This volume of fifteen essays for our much-loved and admired Fellow Ann Williams is unusually cohesive for a Festschrift. It could easily be a volume of Anglo-Norman Studies to which Ann has made several important contributions. The papers take their lead from Ann's own work, and most acknowledge a direct debt to or inspiration from what she has written. The essays also follow Ann's example in their scrupulous attention to detail and close reading of texts. The main themes can be summarised as people, places and primary sources either side of the Norman Conquest. Prosopographical reviews and studies of significant individuals predominate, and reflect Ann's own significant contributions to medieval biography. There are papers on the thegnly family of the Swarts (Lucy Marten), Kentish moneyers (Hirokazu Tsurushima), Wace (Valentine Fallan and Judith Everard), Wulfric Spott (Charles Insley), Eustace ii of Boulogne (Sally Harvey), Robert of Torigni (David Bates) and the English lords of Lincolnshire post-1066 (David Roffe). William Aird provides a more general overview of the problems facing the modern writer of medieval biography, but also argues that even fragmentary lives are necessary for making sense of the past. The ‘biographical’ papers provide evidence to illustrate his claim, and add to, among other topics, our understanding of the impact of major events on individuals and their families and of the dynamics of power.
Vanessa King and Pamela Taylor use charter evidence to explore respectively the early history of the monastery of Bredon (Worcs) and the Hundred of Edmonton (Middx). Two papers are based around the Bayeux Tapestry. Katherine Keats-Rohan makes a case for Stigand as its commissioner, with Odo of Bayeux as its intended recipient. The number of putative patrons has grown apace in recent years so one might not think there was room for another, but the paper shows how the choice of Stigand could cover all the bases. Mark Hagger explores the theme of lordship and lunching to explain the significance of the Bayeux Tapestry scene of the Normans enjoying some early kebabs soon after their arrival at Pevensey.
Finally, three papers draw on a wide range of medieval and modern sources to provide very interesting overviews of topics that have their origins in the Anglo-Norman period. Simon Keynes looks at what can be discovered about the burial and tomb in St Paul's, London, of Æthelred ii (subject of a biography by Ann) – and says much about other royal Anglo-Saxon burials as well. Emma Mason looks at the afterlife of Earl Waltheof, ending with his supposed arms on a cenotaph of King David of Scotland commissioned in 1600 by Robert Cotton for the church at Conington (Hunts), his manor that was once owned by Waltheof and by David, who had married Waltheof's daughter. Stephen Church ranges even more widely in time in his study of the Exchequer cloth, which was apparently still being bought and used in 1834 when the Exchequer's role as a department of receipt was finally ended. As he says, ‘it is a remarkable testament to the longevity and stability of English administrative practice’.
This book can be seen as a fitting testament to the remarkable contribution by Ann Williams to historical studies, and to the careers of individual historians, as Stephen Church makes clear in a prefatory appreciation.
