Fifteenth-Century England
Submitting Institution
University of WinchesterUnit of Assessment
HistorySummary Impact Type
CulturalResearch Subject Area(s)
Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies, Literary Studies
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies
Summary of the impact
The Wars of the Roses and Richard III remain engrossing and controversial
after 500 years throughout the Anglophone world and beyond. Hicks and
Holford have made a significant impact on public knowledge and
understanding of the period's politics and society. Their publications,
printed and online, are valuable resources for professional and amateur
historians, students and the general public, nationally and
internationally. Hicks' Anne Neville underpinned Philippa
Gregory's novel, The Kingmaker's Daughter and hence the BBC series
The White Queen. The website, blog and twitter, Mapping the
Medieval Countryside, are making the inquisitions post mortem
(IPMs) much more widely accessible and useful than hitherto.
Underpinning research
This case study relates to the principal research areas of Professor
Michael Hicks and Dr Matthew Holford.
Hicks and Holford are historians of the political society of
fifteenth-century England, and especially of the Wars of the Roses and
Richard III. Hicks has worked in this field for 40 years and since 1998
has published nine books of at least 2* quality and many articles. Since
2000, Holford has written two books and many papers of at least 2*
quality. Both are historians of records — Hicks published `The Sources' in
A.J. Pollard (ed.), The Wars of the Roses (1995) — and both have
longstanding interests in IPMs, the key source for late medieval English
landholding, the rural economy and society. Since 2011 they have been
digitising all published IPMs for use by academic archaeologists,
demographers, geographers and historians and especially by local and
family historians as required by the Impact statements in their successful
2010 Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) grant application. This
summary treats the two research areas that underpin claims for impact.
Hicks has deepened and extended historians' knowledge and understanding
of fifteenth-century politics and has re-interpreted the Wars of the Roses
as a whole. His principal publications here are his books on the Wars of
the Roses and the Yorkist royal family, in particular his Warwick the
Kingmaker (1998), Edward IV (2004) and The Wars of the
Roses (2010), all submitted to RAE 2001-8 or REF 2014. Also
incorporating excellent research, but not submitted, are Hicks' most
widely known books on Richard III (2000), Edward V (2003)
and Anne Neville (2006), which treat different aspects of the
Third War of the Roses (1483-5).
So important are IPMs to medieval historians that they were selected by
the Victorian Public Record Office for publication as calendars (shortened
summaries) of which 29 volumes have been published, the last five funded
as Resource Enhancement by the AHRC at a cost of nearly £1,000,000.
Holford calendared volume 26 (2010). Calendaring huge volumes at £195 each
on very short print-runs accessible to very few is no longer considered
financially viable. Hicks (Principal Investigator) and Holford (Senior
Researcher) collaborate with King's College London's Department for
Digital Humanities on the AHRC-funded project Mapping the Medieval
Countryside, which makes all this material fully accessible online,
banks the lessons learnt from the calendaring project, and extends
understanding within academia and beyond. All 29 calendars are digitised
on the open access British History Online (2013). The multi-authored The
Fifteenth-Century Inquisitions Post Mortem: A Companion, edited by
Hicks and containing four papers by Hicks and Holford, was published in
2012. The introduction to the source and its use with selected examples is
being published continuously online at http://blog.inquisitionspostmortem.ac.uk/
and itself exemplifies excellent research. The freely-accessible
web-mounted GIS-linked database of IPMs 1399-1447, capable of
sophisticated searches and analysis, will be launched in 2014. The next
AHRC application will apply this digital technology to filling the 1447-85
gap in calendars at much reduced cost for a worldwide audience.
References to the research
M. Hicks, Warwick the Kingmaker (Blackwells: 1998) RAE 2001
M. Hicks, Richard III (Tempus: 2000)
M. Hicks, Edward V: The Prince in the Tower (Tempus: 2003)
M. Hicks, Edward IV (Arnold: 2004) RAE 2008
M. Hicks, Anne Neville, Queen to Richard III (Tempus: 2006)
M. Hicks, The Wars of the Roses (Yale 2010) REF 2014
M. Hicks, The Fifteenth-Century Inquisitions Post Mortem: A Companion
(2012), 2 chapters by Hicks, 2 by Holford REF 2014
M.L. Holford, `"Testimony (in part fictitious)": Proofs of Age in the
First Half of the Fifteenth Century', Historical Research, 82
(2009), 634-54 REF 2014
Details of the impact
Impact is of two types.
Most recognizable and familiar are publications directed at the informed
public, in Britain and world-wide, who are now engrossed by the Wars of
the Roses and in particular Richard III. Many of them belonged to the
former History and Medieval History Book Clubs and still belong to the
Richard III Society. The excavation of Richard III's remains (`The King in
the Car Park') is an international sensation. Hicks' Warwick and The
Wars of the Roses were directed at trade audiences and have been
repackaged by commercial publishers for wider consumption, e.g. in Hicks'
biographies of the three Yorkist kings and their brother, consort, and
father-in-law. Biography is more entertaining and accessible to
non-academics than many forms of historical writing and has become a key
medium for disseminating up-to-date research to wider audiences. Success
here is demonstrated by the sales of Hicks' books, Richard III
(Tempus: 2000), Edward V: The Prince in the Tower (Tempus: 2003),
and Anne Neville, Queen to Richard III (Tempus: 2005), together
27,000 sales, 5,058 in this REF cycle. Richard III and Anne
Neville are e-books. Hicks' The Wars of the Roses 1455-87
(Osprey: 2003) was written for re-enactors. All Hicks' books sell abroad.
Hicks contributes to numerous encyclopaedias and directories, such as The
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), Oxford
Bibliographies Online: Military History (2011), Wiley-Blackwell's Encyclopaedia
of War: Wiley Online Version (2011), and The Oxford Dictionary
of the Middle Ages (2010).
Hicks has published articles on this subject in the BBC History
Magazine which claims 60,000 sales and a readership of 265,000 and
on `Henry VI: The Misjudged King' in History Today 61.1 (2011)
(circulation 15,000). Hicks was consulted about Richard III's bones by
media in Britain (BBC News Magazine, September 2012), Éire (Irish
Radio's Talking History, 7 April 2013), the USA (Washington
Post, 6 February 2013) and Chile (El Mercurio de Chile, 9
February 2013) and commented in the Times Higher on 15 February
2013. Hicks' public papers on the Wars of the Roses and Richard III's
character, hosted at the Tower of London by the Royal Armouries (2011) and
Historic Royal Palaces (2013), each attracted over a hundred fee-paying
and historically informed audiences. The latter paper was published as a
podcast on the Historic Royal Palaces' iTunes site https://soundcloud.com/#historic-royal-palaces/sets/richard-iii-uncovered-1.
Hicks contributed sections to the Richard III Society website
http://www.richardiii.net/2_2_0_riii_family.php#george.
In 2013, he published two podcasts for sixth formers for the Historical
Association on `Richard III' and `The Wars of the Roses', http://www.history.org.uk/resources/student_resource_6307_107.html.
Hicks' book Anne Neville was acknowledged by Philippa Gregory as
the basis of her bestselling novel The Kingmaker's Daughter (2012)
and hence for her sixteen-part BBC2 series on Women in the Wars of the
Roses (The White Queen and The Real White Queen, 2013), for
which Hicks was a historical consultant. He will write the 60,000-word
essay on Anne Neville for Gregory's Women of the Cousins' War, ii,
to be published by Simon and Schuster.
Other types of impact on local historians and family historians worldwide
are achieved by Hicks and Holford through their digitisation of a key
source, the IPMs, on the Mapping the Medieval Countryside project.
This is academic research impacting beyond academia. IPMs record deaths
and succession to property everywhere, topographical features from fields
and markets to mills and weirs, and the personnel of local government.
This data is valuable to landscape and other archaeologists, demographers
and geographers as well as historians. IPMs mention thousands of medieval
places — the subject matter of local historians — and tens of thousands of
people for family historians to study. Family and local historians
contributed to the public engagement survey. The project website explains
the IPM system, trains non-academics in using IPMs, and includes examples
of their effective use: http://blog.inquisitionspostmortem.ac.uk/.
There are featured inquisitions, blogs, news items, and a Twitter account.
The website was recommended by the Family History Magazine
(January 2012) and The Ricardian (April 2013). The Companion
gives further guidance. The digitised IPMs on British History Online had
made available source material hitherto inaccessible: www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=108073&strquery=inquisitions%20post%20mortem.
Local and family historians with an internet connection anywhere in the
world can now consult this material free of charge. Impact is already
indicated by hits on the various websites: 50,696 in British History
Online (up to 31 July 2013) and 6,719 (up to 31 July 2013) on Mapping
the Medieval Countryside.
Sources to corroborate the impact
1) Impact statements for 2010 AHRC grant award
2) Sales of books from royalty statements
3) Contributions to encyclopaedias, directories etc.: 33
biographies in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)
(2005: Fellow of Oxford Dictionary of National Biography); Wiley-Blackwell
Encyclopaedia of War (2010); The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle
Ages (2010); Oxford Bibliographies Online: Military History
(2011); and the Richard III Society website [as cited in text]
4) Articles in popular journals: Family History Magazine,
History Today
5) Websites: Inquisitions post mortem on British History
Online and the Mapping the Medieval Countryside Project.
http://blog.inquisitionspostmortem.ac.uk/;
www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=108073&strquery=inquisitions%20post%20mortem
6) Webhits: statements from Google Analytics and British History
Online
7) Podcasts: https://soundcloud.com/#historic-royal-palaces/sets/richard-iii-uncovered-1;
http://www.history.org.uk/resources/student_resource_6307_107.html
8) Broadcasts: three on Richard III (Channel 4, Radio Solent,
Talking History).
9) Newspapers: Letter in the Times Higher, articles by
journalists based on discussions with Hicks in BBC News Magazine,
Washington Post and syndicated papers, El Mercurio de Chile
(PDFs available)
10) Letter/emails from Philippa Gregory; resulting contract with
Oxford Scientific Films; credit on The Real White Queen