This thesis investigates the factors that influence the ways in which scribes copied Old English in charter texts. These factors include: the training scribes received in learning to write Old English and to copy texts; the role of the Anglo-Saxon scriptorium and the environment in which scribes worked; and the role of training and scriptorial influence in the development of a scribe’s written system. This investigation has highlighted, in particular, the lack of information about how scribes were trained in Old English compared to what is known of their training in Latin and in script acquisition. To investigate these factors, this thesis uses a comparative study of the work of the scribe of the eleventh-century Worcester Nero Middleton cartulary, copying the texts S 1280 and S 1556 from the early eleventh-century cartulary Liber Wigorniensis. The data is taken directly from the manuscripts and from original transcriptions of each charter copy, which provides evidence not available in editions. This study demonstrates the worth of studying later copies of texts, in particular of charters. It also shows the wealth of information to be found in the work of copying scribes. The study of the Nero Middleton scribe’s work has shown that scribal copying is not simply the application of one system (the copying scribe’s) onto another (the exemplar’s). In the two texts studied, this scribe exhibits different behaviours, varying in ways which are not the result of influence from their exemplar, but which suggest that their copying style and written system is changeable. From this it can be concluded that the scribes underwent some training in writing Old English which formalized aspects of their written conventions, but that much of the scribes’ conventions appear to have been influenced by the collaborative environment of the scriptorium in which they worked.

This thesis discusses the role of the manuscripts written, read and studied by the Franciscan friars from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries in the city of Padua, northern Italy. In order to study the manuscripts, the study proposes a model of analysis that consists of four aspects: the ideal, the space, the purpose and the interaction. The ideal was expressed by the regulations on learning, study and use of books. The regulations determined the type of book that the manuscripts should be aiming for. The thesis shows that the friars proposed interpretations of the rule in order to reconcile this ideal with their actual use of books. The space was expressed by the Franciscan libraries as places where the manuscripts were collected, but also studied. The thesis discusses how the libraries of the friars found the best ways to guarantee the availability of books for their readers through practices such as long-term loans. The study shows also that the purpose of the manuscripts was related to their physical characteristics, as well as to their type as a book of study, pastoral care, devotion or preaching. The dimension of the interaction refers to the practices of reading. The study reveals that Franciscans were skilled readers who showed remarkable flexibility and contributed significantly to the affirmation of the portable, personal library as a tool for learning and writing. This thesis follows an innovative approach by comparing for the first time the book collections of the medieval Franciscan libraries in Padua. It also explores an original path by applying the reception theory and the notion of interpretive community as tools to discuss the cultural agency of the medieval Franciscan friars. As a result of its interdisciplinary approach, this study offers findings on the dynamics of circulation of manuscripts in the libraries, the role of portability in the manuscripts employed by the friars, and prospective fields of application of the model of analysis.

This thesis examines the development of the institutional identity of the Chapel of St Mary and the Holy Angels, York, from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. Following its foundation next to York Minster in the late 1170s, the chapel went through a series of reforms and re-foundations. It is these moments of activity and change which enable us to examine how the chapel’s identity was being constructed and conceived. Over the course of its history, the community and its identity developed in response both to the wishes of its founder and its relationship with the cathedral church. This thesis accordingly explores the relationship between the constitutions, administration, personnel and liturgy of the two institutions. The thesis is split into two parts: Part One examines the foundations and constitution of the chapel. Chapter One surveys existing approaches to the chapel and examines the context of the foundation of St Mary and the Holy Angels’ within the cathedral close and some elements of its early purpose and function. Chapter Two explores the development of the chapel’s constitution in the thirteenth century, with a focus upon its administrative figures. Chapter Three considers the challenges to the chapel and its identity from external influences upon its personnel and architectural developments within the cathedral in the fourteenth century. Part Two focuses on the long fifteenth century. Chapter Four is a prosopographical study of the chapel’s canons, demonstrating the cohesion between the communities of the chapel and minster. Chapter Five offers a study of the York Antiphonal, considering its relevance to the York Use and liturgical renewal in the fifteenth century. Chapter Six addresses aspects of the liturgical identity of the chapel using the York Antiphonal. Chapter Seven concludes the history of the chapel and considers the community and dissolution of the chapel in the sixteenth century.

This thesis examines castles in the early Tudor period between 1485 and 1547, considering these buildings as case studies for English and Welsh daily life, rather than as purely military or symbolic structures. The four buildings and their owners investigated here are: Carew Castle, Pembrokeshire and Sir Rhys ap Thomas, Cowdray Castle, West Sussex and Sir William Fitzwilliam, Hedingham Castle, Essex and John de Vere, thirteenth earl of Oxford, and finally, Thornbury Castle, Gloucestershire and Edward Stafford, third duke of Buckingham. Evaluating these four sites in combination with their owners broadens the current scholarship and provides an opportunity to assess the households, spatial arrangements, organisation and display of early Tudor castles. In conjunction, this thesis applies a new methodology that incorporates an interdisciplinary approach in order to investigate and analyse a more rounded set of evidence. The innovative methodology incorporates archaeology, building remains, access analysis maps, and written records to construct a more holistic picture of the castle’s function and role in everyday life. The first half of the thesis explores the relationship between the lord, the castle, and the regional landscape and community. It establishes that the castle cannot be examined in isolation; instead these aspects need to be incorporated into castle studies in order to provide a clearer picture. The first part forms a vital precursor to the examination of the interaction that happened within the castle itself, which forms the second part of this thesis. The spatial arrangements and the households of each of the four case studies are comparatively examined in order to determine the movement of the household, guests, and the lord through the castle. Each of the chapters reveals similarities between the sites, their layout, and the daily life that took place within them. This furnishes a rich seam of information that contributes to scholarship on the early Tudor period, bringing to the forefront of the discussion the focus on people and place.

The objects of the present inquiry are two-fold: to assess the reliability of Ibn al-Athir as an historian of the Crusades from the Muslim standpoint, and to distinguish the various strands of information upon which he drew for his crusading material, as far as that may be done in the absence of known sources. Before proceeding to the consideration of these questions, it Is proposed to note briefly his situation with respect to the crusades, and to indicate previous work which has been done in this field.

In this thesis, I contend that the visual dynamics of religious manuscripts produced in England (1260-1500) had fundamental importance in shaping the cognitive and conceptual responses of readers who were not literate in Latin. I begin by establishing the primacy of Latin paraliturgical materials, used for teaching beginning readers the preliminary skills needed to recite Latin prayers. In Books of Hours, all the visual components of the page combined to inculcate a distinctive mode of reading, close to monastic lectio, which was to influence Middle English devotional writing. In my second chapter, I demonstrate that thirteenth-century pastoral writings such as the Manuel des Péchés placed readers in intimate contact with modes of reading translated from the Latin, and that this mode of reading endured in popularity into the fifteenth century. My third chapter considers the translation of the French of England of the Manuel into Middle English as Handlyng Synne, and the transmission of that Middle English text in late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts. Handlyng Synne repositions the French of England as a language exclusive to ‘clerkes,’ and this repositioning creates a space in which Latin becomes almost vernacularised. In the visual dynamics of the Handlyng Synne manuscripts, we see evidence of readers who were competent to interpret Latin submerged in Middle English. In Nicholas Love’s Mirror, paraliturgical Latin again comes to the fore, in visual dynamics that construct a space for Middle English readers on the margins of Latin textual culture. In my final chapter, I look at the late-medieval manuscripts of the romance Robert of Sicily, finding in them complex interactions between languages, which shed light on the text’s central exploration of the process of translation and of the positions of Latin and Middle English. I conclude that, despite medieval writers’ rhetorical distinction of the three main languages of medieval England from one another, Latin models of reading were transmitted from paraliturgical contexts, from texts written in the French of England, into Middle English manuscripts, whose visual contents are constantly in contact with Latin.

This thesis explores the cultural meanings of beds and chambers in late-medieval England. It argues that the cultural phenomenon of the chamber, which emerged in England in the later middle ages, had profound and wide-reaching effects on late-medieval society and affected both those who had chambers and those who did not. This thesis has a strictly interdisciplinary approach, using a range of literary, documentary, visual and archaeological sources, and demonstrates how these sources informed and were informed by cultural associations and assumptions surrounding the bed and chamber. Its analysis of how members of society considered and interacted with the bed and chamber contributes to current discourse on space and objects. Additionally, its in-depth analysis of how cultural meanings of the bed and chamber were articulated and perpetuated sheds new light on late-medieval literature and social practice. This thesis is structured around a set of precepts known as “Arise Early”. Chapter One, “Fyrst Arysse Erly”, reconstructs the physical components of both real and ideal beds and chambers. Chapter Two, “Serve Thy God Deuly”, focuses on the bed and chamber as an appropriate space in which to encounter God and engage in domestic piety. Chapter Three, “Do Thy Warke Wyssely […] And Awnswer the Pepll Curtesly”, analyses how the cultural associations of the bed and chamber with intimacy and sound judgement impacted on personal and political communication and administration. Chapter Four, “Go to Thy Bed Myrely/ And Lye Therin Jocundly”, explores the chamber as a space for communal and individual leisure, the cultural link between beds and books, and the chamber as a space for the appropriate expression of emotion. Chapter Five, “Plesse and Loffe Thy Wyffe Dewly/ And Basse Hyr Onys or Tewys Myrely”, focuses on the ways in which the bed and chamber were understood in relation to both licit and illicit sex and demonstrates that the marital bed was considered to be the only acceptable locus for sex. Chapter Six, “The Invisible Woman”, explores the powerful link between women and beds and chambers in late-medieval England and demonstrates that chambers both contained and empowered women. Finally, my conclusion demonstrates how these complex cultural meanings were interwoven and highlights the importance of interdisciplinarity in approaching an understanding of the past.

Exile was a state of hardship undertaken by a vast number of individuals throughout the history of Anglo-Saxon England. Thoughts about exile permeate literary works throughout the period, including poems, homilies, and prose narratives. Exile was a powerful force in shaping concepts of the Anglo-Saxon past. In this dissertation, I will examine how stories about exile were employed to craft presentations of Anglo-Saxon kings who had been restored to power. To this end I have selected three representative kings for discussion: Edwin of Northumbria, Alfred of Wessex, and Æthelred II of England. Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica and its portrayal of Edwin’s exile experience is the subject of the first chapter. In the chapter about Alfred I assess Asser’s biography of that king (the Vita Ælfredi), as well as entries made in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the prologue to Alfred’s law code. In the final chapter I look at the Chronicler’s account of Æthelred II, and assess the manipulation of language and employment of literary device in the king’s post-exile charters and legislation. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, I demonstrate how new questions may be asked of these well-known primary sources to expand our understanding of the composers of these narratives and documents and the historical contexts of their compositions. Most importantly, this dissertation further develops the idea that a ‘discourse of exile’ existed in Anglo-Saxon texts, and that this discourse was artfully employed to impart important statements on liminality, cultural identity, unity, negotiations of power, typologies, and kingship.

This thesis investigates the battles associated with rebellion in the Tudor state between 1549 and 1554, considering these actions as case studies for English warfare, rather than as internal policing operations. Evaluating such engagements in this fashion broadens the currently limited sample of battles fought in the sixteenth-century British Isles and provides an opportunity to assess the organisation, weaponry, and tactics of Tudor armies in the field. The thesis also makes use of methodologies of terrain reconstruction to ascertain the historic landscape in which these encounters occurred, building up a picture of their battlefield environment from cartographic and narrative source material. These reconstructions are then used to undertake detailed analysis of individual battles, beyond that which can be attempted using purely written accounts, discerning how opposing forces deployed and manoeuvred within the terrain. The first half of the thesis explores England’s available military resources, in terms of personnel and armaments, and establishes the way in which these assets were typically employed in battle. This forms a vital precursor to the case studies of subsequent chapters, illustrating the sources of recruitment upon which both loyalist and rebel forces could draw, as well as defining how English armies were equipped, and how they fought. The case studies themselves comprise the latter half of the thesis, with conclusions regarding the composition, requirements, and battlefield performance of Tudor armies being extrapolated from the outbreak and suppression of uprisings in Devon and Cornwall, Norfolk, and Kent. In each of these instances, insurgents conducted military campaigns that culminated in battles with government forces, furnishing a rich seam of information that can complement and enhance the study of warfare in this period.

This work charts the evolution of soteriology among Franciscan friars working at the University of Paris up to 1300. It examines in turn each of their extant soteriological works from this period to demonstrate the development of a distinct and uniquely Franciscan approach to soteriology. This study considers the written forms in which these Franciscan theological opinions were expressed, the scholastic genres of commentaries upon the Book of Sentences along with quaestiones disputatae, quodlibets and summae. It situates those soteriological innovations and their genres of expression in their historical context, the developing engagement of the Franciscans with the University of Paris and the tensions that came with this, especially the secular-mendicant controversy of the 1220s to 1250s and the Aristotelian conflict with Stephen Tempier in the 1270s. These three elements, Franciscan theological ideas, the literary forms in which they were articulated and the historical setting in which they were expressed, played upon each other to produce theology particular to the Franciscans. The friars discarded much of the soteriology inherited from Anselm of Bec and marginalised the significance of satisfaction and divine punishment for the fall. Figures like Bonaventure, Matthew of Aquasparta and Richard of Middleton gave greater emphasis to human fulfilment in a plan unrelated to the events of the fall. Despite obstacles to their theological work from both the university and the wider church, the Franciscans were not dissuaded from their ideas, adjusting the expression of those notions to ensure their acceptance. This interplay of ideas, genres and events provides evidence that supports a claim for the existence of a distinctive ‘Franciscan school’ of theology in operation in Paris in the thirteenth century. This school recast the doctrine of redemption as more than the appeasement of a God angered by disobedience and demanding a suitable sacrifice. The Franciscans advocated instead for salvation as God generously furthering and advancing the final culmination of human creation.