Boydell & Brewer

Summary

In late medieval England, clergy of all ranks, from archbishops to parochial clergy, sent proctors to parliament, whether as representatives (delegates) of constituency groups – the diocesan clergy and cathedral chapters – or as deputies for the individuals who were called to appear in person. The individuals were bishops, parliamentary abbots, archdeacons, and cathedral deans. Bishops and abbots received individual writs of summons, while archdeacons and deans were called indirectly through their bishops. This clerical element in the personnel of parliament has received comparatively little attention, but there is a series in The National Archives, Special Collection 10, on that very subject, and this essay aims to draw attention to the riches it contains. Most evidence concerns those higher clergy who were summoned to parliament individually, and within that category the letters of abbots predominate.

Neglect of these parliamentarians may have several causes, but the likeliest reason is that so much material recording their presence has been lost. Proctors attending parliament on the clergy's behalf carried letters of appointment which they handed to the parliamentary clerks who then compiled proxy rolls containing this information. Those rolls were already decayed by the early seventeenth century, and later disappeared completely. A single surviving example is the list of those sending proctors to the Carlisle parliament of January 1307, and the names of their proctors. It was copied from the parliament rolls into the Vetus Codex, a collection of documents assembled during Walter Stapeldon's time as treasurer in the 1320s. This contains ninety-three letters, including ten from bishops, seventeen from archdeacons, nineteen from cathedral deans (or priors of monastic cathedrals) and their chapters in various combinations, thirty-four from abbots, and thirteen from representatives of the lower clergy.

The existence of this list shows us something of what has been lost. But fortunately, by luck, and by no discernible archival policy, large numbers of the original proxy appointments survive, along with a smaller number of the letters which proctors carried with them during the parliament as proof of their status. Dating from about 1248 to 1447, and again from 1523 to 1536, there are 2,731 appointments, nearly all in TNA SC 10. Most of these commissions were issued by members of what came to be called the clerical peerage: bishops and abbots.

Summary

By the mid-nineteenth century, a workforce of many thousands had been trained in textile engineering. The best paid and highest skilled were considered part of an aristocracy of labour. Alongside was a multitude of shop-floor engineering workers concentrated on narrowly defined duties in large factories, arguably with little independence or discretion compared with their immediate predecessors. The ways in which engineering workers were employed and trained had evolved, and the trade had changed. Whether this group was less skilled overall, and how far it might have lost touch with the industry's earlier ethos, are less certain.

It seems that chances to progress out of this rather regimented industrial proletariat had been curtailed. Many employees and employers still shared a background of apprenticeship training, an absorption in the skills and knowledge of textile technology. Yet the workers were less likely to advance. After the industry was restructured in the 1810s and 1820s, the size of capital investment needed to set up a machine shop with self-acting tools became an obstacle. The chance of building such a company from scratch was placed out of reach for most. The number of new ventures dramatically reduced in proportion to the enlarged workforce.

And there were other changes. In the large shops at least, some level of stability replaced casual employment practices. This had its attractions, compared with the uncertainties of self-employment. It came at a price, though, the loss of that relative independence to which previous generations had aspired. Capital was not the only hurdle: there was less opportunity to learn about the production process overall, about the commercial workings of the trade, and to be nurtured and supported into self-sufficiency by a former master. Yet the small-scale sector in engineering continued to be very significant, so self-employment was not an impossibility. Perhaps the real barrier was that workers classed as skilled in the larger factories were not really so. In fulfilling only a narrow range of tasks, was their lack of all-round proficiency shielded by division of labour and a range of modern machine tools? Was the trade shedding its broad-based competence?

Summary

A man who urinates as the ‘eues (gutters) of an house dropiþ’ faeces that look like ‘þe shauyng of parchemyn’ a head wound that resembles a ‘spynand webbe blewe or ellys rede’ or ‘a burbyl of water when þat it raynes’ and ‘a man þat herith in hys ere / As hornys blewe or thonder were’: where do all of these striking similes come from? From recipe collections of one variety or another, whether these be translations of scholastic texts, vernacular remedy books or vernacular verse remedies. And yet these instructional texts have traditionally been depicted by scholars as devoid of any imaginative labour or poetic skill, as blandly or singularly utilitarian. For example, after exploring the problems inherent in cataloguing and indexing medical recipes, Henry Hargreaves nonchalantly proclaimed that the texts ‘have, of course, not the slightest scintilla of literary interest’. It is my contention in this essay, however, that it is this very kind of practical text that can help us to form a more nuanced understanding of the nature – or natures – of poetic language in the Middle Ages.

As the editors Frank Grady and Andrew Galloway note in their introduction to a recent essay collection, medievalists have long been concerned with what constitutes the literary. However, only in recent years have critics begun to ask whether medieval practical writings can be considered to be at all poetic. Often they have done so by focusing upon the aesthetic and imaginative qualities of individual texts or manuscripts, or by analysing a wide variety of different poetic features in a selection of texts from different traditions of practical writing. These studies have been invaluable for foregrounding the question of poetic practicality and for introducing different text-types and analytical methods which might lead to fruitful future study. However, to date, there has been little in-depth work on the use of specific literary features in specific forms, such as the medical recipe.

On the other hand, in the last decade, there has been no shortage of scholars reflecting upon the importation of medical language and phenomena into other types of discourse – political, devotional or poetic – in order to represent different kinds of experience.

Summary

As a member of his composition class I remember well how he used to discuss with his advanced pupils certain acoustical phenomena about which he was writing in his book, and their melodic and harmonic implications. To corroborate further his theory of tonal organisation he composed the monumental ‘Ludus Tonalis’ for piano which has become one of his most famous works.

—Franz Reizenstein, 1964

The Ludus Tonalis (‘Play of Tones’), written in 1942 and premiered by Willard MacGregor in 1943, is the quintessential model of Hindemith's music theory in practice. It was written five years after the first published edition of the Unterweisung, and shared proximity with Unterweisung II (1939), the second edition of Unterweisung I (1940), Craft I (1942) and the preparatory work towards Unterweisung III. Though Hindemith wrote many other compositions during this time, such as three organ sonatas (1937–1940), eleven instrumental sonatas and the ballet The Four Temperaments (1938), none have the explicit reference to music theory found in the Ludus: where all twelve of the starting pitches for the fugues correspond to the ordering of Series 1. If Hindemith's early works show the composer at his most pluralistic, the Ludus presents the composer at his most cerebral. It provides the strongest indication of how Hindemith's music theory might be transferred into free composition, and lends itself more suitably to a theoretical analysis than any of his other compositions. Hindemith invites us to analyse his piano cycle with his theory in mind.

The Ludus was completed two years after Hindemith's appointment at the Yale School of Music, and four years before he received American citizenship. It marked a watershed moment in Hindemith's life – the closing of his troubled chapter in Germany in the mid- to late 1930s, and the widespread acceptance of the refined compositional style in the Ludus, brought about by his intensive theoretical activity. The work is a unique example in the history of Western Music of the relationship between music theory and compositional practice. While for previous works, it is questionable whether Hindemith's theorising, or his composing, came first; with the Ludus it is absolutely clear. The theory came first.

Summary

Salutem in Christo

After my harty Commendations etc.

I am informed that there is one place voyd by the Death of Mr Master, and that another will be voyd at this your Election. I am likewise given to understand that there is a very good Inclination in your self and the Fellowes to chuse Sir Croft of Jesus Colledge into that place which is voyd by death. And I thinke there is an intendment for a younger Sonne of my Lord Keeper, who much desyre's to be a Civill Lawyer, to succeed in the place of Mr Shelden. Now you know that Mr Shelden holde's the place of a Divyne, and soe must he in ordinary course that succeeds him, but the place which is voyde by death, is a Lawyers place. All that I shall desyre of your self and the Fellowes is but this, that when it comes near the Election, and that it is resolved among you and them whom to chuse, you would be pleasd to chuse young Mr Coventry into the Lawyers place, and Sir Croft into the Divynes. My Lord Keeper doth much desire this Accommodation and soe doe I for him.

Since I have this occasion of wryting to you, I will not forget to thanke you for the kynd Letters which I receyved from that Body to wellcome me into the place which I now beare. But your Love made you heape a great deale too much honour upon me, for I profess sadly I hold my self farr short of the least Degree of Comparison to your worthy Founder. The Church now affoarde's me not means to doe that which my hart is upon, were all thinges else answerable. But enough of this. I hope you and the Company will not deny me this my first and easy Suit. Soe with remembrance of my love I leave you all to the Grace of God and rest

Your very lovinge Freind and Visitour.

W: Cant:

Lambeth October 24. 1633.

To the Right Worshipfull my very worthy Freind, Dr Ashley, Warden of All: Soules Colledge in Oxford.

Summary

This book has been a labour of love. My affair with the region began as a young boy, when the impressive streamlined locomotives of Southern Region's West Country class, inaugurated in 1945, steamed through our town in Kent: each was named after a place in the south-west on or near the Southern network, and to me those names were pure magic – Templecombe, Bude, Okehampton, Budleigh Salterton, Yes Tor … Later we moved to Hampshire, and while the New Forest, not yet west country by my definition, was our regular playground, annual holidays began to take the family car further west. The first of these, despite being on a sodden caravan site at the rear end of Paignton, already made me a west country aficionado. The second, in 1966, was in an ancient cottage with pink bath-water in the middle of Bodmin Moor. By 1967 we had graduated to a prefab on a farm near Dulverton, to which we returned several times. Through much of the 1980s and ‘90s my parents lived in semi-retirement, first in Brushford and then in Porlock, the latter a perfect place for visits. Music was not exactly a leitmotiv of these experiences, except when my early music group sang a Palestrina mass liturgically one sunny Sunday morning in Luccombe parish church, or with its viols and partbooks crowded into the tiny minstrels’ gallery of Chulmleigh Congregational Church to experience the wonderful acoustic. But that is perhaps the point: most of the time, music simply took its place in the scheme of things.

Three years after I moved to Bristol in 2003, I founded CHOMBEC, the Centre for the History of Music in Britain, the Empire and the Commonwealth, and proposed that it should have a threefold brief, regional, national, and transnational. Thanks to generous research leave and a research fellowship from the University, to a British Academy Small Research Grant, to the forbearance and interest of colleagues in both Music and other departments of the Faculty of Arts, and to a succession of eight-infifteen- days railcards from First Great Western, I was in due course able to devote an uninterrupted year to gathering the resources for a musical history of the region to which Bristol has always acted as gateway.

Summary

This book is a critical study of Hindemith's music theory, through a close analysis of his music. His writing and theoretical ideas can be hard to grasp, particularly given his often hazy description of how ideas such as ‘harmonic fluctuation’ and ‘Series 1 orders’ can describe and compose music. The reader should not be deterred by Hindemith's rhetoric, however, as within his oeuvre lies one of the great practical musicians of the twentieth century. Since the time it was written, his music and music theory have encountered conflicting receptions, dividing those performers whose repertoire owes its foundations to a Hindemith sonata and those who claim that he was an unnecessary tinkerer of his compositions and whose meddling in music theory caused widespread mischief. Though this book does not refrain from offering critical perspectives on Hindemith's works, it does so with the agenda that the reader may become more acquainted with Hindemith's proto-theory and may reflect on how it may be developed and nurtured within the context of the twenty-first century.

Hindemith's Theory Publications

Hindemith finished seven theoretical and pedagogical textbooks, all but one of which are published by Schott & Co. and have enjoyed several revised editions. Following Hindemith's move from Germany to the USA during 1937, the original language of some of his texts switched to English. However, they were still translated back to German, which is testament to his popularity after the Second World War. In order of publication these include:

Summary

The Forths had long been established in Hadleigh, ten miles west of Ipswich, when William Forth, Charles's grandfather, bought Butley Priory in 1544. The leading members of the family had been successful cloth merchants. In the fifteenth century, Suffolk was the foremost centre of English textile production, which was concentrated in the south of the county. During the later 1460s, Hadleigh was second only to Lavenham in its number of cloth¬iers and the amount of tax (alnage) paid on cloth manufactured. William and Robert Forth of Hadleigh were the second and third most active clothiers of Suffolk. ‘For five decades until his death in 1504, William Forthe was the patriarch of Suffolk cloth-making.’ He owned property both in Suffolk and in London. A member of the Staple of Calais, he was involved in the trade in wool as well as cloth. His daughter Elizabeth married Thomas Baldry of Stowmarket, who became a London mercer and lord mayor of the city in 1523. William Forth left in his will a holy water stoup of silver to Butley Priory ‘to be praide fore’, showing that the family's connection with the priory existed long before another William Forth purchased its premises in 1544. William made his son Robert his executor. Robert was thirty at the time of his father's death in August 1504. William asked no less a person than Sir James Hobart of Hales in Norfolk, the attorney general, probably his relative by marriage, to assist and advise Robert.

Robert Forth of Hadleigh, gentleman, doubtless the same man, was granted a coat of arms and crest by Thomas Hawley, Clarenceux king of arms in December 1539. Robert made his will on 24 July 1540, and died three days later. He was buried at the church of St Dionis Backchurch in the City of London on 29 July, despite his wish to be buried at Hadleigh. He was probably a widower, since his will makes no mention of his wife. Its chief beneficiary was his youngest son William, to whom Robert left land in several villages in the Stour valley along the Essex–Suffolk border. Three daughters were each to receive a marriage portion of £100.

Summary

Salutem in Christo.

My very good Lord.

It is more then tyme to give you thankes for the Nagge you sent me, and to pray you hartily to excuse me, that I did it not by your Sonne when he brought me the Horse, and went presently downe. For indeed my Lord I was at that present much overpressed and your Sonne could not but see it in part, and I doubt not but he will beare witness to this truth. My Lord I knowe not how to make you any amendes for this favour done me, but yet certainly if God lend me life I will hope to returne it eyther to your self or your Sonne.

I thanke you alsoe for the love you have shewed to the new Vicar of Rachdale,3 I hope he will continue to deserve it. He hath delyverd me this Petition inclosed concerning a Parishioner of his, and a Seat in the Chancell. I pray your Lordship examine the truth of it, and if you finde that for the well ordering and decency of the Chancell he hath been content to part with his former Seat, soe longe used as is herein expressed, I pray see him elswhere conveniently placed in the Church as is desired. For it will be very fitt to shew favour to orderly men.

I have likewise receyved a Letter from your Lordship in the behalfe of one Francis Edwardes a Minister in Chester, who is like enough to be free from Simony having encreased his Benefice from 20l to 100l per annum against a scraping Patrone, and yet by the malice of some neare him, is like to be put to trouble and charge, as if he were both guilty of that, and inconformity. His Suite is to have a Graunt from the Kinge ad Corroborandum titulum, of which his Majesty is very sparing, alleadging that if he graunt Corroboration, he shall destroye all his Titles by Simony, and never be able sufficiently to punish that crime. If any thinge move the Kinge it must be your testimony, which I will now presently shew to his Majesty and doe the honest man the best favour I can. Soe wishing your Lordship all health and happynes, I leave you to the grace of God and rest.

Summary

Sir:

I made Accompt to have beene att Wells by this tyme: but that will not bee: and I am soe farr from keepinge my intended tyme, that I am commaunded by His Majesty to attend the whole progress which wilbee very tedious, and howe I shalbe able to beare it God knowes, but well or ill it must bee borne.

I should not have troubl’d you with lettinge you know thus much but that peradventure, you might have beene to seeke mee, att the least by your letters, before Michaelmas daie, where I had not been to be found.

One particular only may be of consequence, if it come not too late. I remember Mr Staple tould mee, of a desier hee hadd to fall to the profession of the Civill and Cannon Lawes: and that hee thought you would bee willinge to helpe him forward in that waye. If hee thinke of that course I thought fitt to signifye to you that the Chauncelor of Gloucester Mr. Sutton hath bene of late shrewdly putt to it att the Heigh Commission: and it is thought hee will not abyde many more Shocks. If Mr Staple could gett it, it would bee a very fine place for him, and neere enough to you, (unless you have hope of the nearest). If hee medle with it I would wishe him to provide himselfe this Vacation that he may take his degree att Oxford at the very beginninge of Michaelmas Terme, before the Terme beginn att London. I praie lett him knowe that I have troubld your letter wyth thus much, partly because I have not leasure to write 2 letters: and partly that I might have some stuffing for this one.

I knowe not of any farther business that I have with you, and I looke not nowe to heare from you till Michaelmas; till which tyme I shall returne to my old course and bee a Wanderer. I hope both you and your Ladie are in health, which I praie God continewe.

Summary

Salutem in Christo

After my hearty commendations etc.

I have at length found leysure (such as my manyfold occasions would permitt) to peruse the booke of your Statutes, and out of them with some few necessary Additions to compile such a Bodye for your future reglement, as I hope will make for the honour of the Church and the good of every member thereof. But before I caused the same to be transcribed and putt to the broade seale, I thought it not Amisse to send a draught of these Statutes downe to you, that if upon perusall of them, any of you shall have iust Exception to any passage therein conteyned, or can thinke of any thing that may be fitt to be added, you will sett the same downe in writing and send it me together with this Copye, and I shall not faile (God willing) so soone as Terme businesse will give me leave, to take all particulars into Consideration, and doe what shall be fitting; Soe wishing that Bodye much happynesse, I leave you all to Gods blessed protection and rest

Your very loving Freind,

W: Cant:

Lambeth October 10 1637

To my very worthy Freinds the Deane and Chapter of the Church of Winton these

Summary

Salutem in Christo.

Sir

You are wellcome backe into England and I thanke you for your Letters. They put me in good hope I shall shortly be able to wellcome you into the Church, as well as into the Kingdome. This hope I the rather conceyve because your Letters are temperate, and that therein you profess you ayme at nothinge but the preservation of a good Conscience, desyrous to be satisfyed in what you doubt. And I for my part make noe question but you may returne with a better Conscience, then continue with the Romane partye. And God forbid but that you should receyve satisfaction in what you doubt.

I cannot but wish still that my labours had not been mistaken by Dr Kettle, then I should have hoped that you might have had satisfaction longe ere this. But I must thinke God had somwhat else to doe, and by another waye, which in the end I assure my selfe will prove, as fitter for his glorye, soe better for you.

Now thinges standinge as they doe, I thinke it very requisite that you have Conference, and satisfaction given you assoone as may be. This I would have undertaken my selfe, but that I thinke it better for you, that another should doe it. For the world would be apt to thinke, if you receyved your Content from me when others could not give it, that you had more temporall Ends in the busynes, then Cases of Conscience. Therfore partly because of my manifold occasions, and partly for the Care I have of you, and your Reputation, I thinke it fitt to referr you for your satisfaction in your doubtes to another. The man I have pitched upon to serve you in this, is Dr Potter an honest and an able man; and by reason that he waytes this present month in Court, you may easily without much travell or charge, goe to him when you please. I have allready spoken with him about it, and shall be ready to take all other Care for your Good.

Summary

Maye it please your Maiestie.

As great as the Secret is which Comes hearewith, yett I chose rather to send it in thiss silent covert waye, and I hope safe, then to Come thither and bringe it mye self. First because I am noe waye able to make hast enough with it. Secondlye because should I come at thiss tyme, and andedate the meetinge September 24 thear would be more Jelousye of the busynes, and more enquirye after it: Especiallye if I beinge Once there should returne againe before that daye, as I must if thiss busynes be followed as is most fitt.

The dainger it seemes is imminent, and layd bye God knowes whome, but to be Executed bye them which ar verye neare about you. (For the great honour which I have to be in danger with you, or for you, I pass not, soe your sacred person, and the state maye be safe) Nowe maye it please your Maiestye. Thiss Information is ether True; or thear is some mistake in it. If it be true, the persons which make the discoverye, will deserve Thankes, and Reward. If thear should be anye mistake in it, your Maiestye Can loose nothinge but a little silence.

The busynes (if it be) is Extreame fowle. The discoverye thuss bye Gods providence offerd, seems faire. I doe heare humblye begg it upon mye Knees of your Maiestye, that you will Conceal thiss busynes from Everye Creature: and his Name that sends this to me. And I send his Leters to me, to your Maiestye that you maye see his sense, both of the busynes and the secrecye. And such Instructions as you thinke fitt to give himme, I beseech you lett them be in your owne hand for his warrant, without impartinge them to anye. And if your Maiestye leave it to his discretion to followe it thear in the best waye he Can, That in your owne hand will be Instruction and warrant enough for hime. And if you be pleased to returne it hearwith presentlye to me, I will send an Express awaye with it presentlye.

Summary

Recent financial crises, from 2007 onwards, have attracted renewed interest in a topic that had been neglected for decades, particularly in continental, but also in English-language historiography: that of the big merchant-banking companies of the late Middle Ages and the financial crises they suffered from the late thirteenth century. The eruption of the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the United States and the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 have generated a number of articles stressing the cyclical recurrence of financial crisis in capitalistic systems or protocapitalistic ones. Taking a long historical perspective, some of the most famous bankruptcies are those of the Florentine companies in 1344–6 and those of the Genoese bankers lending to Spanish monarchs in the late sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries. But it could be claimed that the first international financial crisis actually occurred in the 1290s, due to the collapse of the Ricciardi (or Riccardi) company from Lucca, who had been for two decades Edward I's loyal bankers before entering a period of severe troubles which ultimately led to their failure in 1300.

The vicissitudes of the Ricciardi company in England and the role of Italian bankers more generally were thoroughly investigated in a series of studies published during the last decades of the twentieth century. Following something of a historiographical vacuum around the topic, a research project by the International Capital Markets Association (ICMA) based at the University of Reading, entitled ‘Credit Finance in the Middle Ages: Loans to the English Crown c. 1272–1340’, returned to the subject, producing a number of studies and analyses of sources concerning the royal accounts (particularly the valuable Exchequer and Wardrobe accounts). The focus of this project is on the English monastic wool market and the system of forward contracts set up by the Italian firms, on the interest rate applied in various kind of loans, and on the vicissitudes of the principal Italian banking companies acting in England as bankers to the Crown in the period of the three Edwards – namely the Ricciardi, the Frescobaldi and the Peruzzi, Bardi and Acciaiuoli – and the reasons leading to their collapse. The wider aim is ‘to apply modern economic and financial analysis to medieval sources’, as stated in the presentation of the project background.

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Part II - Catalogue of Translations to 1500

The Representation of the Clergy in Parliament

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List of Figures

5 - Ingenious Mechanics

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6 - Similes We Cure By: The Poetics of Late Medieval Medical Texts

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4 - The Ludus Tonalis as Quintessential Hindemith

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71 - 24 Oct. To Richard Astley, warden of All Souls College Oxford

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Preface and Acknowledgements

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Introduction

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3 - The Forths: From Clothiers to Landed Gentry

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129 - 3 July To John Bridgeman, bishop of Chester

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1624

20 - 14 July To Sir John Scudamore

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154 - 10 Oct. To the dean and chapter of Winchester

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58 - 5 Sept. To William Chillingworth

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List of Illustrations

1630

1641

220 - 11 Sept. To Charles I

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4 - Italian Firms in Late Medieval England and their Bankruptcy: Re-reading an Old History of Financial Crisis

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