The Breaking of Britain is a collaborative project, funded by the AHRC, between the University of Glasgow, Lancaster University, the University of Edinburgh, and King’s College London (including the Department of Digital Humanities). The project is concerned with the period which extends from the failure of Alexander II’s short-lived revival of a Scoto-Northumbrian realm in 1216–17 to the formal abolition of cross-border landholding by Robert I in November 1314, following his victory at Bannockburn.

 

The project builds on the work of another project funded by the AHRC, The Paradox of Medieval Scotland, and will extend the People of Medieval Scotland database to 1314. It will also be linked to a new database, People of Northern England, recording interactions between the Crown and people in the three northern counties of England from 1216 to 1307. The project will also study border chronicles as a source both for medieval perceptions of identity and fields of medieval historical interest.

Listen here to a podcast in which the Breaking of Britain investigators introduce the project