Where the Middle Ages Begin
The earldoms of Henry Ills reign can only be understood in the context of their history. The roots of the nature of earldoms in Henry II’s reign stretch back beyond the Norman Conquest to England and the Continent before 1066. It was the combination of these two traditions that shaped many of the features of the earldom under the Norman and early Angevin kings of England.
Thomas Hatfield (c. 1310–81) rose from origins amongst the Yorkshire gentry to become a valued royal servant under King Edward III.
The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, established by the victorious crusaders in Palestine in July 1099, was one of the first colonial societies of the Middle Ages.
The reign of Basil II (976-1025) is widely accepted as the apogee of medieval Byzantium.
From the perspective of a medievalist, this work is clearly essential; most medieval people, quite simply, were peasants, and we shall better understand the histories of medieval parliaments, towns, and universities when we have successfully uncovered their rural underpinnings.
The tension created by the two-court system is an integral part of England’s administrative and constitutional history. Exactly how integral has generated a considerable amount of scholarly work, from explanations of the sources of the conflict, to how the disagreement over jurisdiction was addressed throughout the Middle Ages, to what impact the issue had in shaping England’s overall political development.
Given a demand for Rhine travel, an Emperor faced a classic complementary monopoly problem: how many toll stations to have, where to site them, and what toll to charge at each.
This approach is further hampered by the continually changing nature of modem psychology. Due to alterations in the criteria used for diagnoses, terms and illnesses become obsolete, thus negating our previous theories.
Al-Nasir Muhammad’s reign was defined by his reorganization of the tax system and investment in the agricultural infrastructure of the sultanate in a manner which fundamentally altered the economic structure of the Mamluk state.
In what follows, therefore, I provide a detailed study of Icelandic clergy and the institutions of the Icelandic Church in the period from 1300 to 1404.
This paper was part of SESSION VIII:Power & Politics in the Long Twelfth Century. It examined the charters of Geoffrey of
Where possible, I have given examples of the earliest type of court documented, with examples of the type of case heard, and by whom they were heard, concentrating on the Manorial and Mayor’s Courts, which are the best documented, and whose Rolls nave been translated by the authors of my chief sources of reference.
In this article, I wish to return to the references to coinage in the Anglo-Saxon laws in the light of Patrick Wormald’s important research on the laws, especially his The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, which has made this difficult evidence much more penetrable to the non-specialist.
This is the second part of my investigation on the Muslim governors (or rulers) in Sicily.
Water management was crucial for agriculture in Iraq. The delicate ecological balance that allowed high soil productivity could be seriously threatened by irresponsible land administration.
One of the problems with which any medieval government had to contend was communications.
Henry II ruled over a vast empire that no English king before could match. Through his inheritance, military success, and political cunning he managed to wield power and influence on a level that no future medieval English monarch would.
This paper seeks to examine both the positive and negative impacts of the Hundred Years War on the rural society and economy of England and to demonstrate that the overall impact of the war was not as negative as the majority of historians have previously maintained.
The transition to the medieval thematic system of provincial administration took place at a period of time on which our level of information is extremely low.
Excluding the profession of the sword, that of the notary was among the earliest, the most self-conscious and certainly the largest in the medieval world.
The usurpation of Richard II by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke in 1399 was one of the most significant events in later medieval history.
Overall, during the 12th century, the church saw the rise of a bureaucratic career. In an attempt to understand the rise of bureaucratic careers in the medieval church, this chapter examines the shifting patterns of appointments to top positions within local dioceses from 1066 to 1250.
The Bristol mayor’s inauguration was commemorated by a display of civic authority and splendour which was extravagantly illustrated and entered into the city’s most famous history, The Maire of Bristowe Is Kalendar, begun by Robert Ricart in 1479. Urban ceremonies and rituals such as this have excited a great deal of scholarly interest.
In England, the role played on the continent by the castellanies would appear to have been performed by the county castle and the sheriff, a post that remained firmly under the king’s control in all but a few counties. Instead, a more subtle link between the castle community and political power will have to be found. It will be searched for in the appointment of constables to royal castles, and in grants of ownership of castles, royal or forfeited. It may be found in the building activity that was so common in this period, or in the marriage alliances that created many of the great castle owning estates.
Sheriffs were a numerically select group, but who were they? Why were they appointed? What qualities, if any, set these men apart from their peers? Prosopography, rather than procedural history, holds the key to these problems and in terms of its methodology this study owes far more to McFarlane than it does to Morris.
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