This article discusses the University of Kansas’s Kenneth Spencer Research Library as an unexpectedly rich resource for British and Irish studies. The library’s location in Lawrence, Kansas, at a distance from the coastal research corridors, means that its collections tend to be underexplored, despite their significance. Spencer Library’s strength in eighteenth-century British imprints is complemented by extensive manuscript holdings. Among these are several centuries of estate papers for Britain’s prominent North family, and manuscripts documenting the Asiento (agreement) and England’s trade in supplying captive Africans to Spanish colonies in the Americas in the papers of Arthur Moore. Particularly noteworthy is the library of writer, civil servant, and Irish nationalist P. S. O’Hegarty, which offers scholars an unparalleled resource for Anglo-Irish relations and Irish history, culture, and politics. O’Hegarty’s collecting of scarce and ephemeral material, on the one hand, and books with significant provenance, on the other, makes his library a valuable resource for researchers even in an age of digitized text.
本文讨论了堪萨斯大学肯尼斯·斯宾塞研究图书馆作为英国和爱尔兰研究的意外丰富资源。该图书馆位于堪萨斯州劳伦斯市，远离沿海研究走廊，这意味着尽管其馆藏意义重大，但它们往往未被充分发掘。斯宾塞图书馆的实力在十八世纪的英国印记是补充广泛的手稿控股。其中包括英国显赫的诺斯家族几个世纪以来的遗产文件，以及亚瑟·摩尔（Arthur Moore）的文件中记录的《亚洲契约》（Asiento）和英国向美洲西班牙殖民地提供被俘非洲人的贸易的手稿。特别值得注意的是作家、公务员和爱尔兰民族主义者p.s. O 'Hegarty的图书馆，它为学者们提供了研究英爱关系和爱尔兰历史、文化和政治的无与伦比的资源。O 'Hegarty一方面收集稀缺和短暂的材料，另一方面收集有重要出处的书籍，这使得他的图书馆即使在数字化文本时代也成为研究人员的宝贵资源。
{"title":"One British Archive: Stocked Stacks in the Great Plains: British and Irish Collections at the University of Kansas’s Kenneth Spencer Research Library","authors":"Elspeth Healey","doi":"10.1017/jbr.2025.10184","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2025.10184","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses the University of Kansas’s Kenneth Spencer Research Library as an unexpectedly rich resource for British and Irish studies. The library’s location in Lawrence, Kansas, at a distance from the coastal research corridors, means that its collections tend to be underexplored, despite their significance. Spencer Library’s strength in eighteenth-century British imprints is complemented by extensive manuscript holdings. Among these are several centuries of estate papers for Britain’s prominent North family, and manuscripts documenting the Asiento (agreement) and England’s trade in supplying captive Africans to Spanish colonies in the Americas in the papers of Arthur Moore. Particularly noteworthy is the library of writer, civil servant, and Irish nationalist P. S. O’Hegarty, which offers scholars an unparalleled resource for Anglo-Irish relations and Irish history, culture, and politics. O’Hegarty’s collecting of scarce and ephemeral material, on the one hand, and books with significant provenance, on the other, makes his library a valuable resource for researchers even in an age of digitized text.","PeriodicalId":46738,"journal":{"name":"Journal of British Studies","volume":"162 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146153519","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern gravestones have been a common sight in European towns and cities for just over three hundred years. They provide a wealth of information beyond simply names and dates, and can teach us a great deal about the time and place in which they were erected and the people who built them. I have been recording and conserving gravestones for fifteen years, and here I present some of the techniques, sources, and hard-learned lessons of using gravestones as archival material that will enable you to see your local graveyard in a whole new light.
{"title":"One British Archive: A Monumental Task: The Archival Potential of Graveyards","authors":"James Johnson","doi":"10.1017/jbr.2025.10131","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2025.10131","url":null,"abstract":"Modern gravestones have been a common sight in European towns and cities for just over three hundred years. They provide a wealth of information beyond simply names and dates, and can teach us a great deal about the time and place in which they were erected and the people who built them. I have been recording and conserving gravestones for fifteen years, and here I present some of the techniques, sources, and hard-learned lessons of using gravestones as archival material that will enable you to see your local graveyard in a whole new light.","PeriodicalId":46738,"journal":{"name":"Journal of British Studies","volume":"51 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146153739","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
It has long been recognized that the “Irish Question” was also an imperial question. The vast Irish diaspora in the settler colonies ensured that Home Rule had enormous consequences for the wider empire. But scholars have yet fully to appreciate the part that political elites in the self-governing Dominions played in this story. This article explores the role of colonial statesmen in Anglo-Irish affairs. Figures like Australia’s Billy Hughes or South Africa’s Jan Smuts were able to navigate the emotional complexities of Irish nationalist politics in a manner that transcended British party politics. In the process, they framed “colonial” Home Rule as a compromise between British rule and independence. This article shows how Irish nationalist politics became enmeshed with imperial politics in a manner that blurred the line between the local, national, imperial, and global.
{"title":"Imperial Politics, the Dominions, and the Irish Question, 1907–21","authors":"John C. Mitcham","doi":"10.1017/jbr.2025.10178","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2025.10178","url":null,"abstract":"It has long been recognized that the “Irish Question” was also an imperial question. The vast Irish diaspora in the settler colonies ensured that Home Rule had enormous consequences for the wider empire. But scholars have yet fully to appreciate the part that political elites in the self-governing Dominions played in this story. This article explores the role of colonial statesmen in Anglo-Irish affairs. Figures like Australia’s Billy Hughes or South Africa’s Jan Smuts were able to navigate the emotional complexities of Irish nationalist politics in a manner that transcended British party politics. In the process, they framed “colonial” Home Rule as a compromise between British rule and independence. This article shows how Irish nationalist politics became enmeshed with imperial politics in a manner that blurred the line between the local, national, imperial, and global.","PeriodicalId":46738,"journal":{"name":"Journal of British Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146129318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article introduces the open access ArcGIS database Weather Extremes in England's Little Ice Age, 1500–1700 . The database maps narrative weather records from a range of sources, including historical chronicles, personal diaries, and extreme weather pamphlets. A source of particular note is the manuscript commonplace book of Richard Shann (1561–1627), a Catholic copyholder from Methley, Yorkshire. Shann included his weather notations in two distinct sections, with the first transcribing events between 1617–27, and the second, between 1586–1622. Falling between the genres of chronicle and diary, these records provide a sustained perspective on local weather conditions. In their turn-of-the-century focus, they also help to clarify the specific impact of the Little Ice Age on England, as their local observations reflect a national trend wherein seventeenth-century weather becomes not only more cold but also more unstable.
{"title":"One British Archive: The Weather Extremes in England's Little Ice Age Database","authors":"Madeline Bassnett","doi":"10.1017/jbr.2025.10187","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2025.10187","url":null,"abstract":"This article introduces the open access ArcGIS database <jats:italic>Weather Extremes in England's Little Ice Age, 1500–1700</jats:italic> . The database maps narrative weather records from a range of sources, including historical chronicles, personal diaries, and extreme weather pamphlets. A source of particular note is the manuscript commonplace book of Richard Shann (1561–1627), a Catholic copyholder from Methley, Yorkshire. Shann included his weather notations in two distinct sections, with the first transcribing events between 1617–27, and the second, between 1586–1622. Falling between the genres of chronicle and diary, these records provide a sustained perspective on local weather conditions. In their turn-of-the-century focus, they also help to clarify the specific impact of the Little Ice Age on England, as their local observations reflect a national trend wherein seventeenth-century weather becomes not only more cold but also more unstable.","PeriodicalId":46738,"journal":{"name":"Journal of British Studies","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146129317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article will use the records of the Slave Compensation Commission to examine how women experienced and negotiated property- and slave-ownership in nineteenth-century Britain. Demonstrating that women played a crucial role in facilitating the transmission of wealth rooted in enslavement into metropolitan society, it will show how they utilized, manipulated—and were restricted by—the financial mechanisms and legal frameworks that underpinned the British economy. Women’s engagement with the compensation process illustrates both the economic opportunities open to middle- and upper-class women in the early nineteenth century and the ways that female property ownership was mediated and constrained. But we cannot elide the nature of this particular form of “property.” These women were significant players in a system dependent on the violent exploitation of other human beings. The article shows the different ways that British women claimed enslaved people as property: how they used racialized violence to negotiate and wield power in a patriarchal society and to claim, establish, and reinforce their own potentially precarious positions. In doing so, it demonstrates the importance of interrogating the complex nexus of power relations—gendered, racialized, and classed—that shaped how female property- and wealth-holders thought, acted, and behaved in nineteenth-century Britain.
{"title":"“Unconscious Stipendiaries of This Wicked System”? Female Enslavers and Compensation in Nineteenth-century Britain","authors":"Hannah Young","doi":"10.1017/jbr.2025.10185","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2025.10185","url":null,"abstract":"This article will use the records of the Slave Compensation Commission to examine how women experienced and negotiated property- and slave-ownership in nineteenth-century Britain. Demonstrating that women played a crucial role in facilitating the transmission of wealth rooted in enslavement into metropolitan society, it will show how they utilized, manipulated—and were restricted by—the financial mechanisms and legal frameworks that underpinned the British economy. Women’s engagement with the compensation process illustrates both the economic opportunities open to middle- and upper-class women in the early nineteenth century and the ways that female property ownership was mediated and constrained. But we cannot elide the nature of this particular form of “property.” These women were significant players in a system dependent on the violent exploitation of other human beings. The article shows the different ways that British women claimed enslaved people as property: how they used racialized violence to negotiate and wield power in a patriarchal society and to claim, establish, and reinforce their own potentially precarious positions. In doing so, it demonstrates the importance of interrogating the complex nexus of power relations—gendered, racialized, and classed—that shaped how female property- and wealth-holders thought, acted, and behaved in nineteenth-century Britain.","PeriodicalId":46738,"journal":{"name":"Journal of British Studies","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146071485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores the complex cultural processes that engineered the production and circulation of British evangelical periodicals in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It draws on a vast collection of missionary archival material from Tahiti to show the patched-together character of evangelical periodicals, constituted by highly mobile texts that connected readers across vast geographic distances. Furthermore, it illustrates how readers responded to periodicals: how they represented the intellectual worlds of the early missionaries and complicated their conceptualizations of home and mission, in particular. The article avoids characterizing periodicals as purely propaganda, instead examining how they worked to extend evangelical networks and how they fit into wider systems of knowledge production. The article makes contributions to the study of religion, media, and the materiality of knowledge, bringing the evangelical knowledge industry into a globalized context that intersected with the mission field.
{"title":"Assembling Home in the Mission Field: Evangelical Periodical Culture in Britain and Tahiti, ca. 1790s–1830s","authors":"Kate Tilson","doi":"10.1017/jbr.2025.10179","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2025.10179","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the complex cultural processes that engineered the production and circulation of British evangelical periodicals in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It draws on a vast collection of missionary archival material from Tahiti to show the patched-together character of evangelical periodicals, constituted by highly mobile texts that connected readers across vast geographic distances. Furthermore, it illustrates how readers responded to periodicals: how they represented the intellectual worlds of the early missionaries and complicated their conceptualizations of home and mission, in particular. The article avoids characterizing periodicals as purely propaganda, instead examining how they worked to extend evangelical networks and how they fit into wider systems of knowledge production. The article makes contributions to the study of religion, media, and the materiality of knowledge, bringing the evangelical knowledge industry into a globalized context that intersected with the mission field.","PeriodicalId":46738,"journal":{"name":"Journal of British Studies","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146056136","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The memoir of Shadrack Byfield, an English weaver and war amputee, occupies a privileged place in the historiography and public memory of the Anglo‑American War of 1812. Yet relatively little is known about the author of this rare rank-and-file account. Drawing on extensive archival research and a newly discovered second autobiography, this article challenges the familiar image of Byfield as a plainspoken exemplar of military stoicism. It reveals how war in North America transformed the former private soldier both physically and psychologically. Examining Byfield’s return to civilian life, the article highlights his tenacious pursuit of veterans’ benefits, his cultivation of influential patrons, and his invention of a prosthetic device to enable a resumption of weaving work. It also traces the ex‑serviceman’s path to publication and explores his shifting self‑presentation in print—first as a dutiful soldier and later as a redeemed sinner. Integrating scholarship on disability, memoirs, military welfare, and the history of emotions, the article argues that Byfield’s exceptionally well‑documented life offers a window into the wider experiences of Britain’s homecoming soldiers after the Napoleonic Wars.
{"title":"From Amputee to Author: Shadrack Byfield and the Making of a War of 1812 Veteran","authors":"Eamonn O'Keeffe","doi":"10.1017/jbr.2025.10169","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2025.10169","url":null,"abstract":"The memoir of Shadrack Byfield, an English weaver and war amputee, occupies a privileged place in the historiography and public memory of the Anglo‑American War of 1812. Yet relatively little is known about the author of this rare rank-and-file account. Drawing on extensive archival research and a newly discovered second autobiography, this article challenges the familiar image of Byfield as a plainspoken exemplar of military stoicism. It reveals how war in North America transformed the former private soldier both physically and psychologically. Examining Byfield’s return to civilian life, the article highlights his tenacious pursuit of veterans’ benefits, his cultivation of influential patrons, and his invention of a prosthetic device to enable a resumption of weaving work. It also traces the ex‑serviceman’s path to publication and explores his shifting self‑presentation in print—first as a dutiful soldier and later as a redeemed sinner. Integrating scholarship on disability, memoirs, military welfare, and the history of emotions, the article argues that Byfield’s exceptionally well‑documented life offers a window into the wider experiences of Britain’s homecoming soldiers after the Napoleonic Wars.","PeriodicalId":46738,"journal":{"name":"Journal of British Studies","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146000517","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
For decades, the study of Chartism has been one of the most vibrant fields of modern British history. Indeed, this nineteenth-century radical movement was a major empirical focus for proponents of the so-called linguistic turn that has exerted such a major influence on the discipline. Interest in the Chartists does not abate, with valuable recent studies all combining—to greater or lesser extent—close attention to Chartist verbal and symbolic forms of communication with novel thematic concerns. However, more remains to be said about the language of Chartism, the topic that provided the original impetus for so much subsequent work. Specifically, the generally accepted argument that languages of constitutionalism and democracy were inextricably intertwined can be questioned, a task made easier by digitization of key organs of the Chartist press. This article revisits this intertwining in the pages of the Northern Star from the movement’s beginnings in the late 1830s to its disintegration in the late 1840s. It commences with results of a quantitative analysis of Chartist discourse and reconsideration of the relationship between the constitutional and democratic idioms in the movement’s early phase. Four factors are then discussed, which help explain the increasing prevalence of the language of democracy through the 1840s: heightened social conflict during the general strike of 1842; Chartist engagement in formal politics; international developments; and the crisis of 1848. However, despite the dominant linguistic trend, connections between democracy and social class, forged in the early 1840s, were not immutable but contingent.
{"title":"Rethinking the Language of Chartism","authors":"Peter Gurney","doi":"10.1017/jbr.2025.10140","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2025.10140","url":null,"abstract":"For decades, the study of Chartism has been one of the most vibrant fields of modern British history. Indeed, this nineteenth-century radical movement was a major empirical focus for proponents of the so-called linguistic turn that has exerted such a major influence on the discipline. Interest in the Chartists does not abate, with valuable recent studies all combining—to greater or lesser extent—close attention to Chartist verbal and symbolic forms of communication with novel thematic concerns. However, more remains to be said about the language of Chartism, the topic that provided the original impetus for so much subsequent work. Specifically, the generally accepted argument that languages of constitutionalism and democracy were inextricably intertwined can be questioned, a task made easier by digitization of key organs of the Chartist press. This article revisits this intertwining in the pages of the <jats:italic>Northern Star</jats:italic> from the movement’s beginnings in the late 1830s to its disintegration in the late 1840s. It commences with results of a quantitative analysis of Chartist discourse and reconsideration of the relationship between the constitutional and democratic idioms in the movement’s early phase. Four factors are then discussed, which help explain the increasing prevalence of the language of democracy through the 1840s: heightened social conflict during the general strike of 1842; Chartist engagement in formal politics; international developments; and the crisis of 1848. However, despite the dominant linguistic trend, connections between democracy and social class, forged in the early 1840s, were not immutable but contingent.","PeriodicalId":46738,"journal":{"name":"Journal of British Studies","volume":"187 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145583004","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Historians and archaeologists have extensively studied the history of health and illness in medieval England. Despite uncovering evidence of many diseases, especially fatal ones, questions remain about the impact of infirmity on people’s lives. How often were people unable to work because of illness? Were there seasonal patterns to such absences and did some people suffer recurring bouts of sickness? It has long been recognized that sick customary tenants could, in theory, be excused from performing their labor services (known as “works”) but few examples of this practice have been found. This article presents new evidence of infirmity on the manors of Ramsey Abbey. The monks excused sick tenants from performing their labor services for up to a year and a day, and sixty-two manorial accounts offer new insights into 229 cases of infirmity among their customary tenants in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. These accounts reveal a variety of experiences, from acute illnesses that lasted just two days, to chronic and debilitating infirmities that could result in a year’s absence. Five weeks of autumn accounted for a high number of absences, perhaps reflecting the demands of the harvest, but also the possibility of workplace accidents or even fraudulent claims of infirmity.
{"title":"Sick Leave of Customary Tenants in Late Medieval England","authors":"Grace Owen, A. T. Brown, Tudor Skinner","doi":"10.1017/jbr.2025.10130","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2025.10130","url":null,"abstract":"Historians and archaeologists have extensively studied the history of health and illness in medieval England. Despite uncovering evidence of many diseases, especially fatal ones, questions remain about the impact of infirmity on people’s lives. How often were people unable to work because of illness? Were there seasonal patterns to such absences and did some people suffer recurring bouts of sickness? It has long been recognized that sick customary tenants could, in theory, be excused from performing their labor services (known as “works”) but few examples of this practice have been found. This article presents new evidence of infirmity on the manors of Ramsey Abbey. The monks excused sick tenants from performing their labor services for up to a year and a day, and sixty-two manorial accounts offer new insights into 229 cases of infirmity among their customary tenants in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. These accounts reveal a variety of experiences, from acute illnesses that lasted just two days, to chronic and debilitating infirmities that could result in a year’s absence. Five weeks of autumn accounted for a high number of absences, perhaps reflecting the demands of the harvest, but also the possibility of workplace accidents or even fraudulent claims of infirmity.","PeriodicalId":46738,"journal":{"name":"Journal of British Studies","volume":"59 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145382018","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Liber Lynne, a fifteenth-century manuscript in the archive of the City of London Corporation, is a puzzle. Catalogued among the City of London’s collections of written custom (formerly Guildhall MS Cust. 15), it is generally defined as a cartulary. In this article, I study the Liber Lynne as a book that was both about family and for family. Its chance survival, a consequence of its acquisition by the Hanseatic Steelyard in London before the end of the fifteenth century, offers an unusual opportunity to explore the concept of family in the medieval English town. I situate the Liber Lynne in a distinct place and time, and argue that the book is a distinctively urban manuscript, the outcome of urban interests, ambitions, and anxieties. It also reveals the persistent and ubiquitous presence of plague, which exposed the fragility and precarity of families, but helped to give them different shapes. These shapes, or structures, were fluid because of the mutable nature of ideas about family and its voluntaristic qualities. Family, the Liber Lynne suggests, was a choice and a practice.
伦敦金融城公司（City of London Corporation）档案中的一份15世纪手稿《Liber Lynne》是个谜。在伦敦金融城的书面习俗收藏中（以前的伦敦市政厅MS Cust. 15），它通常被定义为一本cartulary。在这篇文章中，我将《自由林恩》作为一本关于家庭和为家庭而写的书来研究。在15世纪末之前，它被伦敦的汉萨萨钢铁厂（Hanseatic Steelyard）收购，这为探索中世纪英国城镇的家庭概念提供了一个不寻常的机会。我把《自由林恩》放在一个独特的地点和时间，并认为这本书是一本独特的城市手稿，是城市利益、野心和焦虑的结果。它还揭示了瘟疫的持续和无处不在，这暴露了家庭的脆弱性和不稳定性，但也使家庭的形态有所不同。这些形状或结构是流动的，因为关于家庭的观念的易变性及其自愿性。《自由林恩》认为，家庭是一种选择，也是一种实践。
{"title":"What is Family in an Age of Plague? The Liber Lynne and the Urban Family in Late Medieval England","authors":"Christian D. Liddy","doi":"10.1017/jbr.2025.10123","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2025.10123","url":null,"abstract":"The <jats:italic>Liber Lynne</jats:italic>, a fifteenth-century manuscript in the archive of the City of London Corporation, is a puzzle. Catalogued among the City of London’s collections of written custom (formerly Guildhall MS Cust. 15), it is generally defined as a cartulary. In this article, I study the <jats:italic>Liber Lynne</jats:italic> as a book that was both <jats:italic>about</jats:italic> family and <jats:italic>for</jats:italic> family. Its chance survival, a consequence of its acquisition by the Hanseatic Steelyard in London before the end of the fifteenth century, offers an unusual opportunity to explore the concept of family in the medieval English town. I situate the <jats:italic>Liber Lynne</jats:italic> in a distinct place and time, and argue that the book is a distinctively urban manuscript, the outcome of urban interests, ambitions, and anxieties. It also reveals the persistent and ubiquitous presence of plague, which exposed the fragility and precarity of families, but helped to give them different shapes. These shapes, or structures, were fluid because of the mutable nature of ideas about family and its voluntaristic qualities. Family, the <jats:italic>Liber Lynne</jats:italic> suggests, was a choice and a practice.","PeriodicalId":46738,"journal":{"name":"Journal of British Studies","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145254863","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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