He died with his boots on

I came upon an online post from X which linked to an article from Archaeo - Histories. The subject matter is about a skeleton discovered during the excavation of the Thames Tideway Tunnel. It probably dates from the late fifteenth century and is that of a man, probably in his early thirties, who met with what appears to have been an accidental death on the Thames foreshore. 

The remarkable thing is that significant portions of the long leather boots the man was wearing have survived in the mud. 

Modern anatomical archaeology reveals much about the man, his health, and his life. Further research in his remains should reveal where he grew up and other aspects of his life. It is not clear if he was a mariner or a landlubber, but his seemingly hard life is still revealed to a surprising extent, and that enriches our knowledge of life at the time. 

The post can be seen at Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories)

 

The Thames below the Tower of London in the sixteenth century.

This was the probable area in which the man spent much of his life. A nineteenth century engraving based on Antony van de Wyngaerde’s drawing of London in the 1540s

Image: Wikisource

The changing coastline at Cromer

A regular reader of this blog recently, and very kindly, sent me the link to an article in the Daily Mail about a significant underwater archaeological survey at Cromer on the north Norfolk coast. 

Cromer from the present beach

Image: The Guardian

Cromer today sits on low cliffs above the beach with Georgian houses clustered around its fine late medieval parish church, together with Edwardian features such as an elegant pier from its time as a genteel resort.

However, as  the article explains, the coastline has retreated significantly in historic time, and the underwater survey has revealed remains of what was once the northern extension of the town. This was Shipden which was clearly flourishing in the time of the Domesday Survey but which gradually declined in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. A major storm in January 1362 may have hastened its disappearance, although in 1390 there seem to have been moves to stabilise the coast.

The eastern coast of England from Flamborough Head to the Solent has witnessed significant coastal erosion over the centuries, and it is a continuous process. News reports quite frequently cover this, notably these days at the north-eastern tip of Norfolk. 

Soft clays and winter tidal surges have eroded the coastline, but also created new features such as Sunk Island on the north shore of the Humber, Orford Ness and Dungeness. Islands which appear to have still existed off the Lincolnshire coast in the early thirteenth century were subsequently washed away, but the Isle of Thanet has become physically attached to Kent. 

  

Numerous Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk villages have been lost to the sea, most notably Dunwich, and half of Aldeburgh, in Suffolk.

I think that at Dunwich similar surveys have picked up street patterns and church sites.

The article about the investigation can be read at Diver explores lost British town under sea that vanished 700 years ago

The work is also reported upon I find by Heritage Daily   at Divers investigate submerged medieval town lost beneath the North Sea

The St Etheldreda panels

The other day I attended online a lunchtime lecture at the Society of Antiquaries about the recent work to stabilise the St Etheldreda panels which are amongst the Society’s treasures.    

 

    

The St Etheldreda Panels 

Image: Instagram

Painted about 1455 for the shrine of St Etheldreda in Ely Cathedral the two panels are a virtually unique survival of such works from before the waves of iconoclasm of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

These panels survived because someone in Ely used them as cupboard doors until an antiquarian discovered them in the late eighteenth century. He acquired them and eventually bequeathed them to the Society of Antiquaries in the early nineteenth century. 

Since then they have had several restorations. This latest project was designed to make them secure to travel to display in Norwich in an exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre. The work did not involve a full cleaning and restoration, but as the speakers explain in the presentation, the panels are now in a fit state for that if it is decided upon at a future date.

The set of talks about the paintings and the project can be viewed online at https://www.youtube.com/live/4e0draY5JDk?si=ZNpF3CImknPsMVFm

King Henry V 640

The current consensus amongst historians of the period is that the future King Henry V was born at 11.22 on the morning of September 16th 1386 at Monmouth Castle. This, therefore, is the 640th anniversary of a birth that was to be far more momentous than his parents could have realised at the time. 

King Henry V

Image:Wikimedia

His father, Henry Earl of Derby, was nineteen and the son and heir of John, Duke of Lancaster, the eldest surviving son of King Edward III. The baby’s mother, Mary, was sixteen or seventeen, and the co-heiress of the last de Bohun Earl of Hereford, Essex and Northampton.

The newborn was thus part of the extended family of King Edward III, and potentially in the line of succession if King Richard II and Queen Anne were to be childless - as indeed they were to be. King Richard occasionally hinted or indicated who his successor in such an eventuality might be but never formally. Amongst the most likely candidates was Duke John, were he to return from Iberia, and then his son Henry, now with an heir, but nothing was formalised. Nevertheless his prospective wealth as Duke of Lancaster together with the de Bohun inheritance and his Plantagenet blood meant that the new baby was destined, if he survived infancy and childhood, for a place in the elite, at the very centre of national life.

Henry and Mary were a well educated, devout couple who enjoyed music and books. Henry was also becoming an established jouster and on the verge of becoming an active political figure safeguarding his family interests in the increasingly fraught circumstances of his cousin King Richard II’s rule whilst his father Duke John was embarking on an attempt to win the throne of Castile and Leon for himself and Henry’s stepmother.

 

Tradition claims that the baby Henry was born in a room over the gatehouse of the castle at Monmouth. I am a little skeptical about this, as it seems an unlikely place for a confinement - which took a long time in the medieval age for a woman of noble status - and that surviving rooms in ruins with historic associations to births and deaths are often later attributions.

The baby was probably baptised in the nearby parish church on the day of his birth or very soon after.

Monmouth as shown by John Speed in 1611

The castle and parish church are centre right, the famous bridge gate over the Monnow at the left

Image: etsy.com

Henry and Mary were an uxorious couple and young Henry was to be followed by three more sons and two daughters before Mary died in childbirth in 1394 aged twenty four. Her widower, despite fathering one illegitimate son, did not remarry until 1403.

Henry of Derby was an absent father for a number of years, attending the Saint-Ingelvert jousts on the border south of Calais and then being on crusade with the Teutonic Knights in 1390, and again in 1392 before crossing central Europe to Venice and going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and returning in 1393. When he arrived at Peterborough Derby had a variety of souvenirs from his travels to show his family, including an ostrich and a hunting cheetah given to him by the King of Cyprus. His own father Duke John was also absent in 1394-5 in Gascony.

The baby probably spent his earliest years with his mother at the home at which she and Derby based themselves at Peterborough. Early in life he was assigned a nurse, Joan Waring, to whom he gave an annuity of £20 for life in 1415. 

 

As he grew he spent time with his formidable maternal grandmother, who lived on to 1419, at her residence of Castle Bytham, of which only substantial earthworks remain, in south-west Lincolnshire. Here he may have had a governess called Mary Hervy.

 

Castle Bytham

Image: picturesofengland.com

There is an account of the castle and its water defences, which misnames the Countess, at Bytham Castle | History & Visiting Information

He also stayed with his paternal grandfather, following his return from Spain in 1389, at Lancastrian castles such as Leicester and Kenilworth. The latter was to become a favourite residence of the future King, where recuperated after his injury at Shrewsbury, and where he was to create a private retreat at the further end of the lake.

A reconstruction of Kenilworth Castle circa 1420

The private retreat built by Kung Henry V can be seen at the top of the image 

Image: English Heritage 

The precise time of the birth was doubtless recorded so that horoscopes could be cast, but if they were one wonders if they predicted the future as it turned out with young Henry becoming Prince of Wales and heir to the throne in 1399, facing the rising of Owain Glyndŵr which, significantly started on Henry’s birthday in 1400, miraculously surviving the battle of Shrewsbury, succeeding his father as monarch, leading and winning the Agincourt campaign, invading France again two years later, conquering Normandy, negotiating the Treaty of Troyes in 1420 and being recognised as Regent and Heir of France, or that he would die just short of his thirty sixth birthday.

King Henry V

Image: Wikipedia 

Investigating Archbishop Hubert Walter’s vestments

Research into medieval silk items from English sources has includes an examination of the remaining material from the dalmatic which formed a part of the vestments in which the body of Archbishop Hubert Walter was apparelled for his burial at Canterbury Cathedral in 1205. The items were discovered when his tomb was opened in 1890.

The investigation is reported upon in a recent account on the medievalists.net website. It can be accessed at Gold Found in Medieval Archbishop’s Silk Garment at Canterbury Cathedral

In 2019 the fabric used in the dalmatic was copied to make the fabric for twelve new copes for use in the cathedral.

There is more about the other vestments from the grave from the Textile Research Centre at Leiden at Vestments of Hubert Walter (1205)

The mitre and episcopal slippers found in the tomb of Archbishop Hubert Walter. The silk uppers of the slippers are decorated with garnets and have amber silk soles.

Image: text-leiden.nl

 

One of the Archbishop’s buskins

Image: Church Times

The mitre from the tomb

Image:praytellblog.com

In addition his crosier and chalice and paten were also in the tomb, and an be seen on display in the cathedral.

The paten from the Archbishop’s tomb

Image: Wikipedia 

Wikipedia has a biography which appears to be cognisant of the latest scholarly opinion of this highly accomplished and influential administrator at Hubert Walter

I was surprised when reading it to discover that Hubert Walter, whom I had always envisioned as an elder statesman, was apparently only about forty five when he died.

 

The tomb of Archbishop Hubert Walter in Canterbury Cathedral

Image:x.com

Medieval external paintings on a German church

Medievalists.net has an interesting report on a conservation project at the Friedenskirke, formerly St Nicholas, in Frankfurt on Oder, which is now on the border with Poland.

The work looked at a series of external paintings on what was the eastern gable of the nave and dating to the early fourteenth century, but which were covered up by the taller choir constructed about 1370. Protected by the newer roof they have survived when other similar works elsewhere have been lost. Where there are similar survivals it is hoped that the information gleaned at Frankfurt on Oder can inform similar conservation efforts.

The Friedenkirke-St Nicholas

The higher roof of the choir is clearly visible

Image:HörMat Frankfurt!

  

The illustrated article can be accessed at Lost Medieval Paintings Recreated After 650 Years - Medievalists.net

The church has had a very eventful history and today is externally very much a reconstruction from the Wilhelmine era.

 

There are short, illustrated, accounts at Stadtmarketing Frankfurt (Oder), at Friedenskirche Frankfurt (Frankfurt (Oder)), at Friedenskirche Frankfurt (Frankfurt (Oder))  and at Friedenskirche, Frankfurt (Oder) - Europäische Route der Backsteingotik

Wikipedia has an account, in German, at Friedenskirche (Church of Peace), formerly St. Nicolas Church/Reformed Church Friedenskirche (Frankfurt (Oder))

Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Today is the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. In the Catholic tradition this absorbed the other feast, that of the Invention of the Holy Cross - Invention meaning discovery - which was celebrated on May 3rd infer Pope John XXIII. In the East these two observances are supplemented by a number of other feasts and customs, as is well set out in the Wikipedia article Feast of the Cross

There is a shorter introduction at What Is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross?

 

I wrote in 2015 about the feast and linked to some late medieval English depictions in stained glass of the story of the True Cross. Photographed by the late Gordon Plumb these windows at Tattershall and Ashton-under-Lyne are wonderful survivals from the last years of the fifteenth and early years of the sixteenth centuries. That article can be seen at The Exaltation of the Holy Cross

In 2019 the New Liturgical Movement had a good account of the late fourteenth century frescoes dated to 1385-7 by Agnolo Gaddi on the legend of the True Cross on the side walls of the sanctuary of the great Franciscan church of Santa Croce in Florence. This can be accessed at The Legend of the True Cross, by Agnolo Gaddi

 

The sanctuary of Santa Croce 

The Gaddi frescoes are on the flanking north and south walls*

Image: Wikipedia 

*pity about the forward altar

As the author points out these were in part a source and inspiration for the more famous, if sadly damaged, series from 1447-66 by Piero della Francesca for the Franciscan church in Arezzo. These are technically superior to those by Gaddi. I posted about the Arezzo frescoes in The Legend of the True Cross

Santa Croce is one of the great churches of late medieval and Renaissance Florence and Wikipedia has a good account at Santa Croce, Florence

On a more parochial and domestic level Fr William Rock recently had an article on the FSSP website about the traditional forms of blessings for crucifixes in the home and those set up in churchyards or precincts. This can be read at Blessings of Crosses and Crucifixes 

Hail Holy Cross, our help and our hope!

Binnenhof renovation reveals sixteenth century roof pre-fabrication

An insight into construction techniques from the later medieval era has been gained from restoration work at the Binnenhof in The Hague.

The ongoing restoration of the historic complex which houses the Dutch parliament and government offices included the spire over the Torentje - or Little Tower - which was rebuilt by the Emperor Charles V in 1547 with the addition of the spire. The tower now houses the office of the Prime Minister.

When the timbers of the roof were examined Roman numerals were found cut into the timber, indicating the structure had been built elsewhere, the parts numbered, then dismantled and taken to the new tower and reassembled.

The Torentje

Image:tripadvisor.co.uk

The website of Dutch News has an account of the discovery with further details at Roof of PM’s office is original 16th-century flat-plack

The fact that this timber roof was created in this ways leads one to wonder how frequently this method was employed for timber framed church spires or for church and hall roofs in the medieval period.