History

London in the Later Middle Ages: Government and People 1200-1500

Caroline M. Barron

In the three hundred years covered by this study, the city of London, in partnership with its near neighbour the town of Westminster, developed as the economic, social, administrative, ... More

In the three hundred years covered by this study, the city of London, in partnership with its near neighbour the town of Westminster, developed as the economic, social, administrative, and political capital of the expanding English kingdom. This book charts the halting process whereby the Londoners struggled to forge viable systems of self-government under the ever-watchful eyes of the royal officials at Westminster. This book examines the symbiotic relationship between the Crown and the City, and charts the ways in which the Londoners created the wealth that made them so indispensable to the Crown. It was during these years that the Londoners developed the systems of self-government, welfare provision, and control of the urban environment which were to able to withstand the pressures of massive population expansion, endemic plague, and the extremes of poverty and wealth in the Tudor period. The remarkable survival of the city's own records makes it possible to trace, for the first time and in unexpected detail, the inner workings of civic politics and government over three hundred formative years. Less

Lords and Lordship in the British Isles in the Late Middle Ages

Rees Davies

Brendan Smith (ed.)

Throughout the British Isles in the late Middle Ages a small group of the wealthiest lords wielded immense power. The nature of their lordship and the ways in which it was expressed in a ... More

Throughout the British Isles in the late Middle Ages a small group of the wealthiest lords wielded immense power. The nature of their lordship and the ways in which it was expressed in a diverse and divided region in the period c.1272-c.1422 are the concerns of this book. Although their right to rule was rarely questioned, the magnates flaunted their identity and superiority through the promotion of heraldic lore, the use of elevated forms of address, and by the extravagant display of their wealth and power. Their domestic routine, furnishings, dress, diet, artistic preferences, and pastimes spoke of a lifestyle of privilege and authority. Warfare was a constant element in their lives, affording access to riches and reputation, but also carrying the danger of capture, ruin, and even death, while their enthusiasm for crusades and tournaments testified to their energy and bellicose inclinations. As leaders of large armies they were required to raise revenue, recruit soldiers, and plan campaigns. Their organizational abilities have been under-estimated, but can be seen in the provisions they made for the family inheritance, and in the sphere of economic management, where they withdrew from demesne farming while maximising their income from other sources. Underpinning their control of land was their control of men — an aspect of lordship that regains its central significance when the scope of investigation is widened from England to include the British Isles as a whole — and the complex system of dependence and reward which this involved is fully explored in this book. Less

Lords of the Central Marches: English Aristocracy and Frontier Society, 1087-1265

Brock Holden

In the Middle Ages, the March between England and Wales was a contested, militarised frontier zone, a ‘land of war’. With English kings distracted by affairs in France, English frontier ... More

In the Middle Ages, the March between England and Wales was a contested, militarised frontier zone, a ‘land of war’. With English kings distracted by affairs in France, English frontier lords were left on their own to organize and run lordships in the manner that was best suited to this often violent borderland. The centrepiece of the frontier society that developed was the feudal honour and its court, and in the March it survived as a functioning entity much longer than in England. However, in the 12th century, as the growing power of the English crown threatened Marcher honours, their lords asserted their independence from the king's courts, and the March became a land where ‘the king's writ did not run’. At the same time, the increased military capability of their Welsh adversaries put the Marcher lordships under enormous military and financial strain. This book describes how this unusual frontier society developed in reaction to both the challenge of the native Welsh and the power of the English kings. It examines how the ‘feudal matrix’ of Marcher power developed over the course of the 11th to 13th centuries. Less

Medieval Law and the Foundations of the State

Alan Harding

The state is the most powerful and contested of political ideas, both loved for its promise of order and hated for its threat of coercion. This book shows how the idea first emerged from ... More

The state is the most powerful and contested of political ideas, both loved for its promise of order and hated for its threat of coercion. This book shows how the idea first emerged from medieval systems for the administration of justice and enforcement of peace. These provided new models of government from the centre, successfully in France and England, less so in Germany. The law courts and legislation of French and English kings are described establishing public order, defining rights to property and liberty, and structuring commonwealths by ‘estates’. In the final chapters it is shown how the concept of the state was used by political commentators in the wars of the late Middle Ages and Reformation period, and how the law-based ‘state of the king and the kingdom’ began to be transformed into the politically dynamic ‘modern state’. Less

Medieval Marriage Sermons: Mass Communication in a Culture without Print

David D'Avray (ed.)

Before the advent of printing, the preaching of the friars was the mass medium of the middle ages. This edition of marriage sermons reveals what a number of famous preachers actually ... More

Before the advent of printing, the preaching of the friars was the mass medium of the middle ages. This edition of marriage sermons reveals what a number of famous preachers actually taught about marriage, teasing out the close connection between marriage symbolism and social, cultural, and legal realities in the 13th century. The relation between genre, content, and gender is analysed, with particular attention to the likely impact of preaching, viewed as a means of intellectual power in competition with vernacular genres and other social forces. Its mass diffusion anticipated printing, but the means of production were those of the monastic scriptorium. The textual criticism and palaeographical analysis of these sermons undermine central assumptions of both medieval and early modern historians of the book, establishing a technique of textual criticism appropriate for texts of this kind. A pragmatic compromise between simple transcriptions which ignore stemmatic relation and full-scale editions attempting to fit all manuscripts into a genealogical table, this book addresses both the sermon literature of the period and the understanding of marriage and its religious and cultural significance in the middle ages. Less

Medieval Single Women: The Politics of Social Classification in Late Medieval England

Cordelia Beattie

This book is a focused study of the use of the category ‘single woman’ in late medieval England. In a culture in which marriage was the desirable norm and virginity was particularly ... More

This book is a focused study of the use of the category ‘single woman’ in late medieval England. In a culture in which marriage was the desirable norm and virginity was particularly prized in females, the categories ‘virgin’ and ‘widow’ held particular significance. But the law gave unmarried women legal rights and responsibilities that were generally withheld from married women. The pervasiveness of religion and the law in people's day-to-day lives led to a complex interplay between moral and economic concerns in how medieval women were conceptualized. The result is different unmarried women are marked out as ‘single women’ in different contexts. This study is therefore revealing of the multiplicity of ways in which dominant cultural ideas impacted on medieval women. It also offers a way into the complex process of social classification in late medieval England. All societies use classificatory schemes in order to understand and to impose order on society. This study views classification as a political act: those classifying must make choices about what divisions are most important or about who falls into which category, and such choices have repercussions. When those classifying choose what defines a group or how an individual should be labelled, they choose between certain variables, such as social status, gender, or age, and decide which to prioritize. This study does not isolate gender as a variable, but examines how it relates to other social cleavages. Less

Monks and Markets: Durham Cathedral Priory 1460-1520

Miranda Threlfall-Holmes

The institutions of the Middle Ages are generally seen as tradition bound: Monks and Markets challenges that assumption. Durham's outstanding archive has allowed the uncovering of an ... More

The institutions of the Middle Ages are generally seen as tradition bound: Monks and Markets challenges that assumption. Durham's outstanding archive has allowed the uncovering of an unprecedented level of detail about the purchasing strategies of one of England's foremost monasteries, and it is revealed that the monks were reflective, responsive, and innovative when required. If this is true of a large Benedictine monastery, it is likely to be true also for other medieval household economies for which comparable evidence does not exist. This study gives a unique insight into the nature of medieval consumer behaviour, which throughout history, and particularly from before the early modern period, remains a relatively neglected subject. Key elements of the monastic economy are explored, including the diet of the monks, the monastic administrative and accounting systems, the factors influencing their purchasing decisions, their use of the market and their exploitation of tenurial relationships, and their wide and diverse cohort of suppliers. The book also provides detailed analyses of the priory's purchasing and consumption of a wide range of goods, from staples such as grain to luxury imported goods such as wine and spices, and considers related issues including price movements, transport, and arrangements for payment and credit. The book provides a rare insight into the regional economy of north-east England from the point of view of a major consumer. Less