Owners of estates and titles in the peerages of England, Scotland and Ireland were more, rather than less, likely than ordinary people to experience dramatic and gruesome deaths and certainly more likely to have them recorded. This study, drawing on the pages of 'The Complete Peerage', describes some 7,000 such deaths, revealing when, where and how they occurred and how they were commemorated. In the Middle Ages, war, execution, imprisonment, plague, poison and sheer misfortune brought an end to many noble lives. In the sixteenth century wars, executions and murders continued to take their toll alongside 'affrays' or 'skirmishes' so often blamed for deaths in Scotland and Ireland; and ill-health in amazing variety. Wars at home, at sea and abroad were fatal for many in the seventeenth century, wars overseas in the eighteenth, but by then death from too much food or drink was much more common and death in fashionable mansions in London's west end more usual than in ancestral castles. In the nineteenth century came deaths in remarkable places, sometimes very suspicious.

Classic VCH account of the famous town of Glastonbury and its environs. The ancient religious settlement of Glastonbury, with its many legendary associations stretching back into the Dark Ages, and the manufacturing town of Street, the creation of the late 19th century, are curious neighbours. They lie at the centre of the mysteriously-named Twelve Hides Hundred, the core estate of Glastonbury Abbey in the early Middle Ages. Around them, spreading into the low-lying moors of the Somerset Levels, are parishes which produced forthe abbey, after continuous improvement of drainage, most of its economic riches - meat, milk, cheese, fruit, wool, wine, cider, fish, stone, timber, and fuel. The suppression of Glastonbury under unusually tragic circumstances ended the dominance of a single lord and a coordinated economic system, and the eventual inclosure and drainage of the moors took two more centuries to achieve. Glastonbury, meanwhile, faced a century and more of depression but in the 18th received a charter of incorporation and became a centre of the stocking industry; while the fortunes of Street also rose, both through the shoe industry but also of the role of the Clark family in education and social improvement. ROBERT DUNNING is County Editor, Victoria County History of Somerset.

The life and career of Jocelin of Wells examined, with a particular emphasis on his role in the reconstruction of the Cathedral and Bishop's Palace. Jocelin, bishop of Wells [d. 1242], is an iconic figure in his native city; but his career as courtier and statesman moved far beyond the west country. From a family network which had produced bishops over several generations, heplayed a major role in a developing diocese and mother church, and in the growth of towns, fairs and markets in early thirteenth-century Somerset. He had a crucial influence on the completion of what was to become Wells Cathedral,and on the Bishop's Palace beside it. The essays in this volume look at Jocelin's life and career from a variety of perspectives, with a particular focus on his involvement in the building work to complete the Cathedral, aswell as the erection of the earliest part of the Bishop's Palace. Architectural, archaeological and even botanical approaches are used to explain the curious physical nature of the Palace site, the significance of the work still standing there from Jocelin's time, and the possible sites of other contemporary work. A final chapter studies the design and purpose of Robert Burnell's additions to Jocelin's work. Contributors: Robert Dunning, NicholasVincent, Jane Sayers, Diana Greenway, Sethina Watson, Tim Tatton-Brown, Jerry Sampson, Alex Turner, Christopher Gerrard, Keith Wilkinson, Mark Horton, David J. Hill, Matthew Reeve.

A collection of original essays by distinguished historians on the works of topographical writers who described and recorded the landscape of South-West England in the period c. 1540-1900. The development, subject matter and contribution to knowledge of a range of key authors is examined. For example, John Leland's classic descriptions of South-West England will be assessed and the works of local writers in the Tudor and Stuart era who followed an developed his approach to the description of people and places is examined. Amongst these, Richard Carew of Anthony produced perhaps the finest of any of the descriptions of an English region in his study of Cornwall, published in 1602. The authors follow the writings of Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset topographers who contributed to the genre over more than three centuries. The book also includes a gazetter of collections in Devon and Cornwall where copies of the works of local topographical writers can be found.

A Monograph In American Lectures In Physiology.

A Monograph In American Lectures In Physiology.