Revisionism in castle Studies: A caution

Medieval Archaeology

Volumn 51, Issue , 2007, Pages 83-102

  Platt, Colin ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 65849505562     PISSN: 00766097     EISSN: 1745817X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1179/174581707x224679     Document Type: Review

References (56)

1. M. Johnson, Behind the Castle Gate. From Medieval to Renaissance (London, 2002), 93.
2. O. H. Creighton, Castles and Landscapes. Power, Community and Fortification in Medieval England (London, 2002), 223, 225 and passim.
3. A. Wheatley's The Idea of the Castle in Medieval England (York, 2004), in studying the literary and artistic evidence, adopts a new and highly promising approach.
4. R. Liddiard, Castles in Context. Power, Symbolism and Landscape, 1066 to 1500 (Macclesfield, 2005), 67.
5. In taking the status-first argument back into the 12th century, Dixon and Marshall make valid points about social orientation and private space in the keeps (donjons) of 12th-century England (as in P. Dixon and P. Marshall, 'The Great Tower in the twelfth century: the case of Norham Castle', Archaeol. J., 150 (1993), 410-32,
6. and 'The Great Tower of Hedingham: a reassessment', Fortress, 18 (1993), 16-23). But if, as I shall argue, the late-medieval castle, for all its many uses, was still 'designed primarily for defence', how can this not have been the case at the earliest castles of conquest and settlement? Has the bandwagon run out of control?
7. C. Coulson, 'Structural symbolism in medieval castle architecture', J. Brit. Archaeol. Assoc., 132 (1979), 73-90.
8. C. Coulson, 'Hierarchism in conventual crenellation: an essay in the sociology and metaphysics of medieval fortification', Medieval Archaeol., 26 (1982), 69-100.
9. D. Stocker, 'The shadow of the general's armchair', Archaeol. J., 149 (1992), 415-20, 420.
10. C. Coulson, 'Bodiam Castle: truth and tradition', Fortress, 10 (1991), 3-15. Of the two National Trust guides to Bodiam Castle, J. Goodall's (2005) gives qualified support to the status argument, whereas D. Thackray's (2003) keeps defence in the frame.
11. C. Taylor, E. Everson and R. Wilson-North, 'Bodiam Castle, Sussex', Medieval Archaeol., 34 (1990), 155-7;
12. P. Everson, 'Bodiam Castle, East Sussex: castle and its designed landscape', Château Gaillard, 17 (1996), 79-84;
13. id., 'Bodiam Castle, East Sussex: a fourteenth-century designed landscape', 66-72 in D. Morgan Evans, P. Salway and D. Thackray (eds.), The Remains of Distant Times -Archaeology and the National Trust (Woodbridge, 1996).
14. C. L. H. Coulson, 'Freedom to crenellate by licence - an historiographical revision', Nottingham Medieval Stud., 38 (1994), 86-137, 91-2;
15. id., Castles in Medieval Society. Fortresses in England, France, and Ireland in the Central Middle Ages (Oxford, 2003), 205.
16. D. J. Turner, 'Bodiam Castle: true castle or Old Soldier's Dream House', 267-77 in W. Ormrod (ed.), England in the Fourteenth Century (Woodbridge, 1986).
17. and for the general panic, see also C. Fletcher, 'Manhood and politics in the reign of Richard II', Past & Present, 189 (2005), 3-39, 32-6.
18. and see also A. Goodman and J. Gillespie (eds.), Richard II. The Art of Kingship (Oxford, 1999), 50, 60-1.
19. N. Saul, Scenes from Provincial Life. Knightly Families in Sussex 1280-1400 (Oxford, 1986), 70.
20. C. Coulson, 'Cultural realities and reappraisals in English castle-study', J. Medieval Hist., 22 (1996), 171-208, 192.
21. O. Creighton and R. Higham, Medieval Castles (Princes Risborough, 2003), 24.
22. J. D. H., 'The earthwork known as the "Gun Garden"', Trans. Battle Dist. Hist. Soc., 10 (1960-1), 22-4,
23. For Scotney and its South Coast parallels, see C. Platt, The Castle in Medieval England and Wales (London, 1982), ch. 6 (Castles of the Hundred Years War);
24. also id., The Architecture of Medieval Britain (London, 1990), in particular 183-5.
25. S. E. Rigold, Nunney Castle (London, 1957), 4 and passim;
26. and see C. Platt, King Death, The Black Death and its Aftermath in Late-medieval England (London, 1996), in particular ch. 3 (Villages in stasis).
27. For the growing threat of revolt under more effective post-plague leadership, see C. Liddy, 'Urban conflict in late fourteenth-century England: the case of York in 1380-81', Engl. Hist. Rev., 118 (2003), 1-32.
28. also A. Saunders and R. B. Pugh, Old Wardour Castle (London, 1984)
29. and M. Wood, Donnington Castle (London, 1964).
30. N. Davis (ed.), Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century (2 vols, Oxford, 1971-6), i:107-14 ('A remembrauns of the goodes that somtyme were Ser John Fastolffes, mad be John Paston aftir such examinacions and writyngges as he can fynd').
31. For a recent comment on Jack Cade's rebellion, 'striking (for) the evidence it offers for the organization of popular violence in late medieval England', see M. Bohna, 'Armed force and civic legitimacy in Jack Cade's Revolt, 1450', Engl. Hist. Rev., 118 (2003), 563-82;
32. and for the common fate of the 'overmighty subject' in the Wars of the Roses - 'generally they failed and almost all died violently' - see M. Hicks, 'Bastard feudalism, overmighty subjects and idols of the multitude during the Wars of the Roses', History, 85 (2000), 386-403.
33. For A. R. Bridbury at his best, see Economic Growth. England in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1962);
34. id., 'The Black Death', Econ. Hist. Rev., 26 (1973), 577-92;
35. As summarised by P. J. P. Goldberg, Medieval England. A Social History 1250-1550 (London, 2004), ch. 11 (The years of hunger, 1250-1348);
36. and see also P. R. Schofield, Peasant and Community in Medieval England, 1200-1500 (Basingstoke, 2003), ch. 8 (Peasants and politics).
37. M. Bailey, 'Peasant welfare in England, 1290-1348', Econ. Hist. Rev., 51 (1998), 223-51, 240 and passim;
38. also B. M. S. Campbell, 'The agrarian problem in the early fourteenth century', Past & Present, 188 (2005), 3-70, who writes (pp. 63-4): 'Everywhere, at the height of the agrarian crisis of 1315-22 there was acute distress on the land, most particularly among the swollen and indebted ranks of the rural poor. Further crises followed over the next twenty-five years . (until) eventually, it was the massive and fortuitous loss of life in the Black Death of 1348-9 that took the demographic tension out of the equation and thereby broke the deadlock on the land.'
39. For a less pessimistic view of the prospects of the poor in this half-century, see J. Langdon and J. Masschaele, 'Commercial activity and population growth in medieval England', Past & Present, 190 (2006), 35-82.
40. C. Platt, Medieval England. A Social History and Archaeology from the Conquest to 1600 AD (London, 1978), 108-115;
41. for an overview, see B. M. S. Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250-1450 (Cambridge, 2000), ch. 9 (Adapting to change: English seigniorial agriculture, 1250-1450).
42. C. Burt has recently questioned the significance in law-keeping of the collapse of the general eyre after 1294 ('The demise of the general eyre in the reign of Edward I', Engl. Hist. Rev., 120 (2005), 1-14),
43. and A. J. Musson had already shown how much still depended in the early 14th century on the low-level (i.e. non-royal) peace-keeping apparatus in the localities ('Sub-keepers and constables: the role of local officials in keeping the peace in fourteenth-century England', Engl. Hist. Rev., 117 (2002), 1-24).
44. But nobody now questions the reality of the pre-plague unrest, when even in the more vulnerable Marcher counties of the North, non-violent resistance to state taxation in the 1330s and 1340s was as much the cause of poor revenue returns as the damage done by the Scots (C. Briggs, Taxation, warfare, and the early fourteenth-century "crisis" in the north: Cumberland lay subsidies, 1332-1348', Econ. Hist. Rev., 58 (2005), 639-72).
45. B. A. Hanawalt (ed.), Crime in East Anglia in the Fourteenth Century: Norfolk Gaol Delivery Rolls, 1307-1316 (Norwich, 1976);
46. id. Crime and Conflict in English Communities, 1300-48 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979).
47. As, for example, at Birdbrook in Essex (P. R. Schofield, 'Tenurial developments and the availability of customary land in a later medieval community', Econ. Hist. Rev., 49 (1996), 250-67).
48. for examples of the property disputes that so frequently dragged the gentry down, see S. J. Payling, 'Murder, motive and punishment in fifteenth-century England: two gentry case-studies', Engl. Hist. Rev., 113 (1998), 1-17.
49. Payling reminds us here usefully of the general 'tolerance of violence on the part of a martial aristocracy', where 'the chief deterrent to murder . lay not in fear of the courts but in the threat of private vengeance'. For the legitimacy of private feuding, 'grounded in the basic right of every noble to use force to pursue his rights', see H. Kaminsky. The noble feud in the later Middle Ages', Past & Present, 55-83, 177 (2002), 55.
50. K. B. McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1973), 143, 172-6
51. For the Greys, see R. I. Jack (ed.), The Greys of Ruthin Valor (Sydney, 1965), introduction;
52. for the Courtenays, see M. Cherry, 'The Courtenay earls of Devon: the formation and disintegration of a late-medieval aristocratic affinity', Southern History, 1 (1979), 71-97,
53. and see also C. Dyer, Making a Living in the Middle Ages. The People of Britain 850-1520 (London, 2003), ch. 10 (The countryside, c. 1350-c. 1520).
54. As described and illustrated by A. Emery, Greater Medieval Houses of England and Wales 1300-1500. Volume II. East Anglia, Central England, and Wales (Cambridge, 2000), 449-59; and see 308-16 for Cromwell's other country residence at Tattershall.
55. For a neat contemporary application of 'Schumpeter's Hotel', see J. Goldthorpe, 'Perpetuum mobile?', Prospect, November 2005, 16-17;
56. and for a recent comment on the growing community of interest between gentry and merchants in late-medieval England, see P. Nightingale, 'Knights and merchants: trade, politics and the gentry in late-medieval England', Past & Present, 169 (2000), 36-62.