This was not actually covered in the ‘Medieval England’ course but it was briefly mentioned and so I detoured to go find out more about the origins of the word ‘romance’. And unexpectedly I also uncovered the origins of the prejudice against romance. Read on…

In twelfth century England, the upper-classes spoke French. They also spoke English but it was deemed pedestrian to speak in English when you could speak in French. But, equally, it was deemed crude to read/recite French when you could be reading/reciting Latin, yet French was what the courtly/chivalric tales of the middle ages were created (and recited) in.  So Latin beats French, French beats English, English beats paper, paper beats rock. (and Spock beats lizard…but I digress…)

Therefore the style of speech/prose particular within the elite class became known as ‘romances’ after Romanicus the Latin word for ‘of the roman style’. In other words, chivalric tales of adventure and courtly love (including all the slaying and the death and the grandeur as well as all the love and angst) were romances.

And so then, just as now, the word carries with it—and perhaps has carried with it since then—the suggestion that it is somehow inferior to other, higher forms of prose/speech. But then, just as now, they are the popular stories being consumed wholesale by the masses and capturing their imagination.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.