Specialising in the medieval English nobility, gentry and royal family, he is considered the major propagator of K. B. McFarlane's ideas on bastard feudalism, and published widely on a plethora of subjects ranging from the biographies of kings to the cartularies of minor abbeys.

They fused easy reading, suitable for a general readership, with the minute approach to detail and sourcing required in a high-end piece of scholarship.

[2] The historian DeLloyd J. Guth concluded that the biography was "in the best tradition" of McFarlane, and left the previous work—Cora Scofield's 1926 biography—"flounder[ing] in a wealth of facts and episodes".

[5] Although Colin Richmond believed that it remained less an achievement than Scofield's—if only because it had greater and more plentiful scholarship to work upon—he praised Ross's analysis of political tension.

For example, in 1970, Ross, Stanley Chrimes and Ralph Griffiths edited the papers presented at the 1970 medieval history colloquium in Cardiff.

[1] By the time Ross was due to retire, he was estranged from his second wife,[18] who remained at their large family home in the Redland area bringing up their son alone.

[1] Ross lived in a "large, semi-detached Georgian" apartment in Clifton, in the heart of the university's housing,[18] which he and Jefferis had bought between them in 1984.

[12] Adding to her stress, Ross had become sicker since November 1985, which had made him harder to live with ("more petulant", it was later reported) and in April she discovered that one of her own children needed a brain scan.

[1] The following night, she was overheard crying [21][16] and neighbours called the police, who broke into Ross's flat and found Jefferis next to him,[16] "staring 'vacantly' at her hands".

[22] At her trial at Bristol Crown Court, Jefferis pled guilty to manslaughter on account of diminished responsibility,[21] which plea was accepted by the prosecutor.

[12] Defence counsel argued that it was unlikely the true facts surrounding that night would ever be known, suggesting that Jefferis suffered from such emotional collapse that she had erased all memory of events, a condition recognised by psychiatrists, he claimed.

Ross's colleagues described how on one occasion he presented to the Homeopathic Hospital with glass in his eye, after his spectacles were smashed during a fight with her; another time, "he went to work limping, saying Mrs Jefferis had driven the car at him".

[12] In 1978, Ross organised a symposium at Bristol with the intention of providing "an informal and friendly gathering" to allow younger scholars the opportunity to present their own papers.

Among the former including Margaret Condon, Keith Dockray, Ralph Griffiths,[11] Michael Hicks—"proud also to be a member of 'the Bristol connection'"—and Tony Pollard.

[2] his colleague, Professor Joel T. Rosenthal of SUNY, commented that "Ross's friends are also McFarlane's heirs, and that we are all Marc Bloch's grandchildren .

The starting point was usually the noble family—the Percies, Beauchamps, Staffords, Mowbrays, Hollands, Courtenays, Talbots, Hungerfords, or Greys of Ruthin.