Daily Medieval

The controversy between King Henry II and his best friend, Thomas Becket, was far from the only clash between temporal and ecclesiastical p...

One of the Keepers of the Wardrobe for five years (1290 - 1295) under Edward I was Walter Langton (1243 - 1321). He used the surname Langt...

Eleanor of Castile, as Queen of England, wanted advantageous marriages for her children. She and Edward I had 16 or more, but although many ...

Eleanor of Castile (1241 - 1290) was not always well-liked by the English. Although she was performing the expected duty of providing childr...

Ferdinand III of Castile and his queen, Joan the Countess of Ponthieu, had two children together. One, a son named Ferdinand, went on to bec...

( Part One ) So the 13 claimants for the throne of Scotland came down to the four most likely candidates. The  An t-Adhbhar Mòr  (Scottish G...

After the death of Alexander III of Scotland and his granddaughter, Margaret , the problem of who would rule Scotland rose again in Septemb...

When King Alexander III of Scotland died unexpectedly , the only heir to the throne was his granddaughter in Norway, Margaret. He had named ...

Last week, a young co-worker expressed his disbelief that there were ever things like outhouses. I told him that I had used an outhouse many...

Isabella of France was the only surviving daughter of King Philip IV of France and Joan I of Navarre, promised to the Prince of Wales (later...

One of the complaints about King Edward II of England by his barons was that he took the wrong people into his confidence and acted on thei...

When King Edward I of England was a teenager , he chose to side with his father's critics. His father, Henry III, refused to speak to hi...

Edward Caernarvon (princes were named for the location of their birth) was born 25 April 1284 to Edward I and Eleanor, Countess of Ponthieu....

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 ...

...are the hands of a healer." This line from The Lord of the Rings  sounds fantastical, but as a first-rate historian and medievalist,...

Lord Edward returned from the Ninth Crusade to a country that had not had a king in residence for a couple years. His father, Henry III, ha...

In 1271, Edward, Duke of Gascony, went on a continuation of the Eighth Crusade that is sometimes called the Ninth Crusade and sometimes Lord...

The future King Edward I (pictured here with his wife Eleanor and showing his reported blepharoptosis , drooping left eye) did not always su...

When Alfonso X of Castile looked northward over the Pyrenees and cast his eye on Gascony, Henry III of England decided he needed to do somet...

When Henry III's eldest son was born on 18 June 1239, he gave him an unusual name. Edward was an Anglo-Saxon name, in a court that spoke...