Nottingham Medieval Studies

Scholars have long recognized that writing came to play a large role in late medieval English society. In this article I attend to two key elements of this development, both of which have been largely understudied. First, I argue that informal writing, such as the memoranda, epistolary formulas, and Latin phrases populating the margins and flyleaves of manuscripts, demonstrates that the desire to write went far beyond those who copied documents for official legal purposes. Then, I address the question of how scribes — of both the informal and formal variety — acquired their skills. To answer this question, I bring together evidence about the teaching of writing in grammar schools, writing schools, at university, and within homes, showing that there were numerous educational options available in the period.

This article examines the Scalacronica, a chronographic work authored by the soldier and knight Thomas Gray (d. 1369), as a work of political thinking. In doing so, it takes inspiration from recent approaches which have diversified the kinds of sources used in the study of political ideas. Three themes in the Scalacronica — the king’s use of the realm’s resources, the provision of counsel, and the wider role of the nobility and of kingship itself — are examined closely and situated in context to illustrate that Gray’s text offers a valuable — and rare — knight’s eye view into late medieval political thinking. More broadly, this article shows how the study of political ideas can continue to be refined by the study of a wider range of texts and documents. This will enable historians to situate the lives of political actors firmly into a diverse and sometimes contradictory spectrum of political thinking.

This article reassesses the nature of Richard II’s relationship with the principality of Chester (1397–1399) through the lens of royal justice. It attempts to look beyond the concept of factional maintenance to assess the royal administration’s support of serious lawbreakers within and without Richard II’s Cheshire retinue, bringing to light hitherto unseen sources. It sets these complaints against Cheshire in the context of petitions to the king since the beginning of the reign which had complained of the county’s inhabitants’ violent incursions into neighbouring English counties. The article also revisits a case study highlighted in this journal by Gwilym Dodd in 2002, the murder of William Laken — a Lancastrian retainer of Henry of Bolingbroke — by Sir John Haukeston of Cheshire in September 1397. The reassessment reveals violent and murderous crimes which had been carried out with greater impunity than has previously been assumed, and by men who could rely on a prince de Cestre to manipulate royal justice by abusing the regalian right to pardon indicted criminals. It is ultimately argued that the phrase ‘Lancastrian propaganda’ takes too much away from our understanding of contemporary criticism toward Ricardian Cheshire.

This article reassesses the nature of Richard II’s relationship with the principality of Chester (1397–1399) through the lens of royal justice. It attempts to look beyond the concept of factional maintenance to assess the royal administration’s support of serious lawbreakers within and without Richard II’s Cheshire retinue, bringing to light hitherto unseen sources. It sets these complaints against Cheshire in the context of petitions to the king since the beginning of the reign which had complained of the county’s inhabitants’ violent incursions into neighbouring English counties. The article also revisits a case study highlighted in this journal by Gwilym Dodd in 2002, the murder of William Laken — a Lancastrian retainer of Henry of Bolingbroke — by Sir John Haukeston of Cheshire in September 1397. The reassessment reveals violent and murderous crimes which had been carried out with greater impunity than has previously been assumed, and by men who could rely on a prince de Cestre to manipulate royal justice by abusing the regalian right to pardon indicted criminals. It is ultimately argued that the phrase ‘Lancastrian propaganda’ takes too much away from our understanding of contemporary criticism toward Ricardian Cheshire.

Loyalty is one of the conspicuous themes in the Alliterative Morte Arthure. The narrator treats loyalty with ambiguity and incertitude, at times providing the reader with examples of loyal (and disloyal) behaviour which are nuanced. Some of the acts which are generated by loyalty are associated with positive characteristics, while others are connected to more negative traits. Ultimately, the loyalty that many of Arthur’s knights show in the poem contributes to the end of the Round Table, but death in battle was interpreted as an honourable and heroic end for knights in much of the chivalric literature. And acts of loyalty can have problematic consequences: ‘loyally’ relaying a message from one’s lord to another could elicit the anger of the recipient, potentially resulting in the death of the messenger. Readers would not be in unanimous agreement as to whether the protagonists’ actions are loyal or whether the loyalty they show is always righteous. It is argued here that this was the narrator’s intention. The work reminds us that one person’s act of loyalty can be another’s act of disloyalty.

It is common for undergraduate students who have not studied medieval history before (or have not done so in any great depth) to be nervous and potentially unenthusiastic about approaching it for the first time at university. To help students overcome these potential barriers, during the time I have been at the University of Nottingham I have developed a series of ‘active learning’ activities, including some role-plays, designed to foster greater student engagement and attainment with this subject. In this article, I outline what these activities are and reflect on the (broadly positive) impact they have had on my students.

Dan Veach, Beowulf & Beyond: Classic Anglo-Saxon Poems, Stories, Sayings, Spells, and Riddles (Columbus GA: Lockwood Press, 2021). pp. viii + 224. $19.95. ISBN: 978-1-948-48861-7, reviewed by Abigail Greaves

Reinhard Hennig, Emily Lethbridge, and Michael Schulte, eds, Ecocriticism and Old Norse Studies: Nature and the Environment in Old Norse Literature and Culture (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023). pp. 312. €90.00. ISBN: 978-2-503-60484-8, reviewed by Emma E. Horne

Joseph Grossi, Angles on a Kingdom: East Anglian Identities from Bede to Ælfric (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021). pp. xiv + 385. $85. ISBN: 978-1-487-50573-8, reviewed by Rory Naismith

Mauro Mormino, Pietro Siculo, Omelie contro i pauliciani: testo e traduzione. Nuovi testi patristici 4 (Rome: Città Nuova, 2023). pp. 216. €30.00. ISBN: 978-8-831-12704-2, reviewed by Carl Dixon

Tom Horne, Elizabeth Pierce, and Rachel Barrowman, eds, The Viking Age in Scotland: Studies in Scottish Scandinavian Archaeology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023). pp. xx + 340. £90.00. ISBN: 978-1-474-48582-1, reviewed by Tom Fairfax

Judith A. Green, The Normans: Power, Conquest and Culture in 11th-Century Europe (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2022). pp. 351. £25.00. ISBN: 978-0-300-18033-6, reviewed by David Bates

Alex Mallett, ed., Franks and Crusades in Medieval Eastern Christian Historiography (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020). pp. 351. €84.00. ISBN: 978-2-503-56581-1, reviewed by Lucas McMahon

Nicholas Morton, The Crusader States and their Neighbours: A Military History, 1099–1187 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). pp. 320. £60. ISBN: 978-0-198-82454-1, reviewed by Andrew D. Buck

Helen J. Nicholson and Jochen Burgtorf, eds, The Templars, the Hospitallers and the Crusades: Essays in Homage to Alan J. Forey (Abingdon: Routledge, 2022). pp. xiii + 244. ISBN: 978-0-367-49687-6, reviewed by Rory Maclellan

Carl F. Petry, The Mamluk Sultanate: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), pp. xix + 358. £69.99. ISBN: 978-1-108-47104-6, reviewed by Nicholas Morton

Claire Weeda, Ethnicity in Medieval Europe, 950–1250: Medicine, Power and Religion (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2021). pp. 356. £65.00. ISBN: 978-1-914-04901-9, reviewed by Levi Roach

Ruth J. Salter, Saints, Cure-Seekers and Miraculous Healing in Twelfth-Century England (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2021). pp. 248. £68.90. ISBN: 978-1-914-04900-2, reviewed by Simon Yarrow

James Titterton, Deception in Medieval Warfare: Trickery and Cunning in the Central Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2022). pp. 292. £75. ISBN: 978-1-783-27678-3, reviewed by Robert W. Jones

Sarah Ifft Decker, The Fruit of Her Hands: Jewish and Christian Women’s work in Medieval Catalan Cities (Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press, 2022). pp. 233. £90.95. ISBN: 978-0-271-09330-7, reviewed by Anna Rich-Abad

Nicholas Orme, Going to Church in Medieval England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2021). pp. xii + 483. £20.00. ISBN: 978-0-300-25650-5, reviewed by Claire Kennan

Krista A. Murchison, Manuals for Penitents in Medieval England: From Ancrene Wisse to the Parson’s Tale (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer). pp. xiii + 175. £65. ISBN: 978-1-843-84608-6, reviewed by Sarah Wood

Arvind Thomas, Piers Plowman and the Reinvention of Church Law in the Late Middle Ages (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019). pp. 288. $85. ISBN: 978-1-487-50246-1, reviewed by Mike Rodman Jones

Thorlac Turville-Petre, ed. Pearl (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2021). pp. 224. £85. ISBN: 978-1-800-85999-9, reviewed by David Aers

Ian Forrest and Christopher Whittick, ed. and trans, The Visitation of Hereford Diocese in 1397, Canterbury & York Society, 111 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2021). pp. liii + 271. £24.99. ISBN: 978-0-907-23984-0, reviewed by Joel T. Rosenthal

Robert L. J. Shaw, The Celestine Monks of France, c. 1350–1450 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018). pp. 294. €129. ISBN: 978-9-462-98678-7, reviewed by Daniel Hobbins

Kara L. McShane and Mark J. B Wright, eds, The Destruction of Jerusalem, or Titus and Vespasian (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2021). pp. 228. £26.50. ISBN: 978-1-580-44487-3, reviewed by Lauren Sisson