The Bailiffs' Minute Book of Dunwich, 1404-1430
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The Bailiffs' Minute Book of Dunwich, 1404-1430 by Mark Bailey
In 1200 the Suffolk town of Dunwich was one of medieval England's wealthiest ports. However, a succession of marine inundations in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries drastically reduced its size and importance. Evocative descriptions of Dunwich's long struggle against the sea abound, but little has been written about the medieval town itself. The Bailiffs' Minute Book of 1404-30 is the single most substantial and informative document to have survived from the borough's medieval archive. It provides new insights into Dunwich's bitter legal dispute with neighbouring Walberswick, its system of government, the election and payment of its MPs, and the men who administered and financed the town. Of greater importance are the many references to the fortunes and organisation of the fishing industry. The Minute Book also contains a number of detailed tax assessments, revealing how Dunwich, like all local communities, shared the burden of royal lay subsidies. These assessments are among the first of their kind to be published. Mark Bailey introduces the Minute Book, and brings it to a wider audience than that permitted by the medieval Latin of the original - translated here for the present-day reader. The daily life and business of one important Suffolk town in the Middle Ages, revealed in absorbing detail in this book, will be of interest not only to inhabitants of Suffolk and the county's historians, but to a wider readership as well.
An unambigous example of urban decay.. The editor's introduction, which discussed the topography, customs, government and economy of Dunwich in the light of wider debates about the period, is a most valuable contribution to urban history... it is pleasing to have to hand such a source of detail about the practices and problems of a small fifteenth-century town. -- R.H. Britnell * RICARDIAN *
This volume of Suffolk history is so skilfully organized that one can only admire Mark Bailey's attention to detail and understanding the work of an editor...imaginative and endlessly instructive. -- Elaine Clark * ALBION 23/3 *
Valuable information on borough decisions, MPs, freemen, royal tax apportionment, conflicts with Blythburgh and Walberswick, and much else its particular value lies in its full information on the port's fishing activities... a major source for Dunwich and for the fishing industry. * HISTORY *
This volume of Suffolk history is so skilfully organized that one can only admire Mark Bailey's attention to detail and understanding the work of an editor...imaginative and endlessly instructive. -- Elaine Clark * ALBION 23/3 *
Valuable information on borough decisions, MPs, freemen, royal tax apportionment, conflicts with Blythburgh and Walberswick, and much else its particular value lies in its full information on the port's fishing activities... a major source for Dunwich and for the fishing industry. * HISTORY *
MARK BAILEY was recently High Master of St Paul's School, London, and a visiting fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He was previously a fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and is now the Professor of Later Medieval History at the University of East Anglia. His numerous publications include Medieval Suffolk. An economic and social history 1200-1500 (2007) and After the Black Death. Economy, society and the law in fourteenth-century England (2021).
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780851153063 |
| ISBN 10 | 0851153062 |
| Title | The Bailiffs' Minute Book of Dunwich, 1404-1430 |
| Author | Mark Bailey |
| Series | Suffolk Records Society |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Boydell & Brewer Ltd |
| Year published | 1992-08-24 |
| Number of pages | 159 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |