Acta of the Plantagenets
- Project status
- Ongoing
Chair: Professor David Bates
Project Director: Professor Nicholas Vincent FBA
Honorary Secretary: Dr Judith Everard
The ‘Acta of the Plantagenets’ project was launched in 1971 by the late Professor Sir James Holt at the University of Reading. The project is currently based at the University of East Anglia where the Director, Nicholas Vincent, is Professor of Medieval History.
A complete edition of the charters of England's Kings and Queens, from 1154 through to the reign of King John. These are scattered across many hundreds of libraries and archives, not only in the UK, but in Ireland, Scotland, France and many other parts of Europe
The publication of The Letters and Charters of Henry II, so far in seven of the proposed eight large volumes. Skeleton editions of all other kings and queens across the period, shared with scholars and other interested parties, on application to the project director. A great deal of work around the chancery of King John, including contributions to the study of Magna Carta (at least five monographs to date), most recently attracting media attention in 2025 following the indentification (with direct project input) of a previously unrecognized original Magna Carta at Harvard
OUP will have flyers and so forth for the published volumes of Henry II. For Magna Carta, see <https://magnacartaresearch.org/>, and there was endless media churn for the Harvard story, perhaps best from the Harvard/KCL/UEA on Youtube: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mmRIAZJgxU>
The Director writes:
“Henry II and his family traditionally enjoy high ‘public’ profile, remaining an abiding topic of interest (Becket, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard I’s Crusade, John’s ‘tyranny’) amongst the general public not only in the English-speaking world but across western Europe. So far, then, this is a project essential to both scholarly and popular understanding of England and English kingship.
From here, however, the trail extends in interesting directions. Because charters remain our chief access to 12th-century law, and since the greatest of all English medieval laws (Magna Carta) was itself issued in charter form, the project has come to play a significant role in the scholarly and popular understanding of Magna Carta, and hence to exert influence in fields adjacent to those of scholarship, but extending here to politics, law and public policy. Magna Carta, both as a manifesto of good government and as a totemic relic of the medieval past, retains a very high profile.
The project, through its role in interpreting and contextualising Magna Carta, has therefore garnered publicity and influence in ways that might not have been anticipated. … Impact in this context is defined by the public response (new understanding, new depth of appreciation, new discoveries) to Vincent’s work in 2015, including the publication of at least three books generally acknowledged as definitive statements on the meaning and implications of Magna Carta and hence of English medieval law.
As a result, the project’s advice has been sought by governments, the royal family, commerce (Sothebys, but also those seeking to publicise or display Magna Carta) and public bodies (British Library, Library of Congress, Australian Senate) etc. This in ways that may surprise those who believe medieval charters to be far distant from the world of relevant or impactful modernity.”
Funded by
