We move on from the phenomenon of lordly expressions of dissatisfaction through defensible locations within a limited space associated with the identity of lords and their families to larger, delineated – though often still defensible – spaces linked with larger corporate bodies, a topic already touched on above, in chapter 5. The position of towns and cities as places of corporate action through revolt is a well-established area of study for the late Middle Ages, a phenomenon discussed in the many studies of urban revolts of the period, which have highlighted the success of such actions in achieving their protagonists’ aims. Similarly, urban revolts are increasingly recognised as a factor in the development of urban communes in Italy in the central Middle Ages. In England and France in our period, the importance of towns as corporate political bodies seems to have increased, and urban rebellion seems to emerge as a significant political phenomenon, particularly in the later eleventh and twelfth centuries.

While it is not possible to chart the processes of urban-based rebellion in the ninth and tenth centuries, the use of fortifications in northern France and midland England seems to have been linked with the contestation of power in the period. In the so-called ‘Re-conquest’ of the Danelaw, the building as well as the holding of urban fortifications played an important role in the exercise of political power in this region. Such contestation of power is not always viewed in a framework of urban revolt but then, equally, the interests of established elites are not always given prominence in readings of eleventh-and twelfth-century urban rebellions, which often foreground the significance of the unrest of communal groups at a time of ‘improved human fertility and growing wealth’. Although unrest as an urban phenomenon directed from within, by groups with a sense of self-organisation, is apparent in the early and central Middle Ages, the special interests of particular groups, often those enjoying oligarchical power within particular urban spaces, are important. This chapter is an attempt to address the links between urban oligarchies and the expression of unrest in towns. By addressing the role of the urban space within political society, we can consider the interactions between the political actors within urban communities when conflicts occurred, both within the urban communities and when those conflicts encompassed the interests of other political elites.