Richard II

Special offer for the Tabula Gratulatoria for the festschrift for Prof. Nigel Saul!

The reign of Richard II is well known for its political turmoil as well as its literary and artistic innovations, all areas explored by Professor Nigel Saul during his distinguished career. The present volume interrogates many familiar literary and narrative sources, including works by Froissart, Gower, Chaucer, Clanvow, and the Continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum, along with those less well-known, such as coroner's inquests and gaol delivery proceedings. The reign is also notorious for its larger than life personalities-not least Richard himself. But how was he shaped by other personalities? A prosopographical study of Richard's bishops, a comparison of the literary biographies of his father the Black Prince, and Bertrand du Guesclin, and a reconsideration of Plantagenet family politics, all shed light on this question. Meanwhile, Richard II's tomb reflects his desire to shape a new vision of kingship. Commemoration more broadly was changing in the late fourteenth century, and this volume includes several studies of both individual and communal memorials of various types that illustrate this trend: again, appropriately for an area Professor Saul has made his own.

Shakespeare’s Richard II, a play that is primarily focused on Henry Bolingbroke’s usurpation of the throne, takes a curious deviation from the plot in the middle of act five when Aumerle, the Duke of York’s son, is found with a bond to kill the new king Henry. The Duke and Duchess of York have very different responses to Aumerle’s crime: York demands that his son be put to death for treason while the Duchess instead begs for her son’s life. Despite the complexity of these scenes, they are often dismissed as comical or representative of the masculine/political loyalty to the state versus the feminine/domestic loyalty to the family. Yet I argue that reducing the Duke’s and Duchess’s motives to gendered stereotypes ignores the underlying feudal issues both inherent in the play and explicitly referred to in the Aumerle scenes. By analyzing the different legal and personal stakes that York and the Duchess hold in Aumerle’s conviction, as well as the implications illuminated by Holinshed’s Chronicles, I will reintroduce the complex sociopolitical concerns that underlie these opposing reactions. In doing so, I will complicate the traditional male/female explanation and expose the competing economic, personal, and legal motives with which the characters—and the audience—must negotiate when making such a decision. I hope that restoring feudal law into a play preoccupied with landholding will reveal these scenes not as a funny aside, but as a tangible illustration of the play’s anxiety around the connection between a man’s promise and his life.

Recent critics who have challenged or revised Ernst Kantorowicz’s seminal reading of Shakespeare’s Richard II as “the tragedy of the King’s Two Bodies” share a common impulse to reject the tragic vision of political theology (inherited from Carl Schmitt) and imagine more affirmative, rational, and democratic alternatives. The first half of this essay returns to Richard II to uncover an overlooked model for a comedic political theology located not in King Richard’s decline, but in Henry IV’s ascension, particularly in the subplot of Aumerle’s failed conspiracy. These scenes challenge Schmittian political theology in two ways. First, the moment of sovereign decision is temporally displaced; second, this displacement enables a political resolution through a distributed and participatory form of fiction-making, which enacts at a practical level, while it simultaneously obscures, the operations of constituent and constituted power. The second half of the essay tests the broader applicability of these concepts by examining the legal reasoning and narrative techniques of the 1689 English Bill of Rights, a text which reflects both displaced temporality and distributed participatory performance by assiduously avoiding any decisive location of political sovereignty—whether in the monarchs or the parliament.

This thesis ultimately seeks to understand how and why the London armourers came to be so closely associated with the politics and uprisings of London’s controversial mayor, John Northampton (1381-1383). However, because the armourers were not incorporated as a combined guild until 1453, this thesis must first analyse how the armourers developed as an industry, and how their workshop, household, and socio-industrial networks and organisations developed and helped to inform their political identities. This is the first time that the fourteenth-century London armourers have been rigorously examined as a collective of constituent specialist industries, and this thesis contributes to an understanding of how late medieval small crafts developed outside of guilds.

Through examining armourers’ workshops, households, and socio-industrial networks, this thesis arrives at several important conclusions about the nature of the English industry in the fourteenth century which challenge existing scholarship. It finds evidence to explode scholarly myths that English armour was cheap and poorly made through lack of skill, that women did not participate in the industry, and that regulation of the industry was entirely imposed from outside. Finally, this study shows that the armourers were the most significant participants in the 1384 Mayoralty Riots because their workshop, household, and socio-industrial networks had all contributed to the development of a shared political identity, because Northampton’s opponent Nicholas Brembre attacked that identity, and because the Crown and City’s draconian policies towards the local armour market had grown increasingly severe prior to the riots. This thesis argues that the armourers’ political identity developed as an extension of their workshop, household, and socioindustrial identities and networks, and that each of these contributed to their overall organisational development outside of a guild structure.

The rebuilding of Westminster Hall by Richard II in the last years of his reign is the supreme expression of his kingship and resulted in one of the most spectacular creations of the medieval offi ce of works-to be seen alongside the Wilton Diptych as a measure of the artistic refinement of the age. As the king's great hall in the Palace of Westminster, it performed major functions in every sphere of national life and was the backdrop for key events and for long the home of the central courts of justice. The paper discusses the design and technology of the roof carpentry.

For many reasons, Shakespearean texts have been used as test cases in continuing philosophical debates over the nature of the humanistic enterprise. This graduate seminar examines the dynamics of early modern criticism, concentrating on particular Shakespeare plays in relation to important theoretical developments, including the bourgeoning field of critical race studies propelled by a renewed awareness of the importance of religion in the period and in our post-9/11 world.

        A second focus of the course is major philosophers' engagement with Shakespeare, including Hegel, Karl Marx, Freud, Lacan, and Derrida. In addition to theoretical texts, we will work with a group of core play texts.

There will be ample opportunity to relate the course to any of your prior or developing interests or to work in original languages if you like. While an emphasis is placed on theoretical implications of various modes of confrontation with "Shakespeare," seminar members are encouraged to contribute to the reading list.

By showing that the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales was inspired by Harry Bailey's 1381 poll-tax records for Southwark, this article offers a new interpretive context for Chaucer's best-known work.

During the second half of the 1380s, John Gower, the leading fourteenth-century poet and an acquaintance of Geoffrey Chaucer, was working on his longest English poem, the Confessio Amantis. Chaucer, in turn, is believed to have been writing some of the material that would later form The Canterbury Tales. In addition, Chaucer was probably finishing Troilus and Criseyde, which must have been available before March 1388, at least in part, to Thomas Usk, the poet and undersheriff of London, who names the poem and borrows from Chaucer’s Boece in his Testament of Love. It is in the Confessio and in the Troilus, that is, in works written in the second half of the 1380s, that Chaucer and Gower first refer to one another in a literary context. The only other instance that connects the two names is a 1378 legal record, in which Chaucer hands power of attorney to Gower and the lawyer Richard Forster. Rather than reading this document as proof of Gower and Chaucer’s supposed personal friendship, I adduce new evidence for Gower’s legal training that suggests that the 1378 record was a purely professional arrangement—Chaucer might simply have needed a team of lawyers at the time. There is no reason to read this document through the prism of an instance of poetically embedded praise some ten years later, particularly given Gower’s likely career as a lawyer.

The new evidence for Gower’s legal training changes what we know of the relationship between the two poets and, by virtue of pushing forward their literary acquaintance to the late 1380s, brings into sharp relief their deep ties to Southwark, where Gower may have resided at the time and where Chaucer launched his Canterbury Tales. Furthermore, on closer inspection, this new focus on Gower’s and Chaucer’s work in Southwark has the potential not only to foreground the role of an emerging literary culture in the area but to challenge existing models of reading The Canterbury Tales and modify our understanding of what Chaucer had in mind when he embarked on this collection of tales.

In providing the background to contemporary society, modern history often appears more relevant than medieval history. The search for relevance, however, has led some historians to impose interpretative models upon the medieval past. The Marxist school of history has used the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 to support a central tenet of its model: that all history is about class struggle. Rodney Hilton, a prominent historian of the revolt, made two assertions in presenting the rebel actions as a class conflict: that the rebellion had a single united agenda; and that there was a degree of coordination through communication between county leaders. My study of the revolt in Suffolk in 1381, particularly of the events in the town of Bury St Edmunds, suggests that here the rebels were pursuing local grievances rather than a class-conflict agenda. Coordination within the county has also been greatly overstated. There does not seem to have been a single leader in Suffolk as claimed by contemporary chronicles. In revising views of the Peasants’ Revolt as a class struggle, my research challenges the foundations of the Marxist model of history.

"""Bodiam Castle, one of the most visually striking medieval castles in England, is situated in East Sussex on the river Rother, near Robertsbridge. In 1385 Sir Edward Dallingridge (c.1364-1393) was licensed to ‘strengthen with a wall of stone and lime and crenellate and construct and make into a castle his manor house at Bodyham [Bodiam], near the sea in the county of Sussex, for defence of the adjacent county and resistance to our enemies’.  This licence was issued at a particularly turbulent time in English history. England faced the threat of invasion from France and internal conflict during the reign of Richard II. However, interpretations of the function and purpose of the castle have been deeply divisive in the field of castle studies over the course of the last two decades. In the absence of documentary sources, with the exception of the licence to crenellate, attention has focused on the architectural evidence for the castle. The traditional view, as characterised by Thompson, is that Bodiam Castle was built to provide protection for the nearby coastal towns of Rye and New Winchelsea, which were navigable from Bodiam via the river Rother. 

However, since the 1990s, a new consensus on castle studies, particularly following from the work of Charles Coulson, using the evidence of licences to crenellate, claims that castle architecture in the Late Medieval Period was primarily motivated by symbolism and status.  In his view, Bodiam has weak defensive features, such as an easy-to-drain moat, badly situated gun-ports, and thin walls, with the military themed architecture intended to convey a ‘message of power and deterrence’ through the studied exaggeration of features of defensive origin.  In Coulson’s opinion, Dallingridge was a newcomer to the area, who needed to compensate for his lack of pedigree; by constructing a magnificent looking castle he was able to promote his wealth and social standing.  This interpretation is contested by Platt, who stresses that Bodiam Castle was intended to serve a military purpose, but other authors, such as Creighton and Liddiard, have sought to move away from the ‘war or status’ debate. 

The most contentious issue regarding Bodiam Castle has centred on Dallingridge’s motivation in building the castle. Why would a member of the gentry build such an impressive castle at this particular time in Southern England?  In the absence of other evidence, the study of Dallingridge’s life is important in understanding why Bodiam Castle was built. Previous studies on Bodiam Castle have been rather superficial in their treatment of Dallingridge, which has tended to reflect their views on the motivation for its construction; for instance, by laying emphasis on his social aspirations or his military career. This article will examine Dallingridge’s life to see what insights it provides into the circumstances in which Bodiam was built in the late fourteenth century. By looking at his family background, military career, political career and his financial holdings, it will show that the motivation for the construction of Bodiam Castle was influenced by the turbulent events of 1385, and served as a visual demonstration of Dallingridge’s social standing in east Sussex."""

Published in "Les Cahiers du Bazadais", no. 187, December 2014.
This paper is about the family of Preissac whose elder members where nicknamed Soudan of la Trau. They were issued from a nephew of Pope Clement V and its most famous member has been Arnaut-Bernat IV de Preissac who became knight of the Garter c. 1380-1381. He was also present at the battles of Poitiers (1356), Cocherel (1364) and Najera (1367), and has participated at the expedition against the Tunisian town of Madhia (1390) led by the duke of Bourbon. There are some details about the siege of Mortagne-sur-Gironde (1377-8) and the murder of Owain of Wales, the last Welsh pretender of the principality of Wales.

This doctoral thesis (Université de Lausanne, 2017) highlights the role of Carmelite friars in the composition and circulation of religious texts in the vernacular in late medieval England, a mission undertood with energy but also consternation, because of the vexed religious and social climate of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

A particular theological concern to the Carmelites were the teachings of Oxford theologian John Wyclif (c.1328-84) and his ‘Lollard’ followers. Carmelite writers of ‘vernacular theology’ in the years 1375-1450 trod a fine line in balancing their Order’s reputation for, on the one hand, promoting religious renewal, and on the other hand the rooting out of heresy.

The first two chapters set out the context in which medieval English Carmelite writers and their audiences lived. Chapter One considers the interactions between Carmelites and pious laypeople, notably the testimony offered by Margery Kempe (c.1373-1438+) in her Book, and the symbolic imagery contained in the so-called Reconstructed Carmelite Missal. Chapter Two surveys early Carmelite history and historiography, with a particular focus on the Whitefriars’ approach to vernacularity, apostolate, education, and bibliographic culture.

The following chapters present in roughly chronological order the Carmelites known to have written in the vernacular, making reference to others who may have done so, or had a demonstrable interest in vernacular theology. Each Carmelite is first put in his social and literary context, before his life and work are considered.

Chapter Three presents Carmelite theologian Richard Maidstone (d. 1396), comparing his Latin works with his Middle English poem The Penitential Psalms. Chapter Four considers parallel interests in the Litil Tretys on the Seven Deadly Sins by Richard Lavenham (fl. 1399). Chapter Five considers the work of Thomas Ashburne and Richard Spalding, and a manuscript scribe who may well have been an East Midlands Carmelite. Chapter Six concerns Richard Misyn, who in the 1430s translated into English the De Emendatio Vitae and Incendium Amoris by Richard Rolle of Hampole (c.1290-1349), clearly articulating in a preface addressed to an anchorite the tension Whitefriars felt in promoting and policing religious thought in the vernacular. Misyn’s work is compared with confrere Thomas Fishlake, who translated Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection into Latin. Chapter Seven examines Thomas Scrope’s activities as a writer, translator, bibliophile, and promoter of Carmelite spirituality in both the Latin and English languages.

The conclusion traces the extraordinary experience of Carmelite Provincial John Milverton, provides a broad chronological survey of major themes and individuals, and presents a broad resumé of findings, suggesting areas for further research.

Appended to the thesis are: a chronology of Carmelite vernacular writers in medieval England; a list of their surviving, lost, doubtful, and rejected writings, including all known manuscripts, editions, and translations; the Carmelite Rule of Saint Albert in Latin and Modern English versions; and a comprehensive bibliography.

First, I examine the aspects of the political sovereignty on the Shakespearean stage. In the light of Walter Benjamin’s Origin of the German baroque drama (1928) and of Carl Schmitt’s answer to Benjamin in Hamlet or Hecuba (1956), I show that Shakespeare stages the mortality of the political bodies and the new sovereignty of the plotter. Urged to master the art and the tempo of the plot, the prince is nonetheless unable to prevent the decomposition of the state. Then, drawing on the Elizabethan drama, I question the contemporary effort towards order and synchronization within the city. Hobbes’s theory of political and juridical representation breaks with the mystical conception of political unity and with any inspired legislation, whereas the civil scene is dedicated to the peace between individuals in order to ensure the possibility of a real autonomy in the private sphere. Reciprocally, this autonomy must consolidate the solutions to the problems of melancholy and skepticism conceptualized in Leviathan. While endorsing the tragedy of human condition and of knowledge already put on stage by Shakespeare, Leviathan prevents Schmitt’s exaltation as well as the « pure » violence which, according to Benjamin, lies in the subject’s state of exception. Yet, through the ghosts that Leviathan cannot tolerate within the public sphere, the Shakespearean stage unravels the mechanisms of perpetual order and synchronization without rejecting the law and the project of autonomy.

Keywords : Melancholy – Skepticism – Law – Discipline – Elizabethan drama – Shakespeare – Walter Benjamin – Carl Schmitt – Hobbes – Leviathan – Behemoth

The purpose of this literary analysis essay is to examine identity in Richard II and Macbeth by William Shakespeare. We will study identity in both tragedies; however, we will focus only on Richard II and the language's role in the construction of his identity as well as Macbeth's crisis in identity and the idea of "the single state of man". Lastly, we will analyse Lady Macbeth and gender identity. Some authors such as Harold Bloom, James Well , John Joughin and A.C. Bradley will support the ideas presented and add important information according to their points of view.

Anne of Bohemia died in 1394, and her husband Richard II and the kingdom of England mourned her loss.  At her grand funeral in August of that year, there was a physical altercation between the Earl of Arundel and Richard II, resulting in the King spilling blood on holy ground.  The funeral had to be stopped and the sanctuary purified.  Yet, out of all the chroniclers to remark upon her funeral, only Thomas Walsingham reports this dramatic incident.

Historians have never considered Anne of Boehmia to be a political queen.  Her marriage and her occasional role as intercessor caught the attention of chroniclers, but she lived a relatively silent life.  Ironically, in Walsingham’s works, Anne’s funeral became a flashpoint of the political conflict between her husband and his nobles.  This conveys the impression that the queen’s absence had more effect on the political scene than her living presence.  This paper will explore the life of Anne of Bohemia in surviving narratives and financial documents and attempt to place her and her role as queen in the context of her time.  The Queen’s dead body had no power to enact her agenda, but an inability to act did not render her inert or something easily ignored.  The disparity between the coverage of the living Anne’s political side and the politicization of the exequies for her corpse must be investigated.

This article focuses on the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 as a means of examining some of the late medieval assumptions about the nature of royal mercy. Rather than adding to the weight of scholarship on the causes and characteristics of the Revolt, this article discusses the views on mercy (‘grace for the rebels’) that were reportedly expressed by all parties during the course of the rebellion. The first section analyses
the chronicles and their references to discussion of pardon and mercy during the revolt itself. The second section examines the role of the royal pardon in the subsequent judicial proceedings in the Home Counties d who were the first recipients of pardon, and how were they able to secure royal grace? The final section then discusses the formulation of the pardon in the autumn parliament, and the debate surrounding the course of government policy in the wake of revolt on an unprecedented scale. This article seeks to demonstrate that the Crown and commons shared a common language of pardon, and understood that by framing their discussion in terms of royal grace, they were alluding to a particular kind of idealised relationship between the king and his subjects.

This paper was presented at Leeds IMC 2016.

In 1400, the deposed Richard II died at Pontefract Castle.  Rumours swirled that he had died fighting his assassins or that he was secretly alive and hiding in Scotland.  However, the official Lancastrian line, conveyed by Thomas Walsingham in his chronicles, was that Richard had starved to death unintentionally, faulting no one for this sad event.  Later chroniclers would not follow this line; someone -- be it Richard II or Henry IV -- had to be responsible.  This paper explores the literary evolution of Richard II's death narrative and examines the religious and social context of these events.  Ironically, one of Thomas Walsingham's major criticisms of Henry IV's funeral for Richard was the lack of a meal for guests, a prescribed part of royal funerals. A king suffered a pauper’s death, though not quite a pauper’s funeral.

The starting point for this essay is the sense that we live in a world that is, perhaps more than ever before, intensely mediated. In many ways, the rise of electronic information technology in the so-called “developed world” has reinforced the principle of mediation that shapes our experience of reality. The ubiquity of information technology in our everyday lives also provides us with invaluable tools to contextualise our position as mediated subjects. In recent theoretical debates, the mediation of subjectivity has been addressed through the concept of “interpassivity”. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis, Slavoj Žižek uses interpassivity to conceptualise the intrinsic displacement that defines the experience of enjoyment. Interpassivity describes how enjoyment is always, by essence, displaced onto another instance (the “big Other”). The essay explores the manifestations and implications of interpassivity in technologically advanced twenty-first century societies. Shakespearean drama provides a key entry point into the topic: Hamlet, Macbeth and Henry V throw a new light on the big Other qua symbolic instance that regulates social interactions. The Chorus of Henry V, in particular, illustrates the kernel of mediation underlying mass entertainment and opens up a reflection on the role of the media in the distribution and control of information.

Al quarto centenario della sua morte, William Shakespeare resta uno dei punti di riferimento essenziali della cultura occidentale. Per lo scrittore italiano Raffaele La Capria, nato insieme al fascismo e formatosi sulle pagine degli autori della leggenda americana, la figura del Bardo assume esplicitamente il ruolo di “padre nobile” soprattutto nella seconda stagione della sua carriera. Ma La Capria non si serve di Shakespeare soltanto «per metterlo “tra virgolette”». Il suo sembra essere una sorta di ritorno alle radici europee della cultura straniera che ha tanto amato. Un ritorno che gli consente di riprendere e di sciogliere, anche retrospettivamente, alcuni dei nodi più importanti della sua poetica. Nello 'Stile dell’anatra', ad esempio, l'autore rievoca il monologo di Shylock per parlare della sua idea di ‘simpatia’, che definisce come la «capacità di essere coinvolti dalla sofferenza di un altro». E per spiegare ciò, sostituisce la parola “ebreo” con la parola “altro”, e smorza intenzionalmente la conclusione del monologo, tutta incentrata sul tema del risentimento e della vendetta. Recensire le citazioni di Shakespeare e valutarne la risonanza nell’opera di uno scrittore contemporaneo di altra nazionalità può allora divenire un’occasione per studiare la figura del drammaturgo inglese da un’angolazione alternativa e privilegiata.

One of the consequences of the reformations was, around 1560/70, the transformation of older medieval as well as humanist practices and theories of regicide, tyrannicide and conspiracy. What had been still rooted in the medieval coniuratio as congiure (Machiavelli, Discorsi III, 6) or inspired by ancient authors (the young Morus on Lukian´s De Tyrannicida) was to become an interpretative politico-theological scheme, highly polarized, that was ordering perceptions and actions of and within the early modern international state system. Shakespeare´s own period was marked by the diffusion of the Calvinist and catholic monarchomach theories as well as by the spiritualization of the Crimen laesae majestatis (Cod. Just. IX, 8, 5) with tacitist lawyers so important for England as Alberico Gentili: The political contexts since at least the excommunication of Elizabeth I (1570) right up to the Gunpowder plot was marked by the intersection of such theories with the well-known practice of ´plotting´ and European wide networking; the Catholics (exiled, recusant or not) between Rom, Madrid, Reims, Douai, Rouen; the protestants between England, the Netherlands, the Palatinate. The question of this contribution is not to search once again for direct influences on Shakespeare´s plays and to understand them simply as replicas of reality – to see Hamlet as a comment on the succession crisis; to ask for literal influence of the Basilikon doron on Measure for measure. It is rather the argument that the political practice and communication had witnessed itself, indeed, a profound change after the middle of the century, a liquefying of what were before more stable dynastic systems of rule, that a continuous change of perspectives and of reflexivity – the good king would switch to tyrant, who was once protector of one owns religion became its cruel persecutor – was trained not only and first on stage but was a crucial problem in real politics in a new way. This epistemic change which started to exercise its pressure on the relevant actors´ perception was due mostly to changes in the forms of communication, political analysis and planning. For the historian, it thus seems that the prismatic interrogations about tyranny, usurpers, sovereignty, regicide in Shakespeare´s plays such as Julius Caesar and Richard III are to be conceived as projections of that already existing liquefied political perception into a more personalized investigation of and on characters.

The stability, strength and effectiveness of English kingship depended, first and foremost, on the character, ability and experience of individual English monarchs.  Between 1377 and 1461, there were twenty-seven years of minority kingship in England, Richard II (1377-1389) and Henry VI (1422-1437). There was sustained disruption to English kingship in this period, which left the English kingdom vulnerable, which one argues that both of these monarchs were claimed to rule with either physical or mental disability during this period. These individuals, whatever their precise nature, according to Fraser, did have a profound effect on history.  No one is suggesting that history should be studied entirely through the lives of the king.  However, it is an important element that we do analyse the retrospective aspect that through the study of kingship, that we receive the understanding that  maintaining the image and reality of kingship was a basis for maintaining stability and social order in English government.

The medieval historian engaged with the systems of power and authority that surrounded him. In his account of the Peasants' Revolt in late medieval England, the ecclesiastical historian Henry Knighton (d. 1396) both reinforced and challenged the traditional order. This thesis explores the ways in which his ideological perspectives shaped his understanding of the events of June 1381 and how this understanding was articulated through the structure, language, and cultural meaning of the historical text. The reconstruction of authorial intention and reclamation of both Knighton and the medieval reader as active participants in the creation of history challenge a historiography that has long disregarded Knighton as an unremarkable historical recorder. Instead, they reveal a scholar whose often extraordinary approach to the rebels and traditional authorities expresses a great deal about the theory, practice, and construction of power and authority in late medieval England.

"That when my law partner came in on the first appearance to file a motion to dismiss, Your Honor did not read the motion. Your Honor accused my law partner, friend, and colleague of trying to delay proceedings. Now, it's not clear how a judge would know whether a motion is meant to delay...without reading it. That would be certainly the most talented judge I've ever met, and I've met some pretty talented ones. And I've worked for a judge. And I have judges who are friends. And if I told a judge that I met a judge in Suffolk County who could know whether a motion was meritorious without reading it, they'd tell me I was lying or they'd tell me that a judge pulled one over on me."

Since Piers Plowman occupies a central place in the study of medieval English literature, much attention has been paid to the vexed question of the poem's authorship. This justified interest in revealing the human agent behind the family of interrelated versions of the poem, usually named A, B, and C, continues to feed a vibrant industry of speculative scholarship on the person behind the poem. This article reassesses the relevance of the 'Langland' myth for the contemporary reception of the poem, and argues that medieval audiences of the B Version associated the work with a 'Long Will' author-persona. In this context, the case of a previously unnoticed Norfolk poacher in the weeks leading up to the 1381 rising, a William Longewille, and his encroachment on the estate of the former sheriff and tax collector Richard Holdych echo the Ploughing of the Half-Acre in Piers Plowman, in particular as it is presented in the B Version of the poem. As a result, this article proposes that both the A and B Versions of the poem may have been available to (some of) the rebels of 1381, and that the B Version may have circulated in Norfolk along Cluniac and Benedictine networks before and after the unrest.

Vadim Chepizhenko. Biblical images of Richard II: an
essay on political hebraism

The article deals with the identification of the biblical tradition
as one of the trends in the ideology of England late 14th century. The
key issue is the biblical images of Richard II. The author focuses on
the significance of reflections on the Bible in the history of ideas.

Out of popular interest in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 a number of familiar narratives have formed. The most famous of these is the journey of the Kent and Essex rebels to London. In Suffolk, the ‘story’ of the revolt follows the actions of John Wrawe, a man dubbed ‘the Suffolk leader’. Not all histories place such an emphasis on Wrawe, but his status as the county leader has never been directly challenged. Through exploring the evidence for other Suffolk rebels, this dissertation reaches a number of conclusions. Firstly, that Wrawe’s role as ‘the Suffolk leader’ has been greatly overstated and the existence of entirely separate rebel groups has received too little attention. Secondly, that the county’s revolt was highly varied, both in terms of grievances and the nature of rebel actions. Thirdly, that the fate of a participant after the rebellion varied dramatically based on their social status. The dissertation’s findings pose questions about the handling of chronicle evidence, with Walsingham’s chronicle having directed many historians to attributing an excessively prominent position to Wrawe. They also emphasise the scope of individual agency to shape history, a point that becomes marginalised in histories that place the revolt within a wider historical framework.