Civic Community in Late Medieval Lincoln

Civic Community in Late Medieval Lincoln
Author: Alan Kissane
Publisher: Boydell Press
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2017
Genre: Black Death
ISBN: 9781783271634

The later middle ages saw provincial towns and their civic community contending with a number of economic, social and religious problems - including famine and the plague. This book, using Lincoln - then a significant urban centre - as a case study, investigates how such a community dealt with these issues, looking in particular at the links between town and central government, and how they influenced local customs and practices. The author then argues, with an assessment of industry, trade and civic finance, that towns such as Lincoln were often well placed to react to changes in the economy, by actively forging closer links with the crown both as suppliers of goods and services and as financiers. The book goes on to explore the foundations of civic government and the emergence of local guilds and chantries, showing that each reflected broader trends in local civic culture, being influenced in only a minor way by the Black Death, an event traditionally seen as a major turning point in late medieval urban history. Alan Kissane gained his PhD from the University of Nottingham.

After the Black Death

After the Black Death
Author: Mark Bailey
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2021-02-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198857888

The Black Death was the worst pandemic in recorded history. This book presents a major reevaluation of its immediate impact and longer-term consequences in England.

Urban Society and Monastic Lordship in Reading, 1350-1600

Urban Society and Monastic Lordship in Reading, 1350-1600
Author: Joe Chick
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2022-12-13
Genre: Monasticism and religious orders
ISBN: 1783277564

Interrogates the standard view of turbulent and violent town-abbey relations through a combination of traditional and new research techniques.

Credit and Trade in Later Medieval England, 1353-1532

Credit and Trade in Later Medieval England, 1353-1532
Author: Richard Goddard
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2016-06-21
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1137489871

This book challenges the notion that economic crises are modern phenomena through its exploration of the tumultuous ‘credit-crunch’ of the later Middle Ages. It illustrates clearly how influences such as the Black Death, inter-European warfare, climate change and a bullion famine occasioned severe and prolonged economic decline across fifteenth century England. Early chapters discuss trends in lending and borrowing, and the use of credit to fund domestic trade through detailed analysis of the Statute Staple and rich primary sources. The author then adopts a broad-based geographic lens to examine provincial credit before focusing on London’s development as the commercial powerhouse in late medieval business. Academics and students of modern economic change and historic financial revolutions alike will see that the years from 1353 to 1532 encompassed immense upheaval and change, reminiscent of modern recessions. The author carefully guides the reader to see that these shifts are the precursors of economic change in the early modern period, laying the foundations for the financial world as we know it today.

Constructing a Civic Community in Late Medieval London

Constructing a Civic Community in Late Medieval London
Author: David Harry
Publisher:
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2019
Genre: History
ISBN:

An examination of the growth of civic power in the turbulent arena of late medieval London. In the late fourteenth century, London's government, through mismanagement and negligence, experienced a series of crises. Relationships with the crown were tested; competing factions sought to wrest power from the hands of the once all-powerful victualling guilds; revolt in the streets in 1381 targeted the institutions of royal as well as civic power; and, between 1392 and 1397, King Richard removed the liberties of the city and appointed his own wardensto govern in place of the mayor of London. This book examines the strategies employed by the generation of London aldermen who governed after 1397 to regain control of their city. By examining a range of interdisciplinary sources, including manuscript and printed books, administrative records, accounts of civic ritual and epitaphs, the author shows how, by carefully constructing the idea of a civic community united by shared political concerns and spiritual ambitions, a small number of men virtually monopolised power in the capital. More generally, this is an exploration of the mentalities of those who sought civic power in the late Middle Ages and provokes the question: whygovern, and for whom? DAVID HARRY is Lecturer in History at the University of Chester.

Marriage, Sex, and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London

Marriage, Sex, and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London
Author: Shannon McSheffrey
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2013-04-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812203976

Awarded honorable mention for the 2007 Wallace K. Ferguson Prize sponsored by the Canadian Historical Association How were marital and sexual relationships woven into the fabric of late medieval society, and what form did these relationships take? Using extensive documentary evidence from both the ecclesiastical court system and the records of city and royal government, as well as advice manuals, chronicles, moral tales, and liturgical texts, Shannon McSheffrey focuses her study on England's largest city in the second half of the fifteenth century. Marriage was a religious union—one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church and imbued with deep spiritual significance—but the marital unit of husband and wife was also the fundamental domestic, social, political, and economic unit of medieval society. As such, marriage created political alliances at all levels, from the arena of international politics to local neighborhoods. Sexual relationships outside marriage were even more complicated. McSheffrey notes that medieval Londoners saw them as variously attributable to female seduction or to male lustfulness, as irrelevant or deeply damaging to society and to the body politic, as economically productive or wasteful of resources. Yet, like marriage, sexual relationships were also subject to control and influence from parents, relatives, neighbors, civic officials, parish priests, and ecclesiastical judges. Although by medieval canon law a marriage was irrevocable from the moment a man and a woman exchanged vows of consent before two witnesses, in practice marriage was usually a socially complicated process involving many people. McSheffrey looks more broadly at sex, governance, and civic morality to show how medieval patriarchy extended a far wider reach than a father's governance over his biological offspring. By focusing on a particular time and place, she not only elucidates the culture of England's metropolitan center but also contributes generally to our understanding of the social mechanisms through which premodern European people negotiated their lives.

Archaeology, Economy, and Society

Archaeology, Economy, and Society
Author: David A. Hinton
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2022-05-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000583694

This book examines the contribution of archaeology to the study of the social, economic, religious, and other developments in England from the end of the Roman period at the start of the fifth century to the beginnings of the Renaissance at the end of the fifteenth century. The first edition of the book was published in 1990, and remains the only synthesis of the whole spectrum of medieval archaeology. This new edition is completely rewritten and extended, but uses the same chronological approach to investigate how society and economy evolved. It draws on a wide range of new data, derived from excavation, investigation of buildings, metal-detection, and scientific techniques. It examines the social customs, economic pressures, and environmental constraints within which people functioned; the technology available to them; and how they expressed themselves, for example in their houses, their burial customs, their costume, and their material possessions such as pottery. Their adaptation to new circumstances, whether caused by human factors such as the re-emergence of towns or changing taxation requirements, or by external ones such as volcanic activity or the Black Death, is explored throughout each chapter. The new edition of Archaeology, Economy, and Society will be essential reading for students and researchers of the archaeology of Medieval England.

The Destruction of Jerusalem, or Titus and Vespasian

The Destruction of Jerusalem, or Titus and Vespasian
Author: Kara L. McShane
Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2021-10-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 158044489X

Within the English fall of Jerusalem tradition, nearly all scholarly attention has gone to Siege of Jerusalem, which has enjoyed critical and pedagogical attention of late. Michael Livingston's 2004 edition with the Middle English Texts Series/MIP drew attention to the text, and Adrienne Williams Boyarin has recently published a new translation with Broadview Press that appears in the Broadview Anthology of British Literature's medieval volume (and as a stand-alone volume). With this edition of the Destruction of Jerusalem, we hope to bring the poem (which is extant in more copies than Siege) into the conversation. METS/MIP is precisely the right series and press to publish Destruction. The work would complement METS volumes such as The King of Tars, Richard Coer de Lion, and Crusades romances such as Three Middle English Charlemagne Romances. Indeed, given METS's broad offerings in Middle English romance, the series is a natural home for Destruction. Destruction would be of tremendous value particularly in courses focused on Crusades traditions, traditions of medieval anti-Semitism, vernacular theology, or late medieval depictions of difference more broadly, matters of considerable scholarly and pedagogical interest to medievalists of late.

Property, Power and the Growth of Towns

Property, Power and the Growth of Towns
Author: Catherine Casson
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2023-05-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1000876772

Local enterprise, institutional quality and strategic location were of central importance in the growth of medieval towns. This book, comprising a study of 112 English towns, emphasises these key factors. Downstream locations on major rivers attracted international trade, and thereby stimulated the local processing of imports and exports, while the early establishment of richly endowed religious institutions funnelled agricultural rental income into a town, where it was spent on luxury goods produced by local craftsmen and artisans, and on expensive, long-running building schemes. Local entrepreneurs who recognised the economic potential of a town developed residential suburbs which attracted wealthy residents. Meanwhile town authorities invested in the building and maintenance of bridges, gates, walls and ditches, often with financial support from wealthy residents. Royal lordship was also an advantage to a town, as it gave the town authorities direct access to the king and bypassed local power-brokers such as bishops and earls. The legacy of medieval investment remains visible today in the streets of important towns. Drawing on rentals, deeds and surveys, this book also examines in detail the topography of seven key medieval towns: Bristol, Gloucester, Coventry, Cambridge, Birmingham, Shrewsbury and Hull. In each case, surviving records identify the location and value of urban properties, and their owners and tenants. Using statistical techniques, previously applied only to the early modern and modern periods, the book analyses the impact of location and type of property on property values. It shows that features of the modern property market, including spatial autocorrelation, were present in the middle ages. Property hot-spots of high rents are also identified; the most valuable properties were those situated between the market and other focal points such transport hubs and religious centres, convenient for both, but remote from noise and pollution. This book takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on expertise from the disciplines of economics and history. It will be of interest to historians and to social scientists looking for a long-run perspective on urban development.

Children Forsaken

Children Forsaken
Author: Steven Walker
Publisher: Critical Publishing
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2021-07-12
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1913453847

A shocking reminder of the cruel history of childhood that has been largely hidden and forgotten. Children Forsaken provides a long, historical, overarching examination of the phenomenon of child abuse. In the UK battered child syndrome was 'discovered' in the 1960s, whilst child sexual abuse gained attention in the early 1980s. Subsequent enquiries, legislation and practice developments have focused narrowly on reacting to events giving the impression that child abuse is a recent problem. Yet the historical record provides a multitude of examples of the ritual slaughter, sexual and physical abuse of children continuing since Ancient times. This book place child abuse in the context of the way children and childhood have been understood throughout the ages, but also show that despite legal definitions, and children's rights laws, children and young people continue to suffer. This book enables practitioners and those training in the helping professions to gain a deeper understanding of how embedded in human society child abuse has been and still is. Practitioners need to perceive child abuse as a long-standing problem about children's status in the World, their legal and human rights, and that much work is still needed to ensure children's needs and safety are paramount. "This ambitious book paints an important and erudite picture of child abuse and social responses to it, bringing us up-to-date with a call for continued vigilance, compassion, and action." Professor Jonathan Parker, Bournemouth University