Gwilym Dodd

Small Group Teaching: Perceptions and Problems1

Seminars and tutorials are a standard part of delivering teaching in politics departments. However, the range of methods used in such small groups is wide and varied as are the perceptions of the purpose of small group teaching (SGT). On the basis of interviews with students and lecturers, we highlight important differences between what lecturers hope to achieve and what students expect to learn in these sessions. We aim to provide a better understanding of the cause of common problems in SGT and to explore how teaching staff might address these shortcomings to maximise the success of small group teaching.

The Rise of English, the Decline of French: Supplications to the English Crown, c. 1420–1450

It is now some thirty years since the researches of John H. Fisher and Malcolm Richardson highlighted the importance of the records of the central government in the process of English-language “vernacularization” in early-fifteenth-century England. Their publication of the Anthology of Chancery English provided irrefutable evidence of a linguistic transition that overtook some key types of government records, which began to be drafted in English where previously they had been written in Anglo-Norman French and, to a lesser extent, Latin. But while the existence of these early examples of “official” written English cannot be doubted, the forces that underlay this linguistic shift are less clear. From the very outset, doubts were expressed about the hypothesis advanced by Fisher and Richardson, that the spread of English in the records of the central government could be directly attributed to a “language policy” put into place by the Lancastrian regime and, in particular, to the personal initiative of Henry V, who made the momentous decision—from a linguistic point of view—to have his signet letters written in English rather than French in July 1417. But it is only more recently that a more detailed and robust criticism has been directed toward these ideas. In an article published in 2004, Michael Benskin rightly pointed out that the very term “Chancery English,” or “Chancery Standard,” as applied in the work of Fisher and Richardson is a misnomer, since only a minority of the documents contained within the Anthology were actually produced within the Chancery itself. He also questioned the extent to which the Chancery could be credited with an enlightened attitude toward written English, given that some of its most prestigious records—the close, patent, and statute rolls—continued to be written in Latin or French throughout the fifteenth century.

Was Thomas Favent a political pamphleteer? Faction and politics in later fourteenth-century London

Thomas Favents Historia has long been recognised as an important source for the turbulent middle years of Richard IIs reign, in particular for its praise of the actions of the Lords Appellant in the Merciless Parliament of 1388. But why did Favent write the Historia and for whom was it written? In recent years the Historia has for the first time been subjected to detailed scrutiny and a case has made for regarding it as a political pamphlet written for a community of reform-minded civil servants eager to celebrate the achievements of parliament. This study offers an alternative explanation. It seeks to place the Historia more squarely within the turbulent environment of Londons factional politics. Favents factional affiliations are easily discerned, but his motivations for writing the Historia were complex and multi-faceted. A new reading of this text suggests, in fact, that it was written not to perpetuate divisions within London, but to draw a line underneath them. The article highlights the use of textual representation to shape and ultimately control memories of political conflict.

Multiple-clause petitions to the English parliament in the later Middle Ages: instruments of pragmatism or persuasion?

This discussion considers how and why some parliamentary private petitions were written as lists of separate requests or complaints between the late thirteenth and mid-fifteenth centuries. These petitions constitute a small, but visually distinctive, sub-group of The National Archives series SC 8 (‘Ancient Petitions’). Although the practicalities of writing complicated requests were often a key factor, the article argues that other more subtle considerations could lead to the adoption of a ‘multiple-clause’ petition: it could be part of a rhetorical strategy; it might have been determined by bureaucratic expediency; or it could indicate co-operation between petitioners with a common cause. Overall, the discussion contributes to our understanding of the mechanics of writing petitions in the late medieval period and it offers new insights into the strategies adopted by petitioners to gain a favourable outcome to their requests.

Reason, Conscience and Equity: Bishops as the King's Judges in Later Medieval England

It has long been recognized that many late medieval bishops were heavily involved in secular government. Scholars have tended to characterize these activities in fairly general terms, labelling those who chose to serve the crown as ‘administrators’, ‘bureaucrats’ or ‘civil servants’. In fact, they are better described as king’s judges, for a large part of what bishops did in government was dispensing justice in the king’s name. The first part of this article explores the contexts of this judicial activity, showing that bishops were especially active in institutions such as parliament, chancery and the council which offered justice to the king’s subjects on a discretionary basis. Discretionary justice was closely informed by the precepts of natural law, which in turn derived authority from the abstract notion of the divine will. The second half of the article suggests that the strong theological underpinning of discretionary justice meant that bishops’ involvement in secular government did not stand in opposition to their spiritual vocation or their role as leaders of the church. I argue that the sweeping and rather disparaging contemporary and modern characterizations of ‘civil-servant’ bishops as self-serving careerists ought to be replaced by a more nuanced understanding of the rationale and motivation of those senior clergymen who involved themselves in secular governance.

Corruption in the Fourteenth-Century English State

This article explores manifestations of corruption among local officeholders and royal judges who exercised authority on the kings behalf. It explores the complex and often contradictory perceptions of official malpractice among these men. The king in particular understood the danger of his representatives sullying the crowns reputation. Yet, the measures taken to combat corruption were mostly ineffective and often proved to be empty rhetoric. The discussion shows how new notions of public service and accountability clashed with older forms of social and political organization founded on lordship and hierarchy. It also suggests that it was in addressing and finally tackling corruption that the origins of a “civil service” may be found.

Richard II and the Fiction of Majority Rule

For Thomas Walsingham, one of the first occasions when Richard II revealed the true nature of his rule came in the Summer of 1383 when, accompanied by his new queen, he went on a “shrine-crawl” of the eastern counties, imposing himself and his household on the hospitality of the region’s abbeys, apparently showing little consideration for the expense and inconvenience that his visits caused. It was not simply that the king had received “an abundance of gifts from both religious and seculars,” but that these gifts had been “bestowed in great abundance upon the foreign countrymen of the queen, her Bohemians.”2 Moreover, when he had stayed at the abbey of Bury (St Edmunds) Richard had peremptorily confirmed Abbot John Timworth in office even though the latter had not yet received papal confirmation.3 “After such action,” Walsingham commented, “the king’s unreliability, and that of his council, became known far and wide.” All in all, if Walsingham’s account represented broader opinion, Richard’s progress through the shires had been a public relations disaster. It had exposed some deep-seated flaws in the exercise of his kingship—the unnecessary extravagance of his household, the misappropriation of money and the injudicious exercise of the royal prerogative.

The reign of Edward II : new perspectives

Edward II presided over a turbulent and politically charged period of English history, but to date he has been relatively neglected in comparison to other fourteenth and fifteenth-century kings. This book offers a significant re-appraisal of a much maligned monarch and his historical importance, making use of the latest empirical research and revisionist theories, and concentrating on people and personalities, perceptions and expectations, rather than dry constitutional analysis. Papers consider both the institutional and the personal facets of Edward IIs life and rule: his sexual reputation, the royal court, the role of the kings household knights, the nature of law and parliament in the reign, and Englands relations with Ireland and Europe. Contributors: J. S. HAMILTON, W. M. ORMROD, IAN MORTIMER, MICHAEL PRESTWICH, ALISTAIR TEBBIT, W. R. CHILDS, PAUL DRYBURGH, ANTHONY MUSSON, GWILYM DODD, ALISON MARSHALL, MARTYN LAWRENCE, SEYMOUR PHILLIPS.

Calais: An English Town in France, 1347–1558, and: The Calais Garrison: War and Military Service in England, 1436–1558 (review)

In any case, it is clear from the full range of subjects on which he has published that Jonathan Riley-Smith’s contribution to the subject matter of the crusades is far wider in method and scope than the argument for which he is most famous. Several of the essays collected here – the majority even – could be broadly considered to be materialist (in the philosophical sense) in that they are close investigations of social or political structures rather than the intellectual mindset of the crusader. So, for example, four papers, written over a span of thirty years, examine the government and politics of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. For the military historian, the essay that will probably be of most interest is the chapter “Casualties and the Number of Knights on the First Crusade,” with its detailed prosopographical appendix. Historians of the First Crusade have speculated rather widely on the numbers of participants, with room for such speculation being created by the inconsistency of the sources. Jonathan Riley-Smith avoids a ‘pick and choose’ approach to the sources by assembling as thorough a list of known crusaders as possible and extrapolating some figures from them, leading to his conclusion that around 5,000 knights took part in the First Crusade. The other essay most likely to interest military historians is that entitled “Were the Templars guilty?”. Published in 2004, this is a rather iconoclastic essay as Jonathan Riley-Smith argues against the modern consensus that evidence against the Templars was fabricated in order to dispossess the order of their wealth. Instead, as he puts it ‘I have come to believe that the evidence cannot all be dismissed out of hand or interpreted solely as the construct of an ambitious government.’ All in all this is an important and useful collection and furthermore one which as well as providing ready reference to key articles in crusading scholarship can be read for pleasure thanks to Jonathan Riley-Smith’s lucid writing style.