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When Ernst Kantorowicz published The King’s Two Bodies in 1957, far greater importance was placed upon the body politic, the office of King, than on the body natural, the king as a man. In part, this thesis sets out to overturn this notion: the royal corpse was the central and most vital element of the royal funerary and burial ceremonies, and concern for the royal body and its soul lasted for centuries. Although the King always lived, the mortal king did not become inert or null upon death. The English royal funeral has been understudied. The practical mechanics of English kings’ funerals (including the preservation of the body, the role of the Church, and the events of the ceremonies) have not been laid out clearly. This thesis seeks to update the analysis of both individual kingly funerals and the overarching development of royal exequies over three centuries, from John in 1216 to Henry VII in 1509. It is my argument that the language used in the royal prescriptive funerary and burial texts permitted individual variation based on personal preferences, the unique circumstances of the death, and the requirements of the Church for a Christian burial. The royal prescriptive texts were elastic, enabling a wide variety of kings during the medieval period to be laid to rest fittingly and honorably, according to their station. These prescriptive texts did not cover commemoration, an omission that allowed flexibility in celebrating the legacy of a deceased king. In special cases, the living elected to rebury the dead, be it for practical reasons or to enhance the legacies of both parties. The ceremonies and the ensuing commemoration, combined with a pronounced preference for burial in England for members of the royal house, formed an English royal way of death.

Commoners' use of the assize of novel disseisin, or recent dispossession, and the action itself are fundamental to the creation and evolution of English common law. The assize was issued by Henry II in 1166 for the resolution of property disputes and could be brought only before the royal courts, which had the effect of removing many such disputes from seigneurial jurisdiction. It was immediately popular and continued in everyday use for almost 300 years. The thesis considers commoners' approach to the action from the earliest accounts of their cases recorded in the Plea Rolls, which are extant from 1194, focusing upon unfree litigants despite their official exclusion from the assize, the poor, and women. It finds that they were attracted by, inter alia, the action's accessibility to all free men and women, however impoverished, its speed and reliability, and its use of writing to record the outcome of disputes. It was a time when the procedures of the nascent common law, the new opportunities it offered the populace, and literacy, were all in a state of flux. The cases show how and in what manner many humble people used the action to their advantage and also the reasons why others failed, indicating their view and understanding of their society.

Count Geoffrey V of Anjou (1129-51) features in Anglo-French historiography as a peripheral figure in the Anglo-Norman succession crisis which followed the death of his father-in-law, Henry I of England and Normandy (1100-35). The few studies which examine him directly do so primarily in this context, dealing briefly with his conquest and short reign as duke of Normandy (1144-50), with reference to a limited range of evidence, primarily Anglo-Norman chronicles. There has never been a comprehensive analysis of Geoffrey’s comital reign, nor a narrative of his entire career, despite an awareness of his importance as a powerful territorial prince and important political player. This thesis establishes a complete narrative framework for Geoffrey’s life and career, and examines the key aspects of his comital and ducal reigns. It compiles and employs a body of 180 acta relating to his Angevin and Norman administrations to do so, alongside narrative evidence from Greater Anjou, Normandy, England and elsewhere. It argues that rule of Greater Anjou prior to 1150 had more in common with neighbouring principalities such as Brittany, whose rulers had emerged in the tenth and eleventh centuries as primus inter pares, than with Normandy, where ducal powers over the native aristocracy were more wide-ranging, or royal government in England. It explores the count’s territories, the personnel of government, the dispensation of justice, revenue collection, the comital army, and Geoffrey’s ability to carry out ‘traditional’ princely duties such as religious patronage in the context of Angevin elite landed society’s virtual autonomy and tendency to rebel in the first half of the twelfth century. The character of Geoffrey’s power and authority was fundamentally shaped by the region’s tenurial and seigneurial history, and could only be conducted within that framework. This study also addresses Geoffrey’s activities as first conqueror then ruler of Normandy. The process by which the duchy was conquered is shown to be more intricate than the chroniclers’ accounts of Angevin siege warfare suggest, and the ducal reign more complex than merely a regency until Geoffrey’s son, the future Henry II (1150-89), came of age. Through use of a much wider body of evidence than previously considered in connection with Geoffrey’s career, and a charter-based methodology, this thesis provides a new and appropriate treatment of an important non-royal ruler. It situates Geoffrey in his proper context and provides an account of not only how he was presented by commentators who were sometimes geographically and temporally remote, but by his own administration and those over whom he ruled. It provides an in-depth analysis of the explicit and implicit characteristics of princely rulership, and how they were won, maintained and exploited in two different contexts.

The thesis examines the evidence for migration from Northern Britain to Ireland associated with the activity of the Church. It has a particular focus on British and Pictish individuals. Making use of a wide range of sources from the early medieval period onwards, detailed case-studies consider individual men and women whose activities can be discerned. They assess how the movements of these individuals contributed towards wider trends in the dynamics of migration between Northern Britain and Ireland from the coming of Christianity until the close of the eighth century. The investigation also charts the manner in which such migration was perceived in later centuries and how these perceptions changed as time progressed. A picture emerges of how the ‘migration narrative’ was developed and engaged with in both Ireland and Scotland. This was to have a significant effect on how the character of the early Church was understood.