The subject of this thesis is the social significance of knighthood in England during the reign of Edward I. The introduction outlines the process whereby knightly rank became associated with landed wealth. Evidence discussed in the second chapter points to the existence of many knights. The personal relationships between them indicate a defined social group. Next it is argued that the failure from the late 13th century of many landholders to take knighthood was prompted by financial considerations but the group retained its integrity. The fourth and fifth chapters investigate the nature of the knights ' lordship and reveal great variations in their social and economic power. The following chapter shows that inheritance underpinned the changing composition of the knightly group into which freemen might prosper. It is then suggested that territorial and family solidarities were more instrumental in determining alliances between knights and greater landholders than feudal tenurial ties. It is next shown that military and administrative service occasionally overlapped but those aspects of service were crystallizing respectively around the retinues of the magnates and the lesser knights active in the counties. The conclusion suggests that the cult of knighthood legitimized the social position of all knights.

This study investigates the history of Morris Dancing in the twentieth century through written sources detailing the development of the dance, but more importantly, through the oral testimony of some of those dancers who began their dancing careers after the second world war. Three particular questions were identified, firstly concerning the way in which ancient dance forms are generally linked, perhaps incorrectly, with place; secondly, the way in which the part that women played in the development of the dance has been written out of the popular modern view of the Morris; and finally, the part that Morris Dancing has played in the production of an invented myth of English history and English tradition. These, and further questions raised during the interviews, forced the study to take a wider view of the history of the dance. Looking back towards the earliest records became important because of the apparent changes that have affected Morris Dancing throughout the centuries, a dance form that is assumed to have been firmly established as an unchanging ritual, but in fact, it would seem, has always been prepared to follow whatever alterations have been demanded by society. Looking forward also became important, because as the dance has clearly changed dramatically during its history, interviewees were keen to explore the ways in which the dance could continue to develop. To follow this final area interviews were conducted with a few of those young dancers who are taking the dance forward. Sections have also been included which will try to explain some of the mysteries of the Morris for those readers who come to the dance as observers rather than performers. Through these sections further areas of study have been identified that cannot be followed in this present work but should be noted for further investigation.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2008. / Vita. Advisor: Tim Harris. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 316-346).

This thesis considers the interrelationship between the discourse and performance of gender, national identity and political agency in Scotland during the Union debates of 1706-07 and the mid-to-late eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment. These two periods are offered in contrast to each other in order to demonstrate the means by which changing discourses of gender and national identity impacted upon the performance of political agency. The first section of this thesis (Chapters 2 and 3) demonstrates that anti-Union discourse in 1706-07 was founded upon a conception of a masculine Scottish nationhood defined by ‘heroick ancestors’. This is contrasted with women’s political agency at the time, demonstrated most markedly by elite women’s ability to influence parliamentary politics. I argue that despite masculinist discourses of nationhood, during the Union debates status was a more important determinant of political agency than gender. The second section of my thesis (Chapters 4, 5 and 6) considers the centrality of male refinement and ‘civilised’ femininity to discourses of North British nationhood in the context of the Scottish Enlightenment. I examine the construction and performance of male refinement within intellectual societies and convivial clubs and then consider women’s limited inclusion in the urban Enlightenment public sphere, demonstrating that discourses of femininity necessarily precluded women’s full public engagement in this sphere. The final chapter (Chapter 7) considers martial masculinity, particularly the masculine ideal of martial Highland manhood in order to demonstrate the problematic aspect of notions of hegemonic masculinity and in order to bring the story of the Highlands and Empire into the story of Enlightenment Scotland. This thesis will demonstrate the centrality of gender to discourses of national identity and examine the impact of these on the performance of political agency in eighteenth-century Scotland and in doing so offers a contribution to the history of gender and political power.

This thesis attempts to account for the appearance, persistence, and eventual decline of an architectural motif, derived from ancient pagan temples, widely used as the principal feature on an increasing variety of building types in Britain, during the period 1630 to 1850. The thesis seeks to do this by defining both the word 'portico' and the architectural forms to which, historically, it was applied, and by examining the religious, political, social, and stylistic contexts in which the portico, as a metaphor for the temple, was utilized. The rationalization within the Vitruvian-Christian tradition of the ancient temple's pagan connotations; the portico's intrinsic capacity to symbolize virtue, distinction, and authority; the changing perceptions of the idea of the temple; and the different nature and sources of both the authority and the architectural style which the portico expressed, are investigated. Architecturally, the portico expressed grandeur, centrality, and an entry; it controlled, defined, and gave focus to urban space. Introduced to Britain by Inigo Jones, and based on classical Roman and Palladian models but with Salomonic overtones, the portico initially symbolized Stuart dynastic claims to divine kingship. As political and economic power shifted to an aristocratic oligarchy, the temple that was Britain, Rome's heir, symbolized a church and state united, and the secular virtues of the Augustan age. Palladio's fusion of Roman temple and villa provided the model for the oligarchy's power base, the porticoed country house. Archaeology and politics combined, first to project mercantile opulence through imperial Roman-inspired neo-classicism, then the more fundamental qualities of the Greek temple. The Pantheon gave way to the Parthenon; the temple of private wealth to the imagined temple of democracy. After epitomizing the characteristic early nineteenth-century public style, the too-pagan Greek portico succumbed - as did the classical ideal - in the anarchy of styles, to the Gothic.

Thesis (D.Phil.)--University of Oxford, 2008. / Supervisor: Professor David Womersley. Bibliography: leaves 254-261.

Thirlwall dissertation, 1889. / Originally published: Cambridge : The University Press, 1890. (Cambridge historical essays ; no. III) Includes bibliographical references and index.

This thesis examines women’s professional employment in Wales between 1880 and 1939. It explores women’s negotiation of professional identities, their formation of professional networks, and their relationship with the broader women’s movement over this formative period in the emergence of the professions. The thesis contributes to neglected histories of women and the middle class in Wales, and enhances our understanding of the strategies women used to enter professional society. As the first major study of women’s professional employment in Wales, the thesis suggests that the Welsh women’s experience did exhibit some distinctive features. Women’s education attained a political and cultural importance in Wales from the late nineteenth century. But the nation’s economic development offered limited opportunities for educated women’s paid employment. This exacerbated the high proportion of women in the teaching profession, and meant that women’s professional employment was confined to a smaller range of occupations in Wales by the outbreak of the Second World War. Unlike most related studies of women’s work which focus on individual occupations, this thesis provides a comparative approach of women’s employment in medicine, teaching and academia. Such an approach reveals the interconnections and networks between groups of professional women and allows for analysis of an overarching feminine version of professional identity. In doing so, the thesis argues that women participated in professional society by exploiting – rather than directly challenging – contemporary gender norms and existing professional practices. By exploiting contemporary gender norms, women developed a distinctive feminine professional identity which highlighted their ‘natural’ skills and, following professional practices, they increasingly institutionalised their networks into women’s professional organisations and capitalised upon professional ideals of meritocracy.

Much concerning the disease termed leprosy is accepted as received knowledge, without thought to time and place, but there were many differences in how leprosy sufferers were treated across regions and eras, and so diversity should be regarded as normal. This thesis will examine what was meant by the term leprosy during primarily the medieval period between the sixth and fifteenth centuries in Ireland in order to see if this equates with the disease called Hansen’s Disease in the twenty-first century. The focus will fall around the twelfth century, but as the majority of the extant documentary evidence is mainly from the early modern period, this will, out of necessity, also be discussed. There has been much written on what exactly leprosy was in the past and this thesis will not attempt to answer that question directly, instead its aim will be to contextualise the situation in medieval Ireland by examining the presence of leprosy in comparative terms in the Middle Ages. Leprosy in medieval Ireland is a much neglected area of research due to the perception that there is a lack of evidence. Although extant documentary sources may be less than elsewhere in medieval Europe, this thesis will show that there are plenty of other forms of proof available. Ciara Crawford’s unpublished thesis of 2010, which examined general illness, including leprosy in the Irish annals, is the only other research undertaken this millennium regarding leprosy in medieval Ireland, as all of the other limited research in connection with this subject was undertaken during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This thesis employs all forms of extant evidence including, annals, documentary, hagiography, archaeology, paleopathology and place-names and using this multi-disciplinary approach provides confirmation of the presence of the disease, which was then termed leprosy, in medieval Ireland. This approach resulted in multiple methodological and terminology issues and this thesis will also attempt to address these in order to understand the extent and nature of leprosy in Ireland and its prevalence throughout the period under scrutiny. Employment of this multi-disciplinary approach has resulted in a surprising amount of Irish evidence concerning leprosy being gathered together for the first time. This approach enabled an image to emerge of how leprosy and its sufferers were treated and together with elsewhere, Ireland shows diverse outcomes. It must be taken into consideration however that the extant evidence is inconsistent and some geographical areas and time periods are better represented than others, resulting in an incomplete and uneven portrayal.

This thesis explores the role played by small-scale cinema entrepreneurs in the south Wales valleys in establishing cinema as the predominant cultural medium of the twentieth century. The focus and methodology draw heavily on the �new cinema history� that emerged in the early 2000s and champions a reorientation of cinema history away from a concentration on films as cultural products towards a more sociological approach that views cinema as a social institution located within specific community settings. The continuing dominance of small-scale cinema ownership in the south Wales valleys (in most areas of the UK, the major cinema chains, such as Odeon and ABC, came to control the market) meant that cinema proprietors were often prominent local figures. Not only did they exercise a considerable amount of influence on the audience experience, they were also active players in their local communities, cultivating relationships with civic leaders, contributing to a range of local good causes and promoting the community benefits of cinema. Given the controversial nature of cinema, they became adept �cultural brokers,� negotiating with regulatory authorities, appeasing oppositional groups whilst keeping a weather eye on fluctuating popular tastes. The divisive nature of cinema makes it an ideal lens through which to examine the dynamics of civil, social and commercial life of south Wales towns as they transitioned from conditions of economic boom to post industrial bust. The focus of this study is Bargoed in the Rhymney Valley, which was home to the Withers, one of the most important, and yet little known, cinema-owning families in south Wales. By holding the magnifying glass up to a single town and business the aim is to move beyond generalizations and examine closely how various social, economic and cultural forces interplayed at the local level.