Dr Simon Payling

Current Research

Senior Research Fellow Commons 1461-1504

History of Parliament Research

Having completed work on the first set of volumes from the House of Commons 1422-1504 project, which relate to the period, 1422-1461, my work at the History now involves the compilation of biographies for the next set of volumes for the Commons for the period 1461 to 1504.

Research and Publications

Outside the History my research interests include the legal profession, the law governing the descent of real property, marriage contracts and murder.

My  publications include:

-‘On “Peyne of their Lyfes...they Shuld no Verdit gif, but if they Wold Endite the Seid William Tresham of his Owen Deth”: the Murder of Lawyers in Fifteenth-Century England’, in The Fifteenth Century XVII ed. Linda Clark (Woodbridge, 2020), pp. 99-113 

-‘The Rise of New Boroughs and the Decline of Electoral Localism: the Evolving Composition of the House of Commons, 1386-1558’, Parliamentary History, xl (2021), pp. 261-76

- ‘Widows and the Wars of the Roses: the Turbulent Marital History of Edward IV’s Putative Mistress, Margaret, daughter of Sir Lewis John of West Horndon, Essex’, in The Fifteenth Century, XIV: Essays Presented to Michael Hicks, ed. L. Clark (Woodbridge, 2015),  pp. 103-15


- ‘The 'Grete Laboure and the Long and Troublous Tyme': The Execution of the Will of Ralph, Lord Cromwell, and the Foundation of Tattershall College
’, in The Fifteenth Century, XIII: Exploring the Evidence ed. L. Clark  (Woodbridge, 2014), pp. 1-29

- ‘Edward IV and the Politics of Conciliation in the Early 1460s’, in The Yorkist Age: Proceedings of the 2011 Harlaxton Symposium ed. H. Kleineke and C. Steer (Donington, 2013), pp. 81-94

- ‘Late Medieval Land Disputes and the Manipulation of Inquisitions Post Mortem’, in The Later Medieval Inquisitions Post Mortem: Mapping the Medieval Countryside, ed. M. Hicks (Woodbridge, 2016), 203-14.

- Political Society in Lancastrian England: The Greater Gentry of Nottinghamshire (Oxford, 1991)

- ‘"A Beest envenymed thorough … covetize": an Imposter Pilgrim and the Disputed Descent of the Manor of Dodford, 1306-1481’, in The Fifteenth Century, X: Parliament, Personalities and Power, ed. H. Kleineke (Woodbridge, 2011), pp. 17-38

- ‘Legal Right and Dispute Resolution in Late Medieval England: the Sale of the Lordship of Dunster’, English Historical Review, cxxvi (2011), pp. 17-43,

- ‘The House of Commons, 1307-1529’, in A Short History of Parliament, ed. C. Jones (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 75-85

- ‘War and Peace: Military and Administrative Service amongst the English Gentry in the Reign of Henry VI’, in Soldiers, Nobles and Gentlemen: Essays in Honour of Maurice Keen, ed. P. Coss and C. Tyerman (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 240-58

- '"Never desire to be great about princes, for it is daungeros": the rise and fall of the fifteenth-century Catesbys’, in The Catesby family and their Brasses at Ashby St. Ledgers, ed. J. Bertram (London, 2006), pp. 1-17

- ‘Identifiable Motives for Election to Parliament in the Reign of Henry VI: the Operation of Public and Private Factors’, in The Fifteenth Century, VI: Identity and Insurgency in the Late Middle Ages, ed. L. Clark (Woodbridge, 2006) , pp. 89-105

- ‘The Rise of Lawyers in the Lower House, 1395-1536’, in Parchment and People: Parliament in the Middle Ages, ed. L. Clark  (Edinburgh, 2004), pp. 103-120

- The Economics of Marriage in Late Medieval England: The Marriage of Heiresses’, Economic History Review, new series, liv (2001), pp. 413-429

- ‘County Parliamentary Elections in Fifteenth-Century England’. Parliamentary History, xviii (1999), pp.  237-259

- 'Murder, Motive and Punishment in Fifteenth-Century England: Two Gentry Case-Studies’, English Historical Review, cxiii (1998), pp. 1-17

- ‘The Later Middle Ages’, in The House of Commons, ed. R. Smith and J.S. Moore (London, 1996), pp. 48-69

- ‘The Politics of Family: Late Medieval Marriage Contracts’, in The McFarlane Legacy, ed. R.H. Britnell and A.J. Pollard (Stroud, 1995), pp. 21-47

- ‘A Disputed Mortgage: Ralph, Lord Cromwell, Sir John Gra and the Manor of Multon Hall’, in Rulers and Ruled in late Medieval England: Essays Presented to Gerald Harriss, ed. R.E. Archer and S. Walker (London, 1995), pp. 117-136

- ‘Arbitration, Perpetual Entails and Collateral Warranties in Late-Medieval England, Journal of Legal History, xiii (1992), pp. 32-62

- ‘Social Mobility, Demographic Change, and Landed Society in Late-Medieval England’, Economic History Review, xlv (1992), pp. 51-73

- ‘The Ampthill Dispute: a study in aristocratic lawlesness and the breakdown of Lancastrian Government’, English Historical Review, civ (1989), pp. 881-907