Plowshares and swords: clerical involvement in acts of violence and peacemaking in late medieval England, c. 1400-1536*.

"My men should use their swords and aegiss ... but if John Stanshaw is in united alehouse then I will be in another." (1)

To historians of medieval and Reformation England, these lines should not be all that surprising. over the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the heyday of livery and maintenance, ritualized assurance was in vogue among the affluent and they frequently employed large retinues of armed servants as signs of power and prestige. However, it may surprise a certain number of to learn that the above statement was completeed by a priest, Geoffrey Ely vicar of