Daily Medieval

Charlemagne's first son was named Pepin. Shortly after his birth he developed a spinal deformity that has caused historians to refer to...

In William Shakespeare's Richard III , someone refers to Richard as “that foule hunch-backt toade.” It's the first recorded instance...

Richard of Conisburgh, 3rd Earl of Cambridge, was one of the chief conspirators of the Southampton Plot to eliminate Henry V and replace h...

I mentioned yesterday the links between the three men who hatched the Southampton Plot to assassinate Henry V and put Edmund Mortimer on ...

People in England during the reign of Henry V were still trying to use Edmund Mortimer as a focal point for a rebellion. Edmund's sist...

Although he was a thorn in the side of King Henry IV —because he had a greater claim to the throne and was used as a focal point for rebelli...

Young Edmund Mortimer , who was the heir-presumptive of Richard II with the strongest claim to the throne of England, was being raised by th...

Although Edmund Mortimer was only seven years old when Henry Bolingbroke usurped the throne from Richard II, he was a potential political ...

When Henry Bolingbroke decided in 1399 to return from exile in France and force his cousin, King Richard II, to return to him the propertie...

After the Trial by Combat affair in 1398 between Henry Bolingbroke and Thomas Mowbray (which was supposed to be to the death), King Richar...

Henry Bolingbroke and his cousin, Richard, were childhood friends, but when they were older Henry became one of the Lords Appellant  in 138...

I mentioned yesterday that Henry Bolingbroke , son of John of Gaunt, married Mary de Bohun, through whom he inherited the title Earl of Here...

I wrote not too long ago about Bolingbroke and his adversarial relationship with his cousin, Richard II. It might be useful to see him as a...

The Lords Appellant must have felt they had done good service to the kingdom of England after the Merciless Parliament  of 1388 eliminated ...

After the Merciless Parliament  in 1388 had eliminated the five specific advisors to Richard II that they considered the most corrupt, the L...

A few years back I offered a brief look at the Lords Appellant , the group put in charge of England because of the excesses in the administr...

We know little of Thomas Usk's early life except that he was born in London. The name Usk appears in several records, but we cannot link...

After the populist mayor of London John Northampton was defeated in the election of 1383 by Nicholas Brembre , Brembre worked to overturn a...

Proving that "what goes around comes around"—although we should probably just allude to the medieval concept of the  Wheel of Fort...

Despite his past as a troublemaker being involved in public brawls, even being imprisoned in the Tower for a time because of one in 1371, Jo...

1376 was a time of unrest in England under King Edward III. The court was considered corrupt, the wealth gap was increasing, the common peop...

John Northampton was a citizen of London his whole life, from a decent-sized family (two brothers and two sisters). He became a cloth mercha...

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...

We started a conversation yesterday on the use of urine by medieval Western European physicians to determine health. I thought today we...

Last post mentioned that a medieval illustrator indicated a physician by showing him holding a flask. There was a very specific substance i...

We've been talking about blood as food , and some recipes using blood in cooking, but now let's talk about health-related blood. Bl...

We talked yesterday about preparing and preserving blood for culinary use, now let's look at some more specific uses in medieval cuisin...