As dermatologists recognise, skin is one of the most extensive and important organs of the human body. As a mechanism for protection, it serves as a barrier, shielding people from external impacts and variations in pressure, while as an instrument of regulation, it ensures that body temperature remains within acceptable parameters. With its network of nerve cells, skin is the most widely distributed of the sense organs and the only one that is essential for life. As it detects and relays changes in external environments, skin functions as a universal, an anatomically essential component of the body that – in the absence of injury, disease, or acts of self-inflicted transformation – serves as a leveller, uniting beings in a common evolutionary bond. Yet from a socio-cultural perspective, skin is one of the most complex and ambivalent parts of the body. Appraised in some contexts as a stand-in for the individual, a synecdoche, or pars pro toto of human identity, it is viewed in others as a mask, a barrier, a form of protective armour that impedes contact with the individual artificially trapped within. It stands thus, paradoxically, both as a representation of the true and authentic self, and as the facade that conceals it. This process, which is further complicated by the curious and controlling operation of the gaze, which imposes identities through procedures of scopic surveillance, ensures that just as the skin of the individual projects an identity outwards towards the observer, it serves simultaneously as a canvas, a text, a receptacle for the imposition – whether warranted or not – of a range of culturally significant meanings.

Gervase of Canterbury and Roger of Wendover shared certain similarities. Both were Benedictine monks and chroniclers. Their social backgrounds were probably quite similar. Historically, Christ Church and St Albans maintained certain connections such as Lanfranc's Monastic Constitutions, which Lanfranc composed for both Canterbury and St Albans. Nevertheless, the views of Roger and Gervase on the papacy and its legates stood worlds apart. English criticism of the papacy was not novel, but Roger took it to a new level. The world had changed since Gervase wrote his Chronica: King John had offered up England as a fief to the pope.

In 1213, King John had found himself in deep trouble. Excommunicated by the pope for his stance on the Stephen Langton affair, facing rebellion, and expecting a French invasion, John had capitulated to Pope Innocent III to curry favour and offered England as a fief to the pope. Roger found this manoeuvre outrageous. He accused the king of selling his country and his people into slavery. The pope, in the same vein, was a traitor in Roger's eyes because he had accepted the offer. Innocent became the feudal lord of England, John, receiving England as a fief, his vassal. Roger viewed this arrangement as a momentous shift in Anglo-Papal relations. It greatly affected his outlook on the legatine adventus. While he, like Gervase, viewed the legatine adventus as the ceremonial affirmation of papal-legatine authority, he interpreted the implications in a radically different way.

Introduction

In 1868, planning began on the northern estates of the Duke of Sutherland for one of the largest land reclamation schemes in nineteenth-century Britain. Underpinned by Victorian confdence in the wonder innovation of the age – steam power – the 3rd Duke invested heavily for ffteen years in his attempt to create productive arable land and farms to support commercial sheep farming, the dominant enterprise on the estate. Agricultural experts had long pointed out that the total acreage of arable land in Sutherland was the smallest of any Scottish county; out of a total 1,207,188 acres in the county, only 28,711 were under cultivation and this meant that large sheep farmers were obliged to send their focks into Caithness and Ross-shire for winter feeding, as sufcient foodstufs could not be grown locally. Land reclamation in Sutherland, using the most modern agricultural technology and theory, aimed to create neat and productive felds from land lying in a ‘state of nature’, by removing all stones and other obstacles, ploughing it over, fertilising it and cropping it, so that Sutherland sheep farmers would no longer have to line the pockets of farmers and suppliers from outside the county.

Works on the same principles had been undertaken elsewhere in England, lowland Scotland and in other Highland counties. But the Sutherland works were on the largest scale ever attempted in Britain, in terms of acreage, technology and fnancial investment.

Native Landscape and Family Relations

There is nothing particularly romantic or exciting—at least in the conventional sense—about the countryside in which young Bedřich Smetana spent his earliest years. It is a gracious, fertile land, stretching between the border mountains of northeastern Bohemia and the gently tapering plains of the river Labe (Elbe). The landscape is a patchwork of fields and meadows, occasionally interrupted by apple, pear, or cherry orchards, their trees either in full blossom or heavy with ripening fruit.

Here and there, darker shades of green signal pinewoods, which grow wider and denser as they approach the mountain ridges. Scattered across the slopes, valleys, and riverbanks are typical Bohemian villages. Every now and then, small but thriving towns, centuries old, dominate the landscape with their ancient church towers, castles, and modern schools. The Orlické Mountains stretch from the north to the southeast, gracing the horizon. On clear days, the mightier peaks of the Krkonoše range can be glimpsed in the distance. To the west, where the land opens into a broad plain, lie the ruins of Kunětická Hora castle and the majestic Renaissance steeples of Hradec Králové (Königgrätz), a bishopric and county seat. The rivulets and streams feeding into the Labe teem with fish, while the dense forests provide shelter for pheasants and partridges. Along the Metuje river, near the Bohemian frontier and Prussian Silesia, beneath the imposing Wallenstein's castle, lies Náchod, now known as the Czech Manchester. Not far away, past a low pass called “Branka” (Gateway), the charming town of Nové Město nad Metují sits perched on a rocky promontory.

In 1885 Henry Banks of York, the proprietor of the music shop later known as ‘Banks & Son’, asserted that he had the ‘Largest stock [of music] in England’. A pedigree traces the origin of Banks’ music shop in York back to 1756, when Thomas Haxby established a business there that aimed to sell everything that musicians, both amateur and professional, might require. Haxby and Banks were both inheritors of a long tradition of traders supplying music-related goods in York, which can be traced to Anthony Foster, who provided paper for York Minster's partbooks in the 1580s, and John Foster, a seller of music books who died in 1616. The probate inventory of Foster's bookshop lists c.750 titles and 3373 identifiable items, including 25 music books. The majority of these volumes are of English secular songs or psalms, but Foster's collection also indicates the early trade in both continental publications and second-hand music books in this city. Following Foster, evidence for the sale of music goods in York is scant until the late seventeenth century and it is the purpose of this chapter to outline the trade in musical goods and services within York between the time of John Foster and the turn of the nineteenth century.

Francis and John Hildyard

The first individual we encounter in this study of York music sellers is Francis Hildyard (d.1731) who, from 1682, kept a shop at the ‘Sign of the Bible’ on Stonegate. Hildyard traded in a variety of musical goods and services, including the sale of newly published music books such as William Croft's Musica Sacra (1724) and Peter Fraser's The Delightfull Musical Companion (1726).

Acentral focus of Mathilda of Flanders’ energy was her construction of a Benedictine abbey for women, Holy Trinity in Caen, dedicated in 1066. Mathilda's choice to establish her new monastic foundation in honor of the Trinity, as opposed to a saint or the Virgin Mary, was an early indicator of her spiritual preference for the Holy Spirit and, through it, apostolic authority. The mysteries of the Holy Spirit were connected in scripture to prophesy, which would be another fascination for her. Historians have long argued that Holy Trinity was founded as a penance for Mathilda's marriage in the face of a papal ban. Yet her creation of Holy Trinity eventually swept over the past to embrace a breathtakingly uncertain venture: the Norman invasion of England. In what follows, I consider Holy Trinity in light of the Norman conquest. Holy Trinity was Mathilda's frst contribution to Norman victory. Mathilda established the monastery's connections to the military ofensive from the beginning, despite the uncertainty of its success, and the conquest remained a central element of its character long afer her death. The second contribution was the Mora, the ship she had constructed for the invasion, that carried William to England. Tus, through the work of her hands, she placed herself at the heart of the Norman Conquest. To these two conquest gifs, one must add the most notable – her daughter, Cecelia. Given as an oblate on the day of Holy Trinity's dedication, Cecelia's role in the family's success was a critical one. Her career as the second abbess of Mathilda's new foundation was surely planned from the start.