Using a variety of sources including chronicles, annals, secular and sacred biographies and monographs on local histories, this text offers a critical survey of historical writing in England from the mid-6th century to the early 16th century. Based on the study of the sources themselves, these volumes also offer a critical assessment of secondary sources and historiographical development. The author discusses figures such as Bede, William Malmesbury and Matthew Paris, individually, concluding with a critical examination of their careers and work. The author details the influences and...

The abbey of Bury St. Edmund's was one of the richest and most powerful of the monasteries of medieval England. The Libert of the Eight and a Half Hundreds, over which the abbot exercised the authority of Sherriff, covered all west Suffolk and survived as a separate administrative district until the country reorganisation of 1974. As its centre was an even more privileged area, the town and suburbs of Bury St. Edmunds, which grew up to service the abbey's worldly needs and remained under the abbot's absolute control; today it survives as the prosperous borough of Bury St. Edmunds. The abbey...

St Edmund's Abbey was one of the most highly privileged and wealthiest religious houses in medieval England, one closely involved with the central government; its history is an integral part of English history. This book (the first of two volumes) offers a magisterial and comprehensive account of the Abbey during the thirteenth century, based primarily on evidence in the abbey's records (over 40 registers survive). The careers of the abbots, beginning with the great Samson, provide the chronological structure; separate chapters study various aspects of their rule, such as their relations with...

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 sixteenth century. Bede's clarity and authority were welcomed by generations of monastic historians. At the other end is a humble fourteenth-century chronicle produced at Lynn with little to add other than a few local references.

The letter-book of William of Hoo is a hybrid between a formulary and letter-book with over 200 entries. It begins with fifty six entries which are pure forms, with initials instead of names or places and no dates, and ends with more or less complete copies of letters with full names and dates. William of Hoo was the sacrist of Bury St Edmunds from 1280-1294. As such he owned many manors and was virtually lord of the borough of Bury St Edmunds, he not only drew the rents, tolls and other profits of the borough but also presided over the borough court, held the view of frankpledge, was in...

The customary, edited here from British Library harley 1005, was composed at Bury St Edmunds in the first half of the 13th century (probably after 1234); its main concern is with the duties of the abbot and the obedientiaries, but it also throws much light on the daily duties of a 13th-century Bury monk. The edition is provided with an extensive historical introduction, and a number of treatises relevant to the customary and printed in appendices.