Law, Justice and Landowners in Late Medieval England

1983 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Carpenter
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Law ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
Difficult Subject

Lawlessness, both the more subtle manipulative and the cruder violent varieties, has long been seen as one of the most marked features of England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Even in recent years historians have found it a difficult subject to handle. With the notable exception of K. B. McFarlane, and more recently M.T. Clanchy and G.L. Harriss, few have been prepared to deny that there was something intrinsically wrong with the administration of the law in this period, even though they may concede that it was no ‘wronger’ than in the thirteenth century, merely better documented. Underlying these discussions there is, in Clanchy's words, the often unspoken assumption ‘that the king's justice really was the norm and that justice emanated from the centre to the localities.’ Thus, the need for an extension of royal justice is set against local abuses, which all law-abiding men from the king downwards would have wished eradicated.

scholarly journals Trinitarian Hagiography in Late Medieval England: Rewriting St Robert of Knaresborough in Latin Verse

2021 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 74-95
Author(s):  
Hazel J. Hunter Blair
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Holy Trinity ◽  
Latin Verse ◽  
Weberian Theory ◽  
Late Medieval England

The Order of the Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives (or Trinitarian Order) is one of the least studied continental religious groups to have expanded into thirteenth-century England. This article examines shifting notions of Trinitarian redemption in late medieval England through the prism of the order's writing about Yorkshire hermit St Robert of Knaresborough (d. 1218). Against the Weberian theory of the routinization of charisma, it demonstrates that Robert's inspirational sanctity was never bound too rigidly by his Trinitarian hagiographers, who rather co-opted his unstable charisma in distinct yet complementary ways to facilitate institutional reinvention and spiritual flourishing in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Between Reform and Reformation: The English Church in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries

1990 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 647-678 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Heath
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Current Version ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
The Church

Forty years ago the story of the Church in late medieval England was a simple one and not very different from the version which had prevailed half a century before that. The interpretation presented by W. Capes in 1900 had been slightly modified but largely underlined by 1950, and the Church and its development which was commonly depicted in that year would not have been strikingly unfamiliar to him. The current version was that, after the reforming efforts of the thirteenth century, which failed to achieve their end, and the advent of the friars, who even by the middle of that century were departing from their earlier zeal and purity, the Church in the following hundred years was exploited by the pope when it was not saved or oppressed by the Crown. The resulting corruption of the clergy contributed to its negligence and provoked an eruption of heresy which in due course was savagely suppressed and virtually expunged; rid of this threat, the fifteenth-century clergy were so notorious for their laxity, greed and mediocrity that a few devout members of the laity, perhaps inspired by the mystical writings, took refuge in private devotions which anticipated the individualism of the Protestant. The Reformation was viewed as the inescapable result of these circumstances.

scholarly journals Irish clergy in late medieval England

2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (126) ◽  
pp. 145-160
Author(s):  
Virginia Davis
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Religious Order ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Geographic Origins ◽  
History Of ◽  
Place Of Origin ◽  
Late Medieval England

This article examines a hitherto unexplored source for the history of the Irish clergy in England — English episcopal ordination lists — to see what they can reveal about Irish clergy in medieval England: their geographic origins, their numbers and, less tangibly, their motivation both for coming to England and for remaining there.Episcopal ordination lists survive, with gaps, for most English dioceses from the later thirteenth century onwards and are the formal records of the diocesan ordination ceremonies held quarterly by bishops or their suffragans, at which men wishing to be ordained to the priesthood were ordained successively to the orders of acolyte, subdeacon, deacon and priest. The ordination lists can add substantially to our knowledge of the vast mass of the medieval clergy, especially the unbeneficed, who frequently remain almost hidden from the historian. Episcopal ordination lists detail information such as the date and place of ordination, the ordinand’s diocese of origin, and occasionally a more precise place of origin and educational qualifications. If the candidate for ordination belonged to a religious order, usually this order and the actual house to which he was attached are listed. Thus these lists can provide a substantial corpus of information, particularly since every member of the clergy ought to be included in the ordination lists as they climbed the ranks of the clerical hierarchy; the same information should be available for everybody, whether they later became an archbishop or found themselves scratching out a living as an underpaid vicar or an unbeneficed mass priest. Over the last few years the computerisation of this material has produced a database of English medieval clergy drawn from the contents of surviving English episcopal ordination lists.

‘Lesyng of Tyme’: Perceptions of Idleness and Usury in Late Medieval England

2002 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 107-116
Author(s):  
Diana Wood
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Piers Plowman ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
John Gower ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Didactic Literature ◽  
Late Medieval England

Then came Sloth, all be-slobbered, with two slimy eyes.‘I must sit down to be shriven,’ quoth he, ‘or else I shall fall asleep.I can’t stand or prop myself up, or kneel without a hassock.If I were put to bed, no amount of bell-ringing would get me upuntil I was ready for dinner – well, not unless I had to relieve myselfThis is Langland’s description of Sloth in Piers Plowman. Originally a monastic vice, meaning boredom with the cell, sloth, or accidia, came to be applied to spiritual duties generally. By the time Langland wrote, it had also come to mean physical laziness or idleness, that is ‘lesyng’ or misspending of time. This paper investigates some ideas about idleness and its consequences as they emerge from the spiritual and didactic literature of late medieval England. They are linked with ideas about the most detested idlers, the usurers, the money-lenders. Usurers violated time in a double sense, for not only did they misspend it, but they also made a profit from selling it. Equally vilified as idle were the clergy. The poet John Gower sourly observed that ‘Slouthe kepeth the librarie’ of the corrupt English clergy. They will feature here only incidentally, although it is perhaps worth pointing out that some ecclesiastics profited from lending money. In the late thirteenth century a council held at Exeter had to decree the suspension from both office and benefice of usurious clergy. In the mid-fourteenth century no less a person than Archbishop Melton of York profited from lending money.

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