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Provides a succinct bibliography of the various kings of medieval England, from the Bretwaldas of Bede's day through the short reign of Richard III. In selecting works to be included, the author has focused his attention on providing annotations of informative and accessible sources, particularly biographical materials, that might be used by a wide range of individuals--scholars, undergraduate researchers, Anglophiles, and others. The annotation for each entry contains a 75-to 150-word analysis of content and other factors, such as bibliography, helpful notes, tables, illustrations, and level of comprehension, which commend the book or article to the reader. With author index. ... Read more

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Foremost in the historiography on English monarchs.
Dr. Larry Usilton, Professor of History at the University of NorthCarolina at Wilmington has released a remarkably lucid, engaging, andcritically important reference source for anyone interested in the earlymonarchs of Britain. Any lecturer in the field should feel comfortablerecommending this book to their students. ... Read more

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The essays in this volume look at the mechanics of debt, the legal process, and its economics in early medieval England. Beneath the elevated plane of high politics, affairs of the Crown and international finance of the Middle Ages, lurked huge numbers of credit and debt transactions. The transactions and those who conducted them moved between social and economic worlds; merchants and traders, clerics and Jews, extending and receiving credit to and from their social superiors, equals and inferiors. These papers build upon an established tradition of approaches to the study of credit and debt in the Middle Ages, looking at the wealth of historical material, from registries of debt and legal records, to parliamentary roles and statues, merchant accounts, rents and leases, wills and probates. Four of the six papers in this volume were given at a conference on 'Credit and debt in medieval and early modern England' held in Oxford in 2000. The other two papers draw upon new important postgraduate theses. Contents: Introduction (Phillipp Schofield); Aspects of the law of debt, 1189-1307 (Paul Brand); Christian and Jewish lending patterns and financial dealings during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (Robin R. Mundill); Some aspects of the business of statutory debt registries, 1283-1307 (Christopher McNall); The English parochial clergy as investors and creditors in the first half of the fourteenth century (Pamela Nightingale); Access to credit in the medieval English countryside (Phillipp Schofield); Creditors and debtors at Oakington, Cottenham and Dry Drayton (Cambridgeshire), 1291-1350 (Chris Briggs). ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Trash, But Unfortunately Not Good Trash
You know how sometimes you just want to read a good, almost trashy work of popular history? Something that has no pretensions to being an academic study, that requires no thought whatsoever - something that's just a ripping yarn, but that doesn't leave you feeling cheated by bombarding you with factual errors, amateur psychology and pet theories stated as fact? A book that makes you wonder why you bother with so many bad works of historical fiction by churn-'em-out hacks and Richard the Third apologists, when a brilliantly-written work of popular history beats most historical fiction out of this world?

Well, `She Wolves' ain't it. The surface is racy and trashy, but the content is uninspiring. The writing style isn't very impressive either - it's badly punctuated, with commas thrown into some sentences with no logic whatsoever. Language like "Aelfthryth is one of the most notorious of any queen of England" is also highly irritating. Why not, "Aelfthryth is one of the most notorious queens of England"? As I always end up concluding in these cases, a good editor could have helped a great deal, and massaged something inadequate into something adequate.

What's most irritating is those passages that manage to bombard you with information, and at the same time, tell you almost nothing. For example: "Anne Boleyn is the most controversial woman ever to wear the crown of England. Like Elizabeth Woodville, she rose from humble origins to marry the king but her king was already married. By deciding to marry, Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII set in motion a divorce which dragged on for over six years and dramatically changed the course of English history. Anne Boleyn had a huge impact on religion in England and helped to shape the course England would take into the early modern period. In spite of this, however, she was never popular and Anne's security was ultimately based on maintaining the king's love. One of the most studied of her generation, Anne Boleyn's life held moments of great triumph and calamity. She is also one of the most vilified, though Henry should bear most of the blame, as he held the power in their relationship. Anne ended up an unfortunate victim, just like Henry's first wife, Catherine of Aragon." Whoa! This rushed, breathless style made me start to feel almost dizzy if I read more than one chapter at a time.

There's a monstrous factual error about Bloody Mary that I must point out, in order to prove I'm not just being snide about how bad this book really is: "Mary had begun to burn Protestants in February 1555 but these dramatically increased following Philip's departure, in Mary's bid to please God and so earn His favour again. Thousands of Protestants were burned during Mary's reign and she earned the nickname, `Bloody Mary' for this policy." Yes, that's right: THOUSANDS of Protestants were, according to this supposed historian, burned between February 1555 and Mary's death in November 1558. Not the 300 or so that other historians state (though some specify about 280). David Starkey's `Elizabeth' mentions, in addition to those 300, about 100 other deaths in custody, so if you add those suspected heretics who died in prison awaiting trial, you could safely say she was responsible for the deaths of approximately 400 Protestants. That is not `thousands'. One other possible mistake: "Mary must have been devastated by the failure of her `pregnancy' and her grief was confounded on 29 August when Philip sailed to Flanders." I know "confounded" means confused, perplexed, astonished, etc. - but still, this doesn't sound right. Is there any possibility she meant "compounded"? Mary's grief at the ending of her phantom pregnancy would certainly have been magnified by her husband's desertion of her.

I have to say, I'm also disappointed with the production standards. After reading works such as John Schofield's `The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell', Peter Rex's `The English Resistance' and Arlene Okerlund's biography of Elizabeth Woodville, I'd assumed The History Press was a highly reputable publisher that only published well-produced books by serious historians. `She Wolves' has blown that theory out the window. In addition to the problems already outlined, the book was not edited or proofread properly - there those commas all over the place, and problems such as "One of Mary's first acts as queen was to repeal her parent's divorce", "Matilda of Flander's daughter-in-law" and "Isabella must have eager to visit her new country" are enough to make anyone who cares about the production standards of books wince. She also refers to Thomas More and `Thomas Moore', and writes that Elizabeth Woodville's father was named Sir John Woodville, when his name was Sir Richard Woodville.

I'd say, "Don't expect too much and you won't be disappointed", except that I'd be lying. Based on other reviews, I didn't expect too much, yet I was still disappointed. It's not completely unreadable (though it's close!), but the awkward writing and haphazard punctuation do not make it an enjoyable read. And I have to say that her statement in the Conclusion that "The queens discussed here were all, for a variety of reasons, portrayed as She-Wolves" seems unsubstantiated. Were the witless wanton Catherine Howard and the manipulated and abused Lady Jane Grey really seen by their contemporaries as "she-wolves"?

Great idea but disappointing execution
The irritatingly breathless, hyperbolic and off-putting cover blurb was ironically the reason I picked up this book; surely the author was not seriously suggesting that Emma of Normandy, Empress Matilda, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, Anne Boleyn, Lady Jane Grey and Mary Tudor (to name a few of the "notorious queens" profiled here) all shared a penchant "for witchcraft, murder, adultery and incest"!Thankfully, no - the product summary is very much a misrepresentation of the approach here.The common theme is the notion that the notoriety of these queens arises from their failure, or refusal, to conform either wholly or partly to contemporary expectations of female behaviour, and that their reputations are not necessarily deserved.Given its scope -approximately twenty queens' lives are examined here, some famous, some more obscure - each chapter is understandably a very brief and general account of each queen.

It's definitely a worthy thing, to re-examine the lives of women who attracted censure and vitriol during their lifetimes (or immediately after their deaths) with a view to analyse critically whether they are truly "bad girls of history" or simply misunderstood.In attempting to rehabilitate some of her subjects' reputations, though, Norton regrettably goes too far in the other direction at times.For example, in the chapter on Isabella of France, Edward II's Queen, she argues that Isabella was "driven" into her "cruel and terrible actions" by "years of mistreatment"; that the invasion of England and the tyrannical regime that Isabella and Mortimer set up was the result of being provoked beyond endurance by her homosexual husband and his favourites (Piers Gaveston and the Despensers, which is spelt "Dispensers" - both annoying and unintentionally funny).This implication that Isabella was really just a put-upon wife in an abusive marriage is too simplistic for words, as well as unfair.If a strong and powerful woman is able to own her achievements, then she should be held just as responsible for her less laudable actions.The "victimhood" approach (which also forms the basis of Alison Weir's analysis of Isabella) denies women's agency, and is just as paternalistic as some of the contemporary attitudes that Norton criticises.Other striking examples of analysis turning into apologia include the chapters on Margaret d'Anjou and Elizabeth Woodville.These queens were far more complex than that.

Unfortunately, the actual writing is also rather pedestrian and a bit simplistic.There is too much speculation as to what each of her subjects may have felt or thought: so-and-so "was probably excited at the thought of her marriage" or "probably hoped to be able to influence her husband."The narrative is extremely repetitive: words such as "notorious" and "unsavoury" are used far too often, which suggests Norton and/or her editors need to invest in a good thesaurus, and the prose is fairly lifeless.Just because a book is non-fiction does not mean the writing style has to be dry and laboured; Antonia Fraser and David Starkey are examples of biographers whose writing is vivid and entertaining, and whose books read like novels.

The lives of the queens depicted here are definitely fascinating, and deserving of analysis.Unfortunately this book does not quite do them justice which is a real shame, and an opportunity missed.
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Winner of the Women's History Network Book Prize, 2007A large proportion of late medieval people were accused of some kind of misdemeanour in borough, manorial or ecclesiastical courts at some stage in their lives. The records of these courts bring us as close to ordinary townspeople and villagers as it is possible to get, and show what behaviour was considered reprehensible in men and women. This book is the first full-length study of gender and crime in late medieval England. Based on a meticulous analysis of the records of local jurisdictions in Kent, and bringing in a wealth of evidence from numerous individual cases, it shows how charges against women typically differed from those against men, and how contemporary assumptions and fears about masculinity and femininity were both reflected and reinforced by the local courts.KAREN JONES is an Associate Research Fellow of the University of Greenwich. ... Read more

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After William the Conqueror imposed upon English monastic houses a new obligation of providing knights for the king's army, their new lay military and judicial responsibilities required them to organize honor courts.The resulting juggling of spiritual and secular duties powerfully impacted monastic lords' relationship with the king and his court.Because abbots were not merely leaders of religious houses but also honorial lords presiding over secular justice, a study of the monastic honor court affords new insights into the evolution of royal justice in Anglo-Norman and Angevin England.Tribunals of monastic houses consisting of the brethren and the lay tenants, headed by their abbot, answered questions of the knights' tenures and services, assessed and enforced military obligations, and resolved tenants' disputes. This book shows that under the Conquerors' sons, monastic lords in England regularly looked to their king for support in preserving and protectin!g their jurisdiction, and the Anglo-Norman kings responded favorably. Later, the legal and administrative reforms of the Angevin kings along with changing patterns of patronage gradually reduced royal support. ... Read more

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The past is a foreign country. This is your guidebook. Imagine you could get into a time machine and travel back to the fourteenth century. What would you see? What would you smell? More to the point, where are you going to stay? Should you go to a castle or a monastic guest house? And what are you going to eat? What sort of food are you going to be offered by a peasant or a monk or a lord? This radical new approach turns our entire understanding of history upside down. It shows us that the past is not just something to be studied; it is also something to be lived. It sets out to explain what life was like in the most immediate way, through taking you, the reader, to the middle ages, and showing you everything from the horrors of leprosy and war to the ridiculous excesses of roasted larks and haute couture.Being a guidebook, many questions are answered which do not normally occur in traditional history books. How do you greet people in the street? What should you use for toilet paper? How fast - and how safely - can you travel? Why might a physician want to taste your blood? And how do you test to see if you are going down with the plague?The result is the most astonishing social history book you are ever likely to read: revolutionary in its concept, informative and entertaining in its detail, and startling for its portrayal of humanity in an age of violence, exuberance and fear. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

A terrific gift for someone who enjoys history
I purchased this book for a young cousin in England. He has raved about the book.
Well worth the price.

Best history book I've read in a long time!
I'm not a historian or even a serious student of history -- I read history books for pure enjoyment. I can't think of another that has been as fascinating and informative as "Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England". Ian Mortimer has written a handbook in the second person voice that really makes you feel a connection to and an understanding of 14th century England. (To be honest, it also made me much more appreciative of the modern world!)

I would recommend this book to anyone who is curious about the past and what it was like to live in that time. I only wish such handbooks were available for other centuries and countries -- it gives such a unique perspective to "history".

(I added a tag for SCA, because this is a very useful reference for re-enactors.)

Wilt thou come travelling too?
An excellent book on social history, presented in the style of a travel guide. Fascinating and highly entertaining,this is so much more than a typical history book.

It takes the reader on a journey through the cities, towns and villages of medieval England, illustrating the vivid contrast between rich and poor, slave and nobleman.
The presentation of the struggles and triumphs,joys and sorrows of men and women of a bygone era, allows the reader to identify with them, and learn much about thier world.

At the same time it serves as an introduction to social customs and conventions. In doing so it provides a unique insight into life during this period, as well as a glimpse into the medieval mindset.

Reading this whet my appetite, and I have been searching for more books on the subject.

The book could have done with a glossary, as not all the unfamilar terms were defined, and perhaps a little more clarity in some places, but other then that it is an invaluable and unique resource.

The Time Traveller indeed
This book was one of excitement and fun. I felt as if i was acutally there walking beside Geoffery Chaucer while he talked about his next great book, or fighting alongside the Black Prince in France. This book is nothing short of a mircale because it really takes us back to the 14th century and the England of the 14th century, which was quite brutal.

Besides being fun and historically sound, Ian had some good points. I certainly would not want to face a knight with a broadsword anytime soon, knowing the men of this time were much stronger than they are today. And I really don't want to be a French knight at Crecy facing Edward III's longbowmen. And I absolutly don't want to be living in Europe between 1348-49, because I don't want to die of the Black Death.

I found the bit on the cloths cool. The kings and noblemen of the 14th century thought is was fasionable to wear jewelry. The queens wore headresses that had '154 pearls' dotted on them. Women today would believe those women to be rich. Also that a medieval woman had to wear a nightshirt and nightcap. I thought the slept in the neud. It was very exciting to learn that.

This is definatly a really cool book. I have a signed copy of it. I recommend this book to anyone intrested in Medieval England

A new slant on history
This book is truly written as a guide for a time traveler. It explains how you would live life in the 14th century - what you would see and hear, who you would meet, how you would travel and conduct business, and so on. It goes into phenomenal detail about seemingly mundane aspects of daily life and explains greater societal changes throughout the century. The author frames the information in an interesting and often amusing way. This is a very solid history book that avoids reading like a text book (and I know how dull a history textbook can be). Although, he covers some subjects a little too thoroughly. And I admit that I glanced over a few pages and tables here and there as I read it. But for a 300+ page history book, I was pretty hooked.

I can't remember how I first heard of this book. I may have seen it on the BBC website. Since it is not yet published in the US, I had to order it on Amazon UK. I bought a few things, so the overseas shipping wasn't so outrageously expensive. And it arrived in two days - much faster than when I order on regular Amazon! ... Read more

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This is the first volume of a two-volume study of medieval England covering the period between the Norman Conquest and the Black Death. The book opens with a summary portrait of the English economy and society in the reign of William I. It goes on to examine in detail the population increase from 1086 to 1349 and to investigate the structure of society where relationships were rooted in the dependence of man upon man. ... Read more

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Sandy Bardsley examines the complex relationship between speech and gender in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and engages debates on the static nature of women's status after the Black Death. Focusing on England, Venomous Tongues uses a combination of legal, literary, and artistic sources to show how deviant speech was increasingly feminized in the later Middle Ages. Women of all social classes and marital statuses ran the risk of being charged as scolds, and local jurisdictions interpreted the label of "scold" in a way that best fit their particular circumstances. Indeed, Bardsley demonstrates, this flexibility of definition helped to ensure the longevity of the term: women were punished as scolds as late as the early nineteenth century.

The tongue, according to late medieval moralists, was a dangerous weapon that tempted people to sin. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, clerics railed against blasphemers, liars, and slanderers, while village and town elites prosecuted those who abused officials or committed the newly devised offense of scolding. In courts, women in particular were prosecuted and punished for insulting others or talking too much in a public setting. In literature, both men and women were warned about women's propensity to gossip and quarrel, while characters such as Noah's Wife and the Wife of Bath demonstrate the development of a stereotypically garrulous woman. Visual representations, such as depictions of women gossiping in church, also reinforced the message that women's speech was likely to be disruptive and deviant. ... Read more

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Nuns and devout noblewomen were sometimes celebrated for their achievements in the literature of the medieval period, but more often than not these women only appear on the side-lines of history, while the ordinary wife and mother is virtually invisible. These papers, written by historians and archaeologists, discuss the religious devotion and spiritual life of medieval women from all walks of life. From an analysis of the architecture and economic organisation of nunneries, to an assessment of the medieval Church's response to the pain and perils of childbirth, these papers consider the influence of the church on the lives of women, and the influence that women had on the life and worship of the Church. The papers in this collection started as contributions to a conference held in Oxford in 2001. ... Read more

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In this series of essays on the society and economy of England between the eleventh and the sixteenth centuries, fourteen contributors address many of the most important themes in an era that experienced profound change in rural, commercial, urban and industrial life. Subjects covered include the growth of London, the commercial and urban development of the north, Italian merchants and banking, overseas trade, taxation, farm servants, hunting and poaching, changing relations between landlords and tenants, the expansion of the economy in the twelfth century and the great slump of the fifteenth. ... Read more

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Indulgences played a major role in medieval 'strategies for eternity', easing the journey through Purgatory to Heaven after death. However, theological attacks during the Reformation and the subsequent Protestant rejection of indulgences have given them a poor reputation, compounding the effect of the fourteenth-century satires by Chaucer and Langland of the pardoners who ensured their widespread distribution. This book is the first study of indulgences in late medieval England and it offers an extensive and authoritative re-evaluation of their role in England's religious, social, and economic life between 1300 and the Reformation. R. N. Swanson traces their importance to devotional life, their contribution to charitable and economic structures and the complex tale of their disappearance under Henry VIII. This is a major contribution to the religious history of late medieval England and will be essential reading for scholars of medieval history, religious studies and the Reformation. ... Read more

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The English cultural landscape has evolved over centuries, retaining in its multifarious patterning many aspects of the past which provide evidence of a long and gradual development. This book discusses in detail some aspects of life in medieval England still to be seen in the landscape. The perspective of the air photograph conveys a fresh understanding of the physical setting of medieval society, of the interaction between communities and the land upon which they settled and of the varying pattern of the social and economic fabric of the country. Comparison of air photographs with early maps and records is exceptionally informative, permitting analytical studies of town and village plans, or providing clues to the discovery of quite unexpected features. Many villages were established long before the Doomsday survey: some have vanished or are now to be seen only as a roughness in the ground or as marks in soil or crops. Others may remain as an ancient nucleus of a town or city now surrounded by more recent building development. ... Read more

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Medieval castles have traditionally been explained as feats of military engineering and tools of feudal control. The Idea of the Castle in Medieval England sets out systematically to challenge these assumptions. This exciting book looks again at the medieval evidence, introducing new approaches and sources to reveal the castle's place at the heart of medieval culture. It argues that castles participated fully in aesthetic and intellectual movements, and were vehicles for ideas every bit as sophisticated as the church architecture of the period.

At a time when almost every aspect of castle studies is up for grabs, Abigail Wheatley offers a genuinely fresh perspective. Most castle scholars confine themselves to historical documents, but she turns instead to medieval literature and art, examining their influence on and response to contemporary castle architecture. What emerges is a fascinating web of cultural resonances. The castle is implicated in every aspect of the medieval consciousness, from private religious contemplation to the creation of national mythologies. Sermons, seals and ivory caskets, local legends and Roman ruins all have their part to play. This refreshing approach reveals fundamental gaps in modern castle studies and makes a compelling case for a new, interdisciplinary approach to the medieval castle. ... Read more

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What did 'home' mean to men and women in the period 1200-1500? This volume explores the many cultural, material and ideological dimensions of the concept of domesticity. Leading scholars examine not only the material cultures of domesticity, gender, and power relations within the household, but also how they were envisioned in texts, images, objects and architecture. Many of the essays argue that England witnessed the emergence of a distinctive bourgeois ideology of domesticity during the late Middle Ages. But the volume also contends that, although the world of the great lord was far removed from that of the artisan or peasant, these social groups all occupied physical structures that constituted homes in which people were drawn together by ties of kinship, service or neighbourliness. This pioneering study will appeal to scholars of medieval English society, literature and culture. ... Read more

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Hugh the Chanter's History is a vivid, partly first-hand account of the struggles of Archbishop Thurstan of York for the rights of his church in the court of King Henry of England and before the pope.Hugh's account illuminates the history not only of the church and court of England but also of France and the papal curia in those years.This revised edition is based on a complete re-collation of the manuscript, and includes a full introduction which describes the manuscript, Hugh's background and purpose in writing, the chapter on York, and the issues at stake with Canterbury and Scotland. ... Read more

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English history has usually been written from the perspective of the south, from the viewpoint of London or Canterbury, Oxford or Cambridge. Yet throughout the middle ages life in the north of England differed in many ways from that south of the Humber. In ecclesiastical terms, the province of York, comprising the dioceses of Carlisle, Durham and York, maintained its own identity, jealously guarding its prerogatives from southern encroachment. In their turn, the bishops and cathedral chapters of Carlisle and Durham did much to prevent any increase in the powers of York itself. Barrie Dobson is the leading authority on the history of religion in the north of England during the later middle ages. In this collection of essays he discusses aspects of church life in each of the three dioceses, identifying the main features of religion in the north and placing contemporary religious attitudes in both a social and a local context. He also examines, among other issues, the careers of individual prelates, including Alexander Neville, archbishop of York (137X88) and Richard Bell, bishop of Carlisle (1478-95); the foundation of chantries in York; and the writing of history at York and Durham in the later middle ages.
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Examines medieval cathedral practice through the analysis of choir stalls. This book demonstrates that far from being merely decorative, these seats reveal much about Medieval society, law, and feudal responsibility. ... Read more

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