Wendy R. Childs (born March 1943) is Emeritus Professor of Later Medieval History at the University of Leeds.
Childs was educated at Girton College, Cambridge where she completed the degrees of BA (later promoted to MA) and PhD.
Childs was appointed as a Lecturer in the School of History at the University of Leeds in 1975. She was promoted to Reader in 1997 and to Professor of Later Medieval History in 2005. She was Director of the university's Institute for Medieval Studies from 1983 to 1993 and Chair of the School of History from 1991 to 1994. She retired in 2007 when she became emeritus professor [1]
Childs is a specialist in the economic history of medieval Europe and the international trade of England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. [2] She has also written about fourteenth century politics (especially during the reign of King Edward II) and the English chronicles.
Year 1320 (MCCCXX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar.
Alfonso X was King of Castile, León and Galicia from 30 May 1252 until his death in 1284. During the election of 1257, a dissident faction chose him to be king of Germany on 1 April. He renounced his claim to Germany in 1275, and in creating an alliance with the Kingdom of England in 1254, his claim on the Duchy of Gascony as well.
Margaret de Clare, Countess of Gloucester, Countess of Cornwall was an English noblewoman, heiress, and the second eldest of the three daughters of Gilbert de Clare, 6th Earl of Hertford and his wife Joan of Acre, making her a granddaughter of King Edward I of England. Her two husbands were Piers Gaveston and Hugh de Audley, 1st Earl of Gloucester.
Andrew Harclay, 1st Earl of Carlisle, alternatively Andreas de Harcla, was an important English military leader in the borderlands with Scotland during the reign of Edward II. Coming from a knightly family in Westmorland, he was appointed sheriff of Cumberland in 1311. He distinguished himself in the Scottish Wars, and in 1315 repulsed a siege on Carlisle Castle by Robert the Bruce. Shortly after this, he was taken captive by the Scots, and only released after a substantial ransom had been paid. His greatest achievement came in 1322, when he defeated the rebellious baron Thomas of Lancaster at the Battle of Boroughbridge on 16–17 March. For this he was created Earl of Carlisle.
The Treaty of Alcáçovas was signed on 4 September 1479 between the Catholic Monarchs of Castile and Aragon on one side and Afonso V and his son, Prince John of Portugal, on the other side. It put an end to the War of the Castilian Succession, which ended with a victory of the Castilians on land and a Portuguese victory on the sea. The four peace treaties signed at Alcáçovas reflected that outcome: Isabella was recognized as Queen of Castile while Portugal reached hegemony in the Atlantic Ocean.
Eleanor of Castile was Queen of England as the first wife of Edward I, whom she married as part of a political deal to affirm English sovereignty over Gascony.
Hugh le Despenser, 1st Baron le Despenser, also referred to as "the Younger Despenser", was the son and heir of Hugh le Despenser, Earl of Winchester, by his wife Isabella de Beauchamp, daughter of William de Beauchamp, 9th Earl of Warwick. He rose to national prominence as royal chamberlain and a favourite of Edward II of England. Despenser made many enemies amongst the nobility of England. After the overthrow of Edward, he was eventually charged with high treason and ultimately hanged, drawn and quartered.
Geoffrey the Baker, also called Walter of Swinbroke, was an English chronicler. He was probably a secular clerk at Swinbrook in Oxfordshire.
The Battle of Winchelsea or the Battle of Les Espagnols sur Mer was a naval battle that took place on 29 August 1350 as part of the Hundred Years' War between England and France. It was a victory for an English fleet of 50 ships, commanded by King Edward III, over a Castilian fleet of 47 larger vessels, commanded by Charles de la Cerda. Between 14 and 26 Castilian ships were captured, and several were sunk. Only two English vessels are known to have been sunk, but there was a significant loss of life.
Sir Frederick Maurice Powicke (1879–1963) was an English medieval historian. He was a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, a professor at Queen's University, Belfast and the Victoria University of Manchester, and from 1928 until his retirement Regius Professor at the University of Oxford. He was made a Knight Bachelor in 1946.
The Battle of La Rochelle was a naval battle fought on 22 and 23 June 1372 between a Castilian fleet commanded by the Castilian Almirant Ambrosio Boccanegra and an English fleet commanded by John Hastings, 2nd Earl of Pembroke. The Castilian fleet had been sent to attack the English at La Rochelle, which was being besieged by the French. Besides Boccanegra, other Castilian commanders were Cabeza de Vaca, Fernando de Peón and Ruy Díaz de Rojas.
The Vita Edwardi Secundi is a Latin chronicle most likely written in 1325 by an unknown English medieval historian contemporary to Edward II. It covers the period from 1307 until its abrupt end in 1325.
Gilbert de Clare, 8th Earl of Gloucester, 7th Earl of Hertford was an English nobleman and military commander in the Scottish Wars. In contrast to most English earls at the time, his main focus lay in the pursuit of war rather than in domestic political strife. He was the son of Gilbert de Clare, 7th Earl of Gloucester, and Joan of Acre, daughter of King Edward I. The older Gilbert died when his son was only four years old, and the younger Gilbert was invested with his earldoms at the young age of sixteen. Almost immediately, he became involved in the defence of the northern border, but later he was drawn into the struggles between Edward II and some of his barons. He was one of the Lords Ordainers who ordered the expulsion of the king's favourite Piers Gaveston in 1311. When Gaveston was killed on his return in 1312, Gloucester helped negotiate a settlement between the perpetrators and the king.
The Caroline War was the second phase of the Hundred Years' War between France and England, following the Edwardian War. It was so-named after Charles V of France, who resumed the war nine years after the Treaty of Brétigny. The Kingdom of France dominated this phase of the war.
Isabella of England was the eldest daughter of King Edward III of England and Philippa of Hainault, and the wife of Enguerrand de Coucy, Earl of Bedford, by whom she had two daughters. She was made a Lady of the Garter in 1376.
Mark David Bailey is a professor of later medieval history at the University of East Anglia. In 2019, he delivered the James Ford Lectures in British History at Oxford University, which were later published as a book, After the Black Death: Economy, society, and the law in fourteenth-century England. Bailey was formerly a rugby union player, and made seven appearances for the England national team.
Noël Denholm-Young was an English historian. He was a Fellow and archivist of Magdalen College, Oxford specialising in the political history of late medieval England. He worked as keeper of Western manuscripts at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and later in the faculty of the University College of North Wales, Bangor. Among his publications was an edition of the chronicle Vita Edwardi Secundi.
John Walwayn was an English royal official and scholar, and a proposed author of the chronicle known as Vita Edwardi Secundi a partial record of the reign of Edward II.
William Mark Ormrod, was a Welsh historian who specialised in the Later Middle Ages of England. Born in South Wales, he studied at King's College, London, and then earned his Doctor of Philosophy at Worcester College, Oxford. He was employed at a number of institutions, eventually settling at the University of York where he became Dean of the History Faculty and director of the Centre for Medieval Studies. He researched and published widely, including nine books and over 80 book chapters. Ormrod retired in 2017 and died of cancer in 2020.
Bruce Mortimer Stanley Campbell, FBA, MRIA, MAE, FRHistS, FAcSS is a British economic historian. From 1995 to 2014, he was Professor of Medieval Economic History at Queen's University Belfast, where he remains an emeritus professor.