This thesis sets out to develop an archaeological approach to the study of the late medieval English peasantry that allows issues of power, resistance, gender and community to be addressed. It is identified at the outset that the aims of the majority of late medieval rural archaeology are those to do with long-term issues of settlement development and determinations of the chronology and function of material culture types. This thesis puts an alternative interpretive emphasis on the material culture and documentary evidence of the period and focuses on the ways in which detailed, contextual studies of medieval settlements facilitate the investigation of more `social' issues. A case-study approach is advocated and utilised here, as a central contention of the work is that specific aspects of medieval material culture, such as, for example, regular village plans or lordly insignia on churches, do not have one meaning applicable throughout all contexts, and that these contextual meanings only become clear when all the available evidence for a specific settlement is taken into account. The focus is, therefore, on the examination of three Yorkshire villages which contained evidence of peasant settlement, standing buildings, as well as documentary records. In addition, the material culture and documentary evidence of the immediate regions of these villages are investigated in order to further contextualise the suggestions regarding the peasants' experience of power, resistance, community and gender that are put forward. These case studies are followed by a chapter which investigates similar issues as they pertain to four classes of medieval material culture which are dealt with thematically. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the nature of gendered power among the medieval peasantry. The importance of deconstructing deeply-entrenched ideas about `public' and `private' as well as about the nature of power is stressed, and an argument is advanced which suggests that when these concepts are critiqued and the centrality of social practice to discussions of power is acknowledged, it is possible to suggest that medieval peasant women may not have experienced gendered differences as oppressive.

This thesis explores the manifold ways that people encountered and adapted to legal processes and concepts in late-medieval England. It argues that these encounters with law were inextricably related to space and local knowledge, that is, to particular physical places, and the localized information that was produced within those places. The thesis makes two historiographical interventions. Firstly, it argues that the huge variety of different law courts operating in late-medieval England created a situation of ‘legal pluralism’, meaning that there were far more opportunities to become involved with legal institutions than has generally been assumed. Secondly, it argues that previous attempts to understand how ordinary people interacted with law have been too focussed on the central and ecclesiastical law courts. In order to redress these problems, the thesis posits the idea of the ‘local legal regime’: the localized cultural logic that informed people’s encounters with the particular formulation of legal pluralism in the locality within which they lived. The thesis examines three case studies of different local legal regimes. The first chapter looks at the provincial city of Hereford; the second chapter examines the coast of East Anglia; the third chapter looks at the Forests of Yorkshire. In each case, particularly local institutional arrangements, landscapes, and socioeconomic and demographic features crucially shaped the way that people encountered and drew upon law in their everyday lives. Overall, the thesis has two important implications. Firstly, what we often take to be generic aspects of the late-medieval English legal system – such as property rights or nuisance litigation – were in fact underpinned by distinctively local arrangements and expectations. Secondly, we ought to understand law as something rooted physically in the locality. As people moved through the late-medieval landscape, they were encountered with, and able to adapt to, a variety of different legal claims.

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Beginning with a survey of the writings of the medieval mulieres religiosae this comparative thesis attempts to explore the medieval mystical tradition as a space of self-construction and self-expression in both the medieval and modern periods. The thesis is preoccupied with tracing an 'untimely' relation between these two historically distant periods via a series of synchronic case studies stretching from the twelfth to the twentieth century, and focusing specifically on the ways in which the writings of female mystics are mediated in the medieval period and re-mediated in the modern period. The return, recurrence and endurance of the medieval within the modern is thus a key point of interest. The opening chapter provides a survey of medieval mysticism and considers the problems of developing and defining a language set with which to discuss the abstract nature of the mystical. This survey is followed by a set of diverse case studies which consider a selection of medieval mystics from the life of orthodox figures such as the beguine Marie d'Oignies (1177- 1213) to the speculative writings of heretic and beguine Marguerite Porete (d. 1310), and finally the Middle English translation of Saint Catherine of Siena's (1347-1380) Dialogue. Chapter Three builds on this analysis of medieval mysticism by considering the ways in which the mystical tradition is received and subsequently, recovered and perpetuated in the early twentieth-century. Beginning with a consideration of the crucial work of female medievalists such as Evelyn Underhill and Hope Emily Allen in this area, the thesis progresses by analysing twentieth century models of the medieval devotee/confessor relationship (Adrienne von Speyr and Hans Urs von Balthasar), before juxtaposing the writings of Simone Weil and Anne Carson, which resonate with the removal or 'decreation' of self that forms the foundation of the apophatic genre. Concluding with a survey of the so-called 'religious' or 'apophatic turn' within Continental philosophy and the humanities more broadly, the thesis hopes to usefully reflect on the role of the medieval mystical tradition and its contribution to an emerging women's history. This thesis is fundamentally preoccupied with the impact which female religious writings have and how they are re-mediated and reappropriated in both modem scholarship and feminist historiography. Overall, a range of apophatic writings will be analysed as I argue for this genre as a paradoxical space for both the empowerment and silencing of the female voice at different historical moments. Mystical languages of 'unsaying' and the concomitant oscillation between languages of 'selfing' and 'unselfing' engendered by the self-negating nature of apophatic discourse will be shown to play a central role in the politics of women who write and are written into history.

This thesis explores the expansion of the Kingdom of Wessex between 802, when King Ecgberht ascended the West Saxon throne, through to the death of his great-greatgrandson, King Ethelstan in 939. It explores how, as a dynasty, these particular West Saxon kings managed to overcome the claims of rival branches of the West Saxon stirps regia. The term `dynastic strategies' has been coined to emphasise that these West Saxon kings introduced protracted policies of succession in order to maintain their supreme social position, and, where possible, to extend their political authority further afield. Family dynamics dictated much of these complex policies and these strategies resulted in intense rivalries between the different strands of the royal house which, at times, erupted into contested successions, rebellion and even civil war. However, a major part of the phenomenon of West Saxon expansion was shaped by external factors, particularly the associations their kings made with Mercia and with Kent. The presence of these external elements involved in the emergence of Wessex as the dominant `English' power will form a major component of this study. By situating the expansion of Wessex firmly into a family and dynastic context, this thesis forms a departure from previous works on this subject. It relegates the creation of any `imagined communities' to the periphery and concentrates upon the available source material produced for these West Saxon kings as texts written for the furtherance of one particular family, thereby allowing the pre-occupations of a dominant, but essentially insecure, dynastic regime to emerge more clearly. This thesis demonstrates that the primary intention of King Ecgberht and all of his successors was not the creation of a West Saxon-dominated United Kingdom; it was the retention and transmission of the throne of Wessex intact within one single dynastic bloodline.

The Mercian supremacy has a relatively fixed place in the thought of contemporary Anglo- Saxon historians, who have focused primarily on documentary evidence for the rivalry of Mercian kings and Kentish archbishops. Less attention has been devoted to the shape of the Mercian realm; a kingdom with a midland focus extending its reach permanently over neighbouring kingdoms from the late seventh century onwards. Regional communities absorbed within the new Mercian sphere played an active role in its construction, influencing both Mercian development and their own futures, whilst the succession of each new king offered opportunities for renegotiation of the terms of hegemony. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this thesis uses an essentially chronological structure to question varied political aims and pressures, defensive needs, and cultural, economic and religious interests across the midland kingdoms, then to assess these as motivating factors in the relationships of resistance and accommodation which formed the Mercian hegemony. In chapter one it considers the diverse backgrounds of the independent midland kingdoms during early Mercian expansion. In chapter two the specific case study of the takeover of London is tackled, with its consequences for the East Saxons. The absorption of local rights and delegation of Mercian influence and protection under Aethelbald is analysed in chapter three as a key factor in regional power-relations amongst the Lindisse, Maagonsaete and Hwicce. As Mercian hegemony expanded under Aethelbald and Offa, chapter four considers strategies of accommodation and resistance within the kingdom of East Anglia. In chapters five and six, the formation of a supra-regional Mercian community under Offa and Coenwulf is considered, with the internal impact of key Mercian developments, such as common defensive burdens and economic currency, the establishment and dissolution of the Lichfield archbishopric, conquest and rebellion in East Anglia and Kent and external relations with the Welsh, West Saxons and Franks. Local attempts made to stabilise and augment the authority of their own lineages are discussed and how regional lineages responded to the loss of royal power explored. The final chapter asks if forces of Mercian regional interest and dynastic politics elicited multiple crises in the 820s, causing the Mercian disintegration and allowing West Saxon invasion in 829 and the re-emergence of disparate destinies for the midland kingdoms. This thesis argues that choices at a regional level for unity or independence conditioned not only Mercian hegemony, but also responses in each region to subsequent West Saxon and Scandinavian overlordship.

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No description available.

No description available.