The Rules of Robert Grosseteste Reconsidered: The Lady as Estate and Household Manager in Thirteenth-Century England

This chapter looks at the 'Rules' that Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, wrote for Margaret de Lacy, countess of Lincoln, to help her govern her household and estates. It shows, with reference to royal messenger accounts, how the 'Rules' as a treatise was based on a detailed knowledge of this particular countess's estates and favoured residences, and suggests a new date for their production of 1245-53, when Margaret controlled her mother's barony of Bolingbroke and her dower lands from her Lacy and Marshal marriages, independently, for the first time.