Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, Interim Report
‘Collective decision-making in England (1400 – 1530)’
1. Summary of Research
My research on collective decision-making over the past year has significantly
advanced the findings of my doctoral thesis. I am now in a position to show that there
were strong connections between various types of corporate government in the
fifteenth century. My research has focused on ideologies and practices relating to
three kinds of institutions: the general councils of the Church, small-scale corporate
institutions in England and English parliaments.
Using under-exploited manuscript evidence in libraries in Oxford and Cambridge, and
in various archives in Germany (Augsburg, Koblenz and Munich), I have unearthed
English attitudes towards collective authority in the Church. English authors attached
great importance to teachings that were obtained through group decision-making in
international assemblies (the general councils of the Church). Participants at the
councils had to confront the difficulties of reaching judgements through majority
voting, and in so doing they drew on experiences of government in small-scale
corporate institutions and secular assemblies, such as parliaments.
The second focus of my research has been small-scale corporate institutions within
the Church, such as colleges and cathedral chapters. By analysing moments of conflict
within these institutions, as recorded in bishops’ registers, I have been able to uncover
attitudes towards the value of collective decision-making. In times of conflict, the
heads of the corporation were often accused of failing to consult the other members
about key decisions. Intervening to resolve the disputes, bishops stressed the need for
consultative government and introduced measures whereby the whole body of the
corporation was integrated into decision-making. Significantly, the parties in smallscale corporate disputes appealed to the same ideology of collective decision-making
that was used in the general councils. I conclude that this model of government was
applied in a number of contexts. In line with recent research, I wish to assign the
model of collective government a prominent place alongside hierarchical (or topdown) models of decision-making (most notably ‘kingship’) which have previously
received the bulk of historical attention in a northern European context.
There have been some changes to the research plan outlined in my initial proposal.
Instead of examining town councils, I have decided to look at parliaments as my third
context of corporate government. Parallels were often drawn between parliaments and
the general councils of the Church, because both drew upon theories of political
representation. What did it mean for a body of several hundred unelected clerics at a
general council to represent the whole Church? This question received several
interesting answers, and contemporaries were aware that it was very similar to the
problem of how MPs could be said to represent the whole English nation. A study of
the relationship between the general councils and parliaments will provide
illuminating conclusions about the tensions and innovations within the theories and
practices of collective decision-making.
Alexander Russell, May 2014
2. Future Research
My research in the next year will be used to deepen my understanding of corporate
government in localised contexts. The documents I have examined so far have chiefly
been contained in printed bishops’ registers. I need to supplement these with records
contained in archives in York, Lincolnshire and Worcestershire. I plan to examine
these documents chiefly in June-July 2014. I will use the next year of the fellowship
to examine the continuity in theories and practices of collective decision-making into
the sixteenth century. My research has thus far primarily examined the fifteenth
century, but I plan to extend this to c. 1530. Luckily records of corporate institutions
often extend across the full range of the pre-Reformation period.
Thanks to the research I have carried out in the first year of the fellowship, I am now
in a position to produce a monograph on collective decision-making in England (1400
– 1530). I have proposed this idea to Cambridge University Press, and their Studies in
Medieval Life and Thought series has responded with interest. They are awaiting
finished chapters before making their final decision. I feel confident that by
combining material from my doctoral thesis and the significant findings from the first
year of my Early Career Fellowship, I can complete a monograph by December 2014.
It will be noticed that the monograph will not include as much material on the
Reformation as initially projected. I have decided that to focus on both the fifteenth
century and the Reformation in the course of one monograph will be too ambitious
and will cause the book to lose focus. In the concluding chapters of my monograph I
will, however, clearly show how the developments of the fifteenth century had
enormous consequences for Reformation England.
As I hope to produce a monograph on collective decision-making within the next 7
months, I am already looking ahead to the research outputs of the final stages of my
fellowship. To this end, I am undertaking research in the archives of Munich and
Salzburg over the summer of 2014. This work will extend and enrich my findings
about collective decision-making in an English context. It will use evidence from
Church court trials to make conclusions about the use of concepts of free will and
coercion in the formation of contracts. It will also give a wider European scope to the
local studies that I will be carrying out for my monograph on collective decisionmaking.
Alexander Russell, May 2014