Staff profile

Trained as an urban historian, I wrote my first book on relations between major provincial cities and the English crown during the Hundred Years War. The book has recently been re-published in paperback. After this study of English towns, my interests widened to encompass other kinds of semi-autonomous and privileged spaces, notably the palatinate of Durham, on which I wrote my second book.

Since then, I have returned to urban history. Between 2007 and 2012 I was an associate editor of the journal Urban History, for which I wrote an annual review (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012). Since 2007, I have been a member of the organizing committee of the Pre-Modern Towns conference, which is held annually at the Institute of Historical Research (London). 

My most recent research project, funded by a British Academy Small Research Grant (2009-11) and by a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship (2014-15), was on the multiple and, sometimes, conflicting meanings of citizenship in late medieval English towns. In a series of articles and essays I wrote about urban citizenship and struggles over taxation, common land, and freedom of speech. A book, The Politics of Citizenship, was published by Oxford University Press in 2017. 

I have a particular interest in the relationship between ideas of citizenship and practices of resistance, and argue that rebellion was the outcome of shifting perceptions and contested definitions of citizenship. 

These ideas underpinned the Magna Carta and the Changing Face of Revolt exhibition, which was held in the summer of 2015 at Palace Green Library and which I co-curated. To accompany the exhibition, I also organised a public lecture series on the theme of citizenship. The lectures are available on the Durham University YouTube channel, Magna Carta play list. Speakers included Professor Guy Standing, author of The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class and A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens.

In 2017 I organised a series of public discussions held at Durham Cathedral and Palace Green Library to mark the 800th anniversary of the Charter of the Forest, the charter that gave Magna Carta its name. The talks sought to inform and influence public understanding of the historical meaning and contemporary relevance of the Charter of the Forest, with particular regard to the symbiotic relationship between landscape and ideas and practices of citizenship. For more information about my research, see the Citizens and Rebels project website.

 

• Family, Lineage, and Dynasty
• Citizenship
• Popular revolt and popular protest
• Pre-modern towns

Authored book

• Liddy, C. D. (2017). Contesting the City: The Politics of Citizenship in English Towns, 1250 - 1530. Oxford University Press
• Liddy, C. D. (2008). The Bishopric of Durham in the Late Middle Ages: Lordship,Community and the Cult of St Cuthbert. Boydell Press
• Liddy, C. (2005). War, Politics and Finance in Late Medieval English Towns: Bristol, York and the Crown, 1350-1400. Boydell & Brewer

Chapter in book

• Liddy, C. D. (in press). Urban Revolt, Citizenship and Town Politics. In P. Lantschner, & M. Prak (Eds.), Cambridge Urban History of Europe, Volume II: Medieval and Early Modern. Cambridge University Press
• Haemers, J., & Liddy, C. (2021). Conclusion. Medieval households, families and lineages: towards a comparative history of Northern and Southern Europe. In J. Solórzano Telechea, J. Haemers, & C. Liddy (Eds.), La familia urbana: matrimonio, parentesco y linaje en la Edad Media (517-525). Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, Logroño
• Liddy, C. D., & Lambert, B. (2017). The Civic Franchise and the Regulation of Aliens in Great Yarmouth, c. 1430-c. 1490. In W. M. Ormrod, N. Mcdonald, & C. Taylor (Eds.), Resident aliens in later medieval England (125-143). Brepols Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1484/m.seuh-eb.5.114462
• Liddy, C. D. (2016). Cultures of Surveillance in Late Medieval English Towns: The Monitoring of Speech and the Fear of Revolt. In J. Firnhaber-Baker, & D. Schoenaers (Eds.), The Routledge history handbook of medieval revolt (311-329). Routledge
• Liddy, C. (2011). Bill casting and political communication: A public sphere in late medieval English towns?. In J. A. S. Telechea, & B. A. Bolumburu (Eds.), La Gobernanza de la Ciudad Europea en la Edad Media (447-61). Instituto de Estudios Riojanos
• Liddy, C. (2011). "Bee war of gyle in borugh". Taxation and political discourse in late medieval English towns. In A. Gamberini, J. Genet, & A. Zorzi (Eds.), The Languages of Political Society, Western Europe, 14th -17th Centuries (461-485). Viella
• Liddy, C. (2011). Political Contract in Late Medieval English Towns. In F. Foronda (Ed.), Avant le Contrat Social: Le Contrat Politique dans l’Occident médiéval XIIIe-XVe siècle (397-416). Publications de la Sorbonne
• Holford, M., & King, A. (2007). North-East England in the late middle ages: rivers, boundaries and identities, 1296-1461. In A. Green, & A. Pollard (Eds.), Regional Identities in North-East England, 1300-2000 (27-47). Boydell
• Liddy, C. (2007). William Frost, the City of York and Scrope's rebellion of 1405. In P. Goldberg (Ed.), Richard Scrope: Archbishop, Rebel, Martyr (64-85). Shaun Tyas
• Liddy, C. (2006). The politics of privilege: Thomas Hatfield and the palatinate of Durham, 1345-81. In J. Hamilton (Ed.), Fourteenth Century England IV (61-79). Boydell & Brewer
• Liddy, C. (2005). Land, legend and gentility in the Palatinate of Durham: the Pollards of Pollard Hall. In C. Liddy, & R. Britnell (Eds.), North-east England in the later Middle Ages (75-95). Boydell & Brewer
• Liddy, C. (2004). Bristol and the crown, 1326-31: local and national politics in the early years of Edward III’s reign. In W. Ormrod (Ed.), Fourteenth Century England III (47-65). Boydell & Brewer

Edited book

• Solórzano Telechea, J., Haemers, J., & Liddy, C. (Eds.). (in press). La familia urbana: matrimonio, parentesco y linaje en la Edad Media. Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, Logroño
• Liddy, C., & Dodds, B. (Eds.). (2011). Commercial Activity, Markets and Entrepreneurs in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Richard Britnell. Boydell Press
• Liddy, C., & Britnell, R. (Eds.). (2005). North-east England in the Later Middle Ages. Boydell & Brewer

Journal Article

• Liddy, C. D. (in press). The household, the citizen, and the city: towards a social history of urban politics in the late Middle Ages. Social History,
• Liddy, C. (in press). The making of towns, the making of polities: Towns and lords in late medieval Europe. Past & Present: A Journal of Historical Studies,
• Liddy, C. D. (2021). Who decides? Urban councils and consensus in the late Middle Ages. Social History, 46(4), 406-434. https://doi.org/10.1080/03071022.2021.1967640
• Liddy, C. (2020). Family, lineage and dynasty in the late medieval city: Re-thinking the English evidence. Urban History, 47(4), 648-670. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0963926819000671
• Liddy, C. D. (2017). 'Sir ye be not kyng': Citizenship and Speech in Late Medieval and Early Modern England. Historical Journal, 60(3), 571-596. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x16000108
• Liddy, C. D. (2015). Urban enclosure riots: Risings of the commons in English towns, 1480-1525. Past & Present: A Journal of Historical Studies, 226(1), 41-77. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtu038
• Liddy, C., & Haemers, J. (2013). Popular Politics in the late medieval city: York and Bruges. The English Historical Review, 128(533), 771-805. https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cet107
• Liddy, C. (2012). Urban politics and material culture at the end of the Middle Ages: the Coventry tapestry in St Mary's Hall. Urban History, 39(2), 203-224. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0963926812000028
• Liddy, C., & Steer, C. (2010). John Lord Lumley and the creation and commemoration of lineage in Early Modern England. Archaeological Journal, 167, 197-227
• Liddy, C. (2003). Urban conflict in late fourteenth-century England: the case of York in 1380-1. The English Historical Review, 118(475), 1-32. https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/118.475.1
• Liddy, C. (2002). The rhetoric of the royal chamber in late medieval London, York and Coventry. Urban History, 29(3), 323-349. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0963926802003012
• Liddy, C. (2001). The estate of merchants in the parliament of 1381. Historical Research, 74(185), 331-345
• Liddy, C. (1997). The Palmers’ gild window, St Lawrence’s Church, Ludlow: a study of the construction of gild identity in medieval stained glass