Books Reviews THE ENGLISH EXPERIENCE IN FRANCE, c. 1450-1558. War, Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange. Edited by David Grummitt. 2002. Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Aldershot. £39.99 ISBN 0-7546-0535-3 The editor in his introduction gives a clear tesumé of the relevant events and issues of 1450-1558 in the fields of war, diplomacy and cultural exchange, paying more attention in all three sections to the post-1500 years than to the half-century before. In her ‘The loss of Lancasuian Normandy: an administrative nightmare?’ Anne Currystudies British Library MS Add. 11,509, a partial but fascinating account book of the receiver-general of France and Normandy fromMichael- mas 1448 to Michaelmas 1449, the year the Engiish lost Rouen and Normandy. The book demonstrates almost tangibly what the loss of the duchy meant to the English settlers and soldiers, but also how its administration passed seam- lessly into the hands of the French. Next David Gtummitt, “‘One of the mooste pryncipall treasours belonging to his Realme of Englande”: Calais and the crown, :. 1450-1558’, gives a very usefuloverview of the importance of the town and ‘pale’ of Calais to the crown and discusses in particular the Calais Act of 1536 which — he argues — was not so much an attempt to consolidate ‘the Englishness’ of the territory and change its constitutional position, as to make its government more efficient. Edward Meek, in his ‘The practice of English diplomacy in France 1461- 71', looks at the practical details and problems of Engiish embassies to France in the first reign of Edward IV and illustrates the ‘patchy’ and ‘pretty constant’ flow of diplomatic missions, which were often quite informal and emanating not fromthe crown directly, but fromsuch as the earl of Warwick in par- ticular, his importance partly due to his being captain of Calais and in control of the Calais based network. This paper suffersa little frombeing clearly taken from a larger study: a numberof names are ‘dropped’ of men whose back- ground and importance cannot be explained in such limited space. In his well argued ‘The myth of 1485: did France really put Henry Tudor on the throne’ Michael K. Jones puts later emphasis by the French and by modem historians on the decisive importance of French help for Henry at the battle of Bosworth in perspective. This otherwise sensible study features for the first time the illusionary ‘Swiss trained' pikemen that are supposed to have spelt the doom of Rict III, who had apparently never heard of suchpeople (see also my review of Jones’ Benz/ml), above). One of Henry VII’s own military expeditions and its huge preparations are described by John Currin, 123 “‘To Traffic with War”?Henry VII and the French campaign of 1492’, a. cam- paign that seems to me a repeat of Edward IV’s wage in 1475 — both in terms of genuine warfare and of greed. Curtin concludes: ‘[Hem:y] found himself back where he started in 1485'. isolated in Europe, dependent on the goodwill of France, and mistrusted by the Habsburgs’. (One quibble: the prophecy of the ‘Son of Man’existed long before Henry VII; it probably goes back to Ed- ward III’s time). The first paper concerning the sixteenth century is Charles Giry-Deloison’s “'Une haquenée pourle porter bientost et plus doucement en enfer ou en pmdis”: the French and Mary Tudor’s maxriage to Louis XII in 1514’, which lists and extensively quotes from all surviving accounts and regards the mar- riage as the beginning of normalisation of Anglo-French relations, ‘opening up’ French fashion and novelties to the English nobility. Robert Knecht’s chapter on ‘Sit Nicholas Carew’s journey through France in 1529’ provides a fascinat- ing insight into the ‘more mundane’ [and timeless? LV-F] aspects of ‘Renais— sance’ diplomacy, showing how close were the informal contacts between Englishmen and Frenchmen at certain levels of society. This picture is elaborated upon, given a more general meaning and its changing nature pointed out by Luc MacMahon in his ‘Courtesy and conflict: the experience of English diplomatic personnel at the court of Frances I’. For Henry VIII’s em- bassies to France a different class of men was needed — usually gently or nobly bom — to cope with Francis' very personal style, which included his ‘use’of women in diplomatic communication. Finally David Porter, ‘The private face of Anglo-French relations in the sixteenth century: the Lisles and their French friends’, using some less well known Lisle letters and helped by extensive footnotes, presents the attractive and intimate side of friendship between the provincial gentry of northern France and their English counterparts at Calais. Over all this is a thorough, revealing, pleasant and at times entertaining collective picture of early modern relations between the English and the French; as usual little appears to have changed. My only reservations are the editor’s tendency to favour the spelling ‘sise’,siseable’ and ‘seise’,and the price of the volume. LIVIA VISSER-FUCHS MEDIEVAL HUNTING. Richard Almond. 2003. Sutton Publishing Ltd, Stroud. £20. ISBN 0-7509-2162-5 Hunting was a core aspect of medieval life in a way that modem readers may find difficult to comprehend. The population was predominately ruraland found the acquisition of some ready protein a valuable dietary addition. Not 124 that everyone depended upon hunting for this reason, though, as for the social elite it was a sport, a ritual bonding activity and an excuse for display. In this book Richard Almond explains how hunting was central to the life of all classes and both sexes,to be inclusive and not exclusive. Of course, hunting came in many different forms. Almond’s key (and con— cluding) point is made by reference to an early sixteenth century German book of hours(BL MS Egerton 1146). One of the twelve-picture cycle (Plate 47 and in colour on the dust cover) shows a wealthy young man galloping through woodland chasing a hate with hounds while a poorman shoots rabbits at the field edge with a crossbow. Hunting was not just about what game was sought, but about how it was won: as a noble pursuit or ignoble necessity. For a man like Gaston Fébus, a Gascon lord who wrote the definitive Um de Clmse (1389) to hunt was to live. Literacy was becoming a crucial factor in transmit- ting the knowledge, skills and proper conduct in hunting. Edward, Duke of York, provided an English version, The Matter of Game, a few years later. Al- mond uses this work to reinforce his point about the involvement of women in hunting. It has long been understood that ladies engaged in falconty, but Almond produces both literaryand visual evidence to sugest that they might be found actively engaged in more dangerous pursuits. Hunting was dangerous. Apart fromthe risks of the mounted chase, the quarry could turn. Fébus describes having his horse brought down and killed by a boar. Yet, the mature male red deer was most feared — ‘after the boat the leech (doctor) after the hart the bier' went the old saw — and therefore the most noble game. The ritual of butchering (unmaking) the carcass, took on an almost spiritual tone. Everyone was honoured by the kill, not just the nobles and the professional huntsmen, but any youngsters who had blood smeared on their faces. (Almond comments that this custom went on until the mid-twen- tieth century, although the tabloid furorewhen the current royal princes were so ‘blooded’ in the early 19905 suggests otherwise.) The horsemanship, hard- ship, comradeship and common endeavour, together with the kill, made hunt- ing of large game an excellent training for war. Almond acknowledges an element of bloodlust (although he is nervous about attributing it to modern hunters). The hunt was also an excuse for other lustful activities, a couple of the plates showing scenes of dalliance involving the young (human) bucks and their female companions, excited by the chase and blessed with some unusual privacy. But the women were not just there for the tide. Almond emphasises their role as participants and even experts in hunting. True, they are mostly depicted chasing birds or trapping rabbits, yet in his chapter devoted to ‘Medieval Dianas’ Almond does much to rescue their hidden history. (Al- though his website reference may have misled him to accord them too great an active role in warfare.) 125 This is a thoroughly enjoyable book with many insights into medieval society. It owes a (fully acknowledged) debt to John Cummins’ The Hound and the Hawk, the Art of Medieval Hurting (1988), yet takes the topic much further and provides a strong and convincing thesis for the universality of hunting in the period. Almond stresses that the class divisions which came about were due first, and in part, to that would-be autocrat Richard II’s little-enforced 1390 Game Law (explored in an unpublished communication by his mentor ProfessorTony Pollard). Ricardians will doubtless be unsurprised to learn that it was actually Henry VII and his successors who created the social divide (still evident today) by furtherlegislation in the sixteenth century. Just a couple of points about presenmtion are disappointing. The very use- ful half-hundred, black-and-white plates contain illustrations, which are alluded to frequently in the text yet never clearly identified (as in: ‘See Plate N’). There is also quite a lot of quotation in Middle English, which could really have home translation (either in the text or in the notes) to make it more com- prehensible and an easier read. Some of the Modern English is equally arcane (although I am surethat Ricardians will not be foxed by ‘vulpicide’).