The Idea of Disinheritance
in Middle English Romances
A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities
2019
Grace A. Timperley
School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
2
Contents
Abbreviations .................................................................................................. 5
Abstract ............................................................................................................ 9
Declaration ....................................................................................................... 10
Copyright Statement ........................................................................................ 11
Notes on Referencing and Spellings ................................................................ 12
Acknowledgements .......................................................................................... 13
Introduction .................................................................................................... 14
Inheritance Culture in Late-Medieval England ............................................... 14
Inheritance in Middle English Romance Criticism .......................................... 24
Critical Position ............................................................................................... 30
Texts ................................................................................................................ 43
Chapters ........................................................................................................... 55
Chapter 1: Disinheritance ............................................................................. 59
Anticipating Disinheritance ............................................................................. 61
Re-imagining ‘Heritage’ .................................................................................. 67
Bloodshed ........................................................................................................ 78
Female Heirs .................................................................................................... 91
Chapter 2: Illegitimacy .................................................................................. 96
The Language and Meanings of Illegitimacy .................................................. 97
Imagining Illegitimacy in the Romances ......................................................... 112
The Fair Unknown and Rightful Illegitimacy .................................................. 119
Chapter 3: Recognition ................................................................................. 137
Definitions of Recognition .............................................................................. 138
Disentangling Blood, Birth and Worth ............................................................ 144
Testimony and Transformation ........................................................................ 158
3
Chapter 4: Regeneration ............................................................................... 177
Sense of Unending ........................................................................................... 181
Twin Endings ................................................................................................... 187
Adopted Inheritance ......................................................................................... 195
Happy Endings ................................................................................................. 205
Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 212
An Idea of Disinheritance in Middle English Romances ................................ 212
The Eagle and Child ........................................................................................ 218
Further Work ................................................................................................... 224
Lists and Illustrations .................................................................................... 229
Bibliography ................................................................................................... 242
Word count: 72984
4
Lists and Illustrations
List of manuscripts with romances .................................................................. 229
List of romances with manuscript witnesses and key characters ..................... 230
Fig. 1: Table showing distribution of romances in manuscripts ...................... 233
Fig. 2: Genealogy of Stanleys of Lathom ........................................................ 234
Fig. 3: Stanley genealogy according to ‘The Stanley Poem’ ........................... 235
Fig. 4: Stanley genealogy according to Seacombe .......................................... 235
Fig. 5: Graphic tail-rhyme in Bevis of Hampton .............................................. 236
Fig. 6: Detail of London, British Library, MS Yates Thompson 22 ............... 237
Fig. 7: Detail of London, British Library, MS Harley 7353 ............................ 237
Fig. 8: Detail of Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS Douce 261 ......................... 238
Fig. 9: Detail of London, British Library, MS Additional 10292 .................... 238
Fig. 10: Detail of London, British Library, Stowe MS 17 ............................... 239
Fig. 11: Detail of London, British Library, MS Sloane 2463 .......................... 239
Fig. 12: Manchester Cathedral, misericord supporter (ape and child) ............. 240
Fig. 13: Manchester Cathedral misericord supporter (eagle and child) ........... 240
Fig. 14: Manchester Cathedral choir bench end (eagle and child) .................. 241
Fig. 15: Manchester Cathedral misericord (eagle and child) ........................... 241
5
Abbreviations
BLMS The British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts
<http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts>
CIPM Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem and Other Analogous
Documents, Series I, 14 vols and Series II, 3 vols
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1904–55),
searchable online (TannerRitchie with the University of
St Andrews, 2010–13)
<http://www.tannerritchie.com/memso.php>
DIMEV The Digital Index of Middle English Verse, ed. Linne R.
Mooney, Daniel W. Mosser et al
<http://www.dimev.net/index.html>
DMER Database of Middle English Romances (University of York,
2012) <http://www.middleenglishromance.org.uk>
EEBO Early English Books Online <http://search.proquest.com
/eebo>
EETS, OS / ES Early English Text Society, Original Series / Extra Series
Manual (1916) A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050–1400, ed.
John Edwin Wells, vol. 1: Romances (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1916)
Manual (1967) A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050–1500,
ed. J. Burke Severs, vol. 1: Romances (New Haven:
Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1967)
MED Middle English Dictionary, ed. Frances McSparren et al
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Library, 2000–
2018) <http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-
dictionary/>
6
METS TEAMS Middle English Texts Series Online
<http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams>
ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
<http://www.oxforddnb.com>
OED Oxford English Dictionary <http://www.oed.com>
Manuscripts
Ashmole 61 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 61
Ann Arbor 225 Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, MS 225
Auchinleck Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Advocates 19.2.1
Cambridge 175/96 Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 175/96
Cambridge 4407 Cambridge, University Library, MS Additional 4407
Cambridge Ff.2.38 Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff.2.38
Cambridge O.2.13 Cambridge, Trinity College Library, MS O.2.13
Chetham’s 8009 Manchester, Chetham’s Library, MS 8009
Cotton Caligula A.ii London, British Library, MS Cotton Caligula A.ii
Egerton 2862 London, British Library, MS Egerton 2862
Eng. Poet. D. 208 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Poet. D. 208
Lambeth London, Lambeth Palace, MS 306
Laud Misc. 108 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108
Lincoln 91 Lincoln, Lincoln Cathedral, MS 91
Naples Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS XIII.B.29
Percy Folio London, British Library, MS Additional 27879
7
Editions
Athelston
Bevis (Auchinleck)
Havelok (Laud Misc. 108)
Horn
Four Romances of England: King Horn, Havelok
the Dane, Bevis of Hampton and Athelston, ed.
Ronald B. Herzman, Graham Drake, Eve
Salisbury (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute
Publications, 1997)
Bevis (Cambridge and Naples) Sir Bevis of Hampton: edited from Naples,
Biblioteca Nazionale, MS XIII.B.29 and
Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff.2.38, 2
vols, ed. Jennifer Fellows, EETS, OS 349 and
350 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017)
Degare
Emare
Lay le Freine
Sir Orfeo
The Middle English Breton Lays, ed. Anne Laskaya
and Eve Salisbury (Kalamazoo: Medieval
Institute Publications, 1995)
Eglamour (Cotton Caligula A.ii)
Isumbras
Northern Octavian / NO
(Lincoln 91)
Tryamour (Cambridge Ff.2.38)
Four Middle English Romances: Sir Isumbras,
Octavian, Sir Eglamour of Artois, Sir Tryamour,
ed. Harriet Hudson (Kalamazoo: Medieval
Institute Publications, 2006)
Southern Octavian / SO
(Cotton Caligula A.ii)
Octovian Imperator: edited from MS BL Cotton
Caligula A II, ed. Frances McSparren
(Heidelberg: Carl Winter, Universitätsverlag,
1979)
Lybeaus (Ashmole) Codex Ashmole 61: A Compilation of Popular
Middle English Verse, ed. George Shuffelton
(Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications,
2008)
8
Lybeaus (Naples and Lambeth) Lybeaus Desconus, ed. Eve Salisbury and James
Weldon (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute
Publications, 2013)
Torrent (Chetham’s 8009)
Sir Torrent of Portingale, ed. James Wade
(Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications,
2017)
Chaucer
All citations are from The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd
edn, ed. Larry D. Benson and others (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2008)
Shakespeare
All citations are from The Norton Shakespeare, ed.
Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E.
Howard and Katherine Eisaman Maus (London
& New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1997)
9
Abstract
The aim of the thesis is to examine the idea of disinheritance in six Middle English
romances, towards a better understanding of the imaginative work of the romances and
the matter of inheritance in the late-medieval imagination. The thesis revises some well-
established critical readings of inheritance in medieval romances: namely that the
inheritance narrative is fundamentally driven by a reciprocal plot structure, in which an
heir loses and then regains an inheritance; and that, as such, the texts sustain a socially
and economically conservative ideology of inheritance.
I find that disinheritance provides a conceptual framework in the romances for
re-imagining rightful heirship: in ways that resist, complicate or subvert medieval legal
orthodoxies and particularly the principles of primogeniture. The romances portray the
acquisition of heritable property by disinherited, allegedly illegitimate or “unknown”
protagonists, through feats of arms or fortuitous happenstance, rather than claims of
birthright.
While I prioritise close readings of the romances, I also draw attention to
historical evidence that suggests a late-medieval gentry readership would have been
sensitive to this idea of disinheritance in the texts: in particular, the correlation between
disinheritance and opportunity, between aristocratic dynastic instability and non-
aristocratic social advancement. The thesis concludes by offering a case study for the
political use of this idea of disinheritance, in late-medieval England, and suggesting
avenues for further research.
10
Declaration
I hereby declare that no portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted
in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other
university or institute of learning.
11
Copyright Statement
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certain copyright or related rights in it (the "Copyright") and s/he has given The
University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for
administrative purposes.
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Thesis restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, The University
Library’s regulations (see http://library.manchester.ac.uk/about/regulations/) and in The
University’s policy on Presentation of Thesis.
12
Note on Referencing
Aside from those listed under Abbreviations, texts will be given their full titles and
publication details in footnotes when first cited. Thereafter, full titles will be
abbreviated. Both the full titles and abbreviated titles for the Middle English romances,
above and elsewhere, conform to existing critical conventions. As far as possible, line
numbers for quotations from romances will be given in parenthesis in the body of the
thesis, for ease of reference. All other references will be given in footnotes, collated
where possible.
Note on Spellings
I have standardised the spelling of proper names throughout the thesis except when
quoting a source directly.
13
Acknowledgements
For their guidance and encouragement throughout the project, I am most grateful to my
supervisory panel: Professor David Matthews, Dr Anke Bernau and Dr Noelle
Dückmann Gallagher. For providing access to research materials including manuscripts,
I am grateful to staff and curators at the University of Manchester Libraries, Chetham’s
Library and Bodleian Library. I also received a great deal of helpful feedback from
participants of the conferences at which I presented my work, twice aided by a Donald
Howard Travel Scholarship from the New Chaucer Society. A special thanks must go to
Rachel Dawson, Kirsty Bolton, Dr Kate Irisarri, Aswiny Uthayakumar, Charlotte
Catling and Fiona Prichard for generously volunteering to proofread drafts of the thesis.
Remaining errors are my own.
Dedication
For my parents and for Tony, whose unconditional support made the project possible.
14
Introduction
Inheritance Culture in Late-Medieval England
It should come as no surprise that a late-medieval work of literature such as Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales, however wide-ranging in form and content, repeatedly features the
matter of inheritance. Inheritance is a perennial issue throughout medieval literature, and
the Canterbury Tales, with its Chaucerian catalogue of literary genres, is inevitably
indicative of this wider trend. Between its ‘sondry’ tellers and tale-types, heirs and
inheritance are invoked in a variety of ways: the comical aspirations of the Reeve’s parson
for a bastard ‘heir’; the Wife of Bath’s discussion of ‘heritage’ and ‘gentilesse’ as
mutually independent attributes; the Parson’s condemnation of ‘false heires’ who
‘wrongfully | Ocupien folkes heritages’.1 In the Friar’s Tale, the summoner’s ‘heritage’ is
said to be ‘in helle’; by way of retaliation, in the Summoner’s Prologue, a friar discovers
that the ‘heritage’ of his ‘kynde’ is in the ‘develes ers’.2 Inheritance surfaces in the Clerk’s
Tale as popular political concern, as a ‘peple’ petition their ‘biloved’ lord to marry and
prevent his ‘heritage’ from falling to a ‘straunge successour’.3 In the Merchant’s Tale, in
contrast, the matter of inheritance is portrayed as a personal issue, providing the poem
with its dual source of pathos and comic irony. The elderly January worries that his
‘heritage sholde falle | In straunge hand’ and decides to marry a young wife to produce an
heir; only for his wife’s subsequent infidelity to mean that his ‘heritage’ may fall to a
‘stranger’ after all, namely an illegitimate child.4
1 Chaucer, General Prologue, l. 25; The Reeve’s Tale, l. 3978; The Wife of Bath’s Tale, ll. 1117-19; The Parson’s Tale, ll. 885-88. 2 The Friar’s Tale, l. 1641; The Summoner’s Prologue, ll. 1705-06. 3 The Clerk’s Tale, ll. 69, 85, 138-39. 4 The Merchant’s Tale, ll. 1439-40; Nicole Sidhu, ‘“Famulier foo”: Wives, Male Subordinates, and Political Theory in the Merchant’s Tale’, The Chaucer Review, 54:3 (2019), 292-314 (p. 306). Inheritance is also at stake in the Man of Law’s Tale and the Franklin’s Tale: ‘heritage’ is explicitly invoked at l. 366 in the former and ll. 1563 and 1584 in the latter.
15
In turn, it is unsurprising that medieval literature should be preoccupied with the
matter of inheritance, given the importance of inheritance in medieval culture. Primarily
referring to land tenures, ‘inheritance’ described the passing of property from one
generation to the next. The formation of the late-medieval English common law of
inheritance began after the Conquest.5 From the eleventh century, all land was held of the
crown, notionally in feudal lord-vassal relationships ‘marked by reciprocal duties of
protection and service’: for example, land leased from the crown to his tenants-in-chief in
return for military service, and from tenants-in-chief to labourers in return for agricultural
service. These tenures were increasingly regarded as heritable, however, and by the
thirteenth century the rules of common law inheritance were firmly established.6 Though
not the only means of acquiring wealth and status, inheritances were the foundation of
political power, and those of great land magnates were a major influence on regional
society and national politics.7 Furthermore, while the succession of such estates, second
only to the crown, are the most obvious context in which private inheritances could be a
prominent public concern, the custom of inheritance transcended class.8 Any individual’s
5 See A. W. B. Simpson, A History of the Land Law, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986; repr. 2011), pp. 1–24. The classic work on the development of English common law is Frederick Pollock and F. W. Maitland, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I, 2 vols (London: Cambridge University Press, 1898; first published 1895). However, Simpson’s Land Law, first published in 1961, is my preferred source due its focus on land law, longer historical view, and revisions after more recent scholarship. 6 See Simpson, Land Law, pp. 2, 49–50. 7 See Maurice Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages: A Political History (London and New York: Routledge, 2003; first published 1975), pp. 10–11; Michael Hicks, English Political Culture in the Fifteenth Century (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 64, 68; Christine Carpenter, The Wars of the Roses: Politics and the Constitution in England, c. 1437–1509 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 26. 8 See Hicks, English Political Culture, pp. 83–84; Rosamond Jane Faith, ‘Peasant Families and Inheritance Customs in Medieval England’, The Agricultural History Review, 14:2 (1966), 77–95; Paul Hyams, ‘The Origins of a Peasant Land Market in England’, The Economic History Review, 23:1 (1970), 18–31.
16
social position was largely determined by the ‘estates’ or offices that descended to them
by ‘hereditary right’.9
Medieval writing on inheritance ranges from legal treatises and records to personal
correspondence and vernacular poetry. These written sources do not conform to a single,
coherent discourse on inheritance, nor are they entirely independent of each other. But
rather their similarities and differences demonstrate the depth and breadth of the matter of
inheritance in late-medieval thought. The legal institution of inheritance, firstly, set out to
protect the rights of heirs and the interests of lords. Tractatus de Legibus et
Consuetudinibus Regni Anglie (c. 1190), commonly known as Glanvill after its presumed
author, Ranulf de Glanvill, is the earliest treatise on English law and survives in more than
thirty manuscripts dating from the late twelfth to fourteenth centuries, subsequently being
copied and combined with other texts.10 Similarly influential was the slightly later De
Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae (c. 1220–30), attributed to Henry de Bracton (or
Bratton) and known as Bracton, surviving in more than fifty manuscripts dated between
1250 and 1350.11 The legal principles set out in these works can be distinguished from
legal practice to an extent, according to primary case evidence and historical analysis of
legal records, more of which below. For now, it is important to note the orthodox legal
9 Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages, p. 10. 10 Translated quotations are from The Treatise on the Laws and Customs of the Realm of England Commonly Called Glanvill, ed. and trans. G. D. G. Hall (Washington: John Byrne & Co., 1900). On the author and the work, see Hall, ed., Glanvill, pp. xl, lv and John Hudson, ‘Glanville [Glanvill], Ranulf de (1120s?–1190), Justiciar’, ODNB <https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-10795> [accessed 4 Dec 2019]. 11 Translated quotations are from Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England, 2 vols, vol. 2, ed. George Woodbine, trans. Samuel E. Thorne (London: Oxford University Press, 1968). On the author of Bracton, see Paul Brand, ‘Bratton [Bracton], Henry of (d. 1268), Justice and Supposed Author of the Legal Treatise known as Bracton’, ODNB <https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-3163> [accessed 4 Dec 2019]. For an overview of the Bracton manuscripts, see Sam Worby, Law and Kinship in Thirteenth-Century England (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2015), pp. 69–71.
17
definitions of inheritance expressed in these treatises, namely the system of primogeniture
for male heirs and partition for female heirs to hereditary tenures.12
According to primogeniture, the ‘eldest son is the heir to the whole inheritance’
and if there are two or more sons, ‘the proprietary right always descends to the older, since
he came forth first in the nature of things’.13 This remained legal orthodoxy throughout the
medieval period and beyond.14 Thomas Littleton’s fifteenth-century treatise on land
tenures attests to the many and various forms of tenure extant towards the end of the
medieval period, while reiterating the basic principle of primogeniture for hereditary
land.15 Littleton also sets out the customary procedure for female heirs: that a daughter
without male siblings inherits singly, while two or more sisters should share the
inheritance between them; though this ‘partition’ may be made ‘in divers manners’.16 The
legal treatises are ostensibly concerned with regulating inheritance as an economic issue,
but their effects are social and political. Occasionally, the pragmatic tone of the legal
treatise shifts to theocracy: Bracton insisting that ‘only God can make an heir’, for
instance, idealising inheritance as a ‘sacred’ right.17 Bracton’s code-switching is
characteristic of what Ernst Kantorowicz calls the ‘secular “political theology” of late-
12 Glanvill, pp. 120–28. 13 Glanvill, p. 120; Bracton, p. 189. 14 See Simpson, Land Law, p. 51; Hicks, English Political Culture, p. 8; Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 10–11; Chris Given-Wilson, The English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages: The Fourteenth-Century Political Community (London and New York: Routledge, 1996; first published 1987), p. 10. 15 Quotations are from Thomas Littleton, Littleton’s Tenures in English, ed. Eugene Wambaugh (Washington: John Byrne & Col, 1903). Littleton’s Tenures is the earliest law book to have been printed in England, originally issued in French but also copied into manuscript form and translated into English within a few decades of publication. On the author and the influence of his work, see J. H. Baker, ‘Littleton [Lyttleton], Sir Thomas (b. before 1417, d. 1481), Justice and Legal Writer’, ODNB <https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-16787> [accessed 4 Dec 2019]; Thomas Garden Barnes, Shaping the Common Law: From Glanvill to Hale, 1188–1688, ed. Allen D. Boyer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), pp. 32–45. 16 Littleton, Tenures, p. 113. 17 Bracton, p. 184. Hicks, English Political Culture, p. 64.
18
medieval England: a theocentric legal philosophy which (with regard to the crown, at
least) encompasses the doctrine of the ‘divine right’ of the sovereign to his estate.18
Other conceptions of inheritance can be found elsewhere. Christian scripture offers
an inverse account of inheritance as a ‘sacred’ right, for instance. In this context, the
‘kingdom of heaven’ is the metaphysical inheritance promised to Christians: material
wealth is the antithesis of spiritual wealth, and faith rather than lineage is the key to
rightful heirship, making Christians ‘cohaeredes’ (i.e. co-heirs) with Christ.19 The
metaphor of spiritual inheritance is picked up in vernacular literature, both to describe ‘the
regne of heuene [as] heritage to good folke’ and the ‘heritage in helle’ awaiting the
sacrilegious.20 In hagiographical contexts, ‘heritage’ describes the worldly possessions
that saints eschew, figuring their religious asceticism as spiritual heirship. St Wistan is
said to have decided, as a child, to ‘become coheir of a heavenly rather than temporal
realm’; and so he ‘neglected every earthly rule’.21 Wistan’s youthful rejection of earthly
inheritance for spiritual reward is a trope which can also be found in the legends of Ss
Francis, Katherine and Antony.22 This conceptual juxtaposition of earthly and heavenly
18 Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016; first published 1957), pp. 87, 93. Elsewhere, the idea of theocratic sovereignty is particularly associated with post-Reformation England. See J. N. Figgis, The Divine Right of Kings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914) and Glenn Burgess, ‘The Divine Right of Kings Reconsidered’, The English Historical Review, 107:425 (1992), 837–61. 19 Matthew 3.2, 4.17, 5.3; Romans 8.17. 20 The Parson’s Tale, l. 884; John Gower, Confessio Amantis, 3 vols, vol. 3, ed. Russell A. Peck (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2004), 5.7006. For further examples, see MED, heritage, n., sense 2a. 21 In the original Latin: ‘Puer vero Wistanus, malens celestis regni quan temporalis fiera coheres, singula mundana neglexit imperi.’ See Art. 116, De Martirio Sancti Wistani, in The Complete Harley 2253 Manuscript, 3 vols, vol. 3, ed. Susanna Greer Fein and trans. David Raybin and Jan Ziolkowski (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2015), ll. 8–10. 22 The Life of St Francis, in Saints’ Lives in Middle English Collections, ed. E. Gordon Whatley, Anne B. Thompson and Robert K. Upchurch (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2004), ll. 109–28; The Martyrdom of Sancte Katherine, ed. Emily Rebeka Huber and Elizabeth Robertson, in The Katherine Group MS Bodley 34 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2016), 2.2; Athanasius: The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus, trans. Robert C. Gregg (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), pp. 69–72. St Katherine
19
estates is also portrayed effectively in the dream poem, Pearl (c. 1390).23 In the poem, the
dreamer has a vision of his lost ‘pearl’ (an infant girl who lived ‘not two yer’) in the
likeness of a queen.24 He cannot understand how she has risen to so high an estate, being
so young. But she is a queen in heaven, she explains: in death she is ‘sesed in alle
[Christ’s] herytage’; not lost, but home.25
The ethical dimensions of the concept of inheritance in religious contexts are
further complicated by debates surrounding labour, as either a fallen state or a virtue.26 For
example, we might consider how material wealth inherited by birth contrasts with the
notion of spiritual inheritance as the reward earned by ‘good folke’. But the example of
the Pearl-maiden emphasises that the ‘herytage’ of heaven can be considered a birthright
to Christian children: her heavenly elevation occurring after she has lived (or laboured)
barely two years in the world. Meanwhile, the common law concept of inheritance by
birthright, most noticeably where it inclines toward theocracy, presupposes the worth of
the heir rather than rendering it irrelevant.
No absolute distinctions can be made between the ideas of ‘divine’ and earthly
inheritances, nor between birthright and worth: although the ways in which different texts
prioritise the two are revealing of their respective ethical or political orientations.
keeps part of her inheritance, but only in order to maintain the people whom her deceased parents had employed, otherwise giving her ‘eritage’ away. On the trope more generally, see Emma Campbell, Medieval Saints’ Lives: The Gift, Kinship and Community in Old French Hagiography (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 76–77. 23 Quotations are from Pearl, ed. Sarah Stanbury (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2001). Pearl appears uniquely with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero A.x. 24 Pearl, l. 483. 25 Pearl, l. 417. ‘Sesed’ means to ‘take possession’ in a legal sense. See MED, seisen, v. Stanbury glosses the phrase as ‘endowed with inheritance’ (l. 417). 26 For discussions of this theme see Kellie Robertson, The Labourer’s Two Bodies: Literary and Legal Productions in Britain, 1350–1500 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 1–12; Nicola Masciandaro, The Voice of the Hammer: The Meaning of Work in Middle English Literature (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007); Lisa Cooper, Artisans and Narrative Craft in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
20
Inheritance is a predominantly secular issue in chronicle literature with its dynastic
preoccupations.27 The relationship between inheritance and lineage (or birthright) is
especially important in poetic political propaganda, in turn, with writers like Thomas
Hoccleve (d. 1426) imaginatively ‘fiddling [with] the facts of Lancastrian succession’ in
order to legitimate the Lancastrian inheritance of the crown.28 Although, when the
personal matter of inheritance surfaces – Hoccleve pertinently remarking, in The Regiment
of Princes, that courtly patronage is very well in one’s youth, but ‘service, I woot wel, is
noon heritage’ – 29 it is clearly as a financial concern and less about lineage.
It was common to conceive of inheritance in largely economic terms in late-
medieval England. ‘Landholding was what contemporaries meant’, Michael Hicks writes,
‘when they talked about inheritance’.30 Indeed, inheritance appears to have been a
frequent topic of discussion among members of late-medieval gentry families, given the
wealth of evidence in letter collections belonging to families such as the Pastons and
Stonors.31 The letters of Joan and Robert Armburgh are especially remarkable for detailing
a bitter and protracted inheritance dispute. Their letters not only demonstrate the complex
legal and political considerations in such a case but the correspondents’ ability to engage
27 See Sarah L. Peverley, ‘Genealogy and John Hardyng’s Verse Chronicle’, pp. 259–82 and Lister M. Matheson, ‘Genealogy and Women in the Prose Brut, Especially the Middle English Common Version and its Continuations’, pp. 221–58, both in Broken Lines: Genealogical Literature in Late Medieval Britain and France, ed. Raluca L. Radulescu and Edward Donald Kennedy (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008). 28 Paul Strohm, England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation, 1399–1422 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988), pp. 146–47 on Hoccleve. See also Lesley Coote, ‘Prophecy, Genealogy, and History in Medieval English Political Discourse’, in Broken Lines, pp. 27–44. 29 Thomas Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ed. Charles R. Blyth (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1999), l. 841. 30 Hicks, English Political Culture, p. 64. 31 Raluca Radulescu and Alison Truelove, eds., ‘Introduction’, to Gentry Culture in Late Medieval England (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2005), pp. 1–17 (p. 7). For examples see The Paston Letters, ed. Norman Davies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 14; Kingsford’s Stonor Letters and Papers, 1290–1483, ed. Christine Carpenter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 60.
21
with its intricacies.32 The high stakes in matters of inheritance – social, economic and
political – made the ability to navigate this complex legal terrain an important skill, and
not one confined only to lawyers. This was a world in which ‘everyone knew their own
claims to inherit and asserted them vigorously’.33
Imaginative literature is clearly part of the culture of inheritance in late-medieval
England, yet it is an aspect which remains relatively understudied. There is a gap in
medievalist scholarship for a series of studies of the treatment of inheritance, and the
significance of inheritance as a literary conceit, across a range of Middle English genres.
The varied use of the inheritance theme in the Canterbury Tales warrants greater attention,
for example, as does the trope of rejecting inheritance in hagiographical literature.
Studying the idea of ‘heritage’ in various literary contexts will contribute to a better
understanding of late-medieval attitudes to inheritance as well as the political nuances of
the literature of the period. This thesis sets out on this potentially wide-ranging
programme of research with a relatively limited focus, prioritising one of the most widely
circulated forms of vernacular literature in England in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries: Middle English romance. Not only was romance the ‘major genre of secular
fiction’ in late-medieval England, but the matter of inheritance is a remarkably prominent
theme in these texts.34
Middle English romances ‘almost obsessively return to the problems and
vicissitudes of producing and retaining viable heirs’, Angela Florschuetz writes, ‘to
continue valued bloodlines’:
32 For some explanation of the dispute, see The Armburgh Papers: The Brokeholes Inheritance in Warwickshire, Hertfordshire and Essex, c. 1417–c. 1453, ed. Christine Carpenter (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998), p. 5. 33 Hicks, English Political Culture, p. 64. 34 Helen Cooper, The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 2.
22
Sir Gowther and Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale … directly address the problems caused by the lack of an
heir; Melusine, Emaré, and Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale feature claims of unsuitable, monstrous
heirs … the King of Tars focuses on the racially hybrid production of a lump of flesh rather than a
child … in Cheuelere Assigne the seven children of the king are threatened by accusations of
adulterous and bestial conception [and] transformed into swans.35
She notes that Athelston ‘includes the violent slaying of the heir while still in his mother’s
body’ and indeed the family drama of that romance begins with the hero inheriting the
English throne from a ‘cosyn’ who ‘dyyd withouten ayr’ (ll. 26, 32).36 Many more
examples could be added to those Florschuetz lists above.
The question of recognising legitimate heirship lies just beneath the surface of
foundling romances like Sir Degare, Lai le Freine and William of Palerne, and the very
popular Arthurian Lybeaus Desconus, whose ‘bastard’ hero sets out to ‘wynne’ the lady of
Synadon, ‘eyre’ to her own ‘kyngdom’ (Ashmole Lybeaus, ll. 15, 1789–93).37 The
beginning of Ipomadon is densely packed with details about heirs and inheritances:
introducing the king of Calabria, who ‘gatte neuer chyld his eyre to be’ and who adopts
‘his newov nere … to make his eyre’; his niece, a sole ‘ayre’, who is determined ‘hyrselffe
her londys to welde’ without a husband; and finally Ipomadon, only son and heir to the
King of Apulia, determined to win her marriage by proving himself ‘the best knyghte | Of
all this world’.38
35 Angela Florschuetz, ‘Women’s Secrets: Childbirth, Pollution, and Purification in the Northern Octavian’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 30 (2008), 235–68 (p. 237 and n. 2). 36 Florschuetz, ‘Women’s Secrets’, p. 237. 37 On the ‘foundling’ romances see Arlyn Diamond, ‘Loving Beasts: The Romance of William of Palerne’, in The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance, ed. Ad Putter and Jane Gilbert (Harlow: Longman, 2000), pp. 142–56 and Elizabeth Archibald, ‘Lai le Freine: The Female Foundling and the Problem of Romance Genre’, in Spirit, pp. 39–55. 38 Ipomadon, ed. Rhiannon Purdie, EETS, OS 316 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), ll. 34, 36–37, 82, 95, 118–19.
23
Just as striking as the recurrence of the theme of inheritance in the Middle English
romances, however, is the frequency with which the matter of disinheritance recurs. Some
of the earliest surviving examples, in Bevis of Hampton, Havelok the Dane and King
Horn, follow heirs who are disinherited after a father’s untimely death; while Octavian,
Sir Eglamour of Artois, Sir Tryamour and Sir Torrent of Portingale portray the
disinheritance of heirs declared illegitimate. The hero of Tale of Gamelyn is deprived of
his inheritance by an elder sibling and turns to outlawry. Two disinherited princes of
Hungary are, respectively, the hero and the villain of Le Bone Florence of Rome. In Ywain
and Gawain, the titular heroes become the opposing champions of two sisters locked in an
inheritance dispute. Any number of subdivisions could be made among romances treating
the matter of inheritance, with many overlaps between them. But the significance of the
recurrent pattern of disinheritance, including its presence in some of the most widely
circulated examples, is the focus of my thesis. I will consider what disinheritance means in
the romances as a literary conceit, comparing the romances to other sources concerned
with the matters of inheritance and heirship in late-medieval England. I will also explore
the political implications of the romances’ conceptualisation of rightful inheritance and
heirship, especially from the viewpoint of their late-medieval readership.
To this end, I focus my analysis on a set of romances which share a common
narrative pattern, including protagonists disinherited in infancy, separated from their
‘heritage’ and acquiring new lands and titles during the course of their adventures. These
are Bevis of Hampton, Havelok the Dane, Sir Eglamour of Artois, Octavian, Sir Tryamour
and Sir Torrent of Portingale. The group is not intended to be definitive of the genre’s
treatment of disinheritance or inheritance, and at times I will refer to other romances, by
way of comparison and contrast. But I will argue that the portrayal of disinheritance in this
group challenges prevalent critical views about the nature of the inheritance theme in the
24
romance genre at large. As such, the thesis also makes a case for further scholarship on the
theme of inheritance in medieval romances and medieval literature more generally, with
an initial contribution to this nascent field of enquiry.
Inheritance in Middle English Romance Criticism
Romance criticism has long associated medieval inheritance practices with the politics of
the romance genre. Critics generally agree on the importance of primogeniture and the
effect (and intent) of romance narratives being to provide imaginative resolutions to
threats to dynastic stability. Helen Cooper’s major study of medieval romance, The
English Romance in Time (2004), describes the genre as the ‘myth of the ideology of
primogeniture’, evoking Georges Duby’s influential thesis on the relationship between
romance and primogeniture, in The Chivalrous Society (1977).39 Duby saw romance as
emerging in response to the practice of primogeniture among the French aristocracy in the
twelfth century. Romance was a ‘literature of chivalry’, he argued, with noble heroes
acquiring land through marriage and ‘adventure’: this mirrored the experiences of the
younger sons of the aristocracy (‘juvenes’) who were ‘deprived’ of an inheritance by
primogeniture, as their elder siblings inherited the family’s estates.40 Chivalric adventure,
through which aspirational knights can gain fame, marriage and land, was the idealised
alternative to inheritance. But by idealising chivalric pursuits the romances seemed to
Duby to maintain support for primogeniture. Although Cooper’s English Romance deals
with later forms of romance, she recalls the birth of the genre ‘in the same period that
39 Cooper, English Romance, p. 326. 40 Georges Duby, The Chivalrous Society, trans. Cynthia Postan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980; first published 1977), p. 118.
25
primogeniture becomes the legal norm for inheritance’, in order to elucidate the content of
the English texts.41
In Middle English romances like Bevis, Havelok and the others in my group, the
protagonists are not ‘younger sons’ but firstborns, who would ordinarily inherit according
to primogeniture. They are not ‘deprived’ by elder siblings but rather disinherited. The
‘ideology of primogeniture’ manifests here, in Cooper’s view, when the disinherited heirs
are later ‘proved rightful’ by the discovery of their ‘parentage’ and restored to their
original inheritances.42 Other critics have perceived a similar equation in the Middle
English romances, between parentage and rightful inheritance, deducing that the texts
‘endorse the upper-class belief that worth and birth are synonymous’.43 Although
consensus has grown that the readers of Middle English romances were not ‘upper
class’,44 critics have cogently argued for a change in the ‘function’ rather than the
‘ideology’ of romances, when adapted from their earliest French forms into Middle
English.45 Stephen Knight’s well-known 1986 essay on the ‘social function’ of Middle
English romances cites Duby’s theory directly, arguing that pro-aristocratic ‘values’ are
‘inherent’ in the English romances. The effect in the context of Middle English romances,
he suggests, is to reinforce support for those who hold power among those who do not.46
41 Cooper, English Romance, p. 326. 42 Cooper, English Romance, p. 326. 43 Susan Wittig, Stylistic and Narrative Structures in the Middle English Romances (Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1978), p. 189. 44 Derek Pearsall, ‘The Development of Middle English Romance’, in Studies in Middle English Romances: Some New Approaches, ed. Derek Brewer (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1988; first published 1965), pp. 11–35 (p. 33). On the non-aristocratic audiences for Middle English romances, see Harriet Hudson, ‘Middle English Popular Romances: The Manuscript Evidence’, Manuscripta, 28 (1984), 67–78 and Felicity Riddy, ‘Middle English Romance: Marriage, Family, Intimacy’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, ed. Roberta L. Krueger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 235–52 (p. 248). 45 Stephen Knight, ‘The Social Function of the Middle English Romances’, in Medieval Literature: Criticism, Ideology & History, ed. David Aers (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1986), pp. 99–122. 46 Knight, ‘Social Function’, pp. 100, 101.
26
A similar logic has been applied to the adaptation of so-called ‘insular’ or ‘Anglo-
Norman’ romances, such as Boeve de Hamtoune, into Middle English. These romances are
temporally situated between the earliest French examples of the genre (twelfth century)
and the later Middle English forms (dating from the beginning of the fourteenth century).
In her study of the Anglo-Norman texts, Susan Crane argues that their treatment of
inheritance reflects the concerns of thirteenth-century baronial audiences in England, with
consolidating inheritance rights to feudal tenures.47 Raluca Radulescu more recently
characterised the texts as ‘genealogical’ romances, idealising the ‘privileges enjoyed by
the upper classes’, not least access to hereditary wealth and political status.48 But both
revise M. Dominica Legge’s earlier view, that these ‘ancestral romances’ were written for
identifiable noble family patrons and mythologised the ‘prestige’ of their ‘noble lineage’,
in suggesting that their pro-aristocratic sentiments had a broader appeal.49
This appeal is thought to extend to the readers of the later, Middle English
adaptations. Like Knight, Crane sees a change in the function but not the politics of the
inheritance theme when it is transferred from Anglo-Norman romances (like Boeve and
Haveloc) to Middle English romances (like Bevis and Havelok), and from baronial to non-
aristocratic domains of production and consumption. There is the same ‘baron[ial] concern
for landed stability’ in the Middle English romances, Crane writes, but it is expressed in
‘more universal terms’. The restoration of the noble heir is a pro-aristocratic motif but
inspires ‘the middle class’s affinity for social order’ and effects a sense of ‘social
reconciliation’.50 Radulescu likewise suggests that ‘genealogical’ romances, which attend
47 Susan Crane, Insular Romance: Politics, Faith, and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature (University of California Press: Berkeley and London, 1986). 48 Raluca L. Radulescu, ‘Genealogy in Insular Romance’, in Broken Lines, pp. 7–26 (p. 7). 49 M. Dominica Legge, ‘The “Ancestral” Romance’, in Anglo-Norman Literature and Its Background (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 139–75 (p. 174). 50 Crane, Insular Romance, p. 52.
27
to ‘crises of succession as well as their resolution’, appealed to the common interest of the
aristocracy and ‘the middle class’ in ‘continuity’.51
The ‘middle class’ readership Radulescu imagines for the Middle English
romances is analogous to ‘the gentry’, as it has been loosely defined by historians of late-
medieval society.52 The identity of this ‘gentry’ class is necessarily fluid, because one of
its few fundamental features is permeability to both the less wealthy ranks of society and
its upper echelons. Philippa Maddern argues that the very indeterminacy of gentry status
in the late-medieval period was an advantage to those who aspired to it.53 But otherwise,
the two common denominators are landholding and a lack of hereditary aristocracy. Since
the traceable owners of extant Middle English romance manuscripts belong to this wide-
ranging social group, Michael Johnston has argued in favour of reading for a non-
aristocratic, ‘gentry’ viewpoint in the texts.54 The English romances do ‘something new’
with older romance material, Johnston writes, introducing ‘new motifs’ which reflect the
‘class identity’ of ‘the gentry’ who reproduced and read them.55
Johnston’s reading of the matter of inheritance in the romances, though, concurs
with the views of Radulescu, Crane and Knight, appearing to be the point at which
‘gentry’ aspirations and aristocratic interests converge. ‘Primogeniture plays [a] central
role’, he writes, in the Middle English Octavian, in which twin heirs are disinherited and
their family separated. The final scene of family reunion, as such ‘serves as a powerful
image to the readers that primogeniture is a stable and effective system of family
51 Radulescu, ‘Genealogy in Insular Romance’, p. 25. 52 See Radulescu and Truelove, eds, ‘Introduction’, to Gentry Culture, pp. 1–17. See also Maurice Keen, Origins of the English Gentleman: Heraldry, Chivalry and Gentility in Medieval England, c. 1300–c. 1500 (Stroud: Tempus, 2002) and Peter Coss, The Origins of the English Gentry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Further works on this topic are cited below. 53 Philippa Maddern, ‘Gentility’, in Gentry Culture, pp. 18–34. 54 Michael Johnston, Romance and the Gentry in Late Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 55 Johnston, Romance and the Gentry, pp. 88–89.
28
economy’.56 Here Johnston quotes a line from Christine Carpenter, writing on the matter
of inheritance among the fifteenth-century English gentry, which, in turn, is evocative of
Duby’s thesis on inheritance customs among the twelfth-century French aristocracy:
namely, that ‘[y]ounger sons were the problem … a terrible potential drag on the heir’,
and the ‘romance’ genre (whether French or English) offered ‘resolutions to concerns
about primogeniture’.57
There is, in the criticism cited above, a general view that romances both expose
and resolve threats to dynastic stability and genealogical succession: that ‘the restoration
of the rightful heir’ is a pro-aristocratic gesture, expressing the ‘rightful passing on of land
and power’ based on ‘inborn chivalry and true parentage’; but that it also represents a
‘long-term social stability’ which is considered ‘desirable’ by a broad cross-section of
late-medieval society.58 Of course, the recurrence of disinheritance in the romances cannot
be missed, and some have expressed suspicion at the resolution of these issues in the texts.
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, for example, finds the final scenes of Octavian disconcerting
because the family’s succession and the identity of the next heir are not definitively
stated.59 Gary Lim makes a similar observation about the ending of King Horn.60 In fact,
the same can be said of the endings of several of the disinheritance romances, as I will
argue in Chapter 4. Lim’s essay meanwhile indicates the potential for a critique of
56 Johnston, Romance and the Gentry, pp. 73–75. 57 Christine Carpenter, ‘The Fifteenth-Century English Gentry and Their Estates’, in Gentry and Lesser Nobility in Late Medieval Europe (New York: St Martin’s, 1986), pp. 36–60 (pp. 51–52); Johnston, Romance and the Gentry, p. 73. 58 Nicola McDonald, ed., ‘A Polemical Introduction’, to Pulp Fictions of Medieval England: Essays in Popular Romance (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 1–21 (pp. 13–14); Cooper, English Romance, p. 324; Wittig, Stylistic and Narrative Structures, p. 186. 59 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘There are Powerlines in our Bloodlines’ <http://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/2011/02/there-are-powerlines-in-our-bloodlines.html> [accessed 4 Dec 2019], paragraph 7. 60 Gary Lim, ‘In the Name of the (Dead) Father: Reading Fathers and Sons in Havelok the Dane, King Horn, and Bevis of Hampton’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 110:1 (2011), 22–52.
29
primogeniture in the Middle English romances; as he observes that Bevis, Havelok and
Horn appear to ‘fantasize solutions to the vexed question of inheritance by modifying the
principles of patrilineal primogeniture’.61 But he concludes, ultimately, that the effect is to
reinforce primogeniture and its cultural primacy.
Romance critics have, in other contexts, noted the genre’s tendency towards
‘transgressive’ or subversive representations of late-medieval cultural norms.62 But the
inheritance narrative, in which primogeniture is supposedly always reinforced or restored,
appears an expression of the Middle English romances’ most socially and economically
conservative impulses. It is a convincing reading, given that the word ‘inheritance’ itself
seems to signify return, repetition, succession: the carrying forward of the past into the
future. Yet there is more work to be done here. The idea of inheritance in the Middle
English romances is rarely the main object of enquiry in the critical works cited above,
tending to appear in the context of overarching theses on the Middle English romance
genre or ‘romance’ as a more expansive literary field (as with Cooper’s chapter,
‘Restoring the Rightful Heir’ in English Romance).63 The works above are also united by a
largely historicist approach, which tends to situate the romances in the context of their
composition; explaining their treatment of the inheritance theme with historical evidence
that predates the surviving manuscripts by many years. There is little sense of a distinction
between the definition of inheritance found in the medieval legal record and the romances’
idea of inheritance. This thesis proposes and explores a new way of reading inheritance in
six Middle English romances, beginning with a modified critical approach to the theme.
61 Lim, ‘In the Name of the (Dead) Father’, pp. 51–52, my italics. 62 See McDonald, ‘Polemical Introduction’, pp. 15–16. 63 Cooper, English Romance, pp. 324–53. This chapter is expansive in that the literary sources range from Chrétien de Troyes’s Conte du Graal (c. 1190) to Spenser’s Faerie Queene (1590) and the very many different aspects of romance inheritance narratives, throughout this range, are described necessarily briefly.
30
Critical Position
In an essay on Sir Gowther, Alcuin Blamires sees the romance as expressing a ‘kind of
worst-case threat to dynastic stability’ and speculates that the story of ‘a dukedom ravaged
for a while by tyranny’ possibly ‘fit[s] the political circumstances of England at the end of
the fourteenth century’.64 He concludes, however, that:
[this] type of contextual reconstruction is bedevilled by the vagaries of dating. What is more of a
constant in the later Middle Ages, and what arguably most needs to be restored to view not only in
discussion of Sir Gowther but in discussions of many romance narratives, is the work that such
romances do on the behalf of the ideology of dynasty.65
Temporarily setting aside ‘the ideology of dynasty’, it is important to add that ‘the
vagaries of dating’ apply to the transtemporal transmission of a romance, as well as to the
production of the text and the ‘circumstances’ which may have influenced its author. If
‘contextual reconstruction’ is limited in what it can tell us about what the texts mean or
‘do’, it is partly because the texts were reproduced and read across a long period of time.
The Middle English romances enjoyed a ‘centuries-long appeal’, appearing to
possess a ‘flexible timeliness’ to speak to the ‘on-the-spot concerns’ of readers in different
historical moments.66 It is useful to consider, therefore, Rita Felski’s critique of
‘conventional modes’ of historicism: Felski argues that while wholly ‘aesthetic’
approaches to literature risk neglecting the historical circumstances that ‘shape and
sustain’ it, deferring to the ‘context’ of production as the source of meaning fails to
account for the ‘transtemporal … affective resonance’ of certain texts.67 Though I do not
64 Alcuin Blamires, ‘The Twin Demons of Aristocratic Society in Sir Gowther’, in Pulp Fictions, pp. 45–62 (p. 52). 65 Blamires, ‘Twin Demons’, p. 57. 66 Christine Chism, ‘Romance’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Literature, ed. Larry Scanlon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 57–70 (pp. 57–58). 67 Rita Felski, ‘Context Stinks!’, New Literary History, 42:4 (2011), 573-91 (p. 574).
31
pursue the ‘phenomenological’ project that Felski prescribes, I similarly treat ‘context’ as
something which influences the reception of the texts rather than revealing inherent
meanings. My thesis does not aim to prove that the content of the romances reflects
particular historical circumstances surrounding their composition, but considers historical
context in so far as it indicates the frames of reference within which the gentry owners of
the extant manuscripts (mostly dated to the fifteenth century) would have read them and
their presentation of inheritance.
This is an altogether different (and later) historical setting than that in which other
romance critics have situated their discussions of ‘primogeniture’ in the genre. Lim’s
essay, for instance, places the Middle English romances in the context of the reign of
Edward I (d. 1307) and contemporary baronial ‘challenges to the monarchy’.68 In doing
so, his essay builds on Susan Crane’s analysis of the Anglo-Norman romances, described
above. In considering a late-medieval ‘gentry’ viewpoint, I build on the work of
Radulescu, Johnston and others.69 But my reading of the romances suggests a different,
politically distinct interpretation of the inheritance theme than has been recorded in
criticism thus far. In turn, I propose that this interpretation would have been especially
evident to the romances’ gentry readership, if we review our understanding of the
inheritance culture in which they were living. I do not attempt to associate individual
romances with individual readers and therefore this cultural context is necessarily rather
general, but it also supplements rather than directs my interpretation of the texts.
De-centring ‘contextual reconstruction’ from criticism of Middle English
romances is no small ask, given the status of historicist approaches in the field. The
aesthetic qualities of the texts were poorly regarded in the mid-twentieth century, Sir
68 Equally significantly, classical sources and Duby’s work (rather than medieval English legal texts) frame Lim’s discussion of ‘primogeniture’. Lim, pp. 22–24 and p. 23, n. 3. 69 See further citations above and below for scholarship identifying the romances’ gentry readership.
32
Eglamour of Artois infamously described as a ‘mechanical shuffling-together of stock
incidents, whisked vigorously and poured out at a pace that aims to provide little time for
reflection on what rubbish it all is’.70 Historicist scholarship helped to revive interest in the
Middle English romances as ‘an ideal vehicle for understanding medieval culture’ and has
since taken priority.71 At the same time, however, some have argued that historicist
approaches, while treating the texts as valuable sociohistorical sources, tend to avoid
rather than reevaluate the question of the romances’ literary value.72 Robert Meyer-Lee
and Catherine Sanok likewise remark that ‘scholarship pursued under the rubric [of]
historicism or cultural studies’ has often seemed to push literature itself ‘from the center
of its attention’.73
Any reappraisal of the romances’ literary value, aside from their historical
significance, is complicated by the equivocal nature of the category of ‘literature’: it is a
‘debatable concept’, Eva von Contzen notes, and the ‘precise features that create
literariness can vary strongly from text to text’.74 Indeed many critical understandings of
literary ‘form’ originate in studies of post-medieval literature, throwing open the question
of how to describe the ‘special’ qualities that make a medieval text literary.75 A further
70 Derek Pearsall, ‘The Development of Middle English Romance’, p. 31. Pearsall retracts this view in Derek Pearsall, ‘The Pleasure of Popular Romance: A Prefatory Essay’, in Medieval Romance, Medieval Contexts, ed. Rhiannon Purdie and Michael Cichon (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2011), pp. 9–18. 71 Michael Johnston, ‘Romance, Distraint, and the Gentry’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 112:4 (2013), 433–60 (pp. 433–34). See also Derek Brewer, ‘Escape from the Mimetic Fallacy’, in Studies in Medieval English Romance, ed. Derek Brewer (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1988), pp. 1–10 (p. 10); McDonald, ‘Polemical Introduction’, pp. 1–4; Ad Putter and Jane Gilbert, eds, ‘Introduction’, Spirit, pp. 1–38 (pp. 26–31); Raluca L. Radulescu and Cory James Rushton, eds, ‘Introduction’, to A Companion to Medieval Popular Romance (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2009), pp. 1–8 (pp. 2–3). 72 McDonald, ‘Polemical Introduction’, p. 4; Putter and Gilbert, ‘Preface’, Spirit, p. vii. 73 Robert J. Meyer-Lee and Catherine Sanok, eds, ‘Introduction: The Literary through – or beyond? – Form’, to The Medieval Literary Beyond Form (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2018), pp. 1–14 (p. 2). 74 Eva von Contzen, ‘Introduction’, to Sanctity as Literature in Late Medieval Britain, ed. von Contzen and Anke Bernau (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), pp. 1–17 (p. 10). 75 Meyer-Lee and Sanok, ‘The Literary through – or beyond? – Form’, p. 2. See also Robert J. Meyer-Lee, ‘Toward a Theory and Practice of Literary Valuing’, New Literary History, 46:2 (2015), 335–55. In this
33
challenge is that the Middle English romances remain largely absent from the recent return
to ‘form’ in medieval literary scholarship, so far.76 Yet the questions raised by ‘new
formalism’ have long been latent in Middle English romance scholarship. The
introduction to the 1916 Manual of Writings in Middle English (hereafter MWME) clearly
registers a tension between the agreed ‘literary’ status of the Middle English romances and
their lack of literary value: the texts are, at once, described as the ‘most literary’ of Middle
English genres and aesthetically ‘inferior’ to their French counterparts.77
By comparison, Cooper’s English Romance in Time persuasively argues for the
historical cultural significance of the Middle English romances en masse, as she explores
the ‘transformation’ of their narrative ‘motifs’ in the changing contexts of late-medieval
and early modern politics. But the study cannot account for the ‘inexplicable’ popularity
of Eglamour in the fifteenth century.78 This passing comment is directed specifically at
Eglamour, evoking the earlier critique of the poem’s form, cited above; but it also hints
that neither conventional formalist nor historicist perspectives can fully explain the Middle
English romances’ appeal or significance to their late-medieval readers. Although the
question of Middle English romance literariness is not the object of this thesis, I wish to
reevaluate the romances’ presentation of inheritance and heirship in a manner that moves
earlier article, Meyer-Lee addresses the question of ‘literary value’, arguing that literary criticism ought to account for the subjective and historically contingent nature of ‘literary valuing’. 76 A notable exception and forerunner is Rhiannon Purdie, Anglicising Romance: Tail-Rhyme and Genre in Medieval English Literature (Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2008). In addition, Catherine Sanok refers to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in ‘Afterword: Calendar Time in Balade Form’, in Sanctity as Literature, pp. 228–44 (pp. 234–35); the ‘tail-rhyme’ form of King Horn is discussed in Kathryn Kerby-Fulton and Andrew W. Klein, ‘Rhymed Alliterative Verse in Mise en Page Transition: Two Case Studies in English Poetic Hybridity’, in Beyond Form, pp. 87–118. Besides the introductions to Sanctity as Literature and Beyond Form, for further explanation of the formal ‘turn’ in medieval literary criticism in the twenty-first century, the key works and critical questions, see Helen Marshall and Peter Buchanan, ‘New Formalism and the Forms of Middle English Literary Texts’, Literature Compass, 8:4 (2011), 164–72. 77 Manual (1916), p. 2. The language of the later edition of the Manual (1967) is slightly ameliorated, where the English romances are characterised as ‘less sophisticated’ than the French (p. 12). 78 Cooper, English Romance, p. 261.
34
beyond either formal analyses or ‘contextual reconstruction’ as the sole interpretative
framework. To this end, I draw on Nicolette Zeeman’s ‘Imaginative Theory’, towards an
alternative understanding of the ‘special’ literary possibilities of romance narrative.79
Taking the example of a chanson d’aventure metaphor for creative invention, in
which a new song is ‘found’ in the fictional landscape, Zeeman proposes that imaginative
literature such as chanson and romance generates its own ‘imaginative’ theory of
production. It does not sit within other recognised ‘schools’ of literary theory, nor conform
to their literary standards. Instead, imaginative literature can be characterised by a
‘discursive “otherness”’, always ‘speak[ing] from a different place’ than other modes of
writing.80 In this sense, the literary value of a Middle English romance inheres in its
imaginative possibilities: rather than its ability (or otherwise) to meet with the
conventional formal expectations of ‘sophisticated’ literary texts, according to which the
romances have been regarded ‘inferior’ in the past.81 ‘Imaginative theory’ also suggests
that the meaning of romance narrative depends less on ‘contextual reconstruction’ than
might be supposed in conventional historicist readings, given that the romances always
‘speak from a different place’.
Reading the romances as imaginative literature, in turn, revises the well-
established binary view of the genre’s relationship to history: either that romances are
especially invested in ‘history’ or, alternatively, that ‘most writers of romaunces seem
indifferent to the historicity or fictionality of their narratives’.82 On the contrary, in a
recent volume on romance, Thinking Medieval Romance (2018), Katherine Little and
79 Nicolette Zeeman, ‘Imaginative Theory’, in Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Middle English, ed. Paul Strohm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 222–40. 80 Zeeman, ‘Imaginative Theory’, pp. 229–30. 81 See MWME citations above for these quotes. 82 Paul Strohm, ‘The Origin and Meaning of Middle English Romaunce,’ Genre 10 (1977), 1–28 (p. 19); Ad Putter, ‘Finding Time for Romance: Medieval Arthurian Literary History’, Medium Aevum, 63 (1994), 1–16.
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Nicola McDonald have suggested that ‘radical fictionality’ is the genre’s defining
characteristic. Romances can ‘imagine’ and ‘interrogate’ otherwise unexamined
‘foundational beliefs of medieval culture’.83 Romances do not only respond to existing
cultural concepts but, as imaginative literature, can propose new ideas. As the contributors
to Thinking Medieval Romance contend, this ‘imaginative thinking’ (to paraphrase by way
of Zeeman) is something which romance ‘both displays and invites’.84
Though the romances’ poetic form has often been regarded as unsophisticated,
Christine Chism argues that it is precisely their elliptical style and the incredibility of
some of their ‘conventional formulae’ which ‘provoke questions’ of the reader.85 In a
similar vein, James and Peggy Knapp have recently proposed that medieval romance
should be regarded as a form of ‘speculative fiction’, with an ‘aesthetic of possibility’:
romances can explore ‘philosophical questions’ and ‘invoke philosophical puzzles that
stimulate cognitive frisson’.86 Karen Sullivan argues for a turn towards the
‘epistemological issues’ that the romances raise as works of fiction: she suggests that
readers engaging with medieval romance must entertain uncertainty and ambiguity,
aligning ‘truth’ with ‘imagination’ or ‘wonder’ rather than ‘rationalism’.87 James and
Peggy Knapp exclude Middle English romances from their study, with the exception of
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, while Sullivan concentrates on Arthurian romances up
to the thirteenth century; but they share a common critical standpoint with Thinking
83 Nicola McDonald and Katherine Little, eds, ‘Introduction’, to Thinking Medieval Romance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 1–12 (pp. 4–6). 84 McDonald and Little, ‘Introduction’, p. 6. 85 Chism, ‘Romance’, p. 62. 86 James F. Knapp and Peggy A. Knapp, Medieval Romance: The Aesthetics of Possibility (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), pp. 1, 20–23. 87 Karen Sullivan, The Danger of Romance: Truth, Fantasy, and Arthurian Fictions (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2018), p. 22.
36
Medieval Romance, where later and non-Arthurian Middle English romances are given
more attention.
I borrow some of this thinking in my analysis of disinheritance in the Middle
English romances. Though I do not directly examine the possibility of the disinheritance
narrative as an imaginative tool for exploring ‘epistemological issues’, I find their
treatment of disinheritance to be symptomatic of an epistemology of imagination:
engendering ambiguity and uncertainty about rightful heirship and succession. In Chapter
2, in particular, I argue that the logic of common law legislation on legitimacy – how to
know a rightful heir – is displaced in the romances by an imaginative concept of
“unknowing”. Throughout the thesis, I consider the romances’ presentation of
disinheritance as an imaginative conceit liable to provoke questions, allowing readers to
examine fundamental beliefs of medieval inheritance culture, without necessarily
supplying answers.
The medieval imagination itself is not the object of my study,88 neither in terms of
the psychology or medieval theories of imagination;89 nor do I attempt to discern evidence
of the authors’ understanding of theories of imagination.90 But I will explore the romances
as an imaginative apparatus for thinking about inheritance in late-medieval England, and
intend to shed light on the idea of inheritance in the late-medieval imagination.91 In my
88 As with Jacques Le Goff, The Medieval Imagination, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992; first published 1985). 89 As with M. W. Bundy, The Theory of the Imagination in Classical and Mediaeval Thought (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1927); Douglas Kelly, Medieval Imagination: Rhetoric and the Poetry of Courtly Love (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978); Michelle Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2011). 90 As with Douglas Kelly, ‘The Logic of the Imagination in Chrétien de Troyes’, in The Sower and His Seed: Essays on Chrétien de Troyes, ed. Rupert T. Pickens (Lexington: French Forum, 1983), pp. 9–30. 91 In this sense the object of the thesis may be comparable to Elizabeth Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001). In so far as I will be considering how the romances’ “thinking” on inheritance diverges from legal orthodoxy, the thesis might also be aligned with Sophie Page, The Unorthodox Imagination in Late Medieval Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010).
37
analysis, I consider the “imaginative work” of the romance as a process occurring between
the reader and the text, rather than inherent in the text or authorial intent. I deliberately do
not to refer to ‘ideology’ or ideological work (in the manner of Blamires, Cooper and
Knight) as I do not wish to suggest that the romances manifest an ‘inherent’ or coherent
‘belief system’ on the matter of inheritance.92 But I am interested in how the romances
might have been interpreted in given social and political contexts, or appropriated in the
service of a given political agenda or ideology. Where I refer to the romances’ imaginative
work (as opposed to ideological), it is to underline that the romances are liable to speak
differently from, and can be indifferent to, political ideas evident elsewhere in the
medieval record. I have found, on the contrary, that the effect of the disinheritance
narrative is not to sustain a singular doctrine or ideology of rightful inheritance.
At the same time, I wish to signal a distinction from the Marxist sense of ‘the
imaginary’ as a delusion, which is implied in historicist discussions of ideology in the
romances. As James Simpson explains in his chapter in Thinking Medieval Romance,
where Marxist critics ‘dismissed the aesthetic dismissal’ of Middle English romances,
‘they held tenaciously to the charge that romances [do] not think’ and that its imaginative
narratives kept their late-medieval audiences ‘suspended in a zone of thought-
neutralization, in which the interests of one class are made acceptable to another’.93 The
further implication here is that late-medieval readers could not see, or could not
interrogate, a covert political agenda which is clearly visible to modern academic readers.
It is my contention, by contrast, that the romances are conspicuously thought-provoking, if
not by design then certainly in effect, and that late-medieval readers would have been
92 On this definition of ‘ideology’, see Terry Eagleton, Ideology (London: Verso, 1991), p. 107. 93 Simpson, ‘Unthinking Thought: Romance’s Wisdom’, in Thinking Medieval Romance, pp. 36–54 (p. 37). The thrust of Simpson’s argument is that romances’ apparent silence on certain issues constitutes a conscious recognition that some subjects are ‘better not thought about explicitly’ and require more ‘subtle’ and indirect consideration.
38
sensitive to the romances’ interrogative cues: many of which have been passed over in
academic critique in the past and which will be the subject of my analysis.
In practice, I combine close readings of the content and poetic features of the
romances, especially figurative language and imagery, with comparative reference to a
range of non-romance sources and historical scholarship. In making these comparisons, I
aim to reconstruct the connotations of certain language and imagery for readers in late-
medieval England, while prioritising the romances and their imaginative potential to
signify differently than other sources, according to the internal logic of their stories and
associations between them. I use various legal sources to help to construct late-medieval
frames of reference for reading the romances’ treatment of inheritance but bear in mind
that ‘literature’ and ‘the law’ are ‘two distinct discourses’, however mutually influenced.94
As far as possible, the legal citations will not only ‘serve an explanatory function’ but aid
my analysis of the ‘poetic’ employment of ‘legal vocabulary’ and references to legal
forms. I examine the ‘play’ between these ‘two discursive systems’, to signify something
new in the ‘fictional world’ of the poem.95
By studying inheritance in Middle English romances, I build on Noël James
Menuge’s study of wardship in the genre, wardship being an important aspect (or
‘incident’, to use the legal parlance) of inheritance. But where Menuge proposes that the
romances allow us to read ‘more nearly into the lives of medieval wards’ I will read the
romances’ presentation of inheritance as a product of imaginative discourse.96 While it
94 Richard Firth Green, A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), p. xv (italics in the original). 95 Maura Nolan, ‘“Acquiteth yow now”: Textual Contradiction and Legal Discourse in the Man of Law’s Introduction’, in The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Medieval England, ed. Emily Steiner and Candace Barrington (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2002), pp. 136–53 (pp. 137, 146–47). 96 Noël James Menuge, Medieval English Wardship in Romance and Law (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001), p. 23.
39
may obliquely represent the legal or social realities of inheritance in late-medieval
England, the meaning of (dis)inheritance in the romances is not circumscribed by records
of lived experience. In so far as the romances work towards their own definitions of
rightful heirship and inheritance, they work within what Andreea Boboc has elsewhere
called the ‘jurisdiction [of] the literary imagination’.97
At this point, however, I wish to draw out some features of late-medieval
inheritance culture which have not been apparent thus far, but which ought to influence
how we interpret the romances’ imaginative effects for their late-medieval readers. Firstly,
in light of historical work on inheritance practices in medieval England and France,
beyond Duby, it seems less likely that the romances should be inherently committed to
resolving concerns about primogeniture. Indeed, its notional status as the formative
cultural phenomenon of the romance genre cannot pass without question. Primogeniture
did not effectively disinherit the younger sons of the French nobility in the ‘harsh’ way
that Duby imagined, nor did ‘younger sons’ in medieval England have to ‘go a-begging’.98
Historians have revised the earlier view that ‘primogeniture [was] securely enthroned’ in
England by the end of the fourteenth century.99
While the ‘Common Law’s interpreters from Glanvill onwards preached
primogeniture in strong terms’, customarily an elder sibling would inherit the greatest
share of the patrimony – the hereditary lands – and the younger siblings the smaller shares
97 Andreea D. Boboc, ed., ‘Introduction’, to Theorising Legal Personhood in Late Medieval England (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), pp. 1–28 (p. 2). 98 David Crouch, ‘The Historian, Lineage and Heraldry, 1050–1250’, in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, ed. Peter Coss and Maurice Keen (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2002), pp. 17–38 (p. 27); J. C. Holt, ‘Politics and Property in Early Medieval England’, Past & Present, 57 (1972), 3–52 (p. 12). 99 Simon Payling, ‘The Politics of Family: Late Medieval Marriage Contracts’, in The McFarlane Legacy: Studies in Late Medieval Politics and Society, ed. Richard Britnell and A. J. Pollard (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1995), pp. 21–47 (p. 32).
40
and secondary titles.100 Forced primogeniture only applied to hereditary titles. Lands
acquired during the holder’s lifetime, rather than lands they had inherited, could be
granted to younger offspring.101 The Tale of Gamelyn illustrates this: the hero’s father, Sir
John of Boundes insists, ‘I wil delen my londe after myn owne will’: he bequeaths ‘my
faders heritage’ to his eldest son, while the ‘myddelest sone’ receives ‘fyve plowes of
londe | That I halpe forto gete with my right honde’ and the youngest receives ‘myn other
purchace of londes and ledes’.102 From the thirteenth century onwards, in fact, legal
devices like ‘entails, jointures and enfeoffments’ had provided landholders with ways of
‘getting around [the] restrictions’ of inheritance law, allowing them to ‘designate the heirs
to an estate’ according to their will and enabling some ‘avoidance of primogeniture’.103 By
the fifteenth century, a great deal of formerly hereditary property had been ‘resettled in
more sophisticated tenures’.104
Lords and tenants alike sought to circumvent the ‘customary rules of inheritance’,
creating a complex landscape for inheritance in late-medieval England.105 In an estimated
quarter of all inheritance cases, meanwhile, primogeniture could not be implemented for
lack of a direct heir.106 Though the majority of heirs inherited without incident, inheritance
disputes arose as fifteenth-century common law failed to keep up with ‘contemporary
100 Crouch, ‘The Historian, Lineage and Heraldry’, p. 27. 101 See J. C. Holt, ‘Politics and Property’, p. 12; Glanvill, p. 118. 102 The Tale of Gamelyn, in Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, ed. Stephen Knight and Thomas H. Ohlgren (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997), ll. 56–61. ‘Purchace’ means land acquired rather than inherited. See Gamelyn, note to l. 14 and MED, purchasen, v. 103 Chris Given-Wilson, The English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages, p. 138; Christine Carpenter, ‘England: The Nobility and the Gentry’, in A Companion to Britain in the Later Middle Ages, ed. S. H. Rigby (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), pp. 261–83 (p. 272). 104 Michael Hicks, ed., ‘Introduction’, to The Fifteenth-Century Inquisitions ‘Post Mortem’: A Companion (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2012), pp. 1–24 (pp. 8-10). 105 Bruce M. S. Campbell, ‘England: Land and People’, in Companion to Britain in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 3–25 (p. 18). 106 Hicks, English Political Culture, p. 176 and K. B. McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), pp. 175–76.
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conveyancing’, and complicated settlements created ambiguities.107 A popular fifteenth-
century instructional text, Rules for Purchasing Land, warns those acquiring land by
means other than inheritance to be aware of all those who may have a competing claim.108
But there is no reason to assume, in this complicated legal landscape, that Middle English
romances or their readers ‘fantasized’ (to borrow Lim’s word) about a simpler solution, in
the form of restored or reinforced primogeniture.
While primogeniture remained a legal orthodoxy and customary norm, it was not
necessarily the preferred scenario for landholders. Where historian Stephen Rigby sees a
resurgence of interest in primogeniture in England in the fifteenth century, he speculates
that it was driven by the fathers of daughters in particular. These men were looking for
‘assurance that their sons-in-law would not be disinherited by some future division of their
fathers’ estates’: that is, due to the increasingly common use of entails and enfeoffments to
bypass primogeniture.109 Similarly, Joel Rosenthal observes that while primogeniture was
still usual in the majority of cases, there were significant moves to reform the practice in
the fifteenth century.110
Stability in lordship and landholding was never a long-term reality in late-medieval
England, neither was it universally desirable.111 The non-noble landholders who
107 Hicks, English Political Culture, p. 64. 108 See Rules for Purchasing Land, in Codex Ashmole 61: A Compilation of Popular Middle English Verse, ed. George Shuffelton (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2008). 109 Stephen H. Rigby, English Society in the Later Middle Ages: Class, Status and Gender (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), p. 205. 110 Rosenthal, Patriarchy and Families of Privilege in Fifteenth-Century England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), p. 27. Eventually, the Statute of Wills 1540 made it possible to devise a proportion of heritable property by will, before the Tenures Abolition Act 1660 reduced the amount of land held in knight’s service and therefore regarded as compulsorily heritable. Primogeniture remained the default practice for the whole property of anyone dying intestate, however, until the Administration of Estates Act 1925. The Act legislated for the rights of the spouse of a person dying intestate and determined that offspring should inherit equal shares, effectively abolishing primogeniture as the de facto law of inheritance. See Administration of Estates Act 1925 c. 23 (15 and 16 Geo. 5) <http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo5/15-16/23/contents> [accessed 4 Dec 2019]. 111 See Peter Fleming, ‘Politics’, in Gentry Culture, pp. 50–62 (esp. p. 58).
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comprised the readership for the Middle English romances had much to gain from the
mobility of ordinarily heritable land, through various forms of loss and acquisition. The
political economy commonly called ‘bastard feudalism’ created ‘something like a market
for lordship’ in England in the fifteenth century, in which lords relied upon the support of
the far more numerous local gentry and officials to maintain their holdings.112 Rivalries
between noble land magnates gave gentry supporters the opportunity for significant
political or financial reward. There are ‘two simultaneous trends at work’ in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, Simon Payling writes: one is the aggregation of land by noble
families who ‘survived in the male line over several generations’ and the other is the ‘rate
of failure’ coupled with the ‘land market’, which saw the ‘conversion of non-landed
wealth into land’ and ‘upward mobility into the landed class’.113
So, where a noble romance reader may have sought (and perhaps found)
affirmation of primogeniture and ‘dynastic stability’ in the texts, the sociopolitical
situation of gentry readers suggests an alternative interpretation. It is a view which has not
yet been brought to bear on scholarship interested in inheritance in the romances, but
which is evident in the texts themselves: namely, that dynastic instability also creates
opportunity. My close readings of inheritance in Bevis, Havelok, Eglamour, Octavian,
Tryamour and Torrent will offer a counterpoint to the view that romances manifest an
‘ideology of primogeniture’ – or work ‘on behalf of an ideology of dynasty’ – and aim to
resolve ‘crises of succession’.114 In contrast, I argue that dynastic instability can be read as
112 Fleming, ‘Politics’, p. 58–60. The concept of ‘bastard feudalism’ has been revised since McFarlane’s early and influential definition, but the term is still widely used. See K. B. McFarlane, ‘Bastard Feudalism’, in England in the Fifteenth Century: Collected Essays (London: The Hambledon Press, 1981; first published 1945), pp. 23–44; P. R. Coss, ‘Bastard Feudalism Revisited’, Past and Present, 125 (1989), 27–64; Maurice Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 12-13; Michael Hicks, ‘Bastard Feudalism’, in English Political Culture, pp. 141–63; Simpson, Land Law, p. 5. 113 Simon Payling, ‘Social Mobility, Demographic Change, and Landed Society in Late Medieval England’, Economic History Review, 45:1 (1992), 72–73 (p. 72). 114 Quoting Cooper, Blamires and Radulescu – as cited above.
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the narrative object of these romances, which is sustained rather than resolved in the
endings of the stories, and which revolves around the idea of disinheritance.
Texts
The six romances comprising the main focus of my analysis will be called disinheritance
romances, for ease of reference. But this is a heuristic, not a definitive category, intended
to aid my analysis of the imaginative effects of a recurrent pattern in the presentation of
inheritance among Middle English romances. Romance scholarship has attempted to
define the boundaries of the genre in various ways, but consensus has grown for a content-
based approach that resists establishing definitive boundaries.115 Treating the Middle
English romances, as such, as a ‘family-resemblance’ category means that romances can
be identified by their similarities to each other, rather than according to a certain hierarchy
of features.116 My ‘disinheritance romances’ are a kind of ‘family-resemblance’ group,
brought together on the basis of narrative similarities rather than fixed criteria. It can be
considered as one of the many ‘subgroups’, in romance scholarship, which indicate ‘the
mutually determining oppositions’ that constitute the genre’s ‘field of play’ rather than
anatomising it.117
115 For an overview of the debate and various approaches see Yin Liu, ‘Middle English Romance as Prototype Genre’, The Chaucer Review, 40:4 (2006), 335–53 and Melissa Furrow, Expectations of Romance (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2009), p. 57. 116 The idea of the ‘family-resemblance’ category is borrowed from Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte, ed. Hacker and Schulte (Wiley-Blackwell, 2004; first published as Philosophische Untersuchungen, 1953), pp. 67–66. Critics explicitly adopting this approach include Cooper, English Romance, p. 222; Putter and Gilbert, ‘Introduction’, Spirit, p. 2; Matthew Giancarlo, ‘Speculative Genealogies’, in Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Middle English, pp. 352–68 (p. 353). In contrast, K. S. Whetter, Understanding Genre and Medieval Romance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008) argues for a content-based understanding of genre which is definitive: in short, romances are about, ‘love, ladies, adventure and [a] happy ending’ (p. 95). 117 Chism, ‘Romance’, p. 67.
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Describing the genre on the basis of resemblance means also that the exemplary
romances are not those that meet with certain formal standards, nor necessarily those
which are in any way extraordinary, but those which are the most typical. Bevis, for
example, is said to be the ‘quintessential’ romance of ‘the displaced youth’, if ‘not the
original’ version.118 McDonald and Little declare Torrent to be ‘exemplary’ not because it
is the ‘best’ (according to whatever evaluative measures) but because it is ‘chock full’ of
‘generic accoutrement’: that is to say, it includes all of the things that make romance
recognisable as romance.119 This is also pertinent to Eglamour, given that it is Torrent’s
nearest analogue. Yin Liu’s experimental application of ‘prototype’ theory to the Middle
English romance genre offers an evidence-based way of identifying the romances that
might have been considered ‘most typical of the genre’ by late-medieval readers. Liu
counts the number of references to romances by title, in various medieval texts, and
combines these with the number of extant manuscripts for each romance.120 The result is a
list with Bevis in first place and Octavian eighth.121 It suggests the prominence of these
texts in a late-medieval reader’s imaginative frame of reference.
My grouping of disinheritance romances sets aside some of the more conventional
critical subdivisions among them and brings together texts which are rarely in close
conversation, such as Havelok and Eglamour. Havelok and Bevis, on the other hand, have
traditionally been brought together as ‘hero-alone’, ‘legendary English hero’, and ‘matter
of England’ romances, with reference to their Anglo-Norman antecedents.122 Havelok has
118 Andrew King, ‘Romance’, in A Companion to Fifteenth-Century English Poetry, ed. Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013), pp. 187–98 (p. 190). 119 McDonald and Little, ‘Introduction’, Thinking Medieval Romance, p. 2; Wade, ed., ‘Introduction’, to Torrent, available via METS [accessed 4 Dec 2019], paragraph 1. 120 The sources range from Cursor Mundi (c. 1300) to the Laud Troy Book (c. 1400) and their mentions of romances ‘appear in different contexts and for different reasons’. Liu, ‘Prototype Genre’, p. 340. 121 Liu, ‘Prototype Genre’, pp. 342, 343. 122 Knight, ‘Social Function’, p. 111; Harriet Hudson, ed., ‘General Introduction’, to Four Middle English Romances, available via METS [accessed 4 Dec 2019], paragraph 1; Raluca Radulescu, ‘Genre and
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often been treated singly in the past, and at greater length than many other romances,
because of its actual or perceived idiosyncrasies compared to other romances, such as the
hero’s association with British chronicle tradition and the romance’s attention to ‘non-
courtly characters, town life, labor and money’.123 Critics have debated its generic
influences;124 whether it analogises historical events or mythologises a British past;125
whether it presents a theocratic model of kingship or is essentially a romance ‘of the
law’.126 Several studies consider whether the romance’s details of lower class life suggest
a non-noble audience or whether it is a ‘mirror for princes’, telling us ‘not so much what
the lower classes thought [as] what the upper classes liked to think the lower classes
thought of them’.127
Classification’, in A Companion to Medieval Popular Romance, pp. 31–48 (p. 38). For the ‘matter of England’ category see Donald Sands, Middle English Verse Romance (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1986), pp. 4–5 and W. R. J. Barron, English Medieval Romance (London: Longman, 1987), pp. 63–88. Rosalind Field and others have criticised the ‘matter of England’ classification as an anachronistic ‘modern construct’: Field, ‘The Curious History of the Matter of England’, in Boundaries in Medieval Romance, ed. Neil Cartlidge (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 29–42; Robert Rouse, The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England in Middle English Romance (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005), p. 52; Radulescu, ‘Genre and Classification’, p. 35. 123 Roy Michael Liuzza, ‘Representation and Readership in the ME Havelok’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 93 (1994), 504–19 (p. 504). The earliest appearance of the hero ‘Havelok’ in medieval literature is in Geoffrey Gaimar’s Estoire des Angleis (c. 1150). On the relationship between Havelok and other sources, see G. V. Smithers, ed., ‘Introduction’, to Havelok (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), pp. i-lxxxiii and Scott Kleinman, ‘The Legend of Havelok the Dane in the Historiography of East Anglia’, Studies in Philology, 100:3 (2003), 245–77. 124 Nancy Mason Bradbury, ‘The Traditional Origins of Havelok the Dane’, Studies in Philology, 90 (1993), 115-42; K. S. Whetter, ‘Gest and Vita, Folktale and Romance in Havelok’, Parergon, 20:2 (2003), 21–46. 125 Christopher Stuart, ‘Havelok the Dane and Edward I in the 1290s’, Studies in Philology, 93:4 (1996), 349–64; Dominique Battles, ‘Reconquering England for the English in Havelok the Dane’, The Chaucer Review, 47:2 (2012), 187–205. 126 Sheila Delaney and Vahan Ishkanian, ‘Theocratic and Contractual Kingship in Havelok the Dane’, Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 22 (1974), 290–302; Kimberly K. Bell, ‘Resituating Romance: The Dialectics of Sanctity in MS Laud Misc. 108’s Havelok the Dane and Royal Vitae’, Parergon, 25:1 (2008), 27–51; Crane, Insular Romance, p. 48. 127 J. Halverson, ‘Havelok the Dane and Society’, The Chaucer Review, 6 (1971), 142–51; David Staines, ‘Havelok the Dane: A Thirteenth-Century Handbook for Princes’, Speculum, 51 (1976), 602–23; Robert Levine, ‘Who Composed Havelok for Whom?’, Yearbook of English Studies, 22 (1992), 95–104; John C. Hirsch, ‘Havelok 2933: A Problem in Medieval Literary History’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 78 (1977), 339–49 (p. 343).
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This same depth of critical enquiry has not been afforded to many of the others I
will analyse in this thesis, but reading Havelok alongside romances like Octavian and
Eglamour is illuminating. Firstly, it reminds us that Havelok is not so different, in content,
from its fellow romances: all six of my texts possess inheritance narratives, of course, but
even the scenes of urban labour in Havelok, which have been considered unusual, are
comparable to those of mercantile apprenticeship in Octavian.128 In turn, the other
disinheritance romances have much to offer by way of answer to the critical questions
asked of Havelok, especially regarding the nature of narrative allusions to medieval
English political theory and practice.129 In Chapter 3, for instance, my analysis of witness
testimony in Octavian and others finds potential parallels with the medieval legal process
of ‘recognition’. My thesis contends that disinheritance and rightful heirship are the
central topoi of Havelok: but rather than articulating existing medieval political theories, it
shares with the other romances an unorthodox, imaginative treatment of these issues.
128 Glenn Wright and others have noted that the northern Octavian is ‘critical’ of its main mercantile figure, Clement (adoptive father to one of emperor Octavian’s estranged sons), but the southern version demonstrates ‘considerable sympathy’. See Wright, ‘The Fabliau Ethos in the French and English Octavian Romances’, Modern Philology, 102:3 (2005), 478–500 (p. 482) and Megan G. Leitch, ‘Of his ffader spak he no thing’: Family Resemblance and Anxiety of Influence in Fifteenth-Century Prose Romance’, in Medieval into Renaissance: Essays for Helen Cooper, ed. Andrew King and Matthew Woodcock (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2016), pp. 55–72 (p. 61). 129 Sheila Delaney argues that the main critical debates surrounding Havelok cohere around the question of the ‘nature of kingship’. Sheila Delaney, Medieval Literary Politics: Shapes of Ideology (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1990), p. 61. Other examples of Havelok criticism drawing on political and economic theoretical frameworks, both medieval and modern, are: Liam O. Purdon, ‘The Rite of Vassalage in Havelok the Dane’, Medievalia et Humanistica, 20 (1993), 25–39; Rodger I. Wilkie, ‘Re-Capitating the Body Politic: The Overthrow of Tyrants in Havelok the Dane’, Neophilologus, 94:1 (2010), 139–50; Aaron Hostetter, ‘Food, Sovereignty, and Social Order in Havelok the Dane’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 110:1 (2011), 53–77; Alexis Kellner Becker, ‘Sustainability Romance: Havelok the Dane’s Political Ecology’, in New Medieval Literatures, 16, ed. Laura Ashe, Wendy Scase and David Lawton (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2016), pp. 83–108. Emma O’Loughlin Bérat has recently revisited the idea of the ‘king’s body’ (citing Kantorowicz) in Havelok, focusing instead on ‘queenship’. Bérat, ‘Constructions of Queenship: Envisioning Women’s Sovereignty in Havelok’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 118:2 (2019), 234–51.
47
Octavian, Eglamour, Tryamour and Torrent have been considered ‘family
romances’, a defining feature being the portrayal of families separated and reunited.130
Such romances are also associated with the ‘accused queen’ or ‘calumniated queen’ trope,
in which a queen is falsely accused and exiled; sometimes with her offspring, as is the
case in Octavian and Tryamour.131 Named for canonical literary examples, they are
classed as ‘Eustace-Constance-Florence-Griselda legends’ in MWME, and elsewhere as
‘Constance-sagas’ or ‘Eustace-sagas’.132 But the phrase ‘family romance’ can be applied
to Middle English romances far more generally, too, as Matthew Giancarlo notes.133 It
evokes the ‘family-resemblance’ method of describing the genre and the ‘domestic’
setting in which it is likely that they were read, since they survive in manuscript
130 Geraldine Heng, Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), p. 29; Florschuetz, ‘Women’s Secrets’, pp. 236–37; Pearsall, ‘A Prefatory Essay’, p. 12; Radulescu, ‘Genre’, pp. 42–45; Hudson, ‘General Introduction’, Four Middle English Romances, paragraph 1. 131 ‘Accused queen’ is also one of the searchable ‘keywords’ in DMER. For discussions of the trope in medieval romances, see A. B. Gough, The Constance Saga (Berlin: Mayer & Muller, 1902); Margaret Schlauch, Chaucer’s Constance and Accused Queens (New York: New York University Press, 1927); Peggy McCracken, The Romance of Adultery: Queenship and Sexual Transgression in Old French Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998); Nancy Black, Medieval Narratives of Accused Queens (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 2003). 132 Derek Pearsall, ‘A Prefatory Essay’, p. 12; Hudson, ‘General Introduction’, paragraph 2. The legend of St Eustace features family separation and Sir Isumbras is an analogous romance; Griselda is long-suffering wife and mother deprived of her children, in Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale. The legend of Constance is told in Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale and John Gower’s Confessio Amantis, but among the anonymous Middle English romances, Emare is its closest analogue. The story of ‘Florence’ (heroine of Le Bone Florence of Rome) similarly features a female protagonist suffering a litany of abuses, of which ‘calumnation’ is just one. See Hudson, ed., ‘Introduction’, to Sir Isumbras, available via METS [accessed 4 Dec 2019] and Anne Laskaya and Eve Salisbury, eds, ‘Introduction’, to Emare, available via METS [accessed 4 Dec 2019], paragraph 2. 133 Giancarlo, ‘Speculative Genealogies’, p. 359. Occasionally the phrase is used in its Freudian sense, referring to family psychodrama, as in Cheryl Colopy, ‘Sir Degaré: A Fairy Tale Oedipus’, Pacific Coast Philology, 17:1/2 (1982), 31–39. For the original use, see Sigmund Freud, ‘Family Romances’, in Collected Papers, 5 vols, vol. 5, ed. James Strachey (New York: Basic Books, 1959), pp. 74–78. Geraldine Heng argues in favour of this definition in Empires of Magic, p. 185.
48
miscellanies of the type sometimes called household books, alongside hagiography and
housekeeping or husbandry texts.134
The distinction between so-called ‘matter of England’ and ‘family’ romances
proves an arbitrary one in my group. All six romances include instances of family
separation and reunion, with narrative attention dispersed among family members in Bevis
as much as in Octavian. Likewise, while Bevis is ostensibly ‘of Hampton’, the majority of
the action of Bevis takes place anywhere other than England: as Robert Rouse observes,
Bevis is ‘strange and unsettling’ as an ‘English knight’.135 In turn, while the ‘family
romances’ have continental European and Middle Eastern settings and characters, only
Octavian has a continental literary analogue: giving Eglamour, Tryamour and Torrent a
different claim on the classification of “English romance” from that of Bevis or Havelok.
Without putting each romance’s individual distinctions aside, I treat the six romances as a
coherent group insofar as their portrayal of disinheritance goes.
Thirteen manuscripts (including some fragments), dating from c. 1300 to c. 1500,
account for all the surviving Middle English manuscript versions of Bevis, Havelok,
Eglamour, Octavian, Tryamour and Torrent collectively. I have taken the year 1500 as the
cut-off date for my study, because it represents the approximate terminus for the wide
circulation of the disinheritance romances in manuscript form and thus provides a
necessary limit on the scope of the project. It is also the case that the advent of print spells
the beginning of variations to the romances’ form and content, as they are extended or
134 Julia Boffey, ‘Bodleian Library, MS Arch. Selden. B. 24 and Definitions of the “Household Book”’, in The English Medieval Book: Studies in Memory of Jeremy Griffiths, ed. A. S. G. Edwards, Vincent Gillespie and Ralph Hanna (London: British Library, 2000), pp. 125–34. 135 Robert Rouse, ‘For King and Country? The Tension between National and Regional Identities in Sir Bevis of Hampton’, in Sir Bevis of Hampton in Literary Tradition, ed. Jennifer Fellows and Ivana Djordjević (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 114–26 (p. 116).
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abridged and the verse supplanted by prose,136 and they begin to circulate in a new reader
market. As such, I exclude Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 261 (1564), which
contains a copy of Eglamour, and London, British Library, MS Additional 27879
(otherwise known as the Percy Folio, c. 1650), which contains Eglamour and Tryamour,
since both postdate print versions.
The remaining manuscripts are mostly later than 1400 and concentrated towards
the middle of the fifteenth century, which is typical for all surviving Middle English
romance manuscripts.137 The thirteen witnesses include several of the most compendious
romance manuscripts to have survived to the present, as well as the earliest (Oxford,
Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, containing Havelok) and one of the latest
(Manchester, Chetham’s Library, MS 8009, containing Bevis and Torrent).138 The
disinheritance romances are found together in manuscripts in a number of instances: most
striking is the pairing of Octavian with Eglamour, so that the former is never found
without the latter.139 This suggests a possible association between the texts in the minds of
manuscript compilers and late-medieval readers, who might have been prompted to
compare the stories.
Manuscript coincidences are not definitive in the thesis, however: hence the
exclusion of King Horn from my main group. Although it is certainly a romance about
disinheritance and appears alongside Havelok in Laud Misc. 108, its narrative diverges in
some significant ways. As Lim has also noted, the circumstances in which Horn is
136 Cooper connects the change in form to the changes in content, in Cooper, ‘The Strange History of Valentine and Orson’, in Tradition and Transformation in Medieval Romance, ed. Rosalind Field (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999), pp. 163–58. See Cooper’s index to English Romance (pp. 409–31) and DMER for lists of post-medieval adaptations of the romances and early print editions. 137 See my list of manuscripts (p. 230) and DMER. 138 Auchinleck, Egerton 2862, Cambridge Ff.2.38, Lincoln 91 and Cotton Caligula A.ii are notable romance compendia. 139 See my table of romances and manuscripts (p. 234).
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disinherited ‘differ considerably’ from those in Havelok and Bevis.140 In particular, Horn
is disinherited as a teenager, where others are infants; Horn’s disinheritance is the
incidental result of the conquest of his father’s lands, where others are deliberately
disinherited in the course of intrafamilial conflicts; Horn is exiled with a group of friends
and peers, where others are more isolated and in some cases entirely disconnected from
the family and social milieu into which they were born. Horn is peripheral in my analysis,
a point of comparison rather than a main focus, as a different kind of disinheritance
narrative.
Most of the manuscripts have been associated with gentry or merchant owners in
the fifteenth century. Though the provenance of Laud Misc. 108 is uncertain, ownership
marks appear to place the manuscript in the possession of Henry Perveys, a London draper
(fl. 1434–76).141 Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Advocates 19.2.1 (also
known as the Auchinleck manuscript) is variously thought to have been produced for an
aspirational mercantile market in London, for a noble or gentry family, or possibly with a
female reader in mind.142 A ‘family’ readership is surmised from the ‘frequent focus on
140 Lim, ‘In the Name of the (Dead) Father’, p. 40. Lim uses the word ‘dispossessed’, rather than ‘disinheritance’. 141 For provenance, see the Bodleian catalogue entry by Matthew Holford (March 2018) <https://medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/manuscript_6917> [accessed 4 Dec 2019]. For an analysis of the ‘Henrico Perueys’ signature and attribution to Henry Perveys, London draper (fl. 1434–76), see Christina M. Fitzgerald, ‘Miscellaneous Masculinities and a Possible Fifteenth-Century Owner of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108’, in The Texts and Contexts of Oxford, Bodlieian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108: The Shaping of English Vernacular Narrative, ed. Kimberly Bell and Julie Nelson Couch (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 87–113. 142 Laura Hibbard Loomis, ‘The Auchinleck Manuscript and a Possible London Bookshop of 1330–1340’, PMLA, 57 (1942), 595–627; Derek Pearsall and I. C. Cunningham, eds, ‘Introduction’, to The Auchinleck Manuscript (London: Scolar Press, 1977), pp. i–xxiv (p. viii); Thorlac Turville-Petre, England the Nation: Language, Literature and National Identity, 1290–1340 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 138; Phillipa Hardman, ‘Domestic Learning and Teaching: Investigating Evidence for the Role of “Household Miscellanies” in Late Medieval England’, in Women and Writing, c. 1340–c. 1650: The Domestication of Print Culture, ed. Anne Lawrence-Mathers and Phillipa Hardman (Woodbridge and Rochester: Boydell & Brewer, 2010), pp. 15–33 (pp. 19–20).
51
family relationships and lineage’ in the romances of the manuscript as well as, more
recently, its ‘biblical’ material: this combination of literature was, Cathy Hume suggests,
meant to be morally ‘edifying’ for a family audience.143
A female readership has, at times, been inferred from the contents of Naples,
Biblioteca Nazionale, MS XIII.B.29 and Chetham’s 8009, otherwise more generally
associated with the ‘London book market’ and ‘mercantile ownership’.144 Four belong to
the nine compilations which Michael Johnston identifies as ‘gentry manuscripts’: London,
British Library, MS Egerton 2862, Cambridge, Cambridge University, MS Ff.2.38,
Lincoln, Lincoln Cathedral, MS 91 and London, British Library, MS Cotton Caligula
A.ii.145 The Egerton manuscript is thought to have been owned by a gentry family or
minor aristocracy in the fifteenth century, while Cambridge Ff.2.38 is aligned with a
‘gentry’ or ‘middle-class household’.146 Lincoln 91 is one of two surviving manuscripts
143 Linda Olson, ‘Romancing the Book: Manuscripts for “Euerich Inglische”’, in Opening Up Middle English Manuscripts: Literary and Visual Approaches, ed. Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Maidie Hilmo and Linda Olson (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012), pp. 95–151 (pp. 101–16); Cathy Hume, ‘The Auchinleck Adam and Eve: An Exemplary Family Story’, in The Auchinleck Manuscript: New Perspectives, ed. Susanna Fein (Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2016), pp. 36–51 (p. 37). 144 James Weldon, ‘The Naples Manuscript and the Case for a Female Readership’, Neophilolgus, 93:4 (2009), 703–22; Rhiannon Purdie, ‘Sexing the Manuscript: The Case for Female Ownership of MS Chetham 8009’, Neophilologus, 82:1 (1998), 139–48; Jordi Sánchez-Martí, ‘Reconstructing the Audiences of the Middle English Versions of Ipomadon’, Studies in Philology, 103:2 (2006), 153–77 (p. 168); James Wade, ‘Romance, Affect, and Ethical Thinking in a Fifteenth-Century Household Book: Chetham’s Library, MS 8009’, New Medieval Literatures, 15 (2013), 255-83; Jordi Sánchez-Martí, ‘Manchester, Chetham’s Library MS 8009 (Mun.A.6.31): A Codicological Description’, Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, 47 (2003), 129–54. 145 Johnston, Romance and the Gentry, pp. 120–21. 146 Johnston, Romance and the Gentry, pp. 110–11, 120–21. Frances McSparran and P. R. Robinson, eds, ‘Introduction’, to Cambridge University Library MS Ff.2.38 (London: Scolar Press, 1979), pp. i–xxvii (p. vii). Elsewhere, McSparran does not refer to the audience for Cambridge Ff.2.38 as a socioeconomic group but simply a ‘household’ who would have found the material both diverting and ‘didactic’ (akin to Cathy Hume’s view of Auchinleck, cited above). McSparran, ed., ‘General Introduction’, to Octovian Imperator (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1979), pp. 8–9 (p. 8).
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known to have been compiled and owned by Robert Thornton, a gentry landowner in
Yorkshire.147
All six of the romances have been edited in the last few decades, with new editions
of Torrent and Bevis in the last few years.148 Critics have called for both romances to be
treated more prominently in romance scholarship, Torrent because of its exemplary
content and Bevis because of its wide circulation in Europe and longevity throughout the
medieval period and beyond.149 There are eight extant manuscripts of the Middle English
Bevis and variations on the story remained in circulation in print in England until the early
eighteenth century, latterly in cheap ‘chapbook’ form.150 These chapbook editions had
barely passed out of circulation when the manuscript romances were rediscovered by
antiquarian scholars in the later 1700s.151 Though my own study is limited to pre-1500
147 The other is London, British Library, MS Additional 31042 (c. 1450) which contains four romances with a crusades theme: Duke Roland and Sir Otuel of Spain, Richard Coeur de Lion, Siege of Jerusalem and Siege of Milan. See Robert Thornton and His Books: Essays on the Lincoln and London Thornton Manuscripts, ed. Susanna Fein and Michael Johnston (Woodbridge and Rochester: Boydell & Brewer, 2014). See also Andrew King, ‘Romance’ p. 189. 148 Both James Wade’s edition of Torrent and Jennifer Fellows’s facing-page edition of the Cambridge and Naples Bevis were published in 2017. See my abbreviations and bibliography. 149 Jennifer Fellows and Ivana Djordjević, eds, ‘Introduction’, to Sir Bevis of Hampton in Literary Tradition, pp. 1–8. 150 I exclude Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce Fragm. E.13, although given as a manuscript in DMER, since it is actually a two-leaf fragment of an early imprint, c. 1500. See the Bodleian Library incunables catalogue <http://incunables.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/record/B-591> [accessed 4 Dec 2019]. See also Cooper, English Romance, p. 413; Jennifer Fellows, ‘The Middle English and Renaissance Bevis: A Textual Survey’, in Sir Bevis of Hampton in Literary Tradition, pp. 80–113 (p. 101). Fellows similarly excludes the incunable fragment. 151 Fellows finds that chapbook versions were in circulation until about 1780, although by 1775 the story was ‘“very little known”’ in the words of one printer (Fellows’s italics). William St Clair estimates that the story had ‘died out’ completely within a generation of 1774. Jennifer Fellows, ‘The Middle English and Renaissance Bevis’, p. 101; William St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 350 and 347–49. On the rediscovery of the romances in the eighteenth century, see Arthur Johnston, Enchanted Ground: The Study of Medieval Romance in the Eighteenth Century (London: Athlone Press, 1964); David Matthews, The Making of Middle English, 1765–1910 (London & Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999). For a recent return to this subject, see Monica Santini, The Impetus of Amateur Scholarship: Discussing and Editing Medieval Romances (Bern: Peter Lang, 2010).
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manuscripts, it is worth noting that evidence of later manuscripts or print editions survives
for all the disinheritance romances but Havelok, after 1500. We can infer from this a
relatively widespread familiarity with the material, and the popularity of the texts, at the
turn of the sixteenth century.
If, as Jennifer Fellows and Ivana Djordjević argue, Bevis deserves more attention
for these reasons, then Eglamour also deserves a share. While perhaps not so ‘infrequently
read’ and ‘little discussed’ as in the last decade, scholarship on Eglamour remains
disproportionate to its medieval and early modern prominence.152 There are seven
manuscript witnesses for the Middle English Eglamour, including the Percy Folio and a
sixteenth-century transcription of a print edition, of which there were at least seven.153 The
romance also inspired a 1444 play entitled ‘Eglemour and Degrebelle’.154 Like Bevis,
Eglamour’s character continues to reappear in various guises in postmedieval literature.
One ‘Sir Eglamour’ has a small but instrumental role in Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of
Verona (c. 1590–91), as a ‘gentleman’ who ‘vowed’st pure chastity’ after his own ‘true
love died’ and who befriends the heroine, Julia.155 Another ‘Sir Eglamore’ is the tragic
knight of William Wordsworth’s ‘The Somnambulist’ (1828), inadvertently causing the
death of his lover by wakening her from sleep-walking at the edge of Aira Force.156
Since the Middle English Eglamour remained in print until 1570 at least, we can
reasonably speculate that it was still known when The Two Gentlemen of Verona was
152 Nicholas Perkins, ‘Ekphrasis and Narrative in Emaré and Sir Eglamour of Artois’, in Medieval Romance, Medieval Contexts, ed. Rhiannon Purdie and Michael Cichon, pp. 47–60 (p. 48); Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Of Giants: Sex, Monsters, and the Middle Ages (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), p. 71. 153 For the print editions see DMER. Eve Salisbury and James Weldon have said the same for Lybeaus Desconus, which survives in six manuscripts to Eglamour’s seven. See Salisbury and Weldon, eds, ‘Introduction’, to Lybeaus Desconus, available via METS [accessed 4 Dec 2019], paragraph 20 and note 37. 154 See Cooper’s index to English Romance in Time, pp. 416–17. 155 William Shakepeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, IV. 3. 11, 20–21. 156 William Wordsworth, ‘The Somnambulist’, in The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, 10 vols, vol. 8, ed. Andrew J. George (Boston: Houghton Miffin, 1919), pp. 344–51.
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written and staged.157 By the late seventeenth century there was a ballad of ‘Sir Eglamore’
in circulation, and a version of this ‘song’ was reproduced in Mary Cooper’s The Child’s
New Play-Thing (1742).158 By the early nineteenth century, it is equally possible that
Wordsworth might have drawn the name ‘Eglamour’ from childhood reading, from
Shakespeare, or from encounters with the romance in Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient
Poetry (1765).159 From his own account of the poem’s composition, it seems Wordsworth
invented the story of ‘The Somnambulist’.160 But if he did, it has since passed into local
folklore.161
In Wordsworth’s poem and Shakespeare’s play, the name ‘Eglamour’ seems
intended to evoke typical romance themes of chivalry and (troubled) love. Where
Eglamour seems likely to have been one of the most recognisable Middle English
romances in the late-medieval period, there may be a similar case for the character
‘Eglamour’ in the centuries that follow, as a recognisable romance figure. It may also be
the case, for medieval readers as well as later writers, that ‘Eglamour’ represents an
157 For the probable dates, see the editorial introduction to The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in the Norton edition of the complete works (as given in my abbreviations and bibliography), pp. 83–84. 158 Courage Crowned with Conquest; or, A brief relation, how that valiant knight, and heroick champion Sir Eglamore, bravely fought with, and manfully slew, a terrible, huge, great monstrous dragon. To a pleasant new tune (London: Printed for F. Coles, T. Vere and J. Wright, 1672) available via EEBO [accessed 4 Dec 2019] and The Child’s New Play-Thing (London: Printed for T. Cooper at the Globe in Paternoster Row, 1742), pp. 114–20. See also M. O. Grenby, ‘Chapbooks, Children, and Children’s Literature’, The Library: Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 8:3 (2007), 277–303 (p. 297). 159 See Johnston, Enchanted Ground, pp. 1, 37–38, 177. 160 Wordsworth, ‘Notes on The Somnambulist’, p. 344. 161 Katherine M. Briggs includes ‘Sir Eglamore and the Lady Emma’ as an unattributed folk legend in her Dictionary of British Folk-Tales, but cites Edmund Bogg, who in turn paraphrases the legend and quotes a few stanzas of Wordsworth’s poem, though he does not make it clear that Wordsworth is the author. Katherine M. Briggs, A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language, Part B: Folk Legends, 2 vols, vol. 2 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971), pp. 352–53; Edmund Bogg, A Thousand Miles of Wandering Along the Roman Wall: The Old Border Region, Lakeland and Ribblesdale (Leeds: Bogg & Miles, 1898), p. 144. For a current version of the legend, see ‘Myths and Legends of Eden’ (last updated June 2018), Eden Council & Eden Tourism <http://www.visiteden.co.uk/images/pdfs/MythsandLegends.pdf> [accessed 4 Dec 2019].
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especially English conception of chivalry: while the medieval character is ‘Eglamour of
Artois’, a French knight, he is an English literary invention, for whom there is no direct
French antecedent or analogue. As Eglamour’s story is reshaped in time, we see the
imaginative work of the originary Middle English romance in action, inspiring creative
invention. Retrospectively, this evidence of Eglamour’s postmedieval afterlife might
indicate the growing popularity and influence of the Middle English romance in the
fifteenth century. Affording Eglamour an equal status with Bevis in this thesis, and
analysing aspects of its narrative at length, I hope to contribute to a better understanding
of this important but sometimes critically maligned romance.
Chapters
The thesis is organised into four chapters, each focusing on one of four narrative features
common to the group: the act of disinheritance, accusations of illegitimacy, recognition of
rightful heirship, and regeneration. Though the chapter titles describe something more
than a sequence of narrative events – and I will argue that these features are distributed
throughout the stories – they are also closely associated with certain narrative moments.
As such, the chapters are ordered roughly chronologically, and the final chapter deals
explicitly with the question of endings.
Chapter 1 attends to the beginnings of the romance narratives, where they
introduce the matter of inheritance with the idea of patrilineal primogeniture.
Subsequently, legal institutions such as wardship are exposed as faulty and bound to fail.
Always more than an opening act, disinheritance inflects the ideas of inheritance and
heirship throughout the romances, but important imaginative associations are established
here. In particular, the violent language and imagery surrounding acts of disinheritance
convey the permanent “cutting off” of the heir from his lineage, as he becomes
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figuratively fatherless. Analysing scenes of bloodshed, I consider the effects of an
imaginative association between blood and disinheritance, not least in its symbolic
allusion to rebirth. I draw on studies of medieval memory theory to show how bloody
severance becomes a ‘memory-image’ for disinheritance.162
Having drawn attention to the disinherited heirs’ expulsion from biological
lineages, Chapters 2 and 3 argue that the romances cultivate ambiguity and uncertainty
about what constitutes legitimate heirship. Chapter 2 focuses on accusations of
illegitimacy in the romances, finding that the texts exploit judicial conflicts between
medieval common law and ecclesiastical law on the matter of legitimacy. In effect, the
elliptical narration sustains the implicit illegitimacy of heroes whose bastardy the romance
narrators otherwise appear to deny. The signs of an illegitimacy trope emerge through a
comparative reading of Lybeaus Desconus, which itself demonstrates that literary
illegitimacy can mean something other than its legal definitions. This is especially true
where the idea of illegitimacy comes into contact with theological ideas about knowing
and self-knowledge, namely the notion that the ‘unknowing’ of worldly things (as in the
Cloud of Unknowing) delivers spiritual knowledge or truth. I will suggest that the
romances’ allusions to a quasi-theological, non-empiricist epistemology, through the
figure of the fair unknown, underwrites the paradoxical idea of illegitimate-yet-rightful
heirship.
In Chapter 3, I analyse forms of ‘recognition’, exploring the extents to which the
romances include or excise the legal bureaucracy associated with inheritance in late-
medieval practice, and the political implications of the law’s presence or absence.
Building on the observations made in Chapter 2, about the significance of twin births in
162 Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008; first published 1990), pp. 19, 27.
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the context of disputed legitimacy, Chapter 3 includes further examples of the ways in
which twin-heirs conspicuously challenge the idea of the one rightful heir, with reference
to medieval legal cases and wider literary contexts. As in Chapter 2, I find that the
romances sustain a distinction between lawful and rightful claims to inheritance. The texts
can be seen to express a definition of ‘recognition’ found in both medieval law and post-
medieval philosophy: one that relies on consensus and not inherent qualities. But internal
consistencies in the romances, with regard to ‘recognition’, continue to invite an
interrogative mode of engagement with the matter of rightful heirship.
In the final chapter, I draw attention to the complexity of the romances’ endings,
arguing that the endings do not provide a simple re-establishment of former order, but
represent the culmination of the stories’ movement towards uncertainty, as set out in
Chapters 1 to 3. The endings underscore the romances’ demotion of birthright in favour of
merit and luck, as an indicator of rightful inheritance, while inheritances are not just
reclaimed, but won and found and given away. With reference to the political model that
Lee Edelman calls ‘reproductive futurism’, I demonstrate how the depiction of adoption in
the romances provides a counterpoint to the privileged status that biological lineage
evidently holds elsewhere in late-medieval inheritance culture.163
While the thesis begins, in Chapter 1, by attending to the ostensibly destructive
aspects of disinheritance, by Chapter 4 it becomes clear that disinheritance is also a
productive force: both in the generation of the story and in terms of the imagined political,
economic and social outcomes for the romances’ disinherited heirs. In the conclusion, I
suggest that the findings of the thesis ought to change long-held assumptions about the
significance of romance inheritance narratives in wider medieval culture, and especially
163 Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), p. 17.
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how we interpret instances when romance material is invoked elsewhere. Taking the
‘eagle and child’ legend of the Stanley family as a case study, I demonstrate how the
romances’ idea of disinheritance, as delineated in the thesis, provides a new and coherent
interpretation of the political motives behind the family’s appropriation of a romance
motif. The conclusion ends by setting out new possibilities for further research.
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Chapter 1
Disinheritance
The disinheritance romances commonly begin with a father hoping to secure the
transference of his estates to an heir ‘of his bodi’ (his biological offspring), according
to primogeniture (Havelok, l. 110).1 The presentation varies. Octavian and
Tryamour, for example, depict landholding fathers anxious that they have not yet
produced an heir. In Tryamour, King Ardus and Queen Margaret lament that ‘no
chylde come tham betwene’, mirroring the emperor and empress in Octavian,
married ‘seven yeres’, ‘bot child togedir had thay none’ (Tryamour, l. 29; NO, ll. 1–
24). The southern Octavian adds an account of the emperor before marriage, urged
by his counsellors to choose a wife to ‘get[e] hym an eyr’ (SO, l. 34).
For Matthew Giancarlo, the narrative premise of Octavian is an example of
the Middle English romances’ preoccupation with genealogy and lineage, their
thoughts ‘always on a child’.2 That said, the ‘family romance’ classification has
perhaps led to an over-emphasis in romance criticism on the biological-familial
relationships portrayed in the texts, at the expense of the economic dimensions of
relationships defined by inheritance. Florschuetz’s essay on Octavian, for instance,
does not name disinheritance as a theme in the romance but understands the
illegitimacy allegation there as a threat to ‘valued bloodlines’.3 The economic
definition of inheritance (i.e., land) is tacitly made secondary to genealogy or
1 The phrase, ‘of his body’ is also a legal formula, used extensively in charters and wills. For an example, see ‘Roger Flore (or Flower), Esq., of London, and Oakham, Rutlandshire, 1424–5’, in Fifty Earliest English Wills in the Court of Probate, London: A. D. 1387–1439; with a priest’s of 1454, ed. Frederick J. Furnivall (London, New York and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1964), pp. 56–64 (esp. pp. 60–61). Also published online by the University of Michigan Humanities Text Initiative (1999) <http://name.umdl.umich.edu/EEWills> [accessed 4 Dec 2019]. 2 Giancarlo, ‘Speculative Genealogies’, p. 355. 3 Florschuetz, ‘Women’s Secrets’, p. 236, n. 2.
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lineage. In her influential essay, ‘Marriage, Family, Intimacy’, Felicity Riddy notes
the medieval economic definition of family as a ‘household’, as encompassing non-
blood relations; but the essay focuses on the depiction of ‘fathers, sons and
husbands’. Riddy argues that the texts favour the idea of ‘family as lineage’.4
The idea that lineage and inheritance (paralleled with genealogy and property
rights) are coterminous is drawn from the law of primogeniture; but it is important to
recall that, for late-medieval readers, mentions of ‘heritage’ and ‘heirs’ referred to
land ownership before anything else. In Octavian and Tryamour, the narrators clearly
qualify children in terms of heirship:
A child to gete betwene them two
That ther heyre myght bee. (Tryamour, ll. 35–36)
In the northern Octavian, the longed-for child is, more precisely, someone: ‘[t]hat
after tham thair land moghte welde’ (NO, l. 34). In these examples, the child and heir
are one and the same, but the emphasis is on heirship: the subsequent narrative is not
simply one of familial separation or lost children, but of disinheritance and lost heirs.
Nor are these opening scenarios indicative of the romances’ final position on the
issue, since disinheritance raises the question of whether lineage and inheritance are
truly equivalent. To revise Giancarlo’s statement on the romances’ thematic
preoccupations: we might say that their thoughts are always on an heir.
This is not to dispense with the child as a literary figure, altogether. Allan
Mitchell has persuasively argued that the child in medieval literature is a figure
4 Riddy, p. 248; p. 235, my italics. On the ‘household’ definition of family see David Herlihy, ‘The Making of the Medieval Family: Symmetry, Structure, and Sentiment’, in Medieval Families: Perspectives on Marriage, Household & Children, ed. Carol Neel (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), pp. 192–213 and Barbara Hanawalt, The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 4 and p. 156.
61
capable of articulating complex philosophical ideas: ‘medieval writers showed great
interest in the infirmities [of] infants’ in particular, Mitchell suggests, ‘because [these
qualities] speak to something … about the human condition’.5 In the romances under
study here, disinheritance occurs during the hero’s infancy, so at various points I will
consider the significance of the disinherited heir as a child: for example, in my
discussion of memory in Chapter 3. But this thesis argues for reading disinheritance,
as opposed to childhood (or family), as the overarching narrative and conceptual
framework in Bevis, Havelok, Eglamour, Octavian, Tryamour and Torrent. The
portrayal of childhood in these romances is both an instrument of, and incidental to
the disinheritance narrative, rather than the other way around. As such, my analysis
only attends to the question of childhood where it is relevant to the portrayal of
disinheritance, heirship and the acquisition of heritable property.
Anticipating Disinheritance
To introduce the matter of inheritance in the shape of the longed-for child, as in
Octavian and Tryamour, is to present the idea of primogeniture together with an
intimation of its risks as an inheritance model: that there may be a lack of biological
offspring who ‘ther heyre myght bee’ (Tryamour, l. 36). As the stories unfold, it
becomes clear that the undoing of patrilineal succession is, ironically, this initial
patriarchal preoccupation with it. In both romances, antagonistic characters
successfully exploit the fathers’ anxieties about their procreative capabilities, with
the result that they disinherit their own heirs. Eglamour and Torrent similarly present
5 J. Allan Mitchell, Becoming Human: The Matter of the Medieval Child (London and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), pp. 33 and 35. The significance of ‘the child’ as a medieval literary figure warrants further research but for a discussion of some of the issues and possibilities see Phyllis Gaffney, Constructions of Childhood and Youth in Old French Literature (Surrey: Ashgate, 2011).
62
the paternal desire to preserve lineage as ironically self-defeating. There, fathers of
daughters (the demographic Stephen Rigby regards as especially invested in
primogeniture) are tyrannical in their pursuit of suitable sons-in-law:6 they
inadvertently encourage clandestine unions between their daughters and the titular
heroes, and subsequently condemn their own grandchildren as illegitimate. In Bevis
and Havelok, which will be the main focus of this chapter, patriarchal concerns
centre on minor heirs, too young to inherit at the time of their fathers’ deaths, and
whose interests their fathers cannot protect.
Noël James Menuge rightly identifies ‘wardship’ as a significant issue in both
romances.7 In medieval England, when a landholder died, an Inquisition Post
Mortem (hereafter IPM) determined the nature of tenure and the identity and age of
the heir.8 The age at which heirs could legally inherit (called ‘majority’) varied
according to tenure and gender: notionally twenty-one years for male heirs to lands
held in knight-service and fourteen or sixteen years for female heirs depending upon
marital status; although court records show further variation to the ages at which
women could inherit property.9 If the heir was underage, the lord of the lands would
have custody of both the property and the person of the heir, as a ward. When the
ward reached the age to inherit, a writ de etate probanda (hereafter ‘proof of age’)
would confirm that they had legal attained majority. Guardians were not allowed to
take profits from the lands of wards, but wardships were still the ‘most lucrative of
6 Rigby, English Society in the Later Middle Ages, p. 205. 7 Menuge, Wardship, as cited in the introduction. 8 Hicks, ‘Introduction’, Fifteenth-Century Inquisitions Post Mortem, pp. 1 and 3. 9 Simpson, Land Law, p. 18; Kim. M. Phillips, Medieval Maidens: Young Women and Gender in England, c. 1270–c. 1540 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2003), p. 33.
63
all the incidents of tenure’, since they could be sold on, and with them the right to
sell the marriage of the ward (providing to a person of equal social rank).10
In Havelok, the minors in question are Goldeboru, daughter of King
Athelwold of England, his ‘rithe eyr’ (rightful heir) and Havelok, ‘that was the eir’ to
King Birkabeyn in Denmark (ll. 289, 410). Their ailing fathers arrange wardships for
their children before they die, but the guardians (named Godard and Godrich)
promptly betray their wards for personal profit. In Bevis, the hero’s father dies during
his minority and his de facto legal guardian, the king of England, is conspicuously
absent. His inheritance is promptly usurped by the German emperor, his soon-to-be
stepfather (later named ‘Devoun’, l. 2913). Wardship thus fails in both romances.
But while the stories take aim at corrupt guardians, legal minority itself is also
presented in a critical light.
Minority is the specific issue concerning the two kings in Havelok, when
Athelwold worries that his daughter is ‘so yung that sho ne couthee | Gon on fote ne
speke with mouthe’ and when Birkabeyn similarly laments that his ‘children yunge’
are yet unable to ‘speken wit tunge’ (ll. 112–13; ll. 368–70). These brief descriptions
evoke the sentiments of childhood ‘vulnerability’ and parental affection;11 but they
are also quite clearly related to the heirs’ ability to inherit. The children’s perceived,
youthful incapacities are contrasted with the requisite skills for landholding and
rulership. Goldeboru ‘ne can speke ne sho kan go’, laments Athelwold, but he would
worry less:
Yif scho couthe on horse ride
And a thousande men bi hire syde
10 Hicks, ‘Introduction’, Fifteenth-Century Inquisitions Post Mortem, p. 6; Simpson, Land Law, p. 18. 11 See Julie Nelson Couch, ‘The Vulnerable Hero: Havelok and the Revision of Romance’, The Chaucer Review, 42:3 (2008), 330–53.
64
And sho were comen intil helde
And Engelond sho couthe welde. (ll. 125–33)
Birkabeyn likewise longs for his children to be able to ‘speken and gangen, on horse
riden | Knictes and sweynes by here siden’ (ll. 371–72).
As it happens, Birkabeyn underestimates his exceptional heir, who proves
astute despite his young age, offering ‘manrede’ (homage) to Godard in exchange for
his life (ll. 483–95). In Bevis, the hero’s legal minority, which assumes him
incapable of fulfilling the role of a feudal tenant, is at odds with his preternatural
physical strength and understanding. Said to be only ‘seve winter olde’, Bevis
nonetheless guesses his mother’s conspiracy with Devoun and denounces her as a
‘vile houre’ (ll. 302–10). He subsequently attacks a porter for dismissing him from
his home, hitting the man so hard he cleaves his head in two (l. 418). The problem
for these underage heirs in Bevis and Havelok is not so much their youthful
vulnerability or incapacity, but the prescriptive nature of legal minority and their lack
of authority as minors.
Even Bevis’s closest ally, his uncle and mentor, Saber, makes his offer of
support conditional on Bevis coming ‘of age’ and ‘of elde’. He says:
And whan thow ert of swich elde
That thow might the self wilde
And ert of age
Thanne scheltow come in te Ingelonde
With werre winne in to thin honde
Thin eritage.
I schel thee helpe with alle me might
With dent of swerd to gete thee right
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Be thow of elde. (ll. 367–75)
There is an implicit distinction between coming ‘of age’ and being ‘of elde’ here,
based on their rhymes: the former is associated with claiming ‘heritage’ and the latter
with being able to ‘wilde’, to govern an earldom or, perhaps, to govern oneself. The
former points to legal majority, an arbitrarily defined coming of age, while the latter
implies physical and/or intellectual maturity. Both Bevis and Havelok juxtapose the
constraints of legal minority – making the heir vulnerable to exploitation – with their
demonstrable physical strength and intellectual astuteness. The romances thereby
intimate some discrepancy between the personal qualities required of an heir, and the
demands of the law.
The sense of systemic failure extends to the presentation of the fathers’
succession planning. They are arguably the first critical target in Bevis and Havelok,
as dynastic ambitions are made to appear inevitably flawed, by the portents of
disinheritance at the outset of the stories. In the opening lines of Havelok, the
narrator promises a ‘tale [of] Havelok’ who ‘[w]hile he was litel, he yede ful naked’,
prefiguring the reader’s understanding of Havelok’s character with a description of
his youthful poverty (ll. 5–6). This first mention of Havelok as ‘the eir’ – where
previously he was Birkabeyn’s unnamed ‘sone’ (l. 350) – heralds the romance’s
dramatic disinheritance scene, which will be given close attention below.
Meanwhile, the reader’s foreknowledge of Havelok’s poverty, and therefore
disinheritance, exposes the futility of Birkabeyn’s attempts to ensure dynastic
stability. He chooses a guardian, in Godard, who swiftly betrays him for personal
gain. Birkabeyn personifies a patriarchal commitment to primogeniture which is
fraught with anxiety, and in attempting to secure his heirs’ inheritance he puts them
in the way of a harm he fails to perceive.
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The opening sequence in Bevis likewise presents the expectation of patrilineal
succession in anticipation of its failure. The earl of Hampton, Sir Gii, is said to be a
‘strong’ man, but ‘ever he levede withouten wive | Al to late and long’; he does not
marry until ‘he was fallen in to elde’ and his strength is gone, ‘[t]hat he ne mighte
himself welde’ (ll. 17–20). Sir Gii’s belated attempt to beget an heir, like Chaucer’s
January in the Merchant’s Tale, has similarly ironic but far more severe
consequences.12 Gii’s young bride is said to have ‘loved’ the emperor of Germany
‘[w]el thar beforen’, and she conspires with him to murder her husband (and later
Bevis, ll. 27–36). Betrayed by an unfaithful wife to his death, Sir Gii leaves his
young heir an orphan. A late-medieval reader, especially one familiar with Havelok,
would recognise the danger for Bevis as sole heir, ‘boute seve winter olde | Whan his
fader was ded’; and sure enough, his inheritance is promptly seized by Devoun, in
the absence of a guardian (ll. 53–54). The implication in Havelok is similarly that
Athelwold and Birkabeyn have left it late to beget heirs, since their children are still
minors when they (their fathers) approach the end of their lives.13 But the narrator of
the Auchinleck Bevis is quite clear about Gii’s culpability, waiting ‘al to late and
long’ to marry. He falls victim to his own belated desire to produce a biological heir,
‘his lif a les’ in the process (l. 29).
Just as each of the disinheritance romances begins with a father hoping to
secure the transference of his estate according to primogeniture, it proves an ill-fated
aspiration in all cases. Plans for patrilineal succession collapse and the romance
adventure begins. A significant element of Saber’s promise to his disinherited
nephew, quoted above, is its shift into the conditional mood. He says:
12 As cited in the introduction. 13 The same motif surfaces in Gamelyn and in Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale: in the latter case the problem is averted, but only because Walter’s people encourage him to marry (as mentioned in my introduction).
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I schel thee helpe with alle me might
With dent of swerd to gete thee right
Be thow of elde. (ll. 373–75)
The meaning of these lines could be, as the romance’s editors have suggested, that
Saber shall defend Bevis’s right, while he is in exile, until he comes of age.14 This
reading may be supported by the much later revelation that Saber has been leading a
‘baronage’ to Devoun each year to claim Bevis’s ‘heritage’ (ll. 1341–44). The more
immediate reading of these lines, however, where Bevis’s life is in danger, is that
Saber will help the disinherited heir to win his right, with ‘dent of swerd’, when or if
he comes of age.15 There is a brutal pragmatism in the conditional tone, but it is also
a grammatical marker of the uncertainty effected by Bevis’s disinheritance. This new
state of uncertainty initiates the romance’s adventure and inflects its treatment of
inheritance and heirship throughout.
Re-imagining ‘Heritage’
While Bevis is an extraordinarily rich and diverse romance, the matter of inheritance
is never far from its surface, with references to landed property occurring once every
few hundred lines.16 Disinheritance is occasionally named as such in the romances
– ‘desereteth’ appears in Bevis and ‘deserite’ in Havelok – but is otherwise an
‘objectification’, ‘produced by and through’ the narrative (Bevis, l. 4265; Havelok, l.
2547).17 Rather than euphemising the issue, the relative absence of the word
14 See Bevis, note to l. 375. 15 Further analysis of ll. 1341–44, below, supports my suggested interpretation of ll. 367–75. 16 There are references to ‘my / his / their londes’ at ll. 428, 1438, 2914, 3096, 3342, 4284; ‘seinori of Hamtoun’ at l. 3092; ‘his erldom’ at l. 4575; ‘eritage’ at ll. 372, 1343, 1439, 2940, 2966, 3002, 3502, 4300; and ‘eir’ at ll. 556, 3580, 3768, 4265. 17 I borrow this approach from Neil Kenny’s study of curiosity: presented with the problem of whether to identify curiosity as a ‘concept’, or ‘a set of words’, or an ‘extra-conceptual and extra-linguistic
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‘disinheritance’ or cognates in the romances has an important imaginative effect: the
romances’ discursive construction of disinheritance is more generative because it is
disconnected from the common legal and vernacular senses of ‘disinheritance’ (to
mean ‘deprivation or loss of possessions or privileges’).18 I provisionally identify
disinheritance in the romances according to the dictionary definition, as the point at
which an heir is deprived of the ability to succeed to the inheritance to which they
have a right by birth. My analysis will reveal, however, that the romances’ own
concept of disinheritance is not monolithic, or reducible to a singular act or event: it
is not a ‘single objectification’ but ‘always in the process of being constructed or
undone’.19
The romances’ idea of disinheritance can be ‘reconstructed’ in part by
analysing the adjacent ‘terminology of the texts’, of which ‘heritage’ and ‘land’ are
the most prominent examples in Bevis.20 The instances of ‘heritage’, in particular,
warrant close attention. The METS edition of the Auchinleck Bevis (1997) simply
glosses the Middle English ‘eritage’ as ‘heritage’ in all but one instance, where it is
given the alternative gloss of ‘inheritance’ (l. 2996). There is no additional editiorial
note here, but the shift from ‘heritage’ to ‘inheritance’ raises a number of questions
about how we read ‘heritage’ in the romances. The modern English ‘heritage’,
meaning ‘that which has been or may be inherited’, has increasingly come to refer to
common rather than personal property and to intangible cultural traditions as well as
to objects and the built environment. By contrast, ‘inheritance’ is used more
reality’, Kenny proposes to analyse curiosity as an ‘objectification’ produced through ‘discourse’. Neil Kenny, Curiosity in Early Modern Europe: Word Histories (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998), pp. 17 and 190. 18 See MED, disheritesoun, n. The dictionary does not specify ‘heritable’ in its definition, though the citations show this is the word’s usual application. 19 Kenny, Word Histories, p. 190. 20 Kenny, Word Histories, p. 17.
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narrowly in modern English to refer to personal property: ‘hereditary succession to
property, a title, office’.21
The divergence between ‘heritage’ and ‘inheritance’ witnessed in modern
English is less evident in Middle English, where both ‘heritage’ and ‘enheritaunce’
primarily mean ‘something legally inherited or inheritable’: ‘legally’ being the
operative word, referring to the kind of tangible property arbitrated by law and, as
the MED citations show, frequently landed property.22 Arguably then, modern
English ‘inheritance’ would be the more appropriate gloss for all instances of
‘heritage’ throughout Bevis. Some of the economic specificity of ‘inheritance’ in the
romances is lost by the conflation of modern English and Middle English definitions
of ‘heritage’, since the modern English word performs differently, as a catch-all term
for property, lineage and class. Here, I read ‘heritage’ (Middle English) in the
romances as an economic matter – heritable landed property – and will refer to it as
inheritance (modern English) in my discussion unless quoting from one of the texts.
In turn, my analysis demonstrates how the disinheritance narrative works to extricate
the economic matter of inheritance from the issue of lineage.
This being said, we should acknowledge that the Middle English writers’ use
of the word ‘heritage’ is a deliberate choice, over the alternative, ‘enheritaunce’. The
terms appear to share the same meaning, but ‘heritage’, according to the MED, has a
21 See OED, heritage, n., and inheritance, n. The entry for ‘heritage’ was first published in 1898 and only the draft additions for 1993 and 2005 indicate the increasing use of the word to describe things of historical significance or cultural interest. Examples of this usage include the UNESCO World Heritage Sites programme, established in 1972, and its Intangible Cultural Heritage List; the government agency (now registered charity) English Heritage, established in 1983; and the UK National Lottery Heritage Fund (formerly Heritage Lottery Fund), which defines ‘intangible heritage’ as ‘traditions, customs, skills’ or other aspects of ‘living culture’. See <https://ich.unesco.org/en/lists> [accessed 4 Dec 2019]; <http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/about-us/> [accessed 4 Dec 2019]; ‘Culture and Memories’ <http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/our-work/cultures-and-memories> [accessed 4 Dec 2019]. 22 See MED, heritage, n. and enheritaunce, n.
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longer and more wide-ranging history of usage in English than ‘enheritaunce’, which
is used less frequently and more formally. The use of ‘heritage’ in Bevis, then, may
be a marker of its vernacular language as well as intimating the cultivation of a
literary, extra-legal discourse on the matter of inheritance. Another reason for the use
of ‘heritage’ over ‘enheritaunce’ in the verse romances may be its propensity for
rhyming with certain other words. The words ‘age’, ‘outrage’, ‘parage’, ‘marriage’
and ‘baronage’ recur as rhyme words with ‘heritage’ in Bevis, and there are
comparable examples in Havelok and Horn.23 These rhyming collocations give
‘heritage’ a certain ‘associative value’:24 alluding to the issues of minority and
majority (‘age’), disinheritance (‘outrage’), social status (‘parage’ and ‘marriage’),
class and armed conflict (‘barnage’ meaning both the barony and an army), they are
metonyms of the disinheritance narrative.25
The frequency with which ‘heritage’ is rhymed in the romance, as above, is
symptomatic of the tendency for the word to appear at the end of a line, as the
subject of the phrase: thereby underlining the importance of ‘heritage’ in the story.
This effect is heightened in manuscripts where the verse is subject to what Rhiannon
Purdie calls ‘graphic tail-rhyme’, as illustrated in the version of Bevis in Egerton
2862 (see Fig. 5, p. 237).26 Every third line is removed from the main, left-hand
23 Examples include: ‘of age … heritage’ (Bevis, ll. 369–72, 2995–96); ‘baronage … heritage’ (Bevis, ll. 1343–44, 3001–02, 3501–02, 4299–300 and King Horn, ll. 1293–94); ‘eritage … parage’ (Bevis, ll. 1439–40); ‘eritage … utrage’ (Havelok, ll. 2836–37). 24 Roger Dalrymple, Language and Piety in Middle English Romance (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), p. 26. Where Derek Pearsall describes Middle English romances’ formulaic verbal style as ‘a form of descriptive shorthand’, Dalrymple argues for the ‘associative value of formulaic language … how the recurrence of a fixed phrase across a tradition of writing makes for incremental meaning, each appearance evoking contiguous usages and associations gleaned from context’ (p. 26, italics in the original). Derek Pearsall, Old English and Middle English Poetry (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1977), p. 149. 25 Bevis, see note above. See also MED, barnage, n.(1). 26 Rhiannon Purdie, Anglicising Romance, pp. 66–79; also see Rhiannon Purdie, ‘The Implications of Manuscript Layout in Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Thopas, Modern Language Studies, 1:3 (2005), 263–74.
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column into a second right-hand column, which is not pushed to the margins so
much as it runs down the vertical centre of the page. Kathyrn Kerby-Fulton and
Andrew Klein argue that ‘a scribe attuned to the potential of mise-en-page’ could use
‘specific formal arrangements on the page to ask readers to begin understanding a
text prior to any close engagement with its language’.27 As a reader begins to engage
with the language, the ‘graphic tail-rhyme’ layout means that the bracketed lines
attract attention first, as though an index to the fuller content of the verse. Kerby-
Fulton and Klein note the ‘temptation’ to read bracketed lines consecutively, while
Jessica Brantley argues that multi-column layouts in medieval manuscripts invite
multiple approaches to reading line order and effectively produce more than one
poem.28 Wherever Bevis was rendered in graphic tail-rhyme, as in the Egerton
manuscript, ‘heritage’ would be the recurrent subject of the resulting poems-within-
a-poem.29
The first characters to mention Bevis’s ‘heritage’ are his uncles: firstly Saber
of Wight (as quoted above) and later Saber Florentin, who advises Bevis:
‘thin em is in Wight
And everi yer on a dai certaine
upon th’emperur of Almaine
He ginneth gret bataile take
Beves, al for thine sake
27 Kathryn Kerby-Fulton and Andrew W. Klein, ‘Rhymed Alliterative Verse in Mise en page Transition: Two Case Studies in English Poetic Hybridity’, in The Medieval Literary Beyond Form, pp. 87–118 (p. 89). 28 Kerby-Fulton and Klein, ‘Rhymed Alliterative Verse’, p. 110; Jessica Brantley, ‘Reading the Forms of Sir Thopas’, The Chaucer Review, 47:4 (2013), 416–38 (p. 427). 29 Besides Egerton 2862, Bevis is rendered in graphic tail-rhyme in Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 175/96. The first 475 lines of the Auchinleck Bevis are tail-rhyme, but written in a single column without brackets. For descriptions of the layout of each extant manuscript, see Jennifer Fellows, ‘The Middle English and Renaissance Bevis’, pp. 104–08.
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He weneth wel, that thowe be ded
Tharfore, kosin, be me red
An hondred men ich yeve thee wighte
...
And thow schelt wende te Saber
Sai, ich grette him wel ilome!
Yif ye han nede, sendeth to me,
Ich wile yow helpe with al me might
Aghen th’emperur to fight’. (ll. 2916–30)
Interactions such as these are a reminder that there are people other than Bevis with
interests in contesting the usurpation of his inheritance. They invoke ‘heritage’
before he does, and though they ostensibly offer to support their nephew, the two
Sabers are also the collateral heirs of the late Sir Gii’s estate in Bevis’s absence.
That Saber in Wight ‘weneth wel’ that Bevis ‘be ded’ is a pertinent detail, in
the passage above. In fact, it repeats and reinforces an earlier mention of this
misapprehension. The first time the reader hears of Saber of Wight’s annual
campaign is after he receives the (false) report that Bevis has been ‘hangyd’. Saber
‘wep and made dreme’, the narrator says:
For he was the childes em
And ech yer on a dai certaine
Upon th’emperur of Almaine
With a wel gret baronage
A cleimede his eritage. (ll. 1331–44)
The juxtaposition is effective, associating Saber’s annual campaign to claim ‘his
eritage’ with his belief in the reports of Bevis’s death. This phrase, ‘his eritage’,
becomes ambiguous: does Saber claim Hampton in Bevis’s right, or his own? It is
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Saber Florentin who assures Bevis that Saber of Wight ‘ginneth grete bataile take |
Beves al for thine sake’, although ‘[h]e weneth wel that thow be ded’ (ll. 2919–21,
my italics). Telling Bevis that he ought to return to Hampton himself, in these terms,
offers both an encouragement and a latent threat.
Where the romance begins by establishing the idea of inheritance in the form
of a notionally monolineal relationship between a father or parental couple and their
heir, disinheritance exposes the complexity of lateral relationships and competing
claims. This multi-dimensional view of inheritance extends to the portrayal of the
usurpers in the romances. When Devoun seizes Hampton and disinherits Bevis, for
example, he also establishes a new heir in the shape of his own son.30 In Havelok,
Godard and Godrich each vocalise concerns for their own heirs as they plot to
disinherit Havelok and Goldeboru. Godard imagines how, with Havelok gone, his
offspring could become, ‘“Louerdings after me | Of al Denemark”’ (ll. 514–16).
Likewise, Godrich questions his oath to protect Goldeboru as he considers that he
has ‘“a sone, a ful fayr knave”’: ‘“He shal Engelond al have! | He shal ben king, he
shal ben sire’” (ll. 308–10). The usurpers’ concerns ironically mirror those of
Birkabeyn and Athelwold, whom they plan to betray, and it remains for the reader to
decide whether this mitigates or underscores their treacherous self-interest. But these
allusions to a second generation also help to complicate the matter of rightful
inheritance in the romance, providing examples of heirs whose inheritance from their
own parents could be contested legally. Yet, having made themselves sovereigns,
Godard and Godrich are respectively in a position to legitimate their own tenures
and, in turn, their own heirs’ lawful accession to the throne thereafter.
30 Bevis, ll. 3098–116: this episode relates how Devoun accidentally kills his son (presumably Bevis’s half-brother, though the narrator does not say) when he throws a knife, poorly aimed, at Bevis. Sharing this news with his supporters in Wight, ‘Beves lough and hadde gode game’ (l. 3116).
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The simple idea that inheritance is a birthright gives way, in the
disinheritance romances, to an ongoing interrogation of legitimate and illegitimate
means of inheriting. Returning to Bevis, one of the later mentions of his ‘heritage’
asks that we consider the possibility of treating an inheritance as a commodity.
Devoun is providing a deceitful account of how he came to be the lord of Hampton,
and says that the young Bevis, a ‘proude wreche’, ‘solde me his eritage’ when he
was ‘of age’ (ll. 2989, 2995–96). There would be complex nuances here for late-
medieval gentry readers with a passing familiarity with the business of buying and
selling formerly heritable land. The Middle English instructional text, Rules for
Purchasing Land alerted potential buyers to the ‘dangers’ of ‘the dark corners of the
legal system’ where ‘rival claimants might emerge years after the transfer of the
land’.31 Devoun’s claim that Bevis was ‘of age’ at the time of the purchase is an
accurate technical detail, consistent with the advice of the Rules, that the seller must
be ‘of age’.32 The popularity of the Rules is attested by its survival in fifteen
manuscripts, including the romance compilation, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS
Ashmole 61. It is important to note this proximity between the romances and the
Rules, because when Bevis returns unexpectedly to Hampton in the guise of the
‘rival claimant’, it is possible that the romance’s readers would recognise there the
adverse situation that the Rules warns against, more readily than they could identify
with the romance’s hero. The object of outrage, then, is not so much Bevis’s
dispossession but Devoun’s debasement of the lawful acquisition of land by
purchase, citing the legitimate process of selling as a decoy for stealing.
31 See George Shuffelton, ed., ‘Introduction’, to Rules for Purchasing Land, available via METS [accessed 4 Dec 2019], paragraph 5. Quotations are from this edition. 32 Rules, l. 9.
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The possibility of trading an inheritance is presented in a more positive light
elsewhere in Bevis, with the provocative suggestion that even spiritual ‘heritage’ can
be exchanged. Since King Ermin has only one daughter, he offers Bevis her marriage
with the promise of his kingdom after his death. Although Bevis has arrived at
Ermin’s court a dispossessed exile with no one to vouch for his identity, Ermin
makes this offer upon the single condition that Bevis converts from Christianity to
Islam:
‘And thow wile thee god forsake
And to Apolyn, me lord, take
Hire [Josian] I schel thee yeve to wive
And al me lond after me live!’ (ll. 557–60)
The structure of Ermin’s offer demonstrates the place of religion in the romance,
secondary to landholding and, potentially, a means of acquiring new land. Ermin’s
offer does, however, test the idea of Christian heirship: converting to Islam will
secure the hero an inheritance on earth but, implicitly, rejecting Christianity will lose
him his inheritance in heaven. That Bevis declines seems to preserve his status as a
Christian hero (if not an especially pious one), but it may also be inferred that
maintaining his Christianity, just as it loses him the Armenian inheritance, has the
effect of maintaining his right to the English lands. Crucially, though, the romance
offers no definitive position on the relationship between religion and land rights.
More revealing is the ease with which spiritual inheritance is invoked in the context
of land transfer, as a political and economic exchange, suggesting that neither
spiritual nor secular inheritances are innate and inalienable.
In contrast, the phrase ‘kende heritage’, uttered later by Bevis himself, at first
appears to imply that his inheritance is ‘natural’ to him (l. 2940): editors have
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glossed this phrase as ‘my natural heritage’, and ‘kende’ can mean ‘natural’ or ‘in
accordance with the ordinary course of nature’ in Middle English. The MED
citations collate instances that appear to refer simply to ‘birthright’.33 But the context
of the usage in Bevis unsettles the assumptions underlying this interpretation. Bevis
plans to return to Hampton, to see:
‘Yif ich mighte with eni ginne
Me kende eritage to winne!’ (ll. 2939–40)
The conditional ‘yif’ and the intent to resort to ‘eni ginne’ (ingenuity, trick) at his
disposal to ‘winne’ his inheritance are noteworthy: these terms unsettle the idea of
inheritance as an inevitable and natural destiny. The word ‘kende’, in turn, can have
the more general meaning of ‘gentle’ or ‘noble’.34 As such, it may be read as
qualifying Bevis’s rightful ‘heritage’ as ‘noble’, rather than intensifying the idea that
he has an innate right to a particular estate. To compare, in the romance Le Bone
Florence of Rome, a character is declared to be the ‘kyndyst heyre’ to the throne: a
designation which indicates that ‘kende’ is a quality of scale rather than a binary
category; one can be the ‘most rightful’, rather than the only rightful heir.35 Rather
than pre-empting Bevis’s lordship of Hampton, the phrase, ‘[m]e kende heritage’
poses a question: it remains uncertain what Bevis will be able to win, what and
where his ‘kende heritage’ will turn out to be.
A definition of ‘heritage’ with Bevis as the primary source might describe it
as something which has essentially been lost and which a rightful heir has to ‘winne’:
33 See MED, kende, adj., senses 1 and 3. This line from Bevis is given as one of the examples. 34 It is used in this way elsewhere in Bevis, for example at l. 1398 and l. 3052. See MED, kende, adj, sense 6. 35 Le Bone Florence of Rome: A Critical Edition and Facing Page Translation, ed. and trans. Jonathan Stavsky (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2017), l. 1257.
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‘With werre to winne in to thin honde
Thin heritage’ (ll. 371–72)
‘Me kende eritage to winne’ (l. 2940)
‘for to winne is londe aghen’. (l. 3342)
Nearly all instances of the word ‘heritage’ in the Auchinleck Bevis, in fact, refer
directly to dispossession.36 Disinheritance propels the narrative forward, even when
Bevis’s own lands are not at issue: the hero is driven back to England for the final
time, after being crowned king of Mombraunt, by the news that King Edgar has
disinherited his cousin, Robaunt (ll. 4253–73). But as much as disinheritance inflects
the meaning of ‘heritage’ in the romance, it also forms the figure of the heir.
Bevis only emerges into the story as such, by virtue of the disinheritance.
Before this, there is no mention of Bevis’s ‘heritage’ and nor is Bevis explicitly
nominated as Gii’s ‘heir’. He is simply called ‘knave child’ when born; then ‘[your]
sone’ by Devoun, when threatening Sir Gii; ‘me … child’ and ‘me yonge sone Bef’
by Sir Gii; and ‘me yonge sone Bef’ by his mother, ordering his execution (ll. 50,
220, 226, 268, 338). Bevis only recognises himself as an heir when confronted with a
vision of his disinheritance. Disguised as a shepherd in order to evade capture, he
looks ‘homward to the toun | That scholde ben his’. Standing on a ‘doun’, he
exclaims, ‘Ne was ich ones an erles sone | And now am herde!’ (ll. 380–87).
Literally and figuratively, he can only see his inheritance when he is removed from
it. The resulting idea, in the romance, that the event of disinheritance forms the heir,
is an inversion of the tenet of medieval law that an heir cannot be legally identified
36 The one, possible exception does still refer to Bevis’s disinheritance indirectly: King Ermin pretends, for his daughter’s benefit, that Bevis has left them in order to return to Hampton ‘in to his owene eritage’ (l. 1439).
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until after the death of the tenant.37 The inversion suggests, paradoxically, that the
rightful heir can only be identified after disinheritance.
Bloodshed
The violence with which disinheritance occurs is one of the most striking common
features among the romances, involving scenes of bloodshed in Bevis, Havelok, and
Octavian. The bloody imagery is rich in symbolic potential in the context of
disinheritance and ruptured families, which can be best appreciated through a close
reading of Havelok, in the first instance. The relevant passage is quoted at length
below. The recently orphaned Havelok, Swanborw and Helfled have been
imprisoned by their guardian, Godard. He is said to plot a ‘trechery’ against the
children and goes to visit them in prison (l. 443). A starving Havelok begs him for
food, but:
Ther-offe yaf he [Godard] nouth a stra
But tok the maydnes bothe samen
Al so it were up on hiis gamen
Al so he wolde with hem leyke
That weren for hunger grene and bleike.
Of bothen he karf on two here throtes
And sithen hem al to grotes.
Ther was sorwe, wo-so it sawe,
Hwan the children by the wawe
Leyen and sprawleden in the blod.
Havelok it saw and therbi stod. (ll. 466–76)
37 Simpson, Land Law, p. 52.
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While the romance’s narrative style is typically brief, this sequence of events is
noticeably abrupt, with the murder taking up only two lines. Spoken aloud, this
couplet delivers percussive and plosive consonants, contrasting with the sibilance of
the next line and its repeated ‘o’, conveying wide-eyed, open-mouthed horror: ‘Ther
was sorwe, wo-so it sawe’.
Violence is commonplace in Middle English romances and graphic violence
involving children not uncommon to late-medieval vernacular literature at large, with
religious matter providing various examples: from the child martyrs of popular
hagiography, emulated in Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale, to biblical narratives like
Herod’s massacre of the innocents (imitated in Arthurian legend in the ‘May Day
massacre’) and the near-infanticide portrayed in ‘Abraham and Isaac’ mystery
plays.38 It is impossible to know whether late-medieval readers would have thought
the scene in Havelok shocking, although Havelok’s own stunned silence is implied in
the line, ‘Havelok it saw and therbi stod’, evocative of the proverbial, ‘stode as a
stone’.39 That they are royal deaths might have added to the impression of surprise.
38 The murder and martyrdom of the child-king St Kenelm is one of the stories in a hagiographical collection known as the ‘South English Legendary’, a version of which is preserved in the same manuscript as Havelok (Laud Misc. 108). For an overview and study of medieval child-martyr cults, see Peter Healy Wasywliw, Martyrdom, Murder, and Magic: Child Saints and Their Cults in Medieval Europe (New York: Peter Lang, 2008), esp. pp. 73–90. Chaucer’s story of a boy martyred at the hands of Jews alludes to ‘yonge Hugh of Lyncoln’ and has parallels with the legend of William of Norwich. Chaucer, The Prioress’s Tale, l. 684. See E. M. Rose, The Murder of William of Norwich: The Origins of the Blood Libel in Medieval Europe (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2015) and Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Medieval Jews (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999). For Malory’s account of Merlin’s plan (with Arthur) to destroy ‘all the children that were borne in May Day’, see Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur, ed. Stephen H. A. Shepherd (London and New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Ltd, 2004), pp. 39–40. The relevant biblical passage is Matthew 2.16–18. For ‘Abraham and Isaac’, see English Mystery Plays, ed. Peter Happé (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), pp. 133–51 and pp. 152–71. 39 See the uses of ‘stonayde … stode as a stone’ and ‘stondis stonstille’ in Awntyrs off Arthur, in Sir Gawain: Eleven Romances and Tales, ed. Thomas Hahn (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1995), ll. 109 and 580. See also the MED, stonen, v.(2), sense 2: ‘To be astonished or amazed … be bewildered, be stupefied; be held motionless from mental shock’.
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In other ways, too, a sense of the unexpected is ‘scripted’ in the preceding
narrative.40
The structure of the story is especially revealing. Up to this point, the account
of Havelok and his sisters in Denmark closely resembles that of Goldeboru in
England, encouraging the impression that they will continue in parallel. When
Goldeboru is imprisoned by her treacherous guardian, Godrich, the narrator calls him
‘Judas’; Godard is similarly called ‘Judas’, having imprisoned Havelok and his
sisters (l. 319; l. 482). In the face of Goldeboru’s suffering, Godrich is said to give
‘nouth a stra’, and the same phrase later describes Godard’s response to Havelok’s
plea for food (l. 315; l. 466). Before the narrator turns to Havelok’s story in
Denmark, Goldeboru is left in a state of imprisonment, this being the culmination of
Godrich’s betrayal and decision to usurp her inheritance. When we subsequently read
that Godard is planning a ‘trechery’ against the heirs in Denmark, they appear
destined for the same fate. The unprecedented killing of Havelok’s sisters is an
aberration, disrupting the narrative symmetry.
Furthermore, this incident is unique to the Middle English Havelok. There is
no evidence that other medieval versions of the story, including the Anglo-Norman
romance, give Havelok two sisters.41 Nor are there any analogous characters named
‘Swanborw’ and ‘Helfled’ elsewhere in medieval romance.42 The names contribute to
the impression that these characters will be protagonists in the romance, not least
40 I use the word ‘script’ here with allusion to the concept of ‘emotion scripts’: that is, a series of circumstances eliciting a particular emotional reaction. See Barbara Rosenwein, Generations of Feeling: A History of Emotions, 600–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 8 and n. 26. 41 See Smithers, Havelok, pp. xix–lvi. 42 See Scott Kleinman, ‘The Legend of Havelok the Dane and the Historiography of East Anglia’, Studies in Philology 100:3 (2007), 245–77 (pp. 265–66). Kleinman notes that there is a ‘Swanburc’ in the Anglo-Norman Horn, but her character bears no relation to the Swanborw in the Middle English Havelok.
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because it is common for romances to leave marginal characters unnamed. The
sisters’ importance in the story is also implied by their repeated inclusion among
Birkabeyn’s ‘thre’ children, and where they are named alongside the title character
(l. 410). But just as they emerge as individually identifiable characters, they are
killed off. Whether or not this elicits spontaneous surprise from the reader, there are
clear signs that this is intended to read as an unexpected event. As such, it also
invites a degree of readerly suspicion about narrative patterns, warning against the
expectation of narrative conformity and continuity. At the same time, the finality of
the murder intimates that disinheritance cannot be reversed: in some respects, at
least, it will be a permanent transformation.
Kimberly Bell and Julie Nelson Couch have concentrated on this scene in
studies of Havelok which consider the romance’s thematic relationship to the
hagiographical South English Legendary, contained in the same manuscript (Laud
Misc. 108).43 In this context, applying an ‘affective’ critical approach, Bell and
Couch read the child-murder scene in Havelok in a Christian interpretative
framework. Havelok is thus characterised as the ‘vulnerable child’, whose ‘suffering’
evokes the suffering of Christ and elicits ‘affective piety’ from the reader, an
interactive experience of pious devotion.44 Emotional words and phrases like ‘sorwe’
and ‘mikel dred’ might be read as affective cues, while the pretence of play (‘leyke’)
43 Couch and Bell have also jointly edited a volume on the manuscript: Texts and Contexts of Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 (Leiden: Brill, 2010). 44 Kimberly K. Bell, ‘Resituating Romance: The Dialectics of Sanctity in MS Laud Misc. 108’s Havelok the Dane and Royal Vitae’, Parergon, 25:1 (2008), 27–51; Julie Nelson Couch, ‘Defiant Devotion in MS Laud Misc. 108: The Narrator of Havelok the Dane and Affective Piety’, Parergon, 25:1 (2008), 53–79. For an overview of the idea of ‘affective piety’ and ‘devotional’ reading practices in medievalist scholarship see Nicole R. Rice, ed., ‘Introduction’, to Middle English Religious Writing in Practice: Texts, Readers, and Transformations (Turnout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 1–16; see also Sarah McNamer, Affective Meditation and The Invention of Medieval Compassion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010) and Dalrymple, Language and Piety, esp. references on pp. 58 and 124.
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might elicit horror or revulsion, contrasting grotesquely with Godard’s true intention,
not least because of the word’s sexual connotations in Middle English (ll. 473, 478,
469).45
The religious allusions in the poem, however, appear in the service of a
predominantly secular story: romance being the ‘dominant non-devotional genre of
Middle English literature’.46 Havelok is not a saint-king, like others in the South
English Legendary.47 Nor are Havelok’s murdered sisters characterised as martyrs or
otherwise depicted in religious terms: they do not become queens in heaven like the
Pearl-maiden; they are not miraculously resurrected like the sacrificed children of
the romance Amis and Amiloun or its hagiographical analogues; they are described in
terms visceral, not spiritual.48 Therefore, while I agree that the murder scene
constitutes a ‘nucleus of affectivity’ in Havelok, I read its effects differently.49
45 See MED, leiken, v. 46 Chism, ‘Romance’, p. 57. 47 See my note above on St Kenelm. 48 See my introduction for Pearl and further explanation of Amis and Amiloun is below. There is not a great deal of work on the presentation of child-related violence in medieval literature in secular terms, but for an overview of the trope see Daniel T. Kline’s chapter, ‘“That child may doon to fadres reverence”: Children and Childhood in Middle English Literature’, in The Child in British Literature: Literary Constructions of Childhood, Medieval to Contemporary ed. Adrienne E. Gann (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) pp. 21–37. It may be that an aversion to this topic stems from medievalists’ efforts to repudiate mid-twentieth-century histories that characterised medieval childhood (and the Middle Ages) as hard or harsh. Philippe Ariès is often credited with fomenting misconceptions about neglected medieval children, by historians arguing to the contrary: notably Shulamith Shahar, Barbara Hanawalt and Nicholas Orme. See Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, trans. Robert Baldick (New York: Vintage, 1962; first published as L’Enfant et la vie familiale sous l’Ancien Régime by Plon in Paris 1960); Shulamith Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages (London and New York: Routledge, 1990); Barbara Hanawalt, Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Nicholas Orme, Medieval Children (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001). In contrast, a volume of essays published in 2011 aimed to reappraise the ‘dark sides’ of premodern childhood experience: The Dark Side of Childhood in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. Katariina Mustakallio and Christian Laes (Oxford and Oakville: Oxbow Books, 2011). For an overview of the historiography of medieval childhood, see Barbara Hanawalt, ‘Medievalists and the Study of Childhood’, Speculum, 77:2 (2002), 440–60. 49 Couch, ‘Defiant Devotion’, p. 68.
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‘Affect’ is not just how texts provoke ‘feeling’ but, as Sarah McNamer has
argued, how they ‘make meaning’.50 More than it serves a devotional purpose, I
suggest, the affective density of the murder scene exploits a connection between
emotion and cognition, which is acknowledged in medieval theories of memory, in
order to establish this moment as the interpretative key to the romance.51 It can be
regarded as the affective nexus of the poem in this sense, being recalled repeatedly in
the romance – at least five times in the second half – giving Havelok the motivation
and justification to reclaim Denmark and thereby propelling the narrative action.52
What the emotional language attendant on the murder memorialises is not only
Havelok’s suffering but more precisely his disinheritance.
The scene is highly visual as well as emotive: the discoloured flesh (‘green
and bleike’), the mutilated bodies ‘sprawleden’ (‘convulsing’) in blood (ll. 470, 475).
The graphic nature of the description is important because visualisation is the most
common feature of classical and medieval theories of memory, not least in the sense
50 This idea originates in the reader-response school of literary criticism with Stanley Fish, whom McNamer cites. See Stanley Fish, ‘Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics’, New Literary History, 2:1 (1970), 123–62. Sarah McNamer, ‘Feeling’, in Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Middle English Literature, ed. Paul Strohm (London: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 241–57 (p. 248). Also see MED, felen, v. As McNamer notes, this word means to think as well as to feel. 51 Rosenwein, Generations of Feeling, p. 7; Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008; first published 1990), p. 85. Carruthers argues that memory is the principal expression of cognition in medieval theory, so that memory is more closely connected to all forms of thought, including creative invention, than is usually the case in modern parlance. For studies of emotion and memory in medieval literature, see Emotions in Medieval Arthurian Literature: Body, Mind, Voice, ed. Frank Brandsma, Carolyne Larrington and Corrine Saunders (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015); particularly Corinne Saunders, ‘Mind, Body and Affect in Medieval English Arthurian Romance’, pp. 31–46, and Carolyne Larrington, ‘Mourning Gawain: Cognition and Affect in Diu Crône and Some French Gauvain-Texts’, pp. 123–42. 52 See ll. 1366–68, 1408–15, 2222–25, 2393–95, 2482–84. These lines and the effect of the repetition are described more fully in Chapter 3.
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of reading as a ‘visual act’.53 The references to sight – ‘Havelok it sawe’, for
example – intimate that the hero will later be able to provide eyewitness testimony:
saying, ‘ich saw biforn min eyne [Godard] slo | Mine sistres with a knife’ (ll. 1365–
66, my italics).54 But the very concept of eyewitness testimony relies on the
connection between visualisation and remembering. The reader, too, is encouraged to
visualise the scene – as the implied onlooker in the phrase ‘wo-so it sawe’ – and
therefore to commit the event to memory, to be able to recall it.
The sight of blood is particularly prominent, not only with the striking image
of the sisters’ bodies ‘sprawleden in the blod’ but later the ‘knif’ still ‘lewe | Of the
seli children blod’ (ll. 498–99). This is significant, firstly, because the sight of blood
also has a special place in medieval memory theory: the image of ‘bloodied bodies’
is the original ‘memory-image’ for ‘the art of mnemotechnics’, as set out in Cicero’s
De Oratore, illustrated by the legend of Simonides.55 According to the legend,
Simonides survives the collapse of a building which has killed many others
assembled there. Though the corpses are mutilated, Simonides can identify them by
recollecting where each person had been seated. Thus, while Simonides is said to
realise that memory is aided by the ‘orderly arrangement’ of ‘mental images’, the
illustrative mnemonic for the art of memory is, itself, an image of disorder and
53 Carruthers, The Book of Memory, p. 19. Carruthers translates the idea of the ‘memory-image’ from Aristotle. See Aristotle, De Memoria et Reminscentia, trans. R.Sorabji (Providence: Brown University Press, 1972), 450b 11–20. For a study of memory in Middle English romance see Jamie McKinstry, Middle English Romance and the Craft of Memory (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015). Carruthers has written extensively on the subject, including The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003; first published 1998) and The Medieval Craft of Memory: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures, ed. Mary Carruthers and Jan M. Ziolkowski (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004; first published 2002). 54 There is further discussion of the ways in which the romances allude to legal testimony in my third chapter. 55 See Cicero, De Oratore, trans. E. W. Sutton (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 465–69. Carruthers explains the story in The Craft of Thought, pp. 27–28. My quotations are from Mitchell’s discussion of the legend, in Becoming Human, p. 164.
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bloodshed.56 This visual juxtaposition is evident in Havelok, too: though the scene is
one of unexpected and bloody destruction, the prepositional description of the girls’
bodies ‘by the wawe’ is also a ‘locational memory’ device, of the kind found in
classical and medieval memory schemes: involving the ‘mental picturing’ of
architectural spaces, to aid the orderly arrangement of memory-images in the mind.57
As a memory-image for disinheritance, the scene of bloodshed speaks to the
violence of the act: not only the literal physical injury but the figurative, intrafamilial
violence of Godard’s betrayal. Invoking the image of ‘blod’ in the context of familial
betrayal subverts a common proverbial use of ‘blood’ to refer to family bonds; but
this is not unique to Havelok. In her study of blood in medieval vernacular literature,
Bettina Bildhauer finds that the ‘concept of relatives as united by a common blood is
invoked precisely when the ties that bind are violated’.58 In this light, the bloodshed
in Havelok both implies family relationships and exemplifies the vernacular literary
association between so-called blood relations and disunity (bloodshed). In the
context of disinheritance, such a graphic reminder that there is latent violence in the
very idea of blood relations seems to point up, once again, the inevitability of
dynastic disruption. Indeed, it might allude to the intergenerational opposition
inherent in inheritance itself: while lineage can be imagined as continuity, succession
means replacement.
There is also an economic dimension to the bloody imagery. The language of
the poem, in fact, invites an economic reading of the bloodied bodies themselves.
The girls’ bodies are said to be carved to ‘grotes’: the name of a small coin, as well
56 Mitchell, Becoming Human, p. 164. 57 Mary Carruthers, ‘The Poet as Master Builder: Composition and Locational Memory in the Middle Ages’, New Literary History, 24 (1993), 881–904 (p. 898). 58 Bettina Bildhauer, Medieval Blood (Cardiff: Cardiff University Press, 2006), p. 135.
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as meaning ‘pieces’.59 While it could be said of any medieval family that they were
‘expected to stand together [and] certainly never shed the blood of their own’,
Barbara Hanawalt’s study of peasant families suggests that economic
interdependency partly accounts for low instances of intrafamilial violence among
them.60 Havelok suggests that, on the contrary, for an aristocratic guardian, the value
of a royal wardship is not incentive enough to prevent them from killing and
usurping their ward’s inheritance. Cutting the corpses to ‘grotes’ initially suggests
devaluation, as formerly valuable living bodies (wardships) are reduced to a low-
value coinage; but, for Godard, it is a profitable liquidation of assets. From another
perspective, Aaron Hostetter speculates that when Godard ‘carves’ Swanborw and
Helfled to ‘grotes’ (pieces of flesh) it is ‘a terrifyingly literal response’ to Havelok’s
earlier plea for food.61 This offer of cannibalism remains a latent horror, yet the
memory of the murder will later provide Havelok with the ‘affective’ fuel he requires
to challenge Godard for the Danish throne. Though the murder cannot be reversed,
the spilled blood remains in circulation, figuratively, as converted currency.
Spilled blood is similarly made a memory-image for acts of disinheritance in
Bevis and Octavian, where the sight of bloodshed is emphasised. In Bevis, the reader
is presented with the image of the ‘childes clothes’:
Al a bisprengde with that blode
In many stede
Ase yif the child were to-hewe. (ll. 349–52)
59 MED, grot, n.(3) and grot, n.(1). 60 Bildhauer, Medieval Blood, p. 135; Barbara Hanawalt, ‘Violence in the Domestic Milieu of Late Medieval England’, in Violence in Medieval Society, ed. Richard W. Kaeuper (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2000), pp. 197–214 (pp. 200–01). See also Barbara Hanawalt, The Ties that Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). 61 Aaron Hostetter, ‘Food, Sovereignty, and Social Order’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 110:1 (2011), 53–77 (p. 58).
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In this case, the bloodied clothes are a decoy, sprinkled with pig’s blood and
intended to be ‘schewe’ to Bevis’s mother as proof that he is ‘dede’ (ll. 353–54).
Though Bevis remains physically unharmed, the narrator nonetheless offers the
image of the child’s body cut to pieces, akin to that in Havelok, ‘as if’ the child ‘were
to-hewe’. This language is especially gruesome: more than it denotes ‘killed’ or
‘cut’, the Middle English verb ‘heuen’ specifies the kind of cutting that is done with
the strike of an axe, best translated as ‘chopped’.62
Since the word is commonly used in relation to felling trees and chopping
wood, it effectively associates the violence of Bevis’s disinheritance with branch-
cutting, calling up the imagery of family trees. This metaphor is well established in
late-medieval culture. It is present in the Old Testament, where the ancestry of Christ
is likened to a ‘branch’ growing from ‘stem’ and ‘root’, and the ‘Jesse tree’ is
depicted in medieval art from the eleventh century onwards. Genealogical
manuscripts from the later medieval period show family relationships in tree form.63
The combined imagery of spilled blood and hewn branches, used in Bevis, can also
be found in Shakespeare’s Richard II, in the context of intrafamilial violence and
usurped inheritance. The Duchess of Gloucester rebukes John of Gaunt for his
alleged role in his brother’s murder:
DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER Edward’s seven sons …
Were as seven vials of his sacred blood
Or seven fair branches springing from one root
…
One vial full of Edward’s sacred blood
One flourishing branch of his most royal root
62 See MED, heuen, v.(1) and citations. 63 See Isaiah 11.1; Figs 6–7 (p. 238).
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Is crack’d, and all the precious liquor spilt,
Is hack’d down, and his summer leaves all faded,
By envy’s hand and murder’s bloody axe.
Ah, Gaunt, his blood was thine! … 64
The metaphors are elucidated at length here, whereas in Bevis they remain implicit,
affecting the story in a different way. What is sometimes taken to be the simplistic
brevity of Middle English romance narrative entails a bold resistance to explicating
symbolism and metaphor: it is the resulting sensation that something is being
withheld – that there are ‘gaps’ – that provokes the imagination here.65 The image of
the child ‘to-hewe’ in Bevis expresses that the disinherited heir is severed from his
lineage. Inheritance and lineage are not the same thing – nor recoverable in the same
way – but both are lost in the event of disinheritance.
Octavian is more explicit about the loss of paternal lineage in its bloody
disinheritance scene. Here, the disinheritance of the emperor Octavian’s newborn
twin sons is confirmed when he judges them to be illegitimate: a judgement
conveyed in his silent execution of a kitchen servant, whom he believes to have
fathered the children. ‘Alle was byblede with blode’, the narrator says, ‘the clothes al
byblede’ (ll. 159, 179). The bloody imagery is especially poignant as a symbol of
refuted paternity here, because the ‘clothes’ which are ‘al byblede’ are the bedsheets
of the empress’s birthing chamber. Maternal, postpartum bloodshed is displaced by
the blood spilled in this paternal act of violence, by which the heirs are figuratively
64 Shakespeare, Richard II, I. 2. 11–22. 65 On ‘gaps’, see Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics (London and New York: Methuen, 1983), p. 45. Although romance narratives work differently from later forms (more of which in Chapter 4), I have found Rimmon-Kenan’s description of suspenseful and thought-provoking elliptical storytelling useful for reading the romances: corroborating Christine Chism’s observations of the genre, quoted in my introduction.
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severed from their paternal lineage and reborn: as fatherless, illegitimate and
disinherited. As in Havelok, the gruesome imagery is extended: the servant’s
disembodied head is held aloft ‘by the hare’, to display its ‘lowryng chere’ and, in
the southern Octavian, is hurled at the empress with the grotesque invitation to ‘pley
þe wyth þat ball!’ (NO, l. 177; SO, l. 211). Visualisation is stressed by reference to
sight as well as the absence of language: the emperor ‘saw that syghte’ and ‘no
worde speke he ne myghte’; the empress ‘saw the clothes’ and ‘bygan to skyrke and
crye’; and ‘[w]ordis of this were spoken no mo’ (ll. 154–184).
It is important to note that bloodshed is something to which the infant
Havelok, Bevis and the twins in Octavian are party but not personally subjected.
These are not exactly cases of bloodshed ‘averted’, a hagiographical trope in which
‘bodily integrity [is] restored’ by the avoidance of bloodshed.66 But religious ideas
about the generative properties of blood might have influenced the way in which
readers interpreted the symbolic significance of bloodshed in the romances. The
romance Amis and Amiloun, for example, imagines blood to be a cure for disease: the
romance draws on the legend of St Sylvester and the idea fundamental to the
Christian Eucharistic communion that blood sacrifice can be restorative and reinforce
(figurative) family bonds.67 The blood of Amis’s sacrificed children (later restored to
life) is used to cure his friend Amiloun of leprosy: it also reinforces their fraternal
bonds and, as Peggy McCracken argues, establishes a ‘symbolic lineage’ between
them.68 The curative properties of blood are not apparent in Havelok, Bevis and
66 Bildhauer, Medieval Blood, p. 60. 67 Peggy McCracken, The Curse of Eve, the Wound of the Hero: Blood, Gender, and Medieval Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), pp. 92–93; Bildhauer, Medieval Blood, pp. 60–61. 68 McCracken, The Curse of Eve, p. 50. See Amis and Amiloun, in Amis and Amiloun, Robert of Cisyle, and Sir Amadace, ed. Edward E. Foster (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007), ll. 2197–424.
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Octavian, but the idea that bloodshed might prefigure a new, symbolic lineage is
compelling with respect to the disinherited heir, cut off from his original lineage. In
Bevis, where animal’s blood is sacrificed to save the hero from execution but signals
his transition from ‘erles sone’ to ‘herde’, bloodshed effects a kind of ‘symbolic
death’: an anthropological term for a youthful ‘rite of passage’, which begins with
violent initiation and results in ‘rebirth’.69 Spilled blood as a memory-image for
disinheritance, then, intimates its dually destructive and generative potential,
recreating the romance’s nascent heir-character as disinherited-heir protagonist.
Indeed, the violence implicit in ‘heuen’ (hew) may also be the precursor to
re-growth or the formation of something new. The word can be applied to the
working of wood or stone, as in ‘[he] fellith tymbir and gene to hewe | And fourty
sheppis he ded make newe’.70 The image of ‘the child al to-hewe’ in Bevis finally
appears to convey a double metaphorical meaning: the idea of the heir cut off, like
the branch of a tree, from his lineage; then, in turn, the heir ‘hewe’ into something
‘newe’. In her book on the idea and ethics of ‘the new’ in medieval culture, Patricia
Ingham proposes that ‘childhood’ itself figures in imaginative literature as a brand of
‘newness’, one that has the potential to mitigate threatening forms of innovation.71
The figure of the heir perhaps embodies the concurrence of these two ideas of the
new: the heir is product of their parents’ desire for continuity and yet promises
novelty, even threatening death and displacement. The disinherited heir is potentially
more radical, however, as the fatherless offspring of disrupted succession. If the
69 Miri Rubin, ‘Introduction’, to Rites of Passage: Cultures of Transition in the Fourteenth Century, ed. Nicola McDonald and W. M. Ormrod (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2004), pp. 1–12 (p. 2). Rubin cites Arnold van Gennep’s influential study, Les Rites de Passage (Paris: É. Nourry, 1909). 70 The Seege or Batayle of Troye, ed. M. E. Barnicle, EETS, OS 172 (London: Oxford University Press, 1927), ll. 429–30. 71 Patricia Clare Ingham, The Medieval New: Ambivalence in an Age of Innovation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), pp. 75–111 (esp. on Floris and Blancheflour, pp. 82–92).
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disinherited heir is to be read as a posterchild for primogeniture, then he is inevitably
a troubling one: embodying discontinuity and thwarted parental reproduction.
Female Heirs
As stated at the beginning of this chapter, a common feature of the disinheritance
romances is that the story originates in paternal interests in stable dynastic
succession. Fathers in Bevis, Havelok, Tryamour and Octavian alternatively worry
about producing heirs and about protecting the rights of minor heirs. A key
distinction in Eglamour and Torrent is that the fathers’ dynastic aspirations are
expressed in their pursuit of an appropriate marriage for their (female) heirs, rather
than the heirs’ protection, per se. This does not necessarily represent a secure,
gendered differentiation. Although Athelwold alludes to Goldeboru’s future marriage
at ll. 198–200 in Havelok, his primary concern is that she succeed him as his ‘eyr’,
‘Engelond [to] welde’: ‘Yure levedi after me’, he says to his councillors, Goldeboru
should ‘yemen and welde’ (l. 110; l. 129; ll. 170–75). Inarguably, female inheritance
plays a secondary role in the disinheritance romances and therefore much of my
analysis inevitably focuses on male protagonists, as disinherited heirs. Female heirs
are nonetheless a significant presence in each romance and the perennial question of
legitimacy, with which the next chapter is concerned, frequently originates in the
matter of female heirship (which itself deviates from the paradigm of male-
preference primogeniture). To conclude this chapter then, and as a preface to the next
chapter, I reflect briefly on the presentation of female heirship in the romances,
beyond the (usually male) disinherited protagonists.
There is a common syntactical formula used to introduce female heirs in the
disinheritance romances, the basis of which is ‘no heir, but a daughter’:
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Of his bodi ne havede he eyr
Bute a mayden swithe fayr (Havelok, ll. 110–11)
‘I nave non eir after me dai
Boute Josian, this faire mai’ (Bevis, ll. 555–56)
nevry child but on
That was a dowghtir …
His ryche eyr shulde be (Eglamour, ll. 25–27)
He has no heyre hys londys to welde
But a doghtyr of seven yeres elde. (Tryamour, ll. 625–26)
The phrasing allows some ambiguity about whether the daughter-heir is fortuitous or
unfortunate. In three of the four examples, the words ‘he had no heir’ (to paraphrase)
are isolated from the mention of the daughter, as if a standalone statement. The
syntax alternately implies that having a daughter is next to having no heir at all, or
that no one but she can be considered an heir. On one hand, then, the formula
appears to support claims about the ‘insistence of romance [on] such a thing as a true
heir … that one person, and one person only, carried the right to the crown’, as per
the fundamental principle of primogeniture.72 But on the other hand, it insinuates a
certain precarity.
That precarity could reside in the very singularity of the heir, upon whom the
fate of the succession rests. Yet the phrase is used of two daughters in Ywain and
Gawain, describing a ‘grete lord of the land’ who had ‘none other ayre | Bot two
doghters that war ful fayre’.73 The problem here is not singularity but quite the
72 Cooper, English Romance, p. 326. 73 Ywain and Gawain, in Sir Perceval of Galles and Ywain and Gawain, ed. Mary Flowers Braswell (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1995), ll. 2746–48, my italics.
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opposite: there being two daughters and no sons, the estate would customarily
descend according to partition and be divided, and in this romance the situation
spells conflict.74 In Ipomadon, meanwhile, the formula is used to introduce a male
heir:
... he gatte neuer chyld his eyre to be
But a brother son had hee
That was he newov nere. (ll. 33-36)
Again, the formula serves to highlight the precarity of patrilineal succession, but here
the issue is neither singular female heirship nor co-heirship (partition), but that the
king has no offspring of his own. It remains that the formula is particularly
associated with daughters in the disinheritance romances. But since it is not reserved
exclusively for female heirs, or singular heirs, according to the evidence of
Ipomadon and Ywain, I suggest that its ambiguous implication of precarity is best
understood in other terms: not referring to the problem of singularity or gender per
se, but in light of the economics of female heirship in late-medieval England.
Primogeniture was in some senses an advantage for female heirs, because a
daughter with no brothers would have a better claim to her father’s estate than any
uncles or male cousins. Historians have speculated that this resulted in the
aggregation of lands in aristocratic hands in the medieval period, as families with
sole female heirs sought marriages that elevated their own economic and political
standing. Simon Payling argues, however, that this theory does not hold for later
medieval England, a time of ‘crisis in male succession’, as Felicity Riddy also notes,
due to high mortality rates for male heirs.75 At this time, Payling writes, female heirs
74 This is discussed further in Chapter 4. 75 See Payling, ‘Social Mobility, Demographic Change, and Landed Society in Late Medieval England’ (as cited in the introduction) and Payling, ‘The Economics of Marriage in Late Medieval
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were increasingly the cause of the ‘dispersal of estates’, rather than land aggregation:
this was part of a trend towards the ‘permeability of aristocratic society to non-
landed wealth through the land market’, in fact.76 These two alternate possibilities for
female heirs (aggregation or dispersal of aristocratic estates) are, perhaps,
represented in the ambiguity of the formula, ‘no heir but a daughter’. Moreover, I
suggest, the ambiguity of that phrase foreshadows the subsequent conflict between
fathers, who intend their female heirs to consolidate their (aristocratic) wealth, and
the aspirational knight heroes for whom sole female heirs are key to social
advancement.
Of the disinheritance romances, Eglamour and Torrent most clearly play on
the possibility that ‘succession through the female line’ creates ‘opportunities for
men of lesser social status to advance themselves’.77 Eglamour is a ‘knyght’ but
seeks to marry Cristabell, the daughter of the ‘erle’ he serves; the feudal relationship
making the contrast in their socioeconomic standings quite plain (ll. 7–24). In
Torrent, the eponymous protagonist is the son of an earl, but he similarly seeks to
marry upwards, in his pursuit of the princess, Desonell. Both women reciprocate the
affections of their respective suitors and, as sole heirs to the fathers’ estates, their
marriages clearly represent an opportunity for social advancement. But both matches
are scorned by the women’s fathers, who regard the knights as unsuitable and seek
sons-in-law of equal or higher social standing. The sole female heir is thus an
England: The Marriage of Heiresses’, The Economic History Review, 54:3 (2001), 413–29. Riddy, ‘Family, Marriage, Intimacy’, p. 245. 76 Payling notes that this trend is also evident in landholders’ ‘subversion of male primogeniture’ in order to provide for other offspring. Payling, ‘Economics of Marriage’, p. 413. 77 Joanne Charbonneau, ‘Trangressive Fathers in Sir Eglamour of Artois and Torrent of Portyngale’, in Discourses on Love, Marriage, and Transgression in Medieval and Early Modern Literature, ed. Albrecht Classen (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2004), pp. 243–65 (p. 247); also Eglamour, note to ll. 64–84.
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ambiguous figure, at once a threat to aristocratic dynastic integrity and a boon to the
aspirational knight. As such, the recurrent presence of the female heir in the
disinheritance romances is provocative, one of the ways in which the romances resist
and undermine patrilineal primogeniture. But the issue is not necessarily one of
gender. Rather, female heirs raise the question of legitimate succession as a social
issue. It is with this in mind, finally, that the next chapter turns to the presentation of
allegations of illegitimacy in the romances, and the political implications of
illegitimate or legitimate heirship.
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Chapter 2
Illegitimacy
Little has been written about the recurrence of illegitimacy allegations or other
illegitimacy motifs in the Middle English romances. Some have noted that the
genre’s archetypal adulterous relationship, between Guinevere and Lancelot, remains
unproductive and therefore avoids producing bastard offspring. Elsewhere, Georges
Duby declares that ‘bastardy was too serious a matter to be treated lightly’ and, he
implies, ‘too serious’ a topic for romance.1 But the topic of bastardy is more
prominent in the Middle English romances than this suggests. The repeated
allegations of illegitimacy in the disinheritance romances – ‘houre sone’, ‘bastard’,
‘horcop’ – are only the most conspicuous sign of an illegitimacy trope.2 The idea of
illegitimacy is – like disinheritance, and as an aspect of it – inextricably and
paradoxically linked with the construction of heirship in the romances. Where the
previous chapter argued that disinheritance delineates the romances’ concept of
‘heritage’, and the heir is metaphorically reborn through disinheritance, here I will
show how the romances work towards the imaginative concept of illegitimate-yet-
rightful heirship; in part, by exploiting real judicial conflicts between medieval
common law and ecclesiastical laws on the matter of legitimacy.
The allegations of illegitimacy, to begin with, are explicit and direct. In
Eglamour, Princeamor exiles his daughter, Cristabell, decrying her child as a
‘bastard’, ‘that ys thee dere’ (l. 787). In Torrent, King Calamond exiles his pregnant
1 McCracken, Romance of Adultery, p. 119; Georges Duby, The Knight, the Lady, and the Priest: The Making of Modern Marriage in Medieval France, trans. Barbara Bray (London: Allen Lane, 1984; originally published as Le Chevalier, la Femme et le Prêtre in Paris by Librarie Hachette, 1981), p. 222. 2 Bevis, l. 398; others given below.
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daughter, Desonell and ‘that bastard within thee’ (l. 1765). In Tryamour, Sir Marrock
insists that the unborn Tryamour is a ‘horcop’ (bastard) and in Octavian the
emperor’s twin sons are alleged to be the ‘mysbegeten chyldren’ of adultery. Their
accuser is their paternal grandmother, the dowager empress of Rome, who tells her
son that, through these twins, ‘Rome sall wrange ayerede bee | And in uncouthe
hande’ (Tryamour, l. 224; SO, l. 259; NO, l. 107–08). The use of the word ‘heir’
here, as a verb and part of a compound adjective, is unusual: indeed, it is the singular
example in the MED.3 The effect is to conceive of the illegitimate heirs as active
agents of Rome’s future destruction: seemingly the opposite of rightful heirs, the
illegitimates are wrongful heirs, embodying problematic productivity, liable to
regenerate the “wrongness” of their conception in the land they inherit. The romance
will go on to challenge this notion, but the language of illegitimacy proves
performative in both Octavian and Tryamour, where it is enough to persuade
formerly devoted husbands to condemn their wives and offspring. Emperor
Octavian’s speechlessness at l. 155 (mentioned in Chapter 1) marks the absence of a
rhetoric adequate to counteract that of illegitimacy. It also raises a question about the
definition of illegitimacy and its boundaries, which is where the next section begins.
The Language and Meanings of Illegitimacy
The apparent finality of the word ‘bastard’ conceals its complexity in Middle
English. Glanvill at first seems straightforward on the fact that lawful heirs must be
born of lawful marriages, and bastards cannot be lawful heirs. Glanvill states that,
no-one who is a bastard or not born of a lawful marriage may be a lawful heir;4
3 See MED, wrong(e, adv., sense 1b: ‘~heired ?passed down as a heritage to illegitimate heirs?’. 4 Glanvill, p. 87.
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or, in the original Latin,
heres autem legitimus nullus Bastardus nec aliquis qui ex legitimo matrimonio non est
procreatus esses potest.5
But to say ‘not born of lawful marriage’ is not necessarily equivalent to ‘bastard’.
Furthermore, what constitutes a ‘lawful marriage’ depends on the ‘law’ to which one
defers. Bracton indicates the potential for conflict between different jurisdictions,
when stating that:
a legitimate heir is a son whom the marriage proves to be legitimate, as he who was born in
lawful wedlock, or one recognized in the face of the church though in truth there has been
no marriage.6
Bracton indicates that the church might recognise the legitimacy of heirs who are
born in circumstances which would not constitute ‘marriage’ according to common
law. Though it would be inaccurate to posit two opposing ‘models of marriage’ in
late-medieval England, it is true that there were two ‘very different’ and even
‘contradictory notions’ of the ‘purpose of marriage’, between common law and
canon law.7 These contradictions create the possibility of ‘clashes’ on the question
of legitimate heirship.8
5 London, British Library, Additional MS 24066, f. 42v (transcription my own). A digital facsimile is available from the Early English Laws project website <http://www.earlyenglishlaws.ac.uk/laws/manuscripts/> [accessed 4 Dec 2019]. Early English Laws is a collaborative project between the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London and the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London, begun in 2006 and AHRC-funded 2009–11. 6 Bracton, p. 185, my italics. 7 See Conor McCarthy, Marriage in Medieval England: Law, Literature and Practice (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2004), p. 5. McCarthy refers to Georges Duby’s argument (in The Knight, the Lady, and the Priest) for two competing models of marriage in twelfth-century France and David Herlihy’s counterargument, while admitting that there were jurisdictional conflicts on certain matters, such as the legitimacy of children. David Herlihy, Medieval Households (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 86. 8 McCarthy, Marriage in Medieval England, p. 6.
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After marriage was made a sacrament by the church in the twelfth century,
the legitimacy of marriage increasingly came within the purview of ecclesiastical law
courts. The object of sacramental marriage was not to clarify legitimate heirship,
however, but to eradicate or convert ‘concubinal’ relationships.9 This desire partly
manifested in a ‘reluctant willingness to recognize clandestine marriage’, which
could be as informal as promises made privately between a couple.10 Thus while the
church was more concerned with policing ‘illicit sex’ than the property rights of
illegitimate progeny, recognising clandestine marriages consequently recognised
children born from such unions as potentially legitimate, even though not born
‘within wedlock’ (after a formal wedding ceremony).11 Theoretically, any bastardy
dispute ought to have been tried according to ecclesiastical law first, and then
common law; although in the absence of any parish registers, the issue ‘was usually
determined by a sworn inquisition of neighbours’.12 At the same time, ecclesiastical
authorities were reluctant to litigate on the matter of legitimate heirship. Far from
being a neutral position, however, this constituted a refusal to use ecclesiastical
courts to ‘deny inheritance’ to anyone who may be illegitimate in the eyes of the
common law but who was ‘canonically legitimate’.13
In both Eglamour and Torrent, the children in question – called ‘bastard’ by
their grandfathers – are born before their parents are formally married, but after the
pairs have privately committed themselves to one another. In Torrent, the
9 Michael M. Sheehan, ‘The European Family and Canon Law’, Continuity and Change, 6:3 (1991), 347–60 (p. 354). 10 Sheehan, ‘The European Family and Canon Law’, p. 354. 11 Sara McDougall, Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800–1230 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 10. 12 R. H. Helmholz, ‘Bastardy Litigation in Medieval England’, The American Journal of Legal History, 13:4 (1969), 360–83 (p. 361). 13 Michael M. Sheehan, Marriage, Family, and Law in Medieval Europe: Collected Studies, ed. James K. Farge (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), p. 257.
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eponymous hero is sent on various quests, by Desonell’s father, to prove his worth as
a marriage suitor. Before his first departure, he meets privately with Desonell in ‘a
chambyr’ and promises to ‘come ageyn’ (ll. 858, 862). Later, hearing that her father
has arranged Desonell’s marriage to the prince of Aragon, Torrent publicly declares
himself wronged and rightfully entitled to ‘wed her to my wyfe’ (l. 1208). When he
returns, though he and Desonell are still unmarried, and without her father’s consent,
they spend a night together. In ‘her chamber’, the narrator says, she ‘set hym on her
bed syde’ and such ‘gestenyng she a-right’ (hospitality she made) that ‘there he
dwellid all nyght’. Before departing again, Torrent gives Desonell a ring; after this
point, he refers to her as the one to whom he has ‘trouth to plight’ (ll. 1361–98,
1706). This is a significant phrase because ‘trothplight’ can refer to either betrothal
or marriage vows.14 To compare, in Eglamour: Eglamour tells Cristabell ‘with the
grace of God I shall you wedde’ and, in the words of the narrator, ‘thereto here
trowthes they plyght’ (ll. 668–69).
The church’s stance on clandestine unions allowed the possibility of
retroactively legitimising prenuptial offspring, after the formalisation of the parents’
marriage (assuming that no adultery had been committed). There is evidence of
resistance to such allowances, in the thirteenth century, among the lay aristocracy.15
However, in 1397, Richard II retrospectively legitimised the prenuptial children of
14 See MED, treuth-plight, n. 15 Robert Grosseteste petitioned the royal judge William Raleigh, a possible originator for Bracton, to recognise the legitimacy of prenuptial offspring in the secular courts but his efforts were ‘turned back’ by the secular aristocracy at the Council of Merton in 1236. Helmholz, ‘Bastardy Litigation’, p. 365. Pollock and Maitland consider William Raleigh to be ‘Bracton’s master’, while Sam Worby suggests with Paul Brand that Raleigh himself ‘is a “plausible author”’. Pollock and Maitland, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I, vol 2, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 107; Worby, Law and Kinship, p. 62; Paul Brand, ‘The Age of Bracton’, in The History of English Law: Centenary Essays on “Pollock and Maitland”, ed. John Hudson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 65–89 (pp. 78–79).
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John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford (who took the name ‘Beaufort’), with the
assent of parliament.16 The legitimation had far-reaching implications in fifteenth-
century politics, since Edward IV, Richard III and Henry VII were all direct
descendants of the Beaufort line through their mothers, Cecily Neville and Margaret
Beaufort. It arguably provided Henry VII with a claim to the throne (by descent from
Edward III) superior to that of Richard III.17 Given these political contexts, late-
medieval readers were likely to be sensitive to the possibilities of illegitimacy and
legitimation in the romances, noting that neither Degrebell (in Eglamour) nor Antony
and Leobertus (in Torrent) qualify for retroactive legitimation, according to canon
law, until the very end of the romances when their biological parents are finally
married. Until then, from either canon or common law standpoints, they are
‘bastards’ as accused.
There is also another dimension to the bastardy of the disinherited heirs in
these romances, an extra-judicial, social meaning. Sara McDougall’s recent book on
the history of bastardy in medieval Europe demonstrates that, in the early Middle
16 See Calendar of Patent Rolls, Richard II, 1396–1399 (London: Mackie & Co., 1909), p. 86 (9 Feb 1397) and ‘Richard II, January 1397’, in The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, 1275–1504, gen. ed. Chris Given-Wilson (Leicester: National Archives and Scholarly Digital Editions, 2005), p. iii.343 (Membrane 2; Items 28 & 29) also available at <www.sd-editions.com/PROME> [accessed 4 Dec 2019]. An exemplification (certified copy) of the legitimation was issued in 1407 by Henry IV, at the request of his half-brother, John Beaufort. See Calendar of Patent Rolls, Henry IV, 1405–1408 (London: Mackie & Co., 1907), p. 284 (10 Feb 1407). Chris Given-Wilson notes that the wording of the original patent was revised at this time to exclude the Beauforts from the royal succession, with the phrase ‘excepta dignitate regali’. Chris Given-Wilson, Henry IV (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016), p. 306, n. 14. 17 Henry VII could claim descent by agnatic primogeniture from the third of Edward III’s sons (John of Gaunt), whereas Richard III (and his elder brother, Edward IV) could only claim descent from the fourth of Edward III’s sons (Edmund, Duke of York) by agnatic succession and from the second (Lionel, Duke of Clarence) by a female line (Lionel’s daughter and only heir, Philippa). Edward III’s entailment of 1376 had settled the succession on male heirs. Ultimately, however, it was victory in battle that gave credence to Henry VII’s claim. See Michael Bennett, ‘Edward III’s Entail and the Succession to the Crown, 1376–1471’, The English Historical Review, 63:452 (1998), 580–609. S. B. Chrimes, Henry VII (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), p. 50.
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Ages, bastardy was alleged according to the social status of the child’s parents and
not the legitimacy of their marriage, or even their marital status. In aristocratic
society, having:
the right ancestry … the best genealogy, the most prestigious maternal and paternal lineage,
mattered most in ideas of what made someone a legitimate heir or successor. It mattered far
more than whether the parents had married legally or not.18
McDougall’s study ends in 1230, but the three entries for ‘bastarde’ in the
Promptorium Parvulorum (c. 1440), a Middle English-to-Latin glossary, show that
this socially determined sense of bastardy persists into the mid-fifteenth century, at
least.19 The first entry is translated into Latin as ‘nothus’, with no further gloss. But
the two additional entries for the word, given as ‘spurius/a’ and ‘nothus/a’, are
respectively glossed as: ‘comyn of [ungentyl] fader and moder genteylle’ and
‘[comyn] of fadyr gentylle and modyr ungentylle’.20 The latter accords with the
description in John Trevisa’s translation of Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon: ‘Nothus
is a bastard, or he þat is i-gete of a worþy fader and i-bore of an vnworþy moder’.21
Crucially, none of these definitions refers to marriage or ‘wedlock’ but all define a
‘bastard’ as the offspring of a socially mixed union, differentiated according to the
18 McDougall, Royal Bastards, p. 15. 19 Promptorium Parvulorum Sive Clericorum: Dictionarius Anglo-Latinus Princeps, ed. A. Way (London: Camden Society, 1865), p. 26. Way’s edition is based on London, British Library, Harley MS 221 (c. 1440). All references to the Promptorium are to this edition unless otherwise stated. 20 A. L. Mayhew’s edition for the Early English Text Society, from the Winchester Cathedral Chapter Library manuscript (c. 1440), shows the two definitions conflated so that there is no longer a distinct entry for a child born to a ‘gentle’ mother and ‘ungentle’ father. See The Promptorium Parvulorum: The First English-Latin Dictionary, ed. A. L. Mayhew, EETS, ES 102 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd., 1908), col. 25–26. 21 John Trevisa, Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden Monachi Cestrensis, 8 vols, ed. C. Babington and J. Rawson (London: Longman & Co., 1865–86), vol. 2, ed. Babington (1869), p. 269. Ranulf Higden was an English chronicler, c. 1280–1364, his Polychronicon translated from Latin into Middle English by John Trevisa (fl. 1342–1402). The earliest of the Trevisa Polychronicon manuscripts is dated to 1387.
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sex of the ‘gentylle’ or ‘worþy’ parent.22 Though the MED records the proper noun,
‘Bastard’ as the ‘epithet of a noble’ (my italics), it is not confined to the nobility: a
letter to Thomas Stonor, for instance, dated to around 1463, mentions one ‘Johannes
Bastard de Modbury, baker’.23
In this light, the class aspects of the bastardy allegations in the Middle
English romances are inescapable. The couplings in Eglamour and Torrent are
mixed-class unions: Eglamour a ‘knyght’, who has ‘wan degré with jurnay clere’
(won his status through valiant deeds), in service to an earl, proposing to marry
Cristabell, daughter of the said earl and Torrent, the son of an earl, wishing to marry
Desonell, a princess.24 When Eglamour confides his admiration of Cristabell to a
squire of her father’s household, the squire advises him:
‘Ye ar a knyght of lytyll lond
Take not to evyll, I undirstond
For mykyll wolde have more.
Yif I went to that lady and told her so
Peraunter on skorn take it wold scho
And lyghtly lett me fare.
Syr, a mon that hewyth ovyr hye
Lyghtly the chyppus fallen in his eye’. (ll. 64–71)
The squire assumes that Eglamour is interested in augmenting his ‘lytyll londe’ and
that Cristabell will ‘skorn’ the suggestion of marriage to such a man. His advice is
edged with warning. ‘[M]ykyll wolde have more’ might be read as an allusion to
22 ‘Worþy’ (or ‘worthi’) can refer to a social rank, as well as to monetary wealth. See MED, worthi, adj. 23 See MED, ‘bastard’, n., sense 1b; Stonor Letters and Papers, p. 151. 24 Eglamour, l. 11.
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greed, when coupled with the proverbial warning against overreaching oneself: that
is, getting ‘chyppus’ in one’s eye for attempting to cut too high a branch. A similar
metaphor is used in a popular Middle English political verse, which cautions against
‘hacking’ over one’s head and points to the example of William Walace: ‘It falles in
his eghe | That hackes ovre heghe | Wit at Walays’.25
But Eglamour’s squire also begins his warning apologetically and
empathetically: ‘Take not to evyll’ and ‘I undirstond’, he says, articulating the
romance’s ambiguous position on the ‘permeability’ of aristocratic wealth (to borrow
Payling’s term). Eglamour’s aspiration is socially subversive and potentially
dangerous, but also understandable. He is, after all, the romance’s principle hero and
he will marry Cristabell before the end. The proverbial image is also noteworthy for
its resonance with the ‘family tree’ metaphor discussed in Chapter 1. In this light, it
seems that the squire’s lesson is not only against setting one’s sights too high, but
that Cristabell’s union with Eglamour will see her cut off from her noble lineage, like
a branch from a tree. This would be Eglamour’s loss – the ‘chyppus’ in his eye – if
Cristabell’s noble wealth is his object.
In Octavian and Tryamour, the false claims of adultery also involve mixed-
class unions. The claim that the empress has taken a ‘kokys knave’ as her lover in
Octavian is the most exaggerated, but the social disparity between Queen Margaret
and the unnamed ‘knyght’ alleged to be her lover, in Tryamour, is emphasised by the
use of the word ‘horcop’ to describe the offspring. The Promptorium approximates
‘horcop’ in Latin as ‘manzer, spurius, spuria, pelignus, peligna’, where the term
25 The verse is inserted into Peter Langtoft’s Chronicle and that of Robert Mannyng of Brunne (see DIMEV 545). The quotation above is from The Chronicle of Pierre de Langtoft: in French Verse, from the Earliest Period to the Death of King Edward I, ed. T. Wright, 2 vols (London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1866–68), vol. 2 (1868), p. 364.
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‘spurius/a’ is elsewhere defined as a child ‘born of a gentle mother and ungentle
father’.26 The accuser in Tryamour is Sir Marrok, steward to the king, whose primary
motive is to cast doubt on the queen’s revelation that he had attempted to seduce her
in the king’s absence. But his accusation of adultery against the queen quickly
becomes an accusation of illegitimacy against her offspring. He advises the king:
Hyt were not feyre,
A horcop to be yowre heyre,
But he ware of yowre kynne. (ll. 223–25)
The caveat, ‘but he ware of yowre kynne’ pertinently disassociates bastardy from
illegitimate heirship, allowing that the king’s bastard child could be considered a
‘feyre’ successor. But it also suggests that the issue is one of gender: that the
illegitimate child of a ‘gentle’ woman with an ‘ungentle’ man is lower in status than
the illegitimate child of a ‘gentle’ man with an ‘ungentle’ woman.
Where ‘bastard’ can refer to offspring of either sex and any combination of
noble and non-noble parentage, the use of ‘horcop’ in Tryamour specifies that the
child is the progeny of the queen’s extramarital sexual activity, rather than that of the
king. The word is also suggestive of the gendered term, ‘whore’.27 But the gendering
of bastardy should be read in light of inheritance customs, rather than other social or
religious ethics. While ‘theologians maintained that extramarital sex was as sinful for
26 NO, l. 116; Tryamour, ll. 172 and 224; Promptorium, p. 246. 27 The etymology of the word ‘horcop’ is uncertain but the MED compilers speculate that it is probably from ‘hore’ and ‘cop’, modeled after ‘atter-cop’. The MED gives hor(e, n., sense 1 as ‘physical filth’ or ‘moral foulness’. Cop, n., sense 2(a) means ‘head’. Thus ‘horcop’ would mean ‘foul-head’. (‘Atter-cop’ means ‘spider’, but literally ‘poison-head’). But given the MED entry for hor(e, n., sense 2, meaning ‘whore’ – ‘a woman who prostitutes herself for money’ – it seems inevitable that the word ‘horcop’ would connote prostitution, for late-medieval readers of Tryamour. Among the compounds for hor(e, n., sense 2 is ‘horsone’ (whore’s son). The word ‘horcop’ always means ‘bastard’ (the MED gives no evidence of its use in any other context).
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a man as for a woman’, the belief that adultery was primarily a ‘female offense’ was
sustained by ‘laypeople’;28 because it was seen to threaten the ‘legitimate production
of progeny and proper descent of property’.29 The gendering of bastardy, then, was
symptomatic of legitimacy as a social institution, aimed at maintaining property and
power divisions along class lines, policed by patriarchal authorities. Legitimacy itself
was neither a matter of gender nor spiritual morality but, as an essentially aristocratic
and patriarchal instrument of social order, it was vulnerable to challenges from either
the church’s recognition of clandestine marriage or autonomous female sexuality:
each liable to be characterised as illegitimate.
Indeed, the clandestine pregnancies in Eglamour and Torrent are an affront to
the romances’ aristocratic patriarchs because they are born of unions that cross class
lines and daughters who have ignored their fathers’ prerogative to choose a suitable
husband. Patriarchal authority is thus destablised by the coincidental interests of
disobedient daughters and upwardly mobile suitors, in these romances. It is
significant that the sympathies of Desonell’s mother, in Torrent, are also with the
young ‘erlis sonne’: she begs her husband to give Desonell ‘[r]ight of lond’ at least
‘[t]ill she delyvered be’, reasoning that Torrent is a ‘[r]iche man inough’ even though
he is not their social equal (ll. 1804–08).30 These entreaties represent a challenge to
28 James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 27. See also James A. Brundage, ‘Sex and Canon Law’, in Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, ed. Vern. L. Bullough and James A. Brundage (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 33–50. For a useful overview of marriage in medieval law, see the introduction to The Trials and Joys of Marriage, ed. Eve Salisbury (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2002). 29 Caroline Dunne, Stolen Women in Medieval England: Rape, Abduction and Adultery, 1100–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 120. 30 This appears to be an example of ‘pleading the belly’, whereby a woman was granted clemency for the duration of her pregnancy in order to avoid condemning an unborn child. See James C. Oldham, ‘On Pleading the Belly: A History of the Jury of Matrons’, Criminal Justice History, 6 (1985), 1–64.
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what Carolyn Dinshaw elsewhere identifies as the patriarchal instrument of the law.31
The alignment of gentry and female interests may have felt familiar to the romance’s
late-medieval readers and, if so, these scenes would have been provocative: they
emphasise the idea of illegitimacy as an aristocratic social construct and present the
authority policing legitimacy as hostile and unjust.
This critical view of patriarchal legal authority is also present in Octavian and
Tryamour, where the emperor and king, respectively, are so easily duped by false
evidence that they pass legal judgements that perversely de-legitimate their own
offspring. In contrast to Maura Nolan’s observation of Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale,
where she finds the poet employing the ‘language of the law’ in order to provide ‘an
essential vocabulary of legitimacy’ – ‘the legitimating force of legal discourse’ – at
these crucial points in the disinheritance romances, the law is a source of injustice
and illegitimacy.32 In Octavian and Tryamour, the failure of the law to arbitrate
legitimacy successfully is comparable to the failure of wardship in Havelok and
Bevis. In Eglamour and Torrent, the heirs are illegitimate but their exile is presented
as an outrage, marking the romances’ distinction between legal legitimacy and an
extra-judicial sense of justice, or rightful heirship.
The accusations of illegitimacy in the romances are intensely political, not
just because they explicitly deal with the transmission and tenure of power but
because they implicitly deal with the legitimacy of mixed social parentage and social
mobility. The mirroring of two rhyming couplets in Tryamour and Torrent is
poignant:
31 Carolyn Dinshaw, ‘The Law of Man and Its ‘Abhomynacions’, Exemplaria, 1:1 (1989), 117–48. 32 Nolan, ‘“Acquiteth yow now”’, p. 152.
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Middle English romance is a genre that ‘rewards memory’, as McKinstry says,33 and
the alternative rhymes for ‘heir’ above, between Torrent and Tryamour, produce an
extra-textual collocation of the term ‘horcop’ with the disparaging use of ‘erlls sone’.
The tacit equivalence here indicates how profoundly insulting the latter usage of
‘erlls sone’ might have sounded to the romances’ medieval readers. Close inspection
of the bastardy accusations in the romances, in this example and the others above,
shows that they are coincidental with disdain for mixed social matches and
particularly the upwardly mobile knights.
To understand how negative (or otherwise) the idea of bastardy would have
seemed to late-medieval readers of the romances, in general, we might look to other
historical evidence. Historians of childhood offer different views on the status of
illegitimate offspring in late-medieval cultures, attesting to the complexity of the
issue as well as the varying definitions of illegitimacy according to different laws
and among distinct social classes. There are also some gaps in the scholarship,
particularly on the distinction between extramarital and prenuptial children. A
significant degree of variation can be found in a single volume, as with the essays
collected in A Cultural History of Childhood and Family in the Middle Ages (2010).
Valerie Garver notes that church reformers in the High Middle Ages ‘emphasized
how a parent’s sin might taint the child’, referring to children born of adultery, rather
33 Jamie McKinstry, Middle English Romance and the Craft of Memory, p. 2.
‘Hyt were not feyre
A horcop to be yowre heyre’
(Tryamour, ll. 223–24)
‘Madame, were that feyer,
To make as erlls sone myn eyer?’
(Torrent, ll. 786–87)
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than prenuptial children.34 Richard Huscroft finds that illegitimate children ‘were
looked on with disfavor’, referring to ‘the children of prostitutes, [illegitimate
children of] servants, and other unmarried women’ and socially isolated parents who
might resort to ‘giving up, abandoning, or even killing their unwanted children’.35
Louise Wilkinson alludes to a relationship between illegitimacy and infanticide in
German and Italian medieval legal records.36
By contrast, Jennifer Ward and P. J. P. Goldberg respectively describe the
care of illegitimate and orphaned children as a ‘community’ responsibility and find
examples of some parents who adopted illegitimate offspring and other non-
biological children into their families.37 Barbara Hanawalt finds that the ‘stigma of
an illegitimate birth for either the mother or the child [in peasant society] need not
have been very strong’. She cites one jury decision in the fifteenth century which
shows that, occasionally, ‘[e]ven a child produced from an adulterous union [could
be] deemed legitimate’.38 As Goldberg briefly notes, however, ‘[t]hese phenomena’,
the care and adoption of illegitimate offspring, ‘have received little scholarly
attention’.39
Though the word ‘bastard’ is invariably derogatory when used in the
disinheritance romances, it is not inherently insulting. The sources cited in the MED
record an array of uses which are pejorative, but not necessarily abusive. The use of
the word in personal names, for example, appears more neutral, even if it carries
34 Valerie L. Garver, ‘Faith and Religion’, in A Cultural History of Childhood and Family in the Middle Ages, ed. Louise J. Wilkinson (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2010), pp. 145–60 (p. 152). 35 Richard Huscroft, ‘The State’, in Childhood and Family in the Middle Ages, pp. 127–44 (p. 140). 36 Louise J. Wilkinson, ‘Introduction’, to Childhood and Family in the Middle Ages, 1–21 (p. 6). 37 Jennifer C. Ward, ‘Community’, in Childhood and Family in the Middle Ages, pp. 41–55 (p. 52); P. J. P. Goldberg, ‘Family Relationships’, in Childhood and Family in the Middle Ages, pp. 21–39 (p. 33). 38 Barbara Hanawalt, The Ties that Bound, pp. 73, 196. 39 Goldberg, ‘Family Relationships’, p. 33.
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some of the negative connotations of other usages. The best known bearer of the
name ‘bastard’ is William I of England: ‘William bastard þat þis lond wan’.40 But
there is also Jean Dunois (d. 1468), son of the duke of Orléans, known as ‘the
Bastard of Orliaunce’ and immortalised in Shakespeare’s 1 Henry VI (c. 1591).41
There is a passing reference to ‘my lord the Bastard’ in a letter from John Paston III
to his mother, dated 1468 (probably referring to the Count de la Roche);42 and Robert
Armburgh, in a letter dated 1450, twice mentions a feoffee of Joan Armburgh’s
estate by the name ‘Bastard’ (otherwise unidentified).43 The honours afforded to
Henry Fitzroy (d. 1536), the illegitimate offspring of Henry VIII, and the brief
consideration given to his viability as an heir to his father, demonstrates that
restrictions placed on illegitimate heirs could be circumstantial.44
Although medieval inheritance law appears straightforward on the non-status
of illegitimate offspring as heirs, the blunt statement that ‘bastards [had] no rights of
inheritance and no next of kin’ refers narrowly to de facto inheritance rights.45 It
does not mean that illegitimate offspring were entirely prevented from inheriting
40 An Anonymous Short English Metrical Chronicle, ed. Ewald Zettl, EETS, OS 196 (London: Oxford University Press, 1935), l. 1977. The chronicle is included in the Auchinleck manuscript. 41 For more on the life of Jean Dunois, see Anthony Emery, Seats of Power in Europe during the Hundred Years War (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2016). A comparable example of this epithet is Anthony of Burgundy (d. 1504), known as the bastard of Burgundy. See Richard Vaughan, Philip the Good: The Apogee of Burgundy (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2002), p. 129. The Middle English spelling of the ‘Bastard of Orliaunce’ above is from ‘Copy of a Paper Rolle, temp. H. 6. [c. 1422–71], containing charges against the Duke of Suffolk’, in Third Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1872), p. 280. See Shakespeare, 1 Henry VI, I. 1. 93 for the first mention of the ‘Bastard of Orléans’ and I. 3. 25 for his first line. For a recent reappraisal of illegitimacy in Shakespeare’s works, see Katie Pritchard, ‘Legitimacy, Illegitimacy and Sovereignty in Shakespeare’s British Plays’ (doctoral thesis, University of Manchester, 2011). 42 Paston Letters, p. 165. 43 Armburgh Papers, pp. 176–77. 44 See Beverley A. Murphy, ‘Fitzroy, Henry, Duke of Richmond and Somerset (1519–1536)’, ODNB <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/46706> [accessed 4 Dec 2019]. 45 Hicks, ‘Introduction’, Fifteenth-Century Inquisitions ‘Post Mortem’, p. 8.
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property, particularly as ‘testamentary freedom’ increased in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries.46 Though it does not concern the inheritance of land, Margaret
Paston’s bequest of ‘ten marks’ to the bastard daughter of John Paston, in her will of
1482, demonstrates both a willingness to consider illegitimate offspring as heirs and
the expectation that the law will act accordingly.47 In short, alleged illegitimacy did
not always present an insurmountable obstacle to social integration and accrual of
wealth and power: the connotations of illegitimacy in the romances are not,
therefore, inevitably and irrevocably negative.
The various non-romance sources help to illuminate the mentions of bastardy
in the Middle English romances, if it is only to expose their essential ambivalence.
Clearly bastardy can be defined in more than one way: the social and ethical
implications of bastardy vary according to context, as well as to the character of
individuals, as much as the form of bastardy itself. Not all offspring born of illicit
sex are called ‘bastards’, in fact: Sir Gowther, for example, born half-human and
half-demon is never called a ‘bastard’ in the romance bearing his name. A further
study might reveal whether various medieval terms for, and definitions of, bastardy
can be categorised with distinct social or ethical implications. It might also answer
whether these categories would correspond to beliefs (religious or social) about the
extent of transgression committed by different types of illicit sex. But the evidence
gathered here so far suggests not; especially because the idea of bastardy is entangled
with sexual ethics as well as economics, according to certain social agendas, and
46 McCarthy, Marriage in Medieval England, p. 63. 47 This will is cited in Kim M. Philipps, Medieval Maidens, p. 33.
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there ‘was not one universal and hegemonic point of view’ on sexual ethics any more
than on matters of social class.48
An important point is that the differing definitions of bastardy allow for more
than one interpretation of whether the accused heirs in the romances are illegitimate
or not. As such, the next section begins by addressing some of the ways in which the
romances construct the possibility of their heirs’ illegitimacy, other than through the
explicit allegations made by their antagonists. But then, increasingly, the meaning of
bastardy in the disinheritance romances demands to be understood on its own terms.
Just as there are conflicting definitions of bastardy according to different medieval
legal jurisdictions, it is possible that the jurisdiction of the ‘literary imagination’
sustains its own, distinct conception of bastardy.49 I will argue that the disinheritance
romances extend their illegitimacy theme through the presentation of infertility and
ambiguities about infidelity and conception; the birth of twins; naming patterns; and,
finally, by allusions to the genre’s most prominent bastard hero, Lybeaus Desconus.
Imagining Illegitimacy in the Romances
In Octavian and Tryamour, ambiguities about the heirs’ legitimacy begin with the
presentation of childlessness. Peggy McCracken and Karen Cherewatuk have noted
the imaginative connections between barrenness, adultery and illegitimacy in Old
French romances and Le Morte Darthur, respectively.50 There is no work of
comparable depth for the Middle English romances, but the same observations bear
out here: in Octavian, infertility is plainly cited as a reason to disbelieve the
48 Ruth Mazo Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others (New York and London: Routledge, 2005), p. 26; also pp. 124–25 on the ethical neutrality of illegitimate offspring. 49 Boboc, ‘Introduction’, Theorising Legal Personhood, p. 2. 50 See McCracken, Romance of Adultery and Cherewatuk, Marriage, Adultery and Inheritance, as cited above.
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legitimacy of the heirs. When Octavian asks his mother, ‘Haffe I noghte knave-
childir two?’ she tells him, ‘Nay certis’:
For thou myghte no childir have,
Scho hase takyn thy kokes knave’. (ll. 110–16)
What was earlier presented as a private concern shared between husband and wife (at
ll. 37–81) is here announced by a third party as a fact: the dowager affects to
condescend to her son’s ignorance as well as implying that a marital confidence has
been broken. Invoking his infertility makes the emperor susceptible to the subsequent
accusation of spousal infidelity. The same can be said of Sir Marrok’s deceit of King
Ardus in Tryamour and in both cases the years of marriage without children are
framed as a portent of illegitimacy.
Neither the empress nor Queen Margaret attempt to mount a defence, and
though this might be viewed in terms of the so-called ‘patient Griselda’ trope, it also
reflects the performative nature of the illegitimacy accusations.51 Once the children
in question have been denounced as illegitimate, firstly by third-party accusers and
then by their fathers, they are illegitimate. Subsequent exile only confirms their
illegal status, putting them physically beyond the reach of the law’s redress. It is an
idea common to medieval Christian philosophy that sin inheres in the intent as well
as the act and, for instance, that the very thought of infidelity could constitute a
transgression.52 As such, there are infidelities in Octavian and Tryamour and they are
51 This derives from a medieval European story adapted by Chaucer into the Clerk’s Tale, in which a woman suffers abuse without complaint. Chaucer’s Griselda is a poor man’s daughter, married to a marquis, who later deceives her that their children are despised, due to Griselda’s low birth, and they must be killed. See The Riverside Chaucer, p. 880 (notes to the Clerk’s Tale). 52 The idea of sinning ‘in the heart’ is summarised in Matthew 5.28, but it permeates medieval philosophy. See Jean Porter, ‘Action and Intention’, in Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy, ed. Robert Pasnau and Christina van Dyke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 506–16.
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committed by the husbands, not their wives: in their lack of faith in their spouses and
misplaced faith in malign others. This infidelity and specifically the thought of
adultery effectively de-legitimises their offspring.
There are further symbolic gestures towards illegitimacy that work against
the narrator’s more explicit denials. It should be noted, for example, that the sight of
bloodied bedsheets in Octavian (NO, l. 179) is likely to have been familiar to late-
medieval readers, from other romances, as a sign of illicit sexual relations.53 This is
pertinent imagery to associate with the scene of de-legitimation and disinheritance in
Octavian: speaking of adultery and illegitimacy, even as the narrator says otherwise.
The tacit notion of illegitimacy is compounded further by the birth of twins: ‘knave
childire two’ (SO, l. 83, repeated at l. 89; l. 359). Initially, the twin birth might be
taken as a vindication of the emperor’s fertility. But the recurrence of twins in the
romances – they appear in Bevis, Octavian, Torrent and possibly Tryamour – is also
an aspect of the romances’ illegitimacy trope.
The idea that twins are a token of illegitimacy has its origins in both popular
folklore and pseudo-medical philosophy. In the Middle English Lai Le Freine (c.
1330, an adaptation of Marie de France’s late twelfth-century Le Fresne) a ‘proude
dame and an envieous’ hears that her neighbour has delivered ‘tuay sones’ and
publicly claims that a twin birth can only occur if ‘tuay men hir han hadde in bour’.54
That the twin birth inspires her jealousy presupposes that twins ought to be an
occasion for celebration, and her slander is refuted and punished in the story. But
while this episode, clearly, does not represent a widely held belief in medieval
53 See McCracken, Romance of Adultery, pp. 75 and 141; Cherewatuk, Marriage, Adultery and Inheritance, p. 15; McCracken, ‘Bloody Sheets’, in The Curse of Eve, pp. 10–17. 54 Lai le Freine, ll. 54–71. For an English translation of Marie de France’s Le Fresne see The Lais of Marie de France, ed. and trans. Glyn S. Burgess and Keith Busby (London: Penguin, 2003).
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society, it does, however, evidence a widely known superstition, which was
grounded in classical and medieval philosophy. The basic premise of Aristotle’s
theory of twins, for instance, is that the mother has been impregnated twice.
Although Aristotle concedes that this could be induced by one partner, by way of
illustration he refers to the legend of Hercules and Iphicles: twins born to one mother
and two different fathers (Zeus and Amphitryon).55 He adds to this the case of a
‘certain woman’ who, ‘having committed adultery’, ‘brought forth the one child
resembling her husband and the other resembling the adulterous lover’.56 Not only
does the association between adultery and twins in the romances gain traction in the
context of this traditional superstition, but the romances differentiate between twins
in ways that evoke the Aristotelian binary of paternal and non-paternal resemblance.
The discriminatory treatment of the twins in the romances is compelling in a
number of ways, and will be explored further in later chapters, but here I wish to
draw attention to naming patterns. The twins born to Bevis are a second generation
of displaced (and consequently disinherited) heirs in that romance. Bevis names one
of his twins ‘“Gii … ase me fader het”’ but leaves the other unnamed. This child’s
foster father, a fisherman, takes the child to church ‘himself’ and ‘let nevene’ the
child ‘Mile’ (l. 3742; l. 3752). Thus Gii is named after his grandfather, while his
brother’s name is more anonymous, being the medieval Latin word for ‘soldier’ and
‘knight’.57 In another context, this would be an uncontroversial name choice, but
55 Quotations are from The Works of Aristotle, 12 vols, vol. 4 [Historia Animalium], trans. D’arcy Wentworth Thompson, ed. J. A. Smith and W. D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910). 56 Aristotle, Works, 7.585a.14; 7.585a.15–17. For an explanation of theories of twins in the works of Aristotle and Albertus Magnus (c. 1200–80), see J. M. Thijssen, ‘Twins as Monsters: Albertus Magnus’s Theory of the Generation of Twins and Its Philosophical Context’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 61:2 (1987), 237–46. 57 See ‘miles’ in Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, ed. Richard Ashdowne, David Howlett and Ronald Latham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018; originally published in 17 parts
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compared to the familial prestige attached to the name ‘Gii’, in Bevis, the lesser
status of ‘Mile’ is more stark. In the later Cambridge and Naples versions of Bevis,
the fisherman is named ‘Mile’, reinforcing the discrepancy between the twin with the
paternal name and the twin without.58 It also recalls the Aristotelian idea of twins
born of adultery, where only one resembles the lawful father.
Furthermore, there is another character with the same name in Bevis: the ‘erl,
that highte Mile’, who earlier ‘wedde’ Josian ‘aghenes [her] wille’, attempted to
‘make hire dronke a bedde’, and whom she killed (ll. 3122, 3169 and 3190). The
manner of the murder stresses Miles’s physical proximity to Josian and the threat of
rape.59 Josian’s virginity and chastity is a recurrent preoccupation in the romance:
prior to her marriage to Bevis and besides the forced marriage to Miles, there is
another to Bevis’s enemy, King Yvor. This marriage lasts for ‘seve yere’, ‘[b]oth to
bord and to bedde’, though Josian claims to have maintained her virginity (ll. 2006–
12, 2203–06). The romance’s narrator casts no aspersions on her honesty but re-
using the name ‘Mile’ for one of her offspring inevitably recollects the earlier forced
marriage and invites an imaginative connection between the multiple birth and the
multiple marriages. In effect, the name choice characterises one twin as potentially
illegitimate.
A comparable naming pattern can be found in Octavian, where one twin is
named ‘Octavian’ and the other ‘Florent’. In the northern version of the romance, the
between 1975 and 2013), available online at <http://logeion.uchicago.edu/lexidium> [accessed 4 Dec 2019]. 58 The fisherman is anonymous in the Auchinleck Bevis. 59 She winds the bed-curtain around his neck and ‘let him so ride al the night’, the sexual connotations of ‘ride’ punning with the ‘knotte riding’ (noose) by which he hangs (ll. 3121–24). See MED, riden, sense 9. A pun on the same word appears in Torrent, the King of Portugal telling his daughter, Desonell: ‘There fore thou shalt in to the see | And that Bastard within thee | To lerne you ffor to ride’; the latter phrase meaning to ride the waves of the sea or to work as a prostitute (ll. 1792–94).
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name ‘Florent’ recalls the ‘Florence’ (Florins) used to purchase the child from a band
of outlaws and alludes to the mercantile family into which he is fostered (NO, l. 579).
Unlike ‘Octavian’, the name ‘Florent’ does not bear any resemblance to the name of
the twins’ biological father (NO, l. 545). Other than a passing similarity to the name
of his adopted father (Clement), it does not indicate paternity at all. Only in the
southern version does it recall his mother’s name, ‘Florence’ (SO, l. 39). Yet in the
context of medieval folklore surrounding twin births and illegitimacy, the maternal
name seems a pertinent allusion to fatherlessness.
In Torrent, neither twin is named for a biological parent and the names are
suggestive in other ways. Indeed, even the most unassuming element of the name
‘Antony Fice Greffoun’ is significant. The prepositional ‘Fice’, derived from the
French ‘fiz’, literally means ‘son (of)’; but its usage is far from neutral.60 One of its
most frequent collocations in English texts, according to citations in the MED dating
from c. 1330 to c. 1450, is in the pejorative phrase, ‘fitz a putain’: a French
borrowing meaning ‘son of a whore’.61 Uses of the term in the nomenclature of royal
offspring are ameliorative by association, but nevertheless compound its connection
with bastardy. Besides Henry Fitzroy, mentioned above, there was Richard of
Chilham (d. 1246), an illegitimate son of King John, but ‘the only one to gain an
honorific title’ in the form of ‘Richard fitz Regis’, or Richard ‘fiz le Roy’.62 In
assessing the rarity (or otherwise) of a name such as ‘Fice Greffoun’ in medieval
romance, I have been able to find one ‘Kymbelyn le fitȝ Gryffith’, who appears the
60 See ‘fiz’ in Anglo-Norman Dictionary <http://www.anglo-norman.net> [accessed 4 Dec 2019]. 61 See MED, fitz, n., sense 1c, ‘~ a putain’ and also MED, putain, n., sense 1: ‘A whore, prostitute; fitz a ~, fitz dei ~, whoreson’. 62 Simon Lloyd, ‘Chilham, Sir Richard of (d. 1246)’, ODNB <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/46706> [accessed 4 Dec 2019].
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fifteenth-century poem, Arthur.63 Though nothing more is said about Kymbelyn, he
is the penultimate in a long list of attendees at Arthur’s Round Table, who belong to
a group described as ‘other … gentyls grete’, apart from the ‘kynges & erles’ already
introduced. Each of its members bears the moniker ‘fitȝ’: namely, ‘Reyneȝ fitȝ
Colys’, ‘Tadeus fitȝ Reis’ and ‘Delyn fitȝ David’ (ll. 165–77). This assemblage of
characters named ‘fitȝ’, separated from the main cohort, implies some shared social
status, which might be illegitimacy.
Since we have seen that fatherlessness might be a euphemism for bastardy, it
is significant that the twins’ names in Torrent evoke neither mother or father but
identify them with the animals who stole them away: Leobertus after a leopard and
Antony after a griffin. In light of the discussion of symbolic rebirth after
disinheritance, in Chapter 1, it is significant that the twins’ animal names
disassociate them from their (human) origins. The name ‘Antony Fice Greffoun’
literally reads as ‘Antony, [bastard] son of the griffin’.64 The name rewrites the
disinherited heir’s genealogy, with the animal abduction as the rite of passage
leading to his symbolic rebirth: borne away by a griffin and reborn as ‘Fice
Greffoun’. Octavian includes a more literal expression of an animal’s surrogate
63 Arthur [Longleat, Marquess of Bath, MS 55 (c. 1412–1430)], ed. Frederick J. Furnivall, EETS, OS 2 (London: Trübner & Co, 1864), ll. 165–77. On the manuscript and its date, see Erik Kooper, ‘Longleat House MS 55: An Unacknowledged Brut Manuscript?’, in The Prose Brut and Other Late Medieval Chronicles, ed. Jaclyn Rajsic, Erik Kooper and Dominique Hoche (Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2016), pp. 75–93. The ‘Kymbelyn le fitȝ Gryffith’ in Arthur is unrelated to the ancient king Cymbeline, best known from Shakespeare’s play of the same name; the two are mentioned, separately, in John Hardyng’s Chronicle (c. 1457). See John Hardyng, Chronicle, ed. James Simpson and Sarah Peverley (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2015): Kymbelyn/Cymbeline, son of Tenvancyus at 2.2459, 2.2459, 2.2473, 2.2478; ‘Kymbelyne’, knight of the Round Table, at 3.2469. As a surname, as it appears in medieval records, ‘Griffin’ may derive from the common Welsh ‘Griffith’ (or Gruffudd). 64 In comparison, the name ‘Richard Coer de Lyon’ (Richard I) features an animal in the suffix, alluding to a supposedly animalistic personal quality, but does not suggest that Richard is born of a lion.
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parenting, where the young Octavian ‘sowkyde the lyones’ along with her ‘whelps’
(NO, ll. 370–75).
Both the lion and the griffin are common heraldic devices, but the latter
seems a pertinent choice of avatar for an (allegedly) illegitimate character, not least
because it is a hybrid creature.65 Described in the Book of John Mandeville as having
‘the body byfore as an egle and byhynde as a lyon’, it is a suitable figurative
representation of the mixed-parentage definition of bastardy.66 Furthermore, in the
particular context of Middle English romances, the griffin is significant as the
heraldic device of the genre’s most prominent bastard hero: ‘a ryche scheld overgylte
| with a gryffyn gay’ is borne by Lybeaus Desconus, otherwise called the fair
unknown.67
The Fair Unknown and Rightful Illegitimacy
The fair unknown has become something of a critical archetype in romance
scholarship, often mentioned in relation to Malory’s Gareth in Le More Darthur, but
for late-medieval readers, the name would be synonymous with Lybeaus Desconus.68
‘Lybeaus Desconus’ is an Anglicised rendering of ‘Li Biaus Desconneus’, as the
character is called in the only surviving French version of his romance (dated to the
65 See Bernard Burke, The General Armory of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales (London: Harrison, 1884) and A Heraldic Miscellany: Fifteenth-Century Treatises on Blazon and the Office of Arms in English and Scots, ed. Richard J. Moll (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2018). See also Maurice Keen, ‘Heraldry and Heralds’, in Chivalry (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 125–42. 66 The Book of John Mandeville, ed. Tamarah Kohanski and C. David Benson (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007), l. 2386. This edition is based on London, British Library, Royal MS 17 C xxxviii (c. 1410). 67 Ashmole Lybeaus, ll. 92–93. 68 See James Weldon, ‘The Fair Unknown’, in The Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain, 4 vols, vol. 2, ed. Sian Echard and Robert Rouse (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2017), pp. 783–86. See also Weldon’s entry for ‘Lybeaus Desconus’, pp. 1212–16.
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thirteenth century), meaning ‘the fair unknown’.69 There are six surviving Middle
English versions of Lybeaus Desconus, making it a close rival (alongside Eglamour)
to Bevis and Guy of Warwick for the place of the best attested and possibly the most
widely circulated of all the Middle English romances. Certainly, there are more
surviving manuscripts of Lybeaus than any other, single Middle English Arthurian
romance.70 The romance itself and the presence of fair unknown typology in other
romances remain understudied.71 But its proliferation and co-existence with other
romances in their manuscripts suggest that Lybeaus might have exerted some
influence over their reception, and thus it warrants careful attention here.72
69 Renaut de Bâgé, Le Bel Inconnu (Li Biaus Decouneüs; The Fair Unknown), ed. Karen Fresco, trans. Colleen P. Donagher, music ed. Margaret P. Hasselman (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1992), l. 6249. The French manuscript is Chantilly, Musée Condé, Chantilly MS 472. The English manuscripts are: Cotton Caligula A.ii (which also features Eglamour and Octavian); Lambeth 306; Lincoln’s Inn 250; Naples; Ashmole 61; and the Percy Folio. Jane Bliss notes that the co-existence of two different characters, in Sir Gawain and the Carl of Carlisle, named ‘Syr Lebys Dyskoniis’ and ‘Syr Ferr Unkowthe’, ‘raises the question: is a French name in an English text going to be heard or understood differently [by] an anglophone audience?’ although she concedes it is probably ‘vain to speculate’, because of the differing ‘linguistic skill, literary knowledge, and cultural experience’ of individual readers and audiences. Bliss, Naming and Namelessness in Medieval Romance (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008), p. 108. Possible reasons for not translating the meaning of the hero’s name into English in the Middle English Lybeaus include that the character was already known and recognisable by the French name, as well as a desire to evoke the French origins of the romance, as P. J. C. Field and Margaret A. Muir suggest of the Morte Darthur. See Field and Muir, ‘French Words and Phrases in Sir Thomas Malory’s, “Le Morte Darthur”’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 72:3 (1971), 483–500. 70 Tony Hunt, ‘Editing Arthuriana’, in A History of Arthurian Scholarship, ed. Norris J. Lacy (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006), pp. 37–48 (p. 45). There are four surviving manuscripts of Awntyrs off Arthure, two each of Sir Cleges, Sir Degrevant and Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle, and only one manuscript for each of the remaining examples: Stanzaic Morte; Alliterative Morte; Sir Tristrem; Sir Percyvelle of Gales; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Marriage of Sir Gawain; Greene Knight; Arthur; Avowyng of King Arthur; Arthour and Merlin; Ywain and Gawain; Wedding of Gawain; Turke and Sir Gawain. See DMER. 71 Carolyne Larrington remarked on the necessity of Salisbury and Weldon’s 2015 edition of Lybeaus and hoped it would ‘breathe new life into the study of the “Fair Unknown” motif’. Carolyne Larrington, ‘Review, Lybeaus Desconus, ed. Eve Salisbury and James Weldon (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2013)’, Medium Aevum 84:2 (2015), 356. 72 Lybeaus is also placed inside the top fifteen results of Yin Liu’s ‘prototype’ test (as cited in the introduction).
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Other critics have tended to play down any correlation between Lybeaus and
other, non-Arthurian Middle English romance heroes: often because the fair
unknown is regarded as a plot-type as much as a character. By contrast, Malory’s Sir
Gareth, in the Morte Darthur, occupies a somewhat misleading position in criticism
as a prominent example of the fair unknown type. Gareth is quite unlike Lybeaus,
neither ‘unknowing’ or a bastard, but deliberately disguising himself in order to
conceal his parentage and perform the part of an unknown newcomer to Arthur’s
court. Gareth is recognised as a fair unknown in criticism because of parallels with
the plot of Lybeaus, regardless of dissimilarities between the characters (particularly
their motivations).73 Elsewhere, Helen Phillips recognises Florent (of Octavian) as a
type of fair unknown character, but for Tara Williams Octavian is ‘not a fair
unknown narrative’.74 George R. Keiser refutes the comparison, remarking that ‘the
Fair Unknown is different from the more conventional chivalric heroes [as in]
Octavian’.75 In fact, all of the disinherited heirs in the romances discussed here
appear, at least once in their stories, like Lybeaus Desconus, as the unknown and
exceptional youth. Rather than plot, I suggest that “unknownness” is the fair
unknown’s defining feature, and the one shared with the disinherited heirs, separated
from their families and raised in obscurity.
73 See R. H. Wilson, ‘The “Fair Unknown” in Malory’, PMLA, 58:1 (1943), 1–21; Arnold Sanders, ‘Sir Gareth and the “Unfair Unknown”: Malory’s Use of the Gawain Romances’, Arthuriana, 16:1 (2006), 34–46; Ralph Norris, ‘The Sources of “The Tale of Sir Gareth”, in Malory’s Library: The Sources of the Morte Darthur (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 81–94; P. J. C. Field, ‘The Source of Malory’s “Tale of Sir Gareth”’, in Malory: Texts and Sources (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1998), pp. 246–60. 74 Helen Phillips, ‘Rites of Passage in French and English Romances’, in Rites of Passage, pp. 83–108 (p. 92); Tara Williams, ‘Revealing Spectacles: Virtue and Identity in Fair Unknowns’, in Middle English Marvels: Magic, Spectacle, and Morality in the Fourteenth Century (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2018), pp. 37–63 (p. 59). 75 George R. Keiser, ‘Robert Thornton: Gentleman, Reader and Scribe’, in Robert Thornton and his Books: Essays on the Lincoln and London Thornton Manuscripts, ed. Susanna Fein and Michael Johnston (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, York Medieval Press, 2014), pp. 67–108 (p. 89).
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Unknownness, in Lybeaus, is definitively linked with bastardy, mentioned
early and unequivocally in the English versions of his story. The incipit to London,
Lambeth Palace, MS 306 reads:
A tretys of one Gyngelayne othir wyse namyd by Kyng Arthure Lybeus Dysconeus that was
bastard son to Sir Gawayne. (l. i)
Ashmole 61 introduces its hero similarly:
Hys name was callyd Gyngeleyn
Getyn he was of Sir Gawayne
By a forest syde.
…
Gyngeleyn was feyr and bryght,
Gentyll of face and body ryght,
Basterd thoff he were. (ll. 5–14)
Unlike their French counterpart, the English versions of the romance immediately
divulge the hero’s biological parentage, his bastardy and the alternative name
‘Gyngeleyn’ (as yet unknown to him). They thus dispense with the idea that the
unknownness of the fair unknown denotes illegibility. Instead, when Arthur dubs the
precocious youngster ‘Lybeaus Desconus’, unknownness appears as a euphemism
for his evident illegitimacy: the child who cannot tell the king the identity of his
father nor his paternal name. He knows himself only by the affectionate name given
by his mother, ‘bewfiz’ (meaning ‘fair son’; Lambeth Lybeaus, l. 26). Matronymic
names were common in England until at least the fourteenth century, especially if the
mother was an heiress to substantial lands. But – as Eve Salisbury also suggests – the
maternal pet-name in Lybeaus might be read as a euphemistic allusion to
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illegitimacy, in that it identifies the child as his ‘mother’s son’, insinuating a lack of
legitimate paternity.76
Illegitimacy is no impediment to chivalric success in Lybeaus, however. In
fact, as the Lambeth narrator insists, a ‘better knyght was never prophitable | With
Arthur at the Roun Table’ (ll. 10–11). The word ‘prophitable’ is interesting one,
possibly meaning ‘honorable’ (as per Salisbury and Weldon’s editorial gloss) but
also ‘profitable’, as in financially lucrative.77 In terms of the socioeconomic
definition of bastardy, it associates degraded or lowly lineage with a capacity for
accruing wealth. Likewise, the phrase ‘basterd thoff he were’ simultaneously admits
that bastardy is potentially degrading and confirms that it can be overcome (Ashmole
Lybeaus, l. 14). The same phrase is used of Richard of Chilham in the chronicle of
Robert of Gloucester (fl. 1260–1300): ‘Richard fitz le rei … Gentil man was inou,
þei he were abast ibore’.78 It is an apology for bastardy that nonetheless indicates a
preference for including rather than erasing the fact.
A brief detour into the Morte Darthur is useful here, since it features a
comparable admission of potential bastardy which is clearly unsettling to, but also
proximate to the construction of rightful heirship. A crucial element of the medieval
Arthurian legend is the extraordinary circumstance of Arthur’s conception, aided by
Merlin, which also introduces the threat of illegitimacy. Merlin disguises the king,
Uther Pendragon as Gorlois, duke of Cornwall, in order that he can gain admittance
to the chamber of Gorlois’s wife, Igrayne. She conceives Arthur with Uther, thinking
76 See Conor McCarthy, Marriage in Medieval England, p. 131; Hanawalt, Ties that Bound, p. 82; Eve Salisbury, ‘Lybeaus Desconus: Transformation, Adaptation, and the Monstrous-Feminine’, Arthuriana 24:1 (2014), 66–85 (p. 78 and notes 42–44). 77 See MED, profitable, adj. 78 The Metrical Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, ed. William Aldis Wright (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1887), l. 10629.
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him to be her husband, who is meanwhile killed in battle. In the Morte, the narrator’s
subsequent insistence that Arthur’s conception occurred ‘after the deth of duke’
indicates a squeamishness about potential bastardy and a desire to define the terms of
his legitimacy clearly:
after the deth of the duke, Kyng Uther lay with Igrayne more than thre houres after his deth,
and begat on her that nyght Arthur.79
Yet the dubious legitimacy of Arthur’s conception is clearly an essential part of
legend for Malory, which he does not seek to abridge or erase.80
When the kings of Britain refuse to recognise Arthur’s right to the throne,
denouncing him as a ‘berdles boye that was come of lowe blood’, Merlin initially
tells them that Arthur is ‘“Kynge Uther Pendragons sone … goten on Igrayne, the
Dukes wyf of Tyntigail”’. The report plainly depicts Arthur as the product of
adultery, to which the kings conclude: ‘“Thenne is he a bastard”’. Merlin rebukes
them, saying:
‘Nay! After the deth of the duke more than thre houres was Arthur begoten, and thirtene
days after kyng Uther wedded Igrayne, and therfor I preve hym he is no bastard’.81
When Igrayne is called upon to testify, she says that, ‘“Merlion knoweth … Kynge
Uther com to me [when my lord] was dede three owres tofore”’.82 The reiteration of
the ‘thre houres’ eventually reads as a well-rehearsed piece of witness testimony. But
while it is said to ‘preve’ Arthur’s legitimacy, the dramatic proximity of illegitimacy
is inevitably and even wilfully recalled.
79 Morte Darthur, p. 5, my italics. 80 The tradition of the dubious circumstances of Arthur’s conception begins with Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136). See Rosemary Morris, ‘Conception and Birth’, in The Character of King Arthur in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1982), pp. 24–35. 81 Morte Darthur, p. 12, my italics. 82 Morte Darthur, p. 33, my italics.
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Karen Cherewatuk suggests that bastardy is neutral in many of Malory’s
characters, and that ‘Mordred stands apart in his malevolence’: the ‘“trouble” [he]
will wreak [has] its roots not so much in his illegitimate status as his incestuous
conception’.83 Yet illegitimacy remains the issue here, in so far as Mordred’s
illegitimacy is constituted in his incestuous conception.84 On the other hand, Jessica
Watson has argued that bastardy is presented as a ‘gifted status’ in the Morte by
reason of association with a number of powerful knights.85 ‘Sir Gylberd the
Bastarde’, for example, is said to be ‘one of the best knyghtes of the worlde’.86 No
further explanation of his bastardy is given but the simultaneous use of the epithet
with the description of his character tacitly links bastardy to chivalric
exceptionalism. Catherine Emerson speculates that ‘a bastard, upon whom the
inheritance of the duchy could not rest’ might have been regarded as ‘the ideal figure
to undertake the inherently risky occupation’ of chivalric combat.87 This may be the
case with ‘Sir Gylberd’, and various historical examples, but it does not account for
the way in which bastardy is incorporated into the Arthurian legend in direct relation
to the construction of Arthur’s rightful heirship, nor comparable examples of dubious
legitimacy in the disinheritance romances. In order to better understand the
imaginative connection between bastardy and (rightful) heirship in these texts, I
return to the figure of the fair unknown in Lybeaus.
83 Cherewatuk, Marriage, Adultery and Inheritance, pp. 109–10. 84 In other literary traditions, such as Scottish chronicles, Arthur is deemed illegitimate and Mordred is characterised as the ‘rightful heir to the British crown’. See Megan Leitch, Romancing Treason: The Literature of the Wards of the Roses (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 119. 85 Jessica Watson, Bastardy as a Gifted Status in Chaucer and Malory (Lewiston: Mellen, 1996). 86 Morte, p. 170. An editorial gloss for the epithet simply states, ‘son of unwed, but noble, parents’. 87 Catherine Emerson, Olivier de La Marche and the Rhetoric of 15th-Century Historiography (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2004), p. 160.
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When Arthur knights the unnamed youth as ‘Sir Lybeaus Desconus’,
previously known only by his mother’s pet name, he provides the hero with an alias
which formally mimics the patronymic system.88 But in substance, the name
consolidates Lybeaus’s unknownness. It does not provide a provisional paternal
name in place of his maternal pet name. Rather, the ‘fair son’ becomes the ‘fair
unknown’. If the maternal origin of the first name might imply fatherlessness (and
thus bastardy), then the new name renders Lybeaus nobody’s child: ‘filius nullius’, to
borrow the legal phrase sometimes used for bastard offspring.89 Even when Gawain
later recognises Lybeaus as ‘hys son’ and ‘comand[s]’ everyone to ‘call hym
Gyngelayn’, the hero continues to be called ‘Libeus Disconeus’ to the end of the
romance (Ashmole, ll. 2225–26; l. 2242).90 Though the plot has been described as an
‘identity romance’, the story of a young man who ‘matures into’ his ‘proper name’,
having previously lacked any ‘“real” identity’, the romance does not polarise
unknownness and identity.91 In fact, contrary to the idea that ‘Gyngelayn’ is the
hero’s ‘real’ or ‘true’ name, it cannot be overstated that his unknownness is his
identifying mark.92 Lybeaus Desconus is the name by which the hero is known both
within the interior world of the romances and beyond. The Old French manuscript is
alone in bestowing the romance with the title, ‘De Guinglain’.93 In the English
88 Eve Salisbury, ‘Transformation, Adaptation, and the Monstrous-Feminine’, p. 66. 89 Paul Brand, ‘Family and Inheritance, Women and Children’, in An Illustrated History of Late Medieval England, ed. Chris Given-Wilson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), pp. 58–81 (p. 73). 90 The Naples Lybeaus ends in the same way; the Lambeth and Cotton versions omit any mention of Lybeaus’s reunion with his mother or Gawain after his wedding. 91 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Of Giants: Sex, Monsters, and the Middle Ages (University of Minnesota Press, 1999), p. 121; Salisbury and Weldon, eds, ‘Introduction’, Lybeaus Desconus, available via METS, paragraph 1. 92 Alistair Fowler, Literary Names: Personal Names in English Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 143. 93 Karen Fresco, ‘Introduction’, to Le Bel Inconnu (Li Biaus Decouneüs; The Fair Unknown), pp. i–xxxii (p. xxii).
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tradition, ‘Lybeaus Desconus’ is the hero’s definitive moniker: he is name-checked
as ‘Sir Lybeux’ in Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Thopas and included among the early
modern inscriptions on the Winchester Round Table, as ‘S[ir] lybyus dysconu[s]’.94
Unknownness and unknowing are synonymous with Lybeaus’s heroic
identity and his heroic deeds, one effect of which is a link between illegitimacy and
merit. When he fights for the Lady of Synadon, he says that he does so although he
‘ne wote wherfor ne whye | Ne who dothe hyr that tormentrye’ (Ashmole, ll. 1716–
17). When she obliquely reveals the identity of his father, Lybeaus does not reply.
She subsequently thanks him for saving her from her curse, by performing a
restorative kiss; but in fact it is she who kisses him, ‘ere that Lybeous wiste’
(Ashmole, l. 2082, my italics). Lybeaus’s unknowing is contrasted, here, with the
wicked cunning of the ‘two clerkys kowthe’ who had issued the curse on the Lady:
to borrow from Patricia Ingham’s study of the ‘ethics of the medieval new’, we
might read the clever clerks’ ‘nygrymauncye’ as the dangerous intellectual
‘innovation’ for which Lybeaus’s non-threatening brand of novelty, his youthful
unknownness, is the remedy (Lambeth, ll. 1752–56).95 His unknowing is something
of a virtue. In fact, when he is first asked his name, Lybeaus admits that he is ‘a child
uncouthe’, or ‘a child unknown’ (Ashmole and Lambeth, l. 49; Naples, l. 49). It is a
‘knowing’ declaration, in his self-consciousness about his very lack of knowledge.
Early in the Ashmole 61 version of the romance, Lybeaus is even described as
‘wytty’ and ‘wyse’, adjectives connotative of ‘knowing’, suggesting that Lybeaus’s
unknowing is a kind of knowledge (l. 5 and l. 25).
94 Chaucer, Tale of Sir Thopas, l. 2091. For an image of the Winchester Round Table see Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, online exhibition, ‘The Romance of the Middle Ages’ <http://medievalromance.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/romance-home> [accessed 4 Dec 2019]. The table has been dated to the reign of Edward I (1272–1307) but was repainted in the early sixteenth century. 95 Ingham, The Medieval New, p. 82.
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As Karen Sullivan observes in medieval ‘Merlin’ literature, admitting to
one’s ‘unknowing’ constitutes a ‘realization’ of the limits of human knowledge:
realising ‘that one cannot place trust in human understanding … itself constitutes a
kind of understanding’.96 This idea has its basis in Christian theology, best expressed
by the late fourteenth-century mystical text, the Cloud of Unknowing, which explains
that humans cannot know God: therefore to contemplate the divine, the reader ought
to work towards a conscious un-knowing, divesting the mind of all things in order to
reach spiritual enlightenment.97 Un-knowing oneself, as Lybeaus professes to do, is
an advanced stage of the Cloud’s meditation, where the reader is taught ‘in this werk
[to] forgete bothe thiself and also thi dedes’ for God (ll. 1522–23). In fact, the name
‘Lybeaus Desconus’ possibly expresses the Cloud’s central idea that (divine) truth is
contingent on unknowing. Among its various usages, the Middle English ‘fair’ can
mean ‘accordant with truth’, so that the phrase ‘fair unknown’ might be closer in
sentiment to ‘unknown truth’ than ‘beautiful stranger’.98
If this comparison seems unlikely, it is worth noting some of the ‘theocentric’
language in Lybeaus. The romance’s recent editors have noted the ‘pious’ language
and ‘implicit sanctification’ of the poem’s hero, watched over by ‘hevens quene’
(Naples, l. 840); while its hymn-like, tail-rhyme form can be found in religious
96 Karen Sullivan, ‘On Recognizing the Limits of Our Understanding: Medieval Debates about Merlin and Marvels’, in Uncertain Knowledge: Scepticism, Relativism, and Doubt in the Middle Ages, ed. Dallas George Denery, Kantik Ghosh, and Nicolette Zeeman (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 162–84 (p. 181). 97 Quotations are from Cloud of Unknowing, ed. Patrick Gallacher (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997). There are 17 extant Cloud manuscripts, suggesting that it was relatively popular in the late-medieval period. 98 See MED, fair, adj., sense 10. Wendy Matlock has similarly argued for this sense of the word ‘fair’ (i.e. truthfulness) in her reading of Isumbras. Wendy Matlock, ‘Reading the Family in Rate Manuscript’s Saint Eustace and Sir Isumbras’, Chaucer Review, 53:3 (2018), 350–73.
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material dating from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries.99 The fair unknown also
makes at least one appearance in vernacular religious literature: a mid-thirteenth-
century French poem by a Cistercian abbot named Gérard of Liége includes a
characterisation of Christ as ‘li biaus descouneüs’.100 If an allusion to the romance
hero, it seems a risky one, given his bastardy, but the analogy might also refer to the
fair unknown’s exceptionality and virtuous brand of unknownness.101 The conceit of
the fair unknown, with or without its pious colouring, increasingly appears to speak
of righteous unknowing or, to extend the romance’s own metaphor, rightful
illegitimacy. When the disinheritance romances characterise their disinherited heirs
as fair unknowns, they invoke this concept.102
Lybeaus has been described as a romance which shows how ‘kinship
relations [can be] legitimated’ through the reunion of ‘estranged parents’,103 and
readers may feel that ‘knowledge of [his] father gives [Lybeaus] a heritage that
99 Rhiannon Purdie, Anglicising Romance, p. 6; Salisbury and Weldon, eds, ‘Introduction’, to Lybeaus, available online via METS, paragraph 17. 100 The poem is a tract on the love of God, combining Latin devotional writing and vernacular lyric. See Barbara Newman, Gods and Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), p. 153. 101 The implication of Christ’s illegitimacy contradicts the fundamental doctrine of the Virgin birth (the belief that Christ is an incarnation of God and has no natural father) established in the early Christian church between the second and fifth centuries. C. H. Moehlman, ‘The Origin of the Apostles’ Creed’, The Journal of Religion, 13:3 (1933), 301–19; Charles Joseph Hefele, A History of the Councils of the Church, from the Original Documents to the Close of the Council of Nicaea, A.D. 325, ed. William R. Clark (New York: AMS Press, 1972; first published Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1883–96), p. 275. Alison Findlay notes some comparable allusions to Christ’s bastardy in early modern literature, in Illegitimate Power: Bastards in Renaissance Drama (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994), pp. 174–76. 102 My comparison of the theological notion of conscious unknowing in the Cloud to the secular presentation (and political implications) of conscious unknowing in Lybeaus is different from, but could help to extend, James Simpson’s examination of ‘romance (un)thinking’. Simpson describes romances’ tendency to approach certain subjects only indirectly as a conscious recognition that certain issues are ‘better not thought about explicitly’, fostering a ‘subtle form of thought’. Simpson, ‘Unthinking Thought: Romance’s Wisdom’, p. 37. 103 Salisbury and Weldon, ‘Introduction’ to Lybeaus, paragraph 2.
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makes him worthy to marry the Lady of Synadowne’.104 Yet the order of events in
the romance suggests otherwise. Lybeaus has already married before his parentage is
revealed. When Gawain does claim Lybeaus as his son, his proclamation of the name
‘Gyngelayne’ is ignored. In some versions of Lybeaus, there is no family reunion at
all.105 The relevance of paternal identity and legitimacy appear diminished: the
question posed at the beginning of the story ceases to matter by the end.
Likewise in Tryamour, although the hero asks about his father’s identity
elsewhere in the romance, his marriage to the queen of Hungary (Helen) is arranged
before any knowledge of his father’s identity comes to light. There is even a
pertinent moment of unknowing at the beginning of Tryamour: the hero’s conception
occurs on the night before his father’s pilgrimage, ‘as Gode wolde’ though the
couple ‘wyste noght’ (ll. 39–42). The timing of Tryamour’s conception and birth,
unknown to his parents or others, gives credence to Sir Marrok’s subsequent
accusations of adultery and illegitimacy, but it is divinely ordained: thereby
juxtaposing God’s omniscience and the fallibility of human judgement, while
implying a divine endorsement of unknowing and even the allegation of illegitimacy
that follows. These romances seem less invested in legitimating bastards than
demonstrating how allegedly illegitimate offspring can operate within, and exceed,
normal social expectations.
Parallels between Lybeaus and the unknown heirs of the disinheritance
romances are mostly situational, but certain details especially invite the comparison.
One compelling, recurrent presence is the griffin: the animal featured in Lybeaus’s
insignia and who, in both versions of Octavian as well as in Eglamour and Torrent,
104 Rachel Moss, Fatherhood and its Representations in Middle English Texts (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013), p. 105. 105 This is the case in the Lambeth version and Cotton Caligula A.ii.
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captures and separates the (allegedly) illegitimate heirs from their mothers and
carries them to places ‘unkende’ (unknown). In the northern Octavian:
There come a fewle full faire of flyghte
A gryffone, sayse the buke, he hyghte
…
The lyones with the childe tuke he
And intill ane ile of the see
The gryffone bothe tham bare.106
In the southern version, similarly, ‘þe chyld & þe lyoun | Vp yn hys clawys bar þe
gryffoun (ll. 447–53). In Eglamour, ‘a grype come’ and the ‘yong chylde away he
bare’ to ‘a countre unkende’ and likewise in Torrent, a ‘grype’ carries Desonell’s
‘yong son’ over ‘a water flod’ and ‘into a wyldernes’ (Eglamour, ll. 817–19; Torrent,
ll. 1872–74). The cumulative effect of these appearances, and the griffin’s
association with Lybeaus, is to figure the griffin as a spectre of (heroic) illegitimacy.
It is probably not coincidental, in this light, that a minor figure who features in
Lybeaus as ‘Sir Griffayn’ has a more extended role in the Morte as ‘Gryfflet le Fyȝ
de Dieu’: a knight whose epithet suggests half-supernatural genealogy as well as
bastardy. Poignantly, it is one of King Arthur’s first acts in the Morte, after learning
of his own dubious conception, to make the young ‘Gryfflet’ a knight.107
106 NO, ll. 352–60. The ‘buke’ is probably a fictional source. At least, in the earlier French version of the romance it is a dragon, and not a griffin, that comes to steal the empress’s child. See Hudson’s note to line 353. It is still a ‘dragon’ that haunts the empress’s premonitory dream, in the northern English Octavian (l. 167). The griffin may be a typically English intervention, since there is no source for Lybeaus’s griffin heraldry in its Old French counterpart either. 107 See Morte, p. 3, for Arthur knighting Gryfflet and p. 352 for the longer version of his name. See Naples Lybeaus, l. 254 for ‘Sir Griffayn’. The spelling of the name varies in the Lybeaus manuscripts, but Salisbury and Weldon, with Christopher Bruce, identify the character with Gryfflet, as he is better known. See Salisbury and Weldon, eds, Lybeaus, note to Lambeth, l. 231; Christopher W. Bruce, The Arthurian Name Dictionary (New York and London: Garland, 1999), pp. 220–21. Sir Griffayn’s
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Like Lybeaus, Degrebell adopts the griffin as a heraldic device and, as with
Antony Fice Greffoun in Torrent, the griffin stands in for Degrebell’s unknown
genealogy. The Eglamour-narrator demands that readers pay special attention to this
detail:
Lestenes lordynges, both lefe and dere,
What armes the chyld bare ye schal here
And ye wyll undyrstond.
He bare in armere a grype of gold
Rycheley betyn in the molde. (ll. 1003–07)
A sixteenth-century copy of Eglamour dutifully includes an illustration of the griffin
holding its swaddled infant, in a style which clearly emulates the design of heraldic
badges (see Fig. 8, p. 238).108 The narrator appeals to the reader to ‘undyrstond’ the
griffin heraldry, not only at this moment but also later, when Degrebell attends a
tournament and an onlooker asks, ‘What manere of man, sykurly | That berys a grype
full bryghte?’ (ll. 1088–89). Readers are invited to recognise the significance of the
‘grype of gold’ as an emblem of Degrebell’s fair-unknownness and as the heraldic
device of the best-known bastard hero of medieval romance.
There are also allusions to the fair unknown in the naming of some of the
disinheritance heroes. The name ‘Degrebell’, with a meaning approximate to lost
beauty, is evocative of the fair unknown and a matronym, in that it follows the
pattern of his mother’s name, ‘Cristabell’.109 Most strikingly, the name ‘Bevis’ bears
epithet in the French Li Biaus is ‘li fius Do’, comparable to Malory’s ‘fyse de dieu’ and possibly associating him with the Welsh mythic figure, Dôn (see Bruce, p. 220). 108 See the conclusion and Figs 13–15 (pp. 241–42) to compare to the Stanley family’s ‘eagle and child’ heraldry. 109 Editors and critics have proposed the same French root for ‘Degare’ (Sir Degare) and ‘Egare’ (Emare). See Eglamour, note to l. 842; Degare, note to l. 254; Emare, note to l. 23. See also Jane Bliss, Naming and Namelessness, pp. 166–67.
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an orthographical resemblance to, if not a common etymology with ‘Bewfiz’, the
maternal pet name that nods towards Lybeaus’s suspect legitimacy.110 In fact, the
Ashmole 61 scribe (who signs himself ‘Rate’) renders Lybeaus’s pet name ‘Beuys’,
identical to spellings of ‘Bevis’ in the Cambridge and Naples manuscripts (Ashmole,
l. 26).111 Such evidence suggests that late-medieval readers of the romances might
have read ‘Bevis’ interchangeably with Lybeaus’s pet name.
Further investigation of the use of the term ‘bew-fiz’ in late-medieval English
texts might reveal the extent of its coincidence with stories of troubled inheritance,
illegitimacy or troubling maternal authority (as is the case in Bevis). One chronicler,
for example, records Isabelle of France appealing to Edward III as ‘beal fitz’, at the
moment he comes into his inheritance: ‘beal fitz, eiez pitie’, she is imagined to say,
as her regency with Roger Mortimer is overthrown.112 In Bevis, the problem of
maternal infidelity is imaginatively associated with the potential illegitimacy of the
hero, whether according to the logic of common law or in the romance’s figurative
sense. When he is dismissed from his former home by the porter who fails to
recognise him, calling him ‘scherewe houre sone’, Bevis’s reply is affirmative:
110 Lybeaus’s pet name is spelt variously in Lambeth and Naples as ‘Bewfiz’, ‘Bewfice’ and ‘Beaufits’, but may be a pun on ‘Bewvisage’, given that the hero is said to be ‘feire of vis’ (Naples, l. 72). 111 See Lambeth Lybeaus, note to l. 26. Various spellings of ‘Bevis’ include ‘Befyse’, ‘Beuys’ and ‘Beuon’ (Cambridge Bevis, ll. 5 and 57; Naples Bevis, l. 4). See also Shuffelton’s note to the Ashmole Lybeaus, l. 26, where he speculates that Rate ‘may be evoking’ Bevis deliberately. 112 Chronicon Galfridi le Baker de Swynebroke, ed. E. M. Thompson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1889), p. 46. There are some loose parallels between Edward’s position and that of the romance hero, Bevis: not only had Mortimer played a part in the death of Edward’s father, but it was widely believed that Isabelle had conducted an illicit affair with him. There were even rumours, before Edward III’s coup in 1330, that Mortimer had begotten a child with Isabelle and was intent on ‘overturn[ing] the royal bloodline’. Caroline Shenton, ‘Edward III and the Coup of 1330’, in The Age of Edward III, ed. J. S. Bothwell (York: York Medieval Press, 2001), pp. 13–34 (p. 14).
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‘An houre sone for sothe ich wes
Wel ich wot!’ (ll. 410–11)
A ‘houre sone’ by his own admission, Bevis’s attack on his mother’s fidelity invites
some speculation as to the extent of her premarital affair with Devoun and raises the
possibility of Bevis’s illegitimate status in both ecclesiastical and common law
senses.
Indeed, when Bevis is reintroduced to the story after the episode relating
Gii’s death, the narrator calls him ‘Beves, that was Guis sone’: curiously suggesting
that Bevis ‘was’ but is no longer Gii’s son, underlining his fatherlessness. The
legitimacy of Bevis’s birthright is further troubled by the fact that his father’s dying
act was to ‘graunte’ all his lands to Devoun, in a bid to save his life (l. 263). Then,
when Bevis conspires to falsify evidence of his own death, he sacrifices his legal
identity altogether. Saber’s advice to Bevis, to return to Hampton in future to claim
the lands ‘with werre’, takes on a new legal specificity in this light, meaning to claim
by right of conquest, rather than by birth.
A key question for criticism dealing with illegitimacy in medieval literature,
so far, has been whether it is presented as bad, neutral, or potentially positive. On the
treatment of illegitimacy in Old French romances, Peggy McCracken quotes a
maxim from Partonopeu de Blois, that ‘meix vaut bons fix en pechié nes | Que
mauvais d’espouse engenrés’ (a good son born in sin is better than a bad son
engendered in a spouse) and cites Caradoc as evidence that ‘illegitimacy need not
represent a threat to succession and political stability’.113 Bastardy is not an
inherently bad thing, the maxim advises; it can be managed. Cooper similarly notes,
in reference to Lybeaus, that the romance genre is sometimes ‘prepared to allow such
113 McCracken, Romance of Adultery, p. 137 (McCracken’s translation) and p. 142.
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children [illegitimate offspring] within its remit’, despite its ‘insistent concern with
noble blood lines’.114 But Lybeaus is no minor admission to the romance canon and
the trope of illegitimacy now seems more widespread. Even in the romances where
accusations of illegitimacy do not prefigure the disinheritance, as in Havelok, the
hero’s ability to reclaim original patrimonies on the basis of birthright is called into
question. The legitimacy of Havelok’s birth and parentage is never explicitly
contested, but he does renounce his own lineage in order to save his life: ‘Sweren I
wole that Bircabein | Nevere yete me gat’, he promises to Godard (ll. 494–95).
Making such a promise means that Havelok commits to presenting himself,
hereafter, as the natural son of his adopted father, Grim, or otherwise fatherless:
making himself an illegitimate heir to Denmark.
But the romances do not subscribe to absolute definitions of illegitimacy nor,
even, to the idea of legitimacy as a binary category. In the forum of the ‘literary
imagination’, illegitimacy is both problematic and positively productive.
Illegitimacy, actual or alleged, is presented as a threat to political stability; but its
destabilising effect on patriarchies corrupted by malign influences (Octavian,
Tryamour) or which are hostile to social climbers (Eglamour, Torrent) is a welcome
one. The patriarchal figures in Eglamour and Torrent, and the accusers in Octavian
and Tryamour, find themselves on the wrong side of the story: punished for their
cruelty while the aspirant gentry knights and their illegitimate, disinherited, socially
mixed offspring, are richly rewarded.
In the last chapter I emphasised the romances’ portrayal of genealogical ties
broken, with the possibility of the initiation of new, symbolic lineages, expressed
through the figurative imagery of bloodshed. I propose here that this new, symbolic
114 Cooper, English Romance, p. 328.
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lineage can be found in a metatextual family of ‘unknown’ heirs, traceable through
shared naming patterns, animal origins and heraldry. Characterised according to this
common typology, the disinherited heirs are thus inducted into the fictive genealogy
of the illegitimate heir, which displaces noble ‘blood lines’ as the source of rightful
heirship. Significantly, the connections between illegitimacy and heirship,
culminating in social and economic success (discussed further in Chapter 4),
delineate an imaginary heir whose ability to inherit property is not, necessarily,
contingent on birthright or even lawfulness. The next chapter will continue to
explore this discrepancy between lawfulness and rightfulness by analysing how
rightful heirship is recognised, examining the forms and meaning of recognition.
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Chapter 3
Recognition
Through the previous two chapters, the romances’ disinherited and illegitimate heirs,
cut off from their genealogies, have increasingly appeared to figure a literary concept
of heirship that contrasts with medieval legal paradigms. The most obvious
counterargument to this reading, according to existing romance criticism, is that the
romances eventually end and resolve their heroes’ disinheritance. In this view, the
romances ultimately adhere to a legally orthodox, socially and economically
conservative model of rightful heirship: in short, they close the gap between lawful
heirship and rightfulness measured in other ways. Having given their heroes the
opportunity to prove their worth in feats of arms, for example, during a period of
disinheritance, the stories finally reaffirm birthright as the ideal marker of rightful
succession: showing that ‘worth and birth are synonymous’, as Susan Wittig writes.1
Wittig sees ‘recognition’ as the prerequisite to ‘restoration’, saying that, in
the ‘episode linking pattern recognition-restoration-marriage’, recognition ‘plays a
part necessarily previous to the concluding two type-episodes’.2 Rosalind Field
describes Havelok as a ‘returning heir’, of the ‘exile-and-return’ type, and suggests
that ‘the key is his resemblance to his father … helped by some marvellous pointers
to his true identity’. She describes Gaimar’s ‘Haveloc’ episode in the same terms,
describing the point at which Haveloc is ‘dramatically recognise[d] [as] his father’s
son’ as the ‘recognition of the true heir’, ‘backed up’ by ‘marvellous proofs’. 3 Thus
1 Wittig, Stylistic and Narrative Structures, p. 189. 2 Wittig, Stylistic and Narrative Structures, p. 173 (italics in original). 3 Rosalind Field, ‘The King Over the Water: Exile-and-Return Revisited’, in Cultural Encounters in the Romance of Medieval England, ed. Corrine Saunders (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005), pp. 41–54 (p. 51; p. 44).
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the ‘restoration’ of the rightful heir is predicated on a recognition of their ‘true
identity’, usually equated with biological paternity.4
However, this reading of the ‘matter’ of inheritance in the romances is partly
based on an assumption that the endings provide the ‘sense’ of their stories.5 In the
next and final chapter, I will question this end-focused reading of the romances, as
well as providing an alternative view of the endings: namely that they do not
constitute a ‘restoration’ of some former order. Here, I focus on the question of
‘recognition’. The idea that the heir’s ‘true identity’ is biologically determined also
suggests that ‘recognition’ means the discovery of lineage, thereby bringing about
the restoration of patrilineal succession. Yet close analysis of instances of
recognition in the romances – focusing on the places where a formerly disinherited
youth is nominated as an heir or determined to be a rightful successor to an
inheritance – shows otherwise.
Definitions of Recognition
Since the word ‘recognition’ is often used in romance scholarship, but also has a
long philosophical tradition attached to it, I begin by considering the possibilities of
‘recognition’ as a critical term. ‘Recognition’ appears as a literary-critical term as
4 Helen Cooper, ‘When Romance Comes True’, Boundaries in Medieval, pp. 13–28 (pp. 24–25); further examples given below and where discussed at greater length in Chapter 4. 5 I paraphrase the well-known terminology of ‘matiere et san’ from Chrétien de Troyes’s prologue to Le Chevalier de la Charette (Lancelot) for its useful (if contested) distinction between content and meaning (where ‘san’ does not simply mean ‘knowledge’, referring to the ‘faculty of the author’, but means ‘an interpretation of the matière’ engendered by the creative arrangement of the text). See Chrétien de Troyes, Le Chevalier de la Charette, ed. Mario Roques (Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honoré Champion, 1958), l. 26; Marie-Louise Ollier, ‘The Author in the Text: The Prologues of Chrétien de Troyes’, Yale French Studies, 51 (1974), 26–41 (pp. 31–32); also Douglas Kelly, ‘Narrative Poetics: Rhetoric, Orality and Performance’, in A Companion to Chrétien de Troyes, ed. Norris J. Lacy and Joan Tasker Grimbert (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 52–63 (esp. p. 56).
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early as Aristotle’s Poetics, where anagnorisis (translated as ‘recognition’) is
identified as a fundamental element of plot. Aristotle describes anagnorisis as:
a change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hate between the persons destined
by the poet for good or bad fortune.6
There is an alternative definition of ‘recognition’ in political theory, ultimately
deriving from Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit (Phänomenologie des Geistes,
1807). Hegel argues that individual subjectivity emerges through interaction with
others, in a process of a ‘mutual recognition’ which also establishes the terms of the
relationship between respective parties.7 Recognition has since become a critical
touchstone in philosophical discussions of issues such as identity, multiculturalism,
capitalist ideology and constitutional rights.8 Although these topics seem somewhat
removed from Aristotle’s literary definition of anagnorisis, they share the
Aristotelian belief that recognition is something that occurs ‘between persons’.9
Where Aristotle describes recognition as the acquisition of ‘knowledge’, eliciting an
6 The Poetics of Aristotle, ed. and trans. S. H. Butcher, 3rd edn (London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd, 1902), p. 41. Further quotations from the Poetics will be from this edition. 7 G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of the Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), p. 273. 8 On the prominence of ‘recognition’ in modern political theory and its debt to Hegelian philosophy, see Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange (London: Verso, 2001), pp. 1–2. See also Louis Althusser, On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, trans. G. M. Goshgarian, ed. Jacques Bidet (London: Verso, 2014; first published as ‘Idéologie et appareils idéologiques d’État’, La Pensée, 151 (1970), 3-38)), esp. pp. 190–97; Charles Taylor, ‘The Politics of Recognition’, in Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 25–74; Jürgen Habermas, ‘Struggles for Recognition in the Democratic Constitutional State’, trans. Shierry Weber Nicholson, in Multiculturalism, pp. 107–48. Louis Althusser directly refers to the Hegelian idea of ‘mutual recognition’ in Ideology, p. 197. 9 For the influences of both Aristotle and Hegel on later recognition theory in general, see Teresa G. Russo, ed., ‘Introduction’, to Recognition and Modes of Knowledge: Anagnorisis from Antiquity to Contemporary Theory (Alberta: University of Alberta Press, 2013), pp. xiii–xxix (esp. pp. xviii–xx). The volume sets out to examine ‘Aristotelian … post-Aristotelian … Hegelian, and post-Hegelian models of recognition in critical theory’ (p. xiii).
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emotional response (‘love or hate’), Hegel’s recognition produces a psychological
effect. But the action is similarly social: recognition is not something that happens in
the mind of one individual, but ‘between persons’.10 This broadly sociopolitical
definition of recognition, a transformative process ongoing between two or more
people, provides one alternative standpoint from which to view the recognition of
rightful heirship in the Middle English romances, as something other than the
exposure of a pre-existing identity.
But it is the more Aristotelian idea of recognition as a basic plot feature
which predominates in romance criticism, after the influential folkloristic scholarship
of the twentieth century, where recognition is identified as a widespread literary
‘motif’.11 The omission of the medieval period from Terence Cave’s otherwise
expansive study of ‘recognitions’ in literature might indicate this gap between
medievalist scholarship and the post-medieval recognition theory.12 Meanwhile, the
‘recognition scene’, along with the ‘token of recognition’, is a widely acknowledged
feature of romance narrative.13 In this context, ‘recognition’ is invoked in its
10 For brief commentaries on the relevant passage in Phenomenology, see Robert Stern, ‘The Dialectic of the Subject’, in Hegel and the Phenomenology of the Spirit (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 71–96 (especially pp. 74–75) and Terry Pinkard, ed., ‘Introduction’, to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Phenomenology of the Spirit (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. ix–xxxvi (p. xxiii). 11 See Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, 2nd edn, trans. and ed. Louis A. Wagner (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968; originally published as Morfologiya Skazki [Морфология сказки] in Leningrad by Academia, 1928), p. 62; Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Medieaval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books and Local Legends, 6 vols, vol. 1 (Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press, 1966; first published 1932). Thompson’s Motif-Index builds on the work of Antii Aarne, which also predates that of Propp: Antti Aarne, Verzeichnis der Märchentypen [The Types of the Folk-Tale] (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Tiedeakatemian Toimituksia, 1910). 12 Terence Cave, Recognitions: A Study in Poetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). 13 Key examples are Northrop Frye, Secular Scripture: A Study of The Structure of Romance (London: Harvard University Press, 1976), especially pp. 136, 141 and 145; Wittig, Stylistic and Narrative Structures, pp. 173–76; Cooper, English Romance, pp. 327–29. Incidental references to ‘recognition scenes’ or ‘token of recognition’ are common in romance criticism, so it would be impossible to enumerate all, but for an indicative sample from my bibliography, see: Barron, English Medieval
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common vernacular sense, to mean ‘the action or an act of identifying a person or
thing from a previous encounter or knowledge’.14 Though this definition of
‘recognition’ is more prosaic than that of political theory, it also alludes to a
relationship with memory, which will be explored further below.
Generally speaking, references to ‘recognition scenes’ in romance criticism
are more often incidental than symptomatic of sustained analysis of the semantics of
recognition, or the cognitive process. Lewis J. Owen’s 1971 essay, ‘The Recognition
Scene in Sir Orfeo’, for example – cited for its ‘commentary’ on a certain
‘recognition scene’ in the widely accessible METS edition of Sir Orfeo – is, rather,
an editorial inquiry, not concerned with the presentation or meaning of ‘recognition’
(Owen only uses the phrase, ‘recognition scene’ to name the passage in question).15
More recent work, particularly that of James Simpson and Elizabeth Archibald,
shows a greater range of possibilities for analysis of romance ‘recognition scenes’ by
engaging directly with both the means and the meaning of ‘recognition’.16 But this
approach has not yet turned to the question of recognising rightful heirship.
Romance, p. 65; Maldwyn Mills and Gillian Rogers, ‘The Manuscripts of Popular Romance’, in A Companion to Medieval Popular Romance, pp. 49–66 (p. 61); Archibald, ‘Lai le Freine: The Female Foundling and the Problem of Romance Genre’, in Spirit, pp. 39–55 (p. 47); Elizabeth Fowler, ‘The Romance Hypothetical: Lordship and the Saracens in Sir Isumbras’, in Spirit, pp. 97–121 (p. 118); Bliss, Naming and Namelessness, pp. 40–41; Monika Otter, ‘Music by Tristan: The Two Lais of Chèvrefeuille’, in Thinking Medieval Romance, pp. 170–86 (p. 176). Also see DMER, where one of the searchable ‘keywords’ is ‘tokens of recognition’. 14 OED, recognition, n., sense 1. 15 Lewis J. Owen, ‘The Recognition Scene in Sir Orfeo’, Medium Aevum, 40 (1971), 249–53. See Sir Orfeo, note to ll. 319–30. In this passage, Orfeo and Heurodis see each other but ‘noither to other a word no speke’ (l. 324). 16 James Simpson revists the ‘recognition scenes’ in Sir Orfeo, in Simpson, ‘Cognition is Recognition: Literary Knowledge and Textual “Face”’, New Literary History, 44:1 (2013), 25–44. See also James Simpson, ‘Sir Degaré: The Story’, in Thinking Medieval Romance, pp. 36–54; Elizabeth Archibald, ‘Non-recognition in Sir Triamour: The Reversal of Romance Expectations’, in Recognition: The Poetics of Narrative; Interdisciplinary Studies on Anagnorisis, ed. Philip F. Kennedy and Marilyn Lawrence (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009), pp. 62–80; Marilyn Lawrence, ‘Recognition and Identity in Medieval Narrative: The Saracen Woman in the Anglo-Norman Epic Boeve de Haumtone’, in the
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The most crucial omission from studies of recognition in romance thus far,
which is especially important to our understanding of late-medieval inheritance
narratives, is the particular medieval legal sense of the word. The earliest explanation
of the legal process of ‘recognition’ appears in Glanvill, but references can be found
into the fifteenth century.17 Summarised in the OED as a ‘form of inquiry or inquest
by jury … [or] recognition of assize’, it is specifically an inquest into land disputes.18
Jurors would be self-informing, Glanvill says:
acquainted with the merits of the cause, either from what they have personally seen and
heard, or from the declarations of their fathers, and from other sources equally entitled to
credit.
The ‘testimony of many credible witnesses’ is more equitable an institution ‘than that
of the duel’, Glanvill remarks, advocating the recognition process as a means of
avoiding death or injury in trial by combat.19 Other have noted that trials by combat,
effectively ended in England and France by the early fourteenth century, retain some
cultural currency in romances.20 But this is not to the exclusion of contemporary
legal practices. In Chrétien’s twelfth-century Yvain, for example, trial by combat is
proved ineffective in an inheritance dispute between two sisters, and the matter is
same volume, pp. 81–96. Worth noting, though not directly relevant, is Lee Patterson, Acts of Recognition: Essays on Medieval Culture (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010). Patterson does not analyse literary presentations of recognition but rather describes the volume’s unifying theme as readerly acts of recognition between ‘the past and the present’ and ‘between the individual and the social’ (p. vii). Romance features in the volume in the shape of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde. 17 Glanvill, pp. 31–36, 46 and 53–54. See also MED, recognicion, n. 2: particularly quotations from The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, 1124–1707, 11 vols, ed. T. Thompson and C. Innes (Great Britain Record Commission, 1814–1875), I. 357/2 (c. 1430) and the Godstow Register (c. 1470), in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson B.408, 598/9 and 638/12. 18 OED, recognition, n., sense 1. The entry was last updated in 2009 and this sense of the word is listed as ‘historical’. 19 Glanvill, p. 54; p. 46. 20 See Green, Crisis of Truth, pp. 78–80.
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settled by the king, to prevent further harm to their evenly matched champions
(Yvain and Gauvain).21 The English version of this romance, Ywain and Gawain,
repeats the scenario, but unlike the French version describes the legal resolution as
the first example of partition in England.22 Significantly, the English narrator thus
associates legal arbitration (as opposed to trial by combat), and the resolution of
inheritance disputes, with the most prominent form of inheritance which is other than
the rule of primogeniture.23
21 Chrétien de Troyes, Le Chevalier au Lion, ed. Mario Roques (Paris: Champion, 1960), ll. 4703-6526. For an English translation of the relevant episode see Arthurian Romances, ed. and trans. William Kibler (London: Penguin, 2004), p. 375. 22 The romance is preserved in a single fifteenth-century manuscript (London, British Library, MS Cotton Galba E. ix) and is thought to have been composed c. 1300–50. See DMER. For the relevant passage, see Ywain, ll. 3731–72. The passage concludes: ‘This land was first, I understand | That ever was parted in Ingland … Al sisters that sold efter bene | Solde part the landes tham bitwene’ (ll. 3767–72). An interesting point of comparison is the late thirteenth-century Roman de Silence, another French-language romance, although it seems its manuscript was in England at least by the fifteenth century (due to the marginal signature of ‘John Bertrem’, dated to 1471). In Silence, a duel to settle an inheritance dispute between twin sisters results, disastrously, in the deaths of both combatants and the outlawing of female succession in England. See Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance, ed. and trans. Sarah Roche-Mahdi (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1992), ll. 278–318; Sharon Kinoshita, ‘Heldris de Cornuälle’s Roman de Silence and the Feudal Politics of Lineage’, PMLA, 110:3 (1995), 397–409; Ralph Hanna and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds, ‘The History of a Family Collection’, in The Wollaton Medieval Manuscripts: Texts, Owners and Readers (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2010), pp. 3–19 (p. 12). 23 Chrétien probably would have regarded his legal resolution as closer to primogeniture than partition, since French law emphasises the distinction between absolute partition, creating two tenants-in-chief to the crown, and partition where one sibling holds their share of the lands in vassalage to the other (as in Yvain and Ywain). Chrétien’s audience, also, would likely have been cognizant of these different forms of partition, since they only gave way to primogeniture, in Champagne, during the twelfth century (though there were ongoing regional variations, as in England). In fifteenth-century England, primogeniture and the latter model of partition (vassalage) had long been established as the legal norms, to the extent that both were increasingly subverted. Thus, what for Chrétien is a strong endorsement of one particular model of partition (parage avec hommage), in contrast to an alternative model of partition, for the Ywain-narrator is a reference to the (ancient) institution of partition, in contrast to primogeniture. See A. H. Diverres, ‘Chivalry and Fin Amor in Le Chevalier au Lion’, in Studies in Medieval Literature and Languages in Memory of Frederick Whitehead, ed. William Rothwell (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1973), pp. 91–116 (p. 109); Kibler, ed., ‘Notes’, to Arthurian Romances, p. 516, n. 17.
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Ordinarily, when the identification of rightful heirs was not disputatious,
‘recognition’ would not be necessary: when a landholder died, an Inquisition Post
Mortem (IPM) would establish the lands and titles held of the crown, and the next
heir. A proof of age would follow if necessary. But by the fifteenth century these
processes had become somewhat arbitrary and bureaucratic, the evidence
documented being formulaic and, it seems in some cases, falsified in order to satisfy
the requirements of the record.24 Similarly, private charters of land ownership were
rarely produced in court to prove property rights, more often being used to ‘justify
the summons of the witnesses it listed’.25 The absence of such administrative
procedures and documents in the romances does not indicate a lack of interest in
legal forms altogether but it does underline that the romances are concerned with
what IPMs and proofs of age are not: namely, how to recognise rightful heirship
when lineage has become obscure.
Disentangling Blood, Birth and Worth
There are various forms of recognition in the romances, but ‘recognition by a token
is the category which is most often noted’, as Wittig observes, listing a number of
examples in the romances:
24 See Matthew Holford, ‘Testimony (To Some Extent Fictitious): Proofs of Age in the First Half of the Fifteenth Century’, Historical Research, 82:218 (2009), 635–54; William S. Deller, ‘Proofs of Age 1246 to 1430: Their Nature Veracity and Use as Sources’, in The Later Medieval Inquisitions Post Mortem: Mapping the Medieval Countryside, ed. Michael Hicks (Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2016), pp. 136–60. Joel Rosenthal argues in favour of the proofs of age as a historical resource for social detail, despite the formulaic nature of some of the ‘memories’ they contain. See Rosenthal, Telling Tales: Sources and Narration in Late Medieval England (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003) and Rosenthal, Social Memory in Late Medieval England: Village Life and Proofs of Age (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). 25 Paul Hyams, ‘Orality and Literacy in the Age of the Angevin Law Reforms’, in Law, Governance, and Justice: New Views of Medieval Constitutionalism, ed. Richard Kaeuper (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 27–72 (p. 50).
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[the] lost hero (or heroine) may be identified by a robe (Freine, Isumbras), by a pair of
gloves (Degare), a ring (Perceval, Horn, Freine), a cup (Amis), a broken weapon (Degare), a
horse (Bevis), a heavenly light and a birthmark (Havelok), or armor (Torrent, Eglamour).
It is a relatively minor point for Wittig that ‘[c]ategorizing the episodes in this way
does not allow us to see the various manipulations which may occur in the scenes’.26
But this is an important acknowledgement that the value of such objects varies in
each case, not just according to type (a cup as opposed to a sword, for instance) but
also according to use. McKinstry identifies the ‘rings, gloves, swords, cups, armour’,
exchanged between characters as ‘memorial objects’, intended to ‘recall the last time
when they were seen or encountered’.27 Furthermore, the ‘rhetorical force’ of
ekphrastic descriptions of such objects, as Nicholas Perkins suggests, works to
‘heighten a romance’s claim on the audience’s attention and memory’.28 But what
they memorialise and what they can recall for characters in the story is necessarily
subjective, depending on where and when they appear, and to whom.
Cooper notes that in Degare, the ‘recognition token[s]’ in the hero’s
possession are personalised: the gloves that will fit no one but his mother and the
sword belonging to his father bearing distinguishing features of damage.29 But
comparable objects in the disinheritance romances are not so specific, or personal.
Torrent gives two ‘gold ryngs’ to Desonell, to ‘kepe … Yf God a child us send’, and
26 Wittig, Stylistic and Narrative Structures, pp. 173–74. 27 McKinstry, Middle English Romance and the Craft of Memory, p. 106. 28 Perkins, ‘Ekphrasis and Narrative in Emaré and Sir Eglamour of Artois’, pp. 59–60. There are many alternative theoretical approaches to ‘objects’ in medieval literature, for an overview of which see Jessica Brantley, ‘Material Culture’, in A Handbook of Middle English Studies, ed. Marion Turner (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), pp. 187–205 (esp. p. 188). For a recent reappraisal of the ‘gift’ as a theoretical concept in romance see Walter Wadiak, Savage Economy: The Returns of Middle English Romance (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2017), especially Chapter 2, ‘The Gift and Its Returns’, pp. 30–62. The idea of the object as a memory device is the most relevant to my discussion of recognition. 29 Cooper, English Romance, pp. 328–29.
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when Desonell is banished, she tears a ‘cloth of silke’ with her mother and each of
her twin sons is ‘wonde’ in a piece (ll. 1398–1400). Retrospectively, the narrator
adds that Desonell also gave each twin one of Torrent’s gold rings (ll. 1827–29,
1906).30 When the separated twins are later found by strangers, however, the rich
‘swathing band’ and ‘gold ryng’ do not attest to a particular parentage (nor to
legitimacy) but only signify that the unknown child is ‘come of gentill teme’ or
‘gentill blood’ (ll. 1919–24, 1985).
Likewise in Eglamour, when Degrebell is found in ‘a skarlet mantell
wounden’, with ‘a gyrdyll of golde fast bounden’ and ‘yen [eyes] clere as cristall’,
the finders can only speculate that that he is ‘comen of gentyll blode | Where evur he
was tane’ (ll. 835–40). It is significant that their certainty about the child’s ‘gentyll
blode’ is coupled with their uncertainty about his origins. At the same time, the
question of his lineage appears to be of no immediate importance: to say that he is
‘of gentyll blode | Where evur he was tane’ does not suggest any urgency to discover
the child’s family, but rather that his gentility is self-evident regardless of his origins.
To describe the objects above as ‘tokens of recognition’ (my italics) may be a
little misleading, since it invites comparison with ‘foundling tokens’: the name given
to the objects intended to identify mothers of children who were taken into the care
of foundling hospitals, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.31 Fundamentally
not objects of any monetary value, foundling tokens commonly took the form of
swatches of homespun or customised fabric. These were designed to prove a certain
mother-child relationship: the mother kept one part and the child the other, so that
30 The cloth is not shared between Desonell and her mother, as suggested in the note to line 1398 of Wade’s edition. 31 Wade makes this comparison in an editorial note to Torrent, l. 1398; Cooper also, in English Romance, p. 327.
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they could be put back together at a later date. There is at least one documented
example from the eighteenth century of a reunion successfully brought about in this
way.32 But this possibility is never realised in Torrent. The separate pieces of the
‘cloth of silke’ torn between Desonell and her mother, then used to swaddle the
infant twins, are never brought back together.33 The romance’s ‘tokens of
recognition’ are, rather, more like those objects which Katherine French finds
associated with childbirth among fifteenth-century urban Englishwomen, and gifted
or bequeathed by mothers to children. Neither heirlooms nor necessarily inscribed
with personal, identifying marks, these gifts were chosen to communicate an
aspirational socioeconomic milieu, reflecting ‘hopes for the future’ as well as ‘real or
imagined’ ideas of the family’s past.34 In the romances, objects of recognition
frequently represent ‘hopes for the future’, or future promise, as gentility is inferred
and perhaps lineage ‘imagined’ but uncertain.
32 John Styles, Threads of Feeling: The London Foundling Hospital’s Textile Tokens, 1740–1770 (Reading: Lamport Gilbert Ltd, 2010; repr. 2013 and 2016), pp. 15–16, 70. See also Maria Zytaruk, ‘Artifacts of Elegy: The Foundling Hospital Tokens’, Journal of British Studies, 54:2 (2015), 320–48. 33 For medieval readers, the cloth torn in two might have been suggestive of chirographs or indentured legal agreements. By this method, two copies of an agreement were made on a single piece of parchment, cut apart by a wavy line, sometimes with the word ‘chyrographum’ written beneath. In theory, as J. M. Kaye explains, ‘a copy [of a grant] made by chirograph had the advantage that if a dispute were to arise as to the terms of a grant, the two parts could be fitted together along the line of severance. If they corresponded exactly, the text would have to be accepted by both parties.’ But there appears to be little evidence of chirographs or indentures being used in this way in late-medieval England; at least, I have not come across conclusive evidence in my reading on the subject thus far. Hyams suggests that the contrary is the case, where he finds evidence of charters being used to supply the names of appropriate witnesses for hearings, rather than functioning as documentary proof in their own right. J. M. Kaye, Medieval English Conveyances (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 11; Hyams, ‘Orality and Literacy’, p. 50. 34 Katherine L. French, ‘The Material Culture of Childbirth in Late Medieval London and Its Suburbs’, Journal of Women’s History, 28:2 (2016), 126–48 (pp. 128–29, 140).
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In Torrent, the recognition of gentle blood, though it reveals nothing of the
child’s actual lineage, constitutes a recognition of rightful heirship. This happens
twice, once for each twin:
Whan the lady saw the ryng
She said, without lettyng
‘This child is com of gentill teme
Thou hast none heyre, thy lond to take
For Jesu love thou sholdist hym make
Prynce of Jerusalem’ (ll. 1935–40)
‘A knave child found I have
…
Frome a grefon he was reste
Of what lond that is left
Of gentill blode was he.
Thou hast none heyre, thy lond to take
For Jesu love thy sonne hym make’. (ll. 1981–87)
In both cases, the kings agree to this advice and promptly make the unknown
children their heirs. ‘Gentil’ in Middle English can apply to those of noble rank as
well as the gentry;35 and Philippa Maddern has demonstrated the indeterminacy of
the term in late-medieval England.36 The overlap between the senses of the two terms
in the romances can be detected by comparing the very close Cambridge and Naples
versions of Bevis, where a noble assembly is respectively described as ‘gentyll
knight and bold baron’ or ‘king and nobil baron’ (both, l. 4836). I confine my
35 See MED, gentil, adj. 36 As cited in the introduction: Maddern, ‘Gentility’, in Gentry Culture, pp. 18–34.
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observations on the meaning of gentility to such examples in the romances,
interpreting these according to contextual usage. In the extracts above, ‘gentill blode’
can be recognised in children of unknown lineage, not least to be taken as evidence
of their worthiness to inherit. This unsettles what Lee Patterson perceives elsewhere
to be a ‘growing insistence upon the priority of lineage as a definition of nobility’ in
the culture of the later Middle Ages.37
In particular, the romances invite their readers to question the priority of
birth, as the de facto source of rightful heirship. References to ‘gentill blode’ are
conspicuously associated with superficial, aesthetic features, rather than the inborn
gentility that the phrase itself implies. The mantle, the girdle of ‘golde’ and even
Degrebell’s eyes, compared to ‘cristall’, indicate that ‘gentill blode’ means the
appearance of wealth. In Octavian, the perception of Florent’s ‘gentill blode’ by an
outlaw gang comes with an estimation of his market value in ‘golde and silver’, of
‘fourty pound’ (ll. 580–87).38 If wealth is synonymous with pedigree, in these
examples, they also suggest that the appearance of pedigree – a mantle, a gold ring –
can be purchased or traded. Gentility is a valuable economic asset, engendering
social status.
The romances modify the better-known Chaucerian model of gentility in this
respect: Chaucer’s ‘gentilesse’ is an ethical attitude, and not heritable; ‘richesse’ is a
separate matter, and is heritable through lineage.39 In the romances, the heritability of
‘richesse’ according to lineage is contested, as patrimonial inheritances are lost and
wealth must be acquired through other means. ‘Gentill blode’ and ‘richesse’ are,
37 Lee Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), p. 193. 38 This also recalls the pun on ‘grotes’ in Havelok, noted in Chapter 1. 39 See the Wife of Bath’s Tale, ll. 1117–24 and editorial note to l. 1109; also Gentilesse (a short poem), ll. 12–17.
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however, closely aligned, in that the former is conceived as a wealthy aesthetic. The
acquisition of an inheritance is aided by the possession of ‘gentill blode’, but this can
be manifest in either physical features, like ‘cristall’ eyes, or in accoutrements like a
‘skarlet mantell’, which can be acquired by purchase. ‘Gentill blode’ in the romances
thus has an economic value, rather than an ethical one; and, importantly, it can be
identified independently of parentage.
The possibility of recognising rightful heirs by their physical likeness to
fathers is muted or absent in the disinheritance romances. Bevis’s lack of physical
resemblance to Gii is implied by Saber Florentin’s failure to recognise him on sight.
Then, before Bevis has the opportunity to return to Hampton, he is bitten by a snake
and ‘negh a les ther contenaunse’ (l. 1562). When he returns to Josian in the guise of
a ‘palmare’, she does not believe it is him, because of his facial disfigurement, even
though she sees a likeness in his bearing:
‘Ner this mannes browe to-tore
Me wolde thenke be his fasoun
That hit were Beves of Hamtoun’. (l. 2134; ll. 2154–56)
She is reassured only when Arondel, Bevis’s horse, recognises his ‘lordes stevene’:
‘Tho the hors him knew and segh’ and ‘[t]harbi that maide him wel knew’ (ll. 2158–
80).40
40 There is literary trope, in Middle English romances and beyond, that animals are capable of recognising nobility or other qualities in humans. For example, Josian in Bevis is protected from lions as a ‘kynges doughter, that maide is’. The METS editors note that ‘virginity could confer invulnerability’ according to ‘medieval lore’; but the fact that Josian is a princess is also emphasised. The poet states, ‘A kynges doughter, that maide is, | Kinges doughter, quene and maide both | The lyouns myght do hur noo wroth’ (ll. 2392–94 and note to l. 2394). Likewise, the lioness in Octavian decides not to make a meal of her human captive, because she sees that he is a ‘kynge sone’ (NO, l. 349).
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Eglamour and Tryamour include ironic meetings between fathers and sons
who do not know the extent of their relationship, which rely upon the assumption
that the child cannot be recognised by any likeness he bears to his father. In the same
way, the unwittingly incestuous marriage between Cristabell and Degrebell
(comparable to that in Degare) relies on Cristabell seeing no familial resemblance in
her son. No one recognises that Degrebell ‘[h]ys owen modyr has wed’ (l. 1109).
Indeed, even when she sees the armour he bears, depicting a child carried by a
griffin, Cristabell does not recognise Degrebell, but rather recalls the manner in
which her son was lost:
Hys armes they bare hym beforn –
Sche thynkes how hyre chyld away was born.
Therfore sorow sche hade.
Sche grette therfore and sorow gan make
And all was for hyr sones sake
…
‘Lord, in thyn armes a fowle I se
That sumtyme raft a chyld fro me’. (ll. 1111–21)
Degrebell makes no reply to this, leaving the king to make the connection that
constitutes recognition:
‘Be Crystus myght!
In my forest hon he lyght
A grype to lond gym browghte’. (ll. 1123–25)
In the northern Octavian, the empress claims to ‘knowe [Florent] by his faire face’
though the emperor perceives no likeness in his son and had earlier asked him if
Clement was his father (NO, l. 1793; l. 1262). Octavian deduces that Florent is
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‘comen of gentill blode’, since he is ‘curtayse’ and ‘bold’, yet he ‘ne wiste what he
was’ (NO, ll. 1238–43). As in Eglamour, we find that the confident identification of
‘gentill blode’ is coupled with uncertainty about its origins. In the southern Octavian,
the emperor observes that mother and son are ‘ilyk of semblaunt’, though pointedly
‘wiþouten oþ’ (SO, ll. 1891–92).
Only in Havelok is the hero is said to resemble his father and be recognised
as his heir for this reason:
‘it was nevere yet a brother
In al Denemark so lich another
So this man, that is so fayr
Als Birkabeyn; he is hise eyr’. (ll. 2154–57)
But this is an exceptional example. Elsewhere in the romance, characters fail to
recognise the significance of Havelok’s physical appearance. Godrich is blind to the
connection between Havelok’s physical stature and his rightful social standing, as
‘hexte’ (tallest/highest) in the land, and Goldeboru also believes herself disparaged
by her marriage to Havelok, married ‘unkyndelike’ (ll. 1076, 1251).41 Havelok is
alone among the disinherited-heir heroes for possessing supernatural physical marks:
the ‘kynmerk’ on his body and the ‘sunnebem’ that shines from his mouth when he
sleeps (ll. 593, 605). But while these mark him out as extraordinary, they do not
identify his lineage or a birthright. When Goldeboru sees them, she takes them only
as signs that Havelok is a ‘heyman’ (a noble), until an angelic voice explains
Havelok’s destiny to be king (ll. 1261, 1265–75). The wide variety of forms of
recognition in Havelok, more of which below, attest to an idea common to all the
41 King Athelwold stipulates, to Godrich, that Goldeboru’s husband must be ‘the hexte’, ‘the best, the fairest, the strangest’ (ll. 1076, 1080–81).
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disinheritance romances: that genealogy is not easily discerned or proved, and is an
unreliable indicator of rightful heirship as such.
The twin heirs of the romances present the most obvious challenge to rightful
heirship as defined by birth. Twin births are remarkably frequent among Middle
English romances: twins are the title characters in Lai le Freine and the late prose
romance, Valentine and Orson; they are born to the title characters in Bevis,
Octavian, Torrent and possibly Tryamour. In Octavian, they are foremost among the
romance’s protagonists, while in Bevis and Torrent they occupy leading, if not
principal roles. The frequency of the recurrence has not been readily acknowledged,
though it raises an interesting question about the significance of twins in medieval
literature at large.42 This cannot be addressed fully here, but in the context of the
disinheritance romances it is important to note that these texts repeatedly and
specifically depict firstborn male twins. The importance of this specificity is its
challenge to the model of primogeniture.
The common law solution to firstborn male twin heirs is to adhere to the
convention of preferring the eldest, and to identify one twin as the elder of the two.
The eldest twin could then inherit the patrimony and the younger twin a smaller
share.43 But this solution is not without its tensions. Mentions of twins in the legal
42 Erik Kooper’s study of twins in medieval European literature surveys twenty plots, among which Middle English romances are not prominent. Erik Kooper, ‘Multiple Births and Multiple Disaster: Twins in Medieval Literature’, in Conjunctures: Medieval Studies in Honour of Douglas Kelly, ed. Keith Busby and Norris J. Lacy (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994), pp. 253–68. Carolyne Larrington remarks that twins are ‘surprisingly rare in medieval European romance’, mentioning Valentine and Orson and the Middle English Lai le Freine; but the scope of Larrington’s study of siblings in medieval literature is far broader than the Middle English romances, or twins, and thus demonstrates the potential for further, focused work in these areas. Carolyne Larrington, Brothers and Sisters in Medieval European Literature (York: Boydell & Brewer, 2015), p. 60. 43 Female heirs without brothers were already likely to be subject to partible inheritance – thereby sharing the patrimony as co-heirs – whether or not twins. If twins had elder siblings, the difference between them in the hierarchy is diminished. For mixed-sex twins, without elder siblings, the male heir would take priority as per usual practice. Such a case occurred in Europe as recently as 2014,
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record (where inheritance is not at issue) describe them as ‘insimul nes’, or ‘born at
the same time’, showing that the legal insistence elsewhere that twins are like any
other siblings, one the ‘older’ and one the ‘younger’, competes with a common
assumption that they are the same age.44 The well-documented case of the Beaumont
twins in the twelfth century demonstrates how careful a negotiation might be
required for twin heirs. The twins’ father, Count Robert of Meulan (d. 1118) had a
will confirmed by Henry I, around 1107, which provided for both his sons. But the
provision still hinged on identifying one of the twins as the elder. As such, the
‘firstborn’ twin (Waleran) succeeded to the lands that had belonged to his paternal
grandfather, while the ‘younger’ twin (Robert) mainly inherited lands won during his
father’s lifetime.45 But the young Robert’s inheritance also included some areas that
had been part of Count Robert’s patrimony. Historian David Crouch suggests that the
several English estates that, otherwise unaccountably, went to Waleran along with an
when mixed-sex twins were born to the Princess of Monaco: although the female twin was born first, her brother is first in line to inherit according to the constitution. Around the same time, in anticipation of the birth of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s first child, a new Act of Succession was passed in the UK to remove this gender bias. See La Constitution de la Principauté de Monaco 17 Décembre 1962 (modifiée par la loi no 1.249 du 2 Avril 2002), Chapter II, Article 10, available online at <https://www.gouv.mc/Gouvernement-et-Institutions/Les-Institutions/La-Constitution-de-la-Principaute> [accessed 4 Dec 2019]; Succession to the Crown Act 2013, available online at <http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/20/contents/enacted> [accessed 4 Dec 2019]. 44 See Seipp 1486.052 (Traverse of Office) in the online database of Year Books; Or Reports in the Following Reigns, with Notes to Brook and Fitzherbert’s Abridgements; Originally published in London by George Sawbridge, 1687, 1679-80, 11 vols, with new introductory notes and tables by David J. Seipp and Carol F. Lee (Clark, NJ: Lawbook Exchange, 2007 and 2013), hosted by the Boston University School of Law <http://www.bu.edu/law/faculty-scholarship/legal-history-the-year-books/> [accessed 4 Dec 2018]. See also Seipp 1372.119ass (Writ of Assize) and Seipp 1327.030 (Writ of Assize). A 1372 proof of age for one Henry Soumpter records the testimony of John Baker, ‘godfather to John, [twin] brother of the said Henry, who was born of the same mother at the same time’; and a writ of 1369 records ‘Beatrice and Maud [… both] 46 years of age, being twins’. See File 231 (16), CIPM, Series I, vol. 13, p. 212; File 209 (8), CIPM, vol. 12, p. 339. 45 See Holt, ‘Politics and Property’, p. 50.
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income of £140 per year from Sturminster Marshall, were ‘compensation’ for the
lands given to Robert, ‘which Waleran could have claimed ought to have been his’.46
Not all such arrangements went uncontested. When Laurence de Pavily
succeeded as sole heir to the lands of his father around 1288, it aroused a complaint
from Phillip de Pavily, Laurence’s twin brother. This dispute resulted in Philip being
forced to concede, formally in court, that Laurence was held to be the elder twin and
that he, Philip, must therefore forgo his right to object to Laurence’s inheritance.47
Philip’s complaint shows that there could be some uncertainty as to which brother
was held to be the elder twin, though the primary witness in the de Pavily case was
the twins’ mother. A comparable fifteenth-century case indicates that the
appointment of the eldest twin could be discretionary. In 1447, the Countess of
Douglas made a legal statement claiming that her son, James was the primary heir to
her late husband’s estate, to the detriment of his twin brother, Archibald. But
documents predating this statement indicate that Archibald Douglas had been
regarded as the elder of the two during their father’s lifetime, leading Douglas
historian William Fraser to speculate that favour had shifted from one twin to the
other.48
Though legal records for inheritance disputes between twins are infrequent,
this does not indicate a lack of conflict: besides the fact that many disputes could
have been settled without recourse to the courts, other reasons for the scarcity of
documented cases include the relative rarity of same-sex firstborn twins and high
infant mortality rates (with the possibility of one twin dying in minority). It is true,
46 David Crouch, The Beaumont Twins: The Roots and Branches of Power in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 9. 47 See File 51 (61), CIPM, Series I, vol. 2, p. 418. 48 See William Fraser, The Douglas Book, 4 vols (Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, 1885), vol. 1, pp. 447, 477–78 and vol. 3, pp. 379–80.
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for example, that twin heirs never caused problems to the succession of the crown in
medieval or early modern England, but this is because firstborn twins among the
royal families were vanishingly rare. In the one recorded case, twin sons were born
to James I of Scotland, but only one survived infancy: thus, James II (b. 1430; r.
1437–60) succeeded to the throne, despite having been born the “younger” twin.49
While the Douglas case shows that, in practice, the recognition of the rightful heir,
between twins, could be rather more subjective than legal treatises suggest, the
singular royal example demonstrates that rightful inheritance is sometimes more a
matter of unexpected circumstance.
The Middle English romances are more open to sustaining these ambiguities
in the popular imagination than has previously been credited. Bevis and Octavian
differentiate between their twin heirs in unorthodox ways, but the differentiation
itself, according to an implicit hierarchy, initially appears to follow the logic of
medieval inheritance laws. The contrast between the names of the twins was noted in
Chapter 2, but there is also a clear disparity between their respective upbringings. In
Bevis, one son is entrusted to a ‘forster’ (forester), whom Bevis promises to reward
well, if the forester will ‘tech him [the child] bere spere and schelde’; the other is
given to a ‘fischere’ with an upfront payment of ‘ten mark’ and no instructions as to
his tuition (ll. 3732–52). Likewise in Octavian, the hierarchy implied by the twins’
names is borne out in their upbringings: young Octavian is raised at court and young
Florent is raised by a merchant (or a butcher, in SO).50 However, there is no evidence
in the romance that the hierarchal organisation of the twins is anything other than
49 See Alan R. Borthwick, ‘James II (1430–1460), King of Scots’, ODNB <http://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/14588> [accessed 4 Dec 2019]. 50 In the northern Octavian, Clement is described as a ‘burgesse’ and apprentices Florent to a butcher (ll. 473, 648). His natural son he sends to a ‘chawndelere’ (‘candlemaker’, l. 645).
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‘arbitrary’, as Carolyne Larrington says of Bevis: nowhere is it stated which of the
twins is the ‘eldest’, in order to confirm that the discrimination between them
conforms to common law.51
The capriciousness of Bevis’s decision-making is underlined by the fact that
the forester and fisher are the first two people he ‘mette [in] the wode’: it is a chance
encounter not unlike those with the ape and lioness in Octavian, in the mysterious
‘herbere’ within ‘a wode [that] was ferly thykke’ (Bevis, l. 3725; Octavian, ll. 307–
12). Only in Torrent does a narrator mention the respective ages of the twins, where
they unwittingly encounter each other in combat, the narrator remarking that:
Though Antony fy Gryffon yonger were
His brother Leobertus he can down bere. (ll. 2478–79)
It is ironic that in the only instance in which one twin heir is identified as the
younger, it is to point out that he is the stronger of the two. Yet Torrent is also the
only romance, of those discussed here, to treat its twins equally in all other respects,
as both are made heirs to kings.52
In Bevis, differences of nurture have little impact on the twins’ chivalric
capabilities: both twins return to Bevis from their respective foster fathers as fully-
fledged knights. This possibly indicates the superiority of nature over nurture: the
idea that nobility is inherent. Yet, if worth and birth are supposed to be coterminous,
it is unsettling that the firstborns are unable to prove themselves superior to their
younger siblings. The ‘ideology of primogeniture’, or what Larrington terms the
‘unassailable cultural importance of the first-born’, is not demonstrated here.53
51 Larrington, Brothers and Sisters, p. 62. 52 The eventual inheritances of twin characters in the romances will be given closer attention, in the wider context of the endings, in the next and final chapter. 53 Larrington, Brothers and Sisters, p. 62.
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Introducing twins to the romance presents two narrative possibilities: either to
demonstrate that, when put to the test, the superiority of the firstborn, as per the ideal
of primogeniture, is borne out in the figure of the rightful heir in all respects; or,
alternatively, that it is not. These romances convey the latter possibility.
Testimony and Transformation
Given the romances’ deviation from legal definitions of inheritance, it may be
tempting to read their non-textual, recognitional objects in the context of what
historians have characterised as a paradigm shift in late-medieval law: from
‘communal memory’ to ‘the judicially enforced written contract’.54 That is to say, the
presentation of a ‘goldyn gyrdull’ in Eglamour, as a memory aid to identify
Degrebell as Cristabell’s son, is a nostalgic counterpoint to the documentary records
(IPMs, proofs of age, charters) that are theoretically used to ratify inheritance claims
in late-medieval law (l. 1130). Michael Clanchy sees Edward I’s quo warranto
investigations into land titles as an example of the demise of ‘unwritten customary
law’ in favour of written charters, and cites a fourteenth-century account of the
proceedings as evidence of popular resistance to the change.55 According to this
legend, the Earl Warenne responds to the royal inquisition by producing an ‘ancient
and rusty sword’ and declaring, ‘this is my warrant!’56 In Clanchy’s view, the earl in
54 Green, Crisis of Truth, p. xiv. Green revises Michael Clanchy’s theory on the topic, in Michael Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307, 3rd edn (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013; first published Harvard University Press, 1979). In expressing a widespread cultural shift, Clanchy’s title evokes H. J. Chaytor, From Script to Print (Cambridge: University Press, 1945). 55 Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, p. 3. 56 Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, p. 36. See also The Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough: previously edited as the chronicle of Walter of Hemingford or Hemingburgh, ed. Harry Rothwell (London: Royal Historical Society, 1957). My quotation is from Clanchy’s paraphrase of the legend. For an explanation of the quo warranto proceedings of Edward I’s reign see Michael
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the legend is reacting to the legal paradigm shift by providing an object that
memorialises his family’s tenure, rather than documentary proof.
In Eglamour, rather than producing a document to attest to Degrebell’s
identity, there is an object that provokes ‘communal memory’, as Cristabell, the king
and his squire share their recollections of the object and its relation to Degrebell. But
this is not essentially contradictory to legal process; rather it intimates the process of
witness testimony. The distinction between memory and document (or ‘contract’) is
not sustainable: as Richard Green observes, these ‘[t]wo modes of evidence …
permeated the conceptual system of medieval society as a whole’.57 Paul Hyams
argues that documents functioned largely in the same way as non-textual objects in
medieval law, namely to ‘assist the memory of witnesses’ rather than as proof in
their own right. Michael Prestwich suggests that the quo warranto legend actually
expresses that ‘franchises … had been acquired by conquest, not by royal grant’,
while Green observes that swords are ‘instruments of legal tenure’. The non-textual
‘recognitional objects’ found in the Middle English romances are, in this light,
essentially ‘legal tokens’.58
Yet Green implies a nostalgic view of the law in the romance genre, when he
writes that ‘romance’s mistrust of the ease with which writing may disguise true
intentions’ can be seen in the negative portrayal of forged letters in Bevis and
Athelston.59 In fact, non-textual objects can be just as misleading. We might recall
the presentation of bloodied clothing in Bevis, as false evidence of the hero’s death:
Prestwich, Edward I (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997; first published by Methuen in 1988), pp. 258–59. 57 Green, Crisis of Truth, p. 43. 58 Hyams, ‘Orality and Literacy’, p. 53; Prestwich, Edward I, p. 259; Green, Crisis of Truth, pp. 267 and 264. 59 The relevant passage in Bevis is ll. 3137–54. Green, Crisis of Truth, pp. 264 and 279.
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not only proving that object evidence can be counterfeited, but poignantly that the
evidence of ‘blood’ is not necessarily trustworthy. Moreover, any absolute
distinction between word and object in romance fails at the level of romance’s
textual form: all of the objects portrayed in the stories are to a degree textual, or at
least ‘rhetorical’ devices.60
The sword in the stone, of Arthurian tradition, is probably the best-known
example (and among those Green cites) of an object aiding the recognition of a
rightful heir in medieval romance. Significantly, when Arthur draws the sword from
the stone, it identifies him as rightful king but reveals nothing about his parentage.
Nor does the sword speak for itself: its significance is inscribed upon the stone
(sometimes illustrated as such in medieval manuscripts – see Fig. 9, p. 239) and
explained by Merlin, who was party to the plot of Arthur’s conception. Similarly, the
‘gyrdyll of golde’ in Eglamour only works as evidence of Degrebell’s parentage
when it is eventually presented to Cristabell, who can publicly identify it as hers (l.
831). Furthermore, her claim is not taken at face value but prompts further
interrogation: she is asked, ‘how long sythen’ she lost the child with the girdle, and
she testifies that it was ‘fyftene yere’ ago (ll. 1135–36). Likewise in Torrent, when
the disparate members of the family are brought together again, Desonell’s mention
of the ‘ryngs two’, ‘[e]verich of [her children] has one of thoo’, effects recognition of
the twins as Torrent’s sons (ll. 2550–51). But the rings remain unseen: it is not a
physical object but rather the memory-image, produced through Desonell’s vocal
recollection, which aids recognition. Finally, objects are not separable from memory
60 Perkins, ‘Ekphrasis and Narrative’, p. 59. In a study of Sir Degare, Sir Degrevant and Emare, Tom White points up the relationships between ‘text’ and ‘textiles’: the use of fabrics to memorialise family relationships in the romances and the use of textile metaphor in literary criticism to express abstract or immaterial connections. See Tom White, ‘Textile Logics of Late Medieval Romance’, Exemplaria, 28:4 (2016), 297–318.
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in the romances and nor can they provide ‘objective’ proof, because they are subject
to the interpretation of witnesses.
The importance of witness testimony to the recognition of heirs in the
romances cannot be overstated. In Eglamour and Torrent, the public testimonies of
estranged mothers and adopted parents combine to effect the recognition of young
foundlings of unknown origins (in the eyes of their adoptive parents) as disinherited
heirs. In Eglamour, Cristabell explains how she lost her child, the king of Israel
recalls ‘how he fond Syr Degrebell’, and ‘knytes lystend thanne’ as if in the role of a
jury (ll. 1264–65). In Torrent similarly, Desonell tells an assembly of kings and
knights that her two children were ‘revid’ from her, a ‘gryffon bare the one away’
and a ‘liberd the other’, prompting others to offer their accounts:
Than said the kyng of Jerusalem:
‘I found one by a water streme
He levith yet with blood and bone!’
The Kyng of Grece said, ‘My brother,
Antony, my son, brought me another!’ (ll. 2547–60)
What is striking about this imaginative presentation of recognition is that it involves
several speakers contributing partial accounts in order to provide a full picture, in the
manner of witnesses called before jurors or, indeed, in the manner of the self-
informing juries of late-medieval English courts described in Glanvill.
The southern Octavian provides the fullest rendition of witness-testimony
recognition, and in doing so reveals its limitations as a form of proof. Finally
reunited with her estranged husband, the empress of Rome delivers fifty-five lines of
testimony, explaining how her children were stolen by wild animals, how she was
reunited with the child with the lioness, and how they were carried by ship to
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Jerusalem, where the young Octavian was made a knight (SO, ll. 1817–72). She still
does not refute the allegations of adultery and illegitimacy at this point, instead
referring obliquely to a ‘greet destaunce’ (a great discord), concluding with reference
to the emperor’s ‘modyr tresoun’ (ll. 1821–22, 1871). Her testimony brings about a
reconciliation between the emperor Octavian and his young namesake, and the three
sit ‘yn same’ (l. 1885). Of the second child, Florence says, ‘þat oþer becam y nyst
never whar … Þis day us fyfe & twenty yere | Þat y sawe hym last’ (ll. 1827–30).
Her admission that she ‘nyst never’ is significant, but empirical knowledge is not the
only form of knowing that the romances permit, as argued in Chapter 2.
Overhearing ‘Florentynes name’, the empress instantly believes, and swears
‘be Seynt Iame’, that it is her son (ll. 1886–89). This abrupt proclamation initially
stands in contrast to the detailed testimony provided for young Octavian, but it
prompts further evidence-gathering. The emperor, with a committee of ‘kynges þre’,
enquires of Clement how he came to be Florent’s guardian (SO, ll. 1891–92, 1897–
1904).61 Clement testifies that he came across four outlaws and bought the child from
them, telling no one but his wife, and raised him as his own son for twenty-four years
(ll. 1905–18). Hearing this, an ‘old knyȝt’ testifies that it is ‘fyf & twenty yer’ since
he rescued a child from an ape, before losing the child to a band of outlaws; he also
remembers ‘þat tyme byfyll me þys destresse | Þat fayre Florence … Was ydryve …
Out of Rome’ (ll. 1921–43). This mention of Florence’s banishment not only locates
the old knight’s encounter with the child and the ape in the correct timeline, but is
corroborative proof of the kind found in proof-of-age statements, where witnesses
61 In the intervening lines, the emperor says ‘But be colour of har cloþ | Nys noon oþer inne | Þat schold hem knowe certeyne for soþ | Be syeȝt atweyne’ (ll. 1893–96). The lines are a little ambiguous but appear to state that no one present could certainly distinguish between them by sight, but for the colour of their clothes – though whether it refers to Clement and Florent, Florence and Florent, or perhaps Florent and young Octavian, is unclear.
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were often said to remember the birth of a child because it coincided with some other
memorable event.62 In this case, the memory is aided by the ‘destresse’ the knight
recalls having felt.
The age ‘fyf & twenty’ is also significant, because twenty-five is the age
commonly used in IPMs to confirm that an heir had reached majority.63 The
representation of witness evidence and references to ‘fyf & twenty yer’ invite
comparisons between the characters’ testimonies and the information ordinarily
presented in proofs of age, pertaining to birth. The knight’s evidence is not a
conventional proof, since it recalls disinheritance, not birth. Becky Lee finds that
proofs of age often relied on the testimony of witnesses who had attended
purification rituals (or ‘churching’ feasts) and these occasions were made
deliberately memorable for that reason. In Octavian, however, as Angela Florschuetz
notes, in the public ‘moment’ that ought to be a churching feast, ‘Octavian chooses
to reveal his wife’s “infidelity”’. Where memorable churching feasts were intended
to ‘create a communally accepted fact or history of the heir’s arrival and legitimacy’,
in Octavian the memorable incident is the opposite, the renunciation of the twins’
legitimacy.64 The conspicuous reticence of the romance’s characters on this detail –
obliquely mentioned as ‘destaunce’ and ‘destresse’ – work as cues for the reader to
recall it.
62 On ‘memories of coincidence’ in proofs of age, see Joel Rosenthal, Social Memory in Late Medieval England, pp. 32, 42 and 56; Rosenthal, Telling Tales, pp. 10–13. 63 The actual age of majority is usually twenty-one, but to say that an heir is ‘aged twenty-five years or more’ indicates that the heir is comfortably past the age of twenty-one. For examples, see the IPMs for Maud de Baddeby, Edward Botiller, Joan de Ferrers, and Baldwin de Frevill, CIPM, vol. 14, pp. 4, 95, 128, 129. 64 Becky Lee, ‘Men’s Recollections of a Women’s Rite: Medieval English Men’s Recollections regarding the Rite of the Purification of Women after Childbirth’, Gender & History, 14:2 (2002), 224–41 (p. 224); Florschuetz, ‘Women’s Secrets’, p. 260.
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Equally significant are the discrepancies in the evidence. The old knight and
the empress each say it is ‘fyf & twenty’ years since they have seen the infant whom
they lost, while Clement describes the time elapsed as ‘four and twenty yer & more’.
This need not contradict the knight’s account, but the differing expressions of the
time elapsed hint at the subjectivity, and potential unreliability, of the memories on
which the testimonial evidence is based. The time lapse also intimates the gap in
Florent’s history. The absent witnesses, who could provide the missing link between
the old knight and Clement, are the outlaws. Florent’s brief time with the outlaws
may earlier have read as an expression of his de-legitimised status, but the extent to
which it puts him beyond the reach of the law now becomes clear: the outlaws’
testimony is inevitably absent.
Florent is with the outlaws for an unspecified length of time, meaning that the
ability to corroborate either witness’s testimony is put beyond even the omniscience
of the narrator or reader (NO, ll. 544–76 and SO, ll. 381–96). The romance’s
narrative structure, which alternates between the child with the lioness (young
Octavian) and the child with the ape (Florent), renders Florent’s biography
discontinuous. Thus the reader is invited to share in the sense of uncertainty about
Florent’s identity, portrayed in the recognition scene. But within the jurisdiction of
the romance, imperfect evidence is permitted. Having effectively conveyed the
testimony as partial and incomplete, the episode ends with the emperor claiming
Florent as his own and kissing both of ‘hys sones’ (SO, l. 1943).
The disinherited heirs are notably silent during these witness-testimony
recognitions. In Eglamour, Degrebell’s silence signals a lapse in the accounts
provided by his mother and adoptive father, during which time he was captive to the
griffin (comparable to Florent’s time with the outlaws). Degrebell cannot provide an
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account of this period because he was too young to have been able to remember it. In
contrast, the possibly of testifying to one’s own identity can be found in Bevis, where
the hero is old enough at the time of his disinheritance to recall it: he can introduce
himself to his estranged uncle – telling him ‘what he was’ – when they meet for the
first time (l. 2575). Later, insisting that King Edgar should ‘graunt’ him the
‘heritage’ of Hampton, he declares, ‘Ichatte Beves of Hamtoun | Me fader was ther
th’erl Gii’ (ll. 3495–504). Bevis is similar in this instance to the eponymous hero of
Horn, who repeatedly declares his name and his birthplace.65 But the disinherited
heirs in Eglamour, Octavian, Tryamour and Torrent cannot declare themselves as
their fathers’ sons because this memory is beyond recall.
In comparison, it is one of the earliest admissions of Augustine’s Confessions
that he cannot remember his own origins, and therefore his self-knowledge is
incomplete. The limitation of childhood memory poses an ethical question for
Augustine: ‘who reminds me of the sin of my infancy?’, he asks, as he considers his
‘responsibility’ for a ‘time of which I recall not a single trace’.66 It is a ‘startling
admission’, Allan Mitchell writes, ‘in a work that will go on to hymn the power of
memory’ as ‘the guarantor of personal identity’, and an ironic beginning to a work
which Gillian Clarke finds to be dedicated to the ‘memory of [his] parents’.67
Significantly, even Bevis’s confident declaration of his father’s identity is
65 Like Bevis, Horn’s disguises render him physically unrecognisable, even to his closest friends: ‘Ne canstu me knoght knowe?’, he asks Rymenhild. But he is able to explain, ‘Ich am Horn thin oghe … Ich am Horn of Westernesse | In armes thu me cusse’ (ll. 1217–20). The father of Horn’s comrade, Athulf, cannot recognise him out of disguise, either, until the hero prompts him, ‘Horn … ben here’ (ll. 1363–64). He refers to himself as ‘Horn of Westernesse’ also at l. 954; elsewhere he says, ‘Horn ich am ihote | Icomen ut of the bote | Frame the se side’ (ll. 205–07). 66 Augustine, Confessions, ed. and trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008; originally published 1991), pp. 9–10. 67 Mitchell, Becoming Human, p. xi; Gillian Clarke, Augustine: The Confessions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 34.
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inauthentic in this Augustinian sense, since he cannot recall his own beginnings. This
has political, rather than ethical, implications in the romances. For the estranged heir,
an inability to recall their own origins exposes the absence of any ‘innate’ knowledge
of their original birthright.68
For his part, Augustine concedes to a reliance on third-party witnesses: ‘I
have believed what others have told me’, he says, of a time of life otherwise ‘lost in
the darkness of my forgetfulness’.69 Although it does not involve the memory of
birth, recognition of rightful heirship is similarly collaborative in the romances:
relying on the testimony and affirmation of third-party witnesses. Havelok offers a
poignant demonstration of both. The hero appears to forget his own origins during
the course of the romance, unable to interpret the meaning of a dream in which he
embraces a miniaturised kingdom of Denmark in his arms; despite having displayed
an acute awareness of his status earlier, lamenting that he ‘evere was … kinges bern’,
for the trouble it has brought him (ll. 1286–1313; l. 572). Indeed, in the intervening
period, Havelok is never said to contemplate his disinheritance or take action
towards reparation. But once he is prompted by Goldeboru to remember the death of
his sisters, this memory is repeated several times: a pattern suggestive of traumatic
repetition, following the suppression of a memory, rather than a simple case of
forgetting and remembering.70
68 That is, in the Cartesian sense of knowledge that is inborn or instinctive. René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy: with Selections from the Objections and Replies, ed. and trans. Michael Moriarty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 28; Kurt Brandhorst, ‘Innate Ideas’, in Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), pp. 103–05. 69 Confessions, p. 10. 70 Anthony Hasler pursues a psychoanalytical reading of the late romance, Eger and Grime, drawing on the work of Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Žižek, in which he argues for a similar interpretation of that romance’s portrayal of bodily trauma, remembered and enacted repeatedly. See Hasler, ‘Romance and Its Discontents in Eger and Grime’, in Spirit, pp. 200–18. A passing reference in McKinstry’s Middle English Romance and the Craft of Memory to instances of romance heroes ‘forgetting’ the object of
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The repetitious remembering is also a communal effort: the bloody memory-
image of Havelok’s disinheritance is shared among other characters and vocalised by
three or more speakers, each time with a similar form of words, presenting the
memory in the manner of corroborative testimony. The cumulative effect is striking.
Initially, Havelok remembers aloud:
‘ich saw biforn min eyne slo
Mine sistres with a knif’. (ll. 1365–68)
Then Havelok shares the memory with his foster-brothers:
‘I saw that fule fend
Mine sistres slo with hise hend:
First he shar a two here throtes,
And sithen hem al to grotes.’ (ll. 1412–15)
Consequently, the Danish earl, Ubbe testifies:
‘For the maydnes here lif
Refte he bothen with a knif,
And [Havelok] shulde ok have slawen -
The knif was at his herte drawen.’ (ll. 2222–25)
Havelok’s foster-brother, Robert confronts Godard with the memory:
‘thenke what thou him dedes
Whan thu reftes with a knif
Hise sistres here lif.’ (ll. 2393–95)
Finally, the memory is inscribed on the gallows where Godard is hung:
their missions, or becoming ‘distracted’, indicates the potential for further study in this area (see McKinstry, Craft of Memory, p. 89, n. 61).
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‘This is the swike that wende wel
The king have reft the lond ilk del,
And hise sistres with a knif
Bothe refte here lif.’ (ll. 2482–84)
There are some missing lines in the manuscript, from the beginning of the Ubbe
episode, but from what remains we can reasonably assume that there is at least one
further instance (a sixth) in which someone shares the memory with Ubbe. The
repetition of this memory unifies Havelok’s supporters in his campaign to seize
Denmark and, thus, in recognising him as the rightful heir to Denmark. Though it is
not the only form of recognition in the romance, it is the most frequently invoked.
Significantly, as in the other romances, the memories associated with the recognition
of rightful heirship are not memories of paternity or birth, but rather the scene of
Havelok’s disinheritance and symbolic rebirth.
In fact, recognition is always more than remembering the past. While
recognition may draw on memory, it is not simply recall but ‘re-cognition’. In
modern recognition theory, as in Aristotle’s Poetics, an important aspect of
recognition is ‘change’; the ‘force of recognition’, in James Simpson’s words, is
‘reformist’.71 Reading recognition as reformist, or transformative, helps to make
sense of what might otherwise appear to be narrative lacunae in the romances. We
can read the process of recognition in Octavian, for example, as more important than
the memory testimonies given: rather than expecting the process to reveal or prove
71 James Simpson, ‘Cognition is Recognition: Literary Knowledge and Textual “Face”’, New Literary History 44:1 (2013), 25–44 (pp. 25–26). Simpson is describing ‘reading practice’ here, though he goes on to adapt the theory to the analysis of ‘represented recognitions’ in literary texts. He initially follows Rita Felski’s ‘phenomenological’ definition of recognition, as a mode of ‘textual engagement’. She similarly emphasises that ‘recognition is not repetition’. Rita Felski, Uses of Literature (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), pp. 14 and 25.
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Florent’s paternity, the result is his transformation from unknown youth into son of
the emperor. Writing on the romance Sir Isumbras, Matthew Giancarlo describes a
‘token-recognition scene and a touching reunion’, after which ‘Isumbras is – without
any explanation – “crowned kynge … of many ryche londes thare”’.72 In light of
recognition theory, however, the otherwise inexplicable coronation can be
understood as an expression of the ‘reformist’ force of recognition. The act of
recognition does not simply reinstate a former order but can transform its subject: in
this case, Isumbras made king.
In Havelok, the only person to interpret the supernatural signs on the hero’s
body correctly is Grim, who recognises that Havelok will be king of Denmark and of
England, a place with which he has no existing connection (ll. 590–615). This is a
transformative re-cognition: not a recollection or revelation of Havelok’s pre-
existing birthright, but the apprehension of something yet-to-come. Grim’s change of
attitude towards Havelok is so complete that Kimberly Bell considers it akin to
religious ‘conversion’; but Havelok is also transformed by this recognition, from
Birkabeyn’s heir into the rightful heir of a new, as-yet unformed Anglo-Danish
kingdom.73 There is evidence, elsewhere in medieval sources, of the idea that an heir
transforms upon inheritance of the throne.74 But in Havelok, transformation occurs
with the recognition of rightful heirship, and it extends to the inheritance, which is
augmented beyond the hero’s original birthright. The ‘dramatic potential’ of
‘recognition scenes’ is not only the ‘oscillation between the loss and the recovery of
72 Giancarlo, ‘Speculative Genealogies’, p. 363. 73 Bell, ‘Resituating Romance’, pp. 49–50. 74 See Prestwich, Edward I, p. 3. The genealogy of English kings preserved in London, British Library, MS Royal 14 B vi (c. 1300–07) shows each king twice: as an heir and as the crowned monarch.
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identity’ then, but the possibility of forming something new: 75 not just ‘identity’,
moreover, but a new claim on a heritable property.
Tryamour provides differentiated examples of remembering birth, recognition
from previous encounters, and recognition as a transformative act. During the course
of the romance, Tryamour and King Ardus (his biological father) become
acquainted, but do not know their familial relationship. Neither can recognise the
other as family, because Tryamour was born after his mother was sent into exile. But
when Queen Margaret is reunited with her husband, in Tryamour’s presence, she
tells their story in the public forum of Ardus’s hall (ll. 1656–80).76 She begins by
gesturing to Tryamour and saying to Ardus:
‘Here ys yowre sone
Knowe hym yf ye konne.’ (ll. 1654–55)
Since he cannot draw on memory, Ardus is asked to ‘knowe’ (recognise) Tryamour
in the very particular sense of ‘re-cognition’: to revise his understanding of his
relationship to the young knight, to see him as his son for the first time. Recognition
is generative, as opposed to simply restorative.
This recognition is not certain, however, and hinges upon the conditional ‘yf’.
Especially given that Ardus earlier denounced Tryamour as illegitimate, there is
something of Roland le Huenan’s description of recognition here, as ‘a disquieting
questioning of the self’.77 No new evidence of Tryamour’s legitimacy is presented
but, as in Octavian, the process of recognition is effective. Though Ardus cannot
75 Ad Putter, ‘Story Line and Story Shape in Sir Percyvell of Gales and Chrétien de Troyes’s Conte du Graal’, in Pulp Fictions, pp. 172–96 (p. 187). 76 In summary, she explains how Sir Marrok tried to seduce her, her exile and how Sir Roger was killed, how she gave birth in a forest, and how Sir Bernard took them in. 77 Roland le Huenan, ‘Preface’, to Recognition and Modes of Knowledge, pp. ix–x (p. x).
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‘remember’ Tryamour’s birth, he is said to ‘chese’ Tryamour as ‘hys sone’, just as
the emperor Octavian is said to ‘chese’ his young namesake (Tryamour, ll. 1681,
1685; NO, l. 1776). The legal connotations of ‘chese’ recall, again, the idea of
recognition as the legal process used to settle disputatious inheritance claims.78 But
the word also emphasises the agency of the person doing the “choosing” and, in turn,
the mutuality of recognition.
Importantly, Ardus’s recognition of Tryamour as his rightful heir takes place
elsewhere, long before Ardus is said to ‘chese’ Tryamour as his ‘sone’. Ardus
encounters Tryamour at a tournament, where the latter triumphs but is forced to
abandon the field suddenly, after killing a rival who ambushes him. Ardus
subsequently comes under attack and sends for Tryamour to defend him:
When Tryamowre come into the halle
He haylesed the kyng and sythen all
He [Tryamour] knew hym [Ardus] at that syght.
The kyng toke hym be the hande
…
And asked hym what he hyght.
‘Syr,’ he seyde, “Y hyght Tryamowre’
…
The kyng wyste wele that hyt was he. (ll. 1138–50)
Perhaps because this interaction does not involve the discovery of parentage, it has
not been regarded a ‘recognition scene’ in criticism – Elizabeth Archibald sees it as
one of the romance’s many ironic non-recognitions – but in terms of the inheritance
narrative, this is a critical moment.79 When the day of the battle comes, Ardus makes
78 See MED, chesen, v., sense 2. 79 Archibald, ‘Non-recognition in Sir Triamour’, pp. 67–68.
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Tryamour a knight and then announces, ‘“Tryamowre, Y make the myn heyre | And
for me thou schalt fyght!”’ (ll. 1193–94). There can be no doubt about the meaning
of this offer. Nor can it be an erroneous sequencing of events on the part of the
author/copyist, since Ardus repeats the offer at l. 1268 and again at ll. 1285–87. The
scene above therefore constitutes a ‘recognition’ in another, more modern sense of
the word: the ‘acknowledgement’ of ‘worth’ or ‘achievement’.80 That is, Ardus
recognises Tryamour as his rightful heir according to worth, not birth.
For Cooper, when unknown heirs perform feats of arms in the romances, it is
an opportunity to demonstrate ‘the inherent superiority of noble blood’: ‘the point’ of
a ‘foundling’ hero is ‘that their high birth will be revealed’, thereby reaffirming a
preexisting ‘social hierarchy’.81 Lee Ramsey likewise argues that romances about
inheritance ‘insist on birth as a prerequisite for good and stable rule’.82 But the
discovery of Tryamour’s ‘high birth’ is not coterminous with his recognition as
Ardus’s rightful heir. The insistence on high birth and noble blood perceived
elsewhere is not true in the internal world of the romance. Namely, the reader knows
that Tryamour is Ardus’s natural son, but Ardus does not. The romance is politically
duplicitous, in fact. While one reader might see Tryamour earning the inheritance of
Ardus as merely emphasising his birthright, which is the prerequisite, another can see
the eventual revelation of Tryamour’s ‘high birth’ as surplus to requirement. It
satisfies Tryamour’s curiosity, as to ‘who [his] fader were’ – since the inheritance
narrative is combined with the family-separation story – but it is not essential to
justify Tryamour’s inheritance from Ardus, which has already been confirmed (l.
1040).
80 OED, recognition, n., senses 3a. and 7. 81 Cooper, English Romance, p. 329. 82 Lee Ramsey, Chivalric Romances (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), p. 29.
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Of the two alternative readings set out above, the first is well documented in
criticism already, and the second is the one I wish to draw out. That rightful heirship
might be ‘recognised’ in the sense of worth, in spite of birth, deviates from the
principle of primogeniture. But the heirs’ acquisition of land and titles in the
romances, through feats of arms, while unknown or illegitimate, is proof of the idea
in action: even when the land in question is the estate to which they originally had a
claim by birth (now lost). In Bevis, for example, the hero is eventually recognised by
the king of England as rightful heir to Hampton, but only after he has taken it by
force and not because the king knows him for his father’s son: his failure to see the
family connection is clear when he ‘askede [Bevis] what he were’ (ll. 3491–504).
The Bevis-narrator is clear about this means of land acquisition from the outset, when
Saber tells the young Bevis that he will have to ‘winne in to [his] honde’ his
inheritance ‘with werre’. The first phrase is glossed as ‘win back’ in the METS
edition of Auchinleck (my italics), though that emphasis on return is not present in
the Middle English: to ‘winne’ simply means to ‘to take into one’s control’ or ‘to
gain territory by military action’ (ll. 371–72 and note to l. 371).83 If recognition is a
‘form of action that dramatizes the cardinal values’ of the society it represents, then
it is significant that the recognition of rightful heirship by feats of arms, in the
romances, provides a model of rightful heirship that contradicts the medieval legal
ideal of de facto inheritance by descent.84
One might still argue that these are ‘meritocratic’ recognitions in the properly
satirical sense of the word, namely that the relationships between merit, success and
83 See MED, winnen, v., senses 2 and 6a. Bevis says again that he will ‘winne’ his ‘heritage’, at l. 2940. 84 Sheila Murnaghan, Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey, 2nd edn (Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2011), p. ix.
174
privilege by birth are circular.85 Tryamour, the young Octavian and Bevis benefit
from access to the accoutrements of a chivalric upbringing, which are arguably
granted on the basis of their birth: in the first two cases, their mothers are recognised
as queens, and Bevis is able to present himself to King Ermin as an earl’s son.
Antony, Leobertus and Degrebell appear to have ‘gentill blode’, an outward display
of wealth that gives them access to aristocratic worlds. Among the disinherited heirs,
only Florent could be said to possess an inborn aptitude for chivalric pursuits,
because of his isolation from noble society.86 (Havelok is similarly isolated, raised in
a peasant family, but unlike Florent he excels as a labourer.) More importantly,
however, there is a subtle distinction to be made between the ideas of ‘high birth’ or
‘noble blood’ and the more specific idea of birthright: a legitimate claim on a
particular property according to the law of descent. The romances expose these
distinctions, wherever rightful heirship is recognised separately from birth.
The recognition scenes in these romances continue the imaginative work
begun with the incident of disinheritance. The variety of objects and signs involved
in recognition – trinkets that indicate ‘gentill blode’, feats of arms, supernatural
signs, witness testimony – do not provide a definitive answer to the question of what,
exactly, constitutes ‘rightful’ heirship, except that it is not simply the revelation of
paternity. In fact, the compelling consequence of the ‘distributed’ nature of
recognition, noted by Wittig, is that rightfulness cannot be located in any one object,
85 Michael Young coined the word in a satire intended to demonstrate how success leading to wealth breeds privilege, though the adjective has since passed into non-ironic usage. See OED, meritocratic, adj, and Michael Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy: 1870–2033 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1958). 86 This is a common reading of Florent’s ‘enfance’ in the romance. For a recent example see Ryan Naughton, ‘The Primacy of Natural Nobility in the Cambridge Octavian’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 117:3 (2018), 343–59.
175
attribute or moment.87 Rather, rightful heirship emerges in the process of recognition
itself, an action that occurs ‘between people’ and which, therefore, cannot be innate
to the heir.
The extended portrayal of testimonial evidence in the southern Octavian is
described by the narrator as exemplary and begins with a request for the reader’s
attention: ‘may ye here yn romaunce ryȝt | Well kende acord’ (SO, ll. 1811–12). The
choice of words is suggestive here: ‘romaunce ryȝt’ implies both ‘rightful romance’
and ‘romance law’, where ‘ryȝt’ is defined contextually rather than entailing any
particular law.88 It is a pertinent description of the fundamentally self-referential and
circular determination of rightful heirship in the romances, ultimately hanging upon
‘acord’. Consensus is emphasised in Tryamour also, where the hero is ‘chosyn wyth
comyns assent’ to marry Helen and to ascend to a royal estate, in spite of his
unknown lineage at that point (l. 848). To compare with the Morte Darthur, the
‘comyns’ similarly approve of Arthur as king. When he pulls the sword from the
stone:
all the lordes and comyns [were] there – wherefore alle the comyns cryed at ones, ‘We will
have Arthur unto our kyng’.
Pertinently for a non-noble readership, Malory is clear about the comparatively low
social status of the ‘comyns’, whose well-judged approval contrasts with the
disparaging views of the barony: the ‘lordes’, who ‘saide it was grete shame unto
87 Wittig observes that in some tales recognition scenes are distributed within the plot structure rather than collected in one episode (p. 175; italics in original). 88 Middle English ‘ryȝt’ is as flexible in its meaning as the modern English ‘right’ and the MED provides a sample of common collocations: ‘of God’, ‘of nature’, of ‘law’. The adjective ‘rightful’ similarly varies in meaning, from ‘accordance with justice’ or ‘accordance with law’ to ‘accordance with reason’. See MED, right, n. and rightful, adj; and OED, right, n.
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them all [to] be over-governyd with a boye of no hyghe blood borne’.89 Legitimate
heirship is subjective here and recognised along class lines.
The variety, along with the lack of uniformity or obvious hierarchy among
the forms of recognition of rightful heirship presented in the romances, indicates the
new disorder instigated by disinheritance. That recognition is a communal process,
rather than something inherent in the heir, is particularly significant. The romances’
recognition of ‘worth’ aside from ‘birth’, as well as their references to common
assent, imply a popular, late-medieval conception of rightful heirship which is at
odds with the orthodoxies of pro-aristocratic inheritance laws: in particular, this
alternative view permits and even promotes the admittance of those persons believed
to be of ‘no hyghe blood borne’. As we will see in the next chapter, it is still possible
to read the treatment of recognition in the romances as foreshadowing their endings,
as suggested elsewhere in romance criticism; but not because the recognition scenes
represent the beginning of the romances’ restoration of order, or specifically the
order of primogeniture – quite the opposite.
89 Malory, Morte Darthur, pp. 10–11.
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Chapter 4
Regeneration
This final chapter demonstrates the complexity of the endings of the disinheritance
romances, arguing that they do not provide a simple re-establishment of former
order, confirming a future that is certain and secure, but instead represent the
culmination of a narrative movement towards uncertainty. In particular, the endings
resist reproducing the ‘myth of primogeniture’ in a number of ways. They witness a
redistribution of lands, more than a restoration of former tenures. Firstborn twins in
Bevis, Octavian, Torrent and possibly Tryamour conspicuously challenge the idea of
the one rightful heir, yet the texts remain indirect and inconclusive in their responses.
In Eglamour and Torrent, adoption displaces reproduction as the means of attaining
a rightful heir. A series of false endings in Bevis suggests that disinheritance cannot
be resolved. As we have seen in previous chapters and continue to see here, the
significance of birth wanes in comparison to merit and luck, as inheritances are not
just reclaimed but won and found and given away.
Some semblance of order is the minimum expectation of Middle English
romances’ endings, according to existing critical consensus, to a degree maintaining
a Structuralist view of the romances’ deeply embedded, reciprocal narrative patterns.
In relation to the disinheritance romances, the narrative pattern frequently cited is
that of ‘exile-return’, ‘expulsion and return’, or ‘separation-restoration’, where the
language of ‘restoration’ and ‘return’ harks back to influential narratological work on
plot.1 Laura Ashe offers the most complete interpretation of the ‘exile-and-return’
pattern in such stories, seeing it as a continuity myth, a version of what Rosalind
1 See for example the concepts of ‘return’ and ‘recovery’ in Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale, esp. pp. 100–110. See also Crane, Insular Romance, pp. 24–25.
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Field calls the ‘king over the water’ trope.2 For Susan Wittig, ‘separation-restoration’
is one of two ‘basic double patterns’ (the other being ‘love-marriage’) that between
them describe the structure of all Middle English romances.3 ‘Righting wrongs and
re-establishing proper social order’ is counted an essential feature of the genre.4
Indeed it is one of few unifying features, Ad Putter remarks, that romances ‘usually
end happily with the restoration of an order that was disrupted at the beginning of the
story’.5 The ‘restoration of order’ is closely associated with the ‘happy ending’,
though I defer further examination of the latter phrase until the end of this chapter,
for reasons that will become plain there.
The basic critical expectation of romance endings, namely that there will be
some ‘order’, may be partly based on postmedieval literary theory and the
conventions of the novel.6 The ‘restoration of order’ and ‘righting [of] wrongs’, as
described above, aligns with Peter Brooks’s description of the ‘definitive’ story
ending: one which comprises a ‘distribution of awards and punishments’ and the ‘tie-
up, through marriages and deaths, of all the characters’ lives’.7 The ‘spectacular
denouement’ which characterises the ‘definitive’ story ending for Brooks is, in John
Mullan’s analysis of the structure of novels, borne of the ‘hidden design’ of plot.8
But plot is not a ‘hidden design’ in the Middle English romances: as Putter argues
2 Laura Ashe, ‘“Exile-and-return” and English Law: The Anglo-Saxon Inheritance of Insular Romance’, Literature Compass 3:3 (2006), 300–17; Field, ‘The King Over the Water: Exile-and-Return Revisited’, pp. 41–53. See also Lee Ramsey, ‘The Child Exile’, in Chivalric Romances (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), pp. 26–44. 3 Wittig, Stylistic and Narrative Structures, p. 179. 4 Joanne Charbonneau and Désirée Cromwell, ‘Gender and Identity in the Popular Romance’, in A Companion to Medieval Popular Romance, pp. 96–110 (pp. 96–97). 5 Ad Putter, ed., ‘A Historical Introduction’, Spirit, pp. 1–15 (p. 1). 6 Helen Cooper looks to the ‘happy endings’ of Dickensian novels for a comparison with Middle English romances, in English Romance, p. 329. 7 Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1992; first published 1984), p. 314. 8 John Mullan, How Novels Work (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 169.
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elsewhere, in fact, romance narrative follows a ‘proairetic code’ making the
connections between its actions and consequences plain.9 The romances are not
‘plot-driven’ in this sense: the associated notion of the ‘spoiler’, for example, is
anachronistic for Middle English romances, which were read and reproduced over a
period of two centuries.10 Yet categorising a romance as an ‘exile-return plot’
implies that this structure, especially the manner of the ending, is the essential
interpretative key to its content.
I argue, on the contrary, that the value of the disinheritance theme in these
romances should not be defined by the ways in which the stories end, because to
consider the ending as anything approaching a ‘denouement’ is inappropriate to the
form. In this case, if the disinheritance romance ends with noble heirs inheriting
noble property, it does not follow that this defines the meaning of the romance. More
specifically, it does not follow that the story ultimately expresses a socially
conservative and legally orthodox ideology of inheritance. At the same time, I
suggest that the endings warrant closer analysis, something which their perceived
predictability and formulaic nature might otherwise preclude. It is not possible to
know whether medieval readers found the romance endings predictable, but it is
certainly not the case that the absence of a ‘hidden design’ entails a lack of depth of
9 See Putter, ‘Story Line and Story Shape’, pp. 172–96 (see pp. 173, 192). This is in contrast to the ‘hermeneutic’ code, which Putter sees in the Conte, and which involves asking questions of the narrative to uncover answers. Putter borrows the ‘codes’ from Roland Barthes’s S/Z, first published in 1970. For the English translation see Roland Barthes, S/Z, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974). 10 See OED, spoiler, n., draft additions 2007. Though this sense of the word ‘spoiler’ is more recent, John Mullan credits Wilkie Collins with being the first writer to ‘plead with reviewers not to give away the plots of his novels’ in the nineteenth century (while contemporary Anthony Trollope scorned Collins for encouraging readers to read only for the plot). John Mullan, ‘Whatever Next? How Plot Grips Us, From Dickens to Line of Duty’, Guardian, 14 May 2016 <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/14/whatever-next-pleasures-plot-dickens-line-of-duty> [accessed 4 Dec 2019], paragraph 14. See also John Sutherland, ‘Two Emergencies in the Writing of “The Woman in White”’, The Yearbook of English Studies, 7 (1977), 148–56.
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meaning. In turn, acknowledging that the endings do not attempt any explication of
the plot should alert us to the fact that any ambiguities present in the preceding
narrative remain unexplained at its close.
Alongside the critical consensus concerning the restorative ordering of
romance endings, there is the observation that romance narrative is a ‘continued
deferral of closure’: for Patricia Parker a ‘strategy of delay’ and for Andrew King a
‘resistance to closure’.11 Deferral culminates, Nicola McDonald writes, in the
‘gratification’ of a predictably ‘happy ending’ in which, for instance, ‘the rightful
heir will inherit unjustly lost property’ (italics in original).12 Yet the disinheritance
romances provide several examples to the contrary. Bevis fails to end in this way: the
desire expressed at the outset of the adventure – as imagined by Saber, that Bevis
returns to England and wins back his ‘eritage’ – is a false ending, as it happens (ll.
370–72). The idea of Bevis mending the patrilineal order broken after the story’s
initial act of disinheritance, assuming his late father’s position and thereby restoring
dynastic stability to Hampton is the deferred closure that never comes. As something
of a prototype for Middle English romances in the late-medieval imagination,13 the
ending of Bevis indicates some of the expectations that late-medieval readers may
have held, regarding the endings of other romances. Significantly, the expectations
that Bevis establishes are quite different to those evident in criticism, as the section
below aims to show.
11 Rosalind Field, ‘From Gui to Guy: The Fashioning of a Popular Romance’, in Guy of Warwick: Icon and Ancestor (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007), pp. 44–70 (p. 54); Andrew King, ‘Romance’, p. 187; Patricia Parker, Inescapable Romance: Studies in the Poetics of a Mode (Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 5. 12 McDonald, ‘Polemical Introduction’, pp. 11, 14, 15. McDonald cites Roland Barthes’s notion of ‘jouissance’ (p. 16) from Le Plaisir du Texte (1973). 13 See my discussion of Bevis and the growing critical consensus about its place in late-medieval literary culture, in the introduction, particularly references to Yin Liu’s work on a ‘prototype theory’ of the romance genre.
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A Sense of Unending
The Auchinleck Bevis stretches to more than 4600 lines, its recursive storytelling
perpetuated by a series of incidents that occur just as resolution seems imminent.
Two of these false endings involve Bevis winning his late father’s earldom of
Hampton. Bevis does return from exile to England, as Saber predicted, determined to
seize Hampton and avenge his father’s murder (see ll. 3467–74) but the romance is
far from over at this point. Bevis soon finds himself at odds with King Edgar and
expelled from England. When Bevis is reconciled with the king, some 1000 lines
later in the Auchinleck version, he is in a position to claim Hampton once again. As
Edgar offers his daughter in marriage to Bevis’s son, Miles, the rest of his family are
reunited in England. It seems the original order of the romance can be restored:
Bevis as lord of Hampton (like his father, Gii) and two sons (one also named Gii)
who could succeed him. But still the romance is not ended. The narrator reports
briefly how:
Beves tok leve, hom to wende
...
And his erldom in Hamteschire
A yaf to his em Sabere
And schipede at Hamtoun hastely (ll. 4570–77).
‘Hom’ – or ‘homeward’ in the Cambridge and Naples manuscripts – is no longer
Hampton but Mombraunt, a land Bevis has won during the course of his adventures,
‘ther he was king’ (ll. 4574).14 Bevis’s ‘haste’ is a curious detail, suggesting little
attachment to his paternal lands. The word ‘yaf’ is even more significant. The verb
14 Cambridge and Naples, l. 4802 in both. It contrasts with the early scene in which Bevis comprehends his disinheritance, looking ‘homward to the toun [Hampton] | That scholde ben his’ (ll. 380–81).
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‘yeven’ is frequently used in medieval wills to bequeath property. It is the same term
used earlier in Bevis where King Ermin, on his deathbed, ‘yaf’ his kingdom to young
Gii, his grandson (ll. 4006–16). But ‘yeve’ is also the appropriate term when
heritable property is alienated from heirs.15 By conveying Hampton to Saber in this
way, Bevis removes his own biological sons from contention. Far from restoring
patrilineal succession at the end of the romance, Bevis exchanges his patrimony for
lands won through feats of arms. There is now a pathetic irony about the manner of
his father’s death: he was murdered by the lover of the wife he married in order to
produce an heir, only for that heir (Bevis) to eventually cede his ‘heritage’ to an
uncle (Saber), who would have inherited the land if Sir Gii had never had a child at
all. Sir Gii’s faith in primogeniture and the sacrifice he made to the ideal proves
futile.
Hampton is no longer the only heritable property at stake in Bevis by the end.
The romance’s various adventures draw many other kingdoms and heirs into its
remit. Reviewing the distribution of these, at the end of the story, reveals the extent
to which patrimonial inheritance is eclipsed by new acquisitions through feats of
arms, and how questions of succession are left in a state of suspense. The son whom
Bevis names ‘Gii’, as if in anticipation of his eventual succession to his grandfather’s
place, actually inherits the kingdom of Armenia from his maternal grandfather.
Meanwhile, like Bevis himself, other characters settle in lands acquired through
marriage or battle. Miles is set to become king of England by marriage (‘throwe the
eritage of þat wedding’, as the Naples version has it, l. 4796). Terry, formerly known
as ‘Saberes son of Wight’, becomes king of a land called Aumberforce by marriage
15 See MED, yeven, v., especially sense 1a (e). For examples of this usage in wills, see Fifty Earliest English Wills, pp. 82, 87, 98, 105.
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to the ‘riche levedy [of] that londe’ (Auchinleck, ll. 3786, 3957–58). Saber becomes
lord of Hampton as a reward for loyalty to his nephew.
Some lines of succession are discontinued altogether, most obviously that of
Devoun, Bevis’s stepfather and the emperor of Germany, since both he and his heir
are killed during the course of the story. Their deaths are retribution for the
usurpation of Hampton, but it is significant that their lands are also left heirless, the
succession unresolved, in a romance so preoccupied by inheritance and the
acquisition of property. Further questions remain over the succession of Hampton,
Wight and Mombraunt: the lateral distribution of property among members of
Bevis’s family gives everyone an estate of their own but leaves no obvious heirs next
in line. The question of which of Bevis’s twin sons will ultimately succeed him, if
either, remains a moot point.
The relationship between Bevis’s twin sons may be the most compelling
question left unanswered by the end of Bevis. When Josian is dying, she summons
her family to her side:
Gii, hire sone, she gan ofsende
And Terry, the riche king
For to ben at here parting. (ll. 4592–94)
Bevis is there, but the family gathering conspicuously lacks the other twin, Miles.
Gii’s presence here, and his subsequent management of his parents’ memorials, may
reinforce inferences drawn elsewhere in the romance that he is considered the eldest.
Yet his presence at his parents’ death, while his brother is abroad managing his own
estates, also puts Gii in the role of the ‘fireside child’: the youngest sibling who is at
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home when his parents die.16 The ambiguity about the possibility or validity of
differentiating the twins according to a conventional legal hierarchy is sustained
here.
Miles’s absence from this scene would be less noticeable, perhaps, if Josian
had not included Terry in her summons (her husband’s cousin). Terry’s epithet here,
‘the riche king’ suggests the honour of being attended on by someone of such
status.17 But his presence is more intriguing given the narrator’s silence on the future
succession of Hampton and because Terry now qualifies (through his father, Saber)
as the de facto heir to Hampton, in spite of Bevis’s own sons. The deathbed vignette
raises a number of pertinent questions, none of which are answered. The final lines
of verse, bringing the text of Bevis to its physical end, are a brief prayer:
Thus endeth Beves of Hamtoun.
God yeve us all Is benesoun!
Amen. (ll. 4619–21)
The non-narrative nature of these final lines points up the strictly structural function
of the ending. Indeed, one effect of the ‘continued deferral of closure’ in Bevis is that
it encourages suspicion of any sense of an ending.18 The final prayer is a structural
container: the text ends in a manner that satisfies the need for closure at a formal
level, but the (dis)inheritance narrative remains in a state of suspension.
16 Pollock and Maitland argue that the idea of the ‘fireside child’ helps to explain the custom of ultimogeniture, where the youngest child inherits from his or her father (the best known example being ‘gavelkind’ in Kent). Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, pp. 261, 272 and 280. See also Simpson, History of Land Law, p. 21. Menuge suggests that Gamelyn is a ‘fireside’ child, in Wardship, p. 51. 17 Gii is only called ‘hire son’ at this point in the Auchinleck Bevis, although in the later Naples and Cambridge versions he, too, is described as ‘the king’ (Naples, l. 4822; Cambridge, l. 4822). 18 Field, ‘From Gui to Guy’, p. 54.
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Romance criticism which has focused on ‘structure’ or ‘plot’ has tended to
stress patterns of reunion and return in the endings, without necessarily being
troubled by the inconsistency of the narrative content. For Northrop Frye, even if a
romance ending seems ‘faked, manipulated, or thrown in’ it still ‘fits’.19 Not
dissimilarly, in his 2008 study of genre, K. S. Whetter points to a ‘happy ending’
which seems rather ‘forced’, in Ywain and Gawain, as evidence that the happy
ending is an essential feature of romance.20 But Frye’s and Whetter’s observations
reveal an essential conflict between the form and the content of the romances. As Jill
Mann writes, in her analysis of Chaucer’s ‘Knight’s Tale’, the ‘happy ending as a
narrative convention’ is the ‘choice of a point to satisfy the human hunger for
closure, rather than an assurance that the alternating sequence of joy and woe has
been brought to an end’.21 The ‘understanding’ that endings are ‘artificial, arbitrary
… casual and textual’ is an attribute Peter Brooks associates with the ‘most
sophisticated literature’ of the twentieth century, but some of these same
observations have been made of the conspicuous artificiality of endings in Middle
English romances.22 Nicola McDonald, for instance, has identified the ‘gap that
exists’ between the ‘conventions’ of romance form and ‘the transgressions’ the
stories involve: the ‘happy ending’ of Middle English romance is an ‘inviolable’
19 Frye, Secular Scripture, p. 135. 20 Whetter, Undersanding Genre, p. 67. 21 Jill Mann, ‘Beginning with the Ending: Narrative Techniques and their Significance in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale’, in Romance Rewritten: The Evolution of Middle English Romance, ed. Elizabeth Archibald, Megan G. Leitch and Corinne Saunders (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2018), pp. 85–102 (p. 101). Mann’s reference to the ‘alternating sequence of joy and woe’ recalls the opening lines of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, where the alternating sequence of ‘werre and wrake and wonder’ that characterises the ancient past perpetuates into the present: ‘And oft boþe blysse and blunder | Ful skete hatȝ skyfted synne’. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. and trans. W. J. R. Barron (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), ll. 16–19. 22 Brooks, Reading for the Plot, p. 314.
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convention, she argues, but cannot resolve the ‘transgressions [from] social and
cultural norms that its narrative produces’.23
In fact, the endings of the disinheritance romances do not only fail to resolve
the ambiguities of the narrative, but they also generate more uncertainty. Where
McDonald associates readerly enjoyment with the dissonance that exists between the
‘blatant artifice’ of the ‘happy ending’ and the ‘transgressions’ it fails to contain, I
suggest this dissonance also invites readerly critique. Whetter has suggested, on the
contrary, that the ‘credulity of the ending is less important than its presence’ and that
medieval readers of the romances would have ‘viewed [their endings] less
sceptically’ than readers with ‘modern sentiments’.24 Yet while it may be true that
‘suspicious reading’ is a typical of a ‘ubiquitous academic ethos’, as Rita Felski has
argued,25 the artificiality of the romance’s ‘conventions’ are too conspicuous for
critical reading to be confined to critics. The ‘happy ending’ is only one example of
the ‘conventional formulae’ liable to ‘provoke questions’: inspiring ‘incredulity’
rather than ‘complicity’ in the reader.26
In this light, we might reverse Putter’s thesis, reading the Middle English
romance endings with the ‘hermeneutic code’ and consider the potential of the ‘gaps’
that remain as cues to ‘form a hypothesis’.27 The ‘gaps’ in the ending of Bevis, for
example, raise pertinent questions about inheritance and succession – why does the
hero abandon his paternal inheritance and who will succeed to Wight, Hampton,
Mombraunt? – that sustain the disinheritance narrative beyond the ‘inescapably
23 McDonald, ‘Polemical Introduction’, pp. 15–16. 24 Whetter, Understanding Genre, p. 67. 25 Rita Felski, The Limits of Critique (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2015), p. 574. 26 Chism, ‘Romance’, pp. 61–63. 27 Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction, p. 45; pp. 125–29.
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linear’ time and space of the textual form.28 The point is not to discover an answer –
there is no ‘spectacular denouement’ here – but to discover questions. Medieval
readers may not have ‘question[ed] the satisfactoriness’ of an ‘abrupt’ ending in the
way that a modern reader would, but because there is a ‘reward’ in recognising its
very artifice.29 The effect of that conspicuous artifice is to expose ‘gaps’ and provoke
questions, and to convey the impossibility of absolutely resolving the problems
raised by the narrative. For late-medieval readers likely to have a heightened
awareness of the matter of inheritance, compared to their modern counterparts, the
artificiality of the ending of the disinheritance narratives conspicuously signals the
impossibility of resolving the issue of succession, entirely or permanently. The
recursive narrative style of Bevis gestures towards endless regeneration: the unending
‘alternating sequence’ in this case being one of disinheritance and inheritance, loss
and redistribution.
Twin Endings
As with the final portrait of family relations in Bevis, the final scene in Octavian fails
to address the romance’s opening question, namely the succession of Rome:
To Rome than wente the Emperoure,
His lady by his syde
And his two sonnes also
And with tham many one mo
Home than gan thay ryde.
28 Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction, p. 45. 29 Whetter, Understanding Genre, p. 67 (my italics); Chism, ‘Romance’, p. 61.
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And thus endis Octovean,
That in his tym was a doghety man.30
The preceding seventy-five lines see the reunion of the estranged emperor and
empress of Rome, with the twins who were disinherited and separated shortly after
birth: the children alleged to be the illegitimate offspring of the empress of Rome are
finally recognised as the emperor’s sons. Neither is said to inherit Rome, however.
Furthermore, this ending in which the two brothers return ‘home’ to Rome with their
parents is anachronistic, because it overlooks Florent’s recent marriage to Marsabell,
strangely absent here. Indeed, the symmetry of the family portrait is a pointed
contrast to the asymmetrical treatment of the twins throughout the romance.
Twins have been a recurring theme in this thesis, just as they are a recurring
feature of the romances, since they present a clear challenge to the idea that
romances mythologise ‘the ideology of primogeniture’. It is significant that Middle
English romances tend not to show direct conflict between male twin heirs, an
omission made more noticeable by comparison to the presentation of female twins
and co-heirs. In the Roman de Silence (c. 1280), a bitter feud between firstborn twin
sisters culminates in the deaths of both their champions and, as a result, the
prohibition of female inheritance. Sisters are locked in a dispute over their
inheritance in Ywain and Gawain. Lai le Freine, while it stops short of portraying
any personal antipathy between the twin sisters separated at birth, makes their love-
rivalry for Gurun central to the story. Le Freine is eventually married to Gurun and
her sister is ‘spousyd’ to an anonymous ‘gentle knight of that countré’: a potentially
30 NO, ll. 1838–47. These are the final narrative lines of Octavian, before the text closes with a four-line prayer: With the grace of Mary free, | Now, Jhesu lorde, of heven kynge, | Thou gyffe us alle thi dere blyssynge. | Amen, amen, par charyté! Amen (ll. 1845–48).
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unsettling ending, where disequilibrium masquerades as even-handedness and
universal joy (ll. 405–06).31
The portrayal of direct competition between female heirs may be an analogy
for the division of an estate, according to partition; but division is not an exclusively
female-gendered trait of twins in the romances. While male twins in the romances
are not overtly antagonistic (only in Torrent do twins fight each other, unwittingly)
division nonetheless defines their relationship. In all cases, the male twins are
separated from each other shortly after birth and differentiated by the consequences
of that separation. Given the ample evidence of fraternal hostility elsewhere in
medieval literature, the apparent absence of conflict between male twin-heirs in the
romances may be taken as a cue, by the reader, to interpret this conviviality with
some scepticism.32 The repeated separation of the male twins in the romances, I
suggest, effectively functions as a metaphorical expression of the latent competition
between them: their potential opposition as heirs. While a single heir risks the
extinction of the line (if that heir dies), more than one risks rivalry: the ‘problem of
the spare’, as Jonathan Spangler puts it.33
Any contrary notion that twins represent dynastic stability is undermined in
romances where the birth of twins leads to the exposure of anxieties about infertility
31 On the lacunae and dissonances of this ending, see Archibald, ‘Lai le Freine: The Female Foundling and the Problem of the Romance Genre’, pp. 39–55 (esp. pp. 46, 50 and 52). In contrast, editors Anne Laskaya and Eve Salisbury describe the ending as ‘like the conclusion of many Breton lays, reunit[ing] the protagonist with the family unit and affirm[ing], in its fairytale ending, the triumph of the good’. Laskaya and Salisbury, eds, ‘Introduction’, to Lay le Freine, available online via METS [accessed 4 Dec 2019], paragraph 2. 32 See Larrington, Brothers and Sisters, pp. 104–28. The paradigmatic biblical example of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4.1–16) would have been familiar to many fifteenth-century romance readers through mystery plays, being present in Chester, Towneley, York, and N-Town cycles. See for example ‘Cain and Abel’, in The N-Town Plays, ed. Douglas Sugano (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007) and ‘The Killing of Abel’ [Townley 2], in English Mystery Plays, ed. Patter Happé (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984). 33 Jonathan Spangler, ‘The Problem of the Spare’, The Court Historian, 19:2 (2014), 119–28.
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and immediately precedes dynastic instability, in the form of de-legitimation, family
separation and disinheritance. The general sense of the problematic nature of twins,
in medieval literature, may derive from obstetrics: the fifteenth-century medical
treatise known as the Trotula (London, British Library, MS Sloane 2463), for
example, describes twins as an ‘unkyndely’ occurrence and the birth is considered
especially hazardous.34 The Trotula’s illustrations show twins linking arms in the
womb (see Fig. 11, p. 240). The images are somewhat reminiscent of the biblical
account of the birth of twins Jacob and Esau: Jacob emerges clinging to his brother’s
ankle; a tangle which portends a later conflict and, specifically,
conflict over birthright.35 Indeed, while Erik Kooper’s survey of twenty European
stories about twins finds that ‘multiple births’ lead ‘to numerous kinds of disaster’,
that ‘disaster’ frequently centres on the disruption of patrilineal primogeniture in the
Middle English romances.36 The arrival of firstborn twin heirs complicates the
paradigm of primogeniture, the ‘insistence [that] there [is] such a thing as a true heir’
and (at least in Octavian and Torrent, where kingdoms are at stake) that ‘one person,
and one person only carrie[s] the right to the crown’.37
The ending of Tryamour is remarkable in this respect, since it features the
birth of two sons, whose introduction to the romance implies that they may also be
twins. ‘Man chylder had they twoo’, the Tryamour-narrator says, recalling the form
of words that describes twin births in other romances: ‘knave children tweie’, ‘knave
childire two’, ‘men children two’; and, in fifteenth-century versions of Bevis, ‘man
34 Medieval Woman’s Guide to Health: The First Gynecological Handbook, ed. Beryl Rowland (Croom Helm: London, 1981), p. 133. 35 Genesis 25.24–26. 36 Erik Kooper, ‘Multiple Births and Multiple Disaster’, p. 260. 37 Cooper, English Romance, p. 326.
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chyldur had sche two’ or ‘knaue childer tuay’.38 The following stanza in Tryamour
describes the hero’s reaction:
Kyng Tryamowre and hys quene
Mekyll joye was them betwene;
Man chylder had they twoo.
Aftur that hys fader was dedd
Then he cowde no nothur redd,
Ywys he was full woo! (ll. 1705–10)
In a neat illustration of how romance endings can convey a perpetuating sequence of
‘joy and woe’, the ‘joye’ of what seems to be a twin birth is juxtaposed with
Tryamour’s ‘woo’ at his father’s death. This stanza’s penultimate line, describing
Tryamour at a loss for what to do, reads coherently as a reference to the inheritance
crisis precipitated by the coincidence of these two events.
The question concerns the appropriate distribution of titles. There is
Tryamour’s paternal inheritance – his father’s kingdom – and Tryamour’s kingdom
of Hungary (Helen’s patrimony), won by right of his marriage. Both lands are
hereditary, but according to the principles of patrilineal primogeniture, the elder of
Tryamour’s sons would rightfully inherit his grandfather’s land and the maternal
38 Tryamour, l. 1707; Bevis, l. 3640; NO, l. 83; Torrent, l. 1811; Cambridge Bevis, l. 4136; Naples Bevis, l. 4136. The later Percy Folio version of the romance, Sir Triamore (c. 1650) follows William Copland’s 1561 print edition in omitting Tryamour’s sons from its ending, with other details of the Cambridge manuscript: such as Ardus’s formal recognition of Tryamour (‘for his sone he hym chese’, l. 1685) and Ardus’s death. Neither the Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson fragment of Tryamour nor that of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Poet. D 208 include the relevant lines. The Rawlinson fragment is now lost but an edition can be found in Early English Poetry, Ballads, and Popular Literature of the Middle Ages, vol. 16, ed. James Orchard Halliwell (London: T. Richards, 1846), pp. 61–63. For the relevant lines of the Percy version, see The Percy Folio of Old English Ballads and Romances, vol. 2, ed. F. J. Furnivall and J. W. Hales (London: De La More Press, 1906), p. 190. A reproduction of the British Library’s copy of William Copland’s Syr Tryamoure (London: [Thames St], 1561) is available via EEBO [accessed 4 Dec 2019].
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lands (Helen’s) would go to the younger sibling.39 However, Tryamour reverses this
convention:
Hys yongyst sone then ordeygned hee
Aftur hys fadur kynge to bee,
God grawnt hym wele to rejoyse! (ll. 1711–14)
Significantly, these lines pass over Tryamour’s own succession to his father’s
kingdom, which is implied but not stated. Nothing is said of the elder son or the
inheritance of Hungary: leaving the reader to assume, with a degree of uncertainty,
that the two converge. This briefly narrated final sequence is remarkable for its
introduction of a new dilemma, that Tryamour ‘cowde no nother redd’, at the very
end of the text. If the point of the romance is to re-establish the patrilineal succession
of both kingdoms (Aragon and Hungary), then this ending delivers little sense of
resolution. But if the value of the romance is to be found in its uncertainty on the
matter of inheritance – a provocative case study for a readership of whom it can be
said that ‘everyone knew their own claims to inheritance’ – then the allusive
reference to twin birth and inheritance at the ending of Tryamour is highly
effective.40 Thus, twins prefigure a resistance to narrative closure as well as
providing a challenge to the primogeniture model.
Carolyne Larrington writes that the ‘topos of twinship’, in medieval
romances, ‘opens up, but does not closely interrogate, the important question: how
fair is primogeniture?’.41 I would modify this, to say that the romances invite their
readers to closely interrogate this question, but do not provide a conclusive answer.
But if the romances do not explicitly take up an anti-primogeniture position, they
39 See Crouch, The Beaumont Twins, p. 9. 40 Hicks, English Political Culture, p. 64. 41 Larrington, Brothers and Sisters, p. 61.
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certainly do much to unsettle its basic principles. I noted in Chapter 3 that where the
romances initially appear to establish a primary-secondary hierarchy between twin
brothers, as per the legal solution for organising twins according to primogeniture,
this implicit order is later undermined or made redundant. In Octavian and Torrent,
the ‘younger’ twin emerges as the more dominant or stronger of the two, and in Bevis
the twins are evenly matched. In this chapter, I would add that the romances also
resist bringing the implied hierarchy (elder twin and younger twin) to completion by
confirming the succession of the putative elder twin to his father’s land.
I have already suggested this may be the case in Tryamour, above. Likewise
in Bevis, the pattern deviates from legal norms when young Gii fails to inherit his
paternal grandfather’s land (inheriting from his mother’s line instead) and neither
twin inherits Hampton. Miles’s inheritance is unconnected to either parents’
patrimony but is the by-product of a political reconciliation between Bevis and King
Edgar. Arguably, Octavian subtly adheres to a conventional hierarchy between its
twins: the moment in which Octavian ‘chese[s]’ his young namesake suggests that
young Octavian is nominated as his successor, while Florent achieves other lands
through marriage (NO, l. 1776). But this is the result of fortuitous circumstances
rather than deliberate provisions: Florent’s marriage negates both the potential
rivalry and hierarchal distinction between the brothers. As with Bevis, it seems that
Octavian contrives to avoid demonstrative statements on the appropriate treatment of
twins within the strictures of primogeniture. But it is worth revisiting the
circumstantial manner in which the twins are managed in the romances. This is most
vividly portrayed in the animal abductions.
It is only when one of the unnamed infants becomes the child with the lioness
and his brother becomes ‘the other childe … That the ape away bare’ that the twins
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can be distinguished in Octavian: one effectively becomes the ‘first’ twin and his
brother the ‘other’ (ll. 530–31). The symbolic significance of the animals, with
regard to the characteristics of the heirs and their upbringings, has been noted
elsewhere in criticism. David Salter writes that the connection of ‘young Octavian to
the lioness’ is of ‘symbolic importance in the construction of the child’s identity as a
royal hero’ because of the animal’s regal associations in medieval culture.42 The
lioness is also a symbolic portent of young Octavian’s subsequent upbringing with
his royal mother. Meanwhile, Florent’s abduction by an ape may be a cruel satire on
the ‘humble, bourgeois, and occasionally comic environment’ in which Clement
raises his adopted son, since the medieval ape is thought to represent ‘the absurdity,
futility, and arrogance of an irrational beast attempting to imitate (ape) the behaviour
of rational men and women’.43
Apes frequently appear as parodic figures in medieval ‘marginal’ art, such as
manuscript marginalia and church misericords. They are shown imitating human
behaviour, including carrying human babies (see Figs 10 and 12, pp. 240–41).44
Comparatively, Octavian’s Clement has been read as a ‘figure of fun’ whose
bourgeois pretensions ‘contrast very poorly with the grandeur and splendour of the
court’.45 From this perspective, the ape with its characteristic tendency to imitate
42 David Salter, Holy and Noble Beasts: Encounters with Animals in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001), p. 90. 43 Salter, Holy and Noble Beasts, p. 90. 44 The most comprehensive study of medieval ape symbolism is H. W. Janson, Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (London: Warburg Institute, 1952). For more recent analysis of apes in medieval ‘marginal’ art, see Michael Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 1993), pp. 12–14; Alixe Bovey, Monsters and Grotesques in Medieval Manuscripts (Toronto: Unversity of Toronto Press, 2002) pp. 52–53; Paul Hardwick, English Medieval Misericords: The Margins of Meaning (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2011), pp. 60, 123–24. 45 John Simons, ‘Northern Octavian and the Question of Class’, in Romance in Medieval England, ed. Maldwyn Mills, Jennifer Fellows and Carol M. Meale (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1991), pp. 105–11 (p. 110).
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human behaviour might appear to allude to Clement’s own comic aping of
aristocratic behaviour and specifically aristocratic parenthood. But there is at least
one alternative reading to be gleaned here.
William Fahrenbach argues that for the ‘increasingly diverse, vernacular
audience’ of the Middle English romances, ‘merchants’ and ‘lesser gentry’ not
necessarily ‘ideologically compliant’ with aristocratic perspectives, Clement is a
more ‘ambivalent’ figure.46 Therefore, the ape may express something else for this
audience. The object of the parody may be the narrative device itself: namely the
animal abductions that effect the separation and consequently the differentiation and
implicit hierarchy between the twin heirs. Where the birth of twins confounds the
monolineal model of succession that is primogeniture, the ape abduction
metaphorically speaks to the absurdly arbitrary manner in which the twins are
subsequently designated as first- and second-born heirs, in attempt to make them
conform. The parodic ape is, in this light, an emblem of the romance’s critique of
primogeniture.
Adopted Inheritance
This next section shows how the romances present adoption as an alternative model
of heirship and succession, no longer contingent on genealogy. The penultimate
events in Torrent are the reunion of the dispersed, biological family (Torrent,
Desonell, and twins Antony and Leobertus), and their return to Portugal together,
where Torrent and Desonell are finally married. As with Octavian, however, this
image of family reunion does not accurately summarise the outcomes of the
46 William Fahrenbach, ‘Rereading Clement in Thomas Chestre’s Octavian and in BL Cotton Caligula A.II’, Essays in Medieval Studies, 26 (2010), 85–99 (p. 86).
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disinheritance narrative. The separation and the reunion of the biological family
gives the illusion of a ‘reciprocal’ macro-structure, but it is deceptive: not only in
terms of the story as a disinheritance narrative but also if we read it as a ‘family
romance’, since family relationships have been reconstituted along non-biological
lines by this point in the story.47 Indeed, this re-assembly of the fractured biological
family (Torrent, Desonell, the twins) is only a temporary reunion, albeit a celebratory
one. The episode is not presented as the recovery of foundling children from foster
parents, but the formalisation of adoption: each twin is confirmed to be the son and
heir of his adoptive father.
The king of Jerusalem explains how he found his adopted child ‘lying in a
liberts mouth’, before asking if Torrent will permit Leobertus, ‘thy sonne’, to live
with him (the king) until he dies and ‘sith rejoyse my lond’ (ll. 2635–42). There is
some ambiguity in the phrase, ‘sith rejoyse my lond’ – the stanza is truncated (nine
lines rather than the usual twelve), so there may be some further explication missing
– but given the prior reference to the king of Jerusalem’s death, it almost certainly
means that he intends for Leobertus to inherit after him.48 In the presence of ‘lordys
of gret renown’, Torrent agrees and, the narrator says, ‘Torent gave hym his son’ (ll.
2643–44). The king of Greece makes a similar offer to his adopted son and there is
no ambiguity here: ‘I yef thy son all my right | To the Grekys flood’, he tells Torrent,
similarly asking if Antony will be permitted to ‘dwell with me’ (ll. 2645–48). Once
again, Torrent agrees. As in Bevis, the word ‘yef’ is invoked to underline the transfer
47 Wittig describes the binary narrative structures she perceives (e.g. ‘separation-return’) as ‘reciprocating patterns’ (Stylistic and Narrative Structures, p. 179). 48 The word ‘sith’ has various uses as a noun in Middle English, to refer to points in time (‘that time’) or relationships to time (‘repeatedly’), but in this case in Torrent it appears to be an adverb qualifying ‘rejoice’ and therefore means ‘afterwards’. It seems more likely that it means ‘after my death’, than the ‘then’ of a more immediate future in which the land simply rejoices at Leobertus’s return. See MED, sith, n. sense 4 and sitheli, adv.
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of land rights. The same verb describes how Torrent ‘gives’ his son to the king of
Jerusalem, and the proximity of the two instances of the word suggests an
equivalence of meaning: the act of adoption and the transfer of heritable land rights
are simultaneous and described in the same terms. Having relinquished his paternal
claim on the twins, Torrent becomes emperor of Rome: an unexpected outcome but
not unaccountable, given the findings of Chapter 3 on the transformative nature of
recognition in the romances. Here, recognition formalises adoptive relationships,
supplanting biological ties.
The adoptions in Torrent affect the portrayal of inheritance in several ways.
Firstly, the adoption of their biological children re-positions Torrent and Desonell,
by the end of the romance, as the heirless emperor and empress of Rome: a situation
which bears an uncanny resemblance to that of the emperor and empress at the
beginning of Octavian. The subsequent reference to the titular hero building
‘chirchus and abbeys [for] hym and his to praye’ contributes to this effect, as follows
(ll. 2661–62). The provision of prayers for oneself and one’s family is common in
late-medieval wills and thus the phrase, ‘for hym and his’ could refer, in this sense,
to Torrent and his existing offspring. But since the prayer is nameless, the possessive
‘his’ remains non-specific. In turn, such non-specificity was an important feature of
testamentary legal formulae when heirs were mentioned, because the legal heir could
not be confirmed until after the testator’s death.49 From this viewpoint, Torrent’s
prayer reads as an allusion to nameless future heirs, inviting comparison with the
opening succession crisis in Octavian: where the emperor builds ‘a ryche abbaye’ to
pray that the childless couple be blessed with an heir (NO, l. 76). But by the end of
Torrent, heirlessness no longer seems cause for alarm. It gives way to a sense of
49 Simpson, Land Law, p. 52.
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hopeful acquiescence to future uncertainty, in the typical form of a prayer: ‘Jesu
Cryst, that all hath wrought ... He graunt us blis to be | Oute of this world whan we
shall wend’ (ll. 2666–71).
A secondary effect of the adoptions in Torrent is that they effectively render
the question of the twins’ illegitimacy redundant, since their adoptive inheritances
have displaced whatever they were due as the il/legitimate offspring of Torrent and
Desonell. They are not, finally, made the legitimate heirs to their biological parents;
nor is Degrebell in Eglamour. Here, too, the title character (Eglamour) and his wife
(Cristabell) are left heirless by the adoption of their biological son. The diminished
relevance of the illegitimacy accusations for the twins in Torrent and Degrebell in
Eglamour is therefore symptomatic of a broader shift in the romances, away from the
priority of biological lineage. The familial language used between adoptive fathers
and heirs demonstrates the extent to which the adoptive relationship supplants the
biological connection. The king of Israel is said to consider Degrebell his own child
from the moment he finds him: telling his wife, ‘“Thys chyld God has me sent”’ (l.
847). He subsequently makes Degrebell a ‘knyght | And prynce’ (ll. 1001–02).
Degrebell refers to the king as ‘fadur’ and is called ‘my sone’ in return (ll. 1144,
1272). The matter of his birth, within or out of wedlock, is neither raised nor
contested; because he is not a son and heir by birth any longer, but by adoption.
Familial terms of address are used at critical narrative moments in Eglamour,
blurring the distinction between biological and adoptive parentage, demonstrating
how smoothly one overtakes the other. When Cristabell recognises Degrebell as her
offspring, halting their incestuous marriage, Degrebell asks the king’s advice, calling
him ‘fadur’ and then Cristabell ‘modyr’ (ll. 1144–45). After Eglamour learns that he
is Degrebell’s biological father and kneels before the king of Israel to thank him for
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raising Degrebell, the king responds by naming Degrebell his heir and calling him
his son:
The kyng of Israell gon hym telle
How he fond Syr Degrebell;
Knytes lystend thanne.
Syr Eglamour kneled on hys kne,
‘And, lord, Gode yelde hyt the;
Ye have made hym a manne.’
The kyng sayde ‘I schall hym geve
Half my londes whyle I leve,
My sone as whyte as swanne.’ (ll. 1264–72)50
Immediately thereafter, Degrebell is offered the marriage of the princess Organate, in
recognition of the fact that ‘his fadure’ (in this case, Eglamour) was earlier awarded
this prize:
The kyng of Sydon sayd also,
‘And my dowghtyr Organate to -
Me mynnes his fadure hyr wan’. (ll. 1273–75)51
In this respect, the revelation that Eglamour is Degrebell’s biological father does
change things for him, but it does not lead to his claiming an inheritance by birth,
through either of his biological parents.
50 The Thornton version has ‘half my kyngdome’ rather than ‘half my londes’ and instead of ‘his fadur hyr wan’ it is ‘my londys hys fadur wan’. Otherwise this passage is almost identical in the Cotton and Thornton manuscripts. See The Thornton Romances: The Early English Metrical Romances of Perceval, Isumbras, Eglamour, and Degrevant, ed. James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps (London: J. B. Nicholas and Son, 1844), p. 173 (ll. 1292 and 1296). 51 Eglamour was earlier offered the marriage of the princess (and with it the ‘crowne’) in return for service to the king of Sydon. See ll. 505–624 (l. 595).
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Adoption by contract was possible in medieval English law, and although it
was not equivalent to bestowing de facto inheritance rights on the children in
question, there is evidence of adoptions taking place in conjunction with transfers of
land, to achieve that effect.52 Such adoptions can be situated within a wider social
context, in which children could move between families in order to be raised in
another home (if aristocratic) or to serve or be apprenticed (if not), with the various
aims of consolidating unions between households of similar or differing social
standing, or providing opportunities to the child for learning, earning or social
advancement.53 In the romances, adoption is a means for the allegedly illegitimate
offspring of mixed-social marriages to attain princely inheritances. It is a further
example of the ways in which incidents relating to inheritance in the romances bear
resemblance to contemporary legal practices other than de facto primogeniture.
Moreover, it is another instance in which disinheritance appears as a precursor to
social advancement. The adoptions consolidate the idea that inheritance is something
to be won, or even to be found, but never simply something to which one is born.
Prestige is attached to winning inheritance, more than inheriting according to
birthright.
As a point of contrast to the adoptions in Eglamour and Torrent, Florent in
Octavian is adopted by Clement – an affectionate parent who suffers ‘mych pyn’ for
52 For an early adoption record, see Year Books of Edward II, vol. 1, ed. F. W. Maitland (London, 1904), pp. 186–87. See also Cicely Howell, Land, Family and Inheritance in Transition, Kinsworth Harcourt, 1280–1700 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), esp. p. 347. I found a useful source in Kristin Elizabeth Gager, Blood Ties and Fictive Ties: Adoption and Family Life in Early Modern France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), which cites both Howell and the early adoption record above. 53 See Barbara Hanawalt, Growing Up in Medieval London, pp. 129–54 and Nicholas Orme, Medieval Children, pp. 55–56 and 309–13. For a study of a slightly later period, which looks retrospectively at late-medieval England, see Grant McCracken, ‘The Exchange of Children in Tudor England: An Anthropological Phenomenon in Historical Context’, Journal of Family History, 8 (1983), 303–13.
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his ‘loue’, calls him ‘sone’ and is called ‘fadyr myn’ in return – but does not inherit
from him (SO, ll. 1895, l. 1801). He does not inherit from his biological father either,
however, meaning that the romance undermines the legal notion of the father as a
monolithic figure who produces, raises and eventually bequeaths an inheritance to
his son and heir. Adoption is not directly advantageous to Florent in the way that it is
to the disinherited heirs in Eglamour and Torrent. Arguably, Florent’s ineptitude as a
mercantile apprentice and affection for aristocratic pursuits such as hawking and
horse-riding can be taken as an expression of his innate nobility and the romance’s
fundamentally aristocratic perspective. At the same time, however, Clement’s
support for his adopted son figures prominently enough in the romance (especially in
the southern version) to be credited with some of Florent’s subsequent martial and
marital success. Quite unlike the absurd ape of the medieval imagination, whose
attempts to imitate human behaviour inevitably fail to convince, Clement is a model
of successful, aspirational bourgeois parenting.
Adoptive heirship is a conceit typical of the disinheritance romances, both re-
investing in the idea of inheritance and the prestige of heritable titles and land, while
undercutting the legal orthodoxies associated with inheritance, namely de facto
patrilineal succession and birthright. The eschewal of biological reproduction as the
means of generational succession for adoptive fathers in Eglamour and Torrent
invites some consideration of Lee Edelman’s influential critique of ‘the Child’ in
political discourse. The ‘organising principle’ of political governance and
‘communal relations’, Edelman writes, is the idea of ‘the Child’ as the self-evidently
rightful future beneficiary of all present efforts and sacrifices: a political orientation
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that Edelman calls ‘reproductive futurism’.54 The ‘son and heir’ of medieval legal
theory may be the paradigmatic ‘Child’: biological reproduction and generational
succession are coterminous in this figure, the offspring who inherits the parent’s
wealth. But the adoptions in the disinheritance romances make clear that the ‘son’
and the ‘heir’ can be distinguished from one another. The child is not always an
emblem of generational succession, nor is one’s rightful heir necessarily one’s child.
While Edelman’s ‘Child’ is antithetical to what he terms ‘queer
oppositionality’, elsewhere literary critics have sought to examine the possibility of
‘queer children’, whose ‘subversive strategies’ complicate otherwise ‘heterosexually
straightforward storylines’.55 The foundling heir of the Middle English romance,
recovered from the clutches of a mythical creature, whose permanent adoption into a
non-biological family renders his biological parents without either child or heir,
might be considered one such ‘subversive’ figure. Without wishing to argue that the
adoptions imagined in the romances are a model of queer futurity (indeed LGBTQ+
adoption is a specific target for criticism in Edelman’s book, on the basis that it is
conformist rather than resistant) the texts nonetheless pull away from the strictures of
reproductive futurity, with the figure of the heir transformed from offspring to
foundling.
54 Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), pp. 2–3. 55 Edelman, No Future, p. 4; Jennifer Higginbotham and Mark Albert Johnston, eds, ‘Introduction’, to Queering Childhood in Early Modern English Drama and Culture (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 1–30 (p. 4). The contributors to this volume deploy a flexible, theoretical use of the term ‘queer’, in the sense articulated by Carolyn Dinshaw in her introduction to How Soon is Now? (2012): that is, not turning away from the politics and lived experiences of queer sexuality but recognising what Edelman call ‘queer oppositionality’ in broader contexts. See Carolyn Dinshaw, How Soon is Now? Medieval Texts, Amateur Readers, and the Queerness of Time (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), pp. 1–40 (esp. p. 4). This queer-theoretical criticism of the literary child, drawing on (and questioning) ‘queer theory’s formation [of] the Child’, ought to be distinguished from the study of ‘queer childhood’ or ‘(queer) children’s literature’, for which see Kenneth Kidd, ‘Queer Theory’s Child and Children’s Literature Studies’, PMLA, 126:1 (2011), 182–88 (p. 127).
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Taking up Edelman’s charge to ‘consider … how political futurity becomes
tangled up in the figure of the child’, Joseph Campana has written about the spectral
children in Shakespeare’s Macbeth as ‘apparitions of [a] fraught phenomenon,
sovereignty by generation’. Campana argues that these children signal that the ‘time
of succession had passed’ or, in other words, that political futurity could no longer be
imagined as a child.56 Campana is thinking of early modern political contexts in his
reading of Macbeth,57 but there are parallels with the periods of dynastic instability
and civil war during the fifteenth century. The childless and heirless state in which
Eglamour and Torrent leave their titular heroes, whose productivity is no longer the
romance’s concern, accords with what Urvashi Chakravarty describes, elsewhere in
Shakespeare’s plays, as the imagined ‘barren future [that] fundamentally queers the
presumption of straight … futurity’.58 For fifteenth-century readers, the child-heirs of
the disinheritance romances might have figured in the imagination as harbingers of
crises in succession, rather than champions of dynastic stability. But unlike
Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the romances do not operate in the tragic mode: the
outcomes are positive for the offspring of disrupted succession, their parents and
allies.
Adoption evades the problem that twin heirs pose to primogeniture. Taken
out of context, it might seem a resolution that returns to endorse primogeniture: in
Torrent, for example, it allows each twin to assume the position of a firstborn heir.
But this would be to ignore their adoptive status and the adjacent re-positioning of
56 Joseph Campana, ‘The Child’s Two Bodies: Shakespeare, Sovereignty and the End of Succession’, ELH, 81:3 (2014), 811–39 (pp. 811–12, 823). 57 Campana views the spectral children of Macbeth in light of the crises in succession in Tudor England, writing that ‘too many wives and therefore children of Henry VIII … [were] as problematic a precedent for monarchical continuity [as] the childlessness of Elizabeth’ (p. 833). 58 Urvashi Chakravarty, ‘“I Had Peopled Else”: Shakespeare’s Queer Natalities and the Reproduction of Race’, in Queering Childhood in Early Modern English Drama and Culture, pp. 57–78 (p. 73).
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the biological father. What might seem to be conventional patrilineal transmissions
of inheritance in the endings of Torrent and Eglamour, at first glance, are actually
contingent on lateral affiliations between non-blood relatives and involve
generational levelling. Once separated, the twins who ought to be in the respective
positions of senior and junior offspring, according to medieval law, are made equal.
Once separated, fathers and their offspring assume equivalent social degrees as
unmarried men without any personal wealth. This equivalence is underlined in
Eglamour where it is the premise for a narrowly avoided incestuous marriage,
Degrebell trading places with his father as his mother’s suitor; later marrying
Organate in his father’s stead. A similar observation can be made of Tryamour, in
which the protagonist and his father become peers, ruling their respective kingdoms
concurrently.
Finally, adoption allows a redistribution of heritable property regardless of
lineage. In Havelok, most strikingly, the hero’s adoptive sisters and others are
elevated from the peasantry to the nobility by virtue of their loyalty to their adopted
brother. To Bertram ‘that was the erles kok’, Havelok gives the earldom of Cornwall:
‘for wissing and thi god dede | That tu me dides in ful gret nede’ (ll. 2902–03). One
of Grim’s daughters, Levive is married to him (ll. 2911–27). The other, Gunnild, is
married to the earl of Chester (ll. 2859–87). In view of hagiographical readings of
this romance, this flattening of the social hierarchy among adoptive siblings and
comrades might be compared to the notion of ‘universal siblinghood’ among
Christians, enacted by a common co-heirship to the kingdom of heaven.59 But in the
59 I borrow this phrase from Marc Shell, The End of Kinship: “Measure for Measure”, Incest, and the Ideal of Universal Siblinghood (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988).
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romance’s ultimately secular narrative context, it effects radical social reorganisation
and redistribution of worldly property.
At the same time, however, the elevation of Havelok’s adoptive sisters recalls
the biological sisters whom he lost: the casualties of disinheritance who cannot be
restored. The distribution of land according to merit is not a perfect resolution to the
injustices committed earlier, for which the reader is now served with a poignant
reminder. Far from presenting a new, secure form of order, in fact, the ending of
Havelok offers little resolution to the question of succession with which it began.
Among Havelok and Goldeboru’s own offspring – ‘sones and doughtres rith
fivetene’ – none is named as their successor (l. 2979). The ‘sones were kinges alle’
and ‘the douhtres alle quenes’, but to which lands the narrator does not say (ll. 2980,
2982).60 The vision of family as a vertical structure, inherent in the idea of family ‘as
lineage’ (Riddy), is displaced here by a lateral vision of the family’s future, in which
offspring disperse to claim equal estates elsewhere. After disinheritance, the romance
does not suggest the reinstatement of a predictable succession of future heirs, but
rather provides a tentatively peaceful state of equilibrium and uncertainty.
Happy Endings
The main aim of this chapter has been to show that the endings of the disinheritance
romances are more generative than has previously been acknowledged and in
particular that they do not necessarily present ‘correct patriarchal order re-established
and re-affirmed’ and ‘the rightful heir, the first-born son, again in his proper place’.61
60 See also Lim, ‘In the Name of the (Dead) Father’, as cited in the introduction. 61 Menuge, Wardship, p. 80; the same view is echoed by Peter Fleming, ‘Politics’, Gentry Culture, p. 59.
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Finally, I return to the question of ‘happy endings’. The ‘happy ending’ is generally
perceived to be a characteristic feature of romance. Mentioned in passing as ‘the
requisite happy ending’ or ‘predictably happy resolution’, it is sometimes mandated
as an essential feature of the genre: as in Whetter’s definition of medieval romance
as stories about ‘love, ladies and adventure, culminating in a happy ending’.62
Some regard the Middle English (and especially non-Arthurian) romances as
more drawn to ‘happy endings’ than their French (or Arthurian) counterparts.
Corinne Saunders contrasts the happy ending of some Middle English romances,
where she sees a folkloric influence, with the ‘understated’ tone and ‘realist’ mode of
Malory’s Morte Darthur.63 A. C. Spearing and Cheryl Colopy point to the happy
endings of Middle English romances in contrast with classical sources,64 while the
Middle English Sir Perceval of Galles (c. 1440) and Chrètien de Troyes’s Conte du
Graal (c. 1190) are more than once juxtaposed in this way. John Finlayson writes of
Sir Perceval of Galles that it is ‘clearly the result of the reductive capacity of a far
from sophisticated mind’, citing its ‘primitive suspense’ and ‘happy ending’ as
features that distinguish it from Chrètien’s Conte du Graal.65 More generously, Ad
Putter proposes that the Middle English Perceval-author has exchanged the
‘enigmatic’ deferral of the French romance for a ‘fulfilling ... happy ending’.66
62 Arlyn Diamond, ‘Meeting Grounds’, in The Exploitations of Medieval Romance, ed. Laura Ashe, Ivana Djordjević and Judith Weiss (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), pp. 125–38 (p. 132); Roberta L. Krueger, ‘Introduction’, to Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, p. 8; Whetter, Understanding Genre, p. 7. 63 Corinne Saunders, ‘“Greater love hath no man”: Friendship in Medieval English Romance’, in Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Medieval English Literature, ed. Charlotte Brewer and Barry Windeatt (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013), pp. 128–43 (p. 134). 64 A. C. Spearing, ‘Interpreting a Medieval Romance’, in Readings in Medieval Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 56–82 (p. 58); Cheryl Colopy, ‘Sir Degaré: A Fairy Tale Oedipus’, Pacific Coast Philology 17 (1982), 31–39 (p. 32). 65 John Finlayson, ‘Definitions of Middle English Romance’, The Chaucer Review 15:2 (1980), 168–81 (p. 174). 66 Putter, ‘Story Line and Story Shape’, pp. 174; 180.
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It ought to be noted, however, that the Conte is far from a typical example of
romance narrative (either French or English) and the omission of a conclusion, which
is partly what preserves a sense of enigmatic suspense in the text, is accidental, not
stylistic. It is generally accepted that the poem remains unfinished due to the death of
either poet or patron.67 Likewise, it should be noted that the prose form of Malory’s
Morte Darthur distinguishes it from the verse of the Middle English romances; the
potential connection between prose and tragic modes something Helen Cooper has
explored in relation to the late, prose romance Valentine and Orson.68
Elsewhere critics have questioned whether the convention is as secure in the
Middle English texts as it is in the criticism. Donna Crawford, for instance, offers a
counterpoint to the views of Spearing and Colopy, observing that the sustained
violence of many Middle English romance narratives is continuous into their
endings.69 Arlyn Diamond and Elizabeth Archibald have noted certain dissonances in
the endings of individual romances, such as Lai le Freine.70 Melissa Furrow finds
that the ‘happy ending is more often claimed as a characteristic of the trans-historical
mode of romance’ (as with Northrop Frye’s reference to the genre’s ‘conventional
happy ending’, in the Secular Scripture) than of medieval romance in particular (as
Whetter insists), or with regards to particular texts.71 In a similar vein, Helen Cooper
67 See Jean Frappier, Chrétien de Troyes et le Mythe du Graal: Étude sur Perceval ou le Conte du Graal (Paris: Société d’Édition d’Enseignement Supérieur, 1972), pp. 252–53 and Kibler, Arthurian Romances, pp. 2–3. 68 Helen Cooper, ‘The Strange History of Valentine and Orson’, in Tradition and Transformation in Medieval Romance, ed. Rosalind Field (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999), pp. 153–68 (esp. p. 163). 69 Donna Crawford, “‘Gronyng wyth grysly wounde”: Injury in Five Middle English Breton Lays’, in Readings in Medieval English Romance, ed. Carol M. Meale (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 35–52 (p. 38). 70 See Arlyn Diamond, ‘Unhappy Endings: Failed Love / Failed Faith in Late Romances’, in Readings in Medieval English Romance, ed. Carol M. Meale (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 65–82; Archibald, ‘Lai le Freine: The Female Foundling’, as cited above. 71 Furrow, Expectations of Romance, p. 56; Frye, Secular Scripture, p. 135.
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identifies the happy ending as ‘the characteristic most widely considered definitive
of the [romance] genre’, in her introduction to English Romance, while also devoting
a chapter to the possibility of ‘Unhappy Endings’.72
The adjective ‘happy’ is rarely defined: according to the works cited above it
can imply an ending that is either ‘reductive’ or ‘fulfilling’, but more than anything
else it is ‘conventional’ and aligned with ‘order’. The ending of Bevis is not joyous,
relating Bevis’s death and eliciting ‘pité’, but Cooper argues that the ‘simultaneous
natural deaths of Bevis … Josian … and his horse Arundel’ are depicted as ‘the
culminating marvel of [the] story’ (Bevis, l. 4616). It is not an unhappy ending,
furthermore, because ‘unhappy’ has the stronger meaning of ‘misery’ in Middle
English. An unhappy ending is one that ‘challenges faith more radically’ by depicting
an ‘unprovidential world’, a feature associated with later, prose romances.73
Yet where Cooper argues that a lack of joy does not make the ending of Bevis
unhappy, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen finds, on the other hand, that the presence of joy in
the ending of Octavian fails provide a satisfactory conclusion. The ending is
‘unsatisfactory’, he writes, because it raises more questions than it answers: ‘The
family return to Rome together ... but to what future? With what promise? The book
does not say’.74 The Octavian-narrator insists that the ending is a joyful one,
repeating ‘joye’ three times in the penultimate, twelve-line stanza, but Cohen
suggests that a certain ‘affective dissonance’ stems from a lack of accompanying
order: failing to resolve its inheritance question and confirm the order of succession
(NO, ll. 1832, 1836, 1837).75
72 Cooper, English Romance, p. 9; pp. 361–408. 73 See Cooper, English Romance, p. 361. See also Leitch, Romancing Treason, p. 184. 74 Cohen, ‘There are Powerlines in our Bloodlines’, paragraph 7. 75 McNamer, ‘Feelings’, p. 248.
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What the endings of the disinheritance romances fail to support, I suggest, is
the critical alignment of ‘happy endings’ with ‘providential ordering’ and ‘unhappy
endings’ with ‘the bleakness of a world’ without such order, where ‘malevolence [is]
inherent in the scheme of things’.76 As I have argued in this chapter, the endings of
the disinheritance romances resist restoring order in the form of primogeniture, the
order with which the stories began. Yet they convey ‘joy’ more than ‘malevolence’.
These apparently contrary positions can be reconciled if we redefine the meaning of
‘happy’ in this context. Just as the Middle English ‘unhappy’ is distinct from its
modern English equivalent, so with the Middle English word ‘happy’: it does not
simply denote joy, as in the modern English vernacular, nor does it mean order, in
the particular sense that can be inferred from its usage in romance criticism. The
word stems from ‘hap’, meaning chance, luck, or (one’s) lot, and ‘happi’ bears these
associations in Middle English: meaning good fortune.77
I propose that the disinheritance romances do provide ‘happy’ endings, in the
specific sense that they represent the culmination of a series of chance incidents: the
luck of ‘happi chance’.78 In Octavian, when the infant Florent is stolen from his
mother by an ape, it is only the first in a series of exchanges, each one like a roll of
the dice: the forest of medieval romance being just as likely to yield up a mythical
creature as a questing knight or a band of outlaws or a royal hunting party.79 Each is
a possible outcome, according to other medieval romances: Tryamour is fostered by
a knight who finds him by chance in the woods; Gamelyn joins a community of
76 Cooper, English Romance, pp. 261, 361. 77 See OED, hap, n. 1 and MED, happy, adj. & adv. 78 Gower, Confessio Amantis, vol. 2, ed. Russell Peck (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2013), 4.367. 79 On the forests of medieval romance as the site of ‘chance encounters’ see Corrine Saunders, The Forest of Medieval Romance: Avernus, Broceliande, Arden (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993), esp. p. 50 and pp. 171–72.
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outlaws (Gamelyn); Orson is raised by a bear and his brother by a king (Valentine
and Orson). Each time Florent changes hands, his possible future changes. Settling
with Clement does not deliver Florent into his original birthright but sets him on a
different and uncertain path, the endpoint of which is still somewhat obscure when
the romance draws to its close.
Rather than ‘providential ordering’ there is fortuitious disordering:
disinheritance enables a redistribution of fortunes. The romances are generally clear
about which characters are worthy and which characters are wicked and the
‘distribution of awards and punishments’ follows accordingly, with rightful heirs
gaining and their antagonists punished. But it is not always so apparent, as with the
treatment of twin heirs in Octavian and Bevis. Whether or not the romances’ endings
demonstrate good fortune in any objective sense, and for whom, remains open to
debate. Furthermore, the romances do not work towards an objective redefinition of
rightful heirship, as they unsettle its orthodox legal definition (birthright), but rather
rightful heirship emerges in processes of recognition whose underlying logic remains
largely implicit. So it follows that the romances’ endings do not define the terms of
their good fortune. Instead the reader is asked to acknowledge the ‘joye’ of ‘happi
chance’ and the uncertainty that comes with it.
Adjusting our understanding of the romances’ ‘happy’ endings in this way, to
appreciate the emphasis on chance rather than predestination, is politically
significant: shifting away from the idea of a conservative return to order and, more
specifically, the idea of the endings as a restoration of pro-aristocratic primogeniture.
Chance is a common factor in socioeconomic developments in the world beyond the
romances, if one that is under-appreciated in historical analysis, as Payling and other
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historians have argued.80 But where presented in the romances as a means of
acquiring heritable land, it is the fortuitous consequence of disinheritance and an
economically productive alternative to dynastic stability. For readers prepared to see
it, the romances offer a radical re-imagining of medieval legal orthodoxies of rightful
inheritance.
80 In addition to Payling’s work cited above see Bridget Wells-Furby, ‘Marriage and Inheritance: The Element of Chance in the Development of Lay Estates in the Fourteenth Century’, in Fourteenth Century England, vol. 10, ed. Gwilym Dodd (Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2018), pp. 113–32 and Kate Kelsey Staples, Daughters of London: Inheriting Opportunity in the Late Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2011).
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Conclusion
An Idea of Disinheritance in Middle English Romances
The question with which this project began was the significance of the recurrent
presentation of disinheritance in Middle English romances, and particularly in a
subset of six romances. I have concentrated on the imaginative effects of their
portrayals of disinheritance and illegitimacy, considering the perspective of a late-
medieval gentry readership. The prevailing critical view, I argued in the introduction,
has been that disinheritance is plot incident expressing the anxiety of a land-owning
class: that the romances work to assuage anxieties about dispossession and dynastic
instability by resolving disinheritance in ways that reinforce the fundamental
principles of primogeniture. According to this reading, the romances eventually insist
that their ascendant “unknown” heroes are revealed to be lawful heirs by birth to the
lands they inherit. But, as I have argued throughout the thesis, this is not always the
case. The disinheritance narrative does not, necessarily, serve to sustain a pro-
primogeniture ideology but provides a conceptual framework for re-imagining
rightful heirship in other terms.
The romances’ heirs are conceived within the narrative framework of
disinheritance. The stories begin by presenting a paternal desire for patrilineal
succession and primogeniture; which can be understood as a legal orthodoxy rather
than, necessarily, the preferred practice in late-medieval England. In the romances,
these aspirations are shown to be precarious at best, and even doomed to failure from
their inception. Just as the matter of inheritance is introduced, disinheritance proves
to be the operative concept. Where the romances present disinheritance as a violent
event, it first appears to be a destructive or degenerative act, but it proves productive
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in metaphorical and metatextual senses: generating the story and forming the
protagonist in the shape of the disinherited heir.
This paradoxical relationship between disinheritance and heirship is the
starting point for a narrative which subverts the tenets of medieval inheritance law.
Recognition of rightful heirship, after disinheritance, can no longer be a question of
lineage alone. The disinherited heroes re-emerge as unknown heirs, whose worth is
recognised in spite of their dubious origins. The recurrence of twin heirs works to
expose the flaws and arbitrary principles of primogeniture. The comparative clarity
of legal treatises is displaced, in the romances, by something more diffuse. The
romances’ relationship to medieval law remains complex. Rather than rejecting
medieval legal frames of reference altogether, the romances frequently show
patriarchal legal authorities to be flawed. Allusions to legal actions (testimony,
recognition) and linguistic cues (‘chesen’) manifest in ways that contribute to the
overall sense of a shift, from the beginnings of the romances to their endings, away
from the theocratic certainty of legal treatises and towards the evolving process of
legal practice and beyond, to popular extra-judicial notions of rightful heirship.
Rightful heirship in the romances is not absolute but relative.
The endings of the romances do not enact restoration or reproduction, neither
in the sense of a return to the order disrupted at the outset of the romances nor in the
sense that biological offspring reinstate dynastic stability. This contradicts the well-
established Structuralist explanation of romance narratives, as reciprocal or binary
plots that begin with a crisis and end with a return to order. Reading the details of
inheritance in the contexts of individual romances, rather than according to large-
scale structural patterns thought to be the common basis of many or all romances,
provides an alternative understanding of how the stories work. I have emphasised
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that while the disinherited heroes do finally acquire hereditary titles, they do so
through a combination of luck, reward and communal recognition: in turn, some of
the lands won are those to which they lost their original birthright and some are
estates to which they had no prior claim by birth. Most importantly, all win greater
wealth than they would have inherited from their parents before disinheritance.
Disinheritance figures, perhaps, as a felix culpa: suffering the violent loss of a
nascent ideal ultimately leads to redemption. In the title of my final chapter, I offer
‘regeneration’ as an alternative description of endings which suggest renewal, not in
the form of restoration but rather the redistribution of property. This redistribution
even extends beyond the disinherited heirs, in several cases, to include their allies.
Finally, regeneration intimates an ongoing process: the un-ending of dynastic
insecurity, since the possibility of further disruption is also regenerated in the
elliptical endings of the romances.
In all six of the romances studied here, disinheritance allows an upward
social mobility more usually aligned with ‘chivalry’ in romance criticism. It is the
performance of ‘chivalry’ in medieval romances, writes Christine Chism, which can
‘erode aristocratical exclusivity and enact a notional social mobility’.1 According to
Duby’s thesis, the chivalric hero of medieval romance is a reflection of aristocratic
society’s juvenes, the younger sons whose socioeconomic position is defined in
contrast to firstborn heirs. Duby recognises chivalric enterprise as a means of
acquiring or securing wealth and social status, enacting a covert social mobility,
where otherwise there is inheritance. But my reading of disinheritance in Middle
English romances suggests that this critical distinction between the heir heroes and
chivalric heroes of medieval literary imagination, between pro-aristocratic ideology
1 Chism, ‘Romance’, p. 61.
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and imagined social mobility, the established wealth and the parvenu, cannot be
sustained. Or, at least, the Middle English romances’ disinherited-heir heroes can no
longer be safely situated on the conservative side of the dividing line, with an
exemplar such as Bevis ultimately eschewing patrilineal inheritance in favour of
earned wealth.
This is an idea of disinheritance, aligning dynastic instability with social
advancement, which might have been familiar to late-medieval gentry audiences (as I
suggested in my introduction), and perhaps likely to appeal. But this way of reading
the romances effects something other than social ‘wish fulfilment’. Fredric
Jameson’s distinction between ‘social’ comedy and ‘metaphysical’ romance is useful
here, in the way that it modifies Northrop Frye’s earlier and influential description of
romance as ‘a wish-fulfilment dream’.2 Menuge’s Wardship considers the potential
function of the texts as ‘wish-fulfilment’ in Frye’s ‘social’ sense, arguing that their
‘wish-fulfilment’ endings indicate the desire of readers to see the injustices
experienced by real medieval wards corrected in fictional literature.3 On the other
hand, I suggest that the result of engaging with the imaginative work of the texts is
not an idealised vision (or revision) of ‘social order’ but a more ‘metaphysical’
transformation: a re-imagining of rightful heirship so that it no longer appears as a
singular figure or set of attributes but as an open question.4
The romances engage with legal ideas regarding inheritance, explicitly
referring to issues such as land purchase and illegitimacy, and indirectly alluding to
2 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 186. Frye and Jameson are cited as contrasting examples of critical attitudes towards romance in the introduction to Knapp and Knapp, Aesthetics of Possibility, p. 4. 3 Menuge, Wardship, p. 23. 4 Fredric Jameson, ‘Magical Narratives: Romance as Genre’, New Literary History, 7:1 (1975), 135–63 (p. 153). The essay later appears as a chapter in Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (London: Methuen, 1981).
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recognition by witness testimony and common assent. For readers likely to be well
versed in inheritance laws and their own rights (and ‘prepared to assert them
vigorously’), the romances are a rich source with which to hypothesise and debate.5
Yet they need not serve a didactic purpose. As imaginative texts, the romances
constitute a separate, extra-judicial discourse on inheritance. While they are valuable
for what they may reflect of popular late-medieval views on contemporary
inheritance laws and practice, the texts also have the capacity to shape those ideas.
Likewise, while the stories may satisfy one reader’s anxieties or another’s
aspirations, they also provide imaginative material for thinking differently about
rightful heirship: beyond the confines of what is possible in the society and economy
of late-medieval England.
Ultimately, the romances call into question the ability of the law to determine
rightful succession. The stories cast doubt on figures of legal authority: kings
disinherit their own heirs and outlaws intuit gentle blood. In place of a conclusive
solution to the question of recognising rightful heirship, there is the indirect
implication that uncertainty is the only tenable position. Evidence of ‘gentyll blode’
is insistently connected to unknownness: Degrebell’s wealthy appearance and
Florent’s chivalric bearing imply ‘gentyll blode’ yet cannot reveal ‘what he was’ or
‘[w]here evur he was tane’ (Eglamour, ll. 839–40; NO, ll. 1238–43). This connection
between knowing and unknowing gains traction, as I argued in Chapter 2, when
considered in parallel with an epistemological stance more familiar from religious
writing; but it is applied here to secular matters, to connect unknownness
(illegitimacy) with rightfulness. Arguably, a degree of ambiguity is incidental to the
romances’ typically brief narrative style. But it remains the case that whatever the
5 Michael Hicks, as cited in intro, p. 64.
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authorial intent or lack thereof, an ambiguous and elliptical treatment of the matter of
rightful heirship effectively constitutes a provocative political position: that a rightful
heir might also be an “unknown” confounds the precepts of medieval inheritance
law, and it is an imaginative idea that can be put to political use.
The appropriation of romance material and imagery in a variety of political
contexts has been recognised in romance scholarship.6 While Legge’s theory about
the emergence of insular ‘ancestral’ romances, commissioned and patronised by
noble families, has since been disputed, it is true that medieval families sought to
associate themselves with romance heroes. The ‘great medieval aristocratic
dynasties’ identified with ‘founding English heroes’ in romances such as Guy of
Warwick, for example, associated with the earls of Warwick.7 Helen Cooper writes
of the use of ‘romance as propaganda’ in relation to inheritance, suggesting that that
there was an ‘incentive’ to refer ‘quasi-mythic romance structures’ for those with
claims not as ‘indisputable’ as they might hope.8 When, for instance, the pretender
known as Perkin Warbeck claimed to be the lost, younger son of Edward IV, he
attempted to prove it by showing birthmarks on his body, recalling the ‘kynemerk’ in
Havelok.9 Cooper argues that romances provided a legitimating discourse because
their inheritance narratives culminate in the providential revelation of the ‘true heir’:
‘the fair unknown’ always ‘turns out to be the missing claimant’, the one person
already in possession of a birthright.10
6 See Cooper, ‘When Romance Comes True’, pp. 13–28 and numerous examples throughout English Romance. 7 See Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature and Its Background, as cited in introduction, and Guy of Warwick: Icon and Ancestor, ed. Alison Wiggins and Rosalind Field (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007); Cooper, English Romance, p. 31. 8 Cooper, English Romance, p. 325. 9 Ann Wroe, Perkin: A Story of Deception (London: Jonathan Cape, 2003), pp. 119–20. 10 Cooper, ‘When Romance Comes True’, p. 17.
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But this thesis has emphasised discrepancies between birthright and
inheritance in the romances. The fair unknown Degrebell, for example, is revealed to
be a ‘missing claimant’ to an heirless estate towards the end of Eglamour, but he
does not go on to inherit it. The lands he does inherit, by contrast, he has no claim to
by birth. As such, my own reading of the inheritance theme in romances can shed
new light on the imaginative work of romance tropes when deployed in extra-literary
contexts. I suggest, alternatively to the reading above, that romances could be
invoked in medieval political contexts where legitimate succession was disputed
precisely because dubious legitimacy is permitted in the romances, as much as the
opportunistic exploitation of chance. The romance-inspired ancestral legend of the
‘eagle and child’, cultivated by the powerful Stanley family, provides a case in point.
The Eagle and Child
In 1385, an up-and-coming knight named Sir John Stanley married Isabel Lathom,
eldest surviving child of Lancashire land magnate Thomas Lathom and ‘the richest
heiress in the north-west’.11 It was a very fortuitous marriage for Stanley, one of the
younger sons of William Stanley of Storeton, who himself inherited little from his
family ‘except perhaps his status as a gentleman and his training in arms’.12 John
Stanley’s seizure of the Lathom lands upon his marriage to Isabel was to establish
the Stanleys of Lathom as one of the most powerful families in the country. Perhaps
11 Michael Bennett, ‘“Good Lords” and “King-Makers”: The Stanleys of Lathom’, History Today, 31:7 (1981), 12–17 (p. 13). 12 Michael Bennett, Community, Class and Careerism: Cheshire and Lancashire Society in the Age of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 216. This John Stanley is sometimes associated with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, either as patron or author. See Edward Wilson, ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Stanley Family of Stanley, Storeton, and Hooton’, The Review of English Studies, 30 (1979), 308–16 and Andrew Breeze, ‘Sir John Stanley (c. 1350–1411) and the “Gawain”-Poet’, Arthuriana, 14:1 (2004), 15–30.
219
the most politically influential of their descendants was John Stanley’s direct great-
grandson, Thomas Stanley (1435–1504), first earl of Derby and stepfather to the
future Henry VII by his marriage to Margaret Beaufort.13 The earl’s belated support
for Henry Tudor’s dubious claim to the throne is traditionally regarded as the pivotal
moment in the latter’s triumph over Richard III in battle.14
By this time, the Stanleys were using the ‘eagle and child’ heraldic device
that is still associated with the earls of Derby today, owing to its widespread use in
places connected with the family.15 The earliest surviving written account of the
story behind the ‘eagle and child’ heraldry is given in ‘The Stanley Poem’ (1562), a
metrical history of the family’s exploits, attributed to Thomas Stanley, Bishop of
Sodor and Man.16 The poem tells of one ‘Lord Lathum’, who laments his lack of an
13 Michael Bennett, ‘Stanley, Thomas, First Earl of Derby (c. 1433–1504), Magnate’, ODNB <http://doi.org/10/1093/ref:odnb/26279> [accessed 4 Dec 2019]. 14 Shakespeare’s dramatisation of the Battle of Bosworth, after Vergil’s account, famously imagines Stanley crowning Henry Tudor on the battlefield. Shakespeare, Richard III, V. 8. 3–7. Christine Carpenter explains the difficulty in finding contemporary reports of the so-called ‘wars of the roses’, the events of which are more familiar to successive generations from fictionalised and biased accounts such as the ‘Anglica Historia’ of Italian chronicle Polydore Vergil, commissioned by Henry VII, and Thomas More’s ‘History of King Richard III’. See Carpenter, Wars of the Roses, pp. 4–5; Polydore Vergil, Three Books of Polydore Vergil’s English History: Comprising the Reigns of Henry VI, Edward IV, and Richard III from and Early Translation, Preserved among the MSS of the Old Royal Library in the British Museum, ed. H. Ellis (London: Camden Society, 1844), p. 226. 15 Besides widespread use of the imagery in churches that received Stanley patronage, a number of pubs are named for the ‘eagle and child’, particularly in the north west: in Bury, Ormskirk, Ramsbottom and Staveley, for example. There is also the ‘Eagle and Child Inn’ in Oxford, well known as the meeting place of the ‘Inklings’ literary set. In 1709 new coinage was issued for the Isle of Man, featuring the Stanley eagle and child crest. Eagle and child cap badges were given to men who volunteered for the first four City Pals battalions of the King’s (Liverpool Regiment) at the beginning of the First World War, as a gift from Lord Derby, who was heavily involved in their recruitment. See P. Hosker, ‘The Stanleys of Lathom and Ecclesiastical Patronage in the North-West of England during the Fifteenth Century’, Northern History, 18 (1982), 212–29; Philip Nelson, ‘Coinage of the Isle of Man’, The Numismatic Chronicle and Journal of the Numismatic Society (1899), 35–80; Keith Grieves, ‘Stanley, Edward George Villiers, Seventeenth Earl of Derby (1865–1948)’, ODNB <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36243> [accessed 4 Dec 2019]. 16 Andrew Taylor, The Songs and Travels of a Tudor Minstrel: Richard Sheale of Tamworth (Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2012), p. 42. Taylor’s chapter, ‘The Stanleys, The Stanley Poem and the Campaign of 1558’, pp. 40–81, notes the various depictions of the Stanley family in ballad literature.
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heir, until he hears of a mysterious child ‘cladde in a mantle of scarlette’, and sighted
in an ‘egles eyre’ in nearby Tarlesco wood.17 He orders the ‘babe down to be
fetched’ and brought to ‘Lathum Hall’ where he and his wife christen the child
‘Oskell’ and make him ‘theire heyre after them there to dwell’.18 According to the
poem, Oskell succeeds his adoptive father as lord of Lathom and has a daughter: ‘no
mo children, but that onlye was his heyre’, the poet says, recalling the romance
formula for singular female heirs.19 That daughter later becomes the wife of Sir John
Stanley (see Fig. 3, p. 236). The descendants are said to adopt an image of the eagle
and child as their crest, in commemoration of the miraculous event.20
Traditional accounts vary on whether the heraldic device or the associated
legend came first, but the visual-art record suggests the early existence of the legend.
In the choir of Manchester Cathedral, then the Collegiate Church of Ss Mary, Denys
and George, there are three separate depictions of the eagle and child legend.21 The
carvings on the south side of the choir date from the wardenship of James Stanley II
(d. 1515), whose tenure at the Collegiate Church began in the auspicious year of
For the relationship between Sir John Stanley and the putative author of ‘The Stanley Poem’, see my genealogy of the Stanley family (p. 235). 17 Thomas Stanley, ‘The Stanley Poem’, in The Palatine Anthology, ed. James Orchard Halliwell (London: C. and J. Adlard, for private circulation only, 1850), pp. 208–71 (p. 216). 18 ‘Stanley Poem’, pp. 216–17. 19 ‘Stanley Poem’, p. 218. 20 Maurice Keen notes that heraldry was not always inherited from parents but sometimes changed ‘at will’, sometimes to mark ‘the inheritance of a new fee [or] a new connection established by marriage’. Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984), p. 127. 21 Misericord carvings in medieval churches are remarkably diverse and there are various examples of romance-like imagery. As in heraldry, the eagle can signal nobility in this context, as well as a possible association with St John, according to Christian tradition. See Hardwick, English Medieval Misericords, esp. p. 56; Christa Grössinger, The World Upside-Down: English Misericords (London: Harvey Miller, 1997); Jennifer Fellows, ‘Romance Among the Choir Stalls: Middle English Romance Motifs on English Misericords’, in Profane Imagery in the Marginal Arts of the Middle Ages, ed. Elaine C. Block and Malcom Jones (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), pp. 123–41.
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1485, after his stepbrother’s accession to the throne.22 A misericord supporter shows
the same form of the eagle and child which can be found in later sources, where it is
a heraldic crest,23 and it is comparable to a sixteenth-century illustration of the griffin
and child heraldry in Eglamour.24 But the misericord itself, and a further carving on
the bench end, offer more narrative illustrations: they show the eagle’s nest in a tree,
the search party in procession, and Lathom Hall in the distance (see Figs 13–15, pp.
241–42).
Early historians of the Stanley family, such as John Seacombe, attempted to
account for the Stanley legend by insisting that it must have covered up the true story
of Oskell’s illegitimacy. Seacombe’s History of the House of Stanley (1776) reasons
that Thomas Lathom had an affair with a local woman and deceived his wife that the
bastard offspring was the miraculous eagle-child. Aiming to reconcile the legend
with the evidence of the legal record, Seacombe makes Isabel Lathom the sister of
‘Oskatel’ (see Fig. 4, p. 236). He imagines that Isabel ultimately triumphed over her
adopted brother as heir to Lathom when their father made a deathbed confession of
22 James Stanley’s uncle, of the same name, had also held the post. See F. R. Raines, The Rectors of Manchester and Wardens of the Collegiate Church of that Town, Part I, Chetham Society, New Series 5 (Manchester: Chetham Society, 1885); Clare Hartwell, Pevsner Architectural Guides: Manchester (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 45–58. 23 As in the mid-sixteenth-century manuscript, Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS Rawlinson b.39, p. 9. An image can be found at ‘The Romance of the Middle Ages’ <http://medievalromance.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/romance-home> [accessed 4 Dec 2019]. 24 Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS Douce 261, f. 40r. See Fig. 8 (p. 239). The manuscript is a transcription of an early print edition of Eglamour. Curiously, there is also a carving of an ape with a swaddled infant among the Manchester misericords (see Fig. 12, p. 241). This is a recurring image in medieval manuscript marginalia, as noted in Chapter 4, but being adjacent to the eagle and child carvings it is potentially evocative of romance, specifically Octavian. A monkey with a child appears in the heraldry of at least one aristocratic family, the earls of Kildare; although the related family lore is more prosaic than that of the Stanleys. The Kildare legend involves a monkey rescuing the infant John FitzThomas from a fire and the family is said to have added a monkey to their heraldry in recognition of the animal’s noble act. Charles William Fitzgerald, The Earls of Kildare and their Ancestors: From 1057 to 1773 (Dublin: Hodges, Smith & Co., 1857), p. 20.
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his infidelity. The Stanleys of Lathom adopted the eagle-and-child crest, in
Seacombe’s view, ‘in token of their conquest’ over Isabel’s ‘spurious brother’.25
John Roby repeats Seacombe’s account in his Traditions of Lancashire (1829) and
speculates that the eagle-and-child crest is meant to depict an eagle ‘preparing to
devour’ the illegitimate child.26 Later historians regard the legend as entirely
fictitious, although one remarks on the ‘strange circumstance’ of assuming a crest
‘bearing allusion to the adoption of an illegitimate child’.27 The legend is finally
sidelined in modern histories, with Michael Bennett implying that it is an
unnecessary ‘mythical embellishment’ in the already spectacular history of the
Stanley family.28
But resituating the legend in the context of its probable romance origins
reveals a political purpose that would be otherwise forgotten. The story is both
entirely a-historical and, I argue, quite deliberately evokes the romance trope of
illegitimacy. The tentative explanation of the Stanley legend in Cooper’s English
Romance is that ‘mysteriousness of origins … promises heroism’, and thus the
Stanleys were quite happy to incorporate such a legend into their own genealogy,
despite the implications of illegitimacy, and to locate it within ‘knowable historical
time’.29 But we may now expand on this reading. Firstly, it should be noted that
Isabel Lathom was not the lawful heir to the Lathom lands. Her father, Thomas
Lathom, was not heirless as the legend suggests, but had several children, including
25 John Seacombe, History of the House of Stanley (Preston: E. Sergent, 1776), pp. 49–62 (p. 61). Seacombe uses the word ‘spurious’ to denote bastardy here, as per the Latin derivation (see also my citations from the Promptorium in Chapter 2). 26 John Roby, Traditions of Lancashire, 2 vols, vol. 2 (London: Longman, 1829), pp. 125–55 (p. 155). 27 Edward Baines, History of the County Palatine and Duchy of Lancaster, 4 vols, vol. 1 (London: Fisher & Co., 1836), note on p. 248. 28 Bennett, ‘“Good Lords” and “King-Makers”’, p. 12. 29 Cooper, English Romance, p. 339.
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two sons before Isabel and two daughters after her.30 His eldest son, also called
Thomas, succeeded him in 1382 but died in 1384. The second son, Edward, appears
to have predeceased him. But the younger Thomas Lathom (d. 1384), Isabel’s elder
brother, left a living heir: a daughter, named Ellen. When John Stanley seized the
Lathom lands in 1385, he did so ‘in the teeth of opposition from John of Gaunt’,
since Gaunt was Ellen’s legal guardian.31 An entry in the Parliament Rolls for 1385/6
records that John Stanley had wrongfully obtained the manor of Lathom, by reason
of the minority of the heir of Thomas.32 But he is subsequently granted lordship of
Lathom by right of his wife: possibly after Ellen’s death, as she slips from the
record.33
The legend of the eagle and child, which appears to emerge in the subsequent
decades, is not only located within ‘knowable historical time’ but at the precise
moment of Stanley’s unlawful usurpation of the Lathom estate. The legend entirely
erases Ellen from the Stanley family history. As later historical accounts of the
Stanleys show, by dearth of references to Ellen or Isabel’s elder brothers, the legend
proves highly effective as a distraction from the less fabulous genealogy onto which
it is transposed. But more than this, by invoking the animal-foundling children of
Middle English romances, like Degrebell or Antony Fitz Griffin, the Stanley legend
30 See Fig. 2 (p. 235). 31 Bennett, Community, Class and Careerism, p. 216. 32 Lancashire Archives, DDK/1/5a (dated 1385/6). 33 He is recorded as lord of Lathom in document dated 1407/8 and a grant of special grace in 1408 gives Isabel and John Stanley, as ‘king’s knight, steward of the king’s household’, free warren in ‘their manors of Lathom’ and elsewhere, as had been given to the first Thomas Lathom in 1339. See National Archives, DL 25/1023; Calendar of the Charter Rolls, 1341–1471, vol. 5 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1916), p. 435; Lancashire Archives, DDK/1/2. Edward Baines writes that it is ‘probable’ Stanley successfully petitioned for the Lathom lands after John of Gaunt’s initial complaint. Baines, History of the County Palatine and Duchy of Lancaster, 4 vols, vol. 1, p. 249.
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alludes to a conception of rightful inheritance that confounds the ideology of
primogeniture and the principles of the common law of descent.
Historians of medieval culture have observed that heraldic devices could
‘symbolise politics and propaganda’, sometimes conveying quite ‘subtle’ messages,
especially when their ‘purposes [were] misrepresentation or even disinformation’.34
The eagle-and child emblem, and the story it memorialises, does not simply conceal
the truth but presents a ‘truth in … the lie – in the fantasies it embodies or in the
purpose it serves’.35 That is, the legend does not entirely conceal John Stanley’s
illegitimate usurpation of the Lathom inheritance but transforms it, by reference to
romance, into an extra-lawful, rightful succession. It refutes biological genealogy as
the source of rightful inheritance and celebrates the unexpected new heir. The good
fortune of the eagle-child mirrors that of John Stanley, non-aristocratic successor to
noble hereditary property, making the eagle-child symbolic of the political
opportunism that comes to characterise the most prominent Stanley descendants.36
Further Work
The thesis has analysed the idea of disinheritance in six Middle English romances, as
a framework for re-imagining rightful heirship, aside from medieval legal
34 Adrian Ailes, ‘Heraldry in Medieval England: Symbol of Politics and Propaganda’, in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display, pp. 83–104 (p. 83). 35 I borrow Paul Strohm’s description of a ‘romanticised’ medieval biography of Arthur, earl of Richmond, its narrative frame ‘drawn from romance’ and characterising Arthur’s mother, Joan of Navarre, as a ‘romance heroine’. Strohm, Empty Throne, p. 168. 36 When Henry Tudor joined the Stanley family by his mother’s marriage to Thomas Stanley, the eagle-and-child device perhaps gained an additional nuance, as a symbol of the “returning” Lancastrian heir. It is worth noting, in this regard, that Manchester was a focus of lady Margaret Beaufort’s patronage during the period of the Stanleys’ wardenship of the Collegiate Church, and therefore it is feasible that she might have been party to the commissioning of the choir carvings. See P. Hosker, as cited above; and M. G. Underwood, ‘Politics and Piety in the Household of Lady Margaret Beaufort’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 38 (1987), 39–52 (esp. p. 46).
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orthodoxies and practices. In the introduction, I positioned the thesis as a step
towards a more complete understanding of late-medieval inheritance culture, and
inheritance in the medieval imagination. Further stages of this project could include a
comprehensive study of the presentation of inheritance in all extant medieval
romances, as well as comparative investigations into hagiography, chronicle, and
other medieval genres. Besides painting a fuller picture of inheritance in medieval
literature, the focus on inheritance would be a new perspective from which to review
the relationships between romance and other genres. For example, the disinheritance
topos provides a thematic meeting point for the romance knight and the medieval
outlaw hero: the dispossessed noble becomes an outlaw or meets with outlaws in his
exile, in early proto-romances like Gesta Herewardi (c. 1200–1300), Anglo-Norman
‘ancestral’ romances like Fouke le Fitz Waryn (c. 1300–50), and later cross-overs
like The Tale of Gamelyn (c. 1400–1500) and A Gest of Robin Hood (c. 1500).37
Further examination of outlaws and the idea of outlawry in romances like Octavian
might help to illuminate the boundaries (or permeability of the boundaries) between
romances and outlaw literature and their audiences.38
37 Dates in brackets refer to surviving manuscripts (or print witnesses, in the case of A Gest of Robyn Hode), to indicate their closeness to the surviving Middle English romance manuscripts, in terms of circulation and possibly reception. Estimated dates of composition are earlier, as with the Middle English romances (see DMER). The Gesta Herewardii is thought to have originated in the early twelfth century, Fouke in the late thirteenth, Gamelyn in the mid-fourteenth and A Gest of Robyn Hode in the mid-fifteenth century. See Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, ed. Stephen Knight and Thomas H. Ohlgren (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997) and especially the editorial introductions to A Gest, Gamelyn and Fouke (pp. 80–89, 184–93 and 687–92). 38 See Christine Chism’s discussion of the ‘metacritical’ appropriation of the ‘aristocratic conventions’ of Middle English romances, in Robin Hood ballads, in ‘The Romance of the Road in Athelston and Two Late Medieval Robin Hood Ballads’, in Roadworks: Medieval Britain, Medieval Roads, ed. Valerie Allen and Ruth Evans (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), pp. 220-48 (p. 221). See also J. C. Holt, ‘The Origins and Audiences of the Ballads of Robin Hood’, Past & Present, 18 (1960), 89–110 (p. 103) and Stephen Knight, ‘Robin Hood Versus King Arthur’, in In Strange Countries: Medieval Literature and its Afterlife, ed. David Matthews and Anke Bernau (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), pp. 9–24.
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There is also more to be said about the romances’ portrayal of female heirs,
and comparisons between English and French romances. For example, while
historians identify the ‘Salic law’ of succession – excluding women from inheriting
the crown or ‘acting as the conduit through which a royal child could become king’ –
as a main point of difference between English and French views of female
inheritance, this distinction is not necessarily borne out in medieval romances.39 A
more wide-ranging survey of female heirs in medieval romances may ascertain the
degree of convergence or divergence between popular English and French beliefs
about female succession. Such a project could also investigate traces of a shift in
attitudes towards female heirs and matrilineal succession, in the English romances,
from those of the earliest surviving manuscripts (the shadowy maternal figures of
Havelok and Horn) to the latest (the maternal protagonists in Eglamour and Torrent).
I have not attempted to argue for the development of the disinheritance theme
through time in this thesis, preferring to collapse the traditional critical division of
early-surviving ‘hero-alone’ romances from late-surviving ‘family romances’,
towards a new reading of inheritance in the texts. But this question could be asked
again now, in light of my findings here. Likewise, since I have concentrated mainly
on non-Arthurian romances, the question of whether inheritance is a different
imaginative conceit within or without that narrative context has remained on the
margins of this thesis, but could be the focus of future studies.
Exciting recent interventions in romance scholarship – Aesthetics of
Possibility (2017), Thinking Medieval Romance (2018), Dangers of Medieval
Romance (2018) – make the case for critical analyses of the imaginative work and
39 Kathryn Reyerson and Thomas Kuehn, ‘Women and Law in France and Italy’, in Women in Medieval Western European Culture, ed. Linda E. Mitchell (New York and London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 131–42 (p. 132).
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philosophical engagements of the Middle English romances. The romances’ idea of
disinheritance has more to offer to this project than I have been able to investigate
thus far. I have explored disinheritance as a conceptual framework for re-imagining
rightful heirship and inheritance, but not the metaphorical potential of disinheritance
to speak to other ideas. One possibility, mentioned in Chapter 1, is that the
disinheritance narrative in these romances becomes, in effect, an allegory for the
transition from childhood to adulthood, given the coincidence of these experiences in
the stories. Pursuing this line of enquiry could result in a valuable contribution to
scholarship on medieval theories (and perhaps experiences) of childhood, as well as
augmenting studies of the medieval child as a literary figure (as in Allan Mitchell’s
2014 book, Becoming Human). Similarly, the discussion of unknowing in Chapter 2
could be pushed further, to consider how the romances’ ideas about heirship may
intervene in medieval philosophical discussions, beyond the matter of inheritance
itself, in the manner of Aesthetics of Possibility.
The present thesis makes its principal contribution to knowledge in the field
of Middle English romance scholarship, with a new reading of the matter of
inheritance in the genre. In particular, I have found that the romances sustain an
equivocal attitude towards primogeniture and genealogical inheritance, revising
earlier critical views of the relationship between the romance genre and a
conservative, pro-aristocratic ideology. As such, the thesis also invites a
reconsideration of uses of Middle English romance motifs in other medieval
contexts, especially where potentially serving a political purpose in relation to
inheritance or succession.
With regard to its approach, the thesis demonstrates the potential for
sustained close analyses of some Middle English romances which have not always
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found favour in romance scholarship, such as Eglamour. Setting aside notions of
literary deficiency, I have approached the romances as a rich imaginative resource
and considered the ideas, or lines of thinking, that might emerge when readers
respond to the texts’ provocations to engage critically with their narrative content.
Finally, then, the thesis makes a contribution to recent developments in romance
scholarship, noted above, by exploring how the Middle English romances might have
been read in their time (and how they can be read now), beyond plot structures,
contextual reflections and ideological functions, in terms of their generative,
imaginative work.
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Lists and Illustrations
Manuscripts
Manuscripts containing ‘disinheritance romances’ are listed below, in chronological
order as far as approximate dating allows (see DMER). I have indicated which of my
six romances appears in each manuscript, as well as others mentioned in the thesis.
For full contents and folio numbers, see DIMEV.
Laud Misc. 108 (c. 1300) Havelok; also King Horn.
Auchinleck (c. 1330) Bevis; also Amis and Amiloun, Horne Child
(a unique variant of King Horn), Lay le
Freine, Degare and Sir Orfeo.
Cambridge 4407 (c. 1375–1400) Havelok (fragments).
Egerton 2862 (c. 1375–1400) Bevis, Eglamour; also Amis and Amiloun
and Degare.
Ann Arbor 225 (c. 1420) Eglamour (fragments).
Cambridge Ff.2.38 (c. 1420–50) Bevis, Octavian, Eglamour, Tryamour; nine
in total, including Degare.
Lincoln 91 (c. 1440) Eglamour and Octavian.
Naples (c. 1450–60) Bevis; also Lybeaus Desconus.
Cotton Caligula A.ii (c. 1446–60) Octavian, Eglamour; also Lybeaus
Desconus and Emare.
Cambridge 175/96 (c. 1450–75) Bevis.
Cambridge O.2.13 (c. 1450–1500) Bevis.
Eng. Poet. D. 208 (c. 1450–1500) Bevis and Tryamour.
Chetham’s 8009 (c. 1470–1500) Bevis and Torrent.
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Romances
The six ‘disinheritance romances’ are listed below, in the chronological order of their
earliest manuscript witnesses, as far as approximate dating allows (see above and
DMER). I have indicated the number of manuscript witnesses for each romance, up
to 1500, with span dates. I have also listed key characters mentioned in my analysis.
For story summaries, see DMER.
Havelok the Dane (Havelok)
Manuscripts to c. 1500: two (one fragment), c. 1300–c. 1400
Havelok, son of King Birkabeyn of Denmark
Swanborw and Hefled, Havelok’s sisters
Goldeboru, daughter of King Athelwold of England and later Havelok’s wife
Godard, steward of Denmark and Havelok’s treacherous guardian
Godrich, steward of England and Goldeboru’s treacherous guardian
Grim the fisherman, Havelok’s adoptive father
Ubbe, a Danish earl
Bevis of Hampton (Bevis)
Manuscripts to c. 1500: eight, c. 1330–c. 1500
Sir Gii, earl of Hampton
Bevis, son of Sir Gii
Bevis’s mother (otherwise unnamed)
Devoun, emperor of Germany, becomes Bevis’s stepfather after killing Sir Gii
Saber of Wight, Bevis’s uncle and tutor
Terry, Saber of Wight’s eldest son
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Saber Florentin, Bevis’s uncle and bishop of Cologne
Josian, King Ermin’s daughter and later Bevis’s wife
Young Gii and Miles, twin sons of Bevis and Josian
Sir Eglamour of Artois (Eglamour)
Manuscripts to c. 1500: five, c. 1375–c. 1460
Eglamour, an earl’s son
Princeamor, the earl of Artois
Cristabell, Princeamor’s daughter
Degrebell, son of Eglamour and Cristabell
King of Egypt, Cristabell’s uncle, with whom she finds sanctuary
King of Israel, Degrebell’s adoptive father
Octavian (both versions)
Manuscripts to c. 1500: three, c. 1420–60
Octavian, emperor of Rome
Empress of Rome (in one manuscript named ‘Florence’)
Dowager empress of Rome, Octavian’s mother
Young Octavian and Florent, twin sons of the emperor and empress of Rome
Clement, Florent’s adoptive father
King of Jerusalem, with whom the empress and young Octavian find sanctuary
King of France, ally of emperor Octavian against Saracens
Marsabell, daughter of the Sultan of Babylon and later Florent’s wife
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Sir Tryamour (Tryamour)
Manuscripts to c. 1500: two, c. 1420–15001
King Ardus of Aragon
Queen Margaret of Aragon
Tryamour, son of Ardus and Margaret
Sir Marrok, Ardus’s treacherous steward
Sir Roger, killed protecting Margaret in her exile (with newborn Tryamour)
Sir Bernard, with whom Margaret and Tryamour find sanctuary
Helen of Hungary, child heiress and future wife of Tryamour
Two unnamed sons of Tryamour and Helen
Torrent of Portingale (Torrent)
Manuscripts: one, c. 1500
Torrent, an earl’s son
Calamond, King of Portugal
Desonell, daughter of the king of Portugal
Antony Fitz Griffin and Leobertus, twin sons of Torrent and Desonell
King of Greece, Antony’s adoptive father
King of Jerusalem, Leobertus’s adoptive father
1 Two further, later manuscript witnesses are given in DIMEV: a missing fragment in an Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson manuscript; and the Percy Folio.
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Figure 1
Manuscript Date Havelok Bevis Eglamour Octavian Tryamour Torrent
Laud Misc.
108
1300
Auchinleck 1330
Cambridge
4407
1375–
1400
(fragment)
Egerton 2862 1375–
1400
Ann Arbor 225 1420
Cambridge
Ff.2.38
1420–
50
Lincoln 91 1440
Naples 1450–
60
Cotton
Caligula A.ii
1446–
60
Cambridge
175/96
1450–
75
Cambridge
O.2.13
1450–
1500
Eng. Poet. D.
208
1450–
1500
Chetham’s
8009
1470–
1500
234
Figure 2 Genealogy of Stanleys of Lathom2
2 Only showing persons mentioned in the thesis, where historical sources are also given.
235
Figure 3
Stanley genealogy according to ‘The Stanley Poem’
Figure 4 Stanley genealogy according to Seacombe
236
Figure 5
Graphic tail-rhyme in Bevis (detail of Egerton 2862, f. 48r)
The lines highlighted above read:
And whenne þu art come to ylde
þat þu may armes wylde And art of Age
Then shalt þu com to Ingelonde
Wt werre to wynne into þyn honde þyne herytage
I wyl þe help wt al my myȝt
Wt dynt of swerd to gete þy ryȝt Be þu of ylde. 3
3 Photograph and transcription are my own.
237
Figure 6
London, British
Library, MS Yates
Thompson 22 (‘The
Brantwood Bible’, c.
1260), f. 298v detail.4
Figure 7
London, British
Library, MS Harley
7353, detail.5
Genealogy of Edward
IV.
4 Available from BLMS [accessed 4 Dec 2019], copyright The British Library. 5 Detail of the upper-right hand section of the roll. Available from BLMS [accessed 4 Dec 2019], copyright The British Library.
238
Figure 8
Oxford, Bodleian
Libraries, MS
Douce 261, f. 40r
detail.6
Figure 9
London, British
Library, MS
Additional 10292,
f. 100 detail.7
6 Available from Digital Bodleian < https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/inquire/p/570e1964-9656-4c81-a856-e4ea5b635c34> [accessed 4 Dec 2019], copyright Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. 7 Available from BLMS [accessed 4 Dec 2019], copyright The British Library.
239
Figure 10
London, British
Library, Stowe MS
17, f. 189v detail.8
Figure 11
London, British Library,
MS Sloane 2463
(‘Trotula’), f. 218v
detail.9
8 A fully digitised copy of the manuscript (the ‘Maastricht Hours’) is available from British Library Digitised Manuscripts, at <http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Stowe_MS_17> [accessed 4 Dec 2019], image copyright The British Library. 9 Available from BLMS [accessed 4 Dec 2019], copyright The British Library.
240
Figure 12
Misericord supporter
(c. 1500) in
Manchester Cathedral,
depicting an ape with
a child.10
Figure 13
Misericord supporter
(c. 1500) in
Manchester Cathedral,
depicting the Stanley
eagle and child in a
form reminiscent of
the heraldic crest.
10 All photographs of the Manchester Cathedral carvings are my own.
241
Figure 14
Choir bench end (c.
1500) in Manchester
Cathedral featuring
narrative illustration of
the ‘eagle and child’
legend.
Figure 15
Misericord carving (c.
1500) in Manchester
Cathedral featuring
narrative illustration of
the ‘eagle and child’
legend.
242
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