The aim of this study is to examine the society and institutions of a small part of the so-called Danelaw in the period after the Viking invasions and settlement from the late ninth century. To fully understand the changes which the Viking invasions and the subsequent re-conquest brought, it . 1S necessary to examine the type of society into which the Vikings came. The study starts from the belief that it is possible to learn something of the pre-Viking organisation of the study area - Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire - by the application of a multi-disciplinary approach, documentary sources, ecclesiastical and cartographic evidence are used for this purpose. The initial aim of the study is to unveil a primary layer of organisation 1n the region - albeit hypothetical in some cases - against which to measure the changes which the study area underwent between the 870s and c.ll00. Topographical analysis is primarily useful for mapping the landscape and its boundaries, but by combining it with what is known about the social fabric of Anglo-Saxon England, it is possible to devise models for the social and territorial organisation of the study area in that period. The study puts much emphasis on placing Anglo-Saxon England 1n a broad Germanic context. This opens up the possibility of using comparative material. Moreover, some of the theoretical frameworks for social organisation which have been devised by Continental scholars provide many useful points for discussion, if not actually providing a model which can be adopted. A broad comparative examination of Germanic society enables the study to examine the possible ways in which the Vikings took control of, and settled, the lands which they invaded. It is only by examining the pre-existing society and its organisation that any new insights into the Viking impact can be gained. In the study area, the geographical disposition of the territorial soke - as recorded in Domesday Book - and the distribution of Scandinavian place-names allows some hypotheses about the chronology of change.

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This thesis explores the political, economic and social fortunes of London's drapers in the Late Middle Ages, and the city's developing role in both the domestic and export trades in cloth. The first section considers the early development of the drapers' guild in the context of political and economic pressures. The city-wide ramifications of collaboration among drapers intent on protecting mutual economic interests are discussed with particular reference to John of Northampton, draper, who was politically-active in late fourteenth century London. An exploration of the identity or identities of London drapers sets the guild's significance in the wider context of other networks of association based on residence, kinship, apprenticeship, property-holding and parish-based brotherhoods. The next section discusses London's emerging role as the distributive centre of an expanding trade in English cloth. The role of cloth consumers (particularly noble and gentle households) in increasing London's magnetism is considered through an analysis of the purchase accounts of the Great Wardrobe. Aspects of investment in the domestic production of cloth, and the relationship between drapers, London clothworkers and provincial clothiers, is brought to light by a study of particulars of ulnage accounts, and of debt and Chancery cases involving drapers. The final section, based on particular accounts of custom and subsidy, supplements what is known of London's expanding role in the cloth export trade with an analysis of the various mercantile interests behind these exports. In addition, the drapers' path from the export of wool and import of Flemish cloth in the early fourteenth century, to the export of cloth from the late fourteenth century, to a diversity in both imports and exports which was born of growing economic confidence by the end of the fifteenth century, is discussed alongside the growing competition faced by drapers as domestic suppliers and retailers of cloth.

This thesis seeks to explore changes in patterns of Mercian kingship from c. 633 to 796. It is argued that during this period Mercian kings acquired more functions and developed a form of kingship which was more powerful, more centralized and more invasive than hitherto. It is suggested that these changes occurred as a consequence of the adoption by Mercian kings of Rome-focused Christianity. An interdisciplinary methodology has been adopted, using a range of literary and non-literary sources, to produce four case studies which examine different aspects of Mercian kingship at different periods. The first case study makes a broad overview of the career and kingship of Penda. The second explores the changing relationships between religion, ethnicity and group identity. The third case study considers the role of the emporium at London in the creation of a more integrated supra-regional elite. The final study examines Offa's Dyke, and considers the significance of that monument for visions of Mercian royal ideology. While it is accepted that the surviving sources are few and fragmentary, it is suggested that a re-examination of them can do much to advance our understanding of Mercian kingship. It is argued that the pre-conversion Mercian hegemony presided over by Penda was a political. system which depended on the existence of multiple kingships, loosely tied together by personal links between kings. It is suggested that the introduction of Rome-oriented Christianity not only provided Mercian rulers with mechanisms making centralization possible, but also with new paradigms of kingship which made it seem desirable. Using models drawn from social anthropology, it is argued that Penda's hegemony was ethnically and religiously pluralist in composition, and that the diverse elites of this system were bound together by non-ethnic forms of group identity. It is suggested that the ideological entailments of conversion ultimately resulted in the development of more exclusive, more self-consciously 'English' forms of kingship. Finally, an attempt is made to position the findings of this thesis in the mainstream of research on pre-viking Mercia. It is argued that for much of the twentieth century, eighth-century Mercian kingship was seen as an important stage in the development of a unified English kingship. More recently, it is suggested revisionist insights have resulted in a downgrading of visions of 'the Mercian Supremacy', which is now seen as less impressive than earlier scholars maintained, and essentially ephemeral. It is argued that, in rejecting earlier, overstated models, revisionism has perhaps gone too far. No attempt is made to reoccupy pre-revisionist positions, but it is proposed that eight-century Mercian kingship was more significant than modern interpretations allow.

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