Feature Article 5: Tessa Webber
The Models of Authority project encompasses a period remarkable for the emergence of an extraordinary level of diversity in the appearance of the handwriting of charters issued both north and south of the Scottish border. The earliest surviving Scottish charters, which date from the ...
Feature Article 4: Alice Taylor
One of the main aims of Models of Authority is to show how the study of charter diplomatic can aid our understanding of the emergence of more centralised governmental structures in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This is explained in Dauvit Broun's ...
Feature Article 3: Dauvit Broun
It is important at the outset of the project to recognise that charters were not the only way in which royal authority was represented in text on parchment (or vellum).[1] There were forms explicitly about the kingship itself. The simplest example would be a ...
Feature Article 2: Dauvit Broun
Those with a general interest in History can be forgiven for not expecting to find much of human interest in charters. The Earl of Rosebery, former Prime Minister, went so far as to complain in his presidential address to the ...
Feature Article 1: Dauvit Broun
The project aims through the study of charters to offer a new perspective on a fundamental historical development: the origins of government in western Europe. Tim Reuter described this deftly when he observed that, ‘By around 1200 we have begun to move towards a ...