This book examines the making of the March of Wales and the crucial role its lords played in the politics of medieval Britain between the Norman conquest of England of 1066 and the English conquest of Wales in 1283. Max Lieberman argues that the Welsh borders of Shropshire, which were first, from c.1165, referred to as Marchia Wallie, provide a paradigm for the creation of the March. He reassesses the role of William the Conqueror's tenurial settlement in the making of the March and sheds new light on the ways in which seigneurial administrations worked in a cross-cultural context. Finally, he explains why, from c.1300, the March of Wales included the conquest territories in south Wales as well as the highly autonomous border lordships. This book makes a significant and original contribution to frontier studies, investigating both the creation and the changing perception of a medieval borderland.

This book examines the making of the March of Wales and the crucial role its lords played in the politics of medieval Britain between the Norman conquest of England of 1066 and the English conquest of Wales in 1283. Max Lieberman argues that the Welsh borders of Shropshire, which were first, from c.1165, referred to as Marchia Wallie, provide a paradigm for the creation of the March. He reassesses the role of William the Conqueror's tenurial settlement in the making of the March and sheds new light on the ways in which seigneurial administrations worked in a cross-cultural context. Finally, he explains why, from c.1300, the March of Wales included the conquest territories in south Wales as well as the highly autonomous border lordships. This book makes a significant and original contribution to frontier studies, investigating both the creation and the changing perception of a medieval borderland.

One opens each new volume expecting to find the unexpected - new light on old arguments, new material, new angles. MEDIUM AEVUM The articles brought together here demonstrate the exciting vitality of this field. The volume begins with a keynote chapter on the failure of marriages among Christians and Muslims in crusader diplomacy. Other chapters consider the ceremony of knighting and the coronation ritual of Matilda of Flanders. There are also investigations of hunting landscapes in Cheshire, and Lancashire before Lancashire in the context of the Irish Sea World, while lordship is examined in two contexts, in post-Conquest England and early thirteenth-century Le Mans and Chartres. The sources for our knowledge of the period, as always, receive attention, whether drawn from documentary evidence or material culture, with essays on universal chronicle-writing and the construction of the Galfridian past in the Continuatio Ursicampina; the coinage of Harold II; and the patronage of the Bayeux Tapestry by Odo of Bayeux.

By 1300, a Marcher region had been created between England and Wales, consisting of about forty castle-centered lordships that extended along the Anglo-Welsh border and much of southern Wales. Expressions like "the Welsh marches" are still part of today's vernacular, though they refer only vaguely to Anglo-Welsh borders--but the question remains: what was this medieval March of Wales, and how and why was it created? This book provides a readerly, scholarly, yet concise answer, aided by maps, illustrations, a list of key dates, and primary source material--placing the March in the context of current debates on frontiers and the medieval British Isles.

A series which is a model of its kind EDMUND KING, HISTORY This latest collection reflects the full range and vitality of the current work on the Anglo-Norman period. It opens with the R. Allen Brown Memorial Lecture for 2009, a wide-ranging reflection by the distinguished French historian Dominique Barthelemy on the Peace of God and the role of bishops in the long eleventh century. Economic history is prominent in papers on the urban transformation in England between 900 and 1100, on the roots of the royal forestin England, and on trade links between England and Lower Normandy. A close study of the Surrey manor of Mortlake brings in topography, another aspect of which appears in an article on the representation of outdoor space by Normanand Anglo-Norman chroniclers. Social history is treated in papers dealing with the upbringing of the children of the Angevin counts and with the developing ideas of knighthood and chivalry in the works of Dudo of Saint-Quentin and Benoit of Sainte-Maure. Finally, political ideas are examined through careful reading of texts in papers on writing the rebellion of Earl Waltheof in the twelfth century and on the use of royal titles and prayers for the king inAnglo-Norman charters. Contributors: Dominique Barthelemy, Kathryn Dutton, Leonie Hicks, Richard Holt, Joanna Huntington, Laurence Jean-Marie, Dolly Jorgensen, Max Lieberman, Stephen Marritt, Pamela Taylor