There then follow ‘the more interpretative chapters’, five in number, which look at the relationships between land and men, the thegnly residence, display, and pastimes. ‘The first three chapters introduce the various layers of aristocratic society’ (earls, stallers, and the thegns who formed the county communities), with each chapter including two or three exemplars to give a sense of each rank’s role, obligations, and limitations. Williams explains that she wants here to present Old English aristocrats ‘in their prime’, that is in the period between 8 – although there is more on the 11th century than the 10th, due to the nature of the surviving evidence. Her expertise on Domesday and the prosopography of the Anglo-Saxon elite is clear throughout, and the book also distils much of her earlier work, along with important studies by scholars such as Stephen Baxter, Robin Fleming, Naomi Sykes, and Robert Liddiard, to create a wide-ranging, rich, and detailed overview of these lords, their environment, and trappings.
This work and her deep knowledge of the period, its mechanics, its sources, and its characters makes Williams the ideal person to have authored this expository survey. 500–1066 and Æthelred the Unready: The Ill-Counselled King (1), not to mention numerous articles.
Ann Williams is the author of The English and the Norman Conquest, Kingship and Government in Pre-Conquest England c. This is an accessible and engaging book about the ranks, obligations, and image of the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy, written by one of the leading historians of the period.
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