Kingship, Lordship and Sanctity in Medieval Britain: Essays in Honour of Alexander Grant

The volume celebrates the career of the influential historian of late medieval Scotland and northern England, Dr Alexander (Sandy) Grant. Its contributors engage with the profound shift in thinking about this society in the light of his scholarship, and the development of the New Orthodoxy , both attending to the legacy of this discourse, and offering new research with which to challenge or amend our understanding of late medieval Scotland and northern England.

Dr Grant’s famously wide and diverse historical interests are here reflected through three main foci: kingship, lordship and identity. The volume includes significant reassessments of the reputations of two kings, Alexander I of Scotland and Henry V of England; an examination of Richard III’s relationship to the lordship of Pontefract; and a study of the development of royal pardon in late medieval Scotland. Further chapters consider the social influence and legal and tenurial rights vested in aristocratic lineages, regional gentry communities, and the leaders of burghal corporations. Finally, the relationship between saints cults, piety and regnal and regional identity in medieval Scotland is scrutinised in chapters on St Margaret and St Ninian.