The Northamptonshire Record Society is a text publication society for the English county of Northamptonshire. It was established in 1920 by Joan Wake. [1] The society is based at Wooton Hall Park in Northampton, with the Northamptonshire Record Office. It is a registered charity. [2]
Hereward the Wake (c.1035 – c.1072) was an Anglo-Saxon nobleman and a leader of local resistance to the Norman Conquest of England. His base, when leading the rebellion against the Norman rulers, was the Isle of Ely in eastern England. According to legend he roamed the Fens, which nowadays covers the parts of the modern counties of Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Norfolk, leading popular opposition to William the Conqueror.
Leofric was an Earl of Mercia. He founded monasteries at Coventry and Much Wenlock. Leofric is most remembered as the husband of Lady Godiva.
The history of Northamptonshire spans the same period as English history.
The Diocese of Peterborough forms part of the Province of Canterbury in England. Its seat is the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter, Saint Paul and Saint Andrew, which was founded as a monastery in AD 655 and re-built in its present form between 1118 and 1238.
Peterborough is a borough constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Its current form is the direct, unbroken successor of a smaller constituency that was created in the mid-16th century and used for the legislatures of England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom (UK). The seat today elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first-past-the-post system of election since 1885, before which its earlier form had two-member representation using the similar bloc vote system and both forms had a broadening but restricted franchise until 1918.
Northampton railway station serves the large town of Northampton in England. It is on the Northampton Loop of the West Coast Main Line. The station is served by West Midlands Trains services southbound to London Euston and northbound to Birmingham New Street and Crewe. A handful of Avanti West Coast services also serve the station.
Miles FitzWalter of Gloucester, 1st Earl of Hereford was a great magnate based in the west of England. He was hereditary Constable of England and Sheriff of Gloucestershire.
Below is a list of people who have served as Lord Lieutenant of Northamptonshire. Since 1735, all Lords Lieutenant have also been Custos Rotulorum of Northamptonshire. The lieutenancy included the Soke of Peterborough until 1965, when the Lord Lieutenant of Huntingdonshire became Lord Lieutenant of Huntingdon and Peterborough. This merged with the lieutenancy of Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely in 1974, forming the jurisdiction of the present Lord Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire.
Medeshamstede was the name of Peterborough in the Anglo-Saxon period. It was the site of a monastery founded around the middle of the 7th century, which was an important feature in the kingdom of Mercia from the outset. Little is known of its founder and first abbot, Sexwulf, though he was himself an important figure, and later became bishop of Mercia. Medeshamstede soon acquired a string of daughter churches, and was a centre for an Anglo-Saxon sculptural style.
St Peter's Collegiate Church is located on the northern side of central Wolverhampton, England. For many centuries it was a chapel royal, and from 1480 a royal peculiar, independent of the Diocese of Lichfield and even the Province of Canterbury. The collegiate church was central to the development of the town of Wolverhampton, much of which belonged to its dean. Until the 18th century, it was the only church in Wolverhampton and the control of the college extended far into the surrounding area, with dependent chapels in several towns and villages of southern Staffordshire.
William Kingsmill alias William Basyng (?–1549) was Prior of St. Swithun's Priory, Winchester until the Dissolution of the Monastery in 1539; it was a Benedictine monastic house and its shrine to the saint popularly associated with determining the entire period of pre-harvest weather was a place of pilgrimage. He was appointed as the first Dean of Winchester Cathedral at the foundation of the new chapter in 1541.
Hemming was a monk, author and compiler in medieval England from around the time of the Norman conquest of England. He was a senior brother at Worcester Cathedral Priory, and his significance derives from the monastic cartulary attributed to him.
John Towers was an English churchman, Bishop of Peterborough from 1639, a royalist and a supporter of the ecclesiastical policies of William Laud.
The Wiltshire Record Society is a text publication society in Wiltshire, England, which edits and publishes historic documents concerned with the history of Wiltshire.
William Fitzilliam or Fitzjames was Dean of Wells Cathedral from 1540 to his resignation and surrender of the Deanery in late 1547.
St Andrew's Priory was a Cluniac house in Northampton, England.
The Chronicon Petroburgense, or Peterborough Chronicle, is a 13th-century chronicle written in Medieval Latin at Peterborough Abbey, England, covering events from 1122 to 1294. It was probably written by William of Woodford, a sacrist and later abbot of Peterborough (1296–1299). It survives as part of a Peterborough cartulary known as the "Liber Niger", or "Black Book", where it appears on folios 75–80 and 85–136. The chronicle was edited by Thomas Stapleton and published by the Camden Society in 1849, with an appendix containing a transcription of the first 20 folios of the Liber Niger. In his introduction to Stapleton's edition, John Bruce wrote that the Chronicon contained "valuable contributions to legal and constitutional history [that were] universally recognised".
Dale Abbey, also known as the Abbey of Stanley Park, was a religious house, close to Ilkeston in Derbyshire. Its ruins are located at the village of Dale Abbey, which is named after it. Its foundation legend portrays it as developing from a hermitage, probably in the early 12th century. After several false starts, it was finally constituted as an abbey in 1204. It was affiliated to the Premonstratensians, an order of canons regular in which it played, at times, a leading part among English Houses. It acquired a large number of small properties, concentrated in areas of the East Midlands, developed a network of granges and appropriated a number of lucrative parish churches. Its discipline and reputation varied considerably, particularly in the 15th century, and it seems to have fallen away from the originally austerity. By 1536 its income was well below the threshold set for the Dissolution of Lesser Monasteries. Although there were accusations of grave immorality, the abbey was allowed to pay a fine to continue its existence until 1538.
Bruce Anthony Bailey ALA FSA is an English author, architectural historian, archivist, librarian, freelance lecturer and photographer. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London on 1 January 2003. He lives near the village of Lowick, Northamptonshire, works as an archivist and librarian, and is a Trustee of the Northamptonshire Historic Churches Trust.
Media related to Northamptonshire at Wikimedia Commons