The Ordinance of Normandy is the name given to a paper attributed to Philip VI of France, dated 23 March 1338 and exhibited in the Parliament of England on 8 September 1346. The document called for a second Norman conquest of England, with an invading army led by the Duke of Normandy (later king John II of France), and England was to be divided between the Duke of Normandy and his nobles as a fief for the King of France.[1] It would have been discovered by the English army at Caen, following the Battle of Caen in 1346 that ensued from the English invasion of Normandy. The Earl of Huntingdon brought the document to England after he was invalided home and it was read out in St. Paul's Cathedral in London by the Archbishop of Canterbury, John de Stratford.[2] The document was also exhibited in Parliament on 8 September 1346, which was summoned to vote supplies to the king, who was engaged in the Siege of Calais.[3] It was claimed that King Philip vowed to "destruire & anientier tote la Nation & la Lange Engleys" [destroy and ruin the entire English nation and country].[a][6] However some scholars believe the letter to have been forged.[7]

Notes

  1. ^ In Medieval French, the word langue/lange is used for a linguistic community and people or the territory where a language is spoken,[4][5] as for the langues of the Knights Hospitaller.

References

  1. ^ John Aberth, From the Brink of Apocalypse. Confronting Famine, War, Plague, and Death in the Later Middle Ages (Routledge, 2001), p. 74.
  2. ^ Anne Curry, The Hundred Years' War (Palgrave, 2003), p. 7.
  3. ^ Travers Twiss, ed. (1871). The Black Book of the Admiralty, with an Appendix. Vol. 1. London: Longman & Co., and Trübner & Co. p. 420. Retrieved 2019-06-20.
  4. ^ "lange". Anglo-Norman Dictionary. 2008–2012. Retrieved 2019-06-20.
  5. ^ "langue". Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (1330-1500). 2015. Retrieved 2019-06-20.
  6. ^ Kibbee, Douglas (1991). For to Speke Frenche Trewely: The French Language in England, 1000-1600: Its Status, Description and Instruction. John Benjamins Publishing. p. 34. ISBN 9789027245472.
  7. ^ Deanne Williams, The French Fetish from Chaucer to Shakespeare (Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 18.
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