Reference

A vital sourcebook for information on clothing and textiles in the middle ages, containing many previously unprinted documents.

Texts (with modern English translation) offering insights into the place of cloth and clothing in everyday life are presented here. Covering a wide range of genres, they include documents from the royal wardrobe accounts and petitions to king and Parliament, previously available only in manuscript form. The accounts detail royal expenditure on fabrics and garments, while the petitions demand the restoration of livery, for example, or protest about the needfor winter clothing for children who are wards of the king. In addition, the volume includes extracts from wills, inventories and rolls of livery, sumptuary laws, moral and satirical works condemning contemporary fashions, an OldEnglish epic, and English and French romances. The texts themselves are in Old and Middle English, Latin and Anglo-Norman French, with some of the documents switching between more than one of these languages. They are presented with introduction, glossary and detailed notes.

Louise M. Sylvester is Reader in English Language at the University of Westminster; Mark Chambers is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at Durham University; Gale R. Owen-Crocker is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at the University of Manchester.

A detailed analysis of the political, social and cultural aspects of the British orders of knighthood in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

`Sheds considerable new light on the nature, development and functions of the orders in a key phase of their history, and goes a long way to explaining how such archaic institutions could flourish in a culture that is commonly thought anti-traditional and especially hostile to the "middle ages"'. Professor JONATHAN BOULTON, University of Notre Dame.

This is the first comprehensive study to set the British orders of knighthood properly into the context of the honours system - by analysing their political, social and cultural functions from the Restoration of the monarchy to the end of George II's reign. It examines the revival of the Order of the Garter and the proposalsto establish the Orders of the Royal Oak and the Esquires of the Martyred King at the Restoration, the foundation [1687] and the revival [1703-4] of the Order of the Thistle as well as the foundation of the Order of the Bath [1725]. It establishes just how central a part the orders played in the British high political life and its comprehensive and multidimensional approach carefully contrasts the idealistic discourse of virtue and honour to the real workings of the honours system; it also makes the case for the 'Chivalric Enlightenment'. The 'orders over the water', the Garter and the Thistle conferred by the Jacobite claimants, are discussed for the first time in the context of the established British honours system. Overall, the comparison between the socially very restricted British and the increasingly meritocratic Continental orders highlights the isolation of the British honours system from the European tendencies.

Survey of the activities of one of the most important cross-Border families, the ancestors of Robert the Bruce.

Robert de Brus, the "conquisitor of Cleveland, Hartness and Annandale", who came into England among the followers of Henry I, was also a close companion and mentor of David I, king of Scots. The lands he acquired from bothkings were divided between his sons, from whom two lines descended: the lords of Skelton, influential Northerners who played an active part during the baronial troubles in the reigns of John and Henry III, and the prominent cross-Border lords of Annandale, co-heirs of the substantial Chester and Huntingdon estates and progenitors of King Robert Bruce.
This study takes a fresh approach to the Brus family by assessing the achievements of the two lines in parallel while examining the extent of their power and the development of their lordships; it highlights the inter-relations between the barons of England and Scotland during two hundred years of comparative peace between the kingdoms. Of additional interest is the appendix of an extensive handlist of charters of the Brus family of both lines. It will be a welcome addition to the existing body of works on English baronial families and on Anglo-Scottish cross-Border lords of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Classic study of the rise and flowering of heraldry 12-13c, with Arthurian references.

Early Blazon traces the evolution of heraldic terminology from its beginnings - the second quarter of the 12th century to about the year 1300. It analyses the use of coats of arms in literary texts of the period and elucidates such phenomena as allusive, canting and symbolic arms, studying the semantic evolution of the terms and phrases which have survived in today's blazon, and establishing that coats were consistently attributed to certain Arthurian characters from the early 13th century onwards.
The glossary defines and gives complete references for every word and phrase utilised in heraldy down to 1300; each term, with its synonyms and its phraseology, is analysedhistorically and philologically. The introduction covers related topics like heraldic art and pre-classic blazon, the emergence of classic blazon, literature and heraldry, heraldic flattery, plain arms, and history and heraldry.
Reissued to coincide with the publication of Professor Brault's edition of The Rolls of Arms of Edward I (1272-1307), this new edition of Early Blazon includes in a new appendix additions and corrections reflecting more than a quarter of a century of advances in the study of heraldic terminology.
GERARD J. BRAULT is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of French and Medieval Studies at the Pennsylvania State University.

A study of power in the middle ages: the Nevilles of Raby, who included among their members Warwick the Kingmaker, was one of the major baronial families in England.

The story of the Neville family is a fascinating one. From their inconspicuous beginnings in Lincolnshire after the Norman Conquest, by the fourteenth century the Nevilles of Raby were among the most influential groups in the north of England, virtually ruling the area by means of the royal offices they held, and their political power reached its zenith in the fifteenth century with Richard de Neville, earl of Warwick, the so-called Kingmaker. This new study aims to answer the question of how a family of knightly status but with no special prominence was able to rise to such heights, tracing its growth and development through a careful examination of surviving documents; it also illustrates how the governance of medieval England worked with the cooperation of baronial families in a pragmatic manner, quite apart from any abstract legal or constitutional principles.
CHARLES R. YOUNG is Professor Emeritusof History at Duke University.

The definitive reference book on Ireland's cultural and religious heritage.

Ireland has one of the finest cultural heritages and a standard reference book combining the related subjects of folklore, myth, legend and romance is long overdue. There are 350 substantial entries, in alphabetical order from Abán, a 6th-century saint, to Weather, all with full references to sources, a synopsis of relevant stories, and discussion of their origin, nature and development. These are complimented by a genre-list of material under various headings, such as Mythical Lore, Fianna Cycle, Ulster Cycle, King Cycles, Peoples and Traditions, Religious Lore, and Folk Custom and Belief. There is also a wealth of genealogical detail, indicating how historical and social circumstances have influenced the growth and spread of Irish lore.

DAITHI O HOGAIN, Associate Professor of Irish Folklore at University College Dublin, was an international authority on folklore and traditional literature.

An exhaustive catalogue of all the manuscripts containing music in the medieval period.

This descriptive catalogue, comprising descriptions of some 364 sources held by 75 institutions and individuals, enumerates the remains of the written musical traditions for the early medieval period of an entire country. Each record is complemented by paleographical and codicological analyses, and the whole by a bibliography, by comprehensive indices of incipits and subjects, and by eight full-page plates. It thus illuminates a facet of medieval England which has never been studied in full and about which we know very little compared to our knowledge of pictorial art and letters. It will be indispensable not only for students of music and liturgy, but for medievalists in general.

This book is published in association with the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society.

K.D. HARTZELL is Professor of Music Emeritus, University at Albany, Albany, New York.

First modern text and translation of the prose Brut chronicle, the most popular secular vernacular work of the middle ages.

First composed in Anglo-Norman French around the end of the thirteenth century, the anonymous prose Brut chronicle became the most popular secular vernacular work, and the most widespread Arthurian work, of the later middleages in England: repeatedly expanded, revised, and translated, it remained influential for centuries. Yet it has been little studied, in part because of the lack of any full modern edition.
This edition of the Oldest Versionof the prose Brut, running from the fall of Troy to the death of Henry III in 1272, provides the Anglo-Norman text with facing-page translation and textual apparatus, a comprehensive introduction, and extensive explanatorynotes. It makes new contributions, on, for example, the identification and classification of the manuscripts, the identification and analysis of the sources [far more varied and numerous than had been previously recognised], andthe probable circumstances of the chronicle's composition. It will enable scholars to make full use of this remarkable resource for the study of Arthurian tradition, contemporary visions of British history, popular thought about society and government in late-medieval England, and the history of reading itself.

Professor JULIA MARVIN teaches at the University of Notre Dame.

First bibliography of all printed material concerned with Westminster Abbey, from parliamentary papers to guide books.

Westminster Abbey is one of the most significant ecclesiastical institutions in Britain and occupies a unique position in the life of Church and Nation. Founded as a Benedictine monastery c.960, it is the coronation church and a royal mausoleum, a place of worship and an architectural masterpiece, a national shrine whose collection of monumental sculpture is of international renown. The Abbey's history is inextricably linked with that of both Westminster School [governed directly by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster until 1868] and of St Margaret's church [built by the Westminster monks for the local community, and closely associated with the Abbey ever since].

Thisfully-indexed bibliography is the first of its kind dedicated to a major church, and is a fundamental contribution to the historiography of Westminster Abbey. It provides full bibliographical details of more than 3300 printed works, including parliamentary papers, editions of archival sources, guide books, theses, historical monographs and journal articles. Covering a huge range of subjects from art and architecture to poetry, sermons and Westminster School grammars, it is an indispensable reference work for anyone seeking to know more about this remarkable institution.