Sunday 26 October 2014

Edward The Great?


Edward III
The medieval era produced some of the most charismatic kings and courtiers, that make our modern-day politicians look bland and boring in comparison.  But few could compare with Edward III, the victor of the sea battles of Sluys and Winchelsea and the great battle of Crécy, the only king since Alfred who came close to earning the epithet 'the Great'. 

Edward was born to two other great characters, King Edward II and his wife Queen Isabella of France, sister to Charles IV King of France.  He found himself caught between them when they fell out, with catastrophic consequences for Edward II.  He was powerless to do anything to prevent his mother allying herself with the exiled Roger Mortimer and invading England together and deposing his father.  He was used as a pawn in their plans, his mother selling his hand in marriage to Hainault in exchange for soldiers to aid in her fight against her husband.

Edward refused the crown when it was first offered to him.  His father was imprisoned at Kenilworth Castle having been deposed by parliament on January 13th 1327, and when the same parliament called for the king to be removed and replaced by young Edward with the cry of "Let it be done!", he refused their plea to replace him.  Even at the tender age of fourteen and a handful of weeks, Edward was showing he was astute and intelligent.  It was not until after his father had abdicated the throne on 21st January that Edward acceded to the will of parliament, but primarily to the will of his father, and allowed himself to be proclaimed king.

This little scene shows what potential Edward had even in his early teens.  He was under the rule of Mortimer but he did not meekly submit to the older man.  He used his intelligence to out-flank him where he could, most notably in the use of a secret code to alert the pope that letters carrying his seal were his words and not Mortimer's - he wrote Pater Sancte at the end.  I think it likely that he used the same ruse to others but these simply do not survive as papal archives do.

A survey of the tunnels under Nottingham Castle
Trent and Peak Archaeology / University of Nottingham
In 1330 Edward deposed Mortimer in a manner that was so very Edward in nature and summed up everything that he was and would be.  At Nottingham castle in November 1330 Roger Mortimer had threatened Edward's household and spurred the young king into action.  He had already had to stand back and watch as Mortimer had destroyed his father and his uncle, Edmund, the Earl of Kent, but now he was older and with a wife and baby son to protect, the time had come to fight back.  His closest companions, led by William Montagu his dearest friend, crept into the castle by night using secret passages under the castle walls and surprised Mortimer, taking him captive while Edward's mother pleaded for his life.  Mortimer was taken from the castle that night and then to the Tower of London where he was walled into a room until his trial and execution.

Edward adored such secret plans, made good use of them through the heyday of his reign, as well as using such wiles to thoroughly enjoy himself.  In April 1331 Edward made an incognito and rather hasty, trip to France dressed as a pilgrim with only around fifteen others, a small retinue for a medieval king. He fought at the tournament at Dunstable in 1334 disguised at 'Sir Lionel', not after the Arthurian knight of dubious reputation, but because his mother and Mortimer nick-named him Leonell, Little Lion, at a tournament in 1329.  In December 1349 Edward and his son, Edward of Woodstock, Prince of Wales, (later to become known as The Black Prince) both travelled to Calais dressed as merchants to investigate a report of treachery.  They set up an ambush and once the trap was sprung Edward joined the fight under the banner of Sir Walter Manny and not as himself.  And on May 5th 1357 Edward executed a mock ambush for the Prince of Wales as he made his way from Plymouth as he returned after his victory at the Battle of Poitiers.  Edward, with 500 men dressed as outlaws waylaid the prince, leaving King John of France rather bemused.  Edward, it seems, was taken with the legends of Robin Hood.

The Battle of Sluys, by Froissart
So he had a playful side, which is at odds with the very bellicose reputation he gained, unfairly, among Victorian historians.  I suspect his subjects were perfectly at ease with this side of him, he had already proved himself in battle at a tender age and had begun his personal, direct rule whilst still several years short of his majority.  In between escapades he was a serious ruler who had educated himself in the ways of battle, having a thorough knowledge of Vegetius and his De Re Militaria.  He was also a charismatic leader, one who men followed without question and who put themselves in the path of danger and performed feats of great valour in his name.  Part of this must have come from his conspicuous personal bravery, his willingness to be at the forefront of action, and never shirk his responsibility as a king and leader.  At Sluys he fought alongside his men, even being injured and laid up for two weeks afterwards, going into battle because he must, but knowing he was outnumbered by larger, better equipped ships and was more likely facing death than victory, having been warned by three trusted advisers that Philip of France was out to capture or kill him.

He ruled through mutual respect, not fear and evil tempers as his great grandfather had done.  He was harsh when he chose to be, stringing up the French admiral Nicolas Béhuchet from the mast of his own ship after the battle of Sluys in 1340, and yet previously, in 1332, when another pirate fell into his hands, one John Crabb who was fighting against the English for the Scots, Edward spared him and brought him into his own employ because he could be useful.

The author messing around
at Crécy!
He was an innovative king, re-establishing the power and dignity of the crown after the haphazard rule of his father, careful where he distributed rewards, mostly careful where he showed his wrath though in this regard his Plantagenet temper was known to get the better of him.  He had favourites but they were men who had done him conspicuous service and well deserved their gains.  He surrounded himself with talented individuals, people who had been well versed in the art of warfare from a young age and yet young enough to wish to innovate and change the accepted order of things.  The use of archers was a long-term plan.  It took ten years to take a boy and turn him into a fully-fledged archer with the strength to draw an English warbow and the skill to aim it almost without thinking.  And in creating an army of archers, Edward created a new industry - the mass manufacture of bows and arrows, giving the common man a direct investment into the defence of the country, either in making bows or in using them.  Ordinary people were going to fight alongside the nobility for the first time, not merely as infantry, but as a front-line fighting force.  Everyone on the English side fought on foot at Crécy, including the Prince of Wales (the defences employed to damage the French cavalry would also have negated their own).

It was Edward who adopted St George as a patron saint, who gave the monarchy a coat of arms, elements of which survived from 1340 to 1800.  Edward gave us the Order of the Garter, an order of chivalry still in use today and much imitated.  He owned one of the earliest known mechanical clocks.  He supported the arts in England and English artisans.  He maintained peace within England for his entire reign.

The Six Burghers of
Calais by Rodin
Edward had his faults, of course he did, one of which was his famed Plantagenet temper.  He once ordered that those responsible for building a stand that collapsed at one of his entertainments to be hanged and it took his wife, Philippa, to talk him out of it and spare them.  Similarly at the end of the siege of Calais he ordered the execution of the famous six burghers, immortalised in the sculpture by Rodin outside the Calais town hall.  Again it was Philippa who begged for mercy and spared their lives.  This may well have been a performance for the benefit of those watching, a play put on to prove his graciousness and merciful nature, but as a king he could not advertise decisions that he was not able to live with and defend, in case Philippa was not on hand to save the day.

And that brings us to his relationship with Philippa.  As I said earlier, Edward had little choice in bride, as did few of the nobility in reality.  He was told he was to marry one of the Hainault girls.  He had been lined up to marry the eldest, Margaret, some years before, but she married Ludwig of Bavaria, Holy Roman Emperor.  So Edward, probably diplomatically, selected the next eldest, Philippa.  Despite such inauspicious beginnings, the pair were fond of each other from the start and this continued for their entire marriage.  Edward's reign is filled with speculation over mistresses and licentious behaviour, and yet there is only ever one name put forward for such a mistress, the well-known Alice Perrers, acknowledged mistress of his later life, to whom he was also famously faithful.  In the entirety of a long reign, no other name comes up for a king who was supposedly well-known for his loose morals.  This is highly unusual considering much earlier kings, about whom so much less is generally known, still have a bevy of named mistresses and named and accepted off-spring from them.  There is the story of the Countess of Salisbury but that is so riddled with errors that it requires far more space to discuss than I have here.  The main point is that there is only one proven mistress and she appears in his later years.  Otherwise Edward's relationship with Philippa was exceptionally good.  One of the causes of the Battle of Sluys was to secure the safety of Philippa who was stranded in Ghent, surrounded by enemies.  It was not only Helen of Troy whose face launched a thousand ships.

Edward's tomb in Westminster Abbey
It is the tragedy that this charismatic, innovative, popular king would probably have been given the moniker 'Great' had he died sooner.  He had the misfortune to die old and infirm, all greatness gone out of him, after everyone he had ever held dear had died before him - his great friend William, his wife, his beloved son Edward.  Only Alice was left to him who actually cared, and she deserted him having stolen his rings.  Only a priest was there at his ending and he passed almost unregarded, but for the vultures who would go on to squabble over the power behind the throne once Edward's ten year old grandson Richard was crowned king.  Had Shakespeare chosen to write about Crécy instead of Agincourt we would all know a great deal more about this great king and remarkable man who laid the foundations for England as we know it.

For more information, I highly recommend the wonderful biography of Edward by Dr Ian Mortimer 'The Perfect King' and for those interested in conspiracy theories and the struggle for the truth, follow it up with 'Medieval Intrigue'.


Tuesday 26 August 2014

England & Son

I have not written on this page as often as I intended to.  Lack of time is the culprit, and that is not easily remedied, which is very frustrating indeed.  However, today, on the anniversary of the battle of Crécy, I decided that I had to post something about it.  So, here is a little short story - a total fiction rather on the romantic side, and not entirely about Crécy, but which developed from a contemporary French rumour from the siege of Calais. It came my way and tickled my love of the two main characters - King Edward III and his son Edward, the Black Prince.  So I am sharing it with you, though sadly the author wishes to remain anonymous - shyness I suspect.  I hope you enjoy it.

The Black Prince's tomb in Canterbury cathedral



England & Son

* In memory of Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince, 1330 - 1376 *

Windsor, December 1347

That his father wasn't in his grand seat in the stand really didn't bother Ned, not when he was in this sharp mood.  He was seventeen years old and he needed no one.  His mother was there, as ever.  Queen Philippa watched his every move, flinching whenever a blow rang on his shield.  She thought he was unaware of this, but he knew.  Joan had teased him for it, trying to make him react.
               "Your mother is always worried," she'd said.  She'd meant 'Your mother thinks you are not as good as your father' and he hated her for that.  Hated her and loved her.  Damn her!  If she would, just for a moment, stop flicking her ridiculous blonde hair at him and keep it in her sodding hair net, maybe he'd be able to ignore her.  Being handsome and the king's eldest son had not helped him in matters of the heart and Joan was not the only woman to refuse him, but he recalled with satisfaction Joan's hurt look as he had snubbed her to demand a favour from the pretty brunette with the green eyes.  Two could play that game, Cousin.
               Ralph watched Ned from behind the screen in the tent, wondering what troubled his young lord.  Ned was rarely anything other than chirpy, even before a tournament.  His father brooded certainly, but so far that trait did not appear to have been passed to Ned; he favoured his good-humoured, spirited mother.
               "Is everything well, my lord?" the aging man-at-arms asked cautiously as he readied Ned's pristine black armour.  A veteran of wars in France, Brittany and Scotland, Ralph had been sceptical of Ned's youth and ability, right up to the moment the lad had stepped in front of a French mace at Crécy and saved Ralph's life.  His devotion to his charge was demonstrated through his careful, some said obsessive, preparation of the prince's arms and armour.
               Ned's black curls, so reminiscent of Queen Philippa, obscured his face as he stared down at his booted feet.  "Yes," he said flatly.
               "You have to get ready then," Ralph ventured and rattled the mail coat on its stand.
               "Yes, yes," Ned responded with impatience.
               Ralph planted himself in front of Ned.  "Out with it.  You can't take a sour mood into the arena.  It'll get you killed."
               "Now you think I am not good enough."  Ned's head snapped up.  His black eyes were filled with pain.
               "Of course you are.  You'll bloody win this thing.  Don't be so idiotic."
               "So I am now an idiot," the prince declared, but his lips twitched and Ralph relaxed.  "Thank you, Ralph," the younger man said.  "I saw Joan earlier," he confided.  "She was not kind."
               "Ignore her.  What does a slip of a girl know of such things?"
               "My mother knows."  Ned shook his head slowly.  "Is it not ironic the only person I need to fight and defeat to be the best in England is the only person I cannot fight and defeat - my father, the best in England."
               "His grace has not competed for years."
               "And yet he is held to be better than me."
               "Different times, my lord, you can't compare the two."
               "But they do," and his arm swung out to encompass the whole tournament field.  "They do not believe I could beat him.  They think as Joan does."
               "Why should they?"  Ralph pulled the unusual black mail coat off the stand and brought it to Ned.  "You proved yourself at Crécy last year, and your father acknowledged you in front of the entire army."  Ned clambered to his feet and pulled on his padded tunic over his silk shirt.  "Just because your twice-married hussy of a cousin doesn't appreciate you, doesn't mean she is in the majority.  Walk out there now, into the crowds and smile.  See how many sweet little things hurl themselves at your feet."
               Ned shrugged, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. 
               "But my father is not here.  He did not come."
               Ralph pulled the mail over Ned's head, the metal rings tugging at his curls until the coat sat on his shoulders and the curls bounced back into place.
               "You can't hide in his shadow forever.  Let today be the day you shine."

*                            *                            *

Ned had never felt more exhilarated, not even when he'd won the day at Crécy.  He'd done it, despite his own worries.  He was tournament champion.  He'd taken on all-comers and he had beaten them.  His father was still absent from the stands, but he did not care.  All the earls were there.  They would not call him 'boy' again. 
               His sword glinted in the weak winter sun as he thrust it in the air, accepting the adulation of the crowd.
               Sir Lionel de Calais, the unknown knight from France, still lay where he had fallen.  Ned had thought him a chancer, disenfranchised when the English took Calais last August and seeking retribution in England, but he had put up one hell of a fight.  A few groans emanated from his helm, revealing he yet lived.  Servants hurried to him and began to help him up. 
               Ned paid little heed, too busy revelling in the cheers from the crowd.  He was not prepared for the gasp that flew around the arena, the sudden silence that descended, nor the eruption of noise that greeted Sir Lionel when he finally removed his helm.  Ned turned to accept the man's capitulation with all the grace of an English knight but his chin fell to the sand at his feet, gawping in disbelief.
               King Edward of England stood with a weary smile, his hand raised in acknowledgement as his people poured adoration on him.
               "Father!" Ned howled in bewilderment.  "Why did you not tell me?"
               Coated in sweat and awkward after his fall, King Edward grinned.  "You would not have tried as hard had you known.  Now you have beaten me, in front of everyone."  He sighed wearily and wiped his eyes with a cloth given to him hastily.  "You are my son, and you are my successor, in all things."
               Ned grinned as what he had done dawned on him.  He had beaten him.  He had beaten his glittering father, his magnificent king, in a fair fight, and in front of the whole court.  He threw himself into his father's arms and then continued to celebrate as the king limped from the field.
              
King Edward was not surprised to be joined by the slender figure in the turquoise silk gown as he rounded a large pavilion, heading to 'Sir Lionel's' tent.  His paramour had not been in the main stand but he knew she would have watched every moment of his bout with Ned somewhere out of sight, no doubt fidgeting with her glorious red gold hair as she worried for them both.  He dropped a quick but tender kiss on her lips, moved that she still took such rosy pleasure in his touch.
               "Very skilful," she said as she fell into step beside him.  His shortness of breath had vanished along with his limp and he stood tall and easy again.
               "Thank you," Edward replied.
               "To lose like that.  And Ned will never realise, will he?"
               Edward turned to watch Ned.  He was still in the arena, surrounded by pretty girls.  His head was thrown back and he was laughing, thoroughly enjoying his new status as undisputed champion of England.
               "You'll never tell, will you?"
               "You know I love him aswell," she said.  "I would never say a word to him.  And I shall probably never speak of it again to you either." 
               She grinned and wandered away leaving Edward trying to shift inside his mail at the familiar discomfort roused by those few moments in her company.
               The guilt had still to fade completely.  He had been forced to admit to himself the truth - that he'd stolen her, his lady of Calais, from Ned.  Had she not refused Ned first, he would never have spoken to her of his desire; and if any man could persuade a woman to his way of thinking it was Ned, but he had not been given the opportunity. So today he had repaid his debt to his son, in currency that Ned understood.  He had given him something he craved far more than any girl - he had finished what he started at Crécy and had made him into a legend.

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Wednesday 9 July 2014

Domesday Book: A Scribe's Tale

Great Domesday Book


Domesday Book is more than just a dry collection of records.  These days we have data input clerks who tap information into a computer which the computer promptly loses.  In 1086 it was all done by hand.  In the case of Domesday Book, one hand.  Such details thus make this great tome a living, breathing thing, as it was created by one.

The scribe would have been the person closest to the survey physically and mentally.  He would have lived and breathed it for months and I like to think that either it was a labour of love and duty or that he hated the sight of it by the end!  So who was he, this scribe, whose life was taken over by this survey and what can he tell us about his work?

It is unlikely that he was a royal scribe.  It is not certain how many scribes King William had but only one is entirely possible since it appears Rufus increased the number to two.  There is only one scribe referred to as royal scribe for this period of the reign of William I and that was Osmund who was called 'king's writere' in the Northamptonshire geld roll.  As royal scribe Osmund would have been in Normandy with King William on king's business and too necessary to the king to be spared in England.

Other indications suggest that the scribe was English.  He used the English horned 'e' and had a knowledge of English place names, which excludes Samson the king's chaplain and future bishop of Worcester who has been put forward as a possibility: he was Norman.  He can also be excluded on other grounds - the Domesday scribe corrected the entry for Templecombe in Somerset held by Odo of Bayeux but sub-let to Samson.  It seems quite possible for Samson to notice a mistake in the entry of his own holdings but the same scribe went on to make a mistake in the final text concerning the same lands, Turnie which was amalgamated with Templecombe.  In the Exon Domesday text, a survivor of the intermediate stage of the record collecting, the value of Turnie is recorded as 14s but in the final text it is recorded as 13s.  The Domesday scribe made mistakes but surely not with his own lands.

From Domesday Book, the two different
letter 'd's can be discerned (see line 3)
So if not the king's chaplain, who was he?  Scribes, for all they followed a set formula of writing, appeared to have developed 'house styles'.  The Domesday scribe had a very identifiable script.  He used an unusual suspension sign to abbreviate '-us' after a letter 'b' in words such as 'omnibus'.  He also used two styles for the letter 'd'.  One was half uncial with a vertical ascender and the other was an uncial with a serif at right-angles to the ascender.  His script has been discovered in three other manuscripts, all with connections to the Durham scriptorium. 

The first is a manuscript in four parts, the fourth part being a sermon attributed to St Augustine. The second manuscript contains a life of St Katherine of Alexandria which was written by the Domesday scribe.  A copy of the life of St Katherine was known to have been in the Durham cathedral library.  The third manuscript contains a contents list written by the same scribe in a similar style to the lists in Domesday book.  This manuscript is thought to have come from Durham.  Another nine manuscripts originating from the Durham scriptorium contain examples of the Domesday book script.  There appears to be a characteristic Durham 'house' script.

A key example of such a Durham script appears in Exon Domsday, notably the addition to the estates of the bishop of Winchester, of Taunton granted at Salisbury in 1086.  It is the only entry by this particular scribe.  The question 'why should a scribe from Durham be at Salisbury?' has to be explored in relation to his master.  A Durham scribe could only be in Salisbury with someone from Durham who needed a scribe.  Such a person was William of St Calais, the bishop of Durham.  We know he was at Salisbury since it is recorded that it was he who was instructed to enter the addition of Taunton.

William of St Calais' role would explain why it was his scribe who wrote the single addition in Exon and why one of his scribes, probably his favourite and most trusted, wrote Great Domesday.  To have been asked to add a grand of land to Exon suggests his role exceeded that of a member of the group of legati, the group of magnates who went to each area to double check the veracity of the returns.  He witnessed a writ issued "post descriptionem totius Angliae" (after the survey of all England) instructing action concerning lands held by Westminster Abbey in Surrey.  By the form of the date, mentioning the survey, the writ was connected to the survey.  This writ was written by a Durham scribe.  Whether this scribe was the same one who added the grant of land does not appear to have been investigated.  The writ must have been issued whilst the king was at Salisbury and we know William was with him.

William of St Calais from the sermon
of St Augustine 
VH Galbraith hypothesised that there must have been a man behind the survey other than the king to keep up momentum after the king left England.  William of St Calais could easily fit this position.  He was involved in the survey in two separate areas or circuits.  He was asked specifically to add to the finished returns for the West Country; he witnessed a writ connected with the survey.  From 1091 to his death in 1096 he witnessed every writ concerning Domesday Book issued by William Rufus.  No wonder then that it was William's scribe, a Durham scribe, who wrote up Great Domesday.

Where this scribe wrote up the returns is not documented.  It is assumed that since Great Domesday was kept at Winchester that it was written there.  But it is not impossible for the scribe to have been itinerant and if he were, it would explain much.  The returns were written into a series of booklets which would have been convenient for an itinerant scribe.  It has been calculated that it would have taken one man 240 days to write Great Domesday assuming he wrote it in just one location.  An itinerant scribe would take much longer to travel from location to location.  But the notes in the margin against blank entries asking "how many?" would be more easily answered on location, and each section could be sent back to Winchester or wherever, once completed.

This explanation of who wrote Domesday Book, for whom, where and how also answers the great question - why does Little Domesday Book exist?  Little Domesday Book is the returns for East Anglia, written in full and unabbreviated, and not included in Great Domesday Book but standing alongside it.  Why these records were not incorporated into the great tome is a question that has never been fully answered.  However, when William of St Calais was exiled in 1088 he may well have taken his favourite scribe with him, and we would not be stepping outside the boundaries to assume that this was the Domesday scribe.  The relative lateness of this event, so long after the 'completion' of Domesday book in 1086, could fit in with the longer period of time necessary for an itinerant scribe to travel around the country to write up the returns.  But had the Domesday scribe left the country with his master it would have left the survey machinery without its two most important components.  Assuming that East Anglia had yet to be visited by William and his 'writere' (it was a more complex area with confusing patterns of land holding and may well have taken longer to survey), the officials left behind could well have assumed that their records would never be seen by William and did the only thing they could do under the circumstances - copy the document neatly and hand it over to be rubricated following the pattern of the other records already sent to Winchester.

This also tells us that although the information was complete by 1086 and King William's visit to Salisbury, Great Domesday Book was not written up into the document as we know it at that point, but was a far longer, on-going process that stretched into 1088 and the reign of William Rufus, who also had the desire to see it finished.  Only the absence of its single director who knew it better than anyone, and his single scribe who knew how to write it up, prevented its full completion.


So by simply looking at the scribe we can deduce a great deal of information about Domesday Book and the survey in general.  We know who kept the survey on track, we know why parts were omitted from the main survey, and we can gain insight into the mechanics behind the survey.  We can also say that it was incredibly important to King William for him to appoint such a high ranking official to oversee it, and for that official to trust only the one single scribe to complete it to ensure continuity throughout.  It is such a pity that this scribe's name is lost to us even though his greatest work still survives after nearly a thousand years.  Much better than a floppy disc.

Thursday 22 May 2014

A little bit of Domesday Book



Great Domesday Book
Domesday Book is a vast bound book that contains a survey of the whole of England in a single year - 1086.  It is in fact, two volumes, Great Domesday which contains the vast majority of the survey, arranged by county, and Little Domesday which contains only those for East Anglia.  Little Domesday isn't actually all that little and is almost the same physical size as Great Domesday. 

Domesday Book was the brainchild of King William I, better known as William the Conqueror, or even William the Bastard of Normandy.  Having ruled England for nearly twenty years he decided for some unrecorded reason, at his Christmas court of 1085, to order a survey of the entire country to be undertaken.  All these findings, county by county, were to be brought to him at Salisbury in September 1086.  He was quite specific and his list of questions was comprehensive.  These questions survive in one document only, the Inquisitio Eliensis, one of the many so-called 'Domesday Satellites', documents that formed a part of the survey before Great Domesday (have a look here for some of the kind of information that was available to those undertaking the survey), and it records that:

               "Here follows the inquest of land, as the king's barons made it, to wit: by the oath of the sheriff of the shire and of all the barons and their frenchmen and of the while Hundred of the priest, the reeve, six villagers of each village, in order, what is the manor called? Who held it in the time of King Edward?  Who holds it now? How many hides? How many ploughs on the demesne? How many men? How many villagers?  How many cottars?  How many   slaves?  How many freemen?  How many sokemen? How much wood?  How much meadow? How much pasture?  How many mills?  How many fishponds?  How much has been added or taken away?  How much taken together it was worth and how much now.  How much each  freeman or sokeman had or has.  All this at three dates, to wit, in the time of King Edward and when King William gave it and as it is now.  And if it is possible for more to be had than is had."

A page from Exon Domesday
J H Round, writing in the nineteenth century, hypothesised that Domesday Book was a tax book, probably based on that last line '...if it is possible for more to be had than is had'.  But why would a tax book want to know detail such as the number of mills without their specific values?  The only values are demanded for each manor in question as a whole, not piecemeal.  If you wanted to wring as much as you could from a piece of land, you'd want the detail, not just an overview.

And the actual book does not record all the details demanded in Exon Domesday anyway.  That last line was dropped from the survey.  Let's have a look at an entry made for Lovington in the West Country.  Fortunately, for a student of Domesday Book, there is a satellite called Exon Domesday which is held at Exeter.  It was probably, once, the full returns presented to King William at Salisbury and then submitted to the scribe to write up in Great Domesday.  By the late fourteenth century, when it was bound, it had lost most of its contents and little now survives.  But what does survive is fascinating as it gives a direct comparison between the information that was collected for the Domesday survey and what actually made it into the main text, what Domesday Book actually wanted.

From Exon Domesday:

               "Serlo has a manor which is called Lovington and which three thegns Aelmanus and Siricus and a woman Alfilla held in parage on the day King Edward was alive and dead.  It rendered geld for 6 hides.  Those can be cultivated by 8 ploughs.  Of the aforesaid hides Alemanus had 4 hides and Siricus 1 and Alfilla another hide.  These lands Serlo holds as a manor.  Of   them Serlo has 3 hides minus 5 acres, and 2 ploughs in demesne, and the villeins have 2 hides and 5 acres and 6 ploughs.  And there are 8 villeins and 9 bordars and 2 slaves; and 16 beasts and 1 riding horse and 11 swine and 80 sheep; and a wood 4 furlongs in length and 2 in breadth; and 40 acres of meadow.  And it is worth 100s annually and when Serlo received it 61s."

And the same entry from Great Domesday:

               "Serlo holds Lovington. 3 thegns held it TRE* as 3 manors and it gelded for 6 hides.  There is land for 8 ploughs.  In demesne there are 2 ploughs and 2 slaves, and 8 villeins and 9 bordars with 6 ploughs.  In it a mill renders 10s and [there are] 40 acres of meadow, a wood 4 furlongs in length, 2 furlongs in breadth.  Previously [it was worth] 61s, now 100s."

So much was removed because, once the entry was written up following what must have been very strict guidelines, detail such as the names of Alfilla and Siricus was not needed; and the entire entry has been brutally abbreviated.  This allowed only what was deemed necessary to be retained, and also made life a lot easier for the scribe who had to write it all up by hand!  And there was only the one scribe who wrote the entirety of Great Domesday.

The rubrication is clear
So what was needed?  And why?  Well, Great Domesday is not just abbreviated, but it is rubricated, and certain words are struck through in red making them stand out to the reader, and these are the names of the manor and the names of the tenants.  Not the values.  One's eye is not drawn to the values.  Land values are not treated with any particular deference.  These are not what Domesday believes is the most important aspect of itself.

Which does beg the question - what is?  That will be the names, but why?  To be honest, we don’t know.  Did William want to know what was not parcelled off to his followers after Hastings to grant to newcomers to his court?  Did he want to know where to billet soldiers in the event of war with France, or Scandinavia?  Was he merely curious and had the extraordinary authority that was required to ensure such a vast undertaking was not just done but completed?  There are many theories, but sadly William did not leave a record of his inner thoughts and the reason he woke up one morning and decided that he wanted every cow and sheep and mill and cottar and villein and slave in his English realm counted and recorded. 

William I the 'Conqueror'
He did not do this for Normandy - that raises more questions.  England was larger, far larger than Normandy - did he just not know quite how to govern such a large territory?  He had managed quite well, even his detractors have to admit that, but is this what he felt?  And was he looking to hand over all this to his heir, William Rufus, to help him rule, a vast directory of the land holders of England?  Was that on his mind?  He died before the survey was fully written up, in September 1087, at the age of around sixty, so maybe he had an idea of his own mortality.  It is presumed his death is why Little Domesday exists in its form, a long-winded, unabbreviated version of the returns for East Anglia - that the will and the authority was gone with William and the writing up of the survey was abandoned.

There are many aspects to Domesday Book and what at first appears to be a dry document, ancient and dull, becomes a living, breathing piece of history stuffed full of human interest.  I wrote my dissertation for my degree on it and my tutor, Dr David P Kirby, commented that it was obviously a labour of love.  Come back in the next weeks and I will look at these other aspects and hopefully you'll like it as much as I do.

*tempore regis Edwardi - in the time of King Edward (Edward the Confessor).





Sunday 18 May 2014

Righting wrongs

Finding a new book on the Battle of Crécy seemed like heaven.  It was brand new, untouched, unopened, and best of all it was in a charity shop for a fraction of its cover price.  I was thrilled.  Once home, and without the time to start reading it cover to cover, I decided to see what was said about my fave Emperor, who fought at Crécy.  I wish I hadn't bothered.  What I found there left me feeling very grumpy and unsure if I want to read the rest.

Few things annoy me more than lax research.  I'm not talking about the things that were thought to be correct at time of publication, or that hard-to-track-down detail that you only find when it is too late - these are unavoidable. I'm talking about the things that could have been checked, should have been checked, or those details that have been misunderstood, or taken as truth without corroboration.

This happens, and it annoys me no end.  Along with the above mentioned book, I found similar research 'fails' in another book, a novel, so I think it is time to respond. 

The young Charles
I have already spoken about the person in question - Charles IV of Bohemia, Holy Roman Emperor, and you can read more about him here.

In the text book I leafed through (then tossed aside in bemusement) Charles was scandalously portrayed as being a puppet to his father and a coward who not only arrived late to the battle but then left the field as soon as the going got tough, and then refused to speak about it afterwards.  These opinions appear to be based on English sources which consistently use the phrases 'I know not' and 'so men say' which suggests to me that they hadn't actually got a clue what Charles was up to during the battle and smacks of gossip.  Where the idea that he never mentioned it again came from I have no idea.

However, Czech sources are not so devoid of detail and Charles is recorded as having played an important role in the whole campaign.  He was in Paris and saw the campfires of the English army as it paused at Poissy to repair the bridge.  He was at Saigneville and Blanchetaque on the heels of the English as they forded the Somme to escape the French trap.  He was with the King of France at Crécy itself to advise.

In the battle he charged, possibly even as soon as in the first wave alongside the count of Alençon, the French king's brother who was one of the many high ranking casualties on the French side, and we are told he only left the field again by being dragged away by his men after his father was dead.  He had been injured in the arm twice.  On the demise of his father he became a count and a king twice over so one can understand why his men were so fearful for him - he'd just become the most powerful man in Europe bar the pope.

So we have two groups of sources, English and Czech.  The English sources got their information, well, who knows where.  It is not recorded.  'Men' is as close as we can get, though as one chronicler is Jean Froissart it is assumed that someone close to King Edward gave him the information.  But had this been the case surely Froissart could give names to these eye-witnesses.  So maybe he was not as close to the king's inner circle as has been assumed.  The Czech source is actually two, one derived from the other.  The earlier is by one František Pražský who wrote about Crécy but he fell out of favour with Charles and a new chronicler was appointed, Beneš Krabice z. Weitmile.  We can assume that as Charles appointed him particularly, he had some input over what was written about him.  And Krabice based his account on František's existing work and the account of Crécy was retained, thus, we have to assume, was approved by Charles.  Two chronicles discussing the same event is not what you expect from someone who doesn't want to talk about it.

When examining sources a good researcher will ask various questions - who wrote this? For whom? What was his aim? With what authority did he write? There are others but these are good ones to start with and allow you to build up an idea of the bias, and there is always a bias.  We can say with some certainty that regardless of what happened, Charles approved of the record of events written by František to allow his own chronicler to use it as a base.  Whether František was as much the king's man as Krabice really doesn't matter because what he said was accepted by Charles personally for Krabice to be allowed to continue to use it.  Does this mean it is gospel truth? No, it doesn't, but contains input from a named someone who was indisputably there, unlike the main English source Froissart.

But what of those English sources?  We already know without doubt that Froissart 'made things up' - he gives an account of a conversation between John of Bohemia and his knights that Froissart and no Englishman could possibly have overheard.  The English sources have no particular authority given, no names, unlike the Czech chronicles, but what would the English have to gain by maligning the Emperor?  Plenty actually.  Charles had been elected Holy Roman Emperor just weeks before the battle.  There was, however, already an Emperor, Ludwig of Bavaria, the same Ludwig who was Edward III of England's ally in Europe, and was also his brother-in-law.  Charles also had the ear of the pope, Clement VI who had been Charles' childhood tutor and was no friend to England and who exercised a definite French bias.  Defaming Charles and suggesting he was a coward would have been something of a cheap shot but one that, had it caught on, would have been difficult to dispute in the confusion of battle.  However, there is less out there to suggest the negative view is more true than the positive, that he was an admired, possibly sought-after, warrior and an astute statesman.

Comparing sources is just part of the problem here.  Yes, you can compare and contrast and find the bias, but they are still just a snapshot of an event.  To get a better idea of whether the allegations are believable or just absurd, looking at Charles himself sheds more light.  Was he a coward? What had he done before?  Who was Charles?

The Battle of Crécy from a
French manuscript
And if you look at Charles' life up to 1346 you find a man who was anything but a coward.  Charles fought in his first battle aged fifteen, fighting the forces of several Italian city states whilst protecting his father's interests in Italy.  He was young, even for the times, to lead a force, but he did.  And he nearly lost, having his horse killed under him and yet he stayed, facing certain failure.  But he didn't lose.  He won, and he was knighted there and then.  (I must here point out that this was a year younger than Edward, the Prince of Wales who became known as the Black Prince, the flower of English chivalry and famous warrior who was knighted at sixteen years of age.)  He chose to fight on the side of the Venetians in Italy when he had absolutely no reason to do so.  He fought alongside his father in Lithuania.  He had suffered injuries in his first battle, and went on to fight again.  He rode to war against his rival Ludwig after the events of Crécy.  These are not the actions of a man who was afraid of a battle or of losing his life.  And one must remember that dynastically speaking his survival was not essential - he had a full brother to inherit Bohemia and a half brother destined to take control of Luxembourg.

Two other allegations that are levelled at Charles in the same tome are that he was a puppet of his father and that somehow his youth went against him, referred to several times, rather disparagingly as 'young Charles'.  The first of these is just not true. Charles was his own man.  He changed his name, when only seven years old, not to honour his father but the man who was in reality bringing him up, King Charles IV of France.  Charles did go to Italy when required, at the tender age of fourteen, and began to govern his father's lands.  But he founded a town and called it Montecarlo after himself, not Montegiovanni for his father.  He chose to leave Italy to return to Bohemia, his father only agreeing once it was a fait accompli, where he began to re-establish the monarchy after years of neglect by his father, and that included an army that answered to him.  Raising it to come to the aid of his brother in Tyrol, and thereby proving his own personal power, caused a major rift between him and his father that took years to resolve.  His activities for the Venetians were entirely by his choice - he was keeping out of the way of his father because of the issue with the Bohemian army at the time.

And so to his supposed 'youth' at the battle of Crécy.  Let's have a closer look at the major combatants, from both sides.  Charles was thirty.  King Philip VI of France was fifty-three.  John of Bohemia was fifty. Charles count of Alençon was forty-nine.  Edward III of England was thirty-three.  William Bohun, earl of Northampton was thirty-four.  Thomas Beauchamp, earl of Warwick was thirty-two.  John de Vere, earl of Oxford was thirty-four.  Sir Thomas Holland was thirty-two.  Lord Bartholomew Burghersh was around 26.  Edward, Prince of Wales was sixteen.  Enough said.

It is certainly worth noting how Charles is viewed by the Czech people when examining him and his supposed cowardice and weakness.  My Czech friend's expression of confusion and disbelief when I put this version to her told me pretty much all I needed to know.  However, she explained that Czech children are taught that Charles' survival at Crécy was 'miraculous'.  In 2005 he was voted the greatest Czech to have ever lived and you can read a little more about that here.  There is no suggestion in the national consciousness of a man who fled a battlefield a coward.  Today Czech children learn about Crécy because of Charles and his father, whereas in England, the side who actually won, school children have no idea what it is.

Charles with the crown of the 
Holy Roman Empire
The second book is a work of fiction which left me more deeply disappointed as it was written by an author I had trusted and liked.  Poor fact checking was one sin - stating more than once that the river Seine could be followed from Rennes to Paris was unforgivable.  I mean, how hard is it to check a map? And did no one think to verify this at the editing stage?  Similarly the writer did not check the date of birth of Edward III, referring to him as being thirty-four at Crécy.  Edward was born on 13th November 1312 so he did not turn thirty four for another two and a half months.

But what really rubbed me up the wrong way was how the writer killed off Charles, stating that he bled to death on his father's body.  It is such a bizarre thing to do.  His 'death' wasn't a plot twist, a device to further the story, and there was no tension created by it, no conflict.  It served no purpose except to be wrong.  Surely it would have been better to leave Charles out of it altogether than to go so disastrously astray.  

And as if to underline the inaccuracies in the novel, the author also kills off King Jaume III of Mallorca who, like Charles, fought for the French.  Jaume did die in battle, but not this battle.  He perished in the battle of Llucmajor, Mallorca, on 25th October 1349.  His input into the battle of Crécy is sketchy at best and he certainly didn't distinguish himself, but he survived it.  There is one more high profile victim of this author - the Count of St Pol was also slain at this fictional version of Crécy.  Guy de Chatillon, who became Count of St Pol in 1344, died in London in 1360 serving as a hostage following the Treaty of Brétigny. The treaty allowed for the release of King John of France, who had been captured at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356, in exchange for other hostages and Guy was one of those.

So that is three very high ranking people who were erroneously killed off at Crécy who in reality went on to live for years, thirty-two more years in the case of Charles.  Did the author know?  Did he care?

I am staggered to discover how little-known Charles is in England - and I was just as guilty until last year, but then I'm not a professional historian nor serious novelist - still more that such things as his supposed death at Crécy can be accepted so readily and without question, and can be written by someone without a stab of guilt.  One day, maybe, I will contact the author and simply ask why he did it, but until then I will sit and fume to myself and continue to write about what an extraordinary man Charles really was.

Wednesday 7 May 2014

Was Hamlet just an inept King Edward III?

'Hamlet' has been the centre of much study and the focus of a great deal of theories and character analysis.  Was he oedipal?  Was he bi-polar?  But there is one study I have not seen, and that is an examination of the parallels between Hamlet and King Edward III.

Edward III holding court after 1339
Their stories are strikingly similar - they were both princes and heirs to their respective thrones, both of their fathers were murdered*, both of their mothers entered into a relationship with the man responsible who then assumed power, and both resorted to the use of subterfuge in order to gain their revenge. 

The outcomes were very different.  Hamlet famously perished, killed by the touch of a poisoned sword, his close friend Horatio at his side.  Edward survived, thrived, and ruled for fifty years, surrounded by good, loyal friends.

So, one was successful, one was not.  But was Hamlet doomed from the beginning?  And if so, does that diminish what Edward achieved or does it make him all the more remarkable?

Hamlet's father was killed by Claudius and the first Hamlet knew of any trouble was when he was recalled from university.  He only learned that the death was murder when he spoke to his father's ghost.  By then his mother was already married to Claudius.  Hamlet struggled with the task he was given by his father - avenging his death - and it brought him low.  He contemplated suicide more than once during the play, speaking of 'self-slaughter', and again most famously in his 'To be or not to be' speech.  Was this a natural reaction for a young man in his situation, to the discovery of the murder of his father and his mother's hasty remarriage, to the loss of his birthright to be king after his father?  Or was Hamlet always going to feel this way, even had his father not been murdered, had died a natural death?  Could he ever have ruled?  Was his personality suited to kingship?

The sensible way to answer this would be to look at someone who struggled with a similar situation - King Edward III. 

Edward III's coronation in 1327
Edward's mother, Queen Isabella, began an affair, under his nose, with Roger Mortimer when she took Edward to Paris.  His father, Edward II, sent him numerous, and increasingly distressing, letters demanding he return to England, but he was unable to comply.  The new couple, Isabella and Mortimer, raised an army to invade England, effectively selling Edward's hand in marriage to Hainault for soldiers to swell the ranks.  They captured his father, imprisoned him and persuaded Parliament to declare young Edward king.  However Edward refused until his father had renounced the throne himself and only then did the young prince agree to be crowned.  But despite his new status, Edward was forced to allow his mother's lover Mortimer to take his place, ruling as king in his stead.  He was just fourteen.

Edward was then under what was virtual house arrest with a small household who were constantly monitored and spied on, again reminiscent of the activity at Elsinore that Hamlet so despised, hence the only way Edward could convey his own thoughts to the pope was by subterfuge, adding code words to his letters, another parallel with 'Hamlet' where altered letters play an important part.  All this, you would think, would be enough to make anyone melancholy. 

And yet Edward does not appear to have reacted this way.  He appears to have been a far stronger, more resilient person than Hamlet while facing similar adversity to the Danish prince, more in fact when you consider that Edward was actually expendable as he had a brother (and his father may not have been dead after all*).  His solution was to act and not delay as Hamlet did.  When Roger Mortimer, rightly, suspected a plot and threatened Edward's friends, Edward acted that same day to remove him.  Maybe his childhood at his father's troubled court had prepared him for such a life, whereas Hamlet's childhood appears to have been idyllic.

Another characteristic of Hamlet was his animosity towards his mother demonstrated and much debated in the 'Closet' scene where Hamlet confronts Gertrude - "Good night: but go not to mine uncle's bed; Assume a virtue, if you have it not."  What Edward thought of his mother is unrecorded, but he did not punish her unduly though he must have been as furious at her as Hamlet was at his mother, and she remained a part of his life.  That she referred to her husband in a letter mere months before his deposition as 'my very sweet heart' (mon tresdoutz coer) and that she requested that she be buried with Edward II's heart suggest she may have later regretted her actions as Gertrude did, though she was far more guilty than the deluded Danish queen.

Hamlet and Ophelia
Both princes had a significant woman in their life, a lover, a paramour, and maybe the differing ways in which they approached love could explain why one failed and one did not.  Hamlet chose who he loved and he declared he loved Ophelia, but only really expressing such sentiments after she was dead.  He did all he could to distance her from him and eventually sent her mad, her committing that act that had so troubled Hamlet - suicide - and drowning herself, albeit with some sense of diminished responsibility. 

Again, for Edward, everything was the opposite and played out very differently - he had been forced into an arranged marriage, being told pretty much to take his pick of the Hainault daughters.  He selected Philippa, the eldest unmarried daughter in the family.  He had every reason to resent Philippa, if not for herself then for the circumstances of their union.  But he did not.  He and Philippa made the absolute best of their situation, probably clinging to each other in adversity, both still so young, and producing at the earliest practical opportunity (Philippa was sixteen, Edward seventeen) the son and heir that was so necessary to their security.  Having someone to confide in, someone he could not be separated from, maybe made a difference to Edward, gave him a comfort that Hamlet denied himself.

There is one similarity between Hamlet and Edward where they both used the same tactic to further their interests in their dramas, and it worked for them both, and that is the element of subterfuge. I've already touched on the letters they both used but there was another instance for them both.  Hamlet used a false play to cause Claudius to declare himself, to prove himself guilty - "the play's the thing wherein we'll catch the conscience of the king."  Claudius reacts to the dramatic murder scene and seals his fate in the eyes of Hamlet.  Edward resorted to subterfuge simply and literally to catch a king, or in his case, a usurper.  Once his friends had been threatened by Roger Mortimer at Nottingham and Edward knew he had to do something, he ordered his friends to gain entry to the locked castle using hidden underground passages and thereby catch Mortimer unawares and arrest him before his own retinue had time to react.  It is one of the few instances where both young men achieved what they wanted - subterfuge obviously works!

The final scene in 'Hamlet'
Ultimately, though, Hamlet failed.  Yes, he avenged the death of his father but the price was very, very high.  He sends Ophelia to an early grave, he murders her father and her brother Laertes, his mother is killed with the poisoned wine meant for him and he succumbs to a poisoned blade.  Hamlet is remembered for his inaction and delay and his melancholy in the face of adversity.  Edward on the other hand succeeded spectacularly.  He arrested Roger Mortimer and his closest allies with little fuss.  His mother, we must presume, repented, and she lived comfortably into old age.  He loved the wife who was pressed upon him and they had a long and happy marriage and had a lot of children.  Edward proved himself capable and was a known across Europe as a man of action and one who knew how to enjoy himself.  We must assume, therefore, that Hamlet's personality doomed him and not his circumstances.

Shakespeare was familiar with Edward's story, he had read Holinshed, took much of the detail for his history plays from that chronicle, and there is a great deal of detail about Edward III in the 1577 version.  He is suggested as a collaborator on the play 'The Reign of King Edward III' and if so he was intimate with the history and must have read Froissart, the go-to source for Edward's reign which is the basis for the play.  Even if he was not a writer of it, he most certainly would have known it.  Whether he took elements of the king's life and included them in his version of 'Hamlet', consciously or subconsciously I don't know, I have not read any other study on this aspect of 'Hamlet' and I personally have not had the chance to delve any deeper than I have here, but the parallels are certainly striking.


* It is generally held that Edward II died at Berkeley castle in September 1327 but in recent years material has surfaced that has thrown new light on old sources suggesting that he did in fact survive not just beyond 1327 but possibly into the 1340s, living hidden in northern Italy with the odd trip into Germany to meet with his son.  Many 'old school' historians deny this version of events, but the growing body of evidence is more and more compelling and makes far more sense than the opposing view.  For more information on this line of enquiry take a look at Ian Mortimer's book Medieval Intrigue, Kathryn Warner's website and the Auramala Project