TY - JOUR
T1 - Bureaucratic Verse
T2 - William Lyndwood, the Privy Seal and the Form of The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye
AU - Sobecki, Sebastian
N1 - The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye = cursief
PY - 2010
Y1 - 2010
N2 - This essay associates The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye with civilian bills, or libelli, and re-evaluates the immediate historical context surrounding the poem’s composition. The wealth and accuracy of economic, political, and legal information that is contained in the poem points to the poet’s intimate familiarity with the highest functions of the King’s writing offices at Westminster. This essay argues that The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye must have been composed from within the closest circle of Henry VI’s senior administrators. Thus, the poem formed part of the Privy Seal’s strategy to identify the adolescent monarch, who had only just begun to exercise the royal privilege of granting petitions, with a defence of Calais and an ideological pursuit of peace. Central to this process were William Lyndwood, Keeper of the Privy Seal, and Walter Hungerford, the poem’s sponsor. In addition to historical and circumstantial evidence, Lyndwood’s association with The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye is supported by the centrality the poem assigns to seals and documentary validity, its legal mode as a libellus, and its programmatic emphasis on peace and unity, which Lyndwood had championed in a parliamentary sermon of 1431.
AB - This essay associates The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye with civilian bills, or libelli, and re-evaluates the immediate historical context surrounding the poem’s composition. The wealth and accuracy of economic, political, and legal information that is contained in the poem points to the poet’s intimate familiarity with the highest functions of the King’s writing offices at Westminster. This essay argues that The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye must have been composed from within the closest circle of Henry VI’s senior administrators. Thus, the poem formed part of the Privy Seal’s strategy to identify the adolescent monarch, who had only just begun to exercise the royal privilege of granting petitions, with a defence of Calais and an ideological pursuit of peace. Central to this process were William Lyndwood, Keeper of the Privy Seal, and Walter Hungerford, the poem’s sponsor. In addition to historical and circumstantial evidence, Lyndwood’s association with The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye is supported by the centrality the poem assigns to seals and documentary validity, its legal mode as a libellus, and its programmatic emphasis on peace and unity, which Lyndwood had championed in a parliamentary sermon of 1431.
U2 - 10.1484/J.NML.1.102188
DO - 10.1484/J.NML.1.102188
M3 - Article
SN - 1465-3737
VL - 12
SP - 251
EP - 288
JO - New Medieval Literatures
JF - New Medieval Literatures
ER -