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12 - Below Malvern: MS Digby 86, the Grimhills and the Underhills in their Regional and Social Context
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- By John Hines, Cardiff University, Melissa Julian-Jones, Cardiff University
- Edited by Susanna Fein
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- Book:
- Interpreting MS Digby 86
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 24 October 2019
- Print publication:
- 19 July 2019, pp 255-273
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Summary
THE foundations for wide-ranging interest in and discussion of Oxford, BodL, MS Digby 86 in relation to its context of production and early use were laid in the researches of Brian Miller, who assiduously collected and collated contemporary documentary records of individuals and families represented in marginalia and other entries within the manuscript. Publishing a facsimile of the manuscript for the Early English Text Society in 1996, Judith Tschann and Malcolm Parkes were able to bring out more of the complex and fascinating codicological process by which the manuscript was compiled. A number of subsequent studies have approached and applied these data from more literary – interpretative and critical – viewpoints, while Peter Coss has complementarily evaluated these insights from the point of view of a social historian's interest in the culture of the gentry and, in this case, also the ‘sub-gentry’ of the late thirteenth and earlier fourteenth centuries. This chapter's consideration of the societal context of the manuscript builds on all of these observations, using Network Theory to explore the sociopolitical networks of the area and considering the archaeological and geographical context of this region of Worcestershire.
The background: settlement and society in Worcestershire west of the Severn
Tschann and Parkes were prepared to speculate that the principal scribe and compiler, who completed his work during or shortly after the period of November 1281 to November 1283, was Richard de Grimhill (d. 1307/8), whose daughter Amice married Simon (of) Underhill. Death notices for Alexander of Grimhill, possibly a son of Richard who died young, and for Amice and Simon themselves are included in a Calendar within the manuscript (art. 25; fols. 68v–74r), and autograph pen-trials in the hand of William, the son of Simon and Amice, appear on several leaves. Further marginal pen-trials on the leaves of the manuscript are in the hands of a Robert and a John of Pendock, while a large marginal addition is the will of one Robert (son of Robert) of Pendock, stipulating that he should be buried at Redmarley, and leaving a young horse to William of Underhill. These references locate the manuscript, by the early fourteenth century at least, very precisely.
Family Strategy or Personal Principles? The Corbets in the Reign of Henry III
- Edited by Janet Burton, Phillipp Schofield, Björn Weiler
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- Book:
- Thirteenth Century England XV
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 11 June 2021
- Print publication:
- 15 October 2015, pp 69-80
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Summary
To date, greater consideration has been given to the rebels and main players in the Barons’ War than to their royalist opponents, with particular emphasis on their reasons and justifications for rebellion, the consequences of their actions, and their impact on the political, legal and socio-economic landscape. It may be assumed that the motivations of the rebels provide a greater platform for study, especially for understanding the zeitgeist of the 1250s and 60s, and the reasons for the dramatic events, shifts and tensions which took place within it, on a micro- as well as a macro-level. The motivations of the royalists, however, have been examined less thoroughly. There have been a few exceptions, including Barry Kelly's article, ‘A Royalist Perspective on the Barons’ War 1264–5’, but on the whole, and certainly in recent publications, less attention seems to have been paid to the supporters of the king's cause in their own right than the rebels and leading figures such as Simon de Montfort.
Rebellion and the nature of rebels as political agents are, naturally, subjects to which much sociological and political theory has been devoted. Marxist theories and interpretations have coloured the historical views on peasant rebellions, and in the early 1990s Roger Petersen put forward a community-based theory of rebellion which could also be transferable in principle to the community-centric context of thirteenth-century England. Arguably, the March of Wales, formed of individual lordships and border baronies each with its own individual character and context, provides an ideal basis for a case study in which communities within the March found themselves in violent opposition to one another. Extended families found themselves at odds and on either side of the rebellion; it was not the case that all individuals were united by a family policy, unanimously favouring one side over the other, nor that families were united according to the wishes of their respective heads, as will be shown in this present study. The following case study is intended to illustrate the kinds of discrete individual decisions and actions that could be applied in such circumstances, through one member of a middle-ranking Marcher family, Thomas Corbet.