Monthly Archives: May 2014

Recent Reads: May 2014

Very much enjoyed the following:

P.R. Cavill’s article in the latest EHR, ‘Heresy, Law and the State: forfeiture in medieval and early modern England’ –  which avoids the more obvious issue of burnings and looks at the practice and meaning of introducing and upholding property forfeiture for heresy in this period.

A Kirkham and C Warr, Wounds in the Middle Ages (Ashgate, 2014), which brings together medical, military, gender, business and theological aspects of history in a series of papers based on wounds. It is always admirable when a collection of essays manages to represent something more than the sum of its parts, and that is certainly the case here. It was an interesting and imaginative choice of subject, and the collection shows that, despite the various pressures, there is some excellent medieval scholarship about.

Top Medieval Surnames Part 1

Found in a petition at the National Archives (SC 8/56/2787) a man called ‘Adam Halfnakede’. A rather spoilsportishly serious book of surnames (C.W.E. Bardsley, A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames, p. 349) suggests it might be a corruption of ‘Halfacre’, rather than something to do with medieval streaking. There is also a place called ‘Halfnaked’ in Sussex (See PROB 11/29/240), which may have been the origin of the name, (must have got a bit chilly at times).

13/5/2014