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PRISTINA LIBERTAS: LIBERTY AND THE ANGLO-SAXONS REVISITED1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2005

Julia Crick
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Abstract

The association between liberty and the Anglo-Saxons has been rendered mythical by later retellings, both in the Middle Ages and afterwards. This later history notwithstanding, it is argued here that liberty occupied a significant place in the early English documentary record. Originally part of the cultural and linguistic inheritance from late antiquity, the notion of liberty was deployed by English churchmen in defence of monastic freedom from the eighth century onwards, creating an archival legacy which was rewritten and imitated in later centuries, becoming fixed in institutional memory as fiscal and legal freedoms bestowed on the populations of monasteries and towns by pre-Conquest kings.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 14 , December 2004 , pp. 47 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society2004

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References

1 Versions of this essay were presented at seminars in Cambridge and Oxford in November 2000 and June 2002. Its final form owes much to questions, comments and advice offered by members of the audience at all three public readings. In addition I owe particular thanks to Jonathan Barry, Rosamond Faith, Nicholas Orme and Susan Reynolds who guided me on specific points, and to Sarah Hamilton, Bruce O'Brien, Julia Smith and Alexandra Walsham, who generously read drafts, shared expertise and provided strategic advice.