Urban Identity in Medieval English Towns

Abstract

Urban Identity in Medieval English Townseditors' introduction After receiving basic chartered liberties during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, English towns continued to augment both their privileges and the physical spaces in which they exercised them. Urban ofªcers thereby sought to deªne civic identity as distinct from the rural, noble, and ecclesiastical powers that surrounded them. Four case studies from Exeter, Shrewsbury, Norwich, and York allow in-depth explorations to be made of the ways in which towns deªned physical and juridical space through law suits. The process of mustering legal evidence, choosing a local or royal venue, ªnding helpful patrons, and participating in arbitration contributed to the mature development of urban institutions and their self-conceptions. The disputes and their pursuit before the law show clearly how urban space impacted territorial, legal, and ethnic identity in late medieval society. URBAN IDENTITY IN ENGLISH TOWNSScholars of the late medieval European town are well aware that urban space was cross-cut by contradictory, even mutually exclusive, images and realities. Although commercial opportunity, personal freedoms, and legal self-determination clearly deªned the urban experience-and made it unique-such liberties could also be accompanied and undermined by inequality, repression, illness, and violence. Such negative attributes all too vividly conªrm popular prejudices about the medieval world in general and the conditions of town life in particular. Moreover, this is not the only set of contradictions inherent in the story of medieval urban space. Another becomes visible through an examination of the shaping of the urban self-image, namely, the ways in which urban liberties were created in the course of struggles to claim, delineate, and defend physical space itself. 1

Spaces in Theory, Spaces in History and Spatial Historiographies

“…legal rights, exercised within the abstract juridical space that defined the unique state of the town, required real geographical space for their fullest and most secure expression. The pursuit of that physical space forced urban officials to clarify their needs, motives, and ideals in ways conducive to self-definition (Attreed 2002) Rather than urban islands of freedom in a feudal sea, cities were shot through with complicating jurisdictions and their boundaries, walls or not, were rather porous. Thus in Exeter, the extramural liberty of Dean and Chapter was a compact holding where civic rights to collect tallages and arrest offenders were resisted from the mid-thirteenth century until an Act of Parliament in 1436.…”

“…[… since m]iscreants from the city's liberty could escape into the episcopal liberty, sometimes simply by crossing a street' (Attreed 2002).…”

The Identity of the urban ‘Commoners’ in 13th century Flanders

“…82 As medievalists know, 'collective selfishness' about personal freedoms and legal selfdetermination among commoners was a characteristic of every city in medieval Europe and a central feature of the political and judicial identity of townsmen. 83 The 12 th -century 'commune' as the ideal against its antipode, feudal society with its alleged arbitrariness, remained a classic rallying point for ages to come. 84 Urban liberties constituted the core of the local identity of many late medieval European citizens, who collectively defended their values and rights of self-determination when these were undermined by princes or intra-urban rivals.…”