Scotland Archive
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The Production and Planning Process of the Book of Kells
Posted on December 9, 2012 | No CommentsThe Book of Kells is one of Ireland’s greatest treasures, although its origins— location and date—cannot be definitively determined. The gospel book earned its name from the monastery in which it was last housed before its move to Dublin (circa 1654) for safekeeping during the Cromwellian period when Catholic establishments were dissolved and property was either looted or destroyed. -
Funding given to commemorate the 500th Anniversary of the Battle of Flodden
Posted on December 3, 2012 | No CommentsThe Flodden 500 Project will receive £887,300 from the Heritage Lottery Fund to commemorate the 500th anniversary of one of the largest battles ever fought between Scottish and English forces. -
The invasion of Scotland, 934
Posted on December 3, 2012 | No CommentsThe various conflicts and settlements in the period 920 to 945 are often considered inisolation but they are connected and also together form part of two longer-term processes -
Spectacularizing Justice in Late Medieval England
Posted on November 28, 2012 | No CommentsI use the word ritual because in cases of treachery use of a general ‘script’ as ordered by these two accounts emerges with surprising frequency in England in the late 13th and early 14th century. -
What can written sources, sculpture and archaeology tell us about Pictish identity and how this might have changed between the sixth and ninth centuries?
Posted on November 18, 2012 | No CommentsArguably one of the biggest changes in how the Picts portrayed themselves is understood through their use of sculpture. The earliest is thought to date to around the fifth century (Historic Scotland, 2012) lending itself to the Class I typology. -
Hugh Kennedy of Ardstinchar: Joan of Arc’s Scottish Captain
Posted on November 14, 2012 | No CommentsPriest, soldier, pillager, diplomat, counsellor to kings, Archdeacon of St Andrews… and mentioned in the birth of Scottish golf. You couldn't make this man up. -
Britain’s Medieval identity Crisis
Posted on November 14, 2012 | No CommentsClare Downham considers how a set of saints’ lives written by a13th century monk in Cumbria help us understand how national allegiances were understood in medieval Britain. -
Queen Ermengarde and the Abbey of St Edward, Balmerino
Posted on October 26, 2012 | No CommentsThis article is an examination of the role played by Alexander's mother, Queen Ermengarde, in the founding of Balmerino. -
The Lands and ‘Sisterlands’ of Aberdour, c.1100-1650
Posted on October 13, 2012 | No CommentsOf the lands in Aberdour, we begin in very uncertain time long before the Sisterlands became such and a period from which few documents are available. It is thought that shortly after 1100 some of the lands in what was later to become the burgh of Aberdour came to be held by a Norman-French family, the Viponts. -
Sacrilege, Sacrifice and John Barbour’s Bruce
Posted on October 13, 2012 | No CommentsThe narrative accomplished on this plane is critical to the foundation, or re-foundation, of royal order after a usurpation, yet it is more than a dynastic expedient;3 rather, it is a story that, even as it bridges the gaps in credibility and legitimacy attendant upon a new royal line, primally reinforces the governing fictions of kingship as an institution. -
A Question of Truth: Barbour’s Bruce, Hary’s Wallace and Richard Coer de Lion
Posted on October 13, 2012 | No CommentsTempting though it is to assume that these poems are simply peculiarly Scots, to do so denies them their place in British literature. A survey of English romances, moreover, reveals what appears to be an English equivalent: Richard Coer de Lion. It is also a hybrid poem about a recent king and military leader. -
Robert Bruce’s Bones: reputations, politics and identities in nineteenth-century Scotland
Posted on October 13, 2012 | No Comments‘We, on the whole, do our Hero-worship worse than any other Nation in this world ever did it before.’ Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). -
The British History Podcast
Posted on October 9, 2012 | No CommentsWith over seventy episodes recorded, the British History Podcast is giving people a lot to listen too. -
Aristocratic Politics and the Crisis of Scottish Kingship, 1286–96
Posted on October 5, 2012 | No CommentsIn late 1292 the new king of Scots, John Balliol, did homage to Edward as his superior lord and during the next three years lived with the consequences of this act. -
A monk from Melrose? St Cuthbert and the Scots in the later middle ages, c. 1371–1560
Posted on October 5, 2012 | No CommentsWhilst in theory the cult of the saints was a universal phenomenon, in practice saints and their shrines were often appropriated to regnal, local or institutional causes. -
Annals of Ulster of the Early Middle Ages AD 500-1000
Posted on October 1, 2012 | No CommentsIn Ireland and Scotland the monks invented a connection between the peoples of the Bible and the Gaels of Ireland and Scotland; they invented a genealogy which ‘proved’ they were descended from an Egyptian pharoah’s daughter called Scota. -
Excavations of a Monastic Settlement and Medieval Church Site at Killevin, Crarae Gardens, Mid Argyll
Posted on September 29, 2012 | No CommentsAccording to local tradition, Killevin was the first parish church of Glassary before being succeeded by Kilneuair. Unfortunately, the lack of surviving evidence regarding the ecclesiastical history of the parish before the mid-14th century poses real problems for untangling the status of medieval Killevin. Even that of Kilneuair is shrouded in doubt. -
Women and the adoption of charters in Scotland north of Forth, c. 1150–1286
Posted on September 29, 2012 | No CommentsIn the thirteenth century, charters in the name of women became more plentiful, especially in the case of widows, and more standard formulas emphasising the ‘lawful power of widowhood’ were employed widely. -
Macbeth: bloody tyrant or popular king?
Posted on September 23, 2012 | No CommentsMost of us know Shakespeare's version of Macbeth. What was the reality? Jackie Cosh reports -
“We will drain our dearest veins, but we shall be free!”: The Legend and Legacy of Sir William Wallace, Warrior, Martyr, and National Icon
Posted on September 19, 2012 | No CommentsIn the 700 years since his death at the hands of the English, the famed Scot has served as a martyr-like icon for every generation, a pillar of remembrance to the ferocity and persistence of Scotland’s seemingly eternal fight for independence. -
People of Medieval Scotland online database officially launched
Posted on September 5, 2012 | No CommentsThe People of Medieval Scotland (PoMS) project has catalogued over 21,000 individuals mentioned in 8,600 documents. The documents, written between 1093 and 1314, tell the story of Scotland’s transformation from a land of patchwork regions to an established kingdom with fixed borders and modern systems of government. -
The Women of the Wars of Independence in Literature and History
Posted on August 29, 2012 | No CommentsMy paper will have two main goals. The first goal is to survey the historical evidence available for the study of real women who were affected by the war...The second goal will be to consider the theoretical implications of the representation of women in a discourse produced entirely by men. -
The personnel of English and Welsh castles, 1272-1422
Posted on August 22, 2012 | No CommentsIn England, the role played on the continent by the castellanies would appear to have been performed by the county castle and the sheriff, a post that remained firmly under the king's control in all but a few counties. Instead, a more subtle link between the castle community and political power will have to be found. It will be searched for in the appointment of constables to royal castles, and in grants of ownership of castles, royal or forfeited. It may be found in the building activity that was so common in this period, or in the marriage alliances that created many of the great castle owning estates. -
The English aristocracy at war, 1272-1314
Posted on August 22, 2012 | No CommentsNevertheless, the experiences of medieval combatants are best understood in the context of the local communities from which they were recruited and the retinues in which they served. Consequently, an attempt is also made to reassess the subject of military organisation under the first two Edwards by examining the composition and structure of these armies from the perspective of the soldiers and small units that comprised them. -
The warhorse and military service under Edward III
Posted on August 22, 2012 | No CommentsHow, for example, are we to assess the likely extent and distribution of campaigning profits (and, indeed, costs) in society - or the impact of military service on the workings of shire administration, or the influence of war on the retaining practices of the nobility and gentry - without first establishing the identities of those who served in the king's armies during this period? There can be few major research undertakings in the field of late medieval English history that would offer such wide-ranging benefits as a full-scale reconstruction of the military community.
