Flowers of the Crown in English Legal Thought: Metaphorical Assessments of Royal Power in Transitional Periods of Monarchy

Abstract

In an attempt to connect legal, cultural, and intellectual approaches to the history of late medieval England, this article expands upon and complements the reflections of J. W. Gough on the expression ‘flowers of the crown’, first presented in the Notes and Documents of the English Historical Review in 1962. After the Angevin kings endorsed floriated crown designs, a number of poets, clerics, and common lawyers worked flowers into their appraisals of royal power, it is revealed. Up to the Stuarts, this metaphor was especially helpful for suggesting that prerogative donations and delegations, like flowers, eventually die once plucked from their source. This is a finding that prompts consideration of the circumstances compelling jurists and politicians to invoke metaphors in their assessments of royal power more generally, leading to new insights about the nature of crown in modern English thought.