Something New Every Day – how a Welsh page fathered the most famous royal line of all Britain

Catherine of Valois was daughter to France’s king Charles VI and wife to the second Lancastrian king of England, Henry V for just two short years before his death.

Their first and only child together was a male (Henry VI) which made Catherine dowager Queen of England at the ripe old age of 21. The death of Catherine’s own father just a couple of years later meant that her toddler son suddenly found himself King of England and France. English parliament moved after several years to create a bunch of rules relating to the marriage of a dowager in order to stop every man and his dog attempting to marry Catherine and seize control of the two countries (and the infant king). If she married without the permission of the king, the suitor’s lands, titles and money would be forfeit. But…the king had to be of majority to approve such a union. And he was only six at the time.

So what’s a healthy, beautiful 21yo woman to do?

She entered into an affair with a welsh squire of the court, Owen Tudor (Owain ap Twdwr – the keeper of her wardrobe but who had been at Agincourt under Henry V.) It is believed this was a love match and although no marriage records now exist, she supposedly did marry him (against the law) six years later and went on to have six children by him before her death (at 36 years).

One of those half-brothers of the king, Edmund Tudor, had his own little Henry who went on to found the Tudor royal line.

I love this story!! Finally a marriage for love! How long has it taken us! The English parliament who had been so very busy protecting the Lancastrian line from interlopers totally failed to notice that a handsome Welshman in the Queen’s own household stole her heart and then founded one of the most famous royal lines of all time – the Tudors.

Not that any of them knew it at the time. Catherine and Owen married for love. Because she was beautiful and husbandless and because he was dashing and Welsh…and there!

Other interesting Owen-isms…

Owain ap Twdwr used his grandfather’s name in England and anglicised it to Owen Tudor. Had he used his father’s name then the most powerful ruling Dynasty of England would have been The Merediths   Somehow I can’t see Jonathan Rhys-Myers on a promo poster called ‘The Merediths’.  (Wikipedia)

Owen Tudor was the ancestor of our own queen, Elizabeth II.

Medieval England is a university level course courtesy of TheGreatCourses.com and is available as a podcast, CD or DVD

Something new every day – Burned for wearing trousers

So, first up, how embarrassment. I had no idea it was the English that executed Joan of Arc. Duh! Because it happened in Orleans I thought it was the French. But Orleans was English territory at the time.

Peasant-born Jehanne d’Arc was a toddler when Henry V fought the infamous battle at Agincourt and started a decade long losing streak for the French. When she was 12 she had visions of three Saints whoinstructed her to ‘drive out’ the English and to help bring the Dauphin (Charles VII) to rule.

Oh, okay, dead people. No probs. (!!)

Undeterred by the enormity of this task, she spend the next four years working her way to her goal and finally, aged 16 she managed to predict a particular battle in front of high born witnesses and persuade the French nobles to kit her out in borrowed battle gear and stand at the head of their most significant army to lead it to victory.

(Kind of paints a fairly clear picture of the dire straits that the French were in – ceding their army to an uneducated, teenaged, peasant prophet.)

But she first had to undergo an ‘inquisition’ at the hands of the French so they could rule out witchcraft/heresy before the King could be seen to back her. She passed with flying colours. Experts disagree on the matter of her ‘leading’ the army. It is possible that she was asked to bear the battle standard and thus became a motivational figure-head much like Eleanor of Aquitaine in the Crusades so many years before her. But, very quickly, her role became more active and hands-on. She subsequently led many highly successful, highly overdue, battle wins for the French.

Charles VII repaid Joan for her miraculous intervention and success at getting him crowned by doing absolutely nothing to help her when she was captured and eventually sold to the English.

Nice one, Chuck.

When Joan d’Arc was first brought to answer to the charges of insubordination and heterodoxy (dissidence) whipped up against her by the English, the inquisitors were astounded at her intellect and her political savvy and had a really tough time getting any of their claims to stick.  So much so the official records had to be doctored because she did such a good job of answering the key theological challenges put to her by the inquisitors. In the end, the only ‘crime’ that they could pin on her was for the wearing of men’s clothes (based on an obscure biblical tenant) and she was ordered to stop wearing them. That agreement saved her life.

However, rather than being sent to a prison run by nuns, the young virgin was placed in a male-run prison and had to return to wearing men’s clothes to protect her chastity. Donning the clothes was interpreted as a return to her heretical ways. At least, it was all the English needed to condemn her.

Jehanne d’Arc was burned at the stake in 1431 for wearing trousers.

She was 19 years old.

Medieval England is a university level course courtesy of TheGreatCourses.com and is available as a podcast, CD or DVD

Something new every day – The right to ‘bear arms’

A long time before gun-toting countries mad this phrase about the right to carry weapons, it meant something very different. In medieval times, earning the ‘right to bear arms’ meant that you’d earned the right not to fight (that was just expected) but to display your lord/country’s coat of arms/heraldic colours.

The need for heraldry arose from the manner of hand-to-hand combat when everyone on the field was impossible to distinguish. Just one big mass of helmets, plain shields and swords.

Heraldry had its own formal language (complete with unique syntax) that dictated how new arms were described and created. Every symbol, every colour, the posture of the characters, the order of the elements, the mix of colour, texture and material all meant something subtly different. The arms had a verbal equivalent as carefully specific as the visual which had to be used, by all, to describe the arms. This verbal descriptor was called the ‘blazon’.

So when something was ‘enblazoned’ it meant that it was taken from verbal descriptor to finished, visual arms.

Interpreting this language, keeping all these symbols straight, thinking them up and then deciding on who could use/bear them became a full time job and lords paid someone to be their Herald. It was the Herald’s job (amongst other things) to whisper a who’s-who for the king’s advisors when meeting someone for the first time, to recommend new heraldic arms and to resolve disputes about the right to bear arms.

Medieval England is a university level course courtesy of TheGreatCourses.com and is available as a podcast, CD or DVD

Something new every day -  I dub thee Sir Tossalot…

I love a good Knight story. All those blazing eyes, heroic battle-deeds, courage under fire, passionate love for king, country and god. The knight, blinded in battle, who rode into the fray on a horse tethered to his squire’s (they were all found dead—knight, squire and horses—still tethered together), Sir Gawain who honoured a pledge to fight a supernatural warrior even though it meant certain death… *sigh* But it turns out there’s someone who loves a good Knight story more than me…

The Knights themselves.

In the real medieval world, knights were just a little bit too pleased with themselves. They were the elite sportsmen of the dark ages. The rockstars. And boy did they know it.

Knights of the eleventh century were little more than hired thugs who happened to fight really well and whose weapons were slightly better than everyone else’s. When not actively engaged in their skirmishing, they roamed around the countryside raping and pillaging and generally abusing their authority horribly. Then in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as the chivalric code shifted from something in literature to something actually aspired to, a lot changed about knights and their behaviour. They looked better, they fought better and they behaved better.

But only on the surface. Underneath they were still the thugs their fore-knights had been.

Chivalric knights had egos as shiny and impenetrable as the armour they starved their peasants to afford and it seems they were oblivious (or just plain uninterested) in the suffering of those that kept them in their lofty positions. They were as competitive in the arts of courtly/chivalric love as they were on the field. Everyone wanted to be the most courageous, the most beloved, the most talked-about. It wasn’t enough to fight your way to the top, you had to stay on the top. Be the most resplendent. Have great bardic tales of your exploits recorded and repeated across the land.

And OMG how they bought into their own PR.

When not actually being brave and heroic in battle, knights liked nothing better than to practice being brave and heroic in battle in war-games (jousting, practice skirmishes, great training displays). And in their down-time they liked to listen to stories of other knights being brave and heroic in battle, and if a troubadour couldn’t be found to perform for them then they made up stories of their own fabulousness.

But in their down-time from being so totally self-appreciating and self-absorbed they had some other favoured pastimes. Outside of the intensely biased world of fictional chivalry policy was a much less appealing standard operating procedure.

You want? You take.

The fundamental principles of chivalry (honour, loyalty, respect, courage) pretty much only applied to people of the same social class as the knights – ie: nobles. It was perfectly appropriate (and even encouraged) for knights who fancied a peasant woman for instance to not only not treat her with anything resembling chivalric respect and restraint but to simply take her by force. No matter whose wife, daughter, sister she was.

Pillaging? Check. When released from battle in foreign lands, knights marauded across the countryside relieving the local villagers of their possessions and daughters and lives with little more thought than kicking over an ants nest. They didn’t even see them.

Belittling others was a favourite. Knights, it seems were intensely intolerant of anyone who wasn’t as fabulous as they. They delighted in humiliating, punishing or showing-up those of lower class, though it’s hard to imagine how they could possibly have maintained the veneer of chivalry while doing so.

Perhaps the entire elite was so guilty of the same abysmal double-standard that they were only too happy to perpetuate the chivalric myth even in the face of rampant evidence of the very un-chivalric   behaviour.

Medieval England is a university level course courtesy of TheGreatCourses.com and is available as a podcast, CD or DVD

Something new every day – Don’t poke the angry bear

Edward I (The Hammer of the Celts) was a welcome relief to England after the 50+ year reign of the ineffectual (and apparently inept) King Henry III. Edward’s reputation as a warrior and strategist was so great that—unlike every King preceding him who had to race to England and seize Treasury in order to shore up their right to the throne—Edward waited two whole years after learning of his father’s death to return to England from the Crusades. And when he dawdled home he found an incredibly well-behaved England whose lords and barons were so grateful to have a decent and formidable King at last they had passed two years without a King on English soil with barely a ruckus.

But… over in Wales (yay, the Welsh!) where the Twysogs (lords) were generally so busy fighting amongst themselves they didn’t generally bother about England, a confident and bolshy lord Llewelyn decided that he didn’t want to pay homage to an English King anymore. So he stopped. And Edward sent a force to punish him accordingly.  Payments resumed. Five years later (and presumably better resourced and armed and ready for round two) Llewellyn refused to pay again.

Edward was pissed. But this time, instead of focussing his ire on Llewelyn’s kingdom—who had mostly been quiet and trouble-free and paid their dues on time—he killed Llewellyn and then set about conquering all of Wales once and for all over the next decade. He built castles all over the country, staffed them with brutal warriors and forced every person there to pledge fealty. In return he promised the Welsh that he would give them a Prince that spoke no English, to persuade them that their Welsh values and society would be preserved.

He lied.

Well, really he cheated.

He did give them a Prince that spoke no English – Edward II (the first) Prince of Wales. He spoke no English because he was an infant when named their liege and infant Edward spoke no language of any kind.

Tricky Edward I, tricky…

Medieval England is a university level course courtesy of TheGreatCourses.com and is available as a podcast, CD or DVD

Something new every day – What’s in a Name…?

If you’re the King of England (or even the heir to the throne of England) you want a name that suggests power and capability and your regal lineage. Because names matter in medieval England. And the name you’re born with may not be the name you get called behind closed doors and it may not be the name that strangers call you (nor, indeed, one you even want).

These are the kinds of names you want to be called:

• Athelstan the Glorious  - did he pay someone to start using that? And why am I suddenly thinking of Aslan?
• Alfred The Great King. Yeah: no-one’s going to mind that nickname
• Richard the LionHeart. Awesome: brave, loyal, fierce. A nickname to be proud of.
• William the Conqueror.  Terrific! But… William spent the first thirty years of his life as William the Bastard. Less impressive.
• Edward the Warrior King (and The Hammer of the Scots)
• Edmund the Magnificent
• Edmund Ironside

Here’s some names you don’t want to be called if you’re king:

• Robert Curt-hose. Ouch, that’s basically Bobbie Short-pants.
• Ethelred the Unready  Mmmmm…
• Stephen the Irresolute   Stephen came to the throne when he was literally the last man standing after all the better options were drowned off Normandy in the sinking of The White Ship. No-one has ever been named after him. That’s not a good sign. In Stephen’s case it’s because he was a weak, ineffectual king who was easily swayed from his own decisions.
• John Lackland and worse, John Soft-sword. Ouch just…ouch. Again another King never honoured with the naming of a descendent. This time it was because John was so greatly despised. Really, what was to like. He killed children. He mortgaged England to the French. He failed as a war leader. He married a 12yo girl (some say younger, 9) and did not observe the customary practice of letting her mature before consummation. He was just a particularly nasty pastie. And that’s even allowing for the many hard and horrible things a King had to do.

Much later than medieval England came a corker, a name which makes up in intrigue what it lacks in subtlety. What exactly do you have to do to be called:

• James the Shit  

Medieval England is a university level course courtesy of TheGreatCourses.com and is available as a podcast, CD or DVD

Something new every day – Tawdry

In 13^th Century England, agriculture, pastoralism and enterprise surged. Reflecting the health of the economy and the growing population, markets and fairs began to appear across the country and became quite dominant. Once such fair, held in June by the Monks of Ely to celebrate the name-day of their saint, St Audrey (7^th Century’s St Ǽthelthryth, Abbess of Ely & Fenland queen), became famous for the sale of necklaces made of silk and lace. These were quite shabby and low-class and so the event’s namesake (St Audrey) was shortened to ‘taudrey’.  Tawdry lace.

Medieval England is a university level course courtesy of TheGreatCourses.com and is available as a podcast, CD or DVD

Something new every day – Oops! Why you should never drink and sail (and the ultimate ‘Bradbury’)

In 1100ish Henry I was due to return to England victorious from France with his full court when Thomas Fitz Stephen kindly offered to sail him in his vessel, The White Ship. Presumably he thought this would bring his sexy, just-built ship the kind of fame his own father’s had received after Henry’s father (William the Conqueror) sailed in it to invade England in 1066.

Well, Thomas got fame, alright. Just  not the way he expected.

Henry already had a ship so he sent 300 of his court on The White Ship instead including his son and sole heir, William, the heir to the German throne, a much-beloved illegitimate soldier-son, Richard, a step-daughter, a slew of royal nephews and nieces and earls and countesses, 180 knights, a bunch of young earls and countesses, and the Archdeacon of Hereford.  It was the party boat, while all the serious and boring rich people went on the other ship.

William, it seems, was fond of a celebration and he authorised great quantities of wine for the crossing, much of which was consumed prior to the ship sailing. This has then led to an impact of Titanic proportions off the coast of France when the White Ship hit a very obvious rock at speed. William (it seems) had asked the ship’s captain to beat his father’s vessel back to England.

Thus, the future Kings of England and Germany were lost, most of the heirs of all England and Normandy’s biggest families (and their potential future wives) were lost, and 180 of the kingdom’s finest knights were lost. Thomas Fitz Stephen, it is said, did not immediately drown but when he realised whose deaths he had caused he let himself sink to the bottom of the frigid English Channel (not sure how anyone knows this but I love it!!!).

History records just one man surviving the sinking – a French butcher on board to collect on debts by the consumptive royal entourage.

But another man survived by virtue of having disembarked when the ship sailed due to a bad case of the runs. Stephen – the King’s nephew.

Stephen later became King of England because he was, quite literally, the last man standing. And because he’d had the squirts.

Now that’s what I call ‘doing a Bradbury’.

Medieval England is a university level course courtesy of TheGreatCourses.com and is available as a podcast, CD or DVD

Something new every day – At last!! Arthur! (Almost…)

So I’ll do a totally separate post on the whole Arthur thing but something really intriguing came out of today’s lecture regarding the origins of the whole ‘courtly love’ craze.

So… up until the twelfth century, literature (epic poems, songs and stories) tended to be about very masculine things – honour and valour and swords and dragons and battles and great kingly acts and stuff. Think Beowolf. Or it was about men of religion and their love for their lord or their spiritual love for each other as soldiers of the soul united against evil. Women barely rated a mention, at all.

Then, around the middle of the 1100s literature started to shift in the direction of ‘courtly love’.

It seems waaaaaay too coincidental to discover that Eleanor of Aquitaine–a rabid reader of literature and lover of music–raised two daughters right about then in her image. Huge supporters of the arts. One in particular, Marie de Champagne, went on to become the biggest patron of the arts that England/France/Ireland & Wales had ever seen. She bestowed money on musicians and poets and writers who subsequently produced tales of terrific knights and kings courts and honour and valour and chivalry which must have pleased the nobles and real knights who formed the audience for these performances no end.

But…

Suddenly onto the literary scene lurches women in amongst all those heroic, chivalrous male heroes. Desirable, angst-ridden, modest women as the subject of the undeniable passions of these nobel men. Women as muses, inspiring great acts of valour. Much-loved Queens whom bold knights would die for. All terribly secret and forbidden, passionate and angst-filled.  Nothing like the dull real lives twelfth century women were leading married off to husbands in partnerships that were more about business than passion.

It’s hard not to draw a connection between the flow of funding from the courts of Marie and Eleanor for these highly romantic stories that appealed so much to women and their very creation. Music was written to suit and flatter the patrons, why not literature?

I’ll be sniffing around about this aspect some more in the near future. Watch this space.

Medieval England is a university level course courtesy of TheGreatCourses.com and is available as a podcast, CD or DVD

Something new every day – Consanguination, a handy out

The annulment of marriages due to consanguination—a degree of relatedness greater than the recommended seven degrees of separation—was a common and convenient ‘out’ for royal pairings that were falling apart.

It was the ‘irreconcilable differences’ of the middle ages.

The level of inter-relatedness does not seem to have been the slightest problem BEFORE the marriages were announced—if you were hoping to marry someone suitably bred, suitably titled and suitably wealthy, royal beggars could not be choosers—but it was a fast and provable way of getting out of the same marriage.

In 1137, 15 year old Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine and King (in waiting) Louis VII (cousins four times removed) were married despite not being at all suited. Eleanor was far too feisty and bold for flashy Louis. She insisted on accompanying Louis on the Second Crusades (having rallied an army in a display that would have done Joan of Arc proud) and then promptly challenged every military decision he made, siding with her young Uncle who was in the east as well (and with whom she was rumoured to be having an affair *cough*).

Her betrayal on both fronts led to a request for divorce which was denied by one Pope (who appears to have forced them to have sex in order to produce an heir–charming) but when the result of that union was another female Louis (and the pope) finally agreed and they were divorced on grounds of being too closely related. She then promptly married Henry II, her cousin three times removed and gave him eight children, including four male heirs. No issues of consanguination, there…!

Medieval England is a university level course courtesy of TheGreatCourses.com and is available as a podcast, CD or DVD

Something new every day – Cheque please!

William the Conquerer, so eager to tally up the value of his conquering, set a thousand men to the task of determining the worth of the entire country (estates, castles, forests and all their worth, right down to every pig and cow). The auditing processes required for this became regular processes and entire reporting structures were put in place to ensure they happened.

But, someone had to add all of this up and in the pre-calculatory days of the middle ages they had to do it manually. Abacus didn’t yet exist. Even tally systems were fifty or sixty years away. They basically had fingers and furniture. And tablecloths.

But a system was implemented and it went on to be the foundation of England’s accounting system for centuries.

The exchequer.

The exchequer was best known as a position (as in ‘I’m off to see the exchequer’) but it was, in fact, a thing. A table to be precise.

Imagine a large dining table with a raised ridge around its entire four-sides, and throw on it a chequered tablecloth. Then throw down some pebble-like counters. The combination of these counters in their rows and their columns was used to account for net worth, a very early form of abacus.

Imagine my disappointment to discover no connection between the exchequer and cheques (other than a vague etymological connection going back to the latin) and also between the exchequer and the game of checkers.  Checkers started life in the time of the Egyptians it seems and had evolved into chess well before the creation of the exchequer. HOWEVER, there is a connection between chess and the exchequer in as much as both happen on a chequered table so I’ll have to be happy with that.

Medieval England is a university level course courtesy of TheGreatCourses.com and is available as a podcast, CD or DVD

Something new every day – ‘A surfeit of eels’

I’ve heard the saying but never really thought about what a surfeit of eels means. Today I found out.

So, carrying on our mini-theme of really undignified ends to cruel reigns…

King Henry (1st) — who had come by his throne opportunistically (and some say suspiciously) following the death of his king brother by cross-bow incident and who then went on to be a brutal king rather too fond of justice – died after gorging himself on his favourite food – lamphreys (incorrectly known as eels).  Possibly food poisoning, possibly allergy or intolerance but definitely a surfeit and definitely lamphreys of which he was ‘inordinately fond’.

Why? I don’t know. They might just be the creepiest fish I’ve ever seen.

Fish: Petromyzon marinus (Lamprey) mouth in Sala Maremagnum of Aquarium Finisterrae (House of the Fishes), in Corunna, Galicia, Spain.

Their name means ‘stone-licker’ (classy…) and they look like something out of the X-Files. Remember the episode with the dude in the sewer? *shudder*

Anyway, apparently quite tasty and I’m guessing that, in the same way livers are tasty and rich because they filter all the crap out of what we eat and that somehow improves the liver, Lamphrey might be similarly delicious.  And really probably quite toxic if you consider what was *in* the average medieaval waterway.

Anyway, certainly toxic to Henry I.

One last thing about Lamphrey – some Roman dude used to throw people to a pond full of Lamphreys as cruel and unusual execution. Now I’m thinking of Austin powers and his really angry sea bass….

Medieval England is a university level course courtesy of TheGreatCourses.com and is available as a podcast, CD or DVD.

Something new every day – Poor Robert–none of his father’s skill and all his bad luck.

William the Conqueror’s entire family appears to have been intensely dysfunctional. On his death, William had to be badgered into leaving Normandy to his eldest son, Robert, who the people generally accepted as heir. Robert was his mother’s favourite and he ruled with her as a 14 yo co-Regent while his father was off conquering England.

Perhaps because of this young start, Robert was widely known as Robert Curthose (or Robert Short-pants) which was intensely insulting for a prince and then king. Normandy was poor when he inherited it and it took him no time at all to run through the rest as King.  He sold off a big chunk to his youngest brother for some of the £5000 pounds (5000 pounds of silver) that he’d inherited on his father’s death.

His younger brother, William, was given the much richer kingdom of England and he refused his rival Robert financial aid more than once.

In 1096 Robert declared himself off on the crusades to show everyone once and for all that he was a warrior and a worthy king, but he had to mortgage Normandy (to William) to raise the funds (believing he’d be back with riches).

But, in the four years that he was off crusading, William (King of England) died in a veerrrrry suspicious cross-bow related hunting accident and youngest brother Henry hastened to London before William’s body was even stiff and declared himself King.

Robert returned from the crusades with no riches but some reputation as a warrior and found his little brother running the country. The only good bit of luck in his life was that with William died Robert’s debt (fortunate since he came back as poor as he’d left).

But he was an ambitious man and angry at his ambitious little brother’s presumption and he attacked to seize the throne. But he found much support for Henry when he invaded and so he allowed himself to be bought off.

He returned to Normandy, humiliated and ashamed but cashed up.

But just a few years later he was captured in the name of King Henry (by a herald, no less, to his complete shame), imprisoned in the Tower of London where he lived for 28 years before dying.

Medieval England is a university level course courtesy of TheGreatCourses.com and is available as a podcast, CD or DVD.

Something new every day – The king is dead. Long live the king.

It seems being the most dynamic and effective and wealthiest ruler England had ever seen really didn’t buy you any special treatment. Or many friends.

When William the Conqueror died in Rouen in 1087 from chronic intestinal troubles caused (depending on who you asked) either by his massive corpulence or from a pommel related injury he sustained when his horse bolted, what little family he had all left the moment he’d died (if they even waited) and his royal attendants took his possessions and fled leaving him laid out on the floor of his home.

With everyone else nicked off, a ‘common knight’ was left with the responsibility of preparing his body and transporting it to his final resting place, where, on arrival, everyone left to go battle a fire in the town.

On arrival a local lord claimed that the King had stolen the lands on which he’d built his special gift to the church (and preferred resting place) and refused, as legitimate owner of the land, to let him be buried in it. The lord was hastily paid off so the service could continue.

What few nobles and churchmen were left after his shambolic beginning had to endure William’s final indignity–the sarcophagus hastily made to take his large frame was too small. Panicked attendants urged his dead self into the stone box (*cough*) at which point his bowel ruptured and the casket filled to overflowing with the most awful pestilence which those present gagged and fled over.

But even his rest would not be in peace. He was first exhumed in the sixteenth century, then his tomb raided and his bones scattered. Then the only remaining bone (a thigh bone) was interred in a new monument which was subsequently destroyed to the ground in the French Revolution.

Long live the Conqueror.

Medieval England is a university level course courtesy of TheGreatCourses.com and is available as a podcast, CD or DVD.

Something new every day – No wonder the peasants just shrugged…

Alfred the Great spent his entire monarchy uniting England (Mercia, Sussex, Northumberland and East Anglia) so that they all looked to one king as their leader. Just two generations on, norse King Canute undid it all and reinstated ‘kings’ in the same regions except he called them Earls (a Scandinavian term which persists today).

So all those lives lost, all that political posturing and alliance, all those forced marriages and desperate heir making… All so swiftly undone.

No wonder the ever-changing monarchy just rolled off the peasants, day-to-day. It really made little difference to them who they were ploughing for.

It was only William the Conqueror who recognised that the real power and security came when there was some kind of direct relationship between the people and the king… They may never meet the king but they’d know they served him and owed him their fealty. Not some random lord.

Medieval England is a university level course courtesy of TheGreatCourses.com and is available as a podcast, CD or DVD.

Something new every day – Ethelred the ‘Unready’

Æthelred was the son of King Edgar and the very ambitious Queen Ælfthryth and his half-brother, Edward, blocked his way to the throne. So it seems that mommy dearest had her stepson king bumped off by her attendants (charming) as if this would somehow speed Elthered’s way to the throne. He was ten.

Not surprisingly he wasn’t really welcomed there by the people of England when he did ascend in 978AD. Lots of kings have nicknames (William the Conqueror, Alfred, the Great King, Edward Ironside) but poor old rushed-to-the-throne Ethelred was lumbered with ‘Æthelred Unræd’. This has gone down thorugh time as being Elthered the Unready.

LOL, that’s hardly dignified, is it?  And it’s not his fault he wasn’t ready to be king, he wasn’t supposed to be king.

But a more literal translation of Unræd is ‘bad counsel’ – hardly any better. So it’s curious to know whether that referred to the counsel of his domineering mother who (presumably) continued to interfere in his affairs or to his own counsel which he was apparently famous for flouting (changing his mind constantly much to the peril of his armies).

Medieval England is a university level course courtesy of TheGreatCourses.com and is available as a podcast, CD or DVD.

Something new every day… Where Sheriffs come from

When a daddy sheriff and a mummy sheriff love each other very much…

No. I should know by now that words aren’t just invented. They evolve every bit as much as species do. So today I discovered where the word ‘Sheriff’ comes from. But first a definition.

In Anglo-saxon terms, a sheriff was the man charged with the responsibility for representing the monarchy in his shire and maintaining law and order (a shire being made up of many ‘hundreds’ and a ‘hundred’ being made up of 100 tithings. A tithing (tithe) was 10 ‘households’.)

Huh…you say? OK, let me just explain that again.

So peasants had a tythe (an amout of land worked out as what one man could reasonably farm), and they were grouped into tens as tithings and a leader assigned to administer them (called a tithingman), one hundred tithings (one thousands tithes) was known as a Hundred and was kind of a unit of land/space measure as well as an implied value. Each Hundred had a hundred man or eolderman in charge of it. Shires were made up of any number of Hundreds (bigger ones being worth considreably more) and had sherrifs in charge of them.  So peasants all answered to a tithingman, tithingmen all answered to a eolderman and eoldermen answered tot heir sheriff who in turn answered to the King.

A Reeve (and there were many) was someone with administrative responsbilites for a particular function. IN the case of the Reeve resposible for the whole shire he was called the Shire Reeve. Or Sheriff.  Often these were lords but not always. The role was coveted for its power and contact with the monarchy.

In english terms possibly the most famous sheriff of all was the fictional Sheriff of Nottingham who administered his shire (including Sherwood Forest) with an iron fist (all the better to grab fistfuls of money with). 

Medieval England is a university level course courtesy of TheGreatCourses.com and is available as a podcast, CD or DVD.

Something new every day…  King Alfred the over-achiever

King Alfred of Wessex is known as the great king. As a 5yo child, his father King Athelwolf sent Alfred ahead in his advance party on a special visit to Rome and the Pope was charmed by the boy and confirmed Alfred personally. This was just a standard confirmation but because the Pope delivered it, ‘Team Alfred’ later let the rumour persist (and maybe ensured it did) that the Pope had fore-ordained that Alfred would be king (despite being the last of four brothers in line for the throne).

Alfred was a comparatively gentle, gastrically-challenged, well-educated king who set about ensuring that all the people of England had access to documents of knowledge (not just the wealthy/powerful few). In between all his warring (in which he finally defeated the Vikings that had plagued England for the better part of two centuries), he set about having all the great documents of his time (and before) translated into the language of his time. He also built England’s first fleet of ships—not great ships, but showing how important it was to stop raiders before they hit English soil. To unite the kingdoms of England he then married his cleverest daughter off to a Mercian noble so that she could rule him and, through him, England’s biggest kingdom, Mercia. When the noble did early, Mercia embraced Alfred’s daughter and she continued to rule there for decades, as smart and wise as her father. And lastly, Alfred overhauled the system of law in England to be more in line with principles in the great texts he was reading (and less rooted in historic practice).

So he defeated the Viking plague, he brought the world’s knowledge to his people, he began uniting the entire country, he established maritime defence, and he overhauled the legal system.

Not bad for a 28 year reign. Or a kid plagued his whole life with chronic intestinal pain (probably Crohn’s).

Medieval England is a university level course courtesy of TheGreatCourses.com and is available as a podcast, CD or DVD.

Something new every day – Vikings

Viking is a verb not a noun. It’s old norse for ‘going and and raiding’, essentially. So technically you go a-viking the same way you go a-roaming. Back then no-one knew them as Vikings, the anglo-saxons called them Northmen or Norsemen. (Centuries later these ‘north men’ who settled a part of France to be called Normandy became known as Normans and they once again invaded England and changed the trajectory of Britain’s history.)

Some Anglo-saxon kingdoms paid protection money to the Vikings so that they would sail off again without plundering and killing. This became controversial eventually but paying tribute had been a part of agrarian societies for a really long time—peasant to lord, lord to king, smaller kingdom to bigger kingdom.

Medieval England is a university level course courtesy of TheGreatCourses.com and is available as a podcast, CD or DVD.

Something new every day – How to treat a horse or cow that’s been elf-shot

I kid you not. According to the lore of the mid-tenth century, if you suspect your horse or cow has been shot by an elf you should either:

• Take the eye of a broken needle and give the horse a prick with it in the ribs; or
• Give it dockseed & Scottish wax and ‘let a man sing twelve masses over it’ and sprinkle holy water on it

Historians like this early record because it’s such a strong demonstration of the way that paganism and Christianity existed in harmony.

Um… yep. That’s why it’s interesting. It couldn’t be the fact that they discuss elves as though they’re perfectly commonplace and overly fond of shooting animals of labour….

Medieval England is a university level course courtesy of TheGreatCourses.com and is available as a podcast, CD or DVD.