Over the last two decades Cary Nederman has published extensively on political thought in the central and late Middle Ages. His numerous articles have added substantially to our understanding of scholastic political thought, and have been particularly useful in showing the contribution of Englishmen like John of Salisbury and of English Common Law. Underlying this work has been Nederman's conviction that there is a distinctively Western tradition of political thought and sensibility, and that that tradition was forged in great measure during the Middle Ages. Yet, as Nederman laments in the Preface of this volume, "The academic climate for the study of the far recesses of medieval political thought remains a chilly one, in North America at least." This is certainly the case in political science departments, which tend to be dismissive of political theory in general, and rarely devote a course to medieval political thought, sandwiching it instead into courses on pre-modern political theory, and trotting out brief selections from the usual suspects, like Marsilius of Padua and Thomas Aquinas. Nederman having rightly divined that this neglect is owing in part to a dearth of translations or to translations that are virtually inaccessible to students, has published an affordable paperback translation of substantial portions of John of Salisbury's Policraticus in the series Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (1990), and, with Kate Langdon Forhan, the paperback Medieval Political Theory--a Reader: The Quest for the Body Politic, 1100-1400 (Routledge, 1993).
This most recent contribution of translations is particularly welcome for a number of reasons. Firstly it contains the entire texts, rather than selections, of Walter of Milemete's On the Nobility, Wisdom, and Prudence of Kings, William of Pagula's so-called Mirror of King Edward III (in both the A and B versions), and William of Ockham's Whether a Prince Can Receive the Goods of the Church for His Own Needs, Namely, In Case of War, Even Against the Wishes of the Pope. Secondly, these works have remained hitherto untranslated. Indeed, the Milemete text has until now been available only in M.R. James's facsimile of 1913 and the transcription found in Stanley J. Bird's 1975 University of North Carolina MA thesis. Finally, these three works together have a chronological and thematic unity, in that they all were penned by Englishmen during the reign of King Edward III, and all are informed by and address a distinct set of historically situated issues and problems, namely the extent and limits of royal power in relation to the community of the realm. In the General Introduction, Nederman asserts that in these three works one can discern a "uniquely English understanding of political life." This was characterized by a "special sensitivity to the elements of the so-called English constitution, namely, common law and the statutory proclamations and legislative documents associated with royal government," and a belief in "the reciprocal and mutual sharing of power among the king and his subjects."
Although Walter of Milemete's On the Nobility, Prudence, and Wisdom of Kings employs the calm mien of disinterested, generalized counsel characteristic of speculum principis literature, one can discern just below its surface the fraught blend of anxiety and aspirations that attended the accession of the teenage Edward III in January 1327. His father's reign had, after all, been a near disaster, and had been brought to a violent conclusion with his forced abdication (and eventual murder) at the hands of his disaffected queen Isabella and her lover and political ally, Roger Mortimer. Thus, the tyranny of Edward II and his royal favorites, the Despensers, as well as England's embarrassing defeats in the Anglo-Scottish war of 1313-22 was very much on Milemete's mind when he composed this companion piece (now Oxford, Christ Church MS 92) to accompany another gift he had recently made to Edward of a lovely illuminated copy of the pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum (now London, BL Add. 47680). Little is known about Milemete, other than that he was a king's clerk, who was preferred to a prebend in Cornwall in 1328 and (unacknowledged by Nederman) enrolled as a King's Scholar at Cambridge 1329. He was evidently also a man of respectable learning, evidenced by his command of classical authors and of Roman and canon law, and means, since he could afford to commission two deluxe manuscript books. Nederman concedes that on the basis of this work Milemete cannot be put in the first rank of political thinkers; the ideas in On the Nobility are far too derivative and underdeveloped for that. But Nederman does scholars and students a real service by translating this work. Not only is it the earliest English example of a true Miroir au Prince--a genre (and here I use Jean-Philippe Genet's definition) originating with works produced in the second half of the thirteenth century, usually by mendicants, directed at the instruction of Capetian rulers--but it also betrays an emerging English insistence on "the king's reciprocal duties toward the inhabitants of his kingdom, particularly as concerns their physical well-being." It also is an important witness to the way mirrors could be used to "criticize the faults of particular rulers," in this case Edward II, and promote specific political programs, like ruling in cooperation with the English nobility in Parliament and renewing the war on the Scots. My only small criticism of Nederman here, is that I think he accepts too readily the argument of Judith Ferster, in her Fictions of Advice: The Literature and Politics of Council in Late Medieval England, that late medieval English mirrors of princes were primarily works of covert political critique. Ferster's case for this is undercut by too little knowledge of the scholastic substratum on which many of the works she discusses were based. In Milemete's case it could in fact be argued that rather than him feeling a need to camouflage his criticism from his intended readership, he instead wrote his work with the full support of the group responsible for Edward II's ouster. There is also a good case to be made for Milemete's advocacy of a militant expansionist policy whose goal was to make good on Edward I's claim of Scottish overlordship (a program Edward III would start putting into effect in 1333).
Criticism is anything but covert in the two recensions of William of Pagula's attack on the royal government's practice of purveyance. If Milemete's mirror evinces the hand of a loyal and dedicated royal servant, William of Pagula's is the product of a conscientious pastor, looking after the material welfare of his flock as well as the spiritual wellbeing of his monarch. Purveyance, or prise, the royal prerogative to requisition provender and supplies either for the court or the army, was unpopular at best, since purveyors never purchased at fair-market value, and was downright oppressive when abused, as it frequently was. As Nederman points out, the probable dating of the two recensions to 1331 and 1332 is curious, since it falls between the 1327 and 1333 campaigns against the Scots. His conjecture that William wrote in anticipation of renewed purveyance as the young King began to contemplate war with the Scots makes sense. It could also be that William, who was vicar of Winkfield in Berkshire, was reacting against purveyors' supplying the court during its stays at the nearby royal residence of Windsor castle, a practice he explicitly condemns in the first version of the Mirror (p. 88). William's work is hardly a speculum principis in the conventional sense, being rather a work of explicit political criticism. William's argument is simple and straightforward: dispense with purveyance because it is theft from the poor (be that the economically poor or the clergy) and this theft puts the king's immortal soul in danger, while also compelling his subjects to rebel against and perhaps even depose him. William lends force to this argument by pointing frequently to the fate of Edward II. An Oxford graduate and author of several pastoral manuals, he also employs his considerable learning in canon law and theology. It is interesting, however, that the frequent canon law, patristic, and classical references of the first version virtually disappear from the second. Perhaps, as Nederman suggests, William either wrote for two audiences, one learned and one popular, or decided upon reflection that his learned tract needed to be recast in the form of a sermon.
There is no evidence to suggest Edward III ever read or even indeed knew of either version of William of Pagula's jeremiad. No doubt if he had, he would not have been pleased. He would, however, have approved mightily of William of Ockham's pro-royal Whether a Prince, a distinctly polemical piece written probably in 1338 or 1339 in support of the English monarch's military alliance against France with Ockham's protector, the emperor Ludwig of Bavaria. Relying on canon and civil law, the writings of the Fathers and St. Bernard, Ockham refutes the case for clerical immunity from royal taxation during time of war. At the core of Ockham's reasoning is the assertion that property of any kind is a purely temporal thing and thus subject only to human law. Such an understanding of property is not only Augustinian, it also accords well with the position of the Spiritual Franciscan faction, a group to which Ockham belonged. According to Ockham, the three arguments for clerical immunity are false. The first, namely that ecclesiastical goods cannot be granted without papal permission, has no standing because not only did English kings never grant full dominium over the property of the English church to the popes, but absolute control over ecclesiastical property is in no way a function of papal plenitudo potestatis, which concerns spiritual, rather than temporal, affairs. The second argument, that clergy are exempt from royal taxation, is invalid owing to the Roman law principle that "what touches all must be approved by all," and that therefore the king's clerical subjects must, like their lay counterparts, contribute to the defense of the realm. After all, the clergy, just like the laity, are beneficiaries of royal protection. As for the final argument, that the true owners of ecclesiastical property are the poor and needy, and that therefore royal exactions divert the fruits and income of church property from their true purpose, Ockham argues that the good of the whole, that being of the entire community of the realm, is to be preferred over that of a part thereof.
The impact of these works on their contemporaries is difficult to fathom. Milemete's treatise exists in but a single manuscript, albeit one that may well have found its way into Edward's hands. There is no sign that Edward read either of the other two works; nor for that matter did either work circulate in a large number of copies. Nonetheless they are certainly witnesses to the sort of political discourse going on in England during the early years of the king's reign. As such they deserve to be read and discussed by scholars and students of medieval and early British history and political thought. It is fortunate indeed that they are now so accessible, and that they have been made so by a scholar of Nederman's erudition and skill.