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Post-Conquest England (Medieval Studies)

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  1.  
  2. Introduction
  3.  
  4. The customary periodization of English history refers to the period before the Norman Conquest as the Anglo-Saxon or Old English period, and then “medieval history” is seen to begin in 1066, though this conventional English distinction is not invariably followed in the United States. Furthermore, recent scholarship has worked to erode the milestone boundaries of both 1066, at the beginning, and 1485, at the end, in terms of these dates defining or bracketing medieval history. Regarding 1066, the extent to which the new Norman monarchy was based upon and built itself as an extension of late Anglo-Saxon society and statecraft has received considerable attention, while at the far end scholars have argued that we can narrow (if not close) the gap between the late-medieval world of the Lancastrian and Yorkist dynasties in the 15th century and that of the early Tudors after 1485. However, by the early 16th century both the problems that beset the realm, particularly the Henrician Reformation, and the sources through which we can study the great upheaval, begin to differ from those that marked late-medieval England. Accordingly, this entry winds down in the late 15th century. This entry focuses on secular society, with complementary Oxford Bibliographies entries on the Church after the Conquest, the English kings, and the English chronicle tradition, as well as a number of entries on literary topics to help round out the coverage.
  5.  
  6. Reference Works
  7.  
  8. In addition to bibliographies there are numerous reference books, dictionaries, and encyclopedias that cover different aspects of medieval England. Many of these newer reference volumes devote considerable attention to social and cultural history, alongside such traditional topics as monarchy, the various kings, and central government. Material culture and women and family structure are now topics of interest. Works such as Cheney 1955 and Mullins 1958 present information that is hard to find in one place, while the encyclopedias listed (like Strayer 1982 and Szarmach, et al. 1998) have articles by leading authorities and usually indicate the state of the question (or research) at the time of publication. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is a vast project; its collections of biographies are constantly being supplemented online, and new entries continue to be inserted, whereas the biographies in Roskell, et al. 1992 will stand as published. Some reference volumes have a special focus; see Beresford and Finberg 1973 listing the boroughs and Davis, et al. 2010 for the cartularies that are invaluable for the study of land-holding and of the institutions and families that recorded such important information.
  9.  
  10. Beresford, M. W., and H. P. R. Finberg. English Medieval Boroughs: A Hand-List. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1973.
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  12. Boroughs were towns and cities with a charter granting the rights of self-government, and they are listed here by counties with a reference to the extant sources, both published and in manuscript. Boroughs play a major part in the tale of economic growth and urbanization.
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  14. Cheney, Christopher R. A Handbook of Dates for Students of British History. London: Royal Historical Society, 1955.
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  16. This handbook has been revised and updated by Michael Jones in the same format, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000). The handbook is an invaluable guide to such information as regnal years, saints’ days observed in the British Isles, and the date of Easter through the millennium.
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  18. Crabtree, Pam J., ed. Medieval Archaeology: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland, 2001.
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  20. Medieval archaeology is a fairly new field, and a reference volume that covers findings, digs, and methods is useful, though new reports—often on digs actually made some years before—make keeping abreast of new work a challenge.
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  22. Davis, G. R. C., Claire Breay, Julian Harrison, and David M. Smith. Medieval Cartularies of Great Britain and Ireland. London: British Library, 2010.
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  24. Now in a revised edition, a guide to the records of ecclesiastical and secular landlords indicating the extent of landed holdings; a valuable source for tracing families as well as their lands, their main source of wealth. Originally published in 1958 (London: Longman).
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  26. Mullins, E. L. C. Texts and Calendars: An Analytical Guide to Serial Publications. London: Royal Historical Society, 1958.
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  28. A listing of the publications of the many local history societies as well as those of the Record Office. Mullins brought out a second volume listing the publications of 1957–1982 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1983). These volumes offer easy access to materials that are often hard to locate in library catalogues.
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  30. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
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  32. Now the major and absolutely indispensable biographical reference book, running to sixty volumes. In addition to biographical entries for hundreds of medieval men and women, there are generic articles on such topics as the Paston Family or women as medical practitioners. This new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) replaces the old Dictionary of National Biography and is constantly being updated online, as well as adding new biographies for even wider coverage.
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  34. Roskell, J. S., Linda Clark, and Carole Rawcliffe, eds. History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1386–1421. 4 vols. Stroud, UK: Alan Sutton, 1992.
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  36. Now the authoritative reference work for biographies of members of the House of Commons, with the rest of the 15th century to be covered and now nearing completion (under the editorial direction of Linda Clark), all to replace the 1938 volumes supervised by J. C. Wedgwood. A basic work covering all knowable MPs.
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  38. Strayer, Joseph R., ed. Dictionary of the Middle Ages. 13 vols. New York: Scribner, 1982.
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  40. Joseph R. Strayer was editor in chief, with many entries on England and the British Isles, some quite long and with useful if short bibliographies. A supplementary volume (2004), edited by William Chester Jordan, fills in some gaps in the coverage of the 1982 effort.
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  42. Szarmach, Paul E., Mary Teresa Tavormina, and Joel T. Rosenthal, eds. Medieval England: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland, 1998.
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  44. The focus is on many aspects of the topic, with literature, art, and music being covered in addition to “history.” Anglo-Saxon England, as well as post-Conquest England, is included.
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  46. Bibliographies
  47.  
  48. There are two basic forms of bibliographical scholarship and publication. One consists of the various annual updated listings of publications; the other consists of fixed pieces that become dated but that have the advantage of clustering related types of work published over the years, much as the open shelves of a library put related items beside each other. Bibliographies such as Altschul 1969, Graves 1975, Guth 1976, Rosenthal 1994, and Wilkinson 1978 are extremely useful though they do become dated. They have the advantage of listing related items more coherently than the various annual aggregations. Against this, the up-to-date nature of such tools as the Royal Historical Society Annual Bibliography of British and Irish History and the International Medieval Bibliography proves to be of great value for a look at the most recent publications. The annual listings and various online bibliographical lists have largely eclipsed the role of the compilations.
  49.  
  50. Altschul, Michael. Anglo-Norman England, 1066–1154. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1969.
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  52. This volume, like Guth 1976 and Wilkinson 1978, was part of a “bibliographical handbooks” series commissioned by the Conference on British Studies. Altschul lists more than eighteen hundred entries, though work since 1969 has added new perspectives and dimensions, as well as a vast number of books and articles, to the study of Norman England.
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  54. Graves, Edgar Baldwin. A Bibliography of English History to 1485. Oxford: Clarendon, 1975.
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  56. This is the most comprehensive such work, with some seventy-two hundred entries covering editions of primary sources, scholarly work, local history, collected volumes, auxiliary aids to historical research, among other areas. It updates Charles Gross’s work, first published in 1900. Still invaluable for almost everything published before 1970.
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  58. Guth, DeLloyd J. Late Medieval England, 1377–1485. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
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  60. With twenty-five hundred entries covering older as well as 20th-century work; some entries have an editorial comment or précis. Part of the Conference on British Studies series, with Altschul 1969 and Wilkinson 1978.
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  62. International Medieval Bibliography. 1968–. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols.
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  64. Begun in 1968 and edited at the University of Leeds, this is the most comprehensive annual volume. Work related to English (and British) history is given, as a subsection, in all the relevant chapters; general topics (such as architecture, economic history, both urban and rural local history, or politics and diplomacy) are also treated, with references to entries on the British Isles.
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  66. Rosenthal, Joel T. Late Medieval England (1377–1485): A Bibliography of Historical Scholarship, 1975–1989. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1994.
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  68. A chronological successor to Guth 1976 and with editorial comments and summaries of most of the nineteen hundred entries. A subsequent volume in 2003 covers scholarly work published in the 1990s.
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  70. Royal Historical Society Annual Bibliography of British and Irish History. 1976–. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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  72. The first volume appeared in 1976, covering publications of 1975 and produced by the Royal Historical Society. Publications relating to “England, 1066–1500” as well as to Wales, “Scotland before the Union,” and “Ireland to c. 1640” are listed by subtopics (such as “Religion” or “Social Structure”) though without editorial comments. This annual work is now accessible through an online electronic database, published by Brepols in conjunction with the Royal Historical Society and the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.
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  74. Wilkinson, Bertie. The High Middle Ages in England, 1154–1377. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
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  76. Part of the Conference on British Studies series, with Altschul 1969 and Guth 1976, and also with some editorial comments and summaries. All of these volumes are still useful though they are aging.
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  78. Writings on British History. London: University of London Institute of Historical Research. 1921–.
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  80. This was an older series, published annually by the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, now superseded by the Royal Historical Society Annual Bibliography of British and Irish History. The Institute of Historical Research (IHR) also published booklets listing PhD dissertations in progress and completed; the IHR continues to publish (with an updated volume every few years) Teachers of History in the Universities of the United Kingdom.
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  82. Journals
  83.  
  84. For over a century scholarly journals have been a major outlet for research findings and discussions that do not seek the full-sized monograph. As the historical profession has grown in size the demand for even more journals has increased, and in the early 21st century there are many such publications, both old and new. Some of them, such as the English Historical Review and the Economic History Review, not only carry articles on medieval England but have extensive annual bibliographies, while Speculum has a long listing of new books in its “Books Received” section to supplement its wide range of full-length reviews. Only the Journal of Medieval History is confined to the Middle Ages, while both Albion (now defunct) and the Journal of British Studies are confined to the British Isles. Northern History focuses on the North of England with considerable medieval material; it is one of the older regional journals. Past and Present is a very general journal but publishes long articles, many of them on medieval England. Historical Research is the newer version of the Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research from the University of London, and it remains a major contributor in the field of medieval studies.
  85.  
  86. Albion. 1969–2004.
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  88. Now defunct; it was published under the auspices of the Conference on British Studies as a parallel or rival to the conference’s other journal, the Journal of British Studies. It carried numerous book reviews at a time when the Journal of British Studies did not review, and its issues had a considerable focus on the Middle Ages.
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  90. Economic History Review. 1927–.
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  92. Published by the Economic History Association and the major outlet for work focusing on economic, urban, and demographic history; some articles are fairly technical regarding economic and statistical data. The journal carries reviews and an extensive annual bibliography, containing review essays discussing publications of the previous year or two, plus very long lists of articles arranged by chronology and subfield.
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  94. English Historical Review. 1886–.
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  96. The oldest and probably the premier journal for English-language scholarship. Offers an annual survey of new work, many reviews (some at length, many in a shorter format), and major articles. The Middle Ages are well represented.
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  98. Historical Research, 1987–.
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  100. The publication of the IHR of the University of London, this has been a major journal and an outlet for work on medieval England from the start. Carries articles and various short notes. This is really a continuation of the Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 1921–1987.
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  102. Journal of British Studies. 1961–.
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  104. The journal of the North American Conference on British Studies. Despite its title it is almost exclusively a history journal, now carrying reviews (since the demise of Albion) and articles across the entire chronological spread of British history (and “British history” pretty much means English history).
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  106. Journal of Medieval History. 1975–.
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  108. A relative newcomer and the only major journal exclusively devoted to medieval history. England is well covered; probably more articles on the British Isles than on any other part of Europe.
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  110. Northern History. 1966–.
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  112. For many years a publication of the School of History of the University of Leeds. Quality papers and an annual survey of other publications relating to the North of England. Published as an annual and much in the mode of Southern History and Midland History.
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  114. Past and Present. 1952–.
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  116. Began life as a very high-quality Marxist journal and now a general one, publishing work running from the ancient Near East through the early 21st century. Medieval history has always been well represented. Sometimes a controversial article sparks a forum for rebuttal and counterrebuttal.
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  118. Speculum. 1925–.
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  120. The journal of the Medieval Academy of America. Covers all fields of medieval studies, not just history, and stands as the major North American journal in the field. Many book reviews and a long list of new books. Long obituary notices of fellows of the Medieval Academy.
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  122. Annual Volumes
  123.  
  124. In addition to journals (most of which appear two or four times a year), there are a number of annual volumes, usually the proceedings of a conference or a society. These either focus on a given period, as do Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies or the Haskins Society Journal, both looking at the era of the Norman Conquest, or they take a theme for each year and offer papers with a concentrated focus, as in the Fifteenth Century Series or the annual Harlaxton Symposium volumes. The prestigious Transactions of the Royal Historical Society vary from year to year; there is usually at least one paper of relevance to medieval England and often there are more than one. First volume of the Fifteenth Century Series did much to rehabilitate a long-neglected period of late-medieval England.
  125.  
  126. Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1979–.
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  128. An annual, looking at matters just before and just after the Norman Conquest. More papers devoted to history than to other disciplines, though coverage is general.
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  130. Fifteenth Century Series. 1972–. Stroud, UK: Sutton.
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  132. Not really a series as such but a collection of papers, published annually for many years; papers read at the annual Fifteenth Century Conference and published in the 1980s and 1990s by Alan Sutton. The volumes contain valuable work as the 15th century came into its own; volumes edited by Barrie Dobson, The Church, Politics, and Patronage in the Fifteenth Century (Stroud, UK: Sutton, 1984); or Tony Pollard, Property and Politics: Essays in Later Medieval English History (Stroud, UK: Sutton, 1984); or Jennifer Kermode, Enterprise and Individuals in Fifteenth-Century England (Stroud, UK: Sutton, 1991), are widely cited, as are numerous other papers and books in the series. Each year’s theme means that the papers mesh more than those of many comparable enterprises. The first volume’s (reprinted 1995) seven papers did much to open the ground for 15th-century studies.
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  134. Harlaxton Symposium. Donington, UK: Shaun Tyas/Paul Watkins, 1983–.
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  136. An annual conference at Harlaxton, Lincolnshire, and now published by Shaun Tyas. Each conference has a theme and the papers, covering many disciplines, all having a common focus. Some years the volume is in honor of a prominent scholar (The Medieval English Cathedral, edited by Janet Backhouse to honor Pamela Tudor-Craig, 2003, or London and the Kingdom, edited by Matthew Davies and Andrew Prescott to honor Caroline M. Barron, 2008). At other times a theme as chosen by the committee sets the tone (England in the Fourteenth Century, edited by Nicholas Rogers, 1993, or Armies, Chivalry, and Warfare in Medieval Britain and France, edited Matthew Strickland, 1998); other Harlaxton volumes are listed in various categories in this article. Though “history” is the main focus, the symposia are deliberately interdisciplinary and regularly carry papers on art, architecture, literature, and various aspects of religious studies.
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  138. Haskins Society Journal. 1989–.
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  140. Papers from the annual meeting of the Haskins Society (named for Charles Homer Haskins). Mostly looking at England in the 11th and 12th centuries; some with an eye on the Norman cross-Channel world and some papers in fields other than history.
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  142. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 1868–.
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  144. The oldest of such series (excepting the Society of Antiquaries) and offers the papers read at meetings of the society. These are long and valuable papers, only being read and published when the author has been invited to make the presentation.
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  146. Festschriften
  147.  
  148. These are volumes of papers collected on a one-off basis to honor a distinguished scholar, usually at some milestone birthday (sixtieth, seventieth, and so forth) or on retirement; in some cases they unfortunately must appear as a memorial volume. The theme is usually a topic or a line of research of interest to (and practiced by) the honoree, and a successful Festschrift offers papers that relate to each other. Allmand 1976 has papers on military history before that field gained its fashionable status, while DeWindt 1995 on J. Ambrose Raftis and Jones and Vale 1989 on Pierre Chaplais are collections much in keeping with the interest of the honoree. As historians write about various aspects of their field during their careers (for example, Archer and Walker 1995 on Gerald Harriss, Evans 2004 on Trevor Aston), they present papers that diverge from each other, but all point back to the guidance of the honoree, as shown in volumes dedicated to Britnell (Dodds and Liddy 2011) and to Dyer (Goddard, et al. 2010). Rowe 1986 points readers to J. R. Lander’s interest in political history and ideology, and Clough 1982 focuses on one of A. R. Myers’s lines of interest amid his work on the 14th century. Barron and Stratford 2002 brings together papers that reflect some of the many sides and interests of Dobson’s long scholarly career.
  149.  
  150. Allmand, Christopher T., ed. War, Literature, and Politics in the Late Middle Ages. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1976.
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  152. A volume in memory of G. W. Coopland, with nine papers and an appreciation, focusing on war, spies, and martial literature.
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  154. Archer, Rowena A., and Simon Walker, eds. Ruler and Ruled in Late Medieval England: Essays Presented to Gerald Harriss. London: Hambledon, 1995.
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  156. The fourteen papers, running from the time of Richard II to Henry VII, look mostly at the nobility and the gentry: a mix of political and social history to honor a scholar of diverse interests and publications.
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  158. Barron, Caroline M., and Jenny Stratford, eds. The Church and Learning in Late Medieval Society: Studies in Honour of Professor R. B. Dobson. Harlaxton Medieval Studies 11. Donington, UK: Shaun Tyas, 2002.
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  160. Proceedings of the 1999 Harlaxton Symposium. A wide net cast to honor a colleague whose work was of importance touching monasteries, cathedrals, urban development, prosopography, universities, York and the North, and the Jews. This is but one of several volumes offered to Dobson by his admirers.
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  162. Clough, Cecil H., ed. Profession, Vocation, and Culture in Late Medieval England: Essays Dedicated to the Memory of A. R. Myers. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 1982.
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  164. Eight papers and a tribute to Myers, looking at lawyers, bishops, merchants, local administrators, and other white-collar realms.
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  166. DeWindt, Edwin B., ed. The Salt of Common Life: Individuality and Choice in the Medieval Town, Countryside, and Church; Essays Presented to J. Ambrose Raftis. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1995.
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  168. In line with Raftis’s scholarship, papers focus on common people in a variety of rural and village settings; the manor; those who lived upon it; and the nature of their inter-relationships. Raftis was the guiding spirit of “the Toronto school” of manorial history; a close look at peasant lives and interactions was the key.
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  170. Dodds, Ben, and Christian D. Liddy, eds. Commercial Activity, Markets, and Entrepreneurs in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Richard Britnell. Woodbridge, UK, and Rochester, NY: Boydell, 2011.
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  172. Students and colleagues offer papers touching on Britnell’s numerous areas of expertise and publication, concentrating, as he did, on the development of an urban and commercialized England.
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  174. Evans, Ralph, ed. Lordship and Learning: Studies in Memory of Trevor Aston. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2004.
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  176. A mixed group with some concentration of legal and manorial history and the university’s role in medieval life, honoring the longtime editor of Past and Present.
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  178. Goddard, R., J. Langdon, and Miriam Muller, eds. Survival and Discord in Medieval Society: Essays in Honour of Christopher Dyer. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2010.
  179. DOI: 10.1484/M.TMC-EB.6.09070802050003050208010501Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  180. A tribute to one of the leading economic historians of this generation, Dyer making contributions to rural and urban history; the range of the papers reflects the wide interests of the honoree.
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  182. Jones, Michael, and Malcolm Vale, ed. England and Her Neighbors, 1066–1453: Essays in Honour of Pierre Chaplais. London: Hambledon, 1989.
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  184. These cross the English Channel and look at all the Celtic regions of the British Isles (including Ireland), touching diplomatic, political, and military areas.
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  186. Rowe, J. G., ed. Aspects of Late Medieval Government and Governing: Essays Presented to J. R. Lander. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986.
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  188. Some interest in political theory and papers on government and administration, much in the footsteps of Lander’s own work. Lander’s work helped break down the old barrier between 15th-century concerns and the early Tudors.
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  190. Historiography
  191.  
  192. In addition to reference works, historians and literary scholars have considerable interest in how the people of the Middle Ages wrote their own histories—some of these works begin at the creation of the world and move toward the present; others focus mainly on their own times. Though most editions of medieval texts as now published contain material about the author in their introductory material, there are some broader examinations of the process of writing history along with a look at the historians of a given period or genre. Given-Wilson 2004, Gransden 1973, and Taylor 1987 look at what was written and by whom, while Coleman 1996 is concerned with the way written work was transmitted and understood. Other scholarly works concentrate on a particular medieval historian, as Lovatt 1981 does with Henry VI’s biographer and Vaughan 1958 with Matthew Paris, one of the main chroniclers of medieval England. Mathisen 1998 and McLaren 2002 turn, rather, to specific works, or a specific genre of historiography, one with growing popularity among lay readers; they discuss the tradition whereby various writers added to or changed a received text to make it an ongoing contribution to late-medieval historical writing.
  193.  
  194. Coleman, Joyce. Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
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  196. Novel insights into the intriguing relationship among reading, oral reception, and aural reception as “books” were produced and then promulgated for a world of limited literacy. These texts were heard as well as seen and voiced.
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  198. Given-Wilson, Christopher. Chronicles: The Writing of History in Medieval England. London: Hambledon, 2004.
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  200. An overview of the genre and a useful introduction to how medieval historians went about their work.
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  202. Gransden, Antonia. Historical Writing in England, c. 550 to c. 1307. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973.
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  204. A comprehensive survey of most of the historians and their works through the entire Middle Ages. Thorough coverage; not a work likely to be superseded. Gransden followed this with a 1982 volume covering the later Middle Ages.
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  206. Lovatt, Roger. “John Blacman: Biographer of Henry VI.” In The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to R. W. Southern. Edited by R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, 415–444. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.
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  208. How the author assembled his memoir of a failed but pious king.
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  210. Mathesen, Lister. The Prose Brut: The Development of a Middle English Chronicle. Tucson, AZ: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1998.
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  212. A close look at the “growth” of a very popular chronicle (in its many versions); numerous authors and a wide audience in an age of increasing literacy and lay interest in history. Excerpts from various versions but basically a discussion of the process of writing a history rather than an edition of a text.
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  214. McLaren, Mary-Rose. The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2002.
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  216. These chronicles were the major products of a shift from an ecclesiastically based tradition of historical writing to a secular one with its focus on urban life and events. Some of the many extant manuscripts are discussed and a published text from a Bradford, Yorkshire, manuscript is given.
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  218. Taylor, John. English Historical Literature in the Fourteenth-Century. Oxford: Clarendon, 1987.
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  220. A survey of the various types of historical writing produced in a century that saw much new work, it coming in both old and new forms.
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  222. Vaughan, Richard. Matthew Paris. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1958.
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  224. Though old, this is still perhaps the best study of a major historian of medieval England, as there are few full-length studies of medieval historians as authors we can identify and analyze.
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  226. General Histories Pre-1307
  227.  
  228. Post-Conquest England draws so much scholarly attention that surveys, general volumes, and biographies appear each year in considerable numbers. To a great extent surveys and general histories have moved away from an older concentration on political history; much recent work devotes considerable attention to developments and problems in areas of social and cultural history, often with some concern for women’s history and gender. There are so many studies of value that a division of work around the death of Edward I in 1307—in so far as this guideline can be followed—should simplify our access to the field. Surveys such as Bartlett 2000 and Harvey 2001 look at “events” and also steer the reader toward 21st-century interpretations, while Clanchy 1993 explores the wider implications of changes in record keeping and the growth of government (and literacy). Powicke 1953 is dated because of its heavy focus on political history but still of value when read for its areas of strength. Davies 2000 and Frame 1995, in influential studies, survey political developments across the British Isles and have helped set a new agenda for gauging success, failure, identity, and political ambitions as we look at kings, nobles, and military enterprises—a “new imperial history.”
  229.  
  230. Bartlett, Robert. England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075–1225. Oxford: Clarendon, 2000.
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  232. A volume in the New Oxford History of England series and a worthy successor, as a survey, to volumes written by A. L. Poole (1951) and F. M. Powicke (Powicke 1953) in the original Oxford History of England series that was launched before World War II.
  233. Find this resource:
  234. Clanchy, Michael. From Memory to Written Record. 2d ed. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1993.
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  236. This remains a groundbreaking study of a major transition both in the working of government and in our understanding of the role of cognition and memory in government and in social interactions. It also can be read in the context of entries in this section touching on administrative, social, and intellectual history.
  237. Find this resource:
  238. Davies, Rees. The First English Empire, 1093–1343. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
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  240. Though this important volume (the Ford lectures, 1995) goes beyond England’s borders it did much to set the agenda for current interest in a larger England and for an empire and its imperial designs that looked north and west as well as across the Channel toward France and the Low Countries.
  241. Find this resource:
  242. Frame, Robin. The Political Development of the British Isles. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995.
  243. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198206040.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  244. As with Davies 2000, this look at all the political units of the British Isles helped pose a new set of questions and influence current work on “empire” and identity; it overlaps the chronology of this entry. Davies and Frame have had a considerable influence on much subsequent work.
  245. Find this resource:
  246. Harvey, Barbara, ed. The Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, 1066–c. 1280. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
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  248. Harvey as editor of a collection of essays that cover the field and emphasize new work.
  249. Find this resource:
  250. Powicke, F. Maurice. The Thirteenth Century, 1216–1307. Oxford: Clarendon, 1953.
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  252. A volume in the old Oxford History of England, dated because of its heavy concentration on political history but a masterful synthesis and still useful, as offered by a great scholar of 12th- and 13th-century England.
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  254. General Histories Post-1307
  255.  
  256. For many years after the beginnings of modern academic scholarship in the late 19th century the 14th century was considered a period of great interest; the growth of Parliament, the domination of Edward III and his war in France and Scotland, and the internal developments that produced Geoffrey Chaucer in literature, John Wycliffe in religion, and the Black Death (1348) and the Peasants’ Rebellion (1381) in society. After World War II, historians began to reconsider the 15th century, no longer dismissing it as a period of internal violence and weakness (Henry VI and the Wars of the Roses), one that had been seen as a nasty period that was a setup for the strong Tudor monarchy of the 16th century and the Reformation. Surveys with a broad social sweep, such as DuBoulay 1970 and Rubin 2003, relate political issues to those of social and economic development, while McFarlane 1973 and McFarlane 1981 demonstrate how much of the “disorder” of the day makes sense when people, families, and local interactions, rather than weak central government, became the focus of research. Works such as Harriss 2005, Thomson 1983, and Griffiths 2003 still show a concern for political history, but they too reflect the newer and wider interest in the affairs of the realm. McKisack 1959 was a major breakthrough as a post–World War II synthesis of a century of turmoil, and it remains of value for its attempt to survey society well down from the top layers.
  257.  
  258. DuBoulay, F. R. H. An Age of Ambition: English Society in the Late Middle Ages. London: Nelson, 1970.
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  260. This was one of the first sympathetic overviews of the 15th century and still has much of value. It is a collection of related essays, not a narrative history.
  261. Find this resource:
  262. Griffiths, Ralph A., ed. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
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  264. Griffiths as editor in the same series as Barbara Harvey, ed., The Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, 1066–c. 1280 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). Concise essays that range through political and social history.
  265. Find this resource:
  266. Harriss, Gerald L. Shaping the Nation, England, 1360–1461. Oxford: Clarendon, 2005.
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  268. Same series as Robert Bartlett, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075–1225 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000). A masterful survey of a crowded stretch of English history with as much focus on society and local institutions as on royal politics. This replaces the E. F. Jacob’s 1961 volume on the 15th century in the old Oxford History of England series.
  269. Find this resource:
  270. Kleineke, Hannes, and Christina Steer, eds. The Yorkist Age: Proceedings of the 2011 Harlaxton Symposium. Harlaxton Medieval Studies 23. Donington, UK: Shaun Tyas, 2013.
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  272. As with all Harlaxton volumes, the papers look at art and architecture as well as traditional historical topics; a recent collection of work on many aspects of the late-medieval world of Edward IV and Richard III.
  273. Find this resource:
  274. McFarlane, Kenneth Bruce. The Nobility of Later Medieval England. Oxford: Clarendon, 1973.
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  276. Though ostensibly concerned with kings and nobles, the monumental works of McFarlane, mostly published after his death in 1966, have had a great influence on many varieties of scholarship and have helped set the professional agenda for a generation. McFarlane’s work still tends to set the questions for research that combines social with political history.
  277. Find this resource:
  278. McFarlane, Kenneth Bruce. England in the Fifteenth Century: Collected Essays. London: Hambledon, 1981.
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  280. As with McFarlane 1973, these papers have directed work on regional history, the aristocracy, the county gentry, and prosopography as a method of analysis. Though McFarlane died in 1966 his influence is still very powerful in the choice of lines of inquiry.
  281. Find this resource:
  282. McKisack, May. The Fourteenth Century, 1307–1399. Oxford: Clarendon, 1959.
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  284. The penultimate medieval volume to appear in the Oxford History of England series and still a useful survey of political, social, and economic history. It had no serious rivals when it appeared.
  285. Find this resource:
  286. Rubin, Miri. The Hollow Crown: A History of Britain in the Later Middle Ages. London: Penguin, 2003.
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  288. A different approach from narrative history, focusing rather on how events might have seemed to those who lived through them as they unfolded in the 14th and 15th centuries.
  289. Find this resource:
  290. Thomson, John A. F. The Transformation of Medieval England, 1370–1529. London: Longmans, 1983.
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  292. A rather standard treatment but of considerable value as a general survey.
  293. Find this resource:
  294. Primary Sources
  295.  
  296. The publication of primary sources can be divided into several categories. One is that of collections of related sources—materials on the same theme or subject—and usually such collections are in volumes designed for student use. Another group consists of edited or reedited full-length texts, now usually coming with a translation; mostly we find contemporary chronicles and the like, plus letter collections and various kinds of local records, covered by this kind of scholarship, though religious texts also continue to appear. A third area is the publication, either in full text or in some abbreviated or calendared form, of record documents: administrative, economic, or social history all come into play. Such records might reveal the workings of the king’s government, or of town government, or of a private party or a family (as with 15th-century family letters), or of a voluntary association like a gild or fraternity. Work on editing documents from all of these categories continues. Only a few items can be mentioned here, and they have been chosen to illustrate the diversity of types of documents and the range of social and political institutions whence they emanate. They are but the tip of a huge iceberg of scholarship.
  297.  
  298. Collections
  299.  
  300. These selections give an idea of the range of sources that different editors and compilers have chosen to bring together. The material presented in the massive English Historical Documents volumes, represented here by Douglas and Greenaway 1981, Rothwell 1975, and Myers 1969, is comprehensive; political, ecclesiastical, economic, municipal history, and other fields are treated, though their older coverage devotes less attention to women, family structure, and private life than would be the case were they to be done today. Brown 1973 offers documents to illuminate the various aspects of a “hot” historiographical debate on the origins of feudalism and its introduction (or not) by the Normans, while Harding 1973 delves into the complex and tangled roots of legal institutions. Dobson 1983 and Given-Wilson 1993 take a particular event, or closely related series of events, and show both the widespread contemporary interest and the varieties of interpretation as expressed at the time. McHardy 2012 offers material that sets the historical scene for Given-Wilson 1993, and Rosenthal 1976 offers a variety of sources illustrating various aspects of aristocratic life.
  301.  
  302. Brown, R. Allen. The Origins of English Feudalism. London: Allen and Unwin, 1973.
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  304. In a series, Historical Problems: Studies and Documents, shedding light on a perennial “hot” topic and offering documents in translation to support the discussion.
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  306. Carlin, Martha, and David Crouch, trans. and eds. Lost Letters of Medieval England, 1200–1250. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.
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  308. A letter book rich in “how to do it” models of letters for many occasions, giving a glimpse of expectations, modes of address and speech, and the temper of interactions at many social levels.
  309. Find this resource:
  310. Dobson, R. Barrie. The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. 2d ed. London: Macmillan, 1983.
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  312. A model collection of documents with editorial comments, together making the teaching of this topic an easy challenge; a starting point for virtually any look at the most serious peasant rebellion in English history. A model sourcebook in terms of its focus on the many aspects and consequences of a related series of dramatic events.
  313. Find this resource:
  314. Douglas, David, and G. M. Greenaway. English Historical Documents, 1042–1189. 2d ed. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1981.
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  316. A volume in a series launched by Douglas; the editors offer a massive volume with material touching virtually all aspects of English life.
  317. Find this resource:
  318. Given-Wilson, Christopher. Chronicles of the Revolution, 1397–1400: The Reign of Richard II. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1993.
  319. DOI: 10.7765/MMSO.35265Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  320. A volume in a series designed for students and a collection with a narrow and illuminating focus on critical years in the realm’s political history. Good for showing the variety of opinion and the growth of a consensus; meant to be the sequel to McHardy 2012.
  321. Find this resource:
  322. Harding, Alan. The Law Courts of Medieval England. London: Allen and Unwin, 1973.
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  324. In the same series as Brown 1973 and documents and editorial guidance that shed light on a topic that tends to bewilder students.
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  326. McHardy, Alison, ed. and trans. The Reign of Richard II from Minority to Tyranny,1377–97. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2012.
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  328. This collection of primary materials sets the stage for Given-Wilson’s (1993) treatment of the climax of Richard’s reign. Student-oriented as a guide to the wealth of sources for the king and his times.
  329. Find this resource:
  330. Myers, Alec R., ed. English Historical Documents, 1327–1485. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1969.
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  332. In the series with Douglas and Greenaway 1981 and Rothwell 1975; massive collections that have not been superseded or even rivaled, by an editor who included something on almost everything. There are long introductory essays and a valuable bibliography.
  333. Find this resource:
  334. Rosenthal, Joel T. Nobles and the Noble Life, 1295–1500. London: Allen & Unwin, 1976.
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  336. Documents in translation covering many aspects of upper-class life.
  337. Find this resource:
  338. Rothwell, Harry. English Historical Documents, 1189–1327. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode and Oxford University Press, 1975.
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  340. In the series with Douglas and Greenaway 1981 and Myers 1969; a large range of materials on political, social, and ecclesiastical history. Many documents from obscure sources not otherwise accessible, though this collection is not as comprehensive as that of Myers.
  341. Find this resource:
  342. Editions
  343.  
  344. Many of the major historical writings of medieval authors were published many years ago, often as part of the 19th-century Rolls Series. However, new research, the use of more manuscripts, and the changing (and rising?) standards of editorial supervision constantly point to the need to republish some of the old texts as well as to offer new ones. New editions (usually coming today with an English translation) continue to appear, and many more of these are now available beyond those listed here. Some of the work cited focuses on a single or discrete text, while some represents a collection of shorter and even miscellaneous materials, as we find with the family letters now available, either for the first time or in new editions. A major historian (for example, Chibnall 1969–1980, Greenway 2002, Taylor, et al. 2003) or a lesser medieval writer (for example, Dockray 1988, Martin 1995 [looking at a single chronicler]) enable the student to read medieval writers firsthand. Davis 1971–1976, Hanham 1975, and Kirby 1996 help readers enter “daily life” as lived and expressed by people of reasonable status in the lay world, often when they thought they were just communicating with each other. Carpenter 1998 adds the personal papers of one more family to the rich collections of such material, and Kingsford 1996 (First published in 1924) makes the Stonor Letters much more accessible. Kirby 1996 completes the collections of family letters by replacing a 19th-century publication of the Plumpton material.
  345.  
  346. Carpenter, Christine, ed. and intro. The Armburgh Papers: The Brokholes Inheritance in Warwickshire, Hertfordshire and Essex, c. 1417–c. 1453. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1998.
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  348. Family papers, though focused more on lawsuits and quarrels than are the Paston Letters. A valuable addition to the various 15th-century family letter (and papers) collections, offering Midland material that had never been published before. A nasty quarrel over an inheritance is at the bottom of the controversy.
  349. Find this resource:
  350. Chibnall, Marjorie, ed. and trans. The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis. 6 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1969–1980.
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  352. This is a major source for William I and the Conquest, now finally available in Latin and English and with scholarly introduction and notes.
  353. Find this resource:
  354. Childs, Wendy R., ed. and trans. Vita Edwardi Secundi: The Life of Edward the Second. Rev. ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 2005.
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  356. This edition revises that of Noel Denholm-Young, published in 1957. The chronicle is a major source for the troubled reign of Edward II and is a good example of a 14th-century chronicler’s ability to speak his or her mind.
  357. Find this resource:
  358. Davis, Norman. Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1971–1976.
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  360. The “modern” scholarly edition of the most important of the family letter collection, here in two volumes; the first is letters written by members of the Paston family, the second is letters sent by others to the Pastons. This will remain the definitive edition.
  361. Find this resource:
  362. Dockray, Keith. Three Chronicles of the Reign of Edward IV. Stroud, UK: Sutton, 1988.
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  364. Not major works in this collection, but they are helpful in trying to untangle the murky politics of the Yorkist dynasty and the Wars of the Roses.
  365. Find this resource:
  366. Greenway, Diana, ed. The History of the English People, 1000–1154, by Henry of Huntington. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
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  368. An important source for the post-Conquest decades, now edited from a vast number of manuscripts and with an English translation.
  369. Find this resource:
  370. Hanham, Alison, ed. The Cely Letters, 1472–1488. Oxford: Early English Text Society, 1975.
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  372. Family letters of men involved in the cross-Channel wool trade, opening a window into economic dealings and the problems of doing business.
  373. Find this resource:
  374. Kingsford, C. L. Kingsford’s Stonor Letters and Papers, 1290–1483. Edited with additional material by Christine Carpenter. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
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  376. These letters and miscellaneous documents of the Stonors were a major contribution to late-medieval family studies when published in 1924. They are reprinted here with a long introduction by Carpenter along with some additional material.
  377. Find this resource:
  378. Kirby, Joan. The Plumpton Letters and Papers. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
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  380. The letters of a northern family in the 15th century, reflecting the local problems and relations in an area of the realm under the cloud of over-mighty subjects and a resort to violence.
  381. Find this resource:
  382. Martin, Geoffrey, ed. Knighton’s Chronicle, 1337–1396. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995.
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  384. A source that has been undervalued, despite its information about 14th-century politics and its look at John Wycliffe and the beginnings of a heretical movement.
  385. Find this resource:
  386. Taylor, John, Wendy R. Childs, and Leslie Watkiss, eds. and trans. The St. Albans Chronicle: The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham. Vol. 1, 1376–1394. Oxford: Clarendon, 2003.
  387. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  388. This new edition makes a major source and a representative of the Saint Albans “school” of historical writing available.
  389. Find this resource:
  390. Record Sources
  391.  
  392. Records of all sorts continue to be edited and published, mostly for the first time and chosen from the immense hoards of material still in manuscript form. Records of the king’s government, of the church, of manorial and rural life, and of towns and gilds are all of current interest. Many records are now published in calendared or abbreviated form, with entries in English, thereby holding down costs and making for a shorter and more accessible volume. The standard of editing these days is uniformly high. The volumes listed here are offered as examples of work being done; each could well have been listed under some other topical heading, and other examples from each category or genre are at hand and could have been listed instead of those chosen. Access to the great administrative innovations of medieval English government is now an easy matter, sometimes through online access: the Domesday Book, easy to use through efforts led by Morris 1975–1986, and the Pipe Rolls, where Knight 1999 continues an editing tradition that goes back for almost a century. Cobb 1990 looks at sources of working life to probe economic issues, and Kirby 1987 shows how the king’s government inquired into heirs, landholding, succession, and longevity. Norfolk Record Society 2007 reminds us that many records of relatively minor affairs have been preserved that add their own contributions toward a larger picture of medieval society.
  393.  
  394. Cobb, Harry S. The Overseas Trade of London: Exchequer Customs Accounts, 1480–81. London: London Record Society, 1990.
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  396. Minor sources by themselves but when read together they shed valuable light on the details of urban economic life and on how such practical affairs were conducted in the kingdom’s metropolis.
  397. Find this resource:
  398. Kirby, J. L., ed. Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem. Vol. 18, 1–6, Henry IV (1399–1405). London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1987.
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  400. A valuable source for family history and the details of landholding and estates, with information about demography, genealogy, and heirs’ ages (in Proofs of Age proceedings); occasional details about manorial stock and holdings, old quarrels, and the role of social memory. The series, under the direction of Christine Carpenter, has now been continued through Vol. 26 (2009) for 1442–1447.
  401. Find this resource:
  402. Knight, G. A. The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Sixth Year of the Reign of King Henry III, Michaelmas, 1222. London: Pipe Roll Society, 1999.
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  404. Part of a long series by the Pipe Roll Society, mostly devoted to publishing the extremely valuable annual accounts of the Plantagenet sheriffs at the king’s exchequer. The Pipe Rolls shed light on the precocious administration of the Plantagenet kings (though the series actually begins with a pipe roll from the time of Henry I, 1100–1135).
  405. Find this resource:
  406. Morris, John, ed. Domesday Book. Chichester, UK: Phillimore, 1975–1986.
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  408. Morris was the moving force behind the editing of thirty-nine volumes, giving the Latin and a translation for the most important of all the record sources for the reign of William I. “Who held this land on the day King Edward was alive and dead?” Now accessible online. Domesday Book is perhaps the most striking evidence of the early growth of complex bureaucracy for the Middle Ages.
  409. Find this resource:
  410. Norfolk Record Society. Poverty and Wealth: Sheep, Taxation, and Charity in Late Medieval Norfolk. Norfolk, UK: Norfolk Record Society, 2007.
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  412. Brings together three short sources: Mark Bailey, “The Sheep Accounts of Norwich Cathedral Priory, 1484 to 1535,” Maureen Jurkowski, “Income Tax Assessments of Norwich, 1472 and 1498,” and Carole Rawcliffe, “The Cartulary of St. Mary’s Hospital, Great Yarmouth.” These “minor” sources illuminate the workings of local government and of the privileged folk who helped make it work, and such a volume has been listed here as an example of the valuable contributions of county and local record and historical societies.
  413. Find this resource:
  414. Political History
  415.  
  416. Though social history in its many dimensions has become a major field of endeavor, political history in a rather traditional fashion still generates much interest. A medieval monarchy did revolve to a great extent around the monarch, and that person—whether we look at him as an individual, or at his policies, or at an assessment of his style of government and his abilities—remains central to an examination of the medieval state and to much of what transpired within it. Political history also takes monarchs’ dates and periodization as building blocks, and much of the work focuses on a set span, like that of the Norman kings (1066–1135) or the three Edwards (1272–1377). Chibnall 1986 offers a summary of the course and consequences of the Norman Conquest of 1066. Surveys and synthetic studies incorporate much of the detailed work of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, as Le Patourel 1976 puts the Norman kings into a context of French and cross-Channel history. Prestwich 1980 emphasizes the crises as well as the innovations of Edward I. Clanchy 1983 looks at two centuries after the Norman Conquest and explores the way a new political identity emerged. Tuck 1985 concentrates on political issues of king and nobles, Storey 1966 makes sense out of the tangled alliances and violence of the Wars of the Roses, and Walker 1990 gives an idea of the power of a great nobleman who was both rich and ambitious. The New Cambridge Medieval History (Abulafia, et al. 1995–2005) updates the narrative offered by the original Cambridge Medieval History and also recognizes the need to present a more rounded picture of medieval life with chapters on urban, economic, and cultural (religious) life.
  417.  
  418. Abulafia, David, Martin Brett, Simon Keynes, Peter Linehan, Rosamond McKitterick, Edward Powell, Jonathan Shepard, and Peter Spufford, eds. New Cambridge Medieval History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995–2005.
  419. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  420. Volumes 4–7 cover the ground from 1024 to 1500. In chronological order, chapters by Marjorie Chibnall, Thomas Keefe, D. A. Carpenter, W. Mark Ormrod, Caroline M. Barron, Edward Powell, and Rosemary Horrox unfold the narrative. Part 1 of Volume 4 has thematic chapters: “Towns and the Growth of Trade” by Derek Keene, “Religious Communities” by Giles Constable, and “Government and Community” by Susan Reynolds, among others. This “new” history replaces the Cambridge Medieval History of the interwar years.
  421. Find this resource:
  422. Bennett, Michael. Richard II and the Revolution of 1399. Stroud, UK: Sutton, 1999.
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  424. Looking at the deposition of 1399; background, causes, and consequences in a clear exposition of a complicated situation.
  425. Find this resource:
  426. Chibnall, Marjorie. Anglo-Norman England, 1066–1166. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.
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  428. This concise study looks at the course and the consequences of the Norman Conquest, touching on a range of complex developments in government and society.
  429. Find this resource:
  430. Clanchy, Michael. England and Its Rulers, 1066–1272: Foreign Lordship and National Identity. London: Fontana, 1983.
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  432. A short but useful coverage, as the title indicates.
  433. Find this resource:
  434. Le Patourel, John. The Norman Empire. Oxford: Clarendon, 1976.
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  436. One of several judicious assessments of the most important single event in English medieval history, with a concern to cross the English Channel in both directions, just as the kings did for centuries.
  437. Find this resource:
  438. Maddicott, J. R. The Origins of the English Parliament, 927–1327. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
  439. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199585502.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  440. Tracing the institution from late Anglo-Saxon times through the accession of Edward II with an emphasis on English exceptionalism.
  441. Find this resource:
  442. Prestwich, Michael. The Three Edwards: War and State in England, 1272–1337. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980.
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  444. Basic political history, clearly presented.
  445. Find this resource:
  446. Storey, Robin L. The End of the House of Lancaster. London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1966.
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  448. No one had straightened out the Wars of the Roses and the aristocratic politics behind them as well as this short incisive study does. Still of value and with interesting insights into events and people.
  449. Find this resource:
  450. Tuck, Anthony. Crown and Nobility, 1272–1461: Political Conflict in Late Medieval England. Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1985.
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  452. A long look at the kings’ relations with their peers (and their families); perhaps the basic political problem of medieval monarchy.
  453. Find this resource:
  454. Walker, Simon. The Lancastrian Affinity, 1361–1399. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990.
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  456. John of Gaunt’s vast network of men and resources was a major political player for years and a vital factor in the coup of 1399.
  457. Find this resource:
  458. War and the Military
  459.  
  460. Warfare was a major part of the agenda of the medieval state, whether it was by design and intention, as was the Hundred Years’ War, or it “just happened” because of internal factions, weak kingship, over-mighty nobles, and the perceived breakdown of law and order and the links between central and local government, as with the Wars of the Roses. Both wars are really a series of wars with truces, stalemates, and quiet periods intervening between battles. Much of the focus of entries listed under Political History and Royal Biography is on the kings as leaders in these, and other wars.
  461.  
  462. The Hundred Years’ War
  463.  
  464. This was really a drawn out affair, with a number of large and famous set pieces (great English victories), raids across the countryside and much destruction, dynastic claims that still engage scholarly attention, numerous truces (some well-observed and honored, some not), the occupation of Normandy in the 15th century, and the ultimate loss of all the English had gained through either battle or diplomacy. Furthermore, in a less chivalrous context, there were more sieges, battles, and raids across the countryside that probably caused more loss of life and more damage to the economic and agricultural infrastructure than did opposing armies when they clashed. This long and complicated story is told with great skill and a wide range of topics by Sumption 1990, now the major recent narrative; for more compact coverage, Curry 1993 and Allmand 1988 are reliable and readable. Of the many treatments of battle and the organization of late medieval armies, Curry 2000 is instructive and Hewitt 1958 looks at a famous leader and his efforts to impose himself on the Continent. A biography of a major 15th-century figure is offered by Pollard 1983, whereas Green 2014 turns to the question of the effects of war upon society, especially on those who did the fighting. The main narrative chronicle by Froissart is available in an accessible Penguin volume: Brereton 1968.
  465.  
  466. Allmand, Christopher. The Hundred Years War: England and France at War, c. 1300–1450. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
  467. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139167789Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  468. A narrative designed to lead readers through the complicated story, from the dynastic and political motives for the outbreak of hostilities through the long and drawn-out final stages during which the English burned Joan of Arc but lost all the territory they had once held by feudal inheritance or by conquest (except Calais).
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  470. Brereton, Geoffrey, trans. and ed. Jean Froissart’s Chronicle. Baltimore: Penguin, 1968.
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  472. The major narrative chronicle; a very readable contemporary account with an eye on English events (like the peasant rebellion of 1381) and the court, as well as on diplomacy and military affairs.
  473. Find this resource:
  474. Curry, Anne. The Hundred Years War. Houndmills, UK: Macmillan, 1993.
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  476. A short account designed to guide students through the maze. A useful chapter talks of the historiography: how writers over the centuries have explained the century of sporadic hostilities.
  477. Find this resource:
  478. Curry, Anne. The Battle of Agincourt: Sources and Interpretation. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2000.
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  480. The greatest and—with a nod to Shakespeare and the movies—the most famous of all the English victories, giving both a narrative and a look at how we know what we do.
  481. Find this resource:
  482. Green, David. The Hundred Years War: A People’s History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014.
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  484. As well as kings and military leaders, a very large number of people of all ranks and stations did their share of military service, many with mixed feelings and usually with mixed success.
  485. Find this resource:
  486. Hewitt, Herbert J. The Black Prince’s Expedition of 1355–1357. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1958.
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  488. A detailed study of one of the major military expeditions by the royal prince whose ambition was a match for his enduring fame. Much of the war was waged by expeditions, bringing damage to the land and glory to their leaders.
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  490. Pollard, A. J. John Talbot and the War in France, 1427–1452. London: Royal Historical Society, 1983.
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  492. One of the very few biographies of a great captain of the English forces during the years when victory and the occupation of Normandy turned around; Joan of Arc was a figure in these years.
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  494. Sumption, Jonathan. The Hundred Years War. 3 vols. Boston: Faber & Faber, 1990-.
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  496. The major narrative history of the war, covering its many aspects in great detail. Long, thorough, readable.
  497. Find this resource:
  498. The Wars of the Roses
  499.  
  500. This anachronistic title for a series of battles, insurrections, and dynastic coups has held the imagination of both the public and those who choose book titles. The sporadic violence and political unrest that saw five kings in twenty-five years is a topic that draws scholarly interest as well as figuring in a lurid fashion in historical novels and television miniseries (neither being covered here). Pollard 2001 gives a concise and clear account of unclear issues and Hicks 2010 argues that the “wars” ended a number of times only to be resumed. Goodman 1981 relates a sporadic state of war and of violence to society. Hallam 1988 offers extracts from various contemporary accounts. Jones 2002 and Boardman 2009 tackle the confusing issue of a medieval battle, both seemingly conclusive and very sanguine. The excellent treatment by Storey is cited under Political History (Storey 1966).
  501.  
  502. Boardman, A. W. Towton: The Blodiest Battle. Stroud: History Press, 2009.
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  504. Revised version of a 1994 study of this bloody encounter: military history of a traditional style, clearly offered with illustrative material. No battle affecting Englishmen would be this costly until the Civil War of the 1640s.
  505. Find this resource:
  506. Goodman, Anthony. The Wars of the Roses: Military Activity and English Society, 1452–97. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981.
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  508. From the early days of disorder (after Cade’s rebellion in 1450) until Henry VII’s victory at Stoke solidified the Tudors on the throne, with an interest in how the sporadic warfare affected domestic society.
  509. Find this resource:
  510. Hallam, Elizabeth, ed. The Chronicles of the Wars of the Roses. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988.
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  512. A coffee table format but making some of the various contemporary accounts accessible (they being in English); a preface by Hugh Trevor-Roper.
  513. Find this resource:
  514. Hicks, Michael. The Wars of the Roses. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010.
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  516. A clear account, particularly interesting for the explanation that on a number of occasions the “wars” could have been thought to be over. It was the clash of personalities plus such factors as the king’s death that re-opened them.
  517. Find this resource:
  518. Jones, Michael K. Bosworth 1485: Psychology of a Battle. Stroud, UK: Tempus Books, 2002.
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  520. The various forces and personalities that led to what turned out to be (almost) the final battle of a conflict that had begun in 1455.
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  522. Pollard, A. J. The Wars of the Roses. 2d ed. Houndmills, UK and New York: Palgrave, 2001.
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  524. Second edition of a clear and concise account, much in the model of Curry 1993 on the Hundred Years’ War.
  525. Find this resource:
  526. Royal Biography
  527.  
  528. The biographies of kings remain of interest to authors and their readers, despite the problems of writing a full-fledged biography of any medieval man or woman. The idea of a series of would-be definitive biographies of the kings was broached years ago—the English Monarchs Series, first published by Eyre and Spottiswoode, then by the University of California, and now by Yale University Press. These biographies—with Douglas 1964 on William I, or Warren 1973 on Henry II, or Saul 1997 on Richard II or Phillips 2010 on Edward II or Ormrod 2013 on Edward III, all listed here—incorporate scholarly concerns and offer of a broad appreciation of the kings and the problems they faced. Overall the volumes in the English Monarchs Series run to some length, giving scope for a discussion of many aspects of life and rule, and Gillingham 1999 (on Richard I) and Allmand 1992 (on Henry V) follow in this vein. All of these volumes are likely to be the definitive summations for some years. Griffiths 1981 offers a massive treatment of the reign of Henry VI, illuminating a neglected ruler but one whose rehabilitation is beyond the task of the historian, and Carpenter 1996 presents the first thorough examination of Henry III and his long and difficult reign to have been written in more than a generation. Ross 1974, treating Edward IV, has set the standard against which much subsequent work on the Yorkist kings continues to be measured. Hagger 2012 brings William the Conqueror back into the current picture.
  529.  
  530. Allmand, Christopher. Henry V. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
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  532. Generally “pro” Henry but a scholarly and balanced view of a much-lionized figure, with equal attention to domestic and foreign-military issues.
  533. Find this resource:
  534. Carpenter, David A. The Reign of Henry III. London: Hambledon, 1996.
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  536. The first scholarly survey of the reign since F. Maurice Powicke’s King Henry III and the Lord Edward (Oxford: Clarendon, 1947) and his The Thirteenth Century, 1216–1307 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1953) and the follow-up to. Carpenter’s Minority of Henry III (1990).
  537. Find this resource:
  538. Douglas, David C. William the Conqueror: The Norman Impact upon England. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1964.
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  540. This volume launched the Yale University Press series, and it helped open the door on interpretations of the late 11th century and the 12th century that tied England to Continental affairs and events.
  541. Find this resource:
  542. Gillingham, John. Richard I. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999.
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  544. This study, along with many shorter pieces by Gillingham, has “rehabilitated” Richard I as a ruler rather than as the irresponsible (if attractive) and headstrong figure of many older studies.
  545. Find this resource:
  546. Griffiths, Ralph A. The Reign of Henry VI: The Exercise of Royal Authority, 1422–1461. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.
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  548. This major study of the king and his long reign was virtually the first attempt to move beyond stereotypes about a weak king and a troublesome aristocracy. It remains the basic overall view of the reign.
  549. Find this resource:
  550. Hagger, Mark S. William: King and Conqueror. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
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  552. Looks at William in the context of a cross-channel figure. Almost equal emphasis on both areas of the duke’s dominions.
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  554. Ormrod, W. Mark. Edward III. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2013.
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  556. The Yale royal biographical series volume on the king; a massive, scholarly, well nuanced life that is as easy a read as one can hope for in a very long study, the summation of many years of work by Ormrod on a range of topics that run from religious observance at court to ways of collecting taxes.
  557. Find this resource:
  558. Phillips, Seymour. Edward II. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2010.
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  560. Readable and sober, with a skeptical eye on some of the more dramatic aspects of Edward’s reign; a very balanced and readable explanation of crisis and controversy, all supported by a wealth of scholarship and convincing judgment.
  561. Find this resource:
  562. Prestwich, Michael. Edward I. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
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  564. A sober look at one of the great kings, balancing his contributions and activities with details of personal and political weakness.
  565. Find this resource:
  566. Ross, Charles. Edward IV. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974.
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  568. The major modern scholarly study; balanced, well researched, and still the standard scholarly treatment. Ross’s (1981) work on Richard III also remains the basic one-volume treatment, with its mixed views about the most controversial of all English kings.
  569. Find this resource:
  570. Saul, Nigel. Richard II. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.
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  572. A major synthetic work, drawing together a huge amount of late-20th-century scholarship, much of it by the author himself, and offering useful comments about many controversial aspects of the reign and the king himself.
  573. Find this resource:
  574. Warren, Wilfred L. Henry II. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.
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  576. Catches the complexity of the problems on both sides of the Channel, of Archbishop Thomas Becket, Queen Eleanor, and all those difficult sons.
  577. Find this resource:
  578. Collected Papers
  579.  
  580. In addition to volume-length studies of individual monarchs, a number of valuable collections, focused on a particular ruler and his reign, have appeared, often as the product of a dedicated conference. Though most of these volumes cover more than the royal politics of the reign, it is the king and his government that remain central and that give the volume coherence. For example, the Dodd and Biggs 2003 and Dodd and Biggs 2008 volumes on Henry IV have helped restore this king’s role on the scholarly agenda, while others—such as King 1994 on the “anarchy” of Stephen’s reign or Church 1999 on John—have enabled revisionist views to be tested in a sympathetic setting. Gillespie 1997 and Goodman 1999 have moved a discussion of Richard II from the court to such wider issues as regionalism, local loyalty, the governing away from the center, as well as Continental diplomacy, and cultural patronage.
  581.  
  582. Church, S. D., ed. King John: New Interpretations. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1999.
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  584. The rule of England’s most unpopular king is more complex than older accounts were apt to indicate.
  585. Find this resource:
  586. Dalton, Paul, and Graeme J. White, eds. King Stephen’s Reign, 1135–54. Woodbridge, UK and Rochester, NY: Boydell, 2008.
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  588. Papers from a 2005 conference, touching on the king and the role of the Church, and providing a balance to or a revision of older views that almost always emphasized disorder and “anarchy.”
  589. Find this resource:
  590. Dodd, Gwilym, and Douglas Biggs, eds. Henry IV: The Establishment of the Regime, 1399–1406. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2003.
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  592. After all the concern with Henry’s deposition of Richard II in 1399, this edited collection helped shift the focus of attention to the new reign and the issues that confronted the new king once he had taken control of the realm.
  593. Find this resource:
  594. Dodd, Gwilym, and Douglas Biggs, eds. The Reign of Henry IV: Rebellion and Survival, 1403–13. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2008.
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  596. Following Dodd and Biggs 2003, the editors offer papers that discuss the king’s breakdown and the emergence of the prince (Henry V).
  597. Find this resource:
  598. Gillespie, James L., ed. The Age of Richard II. New York: St. Martin’s, 1997.
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  600. Edited papers looking at the nobles, the Church, and culture as well as the court.
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  602. Goodman, Anthony, and James L. Gillespie, eds. Richard II: The Art of Kingship. Oxford: Clarendon, 1999.
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  604. An exploration of various problems of government and relations between England and Continental powers.
  605. Find this resource:
  606. Harper-Bill, Christopher, and Nicholas Vincent, eds. Henry II: New Interpretations. Woodbridge, UK, and Rochester, NY: Boydell, 2007.
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  608. This major king has received relatively little recent attention, and these papers help redress the balance; war, law, the Plantagenet Empire, women, and those troublesome children.
  609. Find this resource:
  610. Harriss, Gerald L., ed. Henry V: The Practice of Kingship. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
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  612. The many sides of the king and his reign, inspired by B. McFarlane’s adoration of an overrated monarch.
  613. Find this resource:
  614. King, Edmund. The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994.
  615. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198203643.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  616. Another area where old stereotypes have been challenged by a rereading of the texts and an exploration of local and administrative history.
  617. Find this resource:
  618. Nonroyal Biography
  619.  
  620. Many biographies of leading figures other than kings have appeared, though all writers acknowledge that the problems with the sources make biography in the modern sense, even for a king, virtually impossible to write. But many major studies revolve around the life and times of a central figure; studies such as Alexander 1983 on the Earl of Chester, a great figure during “the anarchy,” or Maddicott 1994, looking at a powerful nobleman and a foil to Henry III, provide a different perspective on the usual view that goes from center to periphery, whereas Crouch 1990, on William Marshal, focuses on an outsider who worked his way into the inner circles of the Plantagenet dynasty, while Goodman 1992 follows the career of an English prince who sought to become a power on the Continent as well as at home. People out of the limelight are hard to deal with; Richmond 1981 shows how a lesser figure’s life could be rounded out by being set into a social context. Hamilton 1988, on Piers Gaveston, gives balance to the bitter partisanship that surrounded Edward II even before he ascended the throne. Harriss 1988 bridges the secular and the ecclesiastical in offering a major study of a political churchman, and Hicks 1998 turns a rather critical eye on the greatest of the over-mighty subjects of 15th-century England. Ross 2011 tells of a nobleman who served as a bridge between Yorkist England and Henry VII.
  621.  
  622. Alexander, James W. Ranulf of Chester: Relic of the Conquest. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983.
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  624. Ranulf was a great independent force during the “anarchy” of Stephen’s reign—courted with limited success by both sides.
  625. Find this resource:
  626. Crouch, David. William Marshal: Court, Career, and Chivalry in the Angevin Empire, 1147–1219. London: Longmans, 1990.
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  628. The greatest of all the “new men” of post-Conquest England; richest, most influential, and founder of a vast dynasty. This study supersedes the classic by Sidney Painter, 1933: William Marshal: Knight-Errant, Baron, and Regent of England.
  629. Find this resource:
  630. Goodman, Anthony. John of Gaunt: The Exercise of Princely Power in Fourteenth-Century Europe. New York: St Martin’s, 1992.
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  632. A major figure without a full biography since 1904; now presented by a historian with a long interest in the Iberian Peninsula as well as in English politics and social history.
  633. Find this resource:
  634. Hamilton, Jeffrey L. Piers Gaveston: Earl of Cornwall, 1307–1312; Politics and Patronage in the Reign of Edward II. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1988.
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  636. Though accepted as an important figure in the sad tale of Edward II, Gaveston has received little attention in his own right, and he rarely draws much sympathy from his contemporaries or from historians.
  637. Find this resource:
  638. Harriss, Gerald L. Cardinal Beaufort: A Study of Lancastrian Ascendancy and Decline. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988.
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  640. Beaufort, an illegitimate royal, was the closest England came to a kingmaker in the first half of the 15th century. This biography might be listed under ecclesiastical history, but Beaufort was a powerful force in royal circles, and as young Henry VI’s great uncle, he with Humphrey of Gloucester fought to hold center place in the council and government.
  641. Find this resource:
  642. Hicks, Michael A. Warwick the Kingmaker. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.
  643. DOI: 10.1002/9780470753415Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  644. This detailed study is not a “whitewash,” and many of the great nobleman’s moves and motives are questioned. Hicks’s interest in biography also covered a study of Edward V in 2003 and Edward IV in 2004.
  645. Find this resource:
  646. Johnson, P. A. Duke Richard of York, 1411–1460. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988.
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  648. The only biography of the richest nobleman, the Yorkist claimant to the throne, and the father of Edward IV and Richard III.
  649. Find this resource:
  650. Maddicott, J. R. Simon de Montfort. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
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  652. De Montfort led the rebellion against Henry III, and this valuable study shows the two men to be about equally unlikable.
  653. Find this resource:
  654. Richmond, Colin F. John Hopton: A Fifteenth Century Suffolk Gentleman. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
  655. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511560293Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  656. A bold attempt to write the life of an “ordinary” person; sources and probabilities well crafted to tell the tale.
  657. Find this resource:
  658. Ross, James. John de Vere, Thirteenth Earl of Oxford, 1442–1513. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2011.
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  660. The most important peer of a long-lived family and a major figure in the reign of Henry VII, following a more localized or regional prominence under Edward IV.
  661. Find this resource:
  662. Royal Government and Administrative History
  663.  
  664. In addition to royal biographies, there are numerous studies of kingship and of the king’s government and administration. How medieval government worked, as well as a focus on the people involved, has long been a field of concern, keeping alive an interest in administrative history, as we see in studies such as Brown 1989, Turner 1988, and Green 1986. Others, such as Given-Wilson 1987, explore the relations between the Crown and its high and hereditary servants. The Domesday Book can be thought of as the beginning of medieval administration, and of the problems it poses, which are probed by Roff 2000 in coverage of recent scholarship. The personnel named in Domesday are analyzed by Keats-Rohan 1999 in an effort to test how far prosopography can unravel the question of networks of interest and relationship. Holt 1992 also looks at the Magna Carta, the most famous document of them all, and McFarlane 1972, an assessment of kings and their success, sets a high standard for all subsequent scholarship and historiographical evaluation. Hicks 1995 sets the role of “over mighty subjects” into a context of royal government, a feudal culture, and law and order.
  665.  
  666. Brown, A. L. The Governance of Late Medieval England, 1272–1471. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989.
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  668. Traditional administrative history, now brought up-to-date with many observations about how government “worked.”
  669. Find this resource:
  670. Given-Wilson, Christopher. The English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages: The Fourteenth Century Political Community. London: Routledge, 1987.
  671. DOI: 10.4324/9780203441268Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  672. The role of the aristocracy in government was vital, as it was in county society and military ventures.
  673. Find this resource:
  674. Green, Judith. The Governance of England under Henry I. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
  675. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511560248Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  676. Building on the legacy of his father and establishing a government that could yoke the personnel and the bureaucratic.
  677. Find this resource:
  678. Hicks, Michael. Bastard Feudalism. London and New York: Longman, 1995.
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  680. This title term was used, mainly in a pejorative sense, to characterize the role of great nobles and their armed retainers; set here in a broader context touching royal government, the culture and power of the nobles, and questions of law and order.
  681. Find this resource:
  682. Hicks, Michael, ed. The Fifteenth-Century Inquisitions Post Mortem: A Companion. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2012.
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  684. Conference papers explaining the value, role, and history of the inquisition into the property of deceased land holders; some case studies and papers with a specific focus, others on the growth of the public records and administrative history.
  685. Find this resource:
  686. Holt, J. C. Magna Carta. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
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  688. The second edition of a 1965 study, setting the charter into the context of John’s reign and looking at the beginnings of the myth that surrounds it.
  689. Find this resource:
  690. Keats-Rohan, Katherine S. B. Domesday People: A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents, 1066–1166. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1999.
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  692. Using prosopography as a method and collecting whatever is known about all those named in the book.
  693. Find this resource:
  694. McFarlane, Kenneth Bruce. Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights. Oxford: Clarendon, 1972.
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  696. Posthumous publication of an important assessment of kings and kingship and an evaluation of the upper-class involvement with the Lollard heresy; the interest is political and social, not theological.
  697. Find this resource:
  698. Roff, David. Domesday: The Inquest and the Book. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
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  700. An up-to-date introduction to views about the beginnings of administrative history and to the immense volume of scholarship on the Domesday Book that is controversial and often adversarial.
  701. Find this resource:
  702. Turner, Ralph V. Men Raised from the Dust: Administrative Service and Upward Mobility in Angevin England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988.
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  704. A careful examination of the “new men” on whom Henry I rested much of his government.
  705. Find this resource:
  706. Law and Legal History
  707.  
  708. Many of the sources for legal history as well as the modern scholarship that focuses on them seem esoteric and remote to students who are without legal training. In this section some basic sources are elaborated, and a small part of the early 21st-century scholarly focus will be introduced.
  709.  
  710. Editions of Primary Sources
  711.  
  712. The sources for legal history have been the special concern of the Selden Society, and of their many volumes, late 20th-century ones on law reports (Brand 1996) and on manorial law (Poos and Bonfield 1998) continue this work. New editions and versions of classic medieval treatises on the law are a boon to students, and Hall 1993, Lockwood 1997, and Stoljar and Downer 1988 supersede old and out-of-print versions. Baker and Milsom 1986 is a wide-ranging anthology with excerpts that cover many aspects of private law. Thorne 1968 makes the major legal treatise of the 12th century—the days of Henry II and tremendous innovation in the law—available and easy to use.
  713.  
  714. Baker, J. H., and S. F. C. Milsom. Sources of English Legal History: Private Law to 1750. London: Butterworth, 1986.
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  716. Selections in English to illustrate a variety of legal proceedings, many of the excerpts taken from manuscripts.
  717. Find this resource:
  718. Brand, Paul, ed. The Earliest English Law Reports. 4 vols. London: Selden Society, 1996.
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  720. See Volume 1, Common Bench Reports to 1284, and Volume 2, Common Bench Reports 1285–1289 and Undated Reports 1279–1289. These reports of judicial thinking and decisions show the law as a working process.
  721. Find this resource:
  722. Hall, G. D. H., ed. The Treatise on the Laws and Customs of England Commonly Called Glanvill. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993.
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  724. The most important 12th-century legal text, here following the 1905 edition and with scholarly support for the uninitiated.
  725. Find this resource:
  726. Lockwood, Shelley, ed. Sir John Fortescue: On the Laws and Governance of England. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
  727. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  728. The volume also contains “In Praise of the Laws of England,” following S. B. Chrime’s 1942 edition; the main text follows Charles Plummer’s 1885 text and offers the most important 15th-century legal thinking about the “special” nature of English law and government.
  729. Find this resource:
  730. Poos, Lawrence R., and Lloyd Bonfield, eds. Select Cases in Manorial Courts, 1250–1550: Property and Family Law. London: Selden Society, 1998.
  731. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  732. A collection of cases that illustrate the way law was interpreted and implemented away from the royal court system.
  733. Find this resource:
  734. Stoljar, S. J., and L. J. Downer, eds. Year Books of Edward II, 14 Michaelmas, 1320. London: Selden Society, 1988.
  735. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  736. Selected cases, with questions from and answers to the judges. These were the lawyer’s working papers, in this case from the early 14th century, this volume being part of a series of yearbook volumes that have been published for over a century.
  737. Find this resource:
  738. Thorne, Samuel E., ed. and trans. Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1968.
  739. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  740. Henry de Bracton’s text is the most important legal text of the 12th century, and Thorne’s accessible edition makes use of George Woodbine’s edition of the Latin text.
  741. Find this resource:
  742. Legal Scholarship
  743.  
  744. Late-20th-century and early-21st-century scholarship has both explicated law, in the traditional fashion, and looked at how the law was used in a social setting, as Hyams 2003 does in a study of conflict resolution and as Palmer 1991 does in showing it as an instrument of class. For surveys of legal history aimed at a lay audience, Baker 1990 is vital, and Hudson 1996 looks in more detail at the first centuries after the Conquest. Brand 1992b follows the way a new career was shaped for those we know as lawyers, and Brand 1992a looks at how English common law worked (or did not work) in Ireland. Helmholz 1987 explores the way canon law operated in a realm governed by common law, Worby 2010 looks at the way (canon) law shaped the definition and role of the family, and Hunnisett and Post 1978 offers a variety of sources with commentary to give an idea of the variations of the law and of legal history. Loengard 2010 brings us up to date on views of Magna Carta while Lacy 2009 turns to the king’s pardon, showing how law could be used or stretched by the man at the top.
  745.  
  746. Baker, John H. An Introduction to English Legal History. 3d ed. London: Butterworths, 1990.
  747. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  748. Basic introductory survey; the place to begin.
  749. Find this resource:
  750. Bellamy, John. Bastard Feudalism and the Law. London: Routledge, 1989.
  751. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  752. A legally focused discussion of how “bastard feudalism” affected society and a good bookend for Hicks’s study (Hicks 1995, cited under Royal Government and Administrative History), which is more concerned with the political aspects of this invented phenomenon.
  753. Find this resource:
  754. Brand, Paul. The Making of the Common Law. London: Hambledon, 1992a.
  755. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  756. A collection of twenty papers (mostly reprinted) and concerned to trace the course of common law as the English applied it to their lands in Ireland.
  757. Find this resource:
  758. Brand, Paul. The Origins of the English Legal Profession. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992b.
  759. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  760. The law and the men who followed it as their profession.
  761. Find this resource:
  762. Helmholz, R. H. Canon Law and the Law of England. London: Hambledon, 1987.
  763. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  764. This volume reprints eighteen articles, mostly on canon law as it was applied in a realm of common law.
  765. Find this resource:
  766. Hudson, John. The Formation of English Common Law: Law and Society in England from the Norman Conquest to Magna Carta. London: Longman, 1996.
  767. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  768. Focusing on the Anglo-Norman courts and discussing how the law dealt with crime, landholding, the development of the court system, and the Magna Carta; now overlapped by his 2012 volume, covering 871–1216, in the Oxford History of the Laws of England.
  769. Find this resource:
  770. Hunnisett, R. F., and J. B. Post, eds. Medieval Legal Records, Edited in Memory of C. F. Meekings. London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1978.
  771. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  772. Though legal texts are published in each of the fourteen case studies, they all have introductory essays that explain the choice of text and its importance; a good way to appreciate the variety of legal “situations” and application.
  773. Find this resource:
  774. Hyams, Paul R. Rancor and Reconciliation in Medieval England. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003.
  775. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  776. A study of how the law “worked” when anger, revenge, and the feud were on the table.
  777. Find this resource:
  778. Lacy, Helen. The Royal Pardon: Access to Mercy in Fourteenth-Century England. York, UK: York Medieval Press, 2009.
  779. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  780. The royal pardon was a special prerogative: details here on its use, following Naomi Hurnard’s The King’s Pardon for Homicide (1969); at the crossroads of legal-judicial, administrative, and legal history.
  781. Find this resource:
  782. Loengard, Janet, ed. Magna Carta and the England of King John. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2010.
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  784. Collected papers with valuable insights into the charter and the contest from which it emerged. Particularly useful for its synthesis of much recent scholarship on the reign and the charter, the most famous of all medieval English documents.
  785. Find this resource:
  786. Palmer, Robert C. English Law in the Age of the Black Death, 1348–1381: A Transformation of Governance and Law. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
  787. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  788. Law in operation as an instrument of class privilege and social control.
  789. Find this resource:
  790. Worby, Sam. Law and Kinship in Thirteenth-Century England. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2010.
  791. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  792. Though looking largely at canon law (as well as at civil law), the way in which legal definitions and decisions shaped the nature and definition of the family is a topic of interest and not often dealt with in a dedicated monograph.
  793. Find this resource:
  794. The Jews (Before 1290)
  795.  
  796. Because the Jews were treated as a marginalized social group rather than as a religious minority in the modern sense, the material on their place in English society before they were expelled from the realm by Edward I in 1290 is given here, an offshoot of political and administrative history. Nominally they were under the king’s direct protection, a “privilege” for which they often had to pay an exorbitant price. The basic narrative that covers the community is Roth 1964, revised numerous times. Mundill 1998 has produced a narrative and analysis of the last years before the expulsion, and Stacey 1992 has looked at the pressure to convert in the years just before the expulsion. A more general discussion of anti-Semitism, embracing the English community, has been set out by Langmuir 1963 in the form of a critical review essay on Richardson 1960, one that focuses on the interaction of the Jewish community and the king’s government (mostly by way of the exchequer of the Jews), with Causton 2007 providing more data for this area of interest. Dobson 2010 brought Jewish history into the mainstream of historical discourse with an early examination of the massacre of 1190, and R. Barrie Dobson followed this by linking Jewish history to women’s history in Dobson 2010, now collected, with other important papers, in Dobson 2010. Hyams 1974 turns to the relations between an “other” and the mainstream of society. Goldy 2012, following Dobson’s early lead, pieces together a biographical essay in an elusive and under-documented field, and Rees Jones and Watson 2013 follows another line of investigation that Dobson pointed out.
  797.  
  798. Causton, Ann, ed. Medieval Jewish Documents in Westminster Abbey. London: Jewish Historical Society of England, 2007.
  799. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  800. Mostly financial records; debts, pardons, contracts; translated and giving a good idea of the scope of the business being carried out under crown eyes and supervision.
  801. Find this resource:
  802. Dobson, R. Barrie. The Jewish Communities of Medieval England: The Collected Essays of R. B. Dobson. Edited by Helen Birkett, with a preface by Joe Hillaby. York, UK: Borwick Institute, University of York, 2010.
  803. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  804. Dobson’s work brought Jewish history into the mainstream of English medieval history, and his seminal papers (the 1190 massacre at York, 1974, the role of Jewish women, 1992, etc.) are brought together here—now accessible and still the starting point for much subsequent work.
  805. Find this resource:
  806. Goldy, Charlotte Newman. “Muriel, a Jew of Oxford: Using the Dramatic to Understand the Mundane in Anglo-NormanTowns.” In Writing Medieval Lives. Edited by C. N. Goldy and Amy Livingstone, 227–245. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
  807. DOI: 10.1057/9781137074706Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  808. Probing the sources and setting “Muriel” into the life of a prosperous town; Jewish and Christian neighbors and interaction across the boundaries. Exploring the lives of Jewish women is difficult but rewarding.
  809. Find this resource:
  810. Hyams, Paul. “The Jewish Minority in Medieval England, 1066–1290.” Journal of Jewish Studies 25.2 (1974): 270–293.
  811. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  812. Sets a long-term minority into the context of Christian, secular, and persecuting society.
  813. Find this resource:
  814. Langmuir, Gavin. “The Jews and the Archives of Angevin England: Reflections of Medieval Anti-Semitism.” Traditio 19 (1963): 183–244.
  815. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  816. A critical appraisal of the Richardson 1960 narrow focus using the insights of other social sciences applied to an historical issue. This important article became the center of later discussions of anti-Semitism.
  817. Find this resource:
  818. Mundill, Robin W. England’s Jewish Solution: Experiment and Expulsion, 1262–1290. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
  819. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511549434Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  820. A detailed study of the last decades; royal policy and harsh treatment.
  821. Find this resource:
  822. Rees Jones, Sarah, and Sethina Watson, eds. Christians and Jews in Angevin England: The York Massacre of 1190, Narrative and Contexts. York, UK: York Medieval Press, 2013.
  823. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  824. Inspired by Dobson’s work, conference papers of 2010 (“York 1190: Jews and Others in the Wake of Massacre” held March 2010 at the University of York) examining the sources and the context for an infamous event in the major city of the north.
  825. Find this resource:
  826. Richardson, H. G. The English Jewry under the Angevin Kings. London: Methuen, 1960.
  827. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  828. Looking at the Jewish community through the eyes of the royal administration: a special exchequer, special taxes, and so forth; many documents printed in the appendix. In some respects this is administrative and economic history rather than Jewish history as such.
  829. Find this resource:
  830. Roth, Cecil. History of the Jews in England. Oxford: Clarendon, 1964.
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  832. The third edition of what for years stood as the basic narrative; now old-fashioned in its narrow focus, though still a useful summary. Can be read in conjunction with Roth’s more detailed The Jews of Medieval Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon, 1951).
  833. Find this resource:
  834. Stacey, Robert C. “The Conversion of the Jews to Christianity in Thirteenth Century England.” Speculum 67.2 (1992): 263–283.
  835. DOI: 10.2307/2864373Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  836. The pressures to convert and conform and how deeply they cut into the Jewish community.
  837. Find this resource:
  838. Social History
  839.  
  840. An old definition of social history held that it was history with the politics left out. There is still some merit to this, though late-20th-century and more recent work has reached into virtually all aspects of life, both public and private, in an effort to understand people’s lives, thoughts, and relationships with each other. While much of this work is presented in specialized monographs and articles, a number of books either offer a synthesis about English society or look at some particular region of the realm in detail to see how “the pieces” fit together over a given span of years. General surveys, such as Keen 1990 and Rigby 1995, bring in social structure, family, gender, and demographic considerations. More focused examinations, such as Bennett 1988 and Pollard 1990, concentrate on the North of England—one on the Northwest, one on the Northeast—and look at interactions across class and through a variety of institutions, emphasizing the interplay of the political and the social, much as Virgoe 1997 does for East Anglia. Coss 1993 examines one important component of the social scene and shows the role that knights, in their activities and ethos, played in society. Coss 2003 sums up an area of debate about class and how it was linked to wealth, political culture, and social identity. Edited volumes, such as Horrox 1994, Horrox and Ormrod 2006, and Radulescu and Truelove 2005, offer essays on a variety of topics in an effort to touch on themes and patterns that were part of daily life. The new interest in women, private life, urban life, and the culture of the gentry all come in for consideration. Kowaleski 2014 synthesizes lines of inquiry not often brought together under one heading.
  841.  
  842. Bennett, Michael. Community, Class, and Careerism: Cheshire and Lancashire Society in the Age of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
  843. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  844. The Northwest tended to be a region apart, and Bennett delves into how its various elites interacted and controlled public life. Still a model regional study.
  845. Find this resource:
  846. Coss, Peter R. The Knight in Medieval England. Stroud, UK: Sutton, 1993.
  847. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  848. A general survey that traces the rise of those who followed a military life, looking at military training, social roles, and chivalric ethos.
  849. Find this resource:
  850. Coss, Peter R. The Origins of the English Gentry. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
  851. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511522383Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  852. This issue has sparked much scholarly debate concerning both the definition of gentry and the date when the gentry (whoever they were) emerged as a force in political and social life. Coss followed this this line of interest with a study focused on the Multon family: The Foundations of Gentry Life, 2010.
  853. Find this resource:
  854. Horrox, Rosemary, ed. Fifteenth-Century Attitudes: Perceptions of Society in Late Medieval England. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
  855. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  856. Essays that cover an extensive sweep of institutions and topics touching politics, religion, culture, and private life. The essays are a good introduction to the many faces of “social history”
  857. Find this resource:
  858. Horrox, Rosemary, and W. Mark Ormrod, eds. A Social History of Medieval England, 1200–1500. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
  859. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  860. Much like Horrox 1994, only with a wider brush and looking at another decade of scholarly contributions.
  861. Find this resource:
  862. Keen, Maurice Hugh. English Society in the Later Middle Ages, 1348–1500. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1990.
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  864. A volume in the Penguin Social History series; a thorough and concise survey beginning with the plague and running through the coming of the Tudors.
  865. Find this resource:
  866. Kowaleski, Maryanne. “Medieval People in Town and Country: New Perspectives from Demography and Bioarchaeology.” Speculum 89 (2014): 573–600.
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  868. A bold attempt by a leading economic historian to synthesize various current lines of inquiry in this presidential address to the Medieval Academy of America.
  869. Find this resource:
  870. Pollard, Anthony J. Northeastern England during the Wars of the Roses: Lay Society, War, and Politics, 1450–1500. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990.
  871. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  872. How a section of the realm dealt with civil war and the presence of great nobles who dominated much of life; the effort is to reconstruct society in a part of the realm with a strong local culture and political tradition rather than to concentrate on battles and warlords.
  873. Find this resource:
  874. Radulescu, Raluca, and Alison Truelove, eds. Gentry Culture in Late Medieval England. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2005.
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  876. Essays on family, education, religion, literacy, music, visual culture, and other aspects of upper-middle-class life, drawing on many sources and pointing to early-21st-century scholarship. A useful route into many lines of recent scholarly inquiry.
  877. Find this resource:
  878. Rigby, Stephen H. English Society in the Later Middle Ages: Class, Status, and Gender. London: Macmillan, 1995.
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  880. A complicated approach as guided by sociological models and theory for analyzing social structure, with much attention to class as a factor of social and economic life. A probing analysis, though not easy reading.
  881. Find this resource:
  882. Virgoe, Roger. East Anglian Society and the Political Community of Late Medieval England. Edited by C. M. Barron, Carole Rawcliffe, and Joel T. Rosenthal. Norwich, UK: University of East Anglia, 1997.
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  884. Detailed studies of the political and social community of an important and wealthy region; family, parliament, and the way “national” events were played out at the regional level.
  885. Find this resource:
  886. Families, Family Structure, and the Household
  887.  
  888. As a subspecies of social history, and with considerable overlap with some aspects of women’s history, there has been considerable emphasis on family structure, on the many working definitions of family (as a social, political, cultural, and economic unit), and on the nature of the household. For the early post-Conquest centuries, much of what can be studied has to be the royal and aristocratic family and household, but by the 14th and certainly by the 15th century the sources enable us to look at gentry and even peasant families in more detail. Works such as Castor 2004, Richmond 1990–2000, Saul 2001, and Noble 2009 focus on a particular family, over the course of several generations, and emphasize continuity, often in the face of internal and external woes. Mertes 1985 and Woolgar 1998 focus on life at or near the top, looking at aristocratic households—centers of patronage and consumerism and in imitation of the royal household itself. Bennett 1987, a study of a peasant village with particular emphasis on the roles played by women, uncovers aspects of life that were long neglected, while Hanawalt 1986, an adroit analysis of coroners’ role, sheds light on how an inquiry into cause of death reveals much about the prosaic activities of daily life. Rosenthal 1990 explores some of the varieties of family life and structure, including the fortunes of some upper-class widows.
  889.  
  890. Bennett, Judith M. Women of the Medieval English Countryside: Gender and Household in Brigstock before the Plague. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
  891. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  892. This could also be listed under Women’s History and offers an important look at peasant families and the role of women in manorial life, mostly focused on the 14th century.
  893. Find this resource:
  894. Castor, Helen. Blood and Roses: The Paston Family and the Wars of the Roses. London: Faber and Faber, 2004.
  895. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  896. A clear account of family fortunes, following a chronological narrative that helps untangle the Pastons’ many tangles.
  897. Find this resource:
  898. Hanawalt, Barbara A. The Ties That Bind: Peasant Families in Medieval England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
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  900. An ingenious use of coroners’ rolls about mishaps and deaths to uncover much material on family structure, children, and the division of labor, followed by her further look at families in 1993’s Growing Up in Medieval London.
  901. Find this resource:
  902. Mertes, Kate. The English Noble Household, 1250–1600: Good Governance and Politic Rule. Oxford: Blackwell, 1985.
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  904. A major institution embracing many people and serving many purposes, with a look at a number of great households in order to construct a synthetic picture of upper-class life.
  905. Find this resource:
  906. Noble, Elizabeth. The World of the Stonors: A Gentry Society. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2009.
  907. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  908. Based on the family letters and material relating to their lands, political crises, and legal tangles, we can follow an important gentry family through the course of a century.
  909. Find this resource:
  910. Richmond, Colin. The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century. 3 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990–2000.
  911. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511560309Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  912. A close-up look at the best-documented gentry family of medieval England, setting them into the context of county and gentry society. Volume 3 published by Manchester University Press.
  913. Find this resource:
  914. Rosenthal, Joel Thomas. Patriarchy and Families of Privilege in Late Medieval England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990.
  915. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  916. Covering some of the many varieties of family structure and interaction; marital webs, the importance of continuity, and the status and opportunities of some upper-class widows.
  917. Find this resource:
  918. Saul, Nigel. Death, Art, and Memory in Medieval England: The Cobham Family and Their Memorials, 1300–1500. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
  919. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  920. Integrates family history and genealogy of a minor noble family with an examination of their memorials and funeral brasses to illustrate how identity and lineage were asserted in life and afterward.
  921. Find this resource:
  922. Woolgar, Christopher M. The Great Household in Late Medieval England. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.
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  924. The structure of great households and a discussion of the rhythms—daily, seasonal, and annual—by which their many activities were regulated. This book builds on Woolgar’s edition of household accounts and records (published by the British Academy, 1993).
  925. Find this resource:
  926. Women’s History
  927.  
  928. To treat women’s history as a separate category does credit to the exploration and expansion of this field. On the other hand, treating it separately, even for convenience’ sake, does little justice to the efforts to “mainstream” women into all the currents and patterns of daily life, from studies of queens to a look at widows, young women, single women, servants, and women in the workplace and the workforce. Some of the richness of much late 20th-century and early 21st-century scholarship lies in the way the studies move across the boundaries as drawn here.
  929.  
  930. General Surveys
  931.  
  932. Because so much work has been offered, a number of surveys or synthetic volumes have appeared, summarizing the wealth of scholarly investigations and offering some broader views of the role and status of women in the centuries between the Conquest and the end of the Middle Ages. Leyser 1995 and Jewell 1996 cover much of the field, while Mate 1999 focuses more on economic life, Coss 1998 focuses on the gentry, Ward 1992 focuses on women of aristocratic families, and Lewis, et al. 1999 focuses on a narrower slice of women’s experience, while Dunn 2013 looks at the mixed fates that could mean gross mistreatment or a cover-up for individual choice in a patriarchal world.
  933.  
  934. Coss, Peter R. The Lady in Medieval England, 1000–1500. Stroud, UK: Sutton, 1998.
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  936. Mostly looking at upper-class life and the sharing of duties and roles between marital partners as well as the challenges women were called upon face.
  937. Find this resource:
  938. Dunn, Caroline. Stolen Women of Medieval England: Rape, Abduction and Adultery, 1100–1300. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
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  940. Some of these fates were the result of violent assaults and others were a cover-up for elopements, as law, women’s stories, and family and marriage were intertwined.
  941. Find this resource:
  942. Jewell, Helen M. Women in Medieval England. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1996.
  943. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  944. A general survey touching on most of the basic topics and informative on late-20th-century scholarship. As with other volumes in this grouping, a good introduction to problems and scholarly explorations.
  945. Find this resource:
  946. Lewis, Katherine J., Noël James Menuge, and Kim M. Phillips, eds. Young Medieval Women. New York: St. Martin’s, 1999.
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  948. An edited collection, mostly of papers on young English women, looking at roles, choices, and confining circumstance. This is another of those topics that few people looked at before the late 20th century.
  949. Find this resource:
  950. Leyser, Henrietta. Medieval Women: A Social History of Women in Medieval England, 450–1500. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1995.
  951. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  952. Like Jewell 1996, covers many aspects of the topic and with comments and judgments about medieval women and what scholars have said about them.
  953. Find this resource:
  954. Mate, Mavis E. Women in Medieval English Society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
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  956. Written for a series published by the Economic History Society; a short study that concentrates on women in economic life, the workforce, and the marketplace. More focus on economic aspects of women’s lives than the “rival” volumes listed here.
  957. Find this resource:
  958. Ward, Jennifer C. English Noblewomen in the Later Middle Ages. London: Longman, 1992.
  959. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  960. A survey but dealing with upper-class women and some rich case studies where their household books have survived.
  961. Find this resource:
  962. Biographies of Women
  963.  
  964. Much of the work on women’s lives has, by necessity, centered on queens, though where sources permit, other women have been treated as our interest runs deeper into society than did that of early biographers. The royal biographies deal with what are obviously atypical women, though a study of their lives does show us the many roles such women could play and the crises that often confronted them—sometimes of their own making, sometimes just befalling them because of gender and their political roles. Studies of queens, such as Wheeler and Parsons 2002, Maurer 2003, Parsons 1995, or Chibnell 1991, are close-up case studies, while Laynesmith 2004 offers some general views about a small group of women at the top of the pyramid in troubled times. Mitchell 2003 looks at a group of aristocratic women with an emphasis on how they exercised power, and Swabey 1999 takes us into a rich widow’s household and reconstructs such aspects of life as “who’s coming to dinner.” Bennett 1999 reconstructs the life of a village woman, doing for her much what Colin Richmond did for John Hopton, showing how our expanding knowledge of life across the social spectrum now makes such work possible.
  965.  
  966. Bennett, Judith M. A Medieval Life: Cecilia Penifader of Brigstock, c. 1295–1344. Boston: McGraw Hill, 1999.
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  968. A creative study of one of the active peasant women treated in a drier fashion in Bennett’s Women in the Medieval English Countryside: Gender and Household in Brigstock before the Plague (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). A bold and imaginative re-creation of a “typical” life.
  969. Find this resource:
  970. Chibnell, Marjorie. The Empress Matilda: Queen Consort, Queen Mother, and Lady of the English. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
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  972. Matilda was daughter of Henry I, wife to the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V, a claimant to the throne of England against her cousin Stephen, and mother of Henry II, all covered in a biography by an expert on Norman England.
  973. Find this resource:
  974. Laynesmith, J. L. The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship, 1445–1503. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
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  976. An unusual study of a group of women of mixed backgrounds who rose to the top, with many insights about the lives and challenges of such women. Life at the top was not necessarily a bed of roses.
  977. Find this resource:
  978. Maurer, Helen E. Margaret of Anjou: Queenship and Power in Late Medieval England. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2003.
  979. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  980. A scholarly assessment of a perennial villain and upstart woman from the Continent who became an active figure as both wife and mother on behalf of the Lancastrian cause.
  981. Find this resource:
  982. Mitchell, Linda Elizabeth. Portraits of Medieval Women: Family, Marriage, and Politics in England, 1255–1350. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
  983. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  984. A group of essays looking at some high-born women, showing them to be active figures in legal and political matters, much of it centering around inheritance.
  985. Find this resource:
  986. Parsons, John Carmi. Eleanor of Castile: Queen and Society in Thirteenth-Century England. New York: St. Martin’s, 1995.
  987. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  988. A scholarly assessment of a queen who has generally had a “soft press” working on her behalf; some revisionism, some debunking.
  989. Find this resource:
  990. Swabey, Fiona. Medieval Gentlewoman: Life in a Widow’s Household in the Later Middle Ages. Stroud, UK: Sutton, 1999.
  991. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  992. The widow was Alice de Bryene, and her household books from 1412 to 1413 allow an examination of a rich woman’s daily life.
  993. Find this resource:
  994. Wheeler, Bonnie, and John Carmi Parsons, eds. Eleanor of Aquitaine, Lord and Lady. New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
  995. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  996. Collected papers reporting on current research on the most famous laywoman of the 12th (and early 13th century, touching on politics, family, crusading, France and England, and patronage and court culture.
  997. Find this resource:
  998. Women at Work and the Medieval Life Cycle
  999.  
  1000. Most medieval women who did not enter the Church went through life in a series of steps: maiden, wife and mother, and widow toward the end. But what they did in secular society, in addition to playing out their familial, domestic, and sexual roles, has also been of interest, though the public and the private in a woman’s life were more likely to have been intertwined than to have occupied separate spheres. Goldberg 1992 and Bennett 1996 study aspects of women at work and Karras 1996 a perennial but socially margin form of employment. Hanawalt 2007 explores the question of how, in an urban setting, women might try to accumulate and control economic assets, while McIntosh 2005 presents a general survey of many forms of women’s economic activity—buyers and sellers, producers and consumers. All of these works offer comparisons between the power and role of men and women in medieval society. Since most women who married outlived their first and often subsequent partners, a focus on the options and circumstances of widows has also attracted attention, as in Walker 1993 and Barron and Sutton 1994, with their numerous case studies. Other works look at different aspects of the life cycle (for men as well as for women), including Orme 2001 on children (as perceived and as socialized) and Rosenthal 1996 on old age, though the nature of the sources forces more attention to old men than to old women.
  1001.  
  1002. Barron, Caroline M. “The ‘Golden Age’ of Women in Medieval London.” Reading Medieval Studies 15 (1989): 35–58.
  1003. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1004. Arguing for opportunity, largely through access to trade, the crafts, and widows’ rights, a statement on behalf of the positive view of late-medieval urban women.
  1005. Find this resource:
  1006. Barron, Caroline M., and Anne F. Sutton, eds. Medieval London Widows, 1300–1500. London: Hambledon, 1994.
  1007. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1008. Collected case studies of women, all with London connections and mostly “success stories” in regard to how they coped in a difficult world, though the pitfalls and disasters are also presented.
  1009. Find this resource:
  1010. Bennett, Judith M. Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women’s Work in a Changing World, 1300–1600. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
  1011. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1012. A study of women at work and how they lost ground to hostile men as the trade became larger and more organized. This is presented as a case study typical of larger economic forces and gender wars.
  1013. Find this resource:
  1014. Goldberg, P. J. P. Women, Work, and Life Cycle in a Medieval Economy: Women in York and Yorkshire, c. 1300–1500. Oxford: Clarendon, 1992.
  1015. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198201540.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1016. This study of working women and their opportunities puts servants, especially young women, into the scholarly agenda.
  1017. Find this resource:
  1018. Hanawalt, Barbara A. The Wealth of Wives: Women, Law, and Economy in Late Medieval London. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
  1019. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1020. A look at the many avenues of action and independence—for some women—in a late-medieval urban setting, with attention to the special characteristics of life in and under the laws and customs of London.
  1021. Find this resource:
  1022. Karras, Ruth Mazo. Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
  1023. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1024. A source of income and employment, an outlet for (male) sexuality, a moral problem, and, in terms of regulation and town ordinances, just another trade or profession.
  1025. Find this resource:
  1026. McIntosh, Marjorie Keniston. Working Women in English Society, 1300–1620. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
  1027. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1028. Setting women in many social and economic contexts with comparisons from modern and non-European settings.
  1029. Find this resource:
  1030. Orme, Nicholas. Medieval Children. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001.
  1031. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1032. An overview or survey from Anglo-Saxon times through the Reformation, though mostly looking at post-Conquest England.
  1033. Find this resource:
  1034. Rosenthal, Joel T. Old Age in Late Medieval England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.
  1035. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1036. Lots of old men and women were around, scattered throughout society.
  1037. Find this resource:
  1038. Walker, Sue Sheridan, ed. Wife and Widow in Medieval England. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.
  1039. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1040. Collected papers that emphasize the many options open to women as well as the many difficult problems and challenges that confronted them.
  1041. Find this resource:
  1042. Economic and Urban History
  1043.  
  1044. These topics have been of interest for many years. New work builds upon older scholarship, and late-20th-century and early-21st-century publications focus largely on trade networks, food and nutrition, and urban government. The line between economic and urban history, as against social and women’s history, is an indistinct one; many of the entries in all of these sections could be relocated without confusion. General surveys endeavor to synthesize a huge body of scholarship, much of it based on a close reading of primary sources (many still unpublished) and of detailed case studies and monographs, while Cohen 2013 generalizes about one interesting aspect of urban life and Bothwell, et al. 2000 turns to a basic if neglected aspect of life and livelihoods. Bolton 1980 is a very good guide of this sort. Dyer 1989 and Britnell 1996 address the question of economic growth, emerging capitalism, and the setbacks and checks in the economy over the course of the centuries; Davis 2012 surveys economic life as reflected in markets and with a serious dose of economic theory. Reynolds 1982 offers a survey of urban life and growth from Roman times through the end of the period. Holt and Rosser 1990 and Thomson 1988 bring together scholarly papers that cover many aspects of urban life and various parts of the realm. For an early 21st-century summary of scholarship touching many aspects of urban and economic history, the new Cambridge Urban History of Britain (Clark 2000) is the most valuable single volume.
  1045.  
  1046. Bolton, James L. The Medieval English Economy, 1150–1500. London: Dent, 1980.
  1047. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1048. A survey that simplifies and arranges a great deal of specialized work and looks at the key issues of expansion and contraction of population and economic life. Though it is beginning to age, it has not been replaced for this purpose; its arguments are much extended in Bolton’s Money in the Medieval English Economy (2012).
  1049. Find this resource:
  1050. Bothwell, James, P. J. P. Goldberg, and W. M. Ormrod, eds. The Problem of Labour in Fourteenth-Century England. York, UK: York Medieval Press, 2000.
  1051. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1052. Papers originally presented at the York Interdisciplinary Conference on the Fourteenth Century, held at the University of York, in July 1998. Eight papers drawing on literature, household materials, and women’s work to offer views about a major factor in the economy, especially in an urban setting.
  1053. Find this resource:
  1054. Britnell, Richard. The Commercialisation of English Society, 1000–1500. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1996.
  1055. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1056. A picture of developing economic life and consumerism as against an old view of a stagnant and supply-and-demand medieval economy. Whether the lines on the graph were mainly up or down has been a point of considerable contention among economic historians.
  1057. Find this resource:
  1058. Clark, Peter, ed. Cambridge Urban History of Britain. Vol. 1, 600–1540. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
  1059. DOI: 10.1017/CHOL9780521431415Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1060. Articles summing up late 20th-century and early 21st-century scholarship and offering an overview: Caroline M. Baron on London (pp. 395–440), Jennifer Kermode on the greater towns (pp. 441–466), Maryanne Kowaleski on the port towns (pp. 467–494), and Barrie Dobson with a general survey, 1300–1540 (pp. 273–290), among others covering various kinds of towns and regions of the kingdom. Between the specific chapters and the general ones, this collaborative volume is a basic secondary source.
  1061. Find this resource:
  1062. Cohen, Samuel K. Popular Protest in Late Medieval English Towns. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
  1063. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1064. Drawing together a vast amount of information across the realm, though the definition of a protest movement is uneven and the aggregation runs from minor episodes of complaint to major confrontations.
  1065. Find this resource:
  1066. Davis, James. Medieval Markets and Morality: Life, Law, and Ethics in the English Marketplace, 1200–1500. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
  1067. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1068. A survey of economic activity, emphasizing growth; economic theory enters in, making this a rich text but less accessible than others listed here.
  1069. Find this resource:
  1070. Dyer, Christopher. The Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: Social Change in England, c. 1200–1500. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
  1071. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139167697Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1072. A survey by a leading economic historian who specializes in the countryside and village and manorial life.
  1073. Find this resource:
  1074. Dyer, Christopher. An Age of Transition? Economy and Society in England in the Later Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
  1075. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1076. The early 21st-century views of an expert, looking for a balance of good news and bad news.
  1077. Find this resource:
  1078. Holt, Richard, and Gervase Rosser, eds. The Medieval Town: A Reader in English Urban History, 1200–1540. London: Longman, 1990.
  1079. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1080. Many of the papers are reprinted articles that have claimed a long-term place in the debates over urban fortunes, London, suburban development, and some provincial towns and cities.
  1081. Find this resource:
  1082. Reynolds, Susan. An Introduction to the History of English Medieval Towns. Oxford: Clarendon, 1982.
  1083. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1084. A revised edition, surveying urban life from Roman Britain through the later Middle Ages; town government, size, and urban life all touched in a short treatment.
  1085. Find this resource:
  1086. Thomson, John A. F., ed. Towns and Townspeople in the Fifteenth Century. Stroud, UK: Sutton, 1988.
  1087. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1088. An edited collection of papers from a 1986 conference with a focus on the variations between towns and change over time.
  1089. Find this resource:
  1090. Case Studies of Cities and Towns
  1091.  
  1092. As well as the more general field of urban history and the role of towns and cities in the political and economic life of the realm, many monographs deal with the cities and more urbanized parts of the kingdom. Some, such as Carlin 1996 and Rosser 1989, are general urban histories of a place—suburbs of London, in this case—while Barron 2004 concentrates on the personnel and structures of the government of the city itself. Other studies focus more on the economy of the town and the urban interaction with the region, as does Kowaleski 1995 for Exeter, Britnell 1986 for Colchester, and Kermode 1998 in a comparative fashion for several northern towns. Phythian-Adams 1979 offers the best case study of the “urban decline” school of thought, while Rawcliffe and Wilson 2004 contains chapters on most of the important aspects of urban life for the second or third city of the kingdom. Rubin 1987 focuses on one aspect of urban life and sets medieval behavior into the context of an important but smallish town. Amor 2011 offers a survey that works to balance the positive side of urban life against the down currents, and Palliser 2014 offers the tale of a major provincial city in a setting that compares York’s tale with that of other well-studied towns.
  1093.  
  1094. Amor, Nicholas R. Late Medieval Ipswich: Trade and Industry. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2011.
  1095. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1096. The usual mixed story: some decline, some signs of growth, and a look at a food riot in 1435.
  1097. Find this resource:
  1098. Barron, Caroline M. London in the Later Middle Ages: Government and People, 1200–1500. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
  1099. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199257775.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1100. Now the major study of the metropolis with a focus on the development of government, relations with the Crown, and the personnel involved in the upper levels of urban life.
  1101. Find this resource:
  1102. Britnell, Richard H. Growth and Decline in Colchester, 1300–1525. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
  1103. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1104. The question of whether towns (and urban life) grew, shrank, or largely held steady has been a major question for those who approach the topic with an eye on economic history.
  1105. Find this resource:
  1106. Carlin, Martha. Medieval Southwark. London: Hambledon, 1996.
  1107. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1108. This study and Rosser 1989 shed light on the way a regional economy and culture flowed outward from England’s only metropolis, with attention to the distinction in economic, political, and social life between London and its near but very different neighbors. Carlin and Rosser offer important studies of the suburbs, places of considerable importance in the tale of large medieval cities.
  1109. Find this resource:
  1110. Davies, Matthew, and Andrew Prescott, eds. London and the Kingdom: Essays in Honour of Caroline M. Barron: Proceedings of the 2004 Harlaxton Symposium. Harlaxton Medieval Studies 16. Donington, UK: Shaun Tyas, 2008.
  1111. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1112. A collection of twenty-four papers (plus a tribute to the honoree) touching on virtually all sides of the medieval city: politics, culture, religion, art and architecture. A valuable collection of interdisciplinary studies.
  1113. Find this resource:
  1114. Kermode, Jennifer. Medieval Merchants: York, Beverly, and Hull in the Later Middle Ages. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
  1115. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1116. A comparative study of northern towns and their different fortunes along with the different roads that led some to prominence and power.
  1117. Find this resource:
  1118. Kowaleski, Maryanne. Local Markets and Regional Trade in Medieval Exeter. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
  1119. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1120. Very much a regional economic history looking at the interaction between the city and its wide hinterland.
  1121. Find this resource:
  1122. Laughton, Jane. Life in a Late Medieval City: Chester, 1275–1520. Oxford: Windgather, 2008.
  1123. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1124. An important provincial market town and a focal point for economic life pointing toward nearby Wales.
  1125. Find this resource:
  1126. Palliser, David M. Medieval York, 600–1540. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
  1127. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199255849.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1128. Valuable comprehensive study of a major provincial city; much comparative material linking York’s story with that of other towns and cities that have been well studied.
  1129. Find this resource:
  1130. Phythian-Adams, Charles. Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
  1131. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1132. Still perhaps the leading monograph on the urban-decline school of interpretation.
  1133. Find this resource:
  1134. Rawcliffe, Carole, and Richard Wilson, eds. Medieval Norwich. London: Hambledon, 2004.
  1135. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1136. An edited volume covering political, cultural, and religious life for the major city East Anglia, telling a tale of great success and eventual decline.
  1137. Find this resource:
  1138. Rosser, Gervase. Medieval Westminster, 1200–1549. Oxford: Clarendon, 1989.
  1139. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1140. The other suburb, alongside Martha Carlin’s Southwark (Carlin 1996), though here the focus is more on the king’s government and its effects on the village.
  1141. Find this resource:
  1142. Rubin, Miri. Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
  1143. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511522444Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1144. A look at the charitable institutions of the town and the links among government, the economy, and “social work.”
  1145. Find this resource:
  1146. Intellectual History, Education, Science, and Medicine
  1147.  
  1148. These are huge areas of interest and research, though much of the intellectual history that veers toward philosophy will be ignored and that focused on religious controversy will be dealt with in a separate entry, as is the vast body of Middle English and Anglo-Norman literature. The history of science focuses to a considerable degree on institutions, as in Rawcliffe 1999 on the major Norwich hospital, a study written to mark the 750th anniversary of its founding. Interest is also found in medical personnel, as in Kealey 1981 and Getz 1990, a study of a similar topic. Rawcliffe 2006 on leprosy deals as much with the disease, from a medical perspective, as it does with an institutional approach, and many myths about the disease are exploded. Ormrod and Lindley 1996 goes beyond the Black Death as a disease and a plague to include papers on the social consequences of the demographic devastation, whereas Rawcliffe 2013 answers with a study of urban hygiene and public health. The history of education and educational institutions is treated with a concern for the curriculum, its institutional and structural framework, and the social impact of schools and learning, as shown in Orme 2006, a general treatment of schools and schooling, and in Catto 1984–1992, on the history of Oxford. Cobban 1999 provides an overview of the English universities. Moran 1985 remains a useful study of schools and schooling in the North.
  1149.  
  1150. Catto, Jeremy, and T. A. R. Evans, eds. History of the University of Oxford. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1984–1992.
  1151. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1152. Edited volumes covering intellectual and institutional life; much basic research is woven into the narrative of what is now the standard work, and considerable attention is devoted to John Wycliffe and heresy at the university. This series is the authoritative general treatment of England’s major medieval university.
  1153. Find this resource:
  1154. Cobban, Alan C. English University Life in the Middle Ages. London: University College London, 1999.
  1155. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1156. A synthetic treatment covering the growth of the two universities and some concern for what they taught and who came there to study.
  1157. Find this resource:
  1158. Getz, Fay. “Medical Practitioners in Medieval England.” Social History of Medicine 3.2 (1990): 245–283.
  1159. DOI: 10.1093/shm/3.2.245Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1160. Reconstructing a database of personnel, an invaluable guide to training and background and also instructive on the value of extant sources.
  1161. Find this resource:
  1162. Kealey, Edward J. Medieval Medicus: A Social History of Anglo-Norman Medicine. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981.
  1163. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1164. More focus on personnel than on the practice of medicine, going with the flow of what sources we have.
  1165. Find this resource:
  1166. Moran, Jo Ann Hoeppner. The Growth of English Schooling, 1340–1548: Learning, Literacy, and Laicization in Pre-Reformation York Diocese. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.
  1167. DOI: 10.1515/9781400856169Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1168. Though running beyond the Reformation, this detailed look at education, in its many aspects, remains a valuable regional study: levels of education, the personnel, the curriculum, and growing literacy.
  1169. Find this resource:
  1170. Orme, Nicholas. Medieval Schools: From Roman Britain to Renaissance England. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.
  1171. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1172. A thorough survey of variety, expansion, and intellectual life as centered on the institutions of formal education, filling out the picture presented in Orme’s From Childhood to Chivalry (1984) about the upper classes.
  1173. Find this resource:
  1174. Ormrod, W. Mark, and Phillip Lindley, eds. The Black Death in England. Stamford, UK: Paul Watkins, 1996.
  1175. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1176. An edited volume with papers that touch many aspects of the plague and look at its consequences. Social as well as medical history.
  1177. Find this resource:
  1178. Rawcliffe, Carole. Medicine for the Soul: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of an English Medieval Hospital; St. Giles’s, Norwich, c. 1249–1500. Stroud, UK: Sutton, 1999.
  1179. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1180. Major study of a single institution, written for its 750th anniversary.
  1181. Find this resource:
  1182. Rawcliffe, Carole. Leprosy in Medieval England. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2006.
  1183. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1184. Medical history and major revisionism regarding both a dreaded disease and how it was perceived by medieval society.
  1185. Find this resource:
  1186. Rawcliffe, Carole. Urban Bodies: Communal Health in Late Medieval English Towns and Cities. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2013.
  1187. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1188. Innovative, thorough, and challenging in its presentation of the case for hygiene, public awareness of health and safety measures, and the response of authorities and their subjects.
  1189. Find this resource:
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