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.

"Fee tails" were a building block for family landholding from the end of the thirteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century. The classic entail was an interest in land which was inalienable and could only pass at death by inheritance to the lineal heirs of the original grantee. Gordan's study considers the origins, development and use of the entail, and the origins of a reliable legal mechanism for the destruction of individual entails, the common recovery.

Entry point into Welsh migration by experts: many of the contributors have longer studies that students can then read; Multi-disciplinary: shows how historical and literary sources can be read together, includes new archaeological data Showcases new work by a new generation of Welsh historians.

In this important new work Ian Mortimer examines some of the most controversial questions in medieval history, including whether Edward II was murdered, his possible later life in Italy, the weakness of the Lancastrian claim to the throne in 1399 and the origins of the idea of the royal pretender. Central to this book is his ground-breaking approach to medieval evidence. He explains how an information-based method allows a more certain reading of a series of texts. He criticises existing modes of arriving at consensus and outlines a process of historical analysis that ultimately leads to questioning historical doubts as well as historical facts, with profound implications for what we can say about the past with certainty. This is an important work from one of the most original and popular medieval historians writing today.

Vol 1 of a three-volume edition, provides translations of the Goldsmiths' Company Register of Deeds with full explicatory annotation, and with a clear introduction to both the manuscript and the legal texts contained in it. The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, commonly known as the Goldsmiths' Company, is one of the twelve Great Livery Companies of the City of London. This three-volume edition provides translations of the company's Register of Deeds with full explicatory annotation and with a clear introduction to both the manuscript and the legal texts contained within. Additionally, the volumes contain detailed name and subject indexes. The company's Register of Deeds has never been fully utilised by historians, but it contains a record copy made from the fifteenth century onwards of the original deeds of the company's acquisitions of property from the reign of King Richard I to the seventeenth century. These deeds reveal much about the precise location of properties and their inhabitants. Wills, often appearing in the Register, help to piece together a social history of the time. Charitable purposes were often the reason for monies or property bequeathed to the Goldsmiths, sometimes of an educational nature, or of almsgiving to the poor, or for the training and support of young goldsmiths and silversmiths. Many documents also concern women, either acting solely in their own name or jointly with a husband, sometimes also appearing as daughters or sisters, providing evidence regarding their legal position during the medieval and early modern period. The editing and translation of these documents (from Latin and French into modern-day English) will be of great use to historians interested in the buildings of medieval and Tudor London and their use as personal or business premises. But beyond these obvious confines, these so far hidden sources will help to rewrite a social, legal, and economic history of medieval and Tudor London.

This collection of essays opens a new discussion about the mind, body, and spirit of the mad in medieval Europe. The authors examine a broad spectrum of mental and emotional issues, which medieval authors point out as ‘unusual’ behavior. With the emerging field of medieval disability studies in mind, the authors have carefully considered legal and cultural descriptions for insight into the perception and understanding of mental impairment. These essays on madness in the Middle Ages elucidate how medieval society conceptualized mental afflictions. Individually, the essays cover aspects of mental impairment from a variety of angles to unearth collectively medieval perspectives on mental affliction. Contributors are James R. King, Kate McGrath, Irina Metzler, Aleksandra Pfau, Cory James Rushton, Margaret Trenchard-Smith, and Wendy J. Turner.

The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower reviews the most current scholarship on the late medieval poet and opens doors purposefully to research areas of the future. It is divided into three parts. The first part, "Working theories: medieval and modern," is devoted to the main theoretical aspects that frame Gower’s work, ranging from his use of medieval law, rhetoric, theology, and religious attitudes, to approaches incorporating gender and queer studies. The second part, "Things and places: material cultures," examines the cultural locations of the author, not only from geographical and political perspectives, or in scientific and economic context, but also in the transmission of his poetry through the materiality of the text and its reception. "Polyvocality: text and language," the third part, focuses on Gower’s trilingualism, his approach to history, and narratological and intertextual aspects of his works. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower is an essential resource for scholars and students of Gower and of Middle English literature, history, and culture generally.

An in-depth look at the lives of illegitimate children and their parents in England in the later Middle Ages. For the nobility and gentry in later medieval England, land was a source of wealth and status. Their marriages were arranged with this in mind, and it is not surprising that so many of them had mistresses and illegitimate children. John de Warenne, earl of Surrey, married at the age of twenty to a ten-year-old granddaughter of Edward I, had at least eight bastards and a complicated love life. In theory, bastards were at a considerable disadvantage. Regarded as ‘filius nullius’ or the son of no one, they were unable to inherit real property and barred from the priesthood. In practice, illegitimacy could be less of a stigma in late medieval England than it became between the sixteenth and late twentieth centuries. There were ways of making provision for illegitimate offspring and some bastards did extremely well—in the church, through marriage, as soldiers, and a few even succeeding to the family estates. The Legitimacy of Bastards is the first book to consider the individuals who had illegitimate children, the ways in which they provided for them and attitudes towards both the parents and the bastard children. It also highlights important differences between the views of illegitimacy taken by the Church and by the English law. “Informative and well researched . . . A great resource for those who want to learn more about the late medieval period and illegitimate children.” —Adventures of a Tudor Nerd

Presenting a broad spectrum of reflections on the subject of female transgression in early modern Britain, this volume proposes a richly productive dialogue between literary and historical approaches to the topic. The essays presented here cover a range of ’transgressive’ women: daughters, witches, prostitutes, thieves; mothers/wives/murderers; violence in NW England; violence in Scotland; single mothers; women as (sexual) partners in crime. Contributions illustrate the dynamic relation between fiction and fact that informs literary and socio-historical analysis alike, exploring female transgression as a process, not of crossing fixed boundaries, but of negotiating the epistemological space between representation and documentation.