Future Publications

George Ashby’s Active Policy of a Prince and its addendum Dicta et opiniones diversorum philosophorum, a mirror for princes written ca. 1461–1462 for the Lancastrian prince Edward, is a unique witness to the political discourse of the Wars of the Roses. As a clerk of the Signet Office, Ashby had intimate knowledge of both the inner workings of politics at the Lancastrian court as well as its key players. The Active Policy of a Prince is a largely original work of political advice written in Middle English, while the Dicta et opiniones diversorum philosophorum is a macaronic text, combining prose passages taken mostly from the Latin wisdom text Liber philosophorum moralium antiquorum, followed by Ashby’s verse translations in Middle English. This book presents a full edition of The Active Policy and Dicta with extensive glosses, notes and translations of the Latin passages.

The early fourteenth-century anonymous tail-rhyme romance Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild offers an excitingly different perspective of the legend in comparison to the previous century’s better-known King Horn. Set within the British Isles, it recounts the exile and return of a Northumbrian prince; his adventures in southern England, Wales, and Ireland; his defeat of his father’s usurper; and marriage to his beloved princess. In its diversions, the Middle English Horn Childe shows closer affinity to the late twelfth-century Anglo-Norman Roman de Horn and later ballad traditions than to King Horn. Its distinctive treatment of the legend also illuminates shifting social norms during a period of social and political strife, and reestablishes a unique link with an Anglo-Danish heroic tradition absent in other versions.