Donald Balloch, the ‘Treaty of Ardtornish-Westminster’ and the MacDonald raids of 1461–3. James Petre
This article attempts a reassessment of Clan Donald’s activities and their relations with the Scottish and English crowns in 1461–3. There are two objectives: first, to review the nature and significance of the MacDonald alliance with Yorkist England and the identities and roles of its leading advocates; and second, to establish how far, if at all, the raids conducted by the MacDonalds in these years can be linked with the development of this entente. The exercise necessitates a review of background themes, at first seemingly distinct from each other, but which coalesce in 1460–1 to create a dynamic out of which the alliance was born and, arguably, MacDonald military activity encouraged.
Tenure and property in medieval England. Susan Reynolds
This article argues that the use of the word ‘tenure’ instead of ‘property’ in discussions of medieval English property law impedes the understanding of that law and makes it harder to compare it either with modern law or with the law of other parts of medieval Europe. Its use derives not from the vocabulary or content of medieval English law, but from the effort of seventeenth-century antiquaries to connect medieval English law with the academic law that French scholars had derived from the twelfth-century Italian Libri Feudorum.