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‘SIR YE BE NOT KYNG’: CITIZENSHIP AND SPEECH IN LATE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN ENGLAND*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2016

CHRISTIAN D. LIDDY
CHRISTIAN D. LIDDY*
Affiliation:
University of Durham
*
Department of History, University of Durham, 43 North Bailey, Durham, dh1 3exc.d.liddy@durham.ac.uk
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Abstract

Few would argue against the intimate relationship between citizenship and speech in early modern England. Historians of political thought and literary scholars have explored the cultural and political impact of the English Renaissance, which turned subjects into citizens and which produced a learned, humanist, and oratorical model of citizenship, centred upon the virtues of the ‘articulate citizen’. But the English Renaissance did not give birth to citizenship. There was an older, vernacular, urban-based concept of citizenship, which was grounded in social practice rather than in intellectual tradition. This citizenship was shaped by multiple, competing, and conflicting impulses: inclusive, yet exclusive; participatory, yet discriminatory; a mixture of rights and duties. Speech both exposed and amplified these different senses of citizenship: who could speak and act against authority, and were there limits on what citizens could say and do? The tensions between urban citizenship and speech persisted throughout the late middle ages and into the early modern period. Local power struggles about the nature of civic authority helped to define ideas of citizenship and of free speech.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 60 , Issue 3 , September 2017 , pp. 571 - 596
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to express my thanks to Andy Wood and Emma Hamlett, who read an early version of the article and who encouraged me to publish it, to the anonymous readers, who gave a detailed critique, and to the editor of the Historical Journal, whose advice has been invaluable throughout.

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4 non contra officium suum quatenus est civis Aldermannus vel Burgensis.

5 English reports, pp. 1278–9.

6 BL, Additional MS 35957, fo. 7v.

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23 L. Jefferson, ed., The medieval account books of the Mercers of London: an edition and translation (2 vols., Aldershot, 2009), ii, p. 1031. For earlier and slightly later versions of this oath, see R. R. Sharpe, ed., Calendar of the letter-books of the city of London (11 vols., London, 1899–1912), Letter-book D, p. 195, and R. Arnold, The customs of London, otherwise called, Arnold's chronicle, ed. F. Douce (London, 1811), p. 96.

24 M. D. Harris, ed., The Coventry leet book (Early English Text Society, Original Series, 134–46, London, 1907–13), pp. 555–6.

25 Jefferson, ed., Account books, ii, p. 1031.

26 Bickley, ed., Little red book, i, p. 51.

27 Jefferson, ed., Account books, ii, p. 1031.

28 C. D. Liddy, ‘“Be war of gyle in borugh”: taxation and political discourse in late medieval English towns’, in A. Gamberini, J.-P. Genet, and A. Zorzi, eds., The languages of political society: Western Europe, 14th–17th centuries (Rome, 2011), p. 477.

29 Hudson and Cottingham, eds., Norwich, i, p. 129.

30 See, for example, Bickley, ed., Little red book, i, pp. 102–3.

31 Ibid., i, p. 51.

32 H. T. Riley, ed., Munimenta gildhallae Londoniensis (3 vols. in 4, London, 1859–62), i, p. 20, translated in idem, ed., The liber albus (London, 1861), p. 18.

33 Bickley, ed., Little red book, i, p. 51; A. F. Leach, ed., Beverley town documents (Selden Society, 14, 1900), p. 14.

34 F. Collins, ed., Register of the freemen of the city of York (2 vols., Surtees Society, 96, 102, 1896–9), i, p. xiv.

35 Griffiths, P., ‘Secrecy and authority in late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century London’, Historical Journal, 40 (1997), pp. 925–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 927.

36 A. R. Myers, ed., English historical documents, iv: 1327–1485 (London, 1969), p. 569.

37 York Civic Archives (YCA), D1, fo. 2r. For the term ‘concitizens’, see above, p. 8.

38 J. M. Dean, ed., Medieval English political writings (Kalamazoo, MI, 1996), pp. 222–5.

39 R. Williams, The country and the city (London, 1973).

40 C. Dyer, Standards of living in the later middle ages: social change in England, c. 1200–1520 (Cambridge, 1989), p. 189; D. M. Palliser, ‘Urban society’, in R. Horrox, ed., Fifteenth-century attitudes: perceptions of society in late medieval England (Cambridge, 1994), p. 133. See also R. Leech, The town house in medieval and early modern Bristol (Swindon, 2014), pp. 59–60.

41 On the anthropological concept of face-to-face societies, see F. G. Bailey, ‘Gifts and poison’, in idem, ed., Gifts and poison: the politics of reputation (Oxford, 1971), p. 4.

42 P. Fleming, ‘Telling tales of oligarchy in the late medieval town’, in M. Hicks, ed., Revolution and consumption in late medieval England (Woodbridge, 2004), p. 178; C. Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a city: Coventry and the urban crisis of the late middle ages (London, 1979), p. 166; Leech, Town house, ch. 11.

43 Leech, Town house, ch. 5.

44 G. Schwerhoff, ‘Öffentliche Räume und politische Kultur in der frühneuzeitlichen Stadt: Eine Skizze am Beispiel der Reichsstadt Köln’, in R. Schlögl, ed., Interaktion und Herrschaft: Die Politik der frühneuzeitlichen Stadt (Constance, 2004), p. 118.

45 Robert Ricart, The maire of Bristowe is kalendar, ed. L. T. Smith (Camden New Series, 5, 1872), pp. 70, 74.

46 Charles Wriothesley, A chronicle of England during the reigns of the Tudors (2 vols., Camden New Series, 11, 20, 1875–7), i, p. 171.

47 M. Sellers, ed., York memorandum book (2 vols., Surtees Society, 120, 125, 1912–14), ii, pp. 86–7: sic quod pro vicecomitibus ab aliis hominibus possint cognosci.

48 A. Raine, ed., York civic records (8 vols., Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, 98–119, 1938–52), ii, p. 162.

49 M. J. Braddick, ‘Administrative performance: the representation of political authority in early modern England’, in M. J. Braddick and J. Walter, eds., Negotiating power in early modern society: order, hierarchy, and subordination in Britain and Ireland (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 166–87.

50 For the relationship between land and power, see C. Carpenter, Locality and polity: a study of Warwickshire landed society, 1401–1499 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 47–8, 283–4.

51 London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), COL/CA/01/01/002, fo. 168r.

52 LMA, COL/CA/01/01/003, fos. 265v–266r. The mayoral practice of regulating the price of wood sold at the quayside during the winter months was also common in Bristol, where it is mentioned by the town clerk, Robert Ricart: Maire of Bristowe, pp. 83–4.

53 LMA, COL/CC/01/01/002, fo. 23r (publice et aperte); /005, fo. 107r (publice); /007, fo. 161v (palam); Sellers, ed., York memorandum book, ii, pp. 75–6 (publice in aperto).

54 LMA, COL/CC/01/01/001, fo. 47r–v; /002, fo. 98r; M. Bateson, ed., Records of the borough of Leicester (2 vols., London, 1899–1901), i, pp. 307–8.

55 John Stow, ‘An apologie or defence of the cittie of London’, in C. L. Kingsford, ed., A survey of London (Oxford, 1908), pp. 196–9.

56 H. E. Wicker, ‘Opprobrious language and the development of the vernacular in fifteenth-century England’ (Ph.D. thesis, Kent, 2007), p. 1. For some early sixteenth-century London examples, see LMA, COL/CA/01/01/002, fos. 29r, 38r, 70r, 85v, 94r, 168v, 182v; /003, fos. 65v, 112r, 264v.

57 I use the word ‘defamatory’ more loosely than the private law of defamation technically allowed, for which see Richard Helmholz's introduction to his Select cases on defamation to 1600 (Selden Society, 101, 1985). M. Ingram, ‘Law, litigants and the construction of “honour”: slander suits in early modern England’, in P. Coss, ed., The moral world of the law (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 134–60, gives a nuanced account of the complex relationship between opprobrious words and reputation.

58 LMA, COL/CA/01/01/003, fo. 188r.

59 Bateson, ed., Borough of Leicester, i, p. 230.

60 J. Kamensky, Governing the tongue: the politics of speech in early New England (Oxford, 1997), p. 128.

61 LMA, COL/CC/01/01/001, fo. 9v.

62 R. Hilton, ‘Status and class in the medieval town’, in T. R. Slater and G. Rosser, eds., The church in the medieval town (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 12–13.

63 Canterbury Cathedral Archives (CCA), CC-A/C/1/47: verba obprobriosa infra Ciuitatem predicta contra honorabiles viros istius Ciuitatis. For Sutton's purchase of the freedom, see J. M. Cowper, ed., The roll of the freemen of the city of Canterbury from A. D. 1392 to 1800 (Canterbury, 1903), p. 303.

64 In interpersonal cases, social and economic historians have shown the gendered nature of defamatory language, where words could harm sexual and economic reputation: Poos, L. R., ‘Sex, lies, and the church courts of pre-Reformation England’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 25 (1995), pp. 585–607 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; L. Gowing, Domestic dangers: women, words and sex in early modern London (Oxford, 1996), chs. 3–4. See also C. Muldrew, The economy of obligation: the culture of credit and social relations in early modern England (Basingstoke, 1998), especially ch. 6.

65 Sellers, ed., York memorandum book, ii, p. 55: dixit Johanni Loftehouse, uni vicecomitum, quod ipsam tabernam dimittere nollet, eciam si maior vel Nicholaus Blakburn sibi inhibuerint. Nicholas Blackburn had been mayor six years earlier.

66 Rees Jones, ‘York's civic administration’, p. 125 n. 69.

67 Harris, ed., Coventry leet book, p. 520.

68 Ibid. For Boteler's work on behalf of the city, see CRO, BA/F/10/4/3.

69 LMA, COL/CC/01/01/004, fo. 11r. For Holland, see C. M. Barron, ‘Ralph Holland and the London radicals, 1438–1444’, in R. Holt and G. Rosser, eds., The English medieval town (London, 1990), pp. 160–83.

70 P. Wormald, ‘Germanic power structures: the early English experience’, in L. Scales and O. Zimmer, eds., Power and the nation in European history (Cambridge, 2005), p. 105.

71 Sharpe, ed., Letter-book L, p. 85.

72 LMA, COL/CC/01/01/007, fo. 204v: quod fuit ita bonus sicut idem Johannes Tate et habuit ml libras.

73 See above, p. 13.

74 See, for example, Bateson, ed., Borough of Leicester, i, pp. 230, 252, 271, 275, and ii, pp. 30, 92, 107; A. H. Thomas and P. E. Jones, eds., Calendar of the plea and memoranda rolls of the city of London (6 vols., Cambridge, 1926–61), ii, p. 265; LMA, COL/CC/01/01/006, fos. 144v–145r.

75 LMA, COL/CC/01/01/005, fo. 116r: quod ipse seruiens non habuit potestatem capere districtionem sine constabulario.

76 H. T. Riley, ed., Memorials of London and London life in the XIIIth, XIVth, and XVth centuries (London, 1868), p. 276.

77 The picture, from Robert Ricart's Kalendar, is reproduced in D. H. Sacks, The widening gate: Bristol and the Atlantic economy, 1450–1700 (Berkeley, CA, 1991), p. 176.

78 L. C. Attreed, ed., York house books, 1461–1490 (2 vols., Stroud, 1991), i, p. 123.

79 CCA, CC-A/C/1/15. Bolney had been mayor between 1494 and 1495: CCA, DCc-ChAnt/M/490.

80 D. M. Palliser, Tudor York (Oxford, 1979), p. 65; C. M. Barron, London in the later middle ages: government and people, 1200–1500 (Oxford, 2004), p. 156.

81 Anglo-Norman dictionary: sub ‘veisin’ (a); Middle English dictionary: sub ‘neighebor’ (a).

82 NRO, NCR, 16a/2, p. 77.

83 Raine, ed., York civic records, ii, p. 106.

84 YCA, B9, fo. 2v. For another example, see B9, fos. 37v–38r.

85 Raine, ed., York civic records, iv, p. 42.

86 T. B. Dilks, ed., Bridgwater borough archives, 1200–1377 (Somerset Record Society, 48, 1933), pp. 10–11.

87 NRO, NCR, 16d/1, fo. 28v.

88 LMA, COL/CC/01/01/007, fo. 45r: infra breue Cloca sua arreperetur ab ipso. For the livery, see Barron, London, pp. 145–6.

89 Raine, ed., York civic records, ii, pp. 148–9.

90 See above, p. 16, and CCA, CC-A/C/1/15.

91 Cf. M. Goldie, ‘The unacknowledged republic: officeholding in early modern England’, in T. Harris, ed., The politics of the excluded, c. 1500–1850 (Basingstoke, 2001), p. 180.

92 Rosser, G., ‘Crafts, guilds and the negotiation of work in the medieval town’, Past and Present, 154 (1997), pp. 3–31 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and idem, The art of solidarity in the middle ages: guilds in England, 1250–1550 (Oxford, 2015), ch. 5.

93 E. D. Craun, Lies, slander, and obscenity in medieval English literature: pastoral rhetoric and the deviant speaker (Cambridge, 1997).

94 Helmholz, ed., Select cases, pp. lx, lxiv.

95 C. Bailey, Transcripts from the municipal archives of Winchester (Winchester, 1856), pp. 49–50.

96 The National Archives (TNA), C 1/227/29. Undated, the petition to the royal chancellor, Archbishop John Morton, can be assigned to the period 1493–8 because the city of Canterbury acquired a new written constitution in 1498, when the common council was reduced to twenty-four: CCA, CC-A/A/44.

97 CCA, CC-SuppMs/6, p. 33.

98 Custom was here an elite, rather than popular, resource: A. Wood, The memory of the people: custom and popular senses of the past in early modern England (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 31–2.

99 LMA, COL/CA/01/01/002, fo. 194r.

100 Sellers, ed., York memorandum book, ii, p. 110.

101 Bickley, ed., Little red book, i, p. 27.

102 Ibid., i, p. 28. In the manuscript, the folios are out of sequence, so the town customs do not follow the formation of the common council, but palaeographical and codicological evidence indicates that the two originally appeared sequentially: cf. BRO, 04718, fos. 13r, 100r.

103 See above, p. 17, and Dilks, ed., Bridgwater, p. 11.

104 Thomas and Jones, eds., Plea and memoranda rolls, ii, p. 199.

105 For confession: LMA, COL/CC/01/01/001, fo. 9v; /003, fo. 105r; /006, fo. 222r. For pardon: LMA, COL/CC/01/01/004, fo. 143v; /007, fos. 23r, 47v.

106 LMA, COL/CC/01/01/006, fo. 222r: humiliter inclinando et genuflectando coram maiore et aldermannis.

107 See above, pp. 15–16, and Attreed, ed., York house books, i, p. 123.

108 Cf. G. Walker, Crime, gender and social order in early modern England (Cambridge, 2003), p. 99; A. Wood, The 1549 rebellions and the making of early modern England (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 131–3.

109 Sharpe, ed., Letter-book H, p. 323.

110 For example, LMA, COL/CC/01/01/004, fo. 144r; /005, fos. 83r, 98r; /006, fo. 252v; /007, fos. 48r–49v. See also CCA, CC-A/C/1/2.

111 A. H. Thomas, ed., Calendar of early mayor's court rolls, 1298–1307 (Cambridge, 1924), p. 217. ‘Tallage’ was the tax raised to pay a gift to the crown. For the context, see Barron, London, p. 12.

112 See above, pp. 14–15, and Sharpe, ed., Letter-book L, p. 89.

113 Raine, ed., York civic records, iii, p. 38; YCA, B9, fo. 63v.

114 LMA, COL/CA/01/01/003, fos. 261r–262r.

115 LMA, COL/CA/01/01/003, fos. 265v–266r. The context is discussed above, pp. 11–12.

116 See, for example, D. H. Sacks, ‘Celebrating authority in Bristol, 1475–1640’, in S. Zimmerman and R. F. E. Weissman, eds., Urban life in the Renaissance (London, 1989), pp. 187–223; Tittler, Reformation and the towns, chs. 11–14.

117 Withington, Politics of commonwealth, ch. 3. The quotation is from pp. 73–4.

118 Idem, ‘An “Aristotelian moment”: democracy in early modern England’, in Michael J. Braddick and Phil Withington, eds., Popular culture and political agency in early modern England (Woodbridge, 2017), pp. 204–8.

119 Idem, Politics of commonwealth, ch. 2.

120 S. Rigby, ‘Urban “oligarchy” in late medieval England’, in J. A. F. Thomson, ed., Towns and townspeople in the fifteenth century (Gloucester, 1988), p. 76; Lee, J., ‘Urban policy and urban political culture: Henry VII and his towns’, Historical Research, 82 (2009), pp. 493–510 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

121 For what follows, see C. A. Markham and J. C. Cox, eds., The records of the borough of Northampton (2 vols., London, 1898), i, pp. 312–14. For the petition, see R. Horrox, ed., The parliament rolls of medieval England, xvi: Henry VII, 1489–1504 (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 60–1. Henceforth, a new electoral body of forty-eight burgesses, chosen by the mayor and previous mayors of the town, would have the right of election.

122 This requirement repeated the civic obligation, explicit in some (but not all) freemen's oaths, that citizens were not to implead a fellow citizen in an outside court, if the matter could be dealt with within the civic community: Sharpe, ed., Letter-book D, p. 195; Jefferson, ed., Account books, ii, p. 1031. The duty to sue only in the town's courts shored up the judicial powers of the town's rulers, but it could also be viewed as a privilege that promised swift justice for urban litigants and safeguarded them from the intrusive claims of non-local jurisdiction: Myers, ed., English historical documents, p. 569. By contrast, the Northampton ordinance aimed to uphold the exclusive claims of civic magistracy.

123 Markham and Cox, eds., Borough of Northampton, i, pp. 338–9.

124 For similar language, see Henry VII's address to the mayor of York, also in 1495: Raine, ed., York civic records, ii, p. 115. For analysis of the king's attitude towards towns, see Lee, ‘Urban policy’, pp. 493–510.

125 For the charter, see above, p. 2. For the local ordinances, see R. N. Worth, ed., Calendar of the Plymouth municipal records (Plymouth, 1893), pp. 60–1. I would like to thank one of the readers for kindly supplying this reference.

126 See above, p. 2.

127 Colclough, Freedom of speech, ch. 3. See also above, p. 4.

128 See above, p. 9.

129 On this distinction, see Sacks, D. H., ‘Freedom to, freedom from, freedom of: urban life and political participation in early modern England’, Citizenship Studies, 11 (2007), pp. 135–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 141–2.

130 Brooks, Law, politics and society, chs. 6–7, 13.

131 English reports, p. 1281.

132 BL, Additional MS 35957, fo. 7r: loyal pur ascun del corporacion a dire al maior que il ne fist bien in son office…car non reson que le maior…ferra quid luy pleist.

133 English reports, p. 1271; BL, Additional MS 35957, fo. 7r.