Matt Raven

Contact

• workRoom Office hour: Humanities B18. Mondays, 10:00 - 11:00; Thursdays, 09:00-10:00
  University Park
  Nottingham
  NG7 2RD
  UK
• work+44 (0)115 74 84107
• Matt.Raven@nottingham.ac.uk

Biography

My work focuses on political structures and the aristocracy in the late middle ages and seeks to place these areas into broad intellectual, economic and institutional contexts.

After an undergraduate degree at the University of Nottingham (2010-13) and an MPhil at the University of Cambridge (2013-14), I was awarded a doctorate for a thesis entitled 'The Earls of Edward III, 1330-60' by the University of Hull in October 2018, after spending the 2017-18 academic year as a doctoral junior research fellow at the Institute of Historical Research in London. This thesis provides an account of the collective careers of Edward III's English earls in political thinking, in war, in counsel, and in local governance within the governmental, social and cultural context of later medieval England. I joined the University of Nottingham as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in October 2020 after a year as the 2019/20 Postan Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research in order to begin a project provisionally entitled 'Earls and Transnational Kingship in the Medieval Plantagenet Empire, c.1300-1400'.

Research Summary

My current project developed out of my doctoral work on the English higher nobility between the years 1330-60. In the fourteenth century, the power of the English kings was shaped by their… read more

Recent Publications

• MATT RAVEN, 2023. Wool Smuggling and the Royal Government in Mid-Fourteenth Century Northumberland Northern History. 60, 2-27
• MATT RAVEN, 2023. The English Parliament and Magnate Counsel, c.1272–1327: English Exceptionalism or a Common Theme?. In: A.M. SPENCER AND C. WATKINS, ed., Thirteenth Century England XVIII (2023) Boydell & Brewer. pp. 47-70
• MATT RAVEN, 2023. Henry of Lancaster’s Revolt (1328–29): Conflict, the Politics of Kingship, and the Political Public in Fourteenth-Century England English Historical Review. 139, 705-743
• MATT RAVEN, 2022. Wool Smuggling from England’s Eastern Seaboard, c.1337–43: An Illicit Economy in the Late Middle Ages Economic History Review. 75, 1182-1213

• View all publications

Current Research

My current project developed out of my doctoral work on the English higher nobility between the years 1330-60. In the fourteenth century, the power of the English kings was shaped by their relationships with the nobilities they ruled across England, Ireland, Wales and Gascony. Earls headed all these nobilities; but their collective political influence across these regions has been obscured by a national focus. My project applies the analytical category of 'empire' to provide the first transnational analysis of the power of earls across these diverse realms: by viewing these earls within a shared imperial space, he will position elite power as part of an interconnected political society - a 'Plantagenet empire' - which promoted duality between kings and nobles.

Past Research

As the 2019/20 Postan Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research in London, I conducted research into the smuggling of wool, fourteenth century England's most important domestic product. This project will provide the first account of a subversive activity of huge economic and political importance which, in turn, will illustrate the changing place of royal power in the lives of the king's subjects.

• MATT RAVEN, 2023. Wool Smuggling and the Royal Government in Mid-Fourteenth Century Northumberland Northern History. 60, 2-27
• MATT RAVEN, 2023. The English Parliament and Magnate Counsel, c.1272–1327: English Exceptionalism or a Common Theme?. In: A.M. SPENCER AND C. WATKINS, ed., Thirteenth Century England XVIII (2023) Boydell & Brewer. pp. 47-70
• MATT RAVEN, 2023. Henry of Lancaster’s Revolt (1328–29): Conflict, the Politics of Kingship, and the Political Public in Fourteenth-Century England English Historical Review. 139, 705-743
• MATT RAVEN, 2022. Wool Smuggling from England’s Eastern Seaboard, c.1337–43: An Illicit Economy in the Late Middle Ages Economic History Review. 75, 1182-1213
• MATT RAVEN, 2022. The English Parliament and the Trial of the Peers of the Land in Henry of Lancaster’s Revolt (1328–29): The Origins of a Privilege. In: Fourteenth Century England XII, ed. J.S. Bothwell and J. Hamilton Boydell and Brewer. 79-97
• MATT RAVEN, 2022. ‘Wool Smuggling and the Royal Government in England, c.1337–63: Law Enforcement and the Moral Economy in the Late Middle Ages’ Law and History Review. 40, 747-788
• MATT RAVEN, 2022. Reginald, Lord Cobham of Sterborough (D. 1361), As Marshal of the King’s Army in 1340 Notes and Queries. 69(4), 271-273.
• MATT RAVEN, 2021. Diplomacy, counsel and the nobility of fourteenth-century England: the diplomatic service of Edward III’s earls, 1337–60 Journal of Medieval History. 47(1), 62-88
• MATT RAVEN, 2021. The Career of William Clinton, Banneret of Royal Household and Earl of Huntingdon: Royal Authority and Magnate Lordship in Mid-Fourteenth Century Kent Archaeologia Cantiana. 142, 59-80
• MATT RAVEN, 2021. The Earldom Endowments of 1337: Political Thought and the Practice of Kingship in Late Medieval England English Historical Review. 136(580), 498–529
• MATT RAVEN, 2019. Tout and the higher nobility under the three Edwards. In: CAROLINE BARRON AND JOEL ROSENTHAL, ed., Thomas Frederick Tout (1855-1929): Repositioning History for the 20th Century University of London Press. 155-70
• MATT RAVEN, 2019. Magnate counsel and parliament, c.1340-77: the place of the Lords in the era of the Commons Parliamentary History. 38(3), 309-324
• MATT RAVEN, 2019. The earls of Edward III and the polity: the earls of Arundel and Northampton in the localities, 1330–60 Historical Research. 92(258), 680-704
• MATT RAVEN, 2018. Financing the dynamics of recruitment: king, earls and government in Edwardian England, 1330-60. In: GARY BAKER, CRAIG LAMBERT AND DAVID SIMPKIN, ed., Military Communities in Late Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Andrew Ayton Boydell & Brewer. 105-23
• MATT RAVEN, 2018. The Loyal Earl: the career of Roger Mortimer, Second Earl of March Journal of the Mortimer History Society. 2, 51-71