Rural fraud on the Isle of Wight in the 1260s

The third of these articles about farming life  from Medievalists.net looks at the potential for fraud by a farm manager as described by Robert Carpenter in his formulary written in the 1260s.

Like all fraud these schemes require a degree of planning and on occasion co-conspirators. It is not clear if these are examples the author has come across or whether he is admitting to having committed them himself. Their relatively small scale and necessarily ‘hands-on’ nature are a reminder that this was a world where much of life was inevitably local, and low cunning could thereby make a return for its practioner. After all the sheep cannot testify in the manor court…

The article can be read at The secrets of defrauding your medieval lord

 

Farm life near Durham in the later middle ages

The second piece on the Medievalists.net website about gaming life is taken from a 2010 paper by Prof. Richard Britnell which draws on the accounts in the period 1370-1409 of a farm called Houghall just outside Durham. This was not a manor but appears to have been a stock breeding centre owned by the cathedral priory, and one that depended upon hired labour. Their names are often recorded and the fluctuations in employment on short contracts and the flexibility of the labour market p afford a more close-up glimpse of rural life at the time.

The article can be seen at Employment on a Northern English Farm, 1370-1409

 

How to be a Good Shepherd in the middle ages

Medievalists.net has had three recent posts about aspects of medieval farming practice which give insights into the life of the past yet who offer scenes that are still familiar.

The first is a guide to being a good shepherd dictated by Jean de Brie, who came from the area around Paris, in 1379 and had spent his working career herding livestock.

The article, with quotations from the original text, can be seen at How to be a Shepherd in the Middle Ages

The grave of Cerdic

 

The Mail Online reports about the apparent identification near Andover of the burial mound of Cerdic, the founder of the royal house of Wessex and a key ancestor of the Royal Family. 

The identification was made by a researcher who walked the boundaries of an estate as recorded in 900 at the very beginning of the tenth century and which named the mound as being Cerdic’s barrow. 

Assuming the tenth century memory of the fifth century event was accurate - and it seems reasonable to believe that it would have been, then this is an important addition to our knowledge of the formation of Wessex around an initial territory in 495 or thereabouts, although some modern interpretations put it a generation or so later.

 

Little is recorded about Cerdic but one thing that is of great interest, and that is his name. The founder of the West Saxon Kingdom, of Wessex, did not have a Germanic name, but a British one. The suggestion is that he was from one of the post-Roman British ruling families who recruited some Saxon followers and created his own principality centred on Southampton Water and its hinterland. The people who made Wessex may have been not so much the West Saxons as the Gewissae, meaning confederates. Furthermore for the succeeding generations of Cerdic’s descendants until the late seventh century and the accession of King Ine in 688 regnal names began with a C rather than the Æ which dominated thereafter until 1066.

This would tie in with increasing archaeological evidence for co-existence between Britons and Germanic groups in this period as well as literary references.

The Daily Mail article can be seen at Burial site of first King of Wessex is in Hampshire field, author says

There is also a video on YouTube about the identification of the site at The First King of WESSEX - We Found him!!

The book about Cerdic and the identification of his barrow is being published just now.

Treasures from the household of Queen Henrietta Maria

By chance I came upon a Mail Online article from 2016 about a significant discovery made by divers off the Dutch island of Texel in 2014. These were, it appears, items from a vessel in the fleet of twelve which had taken Queen Henrietta Maria and part of her household to the United Provinces in 1642 on a visit to sell jewels to fund the Royalist cause in the impending Civil War. The vessel was wrecked but mud into which it sank preserved in excellent condition many of the ship’s contents.

Amongst the items which have been preserved  in the mud are a court dress thought to have belonged to Jane, Countess of Roxburghe, an embroidered walket, the binding of a Bible with the Royal Arms and a piece of plate with a figurine. 

The well illustrated article can be seen at Rags found in the sea belonged to a member of Charles I's household

Healthy exercise in the middle ages

I would not, could not, claim to be a practioner of ‘keep fit’ exercises, and my friends could also testify to that fact, but by chance I came upon an interesting video online about how medieval men, especially those from a military background, trained and kept fit over and beyond the normal activities of daily life such as riding and hunting. 

The video can be watched at How did Knights & Men Work Out in the Renaissance? Newly Discovered Dumbbell & Barbell Exercises

Marshal Boucicaut’s displays of athleticism in armour are recreated with splendid vigour in the video Can You Move in Armour?

Those extra helpings at gargantuan, and misunderstood, medieval feasts could pile on the pounds and inches, with the result that one’s suit of armour didn’t fit, especially in the era of plate armour - and were there to be trouble of a kind only too frequent in the period, the ensuing problem could indeed be a matter of life and death ….

Keep slim and keep your armour on could be the meme of the elite.

King Edward II

 

Writing about the origins of Oriel yesterday put me in mind of the fact that today is the 740th anniversary of his birth in the temporary royal accommodation at Caernarvon in 1284.

The fourth son of King Edward I and Queen Eleanor he was the only one to reach adulthood - his elder brothers John, Henry, and Alphonso all died as children, Alphonso when Edward was only four months old. The forty eight year difference in their ages may have contributed to the not always harmonious relationship he had with his father.

King Edward II

Tomb effigy in Gloucester Cathedral

Image: Flickr

The tomb at Gloucester has parallels with the effigies at St Denis of his in-laws and in the tomb design with that of Pope John XXII at Avignon. He and his family and his Court were part of a complex European cultural and political network. 

The effigy at Gloucester is striking as a portrait despite the damage and disrespect of intervening centuries. The King’s appearance is discussed at Appearance of Edward II

For well over a century his reign has attracted the scholarly attention of academic historians, from Stubbs to Tout and his circle, to Clarke and McKisack, Maddicott and Fryde, and Haines to mention but a few. If one wants to examine the reign it is well chronicled by contemporary writers and clerks, and analysed as are few others by modern historians.

It was a reign that began with tension and uncertainty, and quickly had unstable violent politics, rebellion, catastrophic defeat in Scotland, the famine of 1315-17, further rebellion and vigorous retribution, an oppressive policy towards anyone perceived as an opponent, war in Gascony and finally the collapse of the King’s marriage and position as he was dethroned by his wife. That troubled marriage was, of course, by processes unforeseen at the time it was contracted to lead to the Hundred Years’ War evolving out of border disputes into full blown war over the French throne. The actual contract and its chance survival is discussed at The marriage contract of Edward II, 1303

Yet for all this there was still an artistic flowering in the reign such as Bishop Stapledon’s rebuilding of Exeter cathedral and the central tower of Lincoln cathedral, and not to forget individual resiliance - the canons of Lincoln cathedral putting on plays to cheer themselves up in adverse times.

The King’s responsibility for this chaotic situation is not inconsiderable, yet the questions remain. Was it because he was weak, dependent on favourites, a man who invited the contempt of his nobles? Or was it that he had inherited a system at stretch from his assertive father who had already antagonised many of the leading men and who were waiting for an untried and uncertain ruler?  Or again was the King simply trying to pursue his father’s methods when times had changed, and he failed to accept that, seeking to maintain the rights he had inherited?

Equally was his Queen Isabella wronged by her marriage, a victim who eventually fought back, or was she always the ‘She Wolf of France’ biding her time, brooding on her humiliation as wife, mother, Queen and daughter of France? Indeed was the marriage always unhappy - the surviving evidence is mixed?

Today his reign continues to attract scholarly debate - most recently the argument that he was not murdered in 1327 but escaped, lived under Church protection and met up with his son King Edward III and his young family a decade after his deposition. This argument advanced by Ian Mortimer is impressive but almost seven centuries of belief in a violent death are hard to overcome. It is a question on which I remain something of an agnostic or a ‘don’t know’.

I do however know I owe him a debt of gratitude for founding Oriel - even if it is the one enduring success of his troubled reign and life.

Anticipating Oriel

In January 2026 Oriel - my college - will celebrate its 700th anniversary, the fifth oldest college in Oxford and the oldest continuous royal foundation in either Oxford or Cambridge.

However in order to be founded in 1326 there had to be some preparation and that began just seven centuries ago. In April 1324 - different secondary sources I consulted today give the 20th, 24th, and the 28th, and the text of the Patent Rolls was not available - King Edward II granted a licence to acquire property in mortmain to Adam de Brome, a Suffolk born Chancery clerk and inter alia rector of St Mary’s in the High to found a college in Oxford. Adam was essentially what today would be termed a civil servant, and who had been in royal service since at least 1297. In recent years he appears to have been based in Oxford and intended to found a small college for higher studies. His inspiration may well have been Merton, whose statutes he simply copied for his ultimate creation. 

With his licence he proceeded to bu the quite recently built Tackley’s Inn on the High, and which still houses Oriel students, Perilous Hall on Horsemonger Street, now Broad Street, but then, in part, the town ditch, and as a source of income the advowson of the church at Aberford in the West Riding - which is still an Oriel living.

His college consisted of a Rector ( like Exeter founded in 1314 ) and ten Fellows. With the new house of studies established and under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin, after some twenty or so months, on January 1st 1325-6 Adam transferred his college to King Edward who three weeks later refounded it in his own name, gave the advowson of St Mary’s and its rectory which became St Mary Hall, and appointed Adam de Brome as the new head of house as first Provost. So began the House of Blessed Mary the Virgin in Oxford. Not until 1329 did the King’s cousin Master James of Spain, give to the new college the house called the Oriel, by which name the foundation came to be known. That, however, is another story.

So as Oriel begins in earnest its plans to celebrate seven centuries of study and learning, one can recall those first beginnings just as King Edward’s governance began to disintegrate, and say with heart and voice “Floreat Oriel”