6 Repertoires of Access in Princely Courts, 1400-1750

In the past four decades, the accessibility of those in power has become an important topic in historiography, particularly at the pre-modern court. Whereas most specialists of late medieval and early modern politics tend to agree that the study of access is the key to understanding power relations in these periods, opinions seem to differ as to exactly how the concept should be approached. For want of a clear definition, access has remained a rather vague category, the importance of which is often assumed rather than thoroughly explained. Similarly, the association between access and power is usually taken for granted, whereas the mechanisms behind it remain obscure. Scholars still struggle to understand how access was used by subjects to represent their claims in premodern centres of power, and the ways in which it was articulated and performed. By taking the full complexity of proximity to the monarch into account, this chapter means to broaden the scope and to explore how the many varieties of access enabled medieval and early modern people to express their voices and concerns.