The 69th Conference of the Scottish Medievalists was held 10-11 January 2026.
Session 1: History and Public Engagement
Fiona Watson – ‘Why the media is not your friend (but don’t let it worry you).’
“I would like to explore the idea that TV and radio producers are usually trying to do something very different from what historians think they should be doing or want them to do. With some honourable exceptions, we are talking about problematic oversimplification, reliance on myths, and far too short a programme to do justice to much in the way of historical complexity. There is also a reliance on the same people (of which I am sometimes one), even if the subject may be out of their area of expertise. I would suggest that there’s no point in lamenting any of this (other than as licence payers bemused by the content of Radio Scotland). But each of us should decide where our lines are that you’re not willing to cross.
Having said that, there is also much that the historical profession can do these days to get a more sophisticated version of the past across. This boils down to: it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. I know that undergraduates are encouraged to write blogs etc. But I’m not sure the profession gives much thought to training the next generation of professionals (or even, dare I say it, themselves) in becoming good writers and/or speakers. We neglect our ability to communicate effectively at our peril, that of being viewed as largely irrelevant, talking to ourselves. It’s also vital to engage with, or at least give respect to, groups and individuals passionate about history, even if we don’t feel it’s often ‘our’ kind of history. That’s not about dumbing down or pretending to be something we’re not. But to be on hand to offer advice and give support and, often, to learn how to engage. ”
Allan Kennedy – ‘History Scotland Magazine, 2001-2025: Reflections and Lessons’
History Scotland magazine was a glossy, professionally-produced magazine which, after its launch in 2001, quickly established itself as the pre-eminent crossover periodical dedicated to bringing cutting-edge historical research about Scotland to a global reading public. As it developed, it also spawned a number of supplementary platforms, including souvenir guides, exclusive e-essays, lectures, podcasts, a webinar series, and even a comic book. In this paper, the presenter, who was centrally involved in History Scotland for a decade, first as Reviews Editor and then as Consultant Editor, will offer his personal reflections on the opportunities and challenges presented by the magazine. Topics of discussion will include the need to balance academic fashions with public tastes, writing for the public, ensuring quality, securing academic buy-in, and, of course, the interaction of academic mission and commercial necessity. The paper will also reflect on the magazine’s sudden closure at the start of 2025, asking what its failure tells us about the current state of Scottish public history.
Bruce Fummey – ‘I Tell Stories’
Bruce Fummey has gained 250 000 YouTube subscribers as a fake Scottish historian. There is still some public debate as to whether it’s the Scottish bit or the historian bit that’s fake, he’s learned a few things about the challenges of communicating history and seeks to share some lessons learned.
Session 2: Politics and the Nobility
Arpad Kuffler (Aberdeen) – The Quincy crusaders: an Anglo-Scottish family tradition, 1189 – c.1250
From the end of the twelfth century, an increasing number of Scottish nobles are known to have enlisted on a ‘general passage’ or ‘crusade’ – a combined pilgrimage and military campaign – launched to attain western Christian control of the holy sites of Christendom in Palestine and Syria. Surviving documents often reveal no more than names of participants and preparatory business transactions. An exception is the Quincy family, which produced three generations of crucesignati. Robert I (d. c. 1208), founder of the Scottish branch of this Anglo-Norman family, became a royal justiciar under William the Lion, and later accompanied Richard I on the Third Crusade. His son, Saer IV, one of the prominent magnates in the British Isles and one of the sureties of the Magna Carta, eventually died during the Fifth Crusade (1219). His grandson, Robert III (d.1257), youngest son of Saer IV, joined the Seventh Crusade.
Throughout these generations, the family retained interests in both realms, and thus, are best described as Anglo-Scottish. The greater-than-usual insight into their activities, provided by charters, crown records, annals and chronicles, presents a fragmented and kaleidoscopic image of a military aristocracy maintaining multiple loyalties. This image, in turn, can shed some light on the changing priorities of this particular family, and on the social impact of the crusades on Scotland. Although final conclusions of the project are still to be written, findings indicate so far, that documented crusade participation in Scotland often correlated with English presence and influence.
William Mulloy – ‘By Force and Valour’: Roger Kirkpatrick and the Shaping of the Scottish West March, c.1350-1359
Following the defeat and capture of King David II at the Battle of Neville’s Cross, the Scottish border lordship of Annandale experienced an acute crisis of leadership. John Randolph, lord of Annandale, was slain, alongside several of the lordship’s leading magnates; many others were taken prisoner, left to languish in English captivity for the rest of the 1340s. It is in this context, with Annandale deprived of both its traditional lords (the Bruces) and the Randolphs, that another local kindred, the Kirkpatricks, would briefly rise to prominence.
In the mid-1350s, Roger Kirkpatrick successfully invaded and recovered much of Nithsdale and southwestern Annandale, holding these regions ‘securely in the allegiance of the king’. Like other war leaders—such as William Douglas of Liddesdale and George Dunbar—he emerged as a key figure in the affairs of the Scottish West March, receiving English adherents into David’s peace whilst simultaneously expanding his family’s holdings and influence in the region. This paper argues that Kirkpatrick’s rapid rise within Nithsdale and Annandale, coupled with his murder at the hands of Sir James Lindsay, profoundly shaped the political landscape of the lordship, setting the stage for the next two decades of Anglo-Scottish conflict and political manoeuvring in Annandale.
Joanna Richardson – ‘An ‘outrageous sucquedry’: Fate, Providence and the Death of Edward Bruce in John Barbour’s The Bruce’
In 1318 Edward Bruce met his demise at the battle of Dundalk in what many have understood as a natural and predictable consequence of his inherent character flaws. John Barbour’s The Bruce is one of the central texts responsible for this understanding, but it is in fact the case that Barbour views Edward’s downfall as inevitable? To properly comprehend Barbour’s depiction of these events it is important to recognise the inherent religious framework of the text which has often been unappreciated. The Bruce explores the concepts of fate and providence as the means through which God interacts with man in order to emphasise the conviction that humans are able to exercise free will over their actions within an overarching divine plan. As such Edward Bruce death provides a lesson to Barbour’s readers precisely because it is avoidable and he has the potential to succeed despite his shortcomings.
Neil Macpherson (Aberdeen) – ‘The Tripartite Indenture of 1405 – was there a Scottish political dimension?’
This paper will examine the Tripartite Indenture of 1405 to identify if the Scots were involved in any way. The indenture was an agreement between the Earl of Northumberland, Owain Glyn Dŵr of Wales and the Mortimer family to divide England up between them and hitherto, any Scottish involvement has tended to be overlooked by historians. This will involve first, a brief examination of what Scottish historians have – or have not – written about it. Second, an assessment of both English and Welsh historians’ comments will be undertaken, exploring any Scottish angles that they may have identified. Some of the original English and Scottish sources of the time will then be researched, in particular an analysis of diplomatic contacts and correspondence. Following this, the observations of some contemporary and contemporaneous chroniclers from Scotland, England, Wales and France will be surveyed to identify possible Scottish involvement in the Indenture. Finally, the complex relationships between the leaders of the English Percy family and their Scottish border neighbours will be examined. In the conclusion, the evidence of Scottish involvement in the indenture will be analysed and assessed against the political and diplomatic imperatives of the Scottish kingdom at that time.
Session 3: The 7th A. A. M. Duncan Memorial Lecture:
Cecily Shakespeare – ‘Lost in translation: rediscovering a forgotten cult of Saint Colman at Portmahomack and understanding its wider context in late medieval Ross-shire’
Abstract
Bioarchaeological analysis of a 14th-century burial at St Colman’s Church, Portmahomack, Ross-shire has unpackaged understanding of a rare, multi-generational grave which included a saintly relic. The scientific programme will be outlined and the results used to explore a locally-based kindred of potential culturally Gaelic background. The unusual composition of the burial will be placed within the context of the late medieval cult of relics and the (sometimes violent) social and environmental stresses of the 14th century. The late medieval settlement at Portmahomack forms part of the immediate context for the burials and included a rare smithy producing bladed weapons. The smithy connects Portmahomack to the results of research excavation at Eilean Donan Castle, Ross-shire where a smithy has been found through excavation and was also likely producing bladed weapons. The relationship with the castle and St Donnan and other saints remembered in placenames will also be explored.
Speaker
Cecily Shakespeare is a researching field archaeologist at FAS Heritage who has excavated, studied and published medieval stratified sequences in Scotland and England.
Session 4: Church, gender and society
Ashley Brown – ‘Self- and collective-fashioning in 16th-century scholarly letters.’
Many Scottish intellectuals in the post-Reformation period (1560-1610) operated within a wide scholarly network, exchanging letters with other educated men across western Europe. This network (which I call a ‘trans-national Protestant intellectual communication community’ (TPICC)) was comprised of men who had a shared faith, and a strong passion for demonstrating and upholding that Presbyterian/Calvinist faith. They were also brought together by fear. Throughout their epistolary correspondence, it is clear that many of the men firmly felt that their religious path and those who followed it constantly suffered from a range of threats, or outright attacks.This shaped the self- and collective-fashioning within the letters of these intellectuals in interesting and unique ways: they were both active defenders of the church and beleaguered sufferers, being stalwart fighters who protected their religious path, but also victims of ‘evils threatening the Church of God’. My research develops the work of Kenneth Austin (self-fashioning in academic letters) and John McCallum (emotion history in 16 th century Scotland) by applying a gender lens to the epistolary exchanges of Andrew Melville, James Melville, John Johnston and Robert Howie to better understand how these men communicated with each other as scholarly, fearful men. As such, this paper will first evidence the outlook and nature of this network before demonstrating how members of this TPICC fashioned themselves, and each other, as both victims and ‘scholarly warriors’.
Bess Rhodes – The Divorce of Elizabeth Geddy: Sex, Lies, and the Scottish Reformation
In February 1560 an unhappy couple appeared before the newly established kirk session in St Andrews. A local burgess named William Ranton alleged that his wife Elizabeth Geddy was an adulteress who was conspiring to murder him. Elizabeth firmly denied these accusations. This dispute commenced what was probably the first Protestant divorce proceedings in Scotland – a process which ultimately ended in a resounding success for Elizabeth.
The disintegration of William and Elizabeth’s marriage presented the St Andrews Kirk Session with a challenging task. Not merely were the members of the kirk session expected to determine the truth about a complex relationship, their actions would also lay the foundations for a new Protestant approach to ending marriages. Faced with these heavy responsibilities, the minister and elders of St Andrews questioned Elizabeth and William extensively, as well as taking statements from their servants, neighbours, and friends. This evidence was written down in more detail than was typical in later cases before the kirk session. As a result, we have a remarkable window onto urban society at the time of the Scottish Reformation. This paper will adopt a microhistorical approach to the Ranton v. Geddy divorce case, exploring its unexpected twists and turns, and considering what the kirk session’s records reveal about marriage, gender relations, and town life in a time of religious unrest.
Session 5: Archaeology and Built Heritage
Stephen Harrison – ‘Mayback, Papa Westray – A New Viking Cemetery from Orkney’
Between 2015 and 2017, a series of excavations were carried out at Mayback, Papa Westray, by AOC Archaeology under the Historic Scotland Human Remains Call-off Contract. Among other things, these revealed the remains of a small ‘Viking’ cemetery, and led to the discovery of two furnished graves – a boat burial that had been disturbed in antiquity, and a well-furnished weapon grave. An extensive programme of multidisciplinary post-excavation research is now almost complete, and initial publication is under way.
The graves are exciting for a number of reasons. They have been excavated under controlled conditions and subjected to a wide range of scientific tests, which has included analysis of the surviving skeletal material as well as the grave-goods. These give new insights to two early settlers in Scotland and contribute to ongoing debates on the social role of the furnished burial rite in the early Viking-Age, including the relationship between grave-goods and individuals, the role of gender in assemblage selection, the significance of monumentality in mortuary practice, and the complex relationship between ‘pagan Norse’ and ‘Christian native’ in this period.
I am grateful to Historic Environment Scotland, AOC Archaeology and my co-authors for permission to present some key findings at this conference.
Eleonora A. Veneziano – ’Restored Middle-Ages: the fate of Edinburgh’s medieval churches in the early 19th century’
In 19th century Europe numerous churches – and especially medieval cathedrals – underwent an unprecedented wave of interventions, ranging from mere transformations to demolitions and reconstructions. These operations often had very different outcomes but also provided an opportunity for a lively theoretical debate, which had profound consequences for architectural practice. While this was particularly evident across England, in Edinburgh – the city of the Enlightenment par excellence in the United Kingdom – reflections on the built environment appeared in some respects different and often not formally documented. In an era of unparalleled urban change, for both aesthetic-cultural and utilitarian reasons many of the medieval churches in the capital faced interventions that completely altered their substance, sometimes with dramatic results for the effective conservation of the city’s medieval heritage. This research aims to explore the fate of Edinburgh’s main medieval churches, examining what has actually been preserved from the Middle Ages and what, on the other hand, has been conjecturally restored or reinvented in line with both the widespread romantic sentiment towards the Nation’s past and the need to accommodate modern requirements and needs, such as the revision of traditional parochial structures, shifts in the town’s identity and self-perception and imposed response to the arrival of the railway.
Murray Cook and Dominic Farrugia: ‘Guarding the Past: Stirling’s 16th Century Renaissance Wall’
Re-examines Stirling’s Burgh Wall, Scotland’s best-preserved example of a 16th century defensive burgh wall, using a multidisciplinary biographical approach integrating topographical, architectural, documentary and archaeological analysis. Findings indicate that planning and construction began earlier than the traditionally accepted date of 1547, under French influence and directed by Queen Dowager Mary de Guise to protect Mary Queen of Scots and uphold Stuart sovereignty. New archaeological evidence is presented of previously unrecorded physical remains, offering fresh insights into the design, extent, phasing and repair of the structure. Acknowledged in this research as an early Scottish example of a bastioned Renaissance fortification adapted to its local setting, the Stirling Burgh Wall is shown to have also played a crucial role in civic life, regulating trade, asserting authority and supporting ceremonial activities. Its biography reflects early modern Stirling’s resilience, political pragmatism and organisational strength, while offering fresh insights into the rarity of defensive walls in Scottish burghs. Despite subsequent modifications and partial demolition, the Stirling Burgh Wall’s enduring cultural and historical significance underscores the critical need for enhanced management measures.
Session 6: Anderson Dunlop Awards
Kelly Kilpatrick – Archaeological Evaluation in the Vicinity of the Medieval Church in the Township of Kirkapol, Isle of Tiree
The medieval ecclesiastical history of Kirkapol, a township on the Isle of Tiree, is evident today in the ruinous fourteenth-century church and chapel, nearby to which is Cladh Odhrain, a cemetery still in use. The place-name Kirkapol itself means ‘farmstead of the church’ in Old Norse. It is known from medieval accounts such as the Life of St Columba (c. AD 700) and the Irish Chronicles that multiple early Christian monasteries existed on Tiree, and thus it is of considerable importance to better understand the archaeology of sites like Kirkapol that have a longstanding religious history.
Between 2021 and 2022, in partnership with Dr Rob O’Hara, Kelly directed the Aerial and Satellite Archaeological Prospecting project on the Isle of Tiree (Society of Antiquaries of Scotland). This research used remote sensing techniques (LiDAR and multispectral satellite imagery) to identify, map, and classify potential archaeological features on the island. In partnership with the North of Scotland Archaeological Society, in September 2023 select features in the landscape of Kirkapol identified by the remote sensing survey were subject to an archaeological trial trenching programme, a geophysical survey, and drone photogrammetry. This paper discusses the scope of the work undertaken at Kirkapol, the results of the archaeological evaluation programme, and scope for future research.
Joanna Martin (University of Nottingham): ‘Home and Harbery in Older Scots’.
My research aims to produce an original book-length analysis of the depictions of home, ‘harbery’ (shelter / hospitality) and homelessness, and the emotions associated with the home, in Older Scots language and literature, c. 1400-1600. Drawing on research into the history of emotions, and early domestic materiality, archaeology and architecture, and informed by site visits to surviving pre-1700 dwellings, my research assembles and examines a range of documentary and literary sources related to low-status, mercantile, and laird’s dwellings. The resulting monograph will transform our understanding of the conceptualisation of home and how it shaped expressions of emotion and morality in pre-modern Scotland.