The Bolton Priory Compotus 1286-1325: Together with a Priory Account Roll for 1377-78

by Ian Kershaw (Editor), David M. Smith (Editor)

Most knowledge of medieval monastic economy in England is drawn from the estates of large and wealthy Benedictine establishments in the midlands and south. Bolton Priory was by contrast an Augustinian priory in the Yorkshire dales, modest in size, poorly endowed, located in an unyielding farming region, and faced with daunting financial problems. The Compotus, a unique thousand-page book of the accounts of the Priory, provides comprehensive and rich details of all aspects of its affairs. The Priory's dealings with Italian wool-merchants (to whom it owed heavy debts), the build-up of its estate, the running of its granges, the patterns of household food consumption, and the devastating impact of agricultural crisis compounded by damage inflicted by marauding Scottish raiders, are all fully documented. IAN KERSHAW is Professor of History at the University of Sheffield; DAVID M. SMITH is director of the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, University of York.

650 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Ian Kershaw is a British historian, noted for his biographies of Adolf Hitler.
Ian Kershaw studied at Liverpool (BA) and Oxford (D. Phil). He was a lecturer first in medieval, then in modern, history at the University of Manchester. In 1983-4 he was Visiting Professor of Modern History at the Ruhr University in Bochum, West Germany. From 1987 to 1989 he was Professor of Modern History at the University of Nottingham, and since 1989 has been Professor of Modern History at Sheffield. He is a fellow of the British Academy, of the Royal Historical Society, of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung in Bonn. He retired from academic life in the autumn semester of 2008.