Martial prowess was widespread throughout late medieval and early modern England. This thesis explores one aspect of it, fencing – broadly defined as the use of edged weapons in hand-to-hand combat – and how it was practised, taught, and regulated from the early fifteenth century to the early seventeenth. By exploring these issues, this thesis contributes to modern scholarly understandings of the performance and perceptions of violence in late medieval and early modern society, with a particular focus on non-elite civilian violence.
Chapter One describes and contextualises the wide variety of weaponry that featured in English fencing culture. Chapters Two and Three consider the fight book genre as it existed in England, with a particular focus on authorial intents, communication strategies, and the bodily techniques of combat which they describe. A consideration of these aspects demonstrates that the highly heterogenous practice of writing about fighting present in the Middle English fight books gave way to a more homogenous style in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, and also allows this thesis to explore how far it is possible to say that an English style of fencing existed. Subsequent chapters shift the focus from the tools and techniques of fencing to the men who used and practised them. Chapter Four is a study of the careers of fencing masters, in particular the Masters of Defence, a proto-guild of fencers who achieved official recognition in 1540. It considers the urban medieval masters who paved the way for the royal acknowledgement of the Masters of Defence, the way in which this body organised itself and accredited masters, and finally the challenges they faced at the hands of several Italian masters in the late sixteenth century. Chapters Five and Six examine how fencing masters, schools, and the art of fencing itself were perceived by contemporaries, with Chapter Five analysing wider legal and societal perceptions of these matters, and Chapter Six considering how the Masters of Defence viewed themselves and their role as regulators of martial knowledge in Tudor and Jacobean England. Key to this latter chapter is a study of the oaths sworn by new masters and provosts, which offer valuable insights into how these professional masters of arms understood their place in society.
