Voil ma chançun a la gent fere oïr. An Anglo-Norman Crusade Appeal (London, BL Harley 1717, fol 251v)

Anna Radaelli has edited this text anew and agrees with previous scholars that the expedition envisaged is the Third Crusade and that its author was a spokesman for the Plantagenet milieu. She further argues that the song’s evocation of harmonious relations between ‘counts, dukes and crowned kings’ indicates that it was composed between January and November 1188, during a brief moment when internal conflicts among the Angevins had subsided and no longer seemed likely to further delay their departure. Her detailed analyses of the manuscript, British Library, MS Harley 1717, of the song’s codicological and literary context, the scribe’s hand (which she sees as late twelfth-century), the musical notation and distinctive musico-paleographical features all lead her to suggest that the piece survives as an author’s unicum, dating from the same time as the events to which it refers, composed and written by a clerk in Henry’s chancery, and that it was addressed to the royal court itself.