Originally published in 1965. In A Baronial Family in Medieval England: The Clares, 1217–1314, Michael Altschul studies the Clare family during the thirteenth century. The Clares spearheaded the struggle to enforce Magna Carta in the Barons' War. Historians prior to Altschul tended to neglect the Clares' history given the scattered nature of the archives documenting their time as a politically influential and powerful family. This book unfolds chronologically, outlining the Clares' rise to preeminence and describing how they administered their estates and income.

The articles in this book, reprinted from the journal Past and Present, are all, in different ways, concerned with the ownership of landed property in medieval England and with those who worked the land. Problems debated include those concerning the keeping intact of the great estates of the Anglo-Norman barons in the face of both inheritance claims and of political manipulation by the crown. Other articles show that the difficulties of knights and lesser gentry were no less complex, as social shifts resulted from economic developments as well as from their military role and their relationships with their overlords. The essays are of as much importance for those interested in the history of politics as to those concerned with the economy and society of medieval England.

New investigations into a pivotal era of the thirteenth century.

A study of power in the middle ages: the Nevilles of Raby, who included among their members Warwick the Kingmaker, was one of the major baronial families in England.

This book reassesses the relationship between Edward I and his earls, and the role of English nobility in thirteenth-century governance.

Fee tails were a heritable interest in land which was both inalienable and could only pass at death by inheritance to descendants of the original grantee. Biancalana's study considers the origins of the entail, and the development of a reliable legal mechanism for their destruction, the common recovery.

In this collection of essays, Antonia Gransden brings out the virtues of medieval writers and highlights their attitudes and habits of thought. She traces the continuing influence of Bede, the greatest of early medieval English historians, from his death to the 16th century. Bede's clarity and authority were welcomed by generations of monastic historians. At the other end is a humble 14th-century chronicle produced at Lynn with little to add other than a few local references.

This Royal Descents supplement is an outgrowth of the authorÍs multi-volume family history of the ñPresidential Branchî of the Washingtons. That work collects the descendants of the immigrant John Washington who settled in Westmoreland Co., Va., in 1657, married Anne Pope, and became the great-grandfather of President George Washington. The Royal Descents traces the ancestry of the early Virginia members of this ñPresidential Branchî back in time to the aristocracy and nobility of England and continental Europe, including the Plantagenet dynasty, William the Conqueror, Alfred the Great, Charles Martel, and Charlemagne. ADVANCE PRAISE for The Washingtons: A Family History ñI am convinced that your work will be of wide interest to historians and academics as well as members of the Washington family itself. Although the surname Washington is perhaps the best known in American history and much has been written about the Washington family for well over a century, it is surprising that no comprehensive family history has been published. Justin M. GlennÍs The Washingtons: A Family History finally fills this void for the branch to which General and President George Washington belonged, identifying some 63,000 descendants. This is truly a family history, not a mere tabulation of names and dates, providing biographical accounts of many of the descendants of John Washington who settled in Westmoreland County, Virginia, in 1657. . . . Each individual section is followed by extensive listings of published and manuscript sources supporting the information presented and errors of identification in previous publications are commented upon as appropriate.î John Frederick Dorman, editor of The Virginia Genealogist (1957-2006) and author of Adventurers of Purse and Person ñDecades of reviewing Civil War books have left me surprised and delighted when someone applies exhaustive diligence to a topic not readily accessible. Dr. Glenn surely meets that standard with the meticulous research that unveils the Washington family in gratifying detail„many of them Confederates of interest and importance.î Robert K. Krick, author of The Smoothbore Volley that Doomed the Confederacy and Stonewall Jackson at Cedar Mountain

This vivid and pioneering study illuminates the different roles played in late medieval society by noblewomen - the most substantial group of women to survive as individuals in medieval documents. They emerge (despite limited political opportunities) as figures of consequence themselves in a landowning society through estate management in their husbands' frequent absences, and through hospitality, patronage and affinity.