St George’s College, Windsor Castle, in the Late-Fifteenth and Early-Sixteenth Centuries

Euan Roger

Research output: ThesisDoctoral Thesis

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Abstract

This thesis examines the royal college of St George, Windsor Castle, in the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries. The thesis considers specific groups of individuals within the college, including canons, vicars, clerks and poor knights that resided within, and assesses how these groups interacted with one another. This discussion includes problems of individual wages, the college’s collective income, personal interactions and liturgical change. The thesis provides a community study of the college, and questions the extent to which St George’s was a coherent community. It argues that the college was a distinctive institution, which was able to adapt as fashions changed, but which was not perfect. The thesis makes use of the college’s extensive medieval archive at Windsor, supported by manuscripts from The National Archives and other repositories, and fills a substantial gap in the historiography of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century college.

After setting out the college’s fourteenth-century foundations and historiography, five chapters consider different groups within the community. Chapters 1 and 2 investigate the secular canons who ran the college under the supervision of the dean or warden. The chapters first assess the composition of this group and then use a series of case studies to examine how the canons dealt with problems throughout the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries. Chapter 3 considers the college’s vicars, lay clerks and choristers and the ways in which their roles changed during the fifteenth century. Chapter 4 discusses a charitable element of the college’s constitution, the poor knights (a group of royal pensioners unique to St George’s and not found in other collegiate foundations), and assesses the burden these individuals placed on strained finances. The final chapter examines commemoration within the college, who was commemorated and how. Overall, the thesis sheds new light on an important and peculiar late-medieval collegiate institution.
Original languageEnglish
QualificationPh.D.
Awarding Institution
  • Royal Holloway, University of London
Supervisors/Advisors
  • Burgess, Clive, Supervisor
Award date1 Mar 2016
Publication statusUnpublished - 2015

Keywords

  • Medieval History
  • Windsor Castle
  • Religious History
  • St George's College
  • Medieval Studies
  • Social History

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