David Crouch | |
---|---|
Born | David Bruce Crouch 31 October 1953 |
Nationality | British |
Known for | Professor of Medieval History, Author |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | Cardiff University |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Medieval Social History |
Institutions | Hull University |
David Bruce Crouch, FRHistS , FBA (born 31 October 1953) is a British historian and academic. From 2000 until his retirement in 2018,he was Professor of Medieval History at the University of Hull.
He graduated in history from the former University College,Cardiff,in 1975,and pursued a career in secondary school teaching in Mountain Ash,South Wales till 1983. While serving as a schoolteacher he completed a doctorate on the Anglo-Norman twin aristocrats,Waleran of Meulan and Robert of Leicester,subsequently published by Cambridge University Press. [1] From 1984,he occupied research posts in the University of London until moving to a teaching position in North Riding College,later University College,Scarborough in 1990. [2] In 2000,he transferred to the Department of History in the University of Hull as professor of medieval history. He has occupied visiting professorships in Poitiers and Milwaukee. [3] From 2013,he held a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship and in 2015 he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study,Princeton. [4] Since retirement he has devoted his energies to the ongoing Victoria Counties of England series on Yorkshire East Riding,publishing a two volume study of Howdenshire wapentake and the reconstruction of a medieval Howdenshire gentry cartulary,constructing an edition from 17th-century antiquaries transcripts. [5]
Professor Crouch's main focus is on the social and political history of the period from 1000 to 1300,primarily in England and France,with a particular emphasis on comparative studies of social structures between the various realms of Britain and continental France. His fullest statement on his theory that it was the formulation of nobility as a self-conscious aristocratic quality demanding social deference is to be found in his 2005 work The Birth of Nobility. His idea is that once nobility was a quality that could be acquired and demonstrated by conduct and lifestyle as much as by birth,a cascade effect was triggered which produced a hierarchy of social classes organised by relative degrees of nobility. He sees this as happening in the generations on either side of the year 1200.
From the beginning of his career he has also published on the medieval history of South East Wales and the diocese of Llandaff. [6]
In political history he has written influential biographies on King Stephen and William Marshal. He was a member of the academic team which edited and translated into English the contemporary medieval biography of Marshal [7]
His books on the aristocracy of England and France in the High Middle Ages,have been characterised by his incorporation of English social history into the mainstream of continental scholarship. [8]
In 1986,Crouch was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS). [9] In 2014,he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA),the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. [10]
Chivalry, or the chivalric language, is an informal and varying code of conduct developed in Europe between 1170 and 1220. It is associated with the medieval Christian institution of knighthood, with knights being members of various chivalric orders, and with knights' and gentlemen's behaviours which were governed by chivalrous social codes. The ideals of chivalry were popularized in medieval literature, particularly the literary cycles known as the Matter of France, relating to the legendary companions of Charlemagne and his men-at-arms, the paladins, and the Matter of Britain, informed by Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, written in the 1130s, which popularized the legend of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table.
John de Gray or de Grey was an English prelate who served as Bishop of Norwich, and was elected but unconfirmed Archbishop of Canterbury. He was employed in the service of Prince John even before John became king, for which he was rewarded with a number of ecclesiastical offices, culminating in his pro forma election to Norwich in 1200. De Gray continued in royal service after his elevation to the episcopate, lending the King money and undertaking diplomatic missions on his behalf. In 1205 King John attempted to further reward de Gray with a translation to the archbishopric of Canterbury, but a disputed election process led to de Gray's selection being quashed by Pope Innocent III in 1206.
Thurstan or Turstin of Bayeux was a medieval Archbishop of York, the son of a priest. He served kings William II and Henry I of England before his election to the see of York in 1114. Once elected, his consecration was delayed for five years while he fought attempts by the Archbishop of Canterbury to assert primacy over York. Eventually, he was consecrated by the pope instead and allowed to return to England. While archbishop, he secured two new suffragan bishops for his province. When Henry I died, Thurstan supported Henry's nephew Stephen of Blois as king. Thurstan also defended the northern part of England from invasion by the Scots, taking a leading part in organising the English forces at the Battle of the Standard (1138). Shortly before his death, Thurstan resigned from his see and took the habit of a Cluniac monk.
Roger le Poer was a medieval Lord Chancellor from 1135 until 1139 for King Stephen of England. The son of a powerful bishop, Roger owed his position to his family connections. He lost his office when his father and other relatives lost power. Arrested along with his father, Roger was used to secure the surrender of a castle held by his mother and then disappeared from history.
Ralph de Warneville was the twentieth Lord Chancellor of England as well as later Bishop of Lisieux in Normandy.
The landed gentry, or the gentry, is a largely historical Irish and British social class of landowners who could live entirely from rental income, or at least had a country estate. It is the British element of the wider European class of gentry. While part of the British aristocracy, and usually armigers, the gentry ranked below the British peerage in social status. Nevertheless, their economic base in land was often similar, and some of the landed gentry were wealthier than some peers. Many gentry were close relatives of peers, and it was not uncommon for gentry to marry into peerage. With or without noble title, owning rural land estates often brought with it the legal rights of the feudal lordship of the manor, and the less formal name or title of squire, in Scotland laird.
A knight banneret, sometimes known simply as banneret, was a medieval knight who led a company of troops during time of war under his own banner and was eligible to bear supporters in English heraldry. The military rank of a knight banneret was higher than a knight Bachelor, but lower than an earl or duke.
Bastard feudalism is a somewhat controversial term invented by 19th-century historians to characterise the form feudalism took in the Late Middle Ages, primarily in England. Its distinctive feature is that middle-ranking figures rendered military, political, legal, or domestic service in return for money, office, or influence. As a result, the gentry began to think of themselves as the men of their lord rather than of the king. Individually, they are known as retainers, and collectively as the "affinity" of the lord, among other terms.
The late Middle Ages or late medieval period was the period of European history lasting from AD 1300 to 1500. The late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern period.
Walcher was the bishop of Durham from 1071, a Lotharingian and the first Prince-bishop. He was the first non-Englishman to hold that see and an appointee of William the Conqueror following the Harrying of the North. He was murdered in 1080, which led William to send an army into Northumbria to harry the region again.
Alexander of Lincoln was a medieval English Bishop of Lincoln, a member of an important administrative and ecclesiastical family. He was the nephew of Roger of Salisbury, a Bishop of Salisbury and Chancellor of England under King Henry I, and he was also related to Nigel, Bishop of Ely. Educated at Laon, Alexander served in his uncle's diocese as an archdeacon in the early 1120s. Unlike his relatives, he held no office in the government before his appointment as Bishop of Lincoln in 1123. Alexander became a frequent visitor to King Henry's court after his appointment to the episcopate, often witnessing royal documents, and he served as a royal justice in Lincolnshire.
Hugh Nigel Kennedy is a British medievalist and academic. He specialises in the history of the early Islamic Middle East, Muslim Iberia and the Crusades. From 1997 to 2007, he was Professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of St Andrews. Since 2007, he has been Professor of Arabic at SOAS, University of London.
Beverley has been the name of a parliamentary constituency in the East Riding of Yorkshire for three periods. From medieval times until 1869 it was a parliamentary borough consisting of a limited electorate of property owners of its early designated borders within the market town of Beverley, which returned (elected) two Members of Parliament to the House of Commons of the English and Welsh-turned-UK Parliament during that period.
The British nobility is made up of the peerage and the (landed) gentry. The nobility of its four constituent home nations has played a major role in shaping the history of the country, although the hereditary peerage now retain only the rights to stand for election to the House of Lords, dining rights there, position in the formal order of precedence, the right to certain titles, and the right to an audience with the monarch.
Goodrich Castle is a Norman medieval castle ruin north of the village of Goodrich in Herefordshire, England, controlling a key location between Monmouth and Ross-on-Wye. It was praised by William Wordsworth as the "noblest ruin in Herefordshire" and is considered by historian Adrian Pettifer to be the "most splendid in the county, and one of the best examples of English military architecture".
Robert or sometimes Robert of Lewes was a medieval English Bishop of Bath. He began his career as a monk at Lewes Priory as well as performing administrative functions for Henry of Blois. It was Henry who secured Robert's selection as bishop. While bishop, Robert built in his diocese and set up the system of archdeacons there. He may have been the author of the Gesta Stephani, a work detailing the history of King Stephen's life.
The medieval household was, like modern households, the center of family life for all classes of European society. Yet in contrast to the household of today, it consisted of many more individuals than the nuclear family. From the household of the king to the humblest peasant dwelling, more or less distant relatives and varying numbers of servants and dependents would cohabit with the master of the house and his immediate family. The structure of the medieval household was largely dissolved by the advent of privacy in early modern Europe.
The economy of England in the Middle Ages, from the Norman invasion in 1066, to the death of Henry VII in 1509, was fundamentally agricultural, though even before the invasion the local market economy was important to producers. Norman institutions, including serfdom, were superimposed on an existing system of open fields and mature, well-established towns involved in international trade. Over the five centuries of the Middle Ages, the English economy would at first grow and then suffer an acute crisis, resulting in significant political and economic change. Despite economic dislocation in urban and extraction economies, including shifts in the holders of wealth and the location of these economies, the economic output of towns and mines developed and intensified over the period. By the end of the period, England had a weak government, by later standards, overseeing an economy dominated by rented farms controlled by gentry, and a thriving community of indigenous English merchants and corporations.
Burchard du Puiset was a medieval Anglo-Norman clergyman and treasurer of the diocese of York. Either the nephew or son of Hugh du Puiset, the Bishop of Durham, Burchard held a number of offices in the dioceses of York and Durham before being appointed treasurer by King Richard I of England in 1189. His appointment was opposed by the newly appointed Archbishop Geoffrey, which led to a long dispute between Geoffrey and Burchard that was not resolved until the mid 1190s. After the death of Hugh du Puiset, Burchard was a candidate for the Hugh's old bishopric, but lost out in the end to another candidate. Burchard died in 1196.
Sybil was an Anglo-Norman noblewoman in 12th-century England. Her parentage is unclear, but her first marriage to Pain fitzJohn is well-attested. Through her marriage, Sybil transferred lands in several shires to her husband, including lands around Ludlow Castle and the castle itself. After Pain's death in 1137, Sybil attempted to retain control of Ludlow and her lands but in 1139 King Stephen of England married her to Josce de Dinan, who died in 1166. Sybil had two daughters with Pain and is probably the mother of Josce's two daughters also. Sybil's marriage to Josce, and his control of Ludlow in right of his wife forms the background to a medieval Welsh romance, Fouke le Fitz Waryn.