ABSTRACT
This portrait will bring to life the medieval urban environment of Swansea, south Wales: a thriving port, a base for the Marcher lords of Gower, and a multi-cultural, multi-lingual borderland community. It will be informed by the detailed research which comprised, and followed, the AHRC-funded project ‘City Witness: Place and Perspective in Medieval Swansea’ (www.medievalswansea.ac.uk), directed by the author, as well as the subsequent AHRC-funded project which developed the St Thomas Way. At the centre of this research – and inspiration for this portrait – is MS Vat. Lat. 4015, with its nine eyewitness accounts of the hanging – and apparently miraculous revival – of the Welsh outlaw William Cragh in 1290, compiled as part of the canonisation proceedings for Thomas of Hereford (Thomas Cantilupe). Using these highly detailed testimonies, as well as other documentary and archaeological evidence, together with mapping and visualisation work produced as part of the ‘City Witness’ project, the portrait will present a first-person account of an imaginary visit from Ralph Baldock, Bishop of London – one of the inquisitors in the Thomas Cantilupe canonisation trial – to Swansea. We know from the manuscript record that Ralph interviewed the witnesses in Hereford and London. But what if he had visited Swansea himself? How might he have experienced the medieval town and the Welsh Marches? And, given his documented interests in natural science, medicine, and history, what might he have asked the hanged man himself? This contribution will offer an immersive portrait of a medieval town, drawing upon the latest research in medieval urban history and experimenting, through imagination, with the gaps and silences in the record.
