The Gascon Rolls 1317-1468

Project Description:

The Gascon Rolls, held in the U.K. National Archives (C 61)are importance to the study of the twelfth century acquisition of the great duchy of Aquitaine by the Plantagenet kings of England. This project will make the unpublished Gascon Rolls available in electronic form for both the research project itself, and for the international research community. A successful pilot project, funded by the British Academy, has already established the methodology and chronology. The final version of the edition of the Gascon Rolls will be available in a mixture of text and translation, and calendar (summary translation) online. In 1152 the future King Henry II of England married the divorced wife of King Louis VII of France, Eleanor of Aquitaine. This brought momentous consequences for the history of Europe and in particular for the relations between England and France. The rolls shed considerable light on English government in the last major continental possession of the English Crown, and reveal the relationship between the king, and his English administration, with his officers in the duchy, and with his subjects in his lordship of Aquitaine. They also provide one of the principal primary sources for any study of Anglo-French relations at a time when tensions were growing between the English and French crowns culminating in the outbreak of the Hundred Years War.