A collection of essays exploring medieval and early modern views of community and society.

Preface Rosemary Horrox; Richard Barrie Dobson: an appreciation John Taylor; 1. 'If heaven be on this earth, is it in cloister or in school': the monastic ideal in later medieval English literature Derek Pearsall; 2. The 'chariot of Aminadab' and the Yorkshire priory of Swine Janet Burton; 3. 'Godliness and good learning': ideals and imagination in medieval university and college foundations Robert Swanson; 4. Hugh of Balsham, bishop of Ely 1256/7¿1286 Roger Lovatt; 5. A cruel necessity? Christ's and St John's, two Cambridge re-foundations Malcolm Underwood; 6. Coventry's 'Lollard' programme of 1492 and the making of Utopia P. J. P. Goldberg; 7. Thomas More's Utopia and medieval London Sarah Rees Jones; 8. Social exclusivity or justice for all? Access to justice in fourteenth-century England Anthony Musson; 9. Idealising criminality: Robin Hood in the fifteenth century A. J. Pollard; 10. Fat Christian and Old Peter: ideals and compromises among the medieval Waldensians Peter Biller; 11. Imageless devotion: what kind of an ideal? Margaret Aston; 12. An English anchorite: the making, unmaking and remaking of Christine Carpenter Miri Rubin; 13. Victorian values in fifteenth-century England: the Ewelme almshouse statutes Colin Richmond; 14. Puritanism and the poor Patrick Collinson; 15. Realising a Utopian dream: the transformation of the clergy in the diocese of York, 1500¿1630 Claire Cross; Bibliography of Barrie Dobson's published works.