Books by Ryan Lavelle

Collection of source material and crucial interpretations, offering a comprehensive guide to Anglo-Saxon warfare.

First full examination of why and how certain locations were chosen for opposition to power, and the meaning they conveyed.The direct contestation of power played a crucial role in early medieval politics. Such actions, often expressed through violence, reveal much about established authorities, power and lordship. Here the hitherto neglected role of place and landscape in acts of opposition and rebellion is explored for its meaning and significance to the protagonists. The book includes consideration of a range of factors relevant to the choice of location for such events, and examines the declarations and motivations of political actors, from disaffected princes to independently minded nobles, as well as those who responded to rebellion, to show how places and landscapes became used in political disputes. These include both "e;public"e; and "e;private"e;, religious, urban and rural space. Covering a long period in England and northern France, from the late Carolingian period through to the emergence of cross-Channel polities inthe aftermath of the Norman Conquest, this book casts valuable light on the political relations of the early and central Middle Ages. RYAN LAVELLE is Professor of Early Medieval History in the Department of History atthe University of Winchester.

A biography of Aethelred II

This work, focusing on specific categories of royal estates, concentrates on the later Anglo-Saxon period in England (the mid-ninth century to the mid-eleventh AD). These centuries were a formative period in early medieval history, in which a state can be seen to have developed from a small kingdom to take control of lowland Britain, and, indeed, exert political influence over much of the rest of Britain. The area of this study consists of royal lands in the two shires of Hampshire and Dorset as set out in the folios of Domesday Book. Royal estates were lands used to support kings and their immediate retinue, and lands granted by kings to members of the royal family. Lands of royal agents are also examined in this work.