The Pakenham cartulary for the manor of Ixworth Thorpe in Suffolk is one of the few secular medieval cartularies to survive. It is especially deserving of attention for its demonstration of the importance families of the Pakenham class attached to the provision of inheritances for their younger sons. Thomas of Pakenham, the man for whom the cartulary was composed, was the second son of the knight Sir William of Pakenham; his elder brother Edmund was the main beneficiary of their father's estate, but it is clear that Sir William wished to provide for all his sons: the manor of Ixworth Thorpe...

The village of Stanton, some nine miles north-east of Bury St Edmunds, is in many ways a typical Suffolk village. What is not so typical is the survival of a considerable and largely coherent collection of charters and similar texts, which together provide a rich and detailed picture of aspects of life in this village from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries. Most of the documents were written for, or involved, local peasants and farmers, and illustrate their own dealings with each other, with their lords (most importantly the nearby abbey of Bury), together with the involvement of...

(East Anglian) A wealth of surviving documents provide an unusually comprehensive overview of the only Cistercian house in Suffolk.

The first two volumes make available all the existing pre-Reformation charter material, the third consists of an introduction and index. Taken together the three volumes illuminate the social and economic as well as the ecclesiastical organisation of the Suffolk-Essex border in the 12th and 13th Centuries.

The first two volumes make available all the existing pre-Reformation charter material, the third consists of an introduction and index. Taken together the three volumes illuminate the social and economic as well as the ecclesiastical organisation of the Suffolk-Essex border in the 12th and 13th Centuries.

The priory of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Blythburgh was one of the earliest of the many houses of Augustinian canons established in the diocese of Norwich; the beginnings of conventual life most likely date from the mid-12th century.

Butley Priory was a house of Augustinian canons, Leiston Abbey a foundation for Premonstratensian canons. This volume is largely an edition of the Leiston cartulary and although the introduction covers aspects of the history of both houses, it is chiefly concerned with Leiston as the better documented and less investigated of the two.

The documents edited here tell a story of aspiration and social mobility in late medieval Suffolk. Edmund Bohun, the younger son of a prosperous yeoman from Fressingfield, managed through good contacts and good luck to obtain a position in the centre of administrative and political power in London, thence achieving armigerous status as well as acquiring considerable amounts of land, both in and round the village itself and elsewhere in Suffolk. Having no son of his own, he left his land and coat of arms to his nephews, thereby establishing the family's fortunes on a level which they were to...

First modern edition of medieval documents from an important East Anglian religious house.

Edition of documents from an important medieval East Anglian ecclesiastical institution.