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A study of the formation of a large estate by Ely Abbey during the tenth and eleventh centuries and of the various social groups on that estate after the foundation of the bishopric in 1109 and down to the mid-fourteenth century. A central theme is the way in which this estate reflected the great movement of economic expansion during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: the agricultural operations of the bishops themselves, the fortunes of their peasant tenants and the relationships between the bishops as landlords and their tenants. In this connexion the problems of estate management are also discussed and the formation and character of a managerial class. The bishops, however, were more than merely landlords: they were also feudal lords and possessed extensive local government powers. The book, therefore, also deals with their feudal as well as their agricultural tenants and with the exercise by the bishops of 'public' powers. In this sense it tries to give a complete picture of the secular influence of the bishops, which was one of the dominating influences in the society of Eastern England.
Despite its size, Ely has always been one of the most wealthy and important dioceses in the country. The essays here focus on the careers of its bishops, with additional chapters on its buildings and holdings. The diocese of Ely, formed out of the huge diocese of Lincoln, was established in 1109 in St Etheldreda's Isle of Ely, and the ancient Abbey became Ely Cathedral Priory. Covering at first only the Isle and Cambridgeshire, it grewimmensely in 1837 with the addition of Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire and West Suffolk. The latter two counties left the diocese in 1914, but a substantial part of West Norfolk was added soon after. Until the nineteenth century Ely was one of the wealthiest dioceses in the country, and in every century there were notable appointments to the bishopric. Few of the bishops were promoted elsewhere; for most it was the culmination of their career, and manyhad made significant contributions, both to national life and to scholarship, before their preferment to Ely. They included men of the calibre of Lancelot Andrewes in the seventeenth century, the renowned book-collector John Moorein the eighteenth, and James Russell Woodford, founder of the Theological College, in the nineteenth. In essays each spanning about a century, experts in the field explore the lives and careers of its bishops, and their families and social contacts, examine their impact on the diocese, and their role in the wider Church in England. Other chapters consider such areas as the estates, the residences, the works of art and the library and archives. Overall, they chart the remarkable development over nine hundred years of one of the smallest, richest and youngest of the traditional dioceses of England. Peter Meadows is manuscript librarian in Cambridge University Library. Contributors: Nicholas Karn, Nicholas Vincent, Benjamin Thompson, Peter Meadows, Felicity Heal, Ian Atherton, Evelyn Lord, Frances Knight, Brian Watchorn
"The translation does full justice to the compiler's wide range of source material; it gives priority to the readings of the oldest manuscript of the Liber Eliensis, but covers everything included in the later but fuller recension of the Latin text presented in E.O. Blake's 1962 edition. There are notes on the text and sources, an introductory essay, appendices and indices."--Jacket.
15c cartulary of Benedictine nunnery illuminates relationship with Ely, estate management, and life of women religious. Takes its place as perhaps the finest available study of a house for women religious. ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW The fifteenth-century cartulary of the Benedictine nunnery of Chatteris Abbey in Cambridgeshire (founded in the early eleventh century) has important implications for the study of women religious, especially in the light of the small number of surviving cartularies from English nunneries, yet until now it has received little attention, perhaps due to its damage in the Cotton Library fire of 1731. This critical edition of the manuscript, which contains documents copied into it from the mid-twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, offers a full transcription, together with historical notes and apparatus. The introduction draws on the cartulary itself, as well as manorial and episcopal records, to analyse the nunnery's relationship with its patron, the bishop of Ely, and the development and management of its estates; it also examines the location and layout of the abbey, the social and geographical origins of the nuns, and the production and organisation of the cartulary. The edition is accompanied by an annotated listof all known abbesses, prioresses and nuns. CLAIRE BREAYgained her Ph.D. at the Institute for Historical Research at the University of London; she is currently a curator of medieval manuscripts at the British Library.