Professor Chris Given-Wilson: 'Adam Usk (c. 1350-1430): Clerk, lawyer, Welshman, traitor'.

This talk will investigate the life and chronicle of Adam Usk, born a Welshman but whose education was supported by the Mortimers and who pursued an initially successful career as an archiepiscopal and royal clerk in England. His misfortune was that, just as he came close to the top of his profession, the revolt of Owain Glyn Dwr erupted, causing suspicion of Welshmen at the English court and eventually persuading him that in order to pursue his career he needed to make his way to the papal court at Rome, where he spent four years from 1402 to 1406. His adventures thereafter took him back to France, where he sought a bishopric from the Avignon papacy, then to Wales for three years, and eventually, in 1411, back to England, where he spent the last twenty years of his life. Yet the conflicting loyalties between his Welshness and his ambition meant that in the end he had to betray one side or the other, although he says as little about this as he can in his chronicle. In many ways, it is what he does not say in his chronicle rather than what he does say which defined his life and legacy.
Professor Chris Given-Wilson is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the University of St Andrews and the author of several books on fourteenth and fifteenth-century history, including the Yale English Monarchs biography of Henry IV and the Oxford Medieval Texts edition of Adam Usk's chronicle

[@scummyr]

Professor Given-Wilson, I read some of your work on Adak Usk whilst writing a university paper that looked at how Glyn-Dwr was represented in contemporary sources, and I found your translations of Usk instrumental in writing that paper.
I'm really glad I stumbled across this video, although I wish I had found it sooner!
Awesome stuff, thanks for sharing.