The Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries

Greetings again and thanks for joining us as we continue examining topics which arise in Usurper’s Curse, the seventh book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries Series.  In this monthly posting, I am writing of the rebellion of Sir Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland, a real person, who makes an appearance in Usurper’s Curse.

Henry Percy had royal blood as a descendant of Henry III.  He was born in 1341 the son of Henry de Percy, 3^rd Baron Percy and died in 1408, two years after my novel is set.  He grew up in the reign of King Edward III, becoming the 4^th Baron Percy among his other titles and was given considerable authority by King Edward III in handling England’s problems with Scotland.

King Richard II made Percy the 1^st Earl of Northumberland in 1377.  The Percy family resided for many centuries in Alnwick Castle in Northumberland.  This ancient castle still stands today and is shown in various pictures in this posting.  The main gateway is shown on the left while the picture at the bottom is one I shot of my husband, Lou, photographing the castle from a distance.  Alnwick Castle has been used as a setting for many television programs and movies including two of the first Harry Potter films as the site of Quiddtich matches.

Sir Henry Percy was a high-ranking nobleman with royal ancestors and title.  As such, he would often support the king but would also challenge the monarch at other times.  In the reign of King Richard II, both Henry Percy and his son, known as Hotspur, were unhappy with Richard II and early on threw their support to Henry Bollingbrook in 1397.  When Henry usurped the crown from Richard in 1399 to become King Henry IV, Henry Percy was appointed Constable of England and granted the lordship of the Isle of Mann.

Sadly, this good relationship between King Henry and the earl did not last long.  After Percy and Hotspur were given the task of finding peace with Welsh rebels such as Owain Glyndwr, they started to disagree with Henry IV.  In 1402 at the Battle of Homildon Hill, they captured many Scottish nobles and then disagreed with Henry IV about whether those nobles should be ransomed.  The following year Henry Percy and Hotspur conspired against Henry IV in favor of Edmund Mortimer.  The Percy Rebellion failed, and Hotspur was killed in the Battle of Shrewsbury.

Percy lost his title as Constable of England and began to conspire with Owain Glyndwr and Edmund Mortimer against the king.  The three of them signed an agreement in 1405 indicating how they would divide up England if the usurper, Henry IV, could be overthrown.  Percy, however, became a fugitive for the rest of his life, and it is in this role that he appears in Usurper’s Curse.  I hope you find of interest how this fugitive encountered my heroine, the Lady Apollonia of Aust.

Greetings again and thanks for joining us as we continue examining topics which arise in Usurper’s Curse, the seventh book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries Series.  In this monthly posting, I am writing of “Lollardy”, a topic that makes an important appearance in this story.

“Lollardy” is a term referring to the reformed religious followers in England of the Oxford scholar John Wycliffe.  The term “Lollardy” was first used in England in 1387 by the Bishop of Worcester in whose diocese Usurper’s Curse is set.  The green areas in the map, shown below on the right, indicate that Lollardy had taken hold in Gloucestershire in the years before my novel is set there.

Some of Wycliffe’s ideas that appealed to Lollards were that scripture is the reliable guide to religious truth, that monastic life and the papacy were corrupt, and that transubstantiation during the mass and the sacrament of confession were untrue teachings.

John Wycliffe was the Prebend of Aust when Lady Apollonia was raising her five sons and, in my story, Wycliffe had an influence on the Lady’s middle son Thomas’ later decision to become a priest.  Wycliffe appeared in Effigy of the Cloven Hoof and “Lollardy”, appears again in Memento Mori among the merchant colleagues of Richard Windemere, Apollonia’s third husband.

Thomas Arundel, the Archbishop of Canterbury who also became Chancellor of England, plays an important role in Usurper’s Curse.  By the time of my story in 1406, Arundel had been a champion for many years of finding and punishing Lollards as heretics, and his pursuit of heretics is a recurring theme throughout Usurper’s Curse.  Nine years later, the Council of Constance declared that Wycliffe’s books should be burned, and later his body was taken from his grave and burned in 1428, 44 years after he died.

A well-known leader of the Lollard movement and its center in Bristol at the time of my story was John Purvey, a real-life character, who is introduced as a good friend to the fictional knight, Sir Julian Thurgood.  Although Wycliffe is credited with producing the first English translation of the bible in 1382, Purvey tried to make it more accessible and comprehensible in his revision of 1388.  Then, in 1401, he recanted when threatened with being burnt at the stake.  By the time of Usurper’s Curse, he had regretted his recantation and was again preaching Lollard ideas.  The next year, 1407, he was arrested and later died in prison from natural causes.

Another fictional character, Mark Marimon, a friend of Sir Julian Thurgood, meets Lady Apollonia while he is on the run because Marimon is suspected of being a Lollard heretic.  Purvey comes into my story because Sir Julian Thurgood was staying with him in Bristol, and it is Thurgood whom Apollonia seeks to come to Aust at the request of Mark Marimon.

Lady Apollonia’s brother, Ferdinand, Earl of Marshfield, was suspicious of Lollards.  Neither the Lady Apollonia nor anyone in her affinity identified themselves as Lollards, but she and several others were sympathetic to many on Wycliffe’s ideas about what needed reforming in the Roman Catholic Church.

Lollards persisted into the 16^th century and beyond and were largely absorbed into the various branches of Protestantism.

Please join us again next month.

Greetings again and thanks for joining us as we continue examining topics which arise in Usurper’s Curse, the seventh book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries Series.  In this monthly posting, I am writing of chivalry and knights, topics that make important appearances in this story.

Two fictitious knights appear in my novel who represent very different concepts of medieval knighthood.  Sir Julian Thurston of Wiltshire considers himself to be a knight errant while Sir Hardolph of Leicester is an example of a mercenary knight.  One of the most famous mercenary medieval knights in real life was John Hawkwood who was so honored in Florence, Italy, that his equestrian statue, shown below on the right, is featured in the nave of that city’s duomo.

The term “knight errant” came into use in the 14^th century for a romantic notion of knighthood that developed in earlier centuries as the knights of the round table or knights seeking the holy grail.  Sir Julian Thurston may have considered himself a knight errant, but the term “errant” refers to wandering or roving the countryside.  He did not wander around seeking knightly duels or courtly love, however.  Rather, he wanted to be of service to his king and would go wherever, to serve as needed.

The historian Ian Mortimer estimates there were about 1100 knights in England in the 14^th century.  Their rank in the nobility was ususally below that of barons but above esquires and gentlemen.  The armor they wore for fighting in combat or tournaments weighed between 80 and 100 pounds.  The effigy shown at the end of this posting is a 14^th century knight in his armor.

Mercenaries were people hired by a private individual or company for operations which may not relate to their king’s needs.  This idea goes back to ancient times and continued through the Middle Ages.

My heroine, the Lady Apollonia, suspects that Sir Hardolph had been hired by someone who was not acting in the best interests of King Henry IV of England.  Part of the mystery for her was whether her suspicions were true and, if so, who had hired Sir Hardolph.

Medieval chivalry is defined in the glossary of my novel as rules and ideal qualifications for a medieval knight: courage, courtesy, generosity, valour, and dexterity in arms.  This listing is obvious except for courtesy which had a somewhat different meaning in medieval times.  In the glossary of some of my novels, courtesy is described: “in the understanding of those followers of Julian of Norwich from about 1400, courtesy means loving respect implying not only indulgence of another but also goodness granted freely despite sinful behavior.  Mother Julian describes God as our ‘Courteous Lord’”.

A knight such as Sir Julian Thurston would have aspired to the idea of medieval chivalry while a mercenary knight such as Sir Hardolph would not.  The young man, named Waldef in my novel, aspired to chivalry as the dominating force guiding his life, extraordinary goals for a teenager.  For more details, read Usurper’s Curse.

Greetings again and thanks for joining us as we continue examining topics which arise in Usurper’s Curse, the seventh book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries Series.  During this new year, I will be posting monthly and this time, I am writing of medieval minstrels who make an important appearance in my story.

The term “minstrel” came into use in the 13^th century for an entertainer, that is: a juggler, an acrobat, a singer, or even a fool.  However, as early as Anglo-Saxon England, there were professional poets who sang their own poems.  Minstrels mainly performed, sang, and played music but also told tales and poetry.  These versatile entertainers could also perform acrobatics, juggling, and dancing.  The picture on the left shows the tumbler corbel in Exeter Cathedral in which an upside-down tumbler is atop a viol player, seeking to entertain the baby Jesus and his mother, Mary, who are depicted in another Exeter corbel just opposite them in the nave.  These minstrels believed that their talented performance was the greatest gift they could give to the newborn child and his mother.

Minstrel singers performed songs telling stories of distant places and events, both imaginary and historical.  Some of the instruments they used are shown above in a woodcut of the Beverley Minstrels.  From left to right, the instruments they are playing are area pipe and tabor, a fiddle, a wind instrument, a lute, and a shawm.

All these instruments are related to modern ones, but for example, the medieval violins did not have the waist or indentations on the sides which allow freer bowing on the modern instrument.  This lack of indentation can be seen in the fiddle held by the second Beverley minstrel in the drawing above as well as in the picture on the right of the fiddle from the Minstrel’s Gallery in Exeter Cathedral.  This is played by the fourth angel from the left of the dozen angel musicians on the front of that gallery which is shown below.

Since a medieval minstrel was an entertainer, his costume also represented this image.  Thus, it was common for medieval minstrels to wear bright multi-colored costumes and even the horses of medieval minstrels would display a colorful costume.

Minstrels were regularly employed by royalty and nobility, while others wandered about the country to find work.  It was such a troop in Usurper’s Curse that annually visited Ferdinando, the Earl of Marshfield and brother of Lady Apollonia, my heroine.  This troop of five men was led by Gero Hewyn.  Reg, Gero’s son-in-law, played the flute and drum.  Tibur, Reg’s brother, played the shawm and ocarina while the youngest member, Kew, played the viol.  The shawm was a precursor of the oboe and is played by the Beverley minstrel at the far right of the Beverley woodcut near the top of this posting.  It is also played by the third angel from the right in the Exeter Minstrel’s Gallery picture.  The ocarina is a modern name for a type of flute sometimes called a sweet potato flute as pictured below.  Notice how its shape differs from the tubular shape of a traditional flute.

Hope to see you again next month.

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Greetings again and thanks for joining us as we continue examining topics which arise in Usurper’s Curse, the seventh book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries Series.  This time I will speak of medieval medicine because it plays an important part in my story.  There are several medical problems that occur in Usurper’s Curse, not the least of which was the illness of King Henry IV and how it was treated.

Medieval medicine owed much to the ancient Greeks, especially Hippocrates, shown to the right, and Galen.  It also owed much to the Byzantine and Muslim worlds.  Muslim contributions included both the transmission of Greek medical wisdom and new ideas which they developed.  Hippocrates, living in the 5^th and early 4^th centuries BCE, was considered the Father of Medicine.  Much of what we know about him was passed down to us by Galen who was born in 129 CE and died around 216 CE.

Galen’s concepts of keeping the four body humors–blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm–in balance continued to be very important in medieval medicine.  An image of Galen is shown on the left.  Methods such as bloodletting, enemas, and even vomiting were used to try to balance Galen’s four humors from the first millennium right on through the medieval period.  Galen was also a skilled surgeon, even doing operations like modern cataract procedures.  His medical practice emphasized checking the pulse and examining the urine of a patient.

Turning to the Muslim contribution, there is a five-volume medical encyclopedia, The Canon of Medicine, authored by Ibn Sina at the beginning of the 11^th century.  It was used as a standard medieval text until the 18^th century in both the Muslim world and in Europe.

Despite these advances in formal medical practice over the centuries, it is true that superstition, astrology, folk remedies, and prayers to certain saints for intercession and healing played a major role in medical treatment in medieval England.  This led to practitioners consulting the signs of the zodiac, and it led to people often seeing illness as God’s judgment on some perceived sin.  Persons who were seen as helpful were often called healers.

Medieval healers ranged from those who were university trained doctors to surgeons who were trained by craft-guilds and on to barber-surgeons.  The first western school to be recognized in medicine was in Salerno, Italy, but by the time of my novel, there were other universities in Western Europe that were also important in this field.  An English Doctor of Physic, one who treated King Henry in my story, had been trained at Salerno.  Another medical practitioner in my novel, an Italian of dubious background, also plays a role.  He is eventually barred from treating King Henry IV, something which I based on a real event that occurred in the treatment of King Henry IV.

In the Middle Ages, surgery was not usually practiced by the university-trained doctors but by other practitioners as mentioned above.  Barbers were needed to do tonsures for medieval monks as well as haircuts for civilians.  They had the tools to cut into human flesh for medical reasons, including amputations that were often needed in military campaigns.  While other surgeons were apprenticed by craft guilds, university-trained doctors usually were limited to consulting about surgeries.  A doctor of physic, as mentioned above, was a medieval term commonly used for a physician or a medical doctor.

Join us next time when I will continue my discussion of topics from Usurper’s Curse.

Greetings again and thanks for joining us as we begin to examine topics which arise in Usurper’s Curse, the seventh book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries Series.  We begin our topics with King Henry IV, the accused usurper in my book title, shown above in the only portrait ever done in his lifetime, a miniature from about 1402.

In my blog posting of October 25, 2021, I referred to him as Henry Bolingbroke, a designation which reflects that Henry was born in Bolingbroke Castle.  His father was John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and third son of King Edward III, who referred to Henry as Henry of Lancaster.  Because Henry of Lancaster was King of England from 1399 to 1406 when Usurper’s Curse is set, here he is called King Henry IV.  In my October blog posting, I gave a brief description of his usurpation of the crown from his cousin King Richard II in 1399.  The picture shown below depicts Henry claiming the throne as he is flanked by his lords, both spiritual and noble.

King Henry IV was the first of four kings in just 84 years who usurped the throne of England, the others being Edward IV in 1461 and again in 1471, Richard III in 1483, and finally Henry VII in 1485.  As with other kings of that period, Henry IV is best known to many of us through Shakespeare’s so-called histories.  Shakespeare wrote plays that were influenced by the propaganda of the Tudor kings.  The Tudors sought to justify the usurpation of Henry Tudor who could not claim the throne through inheritance but claimed it through conquest at the Battle of Bosworth against Richard III and became King Henry VII.

The subject of this post, however, the Lancastrian King Henry IV, was a much more complicated ruler than Shakespeare portrays in parts 1 or 2 of his history plays.  Some have called Henry IV the most enigmatic ruler since the Norman Conquest.  Others say he was the most intellectual of the medieval kings of England.  His model for kingship was his grandfather King Edward III, not his despotic cousin, King Richard II.

There is a great contrast between Henry’s life before his coronation in 1399, shown on the left, and his 13 years as ruler.  In the first 32 years of his life before he became king in 1399, he was a man of good health who was a famous knight, one of the most admired in England at jousting.  There was great competition between top knights of England and those of France in 1390.  Henry was judged by the French to be the best of the English in the tournament.

A devout man, Henry of Lancaster went on crusades to Latvia and Lithuania as well as a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.  He later vowed that he would lead a crusade to once again free Jerusalem from the infidels.

All of this is in great contrast with the thirteen years of his reign after usurping the English throne from King Richard II.  He was plagued by sickness through most of that reign, especially troubled with serious skin problems, though most scholars believe he did not suffer from leprosy.  As Henry IV is monarch of England at the time of the setting of Usurper’s Curse, I have brought him and other real persons into my story, also used such facts that foreign doctors were eventually banned from serving the sickly king, and that the king spent some time recuperating in Lambeth Palace under the auspices of the Archbishop of Canterbury Arundel.  A great contrast to Henry’s earlier vigorous life as a knight, such unmanning sickness and suffering was viewed by some as a curse upon him for his usurpation of the throne and his likely cause of the death of Richard II.  Many at that time believed that such human struggles were punishment from God for acts that a person had committed.

Please join us next time when we will continue discussing topics from Usurper’s Curse.

Greetings!  Thanks for joining us as we finish examining topics which arise in King Richard’s Sword, the sixth book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries.

Each of my books has a glossary to define medieval terms which may be unfamiliar to the modern reader or had different meanings than in the present time.  For example, chivalry is defined as “Rules and ideal qualifications of a medieval knight: courage, courtesy, generosity, valour and dexterity in arms.”

In turn, courtesy “In the understanding of those followers of Julian of Norwich from about 1400, is not meant to be understood as excellence of manners or polite behaviour.  Courtesy means loving respect implying not only indulgence of another but also goodness granted freely regardless of sinful behaviour.  Mother Julian describes God as our ‘Courteous Lord’”.  As you can see, the medieval word “courtesy” had connotations beyond Emily Post and others influencing our manners.  A drawing of my heroine, the Lady Apollonia of Aust who is a fan of Mother Julian, is shown on the lower right.

Lady Apollonia is described as a vowess in several of my novels.  This vocation is the choice she makes after having been widowed a third time, as described in Templar’s Prophecy, set in 1395, and in my novels which are set later, such as King Richard’s Sword.  In the glossary, vowess is defined as “A ceremony performed before witnesses during mass where a kneeling widow was asked by the bishop if she desired to be a spouse of Christ.  The vow was restricted to the obligation of perpetual chastity and in no way curtailed the activities of the vowess.  She was able to remain in the world and not be confined to a monastic life.”

The motivation for Apollonia to become a vowess included several aspects of the definition.  By becoming a spouse of Christ, she was able to protect herself from another marriage.  As a wealthy widow, she was vulnerable to being involuntarily grabbed by a powerful man to be his wife, simply for her money.  By remaining single, she retained her independence and control of her many assets.  The Lady was a devout Christian, but being a vowess did not require her to go into a convent.  Therefore, she could remain in the world and deal with various mysterious problems that came her way.  A drawing of Lady Apollonia as a vowess appears at the end of this blog post.

“Gangs” is another term that occurs in many of my novels, including King Richard’s Sword.  It is not in my glossary, for in modern life, criminal gangs have been a major problem yet have not been a problem just for our day.  Gangs were also a threatening part of medieval life in England.  We are all aware of the Robin Hood stories from the medieval period with their romantic plots of robbing the rich and helping the poor.  Gangs may have inspired some of the Robin Hood tales, but the reality more frequently was that medieval gangs in England performed their criminal acts for their own benefit and often these gangs were led by noble persons and others of exalted position.

So, I have used the idea of gangs in many of my novels, including King Richard’s Sword where I have used a disreputable monk leading a gang.  Two of the worst villains in my series are female gang leaders but I have even employed competing gangs in the same story.  This use of gangs in my stories is not out of line with the actual history of medieval England.

Greetings!  Please join me today as we continue to examine topics which arise in King Richard’s Sword, the sixth book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries.  This post will focus upon King Richard II of England whose reign of two decades ended during the time in which King Richard’s Sword is set.

King Richard II is probably least known of the three Richards who have ruled England, even though his reign was about a decade longer than that of Kings Richard I and III combined.  Many of us were taught that King Richard I, known as King Richard the Lionheart, was famous as a Crusader.  Yet, he spent little of his almost ten years as king in England itself.  Similarly, we often learned of King Richard III through Shakespeare’s play about him.  This drama is a view of Richard III’s short reign from 1483-1485 which is greatly biased toward the viewpoint of the Tudors who overthrew him.

Few of us as Americans learned much in school about England’s King Richard II who came to the throne at the age of 10 on June 22, 1377, and he gave it up on September 29, 1399.  He was ruling England by 1380, the year when I set my second book, Plague of a Green Man.  The end of his reign in 1399 occurred during the time when King Richard’s Sword was set.  His portrait from the mid-1390’s is shown on the upper left, one of the first portraits of an English monarch that was done in the monarch’s lifetime.

Richard was the last hereditary ruler of England who traced his lineage back to William the Conqueror.  His father, the so-called Black Prince, died in 1376, the year before the death of his grandfather, King Edward III.  Richard, next in line, was always determined to be a great king, but physically unable to be a great knight like his father.  No official regent was named when he became king at age ten; instead regency councils, heavily influenced by his uncles including the wealthy John of Gaunt, guided the country.

When, in 1381 at age 14, Richard faced his first great crisis, the Peasants’ Revolt, he played a critical role in suppressing that uprising.  That revolt was primarily to the south and east of London, and as it moved into London itself, Richard began to assert his independence in dealing personally with the crisis.

Richard II was less inclined to militarism than his father or grandfather and instead created a more refined atmosphere in court.  In the Wilton Diptych, shown above and painted in his lifetime, we see Richard, kneeling on the left, with several saints: John the Baptist, Edward the Confessor, and Edmund the Martyr.  The latter two were patron saints of England before the 15^th century when St. George assumed that role.  The left panel of the diptych faces the Virgin Mother and infant Jesus on the right panel surrounded by a group of angels.

In early 1382, Richard II married Anne of Bohemia who was the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor.  This marriage was important for diplomatic reasons but was childless.  It turned into a marriage of love, however, and Richard became quite dependent on Anne.  When she died from the plague in 1394, he was devasted.

Richard II’s early military ventures came to naught, yet he did seek to end the Hundred Years’ War in France.  However, as king, he depended on a small number of courtiers and a private retinue for protection.  This was not popular with much of the nobility.  Richard’s relationship with John of Gaunt was helpful but deteriorated when Gaunt departed England in 1386 to pursue a claim as King of Castile.  For these and other reasons, a crisis developed in 1387 when a group of aristocrats known as the Lords Appellant seized control of the government for two years.  By 1389, Richard was 22 years old and regained control, in part due to mistakes made by the Lords Appellant.

He ruled the next eight years working with the Appellants and others.  John of Gaunt, returned to England and was supportive.  His uncle’s rebuilding of Kenilworth Castle may have inspired Richard to rebuild Westminster Hall into its present form.  Westminster Hall is the oldest part of the present British Parliament Building.  A picture of its vast, open interior without support columns is shown below.  In 1394-1395, Richard intervened successfully in Ireland to bring troublesome Irish into line.

Still, this generally peaceful period was not without its problems.  Betrothal for a second marriage was arranged for Richard, this time with six-year-old Isabella, daughter of King Charles VI of France.  Meanwhile, Richard was secretly waiting for an opportunity to take revenge on the Lords Appellant, and he did just that in 1377 by arranging for Parliament to revoke their pardons of eight years earlier.  The king developed his personal bodyguard of archers in Chester, and as he became pressed financially, he seized the sizable inheritance of John of Gaunt’s son, Henry Bolingbrook, Duke of Hereford, who was in exile after his father’s death.   Exhibiting a false sense of security and self-confidence, Richard grew more unpopular even though by 1399 he was requiring loyalty oaths from many people.

In 1399, the king embarked on another expedition to Ireland, but this time, rebellion began in England, led by Henry Bolingbrook, returned from exile, and seeking to regain his inheritance.  As support mounted against the king in England, Richard returned to Wales from Ireland.  Bolingbrook’s strong forces moved westward into Wales where Richard and his weak forces were intercepted.  At Flint, Richard resigned his throne on September 29, 1399, leading to Bolingbrook becoming King Henry IV.  Richard was held, eventually in Pontefract Castle where he died around February 1400, probably from starvation.

Please join us next time when I will deal with several other interesting medieval topics from King Richard’s Sword.

Greetings!  Today, we continue to examine some of the topics which arise in King Richard’s Sword, the sixth book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery series.  We are currently discussing the ancient city of Worcester, the setting for the novel.  This posting will continue the medieval history of Worcester by focusing on Worcester Cathedral.

I mentioned in my posting of August 23, 2021, that Worcester Cathedral has a history going back to AD 680.  That is 1341 years ago, over a millennium and a third.  Those of us who are Americans find such longevity amazing and can hardly imagine an organization existing and thriving for such a period.  It is true that there are no longer any remnants of the first cathedral building in Worcester, but the cathedra, that is, the throne of the Bishop of Worcester, has been at this same site throughout these many centuries.

In my earlier postings about Worcester, I mentioned that two Saxon bishops, Oswald and Wulfstan, later became saints after each contributed to the development of the cathedral.  Oswald, in the late 10^th century, brought the running of the cathedral under a single monastic order, the Benedictines.  Thus, Worcester Priory and Worcester Cathedral became linked together before the end of the first millennium, a situation that continued up to and beyond the time of my novel at the end of the 14^th century.  Wulfstan started a new church building, a model of which is shown above at the start of this post.  The crypt of that 11^th century church does survive under today’s mostly Gothic church building.

King John of Magna Carta fame took a special interest in Worcester.  On his deathbed, he added a codicil to his will stipulating that he wished to be buried in Worcester Cathedral.  His death occurred in AD 1216 and his wishes were honored, so his tomb, as pictured above, sits today in front of the high altar of Worcester Cathedral.

The present building, called the Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Mary the Virgin, of Worcester, was constructed between AD 1084 (the crypt) and 1504 and represents architectural styles from Norman to Early English Gothic right through to Perpendicular Gothic.  In the picture to the left, I am sitting in the nave taking in the splendid Gothic interior as it would have appeared at the time of King Richard’s Sword.

The medieval version of the church was much as we see it today, but it did feature a separate tower called the Clochium on the north side of the church.  The Clochium was a massive, octagonal stone structure with a spire on top, probably used to toll the hours of the Opus Dei before the central tower of the Gothic structure was built.  The drawing of the medieval cathedral and priory above shows how the Clochium was higher than any other feature of the medieval buildings.  Early in my novel, when the Lady Apollonia visited the priory, she had to walk past the Clochium to enter the cathedral through the north door.

In 1987, the remains of a medieval pilgrim were found in Worcester Cathedral.  Objects found with his remains indicated that he had traveled to Santiago de Compostela in Spain and made other pilgrimages as well.  He had been wounded on his journeys, but the quality of his clothes indicated that he was comparatively wealthy, although probably not a knight or nobleman.  A drawing of the so-called Worcester Pilgrim is shown on the left.  The pilgrim inspired one of my characters in King Richard’s Sword, a wealthy merchant named Robert Kenwood.

This next picture shows me examining some ruins next to the eastern south transept off the Choir of Worcester Cathedral.  This was once the east wall of the Guesten Hall in Worcester Priory where visitors were lodged under the care of the priory’s Hospitaller.  In my novel, I chose it as a place for Brandon Landow, the pardoner, to stay when he was trying to sell a fake relic to the monks of Worcester Priory.

Please join us next time when I will tell of some of the characteristics of King Richard II whose loss of his crown by usurpation occurred at the time of my story.  For now, however, I leave you with a picture below of the glorious Worcester Cathedral as it appears from across the River Severn.

Greetings!  Today, we continue to examine some of the topics which arise in King Richard’s Sword, the sixth book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries.  We are focusing on the ancient city of Worcester, the setting for the novel.  In my last post, I began to discuss the medieval history of Worcester from the time of the Norman Conquest in AD 1066; this will continue that history.

I have mentioned that Worcester was well situated on a trade route from England to Wales.  In the medieval period, guilds began to develop in some trades.  The Guild of Merchants in Worcester was incorporated in the 13^th century and was the dominant guild by the time of my novel.

There are many houses remaining in Worcester from the medieval period.  A number of them were built by wealthy merchants and inspired my image of the city as I wrote the story.  For example, an ancient jettied house on New Street is shown above on the left.

Several of these medieval houses are on Friary Street and one, in particular, stands out.  It is called Greyfriars House and was my inspiration for Aust House in my story.  This house and Friary Street are named for the defunct Greyfriars Friary which was in this part of the city.  It was once thought that Greyfriars House served guests of the priory, but it was, in fact, built by a merchant.  The building is now run by the National Trust.  Its exterior is shown on the right side of the picture above while its back garden appears below.  Another building on Friary Street is shown at the end of this posting.

Worcester Cathedral is a glorious medieval building with both Norman and Gothic architecture in its construction.  I will deal with it specifically in the next posting.  Other city buildings from the medieval period include the Commandery which I mentioned in my last posting.

There was a Jewish presence in Worcester, but they were much persecuted in the 13^th century and expelled in AD 1275.  This had implications for my story because I create a Worcester character in King Richard’s Sword who becomes friends with my heroine, Lady Apollonia.  She learns that he is troubled by the recent revelation that one of his ancestors was a Jew who converted to Christianity to prevent being expelled in the 13^th century.

Another implication of the Jewish expulsion involves the lending of money.  Before AD 1275, the Jews in Worcester had been useful as money lenders because the Roman Catholic Church frowned on Christians lending money and charging interest.   As the merchant class was growing in the 14^th century people needed to borrow money to grow their businesses.  When Jews were no longer resident in England, the only lenders were individuals who did not feel bound by the Christian sanction against lending.  This led to some despicable characters who practiced usury, the lending of money at unreasonably high rates of interest.  Some of the villains in my story were usurious and took advantage of Worcester people who needed money, trapping them in the exorbitant interest rates they charged.

Please join us next time when I will focus on the ancient history of Worcester Cathedral.