WARWICK AND WAVRIN Two case studies on the literary background and propaganda of Anglo-Burgundian relations in the Yorkist period Carolina Theodora Livia Visser-Fuchs University College London PhD thesis 2002 ProQuest Number: U642339 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest U642339 Published by ProQuest LLC(2015). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 WE GOT TO VJR\TE A WUKTS XOJR. BMS. CXH UECK, I OOKT WAOW 1 SUPPOSE OH. LIKE I'M REPORT FOR SCHOOL. Topic ? y xov mSTHlKG A.BOJT BATS.' RESEARCH GOING TO mXTHlHG HOW A(A I SUPPOSED TO IS OUT OF lEARU ^SXJT HORt^F\0’ VR\TE A. REPORT ON A. THE OUEST10K. BATS m suBiEcT Î v^JMovl mwm W/zmTE ABOUT IT'S 1N\P0SS\BI£! A REPORT ?.1 QWE NE K / BREAVC.' Warwick and Wavrin Two case studies on the literary background and propaganda of Anglo-Burgundian relations in the Yorkist period. I. The reputation of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, in the Burgundian Low Countries from c. 1450 to 1471. II. The work and anglophilia of Jean de Wavrin (1400-C.1475). Contents Abstract. 5 General introduction. 6 Acknowledgements. 14 Abbreviations. 15 List of illustrations. 17 General editorial remarks. 18 Part I. The reputation of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, in the Burgundian Low Countries from c.1450 to 1471. Introduction. 20 Chapter 1. Ille perfidus Warvich: Warwick in prose. 1. Jean de Wavrin and Warwick’s ‘Apology’. 29 2. Thomas Basin. 52 3. Georges Chastelain. 57 4. Jean de Haynin. 64 5. Werner Rolevinck, Jan Veldener, Gouds kronielge , Kattendijke Kroniek and related texts. 66 6. Olivier de La Marche. 69 7. Anthonis de Roovere and the Cronijcke van Vlaanderen. 71 8. Jan Allertsz. 78 9. Adriaan de But. 80 10. Philippe de Comines. 90 Chapter 2. Le conte dont on chante: Warwick in verse. 1. The earlier ballads. 94 2. The Latin poems of Jean Mielot. 105 3. The satyrical epitaphs. 114 4. The later ballads. 132 Conclusion 142 Appendix A; Warwick in Dutch/Flemish sources (texts). 147 Appendix B: The Flemish translation of the two epitaphs on Warwick in the Cronijcke van Vlaenderen. 156 Part II. The work and anglophilia of Jean de Wavrin (1400-C.1475). Introduction. 162 Chapter 1. Jean de Wavrin. 1. Wavrin’s life. 163 2. Wavrin’s relatives and acquaintances. 166 3. Anglophilia. 172 Chapter 2. Wavrin’s books. 176 1. Books ascribed to Wavrin’s authorship. 178 2. Wavrin’s library and related books. 185 3. England and the English in Wavrin’s books. 189 4. The Wavrin Master and his workshop. 196 Chapter 3. The Recueil de croniques d’Engleterre. 200 1. The dedication and date, title and subject, structure, making and purpose of the Recueil. 203 2. The beginning: Albina, foundress of Albion. 222 3. Wavrin’s sources and how he used them. 233 4. The end: contemporary newsletters. 264 Chapter 4. The manuscripts of the Recueil. 1. The manuscripts of t h e 287 2. The ‘Masters of the ReceuiV. 297 3. The readers of the i?ecwej7. 303 Conclusion: the value of the Recueil. 306 Appendix C. Family trees including Jean de Wavrin’s relatives, his acquaintances and literary associates. 310 Appendix D. Manuscripts known to have been owned by Jean de Wavrin and manuscripts in some way associated with him, his library or his friends and relations. 312 Appendix E. Pièces justificatives for part II, ch. 3, section 1. 319 Appendix F. Lists of manuscripts of the Recueil, of manuscripts relevant to the making and the readership of the Recueil, and of the printed sections of the Recueil. 322 Appendix G. The work and milieu of the scribe and translator Jean du Chesne. 333 Appendix H. Some standard phrases in Wavrin’s account of the battle of Shrewsbury (4, 6, 2) compared to similar phrases in some of the ‘historical novels’ associated with him.334 General conclusion. 336 Bibliography. 337 Abstract This thesis is divided into two parts. The first part studies the reputation of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, the Kingmaker, in the Burgundian Low Countries from c. 1450 to 1471 as far as it can be gleaned from literary, non-archival sources. Warwick’s decision to support the Lancastrian claim to the throne again in 1469, his military alliance with Louis XI of France and his seizure of power in England in 1470 made him a dangerous and fascinating figure to the subjects of the Valois dukes of Burgundy. The Anglo-French alliance that he embodied threatened the very existence of the Burgundian ‘state’, and particularly in the Low Countries Warwick’s name was intensely feared and hated. Burgundian authors voiced this hatred each in their own way, both in prose and verse, until his death took away their fear as suddenly as it had struck. The foibles of various chroniclers are revealed by their image of the English earl, but it is interesting to see that general national or ‘racial’ prejudices against the English played little part in their judgment. The many poems about Warwick written at the time, both popular and ‘courtly’, present an interesting sample of such ‘cycles’ of political verse, which were not unusual at the time, triggered by events that stirred people’s positive and negative emotions. In this case the poems show what, on the one hand, ordinary, literate people and, on the other, the nobility at the ducal court thought about the earl and the spectre of war and destruction that he released. The poems, too, suggest that in the Low Countries there was not much national or racial prejudice against the English. The second part of this thesis attempts to evaluate the sources and method used by Jean de Wavrin in his ‘Collection of Histories of England’, and at the same time establish what his feelings - and those of his friends and relations - were about England and the English. In his work, too, there is little sign of prejudice, but more importantly Wavrin’s history of England is particularly interesting because of his access to otherwise unknown contemporary sources and it deserves closer study than the preliminary researches presented here. It is hoped that, at the least, the value of and the need for further and fuller analysis of all his sources and the way he used them become evident in this study. The general preliminary conclusion of this very partial study of the literary background and propaganda of Anglo-Burgundian relations in the Yorkist period is that there was much interest in English affairs at the Burgundian court and in the Low Countries, but little prejudice against the English people. Warwick was feared and hated, but not because he was an Englishman; Wavrin was interested in England, but his priority was the recording of deeds of chivalry, whatever the nationality of its exponents, for the entertainment of his peers. General Introduction This study started out as a first attempt at describing and analysing how, in roughly the Yorkist period (1460-1485), literate people in England on the one hand, and in the lands ruled by the duke of Burgundy on the other, regarded each other, and what they thought and were meant to think about the relations between their two ‘nations’. The excuse for studying this subject was first of all a personal wish to know. It was also hoped that any closer look at the sources available would help fill in the background of Anglo-Burgundian relations in the fifteenth century. Much has been written on relations between England and the Netherlands in the sixteenth century and it may be interesting and revealing to find out more about attitudes in the preceding period. Huizinga wrote: The opinions of a people concerning the character and characteristic traits of a neighbouring people are as a rule remarkably constant, and once formed in all their superficiality they are hardly subject to change’.' If he was right, and I think he was, even this partial study may contribute to the general picture of England’s relations with ‘the parties across the sea’. Ideally one would like to know what people in general thought, said and wrote about the physical characteristics of the neighbouring country and its inhabitants, in the present and in the past. What ideas and prejudices existed on either side concerning the character and achievements of their neighbours? Which aspects of the ‘others’ were of most interest? How were they depicted in literature and art?^ Were these ideas permanent or constantly changing and were they positive, negative or mixed? How were they fed, by travel, reading, the visual arts or official propaganda? Each of these questions raises a number of others and only a very few can be considered here in detail. To justify a study of the subject it has to be postulated that both England and ‘Burgundy’ saw themselves as entities and unities, separate from others and therefore able to have opinions about ‘others’, that is their neighbours. By a circular process a study of such opinions should help prove that they did feel separate and, more or less, unities. It is here assumed that the English, whatever their internal problems, did feel themselves one people, one ‘nation’, separate from others, and had done so for several centuries. Their identity had been put into clearer perspective by the Hundred Years War and by opposing and contrasting themselves to the French.^ The sense of separate identity and unity of people living in the lands ruled by the Valois dukes of Burgundy is far more questionable. In the period under discussion, ‘Burgundy’ 1 Huizinga, ‘Voorgeschiedenis’, p. 146. 2 Lnteresting is Rickard, Britain, passim. 7 consisted of the duchy and county of Burgundy and a few other regions together forming a single unit in the south, and a larger and wealthier cluster of territories in the north; Flanders, Brabant, Hainault, Artois, Namur, Boulogne, the Somme region, Zeeland and Holland, with Limburg and Luxemburg ‘hanging on’. The greater part of these possessions had been ‘in the family’ since the early years of the century, and the duke of Burgundy, to most people living there, was - by direct or rather more indirect inheritance - their natural and legitimate overlord, and so they were told over and over again. Much has been written on the question whether this collection of territories constituted a nation or not, and the problem is complicated and obscured by later developments."^ All that matters, in practice, is the perception and attitude of those who lived in these lands and it is here assumed that the mass of the people, without sophisticated maps, with only limited means of communication and no prophetic foresight, assumed that they belonged together for the single and crucial reason that the duke ruled them all and that this situation was a permanent one. Nationalism is made up of illusions and images and it will continue to be defined and appreciated differently in different periods. It is therefore less relevant to philosophise about nationalism, national consciousness and patriotism in general, trying to fit fifteenth-century conditions into our system, then to find out what was actually written and said in the period: ... pour éviter l’anachronisme il n’est besoin que de se placer au point de vue des contemporains. Les contemporains, dira-t-on, mais ils étaient bornés, ignorants; il leur manquait les vues générales qui nous permettent de juger la situation; ils étaient pris dans leur illusions loyalistes et féodales. Il me semble que c’est justement ces illusions qu’il importe de connaître afin de bien comprendre l’histoire. Parce qu ’au fond ce sont des illusions qui dominent les actions politiques du moyen âge bien plus que n’ont fait la raison, le calcul, l’intérêt bien compris’ (my italics, and 1 have consciously not included ‘du moyen âge’).^ It may perhaps also be said that the human mind adapts itself quickly. What has happened two or three times is already a ‘tradition’.^ A situation that has obtained for a generation is felt to have existed ‘since time out of mind’. A concept that was new to our parents often seems undeniable and inevitable to us. Images that have been around for a while become representations of reality. If this is a timeless rule it is conceivable that in the 1450s, 60s and 70s the concept of ‘Burgundy’, not only as something permanent, but also as a unity, as ‘belonging together’ vis-à-vis the rest of Europe - even France, in spite of the complex 3 E.g. Thomson, Transformation, pp. 75-80; Goodman, History, pp. 1-7, who mentions the importance of ease of communications for a sense of unity; Scattergood, Politics, pp. 41-46. 4 Huizinga discussed the subject particularly in relation to ‘the Netherlands’; see his ‘L’état’, ‘Voorgeschiedenis’, ‘How Holland became a nation’, ‘Burgund’. The problem is summarised by Prevenier and Blockmans, Burgundian Netherlands, pp. 198-213. Wouters, ‘Nationaliteitsbesef, discussed several chroniclers, and found them all wanting. Vaughan, ‘Burgundian state’. 5 Huizinga, ‘L’état’, p. 168. 8 relations with the ‘mother country’ - had taken hold of the minds of most men and women living within the confines of the dukes’ lands. The views of England that these ‘Burgundians’ held must have differed greatly, just as their relations with the island - if they had any - differed, being defined by geographical position and economic activity. To set the scene it will be useful describe briefly the relations between England, Burgundy and France as they stood at the beginning of the Yorkist period and, after that, look at a contemporary work which had a purpose partly similar to that of the present study and though only concerned with the views of the French and the English, is contemporary with the period to be studied here and reveals the contemporary attitude to the subject, showing the range and limits of literate people’s knowledge and interest. Because Flanders was partly a possession of the French crown relations between England and the Low Countries had always been complicated by the Anglo-French wars, though less so for the northern provinces, whose commercial exchange with England had flourished naturally for centuries.^ The acquisition of Flanders by the French Valois dukes of Burgundy in 1369 and Henry V’s conquests in France from 1415 did not change this situation, but the ill-advised murder of Jean sans Peur, Duke of Burgundy, by the future king of France in 1419, completely upset the balance for a while, forcing the next duke, Philip the Good, to take a pro-English position, which essentially made the English king also king of France, and generally pleased the Flemish and other northern subjects of the duke because it benefited them economically, but it did not last more than fifteen years. In 1435 the peace of Arras between France and Burgundy restored ‘natural’ relations within the Anglo-French- Burgundian triangle, including the mutual commercial activity of the lands on either side of the North Sea - however much subject to the political whims of their new overlords - but the link between the ‘mother country’, France, and the Burgundian lands was weakened forever. At the same time England was heading for the first climax of its dynastic problems, while its economic interests in the Low Countries and its military ones in France were being used and abused by the protagonists of the two factions. In this subtly balanced, triangular world, influenced mainly by economic interests but also by political, military and emotional ones, did such men as Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, and Jean de Wavrin, Lord of Forestel, and their friends and relations lead their lives, shape their careers and write their books. 6 Compare Bloch, Feudal Society, vol. 1, p. 114. 7 On this and what follows Owen, Connection, Barron and Saul, England, introduction, Thielemans, Bourgogne.