The Norman Conquest of Ireland (part 2)

Posted on Leave a comment

While Richard ‘Strongbow’ de Clare was the first Norman to gain a foothold in Ireland, by 1171, King Henry of England had gotten involved and he and his knights carved out huge sections of eastern and southern Ireland for themselves. Other knights marched north and established a northern bastion at Carrickfergus, which became the seat of the Earl of Ulster. Over time, however, Anglo-Norman rule ebbed and flowed. In fact, as the centuries progressed, it ebbed more than flowed, such that by 1500, the descendants of the original conquerors were almost completely assimilated into the native Irish clans. It reached a point such that Henry VIII offered amnesty to all lords in Ireland regardless of ethnicity, provided they surrendered their lands to him (to receive them back immediately by royal charter). Unfortunately for Ireland, after two hundred years of being mostly ignored Read more…


The Norman Conquest of Ireland (part 1)

Posted on 1 Comment

The Normans were conquerors. Even more, they conquered. It was what they did. It was only natural, then, that eventually one of them would set his sights on Ireland.  That someone, in this case, was Richard de Clare, otherwise known as Strongbow. Now, Strongbow wasn’t entirely at fault for what came next. In fact, in 1169 he was invited into Ireland by the ousted king of Leinster, Diarmait Mac Murchada. Murchada had been removed from power by the High King of Ireland, Rory O’Connor, and, naturally, he wanted his lands back. He knew about Norman military prowess and looked to south Wales, where Clare was the Earl of Pembroke, for assistance. And what did Clare get out of it? Murchada had no male heir, so he promised Clare his daughter and the kingship of Leinster if they succeeded. For Clare, that Read more…


A Good Meal–Food in the Middle Ages

Posted on

Diana Wynne Jones’ book Tough Guide to Fantasy Land (recommended for any fantasy/historical fantasy writer) is a hilarious riff on the fantasy genre.  At one point, she mocks fantasy authors’ tendency for their adventurers to eat ‘stew’ in great quantity, which travelers would for the most part never do. The classic example of this is when Sam, in Lord of the Rings, hauls those pots all the way to Mordor.  A much more likely scenario would for him to have stashed a couple of sticks in his backpack to poke through those poor rabbits he takes from Gollum in order to roast them over the fire.  Stew is far too much work. So if not stew, then what? Roasted meat over a spit, when possible.  Stale bread.  Berries or root vegetables gathered from the surrounding area.  Salted, smoked, and dried meat that keeps for weeks Read more…


Celebrating Thanksgiving

Posted on Leave a comment

We are eating a classic, American Thanksgiving today, with turkey, stuffing, potatoes, yams, ‘apples ‘n’ onions’, which was Almanzo Wilder’s favorite dish, peas, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin pie, and chocolate pie (chocolate is ‘new world’, right?). A feast in the Middle Ages might have included:  fowl, such as geese, capons, geese, chicken and quail; meats such as beef, lamb, and pork; fish such as herring, salmon, eels,  oysters steamed in almond milk, and fresh water fish. Cheese, butter and other dairy products were also served, along with cream sauces for all these dishes. Old world fruits and vegies included:  beets, brocolli, carrots, eggplant, lettuce, onions, peas, radishes, and turnips.  They also include olives, dates, grapes, figs, blackcurrent, and apples.  Alternatively, beans, corn, beans, peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, strawberries, squashes and pumpkins are all new world.   And chocolate, as I said. The American holiday of Thanksgiving Read more…


Deganwy

Posted on 2 Comments

Deganwy is one of those castle-forts that has become part of the legend of Wales, although very little of it remains. This plan http://www.castlewales.com/deganwy1.html shows a reconstruction of the early medieval fort.  It was the seat of “Maelgwyn Gwynedd, the foremost historical figure of the 6th century in north Wales, patron of St Cybi and St Seiriol, but reviled as a drunken tyrant by the chronicler Gildas. Excavations on the western summit in 1961-66 confirmed occupation in the 5th and 6th centuries.”  http://www.castlewales.com/deganwy.html “The area below the castle is called Maesdu (Black Meadow) and was, doubtless, the site of many bloody battles. The lower ground of the later bailey may have been the site of a settlement of serfs and bondmen; while Maelgwn’s stronghold stood atop the higher of the later castle’s twin peaks. It would have been largely of Read more…


Family Tree of the Royal House of Wales

Posted on 10 Comments

In general, marriages between the well-born in the Middle Ages were arranged–daughters in particular were essentially sold off in order to cement alliances, concentrate wealth, or gain allies.  That is not to say that sons were any better off, since they too were not marrying for love.  They, however, for the most part had more leeway on whether or not they were faithful to their wives, and certainly had more freedom in general.  Perhaps the most startling example of an arranged marriage that cements an alliance is when Isabella de Braose married Dafydd ap Llywelyn, the son of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the Prince of Wales, after her father, William, had been hung by Llywelyn for sleeping with Joanna, his wife. The families trees of the Gwynedd indicate how closely linked the Welsh princes were to the Marcher lords and to the Kings of England Read more…


Bloodletting

Posted on Leave a comment

Bloodletting is one of the more horrific aspects of doctoring in history to the modern mind, the exact opposite of the prescription, ‘first do no harm’. In Starz production of Pillars of the Earth, set in the 1100s AD in England, an early scene shows a doctor bloodletting a patient.  This surprised me because I thought it too early for that particular method of harming a patient. I was wrong. Bloodletting has been practiced for thousands of years and was common among the ancients.  “‘Bleeding’ a patient to health was modeled on the process of menstruation. Hippocrates believed that menstruation functioned to “purge women of bad humors”.  Galen of Rome, a student of Hippocrates, began physician-initiated bloodletting.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodletting “Prior to the time of Hippocrates (460 to 377 B.C.), all illness was attributed to one disease with variable symptoms. Careful clinical Read more…


Leprosy

Posted on 2 Comments

Leprosy was one of the scourges of the Middle Ages–not so much because of scale, but because when a person caught it, their community cast them out.  The lazar house in the Brother Cadfael books, St. Giles, plays a significant role in the series.  In the movie, Kingdom of Heaven, Baldwin IV of Jerusalem is portrayed as a leper, which is historically accurate.  He ruled from 1174 to 1185.  The man who recognized he had the disease (instead of the Baron played by Liam Neeson) was William of Tyre, later Archbishop and Chancellor.  As you can see from the following article, the rest of the movie is entirely fictive as well:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin_IV_of_Jerusalem Leprosy, also known as ‘Hansen’s Disease’, is a contagious disease caused by a bacteria, Mycobacterium leprae, which is why it is curable post-antibiotics.  Left untreated, leprosy is often Read more…


The Fictive and Historical King Arthur

Posted on 2 Comments

Historians are not in agreement as to whether or not King Arthur—the living, breathing, fighting human being—ever existed. The original sources for the legend of King Arthur come from a few Welsh texts. These are: 1) Y Gododdin—a Welsh poem by the 7th century poet, Aneirin, with it’s passing mention of Arthur. The author refers to the battle of Catraeth, fought around AD 600 and describes a warrior who “fed black ravens on the ramparts of a fortress, though he was no Arthur”.  http://www.missgien.net/celtic/gododdin/poem.html 2) Gildas, a 6th century British (that is, Welsh) cleric who wrote De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae (On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain). He never mentions Arthur, although he states that his own birth was in the year of the siege of Mount Badon. The fact that he does not mention Arthur, and yet is our Read more…


Welsh Rebels

Posted on Leave a comment

In looking through historical documents, there is a striking resemblance between one of the last letters that Llywelyn ap Gruffydd wrote to Edward I, a month before his death, and the famous speech by Patrick Henry.  From Llywelyn: We fight because we are forced to fight, for we, and all Wales, are oppressed, subjugated, despoiled, reduced to servitude by the royal officers and bailiffs so that we feel, and have often so protested to the King, that we are left without any remedy . . .. Compare it to Patrick Henry’s speech to the Virginia Assembly: Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace Read more…


Mortality Rates

Posted on Leave a comment

One of the hard things about imagining oneself in the middle ages, or writing a character who lives then, is figuring out the odds of them living at all.  The median lifespan of an individual living in the US was 78.7 years in 2010, unchanged since 2004. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm I’ve posted before about life expectancy in the Middle ages (https://sarahwoodbury.com/life-expectancy-in-the-middle-ages/ and https://sarahwoodbury.com/child-mortality/), indicating that among the elite, both men and women–if they survived childhood–couldn’t reasonably expect to live out of their forties.  Some people did, but what were the mechanisms that kept mortality high? “Mortality rate is a measure of the number of deaths (in general, or due to a specific cause) in some population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit time. Mortality rate is typically expressed in units of deaths per 1000 individuals per year; thus, a mortality rate Read more…


Child Mortality in the Middle Ages

Posted on 3 Comments

One of the hardest things to read about is the infant/child mortality rates that were prevalent up until the invention of antibiotics–and certainly in the Dark and Middle Ages. It may be that it was much worse in Victorian England, when cities grew large, but looking at King Edward I’s progeny, your heart just bleeds for him and his wife (even if he was a tyrant to the Welsh!). Edward and his first wife, Isabella, produced 16 children. Of those, five were sons. Of those, John lived five years; Henry, six. Alphonso lived until he was eleven, and only Edward, their last child, born in 1284, lived to adulthood and inherited the kingdom. Of their 11 daughters, five lived to adulthood and six died before the age of three. As a mother of four, to think about losing a child Read more…