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.
Lewis Morris and the Mabinogion
Lewis Morris (1700/1-1765) was regarded as the foremost Welsh antiquary and authority on Welsh literature of his day. A founding member of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion in 1751his expertise on Welsh literature and history was solicited by Welsh poets and antiquaries alike.
Is the Conservation of the United Kingdom’s Built Heritage Sustainable?
How does one put a price on the priceless? What is the cost of protecting and preserving this multitude of homes, castles, industrial buildings and urban social history and, more importantly, is it sustainable?
National Library of Wales purchases Laws of Hywel Dda manuscript for £541,250
The Library will be showcasing the purchase to the public for a short exhibition – 23 July – 10 August – and then it will be taken into the care of the Library’s conservators to be rebound and digitised.
The Prince and the Poet
In this essay, I will discuss the historical importance of panegyric poetry as a performative act, representing a component of a lord’s self-perception. I will limit myself, for the sake of time and for the sake of presenting a clear picture, to the poetry of the age of the Gogynfeirdd or not-so-early poets (about 1100 to 1282), representing the strongest tradition of patronage of poetry and a period of increased Welsh political independence.
Medieval Welsh manuscript to go for sale at auction
A 14th century manuscript containing the Laws of Hywel Dda is set to go up for auction next month, and is expected to sell for between £500,000-700,000
Constructions of Gender in Medieval Welsh Literature
The discussion of gender in medieval literary criticism is generally considered
to be a relatively new field, having achieved real momentum only in the latter half of the twentieth century. However, since it was the early fifteenth century when Christine de Pisan wrote a response to Jean de Meun’s Romance of the Rose, it cannot really be imagined that the medieval audience was too primitive to be fully aware of the subtext inside their stories.
Earthwork Castles of Gwent and Ergyng AD 1050-1250
The research addresses the presence of the castles and discusses their roles as weapons of conquest and structures of administrative control.
Placenames and the settlement pattern of dark-age Scotland
This study will examine some placename evidence for features of settlement in E Scotland, that zone which lies of the Firth of Forth and E of the main Scottish mountain mass. In this areaat least four different languages have been spoken with differing temporal and spatial extents: one non-Indo-European tongue, Celtic, Norse and English.
Living Links: The Role of Marriage between Welsh and Anglo-Norman Aristocratic Families in the Welsh Struggle for Autonomy, 1066-1283
These marriages were utilized by the Welsh in their attempts to preserve their political identity and autonomy against the incursions of the Anglo-Normans, as well as to gain advantages over their Welsh rivals. The Anglo-Normans, in turn, used the marriages to gain land and influence in Wales.
Problems with medieval Welsh local administration – the case of the maenor and the maenol
This article proposes to look more closely at one level of this emergent Welsh territorial order, namely, the level of the maenor/maenol.
The hanging of William Cragh: anatomy of a miracle
On Monday 12 November 1291, Welsh rebels, William Cragh and Traharn ap Howel, were dragged from the dungeons of Swansea Castle and hanged on the nearby gallows. That, by all reason, should have been the end of the story – except that it was not.