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

by Ian Mortimer

  3. If the population of England was 2.5 million, and at least 170,000 lived in these thirty cities, and the two hundred other towns and cities have an average population of 650, the proportion is 12 percent. Other writers have suggested that as little as 5 percent of the population were urban dwellers in the fourteenth century (e.g., Platt, Medieval Town, p. 15, drawing on the work of Lawrence Stone) but these figures are based on the assumption that only 150,000 people lived in towns. About 190,000 people lived in just the largest forty (as listed by Hoskins). So the figure is much more likely to be nearer the one in seven (14.3 percent) in Dyer, Standards, p. 23, or even the one in five (20 percent) suggested in Dyer, Everyday Life, xv

  4. Riley (ed.), Memorials, p. 279.

  5. Riley (ed.), Memorials, p. 67. The other details in this paragraph are from the same source.

  6. Brown, Colvin and Taylor, History of the King’s Works, I, p. 534.

  7. Second only to Edward Ill’s work at Windsor Castle. See Brown, Colvin, and Taylor, History of the King’s Works, I, p. 157.

  8. This example dates from the thirteenth century. See Scott (ed.), Every One a Witness, p. 42.

  9. Henry III was importing fir boards from Norway in the previous century. See Wood, Medieval House, pp. 395-96.

  10. Details on the trees have been taken from Salzman, Building (mainly from chapter 16), Esmond and Jeanette Harris, Guinness Book of Trees, and Cantor, Medieval Landscape, p. 63. The reference to elm (which is otherwise not noted in these books) is due to the reference in Riley (ed.), Memorials to an elm too near the walls of London being cut down in the year 1314. Elms also apparently grew in the twelfth century at Smithfield (Morley Bartholomew Fair, p. 9) and, most famously, at Tyburn.

  11. Quoted in Coulton (ed.), Social Life, p. 2.

  12. Dyer, Standards, pp. 258-60.

  13. Hoskins, English Landscape, p. 118.

  14. Barnwell and Adams, House Within, p. 4.

  15. This figure has been extrapolated from (a) the area of the county as described in Lewis, Topographical Dictionary, and (b) a population figure derived from the poll tax returns of 1377 on the same basis as the figures for the towns. It presumes that 40 percent of the population was thirteen years of age or less, or clergy, or avoided the tax illegally or were destitute. It is not possible directly to compare these figures with modern ones, as the definition of a town is differently composed in the modern world (motor transport and the railways having changed the relationships of towns and rural areas). Surrey—which had a rural density of about 40 people per square mile in 1377—now has in excess of 2,000 for those areas that have not been swallowed by Greater London.

  It may be of interest that Norfolk, Suffolk, and Huntingdonshire (all of which remain largely rural) have between 381 and 442 people per square mile (according to the 2001 census); Rutland has 243 people per square mile, Dorset 389, Devon 273, and Cornwall 378. Cumberland and Westmorland, combined as Cumbria, have 218. The population density of modern counties is determined to a far greater extent by the towns and industries within them, rather than the nature and landscape of the county itself.

  2. The People

  1. See Hatcher, Plague, Population, pp. 13-14, 71. The poll tax of 1377, supposedly leveled on all the population over fourteen, with only the clergy and the naked poor excepted, shows 1,386,196 taxpayers. If one uses the same estimate used above—that this represents about 60 percent of the total population—then the total would be about 2.31 million. Earlier estimates are normally extrapolated from this, taking into consideration the level of plague-related mortality in 1348-49, 1361, and 1368. The population was continuously falling for a whole century, to the 1440s. See Hatcher, Plague, Population, p. 27.

  2. Dyer, Standards, p. 182.

  3. Hatcher, Plague, Population, especially p. 71. The age-related statistics here are estimates based on the sixteenth-century figures in Wrigley and Schofield, Population History, especially table A3.1 on p. 528. These statistics relate to a life expectancy at age twenty-five of about thirty-two more years, which is in excess of the estimates of between twenty and thirty years at age twenty in both Dyer, Standards, p. 182 and Harvey Living and Dying, p. 128 (both based on fifteenth-century data). Hence the slight revision downwards in average age from the figures in Wrigley and Schofield’s table A3.1. Modern figures have been taken from the website of the Office of National Statistics.

  4. Dyer, Standards, pp. 316-17. See also Roberts and Manchester, Archaeology of Disease, p. 57, which gives 171.8 cm (5 ft. 7 in.) for men.

  5. Greene, Medieval Monasteries, p. 161.

  6. Roberts and Manchester, Archaeology of Disease, p. 75.

  7. Coulton, Chaucer, p. 13.

  8. Cokayne, Complete Peerage, V p. 629.

  9. Very briefly there is also the rank of marquis. Robert de Vere was created marquis of Dublin in 1385, a title that he technically still held after being created duke of Ireland the following year and did not become extinct until his death in 1392. In addition, John Beaufort was created marquis of Dorset by Richard II in 1397; his brother Henry IV stripped him of the title on his return to England in 1399. It was then declared “un-English.”

  10. For Isabella, see Mortimer, Greatest Traitor, p. 171. For Gaunt, see Dyer, Standards, p. 36, where his income is given as £12,474; Goodman, John of Gaunt, p. 341 gives his income for the years ending at Michaelmas 1394 and 1395 as “about £10,000 net (£11,750 gross).”

  11. See Dyer, Standards, pp. 30-31 for incomes of the knightage and lesser gentry

  12. The number of parliamentary prelates varied greatly In 1307 fifty-four were summoned. In 1399 just twenty-six: the abbots of Peterborough, Glastonbury St. John’s Colchester, Bury St. Edmunds, Abingdon, St. Mary’s York, Waltham Holy Cross, Crowland, Bardney St. Benet Hulme, Malmesbury Reading, St. Albans, Selby Thorney Battle, Westminster, St. Augustine’s Canterbury, Cirencester, Evesham, St. Peter’s Gloucester, Ramsey, Hyde by Winchester, Winchcombe, and Shrewsbury. In addition, the prior of Coventry was regularly summoned. Note that all the prelates in Parliament are given precedence over the earls, even though dukes are given precedence over archbishops. See PROME, 1399 September, introduction.

  13. The medieval English dioceses are Bath and Wells, Canterbury, Chich-ester, Coventry and Lichfield, Ely, Exeter, Hereford, Lincoln, London, Norwich, Rochester, Salisbury, Winchester, and Worcester. The Welsh ones are Bangor, Llandaff, St. Asaph’s and St. David’s.

  14. Dyer, Standards, p. 36.

  15. This estimate is based on the large proportion with £50-£500 in Valor Ec-clesiasticus as noted in Knowles and Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses.

  16. Dyer, Standards, p. 119, quoting E. A. Kosminsky Studies in the Agrarian History of England in the Thirteenth Century (Oxford: 1956), pp. 216-23.

  17. Coulton, Medieval Panorama, p. 76.

  18. Finberg, Tavistock Abbey, p. 77.

  19. A 1279 lease of a whole manor to its chief tenants is printed in Fisher andjurica (eds.), Documents, pp. 102-103.

  20. Dyer, Standards, pp. 193-94.

  21. Quoted in Coulton (ed.), Social Life, p. 433.

  22. Quoted in Leyser, Medieval Women, p. 97.

  23. Leyser, Medieval Women, p. 114.

  24. There are a few exceptions to this. Edward I campaigning against the Scots in his sixties is perhaps the most obvious. Roger, Lord Mortimer of Chirk, took arms against Edward II in 1322, at the age of sixty-six. Sir Thomas Erpingham took part in the battle of Agincourt (1415) at the age of sixty Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, rebelled several times against Henry IV in his sixties, dying in battle at the age of sixty-six.

  3. The Medieval Character

  1. The story appears in Riley (ed.), Historia Anglicana, I, pp. 418-23. It is probably propaganda, as the outrage is terrible and yet the nunnery not mentioned. No nunnery of this size in the vicinity can be identified. Richard Barber in his ODNB article on Sir John Arundel points to some corroborating details though. Either way, Walsingham believed that these outra
ges took place. They are therefore indicative of the violence people believed was inherent in society

  2. Furnivall (ed.), Babees Book, p. 46.

  3. Bradley (ed.), Dialogues, p. 9.

  4. Coulton (ed.), Social Life, pp. 519-20.

  5. Hamilton, “Character of Edward II,” p. 8.

  6. Mortimer, Greatest Traitor, p. 214.

  7. Coulton (ed.), Social Life, p. 470.

  8. Woolgar, Great Household, p. 1.

  9. Few fourteenth-century churchwardens’ accounts survive. According to the list in the appendix to Hutton, Rise and Fall, pp. 263-93, the earliest are Bridgwater (1318), St. Michael, Bath (1349), St. James, Hedon (1350), Ripon (1354), St. John, Glastonbury (1366), St. Augustine, Hedon (1371), St. Nicholas, Hedon (1379), and Tavistock (1392). That these cover both the north of the country and the southwest (from Yorkshire to West Devon) is a good indication that the format was more widely known in the fourteenth century than the few extant accounts suggest.

  10. Kaeuper, “Two Early Lists of Literates.”

  11. For comparison, it has been estimated that the overall literacy level in England in 1500 was about 10 percent (Stephens, “Literacy,” p. 555). An urban literacy rate of 20 percent and a rural one of 5 percent would equate to 6 percent overall, based on the 12 percent of people living in urban areas mentioned in chapter 1. As the main force of the revolution in record keeping and education was a thirteenth-century development, this 6 percent figure seems commensurate with the estimate of 10 percent in 1500, prior to the significant developments in education and literacy of the sixteenth century

  12. Hingeston (ed.), Royal and Historical Letters, I, pp. 421-22.

  13. M ortimer, Perfect King, p. 360.

  14. Simek, Heaven and Earth, pp. 61, 86.

  15. “The spherical shape of the Earth was taken for granted and had been so since Aristotle. This fact had been an integral part of scholarly knowledge since the Carolingian renaissance of the eighth century … By the thirteenth century the spherical shape of the earth . . . had found its way not only into scholarly but also popular literature.” Simek, Heaven and Earth, p. 25.

  16. Simek, Heaven and Earth, pp. 88-89.

  17. Simek, Heaven and Earth, p. 83.

  18. Coulton (ed.), Social Life, p. 522.

  19. Quoted in Gimpel, Medieval Machine, p. 193.

  4. Basic Essentials

  1. Ruffhead (ed.), Statutes, I, p. 311.

  2. This is adapted from R. L. Poole, quoted in Cheney, Handbook of Dates, p. 3.

  3. Chaucer wrote a treatise on the astrolabe for his son. Henry IV’s accounts refer to repairs to his astrolabes when he was earl of Derby. See Mortimer, Fears, p. 154.

  4. Smith (ed.), English Gilds, pp. 370-409. This is certainly the case in the fifteenth century; at what date it commences is unclear; these ordinances predate Edward IV’s reign but the terminology may be contemporary

  5. Dilley “Customary Acre.”

  6. Finberg, Tavistock Abbey, p. lln.

  7. Hindle, Medieval Roads, p. 31.

  8. The statistics in this paragraph are from Finberg, Tavistock Abbey, pp. 30-31.

  9. Aspects of repute, manners and politeness have largely been taken from Furnivall (ed.), Babees Book, especially “The Babees Book,” “Stans Puer ad Mansam” and John Russel’s “Boke of Nurture.” The notes on female behavior are largely from “How the Good Wijf Taughte Hir Doughtir” in the same volume.

  10. Wylie states Jean de Hangest, lord de Hugueville, shook hands with Henry IV after his audience with him at Windsor in 1400 (Wylie, England under Henry IV, TV, p. 263). Le Roy Ladurie refers to the unusu-alness of handshaking among thirteenth-century French people in Montaillou, p. 140.

  11. Bradley (ed.), Dialogues, pp. 4-5.

  12. Fisher and Jurica (eds), Documents, pp. 237-38.

  13. Coulton, Medieval Panorama, p. 302.

  14. I have followed The Cambridge Urban History of Britain in using the spelling “guild merchant” as opposed to the more usual “gild merchant.” As is well known, some of the most important cities never had a guild merchant (London and Norwich are the most frequently cited examples). However, as the subject is complicated, and to describe the relationships between guilds, guild merchants, and the administration of incorporated towns would take more space than can be warranted here, the description of town administration has been kept simple.

  15. See Bolton, Economy, chapter 4, “The Growth of the Market.”

  16. These are all from fourteenth-century cases noted in Riley (ed.), Memorials.

  17. M ortimer, Perfect King, p. 210.

  18. Bradley (ed.), Dialogues, pp. 15-16.

  19. Rowe and Draisey (eds.), Receivers’Accounts, p. 7.

  20. Dyer, Standards, p. 210.

  21. For the carpenter and laborer, working on the estate of the bishop of Winchester (eight manors, average), see Bolton, Economy, p. 71; for the thatcher and his mate see Dyer, Standards, p. 215; for the royal masons see Salzman, Building, pp. 70-77.

  22. Erskine (ed.), Fabric, pp. 182-83; Salzman, Building, p. 72 (tilers).

  23. Salzman, Building, p. 74.

  24. Woolgar, Great Household, pp. 31-32.

  25. This applies to building work too. See Salzman, Building, p. 71.

  5. What to Wear

  1. Riley (ed.), Memorials, p. 20.

  2. PROME, 1363 October, nos 25-32; Ruffhead (ed.), Statutes, I, pp. 315-16.

  3. TNA E 101/386/9 m. 12.

  4. TNAE 101/386/18 m. 59.

  5. TNAE 101/385/4 m. 28; E 101/386/18 m. 59.

  6. Newton, Fashion, p. 4.

  7. By 1334 buttons were being used on royal garments, as shown by TNA E 101/386/18 m. 58: “fifty-six pearls delivered to the prince’s tailor to make buttons for the prince’s surcote” (March, 30 1334).

  8. The change in design seems to draw its inspiration from the aketon, a quilted jacket which usually fits between the shirt and the chain mail covering the chest. Because the aketon has to fit the body closely (as looseness will result in rips), the sleeves cannot be cut from the same fabric as the rest of the garment. So they have to be cut separately and sewn onto the quilted body of the aketon (which is laced up the back). From about 1330 the narrow-sleeve principles on which aketons are made are applied to items for civilian dress. When Edward III ordered aketons for those who helped capture Roger Mortimer in 1330, he gave them also to two noncombatants, a physician and a clergyman (Shen-ton, ‘Coup of 1330’, pp. 23-24). Therefore the aketon by this time had a nonjousting purpose. In February 1333 Edward ordered payment of an account with his armorer, John de Cologne, which mentions “an aketon of purple velvet embroidered with a rose of pearls” and “two aketons covered in vermilion velvet and embroidered with images of parrots and other decorations” (TNA E 101/386/9). Obviously, these were meant to be seen. With regard to the purple aketon, if it served a practical function rather than a ceremonial one, it would not have been encrusted with pearls. We know that as early as 1327 Edward’s own practical tourneying aketons did have gold embroidery, and so they did have a high level of decoration (like the Black Prince’s extant jupon or aketon at Canterbury Cathedral). Nevertheless, the evidence that aketons were given as personal gifts to men who would never be expected to joust (let alone fight), coupled with the fact that they also might be bedizened with pearls, shows that quilted jackets were being used for noncombative purposes by 1333, and moreover they were made by a linen armorer, a member of the Guild of Tailors and Armourers to whom Edward granted a charter in 1327 (Davies and Saun-ders, Merchant Taylors’ Company, pp. 13, 50). This suggests that tailored garments were being made for civilians at exactly the right time to be the impetus for the new fashion. This is supported by contemporary references to aketons being “open over the chest” (Newton, Fashion, p. 15). The transition was complete by 1338, for the roll of liveries of cloth and furs made by the clerk of the great wardrobe during the year September 1337-September 1338 records “fourteen ells of green taffeta and
1 Vi lbs of cotton in order to stuff and line a short robe made of mixed red cloth of Cologne, spattered with black dye, as well as silver, gilded, enamelled buttons, to be fashioned in the style of a doublet for the king’s person .. . fourteen ells of red taffeta and 1 Vi lbs of cotton to line and stuff an identical garment of mixed red fustian and black spattering, which was to have similar buttons and was to be fashioned as a doublet in the same way” (TNA E 101/388/8). Having said all this, it is just possible that the credit for the new style should in fact be ascribed to Edward II, for the king’s tailor Henry of Cambridge was paid in 1327 for “eight cotehardie tunics at 14d each”: this predates the earliest previously noted appearance of the front-buttoned cotehardie by six years (Cunnington and Beard, Dictionary, p. 54).

  9. Brie (ed.), Brut, II, pp. 296-97.

  10. Courtpieces do date from much earlier than this, though they seem to be rare before the late fourteenth century The earliest example I have come across is the “curtepye” given by the king to the queen in 1334-35. This was made of brown scarlet “oneree des gargulottes dor de les elees de soie de diverses coloures” (TNA E 101/386/18 m. 59). Although this is clearly a female garment, and presumably was worn over a tunic (to cover the legs), it was adopted by men by 1344. The royal accounts for 1342-44 mention courtpieces for eleven earls and knights to go hunting with the king (TNA E 101/390/2 m. 1).

  11. Harvey, Living and Dying, p. 132.