James I was King of Scots from 1406 until his assassination in 1437. The youngest of three sons, he was born in Dunfermline Abbey to King Robert III and Annabella Drummond. His older brother David, Duke of Rothesay, died under suspicious circumstances during detention by their uncle, Robert, Duke of Albany. James' other brother, Robert, died young. Fears surrounding James's safety grew through the winter of 1405/06 and plans were made to send him to France. In February 1406, James was forced to take refuge in the castle of the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth after his escort was attacked by supporters of Archibald, 4th Earl of Douglas. He remained at the castle until mid-March, when he boarded a vessel bound for France. On 22 March, English pirates captured the ship and delivered the prince to Henry IV of England. The ailing Robert III died on 4 April and the 11-year-old James, now the uncrowned King of Scots, would not regain his freedom for another eighteen years.
Matthew Paris, also known as Matthew of Paris, was an English Benedictine monk, chronicler, artist in illuminated manuscripts, and cartographer who was based at St Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire. He authored a number of historical works, many of which he scribed and illuminated himself, typically in drawings partly coloured with watercolour washes, sometimes called "tinted drawings". Some were written in Latin, others in Anglo-Norman or French verse. He is sometimes confused with the nonexistent Matthew of Westminster.
Le Morte d'Arthur is a 15th-century Middle English prose reworking by Sir Thomas Malory of tales about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table, along with their respective folklore. In order to tell a "complete" story of Arthur from his conception to his death, Malory compiled, rearranged, interpreted and modified material from various French and English sources. Today, this is one of the best-known works of Arthurian literature. Many authors since the 19th-century revival of the legend have used Malory as their principal source.
John Pinkerton was a Scottish antiquarian, cartographer, author, numismatist, historian, and early advocate of Germanic racial supremacy theory.
Robert Fabyan was a London draper, Sheriff and Alderman, and author of Fabyan's Chronicle.
Walter Stewart, Earl of Atholl, Strathearn and Caithness was a Scottish nobleman, the son of Robert II of Scotland. Stewart advocated for the ransom and return to Scotland of the future king in exile, James I, in 1424. In 1425 he served as a member of the jury of 21 which tried and executed his nephew Murdoch Stewart, 2nd Duke of Albany. Eventually, however, Atholl turned against the King and conspired in his assassination in 1437. He was tried for murder and was executed after three days of torture.
King Johan is a sixteenth-century English play. Written by a former Carmelite friar named John Bale, it is considered a possible influence on William Shakespeare's later work King John. The play was groundbreaking as it was the first English-language play to cast a historical English monarch as a character of virtue.
Arnold Bronckhorst, or Bronckorst or Van Bronckhorst was a Flemish or Dutch painter who was court painter to James VI of Scotland.
Joseph Stevenson was an English Church of England and later Catholic priest, archivist and editor of historical texts.
Holinshed's Chronicles, also known as Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, is a collaborative work published in several volumes and two editions, the first edition in 1577, and the second in 1587. It was a large, comprehensive description of British history published in three volumes.
Páll, son of Bálki, or Paal Baalkeson, was a 13th-century Hebridean lord who was an ally of Olaf the Black, king of Mann and the Isles. He was long remembered in Gaelic tradition and is traditionally the progenitor of certain families with roots in the Hebrides. Páll is recorded as being a "sheriff" of Skye, a post which had earlier been held by another Páll, son of Bálki, who was possibly an ancestor. This earlier sheriff was said to have been a close friend of Godred II, King of Mann and the Isles.
Indract or Indracht was an Irish saint who, along with his companions, was venerated at Glastonbury Abbey, a monastery in the county of Somerset in south-western England. In the High Middle Ages Glastonbury tradition held that he had been an Irish pilgrim — a king's son – on his way back from Rome who was molested and killed by a local thegn after he had stopped off to visit the shrine of St Patrick. This tradition synchronised his life with that of King Ine (688–726), though historian Michael Lapidge has argued that he is most likely to represent a 9th-century abbot of Iona named Indrechtach ua Fínnachta.
Sir Robert Graham of Kinpont was a Scottish landowner, and one of the key conspirators in the assassination of King James I of Scotland in 1437.
Bærings saga or Bærings saga fagra is a medieval Icelandic romance saga. Its oldest manuscript is from the early fourteenth-century, allowing the saga to be dated relatively securely to the beginning of the period of Icelandic production of romances.
The Brut Chronicle, also known as the Prose Brut, is the collective name of a number of medieval chronicles of the history of England. The original Prose Brut was written in Anglo-Norman; it was subsequently translated into Latin and English.
The Warkworth's Chronicle, now stylized "Warkworth's" Chronicle, is an English chronicle formerly ascribed to John Warkworth, a Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge. Known from only two manuscripts, it covers the years 1461–1474 and provides information on the recording and reception of historical events including the accession of King Edward IV and the murder of King Henry VI.
A Short English Chronicle is a chronicle produced in England in the first half of the 15th century. It is currently held in Lambeth Palace Library, and although it begins its coverage in 1189, its content is thin until it reaches 1422. It covers the years from then until 1464 in greater depth, ending with the marriage of the Yorkist King Edward IV to Elizabeth Woodville and the capture of the deposed Lancastrian King, Henry VI. It is one of a number of chronicles and writings emitting from London in the early 15th century, and it presents national political events from a London perspective.
The Libellus de expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum, also called the Chronicon terrae sanctae, is a short anonymous Latin account of the conquests of Saladin in the Holy Land between 1186 and 1191. The core of the text was written shortly after the events it describes and then supplemented by the addition of an account of the Third Crusade early in the thirteenth century. This probably took place at Coggeshall Abbey in England. Neither the original author nor the continuator/compiler is known by name.
John Shirley was an author, translator, and scribe. As a scribe of later Middle English literature, he is particularly known for transcribing works by John Lydgate and Geoffrey Chaucer.
James Douglas of Spott was a Scottish landowner and conspirator.
