Medieval Petitions: Grace and Grievance

Abstract

This book marks the culmination of a major AHRC project, which catalogued the contents of The National Archives’ ‘Ancient Petitions’ series (SC 8), and made the documents (more than 17,000 in total) available to search through the TNA on-line catalogue. The importance of this series has long been recognised; thematic collections of petitions were published in the second half of the twentieth century, and J.R. Maddicott's work in the 1970s revealed its importance for our understanding of medieval government. However, the new research presented in Medieval Petitions reveals the range of different methodologies which can be employed, now that the whole series of petitions has been reviewed and catalogued. The articles included in this important collection demonstrate the utility of the new Ancient Petitions catalogue, and point the way forward for innovative research in the social, cultural and political history of later medieval England. Ormrod's introduction serves to distance medieval petitions from their modern democratic counterparts, but reminds us that, through Parliament, the link between petitioning and legislation still endures today. Indeed, this link with Parliament is a recurring theme throughout this volume, and Dodd's article is the first to address the parliamentary provenance of the petitions. He charts the tortuous route by which the modern collection came together, through the hands of antiquarians and keepers of the Public Records, and explains, with remarkable eloquence, how we can be sure that the majority of the petitions were presented in Parliament. His findings should allay the fears of historians who have been hesitant to use the series because of its insecure provenance (a point which was raised in a review of Dodd's monograph Justice and Grace: Private Petitioning and the English Parliament in the Late Middle Ages: http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/kleineke.html. For the author's response, see http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/kleinekeresp.html).