1. Studying The Angevin Empire and English exceptionalism (Post-Brexit)
Danica Summerlin, 26 June 2017

2. Today Who am I? The Angevins – then, now, and next?
English Exceptionalism?
E-resources
Time for questions from you
Caveat
Brexit, 1204-style?
BL, Royal 14 C vii

3. Who am I? Medievalist, working mostly on 1000-1250
Research is in legal history and the history of the church (in Europe); teaching on the history of Europe (including Britain) ca ca.1250
Interest in the history of England through a couple of routes
Becket
Papacy
Emergence of the ‘Common’ Law
….and, incidentally, someone who did no medieval history for GCSE or A-Level

4. Angevin Kings (2017 edn) Henry II (1154-1189) Richard I (1189-1199)
Still has a temper
Awareness of cross-channel links – Angevin ‘Empire’ but also beyond
Christopher Harper-Bill and Nicholas Vincent, eds., Henry II: New interpretations (Woodbridge, 2010)
Richard I ( )
Still often overlooked
Military leader, but given less leeway for it now
John ( )
Still a Bad King
Stephen Church, King John: England, Magna Carta and the Making of a Tyrant (London, 2015)

5. Common themes Growth of royal power Growth of papal power
Subsequently, how the two clashed
Political Culture in the twelfth-century
Cross-channel links
Role of individuals in government
Development of law
Angevin/English ‘Empire’?
Rethinking primary sources:
Ritual?
Practice?

6. (Royal) Power: Individual vs collective?
Power of the king
Power of nobles
Magna Carta
‘High’ vs ‘low’ politics
Parliament and its rise in the later-twelfth century
Maddicott, Origins of the English Parliament
Vs ‘Great man’ theories
Becket
Langton
William Marshal
Peter des Roches
And, of course, the kings themselves

7. Papal Power Traditionally a centralised ‘Papal Monarchy’
Increasingly more local/responsive
Papal power as reactive – papacy itinerant and miles away, so therefore relied on local input to know what was happening in the localities
Archbishops/bishops as more important
Becket
Langton
Reflected in some e.g. Duggan, Thomas Becket
BUT – Innocent III
BL, Cotton Cleopatra E I (public domain)

8. Political Culture ‘New Political History’
By now quite old
For the Angevins, this means three things
Study of ritual
Continued engagement with copious administrative records
Consequently, an interest in comparison – with Germany/the Empire, France, even Spain
BL, Cotton Vitellius A xiii

9. Law
‘Although the laws of England are not written, it does not seem absurd to call them laws – those, that is, which are known to have been promulgated about problems settled in council on the advice of the magnates and with the supporting authority of the prince – for this also is a law, that “what pleases the prince has the force of law”. For if, merely for lack of writing, they were not deemed to be laws, then surely writing would seem to supply to written laws a force of greater authority than either the justice of him who decrees them or the reason of him who establishes them’ The Treatise on the laws and customs of the kingdom of England commonly called Glanvill
‘Common’ law
Civil law
Canon - i.e. Church – law
Greater awareness of connections:
Stephen Langton (archbishop of Canterbury) and his time in Paris
Vacarius and Gérard Pucelle
Who in England knew law?

10. Angevin Imperialism
Nature and constituent parts of the Angevin ‘Empire’
Ireland
Henry II and Ireland
John and Ireland
Cross-channel ‘Empire’
Loss of Normandy, 1204
Matthew Paris, Map of Britain: BL, Cotton Claudius D vi

11. Rethinking primary sources
Close reading of texts
‘Literary turn’
Material sources
Seal of Stephen Langton – BL, Harley charter 75 A 14
Becket Reliquary - © Trustees of the British Museum

12. E-resources Emerging from this all are some key e-resources:
Magna Carta Project Homepage
The Early English Laws Project
Fordham Medieval Sourcebook

13. Magna Carta Project
Govt-funded project run by David Carpenter, Nick Vincent, Paul Brand, Louise Wilkinson, and Claire Breay, with assistance from Henry Summerson, Hugh Doherty, and Sophie Ambler, focussing on everything to do with Magna Carta – its genesis, evolution, influence.
Scholarly terms, finished up with a major exhibition at the BL and a conference held in London, but also brought a few other things out of the woodwork
Public facing terms, created a major and interesting website, ran exhibitions, etc…

14. Magna Carta Project (II)
Text of Magna Carta itself
Text of the Articles of the Barons
‘Feature of the month’
John’s Itinerary:

15. Early English Laws http://blog.earlyenglishlaws.ac.uk/
More academic in some ways – not as public facing as e.g. Magna Carta Project
But earlier, so also more suited to looking at early reigns – e.g. Henry II, rather than John

16. Internet Medieval Sourcebook
England
E.g. coronation of Richard I
Display, ritual, ceremony

17. British Library Online gallery of images and collections
All the images in this presentation are taken from the BL’s online spaces, and all are public domain images
Useful too for other types of history than just Medieval – take a look at the BL’s website, for more details
Magna Carta online exhibition:

18. Any questions?
Danica Summerlin