The late fourteenth-century English poem Winner and Waster narrates a
debate between the forces of avarice (Winner) and generosity (Waster);
it ranges widely over a number of major issues in the political life of
England during Edward III's reign.
This book sets out to re-date the poem from the 1350s to the 1360s, and
in so doing to question whether its principal message really revolves
(as so much earlier scholarship has insisted) around the state of public
order and the costs of warfare in the 1350s. Instead, it proposes that
the poem echoes debates about Edward III's ability to maintain concord
between the members of his household, to manage the extravagance in
clothing that prompted the sumptuary laws of 1363, and to run his
peace-time finances of the 1360s in such a way as to guarantee the
solvency of the crown. Drawing extensively on the records of parliament
and on contemporary chronicles, this volume sets Winner and Waster
within the wider context of other complaint literature of the fourteenth
century, and characterizes it as one of the most politically - and
socially - engaged works of the period.
The late W. MARK ORMROD was Professor Emeritus of History at the
University of York; he published extensively on later medieval history.