A Comprehensive Study of Historical Sources in Medieval and Early Modern Britain : From Analysis of Historical Sources to Interpretation of History

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This project has aimed at analyzing comprehensively various historical sources in medieval and early modern Britain and at reconstructing the British history through interpretation of historical sources. Historical sources are tentatively divided in the following way. In the first place, they are divided by their nature : governmental and administrative documents, manorial records, charters, narrative sources and private documents. Secondly they are divided by the subject by whom they were issued : documents concerning royal justice, constitutions and assizes, documents concerning royal court, documents concerning state finance, documents concerning seigniorial household and gentry's documents.Each investigator has collected every information about historical sources which he or she were responsible to deal with and tried to consult manuscripts as far as possible. They have reported about them at general meetings which were held twice a year. At general meetings each historical sources were compared from the viewpoint of their forms, patterns, functions and the way they have been handed down. In this way, all investigators could have various informations about historical sources in common. During the term of the project, three investigators visited Britain every year in order to collect historical materials and discuss about them with British scholars or read a paper upon them.