Richard Purkiss

Research Topic

Royal administration in East Anglia, c.917-1066

Supervisor: Sarah Foot

My thesis examines the administrative development of East Anglia between 917 and 1066, the period which saw the region integrated into a growing English kingdom. I seek to explain how this process operated at a local level by considering what claims underpinned it, how new administrative structures were introduced, and what gave royal officers power in the localities. In answering these questions for East Anglia, my thesis reconsiders the wider foundations of Old English government in the tenth and eleventh centuries. It argues that the ‘Anglo-Saxon state’ of this period drew its strength not so much from military and bureaucratic organisation as from the widespread and direct relationship between the king and his subjects.

Publications

'Early royal rights in the Liberty of St Edmund', Anglo-Norman Studies, 41 (2019), pp. 155-73.