenth-and Fourteenth-Century England (Oxford: Past and Present Society, 1978), p. 69
Traditionally the cat is identified with John of Gaunt and the rodent debate is identified with the Good Parliament as well as the Bad Parliament. For examples, see J.A.W. Bennett, “The Date of the B-Text of Piers Plowman,” Medium Ævum 12 (1943): 55–64.
Piers Plowman. A Reading of the B Text, Visio (London: Croom Helm, 1984)
The historical narrative here owes a great debt to the following works: Chris Given-Wilson, The Royal Household; Anthony Goodman, John of Gaunt: The Exercise of Power in Fourteenth-Century Europe (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992)
Nigel Saul, Richard II (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997)
See Doris Fletcher, “The Lancastrian Collar of Esses: Its Origins and Transformations Down the Ages,” in The Age of Richard II, ed. James Gillespie (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), pp. 191–204
Chris Given-Wilson, ed. The Chronicle of Adam Usk 1377–1421 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 53.
Edward Maunde Thompson, ed. Chronicon Adae de Usk A.D. 1377–1421 (London: Henry Frowde, 1904), p. 173
R.L. Storey, “Liveries and Commissions of the Peace 1388–90,” in The Reign of Richard II. Essays in Honour of May McKisack, ed. F.R.H. Du Boulay and Caroline M. Barron (London: University of London, 1971), pp. 131–52.
RR. 1. 96–106. For the Record and Process, see Rot. Parl. iii 416–22, or see Chris Given-Wilson, trans. Chronicles of the Revolution, 1397–1400: The Reign of Richard II (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993).
Of course, the Richard-poet may simply be borrowing from anti-Ricardian tradition, or a common understanding of Richard’s regime’s faults for this list. Nevertheless, its similarity to the Articles of Deposition is suggestive, considering the efforts Henry made to publish these Articles. Barr sees similarities also. See Helen Barr, Signes and Sothe: Language in the Piers Plowman Tradition (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1994)
Here I differ with James Dean, when he interprets this to mean “by appraising of pole-axis”: James M. Dean, ed. Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000), p. 26.
RR. 2. 47. This line of argument may have held some currency at the time, as it appears in a parliamentary petition of about 1400, and the ethics of a retinue at once royal and private was questioned generally. See John Watts, “Looking for the State in Medieval England,” in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, ed. Peter Coss and Maurice Keen (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2002), pp. 243–67
Richard A. Dwyer, “Arthur’s Stellification in the Fall of Princes,” Philological Quarterly 57 (1978): 155–71.
For a scholarly discussion of the political uses for the chivalric orders, see Hugh Collins, “The Order of the Garter, 1348–1461: Chivalry and Politics in Later Medieval England,” in Courts, Counties, and the Capital in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Diana Dunn (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), pp. 155–80.
For critics with this understanding, see for example Helen Cooper, ed. Le Morte Darthur The Winchester Manuscript (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)
Raluca Radulescu credits Richard Barber’s article “Malory’s Le Morte Darthur and Court Culture,” Arthurian Literature 12 (1993): 133–55
For a recent lengthy study of the medieval Order of the Garter, see Hugh E.L. Collins, The Order of the Garter 1348–1461 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000).
Scholarly treatments of the Knights of the Bath are unfortunately few, and most recent scholars defer to Anstis: John Anstis, Observations Introductory to an Historical Essay, Upon the Knighthood of the Bath (London: James Woodman, 1725).
Fionn Pilbrow, “The Knights of the Bath: Dubbing to Knighthood in Lancastrian and Yorkist England,” in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, ed. Peter Coss and Maurice Keen (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2002), pp. 195–218.
Appendix C in Harold Arthur, Viscount Dillon, “A Manuscript Collection of Ordinances of Chivalry of the Fifteenth Century,” Archaeologia 57 (1900): 29–70.
For a sample of work on the perils of wardship, see Noël James Menuge, “Female Wards and Marriage in Romance and Law: A Question of Consent,” in Young Medieval Women, ed. Katherine J. Lewis, Noël James Menuge, and Kim Phillips (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 153–71
Sue Sheridan Walker, “Punishing Convicted Ravishers: Statutory Strictures and Actual Practice in Thirteenth and Fourteenth-Century England,” Journal of Medieval History 13 (1987): 237–50.
Richard Firth Green, “Palamon’s Appeal of Treason in the Knight’s Tale” in The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Medieval England, ed. Emily Steiner and Candace Barrington (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), pp. 105–14.
For additional information, see G.D. Squibb, The High Court of Chivalry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959).
For an insightful exploration of the deepening understanding of politics in the fifteenth century, including Lydgate’s deployment of “pollecie” in the Lancastrian cause, see Paul Strohm, Politique: Languages of Statecraft between Chaucer and Shakespeare (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005).
Bean, Lord to Patron, p. 217. For a slightly different perspective, see Michael Hicks, “The 1468 Statute of Livery,” Historical Research 64 (1991): 15–28.
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© 2009 Kathleen E. Kennedy
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Kennedy, K.E. (2009). Retaining Men. In: Maintenance, Meed, and Marriage in Medieval English Literature. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230621626_4
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