Medieval gentlewoman

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Ian Mortimer

A time machine has just transported you back to the fourteenth century. What do you see? How do you dress? Where will you stay? How do you earn a living and how much are you paid? What sort of food will you be offered by a peasant or a monk or a lord? This is not your typical look at a historical period. This radical new approach shows us that the past is not just something to be studied; it is also something to be lived. All facets of the everyday lives of serf, merchant, and aristocrat in this fascinating period are revealed, from the horrors of the plague and war to the ridiculous excesses of roasted larks and medieval haute couture.--From publisher description.

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S.D. Church

"If the medieval king was the helmsman of the ship of state, the royal household was the ship's engine. It comprised men from most ranks of society, from the great magnates of the realm to simple servants who looked after the day-to-day needs of the king and his court. English government, in both peace and war, was conducted through the royal household, amongst whom the most important men were the king's knights: socially elite, militarily preeminent, and indispensable for the workings of English medieval government. It is with these men during the reign of King John that this work is concerned."--Jacket.

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Lesley Pearse

Somerset, 1836, and baby Hope is cast out from a world of privilege as living proof of her mother's adultery? Smuggled away from the Harveys and Briargate House to a nearby village, Hope grows up in the arms of the warm and loving Renton family, unaware of her true identity. But fate has harsh plans for Hope and a chain of events sees her forced to lead a vagabond's existence until she finds the courage to fight back and prove herself a fearless and able nurse, a vocation that takes her to the horrific battlefields of the Crimea. But the secrets of the past are not yet done with Hope Renton and she must return to England to face the legacy of her birth?

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Christopher Morris

Mississippi, perhaps more than any other state, epitomized the Old South and all it stood for. Yet, at one time, this area had more in common with newly settled northwest territories than it did with older southeastern plantation districts. This book takes a close look at a "typical" Southern community, and traces its long process of economic, social, and cultural evolution. Focusing on Jefferson Davis's Warren County, Morris shows the transformation of a loosely knit Western community of pioneer homesteaders into a distinctly Southern society. This region was first settled by farmers and herders; by the turn of the nineteenth century, the wealthiest residents began to acquire slaves and to plant cotton, hastening the demise of the pioneer economy. Gradually, farmers began producing for the market, which drew them out of their neighborhoods and broke down local patterns of cooperation. Individuals learned to rely on extended kin-networks as a means of acquiring land and slaves, giving tremendous power to older men with legal control over family property. Relations between masters and slaves, husbands and wives, and planters and yeoman farmers changed with the emergence of the traditional patriarchy of the Old South; this transformation created the "Southern" society that Warren County's white residents defended in the Civil War. Drawing on wills, deeds, and court records, as well as manuscript materials, Morris presents a sensitive and nuanced portrait of the interaction between ideology and material conditions, challenging accepted notions of what we have come to understand as Southern culture.