In the seminal article ‘The Sovereign and the Pirates, 1332’, published in 1970, Frederic Cheyette demonstrated how the adjudication of piracy disputes was essential to the formulation both of sovereignty and of the jurisdiction of the French and English admirals in the fourteenth century. Cheyette used as an illustrative example a court case from Agde, in 1332, where the king of France contested the right of the local lord, the bishop of Narbonne, to jurisdiction over some recently captured Genoese pirates. The bishop argued that justice over the coast in that area was his legal prerogative, but the French king countered that he had sovereignty over the waters of his kingdom and hence also to try piracy. This claim to sovereignty over the sea was a novel political manoeuvre, and it specifically entailed the ‘sovereign legitimation of the violence of war and sovereign limitation of the violence of justice’. The officer directed to exercise this sovereign right over the sea was the French admiral, yet before 1332 no French admiral ever exercised justice. Indeed, complaints over piracy normally went to ordinary royal officers, or to local lords or to Paris. This led Cheyette to conclude that the ‘office of admiral may […] be the rarest bird in the mediaeval administrative bestiary: one that was created in theory before it was instituted in practice’.

That conclusion is equally applicable for England in the fourteenth century. In 1875 Stubbs had remarked that

The history of British saints on the Continent is notoriously difficult to research – and I deliberately use the word ‘British’ and ‘Briton’ even where others might prefer ‘Breton’, because for the sixth century it is usually impossible to make a definite distinction between those who originated in Great Britain and those who came from Brittany. The majority of our sources are late: the most substantial body of material is hagiographic, but the Vita Winwaloei was written by Wrdestin and Clement in the first years of the ninth century, that of Machutus (Malo) by Bili around 860, and that of Paul Aurelian by Wrmonoc in 884. Of the two Lives of Gildas, the earliest appears to belong to the eleventh century, and the second, by Caradoc of Llancarfan, to the twelfth. The first Life of Samson (VIS) would seem to have been composed initially during the seventh century, which is when the author himself claims to have been active, and there are certain linguistic and terminological features in the Life that support such a date. There may, of course, have been a subsequent moment of what French scholars are now describing as réécriture, but even so the fact that the text makes no mention of a diocese of Dol surely indicates that the work as we have it antedates the foundation of the see, whose existence is not clearly attested before the mid-ninth century.

For Samson, unlike Gildas, Paul Aurelian, Winwaloe (Gwennolé), and Malo, we at least have the evidence of the subscription list of the Council of Paris, which can be dated by means of the other signatories to the period 556 to 573. The Council provides us with a useful point of departure for considering the activities of British ascetics in the Merovingian world. Having considered the early evidence for Samson, I will turn to that relating to the Irish saint Columbanus, which arguably gives us our most extensive block of dateable evidence for the influence of Britons on the Continent, before returning to what the Vita Samsonis has to say about the saint's Continental career, and the ways in which it complements and differs from the Columbanian material.

In 1573 Matthew Parker, the archbishop of Canterbury, presented a gift to William Cecil, one of Elizabeth i's chief advisors and chancellor of the University of Cambridge. This was a lavishly decorated presentation copy of a curious book that Parker had had printed: his De antiquitate Britannicae ecclesiae & priviliegiis Ecclesiae Cantuariensis. Some copies, including Cecil's, also included another text, added on at the end: a collection of lists and potted histories relating to the University of Cambridge. For Parker and Cecil, as for many of the most central figures in the Elizabethan regime, Cambridge was a shared part of their personal histories. They had both been at the university during the reign of Henry viii, although in very different capacities: Parker was a doctor of theology who would soon become a Head of House and serve as university vice-chancellor, while Cecil ended his time studying in Cambridge without taking a degree. Both, however, retained a life-long affection for the place where they had spent such formative years, an affection to which the text at the end of De antiquitate bears witness.

Written from the vantage point of 1572, it also bears witness to some of the upheaval and rupture that political and religious change had wrought in the university since 1535, the year when Cecil had begun his studies, and when a Henrician royal visitation had rewritten the university curriculum in the name of royal supremacy over the English Church. The book includes a calendar that begins in 1500 and ends with Parker's present day. It includes a few extra notes, so that there are interspersed references to the arrival of the great humanist Desiderius Erasmus in Cambridge in 1506, to the burning of Lutheran books in 1521, to the death of the German theologian Martin Bucer in 1551 (whose funeral occasioned a display of Protestant piety and celebration) and to the ceremonial exhumation and burning of his remains six years later (a display of Catholic condemnation and triumph). The pages where these latter two events are noted also contain another marker of the rapid and conflicting nature of both England's and Cambridge's political reformations in these years.

English historical writing flourished in the twelfth century as it never had before. From William of Malmesbury to William of Newburgh, English writers wrote histories that have proved enduringly useful, and that broke new ground. It is to these writers that we owe much of our knowledge and image of the medieval English past. Nor was this achievement limited to a few decades; it lasted through the whole century, apart from a brief hiatus in the early years of Henry II's reign. That said, there is also quite a degree of difference between historical writing at the start of the century and at the end. The example of Symeon of Durham may find echoes in Roger of Howden's adhesion to the northern chronicle tradition, and Eadmer of Canterbury is self-consciously followed by some of Thomas Becket's biographers and by Gervase of Canterbury, but despite the popularity of his work, Geoffrey of Monmouth had no late twelfth century successor in Latin, and there is no writer quite like Gerald of Wales or Richard of Devizes in the first half of the century. Henry of Huntingdon and Aelred of Rievaulx remained relevant in King Richard's reign, but the concerns of new writers of history appeared to have moved on from theirs.

There are a number of ways in which the similarities and differences between English historiography in the first half of the twelfth century and its successors at the end of the century might be explored. One might focus on literary form, exploring the persistence of the chronicle, the continuing development of the monograph, and the new experiments in verse historiography. One might examine specific developments, such as the increasingly cosmopolitan nature of historical writing, or the role of biography. Here I will address a fundamental question that is sometimes asked but not always adequately answered: Why did twelfth-century English historians write history? And I will point it in a more specific direction to ask a question that has not been addressed, despite the great volume and quality of work on the subject: Did the purpose of history in England change over the course of the century? I will focus here on literature in Latin, although the period also produced historical writing in the vernacular by authors including Wace, Gaimar and Jordan Fantosme.

FOR many better-off early modern Britons, gaming and wagering were ubiquitous, a deeply embedded part of social life, enjoyed in domestic circles but linked in broader culture to other social and economic contexts of risk, which made them acceptable and even desirable. Betting was far more than an idle practice motivated by mere diversion and the chance of winning a bet. The aristocratic honour code and personal pride insisted that challenges should be met and honourable debts paid. Backing one's judgements and opinions with money dramatized status and provided a means of settling disputes and arguments without violence. Wagering, like emergent capitalism, involved competitive skills, ruthlessness and chauvinistic self-interest. Like any financial market, race betting's importance tempted some into tactics used to fix results that overshadowed ethical considerations.

Horse races were encouraged by gambling owners. They ran alongside the new forms of gambling-inspired venture capitalism and financial speculation emerging in the early eighteenth-century British economy. Betting's meaning and significance could be read as a form of deep engagement, mirroring and reinforcing elite relationships and social structure. Later, as it became more widely popular, more complex socio-cultural differences started to emerge.

Historically, horse-race gambling has offered a range of pleasures. Betting on a race could have multiple meanings: a playful hobby; a hope that chance and luck would lead to life-changing fortune; emotional excitements; or a highly cerebral strategic approach by calculative and manipulative adepts skilful at risk management, employing expert knowledge to manipulate betting-market prices, even when racing outcomes were uncertain. It could encourage recklessness and corruption, or become a life-changing pathological and irrational addiction, creating problem gamblers who suffered problems not just of debt but social relationships – though insufficient data precludes a more quantitative approach here.

Legislation that tried to contain it forbade specific activities, imposed penalties for cheating, or tried to limit amounts staked, and was largely ignored. But the relationships between betting and horse racing in the early modern period are complex and have hitherto been underexplored. Historians focusing on more modern horse-racing gambling are just beginning to acknowledge gambling's centrality to the sport's early development and rules. Eisenberg has correctly stressed the way that the beginnings of modern sport were linked to competitive betting, and racing bears this out strongly.

The themes of wealth, credit and speculation are central to Lo prohibido (1884–85), a novel whose narrative, covering the period from 1880 to 1884, is strictly contemporary. Blanco, in her analysis of this novel, focuses on Galdós's treatment in it of the socio-economic changes that resulted from the nineteenthcentury capitalist expansion in Spain. In particular, she stresses Galdós's portrayal of the bourgeoisie as the new but already well-established dominant class of Restoration society. In her view, Galdόs offers in Lo prohibido a synchronic study of this financial elite, without analysing how it came about. In the Torquemada novels, by contrast, the perspective is diachronic, one that looks at the development of this class from its rise to its zenith (Blanco 1983: 61–2). Nonetheless, it is important to note that the narrator in Lo prohibido gives extensive details about the origins of the great fortunes that populate this novel, which often go back to the 1850s and 1860s. Moreover, the picture that emerges from Lo prohibido is not of a well-established and well-defined bourgeois class but of a hybrid and unstable one, in which social mobility goes up as well as down. This chapter aims to contribute further to a socio-economic reading of Lo prohibido by analysing Galdós's depiction of the money elite of the 1880s as representative of the unbalanced and fragile capitalist system that developed in Spain from the 1830s onwards.

As Whiston points out, the early 1880s, the years in which Lo prohibido is set, were particularly active for the economic sector in Madrid. There was a significant increase in the number of building licences granted, and also a consistent rise in the value of stock-market shares. This upward trend in stockmarket securities allowed bondholders to double their money in a very short period of time. The boom lasted until the summer of 1883, the year before Galdόs started to write Lo prohibido, when a sharp fall in prices caused many investors to suffer great losses (Lo prohibido: 95–6). As Tuñόn de Lara notes, the first decade of the Restoration also saw a great increase in the circulation of fiduciary money, particularly during the years 1881 and 1882 (Tuñόn de Lara 1960, II: 41–2).

It is difficult to gauge the overall effect of article 13 of Limerick, and the prolonged sale of the estate, on John Browne's family and on the wider Connacht community. From 1698 Browne's eldest son Peter became increasingly involved in the management of the family's debts. Browne's four other children (Valentine, Bridget, Elizabeth and Mary) were largely peripheral figures in this business, though the marriages of two of his three daughters and their consequent dowries placed him under further financial burdens and brought Browne into conflict with their husbands. As Browne's most important legal representative in the 1690s and 1700s, Edmund Malone played a prominent role in the management of his affairs, including disputes with Lord Athenry and Viscount Mayo, Browne's sons-in-law. In Dublin, Luke Hussey's diligence was important to the management of Browne's business. This chapter examines the impact of John Browne's debts on the lives of his children, as well as the agency of his nephew Edmund Malone on behalf of several Catholic and Protestant families in Counties Galway and Mayo. The first section analyses Malone's work in London as he managed the affairs of the Brownes of the Neale, the Blakes of Moyne, County Galway, and the Veseys of County Galway, as well as Malone's occasionally tense relationship with his uncle. The lives of Browne's children are discussed in section II, through the prism of their relationship with their father. Though Peter Browne's correspondence is relatively well preserved among the Westport papers, the same cannot be said of Valentine Browne and his three sisters. Section III examines the conversion to Protestantism of two of John Browne's grandsons: Francis Bermingham, future Baron Athenry, and Peter Browne's son, John Browne, future earl of Altamont. Francis Bermingham's conversion in particular allows an insight into the pressure brought to bear on the Catholic gentry of Ireland by the penal laws.

The main branch of the Browne family remained at the Neale after the death of Colonel John Browne's father in 1670, with the estate inherited by George Browne, the eldest son. Like his father and several of his direct descendants, George Browne never assumed the baronetcy bestowed on the family in 1636 – that title was not assumed until 1762, by George Browne's great–grandson (also named George) whose brother John was in turn elevated to the peerage as Baron Kilmaine (second creation) in 1789.

This note is intended to supplement a previous article on the ‘annuary’, presented at Norwich in 2010, and published in ANS 33. Returning to Normandy after many years devoted to the study of other regions in the twelfth century, I had noticed that the forty-nine records (or acta) that occupy folios 112v to 117r (see Fig. 1) in Avranches MS 210 have a collective identity; that they represent a deliberate departure by their author, Robert of Torigni, from the cartulary preceding. Moreover, they bear witness to the new abbot's recognition that accountability in a monastic lordship entailed something other (something more) than a collection of proofs of patrimonial right; it required a record of hands-on engagement with fiscal management in the localities. I argued that, when taken together, these acta, as written, amounted to an experimental fiscal accountability altogether comparable with those undertaken by Robert's contemporaries Suger in Saint-Denis and Bertran de Castellet in Catalonia.

Upon further study of the manuscripts of Le Mont Saint-Michel, I find much of this confirmed, if not quite all. It no longer seems possible to attribute the great romanesque cartulary in MS 210 to Robert of Torigni. That the cartulary pre-dates his abbacy is a major discovery that we owe entirely to Katharine Keats-Rohan, in persuasive codicological research. My own research since 2010 not only confirms her finding, but is pointing ever more strongly to Abbot Bernard (1131–49) as the originator-patron of this incomparable witness to life in Le Mont Saint-Michel before 1150. To my knowledge, moreover, no new work on manuscript illumination and decoration seems contrary to this finding. François Avril, in his work of fifty years ago, allowed for the possibility of a single artist working in Le Bec as well as in Le Mont Saint-Michel before 1154.

As for Abbot Robert's acta, my appellation ‘annuary’ lies mute in deafening silence. So I hasten to add that I make no defence of the term, except to plead convenience and pertinence. A better term would be welcome indeed; what matters is our recognition that these multiple records stem from a single impulse. Each one opens with the words eodem anno, and this is what induced me to associate the acta with Robert's other historical writings.

After the conquest of England in 1066 by Duke William of Normandy, historians on both sides of the English Channel tried to record and explain the political and social circumstances in which they found themselves in the context of larger conceptions of history. The twelfth century, in particular, saw a surge in the popularity of historical writing in the lands controlled by the kings of England. Among the authors whose histories are still widely known and studied are Orderic Vitalis, John of Worcester, Symeon of Durham, William of Malmesbury, and later Ralph of Diceto, Gerald of Wales, Roger of Howden and Matthew Paris. The crafting of new works also led to a renewed interest in earlier historical writing about both the Norman and the Anglo-Saxon past, most notably Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica, and new copies of older texts were made. History was thus being read, reproduced, discussed and reworked, as well as written, in the years after 1066. Moreover, the process of making manuscripts sometimes involved the selection and combination of texts in a single volume, or the exploration of the past through the addition of imagery. Most of the essays collected in this volume take as their starting point individual manuscripts or references to particular history books. Through the examination of text, script, design and imagery they explore different facets of the creation and use of history books in the lands controlled by the kings of England between c. 1066 and c. 1250. The emphasis here is on narrative histories, rather than other forms of documentation, and the essays explore how historians approached their task, notions of time and place, and the varied potential uses of writing about the past.

One of the major challenges of working with manuscript evidence is the limited survival of medieval books. Those writing history in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries included both monks and secular clerics with access to the royal court, and these authors addressed their works to a range of audiences, including their own monastic communities, kings and members of the nobility. However, manuscripts appear to have stood a much better chance of survival if they were preserved in monastic libraries, which probably distorts the evidence available to us.