As for the secondary sources, besides the individual works recommended below, chapter by chapter, the entire period is surveyed in three magnificent and massive volumes in the new Oxford History of England, by Robert Bartlett, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075–1225 (Oxford 2000), Michael Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 1225–1360 (Oxford 2005), and Gerald Harriss, Shaping the Nation: England, 1360–1461 (Oxford 2005). Two other surveys have retained their status as classics: Christopher Brooke, From Alfred to Henry III, 871–1272 (first published in 1961, still in print), and Maurice Keen, England in the Late Middle Ages (first published in 1973). Outside the Oxford series, the best of the modern overviews are those by Michael Clanchy, England and its Rulers, 1066–1307, 3rd edn (Oxford 2006); David Carpenter, The Struggle for Mastery: Britain, 1066–1284 (London 2003); Miri Rubin, The Hollow Crown: A History of Britain in the Late Middle Ages (London 2005), and (with a welcome European dimension for the late Middle Ages, too often considered in Anglocentric isolation) John Watts, The Making of Polities: Europe, 1300–1500 (Cambridge 2009). My own exploration of the subject would have been rendered impossible but for the existence of the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, 61 vols (2004, available in most decent libraries as an online resource at
Chapter 1
Sir Frank Stenton’s Anglo-Saxon England (first published in 1943, still in print in its latest edition) remains classic. For a sense of the wealth and sophistication of the Anglo-Saxons, the principal modern authority is James Campbell, whose collected essays are available in two volumes, Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London 1986), and The Anglo-Saxon State (London 2000). He also served as principal editor of a very useful collection of studies The Anglo-Saxons (London 1982), notable not least for the fact that it introduces a general readership to the thinking of Patrick Wormald, the principal authority on Anglo-Saxon law. For the wealth of England, besides Campbell, see John R. Maddicott, ‘Trade, Industry and the Wealth of King Alfred’, Past and Present, 123 (1989), 3–51, with a subsequent debate in this same journal by Ross Balzaretti and Janet L. Nelson, Past and Present, 135 (1992), 142–63. For biographies of the principal figures, see Ann Williams, Aethelred the Unready (London 2003); M.K. Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England in the Early Eleventh Century (London 1993); Frank Barlow, Edward the Confessor, 2nd edn (London 1997), and the still indispensable D.C. Douglas, William the Conqueror (London 1964), with a particularly useful series of essays on the Confessor’s reign, Edward the Confessor: The Man and the Legend, ed. Richard Mortimer (Woodbridge 2009). For events seen from the perspective of England’s queens, see Pauline Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith (Oxford 1997). Amongst individual topics considered, there is a wealth of information on medieval textiles in the journal Medieval Clothing and Textiles (Woodbridge 2005–). For elves, Karen L. Jolly, Popular Religion in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Chapel Hill 1996); for vampires, Geoffrey of Burton’s Life and Miracles of St Modwena, ed. Robert Bartlett (Oxford 2002). For the structures of society, Robin Fleming, Kings and Lords in Conquest England (Cambridge 1991), and Emma Mason, The House of Godwine (London 2003). For the St Brice’s Day massacre, Ann Williams, ‘“Cockes Amongst the Wheat”: Danes and the English in the Western Midlands in the First Half of the Eleventh Century’, Midland History, 11 (1986), 1–22. For pre-conquest Normandy, David Bates, Normandy Before 1066 (London 1982), and for the Conqueror’s family background, Elisabeth M.C. van Houts, ‘The Origins of Herleva, Mother of William the Conqueror’, English Historical Review, 101 (1986), 399–404. There is a wealth of material, several hundred essays all told, to be excavated from the annual publication of the Proceedings of the Battle Conference, Anglo-Norman Studies (Woodbridge 1978–), a series initiated by R. Allen Brown that has at last enabled scholars on both sides of the great divide of 1066 and on either side of the Channel to come together to discuss leading themes in both Anglo-Saxon and Norman history. For the Bayeux Tapestry, there are excellent colour reproductions by Wolfgang Grape, The Bayeux Tapestry (Munich 1994) and the more tradional David M. Wilson, The Bayeux Tapestry (London 1985). For the battle itself various studies are assembled by Stephen Morillo, The Battle of Hastings: Sources and Interpretations (Woodbridge 1996), complementing Morillo’s monograph, Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings, 1066–1135 (Woodbridge 1994). For the logistics of the 1066 campaign, the remarkable calculations of Bernard S. Bachrach, ‘Some Observations on the Military Aspect of the Norman Conquest’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 8 (1985), 1–25, are cited here with relish though not necessarily with complete confidence in their accuracy. For the suggestion that it was William of Arques, rather than William of Normandy, who visited England in 1051, I am indebted to Peter Davidson and to my Norman Conquest special-subject class at Norwich.
Chapter 2
An excellent selection of primary sources is available on the Norman Conquest in R. Allen Brown, The Norman Conquest of England: Sources and Documents, 2nd edn (Woodbridge 1995). Amongst the more approachable general accounts of this period, Brian Golding, see Conquest and Colonisation: The Normans in Britain, 1066–1100 (Basingstoke 1994). For Norman identity, R.H.C. Davis, The Normans and their Myth (London 1976); W.L. Warren, ‘The Myth of Anglo-Norman Administrative Efficiency’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series 34 (1984), 113–32. For the burdens of society, Austin Lane Poole, Obligations of Society in the 12th and 13th Centuries (Oxford 1946), and the particularly illuminating discussion by Alan Cooper, Bridges, Law and Power in Medieval England, 700–1400 (Woodbridge 2006). For the English after 1066, the fundamental study remains that by Ann Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge 1995), with particular studies of the posthumous history of Harold and the Godwinsons by Alan Thacker, ‘The Cult of King Harold at Chester’, in The Middle Ages in the North-West, ed. T. Scott and P. Starkey (Oxford 1995), pp. 155–76, and Richard Sharpe, ‘King Harold’s Daughter’, Haskins Society Journal, 19 (2008), 1–27. For the survival of Anglo-Saxon officers at the heart of William’s administration, see Simon Keynes, ‘Regenbald the Chancellor’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 10 (1988), 185–222. The Belet and Hose families discussed here emerge from my own research. For surnames, see J.C. Holt, What’s in a Name? Family Nomenclature and the Norman Conquest, Stenton Lecture (Reading 1981), reprinted in Holt, Colonial England 1066–1215 (London 1997). For Domesday, the best starting point remains V.H. Galbraith, Domesday Book: Its Place in Administrative History (Oxford 1974), though, more recently, see David Roffe, Decoding Domesday (Woodbridge 2007). For Domesday’s ‘tormented voices’, Alan Cooper, ‘Protestations of Ignorance in Domesday Book’, in The Experience of Power in Medieval Europe, 950–1350, ed. Robert F. Berkhoffer and others (Aldershot 2005), pp. 169–81. For chivalry and the sense of English superiority over other British peoples, see various of the essays by John Gillingham, ‘Conquering the Barbarians’, and ‘1066 and the Introduction of Chivalry into England’, collected in Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge 2000), pp. 41–58, 209–31. For the coronation rite, Janet L. Nelson, ‘The Rites of the Conqueror’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 4 (1981), 117–32. For the upper end of society, see Robin Fleming’s Kings and Lords, noted above, chapter 1, and F.M. Stenton, The First Century of English Feudalism, 1066–1166, 2nd edn (Oxford 1961); J.H. Round, The King’s Serjeants and Officers of State (London 1911); Chris P. Lewis, ‘The Early Earls of Norman England’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 13 (1991), 207–23. For horses, there is a brief introduction by R.H.C. Davis, The Medieval Warhorse (London 1989), and more recently Ann Hyland, The Medieval Warhorse: From Byzantium to the Crusades (Stroud 1994), and Hyland, The Warhorse, 1250–1600 (Stroud 1998). For the Varangians and contacts with Byzantium, John Godfrey, ‘The Defeated Anglo-Saxons Take Service with the Eastern Emperor’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 1 (1978), 63–74; Krijnie N. Ciggaer, ‘England and Byzantium on the Eve of the Norman Conquest’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 5 (1981), 78–96; Jonathan Shepherd, ‘The Engl
ish and Byzantium: A Study of Their Role in the Byzantine Army in the Later Eleventh Century’, Traditio, 29 (1993), 53–92. For the English and Anglo-Norman languages after 1066, Ian Short ‘“Anglice loqui nesciunt”: Monoglots in Anglo-Norman England’, Cultura Neolatina, 69 (2009), 245–62. For castles, the work of Robert Liddiard is fundamentally significant, including Liddiard, ‘Castle Rising, Norfolk: A “Landscape of Lordship”’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 22 (1999), 169–86, and Landscapes of Lordship: Norman Castles and the Countryside in Medieval Norfolk, 1066–1200, British Archaeological Reports British Series 309 (2000), with a good selection of essays by other hands ed. Liddiard as Anglo-Norman Castles (Woodbridge 2002). For a more traditional approach, and for some excellent aerial photography, R. Allen Brown, English Castles, 2nd edn (Woodbridge 2004); R. Allen Brown, Castles from the Air (Cambridge 1989). For hunting and the animal kingdom, I have relied heavily upon Naomi Sykes, ‘Zooarchaeology of the Norman Conquest’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 27 (2005), 185–97. For bunny-men and the misinterpretation of archaeological evidence, Tom Williamson, Rabbits, Warrens and Archaeology (Stroud 2007). For the Bayeux Tapestry, there is a useful selection of essays collected by Richard Gameson, The Study of the Bayeux Tapestry (Woodbridge 1997). For farming and the leasing of land, Reginald Lennard, Rural England, 1086–1135 (Oxford 1959). For building, Eric Fernie, Romanesque Architecture: Design, Meaning and Metrology (London 1995). For the historiography and the Victorian debate, see Marjorie Chibnall, The Debate on the Norman Conquest (Manchester 1999), and (particularly useful not just for the eleventh but the twelfth century) Claire Simmons, Reversing the Conquest: History and Myth in Nineteenth-Century British Literature (New Brunswick 1990). Two ‘Victorian’ books nonetheless retain their cutting edge: John Horace Round, Feudal England (London 1895), and Frederick William Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond (Cambridge 1897, reprinted with an introduction by J.C. Holt 1997). For short versus long hair, Robert Bartlett, ‘Symbolic Meanings of Hair in the Middle Ages’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series 4 (1994), 43–60.
Chapter 3
Besides the reading recommended for chapter 2, there are excellent overviews by Marjorie Chibnall in her surveys Anglo-Norman England 1066–1166 (Oxford 1986) and The World of Orderic Vitalis (Oxford 1984). Individual biographies of the three kings considered here include Frank Barlow, William Rufus (London 1983); Judith A. Green, Henry I: King of England and Duke of Normandy (Cambridge 2006), and a rich haul of titles on King Stephen, amongst which R.H.C. Davis, King Stephen, 1135–1154, 3rd edn (London 1990), David Crouch, The Reign of King Stephen, 1135–1154 (London 2000), and Edmund King, King Stephen (London 2010) can be particularly recommended. For other major players on the political scene, there are significant biographies by William M. Aird, Robert Curthose (Woodbridge 2008) and Marjorie Chibnall, The Empress Matilda (Oxford 1991). For an overview of royal biographical forms, see essays by Nicholas Vincent and others in Writing Medieval Biography, 750–1250: Essays in Honour of Professor Frank Barlow, ed. David Bates and others (Woodbridge 2006). The approach adopted here in respect of the legality of William’s claims has been refined in opposition to that of George Garnett, Conquered England: Kingship, Succession and Tenure, 1066–1166 (Oxford 2007). For the laws of Henry I, I depend upon forthcoming work by Nicholas Karn, and an excellent and approachable overview by John Hudson, Land, Law and Lordship in Anglo-Norman England (Oxford 1994). For the church, the best overview remains that by Frank Barlow, The English Church, 1066–1154 (London 1979). For the posthumous life of Bede, see R.H.C. Davis, ‘Bede After Bede’ in Davis’ collected essays, From Alfred the Great to Stephen (London 1991). For monasticism, the best survey remains that by David Knowles, The Monastic Order in England, 2nd edn (Cambridge 1966). For Anglo-Norman burials, Brian Golding, ‘Anglo-Norman Knightly Burials’, in The Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill and Ruth Harvey (Woodbridge 1986), pp. 35–48, with further details in Emma Cownie’s Religious Patronage in Anglo-Norman England, 1066–1135 (London 1998). For the rewriting of saints’ lives after 1066, Paul Hayward, ‘Translation-Narratives in Post-Conquest Hagiography and English Resistance to the Norman Conquest’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 21 (1999), 67–93. For Lanfranc, the best introduction remains his own letters, The Letters of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. Helen Clover and Margaret Gibson (Oxford 1979). The same can be said for The Letters of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, ed. Walter Fröhlich, 3 vols (Kalamazoo 1990–94), although no reader should pass by the opportunity to explore Richard Southern’s great biography, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge 1990), or Southern’s equally magnificent study of Eadmer, Anselm’s biographer, Saint Anselm and his Biographer (Cambridge 1966). For the ‘sortes’, see George Henderson, ‘Sortes Biblicae in Twelfth-Century England: The List of Episcopal Prognostics in Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.7.5’, in England in the Twelfth Century, ed. Daniel Williams (Woodbridge 1990), pp. 113–35. My remarks on the Canterbury lavatories emerge from a discussion with Tim Tatton-Brown. For Peterborough, see Edmund King, Peterborough Abbey 1086–1310: A Study in the Land Market (Cambridge 1973). Pending the forthcoming work of Sandy Heslop, the only complete ‘guide’ to the seals of England’s medieval kings remains the outdated series of images compiled by Alfred B. Wyon, The Great Seals of England from the Earliest Period to the Present Time (London 1887). Individual aspects of the reign of Henry I can be approached via the collected essays of C. Warren Hollister, Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions in the Anglo-Norman World (London 1986). An edition of the Pipe Roll for 1130, with English translation, is about to appear via the Pipe Roll Society, ed. Judith Green. The ‘Constitutio’, ed. Stephen Church, is appended to the latest edition of The Dialogue of the Exchequer, ed. Emily Amt (Oxford 2007). For the judiciary, there is much detail in Ralph V. Turner, The English Judiciary in the Age of Glanvill and Bracton, c.1176–1239 (Cambridge 1985). For the aristocracy in politics, the classic study remains that by David Crouch, The Beaumount Twins: The Roots and Branches of Power in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge 1986). For poisoning, the best work is now in French, but see meanwhile Josiah Cox Russell, ‘Allegations of Poisoning in the Norman World’ in his collected essays, Twelfth Century Studies (New York 1978), pp. 83–93. For William and the Jews of Norwich, pending the appearance of a new edition by Miri Rubin, see The Life and Miracles of St William of Norwich by Thomas of Monmouth, ed. Augustus Jessopp and Montague Rhodes James (Cambridge 1896), with a secondary study by Gavin I. Langmuir, ‘Thomas of Monmouth: Detector of Ritual Murder’, Speculum, 59 (1984), 820–46, and reflections on the racial or nationalistic context by Hugh M. Thomas, The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation and Identity 1066–c.1220 (Oxford 2003). For the Cistercians and Ailred, the best introduction remains Walter Daniel’s contemporary Life of Ailred of Rievaulx, ed. F.M. Powicke (London 1950, subsequently reprinted as an Oxford Medieval Text). For wool and the wool trade, although outdated in some respects, Eileen Power, The Wool Trade in English Medieval History (Oxford 1941) supplies the most readable introduction. For the feast days of Mary and their role in royal itineraries, see Nicholas Vincent, ‘King Henry III and the Blessed Virgin Mary’, in The Church and Mary: Studies in Church History 39, ed. R.N. Swanson (Woodbridge 2005), 126–46.
Chapter 4
For overviews of the Plantagenets, see Martin Aurell (trans. David Crouch) The Plantagenet Empire, 1154–1224 (Harlow 2007); John Gillingham, The Angevin Empire, 2nd edn (London 2001), and Richard Mortimer, Angevin England, 1154–1272 (Oxford 1994). There is only one modern biography of Henry II that can be wholeheartedly recommended, although it is a very long book: W.L. Warren, Henry II (London 1973). It can be supplemented with various of the essays collected as Henry II: New Interpretations, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill and Nicholas Vincent (Woodbridge 2007). For Henry II’s marital infidelities, see Marie Lovatt, ‘Archbishop Geoffrey of York: A Problem in Anglo-French Maternity’, in Records, Administration and Aristocratic Society
in the Anglo-Norman Realm, ed. Nicholas Vincent (Woodbridge 2009), pp. 91–123. For the question of precedence, see Nicholas Vincent, ‘Did Henry II Have a Policy Towards the Earls?’, in War, Government and Aristocracy in the British Isles, c.1150–1500: Essays in Honour of Michael Prestwich, ed. C. Given-Wilson and others (Woodbridge 2008), pp. 1–25. Amongst the most evocative primary sources for the court of Henry, see Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium: Courtiers’ Trifles, ed. M.R. James, revised by C.N.L. Brooke and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford 1983), and the Magna Vita Hugonis: The Life of St Hugh of Lincoln, ed. Decima L. Douie and David H. Farmer, 2 vols (Oxford 1985). For the King’s hawks, Robin S. Oggins, The Kings and their Hawks: Falconry in Medieval England (New Haven 2004); Richard Almond, Medieval Hunting (Stroud 2003). For class and the emergence of aristocratic privilege, David Crouch, The Image of Aristocracy in Britain, 1000–1300 (London 1992), and Crouch, The Birth of Nobility: Constructing Aristocracy in England and France, 900–1300 (London 2005). There are two excellent modern biographies of Becket, each taking a very different approach to its subject: Frank Barlow, Thomas Becket (London 1987), and Anne Duggan, Thomas Becket (London 2004), whilst no one should pass by the opportunity to dip into Duggan’s magnificent edition and translation of The Correspondence of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1162–1170, 2 vols (Oxford 2000). Much of the detail above is taken from Nicholas Vincent, ‘The Murderers of Thomas Becket’, Bishofsmord im Mittelalter, ed. N. Fryde and D. Reitz (Göttingen 2003), pp. 211–72, partly reprinted as Becket’s Murderers, William Urry Memorial Lecture (Canterbury 2004). For aspects of the aftermath, see Nicholas Vincent, ‘The Pilgrimages of the Angevin Kings of England 1154–1272’, in Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan, ed. C. Morris and P. Roberts (Cambridge 2002), pp. 12–45; Hans Eberhard Mayer, ‘Henry II of England and the Holy Land’, English Historical Review, 97 (1982), 721–39; Christopher R. Cheney, From Becket to Langton: English Church Government 1170–1213 (Manchester 1956). For heraldry, Adrian Ailes, The Origins of the Royal Arms of England: Their Development to 1199 (Reading 1982), and Ailes, ‘The Knight, Heraldry and Armour: The Role of Recognition and the Origins of Heraldry’, in Medieval Knighthood IV, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill and Ruth Harvey (Woodbridge 1992), pp. 1–21. For English attitudes to Celtic subject peoples, see John Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge 2000), esp. 41–58. For William of Malmesbury, Rodney M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge 1987). For Wace, there is an accessible English translation by Glyn S. Burgess, The History of the Norman People: Wace’s Roman de Rou (Woodbridge 2004). For Geoffrey of Monmouth, besides the various English translations of his History, see Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century, pp. 19–39. For aspects of the twelfth-century renaissance, the classic work remains that by Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge Mass. 1927), to be supplemented, as an introduction, by various of the studies collected as Richard Southern, Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford 1970). For technology, a starting point is provided by Jean Gimpel, The Medieval Machine (New York 1976), with particular examples above drawn from J. D. North, ‘Some Norman Horoscopes’, in Adelard of Bath: An English Scientist and Arabist of the Early Twelfth Century, ed. C. Burnett (London 1987), pp. 147–61. For Glastonbury and Arthurian lore, a starting point is supplied by Reginald F. Treharne, The Glastonbury Legends (London 1971), and various of the essays, especially that by Julia Crick, ‘The Marshalling of Antiquity: Glastonbury’s Historical Dossier’, in The Archaeology and History of Glastonbury Abbey, ed. Lesley Abrams and James P. Carley (Woodbridge 1991). For Gerald of Wales, besides the translated works noted above in the general introduction to sources, see Robert Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, 1145–1223 (Oxford 1982). For Ireland and Laudabiliter, see Anne Duggan, ‘The Making of a Myth: Giraldus Cambrensis, “Laudabiliter”, and Henry II’s Lordship of Ireland’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 3rd series 4 (2007), 107–70. For Grosseteste, see Richard Southern, Robert Grosseteste: The Growth of an English Mind in Medieval Europe (Oxford 1986). For the Gothic, see Otto von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral (London 1956), and Paul Binski, Becket’s Crown: Art and Imagination in Gothic England, 1170–1300 (New Haven 2004). For the wooden door at Westminster, see Warwick Rodwell, ‘New Glimpses of Edward the Confessor’s Abbey at Westminster’, in Edward the Confessor, ed. Richard Mortimer (Woodbridge 2009), pp. 163–6. For the ‘volvelles’ of Matthew Paris, see Daniel K. Connolly, The Maps of Matthew Paris (Woodbridge 2009). For the senses, C.M. Woolgar, The Senses in Late Medieval England (New Haven 2006). For the king’s evil, the classic study remains that by Marc Bloch, The Royal Touch (trans. J.E. Anderson, New York 1961). For leprosy, Carole Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England (Woodbridge 2006). For categorization, Nicholas Vincent, ‘Two Papal Letters on the Wearing of the Jewish Badge, 1221 and 1229’, Jewish Historical Studies, 34 (1997), 209–24. William fitz Stephen’s description of London is translated in the relevant volume of English Historical Documents, ed. D.C. Douglas and George W. Greenaway. For Eleanor of Aquitaine, the best of the modern biographies are those by Ralph V. Turner, Eleanor of Aquitaine (London 2009) and Jean Flori (trans. Olive Classe), Eleanor of Aquitaine (Edinburgh 2007), though the details above are drawn from Nicholas Vincent, ‘Patronage, Politics and Piety in the Charters of Eleanor of Aquitaine’, in Plantagenêts et Capétiens: confrontations et héritages, ed. Martin Aurell and N.-Y. Tonnerre (Turnhout 2006), pp. 17–60.
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