latest volume

English Medieval Government and Administration: Essays in Honour of J.R. Maddicott

Edited by Nigel Saul and Nicholas Vincent 

Newly edited documents and commentaries published in honour of one of our foremost historians of English medieval political society.

Different from most festschriften, this wide-ranging volume brings together a rich collection of newly edited documents accompanied by commentaries which both set them in context and highlight their importance for historians of medieval England.

Among the many topics covered are the Magna Carta rebellion, the Baronial Wars of the 1260s, the feeding of the royal household, the estates of the thirteenth-century nobility, gentry material culture as revealed by inventories, the workings of the law in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and local political life in Richard II's reign. The volume will be published jointly with the Pipe Roll Society, and the distinguished team of contributors will include both friends and former pupils of the honorand. 

The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Tenth Year of the Reign of King Henry III Michaelmas 1226

Edited by Lesley Boatwright and Eric Gallagher

This volume is the first edition of the Latin pipe roll for 10 Henry III (Michaelmas 1226). It will be invaluable for historians of the reign of King Henry III and for historians interested in medieval royal finance and administration. It is a particularly detailed roll, which preserves the accounts for no fewer than twenty-nine English shrievalties, with only Rutland and Westmorland missing. 

In addition to these, this pipe roll includes a number of other accounts, including those of Thomas of Cirencester for the earl of Devon's lands and the king's manors in Devon, which will be useful to local historians. Although no new scutages were levied in this accounting year, this pipe roll shows that arrears were still coming in from those of Montgomery (1223) and Bedford (1224), with some particularly detailed entries relating to the honours of Boulogne and Wallingford. 

The contents of this roll also allow historians interested in taxation and royal revenues to trace the collection of the fifteenth on moveable property, which had been proposed in return for the re-issue of Magna Carta in 1225. There is, similarly, interesting information relating to the business of Hugh de Neville's forest eyre of 1224-5 for Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire, Worcestershire and Dorset, offering insights into the implementation of the Forest Charter. The contents of this pipe roll also assist in studying the royal exchequer's continued attempts to recover large, outstanding debts from barons, such as Warin de Munchensy, via a policy of consolidation and attermination.

Other business of potential interest to a range of scholars is covered in the pipe roll for 10 Henry III. The staffing and maintenance of royal castles are mentioned regularly, and the roll's contents provide important information about the keepers of royal castles in different counties, payments for crossbowmen in particular locations, details relating to knight service and payments for repairs to castles, such as Bedford which figured in Fawkes de Bréauté's revolt of 1224, and for building works at the Tower of London. Included among other business outlined in this pipe roll are details of the money and equipment transported to Portsmouth and Portchester for despatch to Gascony for the use of Richard, Henry III's brother, who had recently been created count of Poitou, and for the defence of Gascony against Louis VIII.

The Household Roll of Eleanor de Montfort, Countess of Leicester and Pembroke, 1265: British Library, Additional MS 8877

Edited and translated by Louise J. Wilkinson 

The household roll of Eleanor, countess of Leicester and Pembroke, offers a fascinating insight into one of the most important domestic establishments in England during the Second Barons' War of 1263-7. As the wife of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, the leading figure within the baronial regime, and the sister and aunt of King Henry III and the Lord Edward, respectively, Countess Eleanor occupied a position at the heart of English political affairs up to, and after, her husband's death at the Battle of Evesham on 4 August 1265.

This volume is a critical edition of the extant thirteen membranes of Countess Eleanor's household account roll for that momentous year, 1265 (British Library, Additional MS 8877). Presented here in the original Latin and with an accompanying English translation, Countess Eleanor's roll includes her diet account for the period from 19 February to 29 August 1265, listing her visitors and the different items of food and drink consumed on each day at each castle at which she was resident, including Wallingford, Odiham and Dover. The roll also incorporates a "wardrobe journal", covering the period up until 1 October 1265, detailing expenditure on the purchase and repair of household furnishings, goods and utensils, on clothing and wages, on the Montfortian war effort in the South, and on messengers travelling to and from the countess, Earl Simon, her sons and associates, in the months before and after the Battle of Evesham.