The Fifteenth Century, (ⅩⅣ): Essays Presented to Michael Hicks, ed.

摘要

The sixteen contributions to this festschrift for Michael Hicks are a measure of the respect and affection in which this distinguished historian of the fifteenth century is held. As his own oeuvre might lead us to expect, the bulk of the essays fall into two categories: some on political and military history, often dealing with 'Wars of the Roses' topics, and others on social and economic themes. All are of interest and it is both difficult and invidious to rank them. But perhaps the most widely read in the first category will be Anne Curry's piece on discipline in the Normandy garrisons under Henry Ⅴ, which usefully prints the two 'discipline' ordinances of 1419 and 1421; Gordon Kelvie's article on the Livery Act of 1429, helpfully related here to the Commons' concern with disorder in general at just this time; Ralph Griffiths's gripping story of Margaret Malefaunt's abduction and rape in Gower in 1438; and James Ross's enquiry into Edward Ⅳ's merciful treatment of traitors' children in the 1460s. Of the essays on social and economic subjects, the most wide-ranging is that of John Hare on the prosperity of late medieval Wessex (predominantly Hampshire and Wiltshire), buoyed up as it was by wool and cloth production and the large consumer market provided by the region's towns. The mid-century depression does not seem to have been particularly depressing in central southern England. Equally rewarding is Winifred A. Harwood's investigation of Southampton trading links with religious institutions in the port's hinterland. If fish and wine were, predictably, the main commodities of trade, monasteries and cathedrals played a larger and sometimes underestimated role in stimulating consumption and economic growth. Mark Page, writing on Hampshire and the parish tax of 1428, presents a more modulated picture in which depopulation has a central place, even though many villages continued to thrive. Two 'outliers' stand apart from these central themes. Matthew Holford contributes a technical but valuable study of the exchequer inquisitions post mortem, demonstrating yet again the wrongheadedness of the meddlesome reordering of the public records by nineteenth-century archivists; while Karen Stober, in the only essay venturing outside England, considers the relationship between two Augustinian houses in Catalonia and their local patrons and benefactors. Small gifts to the canons - hay, oats, eggs -are strikingly in evidence. Although the contributions to the festschrift can be thus grouped and classified, their broad diversity is a tribute the diversity of the honorand's own interests and to the range of interests embraced by those whom he has helped. The book is topped and tailed by a well-judged appreciation from Caroline Barron and a bibliography of Michael Hicks's numerous writings.