T HE R OYAL M INORITIES OF M EDIEVAL AND E ARLY M ODERN E NGLAND

T HE R OYAL M INORITIES OF M EDIEVAL AND E ARLY M ODERN E NGLAND

T he Royal Minorities of Medieval and Early Modern England Edited by Charles Beem

THE ROYAL MINORITIES OF MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN ENGLAND Copyright Charles Beem, 2008. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2008 978-0-230-60866-5 All rights reserved. First published in 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States - a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-37561-5 DOI 10.1057/9780230616189 ISBN 978-0-230-61618-9 (ebook) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The royal minorities of medieval and early modern England / edited by Charles Beem. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Great Britain Kings and rulers Biography. 2. Children Great Britain History. 3. Great Britain Kings and rulers Children. 4. Great Britain Politics and government History. 5. Monarchy England History. I. Beem, Charles. DA28.1.R6767 2008 942.03092'2 dc22 2008013436 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Westchester Book Group. First edition: November 2008 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Jay

Contents Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors Woe to Thee, O Land! The Introduction 1 Charles Beem 1 The Minority of Henry III in the Context of Europe 17 Christian Hillen and Frank Wiswall 2 The More Things Change: Isabella and Mortimer, Edward III, and the Painful Delay of a Royal Majority (1327 1330) 67 J. S. Bothwell 3 Richard II and the Fiction of Majority Rule 103 Gwilym Dodd 4 The Minority of Henry VI, King of England and of France 161 R. A. Griffiths 5 A Story of Failure: The Minority of Edward V 195 Michael Hicks 6 Have Not Wee a Noble Kynge? The Minority of Edward VI 211 Charles Beem Woe to Thee, O Land? Some Final Thoughts 249 Charles Beem Index 255 ix xi

A cknowledgments While an M.A. student at Northern Arizona University during the late 1980s, I wrote an overly long and amateurish history of England s six boy kings, entitled The Royal Minorities of Medieval and Early Modern England. Since that time, I have been intrigued by the possibilities arising from a longue duree approach to understanding the historical evolution of the English monarchy. In my doctoral dissertation, and subsequent first book, I undertook the task of digesting and analyzing multiple historiographies describing several periods of English history, in order to explore and interpret the collective impact of regnant queenship upon English historical development. Older and wiser now, this volume represents the efforts of seven scholars, all specialists of specific periods of English history, to offer a comprehensive analysis of the collective historical impact of six royal minorities on English political development. Accordingly, I wish to thank the contributors, Frank Wiswall, Christian Hillen, J. S. Bothwell, Gwilym Dodd, R. A. Griffiths, and Michael Hicks, all gentlemen as well as scholars, for making time in their busy schedules to contribute their essays. Thanks also to our editor at Palgrave, Chris Chappell, for his advice and support, and my colleagues Carole Levin, Robert Bucholz, and Richard Cosgrove, for the unflagging enthusiasm they have offered this project.

Notes on Contributors Frank Wiswall wrote his thesis at the University of St. Andrews on the royal minorities of medieval and early modern England. He published a chapter on the minority of Edward III in The Age of Richard II, ed. James Gillespie (Sutton, 1997), and is currently writing a fulllength comparative monograph on the royal minorities in England. Since 1998, he has taught history at Cranbrook Kingswood School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Christian Hillen has studied medieval European History at Washington State University and The Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Bonn Germany. He received his Ph.D. in 1999, writing his thesis on the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII, entitled Curia Regis. He is currently a research assistant at The Stiftung Rheinisch- Westfallisches in Cologne, Germany. J. S. Bothwell is a Lecturer in Later Medieval English History in the School of Historical Studies at the University of Leicester. He is the author of Edward III and the English Peerage: Royal Patronage, Social Mobility and Political Control in Fourteenth-Century England (Boydell and Brewer, 2004). His latest monograph is Falling from Grace: Reversal of Fortune, Exile and Redemption in Later Medieval England 1075 1455 (Manchester University Press, 2007). Gwilym Dodd is associate professor in medieval History at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of Justice and Grace: Private Petitioning and the English Parliament in the Late Middle Ages (OUP, 2007), and the editor of The Reign of Richard II (Stroud, 2000). Dodd has also written numerous essays and articles on several aspects of late medieval English history, particularly the history of parliament. R. A. Griffiths is Professor Emeritus of the University of Wales, Swansea. For the past thirty years, he has published widely on many aspects of the political history of late medieval England, including The Reign of Henry VI, which has been published in three editions, and is widely recognized as the definitive work on Henry VI.

xii Notes on Contributors Michael Hicks has taught for the past thirty years at the University of Winchester, where he is Head of History and Professor of Medieval History. He has written extensively on the later middle ages, especially the fifteenth century, and has published books on Edward IV, Edward V, and Richard III and his queen Anne Neville. He is currently working on The Wars of the Roses for Yale University Press. Charles Beem is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Pembroke. He is the author of The Lioness Roared: The Problems of Female Rule in English History, and is currently at work on a study of the colorful English Renaissance figure George Ferrers.