Rex et ministri: English Local Government and the Crisis of 1341

Abstract

Edward III's foreign ambitions, which in 1337 precipitated the Hundred Years' War, generated such severe financial pressures at home that eventually the fiscal crisis became a political one. Exasperated by the inability or unwillingness of the government of regency under Archbishop Stratford to provide him with money and matériel for his continental campaign, an outraged Edward returned to England on November 30, 1340, determined to purge the government of those corrupt and disloyal officials whom he blamed for his humiliation. The attack on the chief ministers, especially Stratford, who was both primate and principal councillor, created a political crisis of considerable proportions, wherein some dominant issues of medieval English politics — the liberties of the church and clergy and the role of the baronage in political decision-making — were re-stated and re-argued. Modern historians have focused their attention on the more dramatic aspects of the crisis of 1341, particularly its “constitutional” implications. Lapsley, Clarke, and Wilkinson, for instance, examined the conflicts of the king with Stratford and with the baronage — events reminiscent of the confrontations of Henry II with Thomas Becket and of Edward II with the Lancastrians. Tout explained the administrative reforms of the early part of Edward III's reign, which, by subjecting the great offices of state to the control of the king's itinerant household, were designed to transform the administrative system into a device for purveying supplies and cash to feed the English war-machine. More recently, E. B. Fryde has described the ordinary and extraordinary financial techniques employed to subsidize the king's expensive foreign policies.