The 10 most-cited articles in The English Historical Review, 2019

Abstract This article asks whether there was a money economy in Anglo-Saxon and Norman England (924–1135). In simple terms, a money economy can be defined as an economic system where money has replaced barter as the principal means of exchange. Bolton has also recently stated that ‘when the use of coin becomes the norm and not the exception … we have the beginnings of a money economy’. These two complementary definitions will provide the basis against which the question will be answered. One focus of this article is therefore on a thorough examination of the documentary material in order to demonstrate the value of monetary equivalents and small-scale transactions in this period. The second focus is on assembling, collating and analysing the abundant numismatic material in the form of single coin finds and coin hoards, an approach which affords more specific evidence of how money was actually used. The combination of approaches proposed here makes possible the formation of a more precise understanding of how money was—and was not—used across the social spectrum of English society…

Abstract During the Great Famine (1845–51) hundreds of thousands of Irish refugees fled to Britain, escaping the hunger and disease afflicting their homeland. Many made new lives there, but others were subsequently shipped back to Ireland by poor law authorities under the laws of Settlement and Removal. This article explores the coping strategies of the Famine Irish in Britain, and the responses of poor law authorities to the inflow of refugees with a particular focus on their use of removal. We argue that British poor law unions in areas heavily affected by the refugee crisis adopted rigorous removal policies, and that the non-settled Irish were consequently deeply reluctant to apply for poor relief, doing so only when alternative sources of support were unavailable. Thus, the true scale of Irish hardship was hidden from the official record. The article also explores, for the first time, the experiences of those sent back to Ireland, a country suffering from the devastating effects of Famine. The combination of heavy Irish immigration to Britain and large-scale removals back to…

Abstract While the significance of private charity, local organisation and government policy have all been evaluated with respect to Irish famine relief, the role of the Royal Navy in distributing food and assisting ashore has been overlooked within the existing historical literature. Operating from its base at Cork and receiving provisions from Plymouth and Portsmouth, the navy battled against Atlantic storms throughout the winter of 1846–7, and for months thereafter, to supply coastal food depots. It had also to confront a growing lawlessness which placed merchant craft at sea and the movement of aid on shore in peril. Yet the navy was not only a vital means of transport. To assist with medical care, the Admiralty sent surgeons to Ireland who reported at length on the extent of starvation and the worst effects of disease—an initiative which brought the Admiralty into conflict with the authorities in Dublin. Furthermore, naval activities had always to be co-ordinated with the Treasury in London, which had overall responsibility for Irish relief yet often far less understanding of…

Abstract Looking back on the Edwardian suffrage campaign, the militant suffragette Annie Kenney thought it ‘more like a religious revival than a political movement’. Its language and iconography were steeped in Christian imagery, yet the religious arguments for enfranchisement have rarely received close attention. This article shows how campaigners grappled with patriarchal readings of Genesis, St Paul and the traditions of the Church to construct a Christian case for equality. It focuses, in particular, on the Church League for Women’s Suffrage, an Anglican organisation boasting nearly 6,000 members by 1914. Inspired by the incarnational theology of Charles Gore, the League recruited over 500 clergy and eight bishops, convinced that enfranchisement was not merely compatible with, but actively demanded by, the teaching of Christ. Activists preached sermons, wrote pamphlets and debated theology in the religious press, establishing a powerful theological case for reform. Using the League as a case-study, the article explores the wider relationship between gender ideology and religious…

Abstract This will appear online only.This essay explores the experiences of enslaved people who sought to escape their bondage in England and Scotland during the first three-quarters of the eighteenth century. It argues that, while the conditions of their servitude in Britain may appear closer to those of white British servants than those of enslaved plantation labourers in the colonies, the experiences of these people were conditioned by the experiences of and the threat of return to colonial enslavement. For some successful Britons an enslaved serving boy was a visible symbol of success, and a great many enslaved men, women, youths and children were brought to Great Britain during the eighteenth century. Some accompanied visiting colonists and ships’ officers, while others came to Britain with merchants, planters, clergymen and physicians who were returning home. Some of the enslaved sought to seize freedom by escaping. Utilising newspaper advertisements placed by owners seeking the capture and return of these runaways (as well as advertisements offering enslaved people for…

Abstract This will appear online only.This article argues for the importance of restoring girls’ aspirations and self-education to narratives of Victorian educational reform. Studies typically focus upon the efforts of professionals, politicians and campaigners in plotting the pioneering changes to girls’ education in the second half of the nineteenth century. Here it is contended that the success of these developments depended upon a new generation of girls with the confidence and ambition to take advantage of the new opportunities to sit examinations and attend university. To do this, the article excavates the neglected phenomenon of the manuscript magazine. It examines how young females used well-established periodicals to advertise their own amateur magazines. Inviting readers to contribute to their ventures, they constructed independent networks of collaborative cultural endeavour. Manuscript magazines, it will be suggested, need to be understood as part of a ‘magazine culture’ widely embraced by Victorian girls. To tease out the small but subtle ways in which magazine culture…

Abstract This article examines the phenomenon of New World-based slave trading, which encompasses slave-trading voyages that embarked from ports in the Americas. Much of the existing literature takes a European-based ‘triangular trade’ as the norm in the slave trade, but it is now clear that almost 40 per cent of all transatlantic slaving voyages sailed from ports in the New World. Slave traders based in the Americas needed to find appropriate and economical trade goods, which was difficult since European and Asian manufactures dominated African markets for captives. A comparative examination of the four largest American slave-trading polities (Barbados, Brazil, Cuba and British North America/the United States) reveals that all of them succeeded in converting plantation produce—sugar, molasses and tobacco—into African trade goods. However, all of these powers also sought to acquire the more valuable textiles and manufactures in order to improve their ‘assortments’. This finding is significant because it forces historians to consider the slave trade not merely as a ‘triangular’ trade…

Abstract Tallage-at-will was a seigniorial tax on unfree tenants and hereditary serfs in medieval England, and one of the two main tests of villeinage under the common law. Contemporary lawyers argued that it was compulsory and uncertain, which has led many historians to portray it as a variable, exorbitant and arbitrary component of villein rent, but this article offers the first comprehensive survey of its form, operation and significance. It reveals that by c.1300 the frequency and level of tallage had become codified and largely fixed, it existed in various forms, it was not found on many manors, and methods of determining individual contributions varied. Thus the example of tallage-at-will serves to reinforce the heterogeneity of villeinage in England and, by extension, the unevenness of its experience on the ground. The absence of tallage-at-will from a sizeable minority of manors c.1300, and its rapid decline and disappearance after 1348–9 from many more, raises questions about its significance as one of the two key tests of villeinage in the common law. Finally, the…

Abstract The ‘county community’ is something of a hot potato amongst late medieval political historians. Since the publication of an influential article by Christine Carpenter in 1994, in which she condemned the county community as anachronistic and conceptually flawed, research on the political structures of late medieval England has mostly avoided the term and the idea. In other fields, the methodological challenges and conceptual complexities underpinning the idea of ‘community’ have been embraced and new, more nuanced understandings of how medieval people organised and represented themselves collectively have been achieved. It is now time for historians of politics and government in late medieval England to move beyond reductionist arguments about the existence or otherwise of county communities to investigate the assumptions and social realities that lay behind contemporary references to the ‘commonalty’, ‘commons’ or ‘people’ of one or more counties. This discussion offers the first in-depth analysis of the single most important evidence for grass-roots expressions of county…

Abstract Peter’s Pence began as an annual donation from England to the papacy. It was later taken up more widely and lasted until the Reformation in England, but its beginnings are much murkier. This article reassesses the earliest forms of Peter’s Pence in the period before 1066. Offerings made by individual Anglo-Saxon pilgrims to Rome gave rise to more regular gifts from several kings between Offa (757–96) and Alfred (871–99); under the latter, gifts also began to be associated with the people as well as the king. A fully articulated mechanism for raising Peter’s Pence only emerges later, however, in the time of Edgar (959–75) and his successors, especially Æthelred II (978–1016). The nature of the national and local frameworks which were used to extract, channel and safeguard the render are assessed in detail, based on sources from across England. Bishops played a central role in this system, above all the archbishop of Canterbury, who received the collected tribute from the kingdom as a whole. The article, utilising a variety of chronicles, law codes and religious texts, as…