The Battle of Agincourt by Anne Curry

Author:Anne Curry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Group Ltd
Published: 2014-11-10T16:00:00+00:00

C 4. Edward Hall, The Union of the Two Illustre Families of Lancaster and York (1542, English)

Modernised from Hall’s Chronicle containing the History of England, ed. H. Ellis (London, 1809), pp. 63–73.

Edward Hall (d. 1547) hailed from Shropshire. After studying at Eton and Cambridge, he entered Gray’s Inn and spent most of his life in legal and political activity in London. He was a committed supporter of the Henrician Reformation: ‘his historical studies were boldly applied to the maintenance of an extreme theory of royal supremacy’.45 In 1542 he published his Union of the Two Illustre Families of Lancaster and York beyng Long in Continual Dissension for the Crown of this Noble Realm, which was reprinted after his death by Grafton in 1548 and again in 1550. Unlike Fabyan, he chose not to cast his work in the style of the London chronicle with the year by year list of officials, preferring rather a reign-based approach. He also gave a shape and a unity of purpose to his work by deliberately beginning it with Henry IV (‘the first author of this division’) and ending with the accession of Henry VIII (‘the undubitate flower and very heir of both the sayd lineages’). This was an overtly political statement which contrasted the anarchy of the fifteenth century, caused by the continuing aftermath of the change of dynasty in 1399, with the peace brought about by the coming of the Tudors, who united the two warring houses.

He claimed that this made sense in terms of historical writing, although he was exaggerating somewhat when he said in his prologue that ‘sithe the ende of Froissart which endeth at the begynnyng of King Henry the Fourthe no man in the English tongue hath either set furth their honours according to their desertes, nor yet declared many noble actes worthy of memory dooen in the tyme of the seven kynges which after King Richard succeeded.’46 Hall used a wide range of source materials, and although he did not use marginal notes, he prefixed his work with a list of the authorities used. He divides this into Latin, French and English writers, and those relevant to the current study include Monstrelet, the Chronicles of Normandy, Fabyan, Hardyng, the Chronicles of London, Caxton and John Basset. This last reference is particularly interesting as there are distinct indications in his text that he did indeed draw upon the Chronicle of (Peter) Basset and Hanson which is now in the College of Arms. He did not, it seems, consult Tito Livio’s Vita Henrici Quinti.47 He praised Fabyan as one of the few adequate histories in the English tongue but he also used the manuscript London chronicles too.48 Polydore Vergil was also an important influence if not source. Indeed it is claimed that there was a strong humanist influence playing on Hall, and that he was the first of the native sixteenth-century writers to use English in the fashion of the renaissance in a work which deliberately covered a long and coherent period of time.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.