The Hospitallers’ and Templars’ involvement in warfare on the frontiers of the British Isles in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries
Although in theory they were independent religious orders answerable only to the pope, in the British Isles the Templars, and particularly the Hospitallers, were increasingly secularised institutions, serving the king of England and playing important roles in royal government
Networking Scribes
This was the keynote paper given at the Celtic Studies Association of North America Annual Conference at the University of Toronto April 18 – 21, 2013.
Welsh Poetry and the War of the Roses
This is a brief summary of a paper on Welsh poetry, patronage and politics. It was given at the Celtic Studies Association of North America Annual Conference at the University of Toronto April 18 – 21, 2013.
Rhetoric and Ethnicity in Gerald of Wales
This paper was given at the 2013 Celtic Studies Association of North America Annual Meeting at the University of Toronto.
Lincolnshire and the Arthurian Legend
This article is intended to rectify this, proceeding from the widely-held assumption of the existence of a genuinely ‘historical Arthur’, before going on to consider the even more fundamental question of whether we ought to believe in Arthur’s existence at all.
The Welsh soldier: 1283-1422
The present thesis is a study of the reality – and the myth – of the ‘Welsh soldier’ in the later middle ages.
Project on the medieval saints in Wales receives £775 000 in funding
A project to better understand the history of medieval saints in Wales and created new online resources has been award more than three-quarters of a million points by The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
Chaucer’s Arthuriana
The majority of medieval scholars, including Roger Sherman Loomis, argue that the popularity of the Arthurian legend in England was therefore on the wane in the latter half of the fourteenth century; as a result, the major writers of the period, such as John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer, refrained from penning anything beyond the occasional reference to King Arthur and his court.
Limits of Viking influence in Wales
Wales experienced sporadic raids, a few settlers and trade, writes Mark Redknap.
The Welsh Female Saint: Patterns within a Social Framework
Historia Divae Monacellae, the Latin Life of Melangell is also comparatively late in composition, with the earliest manuscript being from the 16th century, but possibly drawing on earlier written sources.3 When we look at the availability of written texts relating to male saints the difference in source material is immediately evident.
The Conquest of Wales (1282)
That was when an English king, Edward the First, sent an army along this route I’m travelling now. He conquered Wales, he built castles as symbols of his power, and he shipped in English settlers to exploit this land. And the Welsh became second-class citizens in their own country.
Breuddwyd Rhonabwy: A historical narrative?
The object of this study is the analysis of Breuddwyd Rhonabwy, which is one of the two extant Welsh prose tales about King Arthur.
Holy Women in the British Isles: A Survey
Representations of holy women appear in a wide variety of textual, dramatic, and iconographic forms across medieval Europe during the central and late Middle Ages (c.1100-1530).
The Edwardian Conquest and its Military Consolidation
On land, English armies faced a highly mobile, because lightly armed, infantry whose favoured tactics were ambushes and guerrilla strikes although some native retinues did boast heavy cavalry and siege engines; surprise and speed had to be matched by vigilance and the capacity to concentrate troops swiftly at the point of need.
Spectacularizing Justice in Late Medieval England
I 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.
The making of a frontier society: northeastern Wales between the Norman and Edwardian conquests
Northeastern Wales, on the periphery of English territory, exemplifies the concept of a borderland or frontier because of its geographical isolation and history as a wasteland.
The pattern of settlement on the Welsh border
The attempt made in this paper to answer these questions will be based almost entirely on Welsh evidence. The English evidence, examined and re- examined since the late nineteenth century, is already sufficiently familiar to members of the British Agricultural History Society.
Archaeological research reveals new insights about the Vikings in Wales
Recent excavations by archaeologists from the National Museum Wales at the Viking age settlement of Llanbedrgoch on the east side of Anglesey have shed important new light on the impact of Anglo-Saxon and Viking-age worlds operating around the Irish Sea.
The British History Podcast
With over seventy episodes recorded, the British History Podcast is giving people a lot to listen too.
The Arthur of the chronicles
Even if we cannot accept the claim made by Geoffrey in his introduction that his putative source was ‘attractively composed to form a consecutive andorderly narrative’, he certainly made extensive use ofWelsh genealogies andking-lists.
Mystery of the Newport Medieval Ship Solved?
New evidence suggests that the Newport medieval ship came from the Basque Country
How Great Was the Great Famine of 1314-22: Between Ecology and Institutions
The first aspect to be examined is the extent of harvest failures within different crop sectors. The second issue is to what degree was the Great Famine of 1314-22 a subsistence crisis…My project is based on over 3,000 manorial and monastic accounts compiled between c.1310 and 1350.
The cult of saints in the early Welsh March: aspects of cultural transmission in a time of political conflict
The last mark of subjection … touched the realm of sentiment merely and yet was none the less keenly felt by a people so imaginative as the Welsh.
The personnel of English and Welsh castles, 1272-1422
In 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.