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Irish hagiography displays considerable interest in communication between Ireland and Rome, particularly as this featured saints, popes and relics. While people and objects travel between the two places, there is also concern to circumvent the distance involved. This article discusses an episode of miraculous communication in the Irish Life of St Colmán Élo. Here messages and messengers travel from Rome, but time and space are also telescoped through aural and material means: the sound of the bell marking the death of Pope Gregory the Great and a gift from him of Roman soil to be spread on Colmán Élo’s cemetery. The article considers how the two elements function within their hagiographical context to connect Rome and Ireland, and how these places shaped the account. The roles of bell and soil both draw on their associations in Ireland and relate to papal communication as this was experienced and imagined more widely.

The Welsh esquire, Dafydd Gam, was one of the few casualties named in contemporary English accounts of the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. In these sources, his status as an esquire was not contested and these sources informed William Shakespeare, who included his name among the dead in his play Henry V (1599). Later antiquarians and modern traditions consistently refer to Dafydd as Sir Dafydd Gam and state that he was knighted as he lay dying on the battlefield. The article argues that the tradition that Dafydd Gam was knighted before or after the battle is erroneous, and that its origins lie not in the legends associated with Agincourt but in the political concerns of Dafydd’s descendants, principally his grandson, William Herbert (d. 1469), in asserting his ancestry and status in the political struggles in England in the 1450s and 1460s.

Medieval women's involvement with artworks and building campaigns can sometimes be hidden, particularly when, as with architectural patronage, that involvement is familial and multi-generational; it is also likely to be routinely underestimated by scholars in the absence of the artworks themselves. This paper discusses various interactions between royal women, art and architecture from the turn of the tenth century to the arrival of the Normans in England and the Anglo-Normans in Ireland. Moving to portable objects, the analysis of two lost artworks – Edith of Wilton's alb, described by Goscelin, and Derbforgaill of Mide's chalice given to Mellifont – suggests that historical sources can be more revealing of iconography and meaning than is often assumed. Finally, a brief examination of the Ælfflæd/Frithestan/Cuthbert embroideries shows that these fit the same paradigms as the lost works, and that they may offer some further insight into Ælfflæd's status and fate.

Albanus, an eponymous ancestor for the kingdom of Alba, provides an example of the extent to which the creation of an ethnic identity was accompanied by new ideas about origins, which replaced previous accounts. Through an analysis of the Historia Brittonum’s textual tradition and Welsh knowledge of early Roman history and medieval ethnic groups, this article establishes that Albanus was added to the Historia Brittonum in the late ninth or early tenth century as an ancestral figure for the new kingdom of Alba in northern Britain. This was potentially a result of shared political situations in Gwynedd, Alba (formerly Pictland) and Strathclyde in relation to Scandinavian power at this time, which encouraged contacts and the spread of Alba-based ideology to Gwynedd. The later development of this idea and its significance in Alba itself, Geoffrey of Monmouth's account and English claims to supremacy over Scotland are also traced.

The urban culture of medieval Swansea, which provided the political context for William Cragh and his rebellion, represents only one aspect of the Marcher lordship of Glamorgan. Within the same lordship, Welsh gentry families engaged with national politics through a literary culture shared with their English neighbours. This paper looks at some of the most significant manuscripts associated with south Wales in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, including the ‘Red Book of Hergest’ and National Library of Wales MS Peniarth 50. This latter manuscript is particularly noteworthy for its multilingual contents and for its large collection of political prophecy in Welsh, English and Latin, testifying to Welsh involvement in English politics. The paper argues that Welsh literary culture was a strong element in Glamorgan Marcher society and that an elite group of Welsh gentry were at the heart of a mobile network of scribes, poets and manuscripts.

The testimonies of the nine witnesses to the hanging of William Cragh in Swansea in 1290 offer a rare opportunity to investigate the social and spatial practices of figures from diverse ethnic and social backgrounds moving within the same urban environment. This paper maps the itineraries of the witnesses within the landscape of medieval Swansea and its environs, exploring how they negotiate various spaces, boundaries and thresholds within and around the town, as well as how their spatial practices and reported actions shape social identity, status and power. In particular the paper examines the ways in which certain individuals make use of ‘proxies’ to circumvent spatial constraints and regulation and to extend their sphere of action, raising implications for our understanding of medieval selfhood and agency. The paper advances new insights into the ways in which medieval identities and the medieval town were mutually constitutive, contingent and subject to continual re-making.

This article uses one of Thomas Cantilupe's miracles of resuscitation as a lens through which to view the society of late thirteenth-century Conwy, a centre of English power in the recently conquered territory of north Wales. Combining the evidence of the Cantilupe canonisation process, contained in The Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 4015, with what is known of the history, topography and architecture of town and castle, it examines the relationship between town and castle and, more generally, the structure, operation and spatial expression of hierarchy in Conwy. Taking a micro-historical approach, it further suggests ways in which memories of the miracle itself – the resuscitation of the toddler son of a castle servant – were shaped by that hierarchy and, especially, in a silent negotiation between the powerful and the relatively powerless.

This collection of essays is based on the inter-disciplinary project ‘City Witness: Place and Perspective in Medieval Swansea’. This special issue brings together new research produced by the project, alongside further contributions which extend these insights and explore important historical, political and cultural contexts for the project's central themes and questions.

Early Irish communities of religious women have never been adequately studied. However, Irish hagiography, unique among medieval saints' lives because of the incidental details it offers, provides much evidence about nuns and nunneries. Because the Irish saints' lives were written by monks, this information also reveals the monastic attitude towards nuns. Hagiography shows that many nunneries were established before the seventh century. But these communities began to disappear soon after, so that today only the location of a dozen or so are known to historians. Women's religious communities disappeared for a combination of reasons, political, social, economic, and spiritual. Secular society was hostile towards these communities from the start because they consumed a resource considered precious by men: unmarried women. Male ecclesiastics held an ambiguous attitude towards nuns and nunneries. They believed that women could attain salvation as well as themselves. Yet the entire church hierarchy of Ireland was dominated by supposedly celibate men, whose sacral functions and ritual celibacy were threatened by women, especially women's sexuality. Hagiography expressed this threat with the theme of sinful, lustful nuns; even the spirituality of women vowed to chastity and poverty was suspect. This attitude affected the structure, organization, and eventually the survival of women's monastic enclosures in early Ireland.

In 1297 a parliament was convened at Dublin one of the main purposes of which was to defend more effectively the borders of the English lordship of Ireland. The conquest of Ireland had never been complete. Several of the pre-conquest kingdoms survived beyond the effective edge of the English lordship and elsewhere the actions of conquistador and settler had pushed the native Irish up into the hills. Consequently, the settler population in many parts of Ireland lived in close proximity to areas under Gaelic control. This was not a particular problem in the eastern province of Leinster until the 1270s when the Irish of the Wicklow mountains began to raid settler manors. It has recently been suggested that the effects of this ‘Gaelic revival’ and the legislation passed at the Dublin parliament to deal with its effects led several English lords to cut their landholding ties with Ireland. This article questions how important a factor conflict actually was in the decision-making processes of such English lords by examining their withdrawal from Ireland in a wider context. It concludes by pointing out that withdrawals from a landholding community were not necessarily negative in their effect or cause

As a result of the incomplete English conquest, the relationship between the English in Ireland (the Anglo-Irish) and the native Irish is a major theme in the history of Ireland in the later middle ages. Since these connections were negotiated locally rather than centrally, each relationship is as individual as the Anglo-Irish lords and Irish leaders who negotiated them. This article explores the relationships between the Desmond Geraldines and two Irish dynasties which maintained semi-autonomous kingdoms to the north and southwest of the earldom of Desmond: the Uí Bhriain (O'Briens) and the Mic Charthaigh (Mac Carthys). The Desmond Geraldines developed relationships not just with the ruling lines but also with cadet branches of these dynasties. The connections which formed between the Desmond Geraldines and these Irish lineages demonstrate several of the key types of relationships which developed throughout Ireland as well as indicating the importance these associations played in both maintaining and disrupting the stability of the English lordship in Ireland.

This paper is intended to draw attention to the very different rights and restrictions accorded to Anglo-Irish and Gaelic women in late medieval Ireland. These differing traditions concerning marriage and women's rights within it led to conflicting marital experiences for Anglo-Irish and Gaelic women during this period. Fundamentally the Anglo-Irish idea of marriage was opposed to the Gaelic one which led to clashes especially where intermarriage between the two cultures took place.

The intention of this paper is to examine the role of the Franciscans in the Scottish Wars of Independence. Many of the studies relating to this period have been confined to either the political or ecclesiastical arena. They also choose to treat the individual countries of the British Isles in an unconnected fashion. This paper is intended to redress the balance, using the involvement of the Franciscan friars in Ireland and Scotland to study political events on either side of the Irish Sea. By examining the actions of diverse nationalities belonging to a single order I hope to establish why the Franciscans saw fit to involve themselves in either the nativist or royalist causes and to determine it was purely race that dictated their actions when their countrymen went to war.

Regnal succession in early medieval Ireland has been the centre of scholarly debate for the past eighty-five years. This paper contributes to the debate with an investigation of the early Irish law texts. It is argued that these law texts, especially the tracts on inheritance, reveal a certain pattern of regnal succession, which can be divided into an early and a later phase. Moreover, they allow us to define necessary criteria for eligibility for Irish kingship. The results of this examination are illustrated in the summary by the historical example of the early Síl nÁedo Sláine.

Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain is widely considered to have transgressed the historiographical canons of his time. The work provides a lengthy and detailed account of a prehistoric period for which no history in any currently accepted sense can be written. Among Geoffrey's greater departures from historical credibility is his championship of two mythical figures, Arthur and Merlin, both of whom are given a central place in his History. In this article, the author considers the evidence for the reception of Merlin's Prophecies and its implications for the reception of the history in which they were located. Besides reviewing the testimony of twelfth-century authors who used or criticised the Prophecies, she looks at commentaries on the Prophecies, both published and unpublished, written by contemporaries. She concludes that the Prophecies were attacked not because of any perceived historical inaccuracy but primarily because of political considerations. Indeed, the presence of Merlin's Prophecies at the heart of the History served to enhance its credibility and validity.

Early Irish communities of religious women have never been adequately studied. However, Irish hagiography, unique among medieval saints' lives because of the incidental details it offers, provides much evidence about nuns and nunneries. Because the Irish saints' lives were written by monks, this information also reveals the monastic attitude towards nuns. Hagiography shows that many nunneries were established before the seventh century. But these communities began to disappear soon after, so that today only the location of a dozen or so are known to historians. Women's religious communities disappeared for a combination of reasons, political, social, economic, and spiritual. Secular society was hostile towards these communities from the start because they consumed a resource considered precious by men: unmarried women. Male ecclesiastics held an ambiguous attitude towards nuns and nunneries. They believed that women could attain salvation as well as themselves. Yet the entire church hierarchy of Ireland was dominated by supposedly celibate men, whose sacral functions and ritual celibacy were threatened by women, especially women's sexuality. Hagiography expressed this threat with the theme of sinful, lustful nuns; even the spirituality of women vowed to chastity and poverty was suspect. This attitude affected the structure, organization, and eventually the survival of women's monastic enclosures in early Ireland.