In his masterly new book, Christopher Dyer reviews our thinking about the economy of Britain in the middles ages. In analysing economic development and change, he allows us to reconstruct, often vividly, the daily lives and experiences of people in the past. The period covered here (850-1520) saw dramatic alterations in the state of the economy, and this account begins with the forming of villages, towns, networks of exchange and the social hierarchy in the ninth and tenth centuries, and ends with the inflation, population rise, and colonial expansion of the sixteenth century. This is a book about ideas and attitudes as well as the material world, and Dyer shows how people regarded the economy and how they responded to economic change. We see the growth of towns, the clearance of woods and wastes, the Great Famine, the Black Death and the upheavals in the fifteenth century through the eyes of those who lived through these great events. Changes were not always planned or directed by the rich and powerful, but arose from the uncoordinated ambitions and actions of thousands of ordinary people. Making a living in a changing world presented peasants, artisans and wage workers, as well as barons and monks, with dilemmas and decisions, which this book highlights. The lives of these people were also subject to impersonal forces, such as changes in the climate, but this book emphasises the choices that were made. This book will guide readers through the controversies on the impact of the Vikings and the Norman Conquest, the importance of population growth, the fourteenth-century crisis and urban decline. Dyer deals with issues in social history which had an impact on the economy, such as family structures, social control and social protest. He uses the evidence of archaeology and the landscape as well as the more conventional written sources. Clearly and robustly written, this book sets a new standard for the understanding of medieval life.
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• The knight in England
• Military culture
• The shifting borders of nobility
• The rise of conciliarism
• The king and the peers
• Local violence
• Personal violence
• Dominating localities
• The seigneurial court
• Capital justice and the rise of liberties
• Conduct
• Expectation and demands
• Piety.

William the Conqueror's victory in 1066 was the beginning of a period of major transformation for medieval English aristocrats. In this groundbreaking book, David Crouch examines for the first time the fate of the English aristocracy between the reigns of the Conqueror and Edward I. Offering an original explanation of medieval society-one that no longer employs traditional "feudal" or "bastard feudal" models-Crouch argues that society remade itself around the emerging principle of nobility in the generations on either side of 1200, marking the beginning of the ancien regime. The book describes the transformation in aristocrats' expectations, conduct, piety, and status; in expressions of social domination; and in the relationship with the monarchy. Synchronizing English social history with non-English scholarship, Crouch places England's experience of change within a broader European transformation and highlights England's important role in the process. With his accustomed skill, Crouch redefines a fascinating era and the noble class that emerged from it.
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The Bigods were one of the most powerful and important families in thirteenth-century England. They are chiefly remembered for their dramatic interventions in high politics. Roger III Bigod (c. 1209-70) famously led the march on Westminster Hall in 1258 against Henry III, while Roger IV Bigod (1245-1306) confronted Edward I in 1297 in similar fashion. This book is the first full-scale study of these two Earls, and explores in depth the reasons that led each of them to take the extreme step of confronting his king. It is only in part, however, a political study. In seeking to understand the motives that lay behind their public actions, the book scrutinizes the Earls' private affairs. It establishes for the first time the precise extent of their landed estate, the size of their incomes, and the membership and quality of their affinities. It also examines their relationships with friends and relatives, their building works, and even their personalities. Extensive use is made throughout of unpublished manuscript sources: in particular, the hundreds of ministers' accounts that have survived from the administration of Roger IV Bigod, and the charters given by both Earls, which are calendared and translated in an appendix.
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• FOREWORD INTRODUCTION PART ONE : NOBLE CONDUCT *Reconstructing Chivalry *From Preudommie to Chevalerie *Out of the Iron Age PART TWO : NOBLE DESCENT
• 4. Constructing Families
• 5. The Power of Lineage
• 6. The Growth of Snobbery PART THREE : NOBLE CLASS
• 7. Historians and Noble Class
• 8. Medieval People and Social Division
• 9. The Precocity of England PART FOUR : NOBLE LORDSHIP
• 10. The Feudal Debate
• 11. Power and Structures
• 12. Noble Women : The View from the Stands SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX .
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For 300 years scholars in Britain and France have been working industriously to explain the idea of medieval aristocracy. One part of this book analyses this enormous international field of publications, and breaks it down into four debates: on noble conduct, noble lineage, noble class and noble power. It identifies the points of divergence in the national traditions in each of these debates, and where they have been mutually incomprehensible. It integrates American historiography into the British and French debates as it touches on each. But in addition to all this, the book presents an entirely new perspective on each of the four great debates. Each is subjected to a thorough review by comparing current scholarship with what a vast range of historical source material actually says about each.
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• Power and portrayal-- patronage and power-- countesses-- witnessing-- countergifts and affidation-- seals-- women of the lesser nobility-- royal inquests and the power of noblewomen - the "Rotuli de Dominabus et Pueris et Puellis de XII Comitatibus" of 1185.
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This is a study of noblewomen in 12th-century England and Normandy, and of the ways in which they exercised power. It draws on a rich mix of evidence to offer an important reconceptualization of women's role in aristocratic society, and in doing so suggests new ways of looking at lordship and the ruling elite in the high Middle Ages. The book considers a wide range of literary sources, such as chronicles, charters, seals and governmental records, to draw out a detailed picture of noblewomen in the 12th-century Anglo-Norman realm. It asserts the importance of the life-cycle in determining the power of these aristocratic women, thereby demonstrating that the influence of gender on lordship was profound, complex and varied. This work should be of importance to specialists in history and medieval studies, as well as those interested in the experience of women and those working on lordship and feudalism.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)