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All Outputs (31)

The household, the citizen, and the city: towards a social history of urban politics in the late Middle Ages (2024)
Journal Article
Liddy, C. D. (2024). The household, the citizen, and the city: towards a social history of urban politics in the late Middle Ages. Social History, 49(3), 261-293. https://doi.org/10.1080/03071022.2024.2351752

Histories of politics in the late medieval European town present a struggle between town oligarchs and town citizens. While the conclusions that historians draw differ, the stakes of politics are the same: exclusion, participation, and representation... Read More about The household, the citizen, and the city: towards a social history of urban politics in the late Middle Ages.

The making of towns, the making of polities: Towns and lords in late medieval Europe (2024)
Journal Article
Liddy, C. (2024). The making of towns, the making of polities: Towns and lords in late medieval Europe. Past & Present: A Journal of Historical Studies, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtad030

The relationship between towns and lords was fundamental both to the making of towns and to the making of polities in the late Middle Ages. The European literature on state growth has led historians to focus on the role of towns in historicizing narr... Read More about The making of towns, the making of polities: Towns and lords in late medieval Europe.

Urban Revolt, Citizenship and Town Politics (2023)
Book Chapter
Liddy, C. D. (in press). Urban Revolt, Citizenship and Town Politics. In P. Lantschner, & M. Prak (Eds.), Cambridge Urban History of Europe, Volume II: Medieval and Early Modern. Cambridge University Press

How should we understand the politics of the pre-modern European town? One way in which we might try to answer this open-ended question is to narrow its terms: did urban politics have its own dynamics, or did it embody wider historical forces? Some s... Read More about Urban Revolt, Citizenship and Town Politics.

Who decides? Urban councils and consensus in the late Middle Ages (2021)
Journal Article
Liddy, C. D. (2021). Who decides? Urban councils and consensus in the late Middle Ages. Social History, 46(4), 406-434. https://doi.org/10.1080/03071022.2021.1967640

The prosaic records of town council meetings are an essential, if problematic, source for historians of late medieval European towns. They are a window on to the concerns, fears and ambitions of urban authorities, yet they have proved especially intr... Read More about Who decides? Urban councils and consensus in the late Middle Ages.

Family, lineage and dynasty in the late medieval city: Re-thinking the English evidence (2019)
Journal Article
Liddy, C. (2020). Family, lineage and dynasty in the late medieval city: Re-thinking the English evidence. Urban History, 47(4), 648-670. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0963926819000671

Ever since the publication in 1948 of Sylvia Thrupp's seminal book, The Merchant Class of Medieval London, successive generations of historians of English cities have advanced two central claims about the distinctiveness of the English urban landscap... Read More about Family, lineage and dynasty in the late medieval city: Re-thinking the English evidence.

Cultures of Surveillance in Late Medieval English Towns: The Monitoring of Speech and the Fear of Revolt (2016)
Book Chapter
Liddy, C. D. (2016). Cultures of Surveillance in Late Medieval English Towns: The Monitoring of Speech and the Fear of Revolt. In J. Firnhaber-Baker, & D. Schoenaers (Eds.), The Routledge history handbook of medieval revolt (311-329). Routledge

The sheriffs, wrote John Carpenter in his 1419 book of the customs of London, ‘are called “the eyes of the mayor”’. They are ‘the eyes of the mayor, watchful and supportive of the responsibilities which the said mayor, as one person, is not able to b... Read More about Cultures of Surveillance in Late Medieval English Towns: The Monitoring of Speech and the Fear of Revolt.

'Sir ye be not kyng': Citizenship and Speech in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (2016)
Journal Article
Liddy, C. D. (2017). 'Sir ye be not kyng': Citizenship and Speech in Late Medieval and Early Modern England. Historical Journal, 60(3), 571-596. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x16000108

Few would argue against the intimate relationship between citizenship and speech in early modern England. Historians of political thought and literary scholars have explored the cultural and political impact of the English Renaissance, which turned s... Read More about 'Sir ye be not kyng': Citizenship and Speech in Late Medieval and Early Modern England.

Urban enclosure riots: Risings of the commons in English towns, 1480-1525 (2014)
Journal Article
Liddy, C. D. (2015). Urban enclosure riots: Risings of the commons in English towns, 1480-1525. Past & Present: A Journal of Historical Studies, 226(1), 41-77. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtu038

The process of enclosure, in which hedges, ditches and gates were erected to extinguish or inhibit common rights to land, is usually associated with agrarian society. The enclosure riot, in which hedges were uprooted, ditches levelled and gates destr... Read More about Urban enclosure riots: Risings of the commons in English towns, 1480-1525.

Urban politics and material culture at the end of the Middle Ages: the Coventry tapestry in St Mary's Hall (2012)
Journal Article
Liddy, C. (2012). Urban politics and material culture at the end of the Middle Ages: the Coventry tapestry in St Mary's Hall. Urban History, 39(2), 203-224. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0963926812000028

This article uses the evidence of the internal decoration and spatial hierarchy of an English town hall to explore the construction of urban oligarchy in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Urban historians have regarded this period as... Read More about Urban politics and material culture at the end of the Middle Ages: the Coventry tapestry in St Mary's Hall.

Political Contract in Late Medieval English Towns (2011)
Book Chapter
Liddy, C. (2011). Political Contract in Late Medieval English Towns. In F. Foronda (Ed.), Avant le Contrat Social: Le Contrat Politique dans l’Occident médiéval XIIIe-XVe siècle (397-416). Publications de la Sorbonne