HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2025-02-14T14:33:03.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Medieval(ish) matters #15: What's lurking in the background of medieval maps? And what did medieval people really know about the wider world?
items: Medieval(ish) matters #14: What did an aristocratic household eat in the Middle Ages? And who was Eleanor de Montfort?
items: Medieval(ish) matters #13: Why aren’t monuments to medieval figures included in the statues debate, and was there racism in the Middle Ages?
items: Medieval(ish) matters #12: secrets of the famous Anglo-Saxon Chronicles
items: Medieval(ish) matters #9: Do early medieval Irish texts shed light on prehistoric incest?
items: Medieval(ish) matters #8: Did medieval people care about the time? And did they get bored?
items: Medieval(ish) matters #7: what it meant to be 'blue' in the Middle Ages (and more killer rabbits)
items: Medieval(ish) matters #6: Viking military mind games, Anglo-Saxon mind maps, and embroidery before the Bayeux Tapestry
items: Medieval(ish) matters #5: chivalry, medieval killer rabbits and prisoners of war in the 15th century
items: What was it like to be a Prisoner of War during the Hundred Years’ War?

Medieval(ish) matters #15: What's lurking in the background of medieval maps? And what did medieval people really know about the wider world?
type: item
date: 2020-07-25T11:00:52.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Medieval kings and queens
subject: Medieval matters blog
description: HistoryExtra content director Dr David Musgrove gets the lowdown on the latest research into the Gough Map and the Anglo-Saxon Mappa Mundi to find out what they tell us about medieval English aspirations on the world stage
encoded: Consider maps, and you likely think of them as tools to get from A to B without the inconvenience of getting lost. You might not dwell on any underlying political context to your cartography. So, let’s talk about medieval maps. I had a fascinating chat the other day with Dr Catherine Delano-Smith, who is heading up the Leverhulme-funded project ‘Understanding the medieval Gough Map through physics, chemistry and history’. You can follow the project's work through its splendidly droll twitter feed. The Gough Map (named after the 18th-century antiquarian Richard Gough, who purchased the map and bequeathed it to the Bodleian Library) is one of the most important medieval maps. It shows Britain, with a somewhat different – but recognisable – outline from that on modern maps, and lots of interesting details of towns, rivers and other features. It is large (around 55 by 116 centimetres) and fills two pieces of sheepskin parchment. Under the sheep skin Dr Delano-Smith’s collaborative project is an interdisciplinary effort to get under the (sheep) skin of the map. Various scientific tests on the map have been carried out, including an instructive 3D scan, which sheds light on the pin-holes that seem to have been used to prick outlines of prominent places or buildings. These pin-holes were noticed in the 19th century, but the scanning work has enabled a better understanding of what they are about: “We have come to the conclusion that the pinholes are likely to relate to the first production of the map and that they record a hitherto unknown, arguably unorthodox, form of transferring information onto the map by means of replicating a template, although not every place marked on the map has associated pinholes; many were just inserted into an appropriate space,” noted Dr Delano-Smith in the 2017 article New Light on the Medieval Gough Map of Britain (Imago Mundi 69). The research team has further established that the map is an amalgamation of three successive layers of work: l…

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Medieval(ish) matters #14: What did an aristocratic household eat in the Middle Ages? And who was Eleanor de Montfort?
type: item
date: 2020-07-18T10:00:19.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Medieval kings and queens
subject: Medieval matters blog
description: HistoryExtra content director Dr David Musgrove talks to Professor Louise Wilkinson about the dining habits of Eleanor de Montfort and her household in 1265, a key year in English medieval history
encoded: A lot of herring, more than the odd glass of wine, and not many vegetables – that’s basically the diet of Eleanor de Montfort in 1265. Professor Louise Wilkinson of the University of Lincoln has recently translated and edited The Household Roll of Eleanor de Montfort for this year (for the Pipe Roll Society). This document, which is basically a great roll of parchment on which was recorded the day-to-day expenses of the household, is rich in detail about the daily menu on offer for Eleanor and the people around her, and I interviewed Professor Wilkinson about this for the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen | Professor Louise Wilkinson talks about her research into the household accounts of Eleanor de Montfort, a key figure in the mid-13th century civil war First things first, who was Eleanor de Montfort? “She is one of the most important women in 13th-century England. She was a major political player. She was the youngest daughter of King John by his wife, Isabella of Angoulême. And she was also the sister of one of King Henry III, who reigned over England between 1216 and 1272,” explains Professor Wilkinson. “Beyond that, she was also married to a tremendously important individual, her second husband, Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester. Simon is a very interesting figure in his own right because he led what's widely considered to be England's first revolution against the crown in 1258. He was also involved with his wife in helping to start a major civil war in England against Henry III. So Eleanor was really at the heart of a tremendously turbulent political period.” War and (not many) peas Her household roll is a fantastically informative source, not only for context to the political events of the year it covers (1265 was a tumultuous year, pivotal in the civil war, and notable for the escape from Montfortian captivity of Lord Edward – Henry III’s son – and the future King Edward I, as well as the battle of Evesham, where Simon de Montfort was killed) but also for an …

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Medieval(ish) matters #13: Why aren’t monuments to medieval figures included in the statues debate, and was there racism in the Middle Ages?
type: item
date: 2020-07-16T09:05:25.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Crusades
subject: Debate
subject: Medieval battles
subject: Medieval kings and queens
subject: Medieval matters blog
description: HistoryExtra content director Dr David Musgrove talks to Dr Simon John about the equestrian statue of King Richard I, and whether it’s right that it stands in the shadow of the Houses of Parliament
encoded: Statues are very much in the news. The footage of Edward Colston’s monument being dumped unceremoniously into the harbour in Bristol is one for future history books. Figures associated with slavery, the slave trade, and racism generally across the globe have come under close inspection from people questioning whether they should still stand as commemorative artefacts. Most of these statues are of figures from the 18th century and later, though the conversation has drifted back in time to the likes of Sir Francis Drake and the 16th-century development of the Atlantic slave trade. Globally, statues of Christopher Columbus have also been drawn into the debate. However, little has been said about statues in Britain depicting medieval figures, some of whom may be equally problematic when viewed through a modern lens, as the likes of Colston. Why is that? I recorded a conversation with Dr Simon John of Swansea University for the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen | Simon John considers whether we need to include medieval figures such as Richard the Lionheart in discussions around historical statues Dr John is both a medievalist (an expert on the socio-cultural impact of the Crusades in Latin Christendom) and an authority on statuary; his current project is ‘Contested Pasts: public monuments and historical culture in Western Europe, 1815-1930’ (funded by the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust), which explores the political uses of public monuments and statues in 19th-century European states. We particularly talked about the statue of Richard the Lionheart, which stands directly outside the Palace of Westminster in London. Dr John has studied the circumstances in which this statue was erected in 1860, and also considered whether it is an appropriate monument to stand at the heart of British democracy (many in the 19th century did not think so). Statue-mania Along with many of the statues that are proving to be objects of contention today, its origins lie in the mid-19th century…

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Medieval(ish) matters #12: secrets of the famous Anglo-Saxon Chronicles
type: item
date: 2020-07-11T13:00:05.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Early medieval
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Medieval life
subject: Medieval matters blog
description: HistoryExtra content director Dr David Musgrove takes a look inside the famous Anglo-Saxon Chronicles with Professor Pauline Stafford to find out why King Alfred is crucial to their creation and what story they are really telling
encoded: Read any historical book about the early medieval period in Britain – about the Viking raids, or the rule of King Alfred and the centuries after that, up until the Norman Conquest and a bit beyond – and like as not, you’ll come across references to a source called the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Professor Pauline Stafford, one of the leading experts in this period, has just written a fascinating book about this, entitled After Alfred: Anglo-Saxon Chronicles & Chronicles, 900-1150 (OUP). I had the pleasure of interviewing her for our podcast – listen to an exclusive, extended version here: Note that her subtitle talks of chronicles in the plural. One of the first tasks that Professor Stafford takes on in her book is to remind us that there were various vernacular chronicles produced during the period, all of which have been bracketed together into the source that is now commonly described in the singular as the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’. Anonymous annals She explains: “They are a group of chronicles all in the form of annals [a chronological record of events]. They are all written in the Old English language, between the end of the ninth and the middle of the 12th century. There are seven of them surviving, and we've got a fragment of another. We also know that there are some lost chronicles, three or four certainly. They're anonymous. Nobody signed them. Nobody claimed authorship. We don't know who wrote them, so we can't attach a name to them. And they're usually called now by letters, so chronicle A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and the fragment is H. They're often called the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, as if they're somehow all the same one. And there is a lot in common between them. But you have to recognise that they're all individual chronicles – and that really is the basis of my book." 10 things you didn’t know about the Anglo-Saxons “They're written at different times and places. But there's no statements about where they were written. And they all grow in some way out of a chron…

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Medieval(ish) matters #9: Do early medieval Irish texts shed light on prehistoric incest?
type: item
date: 2020-06-24T10:32:25.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Bronze Age
subject: Early medieval
subject: General prehistory
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Norman
subject: Period
subject: Stone Age
subject: Medieval kings and queens
subject: Medieval matters blog
description: HistoryExtra content director David Musgrove asks two scholars for their views on what, if anything, we can learn about attitudes of Neolithic people in Ireland (particularly about incest) from studying much later early medieval documents
encoded: Royal incest is always going to grab the headlines. And so it proved last week when a fascinating study was published in Nature revealing the results of a project, whose first author is Dr Lara Cassidy at Trinity College Dublin, sampling human bone remains from Neolithic Irish sites. The most eye-catching of several interesting results came from analysis of an adult male, whose cranial remains were found inside the famous 5,000-year-old Newgrange passage grave in Brú na Bóinne, the world heritage site in Ireland's Boyne valley. His genome indicated that he was “the offspring of a first-order incestuous union” (born to parents who were either siblings, or parent and offspring). The bones of this individual were found in what is assumed to be a prestigious position in the inner chamber of the Newgrange monument. Read more medieval matters blogs from David Musgrove: The Last Kingdom, Robin Hood and how to learn Old Norse in lockdown Back to Braveheart, Viking river boats, & the Crusades The salmon of knowledge & rolling Roman mosaics Chivalry, medieval killer rabbits and prisoners of war in the 15th century Dr Cassidy and her co-authors observed that sibling-to-sibling incest has been recorded among elites in other societies (including the Inca Empire and ancient Egypt), and that “this behaviour co-occurs with the deification of political leaders and is typically limited to ruling families”. Thus the headline of the story in the Daily Mail began “Ireland's ancient kings married their sisters and fathered inbred children to maintain dynastic bloodlines”. Medieval mythology That is a pretty newsworthy story in itself, but in addition, Dr Cassidy and her team also noted that: “The Brú na Bóinne passage tombs appear in medieval mythology that relates their construction to magical manipulations of the solar cycle by a tribe of gods, which has led to unresolved speculation about the durability of oral traditions across millennia. Although such longevity seems unlikely, our r…

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Medieval(ish) matters #8: Did medieval people care about the time? And did they get bored?
type: item
date: 2020-06-17T17:09:07.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Early medieval
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Plantagenet
subject: Medieval life
subject: Medieval matters blog
description: HistoryExtra content director David Musgrove ponders on the nature of medieval time, bored monks, bored peasants, and fish markets
encoded: It’s pretty hard not to know what the time is these days. If your watch, phone, or computer can’t tell you, your fridge probably can. Medieval people did not have ready access to such gadgetry, but they did still need to know about time. One of the more notable changes in the approach to time through the Middle Ages, was that up until the 14th century, days (and nights) were measured in temporal hours (when the hours of available daylight were divided into 12, and thus hours varied in length between seasons), but this then shifted to equal hours, with 24 units of time that were all the same length. Time in the Medieval World, edited by Dr Chris Humphrey and Professor Mark Ormrod, is a great read if you want to track the changing face of time through the medieval period. It details how people did need to know what time it was for their day-to-day activities, particularly in urban contexts. The sound of medieval life Church bells provided the rhythm of the day, alerting people to the regular religious services that occurred at set times, but also for secular life. Dr Humphrey tells us that in York, for instance, an ordinance of 1301 dictated that no fish could be sold between vespers being struck at the church of St Michael on Ouse Bridge on one day and prime being struck at the Minster on the following one. Dr Humphrey, who has called time on academia and gone on to launch a careers consultancy for post-PhD researchers called Jobs on Toast, also notes that "the widespread introduction of mechanical clocks into Europe in the 14th century laid the foundations for our modern sense of time". I asked him to elaborate on that and he emailed me to say: “While mechanical clocks were introduced in the 14th century, there wasn’t a uniform take-up of clock-time by all people or institutions. It seems so natural to us now that everyone should use clock-time - but just imagine a medieval town, with its competing bells and chimes ringing out, some sounding the monastic hours, some…

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Medieval(ish) matters #7: what it meant to be 'blue' in the Middle Ages (and more killer rabbits)
type: item
date: 2020-06-10T12:32:49.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Norman
subject: Period
subject: Plantagenet
subject: Medieval battles
subject: Medieval life
subject: Medieval Life and Death
subject: Medieval matters blog
description: HistoryExtra content director David Musgrove discovers what it meant to be 'blue' in the Middle Ages, why food and cathedrals were brightly coloured, and continues his search for the truth about medieval killer rabbits
encoded: Was it a bad thing to 'feel blue' in the Middle Ages? No, is the answer, because the colour wasn’t always associated with sadness – as it often is today – but with loyalty. I’ve been enjoying a recent article in the Journal of Medieval History by the University of Nottingham’s Dr Matthew Ward about the association between the colour blue and the concept of loyalty in the Middle Ages (True blue: the connection between colour and loyalty in the later Middle Ages). He details how in later medieval English and continental texts, particularly in heraldic or chivalric literature, blue is the colour of the steadfast and faithful. Dr Ward does make clear that “many colours have had a range of attributes associated with them, some of which are far from consistent and "vary according to time and place”, but he sees a particular link between blue and loyalty in the later medieval period. He describes how the French poet and composer Guillaume de Machaut (d. 1377) was one of a number of authors at the time who “espoused the relationship between azure and loyalty in a deliberation over the significance of a variety of colours: White denoted joy, green changeability, red passion, black grief or mourning, and blue was without doubt attached to loyalty”. Green for the devil, blue for the loyal He also notes how Geoffrey Chaucer (who you can hear more about on this recent podcast) relates blue to loyalty in the Squire’s Tale. Meanwhile in the Chaucerian contemporary tale Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, he suggests that “the colour blue could also be used ironically to expose the disloyalty of an individual”. Why the knight is green in that story is another matter, and if you listen to the In Our Time podcast on that topic , the University of Bristol’s Professor Ad Putter explains there that “the colour green is associated with nature in the poem, but green is also the colour of the devil”. Read more about the history of colour – from 'baby blue' to royal purple Back to Dr Ward. “Ev…

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Medieval(ish) matters #6: Viking military mind games, Anglo-Saxon mind maps, and embroidery before the Bayeux Tapestry
type: item
date: 2020-06-03T14:54:32.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: General prehistory
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Viking
subject: Medieval matters blog
subject: Viking Britain
subject: Viking life and culture
subject: Viking warfare
description: Historyextra content director David Musgrove goes for a run through several millennia of history, exploring Viking military manoeuvres, early medieval mind maps, and the power of Anglo-Saxon embroidery before the Bayeux Tapestry
encoded: As dawn began to break over Didcot and the North Wessex Downs one day last week, I found myself beside the ancient Ridgeway, shivering on the edge of the prehistoric barrow known as Scutchamer Knob. I was having a day off and I planned to spend it trail-running west along a chunk of the Ridgeway. I was going to start at Scutchamer Knob, which is a Bronze Age round barrow also known as Cwichelm’s or Cuckhamsley Barrow. It’s not much to look at now to be honest, obscured by trees and not quite the prominent lump it once was, but it still commands big views in all directions. View oEmbed on the source website I’d been to this place once before, over a decade ago, when the barrow still overlooked the now-demolished cooling towers of Didcot Power Station and I was researching a BBC History Magazine book called 100 Places that made Britain, in which I asked historians to nominate important places in British history. Winchester University’s Professor Ryan Lavelle had picked Scutchamer Knob, because of its significance in the story of the Viking assault on Wessex in 1006, when England’s King Aethelred (the Unready) failed to make much of a showing against a Viking army that was making hay in his kingdom. Professor Lavelle and Exeter University’s Dr Levi Roach have both written biographies of King Aethelred recently if you want the background to the story. But basically, the Viking army had encamped themselves at Scutchamer Knob in a direct challenge to the English, who, according to The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, had boasted that “if they [the Vikings] sought out Cwichelm’s Barrow they would never get to the sea”. In other words, Aethelred would come and deliver them a lesson for their impudence. However, Aethelred did not come, and the Vikings in the end went back to the ships, stopping on their way to see off the Anglo-Saxon army that finally turned up. Posture and counter-posture “Warfare in this period was a series of posturing and counter-posturing, and is summed up beauti…

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Medieval(ish) matters #5: chivalry, medieval killer rabbits and prisoners of war in the 15th century
type: item
date: 2020-05-27T15:52:09.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Medieval battles
subject: Medieval matters blog
subject: Slavery
description: HistoryExtra content director David Musgrove rounds up the latest medieval stories on the website this week – considering chivalry, medieval prisoners of war, and rabbits in medieval marginalia
encoded: I’ve been contemplating chivalry, violence and slavery this week. Oh, and vengeful rabbits. Maybe it’s because I’ve been in lockdown too long, though it’s more to do with the fact that I was writing up a little web piece about the practice of taking prisoners in the Hundred Years’ War off the back of my podcast interview with Southampton University’s Dr Rémy Ambühl, an expert in such matters. Last week it was, as you might have noticed, the anniversary of the 1420 Treaty of Troyes, which followed Henry V’s famous Agincourt victory, so it’s a timely thing to be thinking about. (On that, Dr Paul Dryburgh and Dr Euan Roger at the National Archives ran an informative twitter thread on the documents associated with the Treaty.) View oEmbed on the source website So, Dr Ambühl and I talked a fair bit about how combatants could actually be taken prisoner during the course of a melee (which reminded me of an interesting conversation I had last year for our podcast with Dr Lauren Johnson about the depiction of the heart of the fighting in the battle of Agincourt in the film The King). Listen | Lauren Johnson discusses the history behind The King, considering how closely it follows the real events of Henry V’s life and reign Another part of the discussion was about the legal and moral justification for taking prisoners of war, which is bound up with concepts of chivalry and the medieval law of arms. What is chivalry – and where does it come from? Chivalry, as far as I can see, is a difficult concept to define, with various ideas as to what it boils down to. What it wasn’t, according to another expert in the field, the University of York’s Dr Craig Taylor, was the romantic idea that some hold today of “knights going round treating war as if it was some kind of game”. Where chivalry comes from is complicated. One line of thought is that chivalry as a concept evolves from the aftermath of the implosion of Charlemagne’s empire. Charlemagne (c747–814) of course famously created a h…

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What was it like to be a Prisoner of War during the Hundred Years’ War?
type: item
date: 2020-05-27T11:54:36.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Medieval battles
subject: Medieval kings and queens
subject: Medieval life
subject: Medieval matters blog
description: What was it like to be taken captive during a medieval battle, and what happened to you afterwards? Historian Rémy Ambühl explains to David Musgrove…
encoded: One of the most infamous incidents from the Hundred Years’ War occurred at the battle of Agincourt in 1415, when some captured French prisoners were massacred by the English on the orders of King Henry V, as the French rear guard were preparing to make a last assault. Medieval historian Rémy Ambühl, from the University of Southampton, has been studying this subject – and was recently interviewed for the HistoryExtra podcast on how the capturing (and ransoming) of prisoners of war was a feature of the 116-year-long conflict. During the episode, he explains how a ransom culture developed with laws and practices that were designed to protect the economic interests of the captor, rather than the wellbeing of the captive. There were also some rules around how you would take, or allow yourself to be taken, captive during a battle. Listen | Rémy Ambühl discusses his new research into the fate of captives in the Hundred Years’ War “Touching the right hand and asking for ransom was a sign that would be understood in the heat of the action as the soldier giving up and handing himself over to the to his enemy,” explains Ambühl. “But that’s not the end of the story, because the prisoner would then effectively be in the possession of the person he has surrendered to. “You have his life in your hands and you are supposed to protect the prisoner at that point. So, you need to take him out of the battle. This is problematic if you are in the melee right in the combat. How does that happen? We can read that valets are there to help the knights; they take the prisoners and keep them outside the heat of the action. 9 medieval battles more significant than Agincourt The King: Henry V on film (podcast) “There were also other rules, too; these were made to avoid the neutralisation of the knights on the battlefield. Once you have taken your prisoner, you take their word and a token which proved that you had captured these prisoners, like a gauntlet or their sword,” continues Ambühl. “This…

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