Author: David Roffe
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN: 1783270195
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 396
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Book Description
New light is shed on the motives and objectives for the compiling of the still-mysterious Domesday Book, revolutionising our understanding of the period. The Domesday Book is one of our major sources for a crucial period of English history; yet it remains difficult to interpret. This provocative new book proposes a complete re-assessment, with profound implications for our understanding of the society and economy of medieval England. In particular, it overturns the general assumption that the Domesday inquest was a comprehensive survey of lords and their lands, and so tells us about the economic underpinning of power in the late eleventh century; rather, it suggests that in 1086 matters of taxation and service were at issue and data were collected to illuminate these concerns. What emerges from this is that Domesday Book tells us less about a real economy and those who sustained it than a tributary one, with much of the wealth of England being omitted. The source, then, is not the transparent datum that social and economic historians would like it to be. Inreturn, however, the book offers a richer understanding of late eleventh-century England in its own terms; and elucidates many long-standing conundrums of the Domesday Book itself. DAVID ROFFE is an honorary research fellow at Sheffield University. He has written widely on Domesday Book and edited five volumes of the Alecto County Edition of the text.
Author: Sally Harvey (Historian)
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199669783
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358
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Book Description
Domesday: Book of Judgement provides a unique study of the extraordinary eleventh-century survey, the Domesday Book. Sally Harvey depicts the Domesday Book as the written evidence of a potentially insecure conquest successfully transforming itself, by a combination of administrative insight and military might, into a permanent establishment. William I used the Domesday Inquiry to contain the new establishment and consolidate their landholding revolution within a strict fiscal and tenurial framework, with checks and balances to prevent the king's followers from taking more powers and assets than they had been allocated. In this way, the survey served as a conciliatory gesture between the conquerors and the conquered, as William I came to realize that, faced with the threat to his rule from the Danes, he needed England's native populations more than they needed him. Yes, the overlying theme of the Domesday Book is Judgment: every class of society had reason to regard the Survey's methodical and often pitiless proceedings as both a literal and a metaphorical day of account. In this volume, Sally Harvey considers the Anglo-Saxon background and the architects of the Survey: the bishops, royal clerks, sheriffs, jurors, and landholders who contributed to Domesday's content and scope. She also discusses at length the core information in the Survey: coinage, revenues from landholding, fiscal concessions, and taxation, as well as some central tenurial issues. She draws the conclusion that the record, whilst consolidating William's position as king of the English, also laid the foundations for the twelfth-century treasury and exchequer. The volume newly argues that the Domesday survey also became an inquest into individual sheriffs and officials, thereby laying a foundation for reinterpreting the size of towns in England.
Author: David Roffe
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783270888
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 354
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Book Description
Essays into numerous aspects of the Domesday Book, shedding fresh light on its mysteries. Compiled from the records of a survey of the kingdom of England commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1085, Domesday Book is a key source for the history of England. However, there has never been a critical edition of the textand so, despite over 200 years of intense academic study, its evidence has rarely been exploited to the full. The essays in this volume seek to realize the potential of Domesday Book by focussing on the manuscript itself. There are analyses of abbreviations, letter forms, and language; re-assessments of key sources, the role of tenants-in-chief in producing them, and the nature of the Norman settlement that their forms illuminate; a re-evaluation of the data and its referents; and finally, fresh examinations of the afterlife of the Domesday text and how it was subsequently perceived. In identifying new categories of evidence and revisiting old ones, these studies point to a better understanding of the text. There are surprising insights into its sources and developing programme and, intriguingly, a system of encoding hitherto unsuspected. In its turn the import of its data becomes clearer, thereby shedding new light on Anglo-Norman society and governance. It is in these terms that this volume offers a departure in Domesday studies and looks forward to the resolution of long-standing problems that have hitherto bedevilled the interpretation of an iconic text. David Roffe and K.S.B. Keats-Rohan are leading Domesday scholars who have published widely on Domesday Book and related matters. Contributors: Howard B. Clarke, Sally Harvey, K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, Andrew Lowerre, John Palmer, David Roffe, Ian Taylor, Pamela Taylor, Frank Thorn, Ann Williams.
Author: Paul Dalton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317060970
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
The importance of the themes of rulership and rebellion in the history of the Anglo-Norman world between 1066 and the early thirteenth century is incontrovertible. The power, government, and influence of kings, queens and other lords pervaded and dominated society and was frequently challenged and resisted. But while biographies of rulers, studies of the institutions and operation of central, local and seigniorial government, and works on particular political struggles abound, many major aspects of rulership and rebellion remain to be explored or further elucidated. This volume, written by leading scholars in the field and dedicated to the pioneering work of Professor Edmund King, will make an original, important and timely contribution to our knowledge and understanding of Anglo-Norman history.
Author: David Bates
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300183836
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 633
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Book Description
Fifteen years in the making, a landmark reinterpretation of the life of a pivotal figure in British and European history In this magisterial addition to the Yale English Monarchs series, David Bates combines biography and a multidisciplinary approach to examine the life of a major figure in British and European history. Using a framework derived from studies of early medieval kingship, he assesses each phase of William’s life to establish why so many trusted William to invade England in 1066 and the consequences of this on the history of the so-called Norman Conquest after the Battle of Hastings and for generations to come. A leading historian of the period, Bates is notable for having worked extensively in the archives of northern France and discovered many eleventh- and twelfth-century charters largely unnoticed by English-language scholars. Taking an innovative approach, he argues for a move away from old perceptions and controversies associated with William’s life and the Norman Conquest. This deeply researched volume is the scholarly biography for our generation.
Author: Martyn Whittock
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 075249726X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354
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Book Description
If the Viking Wars had not taken place, would there have been a united England in the tenth century? Martyn Whittock believes not, arguing that without them there would have been no rise of the Godwin family and their conflict with Edward the Confessor, no Norman connection, no Norman Conquest and no Domesday Book. All of these features of English history were the products, or by-products, of these conflicts and the threat of Scandinavian attack. The wars and responses to them accelerated economic growth; stimulated state formation and an assertive sense of an English national identity; created a hybrid Anglo-Scandinavian culture that spread beyond the so-called Danelaw; and caused an upheaval in the ruling elite. By looking at the entire period of the wars and by taking a holistic view of their political, economic, social and cultural effects, their many-layered impact can at last be properly assessed.
Author: D. M. Palliser
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199255849
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 371
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Book Description
Provides a comprehensive history of what is now considered England's most famous surviving medieval city, covering nearly a thousand years
Author: David Roffe
Publisher: Boydell Press
ISBN: 1843837943
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308
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Book Description
The dynamics of medieval societies in England and beyond form the focus of these essays on the Anglo-Norman world. Over the last fifty years Ann Williams has transformed our understanding of Anglo-Saxon and Norman society in her studies of personalities and elites. In this collection, leading scholars in the field revisit themes that have beencentral to her work, and open up new insights into the workings of the multi-cultural communities of the realm of England in the early Middle Ages. There are detailed discussions of local and regional elites and the interplay between them that fashioned the distinctive institutions of local government in the pre-Conquest period; radical new readings of key events such as the crisis of 1051 and a reassessment of the Bayeux Tapestry as the beginnings of theHistoria Anglorum; studies of the impact of the Norman Conquest and the survival of the English; and explorations of the social, political, and administrative cultures in post-Conquest England and Normandy. The individualessays are united overall by the articulation of the local, regional, and national identities that that shaped the societies of the period. Contributors: S.D. Church, William Aird, Lucy Marten, Hirokazu Tsurushima, Valentine Fallan, Judith Everard, Vanessa King, Pamela Taylor, Charles Insley, Simon Keynes, Sally Harvey, K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, David Bates, Emma Mason, David Roffe, Mark Hagger.
Author: Nicholas Vincent
Publisher: Robinson
ISBN: 1849012148
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334
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Book Description
From the Battle of Hastings to the Battle of Bosworth Field, Nicholas Vincent tells the story of how Britain was born. When William, Duke of Normandy, killed King Harold and seized the throne of England, England's language, culture, politics and law were transformed. Over the next four hundred years, under royal dynasties that looked principally to France for inspiration and ideas, an English identity was born, based in part upon struggle for control over the other parts of the British Isles (Scotland, Wales and Ireland), in part upon rivalry with the kings of France. From these struggles emerged English law and an English Parliament, the English language, English humour and England's first overseas empires. In this thrilling and accessible account, Nicholas Vincent not only tells the story of the rise and fall of dynasties, but investigates the lives and obsessions of a host of lesser men and women, from archbishops to peasants, and from soldiers to scholars, upon whose enterprise the social and intellectual foundations of Englishness now rest. This the first book in the four volume Brief History of Britain which brings together some of the leading historians to tell our nation's story from the Norman Conquest of 1066 to the present-day. Combining the latest research with accessible and entertaining story telling, it is the ideal introduction for students and general readers.
Author: Giles E. M. Gasper
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317094352
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357
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Book Description
Bringing together essays from experts in a variety of disciplines, this collection explores two of the most important facets of life within the medieval Europe: money and the church. By focusing on the interactions between these subjects, the volume addresses four key themes. Firstly it offers new perspectives on the role of churchmen in providing conceptual frameworks, from outright condemnation, to sophisticated economic theory, for the use and purpose of money within medieval society. Secondly it discusses the dichotomy of money for the church and its officers: on one hand voices emphasise the moral difficulties in engaging with money, on the other the reality of the ubiquitous use of money in the church at all levels and in places within Christendom. Thirdly it places in dialogue interdisciplinary perspectives and approaches, and evidence from philosophy, history, literature and material culture, to the issues of money and church. Lastly, the volume provides new perspectives on the role of the church in the process of monetization in the High Middle Ages. Concentrating on northern Europe, from the early eleventh century to the beginning of the thirteenth century, the collection is able to explore the profound changes in the use of money and the rise of a money-economy that this period and region witnessed. By adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, the collection challenges current understanding of how money was perceived, understood and used by medieval clergy in a range of different contexts. It furthermore provides wide-ranging contributions to the broader economic and ethical issues of the period, demonstrating how the church became a major force in the process of monetization.
