Daily Medieval

During the Battle of Neville's Cross , when King David II of Scotland heeded France's request to attack England as part of their Aul...

In listing the Great Twelve Livery Companies of medieval London in the order of preference given to them, I deliberately skipped over explai...

The Royal Touch was not just for scrofula , nor was it just a simple touch. Epilepsy was another disease that would bring folk to the king ...

North of the Pyrenees in what we now think of as southwestern France is an area the Romans called Aquitania from the Latin aqua , "wate...

Primogeniture is actually a "generic" term for different systems of inheritance. The desire by human beings to create a system tha...

Simon of Sudbury, or just Simon Sudbury, was one of those people who shows up here and there, for instance during the Peasants' Revolt w...

A stannary was an administrative division in the counties of Cornwall and Devon based on tin-mining. The term comes from Middle English sta...

Wool is different from hair in that it has a natural "crimp" to it that allows the fibers to bind together. This, and the fact tha...

Before we talk about the wool trade, I think a few words about the history of wool is a good start. There is evidence that sheep were domest...

To sum up yesterday's post : France considered Flanders their territory, Flanders under Count Robert III fought a war about that and los...

Whan Adam delf, and Eve span, Wo was thanne a gentilman? This was part of a sermon allegedly delivered in Blackheath the night before that g...

King John the Good of France was captured during the Battle of Poitiers in 1356 and taken to England as a hostage, hosted by King Edward. He...

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 E...

(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 Fra...

Simply put, the Hundred Years War was an argument over the rightful ruler(s) of England and France. Officially, it ran from 1337 to 1453, ma...