"This Blessed Plot": An Ecocritical Approach to Shakespeare's Second Tetralogy

This research project aims at bringing to light the non-human dimension in Shakespeare’s second tetralogy, i.e., Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV and Henry V. In the context of the military confrontations that preceded the Wars of the Roses, the disruption of human relationships bears an impact on the land and the non-human cosmos in general. Through his literary craft and thorough understanding of human and non-human nature, Shakespeare reveals an intricate network of relationships, which, even when broken, can be mended. My project is guided by a presentist understanding of literature. Studying the relationship between the human and the non-human in Shakespeare’s histories can also inform our own relationship with the land we inhabit and our mutual interdependence. Matter and spirit are integrated in this analysis and inspiration is drawn from Pope Francis’ so-called green encyclical <em>Laudato Si,</em> which invites us to see the earth as our common home and, consequently, exhorts us to be responsible and caring.

A Song of Neither Ice nor Fire: Temperature Extremes had No Impact on Violent Conflict Among European Societies During the 2nd Millennium CE

The second millennium CE in Europe is known for both climatic extremes and bloody conflict. Europeans experienced the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, and they suffered history-defining violence like the Wars of the Roses, Hundred Years War, and both World Wars. In this paper, we describe a quantitative study in which we sought to determine whether the climatic extremes affected conflict levels in Europe between 1,005 and 1980 CE. The study involved comparing a well-known annual historical conflict record to four published temperature reconstructions for Central and Western Europe. We developed a Bayesian regression model that allows for potential threshold effects in the climate–conflict relationship and then tested it with simulated data to confirm its efficacy. Next, we ran four analyses, each one involving the historical conflict record as the dependent variable and one of the four temperature reconstructions as the sole covariate. Our results indicated that none of the temperature reconstructions could be used to explain variation in conflict levels. It seems that shifts to extreme climate conditions may have been largely irrelevant to the conflict generating process in Europe during the second millennium CE.

John Hardyng

The English chronicler John Hardyng (b. 1378–d. c. 1465) had a colorful career before settling down to write his two versions of British history in the 1450s and 1460s. Born in Northumberland, he served in the household of Sir Henry Percy (b. 1364–d. 1403) from the age of twelve, where he learnt the art of warfare and fought in numerous battles, including the Battle of Shrewsbury (1403). Later, he served Sir Robert Umfraville, fighting alongside him in Scotland and in the first years of Henry V’s French campaign (1415–1416). In 1418 Henry V sent Hardyng to Scotland to survey the topography of the realm and seek out evidence of English overlordship. Promised a substantial gift for his espionage, Hardyng returned after three and a half years, but Henry V’s untimely death deprived him of his prize. He remained unrewarded until the 1440s, when Henry VI honored the late king’s promise and granted Hardyng an annuity. By this time Hardyng’s patron, Sir Robert, was dead and Hardyng had taken up residence in the Augustinian Priory at Kyme, Lincolnshire. It was here that he began writing his first account of British history in Middle English verse. Surviving in a single manuscript, which was presented to Henry VI and his family in 1457 along with a map of Scotland and several of the Scottish documents recovered for Henry V, Hardyng’s Chronicle draws primarily on Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, Robert Mannyng’s Chronicle, and a Latin Prose Brut to give an account of British and English affairs from the mythical founding of Britain by Brutus to 1437. Using the historical issue of English hegemony over Scotland as an ideological touchstone to unite divided Englishmen, the Chronicle sought to promote unity amidst the social, economic, and political instability that precipitated the Wars of the Roses. Within a few years of presenting the work and receiving another reward for his service, Hardyng began revising the text for Henry VI’s political rival, Richard, duke of York. The second Chronicle rewrote history to explain York’s superior claim to the throne, but it retained Hardyng’s call for unity among Englishmen and continued to use the issue of Scottish independence as a means of rallying his peers against a common foreign enemy. When the duke of York died in December 1460, Hardyng continued revising his text for York’s son, Edward IV, who took the throne from Henry VI in March 1461. Though Hardyng died before completing his revised narrative, numerous copies of the near-complete chronicle circulated in and around London in the 1460s and 1470s, helping to explain the Yorkist pedigree. It was the second version of the Chronicle that influenced Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur and which was later taken up by the Tudor printer Richard Grafton, who issued two prints in 1543 because of its relevance to the Anglo-Scottish wars in his own time. Grafton’s prints ensured the popularity of the Chronicle among Tudor historiographers and its influence on later writers, such as Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton.

SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF THE PARTICIPANTS OF THE BATTLE OF STOKE FIELD, 16 JUNE 1487

The battle of Stoke Field is often proclaimed to be the finish of the Wars of the Roses in England. It was less than two years after the overthrow of Richard III Plantagenet by Henry VII Tudor. His victory was not so much the result of military superiority as the consequence of a policy of intrigue and betrayal, and it explains the preservation of a significant number of hidden adherents of the overthrown dynasty around the new monarch. Their unification around the Yorkist pretender to the throne led to the last major battle in more than thirty years of struggle for the English throne. Prosopographic analysis allows the author to assess the degree of participation of various social groups in military activities and the impact of the Wars of the Roses on society. Written sources provide an opportunity to partially recover the named composition of the participants in the battle. The author identified 170 people. Most of them are Lancastrians (134 people). The largest social group (89 people) was of gentry (knights and squires). They served as middle and junior officers and formed the basis of both armies. They depended on the outcome of the battle. The battle of Stoke Field was a typical battle of the Wars of the Roses. The most active participants were representatives of the nobility and gentry, and their reasons for participation were personal ties among the nobility. The defeat of the Yorkists did not mean the end of sociopolitical turbulence (which gives some historians a reason to extend the Wars of the Roses to the late 15th century and even to the early 16th century), but subsequent hostilities were social rebellions rather than the episodes of "Game of Thrones".