Patronage, Power, and Masculinity in Medieval England

Andrew G. Miller is a Teaching Professor of history at DePaul University, US. His research interests include the social and religious history of the Middle Ages and violence and masculinity in medieval England. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, September 2023.

• 1. The Contestants, the Diocese, Episcopal Governing, and Thame 2. The Contest Begins: The First Attack (And Failure) 3. The Second Attack: Its Success (And Ultimate Failure) 4. The Third Attack: The Symbolic Shaming of Clerics 5. From Stalemate to Checkmate: The Bishop’s Propaganda War and Starvation-Siege 6. A Settlement: Arbitration, Compromise, and ‘Pro Conservacione Fame’

‘There is no doubt that this fascinating conflict is worthy of such detailed examination … and Miller has produced a microhistory that deserves a wide audience ... Scholars and students with quite different intellectual interests will [thus] benefit from Miller’s exploration of this wonderful snapshot of late thirteenth-century England’ - Journal of British Studies (2025), 64.‘Miller’s greatest strength in the volume is his patient attention to the diplomatic of the case, especially the rolls from the royal court and the ecclesiastical archival material … Miller’s work is careful and thoughtful [and] his book makes a pleasant contribution to the wider study of the tack-and-gibe of the development of the medieval church’ - The Medieval Review, May 2025.‘Miller thoroughly reconstructs a little-known, rollicking medieval conflict and its context. Readers will get an on-the-ground view of matters like how a royal knight, his son, and their thugs went about besieging a church and how a bishop deployed his own bully boys in response, or how a bishop dealt with the geographical contours of his diocese while managing such a conflict. But Miller also takes readers into flight for a bird’s-eye view of larger structures, such as those of church, crown, and gender. I suspect Bishop Oliver Sutton and his opponents John and Edward St. John will be better known than at any time since the late thirteenth century as a result of this entertaining book’ - Michael Burger, Auburn University at Montgomery, USA 'Two households with their retainers did battle (symbolic and literal) in the 1290s over the control of a church. Although one of the households was a bishop’s, this was not a struggle between church and state, but rather between two networks of alliance, both asserting their piety and their manliness, and trying to wrangle royal support. It’s a rare privilege to have this much documentation for a single case and be able to weave such a detailed narrative. The context is explained with the clarity students need, but the argument is original and important for scholars as well' - Ruth Mazo Karras, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland'This volume tells a fascinating medieval story, using it to illuminate in new ways conflicts between bishop and king by putting their dispute over the church of Thame into a broader cultural as well as legal context' - Philippa Hoskin, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, UK‘As its title suggests, Patronage, Power, and Masculinity in Medieval England, deals with big themes. It does so by unravelling an intricate web of relations in 1290s Oxfordshire, around the patronage of the church of Thame. Men - lay and clerical - used a whole range of tactics to secure their claim: they petitioned, enlisted powerful patrons, threatened, cursed, and used force. Like the best microhistories, Andrew Miller's analysis reveals the structures of power, the interweaving of church and state, family and lordship, and the vulnerability of those who worked the land’ - Miri Rubin, Queen Mary University of London, UK