Showing posts with label Kent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kent. Show all posts

Friday, November 2, 2012

And Then There's Maud

Matilda of Flanders (c.1031-1083), also called Maud, was the wife of William II of Normandy (later William the Conqueror). Their legendary and odd "courtship" was described here. The odd thing is that, after the supposed abuse he heaped on her when she first refused his hand, she later defied her father, Count Baldwin of Flanders, and refused to marry anyone else.

The pope objected, because they were too closely related. Determining the exact relationship has been difficult for modern scholars, however:
It has thus been suggested that both William and Matilda were cousins in the fifth degree, being both directly descended from Rolf the Viking. ... Finally, it has been suggested (perhaps with greater probability) that the prohibition was based on the fact that after the death of Baldwin V's mother, Ogiva, his father, Baldwin IV, had married a daughter of Duke Richard II of Normandy. All these theories have difficulties to overcome, and the matter may well therefore be left in some suspense. —William the Conqueror, David C. Douglas (1964)
We know that she was a direct descendant of Alfred the Great, and also was a descendant of Charlemagne, but those connections should not have sparked the pope's concern. Whatever his objections, they were overcome eventually with the help of Lanfranc (see the link above).

Matilda proved to be an admirable consort. She outfitted a ship, the Mora, with her own funds to join his fleet for the Conquest of England. She also had skills as an administrator: William left the Duchy of Normandy in her hands when he headed to England in 1066 to defeat Harold. In fact, although she did spend time with her husband in England—notably when she accompanied him during his Harrying of the North campaign—except for giving birth to their fourth child, Henry, in Yorkshire while on that campaign, all of their other children were born in Normandy.

One thing she likely did not do is work on the Bayeaux Tapestry. As picturesque as the image is of her and her ladies in waiting working away as seamstresses and embroiderers, it is now believed that the tapestry (actually a banner) was arranged by Bishop Odo of Bayeaux (William's half-brother) and created by Kentish artists.

So far as we know, once she captured William's heart she never let it go again. There are no records of William having any children outside of his marriage, or of taking a mistress. They had nine children, all of whom lived to adulthood. Two of them became kings: William II, called Rufus, who ruled England after the Conqueror, and Henry who ruled after William as Henry I.

Her illness and death, with William at her side, was devastating for her husband. William survived her by four years, but he was changed. True, in 1085 he called for the Domesday Book, but his interest in ruling England was waning, and he returned to Normandy for good in 1086. There are also reports that he became more cruel. When he died, he was buried in Caen, near but not with his wife. While he was buried at Abbaye aux Hommes (Abbey of Men), at which Lanfranc had once been abbot, Matilda was interred down the road at the Abbaye aux Dames (Abbey of Women), which had been founded by William and Matilda in 1062. She is buried under a slab of black marble.

Matilda of Flanders died 929 years ago today. The illustration is a statue of her in Paris

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

The Price of a Man

Murder has long been considered the worst crime in many societies. Unlike theft, or vandalism, it cannot be paid back. The only "proportional response" for avenging the death of a friend or loved one was to use the Old Testament values of "an eye for an eye" and slay the slayer. This, unfortunately, could lead to a Hatfields and McCoys situation, with death after death on both sides, an escalating cycle of inter-family murders.

But does it have to?

In the early Middle Ages, Anglo-Saxon and Germanic societies found a way to establish, as a community, a way to settle the matter of a death in a legal and tidy system: wergild (Old English wer = "man"* + gild = "tribute/gold").

The practice was first established by Æthelbert of Kent (c.560-616). The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us that Æthelbert held sway over the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in Britain. He was the first English ruler to convert to Christianity, and perhaps wergild was his attempt to cool the hot blood of the Anglo-Saxon culture. Within a couple centuries, wergild was being used for theft, rape, breach of peace and many other crimes and misdemeanors. Wergild allowed a community to move on after monetary retribution.

How much retribution? It was different for different areas and times. In Kent in the 8th century, a cow was worth a shilling; a freeman was worth 100 shillings, and a nobleman 300. Elsewhere, a sheep might be worth a shilling, and a nobleman worth 1200 sheep. Only slaves were worth too little to account for.

Exchanging money for people had uses beyond crime. In the later Middle Ages, ransoms for captured prisoners were a regular occurrence, and money was more valuable than eliminating an enemy in a military engagement that was far removed from the emotional setting that might have led to homicide in a different time and place. The 20th century hasn't forgotten about wergild, even if we do not use it widely. You may recall the revelation that the U.S. was using financial compensation for deaths and injuries to civilians in Afghanistan. Wergild also appears in The Lord of the Rings, when Isildur refuses to throw the One Ring into Mount Doom when he had the chance, instead claiming it "as wergild for my father and brother." In his case, however, wergild created a larger problem than it solved.

*Think "werewolf"="man+wolf."

Monday, June 4, 2012

Occupy (Medieval) London! Part 3 (of 5)

Wat Tyler & Jack Straw

The Peasants' Revolt was not just the result of a stirring sermon by John Ball. All of the counties of Kent and Essex were stirred up by an incident that started May 30, 1381. One of the king's servants went to the village of Fobbing and attempted to collect the poll tax that had been announced in 1379. He was refused any money, which prompted a visit by Chief Justice Robert Belknap to investigate and punish the villagers. He was attacked on June 2nd at the village of Brentwood.

Walter "Wat" Tyler (we call him "Tyler" because he worked in the roofing trade) comes into the story as an outraged father who killed a tax collector who had molested Tyler's daughter. There is some confusion, caused by the presence of more than one Tyler in the crowd. A recently discovered account from the time suggests that, the rebels already having been stirred up in Kent, they chose a "Wat Tyler" from Maidstone to lead them on or after June 7th, after those rebels took Rochester Castle.

Jack Straw is known even less, but he was one of the leaders of the rebels. Some historians think he was simply a pseudonym for Wat Tyler, but Froissart (who may not have observed the events, but was alive at the time and knew people close to the situation), makes it clear that Straw and Tyler were different people. Thomas Walsingham, a monk who wrote down much of the history of England during the reigns of Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V, claims Straw was a priest and led a group of rebels from Bury St. Edmunds and Mildenhall to London.

There was also a John Wrawe, who had been a vicar in Suffolk and led a group from that county.

A majority of the rebels on the move--mostly the large group from Kent led by Wat Tyler—met at Blackheath and heard the sermon from John Ball with the famous line "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?" By June 12th, these groups were either listening to John Ball or approaching London from a different direction. Tempers were rising, and the lower classes were ready to make a statement.

[to be continued]

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Occupy (Medieval) London! Part 1 (of 5)

The Peasants' Revolt of 1381

The statutes that attempted to restrict the peasant workforce to pre-Plague levels of wages, etc., did not please the lower classes. Social unrest needs a nucleus, however, a focus, and one was found in John Ball.

John Ball (c.1338-1381) was a priest and a "Lollard." (Lollardy, among other things, rejected the idea that the aristocracy were "better.") Ball's traveling roadshow of social equality did not please the Archbishop of Canterbury, who imprisoned Ball in the archbishop's palace in Kent, 30 miles southeast of London. This did not sit well with Ball's many fans, who broke him out of prison. He and they traveled toward London, and in a field in Blackheath, he preached an open-air sermon to a large crowd on a topic that became a motto for the lower class:
When Adam dalf [delved, digged], and Eve span, who was thanne a gentilman? From the beginning all men were created equal by nature, and that servitude had been introduced by the unjust and evil oppression of men, against the will of God, who, if it had pleased Him to create serfs, surely in the beginning of the world would have appointed who should be a serf and who a lord... 
He concluded with exhortations to root out those who brought harm to the community: the lords of the realm, and the lawyers and justices and jurors. The crowd, roused to a frenzy, began the five-mile march to London.

[to be continued]