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.


Thursday 21 October 2021

Winter in the later Middle Ages


As autumnal conditions  becomes increasingly dominant inevitably our thoughts turn towards the approach of winter and what it may bring, and to how we will keep warm and secure. The website Medievalists.net recently had an interesting article about life during the winter in the later Middle Ages. 

This draws attention to the effects caused by the so called “Little Ice age”, which were less those of appreciably colder temperatures in general but rather, as with the current pattern of global warming, sudden and extreme manifestations of fluctuations in the weather, be it snow or flood, freezing or drought.

The article can be read at A Medieval Peasants’ Winter


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