Introduction

Unlike the chronicles discussed in the previous chapter, not all negotiations of the political relevance of Edward II's story were polyvocal. On the contrary, some were deliberately, polemically monovocal. Edward II's reign represented a seminal English precedent for the deposition and execution of a monarch (as Edward's death was widely perceived by the sixteenth century); and it also provided a parallel for the ‘age of overmighty favourites’ in which (as J.H. Elliott has argued) the people of early modern England believed they lived. As a result, Edward's story was frequently used as an analogue for contemporary events, and was deployed to support various (often contradictory) political positions in early modern England and France. These political allusions do not only provide important insight into the development of Edward's historiographical reputation: they are also a valuable resource for investigating the ways in which historical examples functioned in early modern political discourse.

This chapter relies substantially for its theoretical background on Curtis Perry's excellent introduction to the early modern discourse of favouritism, and its ‘cumulative’ construction, in his 2006 book Literature and Favoritism in Early Modern England. Perry argues that this discourse has many stock elements independent of historical facts: