Download PDF | Pierre Chaplais, English Medieval Diplomatic Practice, part I, volume I, Public Record Office, 1982.
437 Pages
Preface
In the middle ages, as in modern times, the techniques of diplomatic relations were essentially international although certain features were distinctive to particular countries. For example, procedures connected with the preparation of embassies and the drawing up of diplomatic documents fell within the exclusive competence of the governments concerned. The degree of uniformity in diplomatic techniques cannot properly be established until the extant diplomatic records of Europe have been fully surveyed country by country and then compared. The present work is limited to English foreign relations, the original documentary sources for which are so extensive as to make a representative selection from them desirable and instructive. It is hoped that choosing documents of English origin only and leaving aside their foreign counterparts will have made England's contribution to the development of diplomatic practice easier to appraise.
The selection ranges from the early thirteenth century to the end of the fifteenth. The documents are grouped according to subject, each group having a chronological sequence. This arrangement should enable the reader both to assess the evolution of each type of document and to follow step by step the complicated procedure of diplomatic relations. Inevitably some types of record are less well represented than others: for reasons of economy the number of such lengthy texts as treaties has been strictly limited.
Comments on individual items will be found either in headings or in footnotes. Topics of particular interest have been selected for longer treatment in notes inserted in the body of the text. Examples of such longer notes include ‘The grant of Guyenne to Edward of Windsor, the great seal and the royal style’ (1325—26) (note following no. 49), "The "viewing" of prospective brides, and enquiries regarding their moral character’ (note following no. 60), ‘The French embassy to England in June-July 1415’ (note following no. 75) and ‘The alliance of 1386 between Richard II and John I, king of Portugal’ (note following no. 261). An extensive discussion of English diplomatic practice from its origins to the end of the middle ages, originally planned as an introduction to the present volumes, will be published as a separate book, which will contain a consolidated subject-index.
To the owners and custodians of all the records and manuscripts which are published in these volumes I am greatly indebted for their courtesy in allowing me to consult and print them. I am also deeply grateful to Dr R. F. Hunnisett and Dr E. M. Hallam of the Public Record Office who read the whole of the typescript and made invaluable comments, to Canon Isaias da Rosa Pereira of Lisbon, and Messrs Bernhard Grabisch of the Hauptstaatsarchiv of Diisseldorf, Pierre Gasnault of the Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris, and Federico Udina, Director of the Archivo de la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona, for information on individual documents, and finally to Mr Norman Evans of the Public Record Office who helped in the final stages of the preparation of this book and saw it through the press.
Pierre Chaplais
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