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Wealth, status and ‘race’ in the Ruthin of Edward II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2005

MATTHEW STEVENS
Affiliation:
Department of History and Welsh History, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, SY23 3DY

Abstract

This article is a case study of the racially mixed, seigniorial borough of Ruthin (modern Denbighshire) in the early fourteenth century. It seeks to explore material inequalities and social aspects of the integration of English and Welsh burgesses in an urban setting. It concludes that whilst a disproportionate quantity of wealth did lie with the borough's English residents, Welsh burgesses enjoyed nearly comprehensive access to the community's wealth-generating and status-affirming activities. And, the behaviour of Ruthin's elites was more strongly dictated by their socioeconomic strata than racial background.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

‘Race’ has been used here only in response to the earlier historiographical context concerning the interaction of English and Welsh cultural practitioners in the Middle Ages, and for the convenience its succinctness affords by comparison to more politically correct alternatives. It here bears no correlation to any of the negative baggage which has been heaped upon the word in preceding decades.