Lordship in the Later Middle Ages: A Round Table Discussion

Abstract Over the last few years, a number of articles have featured in Past and Present on the subject of late medieval lordship. Three were accepted within a four-month period between July and October 2023 (Christian D. Liddy, ‘The Making of Towns, the Making of Polities’; Tristan W. Sharp, ‘Seigneurial Predation in the Late Medieval Feud’; Frederik Buylaert, Thijs Lambrecht, Klaas Van Gelder, and Kaat Cappelle, ‘The Political Economy of Seigneurial Lordship in Flanders’). The three pieces approached the subject in quite different ways, and with very different findings; at the same time, they were clearly talking about the same thing, and all were concerned with assessing more closely what lords took from, and had to offer to, local societies, and their social and/or economic impact. This seemed a good opportunity to hold a workshop to place the articles in conversation with each other in order to identify commonalities, reflect on the wider field, and prompt more general questions. The round table took place on 17 June 2024 at King’s College London. The version presented here is a revised and edited transcript, but aiming to retain the feel of the original oral conversation. A brief opening section introduces the articles to give context to the discussion.