THE LECTURE
The loss of Normandy by King John, together with most of the lands held by the Plantagenet dynasty in France, posed a huge dilemma for the Anglo-Norman aristocracy, who were now potentially forced to choose between their lands in Normandy and those in England.  Most lost their lands in one or other country, but a significant number attempted to defy the new political realities in order to retain their lands on both sides of the Channel. They were forced to make many compromises, and the lives of the men and women who were affected in this way were characterised by political insecurity and intrigue.  This talk will focus on the attempts by the Anglo-Norman aristocracy (including Marcher families such as the Mortimers and the Marshals) to maintain their cross-Channel lands and connections after 1204, and the consequences of those attempts for their families and for broader ideas of identity.

Professor Daniel Power has been Professor of Medieval History at Swansea University since 2007. His research concerns the history of France and the British Isles in the Central Middle Ages (especially the Anglo-Norman realm, the Angevin Empire, and Capetian France), and medieval frontier societies.  His publications include The Norman Frontier in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), and he edited The Central Middle Ages (Short Oxford History of Europe)(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) and (with Naomi Standen) Frontiers in Question: Eurasian Borderlands 700-1700 (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1999).

More recently, Professor Power’s research has concentrated upon the Anglo-Norman aristocracy after the collapse of the Anglo-Norman realm in 1204.  Between 2016 and 2018 he held a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship for the project ‘The Separation of England and France, 1204-1259’, which investigated the disintegration of the political and social ties that had been established between England and Northern France during the Anglo-Norman period.  Some of his other recent publications have concerned the aristocracy of the Welsh March, and the participants in the Albigensian Crusade (1209-29).