Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of family trees
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Maps
- Introduction: East Anglia and the Feudal Transformation
- 1 The Dynasty of Ealdorman Æthelwine and Tenth-Century Society
- 2 The Kindred of Wulfstan of Dalham and Tenth-Century Society
- 3 The Daughters of Ealdorman Ælfgar and the Localization of Power in the Late Tenth Century
- 4 Ealdorman Byrhtnoth’s Kindred and the Formation of Lineage Identity in the Early Eleventh Century
- 5 The Social Order Reshaped and the Emergence of the Gentry in the Early Eleventh Century
- 6 The Formation of Lordships and Economic Transformations during the Mid Eleventh Century
- 7 Landscapes of Lordship and Political Transformations during the Mid Eleventh Century
- 8 The Regional Aristocracy and Social Mobility before the Norman Conquest
- 9 The Regional Aristocracy and Social Mobility during and after the Norman Conquest
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - The Dynasty of Ealdorman Æthelwine and Tenth-Century Society
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of family trees
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Maps
- Introduction: East Anglia and the Feudal Transformation
- 1 The Dynasty of Ealdorman Æthelwine and Tenth-Century Society
- 2 The Kindred of Wulfstan of Dalham and Tenth-Century Society
- 3 The Daughters of Ealdorman Ælfgar and the Localization of Power in the Late Tenth Century
- 4 Ealdorman Byrhtnoth’s Kindred and the Formation of Lineage Identity in the Early Eleventh Century
- 5 The Social Order Reshaped and the Emergence of the Gentry in the Early Eleventh Century
- 6 The Formation of Lordships and Economic Transformations during the Mid Eleventh Century
- 7 Landscapes of Lordship and Political Transformations during the Mid Eleventh Century
- 8 The Regional Aristocracy and Social Mobility before the Norman Conquest
- 9 The Regional Aristocracy and Social Mobility during and after the Norman Conquest
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
There is in the midland district of Britain a most dismal fen of immense size, which begins on the banks of the river Granta not far from the camp which is called Cambridge … It is a very long tract, now consisting of marshes, now of bogs, sometimes of black waters overhung by fog, sometimes studded with wooded islands and traversed by the windings of tortuous streams.
Felix (fl. 713x49), Life of St GuthlacThe marshland of which I am speaking is very wide and beautiful to behold, washed by many flowing rivers, adorned by many meres, great and small, and green with many woods and islands, among which are the church of Ely, the abbey of Ramsey …
Henry of Huntingdon (fl. 1129x54), History of the EnglishThe fenlands in Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire were described as a watery wilderness in the eighth century, but by the twelfth century the richness of the area's resources as well as the reputation of its monastic houses led to a more confident view in ecclesiastical circles. The fenlands benefited from the onset of increasingly favourable ecological conditions as sea levels fell after c. 800, and by c. 1100 at least eleven monastic communities stood on islands in the fens and on the fen-edge. These monastic houses had by then become the most important landholders in the region and had established economic and social ties with each other and with secular communities. The monks of Ramsey and Peterborough exchanged eels for Barnack limestone, and monastic landlords leased out everything from hundreds (i.e. local government jurisdictions) to fishing boats on fenland meres to secular lords and local farmers respectively. Across the area secular and ecclesiastical communities shared access to fenlands under the authority of monastic landlords, who kept open the Roman waterways and dug new channels. Patterns of landownership and economic management established by the close of the eleventh century remained largely in place until the drainage of the fenlands in the late seventeenth century, and only in the late eighteenth century was an alternative means of managing the area within a collective framework successfully established on a permanent basis.
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- Lords and Communities in Early Medieval East Anglia , pp. 13 - 28Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2005