Nottingham Medieval Studies

The Liber de Regno Sicilie of the so-called ‘Hugo Falcandus’, which describes events at the Sicilian court between 1154 and 1169, is a problematic text. Modern scholars cannot agree upon either the identity of its author or the date when it was written. One of the dominant themes of this work is that of tyranny: here the author develops a twelfth-century cliché that Sicily was the quintessential land of tyrants, with particular reference to King William I and his chief minister Maio of Bari. The latter’s tyrannous instincts were shown both by his lack of sexual self-control and by his overweening ambition. Yet tyranny was not confined to these two, and in parts of his History ‘Falcandus’ came close to suggesting that Sicily needed a formidably strong ruler in order for it to be governed at all. And in one particular respect, the author’s concept of tyranny is unusual, for example when compared with that of his contemporary John of Salisbury, for while his work is suffused by a strong moral sense, this is derived from his classical learning, and there is no teleological framework. God, indeed, is conspicuously absent from the text, and the concept of tyranny therein is a wholly secular one.

This article discusses two late twelfth-century accounts of incubi and succubi localized in Norman-occupied Wales, in the writings of Walter Map and Gerald of Wales. These are understood as markers of a Welsh Galfridian reception history, preserving elements of Welsh material oppositional to Norman occupation drawing the incubus narrative of Book vi of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae in line with contemporary Welsh political prophecy.

Women served as manorial officers in late medieval England. Their appointments were generally based upon property-holding qualifications, and consequently the majority of officers were widows. Although examples may be found on manors across the country, there is insufficient evidence to indicate on what proportion of manors local custom allowed women to serve. Manorial offices were customary obligations: they were poorly remunerated and did not convey a degree of status beyond that already achieved by the holder’s property, nor did they provide the women officers with a gateway to wider political or administrative opportunities. However, these offices provided women with public authority to exercise control over their male contemporaries.

A murder of a man who was probably a local freeholder, committed near the Nottinghamshire village of Staythorpe near Newark in 1295, has left a remarkably detailed record in a plea roll of the Court of King’s Bench, resulting from the persistent attempts made by the victim’s widow to convict the perpetrators through the use of a judicial procedure known as an appeal. It includes details of the alleged culprits, the location and date of the crime, and even the weapons used by the individual killers. The killing was allegedly carried out at the instigation of three knights of the county, one of whom was probably the victim’s lord, but the social significance of the crime can only be the subject of speculation because, despite all the circumstantial detail, as usual no motive is recorded.

This article reconsiders the use in Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale of the name ‘Strother’, said to be the town from which the fictional clerks of the tale, John and Aleyn, originate. This article explores the possible connections between Chaucer’s characters and members of the prominent Strother family of Northumberland, and examines the historical basis for the disparaging light in which these individuals are portrayed in the fabliau.

The Auchinleck manuscript’s rendering of the story of Guy of Warwick has often been singled out for its pronounced nationalism, supposedly achieved by carefully editing the text to fit the manuscript’s nationalist agenda. This article argues against such a reading, showing instead that the perceived nationalism of the Auchinleck Guy of Warwick was already present in one or both redactions of the Middle English romance’s Anglo-Norman original, Gui de Warewic. It also discusses the nature of the Englishness depicted in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century versions of the Guy narrative, including Auchinleck, and problematizes the commonly made association between language and nationalism in them. It pleads both for a more nuanced understanding of Englishness in the Guy romances and for greater attention to the narrative’s complex textual history.

Exchange theory reveals how completely Robin Hood and the Potter celebrates giftgiving over market exchange. Robin gives without calculation, disdains commercial profit, and thrives politically as a result. He humiliates his enemy and gains the good will of another opponent, the potter. Despite his yeoman status, Robin’s politically productive free giving is reminiscent of medieval norms of aristocratic practice. Both yeomanry and outlawry in the poem can be understood ultimately to support these norms to the extent that they idealize them in a form displaced from conspicuous trappings of social hierarchy. Moreover, Robin’s imitation of lordship to the potter develops in a socially inclusive direction, from highway extortion to bond-forming largesse.

The Middleton Collection at Nottingham University includes a considerable number of fifteenth-century records in English which offer prime evidence of dated and localized documentary English. This article focuses on four such documents, plus one in TNA, concerning a dispute between John Broxtowe and David Preston over the inheritance of Broxtowe Hall in Nottinghamshire. These documents demonstrate the wide variety of English used in Nottingham between 1438 and 1442 and the epistolary skill with which such accounts were written.

Using his Book of Hours and his will as starting points this paper discusses the life of John Eylestone, esquire, citizen, common clerk, sheriff (1460-1461) and mayor (1471-1472) of Lincoln, his family and background, his friends - such as the Wimbushes of Nocton - his promotion of the Corpus Christi play of his city and his relations with the house of York. Eylestone’s Book of Hours is described in detail and allows insights into his piety and erudition and his circle of learned friends connected to Lincoln Cathedral.

The Buik of King Alexander the Conquerour (BKA) survives in two witnesses: London, British Library, Additional MS 40732 and Edinburgh, National Records of Scotland, MS GD 112/71/9. In both, the poem is acephalous. We thus lack the poem’s prologue and are forced to rely on its enigmatic final lines (19311-69) for information about its composition. These final lines are not composed by the poem’s author, nor simply by a scribe. They are instead written by a redactor, who claims to have rewritten, and in the process ‘mendit’, the ‘faltis’ of the ‘noble buike’ (l. 19343). He reports that he began this task in May of 1499 and completed it in August of that year (ll. 19354-55). He also provides details of the poem’s genesis, informing us that it was ‘translaittit’ ‘out of the Frensche leid’ ‘At þe instance off Lord Erskein, be Schir Gilbert þe Hay’ (19319-20, 19334). This article submits the BKA’s final enigmatic lines to further scrutiny. It provides more extensive details concerning the poem’s composition - its author and patrons - and proposes new theories about the poem’s subsequent stages of revision, firstly by its author, then by its 1499 redactor, and finally by its sixteenth-century copyists. The composition contexts and manuscript history of Sir Gilbert Hay’s Buik of King Alexander the Conquerour have much to teach us about book production processes and the compositorial and editorial role of both authors and scribes in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Scotland.

This article identifies a previously unrecorded printed book from St Mary’s Abbey, York. A Vulgate Bible printed in Paris in 1526, the volume is inscribed with the name of Brother John Grayson, who is first recorded at St Mary’s Abbey in 1528. Below this inscription is a small drawing which provides insights into Brother Grayson’s personal devotion to the Wounds of Christ. The circumstances surrounding the survival of the book are also discussed, and it is shown that the volume is likely to have been preserved by a Yorkshire recusant family.