Agents of reform? Agents of colonisation? Or just plain greedy? Monasteries as appropriators of parish churches in Wales and the Marches

The widespread appropriation of parish churches by monastic houses has been almost universally condemned by historians as working in favour of the former at the expense of parishioners. Tolerating appropriation (just) when practised by Benedictines and Augustinians but dismissed as a sign of decline when the religious concerned were Cistercians, scholars have found little to commend. This paper reassesses the (admittedly difficult) sources and seeks to identify different agencies at work in this complex process with reference to two religious houses: Brecon (Benedictine) and Valle Crucis (Cistercian).

Janet Burton

is professor emerita at University of Wales Trinity Saint David (Lampeter) and author of many works on monastic history. A fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Society of Antiquaries, and the Learned Society of Wales, she is co-Director (with Professor Karen Stöber, University of Lleida, Catalunya) of the Monastic Wales Project, and, also with Karen, general editor of the Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies (Brepols) and its associated book series, Medieval Monastic Studies.

‘A New Frontier?: Lord Edmund and the English Crown in the March of Wales, 1267-1272’.

This paper will explore the early career of Henry III’s often overlooked second surviving son, Lord Edmund (d.1296). Edmund features in several historical studies yet he remains a largely aloof figure in most accounts of the period. His famous and effective brother, Edward I, still casts a long shadow out of which Edmund has still fully to emerge. Here, Edmund’s promotion as an English earl and as a Marcher lord of the first rank are studied together. How far did Edmund’s territorial interests in the March of Wales determine his power and authority both locally and further afield? And to what extent did Edmund benefit from the Second Barons’ War (1264-1267), namely from the mass confiscations of baronial property (including several English earldoms) after the battle of Evesham (4 August 1265), and from the creation of the earldom of Lancaster (1267)? Overall, it is argued that Edmund’s introduction into the March heralded a change in the royal approach towards Wales, while bolstering the crown’s ongoing pursuit of power in the region and influence over its lords.

Dr Alastair Ayton

Currently based in Edinburgh, Dr Alastair Ayton graduated from the University of St Andrews in 2020 with a PhD entitled: ‘Politics, Policy and Power: The Marcher Lords and the English Crown in the March of Wales, 1254-1272.’ He is currently preparing an article for publication on the de Clare Inheritance of 1262 entitled: ‘The Widow and the Ward: the de Clare Inheritance and royal custody in the thirteenth century.’ His research interests include: medieval kingship and lordship; the administration of medieval estates; law and practice re., medieval inheritance; the study of politics and warfare in the British Isles during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. He has been a member of the MHS since February 2021.

‘ “Na wna Glawdd Offa’n ddiffaith” (“Don’t make Offa’s Dyke a wasteland”): Offa’s Dyke in Welsh-language texts before c.’.

Written sources for the history of Offa’s Dyke are limited. This paper will consider Welsh-language engagements with the Dyke in a range of texts and genres and seek to understand how the Dyke was conceptualised both as a physical space and as a political, jurisdictional or cultural border.

Dr Dylan Foster Evans’

main area of expertise is the poetry of the late Middle Ages. He has been a member of projects that have edited and studied the works of two of Wales’s greatest poets, Dafydd ap Gwilym and Guto’r Glyn, and has edited the works of several other poets. He is particularly interested in the relationship between poetry, identity, material culture and the environment and has published a number of critical studies in these fields. His teaching focuses primarily on medieval literature and the relationship between language and heritage. His interest in language and place extends into the modern period and he has a particular interest in the Welsh language in Cardiff. His work in this area covers the history of the language, its culture and literature and also its role in the formation of identity in a varied and multi-ethnic city. Place names form another related field of interest.

Observing and Marvelling: Sun Dogs in the Margam Annals.

In both the Cambridge and Dublin manuscripts of the Annals from the Cistercian house of Margam two distinctive diagrams are to be found. In the first case the representation seems to be of Sun Dogs, a meteorological phenomenon associated with refraction of sunlight in hexagonal ice crystals high in the atmosphere. Usually, two mock suns are observed distant 22° horizontally on either side of the sun. Dated to 1104 there are sufficient additional witnesses, though none with illustrations. The second illustration comes from 1233 at the very end of the annals, literally so in the case of the Cambridge manuscripts. There are differences between the Cambridge and Dublin diagrams and the Dublin manuscript adds more textual detail. The diagrams, as well as the descriptions, are unusual, the Cambridge image closely resembling a diagram of Sun Dogs seen by Edmond Halley and published in 1702. Diagrams of the 1233 phenomenon also appear in the Chronica majora and Liber additamentorum of Matthew Paris. In what follows we will explore, contextually and by examining the phenomena, how, and perhaps, why the authors, compilers, and copyists, were so struck by what had been seen and/or reported. Comparison within the Margam annals puts the diagrams into a broader context of interest, or not, in celestial and meteorological phenomena; comparison with other sources shows links across the marches and beyond. Taken as a whole, consideration of Sun Dogs opens a series of questions as to the purposes of monastic record.

Professor Giles E. M. Gasper 

was educated at the University of Oxford and the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto. He has been in post at Durham University since 2004, in the History Department and with close links to Theology & Religion, and is currently Deputy Executive Dean (Research) for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. His areas of interest are the religious, intellectual, and cultural histories of the European Middle Ages, and its inheritances from Late Antiquity and the Early Church. Creation and the Natural World, the Economy of Salvation, and concepts of Order form his main themes of interest. These are explored through monastic and scholastic theology and science, historical writing, literary texts and craft and culinary manuals. Recent publications include a 5-volume series with Oxford University Press, The Scientific Works of Robert Grosseteste, featuring new editions, English translations, and interdisciplinary commentary.

Professor Brian K. Tanner

is Emeritus Professor of Physics at Durham University. A Fellow of the Institute of Physics and the Royal Society of Arts, he received the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion in 2012, and the Gabor Medal of the Institute of Physics in 2014. For over a decade, he has been a core research team member of the interdisciplinary Ordered Universe Project to study the scientific works of Robert Grosseteste.

‘Sealing (in the) Border: Seals and sealing practices in the medieval Welsh Marches’.

The paper will consider the ‘sealing culture’ of the medieval Marches and parts of south Wales under Anglo-Norman influence, with a particular focus on the manufacture and availability of seal matrices, and by whom they were used, and what this reveals about trade, communication, and regional and local identity.

Dr Elizabeth New

is Reader in Medieval History at Aberystwyth University, and currently holds a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship. Elizabeth has been involved in two major AHRC seal-related projects, including as Co-Investigator for Imprint https://www.imprintseals.org/, and has published widely on British seals and sealing practices, and on Christocentric devotion in medieval England and Wales.

“Marcher Perspectives on the Welsh Past”.

Marcher baronial literature from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries reveals broad interest in Wales and the Welsh past. This interest, which was motivated in part by marcher families’ desire to gain political authority in the region, cultivated a range of romances, genealogies, and chronicles, such as the romance of Fouke le Fitz Waryn, the Genealogy of the Lords of Brecknock, and the Epitome historiae Britanniae. In reimagining the Welsh past, and in making use of Welsh textual sources, marcher readers influenced transmission networks that drew Welsh texts into England, and amplified Welsh influence on medieval Britain’s literary landscape.

Dr Georgia Henley

is an Assistant Professor of English at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. She is the author of a forthcoming book, Reimagining the Past in the Medieval Anglo-Welsh Borderlands, forthcoming with Oxford University Press, as well as a range of articles on Latin writing in Wales, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and Gerald of Wales. With A. Joseph McMullen, she co-edited Gerald of Wales: New Perspectives on a Medieval Writer and Critic with University of Wales Press in 2018.