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Ladies of the Fraternity of Saint George and of the Society of the Garter*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

James L. Gillespie
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Extract

Contemporary society has discovered—or in some cases been forced to discover—the worth of women. Historians have provided valuable insights into the social, cultural, and legal status of women in an effort to highlight the roots of attitudes that have excluded women from positions of power in the western world. Much of this research has focused upon new ways of viewing history, and the fine series of monographs Women in Culture and Society being published by the University of Chicago Press provides a prime example of the new awareness of the distaff side of history. Yet, little attention has been paid to some of the most basic assumptions of past generations of medieval historians about women and society. The claim that male chauvinist attitudes are founded in the primative Germanic concept of a warrior fraternity from which women were physiologically excluded from membership was already hoary when Fritz Kern published his classic account of medieval law and society in 1914. The comitatus band of Tacitus has been seen as a central component of the leitmotiv that produced chivalry. The chivalric love ethic has, of course, received great attention from women's historians, but the chivalric orders into which such views were distilled have been largely ignored.

The traditional view of the chivalric orders as fossilized parodies of the values they espoused so eloquently advocated by Johan Huizinga's The Waning of the Middle Ages still holds the field. Only in the last year have the chivalric orders been rehabilitated as genuine expressions of the human values of their age. The position of women within the tradition of the chivalric orders is worth a look for the intrinsic interest of the subject and for the insights that the investigation provides into the shifts in attitudes toward females over the centuries. The chivalric orders, and the Arthurian legends that inspired them, placed a high value on women, much higher than the earlier chansons de geste. While it is true that this tradition tended to place the lady upon a pedestal from which her daughters have fought to climb down, the greatest and longest lasting of these late-medieval chivalric fraternities, the Order of the Garter, also gave women a role in its celebrations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , Fall 1985 , pp. 259 - 278
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1985

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Footnotes

*

Professors Michael R. Powicke, Klaus P. Jankofsky, and Judith A. Trolander provided insights and inspiration on matters chivalric, Arthurian and feminist. Thanks are also due to lane Roberts and Desirée Tango for technical assistance.

References

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18 P.R.O.E. 101/400/12.

19 P.R.O.E. 101/400/18.

20 P.R.O.E. 404/14-60, Anstis, 2: 128 n.u.

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30 Anstis 1: 12 n.3. For Richard's anger with William Beauchamp over his refusal to help Pole see Knighton, 2: 251; cf. Roskell, J.S., The Impeachment of Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, in 1386 in the Context of the Reign of Richard II (Manchester, 1984), p. 199.Google Scholar

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33 P.R.O. E. 101/403/5.

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36 Historia Vitae et Regni Ricardi Secundi, pp. 154, 159, 207 n. 434.

37 C.P.R., 1396-1399, pp. 533, 552.

38 Ibid., p. 46.

39 Beltz, pp. ccxxi-ccxxiv; Fellows, pp. 103-109; Nicolas, , Orders of Knighthood, 2: lxxvii–lxxxiGoogle Scholar. All these lists of the Ladies of the Garter are imperfect. I shall pass over the specifics lest I be accused of the anal-erotic fixations common to prosopographers.

40 P.R.O. E. 101/404/13.

41 P.R.O. E. 101/405/13.

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49 C.P.R., 1408-1413, p. 382.

50 Ibid., p. 90; P.R.O. E. 101/405/3.

51 P.R.O. E. 101/405/22.

52 Anstis 1: 14 n; the great wardrobe account is fragmentary, P.R.O. E. 101/405/15.

53 P.R.O. E. 101/407/9.

54 P.R.O. E. 101/407/16.

55 Anstis, 2: 124: P.P.C., 4: 116: for Alice's ties to the Beauforts, her friendship with Margaret of Anjou and her role in the factional intrigue of Henry VI's reign see Metcalfe, C.A.. “Alice Chaucer, duchess of Suffolk, c. 1404-1475” (B.A. Thesis, Keele University, 1970)Google Scholar; Griffiths, Ralph A., The Reign of King Henry VI (Berkeley, 1981), passimGoogle Scholar; Gillespie, J.L., “Refectio Eboraca Gubernationis” (A.B. Thesis, Kenyon College, 1968).Google Scholar

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58 Roll of New Year's Gifts, 18 Hen. VI printed by Anstis, 2: 128.

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62 Ibid, 2: xlviii; P.R.O. E. 101/409/19.

63 Beltz, p. ccxxiv and Fellows, pp. 108-109 list Queen Margaret, lady Anne Moleyns, lady de Say, lady de Beauchamp and Alice Norreys as recipients of Robes of Garter in 1448. This is based, however, upon a misreading of the great wardrobe account which after reciting the recipients of robes, lists the queen, lady Anne Molyns, Alice Norreys and lords (sic) Say and Beauchamp as well as several others as recipients of “divers res … de dons domini Regis” P.R.O. E. 101/409/18; Nicolas, Orders of Knighthood, 2: lxxxi n.

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