Also includes information on the founding of Balliol College.

Women as patrons of the arts: their social status, the sources of their wealth and their motives, together with an examination of the various artefacts which they commissioned.

In viewing Galloway from the wider context of the northern British mainland, Irish Sea and wider Hebridean zone, it has been possible to explore the dynamics of state-building, dynastic interactions, and the close inter-relationships of the territories connected by the western seaways, which most traditional 'national' histories obscure. From this wider perspective, the development of the lordship of Galloway can be considered in the context of the spreading power and regional rivalries of English, Irish and Scottish kings, and a reassessment of the emergence of the unitary lordship controlled by Fergus of Galloway and his family. Traditional interpretations of the relationship of Fergus and his successors with the kings of England and Scotland are challenged and new light is thrown on the beginnings of the processes of progressive domination of Galloway by, and integration into, the kingdom of the Scots. The end of the autonomous lordship in the 1230s is projected against the backdrop of the aggressive state-building activities of King Alexander II and the transformation of its rulers from independently minded princes and warlords into Anglo-Scottish barons.

This study examines the political ambitions and influences of the Balliol dynasty in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Scotland, England and France. The generally accepted opinion in previous historiography was that John (II), king of Scots from 1292 to 1296, and Edward Balliol (d. 1364) were politically weak men and unsuccessful kings. In a reassessment of the patriarch of the family, John (I) (d.1268), the Balliols are revealed as committed English lords and loyal servants of the kings of England, underlining how the family has been unfairly judged for centuries by both chroniclers and historians, who have assessed them as Scottish kings rather than as English lords. Despite the forfeiture of the Balliol estates in England and Scotland in 1926, John (II) and Edward retained close relationships with the successive English kings and used these connections to fuel their political ambitions. Their kingships illustrate their desires to recover some influence in English politics which the family had enjoyed in the mid-thirteenth century. This re-evaluation of the Balliols highlights their relationship with the English crown.