Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England

Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England PDF Author: Thomas Benedict Lambert
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019878631X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 407

Get Book Here

Book Description
Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England explores English legal culture and practice across the Anglo-Saxon period, beginning with the essentially pre-Christian laws enshrined in writing by King AEthelberht of Kent in c. 600 and working forward to the Norman Conquest of 1066. It attempts to escape the traditional retrospective assumptions of legal history, focused on the late twelfth-century Common Law, and to establish a new interpretative framework for the subject, more sensitive to contemporary cultural assumptions and practical realities. The focus of the volume is on the maintenance of order: what constituted good order; what forms of wrongdoing were threatening to it; what roles kings, lords, communities, and individuals were expected to play in maintaining it; and how that worked in practice. Its core argument is that the Anglo-Saxons had a coherent, stable, and enduring legal order that lacks modern analogies: it was neither state-like nor stateless, and needs to be understood on its own terms rather than as a variant or hybrid of these models. Tom Lambert elucidates a distinctively early medieval understanding of the tension between the interests of individuals and communities, and a vision of how that tension ought to be managed that, strikingly, treats strongly libertarian and communitarian features as complementary. Potentially violent, honour-focused feuding was an integral aspect of legitimate legal practice throughout the period, but so too was fearsome punishment for forms of wrongdoing judged socially threatening. Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England charts the development of kings' involvement in law, in terms both of their authority to legislate and their ability to influence local practice, presenting a picture of increasingly ambitious and effective royal legal innovation that relied more on the cooperation of local communal assemblies than kings' sparse and patchy network of administrative officials.

Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England

Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England PDF Author: Thomas Benedict Lambert
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019878631X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 407

Get Book Here

Book Description
Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England explores English legal culture and practice across the Anglo-Saxon period, beginning with the essentially pre-Christian laws enshrined in writing by King AEthelberht of Kent in c. 600 and working forward to the Norman Conquest of 1066. It attempts to escape the traditional retrospective assumptions of legal history, focused on the late twelfth-century Common Law, and to establish a new interpretative framework for the subject, more sensitive to contemporary cultural assumptions and practical realities. The focus of the volume is on the maintenance of order: what constituted good order; what forms of wrongdoing were threatening to it; what roles kings, lords, communities, and individuals were expected to play in maintaining it; and how that worked in practice. Its core argument is that the Anglo-Saxons had a coherent, stable, and enduring legal order that lacks modern analogies: it was neither state-like nor stateless, and needs to be understood on its own terms rather than as a variant or hybrid of these models. Tom Lambert elucidates a distinctively early medieval understanding of the tension between the interests of individuals and communities, and a vision of how that tension ought to be managed that, strikingly, treats strongly libertarian and communitarian features as complementary. Potentially violent, honour-focused feuding was an integral aspect of legitimate legal practice throughout the period, but so too was fearsome punishment for forms of wrongdoing judged socially threatening. Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England charts the development of kings' involvement in law, in terms both of their authority to legislate and their ability to influence local practice, presenting a picture of increasingly ambitious and effective royal legal innovation that relied more on the cooperation of local communal assemblies than kings' sparse and patchy network of administrative officials.

Anglo-Saxon England: Volume 13

Anglo-Saxon England: Volume 13 PDF Author: Peter Clemoes
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521332033
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358

Get Book Here

Book Description
Anglo-Saxon England consistently embraces all the main aspects of study of Anglo-Saxon history and culture.

Women in Anglo-Saxon England

Women in Anglo-Saxon England PDF Author: Christine E. Fell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Anglo-Saxons
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description


Anglo-Saxon England and the Visual Imagination

Anglo-Saxon England and the Visual Imagination PDF Author: International Society of Anglo-Saxonists. Conference
Publisher: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies
ISBN: 9780866985123
Category : Art, Anglo-Saxon
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
How did the Anglo-Saxons visualize the world that they inhabited? How did their artwork and iconography help to confirm their identity as a people? What influences shaped their visual imagination? This volume brings together a wide range of scholarly perspectives on the role of visuality in the production of culture. Jewels, weapons, crosses, coins, and other artifacts; descriptive passages in literature; types of script; deluxe illuminated manuscripts; and runes and other written inscriptions, whether real or imagined -- all receive scrutiny in this collection of new essays. Noteworthy for its interdisciplinary scope, the volume features arresting work by experts in archaeology, art history, literary studies, linguistics, numismatics, and manuscript studies. The volume as a whole demonstrates the power of current scholarship to cast light on the visual imagination of the past.

Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England

Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England PDF Author: Barbara Yorke
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134707258
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Get Book Here

Book Description
Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England provides a unique survey of the six major Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and their royal families, examining the most recent research in this field.

An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England

An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England PDF Author: Peter Hunter Blair
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521216500
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 379

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is a lucid, authoritative and well-balanced account of Anglo-Saxon history. Peter Hunter Blair's book has achieved classic status, and is published now with a new, up-to-date bibliography prepared by Simon Keynes. Between the end of the Roman occupation and the coming of the Normans, England was settled by Germanic races; the kingdom as a political unit was created, heathenism yielded to a vigorous Christian Church, superb works of art were made, and the English language - spoken and written - took its form. These origins of the English heritage are Hunter Blair's subject. The first two chapters survey Anglo-Saxon England: its wars, its invaders, its peoples and its kings. The remaining chapters deal with specific aspects of its culture: its Church, government, economy and literary achievement. Throughout the author uses illustrations and a wide range of sources - documents, archaeological evidence and place names - to illuminate the period as a whole.

Trees in Anglo-Saxon England

Trees in Anglo-Saxon England PDF Author: Della Hooke
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843835657
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book Here

Book Description
Trees played a particularly important part in the rural economy of Anglo-Saxon England, both for wood and timber and as a wood-pasture resource, with hunting gaining a growing cultural role. But they are also powerful icons in many pre-Christian religions, with a degree of tree symbolism found in Christian scripture too. This wide-ranging book explores both the "real", historical and archaeological evidence of trees and woodland, and as they are depicted in Anglo-Saxon literature and legend. Place-name and charter references cast light upon the distribution of particular tree species (mapped here in detail for the first time) and also reflect upon regional character in a period that was fundamental for the evolution of the present landscape. Della Hooke is Honorary Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Research in Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Birmingham.

The Wealth of Anglo-Saxon England

The Wealth of Anglo-Saxon England PDF Author: Peter Sawyer
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191650811
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Get Book Here

Book Description
How did the Anglo-Saxons obtain the treasure that tempted Vikings to raid England frequently in the ninth century and again between 980 and 1018? As Britain then had no gold mine and its lead mines yielded very little silver, this treasure must have been imported. Some may have been given, but most was obtained by trade. Until the ninth century the main source was Francia where there was a lively demand for English produce. Cross Channel trade flourished, much of it passing through the major ports, or wics, that developed in the seventh century. The rapid decline of this trade in the ninth century was caused, not by the Vikings, but by a general shortage of new silver in western Europe after c. 850, reflected in the debasement of the Frankish and Anglo-Saxon coinages. Silver was, however, imported to England by the Danes who settled there in the late ninth century. A very important source of new silver was discovered in the 960s in Germany. This led to a rapid expansion of the German economy that created a demand for raw materials and food from England. Very soon England's towns expanded and its trade, internal and external, grew. Its new wealth attracted Vikings, but trade continued and, although they extracted a great deal of silver, new supplies from Germany enabled the English to maintain their currency. Recent studies have shown that it grew to a peak under Edward the Confessor. This confirms the evidence of Domesday Book that on the eve of the Norman Conquest England was a very rich, highly urbanized, kingdom with a large, well-controlled coinage of high quality. This coinage, and Domesday Book itself, are indeed good evidence that English government was then remarkably effective. Peter Sawyer offers an account of the ways wealth was accumulated and the forms it took in Anglo-Saxon England, with emphasis on recent developments in the study of Anglo-Saxon coins and Domesday Book, and some of their surprising results.

Money and Power in Anglo-Saxon England

Money and Power in Anglo-Saxon England PDF Author: Rory Naismith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139503006
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 371

Get Book Here

Book Description
This groundbreaking study of coinage in early medieval England is the first to take account of the very significant additions to the corpus of southern English coins discovered in recent years and to situate this evidence within the wider historical context of Anglo-Saxon England and its continental neighbours. Its nine chapters integrate historical and numismatic research to explore who made early medieval coinage, who used it and why. The currency emerges as a significant resource accessible across society and, through analysis of its production, circulation and use, the author shows that control over coinage could be a major asset. This control was guided as much by ideology as by economics and embraced several levels of power, from kings down to individual craftsmen. Thematic in approach, this innovative book offers an engaging, wide-ranging account of Anglo-Saxon coinage as a unique and revealing gauge for the interaction of society, economy and government.

The Anglo-Saxons

The Anglo-Saxons PDF Author: Marc Morris
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 164313535X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 452

Get Book Here

Book Description
A sweeping and original history of the Anglo-Saxons by national bestselling author Marc Morris. Sixteen hundred years ago Britain left the Roman Empire and swiftly fell into ruin. Grand cities and luxurious villas were deserted and left to crumble, and civil society collapsed into chaos. Into this violent and unstable world came foreign invaders from across the sea, and established themselves as its new masters. The Anglo-Saxons traces the turbulent history of these people across the next six centuries. It explains how their earliest rulers fought relentlessly against each other for glory and supremacy, and then were almost destroyed by the onslaught of the vikings. It explores how they abandoned their old gods for Christianity, established hundreds of churches and created dazzlingly intricate works of art. It charts the revival of towns and trade, and the origins of a familiar landscape of shires, boroughs and bishoprics. It is a tale of famous figures like King Offa, Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor, but also features a host of lesser known characters - ambitious queens, revolutionary saints, intolerant monks and grasping nobles. Through their remarkable careers we see how a new society, a new culture and a single unified nation came into being. Drawing on a vast range of original evidence - chronicles, letters, archaeology and artefacts - renowned historian Marc Morris illuminates a period of history that is only dimly understood, separates the truth from the legend, and tells the extraordinary story of how the foundations of England were laid.