"Winning the People's Voice": Usurpation, Propaganda and State-influenced History in Fifteenth-Century England. By Andrew Broertjes, B.A (Hons) This thesis is presented for the Doctor of Philosophy of the University of Western Australia Humanities History 2006 Table of Contents Abstract Acknowledgements Introduction p. 1 Chapter One: Political Preconditions: Pretenders, Usurpation and International Relations 1398-1509. p. 19 Chapter Two: "The People", Parliament and Public Revolt: the Construction of the Domestic Audience. p. 63 Chapter Three: Kingship, Good Government and Nationalism: Contemporary Attitudes and Beliefs. p. 88 Chapter Four: Justifying Usurpation: Propaganda and Claiming the Throne. p. 117 Chapter Five: Promoting Kingship: State Propaganda and Royal Policy. p. 146 Chapter Six: A Public Relations War? Propaganda and Counter-Propaganda 1400-1509 p. 188 Chapter Seven: Propagandistic Messages: Themes and Critiques. p. 222 Chapter Eight: Rewriting the Fifteenth Century: English Kings and State Influenced History. p. 244 Conclusion p. 298 Bibliography p. 303 Acknowledgements The task of writing a doctoral thesis can be at times overwhelming. The present work would not be possible without the support and assistance of the following people. Firstly, to my primary supervisor, Professor Philippa Maddern, whose erudite commentary, willingness to listen and general support since my undergraduate days has been both welcome and beneficial to my intellectual growth. Also to my secondary supervisor, Associate Professor Ernie Jones, whose willingness to read and comment on vast quantities of work in such a short space of time has been an amazing assistance to the writing of this thesis. Thanks are also owed to my reading group, and their incisive commentary on various chapters. Thank you to Lesley O'Brien, Kate Riley, Joanne McEwan, Karen Hall, Hugo Leith, as well as Sarah Brown for her comments on the introduction, and Dr. Graeme Miles for his assistance with the Latin translations. The support of the U.W.A. postgraduate community in general has been wonderful, but particular thanks to Ali Marchant, Lisa Mackinney, Nicole Crawford, Marianne Hicks and David Robinson. For various other friends in supportive roles I must thank James Dods, for providing me with a place to stay in London; Arif Munshi, for keeping me fit and healthy; Paul McWilliams, for providing both positive and negative reasons for doing a law degree instead of a PhD; Josh Pullan, for various good times and finally William Schaefer, for reasons too numerous to mention. Thanks are owed to various bodies who provided funds and resources. Thank you to U.W.A. History department, the U.W.A. Postgraduate School, the Reid Library Scholar's Centre staff (particularly Michelle Coles and Susana Melo de Howard), James Toher for his assistance with various computer issues, and the helpful staff at both the British Library and the National Archives in London. Finally, there are a number of people who deserve special mention. I would not have been able to write this thesis without the assistance of my long-suffering family, whose love and support has been fantastic. Also to Frank and Annie Cordingley, for their hospitality and friendship, and finally to Emma Cordingley, whose love over the last three years has been of incalculable benefit both to my intellectual, and personal growth. Introduction Thus, my gode lorde, wynneth your peples voice ffor peples vois is goddes voys, menne seyne. (Thomas Hoccleve to Henry of Monmouth, 1411, in The Regement of Princes) I have bin informed that diverse language, hath bene sayde of me to youre moste excellente whiche shoulde sounde to my dishonour and reproach, and charge of my person: howe be it that, I aye have bene, and ever will be, your true liegeman and servaunt (Richard duke of York to Henry VI, 1450) In earlier books of this work we have explained at sufficient length how King Richard II entirely lacked male heirs, and how not long after the whole population of England was split into two factions, Lancastrian and Yorkist, and how a bloody struggle ensued for over a hundred years, indeed until our own day, until at last the houses of Lancaster and York were united. (Polydore Vergil, mid-sixteenth century Anglica Historia) The above three quotes show that there were, in fifteenth century England, a number of different ideas and interpretations of the period written by and about the figures involved in that century’s political landscape. In this thesis I will examine how the events and ideas behind the fifteenth century political conflicts of England were represented through fifteenth century texts. In order to do so, a number of questions need to be asked. What were the political messages associated with fifteenth century English politics, and how did these messages influence the writing of history during and immediately after this time? Can we define these messages as propaganda, a term not coined until the seventeenth century, in the fifteenth century context? And is it possible to see the influence of these messages on the histories that were written during the time? In attempting to answer these questions, I will synthesise a number of works that have already been undertaken in examining the political messages of 1 this period, as well as address some of the gaps that are present in these works. As well as examining individual political messages of the period, I will draw out a broader context for the use of such pieces, outlining not just the messages contained within such propaganda, but the methods by which they were disseminated, which political groups within England carried out this dissemination and to whom, whether these people understood notions of audience and notions of propaganda, and how these factors combined to create a certain notion of fifteenth century England held by both contemporaries and future historians. The significance of such a study should be clear. The fifteenth century was a period which produced a great deal of writing about its own political history and its major political figures, writings present in chronicles, bills, proclamations, biographies and histories. We must assume, therefore, that fifteenth century politics comprised not only what was done, but what was said to be done. In understanding the dissemination and manipulation of information during the fifteenth century, we can gain an important understanding not just of the political events of fifteenth century England, but how contemporaries understood the history of that period. The first points to be addressed are the definitional and theoretical issues of this thesis. The fifteenth century time will be the period focussed on. For the purposes of this study, I choose to adopt the approach of the “long fifteenth-century”, the years 1399-1509.1 This period starts with a deposition, that of Richard II and ends with the death of Henry VII, who himself deposed a legitimate king. These cyclical depositions and the civil conflicts that they both caused and in some cases grew out of, were a defining feature of fifteenth century English politics. The most important theoretical point of this thesis concerns the notion of propaganda itself. Can we use this term in the context of the fifteenth century? Many modern propaganda theorists do not acknowledge the existence of propaganda in the later medieval period. The irony of this situation is that the period in which modern 1 Michael Hicks, English Political Culture in the Fifteenth Century, Routledge: London and New York, 2002. p. 2. 2 propaganda theorists would claim that propaganda is not a useful analytical tool has seen a flourishing of work on propaganda. Even those modern propaganda theorists who choose to examine pre-modern propaganda often do so in a limited way, focussing on visual media such as pageants and processions, to the exclusion of other possible forms of medieval propaganda2. The argument against the use of the term is that propaganda has accompanied the rise of mass media, and therefore requires a “mass consciousness” and a mass audience.3 Since mass media did not come into existence until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, propaganda therefore did not exist before the nineteenth century. Such an argument provides very narrow parameters for the study of propaganda. Nevertheless, most propaganda theorists have used it until now.4 In a similar sense, most historians who have written on propaganda in the late medieval period rarely define what propaganda is. Some of the works so far produced, while empirically rigorous, have lacked any kind of theoretical framework. It seems that there is divergent scholarship due to the scarcity of modern propaganda theorists testing their ideas against pre-modern examples, and pre-modern historians engaging fully in modern propaganda theory. Before examining the sources that will be used for this thesis, we must first address the question of the definition of propaganda. It is generally agreed that in order to have propaganda, two primary factors are required: political turmoil and an audience. Richard Lambert stated that one of the key preconditions for the development of propaganda is political turmoil.5 This turmoil represents multiple viewpoints, each vying for attention and power. The analysis of public revolts and the examination of the pretenders and dynastic disturbances that will be carried out in the next two chapters show that England at many stages of the fifteenth century was in a state of political turmoil and strife. 2 Phillip M. Taylor, Munitions of the Mind, Manchester University Press: Manchester & New York, 1995. pp. 102-103. 3 Terence Qualter, Propaganda and Psychological Warfare, Random House: New York, 1962. pp. 33-34. 4 Qualter, Propaganda and Psychological Warfare, pp. x-xi. 5 Richard Lambert, Propaganda, Thomas Nelson: London, 1938. pp. 7-9. 3 How this turmoil and strife was constructed, however, in the texts of the period, is equally significant for this thesis.