INTRODUCTION
Medieval English history is rich in source material, and this book is intended to provide a sampling of those sources for students and other readers. To encompass several centuries of English history in 102 documents is, of course, impossible. Instead, we have tried both to convey some of the wonderful variety found in the written record and to supply pieces that will complement the textbooks and monographs that history students are likely to be reading in their courses. Some constitutional highlights and standard texts such as Magna Carta and Froissart’s Chronicles are included here, but many of the contents are less well known because they have been less readily available. In this second edition, we have continued to emphasize political history and social history, and to seek out pieces that are readable and accessible to students. As a result, the sources are heavy on narrative material and comparatively light on record sources (charters, financial accounts, and so on), because the latter tend to be less useful to the non-specialist. With a few exceptions, we have also largely excluded literary sources, which are well represented in their own anthologies and other widely available editions, preferring instead to focus on the sources we call “historical” because they purport to record the reality of national events and people’s lives.
In planning this revised second edition, we have sought to retain the strengths of the first, in particular its attention to the experiences of a rich array of historical actors—women as well as men, humble people as well as elites—and its inclusion of a range of viewpoints on political, social, and spiritual matters. The thematic clusters of documents on topics such as the Anglo-Saxon monarchy, lay piety, and late medieval commercial life that were a strength of the first edition have also been retained and enhanced. At the same time, we have aimed to increase the collection’s usefulness to teachers and students, and to update its contents in a way that reflects recent developments in the study of medieval England. The most obvious change to those familiar with the first edition will be the new first chapter on the Anglo-Saxon period, which we have included in recognition that most textbooks (and thus many courses) on our subject begin closer to 500 than 1000 CE. The eighteen sources in Chapter 1 deal with key developments, such as the Gregorian mission and the Viking invasions, while attempting to convey something of the texture of lived experience in early medieval England. Readers will also find much that is new in the five remaining chapters, which feature over twenty new sources. Some of these additions were selected with an eye to covering significant events, such as the conquest of Wales and the deposition of Edward II, not mentioned in the first edition, while others complement sources or extend coverage of themes from the first edition. The inclusion of multiple examples of particular genres, such as wills (docs. 12 and 93) and miracle collections (docs. 35 and 57), is meant to facilitate comparative analysis, while the addition of new sources on themes such as queenship (doc. 38) and Jewish communities (doc. 26) should prompt readers to assess continuity and change over time. Other additions to the second edition represent types of sources, such as proofs of age inquests (doc. 73) and household rolls (doc. 58) that scholars have utilized in increasingly creative ways. Finally, the second edition incorporates a variety of non-textual sources, in recognition of the growing interest in material culture and archaeological sources (docs. 5, 61, and 100) among historians of medieval England.
The revision process inevitably entailed difficult decisions about what material should be cut out to make room for new sources, given the need to keep the collection to a reasonable length. We have removed nineteen documents from the first edition, and condensed others, while attempting to retain the volume’s chronological coherence and balanced coverage of different kinds of historical events and experiences. While we are aware that we may have advertently omitted some instructors’ best-loved sources, we are hopeful that the richness of what has been added will help make amends.
As a teaching text, this anthology is meant to complement courses which take a chronological or thematic approach to England’s medieval past. In the introductions and questions that accompany the entries, we have signaled the importance of situating each source within its historical landscape by paying close attention to the specific circumstances of its composition, its author’s concerns, its original intended audience, and the conventions of its genre. More generally, in approaching medieval sources twenty-first-century readers need to maintain a critical stance that takes into account the nature of medieval society. Literacy was very limited throughout the medieval period; most of those who wrote were male clerics working either within the Church or on behalf of secular authorities, and most literate clerics themselves came from elite backgrounds. For all these reasons, medieval sources have a pervasive bias: they generally represent the perspective of the elite, usually the ecclesiastical or monastic elite, and overwhelmingly the male elite. Even when writers record the testimony of common men and women, as for example in the coroners’ rolls (doc. 60) or the records of a manorial court (doc. 72), a filter of officialdom still stands between the commoner’s experience and the written record. Modern readers must be mindful of this, and alert to other potential limitations, as they attempt to make sense of these sources and the world in which they were produced.
On the other hand, some attempt to understand medieval viewpoints is crucial to understanding these documents and the stories they tell. We do not want to suggest that there is a single such viewpoint. The acceptance of hierarchy and authority, the importance of personal bonds, the pervasiveness of hardship, the tenuousness of life itself, the basic homogeneity of religious culture, the general acceptance of supernatural intervention in earthly matters, and the literalness with which people regarded both secular and sacred ritual were some of the elements that contributed to an experience shared by all levels of society. Yet it is a serious mistake to think of any human society, or even a group within that society, as monolithic. Rather than asking “what people thought” in the Middle Ages about some idea or aspect of life, and thus generalizing about hundreds of years of human experience and opinion, historians need to look out for differences as much as for consensus. In the eleventh century, for instance, Queen Emma (doc. 17) and Queen Edith (doc. 29) presented themselves as fulfilling very different ideals of royal womanhood. English Jews had many persecutors but also some protectors (docs. 42, 53). Everyone seemed to accept villeinage as the proper condition of the majority of the population—until John Ball preached against it and helped touch off the Peasants’ Revolt (docs. 82, 83). While political and intellectual historians have long focused on controversies involving the medieval elite, recent scholarship has revealed that the fabric of society was a much richer tapestry than has traditionally been thought. Anyone who studies the past must bear in mind both the variety of human conditions and the wide spectrum of human reactions even in similar situations. Such an approach is not just a matter of reading a variety of texts: it is a matter of exploring the richness of a single text. We hope that the documents collected here will be read in such a way.
To facilitate such close, engaged reading, we have attempted to make the sources as accessible as possible. We have thus modernized older translations as needed and sought to make new translations that will feel fresh and readable. Mindful that readers new to the study of medieval England will encounter many unfamiliar terms, concepts, and institutions in the texts, we have included explanations of these (as well as other editorial additions) in square brackets. Despite our best efforts, some readers will likely have additional questions we have not anticipated, and we hope these will inspire them to delve more deeply into the medieval past.