Early modern heraldry was far from a nostalgic remnant from a feudal past. From the Reformation to the French Revolution, aspiring men seized on these signs to position themselves in a changing society, imbuing heraldic tradition with fresh meaning. Whereas post-medieval developments are all too often described in terms of decadence and stifling formality, recent studies rightly stress the dynamic capacity of bearing arms. Heraldic Hierarchies aims to correct former misconceptions. Contributing authors rethink the influence of shifting notions of nobility on armorial display and expand this topic to heraldry’s share in shaping and contesting status. Moreover, addressing a common thread, the volume explores how emerging states turned the heraldic experience into an instrument of power and policy. Contributing to debates on social and noble identity, Heraldic Hierarchies uncovers a vital and surprising aspect of the pre-modern hierarchical world.

Essays from a range of disciplines examine different, but linked aspects of the social organization of Europe from the 13th to 16th centuries.

The Ashgate Research Companion to Popular Culture in Early Modern England is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary examination of current research on popular culture in the early modern era. For the first time a detailed yet wide-ranging consideration of the breadth and scope of early modern popular culture in England is collected in one volume, highlighting the interplay of 'low' and 'high' modes of cultural production (while also questioning the validity of such terminology). The authors examine how popular culture impacted upon people's everyday lives during the period, helping to define how individuals and groups experienced the world. Issues as disparate as popular reading cultures, games, food and drink, time, textiles, religious belief and superstition, and the function of festivals and rituals are discussed. This research companion will be an essential resource for scholars and students of early modern history and culture.

Discussion of display through a range of artefacts and in a variety of contexts: family and lineage, social distinction and aspiration, ceremony and social bonding, and the expression of power and authority. Medieval culture was intensely visual. Although this has long been recognised by art historians and by enthusiasts for particular media, there has been little attempt to study social display as a subject in its own right. And yet, display takes us directly into the values, aspirations and, indeed, anxieties of past societies. In this illustrated volume a group of experts address a series of interrelated themes around the issue of display and do so in a waywhich avoids jargon and overly technical language. Among the themes are family and lineage, social distinction and aspiration, ceremony and social bonding, and the expression of power and authority. The media include monumental effigies, brasses, stained glass, rolls of arms, manuscripts, jewels, plate, seals and coins. Contributors: MAURICE KEEN, DAVID CROUCH, PETER COSS, CAROLINE SHENTON, ADRIAN AILES, FRÉDÉRIQUE LACHAUD, MARIAN CAMPBELL, BRIAN and MOIRA GITTOS, NIGEL SAUL, FIONN PILBROW, CAROLINE BARRON and JOHN WATTS.

This book analyzes the political, aesthetic, moral and religious developments in the period 1606-1660 and discusses the works of Donne, Jonson, Milton and early modern women's writing. Brady combines Literary Theory, social and cultural History, Psychology and Anthropology to produce exciting and original readings of neglected source material.

Heraldry is often seen as a traditional prerogative of the nobility. But it was not just knights, princes, kings, and emperors who bore coats of arms to show off their status in the Middle Ages. The merchants and craftsmen who lived in cities, too, adopted coats of arms and used heraldic customs, including display and destruction, to underline their social importance and to communicate political messages. Medieval burgesses were part of a fascination with heraldry that spread throughout pre-modern society and looked at coats of arms as honoured signs of genealogy and history. Heraldry in Urban Society analyses the perceptions and functions of heraldry in medieval urban societies by drawing on both English- and German-language sources from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries. Despite variations that point to socio-political differences between cities (and their citizens) in the relatively centralized monarchy of medieval England and the more independent-minded urban governments found in the less closely connected Holy Roman Empire, urban heraldry emerges as a versatile and ubiquitous means of multimedia visual communication that spanned medieval Europe. Urban heraldic practices defy assumptions about clearly demarcated social practices that belonged to 'high'/'noble' as opposed to 'low'/'urban' culture. Townspeople's perceptions of coats of arms paralleled those of the nobility, as they readily interpreted and carefully curated them as visual expressions of identity. These perceptions allowed townspeople of all ranks, as well as noble outsiders, to use heraldry and its display - along with its defacement and destruction - in manuscripts, spaces (such as town houses, public monuments, halls, and churches), and performances (like processions and joyous entries) to address perennial problems of urban society in the Middle Ages. The coats of arms of burgesses, guilds, and cities were communicative means of individual and collective representation, social and political legitimization, conducting and resolving conflicts, and the pursuit of elevated status in the urban hierarchy. Likewise, heraldic communication negotiated the all-important relationship between the city and wider, extramural society - from the commercial interests of citizens to their collective ties to the ruler.

A new appraisal of the military careers and activities of soldiers from elite medieval families.