The present corpus

This section provides a description of the corpus used for the present study. First, the results of the previous two sections are related to the present data by describing how the socio-political events are reflected in the chosen LDR. Next, the transmission and edition context are presented. Finally, the selection of the LDR that were finally used for this study are explained.

2.1.2.3.1 Socio-political reflections

To introduce the present section, two predominant elements of the social history reflected in the LDR are related, namely the social status of the supplicant and the committed crimes to the general political history of the investigated period.

As pointed out above, the LDR originate from two different periods and were issued by two antagonistic governments. It can therefore be expected to find reflections of these antagonisms to some extent in the data. In order not to go beyond the scope of this work, I concentrate on two elements: the supplicant’s social status and the remitted crimes. An overview of the crimes committed by the supplicants according to the LDR shows that there are considerable variations between the period of French domination and the period under English rule. In approximately half of the cases, the LDR relate to more than one crime. Multiple references are therefore taken into account. The different crimes can be divided into four groups: major offenses against persons (including murder, injuries resulting in death and severe injuries), minor offenses against persons (raids, threats, rapes and fights), economic offenses (thefts, pillages and crimes linked to money trading) and offenses attacking directly or indirectly the public order and the government (cooperation with the enemies or brigands, escape, exile, violations of caution conditions and, for the second period, crimes against English people). For the period under French domination, the LDR issued for crimes of the first group are largest in number (61%).

16 Cf. Numéro 241, ordonnance du lieutenant général, rendue en conséquence des demandes des États généraux, 3 mars 1356, publiée en l’assemblée, publiquement. In: Jourdan and Isambert (1823: 814-847).

In contrast, the English rulers issued LDR only in 34% of the cases for major offenses against persons. In this period, most LDR were issued for offenses against public order and the ruler himself (55% compared to 16% under the French). Obviously, these numbers cannot be generalized: one cannot assert, for example, that under French domination, major offenses against persons took place in much higher number or that Normandy was safer under the English rulers. Remember that LDR do only record the cases in which the request for mercy was successful. What we can deduce from that numbers is that under French domination, a higher number of LDR were issued for crimes against persons, whereas the English rulers showed mercy, in more than half of all cases, on crimes offending their own power.

Furthermore, it can be noticed that only a small number of cases refer to offenses against persons whereas the cases during the first period form double the number compared to those of the second period (8% to 4%). Concerning the last group of crimes, originating from economic reasons, we have the same distribution (16% to 7%). One could come to the conclusion that the higher number of economic crimes resulted from the politically unstable situation of Normandy during the first years. Once again, even if one might find confirmations for this in the LDR, the LDR are not the only sources to be taken into consideration.

Crime 1357-1360 1423-1433

Injury resulting in death 20 14

Murder 9 5

Severe injuries 2 0

Cooperation with the enemies (Navarrians-English/French)

4 10

Cooperation with brigands 0 10

Escape and exile 2 7

Crimes against English people (1 murder) 4

Violation of conditions of a caution 2 0

Raids 2 0

Threat 2 0

Rape 0 1

Fight 0 1

Theft 4 1

Pillage 2 2

Crimes linked to money trading 2 1

Total 51 56

Table 1. Overview of the committed crimes, 1357-1360 and 1423-1433.¹⁷

It is useful to take a closer look at the distribution of the crimes across the second period which is considerably longer than the first one and for which one can distinguish different phases: a period of organization and restoration of the public order (1423-1425), followed by a period of peace (1427-1429) and the ensuing flare-up of French resistance (1431-1433). Since this selection of the LDR is not equal across the three periods, as could be seen above, only the proportional distribution is described. For the first phase of restoration, the analysis of 23 LDR shows that 21 of them refer to crimes offending the public order: there are seven cases of cooperation with brigands, seven cases of collaboration with the French, four cases of exile, and two cases of assaults against English people. During periods of relative peace, the majority of LDR are issued for major offenses against persons (seven cases), one is issued for the accusation of having uttered forged money, and two are issued for collaboration with the French. Concerning the latter, the first LDR issued in 1427 refers to a 1424 plot to betray Rouen to the French, and the second is the last LDR of this period and reports a minor crime (withholding of a letter). It can be stated that the period of relative peace is reflected in my corpus, since the proportion of crimes against the public order are negligible. The last phase shows a different picture. Apart from two economic cases and one minor one, the LDR include three cases of major offenses against persons, two cases of collaboration with the French, one of cooperation with brigands, and one case of an attempt against an English person. The distribution of the crimes seems to be balanced in a way but as I have only ten LDR analysed for that last period, I can only record the fact that there is a rise in crimes against the public order. This corresponds to the growing destabilisation of the English rule during this period, compare, for instance, Beaune (1999), Contamine (1994, 1999), Curry (1999), Jouet (1999) and Neveux (2008) among others.

2.1.2.3.2 Transmission and edition

As shown above, the chancellery issued LDR. For this reason, most of them were registered in the chancellery, in the Registres du Trésor de Chartes, and were kept in the French National Archives (FNA) under the series JJ. These registers are contemporary copies of the LDR written by the scribes of the Chancellery and hence the LDR are transmitted in an almost immediate

17 There is no distinction here between commission of the offence and accessory before or after the fact. For that see the complete overview in the annex.

way. Under the reference numbers JJ 35 to JJ 266, we find the registers of the chancellery from 1286 to 1568.¹⁸ According to Michel (1942), of a total number of 95,000 acts retained in the FNA, 53,800 are LDR. The LDR on which the corpus is based are included in JJ 87 and JJ 172 to JJ 175. JJ 87 covers the period from 1357 to 1360 and contains a total number of 357 acts, of which 210 are LDR. JJ 172 to JJ 175 correspond to the period from 1419 to 1434 and include a total number of 2,177 acts and 1,754 LDR.

The first part of this corpus is based on JJ 87 and was edited by Adrien Dubois commissioned by the CRISCO research centre of the University of Caen Basse-Normandie in 2014.¹⁹ He selected those LDR written in French that refer to Normandy on the basis of analyses in a handwritten analytic inventory of JJ 87 and 88 by Suzanne Clémencet at the Centre d’Accueil et de Recherche des Archives Nationales (CARAN). His transcriptions are based on the following criteria: they are as close to the manuscript text as possible. However, he introduced punctuation and elaborated abbreviations that were signalled by italics.

The text basis for the second part of my corpus is provided in form of the OCR-processed version of the Actes de la Chancellerie d’Henri VI concernant la Normandie sous la domination anglaise (1422-1435) edited by Paul le Cacheux in 1908.²⁰ The CRISCO research centre undertook the OCR version. It contains a selection of LDR and other legal documents related to the Normandy region under the English occupation from 1422 to 1433. The LDR constitute the major part of the edition and are published in their entirety, in contrast to other text types, as vidimus, for instance, of which the major part is printed in a distilled version. They are issued on behalf of Henri VI who introduces himself as king of France and England. According to Cacheux (1908), the LDR are signed by the king himself, to the relation of the reigning duke of Bedford, of the Council and of the Exchequer, and bear the signature of a secretary.

Unfortunately, Cacheux does not detail the criteria used for establishing the edition but we can suspect that he introduced punctuation and replaced abbreviations without indicating his modifications. However, there is no indication that he modified the morphology or the syntax of the texts.

18 A detailed description of the transmission context of the Trésor de chartes goes beyond the scope of the present study, for further details see the following link to the Archives nationales

http://www.archivesnationales.culture.gouv.fr/chan/chan/fonds/guideorientation/I-1-tresorchartes.htm, 5^th February 2015: 16:38.

19 http://www.crisco.unicaen.fr/IMG/pdf/JJ_87.pdf, 14^th February 2016, 15:27.

20 Two pdf files: http://www.crisco.unicaen.fr/IMG/pdf/Le_Cacheux_2_Daphne.pdf and http://www.crisco.unicaen.fr/IMG/pdf/Le_Cacheux_2_Cecile.pdf, 14^th February 2016, 15:32.

2.1.2.3.3 Selection criteria

The CRISCO corpus Français légal ancien de Normandie contains a total of 375 LDR, 194 for the first period²¹ and 181 for the second period.

For the period from 1357 to 1360, a total of 45 LDR was selected. The four years should be equally represented, but of the first year, there are only 9 LDR available on the whole. I therefore compiled a corpus of those 9 letters for 1357, 11 for 1358, 12 for 1359 and 13 for 1360. The unequal distribution for the latter three years is due to the fact that all 24 LDR containing parts of direct speech should be included in the corpus and a minimum of 2 LDR without direct speech part should be maintained per year. Furthermore, the LDR without direct speech were selected at random. The number of 45 LDR for the first part of the corpus corresponds to 23,2% of the total number of LDR in the Français légal ancien de Normandie in the same period. 53% of the LDR of the first period contain parts of direct speech.

Year Total number of selected LDR LDR containing direct speech

1357 9 2

1358 11 5

1359 12 6

1360 13 11

Table 2. Distribution of the selected LDR. 1357-1360.

The second part of the corpus, from 1423 to 1433, includes 44 LDR. This corresponds to 24,3%

of the total number of LDR in the same period. On the whole, 35% of the LDR of the second period contain parts of direct speech. As the second part covers a longer period of time, the number of LDR to choose per year according to the distribution of the total number of LDR across our given time periodwas determined first. Then the distribution according to the place of issue was taken into account. Therefore, the selection is also based on the proportion of documents issued in Paris (65%) versus elsewhere (35%) in order to represent the proportion of all LDR of this period.

21 The version of JJ 87 provided online only comprises 24 LDR which all contain parts of direct speech.

Therefore, the LDR of the first period that are not available online can be found in the appendix (cf. appendix A).

Year Total number of LDR Number of selected LDR

1423 23 6

1424 46 12

1425 24 6

1427 22 5

1428 17 3

1429 10 2

1431 6 2

1432 24 6

1433 6 2

Table 3. Distribution of the selected LDR. 1423-1433.

The original text base does not contain LDR for the year 1430 and only one for 1426. The obviously traceable letter of 1426, number 76, is due to an error of OCR-transcription because the dating is “l'an de grace mil CCCC XXIIII”, whereas the as well wrongly dated LDR 1437/26, number 160 is dated “Donné à Paris, le xxije jour de janvier, l'an de grâce mil quatre cens et vint six et de nostre règne le quint”. However, with regard to the distribution of the other LDR, both years were excluded from the corpus.

For the first period, the following LDR are part of the corpus:

(1) 1, 4, 5, 9, 20, 22, 24, 25, 35, 36, 38, 43, 50, 61, 70, 80, 101, 107, 112, 115, 121, 131, 159, 166, 177, 179, 190, 202, 212, 231, 250, 252, 255, 258, 277, 285, 286, 287, 302, 303, 306, 307, 310, 320, 322.

For the second period, the LDR given in (2) constitute the corpus.

(2) 1, 4, 5, 10, 19, 22, 25, 29, 31, 36, 43, 49, 53, 55, 56, 63, 68, 70, 73, 75, 77, 81, 89, 91, 161, 168, 173, 176, 178*, 178**, 183, 185, 192, 197, 201, 203, 204, 207, 211, 218, 220, 223, 225, 229.

In order to determine the origin of the examples used, the year and the number of the corresponding LDR is noted. This notation immediately allows to relate the corresponding example to the period in question.

Im Dokument At the Left Edge : Fronting in Medieval French Embedded Clauses (Seite 21-27)