York: The Making of a City 1068-1350
Sarah Rees Jones
Abstract
York was one of the most important cities in medieval England. This original study traces the development of the city from the Norman Conquest to the Black Death. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries are a neglected period in the history of English towns. This study argues that the period was absolutely fundamental to the development of urban society and that up to now we have misunderstood the reasons for the development of York and its significance within our history because of that neglect. This study argues that the first Norman kings attempted to turn the city into a true northern capital ... More
York was one of the most important cities in medieval England. This original study traces the development of the city from the Norman Conquest to the Black Death. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries are a neglected period in the history of English towns. This study argues that the period was absolutely fundamental to the development of urban society and that up to now we have misunderstood the reasons for the development of York and its significance within our history because of that neglect. This study argues that the first Norman kings attempted to turn the city into a true northern capital of their new kingdom and had a much more significant impact on the development of the city than has previously been realized. Nevertheless the influence of York Minster, within whose shadow the town had originally developed, remained strong and was instrumental in the emergence of a strong and literate civic communal government in the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Many of the earlier Norman initiatives withered as the citizens developed their own institutions of government and social welfare. The primary sources used are records of property ownership and administration, especially charters, and combines these with archaeological evidence from the last thirty years. Much of the emphasis of the book is therefore on the topographical development of the city and the changing social and economic structures associated with property ownership and occupation.
Keywords:
urban history,
urban topography,
Norman Conquest,
Black Death,
medieval England,
medieval towns,
charters,
property,
social history,
York Minster,
York,
civic government
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2013 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198201946 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198201946.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Sarah Rees Jones, author
Senior Lecturer, Department of History, University of York
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