THE TWENTY-FIVE PLOUGHS OF SIR JOHN: THE TALE OF GAMELYN AND THE IMPLICATIONS OF ACREAGE* GEERT VAN IERSEL The Tale of Gamelyn is an anonymous romance, probably composed between c. 1340 and c. 1370.1 It survives in twenty-five manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales, in which it features as a complement to the unfinished ‘Cook’s Tale’. Various studies have looked into the legal practices reflected by the narrative, which link it closely to the historical context of later medieval England.2 In this paper, I will set out to demonstrate that the romance’s association with specific socio- historical circumstances extends to the way in which land ownership is featured in the narrative, and that this has important consequences for the interpretation of the narrative’s moral subtext. I will start with a summary of the plot: Sir John of Boundes, an aged knight, summons a number of neighbouring knights to his deathbed, so that they may aid him *I would like to thank Professor Peter Hoppenbrouwers, from whose advice this article has greatly benefited 1 Skeat dates the romance c. 1340 (Walter W. Skeat (ed.), The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 2nd ed., 3 Vols, London, 1954, III, 339-400). According to Bennett it was composed “in the mid-fourteenth century” (H.S. Bennett, Chaucer and the Fifteenth Century, London, 1947, 310). A later date (c. 1350-70) was proposed by Charles W. Dunn (in J. Burke Severs, ed., A Manual of the Writings in Middle English: 1050-1500, New Haven, 1967, Vol. I: The Romances, 31). See also Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren, “The Tale of Gamelyn”, in Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, Kalamazoo, 1997, 184-226, here 185. For this article the edition by Knight and Ohlgren has been used. References are by line-number. 2 See esp. Edgar F. Shannon Jr., “Mediaeval Law in the Tale of Gamelyn”, Speculum, XXVI, 1951, 458-64; Richard W. Kaeuper, “An Historian’s Reading of ‘The Tale of Gamelyn’”, Medium Aevum, LII (1983), 51-62; John Scattergood, “‘The Tale of Gamelyn’: The Noble Robber as Provincial Hero”, in Readings in Medieval English Romance, ed. Carol M. Meale, Cambridge, 1994, 159-94. 112 Geert van Iersel in dividing his inheritance. Sir John wishes his lands, mostly gained during his lifetime, to be distributed equally amongst his three sons: John, Ote, and Gamelyn.3 When the assembled knights decide to divide the inheritance evenly between John and Ote – leaving it to them to provide their younger brother with land once he has come of age – Sir John takes matters into his own hands. To John and Ote he gives five ploughs of land each. Gamelyn is to receive the remaining land and tenants, as well as his father’s fine steeds. Immediately after Sir John’s burial, John, the eldest of the three brothers, appropriates Gamelyn’s share of the inheritance. Gamelyn himself is taken into John’s household, where he lives on a scanty allowance of food and clothes. Sixteen years after Sir John’s death an argument starts between the two brothers over the fate of Gamelyn’s inheritance and his position in the household. It is the beginning of a series of violent clashes between the two brothers. Eventually, Gamelyn has to flee to the forest in order to avoid arrest by the sheriff. There he joins, and soon heads, a band of outlaws. John meanwhile becomes sheriff, and has Gamelyn declared an outlaw.4 Gamelyn is arrested when he attends the shire-court to protest against the confiscation of his goods and the maltreatment of his serfs.5 John lets Gamelyn go when Ote stands bail, yet the consequence is that Ote will be punished in his brother’s stead if he fails to turn up for his trial.6 When Gamelyn enters the hall on the day of the trial, he finds that judgement has already been passed: Ote is about to be hung: John has bribed the jurors to condemn Ote to death. Gamelyn takes control of the courtroom, and sentences John, the judge, and the jurors to death. Once the punishments have been carried out, Gamelyn and Ote successfully set about 3 For the ways in which Sir John’s lands were acquired, see esp. lines 56-62. 4 Literally, ‘wolfeshede’ (696). This synonym of ‘outlaw’ dated to the Anglo-Saxon period, and “seems to have been associated with the idea that an outlaw, like a wolf, was a thing to be destroyed”, Shannon, “Mediaeval Law”, 460. 5 This would not, in itself, have constituted a breach of legal procedure. See Shan- non, “Mediaeval Law”, 460; Scattergood, “Gamelyn”, 166; also Maurice Keen, The Outlaws of Medieval Legend, London, 1961, 86. 6 It appears that Gamelyn is to appear before a royal justice. He has been locked up in “the kingges prisoun” (737), where he is to “abide to the justice come” (738). According to Kaeuper, the “royal justice who hears the case” probably acts “under a special commission of gaol delivery or oyer and terminer” (“An Historian’s Reading”, 55; see also Shannon, “Mediaeval Law”, 461). .