abstract: Christina of Markyate, a twelfth-century visionary and prioress, has been frequently seen in scholarship as an outsider at her home institution of St Albans, enduring solely under the protection of its abbot, Geoffrey, her spiritual friend and confidant. This characterization appears incorrect when The Life of Christina of Markyate, St Albans' record of Christina's personal history and religious career, is viewed in its original literary environment. The high volume of extant material from twelfth-century St Albans makes it possible to view Christina's depiction in several original ways: as a textual construction (at least in part) influenced by Bede's narratives of holy women in his widely read Ecclesiastical History; as a portrayal of contemporary devotional prayer in the style of Anselm of Canterbury, a major authority on devotional practices of the time; and as a prominent addition to St Albans' own liturgy, the record of its celebrated saints and local patrons, as an object of devotion herself. The strategy of Christina's endorsement in her Life is also notably different from strategies on display in St Albans materials related to Katherine of Alexandria, an important saint for Abbot Geoffrey, which further suggests he was not her sole promoter at the abbey, if he was involved in the process of her textual production at all. Finally, the historical fact that she was employed as a patron of St Albans before none other than Pope Adrian IV, to whom St Albans was appealing for numerous institutional benefits at the time, shows that the prevailing opinion of Christina at the abbey can not have been entirely negative. Placing the Life within the literary and cultural circumstances of its production thus provides a fresh reading of Christina's institutional and devotional roles at St Albans, medieval views of women's spirituality and its place within the western European Christian tradition, and the compositional process of a major work of medieval hagiographical literature. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. English 2012

Histories of medieval astronomy have brought to light a rich textual tradition, of treatises and tables composed and computed, transmitted and translated across Europe and beyond. These have been supplemented by fruitful inquiry into the material culture of astronomy, especially the instruments that served as models of the heavens, for teaching and for practical purposes. But even now we know little about the practices of medieval astronomers: how they obtained and passed on their knowledge; how they drew up and used mathematical tables; how they drafted the treatises in which they found words to express their ideas and inventions for their particular audiences. This thesis uses a case study approach to elucidate these medieval astronomical practices. Long thought to be a holograph manuscript in the hand of Geoffrey Chaucer, the Equatorie of the Planetis (Peterhouse, Cambridge MS 75.I) has recently been identified as the work of John Westwyk (d. c. 1400), a Benedictine monk of Tynemouth Priory and St Albans Abbey. His draft description of the construction and use of an astronomical instrument, with accompanying tables, provides an opportunity to reconstruct the practices of an unexceptional astronomer. The first chapter of this thesis reconstructs Westwyk’s astronomical reading and understanding, through an examination of the other manuscript that survives in his hand: a pair of instrument treatises by the outstanding monastic astronomer Richard of Wallingford. I show how Westwyk copied this manuscript in a monastic context, learning as he annotated texts and recomputed tables. In the second chapter I discuss the purposes of planetary instruments such as equatoria, their place among other astronomical instruments, and the physical constraints and possibilities experienced by their makers. Through this discussion I assess the craft environment in which Westwyk came to write his own instrument-making instructions. Chapters three and four assess Westwyk’s language, explaining the basis for his choice to write a technical work in the vernacular, and analysing how his innovative use of Middle English furthered his didactic objectives. In the final chapter, I undertake a technical reassessment of the Equatorie treatise, an integrated analysis of the instrument with the somewhat neglected tables that Westwyk compiled alongside it. The thesis thus applies a range of methodologies to examine the practices and products of a single inexpert astronomer from all angles. It aims to show what an in-depth case study approach can offer historians of the medieval sciences.

Syon Abbey, established as the first Birgittine monastery in England in 1415, quite soon became a powerful institution within the order. Although often asserting their own conceptions of the Rule, the English Birgittines still sought the advice of Vadstena, their mother house, when it came to certain important matters concerning monastic life. The present work contains editions of two Latin texts: Responsiones, a document consisting of 175 questions and answers on the Birgittine Rule and daily life in the monastery, and Collacio, a sermon reflecting similar matters. The first part of the Responsiones consists of answers to five questions, sent from Syon to Sweden by letter. An important issue concerns the leadership in the monastery and the role of the Birgittine brothers. Were they to be seen as monks, living in their own monastery, or as religious assistans to the sisters? The second part was written as a direct result of two English brothers visiting Vadstena in 1427 and contains 170 questions and answers dealing with various matters of importance: how to interpret certain Birgittine texts, regulations on food, silence and speech as well as questions on preaching, liturgy and introduction into the monastery. The Collacio, in the manuscript said to have been presented to the Swedish community, was probably written by Syon’s conservator, the Benedictine abbot John Whethamstede of St Albans. Written in a highly metaphorical language rich in references to the Bible and Classical authors, the message to the Birgittine order is clear: first, it is wrong to have two leaders (confessor general as well as abbess) in one community; second, the Birgittines should strive to dispose of later additions and explanations and seek the original and true intentions of the foundress, Saint Birgitta. The thesis contains an introduction, editions with translations, glossary, indices, bibliography and plates.

This research presents a regional study of the implementation of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act (commonly known as the New Poor Law) and its operation in Hertfordshire up to 1847. It examines the economic costs of poor relief across the whole of this rural southern county but it also adopts a microhistory approach to examine in detail how the New Poor Law was implemented and administered in four poor law unions: Hatfield, Hitchin, St Albans and Watford. This study makes national and intra-county comparisons of poor relief data, policy and practice. This research focuses on people as well as place and examines how different groups influenced poor law policy and practice. It makes an important finding about the role played by the second Marquis of Salisbury (a prominent Hertfordshire resident) in the review of the poor laws and the legislation that followed. At the local level this thesis explores the process of implementation and gives new emphasis to the contribution made by the assistant poor law commissioners to both process and policy in the initial years of the New Poor Law. This study is unusual in the attention given to the middlemen of the poor law machinery - the poor law guardians and poor law officers including: medical officers, workhouse masters, relieving officers and schoolmasters and mistresses. This detailed examination of the local guardians challenges the existing historiography on the social demography of this body of men, demonstrates that the influence of elite personnel persisted and adds new data to support the argument that the operation of the poor laws was not just regionally but locally diverse. The workhouse, so symbolic of the New Poor Law and an essential component of the deterrent ideology, is considered in the context of attitudes around its construction and capacity as well as its everyday operation. This thesis adds to the poor law historiography with new data on a previously under-researched area of the country; it provides new information on the development of poor law policy, but more importantly it draws attention to the role of the middlemen and how their individual contributions influenced poor law policy and practice.