This open access book analyses the practice of banishment and what it can tell us about the values of late medieval society concerning morally acceptable behaviour. It focuses on the Dutch town of Kampen and considers the exclusion of offenders through banishment and the redemption of individuals after their exile. Banishment was a common punishment in late medieval Europe, especially for sexual offences. In Kampen it was also meted out as a consequence of the non-payment of fines, after which people could arrange repayment schemes which allowed them to return. The books firstly considers the legal context of the practice of banishment, before discussing punishment in Kampen more generally. In the third chapter the legal practice of banishment as a punitive and coercive measure is discussed. The final chapter focuses on the redemption of exiles, either because their punishment was completed, or because they arranged for the payment of outstanding fines.

Examining literary narratives from the tenth through the fifteenth centuries, this book explores how writers used their craft to voice harsh criticism of the ruling class and unearths a deep distrust of kings and other authority figures during the Middle Ages.

This book places banishment in the early Atlantic world in its legal, political and social context.

Dutch historiography has traditionally concentrated on colonial successes in Asia. However, the Dutch were also active in West Africa, Brazil, New Netherland (the present state of New York) and in the Caribbean. In Africa they took part in the gold and ivory trade and finally also in the slave trade, something not widely known outside academic circles. P.C. Emmer, one of the most prominent experts in this field, tells the story of Dutch involvement in the trade from the beginning of the 17th century–much later than the Spaniards and the Portuguese–and goes on to show how the trade shifted from Brazil to the Caribbean. He explains how the purchase of slaves was organized in Africa, records their dramatic transport across the Atlantic, and examines how the sales machinery worked. Drawing on his prolonged study of the Dutch Atlantic slave trade, he presents his subject clearly and soberly, although never forgetting the tragedy hidden behind the numbers – the dark side of the Dutch Golden Age -, which makes this study not only informative but also very readable.

Rubrics, Images and Indulgences in Late Medieval Netherlandish Manuscripts considers how indulgences (the remission of time in Purgatory) were used to market certain images and how images helped to spread indulgences in the decades before the Protestant Reformation.

Set against the framework of modern political concerns, Treason: Medieval and Early Modern Adultery, Betrayal, and Shame considers the various forms of treachery in a variety of sources, including literature, historical chronicles, and material culture creating a complex portrait of the development of this high crime.

At the height of the Middle Ages, a peculiar system of perpetual exile—or abjuration—flourished in western Europe. It was a judicial form of exile, not political or religious, and it was meted out to felons for crimes deserving of severe corporal punishment or death. From England to France explores the lives of these men and women who were condemned to abjure the English realm, and draws on their unique experiences to shed light on a medieval legal tradition until now very poorly understood. William Chester Jordan weaves a breathtaking historical tapestry, examining the judicial and administrative processes that led to the abjuration of more than seventy-five thousand English subjects, and recounting the astonishing journeys of the exiles themselves. Some were innocents caught up in tragic circumstances, but many were hardened criminals. Almost every English exile departed from the port of Dover, many bound for the same French village, a place called Wissant. Jordan vividly describes what happened when the felons got there, and tells the stories of the few who managed to return to England, either illegally or through pardons. From England to France provides new insights into a fundamental pillar of medieval English law and shows how it collapsed amid the bloodshed of the Hundred Years' War.