Gordon McKelvie

The ability of kings across medieval Europe to pardon even the most heinous of misdemeanours has been long recognised as an integral aspect of kingship. It was a means of reconciliation and enhanced the authority of such kings by tacitly acknowledging them as the ultimate arbiters of law and order. In England kings had an additional option: writ of supersedeas ordering the suspension of any legal case. These cases could be resumed at any time at the king’s will. Thus far these documents have only been looked at in specific contexts and the nature and potential of the document itself has not been fully investigated. The purpose of this paper is to detail the potential of these documents for the investigation of the reigns, and subsequent reputations, of English kings in the second half of the fifteenth century.

The statutes of livery were a response by late medieval governments to combat certain forms of retaining that were becoming socially unacceptable. By 1450 distributing livery to anyone except to one’s family, estate officials, permanent household servants or legal council had been an offence for 60 years. While cases did arise during the early fifteenth century, it was during the 1450s that cases began to arise with greater frequency. Cases during this decade can be found more often and in a wider range of places, many of which coming from oyer and terminer commissions and were connect to wider disorder in places such as Herefordshire, Yorkshire, Hampshire, and numerous others. These cases were occurring in the prelude to the Wars of the Rose and the first reign of Henry VI was coming to an end. It is the intention of this paper to examine the cases of illegal livery during the 1450s in their wider social and political contexts.

In the preface to his highly successful biography of Edward I Marc Morris stated that ‘people tend to presume that there can’t be very much [sources], and imagine that I spend my days poking around in castles, looking for previously undiscovered scraps of parchment.’ The reality is that late medieval England has left a wealth of unpublished archival material that has, and will continue to, form the basis of rigorous research. Technological developments during the past twenty years have made it easier than ever to analyse large quantities of records in a rigours fashion. Databases are now part-and-parcel of many history PhD projects. However, new possibilities create new problems. Some historians have been sceptical about the use of medieval records for the complication of comparative statistics citing their incomplete nature and regional variations in levels of law enforcement. This paper shall discuss the problems and potential associated with such records, specifically the records of the King’s Bench during the fifteenth century. It will address issues such as regarding the recording of crime and the problems associated with incomplete source material. The paper will show how modern technology can inform historical research and highlight new areas for research.

Bastard feudalism (a set of relationships which allowed the English aristocracy to obtain the service and manpower they required from their social inferiors) has been regarded as both a source of social disruption but also part of the normal fabric of society. Illegal livery, has long been associated with attempts to eradicate the socially disruptive elements of bastard feudalism, but thus far discussions of the cases have been limited in scope. From an examination of the records of the King’s Bench this paper will discuss the distribution, both chronological and geographical, of the cases of illegal livery in England during the fifteenth century.

This paper falls into two parts. The first part gives an overview of the statutes of livery and the cases arising from them throughout late medieval England. The 2nd half comprises of a case study of Hampshire. While Hampshire only had 7 cases of illegal livery the cases are, nevertheless, illustrative of many of the main conclusions that be drawn about when and why the statutes were enforced and demonstrate how illegal affinities could be formed.

This paper was given at the '1215-2015: 800 Years of Riot and Protest' conference at the University of Winchester in June 2015. The conference was organised by myself, Dr Simon Sandall and Dr Matt Clement. The keynote speaker at the conference was Professor Sam Cohn (University of Glasgow).