Food and Kingship in Early Medieval England

This seminar will interrogate the system of food renders (sometimes termed ‘feorm’) by which, it is widely accepted, early royal households were supported.

Data strongly suggests that this system did not work in the way the literature supposes. This paper is an attempt to work through this insight, and to build on it to enhance our understanding of early political structures; it focuses on fundamental questions about how kingship evolved, with a king was, and how kings were related to ordinary farmers.

Dr Tom Lambert is a Fellow in History at the University of Cambridge, he specialises on medieval legal culture.

Dr Sam Leggett has recently graduated from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. She has recently defended her thesis on diet and mobility in Early Medieval England.