IN early August 1320, in a meeting of the Scottish parliament, a group of nobles was condemned for conspiring against their king, Robert Bruce. According to a near-contemporary chronicle, their actions were judged to be lese majesty, ‘the crime which surpasses all other crimes,’ plotting the death or downfall of one's own king. By conspiring against King Robert, these nobles had committed high treason and now faced the full penalty of the horrific death reserved for traitors. However, 14 years earlier in the late summer of 1306 it had been Bruce who was denounced as a traitor. Robert's seizure of the Scottish throne and the killing of his rival, John Comyn, which preceded it, were widely condemned as unforgiveable betrayals of both earthly laws and moral precepts. ‘The guilt of homicide and the stain of treason’ justified the brutal treatment of Bruce's family and followers by Edward I of England, a fate which Robert himself would have shared had he been captured. The wars over Scotland between 1296 and 1357 were struggles to claim and exercise authority over the kingdom. Charges of treason provided a way of signalling the illegitimacy of resistance to a ruler, stigmatising opposition, and providing the means to dispossess and eliminate those who acted against their royal lord. Their effectiveness was bound up with prevailing political conditions as much as fixed legal principles. Once he had secured control of the kingdom, the man accused of treason could bring the same charge against his own opponents. Moreover, from the late thirteenth century, treason law developed as a way of framing sovereignty. It defined the scope of royal authority by criminalising those accused of harming it within the territory and legal framework of the realm. In a struggle which centred on the status of Scotland and its rulers, treason was a central issue and a legal weapon.

If treason represented an element in the struggle to control Scotland, over a longer period and more widely it was a measure of relations between rulers and subjects and the right of the latter to resist their prince. In Scottish historiography there is an ongoing debate about the nature of this relationship during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

The navy which Edward VI inherited was essentially his father's creation. When Henry VIII went to war in 1512, he had about ten ships of his own, and was in the middle of a significant build-up which saw the number increase from seven or eight in 1510 to more than twenty by 1513. When his fleet first put to sea for the purposes of fighting, in April 1512, nine of the King's ships were deployed, together with five others which had been ‘taken up’ for the occasion. At the time of his accession there had been a basic dockyard facility at Portsmouth, and one official called the Clerk of the Ships to look after the fleet when it was not in service. In 1511 Henry had opened a second naval forge at Greenwich, and in 1512 built new storehouses at Erith and at Deptford, both of which places were regularly used as anchorages. At the same time he had appointed a second officer, called the Clerk Controller (or Comptroller), with specific responsibilities for the Thames and Medway. The existing Clerk continued to be in control at Portsmouth, which because of its position was the front-line base.

When the war came to an end in 1514, the reasons for these preparations became clear. Instead of disposing of his fighting ships, which his predecessors had generally done in similar circumstances, he had thirteen of them inventoried and decommissioned. At the same time a number of smaller vessels were kept in service to provide patrols in the Channel and the North Sea. Henry intended to take his duty of keeping the seas seriously, and did not want to rely on his subjects to do it for him. The standing navy therefore came into existence between 1512 and 1514, and marked a revolutionary departure in the concept of sea power. This situation remained substantially unchanged for the next thirty years. The navy grew in size to about thirty ships, a new dock was created at Erith in 1517, and in 1525 a third official was appointed in the form of a Keeper of the Storehouses. However, there was no institutional structure, and each of the three officers was responsible directly to the Privy Council, which in effect meant Cardinal Wolsey until 1529 and Thomas Cromwell from 1532 to 1540.

[Voice I]

Miles Christi gloriose

Symon certans in agone

Pro iusticia

Qui constanter conseruasti

A subuersione

Fidem Christi tibi datam

Et a lesione

Vt nos mundet a delictis

Satisfactione

Et in ***

[Voice II]

Plorate ciues Anglie

Magnanimum Lecestrie

Qui bellans pro iusticia

Prostratus est in Anglia.

O zelus ineffabile

[O] nephas <innarrabile>

Quo fit pius ob emulis

Morti datur et meritis

Dum pungnat pro iusticia.

Prauorum ruit framea

Fideles ***

Miles Christi (222)

Cambridge, St John's College, MS F. (formerly MS 138),

former fols 127v–128r (now detached)

[Voice I] O Simon, by fighting to the death for justice as a glorious soldier of Christ you staunchly kept [5] from overthrow and harm that faith in Christ which was given to you, so that he might cleanse us of our sins by penance [10] and in ***

[Voice II] O citizens of England, weep for the great-hearted earl of Leicester who was cut down battling for justice in England. [5] O the wonderful zeal, O the unspeakable wickedness, by which he is made blessed. While he fights for justice he is given over to death by his enemies and by those who deserve it themselves. He falls to the evildoers’ spear. [10] The faithful ***

[fol. 10v]

Anno milleno bis centenoque uiceno

Ter iam quintoque denique luce quoque,

Heu milleno bis centeno terque uiceno

Anno quintoque denique luce quoque,

Augusti quarta uera de Virgine parta

Luce Symon querit prelia sicque perit

Corpore non anima nam celsa petens fugit ima

Et postrema dies fit sibi prima quies.

Martis luce cadit cum uim ui pellere uadit.

Lux festo uacua congruit esse sua.

O pugil anglorum, tu fidus amator eorum

Pro quis castrorum non fugis ipse chorum.

O capud illorum, manus et pes atque cor horum

Pro causa quorum tis facis ipse forum

Singula membrorum uendens pro pace tuorum.

O pie mercator, inclite large dator

Dans corpus morti periure membra chohorti.

O magne fidei uir, bone serue Dei,

Iniuste pateris quia ius uir iuste tueris.

Sed quia ius queris in nece uictor eris.

Ha Deus in celis merito manet iste fidelis

Passus pro patria uulnera seua pia

Causa nam sponte populo pro paupere monte

De forti dictus nec uulnere nec nece uictus.

Iam bene de monte forti dictus quia sponte,

Fortiter ut fortis, fert horrida uulnera mortis.

Anno milleno (203)

Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 349/542, fol. 10v

In the year one thousand, two hundred, three score and five, and at dawn (alas, at dawn in the year one thousand, two hundred, three score and five) on the fourth of August, in a true dawn born of the Virgin, Simon sought battle and thus perished in the body but not in the soul. In seeking the highest he escaped the lowest, and the next day became his first respite. On a Tuesday he fell; with force he went forth to banish force. [10] The day, being void of any calendar feast, was proper to be his. O defender of the English, their faithful friend, for whom you do not flee even from a ‘company of hosts’. O their head, their hand, foot and heart: of yours you even hold a market on behalf of their cause, selling each of your limbs for the peace of your people. [16] O holy merchant, renowned and generous giver, giving your body to death and your limbs to a perjured gang. O man of great faithfulness and good servant of God, you suffer unjustly, O just man, for you protect the law. [20] Since you seek the law, however, in death you shall be the victor.

When I first started working on Thomas Kyd, some twenty years ago, I had no thought of enlarging his canon. My goal was to better understand his masterpiece, The Spanish Tragedy (written c. 1585, published 1592). I also studied the two other plays of accepted authorship, Soliman and Perseda (written c. 1588, published 1592), and Cornelia, translated from Garnier's Cornélie and published posthumously in 1594. Having a naturally inquisitive mind, I studied reference books and annual bibliographies to discover secondary literature on Kyd's life and works. As I worked through these sources, I noticed that other plays had been attributed over the years, some repeatedly, others only once or twice.

The play most often ascribed to him was Arden of Faversham, first made in 1903 by that knowledgeable scholar Charles Crawford, who in 1908 compiled by hand a Concordance to Kyd's three acknowledged plays. Crawford had great expertise in identifying unattributed excerpts, as he showed in an exemplary edition of the 1600 verse anthology England's Parnassus (Oxford, 1913), in which he was able to identify over 3,000 of the quotations from anonymous poets and dramatists. His interleaved copy of another verse anthology, Bodenham's Belvedére (1600), identifying over 2,000 of the anthology's 4,400 quotations, has recently been published. The fact that a scholar with these abilities ascribed Arden of Faversham to Kyd is of considerable significance. Crawford's pioneering identification was soon followed by the dissertation of Walter Miksch on ‘The Authorship of Arden of Faversham’, in which Miksch accepted Crawford's attribution while adding many new matches between the play and Kyd. There were other contributions, English (H. Dugdale Sykes) and French (Felix Carrère), until in 1948 the great Danish scholar Paul Rubow, in his study of ‘Shakespeare and his contemporaries’, settled the attribution by listing over a hundred verbal matches with Kyd.

The documentation in that paragraph will surprise many modern readers, who only know the attribution made by MacDonald Jackson in numerous publications over the last fifty years, according to which Shakespeare wrote scene 8. Jackson dismissed Crawford, unfairly, and completely ignored Rubow, even though M. L. Wine, in his Revels edition of Arden – Jackson's preferred text – frequently cited Rubow in his commentary and included many of his identified Kyd matches in an appendix.

The Navy Treasurer's accounts are missing between October 1551 and September 1554, and again between December 1556 and January 1559. These gaps cannot be explained by administrative upheaval at the start and end of Mary's reign, since Benjamin Gonson remained in post as Treasurer throughout. Nor is it likely that the accounts were destroyed for political reasons, as was certainly sometimes the fate of more sensitive records. For Mary's first year some detail can be supplied from other sources [II.82–5]. The second break in the series is particularly unfortunate because it conceals the immediate effect of the new system of naval funding, set up in January 1557 [II.11]. This will be evident by comparing the recepta of the Marian accounts [II.89, 90] with their equivalent for 1562–63 [ENA, 5]. Before 1557 every issue to the navy from the revenue departments is based on a particular dated warrant. Thereafter the bulk of the income is authorised by a warrant dormant (or standing order) to the Exchequer, enabling the Navy Treasurer to draw as required from a fixed budget.

The most notable feature of Gonson's 1554–55 account [II.89] concerns further sales of redundant ships. The expenses stated here and in the account for 1555–56 [II.90] are largely routine and unspecific. Payments to the Lord Admiral and ‘sundry captains serving upon the seas’ are grouped under a single heading, whereas the Elizabethan accounts identify the ships, their commanders, numbers of men, and periods of service.

The victualling accounts supply more circumstantial detail of that kind, specifying the ships, their complements, and their time in victualling. Baeshe's account for 1552–55 [II.92] includes the expenses of the fleet which escorted Philip to England in 1554, and the building of the stage at which the King disembarked. It also reflects the navy's regular business of transporting ambassadors, catching pirates, and moving ordnance from place to place. The 1555–56 victualling account [II.93] is a beautifully structured document, handsomely written as if in deference to the high proceedings with which it deals. The Royal Navy assists in escorting the King across the Channel, then helps to convey the King's father, the Emperor Charles V, towards Spain and the end of his days.

The Mediterranean Fleet began the 1930s while still under the command of Admiral Sir Frederick L. Field. He was succeeded in May 1930 by Admiral Sir Ernle Chatfield, who had been Admiral Beatty's flag captain during the First World War and still had an important career ahead of him as First Sea Lord and Minister for Co-ordination of Defence. With its six battleships, one and often two aircraft carriers, two cruiser squadrons, four destroyer flotillas and a submarine flotilla, the Mediterranean Fleet was Great Britain's premier naval force. It was still more powerful than the naval forces of the two major Mediterranean naval powers, France and Italy. Moreover, it was also destined to play a key role in case of war in the Far East against Japan, proceeding through the Suez Canal and Indian Ocean to Singapore [24]. With the exception of W.W. Fisher, who died prematurely, every Mediterranean Commander-in-Chief during the 1930s subsequently became First Sea Lord. This was in contrast to the preceding decade when for a variety of reasons only Frederick Field (Mediterranean C-in-C June 1928–May 1930) eventually became head of the Navy.

At the beginning of the 1930s there was little to distinguish the activities of the Mediterranean Fleet from those of the late 1920s. The annual routines of training, drills and exercises, cruises and combined exercises with the Atlantic Fleet continued. Chatfield provides a rough outline of the annual routine. There would be a winter cruise in January and a spring cruise in March, generally culminating with combined exercises with the Atlantic Fleet. Rigorous fleet training took place in May and June, a period when the weather at Malta was at its best. The first summer cruise took place in July and August. A much anticipated fleet regatta usually took place during this cruise, often in Greek waters. This would be followed in late August by about a fortnight back at Malta when ships would be refuelled and re-stored. This would be followed by a second summer (later termed autumn) cruise until the end of October. Then came what Chatfield termed a ‘self-refit’ period back at Malta with the majority of ships laid up for the overhaul of hulls and machinery. The cruises were opportunities for drills and exercises and the fleet had a reputation for playing hard and working hard.

In May 1798 Duckworth, still in Leviathan, reported to Earl St Vincent, Mediterranean Commander-in-Chief, off the Spanish coast at Cadiz [311] and was given some minor tasks [312, 313]. St Vincent was blockading the Spanish naval base, while his subordinate, Rear-Admiral Viscount Nelson, operated to blockade Toulon. The fleet had only recently returned to the Mediterranean, having evacuated it the year before. Duckworth at once bumped up against another awkward superior, Sir Robert Calder, St Vincent's Captain of the Fleet, who rudely returned a letter Duckworth had sent to St Vincent, who was, of course, an old acquaintance [314–318]. He was sent into the Mediterranean on patrol, and established communication with Nelson [320].

He also resumed connections with Rear-Admiral Sir John Orde, [319– 321], but then he became involved, but only as a spectator, in a much more serious dispute between St Vincent and Orde, who was annoyed (as was Sir William Parker, Duckworth's former commander) when Nelson, who was junior to both of them as a rear-admiral, was sent, on government orders, into the Mediterranean to re-establish a British presence [322–324].

In pursuit of the same objective, St Vincent instructed Duckworth, still only a captain, to lead the invasion and capture of Minorca; Duckworth was always careful to cultivate St Vincent. The expedition seems to have required a degree of secrecy, which Duckworth could supply, and at the same time he was able to maintain connections with Orde [314], and to continue communications with Nelson with Sir William Hamilton at Naples. As much as anything he was a diplomat, carefully avoiding entering these quarrels.

The voyage to Minorca involved a curious dispute with the squadron surgeon, in which Duckworth was clearly in the right, and Dr Gardiner exhibited considerable medical arrogance [326–328, 330, 336]. The conquest of Minorca turned out to be straightforward, in large part because of Duckworth's own initiative in pushing forward a landing at an unexpected point [331–335, 337]. But he then had several months of awkward relations with General Stuart, the army commander, who proved to be as touchy as St Vincent or Orde, and a good deal less consistent than either [various letters between 338 and 420]. Ruling a small, overpopulated and poor island, as Duckworth had to for the present, was not easy.

BOOKS

The Index of Middle English Prose, Handlist VII: Manuscripts Containing Middle English Prose in Parisian Libraries. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1989.

Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text. Longman Medieval and Renaissance Library 1. Harlow, UK: Longman, 1990. (Selection repr. in Piers Plowman. Edited by Elizabeth Robertson and Stephen Shepherd. New York: Norton, 2006. 584–91.)

Sciences and the Self in Medieval Poetry: Alan of Lille's “Anticlaudianus” and John Gower's “Confessio amantis”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

The Oxford English Literary History, Vol. 2: 1350–1547. Reform and Cultural Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Piers Plowman: An Introduction. Rev. ed. Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies. Exeter, UK: Exeter University Press, 2007.

Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and its Reformation Opponents. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007.

Under the Hammer: Iconoclasm in the Anglo-American Tradition. The Clarendon Lectures. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Reynard the Fox: A New Translation. New York: Liveright/Norton, 2015.

John Hardyng, Chronicle: Edited from British Library MS Lansdowne 204. Co-edited with Sarah Peverley. Vol. 1. TEAMS Middle English Texts. Kalamazoo, Mich.:

Medieval Institute Publications, 2015.

Permanent Revolution: The Reformation and the Illiberal Roots of Liberalism. Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019.

The Oxford Chaucer. Edited by Christopher Cannon and James Simpson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024.

COLLECTIONS AND ANTHOLOGIES

Medieval English Religious and Ethical Literature: Essays in Honour of G. H. Russell. Edited by Gregory Kratzmann and James Simpson. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1986.

Images, Idolatry and Iconoclasm in Late Medieval England. Edited by Jeremy Dimmick, James Simpson, and Nicolette Zeeman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

John Lydgate: Poetry, Culture, and Lancastrian England. Edited by Larry Scanlon and James Simpson. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006.

“The Middle Ages.” Edited by Alfred David and James Simpson. Volume A of The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt and M. H. Abrams. 8th ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006.

The Morton Bloomfield Lectures, 1989–2005. Edited by Daniel Donoghue, James Simpson and Nicholas Watson. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2010.