Roger Machado: A life in objects

Roger Machado: A life in objects is an AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Award between the CMRC and Southampton City Council Arts and Heritage being undertaken by Gemma Watson. It is being supervised by Professor Ros King, Professor Anne Curry, Professor Matthew Johnson, Duncan Brown and Karen Wardley of Southampton Museums. 

Roger Machado was a herald in the court of Henry VII. Although his name appears in the records of the period, relatively little is known about him. He may have been of Portuguese extraction, although his country of origin is unknown. In 1485, probably shortly before the Battle of Bosworth, he was made Richmond herald by Henry Tudor and by the end of October of the same year he was made a king of arms. On 21 September 1485 he was appointed by the King as Searcher of Customs at Southampton, which may have influenced his choice to take a house there between 1486 and 1497. He lived on Simnel Street at tenements 423 and 424 (Southamtpon Terrier 1454). He was subsequently made Burgess of the town in 1490. In his role as an officer of arms, Machado underwent diplomatic missions to the Continent on behalf of the English crown, of which three he details in his extant journal in the College of Arms (MS Arundel 51 fols 14-88): an embassy to Spain and Portugal in 1488 and two embassies to Brittany in 1490.

Machado's Southampton residence was excavated in 1976 and rich assemblages of imported ceramics and Venetian glass associated with his residence were recovered. The aim of the project is to contextualise this material along with the historical documents associated with Machado by writing a micro-history for him and consequently placing his life within the broader cultural, political, diplomatic, and economic context of the reign of Henry VII.

This webpage will chart the progress of this research providing links to powerpoint slideshows from conference papers given, links to related sites and details of forthcoming publications.

Sea City Museum

This research on Roger Machado will feature in the Gateway to the World Gallery in the new Sea City Museum in Southampton, due to open in April 2012. 

Conference papers and lectures

Manuscripts and Archaeology: An interdisciplinary approach to a life history of Roger Machado at Music, Literature, Illustration: Collaboration and networks in English manuscript culture, 1500-1700, February 2010.

Material things and the written historical record: An interdisciplinary approach to a life history of Roger Machado at the 2010 CMRC Reuter Masterclass.

Roger Machado: A man of his time at the 2010 Fifteenth Century Conference.

Living in early Tudor Southampton: The story of Roger Machado at the Southampton City Museums Archaeological Society Tudor Study Day on 26th February 2011.

Roger Machado: A life in objects for the Tudor House lecture series 'Southampton's Past Times' 12th May 2011.

Jack of all trades: A medieval archaeologist's experience of "being" interdisciplinary at TAG 2011. 

Conferences organised

Gemma recently organised a conference on the theme of interdisciplinary approaches to biography: Writing the lives of people and things, AD 500 - 1700: An interdisciplinary conference.  Chawton House Library, 1-2 March 2012.

 

For further information on this research please contact Gemma Watson on glw1g09@soton.ac.uk.