Thirsk Prize winners 2024-25

The KAS is delighted to announce the results. The judges considered that Rebecca Gaylord’s and John Manley’s MA dissertations were both of a similarly very high standard and consequently it was wholly appropriate to award them the First Prize jointly of £500 each. They have been invited to produce an article from their respective dissertations for Archaeologia Cantiana.

John Manley’s dissertation is entitled ‘Piety, Performance, and Propaganda: Situating Boxley Abbey’s Rood of Grace in Late Medieval Devotional Culture’. As he says, “The Rood of Grace was an animated crucifix attracting pilgrims from the middle of the fourteenth century to Boxley Abbey, a small Cistercian house north of Maidstone in Kent. At the dissolution of the monasteries in 1538, the Boxley Rood became notorious among Protestant reformers as evidence of monastic corruption. The reformers’ often fantastical accounts of the Rood’s mechanical capabilities have filtered down through the centuries and are still repeated uncritically in some modern English historical scholarship. Such unexamined repetition not only distorts modern conceptions of the Rood’s abilities and purpose, and colours wider perceptions of the role and practices of monastic institutions; but it also has the potential to warp the modern understanding of late-medieval religious culture so that it aligns with the allegations of superstition and idolatry that were spread by the reformers. This dissertation will seek to present an alternative argument about the nature and purpose of the Rood. With evidence from Boxley Abbey’s own fragmentary records, from contemporary religious and secular writings, including literature and dramas, and from modern scholarship, the Rood will be situated within the context of late-medieval devotion and performance culture, both ecclesiastical and secular, examining the relationship between performer and audience, both on the dramatic scaffold and in church. The dissertation will also look at the period’s understanding of and familiarity with automata, animated statues, and machinery in both religious and secular settings. This dissertation will seek to unpick the propaganda and situate the Boxley Rood in its contemporary devotional and performance context to ascertain how devotees might have regarded the Rood and interacted with it.”

Entitled ‘Summers of Discontent: Fomenting Rebellions in Later Medieval Kent’, Rebecca Gaylord explores several nationally important revolts. As she says, “On several occasions in the later Middle Ages, large numbers of Kentish people organized and rose in revolt against what they saw as endemic corruption and governmental overreach at both the local and national levels. As increased economic demands by the Crown, the encroachment on centuries-old land-holding practices and political turmoil threatened to destroy the upward social mobility unique to the Kentish commons, feelings of discontent festered and finally erupted in large-scale violence. The purpose of this essay is to examine the factors and circumstances—from geography and topography to the use of charters and other documents—that set Kent and its common people apart from the rest of England and provided the perfect conditions for fomenting rebellions. This essay examines the complex and varied reasons behind the major revolts in 1381, 1450 and 1471. The dissertation also presents case studies of disaffected common people involved in each. The intent of these case studies is to illuminate the lives of the marginalized and little-known people who made up the core of Kentish society and to provide evidence of their possible motivations for rebellion. Through close examination and cross-referencing of extant records and documents, this essay seeks to establish heretofore unexplored social and military connections between rural and urban rebels as well as their ties to the people who became the targets of their wrath. These connections are also examined through the lens of contemporary chronicles to make the case that the rebels chose their targets carefully and strategically with their attacks being calculated and coordinated rather than random acts of indiscriminate violence. The evidence gathered in this essay will show that the common people of Kent—both rural and urban—were smart, clever, resourceful and capable of organizing resistance in the face of attempts to repress their long-held rights and their drive toward economic and social prosperity.”