The Creation of a Community
The City of Wells in the Middle Ages
Published on 8. July 1993
Book
Hardback
352 pages
978-0-19-820401-5 (ISBN)
Description
This is the first scholarly history of the city of Wells in the Middle Ages. David Gary Shaw makes full use of the rich archives of Wells to trace its growth from a rural manor into the prosperous borough it became by the late twelfth century. Dr Shaw examines the variety of trades which flourished in Wells - including tanning, glove-making, and cloth-manufacture - and analyses the composition of the burgess community. He also explores the importance of the family, the extent of social mobility, the position of women, and the roles of conviviality on the one hand and religion on the other in shaping communal activity and communal spirit. Dr Wells makes full use of the rich archives of Wells to present in vivid and telling detail the anatomy of a medieval borough.
Reviews / Votes
'Here is a valuable addition to the small corpus of modern monographs devoted to individual English towns in the medieval period. Shaw writes shrewdly about 'community', conscious of the voguish and treacherous nature of the concept. Shaw's book, while acknowledging the gap between pious ideal and reality, goes far to demonstrate the practical and ideological impact on one medieval urban society of that communitarian discourse.'Gervase Rosser, The Ricardian, X, No. 126, Sept 1994 sensitive and probing book...a well-presented and thoughtful study * Journal of Interdisciplinary History * Dr Shaw's is a very fine book, analysing the borough community in as much detail as the records permit, providing much information on the town in its own right, but also setting his study in a wider English and European context ... a welcome reminder of the great variety of medieval towns, so often very different from what he calls 'the national model ... of places like Lincoln or Oxford.' * D.M. Palliser, University of Leeds, EHR Apr. 96 *
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Oxford University Press
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
figures, tables
Dimensions
Height: 223 mm
Width: 144 mm
Thickness: 26 mm
Weight
579 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-820401-5 (9780198204015)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Content
Introduction - the appeal of the small town, community and the borough community, sources; origins - the early Church, the development of the town; the size of a small town - the physical city; the smaller town in medieval Europe, the size of the population, population change - dilapidation and decayed rents, population change - the admissions list, migration, relative size; economy - occupational structure, clothmaking - participation, organization of the industry, magnitude of the industry, Wells and its countryside, trade, labour, conclusion - qualifying urban decline; the balance of authority - the burgesses' power circa 1300, the moment of crisis, the community's resources, the accommodation; the social history of the borough community 1377-1500 - membership, socio-economic composition, participation and office-holding, trades and "power", oligarchy; the culture of the borough community 1377-1520 - the community ideal, order and tradition, the fraternal ideal, unity, virtues and vices, the institutions of community, initiation, conviviality, manifestations of unity, peacemaking, arbitration; the social world completed - the foreigners - a neglected social category, economic and political situation, poverty, the scope of poverty, women; the culture of the Church - the cathedral, the parish, the parish guilds, chantry and community, prayer, alms - the giving, education, new lives, heterodoxy and control; conclusion - the complexity of small things. Appendices: Wells' bishops; stewards and masters of Wells borough community.