2025/01/01 by Tom Johnson · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Historical Studies of British Isles #Medieval Literature and History #Philippine History and Culture
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/hwj/dbaf001
openalex publication_date 2025/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Abstract A fifteenth-century bailiff named Nicholas Greenhalgh drew a picture in his account book. Next to the image he wrote noverint universi per presentes me (‘Everyone shall know me by these present [things]’), suggesting that he conceived it as a self-portrait, one that would be preserved in the archive of his lord. This essay explores these two suggestions, first by placing the image in the wider context of such ‘doodles’ in fifteenth-century administrative writings; and second by considering the afterlife of seigneurial archives in present-day England. It argues that such archives continue to reanimate the relations of lordship that generated them.