Title: The Earls of Mercia

Author: Stephen Baxter

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Price: £60.00

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: King Harold II

Category: Travel Writing

Offering a fresh interpretation of power structures and political patterns in late Anglo-Saxon England, this book focuses on the family of Ealdorman Leofwine, which obtained power in Mercia, and retained it throughout an extraordinary period of political upheaval between 994 and 1071. The house of Leofwine survived events such as the Viking wars, a palace revolution in 1006-7, and further rounds of political bloodletting during the reign of Æthelred 'the Unready'. It maintained power through Cnut's conquest of 1016, the explosive factional politics of Edward the Confessor's reign, the battles of 1066, and even the first few years of William the Conqueror's reign. Stephen Baxter examines why this family retained power for so long, and why it eventually fell. Offering the first extended treatment of the nature and limits of earls' power, The Earls of Mercia is a reappraisal of the structure of land tenure and the mechanics of royal patronage, and provides a new perspective from which to explore how noble families used religious patronage to strengthen local power structures. Reconstructing pre-Conquest lordship using Domesday evidence, it is the first sustained attempt to explore the relationship between local and national politics,
offering a major new interpretation of the whole structure of the early English kingdom on the eve of its demise.

Title: A Century of British Medieval Studies

Author: Alan Deyermond

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Price: £70.00

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: Medieval World Index

Category: Medieval History

This is an authoritative guide to the complete range of medieval scholarship undertaken in twentieth-century Britain: history, archaeology, language, culture. Some of the twenty-nine essays focus on changes in research method or on the achievements of individual scholars, others are the personal account of a lifetime's work in a discipline. Many outline the ways in which subjects may develop in the twenty-first century.

Title: Heretic Lives - Medieval Heresy

Author: Michael Frassetto

Publisher: Profile

Price: £20.00

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: Medieval World Index

Category: Medieval History

Through the lives of individuals, Michael Frassetto enters the dark history of the great medieval heretical movements - the lives of men and women whose ideas and actions had, by the end of the Middle Ages, transformed utterly the religious and political map of Europe. Michael Frassetto's account of five centuries of social and spiritual turmoil is a vivid and telling mix of events, personality and ideas. His cast of characters includes Bogomil, an obscure priest of the Balkan countryside who introduced 'Manichaean' ideas to his parishioners; Henry the monk, the first true heresiarch, who eluded his captors and prepared Languedoc for the Cathars; Valdes the rich merchant who renounced worldly goods to found the movement that would evolve into the Waldensian Church; Pierre Autier, last of the Cathar 'perfects'; and John Wyclif the gentle Oxford scholar who with his disciple the Czech priest Jan Hus - the first disinterred from his grave in an English country churchyard, the other burnt as an urban spectacle - heralded the Reformation. This is history replete with passion, terror and hope, a key to the heart of medieval Europe.

Title: Women in England in the Middle Ages

Author: Jennifer Ward

Publisher: Continuum

Price: £30.00

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: Medieval World Index

Category: Medieval History

"Women in England in the Middle Ages" looks at 'all sorts and conditions' of women from c.500 to c.1500 A.D., concentrating on common experiences over their life-cycle, as daughters, wives and mothers, and the contrasts derived from their position in the social hierarchy. Most women lived out their lives in their own village or town, but queens and noblewomen exercised power and patronage locally and at the royal court. Religion played a significant part in women's lives; some became nuns and abbesses, while the majority were involved in their own parish and community. Inevitably, women's lives changed over time, but, in bringing up their children and balancing family and work, medieval women faced many of the problems of their modern counterparts.

Title: King Stephen

Author: Donald Matthew

Publisher: Continuum

Price: £16.99

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: King Stephen

Category: Medieval History

The reign of King Stephen (1135-54) has usually been seen as uniquely disastrous in the history of the medieval England - a country riven by a civil war between Stephen and his first cousin, the Empress Matilda, and by an anarchy during which barons laid waste the country and 'Christ and his saints slept'. Donald Matthew challenges this picture. By questioning such melodramatic assumptions, and by looking clearly at what can and cannot be known about Stephen, he brings new light to both the king and his reign. He shows that much of what has been written about Stephen has been based on the selective use of the testimony of hostile witnesses, and has been shot through by wishful thinking or by the political or historical prejudices of the day. "King Stephen" is an important, well-written and timely reinterpretation of the crisis of Norman government.

Title: Horse and Man in Early Modern England

Author: Peter Edwards

Publisher: Continuum

Price: £35.00

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: Medieval Village

Category: Medieval History

Horses were used for many purposes in Shakespeare's England: for travel, either on horseback or in carriages, for haulage and for pleasure, and for work in the fields. The upper classes were closely involved with horses, for jousting, hunting and racing. Horses was also essential to any army, both as cavalry and to draw supplies and artillery. Horse ownership was, however, much more widespread than might be imagined. "Horses in Shakespeare's England" shows how, in pre-industrial England, horses were bred and trained, what they ate, how much they were worth, how long they lived, and what their owners thought of them. While they were named individually, and sometimes became favourites, many were worked hard and poorly treated, leading to their early deaths. They were, nevertheless an essential part of the life of the time and are strikingly depicted in literature and art, as well in many other records.

Title: English Episcopal Acta: Worcester 1062-1185

Editor: Mary Cheney

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Price: £45.00

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: Medieval World

Category: Medieval History

The area comprising what became the counties of Cumberland and Westmorland was long disputed, both politically and ecclesiastically, between the English and Scottish kingdoms. The bishopric of Carlisle was the last see in England to be created before the Reformation changes of the 1540s. This latest volume in the English Episcopal Acta series brings together for the first time an edition of all the surviving charters issued by bishops of Carlisle from 1133 until the death of Bishop Ralph de Ireton in 1292. The extant charters provide great insights into the episcopal administration of this border bishopric for the first 150 years of the see's existence. The introduction provides an account of the diocese, the bishops and their households, discussion of the diplomatic aspects and style of the surviving charters and the episcopal seals. Offering fresh insights into this formative period of English history, this volume will be of interest to scholars and students of ecclesiastical, medieval and local history.

Title: English Episcopal Acta: Norwich 1244-1266

Editor: Christopher Harper-Bill

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Price: £45.00

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: Medieval World

Category: Medieval History

This volume collects together the 198 acta issued by Bishops Walter Suffield and Simon Walton of Norwich. The development of the diocese of Norwich is outlined in English Episcopal Acta 6, Norwich 1070-1214. Although the rapid multiplication of houses of monks, canons and nuns which had characterised the century and a half after the Norman Conquest had slackened in pace, the period covered by this volume saw the foundation of two nunneries, Marham and Flixton, and the establishment by Bishop Suffield himself of a major new hospital, St Giles in Norwich.

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