The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century

by Ian Mortimer

  12. Some contemporary images of Richard show him completely beardless: for example, the portraits in Westminster Abbey and the Wilton Diptych, and the image of Philip de Mezières presenting his manuscript to Richard (see plate 4). Even Richard’s funeral effigy, made during his lifetime, shows him with the smallest imaginable beard and hardly any mustache. The tiniest forked beard and mustache are shown in Creton’s illustrations (painted 1401–1405). Just a little more hair is visible in the illuminated initials in the Book of Statutes (St. John’s College, Cambridge: MS A7) and the Shrewsbury charter.

  13. Cunnington and Cunnington, Underclothes, p. 33.

  14. Most of the descriptions of the peasant clothing of 1340 are from the illustrations in the Luttrell Psalter and, to a lesser extent, the Smithfield Decretals (both in the British Library).

  15. Sources for peasant clothing for the end of the century are nowhere near as rich as the Luttrell Psalter. In addition to various British Library manuscript images online, see Basing, Trades and Crafts; Cunnington and Lucas, Occupational Costume.

  16. For cosmetics see Woolgar, Senses, pp. 136–40,175.

  17. In 1341 a London apprentice is found with money in his two pockets. See Sharpe (ed.), Letter Books 1337–1352, pp. 249-75, at fol. ccxviii b.

  18. All the references in this paragraph come from TNA DL 28/1/6 fol. 22r–23v (goldsmiths), fol. 24r–v (jewels).

  19. See for example the famous illustration of the men at an inn in Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 252, fol. 70. Reproduced in Thorp, Glory of the Page, p. 31.

  20. Duby (ed.), Private Life: Revelations, p. 525.

  21. Duby (ed.), Private Life: Revelations, p. 525; Woolgar, Senses, p. 35.

  22. Mortimer, Perfect King, p. 100.

  23. Woolgar, Senses, p. 35.

  6. Traveling

  1. See Milles, The Gough Map.

  2. Fisher andjurica (eds), Documents, p. 289.

  3. Bradley (ed.), Dialogues, pp. 49-50.

  4. Hindle, Medieval Roads, p. 31.

  5. Henry IV did visit Devon, at least three times. However, the first two were before he was king and the last after the end of the fourteenth century. Edward II and Edward III avoided the peninsula altogether.

  6. Mortimer, Perfect King, p. 460.

  7. Hindle, Medieval Roads, p. 20. Another example, from 1499, is given in Coulton (ed.), Social Life, pp. 426-27, in which a glove merchant was drowned in a clay pit dug in a road near Aylesbury by a miller. Chaucer mentions the same problem befalling a student in “The Miller’s Tale.”

  8. Hindle, Medieval Roads, pp. 41-43.

  9. The Boke of St. Albans, quoted in Reeves, Pleasures and Pastimes, p. 103. There is a similar quotation in the book of The Menagier of Paris, according to Bayard (ed.), Medieval Home Companion, p. 108.

  10. Woolgar, Great Household, p. 190.

  11. Lyon, Lyon and Lucas (eds.), Wardrobe Book, pp. 313-27.

  12. Henry IV, before his accession, purchased a St. Christopher for his messenger going to the king. See Mortimer, Fears, p. 154.

  13. Ohler, Medieval Traveller, p. 97.

  14. Chaplais, Piers Gaveston, p. 23.

  15. TNADL 10/253.

  16. The actual timing of this message is a matter of inference, not precise recording. See Mortimer, Fears, p. 216.

  17. Hill, King’s Messengers, p. 108.

  18. Woolgar, Great Household, p. 193.

  19. TNADL 28/1/9 fol. 6v, 7r.

  20. Woolgar, Great Household, pp. 181-82.

  21. Jusserand, Wayfaring Life, p. 95.

  22. Jusserand, Wayfaring Life, p. 101.

  23. Johnes (ed.), Monstrelet, I, p. 30.

  24. Hutchinson, Medieval Ships, pp. 50-55.

  25. Hutchinson, Medieval Ships, p. 44.

  26. Hutchinson, Medieval Ships, pp. 60-61.

  27. For the sake of an integrated description of a ship I have conflated the archaeological evidence of the Bremen cog (built in 1380) with a brief description of a similar ship in Boston harbor in 1373. For the Bremen cog, see Hutchinson, Medieval Ships, pp. 16-19. For Richard Toty’s ship, see Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous, IV (1377-1388), p. 125.

  28. Hutchinson, Medieval Ships, p. 59.

  29. Coulton, Medieval Panorama, p. 325.

  30. Smith, Expeditions, pp. 23,26.

  31. The descriptions of personal hygiene on board a boat are taken from the late-fifteenth-century writings of Felix Faber, quoted at length in Duby (ed.), Private Life: Revelations, pp. 587-88.

  7. Where to Stay

  1. This is adapted from a contemporary dialogue book’s passages on staying at an inn. See Bradley (ed.), Dialogues, pp. 49-50.

  2. Woolgar, Great Household, p. 26; Chaucer, trans. Wright, Canterbury Tales, p. 149.

  3. Kingsford, “London Merchant’s House,” pp. 137-58.

  4. Eleven coconut cups survive from medieval England. See the Eton College example in Marks and Williamson (eds.), Gothic, item 190. As that entry makes clear, such items were very rare.

  5. Riley (ed.), Memorials, pp. 199-200. The assumption that Hugh le Bever was a taverner is based on his valuable drinking vessels and the fact that he had six casks of wine.

  6. Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous, IV (1377-1388), p. 128.

  7. Greene, Medieval Monasteries, p. 154. The license was granted in 1317.

  8. Harvey, Living and Dying, p. 131.

  9. Prescott, Medieval Hospital, pp. 137-38.

  10. The dozen here refers to Queenborough (started 1361), Farleigh Hungerford (1370), Nunney (1373), Shirburn (1377), Bolton (1378), Wressle (1380), Sheriff Hutton (1382), Wingfield (1385), Bodiam (1385), Lumley (1389), Brancepeth (1391), and Penrith (1397).

  11. The great hall at Ludlow Castle, dating from the end of the thirteenth century, is 60 feet by 30 feet; that of Caerphilly Castle, dating from 1326, is 70 feet by 35 feet. See Wood, Medieval House, pp. 62-66, for other examples.

  12. Emery, Dartington Hall, p. 15 3.

  13. Emery, Dartington Hall, p. 268, quoting TNA C 145/278 no. 37. Certain items not pertaining to the household have been omitted, e.g. the lord’s armor.

  14. Woolgar, Great Household, p. 12 (Arundel); information from English Heritage’s display panels at Okehampton Castle (earl of Devon). Note that the latter differs substantially from the figure computed on the basis of bread allowances for the earl’s household; it seems to be based on the livery roll.

  15. Given-Wilson, Royal Household, p. 11. This is based on the list published in Tout, Place of the Reign of Edward II p. 244-81.

  16. Society of Antiquaries of London, A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations pp. 3-4. This includes those under the authority of the controller of the household, sergeants-at-arms, esquires of the household, officers, and minstrels but does not include artificers such as builders and carpenters or serving men-at-arms. The list also seems to omit the steward, the chamberlain, and the treasurer, so is not complete.

  17. Woolgar, Great Household, p. 8.

  18. Given-Wilson, Royal Household, p. 278.

  19. Many pictures of beds from this time do not show curtains. Some do, however, such as the early fourteenth-century Tickhill Psalter. See Woolgar, Great Household, p. 77. Henry IV paid for curtain hooks for his bed at the end of the century See Mortimer, Fears, p. 128. The fourteenth-century French book, Wright (ed.), La Tour-Landry, p. 6, describes an emperor’s daughters sleeping in a bed with curtains.

  20. Bayard (ed.), Medieval Home Companion, p. 106.

  21. Furnivall (ed.), Babees Book, pp. 179-80.

  22. TNA DL 28/1/5 fol. 29r. The earliest entry for a close-stool in the Oxford English Dictionary is 1410.

  23. The description of the toilet here is taken from the early fifteenth-century account in Furnivall (ed.), Babees Book, pp. 179-80.

  24. In Chaucer’s “Reeve’s Tale,” the Miller’s wife leaves the room in order to answer a call of nature in the night.

  25. Dyer, Standards, p. 170, quoting P. D. A. Harvey (ed.), Mano
rial Records of Cuxham (Oxfordshire Record Society, 1976), pp. 153-59.

  8. What to Eat and Drink

  1. Dyer, Standards, p. 262.

  2. For the close relationship between harvest failure and petty crime see Hanawalt, “Economic Influences,” pp. 281-97; Platt, Medieval England, p. 110.

  3. At the peasants’ feast at North Curry (Somerset) in 1314 each man of the hundred should have received two white loaves, as much ale as he could drink, a mess of beef, bacon with mustard, another mess of chicken, cheese, and candles “to burn out while they sit and drink.” On Christmas Day 1347 at Hunstanton (Norfolk), Sir Hamon le Strange and his household consumed bread, two gallons of wine (12d), one big pig for the larder (4s), one small pig (6d), a swan (a gift from Lord Camoys), two hens (given as rent), and eight rabbits (two of which were a gift). See Fisher andjurica (eds.), Documents, pp. 406-408.

  4. Dyer, Standards, pp. 153-54 (Worcestershire and Norfolk), 159; Finberg, Tavistock Abbey, p. 98.

  5. Langland, Piers Plowman, passus VI (B Text), lines 280-95; Langland, trans. Tiller, Piers Plowman, p. 81.

  6. This recipe is a paraphrased version of “Hares in Padell” in Society of Antiquaries of London, A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations, p. 428. Although the publication of the volume as a whole relates to the royal household, not a peasant home, this section of recipes is not necessarily an exclusively royal one. It has been used here as indicative of the form of a contemporary recipe for hares. The peasant version would not include the spices.

  7. Dyer, Standards, p. 157.

  8. Riley (ed.), Memorials, p. 312.

  9. Smith, Expeditions, pp. 5-34, esp. p. 19.

  10. According to the OED, the term “vin clairet” originally denoted “white” or yellowish wine. No medieval accounts refer to Gascon wine as claret. A date of circa 1600 is given for it being associated with red wines from this region.

  11. Creighton, Epidemics, I, p. 50. This should be compared to 1,334 individual brewers of ale.

  12. TNA DL 28/1/9 fol. 21v (two turbots for 14s).

  13. TNA E 101/388/2 m. 1.

  14. Carp were purchased along with pike by Henry of Lancaster when in Venice in the 1390s. See Smith, Expeditions, p. 217. The Franklin in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales keeps pike and carp.

  15. Smith, Expeditions, p. 97. He paid five nobles and eleven scot (Prussian) for one fresh sturgeon and one porpoise. The same account notes that two porpoises were worth twelve scot. At twenty-four scot to the noble, the sum paid for the sturgeon therefore was about 5 1½ nobles, or 35s sterling.

  16. For these carving terms, see Furnivall(ed.), Babees Book, pp. 140-48, 265.

  17. TNAE 101/394/17m. 1.

  18. Harvey, Living and Dying, p. 69.

  19. Harvey, Living and Dying, pp. 40-41.

  20. Bradley (ed.), Dialogues, p. 48.

  21. Harvey, Living and Dying, p. 54.

  22. Coulton (ed.), Social Life, p. 405.

  9. Health and Hygiene

  1. Talbot, Medicine, plate III.

  2. Quoted in Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society, p. 82.

  3. Scott (ed.), Every One a Witness, p. 132, quotingjohn Mirfield, Breviarum Bartholomei.

  4. Scott (ed.), Every One a Witness, p. 132, quoting John Mirfield, Breviarum Bartholomei.

  5. Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society, p. 53.

  6. Talbot, Medicine, p. 132.

  7. Woolgar, Senses, pp. 118-19.

  8. See the case of William Wombe in Woolgar, Senses, p. 129.

  9. Coulton (ed.), Social Life, p. 45.

  10. Woolgar, Senses, p. 132; Vigarello, Concepts of Cleanliness, p. 17.

  11. Duby (ed.), Private Life: Revelations, p. 525 (Cluniacs); Harvey, Living and Dying, p. 134 (Benedictines).

  12. Salzman, Building, p. 276; Woolgar, Senses, p. 135.

  13. Furnivall (ed.), Babees Bool, pp. 182-83.

  14. This is based on the thirteenth-century French example of Montaillou. See Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou, p. 142.

  15. Talbot, Medicine, p. 112.

  16. Riley (ed.), Memorials, pp. 400—1.

  17. Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous, IV (1377-1388), p. 72.

  18. For his soap on crusade see Smith (ed.), Expeditions, pp. 63, 85, 164. His laundress, Isabel, was paid 6d for her hire of a washtub and board at Calais. Wylie, England under Henry IV, II, p. 51.

  19. Woolgar, Senses, pp. 133-34.

  20. Duby (ed.), Private Life: Revelations, p. 361.

  21. Roberts and Manchester, Archaeology of Disease, pp. 48-49, 53, 58.

  22. Coulton, Social Life, p. 507.

  23. Harvey, Living and Dying, p. 128. The comparative figure is based on later statistics, for those few years when there were both parish registers and monastic records.

  24. Quoted in Zeigler, The Black Death, p. 19.

  25. Hatcher, Plague, Population, p. 22; Gottfried, The Black Death, p. 64.

  26. The population of the United Kingdom at the time of the 1911 Census was 45,221,615. The proportion of those under the age of seventeen was about 40 percent. The official 1922 War Office report recorded total deaths, including civilian men, women and children, as 702,410 (1.55 percent of the total).

  27. Hatcher, Plague, Population, p. 59.

  28. This is taken from Agnolo di Tura’s famous description. He was from Siena, but the bells were banned in England too. His description of burying his own children is one with which many English people would have been able to sympathize.

  29. Creighton, Epidemics, I, p. 105.

  30. Ormrod, “Personal Religion,” p. 863.

  31. Hatcher, Plague, Population, p. 58.

  32. Evidence of pre-1492 endemic and venereal syphilis is rare and open to question. See Roberts and Manchester, Archaeology of Disease, p. 158.

  33. Shorter, Women’s Bodies, p. 98. The figure is drawn from sixteenth-century Aldgate, the nearest figures available in this study

  34. This figure is taken from the sixteenth-century figures in Wrigley and Schofield, Population History, p. 249.

  35. It is often said that the Black Prince died from dysentery; this is almost certainly incorrect. Dysentery kills within a matter of weeks, as with Henry V The Black Prince’s wasting disease, which struck him in his late thirties and carried on for several years, was probably similar to that suffered by his nephew, Henry IV See Mortimer, Fears, p. 435 n. 14.

  36. Creighton refers to the first recorded ergot case in Britain as 1762 (Creighton, Epidemics, p. 57). This is surprising given that rye was certainly eaten in rye bread and in maslin bread, especially in the early fourteenth century

  37. Dyer, Standards, p. 2 09.

  38. Mortimer, Perfect King, p. 332.

  39. Talbot, Medicine, pp. 173-76.

  40. Talbot, Medicine, pp. 129-30.

  41. Coulton (ed.), Social Life, pp. 506-507.

  42. Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society, p. 58.

  43. Berkeley Castle Archives: Select Roll 39.

  44. For the household ordinances of Edward II (1318) see Tout, Place of the Reign of Edward II, p. 251. Forthose of Edward III (1344-47), see Society of Antiquaries of London, A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations, p. 3.

  45. Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society, p. 135.

  10. The Law

  1. Summerson, “Structure of Law-Enforcement,” p. 314.

  2. Cam, Hundred Rolls, p. 186.

  3. Woolgar, Senses, p. 74.

  4. Pugh, Imprisonment, p. 194.

  5. Cam, Hundred Rolls, p. 71.

  6. Ruffhead (ed.), Statutes, I, pp. 190-91 (1 Edward III cap. vii), which orders an inquiry into gaolers forcing prisoners to appeal guiltless men.

  7. This typical example is from Pugh, Wiltshire Gaol Delivery, p. 96.

  8. Summerson, “Structure of Law-Enforcement,” p. 326.

  9. Cam, Hundred Rolls, p. 137.

  10. Cam, Hundred Rolls, pp. 70-71.

  11. McKisack, Fourteenth Century, p. 206. A very similar series of events is found in the thirteenth-cen
tury case of William de Lisle, sheriff of Berkshire and Oxfordshire. See Cam, Hundred Rolls, p. 63.

  12. Cam, Hundred Rolls, p. 135.

  13. Bennett, Life on the English Manor, p. 203.

  14. The Statute of Marlborough (1267) established that no freeholder was bound to attend his lord’s manorial court unless this was specifically required of him by his charter. Bennett, Life on the English Manor, p. 202.

  15. Bennett, Life on the English Manor, pp. 246-47.

  16. There is widespread confusion on this point. I have followed The Oxford Companion to Law, p. 616.

  17. Bennett, Life on the English Manor, pp. 197-98.

  18. Bennett, Life on the English Manor, p. 196. As Henry of Lancaster’s accounts show, when buying eggs in bulk, a dozen cost a penny. Even a retail price double this would mean sixteen eggs are less than 3d.

  19. Lister (ed.), Wakefield Court Rolls [1313], p. 14.

  20. Riley (ed.), Memorials, pp. 195-96.

  21. These ordinances are taken from Moore (ed.), Borough Ordinances of Cowbridge. This roll dates from 1610-11. It is based on an earlier set of ordinances, however, and forty-five of the fifty are in the same order as the ordinances of Kenfig, Glamorgan, written in 1330. It is highly likely that the Cowbridge ordinances therefore date from the fourteenth century. While Cowbridge and Kenfig are not in England today, in the fourteenth century they come within the lordship of Glamorgan, which was in English hands, and the template for these ordinances was the set for Hereford. Cucking stools are mentioned in OED from the first decade of the fourteenth century

  22. Smith (ed.), English Gilds, pp. 370-409. These ordinances were drawn up in the reign of Edward IV However, they are based on earlier sets of ordinances, as made clear from some statements within the document itself and by comparison with fourteenth-century ordinances from other towns. The wording has been considerably simplified.

  23. Scott (ed.), Every One a Witness, p. 227, quoting Calendar of the Coroner’s Rolls.

  24. PROME, October 1399, item 16.

  25. Hardy and Hardy (eds.), Waurin 1399-1422, p. 40.

  26. PROME, October 1399, Introduction.

  27. Jewell, English Local Administration, p. 141, quoting W C. Bolland, The Eyre of Kent.