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75 The appearance of Margaret of Anjou’s arms in the border decoration of three leaves in the Yale Law School manuscript of the Nova statuta Angliae (plates 1–3) is undeniable evidence that the manuscript was commissioned by a supporter of the Lancastrian monarchy who chose to link Henry VI’s queen to England’s legal history. While nothing in the manuscript indicates that it was made for presentation to Margaret herself, a close connection with the queen and her circle of supporters does explain the manuscript’s unique features. As we have seen from our examination of the manuscript’s historiated initials and border decoration, the manuscript creates a visual frame for the legal texts it contains – a frame that shapes the reader’s per­ ceptions of the legal texts of the manuscript and links the Lancastrian line of kings, especially Henry VI, to King David, the primary medieval model of just kingship. The Yale Law School Nova statuta therefore inscribes in its record of English laws a political statement that parallels other examples of Lancastrian discourse in defense of Henry VI, and the form that this politi­ cal statement takes is particularly well suited to Margaret of Anjou’s need for indirect methods to undermine the authority of those who questioned the legitimacy of Henry VI’s rule. For the reader of the manuscript, the appearance of Margaret’s arms in the border decoration of the first leaf of the statutes text also has important implications for constructing the role three The Queen and the Lancastrian Cause the Yale New StatuteS Manuscript and Margaret of anjou • A Lancastrian Mirror for Princes 76 of English queens in preparing heirs to the throne to become just rulers, especially when justice needs to be restored to the realm: the preamble to the first statute in the collection gives an account of the unusual “transfer” of royal power from Edward II to Edward III in 1326–27, with the aid of his mother Queen Isabelle, and this account depicts Edward III and the queen as instruments of divine grace. Several other texts from the 1440s and 1450s also depict Margaret of Anjou as a representative of God’s grace who brings peace and justice to England, which suggests that this association was part of Lancastrian discourse and that the parallel between the situations of Queen Isabelle and Queen Margaret might well be recognized by readers of the Nova statuta Angliae. Margaret’s “presence” in the margins of the Yale Law School manuscript, as well as within its central text, might thus be read as a metaphor for her ambiguous role in the defense of the Lancastrian mon­ archy – officially marginal, yet in many ways at the center, as a voice for a king who was either literally or figuratively absent after his illness in August 1453 and for a prince who was either literally or figuratively absented by the Lancastrians’ foes after his birth in October 1453. Tensions between royal presence and absence and political margin and center are inscribed in the very origins of the Nova statuta Angliae as a text. What is “new” about the New Statutes is that they begin with the first year of the reign of Edward III in 1326–27 and present him as inaugurating a new beginning in English legal history, one in which records for each session of Parliament were made available to readers for the first time and the laws were recorded in French, instead of Latin, allowing for a wider readership. Nevertheless, this new beginning cannot entirely gloss over the political and legal fractures that brought Edward III to the throne and brought about a new form of legal text. In order to construct Edward II’s removal from the throne and replacement by his son as necessary for the restoration of just rule to England, the Nova statuta text begins, not with the first statute of Edward III’s reign, but with a narrative account, similar to a chronicle.1 The account employs remarkable rhetorical strategies in order to explain that Edward III has become “the king that now is,” whose first statute pardons all individuals who aided him and Queen Isabelle when they invaded England and removed Edward II from the throne. When the account begins, it presents Edward II in terms of his relation­ ship with Edward III, but in terms that require recognition of Edward III as rightful sovereign from the very start: “Roi Edward piere nostre...

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