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.


Friday 28 October 2022

Medieval Childhood and Youth


Recent decades have seen a considerable amount of research into the experience of childhood and youth in medieval and early modern societies. 

Drawing upon academic work of this sort History Extra has an article which provides a useful A-Z of aspects of life for the young in the middle ages. It corrects several modern misconceptions about life in the past and makes one see the nature of childhood and adolescence, however different it was from today, as nevertheless less unfamiliar than we might have thought.

The article can be viewed at Medieval childhood: a historical A-Z


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