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Hugh M. Thomas - Power and Pleasure - Court Life Under King John, 1199-1216-OUP Oxford (2020)
Hugh M. Thomas - Power and Pleasure - Court Life Under King John, 1199-1216-OUP Oxford (2020)
H U G H M . T HOM A S
1
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To my daughter, Bella
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Acknowledgements
I have incurred many debts in the course of researching and writing this book
and it is my pleasure to acknowledge them here. Throughout my career, the
University of Miami has been very supportive of scholarly research and I have
greatly benefited in this project as in earlier ones. I carried out some of the earliest
research and writing during a semester’s teaching relief through the university’s
Center for the Humanities, where the other fellows provided useful feedback on
my first chapter. Later I received a sabbatical that greatly speeded work on the
project. The provost’s office and the College of Arts and Sciences provided money
for summer research trips, the latter through awarding me a Cooper Fellowship.
A&S also provided money for book production costs, including paying for the
creation of maps and image reproduction rights. A Fulbright Fellowship, supple-
mented by yet more funds from A&S, allowed me to spend a wonderful term at
King’s College, London, where David Carpenter and other members of the history
department and medieval studies welcomed me warmly.
The staffs of the Richter Library at the University of Miami, the British Library,
the Institute of Historical Research, and the National Archives in Kew all helped
me carry out my research. Jorge Alejandro Quintela Fernandez made two maps
for the book. Martha Schulman helped me tighten and improve the prose
throughout. Peter Dunn, Historic England, The National Trust, The Society of
Antiquaries, the provost and fellows of Eton College, and Oxford University Press
all gave permission to reproduce images. Many individual scholars also helped
me with this project. My colleagues at the University of Miami continue to pro-
vide a supportive atmosphere and have provided feedback on early drafts through
various seminars. Nicholas Vincent provided me with transcripts of unpublished
charters of John and his predecessors from the Angevin Acta project. Ralph
Turner gave me helpful notes and references from his own work and allowed me
to use an unpublished article on John’s illegitimate children. Jo Edge also directed
me to some good references. Lars Kjær provided me with a copy of his book in
advance of publication and Ryan Kemp supplied me with an unpublished article.
Stephen Mileson allowed me to use a map he had compiled and directed me to a
useful article I had not read. Oliver Creighton, Laura Gianetti, John Gillingham,
Leonie Hicks, Ben Jervis, Frédérique Lachaud, Ruth Mazo Karras, and Joe Snyder
have read parts of the manuscript. Jesse Izzo read the whole thing, as did David
Carpenter, who also shared a chapter on Henry III’s court in advance of publication.
The anonymous readers of the original proposal to Oxford University Press
helped set me on the right track. Bjorn Weiler, who read the final manuscript for
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viii Acknowledgements
the Press, caught errors, supplied much new bibliography, made many useful
suggestions to revise the manuscript, and generally helped me make many
improvements. Terka Acton first contacted me from OUP about this project and
Stephanie Ireland, Cathryn Steele, Katie Bishop, and Sally Evans-Darby helped
shepherd it along. All this help made this book much better than it would have
been otherwise, and for that I am very grateful.
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Contents
List of Illustrations xi
List of Abbreviations xiii
1. Introduction 1
2. Hunting and Falconry 25
3. Luxury and Material Culture at Court 54
4. Aspects of Court Culture 79
5. Religious Practices at Court 108
6. Food and Feasting 124
7. Places and Spaces 153
8. King John and the Wielding of Soft Power 184
9. John’s Court in a Comparative Context: A Preliminary Sketch 211
Conclusion228
Bibliography 233
Index 265
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List of Illustrations
2.1. Royal forests, royal dwellings, and a simplified royal itinerary, 1199–1307. 29
2.2. Seal of Isabella of Angoulême with bird of prey. 34
3.1. Obverse of King John’s seal. 70
4.1. Reverse of King John’s seal. 92
7.1. Plan of Corfe Castle. King John’s residential block with the gloriette
is in the upper right of the plan. 160
7.2. Reconstruction of Ludgershall Castle and view of the north deer park. 165
7.3. Plan of Ludgershall Castle. 165
7.4. Plan of Odiham Castle. 166
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List of Abbreviations
Book of Fees Liber Feudorum: The Book of Fees Commonly called Testa de
Nevill. 3 vols. London, 1920–31.
Constitutio Domus Regis Constitutio Domus Regis: The Disposition of the King’s
Household, ed. S. D. Church, published in Dialogus de
Scaccario: The Dialogue of the Exchequer. Consitutio Domus
Regis: The Disposition of the King’s Household, ed. Emilie Amt,
195–215. Oxford, 2007.
Pipe Roll Ireland 14J ‘The Irish Pipe Roll of 14 John, 1211–12,’ ed. Oliver Davies and
David B. Quinn. Ulster Journal of Archaeology 4 (1941),
Supplement, 1–76.
PR Pipe Rolls. Citations are to the regnal years of reigning kings
for the volumes of the pipe rolls published by the Pipe Roll
Society.
Prest Roll 7J Documents Illustrative of English History in the Thirteenth and
Fourteenth Centuries, ed. Henry Cole. London, 1844, 270–6.
Prest Roll 12J Rotuli de Liberate (RL), 172–253.
Prest Roll 14–18J ‘Praestita Rolle 14–18 John,’ ed. J. C. Holt, in Pipe Roll 17 John,
ed. R. Allen Brown, 89–100. Pipe Roll Society n.s. 37.
London, 1961.
1
Introduction
King John was a very bad man; crueler than all others; he was too
covetous of beautiful women and because of this he shamed the high
men of the land, for which reason he was greatly hated. He never
wished to speak truth. He set his barons against one another when
ever he could; he was very happy when he saw hate between them. He
hated and was jealous of all honourable noblemen. It greatly dis
pleased him when he saw anyone acting well. He was full of evil
qualities. But he spent lavishly; he gave plenty to eat and did so gener
ously and willingly. People never found the gate or the doors of John’s
hall barred against them, so that all who wanted to eat at his court
could do so. At the three great feasts he gave robes aplenty to his
knights. This was a good quality of his.
The Anonymous of Béthune1
King John is one of the best known and most thoroughly studied of England’s
medieval rulers. There are several reasons for this scholarly interest. As the quota
tion above indicates, he was a controversial king, despised by many in his day, and
the nature of his character continues to fascinate. Unlike many influential rulers
who have received scholarly attention, he was an overwhelming failure, but his
political failures had great consequences. His loss of Normandy and other contin
ental lands to the French king, Philip II Augustus, left his dynasty primarily an
insular power thereafter and meant that the Capetian kings would dominate
France. His alienation of so many of his barons led to the issuing of Magna Carta,
a document that no longer receives the quasi-religious reverence it once did, but
which remains deeply important, both in its historical and mythological aspects.
His reign was pivotal, if not in ways he would have imagined or welcomed.2
1 Anonymous of Béthune, Histoire des ducs de Normandie et des rois d’Angleterre, ed. Francisque
Michel (Paris, 1840), 105. The translation is adapted from John Gillingham, ‘The Anonymous of
Béthune, King John and Magna Carta,’ in Janet S. Loengard, ed., Magna Carta and the England of King
John (Woodbridge, 2010), 27–44, at 37–8.
2 For biographies of John, see Kate Norgate, John Lackland (London, 1902); Sidney Painter, The
Reign of King John (Baltimore, MD, 1949); W. L. Warren, King John (Berkeley, CA, 1961);
Ralph V. Turner, King John (London, 1994); S. D. Church, King John: And the Road to Magna Carta
(New York, 2015); Marc Morris, King John: Treachery and Tyranny in Medieval England—The Road to
Power and Pleasure: Court Life under King John, 1199–1216. Hugh M. Thomas, Oxford University Press (2020).
© Hugh M. Thomas. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198802518.003.0001
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One area of marked success, however, was that John’s government was remarkably
innovative and successful in compiling and preserving records. As a result, we
have far more detailed information on the workings of his government than that
of any previous European ruler, giving us a good window into one of the key
changes of the central Middle Ages: the development of royal bureaucracies and
institutions. Several generations of historians have exploited these rich records
for a variety of purposes, including biographies of John, histories of his reign,
studies of his government and fiscal policies, and, above all, research on Magna
Carta. This body of work surrounding King John’s rule remains one of the great
historiographic achievements of medieval history, and excellent work continues
to be done on these subjects. One aspect of John’s reign has been relatively
neglected, however: the social and cultural life at his court. As the quotation
above reveals, however, feasts and the giving of robes mattered greatly to his con
temporaries, so greatly that to one critic John’s generosity in these matters off
set—at least partially—his many character flaws. As we shall see, contemporaries
also saw other aspects of life at court as very important, suggesting that we need
to look more carefully at court life.
The subject of life at court, of course, has not been entirely ignored. John’s bio
graphers have often made passing reference to the king’s love of hunting, and
other aspects of court culture appear in various contexts.3 No one, however, has
used the reign’s rich records to focus on court life under John. This is partly
because topics such as Magna Carta have understandably captured scholarly
attention. Another key reason, however, was that for a long time few historians
considered premodern court life worth studying. As Robert Bucholz noted in his
history of the court of Queen Anne of England, scholars of the Whig, Marxist, or
revisionist schools found royal courts elitist, reactionary, and wasteful.4 Many
Magna Carta (New York, 2015); Frédérique Lachaud, Jean sans Terre (Paris, 2018). These works on
Magna Carta or government in the period also offer extensive information about the reign, the revolt,
and the document: H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, The Governance of Mediaeval England from the
Conquest to Magna Carta (Edinburgh, 1963), 321–94; J. C. Holt, The Northerners: A Study in the Reign
of King John (Oxford, 1992); J. C. Holt, Magna Carta and Medieval Government (London, 1985);
J. C. Holt, ‘Magna Carta, 1215–1217: The Legal and Social Context,’ in Colonial England, 1066–1215
(London, 1997), 291–306; Natalie Fryde, Why Magna Carta? Angevin England Revisited (Munster,
2001); Janet S. Loengard, ed., Magna Carta and the England of King John (Woodbridge, 2010);
Nicholas Vincent, Magna Carta: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2012); J. C. Holt, Magna
Carta, ed. George Garnett and John Hudson, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, 2015); David Carpenter, Magna Carta
(London, 2015). See also the excellent website on Magna Carta at http://magnacartaresearch.org. For
the loss of continental possessions, the classic work is F. M. Powicke, The Loss of Normandy,
1189–1204: Studies in the History of the Angevin Empire, 2nd ed. (Manchester, 1960). See also Daniel
Power, The Norman Frontier in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries (Cambridge, 2004), 406–45,
532–8; Martin Aurell and Noël Tonnerre, eds., Plantagenêts et Capétiens: confrontations et héritages
(Turnhout, 2006); Anne-Marie Flambard Héricher and Véronique Gazeau, eds., 1204, la Normandie
entre Plantagenêts et Capétiens (Caen, 2007).
3 The fullest discussion of cultural issues is in Lachaud, Jean sans Terre, 203–5, 219–42.
4 R. O. Bucholz, The Augustan Court: Queen Anne and the Decline of Court Culture (Stanford, CA,
1993), 2.
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Introduction 3
professional historians saw the study of court life as frivolous; better suited to
antiquarians than serious scholars. As Timothy Reuter put it when noting the
focus of historians of medieval English politics on administration, court activities
like hunting, praying, court ceremony, and womanizing have been treated as ‘sim
ply the froth on the top of serious government.’5 The very characteristics that
make court life intriguing, even seductive, to modern people—hunting and fal
conry, feasting upon exotic foods on gold and silver plate, luxurious clothing and
lavish jewellery, chivalric pastimes—made it a dubious subject for most serious
historians. The modern British monarchy, which has so little political power but
receives so much attention for both its daily life and ceremonies, may make earl
ier periods of court life seem politically trivial as well—the stuff of tabloid jour
nalism and popular enthusiasm rather than scholarly history. Only when it came
to patronage of high culture—painting, music, ballet, and so forth—did earlier
generations of scholars tend to take court life seriously. In recent decades, how
ever, the general attitude to the subject has begun to change.
Norbert Elias, a sociologist with a strong historical bent, was instrumental in
this change and is widely acknowledged as the progenitor of modern court studies.6
His two key works, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation and Höfische Gesellschaft,
which began receiving widespread attention in the 1970s, made two broad argu
ments. First, he claimed that royal courts had a profound influence in reshaping
aristocratic manners, thereby softening a warrior nobility and teaching nobles to
restrain their impulses and aggressiveness and embrace self-control. This, he
believed, helped modernize European culture. Second, he argued that the elabor
ate round of court life at Versailles, and by implication other royal courts, had the
profoundly important role of reinforcing royal absolutist control by creating
a peaceful competition for royal favour within the palace.7 Many of Elias’s
5 Timothy Reuter, ‘The Making of England and Germany, 850–1050: Points of Comparison and
Difference,’ in Janet L. Nelson, ed., Medieval Polities and Modern Mentalities (Cambridge, 2006),
284–99, at 294.
6 John Adamson, ‘The Making of the Ancien-Régime Court 1500–1700,’ in John Adamson, ed., The
Princely Courts of Europe: Ritual, Politics and Culture under the Ancien Régime, 1500–1750 (London,
1999), 7–41, at 8–10; Ronald G. Asch, ‘Introduction: Court and Household from the Fifteenth to the
Seventeenth Centuries,’ in Ronald G. Asch and Adolf M. Birke, eds., Princes, Patronage, and the
Nobility: The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age, c. 1450–1650 (Oxford, 1991), 1–38, at 1–2;
Bucholz, The Augustan Court, 1; Jeroen Duindam, Myths of Power: Norbert Elias and the Early Modern
European Court (Amsterdam, 1995); Jeroen Duindam, Vienna and Versailles: The Courts of Europe’s
Major Dynastic Rivals, 1550–1780 (Cambridge, 2003), 7–9; Anna Bryson, From Courtesy to Civility:
Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1998); Rita Costa-Gomes, The Making
of a Court Society: Kings and Nobles in Late Medieval Portugal (Cambridge, 2003), 1–2; Janet L. Nelson,
‘Was Charlemagne’s Court a Courtly Society?’ in Courts, Elites, and Gendered Power in the Early
Middle Ages: Charlemagne and Others (Aldershot, 2007), 39–57, at 39; A. J. S. Spawforth, ed., The
Court and Court Society in Ancient Monarchies (Cambridge, 2007), 4–7.
7 Norbert Elias, Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation. Soziogenetische und psychogenetische
Untersuchungen, 2 vols. (Basel, 1939); Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process (New York, 1978); Norbert
Elias, Power and Civility: The Civilizing Process, Volume II (New York, 1982); Norbert Elias, Die höfis-
che Gesellschaft: Untersuchungen zur Soziologie des Königtums und der höfischen Aristokratie (Neuwied,
1969); Norbert Elias, The Court Society (New York, 1983).
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conclusions have been challenged, particularly by early modernists, but the books
remain influential, in part because they made scholars see the historical import
ance of royal courts.8
The anthropologist Clifford Geertz has also had an important influence on
court studies, especially with his 1980 work Negara: The Theatre State in 19th-
Century Bali. His emphasis on symbolic power, on what he calls the poetics of
power, is especially useful in uncovering aspects of royal power that exist along
side the kinds of military, administrative, and economic forms of power that his
torians have traditionally studied. Drawing on Walter Bagehot’s distinction
between the dignified and efficient parts of government, Geertz aimed to correct
what he saw as a persistent misconception about the relation between the two,
namely that ‘the office of the dignified parts is to serve the efficient, that they are
artifices, more or less cunning, more or less illusional, designed to facilitate the
prosier aims of rule.’ While he may have gone too far in reversing matters and
placing the efficient largely in service of the dignified, his work is helpful in
rethinking older assumptions about the nature of power.9
Elias’s work, combined with the rise of social history, the increasing influence
of anthropology on history, and the subsequent ‘cultural’ turn, fostered consider
able interest among early modernists in royal and princely courts.10 The concerns
of these scholars have varied widely, but there are several common themes. The
first is the study of the organization of royal households, in many ways simply an
extension of traditional interest in administrative history. The second is the study
of cultural activity at court. This too has its traditional aspects, and it is shaped by
an interdisciplinary concern for the history of art, music, and other forms of high
8 For criticism, see Duindam, Myths of Power; Adamson, ‘Making of the Ancien-Régime Court,’
15–16; Asch, ‘Introduction,’ 15–16; Duindam, Vienna and Versailles, 7–9.
9 Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton, NJ, 1980).
Quotation on p. 122.
10 The bibliography is extensive, but important works include: Sidney Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry,
and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford, 1969); Roy Strong, Splendor at Court: Renaissance Spectacle and the
Theater of Power (Boston, MA, 1973); John Adamson, ed., The Princely Courts of Europe: Ritual,
Politics and Culture under the Ancien Régime, 1500–1750 (London, 1999); Bucholz, The Augustan
Court; Duindam, Vienna and Versailles; D. M. Loades, The Tudor Court (Totowa, NJ, 1987); Gregory
Lubkin, A Renaissance Court: Milan under Galeazzo Maria Sforza (Berkeley, CA, 1994); Robert
Muchembled, ‘Manners, Courts, and Civility,’ in Guido Ruggiero, ed., A Companion to the Worlds of
the Renaissance (Oxford, 2002), 156–72; Guido Ruggiero, The Renaissance in Italy: A Social and
Cultural History of the Rinascimento (New York, 2015), 268–325. Some works and collections that
extend the subject to the Middle Ages and other periods are Ronald G. Asch and Adolf M. Birke, eds.,
Princes, Patronage, and the Nobility: The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age, c. 1450–1650
(Oxford, 1991); A. G. Dickens, ed., The Courts of Europe: Politics, Patronage, and Royalty, 1400–1800
(New York, 1977); David Starkey, ed., The English Court: From the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War
(London, 1987); Sergio Bertelli, The King’s Body: Sacred Rituals of Power in Medieval and Early Modern
Europe (University Park, PA, 2001); Werner Paravacini, ed., Luxus und Integration: Materielle
Hofkultur Westeuropas vom 12. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert (Munich, 2010). Some good comparative
works for courts around the world are Jeroen Duindam, Tülay Artan, and Metin Kunt, eds., Royal
Courts in Dynastic States and Empires: A Global Perspective (Leiden, 2011); Jeroen Duindam,
Dynasties: A Global History of Power, 1300–1800 (Cambridge, 2016).
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Introduction 5
culture, but recent work has started to look beyond the aspects of court life that fit
into a modern high-culture framework. A third broad theme is the study of
ritualized or at least highly formalized activities at royal and princely courts, both
religious and secular. A fourth and particularly important theme has to do with
courts, power, and politics, including how courts shaped relations between rulers
and their nobles and other subjects; how courts strengthened and legitimized
rulers by spreading propaganda; and how courts reified intangible aspects of royal
authority.
Historians of Western Europe in the Middle Ages have also begun to study
royal and princely courts. One cluster of such studies focuses on the late Middle
Ages. Not surprisingly, these have much in common with similar studies on the
early modern period, though they have perhaps been less interested in purely cul
tural matters.11 Another group has focused on the early Middle Ages, but they
have a very different historiographic origin and a somewhat different set of inter
ests: in particular, there is a great deal of work on ritual in politics, much of it
influenced by anthropological models.12 Some of the subjects will seem obvious:
11 Costa-Gomes, Making of a Court Society; Chris Given-Wilson, The Royal Household and the
King’s Affinity: Service, Politics and Finance in England, 1360–1413 (New Haven, CT, 1986);
V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne, eds., English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages (New York,
1983); M. G. A. Vale, The Princely Court: Medieval Courts and Culture in North-West Europe,
1270–1380 (Oxford, 2003); C. M. Woolgar, The Great Household in Late Medieval England (New
Haven, CT, 1999); Steven Gunn and Antheun Janse, eds., The Court as a Stage: England and the Low
Countries in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2006); John Carmi Parsons, ed., The Court and
Household of Eleanor of Castile in 1290 (Toronto, 1977); Werner Rösener, Leben am Hof: Königs- und
Fürstenhöfe im Mittelalter (Ostfildern, 2008); Karl-Heinz Spieß, Fürsten und Höfe im Mittelalter
(Darmstadt, 2008). For work on the influential Burgundian court, see Chapter 9, note 52.
12 Important works on early medieval courts and the role of ritual include J. L. Nelson, Politics and
Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London, 1984), 133–71, 239–401; J. L. Nelson, ‘The Lord’s Anointed
and the People’s Choice: Carolingian Royal Ritual,’ in David Cannadine and Simon Price, eds., Rituals
of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1987), 137–80; Janet L. Nelson,
Courts, Elites, and Gendered Power in the Early Middle Ages: Charlemagne and Others (Aldershot,
2007); Gerald Bayreuther, ‘Die Osterfeier als Akt königlicher Repräsentanz und Herrschaftsausübung
unter Heinrich II (1002–1024),’ in Detlef Altenburg, Jörg Jarnut, and Hans-Hugo Steinhoff, eds., Feste
und Feiern im Mittelalter (Sigmaringen, 1991), 245–53; Gerd Althoff, ‘Fest und Bündnis,’ in Detlef
Altenburg, Jörg Jarnut, and Hans-Hugo Steinhoff, eds., Feste und Feiern im Mittelalter (Sigmaringen,
1991), 29–38; Gerd Althoff, Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter: Kommunikation in Frieden und Fehde
(Darmstadt, 1997); Gerd Althoff, ‘Der frieden-, bündnis, und gemeinschaftstiftende Charakter des
Mahles im früheren Mittelalter,’ in Irmgard Bitsch, Trude Ehlert, and Xenja von Erzdorff, eds., Essen
und Trinken in Mittelalter und Neuzeit (Wiesbaden, 1997), 13–25; Gerd Althoff, Die Macht der Rituale:
Symbolik und Herrschaft im Mittelalter (Darmstadt, 2003); Gerd Althoff, Family, Friends and Followers:
Political and Social Bonds in Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 2004), 136–59; Geoffrey Koziol, Begging
Pardon and Favor: Ritual and Political Order in Early Medieval France (Ithaca, NY, 1992); Karl Leyser,
‘Ritual, Ceremony, and Gesture: Ottonian Germany,’ Communications and Power in Medieval Europe:
The Carolingian and Ottonian Centuries (London, 1994), 189–213; Frans Theuws and J. L. Nelson,
Rituals of Power: From Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Leiden, 2000); Jean-Claude Schmitt and
Otto G. Oexle, eds., Les tendances actuelles de l’histoire du Moyen Âge en France et en Allemagne (Paris,
2002), 231–81; Catherine Cubitt, ed., Court Culture in the Early Middle Ages: The Proceedings of the
First Alcuin Conference (Turnhout, 2003); Timothy Reuter, ‘Regemque, quem in Francia pene per
didit, in patria magnifice recepit: Ottonian Ruler Representation in Synchronic and Diachronic
Comparison,’ in Janet L. Nelson, Medieval Polities and Modern Mentalities (Cambridge, 2006), 127–46;
Julia Barrow, ‘Demonstrative Behaviour and Political Communication in Later Anglo-Saxon England,’
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politically important religious rites like coronation or secular ceremonies like the
granting of arms. However, subtler matters—gestures such as bowing, kneeling,
performing prostrations, embracing, and kissing—have also come under study.
Various scholars have argued that supplication or ceremonial greetings that
involved these gestures could have important political implications, as could
activities we might categorize as mere etiquette, like going out to greet guests or
carefully arranging seating at feasts. Scholars have even studied the political
purposes of displays of emotion. Though modern people tend to treat emotions
(at least ‘true’ emotions) as spontaneous, welling up rather than planned, a number
of scholars have argued that the ferocious displays of anger by powerful people
described in many sources did not result from a lack of control but were instead
signals designed to elicit a response such as submission or compromise.13 One
need not divorce medieval emotions too much from modern ones to recognize
this as a possibility—calculated displays of rage and other emotions occur in
modern politics as well.14 Much of what has been described here can be categor
ized as symbolic communication, a phrase I will adopt because so many of these
acts were designed to convey messages.15 Although the scholarship on ritual,
ceremonial, and symbolic communication has not been without controversy, it
has played a decisive role in our understanding of early medieval culture.16
In part, scholars of early medieval Europe have focused on such subjects
because they lack the kind of administrative records allowing one to reconstruct
court life as fully as other scholars have done for later periods, and as I intend to
Anglo-Saxon England 36 (2007), 127–50; Yitzhak Hen, Roman Barbarians: The Royal Court and
Culture and the Early Medieval West (London, 2007); Levi Roach, ‘Penance, Submission and Deditio:
Religious Influences on Dispute Settlement in Later Anglo-Saxon England (871–1066),’ Anglo-Saxon
England 41 (2013), 343–72. A good overview of the literature may be found in Alexander Beihammer,
‘Comparative Approaches to the Ritual World of the Medieval Mediterranean,’ in Alexander
Beihammer, Stavroula Constantinou, and Maria Parani, eds., Court Ceremonies and Rituals of Power
in Byzantium and the Medieval Mediterranean (Leiden, 2013), 1–33, at 1–14.
13 See in particular Gerd Althoff, ‘Empörung, Tränen, Zerknirschung: Emotionen in der öffentli
chen Kommunikation des Mittelalters,’ in Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter: Kommunikation in
Frieden und Fehde (Darmstadt, 1997), 258–81; Barbara H. Rosenwein, ed., Anger’s Past: The Social
Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 1998); Fredric L. Cheyette, Ermengard of Narbonne
and the World of the Troubadours (Ithaca, NY, 2001), 199–219; Stephen J. Spencer, ‘ “Like a Raging
Lion”: Richard the Lionheart’s Anger during the Third Crusade in Medieval and Modern
Historiography,’ English Historical Review 132 (2017), 495–532; Kate McGrath, Royal Rage and the
Construction of Anglo-Norman Authority, c. 1000–1250 (London, 2019).
14 For some useful cautions about taking the difference between medieval and modern emotions
too far, see Geoffrey Koziol, The Politics of Memory and Identity in Carolingian Royal Diplomas: The
West Frankish Kingdom (840–987) (Turnhout, 2012), 403–5.
15 For this term, see Althoff, Die Macht der Rituale; Björn Weiler, ‘Symbolism and Politics in the
Reign of Henry III,’ Thirteenth-Century England (2003), 15–41, at 17; Björn Weiler, ‘Knighting,
Homage, and the Meaning of Ritual: The Kings of England and Their Neighbors in the Thirteenth
Century,’ Viator 37 (2006), 275–99, at 275–6. An alternative is Julia Barrow’s ‘demonstrative behav
iour’; Barrow, ‘Demonstrative Behaviour,’ 127–50.
16 For discussion of the controversy, see Chapter 8, 188.
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Introduction 7
do for John’s reign. However, a more important motive for medievalists has been
to try to understand how early medieval polities were held together in the absence
of the kinds of institutions and bureaucracies that John and other rulers in the
central Middle Ages were noted for building—and that grew ever more signifi
cant over time. Early explanations focused on the idea that sacral kingship gave
rulers, particularly in certain dynasties like the Carolingians and Ottonians, a
religious authority that could offset the lack of developed institutions. More
recent scholarship has emphasized the role of all kinds of rituals and ceremonies,
secular and religious alike, in binding early medieval polities together and allow
ing their rulers to function.
A number of historians have begun to investigate similar practices at royal
courts in the central Middle Ages.17 However, such studies are not nearly as
prominent for the period as for the early Middle Ages. More prominent has been
the study of courtliness, which obviously delves into court life.18 But this has
drawn more on literature and narrative sources than the kinds of records that
allow one to observe court life in detail, and has focused more on broad social
phenomena than reconstructing life at any particular court. There has been
hardly any of this last kind of work for the period. The main exception is for the
court of John’s parents, Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Martin Aurell devoted
much of his book on the Plantagenet court to Henry’s reign; Nicholas Vincent has
produced an important article on Henry’s court; and Sybil Schröder has written a
significant book on material culture at that court, drawing heavily on the king’s
17 Martin Aurell, ‘La cour Plantagenêt (1154–1204): entourage, savoir et civilité,’ in La cour
Plantagenêt (1154–1204) (Poitiers, 2000), 9–46, at 39–46; Klaus Van Eickels, Vom inszenierten Konsens
zum systematisierten Konflikt. Die englisch-französischen Beziehungen und ihre Wahrnemung an der
Wende vom Hoch- zum Spätmittelalter (Stuttgart, 2002), 287–398; Weiler, ‘Symbolism and Politics,’
15–41; Weiler, ‘Knighting, Homage, and the Meaning of Ritual,’ 275–88; Björn Weiler, Kingship,
Rebellion and Political Culture: England and Germany, c. 1215–c. 1250 (Basingstoke, 2007); Scott
Waugh, ‘Histoire, hagiographie et le souverain ideal à la cour des Plantagenêt,’ in Martin Aurell and
Noël Tonnerre, eds., Plantagenêts et Capétiens: confrontations et héritages (Turnhout, 2006), 429–46;
Nicholas Vincent, ‘The Court of Henry II,’ in Christopher Harper-Bill and Nicholas Vincent, eds.,
Henry II: New Interpretations (Woodbridge, 2007), 278–334; Jacques Le Goff, Saint Louis (Notre
Dame, IN, 2009), 480–518; Rebecca L. Slitt, ‘Acting Out Friendship: Signs and Gestures of Aristocratic
Male Friendship in the Twelfth Century,’ Haskins Society Journal 21 (2010), 147–64; Lars Kjær, ‘Food,
Drink and Ritualized Communication in the Household of Eleanor de Montfort, February to August
1265,’ Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011), 75–89; Fanny Madeline, Les Plantagenêts et leur empire:
Construire un territoire politique (Rennes, 2014), 279–86; Wojtek Jezierski et al., eds., Rituals,
Performatives, and Political Order in Northern Europe, c. 650–1350 (Turnhout, 2015). Even when not
consciously addressing these issues, many other scholars have touched on them when speaking of
things like political theatre: see, for instance, R. R. Davies, The First English Empire: Power and
Identities in the British Isles, 1093–1343 (Oxford, 2002), 23–5.
18 The literature is vast, but see, for instance, C. Stephen Jaeger, The Origins of Courtliness: Civilizing
Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals, 939–1210 (Philadelphia, PA, 1985); Josef Fleckenstein, ed.,
Curialitas: Studien zu Grundfragen der höfisch-ritterlichen Kultur (Göttingen, 1990); Aldo D. Scaglione,
Knights at Court: Courtliness, Chivalry, and Courtesy from Ottonian Germany to the Italian Renaissance
(Berkeley, CA, 1991).
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financial records.19 The narrative sources for Henry’s court, it must be admitted,
are somewhat better than for John’s, and shed much light on his court. However,
it is only with John’s reign that one finds the records that allow a reasonably com
prehensive description of a royal court in the central Middle Ages, comparable to
the scholarly work on later periods. Thus, a history of the court of King John can
greatly expand our knowledge of the royal court in the central Middle Ages.
The first aim of this book is, to the degree possible, to reconstruct social and cul
tural life at King John’s court. To some degree, the contents of the archives shape
which topics receive the most attention, including hunting; material culture; reli
gious ceremonial; and food and feasting. However, these subjects appear fre
quently in the records precisely because they were of special interest to John and
his court, as they were to most royal and princely courts of the time. The primar
ily descriptive layer of this project is fundamentally important precisely because
so little work has appeared on court life in this period. Moreover, as individual
chapters and sections will show, this reconstruction contributes to large existing
literatures on medieval hunting, clothing and textiles, learning at court, chivalry,
courtly love, feasting, etiquette, and ceremonial royal entries into towns. In some
cases, it will also contribute to important current debates, for instance over the
survival of sacral kingship after the Investiture Strife, the uses of castles, and
medieval experiences of place and space. In other cases, it will provide useful spe
cific findings. For example, wine historians have long associated the English shift
to consuming Bordeaux rather than Loire valley wines with John’s loss of territor
ies north of Gascony; my research not only confirms this but also shows how fast
it happened, since the change is already apparent in wine purchasing for the royal
court within a few years of 1204.
However useful these contributions to the study of individual aspects of court
life may be, it is the focus on a single court rather than a single topic that is crucial
to providing a fuller understanding of the significance of courts. Though special
ists in such subjects as hunting and feasting often try to provide context for such
activities, the context here will be deeper and much more concrete. Moreover,
looking at the court in the round allows one to see the pervasiveness of important
19 Martin Aurell, ed., La cour Plantagenêt (1154–1204) (Poitiers, 2000); Sybille Schröder, Macht
und Gabe: materielle Kultur am Hof Heinrichs II. von England (Husum, 2004); Vincent, ‘The Court of
Henry II,’ 278–344. See also Martin Aurell, ed., Culture politique des Plantagenêt (1154–1224) (Poitiers,
2003). For an important work that focuses on specific aspects of court life but extends to the reigns of
Henry II’s sons, see Madeline, Les Plantagenêts et leur empire.
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Introduction 9
practices like gift exchange or displays of power and wealth across a range of
court activities. More important still, researching a variety of activities reveals just
how much effort and money went into maintaining court life. The English royal
government strove not only to win wars and oversee justice, the traditional duties
of a king, but also to maintain a magnificent court for the king. Though the sur
viving records do not allow a systematic accounting of royal costs, various indi
vidual figures I discuss throughout the book give a sense of just how much the
royal government spent on activities such as hunting, distributing robes at feasts,
and other aspects of court life—even during a period of ruinously expensive wars.
These expenditures only increased the financial pressures John felt. Moreover,
though the financial demands of warfare were the chief force impelling kings to
develop ever more sophisticated methods to collect money, the desire to have a
spectacular court was also a motive for the English kings to develop their preco
cious bureaucracy.
Finally, reconstruction of life at John’s court will provide a baseline for compari
son with other courts, a subject I turn to in Chapter 9. Though, as I have stressed,
similar systematic work has not been done for other princely and royal courts in
the central Middle Ages, I hope to begin such work by looking at royal records
from other courts around 1200 and piecing together material from a variety of
other primary and secondary sources. The resulting comparison is highly tenta
tive, but I suggest that many similarities existed not only between John’s court and
those of other rulers in core cultural areas of Western Europe such as France, but
also with the courts of rulers in places ranging from Wales and Norway to
Byzantium and the Islamic world. The lack of systematic studies of courts until the
late Middle Ages and early modern period presents challenges for a temporal com
parison as well, but I have also ventured tentative comparisons there. In particular,
I propose a combination of strong continuity with slow but cumulatively powerful
change that meant that court life altered only gradually from generation to
generation but far more radically in the span of centuries, so that early modern
courts were very different from ones from the central Middle Ages.
Norbert Elias placed the study of power at the centre of his exploration of court
life, and most of his successors have followed his lead. Power will be one of the
main subjects of this book as well. Much of the existing work on King John’s reign
also focuses on power, of course, but mostly on institutional, military, or eco
nomic forms rather than the kinds of symbolic or cultural power provided by
activities like hunting and feasting. In his recent book, The Normans and Empire,
David Bates has persuasively argued for extending the modern term ‘soft power’
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20 David Bates, The Normans and Empire (Oxford, 2013), 4, 18–23.
21 I draw the useful phrase ‘administrative kingship’ from C. Warren Hollister and John W. Baldwin,
‘The Rise of Administrative Kingship: Henry I and Philip Augustus,’ American Historical Review 83
(1978), 867–905.
22 For these expeditions and relations with Scotland, Ireland, and Wales more generally, see Seán
Duffy, ‘King John’s Expedition to Ireland, 1210: The Evidence Reconsidered,’ Irish Historical Studies 30
(1996), 1–24; S. D. Church, ‘The 1210 Campaign in Ireland: Evidence for a Military Revolution?’
Anglo-Norman Studies 20 (1998), 45–57; A. A. M. Duncan, ‘King John of England and the Kings of
Scots,’ in S. D. Church, ed., King John: New Interpretations (Woodbridge, 1999), 247–71; Seán Duffy,
‘John and Ireland: The Origins of England’s Irish Problem,’ in S. D. Church, ed., King John: New
Interpretations (Woodbridge, 1999), 221–45; I. W. Rowlands, ‘King John and Wales,’ in S. D. Church,
ed., King John: New Interpretations (Woodbridge, 1999), 273–87; K. J. Stringer, ‘Kingship, Conflict,
and State Making in the Reign of Alexander II: The War of 1215–1217 and Its Context,’ in Richard
Oram, ed., The Reign of Alexander II 1214–1249 (Leiden, 2005), 99–156; Louise J. Wilkinson, ‘Joan,
Wife of Llywelyn the Great,’ Thirteenth-Century England 10 (2005), 81–93; Colin Veach, ‘King John
and Royal Control in Ireland: Why William de Briouze Had to Be Destroyed,’ English Historical
Review 129 (2014), 1051–78; Carpenter, Magna Carta, 238–41, 473–5.
23 For a recent discussion of this dispute, see Christopher Harper-Bill, ‘John and the Church of
Rome,’ in S. D. Church, ed., King John: New Interpretations (Woodbridge, 1999), 289–315.
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Introduction 11
rulers, and (from May 1216) the future Louis VIII of France. His position could
have collapsed in England, as it had in Normandy a decade earlier, but John
recruited and maintained sufficient military strength to prevent this. After his
death, this military power allowed the supporters of his young son, Henry, to drive
out Louis and crown Henry king. John had many failures, but they were not the
whole story.
Moreover, when it came to his greatest failures, many factors worked against
him or were beyond his control. The Angevin Empire was an unwieldy affair,
involving too many territories, frontiers, and enemies.24 As is well known, many
of the governing practices and techniques the rebels objected to in Magna Carta
had been developed and used by John’s predecessors, even if the loss of his most
important continental possessions forced him to ratchet up the financial pressure
on his English subjects to dangerous levels. A significant if somewhat mysterious
episode of inflation, now thought to be centred on John’s earliest years, added to
the turmoil in royal finances caused by John’s efforts to recover Normandy, Maine,
and Anjou.25 Despite the apparently overwhelming advantage in territories the
Angevin dynasty had over the Capetians, their advantage in wealth was not com
mensurate. Moreover, Philip’s acquisition of territories elsewhere in France, along
with other financial initiatives, shifted the economic balance towards the French
king, though historians debate which ruler had more income at the beginning of
John’s reign.26 Clearly, there were many factors involved in the successes and
24 For recent work on the Angevin Empire, see Robert-Henri Bautier, ‘Empire Plantagenêt ou
“éspace Plantagenêt” y eut-il une civilization du monde Plantagenêt?’ Cahiers de civilisation médiévale
29 (1983), 139–47; John Le Patourel, Feudal Empires: Norman and Plantagenet (London, 1984), 1–17,
289–309; J. C. Holt, ‘The End of the Anglo-Norman Realm,’ in Magna Carta and Medieval Government
(London, 1985), 23–65; C. Warren Hollister, ‘Normandy, France, and the Anglo-Norman Regnum,’ in
Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions in the Anglo-Norman World (London, 1986), 17–57; Turner, King
John, 59–86; Ralph V. Turner, ‘The Problem of Survival for the Angevin “Empire”: Henry II’s and His
Sons’ Vision versus Late Twelfth-Century Realities,’ American Historical Review 100 (1995), 78–96;
Aurell, ‘La cour Plantagenêt,’ 9–46; Nicholas Vincent, ‘King Henry II and the Poitevins,’ in Martin
Aurell, ed., La cour Plantagenêt (1154–1204) (Poitiers, 2000), 103–35; John Gillingham, The Angevin
Empire, 2nd ed. (London, 2001); Martin Aurell, The Plantagenet Empire, 1154–1224 (Harlow, 2007),
1–10, 186–218, 263–72; Aurell and Tonnerre, eds., Plantagenêts et Capétiens: confrontations et héritages;
Martin Aurell and Frédéric Boutoulle, eds., Les seigneuries dan l’espace Plantagenêt (c. 1150–c. 1250)
(Paris, 2009); Nicholas Vincent, ‘Jean sans Terre et l’origine de la Gascogne anglaise: droits et pouvoirs
dans les arcanes des sources,’ Annales du Midi 123 (2011), 533–66.
25 For recent work, see J. L. Bolton, ‘The English Economy in the Early Thirteenth Century,’ in
S. D. Church, ed., King John: New Interpretations (Woodbridge, 1999), 27–40; Paul Latimer, ‘Early
Thirteenth-Century Prices,’ in S. D. Church, ed., King John: New Interpretations (Woodbridge, 1999),
41–73; Paul Latimer, ‘The English Inflation of 1180–1220 Reconsidered,’ Past and Present 171
(2001), 3–29.
26 J. C. Holt, ‘The Loss of Normandy and Royal Finance,’ in John Gillingham and J. C. Holt, eds.,
War and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of J.O. Prestwich (Woodbridge, 1984),
92–105; Nick Barratt, ‘The Revenue of King John,’ English Historical Review 111 (1996), 835–55; Nick
Barratt, ‘The Revenues of King John and Philip Augustus Revisited,’ in S. D. Church, ed., King John:
New Interpretations (Woodbridge, 1999), 75–99; V. D. Moss, ‘The Norman Exchequer Rolls of King
John,’ in S. D. Church, ed., King John: New Interpretations (Woodbridge, 1999), 101–16; Nick Barratt,
‘Counting the Cost: The Financial Implications of the Loss of Normandy,’ Thirteenth-Century England
10 (2005), 31–9; John Gillingham, Richard I (New Haven, CT, 1999), 338–48; Vincent D. Moss, ‘La
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failures of John’s reign, many of them studied intensively. What this book seeks to
add is a sustained focus on how the soft power produced at and by the court fit
into the mix.
The discussion of soft power is particularly important because so much
depended on John’s personal relations with the powerful. For all the growing
sophistication of royal bureaucracy, John’s power still depended most heavily on
his ability to maintain the loyalty of existing noble and knightly followers and
recruit new ones. I will pursue this subject more fully in Chapter 8; it suffices to
say here that John lost most of his continental possessions early in 1204, and
nearly lost England late in his reign, first and foremost because so many nobles
and knights turned against him. Though Philip Augustus’s military prowess
should not be ignored, the French king was able to sweep through Normandy,
Maine, Anjou, and parts of Poitou so quickly because of a wave of defections. And
it was, of course, a baronial revolt that later threatened John’s control of England.
However, John avoided losing England to the rebel barons and subsequently to
Prince Louis primarily because he was able to retain the loyalty of some of his
nobles and knights and call on powerful followers from outside England. Of
course, many factors, including John’s patronage in land and office, his need to
raise money, and his use or abuse of his royal powers, shaped his followers’ reac
tions, but the social and cultural interactions discussed in this book were crucial
means for the king to potentially strengthen relations with his most powerful fol
lowers. All things being equal, a king who wielded soft power successfully was
more likely to succeed than a king who did not, and in close-run situations, soft
power could tip the balance. Despite this, John’s use of soft power has been a rela
tively neglected factor in his relations with the powerful: John Gillingham has
addressed aspects of the topic, particularly the impact of John’s lavish expenditure
on the court, and many others have touched on it, but more work is needed.27
However, one must look not only at John’s use of soft power, but also at how his
enemies tried to contest that power, sometimes by employing their own soft
power, but more often by undermining his. Much of the work on aspects of court
life such as ritual performances, feasting, hunting, and the deployment of m aterial
culture comes from functionalist social science theories that focus on these
activities’ purposes, most often with an eye to their role in relations of power.
Early work on these activities understandably focused on how they worked, not
on the potential for failure, on function rather than dysfunction, and often
perte de la Normandie et les finances de l’État: les limites des interprétations financières,’ in Anne-
Marie Flambard Héricher and Véronique Gazeau, eds., 1204, la Normandie entre Plantagenêts et
Capétiens (Caen, 2007), 75–91.
27 John Gillingham, ‘Wirtschaftlichkeit oder Ehre? Die Ausgaben der englischen Könige im 12.
und frühen 13. Jahrhundert,’ in Werner Paravacini, ed., Luxus und Integration: Materielle Hofkultur
Westeuropas vom 12. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert (Munich, 2010), 151–67.
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Introduction 13
discussed them abstractly, without much context. However, as Kim Esmark has
remarked of the medieval historiography on rituals and ceremonies, ‘In recent
years . . . attention has shifted toward problems of process, strategy, contention,
variability, ambiguity, struggles over interpretation, and so on.’28 In this book,
I will stress how John’s enemies, in their actions and the stories they told and
wrote about his activities, tried to counter and undermine the methods he
employed to draw soft power from his court, and to some degree succeeded.
Another major aim of this book is to use John’s reign to assess the impact that
the development of administrative kingship had on earlier structures of soft
power. There are several reasons for the difference between the early medieval
historiography of government, with its emphasis on rituals and ceremonies, and
that of the High Middle Ages, with its longstanding emphasis on administration.
Clearly, the survival of records for the latter period has had an effect, but there
also seems to be at least an implicit presumption that the rise of administration
made soft power less important over the course of the central Middle Ages.29
Perhaps a Weberian model of a shift from charismatic rule to routine bureaucracy
plays a role here. However, the scholars who are exploring ceremony and ritual
in the central Middle Ages are blurring boundaries in that area, and rightly so.
I argue that administrative kingship was in many ways compatible with traditional
uses of soft power. In particular, I point to the way that the rise of government
institutions gave rulers new tools and resources to project an aura of sacral king
ship, engage in impressive ceremonial activities, and generally promote soft
power. It is certainly possible that the rise of bureaucracies and institutions
reduced the relative importance of soft power, and it is likely that they created
challenges for the creation of soft power and altered aspects of how the court pro
duced it. Nonetheless, I intend to show that administrative kingship could not
only coexist with but actually strengthen many of the traditional practices of soft
power at royal courts.
Since the court remained an important potential source of soft power for John,
the question is how well he wielded it. The debate over how able a king John was
more generally and the degree to which he was responsible for the disasters of his
reign is a longstanding one. Given the many factors involved, including those
outside John’s direct control, any answer will be complicated. It is not my inten
tion to relitigate the question of John’s overall competence, though my own cau
tious view is that despite being reasonably intelligent and possessing some
political talents, overall he was a disastrous ruler who bears much responsibility
for his failures. Here, I simply wish to contribute to the larger discussion by
28 Kim Esmark, ‘Just Rituals: Masquerade, Manipulation, and Officializing Strategies in Saxo’s
Gesta Danorum,’ in Wojtek Jezierski et al., eds., Rituals, Performatives, and Political Order in Northern
Europe, c. 650–1350 (Turnhout, 2015), 237–67, at 237.
29 See the comments of Björn Weiler on this: Weiler, ‘Knighting, Homage, and the Meaning of
Ritual,’ 275, 277, 298–9; Weiler, Kingship, Rebellion and Political Culture, xi, 130, 148.
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focusing on John’s skill at using soft power. As will become clear, John had an
impressive and magnificent court and, as the Anonymous of Béthune indicated,
he was generous in sharing its lavishness. Yet his glittering court seems not to
have helped him much: John’s image was perhaps even poorer among contempor
ary writers than modern historians.30 To some degree, this was due to his poor
handling of relations with his nobles at court. In particular, according to chronic
lers writing in the decade or so after John’s death, one major source of baronial
discontent, which most scholars have not sufficiently accounted for, stemmed
from a specific aspect of court life—John’s predatory pursuit of sexual relation
ships with the wives and female relatives of his barons, as noted in the quotation
at the beginning of this chapter. A less egregious but still important problem,
I will argue, is that John forfeited many of the advantages of his court through his
own bungling, especially at significant moments. Overall, John did not benefit as
much as he should have from the soft power his court could provide.
30 For discussions of John’s medieval and modern reputation, see Painter, Reign of King John,
226–84; Richardson and Sayles, Governance of Mediaeval England, 321–36, 364–94; Warren, King
John, 1–16; Holt, ‘King John,’ 85–109; David Carpenter, ‘Abbot Ralph of Coggeshall’s Account of the
Last Years of King Richard and the First Years of King John,’ English Historical Review 113 (1998),
1210–30; John Gillingham, ‘Historians Without Hindsight: Coggeshall, Diceto and Howden on the
Early Years of John’s Reign,’ in S. D. Church, ed., King John: New Interpretations (Woodbridge, 1999),
1–26; Turner, King John, 1–19, 258–65; Matthew Strickland, War and Chivalry: The Conduct and
Perception of War in England and Normandy, 1066–1217 (Cambridge, 1996), 53, 109–10, 203, 212–13,
223, 256–7; Jim Bradbury, ‘Philip Augustus and King John: Personality and History,’ in S. D. Church,
ed., King John: New Interpretations (Woodbridge, 1999), 347–61; Gillingham, Richard I, 335–48; Sean
McGlynn, Blood Cries Afar: The Magna Carta War and the Invasion of England, 1215–1217 (Stroud,
2011), 242–9; Vincent, Magna Carta, 6–20, 36–52; Carpenter, Magna Carta, 70–97; Morris, King John,
285–98; Lachaud, Jean sans Terre, 185–205.
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Introduction 15
31 Elias, Court Society, 37–9. See also Alban Gautier, Le Festin dans l’Angleterre anglo-saxonne,
v e-xie siècles (Rennes, 2006), 23–4; Christina Normore, A Feast for the Eyes: Art, Performance and the
Late Medieval Banquet (Chicago, IL, 2015), 164–5, 192. See, however, Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A
Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, MA, 1984), 367.
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power and pleasure. In Chapter 5, in which I discuss religious life at court, I add a
third variable to the relationship: piety. This was perhaps a less important consid
eration for John than for some other kings, but is worth considering briefly, even
though pleasure will remain the more important focus. Whereas there is a vast
amount of historiography on the court and power to build on, there is little on
pleasure, which means that I can only begin the task of applying sophisticated
analysis to pleasure. Nonetheless, by doing so I hope at least to start a conversa
tion among scholars about the subject.
“In time I exist, and of time I speak,” said Augustine: and added,
“What time is I know not.” In a like spirit of perplexity I may say that
in the court I exist and of the court I speak, and what the court is,
God knows, I know not. I do know however that the court is not
time; but temporal it is, changeable and various, space-bound and
wandering, never continuing in one state. When I leave it, I know it
perfectly: when I come back to it I find nothing or but little of what
I left there: I am become a stranger to it, and it to me. The court is the
same, its members are changed.32
It has become traditional to use the above quotation from Walter Map, a courtier
and critic of the court writing in the reign of Henry II, to describe the protean
nature of the premodern court and the difficulty of defining it. The court’s precise
nature can indeed be difficult to pin down, since contemporaries had no clear-cut
definitions; in particular there was no clear dividing line between court and
household. Modern historians of royal and princely courts speak of the court in
various ways, often in terms of spaces, events, and processes, or as a group of
people.33 For practical purposes, I will use the description Malcolm Vale applied
to the court of John’s father: ‘The court of Henry II (1154–89), like its European
counterparts, predecessors, and successors, was essentially an itinerant body, a
place filled by a mobile assemblage of people. The court was where the ruler
was.’34 Fortunately, because so much of royal government remained within the
royal household in John’s reign, traditional administrative history has included
32 Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium: Courtiers’ Trifles, ed. M. R. James, C. N. L. Brooke, and
R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1983), 2–3.
33 For discussions of the definition and nature of the court and terminology used by people of the
time, see Asch, ‘Introduction,’ 7–9; Lubkin, Renaissance Court, ix–xii; Ralph V. Turner, Judges,
Administrators and the Common Law in Angevin England (London, 1994), xx–xxii; Vale, Princely
Court, 15–23; Costa-Gomes, Making of a Court Society, 2–3, 9–16.
34 Vale, Princely Court, 22. For a similar description of John’s court, see Carpenter, Magna
Carta, 157.
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Introduction 17
much work on the structure of the court. There remains important work to be
done in this area, but here I will simply summarize some key aspects as back
ground for understanding the social and cultural life at court.35
John’s court moved constantly about his realms.36 He was what some scholars
have called a saddle king, and Julie Kanter has estimated that he travelled
79,612 miles (128,123 km) during his reign. His average stop was 2.1 days in length,
and stays of a week or more comprised only 12 per cent of his reign. On average,
including his days at rest, he travelled about 13 miles a day.37 John’s court was far
from unique. Walter Map compared Henry II’s court to a ghostly band that cease
lessly followed the cursed King Herla after their return from an otherworldly visit
to the court of a pygmy king.38 Itinerant rule, which can also be found in non-
Western societies from Java and Hawaii to East Africa and Morocco, was the
norm in Western Europe in the Middle Ages.39 Carolingian and Ottonian kings,
for instance, travelled at broadly comparable speeds to John.40 Rates did vary:
Henry III chose a more leisurely pace than his father, John, or son, Edward I,
though the latter also travelled less frenetically than John.41 England’s royal court
tended to slow down in the later Middle Ages, but it remained itinerant, as did
courts elsewhere in Europe.42 Indeed, European courts tended to settle in a fixed
place only from the middle of the sixteenth century on, and even then courts
35 For government in John’s reign and the Angevin period in general, in addition to relevant sec
tions of the biographies and works on Magna Carta, see T. F. Tout, Chapters in the Administrative
History of Mediaeval England: The Wardrobe, the Chamber, and the Small Seals, 6 vols. (Manchester,
1967), 1:67–175; J. E. A. Jolliffe, Angevin Kingship (London, 1955); Richardson and Sayles, Governance
of Mediaeval England; Doris M. Stenton, English Justice Between the Norman Conquest and the Great
Charter, 1066–1215 (Philadelphia, PA, 1964); W. L. Warren, The Governance of Norman and Angevin
England, 1086–1272 (Stanford, CA, 1987); Ralph V. Turner, The English Judiciary in the Age of Glanvill
and Bracton, c. 1176–1239 (Cambridge, 1985); Turner, Judges, Administrators; David Carpenter, ‘The
English Royal Chancery in the Thirteenth Century,’ in Adrian Jobson, ed., English Government in the
Thirteenth Century (Woodbridge, 2004), 49–69.
36 Two important studies of royal itineration in the period are Jolliffe, Angevin Kingship, 139–65;
S. D. Church, ‘Some Aspects of the Royal Itinerary in the Twelfth Century,’ Thirteenth-Century
England 11 (2007), 31–45.
37 Julie Elizabeth Kanter, ‘Peripatetic and Sedentary Kingship: The Itineraries of John and Henry III,’
Thirteenth-Century England 13 (2011), 11–26, at 11–17. For the phrase saddle king, see A. G. Dickens,
‘Monarchy and Cultural Revival: Courts in the Middle Ages,’ The Courts of Europe: Politics, Patronage,
and Royalty, 1400–1800 (New York, 1977), 8–31, at 17; Loades, Tudor Court, 9.
38 Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium, 26–31.
39 John William Bernhardt, Itinerant Kingship and Royal Monasteries in Early Medieval Germany,
c. 936–1075 (Cambridge, 1993), 45–8; Clifford Geertz, ‘Centers, Kings and Charisma: Reflections on
the Symbolics of Power,’ in Joseph Ben-David and Terry Nichols Clark, eds., Culture and Its Creators:
Essays in Honor of Edward Shils (Chicago, IL, 1977), 150–71, 309–14.
40 Rosamond McKitterick, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge,
2008), 180–4.
41 Kanter, ‘Peripatetic and Sedentary Kingship,’ 18–24; Julie E. Crockford, ‘The Itinerary of Edward I
of England: Pleasure, Piety, and Governance,’ in Alison L. Gascoigne, Leonie V. Hicks, and Marianne
O’Doherty, eds., Medieval Routes in Europe and the Middle East (Turnhout, 2016), 231–57; Michael
Prestwich, ‘The Royal Itinerary and Roads in England under Edward I,’ in Anke Bernau, Valerie Allen,
and Ruth Evans, eds., Roadworks: Medieval Britain, Medieval Roads (Manchester, 2016), 177–97. See
Chapter 7, 169, for more on royal itineration.
42 Given-Wilson, Royal Household, 22, 28; Woolgar, Great Household, 46.
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often travelled at certain times of the year.43 Though the change to sedentary
courts was slow, the cumulative effects were powerful. Elias could use descrip
tions of buildings to frame his study of court society at Versailles.44 In contrast,
John stayed at many different kinds of buildings, and probably spent more of his
waking hours on horseback than in any one type of structure. Essentially John
and those who travelled with him lived as nomads, albeit ones who could draw on
the resources of a sedentary society and who therefore enjoyed a lavish, if peripat
etic, lifestyle.
Though some servants, like the laundresses and carters who appear in one set
of John’s surviving records, followed him constantly, the overall composition of
the court changed continuously.45 Despite Walter Map’s learned comparison to
the abstract mysteries of time, he was partly making a fairly mundane point that
as the court moved, people constantly joined and left. One can see, for instance,
royal falconers bringing hawks and falcons to and from the king, or individual
royal huntsmen and their packs of hounds joining the court in hunting season
and leaving thereafter. Royal messengers and emissaries constantly travelled to
and from court, tying the king to his officials, subjects, allies, and enemies through
a stream of oral and written messages.46 Powerful officials, who often had duties
away from the king, came and went as well. Household accounts for March and
most of April 1207 survive for Hugh de Neville, an important royal official, and
they show Hugh and his household travelling in close proximity to the king
and queen for most of March but going their own way for most of April.47 Queen
Isabella sometimes accompanied the king and sometimes stayed apart from him
with her own household. Secular and ecclesiastical magnates and foreign rulers
and other powerful visitors would bring their retinues to travel with the king for a
while, before spinning back off onto their own, generally less gruelling itineraries.
At times, the court mushroomed, particularly for the great feasts of Christmas,
Easter, and Pentecost. At other times it shrunk nearly to its core. In terms of its
personnel, the court was constantly changing and therefore far more fluid than
the geographically fixed courts of more modern periods.
The court’s core was already well developed by the beginning of John’s reign.48
The earliest comprehensive overview we have of an English royal court comes
43 Adamson, ‘Making of the Ancien-Régime Court,’ 10. 44 Elias, Court Society, 41–65.
45 Misae 11J 110, 118–19, 128, 135, 143, 159, 164; Misae 14J 231, 234, 244, 249, 251, 254, 258.
46 Mary C. Hill, The King’s Messengers, 1199–1377: A Contribution to the History of the Royal
Household (London, 1961).
47 C. M. Woolgar, ed., Household Accounts from Medieval England, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1992), 1:110–16.
48 For work on the administration of the household/court of King John or of the Angevin period in
general, see notes 2 and 35 in this chapter. For the reign of Henry II, Schröder provides a particularly
good overview of the part of royal administration making purchases for the court; Schröder, Macht
und Gabe, 103–40. For later medieval royal households, see Given-Wilson, Royal Household, 1–27,
39–74; Vale, Princely Court, 34–68; Costa-Gomes, Making of a Court Society, 16–34. For medieval
English aristocratic households, see Margaret Wade Labarge, A Baronial Household of the Thirteenth
Century (New York, 1965), 53–70; Kate Mertes, The English Noble Household, 1250–1600: Good
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Introduction 19
from the Constitutio Domus Regis, which describes the early twelfth-century court
of Henry I, John’s great-grandfather.49 Its most recent editor, Stephen Church,
notes that it includes over 150 individuals, though since at least some of these
received a daily ration of a loaf that fed four people, they probably had assistants,
meaning the total size of the court was larger. Some members, like the chancellor
and treasurer, were concerned with the wider government; others were focused
on guarding the household or court. The vast majority, however, had tasks involv
ing life at court. The largest single group, including bakers, butchers, cooks, but
lers, and a fruiterer, dealt with the preparation and serving of food and drink.
Others served in the royal hunt or the king’s chapel. One man was in charge of the
king’s cortinas (hangings or tapestries), another with transporting his bed, and
others with the royal table linens. Though no similar document survives for John’s
reign, the records that do survive indicate the broadly similar nature of his court.
In later periods, the government, including the royal household, was highly
structured and compartmentalized, with different offices having very specific tasks.
This process was already underway in the twelfth century, with the creation of the
exchequer for handling money, but the royal court itself remained very fluid in
John’s reign. For instance, the boundaries between the chamber and wardrobe, later
two distinct departments, were only beginning to develop under John. The Angevin
rulers were noted for the flexibility and omnicompetence of their officials, and these
traits extended to the royal court. Much of John’s government was decentralized, in
the hands of sheriffs and other local officials, or travelling justices, and some of it
was stationed at Westminster and, early in John’s reign, Caen. Nevertheless, the
court remained at the heart of the government, and many of those coming in and
out of court came to deal with administrative matters. Moreover, in wartime, the
court was the centre of the army. Even so, most of the royal court’s staff remained
focused on the court itself rather than broader administration.
In the medieval and early modern periods, members of royal families often
had satellite courts.50 John’s legitimate children were too young during his life
time to have their own establishments, but his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, had
her own following, which remained sizeable even after her partial retirement to
Fontevraud Abbey.51 Queen Isabella also had her own household, but it appears
Governance and Politic Rule (Oxford, 1988), 53–70; David Crouch, The Image of Aristocracy in Britain,
1000–1300 (London, 1993), 281–310; C. M. Woolgar, ed., The Elite Household in England, 1100–1550
(Donington, 2018).
1.4 Sources
For two years of King John’s reign we know on what days he took his infrequent
baths.55 This one detail gives some sense of just how much information the new
52 Nicholas Vincent, ‘Isabella of Angoulême: John’s Jezebel,’ in S. D. Church, ed., King John: New
Interpretations (Woodbridge, 1999), 165–219, at 185–93, 199–200, 205–6.
53 See note 45 in this chapter.
54 Misae 11J 115, 137, 170; Misae 14J 237, 249, 262; Church, ‘Royal Itinerary,’ 42; Carpenter, Magna
Carta, 157. The text of the Constitutio Domus Regis contains a reference to royal bakers being sent ahead
to buy for 40 pence a quantity of wheat that would allow them to make enough to feed 700 or 720 men
(depending on the manuscript). If this was a daily purchase, it might give a number for the ordinary size
of the court, including guests, but it is not certain this was the case; Constitutio Domus Regis, 200–1.
55 Constitutio Domus Regis, 208–9, note 30; Robert Bartlett, England under the Norman and
Angevin Kings, 1075–1225 (Oxford, 2000), 575.
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Introduction 21
records of John’s reign provide about life at court. The period in general was one
of expanding record keeping and record preservation, but the shift from Richard’s
reign to John’s sees a quantum leap in what survives, probably because of
conscious attempts to copy and preserve records that had previously been ephem
eral.56 Carpenter has noted that by rough count, the records of John’s reign run to
approximately 8,650 pages in their modern printed editions.57 Many of the
records concern judicial affairs or the gathering of revenue and shed little direct
light on life at court, but there is still a wealth of pertinent information.
Various types of records survive, a few of which also survive for earlier
reigns.58 Pipe rolls, which mainly recorded moneys owed to the king but noted
some expenditures on the king’s behalf, were the most important, with one
from the reign of Henry I, and many more from the reigns of Henry II and
Richard I. Although not a new type of record, the pipe rolls for John’s reign tend
to be fuller than earlier ones, with more information about purchases for the
court. There exists nearly a full run of John’s English pipe rolls, fragments from
the Norman pipe rolls of his earlier years, and a modern copy of a single Irish
pipe roll (now lost) from his fourteenth regnal year.59 Charters and writs are
another traditional type of document, but in John’s reign the government began
systematically preserving copies of these in three types of rolls: charter rolls,
patent rolls, and close rolls, the last of which contain orders about purchasing
goods and thus supply a wealth of information about material culture at court.60
A variety of new records appear for the first time; memoranda rolls, recording
notes from the pipe rolls; fine and oblate rolls, recording offers people made to
the king for privileges and favours; and prest rolls, describing various advances
and payments to individuals. A particularly important source for court life were
the misae rolls, which record some of the day-to-day expenses of the king and his
household, from his bath expenses on.61 Finally, miscellaneous documents
56 There remains some debate about whether all these efforts were new in John’s reign and who was
responsible, but for our purposes the fact of their survival is key. For discussion of the rise in record
keeping, see Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History, 1:33–8; 2:38–45; Painter, Reign of King John,
93–105; Nicholas Vincent, ‘Why 1199? Bureaucracy and Enrolment under John and His
Contemporaries,’ in Adrian Jobson, ed., English Government in the Thirteenth Century (Woodbridge,
2004), 17–48; David Carpenter, ‘ “In Testimonium Factorum Brevium”: The Beginnings of the English
Chancery Rolls,’ in Nicholas Vincent, ed., Records, Administration and Aristocratic Society in the
Anglo-Norman Realm (Woodbridge, 2009), 1–28; Nicholas Vincent, ed., Records, Administration and
Aristocratic Society in the Anglo-Norman Realm (Woodbridge, 2009), xvi–xviii; M. T. Clanchy, From
Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307, 3rd ed. (Chichester, 2013), 58–75, 164–73.
57 Carpenter, Magna Carta, 89.
58 For a good discussion of what the various types of sources can tell us about the issues discussed
in this book, see Gillingham, ‘Wirtschaftlichkeit oder Ehre,’ 153–64.
59 PR1J to PR17J; MRSN 2:499–575; Pipe Roll Ireland 14J.
60 RCh; MR1J 88–97; RL 1–108; RC; RP; RN 1–36, 45–122. For some of the types of charters and
writs recorded, see Jolliffe, Angevin Kingship, 150–5.
61 Misae 11J; Misae 14J. For some useful comments on these, see Benjamin Wild, ed., The Wardrobe
Accounts of Henry III, Publications of the Pipe Roll Society, NS 58 (London, 2012), xi–xiii, xxv–xxx.
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Introduction 23
caution, since they were intended as moral treatises, not as objective descriptions
of court life. Their works show that the Angevin royal court could be a difficult,
unpleasant milieu, a point to which I will return in Chapter 8. However, the
critics had strong motives to exaggerate the unpleasant aspects, since they wrote
to dissuade clerics from serving at court. Clerics were not supposed to serve there
except for religious purposes, but many did so, often in the hope of earthly reward
and advancement. The court critics were intent on discouraging this not only by
stressing the moral dangers of royal service but also by painting a vividly repellent
portrait of court life, and I do not think modern scholars have always appreciated
just how strong a motive the court critics had to depict court life in a negative way.
Nonetheless, such sources are very useful for fleshing out our picture of court life.
I use many other sources as well. Chronicles, saints’ lives, and other narrative
sources provide glimpses of life at the courts of John and contemporary rulers.
Chivalric romances, troubadour poems, and other literary works constitute
another valuable if tricky source of information. Writers drew on their knowledge
of historical courts, but one must account for fantasy, exaggeration, and the
impact of earlier literary traditions. I also draw on the works of archaeologists
and architectural and landscape historians to learn more about the material cul
ture of the court and the many different environments, built and partially natural,
in which it operated. Finally, I will use the pipe rolls of John’s predecessors and a
handful of surviving records from the courts of the kings of Aragon and Philip
Augustus for comparative purposes. All these sources have their own weaknesses
and shortcomings, but alongside the royal records, they provide a reasonably full
and rounded picture of life at the court of King John.
Even with the additional sources, there are holes in what we know about King
John’s court—there simply is not as much information as for many late medieval
or early modern European courts. Coronations were arguably the most important
royal ritual in Western Europe, and have been extensively studied, but we know
almost nothing about John’s, and it therefore appears only in passing. Similarly,
discussion of some important subjects, such as art and music or the lives of chil
dren at court, will be brief or virtually nonexistent. Much excellent work has been
done in recent decades on medieval queens and their households or courts, but
the surviving records for Queen Isabella allow one to say little about her role at
court, and what can be said has been covered in detail by Nicholas Vincent.64
1150–vers 1330) (Paris, 2010), 249–98, 590–8; Frédérique Lachaud, ‘La figure du clerc curial dans
l’oeuvre de Jean de Salisbury,’ in Murielle Gaude-Ferragu, Bruno Laurioux, and Jacques Paviot, eds.,
La cour du prince: cour de France, cours d’Europe XIIe–XVe siècle (Paris, 2011), 301–20;
Hugh M. Thomas, The Secular Clergy in England, 1066–1216 (Oxford, 2014), 139–53.
64 Vincent, ‘Isabella of Angoulême,’ 165–219. For some examples of works on medieval queens that
also cover aspects of court life, see Parsons, ed., Court and Household of Eleanor of Castile; John Carmi
Parsons, Eleanor of Castile: Queen and Society in Thirteenth-Century England (New York, 1995); Lindy
Grant, Blanche of Castile, Queen of France (New Haven, CT, 2016).
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Nonetheless, the evidence for many subjects is extensive, and if the picture that
emerges of John’s court is uneven, it is also very rich.
Although the subjects of each chapter will be obvious from the table of contents, a
few words about the organization of the book may be helpful. I start with hunting
because the available evidence is particularly rich, allowing me to put forth a
nuanced discussion of how it provided John with soft power, how his enemies
sought to counter that advantage, and how hunting gave pleasure. I follow with
several chapters on various court activities, culminating in Chapter 6 on feasting,
which incorporated or drew from many of the practices discussed earlier.
Discussion of power and pleasure will appear in all these chapters, but Chapter 5,
on religion at court, plays a particularly important role in discussion of power,
since sacral kingship must be discussed in this context. Some of the arguments
there will foreshadow a more focused exploration of power in Chapter 8. Before
getting to that chapter, however, I shift gears slightly to discuss space and place in
Chapter 7. Here, too, court activities appear, notably processions and formal royal
entries into towns and cities. However, the chapter as a whole is focused less on
activities than on the court’s relationship with and attitudes towards the various
environments through which it travelled. As noted, Chapter 8 focuses on power,
drawing on the evidence in earlier chapters to further analyse symbolic commu
nication and gift exchange at John’s court, to discuss the relationship between
administrative kingship and soft power, and to evaluate John’s handling of soft
power. In Chapter 9, I turn to comparisons with other courts.
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2
Hunting and Falconry
2.1 Introduction
On 21 March 1215, at a politically fraught time, John sent five falcons, including
his best gyrfalcon, to two of his leading falconers, with very specific instructions
on feeding the falcons with the flesh of goats, hens, and hares while they moulted.
Nicholas Vincent has noted this letter as a sign of John’s tendency to micro
manage. It is also a sign of John’s personal interest in hunting.1 That many medi
eval kings, including John, had a passion for hunting is widely acknowledged in
the scholarly literature. Yet with few exceptions biographers and other historians
of English medieval rulers have devoted little attention to royal hunting or the
royal hunt establishment.2 There is much work on medieval hunting more gener
ally, and it often sheds light on royal practices, but only Robin Oggins’ work on
falconry has focused on hunting at the English royal court.3 In contrast to the
royal hunting establishment, the royal forests of England, which covered a sur
prisingly large part of King John’s main realm, and in which much of the royal
hunting took place, have received a great deal of attention.4 However, scholars of
1 RLC 192a. For a translation and commentary, see Nicholas Vincent, ‘King John’s Lost Language of
Cranes: Micromanagement, Meat-Eating and Mockery at Court,’ http://magnacarta.cmp.uea.ac.uk/
read/feature_of_the_month/Mar_2015_3.
2 Frank Barlow, William Rufus (New Haven, CT, 1983), 119–32; Frank Barlow, ‘Hunting in the
Middle Ages,’ The Norman Conquest and Beyond (London, 1983), 11–21; Schröder, Macht und Gabe,
41–6, 143–73; Vincent, ‘The Court of Henry II,’ 321–2; John M. Steane, The Archaeology of the
Medieval English Monarchy (London, 1993), 146–62.
3 Robin S. Oggins, The Kings and Their Hawks: Falconry in Medieval England (New Haven, CT,
2004). For other important works on medieval hunting, see La chasse au Moyen Age. Actes du Colloque
de Nice (22–24 juin 1979) (Nice, 1980); Jörg Jarnut, ‘Die frühmittelalterliche Jagd unter rechts- und
sozialgeschichtlichen Aspekten,’ Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo 31
(1985), 765–98; John Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk: The Art of Medieval Hunting (New York,
1988); André Chastel, ed., Le château, la chasse et la forêt. Les cahiers de Commarque (Commarque,
1990); Werner Rösener, ed., Jagd und höfische Kultur im Mittelalter (Göttingen, 1997); Richard
Almond, Medieval Hunting (Stroud, 2003); John Fletcher, Gardens of Earthly Delight: The History of
Deer Parks (Eynsham, 2011); Fernando Arias Guillén, ‘El rey cazador. Prácticas cinegéticas y discurso
ideológico durante el reinado de Alfonso XI,’ in Manual García Fernández, ed., El siglo XIV in primera
persona: Alfonso XI, rey de Castilla y León (1312–1350) (Seville, 2015), 139–52. For a broader perspec
tive, see Thomas T. Allsen, The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History (Philadelphia, PA, 2006).
4 Charles R. Young, The Royal Forests of Medieval England (Philadelphia, PA, 1979); Raymond
Grant, The Royal Forests of England (Stroud, 1991); Oliver Rackham, Ancient Woodland: Its History,
Vegetation and Uses in England, 2nd ed. (Dalbeattie, 2003), 177–88; David Crook, ‘The Forest Eyre in
the Reign of King John,’ in Janet S. Loengard, ed., Magna Carta and the England of King John
(Woodbridge, 2010), 63–82; Judith A. Green, ‘Forest Laws in England and Normandy in the Twelfth
Century,’ Historical Research 86 (2013), 416–31.
Power and Pleasure: Court Life under King John, 1199–1216. Hugh M. Thomas, Oxford University Press (2020).
© Hugh M. Thomas. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198802518.003.0002
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the royal forest have generally paid little attention to hunting, concentrating
instead on forest law and the opposition its onerous burdens created, the admin
istration of royal forests, and the income they generated. Indeed, some scholars
have argued that for the kings hunting soon became secondary to money in their
administration of the royal forest. As David Carpenter has recently written: ‘Its
main purpose was not to provide kings with areas for hunting, although they cer
tainly were great huntsmen. It was to provide them with money.’5 However, the
widespread failure by scholars of kingship in England to take the royal hunt as a
serious subject of research is a mistake.
Though the evidence for hunting, hawking, and falconry is scattered through
out the royal records, a careful reconstruction reveals that King John’s hunting
establishment was very large, that the government devoted considerable time and
effort to managing its logistics, and that the king spent large sums of money on it
despite needing to accumulate funds for his struggle with Philip Augustus. The
question therefore arises of why the king spent so much. Scholars of medieval
hunting have stressed that it could serve many purposes for aristocrats and rulers,
helping them to build prestige and soft power. This chapter applies their findings
to John’s court. However, I also show how critics of the king used his love of hunt
ing to criticize him and undermine his authority, and how hunting practices
themselves created opposition. In addition, I stress that when royal supporters
and critics alike wrote about hunting, they emphasized pleasure rather than
power, and that their views need to be taken seriously to understand royal invest
ment in the sport.
Though the evidence for hunting is scattered throughout the records, collectively
it shows just how large a hunting establishment served the king, and how import
ant the activity was to him. The largest part of the hunting establishment was
devoted to hunting deer and other mammals with the assistance of hounds. The
king owned various kinds of dogs. Most common were greyhounds (leporarii)
that hunted by sight; pack dogs (canes de mota) or running hounds that hunted
by scent and could pursue deer; and lymer dogs and brachets or bercelets, used to
sniff out prey to start the hunt.6 One also finds references to boarhounds, wolf
hounds, foxhounds, and hounds for roe deer, as well as setters and Spanish dogs
7 Boarhounds: PR4J 85; PR14J 169; Misae 14J 241; Prest Roll 12J 248; wolfhounds: PR9J 209; PR10J
103; RLC 68b; foxhounds: PR11J 125; PR16J 55; hounds for roe deer: Misae 14J 236; setters (cucher-
etti): PR16J 32; Spanish dogs: PR13J 29.
8 RLC 133a–35a, 158b. 9 PR13J 149; RLC 4b, 179b, 286b.
10 RLC 206b. 11 PR12J 93.
12 For discussion of birds of prey, see Oggins, Kings and Their Hawks, 10–16; Cummins, Hound and
the Hawk, 187–92.
13 Pierre Chaplais, ed., Diplomatic Documents Preserved in the Public Record Office, Volume 1,
1101–1272 (London, 1964), 125–6.
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14 PR16J 20, 168; RLC 20a, 85a, 132a–b, 136a, 205b, 206b; Oggins, Kings and Their Hawks,
19–22, 56.
15 Misae 14J 251; Oggins, Kings and Their Hawks, 68.
16 For training and care, see Oggins, Kings and Their Hawks, 22–31; Cummins, Hound and the
Hawk, 200–9.
17 For instance, PR14J 87, 169.
18 For the use of the term magister see Misae 14J 237, 252, 258.
19 Church, ‘Royal Itinerary,’ 37–8. 20 Prest Roll 12J 249–50.
21 PR3J 101–2; PR5J 105; PR6J 125; RL 75, 82.
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Figure 2.1 Royal forests, royal dwellings, and a simplified royal itinerary, 1199–1307.
Reproduced with permission of Steven Mileson and Oxford University Press.
residences of Henry II and his sons, showing that they had hunting lodges and
palatial dwellings near ducal forests in Normandy, though less so in their other
continental possessions, probably reflecting a lack of governmental infrastructure
outside of Normandy.22 The residences John himself built or remodelled tended
22 Madeline, Les Plantagenêts et leur empire, 294–303. See also Schröder, Macht und Gabe, 43–4.
Michael Prestwich argues that a desire for good hunting helped shape the itinerary of Edward I;
Prestwich, ‘Royal Itinerary and Roads,’ 182–3.
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to be at good sites for hunting and falconry. John also inherited many enclosed
deer parks, which had various purposes but were designed above all for hunting,
near his residences.23 Though parks may well have existed in the Anglo-Saxon
period, kings and nobles had been building new ones since the Norman Conquest
and stocking them with game, including then-exotic species like fallow deer, pea
cocks, pheasants, and rabbits.24 John copied his forebears: in his second year he
enclosed parks at Bolsover and Melbourne in Derbyshire, and a reference to grain
fed to the king’s pheasants in the sole surviving Irish pipe roll from John’s reign
indicates that he wanted the possibility of hunting exotic game there as well.25
For John, as for many of his ancestors, home was often where the hunting was,
and they were willing to alter the environment to improve their chances of
slaughtering game.
John’s hunting establishment cost far more than historians have realized. The
evidence for hunting expenses is scattered, and individual entries can make them
seem trivial. For instance, various references suggest that the feeding of hunting
dogs was only a halfpenny per day per dog. However, if one takes the 458 dogs
recorded in late spring 1213, the total yearly costs for them would be £348 5s 5d,
less a discount for the days they hunted and were fed part of the quarry.26
Unfortunately, because the evidence is so scattered and unsystematic, one can only
suggest a very broad estimate of total costs, more an order of magnitude of spend
ing than anything. Nonetheless, an overall yearly expenditure of £1,000, plus or
minus several hundred pounds, seems to me a plausible estimate (I have provided
more detail on the basis for this estimate in Appendix 1). Services and renders
owed for tenancies granted by John’s ancestors would have cut some of his hunting
expenses.27 However, John invested new lands in rewards to his falconers and
hawkers, including grants or promises of estates worth over £70 yearly to members
of the extensive Hauville family, who provided many of his falconers.28 Given that
23 Jean Birrell-Hilton, ‘La chasse et la forêt en Angleterre médiévale,’ in André Chastel, ed., Le
c hâteau, la chasse et la forêt. Les cahiers de Commarque (Commarque, 1990), 69–80, at 69–72; Jean
Birrell, ‘Deer and Deer Farming in Medieval England,’ Agricultural History Review 40 (1992), 112–26;
Rackham, Ancient Woodland, 191–5; S. A. Mileson, Parks in Medieval England (Oxford, 2009),
4, 29–81.
24 Naomi Sykes, ‘Animal Bones and Animal Parks,’ in Robert Liddiard, ed., The Medieval Park:
New Perspectives (Windgather, 2007), 49–62, at 58–9; Naomi Sykes, The Norman Conquest: A
Zooarchaeological Perspective (Oxford, 2007), 64–5, 68, 76–85; Fletcher, Gardens of Earthly
Delight, 97–103.
25 PR2J 7–8; Pipe Roll Ireland 14J 32–3.
26 PR16J xii; Misae 14J 243–4, 246–8, 250, 254; RLC 21a, 26b, 51a, 53b, 125b–126b; NR 76; Prest
Roll 7J 276. For non-payment on hunting days, see RLC 225b–26a, 286b.
27 For just a few examples, see Book of Fees 1: 4, 6, 8–13, 33; Red Book of the Exchequer 2: 457–9,
461–2, 466, 468; RLC 96a, 129a 10; Oggins, Kings and Their Hawks, 73, 77–9.
28 For grants to the Hauville family, see PR7J 128; RL 26, 69, 91; RLC 15b, 27b, 140a, 158b, 161b,
251a, 259b, 281a. For grants to other falconers or hawkers, see PR6J 129; RLC 9a; Book of Fees 1: 151;
Red Book of the Exchequer 2: 530; RLCh 126b–127a; Tony K. Moore, ‘The Loss of Normandy and the
Invention of Terre Normannorum, 1204,’ English Historical Review 125 (2010), 1071–109, at 1100. For
both see Oggins, Kings and Their Hawks, 70–3.
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before the civil war at the end of his reign John typically had revenues of between
£22,000 and £40,000 and could draw in far more in exceptional years (close to
£100,000 in one case), the expenditures on hunting, if the figure above is broadly
correct, would have been noticeable, but certainly manageable.29 Considering
John’s desperate need for money to fight his wars, however, the resources he
lavished on hunting show just how high a priority it represented.
Given the amount John spent on hunting, it is worth reconsidering the idea that
the administration and laws of the royal forest were designed mainly to generate
revenue. Hunting was clearly a major priority for John and, according to the
chroniclers, for most of his predecessors as well. Moreover, forest law did, after
all, protect the king’s deer and their environment, and the royal government was
quite zealous about enforcement. As Barbara Hanawalt has noted, the forest laws
created the first proactive police force in England, the first officers ‘who had a
regular patrolling function and territory that was their beat.’30 To take one case
from the few surviving records of forest pleas in John’s reign, Thomas Inkel, a
forester in Northamptonshire, traced a trail of blood in the wood of Siberton to a
local house where meat from a fallow deer was found. The resulting investigation
led to the arrest of three men, one of whom died in prison.31 Many a relative of a
murder victim in John’s reign might have wished the royal government had been
as proactive in seeking justice for their kin. A comparison of royal expenditures
on hunting with the admittedly much more firmly grounded figures on income
from the royal forests shines a light on the respective importance of motives.
Drawing from Nicholas Barratt’s figures, forest income averaged just over £950 a
year, although it fluctuated widely from year to year.32 Over John’s reign, it looks
as though forest revenues and hunting expenditures would broadly have can
celled each other out. Though the forest income was clearly important, one should
not doubt that the ostensible purpose of forest law, the protection of the king’s
hunting, was also a real concern.
John’s actions and decrees regarding hunting show that both income and hunt
ing mattered. Money obviously played a major role in his eagerness to enforce
forest law with heavy exactions on offenders, as Roger of Howden emphasized.33
However, other actions focused on protecting hunting. Placing land under forest
law near Corfe Castle, where John carried out extensive renovations, may have
created a new source of potential revenue, but clearly was mainly designed to
improve the hunting at a favoured residence.34 Moreover, John had a strong repu
tation for preserving his access to birds of prey and forcibly protecting his game.
According to Roger of Wendover, at his Christmas feast in 1208, John forbade the
taking of young hunting birds from nests throughout England, and in 1209
ordered the hedges and ditches around fields in royal forests (where there was
much private land) to be levelled, with the grain to be given to wild beasts.35
Roger was not the most trustworthy of chroniclers, and the latter claim seems
unlikely, but the more reliable Dunstable Chronicle wrote of the destruction of
hedges, ditches, and homes associated with newly cleared land in royal forests.
Doris Stenton has suggested that these statements refer only to the workings of a
harsh forest eyre in that year.36 Nonetheless, Wendover’s statements indicate that
contemporaries associated John’s drive to enforce forest law with hunting as well
as the desire for funds. Without denying the importance of forest revenue (or the
great utility of timber management), I would stress that the remarkable forest
administration of the English kings should be treated not only as a sign of their
administrative and financial precocity but also of the deep importance hunting
had to them and to their courtiers. But why was hunting so important that John
and his government invested so much money and effort in it? Answering this
question will occupy much of the remainder of the chapter, but first it will be use
ful to describe the forms hunting took in the period and to discuss the king and
queen’s personal involvement in falconry and hunting.
King John, as the Anonymous of Béthune stressed, loved hunting with both birds
and hounds.37 Unfortunately, no extended descriptions survive of his or his con
temporaries’ hunts. Nonetheless, by combining information from John’s records
with evidence from literary works, later hunting manuals, archaeology, and other
sources, we can gain a general sense of what these hunts would have been like.38
34 Carpenter, Magna Carta, 209. Conversely, removing forest law from certain areas for payment
shows John’s desire for cash, as David Carpenter pointed out to me.
35 Roger of Wendover, Liber qui Dicitur Flores Historiarum, ed. Henry G. Hewlett, 3 vols. (London,
1886–9), 2:49–51.
36 PR11J xxv–xxvi; Henry Richards Luard, ed., Annales Monastici, 5 vols. (London, 1864–9), 3:31.
37 Anonymous of Béthune, Histoire des ducs, 104, 109.
38 For good works on the technical aspects of hunting, see Cummins, Hound and the Hawk;
Almond, Medieval Hunting; Oggins, Kings and Their Hawks. The pioneering historian of the forest,
Oliver Rackham, believed that royal hunting, though highly symbolic, was very rare, but on this point
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he was almost certainly wrong, as Mileson has shown; Oliver Rackham, The History of the Countryside
(London, 1986), 133–4; Rackham, Ancient Woodland, 181; Mileson, Parks in Medieval England, 15–24.
used hunting horses like his prized Liard. The other major kind of deer hunt was
the drive hunt, in which large numbers of red, fallow, and roe deer, and perhaps
other animals, were driven towards waiting archers. Though drive hunts were less
prestigious than the hunt par force, kings nonetheless participated; Henry I had
men in his hunting establishment who were well paid to carry the king’s bow, and
in 1212 one man held a tenancy for the service of carrying the king’s bow when he
came to hunt in Dartmoor in Devonshire.42 Such hunts could be large scale: in
one day in early December 1205, John and his hunting party took one hundred
fallow deer and seventeen feral pigs in his park of Havering in Essex.43 This may
explain the extraordinary number of greyhounds that John had with him at
times—though scent hounds were used to locate and flush game, the king’s hunts
men used greyhounds to drive the animals and take down those that had been
wounded but not killed by the archers.
42 Constitutio Domus Regis 215; Book of Fees 1: 94. See also National Archives, SC 1/1/4, for an
order to send bows and bercelets to Nottingham.
43 David Crook, ‘The Taking of Venison in the Forest of Essex, 1198–1207,’ Essex Archaeology and
History 26 (1995), 126–32, at 128, 131.
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Formal deer hunts in the Middle Ages had a surprisingly ceremonial component,
which was recorded most fully in later hunting manuals.44 These manuals
described how the deer were butchered, or ‘unmade,’ in a precise and technical
manner. The huntsmen then distributed the parts. Certain choice bits, such as the
testicles and tongue, were set aside for the lord, and the right and left shoulders
were given respectively to the best hunter and to the forester or parker in charge
of the place where the hunt took place. Parts of the entrails (cuiriee) were fed to
the dogs, in part so the taste, so different from the bread they usually ate, would
inspire them in future hunts, but perhaps also so that even they, as Joyce Salisbury
has put it, could participate in a kind of ritual feast.45 The bits assigned to the lord
were then hung on a stick called a forchée, to be carried proudly before the return
ing hunters. Hunting and hunting ceremonial had a specialized vocabulary,
known only to the cognoscenti, and some later manuals devoted much of their
space to terminology.
Though the manuals came later, the ceremonial already existed in
twelfth-century England. John of Salisbury, in a passage to which I will return,
mocked it.46 In a famous scene in Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan, taken from a
lost section of the version written by Thomas of Britain, the hero, newly arrived in
Cornwall, teaches King Mark’s huntsman the proper methods of unmaking.47 The
skeletons of deer at elite sites show that they were often divided up in the way the
sources describe, since shoulder and leg bones were often missing, and Naomi
Sykes shows that the practice was introduced by the Normans.48 It is impossible to
demonstrate conclusively that such ceremonies were practised in John’s hunting,
but an order the king issued during the Poitevin campaign of 1214 directed the
seneschal of Angoulême that in the event the king’s huntsmen caught a great stag,
certain portions should be sent to the queen, including the tongue, and certain to
44 Cummins, Hound and the Hawk, 41–6; Almond, Medieval Hunting, 75–81; Susan Crane, Animal
Encounters: Contacts and Concepts in Medieval Britain (Philadelphia, PA, 2013), 101–7. For the manu
als, see Anne Rooney, Hunting in Middle English Literature (Cambridge, 1993), 7–20; Armand Strubel
and Chantal de Saulnier, La poétique de la chasse au Moyen Age: les livres de chasse du XIVe siècle
(Paris, 1994).
45 Joyce Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages (London, 2011), 37–8.
46 John of Salisbury, Policraticus, 1:22–3.
47 Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan und Isold, ed. Friedrich Ranke (Berlin, 1962), 35–9, lines
2759–3080. Since a version of this scene also appears in the Scandinavian translation of Thomas’s
work, it clearly originated with Thomas rather than Gottfried; Paul Szach, ed., The Saga of Tristram
and Ísönd (Lincoln, NE, 1973), 26–8. See also A. Saly, ‘Tristan chasseur,’ La chasse au Moyen Age. Actes
du Colloque de Nice (22–24 juin 1979) (Nice, 1980), 435–42; Rooney, Hunting, 86–9; Helmut Brackert,
‘ “Deist rehtiu jegerîe”: Höfische Jagddarstellungen in der deutschen Epik de Hochmittelalters,’ in
Werner Rösener, ed., Jagd und höfische Kultur im Mittelalter (Göttingen, 1997), 365–406, at 381–6;
Sigrid Schwenk, ‘Die Jagd im Spiegel mittelalterlicher Literatur und Jagdbücher,’ in Werner Rösener,
ed., Jagd und höfische Kultur im Mittelalter (Göttingen, 1997), 407–64, at 408–17.
48 Naomi Sykes, ‘Animal Bones,’ in R. Poulton, ed., A Medieval Royal Complex at Guildford:
Excavations at the Castle and Palace (Guildford, 2005), 116–28, at 125–8; Sykes, Zooarchaeological
Perspective, 71–5. See also Richard Thomas, ‘Chasing the Ideal? Ritualism, Pragmatism and the Later
Medieval Hunt in England,’ in Aleksander Pluskowski, ed., Breaking and Shaping Beastly Bodies:
Animals as Material Culture in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2007), 125–48.
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him, including the cauda, which may perhaps be translated here as testicles rather
than the more normal tail.49 It is of course possible that this order simply provides
evidence of taste preferences, but John’s court operated in a society in which these
ceremonies were familiar, and it is hard to believe they did not follow them.
Hunting parties could conceivably have involved large numbers of courtiers,
magnates, and guests at royal court, and thus have been important social events—
indeed, they appear as such in romances.50 In the par force hunt, as in modern
fox hunting, large numbers could pursue the quarry across the country. In the
kind of drive hunts that John’s large hunting establishment could have put on,
large numbers of archers could have taken part and thus the king could have
invited many guests to participate. The witness lists of charters certainly show
that royal favourites and powerful magnates often accompanied the king to his
hunting lodges. For instance, at various times ten different earls and various
important royal followers were with the king at his forest lodge at Freemantle, and
though there is no guarantee that they went hunting with him, it certainly seems
likely.51 Indeed, it may well have been to add an element of sociability through
large hunting parties that the Plantagenet kings sometimes held great councils at
hunting palaces such as Woodstock and Clarendon. The queen may also have
participated in the royal hunt. On two occasions in 1207, payments were made
from the king’s accounts to the queen’s fewterers, so Isabella clearly had at least a
small pack of hunting dogs.52 The dogs may have been kept simply to provide the
queen with venison when her household was apart from the king’s, but medieval
women actively hunted in later periods and places, particularly France, and one
should not rule this out for John’s Poitevin queen.53 At the very least, she could
have participated as a spectator, as occurred in romances.54
That spectators attended English hunts at this time is shown by Jocelin of
Brakelond’s statement that although Abbot Sampson, as a good churchman, did
not hunt or even eat venison, he created and stocked parks and kept hounds, and
when eminent guests came, he and the monks would watch the hounds run.55 As
49 RLC 169b. Nicholas Vincent, however, suggests that the passage refers to the haunches and
rump; Vincent, ‘Isabella of Angoulême,’ 183n58.
50 For example, Chrétien de Troyes, Œuvres complètes, ed. Daniel Poirion (Paris, 1994), 4–6, 9; Hue
de Rotelande, Ipomedon: poème de Hue de Rotelande, fin du XIIe siècle, ed. A. J. Holden (Paris,
1979), 87–96.
51 RLCH 37a, 82a–b, 92a, 116b, 125b, 137a, 156a, 159a–b, 161a, 194b, 213a. In addition, Nicholas
Vincent kindly supplied me with transcripts of two additional charters issued at Freemantle from the
Angevin Acta project.
52 RLC 80b, 90a.
53 Almond, Medieval Hunting, 143–66; Sykes, ‘Animal Bones,’ 53–5; Fletcher, Gardens of Earthly
Delight, 116–19; Amanda Richardson, ‘ “Riding Like Alexander, Hunting Like Diana”: Gendered
Aspects of the Medieval Hunt and Its Landscape Settings,’ Gender and History 24 (2012), 253–70;
Amanda Richardson, ‘Beyond the Castle Gate: The Role of Royal Landscapes in Constructions of
English Medieval Kingship and Queenship,’ Concilium Medii Aevi 14 (2011), 35–53, at 43–52.
54 For one example, see 45 of this chapter.
55 Jocelin of Brakelond, The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, ed. H. E. Butler (London, 1949), 28.
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Chapter 7 will reveal, John may have designed one of his favourite castles,
Ludgershall, to give spectators a good view of the hunt from a tower, chamber
block, and earthworks.56 Presumably the carrying of the trophies of the hunt
was also intended for an audience, including not only any spectators in the
hunting grounds, but also the people back at the court itself, thus widening the
circle of those who participated, at least vicariously. The consumption of game,
no doubt accompanied sometimes by discussion of the hunting involved, also
caused others to participate vicariously in the hunt. Directly or indirectly, the
entire court was involved in hunting.
Historians of the hunt, along with some scholars of courts, have explored the pur
poses of royal and aristocratic hunting, and though most have acknowledged that
hunting was considered pleasurable, they typically focus on the practical, social,
and political benefits of hunting.57 Unfortunately, writers of John’s reign did not
analyse in any depth the advantages of hunting, though advocates of hunting in
the later Middle Ages and early modern period defended it as preparation for
war, a defence against idleness, and a means of exterminating pests. Modern his
torians have necessarily relied heavily on inference supported by comparative
studies, often influenced by anthropology. Because I find many of their inferences
compelling, I draw on their conclusions, along with my own research and ana
lysis, to explore the ways that John’s massive investment in hunting could have
undergirded his power, prestige, and authority. As we shall see, John of Salisbury’s
attack on hunting will be a particularly valuable source, since it was designed to
undermine the sport by reversing the very points its practitioners took pride in.
The most concrete benefit of hunting was the provision of venison, a term that
then encompassed all game meats but mostly referred to venison in the modern
sense. References to the salting of venison for preservation and to its transportation
are scattered throughout the royal records and clearly it was an important part of
provisioning the royal household. On one occasion a ship was hired to transport
venison from Torksey to York, probably for a Christmas feast, which suggests that
John could demand game on a large scale.58 What mattered most about game meat
was not the number of calories provided, though they should not be ignored, but its
importance as a rare and highly valued food, a topic I explore more fully in
Chapter 6.59
Hunting itself could bolster a hunter’s prestige, including a king’s, in various
ways. John of Salisbury mockingly compared the procession of successful hunters
returning with heads and other spolia, accompanied by the sound of pipes and
horns, to a Roman triumph: these practices clearly celebrated hunters’ proficiency
and success. Hunting demanded many kinds of knowledge. Some of this
knowledge was practical, if complex: how to find and hunt game, and how to
raise, train, and handle hounds and birds of prey. Some was related to the kinds of
ceremonial practices noted earlier; unmaking, distributing, and displaying the
carcasses of the slain animals. Mastery of the arcane vocabulary of hunting was
crucial, and John of Salisbury warned readers lest they misuse this terminology,
‘because you will be beaten or condemned for ignorance of all good things, if you
do not know their figmenta.’ ‘These,’ he stated, ‘are the liberal arts (liberalia studia)
of the nobility in our time.’60 Werner Rösener has even argued that because of the
surrounding ceremonial practices, hunting, like tournaments, should be seen as
part of the development of courtly culture.61
Medieval people clearly considered command of the skills and arcane know
ledge associated with hunting a marker of aristocratic status. In Gottfried von
Strassburg’s work, although Tristan, cast ashore in a strange land and desiring to
conceal his identity, warily claimed to be the son of a merchant, his knowledge of
the best manner of unmaking and his skill at playing the hunting horn allow the
members of King Mark’s court to perceive his noble status.62 In other romances,
hunting skills bring personal prestige and affirm aristocratic status. For instance,
the eponymous hero of King Horn excels at hunting and hawking and can train
hounds and birds of prey better than anyone.63 The sources for John’s court are
not the sort that show this dynamic in action, but it may be that in sending
58 PR13J 89. For some figures and estimates on the large amount of game being provided to later
kings, see Rackham, Ancient Woodland, 181; Birrell-Hilton, ‘La chasse et la forêt,’ 74–5; Birrell, ‘Deer
and Deer Farming,’ 124–6; Robin S. Oggins, ‘Game in the Medieval English Diet,’ Studies in Medieval
and Renaissance History 3rd ser. 5 (2008), 201–17, at 203–6.
59 Another product of hunting was deer hide; RLC 121b, 172b.
60 John of Salisbury, Policraticus, 1:22–3.
61 Werner Rösener, ‘Jagd und höfische Kultur als Gegenstand der Forschung,’ in Werner Rösener,
ed., Jagd und höfische Kultur im Mittelalter (Göttingen, 1997), 11–28.
62 Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan und Isold, 35–42, lines 2759–3311.
63 Master Thomas, The Romance of Horn, ed. Mildred K. Pope and T. B. W. Reid, 2 vols. (Oxford,
1955–64), 1:12–13, 87. See also A. Ewert, ed., Gui de Warewic, roman du XIIIe siècle, 2 vols. (Paris,
1932), 1:5; Chrétien de Troyes, Œuvres complètes, 239.
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precise instructions about caring for his best gyrfalcon and other birds, John was
not only taking a practical interest but also displaying his command of high-status,
aristocratic knowledge. Even a king, perhaps especially a king, could benefit from
reinforcing his elite status through displays of prestigious knowledge, particularly
during a hunt, surrounded by guests, magnates, and courtiers. Moreover, the king
of England had a source of prestige from hunting that few monarchs, let alone
magnates, could match: command of the extraordinary hunting grounds found
in English royal forests and parks. When Louis VII enumerated the wealth of
Henry II, comparing it to his own possession of no more than bread and joy,
according to an anecdote of Walter Map, he spoke of followers, horses, gold, silk,
gems, and game.64
The similarity between hunting and war was crucial to the status it conferred
on members of a military elite. In peacetime, great nobles, princes, and kings
could regularly display their willingness and ability to unleash violence, poten
tially on a large scale, through hunting. The boar hunt, because of its dangers, was
a particularly good vehicle to display military prowess. Indeed, the anonymous
chronicler of Richard I’s many exploits on the Third Crusade took time from
describing military achievements to provide a detailed account of Richard’s acci
dental but successful encounter with a particularly fearsome boar.65
John’s father, Henry II, and probably John himself, used hunting as a stand-in
for war more subtly. Both Jordan Fantosme and Ralph of Diceto praised Henry II
for using hunting as a way to project steadfastness and confidence during the very
dangerous revolt he faced in 1173–4. After praising Henry as the greatest king
since Moses, save for Charlemagne, Jordan described how he refused to halt
going to the river (for falconry) or pursuing wild beasts, no matter how much his
enemies threatened him.66 Ralph depicted Henry as reacting with equanimity to
his difficulties, maintaining a cheerful countenance, and frequently hunting alone
early in the revolt.67 Taking the time to indulge in hunting projected the absence
of panic, while subtly maintaining the ruler’s reputation for martial prowess.
These ideas should inform our interpretation of a passage in which the
Anonymous of Béthune stated that he did not know what King John felt in his
heart upon hearing the news that Chinon, his last great stronghold in Anjou,
had been lost to Philip Augustus, but that he made little of it and turned his atten
tion to delighting in hawks and hounds and making merry with his wife.68 While
64 Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium, 450–1. See also Gerald of Wales, Instruction for a Ruler
(De Principis Instructione), ed. Robert Bartlett (Oxford, 2018), 714–15.
65 Ewert, ed., Gui de Warewic, 2:3–5; Albert Stimming, ed., Der anglonormannische Boeve de
Haumtone (Halle, 1899), 17–20; William Stubbs, ed., Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi
(London, 1864), 344–5.
66 Jordan Fantosme, Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle, ed. R. C. Johnston (Oxford, 1981), 10–11.
67 Ralph of Diceto, Radulfi de Diceto Decani Lundoniensis Opera Historica, ed. William Stubbs,
2 vols. (London, 1876), 1:373–4.
68 Anonymous of Béthune, Histoire des ducs, 104.
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the author was not praising John, a point to which I will return, if the depiction of
the king’s reaction is accurate, John may have been trying to project confidence as
he began preparing his ultimately futile efforts to reverse his disastrous losses to
the French king.
Partly because of its martial associations, hunting may also have served to
reaffirm and advertise hunters’ masculine identities.69 Certainly hunting is closely
tied to masculinity in many cultures, and John of Salisbury’s attempt to feminize
hunting in his attack on the sport suggests this was true in twelfth-century
England and France as well. However, falconry and hawking had complex associ
ations when it came to gender, as female birds of prey are generally bigger than
males and so were normally used in the sport, a fact widely noted at the time.70
Birds of prey were not inevitably gendered female in medieval literature—for
instance, the lover in Marie de France’s Yonec who transforms from a hawk is
male.71 Nonetheless, hunting birds had strong feminine associations. It was prob
ably not just love of falconry that caused elite women like Queen Isabella to have
themselves depicted with birds of prey on their seals; these images might allow
them to implicitly claim the fierceness and prowess generally associated with rap
tors—and with men in this patriarchal society. However, male taming and train
ing of hawks and falcons, and male mastery over female raptors more generally,
allowed these birds to be used as symbols of male dominance, albeit dominance
over a worthy ‘prize.’ Thus, in King Horn, the eponymous character, returning
after a long absence and testing his beloved Rigmel, speaks of having won and
tamed a goshawk nearly seven years before, coming back to see if it is still valu
able, and taking it if unblemished.72 This association between women and birds of
prey may shed light on a distinctly odd letter John wrote on 30 October 1214, first
discussed by Nicholas Vincent. Writing to Terric the Teuton, John said to him
that he would soon be with him and that ‘we are thinking of you about the hawk
(de austurco).’ He went on to say that even if he had been gone ten years, it would
have been as though he had been absent for three days, and then urged Terric to
take care of his charge and report frequently on it. Vincent, noting that Terric had
just become the queen’s guardian, suggests that the letter, with its expression of
longing, was meant as much for the queen as for Terric, and that John was using
obscure language out of concern for the queen’s safety in the immediate aftermath
of the failed Poitevin expedition. If Vincent’s interpretation is correct, John was
acknowledging Isabella’s own association of herself with a bird of prey, as seen on
69 For hunting and gender, see Richardson, ‘Riding Like Alexander, Hunting Like Diana,’ 256–9.
70 For instance, John of Salisbury, Policraticus, 1:25; Gerald of Wales, Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, ed.
J. S. Brewer, James F. Dimock, and George F. Warner, 8 vols. (London, 1861–91), 5:36–7; Alexander
Neckam, De Naturis Rerum Libri Duo: With the Poem of the Same Author, De Laudibus Divinæ
Sapientiæ, ed. Thomas Wright (London, 1863), 379.
71 Marie de France, Lais de Marie de France, ed. Karl Warnke and Laurence Harf-Lancner (Paris,
1990), 186–9.
72 Master Thomas, Romance of Horn, 1:144–5.
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her seal, but also implicitly placing himself in the place of the hawk’s master and
owner, reasserting his masculinity even as it was undermined by the very threat
to the queen to which he was reacting.73
The surviving records of the royal court are particularly revealing on the role of
hunting animals, game animals, venison, and hunting rights in royal patronage
and the network of gift exchange which (as I will argue in Chapter 8) continued to
play an important role in English kingship and lordship, despite the rise of
administrative kingship and the growing importance of money to royal govern
ment. The giving of hunting animals, game, and venison can be found in various
historical and literary sources, clearly showing it was a meaningful and estab
lished practice.74 John’s records reveal gifts of birds of prey or hunting hounds to
or from foreign rulers and magnates.75 Such small but valued gifts helped kings,
princes, and magnates maintain alliances and close ties. Proffers from subjects to
the king often included hunting animals, among them horses trained for the pur
pose, birds of prey, and occasionally hounds.76 Proffers were generally hard-
headed purchases of favours, grants, or even remission of royal anger from the
king in return for hard cash, but the inclusion of animals and items such as bar
rels of wine helped keep the proffers partly in the mental realm of the gift, a point
I will return to in Chapter 8. One noteworthy example, involving an unusually
large number of animals, came in the proffer that John’s great favourite (and later
enemy), William de Briouze, made for three castles and associated lands in the
Welsh Marches. Along with 800 marks, William offered three warhorses, five
hunting horses, ten greyhounds, and twenty-four scent hounds. In late January
1206, in the same regnal year he made the proffer, William delivered all the ani
mals to the king at Worcester.77 The presentation of so many valuable animals all
at once must have been quite a spectacle and a strong public affirmation of the
close bonds between the king and Briouze.
The king’s gifts to his subjects consisted overwhelmingly of deer and other
game, whether as live animals for stocking their parks, meat for their table, or the
right to hunt a specific number of animals.78 The surviving records reveal the
studied by historians, still had an important role in the relationship between king
and magnates.
This was especially true since grants of animals or hunting rights meant the
king was conferring not only the meat but also the prestige and pleasure of the
hunt. One of John’s few successes in the campaign of 1214 was the capture of
Robert III de Dreux, heir to a cadet branch of the Capetians. The Anonymous of
Béthune described John as keeping Robert in honourable captivity and illustrated
this claim by stating that the king had him taken ‘to the woods and the rivers and
all delights that pleased him.’86 One document even indicates that one purpose of
the royal forest was to provide routine hunting for magnates. In a writ of 11 June
1207 to Brian de Lisle, a major administrator and forest official, the king wrote
that he much desired that capitales barones travelling through Brian’s bailiwick
take game because ‘we do not have forests and beast for our use [alone] but also
the use of our fideles.’ He went on to say that robbers, probably meaning poachers,
were the real problem. If this statement accurately represented standard royal
policy, then the royal forests represented a large and ongoing source of an intan
gible patronage conferring prestige, honour, and pleasure on important barons.87
Inviting magnates, courtiers, and guests to join the king may have been an even
greater source of intangible patronage, for it gave them the opportunity to
reaffirm aristocratic identity and display aristocratic skills in the most exalted
company.
Finally, few aspects of royal government served to project royal power and
authority more effectively than the hunt. As Thomas Allsen has written of royal
hunts throughout Eurasia,
. . . the royal hunt displays a ruler’s ability to marshal and order labor, military
manpower, and individuals (both human and animal) with very special skills.
Moreover, by the very nature of the hunt, these abilities were dramatically dem
onstrated throughout the countryside for the edification of subjects. And a
forceful demonstration in one sphere, such as the hunt, strongly implies an
equivalent competency in others, such as tax collection or bandit suppression.88
One reason for itineration was to show the king’s power across his land, as I will
argue in Chapter 7, and the large packs of dogs that accompanied him for parts of
the year were a potent sign of that power.89 To pen thousands of deer in parks,
move them about the countryside, and slaughter them in large numbers under
scored the royal government’s capabilities and ability to inflict violence. Finally,
the royal forests of England, defined by law rather than topography and
encompassing far more than just woodland, covered huge areas (including the
entire county of Essex); those living in or near them experienced forest law as a
constant reminder of the force of royal authority. When the Anonymous of
Béthune wanted to support his claim that John was the most feared king in
England, Wales, Scotland, or Ireland since King Arthur, he stressed how little the
wild beasts in his insular realms feared humans.90 So powerful was King John’s
authority, he implied, that it shaped the behaviour of animals. The writer’s claim
was no doubt exaggerated, but it shows how hunting and forest law created an
image of mastery over men and beasts.
Though hunting practices and the related jargon and ceremonial practices carried
associations with prowess, skill, nobility, masculinity, power, and authority, these
were not fixed or incontestable.91 Indeed, there were ways in which John’s love of
hunting may have undermined as well as enhanced his power and authority. Most
strikingly, this was because John’s critics and enemies manipulated the social
meanings of hunting to undermine him subtly.
Before going further, however, it is worth pausing to consider John of
Salisbury’s masterful attack on hunting. Although it comes from the previous
generation and was not directed at a particular target, it shows how accepted
views of hunting and the values of secular elites could be subverted. John of
Salisbury’s motives were probably to wean clerical courtiers like his patron,
Thomas Becket, from hunting, since it was forbidden to them; he may also have
been motivated by rivalry between the secular and clerical elites for prestige and
status. His substantive concerns focused on the expenditure and the loss of time
entailed in hunting, possible neglect of office, the social burdens of forest law, and
above all a pious rejection of worldly frivolities. However, to make hunting less
attractive, he systematically dismantled any positive associations. He suggested
that hunting hardly reveals prowess when carried out by an army of men and
dogs rather than one’s own virtue. The comparison with a Roman triumph made
the carrying of the forchée seem silly, and he stressed that an unsuccessful hunt
brought gloom rather than glory. He ridiculed the unmaking ceremony with a
quote from Juvenal about juggling knives, and made hunting jargon look
to the tournament. Each day, he enters into the woods with his huntsmen, then
puts on armour of a different colour, going to the tournament disguised as a dif
ferent knight and winning the prize each time. Each evening, Ipomedon returns
to the castle and presents the ladies with the heads of stags his huntsmen have
caught. Messengers from Meleager, who is staying on the tournament field, bring
word of the day’s fighting, praising the participants and exalting the mysterious
knights who have won the prize each day, with the ladies hanging on every word.
Ipomedon in turn describes his pretended hunting and praises his various dogs,
sending a gift of venison to Meleager. Ipomedon establishes himself as a fool who
thinks that hunting is as worthy as winning tournaments, that the deeds of dogs
are equivalent to the deeds of knights, and that his gift of venison could confer
prestige on a king who fought on the tournament field while Ipomedon has been
entertaining himself in the woods. Again and again Hue describes the ladies
mocking this hunter, who now appears boorish, while Ipomedon’s supporters and
friends, including Meleager, suffer deep chagrin. Of course, they are in for a sur
prise, for after the tournament, Ipomedon arranges to have his identity as the
winning knight revealed. Nonetheless, the setup of the extended joke depends on
a widely acknowledged idea that hunting was a distant second to tournaments
when it came to aristocratic deeds.95
Ipomedon is an idiosyncratic romance, but a similar theme of hunting’s infer
iority to tournaments can be found in King Horn and, to turn to a historical
source, in the History of William Marshal. In the latter, John’s older brother, Henry
the Young King, and his followers find themselves bored in England after a year
of hunting and individual jousts, and long to return to the tournament fields of
France. Later, the poet laments the decline of chivalry since the Young King’s
time, citing the popularity of dogs and birds as one reason for the (alleged)
decline in the popularity of tournaments. For William Marshal’s circle, hunting
was all well and good, but a distant second to the tournament.96
King John, however, appears to have been resolutely uninterested in tourna
ments. The surviving evidence shows him as present at only one joust, before he
became king, and the only clear reference in the royal records is a set of fines
made by two aristocratic participants in a tournament forbidden by John in his
first year.97 John’s lack of interest in tournaments was not unique—indeed, his
father had banned them generally in England. Nonetheless it remains surprising,
given that two of his brothers, Henry the Young King and Geoffrey, were active
and well-known participants and that John’s other brother Richard was interested
enough to end his father’s ban.98 John’s avoidance of tournaments and focus on
hunting may have been a poor investment of time and resources when it came to
garnering prestige, for by the end of the twelfth century, the tournament had sup
planted hunting’s primary role in asserting aristocratic manhood.
John’s baronial opponents, in contrast, had no doubts about the importance of
tournaments. The baronial army assembled at tournament fields before moving
against John and held at least one tournament after John’s issuing of Magna Carta,
when both sides were taking precautions against the possible renewal of hostil
ities. Subsequently, after the invasion of Philip Augustus’s son at the request of the
rebels, one of the baronial leaders, Geoffrey de Mandeville, was killed in one.
A letter of the baronial leader, Robert fitz Walter, reveals that a tournament outside
London during the period of uneasy peace was an excuse to keep many armed
rebels near the city, so at that point there was a concrete reason for rebel dedica
tion to the tournament. However, the rebels may also have intended to use their
tournaments to send a message by contrasting their own participation in this
highly prestigious, chivalric sport with John’s lack of interest and his dedication to
the softer option of hunting.99 Their participation in tournaments, in other words,
may have been a subtle form of propaganda.
When it came to aristocratic prestige, both hunting and tournaments were far
behind warfare.100 John certainly did not shun warfare, but he failed abysmally in
his greatest struggle, with Philip Augustus, and indeed was back in England dur
ing the crucial months when resistance collapsed in Normandy, Maine, and
Anjou. I have suggested earlier that John’s dedication to hunting in the aftermath
of that collapse, as described by the Anonymous of Béthune, was designed to pro
ject calmness and resolution. However, the author himself, I believe, was impli
citly criticizing John for responding to disaster by taking delight in his dogs and
birds and enjoying himself with his wife. Similarly, in the passage stressing John’s
ability to protect wild beasts, which described John as devoting himself to hunt
ing and falconry, the author was undoubtedly suggesting that John was devoting
himself to the pleasures of the chase when he should have been fighting.101 This
criticism was explicit in a mocking sirvente by the poet Bertran de Born the
younger. In this poem, addressed to Savary de Mauleon, John’s key supporter in
Poitou, Bertran unfavourably contrasted John with his brother Richard, whom
the poet says would have spent lavishly to defend his lands. He criticized John for
102 Thomas Wright and Peter R. Coss, eds., Thomas Wright’s Political Songs of England from the
Reign of John to that of Edward II (Cambridge 1996), 3–6. For a later parallel, see Guillén, ‘El rey
cazador,’ 151.
103 Young, Royal Forests, 60–70; Grant, Royal Forests, 133–40; Holt, Northerners, 157–64; Holt,
Magna Carta, 284–6; Carpenter, Magna Carta, 176–7, 209–10, 414–16.
104 Walter of Coventry, Memoriale Fratris Walteri de Coventria, ed. William Stubbs, 2 vols.
(London, 1872–3), 2:220, 222. For this chronicle as a Crowland production, see Carpenter, Magna
Carta, 86–7.
105 Andrew Miller, ‘Knights, Bishops and Deer Parks: Episcopal Identity, Emasculation and Clerical
Space in Medieval England,’ in Jennifer D. Thibodeaux, ed., Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests,
Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (Basingstoke, 2010), 204–37.
106 K. R. Potter and R. H. C. Davis, eds., Gesta Stephani, Regis Anglorum (Oxford, 1976), 4–5.
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slaughter demonstrated his impotence. The critics and enemies of kings u nderstood
hunting’s symbolism as well as their rulers did, and could use it against them.
King John struggled and sometimes failed in the arena of soft power, as in the
realm of hard power. More generally, medieval people knew how to manipulate
the symbolic aspects of hunting to contest as well as build soft power.
There is no doubt that kings devoted resources to hunting partly to derive power,
status, and authority thereby, but as Mileson has argued, one should not take this
too far: ‘If the king had many fine houses, wide forests, and expensively enclosed
parks this may have been more because he enjoyed a certain lifestyle rather than
because he consciously acquired them to impress his power (for all that he might
like to show them off occasionally).’107 Though clearly I believe that kings did
think about power when it came to hunting, I would also emphasize the import
ance of pleasure. Whenever they commented on hunting, writers from King
John’s broad milieu almost always stressed how much hunters loved the activity
or took pleasure in it rather than any desire to gain status or express their author
ity. Most notably, in the Dialogue of the Exchequer, Richard fitz Nigel, despite
being deeply concerned with royal power and authority, described hunting as a
diversion and escape for kings: ‘In forests are the retreats of kings and their great
est delights. They go there for the sake of hunting, setting aside the cares of court
for a while to enjoy themselves with a little quiet.’108 John’s predecessors were
often described as loving or taking delight in the hunt109 and literary works often
described hunting as a diversion or source of pleasure.110 So, too, did later medi
eval works on hunting, and in their discussion of such works, Armand Strubel
and Chantal de Saulnier have emphasized their authors’ belief that aristocratic
pleasure was the chief justification for the hunt.111 Unfortunately, medieval
writers simply took it for granted that hunting was pleasurable, assuming their
audiences would know why. Thus, even though there are many more explicit
112 Alexander Neckam, De Naturis Rerum, 252–3. See also Gerald of Wales, Instruction for a
Ruler, 714–15.
113 Alexander Neckam, De Naturis Rerum, 380.
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(no doubt tongue in cheek), as ‘a memorial to the ages.’114 This event was recorded
precisely because it was unusual, but falconers routinely sought to achieve the
maximum possible spectacle. As Oggins has noted, one of the reasons cranes and
herons were such desirable prey was that they were large and could fight back,
thus providing a fine display of aerial combat, particularly when pitted against
birds of prey trained to hunt in pairs.115 Hunting with dogs offered its own possi
bility of display, either in the flight of a stag pursued by a parade of dogs and
mounted hunters or the spectacle of large numbers of animals being driven past
archers, shot, and then, in many cases, chased down by hounds.
Spectacle sometimes edged into marvel, as seen in the pike story. Gerald of
Wales provides other marvels related to hunting and deer such as a doe rather than
a stag with a twelve-point rack of antlers caught in the hunt of a Welsh prince, who
sent its head to Henry II.116 The many literary tales of magical hunts must have
added to the marvellous associations of hunting. As John Cummins writes:
The extent of literary uses of hunting motifs and symbols, especially those
involving the chase of the deer in the later Middle Ages, suggests that for an
impressionable aristocrat, brought up from his youth to appreciate such litera
ture, embarking on a hunt must have been a kind of participatory theatre,
wrapped in evocative associations: of white or white-footed harts which are
really transformed princes; of devilish boars; of mysterious hermitages deep in
the woods; of animals or hawks which lead the hunter away from his familiar
environment and into the nebulous geography and landscape of Arthurian
legend.117
114 This occurred when Richard was on crusade, after John had driven Richard I’s justiciar, William
Longchamp, from power; Ralph of Diceto, Opera Historica, 2:102.
115 Oggins, Kings and Their Hawks, 33. 116 Gerald of Wales, Opera, 6:17, 141.
117 Cummins, Hound and the Hawk, 9. See also Strubel and de Saulnier, La poétique de la
chasse, 219–53.
118 For general works on hunting in medieval literature, see Marcelle Thiébaux, The Stag of Love:
The Chase in Medieval Literature (Ithaca, NY, 1974); Rooney, Hunting; William Perry Marvin, Hunting
Law and Ritual in Medieval English Literature (Cambridge, 2006); Fletcher, Gardens of Earthly Delight,
120–32. For works dealing with hunting in works from John’s broad milieu, see the works relating to
the Tristan and Yseult cycle in note 47 of this chapter and J. Larmat, ‘La chasse dans les Lais de Marie
de France,’ in La chasse au Moyen Age. Actes du Colloque de Nice (22–4 juin 1979) (Nice, 1980),
377–84; Wendy Marie Hoofnagle, The Continuity of the Conquest: Charlemagne and Anglo-Norman
Imperialism (University Park, PA, 2016), 105–11.
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unsuccessful struggle with Philip Augustus, his conflict with the church, and the
barons’ revolt at the end of his reign. Though many of his problems were of his
own making, the pressures were still real. Moreover, the court was not always
pleasant. As David Crouch has written, ‘Who knows but that the hunting field
was quite so popular in the Middle Ages because it got you away from the con
spiracy and backbiting of the court for at least the morning?’128 If and when John
used hunting to cement political ties with powerful magnates, the hunting field
may not have been much of an escape. On other occasions, however, hunting
with close associates and properly deferential, perhaps obsequious, huntsmen
may well have been a welcome relief from the difficulties of war and politics.
When modern scholars think about the crucial tasks of medieval royal
administrations, they tend to think about waging war or maintaining a legal
system, because these are major functions of modern government. They were
important for John’s reign as well, but another important purpose of his adminis
tration, neglected by most scholars, was to carry out hunting on a large scale. In
part, rulers like John invested money, administrative resources, and even political
capital in hunting establishments because hunting brought intangible but i mportant
benefits, including status, prestige, authority, and the opportunity to enhance
relations with magnates through patronage and shared experiences of hunting.
For most medieval commentators, however, hunting was associated with pleasure,
and a king’s devotion to hunting could open him to criticism and scorn as well as
praise and admiration. At royal courts, power and pleasure were inextricably
intermingled, and it is not always clear when pleasure was harnessed in the ser
vice of power and when power was harnessed in the service of pleasure. Historians
of medieval royal courts should, of course, remain focused on issues of power, but
they should not ignore the degree to which kings used their wealth and power to
create pleasure for their associates and themselves. Courts were designed as much
to produce pleasure as to produce power.
128 David Crouch, ‘Loyalty, Career and Self-Justification at the Plantagenet Court: The Thought-
World of William Marshal and His Colleagues,’ in Martin Aurell, ed., Culture politique des Plantagenêt
(1154–1224) (Poitiers, 2003), 229–40, at 237.
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3
Luxury and Material Culture at Court
3.1 Introduction
Doris Stenton, an influential scholar and editor of texts, wrote in the introduction
to the pipe roll of John’s thirteenth year that ‘Again and again the reader is
reminded of King John’s love of jewels and fine clothes. He was not content merely
to own them. He used them.’1 Many other scholars have noted the splendour sur
rounding John.2 Given how heavily John and his government invested in luxury
goods at a time of great financial pressure, it is worth exploring why they con
sidered material splendour to be so important. Almost no objects associated with
the court survive, even in an archaeological context: this is a chapter on material
culture that uses almost no actual materials.3 Fortunately, the royal records pro
vide a good deal of evidence about the subject.
I have chosen to focus on luxury items, specifically on rich textiles, plate, jewel
lery, and the royal regalia. These were especially important to the royal court and
stood apart from items that would have been more widely diffused throughout
society. In defining luxury goods, I follow Arjun Appadurai, who proposes ‘that
we regard luxury goods not so much in contrast to necessities (a contrast filled
with problems), but as goods whose principal use is rhetorical and social, goods
that are simply incarnated signs. The necessity to which they respond is funda
mentally political.’4 Appadurai here uses ‘political’ in a broad anthropological
sense, but I will argue that in the context of the royal court, luxury also had a
more narrowly political use, though politics, even in the broader sense, was by no
means the sole motivation for investing in luxury.
1 PR13J xxii.
2 Jolliffe, Angevin Kingship, 260; Warren, King John, 138–40; Turner, King John, 88–9; Church,
King John, 131–2; Lachaud, Jean sans Terre, 226–31.
3 A few luxury items do survive from archaeological digs of royal sites, for instance from
Ludgershall, but these can be hard to date to a specific reign; Peter Ellis, ed., Ludgershall Castle,
Wiltshire: A Report on the Excavations by Peter Addyman, 1964–1972 (Devizes, 2000), 134, 161, 168.
For other archaeological work on royal residences held by John, see Philip Rahtz, Excavations at King
John’s Hunting Lodge, Writtle, Essex, 1955–57 (London, 1969); Thomas Beaumont James and
A. M. Robinson, Clarendon Palace: The History and Archaeology of a Medieval Palace and Hunting
Lodge Near Salisbury, Wiltshire (London, 1988); R. Poulton, ed., A Medieval Royal Complex at
Guildford: Excavations at the Castle and Palace (Guildford, 2005). For an overview of surviving items
from the centuries in which John lived, see David A. Hinton, Gold and Gilt, Pots and Pins: Possessions
and People in Medieval Britain (Oxford, 2005), 171–205.
4 Arjun Appadurai, ‘Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value,’ The Social Life of Things:
Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge, 1986), 3–63, at 38.
Power and Pleasure: Court Life under King John, 1199–1216. Hugh M. Thomas, Oxford University Press (2020).
© Hugh M. Thomas. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198802518.003.0003
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Because no one has systematically studied luxury goods at John’s court, I will
start with an overview of these goods. I will then turn to the way luxury goods
bolstered royal authority and prestige, reinforced social hierarchies at court, and
helped the king strengthen ties of lordship and create alliances. I will also discuss
how luxury goods provided pleasure and comfort. Throughout, I will stress the
importance to historians of thinking about luxuries in particular and material
culture more generally in reconstructing court life in the central Middle Ages.
Even today, luxurious clothing and textiles provide the rich with status and pleas
ure, but in premodern periods, when textile production was relatively far more
expensive, they formed one of the most common and prestigious types of luxuri
ous consumption.5 Medieval and early modern rulers and their courts typically
acquired large quantities of textiles, frequently of the most precious types, to
flaunt their wealth and power.6 King John’s court was no exception. In 1211–12,
John fitz Hugh, a major purchaser of goods for the king, bought, among other
things, 6,000 ells of cloth (a typical English ell being 45 inches long), including
1,283 ells of scarlet, the most expensive woollen fabric, along with 216 pieces of
silk cloth. The following year, fitz Hugh bought 7,680 ells of cloth at once,
5 This section draws heavily on my article Hugh M. Thomas, ‘Clothing and Textiles at the Court of
King John of England, 1199–1216,’ Medieval Clothing and Textiles 15 (2019), 79–100.
6 For important works on medieval clothing and textiles and on their use at royal courts, see
Michèle Beaulieu and Jeanne Baylé, Le Costume en Bourgogne, de Philippe le Hardi à la mort de
Charles le Téméraire (1364–1477) (Paris, 1956); Kay Staniland, ‘Clothing and Textiles at the Court of
Edward III, 1342–1352,’ in Joanna Bird, ed., Collectanea Londiniensia: Studies in London Archaeology
and History Presented to Ralph Merrifield (London, 1978), 223–34; Kay Staniland, ‘Clothing Provision
and the Great Wardrobe in the Mid-Thirteenth Century,’ Textile History (1991), 239–52; Stella Mary
Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince: A Study of the Years 1340–1365 (Woodbridge, 1980);
Frédérique Lachaud, ‘Liveries of Robes in England, c. 1200–c. 1330,’ English Historical Review 111
(1996), 279–98; Françoise Piponnier and Perrine Mane, Dress in the Middle Ages (New Haven, CT,
1997); Elisabeth Crowfoot, Frances Pritchard, and Kay Staniland, Textiles and Clothing, c. 1150–c.
1450, 2nd ed. (Woodbridge, 2001); Désirée G. Koslin and Janet E. Snyder, eds., Encountering Medieval
Textiles and Dress: Objects, Texts, Images (Houndmills, 2002); Sarah-Grace Heller, Fashion in Medieval
France (Cambridge, 2007); Margaret Scott, Medieval Dress and Fashion (London, 2007); Benjamin
Wild, ‘The Empress’s New Clothes: A rotulus pannorum of Isabella, Sister of King Henry III, Bride of
Emperor Frederick II,’ Medieval Clothing and Textiles 7 (2011), 1–31; Tina Anderlini, Le costume
médiéval au XIIIème siècle (1180–1320) (Bayeux, 2014); David Gary Shaw, Necessary Conjunctions:
The Social Self in Medieval England (New York, 2005), 145–54. For furs, see Elspeth M. Veale, The
English Fur Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1966); Robert Delort, Le commerce des fourrures
en Occident à la fin du Moyen Âge, 2 vols. (Rome, 1978). For textiles and metalwork, see Susan Mosher
Stuard, Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-Century Italy (Philadelphia, PA, 2006).
For clothing and textiles at Henry II’s and Edward I’s courts, see Schröder, Macht und Gabe, 29–41,
212–43; Frédérique Lachaud, ‘Textiles, Furs and Liveries: A Study of the Material Culture of the Court
of Edward I (1272–1307)’ (PhD Thesis, Oxford University, 1992); Frédérique Lachaud, ‘Les livrées de
textiles et de fourrures à la fin du moyen âge: l’example de la cour du roi Edouard 1er Plantagenèt
(1272–1307),’ in Michel Pastoureau, ed., Cahiers du Léopard d’Or, I, Le vêtement: Histoire, archéologie
et symbolique vestimentaires au Moyen Age (Paris, 1989), 169–80.
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including 1,400 ells of scarlet, for a total of £840 15s 6d.7 At his death, King John
left behind at Corfe Castle a collection of 119 silk cloths from Hispania, thirty-
one pieces of samite, a thick luxurious silk, and four baldekins, another type of
luxurious silk fabric, with a collective value of approximately £500.8 Clearly John
was willing to commit substantial resources to acquiring clothing and other textiles.
Much of the cloth the court purchased was, of course, utilitarian, including
canvas for tents and cheaper woollen fabrics for horse blankets. But the court
gloried in lavish fabrics and furs. Scarlet was so finely made that it gave its name
to the colour, since dyers used on it only the most expensive dye available, kermes,
made from the eggs of Mediterranean insects and producing that colour.9 The
court also wore woollen fabrics in a variety of weaves and colours, including
green, blue, brown, black brown, and peacock. Silk, mainly from Iberia, possibly
from Andalusian workshops, was also found at court. Judging by silk cloth left in
tombs of the Castilian royal family, including John’s sister, Eleanor, it would have
been quite striking.10 The fragment surviving from John’s tomb, which may have
been from the stockpile at Corfe, travelled an even greater distance, from China.11
Much of the fur was also imported. As with fabrics, there was a hierarchy of furs,
with lesser figures at court receiving rabbit and lambskin. Those who mattered
generally wore sable, ermine, and, above all, red squirrel. Squirrel later fell out of
favour, but during the medieval period, vair (made from the combined white bel
lies and grey backs of the winter coat of the squirrel), gris (made from just the
back), and bis (which retained more of the red of the summer coat) were ubiqui
tous in elite clothing. The best came from Scandinavia and Russia, because the
variants of the European red squirrel there had the thickest coats, and most furs
at John’s court probably came from those regions.12
High-quality materials did not come cheaply. Even the cheapest wool fabric,
burel, used for instance to make tunics for the king’s fewterers, cost 1s an ell, or
six days’ wages for these dog handlers.13 Viride, burnet, and paonaz (peacock),
elite fabrics, cost between 3s and 4s and the average per ell of scarlet was 6s 8d,
the equivalent of forty days’ wages for the lowly fewterers. Many of the silk cloths
at Corfe cost £2 apiece, and the pieces of samite cost £5, a sum that would have
required a good chunk of a knight’s annual income. Panels of squirrel skin used as
lining ranged from 27s to 53s 4d, ermine panels could cost £5, and individual
sable skins ranged in price from 10s to 4 marks. According to Gerald of Wales,
the sable coats given each year by the bishop of Lincoln to the king up to the reign
of Richard I cost £100 each, the annual income of a modest barony.14 Luxury furs
and textiles were costly.
Textiles and, to a lesser extent, furs had many uses. I will defer discussion of
some of these: altar cloths and vestments in Chapter 5; table linens in Chapter 6;
and pavilions and horse trappings in Chapter 7. I will, however, glance ahead to
note that in preparing for one lavish procession, horses were purchased to match
the textiles bought to adorn the horses, a surprising reversal that underscores the
centrality of textiles in the court’s material culture.15 Textiles were also used as
hangings, although there is little information on this. Some paonaz cloth pur
chased for Queen Isabella’s chambers was likely for hangings, and the brief
descriptions of some silk cloths John gave to be hung at St Paul’s Cathedral resem
ble those purchased and stored by the king, suggesting the latter too could be
used as hangings.16 Royal bedchambers were important centres of royal activity
and beds were therefore surprisingly important foci of royal authority; luxurious
textiles were also used for bedding, along with rich furs.17 Since the court moved
constantly, textiles and furs were an easier way to display wealth and status than
elaborately carved furniture, and royal bed coverings made ample use of silk,
scarlet, and fur. Among John’s treasures, inventoried with some of his most pre
cious jewellery and regalia, was one cover embroidered with parrots, given by the
viscount of Thouars, a powerful Poitevin noble, and another made of samite lined
with sable, which must have been enormously costly given the costs of cloaks
using that fur.18
But textiles were mainly used for clothing, for as a great lord it was John’s duty
to clothe his ordinary servants and give rich gifts of clothing to elite followers and
guests at court. The quotation from the Anonymous of Béthune at the beginning
of the book shows that one of the few things he admired about King John was his
generous distribution of robes at the major feasts of Christmas, Easter, and
Pentecost.19 The royal government spent over £1,000 on robes and furs John
14 Thomas, ‘Clothing and Textiles,’ 83–7; Gerald of Wales, Opera, 7:33, 41.
15 See Chapter 7, 179—181.
16 RLC 88b, 109a; W. Sparrow Simpson, ‘Two Inventories of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul,
London,’ Archaeologia 50 (1887), 439–524, at 494–5; Thomas, ‘Clothing and Textiles,’ 82.
17 Hollie L. S. Morgan, Beds and Chambers in Late Medieval England: Readings, Representations and
Realities (Woodbridge, 2017), 94–109.
18 RLCh 134a; Veale, English Fur Trade, 18; Thomas, ‘Clothing and Textiles,’ 83.
19 Anonymous of Béthune, Histoire des ducs, 105.
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istributed at the three great feasts of his ninth year and at least £685 13s 9d on
d
robes for Christmas 1205.20 The purchase of six sable skins, 235 panels of squirrel
fur, and 89 panels of rabbit fur for the Christmas feast of 1207 suggests a distribution
of robes to over 300 recipients.21 Unfortunately, no systematic record survives of
the robes given at any particular feast, but there is scattered information on robes
made for specific individuals at feasts or on other occasions. Earl Aubrey de Vere
received robes of blood-red scarlet, and the favoured royal servant, Hugh de
Neville, received robes of ruby scarlet lined with saffron silk.22 Most gifts of robes
consisted of three pieces, a tunic, a supertunic or surcote, and a cloak, though the
gift of two-piece robes was also fairly common. Full sets of robes routinely con
tained six or seven ells, a goodly amount of fabric. Though scarlet was frequently
used for elite clothing, viride, burnet, and even the relatively inexpensive russet
were also used. Silk appears less frequently than one would expect from contem
porary romances, mainly as linings and once as a separate garment granted to a
follower.23 There are no records of sable or ermine in robes given to royal follow
ers but vair, gris, and bis were distributed lavishly. Occasional references to the
costs of scarlet robes, some of them explicitly described as being lined with vair,
show prices ranging from 56s to 71s 8d, by no means paltry sums even for a pros
perous knight. John dressed his household knights and honoured guests in style.24
Unfortunately, there is limited information on clothing for members of the
royal family besides John. Only two brief records survive of clothing for royal
children, and one and possibly both were for John’s illegitimate sons. Both
received high-quality clothing.25 At various times, John’s government supplied
clothes or materials for his wife, Queen Isabella; his discarded wife, Isabella,
countess of Gloucester; his niece, Eleanor of Brittany, whom he kept in honourable
captivity after the death of her brother, Arthur; two daughters of the king of
Scotland in John’s custody; and members of these ladies’ households. Among
other garments, they received robes of scarlet, viride, and burnet. Both Queen
Isabella and Eleanor of Brittany had sets of silk-lined robes. Squirrel fur
abounded, and on one occasion the queen received two panels of ermine, likely
for linings. There are hints of elaborate ornamentation on at least one of the
queen’s garments, and fuller records would likely provide further evidence of
decoration. Overall, the surviving material indicates that the great women
surrounding John dressed very well, as one would expect.
Much more evidence survives for the king’s attire, which must be divided
into his regular clothing (though this includes garments made for feasts) and
certain garments that formed part of the regalia, the special items used in cor
onations and other ceremonies that will be discussed later in the chapter. Some
of his regular clothes were, in fact, quite ordinary, like leather leggings or boots
lined with inexpensive lamb fleece, designed for practical use rather than dis
play. However, John had plenty of luxurious clothing not in the regalia, includ
ing not only regular sets of robes but also special ones for going to bed or
getting up. He clearly enjoyed variety, for he had robes made in various fabrics,
including viride, burnet, and stanfort. A few of his choices seem idiosyncratic
by the standards of the time. One favourite fabric was russet, normally a cheap
cloth, which he may have liked for its colour. In some cases, he paired it with
red squirrel fur from purely red, summer coats, which was a very unusual look.
But most of his clothes were conventional ones among the elite. He often wore
robes of scarlet, and had more garments lined with vair or gris, including
boots, shoes, and gloves, than with lamb. On one occasion, he paired robes of
russet given by the abbot of Sempringham26 with ermine. He also used silk,
though sparingly, outside his regalia; silk linings appear in several robes, and
he had at least some garments made primarily of silk, in one case with a lining
of gris. Other even more luxurious silks appear in the records, most likely for
the king’s ordinary use, but possibly as part of the regalia. Overall, the king
dressed very well and, aside from his preference for russet and red fur, quite
conventionally.27
Compared to the most extravagant descriptions of clothing in romances, the
king’s clothing (apart from the regalia) and that of his court may seem disap
pointing. When one takes into account the costs, however, John, his family
members, and the court’s elite dressed lavishly and expensively, especially at
great feasts. Anyone who came to royal court would have recognized that the
lavish hangings and, for those privileged enough to enter the royal bedcham
ber, the luxurious bedspreads showed the king’s great wealth. Similarly, anyone
who attended a royal feast would have known, from the brightly coloured,
well-made sets of robes using expensive woollens, the occasional touches of
silk, and the exotic and expensive furs, that King John was a rich and gener
ous king.
26 For this interpretation of ‘russet de Sempringham,’ see Lachaud, ‘Textiles, Furs and Liveries,’ 184.
27 These two paragraphs draw on Thomas, ‘Clothing and Textiles,’ 94–9.
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A key part of the equipment of any self-respecting great household in the late
Middle Ages and early modern period was its precious plate, and records of John’s
reign show that this was already the case in the early thirteenth century.28 Two
sources provide an idea of the scope of John’s silver collections. Inventories of
plate in the charge of Hugh de Neville in 1207–8 include over 150 pieces weighing
nearly 550 lbs, and in 1215, inventories of royal plate accumulated from a variety
of stockpiles included over 200 pieces weighing over 500 lbs.29 These inventories
and other references to royal plate included cups, bowls, basins, flagons, platters,
candlesticks, and saltcellars. Some, like two vessels weighting 20 lbs each, were
quite large.30 Gold plate was rarer, but on 1 February 1214, as he prepared to
embark on his failed Poitevin campaign, John arranged for the delivery of fifteen
gold cups, a bowl, and one saltcellar, and there are references to gold cups weigh
ing 4 or 5 lbs or even more.31 There is no way of knowing what percentage of
John’s total plate inventories and other sources recorded.
Though many of the items were plain, some silver items were gilded, and some
had designs. Details are generally more tantalizing than informative: a cup of
Irish design, a shell-shaped bowl, and one set with rings and stones.32 However,
one of the Neville inventories describes a handful of pieces in more detail, includ
ing a pair of basins with leopards and other images in gold on their bottoms.33
Clearly, at least some of John’s plate had magnificent ornamentation. This likely
added to the value and expense; the costs of manufacture could be high for the
finest metalwork. For instance, work done on the royal regalia in John’s ninth year
was charged at £1 for each pound of gold worked and 18 d for each pound of sil
ver, or 7.5 per cent of the cost of the metal in the latter case.34 The regalia was a
special case, but it is likely that the accumulation of royal plate involved large
payments to goldsmiths and silversmiths.
John was even more exuberant when it came to jewellery.35 A writ acknow
ledging receipt from the Hospitallers of various pieces of jewellery and regalia in
spring 1216 included nine great necklaces with many precious stones and a tenth
described as having a diamond surrounded by rubies and emeralds.36 Various
inventories recorded rings, brooches, and staffs decorated in gems and sometimes
covered in them; one staff was embellished with sixty emeralds. These inventories
and other sources also include belts of silk or leather with silver or gold buckles,
often decorated with gold, silver, intaglios, and the inevitable precious stones. At
any given time, John seems to have had hundreds of gemstones set in jewellery,
sapphires above all. An inventory of royal jewellery and regalia held by five reli
gious houses in 1203 reveals the items contained 221 sapphires, 174 emeralds,
101 rubies, 41 garnets, 28 diamonds, 14 turquoises, and smaller numbers of
topazes, amethysts, pearls, carnelians, jaspers, peridots, onyxes, and cameos.37 At
the end of his reign John left at Devizes Castle 272 rings set with precious stones,
some of which must have been huge, given that two rings set with rubies had a
combined value of 50 marks.38 Jewellery was not cheap; on one occasion, John fitz
Hugh paid £226 13s 4d to two merchants from Piacenza for precious stones and
rings.39 Unfortunately, most of the inventories do not contain values, but 111 of
the rings at Devizes were valued at just over £927. Extrapolating from these
prices, the additional rings could have been worth an additional £774 or more.40
When one adds in the many other pieces of jewellery in John’s various treasuries,
it is clear he had invested huge sums of money in jewellery.
There are several indications that John loved gemstones for their own sake, not
simply as adjuncts to kingship. In December 1203 the king gave a great sapphire
and ruby set in gold to Bury St Edmunds, then promptly took them back for his
lifetime in return for a yearly grant of 10 marks; apparently he could not bear to
give them up.41 Other signs of a passion for gems and jewellery include the king
giving a yearly revenue of £1 to a man who had returned some lost jewellery to
him; selecting specific jewellery to keep from the estate of Archbishop Hubert
Walter; and on at least one occasion giving specific instructions to Reginald of
Cornhill about how to set particular stones.42 Sapphires were the most highly val
ued gemstones in John’s era, but even so, the sheer number of sapphires in John’s
jewellery and the number of objects in which they appear suggest he had a par
ticular preference for that stone.43
Because of archaeological discoveries like Sutton Hoo and because of the
importance of treasure hoards in works set in the earliest centuries of the Middle
Ages, like Beowulf and the Nibelungenlied, it is easier to see the importance of
treasure for the early Middle Ages than for the period discussed here. Yet treasure
was very important in John’s era as well. A commonly told story about Richard
the Lionheart was that he besieged the castle where he died because he sought to
claim recently discovered treasure. Gillingham has shown that this story is deeply
37 RCh 134a–b; RLP 54b–55a, 144b–150b, 173a. 38 Cazel, ed., Roll of Divers Accounts, 35–6.
39 PR13J, 112.
40 Cazel, ed., Roll of Divers Accounts, 32–6. I have estimated conservatively here, using the lower
end of the price range in some cases and excluding some stones for which estimates are difficult.
41 RLP 37b; RLCh 114b. 42 PR4J 276; RL 13; RLC 22b, 44a.
43 Lightbown, Medieval European Jewellery, 11, 30.
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problematic, but fascination with treasure and a penchant for moralizing explains
why both medieval writers and modern historians have found it irresistible.44 The
popularity of the story of John’s loss of his baggage train at the Wash where,
according to Roger of Wendover, he lost treasure, costly vessels, and ‘everything
he loved’ also testifies to treasure’s powerful hold on the imagination.45 This loss
hardly crippled the royalist cause and many rings and pieces of silk cloth clearly
remained in royal castles at John’s death, but the loss of precious items and the
emotional blow was too good for Roger to pass up. In thinking about material
culture at John’s court, it is important to keep in mind the nearly universal allure
of treasure to human beings.
The jewellery, clothes, and insignia in the royal regalia formed a particularly lav
ish and heavily symbolic portion of John’s treasures. Aside from items such as
crowns and sceptres that were ipso facto part of the regalia, it is not always pos
sible to tell which items were included, but ‘regale’ and related terms probably had
a technical meaning, and enough references to specific objects as part of the rega
lia survive to build up a picture of it.46 John had several crowns, including one
from Cyprus (no doubt plundered by Richard); one from Germany (perhaps
inherited from the Empress Matilda or given by John’s nephew, Otto); one or
more made for one of John’s coronations; and one made late in the reign by the
goldsmith Henry of St Helena.47 He had two sceptres for which records survive,
both with gold staffs; one topped with a dove, the other with a cross.48 The regalia
included at least two swords, one of them supposedly owned by the legendary
Tristan. Associated with the swords were a scabbard of gilded silver, a sword belt
decorated with gemstones and gold trim, and golden spurs.49 As with his regular
jewellery, John invested heavily in his crowns and other items in the regalia; 65 lbs
of gold and 86 lbs of silver were used to make crowns and other ornaments
for one of John’s crownings, and later payments of 253 marks, 230 marks, and
100 marks were made to Henry of St Helena and his relatives for purchasing gold
and stones to make John the crown noted above.50 Little is known of the queen’s
44 Gillingham, Richard I, 325–31. See also Jean Flori, Richard the Lionheart (Westport, CT,
2007), 202–15.
45 Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, 2:195.
46 For a discussion of regalia in the period, though not including clothing, see Johanna Dale,
Inauguration and Liturgical Kingship in the Long Twelfth Century: Male and Female Accession Rituals
in England, France and the Empire (York, 2019), 78–87.
47 PR9J xi–xii, 50; PR14J 16, 43, 49; Misae 14J 232; 14J RLC 125b–126a; 6J RLP 51b, 77b, 110a, 173a;
5J RLCh 134a–b.
48 RLP 77b, 173a. 49 RLP 51b, 77b.
50 PR9J xi–xii, 50; PR14J 43, 49; 14J RLC 125b–126a; Misae 14J 232.
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regalia, though the reference to a great ‘regale’ of the Empress Matilda shows that
regalia existed for women. One of Queen Isabella’s seals shows her holding a
sceptre with a cross and a bird on it.51
Not surprisingly, the garments that were explicitly part of John’s regalia were
even richer than his other luxurious garments.52 One three-piece set of robes
consisted of a tunic of white diasper silk, a dalmatic of ruby samite fringed with
gold work and set with stones, and a cloak of the same fabric and border, decor
ated with sapphires, pearls, and cameos, and fastened with one of the king’s mag
nificent brooches. Another set of robes was made of purple silk. The regalia also
included silk footwear, silk hose, and white gloves with gems on them. Unlike
John’s ordinary clothing, the regalian clothes were made overwhelmingly of silk,
and would have appeared quite distinctive compared to his other clothing and
that of his secular courtiers. Strikingly, terms for ecclesiastical vestments such as
sandalia and dalmatic, as well as pallium (used both for secular and ecclesiastical
garments), were applied to these garments. Indeed, the descriptions of garments
in the regalia resemble contemporary descriptions of vestments more than those
of secular clothes, though no one would confuse a king bearing his crown,
sceptre, and sword with a churchman.53 Overall, the king in his regalia would
have stood apart from (and symbolically above) all his followers, secular and
ecclesiastical, a point to which I will return. Unfortunately, no record survives of
similar garments for the queen, but the expenditure of just under £75 to purchase
robes for the king’s second coronation, which included the coronation of the
queen, suggests she probably had them and that they were quite costly.54 Were
John’s regalian garments as magnificent as the gloves of Frederick II or the famous
cloak and other garments from the Norman kings of Sicily that still survive?55 We
cannot know, but there is no doubt that the garments, crowns, sceptres, and other
objects in his regalia were extraordinary treasures.
Why did John invest so much in luxury goods when his wars taxed his resources
to politically dangerous levels? I will begin with two very specific practical uses of
luxury goods in John’s reign, only the first of which would be considered useful by
modern standards. An advantage of plate was that its owners could turn it into
cash or use it in lieu of money, though when it was melted down the costs of
manufacture were lost. On 1 May 1216, as he prepared for the invasion of Philip II’s
son, Louis, John sent out commands to have plate turned into silver pennies, and
on 9 June he commanded Hubert de Burgh to use plate to pay knights and
sergeants fighting with him at Dover.56 In a pinch, other luxury goods could be
used that way. William Marshal, regent for John’s young son, Henry, used most of
the rings left at Devizes at John’s death to pay royalist soldiers garrisoned at Dover,
Windsor, and Devizes, as well as knights and sergeants in the bands of various
foreign captains. More surprisingly, though some of the silk cloths at Corfe were
used for the king’s burial, William Marshal used the vast majority to provide gifts
for or pay the money fiefs (often in arrears) of continental knights and nobles
who had come to support John.57 These luxury items were an investment that
could eventually be used as money, while paying cultural returns in the mean
time. In the weeks following Magna Carta, John ordered a number of monasteries
to send him the royal jewellery, plate, and other treasures stored there. These
summons may have been designed not only to protect the treasures from the
possibility of baronial seizure, but also to marshal resources against the possibility
of war.58
The other supposedly practical use of luxury items, specifically gems, particu
larly carved ones, derived from beliefs about their magical or quasi-magical
qualities. Adam of Eynsham recorded a story from John’s meeting, shortly after
Richard I’s death, with Hugh of Avalon, bishop of Lincoln, in which John showed
him a stone set in gold and said that it had been given to one of his ancestors with
the divine promise that any successor who possessed it would lose none of their
lands. Hugh suggested that he should have trust in God rather than a stone, and
the story was designed to condemn the king’s impiety and foreshadow the loss of
Normandy, Anjou, and Maine.59 While a modern audience might see John as
foolishly superstitious, belief in the efficacy of gems was perfectly respectable at
the time, even if few would have placed as much faith in a specific one as John
allegedly did.60 John’s first wife inherited an antique intaglio from her father,
William, earl of Gloucester, which depicted an eagle between two standards; she
used it as a counterseal, accompanied by the inscription ‘I am the eagle, guardian
of my lady.’ This suggests she believed the antique gemstone provided protection
56 RLC 267a, 274b–275a. 57 Cazel, ed., Roll of Divers Accounts, 32–6.
58 RLP 144b–150b. 59 Adam of Eynsham, Magna Vita Sancti Hugonis, 2:139–40.
60 Joan Evans, Magical Jewels of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Particularly in England
(Oxford, 1922); Paul Studer and Joan Evans, eds., Anglo-Norman Lapidaries (Paris, 1924);
Lightbown, Medieval European Jewellery, 96–100, 206; Nicholas Vincent, ‘The Great Lost Library of
England’s Medieval Kings? Royal Users and Ownership of Books, 1066–1272,’ in Kathleen Doyle
and Scot McKendrick, eds., 1000 Years of Royal Books and Manuscripts (London, 2013), at 81;
Roberta Gilchrist, Medieval Life: Archaeology and the Life Course (Woodbridge, 2012), 246–7;
Lachaud, Jean sans Terre, 240–1.
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of some sort, and shows the presence of gemstone lore in John’s circle.61 John’s
preference for sapphires may also have stemmed partly from teachings on gem
stones, for the learned Bishop Marbod of Rennes wrote in his influential lapidary
that sapphires were fitting for kings and protected against a variety of physical
ailments.62 John put most of his faith in money and military power, but his invest
ment in gemstones probably depended partly on belief in their powers.
61 Before becoming king, John also had an intaglio as a counterseal; Robert B. Patterson, ed.,
Earldom of Gloucester Charters: The Charters and Scribes of the Earls and Countesses of Gloucester to
a.d. 1217 (Oxford, 1973), 24–5, plates XXXI–XXXII.
62 Campbell, Medieval Jewellery, 33.
63 For example, Robin Fleming, ‘Acquiring, Flaunting and Destroying Silk in Late Anglo-Saxon
England,’ Early Medieval Europe 15 (2007), 127–58, at 157–8; Timothy Reuter, ‘ “You Can’t Take It with
You”: Testaments, Hoards and Moveable Wealth in Europe, 600–1100,’ in Elizabeh M. Tyler, ed.,
Treasure in the Medieval West (York, 2000), 11–24, at 16. Schröder ably demonstrates how Henry II
used textiles to project a positive image of royal lordship; Schröder, Macht und Gabe, 206–10.
64 James Craigie Robertson and J. B. Sheppard, eds., Materials for the History of Thomas Becket,
Archbishop of Canterbury, 7 vols. (London, 1875–85), 3:29–33.
65 Ambroise, The History of the Holy War: Ambroise’s Estoire de la guerre sainte, ed. Marianne Ailes
and Malcolm Barber, 2 vols. (Woodbridge, 2003), 18; Stubbs, ed., Itinerarium, 172–3.
66 RLC 109a, 184b. 67 RLC 97a–b; PR14J 91.
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colourful and remarkably high-status clothing would have made them stand out
and drawn attention to the wealth and standing of the royal court. Though
Frédérique Lachaud has demonstrated that livery as a kind of uniform, revealing
allegiance to a lord through the wearing of his colours, was a later development,
she shows it had antecedents in John’s era and before.68 The unified appearance
of groups of huntsmen and falconers noted above was an example of these ante
cedents and may have been common at John’s court, creating a vivid spectacle of
different units in the court in different colours but all showing their membership
in John’s retinue.69 As Lachaud notes, one of the purposes of livery was to
enhance a lord’s status, and it is likely that John’s aim in dressing his huntsmen,
falconers, and even laundresses so well was to show what a great and generous
lord he was.
Common in peacetime, luxurious display was even more important in war.
Ralph of Coggeshall wrote that when King John sailed to Poitou in 1214 to try to
reconquer his continental lands, he took with him an inestimable treasure of gold,
silver, and precious stones.70 The royal records confirm this. In addition to the
gold plate noted earlier, on 1 February 1214 John sent for 40,000 marks, a gold
crown, and two chests containing gold and jewellery. Other documents from the
campaign refer to two chests of jewels, some of the king’s luxurious belts, and sil
ver plate.71 No doubt much of this was meant for gifts and payments, but it is also
likely that John hoped that displaying his great wealth would help convince
Poitevin, Angevin, and other nobles to return to his allegiance. In the end, many
of his treasures fell into French hands, or so William the Breton claimed, when
John fled from an army led by Philip II’s son, Louis. According to William, the
French seized gold cups, silver plate, glittering garments, ornaments, and a lux
urious tent, thus transferring any status they provided from the English to the
French, with the additional prestige of having been seized in war.72 William’s par
tisan boasts must be taken with a grain of salt, but there is no doubt that luxuri
ous goods were seen not as a frivolous distraction from war, but as an adjunct to
it. Wars had to be fought in style, and luxury enhanced rather than detracted
from military success.
68 Lachaud, ‘Liveries of Robes,’ 279–98. See also Schröder, Macht und Gabe, 224–5; Church, King
John, 85.
69 For a similar phenomenon at the court of Henry III, see Wild, ‘Truly Royal Retinue,’ 136, 138.
70 Ralph of Coggeshall, Radulphi de Coggeshall Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. Joseph Stevenson
(London, 1875), 168.
71 RLC 163a; RLP 110a, 112a, 119a.
72 Guillaume le Breton, ‘Philippidos,’ in H.-F. Delaborde, ed., Oeuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le
Breton, vol. 2 (Paris, 1885), 1–385, at 293.
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Many scholars have stressed the way in which livery in particular and clothing
more generally was used to display and thereby reinforce status differences in the
Middle Ages. In the late Middle Ages sumptuary laws came on the scene, but as
Lachaud has shown, the use of clothing to mark hierarchy existed long before
them.73 Despite the relatively luxurious robes given to less important figures in
the household, clothing at John’s court was very hierarchical.74 I have already
noted the ways in which higher-ranking people tended to get more expensive fab
rics and furs. In many cases only the value of clothing given to followers or guests
was recorded, but these figures themselves reveal a hierarchy of payments, from
5s for tunics for fewterers to 30s for robes for ordinary chaplains, to the sums
between 56s and 71s 8d cited earlier for scarlet robes for important guests at
court. In part, the costs differed because the fabrics differed. The design of clothes
could also distinguish rank. The king’s officials sometimes bought panels of fur of
different lengths; on one occasion Reginald of Cornhill purchased a panel with
thirteen rows of vair for the queen, and two panels each of ten and eleven rows for
unnamed but clearly high-status members of her household. Almost certainly the
panels were for robes of different length, suggesting that even a garment’s length
showed status difference.75 Less information survives about jewellery or plate and
hierarchy, but at feasts, gold and silver would have been reserved for the most
important people while everyone else would have used the less expensive dishes,
probably ceramic but possibly wooden, that the royal household purchased in
bulk.76 For anyone who attended the court, especially on important occasions,
there would have been no doubt who were the most powerful and highest-
ranking members.
73 Frédérique Lachaud, ‘Dress and Social Status in England Before the Sumptuary Laws,’ in
Peter R. Coss and Maurice Keen, eds., Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England
(Woodbridge, 2002), 105–23. For livery and hierarchy, see Françoise Piponnier, Costume et vie sociale:
La cour d’Anjou, XIVe–XVe siècles (Paris, 1970), 195–230; Lachaud, ‘Liveries of Robes,’ 289–92; Crane,
Performance of Self, 6–7; Wild, ‘The Empress’s New Clothes,’ 12–16. For clothing more generally, see
Delort, Le commerce des fourrures, 1:522–60; Raymond van Uyten, ‘Showing Off One’s Rank in the
Middle Ages,’ in Wim Blockmans and Antheun Janse, eds., Showing Status: Representation of Social
Positions in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout, 1999), 19–34; Reuter, ‘Nobles and Others,’ 118;
Monica L. Wright, Weaving Narrative: Clothing in Twelfth-Century French Romance (University Park,
PA, 2009), 20–1.
74 For a fuller discussion and references, see Thomas, ‘Clothing and Textiles,’ 93–4.
75 RLC 103b, 104a.
76 PR7J xxxviii, 160; PR12J xxxiv–xxxv, 62, 121; PR13J xxi–xxii, 109; RLC 157b, 259b. There is some
indication that higher-quality ceramics could be used at elite tables; Ben Jervis, Pottery and Social Life
in Medieval England: Towards a Relational Approach (Oxford, 2014), 98–103. Nonetheless, the surviv
ing ceramics from royal sites in the period were not especially rare, exotic, or fine; Rahtz, Excavations
at King John’s Hunting Lodge, 91–111; James and Robinson, Clarendon Palace, 169–76; Ellis, ed.,
Ludgershall Castle, 181–200; Poulton, ed., Medieval Royal Complex at Guildford, 43–60.
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3.8 The Regalia and the Special Status of the King and Queen
77 Typical of the brief descriptions of John’s coronation at Westminster are Gervase of Canterbury,
The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. William Stubbs, 2 vols. (London, 1879–80), 2:92;
Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, 1:287–8. For the ducal ceremony, see Adam of Eynsham,
Magna Vita Sancti Hugonis, 2:144.
78 Wickam Legg, ed., English Coronation Records, 34–8.
79 Ralph Niger, De Re Militari et Triplici Via Peregrinationis Ierosolimitane (1187/88), ed. Ludwig
Schmugge (Berlin, 1977), 132–40.
80 See, for instance, a letter of Innocent III to Richard I giving him four rings with four gems and
discussing the virtues linked to these gems, or a letter of John of Salisbury to his brother, thanking him
for a gold ring with a sapphire and discussing the symbolism of the gold and the gemstone;
C. R. Cheney and W. H. Semple, eds., Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III Concerning England
(1198–1216) (London, 1953), 1–2; John of Salisbury, The Letters of John of Salisbury, ed. W. J. Millor,
H. E. Butler, and C. N. L. Brooke, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1979–86), 1:36–41.
81 Dale, Inauguration and Liturgical Kingship, 136–41.
82 Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, 1:287–8, 301–2, 311, 316.
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reign; the last was Easter 1202.83 However, it is possible that coronations
continued later in his reign. In the Norman period, and possibly the late Anglo-
Saxon era as well, English kings adopted a widespread practice of being crowned
on the three feast days of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, a practice described as
crown-wearings rather than coronations by modern scholars.84 Most scholars
have concluded—on the basis of good but not irrefutable evidence—that English
kings abandoned this as a regular practice perhaps as early as the second decade
of Henry I’s reign.85 It is at least possible that John revived this practice, but even
if this is not the case, John certainly used his regalia throughout the reign,
although we cannot know precisely how. He ordered regalia to be sent to him in
the weeks before two Christmas feasts, in 1204 and again in 1207, and on other
occasions as well.86 As noted earlier, he had new crowns made later in the reign.87
John’s crowns, sceptres, and other pieces of regalia clearly continued to reinforce
his kingship long after his inaugural coronation.
In addition to personal appearances, John, like other rulers, had a traditional
means of disseminating an iconic image of himself with his regalia: the royal seal.
On the obverse of the seal, John is seated on a throne, wearing his crown, and
holding a sword and a sceptre mounted on an orb (see Figure 3.1).88 As noted
earlier, the seal of the queen also shows her with regalia. The king’s seal would
have been widely disseminated among the political elites who often obtained
royal charters, and they would have been reminded of his authority any time they
consulted one.
It is also possible that some clothing associated with the regalia was used even
when crowns and sceptres were not. One chronicle described Richard I elabor
ately outfitted in Limassol, Cyprus in a silk tunic and cloak, highly decorated with
embroidery and gold edging, and an elaborate sword belt and scabbard. The
83 Ralph of Diceto, Opera Historica, 2:172; Roger of Howden, Chronica, 4:160; Gervase of
Canterbury, Historical Works, 2:93, 410; Luard, ed., Annales Monastici, 1:25.
84 H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘The Anglo-Norman “Laudes regiae”,’ Viator 12 (1981), 37–78; Michael Hare,
‘Kings, Crowns and Festivals: The Origins of Gloucester as a Royal Ceremonial Centre,’ Transactions
of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 115 (1997), 41–78.
85 Judith A. Green, The Government of England under Henry I (Cambridge, 1986), 21; Gillingham,
Richard I, 271–7; David Carpenter, The Struggle for Mastery (London, 2003), 294; John Robert
Maddicott, The Origins of the English Parliament, 924–1327 (Oxford, 2010), 68–72. Richardson and
Turner, however, argue that Henry II did not give up the practice; H. G. Richardson, ‘The Coronation
in Medieval England: The Evolution of the Office and Oath,’ Traditio 16 (1960), 111–202, at 126–7,
129; Turner, Eleanor of Aquitaine, 156.
86 RLP 48a–b, 54b–55a, 77b, 110a, 142a; PR3J 259; PR6J 120; RLC 122b.
87 PR9J xi–xii, 50; PR13J 107; PR14J 43–4, 49; Misae 14J 232; RLC 125b–126a. The regular perfor
mance of the Laudes Regiae, which I will discuss in subsequent chapters, would support the possibility
of regular crown-wearings on the great feast days.
88 The basic imagery of the obverse of John’s seal went back to that of Edward the Confessor, for
which see Brigitte Bedos-Rezak, ‘The King Enthroned, a New Theme in Anglo-Saxon Royal
Iconography: The Seal of Edward the Confessor and Its Political Implications,’ in Form and Order in
Medieval France: Studies in Social and Quantitative Sigillography (Aldershot, 1993), IV 53–88. For the
importance of seals in reinforcing the religious status of kings, see Dale, Inauguration and Liturgical
Kingship, 191–214. For the reverse side of the seal, see Chapter 4, 91—92.
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description says he was dressed regale, which may refer specifically to wearing
part of the regalia.89 Although we tend to focus on royal insignia such as crowns,
sceptres, and swords or lances of office, clothing was also important. The Siete
Partidas, a law code commissioned by Alfonso X of Castile in the middle of the
thirteenth century, proclaimed that ‘The ancient sages established the rule that
kings should wear garments of silk, adorned with gold and jewels, in order that
men might know them as soon as they saw them, without enquiring for them . . . .’90
This would not apply to the ruler’s ordinary woollen dress either in England or
Castile, but clearly special clothing marked kings out on particularly important
occasions, and its similarity to ecclesiastical vestments signalled the monarchs’
continuing claim to a sacral status paralleling that of high church officials.
Together, the clothing and the insignia made the regalia an important tool of
royal power.
Royal generosity and gift exchange are major themes throughout this book, and
luxury items like cups and jewels were common gifts at royal court. John fre
quently made individual gifts of plate and jewellery, and occasionally distributed
jewellery and belts more widely, including at least once on New Year’s Day, a trad
itional day for gift-giving.91 Above all, the giving of robes at feasts by kings (and
other great men) was one of the most important practices of lordship in the
period. A well-known passage in the poem of William Marshal describes that
great noble, on his deathbed, chastising a cleric for suggesting that he sell the
scarlet robes lined with squirrel intended for his knights so he could give alms for
his soul, and vehemently emphasizing the importance of carrying out the distri
bution.92 So culturally significant was the tradition that Roger of Wendover occa
sionally noted John’s distribution of robes at feasts in his chronicles, even though
it was clearly routine.93 As the Anonymous of Béthune’s rare burst of praise for
John’s granting of robes indicates, John was noted for his generosity in this
practice.94
Who benefited from John’s largesse? Unfortunately, no adequate record of
recipients of robes at any of the great feasts has survived. As we have seen, groups
of falconers and huntsmen received robes, and this likely happened at feasts. Two
records refer to robes purchased for the king’s knights and, in one case, sergeants
for Easter and Pentecost feasts, showing that the military figures in the king’s
household received them, as one would expect.95 The king’s clergy also received
robes.96 The accounts of William Scissor, the king’s main tailor late in his reign, as
well as other sources, reveal gifts of clothing to great nobles and favoured royal
servants, including Earls Aubrey de Vere and William Longsword, and important
officials like Hugh de Neville, Brian de Lisle, Robert of Turnham, and Henry fitz
Count. Both earls received sets of robes linked in the accounts with robes made
for the king, with de Vere’s gift also linked to the queen. This suggests matching
sets of robes, which would have increased the honour paid to the earls and sig
nalled their closeness to the king.97 The specific times of the year when many of
these were made indicate they were for great feasts. Fuller evidence would prob
ably provide a more complex picture, but what does survive shows that John dis
tributed robes at feasts to the valued members of his household and to close
supporters.
John also gave robes and gifts of plate and other luxury items at other times.
Not surprisingly, John also favoured close followers or their kin on these occa
sions. For instance, John presented a valuable piece of plate to one of his stewards,
Peter of Stokes, and a silver cup to a favourite, Peter de Maulay, for the use of
Peter’s mother.98 In addition, he gave robes and other gifts to powerful figures
from more remote parts of his realms. Only loosely tied to the royal court, these
men included Irish kings and other ‘fideles’ in Ireland; Madog ap Gruffydd, prince
of half of Powys and at times an ally of John; and the mayor of Queen Isabella’s
comital town of Angoulême.99 The king sometimes granted clothing to the chil
dren or young relatives of powerful men, including Wilekin de Cantilupe, a mem
ber of a family of royal favourites, and Elias de Pontibus, relative of a seneschal of
Poitou.100 A final category of followers who received robes or plate were foreign
knights who entered the king’s service, including Hugh de Boves, the great mer
cenary captain; Walter de Baillolet, a Flemish knight; and Gosewin le Born, who
held a money fief from the king.101 John clearly used gifts of luxury items to nour
ish his relations with the diverse followers he needed to hold together his dispar
ate realms and to recover lands lost to Philip Augustus. One gift is particularly
striking: a few days before the issuing of Magna Carta, John ordered that Walter
de Beauchamp, one of the rebel barons, be given three luxurious silk cloths to
augment his robes. This unusually rich gift of textiles may have been a futile
attempt to lure Walter to the king’s side.102
John also used gifts to foster diplomacy, as had his father, Henry II, and as was
no doubt common in the period.103 He gave gifts to envoys of foreign rulers,
including the pope; John’s nephews, the Emperor Otto and Henry, Count
Palatinate of the Rhine (but generally called duke of Saxony in the English
sources); the king of Norway; the count of Flanders; and El-Adil, the brother of
Saladin. Most, like wandering knights in romances, received robes from their
royal host, but two received precious cups.104 More important, of course, were the
gifts provided, either through envoys or in person, to the rulers themselves. Ralph
of Coggeshall described how John rode to meet Ferrand, count of Flanders, and
showered him with gold, silver, and precious stones, in the run-up to John’s great
continental campaign of 1214.105 The royal records reveal gifts, mostly plate and
jewellery, to the pope, Emperor Otto and Count (or Duke) Henry, the king of
Norway, the duke of Limburg, and the count of Holland. These gifts were valuable
and some must have been beautifully decorated; for instance, Henry received four
gilded cups worth £25, and the duke of Limburg received a gilded cup weighing
98 RL 272; RLC 175a. 99 PR12J 149; RLC 186b; Misae 14J 267.
100 Misae 14J 237–8, 245, 261; RLP 85b. For Renaud de Pontibus as seneschal, see Vincent, ‘Jean
sans Terre et la origine de la Gascogne Anglaise,’ 555.
101 Misae 14J 267; RLC 95a, 128a. 102 RLC 214a.
103 Schröder, Macht und Gabe, 180–98.
104 PR9J xvi–xvii, 30; PR13J 107; RLC 123a, 159b, 226a, 231a.
105 Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, 168.
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6 marks (4 lbs) but with workmanship that cost an additional 3 marks. These gifts
were relatively trivial for such wealthy men, but they also provided honour and
status. Otto, writing to share news with his uncle, expressed deep gratitude for a
selection of plate, rings, and belts; though he described them as ‘ludicri,’ perhaps
best translated as ‘playthings,’ he emphasized the distinction they conferred upon
him.106 The importance of the pope’s goodwill to John is obvious, and excepting
the king of Norway, all the secular notables listed here were part of John’s alliance
against Philip Augustus. Though relatively unimportant materially, in psycho
logical terms, these gifts were crucial.
The records reveal less about the gifts John received, but he must have been a
frequent recipient of luxury items, particularly from other rulers. In his writ
ordering that a set of gifts be gathered for the king of Norway, John explicitly
stated that they should be sufficiently worthy to be honourably sent to a king who
had himself sent many jewels.107 With subjects there was less expectation of reci
procity, but John also received gifts from them. Items given as part of various
financial proffers were gifts of a sort, and though proffers of jewellery were rare,
the bishop of Bath did offer a ruby ring and the royal official Warin fitz Gerold a
ruby worth 20 marks.108 Among the inventories of plate in the custody of Hugh
de Neville was a group of silver items given by the citizens of London to the king,
and other gifts from subjects can be found as well.109 Stephen Church has pointed
out that such gifts were a good way to win the king’s favour; indeed, in 1211 the
monks of Bury St Edmunds secured a promise of free election from John partly
by offering him a number of gold and silver ornaments.110 The lines between
bribes, salary, and gifts were often blurred, which made the culture of gift-giving
even more important in helping to create links between John, his subjects, and his
fellow rulers.111
106 PR13J 107; Misae 14J 256; RLC 126b, 168a, 231; RLCh 133b; Cazel, ed., Roll of Divers
Accounts, 35.
107 RLC 168a. 108 ROF 15, 389.
109 RLCh 134b; John Thorpe, ed., Registrum Roffense (London, 1769), 122.
110 Church, King John, 132; Rodney M. Thomson, ed., Chronicle of the Election of Hugh, Abbot of
Bury St. Edmunds and Later Bishop of Ely (Oxford, 1974), 4–5.
111 For the blurring of these lines and their relationship with questions of honour and morality, see
Knut Görich, ‘Geld und “Honor”. Friedrich Barbarossa in der Italien,’ in Gerd Althoff, ed., Vorträge
und Forschungen: Formen und Funktionen öffentlicher Kommunikation im Mittelalter (Stuttgart, 2001),
177–200; Knut Görich, ‘Geld und Ehre: Friedrich Barbarossa,’ in Klaus Grubmüller and Markus Stock,
eds., Geld im Mittelalter: Wahrnehmung—Bewertung—Symbolik (Darmstadt, 2005), 113–34.
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condemnation of fine clothes and luxurious living was widespread during the
Middle Ages. Much of this was directed against women, so powerful men were
insulated to some degree.112 Nonetheless, men were also criticized, as when a par
tisan of Richard I, in condemning the French on the Third Crusade for not suffi
ciently supporting Richard, attacked their luxurious, fashionable clothing.113
Sometimes these criticisms focused on royal courts. Orderic Vitalis’s attack on
clothing at William Rufus’s court is famous, but closer to John’s time were the
criticisms of John of Salisbury about clothing and the love of precious ornaments,
perhaps inspired by Henry II’s court.114 Schröder has argued that there was a fair
amount of ambivalence at Henry’s court about extravagant clothing, with praise
for the king when he sometimes wore simple clothing.115 The luxury described in
this chapter therefore seems an obvious target for John’s critics. Nonetheless, one
finds little if any such criticism.
One possibility is that this absence of criticism is a trick of the evidence. The
court critics of Henry II’s reign were mostly no longer writing in John’s reign, and
religious moralists had other, more pressing complaints about the king, above all
his conflict with Pope Innocent III over the election of the archbishop of
Canterbury. Hunting drew criticism for specific reasons: it was linked with forest
law, a particularly unpopular aspect of Angevin royal government, and John’s lack
of participation in tournaments had no parallel in the realm of luxury goods that
could be used against him. Like his father, John sometimes dressed plainly and in
a utilitarian fashion.116 Moreover, many of John’s baronial opponents themselves
valued luxury, and many benefited at times from the king’s generosity. Nonetheless,
aversion to hypocrisy has rarely stopped political figures from attacking their
enemies and given the amount of criticism of John in the sources, it is remarkable
that his enemies neglected this potential weapon. One tentative answer to this
puzzle may be that even the religious thought that royal courts should be a
place of magnificence. In 1125, when a number of German bishops summoned
the missionary bishop, Otto of Bamberg, to elect the next king of Germany,
they urged Otto to come in the ‘courtly fashion of princes of old.’ The election of
a king apparently required that even a saintly bishop display a certain level of
splendour.117 Kings themselves were not just allowed but expected to display
magnificence, an attitude that may have increased during the thirteenth century.
Later in the century, Matthew Paris lamented that in 1248, the financially strapped
Henry III had all his precious plate and jewellery disassembled and melted down
112 E. Jane Burns, Courtly Love Undressed: Reading through Clothes in Medieval French Culture
(Philadelphia, PA, 2002), 37–44, 149–52.
113 Stubbs, ed., Itinerarium, 330–1.
114 Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. Marjorie Chibnall, 6 vols.
(Oxford, 1969–80), 4:186–9; John of Salisbury, Policraticus, 2:12, 158–9, 313–14.
115 Schröder, Macht und Gabe, 29–41. 116 Thomas, ‘Clothing and Textiles,’ 96.
117 Klaus Nass, ed., Codex Udalrici, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden, 2017), 2:601–2.
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for bullion, ignoring the value of the workmanship, and he criticized the king
for not giving away the usual robes to his knights in 1251, comparing him
unfavourably to his predecessors.118 In this passage, Matthew, otherwise one of
John’s harshest critics, implicitly praised his generosity. The silence of the critics
suggests that in creating a magnificent court, John was acting in proper royal
fashion.
That said, in one respect John’s expenditures on luxury items represented a
danger. His relentless quest for money was the most important single factor in
prompting the barons’ revolt. War drove most of this demand, but the expend
iture on clothing, plate, and jewellery (not originally intended to be spent on war,
even if it sometimes was) was still significant and only added to the king’s need
for money and the resulting political stresses.
Scholars who study textiles have been more alert than many to the historical
importance of pleasure. Thus Sarah-Grace Heller, in her exploration of fashion in
medieval France, includes the positive valuation of pleasure and seduction (in
both a broad and a more narrowly sexual sense) as one of ten points in evaluating
whether a system of fashion existed in a specific historical period. As she notes,
‘joias,’ the vernacular term for jewels, conveys the delight taken in them.119
Certainly the moral critics of elaborate clothing and other luxury items associated
them with worldly pleasures—that, of course, was precisely the problem. As with
hunting, however, the exact sources of pleasure derived from clothing, plate, and
jewellery must be teased out, often through inference. Again like hunting, the sta
tus, prestige, and power associated with luxury goods must often have been a
source of pleasure in itself. Gift-giving had many practical and political functions,
but the giving and receiving of valuable presents could also have been a source of
delight. As so often, power, status, and pleasure were intertwined.
What of aesthetic pleasure? Even here, issues of power and status can be
involved. Pierre Bourdieu, in a classic work of sociology, made clear how much
taste and aesthetic choices are influenced by issues of class, status, and aspiration.
Though the details of this process would have been radically different in John’s
time, it is likely that in such a stratified society similar processes would have been
at work.120 No doubt individuals at John’s court sometimes pretended to aesthetic
118 Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. Henry Richards Luard, 7 vols. (London, 1872–83), 5:21–2.
Matthew’s claims receive some corroboration from the royal records: Lars Kjær, ‘Matthew Paris and
the Royal Christmas: Ritualised Communication in Text and Practice,’ Thirteenth-Century England 14
(2013), 141–54, at 152.
119 Heller, Fashion in Medieval France, 9, 38–42, 73.
120 Bourdieu, Distinction. See also Crane, Performance of Self, 7.
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views they did not genuinely possess to match high-status norms. More
commonly, expectations about what aristocrats were supposed to like would have
shaped their tastes. Nonetheless, many factors other than class and status go into
aesthetic choices, and those shaped by sociological factors can be perfectly
genuine. In the 1960s, when Elspeth Veale wrote her definitive study of the
English medieval fur trade, fur was still very much associated with status, as it
had been in the Middle Ages. However, she emphasized an aesthetic response
that she clearly shared: ‘Furs are soft and of subtle colours, with a lustre and
beauty nothing can match, and medieval men and women took particular p leasure
in them, not hesitating to apply to them epithets like “delicate,” “delightful,” or
“beautiful”.’121
Can one find evidence of appreciation of luxury items for the aesthetic pleas
ures they provide? Certainly Matthew Paris’s focus on the workmanship of royal
plate and jewellery suggests an aesthetic appreciation. The lovingly detailed por
trayals of luxury items found in the literature of the time, like Chrétien de Troyes’
minute description of clothing given by Guinevere to his heroine Enide, or Hue
de Roteland’s careful depiction of an elaborate gold cup covered with gems, sug
gest a belief that beautiful objects appealed to their audiences on aesthetic
grounds.122 At John’s court, the existence of highly ornamented plate, including
basins with designs of leopards, carefully designed jewellery, vivid woollen fab
rics, and beautiful silks, all suggest a desire for aesthetic pleasure. Particularly
noteworthy were choices in which aesthetic considerations appear to have out
weighed status concerns. Had John and leading members of his court considered
only the cost and therefore status of the textiles they chose, they would have worn
only silk and scarlet, and they certainly would not have put on fabrics sometimes
worn by their laundresses. Presumably they considered having a variety of fabrics
and a mix of colours important enough to risk blurring status lines. John’s par
ticular choice of russet and red fur indicates a willingness to embrace an aesthetic
choice that flouted the conventions of the time. Of course, at court the choice of
clothing would have had multiple drivers, but there is evidence that beauty and
the pleasure it provided were among them.
What of comfort? As John Crowley has shown, specific views about what is
comfortable, and even the very idea of comfort, are culturally constructed and
historically contingent to a surprising degree.123 Unsurprisingly, however, medi
eval people tried to embrace comfort at times. Romances speak of elite figures
wearing (or not wearing) certain clothing to respond to weather.124 With expen
sive furs such as vair and ermine, display may often have been a more important
consideration than staying warm in cold weather, but the king’s possession of
boots and a tunic for going to bed lined with lamb, and the royal couple’s posses
sion of cloaks lined with the same, all point to a desire for comfort regardless of
status.125 So too did the royal rain cloaks that appear in the records.126 Often
enough, admittedly, a desire for status outweighed comfort. Martha Carlin and
David Crouch have argued that a full set of woollen robes could have weighed
over 21 lb even without lining.127 If this is correct, it is hard to see how they could
have been comfortable, even allowing for differences in cultural ideas of comfort
and the fact that medieval elites would have been accustomed to wearing such
clothes. Nonetheless, other royal garments do show that comfort was not entirely
forgotten in the creation of the royal wardrobe. And alongside comfort, there
would have been the sensual, sometimes sensuous appeal of luxury goods, par
ticularly textiles and furs. The feel of furs, silks, and finely made woollens would
surely have given pleasure in both clothing and bedding. Indeed, rich textiles
made beds not only grand but also sensuous places. As the narrator of The
Romance of Horn said of the eponymous hero of that romance, ‘no lady had seen
him who did not love him and want to hold him, embracing him under an ermine
coverlet without the knowledge of her lord.’128
‘Clothes make the man.’ So goes the saying, which applies to women too. In their
study of clothing in early modern England, Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter
Stallybrass have stressed that in ceremonies of investiture, clothing could indeed
‘make’ a person a member of a guild or household—or a king.129 Obviously inher
itance, marriage, and coronations were the prime drivers in making John and
Isabella monarchs, but the royal regalia, including the clothes in it, played a role.
Recent decades have seen increasing scholarly exploration of and theorizing
about the impact of things on people.130 The study of material culture in various
disciplines has played a major role in this, as has the sociological approach called
Actor-Network Theory (ANT), advanced most notably by Bruno Latour, which
argues that humans exist in constantly changing networks not only with other
humans but with objects; that objects affect people in powerful ways; and that
objects play an important role in allowing some humans to gain power over
others.131 One need not accept every aspect of ANT to accept that humans are
inevitably bound up in a relational network with objects in which humans have
an impact on objects but objects also have an influence on humans. A recent book
by the archaeologist Ben Jervis has used ANT and Bourdieu’s idea of habitus
(which may be roughly defined as the influence of daily activities and the every
day environment on people) to discuss the impact of ceramics in medieval
England on various forms of identity. These influences were often imperceptible
to the people themselves and were not necessarily the result of anyone’s conscious
intent, but sometimes human actors set things in motion. Jervis argues that
‘Through bringing together items of material culture it was possible to become
noble, with the maintenance of relationships with the material world making
durable this constant process of becoming, which also forced others to relate to
their surroundings in particular ways, both to situate themselves, but also the
new lord, within a web of social connections.’132 Relations among humans, of
course, were crucial to establishing claims to nobility, but having the proper
things mattered greatly. The same was true of claims of royalty, and John’s jewels
and plate, the clothes he wore and gave away, and above all the regalia helped him
become and remain king.
Late in John’s reign, the wardrobe, which was in charge of the king’s clothes,
jewellery, and other valuables, began splitting from the chamber, eventually
becoming one of the major bureaucratic and financial court offices.133 This chapter
may help explain this ascension, for the wardrobe’s earliest duties not only gave it
proximity to the king but also placed it in charge of things that were dear to his
heart, including treasure, and were important to royal power. John and his
government invested heavily in luxury items. To some degree, the motives were
ones historians might once have considered frivolous: pleasure, comfort, and
diversion. However, these items were also clearly sources of prestige and tools in
building alliances and creating loyalty. Whatever their purposes, they were highly
valued. It is important, therefore, to remember that John’s court was made up not
only of people, but also of things.
131 For a good overview of this approach, see Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction
to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford, 2005).
132 Jervis, Pottery and Social Life, 84.
133 For the early functions of the wardrobe, see Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History, 1:67–9.
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4
Aspects of Court Culture
4.1 Introduction
Like any royal court, John’s court hosted a wide variety of cultural activities. As
we have seen, ample evidence survives for some, including hunting and material
culture. For others, records are more limited. These activities form the subject of
this chapter and include art and music; entertainers and exotic animals; books
and learning; games and gambling; chivalry; and sex and courtly love. This list
obviously forms something of a miscellany. In modern terms, it includes both
high and low culture, though such a division does not transfer well to the Middle
Ages. It excludes some likely activities at court, such as the recitation of poetry
and other literature, because no evidence survives. Above all, it is determined by
the amount of evidence, and although the recording and survival of far more evi-
dence on some subjects than others no doubt partly reflects the priorities of the
king and his courtiers, it also reflects the vagaries of bureaucratic choices about
what needed to be recorded and what records had to be preserved.1 Yet for all the
odd juxtapositions, discussion of these various activities will reveal just how
rich cultural life was at John’s court. One aspect of court life, however, John’s
aggressive and sometimes coercive pursuit of sex, will show the stark possibilities
of exploitation at court and complicate the generally positive picture we tend to
have of court culture. The evidence presented in this chapter, especially on sexual
exploitation, will provide further insights into power, contestation, pleasure, and
self-gratification at court, and will add the subject of suffering there.
Art and music have received much attention in studies of early modern courts not
only because they are high-status modern subjects with their own disciplines, but
also because many early modern courts were important centres of artistic and
musical patronage. Medieval kings could be important patrons: when it comes to
art and architecture, one only has to consider John’s son, Henry III, with his
1 Thus at least one roll of liveries (or salaries) once existed, and could have revealed much about,
for instance, musicians at court; Prest Roll 12J 244.
Power and Pleasure: Court Life under King John, 1199–1216. Hugh M. Thomas, Oxford University Press (2020).
© Hugh M. Thomas. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198802518.003.0004
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rebuilding of Westminster and his many other projects.2 Unfortunately, for John’s
court the evidence is far more limited than for his son’s, probably due to a com
bination of a shorter reign, fewer surviving records, and less interest on the king’s
part. Nonetheless, John and his court certainly patronized artists and musicians.
For artistic works, much of the evidence appears in other sections of the book.
In Chapter 3, I discussed the rich textiles John’s court imported, including elabor
ately decorated silks, and the fine jewellery and precious plate that the king
and court commissioned. His architectural patronage will appear in Chapter 7.
Here, I will focus on manuscript and wall painting. Unfortunately, no surviving
illuminated manuscripts can be connected directly to John or his court.3 As we
shall see, John owned many books, and it is therefore likely that he commissioned
manuscript illumination, but this must remain speculative. As for wall paintings,
the evidence for John’s father, Henry II, commissioning such works is quite strong.4
The evidence for John is more circumstantial. An Adam Pictor (or Painter) shared
oversight of expensive renovations at the king’s lodgings in the royal castle at
Hereford, suggesting that painters might have had an important role in such
renovations.5 Another painter, named Robert, held a pension from the king early
in his reign, suggesting an integral role in John’s (or perhaps Richard’s) court.6
Thus, the evidence for John’s patronage of painting is limited but suggestive.
More evidence survives of John’s patronage of music.7 Glimpses of sacred
music appear in John’s generous payments to various royal chaplains and clerics
who performed the Laudes regiae, a traditional hymn associating rulers with
the Triumphant Christ, at the great religious feasts of Easter, Pentecost, and
Christmas. Three of the men who most frequently received such payments, Jacob
de Templo, Henry of Hereford, and Robert de Saintes, were described as masters.
Though this title most likely referred to their general education as clerics, it is at
least possible that it referred to a mastery of music, possibly combining the
abstract mastery of musical theory taught in the schools with a more practical
command of the skills required for church music.8 A manuscript that survives in
2 R. Kent Lancaster, ‘Artists, Suppliers and Clerks: The Human Factors in the Art Patronage of King
Henry III,’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 35 (1972), 81–107; Paul Binski, The Painted
Chamber at Westminster (London, 1986); Paul Binski, Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets:
Kingship and the Representation of Power, 1200–1400 (New Haven, CT, 1995). For the artistic patron-
age of rulers in the later Middle Ages, see Vale, Princely Court, 70–1, 165–70, 247–82.
3 For one possibility based on circumstantial but plausible evidence, see Stella Panayotova, ‘Art and
Politics in a Royal Prayerbook,’ Bodleian Library Record 18 (2005), 440–59.
4 Gerald of Wales, Instruction for a Ruler, 678–81; Neil Stratford, ‘The Wall-Paintings of the Petit-
Quevilly,’ in Jenny Stratford, ed., Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology at Rouen (London, 1993),
51–9; Madeline, Les Plantagenêts et leur empire, 293.
5 PR5J 55. 6 RLC 12a.
7 For a later period, see Nigel Wilkins, ‘Music and Poetry at Court: England and France in the Late
Middle Ages,’ in V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne, eds., English Court Culture in the Later Middle
Ages (New York, 1983), 183–204.
8 RN 34; MR 1J 90; RL 1, 14, 25, 93; RLC 4a, 26b, 34b, 51b, 62b, 71a, 82a, 85b, 99a, 183b, 196b, 222a;
RLP 150a; Paul Webster, King John and Religion (Woodbridge, 2015), 27–8.
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Italy and includes polyphonic Latin songs about Henry II, Richard I, and other
members of John’s family suggests that the courts and households of John’s rela-
tives boasted an innovative and learned circle of court composers.9 The same is at
least possibly true of John’s court. As for less learned secular music, there survive
various references to the repair or making of trumpets and horns, including some
gilded with gold, and at least one horn that may have been for the king’s own
use.10 The royal records also note unnamed trumpeters and a number of named
musicians in royal service: John Bataille, trumpeter; Alexander Cytharista (or
harper); Alan le Harpur; and Jakelin and Vielet, the viol players.11 John clearly
had at least a small musical establishment outside the royal chapel.
Music had many purposes at medieval courts. The music of the royal chapel
was obviously religious. Horns were frequently used in hunting, and various
contemporary literary sources such as the works of Hue de Roteland show that
prowess with hunting horns was yet another aspect of aristocratic hunting cul-
ture. ‘Oh God, how sweetly it cries,’ La Fiere exclaims in one of Hue de Roteland’s
works, when she hears the hero, Ipomedon, sounding the hunting horn.12 One
Lancashire landholder held a small manor from the king for the service of his
horn during the hunt, and given John’s passion for hunting it is likely that he used
his own personal horn in this context.13 Music was also closely associated with
war and the contemporary intellectual, Peter of Blois, even described certain
instruments as necessary for war.14 The Anonymous of Béthune described John
as having trumpeters sound the call to battle on one occasion during Prince
Louis’ invasion, and the trumpeter John Bataille’s byname reveals his military
associations.15 In addition, contemporary sources indicate that music was played
at important moments in a monarch’s travels, and an alternative record of the
Lancashire tenure noted above was that its holder sounded his horn upon the
king’s arrival in the area.16 Last but far from least, music was a source of enter-
tainment and pleasure. Contemporary literary sources show aristocratic or royal
men and women performing themselves, and though there is no evidence of this
9 For the royal chapel and polyphony at court, see Ian Bent, ‘The English Royal Chapel before
1300,’ Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 90 (1963–4), 77–95; Thomas, Secular Clergy, 302–4.
10 PR6J 131; PR14J 49; Misae 11J 132; Misae 14J, 257.
11 PR6J 9, 131; PR16J 28; RL 92; Prest Roll 12J 242, 244, 246; RLC 172b, 197b, 227b–228a; John
Southworth, The English Medieval Minstrel (Woodbridge, 1989), 52.
12 Barlow, William Rufus, 125; Hue de Rotelande, Ipomedon, 90–1; Hue de Rotelande, Protheslaus,
ed. A. J. Holden, 3 vols. (London, 1991–3), 1:53.
13 Book of Fees 1:220, 227.
14 Peter of Blois, Petri Blesensis Tractatus Duo: ‘Passio Raginaldi, Principis Antiochie,’ ‘Conquestio de
Dilatione Vie Ierusolimitane,’ ed. R. B. C. Huygens (Turnhout, 2002), 68. See also Jordan Fantosme,
Chronicle, 98–101, 126–7; Robert W. Jones, Bloodied Banners: Martial Display on the Medieval
Battlefield (Woodbridge, 2010), 63–83.
15 Anonymous of Béthune, Histoire des ducs, 169–70.
16 Red Book of the Exchequer 2:464; Gervase of Canterbury, Historical Works, 2:87; Ambroise,
History of the Holy War, 1:33; Stubbs, ed., Itinerarium, 156, 211–12; Gerald of Wales, Opera, 6:62–3;
Constance Bullock-Davies, Menestrellorum Multitudo: Minstrels at a Royal Feast (Cardiff, 1978), 19.
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at John’s court, such performances, unpaid and therefore unlikely to appear in the
royal records, were certainly possible.17 More confidently, one can assert that the
harpist and viol players in John’s service entertained the royal court, with their
instrumental performances perhaps accompanied by song or used to accompany
dances. John’s own appreciation for one musician is shown by the very generous
gift of £1, several months’ wages for a skilled worker, that he gave to Markward,
drummer of the visiting count of Holland, on Palm Sunday 1213, perhaps for a
bravura performance in the day’s celebrations.18
Court fools and jesters were another important type of medieval and early mod-
ern entertainer.19 Early in his reign, John made a grant of land in Normandy to
William Piculf, his fool, and William’s son Geoffrey, for the service of acting the
fool.20 Alms given at different points in the reign to a Chysi stultus (fool) and a
Simon of Cambrai, inaneus, may represent charity, but medieval patrons some-
times supported the mentally impaired for entertainment as well as for religious
motives.21 Though I have suggested that John’s huntsman, John Stultus, derived
his byname as a sign of the king’s slightly contemptuous affection, John
Southworth’s idea that this huntsman also served as a court fool is certainly worth
considering: one can imagine many opportunities for physical pratfalls on the
hunt.22 Roland the Farter, a now mildly famous entertainer who served John’s
father, Henry II, was dead by John’s reign, but a successor still held Roland’s land
from King John in 1212 for the service of leaping and whistling at the king’s
Christmas feast.23 Once again, the surviving evidence is limited, but it does show
that John’s court sponsored entertainers of the sort common in the period.
Possession of exotic animals was an important mark of kingship in the period
and another source of entertainment. Henry I’s menagerie at Woodstock is well
known and Henry II and Henry III also possessed beasts from distant lands such
as camels and elephants.24 Late in his own life and towards the end of John’s reign,
17 Holden, Gregory, and Crouch, eds., History of William Marshal, 1:176–9; 2:428–31. Thomas,
Romance of Horn, 1:12, 41, 95–6; Marie de France, Lais, 268–9; Stimming, ed., Boeve de Haumtone,
104, 106.
18 Misae 14J 257. 19 John Southworth, Fools and Jesters at the English Court (Stroud, 1998).
20 RN 20–1. 21 PR4J 21; PR5J 89; PR16J 135. 22 Southworth, Fools and Jesters, 40.
23 Book of Fees 1:136. For Roland, see Southworth, English Medieval Minstrel, 47; Valerie Allen, On
Farting: Language and Laughter in the Middle Ages (New York, 2007), 12, 161–77; Martha Bayless,
‘Subversion,’ in Julia C. Crick and Elisabeth van Houts, eds., A Social History of England, 900–1200
(Cambridge, 2011), 402–9, at 405–8.
24 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings, ed.
R. A. B. Mynors, Rodney M. Thomson, and Michael Winterbottom, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1998–9), 1:740–1;
Michael Prestwich, ‘The “Wonderful Life” of the Thirteenth Century,’ Thirteenth-Century England 7
(1999), 161–71, at 164. Rodulfus Tortarius, a monk of Fleury, described in a poem a visit to Caen
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Alexander Neckam, son of Richard I’s nurse, pictured a nameless ruler’s court
with exotic animals, including a lion watched over by keepers and bound by
chains, with boys teasing it just beyond the end of its reach, and a bright-green
parrot that could imitate human speech.25 Strikingly, around the time of
Alexander’s writing, the pipe rolls record expenses for a lion, its keepers, its chain,
and a special door to keep it in whatever enclosure John used to hold it at the
Tower of London.26 Perhaps Alexander had seen John’s lion being tormented by
the boys at John’s court or by servants and visitors at the Tower. The lion only
appeared in two pipe rolls, suggesting it did not survive very long, and there is no
record of similar exotic species kept for show (though one wonders if Alexander
had also seen a parrot at court). However, it may be a mistake to differentiate too
sharply between exotic imported curiosities and the kinds of animals more com-
mon at court. Martina Giese has fruitfully discussed Frederick II’s hunting ani-
mals in conjunction with his more exotic beasts.27 Gyrfalcons may have appealed
to John and so many other enthusiastic falconers not only because of their size,
hunting abilities, and impressive appearance, but also because they were generally
imported from the far north and thus had something of the exotic about them.
But the prestige provided by any particularly fine bird of prey, hound, or horse
had parallels to that of the exotic species found in menageries.
An interesting example of a set of animals that was simultaneously exotic and
indigenous, marvellous and domestic, comes in an anecdote by the Anonymous
of Béthune. In this story, William de Briouze’s wife, Matilda, presented Queen
Isabella with 300 cows and one bull, all entirely white except for their red ears.
The Anonymous told the anecdote mainly to make more poignant Matilda’s death
by starvation in John’s prison after the king turned against her husband, a former
favourite, joining it with a story that she claimed to have 12,000 cattle that could
produce enough cheese to feed one hundred men trapped in a castle for a long
siege.28 Despite its polemic use, there is reason to take the story seriously. I noted
in Chapter 2 William’s gift of a large number of hunting animals to the king.29
White cattle with red (or black) ears exist today in isolated herds that have an old
history, and white cattle with red ears appear in various medieval Welsh sources.
where he claims to have seen a king enter with a large train including an Ethiopian leading a lion,
leopard, camel, and ostrich. Martina Giese suggests the king was Henry I; Martina Giese, ‘Die
Tierhaltung am Hof Kaiser Friedrichs II. zwischen Tradition und Innovation,’ in Knut Görich, Jan
Keupp, and Theo Broekmann, eds., Herrschaftsräume, Herrschaftspraxis und Kommunikation zur Zeit
Kaiser Friedrichs II. (Munich, 2008), at 151–2; Rodulfus Tortarius, Rodulfi Tortarii Carmina, ed.
Marbury B. Ogle and Dorothy M. Schullian (Rome, 1933), 325–6. For a useful discussion of exotic
animals and their importance to rulers, see Sharon Kinoshita, ‘Animals and the Medieval Culture of
Empire,’ in Jeffrey J. Cohen, ed., Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and Objects (New York, 2012), 35–63.
25 Alexander Neckam, Alexandri Neckam Sacerdos ad Altare, ed. Christopher James McDonough
(Turnhout, 2010), 142–3.
26 PR13J xxii–xxiii, 109–10; PR14J 44. 27 Giese, ‘Tierhaltung,’ 121–71.
28 Anonymous of Béthune, Histoire des ducs, 111–15. 29 See Chapter 2, 41.
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Even if the Anonymous exaggerated the size of the family herds, the Briouzes
were major landowners, so it is plausible that they could have gathered a large
number of cattle with particular features. However, these cattle would not only
have had an arresting appearance but also important cultural associations: white
cows with red ears had otherworldly connections in Celtic tales and laws, which
the Briouzes, as lords on the Welsh Marches, surely knew.30
In his book, Audun and the Polar Bear, William Miller used an Icelandic tale of
a man who spent all his money on a Polar Bear and, after a complicated series of
events, made his modest fortune by giving it to a king of Denmark, to explore
deeply the nature of gift exchange. Among other lessons from this work, an
important one is that the backstory to the gift could add greatly to the value of a
gift.31 A gift of so many white cattle with red ears would not have been limited to
their economic value, though that was itself far from negligible. The presentation
of the animals would have been a rich visual spectacle; an occasion for delight
and wonder. Most important, for a society that loved marvels and had become
accustomed, through Breton lais and Arthurian romance, to particularly value
Celtic marvels, an explanation of the otherworldly associations of such cattle
would have been particularly welcome, and would, coincidentally, have under-
scored the cultural competence of Matilda and her family in dealing with the
Welsh. Exotic animals may have been curiosities, but curiosities could be cultur-
ally very important.
30 Jessica Hemming, ‘Bos Primigenius in Britain: Or, Why Do Fairy Cows Have Red Ears,’ Folklore
113 (2002), 71–82; Robin Chapman Stacey, ‘King, Queen and Edling in the Laws of the Court,’ in
Thomas Charles-Edwards, Morfydd E. Owen, and Paul Russell, eds., The Welsh King and His Court
(Cardiff, 2000), 29–62, at 36.
31 William Ian Miller, Audun and the Polar Bear: Luck, Law, and Largesse in a Medieval Tale of
Risky Business (Leiden, 2008).
32 For some of the more recent work on this, see Karen M. Broadhurst, ‘Henry II of England and
Eleanor of Aquitaine: Patrons of Literature in French?’ Viator 27 (1996), 53–84; Aurell, ed., Culture
politique des Plantagenêt; Ruth Harvey, ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Troubadours,’ in Marcus Bull
and Catherine Léglu, eds., The World of Eleanor of Aquitaine: Literature and Society in Southern France
between the Eleventh and Thirteenth Centuries (Woodbridge, 2005), 101–14; John Gillingham, ‘The
Cultivation of History, Legend, and Courtesy at the Court of Henry II,’ in Ruth Kennedy and
S. Meacham-Jones, eds., Writers of the Reign of Henry II (London, 2006), 25–52; Jean Flori, Eleanor of
Aquitaine: Queen and Rebel (Edinburgh, 2007), 280–313; Aurell, Plantagenet Empire, 88–101, 134–62;
Turner, Eleanor of Aquitaine, 167–73.
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of a reputation for learning and literature seems fully justified. The only dedication
of a book to John that I know of is Gerald of Wales’s rededication to him of his
account of the English invasion of Ireland, the Expugnatio Hibernica, originally
dedicated to Richard I. However, Gerald regularly and futilely sought royal recog-
nition of his works and in this case was probably mainly motivated by a desire to
get John to further the conquest of Ireland, where many of Gerald’s relatives had
settled, rather than by any real hope of royal reward. Nor is there any indication
that John paid the least notice to the work or rewarded Gerald for it.33 The pres-
ence of entertainers at John’s court suggests royal patronage of vernacular, oral
literature. However, despite the ties of other members of John’s family to the trou-
badour culture of southern France and despite the fact that John’s queen, Isabella
of Angoulême, was Poitevin, the only reference to John as king in the surviving
body of troubadour poetry is the hostile poem of Bertran de Born the Younger
discussed in Chapter 2.34 It is easy to see why John has not gained the reputation
of his parents as a patron of learning and literature.
Nonetheless, John’s court may have been a greater centre for learning than his
reputation suggests. First, there were many clerics in his circle with the title of
magister or master, a sign of a high level of education, often at the emerging uni-
versities of Paris, Bologna, and Oxford. I noted three of them earlier in a musical
context. Another cleric who sang the Laudes regiae for John, Ambrose, may have
been the Ambroise who composed a vernacular account of Richard I’s crusade.35
Some 14 per cent of the many ecclesiastical benefices granted by John went to
men with the title magister, and this is an underestimate, given that the royal
scribes were not consistent in applying the title and used titles with greater pres-
tige, such as archdeacon, when there was a choice.36 Not all these clerics were
particularly close to the king, but several of his most important clerical advisors
were magistri, including his chancellors Walter de Gray and Richard Marsh, and
one of John’s most versatile servants, William of Wrotham. Clerical intellectuals
sometimes denigrated the learning of clerical administrators, partly because they
felt that these clerics misused talents and skills that should have been reserved for
the church. However, either William of Wrotham or William de Sainte-Mère-
Église, a royal administrator under John’s predecessor who was bishop of London
during John’s reign, was a patron of the highly influential Latin grammarian,
Geoffrey of Vinsauf, showing that learned administrators could appreciate the
lively intellectual life of the period.37 John, of course, may have valued his most
33 Gerald of Wales, Expugnatio Hibernica, 261–5. For the possible patronage by John of two poems
by Henry of Avranches, see Josiah Cox Russell and John Paul Heironimus, eds., The Shorter Latin
Poems of Master Henry of Avranches Related to England (Cambridge, MA, 1935), 30–3.
34 See Chapter 2, 47–48. 35 Ambroise, History of the Holy War, 2:2.
36 Thomas, Secular Clergy, 113.
37 John Gillingham, ‘Stupor mundi: 1204 et un obituaire de Richard Coeur de Lion depuis
longtemps tombé dan l’oubli,’ in Martin Aurell and Noël Tonnerre, eds., Plantagenêts et Capétiens:
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highly educated courtiers simply for their administrative skills, but the fact
remains that such men could frequently be found at court. Indeed, given the
steady rise of the schools and universities throughout the late twelfth and early
thirteenth centuries, John’s court probably had larger numbers of educated clerics
than his father’s did.
The most telling evidence that John and his court may have been surprisingly
learned comes from his collection of books. Though no surviving manuscripts
can be definitively associated with the king or his court, a number of works are
mentioned in the royal records.38 On 29 April 1205, John had a history of England
written in French sent to him. On 29 March 1208, he asked the sacrist of the
abbey of Reading to send him a collection of religious and theological works,
including the entire Old Testament in six volumes, Hugh of St Victor’s De
Sacramentis, Peter Lombard’s Sentences, various works of Augustine, the work of
the Roman rhetorician Valerius Maximus, a treatise by Origen, and an obscure
patristic work, the De Generatione Divina by Candidus Arianus. Although
scholars debate the issue, it is likely that these books were John’s rather than loans
from the monastic library. The royal writ described the sacrist as being ‘quit’ of
the book, a technical term that suggests he delivered the king’s own books to him
after John had stored them there just as he stored jewellery, plate, and regalia at
religious houses. A few days later he had a work ‘called Pliny’ sent to him from
Reading.39 As Rodney Thomson, a leading expert on books and learning in the
period, has written, ‘This is a quite extraordinary set of books to be associated
with a layman . . . . There is nothing comparable throughout twelfth- or thirteenth-
century Europe.’40 These examples of deliveries of named books are admittedly
isolated in the surviving records, but there are other occasions when the royal
government paid for the movement of the king’s books, in one case purchasing
chests and carts to move them overseas, which suggests a sizeable library.41 John
no doubt would have had help from clerics in reading and interpreting his learned
works, but that was expected, and even the limited surviving evidence of the
king’s books suggests considerable intellectual curiosity. Had contemporary
chroniclers and other clerical writers been more sympathetic to John, he might
well have left behind him a greater reputation for learning.
confrontations et héritages (Turnhout, 2006), 397–411, at 409–11; Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Poetria Nova,
ed. Margaret F. Nims and Martin Camargo (Toronto, 2010), 95.
38 For a book possibly associated with Queen Isabella, see Vincent, ‘Great Lost Library,’ 98.
39 RLC 29b, 108a–b.
40 Rodney M. Thomson, Books and Learning in Twelfth-Century England: The Ending of ‘Alter Orbis’
(Walkern, 2006), 64. See also Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, 162–3; Vincent, ‘Great Lost
Library,’ 84–5; Stephen Church, ‘King John’s Books and the Interdict in England and Wales,’ in Laura
Cleaver and Andrea Worm, eds., Writing History in the Anglo-Norman World: Manuscripts, Makers
and Readers, c. 1066–c. 1250 (York, 2018), 149–65.
41 PR5J xvi, 139; PR6J 131.
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Games and gambling do not generally receive the same scholarly attention
accorded to books and learning, but they were an important part of court life. A
number of entries in the surviving misae and prest rolls show that John was an
enthusiastic player of ‘tabulas’ or ‘tables,’ which was not a single game but a series
of games played on a hinged board with markers and often dice, some versions of
which were the ancestors of modern backgammon.42 Two entries reveal expenses
for making leather containers for transporting the boards on the king’s journeys.
One of the boards was made of ivory.43 A larger set of entries reveal sums paid off
for the king’s gambling, mostly on his own games, one presumes, but perhaps
sometimes for wagers on others. The sums involved ranged from 4d to 25s 8½d.
Most were 10s or less, minor amounts for the king and his associates, though
certainly not for ordinary people of the time. Such entries show the people John
associated with in one of his major forms of relaxation. His gambling partners
formed a very small circle. Considering that fewer than fifty records of gambling
debts survive, it is striking to see some individuals appear seven or more times.
None were women; almost all were close associates and favourites of the king.
There were a few exceptions, such as John Bucuinte, a prominent citizen of
London, and Saer de Quincy, earl of Winchester and later a rebel baron. However,
even the gaming companions who were later rebels, including the northern
barons Robert de Ros and Simon of Kyme, had had close ties to the king or had
tried to win his favour earlier in the reign. Most of the players were strong loyal-
ists, including four of the earls closest to the king: John’s half-brother, William
Longsword, earl of Salisbury (an especially frequent gambling companion);
Geoffrey fitz Peter, earl of Essex; Ranulf, earl of Chester; and William II de Ferrers,
earl of Derby. Others were leading administrators and favourites, including Hugh
de Neville and the gambling companion mentioned most often in the surviving
evidence, Brian de Lisle. Some, like the knight Robert of Burgate, were important
members of John’s household. All in all, John seems to have gambled with those
upon whom he relied most heavily to govern.44
As striking as John’s love of ‘tabulas’ in the records is the absence of chess, a
point noted by Danny Danziger and John Gillingham, who sardonically state that
42 For ‘tabulas’ see H. G. A. Murray, ‘The Mediaeval Games of Tables,’ Medium Aevum 10
(1941), 57–69.
43 Misae 11J 125; Misae 14J 225.
44 Besides those listed above, John gambled with Pagan of Chaworth, head of a prosperous land-
holding family; Ingelran de Pratell, a member of John’s household; Warin fitz Gerold, member of a
prominent family in royal administration; William Briwerre the Younger, son of one of John’s favorites;
Henry fitz Count, an illegitimate relative who gained John’s favour; and one William Mar,’ who may be
William Marshal, though the absence of the title of earl is striking; Misae 11J 131, 139–40, 147, 155,
157–69; Misae 14J 249–50, 252–4; Prest Roll 7J 272, 275; Prest Roll 12J 176, 181, 196, 208–9, 231,
237–8, 240–1, 243–4; Prest Roll 14–18J 89, 92, 98.
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chess is a game of skill.45 We cannot be certain John did not play chess. Though it
is inconceivable that regular tournaments would fail to appear in the surviving
financial records, one can imagine chess matches slipping through without
appearing in the records, since they did not require extensive organization.
Nonetheless, there are no references to chessboards or to gambling debts related
to chess, even though medieval players regularly gambled on the game. Indeed,
the only reference at all to John playing chess is a decidedly unlikely anecdote in
the later, highly fictionalized biography of a historical rebel against John, Fulk fitz
Warin, in which the two came to blows over a chess game.46 Yet chess was an
extremely important game in England in the central Middle Ages (so important
that the exchequer drew its name from the chessboard) and skill at chess was an
important source of aristocratic prestige.47 Thus John’s apparent lack of interest in
the game is striking, comparable in some ways to his lack of interest in tournaments.
Richard I remains closely associated with chivalry in the modern popular and
scholarly imagination. John does not, no doubt because of his awful personal
reputation. When modern historians discuss the medieval phenomenon of chiv-
alry, they often focus on codes and conduct. Thus, Keen, in his classic work,
described chivalry ‘as an ethos in which martial, aristocratic and Christian elem
ents were fused together,’ and as ‘the secular code of honour of a martially
oriented aristocracy.’48 Important works on chivalry in England and Normandy
in the long twelfth century revolve around the conduct of aristocrats in war.49
However, because John’s conduct in war, and by implication his chivalry or lack
thereof, has been so much discussed in biographies and works on his reign, I will
discuss another aspect of chivalry, namely chivalric cultural practices (or lack
thereof) at John’s court. I have already discussed one major chivalric practice that
45 Danny Danziger and John Gillingham, 1215: The Year of Magna Carta (London, 2003), 75. For
an overview of chess in the period, see Richard Eales, Chess: The History of a Game (New York,
1985), 39–70.
46 E. J. Hathaway et al., eds., Fouke le Fitz Waryn, Anglo-Norman Texts, 26–8 (Oxford, 1975), 22–3.
47 For chess’s importance in England in the period, see Paul Milliman, ‘Ludus Scaccarii: Games and
Governance in Twelfth-Century England,’ in Daniel E. O’Sullivan, ed., Chess in the Middle Ages and
Early Modern Age: A Fundamental Thought Paradigm of the Premodern World (Berlin, 2012), 63–86.
For its prestige, see Richard Eales, ‘The Game of Chess: An Aspect of Medieval Knightly Culture,’
Ideals and Practices of Medieval Knighthood 1 (1986), 12–34.
48 Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven, CT, 1984), 16, 152. For an important work on chivalry
with specific reference to John’s brother, Richard I, see Flori, Richard the Lionheart, 221–347, 403–12.
49 John Gillingham, ‘Killing and Mutilating Political Enemies in the British Isles from the Late
Twelfth to the Early Fourteenth Century: A Comparative Study,’ in Brendan Smith, ed., Britain and
Ireland, 900–1300: Insular Responses to Medieval European Change (Cambridge, 1999), 114–34; John
Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century: Imperialism, National Identity, and Political Values
(Woodbridge, 2000), 41–58, 209–31; Strickland, War and Chivalry.
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was absent at court: tournaments. However, John and his court did embrace other
chivalric practices, including dubbing and heraldry. Moreover, through the use of
martial images, spectacular arms and weaponry, and trappings of war such as
banners, John and his followers adopted and projected a celebration of aristo-
cratic warfare. I will start with this last phenomenon.
For at least some medieval writers, war was an opportunity for panoply and
glorious display. This was most common in secular literature, in which writers
often gloried in the details of their heroes’ armour, weapons, and other gear, but it
was also true of historical accounts. Close to John’s time, Ambroise’s account of
Richard I’s crusade and the Latin chronicle that translated and adapted that work
are full of the splendours of the crusader armies (or occasionally their enemies),
including their fine horses, flashing weapons and glittering armour, magnificent
pennons and banners, and, of course, the accompanying music.50 The descrip-
tions in these two works are particularly detailed, but as Robert Jones has noted
of medieval authors, ‘There is rarely a battle scene written in which the author
does not comment on the splendour of the host, their armour flashing in the sun.’
Jones points out that military historians have tended to focus on the purely func-
tional aspects of armour, weapons, and military equipment, but he makes a strong
case for the psychological, military, and cultural importance of military display.51
John’s taste for military display has not gone unnoticed.52 However, there is room
for further exploration.
The vast majority of references to military matters and expenditures covered
purely pragmatic matters and items, but a desire for pomp comes through in
some entries in the royal records. A purchase of seven horse ‘covers’ (probably
caparisons), three with gold lions and four with silk ones, in the fiscal year 1205/6
shows how warhorses, themselves markers of status and display, could be made to
appear even more magnificent.53 Banners had practical purposes on the battle-
field, but by their very nature were also display items. A great deal of prestige was
attached to them, and just as the Anonymous of Béthune implicitly criticized
John for having the trumpets sounded against Louis and then retreating, so Ralph
of Coggeshall criticized him for erecting the royal English dragon banner against
Louis and then fleeing.54 The royal government periodically purchased banners,
50 Ambroise, History of the Holy War, 1:10, 24, 74–5, 92–3, 157–8; Stubbs, ed., Itinerarium, 156,
189–90, 211–12, 249, 367.
51 Jones, Bloodied Banners. The quotation is at p. 108. For the importance of horses and arms, see
also Joachim Bumke, Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, CA,
1991), 155–78. For the use of military panoply to assert exalted status, see Crouch, Image of
Aristocracy, 177–98, 217–51.
52 See in particular Nicholas Vincent, http://magnacarta.cmp.uea.ac.uk/read/feature_of_the_
month/Apr_2015_4; and Emma Mason, ‘The Hero’s Invincible Weapon: An Aspect of Angevin
Propaganda,’ Ideals and Practices of Medieval Knighthood 3 (1990), 121–37.
53 PR8J xxvi, 47.
54 Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, 182.
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often in conjunction with ‘tunics for arming,’ probably surcoats worn over
armour, which would have enhanced their wearers’ magnificence. In the 1212
pipe roll, for instance, appears a payment for twelve pennons and four ‘plate’ ban-
ners, and on 6 April 1216, John ordered the hasty provision of five banners and
five ‘tunics for arming.’ On at least one occasion silk was ordered for surcoats and
banners and the purchases often involved gold, perhaps as much as 2 lbs of gold
in the 1216 order, so these objects must have been quite splendid. Indeed, Vincent
suggests the somewhat mysterious ‘plate’ banners were made of beaten gold
rather than fabric embroidered with gold thread; either way, the materials were
costly and the effects no doubt impressive.55 John knew how to dress up war to
glorify it, while glorifying himself as an elite warrior in the process.56
When it comes to the most important instruments of warfare, armour and
weapons, it becomes particularly hard to separate purely pragmatic military pur-
poses from the glorification of war. Metal armour and weapons were thoroughly
practical in protecting knights and inflicting harm on their enemies, but they also
glittered and made knights (and horses57) look splendid—some writers described
them as looking like angels.58 However, there are a handful of references to
attempts to make weapons and armour appear even more spectacular. The pipe
roll of 1211 records the purchase of 150 gold leaves to gild 567 lances—one envi-
sions a large troop of the king’s knights bearing a forest of lances tipped in gold.59
The Chronicle of the Third Crusade refers to helmets covered with jewels in a
crusader army preparing to march on Jerusalem.60 Such helmets existed; on
30 October 1215, during the siege of Rochester, a royal writ commanded William
Scissor, who was responsible for caring for the king’s arms and armour as well as
his clothes, to give a foreign knight supporting John any of the king’s helmets
‘except the one gilded (deaurata) with stones.’61 The most precious of John’s arma-
ments was, of course, the sword said to have belonged to Tristan.62 Since it was
kept with the regalia, it was probably used largely in a ceremonial capacity.
However, one should perhaps not make too strong a distinction between
‘parade’ weapons and armour and items used in battle. A frequent image in
Anglo-Norman literature was of combatants smashing precious stones and other
ornamentation off their opponents’ helmets in duels and battles.63 One might
discount literary works and argue that crusaders replaced their gem-studded hel-
mets for battle, but it is also possible that conspicuous consumption was as valued
in warfare as it was in other aspects of aristocratic life. What better way to show
disregard for cost than to charge into battle wearing valuable silk surcoats that
were unlikely to survive any serious combat, to gild lances with gold, or to risk a
functional but expensively decorated helmet in battle? Even if John’s helmet with
the precious stones and the gilded lances were meant just for ceremony, as the
sword of Tristan almost certainly was, the imagery was important. As Emma
Mason has remarked, John and his brothers’ supposed possession of legendary
swords enhanced their authority and status, and could imply that the owner had
inherited the earlier hero’s charisma.64 The helmet and gilded lances, along with
the golden banners and surcoats, marked John as a heroic and wealthy knight like
the literary heroes of works of the day, and as a leader of a glittering host.
Such propagandistic images were largely conveyed in person by John himself
and the followers carrying his banners or gilded lances. In the politics of the day,
in which a small aristocracy wielded tremendous military and political power
and in which armies were relatively small, personal appearances carried more
weight than pictorial images. Nonetheless, depictions in stone, paint, or wax
would have extended the reach of the king’s image making.65 Any sculpted or
painted images from John’s lifetime have been lost, but we have large numbers of
his wax seals, representing thousands or tens of thousands that once existed in
the possession of those holding royal charters. As noted in Chapter 3, the obverse
of the seal showed John with his royal regalia, including a sword. The martial
imagery of the reverse is even more striking, for it shows the king as a mounted
warrior, a helmet on his head and a sword in his hand, ready to smite his enemies
(see Figure 4.1). In a period when many aristocratic seals depicted their owners
this way, John’s seal established him as one of their number, a knight among
knights, as well as a king.66 Of course, the core imagery of the reverse of John’s
seal was not innovative; in fact, it went back to William the Conqueror.67
63 Hue de Rotelande, Protheslaus, 1:120–1; Stimming, ed., Boeve de Haumtone, 121; Holden, ed.,
Waldef, 92; Ewert, ed., Gui de Warewic, 2:60, 111, 135.
64 Mason, ‘The Hero’s Invincible Weapon,’ 124.
65 For the image John’s supporters and successor tried to create of him on his tomb, see Jane
Martindale, ‘The Sword on the Stone: Some Resonances of a Medieval Symbol of Power (The Tomb of
King John in Worcester Cathedral),’ Anglo-Norman Studies 15 (1993), 199–241.
66 Brigitte Bedos-Rezak, ‘Signes et insignes du pouvoir royal et seigneurial au Moyen Age: le
témoignage des sceaus’ and ‘The Social Implications of the Art of Chivalry: The Sigillographic
Evidence (France 1050–1250),’ in Form and Order in Medieval France: Studies in Social and
Quantitative Sigillography (Aldershot, 1993), I 47–62 and VI 1–31; Crouch, Image of Aristocracy,
242–3; Carpenter, Struggle for Mastery, 294.
67 Adrian Ailes, ‘The Knight’s Alter Ego: From Equestrian to Armorial Seal,’ in Noël Adams, John
Cherry, and James Robinson, eds., Good Impressions: Image and Authority in Medieval Seals (London,
2008), 8–11, at 8.
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However, the imitation added to the image’s power by linking John to a series of
successful military predecessors from William I to Richard the Lionheart.
John’s royal seal also has a small but important place in the history of English
heraldry. Over the course of the twelfth century, heraldry became a key element
in chivalry, and by John’s reign, it was thoroughly entrenched.68 John’s own inter-
est in heraldry appears in a royal writ, issued during the disastrous campaign of
1214, requesting that a royal cleric provide him with a shield of arms (scutum de
armis) ‘such as you last gave us and better and more beautiful if it can be done.’69
Though John employed the traditional dragon banner of the English kings, he
and his father and brothers had adopted lions in their personal heraldry. John’s
identification with lions is shown by the lions on the horse caparisons noted
earlier, a belt with little lions (leuncules) on it that was among his treasures, and
the appearance of two lions in his coat of arms on the seal he employed before
68 For a good overview of heraldry in the context of chivalry, see Keen, Chivalry, 125–42. For her-
aldry in John’s broad milieu, see Adrian Ailes, ‘Heraldry in Twelfth-Century England: The Evidence,’
in Daniel Williams, ed., Twelfth-Century England: Proceedings of the 1988 Harlaxton Symposium
(Woodbridge, 1990), 1–16; Crouch, Image of Aristocracy, 220–51. For debate over the purposes and
origins of heraldry, see Adrian Ailes, The Origins of the Royal Arms of England: Their Development to
1199 (Reading, 1982), 21–31; Adrian Ailes, ‘The Knight, Heraldry and Armour: The Role of
Recognition and the Origins of Heraldry,’ Medieval Knighthood 4 (1992), 1–21; Jones, Bloodied
Banners, 11–32, 57–67.
69 RLC 166b.
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becoming king.70 It is quite possible that John acquired his actual lion as a living
symbol of his family’s heraldic emblem. Adrian Ailes has demonstrated that dif-
ferent members of John’s family used different coats of arms featuring lions in a
variety of ways, including on John’s earlier seal. When John became king, how-
ever, he and his advisors adopted the coat of arms featuring three lions passant
guardant (striding and gazing at the viewer) used in Richard’s second royal seal,
for John’s seal. This choice helped depict him as his brother’s legitimate successor
during his early struggles with his nephew Arthur, and was probably also designed
to link him to Richard’s chivalric charisma. Whatever the motives, these lions
have remained a feature of the royal coat of arms ever since, and though Richard
and his advisors designed them, John’s adoption changed them from the personal
badge of an individual king to a hereditary symbol of a lineage.71 The larger point
is that John and his advisors were knowledgeable participants in the practice of
heraldry and used it to enhance the king’s image as an aristocratic warrior.
John and his court also participated in the chivalric ritual of dubbing.72 John
himself had been knighted in 1185 at the age of eighteen by his father, Henry II,
shortly before being sent at the head of an expedition to Ireland.73 On several
occasions, John’s government paid for various items associated with knighting
ceremonies, presumably held at court. These expenditures included £21 10s 2d
for three robes of silk, three robes of viride lined with squirrel fur, ceremonial
bedding for vigils, and horse trappings for dubbing three unnamed men.74 On
New Year’s Day 1202, while in Mayenne on the continent, John knighted a subject
named Robert de Leveland, and the next day helped him make financial arrange-
ments when Robert took the cross for the Fourth Crusade.75 Most notably, in
1212, John knighted the future Alexander II of Scotland, at the age of fourteen, in
London, a politically noteworthy ceremony that drew the attention of a number
of chroniclers, though unfortunately the royal records provide little information
about it.76 The dubbings of knights was obviously a periodic event at John’s court.
At the end of his book on chivalry, Keen wrote, ‘The rise of the secular courts, as
centres of culture and as a natural meeting ground of clergy with nobility,
70 RLP 145a–b; Adrian Ailes, ‘The Seal of John, Lord of Ireland and Count of Mortain,’ Coat of
Arms n.s. 4 (1981), 341–50.
71 Ailes, ‘Seal of John,’ 341–50; Ailes, Origins of the Royal Arms, 39, 77; Adrian Ailes, ‘Governmental
Seals of Richard I,’ in Phillipp Schofield, ed., Seals and Their Context in the Middle Ages (Oxford,
2015), 101–10.
72 For good overviews of the ritual, see Keen, Chivalry, 64–82; Bumke, Courtly Culture, 231–47.
73 Roger of Howden, Chronica, 2:303.
74 RLC 56a; PR11J xiii, 10; PR6J 213. For similar grants under Edward I, see Lachaud, ‘Textiles,
Furs and Liveries,’ 274–84.
75 RL 25–6; RLP 4b.
76 Misae 14J 232; Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, 164; Roger of Wendover, Flores
Historiarum, 2:60; Luard, ed., Annales Monastici, 4:400; Walter of Coventry, Memoriale, 2:206; Joseph
Stevenson, ed., Chronica de Mailrose (Edinburgh, 1835), 113. The expenditure in the misae roll was
only £14 4s 8d, but it is likely that far more was spent.
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provided the context for [chivalry] to grow up from a warrior’s code into a
sophisticated secular ethic, with its own mythology, its own erudition, and its
own rituals which gave tangible expression to its ideology of honour.’77 John’s
court was clearly one of these centres of culture, nurturing the growth of chivalry,
one of the most important cultural developments of the Middle Ages.
Like many though certainly not all kings, John had an active sexual life both in
and out of marriage. The misae roll of John’s fourteenth year has a reference to an
amica, or mistress, of King John named Demoiselle Susanna and another refer-
ence to an unnamed mistress, perhaps also Susanna.78 John certainly had other
mistresses, some of them, as we will see, of noble family. In addition to five legit
imate children with Queen Isabella, he had many illegitimate children with vari-
ous women: an unpublished paper by Ralph V. Turner brings the number of
known ones up to ten.79
What of courtly love? After all, John was the youngest son of Eleanor of
Aquitaine, one of the figures most closely associated with that phenomenon.
Courtly love is, of course, a modern scholarly construct, and though it is certainly
not invented out of whole cloth, most of the sources for it are literary rather than
historical. Nonetheless, John’s court existed in a culture that was heavily invested
in thinking about romantic love and sex, and indeed this was an important period
in the development of Western ideas about romantic love.80 Such ideas are more
closely associated with France than England, but John’s parents came from France,
and he controlled large parts of that realm until 1204. There are at least hints that
the English royal court might be associated with love. A late twelfth-century
Anglo-Norman poem featuring a dialogue between lovers described the male as a
member of the court, providing oblique evidence that even in England the royal
court could be imagined as a place where one might find courtly lovers.81 A strap
end (a metal piece designed to prevent a leather strap from fraying) dating from
1190–1240 found at one of John’s favourite castles, Ludgershall, has the word
‘May’ written on it along with floral embellishments. The word is often found on
love tokens because of the literary associations of the month with love.82
John had a reputation for being uxorious, at least early in his reign. Both Roger
of Wendover and the Anonymous of Béthune chided him for spending too much
time delighting in his young wife, Isabella of Angoulême, as his military position
collapsed in Normandy. The latter stressed how much John loved her, while also
describing them quarrelling in the aftermath of the military collapse.83 These
criticisms were part of the more general portrayal of John as overly concerned
with pleasurable activities during wartime. They were also loosely associated with
a vision of John as sexually depraved that will be discussed below.84 Nonetheless,
claims about John’s love for his wife present him in a somewhat unexpected light.
The royal records occasionally show John engaged in romantic gestures. The
reference to one mistress appears in the misae rolls because John had a chaplet of
roses, picked from the garden of one of his chief officials, sent to her in the middle
of May. John’s own appreciation of flowers, or perhaps his use of them in the pur-
suit of women, is reflected in an expenditure for having a container used to dry
roses made for him. He provided Demoiselle Susanna with robes made of dark
burnet cloth lined with yellow silk, the inclusion of silk being a sign of high
favour.85 The courting of elite women, often for adulterous affairs, was of course
an integral part of courtly culture, at least in the literary imagination, while the
statements about John’s love for his wife could fit into the world imagined in
many romances in which marriage and romantic love were intertwined. We tend
to think, with good reason, of royal marriages as political affairs, but Ralph of
Diceto described John as considering one potential match, with a Portuguese
princess, because ‘her fame enticed his soul.’ This was the kind of language used
in literary works to describe noblemen falling in love with distant women through
their reputations, but it also echoes the language several writers used about
Richard I’s initial attraction to his wife, Berengaria. At a minimum, contemporary
ideas about love affected the way even hard-headed chroniclers thought about
royal marriages, and it is likely they had some influence on how nobles thought
about sexual relations and love.86 It is certainly possible, even probable, that John
was influenced by contemporary ideas about love.
In the end, though, courtly love provides a poor lens through which to view
sexual activity at John’s court. For instance, paid sex was probably also found at
court. One of the offices at the court, to which a small manor was attached, was
that of overseeing the court prostitutes. Already established in the time of Henry II,
it still existed in 1212 when Henry de Mare held land in Oxfordshire for s erving
as a royal doorkeeper or usher and managing the royal prostitutes.87 No further
evidence survives for prostitution at court, and it is at least possible that the office
was a relic of earlier practices. That said, it would hardly be surprising if an
overwhelmingly male institution that included many powerful and wealthy
individuals utilized paid sex.
More important, John was something of a sexual predator, not only by our
standards but by the standards of his own day, and his sexual activities had dan-
gerous political consequences for him. When writers analysed the causes of bar
onial discontent against John, in the decade or two after his death, they continually
returned to his sexual activities with baronial women. In discussing the wave of
defections by Norman barons that led to the loss of Normandy to Philip Augustus
in 1204, the poetic biographer of William Marshal asked, ‘Why could John not
win the hearts of his people?’ He referred to the depredations of mercenaries but
went on, ‘But that was nothing; if he caused shame concerning men’s wives and
daughters, he did not pay two pennies of compensation.’88 Roger of Wendover,
discussing the failed conspiracy of 1212 against John, referred to unjust exactions,
seizures of land, and exiling of nobles, but started by saying, ‘There were at that
time many nobles in the kingdom of England whose wives and daughters (with
them murmuring) the king oppresserat’ (I will return to the meaning of
opprimo).89 The Waverley Chronicle stated that the baronial rebels of 1215 were
motivated by John’s legal tyranny, but also because he had violated (violo) their
wives and daughters.90 As we have seen, the Anonymous of Béthune wrote that
John ‘was too covetous of beautiful women and because of this he shamed the
high men of the land, for which reason he was greatly hated.’91
A fifth passage, from a fragment of a vernacular history of Philip Augustus, dat-
ing to the years 1219–26, deserves a little more attention, since although it was
published nearly a century ago by Charles Petit-Dutaillis, it has not, to my
knowledge, been discussed by historians of John’s reign. Describing John on the
eve of the Magna Carta Revolt, it states, ‘Then King John was in England and
was signed with the cross. And he desired to keep neither faith nor oath nor
agreements with his English. Then he acted worse than before and slept with their
wives, daughters, and relatives, either by force or other means, and he judged
knights like villeins and caused them to die in his prison and he seized their castles
and inheritances. The earls and barons of England gathered together and said they
would not endure this anymore.’92
In the decade or so after John’s death, there was clearly a consensus among
writers that John’s sexual relations with his barons’ wives and kinswomen were a
major source of unrest.93 Their claims receive some corroboration from the fact
that some of John’s illegitimate children had noble mothers. Most notably, the
Anonymous of Béthune recorded that the mother of Richard of Chilham was a
sister of William de Warenne, earl of Surrey, and thus John’s own cousin.94 The
mother of another illegitimate son, Osbert Giffard, clearly came from the import
ant if prolific noble family of Giffard, and Sidney Painter made a circumstantial
but compelling case that the mother of yet another son, Oliver, was the sister of
Fulk fitz Warin, the historical figure upon whom the hero of Fouke le Fitz Waryn
is based.95 More speculative cases have been made for other noblewomen as
mistresses.96 Another type of corroboration comes from other contemporary
sources that also referred, if briefly, to John as lustful.97
More important as corroboration were early claims about John’s relations with
specific women. It must be noted that some of the most vivid stories about John’s
relations with noblewomen were recorded several generations later, and often
contain elements that are clearly fanciful. Such stories provide further evidence of
John’s reputation for aggressive pursuit of noblewomen, but otherwise are best
simply set aside.98 However, two claims come from the period immediately
following John’s death. William the Breton, an admittedly highly biased source,
claimed that John’s half-brother, William Longsword, earl of Salisbury, formerly
92 Li rois Jehans fu en Engleterre, et estoir croisiés, et ne volt tenir ne foi ne sairement ne cove-
nances a ses Englois; ançois lor fist pis que devant, et jut a lor femes et a lor filles, et a lor parentes, et
par force et autrement; et rejemboit les chevaliers com vilains et faisoit morir en sa prison, et lor toloit
casteax et yretages. Li conte et li baron d’Engleterre trainsent ensemble, et dissent qu’il ne sofferroient
mais se; Charles Petit-Dutaillis, ‘Fragment de l’Histoire de Philippe-Auguste, roi de France. Chronique
en français des années 1214–1216,’ Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes 87 (1926), 98–141, at 124.
93 The Crowland Abbey chronicler, admittedly, does not make this claim, but he never summarized
the causes of baronial anger; Walter of Coventry, Memoriale, 232.
94 Anonymous of Béthune, Histoire des ducs, 200.
95 Sidney Painter, ‘Who Was the Mother of Oliver Fitz Roy?’ in Fred A. Cazel, ed., Feudalism and
Liberty: Articles and Addresses of Sidney Painter (Baltimore, MD, 1961), 240–3.
96 Painter, Reign of King John, 231, 235; Rachel Swallow, ‘Gateways to Power: The Castles of
Ranulf III of Chester and Llywelyn the Great of Gwynedd,’ The Archaeological Journal 171 (2014),
289–311, at 299–300.
97 Gerald of Wales, Opera, 5:200; Guillaume le Breton, ‘Philippidos,’ 243–4.
98 William of Newburgh, Historia Rerum Anglicarum, 2:521; Harry Rothwell, ed., The Chronicle of
Walter of Guisborough, Camden Series (London, 1957), 152–3; William Dugdale, Monasticon
Anglicanum, 6 in 8 vols. (London, 1846), 6.1:147; Thomas de Burton, Chronica Monasterii de Melsa,
ed. Edward Augustus Bond, 3 vols. (London, 1866–8), 1:403. For debunking of these stories, see
Norgate, John Lackland, 289–90; Painter, Reign of King John, 234; Lachaud, Jean sans Terre, 200–1.
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one of John’s most loyal supporters, deserted to Louis when the latter invaded
England, because John had slept with the earl’s wife when William had been
Philip’s prisoner after his capture while leading John’s forces at the Battle of
Bouvines.99 Most importantly, the Anonymous of Béthune recorded Robert fitz
Walter as claiming that one reason for his flight from England with his family in
1212 was that John had wanted to have sex with his daughter Matilda by force.100
A surprising number of historians, including some who take seriously the sexual
charges against John, have raised doubts about this claim because Robert also
advanced another reason for his rebellion and the chronicle’s author posited a
third.101 Though Robert may of course have lied or the writer could have invented
the story, I am baffled by the idea that Robert could not have had more than one
motive, or that his claims are suspect because the chronicler did not lay them out
logically like a legal brief but instead presented them in a scattershot fashion not
uncommon for narrative sources.102
There is also at least some potential corroboration for the claims of some of the
writers noted above that John’s sexual aggression prompted active resistance to
his rule, though it should be noted that many of the rebels noted below had vari-
ous possible motives for rebellion, including the calculation, once Louis invaded,
that John’s cause was lost. If one believes William the Breton, John’s sexual aggres-
sion was the main reason for William Longsword’s desertion. Robert fitz Walter
was a key leader of the baronial resistance and another rebel leader, Geoffrey de
Mandeville, had been married to Robert’s daughter at the time John allegedly
tried to rape her. Fulk fitz Warin led his own minor revolt against John and later
joined the baronial revolt.103 John’s illegitimate son, Osbert Giffard, fought for his
father, as did other members of the Giffard family, but some were rebels and two
were among the staunch rebel defenders of Rochester Castle.104 Earl William de
Warenne, brother of one of John’s mistresses, deserted the king after Louis’ inva-
sion, though he quickly turned to the royalist side after John’s death.105
Any individual piece of evidence that John’s sexual relations with noblewomen
created an intensive political backlash could be dismissed; medieval chroniclers
sometimes invented or credulously repeated slurs and lies or simply made
99 Guillaume le Breton, ‘Gesta Philippi Regis,’ in H.-F. Delaborde, ed., Oeuvres de Rigord et de
Guillaume le Breton, vol. 1 (Paris, 1882), 168–333, at 311.
100 Anonymous of Béthune, Histoire des ducs, 121.
101 Norgate, John Lackland, 290–2; Painter, Reign of King John, 234, 261; Warren, King John, 230;
Holt, Northerners, 80n5; Turner, King John, 216; Lachaud, Jean sans Terre, 200–1.
102 For a similar reaction, see Gillingham, ‘Anonymous of Béthune,’ 39n62.
103 Painter, ‘Who Was the Mother of Oliver Fitz Roy?’ 243. For Fulk’s revolt and his later participa-
tion in the baronial revolt, see Painter, Reign of King John, 48–52.
104 RLC 241b, 276b, 283b–284a, 286b; Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, 2:151.
105 Hugh de Neville, whose wife Painter suggested might have been a mistress, turned a castle over
to Louis; Warren, King John, 252; David Carpenter, The Minority of Henry III (London, 1990), 6, 12;
Turner, King John, 255; McGlynn, Blood Cries Afar, 171–2; Church, King John, 235; Morris, King John,
279. For doubts about Hugh de Neville’s wife as John’s mistress, see Holt, ‘King John,’ 88–9.
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mistakes. However, the number of chroniclers who made this claim, and the
amount of corroboration (however problematic each individual piece), makes
this claim incontrovertible, at least in my view. But what made John’s sexual activ-
ity so objectionable? After all, John was certainly not unique as a king in having
sexual relations outside of marriage, including with noblewomen. John’s great-
grandfather, Henry I, had had more than twenty illegitimate children, and John’s
contemporary and neighbour to the north, William I of Scotland, had several,
and in each case some of the mothers were of noble birth.106
John seems to have violated social norms in a way that particularly angered
contemporaries, as the very use of the verb violo in the Waverley Chronicle sug-
gests. Of course, any extramarital sex violated religious norms in the period,
which may have influenced the views of religious writers on the subject. However,
three of the five works stating that John’s sexual activity caused baronial unrest
were composed in the vernacular, and thus almost certainly under secular patron-
age for a secular audience. The claims themselves were about baronial, not eccle-
siastical anger. Pious barons may, of course, have been offended by violations of
religious norms, but that hardly explains why John’s offences provoked so much
more anger than those of other kings.
Honour mattered more. In a deeply patriarchal society in which female honour
was closely tied to sexual purity, having a female relative engage in extramarital
sex, even with a king, could reflect badly on a nobleman’s honour, and two of the
vernacular sources explicitly referred to the shame the barons suffered. To be a
cuckold was particularly shameful. There were, of course, advantages to having a
connection with the king, even of a disreputable nature. The king could compen-
sate for his offences by providing favours and benefits to the families of the women
he slept with. Because the king was an important source of prestige, he could even
ameliorate any shame by enhancing a family’s honour in other ways. Even with
compensation, royal affairs with noblewomen must have been touchy matters. But
according to the poem of William Marshal, John provided no compensation worth
speaking of, which may even have deepened the shame by suggesting that the king
did not judge the affected noble families’ honour worth bothering about. The lack
of compensation could have left such nobles simmering with anger, sometimes for
years, making them eager to retaliate when the opportunity arose.
Most important was the king’s use, at least upon occasion, of force or other
forms of coercion. Violence and subtler forms of coercion were certainly not the
only ways John obtained sexual gratification, as the gifts to mistresses noted earl
ier in this section reveal. The romance Fouke le Fitz Waryn claimed that ‘King
106 Given-Wilson and Curteis, Royal Bastards, 60–73; C. Warren Hollister, Henry I (New Haven,
CT, 2001), 41–5, 228–31; Alice Taylor, ‘Robert de Londres, Illegitimate Son of William, King of Scots,
c. 1170–1225,’ Haskins Society Journal 19 (2008), 99–119. For the development of ideas about illegit
imacy, see Sara McDougall, Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800–1230 (Oxford, 2016).
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John was a man without conscience, evil, contrary, and hated by all good people,
and lecherous, and if he could hear of any beautiful lady or maiden, the wife or
daughter of earl, or baron, or of any other, he wished to have her at his will; either
to entrap her by promise or gift, or to ravish her by force, and for this he was
greatly hated.’107 As noted earlier, this is a deeply unreliable source, but the likeli-
hood that one of John’s mistresses may have come from the family (though the
romance does not record it) might have caused this aspect of John’s character to
stick in family memory. Even if that is not so, the account can still be used as a
record of how a medieval king might have used different methods to have sex
with noblewomen, including both seduction and rape. The Earl Warenne main-
tained a cordial relationship with John until Louis’ invasion, and it seems unlikely
he would have done so had the king raped his sister. But John may well have used
coercion or force in other cases.
Roger of Wendover’s term oppresserat, a form of the Latin verb opprimo, is
worth investigating further. As is well known, the words rapio and raptus were
ambiguous in Roman and medieval law, referring to abduction and elopement as
well as rape.108 As a result, when writers wished to describe violently forced
coitus, they had to use other terminology. A common approach in twelfth- and
thirteenth-century English legal treatises and an important confessors’ manual
from late in John’s reign was to use the verb opprimo with an adverb or adverbial
phrase denoting violence.109 When readers encountered Roger of Wendover’s pas-
sage, they would therefore probably have heard echoes of rape. The lack of an
adverb or adverbial phrase, however, suggests that Roger referred to coercion
rather than physical violence, and a medieval ruler had many ways to put heavy
pressure even on high-status women, including the threat of violence, but also of
unjust exactions or other abuses of power. That said, two sources, the anonymous
biographer of Philip Augustus and Robert fitz Walter (as recorded in the
Anonymous of Béthune), clearly accused John of rape or attempted rape. The like-
lihood that John was a rapist, at least upon occasion, needs to be taken seriously.
Some of the general ways in which the activities and phenomena discussed above
could enhance King John’s power will be obvious. Art, music, entertainers, and
military pomp could all increase the king’s reputation as a wealthy and magnifi-
cent ruler. Though cultural gaps between our own society and John’s make it hard
to fully determine what activities provided the most cultural capital in Western
Europe around the year 1200, command of the intricacies of chivalry and courtly
love would almost certainly boost a king’s status among the secular aristocracy, as
a reputation for learning certainly could among the clergy.112 The ability to pro-
vide various forms of entertainment, including music, entertainers, gambling,
and prostitutes, would, one imagines, enhance the king’s reputation as a generous
host and gracious lord. Military pomp, including martial music, golden banners,
110 Ruth Mazo Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing unto Others, 3rd ed. (New York, 2017),
155–61, 173–8.
111 Nicholas Vincent, ‘A Queen in Rebel London, 1215–17,’ in Linda Clark and Elizabeth Danbury,
eds., ‘A Verray Parfit Praktisour’: Essays Presented to Carole Rawcliffe (Woodbridge, 2017), 23–50.
112 For kings and learning, see John of Salisbury, Policraticus, 1:250–6.
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gilded lances, and Tristan’s sword, may not have been as important to military
success as hiring soldiers, gathering supplies, and stockpiling arms, all of which
John also arranged, but could boost morale and help gain a king a reputation as a
leader worth following. John’s military failures ultimately deprived him of such a
reputation, but he clearly made an effort to create the best image possible under
the circumstances.
Many of the specific activities I have noted in this section had specific benefits.
The singing of the Laudes regiae was part of an effort I will discuss in Chapter 5 to
emphasize the sacral aspects of kingship. John’s lion with its heraldic ties and
quasi-totemic status could have enhanced his reputation as a fierce king. Playing
‘tables’ and gambling with close followers could reinforce those friends’ ties to the
king. Knighting King William of Scotland’s son, the future Alexander II, visibly
demonstrated the dominance John had gained through his campaign against that
kingdom in 1209.113 Even John’s sexual activities, including those within the aris-
tocracy, may have had certain political benefits by giving him a reputation for
aggressive virility and allowing him to display dominance over his nobles.
To what degree John and his advisors consciously used the kinds of cultural
activities discussed here to enhance royal power is unclear. Certainly, contempor
aries were aware of the possibilities: Hugh Nunant, bishop of Coventry, and
Gerald of Wales claimed that during the Third Crusade, Richard’s chancellor and
effective regent, William Longchamp, bishop of Ely, patronized singers and jesters
so that they would write and sing songs that would enhance his reputation.114
Some scholars argue for the Plantagenets in general very consciously using
Arthurian legend and other cultural material as propaganda.115 I am somewhat
sceptical about the extent to which kings directly used contemporary secular
literature, but the arguments of these scholars are worth considering, and it is
unlikely that John and his courtiers paid no thought to the propaganda value of
owning the sword of Tristan. Tradition, an instinctual grasp of how culture could
enhance royal power, and conscious planning to build the royal image probably
all played a role in making many of the cultural practices discussed here sources
of soft power.
As with hunting, however, other obvious sources of royal and aristocratic pres-
tige could be contested. This is easiest to demonstrate with military pomp. Just as
John of Salisbury sought to undermine the prestige secular aristocrats gained
113 Bjorn Weiler is right to note the political complexity of high-profile thirteenth-century knight-
ings in general and this one in particular, and to stress that William and Alexander benefited from it
as well, but he would no doubt acknowledge that John’s display of dominance was an important aspect
of the ceremony; Weiler, ‘Knighting, Homage, and the Meaning of Ritual,’ 283-4.
114 Roger of Howden, Chronica, 3:143; Gerald of Wales, Opera, 4:427; Aurell, Plantagenet
Empire, 85–6.
115 This is the theme of several articles, including the editor’s, in Aurell, ed., Culture politique des
Plantagenêt.
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from hunting, so too he took aim at what he saw as their overblown military
pretensions. Drawing his terminology from the classics, as so often, he attacked
vainglorious knights (milites gloriosi) who gilded their shields and military equip-
ment and made ‘a memorial for the ages’ if they broke a lance, ‘or if a bit of gold is
knocked from their shield,’ aiming precisely at the kind of decorated arms and
armour that John’s government subsequently purchased.116 More pointedly, John’s
own critics used his employment of military pomp against him. When the
Anonymous of Béthune and Ralph of Coggeshall wrote that he sounded the
trumpets or raised his standard against Prince Louis but then withdrew, they
were using his entirely standard use of trumpets and banners to create an implicit
contrast between martial posturing and cowardly retreat.117 English royal heral-
dic lions may seem more heroic than the French royal armorial symbol, the fleur-
de-lis, but that only made it more satisfying for Gerald of Wales, who had become
a harsh critic of the Plantagenets and eager champion of the Capetians by the end
of John’s reign, to refer to the lilies of the French kings routing the ‘atrocious and
voracious beasts, bears, leopards, and lions,’ when talking about Philip’s 1214 vic-
tory over John’s coalition.118 The nickname of Softsword that chroniclers some-
times applied to John, especially in France, powerfully undermined the effort
John made to create a heroic martial image.
As I have stressed, however, one should not view court culture solely through
the lens of power. An indirect way of making this point is to consider several
missed opportunities for John to build up soft power. In Chapter 2, I noted John’s
refusal to embrace tournaments, which his enemies may have used against him.
His apparent disinterest in the prestigious game of chess is a similar example of
him forgoing an obvious source of status. Yet another lost opportunity concerns
the patronage of writers. Nicholas Vincent has written on the ‘strange case’ of the
missing biographies of the Plantagenet kings, noting that unlike their Anglo-
Norman predecessors and Capetian contemporaries, John’s family did not seem
intent on having flattering biographies of themselves written. Vincent has sug-
gested some important reasons for the absence of such biographies: the fallout
from Thomas Becket’s death made it awkward for churchmen to write laudatory
biographies of Henry II or his descendants, while infighting within the family
made it less likely that they would commission posthumous biographies for each
other. Nonetheless, if John could find clerical administrators to stand by him
throughout the interdict, he could have found ones to write flattering reports of
him. In the end, as Vincent suggests, John and other members of the dynasty may
116 John of Salisbury, Policraticus, 2:11–13. John’s reference was no doubt to Plautus’s play, Miles
Gloriosus, but in the context it seems fitting to translate miles as knight rather than the classical soldier.
117 Anonymous of Béthune, Histoire des ducs, 169–70; Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon
Anglicanum, 182.
118 Gerald of Wales, Instruction for a Ruler, 720–1.
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simply have had no interest in promoting such works.119 This was a lost
opportunity not only for John and his predecessors to enhance their reputation
for posterity, but also to improve their contemporary reputation. One could argue
that John was simply not very adept at building soft power, but this ignores the
fact that his more successful relatives also ignored some of these opportunities.
Another explanation is that perhaps kings and their courtiers did not devote
every waking moment and all their efforts to building soft power. Sometimes,
perhaps, kings just wanted to enjoy themselves.
An even more important point is that cultural practices at court sometimes
undermined royal power. The church’s avowed opposition to worldly pomp meant
that some of the cultural activities that enhanced royal glory also undermined
royal claims to sacral kingship. As usual, the most rhetorically powerful critic of
the worldly court was John of Salisbury. Some of his criticisms were very broad,
as when he attacked flattery and the misuse of gifts.120 However, others related to
the specific practices discussed in this chapter. Though he did not entirely reject
court entertainments when practised in sober moderation, he stressed that moral,
social, and religious dangers lurked everywhere. Gaming and gambling could
lead to lying, squandering property, and theft. Love songs were rustic and foolish.
Entertainers were a harmful form of self-indulgent luxury as well as being dis-
tastefully obscene. In one passage, he praised good hosts but condemned those
who squandered money on prostitutes, musicians, and entertainers of many dif-
ferent kinds, or on feeding ‘lions, bears, monkeys, monsters, and abuses of nature
of this sort.’ In another passage, he depicted entertainers and prostitutes as a waste
of royal resources, which he stated belonged to the kingdom rather than the king
himself.121 He criticized kings who engaged in extramarital sex and condemned
courtiers pimping their wives, daughters, and sons to gain royal favour.122 For
John of Salisbury, the indulgences of the court undermined the fitness of soldiers,
contributing to the alleged military failings of his own day.123 John’s voice was
that of a preacher, and no doubt the vast majority of contemporaries, including
the clerics, took his criticisms of royal courts as councils of perfection.
Nonetheless, such attacks did undermine the attempts of kings to claim a moral
and religious high ground.
In secular terms, there were also trade-offs. As John of Salisbury pointed out,
the resources kings invested in entertainments came at the cost of military invest-
ments. King John’s relatively modest investments in entertainment and pomp
119 Nicholas Vincent, ‘The Strange Case of the Missing Biographies: The Lives of the Plantagenet
Kings of England 1154–1272,’ in David Bates, Julia C. Crick, and Sarah Hamilton, eds., Writing
Medieval Biography, 750–1250: Essays in Honour of Professor Frank Barlow (Woodbridge, 2006), 237–57.
120 John of Salisbury, Policraticus, 1:177–90, 205–9, 216–32, 330–4, 346–50.
121 John of Salisbury, Policraticus, 1:245, 247; 2:32.
122 John of Salisbury, Policraticus, 1:216–21, 247–8.
123 John of Salisbury, Policraticus, 2:9–13, 40–1.
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124 Holt, Magna Carta; Holt, Northerners, 80n5. 125 Vincent, Magna Carta, 43–4, 50, 57.
126 Carpenter, Magna Carta, 79–80, 92, 275–6, 282. See also Carpenter, The Minority of Henry III,
5–6, 30.
127 Warren, King John, 189–90, 230; Turner, King John, 215–16; Morris, King John, 295; Lachaud,
Jean sans Terre, 200–1. See also McGlynn, Blood Cries Afar, 127–8. Gillingham stressed the import
ance and weight of the sexual charges but not in a context that allowed elaboration; Gillingham,
‘Anonymous of Béthune,’ 38–9.
128 Painter, Reign of King John, 231–5. 129 Church, King John, 86–7.
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commentators did and have downplayed the chroniclers’ claims about political
consequences.
There are various reasons modern historians have generally paid so little atten-
tion to the signal importance medieval writers placed on the political ramifications
of King John’s sexual aggression. The starkest general accusation about John as a
rapist, in the fragmentary biography of Philip Augustus, has remained unknown.
The surviving royal records provide much more evidence on other sources of
unrest in the reign, particularly financial ones, than on sexual grievances, and his-
torians tend to go where the evidence is. Magna Carta itself does not address the
issue, though this is hardly surprising. As Holt noted, Magna Carta mainly
advanced claims about pointed disputes of law, but no one had to legally establish
that it was wrong for monarchs to rape or have affairs with the wives and daughters
of their barons.130 Moreover, the document had to be approved by the king, who
was unlikely to formally admit to such deeds, so the rebels would have had to
address these issues informally. Almost certainly our own society’s difficulties in
coming to grips with sexual violence or even acknowledging its widespread nature
have spilled over into the area of historical inquiry. Moreover, when the issues have
been discussed, historians tend to treat John as a defendant in court, assessing each
problematic piece of evidence for judicial proof rather than looking at patterns and
probabilities, as we would do for other historical issues. The later, clearly fictional-
ized accounts of John’s pursuit of noblewomen appear to have discredited more
contemporary evidence, though why this should be the case is unclear. A final rea-
son, the one most pertinent to the subject of the book, is a tendency to look at
court life and cultural issues as politically insignificant compared to military, fiscal,
judicial, and institutional power. John’s fiscal exactions and misuse of royal justice
certainly enraged his barons, but so too did his pursuit, sometimes by coercion, of
sexual gratification from the wives and relatives of his barons. The focus on hard
power and the tendency to treat many aspects of court life as frivolous has, I would
argue, caused modern historians to seriously underestimate the political impact of
John’s aggressive sexual pursuit of noblewomen.
The sources of cultural patronage in the central Middle Ages were diverse and
diffuse. Besides the royal courts, there were noble and knightly households,
bishops, monasteries, and nunneries. In a recent book, I stressed the neglected
importance of a less well-known group: wealthy clerics beneath the level of
bishop.131 Nor should one ignore the contribution of townspeople and peasants
in producing various aspects of medieval culture. But courts were important
sources of patronage, as this chapter shows. King John was clearly not the greatest
cultural patron among medieval kings, but he and his court nonetheless
130 See especially Holt, Magna Carta, 254. 131 Thomas, Secular Clergy, 298–319.
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5
Religious Practices at Court
5.1 Introduction
On 23 November 1200, the body of Hugh of Avalon, Bishop of Lincoln, who had
recently died in London, was brought to Lincoln for burial. King John, King
William of Scotland, and a number of secular and ecclesiastical magnates in
Lincoln for a great council went out from the city to meet the body. Bishop Hugh,
who had a reputation for saintliness and would subsequently be canonized, had
often challenged and chastised the Angevin kings, who nonetheless maintained
good relations with him. John ‘put aside royal pride’ and joined archbishops and
bishops in carrying Hugh’s coffin. ‘Humbly submitting their necks,’ and ignoring
the mud and filth, they trudged down the road in their finery to the city gate,
where they relinquished their burden to other magnates who wished a similar
honour. In conjunction with the great council and the funeral, John subsequently
met with a crowd of Cistercian abbots, with whom he had been having a fierce
dispute over their reluctance to pay new taxes. The abbots prostrated themselves
before John, but he urged them to rise up and prostrated himself in turn, weep
ing, and sought reconciliation, promising to build a Cistercian house. He kept
this promise by founding Beaulieu Abbey.1
These are not the kinds of religious scenes one normally associates with King
John, whose reputation for impiety in his own day most modern historians have
left unchallenged. Yet a recent book by Paul Webster, King John and Religion,
shows that religious activities were thoroughly woven into his daily life, challen
ging the traditional picture of his irreligiousness. Despite his reputation, John
took measures to ensure he had access to religious worship on a regular basis;
participated fully in the cult of saints; supported monks, nuns, and hermits; made
sure family members received religious commemoration; and frequently gave
alms to the poor. Webster has described John’s religious life in detail, showing
how the king maintained an ‘infrastructure of personal religion.’ Since inevitably
1 For accounts of these events, see Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, 102–12; Adam of
Eynsham, Magna Vita Sancti Hugonis, 2:225–32; Ralph of Diceto, Opera Historica, 2:171; Roger of
Howden, Chronica, 4:141–5; Luard, ed., Annales Monastici, 1:25; Roger of Wendover, Flores
Historiarum, 1:307; Gerald of Wales, Opera, 7:114–16. For Hugh, see Henry Mayr-Harting, St. Hugh of
Lincoln (Oxford, 1987). For Beaulieu Abbey, see S. F. Hockey, Beaulieu: King John’s Abbey, A History of
Beaulieu Abbey Hampshire, 1204–1538 (London, 1976); C. J. Holdsworth, ‘Royal Cistercians: Beaulieu,
Her Daughters and Rewley,’ Thirteenth-Century England 4 (1992), 139–50.
Power and Pleasure: Court Life under King John, 1199–1216. Hugh M. Thomas, Oxford University Press (2020).
© Hugh M. Thomas. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198802518.003.0005
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this infrastructure encompassed the whole royal court, Webster has thoroughly
covered religious life there.2 I will therefore dispense with the sort of descriptive
section found in previous chapters.
Instead, I will begin by illustrating some precise ways in which John’s personal
religious life shaped the court’s religious life. I will then argue that many aspects
of religious life at John’s court were designed to show the religiosity of the king
and, to a lesser degree, his courtiers, in order to create an aura of piety.
Medievalists have long shown interest in sacral kingship and the religious
reputations of kings because religious authority could provide rulers with a par
ticularly potent form of soft power. However, this is also an area in which medi
evalists often think of contestation. The old warhorse of ‘church and state’ means
that we are acutely aware of how ecclesiastical figures undermined sacral kingship
and challenged the religious authority of kings. A more specific historiography
argues that the decline of sacral power was particularly acute in England, where
kings focused on hard power through building administrations to raise money,
particularly in comparison to Capetian France, where sacral kingship supposedly
remained more robust. Nicholas Vincent has argued that this contrast is over
stated, and that the Plantagenets were interested in strengthening those aspects of
sacral kingship still available, but until very recently, few historians have paid
attention to this phenomenon in Angevin England.3 Webster’s findings show that
John did not ignore the religious aspects of kingship, and I will use the evidence
of the religious activity at John’s court to support Vincent’s argument. Yet there is
no doubt that the Angevins had limited success in their efforts and that John in
particular failed badly, given the hostility to him in so many of the ecclesiastical
sources. There are obvious and well-known reasons for these dynastic and per
sonal failures, but I will focus on more subtle day-to-day ways in which John,
despite trying assiduously to build up his religious authority, undermined his
own efforts, making it easier for his critics to shape the deeply negative picture of
his piety they passed on to posterity.
In previous chapters, I have shown the ways in which pleasure and power were
intertwined and the ways they could clash. Religion added a third complication.
On an obvious level, because royal authority derived partly from religious author
ity, the pursuit of sinful pleasure was one way that pleasure could undermine
power. Paradoxically, however, the pursuit of piety had parallels with the pursuit
of pleasure in its potential to weaken royal power. Money spent for religious pur
poses was money that could not be spent on hiring soldiers, and raising that
money could exacerbate the king’s political problems. Most medieval kings relied
heavily on resources obtained from the churches of their lands; how could they
fulfil pious demands to give these up without losing power? Ideally, a medieval
monarch tried to make all three imperatives work together, using pious deeds to
build up sacral kingship while trying to provide churches enough practical bene
fits so that exploitation of church resources was forgiven, and perhaps taking
pleasure in attending religious services, hearing sacred music, and observing
beautiful churches, all the while trying to achieve salvation.4 In practice, juggling
the three was difficult, and a final aim of this chapter is to observe some of the
ways in which these difficulties manifested themselves.
Studies of great households in the later Middle Ages show that the household was,
among other things, a religious unit. The religious practices that shaped the daily
lives of great magnates also shaped the daily rhythms of their household.5 The
same would have been true of the royal court. As Vincent has argued for the
Plantagenets generally and Webster for John more particularly, religious concerns
even shaped the court’s movements. John’s journeys could be seen in part, in
Vincent’s terms, as perpetual pilgrimage. His journeys took him to eight or nine
cathedral cities every year and he was often at places with cathedrals or major
monastic churches on important religious festivals.6 Where John went, the royal
court went, and a payment for the offerings that knights (presumably household
knights) made alongside the king when he venerated relics in early November
1212 at Reading Abbey shows that members of his household could join him in
religious ceremonies on visits to important churches.7 John took great care to cre
ate new chapels at favourite royal dwellings in his itinerary and to provide these
and existing ones with vestments, books, and liturgical items. He also maintained
a travelling chapel close by at all times, and at least part of his relic collection
travelled with him—indeed, the mobile chapel was a major loss in the disaster to
his baggage train in the Wash shortly before his death. Fixed and movable chapels
provided regular access to religious services not only for the king, but also for his
4 For enjoyment of sacred music, see Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, 97; Holden,
Gregory, and Crouch, eds., History of William Marshal, 2:86–7.
5 Mertes, English Noble Household, 139–60; Woolgar, Great Household, 84–6, 90–6, 176–9.
6 Vincent, ‘Pilgrimages of the Angevin Kings,’ 12–45; Vincent, ‘King Henry III and the Blessed
Virgin Mary,’ 129–31; Vincent, ‘The Court of Henry II,’ 306–8; Madeline, Les Plantagenêts et leur
empire, 268–9; Webster, King John and Religion, 38–42; Paul Webster, ‘Making Space for King John to
Pray: The Evidence of the Royal Itinerary,’ in Alison L. Gascoigne, Leonie V. Hicks, and Marianne
O’Doherty, eds., Medieval Routes in Europe and the Middle East (Turnhout, 2016), 259–86.
7 Misae 14J 246.
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court, or at least its leading members.8 That the court as a whole observed the
standard religious fasts of the period is revealed by the occasional distribution of
alms when leading administrators, courtiers, and mercenary captains broke fast.9
Religious practices were simply part of court life.
Medievalists have been concerned with sacral kingship at least since Marc Bloch’s
work on beliefs that the king’s touch could heal and Ernst Kantorowicz’s work on
the Laudes regiae.10 Much work has been done on sacral kingship in the early
Middle Ages, especially for the Ottonian dynasty.11 The reason for this interest is
that sacral kingship was such an important source of power, capable of creating
respect verging on awe for kings. The more closely the king was associated with
God and the more the wills of the king and God were perceived as aligned, the
more obedience became a religious duty. Moreover, sacral kingship justified the
authority rulers often had over the church in their realms, authority that provided
kings with resources and the ability to appoint loyal ecclesiastical servants to
positions of power and wealth. It is no surprise then that even kings who might
not have been particularly pious would want to cultivate an aura of religiosity.
The routine religious activities of the king and his courtiers meant that at the
very least, any visitor to court would have seen the king’s entourage carrying out
basic Christian functions. However, other religious practices would have broadcast
the piety of the king and his court more forcibly, and some could foster an image of
kingship as sacred. Certain ceremonies were intended precisely for that purpose.
Chief among these were the inaugurations and other coronations of John and
Isabella discussed in Chapter 3.12 As noted earlier, little information survives on
these rituals, but they were clearly imbued with sacral associations, from the reli
gious ceremonies that accompanied them to the royal clothing that had similarities
to ecclesiastical vestments and the items of regalia that were explicitly associated
with Christian virtues. John’s choice to be consecrated as king of England on the
Feast of the Ascension underscored the sacral nature of that ceremony.
8 Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, 183–4; Webster, King John and Religion, 24–7, 56;
Webster, ‘Making Space,’ 271–7. See also PR3J xix; Vincent, ‘Pilgrimages of the Angevin Kings,’ 34.
9 Webster, King John and Religion, 119–20. For the standards of fasting in the period, see Bridget
Ann Henisch, Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society (University Park, PA, 1976), 28–33. The figures
involved were Geoffrey fitz Peter, William Briwerre, Thomas Basset twice, Richard Marsh, Thomas de
Samford, Henry fitz Count, and Hugh de Boves.
10 Marc Bloch, Les rois thaumaturges. Étude sur le caractère surnaturel attribué á la puissance royale
particulièrement en France et en Angleterre (Paris, 1924); Ernst H. Kantorowicz, Laudes Regiae: A
Study in Liturgical Acclamations and Mediaeval Ruler Worship (Berkeley, CA, 1946).
11 For instance Karl Leyser, Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society: Ottonian Saxony
(London, 1979), 83–107.
12 See Chapter 3, 68—69.
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The great royal feasts at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost provided important
regular occasions to celebrate sacral kingship. Contemporaries were very con
scious of these celebrations as religious events. For instance, when praising
Richard I’s lavish celebration of Christmas in Sicily during the Third Crusade, one
chronicler stressed the honour due a religious feast so closely linked to the
redemption of humanity.13 The regular performance of the Laudes regiae on these
feast days was particularly important. I have already noted these performances in
a musical context, but their most important purpose was to celebrate the close
ness between rulers and God.14 As Ernst Kantorowicz wrote, ‘The laudes invoke
the conquering God—Christ the victor, ruler, and commander—and acclaim in
him, with him, or through him his imperial or royal vicars on earth.’15
Dramatic ceremonies in specific circumstances such as the funeral of Hugh of
Avalon could also advertise the king’s religiosity. A particularly important one,
designed to publicize John’s reconciliation with the church, came after John had
made peace with the pope, when the formerly exiled bishops, led by Archbishop
Stephen Langton, came to the king at Winchester. As the Waverley Chronicle and
Roger of Wendover described it, the two sides staged an effective piece of political
theatre. John fell at the feet of the bishops, weeping and asking for mercy, where
upon they tearfully raised him up. John kissed Stephen Langton, and the bishops
led him into Winchester Cathedral where they then absolved him, chanting
psalm 50 in the Vulgate ordering of the psalms. This psalm, attributed to a repent
ant King David, a key Old Testament model for sacral kingship, begins: ‘Have
mercy on me Lord, according to your great mercy.’ To cement the image of reli
gious harmony, the king heard mass with the archbishop presiding, and then
offered a mark of gold on the altar. Afterwards, the king and the bishops feasted
together with secular nobles. According to Wendover, the magnates wept with joy
at the king’s absolution, suggesting the political theatre was effective.16
As Webster shows, John was a reasonably generous donor to religious houses
and orders.17 Some of John’s grander acts of ecclesiastical patronage were also
large and costly advertisements for his piety. His endowment of lands and
churches for Beaulieu allowed it to become a reasonably wealthy Cistercian house,
and he invested approximately £2,000 in cash and movables in building the abbey
and stocking its lands.18 Perhaps even more important politically was John’s
patronage of churches in Rouen, above all the cathedral, which Webster studied
19 Paul Webster, ‘King John and Rouen: Royal Itineration, Kingship, and the Norman “Capital”,
c. 1199–1204,’ in Leonie V. Hicks and E. Brenner, eds., Society and Culture in Medieval Rouen,
911–1300 (Turnhout, 2013), 309–37; Webster, King John and Religion, 50–1, 88.
20 RLCh 100b.
21 For gifts of building materials, see RL 60, 70; RN 85; RLC 25b, 87a, 148a, 150a, 151b, 182a, 229a,
280b; Pipe Roll Ireland 14J 16–17. For gifts of hangings, vestments, and jewels, see RLP 37b; RLC 175a;
Simpson, ‘Two Inventories,’ 494–5; Thorpe, ed., Registrum Roffense, 123; ‘Abstract of a Shorter
Chronicle of Battle,’ in J. S. Brewer, ed., Chronicon Monasterii de Bello (London, 1846), at 184. For
tithes of hunting, see RLC 140a; RLP 44b, RLCh 136a, 189b. For an excellent discussion of such gifts in
the reign of Henry II, see Schröder, Macht und Gabe, 57–76.
22 Webster, King John and Religion, 120–2.
23 PR13J 8, 43, 69, 94, 109, 111, 113, 126, 131, 139, 164, 188, 221, 236, 251, 254, 261; PR14J 11, 18,
23, 27, 46, 51, 58, 71, 77, 82, 87, 102, 113, 124, 129, 136, 161. For other religious activities during the
interdict, see Webster, King John and Religion, 159–61.
24 ‘Shorter Chronicle of Battle,’ 184; B. R. Kemp, ed., Reading Abbey Cartularies: British Library
Manuscripts, Egerton 3031, Harley 1708, and Cotton Vespasian E XXV, 2 vols., Camden 4th ser., 31, 33
(London, 1986–7), 1:75–6, 188–9; Vincent, ‘Pilgrimages of the Angevin Kings,’ 34; Webster, King John
and Religion, 55–6.
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25 Webster, ‘King John and Rouen,’ 331. The classic work on relic theft is Patrick J. Geary, Furta
Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ, 1991). For other indications of John’s
interest in the cult of relics, see Webster, King John and Religion, 37–60; Emma Mason, ‘St Wulfstan’s
Staff and Its Uses,’ Medium Aevum 53 (1984), 157–79.
26 RLC 20a; RLCh 158b; Webster, King John and Religion, 122–4.
27 Hilda Johnstone, ‘Poor-Relief in the Royal Households of Thirteenth-Century England,’
Speculum 4 (1929), 149–67, at 152–3; Charles R. Young, ‘King John and England: An Illustration of
the Medieval Practice of Charity,’ Church History 29 (1960), 264–74; Webster, King John and Religion,
110–30; Katherine Harvey, http://magnacartaresearch.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/an-un-christian-king-
king-john-and.html. For the way in which almsgiving could act as a public spectacle, see Marta
VanLandingham, Transforming the State: King, Court and Political Culture in the Realms of Aragon
(1213–1378) (Leiden, 2002), 111–13.
28 Arnold Kellett, ‘King John in Knaresborough: The First Known Royal Maundy,’ Yorkshire
Archaeological Review 62 (1990), 69–90; Webster, King John and Religion, 117–18.
29 PR5J 59, 71, 80; RL 95–6; PR6J 80, 94, 106, 121, 146, 176, 177, 187, 248; Webster, King John and
Religion, 94, 114–15. See also Johnstone, ‘Poor-Relief,’ 153; Carpenter, Magna Carta, 91–2.
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John’s embrace of the many possible facets of Christian kingship fell far short
of his son’s enthusiastically pious activity, but as Webster has argued, John did the
sorts of things kings were expected to do. In the process, he and his courtiers
demonstrated the Angevin concern with sacral kingship that Vincent has empha
sized. Occasionally John could be quite adept at performing Christian kingship—
indeed, Henry Mayr-Harting has commented on John’s able use of Hugh of
Avalon’s funeral to reconcile with the Cistercians.30 Another instance comes from
the life of the saintly hermit Robert of Knaresborough, which tells how one of the
king’s chief administrators and more notorious courtiers, Brian de Lisle, brought
John to visit Robert. In true ascetic fashion, Robert showed his disdain for secular
pomp and power by ignoring the king and continuing to kneel in prayer. When
urged by Brian to rise and honour John, Robert asked if the king could make an
ear of grain as God could, whereupon John showed proper humility by admitting
he could not. Subsequently, according to the story, he rewarded the hermit with a
grant of land for his holiness. An order from the king to Brian to grant land to the
hermit survives in the close rolls, suggesting the story may be true, in which case
John behaved precisely as a Christian king should in this potentially awkward
situation, thus winning at least one favourable anecdote about his piety.31
For all the efforts of John and his courtiers to create and project an image of pious
kingship, and despite John’s occasional successful performances of the role, the sur
viving evidence shows that he failed badly, reducing his aura of sacral kingship and
undermining his power. No ruler, of course, ever achieved anything like complete
religious dominance in his or her realm—even future saints like Louis IX of France
were challenged on religious grounds. But John’s efforts to lift his religious standing
met with notably little success, particularly in comparison to his rival, Philip
Augustus. While English writers regularly attacked John on religious grounds,
Philip’s biographer, William the Breton, justified Philip’s projected invasion of
England on religious and moral grounds, and both he and his p redecessor Rigord
associated miracles with Philip, including in some of his military campaigns.32
Before addressing John’s failure to secure a favourable religious image, it is
necessary to discuss the definition of sacral kingship and some of the related
30 Henry Mayr-Harting, Religion, Politics and Society in Britain, 1066–1272 (Harlow, 2011), 163.
31 RLC 249a; Joyce Bazire, ed., The Metrical Life of St. Robert of Knaresborough, Early English Text
Society (London, 1953), 64–6, 124–5; Brian Golding, ‘The Hermit and the Hunter,’ in John Blair and
Brian Golding, eds., The Cloister and the World (Oxford, 1996), 95–117.
32 Guillaume le Breton, ‘Philippidos,’ 20–1, 26–7, 57–8, 97–8, 243–9, 255, 261–2, 375–9; Rigord,
Histoire de Philippe Auguste, 176–8, 258–60.
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bureaucracy.40 Vincent has rather memorably cautioned against going too far and
suggesting ‘that the Plantagenets preserved the sacrality of the pre-Gregorian
kings, or that they can be regarded simply as Ottonians with pipe rolls.’41 Even so,
his work along with that of Johanna Dale and others shows that sacral kingship
can be fruitfully studied in a post-Gregorian period.42 One should not ignore the
impact of disputes of kings with popes or other churchmen, though Henry II’s
fight with Thomas Becket, and the latter’s martyrdom, probably loomed larger in
John’s reign than the earlier papal reform. Nonetheless, John’s failure to benefit
much from sacral kingship can clearly not be blamed solely on the impact of the
reform movement or the rise of administrative kingship.
In fact, one can argue that the application to religion of the kinds of routines
being applied to other aspects of government, such as finance, had numerous
advantages in helping kings maintain an active religious life at court, making it
easier to project an aura of sacral kingship. The machinery of government meant
that the complex daily structure of medieval religion continued despite the diffi
culties of constant itineration. The king could attend mass and venerate relics
without great difficulty, and worship went on at court with the frequency and
regularity so prized in the Middle Ages. Mechanisms were in place to distribute
alms to the poor or to nuns, and indeed the broader financial apparatus of gov
ernment made it easier to supply cash for religions donations of all sorts, import
ant in a period in which giving away land from a shrinking royal demesne was
problematic. The routinization of religion meant that the court continuously pre
sented a reasonably reliable image of pious activity, while giving John some flexi
bility. If he wished to go hunting on an important saint’s day or break a fast, he
could mitigate his sin simply by issuing an order for the feeding of 100, 500, or
even 1,000 poor people. These routines might themselves diminish the kind of
charisma derived from unexpected and dramatic displays of piety. Crucially,
however, they did not prevent such displays. King John could still slog through
the mud carrying the body of a holy bishop or prostrate himself before a gather
ing of abbots. Thus, the rise of administrative kingship probably had a more com
plex impact on sacral kingship than scholars have suggested, and it is most
accurate to say that the growth of royal government simultaneously strengthened
and weakened the ability of kings to project an aura of piety.
If sacral kingship was still a potential tool in the royal toolbox in the early
thirteenth century, it is important to investigate John’s own handling of it in order
to understand why he failed so badly. One important part of this consisted of his
40 Ryan Kemp, ‘Hugh of Lincoln and Adam of Eynsham: Angevin Kingship Reconsidered,’ forth
coming in the Haskins Society Journal.
41 Vincent, ‘Pilgrimages of the Angevin Kings,’ 40.
42 Vincent, ‘Pilgrimages of the Angevin Kings,’ 39–40. For other discussions of the history of sacral
kingship, see Aurell, Plantagenet Empire, 110–19; Webster, King John and Religion, 4–7; Dale,
Inauguration and Liturgical Kingship.
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disputes with the church over various matters, including his quarrel with the
Cistercian order over taxation early in his reign; his clashes with his half-brother
Geoffrey, Archbishop of York, over various matters, including taxation; and above
all his confrontation with Pope Innocent III over the latter’s appointment of
Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury, leading to the interdict from 1208
to 1213. In such clashes John, like other kings in similar situations, faced crucial
trade-offs. Given the vast collective wealth of the church, forgoing taxation on
religious houses and churchmen would have deprived the king of much revenue
in a time of expensive wars. By submitting to papal interference in the Canterbury
election, John potentially compromised his royal ability to appoint other bishops
and abbots. John could perhaps have handled the situation more cleverly, but
there was no perfect way to handle such disputes. John’s clashes with churchmen
have been covered in detail by other historians, so I will not discuss them at
greater length, but they clearly undermined his religious reputation.43
Though some of the difficulties John and his advisors faced in trying to protect
the king’s religious reputation were beyond their control or involved difficult
trade-offs, others were self-inflicted. John’s sexual activities, which were obviously
well known, cannot have helped his religious reputation, and some of the credit
John gained with churchmen for carrying Bishop Hugh’s body may have been
squandered when the king diverted some of the revenues of Hugh’s vacant dio
cese to pay expenses for an illegitimate son.44 Almsgiving could alleviate but not
eliminate the negative consequences for the king and court’s religious reputation
of John’s tendency to go hunting on feast days or break fasts, the latter a habit
shared with leading officials. People paid attention to the religious minutiae of
royal lives. Rigord praised Philip Augustus for giving gifts to the poor rather than
entertainers and for his pious hatred of oaths, so great that if he heard a gambler,
even a knight, swear in his presence, he would have him thrown in a lake.45
Promoters or detractors of rulers could use small details of personal behaviour to
good effect in building or destroying a ruler’s reputation for piety.
It is also possible that John undermined any claim to sacral kingship through
arrogance and sheer incompetence, at least according to stories told by Hugh of
Avalon’s biographer, Adam of Eynsham. According to Adam, not long after
Richard I’s death, John met Hugh, who had just buried Richard, at Chinon, and
sought to gain his favour by seeking his counsel and displaying his piety. A few
43 For John’s disputes with churchmen, see Painter, Reign of King John, 151–202; C. R. Cheney,
‘King John’s Reaction to the Interdict in England,’ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 4th ser.
31 (1949), 129–50; Warren, King John, 154–73; Richardson and Sayles, Governance of Mediaeval
England, 337–68; Turner, King John, 147–74; Harper-Bill, ‘John and the Church of Rome,’ 289–315;
Webster, King John and Religion, 131–72.
44 RL 12; PR3J 192–3.
45 Rigord, Histoire de Philippe Auguste, 128–30, 224–6; John W. Baldwin, The Government of Philip
Augustus: Foundations of French Royal Power in the Middle Ages (Berkeley, CA, 1986), 358–9; Jim
Bradbury, Philip Augustus: King of France, 1180–1223 (London, 1998), 167–8.
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days later, at an Easter service, all went awry. First John delayed making a
ceremonial offering of twelve gold coins that an official put in his hands, jokingly
saying that a few days before he would have put them in his purse. This infuriated
Hugh, who refused to accept the coins himself and told John to put them down
and go away. As Hugh preached, John sent him three messages asking him to cut
his sermon short and celebrate mass, since he was hungry and wished to break his
fast, presumably at a feast after the service. A week later, when the Archbishop of
Rouen was inducting John as duke of Normandy, the archbishop handed him the
lance with a banner that served as a ducal insignia, which John promptly dropped,
because he had turned around to laugh with some of his courtiers and was paying
insufficient attention to the ceremony. Some scepticism is in order here. In this
same passage Adam claims that John had not taken communion since he was an
adult, an implausible accusation. Adam was writing towards the end of John’s
reign, and he treated the dropping of the lance as a prophecy for John’s loss of
Normandy. Though an accident of this sort is certainly possible, one must be wary
of conveniently prophetic events. The other stories are more plausible. One can
well imagine an awkward attempt at humour about John’s sudden rise in status and
wealth going wrong, and as we have seen, there is plenty of corroborating evidence
for John’s dislike of fasting even on important religious festivals. If these stories are
true, they show the king needlessly infuriating a key bishop and future saint.46
There is further evidence suggesting that John could be surprisingly foolish
about how his actions might be perceived. Jocelin of Brakelond complained that
on John’s highly symbolic journey to Bury St Edmunds shortly after his coron
ation, he stayed with the monks at great cost to the monastery, but only offered
one penny during mass and presented to the altar only a silk cloth, which he had
to borrow from an abbey official. At the time of Jocelin’s writing, royal officials
had not yet paid the official for the silk.47 That John and his officials could indeed
be careless about the highly symbolic provision of gifts is suggested by similar
incidents found in the royal records, such as an occasion when the king borrowed
a vestment from a monastic official at Worcester to offer on the altar there, though
on that occasion at least the official was repaid. John even had to borrow the gold
he offered in the great ceremony in which he was absolved after the interdict.48
None of these incidents was serious, but they show carelessness with ritual, and as
Jocelin’s comment indicates, people remembered and resented such failures.
More serious was an episode that allegedly took place during John’s dispute
with his half-brother, Archbishop Geoffrey of York, over Geoffrey’s resistance to
John’s taxation. According to this story, when Geoffrey and the Bishop of Durham
knelt at John’s feet to ask him to treat Geoffrey and his followers more leniently,
46 Adam of Eynsham, Magna Vita Sancti Hugonis, 2:142–4. For discussion of Eynsham’s possible
biases, see Leyser, ‘The Angevin Kings and the Holy Man,’ 55; Webster, King John and Religion, 20–4.
47 Jocelin of Brakelond, Chronicle, 116–17. 48 RL 84; PR6J 89; RLC 148b, 170a.
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the king scorned their petition. When Geoffrey then prostrated himself to ask for
mercy, John prostrated himself in turn, but in order to mock Geoffrey, saying,
‘behold, lord archbishop, how I did for you what you did for me.’49 Gillingham
includes this incident in a list of episodes in which John was said to have mocked
people in politically disastrous ways, and I will return to it and similar episodes
in Chapter 8.50 In this context, one may simply note that John’s mockery of an
archbishop’s gesture of humility would hardly have encouraged observers to
view him as pious.
To what extent did John sabotage his own efforts and those of his advisors to
create an image of him as a pious king? Biases in the sources make certainty
impossible, but there is enough evidence to suggest that in minor but cumula
tively important ways John damaged his reputation for no political benefit. Despite
the overall intelligence of his efforts and his occasional display of competence, he
probably did himself a good deal of harm through incompetence. Measuring his
needless errors against the other factors that harmed his reputation but were
either beyond his control or represented tricky trade-offs is difficult. Had John
not had to face financial hardships and an aggressive pope, and had he been a
more successful ruler and a more generous donor, lapses in fasting and careless
ness about giving would probably have been forgiven, and his efforts to present
himself and his court as thoroughly Christian more successful. However, John did
not have these easier circumstances, and in the challenging conditions of his
reign, in which he needed every source of power he could get, he could ill afford
to fritter away the benefits of sacral kingship.
Though John may have sacrificed a measure of his sacral kingship by his incom
petence, as we have seen he also did so by satisfying his desires for sexual
gratification, which he apparently considered worth the political cost. From the
perspective of power politics, it was foolish to sacrifice a reputation for piety in
pursuit of pleasure, but it is unrealistic to think that even kings, who would
have been forced to think more about power than most people, would always
sacrifice pleasure for power (whatever we may think of the type of pleasure in
question). I have stressed the tension between power and pleasure elsewhere.
The expenditure of resources on John’s sexual pursuits was not a problem, but it
cost him dearly in terms of soft power. However, John may have thought it was
worth it.
In theory, for members of this society, piety and power should have gone
together, since from the perspective of ecclesiastical writers, divine favour was the
most important political advantage one could have. Even from a modern per
spective, a reputation for piety was an undoubted political asset. Nonetheless,
piety, like pleasure, could and often did clash with the pursuit of power. One only
has to consider the reign of John’s ostentatiously pious son, Henry III, which had
so many disasters of its own. A major factor in Henry’s problems was financial.
Robert Stacey, in discussing the financial background to the baronial revolt, has
noted that Henry spent £2,000 a year on Westminster Abbey alone over the space
of many years, and rightly suggests that it is doubtful if his total expenditure of
£30,000 bought him sufficient prestige to warrant the cost.51 But of course
political capital was only one of Henry’s aims in rebuilding the abbey; his own
salvation and a desire to please God were probably the chief goals. Nonetheless,
Henry’s profligacy, including his expenditures on religion, brought political
turmoil and civil war. I have noted some of John’s expenditures above; perhaps
£2,000 total plus property on Beaulieu, £575 on Rouen, and over £300 on the
poor in a famine year. There were plenty of other lesser expenditures, which
would have added up, but overall John’s spending on piety was not extravagant.
Indeed, it was likely in the same general range as his expenditure on hunting, if
not smaller. From a political perspective, the cost-benefit ratio is impossible to
calculate. Overall, John’s individual religious investments were sensible, giving
maximum return in reputation for reasonable amounts of money. In the end,
however, the hostility of most ecclesiastical chroniclers suggests that politically
much of his investment was wasted.
But what of the religious perspective? There has been much debate about John’s
piety or lack thereof. Webster, I think rightly, prefers the term ‘personal religion’
because we can only see the externals of John’s religious performance as we have
no writings from him that show his inner thinking.52 While Henry III’s actions
were consistent enough to make inferences about a high level of inner piety rea
sonable, with John the evidence is not so clear cut. I am sceptical that John was
very pious but could easily be mistaken. Certainly, there would have been mem
bers of his court for whom religion was important. Where piety was involved, and
particularly where pious people thought about the trade-offs between building
power and avoiding eternal damnation, there must have been a great deal of
agonizing. When one adds in the pursuit of pleasure, a pursuit made easier by
John and his court’s power, the calculations became even more complex.
Despite John’s reputation for impiety, religion played an important role in his life
and that of the court. In part, religious life at court was designed to promote the
51 Robert C. Stacey, Politics, Policy, and Finance under Henry III, 1216–1245 (Oxford, 1987), 240–3.
52 Webster, King John and Religion, 1–2.
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king’s reputation for piety and sustain what remained of the sacral kingship found
in earlier generations. John, his courtiers, and his administrators pursued these
aims partly through spectacularly staged events, like the king’s humble carrying
of the body of St Hugh, and partly through routine methods like minor gifts to
religious houses and the distribution of alms to the poor. Yet John and his court
failed miserably. Many of the reasons, such as his fight with Pope Innocent III
over the Canterbury election, are well known. It is worth adding, however, that
John’s own incompetence and his pursuit of pleasure also significantly under
mined his efforts to create a Christian image around king and court. Balancing
the demands of religion, power, and pleasure was inevitably difficult, and John
and his courtiers failed to achieve the optimum balance.
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6
Food and Feasting
6.1 Introduction
William the Breton, in a brief episode in his epic poem on the victories of Philip
Augustus, provided a dark vignette of John as a treacherous host. It was set during
Richard’s reign, when John had rebelled against his brother and King Philip had
put him in charge of the important Norman town of Evreux, though not its castle.
William wrote that John, having already betrayed his father and brother, decided
to betray Philip to gain Richard’s forgiveness. He invited all French knights and
their followers in Evreux to a feast, and all but a few came and set down their
arms. Armed English fighters then descended upon them, slaughtering 300 men,
whose heads John had set on pikes around the town. Although Richard deeply
disapproved, he forgave John for his rebellion; Philip burned down Evreux in
retaliation. Given William the Breton’s partisanship, the story must be treated
with some scepticism. It is certainly not impossible, but such an ambush would
have been difficult to accomplish (though easier if John’s fighters were local
Normans rather than English). Moreover, betrayal at a feast was a literary cliché:
William himself referred to the iconic massacre of the Britons at a feast by the
Saxon invaders, Hengist and Horsa, made famous by Geoffrey of Monmouth.1 As
that very reference indicates, however, treachery at a feast was considered an
especially evil betrayal because it used and subverted a type of social occasion
that had deep cultural significance.
Social scientists have long recognized that food and the interactions surround-
ing it profoundly shape human cultures and societies.2 Though medieval food
and feasting have long fascinated medieval historians, except in works intended
for general audiences, feasts tended to come second to the study of warfare,
institutions, and politics. When society as a whole was being studied, food was
investigated primarily by economic historians. There were, of course, important
exceptions, but only in the past generation have historians treated medieval
1 Guillaume le Breton, ‘Philippidos,’ 115–17; Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of
Britain: An Edition and Translation of De Gestis Britonum (Historia Regum Britanniae), ed.
Michael D. Reeve and Neil Wright (Woodbridge, 2007), 134–7.
2 The literature is vast but some useful introductions to it are Stephen Mennell, All Manners of
Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present (London, 1985);
Roy C. Wood, The Sociology of the Meal (Edinburgh, 1995); M. Jones, Feast: Why Humans Share Food
(Oxford, 2007).
Power and Pleasure: Court Life under King John, 1199–1216. Hugh M. Thomas, Oxford University Press (2020).
© Hugh M. Thomas. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198802518.003.0006
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feasting and the cultural and social aspects of eating with the care they deserve.
The result has been an outpouring of work.3 However, while food and feasting at
John’s court have not been ignored, his reign has not been systematically studied
for evidence on these subjects.4
One aim of this chapter is to show how important feasting was at John’s court. I
have, of course, already laid the groundwork for this: in Chapter 2 I wrote about
the importance of providing game to feasts, and in Chapter 3 I discussed the giv-
ing of robes and the use of gold and silver plate on those occasions. In Chapter 4,
I discussed entertainment and music at feasts, and in Chapter 5 I noted that the
greatest feasts provided opportunities for the king to project an image of sacral
kingship. The very fact that so many different aspects of court life related to feasts
reveals their importance. Nonetheless, there is far more to say about feasting, and
a substantial portion of this chapter is devoted to reconstructing feasts at John’s
court. First, however, I will discuss food at court more generally. One subject I
will not fully explore is the regular provision of foodstuffs at court, nor will I try
to reconstruct the total costs of supplying food and drink to the court. These are
important topics, but the records required to discuss them with any confidence
do not survive. What does survive is information on more exotic provisions,
including game, wine, spices, and other special foods, which had to be purchased
or acquired specially, which meant they appear in financial and other records in a
way that the day-to-day provision of bread, ale, ordinary meat, and other staples
did not. Such information reveals what made food at court unusual and what
3 Again, the literature is vast, but the following includes some overviews, key pieces of scholarship,
and particularly relevant works: Henisch, Fast and Feast; Agathe Lafortune-Martel, Fête noble en
Bourgogne au XVe siècle. Le banquet du faisan (1454): Aspects politiques, sociaux et culturels (Montreal,
1984); Bumke, Courtly Culture, 182–96, 203–30; Detlef Altenburg, Jörg Jarnut, and Hans-Hugo
Steinhoff, eds., Feste und Feiern im Mittelalter (Sigmaringen, 1991); Martin Aurell, Olivier Moulin,
and Françoise Thélemon, eds., La sociabilité à table. Commensalité et convivialité à travers les âges
(Rouen, 1992); Massimo Montanari, The Culture of Food (Oxford, 1994); Massimo Montanari, Food Is
Culture: Arts and Traditions of the Table (New York, 2006); Massimo Montanari, Medieval Tastes:
Food, Cooking, and the Table (New York, 2015); Irmgard Bitsch, Trude Ehlert, and Xenja von Erzdorff,
eds., Essen und Trinken in Mittelalter und Neuzeit, 2nd ed. (Wiesbaden, 1997); Bertelli, The King’s
Body, 191–212; Bonnie Effros, Creating Community with Food and Drink in Merovingian Gaul (New
York, 2002); Bruno Laurioux, Une histoire culinaire du Moyen Âge (Paris, 2005); Peter Hammond,
Food and Feast in Medieval England (Stroud, 2005); C. M. Woolgar, D. Serjeantson, and T. Waldron,
eds., Food in Medieval England: Diet and Nutrition (Oxford, 2006); C. M. Woolgar, ‘Feasting and
Fasting: Food and Taste in Europe in the Middle Ages,’ in Paul Freedman, ed., Food: The History of
Taste (Berkeley, CA, 2007), 163–95; C. M. Woolgar, The Culture of Food in England, 1200–1500 (New
Haven, CT, 2016); C. M. Woolgar, ‘Medieval Food and Colour,’ Journal of Medieval History 44 (2018),
1–20; Gautier, Le festin dans l’Angleterre anglo-saxonne; Alban Gautier, ‘Festin et politique: servir la
table royale dans le haut Moyen Âge,’ in L’alimentazione nell’alto medioevo: pratiche, simboli, ideologie
(Spoleto, 2016), 907–34; Julie Kerr, ‘Food, Drink and Lodging: Hospitality in Twelfth-Century
England,’ Haskins Society Journal 18 (2007), 72–92; Kjær, ‘Matthew Paris and the Royal Christmas,’
141–54; Normore, A Feast for the Eyes; Ernst Schubert, Essen und Trinken im Mittelalter, 3rd ed.
(Darmstadt, 2016). See also a group of articles on food at court in Food and History vol. 4, no. 1 (2006)
and a special issue on feasting and gifts of food in the Journal of Medieval History vol. 37, no. 1 (2011).
4 For good but brief treatments of feasts and their preparation at John’s court, see Jolliffe, Angevin
Kingship, 222–3; Warren, King John, 137, 139; Carpenter, Magna Carta, 162.
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foods this society particularly valued. The early sections of the chapter will
explore special foods; spices, cooking, and cuisine; and wine. I will then recon-
struct feasts at court on the basis of the royal records. One subject about which
the royal records provide little information is manners, but other contemporary
sources can make up this deficit. Towards the end of the chapter I will turn to
power, contestation, and pleasure.
Among the horrors of life at the court of Henry II, according to Peter of Blois, was
the awful, indeed dangerous, food and drink served there. The bread was heavy,
under-baked, and had weeds mixed in with grain. The meat was as likely to come
from a diseased animal as a healthy one, and the fish, though costly, was old and
stank. The ale tasted as bad as it looked, and the wine was so mouldy, cloudy,
rancid, and dreg-filled that drinking it required shutting one’s eyes and sieving it
through one’s teeth, grimacing all the while.5 It would hardly be surprising if the
logistical problems created by the constant itineration of the Angevin kings meant
that food was sometimes awful at their courts. However, as noted before, Peter
depicted the court in a most unpleasant light to dissuade clerics from serving
there.6 Moreover, the food and drink that someone like Peter, who was not in the
inmost circle, could obtain was probably not the same as that provided to the king
and his chief followers. There is, in fact, plentiful evidence in the records of John’s
reign of the care taken to provide good food and drink, at least for the king and
those closest to him.
In many respects the court diet reflected that of medieval England and France
more generally, particularly among the elites, with its emphasis on grains (usually
in the form of bread for the better off), and meat for those who could get it. One
notable differentiating factor was the quantity consumed. Though the surviving
evidence does not provide a good overall sense of just how much food John’s
court needed, a glimpse comes during the remodelling of the kitchens at his resi-
dences at Marlborough and Ludgershall, when John ordered installation of a
furnesium in each that could cook two or three oxen.7 More important for our
purposes, however, is the emphasis in the royal records on quality and variety in
foodstuffs and on obtaining rare foods that were valued not only for their own
sake, but also because they were associated with high social rank.8
Nowhere is the emphasis on quality more apparent than in the bread served to
the king, his family, and those close to him. In one unusually detailed set of writs,
the king, no doubt advised by his kitchen staff, gave careful instructions to his
bailiffs at Taunton about the milling and storage of wheat flour to make panis
dominicus (lordly bread) for an unnamed illegitimate son; John then sent his
baker to prepare the bread.9 Other, briefer, references to the high-quality wheat
flour used for panis dominicus are scattered through the records.10 References
also survive to the making of pastry for the king and to a sergeanty for making
wafers.11 Though everyone in medieval society consumed bread, the king and the
elite ate special bread considered appropriate to their status.
Meat, of course, was also widespread in the Middle Ages, but particularly asso-
ciated with the wealthy. Animal bones excavated at royal sites show the wide var
iety of domestic and game animals consumed at court.12 Pigs were a particularly
important meat source—orders went out periodically to slaughter large numbers
of pigs (just under 700 in 1211–12) to create a store of preserved meat for the
court.13 One apparent delicacy was pickled pig parts, particularly the heads.14 The
highest status food was, of course, game, including the flesh of deer, feral pigs,
and various species of birds; as Chapter 2 indicated, game could be supplied in
large amounts.15 In that chapter, I noted that while on campaign in Poitou in 1214
the king ordered a huntsman to send choice bits of any slain stag to him and the
queen, showing the royal couple’s desire to dine on the finest, most prestigious
portions of the carcass.16
Studies: Essays in the Renaissance 4 (1991), 131–49; Bruno Laurioux, ‘Table et hiérarchie à la fin du
Moyen Âge,’ in Carole Lambert, ed., Du manuscrit à la table (Montreal, 1992), 87–108; Montanari, The
Culture of Food, 83–94; Montanari, Food Is Culture, 115–26; Montanari, Medieval Tastes, 67–77;
Albarella and Thomas, ‘They Dined on Crane,’ 23–38; Ken Albala, Eating Right in the Renaissance
(Berkeley, CA, 2002), 184–216; Paul Freedman, ed., Food: The History of Taste (Berkeley, CA, 2007),
15–16; Richard Thomas, ‘Food and the Maintenance of Social Boundaries in Medieval England,’ in
Katheryn C. Twiss, ed., The Archaeology of Food and Identity (Carbondale, IL, 2007), 130–51; Oggins,
‘Game,’ 217.
9 RLC 31a. For this kind of bread and high-status bread more generally, see Woolgar, Culture of
Food, 61–82; Woolgar, Great Household, 123–4.
10 PR13J 40; Misae 11J 129; RLC 58a, 136a, 261b.
11 PR10J 140; Red Book of the Exchequer 2:457. For pastries and wafers, see Henisch, Fast and Feast,
77, 129.
12 Rahtz, Excavations at King John’s Hunting Lodge, 113–15; James and Robinson, Clarendon Palace,
260–5; Sykes, ‘Animal Bones,’ 116–28; Thomas Beaumont James and Christopher Gerrard, Clarendon:
Landscape of Kings (Bollington, 2007), 86–7.
13 PR7J 255; PR10J 62; PR13J xxi–xxii, 110–11; RLC 15a. For the importance of pork in elite diets,
see Thomas, ‘Food and Social Boundaries,’ 138; Sykes, Zooarchaeological Perspective, 42–4.
14 RLC 97a, 157a–b, 177a, 181b–182a; Woolgar, Culture of Food, 73–4.
15 Rackham, The History of the Countryside, 125, 134–5; Rackham, Ancient Woodland, 181;
Christopher Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: Social Change in England, c. 1200–1500
(Cambridge, 1989), 60–1; Albarella and Thomas, ‘They Dined on Crane,’ 23–38; Thomas, ‘Food and
Social Boundaries,’ 130–51; Sykes, ‘Wildfowl Exploitation,’ 82–105; Sykes, Zooarchaeological
Perspective, 20–4, 61–8, 89–90; Oggins, ‘Game,’ 202–6; Woolgar, Culture of Food, 10–11, 119–22.
16 RLC 169b.
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Fish, especially salted or dried sea fish, was also a major part of the medieval
diet, particularly because of frequent abstention from meat on fast days. The fish
bones and shells at royal sites show that a large variety of fish and shellfish was
consumed at court, with the royal records showing the purchase of large numbers
of salted or dried herrings in particular.17 Fresh fish, however, was much more
desirable and of much higher status.18 Thus one tenancy in East Anglia was held
for the service of carrying to the king, wherever he was in England, pastries with
the ‘first’ herrings, presumably from the earliest catch of the fishing season. These
might have been fish pies, but pastry shells were sometimes used to preserve fresh
fish, and that was probably the case here.19 Even the lowly herring could be high
status if it was sufficiently fresh. Other wild fish, like turbot or salmon, were also
caught and provided to the king.20 More important were fresh fish provided from
vivaries, or fishponds, of which there were many on royal estates.21 King John
took an active role in maintaining and expanding these and, after his Irish cam-
paign, he ordered a new pond to be built in Limerick.22 Many royal orders con-
cerned the catching of fish and transportation to the royal court; and special
barrels were sometimes built and filled with water to transport live fish for
restocking or for the royal table.23 Though the infrastructure for providing the
king and those close to him with fresh fish was not as large as the hunting appar
atus discussed earlier, it was nonetheless still impressive, a sign of the seriousness
with which the royal court took its food.
Lamprey was an especially valued species despite being considered dangerous
to one’s health; or perhaps that was an enticement, as Paul Freedman has sug-
gested. Indeed, the death of John’s great-grandfather, Henry I, was famously
attributed to a ‘surfeit of lampreys.’24 Lampreys were prestigious enough for the
king’s subjects to include them in proffers to him seeking favours and benefits.25
Strikingly, the king strove to oversee and control the provision of lampreys, and
not just on his own estates, for instance requiring the servants of foreign rulers
17 James and Robinson, Clarendon Palace, 264–5; Poulton, ed., Medieval Royal Complex at
Guildford, 128–32; James and Gerrard, Clarendon, 87–8; PR5J 235; PR13J 109; RLC 22b, 37a–38a.
18 Christopher Dyer, ‘The Consumption of Fresh-Water Fish in Medieval England,’ in Michael
Aston, ed., Medieval Fish, Fisheries and Fishponds in England (Oxford, 1988), 1:27–38, at 27–8, 33–4;
Woolgar, Great Household, 120–3; Woolgar, Culture of Food, 113–16; Sykes, Zooarchaeological
Perspective, 25, 60–1; Montanari, Medieval Tastes, 72–8.
19 Book of Fees 1:128. For the use of such pastries to transport fish, see Woolgar, Great
Household, 122.
20 PR7J 103, 197; PR13J xxi–xxii, 110; RLC 191b.
21 J. M. Steane, ‘The Royal Fishponds of Medieval England,’ in Michael Aston, ed., Medieval Fish,
Fisheries and Fishponds in England (Oxford, 1988), 1:39–68.
22 PRJ1 219–20; PR2J 52, 249; PR3J 55; PR5J 161; PR6J 89; PR7J 221; PR8J 187; PR13J 84, 178; RLC
19a, 66b, 261b; RLP 99b; Pipe Roll Ireland 14J 70–1.
23 For the employment of fishermen, see for example PR11J 127; RLC 26a, 289a; Prest Roll 12J 244.
For the transportation of fish, see for example PR3J 194; PR6J 146; RL 83, 88; Prest Roll 12J 244; RLC
17b, 20b, 22a. For barrels, see PR16J 125; Woolgar, Great Household, 122–3.
24 Freedman, ed., Food: The History of Taste, 12.
25 PR7J 93; PR8J 14; PR9J 215; ROF 241, 342, 511.
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and nobles to get his permission to obtain lampreys in his territories.26 In John’s
second year, the inhabitants of Gloucester had to purchase his goodwill because
‘they did not respect him as they ought to have concerning his or their lampreys,’
and six years later he told them he was setting fixed prices on them.27 John clearly
saw controlling the availability of lampreys as a matter of royal concern, presum-
ably to make sure his court had good access to this high-status delicacy.
Another delectable but dangerous food was fruit, especially raw fruit, based on
its place in humoural theory.28 Overeating of peaches was a contributing factor to
King John’s death, at least according to Roger of Wendover.29 Modern readers may
doubt this diagnosis, but there is no doubt that the king and courtiers liked their
fruit. The king granted the office of sheriff of Rouen to a citizen of Rouen for the
provision of 500 pears ‘of St. Regulus,’ a symbolic, largely honorary rent that shows
the high esteem in which fruit was held.30 The misae rolls recorded the purchase or
renting of panniers and even carts to carry the king’s fruit, thus ensuring that he
and those closest to him could enjoy fruit on their travels.31 Dried fruits imported
from warmer lands were a particular luxury. Dates appear once in the surviving
records for John’s reign, when 1,500 were purchased. Figs appear more frequently.
They were purchased for as ‘little’ as 6s or as much as 16s 1d a basket (between
twenty-four and sixty-four days’ wages for a skilled labourer). In early 1214, as
John prepared to embark for Poitou, orders were sent to the sheriff of London to
obtain figs as quickly as possible and send them ‘day and night’ so they would get
to the king before he departed on his fateful continental campaign.32 Perhaps John
could not do without them, or perhaps he wished to provide lavishly for the
continental nobles he hoped would support him against King Philip.
Figs were not the only exotic, imported delicacies John and his officials were
eager to get aboard ship—the same writ called for two loads of almonds and 30 lbs
of rice. Purchases of rice occur only occasionally in the royal records, but royal
officials bought almonds more often, sometimes by the hundreds of pounds; on
one occasion they acquired 1450 lbs, or nearly three quarters of a ton. Relatively
cheap at only 2d or 3d a pound, almonds were still luxuries since this price repre-
sented a day’s wages for a skilled labourer.33 Almonds and rice were frequently
associated with spices and were often used in elite medieval cooking—almond
milk in particular could substitute for dairy foods banned on fast days—and are
discussed in section 6.3 on cooking and cuisine.34 Nonetheless, from the modern
26 RLP 5a; RLC 159b. 27 ROF 96; RLP 68b.
28 Albala, Eating Right in the Renaissance, 12–13, 109–10, 171, 206.
29 Freedman, ed., Food: The History of Taste, 12; Hammond, Food and Feast in Medieval England,
88, 98; Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, 2:196.
30 RLCh 113a. 31 Misae 11J 135; Misae 14J 243–6.
32 PR10J 171; PR13J 108; PR14J 49–50; RLC 25a, 44b–45a, 88b, 128b, 162a.
33 PR6J 120; PR8J 47; PR9J 30, 143; PR10J 171; PR13J 108, 178; PR14J 49–50; PR16J 79; RLC 14a,
15a, 22a, 25a, 44b–45a, 64b, 81a, 87a, 88a–b, 101b–102a, 128b, 157a–b, 162a, 188a, 193b.
34 Henisch, Fast and Feast, 44–5; Dyer, Standards of Living, 62–3.
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perspective they represent foodstuffs and offer more evidence of the royal
government’s efforts to provide the king and the elite members of the royal house-
hold with rare, prestigious, and high-quality food.
35 Jack Goody, Cooking, Cuisine and Class: A Study in Comparative Sociology (Cambridge, 1982);
Tony Hunt, Teaching and Learning Latin in Thirteenth-Century England, 3 vols. (Woodbridge,
1991), 1:183.
36 Giles E. M. Gasper and Faith Wallis, ‘Salsamenta pictavensium: Gastronomy and Medicine in
Twelfth-Century England,’ English Historical Review 131 (2017), 1353–85.
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was to present a dish that looked like one thing but was made from something
quite different. Presentation was important, with, for instance, peacock put back
in its skin and feathers to look like a living bird. Spices were used for colour as
well as taste. Not all aspects of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century medieval cook-
ing necessarily existed in the early thirteenth century, but the similarity between
the recipes recorded by Neckam and those in late medieval cookbooks suggests a
broad continuity in cooking.37
There is no way of knowing if John’s cooks were familiar with Neckam’s
recipes, but there is strong evidence that they participated in at least some of the
elite cooking practices of the later Middle Ages. Above all, there is plentiful evi-
dence of the importance of spices and sauces in their cooking. The royal records
include multiple references to spices, including purchases of specific amounts,
sometimes with prices listed.38 Pepper, unsurprisingly, was the most used spice.
It was commonly bought in lots ranging from 10 to 60 lbs, but purchases as large
as 100 and even 242 lbs are recorded. Cumin was a distant second, with pur-
chases from 6 to 60 lbs. Other spices were bought in amounts from half a pound
or less to 4 lbs, and included (in rough order of frequency and quantity of pur-
chases) cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, galingale, cardamom, and mace. Late
medieval English cooking embraced the use of sugar early, but it only appears
once in John’s records.39 In comparison to the total royal budget or some of the
expenditures on hunting or textiles, the amount spent on spices was small. The
largest single purchase was £7 2s 7d for the 242 lbs of pepper. Nonetheless, spices
were clearly luxury items. Even the price of a pound of the cheapest spice, cumin,
around 2¼d to 2½d per pound, was equal to a day’s pay of a skilled labourer.
Pepper cost between 6½d and 8d a pound, and cloves, the most expensive spice,
cost from 1 mark to £1 a pound, making it approximately worth its weight in
silver at its highest price.40 The number of occasions on which spices were linked
37 For European cuisine, see Melitta Weiss Adamson, ed., Regional Cuisines of Medieval Europe: A
Book of Essays (New York, 2002); Laurioux, Une histoire culinaire du Moyen Âge; Montanari, Food Is
Culture, 62–5; Woolgar, ‘Feasting and Fasting,’ 163–95; Paul Freedman, Out of the East: Spices and the
Medieval Imagination (New Haven, CT, 2008), 19–49. For English cuisine, see Constance B. Hieatt
and Sharon Butler, eds., Curye on Inglysch: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth Century
(Including the Forme of Cury), Early English Text Society (Oxford, 1985), 1–15; Constance B. Hieatt,
‘Medieval Britain,’ in Melitta Weiss Adamson, ed., Regional Cuisines of Medieval Europe: A Book of
Essays (New York, 2002), 19–45; Colin Spencer, British Food: An Extraordinary Thousand Years of
History (London, 2004), 36–68; Hammond, Food and Feast in Medieval England, 126–30; Woolgar,
Great Household, 136–65; C. M. Woolgar, ‘Fast and Feast: Conspicuous Consumption and the Diet of
the Nobility in the Fifteenth Century,’ in Michael Hicks, ed., Revolution and Consumption in Medieval
England (Woodbridge, 2001), 7–25, at 19–23; Woolgar, Culture of Food, 83–103; Sykes,
Zooarchaeological Perspective, 86–93.
38 The most useful references to the purchases of spices are PR11J 11, 108–9; PR14J 43–4, 47; Misae
14J 245; RLC 21b, 22a, 64b, 86b, 88a–b, 91b, 101b–102a, 128b, 155a, 156b, 157a–b, 175a, 244b, 259b.
39 PR8J 48.
40 Price data is often limited and needs to be treated cautiously. The prices or price ranges of other
spices include cinnamon 1s to 2s 6d; ginger 9d to 2s 6d; galingale 5s; saffron 7s to 12s; nutmeg 7s to
12s; and mace 10s. For prices later in the thirteenth century, see Labarge, Baronial Household, 90–6.
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in the royal records to the making of the king’s sauce (salsa), to his ‘saucery’
(salsaria), or to Geoffrey, his sauce maker, shows that then, as later, spicy sauces
were a staple of elite medieval cuisine.41
It is harder to be sure that other characteristics of late medieval cooking were
present at John’s court. There are indications that the later medieval obsession
with the appearance of food was already present in the period. John of Salisbury’s
reference to animals stuffed with other animals has been linked to later medieval
practices of disguising one type of meat as another.42 The cut marks on peacock
bones from the twelfth century at Carisbrooke Castle, an important baronial
residence, suggest that the practice of presenting cooked peacock with the skin
and feathers back on was already in existence.43 It is unfortunately impossible to
know if John’s cooks presented food this dramatically, but the purchases of saf-
fron indicate that colour, at least, was already an important consideration in
cooking.
The specialization of cooking, with males taking over high-status positions,
was certainly true at John’s court (and indeed was nothing new). The most
important cooks received ample remuneration. In John’s sixth year, Master Roger
of the Kitchen received 7d per day in pay, only a penny less than knights, and
his yearly salary would have been over £10, an income equal to many gentry
landowners. The same year John gave Master Reimbald, his cook, land worth
£9 yearly, and the year before Geoffrey, the royal sauce maker, received rural and
urban property worth £7 7s 8d yearly, effectively making them both at least minor
members of the gentry.44
Was the kind of elite cuisine that Goody describes present as early as John’s
reign? Alban Gautier, writing of the late Anglo-Saxon era, is hesitant, but Naomi
Sykes argues that one can speak of such a cuisine for the Norman period.45 For
John’s reign, most of the characteristics Goody described are visible. Many of the
foods acquired for John’s court were distinctively high status and typical of elite
consumption. A range of ingredients was obtained through trade, rents, and the
occasional gift, and John obviously employed skilled, specialist cooks. The only
characteristic one cannot pinpoint at John’s court were cookbooks, though the
surviving recipes from other contexts show that the interaction of literacy and
cooking had at least begun. More generally, even if cooking at John’s court was
not as elaborate as at later medieval courts, the king and the elite members of his
court enjoyed the benefits of a complex food culture that set their meals apart
from those enjoyed by most inhabitants of his realms.
41 PR10J 97; PR14J 43; PR16J 28; RLC 88a–b, 101b–102a, 128b, 156b, 175a.
42 John of Salisbury, Policraticus, 2:252–3, 271–2; Montanari, Medieval Tastes, 186.
43 Sykes, Zooarchaeological Perspective, 90. 44 RLC 9b, 14a; RL 20, 49, 108.
45 Alban Gautier, ‘Cooking and Cuisine in Late Anglo-Saxon England,’ Anglo-Saxon England
41 (2013), 373–406, at 373–406; Sykes, Zooarchaeological Perspective, 90.
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6.4 Wine
According to the Anonymous of Béthune, John and his followers were sadly
lacking in discernment when it came to wine. The writer told how, during a short
period of amity between the two kings early in John’s reign, Philip loaned John his
residence and hunting lodge at Fontainebleau, complete with provisions. After
John and his retinue left, Philip and his followers had a good laugh, because the
English (as the chronicler described them) drank the worst wines, and left the
best untouched.46 The gibe was pointed, for few foodstuffs had the aristocratic
prestige of wine, particularly in places like England and Normandy where wine
was mostly imported and therefore only associated with the elites.47
Both because of its prestige and the need to import it to John’s wealthiest and
best recorded realms, few aspects of consumption were as well documented at his
court as wine. Whatever their refinement or lack thereof, John and his followers
were enthusiastic wine drinkers, partly, no doubt, because wine (like ale) was
often safer than water, which could easily be contaminated in a premodern set-
ting. An audit of his stockpiles of wine in England in his fourth year reveal that
John had accumulated (before he departed unexpectedly for the continent) over
717 tuns, or barrels, comprising over 150,000 gallons of wine.48 Transporting
wine to royal residences represented a major logistical challenge once it had
reached England; there are references to using fifteen, thirty, even forty carts to
carry wine.49 It was also a major expense; at various times royal officials spent
£507, £596, or even £953 on wine, in the last case in addition to at least one other
large purchase of wine (£392) the same year.50 Like the sums spent on hunting or
textiles, these purchases would have been perfectly manageable within John’s
budget, but they nonetheless represented major investments. Even late in his
reign, when John was fighting for survival, his officials continued to spend heavily
on wine, drawing on the king’s Gascon revenues to do so.51 Wine was clearly a
high priority at John’s court.
Did wine connoisseurship exist in the Middle Ages? Ernst Schubert thinks not
but emphasizes that concern for quality was present.52 Whatever the French
thought about John’s discernment, he was certainly concerned about the quality
of the wines served to him. Various writs show the efforts to ensure that good-
quality wine was provided to the court, with John refusing to pay for poor wine,
fining men for purchasing bad wine for him, and even issuing vague threats
against Reginald of Cornhill, a major royal purchaser, if he did not provide good
wine.53 Perhaps like Peter of Blois, he sometimes had to sieve wine through his
teeth. Given the difficulties of making, preserving, and transporting good wine in
medieval conditions, it would not be surprising if even the king sometimes con-
sumed awful-tasting wine, but clearly he tried to obtain the best wine he could.
What kind of language was used to describe the nature and quality of wine in
the royal records?54 Only very rarely was wine described as being red or white.
Terms for quality were vague, the most common being ‘good’ and occasionally
‘better’ or ‘best.’ On a few occasions, wines were described as ‘strong’ or ‘durable,’
the latter attesting to the difficulty of preventing wine from going bad. Sometimes
distinctions were made between ordinary (expensible or dispensible) wine and
good wine, or sometimes wine ‘for our mouth,’ meaning for the consumption of
the king and his chosen guests. On one occasion, such wine was described as
vinum dominicum, perhaps by analogy with panis dominicus. Narrative writers of
the time had a fuller vocabulary to describe wines. The poem on William Marshal
described a wine as ‘full bodied, radiant, clear, sweet, and fine,’ while the scholar
Peter of Cornwall spoke of smoothness, sweetness, and purity.55 Alexander
Neckam displayed a talent for exuberant metaphor that would impress the most
extravagant modern wine aficionado, comparing one wine to a stroke of lighting;
that wine also had, among other attributes, the strength of a building in a
Tironensian abbey and the subtlety of a Parvipontan (an influential Parisian
school of philosophy) truth.56 Surely there are at least hints of connoisseurship
here, and in any case the concern for quality is clear. Wine had a very powerful
gustatory, literary, and symbolic place in medieval society, and John and his court
fully embraced this wine culture.
Indeed, John had an important role in the history of wine in France and England,
albeit one stemming largely from his military failures. Scholars of the wine trade
have dated the beginning of the rise of the Bordeaux wine region, and its long his-
tory of exporting wine to England, to John’s loss of Anjou and much of Poitou early
in his reign, and to his son’s loss of La Rochelle in 1224. To thank Bordeaux and
other local towns for their help in resisting Philip Augustus’s attempts to push into
Gascony, John granted them trading privileges that helped them emerge as export
centres. More important, John’s defeats meant that for the next few centuries, the
Bordeaux region had the advantage of being the only wine-producing region with
57 Yves Renouard, ‘Le Grand commerce des vins de Gascogne au Moyen Age,’ Revue historique
221 (1959), 261–304; Rose, Wine Trade, 46–7, 61–2.
58 Ferdinand Lot and Robert Fawtier, eds., Le premier budget de la monarchie française. Le compte
général de 1202–1203 (Paris, 1932).
59 Other occasional references are to Saxon wine; wine from Orleans, La Réole, and perhaps
Soissons; ‘meysac’ wine (probably from the Moissac region); and wine from such unidentifiable places
as Blenc and Musca. For references to wines from all these regions, see PR2J 89; PR4J 82–4; PR7J 129;
PR8J 32, 47, 123, 156, 172; PR9J 52, 71; PR11J 50; PR13J 29, 94, 110; PR14J 18, 45, 48, 57, 98; PR16J 28;
PR2H3 15–16; MRSN 510; Misae 14J 261; RN 79, 80, 105; RL 7; RLC 1a, 2b, 3a, 5b, 21a, 25a, 42a, 44a,
52a, 64b, 70a, 70b, 72b, 88b, 89a, 99b, 114a, 117b, 118a, 121a, 124a, 126a–b, 128a, 128b, 129a, 135b,
136b, 138b, 151a, 153b, 157a–b, 175a, 179a, 180a, 185a, 189b, 193b, 196a, 217b, 220a, 220b, 225a; ROF
94, 230, 303, 360, 433; Sidney Raymond Packard, ‘Miscellaneous Records of the Norman Exchequer,
1199–1204,’ Smith College Studies in History 12 (1926), 1–116, at 10, 73.
60 Schröder, Macht und Gabe, 177–9, 194.
61 Such Rhenish and Moselle wines were called by some variation of the term ‘oblinquo’; Francis,
The Wine Trade, 15.
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Though most aspects of social life at court were too quotidian for chroniclers to
write about, great feasts were sufficiently significant to attract tradition. Thus
62 Auxerre wines were the most expensive, and on one occasion the government paid 8 marks for
one tun, an extraordinary price; RLC 25a. For their prestige, see Rose, Wine Trade, 14, 91–3; Schröder,
Macht und Gabe, 179.
63 PR16J 28. 64 PR13J 254; RLC 55b. For spiced wines, see Rose, Wine Trade, xvii.
65 Book of Fees 1:13; Red Book of the Exchequer 2:461.
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Roger of Howden and later Roger of Wendover regularly stated where John was
on Christmas and sometimes on Easter or Pentecost, occasionally adding com-
ments about the king’s distribution of robes or the nature and size of the company
feasting with him.66 As these comments and the Anonymous of Béthune’s
praise, quoted at the beginning of the book, show, John’s feasts made a splash.67
Unfortunately, no good extended chronicle account of a feast at John’s court sur-
vives like the descriptions of Richard I’s great Christmas feast in Sicily during the
Third Crusade, with its distinguished guests, magnificent plate, excellent service,
and lavish distribution of gifts.68 However, John’s records provide plentiful evi-
dence of preparations for feasts, and these, in conjunction with cautious use of
descriptions of other feasts, can help us reconstruct what John’s great feasts
were like.69
Before doing so, however, it is worth digressing briefly to discuss feasts the
king attended as a guest, because these too were important social, cultural, and
political events. Though John stayed mostly at his own residences at his own
expense during his constant travels, he periodically visited powerful nobles and
followers, and hosting the king in style was an opportunity to gain prestige and
status as well as favour. The daily accounts that survived of Hugh de Neville, one
of John’s great administrators, for two months in 1207 show the preparations for
one such visit. The king arrived at Hugh’s manor of Little Hallingbury in Essex,
near Hatfield Forest, on Saturday 10 March, and left on Monday 12 March. Hugh’s
accounts show his household gathering foodstuffs in the four days leading up to
the visit and having them carted to Little Hallingbury. Since Lent had just begun,
the heart of the main feast was seafood, including lampreys, salmon, oysters,
whelks, haddocks, rays, a large amount of cod, 4,000 herring or more, and £5 15s
worth of salted eels. Hugh’s servants also purchased large quantities of bread and
ale, and for seasoning and flavour, they procured mustard, garlic, and a massive
amount of onions. Overall, Hugh spent approximately £30, the annual income of
a wealthy knight, on the king’s brief visit, including £8 13s 3d for bread; £13 2s
8½d for fish; £3 11s 4d for ale; 15s for dishes; and £2 16s 8d for transporting the
purchases. Presumably Hugh drew wine and spices from existing stores, which
66 Roger of Howden, Chronica, 4:106, 114, 156, 160; Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum,
1:311–13, 316; 2:9, 12, 35, 49, 54, 58, 60, 97, 113. See also Ralph of Diceto, Opera Historica, 2:171–2.
Roger of Howden had done the same for John’s father and brother. For a map of these places, see
Madeline, Les Plantagenêts et leur empire, 350.
67 Anonymous of Béthune, Histoire des ducs, 105.
68 See also Ambroise’s similar description of Richard’s three-day coronation feast: Ambroise,
History of the Holy War, 3, 18; Stubbs, ed., Itinerarium, 172–3.
69 Some particularly useful literary descriptions from the broad period include Walter Map, De
Nugis Curialium, 26–31; Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain, 208–15; Wace, Wace’s
Roman de Brut: A History of the British, Text and Translation, ed. Judith Weiss (Exeter, 2002), 256–67;
Layamon, Layamon: Brut, 593–4, 633–46; Thomas, Romance of Horn, 1:15–16, 139–41, 153; Chrétien
de Troyes, Œuvres complètes, 47–51, 162–4, 168–9, 766–8.
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would have driven his expenses even higher.70 The pipe rolls of Winchester show
meat and dairy consumption for visits outside of Lent. On 6 November 1208,
when the king visited Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester and one of his closest
advisors, for the feast of St Leonard, the royal and episcopal households and any
other guests consumed seventeen sides of bacon, five and a quarter oxen, nearly 300
hens, and an unspecified amount of pickled pig parts. Five large cheeses and nine-
teen small ones were split between this feast and another.71 The hosting of the king
was clearly an occasion for massive consumption, and though the amounts no
doubt reflected the size of the king’s retinues and the retinues of any other major
guests, there was likely also a premium placed on having plenty of food.
Though the feasts John’s followers held for him were no doubt elaborate affairs,
the great feasts held by the king himself were normally far grander, and involved
much advance planning. When other scholars have briefly looked at feasting at
John’s court, they have focused on a particular feast; here I will combine the
sources from throughout the reign, keeping in mind that not every type of prep
aration would have been needed for every feast and that a food that appeared at
one feast did not necessarily appear at all. One concern was having a proper
venue. Certain sites, like the great halls at Westminster and Winchester, were
designed for such feasts and no doubt kept in repair for them. However, when
John wanted to have Christmas at Oxford in 1205, he sent out orders in November
to have the royal residences there repaired and put into proper order.72 On occa-
sion, royal pavilions were conveyed to the sites of great feasts, perhaps for more
feasting space or for lodging guests.73 Firewood, charcoal, tripods, and pots might
all be ordered, along with tables for the feasters.74 The tables would have been
purely functional, but table linens were crucial for display.75 For each feast, the
royal government bought hundreds of ells or more of linen, generally from
Wiltshire, which presumably had a reputation for fine linen production.76 Plate
was even more important than linen.77 Royal officials can be found buying pre-
cious items for specific feasts, including gilded basins, knives with ivory handles,
and salt cellars.78 More commonly, plate was brought out of storage for feasts.79
The discussion in Chapter 3 of John’s plate gives an idea of the magnificence of
the tables where the king and the most prominent guests sat. However, even
John’s large collection of plate was insufficient for the guests at royal feasts, and
the royal records reveal purchases of large numbers of cheaper dishes made of
ceramics or perhaps wood.80 Arrangements also had to be made for entertain-
ment and the massive distribution of robes at the Christmas feasts, not to men-
tion the king’s own feasting garments; on one occasion, William Scissor can be
found doing last-minute work on a set of robes for the king the day before
Christmas.81
Food and drink, of course, formed the heart of a feast, and the royal records
show the anxiety about having sufficiently large quantities. Large orders of spices
might be made specifically for large feasts; for instance, on 17 December 1213, an
urgent order was sent to procure 50 lbs of pepper, 2 lbs of saffron, and 100 lbs of
almonds by Christmas. Normally wine would have been drawn from the king’s
storehouses, but the same order called for twenty tuns of good, new drinking
wine, and four tuns of the best wine, two red and two white, ‘for our mouth.’82 In
Chapter 2, I noted a shipload of game that, from its timing, was probably sent for
a Christmas feast, and fifty red deer were ordered for another feast.83 Preparations
for the 1213 Christmas feast seem to have run late, for on 17 December of that
year several other requests (containing an uncharacteristic amount of pleading)
went out for items for Christmas, including several appeals for pheasants, par-
tridges, and other birds.84 Requests for the meat of domestic animals were also
included in the writs of that day and entries relating to orders of meat were the
most common related to feasts in the royal records. Such orders were often large.
In December 1206, for instance, the sheriff of Hampshire received an order for
twenty oxen, 100 sheep, 100 pigs, and 1,500 hundred hens, along with 5,000 eggs,
and there is no certainty that he was the only provider of meat for that feast.85
Fish was another important item, and an order of 10,000 herrings, 1,800 whiting,
900 haddocks, and 3,000 lampreys was very likely for Christmas 1210: orders of
10,000 eels were definitely made for two other Christmas feasts.86 Humbler foods,
like peas and white beans, made single appearances.87 Surprisingly, neither bread
nor ale appear in the surviving records in reference to great feasts, though both
must have been present in large quantities. Presumably, they could be acquired
through regular channels without the sorts of special requests that would be
noted in writs or pipe rolls. The records of John’s feasts are too fragmentary to
make any quantification possible, but they suggest a heavy emphasis on both var
iety and quantity of food.
80 PR7J xxxviii, 160; PR12J xxxiv–xxxv, 62, 121; PR13J xxi–xxii, 109; RLC 157b, 259b.
81 Misae 14J 269. 82 PR9J 30; RLC 88a–b, 157a–b. 83 PR13J 89; RLC 184b.
84 RLC 157b.
85 For this and other requests for meat, see PRJ1 79; PR6J 88, 146; PR7J 120, 161; PR8J 182; PR9J
139; RL 93; RLC 28b, 75a, 97a, 157a–b, 184b.
86 PR13J 109; PR17J 66; RLC 157b.
87 PR13J 109; RLC 28b.
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Assuming that the amount of linen ordered for feasts can serve as a rough proxy
for their size, linen orders can give an idea of trends in feast size over the course of
the reign. After a purchase of 2,000 ells for the king’s first coronation feast, such
purchases disappear for several years, probably because the king spent so much
time in his continental lands, for which relatively few records survive. For his fifth
through eighth years, purchases of between 100 and 500 ells appear for various
feasts. For his ninth through sixteenth years, the purchases ranged from 800 to
1,000 ells, suggesting that John’s feasts grew along with his wealth. For Christmas
1215, however, in the midst of the great rebellion, only 366 ells were ordered;
clearly the revolt reduced his willingness and ability to attract a large gathering.93
Other than the cost of robes, which I discussed in Chapter 3, the cost of feasts
is hard to uncover.94 Ordinary dishes were surprisingly cheap—29s for a com-
bined total of 1,900 cups and platters on one occasion. Silver and gold plate was
obviously more expensive, but could be reused and represented stored wealth.95
Food was also relatively cheap; for instance, £4 for sixty sheep provided for one
Pentecost feast.96 Cumulative expenses may have added up, however. Thus, one
writ referred to £400 18s 10d for the expenses of a stay in Winchester at Christmas,
though unfortunately it is impossible to know what precisely this covered.97
Overall, my impression is that John’s feasts were costly, but not extravagantly so in
terms of overall royal finances.
93 PRJ1 169; PR7J 161; PR8J 181–2; PR10J 193; PR12J 76; PR14J 147; PR17J 48; 5J Hardy Liberate
93; RLC 15b, 25b, 58b, 66a, 75a, 98a, 127b, 157a–b, 180b, 220b.
94 For a comparison with the better-documented feasts of Henry III’s reign, see Carpenter, Magna
Carta, 162.
95 PR12J 62. 96 PR7J 182. 97 RLC 75b.
98 John of Salisbury, Policraticus, 2:270–1; Gerald of Wales, Expugnatio Hibernica, 96–7; Ambroise,
History of the Holy War, 1:4, 18; Stubbs, ed., Itinerarium, 173.
99 Daniel of Beccles, Urbanus Magnus. For scholarship on this work see Bartlett, England under the
Norman and Angevin Kings, 582–8; Frédérique Lachaud, ‘L’enseignement des bonnes manières en
milieu de cour en Angleterre d’après l’Urbanus magnus attribué à Daniel de Beccles,’ in Werner
Paravicini and Jörg Wettlaufer, eds., Erziehung und Bildung bei Hofe (Stuttgart, 2002), 43–53;
Frédérique Lachaud, ‘Littérature de civilité et “processus de civilisation” à la fin de XIIe siècle: le cas
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of the elite, but he claimed to provide guidance on how to behave within the royal
hall, and he and other aspirational members of the lesser elite no doubt eagerly
imitated royal practices to the extent possible. Much of his guidance about
appearing refined inevitably involved etiquette, and much of his advice about
manners focused on feasting. The scholars who have studied Daniel’s work have
described many characteristics of his advice, including careful control of speech
and the body, the need to appear affable, and the importance of the appearance
and care of one’s body. These are all important, but here I wish to concentrate on
three areas: the complexity of table manners that already existed in the period;
the ability of the host to use feasts to both reflect and shape social hierarchy; and
the importance of social inferiors behaving deferentially to their superiors.
Daniel’s sections on dining are filled with specific instructions on an array of
topics, including how to serve wine and when to say ‘Wassail’ and ‘Drinkhail.’100
Many of the instructions are strange to modern readers because they involve din-
ing patterns foreign to us, like the extensive use of fingers combined with the
sharing of dishes by pairs of diners, which Daniel addresses in his advice about
not reaching into the dish at the same time, politely cutting food for one’s dinner
partner, and not licking one’s fingers. His advice can seem bizarre and hilarious to
modern readers: when spitting, it is best to turn around from the dinner table;
when belching, look at the ceiling; only the lord may urinate in the hall. Such
instructions might suggest a crude society in which any behaviour at all was
acceptable, but in fact Daniel’s work shows that there were strong ideas about
proper manners and that ignorance of them made one look rustic and boorish.
One common and socially crucial practice Daniel describes is the lord granting
some of the food and drink set before him to others.101 Daniel’s advice focuses on
how the guest should react, but Herbert of Bosham’s vita of Thomas Becket shows
how Becket used the practice to honour guests. According to Herbert, when
anglais d’après l’Urbanus magnus,’ Les Échanges culturels au Moyen Âge: XXXIIe congrès de la SHMES
(Paris, 2002), 227–39; John Gillingham, ‘From Civilitas to Civility: Codes of Manners in Medieval and
Early Modern England,’ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6th ser. 12 (2002), 267–89; Fiona
Whelan, The Making of Manners and Morals in Twelfth-Century England: The Book of the Civilised
Man (London, 2017). For other work on table manners and etiquette, see Henisch, Fast and Feast,
190–205; Hammond, Food and Feast in Medieval England, 102–23; Aurell, Plantagenet Empire, 59–82;
Kerr, ‘Food, Drink and Lodging,’ 80–6; Matthew M. Reeve, ‘Gothic Architecture and the Civilizing
Process: The Great Hall in Thirteenth-Century England,’ in Robert Bork, William W. Clark, and Abby
McGehee, eds., New Approaches to Medieval Architecture (Farnham, 2011), 93–109. For broader back-
ground on the kinds of values celebrated in this and other works, see Jaeger, Origins of Courtliness;
Thomas Zotz, ‘Urbanitas. Zur Bedeutung und Funktion einer antiken Wertvorstellung innerhalb der
höfischen Kultur des hohen Mittelalters,’ in Josef Fleckenstein, ed., Curialitas: Studien zu Grundfragen
der höfisch-ritterlichen Kultur (Göttingen, 1990), 392–451.
As seen in previous chapters, gift exchange helped shape power structures in the
Middle Ages, and gifts of food and wine fit this pattern.104 The royal records show
102 Robertson and Sheppard, eds., Materials, 3:228–9; Kerr, ‘Food, Drink and Lodging,’ 82.
103 Daniel of Beccles, Urbanus Magnus, 37–9, 42–3, 45–6.
104 See in particular C. M. Woolgar, ‘Gifts of Food in Late Medieval England,’ Journal of Medieval
History 37 (2011), 6–18.
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the king receiving tuns of wine, and lampreys or fish, often in return for royal
favours.105 More common were gifts from the king. Just as John granted deer
from his parks to stock his subjects’ parks, so he sent fish to restock the fishponds
of two major noble supporters, Earl William Marshal and William Longsword,
earl of Salisbury.106 More common were royal gifts of tuns of wine.107 Some of
these gifts were to bishops and other ecclesiastical figures, and may have been a
mixture of pious gifts (in particular, wine meant for celebration of the mass108)
and favours to powerful supporters. Most of John’s gifts of wines were to the earls
closest to him, like Earl Geoffrey fitz Peter, his justiciar (who received several gifts
of as many as twenty tuns); important administrators, like Hugh de Neville and
Brian de Lisle; and household knights. Only rarely did John use wine to reward or
signal favour to those not in the inner circle.109 Very occasionally, he used gifts of
wine to strengthen diplomatic ties, as when he ordered a shipload of wine to be
sent from Poitou to his nephew and military ally, the Emperor Otto.110
As important as gift exchange may have been in creating networks and alli-
ances, feasting was more important, and many scholars have discussed its role in
creating (and contesting) soft power.111 The ways that feasting built royal power
in various interconnected ways will be apparent from the discussion so far. They
allowed the king to display wealth and generosity, reinforced social hierarchy,
provided opportunities to show favour, and served as occasions for the perform
ance of sacral kingship. Not only were they an occasion for giving gifts, but feasts
were themselves a sort of gift from the host to the guests; it is no accident that
much of Marcel Mauss’s seminal work on gift-giving and reciprocity included
feasting as a central feature.112 Moreover, feasts advertised and reinforced
105 For some examples, see PR7J 129, 131; PR8J 14, 32, 123, 134; ROF 65, 83, 94, 199, 224.
Sometimes the fish were for stocking fishponds rather than the table.
106 RLC 17b, 191b.
107 Some grants, particularly in the Norman rolls, may have been allocations for military supplies,
and others may have represented exchanges (RLC 128b, 135b) or even sales (RLC 1b; ROF 199).
Overall, though, most grants appear to be gifts. For some examples, see PR4J xvii, 83; PR6J 213; RLC
1a, 1b, 3a, 4b, 16a, 16b, 18b, 28b, 30b; RLP 151b; RN 31, 65, 78, 79, 89, 103, 105.
108 RLC 62b.
109 Recipients in Normandy included Robert Tresgoz, Robert de Harcourt, the earl of Leicester, and
Henry de Ferrers. Recipients in England included the earls of Essex, Salisbury, and Chester; the
powerful nobleman, Robert de Ros; and royal officials and household knights such as Brian de Lisle,
Warin fitz Gerold, Simon de Pateshull, Thomas de Samford, Reginald de Cornhill, John de Grey, Hugh
de Neville, Engelard de Cigogné, Thomas Esturmy, Daniel Pincerna, and John fitz Hugh.
110 PR16J 28; RLC 138b, 179a; RLP 129b.
111 A particularly good introduction is Lars Kjær and A. J. Watson, ‘Feasts and Gifts: Sharing Food
in the Middle Ages,’ Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011), 1–5. See also Henisch, Fast and Feast,
194–6; Lafortune-Martel, Fête noble en Bourgogne, 11, 99–108; Bumke, Courtly Culture, 208–10;
Althoff, ‘Fest und Bündnis,’ 29–38; Althoff, ‘Charakter des Mahles,’ 13–25; Althoff, Family, Friends and
Followers, 152–9; van Uyten, ‘Showing Off One’s Rank,’ 19–34; Schröder, Macht und Gabe, 198–201;
Weiler, Kingship, Rebellion and Political Culture, 19–24; Slitt, ‘Acting Out Friendship,’ 156–9; Kjær,
‘Food, Drink and Ritualized Communication,’ 75–89; Montanari, Medieval Tastes, 177–92; Gautier,
‘Festin et politique,’ 907–34.
112 Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (London, 1990).
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s olidarity between ruler and subjects and could signal alliances and the making
or restoration of peace. The very act of attending a royal feast could remind fol-
lowers and subjects of the loyalty they already owed the king because of previous
favours and rewards and because of his office and their oaths. Anthropologists
and sociologists have stressed the importance of sharing food in shaping social
interactions, and there is no doubt that feasts were an important tool for medieval
kings in building soft power.
Much of this operated on such a routine or even subconscious level that con-
temporary writers could simply note that the king held a great feast, perhaps
remarking on unusually important guests, and let the reader fill in the blanks.
However, occasional comments and anecdotes show that contemporaries paid
attention to feasts and might note particularly important aspects. Examples from
the reigns of John’s father and brother can illuminate the context in which John
operated. Gerald of Wales wrote that when Henry II held court at Dublin, the
sumptuousness of his table and the quality of his service favourably impressed the
Irish rulers who had come to see him.113 Ralph of Diceto and Roger of Howden
showed how Henry II and the Young King tried to convey an image of amity after
the revolt of 1173–4 by feasting together and sharing both chamber and high
table, and similarly, when the future Richard I rebelled against his father and
joined forces with Philip II, the two allies showed their unity by sharing a dish
when eating and a bed when sleeping.114 Both Ambroise and his Latin adapter
celebrated the magnificence of Richard I’s feasts, and the latter explicitly stressed
Richard’s generosity and the king’s attention to hierarchy in the gifts he gave to his
guests and the places he seated them.115
One reason feasts were particularly important is that they gathered together an
important audience for the performance of power. The greatest feasts were often
attended by powerful lords and their retainers, some of whom had high status
themselves. These guests would not only observe events at feasts first-hand but
could subsequently recount them to relatives, friends, and neighbours. If one
received unusual favour from the king or, conversely, was seated at a place below
one’s station and ignored by the king, powerful people would see it and could
spread the word. Indeed, how one was treated at a feast could conceivably influ-
ence one’s standing among one’s peers, not just one’s relationship with the king. In
a society highly attuned to nuances of prestige, status, and honour, great royal
feasts would therefore have been highly charged proceedings. Walter Map
recounted an episode at a great Christmas feast, with many powerful guests, of
Henry II, in which William de Tancarville, who was out of favour with the king,
the relatively modest ones like that hosted by Hugh de Neville, celebrated the
king’s greatness and re-enacted the hierarchical social structure of which the king
was the earthly head. Michael Dietler and Joan Gero, in their respective after-
words to The Archaeology and Politics of Food and Feasting in Early States and
Empires, emphasize the role of food and feasting in maintaining political struc-
tures. Dietler stresses the fragile, volatile, and transitory nature of many early
states and empires, and says of such polities that ‘They are a fluid process rather
than a durable thing, and they depend upon constant hard work in the micro-
political struggles of negotiation and legitimation to survive and operate.’ Much
of that work, in his view, took place in meals and feasting.120 Gero argues that
feasts acted as a primary public context to instruct people about how to behave in
a ‘state-like’ manner by letting them learn or repeat their status and rank vis-a-vis
others. ‘So instead of seeing feasts as events, I prefer to see them as a context-
renewing practice, where producing feasts at the same time produces social out-
comes that encourage their existence.’121 In England (though not in the Angevin
Empire as a totality), John ruled a more stable polity than many of the states and
empires studied in this collection, and he had more institutional powers than
many of their rulers. Nonetheless, it is useful to consider John’s rule (and those of
other medieval monarchs) not only via institutional processes, like collecting
taxes and raising armies, but also through cultural processes, including the hold-
ing of feasts. After all, food and feasting continued to be important tools for rulers
through the rest of the Middle Ages and the early modern period.
As so often with soft power, both the events that built it and the stories told about
those events could be used to challenge as well as enhance authority. Indeed,
feasting was particularly open to debate, manipulation, and dispute. Moralists
like John of Salisbury considered feasting in moderation urbane and civilized but
saw excessive eating and alcoholic consumption as sinful and even barbaric. They
often linked it with softness and military weakness, as when John of Salisbury
contrasted the warlike Welsh with unimpressive knights at Henry II’s court who
frequently killed Muslims—but only with their boasting at feasts.122 Feasts them-
selves were often sites of disputes over honour, status, and precedence, as with
120 Michael Dietler, ‘Clearing the Table: Some Concluding Reflections on Commensal Politics and
Imperial States,’ in Tamara. L. Bray, ed., The Archaeology and Politics of Food and Feasting in Early
States and Empires (New York, 2003), 271–82.
121 Joan M. Gero, ‘Feasting and the Practice of Stately Manners,’ in Tamara. L. Bray, ed., The
Archaeology and Politics of Food and Feasting in Early States and Empires (New York, 2003), 285–8.
122 John of Salisbury, Policraticus, 2:12–13, 41, 233, 249–93, 315–27. For other writers linking
excessive feasting and military softness, see Stubbs, ed., Itinerarium, 330–1; Walter Map, De Nugis
Curialium, 408–11; Gerald of Wales, Expugnatio Hibernica, 244–5.
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Walter Map’s story of William de Tancarville, and could even lead to violence, as
when the attempt of leading members of the English Jewish community to enter
Richard I’s coronation banquet sparked a riot that led to a series of pogroms.123
King Arthur’s Round Table first appeared in Wace’s account of the king: and when
Layamon translated Wace into English, he explained its origins as connected to a
particularly violent dispute that had arisen at a feast over seating precedence.
With a round table, no such dispute could arise.124 Feasts were designed to foster
amity, but they often produced the opposite.
Although there is no record of a dispute over precedence at one of John’s feasts,
he did engage in a rivalry with Hubert Walter, his chancellor and the archbishop
of Canterbury, over who was the most brilliant host. Hubert had a notable reputa-
tion for magnificence; in fact, in an otherwise positive portrayal, Ralph of
Coggeshall criticized him for using the income from his archbishopric and his
government position to support an overly lavish lifestyle, including elaborate
buildings, a large retinue, and a splendid table.125 Though Hubert’s income could
not compare with John’s, he was very rich and did not have to finance ruinous
wars, so he may well have held feasts rivalling those of the king. According to
Roger of Wendover, in 1200 King John held a Christmas feast at Guildford at
which he handed out many robes, and Hubert, striving to equal the king, did the
same at Canterbury, which angered John. That Easter, John and Isabella were
guests at Canterbury, putting Hubert to great expense.126 The Anonymous of
Béthune told a similar story. In his version, John, despite being envious of
Hubert’s greatness, attended a Christmas feast at Canterbury which the arch-
bishop held in great style. John then asked if the archbishop knew why the king
had stayed so long, whereupon Hubert graciously replied that it must have been
to do him honour. ‘By the teeth of God,’ said the king, ‘it is otherwise,’ going on to
explain that he did it to ruin the archbishop, since no one could rival his magnifi-
cence. Hubert then asked where the king would hold his next great feast, at which
point the king asked what business it was of his. ‘Do you know why I asked?’ said
the archbishop. ‘Because I would like to be where you will be . . . and I will under-
take to hold a finer court than you and in the court I will spend more than you,
123 William of Newburgh, Historia Rerum Anglicarum, 294–8; Roger of Howden, Chronica, 3:12;
[Roger of Howden], Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi, 2:83. For another noteworthy instance, see Geffrei
Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis: History of the English, ed. Ian Short (Oxford, 2009), 326–9. For a broader
overview of feasts gone wrong, see D. M. Hadley, ‘Dining in Disharmony in the Later Middle Ages,’ in
Maureen Carroll, D. M. Hadley, and Hugh Willmott, eds., Consuming Passions: Dining from Antiquity
to the Eighteenth Century (Stroud, 2005), 101–19. For the complex relationship between events at
feasts and how writers presented them, see Kjær, ‘Matthew Paris and the Royal Christmas,’ 141–54;
Lars Kjær, ‘Feasting with Traitors: Royal Banquets as Rituals and Texts in High Medieval Scandinavia,’
in Wojtek Jezierski et al., eds., Rituals, Performatives, and Political Order in Northern Europe, c. 650–1350
(Turnhout, 2015), 269–94.
124 Layamon, Layamon: Brut, 2:592–9.
125 Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, 160.
126 Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, 1:311.
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give more robes, make more new knights, and do more good works than you.
And at Pentecost I will do the same thing if I am alive then, and still Hubert
Walter will have something to eat.’127 The Anonymous of Béthune’s account, as we
shall shortly see, was designed to make John look bad. Nonetheless, the stories
probably do record memories of an actual rivalry. On some level, this was no
doubt merely personal, especially for Hubert. But for a relatively new king who
was under severe military pressure on the continent, there may have been real
danger in being overshadowed at the great feasts by one of his own officials. In
1223, when two factional leaders at the young Henry III’s court held rival
Christmas courts, the far greater attendance at one of them helped tip the balance
between the two.128 John’s rivalry with Hubert Walter was less fraught, but John
might well have felt that being outmatched at feasting could subtly undermine his
authority.
Even worse, the sharing of feasts or other meals could conceal wavering loyal-
ties or treacherous intent.129 According to one account, when King John prepared
to seize future rebel Robert fitz Walter for besieging a priory in a patronage dis-
pute, a friend of Robert’s slipped away and alerted Robert, allowing him to flee.
The king was enraged that ‘someone who ate my bread’ had warned Robert.130 On
some level, such expressions were merely metaphorical. However, the biographer
of William Marshal criticized one Norman magnate for entertaining John with a
meal, receiving rewards from him, kissing him, and then defecting to Philip
Augustus shortly after John left.131 In that case the shared meal was a deliberate
part of the deception. But, of course, this deception was far less treacherous than
John’s alleged slaughter of guests at Evreux that began the chapter.
As can be seen, it is often hard to know what actually happened at feasts.
However, these accounts do tell us how writers (and presumably others) used
narratives about feasts and metaphors about food to build reputations and, in
some cases, to criticize those they disliked. Roger of Wendover’s account of John’s
rivalry with Hubert Walter probably suggested overreach by the archbishop. In
contrast, the Anonymous of Béthune’s account celebrated the archbishop, lavish-
ing superlatives on him and praising his magnificence and magnanimity, making
John appear small-minded, envious, and ungrateful in contrast. Similarly, the
Anonymous’s anecdote about John and his retinue drinking only the bad wines at
Fontainebleau was designed to humiliate the king and his followers as lacking
true aristocratic discernment. Roger of Wendover, in a passage hostile to the king,
127 Anonymous of Béthune, Histoire des ducs, 105–7. My translation draws on Charles R. Young,
Hubert Walter, Lord of Canterbury and Lord of England (Durham, NC, 1968), 151–2.
128 Stacey, Politics, Policy, and Finance, 29; Weiler, Kingship, Rebellion and Political Culture, 21.
129 For some parallels, see Slitt, ‘Acting Out Friendship,’ 159–64.
130 Thomas Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani, ed. Henry T. Riley, 2 vols.
(London, 1867–9), 1:226–8.
131 Holden, Gregory, and Crouch, eds., History of William Marshal, 2:131–2.
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The link between food, feasting, and pleasure is not as straightforward as one
might presume. When the Irish rulers visited Henry II’s court during his visit to
Ireland, among the dishes they tried, at the king’s command, was crane, which, as
Gerald of Wales tells us, they had hitherto abhorred.133 Since the flesh of cranes
has been described as ‘tough, gross, sinewy,’ one may well sympathize with the
Irish guests.134 Crane probably became a favoured food not for its innate qualities
but because of its rarity and association with the aristocratic sport of falconry. The
consumption of food and drink is of course intimately associated with pleasure,
but as this example illustrates, the relationship can be complex. To take a modern
example: ‘Coffee is one of the great, marvelous flavors. Who could deny that?
Well, actually, anyone drinking coffee for the first time would deny it . . . . It is bit-
ter and characterless; it simply tastes bad the first time you encounter it.’135 Taste
is biological but it is also cultural. Massimo Montanari has written, ‘The organ of
taste is not the tongue, but the brain, a culturally (and therefore historically)
determined organ through which are transmitted and learned the criteria for
evaluations.’ It is probably better to say, as Montanari does in a later formulation,
that the brain directs and judges the sensation of the tongue, but this quotation
nicely captures the cultural and historical aspects of taste.136 Although royal
cooks may have found ways to make crane more palatable, we can presume that at
least some of Henry II’s Irish guests continued to abhor it. Montanari suggests
that some people might have to eat high-status foods despite disliking them and
Chris Woolgar has argued that at least in the later Middle Ages, the colour,
presentation, and shape of foods at feasts were sometimes more important than
their taste.137 One can imagine that some diners, when first introduced to strange
spices or exotic game meats, might have wished for plainer fare. Nonetheless, the
power of culture to shape taste undoubtedly meant that the elites John entertained
delighted even in dishes that modern people might find terrible.
While the sources do not speak in any detail about what made food tasty, they
do take for granted that food and drink were a source of pleasure. One can point,
for instance, to the famous story in which Louis VII of France enumerated all the
wealth and power possessed by other rulers, especially Henry II, but said that in
France they had bread and wine and joy.138 The last word on food at court, how-
ever, should be left to Peter of Blois. Despite his complaints about the quality of
food for those chasing the king around the countryside, when he imagined a
worldly cleric explaining his decision to serve there, among the enticements the
cleric listed was the exquisite and sumptuous food at court.139
For all the tensions feasting might cause, there were plenty of obvious ways in
which it also brought pleasure: good food and wine, of course; cultivated man-
ners and service; entertainment and spectacle; the delight in wearing and behold-
ing fine clothes or seeing glittering dishes of precious metals; good conversation;
and the chance to see friends and acquaintances from far away. For the king, there
was the satisfaction of being the centre of attention and of presiding over an occa-
sion that brought honour and prestige. For honoured guests there might be the
gratification of getting a seat that displayed one’s status, and for the socially ambi-
tious, there could be the thrill of being favoured with drink from the king’s special
wine or morsels from his own dishes. A description of John’s brother, Richard I,
may give a sense of the pleasure that sharing food and drink could bring even to
a king under great pressure. Ralph of Coggeshall condemned Richard’s increased
harshness and greed after his return from crusade and captivity. ‘At the table,
however, placed with his inner circle, he appeared affable and agreeable, because
his jokes and games with them relaxed his savage spirit.’140 Coggeshall is
probably referring to informal meals, but he nonetheless shows the solace a
shared meal with the right company could provide. Perhaps John found similar
relaxation eating with his favourites or at the great feasts he presided over.
Feasting may have been a significant foundation of soft power, but it was also an
important source of pleasure.
Those who followed the royal court about the countryside did not always have
wonderful dining experiences, but royal administrators worked to ensure that the
king and those closest to him got the best possible food and drink. The
137 Montanari, Medieval Tastes, 13, 72; Woolgar, ‘Fast and Feast,’ 22–3.
138 Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium, 450–1; Gerald of Wales, Instruction for a Ruler, 714–15.
139 C. Wollin, ed., Petri Blesensis Carmina (Turnhout, 1998), 267.
140 Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, 92.
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acquisition of good wine and food, the frequent use of spices, and the rewards
lavished on cooks show the court participating fully in the development of the
complex European cuisine found in the late Middle Ages. John and his govern-
ment also contributed to the development of Bordeaux as a wine district, first by
losing the lands from which they had once drawn much of their wine, then by
making large-scale purchases from the region. Food and feasting bolstered royal
power by giving the king an opportunity to show his magnificence and generos-
ity, build ties with his magnates, and, thanks to the customary manners of the
period, reinforce their deference. As always, enemies and critics could contest the
king’s soft power, in this case by telling stories of his envy or treacherous behav-
iour. And, as one would expect, food and feasting were great sources of pleasure.
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7
Places and Spaces
7.1 Introduction
In late June 1212, as the king travelled through northern England, his cooks set
up a makeshift kitchen in the local reeve’s barn in Haltwhistle, Northumberland,
then accidently burned the barn down.1 When modern people think of life at
royal and imperial courts, we usually think of great palaces like Versailles,
Buckingham Palace, and the Forbidden City, not makeshift kitchens in rural
barns. John did own palaces, including Westminster Palace with its huge great
hall. However, because his court was constantly on the move, court life could not
be focused around one great palace or even a handful of them. John had scores of
castles and other residences scattered throughout England, with many more in
his continental lands (at least until 1204), and some in Ireland.2 Therefore, one
must also imagine the royal court in castles, hunting lodges, and even the occa-
sional monastery. Tents and luxurious pavilions also played a role. However, John,
like many other rulers, spent much of his time outdoors. Not only did hunting
and falconry take the court to forests and wetlands, but much of court life, includ-
ing moments of social and cultural significance, took place on the road, often
quite literally.
The first sections of the chapter will discuss King John’s buildings and his tents
and pavilions. An important shift in castle studies over the past couple of decades,
which has de-emphasized their military importance in favour of their domestic
and ceremonial sides, will inform this discussion. This new castellology places
particular emphasis on the presence of designed landscapes around castles and
other residences. The chapter will proceed outward from designed landscapes
to less domesticated, albeit heavily managed wetlands and forests to investigate
contemporary perceptions of these settings. How did John and his courtiers
experience these environments and how should this affect our thinking about
designed landscapes? Itineration and its impact on social (and therefore political)
relations between king and magnates is the next topic. The importance of horses,
horse trappings, and processions will be investigated, as will the place of John’s
Power and Pleasure: Court Life under King John, 1199–1216. Hugh M. Thomas, Oxford University Press (2020).
© Hugh M. Thomas. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198802518.003.0007
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court in the long history of the ceremonial adventus or royal entry. The chapter
will end with a discussion of the relative importance of power, contestation, and
pleasure in the interactions of the court with the places and spaces in which they
found themselves.3
Though John had inherited many castles, palaces, and hunting lodges, he invested
heavily in building and refurbishing various kinds of residences. In England
alone, the incomplete records show that he spent over £17,000 on castles, includ-
ing over £2,000 on Scarborough Castle alone, and over £4,000 on other kinds of
residences. R. Allen Brown, who compiled these figures, convincingly argued that
John was instrumental in determining where such expenditures were made.4
Several scholars have noted his acquisition of new unfortified residences in
England despite the large number he inherited.5 In the past, however, attention
has focused on John and other medieval kings as castle builders. In John’s case,
the imbalance in money spent on castles and other residences helped justify this
approach. More generally, however, the traditional emphasis on political and
military history meant that the military architecture of castles received far more
attention than domestic architecture. Now, however, scholars pay increased atten-
tion to purely domestic architecture.6 More important has been a revolution in
castle studies, whereby castles are seen not only as fortresses, but as aristocratic
homes surrounded by designed or ornamental landscapes. In this new picture,
castles are similar to the great country homes of early modern and modern
3 For an overview of the theoretical background on place and space, see Janette Dillon, The
Language of Space in Court Performance, 1400–1625 (Cambridge, 2010), 6–8.
4 Colvin, History of the King’s Works, 2:51–91; R. Allen Brown, ‘Royal Castle Building in England,
1154–1216,’ Castles, Conquest and Charters: Collected Papers (Woodbridge, 1989), 19–64; Madeline,
Les Plantagenêts et leur empire, 37.
5 Thomas Beaumont James, The Palaces of Medieval England c. 1050–1550: Royalty, Nobility, the
Episcopate and Their Residences from Edward the Confessor to Henry VIII (London, 1990), 57; Steane,
The Archaeology of the Medieval English Monarchy, 81; Danziger and Gillingham, 1215, 170.
6 This interest in domestic architecture does, however, have earlier roots; P. A. Faulkner, ‘Domestic
Planning from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Centuries,’ The Archaeological Journal 115 (1958),
150–83; Rahtz, Excavations at King John’s Hunting Lodge; Margaret Wood, Norman Domestic
Architecture (London, 1974); Philip Rahtz, The Saxon and Medieval Palaces at Cheddar: Excavations
1960–62 (Oxford, 1979); Annie Renoux, Fécamp. Du palais ducal au palais de dieu (Paris, 1991);
Annie Renoux, ‘Résidences et châteaux ducaux normands au XIIe siècles: L’apport des sources compt-
ables et des données archéologiques,’ in Maylis Baylé, ed., L’architecture Normande en Moyen Âge
(Caen, 1997), 1:197–217; Michael Thompson, The Medieval Hall: The Basis of Secular Domestic Life,
600–1600 ad (Aldershot, 1995); Graham D. Keevil, Medieval Palaces: An Archaeology (Stroud, 2000);
Gwyn Meirion-Jones, Edward Impey, and Michael Jones, eds., The Seigneurial Residence in Western
Europe ad c. 800–1600 (Oxford, 2002); Reeve, ‘Gothic Architecture and the Civilizing Process,’
93–109; Morgan, Beds and Chambers; Rollason, Power of Place, 9–98.
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aristocrats. Some of this new work focuses on the buildings themselves.7 Much of
it encompasses both buildings and landscapes.8 The findings of the new castellol-
ogy are only slowly making their way into the wider historiography, but Fanny
Madeline, in her detailed study of the building works of Henry II and his sons,
has applied many of its lessons to their residences.9 I will narrow her focus to
John’s reign.
What are the main findings of the recent work? A number of scholars have
emphasized castles and palaces as status symbols and markers of authority
designed to impress and even overawe visitors and viewers. Their high status
could be reinforced by visual references to past powers—such as the Romans—as
7 P. A. Faulkner, ‘Castle Planning in the Fourteenth Century,’ The Archaeological Journal 120 (1963),
215–35; T. A. Heslop, ‘Orford Castle, Nostalgia, and Sophisticated Living,’ Architectural History
34 (1991), 36–58; Crouch, Image of Aristocracy, 252–80; T. A. Heslop, Norwich Castle Keep: Romanesque
Architecture and Social Context (Norwich, 1994); Pamela Marshall, ‘The Ceremonial Function of the
Donjon in the Twelfth Century,’ Château Gaillard 20 (2002), 141–51; Pamela Marshall, ‘The Great
Tower as Residence,’ in Gwyn Meirion-Jones, Edward Impey, and Michael Jones, eds., The Seigneurial
Residence in Western Europe ad c. 800–1600 (Oxford, 2002), 27–44; Pamela Marshall, ‘Some Thoughts
on the Use of the Anglo-Norman Donjon,’ in John A. Davies et al., eds., Castles and the Anglo-Norman
World (Oxford, 2015), 159–74; Jeremy A. Ashbee, ‘The Function of the White Tower under the
Normans,’ in Edward Impey, ed., The White Tower (New Haven, CT, 2008), 125–39; Leonie V. Hicks,
‘Magnificent Entrances and Undignified Exits: Chronicling the Symbolism of Castle Space in
Normandy,’ Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009), 52–69; Jervis, Pottery and Social Life, 98–103. Much
of this work has been Anglophone, but for castles and soft power, see Annie Renoux, ‘Les fondemonts
architecturaux du pouvoir princier en France (fin XIe–début XIIIe siècle),’ in Les Princes et le Pouvoir
au Moyen Ages. Actes du XXIIIe congrès de la SHMESP (Paris, 1993), 167–94. For an overview of
French and German work on royal and princely palaces and residences, see Schmitt and Oexle, eds.,
Les tendances actuelles, 307–96. For a good study of how people thought about castles in the period,
see Abigail Wheatley, The Idea of the Castle in Medieval England (York, 2004).
8 James and Robinson, Clarendon Palace; James, Palaces of Medieval England; James and Gerrard,
Clarendon; Michael Hughes, ‘Hampshire Castles and the Landscape 1066–1200,’ Landscape History
11 (1989), 27–60; Paul Everson, ‘Delightfully Surrounded with Woods and Ponds: Field Evidence for
Medieval Gardens as Large-Scale Designed Landscapes,’ in Paul Pattison, ed., There by Design: Field
Archaeology in Parks and Gardens (Oxford, 1998), 32–8; Christopher Taylor, Parks and Gardens of
Britain: A Landscape History from the Air (Edinburgh, 1998); Christopher Taylor, ‘Medieval
Ornamental Landscapes,’ Landscapes 1 (2000), 38–55; Oliver H. Creighton, Castles and Landscapes
(London, 2002); Oliver H. Creighton, Designs upon the Land: Elite Landscapes of the Middle Ages
(Woodbridge, 2009); Oliver H. Creighton, Early European Castles: Aristocracy and Authority, ad
800–1200 (London, 2012); Oliver H. Creighton and R. A. Higham, ‘Castle Studies and the “Landscape”
Agenda,’ Landscape History 26 (2006), 5–18; Matthew Johnson, Behind the Castle Gate: From the
Middle Ages to the Renaissance (London, 2002); Charles Coulson, Castles in Medieval Society:
Fortresses in England, France, and Ireland in the Central Middle Ages (Oxford, 2003); Robert Liddiard,
‘Landscapes of Lordship’: Norman Castles and the Countryside in Medieval Norfolk, 1066–1200 (Oxford,
2000); Robert Liddiard, ‘Castle Rising, Norfolk: A “Landscape of Lordship”?’ Anglo-Norman Studies
22 (2000), 169–86; Robert Liddiard, Castles in Context: Power, Symbolism and Landscape, 1066 to 1500
(Macclesfield, 2005); Amanda Richardson, The Forest, Park and Palace of Clarendon, c. 1200–c. 1650:
Reconstructing an Actual, Conceptual and Documented Wiltshire Landscape (Oxford, 2005); Amanda
Richardson, ‘ “The King’s Chief Delights”: A Landscape Approach to the Royal Parks of Post-Conquest
England,’ in Robert Liddiard, ed., The Medieval Park: New Perspectives (Windgather, 2007), 27–48;
Richardson, ‘Beyond the Castle Gate,’ 35–53; Jon Gregory and Robert Liddiard, ‘Visible from Afar?
The Setting of the Anglo-Norman Donjon,’ in John A. Davies et al., eds., Castles and the Anglo-
Norman World (Oxford, 2015), 147–58; Rollason, Power of Place, 9–239. Some key articles by Coulson
and others have been collected in Robert Liddiard, ed., Late Medieval Castles (Woodbridge, 2016).
9 Madeline, Les Plantagenêts et leur empire, 287–314.
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well as the incorporation of very old elements, like prehistoric earthworks. They
often included striking facades and ornamentation designed for visual effect
rather than military purposes, even if the intended effect was militaristic in
nature. Thus elements of designs could appear defensive, but be ineffective in
actual fighting. Philip Dixon has described specific buildings within castles as
theatres of lordship. Focusing on Knaresborough, he notes the inclusion of design
features, for instance light shining from a window onto the high seat of the owner,
that could enhance his or her authority. He has even argued that convoluted
approaches to important rooms may have been intended to keep guests off bal-
ance rather than deter attackers.10 Scholars using the technique of access analysis,
which studies the ability of people to move through buildings, argue that castles
and other residences were designed to control and limit access to the owner and
set up spaces that were intended not so much for privacy as for intimate groups.
Kings and particularly queens often had chambers that were as far removed as
possible from the main entrance, at least in terms of intervening gates, doors, and
other barriers that could prevent visitors from moving further.11 Even the Anglo-
Norman donjon or great tower, the military refuge of last resort in earlier think-
ing, may have been designed as much for ceremonial purposes as for defence or
residence. Defence was merely one consideration in castle design.
The relation between elite dwellings and the surrounding landscape has
received even more attention than the buildings themselves. One focus is on
viewsheds. Castles and palaces, the argument goes, were placed to be seen from
far around in order to increase their impact as visual representations of lordship
and power. They were also often sited to command a view of the surrounding
countryside, both to see approaching enemies and to provide a pleasurable pros-
pect. Rooftop viewing areas and windows with seats built into them could
enhance the experience. Adjuncts to castles and palaces such as forests, parks,
fishponds, gardens, orchards, vineyards, dovecotes, and walkways had practical
purposes but also helped to create a designed and partly ornamental landscape.
Having a park or forest close by made hunting convenient and let castle owners
and their followers look out on a striking landscape of trees and woodland
10 Philip Dixon, ‘The Donjon of Knaresborough: The Castle as Theatre,’ Château Gaillard 14 (1990),
121–39; Philip Dixon, ‘Design in Castle Building: The Controlling of Access to the Lord,’ Château
Gaillard 18 (1998), 47–56. See also Creighton, Early European Castles, 109–24.
11 Amanda Richardson, ‘Gender and Space in English Royal Palaces c.1160–c.1547: A Study in
Access Analysis and Imagery,’ Medieval Archaeology 47 (2003), 131–65; Katherine Weikert, ‘Place and
Prestige: Enacting and Displaying Authority in English Domestic Spaces during the Central Middle
Ages,’ in Scott D. Stull, ed., From West to East: Current Approaches to Medieval Archaeology
(Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2014), 91–115; Katherine Weikert, ‘Creating a Choreographed Space: English
Anglo-Norman Keeps in the Twelfth Century,’ in Liz Thomas and Jill Campbell, eds., Buildings in
Society: International Studies in the Historic Era (Oxford, 2018), 127–39. David Crouch in particular
emphasizes that intimacy rather than privacy was the aim; Crouch, Image of Aristocracy, 265–6. For
the importance of controlling access generally, see Vale, Princely Court, 58–9; Vincent, ‘The Court of
Henry II,’ 313–14.
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pasture. Vivaries or fishponds provided not only fresh fish but also sheets of
reflective water that enhanced the beauty of the surrounding area. Along with
providing food and medicine, gardens were places to enjoy. Chapels and hermit-
ages were primarily religious, but could also increase the allure of the landscape.
Even apparently defensive features—like moats and earthworks—could enhance
the aesthetic interest of the surroundings, and earthworks could also serve as
viewing platforms. Carefully designed, complicated routes up to castles or palaces
displayed the impressiveness of the buildings and the pleasures of the surround-
ing landscape. Thus, later landscape designers like Capability Brown drew on a
tradition that went back at least to the twelfth century and possibly earlier.
The new approach to castles has proved controversial, despite points of wide-
spread agreement.12 Everyone acknowledges that castles had domestic as well as
military functions, and members of the newer school accept that many castles
had military functions. The debate is over the degree to which castles should be
seen as fortresses or great houses, over specific interpretations of individual castles,
and over the extent to which the new claims are grounded in the evidence. Much
of the debate rests on the surviving buildings, ruins, and landscape features, since
castle owners and designers left few records of their intentions. At best, the writ-
ten sources provide brief references from which modern readers must make
broad inferences about the purposes of castles. However, the narrative sources do
show that contemporaries clearly viewed castles and palaces as parts of land-
scapes. The new work on castles cites several convincing examples such as charac-
ters taking pleasure in looking out of windows at the surrounding landscapes in
the romances of Chrétien de Troyes or Gerald of Wales and others depicting the
palace of the bishop of Lincoln at Stow as ‘delightfully surrounded by woods
and ponds.’13 Indeed, once one begins looking, descriptions of buildings in
landscapes, admittedly often brief, pop up frequently.14 Some of these relate to the
castles or residences of John. The Anonymous of Béthune described John’s
favoured residence at Freemantle as being on top of a hill in the midst of a forest.15
In his poetic panegyric of Philip II, William the Breton often noted the fields,
12 Liddiard, Castles in Context, 1–11; Colin Platt, ‘Revisionism in Castle Studies: A Caution,’
Medieval Archaeology 51 (2007), 83–102; O. H. Creighton and Robert Liddiard, ‘Fighting Yesterday’s
Battle: Beyond War or Status in Castle Studies,’ Medieval Archaeology 52 (2008), 161–9.
13 Chrétien de Troyes, Œuvres complètes, 57, 863, 881; Gerald of Wales, Opera, 7:72–3; Adam of
Eynsham, Magna Vita Sancti Hugonis, 1:104; Everson, ‘Delightfully Surrounded,’ 32; Taylor, ‘Medieval
Ornamental Landscapes,’ 39; Coulson, Castles in Medieval Society, 126–7; Creighton, Castles and
Landscapes, 4–5; Creighton, Designs upon the Land, 167, 180, 214; Liddiard, Castles in Context,
111–19, 142–3.
14 Daniel of Beccles, Urbanus Magnus, 72; Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium, 454–5; Thomas of
Marlborough, History of the Abbey of Evesham, ed. Jane E. Sayers and Leslie Watkiss (Oxford, 2003),
46–7; Wace, Roman de Brut, 256; Layamon, Layamon: Brut, 2:632–3; Holden, ed., Waldef, 99; Otto of
Freising and Rahewin, Gesta Friderici I Imperator, ed. G. Waitz and B. de Simson, 3rd ed. (Hanover,
1912), 344–5; Peter of Blois, Opera, 200.
15 Anonymous of Béthune, Histoire des ducs, 147.
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Though John spent more on castles than unfortified residences, he still expended
large sums on the latter. For instance, he spent over £500 on Kingshaugh,
Nottinghamshire, building a residence and enclosing a park there.20 Moreover,
the gap between the £17,000 spent on castles and the £4,000 paid out for other
residences is misleading, since much of the money spent on castles went to
domestic buildings within them. Unfortunately, the royal records rarely break
down expenditures on castles, but the frequent references to money spent on the
king’s ‘houses’ in castles suggest that much was spent on non-military aspects.21
Sometimes the expenditures on individual residences in castles was quite high; of
the over £1,400 spent on Corfe Castle, at least £275, and possibly far more, went
The king could also use an invitation into a special space to show favour. Thus,
after a long election dispute at Bury St Edmunds (and during the period John was
negotiating with the barons at Runnymede), he signalled his favour to the new
abbot by inviting him to sit on his royal bed with him after dinner at Windsor
Castle.31 That John consciously included small intimate spaces in his building
plans is shown by the reference in one royal writ to the construction of a privata
camera at Hereford Castle.32 No one has performed a systematic analysis of access
in any of the buildings John had constructed, but it is noteworthy that he placed
his new residential block at Corfe Castle behind an inherited great donjon, fur-
thest away from the outer gates (see Figure 7.1).33 Like his contemporaries, John
used architecture to create secluded and intimate spaces.
Though in ruins, John’s domestic buildings at Corfe reveal much else. His
predecessors had chosen an impressive site for the castle, high atop a hill with
Figure 7.1 Plan of Corfe Castle. King John’s residential block with the gloriette is in
the upper right of the plan.
© National Trust/Front Row Graphics Ludgershall; Historic England.
31 Thomson, ed., Chronicle of the Election of Hugh, 170–1. 32 RLC 41a.
33 Some of the outer stone walls in the image were later than John’s reign, but the access route to the
inner parts of the castle would probably have been the same.
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sources indicate that royal pavilions could be highly decorated, featuring gilded
pommels and crests among other ornamental features.38 Indeed, in wartime, lux-
urious tents and pavilions were eagerly sought as plunder.39 John seems not to
have relied on these temporary lodgings during his regular itineration; he and
other rulers used them mainly for military campaigns or great gatherings for
feasts and assemblies when permanent buildings were insufficient.40 In both cir-
cumstances, tents and pavilions were important displays of royal magnificence.
Less survives about John’s tents and pavilions than is ideal, but passing references
to them, their use, and the men in charge of them are scattered throughout the
royal records.41 John was certainly willing to invest resources in them, at one point
spending over £71 for ten pavilions and related incidentals.42 The French boasted
that when John retreated from La Roche-au-Moines during the 1214 campaign,
they seized the royal pavilions, revealing their symbolic importance. William the
Breton described them as being woven with barbaric thread, indicating that they
were made of some special cloth or decorated with embroidery.43 This suggests the
likely magnificence of at least some of John’s pavilions, and indicates that his
mobile structures, like his more permanent ones, were designed to impress.
Did John oversee the creation of designed, aesthetically pleasing landscapes? The
evidence must be pieced together, as is inevitably the case for the Middle Ages. He
certainly had a model patron in his father, Henry II, who was responsible for
Everswell in the park at Woodstock, one of the most famous designs of the Middle
Ages. Now lost, it is known from written records and a seventeenth-century
sketch. Henry had a fountain built there in the 1160s that fed a series of ponds,
and thirteenth-century sources record a chamber called Rosamund’s chamber,
after Henry’s mistress, Rosamund Clifford, which (if the name was original) may
38 Lachaud, ‘Les tentes et l’activité militaire,’ 448–9; Schröder, Macht und Gabe, 248–55; Madeline,
Les Plantagenêts et leur empire, 276. For some literary descriptions of tents see Marie de France, Lais,
138–9; Ewert, ed., Gui de Warewic, 1:118–19; Chrétien de Troyes, Œuvres complètes, 701; Hue de
Rotelande, Ipomedon, 212–13; Emmanuèle Baumpartner, ‘Peintur et écriture: la description de la tente
dans les romans antiques au XIIe siècle,’ in Danielle Buschinger, ed., Sammlung—Deutung—Wertung.
Ergebnisse Probleme, Tendenzen und Perspektiven philologischer Arbeit (Stuttgart 1988), 3–11.
39 Ambroise, History of the Holy War, 1:27, 169–72; Stubbs, ed., Itinerarium, 194, 390; Holden,
Gregory, and Crouch, eds., History of William Marshal, 2:30–1.
40 Gervase of Canterbury, Historical Works, 1:474; Ambroise, History of the Holy War, 1:136;
Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, 5:574.
41 For the purchase, repair, and carting of tents, see PR6J 125; PR7J 133; PR11J 27; PR13J 107–8;
PR14J 44; Misae 14J 241; RLC 28b, 100a–b, 119a, 125b–126a, 128b, 166b; Prest Roll 7J 270–1; Prest Roll
12J 208. For royal use of them in wartime, see Prest Roll 12J 181; RLC 207a.
42 PR13J 108.
43 Guillaume le Breton, ‘Philippidos,’ 293; Anonymous of Béthune, Histoire des ducs, 144;
Anonymous of Béthune, ‘Chronique des rois de France,’ 767.
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have been used as a place for their trysts. H. M. Colvin long ago proposed two
possible inspirations for this garden: the water gardens of Sicily, Spain, and the
Islamic world, or a garden described in the romance of Tristan and Isolde. The
garden, of course, was part of a larger landscape, including the palace of
Woodstock and the rest of the park.44 Clearly, sophisticated landscape design
existed by the time John came to the throne.
The royal records show that John paid for various elements that modern w riters
argue went into the designed landscapes. I have already noted John’s expenditures
on parks, which were a key component of landscapes of lordship in the period.45
I have also noted the construction of fishponds.46 In his fifth year, John paid over
£10 to have a garden enclosed at Marlborough; this large sum suggests either a
spacious walled garden within the castle or an even larger fenced one nearby.47
Dovecotes provided a prestigious food source but could also be an element in
designed landscapes, and John had several built.48 Even the hermitages that John
established at some of his hunting residences may have been intended not only
for religious purposes, but also to imitate the landscapes of romances, which
often featured hermits in wooded areas.49 Although some of these features were
added piecemeal, they could have been intended to reshape existing landscapes.
In some cases, however, several features were added together, suggesting the
possibility of sustained design programmes intended to reshape the features of a
castle or palace and the land around it. For instance, when John had the garden
built at Marlborough, he had work done on the fishpond and the castle there. At
Tewkesbury, John had mews constructed and a park enclosed in conjunction with
work on chimneys and windows in one round of renovations; in another, he had a
kitchen and dovecote built along with work on the defences and a chamber and
44 Colvin, History of the King’s Works, 2:1013–16; Howard Colvin, ‘Royal Gardens in Medieval
England,’ in Elisabeth B. MacDougall, ed., Medieval Gardens (Washington, D.C., 1986), 7–22, at
18–20; James Bond, ‘Woodstock Park in the Middle Ages,’ in James Bond and Kate Tiller, eds.,
Blenheim: Landscape for a Palace (Stroud, 1987), 22–54, at 46–8; Ashbee, ‘Cloisters in English
Palaces,’ 78–83.
45 See Chapter 2, 28–30. For parks as landscapes, see Bond, ‘Woodstock Park in the Middle Ages,’
22–54; John Cummins, ‘Veneurs s’en vont en Paradis: Medieval Hunting and the “Natural” Landscape,’
in John Howe and Michael Wolfe, eds., Inventing Medieval Landscapes: Senses of Place in Western
Europe (Gainesville, FL, 2002), 33–55; Richardson, ‘King’s Chief Delights,’ 27–48; Aleksander
Pluskowski, ‘The Social Construction of Medieval Park Ecosystems: An Interdisciplinary Perspective,’
in Robert Liddiard, ed., The Medieval Park: New Perspectives (Windgather, 2007), 63–78; Creighton,
Designs upon the Land, 122–66; Mileson, Parks in Medieval England, 82–115; Fletcher, Gardens of
Earthly Delight, 83–96; Sharon Farmer, ‘Aristocratic Power and the “Natural” Landscape: The Garden
Park at Hesdin, ca. 1291–1302,’ Speculum 88 (2013), 644–80; Fiona Beglane, Anglo-Norman Parks in
Medieval Ireland (Dublin, 2015), 122–60.
46 See Chapter 6, 128.
47 PR5J 161. For medieval gardens, see John Harvey, Mediaeval Gardens (London, 1981); Teresa
McLean, English Medieval Gardens (New York, 1981).
48 PR8J 126, 149; PR13J 67; PR16J 69; RLC 15b, 53a.
49 See Chapter 5, 113–114; Richardson, Forest, Park and Palace of Clarendon, 132–4; Creighton,
Designs upon the Land, 19, 139–40.
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other domestic buildings.50 Clearly the king thought about altering his castles in
conjunction with the landscapes around them.
In detailed studies, archaeologists and landscape historians have argued that
two castles that John built or substantially altered, Ludgershall in Wiltshire, and
Odiham in Hampshire, contained elements of landscape design. John held
Ludgershall for part of Richard I’s reign and all of his own, and the pipe rolls show
several expenditures on it, including for the repairs of a park. There were eventu-
ally two parks at Ludgershall, one of which was adjacent to the castle on the north
side. This was a long, narrow park running east to west, and the north part of the
castle intruded into it, making the park particularly narrow as it passed the castle.
Within the northern section of the castle, a tower and a chamber block were built
around 1200, and are probably attributable to John. Curiously, the section of the
earthworks near these buildings and overlooking the park was broad and flat.
Traditionally, the earthworks have been viewed as defensive, but in a recent study
of Ludgershall, Paul Everson and Graham Brown have reinterpreted this part as
ornamental, a terraced walk designed to give a view into the park. Everson sug-
gests that the north park was used for drive hunts that could be viewed from the
earthworks, the upper floor of the chamber block, and the roof of the tower. In
other words, key parts of Ludgershall Castle were designed not for defence but to
facilitate admiration of the royal hunt (see Figures 7.2 and 7.3). Given the prob-
lems of dating and the lack of written evidence, this interpretation must be tenta-
tive, but would certainly fit in with John’s love of hunting.51
Odiham was one of the castles on which John spent most freely, over £1,200,
and Graham Brown has argued that it was set in an ornamental, watery landscape.52
The castle was besieged by Louis in his invasion of England, so it certainly had
military uses, but according to the Anonymous of Béthune, John had built it for
enjoyment (que li rois fist faire por lui deporter). The chronicler described it as
placed in a beautiful meadow near woods,53 and the castle was built on two
moated platforms in a bend in the river Whitewater, surrounded by riparian
wetlands ideal for falconry. Nearby was a large park, 4 miles in circumference.54
At some point, an octagonal tower was built there, which Madeline has inter-
preted in symbolic terms, parallel to Heslop’s findings about the symbolic aspects
of Henry II’s polygonal donjon at Orford.55 Brown suggests the tower may be
somewhat later, but attributes the remains of a heavily decorated doorway to
John’s reign, indicating that his buildings may have been highly ornamented.
Figure 7.2 Reconstruction of Ludgershall Castle and view of the north deer park.
Peter Dunn, Historic England.
Legend:
Tower and chamber block
Earthworks
Town
0 0.25 0.5 Miles
deer park South deer park
k
par
eer
To d
Legend:
Octagonal tower
Earthworks
Moat
are
River
ew
hit
Marsh
ver W
Road
Ri
Brown argues that broad flat-topped platforms on the site could have served as
promenades to look across the river and marshes and back into the castle and any
gardens therein. The site, with its two enclosed platforms, was designed to control
access to the king. As at Corfe, the royal residences were furthest from the
entrance. Furthermore, the complicated routes to the castle and between the cas-
tle and park seem to have been designed to provide eye-catching views. Once
again, the conclusion must remain somewhat conjectural, but it is likely that
Odiham, like Ludgershall, can be seen as a castle/great house set in an ornamen-
tal landscape (see Figure 7.4).
Towards the end of Designs upon the Land: Elite Landscapes of the Middle Ages,
Oliver Creighton asks, ‘Did the landscapes with which this book has been con-
cerned have aesthetic value to medieval contemporaries?’ His answer is an
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emphatic yes.56 Though this view has gained widespread acceptance among
specialists in landscape and castle studies, those outside the field, and even some
insiders, may be sceptical. The occasional references to the beauty of a landscape
feature outside a royal dwelling or to pleasure from viewing such features show
that medieval people received aesthetic pleasure from them, but one may reason-
ably ask if the aesthetic pleasures were secondary to utility.57 Were earthworks,
fishponds, and parks created for beauty or for defensive purposes, fresh fish, and
good hunting? Did kings, queens, and aristocrats find beauty in the forests or
wetlands in which they hunted with dogs and birds of prey, or did they value such
lands mainly because of their usefulness?
A number of scholars, mostly in literary fields, have studied medieval attitudes
towards forests and, to a lesser degree, wetlands, and their work shows the rich
and complex ways medieval people responded to these environments.58 These
studies are useful, but their findings are not always simple to apply to historical
contexts. Like writers of all periods, medieval authors used landscapes symbolic
ally. They were heavily influenced by classical traditions of the locus amoenus or
pleasant place, a literary landscape that typically combined various features like
trees, fountains, birdsong, and the sighing of the wind. Such classically inspired
traditions could possibly have been imitatively antiquarian and thus not reflect
contemporary views, though because learned clerics formed an important part of
the elite and Latin traditions heavily affected vernacular literature, the greater
likelihood is that classical views of nature and the landscape influenced medieval
aristocratic ones. Christian religious interpretations, particularly the idea of
wilder landscapes as the wilderness to which the religious should retreat, also
shaped narrative accounts.59 Moreover, we can easily be misled by our cultural
assumptions about landscapes and environments, which are influenced by spe-
cific cultural movements, like Romanticism and environmentalism, and based
partly on distinctive modern interactions with landscapes. The issue of medieval
perceptions of landscapes, both designed and undersigned, is a huge and complex
subject, and here I will only take on a small piece of the puzzle, arguing that a
modern tendency to contrast practical functionality and aesthetic value may
encourage us to see a binary choice between utility and beauty. Since the industrial
revolution and the rise of Romanticism and the celebration of art for art’s sake, it
is easy to view economic production and beauty as opposed. Here I will argue
that for medieval taste, beauty and utility, far from being mutually exclusive, went
hand in hand.
I start with a neglected set of descriptions by Gerald of Wales of the royal forest
of Treville in Herefordshire.60 He tells the story of how Abbot Adam of Dore,
Gerald’s rival for the bishopric of St David’s, persuaded Richard I, late in his reign,
to sell part of the land there for timber by falsely asserting it was a poor forest and
a lair for robbers. After Richard’s death, however, John, who knew the woods well
from having hunted in them, discovered the deception and tried, ultimately
unsuccessfully, to reverse matters. Gerald stresses the abbot’s duplicity by heaping
praise on this foresta amoena. It was beautiful and striking (pulchra et praeclara),
even extremely beautiful (pulcherrima), delightful and elegant (delectabilis et dec-
ora), splendid to look at (ad speculum speciosa), and far excelled all the other
woods and royal forests in England by its unique splendour (speciocitas). What
made this woodland so extraordinary? Although the part of the manuscript with
a detailed description is fragmentary, several features stand out. One was that it
was filled with wild beasts; in other words, a good hunting ground. But Gerald
also wrote about the woodland itself, with its noble trees, and tall, upright oaks,
straight underneath and branching out only at the top, ‘arranged as though
ordered through a kind of natural artifice to delight the viewer.’ He described the
ground beneath as flat, as if levelled with a plane, and free of underbrush. Anyone
who has seen old growth forests on flat lands will know that sometimes they can
have the atmosphere of a cathedral, with trunks as columns and the foliage as a
vaulted ceiling, and one wonders if Gerald, who as a child built sand monasteries
and churches in the place of sandcastles, saw it this way.61 However, the other
thing that stands out about this landscape was its utility. Tall, straight oaks would
make excellent timber for major building projects, and Gerald explicitly praised
the timber the forest could provide. A flat woodland with little underbrush would
have been an exceptional venue for a par force hunt. Even the mention of excel-
lent waters, a standard feature of the locus amoenus, came in conjunction with a
mill. In Gerald’s description, visual beauty and utility were closely united.
The compatibility of beauty with utility also becomes clear from twelfth-century
descriptions of the Isle of Ely and other sites, mainly monastic, adjacent to wetlands
or other watery environments and combining designed and heavily reconfigured
landscape elements with wetlands and forests.62 In discussing these descriptions,
60 Gerald of Wales, Opera, 1:104; 4:186–92, 206. 61 Gerald of Wales, Opera, 1:21.
62 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum: The History of the English People, ed. Diana E. Greenway
(Oxford, 1996), 348–9, 692–3; E. O. Blake, ed., Liber Eliensis, Camden Society, 3rd ser., 92 (London,
1962), 2–5, 180–1, 398–400; Pauline A. Thompson and Elizabeth Stevens, ‘Gregory of Ely’s Verse Life
and Miracles of St. Æthelthryth,’ Analecta Bollandiana 106 (1988), 333–90, at 360–2; W. Dunn
MacRay, ed., Chronicon Abbatiae Ramseiensis (London, 1886), 7–8, 38.
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Catherine Clarke and Stephen Rippon have rightly stressed the emphasis on
reclaiming land through the draining of wetlands.63 As they say, the reclamation
of wild lands could be a metaphor for reclaiming souls, and of course reclaimed
land was also land made more productive. However, reclamation was not the
whole story. In most cases the writers also praise the un-reclaimed wetlands
and sometimes woodlands as well. Thus Henry of Huntingdon noted ‘very
beautiful fens’ (pulcherrimas paludes) at Peterborough, and the Ramsey Chronicler
described the beauty (pulchritudo) of Ramsey mere and the pleasure of looking at
another one nearby. The descriptions of wetlands and woodlands, above all at Ely,
emphasized their suitability for hunting and fishing, though, as Susan Oosthuizen
has noted, writers also stressed the richness of the pasture provided by periodically
flooded meadows.64 The descriptions note decorative elements, including zephyrs,
songbirds, and flowers, but utility nonetheless remained crucial in making
managed woods and wetlands, as well as reclaimed lands, beautiful. Another facet
of the descriptions was the inclusion of multiple elements in them, including
domestic animals, gardens, fields, meadows, fruit trees, ponds, fountains, and
even buildings, suggesting that John’s contemporaries valued variety in their
landscapes.
The above descriptions do not refer to landscapes around royal residences.
Nonetheless, these descriptions provide several lessons. They show an appreci
ation for both landscapes that were heavily reshaped by humans and those where
the human footprint was less intensive. They also show that contemporaries
found beauty in variety and that the mixture of landscape elements around castles
and palaces may have existed for both utilitarian and aesthetic purposes. Above
all, they show that the aesthetic and the utilitarian could be tied closely together
in responses to landscapes and that utility may have added to aesthetic pleasure.
Thus any question of whether rulers and magnates reshaped the landscapes
around their residences for utilitarian or aesthetic purposes may represent a false
dichotomy. For John and other great lords, reshaping the countryside around
their residences made them both more useful and more beautiful.
From a modern perspective, the itinerant nature of medieval kingship seems both
strange and unpleasant. The latter viewpoint is not entirely anachronistic: two of
the ablest writers of the twelfth century, Walter Map and Peter of Blois, hated
63 Clarke, Literary Landscapes, 67–89; Stephen Rippon, ‘ “Uncommonly Rich and Fertile” or “not
very Salubrious”? The Perception and Value of Wetland Landscapes,’ Landscapes 10 (2009), 36–60, at
53–4; Stephen Rippon, ‘Water and Land,’ in Julia C. Crick and Elisabeth van Houts, eds., A Social
History of England, 900–1200 (Cambridge, 2011), 38–45, at 43–5.
64 Susan Oosthuizen, The Anglo-Saxon Fenland (Oxford, 2017), 111.
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travelling with John’s father, Henry II.65 I have already described Peter’s objections
to the food, but the travel itself was a major grievance.66 Walter and Peter
described a court continually in chaos as it moved about. Peter, who compared
court life to a kind of martyrdom suffered for unworthy worldly reasons, pro-
vided detail. In a humorous letter to the king, he described how hard it could be
to track down the court, but in the rhetorical attack he launched to deter clerics
from joining the court, he painted a harsher picture, describing courtiers wander-
ing through the forest after dark looking for even vile lodgings and drawing
swords over places pigs would not have fought over. Peter lamented the need to
bribe corrupt royal officials for help while travelling, and described courtiers
being thrown out of lodgings by royal officials while their meals were being
cooked or eaten or even after they had gone to bed, despite having paid the
requisite bribes. When Walter and Peter compared Henry’s court to the followers
of King Herla (or Herlekin), they were likening it to a band of the undead tor-
mented by being compelled to travel ceaselessly.
Peter had religious motives to exaggerate the horrors of the court, and Walter
was more interested in a good story than historical accuracy, but it would not be
surprising for constant travel to cause hardship. The itineration of the courts of
Henry II and his sons was certainly more orderly than Walter and Peter’s accounts
described, but Stephen Church has shown that some chaos was unavoidable.67
John’s court was not blessed, or cursed, with such vivid writers as Henry II’s, but
the records show the many problems that arose, like having to leave baggage
behind when the king travelled to inaccessible regions or having a large wagon
train carrying wine stall when a river flooded.68 Though John’s famous loss of his
baggage train in the fens was not a crippling disaster, it vividly illustrates the
problems that came with itinerant kingship.69 More important, a story from the
Anonymous of Béthune shows that Peter of Blois’ claim about courtiers fighting
over lodgings was not hyperbole. In it, Geoffrey de Mandeville, who was travel-
ling with the king towards Marlborough, sent followers ahead to secure lodgings.
By the time Geoffrey arrived, his men had been thrown out by the followers of
William Briwerre, one of John’s favourites. When Geoffrey ordered the interlopers
to leave, a fight broke out in which he killed the leader of William’s men. This
prompted a heated confrontation between John, Geoffrey, and Geoffrey’s father-
in-law, Robert fitz Walter, deepening a divide that ended with Robert and
Geoffrey rebelling against John in 1215.70 In a society that placed great value on
65 Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium, 30–1, 370–5, 470–3; Wahlgren, Letter Collections of Peter of
Blois, 145–65; Peter of Blois, Opera, 121–2.
66 See Chapter 6, 126.
67 Jolliffe, Angevin Kingship, 139–65; Church, ‘Royal Itinerary,’ 31–45.
68 Misae 11J 137–8; Misae 14J 240, 248.
69 Holt, ed., Magna Carta and Medieval Government, 111–22.
70 Anonymous of Béthune, Histoire des ducs, 116–18. For discussion of this passage, see Painter,
Reign of King John, 260–1. For a confrontation over housing in Richard I’s reign, see Roger of Howden,
Chronica, 3:245–6.
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honour and precedence, the hunger and weariness of a long day’s travel could
prove dangerous, and itineration must have exacerbated the tensions that were
inevitable at any royal court.
Why did medieval royal courts travel so much? Scholars of the medieval
German empire have studied this question most thoroughly, but there is now a
good amount of work on the itineration of English kings, and the explanations
are various and complicated.71 Economic motives were probably not central.
There had been a time when kings had to travel from manor to manor to use up
food supplies, but that time was long past, given the development of extensive
local trade and markets.72 One should not underestimate the importance of cus-
tom. John and other kings may have travelled because all their predecessors and
contemporaries travelled, though as Kanter showed, the speed and frequency of
rulers’ travel varied greatly.73 Pilgrimage and a desire for fresh hunting grounds,
as we have seen, could be important motives. Constant travel meant that royal
households, which formed the core of armies in the period, could easily transi-
tion to mobilizing for military campaigns. Most important, even with the growth
of royal bureaucracy, itinerancy meant frequent contact with different regions, an
advantage in governing large territories. Jolliffe’s work identified many functions
and advantages of itinerant government, and Doris Stenton showed travelling’s
connection to John’s oversight of the conduct of justice.74 Though kings had many
officials to collect money, itineration could help. Roger of Howden described
John travelling through the north of England personally levying penalties for the
breaking of forest law, and recent work has shown a close link between the king’s
travels and the sums accumulated in fines.75 Moreover, travel allowed John to
meet and interact with powerful people across his realms. To the extent that
meetings with powerful nobles and churchmen focused on finances, administration,
71 For work on England, see Jolliffe, Angevin Kingship, 139–65; Given-Wilson, Royal Household,
32–9; Aurell, Plantagenet Empire, 25–8; Church, ‘Royal Itinerary,’ 31–45; Kanter, ‘Peripatetic and
Sedentary Kingship,’ 11–26; Levi Roach, ‘Hosting the King: Hospitality and the Royal Iter in Tenth-
Century England,’ Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011), 34–46; Madeline, Les Plantagenêts et leur
empire, 265–86, 345–50; Crockford, ‘Itinerary of Edward I,’ 231–57; Prestwich, ‘Royal Itinerary and
Roads,’ 177–97. For work on the empire and elsewhere, see Hans Conrad Peyer, ‘Das Reisekönigtum
des Mittelalters,’ Vierteljarhrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 51 (1964), 1–21; Geertz,
‘Centers, Kings and Charisma,’ 150–71, 309–14; Bernhardt, Itinerant Kingship; Andreas Kränzle, ‘Der
abwesende König. Überlegungen zur ottonischen Königsherrschaft,’ Frühmittelalterliche Studien
31 (1997), 120–57; Vale, Princely Court, 136–62; Costa-Gomes, Making of a Court Society, 291–309;
Caspar Ehlers, ‘Wie sich ambulante zu residenter Herrschaft entwickelt hat,’ in B. Jussen, ed., Die
Macht des Königs. Herrschaft in Europa vom Frühmittelalter bis in die Neuzeit (Munich, 2005), 106–24,
376–7; McKitterick, Charlemagne, 171–88; Knut Görich, Friedrich Barbarossa. Eine Biographie
(Munich, 2011), 145–58.
72 Thomas Charles-Edwards, ‘Early Medieval Kingships in the British Isles,’ in Steven Basset, ed.,
Origins of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (London, 1989), 28–39, 245–8; Alban Gautier, ‘Hospitality in
Pre-Viking Anglo-Saxon England,’ Early Medieval Europe 17 (2009), 23–44.
73 Kanter, ‘Peripatetic and Sedentary Kingship,’ 18.
74 Jolliffe, Angevin Kingship, 155–65; Stenton, English Justice, 91–5, 110.
75 Roger of Howden, Chronica, 4:15; Kanter, ‘Peripatetic and Sedentary Kingship,’ 17; Carpenter,
Magna Carta, 217.
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and warfare, they lie beyond the scope of this book. However, such meetings also
involved social interaction, generally intertwined with political interaction, a
combination that is the subject of section 7.7.
A final motive of itineration was to enhance the ruler’s soft power.76 Itineration,
particularly at the beginning of a reign, allowed the ruler to take symbolic possession
of the land. By performing ceremonial activities throughout the realm or realms,
the ruler displayed his or her power and religious or political status far and
wide. As Geertz states, writing of itineration by rulers in nineteenth-century
Morocco, ‘When kings journey around the countryside, making appearances,
attending fetes, conferring honors, exchanging gifts, or defying rivals, they mark it,
like some wolf or tiger spreading his scent through his territory, as almost physically
part of them.’ Itineration allowed a king to display wealth and magnificence not only
at his residences but also during the journeys between them. Only a select few might
attend court in the palace, but many could see a king riding through towns or the
countryside, and he could use these opportunities to show off, as we shall see.
John’s constant travels gave him ample opportunity to meet with the most power-
ful people in his lands, although it is not clear how much advantage he took to
solidify ties with secular and ecclesiastical magnates.77 The witness lists to his
charters, which supply the most plentiful evidence of who surrounded him at any
given time, are dominated by the magnates, officials, and household figures clos-
est to him. This may indicate that John did not take sufficient advantage of his
opportunities, but caution is warranted, partly because the witness lists in the
charter rolls are often truncated and partly because individuals who were closest
to the king may have been considered most useful as witnesses. Even so, the sur-
viving witness lists show that John met magnates outside his inner circle on a
regular basis. He travelled particularly widely in his first year, and his charter
attestations show that he met most of the Norman and English bishops and a scat-
tering of bishops from Aquitaine, Ireland, and Wales. He also met seventeen earls
or counts from England and Normandy, and other barons from both those
regions and from Aquitaine. In his ninth regnal year, to take a random year, his
travels were limited to England, and in the course of it, he met most of the active
English bishops; ten English earls; various barons; a few bishops and barons from
Ireland; and the brothers of an important Welsh figure. Strikingly, in both years
76 See in particular Geertz, ‘Centers, Kings and Charisma,’ 150–71, 309–14; Bernhardt, Itinerant
Kingship, 46–53; Costa-Gomes, Making of a Court Society, 295; Church, ‘Royal Itinerary,’ 44; Vincent,
‘The Court of Henry II,’ 308; Roach, ‘Hosting the King,’ 35, 41–4; Kanter, ‘Peripatetic and Sedentary
Kingship,’ 17; Madeline, Les Plantagenêts et leur empire, 263, 268–9, 277–86.
77 Madeline, Les Plantagenêts et leur empire, 273, 349.
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he met several of the barons who revolted against him at the end of the reign.78
Business of various sorts was no doubt an important motive for such meetings,
but they also had a social component, albeit one closely related to the exercise of
lordship and power.
For one thing, these meetings could involve gifts. In John’s sixth year, a candi-
date for the valuable and disputed office of archdeacon of Richmond offered John
300 marks to obtain the position, and he also brought the king two palfreys,
‘when the king rested at his lodgings at Easingwold,’ on a journey through
Yorkshire. The gift of horses was an extension of the monetary bribe, but it
brought a personal touch and probably allowed the cleric a chance to personally
seek royal support while the king looked over his new animals.79 More costly, but
perhaps more efficacious, was the chance to offer the king hospitality, since hospi-
tality created an important link between guest and host.80 The costly feast pre-
pared by Hugh de Neville, noted in Chapter 6, no doubt helped Hugh cement his
ties with the king.81 Those less close to the king might also offer hospitality. Henry
fitz Hervey of Ravensworth, for instance, was a powerful and wealthy tenant on
the earldom of Richmond and an influential figure in northwestern Yorkshire, but
by no means close to the king. On 27 February 1201, John issued a charter at
Ravensworth, where he was presumably a guest during a journey through north-
ern England. In the weeks before and after, Henry received various royal charters
to his benefit, suggesting that he used his position as host to his advantage.82 The
building of ties worked both ways: just as aristocrats could use these opportun
ities to gain royal favour, the king could use them to build personal ties with any
aristocrats he chose. Indeed, in one charter granting fifty-five acres to his justiciar,
Geoffrey fitz Peter, one can see John trying to create a regular rhythm of visits and
gift exchange with this crucial official. As rent for the land, John specified that
whenever he visited Geoffrey at the latter’s estate in Kimbolton, his host was to
provide hay for the king’s personal horses, wine for the king and two other
knights, and one pike and two bream. A money rent would have been more prac-
tical, but this set-up gave the king a symbolic rent tied to hospitality, perhaps with
a quasi-ceremonial presentation of the wine and fish whenever he visited.83
Itineration had both advantages and disadvantages in controlling access to the
king, a challenge in any monarchy. On one hand, a sensible ruler wanted to be
able to interact with as many powerful subjects as possible to handle practical
business and build up ties. Hospitality, gift exchange, and other forms of social
78 RLCh 1a–62a, 166–78b; Thomas Rymer, ed., Foedera: 1066–1272 (London, 1816), 76. I have also
gone through the charters for those two years that have been collected for the Angevin Acta project.
Thanks to Nicholas Vincent for generously sharing them with me.
79 ROF 119.
80 For hospitality in the period, see Kerr, ‘Food, Drink and Lodging,’ 77–92; Julie Kerr, ‘ “Welcome
the Coming and Speed the Parting Guest”: Hospitality in Twelfth-Century England,’ Journal of
Medieval History 33 (2007), 130–46.
81 See Chapter 6, 137–138. 82 RLCh 88b–89b, 101b. 83 RLCh 144b.
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contact could make this more effective and might also provide pleasant social
interchanges for the ruler. On the other hand, the ruler needed to avoid being
overwhelmed by the many people who wanted attention, and there was also merit
to making interaction with the king rare and therefore valuable. Although John’s
residences were designed at least partly to control access, control was most easily
established in the kinds of large palaces with many rooms possible for stationary
courts. However, itineration also had its advantages. As described above, travel
ensured that kings could meet magnates, even if the latter were not inclined to
travel to court, and often those meetings would have been more intimate than
those held at great palaces. But travel could also limit access. Many people might
desire frequent, repeated access to kings, and at a stationary court anyone with
sufficient resources could simply hang about waiting for opportunities. One had
to have serious persistence and motivation to follow the king about the country-
side to constantly seek admittance to his presence. Itineration may have helped
kings achieve the right balance of frequently meeting the powerful without being
overwhelmed by those seeking repeated royal audiences.
The necessity of riding constantly and openly through the countryside brought
more specific disadvantages and benefits. It was hard to limit access outside a
building, and Walter Map extolled Henry II for his patience when crowds of
people demanded his attention, even to the extent of pushing and pulling him
about.84 However, the long hours riding from place to place provided the king
time to converse with those riding close to him. A famous story in the biography
of William Marshal is set during a time when William suffered from John’s
extreme displeasure, and the two men’s followers were carrying out a proxy war in
Ireland. The king, despite demanding that William follow the court, refused to see
him and made others shun him as well. One day, however, as they journeyed out
of Guildford, John called William to him and, presumably as they rode alongside
each other, told him an elaborate lie about the defeat of William’s men and the
deaths of some close followers. The author’s goal was to demonstrate William’s
forbearance and quick thinking in the face of John’s malevolence, but for our pur-
poses, the key point is that the king could use his journeys to interact with court
iers and guests individually or in small groups.85
Even at its most ordinary, John’s court must have been an impressive sight.86 Lines
of carts and bands of retainers, both the king’s and those of any magnates following
court, would have passed local people, pausing in their tasks to take in the
spectacle. Depending on the season, there would have been huge packs of dogs or
high-status birds of prey. Even more impressive were the hundreds of horses.
Horses were crucial to medieval aristocratic life, for war, hunting, transporting
goods, and, above all, riding from place to place.87 It is no surprise that John was
active in the international market, acquiring horses from Lombardy and Iberia
through gifts and purchases, and at times using a Flemish knight, William de
Baillolet, as an agent.88 John’s port of La Rochelle apparently had a major horse
market, and he sought to carefully oversee it, perhaps to limit sales to nearby
enemies, but probably also to ensure his access to high-quality mounts.89 Horses
were, of course, important display items. In a lengthy depiction of Richard I’s
magnificent appearance and clothing at Limassol during his conquest of Cyprus,
one writer described Richard’s Spanish horse, providing a detailed picture before
concluding by saying the steed was so handsome that no painter could reproduce
it.90 Modern attention tends to focus on warhorses, which were often the most
expensive, but palfreys, horses bred and trained for riding, with a gait designed
for maximum comfort over long distances, were also highly valued, and at least as
important at the royal court.91 Indeed, throughout John’s reign proffers to the
king of palfreys were far more common than offers of warhorses.92 Palfreys, like
warhorses, could be display animals—both Marie de France and Chrétien de
Troyes described beautiful fictional palfreys.93 These palfreys were associated
with female characters, but the monks of St Augustine’s, Canterbury once
attempted to win royal support by offering the king (along with a large sum of
money) a palfrey for his own person, describing it as ‘fit for the royal saddle.’94
Palfreys could be magnificent animals, and unlike warhorses would have been on
constant display during royal itineration.
Horse tackle has received far less attention than horses from historians, but
archaeologists have provided useful information and contemporary sources, both
87 For horses and horse breeding in the period, see R. H. C. Davis, The Medieval Warhorse: Origin,
Development and Redevelopment (London, 1989); Ann Hyland, The Medieval Warhorse from
Byzantium to the Crusades (Stroud, 1994); Ann Hyland, The Horse in the Middle Ages (Stroud, 1999);
Charles Gladitz, Horse Breeding in the Medieval World (Dublin, 1997). For a current archaeological
project on warhorses led by Oliver Creighton, see http://medievalwarhorse.exeter.ac.uk.
88 PR9J 30; PR10J 154–5, 171; PR11J 10; PR17J 41; Misae 14J 238, 251; RLC 163b, 168b, 176b, 180a,
190b; RLP 90b. For the use of horses as gifts, see PR10J 171; RLC 86a, 181b; RLP 137a; Rigord, Histoire
de Philippe Auguste, 368.
89 RLP 13b, 45a, 66b, 67b, 118a. 90 Stubbs, ed., Itinerarium, 197.
91 Davis, Medieval Warhorse, 67; Gladitz, Horse Breeding in the Medieval World, 157; Hyland, Horse
in the Middle Ages, 28–30; Carlin and Crouch, Lost Letters, 159.
92 ROF throughout.
93 PR10J 171; RLC 86a, 181b; RLP 137a; Marie de France, Lais, 162–3; Chrétien de Troyes, Œuvres
complètes, 130.
94 A. H. Davis, William Thorne’s Chronicle of Saint Augustine’s Abbey Canterbury Now Rendered into
English (Oxford, 1934), 155.
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historical and fictional, show just how important it was.95 So common was
ornamentation that the Portable Antiquities Scheme, designed to record stray
finds in England and Wales, currently has records of over 2,000 decorative horse
harness pendants alone.96 Elite decoration could be spectacular. At Limassol,
Richard I’s saddle was of multiple colours and partly gilded, as were his harness
and spurs. Two golden lions, snarling, each with a paw stretched out as if prepar-
ing to fight, stood at the back of his saddle.97 Writers of romance described
extremely luxurious horse trappings, and Chrétien de Troyes declared that his
character Enide had a set worth £1,000 in the coinage of Chartres, at least in one
variant in the manuscript tradition.98 Fictional accounts could undoubtedly be
hyperbolic, but the records of John’s court contain references to the acquisition of
beautiful or gilded saddles, and to gilded reins and bridles, mostly destined for
royal women. One saddle for Queen Isabella cost over 7 marks, far more than the
yearly wages of a skilled worker.99 John himself made several small gifts of land
for a yearly rent of gilded spurs, and though the rent was honorary, it is likely the
spurs were used.100 Colourful textiles added distinction to the horse and rider.
Most notable were the caparisons with gold or silk lions I noted in Chapter 4.101
Less impressive but still noteworthy was the blue and scarlet cloth purchased for
saddle blankets (and possibly caparisons), which added vivid colour to the rider’s
array, especially when scarlet was combined with gilded saddle and harness, as
occurred in at least two royal purchases.102 Whether such elaborate saddles, har-
ness, and textiles would have been used for the royal household’s ordinary itiner
ation is not clear, but they certainly would have been used on ceremonial
occasions, and they show the importance of the road as a venue for royal display.
Among the great ceremonies of the later Middle Ages and early modern period
was the ceremonial entry of a ruler, usually into a city. This normally took place
on his or her first visit after coming into office, but sometimes occurred on other
politically important occasions. Extensive records of these survive from the
95 John Clark, The Medieval Horse and Its Equipment c. 1150–c. 1450, 2nd ed. (Woodbridge, 2004),
43–74, 124–46.
96 https://finds.org.uk.
97 Stubbs, ed., Itinerarium, 197. See also Adam of Eynsham, Magna Vita Sancti Hugonis, 1:102–3;
Bumke, Courtly Culture, 176; Jones, Bloodied Banners, 2.
98 Chrétien de Troyes, Œuvres complètes, 70, 130–1, 1091. See also Hue de Rotelande, Ipomedon,
411; Jones, Bloodied Banners, 142.
99 PR9J xiii, xxx; PR13J 108; RLC 81a, 144b, 150b, 175a.
100 RLCh 137b–138a, 209b–210a, 218a. 101 See Chapter 4, 89–90.
102 Misae 11J 239; RLC 109a–b, 150b, 175a.
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others was undoubtedly one reason these processions and greetings were so
important. In essence, royal entries and other formal events on the road were
pieces of itineration made ceremonial and marked out as special. The distinction
between formal royal entries and other kinds of ceremonies is sometimes unclear,
partly perhaps because ceremonial practices were still fluid, but also because
writers before the fourteenth century usually only provided passing references to
processions and royal entries. This not only makes it hard to distinguish the royal
entry from other practices, but also makes it difficult to know to what degree the
extremely elaborate royal entries of the late Middle Ages and the early modern
period were new or were simply newly revealed in fuller sources, though both
factors were probably at work.106
More unfortunate still, there are no detailed contemporary descriptions of any
of John’s royal entries or other processions. However, broadly contemporary
descriptions provide some idea of what they might have looked like. Jordan
Fantosme’s description of Londoners going out to greet Henry II, on his return
from the continent during the 1173–4 rebellion, makes the process look fairly
elaborate but also more spontaneous than later royal entries. According to Jordan,
the Londoners dressed in their finest clothes, including silk garments, and rode
out on their palfreys to greet the king. The barons (meaning the elite citizens) of
London then embraced the king one by one in a long, drawn-out ceremony,
replete with vows of loyalty from the Londoners and thanks from the king, to
whom the Londoners also gave gifts. They then escorted Henry to Westminster.107
The middle of a war was a time when monarchs needed such affirmations, but it
was also a time when little could be prepared in advance, so it is not clear that this
was a typical royal entry. Other sources also give a sense of royal entries in this
period. These include accounts of Henry of Champagne’s entry into Acre as he
assumed the kingship of Jerusalem; of Henry VI and Constance entering Rome
and Palermo before and after their conquest of Sicily; of Philip II’s passing though
towns and villages on his return from victory at Bouvines; and fictional royal
entries in Chrétien de Troyes’ romances.108 These accounts have several common
aspects: going out to meet the ruler; hanging textiles out of windows and laying
carpets on the ruler’s route; strewing flowers, reeds, herbs, and other sweet-smelling
substances on the streets; playing music; and giving gifts.
Eynsham, Magna Vita Sancti Hugonis, 2:148, 154, 163; Jocelin of Brakelond, Chronicle, 82; Thomson,
ed., Chronicle of the Election of Hugh, 26–7, 126–7; Peter of Blois, The Later Letters of Peter of Blois, ed.
Elizabeth Revell (Oxford, 1993), 113–14.
Ambroise’s account of Richard I’s entry into Messina during the Third Crusade,
subsequently expanded by the Latin Itinerarium, shows another facet of royal
entries: the need for the ruler’s train to impress the audience, especially on
military campaigns. Both accounts described a magnificent entry, dominated by
Richard’s royal galleys with their painted prows, crammed with warriors carrying
glittering lances, banners flying, shields hanging on the sides, and musicians fill-
ing the air with the sound of trumpets. The two sources emphasized that it was a
king’s duty to appear as grand as possible on such campaigns to ensure that the
magnificence of their arrival mirrored their authority and power. Both contrasted
Richard’s glorious entry to Philip II’s much poorer showing. There was a defen-
sive element to these descriptions: though both emphasized how impressed the
audiences were, Ambroise noted that the locals were upset with Richard’s grandi-
ose entry, and, in another account, William of Newburgh revealed that it pro-
voked controversy and unhappiness from both the locals and from Richard’s ally
(and rival) Philip.109 Nonetheless, these accounts show that grand entries were an
important way to project royal power.
There are brief notices in narrative sources of John’s involvement in proces-
sions. A Worcester chronicler described how the monks processed out to greet
the king when he came to worship at the shrine of St Wulfstan. On another occa-
sion, John refused a procession from the canons of Beverley to express his unhap-
piness with their superior, his half-brother, Archbishop Geoffrey of York.110
Rigord reveals that when John visited Philip II during a rare period of rapproche-
ment between the kings, Philip received him with a procession into St Denis,
accompanied by hymns and songs of praise.111 Even these sparse references make
the political importance of processions obvious. More notably, Matthew Paris
elaborated on Roger of Wendover’s bare account of the Emperor Otto’s visit to
London in 1207 by saying that at John’s command, the city welcomed both king
and emperor with flowers, hangings, torches, candles, the ringing of bells, and
processions. Matthew may simply have imagined what the visit must have been
like based on practices in his own time, but all these elements were certainly pos-
sible for John’s reign.112
The royal records provide more information. Early in John’s reign, the men of
Gloucester and Newcastle-upon-Tyne proffered 20 marks and 40 marks and two
palfreys respectively for the king’s bonus adventus, and the men of York were
forced to offer £100 for a number of offences, including not going out to greet the
109 Ambroise, History of the Holy War, 1:9–10; Stubbs, ed., Itinerarium, 155–7; William of
Newburgh, Historia Rerum Anglicarum, 1:324–5.
110 Luard, ed., Annales Monastici, 4:395; Webster, ‘Making Space,’ 267; Peter Draper, ‘King John and
St Wulfstan,’ Journal of Medieval History 19 (1984), 41–50, at 46–7; Roger of Howden, Chronica, 4:25.
111 Rigord, Histoire de Philippe Auguste, 368.
112 Matthew Paris, Historia Anglorum, ed. Frederic Madden, 3 vols. (London, 1866–9), 2:108–9.
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king along the road when he arrived at their city.113 One suspects that John had
expressed displeasure about the gifts he received from the first two towns, and
clearly he had expectations, based on the customs of the period, about how the
citizens of York should have greeted him. More intriguing than these brief refer-
ences, and particularly revealing, are a set of purchases noted in the pipe roll of
John’s fourteenth year.114 A somewhat puzzling entry links a royal cleric, Arnulf
of Aukland, with 140 palfreys and accompanying sambucas (probably saddle
blankets), gilded harness, spurs, and peacock hats. Arnulf may originally have
been intended to acquire these items but ultimately much of the purchasing was
done by John fitz Hugh, one of the chief buyers for the royal court. Included in a
purchase he made of 7,680 ells of cloth were 243 ells of blanchet, a relatively
coarse cloth, which were to be dyed with kermes, the expensive dye generally
used only for scarlets. This cloth was specifically to be used for sambucas. Later
comes the mention of eighty-nine palfreys marked as ad sambucas, or bought for
the sambucas, suggesting the horses were purchased specifically to match each
other and make the scarlet accessories stand out, a hypothesis strengthened by
the reference in John’s first pipe roll to fourteen white horses, which indicates that
the court occasionally grouped horses by their colouring.115 Fitz Hugh also
bought forty saddles for the sambucas and forty-five peacock hats which (given a
reference to hats with peacock feathers in a Marshal family document) probably
included actual feathers.116 In addition, fitz Hugh purchased 140 sets of girths,
140 gilded spurs, 40 gilded sets of reins, 140 lengths of silk cord or lace, and
140 pairs of gloves. He spent £168 19s 2d on these purchases, not counting
whatever portion of the £840 spent on textiles was designated for the sambucas.
Where the remaining palfreys, peacock hats, and gilded reins were to come from
is unclear, but it is possible that other royal agents purchased them or that they
came from stores, since 108 peacock hats had been purchased the previous
year.117 One intriguing possibility is that some of the 7,680 ells of cloth, including
scarlet, which fitz Hugh bought were intended to provide clothing for the 140 riders.
Even if this was not the case, the cavalcade of 140 riders, with matching horses,
gilded tackle, brightly coloured textiles, and peacock hats, must have c reated a
vividly impressive display.
Though these purchases may have been meant for a variety of purposes,
including displaying the king’s grandeur during normal itineration, I believe that
they were made with John’s projected continental campaign in mind. This
hypothesis stems partly from the particular importance to kings of revealing their
113 ROF 111, 119, 152. 114 PR14J 43–4, 48. 115 PR1J 129.
116 David Crouch, ed., The Acts and Letters of the Marshal Family: Marshals of England and Earls of
Pembroke, 1145–1248, Camden Society (London, 2015), 309.
117 PR13J 107–8.
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magnificence on military campaigns. It also comes from the fact that a purchase
the previous year of gold leaf to gild the tips of 567 lances was made in conjunc-
tion with the purchase of the first set of peacock hats, along with horse tackle and
kermes and alum (a fixing agent) for dying blanchet, presumably for a similar
cavalcade. Obviously, the king and his officials did not intend an armed caval-
cade, with knights dressed in armour, but such lances would provide a military
touch. In his long-awaited campaign, John hoped to recapture major towns and
cities he had lost to Philip Augustus, and a new entry into a recaptured city was
precisely the context in which the most formal ceremonies would have been use-
ful. I suspect that in ordering these purchases, John envisioned himself riding
into Poitier, Angers, Rouen, and other great towns at the head of a splendid caval-
cade—indeed, one wonders if he did not in fact lead such a cavalcade into Angers
and other places he briefly occupied in 1214. These suggestions remain specula-
tive, but there is no doubt that these purchases were intended to create a large
parade of similarly equipped riders to impress the onlookers gathered to watch.
The projection of royal power and wealth has been a theme throughout this
chapter. Castles undergirded royal power not only because of their military uses
but also because they served as a showcase for the king’s military power and wealth.
Palaces, designed landscapes, and pavilions also underscored royal wealth and
magnificence. Royal structures, both fixed and movable, provided places in which
the king could play host, thereby winning praise and putting others in his debt as
guests. The more complex structures allowed monarchs to show graded favour, as
only the most exalted and favoured would be allowed into the inner chambers,
allowing rulers to manipulate the desire of powerful people for the status that
familiarity with the king might give. Itineration, in contrast, exposed rulers to
large numbers of their subjects, and John clearly took advantage of his travels to
project magnificence beyond his residences, through the display of fine horses
and beautiful saddles and harnesses. The magnificent, matched gear just noted
displayed wealth and power, while advertising the solidarity and loyalty of the
king’s followers. In addition, itineration allowed rulers to build ties with their fol-
lowers through guesting and feasting with local elites. In short, the pursuit and
projection of power permeated the designs of the places in which rulers lived and
helped guide the way they moved through their lands.
As always, enemies and detractors could contest and undermine royal power
through criticism and the stories they told about the king. Excessive display was a
possible source of reproach. Thus, a generation before, Gervase of Chichester, one
of Becket’s followers, had condemned ‘superfluous’ expenditures on ‘towers and
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palaces encircled with walls, and enclosures of beasts, woods, pools, and also deep
fishponds.’118 However, the expectation expressed by writers such as Ambroise
that rulers display magnificence largely inoculated John and other monarchs
against the religious criticisms of lavishness so common in the period. Instead,
some critics attacked John as a bad guest—one who failed to live up to the
expected obligations created by hospitality or perhaps even subverted them.
When Jocelin of Brakelond noted that John left only one penny at the altar after a
visit to Bury St Edmunds, as noted in Chapter 5, the critique was not only about
John’s lack of piety, but also his bad behaviour for giving nothing to honour the
monastery and recompense it for the expenses of his stay.119 Roger of Howden
described how, when visiting Beverley early in his reign, John ‘for a price’ guested
with a man who had been excommunicated by Archbishop Geoffrey of York.
Roger implied that the king not only sold his favour and defied an important
church sanction, but in doing so turned the culturally freighted relationship
between guest and host into a sordid monetary transaction.120 According to the
Melrose Chronicle, during his northern campaign in 1216, John had his troops
burn down Berwick-upon-Tweed, kindling the fire in the house he was staying in
with his own hands, ‘against the custom of kings.’121
Enemies could also use the king’s own ceremonial tools against him. Pamela
Marshal has argued that donjons served as symbols of a lord’s authority during
his absence, and this argument could be extended to castles as a whole.122 In this
context, baronial seizure of royal castles during the revolt at the end of John’s
reign, like devastation of the king’s woods and slaughter of his deer, may have had
a symbolic as well as military function.123 More explicitly, when the canons of
St Paul’s London held a solemn procession during that rebellion to welcome Louis,
son of Philip Augustus, and the citizens of the town went out to greet him, they
were publicly recognizing Louis, not John, as their rightful ruler.124
When it comes to castles, palaces, pavilions, and designed landscapes, the
importance of pleasure will be obvious. As Thomas Beaumont and Christopher
Gerrard have written in their book on Clarendon Palace and its landscape, ‘Another
theme, not peculiar to Clarendon but exemplified here, is pleasure. Pleasure in
landscapes and vistas, flora and fauna, in buildings and furnishings, in entertain-
ment, food and sport.’125 Unlike other scholars, landscape historians and the new
castellologists have taken the study of royal and elite pleasure seriously, and here
I have added the suggestion that landscapes further away from buildings, including
118 British Library, Royal MS 3 B X, fol. 87r. Gervase’s context was the misuse of ecclesiastical funds.
119 See Chapter 5, 120; Jocelin of Brakelond, Chronicle, 116–17.
120 Roger of Howden, Chronica, 4:156.
121 Stevenson, ed., Chronica de Mailrose, 122. It is possible, however, that John contravened royal
custom here not by being a bad guest but by carrying out the plebeian task of starting a fire.
122 Marshall, ‘Some Thoughts,’ 161. 123 I owe this suggestion to Leonie Hicks.
124 Anonymous of Béthune, Histoire des ducs, 171; Luard, ed., Annales Monastici, 3:46.
125 James and Gerrard, Clarendon, 5.
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woodlands and wetlands, could also provide viewing pleasure, and that beauty
could go hand in hand with utility for medieval people. It is harder to see where
the pleasure of itineration lay. Clearly, practical and political motives played a
larger role than the pursuit of pleasure in the constant travel of medieval kings.
Yet the allure of forests that had had time to recover from earlier hunting exped
itions, a variety of landscapes, and pilgrimage sites and other attractions may
have been powerful. The chance to revel not in one palace but in many residences
and to constantly encounter the new must have had its attractions. And finally,
both residences and itineration allowed the king to take pleasure in showing off
his wealth and taste by receiving guests in impressive buildings or guiding them
through designed landscapes; by riding a beautiful horse harnessed and saddled
in magnificent fashion; or by leading a cavalcade into a city he could claim as his
own, watched by a large audience. As always, the display of wealth and power
could be its own form of pleasure.
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8
King John and the Wielding of Soft Power
8.1 Introduction
When modern historians study the failure of Magna Carta to achieve peace
between King John and his barons, they understandably tend to focus on the
military situation, the longstanding issues that lay between the king and his
nobles, and the precise demands encapsulated in the document. The Anonymous
of Béthune had an altogether different focus when he discussed the renewal of
hostilities. In his account, after John had made peace with the barons, he lay in
bed, ill and unable to walk. He summoned the twenty-five guarantors of the char-
ter to come into his chamber to issue judgement, presumably on various specific
matters raised by individual rebels, but they refused, saying that this violated their
rights, and demanded that he come to them—if he could not walk, he could be
carried. Moreover, when he did come, the barons refused to stand, a severe breach
of etiquette that slighted his authority.1 The chronicler showed his disapproval by
labelling the barons’ actions proud and outrageous, and he depicted the king as
growing angry and plotting revenge. In this telling, it was not the barons’ political
demands that provoked the king to discard the peace, but their gesture of
disrespect.2
One need not accept this interpretation of the failure of Magna Carta or even
the truth of this particular story to recognize that for medieval people, what
Bagehot called the dignified parts of government might have mattered far more
than we think they should, given our focus on the ‘efficient’ parts. Soft power
mattered, particularly in a society in which status and honour were fundamentally
important. Discussion of soft power has run throughout the book, but here I wish
to focus more narrowly on the subject. As the story above suggests, symbolic
forms of communication were an extremely important part of medieval politics,
and though I have discussed many incidents and stories that could fall under that
umbrella, I wish to introduce new ones to pursue the subject more closely. Gift
exchange has also appeared throughout the book, but I analyse it too more closely.
In subsequent sections, I wish to show how administrative kingship in many ways
enhanced the king’s ability to wield traditional forms of soft power. In Chapter 5,
1 For the etiquette of sitting and standing in the presence of a ruler, see Görich, Friedrich
Barbarossa, 164–5.
2 Anonymous of Béthune, Histoire des ducs, 151.
Power and Pleasure: Court Life under King John, 1199–1216. Hugh M. Thomas, Oxford University Press (2020).
© Hugh M. Thomas. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198802518.003.0008
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Before discussing soft power, however, more needs to be said about John’s relations
with the powerful, particularly members of the secular elites who could provide
military support or opposition. John’s failures in retaining the allegiance of his
followers and leading subjects were striking. Indeed, the comprehensive collapse
of loyalty to him in Normandy, a part of France held by English kings for gener
ations, and in Anjou, the paternal homeland of his dynasty, was nothing short of
stunning. Of course, after it became clear that Philip II would win, nobles and
knights were faced with a choice of changing allegiance or losing their land, but it
is noteworthy how few loyally followed John into exile or abandoned extensive
continental estates for less important ones in England. Moreover, the earliest
deserters, those who started the tidal wave of defections, could not have confi-
dently predicted the outcome.3 Equally striking were the desertions of some of
those closest to John during the baronial rebellion, particularly after Louis invaded.
Some of the king’s most important administrators, including such bureaucratic
stalwarts as Hugh de Neville and the royal cleric William of Wrotham, turned
their backs on John, even surrendering a castle to his enemies in Hugh’s case.
Stephen Church has shown that a third of John’s household knights, frequent
recipients of royal favours and expected to form the core of his military forces,
deserted him during the rebellion.4 Most striking was the desertion of his own
half-brother, William Longsword, formerly one of his strongest supporters. Once
again, calculations that John’s cause was doomed, and that loyalty to him would
lead to dispossession and exile, undoubtedly came into play. Nonetheless, the lack
of loyalty among those who should have been most loyal was remarkable and
raises questions about John’s handling of soft power.
Yet if John was remarkably adept at forfeiting the loyalty of nobles who were
his direct subjects, he was also surprisingly successful at collecting prominent
followers from outside his lands, and this success has not always received the
attention it deserves. Indeed, his efforts to recruit such followers can be found
throughout his records. Some of these followers were recruited from the Irish Sea
area, particularly Rǫgnvaldr, king of Man; Alan, lord of Galloway; and Alan’s
brother Thomas.5 Most were from Flanders, Hainault, and the surrounding
regions in northern France and the northwestern part of the empire. These
included some of the region’s great magnates, among them the counts of Flanders,
Holland, and Boulogne. John offered some of them land, but many more received
money fiefs, with Bryce Lyon finding evidence for nearly 300 such fees.6 John
originally recruited these followers to further his aims in Ireland or on the contin
ent, an effort that culminated in the invasion of France that Philip crushed at the
Battle of Bouvines. Ultimately, however, John’s ability to attract support from
beyond his lands gave him the connections and infrastructure to quickly create
the sizeable army of foreigners that helped him to withstand the baronial revolt
and French invasion at the end of his reign.7
John’s foreign supporters are often described as mercenaries, and though this
term may well be accurate for the fighters of lesser rank, it is misleading for the
elite. For one thing, some of the ‘mercenaries’ were actually John’s subjects from
Poitou or Gascony, though the sources made no real distinction between them
and the warriors from the Low Countries.8 None of the foreign magnates among
John’s continental followers came to his aid during the rebellion (some were still
Philip’s captives after Bouvines), but many of those who rallied to him in England
were nobles and knights. Money fiefs may not have created as durable a form of
lordship as grants of land, but many holders of money fiefs, perhaps all, per-
formed homage to John, often travelling to England to do so. John was therefore
not simply their employer, but also their lord, and was sometimes described as
such in the documents related to their fees. Indeed, John and these followers
occasionally expressed their esteem and love for each other in letters and char-
ters, indicating stronger bonds than the mere exchange of service for cash, or at
least the pretence of such bonds.9 The degree to which nobles primarily based
outside John’s realms could be seen as his men is illustrated by the fact that Count
Renaud of Boulogne served as one of four comital guarantors for his peace with
the church after the interdict. Similarly, Alan of Galloway was listed in Magna
5 RLCh 191a; R. Andrew McDonald, Manx Kingship in Its Irish Sea Setting, 1187–1229: King
Rǫgnvaldr and the Crovan Dynasty (Dublin, 2007), 129–42; Richard Oram, The Lordship of Galloway
(Edinburgh, 2000), 113–21.
6 Bryce D. Lyon, ‘The Money Fief under the English Kings, 1066–1485,’ English Historical Review
66 (1951), 161–93.
7 S. D. Church, ‘The Earliest English Muster Roll, 18/19 December, 1215,’ Historical Research 67
(1994), 1–17.
8 Walter of Coventry, Memoriale, 2:226; Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, 2:147.
9 RLP 94a; RLCh 190b–191a, 197a, 221b–222a.
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Carta as one of the followers John consulted before issuing that document.10
Obviously cash was the most important incentive he could offer foreign followers.
Nonetheless, to describe elite followers as mercenaries misses the point that
John was trying to build ties of lordship with them and therefore had to treat
them with much the same care as he treated followers who held land from him.
Indeed, because John could not use the same coercive power of royal adminis-
tration as he could against subjects, soft power may have been an even more
important tool for attracting the loyalty of prominent foreign followers. Not
surprisingly, John made grants of robes, vessels, and horses to these followers
just as he did to the nobles and knights of his own lands.11 As a result, the issue
of John’s ability to effectively use soft power matters not only for his relations
with his own subjects but also for his ties with the so-called mercenaries who
proved so important at the end of his reign.
There were obviously many reasons that nobles from inside and outside John’s
land chose to follow him or reject his leadership: calculations about the political
advantages and disadvantages involved; rewards for service in the form of land or
money; anger at suffering financial harm at the king’s hand; and many more.
Equally obviously, soft power only went so far. The granting of robes or food from
the king’s own dish at a feast was not likely to satisfy a magnate from whom the
king had extracted land or large sums of money. Nonetheless, John’s relations
with the nobility inside and outside his lands were very unusual in some ways and
obviously very important. This makes a study of soft power at his court particu-
larly interesting.
As noted in Chapter 1, historians of the early Middle Ages, and increasingly those
of the central Middle Ages, have done a great deal of work on ritual and cere
monial, including not only formal religious or secular rites, like consecrations of
kings or dubbing ceremonies, but also socially significant gestures, such as bow-
ing or kneeling, matters of etiquette, and even displays of emotion. Collectively,
these rituals, gestures, and displays of emotion may be described as symbolic
communication.12 Though I will emphasize communication, we might also,
drawing on Gero’s description of feasts, noted in Chapter 6, describe such activ
ities as context-renewing practices that continually reinforced political and hier
archical structures.13 As we shall see, however, they were also capable of being
14 Philippe Buc, The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific Theory
(Princeton, NJ, 2001). For what I agree is his somewhat unfair characterization of earlier scholarship,
see Geoffrey Koziol, ‘The Dangers of Polemic: Is Ritual Still an Interesting Topic for Historical Study?’
Early Medieval Europe 11 (2002), 367–88.
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Canterbury over his plan to build a college for his secular clerics, which the
monks feared was a move to partially or wholly supplant them as the cathedral’s
dominant religious body. Not long after the coronation, the monks sent a report
to Geoffrey, their subprior, who had departed into exile to seek aid from a papal
legate. According to the letter, the convent had sent eight monks with vestments to
the coronation because they had heard that after crowning the king, the archbishop
planned to prostrate himself at his feet to request protection and confirmation for
the collegiate church. The eight monks planned to stage a counter-prostration, and
the monks had also recruited Bishop Reginald of Bath, Bishop Hugh of Durham,
and other allies to join them in their dramatic response. But in the end Archbishop
Baldwin did not prostrate himself or make any request about the collegiate
church, perhaps, the monks speculated in their letter, because he had been warned
about their countermeasures. Whatever the reason, their plans had been made
unnecessary.15
What the monks and the archbishop were considering was supplication, a
practice whereby petitioners could seek pardon or favour through a formal
request accompanied by gestures of humility or submission such as bowing or
prostration. Koziol has analysed supplication in Francia in an earlier period,
showing how common and influential the practice was.16 What is striking about
this case is that instead of a possibly fictionalized account by a later third party, of
the sort Buc has cautioned against, one can see potential participants matter-of-
factly discussing intentions and strategy. Gerd Althoff has argued that though
such acts of symbolic communication often seem spontaneous in the sources,
they were generally staged; certainly in this case there was advance planning.17 In
contrast to Althoff ’s argument that all parties carefully negotiated these matters
in advance, however, in this instance there was the potential for competing acts of
symbolic communication that might have caught Richard by surprise and put
him in an extremely awkward position at his coronation. Here another concept
that Althoff has stressed, of Spielregeln, or ‘rules of the game,’ is helpful. The
monks knew how the ‘game’ was played; they knew that the archbishop’s supplica-
tion, right on the heels of crowning the king, could easily pressure Richard into
the most publicly possible statement of support for the archbishop’s position.
They had a plan for thwarting this attempt, though a risky one, given the disrup-
tion their counterstrike would have caused. Their willingness to take the risk may
have been inspired by the fact that one prominent churchman, Bishop Hugh of
Lincoln, was noteworthy for his willingness to flout convention and be disruptive
15 Stubbs, ed., Epistolæ Cantuarienses, 308. For the dispute, see David Knowles, The Monastic Order
in England: A History of Its Development from the Times of St. Dunstan to the Fourth Lateran Council,
940–1216, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1963), 318–22, 325–6; C. R. Cheney, Hubert Walter (London, 1967),
135–57. For context, see Thomas, Secular Clergy, 343–64.
16 Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor, passim.
17 See in particular Althoff, ‘Demonstration und Inszenierung,’ 229–57.
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to achieve his ends, and often did so with success, as when King Richard refused
him a kiss of peace and he grabbed the king’s clothes to demand it, eventually
causing the king to relent with a small smile.18 However, as a future saint of aris-
tocratic background, Hugh could get away with things that others could not.
Moreover, causing a scene at a coronation was particularly risky. But perhaps the
Canterbury monks simply hoped that their plans would leak to the archbishop
and king and pressure the archbishop to abandon his plan. If so, their strategy
achieved the desired outcome.
Though Koziol believed that supplication became less important over the course
of the twelfth century, as kings relied more on administration for building power
and on chivalry to strengthen ties with the nobility, the English evidence indicates
that supplication remained important.19 Various sources describe acts of supplica-
tion at the courts of Henry II and Richard I, and the kings themselves sometimes
used the practice.20 Startlingly, given Richard the Lionheart’s heroic image, an illu-
mination in Peter of Eboli’s panegyric of the Emperor Henry VI shows Richard
kissing the emperor’s feet while in the latter’s captivity.21 That this is not simply
imperial propaganda is indicated by the fact that Roger of Howden and William of
Newburgh described the emperor raising Richard up, indicating that he had in fact
prostrated himself, or at least knelt; supplication, however humiliating, would have
been a wise choice in the dire circumstances in which Richard found himself.22
Therefore, there is every reason to believe that supplication and other forms of
symbolic communication might remain important in John’s reign.
Indeed, John himself employed the practice of supplication. Even before he
became king, John was recorded as having thrown himself to his father’s feet to
request that Henry accept the patriarch of Jerusalem’s request to send him to the
Holy Land to become king of Jerusalem.23 Some years later, he cast himself, weep-
ing, at Richard’s feet to request pardon for revolting against him.24 The first act of
supplication failed, but according to Ralph of Coggeshall, the second prompted
Richard to weep in turn and to grant pardon. I have already noted other acts of
supplication, including the mutual prostration when John made peace with the
Cistercians and his prostration before Archbishop Stephen Langton and other
bishops after making peace with the church.25 Naturally, John was more usually
the object rather than the practitioner of supplication and other sources show
monks supplicating his pardon or favour. These acts were clearly powerful tools;
by their own accounts the monks of Bury once placated John’s anger through a
carefully choreographed act of supplication, and the monks of St Augustine’s got
the king in a receptive mood in another dispute by ‘approaching his indignation
in humility and his anger in supplication,’ though they still had to proffer money
and a palfrey to gain their wishes.26 As this last example suggests, supplication
was often only one part of a larger process of dispute resolution. Nonetheless, acts
of supplication were powerful moments that contemporaries viewed as pivotal in
relations between rulers and their subjects.
I discussed the practice of riding out to meet and thereby honour the king in
Chapter 7 in the context of itineration and processions; that practice was part of a
politically important and broader practice of using formal greetings to bestow
honour on the powerful. At times it behoved the king himself to ride out to
honour others, particularly visiting rulers, or to accompany them on their depart
ure, as Henry II, Richard I, and John are all known to have done.27 A story by the
Anonymous of Béthune reveals, albeit probably in a humorous way, the calcula-
tions that went into such a gesture. The writer’s probable patron, Robert of
Béthune, was with the king at Canterbury when news came that Count Ferrand of
Flanders, a crucial ally, had arrived at Dover. Robert asked King John why he did
not go at once to greet the count. ‘Listen to this Fleming,’ the story relates the king
saying, ‘he thinks his lord, the count of Flanders, is a big deal.’ ‘By Saint James,’
replied Robert, ‘I am right that he is.’ John then laughed and immediately rode off
to Dover, going so fast that he left much of his retinue behind. As the king
approached the count’s lodgings, the count went out to greet him, and when they
met, John dismounted and kissed him. Only a powerful figure deserved such a
display of honour from the king, and the count took care to show respect in turn,
but the story reveals the importance even for kings of showing the proper courtesy.28
The Anonymous of Béthune’s story that opened the chapter shows greeting
practices being used more confrontationally. If the story is true, in forcing the
king to come to them and refusing to stand when he entered, the barons were
clearly signalling a shift in the balance of authority.29 Even if false, the story
illustrates how gestures that could be seen as merely courteous took on powerful
meanings and served as forms of symbolic communication. As we have seen, there
were many of these, including sharing dishes at feasts.30 In the right circumstances,
even ordinary gestures could take on charged meanings. For instance, Gervase of
Canterbury described a conference between John and Philip where, after a first
meeting failed and a second had gone on for a while, the kings suddenly embraced
each other, signalling a breakthrough.31 The very fact that writers took the trouble
to record such moments indicates their importance as methods of communica-
tion in medieval politics.
Displays of royal anger should be viewed similarly, though one should not
always assume the emotions were artificial. The Angevin kings were famous for
their displays of rage, most notably in the description in an anonymous letter to
Thomas Becket of Henry II, in a fit of rage at one of his men, tearing off his hat,
cloak, and other clothes, stripping the silk covering off his bed, and chewing on
the straw that filled the mattress.32 Indeed, Jolliffe long ago treated anger and ill
will (ira et malevolentia) as characteristic of Angevin government, and John was
no exception.33 One royal financial account refers casually to the king having hit a
messenger from Bayonne, suggesting that this sort of action may have been fairly
routine.34 More dramatically, during a dispute with the monks of St Augustine’s,
Canterbury over the patronage of a wealthy church at Faversham, some of the
monks and their followers barricaded themselves in the church and rectory, bar-
ring royal and archiepiscopal officials from entering. According to a chronicler of
the monastery, John, ‘as if turned to madness,’ ordered that the church and house
be burned with the men inside, although his followers eventually dissuaded him.
If this story is true and John had actually intended to burn a holy site with reli-
gious figures inside in a fight over the patronage of a single benefice, however
wealthy, he would indeed have been insane. If, however, one follows those
scholars who think such displays of rage were intended for show, then the episode
appears both more believable and more understandable. John’s orders were meant
to intimidate the monks and signal the depth of his displeasure, but having
accomplished that, he could allow himself to be talked down. In the end, the dis-
play was simply one episode in a long dance of legal manoeuvrings, acts of
restrained coercion, negotiations, and gestures, including the incident of suppli-
cation by the monks noted earlier, which eventually resulted in a settlement.35
I have argued elsewhere that many of the episodes of anger and intimidation in
the Becket dispute were staged to pressure the archbishop rather than being spon
taneous outbursts, and in general it is likely that in making a frequent show of their
30 See Chapter 6, 145. 31 Gervase of Canterbury, Historical Works, 2:92.
32 Duggan, ed., Correspondence of Thomas Becket, 1:542–3. Nicholas Vincent suspects some elab
oration with biblical echoes in this story, but nonetheless there are many accounts of Angevin royal
rage; Vincent, ‘The Court of Henry II,’ 311–12.
33 Jolliffe, Angevin Kingship, 87–109. 34 Misae 11J 165.
35 Davis, William Thorne’s Chronicle, 137–57.
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anger the Angevin rulers were using a tool that was common in the period.36 As is
well known, the Angevin kings accepted proffers for their goodwill and grace or
to remit their anger and ill will, and proffers and payments for those purposes
abound in John’s records.37 Such proffers make most sense in a society in which
royal displays of anger were not simply gauges of the king’s feelings at a given
moment, but signals that the targets of his anger needed to appease him.
A final and related form of symbolic communication can be classed as com-
portment, by which I mean the ability to control one’s outward expression of
emotion. While this might seem to clash with arguments about the displays of
apparently uncontrolled rage, if one sees displays of rage as a tool, then they were
in fact controlled, at least to some extent. Quite likely, other displays of emotion,
including calmness, could also be a tool. Jaeger has shown the importance of ges-
tures, gait, bearing, and carriage in the clerical realm, and at least some of this
spilled over to the secular side of the court.38 Here I will focus on the ability to
express calm or even good cheer, where appropriate, in the face of misfortune,
danger, and sorrow. Both Roger of Howden and Ralph of Coggeshall praised
Richard I for his comportment during captivity, the former remarking that
Richard knew how to control his spirit and overcome fortune with constancy; the
latter praising Richard’s good cheer and noting that he knew how to bear himself
as was fitting for the circumstance.39 On occasion, John is depicted as having the
same ability to put a good face on adversity. In Chapter 6, I noted his display of
good cheer while feasting on his coronation anniversary with Peter of Wakefield’s
ominous prophecy looming over him, and Ralph of Coggeshall described him as
concealing his dismay, at least at first, when one of his planned expeditions to the
continent unravelled.40 Thus, kings could engage in symbolic communication by
displaying more subtle emotions than anger.
In considering symbolic communication, and more generally in thinking
about John’s ability to handle soft power, it is important to keep the social import
ance of honour in mind. Honour was a key form of social capital. To be con
sidered honourable or to possess honour was very much an end in itself, a source
of prestige and no doubt of personal satisfaction. But it was also an advantage in
dealing with others: it enhanced the worth of one’s opinion and advice; made it
easier to influence others or attract followers; allowed one to make more valuable
associations; and provided a host of other benefits. For medieval aristocrats there
were of course many sources of honour, including birth, wealth, and prowess on
36 Hugh M. Thomas, ‘Shame, Masculinity, and the Death of Thomas Becket,’ Speculum 87 (2012),
1050–88.
37 To take examples only from the first sixth of the fine rolls, ROF 26–7, 67, 69, 74, 98, 100.
38 C. Stephen Jaeger, The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe,
950–1200 (Philadelphia, PA, 1994), 9–13, 111–16, 260–2. For a broad look at gestures in the Middle
Ages, see Jean Claude Schmitt, La raison des gestes dans l’Occident médiéval (Paris, 1990).
39 Roger of Howden, Chronica, 3:199; Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, 58.
40 Walter of Coventry, Memoriale, 2:211–12; Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, 152.
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the battlefield or in other endeavours. The king’s court, however, was an important
arena for the possible acquisition or loss of honour. For one thing, it provided an
important audience, above all at feasts or other great occasions, but also even on
ordinary days, when one’s actions and the treatment one received from others
could receive attention and raise or lower one’s reputation. Many actors could
contribute to this, but above all the king could determine who received honour
and status and sometimes who lost it in the various interactions at court. If
honour was important, so too was shame, and the harm of suffering shame was
only magnified when it happened at court. Of course, events at court, and the
resulting shame or dishonour, were subsequently modified by how people
recounted the events, whether orally or in writing, and it is only through the writ-
ten accounts that we have access.41 Nevertheless, the events themselves mattered
greatly, and how a king handled such events, and honoured or shamed those
around him, was an important aspect of successful kingship, and symbolic com-
munication played an important role in the bestowal of shame and honour.
John’s government was run on financial accounts, careful record keeping, and
ongoing institutionalization of law, but it was also a government of gestures
and displays of emotion. Of course, the impact of these forms of soft power should
not be exaggerated. John’s show of respect when greeting the Irish king, Áed
Méith Ó Néill, during his second Irish expedition, by dismounting and kissing
him, did not prevent him from losing Ó Néill’s support when he demanded trib-
ute from him.42 Gerald of Wales described Henry II as personally accompanying
Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem to Dover in an attempt to appease him for his
blunt refusal to go to the aid of the Holy Land or send one of his sons. In Gerald’s
words, though, this gesture and others like it were flatteries (blanditiae) and offer-
ings of honour (beneficii honoris) that, Gerald implied, were hollow compared to
providing substantive aid.43 Yet one should not underestimate the importance of
symbolic communication. The Anonymous of Béthune’s utter indifference to the
specifics of Magna Carta, as opposed to what he saw as the barons’ arrogant
refusal to treat John respectfully in their meeting with him, may not have been
very good history, but it provides a glimpse of the mindset and priorities of at
least one contemporary, and reveals the importance of symbolic communication.
8.4 Gifts
At this point, the importance of gift-giving at John’s court will be obvious. Gifts
have peppered the earlier chapters: hunting animals, hunting rights, deer, and
venison; robes, plate, and jewellery; relics and other religious items; wine. There
has also been ample discussion of hospitality and feasts, themselves a form of gift.
Other kinds of gifts may be added to the picture, including royal grants of timber,
ships captured from the French, and, most coveted of all, land.44 Not only were
the gifts themselves important, but the act of giving was itself a form of symbolic
communication, and could sometimes make quite a spectacle, as when vividly
coloured textiles were distributed when the king granted robes at a feast. Gifts to
the king could also turn into spectacles, and the Briouze family seems to have
been particularly adept at this with William’s presentation of so many hunting
animals to the king and Matilda’s gift of hundreds of white cattle with red ears to
the queen.45 Gift-giving was sometimes routine, sometimes quite spectacular, but
extensive and woven into the fabric of court life; indeed, in many ways acting to
weave that fabric.
As a prelude to analysing John’s adeptness at handling gift-giving, it is useful to
probe a little deeper into the subtleties of the practice. A vast literature on the
importance of gift-giving in premodern societies has developed over the years.46
Gifts served many functions, but winning gratitude and favour was foremost, a
fact of which contemporaries were keenly aware. Early in Henry III’s reign, the
great courtier, Hubert de Burgh, received a letter from an ally informing him that
the young king had received the palfrey Hubert had sent him with affection and
praised it greatly, ‘from which I was happy and rejoiced, for I know that the close
relationship (affinitas) of the lord king is of great value to you and that you will be
easily able to have and hold [the relationship] and his love.’47 As the scholarship
on gift-giving shows, however, the simple picture of gifts earning gratitude,
44 For examples of timber, see RN 112; RLC 40b, 43b, 50a, 66b, 99b; for ships, see RLC 117a, 118b,
120a; Beryl E. R. Formoy, ‘A Maritime Indenture of 1212,’ English Historical Review 41 (1926), 556–9,
at 557. Grants of land are scattered throughout the charter rolls.
45 See Chapter 2, 41; Chapter 4, 83—84; RLC 63a; Anonymous of Béthune, Histoire des ducs,
111–15.
46 The seminal work was Mauss, The Gift. Other works I have used for this section are
Barbara H. Rosenwein, ‘The Family Politics of Berengar I, King of Italy (888–924),’ Speculum 71
(1996), 247–89; Felicity Heal, ‘Reciprocity and Exchange in the Late Medieval Household,’ in
Barbara A. Hanawalt and David Wallace, eds., Bodies and Disciplines: Intersections of History and
Literature in Fifteenth-Century England (Minneapolis, MN, 1996), 179–98; Natalie Zemon Davis, The
Gift in Sixteenth-Century France (Madison, WI, 2000); Esther Cohen and Mayke De Jong, eds.,
Medieval Transformations: Texts, Power, and Gifts in Context (Leiden, 2001); Valentin Groebner,
Liquid Assets, Dangerous Gifts: Presents and Politics at the End of the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, PA,
2002); Florin Curta, ‘Merovingian and Carolingian Gift Giving,’ Speculum 81 (2006), 671–99; Wendy
Davies and Paul Fouracre, eds., The Languages of Gift in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2010);
Woolgar, ‘Gifts of Food,’ 6–18; Jenny Benham, Peacemaking in the Middle Ages: Principles and Practice
(Manchester, 2011), 71–80; Frédérique Lachaud, ‘Freigebigkeit, Verschwendung und Belohnung bei
Hofe, ca. 1150–1300,’ in Werner Paravacini, ed., Luxus und Integration: Materielle Hofkultur
Westeuropas vom 12. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert (Munich, 2010), 85–104. For important discussions of
gift-giving in the courts of John’s father, Henry II, and grandson, Edward I, see Schröder, Macht und
Gabe, 77–104; Lachaud, ‘Textiles, Furs and Liveries,’ 176–219, 249–85.
47 Walter Waddington Shirley, Royal and Other Historical Letters Illustrative of the Reign of Henry III
(London, 1862–6), 1:160.
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48 Chris Wickham, ‘Conclusion,’ in Wendy Davies and Paul Fouracre, eds., The Languages of Gift in
the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2010), 238–61, at 261.
49 Görich, ‘Geld und Honor,’ 177–200; Görich, ‘Geld und Ehre,’ 113–34. For John of Salisbury on
gifts and bribes, see John of Salisbury, Policraticus, 1:187–90, 205–9, 330–4, 346–50.
50 Mauss, The Gift.
51 Benjamin Wild, ‘A Gift Inventory from the Reign of Henry III,’ English Historical Review
125 (2010), 529–69; Nicholas Vincent, ‘An Inventory of Gifts to King Henry III, 1234–5,’ in David
Crook and Louise J. Wilkinson, eds., The Growth of Royal Government under Henry III (Woodbridge,
2015), 121–46; Lars Kjær, The Medieval Gift and the Classical Tradition: Ideals and the Performance of
Generosity in Medieval England, 1100–1300 (Cambridge, 2019), 172–82.
52 Groebner, Liquid Assets, Dangerous Gifts, 1. 53 Kjær, Medieval Gift, passim.
54 Groebner, Liquid Assets, Dangerous Gifts, 1, 10, 13.
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economy.55 Certainly sales and gifts had existed side by side for centuries in
England before John.56 In principle, the two were quite different, but in practice,
continuing expectations of reciprocity made the boundaries between sale and gift
blurred. Wendy Davies has argued that one should see a spectrum between two
poles rather than sharp distinctions, and subtleties rather than confusion in
medieval thinking about the difference between them.57
When it came to the relationship between king and nobles, there was a desire
to downplay any hint of a relationship built on cash rather than gift exchange.
One of the oddities about John’s military practices, particularly during his Irish
campaign of 1210, was that he loaned his noble and knightly subjects a great deal
of cash on military expeditions without any apparent effort to seek repayment.
Stephen Church has conjectured, I think rightly, that the grants were payments
disguised as loans to preserve the nobles’ sensibilities.58 One might even say that
this pretence allowed both parties to avoid any implication that the nobles were
serving for pay rather than fulfilling their tenurial duties and providing proper
reciprocity for the lands which they or (usually) their ancestors had received by
royal gift. An anecdote of the Anonymous of Béthune lends credence to Church’s
theory and suggests a similar dynamic existed with the noble followers John
attracted from overseas during the baronial revolt. The chronicle records how,
despite tensions with John, the Flemish fighters supporting him accompanied
him to Marlborough. There, however, the king did a great ‘villainy’ by having
treasure brought into his chamber before their very eyes but giving them none,
after which they left for Flanders.59 One may reasonably suspect the author of
being less than candid here; he had to justify his patron, Robert of Béthune, and
others deserting John during war. Indeed, Gillingham suggests that Robert
switched sides to Louis.60 What is noteworthy, however, is how the author frames
the supposedly crucial breaking point for the Flemish; certainly not that the
Flemish were being prudent or that the king was not paying them enough. Rather,
he suggests that the king dishonoured them by parading his treasure before them
but not rewarding them with it, implicitly claiming that they were inspired by an
injury to their honour rather than greed or fear. By making John a miserly and
dishonourable lord rather than a bad paymaster, the Anonymous saved face for
his patron. Lyon asked why kings like John relied on money fiefs rather than
simple payments to mercenaries and postulated that the strength of the ‘feudal
system’ was the reason. An alternative possibility is that by removing the transfer
of money from individual acts of military service, such fiefs preserved recipients
from the possible taint of mercenary status. Traditional ties of lordship based on
landholding created an ongoing reciprocal gift exchange of land in return for ser-
vice and loyalty, thereby removing lordship and military service from the vulgar
monetary sphere. Money fiefs marked by the performance of homage aimed to
replicate such permanent and honourable ties of gift exchange, with cash rather
than land as the reward for loyalty, but without the problematic implication of
direct payment for services rendered.61 If these hypotheses are correct, keeping
relations with nobles in the realm of gift-giving rather than the cash nexus was an
important strategy for medieval rulers.
Various cultures have different ideas of what should be bought and sold and
what should remain in the sphere of gift exchange. As Igor Kopytoff has written,
in reference to a study of the Tiv people of Nigeria, ‘We blandly accept the exist-
ence of an exchange sphere of political or academic favors, but would be as
shocked at the idea of monetizing this sphere as the Tiv were at first at the idea of
monetizing their marriage transactions.’62 Medieval boundaries between gift and
sale were politically fraught, and some of the methods used by the Angevin kings,
particularly John, to raise money made their relationship even more problematic
than usual. In their efforts to get cash, the Angevin kings monetized many aspects
of royal government in ways that may shock us, though our economy is more
monetized overall. For instance, kings married off rich heiresses and widows in
their gift in return for cash and, as suggested earlier, even the king’s emotions,
particularly anger, were partially monetized. Such practices may have created
social tension.
There is some indication that John tried to lessen or disguise the increasing
monetization of relations between king and subjects, or so the curious history of
non-monetary portions of proffers to the king suggests. I have noted the inclu-
sion of animals such as birds of prey and horses, as well as wine and other goods,
in proffers to the king. Such items were included in proffers throughout the
Angevin period, but Richard I had started to phase them out. After his return
from captivity, he began seeking cash equivalents for animals and thereby cleared
out a substantial backlog of payments.63 However, John reversed this process,
even at times specifying that specific debtors could not substitute cash for
palfreys.64 John may initially have calculated that such proffers were a convenient
way to obtain the horses and hunting birds the court needed, but if so, he was
wrong, perhaps because the royal administration had a cumbersome process for
inspecting and approving the birds (and presumably the horses) accepted as
proffers.65 For whatever reason, debtors normally provided the promised ani-
mals or goods only after they had paid in all the cash they owed, and often they
substituted cash for animals. A large backlog of owed animals quickly developed.
Thus, in John’s first pipe roll, one horse was delivered to the royal government,
cash was substituted for five more horses, and twenty-eight were owed at the end
of the year. By John’s fourteenth pipe roll, though four horses were delivered and
cash was paid as whole or partial substitution for thirty-eight in that year, over
400 remained outstanding.66 In practical terms, John’s reversal of Richard’s policy
of routinely commuting animals for cash was a failure. Simple cash proffers would
have been much more efficient, and the only way to collect most of these debts
remained converting them to cash. Why then did he continue to encourage the
proffering of animals? He was probably trying to increase the ‘giftiness’ of these
transactions (to borrow a term from Wickham) and thereby make the many
deals between him and his subjects look less like commercial ventures and more
like honourable exchanges of favours and gifts between lord and follower.67 It is
doubtful that these efforts had much success, given the sheer number of cash
proffers and the size and risks or losses involved in many, but the effort does sug-
gest that John and his government were aware of the dangers of turning relation-
ships with the nobility into a commercialized market rather than an arena of
lordship cemented by personal ties and gift exchange. The cultural importance of
gift-giving, in other words, remained strong even as the impact of commercializ
ation grew.
As the argument about John’s attempt to restore ‘giftiness’ to largely cash proffers
indicates, the rise of administrative kingship could disrupt some of the traditional
ways in which soft power was used to smooth relations between ruler and sub-
jects. Nonetheless, administrative kingship did not make traditional forms of soft
power obsolete. As many sections of this book have shown, soft power was still
vital in John’s reign, not just a vestigial survival. In many ways, in fact, the long,
slow development of the European state through the Middle Ages and the early
modern period actually enhanced rulers’ ability to use soft power effectively. For
instance, both Groebner and Natalie Zemon Davis have emphasized that gifts
played an important role in the construction of the early modern state, indicating
that soft power and the rise of the bureaucracy could be closely intertwined.68 The
rise of administrative kingship may have reduced the relative importance of many
forms of soft power, but the greater capabilities that bureaucracy gave rulers pro-
vided them with the means to make expressions of soft power more grandiose,
more impressive, and therefore more effective.
At the simplest level, effective revenue collection and management provided a
king like John the income for many forms of display and generosity: a huge hunt-
ing establishment; large purchases of plate, jewellery, and rich clothing; generous
patronage of music, entertainment, and books; ample religious offerings; and mas-
sive quantities of food and drink, much of it exotic and costly. None of these types
of investments in soft power were new, but administrative kingship gave rulers
the scope for greater magnificence. However, the rise of bureaucracy did more
than provide cash. Importing wine and distributing it throughout England, or
gathering the large quantities of food, drink, textiles, and dishes for a glorious
feast, were challenging logistical tasks, as was managing the complex movement
of dogs, birds, hunters, and falconers throughout the king’s realms and supply-
ing their needs. The development of increasingly effective bureaucracies made
these endeavours easier and manageable on a larger scale. Conversely, the desire
of rulers for more effective displays of soft power (and greater pleasure) provided
an impetus for the rise of administrative kingship. Warfare no doubt remained
the chief stimulus to the rise of sophisticated royal government, and the growth of
royal justice was crucial, but the demands of hunting, material splendour, feasting,
and sacral kingship were also important stimuli. Far from being antagonistic,
administrative kingship and many traditional forms of soft power were mutually
reinforcing.
Similarly, though the increasing use of documents obviously had an impact on
forms of communication, the continuing importance of symbolic communica-
tion suggests that writing expanded the tools of communication rather than sim-
ply replacing oral and non-verbal communication.69 Moreover, though the terse
language of routine writs was a far cry from the kinds of symbolic communica-
tion discussed earlier, aspects of the latter spilled over into writing. Henry Bainton
has argued that important documents were often read aloud at great councils.
Drawing on Weberian terminology and Timothy Reuters’s discussion of the
political importance of assemblies for projecting royal authority, he writes: ‘So
while the use of the written word for political purposes may well have formed
part of the process of the routinization of charisma, it remained bound up with
68 Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France, 8; Groebner, Liquid Assets, Dangerous Gifts,
11–12, 139.
69 For a useful discussion of the differences writing made, see Weiler, Kingship, Rebellion and
Political Culture, 139–48.
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the spectacles of charismatic rule.’70 Public reading was itself a form of symbolic
communication.
Moreover, forms of symbolic communication infiltrated the seemingly purely
practical world of bureaucratic writing, as various scholars have noted.71 Take
expressions of precedence. Physical expressions of precedence such as seating
arrangements and the order in which someone might receive the kiss of peace
remained a crucial aspect of symbolic communication throughout the Middle
Ages and beyond, but are barely mentioned in the records for John’s reign.
However, Josiah Cox Russell showed that the witness lists to John’s charters had a
fairly standard order of precedence, not just between different groups like the
clergy and laity, but also within groups. Thus, for instance, there was a clear order
of precedence among the earls. Russell linked this to seating arrangements; more
broadly, this order of precedence for attestations was probably a written manifest
ation of the kind of careful attention to rank and precedence that undoubtedly
permeated all sorts of routine court activities and gestures.72 Even the language of
gestures made its way into writing. In their letters about their dispute with
Archbishops Baldwin and Hubert over the planned collegiate church, the
Canterbury monks and their allies sometimes performed what might be called
virtual supplications, writing that they embraced the feet or placed themselves at
the feet of the recipient.73 Something similar seems to be going on in a rare sur-
vival of what must have been a very routine writ to John by one of his important
administrators and supporters, Robert de Vieuxpont, reporting the receipt of
military supplies. Robert ended his address clause with the statement, ‘salute et se
totum ad pedes,’ which can probably be translated as ‘greetings and himself
entirely at [your] feet.’74
One way that rulers could show favour was forms of address. To illustrate how
much John favoured William de Briouze, before turning against him, William
Marshal’s biographer said the king described the favourite as seignor and mestre.75
In surviving Latin writs and charters, such terms as dilectus (beloved) and fidelis
(faithful) were used to demonstrate esteem and favour. Of course, sometimes this
was formulaic, especially when used for foreign worthies. For instance, in letters
to Philip Augustus negotiating a truce after the Battle of Bouvines, John addressed
70 Henry Bainton, ‘Literate Sociability and Historical Writing in Later Twelfth-Century England,’
Anglo-Norman Studies 34 (2012), 23–39. Quotation at p. 39.
71 Koziol, Politics of Memory and Identity, 33–7; Hagen Keller, ‘Hulderweis durch Privilegien: sym-
bolische Kommunikation innerhalb und jenseits des Textes,’ Frühmittelalterliche Studien 38 (2004),
309–21; Levi Roach, ‘Public Rites and Public Wrongs: Ritual Aspects of Diplomas in Tenth- and
Eleventh-Century England,’ Early Medieval Europe 19 (2011), 182–203; Charles Insley, ‘ “Ottonians
with Pipe Rolls”? Political Culture and Performance in the Kingdom of the English, c. 900–c. 1050,’
History 102 (2017), 772–86.
72 Josiah Cox Russell, ‘Social Status at the Court of King John,’ Speculum 12 (1937), 319–29.
73 Stubbs, ed., Epistolæ Cantuarienses, 10, 86, 145, 222–3, 283–4, 358–60, 437–8, 445–6.
74 PR8J xxvii. 75 Holden, Gregory, and Crouch, eds., History of William Marshal, 2:208–9.
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80 For the story as a negative anecdote about John, see Gabrielle M. Spiegel, Romancing the Past:
The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in Thirteenth-Century France (Berkeley, CA, 1993), 249.
For the difficulties of interpreting other stories I will discuss below, see Holt, ed., Magna Carta and
Medieval Government, 88–9.
81 For a similar point, see Gillingham, ‘Wirtschaftlichkeit oder Ehre,’ 165–6.
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There were, of course, dangers in investing too much in soft power (not to
mention pleasure). A ruler who spent too much money in these ways might come
up short when money was needed to finance armies and other forms of hard
power. Figures discussed earlier show that John spent heavily on court life, prob-
ably more heavily than most scholars have realized; around £1,000 a year on
hunting; over £1,000 for robes one year; £953 on wine on one occasion; £500 for
the silks and £1,700 for the jewellery left at Corfe Castle; and over £2,000 on
Beaulieu over some years. These figures add up to significant sums, even allowing
for John’s prowess at raising money. The question remains whether they would
have hampered John’s war efforts.
Unfortunately, it is hard to get even an approximate sense of John’s overall
expenditures.82 For later courts, one of the biggest sources of spending would
have been on the food, drink, and other day-to-day costs of the court, but we
know little about this for John’s court. Given how fragmentary our knowledge of
John’s expenditures is, it is difficult to assess the impact of his spending on soft
power and pleasure on his political and military endeavours. There are at least
some indications that John’s spending on the magnificence of his court did not
cause him grave difficulties. For one thing, despite these expenses, he built an enor-
mous war chest, perhaps 200,000 marks.83 Second, although the spending of later
medieval and early modern kings was frequently criticized as too lavish, that was
not an important issue in the grievances related to Magna Carta, which were
focused on the methods the king used to raise money, not how it was spent.84 One
should not make too much of a silence in the sources, but this at least suggests that
the barons considered the king’s expenditures on luxury, display, and pleasure
appropriate, given the need for any king to maintain a magnificent court. Even
though financial strains were one of the major factors in baronial unrest in the reign
of Henry III, Matthew Paris strongly criticized the king when he tried to make
economies, despite admitting he did so to diminish his debt.85 Similarly, for all their
unhappiness with John’s fiscal demands, John’s barons may not have considered his
expenditures on feasting, hunting, and distributing robes a source of grievance,
particularly when they benefited from his largesse. For all the negative attention
John received in the chronicles, he did not have to contend with later stereotypes of
a corrupt, luxurious royal court being challenged by virtuous nobles.
82 For the best attempt to estimate royal expenditures in the period, see Gillingham,
‘Wirtschaftlichkeit oder Ehre,’ 161–4.
83 J. E. A. Jolliffe, ‘The Chamber and Castle Treasuries under King John,’ in Richard William Hunt,
W. A. Pantin, and R. W. Southern, eds., Studies in Medieval History Presented to Frederick Maurice
Powicke (Westport, CT, 1979), 117–42, at 134–5.
84 For later complaints, see Given-Wilson, Royal Household, 14–15, 110–38; C. D. Fletcher,
‘Corruption at Court? Crisis and the Theme of Luxuria in England and France, c. 1340–1422,’ in
Steven Gunn and Antheun Janse, eds., The Court as Stage: England and the Low Countries in the Later
Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2006), 28–38.
85 Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, 5:21–2, 114, 199.
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That said, John’s insatiable demands for money were a major (perhaps the
major) source of unrest in England, and though the requirements of war drove
the demand, generous spending on court life increased the pressure, and though
the worst of the inflation from the beginning of his reign was over by the time he
began spending more on court, higher prices for luxuries as well as war did not
help.86 Lowering such expenditures would have had its own cost in reducing soft
power, but given the exigencies of John’s military position, it might have been the
wiser choice. Even though his spending on court life did not prevent him from
amassing a large war chest, reduced expenditures would have allowed him to
spend more on war or reduce his fiscal demands. Moreover, the royal bureaucracy
designed to safeguard one of John’s favourite activities, hunting, had clear polit
ical costs. Forest law, which I have argued was designed to protect hunting as well
as raise revenue, was deeply unpopular. Similarly, complaints in clause 48 of
Magna Carta about the keepers of rivers were probably related to falconry, and
restrictions on forced contributions to bridge building in clause 23 may have been
at least partly about bridges built to make falconry in wetlands easier, though this
has been debated.87 Expenditures on court life and protection of the king’s hunt-
ing did not lie at the heart of baronial discontent; nonetheless, they contributed.
Before turning from financial considerations to John’s personal abilities, it is
worth briefly noting that even though the court was designed in part to enhance
royal power, certain aspects of court life by their very nature could repel people.
Far better evidence for this comes from the court critics of Henry II’s reign than
from the royal records of John’s reign.88 These writers attacked many aspects of
court life, some of which I have noted, particularly the moral shortcomings of the
court and the problems of itineration and poor food.89 One could add the con-
stant need to flatter and bribe and the frequent danger of backstabbing. Though
the depiction of the court as a hellish place was clearly deeply exaggerated to deter
clerics from serving there, one can nonetheless easily see from their accounts how
the court could be a difficult place to operate. Generally, of course, courtiers
received the blame, at least in public writings about the court, but one could see
how resentment could spread to even the most able king in such settings and how
this resentment might cause problems in times of political crisis. The court could
clearly alienate as well as attract.
That said, all rulers faced the potential of court life to alienate people. More
important for our purposes are John’s own abilities or failings. When one turns
86 For the timing of the inflation, see Latimer, ‘Early Thirteenth-Century Prices,’ 41–73.
87 Painter, Reign of King John, 323; Alan Cooper, Bridges, Law and Power in Medieval England,
700–1400 (Woodbridge, 2006), 81–3; Carpenter, Magna Carta, 205–6.
88 The key works for this are John of Salisbury, Policraticus; Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium; Nigel
of Whiteacre, Tractatus Contra Curiales; Peter of Blois, Opera, 121–2, 195–210; Wahlgren, Letter
Collections of Peter of Blois, 140–73. For secondary discussion, see Chapter 1, note 63.
89 See Chapter 4, 104; Chapter 6, 126; Chapter 7, 169–170.
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90 Anonymous of Béthune, Histoire des ducs, 107. There are some chronological problems with this
story, since it has John then travel to Poitou, suggesting a date of 1206, by which time Hubert Walter
was dead. Nonetheless, the anecdote may have been real even if incorrectly placed in the chronology
of John’s reign.
91 Roger of Howden, Chronica, 4:90; Luard, ed., Annales Monastici, 2:72.
92 For a similar argument, though one focused on John’s lack of chivalry and courtliness, see
Gillingham, ‘Wirtschaftlichkeit oder Ehre,’ 165–7.
93 It is worth noting, however, that the hated foreigners targeted in Magna Carta and other sources
do not seem to have been prominent in this inner circle.
94 See Chapter 2, 41; Chapter 4, 87; Chapter 6, 143–144.
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his closest and most useful followers, though Holt has argued he mismanaged
that kind of valuable patronage as well.95 With cheaper forms of favour, it would
have made sense to cultivate a wider circle, particularly among the baronage, in
order to build stronger ties with powerful political players outside his inner circle.
Though John was a generous giver, as claimed by the Anonymous of Béthune
and demonstrated by his expenditure on items like the robes granted at feasts, he
all too often fumbled the actual act of giving. I have noted the awkward scenes of
joking about his offering with Bishop Hugh of Lincoln, the tendency to have to
borrow the items he gave to churches, and the incident during the Magna Carta
revolt in which he brought out treasure but gave none to his Flemish followers.96
In addition, John could act in ways that surely undermined his reputation for gen-
erosity. For instance, he sometimes demanded in return more than he gave in
exchanges recorded in the fine rolls. Two men on two different occasions owed
two tuns of wines for one the king gave them, and Richard de Camville owed three
palfreys for one he had insisted the king give him.97 Most notably, Earl Ranulf, the
foremost magnate in England, had to offer the king a palfrey in order to obtain a
lamprey from him on one occasion. This exchange was so lopsided that one might
assume it was a joke, especially since the king subsequently forgave Ranulf the pal-
frey. However, a date in the following entry in the fine rolls suggests this proffer
happened sometime in January 1205, a month after John had ordered the seizure
of Ranulf ’s lands in several counties. Though by March 1205, Ranulf and the king
had reconciled, and Ranulf was thereafter an important supporter, it is likely that
this ‘gift exchange’ represented a display of pettiness on the king’s part.98 His record
of gift exchange with another key magnate, William Marshal, was also problem-
atic. In a very flowery letter to William marking their reconciliation after the
Marshal had helped rally the Anglo-Irish baronage on his behalf, John remarked
that William’s son, who was a royal hostage, needed new riding equipment and
robes. The king offered to pay for them, but expected to be paid back, thereby
missing an opportunity to show William further favour at a relatively small price
and soften the awkwardness of holding the son as a hostage.99 More substantively,
the Marshal’s biography reported that during a campaign in Gascony, William had
given John 500 marks of plunder, whereupon the king praised him for his generos-
ity and promised a reward, a promise that went unfulfilled.100 Through episodes
like these, John may well have sacrificed much of the credit he accrued from his
magnificent feasts, generous distribution of robes, and other forms of largesse.
John probably also failed sometimes to show the calm, determined comportment
that was expected of a king under pressure. Although Ralph of Coggeshall
reported that John initially concealed his dismay when he first realized the
planned expedition to Poitou in 1205 might not take place, his reaction once
things really fell apart was less collected. Ralph described him as weeping and
wailing when caught between his followers’ urging against the expedition and the
shame of having it fail. Ralph also reported that, having apparently accepted that
the expedition would not occur, John started travelling towards Winchester, only
to turn back to his ship and sail about fruitlessly while his supporters persuaded
him not to go to Poitou with an insufficient army.101 Similarly, the biographer of
William Marshal described an earlier scene—during John’s final days in
Normandy—in which William criticized the king for not paying attention to the
first signs of discontent there. John reacted by retiring angrily to his chamber and
then leaving early the next day without telling most of his followers, who had to
rush after him.102 John might well have had a very different account of these
events, but these two passages suggest that he had gained a reputation for losing
his cool and flailing around in a very public way when faced with adversity.
Gillingham has described another of John’s failings as the tendency to mock
others or encourage his retinue to do so, noting that this violated one of the most
basic rules in medieval courtesy literature.103 According to Gerald of Wales, this
tendency started as early as John’s 1185 expedition to Ireland, when his followers
pulled on the beards of Irish rulers, with the disastrous diplomatic consequences
one might expect.104 Insults, like displays of anger, could no doubt put pressure
on those with whom the king was displeased and could even be helpful in motiv
ating allies. According to the Anonymous of Béthune, when some of John’s
Flemish followers retreated from the rebels during the baronial revolt, John
insulted them for doing so. Stung, Robert of Béthune, at the next engagement,
urged his fellows to risk death rather than retreat shamefully, and on this occasion
their opponents retreated.105 However, even such ‘productive’ insults had costs,
and that incident may have been one of the reasons that the Anonymous of
Béthune, probably reflecting his patron’s views, so disliked John. Insults created
enemies and, despite the qualifications noted here, Gillingham is almost certainly
correct that John’s overly free use of insults and mockery brought him widespread
hostility. Though displays of anger could be useful, excessive reliance on it was
probably also a mistake, since forcing powerful figures to back down or submit
could create a backlash in a society that valued honour so highly. Jolliffe was
almost certainly right that John used anger as a weapon more frequently than his
father and brother had, and that he paid a higher price for it.106
Humour was another important and useful political tool that could be mis-
used. When properly employed, as Katrin Beyer has shown, it served many pur-
poses; defusing difficult situations, creating and strengthening friendships, and
gaining prestige for wit, among others.107 The question is how well John used
humour. This is particularly hard to answer since it is often difficult to identify
jokes. The royal records record some utterly baffling transactions, and some
scholars have plausibly treated these as jokes.108 John’s son, Henry III, had a series
of ridiculous fines levied on one of his clerics, and these were explicitly described
as a joke when they were cancelled, so it is certainly plausible that similar jokes
could occur under John.109 On a minor scale, a royal valettus had to offer one
palfrey for a ‘license to eat,’ though this was subsequently pardoned.110 A more
famous example is a proffer of 200 hens by Hugh de Neville’s wife to spend a night
with her husband.111 Even more striking is the record of what a number of prom
inent magnates and administrators pledged to the king if the royal favourite, Peter
de Maulay, who had apparently incurred John’s wrath, angered the king again.
Powerful people often served as pledges for agreement by others with the king,
generally offering cash to the king if the other party failed to fulfil the bargain,
and in this case some of the most powerful offered to give palfreys if Peter angered
the king. Eight, however, including leading administrators like Hugh de Neville
and Brian de Lisle, promised that they would let themselves be bound to be
beaten if he did so.112 If this was not a joke, it is an astonishing testimony to John’s
willingness to force followers to place themselves in a potentially brutal and
shameful situation, and of their obsequious willingness to do so, but it is precisely
because the case seems so astonishing that it may have been a joke. Even if these
were jokes, however, Carpenter and Vincent are surely correct in depicting them
as cruel or humiliating, particularly if, as Painter speculated, Hugh de Neville’s
wife was John’s mistress. Even cruel jokes can sometimes create camaraderie, and
such jokes can also underscore and reinforce a powerful figure’s dominance,
which has its own uses, as recent history has shown. Nonetheless, one wonders if
courtiers laughed dutifully but seethed inwardly at the humiliation they or others
faced, and if they looked forward to taking their revenge when the opportunity
presented itself.
As noted earlier, any assessment of John’s handling of soft power must remain
tentative, but if the interpretations above are correct, the king’s missteps lost him
much of the advantage he should have gotten for magnificence and generosity.
Some of this may simply have been awkwardness and miscalculation. John may
not have been a good observer of the impact of his actions, and a prince and later
king surrounded by courtiers who rose or fell through his favour would likely not
receive a realistic picture of how his actions affected others. However, personal
and psychological self-indulgence was probably another factor. As I emphasized
in Chapter 4, by preying on noblewomen for sexual gratification, John deeply wors-
ened his relations with his nobles, and this kind of behaviour may have been
repeated elsewhere on a lesser scale. Though displays of anger could be calculated
and utilitarian, it is also likely that venting rage brought John emotional and psy-
chological satisfaction. If so, since those around him could not easily retaliate, he
could gain such satisfaction repeatedly without immediate consequences. The
longer-term consequences, however, might be dire. Similarly, cruel jokes and other
displays of dominance might have been emotionally gratifying; if so, there was little
to stop John from indulging in them. If these suggestions are correct, John frittered
away considerable advantages and alienated many of his barons and knights,
including some who should have been closest to him, partly to gratify his own emo-
tional demands. In previous chapters I have discussed the importance of both
power and pleasure in shaping court life. In this chapter I have focused on power,
but we should not ignore the possible importance of royal pleasure, including forms
of self-gratification most of us would find deeply troubling. The pursuit of pleasure,
if carried out unwisely or at others’ expense, could sharply undermine power.
Though the movement towards administrative kingship was one of the most
important developments of John’s reign, it should not blind scholars to the
ongoing importance of more traditional forms of soft power. Feasting, gift-giving,
and symbolic communication did not disappear or cease to matter with the
growth of the bureaucracy; at most they lost relative importance. However,
administrative kingship allowed rulers to make feasts more magnificent, gifts
more widespread, and some types of symbolic communication, like processions,
more impressive. Far from rendering such forms of power negligible, bureaucra-
cies and the revenues they brought in allowed rulers to use soft power more
effectively. Much, however, still depended on the king’s abilities. John’s bureau-
cracy gave him the tools to develop soft power on a larger scale than his predeces-
sors had, and to his credit he did so without spending so much that he impeded
his ability to wage war or employ other forms of hard power. Nonetheless, his
spending on soft power and pleasure doubtless increased the financial pressures
that helped provoke baronial unrest. Moreover, John’s personal wielding of such
tools, though sometimes astute, often backfired, perhaps because of miscalcula-
tion, but also because of self-indulgence. Just as John knew how to plan military
operations on a large scale but often failed to bring them off, he knew how to
carry out large displays of soft power, but often stumbled, because of his own
shortcomings, when it came to execution.
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9
John’s Court in a Comparative Context
A Preliminary Sketch
9.1 Introduction
A study of John’s court not only reveals much about the king’s reign, but also
contributes to our understanding of the historical development of court culture
in Western European society. As noted in Chapter 1, there is relatively little work of
the sort carried out in this book for other royal and princely courts of the central
Middle Ages in Western Europe, apart from the court of John’s father, for which
less evidence survives. This chapter asks two major questions. First, to what extent
was John’s court representative of courts of the period in the medieval West and
nearby regions? Second, what can his court tell us about the place of the central
Middle Ages in the long developmental arc of Western courts from the late
Roman imperial court to the famous royal courts of the early modern period?
The answers I provide here will necessarily be tentative and impressionistic,
partly because one case study (or two, if one adds the works on Henry II’s court)
is only a start, but mostly because of the unevenness in evidence. As I stressed in
Chapter 1, the unusually rich records, by the standards of the period, for John’s
reign make his court an ideal subject. However, the lack of equivalent records for
his immediate contemporaries makes detailed comparisons difficult. Enough sur-
vives from the reign of Philip Augustus to make a broad comparison of like with
like, and the fiscal accounts of Catalonia from 1151–1213 also provide potential
points of comparison. Similarities are easier to establish than differences in these
cases: the presence of particular aspects of court life in two sets of records can
demonstrate the former, but apparent differences may stem merely from variations
in the amount and type of surviving evidence. For other contemporary courts,
including highly developed ones such as the Byzantine imperial court, equivalent
records do not survive, and though one can make comparisons based on other
sources, mostly narrative accounts, such comparisons are necessarily impression-
istic. I have not attempted to be comprehensive in my comparison. Instead, I have
chosen a group of brief case studies. These have been chosen on the basis of the
survival of royal records; of other useful records or secondary works where such
records do not survive; and, to the extent possible, by chronological closeness to
John’s reign, though in a number of cases I have had to cast a wider temporal net.
Power and Pleasure: Court Life under King John, 1199–1216. Hugh M. Thomas, Oxford University Press (2020).
© Hugh M. Thomas. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198802518.003.0009
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The problem of disparate records only increases when turning to the long
temporal arc. Though much better records survive from John’s reign than from
his father’s (and from Henry II’s reign than from those of earlier rulers), nonethe-
less the amount surviving from 1199–1216 pales compared to that from the
courts of later medieval rulers, let alone early modern ones. As a result, it can be
very hard to tell if something that appears in the records for the first time in a
given reign is actually new or merely appears so because of new records. There is
the danger that greater documentation as time passed can exaggerate the degree
to which courts grew in complexity and richness over time. In terms of sources,
one is rarely comparing like with like, even from one generation to the next, let
alone from century to century. As a result, caution is in order. But despite the dif-
ficulties of both geographic and temporal comparison, it is worth presenting
some tentative suggestions about the place of John’s court in a broader context.
Three main types of surviving royal records shed light on life at the French royal
court during Philip Augustus’s reign. The first, royal registers, provide more infor-
mation on government and administration than court life, but they do include
documents recording royal alms, inventories of plate and jewels, and a list of
places owing the king hospitality on his itineration.1 More important for our pur-
poses are a royal financial account for 1202–3 and a household account of the
subsidiary household of Philip’s son, Louis, and Louis’ wife, Blanche of Castile, for
1213, which provide information on several relevant topics.2 The total evidence
they preserve relating to issues discussed in this book is minuscule compared to
that in surviving English and Norman records, but they nonetheless reveal strong
similarities between the English and French courts. These include the broad simi-
larities one would expect such as the importance of food, textiles, almsgiving, and
gift exchange, as well as more specific ones. The same stones and types of jewel-
lery appear in the French and English records. There is a large overlap in the sorts
of clothes, furs, and textiles that appear, with only minor differences; for instance,
the French court frequently used a kind of cloth called camelin that is absent in
the English records in John’s reign.3 The French court had the same type of
hunting establishment as the English, though it was probably far smaller. The
records, nonetheless, also suggest differences. References to entertainers abound
in the relatively brief account of the household of Louis and Blanche, particularly
1 John W. Baldwin, ed., Les Registres de Philippe Auguste (Paris, 1992), 183–95, 204–6, 229–37, 243.
2 Lot and Fawtier, eds., Le premier budget; Robert Fawtier, ‘Un fragment du compte de l’hôtel du
prince Louis de France pour le terme de la Purification 1213,’ Le Moyen Age 43 (1933), 225–50.
3 Camelin does appear under Henry III; Wild, ‘Truly Royal Retinue,’ 135.
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in comparison to what appears in the fuller records of Philip and, especially, John.
This may simply be an accident of record keeping, but Lindy Grant has suggested
that Louis and Blanche were far more supportive of music and entertainment than
Philip Augustus, who notoriously refused to support entertainers. Similarly, they
may have been greater patrons of music and entertainment than John.4 A primarily
institutional rather than personal difference between the courts was the heavy
French reliance on well-established customary rights of hospitality to carry out
their itineration, whereas the Angevin kings relied on their own resources and ad
hoc hospitality, at least in England and Normandy. Nonetheless, the overall
impression is of great similarity between the two courts. This is hardly surprising;
John’s Norman and Angevin predecessors and the Anglo-Norman aristocrats
dominant at his court came from the same northern French cultural milieu that
shaped the king of France’s court.
The fiscal accounts of the count-kings of Catalonia and Aragon are very different
kinds of records from their English and Norman counterparts and therefore a
weaker basis for comparison.5 As one might expect, they suggest a greater cul-
tural distance from John’s court than that found at the French royal court. There is
a greater gap in the types of textiles that appear, and food items such as spinach
and sweets occur there but not in the English records. Nonetheless, there are
similarities in the terminology for clothing and the love for falcons and pepper.
One suspects that a visitor from England would have found some aspects of the
Catalan-Aragonese court strange, but only within a broader framework of a similar
court structure and lifestyle.
When one moves beyond courts with surviving administrative records, com-
parisons become more difficult. Among the European rulers whose lives over-
lapped with John’s, Frederick I Barbarossa has perhaps received the most attention
from both medieval writers and modern scholars. Indeed, Gilbert of Mons and
other writers provided far more detail for the emperor’s greatest assembly, held at
Mainz in 1184 to knight his sons, than Angevin writers did for any event held by
John. Gilbert and the other writers described many aspects of the event that
impressed them, ranging from a temporary wooden palace, lodgings, and a sea of
tents to jousting, plentiful food, and the remarkable generosity of Frederick’s sons
and other magnates.6 For all the richness of the narrative sources, however, the
4 Grant provides a good picture of Louis and Eleanor’s household and a fuller one of court culture
under Blanche as regent and queen mother; Grant, Blanche of Castile, 47–8, 169–74, 180–1,
204–6, 230–64.
5 Thomas N. Bisson, ed., Fiscal Accounts of Catalonia under the Early Count-Kings (1151–1213),
2 vols. (Berkeley, CA, 1984).
6 Gilbert of Mons, La chronique de Gislebert de Mons, ed. Léon Vanderkindere (Brussels, 1904),
154–63; Heinz Wolter, ‘Der Mainzer Hoftag von 1184 als politisches Fest,’ in Detlef Altenburg, Jörg
Jarnut, and Hans-Hugo Steinhoff, eds., Feste und Feiern im Mittelalter (Sigmaringen, 1991), 193–9;
Görich, Friedrich Barbarossa, 505–14; John B. Freed, Frederick Barbarossa: The Prince and the Myth
(New Haven, CT, 2016), 446–9.
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paltry surviving documentary records do not allow for the detailed reconstruction
and analysis of the many aspects of court life I have been able to include in this
book. As a result, scholars of Barbarossa’s court have concentrated on somewhat
different matters than I have. For instance, Knut Görich has focused on the
emperor’s ideas of honour; Heinz Krieg has analysed the presentation of
Frederick’s character in narrative writings and chancery documents; and Alheydis
Plassmann has used charter attestations to provide an extremely detailed analysis
of Frederick’s interaction with magnates at his assemblies and on his travels more
generally, a subject I touch on only briefly.7 Görich’s excellent overview of
Frederick’s court in his biography of the court does discuss some of the subjects
I have covered, including itineration, palaces and tents, and learning; and it is
particularly rich in its analysis of symbolic communication, displays and conceal-
ment of emotion, the use of space at court, etiquette, and other aspects of soft
power. However, there is far less on the emperor’s hunting establishment, food
and feasting, and material culture, simply because the records do not survive.8
The difference between the available evidence and therefore the modern scholar-
ship makes precise comparisons between the English and imperial courts diffi-
cult. Nonetheless, one comes away with a very strong sense of similarity. This is
perhaps best illustrated by Rahewin’s description of Frederick’s activities, which
included daily attendance at services; hunting with horses, dogs, birds, and bows
(thus clearly including all types of hunting); presiding over abundant and formal
dining; position-appropriate clothing; and building projects, including a carefully
designed landscape at Kaiserlautern.9
Gilbert of Mons’ chronicle, which focuses on the counts of Hainaut, particu-
larly Count Baldwin V (1150–95), allows us to see that similarities also extended
to princely courts. It does admittedly show administrative differences from
England; like the kings of France, Baldwin relied more heavily than John on fixed
rights of hospitality, including similar rights for his huntsmen, though he remit-
ted the latter when he died. Personally, Baldwin differed from John in attending
tournaments. In other respects, however, he presided over a similar round of
court activities. Gilbert describes Baldwin’s attendance at services and his pious
actions (despite his love of secular pleasures); his elaborate feasts, including at
Christmas; and his generosity to his knights. Where other authors stressed defer-
ence towards rulers, Gilbert emphasized Baldwin’s proper interaction, including
his way of speaking, with his followers, but the importance of correct manners
7 Knut Görich, Die Ehre Friedrich Barbarossas. Kommunication, Konflikt, und politisches Handeln
im 12. Jahrhundert (Darmstadt, 2001); Heinz Krieg, Herrscherdarstellung in der Stauferzeit. Friedrich
Barbarossa im Spiegel seiner Urkunden und der staufischen Geschichtsschreibung (Ostfildern, 2003);
Alheydis Plassmann, Die Struktur des Hofes unter Friedrich I. Barbarossa nach den deutschen Zeugen
seiner Urkunden (Hanover, 1998).
8 Görich, Friedrich Barbarossa, 145–220. For a briefer overview of Frederick’s court, see Rösener,
Leben am Hof, 53–60.
9 Otto of Freising and Rahewin, Gesta Friderici I, 343–5.
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10 Gilbert of Mons, La chronique, 107–9, 116–17, 125, 127, 140, 154–63, 237, 311–12, 333–43. For
Baldwin’s household see Rösener, Leben am Hof, 81–3. For the list of officials, see Vale, Princely
Court, 35–7.
11 Cristina Carbonetti Vendittelli, ed., Il Registro della Cancelleria di Federico II del 1239–1240, 2
vols. (Rome, 2002), 1:86–7, 92–4, 119–21, 131–2, 139–40, 175–6, 202–3, 207–14, 223, 280–6, 355–6,
371, 377, 386–7, 413–14, 418–19, 421–2, 435–6, 444–7, 461–2, 468, 471–4; 2:524, 539–40, 543–4,
555–6, 558–9, 612–13, 653, 684, 688–92, 696–8, 718, 724–5, 737–8, 915–19; Johannes Fried, ‘Kaiser
Friedrich II. als Jäger,’ in Werner Rösener, ed., Jagd und höfische Kultur im Mittelalter (Göttingen,
1997), 149–66.
12 Fried, ‘Kaiser Friedrich II. als Jäger,’ 152–3; Giese, ‘Tierhaltung,’ 127–8.
13 Vendittelli, ed., Registro, 1:201–2; 2:606; Giese, ‘Tierhaltung,’ 121–71.
14 Vendittelli, ed., Registro, 1:219–20, 424–5.
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ways his court spanned cultures, like those of his Norman predecessors in the
kingdom of Sicily.15
There were thus certainly aspects of Frederick II’s court that would have
seemed strange to courtiers from John’s lands. That said, one should not exagger-
ate the differences and, equally important, one should remember that Western
courts valued exoticism and were open to aspects of Islamic and Byzantine influ-
ence. One exotic practice Frederick introduced to Western Christendom was that
of hunting with cheetahs, often called leopards in the Western sources. Some of
the so-called leopards that Frederick sent to John’s son, Henry III, may actually
have been hunting cheetahs, and John’s grandson, Edward I, certainly got a pair of
them from a Mongol ruler.16 Frederick’s own greatest intellectual accomplish-
ment, his treatise on falconry, discussed a subject of interest both to Western and
Islamic rulers and elites.
In general, medieval and modern assumptions to the contrary, one should not
exaggerate the differences found as one moves beyond the core cultural areas of
medieval Western Europe. The survival of sagas of King Sverre (ruled 1184–1202)
and Håkon IV (ruled 1204–63) and a thirteenth-century guide to kingship called
the King’s Mirror allows us to see aspects of the Norwegian court from the late
twelfth to the mid-thirteenth century.17 It is true that when a cardinal stopped in
England on the way to crown Håkon in 1247, according to the saga account, the
English, out of envy, told him that he would not get any decent food or drink and
warned him about the grimness of the people. However, desiring to cater to the
cosmopolitan tastes of his visitor, Håkon had sent abroad for supplies lacking in
Norway, and the saga assures its audience that at the coronation feast the cardinal
praised both provisions and people. Elsewhere, the sagas reveal many similarities
to courts elsewhere in Europe: the importance of royal regalia; the custom of
holding glorious feasts at Christmas as well as on special occasions for the mon
archy; at least one instance of powerful men ceremonially serving at the royal
table; extensive building by rulers, including of feasting halls; the custom of gift
15 David Abulafia, Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor (London, 1988), 251–89.
16 Vendittelli, ed., Registro, 1:201–2, 360–1; 2:522–3, 606, 655–6; Giese, ‘Tierhaltung,’ 133–5;
Allsen, Royal Hunt in Eurasian History, 256–7.
17 Among the secondary works, Daniel Brégaint provides a good discussion of symbolic communi-
cation amongst a broader discussion of communication in general by Norwegian kings: David
Brégaint, Vox Regis: Royal Communication in High Medieval Norway (Leiden, 2016). Hans Jacob
Orning ably analyses feasting at the Norwegian court and in a study of loyalty and obedience dis-
cusses supplication and royal anger: Hans Jacob Orning, ‘Festive Governance: Feasts as Rituals of
Power and Integration in Medieval Norway,’ in Wojtek Jezierski et al., eds., Rituals, Performatives, and
Political Order in Northern Europe, c. 650–1350 (Turnhout, 2015), 175–207; Hans Jacob Orning,
Unpredictability and Presence: Norwegian Kingship in the High Middle Ages (Leiden, 2008), 167–74,
184–92. Sverre Bagge provides a good overview of Norwegian kingship in the central Middle Ages
along with brief discussions of court culture and royal itineration: Sverre Bagge, From Viking
Stronghold to Christian Kingdom: State Formation in Norway, c. 900–1350 (Copenhagen, 2010), 170–4,
267–72. For sacral kingship and rituals of kingship in nearby Sweden, see Philip Line, Kingship and
State Formation in Sweden, 1130–1290 (Leiden, 2007), 350–62, 388–400.
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exchange with other rulers; the high value placed on fine clothing and textiles,
including scarlets and silks; hunting with hawks and hounds; even the use of
gaudy horse trappings such as gilded saddles.18 As for the King’s Mirror, its author
had many of the same concerns as Daniel Beccles and the writers of later courtesy
manuals, even though the details sometimes differed. In discussing the royal
court, the author stressed morality, but also proper deportment, elegant speech,
good table manners, appropriate clothing, and even training for jousting. Above
all, the audience learns about how to interact with the king, with an emphasis on
deferential behaviour throughout.19 It is possible that some of the behaviours
common to courts elsewhere were importations; the thirteenth century saw the
Norwegian king and nobles translating courtly romances from elsewhere in
Europe, possibly as part of a broader acculturation.20 Nonetheless, the point
remains that once the royal court of Norway becomes reasonably visible in the
sources, it resembles other courts in many ways.
The English snobbery about the Norwegian court was far from unique; elites
from the core cultures of Western Europe had a tendency to stress the otherness
of societies on the periphery. For instance, Gerald of Wales’s anecdote about
Henry II making Irish rulers eat crane was intended partly to emphasize that they
were outsiders to mainstream European court culture.21 An anecdote by the
Anonymous of Béthune in which John, during his Irish campaign of 1210, pre-
sented a warhorse with a valuable saddle and bridle to the king of Connacht,
Cathal Crobderg Ó Conchobair, and the Irish king promptly removed the saddle
and harness and rode bareback, had similar intentions.22 Such anecdotes were
part of a pattern of increasingly treating the Irish and other Celtic speakers as
barbarians. One must therefore be wary of writers’ tendency to exaggerate Irish
and Welsh strangeness and so-called backwardness.23 Unfortunately, relatively lit-
tle is known of Irish courts in the period, but the survival of Welsh and Latin
treatises about Welsh royal courts means we know a fair amount about them.
Certainly, one can find rules that appear odd from an English perspective, and
one notable cultural difference was that poets had a much higher status at Welsh
courts than in French or English ones. Nonetheless, the laws and other sources
show much that is familiar, including the importance of hunting and falconry; the
celebration of the three great feasts of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost; the
granting of clothing to the rulers’ followers at those feasts; and the distribution of
18 J. Sephton, ed., The Saga of King Sverri of Norway (London, 1899), 25, 52, 99; G. W. Dasent, ed.,
The Saga of Hacon (London, 1894), 56, 114, 202, 247, 251–60, 271–2, 301, 303, 307, 330–3, 338, 371–3.
19 Laurence Marcellus Larson, ed., The King’s Mirror (New York, 1917), 162–234.
20 Brégaint, Vox Regis, 186–94.
21 See Chapter 6, 150–151. Despite being born in Wales, Gerald was culturally more English and
French than Welsh.
22 Anonymous of Béthune, Histoire des ducs, 112.
23 Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, 159–71; Gillingham, English in the Twelfth Century, 3–18, 41–58.
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the rulers’ own food and drink as a sign of favour.24 Indeed, it is likely that the
largest difference between English and Welsh courts was scale, given the vast
disparity in wealth, rather than culture.
Western European writers also tended to find the Byzantine court strange and
culturally foreign, although they were likely to be grudgingly impressed by it. As
Paul Magdalino has noted: ‘Between 829 and 1204, the Byzantine imperial court
was the most ancient, wealthy, and splendid in the Christian world.’25 There were
certainly aspects of court life that would have seemed exotic to Western visitors:
eunuchs, chariot races, unfamiliar liturgy in Greek rather than Latin, even probably
the sheer splendour of the court, at least until crusaders pillaged Constantinople
in 1204. Yet there would also have been much that was broadly familiar. Feasting,
hunting, lavish textiles, and the absorption of many Christian practices into court
life all would have had strong parallels, even if the details differed. After all, as
Jonathan Shepard has emphasized, Byzantine court practices influenced Western
ones, including those of rulers like John’s distant predecessor, William the
Conqueror.26 Even where one might expect differences, there could be surprising
similarities in detail. Given the far more sedentary nature of the Byzantine court,
one might not expect elaborate horse harnesses or tents to be important aspects
of the court’s material culture. Yet the two most important treatises for under-
standing Byzantine court culture reveal that that court showed off with elabor
ately equipped and decorated horses, and the emperors used lavish tents on
military campaigns.27 Even the Byzantine practice of proskynesis, which could
24 Thomas Charles-Edwards, Morfydd E. Owen, and Paul Russell, eds., The Welsh King and His
Court (Cardiff, 2000). For a recent discussion of these laws that emphasizes their relationship to con-
temporary literature and political discourse and thereby explains some of the oddities, see Robin
Chapman Stacey, Law and the Imagination in Medieval Wales (Philadelphia, PA, 2018).
25 Paul Magdalino, ‘In Search of the Byzantine Courtier: Leo Choirosphaktes and Constantine
Manasses,’ in Henry Maguire, ed., Byzantine Court Culture from 829 to 1204 (Washington, D.C.,
1997), 141–65, at 141. For the court more generally, see Averil Cameron, ‘The Construction of Court
Ritual: The Byzantine Book of Ceremonies,’ in David Cannadine and Simon Price, eds., Rituals of
Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1987), 106–36; Henry Maguire,
ed., Byzantine Court Culture from 829 to 1204 (Washington, D.C., 1997); Paul Magdalino, ‘Court and
Capital in Byzantium,’ in Jeroen Duindam, Tülay Artan, and Metin Kunt, eds., Royal Courts in
Dynastic States and Empires: A Global Perspective (Leiden, 2011), 131–44; Ruth Macrides, ‘Ceremonies
and the City: The Court in Fourteenth-Century Constantinople,’ in Jeroen Duindam, Tülay Artan,
and Metin Kunt, eds., Royal Courts in Dynastic States and Empires: A Global Perspective (Leiden,
2011), 217–35; Rosemary Morris, ‘Beyond the De Ceremoniis,’ in Catherine Cubitt, ed., Court Culture
in the Early Middle Ages: The Proceedings of the First Alcuin Conference (Turnhout, 2003), 235–54.
A good collection with a comparative approach is Alexander Beihammer, Stavroula Constantinou,
and Maria Parani, eds., Court Ceremonies and Rituals of Power in Byzantium and the Medieval
Mediterranean (Leiden, 2013). For both the Byzantine and medieval Islamic courts, I am necessarily
using a broader period for comparison.
26 Jonathan Shepard, ‘Courts in East and West,’ in Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson, eds., The
Medieval World (London, 2001), 14–36; Shepard, ‘Adventus, Arrivistes and Rites of Rulership,’ 337–71.
27 Konstantinos Porphyrogennetos, Konstantinos Porphyrogennetos: The Book of Ceremonies in Two
Volumes, ed. Ann Moffatt, 2 vols. (Canberra, 2012), 1:80–1, 99, 105; Ruth Macrides, J. A. Munitiz, and
Dimiter Angelov, eds., Pseudo-Kodinos and the Constantinopolitan Court: Offices and Ceremonies
(Farnham, 2014), 387–91; Margaret Mullet, ‘Tented Ceremony: Ephemeral Performances under the
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include gestures like bowing, prostration, and kissing feet, and seems quite exotic
to modern sensibilities, was similar to acts of supplication in Western Europe.28
Certainly the Byzantine court differed from Western courts in significant ways,
but one should not exaggerate those differences.
Islamic courts would no doubt have seemed even more exotic to Western visit
ors, particularly because of the religious differences, which both sides viewed as
fundamental.29 Islamic courts also seem to have placed a greater value than did
most Western courts on the written and spoken word and literary refinement. To
some degree this difference might be a matter of surviving source material, which
in the Islamic case is literary rather than documentary. The court of Henry II and
Eleanor, with its literary patronage and the presence of raconteurs like Walter
Map, seems closer to such courts than John’s. Nonetheless, literary culture in
Western Europe, particularly in Latin, may have been less focused on courts than
its Islamic counterpart, given the plenitude of patronage available in ecclesiastical
institutions like cathedrals, monasteries, and the emerging universities. There
would no doubt have been many other differences. Yet in the Islamic case, too,
one can speak of broad similarities, including feasting, hunting, and the import
ance of splendid clothing. Oleg Grabar has written of a shared culture of objects,
and though his focus is on interchange between Byzantine and Arabic courts, the
concept can be extended to Western European ones as well.30 That, after all, was
why English chroniclers were so eager to itemize the plunder Richard captured in
his raid on Saladin’s great caravan, and why Western European courts spent heav-
ily on luxury items made in the Islamic world. When Richard and Saladin negoti-
ated during the Third Crusade, they exchanged gifts of hunting dogs, pears and
other fruit, and jewellery and other small treasures.31 The two rulers and their
advisors clearly shared a cultural understanding of how negotiating operated and
of the importance of gift exchange in that context.
Komnenoi,’ in Alexander Beihammer, Stavroula Constantinou, and Maria Parani, eds., Court
Ceremonies and Rituals of Power in Byzantium and the Medieval Mediterranean (Leiden, 2013), 487–513.
28 For the types of proskynesis, see Macrides, Munitiz, and Angelov, eds., Pseudo-Kodinos, 386.
29 For Islamic courts, see Cynthia Robinson, In Praise of Song: The Making of Courtly Culture in
al-Andalus and Provence, 1005–1134 a.d. (Leiden, 2002); Albrecht Fuess and Jan-Peter Hartung, eds.,
Court Cultures in the Muslim World, Seventh to Nineteenth Centuries (London, 2011); Nadia Maria El
Cheikh, ‘To Be a Prince in the Fourth/Tenth-Century Abbasid Court,’ in Jeroen Duindam, Tülay
Artan, and Metin Kunt, eds., Royal Courts in Dynastic States and Empires: A Global Perspective
(Leiden, 2011), 198–216. For a comparative collection with several pieces on Islamic court culture, see
Maurice A. Pomerantz and Evelyn Birge Vitz, eds., In the Presence of Power: Court and Performance in
the Pre-Modern Middle East (New York, 2017). For a broad comparison of many aspects of govern-
ance, see Political Culture in Three Spheres: The West, Byzantium and Islam, c. 700–c. 1500: A
Framework for Comparison, ed. Catherine Holmes, Jonathan Shepard, Jo Van Steenbergen, and Bjorn
Weiler, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.
30 Oleg Grabar, ‘The Shared Culture of Objects,’ in Henry Maguire, ed., Byzantine Court Culture
from 829 to 1204 (Washington, D.C., 1997), 115–29.
31 Roger of Howden, Chronica, 3:114; [Roger of Howden], Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi, 2:171, 180;
Ambroise, History of the Holy War, 1:120; Stubbs, ed., Itinerarium, 241, 296.
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There are several reasons for these broad similarities in court life. One is that
the shared functions of rulers’ courts were likely to produce parallels in court life,
not only in the cultures discussed here, but also in monarchies throughout the
world. The typical desire of rulers to project power, reinforce hierarchy, and grat-
ify their desires meant that elaborate ceremonies, lavish displays of wealth, and
entertainments and pastimes would be common across cultures. Feasting and gift
exchange are universal human activities, and personal ornamentation is quite
common. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that such phenomena as splendid food
and drink, rich attire, and the giving and receiving of treasures appear repeatedly
at courts. There were thus likely to be similarities even between court cultures
that saw no interaction and shared no common background.32 However, a second
factor for the societies discussed above was that they had many contacts, even if
often indirect or hostile. People, objects, and ideas flowed constantly throughout
Europe, and also between Europe and the Islamic world.33 Third, the societies
discussed above all had cultural roots in the late Roman world, though the con-
tinuing impact of Roman culture varied widely.34
Obviously, the similarities I have outlined here should not be taken too far,
particularly for the courts that were geographically and culturally most distant
from the overlapping cultural zones of England and northern France. Cultural
differences between courts did stand out to medieval people at times, and when
writers wished to emphasize differences between peoples, even a small variation
like the Irish rejecting cranes as food could be treated as a marker of difference.
Nonetheless, assuming any language difficulties could be overcome, John’s court
iers would probably have quickly adjusted to courts elsewhere in Europe, and
most would have found the court of Philip Augustus very familiar. Scholars are
increasingly wary of ideas of English exceptionalism, and though some aspects of
English government were unusual, particularly the level of financial and bureau-
cratic institutionalization, in cultural terms John’s court was very much in the
European mainstream and would have shared many characteristics with the
courts of Byzantium and the Islamic world.
Though specialists in late medieval court culture have often drawn comparisons
with the early modern period, the lack of substantial work on court life in the
central Middle Ages means that there has been little effort to extend the trajectory
32 For comparative works covering courts throughout the world, see Duindam, Artan, and Kunt,
eds., Royal Courts in Dynastic States and Empires; Duindam, Dynasties.
33 For the Eurasian scope of royal hunting culture, for instance, see Allsen, Royal Hunt in Eurasian
History, 233–64.
34 For royal courts in the ancient world, see Spawforth, ed., Court and Court Society.
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described how, a generation before John, the French King, Louis VII, constructed
a park at Fontainebleau for hunting and other pleasures.41 During the Versailles
period, the French court continued to spend six weeks every year there during
the hunting season.42 As this last example suggests, at times one can speak not
only of continuities in broad court activities such as hunting, feasting, and mater
ial display, but also of specific details. A similar example of surprisingly specific
continuity can be found in England. In the letter in which the monks of
Canterbury Cathedral discussed their preparation for Richard I’s coronation, they
also noted that the barons of the Cinque Ports were associated with the canopy
that was carried over the king during part of the ceremony. Hundreds of years
later, at the coronation of Charles II, those barons still had that association.43
Even Elias’s examples of table manners from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth
century include specific continuities along with important changes.44
As with similarities between the royal courts across different lands, there are a
number of reasons for this continuity. Similarity of function once again plays a
role. Duindam has observed that there was continuity of court structures from
the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries because of continuity in the functions of
the court, but there is no reason that this principle cannot be taken back to King
John’s period or well before.45 Institutional continuity obviously played a major role
within individual polities. Even today, the British monarchy utilizes Westminster
and Windsor, sites with a royal tradition going back to the eleventh century, for
ceremonial purposes and court functions. An ongoing emphasis on tradition and,
in later periods, the appeal of the archaic strengthened the desire for continuity.
Above all, perhaps, the influence of Christianity in Western Europe from the time
of Constantine to the present day created a strong ideological and ceremonial
framework in which royal traditions could be preserved. Individual dynasties and
polities may have faltered over time, but the overall history of royal and princely
courts in Western Europe saw unbroken continuity from the late Roman period
to the fall of most monarchies in the modern period, and the remaining constitu-
tional monarchies are still linked to aspects of that history.
Yet when one turns one’s attention from the court of King John to early mod-
ern courts in England and throughout Europe, one seems almost to have entered
a different world.46 The sheer size of courts and of individual departments within
them was generally much larger. Moreover, the level of elaboration and splendour
in activities like royal entries or entertainments at feasts was often on a different
41 Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium, 454–7. 42 Duindam, Vienna and Versailles, 148.
43 Stubbs, ed., Epistolæ Cantuarienses, 308; Bertelli, The King’s Body, 100.
44 Elias, Civilizing Process, 1:84–99.
45 Jeroen Duindam, ‘Court Life in Early Modern Vienna and Versailes: Discourse versus Practice,’
in Steven Gunn and Antheun Janse, eds., The Court as a Stage: England and the Low Countries in the
Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2006), 183–95, at 183–4.
46 For works on early modern courts, see Chapter 1, note 10.
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scale, even allowing for the fact that better sources provide fuller and more
detailed views of court activities. For instance, though royal entries in John’s reign
doubtlessly involved more ceremonial and display than the bare mentions in the
records reveal, it is hard to believe that the elaborate pageantry of tableaux vivants
and other ceremonial aspects of early modern entries could have existed without
leaving a trace in the royal records. It is difficult to convey just how much more
elaborate and splendid early modern courts seem in comparison to John’s, but a
few specifics can help. According to R. J. Knecht, when the court of Francis I of
France, who ruled 1515–47, was on the move, some 18,000 horses were needed.47
John had a handful of departments that each used a few wagons and packhorses,
and even though they would have been joined by the horses of huntsmen, royal
officials, and guests at court, there is simply no comparison. According to Sidney
Anglo, Henry VII of England spent over £128,000 on jewels between 1491 and
the end of his reign in 1509.48 Even allowing for price rise and the many gaps in
John’s records, it is difficult to see how John, fond as he was of gems, could have
spent anything like that during his reign. Rafael Dominguez Casas has compiled a
nearly 200-page prosopography of the artisans who worked for Ferdinand and
Isabella, including painters, illuminators, brick-and-tile makers, jewellers,
embroiderers, musicians, sculptors, and armourers.49 Even if we had equivalent
records for John’s reign, it is inconceivable that we would find so many artisans.
All these examples, it must be stressed, come from the beginning of the early
modern period, and royal courts only became larger and more elaborate as the
early modern period progressed. One can point to exceptions in the overall
growth and growing elaboration of different aspects of court life—it is unlikely,
for instance, that many early modern European hunting establishments much
exceeded John’s in size and scope. Nonetheless, the overwhelming impression one
gets from studying the records of John’s reign and the secondary literature about
the early modern court is that the splendour and elaborateness of court life
expanded dramatically.
At first glance, such comparisons may seem to demonstrate that the transition
from the Middle Ages to the early modern period ushered in major changes, but
such an assumption is misleading. Though one would not want to ignore the
impact that the intellectual and cultural changes associated with the Italian
Renaissance and its iterations elsewhere in Europe had on royal and princely
courts, it would be deeply problematic to place too much weight on old-fashioned
ideas about the end of the Middle Ages. Malcolm Vale, in his book on princely
courts from 1270 to 1380, has argued that ‘in many ways, the distinction often
47 R. J. Knecht, ‘Francis I: Prince and Patron of the Northern Renaissance,’ in A. G. Dickens, ed.,
The Courts of Europe: Politics, Patronage, and Royalty, 1400–1800 (New York, 1977), 99–119, at 103.
48 Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry, and Early Tudor Policy, 104–5.
49 Rafael Dominguez Casas, Arte y etiqueta de los Reyes Católicos: artistas, residencias, jardines
y bosques (Madrid, 1993), 27–200.
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50 Vale, Princely Court, 18. 51 For works on medieval courts, see Chapter 1, notes 11–12.
52 There is extensive work on the Burgundian court. I have relied on Vale’s comparative study noted
above and also on C. A. J. Armstrong, ‘The Golden Age of Burgundy: Dukes That Outdid Kings,’ in
A. G. Dickens, ed., The Courts of Europe: Politics, Patronage, and Royalty, 1400–1800 (New York,
1977), 55–75; Lafortune-Martel, Fête noble en Bourgogne; Werner Paravacini, ‘The Court of the Dukes
of Burgundy: A Model for Europe?’ in Ronald G. Asch and Adolf M. Birke, eds., Princes, Patronage,
and the Nobility: The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age, c. 1450–1650 (Oxford, 1991), 69–102;
Peter Arnade, Realms of Ritual: Burgundian Ceremony and Civil Life in Late Medieval Ghent (Ithaca,
NY, 1996); Andrew Brown, ‘Bruges and the Burgundian “Theatre-State”: Charles the Bold and Our
Lady of the Snow,’ History 84 (1999), 573–89; Damen, ‘Princely Entries and Gift Exchange,’ 233–49;
Andrew Brown and Graeme Small, eds., Court and Society in the Burgundian Low Countries
c. 1420–1520 (Manchester, 2007).
53 Gervase Matthew, The Court of Richard II (London, 1968); Parsons, ed., Court and Household of
Eleanor of Castile; Scattergood and Sherborne, eds., English Court Culture; Given-Wilson, Royal
Household; Ralph A. Griffiths, ‘The King’s Court during the Wars of the Roses: Continuities in an Age
of Discontinuities,’ in Ronald G. Asch and Adolf M. Birke, eds., Princes, Patronage, and the Nobility:
The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age, c. 1450–1650 (Oxford, 1991), 41–67; Nigel Saul, Richard II
(New Haven, CT, 1997), 327–65.
54 Jenny Stratford, Richard II and the English Royal Treasure (Woodbridge, 2012).
55 For the alms of later kings, see Johnstone, ‘Poor-Relief,’ 149–67; Arnold Taylor, ‘Royal Alms and
Oblations in the Later Thirteenth Century: An Analysis of the Alms Roll of 12 Edward I (1283–84),’ in
Frederick G. Emmison and Roy Stevens, eds., Tribute to an Antiquary: Essays Presented to Marc Fitch
by Some of His Friends (London, 1976), 93–125; Sally Dixon-Smith, ‘The Image and Reality of Alms-
Giving in the Great Halls of Henry III,’ Journal of the British Archaeological Association 152 (1999),
79–96. For spending on liveries, see Lachaud, ‘Textiles, Furs and Liveries,’ 217.
56 Bullock-Davies, Menestrellorum Multitudo. See also Southworth, English Medieval Minstrel,
64–83; Woolgar, Great Household, 26–9.
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indication he hosted as impressive a feast as Henry did for the marriage of his
daughter Margaret to Alexander III of Scotland in 1251. The menu for that cele-
bration included at least 300 deer, 7,000 hens, over 2,100 partridges, 125 swans,
115 cranes, 120 peacocks, 290 pheasants, 400 rabbits, 1,300 hares, 400 pigs, 70 boars,
200 salmon, 10,000 haddocks, 68,500 loaves of bread, and 120 tuns of wine.57
English and other medieval rulers did not wait until the advent of ‘modernity’ to
increase the splendour of their courts.
Nothing I have read suggests that the shift of court life towards greater size, elab-
oration, and splendour was the result of any one great leap within a single gener
ation or even century, though future scholarship may change this picture. Instead, a
comparison of courts in different periods suggests a slow evolution towards larger
and more complex courts. No doubt this evolution stalled at times in individual
courts because of economic depression, fiscal crises, or the frugal tastes of particu-
lar rulers, but the overall trajectory from John’s reign forward remains clear.
Nor was there any revolution in John’s own period. One has an impression of
greater splendour at John’s court than at those of his predecessors, although the
ever-decreasing amount of evidence as one goes back in time makes comparison
harder with each generation and increases the danger that variations in record
keeping may deceive us. If the twelfth and preceding centuries did see an increase
in the splendour and complexity of courts, as I believe, it was clearly of a gradual
nature. Aurell and Madeline have studied the courts of Henry II, Richard I, and
John as a group and noted no sign of radical change in the period.58 A reading of
Schröder’s work on material culture at the court of King Henry II and a perusal
of many of the pipe rolls that were her most important source show a great deal of
continuity. Henry II’s government can be found making payments for the same
types of objects and activities as John’s: carting wine and venison; buying cloth
and furs for the royal family; distributing robes; investing in dwellings, parks, and
vivaries; purchasing luxurious food and drink; making diplomatic gifts; and
arranging passage for hunters and dogs across the English Channel.59 Even if
John’s court was more splendid than his father’s, or became so once he had
amassed sufficient wealth, it was not radically different in any way. Going back a
couple more generations, though Henry I’s sole surviving pipe roll is not particularly
revealing about court culture, it does show some comparable activities, including
57 Kay Staniland, ‘The Nuptials of Alexander III of Scotland and Margaret Plantagenet,’ Nottingham
Medieval Studies 30 (1986), 20–45; Rackham, Ancient Woodland, 181; Hammond, Food and Feast in
Medieval England, 125–6.
58 Aurell, Plantagenet Empire; Madeline, Les Plantagenêts et leur empire. See, however, Jolliffe,
Angevin Kingship, 260.
59 PR2 Henry II–34 Henry II; Schröder, Macht und Gabe. Evidence of social and cultural life at
Richard I’s court is limited and comes mostly from his first English pipe roll and his two surviving
Norman pipe rolls, but what survives suggests patterns similar to the reigns of his father and brother;
PR1 Richard I; Vincent D. Moss and Judith A. Everard, eds., Pipe Rolls of the Exchequer of Normandy
from the Reign of Richard I, 1194–5 and 1197–8 (London, 2016).
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limited purchases of wine, spices, and textiles; expenditures for moving wine and
venison; and payments to entertainers.60 That document and the Constitutio
Domus Regis both suggest a fair amount of continuity, and Judith Green is no
doubt right to argue that Henry I’s court served as a precursor to that of the
Plantagenets.61 Nor is there any reason to believe that the trajectory I have sug-
gested did not stretch back into the Anglo-Saxon period, given that the Normans
adopted so much of Anglo-Saxon government.62 Earlier courts probably were less
magnificent than John’s, and the cumulative change was probably large, but the
change once again was likely evolutionary, not revolutionary.
One could find all sorts of ways to show this general trajectory towards larger,
more lavish, and more complex courts, but one good if rough proxy is the num-
bers of individuals involved. Most such calculations are estimates and must be
treated with caution, but various scholars have calculated the size of royal and
princely courts in England and elsewhere from the court of Henry I (based on the
Constitutio Domus Regis) onward. Again and again the calculations show an
increase over time, both in the Middle Ages and the early modern period. Given-
Wilson, for instance, sees a growth in the core of the English court from between
100 and 150 in Henry I’s reign (almost certainly an underestimate), to 500 or
more in the fourteenth century, to over 800 under Henry VI, to around 1,500 in
the early seventeenth century.63
Though the growth of courts and the growing elaboration of court life was
gradual, over the course of centuries the cumulative change would have been
immense. As a result, early modern courts could be greater centres of cultural
production and patronage than medieval ones. Even if one allows for missing evi-
dence, John’s patronage of literature, music, and art was hardly sufficient to create
important cultural trends that influenced society much beyond the court. The
courts of early modern rulers were better placed to be cultural powerhouses and
60 Judith A. Green, ed., The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Thirty First Year of the Reign of King Henry I
(London, 2012), 1, 10, 13, 34, 113, 120.
61 Judith A. Green, ‘Henry I and the Origins of the Court of the Plantagenets,’ in Martin Aurell and
Noël Tonnerre, eds., Plantagenêts et Capétiens: confrontations et héritages (Turnhout, 2006), 485–95.
For the court of Henry’s brother, William Rufus, see Barlow, William Rufus, 137–55.
62 For Anglo-Saxon royal courts, see James Campbell, ‘Anglo-Saxon Courts,’ in Catherine
Cubitt, ed., Court Culture in the Early Middle Ages: The Proceedings of the First Alcuin Conference
(Turnhout, 2003), 155–69. For discussions of material culture among the Anglo-Saxon elites, see
Robin Fleming, ‘The New Wealth, the New Rich and the New Political Style in Late Anglo-Saxon
England,’ Anglo-Norman Studies 23 (2001), 1–22; Ann Williams, The World before Domesday: The
English Aristocracy, 900–1066 (London, 2008), 85–137.
63 Most scholars have put Henry I’s court at around 150, but this does not include the military
household, and Barlow noted that the Constitutio provides bread allowances for far more people;
Given-Wilson, Royal Household, 4, 11, 22, 258–9; Barlow, William Rufus, 143n222; Frédérique
Lachaud, ‘Order and Disorder at Court: The Ordinances of the Royal Household in England in the
Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,’ in Holger Kruse and Werner Paravacini, eds., Höfe und
Hofordnungen, 1200–1600 (Sigmaringen, 1999), 103–16, at 106–7. See also Knecht, ‘Francis I,’ 99–100;
Saul, Richard II, 333–4; Adamson, ed., Princely Courts of Europe, 11–12; Woolgar, Great Household,
9–10; Duindam, Vienna and Versailles, 30–2, 35–6, 51–63, 69–85, 302–3; Wild, ‘Truly Royal Retinue,’
130–1, 134–5, 142.
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to shape the societies around them. Yet for all that, the glittering early modern
courts of Britain, France, the Hapsburgs, and other realms and dynasties could be
so brilliant only because of the accumulation of wealth, custom, and ceremonial
developed across generations of rulers.
Two main engines drove this increasing elaboration of European royal courts
from the central (or, in some cases, early) Middle Ages onward: the general eco-
nomic growth in Western Europe and governments’ growing ability to collect
money.64 Of course, other forces also shaped the history of courts. The rise of cit-
ies supported court growth not only by supplying increased revenue to govern-
ments, but also by producing luxuries for courtly consumption and creating
urban forms of ceremonial rulers could use to enhance their court cultures.65
Religious shifts were also crucial. Because of the importance of Christianity to
court culture, religious developments like the Protestant Reformation had a huge
impact. New cultural and intellectual movements continuously changed courts,
including in the central Middle Ages, when novel ideas about elite love and new
practices such as the tournament created lasting changes. Nor was there any strict
correlation between wealth and cultural brilliance at court; Irish and Welsh
poetry reveal that relatively poor courts could produce outstanding cultural
products. Nonetheless, because wealth was so important to creating splendour
and complexity at royal courts, economic and fiscal development played the cru-
cial roles in the elaboration of court life discussed here.
It is likely that increased fiscal capacity was as important as economic growth, if
not more so. It is striking, for instance, that the economic travails of the later
Middle Ages seem to have had little impact on the continuing expansion of courts
and the ongoing elaboration of court culture. The ever-increasing expense of war-
fare was the main motivation for ever-increasing revenue collection, and warfare
swallowed up most of the results. Nonetheless, just as John’s feasts grew in size as
he gained more money, so too other rulers used growing revenues for court life as
well as warfare. As I argued in Chapter 8, the growth of administrative kingship
facilitated (and was partly inspired by) the growth of a more elaborate cultural life
at royal courts. I noted at the beginning of this work that earlier generations of
scholars tended to neglect the cultural history of English and other medieval
courts in favour of fiscal and administrative subjects. Paradoxically, in doing so
they may have revealed the greatest contribution King John and other members of
his lineage made to changing court history. Though none, including Henry II and
Eleanor, appear to have carried out any great cultural revolution, they helped build
the kind of fiscal apparatus that served as the long-term motor for the growth and
elaboration of royal courts in England and throughout Western Europe.
64 The pattern in other parts of the world, many with their own flourishing court cultures, would of
course have been quite different.
65 Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton, NJ, 1981); Barbara A. Hanawalt and
Kathryn L. Reyerson, eds., City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe (Minneapolis, MN, 1994); Arnade,
Realms of Ritual; Brown, ‘Bruges and the Burgundian “Theatre-State”, ’ 573–89.
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Conclusion
The splendour of John’s court may have fallen short of those of the early modern
French kings at Versailles or his own Tudor, Stuart, and Hanoverian successors,
but he presided over an impressive establishment. He had an extraordinary hunting
establishment, with scores of men; dozens of highly trained birds of prey; hun-
dreds of hunting dogs; and a large network of hunting lodges, parks, and forests.
His court boasted a luxurious material culture, with rich stores of gold and silver
plate, hundreds of pieces of jewellery studded with gems, and exotic and costly
textiles. Though some aspects of court culture left fewer traces in the surviving
records, enough survives to show the patronage of art and music, entertainment
and spectacle, and books and learning. John also sponsored chivalric practices
such as heraldry, and though he was a notable sexual predator, the influence of
new ideas about love and romance was not entirely absent from his court. Despite
John’s reputation for impiety, he carried out the religious activities expected of a
king, and religion was an integral part of court life. The royal records reveal the
ongoing efforts to provide the court with good and often expensive food and wine
throughout the year, and John was particularly admired for his generous distribu-
tion of robes, food, and drink at his feasts. A significant portion of the court’s time
was spent on the road, but this too was an important cultural site for court life and
display, particularly in formal processions and royal entries, in which peacock
hats, lavish decoration on horses, and lances gilded with gold might make an
appearance. The constant itineration of the court meant that there was no one
great palace on which John lavished resources, but he still invested heavily in his
castles, palaces, and hunting lodges, and on the landscapes around them. Court
culture was already highly developed in the early thirteenth century and surviving
sources from other realms show this was true not only of the Plantagenet dynasty.
Court culture was a source of soft power for John in advertising his wealth and
his government’s effectiveness; helping him build ties with magnates, barons, and
knights; reinforcing norms of hierarchy and deference; and providing the oppor-
tunity for him to win a reputation for magnificence, generosity, hospitality, and
piety. Though the rise of administrative kingship during the central Middle Ages
may have lessened the relative importance of traditional kinds of soft power, it
also gave rulers greater resources and administrative capability to build up a mag-
nificent court, thus increasing court life’s potential to create soft power. Indeed,
the increasing magnificence of European courts from the central Middle Ages
through the early modern period was closely intertwined with the continuing rise
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Conclusion 229
in government machinery and fiscal prowess. However, soft power, like hard
power, required skill to use. John, aided by his able administrators, was very suc-
cessful in building up an impressive court. However, he often squandered the
benefits through clumsy missteps and the pursuit of self-gratification. Even had
John been particularly skilful, his opponents would have challenged his attempts
to build soft power by describing his efforts in an unfavourable light, insulting
him, and carrying out hostile symbolic attacks, such as processing out from
London during the baronial rebellion to recognize Louis, rather than him, as
king. John’s failings simply made it easier for them to undermine his soft power.
Power was an important product of court life, but so too was pleasure. We are
too easily led by the propaganda of later kings and our own fascination with
power to focus on the political purposes of court life and ignore the degree to
which royal courts employed extensive resources in poor societies to satisfy the
desires and pleasures of the powerful. Historians tend to think of hunting as a
source of soft power, which it was, but John’s contemporaries focused on the
pleasure it provided. Feasting, luxurious lifestyles, music, and entertainers were
all designed in the first place to delight kings and courtiers. Most rulers probably
paid attention to and valued the political benefits these activities produced, but it
would be unwise to presume that power was generally a greater motive than
pleasure for them. Indeed, by some of his actions, John sacrificed power for pleas-
ure and self-gratification. Financial pressures, partially caused by John’s lavish
spending on his court, caused some of his greatest problems. To the extent that
court life provided him soft power, there was a trade-off, but insofar as the spending
was on pleasure, court life helped create opposition for no political return. More
importantly, when John shamed some of his key nobles by pursuing or having sex
with their wives and daughters, he created a political firestorm.
Royal and princely courts, with their rich cultural patronage, lively activities,
and lavish lifestyles, can be as seductive to modern scholars as they were to con-
temporary courtiers, and I have by no means escaped the spell of King John’s
court. It is all too easy to forget what should be remembered—that the rich cul-
tural and social lives of premodern courts were built with revenue extracted from
deeply impoverished societies. One thirteenth-century French satire has a peas-
ant complain, upon seeing a ‘gentil home’ with a sparrowhawk on his fist, that the
chicken the hawk would eat in the evening could have fed the peasant’s children.
The author of this satire was unsympathetic, calling the peasant doglike for his
complaining.1 Modern readers will, I hope, have more sympathy. Premodern
royal and princely courts were often brilliant and effervescent cultural centres,
but their splendour came at a high price for the ordinary people of the period.
1 Edmond Faral, ‘Des vilains ou des XXIII manières de vilains,’ Romania 48 (1922), 243–64, at 251;
Crane, Animal Encounters, 121, 220n3.
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APPENDIX 1
The evidence for hunting expenses is fragmentary and my estimate is based on a painstaking
gathering of information across different kinds of records. I indicated in the main text that
the feeding of the incomplete number of 458 dogs recorded in late spring 1213 would have
cost nearly £350 a year. A number of references indicate that a common scale of pay was
two pence a day for dog handlers, and seven and a half pence a day for master huntsmen.1
If one takes the seventy-one fewterers accompanying the king’s greyhounds at one point in
1212, which was not the full number of dog handlers, their total yearly pay would have
been £215 19s 2d.2 Master huntsmen were paid only a halfpenny a day less than knights
and their salaries would have gained them a very comfortable £11 8s ½d a year. Scattered
references to eight huntsmen receiving this sum appear in John’s fourteenth year, creating a
total annual sum of £91 5s, but at least eight other prominent huntsmen were active in that
year, so the yearly outlay was probably twice that.3 That these costs and wages were year
round, not just during hunting season, is indicated by the long-term costs of smaller indi-
vidual packs. For instance, one master huntsman with seven assistants and fifty-six dogs
received £51 4s 1d for fifty weeks and five days, in addition to £4 8d for the purchase of a
horse and for the robes the king provided them yearly.4 Clothing was another important
expense; one pipe roll entry records just under £40 being spent on robes and hoods for an
unspecified number of huntsmen and 55s for tunics for eleven fewterers.5 All in all, King
John may well have been spending £750 a year or more, perhaps much more, for hunts-
men, dog handlers, and hounds alone, at least in his later years.
The cash outlay for falconers, hawkers, their assistants, and the birds themselves is likely
to have been smaller, both because it was almost certainly a smaller establishment and
because some of its leading members received their rewards in land. The birds themselves
were expensive; on one occasion a royal official spent 20 marks for ten goshawks and two
falcons.6 As noted, the king received many birds as gifts or through proffers, which would
have cut these costs, but he seems to have had his falconers and hawkers buy them surpris-
ingly often. Wages for falconers, hawkers, and their assistants would have been the largest
cost, but we have little information about this. One record shows two hawkers receiving
5½d each per day, which would have provided them a yearly income of £8 7s 3½d, less
than master huntsmen, but still quite respectable.7 However, it is hard to generalize from
this figure alone. Another tantalizing piece of information is that in John’s seventh year, the
chief hawker, Thomas, son of Bernard, received nearly £90 to distribute to the royal
1 Misae 14J 231, 244, 246–8, 250, 254; RLC 21a, 51a, 53b, 125b–126b; NR 76; Prest Roll 7J 276. The
payments differ somewhat from those under Henry I but are in the same general range; Constitutio
Domus Regis, 212–15.
2 Misae 14J 243. 3 Misae 14J 231, 244, 246–8, 250, 254–5. 4 PR16J 107.
5 PR10J 97. For other examples, see PR13J 38; PR14J 58, 91; Misae 11J 141; MR 1J 92–3; RLC
104a, 104b.
6 PR13J 38. 7 Misae 14J 255.
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232 Appendix 1
hawkers in prests (advances or loans), presumably on their wages.8 What relationship this
bore to the total income of the hawkers is unclear and of course these expenditures do not
include the falconers, but it hints at the considerable expenditures for the men who handled
the king’s birds of prey.
In addition to the wages and expenses of the royal huntsmen and falconers and the
direct costs of feeding their animals, there would have been many miscellaneous expenses.
Horses had to be purchased for members of the hunting establishment.9 Transporting fal-
low deer to Normandy cost over £15 on one occasion, and during his great campaign in
1214 John spent nearly £38 bringing along one hundred dogs and the twenty-three men
associated with them.10 He also spent £38 on enclosing the parks of Bolsover and
Melbourne and at least £84 on building and maintaining royal mews at Winchester over
several years.11 Many of the miscellaneous costs were minor, but collectively they would
have added up to a substantial sum.
Some reassurance that my overall estimate of roughly £1,000 a year is not a gross exag-
geration is provided by sums spent in the pipe and misae rolls of John’s fourteenth year.
Pipe rolls normally only contain minor, incidental hunting expenses, but this one has more
information than most, and reveals expenditures of approximately £338 on hunting. The
misae roll’s coverage of hunting expenses is very limited, but the overlapping misae roll of
that year (which covers the regnal year from May to May rather than the fiscal year from
September to September) includes over £150 of expenditures on hunting and falconry,
with very little duplication from the pipe roll.12 That these two very incomplete accounts of
hunting expenses total nearly £500 suggests that the figure above is at least the right order
of magnitude.
8 Prest Roll 7J 272, 274–5. 9 For instance, Misae 14J 252, 254.
10 PR3J 101–2; RLC 206b.
11 PR2J 7–8, 189, 191; PR3J 101, 103; PR4J 68; PR5J 139; PR11J 163, 178; PR16J 126–7.
12 Misae 14J 231–69.
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Index
Note: Figures are indicated by an italic ‘f ’, respectively, following the page number.
For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion,
appear on only one of those pages.
access to the king 155–6, 159–60, 173–4 Bury St Edmunds, monastery of 36–7, 73, 120,
Adam le Harpur 80–1 159–60, 190–1
Adam of Dore 168 Byzantium, imperial court of 218–19
Adam Pictor 80
adventus; see royal entry, the Canterbury, Christ Church 188–9, 201, 221–2
Áed Méith Ó Néill, king of Tir Eoghain 194 castles and palaces 154–62, 181–3
Alan of Galloway 185–7 Catalonia; see Aragon
Alexander II of Scotland 93–4, 102 Cathal Crodberg Ó Conchobair, king of
Alexander Cytharista 80–1 Connacht 217–18
Alexander Neckam 50–1, 130, 134 cattle 83–4
almsgiving 110–14, 118–20, 223–5 cheetahs 216
Ambrose/Ambroise 85–6 chess 87–8
Angers 180–1 chivalry 88–94, 101–2
Angevin Empire 11–12 Chysi stultus 82
Aragon, royal court of 213 Cinque Ports 221–2
Arnulf of Aukland 179–80 Cistercians 108, 118–19, 159–60, 190–1
Art at court 79–80, 101–2 civilising process 3–4, 220–1
Aubrey de Vere, earl of Oxford 57–8, 71 Clarendon 36
Clipston 113–14
Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury 188–9 comfort 76–7, 159
Baldwin V, count of Hainaut 214–15 comportment 193, 208
Bali 4 Constance, queen of Sicily 178
banners 89–90, 101–2 Constitutio Domus Regis 18–19
Battle Abbey 113–14 Corfe Castle 31–2, 55–6, 158–61, 160f
Beaulieu Abbey 108, 112–13, 122 coronations 63, 68–9, 111, 140, 221–2
beds and bedcovers 57 courtly love 94–5, 101–2
Berengaria of Navarre 95 cranes 32–3, 50–1, 150–1, 220
Bertran de Born 47–8 crowns 62–3
Berwick-upon-Tweed 181–2 cuisine 130–3
Beverley 179, 181–2
birds of prey 25–8, 31–2, 40–1, 50–1, 230 Daniel of Beccles, Urbanus Magnus 141–3,
as gifts 41, 198–9 220–1
expenses associated with 231–2 Daniel Pincerna 144n.109
importation of 27–8, 82–3 Dartmoor 33–4
knowledge of, and status 38–9 deer 33–4, 41–3, 51
Blanche of Castile 212–13 transportation of 28, 42–3, 232
Bolsover 28–30, 232 Dogge Pecelance, Dogge Rastell, and Dogge
books 84–6 de Marisco 51–2
Bordeaux (Gascon) wines 134–6 Dover 191–2
Brian de Lisle 43, 71, 87, 115, 143–4, 209 dubbing ceremonies 93–4
Brill 113–14 Dublin 140
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266 Index
Index 267
268 Index
Index 269
in the central Middle Ages 7–16 Thomas Becket 44–5, 48–9, 65, 117–18, 142–3
in the early Middle Ages 5–7 Thomas de Samford 144n.109
in the late Middle Ages and early modern Thomas Esturmy 144n.109
period 4–5, 220–7 Thomas of Galloway 185–6
growth of, over time 226–7 tournaments 45–7
royal entry, the 176–83, 222–3 treasure 61–2, 197–8
royal forests 25–6, 31–2, 38–9, 48–9, 168, 205 Treville, royal forest of 168
royal records 2, 20–2 Tristan 35–6, 38–9
royal regalia 62–3, 68–71, 77–8 alleged sword of 62–3, 90–1, 102
royal residences
and hunting 28–30, 29f venison 37–8, 41–3, 127, 139
royal seals 62–3, 69, 70f, 91–3, 92f Vielet the viel player 80–1
sacral kingship 13, 109, 111–21 Wales, royal or princely courts of 217–18, 227
Saer de Quincy 87, 205–6 wall hangings 57
St Augustine’s, Canterbury 175, 190–3 Walter de Baillolet 72, 175
Sampson, abbot of Bury St Edmunds 36–7 Walter de Beauchamp 72
Savary de Mauleon 47–8 Walter de Grey 85–6
Scarborough Castle 154–5 Walter de Lacy 42–3
scarlet cloth 56–9 Walter Map 16–18, 22–3, 169–70
sex 94–102, 104–6 wardrobe 19–20, 78
Siberton 31 Warin fitz Gerald 73, 144n.109
silks 55–9, 63–4, 69–70, 89–91, 120 weapons and armour 62–3, 89–91, 101–2, 180–1
Simon de Pateshull 144n.109 Westminster Abbey 79–80, 122, 222
Simon of Cambrai 82 Westminster Palace 138–9, 153, 178
Simon of Kyme 87 wetlands 164–9
soft power 9–14, 101–2, 180–1, 229–30 William II Rufus
administrative kingship and 13, 199–202 court of 73–4
contestation of 12–13, 44–9, 73–5, 102–3, William I, king of Scotland 108
147–50, 181–2, 229–30 daughters of 58–9, 98–9
feasting and 143–7 William Briwerre 87n.44, 170–1
hunting and 37–44 William de Briouze 41, 83–4, 194–5, 201–2
itineration and 172–4, 181 William de Ferrers, earl of Derby 87, 140
John’s skill at handling 13–14, 103–4, 146, William de Saint-Mère-Église 85–6
148–50, 202–10 William de Tancarville 145–6
luxuries and 65–7 William de Warenne, earl of Surrey 97–100
piety and 109–10, 121–3 unnamed sister of 97–100
spices 130–3, 136, 139 William, earl of Gloucester 64–5
Stephen Langton 10–11, 42–3, 112, 118–19, William Longsword, earl of Salisbury 71, 87,
190–1 97–8, 143–4, 185
supplication 188–91 William Marshal 63–4, 71
Susanna, mistress of King John 94–5 King John and 87n.44, 140, 143–4, 174, 205–8
Sverre, king of Norway 216–17 William of Cornhill, bishop of Coventry 42–3
symbolic communication 5–6, 145–6, William of Wrotham 85–6, 185
187–94, 200–2 William Piculf 82
William Scissor 71, 138–9
table linens 138–41 Winchester Cathedral 112
tabulas 87 Winchester Palace 138–9, 232
tents and pavilions 66, 161–2 Windsor Castle 159–60, 222
Terric the Teuton 40–1 wine 133–6, 139, 143–4
Tewkesbury 163–4 Woodstock 36, 162–3
textiles and clothing 26–31, 76–8, 175–6, Worcester Cathedral 120, 179
179–81, 231
and status 65–7 York 179–80