Henry V

Henry of Monmouth was so-called because he was born in a tower at Monmouth Castle in Wales, but the date of his birth was not recorded because he was never expected to be king. (It has since been decided to call it 16 September 1386.)

King of England at the time was Richard II. Henry's father was the king's cousin (Henry senior was the son of John of Gaunt, younger brother of Richard II's father, Edward the Black prince.) Henry senior took part in a revolt against Richard, which resulted in his exile in 1398.

At that point, Richard took the twelve-year-old Henry under his wing, taking him to Ireland. A year later, his grandfather John of Gaunt died and the Lancastrian rebellion overthrew Richard and put Henry's father on the throne as Henry IV. Young Henry was now the eldest son of the reigning king, and was named heir apparent, Prince of Wales, and Duke of Lancaster. He also became Duke of Cornwall, Earl of Chester and Duke of Aquitaine.

In 1400 he was named Sheriff of Cornwall and put in charge of part of the military (note that he is about fourteen years old). In 1403 he led an English army to fight Owain Glendower (previously mentioned here). At the battle of Shrewsbury in 1403 against Henry Percy (immortalized as "Hotspur" in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1), an arrow was embedded in the left side of our Henry's face.

This would have been dire for any soldier, but the king's son was going to receive the best care. The royal physician treated it with honey as a natural antiseptic, and developed a tool to extract the embedded arrowhead before flushing the wound with alcohol. The patient survived with impressive scars that proved his battle experience (although you'll note the absence of scars in the portrait above).

That physician was John Bradmore, and is too interesting a character to not stop and talk about him next.

The Give and Take of Hostages

Probably the easiest way to sum up the medieval view of hostages is a line from Adam Costa's Hostages in the Middle Ages:

In medieval Europe, hostages were given, not taken. They were a means of guarantee used to secure transactions ranging from treaties to wartime commitments to financial transactions.

The word itself has caused debate among etymologists. Some sources think it is related to the Latin hostis, "stranger." It seems more likely it is from Old French ostage, which was used for both pledge or bail and kindness or hospitality. In turn this was from Latin obsidanus, meaning literally "to sit before" and meaning people who were hostages.

A hostage was a pledge of financial payment or cooperation. One example was Philip of Courtenay. Another was William Marshal. William served five English kings, starting with Henry II. When he was a boy, his father, John, opposed King Stephen in favor of the Empress Matilda (this was during "The Anarchy"). Stephen was besieging John's Newbury Castle, and John promised he would eventually surrender the castle and offered William as hostage/surety for his promise.

John used the time it bought him, however, to reinforce the castle and send word to Matilda's forces of what was happening. Stephen found out, and ordered John to surrender immediately, or else William would be hanged. John called Stephen's bluff, saying "I still have the hammer and the anvil with which to forge still more and better sons!" Stephen started to arrange to have William catapulted at the castle, but could not do it. Harming a hostage and harming a child were not easily done.William was released only after several months went by and a peace treaty was signed to end the war.

Another famous hostage was King John of France (26 April 1319 – 8 April 1364) during the Hundred Years War. The English under Edward, the Black Prince, dominated at the Battle of Poitiers, although the French army was probably twice the size. John was captured by a French exile who had sided with the English, Denis de Morbecque, who promised to lead John to the Prince of Wales. John surrendered by handing over his glove.

John was taken to England, where he lived in high style for years. He was allowed to travel the country, and had a budget that included buying pets and clothing and having his own court astrologer and a court band. He would be a hostage while a treaty (including ransom) favorable to the English would be negotiated.

His son, the Dauphin, had great difficulty arranging things back in France. The Estates General, a consulting and legislative body of the various estates in France, were angry over the mismanagement of resources (taxes and men) in a disastrous military engagement. They demanded political concessions in exchange for money, which the Dauphin refused. King John would remain a hostage, hosted by King Edward, for a total of four years. How he was able to go home, and why he then went back to England to place himself in captivity, will be explained tomorrow.

The Hundred Years' War, Part 3

(If you want to see parts one and two.)

The second part of the Hundred Years' War was the Caroline Phase, named after Charles V of France, who ignored the Treaty of Brétigny and started reclaiming sections of land from the English-held territory.

Charles had a reason to think the time was right for this move. Problems in Castile caused Pedro the Cruel to ask England for help in restoring him to his throne. Edward, the Black Prince, spent a lot of money raising an army to help. Once Pedro was restored, he broke his promise to repay Edward. Edward decided the best way to recoup his losses was to raise taxes in Aquitaine.

The people of Aquitaine, since they were French citizens, appealed to King Charles for aid, who summoned Edward to Paris in May 1369. When Edward did not appear, Charles declared war. An ailing Black Prince had returned to England in 1371 where his father was also elderly and in poor health. While Aquitaine was in turmoil, Edward's forces were no longer helping Pedro, who was once again deposed. His enemy was his half-brother, Henry of Trastámara. Henry was now more than willing to throw his military power behind the French forces against England. The English fleet was defeated soundly in the Battle of Rochelle in June 1372.

The Black Prince died on 8 June 1376; his father died 21 June 1377, leaving the throne to the Black Prince's son and heir, crowned Richard II, who was 10 years old. A pre-teen king was not going to conduct a war, so England's territory on the continent was mostly the town of Calais.

We should also remember the the Black Death struck between 1348 and 1351, killing up to 33% of English and 40-50% of the French. Raising and outfitting armies could not have been easy. Moreover, the Plague returned every several years, although it did not kill as many each time.

The war would be renewed by Henry V. Stay tuned.

The Hundred Years' War, Part 2

In what can be called the Edwardian Phase of the Hundred Years' War, King Edward III of England fought to keep what territory he had on the continent. Much of the war was guided by his son Edward,  now called The Black Prince.

(About the nickname: there is no record of that label during his lifetime; the first recorded use is around 1540 by an antiquarian who claims he was known as "The Black.")

England took years to gather its forces, sailing for France in July 1346. Prince Edward was 16 years old, but upon landing, his father knighted him. On 26 August, the first big battle of the War took place at Crécy. The two Edwards commanded different flanks; when word came to the king that his son was in dire straits, having charged bravely into the French troops but then being surrounded by a fierce counter-attack, he declined to send help, wanting to give the prince an opportunity to prove himself.

The prince was in trouble, however, being thrown off his horse. His standard-bearer dropped the standard and stood over the prince, defending him while he recovered. Help did arrive, and the English ultimately were the victors.

The next big event was the taking of Calais, after which the prince burned and pillaged several square miles of the surrounding area. Calais would stay in English hands until 1558. The Battle of Poitiers in 1356 was another success for the English.

The Edwardian Phase took several years, and overlapped with the first appearance of the Black Death. It also experienced a devastating storm called Black Monday. This phase ended with the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360, leaving England with a large section of southwestern France as well as hostages captured in battle who needed ransoming. John II of France had been captured and his ransom set at 3,000,000 crowns. England was content. A few years later, however, Charles V ( trivia about Charles here) became King of France, and he had no intention of adhering to the treaty.

His phase comes next.

The Fair Maid of Kent

To Froissart she was "the most beautiful woman in all the realm of England, and the most loving"; in her own right she was the 4th Countess of Kent and the 5th Baroness Wake of Liddell; to Edward the Black Prince she was wife; to history she was "The Fair Maid of kent."

Her father, Edmund of Woodstock, was a son of King Edward I, which meant that she and the Black Prince were cousins—not uncommon for aristocratic marriages. She might have been able to marry him at all, however, since she had been imprisoned when she was a child.

Her father had supported Edward II (who was his older half-brother) during the conflict with Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer. Once Edward II was deposed, Edmund was executed and his wife and children placed under house arrest in Arundel Castle. Once Edward III came to power, however, he took the family into his care. Joan was his 1st cousin, and the 2nd cousin of his wife, Queen Philippa.

Having survived the scandal of being associated with a traitor, she mdd her own royal mistake when she was 12: she made a secret marriage with Thomas Holland without getting the king's consent. Then Thomas went Crusading. While he was gone, her family—unaware that she had contracted marriage with someone else—arranged a marriage with William Montacute, son of the Earl of Salisbury. Joan did not disclose that she was already married for fear that Thomas would be executed.

Thomas eventually returned to England, having gained great wealth on Crusade, found his wife married into the family of the Earl of Salisbury, and promptly appealed for help to King Edward and Pope Clement VI. Joan expressed the desire to return to the husband of her choice, and the Earl of Salisbury promptly imprisoned her in her own home. The pope, however, chose to annul the second marriage; Joan joined Thomas, and they had four or five children over the next 11 years. Holland died in 1360.

Joan was now about 30, and Edward the Prince of Wales (later called "The Black Prince") a little younger. They had known each other growing up, and a gift from him of a silver cup suggests special affection for his second cousin. There is some evidence that the pair made a secret marriage (this was getting to be a habit of hers) in 1360. This presented a problem, because their relationship was too close for the laws of consanguinity. Edward III, however, requested of the pope that a special dispensation be made, and the two were formally wed on 10 October 1361.

Their son, Richard of Bordeaux, would become King Richard II on the death of Edward III. Joan died on 7 August 1385.

Philippa of Hainault

Philippa of Hainault,
finally becoming Queen of England

Philippa of Hainault has been mentioned as a minor part of the story of the Battle of Cassel, and as the person who introduced the herb rosemary to England. She was born on 24 June 1314, the daughter of Count William I of Hainault and Joan of Valois.

When she was only 12 years old, she was promised in marriage to Edward, Duke of Guyenne. This was an important betrothal, because Edward would one day become King Edward III of England. The marriage took place in 1327—sort of—when Edward sent the Bishop of Coventry to marry her by proxy and cement the relationship. Edward became king on 1 February 1327, and the second ("actual") marriage was celebrated on 24 January 1328. She was not crowned a Queen right away, however. The country was still in the hands of Edward III's regents, his mother Queen Dowager Isabella and Roger Mortimer, the lover she had taken. Isabella was not keen to have another queen in England, so Philippa's coronation did not take place until March 1330 when she was already six months pregnant with Edward, the Black Prince.

Philippa's gentle ways were much loved by the English citizenry; rather than bring a retinue of servants, she maintained only a few of her countrymen and embraced the English in the palace. She urged Edward to focus on England's commercial opportunities, especially the textile industry (which she knew something about because of Hainault's success in this area).

She also fulfilled one of the main functions of a queen admirably: she bore Edward 14 children, nine of whom died before she did, including her eldest, Edward the Black Prince. The descendants of her children would ultimately contest the throne in generations to come, creating the 30-year period of hostility known as the Wars of the Roses.

She and Edward were married for 40 years and held up as an exemplary couple as well as exemplary individuals. (True, Edward had an affair with one of Philippa's ladies-in-waiting, but this seems to have caused no public difficulty between him and his queen.) She died on 15 August 1369

Philippa is especially known for an episode involving problems between Edward and the Burghers of Calais. I'll tell you about that tomorrow.

April 23rd

Let's see...so many to choose from.
The Feast Day of St. George, patron saint of England (who certainly did not exist)
Anniversary of Shakespeare's death (too late for "medieval")
Anniversary (supposedly) of Shakespeare's birth (too late, and really just wishful thinking)
Death of Ethelred the Unready

Ah. Here we are:
Founding of the Order of the Garter in 1348 by Edward III.

The story of the founding of the Order is well-known and unverified, told by Froissart, who loved court stories but wasn't present at the time (and was only a child). It tells us that the Countess of Salisbury lost her garter while dancing at a court ball, to the discourteous amusement of the guests. Edward III gallantly picked up the garter and handed it back to her, saying "Honi soi qui mal y pens."["Shame to him who thinks evil."] This, supposedly, inspired him to create a chivalrous order named for the Garter. The Countess of Salisbury in question might have referred to Joan of Kent, who later became his daughter-in-law when she married the Prince of Wales (Edward, "the Black Prince"). Otherwise, it was Joan's mother-in-law, Catherine Montacute, whose husband was the 1st Earl of Salisbury. Later rumors were that she was the focus of inappropriate affection from Edward.

Other sources claim that Richard Lionheart had his soldiers tie garters around their legs in some acknowledgement of St. George, and that Edward wished to evoke both Richard and George when founding the Order.

Whatever the case of its founding, it is the most exclusive and prestigious Order in England and Wales, limited to the king, the Prince of Wales, and 24 additional knights. The original list is a Who's Who of political power in mid-14th century England—although some of them had to be knighted in 1348 to be able to receive the honor of the Order. "Ladies of the Garter" were also appointed, though without the prestige accorded the Knights of the Garter. King Henry VII ended this practice, but King Edward VII named his wife a Lady of the Garter, as did King George V and King George VI.

Queen Elizabeth II is an ex-officio member of the Order.

John of Gaddesden

With us there was a doctor of physic;
In all this world was none like him to pick
For talk of medicine and surgery;
For he was grounded in astronomy. —Prologue to the Canterbury Tales

Doctor, from the Ellesmere MS.

John of Gaddesden (c.1280-1361) was a "Doctor of Physik" who was quite well-known in his day, so much so that modern scholars looking to find analogs for the characters in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales have suggested he is the likeliest candidate for Chaucer's "doctor of physic." As a fan of both Chaucer and historical detail, I'm going to weigh in and say . . . maybe.

Who was Gaddesden, and why was he considered the model for Chaucer's pilgrim? For one thing, he had written Rosa medicinæ (The rose of medicine; sometimes called the Rosa Anglicæ), a compendium of medical information called so because it was in five parts, like the five sepals of a rose. In it, he quotes numerous authorities from the past; Chaucer's list of authorities with whom his doctor is familiar lines up nicely with Gaddesden's sources. Also, Gaddesden had a reputation for charging high fees, and Chaucer makes it clear that his doctor loved gold.

To be honest, however, Gaddesden's book was quoting the same authorities that anyone would quote when compiling a book on medicine. It was completely unoriginal. Even his title seems derivative, probably based on Lilium medicinæ (the Lily of medicine) by Bernard Gordon, produced at Montpellier in 1303. Gordon, a Scotsman, was one of the teachers of Guy de Chauliac. Chauliac, in turn, taught Gaddesden. What did Chauliac think of his student's work? Not much; he said of it:

Last of all arose the scentless rose of England, in which, on its being sent to me, I hoped to find the odor of sweet originality, but instead of that I encountered only the fictions of Hispanus, of Gilbert, and of Theodoric.

Those who write about Gaddesden being Chaucer's doctor usually justify it also be calling them "contemporaries." Let's look at the timeline: the Canterbury Tales probably wasn't started until 1387. Even if the Prologue were the first thing he wrote—highly unlikely—this was a quarter century after Gaddesden's death; a death that would have taken place when Chaucer was about 20 years old and had been connected to the household of Prince Lionel, the second son of King Edward III, only for a few years. Gaddesden seems to have been attached to the household of Edward, the Black Prince, who would have spent much of Gaddesden's later years on the continent while Chaucer was in England.

They could have crossed paths, but probably not significantly, and Gaddesden would have been long out of the public eye and consciousness when Chaucer came into his own as a poet. For Chaucer to write up a physician who quoted historical authorities, knew astrology, and loved gold probably just meant that he had met typical physicians.

The Handkerchief

Richard II (1367-1400) had all of the elegance and none of the political savvy or military skill required of a king of England in the 14th century. He was given to--and ridiculed for--extravagances and fastidiousness that shocked many of his contemporaries. In an attempt to curb his excesses, he was put under the regency of a council called the Lords Appellant. Richard decided to negotiate a peace with France and devote his energies and finances to overthrowing the Lords Appellant. (Imagine what Congress would have done if, at the height of the Cold War, Lyndon Johnson had declared "I'm going to make peace with Russia and focus on controlling the GOP.") The Merciless Parliament of 1388 was called to curb him. During the process, Parliament convicted most of Richard's advisors of treason. The charges against them include lists of extravagances such as richly decorated garments and household furnishings.

At a time when such excesses were worthy of condemnation, something like the following line--a description of an order from the king's tailor, Walter Rauf--would surely make heads turn and eyes roll:

parvis peciis factis ad liberandum domino regi ad portandum in manu suo pro naso suo tergendo et mundando

"small pieces made for giving to the lord king to carry in his hand for wiping and cleaning his nose"

Why does this stand out?

Prior to this, the sleeve was the primary receptacle for the things for which we now use handkerchiefs or tissues. Stella Mary Newton, in her Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince,  does not find any evidence of handkerchief use in the courts of Europe. This seems to counter the theory that Richard picked up this "foppish" practice from France.* We know the Romans used a piece of cloth called a sudarium for wiping sweat, but that is not likely where Richard got the idea, since there is no evidence that the sudarium survived as a custom in Europe. So maybe Richard did invent the pocket handkerchief.

For more details, see Margaret Roe Designs, who also covers the Roman use of the sudarium.

*Richard was raised in France, where his father, Edward the Black Prince, held much land thanks to Edward III's successes in the Hundred Years War. In fact, it's pretty certain that Richard never bothered to learn English.