Late Medieval England

Talk given at the Leeds IMC 2024 for the Royal Historical Society's  panel on 'The Experience of Local Officialdom, between Order and Disorder, III: Officials As Tools of Governance over and across Distance'

Aspects of Perers’ career have been identified by esteemed scholars, such as Lapsley, Maddicott, Fryde and Saul, but it merits much further attention when considered as a whole. He was once thought to be two men, one a sheriff based in the south of England and affiliated to the earl of Richmond (loyal to Edward II until the Despenser regime), the other a military retainer of Thomas, earl of Lancaster (a constant opponent of the king) and based in the midlands of England. However, I have shown beyond reasonable doubt that they are in fact the same figure, which provides valuable insights into how members of the gentry could negotiate power during a time of extreme crisis within England. Placing Richard into the wider context of the sheriffs of Essex-Hertfordshire in this period, some of whom navigated events much less successfully, he shows himself to have been indispensable to the Lancastrian, Edwardian and Mortimerian regimes of the 1310s and 1320s.

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Recent efforts to conceptualize the "pre-modern multiple" only occasionally reckon with the Middle Ages. Medieval multiples are frequently positioned against their modern counterparts—especially print—and subsequently presented as isolated, unrealized forms of mass (re)production. Yet the multiple was not an anomaly but rather the product of a common mode of artistic creation in the Middle Ages, found in a wide variety of materials and object types. Recognizing its ubiquity in visual and material culture, this conference brings together scholars to consider the multiple in the interconnected cultures of Afro-Eurasia between ca. 500 and 1500: its ontological status, the ways in which it could be produced, and how its makers and viewers recognized (or failed to recognize) replication.

Published in the "Revue Historique de Bordeaux et du département de la Gironde", no. 20, 2014. Several unpublished documents permit to know the paid truces (the "patis") made between places of Aquitaine-Gascony, particularly Saint-Emilion, and some neighbouring "French" garrisons.

... Politics and the Three Estates, 1424-1488 (East Linton, 2001) and The History of the Scottish Parliament, Vol ... many interesting reports on the Three Estates of the county of Provence: Le Livre Potentia des États de Provence, 1391-1523, ed. G. Gouiran and M. Hébert (Paris, 1997 ...

SM Appendix for Increasing Returns to Scale in the Towns of Early Tudor England. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01615440.2020.1722775?journalCode=vhim20

For data and R script of analysis, see https://github.com/rcesaret/TudorEnglandUrbanScaling

Le roman de Horn, Jehan et Blonde et Jehan de Paris sont des récits de différentes périodes et styles de la littérature médiévale française, qui montrent comment le héros chevaleresque se consacre à l’étranger. Et pour y arriver, il doit affronter dans les trois cas un rival étranger. Cette étude contrastée des trois récits se propose d’observer comment la conscience narratrice envisage les rapports du héros avec la culture autre où il se consacre. Étant donné qu’il s’agit de pays chrétiens dans tous les cas, des rapports de convergence et de divergence sont décelables entre le héros et ceux qui l’accueillent dans les trois récits.

Présentation dans le cadre de la 6ème journée des jeunes chercheurs du CRULH, Nancy, 13 avril 2023.

La trajectoire d’Antonio Pessagno est radicalement atypique à l’échelle de l’Angleterre du premier XIVe siècle. Elle se comprend seulement en étudiant le lien entre ce Génois et l’institution royale, et doit être replacée dans le contexte propre à la succession monarchique entre Édouard II et Édouard III. Loin d’être un « cas typique », voire un cas « exceptionnel normal » (Edoardo Grendi), Pessagno est au contraire un « cas limite », comme Menocchio dans Le Fromage et les Vers (Carlo Ginzburg), dont l’étude est un outil pour mieux comprendre la causalité existante entre la participation des marchands étrangers au fonctionnement de l’État en formation et leurs possibilités d’insertion dans la société anglaise.

Nous avons deux propositions. L'une estime que les Vikings présents en Gascogne dès les années 770 ont dominé le pays entre 840 et 982 et ne l'ont jamais quitté malgré leur défaite. L'autre considère qu'ils ont bien attaqué la région, mais qu'ils n'auraient jamais songé à s'y installer. Or, les historiens qui contestent l'installation des hommes du Nord reconnaissent ne pas savoir ce qu'il s'est passé en Gascogne faute de sources et sont incapables d'expliquer ce qui aurait pu empêcher les hommes du Nord de s'y installer. Il devrait pourtant être aisé de relever des indices permettant de trancher en faveur de l'une ou l'autre hypothèse. Nous allons lister quelques anomalies et incongruités historiques qui permettront, à ceux qui en ont l'ambition, de se faire un avis sur la question.

Taking English medieval probate inventories as a case study this article introduces a methodological approach to inventories adapted from the narratological frameworks of Gérard Genette. Using this novel methodology this study explores how we might identify narrative elements within inventories and in so doing better our understanding of the objects and spaces of late medieval houses. It outlines how legal frameworks, the inventorying genre, and the organizational techniques of individual appraisers contributed to processes of narrativization. Moreover, it demonstrates how in praxis this narratological approach can recover traces of hidden objects, spaces, and the movement of appraisers, which have been preserved within the text of these documents. Finally, it highlights the potential of this methodology to be adapted in future work in order to examine systems of classification employed by appraisers, or the contexts of production for inventory corpora.

What does it means to negotiate marriage? According to the Longman Synonym Dictio-nary the meaning of the word negotiate is complex: “Bargain, make a deal, go back and forth, give and take, compromise, meet halfway, agree on, settle differences, settle, come to terms, contract, conclude, complete, finish.” The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of Synonyms and Anto-nyms mentions that negotiating is connected to arrange: “Negotiate, arrange mean to bring about through an exchange of views and wishes and agreement reached by bargaining and compromise … . Negotiate suggests that the dealings are carried on by diplomatic, business, or legal agencies …”, and “Arrange implies dealings intended for the restoration or establishment of order of those carried out between private persons or their representatives… Arrange a marriage as they did long ago”.Couples today negotiate their relationships and their marriage contract over and over again. They ask: what are my obligations – what are yours? In wh...

In studying the political controversies of early "Tudor" England, not enough attention has been paid to the paperwork available pertaining to several key figures and families involved in these events, especially the property documents and wills of the Tyrell and Darcy families; these reveal some important and surprisingly overlooked interrelationships between the actors in these events and their motivations, with some possibly significant implications.

Medieval physical mobility is a field of research of persistent relevance. The sources, however, often lack information allowing to approach questions related to day-to-day exchanges among social groups below the ruling elites and the high clergy. The Paston letters are the most extensive medieval collection of English private letters comprising over one thousand epistles written by the Norfolk family Paston and their environment. They contain a wealth of information related to everyday mobility. The Pastons had risen from small landowners to one of the most influential families in East Anglia in just two generations. The administration of the family’s increasingly disparate country estates in Norfolk required regular presence in different locations. In addition to the duties in Norfolk, they had obligations in London and to the Duke of Norfolk, which involved increasing mobility from the Pastons. During the absence of their husbands or sons, the Paston women took over the administrative tasks arising on the estates. This mobility, and the resulting spatial distance between the individual family members, resulted in a lively correspondence that still bears witness to the family’s mobility and that of their close surroundings. This study is the first to use the Paston letters to survey the various facets of this mobility related to the English gentry and to assess the role and significance of these exchanges within this social group.

The handling of infanticide in late medieval France offers modern audiences an underappreciated paradox: on the one hand infant murder was deplored as grave sin and crime, on the other hand, it was a pardonable offence, even the infanticidal singlemother who had killed to conceal her sin could obtain royal grace. This is far more than the usual story of law differing from practice. Christian ideology of mercy and forgiveness for sin played a central role in shaping the regulation of illegitimate births as well as abortions, stillbirths, and infanticide. Church and secular authorities alike sought to prevent as well as punish the death of infants, but they also created and implemented systems of justice with the explicit purpose of providing mercy to the repentant murderer, even an infanticide.

 John Bellenden's Chronicles of Scotland (1531-r. 1537) is a humanist Scots translation of Hector Boece's Scotorum Historia (1527). As the first full-scale printed national history in the vernacular, the Chronicles assumed a pivotal role in sixteenth-century Scottish literary culture. Despite its contemporary importance,however, relatively little critical attention has been paid to Bellenden's work itself, primarily due to the misconception that it is a neutral translation of the Scotorum Historia . However, as Bellenden successively revised his text in several stages with stylistical, ideological and material alterations, the Chronicles needs to be evaluated as an individual literary work. The Chronicles reveals much about translation practice, cultural attitudes and book history in early modern Scotland. This thesis situates John Bellenden as a leading vernacular humanist whose concern to heighten the quality of vernacular Scots gave major impetus to the vernacular tr...

Our article explores the bed as an object that projects notions of status, aspiration, decorum, and morality. We are interested in the economic and symbolic values that accrue to the bed, bedding, and the bedroom in late medieval England, as described in wills and household accounts, and as evoked in literary and artistic imagery. We situate our analysis in relation to literal and represented household beds, those associated with birth and inheritance and also those portrayed in images of death. “Childbed” and “deathbed” are terms that frame the human lifecycle. They also invoke the most important item of furniture in the premodern household. To Johan Bedell my servaunt . . . an honest whole complete bed and all other things therto belonging for a bedde.—John Goodwyn, 1522 (TNA Prob11/20/377) Take here hede and lerne howeȝ þou schalt make an honest bede and a good plesinge vnto god profitabel and worschipful vnto þi soule. (Take heed here and learn how you shall make an honest bed a...

Our article explores the bed as an object that projects notions of status, aspiration, decorum, and morality. We are interested in the economic and symbolic values that accrue to the bed, bedding, and the bedroom in late medieval England, as described in wills and household accounts, and as evoked in literary and artistic imagery. We situate our analysis in relation to literal and represented household beds, those associated with birth and inheritance and also those portrayed in images of death. “Childbed” and “deathbed” are terms that frame the human lifecycle. They also invoke the most important item of furniture in the premodern household. To Johan Bedell my servaunt . . . an honest whole complete bed and all other things therto belonging for a bedde.—John Goodwyn, 1522 (TNA Prob11/20/377) Take here hede and lerne howeȝ þou schalt make an honest bede and a good plesinge vnto god profitabel and worschipful vnto þi soule. (Take heed here and learn how you shall make an honest bed a...

Riikka Miettinen’s fine first book strikes a powerful blow to the ‘myth of early modern strong states’ (9). In legal historical circles, the early modern era is best known for its Judicial Revolution, which witnessed a transition from restorative justice administered locally and communally to a system based on retributive justice, imposed top-down by a centralized and bureaucratized state, and which employed an elite, university-educated judicature. What is at debate here is the extent to which this transition empowered the state and permitted control over its subjects and their values. While studies like Matthew Lockwood’s recent Conquest of Death: Violence and the Birth of the Modern English State1 see this transition as integral to the development of an authoritarian state controlling its population with an iron grip, Miettinen demonstrates the sheer impossibility of the ideal for the early modern Kingdom of Sweden. Not only was the kingdom sparsely populated, with 90% of its population living in isolated rural hamlets, it was a land of diversity. Including also Finland and Kexholm, the realm’s inhabitants were linguistically diverse (speaking Swedish, Finnish and Russian) and religiously diverse (Lutheran, eastern Orthodox and the animistic faith of the Sámi people). Miettinen uses the crime of suicide as a gateway to underscore just how local and communal justice continued to be during this crucial period.