During his reign, and in particular in the five years after the battle of Hastings, William I carried out the most thorough reallocation of land in England ever to take place in so short a period of time; the results were summarized in Domesday Book in 1086.That great record shows...

Nine hundred years have elapsed since the death of Edward the Confessor, the last English king descended directly from Cerdic, king of Wessex in the sixth century - and so from the pagan gods. Nine hundred years are a long time; and if Edward had been succeeded by a son,...

‘You've gone over to The Dark Side'. These were the words of a well-respected historian to whom I'd been enthusing about the pleasures and perils of Dressing Up. During 2009-10 I spent several months in historic costume, recreating the habits and rituals of domestic life in the past. It was...

To lecture on Harold Godwinson, earl of Wessex, King Harold II of England, in the year 1966 at Hastings is a presumption. We appear to know much about him, and yet in fact there are many gaps in knowledge. Much information, so plausible at first sight, proves unreliable on closer...

Medieval ‘Signs and Marvels': insights into medieval ideas about nature and the cosmic order. Many aspects of life in the Middle Ages puzzle the modern reader but some are stranger than others. What can possibly explain an event reported from Orford Castle, in Suffolk? This is an amazing tale and...

On the north-western side of the City of London, directly in front of St Bartholomew's Hospital near the ancient church of St Bartholomew the Great, there once lay a ‘smooth field', now known as Smithfield. This open space of around ten acres had a long and turbulent history. In medieval...

Professor Anne Curry delivered her final Presidential lecture at the Historical Association Annual Conference 2011 in Manchester. Henry VI (1422-61) was England's youngest king, only nine months old when he succeeded his famous father. Traditionally he is seen as incompetent, pious and, latterly, insane, and thereby causing the Wars of...

He who would seek the origins of parliament cannot proceed without knowing that this is, and this has been, a matter much controverted. English politics have very often been conducted in terms of what has passed for history, not least because they have so frequently revolved around the rights and...

In the opinion of Stubbs King John was totally, not even competently, bad... Stubbs was the predominant, but no the sole voice of his generation. J.R. Green was already claiming that John was ‘the ablest and most ruthless of the Angevins... In the rapidity and breadth of this political combination...

Two hundred years ago it must have seemed to some as if the time for political and economic reform in Britain had arrived. A number of the necessary conditions appeared to be in place: recent examples from America and France showing how readily and rapidly established systems could be overturned...

This pamphlet seeks to chart the progress of the Scottish struggle for independence after 1291 by considering the changing nature of the Scottish resistance. The primary sources are exiguous when compared to those bearing upon the English attempt at subjugation, and the interpretation offered is at best tentative: that initially...

How did King Harold II die at the Battle of Hastings? The question is simple enough and the answer is apparently well known. Harold was killed by an arrow which struck him in the eye. His death is depicted clearly on the Bayeux Tapestry in one of its most famous...

The Great Revolt of 1381 began in South-West Essex sometime between late May and 2 June: contemporary narratives and record sources differ irreconcilably about the dates. It all started with the arrival of a royal tax commissioner, John Bampton, at Brentwood inBarnstable Hundred. He came to inquire into the evasion...

Why Medieval History Matters, Professor Anne Curry, President of the HA ‘I don't mind there being some medievalists around for ornamental purposes, but there is no reason for the state to pay for them'. So, allegedly, said Charles Clarke when Education Secretary in 2003. In fact, medieval history has never...

The project: A three-year research project started in December 2007 with the aim of investigating the credit arrangements of a succession of English monarchs with a number of Italian merchant societies. The study, based at the ICMA Centre, University of Reading, is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)....

On 19th June Terry Jones, 'Python', historian, broadcaster, actor, director and comedian called King Richard II a victim of spin at the annual Historical Association/English Association lecture at the Bishopsgate Institute. Here he sets out to rescue his reputation and lift the lid on the turbulent world of 14th century...

Traditionally, the Middle Ages have been portrayed as the ‘Feudal Age', when men were given land in return for performance of unpaid military service. Whilst this may have formed the basis of the English military system in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it was most certainly not the way armies...

In the village of Kilpeck, about eight miles south-west of Hereford, may be found the small parish church of St Mary and St David, justifiably described by Pevsner as ‘one of the most perfect Norman village churches in England’ (Pevsner 1963, 201). Seemingly remote today, in the twelfth century the...

It is almost a commonplace that there is an affinity between a holy man and the creatures of the wild. The archetype is St. Francis of Assisi but the phenomenon was well marked both before and after his time. I would like to consider briefly an episode in the life...

About the year 1430 the citizens of Thirsk decided that their ancient parish church of St. Mary was old-fashioned and unworthy of the developing town, so they decided to build a new one. As a result, over the next eighty years or so, they produced what Pevsner described as ‘without...