Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society Record Series – Serie

Insights into life in England during the second world war.Kathleen Hey's diary provides an insider's view of an industrial city in wartime Yorkshire. As a shop assistant in a working class district of Dewsbury, she documented the stresses and complex exchanges in a grocery - from both sides of the counter. Regular customers, usually close neighbours, were eager to learn what scarce and coveted items might be in stock, and sometimes went in several times a day to discover what was available, as well as to chat about the war, complain about the provisions they were getting, or seek assistance with their ration books. While the frustrations and satisfactions of shop-work are at the heart of her diary, she also wrote about leisure, popular culture, public events and political debates, civil defence, domestic tensions, and her hopes for the post-war future. Life was often unpredictable; events happened unexpectedly - and could be recorded by her immediately; one social encounter might give rise to a surprising and revealing conversation. Hers is a richly detailed, observant, wide-ranging and sometimes amusing account of wartime social life. It is presented here with full introduction and explanatory notes. PATRICIA and ROBERT MALCOLMSON are social historians with a special interest in English diaries written between the 1930s and 1950s.

Documents assembled from a wide range of sources sheds vivid light on the lives and careers of the Franciscan movement.The Franciscans, frequently known as Greyfriars, were inspired by the charismatic figure of Francis of Assisi (+1226). Pledged to a life of penitence and evangelical poverty, they strove to bring Christianity to life through theirexample and preaching. In the late summer of 1224 they reached England, where they quickly established a presence at Canterbury, London, Oxford and Northampton. Attracting a large number of recruits from the universities, the regular and secular clergy and laymen, they spread rapidly throughout the country, establishing communities in the cities and principal boroughs. The custody of York, with its friaries of Beverley, Boston, Doncaster, Grimsby, Lincoln, Scarborough and York, a regional cluster, began with the friars' arrival in the cathedral cities of Lincoln and York before 1230. The custody reached from Whitby to Spalding. Although several monastic ruins adorn the landscape of northern Lincolnshire and much of Yorkshire, the seven friaries have left little visible trace, and there are few vestiges of the friars' once teeming archives and impressive libraries. However, despite the dispersal of these documents, there are other sources which illuminate the friars' ministry and shine a spotlight upon an individual friar. This biographical register of 1,704 friars draws upon a range of materials, including the wardrobe accounts, the episcopal registers, papal documents the probate registers, urban records, chronicles and diverse sources, illuminating their daily lives and activities, from studying the liberal arts and theology to celebrating Mass andhearing confessions. While some friars are represented by a single entry, other lives are better chronicled, particularly those who were active in the universities, the service of the crown and the local community. MICHAEL ROBSON is a fellow of St Edmund's College, Cambridge.

David Crouch presents a reconstruction and edition of the cartulary of the one of Yorkshire's leading medieval families.The Methams were once a leading gentry family of Yorkshire, whose origins can be traced to a member of the twelfth-century minster community of Howden. By 1405 the family had reached a peak of its influence, with great estates spread across the East Riding and Vale of York acquired through marriage, the rewards of office and also by exploiting the debt market. At that point Sir Alexander Metham commissioned a cartulary, a book in which to register the family's deeds and other documents, of which there were once well over a thousand. The cartulary survived till around 1680 and carried with it a large part of the history of the East Riding. But then it disappeared, though not before it had attracted the attention of two great Yorkshire antiquaries, Dr Nathaniel Johnston and James Torre. Their transcripts from this lost volume allow a reconstruction of over 700 items of its former contents, and with it open a new window on Yorkshire in the middle ages. The edition offers in addition a new biography of Torre and a key to the decoding of Johnston's notorious handwriting, which has frustrated and defeated scholars for over two centuries.