Justice and Grace

“Most Hevynesse and Sorowe”: The Presence of Emotions in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Court of Chancery

“…Dodd's work on private petitions to the crown also shows that by the fourteenth century, petitions stressed the petitioners' worthy qualities and later still (when written in English), their humility or meekness, making the "supplications their own" within the petition's conventions. 83 More directly, Dodd finds evidence in the unusually extensive petition of Thomas Paunfield to Parliament that rhetorical positioning included emotional strategies: "its employment of highly emotive language and rhetoric. .…”

Treason, felony and Lollardy: a common petition in the hand of Richard Osbarn, clerk of the chamber of the Guildhall, 1400-c.1437

“…104 It is significant that, unlike many other private petitions avowed by the Commons, SC 8/24/1197 is identical in phrasing to the version of the petition recorded on the parliament roll, rather than having been reworded by the clerks of parliament in order to emphasize the general nature of the complaint. 105 This suggests that Osbarn and his fellow petitioners knew how to phrase their request in such a way that it would obtain parliamentary backing; indeed, the fact that the petition is addressed in the name of the Commons (rather than the 'commons of the City of London' or similar) supports the idea that they expected this outcome. The links between Osbarn's career (both as a civic official and a copyist of literary texts) and the grievances expressed within SC 8/24/1197 provide evidence that those employed in the actual writing of petitions were sometimes more than mere scribes, and may have both identified with the substance of the complaint and influenced the way in which it was presented.…”

Gilbert Kymer: Rector of the first conjoint medical college

“…Henry V), an anonymous petition, 23 which proposed that sheriffs should require all physicians and surgeons who had not studied at the two universities to go to Oxford or Cambridge to be examined; otherwise they would be punished. It was in the usual format 24 of an obsequious introduction to the King, Lords and Commons, a complaint about the parlous state of medicine in England, and a proposal to improve its practice. Sheriffs across the country were to ensure that all those medical practitioners who had not taken a medical degree at the two universities attended them to be examined and licensed, but no women were to be licensed.…”