[1] Nineteen manuscripts contain the Libelle, which consists of about 1,100 lines in rhyming couplets, with a proem in rhyme-royal and a stanzaic envoi that differs between the poem's two editions.
Given England's waning fortunes in the Hundred Years War following Burgundy's alliance with France after the Treaty of Arras, the Libelle advocates a defence of the wool staple at Calais at any cost, besides "keeping" Wales and Ireland.
[7] In 2019, Sebastian Sobecki identified the author as Richard Caudray, Moleyn's immediate predecessor as clerk of the council who stepped down from this role in 1435 and was therefore best placed to compose this poem.
John Selden used the work to mount his case for closed seas in his Mare clausum (1635) and Samuel Pepys, clerk of the acts at the Navy Board, owned a copy, as did the influential seventeenth-century barrister Matthew Hale.
[13] Sebastian Sobecki draws attention to the use of legal forms in the poem and its interest in documentary authenticity, placing the work in a bureaucratic government context.