“The lak of faith hath qwenchid his manhode” : Queering the Lollard Body in Hoccleve’s Address to Sir John Oldcastle

Meredith Clermont-Ferrand, PhD
Professor of Medieval Literature
English Department
Eastern Connecticut State University
83 Windham Street
Willimantic, CT 06226
clermontm@easternct.edu

Plymouth Medieval and Renaissance Forum

Friday and Saturday April 25-26, 2014

“The lak of faith hath qwenchid his manhode” : Queering the Lollard Body in Hoccleve’s Address to Sir John Oldcastle

 

It may seem counterintuitive to queer Hoccleve’s highly normative and religiously orthodox Address to Sir John Oldcastle. Like traditional medieval gender expectations, the poem itself falls neatly into two parts. In the first half of the poem, lines 1-264, Hoccleve directly addresses Oldcastle. In the second half, lines 273-491, Hoccleve changes of tone and strategy. In these lines he indicts the mass of unnamed Lollards who have lead the previously orthodox knight astray. So one would imagine, as a result of the poems sharp, binary structure, relying as it does on the firm linkage between the Lancastrian body politic and religious orthodoxy, would resist the flexible overlap of non-binary identities that are genderqueer, genderfluid, and transgendering.

However, for all its demands of normality, the Address illustrates the problematics of gender performance, sexual identity and fifteenth century panic about religious non-orthodoxy. Hoccleve’s portrayal of the knight is delightfully queer. Oldcastle is spiritually castrated inside the yonic “snare” of Lollardy, and Oldcastle’s refusal to be closeted was a threat to Hoccleve and the Lancastrian body politic’s masculinity. Moreover, and perhaps most surprising, queering the poem can show us that Hoccleve’s gendered frame proves more self-referential and recursive than he would have us believe. Hoccleve’s hectoring, nagging, fretful, repetitious concerns in his Address to John Oldcastle are in themselves highly feminized. In the Address Hoccleve developed an elaborate coded body that relies on the feminine collapsing into and reconstituting the masculine in an infinite regress.

Historical Background

To understand how Oldcastle’s Lollard religious beliefs threatened the Lancastrian body politic we need a little historical background. For this section, I rely on W.T. Waugh’s article “Sir John Oldcastle” from The English Historical Review. Waugh tells us that Oldcastle began his career as a fully integrated member of the Lancastrian body politic; he was a trusted supporter of Henry, Prince of Wales. Ultimately, Oldcastle’s allegiance to Lollardy, drove a wedge between himself and King Henry V.

Lollardy, for those unclear on its main premises, was anathema to the Lancastrian regime. Lancastrian kings Henry IV and Henry V used Lollard persecution as a way to solidify support for their questioned claim to the throne. Lollards rejected the acquisition of temporal wealth by Church leaders; they believed that the Sacrament of Eucharist is not a transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, that church officials should not concern themselves with secular matters. Lollards, like Oldcastle, rejected pilgrimages, ornamentation of churches, and religious as well as war and violence.

Oldcastle, at one time a friend and “trusted soldier” to Henry V, was able to practice his beliefs for nearly 5 years without persecution. In the fall of 1413, Henry at last consented to a prosecution of the once valued member of the Lancastrian body politic.  On 25 September 1413 Oldcastle was convicted as a heretic. Oldcastle himself escaped into deepest northwest Herefordshire, and for nearly four years avoided capture hiding in Wales with friends and co-religionists.  In November 1417 his hiding-place was at last discovered and he was captured. On 14 December 1417 Oldcastle was formally condemned, on the record of his previous conviction, and that same day was hanged in St Giles’s Fields, and burnt “gallows and all”.

With this history in mind we can return again to Hoccleve’s Address to Sir John Oldcastle, and see how both poet and subject act out a wide range of masculinities with various inflections of queer performance that were resonant within the Lancastrian body politic.

Refusal to be Theologically Closeted

Let’s begin with the idea of Oldcastle’s refusal to be theologically in the closet with his Lollard beliefs. “Closeted” and in the closet” broadly defined are adjectives for hiding non-normative behavior. The metaphor of the closet hinges upon the notion that stigma management is a way of life. Conversely, and paradoxically, to remain in the closet offers an individual a layer of protection against ridicule and bullying. Oldcastle’s refusal to be theologically “closeted” and willingness to accept the stigma of his Lollard beliefs is a threat to Hoccleve and the Lancastrian sense of orthodoxy. Specifically, Lollards like Oldcastle threatened the Lancastrian body politic in two ways: their rejection of the masculinity of the Eucharist and the threats embedded in homosocial bonding.

Let’s begin with the first, the masculinity of the Eucharist. One of the main areas of contention in the Address is the orthodox and Lollard disagreement on the Eucharist. In the Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards, their belief is clearly stated in the fourth conclusion, “pat most harmith le innocent puple is þis, þat þe feynid miracle of þe sacrament of bred inducith alle men but a fewe to ydolatrie,” (Cronin 297). As a counterpoint in the Address, Hoccleve states that Oldcastle:

…errest foule eek in the sacrament

Of the Auter, but how in special

For to declare it needith nat at al. (99-101)

Traditional ideas of communion and the Eucharist encode and emphasize the bodily masculinity of the wine and host. As a Lollard, Oldcastle rejects the transformation of the inert into masculine. Hoccleve’s counterpoint to Lollard excess is that only through the consumption of the unpolluted masculine, bodily Christ is the Eucharist, can Oldcastle be remade into a man. In needing “nat at al” the eucharist, Hoccleve perceives Oldcastle as rejecting masculinity itself.

The second threat to the Lancastrian body politic is fears embedded in homosocial bonding.  Though the poet demands that Oldcastle fetishize and consume the flesh of another man, Hoccleve’s simultaneous if seemingly conflicting perceptions of heteronormativity demand that Oldcastle closet himself firmly.  And, inside the spiritual closet, Oldcastle is not allowed to engage in homosocial bonding with other religious queers.

Yee, with your sly coloured argumentes

Which þat contenen nothyng but falshode

Han, in this Knight, put so feendly ententes,

Þat he is ouercharged with the lode

Which yee han leid on his good old knighthode

That now a ‘wrecchid knyght’ men calle may.

The lak of faith hath quenched his manhode. (281-288)

Oldcastle’s confreres, the Welsh, the Irish and those from les marches d’Escoce, and the Lollard non conformists that made up his coterie, were out of the closet and formed alliance through which they could speak back to the power of the Lancastrian body politic.

By demanding that Oldcastle return alone to the spiritual closet, Hoccleve betrays his fear of mimetic epidemiology; Hoccleve fears that heterodox beliefs will spread through exposure and that this epidemic will infect the Lancastrian body politic. Hoccleve discusses the epidemic of Lollard homosocial bonding not just in the Address, but also in in the Regiment of Princes “by yif this stynkynge errowr be correct/that so myche of this land shall be infecte/there-with that trewthe shall a-downe be throwe” (192-195).  Hoccleve fears that the infection of Lollard thought will move, like an contagion and could potentially spread to infect the urban, the locus of the Lancastrian body politic.

Religious castration/Yonic symbolism

The danger of Oldcastle as the uncloseted queer drawing strength from other outsiders,  is exacerbated by his vulnerability to falling into non-masculine gender performance, specifically the gendered, political and religious castration that takes place inside the yonic “snare” of Lollardy. On its surface, one would think this is a heteronormative metaphor that Hoccleve is using. “O, Oldcastel/allas/what eilid thee/To slippe in to the snare of heresie?” (25-26). After all, what could be more “straight” than a man penetrating the yoni?

However, the deep structure of Hoccleve’s diction shows us that Oldcastle’s interaction with the yonic, either in the form of the snare or in the dark, dank moist “slow,” in the poem is passive and feminized.  Here, rather than a deliberate act of intercourse with the heretical and the treasonous, Oldcastle has inadvertently “slipped” into the clasping yoni.  His non-deliberate act, submissive and womanly, has made Oldcastle sick. He is “eilid.” As a “cure” for the non-normative Hoccleve urges Oldcastle to return to orthodoxy;

And for thy soules helth do eek so!

Thy pryde qwenche and thy presumpcioun!

…And hennes forth be Crystes Champioun (65-69)

This return is facilitated by the knight’s standard gender performance of riding out in the lists for Christ.

What we might imagine as a feminine yet heterosexual penetration of the yonic activates castration anxiety and the un-gendering that comes with a missing phallus.  In the world of the poem, as we have seen, Lollardy is a snare: “what eilid thee/to slippe in to the snare of heresie?” (26) If we understand the snare itself as a hunting tool used to trap and capturing animals, the yonic snare is the clasping vagina of religious non-conformity. This trap becomes, to the knight the location of the penis captivus.  Penis captivus, according to Bullough in his 1996 Handbook of Medieval Sexuality was the medieval medical term for when the penis is essentially held captive by the vagina during sexual intercourse. The phallus is permanently moored and neither partner can separate the bond.  To Hoccleve the snare of Lollardy becomes the penis captivus, the incarnation of the fear of the feminized religious heterodoxy. (140 Bullough) Hoccleve repeatedly urges Oldcastle to political and spiritual potency, encouraging him to “ryse up and pourge thee of thy trespass” (32). In the world of the Address, it  is only through increased phallic potency and an ejaculation of heretical doctrine that Oldcastle can regain his masculinity.

Oldcastle’s gender performance

Not only was Oldcastle castrated in the yonic trap of Lollardy, by losing phallic presence through penis captivus, his Lollard beliefs transgendered him into a woman. Specifically, Hoccleve believes Oldcastle is transgendered into the spinning women he kept company with. Heather Hill Vasquez, in her article “Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, Hoccleve’s Arguing Women and Lydgate’s Hertford Wives: Lay Interpretation and the Figure of the Spinning Woman in Late Medieval England,” argues that the medieval spinning woman was understood as an interpreting woman (176). In the Address, the spinning woman represents social and religious disorder. (181)  “Some women eek, thogh hir wit by thynne/Wele argumentes make in holy writ!/ Lewde calates! Sittith down and spynne!” (145-147). Oldcastle’s willingness to debate translated scripture renders him nearly indistinguishable from his feminized co-believers.  Hoccleve use of the adverb of conjunction ‘eek” is clear. Oldcastle’s transgendering challenges existing gendered theological constructions and identities. To the Lancastrian body politic, that is a hazard.

Hoccleve’s gender performance

For all his insistence on a strictly framed set of gender and spiritual performances, Hoccleve’s gendered frame proves more porous than he would have us believe. What we may initially believe he is reducing orthodoxy/heterodoxy to a gendered binary becomes more interesting and problematic when we look at Hoccleve’s gender performance at poet. Hoccleve’s own gender performance, though its surface content advocated a rough and martial masculinity making Oldcastle the object of the masculine gaze, the deep structure of the poem is formed out of a highly feminized and histrionic nagging which could qualify as queer hysteria, the unreasoning fear heterosexuals have for the non-normative.

The queer hysteria in Hoccleve’s tone may be historically located. For Hoccleve, writing in 1410-1415 the debate over Lollardy was much more contentious than it had been for his earlier contemporaries Gower or Chaucer. There was an increasing amount of attention to Lollards and the threats they posed to the established church and the new Lancastrian regime. Hoccleve’s hysteria, his hectoring, nagging, fretful, repetitious concerns in his Address to John Oldcastle are in themselves highly feminized. His tone borders on camp, an exaggeration of sexual characteristics and personality mannerisms, in some places. Hoccleve’s own gender confusion in Address to Sir John Oldcastle, in the face of Oldcastle’s problematic gender performance, tries to head off a queer panic by confining queer to the stereotype of the effeminate male. If, as Hoccleve argues in the Regiment, that a person’s lot in life can be improved if they listen to advice and,  “by wys conseil settith your hy estat/In swich an ordre as yee lyve may/Of your good propre in reule,” (4831-4833), and Oldcastle accepts advice from a nagging, feminized Hoccleve, then the queer fears and joys are repeated in an infinite regress of phallic presence and absence.

Conclusion

Hoccleve, an often ignored and perhaps undervalued poet, raises the queer potential to re-assess gender performance. Hoccleve shows a remarkable and delightful lack of awareness his constantly shifting narrative positionality. If the Oldcastle in Hoccleve’s Address is also to be this type of shape shifter, he remains enigmatic and unknowable and continue to inhabit the liminal space reserved for the queer.  And Hoccleve’s gendered frame in the Address proves more permeable than he would have us believe. Hoccleve certainly demonstrates that with his “queer panic,” his fear of mimetic epidemiology and his terror of the yonic snare. Recognizing Hoccleve, as someone’s whose spotty career performance as Chancery clerk, positioned him both inside and outside the Lancastrian body politic, we can enjoy as camp performance the queer, discordant exhortations to the dominant Lancastrian voice. Though Hoccleve wrote to re-enforce the normative, he also dialectically underscores the impossibility of maintaining the illusion of the normative.  Though both men would likely deny it, Hoccleve and Oldcastle have a great deal in common. In the Address they both possess an androgyny that temporarily genders itself and then reassigns itself with all the instability of the religious atmosphere of the early fifteenth century.