‘The Puple is Godes, and not Ȝoures’; Lancastrian Orthodoxy in the Digby Lyrics

This essay explores whether Gerald Harriss’s conception of ‘Lancastrian orthodoxy’—established by Henry IV and his coterie, but extended by his son Henry V—can be explored in relation to the lyric sequence of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Digby 102. Diverging from standard critical accounts of the Digby poems, it argues that, rather than acting as praise poetry for the Lancastrian regime, the lyrics articulate an anxiety over Henry V’s attempt to align the authority of the Church with the crown, thus extending his political power. Written within, in Vincent Gillespie’s term, a ‘milieu of orthodox reform’, the lyrics reveal an underlying concern that, under Henry V’s rule, the balance between regnal and ecclesiastical authority could drastically shift. The essay considers these poems in relation to other examples of literature that appear to support the Lancastrian monarchy, namely the macaronic sermons of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 649 and, in particular, Sermon 22. The sermon, as in much other praise literature for the Lancastrian regime, provides a traditional view of heresy in its condemnation of John Oldcastle. Helen Barr, the most recent editor of the poems, has suggested that the Digby poet performs a ‘textual excommunication’ of heresy within the lyrics. The essay considers whether the poet is as much, if not more, concerned with the balance between the ‘auctoritas’ of the Church and the ‘potestas’ of the monarch.