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caused by female succession systems when they developed in twelfth-century England. This is a formidable body of scholarship which has clarified important aspects of female land tenure and shown noblewomen as an element in the exercise of lordship. The importance of this and, by extension, the possibility of women’s power as active participants therein is not clarified directly, because the authors are interested in discussing succession systems and rules of inheritance, or feudalism and lordship, not in discussing women’s power. Yet much can be learned about women
. Wives are more visible in the sources as active participants than daughters, who, although they may be seen to give their consent to familial grants and may witness, rarely grant land away as unmarried single women. Maidenhood was not an empowering role in the context of land transfers. It would be possible through a close study of charters to discover whether minors granted charters with guardians who were not relatives. The roles and spheres of activity of the countesses of Chester are typical of their rank. It is clear that one role of a wife of a powerful earl was
, so did also the number of conferences – that is, those public events that symbolised the beginning of a new relationship. Furthermore, treaties eventually came to symbolise these particular events, hence their increased importance throughout this period. War in the medieval period, as in others, broke out because participants thought that they had more to gain from war than from
This book examines the rise and fall of the aristocratic Lacy family in England, Ireland, Wales and Normandy. As one of the first truly transnational studies of individual medieval aristocrats, it provides a fresh look at lordship and the interplay between aristocracy and crown from 1166 to 1241. Hugh de Lacy (†1186), traded on his military usefulness to King Henry II of England in Wales and Normandy to gain a speculative grant of the ancient Irish kingdom of Mide (Meath). Hugh was remarkably successful in Ireland, where he was able to thwart the juvenile ambitions of the future King John to increase his powers there. Hugh was hailed by native commentators as ‘lord of the foreigners of Ireland’ and even ‘king of Ireland’. In this study his near-legendary life is firmly grounded in the realities of Anglo-Irish politics. The political career of Hugh’s less famous son and heir, Walter de Lacy (†1241), is in turn illuminated by surviving royal records and his own acta. Walter was one of the major actors in the Irish Sea province under Kings Richard I, John and Henry III, and his relationship with each king provides a unique insight into the nature of their reigns. Over the course of fifty-two years, Walter helped to shape the course of Anglo-Irish history. That history is recast in light of the transnational perspective of its chief participants. This book is a major contribution to current debates over the structure of medieval European society.
Hincmar was archbishop of Rheims at Louis the Stammerer's accession and was involved in Louis’s affairs, conducting Louis’s coronation and advising him during his reign. This paper will investigate how much influence Hincmar had on Louis during the years 877-879. It first examines the motivations behind Hincmar’s involvement in West Frankish government and asks how to measure his influence using the existing sources. To start the investigation, this paper looks at Hincmar’s pre-coronation letter Ad Ludovicum Balbum Regem: Novi regis instructio ad rectam regni administrationem, and the archbishop’s role in the coronation as the composer of the ritual and a key participant. It then considers Hincmar’s involvement in Louis’ personal life and various events in Louis the Stammerer’s reign, such as the papal Council of Troyes in 878 and negotiations with Louis the Younger at Meersen later that year. The conclusion is that while Hincmar demonstrably remained involved in West Frankish affairs after the death of Charles the Bald, it is difficult to isolate specific examples of Hincmar significantly influencing royal policy.
social scale occasionally, but certainly not always, numbered twelve. The oath of 1190 allows the historian to address another issue, namely the verbal connection between an oath and an agreement. Owing to the fact that so few documents recording oaths taken at conferences survive, we rarely know the exact verbal form of any oath taken by the participants of peacemaking. Texts of
compare the homage of Bogiszlav to that of King William in 1200, because, although the king of Scots was negotiating deep within English territory, he had not suffered conquest and he was not asked to surrender any hostages. Again it is evident that there must have been some sort of sliding scale of inferiority, where some participants in peacemaking were more inferior than others. It is
important about the relationship between the two participants, and, furthermore, it determines what will happen next in the peace process, as each relationship comes with a different set of rites and rules of how to make peace. Conferences on border sites were preferred when two rulers, claiming equal status, feared a loss of face. 91 Meetings on border sites implied equal
on meeting places has been presented in such a way as to make it obvious that usually participants of peacemaking conferred with each other as equals on border sites or as superior and inferior at sites located within the territory of one or the other of the participants. However, rarely are inter-ruler relations this simple, and it is clear, though the evidence is sparse
to at least one occasion when the participants came away from a conference laden with presents, and there are several examples in Saxo of the generosity of rulers towards their friends or allies. 24 Warren argued that Richard’s refusal to take any of the economically valuable gifts was because he distinguished them from ‘the socially significant ring’, restricting the