Lancastrian Literature

This chapter will provide an overview of how both major and lesser-known Lancastrian writers and texts engage with the law and legal contexts. Covering the period between Henry IV and Prince Edward of Westminster, this chapter will address legal aspects in Thomas Hoccleve’s Regement of Princes, Osbern of Bokenham’s Mappula Angliae, George Ashby’s Active Policy, John Fortescue’s De laudibus legum Angliae and such anonymous works as the Libelle of Englyshe Polycye in order to demonstrate how they intervened in and commented on shifting legal ideas and practices during the first two-thirds of the fifteenth century.