ABSTRACT
The old right of purveyance or prise-taking, which permitted the king, members of his family, royal officials, and the greater nobility to pre-empt foodstuffs and requisition carriage for their personal use, was transformed into an elaborate mechanism for supplying English armies fighting in Scotland and France. In order to defend private property against royal purveyance, representatives of the community experimented—especially during the period 1297 to 1362—with several methods for restricting the practice. But efforts to regulate purveyance were hindered by the ambiguous nature of the king's right, which could be viewed both as a royal prerogative and as a simple act of buying necessities for the king and his court. During the reigns of Edward and Edward III there were attempts to draw decisions concerning the need for military purveyance under parliamentary control and also to assure the compensation of sellers by tieing their payment to specific parliamentary grants of taxes.
