Jeremy Goldberg | University of York (original) (raw)

Books by Jeremy Goldberg

published by Oxford University Press (Clarendon Press), 1992, but still in print chapters on wom... more published by Oxford University Press (Clarendon Press), 1992, but still in print
chapters on women's work, servanthood, marriage and marriage patterns (including analysis of matrimonial litigation from the Court of York), migration
Larger thesis argues for distinctive patterns of life-cycle service and late marriage for both women and men in the later medieval urban economy driven by the acute labour shortage and consequent demand for new sources of labour in the wake of the Black Death. This provided a brief window of opportunity for women living in towns, both native-born and rural migrants, to exercise rather more agency in regards to decisions about marriage with the result that women may have married later and less often.

published by Manchester University Press, 1995 available online to subscribers to Manchester Med... more published by Manchester University Press, 1995
available online to subscribers to Manchester Medieval Sources Online
Collection of primary sources relating to all aspects of the lives of women below the rank of the aristocracy. Draws upon a wide range of texts from both published and archival sources (including translations of depositions from a number of cases from the ecclesiastical courts). Topics include work, recreation, marriage making, the law, prostitution, devotion etc. Substantial introduction.

published by Arnold, 2004 and currently published by Bloomsbury Not a conventional textbook in t... more published by Arnold, 2004 and currently published by Bloomsbury
Not a conventional textbook in the sense of only summarising existing scholarship, but rather my own overview drawing upon and including my own research and original interpretations. Avoids having a token chapter on women since discussion of women's experience runs through the book and gender is an important analytical consideration.
Maurice Keen's review in English Historical Review concluded 'Goldberg's treatment of his subject is impressively comprehensive, and there is much more illumination of many more topics than there has been space here to review. His book will be a boon to teacher and student alike; the original thinking that has gone into it will ensure that it is also for scholars a stimulus to reappraisal and to further research. It looks set to hold the field for some time as the outstanding survey of late medieval England's social history'.

published by Palgrave, 2008 Offers an exploration of a matrimonial case dated 1366 concerning a ... more published by Palgrave, 2008
Offers an exploration of a matrimonial case dated 1366 concerning a child heiress who was contracted in marriage and subsequently abducted. The case came about when the man she was contracted to applied to the ecclesiastical Court of York for restitution of conjugal rights. In essence the case was a tussle between the girl's mother, who promoted her marriage, and a local lord who, given that her father was dead, claimed wardship over the girl, but whose opposition to the marriage was not designed to protect a girl not yet in her teens -- her precise age was central to the case -- but because as her guardian he would have control over her marriage. The case also represented a tussle in respect of lordship and the ambitions of St Mary's Abbey, York to consolidate their authority in the locality. From the detailed depositions it is apparent that the girl's mother approached the king in person to advance her case. Alice Rouclif, the young heiress, is not herself allowed to speak, but the book attempts to give her a voice. The analysis pays particular attention to the problem of reading deposition evidence. In a review in Speculum the reviewer criticised me for describing a grown man having sex with a young girl as rape and ridiculed my argument that the then abbot of St Mary's could have father children much earlier in his career, but other readers may form their own judgement. This case study is supplemented to two shorter studies of a devote and prosperous widow with her own brewing business who is forced to marry against her will and of another widow who ran a hostelry who is pressed to marry a conman masquerading as a gentleman until her neighbours intervene. The conclusion explores the larger question of consent and women's agency.

Published Articles and Chapters by Jeremy Goldberg

The Library , 1994

Article published in 1994 analyses the evidence of bequests of books noted in a large sample -- s... more Article published in 1994 analyses the evidence of bequests of books noted in a large sample -- some 2,300 -- of wills from the city of York in the later Middle Ages.

Leeds Studies in English, new series, 2014

Made famous in a 1995 article in GLQ by Boyd and Karras, the case of John Rykener, recorded in th... more Made famous in a 1995 article in GLQ by Boyd and Karras, the case of John Rykener, recorded in the Plea and Memoranda Rolls of the City of London has been, with some justification, understood as a rare and remarkable window onto gender and sexuality at the end of the fourteenth century. The cross-dressing male prostitute has generated a lot of interest both on the part of scholars and students, but to date the historicity of the account that purports to record the business of mayor's court has not really been explored. This is despite the obvious oddities of the record: there are no clear charges stated, no outcome recorded, and much of the detail of the case relates to events located outside the jurisdiction of the City of London and hence the mayor's court. This present article is an attempt to grapple with these problems. It explores all aspects of the recorded narrative. The timing is seen as particularly interesting in relation to London's troubled dealings with the crown. In analysing the names and places discussed, numbers of references to the court of Richard II are thrown up. These are then built upon to suggest an alternative reading of the narrative that sees it not as the record of an actual case, but an exercise in biting political satire. (Published 2016 for the 2014 issue.)

Explores cases from the ecclesiastical Court of York to think about how depositions written in ab... more Explores cases from the ecclesiastical Court of York to think about how depositions written in abbreviated Latin might on occasion offer a pornographic literature for the Latin-literate personnel of the Court and how depositions may have been shaped by the recording clerks with this in mind. Incidentally also throws light on the adoption of bed curtains and separate chambers in a later medieval context

Single Life and the City 1200-1900

Much scholarship has focused on the experience of single women in later medieval society. This ch... more Much scholarship has focused on the experience of single women in later medieval society. This chapter tries to ask the same questions of single men. In so doing it poses questions about gender and certain assumptions that have been made about gender difference.

Young Medieval Women, 1999

This chapter in the collection Young Medieval Women edited by Katherine Lewis, Noel James and Kim... more This chapter in the collection Young Medieval Women edited by Katherine Lewis, Noel James and Kim Phillips tries to understand the relative absence of evidence for regulation of prostitution in later medieval England and indeed north-western Europe more generally against the relative abundance of evidence for other parts of Continental Europe.

Late Medieval English towns and cities regularly cultivated good relations with a regional magnat... more Late Medieval English towns and cities regularly cultivated good relations with a regional magnate in the expectation that he would help protect the interests of the civic governors, but the relationship was always reciprocal. Th e magnate expected the favour to be returned. Richard of Gloucester, who ascended the throne in 1483 aft er a brilliant and ruthless coup in which his major political opponents were eliminated in short order and his late brother's heir was bastardised and " disappeared, " cultivated just such a relationship with the city of York. Th e price Richard demanded was de facto control over the government of the city. When he ascended the throne the city laid on an elaborate programme of welcome, the full significance of which has not hitherto been realised. The brief notice of one Cherrylips, a local sex worker, in the city records on the eve of Richard's entry into the city might well go unremarked, but this article seeks to demonstrate that the anxieties she provoked and the city's reaction to her in fact speak volumes of the way in which the city governors had become the (more or less willing) puppets and mouthpieces for the new regime.

WerkstattGeschichte, 63, Dec 2013

Article seeks to make sense of the work performed by miracle narratives and the verdicts offered ... more Article seeks to make sense of the work performed by miracle narratives and the verdicts offered in coroners' courts in respect of children who died as the result of accidents (and in the case of the miracle narratives were subsequently revived). Particular attention is paid to the example of child drownings. The article is critical of interpretations that see these sources as offering a simple mirror of the actual frequency of such accidents and seeks instead to understand the reasons behind differing narrative strategies.

Discusses evidence for a lexicon of childhood to suggest some gendered understandings that underp... more Discusses evidence for a lexicon of childhood to suggest some gendered understandings that underpin the way words for children were deployed and revisits the use of coroners' court verdicts for the study of childhood. This last critiques Hanawalt's work and suggests that benign neglect characterised childrearing in later medieval England.

Medieval Domesticity: Home, Housing and Household in Medieval England, edited by M. Kowaleski and P. J. P. Goldberg, 124-144, 2008

Chapter uses probate inventories for people below the rank of gentry to explore patterns of consu... more Chapter uses probate inventories for people below the rank of gentry to explore patterns of consumption. It explores expenditure on bedding and kitchen equipment and on possessions within and outside the house. Particular notice is given to cushions and to silver spoons, both of which appear as markers of a particular bourgeois domesticity that differs markedly from a peasant pattern that privileges the possession of livestock and farm tools.

This article uses “The Ballad of the Tyrannical Husband,” a late fifteenth-century text that asso... more This article uses “The Ballad of the Tyrannical Husband,” a late fifteenth-century text that associates men with the outdoors and women with the home and the domestic, as a springboard for a comparative analysis of rural and urban housing to explore questions concerning the gender division of space over the course of the English later Middle Ages. The article questions the value of rigid models of gender difference that both normative texts and numbers of modern scholars propose. Drawing upon extant late medieval probate inventories and archaeological evidence, it explores rather different cultural norms between peasant and bourgeois society as reflected in the physical fabric and furnishings of homes. It further considers differences between different levels of society and over time. The article advocates an interdisciplinary methodology and the exploitation of narrative sources, literary or otherwise, to interrogate social practice and the meanings of space.

Published in 1991 this article critiques the use of coroners' rolls and manor court rolls as sour... more Published in 1991 this article critiques the use of coroners' rolls and manor court rolls as sources for the study of the economic contribution of English women in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. These critiques were prompted by a reading of Hanawalt's The Ties that Bound, Bennett's Women in the Medieval English Countryside and Hilton's article 'Lords, Burgesses and Hucksters'..

This chapter in a collection on the later medieval urban household problematizes the artisanal wo... more This chapter in a collection on the later medieval urban household problematizes the artisanal workshop / household as the rigidly hierarchical and monolithic unit that contemporary records would have us believe. Many artisanal households depended on a variety of occupations and activities co-existing. Likewise the patriarchal authority of the householder / master / husband needs to be set against the very significant role played by wives.

Explores the historiography of writing on women and the urban economy in later medieval England a... more Explores the historiography of writing on women and the urban economy in later medieval England and argues that quantitative approaches can only take us so far. The article advocates a return to the spirit of such pioneering scholars as Annie Abram and Eileen Power and a much greater attention to the reading and analysis of qualitative evidence.

Women and Work in Premodern Europe, 2018

Though there is now a fairly extensive scholarship on the lives of medieval women and particular ... more Though there is now a fairly extensive scholarship on the lives of medieval women and particular attention has been paid to women’s work, this has conventionally been understood in rather narrow terms. This present chapter seeks to move beyond an exploration of paid employment or the public economy. It seeks rather to offer a holistic analysis of the activities of the medieval bourgeois housewife. Here a whole range of activities necessary for the effective functioning of the home as both an emotional and an economic entity are seen as integral to the role of the bourgeois wife. She was simultaneously wife, sexual partner, mother, domestic manager, and economic partner. She it was who directed the female servants, supervised in her husband’s absence, ensured meals were cooked, floors cleaned, utensils washed, children comforted and clothed, guest catered for, and husbands kept emotionally and sexually satisfied. The very success of the household and the family trade depended or her working in partnership with her husband, but whilst he may have been the public face of the family business, it is she who made the family home.

Concepts and Patterns of Service in the later Middle Ages, 2000

This chapter from a collection on service in the Later Middle Ages tries to grapple how people at... more This chapter from a collection on service in the Later Middle Ages tries to grapple how people at the time actually understood the term 'servant' and what it was to be a servant in the narrower sense of working for and living with an employer. The page extent is 1-20.

'We are All Servants': The Diversity of Service in Premodern Europe (1000-1700), 2022

Building upon previous work on servanthood in later medieval England, this study makes particular... more Building upon previous work on servanthood in later medieval England, this study makes particular use of deposition evidence to explore the nature of the work of servants and their ties to their employers. It argues that servants were more often related by blood or marriage to their employers than has hitherto been noticed. This chapter was published in a collection edited by Isabelle Cochelin and Diane Wolfthal published by the Toronto Centre for Rennaissance and Reformation Studies.

The Library , 1994

Leeds Studies in English, new series, 2014

Single Life and the City 1200-1900

Young Medieval Women, 1999

WerkstattGeschichte, 63, Dec 2013

Medieval Domesticity: Home, Housing and Household in Medieval England, edited by M. Kowaleski and P. J. P. Goldberg, 124-144, 2008

Women and Work in Premodern Europe, 2018

Concepts and Patterns of Service in the later Middle Ages, 2000

'We are All Servants': The Diversity of Service in Premodern Europe (1000-1700), 2022

History Compass, 2007

Home is one of the most emotive words in any language but our experience of being at home is hist... more Home is one of the most emotive words in any language but our experience of being at home is historically and culturally specific. This article reviews a range of recent scholarship on the later medieval English urban household in the disciplines of History, Literary criticism and Archaeology. It has been composed collaboratively by the members of the York Medieval Household Research Group. After an introduction tracing the wider context in which all histories of domesticity are located, we focus in on our particular period through a close study of contemporary later medieval vocabularies of homeliness. This is followed by a sequence of short thematic sections addressing the historiography of different aspects the demographic structure, ideological construction and daily and emotional life of the household as reflected in the current interests of members of the group.

History Compass, 2007

Published in Pragmatic Utopias: Ideals and Communities 1200-1630, edited by R. Horrox and S. Rees... more Published in Pragmatic Utopias: Ideals and Communities 1200-1630, edited by R. Horrox and S. Rees Jones. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Explores the socio-economic. cultural and political contexts for the extraordinary series of related ordinances enacted in Coventry in 1492 designed to bring the moral reform of society including the regulation of single women and the eradication of prostitution. It suggests that a particular political faction comprising numbers of slightly younger men who had sympathies with Lollard ideology briefly gained the ascendant in the town government and that the ordinances enacted then were central to their programme.

Town Courts and Urban Society in Late Medieval England, 1250-1500, 2019

This chapter explores the fictive nature of later medieval English court records through a small ... more This chapter explores the fictive nature of later medieval English court records through a small number of cases studies drawn from different jurisdictions. [Note that the title should actually read 'The Holy Water Clerk of Nottingham' -- I only realised his actual status at a late stage and failed to make all the necessary changes.]

Discusses the case of John Rykener, the 'transvestite male prostitute' of later fourteenth-centur... more Discusses the case of John Rykener, the 'transvestite male prostitute' of later fourteenth-century London. This is a much briefer of the article in Leeds Studies in English on the same theme.

This paper, given at the Leeds IMC for 2024, is concerned with servants, specifically lifecycle s... more This paper, given at the Leeds IMC for 2024, is concerned with servants, specifically lifecycle servants, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries using probate evidence for the city of York, but also Church court material from the diocese and even the ecclesiastical Province of York. It seeks to explore kinship relationships between servants and employers and also between servants employed in the same household.

Paper first given at « Clivages sociaux et modes de domination dans les villes européennes des X... more Paper first given at « Clivages sociaux et modes de domination dans les villes européennes des XIIIe-XVe siècles », École Normale Supérieure, Paris, June 2013. The text here is modestly revised and prepared for publication (still forthcoming?)

This paper initially contrasts the comparatively rich demographic evidence from late medieval Tuscany and the 1427 catasto in particular with the rather slighter evidence of the English poll taxes of the late fourteenth century. In so doing it remarks the evidence for cultural diversity in marriage patterns across Europe, and in particular the Mediterranean and the north-west European marriage patterns, but also diversity even within those regions. Thus the English aristocracy manifest a distinctive marriage regime more like the Mediterranean model than that for other levels of society. Larger regional patterns can also sometimes be noticed in the prevalence of particular household forms. The argument here is that the nuclear household form that prevailed for English non-aristocratic households at the time of the poll taxes may have evolved from something more akin to a stem system in the previous century. Similarly the north-western marriage pattern is seen as an even more recent development that, though fairly universal by the early modern era, was characteristic only of urban society at the time of the poll taxes. This marriage regime, it is suggested, emerged or was accelerated as a consequence of the advent of plague and the twin effects of a growth in demand for live-in adolescent servants as an inexpensive and dependable source of labour and of an expansion in the demand for female labour. The paper finally observes the emergence of distinctive forms of housing in later medieval English towns that mirrored the needs of distinctive structures of cohabitation and manifested distinctive patterns of consumption.

Depositions from matrimonial litigation are a compellingly, if deceptively, vivid source for the ... more Depositions from matrimonial litigation are a compellingly, if
deceptively, vivid source for the words, sentiments and
circumstances surrounding courtship and marriage making. Such
evidence is both coloured and shaped by the power dynamics of
relations between the genders, between the individual and the
collective of family, peer group and community, by the constraints
of canon law, and the complexities of court procedure and
recording practice. Drawing upon evidence from the dioceses of
York and London before 1500 this paper will attempt to explore two
related questions. First, how far we can read erotic love or simply
lust out of the material? Second, can we discern the degree to
which a romantic discourse might have facilitated the expression
of desire or alternatively provided a veneer of respectability to the
business of transferring women from paternal to marital control?

Paper explores the treatment of childhood in respect of biographies of women -- in essence almost... more Paper explores the treatment of childhood in respect of biographies of women -- in essence almost exclusively aristocratic women -- listed for the later medieval era in the then (2005) newly published Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Earlier version given at colloquium on women in the pre-modern economy held in Leuven, this modes... more Earlier version given at colloquium on women in the pre-modern economy held in Leuven, this modestly revised version was given at 'Medieval Women Revisited', Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, 7-9 July 2016

Paper reviews the debate about the 'status' of women in the economies of later medieval England and Europe during the later Middle Ages. It suggests some distinctive elements of the English experience after the Black Death and offers some critical thought on the value on the meaning of statistical evidence and trends.