Orderic Vitalis, without whom, I suspect, the Charles Homer Haskins Society would not exist, wrote the following words about the beginnings of renewed conflict in England and Normandy after the Conquest:

‘In truth, since the adversary of mankind stalks the earth like a raging lion, seeking those whom he might gnash to pieces with the teeth of his cruelty, so once again a great disturbance arose amongst the English and Normans and the perfidious Scourge [Erinis] long raged to the detriment of many.’²

Two things interest me here, both of them couched in striking metaphorical verbiage, not really Orderic’s own;...

The subject of warfare in medieval England and Normandy betweenc. 900 andc. 1150 has tended to attract more scholarly attention than that of peacemaking.¹ During the last twenty years or so, however, peacemaking in these areas during this period has become the focus of an increasing amount of research, which has done much to illuminate this important aspect of medieval society.² A further contribution to the field can be made by examining in more depth some of the sites where English and Norman rulers and aristocrats made peace with their opponents, and some of the occasions on which...

In the ‘Pennal’ letter of 1406 Owain Glyn Dŵr set out his programme for the creation of an independent Welsh church. Among this manifesto’s clauses was the call for the immediate end to appropriation of Welsh parishes to English religious houses and for their advowsons to be restored to the original patrons.² Though there was undoubtedly widespread contemporary concern, by no means confined to Wales, at the acceleration of appropriations by monasteries as a response to economic pressures, particularly during the second half of the fourteenth century, and though appropriations within Wales were certainly not limited to English abbeys, Owain’s...

Any examination of lay piety in the early Middle Ages is fraught with difficulties because of the nature of the evidence. Historians have almost exclusively looked at land donations, which leave records in the form of charters, as testimony of pious lay-giving.¹ The limited scope of charter evidence, however, seriously distorts our perception of lay piety in the pre-Conquest period. Certainly, recent research has highlighted a previously under-recognized trend of extensive and expensive gift-giving among the eleventh-century elite – bishops, earls, and high-status women – that did not involve land donations.² It also has to be acknowledged that only the...

In 1124, ‘on the advice of the English king, Henry’, Emperor Henry V ‘was plotting a surprise attack against the city of Reims’.¹ Suger’s account of how Louis VI gathered a great army to rebut the enemy is viewed by many as a correct perception of a climax in Louis’s reign. Some see in this episode ‘the real birth of theregnum Franciaein its wider sense’.² Others go as far as to claim that Louis’s stand against Henry V in 1124 is the ‘first expression of national patriotism in France’.³ According to Suger, Louis’s army consisted of an impressive...

Lord Peter Stein, eminent historian of Roman law, described the interaction of law and theology in the writings of one twelfth-century writer as a kind of ‘universal jurisprudence’.¹ The twelfth-century figure to whom he referred was Master Vacarius (c. 1115/20–c. 1200), well-known English Roman lawyer² and Anglo-Norman canonist.³ While Stein drew this conclusion largely on the basis of an analysis of Vacarius’ strictly ‘legal’ work, theLiber pauperum,⁴ I have shown elsewhere, following a systematic study of Vacarius’ other works, dealing with marriage, christology and heresy, that, when seen together, they demonstrate a use of law as a universal...

Late in the year 1180, Henry II enacted a reform of both the coinage and mint administration in England. Chronicle descriptions of this event are few and somewhat limited. Roger of Hoveden, for example, states: ‘Henry, king of England, the father, made a new coinage in England’ (1180).¹ While this and other chroniclers’ statements help date when the new coinage was introduced they offer no details as to how the transfer from old to new coinage was managed and no hint that a large reform of the mint system accompanied the change.² The sparse comments of chroniclers and the absence...

Charles Homer Haskins’The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century(1927) is an acknowledged masterpiece of modern medieval historiography.¹ Not only has this celebrated book sparked several generations of scholarship and debate, but, almost eight decades later, it continues to capture the historiographical interest of medievalists.² Since Haskins, not a few historians have tried their hand at describing this ‘renaissance’ of learning that took place in Western Europe during the late eleventh and twelfth centuries and there are, today, countless titles bearing the term ‘twelfth-century renaissance’ to show for it.³ In the course of the now tired debate over the appropriateness...

On 15 September 1361, Lionel of Antwerp (1338–68) disembarked at Dublin and began his tenure as the king’s lieutenant in Ireland.¹ It was a pivotal moment for the English residents of Ireland. They had played on the conscience of the king at Westminster, and the fruit of their efforts was the appointment of a young lieutenant with a pedigree ideally suited to Irish office.² Through his wife, Lionel laid claim to the vast inheritance of the Burgh family, including Ulster – once Ireland’s premier earldom – and the lordship of Connacht. But Lionel was no ordinary noble. He was...