The Capetian apanages and the nature of the French kingdom

The Capetian apanages have traditionally been studied from the perspective of the developing national monarchy. This approach is anachronistic; its premises are drawn from a later century, and even within the Capetian period it groups together with little differentiation the attitudes and intentions of five generations of kings.The context for the early Capetian apanages is the successional customs of the nobility, which the kings knew well from having seen them practised by their baronial neighbors. The determining concepts behind these measures were not those of the crown and the royal domain, but rather the societal ones by which, through the succession, the individual members of the family were ordered in relation to the family's lands.Only in the last quarter of the thirteenth and the first quarter of the fourteenth centuries did the kings and the Parlement impose the series of rulings which molded Capetian practice into a distinctively royal pattern. For most of the period under consideration, the territorial kingdom was treated as an aggregate of separable holdings, most of which were the private inheritance of the ruling family.     

Ancestral neologisms in Richard fitz Nigel's Dialogue of the Exchequer

Although Richard fitz Nigel's Dialogus de scaccario (Dialogue of the Exchequer) has received extensive critical attention as a source for fiscal and governmental history, its importance in relation to twelfth-century perceptions of vernacularity has been largely overlooked. Richard's work incorporates a novel and sophisticated treatment of the interaction between Latin and the vernacular languages which is integral to the success of his historical project. The source of Richard's linguistic innovation is paradoxically located in a valorisation of patrimonial heritage: in using language history to trace, shape and reify the distinguished past achievements of his own family, Richard constructs Latin etymologies which simultaneously explore the development of the vernaculars, particularly French. This presentation of etymology as genealogy enables the supple and subjective qualities of philology to be exploited both as a witness to the past and to the glory of the Norman present.     

The bonds that bind: money lending between Anglo-Jewish and Christian women in the plea rolls of the Exchequer of the Jews, 1218–1280

The plea rolls of the Exchequer of the Jews represent the single most important source for understanding the interrelations and interactions of Jewish and Christian women in thirteenth-century England. A uniquely voluminous series of documents pertaining to the bureaucracy that grew up around Jewish lending after 1190, the rolls reveal the many ways in which women of different faiths were brought into contact — both amicable and oppositional — through financial transactions, predominantly the borrowing and lending of money. It further considers the shared family interests, credit networks and daily necessities that such transactions signified. Finally, by examining specific cases — from large scale, national disputes played out in the Exchequer Court to small-scale disagreements in the locality — it seeks to demonstrate how Jewish and Christian women negotiated with one another for economic resources. It concludes that money-lending, complicated by the particularities of kinship and business structures, first brought women of different faiths together and then tore them apart.     

Christopher Saxton’s Last Maps: Nichol Forest and the Debatable Land, 1607

Although it has been generally held that Saxton in his later life did not work far from home, two previously unrecognized maps in The National Archives show him surveying in 1607 for the Earl of Cumberland in the dangerous Border country. These maps throw new light onto the working methods of Saxton and his son, suggesting that by this date Robert was doing most of the work. The original map appears to have been commissioned as an estate map but was then copied to be re-used as evidence in a law suit, thus separating the maps from their context.