The establishment of the Tironensians in the British Isles provides a case study in the reception of monastic innovation and the role of the lay elite. Abbeys were established in Scotland and Wales very soon after the foundation of Tiron in the Perche in 1109, but the English communities were founded later and were less influential. Links between the lay patrons are explored. While the Scottish houses had the support of the royal house and the Welsh community was among the earliest established by the Normans in Wales, the English priories were not successful in attracting high-profile patrons.

The powerful image of Louis IX on crusade has led scholars to argue that ‘royal French crusading’ was a tradition that developed only after Louis VII departed for the East in 1147. This article explores the formation of the earliest connection between the French royal house and the crusading movement in the first decade of the twelfth century. Key changes in the royal court transformed the body in the decade before the First Crusade as members of the lower aristocracy gradually began replacing the magnates. Philip I viewed these ‘new men’ in his court as his representatives on the expedition in 1095. However, when a majority of these men returned from the East before completing their vows, the royal court faced dangerous questions about its dynastic claims of divine favour. In response to this, several monks from northern France fashioned a version of the First Crusade that sanitized the careers of those knights in the royal entourage. It is this version of events that ultimately became the popular history of the First Crusade.

This article examines possible links between the fictional teller of the Manciple’s Tale and its plot, the story of a crow whose message is unwelcome. It suggests links with proverbs about careless servants or unreliable messengers as crows, and with medieval biblical tradition which underlies this proverbial use: a tradition that the raven which Noah sent out failed to return to the ark because it was feasting on carrion floating in the sea. Allusions to this cluster of associations occur in several medieval texts, English and Welsh, and the widespread familiarity with it that these indicate make it likely that Chaucer had the ideas in mind both when he portrayed the General Prologue manciple as an untrustworthy servant cheating his masters over their catering and also in linking such a character to a tale about a crow-messenger.

This paper argues that there are strong parallels between the literary Orkneys — Gawain and his brothers — and the Scots family Sinclair, associated, like their literary forebears, with Orkney, Norway, and Lothian. It suggests that the Dalhousie Manuscript, a text linked to the Sinclairs and which comprises a variety of Norwegian, Orcadian, and Scots materials, reflects Sinclair recognition of their Arthurian ‘brothers’, and that they may have identified the similarity between their family and Gawain’s either as a result of reading Scots insular writings, chronicle, and romance, or — potentially — through Malory’s Morte Darthur. It is proposed that further research be undertaken on the circulation of William Caxton’s prints in Scotland, and the potential accessibility of Malory’s text to a Scottish audience.