Adcock, Raymond (2024) 1290 A.D or 1307 A.D? When? Why? And by Whom? Was a Medieval Charter Granted to the Township of Laugharne, West Wales. Masters thesis, University of Wales Trinity Saint David.
|
Text
Adcock, Raymond (2024) MA When, Why, and By Whom was a Medieval Charter Granted thesis.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License CC-BY-NC-ND Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (6MB) | Preview |
Abstract
Laugharne is a small, west Wales township of 2,700 people situated ten miles south of Carmarthen.1 It is unusual if not unique, outside of the City of London, for being a medieval chartered borough with an active corporation, who still convene a fortnightly ‘Hundred Court’ and manage 200 acres of land. This makes it both historically important and of academic interest. The chartered borough was created by a member of the de Brian family, the Marcher lords of the manor, but the document is undated and unsigned, albeit there is a wax seal and a list of local earls and nobles appended as witnesses. Therefore, the central question addressed by this dissertation is when, why and by whom was the charter granted? The situation is complicated by the successive use of the first name ‘Guy’ in the de Brian family throughout thirteenth century, the sparsity of local extant documentation and several candidate dates (1290, 1307, etc.,) for the charter. The conventional approach to undated charters is to focus on the birth/death dates of witnesses to narrow the possible timeframe for issue. However, this dissertation recognises that Edward I’s strategy was predicated upon a secure castle with a protected ‘alien’ settlement in its shadow and peaceful economic conditions -necessary for a charter to be successful, so the first step was to identify intervals when this opportunity existed. The second consideration is the overt reference in the Laugharne charter to the Carmarthen equivalent, granted between 1254 and 1257 and which provides useful information with which to connect the Laugharne charter to other historical events, helping to qualify these probable timeframes. Finally, witnesses’ lives were ‘overlaid’ on putative dates, identifying a grant of the charter between November 1279 and March 1282.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D111 Medieval History D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain |
| Divisions: | Theses and Dissertations > Masters Dissertations |
| Depositing User: | Victoria Hankinson |
| Date Deposited: | 02 Aug 2024 09:15 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2024 09:40 |
| URI: | https://repository.uwtsd.ac.uk/id/eprint/3084 |
Administrator Actions (login required)
 |
Edit Item - Repository Staff Only |