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the meanings and symbolisms of countergifts should be set into a paradigm which acknowledges that changes in diplomatic may have affected documentary forms. Thus as a gauge of social realities this assessment of countergifts is placed in a 108 countergifts and affidation framework similar to that established in the previous chapter to analyse witnessing. Although both men and women received an array of items as countergifts in twelfth-century England, male recipients of countergifts tended to receive horses, armour, hunting birds or money.11 Barthélemy’s study
. In 1175–79 Muriel gave rents to Clerkenwell from land which was of her marriage portion and stipulated that the money was to be in effect Roesia’s clothing allowance.14 In total there are eight charters in Muriel’s name.15 Lecia, the daughter of Muriel and her husband, Henry Foliot, in 1193 to Michaelmas 1196 confirmed to Clerkenwell the service of Solomon of Stepney, for which they received eight marks from the nuns of Clerkenwell for the quitclaim.16 By the address clause Henry and Lecia greet ‘all of Christ’s faithful’, and thenceforward all the verbs are in the
counties, but this is not shown in the Rotuli.78 Although the figures suggest that it was customary among the landed nobility to give daughters a marriage portion of land worth £5 or over, some caution is necessary. It is quite possible that many gifts of dowry were in fact sums of money or of goods, and as such would not appear in our record.79 Scott Waugh has suggested that within the nobility by 1300 the custom of endowing daughters with maritagium in the form of land had diminished and it was more normal for a daughter to be given a dowry in the form of a sum of
Agnes arranged for the future marriage of her illegitimate nephew, William, son of Alan de Percy. This concord dating from 1182 agreed in the king’s court gave specified lands to William which were to return to Agnes if she found him an heiress worth between £10 and £12.101 Agnes received a share of over £100 of silver which her husband received on his departure on crusade. She had clearly been involved in this money-raising exercise, supporting her husband’s plan to go on crusade. The manor in question had been granted to Jocelin on his marriage to Agnes, so the
, in relative terms, until the twentieth century. Numerous families were no longer forced to spend such a high proportion of their available money on mere subsistence and were left with a higher disposable income. 2 For the first time, they could exercise choice and taste, paving the way for the emergence of a consumer economy. Peasants and wage earners were able to diversify their diets, fashion became an important factor in the purchase of clothing, privacy and comfort in the construction and decoration of homes. The more elaborate consumption by the lower classes
The work done by wine porters is very useful for city-dwellers all year long. Statutes of the wine porters’ guild of Pavia, 1553 In our city one can really live well because everything needed to make life pleasant is at hand … and any man, if he be worth his salt, can earn money and honour according to his status. Bonvesin de la Riva, On the Marvels of Milan , c . 1288 Vile métiers are to noble ones like
‘formula of moderation’ (‘ moderationis formula ’), so as to avoid excessive emotional arousal. 35 An example of this ‘formula of moderation’ in action is the use of music for the worship of God, while an example of excess is described in Book I. 7, where he criticises the conduct of Nero, whose uncontrolled obsession with music (recounted in Suetonius’s De vita Caesarum ) is rendered even more distasteful on account of the fact that he squandered his money on mimics and actors. 36 Acting, moreover, is an inherently dishonourable pursuit, in John’s mind, as it permits
thaumaturgical power as the relics in the tomb at Cremona. The ‘whole city, the clergy and the people’ ( tota civitas, clerus et populus ) came there. Invalids lay on the ground in the square and every day a mass was celebrated there. Members of all the professional and trade organisations, great and small, showed up in groups before the image, carrying banners and flags and bringing large sums of money. Enough funds were gathered to purchase a house that became the Hospice of Saint-Alberto for assistance to the poor. 4 This story of the transfer
Henry III’s accession to personal rule in 1234, Walter de Lacy was an ageing, and in some ways irrelevant, magnate. The fact that Henry III oversaw the period in which Walter was eventually crushed under the weight of his massive debts to the Crown and Jewish money- lenders might remind one of Matthew Paris’s unflattering depiction of Henry III as a new Crassus, in constant pursuit of money.1 This would be unfair. Walter was the recipient of numerous pardons until the king ultimately allowed his creditors to foreclose. Walter’s debts were not even the product of
reforming house) had to be under twenty-five and ‘beautiful’. 12 These newly developed bodies were put on display. The fourteenth-and fifteenth-century fascination with luxury clothing saw fashion, at least among the elite, become part of the process of accentuating the beauty of youth. Royal account books reveal that in late medieval France, it was young men who spent the most money on