Search results
antiquarian scholars such as Sir Christopher Hatton, and to Sir Walter de Gray Birch, who did much to catalogue the extensive collections of extant impressions of British medieval seals.2 Ultimately, however, these approaches are unsatisfactory because they treat seals as interesting artefacts without taking account of the complex socio-cultural processes within which they were created. Equally difficult is the lack of precise contextualised chronologies which determine how seal images became conventionalised and why.3 Thus although it is now established that, for example
. Even so, Helen, although trained to rule, is also endowed with outstanding beauty, and fulfils her function by marrying and producing a male heir to the kingdom. Yet Geoffrey’s women could in fact be cruel and as vicious as any male character. He recites the tale of Gwendolen and Estrildis. Locrinus, one of the three sons of Brutus, the mythical founder of Britain, after defeating one of his brothers in war, reserved for himself the spoils of war, which included Estrildis, a native princess. Geoffrey provides a lyrical description of her beauty, a standard topos to
stretches back to the inception of British medieval studies,22 imply that an understanding of the gendered nature of lordship will have implications for our understanding of land tenure in general. Sir James Holt’s analysis of twelfth-century social structures saw noblewomen as pawns of men, used to seal political alliances through marriage, their key role being to transmit land and titles to their husbands. Holt’s view is important for the way it located the interactions between the key structures of family and lordship which defined twelfth-century women’s roles. His
saints’ lives. This theme was explored in greater detail in a discussion of the role of noblewomen as patrons of the chroniclers and narratives. Such female influence may well have 198 conclusion affected the popularity of important texts in the twelfth century such as Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain. The activity of noblewomen as patrons affected the way that specific genres developed, and they had important roles to play in the process of cultural diffusion. The development of views of women in chronicles and narratives was discussed in
. 47. 26 Devon Record Office, 1262/M T531 (Fortescue Deeds) (DBC). 119 noblewomen and power 27 The Early Records of Medieval Coventry, ed. P. Coss (British Academy, Records of Social and Economic History, new ser., 11, 1986), no. 29. 28 Clerkenwell Cartulary, nos 65, 73 (c. 1193–96). For a further discussion of these charters see below, Chapter 8. 29 Gloucester Charters, no. 115. 30 Eynsham Cartulary, 1. nos 108, 110. For Matilda de Lucy’s charter confirming the agreement, probably made at the same time, see ibid., no. 109. 31 EYC, 1. no. 65: cum consilio et bona
, Canterbury, 1162–90, ed. C. R. Cheney and B. E. A. Jones (London: Oxford University Press, for the British Academy, 1986), p. xxv; English Episcopal Acta, V, York, 1070–1154, ed. J. E. Burton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, for the British Academy, 1988), p. xxxiii; M. Chibnall, ‘The charters of the empress Matilda’, in Garnett and Hudson (eds), Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy, pp. 291–3. For royal households see RRAN, ‘Introduction’, to vols 1–3. For intra-familial politics see Jones, ‘La vie familiale de la duchesse Constance’, and Chapter 4 nn. 66
. Jacob (eds), The Legacy of the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926), pp. 410–33; cf. E. Power, Medieval Women, ed. M. Postan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975). 4 L. Huneycutt, ‘Female succession and the language of power in the writings of twelfth-century churchmen’, in Parsons (ed.), Medieval Queenship, pp. 189–201. Cf. J. Weiss, ‘The power and weakness of women in Anglo-Norman romance’, in C. M. Meale (ed.), Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 7–23, who asserts an outdated belief in decline
in the rolls), 70, 80, 99, 108. RD, p. 10; Appendix 2: 10. RD, p. 82; Appendix 2: 99. RD, p. 43; Appendix 2: 52–3. Appendix 2: 51. RD, pp. 16–17; Appendix 2: 21. RD, pp. 61–2; Appendix 2: 79. Appendix 2: 11. Appendix 2: 4, 18, 19, 81, 85. For her seal see Appendix 1: 20. Appendix 2: 1, 24, 52–3. RD, p. 53. R. R. Davies, ‘The peoples of Britain and Ireland, 1100–1400’, II ‘Names, boundaries and regnal solidarities’, TRHS, 6th ser., 5 (1995), 1–20. For thoughtful comments on the importance of aristocratic naming patterns in twelfth-century aristocracies 190 royal
98 3 The riddles of the Franks Casket: Enigmas, agency and assemblage Since its recovery from Auzon, France, in 1859 by English antiquary Sir Augustus Franks, the whalebone chest known as the Franks or Auzon Casket has been a ‘fascinating enigma’ to those who have studied it and among the most ‘intriguing and irritating’ of Anglo-Saxon artefacts to have survived.1 Now held in the British Museum, it has been dated to the early eighth century and is likely to be of Northumbrian craftsmanship, though more exact details of its original context are unknown. The
this work have been the most important part of it? Alongside the religious, monastic audience of the Ruthwell monument, we must take into account its other audience: the British who were still living in the Solway region in the early Middle Ages. The kingdom of Rheged was an important component part of early Northumbria, though there are difficulties in pinpointing exactly when and where this kingdom existed: Rheged is mentioned in a number of British sources, yet, perhaps unsurprisingly, the name does not appear in Bede or the early ninth-century Historia Brittonum