IN EXTREMIS: Communal Expressions of Serious Impoverishment in the Dominions of the Kings of England, 1250–1450

Abstract

This article focuses on how communities in later medieval England claiming serious impoverishment articulated their plight to those they thought might be able to help through petitions to the king’s government. Using the 454 petitions, mainly in French, submitted to the king’s government between 1250 and 1450 citing substantial communal impoverishment, three main groups of petitioners are examined: secular communities, religious houses, and wider groupings of the population. While these petitions make up only a fraction of all surviving petitions from the later Middle Ages (2.59% of the 17,514 Special Collections 8 Ancient Petitions), they not only embody the most important communal requests for serious need to the king’s government from all such petitions but also represent a significant proportion of the populace as a whole and account for many of the most important communities under the English king’s control. Indeed by focusing on communities rather than individuals, a clearer sense should emerge of how medieval people understood, if not usually articulated, key aspects of their own common good in extremis — rather than how those with power defined it for them. Also by looking beyond England to those lands under the English monarch’s control from Ireland to southern France, we can see how communities on the very fringes of royal power viewed the English government’s role toward them. Overall this article illuminates how medieval communities claiming to be in or moving toward extreme need saw themselves and/or wanted others to see them, the reality of the situation where known, what petitioners thought was the best way forward, and the royal government’s reaction to such requests.