Eileen Power, best known for her posthumously published Medieval Women, was one of the foremost scholars of medieval economic and social history in the first half of the twentieth century. This 1922 work is a substantial study of medieval English nunneries between 1275 and 1535. Power examines in depth who entered the convents, how they were organised, their finances, activities and problems. Although medieval nunneries were significantly poorer and less well documented than the monastic houses, Power uses the available sources to build up a multifaceted picture of medieval life. Her arguments are firmly rooted in documentary evidence, but are presented in an extremely accessible and engaging style. The book reveals that convent life was not particularly ascetic or learned, and that in poorer houses the nuns had to find additional sources of income. Power's account of their methods of coping makes fascinating reading.
CALENDAROF STATE PAPERS in the Archives at Rome illustrating the History of Great Britain and Ireland. Vol. I. CALENDAR OF STATE PAPERS, relating to ENGLISH AFFAIRS, preserved in the Archives of Venice, &c. Vol. XIX. CALENDAROF STATE PAPERS, relating to ENGLISH AFFAIRS, preserved in the Archives of Milan. (15th century.) CALENDAR of entries in the PAPAL REGISTERS, illustrating the History of Great Britain and Ireland. Papal Letters. Vols. X. and XI.
The importance of the English wool trade in the middle ages is so well recognised that it is difficult to remember that its history is still largely unwritten. This is particularly true of the century before the advent of the Tudor dynasty to the throne. The careful researches of Professor Tout have thrown some light upon the origins of the Staple system in Edward II's reign and those of the late Professor Unwin and his seminar upon the wool trade in the reign of Edward III, but in this, as in most other branches of economic history, the period of the Lancastrian and Yorkist dynasties is an almost unworked field. Ample materials for an investigation of the subject exist, but many of the most important are still hidden in English and foreign archives and much laborious spade work remains to be done before the whole story can be told. That story really involves two distinct problems, which for convenience's sake can be separated—first the institutional history of the Staple and its financial and other relations with the government, and secondly the history of the wool trade, that is to say the technical and financial organisation of the trade, the persons engaged in it, their relations with wool growers at home and wool buyers abroad, and the dimensions of the trade year by year, as reflected in the customs accounts. This article is an attempt to sketch the second of these subjects only, and that for a very limited period. The reign of Edward IV has been chosen because it was a period of considerable commercial activity and because there happens to exist a particularly important collection of material relating to the wool trade at this time.
The history of agricultural technique in the Middle Ages is a subject of obvious importance and interest, but in England, at least, it has never been systematically studied. It is true that the main outline of agricultural practice has been made familiar, as a result of the study of manorial documents, but there has been little attempt to investigate technical questions in detail, or to distinguish between the practice of different parts of the country. One branch of agrarian economy, sheep and cattle farming, has been almost entirely neglected, in spite of the fact that wool and hides were the staple export of England. Nor is it only the technique of farming which awaits investigation; the whole subject of estate management in the Middle Ages is almost untouched. Historians have in the main been content to study manorial organisation and those problems of tenure and of labour which can be observed in a manorial framework; it is the legal rather than the economic side of agrarian history which has chiefly interested them.
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