Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Tuesday 26 January 2021

Life and Death in Medieval Cambridge


Thanks to a post on the Medieval Religion discussion group I was directed to two articles in The Guardian about both life and death in Cambridge in the medieval period.

The first deals with an analysis of burials in three locations Friar crushed by cart: bone analysis hints at causes of medieval deaths

As the original poster of the link points out Coroners records for medieval England are a rich documentary source for stories of both life and death.

The second article, from last year, is superficially influenced by the paper’s contemporary stance, but once you get past that to the Hundred Rolls of 1279 - and who wouldn’t want to do that - it offers a view of the urban patriarchate of the town and their attitudes to property and their neighbours in the first seventy years of the existence. It can be read at How compassionate capitalism flourished in medieval Cambridge


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