Böcker av Bridget Wells-Furby

The life of "e;that notorious woman"e;, Lucy de Thweng, is used as a prism through which to consider the agency of aristocratic women in the Middle Ages.The Yorkshire heiress, Lucy de Thweng, was married as a child to her first husband but later divorced him, entered into an adulterous relationship with another man, was forced into marriage to a second husband, and then, after a period of widowhood, married for the third time to a congenial partner of her own choice. This sounds a remarkable and unusual story - but was it? This book uses the episodes of Lucy's life to explore how far she was exceptional in her time and rank and highlights aspects of personality and personal relationships which are not often recognized. It undertakes extensive investigations into divorce in contemporary aristocratic families and extra-marital sexual relationships by women, as well as discussing the marriage of heiresses and the pressures to remarry which widows endured. These show that the theoretical religious and secular restraints on marriage and sex were often ignored, by both men and women, and how women, particularly if they were heiresses, were able to make their own decisions in these matters. As the legitimate procreation of children within the licensed environment of marriage was the forum for the succession to landed estates, the book also considers how this behaviour affected those estates. BRIDGET WELLS-FURBY is an independent scholar whose interests lie chiefly in late medieval landed estates and their context.

The fruits of new research on the politics, society and culture of England in the fourteenth century.Drawing on a diverse range of documentary, literary and material evidence, the essays collected here consider a wide range of important issues for the period. Political and institutional history is addressed in essays on Edward II's personal expenditure and the development and workings of parliament, including an analysis of those neglected "e;parliamentarians"e; of the period, the parliamentary proctors. Important new insights into the social history of the fourteenth century are provided by chapters on marriage and the accumulation of lay estates, the brokerage of royal wardship and the important and difficult subject of sexual violence towards under-age girls. Another chapter considers the enormously costly and complex task of feeding and supplying medieval armies across the "e;long"e; fourteenth century, while two final pieces offer important new insights into the material culture of the age, focusing in turn on St Stephen's Chapel, Westminster, and the phenomenon of royal reburial. Richly textured with personal and local detail, these new studies provide numerous insights into the lives of great and small in this fascinating period ofmedieval history. GWILYM DODD is Associate Professor of Medieval History at the University of Nottingham. Contributors: Elizabeth Biggs, Anna M. Duch, Bridget Wells-Furby, Alan Kissane, Ilana Krug, Alison K.McHardy, Seymour Phillips, Laura Tompkins, Kathryn Warner.