Early modern England was home to a guild of fencing masters aiming to cast off the spurious reputation of their colleagues. This talk examines how the art of fencing was taught in England, and how masters aimed to improve how others thought of them and their skill.

Weapon: The mind!

Source: A wide range of archival and literary sources from fifteenth- and sixteenth-century England.

This talk presents new research on the careers of English fencing masters, in particular the Masters of Defence, a proto-guild of fencers who achieved official recognition in 1540. It considers the urban medieval masters who paved the way for the royal acknowledgement of the Masters of Defence, the way in which this body organised itself and accredited masters, and finally the challenges they faced at the hands of several Italian masters in the late sixteenth century. Further consideration is given to the subject of how fencing masters, schools, and the art of fencing itself were perceived by contemporaries; not everyone in Tudor England considered it desirable for swashbuckling fencers to travel the cities with a sword in hand’s reach!

Skill level of Participants: Any skill level
Needed Equipment: N/A

About the trainer – Jacob Deacon

Dr Jacob H. Deacon recently completed his thesis at the Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds. His thesis, titled ‘Fencing in Late Medieval and Early Modern England: Practice, Instruction, and Regulation’, was the first full-length analysis of fencing and fencers in England for nearly seventy years. Outside of his doctoral work, Jacob is an editor for Acta Periodica Duellatorum, the journal for historical martial arts studies, and was an assistant on the AHRC-funded project ‘The Joust as Performance: Pas d’armes and Late Medieval Chivalry’. He has previously delivered workshops on the pollaxe fencing of Pietro Monte.