Linda Clark & James Ross 
The Fifteenth Century XX 
Essays presented to Rowena E. Archer

‘This series pushes the boundaries of knowledge and develops new trends in approach and understanding.’ ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW



As is appropriate in a volume honouring the distinguished scholarship in this field of Dr Rowena E. Archer, wealthy and influential ladies, most notably Alice Chaucer, duchess of Suffolk, take centre stage, alongside successive queens consort of the period, whose councils helped to implement justice. Alice’s almshouse at Ewelme provides a fine example of the many institutions which offered care for the elderly in late medieval England, a period when Henry VII placed great emphasis on the burials of his kinsfolk, particularly in Westminster abbey, to ensure that their memory would endure. Pretenders to the throne of that king and his successor, who included Alice’s grandson, bring into focus the riots of 1487 near the borders of Wales and portraits dating from the 1520s. Other themes of language (how Henry V employed English in France), law (the development of the concept of the body corporate) and taxation (levies imposed on imported wine) are added to an intriguing comparison of relations between English administrators and the nobility of Gascony with British imperialists and the princes of India.

Table of Content

A Rich Old Lady getting Power: Maud, Countess of Oxford, and the De Vere Estates, 1371-1413

JAMES ROSS


The Adoption of the English Language by Henry V

SAMUEL LANE


The Origins and Development of the Body Corporate in Late Medieval England

EDWARD POWELL


‘The Principal Place of Honour about the Person of the Queen’. Margaret of Anjou and Alice Chaucer, Duchess of Suffolk: the Making of a Friendship

DIANA DUNN


‘Broken by Age and Reduced by Poverty’: Care for the Elderly in Late Medieval Almshouses

CAROLE RAWCLIFFE


Butlerage and Prisage: a Cinderella Tax? The Bristol Evidence

MARGARET CONDON


From the Welsh Marches to the Royal Household: the Leominster Riots of 1487 and Uncertain Allegiances at the Heart of Henry VII’s Regime

S.J. PAYLING and SEAN CUNNINGHAM


Burials and Memorialization at the Command of Henry VII

RALPH GRIFFITHS


Justice, Good Ladyship and the Queen’s Council in Late Medieval England, 1450-1550

LAURA FLANNIGAN


The ‘Last Yorkist’ Revealed? Richard de la Pole, Charles, duc de Bourbon, and a Contentious Panel Portrait of the 1520s

ANTHONY GROSS


Imperial Echoes: English Gascony and British India. A Preliminary Survey

MALCOLM VALE

About the author

JAMES ROSS is Reader in Late Medieval History at the University of Winchester, UK. He has published extensively on the late medieval nobility, kingship and political society.