The Importance of Unofficial Contacts

This chapter investigates how in the later Middle Ages the English crown also actively cultivated unofficial contacts at the papal curia thanks to networks of ‘friends’ and ‘protégés’. During the fourteenth century informal contacts between England and the Apostolic See supplemented administrative deficiencies, whereas the process of bureaucratization in both polities facilitated Anglo-papal diplomatic discourse. Three specific questions are answered in this chapter. First, who were the English crown’s contacts at the papal curia during the first half of the fourteenth century? Second, how did informal networks at the papal curia facilitate Anglo-papal diplomatic discourse, particularly during the first phase of the Hundred Years’ War? And finally, how did the English crown reward its ‘friends’ at the papal curia for their services?