The 68th Conference of the Scottish Medievalists was held 4-5 January 2025.
Session 1: Early Medieval Scotland
Chair: Alex Woolf
Alexandra Farrell (Glasgow): Decorated Viking-age dress fasteners in Scotland: cultural interaction and negotiating identities, c. 9th -10th century
This research analyses and discusses decorated dress-fasteners recovered from 9th- and 10th-century Viking contexts to better understand the syncretic processes within the ‘Viking diaspora’ in Scotland. The concept of this ‘diaspora’ includes making connections to Scandinavia as well as interacting and negotiating identity with encountering native groups. As there is a conscious decision to decorate, decorated objects are central to this study. The focus of this research is on the deliberate visual effects of these objects in signalling aspects of ethnicity, gender, and status. The corpus consists of 126 decorated objects, including 62 oval brooches, 30 ringed pins, 29 annular and penannular brooches, and 5 ‘other’ dress fasteners found in Viking burial, settlement, and hoard contexts. Analysis included visual and decorative analysis for each object, as well as their visual relationship with other objects in their archaeological contexts. The study discusses visual signalling before deposition by examining manufacture, how these objects were worn through use-wear, and whether they were repaired. While final conclusions are yet to be written for this ongoing study, the results of the study thus far suggests that decoration and visual placement in use and deposition can signal the syncretic aspects of ethnicity, gender, and status.
Murray Cook (Stirling): Back and Forth: reconsidering the fords of Forthin, an archaeological perspective. (Kenneth II’s fortification of the fords of Forthin in The Chronicles of the Kings of Alba to the so-called ‘Fords of Frew’ -10th century)
In 2025 it will 99 years since the publication of Professor William Watson’s The History of the Celtic Place-Names of Scotland. This text explicitly links Kenneth II’s fortification of the fords of Forthin in The Chronicles of the Kings of Alba to the so-called ‘Fords of Frew’ and simultaneously aggrandises the latter’s utility and significance. This over-egged interpretation of the ‘Ford of Frew’ has been generally adopted by historians and archaeologists ever since. This paper explores the actual nature of fords and fording points across the Forth and its tributaries and detects the potential influence of both Sir Walter Scott and John Buchan on Watson. New archaeological research is presented to propose what fortification might have meant on the ground and a suggestion for the date of construction of the first bridge at Stirling is made.
Session 2: Stuart Material Culture
Chair: Jane Dawson
Emily Hay (Glasgow): A Saint, a Skull and two Queens of Scots: St Margaret’s relics in sixteenth-century Scotland
St Margaret of Scotland has become known throughout the centuries as a protector of women in childbirth. Several of the Stuart royal women certainly took this aspect of Margaret’s sanctity to heart, with Mary of Gueldres and Margaret Tudor each calling for her sark (chemise) at the births of James III and V respectively. However, several modern sources on the life of St Margaret also state an altogether more confusing relationship between Margaret and another Scottish queen. Both major biographies of St Margaret state that Mary Queen of Scots sent for Margaret’s skull whilst in childbirth with her son, James VI. Yet, none of the sources which repeat this statement give a reference for where the information came from, and it exclusively appears in sources relative to St Margaret and her relics, not the life of Mary Queen of Scots. Thus, we are left with the question: is this a little documented fact, or an oft-repeated piece of historical fiction? My paper aims to explore this question, presenting the historical evidence related to St Margaret’s relics in sixteenth-century Scotland and their possible connections to Mary Queen of Scots.
Charlie Spragg (Edinburgh): ‘The most triumphant, and royal accomplishment’: The self-fashioning of King James VI at Prince Henry’s baptism
In 1594, King James VI of Scotland and his wife Queen Anna of Denmark welcomed their first son and heir Prince Henry. His baptism was a magnificent affair attended by ambassadors from throughout Europe. The celebrations opened with a themed tournament, followed by the baptism ceremony in a richly decorated Chapel Royal, and finished in a lavish banquet performance. The result of scholarly neglect of James’ relationship with the visual and material promotion of power has been that the central role he played as the patron and principal performer at the baptism has yet to be explored.
This paper examines the overlooked accounts of the King’s Master of the Wardrobe. Considered in conjunction with a range of related sources, James’ capitalisation on the politics of sartorial display at the baptism becomes evident. His clothing was crafted, not only to express the luxury of his court, but his central place as the father and monarch who had secured prosperity and stability for Scotland and its allies, in order to promote himself as a preeminent European leader. Conversely, this discovery indicates that even with such careful planning, patrons and artists had no command over what messages and information were valued by observers.
Molly Ingham (Edinburgh/NMS): Reading the Word, Painting the Faith: The Dean House panels and Post-Reformation Domestic Devotion in Scotland (c.1620)
The ‘lost’ painted ceiling which once presided over the gallery at Dean House in Edinburgh survives as a handful of painted panels, most of which are on display at National Museums Scotland. Commissioned by staunch Presbyterian William Nisbet of the Dean c.1620, these salvaged panels depict Biblical figures and religious scenes in vibrant colour intended to animate the gallery and promote spiritual engagement. Recent trends in post-Reformation scholarship have sought to decentralise the written word and emphasise the continuation of visual forms of religious expression. In imaginatively reconstructing the decorative scheme and visual effect of the Dean House ceiling, this paper takes this scholarship further, demonstrating how Presbyterian focus on the laity’s understanding of the written word directly shaped artistic practice.
This paper will consider the visual programme of the ceiling in relation to Scottish religious experiences – both in the Kirk and at home – as well as the didactic texts which outlined the ideals of Presbyterian devotional practice. In doing so, it will consider the agency of both William Nisbet and the unknown artist in the design of the ceiling. Theories of devotional gaze and ritualised movement will also be employed, tapping into the embodied experience of religion in the early modern Scottish home. Thus, it will uncover the domestic devotional lives of the Nisbet family and how this shaped and, in turn, was shaped by interior decoration.
The 6th A.A.M. Duncan Memorial Lecture
Chair: Alan MacDonald
Lizzie Swarbrick (Edinburgh): “The Fag End of the International Medieval Tradition”? The Quality and Worth of Scottish Churches.
Session 4: Twelfth and Thirteenth Century Scotland
Chair Fiona Watson
Frances Bickerstaff (St Andrews): Serfdom and Slavery: Unfreedom on the lands of Paisley Abbey and its neighbours (12th-13th centuries)
In the eleventh century and well into the twelfth, the kingdom of the Scots was a slaveholding and slave-trading society. But by the beginning of the thirteenth century, a great change seems, at least superficially, to have taken place. Instead of slavery, historians talk of neyfs, serfs and serfdom- people tied to the land though not necessarily enslaved. By the late fourteenth century this system, too, is said to have fizzled out. Yet there is a huge gap in our understanding of the unfree population of twelfth and thirteenth-century Scotland. Exactly how and why this seeming transformation from slavery to serfdom took place, and whether it is anything more than an arbitrary division of historiography, remains in question. This paper proposes to look at the records of one abbey, Paisley, to examine the abbey’s servile population in this key period of transition. Great churches like Paisley were major landholders, and so great owners of people. Across the abbey’s estates were scattered a multitude of fisheries, traps, woods and many hundreds of acres of land, all of which required people-who had varying degrees of freedom- to do the labour which sustained the institution. Can we see any change in their legal and economic status across the period? Understanding the abbey’s servile population will shed light on the status of unfreedom more generally and whether this was, indeed, a great period of transition for the vast bulk of Scotland’s population.
John Marshall (Trinity, Dublin): Avoiding ‘no small peril’: transnational aspirations and limitations in the thirteenth-century Irish Sea region
In 1224, the minority council of the young Henry III wrote to the English proctors at the papal curia, voicing their concerns at the prospects of a marriage between the earl of Pembroke, William Marshal the younger (d. 1231), and a sister of either Alexander II or Robert de Brus, which, they claimed, would lead to ‘no small peril’ for the Plantagenet realm due to the Marshal lands in Ireland. A decade later, however, in 1235, William’s younger brother Gilbert (d. 1241) married Alexander’s sister Marjorie. Why did the Plantagenet attitude to a Marshal-Scottish marriage change? What evidence do we have for Gilbert’s six-year tenure as lord of Haddington in East Lothian and the expansion of the Marshal network into Scotland? And what can the politics of the Marshal marriage negotiations reveal about broader transnational networks of power, the potency of political opportunities and anxieties, and the multiplicity of relationships which connected the Scottish, Plantagenet, and Capetian courts? This paper explores these questions, using the experience of the Marshal family as a lens into the wider complexities of transmarine politics in the thirteenth-century Irish Sea region.
13.00 Session 5: Stewart and Stuart Diplomacy
Chair: Ken Emond
Donald Neil Macpherson (Aberdeen): The release of King James I in 1424: the diplomatic story
On March 22nd, 1406, a ship carrying the young King James I was captured off Flamborough Head. For the next eighteen years various diplomatic efforts were made to secure his return to Scotland. These missions varied in size and quality and should be seen in the context of the governorship of the king’s uncle, the Duke of Albany, whose son Murdac was also a prisoner in England. Whilst Murdac’s release was achieved in 1416, that of King James was not until 1424. Specific reference will be made to the apparent changing attitude toward James and his kingdom by Henry V and how Scottish diplomacy – and military action – brought about the circumstances leading to the decision by the new government of Henry VI in 1423 to set the terms for King James’s release.
The changing nature of both the diplomacy and of the diplomats over the period will be examined with specific reference to the role of the Fourth Earl of Douglas and to the type of face-to-face diplomacy involved in many of the negotiations, particularly that of the York Chapter House Agreement between English and Scottish commissioners of September 10th 1423 and again in London of December 4th of the same year where a slightly different arrangement was agreed. The major difference revolved around the English demand that an Anglo-Scottish truce was agreed as part of the release agreement. The personal and direct role of King James in March 1424 to resolve this awkward matter – awkward due to so many Scottish troops being in France – will be further analysed.
Kate McGregor (St Andrews): Foreign policy and diplomacy during the adult rule of James V, King of Scots, 1528-1542
Amid the religious and diplomatic turmoil of the 1530s Scotland stood at the eye of the storm, standing as the last bastion of Catholicism in Great Britain. Thus far extant historiography has, surprisingly, overlooked the continental European foreign policies of James V, King of Scots during his adult rule (1528-1542). Scholarly understandings of Scotland, Anglo-Scottish relations and the Reformation are, however, profoundly distorted as extant scholarship has largely overlooked the broader context of the continental European foreign policies of James V, King of Scots. By widening archival perspectives away from England and exploring Scottish relations with France, Denmark, the Holy Roman Empire, Ireland and Wales this paper will significantly revise the way we view Scotland’s role in Europe and the apparatus of the sixteenth century Scottish state. Approaching diplomacy as not only treatises and wars, but drawing on the ‘new diplomatic history’, emphasising cultural exchanges between European kingdoms, this paper aims to recast sixteenth century Scotland as a kingdom with a distinct diplomatic culture.
Joe Ellis (York): Progresses and Performance: Early Manifestations of ‘Union’ in James VI’s Scotland, c.1578-1603.
Steven Reid’s recent analysis of James VI’s childhood and adolescence has demonstrated how the English succession was ‘the central concern of his policy from his earliest political engagement’. After assuming his official majority in 1578, James soon inaugurated a personal correspondence with Elizabeth I, effectively terminated Scotland’s Auld Alliance with France, and increasingly incorporated English court fashion into his own. Moreover, an enhanced freedom of movement enabled him to promote his imperial ambition, both above and below the Anglo-Scottish Border. Progresses, or ‘progress-raids’, became major instruments in this campaign. James’s early raids on Scottish Border counties were often half-hearted attempts to appease the English queen’s frustration at cross-border incursions. James only took affirmative action if he had his own reasons to do so: the opportunity to hunt or pursue a personal vendetta were frequent motivating factors. However, after 1600, as multiple-monarchy seemed increasingly plausible, instability in the Marches might cease to be a shared issue, but an issue for James alone. After years of performative action, he subjected the region to the practical effects of his ‘moderated absolutism’. Significantly, James’s progresses also brought him into close physical proximity with England itself. New research suggests that in 1588 he even briefly crossed the Tweed into England without Elizabeth’s dispensation. Thus, the paper argues that James politicised notions of proximity and distance to pursue official recognition as Elizabeth’s heir, measure support amongst his prospective subjects, and take greater control over the region that he hoped would soon constitute the middle of his realm.
Jane Dawson (Edinburgh): Rescue of new transcript of the manuscripts of John Knox’s History of the Reformation – Anderson Dunlop award update and thanks.