“For too long medieval women have been written out of history. It’s high time we put them back in”

1 The religious pioneer

The Yorkshire soil has ottered up tantalising glimpses of a “princess” who straddled England’s pagan and Christian ages

A few beads and pendants was all they found. It wasn’t much to go on, but these diminutive treasures nestled in the soil threw up some tantalising clues about an influential woman who died in the seventh century.

That woman lived during a period of huge cultural change in England. Known as the Loftus Princess, her burial alongside a series of remarkable treasures, overlooking the cliffs of North Yorkshire, testifies that she was honoured by the people who placed her in the earth. The rest of her story – what she achieved, how she lived, who she encountered – can only be surmised.

Should we stop asking questions and dismiss the Loftus Princess as yet another lost woman from our medieval past? Or can we put her in context and build up a world around her using a range of evidence and approaches at our disposal?

For all too long, the former option has prevailed. There’s not enough room on these pages to list the medieval women who have been deliberately removed from the records. So let’s cite just one: Æthelflaed, the Lady of the Mercians, a military leader, social reformer, patron of the arts and a diplomat whose contributions to ninth and early tenth-century