"Nulle Povere Homme" Reframing Political Engagement Through Petitionary Culture

Description

This paper will provide an introduction to the National Archives Ancient Petitions Collection and the ways in which medieval historians can use this relatively recently digitised archive to explore and reframe the ways in which we can see the emergence of a political public in the fourteenth century. Private petitioning provided a mechanism by which subjects of the Plantagenet kings could bring their complaints before parliament to be heard directly by the king, council, House of Lords or commons thereby bypassing local judicial systems which were often corrupt and under the control of powerful local magnates, their families and their retainers. These petitions ranged from private disputes over grain shipments and manorial rents to large public petitions against the actions of the king, by looking at these petitions we can get both a macro and a micro view of the society and politics of the Insular Plantagenet World in the High and Late Middle Ages. The paper will show how political power was wielded and reframed by those outside of the political elite as well as the challenges petitioners faced in seeking justice and ultimately why no discussion of the politics of the Insular Plantagenet World can ignore these fascinating documents.

Period	21 May 2025
Event title	History, Geography and Social Sciences PGR Conference: HiGSS
Event type	Conference
Location	Ormskirk, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	Local