Dan Haug, Sarah Woodbury, and Taran Haug

Abstract:

In this project, we built on the previous work of other researchers to create a more complete and accurate digital version of the Itinerary of King Edward I from his crowning in 1274 through his death in 1307. This document includes a detailed description of how we chose to undertake this project, what source materials we used, the specific issues that we encountered, the methodology that we used to address those issues, the quality of the resulting data set, and suggestions for future improvements of this data set. While this document does include maps and animations depicting the completed dataset, we do not provide any interpretive analysis of that data. The goal of this document is to provide enough information about this dataset so that those who wish to use it in the future will understand its strengths and limitations, and those wishing to improve on the quality of the data will have a strong foundation to upon which to build.

 

 

Getting Started:

In the spring of 2026, we had the opportunity to meet Scott Lloyd, an historian at the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. In an email, Scott sent us a link to a digital file listing the itinerary of King Edward I. Over the past few months, we have been able to take that amazing data set, clean it up, update it, fix some errors (hopefully not introducing too many new ones), and then map it in a way that has helped us to better understand Edward’s travels throughout his reign.

Here are links to the new dataset that we created, as well as some maps. 

Below is a more complete description of the source data, the original digital dataset compiled in 2019, and the work that we have done to try to improve that dataset.

 

Original Source Material:

In 1900 barrister and historian Henry Gough published a two-volume set of documents titled: “Itinerary of King Edward the First Throughout His Reign, A.D. 1272-1307, Exhibiting His Movements From Time to Time, So Far As They Are Recorded. Extracted from the Records of England.”

As titles go, it’s a mouthful, but it tells you pretty much everything you need to know. 

The work was commissioned by John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute. Bute is an island off of the eastern coast of Scotland, and the Marquess seemed to have an historical interest in the English conquest of both Scotland and Wales. In 1898 Gough had published a volume titled “SCOTLAND IN 1298. Documents Relating to the Campaign of King Edward the First in that Year, and Especially to The Battle of Falkirk.” (the man clearly understood how to craft a title), and, in the forward to the itinerary, he explained to his patron: 

“In considering the history of a country scarcely any document can be of greater interest than a faithful record of the daily movements of its ruler. During an invasion, a similar interest attaches to a narrative of the daily progress of the leader of the hostile army; nor is the case materially different if the incursion be rather political than warlike. The value of a well-authenticated statement of the progress from day to day of King Edward I during the whole of his reign will therefore doubtless be generally recognised.”

So it seems that this work was compiled out of a motivation to document Edward I’s campaigns against Scotland. This idea is also bolstered by the fact that there is an extended section in the end of the second volume entitled “King Edward’s Expeditions into and Against Scotland.” This section includes maps of specific “expeditions” that we will later examine in more detail.

The main body of this work, however, consists of hundreds of pages, each consisting of a simple table listing dates, locations, and citations for that information. Each page represents an entire month of this itinerary (e.g. Figure 1). In addition, there are copious footnotes that are often essential to properly interpreting the information in the table. 

It should be noted that we used both publicly available digital scans of Gough’s documents as well as a printed version that we purchased. However, the printed version (which was also based on scans of the original) did NOT include the vast majority of the footnotes. This omission often excludes information that is critical to accurate interpretation of the data in the tables. For that reason, all of our references to these documents should be assumed to refer to the public domain digital documents linked below.

In addition to Gough’s work, in 1974 E.W. Safford published an updated itinerary of Edward I. Unfortunately we were unable to obtain access to that document for reference purposes.

Gough’s Itinerary of Edward I:

Volume 1: https://archive.org/details/itineraryofkinge01gouguoft/page/n19/mode/2upVolume 2: https://archive.org/details/itineraryofkinge02gouguoft/page/n11/mode/2up

 

Original Digital Capture of Source Material:

In 2019-2020, Charlotte Tomkins, Dr. Tom Stafford, and Dr. Charles West  undertook the task of digitizing and analyzing a portion of Gough’s Itinerary of Edward I (specifically the data from 1277-1307). The resulting dataset “was extracted from Henry Gough’s Itinerary of Edward I, … although some revisions and additions to the data were taken from Spufford’s [sic] revised Itinerary of Edward I (Index version)”.  In addition, they made the decision to fill some gaps in the data when it seemed logical. 

The Tomkins et. al write-up and source data can be found here: https://doi.org/10.15131/shef.data.8948699.v1

The resulting dataset, as we downloaded it, consists of two separate tables (see Figure 2):

• The first of these is the “Itinerary” table, consisting of entries for 7,763 dates. Dates without listed locations in Gough’s document are coded as “Unknown” in the data, and comprise 1434 entries. This table includes “Place” and “County” fields that identify the placename as well as the county in which it resides. In addition to the date and location information, there is a field that indicates whether England was in a time of peace, or at war on the given date.
• The second of these data tables is the “Location” table. This table is a list of 891 locations that, like the “Itinerary” table, includes “Place” and “County” fields. In addition there are latitude and longitude fields that Identify the actual location of these places as mapped.

One of the limitations of this database design is that it does not easily accommodate multiple locations for one date. Initially we did not realize that this was an issue with the source data. Tomkins et. al made the choice to enter only one location for every date into the database, choosing among the listed locations. We believe this is not an unreasonable compromise, based on the scale of the project and the purpose of the database (i.e. displaying the pattern of movement of King Edward I for the entirety of his reign). When we started our work on this project, we did not initially recognize this limitation. However, by the time we did, we realized that it would require an impractical amount of time and effort to modify the data structure and then manually revisit the entire body of source material.

Tomkins et. al also provide a list of geographic coordinates of castles, as well as borders (those of Wales and Scotland). Since there are other sources of that information available on-line, we did not make use of the data in these two tables.

Initial Data Quality Testing:

Because I am old (Dan speaking here), we used MS Access as the relational database software for manipulating this dataset. We imported the data into MS Access and did a series of checks to find basic errors in data integrity:

1. Checking for duplicates in the list of “Locations”, including minor mis-spellings. (We found only three obvious duplicates in our initial check)
2. Checking that there are no “orphan records” in the “Locations” table. In other words, locations that are not referenced in the “Itinerary” table. (We found 18 of these)
3. Checking for “orphaned records” in the “Itinerary” table. In other words, itinerary records without linked records in the “Locations” table. (Ignoring itinerary records with “unknown” locations, we found 674 of orphaned itinerary records)

The vast majority of these problems are simply transcription or typographic errors and omissions. They are not technically difficult to correct, but can sometimes be time consuming. We removed duplicate places and ensured that all of the relevant records in the “Itinerary” table referenced the appropriate record in the “Locations” table. We made a unique list of missing locations from the orphaned “Itinerary” records. We fixed obvious typos, but some issues required us to add new locations to the “Locations” table, including the latitude and longitude values. 

Adding these new location records, we quickly discovered that it was not always easy to find the physical location of the named place from the database. We developed a strategy of using Google Maps to search for the correct placename in the correct county.

Mapping and Animating the Data:

Once we had full referential integrity in the database (no orphaned or duplicate records), we joined the “Itinerary” table with the “Latitude” and “Longitude” fields in the “Locations” table and imported that data into ArcGIS in order to look at it spatially.

Initially we just performed visual spot-checks of the locations to ensure that the points and labels corresponded to actual locations on the map. Because of Sarah’s focus on Wales, we looked mainly at those data. We won’t enumerate all of the errors that we encountered and fixed, but here are a couple of examples.

• There was a location in the middle of Anglesey labeled “Castrum Cuby.” We recognised this as an Anglicised misnomer for Cybi’s Fort, or Caergybi (the Welsh name for Holyhead).
• One piece of information that caught Sarah’s eye was Edward visiting Bala and spending quite a bit of time there that included quick trips back and forth to Caernarfon. Because of her interest in Edward’s movement through Wales in 1284, she could not figure out why he had been in Bala. More importantly, the distance between Bala and Caernarfon (more than 40 miles) made the frequent trips as recorded in the itinerary impossible. When we looked at Gough’s source material, Bala was clearly listed. However, we eventually noticed in the footnotes that “Bala” was, in fact, a reference to “Baladeulyn.” Baladeulyn is the site of a former palace (or llys) of the rulers of Gwynedd where Edward was known to have spent his 45th birthday, the exact time in question, and is located in the Nantlle Valley about ten miles travel from Caernarfon. 

As we were catching these errors, we realized that there were likely many more similar errors in places with which we had no familiarity, and that it was unrealistic to believe that we could identify many of them. However, we tabled (ha, ha) that problem for the moment, and moved on to animating the entire dataset.

ArcGIS has the capability to create flexible animated maps, and the structure of our dataset made it easy to quickly produce the animation that you see below. Almost immediately, we realized that there was a gap in the animation, which examination of the data table revealed to be from December 31, 1285 to January 1 1295: nine full years. At first we thought there had to be an error in our work that had inadvertently deleted these records, but we went back to the original CSV files downloaded from Tomkins et. al and discovered that the gap was, in fact, a limitation of the source data.

 

 

Identifying and Data Gaps In the Itinerary:

The discovery of missing dates in the “Itinerary” table made us realize that we needed a more systematic approach to ensuring that the dataset was complete and had no duplicate dates. Searching for duplicates, a fairly simple automated task, yielded a small number that were easily fixed.

Identifying missing dates, however, was a little more tricky. We used a python script to create a list of valid dates from August 1, 1274 (shortly before Edwards arrival in England following the death of his father) through July 7, 1307 (the date of his death). This covered the entirety of his effective rule (before August of 1274, Edward was overseas, returning from Crusade, and Gough’s itinerary is pretty sparse for this period).

Now having a table of valid dates, we were then able to compare it to the dates populating the “Itinerary” table. Using this technique, we identified another three month stretch of missing dates (September 30, 1283 through January 1, 1284), as well as eight more missing dates scattered throughout the entire dataset.

The one last anomaly that we had to deal with was the date of Feb 29, 1300. In the Julian calendar this is a leap year day, but in the Gregorian calendar it is not. Thus the date data type in modern databases does not support this date. As a workaround, we created a duplicate of Feb 28, 1300, but identified it in the notes field as representing the problematic leap day.

Filling Itinerary Data Gaps:

As mentioned above, while the Tomkins et. al dataset only purported to cover the dates from 1277-1307, we decided that, since we already had to go back and fill in the missing data gaps, it would be useful to also add data from August 1274 through the end of 1276. This would create a complete dataset beginning on the date that Edward arrived in Dover on his return from crusade and ending with his death.

We used the digital copies of the Gough document as our source material. It took us a little time experimenting to develop a consistent methodology for data entry. However, we were pretty dialed in after a couple hundred records. All that is to say, there is a greater likelihood that errors could have been introduced in that initial learning phase of data entry. However, the following is the methodology that we settled upon:

• Use automated processes to create new records in the database for any missing date. These new records are flagged so that we can find them with a query to ensure that we have not missed the data entry on any of them.
• Add locations to the new dates in the “Itinerary” table using existing records in the “Locations” table. The database has enforced referential integrity, meaning that we cannot enter a new location in the “Itinerary” table unless it exists in the “Locations” table. Therefore, when we came across new locations (not already in the “Locations” table), we would add those to the “Locations” table, and then reference that new record in the “Itinerary” table. We ran into some problems with locations with the same or a similar name in different counties, but we believe we caught most of those errors in subsequent checks that we will describe below.
• For new locations that did not already exist in the “Locations” table, we used Google Maps to retrieve the latitude and longitude values. We were able to cut and paste those values into the “Locations” table in order to minimize the risk of typographical errors.
• In a number of cases, finding the location named in Gough proved to be difficult. For these, we would plot Edward’s itinerary as a walked route using Google Maps navigation features. This gave us a plausible search area, and using this combined with general internet searches we were able to develop reasonable hypotheses for almost all locations. Through this process, we also started developing a “certainty” rating for each location that we will describe in detail below.

One issue of note in this data entry exercise is that roughly three years of the missing data between 1285 and1295 covers a time when Edward was in France. Gough’s information for large stretches of that period is sparse and often suspect. It may be that there is a dearth of historical records covering this time period, but it also may be that this was simply not a priority for Gough.

After much flailing and gnashing of teeth, we finally had a complete dataset of every date from August 2, 1274 through July 7, 1307. This comprises 12,028 days. Of those, we have known locations for 10,242 days, or 85% of Edward’s reign. During this time, according to this data set, he visited 1277 different locations. The obvious question is, “How good are these data?”

More QA/QC (Quality Assurance/Quality Control):

In order to get a more systematic look at our data quality, we established “certainty” indices to both our “Locations” and “Itinerary” tables. 

Locational Certainty:

We added a “certainty” field in the “Locations” table so that we could note concerns with the accuracy of a particular location, but also indicate if we added that location or made changes to it.

We coded locational certainty as follows:

1. Unchallenged: Places that we accepted from the original dataset of Tomkins et. al. We did not independently verify many of these locations, but they all seem perfectly plausible on a cursory examination. These constituted 769 locations in the database.
2. High Confidence: Places that we either added or moved (because of an obvious error), and for which we were confident in our ability to identify correct locations on the map. There were 445 locations in the database that fell into this category.
3. Questionable Confidence: Places that we either added or moved (because of an obvious error), and for which we were reasonably confident, but still some reasons to doubt. Often these are places where we found a placename on the map, but couldn’t find clear documentation to back it up. There were 34 locations in the database that fell into this category.
4. Low Confidence: Places that we either added or moved (because of an obvious error), and for which we were not particularly confident. There were only 4 locations in the database that fell into this category.
5. Unplaced: Place names that we were simply unable to locate on the map (and thus end up unmapped in the itinerary). An example of one such place is “Thlegh in Keynmeir” listed in Denbighshire, Wales. This is likely a bad anglicisation of a Welsh placename, but we were just never able to figure it out. In the end, we had only 23 places that fell into this category.

Itinerary Certainty:

The locational certainty field provided the foundation for our assessment of the certainty of the itinerary data. However, the certainty of the itinerary data also hinged on whether or not the path that the itinerary plotted was plausible, or even possible. 

While filling in missing data gaps, it became clear that some of the purported distances that Edward’s court would have had to travel on a given day were either unlikely or impossible. We wrote a python script in order to systematically identify daily travel distances that seemed implausible. That script did the following:

1. 

   Figure 3

   First, the script interpolated locations for itinerary dates without a known location. For example, Figure 1 (above) lists Edward as being in Marlborough, Wiltshire on Feb 7th and Kempsford, Gloucester on Feb 10, with no known locations for the intervening two days. Our script would calculate locations for the 8th and 9th of February based on a straight-line path between Marlborough and Kempsford. In another example from Figure 1, Edward is listed in Compton, Oxfordshire for both the 21st and 23rd of February. In this case, the algorithm would guess that Edward simply stayed in Compton on the 22nd as well. Figure 3 illustrates this mapping of these data.

2. Second, the script then calculates the distance along the straight-line path and stores it as a rough guide to the distance that Edward would have had to travel on each given day of his itinerary.
3. Third, the script automatically added a “certainty” field to the itinerary data. We used the straight-line distance traveled to that location to flag potential errors. If the distance was less than 20 miles, it was marked as plausible; between 20 and 40 miles was marked as implausible; and a distance of greater than 40 miles was considered impossible. Using this criteria, the script classified the certainty for each day in the itinerary as follows:
   1. The locational certainty code, as discussed in the section above was assigned to the itinerary date. However, under the following circumstances that code was superseded.
   2. For all specified locations in the itinerary table, if the distance traveled to that location on a given day exceeded 20 miles, the locational certainty code was superseded with one of the following:
      1. Implausible Distance – location between 20 and 40 miles from the previous day
      2. Impossible Distance – location more than 40 miles from the previous day
   3. For all interpolated locations in the itinerary table (as described in bullet point 1 above), the locational certainty code was superseded with one of the following: 
      1. Estimated Static – estimating that Edward did not travel on that day
      2. Estimated Plausible – estimating a location less than 20 miles from the previous day
      3. Estimated Implausible – estimating a location between 20 and 40 miles from the previous day
      4. Estimated Impossible – estimating a location more than 40 miles from the previous day

After running this script and then importing the output into ArcGIS, we were able to produce the following map (Figure 4)

The map allows you to see that there are a lot of problems with the dataset, but here are the statistics for how many itinerary records are OK, and how many need attention:

• Identified Locations:
  • 7774 have not been checked, but seem good
  • 31 have been checked or added and seem good
  • 30 have been checked or added with questionable confidence
  • 25 have been checked or added with low confidence
  • 292 require an implausible travel distance
  • 143 require an impossible travel distance
• Interpolated Locations:
  • 846 are static (so a good guess)
  • 1919 are a reasonable travel distance
  • 63 are an improbable travel distance
  • 18 are an impossible travel distance
• Unmapped:
  • 887 were unmapped

We were surprised to find the number of unmapped itinerary dates, but it turned out that they were records in the “Locations” table where the latitude and longitude fields were null.

Addressing Identified Problems:

Once we identified a list of issues, we needed a way to easily focus on the problematic records and track the changes that we made. The form in Figure X meets this need. The problematic records are highlighted in yellow or red. Since the color coding does not change when the errors are addressed, the checkbox on the far right of the form allows us to mark off the issues as we address them.

This, of course, begs the question of the methodology used for addressing the problematic records. It should be noted, that while we lay out the full idealized methodology below, and we attempted to follow it, the process is always a little more messy and ad hoc than we would like.

For illustrative purposes, we have picked the month of June, 1305 to walk through this process. Figures W-Z are, respectively: 

• Figure 5: The source material from Gough
• Figure 6: The same dates in the QA/QC form
• Figure 7: Mapping a walking route of a subset of those dates (June 14-29) on Google Maps
• Figure 8: A map showing the initial locations for the month in red, and the final resolved locations (and route) in green.

We refer to these figures in more detail below while giving specific examples of our QA/QC methodology.

Here is the procedure:

1. Check the data records against the source material (Gough): 
   1. Ensure that the date and location in Gough match the database: This seems obvious, but there were a few cases when the location and/or date were simply incorrectly entered into the database.
   2. Check the footnotes for mitigating information: There are footnotes on almost every page of the Gough document, and they often have a significant impact on correctly identifying the locations. In Figure 5 there are two footnotes, one for “West-Dean” on the 14th of June, and one for “West-Dean” on the 25th of June. These footnotes indicate that Gough is referencing two different places named “West-Dean.” As you can see in Figure 8, Tomkins et. al only mapped the first of these (the one near Chichester). As a result, the “West-Dean” listed on June 25 in Figure 6 is flagged as an impossible distance to travel in one day.
   3. Selecting a single location for each date: As mentioned above, our data structure requires us to choose only one of the listed locations for any given date. In figure W there are ten days with multiple locations listed. Gough seems to indicate that from June 12th-14th, Edward traveled from Witley to Chichester, passing through both Cocking and West-Dean on the 14th. As you can see in Figure 8, we chose to simply list Chichester as the final destination on the 14th. Occasionally we did choose a location other than the final destination. Sometimes we could not accurately locate that destination, so we felt it was better to list a known location that Edward visited on that date rather than interpolate between days before and after. In addition, you may note that Lewes is listed as one of multiple sites visited on every date from June 23-26. We, therefore, assume that Edward is basing his activities in Lewes, and making day trips to places like West-Dean (on June 25).
2. Plotting the pattern of travel on Google Maps: Having resolved any conflicts between our database and the source material, the next step in our attempts to fix itinerary data was to plot problematic sections of the itinerary using Google Maps. Google Maps navigation capability provides the option to find the shortest walking routes along a series of locations. Figure 7 is a screen shot of Google Maps plotting the locations listed from June 14th through the 29th, as listed in both Figures 5 and 6. In this example, as noted above, we chose one location for every date. This approach allowed us to get a visual representation of Edward’s general pattern of movement. It helped us to identify a number of possible explanations for travel distances that were deemed to be either implausible or impossible. Once identified, these errors can be easily fixed by cutting and pasting the appropriate Lat/Lon values from Google Maps into our database. Figure 8 illustrates the locations before the QA/QC procedure (in red) and after (in green). There were a few common types of errors that we learned to look out for:
   1.  Erroneous locations: The most common error that we ran into during these checks were places that were mapped to the wrong location. The following are some of the most common types of errors that we encountered:
      1. Misplacement: The simplest type of erroneous location is just a misplacement of the location on the map. In Figure 8, Stoke-d’Abernon (Edward’s listing for May 29) is an example of this. By plotting the location on Google Maps, we determined that its actual location was about 25km to the northeast of the originally plotted location. 
      2. Latitude/Longitude coordinate errors: Sometimes the locational errors that we encountered were simply incorrect transcription of the latitude and longitude values. One common example of this involves the transposition of longitudinal values around the Prime Meridian.  Because the Prime Meridian runs through Greenwich, places to east of that line have a positive longitudinal value, and places to the west have a negative longitudinal value. In many instances, we found that the negative sign had either been accidentally omitted, or added incorrectly. In Figure 8, there are six examples of this. You can see that (from North to South) Banstead, Horsley, Godalming, Bramber, Findon, and Arundel were all entered with positive longitudinal values (indicating that they were east of the Prime Meridian) when they should have had negative values. This type of error is readily apparent when mapping the route on Google Maps.
      3. Similar placenames in a different jurisdiction: It is not uncommon to have more than one place in the UK bearing the same name. In the list of locations in the database, there are 26 cases of duplicates, and five more cases of triplicate place names. For example, during his reign, Edward visited Whitchurch in Pembrokeshire, Whitchurch in Shropshire, and Whitchurch in Denbighshire. Visually mapping his itinerary on Google Maps quickly helped us identify times when the wrong Whitchurch had been used in the database. We already identified an example of that with West-Dean in the previous section of this document.
   2. Possible errors in the source material:  If, having eliminated all of the obvious errors, we were still faced with obvious impossible distances traveled, there was one last option open to us. In his introduction, Gough notes: “It may be proper to observe that, in my opinion, the Wardrobe Accounts, or Household Books, do not furnish conclusive evidence that the King was actually in the places mentioned at the dates stated, but only that he intended to visit those places shortly. Possibly, however, the dates in these accounts may sometimes indicate the day when the Court arrived.” With this in mind, if we sometimes simply eliminated locations from the itinerary, but only if the following conditions were met:
      1. Condition 1: The travel distance was improbable or impossible
      2. Condition 2: The visit to that location was only one night, and then returned to a place close to the previous location (essentially creating consecutive days of improbably long travel to return to the starting point).
      3. Condition 3: The itinerary goes to that location either shortly before or after this instance. 

The visit to Leeds Castle on the 29th of June is one example of this. Edward would have had to travel from Mayfield to Leeds Castle (an improbable distance of more than 25 miles) while stopping in Goudhurst on the way, only to return to Milkhouse (a short distance from Goudhurst) a day later. In addition, Edward went to Leeds Castle three weeks later after visiting Canterbury and Dover. In this case, it is possible that Edward actually did go to Leeds Castle on June 29th. However, in most cases the distances are so great as to preclude the possibility.

QA/QC Results:

It should be noted that the methodology that we discuss in detail above had to be followed iteratively a number of times. We saved intermediate data sets for eight iterations through this process, although there may have been one or two iterations early on that we did not preserve. The three maps in Figure 9 below show the results of three of these iterations: the first on our original run, the second after a week of work, and the third on our final run. The most demonstrative changes can be seen in the southeast of England.

As the figure above shows, this iterative process was necessary because every time we moved a location or date on the itinerary, it had the potential to highlight problems for locations on adjacent dates. 

Figure 10 to the right shows the improvements that we were able to achieve in the uncertainty metrics. In our first recorded run of the QA/QC script, we only recorded 23% of the records in the itinerary as having a high level of certainty, while 12% had a low level of certainty. In our final run, we were able to get our high certainty numbers up to 44% while reducing the low certainty were reduced to only 1% of the records in the itinerary.

In Figure 11 below we have eliminated all of the interpolated locations so you can see how this improvement looks for just the specified itinerary locations on the map.

Scotland Campaign Maps as a test of data quality:

As we have mentioned earlier in this document, we initially came to this project thinking that we were going to simply load the CSV files into our mapping software and play with the data. As such, we were not familiar with Gough’s source document, and it was only after completing our entire QA/QC process that we discovered the section of Volume II that includes maps of Edward’s itinerary during six campaigns in Scotland. These maps proved to be a good test for the quality of our data. As you can see in the figures below, we reproduced all six of Gough’s maps by simply plotting the itinerary path for the appropriate dates.

We were pleased to see that the our maps are all quite similar to those produced by Gough. When we referenced the differences, we were able to see that most of them are simply map generalization choices. Our maps are much more literal plotting of the itinerary, where Gough was trying to communicate the general shape of Edward’s movement.

Furthermore, in the 1296 Scotland Campaign map you can see that the path along the north coast that Gough maps is direct, where our map jags to the south. When looking at the actual itinerary, that “southern jag” is actually in the list of locations. However, Gough seems to have interpreted it to be one of the instances where the documents mention a place, but Edward did not, in fact visit that place on that particular date. In our QA/QC process, we had actually looked long and hard at this instance (as both travel distances were in the “improbable” category), but in the end decided to not eliminate that location because it did not meet our third criteria for doing so (a subsequent visit to the location on a temporally proximate date).

With all that said, we see these maps as a nice independently sampled QA/QC verification. At the same time, they do provide an illustration of some of the limitations of this dataset.

Appropriate Use of this Dataset:

For individuals who make use of the data that we have compiled here, it is important to recognize the limitations of the data and how it should be used appropriately. 

Precision:

These data have a low level of temporal and spatial precision. They should really only be used to demonstrate the general patterns of King Edward’s movements. If pressed, we would put the spatial precision at plus or minus ten miles. That is to say, on any given day, Edward is likely to have been within ten miles of the listed location. So when he is listed as spending almost all of March and April of 1305 in Westminster, we can’t assume that he was not taking occasional day trips to other nearby locations.

Similarly, we would put the temporal precision to plus or minus one day. In other words, when taking into account the spatial precision, we would be somewhat confident in saying that Edward was within ten miles of the indicated location either on the given day, or the day before or after. 

For instance, in the example of June 1305 that we used earlier (Figure 5), you can see that on the 19th through the 26th, Edward is listed in:

Findon, Arundel, Arundel, Bramber, Clayton, Clayton, Lewes, Lewes, Arundel, Lewes, West-Dean, Lewes, Horsted

I think it’s probably safe to say that during those eight days there are places that Edward passed through that are not listed. It’s not clear (at least not from Gough) where he spent the night, or how much time he spent in a given location. It’s possible that he may have produced a document in Lewes (for instance) that was signed and dated the following day when he was in (let’s say) Horsted. Thus, that record may have placed him in Lewes on the incorrect date.

Future Work:

While we have spent the majority of this document describing our attempts to identify and address errors and inconsistencies in Edward’s Itinerary, as depicted by both Gough and Tomkins et. al, it is important to appreciate the difficulty of the tasks that they undertook in producing their works. Tomkins et. al invite others to build on their work, and that is what we have endeavored to do.

However, despite our efforts, we know that there are others with more expertise in both the history of Edward’s reign and the geographies through which he moved. Our intimate familiarity with North Wales enabled us to identify a number of errors and inconsistencies, but the aforementioned limitations in our expertise will undoubtedly lead to both perpetuation of earlier errors and introduction of new ones in our attempts to correct inconsistencies that we uncovered.

In addition, like Tomkins et. al, we would invite any interested party to continue the efforts to improve the quality of this dataset. On the assumption that someone will, eventually, step forward to undertake that task, we have a few recommendations for enhancements that we would like to see.

1. The geographical locations of every place in the database could be improved by using place names from a reliable geographical data source, and consistently using the geographic coordinates from that standard. At the very least, a systematic methodology for determining the most reliable available geographical coordinates would be an improvement to the work we have done.
2. The place names listed by Gough are sometimes inaccurate or have been replaced by more contemporary names. In some cases the names that we have used in the database are those newer or corrected names. It would be better to modify the data structure to allow storage of both the name listed by Gough and the more contemporary name.
3. Modify the database design to accommodate multiple locations for each date. Allow those locations to be coded ordinally as they appear in Gough’s document. Then an automated process could be used to spread them out in a reasonable timeframe on the date that they are listed. The QA/QC procedures for this would be a little more difficult, as there is no automated way to check for missing records and the calculation of distances traveled would need to be pro-rated based on the time allotted.
4. Modify the database to more systematically allow for Gough’s footnotes to be logged. As mentioned earlier, the footnotes are sometimes vital in determining the accurate locations, and it would be useful for people using the data to have ready access to them.

Conclusion:

It is our hope that this work has resulted in a more complete, accurate, and reliable digital dataset depicting the itinerary of King Edward the first for the entirety of his rule (August 1274 – July 1307). More importantly, we believe that this document can help anyone who wishes to make use of this dataset to adequately evaluate how appropriate it is for any given task, as well as what possible problems may arise from its use.

We would like to, once again, thank Tomkins et. al for the work they did to provide us with a starting point, as well as Scott Lloyd for sharing that work with us.