Biography

Andrew Ayton retired as a senior lecturer in the department of History at the University of Hull in 2015 after thirty years' service there. He is currently a member of the Advisory board of AHRC-funded project: The Evolution of English Shipping Capacity and Shipboard Communities from the Early Fifteenth Century to Drake Circumnavigation, 1577, (Southampton), 2014 to present; an ESRC Peer Review College member, 2012 to presentt; and a Trustee of the Battle of Crécy Trust.

In recent years he has lived in Staffordshire, and has close research connections with Dr Philip Morgan, a fellow historian of medieval warfare, and Dr Simon Harris, who is working on the war of St Sardos.

Research and scholarship

I am currently working on two books with Craig Lambert at Southampton: one on the maritime dimension of the Hundred Years War, with particular reference to the second half of the fourteenth century ('The king's war and the sea: strategy, politics and coastal communities in later fourteenth-century England'), the second (to which I'm contributing to the fourteenth- century section) on England's shipping and mariners from the fourteenth century to the late sixteenth. A third book project is a re-examination of late medieval warfare from the mid-thirteenth to the sixteenth century.

 

I have a  number of articles in press, including:

‘In the wake of defeat: Bannockburn and the dynamics of recruitment in England’, in The Battle of Bannockburn, 1314-2014, ed. M. Penman. Paul Watkins.

‘Shipping the troops and fighting at sea: Essex ports and mariners in England’s wars, 1337-1389’ [co-author with Craig Lambert], in The Fighting Essex Soldier: War, Recruitment and Remembrance in the Fourteenth Century, ed. T. Thornton. University of Hertfordshire Press.

‘Navies and maritime warfare’ [co-author with Craig Lambert], in A. Curry, ed., The Hundred Years War. Palgrave MacMillan.

Publications

 

AUTHORED BOOKS

Knights and Warhorses. Military Service and the English Aristocracy under Edward III,  Boydell, Woodbridge, 1994.  Pp. xiv, 304. Reprinted in paperback with new preface, 1999.

EDITED BOOKS

(with P. Preston), The Battle of Crécy 1346, Boydell: Woodbridge, 2005. Pp. xii, 390. Paperback edn, 2007.

Editor of Pál Engel, The Realm of St Stephen. A History of Medieval Hungary, 895-1526, I.B. Tauris: London & New York, 2001. Pp. xx, 452. Paperback edn, 2005.

(with J.L. Price), The Medieval Military Revolution. State, Society and Military Change in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, I.B. Tauris: London, 1995. Pp. viii, 208. Paperback edn, 1998.

DATABASES

Shipping, mariners and ports in fourteenth-century England: A database of 10,289 records concerning voyages made by English ships and mariners during the fourteenth century. UK Data Service. From ERSC project: RES-000-22-4127 (co-author with Dr Craig Lambert).

ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS

‘A maritime community in war and peace: Kentish ports, ships and mariners, 1320-1400’ [co-author with Craig Lambert], Archaeologia Cantiana, 134 (2014), 67-103.

‘János Thuróczy: Chronica Hungarorum’, in Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, Volume 5 (1350-1500), ed. D. Thomas, A. Mallett et al., Brill: Leiden and Boston, 2013, pp. 551-9.

‘The mariner in fourteenth-century England’ [co-author with Craig Lambert], in Fourteenth Century England VII, ed. W.M. Ormrod, Boydell: Woodbridge, 2012, pp. 153-76.

‘Military service and the dynamics of recruitment in fourteenth-century England’, in The Soldier Experience in the Fourteenth Century, ed. A.R. Bell, A. Curry et al., Boydell: Woodbridge, 2011, pp. 9-59.

‘Armies and military communities in fourteenth-century England’, in Soldiers, Nobles and Gentlemen: Essays in Honour of Maurice Keen, ed. P. Coss & C. Tyerman, Boydell: Woodbridge, 2009, pp. 215-39.

‘From Muhi to Mohács: armies and combatants in later medieval European transcultural wars’, in Transcultural Wars from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century, ed. Hans-Henning Kortüm, Akademie-Verlag: Berlin, 2006, pp. 213-47.

Chapters in A. Ayton & P. Preston, eds, The Battle of Crécy, 1346:

‘The battle of Crécy: context and significance’ (pp. 1-34)

‘The Crécy campaign’ (pp. 35-107)

‘The English army at Crécy’ (pp. 159-251)

‘Crécy and the chroniclers’ (pp. 286-350)

’Topography and archery: further reflections on the battle of Crécy’ (pp. 351-77).

Entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. OUP: Oxford, 2004, ii, 683; xxv, 764-5; xxv, 769-70; xxxix, 236-7; xxxxi, 155-6; lv, 860-1.

'Sir Thomas Ughtred and the Edwardian military revolution', in The Age of Edward III, ed. J.S. Bothwell, York Medieval Press/Boydell: Woodbridge, 2001, pp. 107-32.

'Arms, armour and horses', in Medieval Warfare. A History, ed. M. Keen, OUP: Oxford, 1999 (paperback edn, 2001), pp. 186-208.

‘Edward III and the English aristocracy at the beginning of the Hundred Years War', in Armies, Chivalry and Warfare in Medieval Britain and France, ed. M. Strickland. Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 7. Paul Watkins: Stamford, 1998, pp. 173-206.

Chapters in A. Ayton and J.L. Price, eds, The Medieval Military Revolution:

‘The military revolution from a medieval perspective’ (co-author J.L.Price): pp. 1-22

‘Knights, esquires and military service: the evidence of the armorial cases before the Court of Chivalry’: pp. 81-104.

'English armies in the fourteenth century', in Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War, ed. A. Curry & M. Hughes, Boydell: Woodbridge, 1994, pp. 21-38.

'The English army and the Normandy campaign of 1346', in England and Normandy in the Middle Ages, ed. D. Bates & A. Curry, Hambledon Press: London, 1994, pp. 253-68.

'Katonai forradalom a 14. századi Angliában' ['The military revolution in fourteenth-century England'], Aetas: történettudományi folyóirat, 1994, no. 4, 5-26.

'Military service and the development of the Robin Hood legend in the fourteenth century', Nottingham Medieval Studies, 36 (1992), 126-47.

'War and the English gentry under Edward III', History Today, 42 (March 1992), 34-40

‘Domesday Book re-bound, c. 1346’, Notes and Queries, New Series, 36/3 (September 1989), 298-9

‘John Chaucer and the Weardale campaign, 1327’, Notes and Queries, New Series, 36/1 (March 1989), 9-10

‘William de Thweyt, esquire: deputy constable of Corfe Castle in the 1340s’, Notes and Queries for Somerset and Dorset, 32/329 (March 1989), 731-8

'Ecclesiastical wealth in England in 1086' [co-author with V. Davis], in The Church and Wealth, ed. W. J. Sheils & D. Wood, Studies in Church History, 24, 1987, pp. 47-60

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