HLS home > library > collections > special > exhibitions > history_in_deed
Library

Notes

Prev | Next
  1. For an excellent overview of the development of documentary practices and ways of thinking see Michael Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066-1307, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1993).
  2. The equations below are intended to give a rough idea of relative values. Most of the measurements used in medieval England have no modern corollaries and are the subject of constant debate.
  3. P.D.A. Harvey, "The English Inflation of 1180-1220" in Peasants, Knights, and Heretics: Studies in Medieval English History, ed. R. H. Hilton (Cambridge, 1976): 57-84.
  4. P.H. Hilton, "Freedom and Villeinage in England," in Peasants, Knights, and Heretics: 174-191.
  5. Joan Thirsk, "The Common Fields" in Peasants, Knights and Heretics: 10-32.
  6. Clanchy describes the charter as "untidily written in an uncouth script" (From Memory to Written Record: Plate VI).
  7. Cf. Cl;nchy, Plate VI.
  8. Eilert Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names, 4th ed. (Oxford, 1981): 480.
  9. Clanchy, 33-34 and passim.
  10. Barbara Hanawalt, The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England (Oxford, 1986): 83 and passim.
  11. In general see Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy: The Eleventh-century Debates (Toronto, 1982). A classic but outdated study for England is C.N.L. Brooke, "Gregorian Reform in Action: Clerical Marriage in England 1050-1200," Cambridge Historical Journal 12 (1956).
  12. Brian Kemp, "Hereditary Benefices in the Medieval English Church: A Herefordshire Example," Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 43 (1970): 8-10.
  13. The dedication of the church of Helston, a market town on the Lizard Peninsula of Cornwall is significant: an old myth of the Cornish people, popularized in the twelfth century by Anglo-Norman poets like Wace, made Cornwall the birthplace of Constantine the Great (c. 288-337) who was, incidentally, never canonized. Constantine did, however, spend his formative years in the Roman province of Britannia where his father Constantius was tetrarch of the Empire's western-most province. when his father died at York in 306 the legions stationed there proclaimed Constantine as Caesar in his father's place.
  14. Paul R. Hyams, King, Lords and Peasants in Medieval England: The Common Law of Villeinage in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Oxford, 1982): 17-137.
  15. Clanchy, 50-51.
  16. A statute which, as Milsom says, gave rise to "nigphpare consequences." S.F.C. Milsom, Historical Foundations of the Common Law, 2nd ed. (London, 1981): 218V.
  17. Tractatus de legibus consuetudinibus Angiæ qui Glanvilla vocatur [Treatise on the Laws and Customs of England Commonly Called Glanvill], ed. and trans. G.D.G.Hall (selden Society, Oxford, 1965): 70-71.
  18. 17 Richard II, mem. 20d. Portions of the case are documented elsewhere in the Close Roll for 1391, from which it appears that, on 17 November 1393 (17 Richard II, mem. 28), John Rotere quitclaimed to Robert bishop of London et al. his right in the manor in which they were originally enfeoffed by John son of William Doreward. A note on membrane 18d for 17 Richard II declares furthermore that John son of William Doreward "is sole tenant in fee simple of the manor of Ledyn Rothing." The November entry gives the particulars of the manor, which was well worth the interests of this exalted group, containing as it did 700 acres of arable, 35 of meadow, 60 of pasture, 20 of wood, and £14.5.0 in rents per annum. Calendar of the Close Rolls Preserved in the Public Records Office, Richard II vol. 5 (London, 1925): 237, 254, 258. For other business of John Doreward transacted during this same year see No. 152.
  19. For an introduction to seals of this kind see Sir Hilary Jenkinson's Guide to Seals in the Public Records Office (London, 1954).
  20. See Hyams, pp. 221-265 for a summary of his findings on the origins of common-law of villeinage. For a discussion of the lord's ownership of a villein's property see pp. 17-24.
  21. "Juyl" appears to have been a common enough family name in the West Country. In 1383, for instance, a Robert Juyl from Cornwall appears as plaintiff in an action for debt brought in the Court of Common Pleas (Plea Rolls, 6 Richard II, Michealmas rot. 239r) and in the same year Robert Juyl is described as "receiver of the lord King for the countries of Cornwall and Devon" (Plea Rolls, 6 Richard II, Michaelmas rot. 260v).
  22. It is possible that the Humfrey Bevile of this charter, who is manifestly the same person as the Humfrey Devile of No. 28 and holder of the manor of Wolvenston mentioned (at a later date) in No. 111, is of the same family as SIMON DE BERNEVILE and his heirs; and possible, too, that both are the scion of John son of Laurence de Bevile whjo received his inheritance from his uncle(?) Ralph de Bevyle in No. 40. The inscription on the seal in No. 40 is difficult to make out, but it might well read BERNVILE--thus providing the orthographical connection between the names Bevile and BERNEVILE.
  23. Hanawalt, 80-104.
  24. The warren of rabbits was, until the eighteenth century, a major and lucrative industry in the flat wolds and fenlands around Essex, Norfolk, and Lincolnshire. Rabbits were bred mainly for their soft silver pelts, which were then sold to haberdashers and furriers for the making of hats, capes, and the like.
  25. Map of London based on A Sketch Map of London under Richard II, pub. no. 93 of the London Topographical Society (London, 1960). Details adapted from Mary D. Lobel, The City of London, British Atlas of Historic Towns vol. III (Oxford, 1989).
  26. Gardendon was a Cistercian abbey in Leicestershire which had a dependency the church of St. James Monkeswell in London: "... wher the abbot and convent had an house or cell called saint Iames in the wall by Cripplesgate ..." J. Stow, Survey of London (1633): 312; quoted inDavid Knowles and R. Neville Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales (London, 1953 etc.): 120.
  27. The geography of medieval Coventry has been faithfully reconstructed by Joan C. Lancaster in the British Atlas of Historic Towns vol. II, ed. MD. Lobel (London, 1975), from which study this map derives.
  28. This ditch probably represents the remains of the ditch or moat surrounding the old (twelfth century) city wall. For a discussion of the importance and dangerous prevalence of drainage and sewage ditches in medieval communities see Hanawalt, 17-64.
  29. For a full account see David Knowles, Bare Ruined Choirs: The Dissolution of the English Monasteries (Cambridge, 1976).
  30. By 1189 (the year Of St. Gilbert's death) there were sixteen Gilbertine houses in England. The order did not spread to the Continent and was thus completely wiped out in 1536-40. See Knowles and Hadcock, pp. 171-175. There is no recent treatment of the Gilbertine Order, but for an introduction see Rose Graham, St. Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertines (London, 1901).
  31. A contemporary vita is that of Ralph the Sacristan: The Book of St. Gilbert, ed. and trans. R. Foreville and G. Keir (Oxford, 1987).
  32. Graham, p. 212. According to Knowles and Hadcock (p. 214) Watton had the largest number of religious of any Gilbertine foundation. Such a prosperous and populous convent could not be without is problems: in 1155 a novice of Watton became pregnant of her lover, one of the lay brothers, was attacked and savagely tortured by the outraged nuns. The girl's pregnancy was aborted under strange circumstances and Gilbert called in Ælred abbot of Rievaulx in Yorkshire to conduct an investigation. For an account of the sepisode as it comes down to us in the letters of Ælred see John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe (New York, 1988): 432-458. Giles Constable has treated the incident in his article "Ælred of Rievaulx and the Nun of Watton: An Episode in the Early History of the Gilbertine Order" in Medieval Women, ed. D. Baker (Oxford, 1987).
  33. Knowles and Hadcock, 110.
  34. Knowles and Hadcock, 162-170.
  35. In general, see M. H. Keen, Chivalry (new Haven, 1984): 44-63.
  36. Knowles and Hadcock, 365.
  37. Theodore F. T. Plucknett, Legislation of Edward I (Oxford, 1962): 98.
  38. The legal status of the Jews in Engand was very peculiar and here I follow entirely the information given by F.W. Maitland in Pollock and Maitland, The History of English Law, 2nd ed. S.F.C. Milsom (Cambridge, 1968): I 468 V. Jews were wards of the king and, in the words of Bracton, "[t]he Jew can have nothing of his own, for whatever he acquires, he acquires not for himself, but for the king..." Maitland continues: "this servility is a relative servility; in relation to all men, save the king, the Jew is free" (p. 468). But while "no law prevented him [the Jew] from holding lands" and while "[m]any lands were gaged to him ... though we do not fully understand the nature of these gages, it seem sot us that the Hebrew creditor seldom too, or at all evens kept, possession of the lands, and that his gage was not conceived of as giving him any place in the scale of lords and tenants. However, late in Henry III's reign it became apparent that the Jews were holding lands in free and had military tenants below them; they were claiming the wardships and marriage of infant heirs, and were even daring to present Christians clerks to Christian bishops for induction into Christian churches. This was not to be borne. In 1271 the edict went forth that they were no longer to hold free tenement ..." (p. 473). See also T.F.T. Plucknett, A Concise History of the Common Law, 5th ed. (Boston, 1956): 405-406.
  39. The forms anti-Semitism took in England were partially fuelled by powerful and insidious rumors which began circulating in the mid-twelfth century. See in particular Gavin Langmuir, "Thomas of Monmouth: Detector of Ritual Murder," Speculum 59 (1984).
  40. Part of the prejudice against Jews could be traced to their economic success in England. James Campbell notes that "the best documented businessmen of early medieval Norwich are the Jews" and that by 1140 they form the second richest Jewish enclave in England (after London and before Winchester). See "Norwich" in British Atlas of Historic Towns vol. II: 10. The industrious activity of Jews in Norfolk would have had some effect on all the neighboring countries. Indeed, Edward's main motive for the Expulsion was economic: he owed them too much money. For an outline of the general picture see Paul Hyams, "The Jewish Minority in Medieval England, 1066-1290," Journal of Jewish Studies 25 (1974).
Prev | Next