🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan25.214942.4644@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> greg@silver.lcs.mit.edu (Hossein Ali Qomi (mka Gregory F. Rose)) writes:

G. de Shipbrooke:
>>In that case, is the awarding of arms (and kingdom service awards, &c.)
>>in full court with all the populace assembled, *really* a mediaeval
>>practice?

Hossein A. de Q:
>I fear, my lord, that it is you who are fixated on an SCA invention.  Court
>is where the king is.  I mean that literally.  The _palatium_ was wherever
>the king was doing business.  All sealed and patent writs were done in
>Court because Court was where the king's business was done.

A couple of amendments:

When King Edward II went on his Stirling campaign of 1314 (the
campaign which ended with that little set-to near Bannok Burn Toune),
he left a fully functional chancery with the Archbishop of Canterbury
in charge at his staging base in England.  Writs continued to be
issued thence under the Great Seal, while King Edward had his privy
seal with him in his baggage train.  When the Scots took the baggage
train, they took the seal.  Subsequent privy seal documents were
issued under the privy seal of the queen, Isabella the She-Wolf.

The sort of court to which Godfrey refers sounds remarkably like a
parliament, though the "populace" in the form of the Commons, were not
summoned to parliament in all countries nor at all times.  The index
of ennoblement for early English peerages used by Cokayne is summons
to parliament, because there was no other formal ennoblement recorded,
and at that same stage there were none but noblemen summoned to parliament.

In addition to there not having been "courts" in the SCA sense, the
"thrones" by which SCA kingdoms set so much store were used for
coronations and that's about it.  The "throne" of France wasn't even
in the Ile de France most of the time!

Aryk Nusbacher