News

On Friday evening, Dr Thomas Asbridge (Queen Mary University of London) gave a lecture in the Nave of Lincoln Cathedral, explaining how the veteran commander and fabled knight William Marshal defeated the French and their baronial allies in the decisive encounter played out within Lincoln’s medieval walls 800 years ago.

Knowing very little about the Battle of Lincoln myself, this lecture provided the perfect introduction to the 1217 battle waged on the streets of Lincoln. I especially appreciated how Dr Asbridge traced the broader impact of the Battle of Lincoln, from the reissuing of Magna Carta to the birth of English national identity, situating the battle within a context that I was more familiar with.

It was fascinating to hear Dr Asbridge present in person, as I immensely enjoyed his documentary series, The Crusades, on BBC Two.

Dr Asbridge is also the historical consultant behind Lincoln’s 2017 Battles & Dynasties exhibition in The Collection which I am looking forward to viewing in the near future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the lecture, Dr Asbridge was kind enough to sign a copy of the booklet he wrote in celebration of the 800th anniversary of the Battle of Lincoln.

 

This weekend, Lincoln Knights’ Trail opened in celebration of the 800^th anniversary of the Battle of Lincoln and the sealing of the Charter of the Forest.

There are 36 sculptures in total placed across Lincoln City Centre and each Knight has been designed and painted by a different artist. (To find out more about the Knights’ trail artists, please click here.)

I did not know anything about the Battle of Lincoln prior to this event, but the Knights’ Trail website has provided a short breakdown of the major events surrounding this period of Lincoln’s history:

‘After agreeing the Magna Carta in 1215, King John went back on his promise which led the country to fall into a civil war.  This divided the barons between supporting the crown and rebel barons who invited Prince Louis, the son of the French King, to take the English throne.

In October 1216, King John died and his son, Henry III, was only a child so William Marshal, a famous medieval knight and the King’s champion, acted as regent. By May 1217, much of the country had been taken by the combined French and rebel English forces, but Lincoln Castle held out for the royalist cause under the command of a formidable lady constable, Nicola de la Haye.

On the morning of 20 May 1217, the Royalist army set out from Stowe or Torksey (the sources disagree) to help Nicola and raise the siege. The Royalists broke into the city and in the fighting that followed between the castle’s East Gate and Lincoln Cathedral, the siege of the Castle was lifted and the French commander was killed. The rebels then either surrendered or fled down the hill and towards London. The Royalists claimed victory and then sacked the city. One chronicler ironically nicknamed the battle the ‘Nine-day’ of Lincoln (a Nine-day was either a fair or a tournament) as a battle in the city in 1141 had already been given the title of The Battle of Lincoln.

This battle was of national significance. If the Royalists had lost, England would have become part of France and our King Louis VIII, instead the Plantagenet dynasty ruled for another 250 years.

The 1217 battle and the subsequent defeat of a French naval force at the Battle of Sandwich in August meant Louis’ attempt to become King of England was over. On the 6^th of November 1217 Marshal, in the name of the young Henry, reissued Magna Carta in an attempt to reunite the country and with it a companion document called the Charter of the Forest. In contrast to Magna Carta, which mainly dealt with the rights of barons, it confirmed rights of access to royal forests for all men and was not superseded until 1971.’ (Credit: Dr Erik Grigg, Lincoln Knights’ Trail Website)

 

Both the 1215 Magna Carta and the 1217 Charter of the Forest can still be viewed in Lincoln Castle and the Knights’ Trail sculptures will remain in position until 3rd September 2017.

I am looking forward to seeing all of the Knights’ Trail now that the weather is getting warmer!

 

 

On Wednesday 10^th May, we were joined by Professor Peter Stone (Newcastle University) for the last History and Heritage research seminar for this academic year. Professor Stone’s presentation discussed the history of cultural property protection and outlined the work of the Blue Shield (the so-called “cultural equivalent” of the Red Cross), suggesting that if we are proactive, cultural property need not be an unwitting casualty of conflict.

 

This seminar was fascinating and made me think about the logistics of preserving history  for future generations, not just in war zones (although, as Professor Stone suggests, this is important) but at local levels too. Many of the MA students in attendance at this seminar, myself included, are particularly interested in making ‘ordinary’ people aware that our culture heritage is everywhere and deserves to be protected. So, while his presentation was not directly focused on medieval history, Professor Stone raised some highly important points concerning the protection of cultural property.

 

Thank you, Professor Stone, for your thought provoking presentation!

 

 

Thanks to the generosity of the Santander Fund, the University of Lincoln is hosting the first two of what we hope will be an annual round of visiting fellows in medieval Iberian history: Dr Julio Escalona Monge and Dr Eduardo Manzano Moreno, both of the CSIC (the National Research Council) in Madrid, have visited Lincoln and each to ran a workshop and deliver a public lecture on aspects of their research and the study of medieval Iberia more broadly.

 

I attended the workshop and lecture ran by Dr Eduardo Manzo Moreno on Thursday 4^th May.

Matching Facts and Artefacts: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Medieval Iberia

In this workshop, Dr Manzo Moreno examined the integration of the material and the textual record, and the manifold ways in which both can be related.

I found his research on how artefacts from 8^th-10^th century Al-Andulus provide an insight into contemporary networks of knowledge and intellectual genealogy particularly fascinating.

His exploration of Islamic manuscripts and biographical dictionaries was also very interesting, and acted to further illuminate how knowledge circulated in this time period.

 

Convivencia: Jews, Christians, and Muslims; or, how we have failed to tackle multiculturalism in medieval Iberia from a social perspective 

In this lecture, Dr Eduardo Manzo Moreno highlighted the importance of multiculturalism as a historiographical focus and demonstrated how we can address the subject of multiculturality in Medieval Iberia.

His methodology raised an interesting debate in the Q&A session afterwards, and it was a pleasure to listen to Dr Manzo Moreno speak about his research.

 

 

 

In November of last year, Dr Renee Ward encouraged a group of MA Medieval Studies students to organise a symposium for the community of medievalists in Lincoln.

Myself and eight other students jumped at the chance to get involved and have worked hard to organise ‘Writing Medieval History’, a half day symposium that will take place on Friday 5^th May 2017 in the UoL Minerva Building.

We are delighted to host a range of undergraduates, postgraduates and medieval lecturers who take different methodological and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of medieval history.

Our aim is to provide a space for individuals to share and develop ‘works in progress’ as well as gain confidence in writing and speaking about medieval history. We think this will be especially beneficial for undergraduate and postgraduate students working towards completing a dissertation, as it is the perfect opportunity to get constructive feedback from peers.

 

The symposium committee convened on Wednesday to finish organising some final details, but overall we feel well prepared and excited to host the event!

On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank Dr Renée Ward and Dr Antonella Liuzzo Scorpo for their invaluable support in the organising process: we really appreciate it.

 

 

 

It is a free event and all are welcome, so please register on our website and come and say hello on Friday 5^th May! We will be offering a buffet lunch from 12pm and tea, coffee and other refreshments will be available all day.

To see a detailed programme of the proceedings please visit our website or contact us on masymposium@lincoln.ac.uk 

A team from the University of Sheffield has uncovered the grave of medieval priest at Thornton Abbey, Lincolnshire, who died 700 years ago (almost to the day!). The stone coffin, which depicts a priest in robes, is marked with the name Richard de W’Peton and a the biblical inscription (‘that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth’) as well as the date of his death: 17th April 1317.

The team has been able to establish that W’Peton was around 35-45 years-old at the time of his death and had stood at around 5ft 4ins tall.

In an interview with The Telegraph, PHD Student Emma Hook, who discovered the grave, said:

“Although he ended his days in the priesthood, there is also some suggestion that he might have had humbler origins in more worldly work; his bones show the marks of robust muscle attachments, indicating that strenuous physical labour had been a regular part of his life at some stage.

Nor had his childhood been easy; his teeth show distinctive lines known as dental enamel hypoplasia, indicating that his early years had been marked by a period of malnutrition or illness.”

 

 

A 3D scan of W’Peton’s skull also revealed evidence of an extremely well-healed blunt force trauma to W’Peton’s skull which he suffered many years before his death; yet, the team could find no evidence pointing to how he died in 1317.

However, Dr Hugh Willmott from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Archaeology, who has been working on the excavation site at Thornton Abbey since 2011, said W’Peton may have succumbed to the Great Famine, which hit Europe between 1315 and 1317 and greatly affected medieval hospitals like Thornton Abbey.

Dr Willmott concluded his interview with The Telegraph by stating that:

“For now, such a narrative can only be a matter of speculation, but it does seem clear that – whatever caused his death – at the end of his days Richard was held in high regard, afforded an elaborate burial in the most prestigious part of the hospital chapel, in the very place he would have spent his final years working among the poor and dying.”

 

 

As medieval historians and University of Lincoln alumni, Lincoln’s remarkable history is not lost on us.

We did not know, however, that Visit Lincoln’s website offers pre-set historical tours of the city. There is a Roman Route, Jewish Route and a Battle of Lincoln Route, to name just a few. Yet, as a group we are interested in a broad range of history from Late Antiquity to Late Medieval; so, one Wednesday afternoon we took inspiration from the Visit Lincoln website and decided to wander around Lincoln looking for history we had never seen before. This is where we went:

 

MA Medieval Studies Route

1. Lincoln Library
2. Medieval Bishop’s Palace
3. ‘Between Two Worlds’ sculpture by Michael Dan Archer
4. Tennyson Statue
5. Roman East Gate
6. Newport Arch
7. Roman Forum
8. Cathedral and Castle View
9. Westgate Water Tower
10. View of the University

 

 

While we are planning on doing one of the pre-set tours eventually, our little wander around Lincoln Cathedral quarter showed us that there are some historical gems in the city that we didn’t even know about!

Visit Lincoln: https://www.visitlincoln.com/trails/roman-heritage-trail-of-lincoln

Route created by Hannah MacKenzie, Beth Williams and Lauren Brand: Three MA Medieval Studies Students.

 

 

 

Ellie Lowe, an undergraduate BA History student at the University of Lincoln, has recently published her first book for the 800^th anniversary of the Battle of Lincoln Fair and was kind enough to answer a few questions about this exciting opportunity:

 

What is your book about?

I was asked to write the book for the 800^th anniversary of the Battle of Lincoln Fair, which is May 20^th 2017. Despite being one of the most significant battles in England’s history, this event is relatively unknown compared to the likes of the Battle of Hastings. Many local residents see Lincoln as a small city in the modern day, but during the medieval period it was second only to London in terms of importance, and an bustling hub of trade and finance. Lincoln played a pivotal role in political affairs during this battle, and had the outcome been different it is very likely that a French king would have sat upon the English throne. As the book evolved it became a brief history of Lincoln itself, starting in the Roman period and ending in 1217, so readers will be able to gain a full understanding of the causes and consequences of the battle.

 

What/who encouraged you to publish this book?

I contacted a number of publishing houses in Lincolnshire looking for work experience in early 2016. Out of the several that I contacted, I only heard back from one, Tucann Design and Print in Washingborough. After sending a sample of my writing, I was asked if I’d like to write a short book on the Battle of Lincoln Fair for the 800th anniversary. This was such a great opportunity for me, and as I work for Lincoln Castle I know already knew a lot about the battle, so I accepted Tom Cann’s offer almost immediately.

 

How did you find the research process?

When I started I was only writing about the battle itself, and there is a chronicle by Roger of Wendover that I relied upon heavily, which was quite easy to understand. The event itself is often mentioned in passing but there are no major works written on it, which was the point of the book in the first place. Once it evolved to include a brief history of Lincoln I had to do a lot more research, and this has definitely helped me to build on my skills in this area. 

 

Do you want to publish anything else in the future?

I wouldn’t say no to any future opportunities, but ultimately I’d like to work in the publishing industry rather than pursuing a career in writing. Although this process has really helped me to understand how the writer/publisher relationship works and I have gained valuable skills throughout the process.

 

What areas of history are you most interested in? 

I am most interested in early modern history and my favourite modules at the University of Lincoln have been ‘Disease, Health and the Body in Early Modern Europe’ with Anna-Marie Roos, and ‘Accessing Ordinary Lives’ with James Greenhalgh and Helen Smith. I really enjoyed the content of both of these modules, and the freedom I had with my final assessments.

 

What do you have planned for your undergraduate dissertation?

My dissertation is going to be on public execution in the seventeenth century, and I am going to primarily explore how having wealth and status affected a condemned English citizen during this period. I will also research how the crowd reacted to executions, and whether this was different based upon the type of crime, and the type of person being executed.

 

 Ellie’s excellent book is available for purchase from Waterstones Lincoln or the Lincoln Castle shop.

For more information on Ellie’s undergraduate work and experience as a student at the University of Lincoln, please have a look at her blog: https://elliemloweblog.wordpress.com!