We are happy and gratefull to announce that hereby our friend Nick Thomas (Academy of Historical Fencing) is certified as a 1st degree member in our Bardic Assembly (Lore).

Nick is best known as a founder and head-instructor of the Academy of Historical Fencing (UK) and author of many amazing novels. He not only put out tons of great HEMA videos on his youtube channel, but also made several historical Broadsword manuals available as transcripted pdf-files for free. So he was also a great help to transcript, rework and publish Capain G. Sinclair´s Cudgel-Playing together with Jay Maas (Broadsword Academy Manitoba).

Jay started a fundraiser campaign to help purchase a rare copy of Captain G. Sinclair’s Cudgel-Playing (1800), with unique plates and illustrations. For those who don’t know, Sinclair was a Highland Officer of the 42nd Regiment of Foot (The Black Watch) and originally published his broadsword treatise under the name Anti-Pugilism. He published it both as a means of learning the broadsword and singlestick, and also for self-defense for walking stick. With help of the campaign-supporters, Jay worked out a new transcription and high-res scans of the illustrations with Nick and they put it out publicly for free online as a pdf-file. You can find the manual and other recources here: http://swordfight.uk/resources/

For this and all the contribution before that with the re-publishing of various manuals like Roworth and Mathewson, as the president and head-instructor of the Cateran Society it is my pleasure to announce the admission of Nick into our Bardic Assembly (Jay was already certified as 1st degree Bard in Lore for his Sinclair-Lesson video series).

Congratulations!