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Since the first attribution of Shakespeare as the author of the anonymous Edward III (1596) in 1656, the play has occupied a shifting status in the canon. Over the past twenty years renewed critical interest in questions of the canonicity of Edward III has led to a wider acceptance of Shakespeare's involvement with the play.This study reviews the canonical problems raised by Edward III and reappraises the play as a dramatic text. Chapter One concentrates on issues of the play's publication, dating, and authorship. Chapter Two examines how the playwright uses literary and chronicle sources to present celebratory images of Edward III and of his son the Black Prince. Chapter Three analyzes the "ancestral influence" of the figures of Edward III and the Black Prince on the titular hero of Shakespeare's Henry V. The Chapter directs attention to Edward III as a pre-text for Henry V. The Conclusion summarizes the study and indicates future lines of inquiry.

This thesis is an examination of the use Edward III made of various resources at his disposal in order to patronize a number of individuals destined for the parliamentary peerage or beyond. Primarily through a judicious use of escheats, forfeitures and expectancies, though also through his control over the marriages of his tenants-in-chief, Edward managed to endow a considerable number of new men with properties both suitable to their existing estates and commensurate with their new ranks. Edward's use of these sources, along with temporary forms of patronage such as wardships, annuities, offices and smaller token forms of favour, unsurprisingly sparked a considerable amount of contemporary reaction. However, unlike previous favourites, though Edward's new men did have to contend with a substantial amount of opposition at an individual level - especially in the law courts - popular reaction in general was surprisingly mute. Though there were instances when these men were singled out for criticism, for the most part landed society as a whole, and the established nobility in particular, received them with a degree of toleration rarely exhibited to parvenus. In part due to Edward's use of propaganda, but also to the terms on which he granted out a large portion of the patronage, Edward's new creations were seen as complementing rather than threatening the existing order. Indeed, it was Edward himself who may be said to have limited the powers of his 'new nobility' not only by making them dependent on his goodwill, but also by not allowing for much of the patronage granted out to remain out indefinitely. In the end, then, this thesis is about the first coherent realization by an English monarch of the importance of controlling the composition of the parliamentary peerage at a time when its membership was becoming increasingly predetermined.

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This thesis is written in two parts. The first part contains an examination of the household functionings as an institution. Although the household was an establishment of declining national importance in the years 1360-1377, due to the fact that Edward III was increasingly separated from it and thus it lost much of its political significance, nevertheless his subjects were on the whole satisfied with the way in which the king ran his household. What complaints there were about its activities were not generalised condemnations but specific complaints aimed at either the jurisdictional competence of the court of the [indecipherable] or the way in which the kings purveyors abused their positions. The numbers of household staff declined steadily during this period, from over 550 in 1359-60 to less than 350 in 1377, the most radical drop being in the early 1360s and probably being due to the fact that the household was no longer involved in the war. Despite the merger of the King's and Queen's households in 1360, wardrobe turnover was much reduced by this drop in numbers and by the household's non-involvement in the war; moreover real attempts at economy were made in the household throughout this period. The chamber too had its official income reduced but in actuality its unofficial income probably made it a vary wealthy department in the 1360s although after 1369 most of its wealth was ploughed into the exchequer, by now very much a controlling organ of the national finances, to help to finance the renewed French war. The second part of the thesis examines the part which the royal domestic establishments played in the political upheavals of 1376-77. The Good parliament was not an attack on a system of government, still less an attack on the household. It was a highly personalised attack on a group of courtiers and their associates who had come increasingly to dominate both the kings policies and his patronage in the 1360s and 1370s. Yet with notable exceptions these courtiers were much more than mere idle royal favourites; the commons in the Good Parliament were quick to forget the services which men such as William Latinor, John Yovill and Richard Lyons had done to the state, and while it is true that these men had personally benefitted considerably from their association with the court, nevertheless the charges brought against them in the Good Parliament were in many cases most unfair. Finally, the part played by the lords in the events of 1376-77 in investigated and it is argued that although there was some opposition from the prelates to the government (now virtually ran by John of Gaunt although this was far from being the case before 1376), there really is very little evidence to suggest that the lay magnates either led the opposition in the Good Parliament or seriously opposed government policies in the last year of the reign.

This thesis is a full political biography of Alice Perrers, the mistress of Edward III from the early 1360s until his death in June 1377 and mother to three of his children. It argues on the basis of the progression of her career that after the death of Edward's queen consort Philippa of Hainault in August 1369 Alice was able to extend the scope of her power and influence to the point that she became a ‘quasi' or ‘uncrowned' queen and, consequently, that her contribution to the political crisis of the 1370s can only be fully understood in terms of queenship. More generally, despite the recent increase on work on Alice, this study suggests that her life deserves a more thorough and nuanced appraisal than it has so far received. Various aspects of Alice's life are explored: her birth, family and first marriage; her early years as Edward III's mistress; the change in her status after Philippa of Hainault's death; her commercial activity as a moneylender and businesswoman; her accumulation of a landed estate and moveable goods; what happened to her in the Good Parliament; her trial in 1377; her marriage to William Wyndesore; and her life after Edward III's death. By examining Alice's career in this fashion it is shown that she took a leading role in the court party during the 1370s. Ultimately, by taking the original approach of applying ideas about queenship to a royal mistress this thesis demonstrates that Alice was perceived to have ‘inverted' or undermined the traditional role that the queen played in complementing and upholding the sovereignty and kingship of her husband, something that has implications for the wider study of not only mistresses, but also queens and queenship and even male favourites.

Why the term 'Anglo-Scottish Struggle' between 1337 and 1346? Why 'The Perspective of English Official Documents'? What influence did the so-called 'Hundred Year's War' have on the Anglo-Scottish relations in the first years of the war? What impact did the 'Scottish issue' have on the policy of the English king during the Anglo-French conflict? How did the perspective of English official documents differ from that of English chronicles or Scottish/French primary sources? What role did the rhetoric of these source play? How was it portrayed? The following thesis will try to analyse some of the aforementioned issues and will strive to prove that the Scottish kingdom had a profound impact on the English policy in multiple respects from the outset of the Hundred Years' War until the battle of Neville's Cross almost ten years later.