Professor of Palaeography and Manuscript Studies, King's College London. Director (King's) Knowledge Orders before Modernity: a Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship Programme. Principal Investigator, The Conqueror's Commissioners: Unlocking the Domesday Survey of South-West England (the Exon Domesday project). Address: King's College London,
The Strand,
London WC2R 2LS
Seat of the oldest saint's cult in Britain, St Albans has a remarkable claim to continuity of cul... more Seat of the oldest saint's cult in Britain, St Albans has a remarkable claim to continuity of cult from Romano-British times. The recent discovery of previously unknown charters, most of them in the vernacular, has provided significant new information about the history of this important medieval monastery and its region.
These texts are presented here, mostly for the first time, together with new editions of all other known charters relating to the house, including three single-sheet originals, with full historical commentaries and translations of vernacular charters. An extended introduction offers a reassessment of the history of St Albans and its region in the early Middle Ages and, in particular, an analysis of the workings of the monastery, its economy, and its relationship with its locality in the century before the Norman Conquest. Particular attention is devoted to the management of the assets of the house, both material (an assessment of their estates and their management) and symbolic (involvement with forgery and enhancement of their documentary record).
... Page 6. Frank Barlow Painting b\ Michael Noakes 1976 Page 7. Writing Medieval Biography 750-1... more ... Page 6. Frank Barlow Painting b\ Michael Noakes 1976 Page 7. Writing Medieval Biography 750-1250 ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF PROFESSOR FRANK BARLOW EDITED BY David Bates,Julia Crick and Sarah Hamilton THE BOYDELL PRESS Page 8. ...
Exeter, Cathedral Library and Archives, MS. 3500 is a manuscript of exceptional complexity, produ... more Exeter, Cathedral Library and Archives, MS. 3500 is a manuscript of exceptional complexity, produced in response to King William I’s order to create the survey of his English dominions known since the twelfth century as Domesday Book. The Exeter manuscript is both a unique survival from the first information-gathering phase of the survey (between Christmas 1085 and 1 August 1086) and a rare example of a datable manuscript from the generation after the Norman Conquest of England. Its codicology and palaeography have been minutely surveyed as part of a major research project (2014-2017) which has shown that its two dozen scribes collaborated in orderly fashion, anticipating the receipt of new information, correcting and checking content, necessitating the involvement of as many as four scribes on a single page. This paper will suggest that the Exon Domesday was a precocious example of administrative processes usually associated with the later Middle Ages.
Lives, Identities and Histories in the Central Middle Ages, ed. Julie Barrau and David Bates, 2021
Eljas Oksanen has recently explored how Flemings dynamized the economy of the English channel bas... more Eljas Oksanen has recently explored how Flemings dynamized the economy of the English channel basin in the century after the Norman conquest of England, acting as traders and settlers in eastern England, an area linked by its short crossing and its topography to the deep inlets of the Flemish coast. This paper considers the more fragmentary evidence for Flemish activity in south-western Britain in the same period. Urban charters and Domesday evidence attest the presence of Flemish settlers on all three coasts of a peninsula which formed the gateway to the Irish Sea trading zone. It is argued that the Flemish incumbents who directed western bishoprics in the eleventh century, or the enclave which Henry I famously granted to the Flemings in Rhos, Pembrokeshire, should be understood not in isolation, but as relatively visible manifestations of a wider pattern of population movement, albeit on a more modest scale than its easterly counterpart. The cumulative evidence for trade, settlement, integration and exploration in the towns of the Irish Sea zone indicates a dynamism and an energy which repays investigation, not least as a route to understanding the leading role of Flemish adventurers in the later conquests of Wales and Ireland.
Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain is widely considered to have transgre... more Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain is widely considered to have transgressed the historiographical canons of his time. The work provides a lengthy and detailed account of a prehistoric period for which no history in any currently accepted sense can be written. Among Geoffrey's greater departures from historical credibility is his championship of two mythical figures, Arthur and Merlin, both of whom are given a central place in his History. In this article, the author considers the evidence for the reception of Merlin's Prophecies and its implications for the reception of the history in which they were located. Besides reviewing the testimony of twelfth-century authors who used or criticised the Prophecies, she looks at commentaries on the Prophecies, both published and unpublished, written by contemporaries. She concludes that the Prophecies were attacked not because of any perceived historical inaccuracy but primarily because of political considerations. Indeed, the presence of Merlin's Prophecies at the heart of the History served to enhance its credibility and validity.
Seat of the oldest saint's cult in Britain, St Albans has a remarkable claim to continuity of cul... more Seat of the oldest saint's cult in Britain, St Albans has a remarkable claim to continuity of cult from Romano-British times. The recent discovery of previously unknown charters, most of them in the vernacular, has provided significant new information about the history of this important medieval monastery and its region.
These texts are presented here, mostly for the first time, together with new editions of all other known charters relating to the house, including three single-sheet originals, with full historical commentaries and translations of vernacular charters. An extended introduction offers a reassessment of the history of St Albans and its region in the early Middle Ages and, in particular, an analysis of the workings of the monastery, its economy, and its relationship with its locality in the century before the Norman Conquest. Particular attention is devoted to the management of the assets of the house, both material (an assessment of their estates and their management) and symbolic (involvement with forgery and enhancement of their documentary record).
... Page 6. Frank Barlow Painting b\ Michael Noakes 1976 Page 7. Writing Medieval Biography 750-1... more ... Page 6. Frank Barlow Painting b\ Michael Noakes 1976 Page 7. Writing Medieval Biography 750-1250 ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF PROFESSOR FRANK BARLOW EDITED BY David Bates,Julia Crick and Sarah Hamilton THE BOYDELL PRESS Page 8. ...
Exeter, Cathedral Library and Archives, MS. 3500 is a manuscript of exceptional complexity, produ... more Exeter, Cathedral Library and Archives, MS. 3500 is a manuscript of exceptional complexity, produced in response to King William I’s order to create the survey of his English dominions known since the twelfth century as Domesday Book. The Exeter manuscript is both a unique survival from the first information-gathering phase of the survey (between Christmas 1085 and 1 August 1086) and a rare example of a datable manuscript from the generation after the Norman Conquest of England. Its codicology and palaeography have been minutely surveyed as part of a major research project (2014-2017) which has shown that its two dozen scribes collaborated in orderly fashion, anticipating the receipt of new information, correcting and checking content, necessitating the involvement of as many as four scribes on a single page. This paper will suggest that the Exon Domesday was a precocious example of administrative processes usually associated with the later Middle Ages.
Lives, Identities and Histories in the Central Middle Ages, ed. Julie Barrau and David Bates, 2021
Eljas Oksanen has recently explored how Flemings dynamized the economy of the English channel bas... more Eljas Oksanen has recently explored how Flemings dynamized the economy of the English channel basin in the century after the Norman conquest of England, acting as traders and settlers in eastern England, an area linked by its short crossing and its topography to the deep inlets of the Flemish coast. This paper considers the more fragmentary evidence for Flemish activity in south-western Britain in the same period. Urban charters and Domesday evidence attest the presence of Flemish settlers on all three coasts of a peninsula which formed the gateway to the Irish Sea trading zone. It is argued that the Flemish incumbents who directed western bishoprics in the eleventh century, or the enclave which Henry I famously granted to the Flemings in Rhos, Pembrokeshire, should be understood not in isolation, but as relatively visible manifestations of a wider pattern of population movement, albeit on a more modest scale than its easterly counterpart. The cumulative evidence for trade, settlement, integration and exploration in the towns of the Irish Sea zone indicates a dynamism and an energy which repays investigation, not least as a route to understanding the leading role of Flemish adventurers in the later conquests of Wales and Ireland.
Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain is widely considered to have transgre... more Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain is widely considered to have transgressed the historiographical canons of his time. The work provides a lengthy and detailed account of a prehistoric period for which no history in any currently accepted sense can be written. Among Geoffrey's greater departures from historical credibility is his championship of two mythical figures, Arthur and Merlin, both of whom are given a central place in his History. In this article, the author considers the evidence for the reception of Merlin's Prophecies and its implications for the reception of the history in which they were located. Besides reviewing the testimony of twelfth-century authors who used or criticised the Prophecies, she looks at commentaries on the Prophecies, both published and unpublished, written by contemporaries. She concludes that the Prophecies were attacked not because of any perceived historical inaccuracy but primarily because of political considerations. Indeed, the presence of Merlin's Prophecies at the heart of the History served to enhance its credibility and validity.
Writing, Kingship, and Power in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Rory Naismith and David Woodman (Cambridge, 2017),
London, British Library, Cotton Galba A. xiv, a small, charred, poorly written, and imperfectly r... more London, British Library, Cotton Galba A. xiv, a small, charred, poorly written, and imperfectly reconstructed manuscript, attests a central but sparsely documented element of pre-Conquest religious life: private devotions. While gospel-books from the period survive in quantity and many manuscripts contain individual prayers, prayerbooks themselves are a relative rarity. Only six are known, four dating from c. 800 and two, including Galba, from the last generations before the Norman Conquest. Galba A.xiv has long been recognized as an enigmatic manuscript. It contains prayers in English and Latin for an audience of men and, apparently, women; its devotions link it to a high-status centre of production, but the institutional context in which it was produced and used remains elusive. Anglo-Saxon prayerbooks are generally noted for their calligraphic script and stylish production; in contrast Galba looks palaeographically uncanonical, even incoherent, its production suggesting aesthetic ambitions and standards of a different order altogether. Its multiple scribes, writing different varieties of Insular and Caroline minuscule, exhibiting varying levels of skill, some of them notably inexpert, produced a volume which opens up multiple questions about late Anglo-Saxon spiritual practice. This paper uses palaeographical evidence to discuss the construction of the volume and the context in which it was copied and used.
The association between liberty and the Anglo-Saxons has been rendered mythical by later retel... more The association between liberty and the Anglo-Saxons has been rendered mythical by later retellings, both in the Middle Ages and afterwards. This later history notwithstanding, it is argued here that liberty occupied a significant place in the early English documentary record. Originally part of the cultural and linguistic inheritance from late antiquity, the notion of liberty was deployed by English churchmen in defence of monastic freedom from the eighth century onwards, creating an archival legacy which was rewritten and imitated in later centuries, becoming fixed in institutional memory as fiscal and legal freedoms bestowed on the populations of monasteries and towns by pre-Conquest kings.
The Oxford classical dictionary. 3rd revised edn. Edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth... more The Oxford classical dictionary. 3rd revised edn. Edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth. Pp. lv+1640. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003 (first publ. 1949, 1970, 1996). £90. 0 19 860641 9 JEH (55) 2004; DOI: 10.1017/S0022046904210806 The Oxford ...
I The general theme of the conference was ‘Anglo-Saxon England and the Visual Imagination’.Three ... more I The general theme of the conference was ‘Anglo-Saxon England and the Visual Imagination’.Three keynote addresses were delivered.Michelle P. Brown, University of London, ‘Imagining the Exotic: Insular Attitudes to the Cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East’.Anna Gannon, University of Cambridge, ‘A Debt and an Honour: New Approaches to Coin Studies’.Leslie Webster, British Museum, ‘Image, Identity, and the Staff ordshire Hoard’.The following thirty-seven papers were delivered.
This is the on-line version of the long-running seminar series held under the auspices of the Ins... more This is the on-line version of the long-running seminar series held under the auspices of the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, London
The seminar, founded in the 1970s by Professors Julian Brown and Andrew Watson, meets on Tuesdays... more The seminar, founded in the 1970s by Professors Julian Brown and Andrew Watson, meets on Tuesdays at 5.30 p.m. in the Seng Tee Lee Seminar room in the Palaeography (Special Collections) Room, Senate House Library, London. Attendance is open to students, academics, and interested members of the public.
The Friends of Exeter Cathedral: Eighty-Seventh Annual Report, 2017
A revised version of a text delivered at the Exon Domesday Conference organized by the Friends of... more A revised version of a text delivered at the Exon Domesday Conference organized by the Friends of Exeter Cathedral, 5 January 2017. Published with the permission of the Friends of Exeter Cathedral. Images withheld for copyright reasons..
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These texts are presented here, mostly for the first time, together with new editions of all other known charters relating to the house, including three single-sheet originals, with full historical commentaries and translations of vernacular charters. An extended introduction offers a reassessment of the history of St Albans and its region in the early Middle Ages and, in particular, an analysis of the workings of the monastery, its economy, and its relationship with its locality in the century before the Norman Conquest. Particular attention is devoted to the management of the assets of the house, both material (an assessment of their estates and their management) and symbolic (involvement with forgery and enhancement of their documentary record).
These texts are presented here, mostly for the first time, together with new editions of all other known charters relating to the house, including three single-sheet originals, with full historical commentaries and translations of vernacular charters. An extended introduction offers a reassessment of the history of St Albans and its region in the early Middle Ages and, in particular, an analysis of the workings of the monastery, its economy, and its relationship with its locality in the century before the Norman Conquest. Particular attention is devoted to the management of the assets of the house, both material (an assessment of their estates and their management) and symbolic (involvement with forgery and enhancement of their documentary record).
the early English documentary record. Originally part of the cultural and linguistic inheritance from late antiquity, the notion of liberty was deployed by English churchmen in defence of monastic freedom from the eighth century onwards, creating an archival legacy which was rewritten and imitated in later centuries, becoming fixed in institutional memory as fiscal and legal freedoms bestowed on the populations of monasteries and towns by pre-Conquest kings.