The history of urban families in medieval England

Few medieval historians have turned their attention to the history of families in urban England. But the groundwork for such studies has been laid in previous scholarship on the merchant class, on women and work in towns, and on borough law and customs. Future studies, more specifically focused on families in towns, will draw upon a wide variety of sources including wills, property records, marriage litigation, coroner's rolls, poll taxes, borough customs, and, most importantly, borough plea rolls. These studies should allow us to explore how the special characteristics of the medieval urban environment – continual in-migration, economic opportunity, commercial and industrial diversity, extremes of wealth, high population density, and borough legal structures – affected family formation, life-cycle, demography, and domestic life in medieval towns.     

Gifts of food in late medieval England

Gifts of food were an integral part of late medieval culture. Small items, such as fruit, might be given by anyone. As part of commensality, sociability, hospitality and charity, food gifts underpinned customary patterns of life; they developed networks of relationships, establishing good lordship, and played an important role in negotiations. Patterns of giving demonstrate the distinctiveness and appropriateness of some categories of foodstuff, and illuminate the purposes of donors. Changes over time can be identified: indiscriminate hospitality or large-scale food alms fell out of common practice after the Black Death and gifts of money were preferred in some circumstances. Giving choice foodstuffs, however, remained a constant.     

Gifts of food in late medieval England

Gifts of food were an integral part of late medieval culture. Small items, such as fruit, might be given by anyone. As part of commensality, sociability, hospitality and charity, food gifts underpinned customary patterns of life; they developed networks of relationships, establishing good lordship, and played an important role in negotiations. Patterns of giving demonstrate the distinctiveness and appropriateness of some categories of foodstuff, and illuminate the purposes of donors. Changes over time can be identified: indiscriminate hospitality or large-scale food alms fell out of common practice after the Black Death and gifts of money were preferred in some circumstances. Giving choice foodstuffs, however, remained a constant.     

The structure of mortality in mid-nineteenth century England and Wales

Most analyses of the origins of the secular decline of mortality in mid-nineteenth-century England and Wales have not dealt with the wide range of mortality experienced by the population in that period. The Registrars' General Annual Reports provide data for a set of 631 registration districts that may be used in examining the spatial variations in life expectancy at birth and infant mortality. This evidence, differentiating clearly between urban and rural areas, suggests that the changing urban environment and a variety of factors that in combination led to improvements in public health standards, local administration and housing quality played important parts in mortality decline.     

Reconciling mendicant and secular confessors in late medieval England

This essay questions the argument, advanced by some historians to explain anti-fraternalism in fourteenth-century England, that friars appeared as lax and even socially disruptive confessors because they placed less emphasis than secular parish priests on confession and penance as a means of social discipline and resolution of interpersonal conflict, emphasising instead the individual, psychological aspects of sin. To test this hypothesis, this study examines instructions for interrogating penitents about the sins of wrath/anger and the requirements for the reconciliation of enemies. It compares the Latin manuals of the Dominican, John of Freiburg, and the anonymous, Franciscan Fasciculus morum on the one hand with the Latin manual by the secular clerk William of Pagula and the Middle English manuals for secular clergy by John Gaytrick and John Mirk on the other. The findings challenge the supposed dichotomy between secular and mendicant approaches to penance. Manuals for both types of confessor addressed conflict and enmity and encouraged introspection that connected anti-social behaviour and discord with an individual's psychology and spiritual wellbeing. Nor can it be assumed that such introspection was imposed on the laity, which was accustomed to struggling with feelings of anger or hatred when attempting to make peace.     

A scapula deformity in two burials from medieval England

A scapula malformation is described in two burials from the site of the late medieval Dominican friary at Ipswich, UK. The changes appear most consistent with primary scapular neck dysplasia. One of the burials also showed clear signs of leprosy. The burials are of lay benefactors of the friary. The Ipswich Dominican friary had no known function as a leprosy hospital. Finding of burials of lepers other than in burial grounds of leprosaria is highly unusual for medieval England. Scapular neck dysplasia has a strong genetic component in its aetiology. This, coupled with its rarity, suggests a close genetic link between the two burials. The findings suggest that in this case, family ties with the friary overrode the normal medieval custom of interring lepers in leprosy hospitals. This illustrates that even rare skeletal variants may convey useful biocultural information about past populations. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The development of the longbow in late medieval England and ‘technological determinism’

Traditional understandings of the development of the medieval English longbow and its role in the fourteenth-century ‘infantry revolution’ have recently been challenged by historians. This article responds to the revisionists, arguing based on archaeological, iconographic and textual evidence that the proper longbow was a weapon of extraordinary power, and was qualitatively different from – and more effective than – the shorter self-bows that were the norm in England (and western Europe generally) before the fourteenth century. It is further argued that acknowledging the importance of the weapon as a necessary element of any credible explanation of English military successes in the era of the Hundred Years War does not constitute ‘technological determinism’.     

Two medieval plague treatises and their afterlife in early modern England

This study of an adaptation of the popular John of Burgundy plague treatise by Thomas Moulton, a Dominican friar, ca. 1475, and a translation of the so-called Canutus plague treatise by Thomas Paynell, printed 1534, shows how the medieval traditions they represent were carried forward, well into the sixteenth century, and also subjected to change in light of religious, moral, and medical concerns of early modern England. The former had a long life in print, ca. 1530-1580, whereas Paynell's translation exists in one printed version. Moulton's adaptation differs from its original and from the Canutus treatise in putting great emphasis on the idea that onsets of plague were acts of divine retribution for human sinfulness. In this respect, Moulton reshaped the tradition of the medieval plague treatise and anticipated the religious and social construction of plague that would take shape in the first half of the sixteenth century. Its long history in print indicates that Moulton's treatise expressed the spirit of that construction and probably influenced the construction as well. The contrasting histories of the two treatises attest not only to the dramatic change brought about by religious and social forces in the sixteenth century, but to a growing recognition of the value of the printing press for disseminating medical information-in forms that served social and ideological ends.     

Evidence of early medieval trade and migration between Wales and the Mediterranean Sea region

Imported Mediterranean pottery recovered from 5th–7th century settlement sites along the south Wales coast indicates that trade and contact between Wales and Byzantium continued following the collapse of the Roman Empire in the early-5th century. It is hypothesised that people as well as pottery continued to travel to Wales from Byzantium, some of whom subsequently settled amongst the local communities. Strontium and oxygen isotope analysis was undertaken on human remains (n = 33 individuals) from four early medieval cemeteries from south Wales. The study identified individuals who may not have been local to the British Isles, thus demonstrating that the isotopic analysis of human remains from Wales can further our understanding of migration to Britain during the early medieval period.     

The origin of the road and city network of Roman Pannonia

In any one macro-region there is usually one brief period of large-scale city foundation. Within Pannonia the road and city building impulse was introduced from outside along differing axial lines at three different times. Impulse chains extended from the generating points or areas to the primary objectives. The pattern of the network was determined by the selection of basic strategic objectives, which were placed on specific sites of high military-transport potentiality. Each of the road networks proved to be fanshaped composed of three elements: the axial entry route, the “cross-bar” along the Danube and “ribs” or “trusses” joining key border posts to the axis. The total pattern was that of a parallelogram of urban corridors surrounding a vacant middle.     

A company of women and men: men's recollections of childbirth in medieval England

The events that took place in medieval English birthing chambers were witnessed and assisted by a company of women. Although these events may have been isolated, they did not exist in isolation. Rather, they interacted in complex ways with the lives and activities of the men in the manor hall. This article examines those interactions as they are evidenced in proof-of-age inquests, legal documents that record the recollections of husbands, fathers, and male relatives and neighbors regarding the events surrounding the birth of an heir to crown land. It concludes that even though men rarely entered the birthing chamber, their dynastic interests and social politics routinely penetrated its walls, blurring the boundary between private and public spheres, female and male space.