Download PDF | (The New Middle Ages) Neil Murphy (auth.) - The Captivity of John II, 1356-60_ The Royal Image in Later Medieval England and France-Palgrave Macmillan US (2016).
132 Pages
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I incurred a number of debts during the course of researching and writing this book. In particular, I wish to thank Graeme Small for the advice he provided at every stage of this project, especially his comments on the manuscript. Gaby Mahlberg read various chapters and offered insightful comments on them. Her close reading of the text and clear analysis opened up new perspectives on the material. A number of other people contributed to this book in various ways, especially Samuel Cohn, Jeroen Duindam, Wojciech Fatkowski and Gordon McKelvie.
I would like to thank the staff of the various archives I visited during the course of this research, especially Violane Jargéant at the archives municipales de Tours who was generous with both her time and her expertise. In addition, I would also like to thank the staff of the Bodleian Library, the Cambridge University Library, the Institute of Historical Research, the Bibliotheque nationale de France and the National Library of Scotland. I also wish to thank Northumbria University for funding the research which underpinned this project.
Currency is in livres tournois, unless specified otherwise.
All translations from French are by the author unless otherwise stated.
Introduction
Abstract This chapter begins with an examination of the historiography of the captivity of John I. It shows that historians have often portrayed John’s time in captivity as the most disastrous years of pitiable reign, with his behaviour in England being seen in an especially negative light. Yet John’s time in captivity was the catalyst for a number of innovations in the presentation of the royal image which had lasting consequences in both England and France. After providing an analysis of the primary sources upon which the book is based (particularly the Valois monarch’s household accounts), the introduction concludes by establishing the chronology of John’s time in English captivity.
Keywords Household accounts ¢ Historiography ¢ Charles V e Chronicles ¢ Poitiers
John II (‘the Good’) spent one third of his reign in captivity. While he was not the only king of France to be taken in battle (Saint Louis was captured at Fariskur in 1250 and Francis I at Pavia in 1525), the repercussions of his capture at Poitiers were the undoubtedly the most significant. According to Raymond Cazelles, the battle had ‘incalculable consequences’ (‘conséquences incalculables’), while Georges Minois has recently pronounced that its effects were so severe that ‘it is permissible to think that it would have been better for King John to have been killed at Poitiers rather than taken prisoner’ (‘il est permis de penser qu’il eut mieux valu que le roi Jean soit tué que fait prisonnier 4 Poitiers’).’ Certainly, John’s capture at Poitiers triggered a series of events that destabilised his kingdom, including: the reforming programme of the Estates of Languedoil, Charles of Navarre’s release from prison, the major peasant revolt known as the Jacquerie and Etienne Marcel’s ‘Parisian Revolution’. In addition to these political crises, France was suffering from widespread economic and social turmoil in the mid-1350s, as a result of two decades of war with England, the depredations of the free companies and the impact of the Black Death. It is for these reasons that J. B. Henneman has observed that the reign of John II is associated with ‘the great disasters in French history’.
While the years following Poitiers were undoubtedly filled with calamities, John II played a secondary role in his government’s response to these events because he was in captivity and unable to rule his kingdom effectively. As his eldest son, Charles, was left to contend with these crises, historians have overwhelmingly approached the events of the later 1350s from the dauphin’s perspective. It is revealing that two of the best accounts of these years are found in Roland Delachenal’s and Frangoise Autrand’s biographies of Charles V, both of which give limited treatment to John’s actions in captivity.
While Raymond Cazelles studied the reigns of John II and Charles V together in Société politique, noblesse et couronne, he says little about John’s time in England beyond showing how the Valois monarch’s efforts to try and rule his kingdom from captivity harmed his son’s position in France.* Likewise, Henneman focuses on the impact John II’s capture at Poitiers had on France (particularly through the raising of his ransom) and he does not deal with the French king’s actions in England.* The events of the later 1350s are typically seen to belong to the reign of Charles V rather than that of his father. For Autrand these years were ‘for Charles, the passage from childhood to adulthood’ (‘pour Charles, le passage de l’enfance a lage adulte’), while Delachenal found that the experiences Charles gained during the four years of his father’s captivity formed ‘a decisive influence’ (‘une influence décisive’) on his style of rule as king.®
While historians have written sympathetically about the dauphin because of the difficulties he had to contend with during these years, they have been scathing in their criticism of John II. In his Histoire de France, Louis-Pierre Anquetil wrote that ‘the reign of King John is one of history’s most disastrous’ (‘le régne du roi Jean est un des plus désastreux que histoire presente’).” The events of John’s reign undoubtedly seemed especially pitiful to Anquetil because his Histoire (written at Napoleon’s request) was first published in 1805, the year of Austerlitz, when France, triumphant in Europe, crushed the Holy Roman Empire and even considered invading Britain. From the early twentieth century, historians began to attribute many of the disasters that befell France in the 1350s to defects in John II’s character. Roland Delachenal labelled him a ‘mediocre sovereign’ (‘mediocre souverain’), while Alfred Colville found that he had ‘mediocre intelligence’ (‘une intelligence médiocre’).
Likewise, in his influential La guerre de cent ans (published in 1945 after another disastrous period of French history, when military defeat had again led to foreign occupation), Edouard Perroy found that ‘at a tragic moment in its history, the crown of France was worn ... by a mediocrity’ (‘a un moment tragique de son histoire, la couronne de France fat portée ... par un médiocre’), while Richard Vaughan noted in his 1962 study of Philip the Bold that John I was reckoned to be ‘amongst the worst of medieval French kings’.? Raymond Cazelles challenged the typically negative view of John IV’s character in his 1974 article ‘Jean II le Bon: Quel homme? Quel roi?’. While Cazelles presented John as an ‘innovative king’ (‘roi innovateur’) who was responsible for many of the achievements that had been erroneously credited to his son, he largely omitted John’s four years in captivity from his study.'° This is a considerable oversight because, as I show in this book, the developments John II made to the presentation of the royal image during this period deserve to rank high amongst the achievements of his reign.
Historians are overwhelmingly negative about John II’s time in England, which they rate as the most pitiful years of a disastrous reign. John is typically cast as a negligent monarch who squandered his subjects’ money in the pursuit of his own personal pleasures at the Plantagenet court. For Jules Michelet, the captive French king enjoyed ‘the insolent courtesy of the English’ (‘de jouir bonnement de l’insolente courtoisie des Anglais’), while Frangoise Autrand writes that John ‘from his gilded prison of Windsor ... did little either for his son or for the honour of the Crown of France’ (‘de sa prison dorée de “Windesores” ... ne faisait pas grand-chose ni pour son fils ni pour ’honneur de la couronne de France’).
For Delachenal, John ‘young still, carefree, insouciant, passionate for hunting, had the freedom to satisfy his desires’ (‘jeune encore, insouciant, passionné pour la chasse, il avait tout latitude pour donner satisfaction a ses gouts’), while the duke of Aumale (who edited the first set of the household accounts detailing John’s time in England—see below) stated that ‘with little concern for the miseries of his kingdom he especially loved pleasure’ (‘assez peu préoccupé des miséres de son royaume ... il aimait surtout le plaisir’).'? Historians generally portray John as filling his time with frivolous pastimes as ‘he waited for the hour of his release’ (‘il attendit ’heure de la déliverance’).'* Recently, Jonathan Sumption has stated that John ‘kicked his heels’ in England while waiting to return to France.'* Even sympathetic accounts of John II’s reign view his actions in captivity as of little importance and divorced from the practice of kingship.'®
In contrast, this book shows that the activities John II pursued during his captivity were of the utmost importance to his struggle with Edward I. John’s innovations in the presentation of the royal image, which came as a result of the conditions of his captivity, also had a wider impact on the fashioning of Valois power during the fourteenth century. Historians customarily state that courtly display blossomed under Charles V because of his achievements in restoring the French monarchy’s power after the catastrophe of his father’s reign. For Robert Knecht, the Valois court was ‘a “theatre of magnificence” for which Charles V laid down certain rules’, while David Loades has called the reign of Charles V the ‘apogee’ of the French court.
In his influential study of pre-modern European courts, A. G. Dickens even compared the magnificence of the court of Charles V with that of Louis XTV.!” In this book, I demonstrate that the developments which took place to the presentation of Valois power during Charles V’s reign have been overstated and that he has been credited for initiatives which should be attributed to his father. Rather than being a product of the military and diplomatic successes of Charles V’s reign, it was the conditions of his father’s captivity that spurred on the major developments that took place in the construction of the royal image during this period. It was John rather than Charles who played the formative role in establishing the French court as the leading court in Europe in the mid-fourteenth century.
The perception that Charles V’s reign was the golden age of the medieval French court is partly a consequence of the lack of work on the early Valois French court. While there are numerous books on the Renaissance Valois court, beyond the work by Elisabeth Lalou and Jules Viard on household ordinances, historians have paid little attention to the reigns of the first two Valois monarchs.'* While Malcolm Vale compares the courts of England, France and the Low Countries during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in The Princely Court, he does not discuss John II’s reign. Francoise Beriac-Lainé and Chris Given-Wilson provide an overview of the operation of John II’s household in captivity in their study of the prisoners of the battle of Poitiers. Yet, John’s activities in captivity merit a sustained analysis, particularly because of the richness of the sources detailing his time in England and the importance of his activities to the presentation of royal power in later medieval England and France. A study of the operation of John II’s household in custody is also important because—despite the frequency with which rulers found themselves imprisoned—none of the books on pre-modern courts and households examines a ruler’s experiences in captivity.'? Yet the constraints placed on John in England were a stimulus to developments in the manifestation of the royal image.
SOURCES
One of the principal reasons why the early Valois court has been so poorly studied is because of the dearth of surviving sources.’° In particular, there are few surviving sets of household accounts for the reigns of the first two Valois monarchs.”! Yet John II’s period of captivity in England is well documented because of the survival of an excellent set of household accounts, which runs for over eighteen months (from 25 December 1359 to 8 July 1360) and provides us with a highly detailed view of the workings of the French king’s household.” These sources are particularly important because—unlike most of the other surviving household accounts of the fourteenth-century Valois monarchy—they provide a daily breakdown of the king’s expenses. The accounts were compiled by John’s secretary, Denis de Collors, who used them to keep a record of the financial expenditure of John’s household during its time in England. They were inspected by the count of Sancerre, Guillaume Racine (John’s chaplain) and Jean de Danville (his maitre d’hétel), who all deemed the information contained in them to be correct.?*
The household accounts are divided into three parts. The first section details the goods and money John’s subjects and supporters sent him, while the second part of the accounts lists the ordinary expenses of the six domestic offices of his household (‘depense ordinaire des VI offices de lostel du Roy’), which includes the basic goods used by John and his staff (such as food, drink and lighting). This is the least detailed section of the accounts and it only provides us with the monthly totals of ordinary expenditure rather than an itemisation of the goods purchased. In contrast, the third part of the accounts provides extensive information about the king’s daily extraordinary expenditure. This allows us to track John’s spending pattern over time, which is important because it reveals how the French king responded to the different conditions placed on him during the various stages of his captivity. The information contained in the extraordinary expenses is central to this book because it provides detailed information on the luxury goods John purchased and the elite activities he participated in. This section of the accounts also provides a wealth of information about the structures of John’s household, as well as the personal and commercial networks the French king and his staff developed in England.
As John’s surviving household accounts do not begin until December 1358, they do not cover his time in Bordeaux or his first twenty months in England. Yet we possess a range of other primary sources which detail John’s first two years in captivity. Chroniclers across Europe recorded the French king’s activities, particularly the ceremonies and festivities he participated in. In addition to these narrative sources, we also possess the administrative records of the English Crown, which provide us with good information about the conditions of the French king’s captivity. As John was separated from his kingdom, he came to rely on letters to keep in touch with his subjects, many of which survive. These letters reveal how John presented his activities in England to his subjects in France. The records held in French municipal archives intersect with the first section of John’s household accounts (which records the money and goods he received from his supporters) to provide us with a rounded view of how John raised the money he required to maintain his royal status. Finally, papal letters and petitions provide us with good information about the composition of John’s household. These documents are particularly valuable because they yield information not contained elsewhere.
While the sources documenting John I’s time in captivity provide us with a good insight into the operation of the French king’s household in the fourteenth century, they are not without their limitations. Much of the recent work on pre-modern courts has focused on what Jeroen Duindam has termed ‘domestic ceremony’, that is to say the daily round of rituals and ceremonies which governed the ruler’s actions from morning to evening.’** We know from the work of Christine de Pisan that ceremonies such as the /ever and coucher (which are most commonly associated with the later Valois and Bourbon monarchs) were already in use at the later medieval French court; yet, John II had no Christine to record the domestic ceremonies of his court or the protocol which governed events such as feasting.
Although his household accounts afford an occasional glimpse into some of these conventions (including the use of elaborate silverware and the presentation of gifts during banquets), we learn little about the manner in which dishes were served to different ranks of guests. While John’s household accounts show that music was a prominent feature of his court in England, they do not tell how this music was performed or if meals were accompanied by entremets. Moreover, although the household accounts, safe conducts, chronicles and other sources show that John received numerous visitors during his time in England, it is difficult to reconstruct the protocol dictating how these guests were admitted into the king’s presence. Despite such limitations, when taken together the mass of primary sources documenting John’s time in captivity provides us with a rare opportunity to understand how the early Valois court operated.
CHRONOLOGY
Before beginning Chap. 2, it is necessary to establish the chronology of John the Good’s captivity, particularly because several historians have made number of significant errors in their accounts of the stages of the French king’s time in England, which has led to a distorted impression of John’s activities during this period. Establishing a precise account of John’s movements is important because the conditions placed on him in each location affected how the French king presented his power and upheld his status.
After his capture at the battle of Poitiers on 19 September 1356, Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince (who had commanded the victorious Anglo-Gascon army), led John on a progress through Gascony, which culminated with his reception at Bordeaux on 5 October. After spending almost eight months in Bordeaux, John sailed to England with the Black Prince on 11 April 1357. A number of historians have stated that John docked in southeastern England (Sandwich or Dover) in early May, following which he visited Saint Thomas Becket’s shrine at Canterbury and then progressed through Kent to London.
These studies follow Froissart, who probably confused the itinerary of John’s arrival in England in May 1357 with either his departure in July 1360 or his return to captivity in January 1364.7” Yet the English Crown’s administrative records show that John docked at Plymouth, which was the obvious port to disembark at when travelling from Gascony. From Plymouth, the Black Prince led John on a progress through southern England, during which he made entries into towns such as Salisbury and Winchester. Following his ceremonial entry into London on 24 May 1357 the French king was lodged in the Savoy Palace. Again following Froissart, some historians have stated that John was lodged for part of this time at Windsor. While John visited Windsor several times, he resided at the Savoy Palace until he was moved to Hertford Castle in early April 1359.7*
Leaving Hertford on 29 July, John arrived at Somerton Castle in Lincolnshire on 4 August 1359, where he remained until 21 March 1360.?? Some historians have stated that John was brought from Somerton to Berkhamsted Castle, when in fact the English Crown only mooted the idea and did not implement it. Rather, John’s household accounts show that he arrived back in London eight days after leaving Somerton and that he was lodged in the Tower, where he remained until he left for Dover with the Black Prince on 30 June 1360.°*° Sailing from Dover on 8 July 1360, John docked at Calais the following morning and was kept there until 25 October, when he returned to France. The French monarch’s final period of captivity came with his voluntarily return to England on 5 January 1364, when his son, Louis, duke of Anjou (one of the hostages who took John’s place in England), broke the terms of his captivity. After a lifetime of ill health, John died at the Savoy Palace on 8 April 1364. In total, he spent four years, four months and nine days in English captivity.
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