Mary Bateson – författare

'Grace books' were the volumes in which scribes recorded decisions of the administration of the University of Cambridge during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Many of the 'graces' concern the conferral of degrees on individuals, but others refer to more general University business including appointment of teachers and preachers, leaves of absence, inventories and financial records, and the resolution of disputes. Grace Book B, Part 1 covers the years from 1488 to 1511, and this transcription was first published in 1903 with an introduction by Mary Bateson of Newnham College which explains the terminology and the administrative systems underlying it, and the changes they underwent during this period. The Latin documents transcribed in this publication constitute a valuable source for those researching British history and institutions in the early Tudor period, and this reissue will make them readily available to scholars today.

'Grace books' were the volumes in which scribes recorded decisions of the administration of the University of Cambridge during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Many of the 'graces' concern the conferral of degrees on individuals, but others refer to more general University business including appointment of teachers and preachers, leaves of absence, inventories and financial records, and the resolution of disputes. Grace Book B, Part 2 covers the years from 1511 to 1544. This transcription was first published in 1905 with an introduction by Mary Bateson of Newnham College which explains the terminology and the administrative systems underlying it, and the changes they underwent during this period. The Latin documents transcribed in this publication constitute a valuable source for those researching British history and institutions in the early Tudor period, and this reissue will make them readily available to scholars today.

Professor F. W. Maitland was the foremost Victorian scholar on English legal history, and Mary Bateson a Cambridge medieval historian. This 1901 volume was edited for the Corporation of Cambridge and the Cambridge Antiquarian Society. It provides a transcript and translation of the royal charters issued to the borough of Cambridge between the twelfth and the seventeenth centuries. Maitland lays stress on the considerable independence the medieval borough had. It was largely self-governing, royal charters bestowing or confirming liberties rather than regulating the town governance or providing a constitution. However, there were some limitations, chiefly relating to justice, for which royal permission was needed. It was not until the late seventeenth century that royal authority began to tighten its control of borough affairs. The introduction explains the conventions of such charters, and how the reader should interpret the information contained therein. A valuable source of local history with wider significance.

My object has been to keep social rather than political facts in view, and throughout to supply by illustration from contemporary accounts some of the characteristic detail which is apt to be crowded out in political histories. The story of social evolution may fairly be called the national story. The political story brings to view the procession of great events, the social story the procession of dead ancestors who acted, howsoever humbly, their part in shaping those events...