This volume, first published in 1939, draws together a significant number of vernacular documents from early medieval England. Augmenting the work with constant reference to contemporary sources such as laws and Latin charters, Dr Robertson examines a wide range of miscellaneous Anglo-Saxon texts including declarations (gesqutelunga), chirographs and entries in Gospel Books.

Without such handbook guides to the Anglo-Saxon countryside we should make far slower progress in understanding the people who inhabited it... Dr Hooke and her publisher are to be congratulated for making so much data available. MEDIEVAL ARCHAEOLOGY

The county of Worcestershire, finally formed before the Conquest around the burh of Worcester, is exceptionally rich in charter material. The charters contain an unusual amount of valuable topographical detail -in descriptions of location, in comments on the appurtenances of an estate and especially within the boundary clauses which accompany many of the grants or leases. From this very full body of texts, Dr Hooke has been able to identify features which have enabled her to reconstruct the landscape of Anglo-Saxon Worcestershire to a remarkable degree. Della Hooke is widely known for her pioneer work on Anglo-Saxon charters, through which she has been able to reconstruct the Worcestershire landscape as it was almost a thousand years ago. The county -part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the Hwicce -responds particularly well to her techniques. It is exceptionally rich in Anglo-Saxon charters and the physical features of the county, which has remained largely agricultural, are relatively easy to identify. Careful study of the charter evidence throws light on the history of settlement and land use, and shows that many features of the medieval county, for instance the rich arable lands of the Vale of Evesham and the wooded landscapes of Malvern and Wyre, were already present in Anglo-Saxon Worcestershire. The book presents all the topographical detail in the charters, together with all the estate boundaries; each charter is individually mapped and the charter's landmarks located. The result is the first such study for any county, providing valuable and readily available data for historians and students of land use. DELLA HOOKEis Research Fellow in the School of Geography, University of Birmingham. She is a council member of the Council for Name Studies in Great Britain and Ireland and of the English Place-Name Society, and editor of Landscape History, the journal of the Society for Landscape Studies. Her published work relates to her long-standing interest in the use of Anglo-Saxon charters to trace the evolution of regional landscape.@RIGHT ALIGN = published price 45

This engaging study focuses on the role of assemblies in later Anglo-Saxon politics, challenging and nuancing existing models of the late Anglo-Saxon state. Its ten chapters investigate both traditional constitutional aspects of assemblies - who attended these events, where and when they met, and what business they conducted - and the symbolic and representational nature of these gatherings. Levi Roach takes into account important recent work on continental rulership, and argues that assemblies were not a check on kingship in these years, but rather an essential feature of it. In particular, the author highlights the role of symbolic communication at assemblies, arguing that ritual and demonstration were as important in English politics as they were elsewhere in Europe. Far from being exceptional, the methods of rulership employed by English kings look very much like those witnessed elsewhere on the continent, where assemblies and ritual formed an essential part of the political order.

An exploration of Anglo-Saxon charters, bringing out their complexity and highlighting a range of broad implications.

Christian theology and religious belief were crucially important to Anglo-Saxon society, and are manifest in the surviving textual, visual and material evidence. This is the first full-length study investigating how Christian theology and religious beliefs permeated society and underpinned social values in early medieval England. The influence of the early medieval Church as an institution is widely acknowledged, but Christian theology itself is generally considered to have been accessible only to a small educated elite. This book shows that theology had a much greater and more significant impact than has been recognised. An examination of theology in its social context, and how it was bound up with local authorities and powers, reveals a much more subtle interpretation of secular processes, and shows how theological debate affected the ways that religious and lay individuals lived and died. This was not a one-way flow, however: this book also examines how social and cultural practices and interests affected the development of theology in Anglo-Saxon England, and how ’popular’ belief interacted with literary and academic traditions. Through case-studies, this book explores how theological debate and discussion affected the personal perspectives of Christian Anglo-Saxons, including where possible those who could not read. In all of these, it is clear that theology was not detached from society or from the experiences of lay people, but formed an essential constituent part.

In this collection of essays Nicholas Brooks explores some of the earliest and most problematic sources, both written and archaeological, for early English history. In his hands, the structure and functions of Anglo-Saxon origin stories and charters (whether authentic or forged) illuminate English political and social structures, as well as ecclesiastical, urban and rural landscapes. Together with already published essays, this work includes an account of the developments in the study of Anglo-Saxon charters over the last 20 years.

For more than forty years Nicholas Brooks has been at the forefront of research into early medieval Britain. In order to honour the achievements of one of the leading figures in Anglo-Saxon studies, this volume brings together essays by an internationally renowned group of scholars on four themes that the honorand has made his own: myths, rulership, church and charters. Myth and rulership are addressed in articles on the early history of Wessex, Æthelflæd of Mercia and the battle of Brunanburh; contributions concerned with charters explore the means for locating those hitherto lost, the use of charters in the study of place-names, their role as instruments of agricultural improvement, and the reasons for the decline in their output immediately after the Norman Conquest. Nicholas Brooks's long-standing interest in the church of Canterbury is reflected in articles on the Kentish minster of Reculver, which became a dependency of the church of Canterbury, on the role of early tenth-century archbishops in developing coronation ritual, and on the presentation of Archbishop Dunstan as a prophet. Other contributions provide case studies of saints' cults with regional and international dimensions, examining a mass for St Birinus and dedications to St Clement, while several contributions take a wider perspective, looking at later interpretations of the Anglo-Saxon past, both in the Anglo-Norman and more modern periods. This stimulating and wide-ranging collection will be welcomed by the many readers who have benefited from Nicholas Brooks's own work, or who have an interest in the Anglo-Saxon past more generally. It is an outstanding contribution to early medieval studies.

The relationship between Anglo-Saxon kingship, law, and the functioning of power is explored via a number of different angles. The essays collected here focus on how Anglo-Saxon royal authority was expressed and disseminated, through laws, delegation, relationships between monarch and Church, and between monarchs at times of multiple kingships and changing power ratios. Specific topics include the importance of kings in consolidating the English "nation"; the development of witnesses as agents of the king's authority; the posthumous power of monarchs; how ceremonial occasions wereused for propaganda reinforcing heirarchic, but mutually beneficial, kingships; the implications of Ine's lawcode; and the language of legislation when English kings were ruling previously independent territories, and the delegation of local rule. The volume also includes a groundbreaking article by Simon Keynes on Anglo-Saxon charters, looking at the origins of written records, the issuing of royal diplomas and the process, circumstances, performance and function of production of records. GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at the University of Manchester. Contributors: Ann Williams, Alexander R. Rumble, Carole Hough, Andrew Rabin, Barbara Yorke, Ryan Lavelle, Alaric Trousdale