Medieval HistorianResearch
Scholarship and archival research
Royal authority and the practice of government in late-medieval England, alongside independent archival research undertaken on behalf of individuals and institutions.
Independent archival research
Meredith undertakes independent archival research on behalf of individuals and institutions. Whether tracing lineages through medieval records, investigating specific historical events, or conducting bespoke research projects, she brings scholarly rigour and deep familiarity with primary source collections to every inquiry.
She also partners with Sticks Research Agency, a professional genealogical and historical research firm based in the United Kingdom.
If you have a research project or archival inquiry, Meredith welcomes your questions.
Primary research focus
Meredith’s research draws together intellectual, political, and ecclesiastical history to examine royal power and authority in late-medieval England. Her doctoral thesis, completed at Lancaster University, focuses on the minority government of Richard II (r. 1377–1399), from his ascension in June 1377 through the disbandment of his minority council in January 1380.
The thesis examines the balance between the duties of the king and those of the political community who administered the realm on his behalf, asking how far that structure of shared power was informed by established precedents — both practical precedents cultivated through earlier reigns and more fundamental ideas about sacred royal duty and inalienable prerogative.
Her earlier MA research, also at Lancaster, examined the Protectorate government of Henry VI between 1422 and 1429 — an inquiry into precedent and political practice that continues to inform her current work on collective rule and shared authority in the late-medieval polity.
Related areas of interest
These central questions open onto a range of interconnected subjects across medieval studies:
- The minority governments of Henry III, Edward II, and Henry VI
- Administrative practices and royal culture under Edward III
- Episcopal and ecclesiastical history of the fourteenth century
- Intellectual history, especially political theology and constitutional monarchy
- The Protectorate government of Henry VI
Fields and methods
Meredith works across comparative, intellectual, ecclesiastical, legal, and political-theory approaches to the late-medieval English polity. Her methodological practice combines close archival reading with prosopographical analysis — the collective biography of historical groups — to recover the people, networks, and assumptions that shaped institutional authority.
She reads medieval Latin and Anglo-Norman French and is trained in palaeography and the interpretation of non-textual medieval sources. Recent work has drawn on the assemblage of prosopographical databases as a tool for tracing the educational and institutional formation of governing communities.
Current work in development
Three projects are currently in development, each extending themes from the doctoral research into new questions about royal authority, ecclesiastical learning, and the practice of late-medieval English government.
Late-medieval Episcopal Learning
A prosopographical analysis of English bishops and university education, examining the intellectual formation of the late-medieval episcopate and its relationship to royal governance.
Collective Government During the Minority of Richard II
Re-examining the institutional shape of royal authority during the minority years of 1377–1380, with attention to how shared power operated in practice beyond the formal continual councils.
The Minority of Richard II: A Mirror of Late-Plantagenet Royal Power
A book-length project extending the doctoral research, reading the minority government as a window onto the assumptions, anxieties, and constitutional grammar of fourteenth-century English royal power.
Education and supervision
- PhD, History — Lancaster University, 2024. Dissertation: The Minority Government of Richard II, 1377–1380. Supervised by Dr Sophie Thérèse Ambler and Dr Alex Metcalfe.
- MA, History (with Distinction) — Lancaster University, 2019. Thesis: Precedent and Politics: Re-Evaluating the Protectorate, 1422–1429.
- BA, Sociology — The University of Texas at Austin, 2004. Minor in Business Administration.