Nigel Saul

Scenes from Provincial Life: Knightly Families in Sussex, 1280-1400

Looking at the world of the medieval gentry through the eyes of three families in East Sussex--the Etchinhams of Etchinham, the Sackvilles of Buckhurst, and the Waleyses of Glynde--Scenes from Provincial Life presents an insightful picture of what day-to-day life was like for a member of a knightly family in the Middle Ages. It draws on charters, estate documents, and even information gleaned from buildings and churches of the day to provide an illuminating account of the central preoccupations of landowners--estate management, military service, provision for relatives, and arrangements for schooling.

England and the Low Countries in the late Middle Ages

This volume of papers given at the biennial fifteenth-century history conference held at Royal Holloway, University of London, in 1991 concentrates on relations between England and the Low Countries during the 150 years from the accession of Edward III in 1327 to the death of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, in 1477. Among the topics considered are aspects of trade between England and the Burgundian Netherlands, Flemish influence on English language and drama, the role of music at the Anglo-French conference at Amiens in 1392, the significance of Edward IVs stay with Louis de Gruthuyse at Bruges, the Flemish-influenced wall-paintings of Eton College, and consumer impact on the book trade in England and Burgundy. An introductory survey draws these threads together and considers the theme of political and cultural relations across the North Sea as a whole.

New Light on the Medieval Gough Map of Britain

ABSTRACT Remarkably little is known about the earliest surviving separate-sheet medieval map of Britain that takes its name from its former owner, Richard Gough (1735–1809), and that has been variously dated to between 1300 and 1400, and later. It presents a sophisticated cartographical image at a time when detailed maps of individual regions were almost unknown in Europe, yet nothing is agreed about its possible origins, context (ecclesiastical or secular), or why and how it was compiled. In the belief that historical interpretation has to stem from an intimate knowledge of the map as artefact—the state of the parchment, nature of the inks, palaeography—as well as image, an informal study group of historians and scientists (the Gough Map Panel) was convened in 2012 to examine the map through high resolution digital reproduction, hyperspectral analysis, three-dimensional analysis and Raman pigment analysis. Although the study is still ongoing, much that is new has been discovered, notably about the way features were marked on the map, Gough’s application to the map of a damaging reagent to render place-names readable, and the extent to which the original map (now dated to c.1400), although never completed, was nonetheless reworked on two different occasions in the fifteenth century, effectively creating two further maps. These and other findings are summarized here to encourage the further study of the map’s features that is needed before it can be fully understood.

The Brockworth Poll Tax Return, 1377

Among the muniments of Westminster Abbey is a hitherto unpublished poll tax return of 1377 from the manor of Brockworth (Glos.), which belonged to Llanthony Priory. The return is of singular interest in recording details of the names and destinations of emigrants from the village in the months before the levying of the tax. A high level of migration is revealed. Generally, the migrants went to local villages and towns. A significant minority, however, left for destinations further afield, chiefly in the Severn valley and Welsh Marches. The evidence of the return is a powerful reminder of the importance of migration as a regulatory mechanism in the English rural economy.

Terry Jones’s Richard II

For Terry Jones, Richard II is a much maligned ruler. Obstructed by a gaggle of obscurantist barons, deposed by a slippery usurper, and with his reputation besmirched by Lancastrian propaganda, Richard, in Terry’s view, is deserving of better in the eyes of posterity. Far from the self-centered, vengeful monarch portrayed in the textbooks, Richard, for Terry, was actually a wise and beneficent ruler who sought the good of his people. In his final years, when he ruled without baronial constraint, he conducted what Terry calls “a bold experiment in ideal kingship.”1 Its aim was to shield the king’s humbler subjects from the policy of aggressive war with France that suited only the warmongering baronage. After 1399, however, when Henry IV seized the crown from his cousin, history was rewritten to blacken the former king’s name. Our assessment of Richard’s kingship, Terry argues, should be based not on the hostile Lancastrian accounts but on sources that date from the king’s own lifetime. In particular, we should try to judge Richard’s achievement in the light of contemporary expectations of kingship for the common good. Viewed in this light, Richard can be seen for what he was—an exponent of the ideas in the “mirrors for princes” literature, a monarch who triumphed over faction, ruling in the common interest. Such in outline are Terry’s arguments, first articulated in Who Murdered Chaucer? in 2003 and developed five years later in his essay “Was Richard II a Tyrant?”2 It is a case that Terry argues with great passion and learning. But how far does it actually convince?

Language, Lordship, and Architecture: The Brass of Sir Thomas and Lady Walsh at Wanlip, Leicestershire, and its Context

Abstract The brass of Sir Thomas Walsh and his wife, dated 1393, at Wanlip (Leics.) is notable for affording the earliest extant example of an English inscription on a high-status tomb monument. It is suggested that the reason for the unusual choice of language was the patrons’ desire to attract intercession from the widest possible audience in recognition of their rebuilding of the church and ‘hallowing’ of the churchyard, both recorded on the inscription. It is shown that the church itself is a distinguished building, notable for incorporating motifs from the new state apartments commissioned by John of Gaunt at Kenilworth Castle, a borrowing explicable in terms of Sir Thomas’s close associations with Gaunt.

Founders and Fellowship. The Early History of Exeter College, Oxford, 1314–1592 . By John Maddicott. 240mm. Pp xii+353, 2 maps, 22 pls. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014. isbn 9780199689514. £75 (hbk).

up to the enforcement of greater order on the unruly Debatable Land following the union of the Crowns in the person of James VI and I in 1603. The author makes the point that even quite modest land-holders were now expected to provide themselves with ‘ane tour’ for their families and tenants, especially after this was legislated for in 1535. Those first two chapters occupy almost half of the book, covering the ground that the author rightly considers deserves the closest attention. The rest of the first part consists of four brief chapters: urban strongholds; bastles, pele-houses and peles; the seventeenth century and later; and restoration and conservation. One of those chapters that will leave many readers wishing for more of the author’s insights is that on bastles and pele-houses, many of which were probably built in response to the act of 1535; the author defines these as ‘“strong” farmhouses with integral cattle-sheds’. There are, of course, long-standing differences of definition of these types on the two sides of the Border, but for the purposes of his discussion the author usefully defines the former as being normally of no more than two storeys, the lower being stone-vaulted, while the latter were generally unvaulted and built of claybonded masonry. The second part consists of a single heavily illustrated chapter entitled ‘Architectural and Other Features’; it occupies more than a third of the book and the present reviewer found it a fascinating feast of food for thought. Opening with a discussion of masonry, it moves on to consider many of the component elements that are to be found in these buildings, and that provide much of their diagnostic evidence. It is perhaps a pity that the courtyards of ancillary buildings that were invariably associated with these towers, and that are appositely described by the author as ‘the bustling community of men and animals’, are relegated to a short section on ‘barmkins’ in this chapter. While it is understandable why the author followed this course, such summary coverage perhaps gives a hostage to those who insist that towers should not be considered in isolation. There has been a recent resurgence of interest in Scottish fortified residences, and much good work has been achieved, although it must be conceded that there has also been a strand of eccentric dogmatism, occasionally coloured by nationalism, that has tended to cloud a number of issues. Indeed, it has been argued by some that there is no such category as the ‘tower-house’. Alastair Maxwell-Irving’s work has for long stood out as a beacon of what can be achieved through painstakingly methodical research based on deep personal commitment and inherent good sense. This latest book is an invaluable contribution to the detailed understanding of a coherent and geographically discrete grouping of buildings.

The Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker . Translated by Preest David with introduction and notes by Barber Richard. Pp xxvii+155, bw'>isbn 9781843836919. £50 (hbk).

owing labour services would have done. A considerable part of the book is devoted to the methods used in turning the grain into bread and ale. The bakery and brewhouse on the premises were controlled by three obedientiaries, namely the master of the cellar, the cellarer and the sacrist. The bakery produced three different types of bread: the so-called ‘knights’ bread’ and ‘monks’ bread’, and a lightweight bread for famuli (servants). About 29,000 loaves were produced annually. When we turn to consumption, each monk was given enough for 2,600 kcal but it is unlikely that he would have consumed it all; probably half was given away to servants and paupers. In addition to the considerable amount distributed to the needy by the almoner, special arrangements were made to feed the local anchorites and hermits as well as the prisoners in the city’s gaols, who otherwise would have starved. Ale was made principally of barley. It is odd that hops are not mentioned despite their introduction into the area (Brears 2008, 104). Two kinds of ale were made, the so-called cervisia bona (monastic ale of a superior quality) and cervisia aule/seconda. The good stuff went to the monks, aristocratic guests and master masons, the secondary to workers of inferior status. Both were made of barley malt. A gallon a day was the gargantuan allowance but it was probably not all consumed and anyway is likely to have been considerably weaker than modern beer, with an alcoholic strength of about 2 per cent. As regards the charge of overeating, it has to be said that the brethren had fasting periods – they were forbidden to eat meat during Advent, the four weeks before Christmas, and during ‘long Lent’, seven weeks before Easter. They were also required to ‘fast’ three days a week (ie, to live on fish and cereals). The result, nevertheless, of the consumption of such excessive amounts by men leading passive and contemplative lives was to cause obesity and lethal symptoms associated with adiposity. This would have led to a high mortality rate as noted by Barbara Harvey in her study of Westminster Abbey (Harvey 1993). Slavin has, by meticulous study of the documentary sources, shown that they can be made to yield an impressive stock of statistics on which to base a credible account of the provisioning of a major religious institution in the late Middle Ages.

English Medieval Shrines . By John Crook. 250mm. Pp 342, 4 figs, many b&w pls. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011. ISBN 9781843636827. £39.95 (hbk).

however, there is a substantial increase in the number of carvings and they are spread much more evenly over the whole area. Furthermore, the Anglian sculptures of the Lune Valley are closely related to each other and stylistically linked to Northumbrian sites to the north and east, while the Anglian material in Mercian Cheshire betrays links to the Midlands and the south. To a certain extent this north/south divide continues into the Viking period. However, in the area around the Mersey and Dee rivers and on the Wirral peninsula, a significant level of influence from Ireland can also be detected. There are 184 carvings in Lancashire and Cheshire, from about sixty sites, with an additional twenty-three Appendix A carvings (Saxo-Norman or uncertain date) from a further eleven sites. Most of the sites have one or two examples, but several have produced large collections, including Chester St John, Halton, Heysham, Lancaster St Mary, Sandbach and Whalley. Another collection, from Bromborough, was almost completely destroyed in the 1930s. The Sandbach crosses were broken up and the fragments dispersed in the seventeenth century. Some of the pieces were built into a grotto in the eighteenth century, but, unlike Bromborough, many of the Sandbach fragments were eventually recovered and carefully reassembled in 1816 in the town’s Market Square. The Sandbach crosses are sculptures of national importance and there are also major sculptures at Neston in Cheshire, and at Halton, Heysham, Lancaster and Whalley (all in Lancashire). As well as these and other larger scale monuments, there are delightful smallscale carvings such as the hook-beaked bird from Heysham (probably part of a chair) and the delicately carved beasts on the tiny hogback from Bidston. In the tenth and eleventh centuries circle-headed crosses form a distinctive monument group in the Wirral and Chester area, while round-shaft crosses, on which the lower shaft is round and the upper shaft square in section, are found in the Cheshire Peak District and in neighbouring Derbyshire and Staffordshire. Any new book by Richard Bailey is good news. Here he is writing about the strategically important north-western border lands of Mercia and Northumbria, and the different influences at work on sculpture to the north and south of this frontier. This provides an added frisson to the discussions and descriptions of the sculptures featured in the catalogues and helps to give this volume in the Corpus its special character.

The Growth of a Mausoleum: The Pre-1600 Tombs and Brasses of St George's Chapel, Windsor

A comprehensive study is attempted of the pre-1600 monuments in St Georges Chapel, Windsor Castle. Use is made for the first time of a key source, the set of plans of the chapel floors made by Henry Emlyn in 1789. These show the chapel once W have contained a large collection of monumental brasses. The plans are examined alongside the evidence of the extant indents in the chapel and cloister to reconstruct the original lay-out of the brasses. It is demonstrated that the great majority of the brasses commemorated the deans and canons who served the chapel. It is argued that the character of the chapel as a mausoleum changed after 1475, when Edward IV embarked on the building of the present fabric. From this time, the ranks of the commemorated expanded to include layfolk, particularly Knights of the Garter and men with royal connections, while, alongside the brasses, big sculpted monuments were commissioned in the side chapels of the building.