Well, pandemic brain, mental health, surgery, and the holidays all conspired to make this take a lot longer then I wanted to get this done. (Remember when I said a day or two? Ha ha, I'm so optimistic before the crushing reality sets in.) But here we finally are, and that's just how it is, and we're doing the research and writing as we can, as best we can.
When we left off, we'd walked through the promotions up from scholar to free scholar. Next up would be Provost, and then finally Master. (To remind folks, there were the four ancient Masters who were in charge of the whole guild. They must have changed over time, but we have no record of this specifically, let alone how the promotions were decided.)
The prize for Provost is where some of the really entertaining stuff starts to appear. When a free scholar decided to play for Provost, both he and his Master went to the four ancient Masters to discuss it. (The manuscript specifically notes that if the student's master were dead, they could choose one of the four ancient masters to fight under, so that's nice.) The four ancient Masters set the day of the prize, where the free scholar was supposed to fight at the longsword, backsword, and staff (though in reality these were somewhat flexible). At this point, the free scholar had to, at his own expense, give four weeks notice to all Provosts of the guild who lived within 60 miles of the location where the prize was to be fought that it was happening. For any Provost inside that radius who was not informed, the free scholar had to pay the ancient Masters a penalty of five shillings. According to the currency converter from my previous post, that comes out to $44.40 in today's dollars. Additionally, any Provost who lived more than 20 miles from the prize fight would have half of their travel expenses paid by the free scholar. (As an aside, Lilias pointed out to me the possibility of doing some fun math here as a free scholar - is it more expensive to pay half of someone's travel expenses or to pay the penalty for not inviting them?) Finally, assuming they pass their prize fight, to receive their Provost's Letter they must pay "to the four ancient Masters for the sealing thereof after the rate which is set amongst them with all manner of other duties belonging to them."
It all keeps coming back to those promotion fees and belt tests, right?
Once the free scholar fights his prize and becomes a Provost of the guild, some new rights and responsibilities are theirs. First, they may not keep a school within seven miles of any Master's school unless they receive permission from the four ancient Masters. They may not teach any scholar unless that scholar is sworn to the Provost's own Master; if done, the Provost must then pay the Master a fee of two pence for each scholar and another two pence to the "most ancient Master of the four" as well as showing his account books every quarter. If they happen to live within the 60 mile radius of a Provost's prize and they know about it, they must appear and fight (unless they are ill or "busied in the Queen's affairs") or pay a penalty of six shillings eightpence to the four ancient Masters. Finally, they are not supposed to play their Master's prize for another seven years - which again, seemed in practice to be a guideline more than a rule.
Now, the prize fight for Master. The Provost who wishes to become a Master does this through the Master under which he fought his prize for Provost (or again, under one of the four ancient Masters if necessary). Assuming they all approve, the four ancient Masters choose the day for the prize, and the Provost will have to fight at the two handed sword, the "Basterd sword", the pike, backsword, and (finally!) the rapier and dagger. The Provost was required to inform all Masters that lived within 40 miles eight weeks in advance of the day. Unlike the Provost, there's no mention of penalties for either the Provost for not informing anyone nor to the Master who doesn't attend.
Assuming the student does well, he pays for his Master's letter and the sealing of it and all the duties that he might owe (which again, are unspecified), he's given his Master's oath and boom! A new Master! At this point, according to the Master's oath, the newly promoted fencer should not set forth any prize (which I take to mean bring up a student for a prize fight, but I could be wrong) or keep more than one school in London. Other items of the oath include stating that they also shouldn't poach students from another Master, set up a prize fight for a hopeful free scholar or Provost without going through the proper channels, and so on in that vein.
Interestingly, there are a small number of instances where there did not seem to be a prize fight at all. Four times in the Sloane manuscript we see, instead of the usual prize fight information, "Master's agreement" which seems to indicate a handwaved promotion to Master. This also happened six times with a promotion to Provost, three times for free scholar, and in one Provost's prize it let the candidate skip the back sword fights, though not long sword. Naturally, there aren't any notes describing why this happened, only that it did.
Aylward has some notes as to how the prize fights themselves were conducted, which are pretty interesting. He notes that in each weapon, the prizor would be fighting two bouts with each person answering the prize - so if there were four weapons and six answerers that would mean the prizor would be fighting forty-eight bouts in that day. Naturally, many of those bouts would be one right after the other as well, although Aylward describes how the Masters running the show would call "this weapon is now done" with a fanfare of drums and would then confer with themselves upon it, giving the prizor a chance to sit and rest. They would then call "The first bout at such-and-such weapon" to more drums, and the bouts would continue.
There were definitely rules of engagement in the fights, too. Per Aylward, in 1599 George Silver (we had to bring him up eventually!) bemoaned that "there are now in these days no grips, wrestling, closes, striking with the hilts, daggers, or bucklers used in our fence-schools." I can almost hear him shaking his fists at the sky while screaming, "Back in my day!"
Interesting fact about Silver, though? He was not remotely associated with the London Masters of Defense. They were a trade guild, and Silver was a gentleman - certainly not someone who would join a common corporation! That said, he did write that he had nothing bad to say about the Masters, and he accounted them quite skilled.
I know, I said I'd yell more about Silver. I'll yell about him in another post, because we need to wrap this up sometime. But I did promise some drama, so here we are:
The Company of the Masters of the Science of Defense was not, as far as we can tell, actually an officially chartered guild. I mentioned this in a previous post. Henry VIII signed letters patent in 1540 to charter the guild. Henry died in 1547, and papers like the one he signed typically lapse upon the monarch's death and as Aylward puts it, "it depended largely upon the capacity of the grantees to satisfy the claims of officials paid only by their fees as to whether a revival was obtained from his successor." We had been wondering how the guild funded itself, and it seemed pretty slim - and this may well be proof of that. The Masters sure kept acting like they had a patent and they said they had one, but there's no record of it existing during Edward VI's, Mary's, or Elizabeth's reigns. In fact, they had been ordered to produce it in 1545 so they could set up schools in London, and the paperwork did not appear in court.
No, I don't know how they were able to open up schools anyway.
The Sloane manuscript purports that Elizabeth renewed the patent and added to it the right "to play openly within the City of London." (Which is just really stylish.) But no, there's no record of this existing anywhere else. They did fight a number of prizes before royalty, so they seemed to have some favor there, but not enough to get the paperwork from them.
With that, I'm going to wrap it here because otherwise I'll never post it. Next time, maybe Fabris. Or yelling about Silver and his shenanigans. Maybe Marozzo for variety. Who can say what'll happen around here?
