TY - JOUR
AU1 - Oliver, Clementine
AB - Abstract This article offers new information regarding a little-known manuscript of the Historia Mirabilis Parliamenti by Thomas Fovent, found in a private collection in New York, and presents a more complete portrait of the author's life. Fovent's Historia is a lively account of the Merciless Parliament of 1388 and has long been known to scholars from May McKisack's 1926 edition published in the Camden Miscellany, based on the only known manuscript in the Bodleian Library. The recent digitization of Thomas Fovent's will by The National Archives provides readily available definitive proof that Fovent lived and worked as part of London's bureaucratic milieu in the later fourteenth century. The Historia Mirabilis Parliamenti is a text that has enjoyed a remarkable longevity across the centuries, resurfacing periodically to captivate a new audience of readers with a lively tale of political corruption, courtroom drama and gallows scenes occurring during the treason trials of 1388. This article presents new information regarding a little-known manuscript of the Historia Mirabilis Parliamenti, as well as a detailed portrait of the author Thomas Fovent's life as revealed by his will. This short, vitriolic and topical account of the Merciless Parliament is best known to scholars from May McKisack's 1926 edition published in the Camden Miscellany. McKisack's edition was based on the only known manuscript of the Historia, MS. Bodley Rolls 9, acquired by the Bodleian Library in about 1607 and listed in the Summary Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library as Bodleian Miscellaneous MSS. 2963.1 This is a small roll made up of four parchment membranes stitched together, and it measures 108 by 111/8 inches. The length of each of the first three sheets is thirty-two inches; the fourth sheet is twelve inches. It has a foliated border and contains throughout small one-line initials and paragraph marks, both in blue on red pen-flourish fields. The handwriting dates from the late fourteenth century. The manuscript's full title –Hic incipit Historia sive narracio de modo et forma mirabilis parliamenti apud Westmonasterium anno domini millesimo CCCLXXXVJ, regni vero Regis Ricardi Secundi post conquestum anno decimo, per Thomam Fauent clericum indictata– is not original to the narrative itself and was added subsequently by a rubricator, for it misleadingly refers to the parliament of 1386, the so-called Wonderful Parliament. McKisack observed that this manuscript clearly is not the author's original draft; not only is the text free from corrections, but there are both grammatical errors and incorrect dates. She concludes that it was copied by a scribe whose Latin was rather poor. Although the manuscript is in the format of a roll, McKisack thought it best to describe the Historia as a ‘political pamphlet’, because of the topical and scurrilous nature of the contents. As the subject was parliament, possibly the Historia's roll format was chosen in imitation of the parliament rolls, which the author used as a source for the charges against those tried in 1388. Indeed this author has argued elsewhere that we should regard the late fourteenth-century Historia as both an early instance of a political pamphlet and an independent opinion piece intended by its author to promote parliament as the institution best capable of exposing government corruption and bringing about reform.2 The fourteenth-century account was printed in translation in 1641 as a pamphlet. This seventeenth-century publication of the Historia provides an inexact translation of the original titled An historical narration of the manner and forme of that memorable Parliament which wrought wonders. Begun at Westminster 1386 in the tenth year of the reigne of King Richard the Second, and perhaps circulated in anticipation of Archbishop Laud's trial.3 It was printed again in 1641 with a supplementary account of Richard II's life and death under a slightly different title, and once more in a much abridged form in ‘the yeare of much feare, 1643’. The great number of copies dating from 1641 which have survived suggests a large print run.4 However, 1641 was not the first time the Historia was republished, as it were. There exists another little-known manuscript of the Historia written in a hand dating from the second quarter of the fifteenth century, and found in a private collection in Manhattan, New York.5 This manuscript had belonged to the antiquary Craven Ord until it was sold in 1830, and it subsequently became part of Sir Thomas Phillipps's collection.6 In 1936 it was acquired by Howard L. Goodhart for his daughter Phyllis, and it now belongs to Howard L. Goodhart's grandson, John Gordan III, who has kindly allowed it to be photographed (Figure 1). The manuscript was first noticed by De Ricci in his Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada, but there it was listed under a different title and of anonymous authorship.7 It seems that only a few scholars have examined it, and apart from a brief mention by Phyllis Goodhart Gordan in the Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin in 1939, it has never been identified in print as a copy of Thomas Favent's Historia Mirabilis Parliamenti, although the content is nearly identical to MS. Bodley Rolls 9.8 Figure 1. Open in new tabDownload slide New York, Gordan MS. of the Historia Mirabilis Parliamenti by Thomas Fovent. Reproduced by kind permission of John Gordan III. The Gordan manuscript measures 104 by 111/8 inches. It comprises five sheets stitched together; the length of each of the first three sheets is twenty-one inches; the fourth sheet is twenty-nine inches; the fifth sheet is twelve inches. It is complete with the exception of two lines that have been dropped at the very end of the first sheet. Proper names are occasionally misspelled, such as ‘Bealknamp’ for ‘Bealknap’. The handwriting is clear and unchanging to the manuscript's end, although the hand seems somewhat inferior when compared with that of the Bodleian scribe. Certainly the layout of the text is not as neat, for there is no right-hand margin to speak of – the text runs nearly all the way to the edge. Furthermore the manuscript decorations were never completed, although care was taken to leave spacing for them throughout. Interestingly enough the arrangement of the blank spaces left for the unfinished decorations is identical to the spacing of the pen-flourished initials and paragraph marks in the Bodleian MS., suggesting the possibility that the Gordan scribe used the Bodleian MS. as his model. Perhaps the decorations proved too costly to be completed, and so the manuscript also was left without author and title which presumably would have been added by the illuminator or rubricator. The current descriptive title –Succincta de facinoribus Alexandri Nevyle Archiepiscopi Eboracensis; Rob. De Veer, Ducis Hiberniae; Mich. De La Pole, Com Suff., Cancellarii Angliae; Rob. Tresyllan, Capitalis Justiciarii, et Nich. Brembre, militis, Consiliariorum intimorum Rich. II Regis et de eorum poenis Historia– was added in a sixteenth-century hand to the outside of the roll by someone who had no knowledge of the original source. While it is not known why this copy of the Historia was made in the second quarter of the fifteenth century, or the exact year, this author would conjecture that it was one of the many texts produced in association with the duke of Suffolk's impeachment trial in early 1450.9 The unpopular duke of Suffolk was the grandson of Michael de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, who is mentioned in the Historia in connection with his own impeachment in the Wonderful Parliament of 1386 and as one of the appellees in the Merciless Parliament of 1388. And what of the Historia's author? In its standardized form, the author's name is recorded in modern bibliographies as Thomas Favent, but we find him in the administrative records of the late fourteenth century as Thomas Fovent. In her introduction to her 1926 edition of the Historia, May McKisack provided what biographical information she could discover about him. McKisack identified him as a clerk of the diocese of Salisbury, who in 1393 received a papal licence to choose his confessor, and in 1400 received a ratification of his estate in the church of Dinton.10 McKisack noted that Dinton was within two miles of Fovant, Wiltshire, and suggested that this was the origin of the family name. She also believed Thomas was related to Cecily Fovent, abbess of Shaftesbury from 1398 to 1423, and so first suggested that the correct spelling of the author's name was Fovent, not Favent. This biographical sketch remained unchanged over the decades until the relatively recent publication of John Taylor's entry for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.11 Taylor added to McKisack's portrait by noting that there appears in the governmental records of the late fourteenth century a Thomas Fovent who was appointed collector of tonnage and poundage in the port of London from 1391 to 1395. Taylor suggests that this Thomas Fovent would have been ideally situated to write about events in London, but he cautions that while it is tempting to identify the London customs collector with McKisack's Salisbury clerk, the evidence remains insufficient. Recently this author argued that the author of the Historia certainly must be the same man who held a customs post in the port of London in the thirteen-nineties.12 Given the pamphlet's subject and tone, it made perfect sense that the author was a Londoner who made his living as a civil servant, much as did Geoffrey Chaucer, and had a keen interest in politics at both the local and national level. However, with the recent digitization of Thomas Fovent's will (The National Archives' DocumentsOnline, Prob 11/2A), we now have readily available the definitive proof that McKisack's man and the London customs collector are one and the same.13 As will be explained in detail in the following paragraphs, the will demonstrates that Fovent was indeed a Londoner with strong family ties to Shaftesbury and Wiltshire. Fovent's will was sealed on 6 April 1404 at the hospital of St. Mary near London (St. Mary's Bishopsgate); it was proved on 7 June 1404 and his executors were acquitted on 4 November. The will provides considerable further evidence about the career of the author of MS. Bodley Rolls 9. Thomas came from a well-situated family in the south of England. His father Robert Osegood alias Fovent (d. 1377) was from the town of Fovant in Wiltshire, but moved to Shaftesbury in the thirteen-fifties shortly after his marriage to Margery Platel, Thomas's mother. (Presumably it was after the move to Shaftesbury that the family name changed from Osegood to Fovent.) Thomas's father was elected mayor of Shaftesbury in 1355, and represented the borough in parliament that same year. Thomas also had an older brother named Robert, who received some property from his mother Margery in 1385, and who represented Shaftesbury in parliament in 1390.This brother married well, for Robert's wife Margaret was the heir to the extensive Herring estates in Dorset. Thomas also had two sisters, Cecily, who became abbess of Shaftesbury in 1398 to her death in 1423, and Agnes, of whom little is known except that she was the widow of Robert Fleming.14 All three of the siblings received bequests in Thomas's will, as discussed below. At some point in the thirteen-eighties, perhaps once he had reached the age of majority, Thomas came to London. It seems certain that he was in the city in 1388, for his Historia appears to be an eyewitness account. It is unclear how he made his living at first, for he does not appear in the administrative records until the early thirteen-nineties. All that can be said of his early life is that he seems to have had a keen interest in parliamentary politics and that he watched the executions of those judged traitors in 1388 with a certain amount of relish, as evidenced by his Historia.15 Thus, we should consider the Historia as a London text, thereby adding political pamphleteering to the already great variety of London literary practices in this period.16 In 1926, T. F. Tout conjectured that Fovent was attached to the household of one of the Lords Appellant, but it is noteworthy that neither Thomas's will nor the administrative records for the period provide any evidence of this connection, and thus the Historia should not be read as a calculated piece of Appellant propaganda.17 Rather Thomas came from a family with a tradition of participation in parliamentary politics. As no other such political writing has been attributed to Thomas's authorship, possibly the Historia was a youthful endeavour at joining the circle of London writers and bureaucrats who had developed an interest in the reformist politics of the period.18 Or perhaps Thomas was naturally carried away by the excitement of events as they unfolded in the city in 1388 and hoped to disseminate news of this parliamentary victory against the crown. In 1390, Thomas was appointed to his first benefice at the church of Berwick St. Leonard in Wiltshire by the patronage of the abbess and convent of Shaftesbury, where his sister was a nun.19 Nevertheless he remained in the city, for between the years 1391 and 1395 he worked as a collector of the petty subsidy (also known as tonnage and poundage) in the port of London.20 The politics of customs appointments had undergone reform in the late thirteen-eighties in response to the demands of the parliamentary Commons, and it seems that Fovent's appointment was part of the shift from emphasizing local burgesses to civil servants in the London customs.21 It is not clear how Thomas secured his job as a customs officer. As Gwilym Dodd recently noted, the entry in the Calendar of Fine Rolls states that Fovent's appointment was by bill of treasurer. The treasurer at this time was John Waltham, bishop of Salisbury, and perhaps there was some local and more personal connection between the bishop and the clerk, for Waltham's diocese included the parish of Berwick St. Leonard along with most of Wiltshire and Dorset. Dodd describes Waltham as having close ties with the Appellants, particularly Thomas Arundel, and suggests that Waltham's initial sympathy for the Appellant cause may have influenced Fovent's account of the Merciless Parliament.22 It should be noted, however, that Waltham became bishop of Salisbury as a direct result of the papal translations of bishops made at the end of the Merciless Parliament. Fovent condemns these translations in a biting passage in his Historia, arguing that Urban VI's motives were purely monetary, and that the Commons' debates on this matter in parliament were ignored.23 It is doubtful that Waltham would have approved of such an opinion, and therefore it is unlikely that he ever read Fovent's account. As treasurer, Waltham showed himself committed to reforming the collection of export duties, and so Fovent's appointment to customs should be seen as part of a programme of reforms typical of Waltham's earlier work as keeper of the rolls of chancery, where he introduced innovations aimed at increasing efficiency.24 Waltham remained treasurer until his death in 1395, and Fovent's appointment to customs was terminated in that year. By the end of the decade Thomas's fortunes were once again on the rise, for we can observe him making the steady climb up the ecclesiastical ladder. In 1398 Thomas's sister Cecily was elected abbess of Shaftesbury. In 1399, she effected his institution to the church of Donhead St. Andrew. Fovent remained here only briefly – later the same year, by the process of exchange with the parson of another parish, he was advanced to Dinton church, a benefice that provided him with a significantly better living worth twenty-two pounds per annum.25 The vicar of Dinton since 1393 had been Robert Arkilby, and upon his death in 1403, Thomas appointed John Newman in Arkilby's place.26 Newman is mentioned in Thomas's will as owing him twenty-seven marks and ten shillings in rents from the previous year; Thomas specified that ten marks from this debt were to go to the poor of the parishes of Dinton and Teffont Magna in Wiltshire. To Newman specifically, whom he must have regarded as a friend, Thomas left all of his household goods at Dinton, requesting that he pray for his soul. It would seem that Thomas remained in London during these years; he was involved in a protracted suit and countersuit for debt with one William Wolaston of London, perhaps the same Wolaston who is listed as an unbeneficed clergyman in the London taxation records of the clergy for 1380 and 1381.27 In 1396, Thomas and a partner, Thomas Tollarton, also a clerk, evidently purchased or became the mortgagees on some business property on Thames Street in the parish of St. Dunstan in the East, for we have a deed releasing them from claims against the property for a period of twelve years.28 Thomas also might have owned an estate in Essex, for the Calendar of Fine Rolls contains an order to the escheator of Essex dated 18 July 1404 regarding the lands of Thomas Fovent, clerk; however, no equivalent record survives in the Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem.29 Thomas's will does hint that he had at least one relationship of a more personal nature, however. Thomas named a woman, Christina Bechefont, as supervisor of the executors of his estate, Nicholas Chamberleyn and Roger Copeland. She was also to receive the residue of all goods, after his debts had been paid. As it was unusual for a woman to be named as supervisor over the executors of an estate, this suggests that he and Christina had a close relationship. Unfortunately the will provides no further clues regarding the identity of Christina or his executors, and their names have yet to be discovered elsewhere. Much of the rest of the will is concerned with the customary bequests to various religious and charitable institutions in London. To the high altar of St. Paul's, he left twenty pence. Other bequests were made to the Crutched Friars of London and St. Katherine's Hospital, both houses located in the south-eastern end of the city near to the Custom House or Woolwharf. To the Crutched Friars, he left six shillings and eight pence to celebrate a mass of requiem preceded by a dirge immediately after his death, and the subprior there was to receive forty pence. The bequest to St. Katherine's in particular is very detailed, specifying that each brother and chaplain without a benefice serving in the choir receive forty pence; each sister of the hospital two shillings; each clerk there six pence; each boy four pence; each bedeswoman four pence; and each poor person living within the cloister of the hospital four pence. Thomas most likely had a special attachment to this place dating from his job at customs, although the will does not mention any individuals at St. Katherine's by name. (This area of the city is also not far from Essex, although whether Thomas owned property there remains unconfirmed.) It is unlikely that Thomas was very old when he died, perhaps in his forties, for his sister Cecily and his brother Robert both outlived him by many years. Robert lived until at least 1426 when his name was last recorded as a witness to a property conveyance in Shaftesbury, and Cecily died in 1423.30 Although Thomas lived out his days in London, he remained attached to his family and home in Shaftesbury. To his sister Agnes, he left ten marks and his household goods in Shaftesbury; to his brother Robert, he left a pair of silver salts. Cecily the abbess is mentioned repeatedly in connection with his benefice at Dinton; she was to receive the greater portion of the twenty-seven marks and ten shillings owed to him by his vicar, John Newman, from the previous year, as well as the annual rents from Dinton church, totalling forty-seven marks. He willed that she should agree with his successors as rectors of Dinton regarding the repair of the church, so that the executors should not be troubled with such arrangements in the future. Cecily was also to receive a further ten pounds owed to him by two Londoners whom the will identifies only as John D. and Haymo Elioth, grocer of the City of London. He also left twenty pence to the high altar of Shaftesbury church, and a silver chalice to the altar of St. Michael there. Interestingly, all of the Fovent siblings co-operated in the establishment of a chantry in Shaftesbury abbey, although the eldest brother Robert seems to have been largely responsible for the preparations. The chantry was to be maintained from property worth twenty-two pounds a year; the rule of ‘St. Katherine's chantry’ was established in 1415, and provided for services for the abbess and her kinsfolk.31 Thomas's will establishes that he was a man of no small means when he died. The bequests made in the will are in the range of sixty-five pounds; this of course does not include the value of any real property that he might have owned. The careful preparations he made for his own death resulted in a small irony nonetheless, one that would not have been lost on a writer whose own prose tended towards biting satire. Thomas's pamphlet about the Merciless Parliament is notable for many things, but in particular the description of Chief Justice Robert Tresilian's capture and arrest. According to the Historia, Tresilian was captured cowering under a table covered with a tablecloth in a house next to Westminster palace, his appearance transformed so that he looked more like a beggar than a king's justice. After a perfunctory trial in parliament, Tresilian was taken to the Tower for his execution, and once upon the gallows he was stripped of his clothes, revealing ‘certain amulets with certain signs painted in them like the signs of heaven; and the head of a devil painted, and the names of many of the devils were written there’.32 Fovent reported that these things were taken away, and the chief justice was hanged naked. Tresilian's wife begged the king for permission to take her husband's body, and he was buried at Greyfriars. Thomas Fovent too was buried at Greyfriars, as he requested in his will. According to the list of burials compiled by a friar of the house about 1526 and printed in C. L. Kingsford, The Grey Friars of London, Thomas's final resting place in the chapel of St. Francis was alongside Robert Tresilian.33 Footnotes * The author wishes to thank Judith Bennett, Cynthia Herrup, Maryanne Kowaleski, Pamela Robinson and Christopher Whittick for their assistance with this article. The anonymous reader's comments were immensely helpful in making revisions. The photograph was taken by Curtis Oliver. The author is particularly grateful to John Gordan III for allowing her to view and photograph his manuscript in Sept. 2006, and for his generosity with his time and his interest in her research. She wishes especially to thank Caroline Barron for telling her of the Gordan manuscript in the first place, and for providing countless suggestions and corrections to this article. This is properly Caroline's discovery, although of course any errors of fact or interpretation are the author's. 1 Thomas Favent, Historia sive narracio de modo et forma mirabilis parliamenti apud Westmonasterium …, ed. M. McKisack, Camden Miscellany XIV (Camden 3rd ser., xxxvii, 1926) (hereafter Historia). A recent translation of the Historia by Andrew Galloway is available in the appendix to The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Medieval England, ed. E. Steiner and C. Barrington (Ithaca, N.Y., 2002). 2 C. Oliver, ‘A political pamphleteer in late medieval England: Thomas Fovent, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Usk, and the Merciless Parliament of 1388’, New Medieval Literatures, vi, ed. D. Lawton, R. Copeland and W. Scase (Oxford, 2003), 167–98. 3 Laud's trial followed the unsuccessful impeachment proceedings against the earl of Strafford in the spring of 1641. Perhaps the printing of Fovent's account of the Merciless Parliament about this time reflects the concern to circulate a more successful example of a parliamentary treason trial before commencing with Laud's, which did not occur until 1644. On the Strafford and Laud trials, see most recently D. A. Orr, Treason and the State: Law, Politics and Ideology in the English Civil War (Cambridge, 2002). Both Strafford and Laud were executed by a bill of attainder. For a lively account of the failure of Strafford's impeachment trial, see also the review of M. Janson, Proceedings in the Opening Session of the Long Parliament: House of Commons and the Strafford Trial (Volume 3:22 March–17 April 1641) by C. S. Lerner, ‘Impeachment, attainder, and a true constitutional crisis: lessons from the Strafford trial’ , University of Chicago Law Rev. , lxix ( 2002 ), 2057 – 101 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close . 4 The first printing from 1641 is entitled An historical narration of the manner and forme of that memorable Parliament, which wrought wonders. Begun at Westminster 1386 in the tenth yeare of the reigne of King Richard the Second, and attributes authorship to Thomas Fannant. There survive 28 copies in library archives. The second printing with a supplementary account of the life and death of Richard II is entitled A True Relation of that Memorable Parliament, which wrought wonders, and 21 copies survive. This version contains a reproduction of Renold Elstrack's engraved portrait of Richard II, originally produced for Henry Holland's Basiliωlogia (1618). The 1643 printing is entitled A True Declaration of that Memorable Parliament which wrought wonders, and only three copies have been catalogued. All three versions are available in their entirety on Early English Books Online <http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home> [accessed 7 March 2008]. 5 The Gordan manuscript hand shows influences of Secretary; the author is indebted to Pamela Robinson for her assistance with dating the Gordan manuscript. 6 For a recent and remarkably even-handed portrait of the notorious 19th-century bibliophile, see A. Bell, ‘Phillipps, Sir Thomas, baronet (1792–1872)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22143> [accessed 7 March 2008]. 7 S. De Ricci, Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada (3 vols., New York, 1935–40), ii. 1684. 8 Phyllis Goodhart Gordan's article entitled ‘Manuscript hunters’ was published in the Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin , xix ( 1939 ), 2 – 6 . Gordan had consulted with V. H. Galbraith regarding her roll, and it was Galbraith who took her to the Institute of Historical Research where she learned of McKisack's edition of MS. Bodley Rolls 9, published in the Camden Miscellany. 9 On the many verses and bills attacking Suffolk that circulated about this time, see V. J. Scattergood, Politics and Poetry in the 15th Century (1971), pp. 157–65; W. Scase, Literature and Complaint in England, 1272–1553 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 121–9. 10 Calendar of Papal Registers, Papal Letters, 1362–1404, p. 495; Calendar of Patent Rolls 1399–1401, p. 138. 11 J. Taylor, ‘Favent, Thomas (fl. 1388–1400)’, O.D.N.B. <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/50200> [accessed 7 March 2008]. 12 Oliver, pp. 186–92. 13 Thomas Fovent's will was proved by the prerogative court of Canterbury, but it seems to have gone unnoticed in the archives until it was digitized and therefore made widely available on The National Archives' DocumentsOnline <http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline/wills.asp> [accessed 7 March 2008]. It is here that this author found the will in July 2006. 14 Thomas's brother Robert is the subject of a fairly detailed entry by L. S. Woodger in The House of Commons: 1386–1421, ed. J. S. Roskell (4 vols., Stroud, 1992), iii. 113–14 (hereafter Woodger, ‘Robert Fovent’). This entry has been relied upon for the information regarding Thomas's parents and siblings. 15 Historia, pp. 16–20. 16 On proto-pamphleteering, see W. Scase, ‘“Strange and wonderful bills”: bill-casting and political discourse in late medieval England’ , New Medieval Literatures , ii ( 1998 ), 225 – 48 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close . 17 T. F. Tout, ‘The English parliament and public opinion, 1376–88’, in Historical Studies of the English Parliament, ed. E. B. Fryde and E. Miller (2 vols., Cambridge, 1970), i. 298–315, at pp. 311–12. 18 K. Kerby-Fulton and S. Justice, ‘Langlandian reading circles and the civil service in London and Dublin, 1380–1427’ , New Medieval Literatures , i ( 1997 ), 59 – 83 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close . 19 The Register of John Waltham, Bishop of Salisbury 1388–95, ed. T. C. B. Timmins (Woodbridge, 1994), p. 76. 20 Calendar of Fine Rolls, xi. 3, 104; Cal. Pat. Rolls 1391–6, p. 448. 21 O. Coleman, ‘Collectors of customs in London’, Studies in London History, ed. A. E. J. Hollaender and W. Kellaway (1969), pp. 181–94, at p. 183. 22 G. Dodd, ‘Changing perspectives: parliament, poetry, and the “civil service” under Richard II and Henry IV’ , Parliamentary Hist. , xxv ( 2006 ), 299 – 322 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close , at p. 314, n. 63. While Dodd is certainly correct in suggesting that Waltham was responsible for Fovent's appointment to customs, this connection does not necessarily imply that Fovent was by extension an Appellant partisan. Waltham's own career was politically complex, and it is difficult to ascribe Appellant sympathies to a man who became a close friend and valued adviser of the king from Apr. 1390, when he attended a meeting of the king's council and renewed his involvement in the government. Richard then appointed him treasurer in May 1391. On Waltham's career, see R. G. Davies, ‘Waltham, John (d. 1395)’, O.D.N.B. <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28645> [accessed 7 March 2008]; R. G. Davies, ‘The episcopate and the political crisis in England, 1386–8’ , Speculum , li ( 1976 ), 659 – 93 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close , at pp. 688–90. 23 Historia, p. 22. The papal translations of the bishops are not recorded in the parliament roll; see, however, The Westminster Chronicle, 1381–94, ed. L. C. Hector and B. F. Harvey (Oxford, 1982), pp. 332–4. For an extensive discussion of these translations, along with an assessment of Fovent's narrative, see Davies, ‘The episcopate and the political crisis’, pp. 675–90. 24 On Waltham's work as an administrative reformer, see T. F. Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England: the Wardrobe, the Chamber, and the Small Seals (6 vols., Manchester, 1920–33), iii. 442, 461. 25 Sir Thomas Phillipps, Institutiones clericorum in comitatu Wiltoniae, ab anno 1297 (Middle Hill, 1825) (hereafter Institutiones clericorum), p. 85. Regarding the value of the benefices, see Nonarum inquisitiones in Curia Scaccarii, 1341 (1807), p. 170. Donhead St. Andrew is valued at about £16. 26 Institutiones clericorum, p. 90. 27 The records of the lawsuit date from 1397–1402 (Calendar of Close Rolls 1396–9, pp. 235, 289; Cal. Close Rolls, 1399–1402, p. 514). Regarding Wolaston, see also A. K. McHardy, The Church in London 1375–92 (1977), pp. 18, 21. 28 London Metropolitan Archives, Husting Roll 125 (35). 29 Cal. Fine Rolls, xii. 222–3. 30 Woodger, ‘Robert Fovent’. 31 Woodger, ‘Robert Fovent’. 32 ‘Mox spoliarunt eum et inuenerunt certa experimenta et certa signa depicta in eisdem ad modum carecterum celi; et unum caput demonis depictum, et plura nomina demonum inscripta fuerunt, quibus ablates, nudus suspensus est’ (Historia, p. 18). 33 C. L. Kingsford, The Grey Friars of London (Aberdeen, 1915), p. 96; for a map of the burials, see E. B. S. Shepherd, ‘The church of the Friars Minors in London’ , Archaeol. Jour. , lix ( 1902 ), 238 – 87 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close . © Institute of Historical Research 2008 This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model) © Institute of Historical Research 2008
TI - New light on the life and manuscripts of a political pamphleteer: Thomas Fovent
JF - Historical Research
DO - 10.1111/j.1468-2281.2008.00476.x
DA - 2010-02-01
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VL - 83
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DP - DeepDyve
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