Helen Watt, MA
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Position:
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Research Assistant, The Correspondence of Edward Lhuyd
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e-mail:
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helenwwales.ac.uk|
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Tel.:
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01970 636543
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Fax:
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01970 639090
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Postal address:
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Miss Helen Watt,
University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies,
National Library of Wales,
Aberystwyth,
Ceredigion,
SY23 3HH
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After a degree in Modern Languages (Spanish & Portuguese) from Jesus College, Oxford, in 1980, Helen Watt gained the Diploma in Archives Administration from the University of Wales Aberystwyth, in 1992. She has since worked on several archival and research projects, the first of which was the Welsh Manorial Records Database Project run by the National Library of Wales in conjunction with the Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1993–6. Then, between 1999 and 2009, Helen worked on different phases of a project managed by the Universities of Cambridge, Bangor and York respectively to research details of records of English and Welsh lay and clerical taxation, c.1200–1700, held in The National Archives, Kew. She was responsible for sections of the on-line E 179 database covering records for the four Welsh dioceses and all thirteen counties of Wales, as well as several English dioceses and counties, including those bordering on Wales. During the Welsh phase of this project, she also completed a survey of Welsh tax records held outside The National Archives, including those in the National Library of Wales, and collected dated examples of Welsh place-names extracted from the tax records for inclusion in the on-line E 179 database, and also for the Place-Name Research Centre at Bangor.
Her main research interests have focussed on Wales and taxation, and include an investigation into how the rebellion of Owain Glyn Dŵr may have affected royal taxation revenue from English counties bordering on Wales. A future project is to analyse two newly-discovered medieval tax documents for parts of Caernarfonshire. By complete contrast, while working at The National Archives, she developed an interest in the British Royal Navy, 1793–1815, and has jointly published on the mutiny in the Royal Navy in 1797, drawing on a newly-discovered eye-witness account of events written by the Captain of one of the smaller ships involved in the mutiny at the Nore. Having also discovered that few letters of ordinary seamen seem to have survived from the time of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, she is currently editing jointly a body of that material from the period, also including a number of letters written specifically during the mutiny in 1797.
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Selected Publications:
Welsh Manors and their Records (Aberystwyth, 2000).
With J. Mackman, ‘Tax Trails Further Explored’, Ancestors, Oct/Nov 2003, 19–25.
With J. Mackman, ‘The E 179 (Lay Taxation) Project: The Records and the Database’, Genealogists’ Magazine, 28, no. 1 (2004), 3–15.
‘Old Welsh Tax Returns/Hen Gofnodion Treth: The Central Government Taxation Records for Wales 1291–1689 Project’, North American Journal of Welsh Studies, 6, no. 1 (2006), 19–47 (an extended version of a paper given at the NAASWCH conference held at West Virginia University, Morgantown, USA, in July 2004).
‘ “On account of the frequent attacks and invasions of the Welsh”: The impact of the Glyn Dŵr rebellion on Henry IV's revenue from England’ in D. Biggs and G. Dodd (eds.), The Reign of Henry IV: Rebellion and Survival, 1403–1413 (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 48–81.
‘Was Wales “a joy for greedy or indigent kings”? A re-evaluation of the subsidies granted to Richard II in 1393 in Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire’ in P. Brand and S. Cunningham (eds.), Foundations of Modern Scholarship: Records Edited in Honour of David Crook (York, 2008), pp. 197–213.
With Rosemary Hayes, ‘The Records of Central Government Taxation in England and Wales: Clerical Taxes, 1173–1664: Introducing a newly-accessible source for the history of the Welsh Medieval Church’ in the on-line proceedings of ‘The Welsh Medieval Church and its Context’ conference held at St Fagans National History Museum in November 2008.
‘Taxation of the Clergy in England and Wales, c.1180–1664: an introduction to the E 179 project and database’ in the proceedings of the ‘Clergy, Church and Society in England and Wales, c.1200–1800’ conference held at the Institute of Historical Reserch, London, in March 2009 (forthcoming, 2010).