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The Kingdom of the Scots book cover
The Kingdom of the Scots
Government, church and society from the eleventh to the fourteenth century
1973
First Published
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352
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This book explores the formative period when Scotland acquired the characteristics that enabled it to enter fully into the comity of medieval Christendom. These included a monarchy of a recognisably continental type, a feudal organisation of aristocratic landholding and military service, national boundaries, and a body of settled law and custom. By the end of the thirteenth century Scotland had a church based on territorial dioceses and parishes, centres of learning including monastic houses representing the main orders of western Europe, and thriving urban communities whose economic power counterbalanced the aristocracy's. How and to what effect these characteristics were acquired are the main subjects of the book.After the introduction eighteen chapters are divided into three parts devoted to government, church and society. The volume comprises some of the most important as well as the most consistently readable work ever published on medieval Scotland. First published in 1973, it is now reissued
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Author

G.W.S. Barrow
G.W.S. Barrow
Author · 3 books

Geoffrey Wallis Steuart Barrow (born 1924) DLitt FBA FRSE is a British historian and academic. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Edinburgh, and arguably the most prominent Scottish medievalist of the last century. The son of Charles Embleton Barrow and Marjorie née Stuart, he was born on 28 November 1924, at Headingley near Leeds. Barrow attended St Edward’s School, Oxford, and Inverness Royal Academy, moving onto the University of St Andrews and Pembroke College, Oxford. He became Lecturer in History at University College, London in 1950, remaining there until 1961 when he became Professor of Medieval History at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and then in 1974 Professor of Scottish History at the University of St Andrews. He was Sir William Fraser Professor of Scottish History and Palaeography at the University of Edinburgh from 1979 to 1992. He married, in 1951, Heather Elizabeth née Lownie, with whom he had one son and one daughter. He began his work by studying the nature of feudalism in Anglo-Norman Britain, but moved on to specialize more thoroughly on Scottish feudalism. His work has tended to focus on Normanisation in High Medieval Scotland, especially in reference to governmental institutions.

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