3 results
2 - The Northern Limits of Norman Power: Border Policies in Northumbria, c. 1050–1100
- Edited by Dan Armstrong, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto, Áron Kecskés, University of St Andrews, Scotland, Charles C. Rozier, University of East Anglia, Leonie V. Hicks, Canterbury Christ Church University, Kent
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- Book:
- Borders and the Norman World
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 22 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 05 December 2023, pp 43-68
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Summary
Duke William of Normandy's victory at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066 and subsequent assumption of royal power in England extended the northern limits of Norman political power to Northumbria. This northernmost region of England bordered the Scottish kingdom to the north and west, carried a tradition of assumed independence from centralised English rule, hosted some unique institutional frameworks, and, in all, presented the Anglo-Norman kings with one of the most significant challenges to their authority down to the middle of the twelfth century. Nowhere was this seen more clearly than in the northern revolts of 1069–70 against the rule of King William the Conqueror. These fractious months witnessed the death of a Norman-appointed earl and most of his army at Durham and a similar destruction of Norman forces and fortifications at York, and saw realistic threats that both the English claimant, Edgar Ætheling, and the king of Denmark, Svend Estridsen, might gain support in the region in order to challenge William's right to rule England. King William's response to this unrest is usually referred to as his ‘Harrying’ of the northern regions, and has come to dominate the debate on the northern limits of Norman power in Britain before c. 1100. Writing during the twelfth century, the Anglo-Norman chronicler, Orderic Vitalis, described William's actions as follows:
He [William] cut down many in his vengeance; destroyed the lairs of others; harried the land and burned homes to ashes. Nowhere else had William shown such cruelty … he made no effort to restrain his fury and punished the innocent with the guilty. In his anger, he commanded that all crops and herds, chattels and food of every kind should be brought together and burned to ashes with consuming fire, so that the whole region north of the Humber might be stripped of all means of sustenance. In consequence, so serious a scarcity was felt in England and so terrible a famine fell upon the humble and defenceless populace, that more than 100,000 Christian folk of both sexes, young and old alike, perished of hunger.
William's campaign in the aftermath of 1069–70 epitomises his generally hostile approach to the north, which has been described by William Kapelle as ‘Government by Punitive Expedition’, and by William M. Aird as representing a period of ‘sporadic violent revolts, put down by equally ferocious punitive expeditions’.
The Sheriffs of Edward the Confessor
- Edited by Stephen D. Church, University of East Anglia
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- Book:
- Anglo-Norman Studies XLV
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 17 December 2023
- Print publication:
- 05 September 2023, pp 61-76
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Well then, the county of Cambridge had fallen by chance to the lot of Picot, a Norman by race, a Gaetulian by temperament. A starving lion, a footloose wolf, a deceitful fox, a muddy swine, an impudent dog – in the end he obtained the food which he had long hankered after and, as if the whole county was one carcass, he claimed it all for himself, took possession of the whole of it and, like an insatiable monster bent on transferring the whole of it to his belly, did not allow anyone to be a sharer of his portion – not God, not an angel, none of the saints, not – and this is what I am leading up to – the most holy and famous Æthelthryth, who up till then had owned a great many properties – land or vills – in that same county, by the gift and grant of prominent people of former times.
The monastic compiler of the Liber Eliensis, writing in the late twelfth century, offers a vivid impression of the unpleasant nature and conduct of the sheriff. Indeed, most have heard of the medieval sheriff: the pre-modern period was apparently riddled with unsavoury, grasping, malicious thugs perpetually seeking to deprive unjustly the public of their money, land, and sometimes even their freedom. One could go so far as to say that the ‘poster boy’ for the poor character of the medieval sheriff is the bullying, greedy sheriff of Nottingham, immortalized in various retellings of the Robin Hood legend. But how much does this figure resemble the agents who operated in Edward the Confessor's England? What do we know of the men and the office in the eleventh century, closer to the origins of the role? This article aims to provide a clearer picture of the Confessor's sheriffs and their activities. It has been well-established – by Ann Williams, Judith Green, Tom Lambert, Richard Abels, and George Molyneaux – that sheriffs were an important cog in the machinery of the eleventh-century English administration. The emergence of this official, beginning in the late tenth century, significantly impacted the exercise and reach of royal power. But what do we know of the men who operated in the office of sheriff in the last decades of the pre-Conquest period?
9 - Royal Reeves, Royal Authority, and the “Holy Society” in Archbishop Wulfstan’s Writings
- Edited by Andrew Rabin, University of Louisville, Kentucky, Anya Adair, The University of Hong Kong
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- Book:
- Law, Literature, and Social Regulation in Early Medieval England
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 10 June 2023
- Print publication:
- 21 February 2023, pp 198-221
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Summary
Wulfstan, archbishop of York between 1002 and 1023, held his office during an incredibly tumultuous time in English history. Beginning in the 980s and continuing intermittently until the reign of Cnut in 1016, England suffered serious devastation at the hands of the Vikings. These attacks had reached their pinnacle of destruction and brutality during the last decade of Æthelred II's reign, and with the English resistance amounting to something altogether ineffective, enormous sums of money were paid to the Danes in tribute on several occasions. Contemporary sources suggest that this was a period when the people of England were plunged into despair and fear, with diminishing faith in their state and the ability of the king to defend it and its people. As archbishop of York and close advisor to two kings, Wulfstan was well positioned to articulate measures intended to improve England's dire situation. Wulfstan was deeply concerned for the state and wellbeing of the English people. The disasters they faced in the form of Viking attacks he viewed as a result of their having fallen away from God and Christian conduct; accordingly, Wulfstan believed it necessary to reform English society if it were to endure, and to regain God's favor. Wulfstan's writings suggest that the archbishop saw the restoration of order to society as the key to solving England's crises. He attempted, in his homiletic and legal works, to create prescriptions for an ordered, holy, Christian society in order to redeem the English in the eyes of God, and to ensure lasting peace and prosperity. The vision of an ordered, “holy society” that emerged from these works was multifaceted and its execution involved the work of both secular and ecclesiastical entities. This chapter demonstrates that the work of royal officials figured prominently in Wulfstan's vision of reform. In the centralization of these officials (and especially of the secular figure of the reeve) can be seen not only the archbishop's recognition of the importance of secular figures to the support of the Church within a holy society, but the varied legal and literary means by which Wulfstan wove the persuasions, exhortations, and regulations through which he sought to realize his vision.
Wulfstan, Reformer and Writer
Wulfstan first makes an appearance in the historical record in 996, when he was appointed as the bishop of London, though nothing about him prior to that year is known.