Historical Writing in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Scotland

2019

When we think of genealogies in medieval Scotland our minds might turn at once to Gaelic, the Celtic language that was spoken in the Middle Ages from the southern tip of Ireland to the northernmost coast of Scotland. This is not unnatural. Texts that trace the ancestry of a notable individual generation by generation survive in their hundreds from the medieval Gaelic world. They are found today almost exclusively in late-medieval Irish manuscripts. Some genealogies originated in collections made as early as the tenth century. Presumably there were once many Scottish manuscripts containing genealogies, too. A reason why they would not have survived is that, in the Scottish kingdom during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Gaelic learned orders who would have had a primary interest in writing and copying this material declined in significance and ceased to participate in Gaelic literate culture. This chapter will open with a brief survey of medieval genealogical texts relating ...

Cultural & Social History, 2010

E nglish monastic chronicles form part of the broader tradition of record keeping by monastic communities. By the late-medieval period there were a number of genres and well-established traditions that monastic writers could draw upon, among them annals, deeds of abbots, histories, cartularies, and registers. Many of the chronicles were created primarily for the internal consumption of the monastic communities, sometimes for broader audiences within the order or for a specific ecclesiastical superior or lay patron. This narrow perspective has traditionally led to a rather dismissive attitude to such works: normally the broad geographical horizon and range of political and national news is taken to indicate the quality of a chronicle. The more focused chronicles are on the internal matters of their home institutions, the more dismissive modern historians tended to be and sometimes still are. Authors of the late-medieval texts discussed here were monks or canons, usually recruited from the local area, some had university education, usually legal, but on the whole little is known about the lives of the fourteenth-century monastic chroniclers and not much more about those active in the fifteenth century. 1 In this context, a genealogical perspective was traditionally seen as an expression of a rather narrow view and of the increasingly insular concerns of monastic chroniclers in the later Middle Ages. The texts discussed here are not the most wellknown chronicles such as those from Bridlington and Lanercost, which provide important information about the Anglo-Scottish wars of the fourteenth century and national politics, but many 'home chronicles', cartularies, and other sources,

2005

The society of the Kingdom of the Scots in the central Middle Ages has long been viewed as experiencing a transition from `old', `Celtic' ways to `new' English norms. This process was once neatly described as `Normanisation', and if such straightforward terms have been abandoned, historians nevertheless still tend to portray political, social, legal, cultural and religious traits of that society as either `Celtic' or `Anglo-Norman'. Recent work on ethnicity in general, and on the ways medieval people often used ethnic identity for political purposes in particular, necessitates a new approach to the society of the kingdom's heartland, north of the Forth. This thesis examines the aristocracy of Scotland north of Forth through the lens of Europeanization, a conceptual framework that is less insular than previous models and more nuanced in its understanding of the role of ethnicity in the sweeping changes that took place across Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This thesis seeks to examine the Europeanizing themes of the spread of charters, the adoption of common European names and the interaction of the chivalric `aristocratic diaspora' with local landholding society through the methodology of prosopography. The role of aristocratic landholders as grantors, witnesses and recipients of charters was studied, based on an analysis of the texts of over 1500 aristocratic, royal and ecclesiastical documents relating to Scotland north of Forth, dating from circa 1100 to circa 1260. The Appendix is a list of all non-royal, non-ecclesiatical (or `private') charters, agreements, brieves and similar documents, catalogued herein for the first time. The results of this study are twofold. First, the thesis involves a degree of reappraisal, in which phenomena which were seen previously as pertaining to either `native' or `Norman' trends are instead examined as part of a single Scottish society. Second, this thesis offers several new findings based on the prosopographical analysis of the charter material, which help to hone our understanding for how Europeanization worked in Scotland. It is now clear that, while the adoption of charters should certainly be seen as a Europeanizing trend, their use by aristocratic landholders followed several stages, none of which adhered to any ethnic bias. This study reveals the prominence of networks in spreading charter use, including one focussed around Countess Ada and other related countesses, in the early stages of aristocratic charter use. Furthermore, the important component of Europeanization, whereby `peripheral' peoples took up common European personal names, can be qualified in the case of Scotland north of Forth, where the society Author's Declaration 9 Abbreviations 10 One: Ethnicity and the Study of Medieval Scotland 17 Conceptual frameworks 17 Methodology 26 Two: The Use of Charters by Scottish landholders 34 The advent of charter use in the Scottish kingdom 34 Aristocratic grantors and monastic beneficiaries 45 Aristocratic charters to other laypeople 59 Three: Personal Names and Scottish Society 64 Problems with using personal names as evidence for ethnicity 66 Prosopographical analysis of personal names 74 Other approaches to personal names as evidence 87 Four: Social Networks and the Aristocracy 115 Groups in landholding society 118 Networks and connections 136 Case studies, contexts and trends 147 Five: Social contexts 169 Patterns of landholding 170 Physical settings and social contexts 186 Six: The Nature of Scottish Europeanization 216 Appendix: A list of non-royal, non-ecclesiastical charters 222 from Scotland north of Forth, circa 1150-1260. Bibliography 247 1. Primary sources 247 2. Secondary sources 254 5 List of Tables and Graphs 1.1 Types of non-royal, non-ecclesiastical charters 1.2 Sources of non-royal, non-ecclesiastical charter texts 31 2.1 Trends in the adoption of charter use in Scotland 37 2.2 The first extant royal charters to lay tenants north of Forth, ca. 1160-ca. 1180 2.3 Beneficiaries of aristocratic charters, 1150-1200 2.4 Beneficiaries by monastery, grants, confirmations and quitclaims to circa 1210 2.5 Top twelfth-century grantors of extant charter texts 48 relating to Scotland north of Forth 2.6 Agnes and Morgrund of Mar's charters to 50 St Andrews Priory, ca. 1160-78 2.7 Earls and royal charter attestations in Scotland, 1124 to 53 1214 2.8 Earls with highest number of attestations 1124 to 1214 54 2.9 Non-royal, non-ecclesiastical charters, according to 60 charter median date 2.10 Numbers of documents from lay landholders, to laypeople 62 3.1 Occurrence of all names 74 3.2 Gender of names versus sex of individuals 75 3.3 Most frequently-attested male names 76 3.4 Personal Nameslocal and European 78 3.5 Most frequently-attested female names 80 3.6 Percentage of individuals with post-1000 English and 81 Scottish royal names 3.7 Proportion of individuals with religious names 84 5.1 Parishes and thanes in the Meares 181 5.2 Evidence for thanages and royal lordship in the Mearns 183 5.3 Sworn perambulators or `good men': 6 examples 212 5.4 `Witnesses' to the ceremony 214 6 List of Genealogical Trees Chapter Two Genealogical Trees 2.1 The countess network 52 2.2 Earl David and his connections in donors to Lindores Abbey 57 Chapter Four Genealogical Trees 4.1 Earls of Angus, earls of Caithness and lords of Ogilvie 155 4.2 Earls of Atholl 156 4.3 Scottish earls and Anglo-French baronial families 157 4.4

International Review of Scottish Studies, 2007

In and around the 870s, Britain was transformed dramatically by the campaigns and settlements of the Great Army and its allies. Some pre-existing political communities suffered less than others, and in hindsight the process helped Scotland and England achieve their later positions. By the twelfth century, the rulers of these countries had partitioned the former kingdom of Northumbria. This thesis is about what happened in the intervening period, the fate of Northumbria’s political structures, and how the settlement that defined Britain for the remainder of the Middle Ages came about. Modern reconstructions of the era have tended to be limited in scope and based on unreliable post-1100 sources. The aim is to use contemporary material to overcome such limitations, and reach positive conclusions that will make more sense of the evidence and make the region easier to understand for a wider audience, particularly in regard to its shadowy polities and ecclesiastical structures. After an overview of the most important evidence, two chapters will review Northumbria’s alleged dissolution, testing existing historiographic beliefs (based largely on Anglo-Norman-era evidence) about the fate of the monarchy, political community, and episcopate. The impact and nature of ‘Southenglish’ hegemony on the region’s political communities will be the focus of the fourth chapter, while the fifth will look at evidence for the expansion of Scottish political power. The sixth chapter will try to draw positive conclusions about the episcopate, leaving the final chapter to look in more detail at the institutions that produced the final settlement..

2013

This article examines the use of Anglo-Norman genealogical rolls in Fra Paolino Veneto's L'Abreujamen de las estorias (Eg. MS. 1500), a diagrammatic world history that was composed in the Occitan vernacular in papal Avignon, circa 1321-1326 (see eBLJ articles by Botana and Ibarz). That such documents were available as a source in an international context raises new questions about the uses to which genealogies of rulers were put. The king list of Britain and England includes passages that were translated from Anglo-Norman French. Its omissions and inaccuracies betray a bias against the Post-Conquest kings of England but in favour of English rule over Ireland. Such evidence supports the idea that a genealogical roll had a political and cross-cultural function outside its insular or dynastic context. In turn, this enquiry leads to further consideration of the intended readership of the Abreujamen.

Northern Scotland, 1994

charters, episcopal registers, university records, medieval chronicles and place names from the Gough Map, Professor Barrow argues that however obscured by the difficult geography of the country, with its mountains, fast rivers, bogs, and its many arms of the sea running far inland, it is still possible to discern a complex pattern of routes which existed throughout medieval Scotland by land and water. His essay on 'Popular Courts' follows a similar pattern: an enquiry, stimulated by a question put by Cosmo Innes in one of his Lectures on Scotch Legal Antiquities, as to whether early Scotland ever had local gatherings which could be equivalated to the English Court of the Hundred or Tithing. Using the evidence of words like Couthal and CuthilJ (Gaelic, ComhdhaiT) meaning assembly, which can be found in some sixty place names scattered throughout Scotland, he suggests a number of these look very much like meeting places where law enforcements and settlements of disputes took place. Many tributes have rightly been paid to Geoffrey Barrow's contribution to medieval Scottish history since his recent retirement as Fraser Professor of Scottish History and Palaeography at the University of Edinburgh; nor is it difficult to see why, looking at this sample of his prodigious output. Scholarship like his will inspire historians for many years to come. LESLIE J. MACFARLANE Medieval Scotland. Crown, Lordship and Community. Essays presented to G.W.S. Barrow. Edited by Alexander Grant and Keith J. Stringer. Pp.xvi, 319. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 1993. £25.00. This magnificent tribute to Professor Barrow brings together the work of two generations of Scottish medieval historians. The first, represented by such luminaries as Grant Simpson, Archibald Duncan, Donald Watt and Bruce Webster (and epitomised by Geoffrey Barrow himself), came to prominence in the 1950s and '60s. It was responsible for establishing Scottish medieval studies as a subject in its own right, deserving of scholarly examination. The second, represented here by the editors, Alexander Grant and Keith Stringer, as well as by other contributors, has carried on that tradition, and continues to flourish in centres of higher education both in Britain and North America, thanks largely to the tutelage and influence of Professor Barrow. Geoffrey BarroWs seminal research has led him to explore virtually every region of the northern kingdom, and to turn his critical skills to a wide variety of areas of enquiry. Both facets of his efforts are well attested in the thirteen essays collected here. Traditions first created by medieval chroniclers, then perpetuated by antiquarian studies, are subjected to the scrutiny and re-evaluation which informs so much of Barrow's own writings. Thus, Alan Macquarrie's reconstruction of the genealogy of the kings of Strathclyde demonstrates that Fordun's claims for the office as a stepping stone to the throne of the king of Scots was erroneous, and his essay does much to bestow on the ancient kingdom a history of its own. Similarly, Bruce Webster's energetic review of the nature of the English occupation of Scotland in the 1330s shows that the episode was no mere 'aftermath' of the victory achieved by Robert Bruce, but rather that it was 'an integral part of the Wars of Independence'. One of the central themes of Professor Barrow's work has been the commingling of Celtic and feudal, or Anglo-Norman, influences in high medieval Scotland, nowhere more

The society of the Kingdom of the Scots in the central Middle Ages has long been viewed as experiencing a transition from `old', `Celtic' ways to `new' English norms. This process was once neatly described as `Normanisation', and if such straightforward terms have been abandoned, historians nevertheless still tend to portray political, social, legal, cultural and religious traits of that society as either `Celtic' or `Anglo-Norman'. Recent work on ethnicity in general, and on the ways medieval people often used ethnic identity for political purposes in particular, necessitates a new approach to the society of the kingdom's heartland, north of the Forth. This thesis examines the aristocracy of Scotland north of Forth through the lens of Europeanization, a conceptual framework that is less insular than previous models and more nuanced in its understanding of the role of ethnicity in the sweeping changes that took place across Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This thesis seeks to examine the Europeanizing themes of the spread of charters, the adoption of common European names and the interaction of the chivalric `aristocratic diaspora' with local landholding society through the methodology of prosopography. The role of aristocratic landholders as grantors, witnesses and recipients of charters was studied, based on an analysis of the texts of over 1500 aristocratic, royal and ecclesiastical documents relating to Scotland north of Forth, dating from circa 1100 to circa 1260. The Appendix is a list of all non-royal, non-ecclesiatical (or `private') charters, agreements, brieves and similar documents, catalogued herein for the first time. The results of this study are twofold. First, the thesis involves a degree of reappraisal, in which phenomena which were seen previously as pertaining to either `native' or `Norman' trends are instead examined as part of a single Scottish society. Second, this thesis offers several new findings based on the prosopographical analysis of the charter material, which help to hone our understanding for how Europeanization worked in Scotland. It is now clear that, while the adoption of charters should certainly be seen as a Europeanizing trend, their use by aristocratic landholders followed several stages, none of which adhered to any ethnic bias. This study reveals the prominence of networks in spreading charter use, including one focussed around Countess Ada and other related countesses, in the early stages of aristocratic charter use. Furthermore, the important component of Europeanization, whereby `peripheral' peoples took up common European personal names, can be qualified in the case of Scotland north of Forth, where the society Author's Declaration 9 Abbreviations 10 One: Ethnicity and the Study of Medieval Scotland 17 Conceptual frameworks 17 Methodology 26 Two: The Use of Charters by Scottish landholders 34 The advent of charter use in the Scottish kingdom 34 Aristocratic grantors and monastic beneficiaries 45 Aristocratic charters to other laypeople 59 Three: Personal Names and Scottish Society 64 Problems with using personal names as evidence for ethnicity 66 Prosopographical analysis of personal names 74 Other approaches to personal names as evidence 87 Four: Social Networks and the Aristocracy 115 Groups in landholding society 118 Networks and connections 136 Case studies, contexts and trends 147 Five: Social contexts 169 Patterns of landholding 170 Physical settings and social contexts 186 Six: The Nature of Scottish Europeanization 216 Appendix: A list of non-royal, non-ecclesiastical charters 222 from Scotland north of Forth, circa 1150-1260. Bibliography 247 1. Primary sources 247 2. Secondary sources 254 5 List of Tables and Graphs 1.1 Types of non-royal, non-ecclesiastical charters 1.2 Sources of non-royal, non-ecclesiastical charter texts 31 2.1 Trends in the adoption of charter use in Scotland 37 2.2 The first extant royal charters to lay tenants north of Forth, ca. 1160-ca. 1180 2.3 Beneficiaries of aristocratic charters, 1150-1200 2.4 Beneficiaries by monastery, grants, confirmations and quitclaims to circa 1210 2.5 Top twelfth-century grantors of extant charter texts 48 relating to Scotland north of Forth 2.6 Agnes and Morgrund of Mar's charters to 50 St Andrews Priory, ca. 1160-78 2.7 Earls and royal charter attestations in Scotland, 1124 to 53 1214 2.8 Earls with highest number of attestations 1124 to 1214 54 2.9 Non-royal, non-ecclesiastical charters, according to 60 charter median date 2.10 Numbers of documents from lay landholders, to laypeople 62 3.1 Occurrence of all names 74 3.2 Gender of names versus sex of individuals 75 3.3 Most frequently-attested male names 76 3.4 Personal Nameslocal and European 78 3.5 Most frequently-attested female names 80 3.6 Percentage of individuals with post-1000 English and 81 Scottish royal names 3.7 Proportion of individuals with religious names 84 5.1 Parishes and thanes in the Meares 181 5.2 Evidence for thanages and royal lordship in the Mearns 183 5.3 Sworn perambulators or `good men': 6 examples 212 5.4 `Witnesses' to the ceremony 214 6 List of Genealogical Trees Chapter Two Genealogical Trees 2.1 The countess network 52 2.2 Earl David and his connections in donors to Lindores Abbey 57 Chapter Four Genealogical Trees 4.1 Earls of Angus, earls of Caithness and lords of Ogilvie 155 4.2 Earls of Atholl 156 4.3 Scottish earls and Anglo-French baronial families 157 4.4