The execution of William Wallace: the earliest account

A newly discovered English source, which also marks the earliest record of William Wallace’s execution, confirms outright what historians had only suspected before: the reason that Edward I dealt so harshly with Wallace was that he viewed him as a pretender to the Scottish crown

Modern merthods and a controversial surname: Plant

In the past few years, DNA testing has begun to contribute to our understanding. It is currently emerging more clearly which surnames are multi-origin, originating with many different forefathers, and which descend from a single male ancestor. As a case study, I shall describe the application of modern, multidisciplinary methods to the surname Plant, which has been ascribed a different meaning each time an authority has written about it. The recent emergence of a different view anout this name's origins has prompted a reassessment of its meaning

Wirral revisited

This article has two goals. The first is to document fully the recurrent English place-name Wirral and a number of similar ones which can be shown, in some cases definitely, in others probably or possibly, to have the same origin, as well as others which appear to have the same first element. The second is to re-interrogate the widely accepted meaning of the Old English word wīr which is, beyond reasonable doubt, the first element of the name, because the grounds for the general belief that it denotes the shrub known as bog myrtle or sweet gale (Myrica gale) have not yet been properly explored

Raoul of Presles. A Fourteenth-Century Translation of De civitate Dei

The dominance of Augustine of Hippo in philosophy during the second quarter of the fourteenth century is testified to by three evidences: (1) the wide use of quotations from his works, (2) the flourishing of commentaries on them, especially at Oxford, as reconstructed by William J. Courtenay; (3) the historical-critical treatment of the writings of the Fathers, of the theological and philosophical auctoritates, and of contemporary Scholastic authors at Paris by the Augustinians, as reconstructed by Onorato Grassi. In this article, I focus on the second kind of evidence, taking into account some commentaries on Augustine’s De civitate Dei, namely those of Nicholas Trevet and Thomas Waleys in the English area, and that Francis of Meyronnes in the French area. These commentaries became the basis for Raoul de Presles’s translation of Augustine’s work into Middle French. Moreover, I analyze books 1–5 of Raoul’s translation, showing that it was by no means accidental to his intellectual endeavors and that Raoul employed innovative, Humanist techniques of translation, and shedding light on the comparison of Charles V of France to Charlemagne in the rediscovery of the Augustinian corpus

The development of the charter in Scotland

No abstract available

The development of the charter in Scotland

No abstract available