Dr. Mary Simms

Summary

Member of the international steering committee for this IRCHSS-funded project (Principal Investigator Dr David Ditchburn, Associate investigators Dr Peter Crooks and Prof. Sean Duffy) which seeks to advance our understanding of the 'making of Ireland' between the high Middle Ages and the dawn of the modern era-one of the most formative periods in Ireland's past-by publishing on the web and in print an English calendar of the rolls of the medieval Irish chancery, c. 1216-1509. The chancery was a key organ of English government in medieval Ireland. Access to its records is, however, severely restricted. The original chancery rolls suffered a series of calamities from the 13th century, culminating in 1922 with the destruction of the last 123 original rolls. A Latin calendar produced by the Irish Record Commission (1828) does not compensate for their destruction: it was poorly edited and lacks an adequate critical apparatus. Moreover, it offers no English translations and the text is printed in 'record type', reflecting abbreviations in the original manuscripts. This project will remedy these deficiencies by reconstructing the chancery rolls from transcripts and calendars dating from 14th-19th centuries located in Ireland and England. The outcome will be a web-based English calendar, to be followed by a multi-volume printed edition. This project will revolutionise medieval Irish studies by providing both specialists and the general public with access to an unparalleled source of information. More generally, the project will generate interest from scholars working on administrative history in a Europe-wide context and on the 'Anglicization' of the British Isles in Middle Ages. It will also stimulate exciting comparative work across the medieval-modern divide on the adaptation (or 'creolisation') of metropolitan governing practices and values in a colonial context, and on the processes of state formation and cultural exchange in the British Isles and the early modern Atlantic world.

Funding Agency

Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Project Type

Thematic Project