The wars waged by the English in France during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries led to the need for judicial agencies which could deal with disputes that arose on land and sea, beyond the reach of indigenous laws. This led to the jurisdictional development of the Courts of Chivalry and Admiralty, presiding over respectively heraldic and maritime disputes. They were thus of considerable importance in the Middle Ages; but they have attracted comparatively little scholarly attention.
The essays here examine their officers, proceedings and the wider cultural and political context in which they had jurisdiction and operated in later medieval Western Europe. They reveal similarities in personnel, institutions and outlook, as well as in the issues confronting rulers in territories across Europe. They also demonstrate how assertions of sovereignty and challenges to judicial competence were inextricably linked to complex political agendas; and that both military and maritime law were international in reach because they were underpinned by trans-national customs and the principles and procedures of Continental civil law. Combining law with military and maritime history, and discussing the art and material culture of chivalric disputes as well as their associated heraldry, the volume provides fresh new insights into an important area of medieval life and culture.
Author(s): Anthony Musson; Nigel Ramsay (eds.)
Publisher: The Boydell Press
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: XIV+250
City: Woodbridge
List of Illustrations vii
Notes on Contributors ix
Preface xi
A Note on Editorial Practice xii
List of Abbreviations xiii
Introduction / Anthony Musson and Nigel Ramsay 1
1. Heralds and the Court of Chivalry: From Collective Memory to Formal Institutions / Richard Barber 15
2. French Armorial Disputes and Controls / Laurent Hablot 29
3. Art, Objects and Ideas in the Records of the Medieval Court of Chivalry / Julian Luxford 47
4. Sir Robert Grosvenor and the Scrope–Grosvenor Controversy / Philip Morgan 75
5. From Brittany to the Black Sea: Nicholas Sabraham and English Military Experience in the Fourteenth Century / Andrew Ayton 95
6. "Armed and redy to come to the felde": Arming for the Judicial Duel in Fifteenth-Century England / Ralph Moffat 121
7. The Jurisdiction of the Constable and Marshals of France in the Later Middle Ages / Bertrand Schnerb 135
8. The Origins and Jurisdiction of the English Court of Admiralty in the Fourteenth Century / Thomas K. Heebøll-Holm 149
9. The Consulate of the Sea and its Fortunes in Late Medieval Mediterranean Countries / Lorenzo Tanzini 171
10. The Admiralty and Constableship of England in the Later Fifteenth Century: The Operation and Development of these Offices, 1462–85, under Richard, Duke of Gloucester and King of England / Anne F. Sutton 187
11. Some Dubious Beliefs about Medieval Prize Law / John Ford 215
Index 237
