After the failure of the Second Crusade, armed and unarmed pilgrims and small groups of crusaders continued to flow to the Holy Land, ‘demonstrating that although Christians had been demoralized by the failure of the Second Crusade and were not inspired to mount a major expedition, their faith and commitment to the Holy Land were not shaken’. To judge by the surviving records, this was not enough to inspire our lyric poets. For the next quarter of a century they had little to say about Palestine. However, the troubadours continued to be interested in the Reconquista; then by the 1170s and 1180s we catch a glimpse of activity in the crusader states and see two troubadours travel to Outremer on pilgrimage.

In the immediate aftermath of the crusade Marcabru's famous Vers del lavador turned attention back towards the via de Hispania. A decade later, in 1157–1158, Peire d'Alvernhe, defending the reputation of his oft-maligned predecessor, also writes in support of the Reconquista (BdT 323.7):

Probably addressed to King Sancho III of Castile, the song refers to the death of Sancho's father, Alfonso VII, and, probably, King Sancho VII ‘the Wise’ (1150–1194) of Navarre, who took advantage of Alfonso's death to enlarge the boundaries of his kingdom.

Rodó's biographers have commented on the remarkable photographs that we have of him as a child. In one, aged eighteen months, he looks serious and thoughtful, and the same expression appears in a second portrait at four and in a third at eleven. Petit Muñoz says of Rodó's earliest portrait that it is “un pasmoso anuncio del pensador” (an astonishing announcement of the thinker) (79), and Mario Benedetti notes “el mismo gesto severo” (the same severe countenance) in all of the childhood photographs, also echoing a French critic's comment about the general absence of smiles in his images (13). Such graveness of outlook found an outlet in Rodó's early writings.

We have reports of Rodó learning to read at home at an early age, taught at first by his elder sister Isabel. According to Salvá, his first writing exercise for school was on the topic of “Charity” (14); Petit Muñoz, who interviewed Rodó's class teacher Ángela Anselmi in old age, was told that this composition, by her best student ever, was “la más extraordinaria, quizás” (perhaps the most extraordinary) (104). Salvá also reports that this piece was followed by another, on Brazil, commissioned by his teachers for the occasion of a visit to the school by Quintino Bocayúva (a journalist and politician who was to play an important role in the republican process of his country); the dignitary was highly impressed (14). It is significant to note, therefore, that already in some of his earliest reflections Rodó expressed concerns that were to occupy him later: the theme of charity, which was to recur in much of his mature work and is central to Liberalismo y jacobinismo (1906); and that of Latin America as a set of interrelated identities. Rodó's writing in fact began even before he went to Elbio Fernández, although the school environment helped to consolidate it. We shall consider this early material in the following order: child journalism; an important private letter to the president; a notebook containing poems on metaphysics and religion; other intimate writings where religion mingles with guilt about sexuality.

A perpetual chantry represented an ambitious form of devise clearly benefiting the parish, with property set aside yielding rent sufficient both to pay a celebrant's stipend and maintain the endowment, sustaining the income in perpetuity and, ideally, providing a little extra for the host institution. Such chantries were never numerous: few individuals had the requisite property; fewer still held this without prior obligations to family or heirs. Even though perpetual chantries functioned as parish enterprises, ordinarily we now have only snippets of information generated and preserved by government and reflective of their inception and demise. Foundation frequently produced a licence to alienate in mortmain entered on the Patent Rolls; the dissolution, in the first year of Edward VI's reign, produced the Chantry Certificates, recording a few details for each institution, whose endowments the government proceeded to absorb. But the All Saints’ archive discloses just how much documentation a parish could compile when managing such an arrangement: Thomas and Joan Halleway's chantry, inaugurated in All Saints’ in the 1440s, generated copious materials. In addition to a variety of foundation documents, we have in particular a good series of accounts, from 1463–64 and continuing with only a few gaps until 1540, and these provide a plethora of detail concerning the day-to-day management of the chantry and its endowment. Although surely once compiled for all perpetual chantries, such accounts survive only rarely, but – it must be emphasised – seem usually to have been kept separately from the churchwardens’ parish accounts. The Halleways’ chantry accounts reveal how much care a parish might lavish on such a foundation, for it was clearly of the utmost importance to All Saints’ that it should flourish.

To keep a chaplain continually: the foundation of the Halleways’ chantry

While no will survives for Joan Halleway, Thomas has a will of sorts preserved, not in a properly recognised record of probate but in the All Saints’ deeds collection. It was made on 10 October 1449, which, given that the All Saints’ benefaction list reveals that Thomas died on 13 December 1454, may initially seem strange. A long interval between giving a will and its probate needs no comment, however. Bristol's mercantile community habitually made ‘fail-safe’ wills well in advance of death.

The House of Lords’ vote in October 2015 to delay controversial cuts to tax credits once again prompted politicians and political commentators to question the place of the upper chamber in Britain's ‘unwritten’ constitution. It was not the first time that a frustrated government majority in the Commons raised the pertinent issue of whether an unelected assembly can legitimately defy the will of the people's representatives – and it is unlikely to be the last.

Indeed, for over a century, the House of Lords has been the subject of sporadic scrutiny over its constitutional role, leading to numerous reforms. The rejection in 1909 of the ‘People's Budget’ by the Lords famously led to the Parliament Act of 1911, which denied them a veto over money bills and allowed them to delay public bills for two years only (reduced to one year by a subsequent Parliament Act of 1949). Besides redefining the relationship between the two Houses, however, the 1911 Parliament Act also hinted at, or threatened, more sweeping changes. The Act's introduction announced that the ultimate aim was to replace the Lords with ‘a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis’. Yet, as the Act went on to lament, ‘such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation’. In the intervening period there have been lurches towards reforming the Lords, including the admission of life peers and women (Life Peerages Act, 1958), and a significant reduction in its hereditary membership (House of Lords Act, 1999). In the past decade, proposals to have a wholly or mostly elected House have fallen by the wayside, yet recent clashes between the Commons and Lords suggest a lingering sense that the Lords must either be reformed further or replaced by a new chamber.

Perhaps those considering the future of the upper chamber should pay more attention to its distant past, particularly the turbulent period in British history from 1640 to 1660. After all, during the course of those two decades the House of Lords was re-formed, abolished, replaced by a new second chamber and ultimately restored.

Chaucer is the poet of unrealized endings; Chaucer is the Ovidian who habitually omits Ovidian metamorphoses; Chaucer is the father of English poetry. This essay argues that these critical commonplaces, notwithstanding their continued relevance and heuristic value, might all profitably be qualified, and that the Book of the Duchess, especially in its narrative of Ceyx and Alcyone, provides occasion to do so. Represented in Ovid's Metamorphoses, rewritten in Chaucer's Duchess, recast in Spenser's Daphnaida, Alcyone comprises part of a literary history linked around the grave: its connective powers, its memorial capacities, its metafictional possibilities. Ovid's Alcyone, envisaging the inscription on her own tomb, has a previously underexplored connection with the desperate lovers of the Heroides, and, as I suggest in part I, it shapes Chaucer's decision to excise her avian transformation from his retelling of the story. He refrains from faithfully representing the traditional Ovidian metamorphosis, but this, as the link with the Heroides implies, may attest his affinity with an earlier model in Ovid's career. Alcyone's plan for her tomb, further, marks in Ovid a potential but unfulfilled conclusion, and though Chaucer doesn't afford it to Alcyone herself, he incorporates its memorializing spirit into his dream about the bereaved Black Knight. The poet of endings finds an unrealized ending already in his predecessor, and transforms it into an artistic analogy between the monumental grave for the dead Blanche of Lancaster, constructed contemporaneously in St Paul's cathedral, and the monumental tribute for the dead White, constructed figuratively in his elegy. Spenser in Daphnaida, as I show in part II, draws on both Ovid and Chaucer in making a grave into what Robert R. Edwards would call a poetic emblem: ‘a self-reflexive statement about poetic art’ and its place in a literary tradition. With another epigraphic inscription, this one imagined by a newly male Alcyon, Spenser generates a transhistorical connection among several poems that doesn't rely solely on structures of genealogy or metaphors of literary paternity. His imitation of Chaucer, the father of English poetry, figures less as the descent from parent to child than as the touch between past and present.

The early thirteenth century saw the intersection of several crusading ventures and European wars. In Greece, a crusade against Christians had produced a new but shaky empire facing external and internal threats, which continued to call, in vain, for support from the West. In 1208 Innocent III launched another crusade against Christians, this time nearer home. The story of the Albigensian Crusade is well known, and still resonates today. A French army under Simon de Montfort headed south, sacking Beziers, massacring its population, occupying Carcassonne and burning heretics. Occitan resistance to Simon de Montfort's army fell apart at the battle of Muret, on 12 September 1213, with the death of Peter II of Aragon. Then three years after proclaiming the Albigensian Crusade, in 1211, Innocent ordered the preaching of a new crusade in Spain, which resulted in the stunning Christian victory over the Moors in July the following year at Las Navas de Tolosa. Meanwhile at the end of 1211 or the beginning of 1212 Frederick II laid claim to the Holy Roman Empire and joined Philip Augustus of France in his war against John of England and the then Holy Roman Emperor, Otto IV of Brunswick. The war culminated in the battle of Bouvines on 27 July 1214, marking the permanent English loss of Brittany and Normandy and Frederick's acquisition of the imperial crown. And five months before the battle of Muret, to launch a new crusade to the Holy Land, the pope issued his great crusade encyclical Quia major, which was to be the main focus of the Lateran council held in 1215. During the second half of April and early May 1213 copies of this supreme example of papal crusade propaganda were issued to almost all the provinces of Latin Christendom. Then at the 1215 council sentence was pronounced on Raymond VI of Toulouse, depriving him definitively of his lands and provisionally sequestering those of the count of Foix.

When Innocent died on 16 July 1216, Honorius III enthusiastically took over his predecessor's programme. From late 1217 crusaders began to arrive in Acre in dribs and drabs, and the army eventually made its way to Damietta, which surrendered to the crusaders in August 1218.

After the defeat at Gaza in November 1239 Thibaut withdrew to Acre. Meanwhile an-Nasir Da-ud of Kerak responded to the attack on the Muslim caravan by marching on Jerusalem, which he was able to occupy without difficulty, as it was almost completely undefended. The soldiers in the citadel held out for twenty-seven days but surrendered on 7 December 1239. An-Nasir destroyed the fortifications, razing the Tower of David to the ground, and retired to Kerak. Four years later, on 11 August 1244, the Khwarismians in turn swept into Jerusalem, sacking the city, slaughtering the Christian population and breaking into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where they slew some Latin priests who were celebrating Mass, tore the bones of the kings of Jerusalem from their tombs and set the church itself on fire. The Christian forces of Outremer, allied to Muslim armies under an-Nasir and al-Mansur against a common enemy, gathered to repel the Khwarismians under Baibars, who on October 17 crushed them at the disastrous battle at La Forbie (Harbiyah). ‘The Christian army was the largest that Outremer had put into the field since the fatal day of Hattin’: 600 knights, 300 Templars and Hospitallers, a contingent from the Teutonic Order, a proportionate number of sergeants and foot soldiers. Within a few hours the whole Frankish army was destroyed. Some 5,000 were dead; 800 prisoners were led off to Egypt. ‘Only at Hattin had the losses been greater.’ On 27 November the bishop of Beirut sailed from Acre to tell the princes of the West that ‘reinforcements must be sent if the whole kingdom were not to perish’.

The Occitan uprising of 1242

Meanwhile, those in the Languedoc suffering the consquences of the Albigensian Crusade had every reason to question the idea of crusading, and had indeed done so in the earlier stages of the French invasion. As a result of defeat in the Albigensian crusade, Raymond VII of Toulouse had been forced to accept the humiliating Treaty of Paris of 1229, which stipulated that if he produced no male heir all his lands would revert to the king of France through the marriage of Louis IX's brother Alphonse to Raymond's only daughter, Jeanne. For years the count sought to re-establish his position, hesitantly and unsuccessfully, by asserting his claims on Provence.

We have seen that Rodó was raised in a national context influenced by spiritualist and idealist philosophy and within politically turbulent times that were later followed by a period of stable democratic institutions which he himself helped to establish. Privately, his home provided both liberal ideas and a strong Catholic faith that were to leave a mark on Rodó as he grew up and became an adult. Signs of a subliminal religiosity beyond church dogma continued to his very last days – something that has not been recognized in received criticism of his work. It is argued here that this religious side of Rodó, which can be seen explicitly in his private writings about poetry, ethics and sexuality, provides the main explanation behind his stance in Liberalismo y jacobinismo.

Rodó's entry into public writing involved close links with some of the great Hispanic intellectuals of the time, including Leopoldo Alas (Clarín) and Rubén Darío, on both of whom he wrote insightful criticism; he co-edited an important literary journal and taught a wide-ranging course on world literature at the national university; during this time, the last lustrum of the nineteenth century, he acquired a remarkable literary knowledge and sharpened his understanding of idealism. This preparation fed into his most famous work, Ariel, a book which, as we noted in Chapters 4 and 10, inspired a movement which in many ways still lives, as signs of Arielism – a tendency to seek and respect high standards in ethics and aesthetics – can be seen in many spheres of life today, both in Uruguay and beyond. In other chapters, we have covered Rodó's defence of consensual politics; his advice to both individuals and nations to pursue vocation and live a good, ethical life; his role as a public intellectual both nationally and in the Spanish-speaking world as a whole; and his wish for a relationship with Europe and the United States based on dignity and equality.

We have demonstrated that the received image of the author as elitist and detached from the real world has no justification. Instead, Rodó displays a deep concern for the well-being of all in society and even proposes positive discrimination, avant la lettre. His democratic convictions led him to confront the most powerful politician of his time and one of the most impressive of modern history anywhere.

Darfur is the westernmost region of Sudan and it extends over an area of approximately 500,000 square kilometres. Since the split of Sudan into two countries in 2011, Darfur remains the largest region of the Republic of Sudan. Like the seceding Southern Sudan region, it has also suffered prolonged armed conflict and bitter civil strife for decades, the most violent being the recent Darfuri insurgency against the National Congress Party government in Sudan. This insurgency started in early 2003 and has continued to date although active insurgency has subsided especially following the most recent battles in which the insurgents suffered heavy losses.

Like those of their southern counterparts, Darfur insurgencies were triggered by the domestic political approach to distributing power and wealth in the country. Using this approach, the riverine ruling and governing elites pursued discriminatory policies whereby the central and northern regions were favoured, leading to their economic domination and cultural hegemony being solidified to the disadvantage and negligence of the vast majority of the peripheral regions. The insurgents had seen a succession of peaceful lobbying and activism either unanswered and/or dubbed racist or subnational (geographic), which left them with no other option but to take up arms in order to seek out a just share of the wealth and power of the country, and end the patronising and discriminatory approaches and policies.

The independent Sudanese central government did not take into account the possibility that peaceful lobbying could change into boisterous and violent trends at a time when simple pre-emptive constitutionally mandated measures could have been put in place to enable justice and equality as requested by the activists (Khalid, 2009, p. 39). In fact, the current central government rejected the activists’ demands outright, and substituted condemnation for persuasion, thus refusing from the beginning to engage in dialogue and negotiation in order to redress grievances and settle differences. This approach inescapably pushed the peaceful activists to lurch further into a fully armed struggle by 2003. Systematic attacks were then launched on government strategic assets such as al-Fashir airport, which were then met with a vicious government onslaught that killed and devastated vast populations in the rural conflict zones.

From the All Saints’ Church Book [ASB 1, p. 14], itemising the Halleways’ benefactions.

Thomas Hallewey, that died 13 day of December Anno Domini 1454, and Joan his wife, that died the first day of March Anno Domini 1455, both lie buried by the Cross altar under the great stone joined to the?Greese.

In primis they founded 1 chantry in the said church in perpetuity [added:] as it appears by the mortifications expressed and by their composition there ordered.

Item they gave forever to find the lamp before the precious sacrament in the choir – 8s.

Item they gave forever for one chamber that the said priest dwelled in, the which they built in the churchyard at their own cost – 6s. 8d.

Item they gave unto the said church 1 worshipful jewel with 2 angels called a monstrance to bear the precious sacrament with divers relics [en]closed in the same, of 57. ozs.

Item they gave one Mass book to the high altar.

Item they ordained 1 bell to be rung daily to Mass, and hung him and enclosed the rope in one case of lead for all manner?wedryngs.

Item they gave to the best suit of vestments – ￡20.

Item they gave to the building of the Cross Aisle – ￡20.

Item moreover most well willed to all good works of the church to oversee the repairs of the church 4 times a year going in his coat. [Added:] Mayor and after he was mayor.

Item they made the seats in the church before St Dunstan's altar, p'c – ￡3.

THIS chapter explores the contributions that four widows made towards All Saints’ to show how much parishioners might achieve when their understanding of the Church's penitential requirements found expression in the strong, shared urge to improve communal finances and amenities. Relatively few late medieval wills survive for women: in general, the proportion rarely exceeds 10 per cent in any surviving sample; by contrast, and simple good luck, women's wills constitute over 20 per cent of the collection for All Saints’ before the Reformation. These widows not only have surviving wills but valuable additional material also exists, found both in the Church Book's benefaction list and in the parish deed collection. All four women were wealthy and, as a result, their generosity may not be typical. Nevertheless, each of their examples – considered in turn – demonstrates how a widow serving as an executrix might prove far more adventurous than anything in either her own or her husband's will, even if we are lucky enough to have both, might lead us to assume or predict. If we could factor in the devotional investment that widows undertook, possibly as a matter of routine, our evaluation of lay achievement before the Reformation would almost certainly need substantial ‘upward’ revision.

Widows had been important benefactors before the fifteenth century. Alice Halye, who died in 1261, devised the parish her house, known as the Green Lattice, sited on the west side of the High Street slightly to the south of All Saints’ church. She had done this, as explained in her will,