Gwynedd after 1282

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After the Treaty of Aberconwy in 1277 AD, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd was reduced to lordship over a small area of land in Gwynedd, mostly west of the Conwy River.  Over the course of the 1282 war, he took back much of what he’d lost.  He was killed, however, on 11 December 1282, and all of Wales ultimately fell the forces of Edward I.  The map at right shows:    Green:  Gwynedd, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd’s principality    Blue:  Territories of Dafydd ap Gruffydd    Pink:  Territories ceded forever to the English Crown   This defeat of the native Welsh forces led by Llywelyn ap Gruffydd and then briefly after Llywelyn’s death by his brother, Dafydd, resulted in a much divided Wales.  On the top of the hierarchy, instead of native rulers, were English (mostly) absentee landowners.  Within the Marche and portions of southern Read more…


First pictures from the Wales trip 2014

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So far, we’ve seen Cilmeri, Tintern Abbey, Chepstow Castle, and Caerphilly Castle. This is the main shot of Cilmeri, the place where Llywelyn ap Gruffydd is said to have been ambushed and murdered by the English. That event–and averting that event–is also the basis for my After Cilmeri series. I’m pleased to report that the site has been spruced up since I was last here, including the placement of a new stone marker at Llywelyn’s well. For tons of information about the life and death of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, see https://sarahwoodbury.com/llywelyn-ap-gruffydd/. Tintern Abbey was founded by Normans and is an early Cistercian house in Wales. See my post on Medieval Monks for more. Chepstow Castle was built by the same Norman lords who endowed Tintern Abbey, including William Marshal and Roger Bigod. When we were here two years ago, it was during the Queen’s jubilee, so Read more…


Did Europeans smoke in the Middle Ages?

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The short answer to that question is ‘no’. Tobacco is a New World good, and thus, not available to Europe until after 1492. The native peoples of the Americas used tobacco primarily for ritual purposes. The longer answer is that ‘smoking’, though not as we understand it today (with tobacco), was a factor in cultures other than Europe, though even those never caught on much in Europe, even after the Crusades. From Wikipedia: The history of smoking dates back to as early as 5000 BC in shamanistic rituals.[2] Many ancient civilizations, such as the Babylonians, Indians and Chinese, burnt incense as a part of religious rituals, as did the Israelites and the later Catholic and Orthodox Christian churches. Smoking in the Americas probably had its origins in the incense-burning ceremonies of shamans but was later adopted for pleasure, or as a social tool.[3] The Read more…


The Sidhe

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The Sidhe (pronounced shee), are the god-like beings of Celtic society.  Sometimes conflated with the Tuatha de Danaan, this site (http://www.shee-eire.com/magic&mythology/fairylore/Sidhe/page%201.htm) posits that they were a real people that were descended from the Tuatha de Danann.  “The people known as “The Sidhe” or people of the mounds, or “The Lordly Ones” or “The Good People” were descended from the “Tuatha de Danann” who settled in Ireland millennia ago .”  “Clearly the belief in the sidhe is part of the pre-Christian religion which survived for thousands of years and which has never been completely wiped out from the minds of the people. . . .The sons of Mil fought them in battle and defeated them, driving them ‘underground’ where it is said they remain to this day in the hollow hills or sidhe mounds . . . The sidhe of the Read more…


Medieval Cursing

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Contrary to what how we curse today, bodily functions were not the worst of the worst for medieval people when it came to swearing. Here is what Melissa Mohr, author of “Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing,” has to say: “generally, people of medieval England did not share our modern concept of obscenity, in which words for taboo functions possess a power in excess of their literal meaning and must be fenced off from polite conversation…Medieval people were, to us, strikingly unconcerned with the Shit.” People back then “did not have much of an issue with describing bodily functions in ways that we might find less appropriate. Going into a city you might find a street called ‘Shitwell Way’ or ‘Pissing Alley’. Open a school textbook for teaching children how to read and you might find the words arse, shit Read more…


6 Myths about the Middle Ages

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I found a great article about 6 myths of the Middle Ages. It’s particularly great to see someone writing about this in the general media. I encounter these assumptions every day and it complicates writing about these times (especially when someone writes to tell me I’m wrong 🙂 But that’s another story). From: http://www.cracked.com/article_20186_6-ridiculous-myths-about-middle-ages-everyone-believes.html You can click on the link above for the full article, but the myths are as follows: 1.  Scientific Progress Was Dead 2. Everyone Smelled Like Complete Sh*t  (for my post on this, see: https://sarahwoodbury.com/did-medieval-people-bathe/) 3. Knights Were Honorable, Chivalrous Warriors 4. Everyone Was a Prude 5. Women Were Treated as Cattle 6. Life Was Horrible and Everyone Died Young (for one my posts on this see: https://sarahwoodbury.com/life-expectancy-in-the-middle-ages/)


Was King Arthur real?

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Historians are still asking themselves was King Arthur real? Whether or not King Arthur was a real person is an either/or query.  He either was or he wasn’t.  Many scholars, researchers, and Arthurophile’s have strong opinions on this topic, both for and against.  Because of the paucity of written records (most notably, Gildas fails to mention him), much of the academic work has come down on the side of ‘wasn’t’–or at least if Arthur was a real person, his name was not ‘Arthur’ and he possible wasn’t even a king.  In another blog (here), I list the original sources that posit the existence of King Arthur. Obviously, since I’ve written a novel about King Arthur, he’s very real to me! Wikipedia has a remarkably thorough analysis of the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur For now, I’d like to point to two aspects of the ‘wasn’t’ Read more…


William de Braose and The Red Wedding

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In the Game of Thrones, ‘the red wedding’ (not to ruin it for anyone) is a massacre of epic proportions. While the author, Martin, says he based the scene on real events in Scotland, Wales had a similar incident, sad to say, this one on Christmas Day. Here is the entry from Wikipedia which is accurate as far as events go: “In 1175, William de Braose carried out the Abergavenny Massacre, luring three Welsh princes and other Welsh leaders to their deaths. His principal antagonist was a Seisyll ap Dyfnwal, of Castell Arnallt near Llanover in the valley of the River Usk near Abergavenny, whom he blamed for the death of his uncle Henry. After having invited the Welsh leaders to a Christmas feast at Abergavenny Castle under the pretence of peace and the start of a new era at the end of the year (a traditional time for settling outstanding Read more…


Bird by Bird by Leslea Tash

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  My friend, Leslea Tash, has just published her debut novel, a romance called Bird After Bird. Here’s the blurb: Dear Birdy, Princess Birdzilla von MuffinStuff, Keeper of Dreams, Lover of our Fine Feathered Friends, queen of my life and light of my world, I hope this letter finds you well. If you are reading this then I am gone, and sweetheart, I am so sorry. Chi-town professional Wren Riley is 25 and a rising star in the business world. She can eat a man alive and laugh about it to her girlfriends in seconds flat–and she does, on the regular. Behind the power suits and the flashing, flirty eyes, however, Wren has a secret, vulnerable side. Following a devastating loss and the discovery of a bird journal she and her father made together years before, Wren sets out to seek peace, closure, Read more…


Ashes of Time is here!

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The eighth novel in the After Cilmeri series, Ashes of Time, is here! It is available at Amazon US and all Amazon stores, Barnes and Noble, the Apple iBookstore, and in paperback (coming soon to Kobo). November 1291. Meg and Llywelyn gather their family at Rhuddlan Castle to celebrate their seventh anniversary and David’s twenty-third birthday. But the joyful reunion goes grievously awry when an old enemy raises the banner of rebellion, followed immediately by an even more catastrophic betrayal by an old friend. Meanwhile, facing war at every turn and still haunted by his decision to leave Cassie and Callum in the modern world, David chooses a dangerous path forward, one that will either change the course of the future forever—or burn his world to ashes.


Life Expectancy in the Middle Ages

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What was the typical life expectancy in the Middle Ages? Life expectancy varied according to diet, climate, location, relative wealth, etc., but the answer is definitive: not as long as we do now. For starters, infants and children died at a horrific rate (some say up to 1/3 of all died before the age of 5) and a significant percentage of women died in association with childbirth: 5% perhaps from the birth itself, often dying with the child, and a further 15% from childbed fever–the infections that followed a poorly managed delivery (by our standards). Following that, if a person made it out of childhood, they could be expected to live into their middle forties, provided they maintained good health and weren’t killed in war.  Both those, of course, are big ‘ifs’. Below is the recorded birth and death date for the adult royal Read more…


The Little Ice Age and the MWP

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We all realize that temperature is not a constant.  It’s hard enough to imagine what life was like in the Middle Ages, without adding in differences in temperature.  As it turns out, many of my books falls directly into the ‘medieval warm period’ of 950 to 1250. “The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) is generally thought to have occurred from about AD 950–1250, during the European Middle Ages.[9] In 1965 Hubert Lamb, one of the first paleoclimatologists, published research based on data from botany, historical document research and meteorology combined with records indicating prevailing temperature and rainfall in England around 1200 and around 1600. He proposed that “Evidence has been accumulating in many fields of investigation pointing to a notably warm climate in many parts of the world, that lasted a few centuries around A.D. 1000–1200, and was followed by a decline of temperature levels till between Read more…