Royal Favour and Local Dispute: Disputing Inheritance in Petitions from Fourteenth Century Lincolnshire

Description

Petitions allow us one of the best insights into the demand side of medieval government. Ranging from private disputes over grain shipments and manorial rents to large public petitions against the actions of the king, petitions offer us both a macro and a micro view of the society and politics of the Insular Plantagenet World in the High and Late Middle Ages. They have however, until relatively recently been almost completely ignored as sources for the examination of political culture. In the wake of the digitisation and enhanced calendaring of the National Archives SC 8 collection of medieval petitions the opportunities for a new approach which takes these documents as its foundation are now tangible in a way which has historically not been the case.

Through an examination of a range of illustrative examples from Lincoln and the wider diocese of Lincoln preserved in the National Archives this paper will demonstrate how allegations of bastardy, judicial corruption, and threats of violence were weaponised in disputes over inheritance. It will show how local disputes could be taken directly to the king to sidestep local judicial and political frameworks. It will furthermore show how petitioning functioned across the Insular Plantagenet World placing Lincolnshire into conversation with the wider networks of patronage and power across Britain and Ireland in the fourteenth century. In particular the paper will show how through situating the petitions within their local Lincolnshire contexts we can understand the role of documentary cultures in these inheritance disputes.

Period	7 Jul 2025 → 10 Jul 2025
Held at	International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds
Degree of Recognition	International