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]
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,such as the hearth son of a knight. 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. [5]
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 [6]
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. [7]
In 1986,Crouch was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS). [8] In 2014,he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA),the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. [9]
Earl is a rank of the nobility in the United Kingdom. The title originates in the Old English word eorl, meaning "a man of noble birth or rank". The word is cognate with the Scandinavian form jarl, and meant "chieftain", particularly a chieftain set to rule a territory in a king's stead. After the Norman Conquest, it became the equivalent of the continental count. Alternative names for the rank equivalent to "earl" or "count" in the nobility structure are used in other countries, such as the hakushaku (伯爵) of the post-restoration Japanese Imperial era.
Chivalry, or the chivalric code, is an informal and varying code of conduct developed in Europe between 1170 and 1220. It was associated with the medieval Christian institution of knighthood; knights' and gentlemen's behaviours 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. All of these were taken as historically accurate until the beginnings of modern scholarship in the 19th century.
Lyfing of Winchester was an Anglo-Saxon prelate who served as Bishop of Worcester, Bishop of Crediton and Bishop of Cornwall.
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.
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.
"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 in the Late Middle Ages. 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.
Cynesige was a medieval English Archbishop of York between 1051 and 1060. Prior to his appointment to York, he was a royal clerk and perhaps a monk at Peterborough. As archbishop, he built and adorned his cathedral as well as other churches, and was active in consecrating bishops. After his death in 1060, the bequests he had made to a monastery were confiscated by the queen.
Henry Murdac was abbot of Fountains Abbey and Archbishop of York in medieval England.
Eric J. Evans was a British historian who was Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Lancaster and was Chair (1991–98) and vice-president of the Social History Society.
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 medieval historian 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.
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.
Æthelwold was the first Bishop of Carlisle in medieval England.
Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in north-eastern England during the Wars of the Roses. He is considered a leading authority on the field. He is emeritus professor of the University of Teesside. In addition to works on the Wars of the Roses, he has also written a general history of fifteenth-century England (2000) and books on Robin Hood (2004) and Warwick the Kingmaker (2007), Henry V (2014) and Edward IV (2016). He has in addition edited collections of essays on fifteenth-century history and the history of the north-east of England as a region.
Anthony Eric Goodman (1936–2016) was an English professor emeritus of medieval and renaissance studies at the University of Edinburgh. His main field of interest was late medieval England, and he published books on subjects such as John of Gaunt and the Wars of the Roses.
Judith Green is an English medieval historian, who is Emerita Professor of Medieval History at the University of Edinburgh. A graduate of King's College, London and Somerville College, Oxford, she held a research fellowship and then a lectureship at the University of St Andrews before transferring to a lectureship at Queen's University, Belfast. There she became a Reader and, eventually, Professor. In 2005, she took the professorship at Edinburgh, retiring in 2011.
The medieval English saw their economy as comprising three groups – the clergy, who prayed; the knights, who fought; and the peasants, who worked the landtowns 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.
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.