Margam Abbey was founded by the lord of Glamorgan, Earl Robert of Gloucester, in 1147. Its scriptorium was concerned not only with the usual business of a monastic house, but also provided staff for the central administration of the Gloucester earldom in the twelfth century and served as the earldom's writing-office for Glamorgan in the early thirteenth. Professor Patterson traces the organization and development of Margam's secretarial administration and analyses the nature of other similar institutions in this Marcher lordship during Margam's first eighty years. This overall picture is made...

The 1993 International Conference of the Haskins Society, held at the University of Houston, produced a varied collection of papers on numerous aspects of the medieval history of the British Isles, with related material on other Western European countries. The articles in this volume, most of which derive from the conference, focus strongly on the topic of religion, with stimulating essays on women religious, Archbishop Lanfranc and the Anglo-Saxon hagiographic tradition; however, other subjects are also explored, including Anglo-Norman litigation and the turbulent state of Denmark in the...

The Charles Homer Haskin Society was founded for the study of and research into the political and social history of the Western European world, through the Viking age and the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to the break-up of the Carolingian state in the mid 13th century. The principal focus is on the British Isles, and on France where events relate to developments in Britain. Its Journal is an annual volume of papers in this area of interest, presented at Society meetings by scholars on both sides of the Atlantic; special studies are also commissioned. Contributors: ROBERT S. BABCOCK, JESSE L. BYOCK...

The Haskins Society 11th International Conference, University of Houston 1992 produced a varied collection of papers including Domesday Jurors, presenting new evidence on landownership in 1086; an essay reassessing the impact of the early explorers arguing that Columbus and Vasco de Gama were simply a phase in a history of European expansion; and an unusual paper on the twelfth-century biography of William Marshal (d. 1219) asking what it reveals about the context of its composition. Contributors: HUGH THOMAS, C.P. LEWIS, J.R.S.PHILLIPS, GEORGE BEECH, C. WARREN HOLLISTER, ROBERT HELMERICHS,...