Barbara Harvey - Böcker

Westminster Abbey was one of the wealthiest and most influential monastic houses in medieval England: c.1300 it held some 38,000 acres, largely in the Home Counties and West Midlands, and its revenues at the Dissolution exceeded £2,800 p.a. These assets supported a complement of 50 to 60 monks in the fourteenth century. This volume publishes 75 documents providing overviews ('states') of the Westminster estate and its revenues, as administered by the abbot and convent separately between c.1300 and 1422. The states provided crucial information at a period of great social and economic change either side of the Black Death, assisting in decisions about farming estates directly or leasing them - and to historians today they provide rich evidence of the agricultural economy of medieval England, the systems of provisioning monasteries, and the men who shaped them. The states are of two types. The first gives estimates of corn, stock and cash on the manors, made partway through the financial year - this is unusual information to survive across substantial parts of an estate. The second group has little parallel: summarising the manorial accounts across either the abbot's or the convent's portion of the lands, the states add information about the management of the estate, its value, arrears and so on. In this edition, the Latin text is given of the accounts up to 1375, after which the material is presented in calendared form. The texts are supplemented by a word list and glossary, and an appendix on the abbot's estate officials.Part 1 of this two-part volume contains the Introduction, the Word List and Glossary, the memoranda and states for the abbot's estates from 1348 to c.1422, along with an appendix on the abbot's estate officials. It also includes the texts of the views and states of the convent's estates from c.1300 up to 1334, all the material of this nature that survives from before the Black Death.

Westminster Abbey was one of the wealthiest and most influential monastic houses in medieval England: c.1300 it held some 38,000 acres, largely in the Home Counties and West Midlands, and its revenues at the Dissolution exceeded £2,800 p.a. These assets supported a complement of 50 to 60 monks in the fourteenth century. This volume publishes 75 documents providing overviews ('states') of the Westminster estate and its revenues,as administered by the abbot and convent separately between c.1300 and 1422. The states provided crucial information at a period of great social and economic change either side of the Black Death, assisting in decisions about farming estates directly or leasing them - and to historians today they provide rich evidence of the agricultural economy of medieval England, the systems of provisioning monasteries, and the men who shapedthem. The states are of two types. The first gives estimates of corn, stock and cash on the manors, made partway through the financial year - this is unusual information to survive across substantial parts of an estate. The second group has little parallel: summarising the manorial accounts across either the abbot's or the convent's portion of the lands, the states add information about the management of the estate, its value, arrears and so on. Inthis edition, the Latin text is given of the accounts up to 1375, after which the material is presented in calendared form. The texts are supplemented by a word list and glossary, and an appendix on the abbot's estate officials.Part 2 completes the publication of the documentation for the convent's estates, with the states and dockets from 1352 to 1415. It includes the Bibliography and the Index to both volumes.

Traces the material fortunes of the abbot and convent of Westminster and describes the changing policies which the monks brought to bear on their estates, and the responses of their tenants to those policies.

This volume provides a readable and authoritative account of the history of the British Isles from the Norman Conquest of England, to the eve of the Welsh against Edward I in 1282 . At the beginning of the period, much of Britain belonged, as did Ireland, to the Vikings. The transformation of the archipelago by the end of this period is explored and explained in this volume. Six sharply focused chapters consider the fundamental changes that occurred in this period: the changing political and social structure and the adaptability of the aristocracy instrumental in these changes; the reforms that affected the ecclesiastical landscape; and the effects on economic life of the growth of a monetised economy. The influence of the natural environment and communications on life in medieval times are discussed in the Introduction. The approach is comparative, bringing out both the sharp contrasts between the experience of the several parts of the British Isles and the similarities. With chapters contributed by a team of experts, Harvey explores the interactions between the parts of the British Isles to provide a clear and incisive history of this fascinating period.

This volume provides a readable and authoritative account of the history of the British Isles from the Norman Conquest of England, to the eve of the Welsh against Edward I in 1282 . At the beginning of the period, much of Britain belonged, as did Ireland, to the Vikings. The transformation of the archipelago by the end of this period is explored and explained in this volume. Six sharply focused chapters consider the fundamental changes that occurred in this period: the changing political and social structure and the adaptability of the aristocracy instrumental in these changes; the reforms that affected the ecclesiastical landscape; and the effects on economic life of the growth of a monetised economy. The influence of the natural environment and communications on life in medieval times are discussed in the Introduction. The approach is comparative, bringing out both the sharp contrasts between the experience of the several parts of the British Isles and the similarities. With chapters contributed by a team of experts, Harvey explores the interactions between the parts of the British Isles to provide a clear and incisive history of this fascinating period.