Laurence Minot's Tribute to John Badding

In commemorating the men who fought for “sir Edward” in the battle “of Inglisch men & Normandes in þe Swyn” Laurence Minot praised John Badding “als one of þe best.” Beyond this tribute, however, Badding has remained unknown to the readers of Minot's poems. In editing these poems, Mr. Joseph Hall surmises that, since Badding's name appears in no other account of the fight at Sluys (1340) the poet “has here inserted the name of some comparatively obscure friend of his.” This friend, he thinks, was probably some person connected with the Robert Badding who was M.P. for Winchelsea in 1371, with the John Badding who was M.P. for Rye between 1386 and 1407, or with the John Badding who, according to Rolls of Parliament, I, 413, was involved in the taking of twenty-four livres worth of goods from a vessel belonging to John Houchoun and Thomas Peverell of Sherborne in 1321-22. It is my purpose to show that, whatever his relation to the M.P.'s for Winchelsea and Rye may have been, the John Badding who was involved in the affair of 1321-22 was probably the person to whom Minot paid tribute for his valor in the fight at Sluys. The evidence for this statement is contained in the record mentioned above and in two other records which identify John Badding with the Cinque Ports and show that he was a well known English seaman of the second quarter of the fourteenth century. With these facts established, the justice of Minot's tribute becomes plausible.