Despite its size, Ely has always been one of the most wealthy and important dioceses in the country. The essays here focus on the careers of its bishops, with additional chapters on its buildings and holdings. The diocese of Ely, formed out of the huge diocese of Lincoln, was established in 1109 in St Etheldreda's Isle of Ely, and the ancient Abbey became Ely Cathedral Priory. Covering at first only the Isle and Cambridgeshire, it grewimmensely in 1837 with the addition of Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire and West Suffolk. The latter two counties left the diocese in 1914, but a substantial part of West Norfolk was added soon after. Until the nineteenth century Ely was one of the wealthiest dioceses in the country, and in every century there were notable appointments to the bishopric. Few of the bishops were promoted elsewhere; for most it was the culmination of their career, and manyhad made significant contributions, both to national life and to scholarship, before their preferment to Ely. They included men of the calibre of Lancelot Andrewes in the seventeenth century, the renowned book-collector John Moorein the eighteenth, and James Russell Woodford, founder of the Theological College, in the nineteenth. In essays each spanning about a century, experts in the field explore the lives and careers of its bishops, and their families and social contacts, examine their impact on the diocese, and their role in the wider Church in England. Other chapters consider such areas as the estates, the residences, the works of art and the library and archives. Overall, they chart the remarkable development over nine hundred years of one of the smallest, richest and youngest of the traditional dioceses of England. Peter Meadows is manuscript librarian in Cambridge University Library. Contributors: Nicholas Karn, Nicholas Vincent, Benjamin Thompson, Peter Meadows, Felicity Heal, Ian Atherton, Evelyn Lord, Frances Knight, Brian Watchorn

First study of the origins of the lordship courts that dominated the lives of the peasantry of medieval England. About the year 1000, hundreds and shires were the dominant and probably the only local assemblies for doing legal and other business in England. However, this simple pattern did not last long, for lords established separate courts which allowed them to manage and discipline their dependents without external interference, and therefore to intensify and redefine their claims over their dependents. These can be seen clearly by the early twelfth century, and were the basis from which the later manorial courts, courts leet and honour courts originated. The appearance of these courts has long been recognised; what is novel about this book is that it shows how they came into being. It argues that lordship courts ultimately originated through subtracting business from the public courts of Anglo-Saxon England, not from the rights inherent in land ownership. It also shows how and when royal justices appeared for the first time as a response to these changes, and how the earliest generation of judges differed from their successors in their roles and functions, which has considerable consequences for how we understand the changing roles of justices in shaping English law. Overall, the changing pattern of assemblies and courts helped to redefine lordship, peasant status and royal authority, and to expectations about how business should be transacted, with widespread implications across Anglo-Norman society, culture and politics

Edition of important documents from one of the major monastic centres of medieval England. In the wake of the Conqueror's ravaging of the North in the course of the rebellion and Danish invasion of 1069-70 the devastated city of York had to be largely rebuilt. The Conqueror himself contributed a major new abbey built in the west of the city, no doubt in a spirit of penitence for the wasting of the city and county carried out by his troops. The community's origins were not straightforward. It had begun in the early 1080s as a struggling monastic settlement on the ancient site of Lastingham on the North York Moors under its charismatic leader, Stephen. Around 1085 the community was adopted by the king and translated to the western quarter of York, to a site which had previously been the "burh" of the earl of Northumbria. The Conqueror made a creative use of the new Norman elite of Yorkshire to endow and secure the new abbey, an enterprise adopted and extended by his son William II Rufus in 1088. By the end of Abbot Stephen's term of office his abbey had absorbed a remarkable number of land grants from a variety of greater and lesser aristocrats across the North and East Ridings, as well as spawned two daughter houses in Cumbria. This new study uncovers in meticulous detail the manoeuvres of the king, the abbot and the aristocracy of Yorkshire as each looked to make spiritual and political capital out of the grand new royal foundation.