There are 65,000 individual instances of resident aliens in England recorded on the database, all with their own stories to tell. Some of the stories are very short, while others prove to be lengthy, detailed and greatly illustrative of the wide variety of immigrant experiences in England in the late middle ages. For the duration of the project, members of the team and invited contributors have been inspired to look further into many of the lives highlighted in the database, but also consider the lives of immigrants who escaped assessment for taxation, or did not feel the need to buy letters of denization or protection, or swear an oath of fealty. The resulting case studies demonstrate that there was not a typical experience for a resident alien in England, as the summaries below suggest:
Individual studies:
Benedict Zakarie – an Italian goldsmith in London
Enguerrand de Coucy – Edward III’s French son-in-law
Reynauld de Nieuport – or Reginald of the Chamber?
Luket Nantron – clerk, literary writer, and administrative assistant
Ralph Cavelario – an intellectual immigrant, 1523-1572
‘Call Me Edward’ – a pagan prince meets the king of England (1363-4)
Agnes Lancecrona – a Bohemian at Richard II’s court
John Balbat – an illegal immigrant in fourteenth-century England
Lucia Visconti – Countess of Kent
Stefano Surigone – the integration of alien and native book-craftsmen in fifteenth-century Oxford
‘I saw this camel and thought of you…’ – an unusual gift for Henry VI
Louis Robessart – a Border-Crossing Knight? – a Hainauter knight in the service of the Lancastrian kings
“Some said he was a Spaniard; some said he was a Breton”: The case of Giles Morvyle
‘Your said oratrice … cannot speak nor understand English’ – working for a Venetian merchant in fifteenth-century England
Group studies:
The Gigli – a family on the move
A Stranger Church at Glastonbury, 1551-1553
Fourteenth Century England – A Place Flemish Rebels Called ‘Home’
John Kempe and friends – Flemish weavers in England
‘The Only Way Is Essex’ – John Hawkwood