Daily Medieval

When the Mayor of London says you have to dress for dinner, you dress for dinner . On the Feast of Pentecost in 1382, the Mayor of London an...

Sometimes the "punishment" was more of a restriction. Take the case of Thomas Welford, who sold salted herring. He had a ship dock...

We've talked about death and destruction in war, and all sorts of dangerous and aggressive behavior that is not seen in modern day-to-da...

William of Malmesbury tells us that William the Conqueror fell from his horse in summer of 1087 while fighting on the continent and suffer...

Moses of Oxford was one of the most prominent scholars and legal minds in Anglo-Jewry of the 13th century. Born in Oxford to a four-generati...

We think of the Magna Carta as an important moment in legislative history, when laws forced a king to relinquish some power to others of le...

The King of Jerusalem, Aimery of Lusignan , had a problem with his seneschal, Ralph of Saint-Omer: he accused the seneschal (who had hopes o...

With Dafydd ap Gruffudd executed for high treason and Wales under his control, it was time for Edward to establish the government he wanted...

Yesterday we learned about Hywel Dda ("Howell the Good"), the 10th-century Welsh ruler, and mentioned that the parliament of Wale...

The Cinque Ports (Old French: "Five Harbors") were five towns on the southeast coast of England where the distance to the continen...

Trial by Ordeal took many forms in the ancient world and the Middle Ages. In a sense, it was an appeal to God to reveal the culprit. In Old ...

Hair is a fascinating resource. It is a crop that renews without any special tending, producing thread and cushioning. It can be cut, dyed, ...

Besides  Brehon Laws , Ireland had Cáin laws ( Cáin ="law"; redundant, I know) that were made with the help of church figures. Ado...

Congal Cáech was a king of the Irish province of Ulaid (on the north east coast) in the early 7th century. Cáech means  "squinting...

Early Irish law was called Brehon Law, a system of civil (not criminal) rules, some of which survived until the 17th century when they were ...

See Parts one and two . The outcome of the trial was dire for Alice, her maid Petronilla, and her stepson William Outlaw. There were others...

Read the first part here . Bishop Richard Ledrede wants to try the case himself. In those days bishops had their own courts separate from ci...

Simply put, possession of land equalled power. The laws of primogeniture and ultimogeniture existed to keep estates together. There were pla...

Recent posts discussed practices of inheritance such as primogeniture and ultimogeniture . There was also, evolving from the feudal system,...

We are accustomed to linking inheritance with a preference for the eldest, even without strict primogeniture involved. In New York State in...