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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.
8 Lordship in four realms T he period covered by this book belongs to a formative age in the shaping of aristocratic lordship in north-western Europe. In the world of transnational landholding, the territorial portfolios of the greater barons could span any number of categories of lordship, from the long- established tenurial holdings in Normandy and lowland England to the colonial outposts of Ireland and Wales. Settled aristocrats could become colonial aristocrats, just by crossing a stretch of water. The Plantagenet empire of the late twelfth and early
, as he says, and 16 quarters of the alms of the countess to the abbot of Quarr. Mowing and the carriage of hay, sold as above. And he is quit. Carrying services. The same renders account for 29½ carrying services of the issues of the customary peasants. Sold as above. And he is quit. 111. Extracts from the valor of the lands and lordships of
5 Royal v. aristocratic lordship: 1206–16 K ing John’s policy for Ireland in the opening years of his reign was one based on political pragmatism and expediency. His administration lacked the resources to compete with the great provincial lordships, so he was forced to work with them to achieve his ends. John’s promotion of the Lacys and William de Briouze during the factionalist disputes of the previous years meant that, by 1206, the resident Lacy brothers were without rival in Ireland. Although it was a situation of his own making, this prominence of
7 The dangers of transnational lordship: 1222–41 T he reign of King John cast a long shadow. His rule provided the context, and his administrative appointees the personnel, for his son’s Minority government. It was also in this later period that some of his policies began to bear fruit. As argued in Chapter 4, King John’s removal of John de Courcy and promotion of Hugh de Lacy as earl of Ulster in 1205 seem to have been done to counterbalance Earl William Marshal’s control of the southern Irish Sea littoral. The elder Marshal’s good relations with the Lacys at
Chapter 7 . ‘His Lordships First, and Last, chapleine’: William Rawley and Francis Bacon Angus Vine A t the west end of the nave of All Saints’, Landbeach, lies a black marble tomb slab, commemorating one of that church’s better-known seventeenth-century incumbents: Dr William Rawley, fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and chaplain in turn to Sir Francis Bacon, Charles I and Charles II. The tombstone was originally located in the chancel, where Rawley was buried in accordance with his last will and testament, but it was moved in the late nineteenth
unfavorable judgments have now been largely replaced by a more sympathetic account of the workings of magnate lordship, which portrays the late medieval affinity as neither an aberration nor a degeneration from the arrangements of an earlier age, but, rather, the logical successor to them. 1 The creation of this consensus represents, however, only the first stage in the effort to reach a proper understanding of the mechanics of lordship in later medieval England, for it raises a number of secondary questions that have yet to be resolved. How pervasive, for instance, was
This article offers the first comprehensive study of Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS Latin 182, a twelfth-century codex formerly belonging to (and possibly produced at) the Benedictine Abbey of (Mönchen-)Gladbach in Germany. I begin with a full codicological and palaeographical analysis of the entire manuscript, before moving on to a discussion of its contents. These include the Venerable Bede‘s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum and the Continuatio Bedae, as well as two hagiographical works copied at the end of the manuscript. I then propose a new possible context of reception for Bede‘s Historia ecclesiastica during the twelfth century, one that interlinked with the prevalent discourses on secular ecclesiastical lordship and monastic reform at Gladbach, as well as, perhaps, in Germany more widely. In doing so, I essentially argue for the possibility that the Gladbach scribes and their audiences may have used and understood the Historia ecclesiastica not only in the conventional context of history and historiography, but also (and perhaps equally important) as an example of the golden age of monasticism which during the later twelfth century was re-framed and re-contextualised as both a spiritual guide and a source of miracle stories.
This is a study of noblewomen in twelfth-century England and Normandy, and of the ways in which they exercised power. It draws on a mix of evidence to offer a reconceptualization of women's role in aristocratic society, and in doing so suggests new ways of looking at lordship and the ruling elite in the high Middle Ages. The book considers a wide range of literary sources—such as chronicles, charters, seals and governmental records—to draw out a detailed picture of noblewomen in the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman realm. It asserts the importance of the life-cycle in determining the power of these aristocratic women, thereby demonstrating that the influence of gender on lordship was profound, complex and varied.
, maritagium, and female inheritance. However, much that has been written about twelfth-century women has been done to the dictates of an oscillating male-centred historiography about the creation of institutions, or otherwise of male lordship or ‘feudalism’. The dominant historiographical discourse which considers dynamics of power in twelfth-century society is that of the study of the multi-faceted construct that is conventionally called lordship. This book will analyse the roles of noblewomen within lordship and in so doing will clarify important aspects of noblewomen