Programme: Autumn Term 2025
Wednesday 15th October, 7.30pm.
Dr Andy Seaman
The link to the programme will be provided when available ☛☛
Critical Locality in the Early Medieval March: A Case Study in the Lower Wye Valley
This talk will present some preliminary research from the Leverhulme-funded Making the March project. We will outline the theoretical and methodological frameworks we have developed for approaching the early medieval frontier landscape and then present a case study focused on the lower Wye Valley, where we have recently undertaken excavations on a potential early medieval enclosure site close to Tintern Abbey.
Dr Andy Seaman
is Reader in Early Medieval Archaeology at Cardiff University. He is leading several research projects focused on Wales and western Britain, including excavations of an early medieval cemetery complex on the grounds of Fonmon Castle.
Wednesday 26th November, 7.30pm.
Dr Emma Cavell
The link to the programme will be provided when available ☛☛
Gender, aristocracy and (self-)belief in the relationship between Matilda de Saint Valéry and King John
Matilda de St Valery, French-born wife of the Marcher lord William III de Braose, is chiefly remembered today for her alleged starvation, with her son, in one of King John’s dungeons. The lurid tale of Matilda’s death, penned by the Anonymous of Bethune in his History of the Dukes of Normandy and the Kings of England, is perfect grist for the mill of those (medieval and modern) persuaded of John’s capacity for extreme cruelty. Matilda’s death, like her husband’s persecution, was the catastrophic end to an enduring and sometimes fractious, but far from perpetually hostile, relationship between the king and the lady of Hay. This talk examines Matilda’s activities as wife and lord in the context of her relationship with the volatile king. Much of the evidence places Matilda squarely within the ‘man’s world’ of the Marcher lordships (and lordly society more broadly) and yet what stands out is not simply that she appeared at ease in this world, but that few people, much less the king in his written defence of own behaviour toward the Braoses, questioned her right to conduct herself as she did.
Dr Emma Cavell
is a Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at Swansea University. She specialises in the study of aristocratic women and the Welsh borderlands, law and litigation in England and Wales, and Jewish women in medieval England – all between c. 1066 and 1300. Emma won the MHS Essay Prize in 2017, and her essay was published in the MHS Journal vol 2, 2018. She contributed a chapter on Mortimer women in The Mortimers of Wigmore 1066-1485: Dynasty of Destiny (Logaston Press, 2023), and an article on medieval marriage in Mortimer Matters.