The Origins of the Office of Coroner

1958 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 85-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. F. Hunnisett
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Edward Ii ◽  
Extant Version ◽  
Widespread Belief ◽  
Dead Bodies ◽  
King Alfred ◽  
Legal Writers

ONLY a hundred years ago the question whether or not there had been coroners in Roman Britain could still be seriously discussed, for two pieces of evidence had created a widespread belief that they had existed long before the Conquest. The Mirror of Justices, a thirteenth-century treatise, credits king Alfred with the appointment of coroners and sheriffs in every county, and a rhyming charter, purporting to have been granted by Athelstan to Beverley Minster, restricts the holding of inquests upon dead bodies within its liberty to its own bailiffs, specifically excluding any ‘other coroner’. Later legal writers, especially Coke, strengthened and prolonged the authority of The Mirror of Justices: they unquestioningly accepted the section on the coroner and embodied it in their works. Maitland, however, has brilliantly exposed the wilful mendacity of its author. The rhyming charter is an obvious forgery; the earliest extant version of it has been attributed on palaeographical and linguistic grounds to the reign of Edward II, when it was probably composed.

Invasion, Explanation, and Responsibility in Anglo-Saxon England

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily A. Winkler
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
The People ◽  
Key Events ◽  
King Alfred

Chapter 3 begins by providing an overview of the key events of eleventh-century England, to serve as a guide for comparing and evaluating both contemporary and twelfth-century retellings of this narrative. It then goes back in time to examine Anglo-Saxon models for leadership from the time of Gildas (writing in post-Roman Britain) and Bede, up to the last versions of ASC written in the eleventh century. The chapter discusses sources from the reign of King Alfred, in which we find early glimmers of the tensions among the responsibilities of kings which occur in a more pronounced fashion in the twelfth century. In considering the immediate reaction to each eleventh-century conquest, it explains that historians in late eleventh-century England saw themselves, the people, and their kings as victims of conquest, and that historians at the time explained the disasters of invasion by employing traditional models of collective sin and providential will.

The Social Origins and Provenance of the English Bishops during the Reign of Edward II

1959 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 51-79
Author(s):  
K. Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Early Career ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Origins ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Edward Ii ◽  
The Social ◽  
Complete Study ◽  
History Of

During the last twenty or twenty-five years medieval historians have been much interested in the composition of the English episcopate. A number of studies of it have been published on periods ranging from the eleventh to the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. A further paper might well seem superfluous. My reason for offering one is that most previous writers have concentrated on analysing the professional circles from which the bishops were drawn, and suggesting the influences which their early careers as royal clerks, university masters and students, secular or regular clergy, may have had on their later work as bishops. They have shown comparatively little interest in their social background and provenance, except for those bishops who belonged to magnate families. Some years ago, when working on the political activities of Edward II's bishops, it seemed to me that social origins, family connexions and provenance might in a number of cases have had at least as much influence on a bishop's attitude to politics as his early career. I there fore collected information about the origins and provenance of these bishops. I now think that a rather more careful and complete study of this subject might throw further light not only on the political history of the reign, but on other problems connected with the character and work of the English episcopate. There is a general impression that in England in the later middle ages the bishops' ties with their dioceses were becoming less close, and that they were normally spending less time in diocesan work than their predecessors in the thirteenth century.

O. G. S. Crawford

Antiquity ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 50 (200) ◽  
pp. 185-186
Author(s):  
Stuart Piggott
Keyword(s):  
Generation Gap ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Ordnance Survey ◽  
Evening News ◽  
First Time

In June 1926 my father, a master at the school in Hampshire in which I was an idle and unedifying pupil, received a letter from the Archaeology Officer of the Ordnance Survey in Southampton, asking for details of a new Romano-British site at West Harting, on the downs just across the county boundary in Sussex. Crawford was collecting material for the second edition of the 0s Roman Britain map: my proud discovery of sherds in moleheaps and rabbit-scrapes had found its way into the parish magazine and thence to the Portsmouth Evening News where it had been spotted by OGSC, and so the letter was really for me. Correspondence followed; the next year, in Southampton with my parents en route for a holiday in France, I was able to meet him for the first time. The Generation Gap had not then been invented, and we liked one another from the start, and from then on OGS (as we were all later to call him) took upon himself to be my archaeological godfather.

Race and the Epigenetics of Memory

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela Soto Laveaga
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Dna Analysis ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Neural Function ◽  
Social Constructions ◽  
Race Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
Black Bodies ◽  
Dead Bodies ◽  
Lasting Change

In my brief response to Terence Keel’s essay “Race on Both Sides of the Razor,” I focus on something as pertinent as alleles and social construction: how we write history and how we memorialize the past. Current DNA analysis promises to remap our past and interrogate certainties that we have taken for granted. For the purposes of this commentary I call this displacing of known histories the epigenetics of memory. Just as environmental stimuli rouse epigenetic mechanisms to produce lasting change in behavior and neural function, the unearthing of forgotten bodies, forgotten lives, has a measurable effect on how we act and think and what we believe. The act of writing history, memorializing the lives of others, is a stimulus that reshapes who and what we are. We cannot disentangle the discussion about the social construction of race and biological determinism from the ways in which we have written—and must write going forward—about race. To the debate about social construction and biological variation we must add the heft of historical context, which allows us to place these two ideas in dialogue with each other. Consequently, before addressing the themes in Keel’s provocative opening essay and John Hartigan’s response, I speak about dead bodies—specifically, cemeteries for Black bodies. Three examples—one each from Atlanta, Georgia; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Mexico—illustrate how dead bodies must enter our current debates about race, science, and social constructions. 

Relation of the Saccasa?khepa??k? Called S?ratthas?lin? to the Vinayavinicchaya??k? Called Vinayas?ratthasand?pan?

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 189-223
Author(s):  
Petra Kieffer-Pülz
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Present Contribution ◽  
The Common ◽  
Literary Histories ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Parallel Texts

The present contribution suggests the common authorship of three P?li commentaries of the twelfth/thirteenth centuries CE, namely the Vinayavinicchaya??k? called Vinayas?ratthasand?pan? (less probably Vinayatthas?rasand?pan?), the Uttaravinicchaya??k? called L?natthappak?san?, and the Saccasa?khepa??k? called S?ratthas?lin?. The information collected from these three commentaries themselves and from P?li literary histories concerning these three texts leads to the second quarter of the thirteenth century CE as the period of their origination. The data from parallel texts explicitly stated to having been written by V?cissara Thera in the texts themselves render it possible to establish with a high degree of probability V?cissara Thera as their author.

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