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News, Noise, and the Nature of Politics in Late Medieval English Provincial Towns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 March 2017

Christopher Fletcher
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Abstract

Recent research has stressed the importance of “popular politics” in English political culture especially after the Peasants' Revolt and during the political disturbances of the fifteenth century. Scholars have begun to explore how the structures of local political culture could inflect the nature of politics on a national level, notably through petitioning and the circulation of open letters and manifestos, thus moving beyond the nobility and gentry to consider the influence on late medieval political life of the society and culture of rural and urban communities that were far from the center of power. This article is a contribution to a growing body of work that aims to show how particular aspects of provincial urban politics affected national political culture. By focusing first on news distribution and contemporary conceptual structures that linked rumor, noise, and riot in one continuum; and by then considering the relationship between communal mobilization at times of political crisis and everyday policing institutions such as the hue and cry, the article investigates how the nature of political life in provincial towns affects our understanding of late medieval English political culture as a whole.

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Journal of British Studies , Volume 56 , Issue 2 , April 2017 , pp. 250 - 272
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Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2017 

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21 For the chronology of the revolt in the southeast, see Dobson, R. Barrie, The Peasants' Revolt of 1381, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke, 1983), 38–41 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 For the dates of Gamston's mayoralty, see Bateson, Mary, ed., Records of the Borough of Leicester, 7 vols. (London, 1901)Google Scholar, 2:447. For events in 1381, see Martin, Geoffrey Haward, ed., Knighton's Chronicle (Oxford, 1995), 226–29Google Scholar.

23 Martin, Knighton's Chronicle, 228–29.

24 Ibid.

25 Attreed, King's Towns, 186–87.

26 Martin, Knighton's Chronicle, 228–29.

27 Ibid., 228–31.

28 For a preliminary survey of news circulation and war in the fourteenth century, see Hewitt, Organization of War, 155–60. For studies of news circulation in a later period, see Ross, Charles, “Rumour, Propaganda and Popular Opinion during the Wars of the Roses,” in Patronage, the Crown and the Provinces in Later Medieval England, ed. Griffiths, Ralph A. (Gloucester, 1981), 15–32 Google Scholar; and Armstrong, C. A. J., “Some Examples of the Distribution and Speed of News in England at the Time of the Wars of the Roses,” in Studies in Medieval History Presented to F. M. Powicke, ed. Hunt, R. W., Pantin, W. A., and Southern, Richard W. (Oxford, 1948), 429–54Google Scholar. For comparisons elsewhere in Europe, see La Circulation des nouvelles au Moyen Âge: XXIVe Congrès de la SHMES (Avigon, juin 1993) (Paris, 1994)Google Scholar.

29 BR III/1/28, Leicestershire County Archives, Wigston (hereafter LCA), calendared in Bateson, Records, 2:25.

30 BR III/1/28, LCA, in Bateson, Records, 2:26.

31 Ibid. (“duxit dominam Regina versus partes Boriales propter fluminem aque”). The same year's account also records two gallons of wine, price 12d. consumed when Thomas de Ferrars, Sir Roger la Zouche, the sheriff, and their household came from Scotland “narrantes rumores de eadem et de Rege.”

32 See, for example, BR III/1/29, LCA, in Bateson, Records, 2:27 (2d. for a man “narrant' rumores de Scot' et de parliamento” in account September 1336–September 1337); BR III/1/31, LCA (Bateson, Records, 2:46) (2d. for a messenger of Sir William de la Zouche “venient' de Scot' … cum rumoribus” [1338–39]); BR III/1/37, LCA, in Bateson, Records, 2:65 (1s. 4d. for two gallons of wine sent to Sir Ralph Hastings “pro rumoribus domini Comitis [the town's lord, then Henry Grosmont, earl of Lancaster] de Vascon [i.e. from Gascony]” [1345–46]); BR III/1/43, LCA, in Bateson, Records, 2:99 (12d. for a king's messenger “ferenti rumores de le North’’ that Lord Percy had taken many Scots and killed a great number [dated 20 August 1355]). The possibility of anticipation also merited, for example, 12d. paid to John Walscheman on 9 May 1355 “ferenti rumores” that the duchess of Lancaster was coming to stay at the castle.

33 BR III/1/30, LCA, in Bateson, Records, 2:41 [1337–38]. Compare four visits by Exchequer officials in 1338–39, one of whom was provided with a new pair of shoes. BR III/1/31, LCA (Bateson, Records, 2:45).

34 For example, BR III/1/29, LCA, in Bateson, Records, 2:27 [1336–37]; BR III/1/40, LCA, in Bateson, Records, 2:75 [1350–51].

35 For example, BR/III/40, LCA, in Bateson, Records, 2:75 (1s. 4d. of wine was consumed in the tavern of John Cook “quando venerunt de Abbathia post quod locuti fuerant cum Hug’ de Berewyk”).

36 Maddicott, John R., “The County Community and the Making of Public Opinion in Fourteenth-Century England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 28 (1978): 27–43 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 33–37; Doig, James A., “Political Propaganda and Royal Proclamations in Late Medieval England,” Historical Research 71, no. 176 (October 1998): 253–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 McKinley, Richard A., ed., Victoria County History: Leicestershire, vol. 4, City of Leicester (London, 1958), 31–54 Google Scholar. On market centers as locations for the circulation of information, see Masschaele, James, “The Public Space of the Marketplace in Medieval England,” Speculum 77, no. 2 (April 2002): 383–421 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 390–99 (on proclamations).

38 Cohn and Aiton, Popular Protest, 141–43 (for 1347).

39 BR V/1/41, LCA, printed in full in Bateson, Records, 2:30.

40 Bateson, Records, 2:43.

41 BR V/1/51, LCA, printed in Bateson, Records, 2:92 (“verbis [contu]-meliosis eos maledicendo et imponendo eis falso quod venerunt causa eum depredandi”). This document was already in bad condition in Bateson's time, and I have not been able to consult the original.

42 For a broader enquiry into the polysemy of “truth,” see Green, Richard Firth, A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England (Philadelphia, 1999)Google Scholar.

43 BR V/1/52, LCA, in Bateson, Records, 2:104.

44 See Britnell, Richard H., “Colchester Courts and Court Records, 1310–1525,” Essex Archaeology and History, 3rd ser., 17 (1986): 133–40Google Scholar; Richard Goddard, “Nottingham Borough Court Rolls: A User's Guide,” https:// www.nottingham.ac.uk/ucn/onlinesources/index.aspx, 3. On Norwich, see notes 46 and 99 below.

45 S. F. C. Milsom, “Trespass from Henry III to Edward III,” part 1, “General Writs,” part 2, “Special Writs,” part 3, “More Special Writs and Conclusions,” Law Quarterly Review 74 (April, July, and October 1958): 195–224 Google Scholar, 407–36, 561–90; Harding, Alan, ed., introduction to The Roll of the Shropshire Eyre of 1256 (London, 1981)Google Scholar. For a recent study of trespass litigation in the rural context, see Phillip R. Schofield, “Trespass Litigation in the Manor Court in the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries,” in Goddard, Langdon, and Müller, eds., Survival and Discord, 145–60.

46 This was the case in Norwich, for example. See Hudson, William, ed., Leet Jurisdiction in the City of Norwich during the XIIIth and XIVth Centuries (London, 1892)Google Scholar; Maddern, Philippa, “Order and Disorder,” in Medieval Norwich, ed. Rawcliffe, Carole and Wilson, Richard (London, 2004), 189–212 Google Scholar; and Sagui, Samantha, “The Hue and Cry in Medieval English Towns,” Historical Research 87, no. 236 (May 2014): 179–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 181–82.

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49 This roll is now BR IV/8/5, LCA. Extracts are printed in Bateson, Records, 2:171–85. For the Colchester evidence, see Britnell, “Colchester Courts”; for Norwich, see Sagui, “Hue and Cry,” 181–82. Good records also survive for Chester, Exeter, and Winchester. See Goddard, “User's Guide,” 1n1.

50 BR IV/8/5, mem. 9, LCA, in Bateson, Records, 2:180, renders his words in a mixture of English and Latin: “Careawey de hoc Thomas quod dixisti.”

51 For careawey, see Middle English Dictionary Online (hereafter MEDO), s.v., “care”: (n(1)), (5c) (earliest ex. from 1440 in the Promptorium Parvulorum, which translates “Careaway” as “Tristitia procul”), https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/, last updated 24 April 2013. Thomas's reply is rendered in Latin: “iam instat tempus nunquam melius.”

52 BR IV/8/5, mem. 15, LCA, in Bateson, Records, 2:183.

53 Ibid. (“verbis litigiosis et verbis minarum”).

54 Claude Gauvard, “Rumeur et stéréotypes à la fin du Moyen Âge,” in La Circulation des nouvelles au Moyen Âge, 154–77, at 161, 165, 169, 171; W. Mark Ormrod, “Murmur, Clamour and Noise: Voicing Complaint and Remedy in Petitions to the English Crown, c. 1300–c. 1460,” in Ormrod, Dodd, and Musson, eds., Medieval Petitions, 135–55; Fletcher, “Rumour, Clamour, Murmur.”

55 MEDO, s.v., “murmur”: (a) “a continuous noise; rumbling, buzzing, murmuring”; (b) “grumbling, muttering, complaining, complaint, esp. an indistinct expression of popular dissent or discontent”; see, for example, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parsons Tale, in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Benson, Larry Dean, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1987), 288–328 Google Scholar, 1. 506, “Murmure … is ofte amonges seruauntz that grucchen whan hire souereyns idden hem to doon leueful thynges.”

56 MEDO, s.v., “clamour”: (1a) “A loud call, a shout ; loud shouting uproar”; (2a) “A noisy expression of disapproval, loud outcry against something; noisy unfavourable opinion,” e.g., John Gower, Confessio Amantis, in The Complete Works of John Gower, vol. 2, The English Works, ed. Macaulay, George Campbell (Oxford, 1901)Google Scholar, prologue, l. 514: “The comun clamour is / In every lond … / And eche in his compleignete telleth / How that the world is al miswent.”

57 MEDO, s.v., “crie”: (1a) “A shout, call, cry ; outcry, noise, tumult”; (4a) “Public complaint, outcry against a wrong,” e.g., Richard Morris, ed., Cursor Mundi, EETS 57 (London, 1874), ll. 2741–46: “O sodome haue I herd the cri … the word es wers than man mai neuen … Als es the cri if it be sua, thar-of sal i ta wengance strang.”

58 MEDO, s.v., “noise”: (1) “A sound, esp. a loud or unpleasant sound, din” and (2a) “A disturbance, perturbation; quarrel troublemaking,” e.g., Black, William Henry, ed., The Life and Martyrdom of Thomas Beket [sic] (London, 1845)Google Scholar, 5: “Yunge childerne and wylde boyes … suede hire and scornede hire … mid noyse and cri”; (3a) “Report, rumor, scandal; accusation,” e.g., Higden's Polychronicon, in Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden, trans. Trevisa, John, ed. Babington, Churchill and Lumby, Joseph Rawson (London, 1872)Google Scholar, 4:287: “By the … cry sprang out tithynges and noyse of the kynges deth.”

59 MEDO, s.v., “rumour,” examples under (c) e.g., Capgrave, John, The Life of St. Katherine of Alexandria, ed. Horstmann, Carl, EETS os 100 (London, 1893)Google Scholar, 4:1244: “Now is the Citee for to see this mayde / Gadered in-feere with noyse and rumor”; and (d) e.g., Lydgate, John, Troy Book, ed. Bergen, Henry, EETS es 103 (London, 1906)Google Scholar, 3:3267: “Her harmys grete, in murmur & in rage, the losse, the costis … . This was the noyse & rumur eke that ran Thorugh-oute the hoste.”

60 MEDO, s.v., “rumour”: (e) e.g., Lydgate, John, Fall of Princes, ed. Bergen, Henry, EETS es 123 (London, 1924)Google Scholar, 3:4284: “She [Avarice] … Caused … Gruchchyng of comouns … Rumour in rewmys, unwar subuersiouns.”

61 MEDO, s.v., “rumour”: (a) and (b) e.g., The Holy Bible  … by John Wycliffe and His Followers, ed. Forshall, Josiah and Madden, Frederic, (Oxford, 1850)Google Scholar, 2 Mac. 5.6: “When fals rumour, or tithing, wente out … Jason sodeynly assailide the citee.”

62 Ormrod, “Murmur, Clamour and Noise”; Fletcher, “Rumour, Clamour, Murmur.” For the broad semantic range of “appeal,” see Anglo-Norman Dictionary Online, s.v., “apeler,” http://www.anglo-norman.net/.

63 Rosamond J. Faith, “The ‘Great Rumour’ of 1377 and Peasant Ideology,” in Hilton and Aston, eds., English Rising, 43–73. For earlier examples and the post-revolt posterity of this use of rumor, see Fletcher, “Rumour, Clamour, Murmur.”

64 For “rumour” as term for revolt of 1381 in the Rolls of Parliament, see Fletcher, “Rumour, Clamour, Murmur,” 197. For portrayals of the revolt as a bestial cacophony, see John Gower, Vox Clamantis, in Complete Works, vol. 4, The Latin Works, ed. Macaulay, George Campbell (Oxford, 1902)Google Scholar, bk. 1, translation in The Major Latin Works of John Gower, trans. Stockton, Eric W. (Seattle, 1962), 51–95 Google Scholar; and Geoffrey Chaucer, The Nun's Priest's Tale, in Benson, ed., Riverside Chaucer, 253–61, at 256.

65 See, for example, Brooks, Nicholas, “The Organization and Achievements of the Peasants of Kent and Essex in 1381,” in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. H. C. Davis, ed. Mayr-Harting, Henry and Moore, R. I. (London, 1985), 247–70Google Scholar; Justice, Writing and Rebellion, 56–65; Hilton, Rodney, Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381 (London, 1973), 214–17Google Scholar; and Müller, “Aims and Organisation.”

66 BA/E/F/37/1/1, fol. 24, Coventry History Centre, Coventry, printed in Harris, Mary Dormer, ed., Coventry Leet Book or Mayor's Register (London, 1907), 96–97 Google Scholar. A possibly broader context of religious dissent in the town is suggested in Jurkowski, Maureen, “Lollardy in Coventry and the Revolt of 1431,” in Identity and Insurgency in the Late Middle Ages, The Fifteenth Century VI, ed. Clark, Linda (Woodbridge, 2006), 145–64Google Scholar.

67 BA/E/F/37/1/1, fol. 24; Harris, ed., Coventry Leet Book, 97.

68 For detailed accounts of these events, see Ross, Charles, Edward IV (New Haven, 1974), 126–77Google Scholar; and Hicks, Michael, Warwick the Kingmaker (Oxford, 1998), 271–313 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 For Nottingham's size, see Attreed, King's Towns, 3.

70 For July 1469, see Ross, Edward IV, 132; and Colin Richmond and Margaret Lucille Kekewich, “Search for Stability, 1461–83,” in Kekewich et al., Politics of Fifteenth-Century England, 43–72, at 46. For Edward's location when he decided to flee, see Harris, ed., Coventry Leet Book, 358–59; Richmond and Kekewich, “Search for Stability,” 49; and Ross, Edward IV, 152.

71 For the landing, see Ross, Edward IV, 162. For the muster and fund-raising, see Attreed, King's Towns, 200.

72 English was mayor from 29 September 1470 to 29 September 1471. See Stevenson, William Henry and Raine, James, eds., Records of the Borough of Nottingham, 9 vols. (London, 1882–1951)Google Scholar, 2:431, 1:422.

73 These events are related in a Nottingham jury presentment dated 22 July 1471, which now survives in a document that also records White's pardon, dated 8 March 1472. CA/4501, Nottinghamshire Archives, Nottingham (hereafter NA), printed in part in Stevenson and Raine, eds., Records, 2:281–85. For Conington, see Stevenson and Raine, eds., Records, 2:467. For the importance of this feast as an occasion for rebellion, see Aston, Margaret, “Corpus Christi and Corpus Regni: Heresy and the Peasants' Revolt,” Past and Present 143, no. 1 (May 1994): 3–47 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 Stevenson and Raine, eds., Records, 2:282: “vbi sunt proditores, qui nobis resistere velint? Ad presens veniant et nos [recte: eos] occidemus.” For this cry in revolts elsewhere in Europe, and the suggestion that they should be taken as a scribal summary of the crowd's agenda rather than any precise cry, see Challet, “‘Moyran, los traidors, moyran,’” 87.

75 Stevenson and Raine, eds., Records, 2:282.

76 CA/7416, NA, accounts for sums paid in July 1471, totaling 23l. 10s. 7d. for trips to London including “rewards” to various clerks and to the king's attorney, and to a man who delivered a letter to the Lord Chamberlain, William Lord Hastings, via his wife.

77 CA/4499, NA, printed in Stevenson and Raine, eds., Records, 2:384–87.

78 Stevenson and Raine, eds., Records, 2:385.

79 Compare the tactics of later rebels who invoked the survival of Richard II. See Walker, “Rumour, Sedition.”

80 Justice, Writing and Rebellion, 65; Müller, “Aims and Organisation,” 10; Hilton, Rodney, A Medieval Society: The West Midlands at the End of the Thirteenth Century (London, 1966), 151–54Google Scholar. For a similar argument in continental context, see Challet, “‘Moyran, los traidors, moyran’”; Haemers, “Moody Community?”; Dumolyn, Jan, “‘Criers and Shouters': The Discourse on Radical Urban Rebels in Late Medieval Flanders,” Journal of Social History 42, no. 1 (Fall 2008): 111–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 Müller, Miriam, “Social Control and the Hue and Cry in Two Fourteenth-Century Villages,” Journal of Medieval History 31, no. 1 (March 2005): 29–53 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bardsley, Sandy, Venomous Tongues: Speech and Gender in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia, 2006), 69–89 Google Scholar, esp. 70–77; Olson, Sherri, A Chronicle of All That Happens: Voices from the Village Court in Medieval England (Toronto, 1996), 91–103 Google Scholar; DeWindt, Anne Reiber and DeWindt, Edwin Brezette, Ramsey: The Lives of an English Fenland Town, 1200–1600 (Washington, DC, 2006), 72–76 Google Scholar, 236–38; Sagui, “Hue and Cry”; Rodziewicz, Janka, “Women and the Hue and Cry in Late Fourteenth-Century Great Yarmouth,” in Women, Agency and the Law, 1300–1700, ed. Kane, Bronach and Williamson, Fiona (London, 2013), 87–97 Google Scholar, 184–87.

82 Pollock, Frederic and Maitland, Frederic William, The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I (Cambridge, 1895), 578–79Google Scholar, cited, e.g., by Müller, “Social Control,” 33; Rodziewicz, “Women,” 88; DeWindt and DeWindt, Ramsey, 331n66.

83 For a compact discussion with references, see Sagui, “Hue and Cry,” 179–80.

84 For the operation of the leet court, see McIntosh, Marjorie Keniston, Controlling Misbehavior in England, 1370–1600 (Cambridge, 1998), 34–40 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85 Sagui, “Hue and Cry,” 189, table 2.

86 Ibid.

87 Ibid.

88 BR IV/8/5, LRO.

89 Rodziewicz, “Women,” 94. This excludes two cases not cited in Rodziewicz's detailed discussion of gender and hue raising. She finds a total of thirty-five cases over twelve rolls (or an average of 2.9 a year). Ibid., 88.

90 Hudson, ed., Leet Jurisdiction, 8.

91 Ibid., 10. Later, the hue was raised on Rackeheath by one Richard the Tailor, who in turn was both assaulted by Thomas de Happisburgh, baker, and raised the hue without pursuing it. Ibid., 14.

92 D/B 5 Cr1, mem. 6v, Essex Record Office, Chelmsford (hereafter ERO), translated in Jeayes and Benham, Court Rolls, 1:20.

93 Examples of “frequent” hue raising by drunkards, foreigners, and prostitutes given by Dewindt and Dewindt, Ramsey, 74, should, I think, also be interpreted as excessive noisiness, not ritual action. Compare in a rural context, a man accused of raising the hue on his dog. Müller, “Social Control,” 36.

94 D/B 5 Cr 2, mem. 10, ERO, translated in Jeayes and Benham, Court Rolls, 1:75–76.

95 Ibid.

96 Müller, “Social Control,” 49–52.

97 D/B Cr 6, mem. 8, ERO translated in Jeayes and Benham, Court Rolls, 1:183. A Philip de la Rokele had the hue justly raised against him in 1312 when he made a distraint for arrears of rent but entered through a fence when he could have come through the door. Jeayes and Benham, Court Rolls, 1:75. In 1333, Philip Rokele raised the hue, this time justly, when Nicholas le Gros tried to prevent him from seizing sheep doing damage on the king's demesne. Ibid., 1:108.

98 Compare the cautious remarks of DeWindt and DeWindt, Ramsey, 332n87.

99 For the Norwich bailiff's court in the first half of the fourteenth century, the following records survive: case 8, shelf a, item 6 (1330/1333), Norfolk County Record Office, Norwich (hereafter NCR) (three cases, disputes over property); case 8, shelf a, item 6a, NCR (1343, including four cases of assault); case 8, shelf a, item 9, NCR (1344, including five cases “pro falso clamore” and a number of unidentified “trespass” cases); case 8, shelf a, item 7, NCR (a property dispute stretching from 1344 to 1346); and case 8, shelf a, item 8, NCR (1350, cases concerning forestalling fish, meat quality, and the like, which also came under Norwich leet court jurisdiction).

100 See works cited in notes 5 and 8–13 above.