An interdisciplinary approach to a crucial part of the systems of medieval authority and governance. In the medieval world, what happened when a figure of recognised authority was absent? What terminology, principles and solutions of proxy authority were developed and adopted? Did these solutions differ and change over time depending on whether the absence was short or long and caused by issues of incapacity, minority, disputed succession, geography or elective absenteeism? Did the models of proxy authority adopted by ruling dynasties and large institutions influence the proxy choices of lesser authority? The circumstances and consequences of absentee authority, a major aspect of the systems of medieval power, are the focus of this volume. Ranging across the realms of medieval Europe (but with a focus upon the British Isles and France), its essays embrace a wide variety of experience - royal, parliamentary, conciliar, magnatial, military, ecclesiastical (papal to parochial), burghal, household, minoror major, male or female, exiled, captive or infirm - and explore not merely political developments, but the dynastic, diplomatic, financial, ideological, religious and cultural ramifications of such episodes. Frederique Lachaud is Professor of medieval history at the Universite de Lorraine, France; Michael Penman is Senior Lecturer in history at the University of Stirling, Scotland. Contributors: James Bothwell Michelle Bubenicek, Leonard Dauphant , Bruno Dumezil, Laurent Hablot, Torsten Hiltmann, Tom Horler-Underwood, Robert Houghton, Olivier de Laborderie, Frederique Lachaud, Hans Jacob Orning, Michael Penman. Norman Reid

Were the English and the Scots always at loggerheads in the fourteenth century? The essays here offer a more nuanced picture. Typical accounts of Anglo-Scottish relations over the whole fourteenth century tends to present a sustained period of bitter enmity, described routinely by stock-phrases such as "endemic warfare", and typified by battles such as Bannockburn (1314), Neville's Cross (1346) or Otterburn (1388), border-raiding and the capture of James I of Scotland by English pirates in 1406. However, as this collection shows, the situation was far more complex. Drawing together new perspectives from new and leading researchers, the essays investigate the great complexity of Anglo-Scottish tensions in this most momentous of centuries and in doing so often reveal a far more ambivalent and at times evena peaceful and productive Anglo-Scottish dynamic. The topics treated include military campaigns and ethos; the development of artillery; the leading "Disinherited" Anglo-Scot, Edward Balliol; Scots in English allegiance and BorderSociety; religious patronage; Papal relations; the effect of dealings with Scotland on England's government and parliament; identity, ethnicity and otherness; and shared values and acculturation. Contributors: AMANDA BEAM, MICHAEL BROWN, DAVID CALDWELL, GWILYM DODD, ANTHONY GOODMAN, ANDY KING, SARAH LAYFIELD, IAIN MACINNES, RICHARD ORAM, MICHAEL PENMAN, ANDREA RUDDICK, DAVID SIMPKIN.