The Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries

The second chapter of Ian Mortimer’s book, The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England, is entitled: The Medieval People.  It is natural to wonder how similar and how different were medieval people from modern ones.  Evolution dictates that some characteristics change slowly while technological progress may be rapid.

The average height of 14^th century English males was 5’ 7”, for females, 5’ 2”, not much below modern standards.  Yet, there are some striking contrasts.  Medieval English people would seem very young to us.  Almost forty percent were under the age of fifteen.  Less than five percent of 14^th century English people were at least 65.  The median age then was 21.  Now it is 38.

This meant that young men often had responsibilities which would be unthinkable today.  In some towns, boys as young as 12 served on juries.  King Edward III declared war on the Scots and led his outnumbered army against them at age 20.  Today he would be too young to be a Member of Parliament.  Prince Edward at Crecy led the foremost battalion of the army when just 16 years of age.  In general, men were considered in their prime in their twenties, mature in their thirties, and old in their forties.  A woman was considered in her prime by age 17, mature by 25, and old by 35.

Another aspect of the English population is that it shrunk from 5 million in 1300 to about half that number during the period of my novels (1380-1406).  England did not regain 5 million until the 1630’s.  The Great Plague in 1348-1349 accounted for much of that drop but not all.  There was a drop of around 10 percent between 1315 and 1325.  Another quarter of the population was lost in the second half of the 14^th century.  Think how much wisdom and expertise were not available by the combination of the younger age distribution and the population reduction.

Medieval people were part of a class system which traditionally had three estates.  This divided people into those who fought, those who prayed, and those who worked, in other words: the nobility, the clergy, and the peasants.  Of these, most literacy was found in the nobility and the clergy, with most peasants being illiterate.  The latter was by far the largest group.  The picture at the top is a display in the Corinium Museum in Cirencester which shows various classes of medieval people.  The top row shows a king, nobility, and clergy while the bottom row shows a knight, a burgess, and a peasant.

In the 14^th century, this pattern of classes was still important, but changes were underway.  The nobles who did the fighting were joined by the English longbowmen who came out of the class that worked.  These longbowmen allowed greatly outnumbered English armies to triumph in such battles as Crecy and Agincourt.  Another change in the 14^th century was the rising importance of the merchants.  These were not nobles or clergymen, but they often were literate and came into wealth that matched or exceeded that of noblemen.

Noblemen were very few, starting with the king.  Below the monarch were less than a hundred dukes, earls, and barons.  Next came over a thousand knights.  Some 10,000 esquires and gentlemen had lands which earned income.  The number of nobles and their families made up just a fraction of one percent of the population.  Lady Apollonia was the daughter of an Earl of Marshfield and the sister of the next Earl.

The clergy were more numerous, perhaps about 30,000.  Archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, canons, and archdeacons had a hierarchy like the nobles.  Below these were rectors, vicars, chaplains, friars, minor clergy, and hermits.  Much of the clergy were monastic.  They had to be at least 18 years old and comprised over two percent of the adult population.

In the social hierarchy, mayors of cities and incorporated towns were on a level with knights.  Merchants were becoming important in the 14^th century.  Lady Apollonia’s second husband, Edward of Aust, was a franklin.  He owned property in Aust and elsewhere, including Exeter House in my second novel, Plague of a Green Man, and he was also a successful merchant.  He was below the nobility.  Hence, Apollonia married below her class when she was wed to Edward.  Still, he was her most beloved husband.

It is easy to classify those who worked in medieval England as just peasants, but it wasn’t that simple.  I have already suggested that merchants and franklins enjoyed a social status just below the nobility or the landed gentry as the lower nobility came to be known.  Working people were not known at the time as peasants.  There was concern with differences among working people.  Were they born to servitude?  Were they subject to a lord?  Were they free men?  What skills did they have?  Working people who had responsibilities such as a reeve or a constable were often resented by other workers.

Even servants could enjoy a good quality of life.  Consider Lady Apollonia’s affinity.  Her maid, Nan, came to Apollonia’s attention when Nan was a little girl.  She learned to speak properly and assumed considerable responsibility in the Lady’s household throughout her adult years.  Many servants did not fit our stereotype of the medieval peasant.

In this age of concern about lack of equal pay for equal work and growing awareness of sexual harassment in the workplace, I want to address the place of women in medieval England.  Men were described by what they did, but women by their marital status: maiden, married, nun, or widow.  A woman was dependent on the person who supported her, her father or husband, for example.  Married women had few legal rights and were much dominated by their husbands who often were forced upon them.  This was true irrespective of class.

My heroine, Lady Apollonia, was unusual in being able to attain her sovereignty after surviving three husbands who left her with considerable assets.  She was ripe for some man to claim her and assume control of those assets.  She avoided this by becoming a vowess in a ceremony performed before witnesses during mass where she, as a widow, was asked by the Bishop of Worcester if she desired to be the spouse of Christ.  By taking this vow, she assumed an obligation of perpetual chastity but was able to remain in the world and not be confined to monastic life.  The church protected her in this way from any more marriages.

The first chapter of Ian Mortimer’s book, The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England, is entitled: The Medieval Landscape.  The landscape of England at the time of my novels was essentially rural.  Cities in the year 1377 were very small by modern standards.  London was the largest city in England at 40,000, followed by York at 12,000.  The largest city in the West Country was Bristol at 10,000.  Gloucester, the setting for my third novel, Memento Mori, was 16^th largest in all of England with 3,700.  It had the biggest population among the cities in which I set my stories.  Exeter, where the second novel, Plague of a Green Man, is set, had 2,400, as did Worcester, where the sixth novel, King Richard’s Sword, takes place.  A drawing of Exeter at the top, done two centuries after my story, shows the city much as it would have been in 1380.  Most of the cities were surrounded by walls, as we can see in the drawing of Exeter.  These cities were small, but other settings of my novels in the towns of Cirencester and Glastonbury and the village of Aust were smaller still.

The population figures given above for cities represent the number of permanent residents.  These numbers would have been supplemented by visitors passing through these cities or residing temporarily at the many inns which they contained.  People were attracted to urban areas from the surrounding countryside every day to take advantage of their regular markets.  Clergy, merchants, messengers, king’s officers, judges, clerks, master masons, carpenters, painters, pilgrims, itinerant preachers, and musicians came to cities looking for employment.

Even the smaller towns of Cirencester, the setting for Templar’s Prophecy, and Glastonbury, setting for Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure, had markets, monasteries, and special services which drew people from outside.  The tiny village of Aust, setting for Effigy of the Cloven Hoof and Usurper’s Curse, was a terminus of the southernmost ferry from England to Wales.  Many people passed through Aust on their journeys between England and Wales.

The cities usually had walls for defence, and the main streets within the walls were often those that led from the principal gates.  Along these main streets, people who could afford it lived in nice three-storey buildings which were long and narrow.  This was the case for Lady Apollonia in Memento Mori.  She lived in Windemere House on West Gate Street in Gloucester.  The ground floor was sometimes used for commercial purposes with the upper floors providing residential space.  As one got away from these finer parts of cities, the buildings were smaller, the lanes were narrower, and everything was less attractive.

Churches dominated the landscape of many urban areas.  The cathedrals in Exeter and Worcester were massive compared with buildings around them.  The same can be said for the monastic churches in Gloucester, Cirencester, and Glastonbury.  Even in the village of Aust, the parish church sits at a high point and stands in a dominating position over the village.  All the churches in my settings, except the monastic churches in Cirencester and Glastonbury, exist today and are still prominent in the modern landscape.  In medieval times, there were walls around many of these church and monastic precincts.  A castle may have occupied a tenth of a city’s area.  Half the area within a city’s walls was often devoted to religious institutions and the castle.  This meant that space for residents could be very precious.

The amount of the landscape in the vast countryside with trees was about seven percent, much the same as today.  Yet, the woods were carefully managed in medieval times because people were very dependent on wood as a fuel and for other purposes.  Some wood had to be imported from Scandinavia and other places for special purposes because the number of varieties of trees in England was limited.

The fourteenth century landscape of England was affected by various factors beyond the control of man.  For example, the mean temperature dropped by one degree Celsius between 1300 and 1400.  This doesn’t sound like much, but it changed England from a country which produced much wine in 1300 to one that could only import that beverage a hundred years later.  The climate change resulting from this temperature drop sometimes brought too much rainfall and a host of related problems such as crops rotting in the fields.

Another factor on the changing landscape was the series of attacks of plague visiting England starting in mid-14^th-century.  The plague reduced the population by a third or more which meant that some farmland had to change its use to grazing for lack of manpower to tend crops.

Rivers and harbours sometimes silted up causing devastation to some towns.  At the same time, reclamation of lowlands in the fens of East Anglia and in the Somerset Levels changed wetlands into farmland.  This was occurring around Glastonbury at the time of my fifth novel, Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure.

London does not have a major role in my first six novels, but it does play a significant part in the forthcoming seventh book, Usurper’s Curse.  Therefore, I will mention its relationship to the landscape.  I have already indicated that it was more than three times larger than any other city in England.  It was also richer, more vibrant and polluted, and most powerful, colourful, violent, and diverse.  The largest cities on the continent were Bruges, Ghent, Paris, Venice, Florence, and Rome, all with at least 50,000.  London is the only English city that can be compared with these.  Also, Westminster which housed some government functions was connected to London by the Strand.  Yet, much of the government was itinerant.  King Richard II held his parliaments in various cities including Gloucester.

For over a year I have been posting information about the venues in which the first six novels of my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries have been set.  I have supplemented these posts with others about some medieval phenomenon such as the plague which has appeared in one of my stories.  I have also posted links for purchasing paperback or ebook versions of my books.

These blog posts have been supplemented with posts on three Facebook pages: My own Ellen Foster author page, a Lady Apollonia page, and the personal page of my husband, Louis Foster.  Each of these Facebook postings has included a short text along with one or two pictures.  Most of the pictures were taken by my husband in the parts of the West Country of England which I have described in my blog.

Currently I am writing the seventh and last novel in the series, Usurper’s Curse.  It is set in Lady Apollonia’s home village of Aust in 1408 but has many scenes set in London at the time of King Henry IV, the usurper who deposed King Richard II in 1399.  There will be more to say in future blog posts about the new story when it is closer to publication.

Meanwhile, I intend to use this blog in the coming months to discuss some general topics about medieval England.  I plan to base my postings on the table of contents in Ian Mortimer’s book, The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century.  The front jacket cover of the American edition is pictured above.  Ian Mortimer has also written other books dealing with my period.  One that I have found these to be very helpful in my current project is The Fears of Henry IV: The life of England’s Self-Made King.

Topics for my monthly postings will include the landscape, the people, the medieval character, basic elements, what to wear, travelling, where to stay, what to eat and drink, health and hygiene, the law, and what to do.  As I deal with these topics I hope to relate them to my stories.  Next month the topic will be the medieval landscape of England.

Worcester Cathedral from across the River Severn

Last month, I posted articles on this blog related to King Richard’s Sword, the sixth novel written in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series.  This story is set in Worcester, England, in 1399-1400.  If you have enjoyed reading the posts about medieval Worcester and have not yet read my story, this might be a good time to order it.

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King Richard’s Sword, the sixth book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries, is set in the city of Worcester in the years 1399-1400.  At that time, the cathedral church was a priory as described in my previous posting.  The cathedral and priory play an important role in my story.

Saint Wulfstan is credited with planning and starting construction of many monastic buildings of the priory which was associated with the cathedral.  These were largely completed after his death in the first quarter of the 12^th century.  There are some traces of what may be Anglo-Saxon or pre-Norman architecture in the cloister of Worcester Cathedral.  These traces are found in all the walls of the cloister except the north wall.  This suggests to me that the cloister, the refectory, and perhaps the dormitory may have been started before the Norman Conquest in 1066.

The chapter house was not started until the beginning of the 12^th century after Wulfstan’s death but was completed by 1125.  Its Norman work was unusual because it was circular on the interior and polygonal on the outside.  The central pillar has a base which is 13^th century.  Further revisions were executed in the 14^th century, giving the chapter house a mixture of Norman and Gothic styles by the time of my novel.  That is still the case today.

Saint Wulfstan started his new church in 1084 from which the crypt still survives under the quire of the present church.  The crypt and the part of the cathedral directly above it were completed in 1089.  Wulstan’s church plain and massive, and plastered and white-washed inside and out.  The footprint of his church was essentially the same as that of the nave, the main transepts, and the western part of the quire of the modern church.

Two Western bays of the nave were rebuilt in Transitional Style around 1170.  A fire in 1113 (which I mentioned in my posting of October 17) and a tower collapse in 1175 contributed to a need for major restoration of the church.  This was almost complete by 1218, so King Henry III attended a service of rededication in that year.

The Edgar Tower is an impressive gatehouse which was originally built in the early 13^th century and then remodelled in the 14^th century.

Construction of a Lady Chapel in the Early English Gothic style began in 1224.  This led to a much-enlarged east end of the cathedral beyond the apsidal end of Wulfstan’s church.  The rebuilding of the nave under Bishop Cobham commenced in 1317.  By the end of the century, the largely Gothic church which has survived to the present day was in place, despite interruptions in construction due to the plague that struck England in mid-century.

The present central tower was completed in 1374.  It is interesting from an architectural viewpoint because the top portion is of the English Decorated Gothic style, while the section below is of the later Perpendicular style.  Perhaps, that section was originally more open and was modified subsequently.  It is also interesting that at some point buttressing for the tower piers was added in the eastern-most bay of the nave arcade.

The monastic buildings in 1399-1400 also included a great hall commonly called Guesten Hall just south of the south transept in 1327.  I had the pardoner in my novel, Brandon Landow, stay in that facility.  The ruin of that hall next to the church is pictured on the right.  The refectory survived the Dissolution of the monasteries by King Henry VIII and is now the great hall of the King’s School which he founded.  The dormitory on the west of the cloister was not so fortunate.

The 14^th century work on the cathedral also included a magnificent north porch to the church, completed in 1386, which Lady Apollonia used to enter the church in my novel.  It is shown in the picture on the top left.  I made one of the characters in my novel, Goran Carter, a patron of that project by contributing carving to the newly built porch around 1395.

For more on these subjects, click on
http://www.worcestercathedral.co.uk/Heritage.php or on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_Cathedral or on
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/worcs/vol4/pp394-408

King Richard’s Sword, the sixth book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries, is set in the city of Worcester in the years 1399-1400.  As mentioned in my last posting, Worcester has been the seat of a bishop since before the end of the first millennium.  A diocese was founded, and Bosel was consecrated as first bishop in 680 although there had probably been a Roman Christian community with a church on this site since the 4^th century.  The first cathedral was dedicated to Saint Peter.

Around 981, Saint Oswald became bishop and built a new cathedral dedicated to Saint Mary, and it stood next to Saint Peter’s until after the Norman Conquest.  Oswald also founded a Benedictine priory at Saint Mary’s, so the church served the priory and as the Cathedral of Worcester.  This remained the case for hundreds of years including the time of my novel and beyond into the 16^th century when King Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries.

The cathedral was known as Worcester Priory before the English Reformation when the Diocese of Worcester also included the present Diocese of Gloucester. The picture above shows the tomb of King John I in the Quire of the church.  As a monastic cathedral, it was included as one of England’s monastic cathedrals about which I posted on August 3, 2016.  After the Dissolution of the monasteries, it has continued to be a cathedral to the present.  Now it is known officially as the Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Mary the Virgin of Worcester.

In 1062 Saint Wulfstan, already serving as Prior of Worcester, was appointed Bishop of Worcester serving until his death in 1095.  He was the last of the English, pre-Norman Conquest bishops when he died.  Under his tutelage, the number of monks increased from ten to fifty.  Wulfstan also developed a plan for the monastic buildings.  I will say more about them in my next posting.

There is an interesting story of how Wulfstan retained his bishopric after the Norman Conquest.  William the Conqueror, wanted to replace Anglo-Saxon bishops with Normans of whose loyalty he could be sure.  At a meeting in Westminster Abbey, the new Norman Archbishop Lanfranc therefore tried to replace Wulfstan as Bishop of Worcester. Legend says Lanfranc ordered Wulfstan to surrender his bishop’s staff and ring.  Wulfstan refused to remove the ring, saying he would wear it to the grave.  He placed the staff on the tomb of King Edward the Confessor, saying he yielded it to the king who made him a bishop and that St Edward ‘will surrender it to whom he chooses’.  The new appointee could not pick up the staff, which remained miraculously attached to the tomb until Wulfstan picked it up – and was allowed to continue as bishop. In the drawing on the right from Trinity College, Cambridge Archbishop Lanfranc, left, reads while Wulfstan, holding his staff, listens.

Wulfstan was canonised in 1203, and his tomb, as well as Oswald’s, became important places for pilgrims to visit.  I posted a blog article on Saint Wulfstan on October 10, 2016.  Another important burial at Worcester was that of King John in 1216.  The king’s tomb is pictured above left.

For more on Worcester Cathedral, click on
http://www.worcestercathedral.co.uk/Heritage.php or on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_Cathedral or on
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/worcs/vol4/pp394-408

In recent weeks, I have been posting articles on this blog related to Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure, the fifth novel written in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series.  This story is set in Glastonbury, England, in 1395.  If you have enjoyed reading the posts about medieval Glastonbury and have not yet read my story, this might be a good time to order it.

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Glastonbury in 1397 is the setting for Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure, the fifth novel in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series.  This location is rich in legends, particularly in the medieval period.  The two figures who are most important in the legends that arose in the medieval period and later are King Arthur and Joseph of Arimathea.  Glastonbury Abbey advanced the legends about these men, beginning in the 11^th century in the case of King Arthur and especially from the late 12^th through the 15^th centuries with Joseph of Arimathea.

In 1191, seven years after the destruction of the abbey by a great fire, Abbot Henry de Sully ordered his monks to dig in the cemetery just south of the Lady Chapel.  The result of their work was the discovery of a body which they identified as King Arthur.  This exhumation is depicted in the drawing shown above.  Note that the Norman Lady Chapel was still under construction.  A second body was identified as Guinevere, Arthur’s second wife.

Meanwhile, the abbey sought to rebuild what had been destroyed by fire, and this led to the great Gothic abbey church on the site at the time of my novel.  The bones of Arthur and Guinevere were reburied in the new church in 1278 in a ceremony important enough to be attended by King Edward I and Queen Eleanor of England.  Obviously, this tomb attracted pilgrims to the abbey and helped contribute to its great wealth.

Glastonbury was viewed by many people in the medieval period as the Isle of Avalon.  Although it is not actually an island, the town and its Tor is on a peninsula which rises out of the Somerset Levels like an island.  This contributed to the legend of King Arthur in Glastonbury.  After the Dissolution of the monasteries by King Henry VIII, the tomb was destroyed.  Today, there is a sign in the grassy area where the quire once stood which indicates that the tomb of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere once resided there.

For more on the legends of King Arthur, click on
http://www.britainexpress.com/Myths/Glastonbury_King_Arthur.htm or on
http://www.britannia.com/history/arthur/abbey4.html .

Joseph of Arimathea was a disciple of Christ who made his cave-tomb available to house the dead body of Jesus after the Crucifixion.  There are extensive legends concerning Joseph of Arimathea making visits to England and Glastonbury.  The most basic is that he came after the Resurrection bringing the Holy Grail.  The Chalice Well near the Tor is involved in this legendary story.  The red colour which springs forth from this well is attributed to the blood of the Christ brought in the Holy Grail.  A variation has Joseph bringing two cruets, one containing blood of Jesus, another containing his sweat as shown in the picture on the right which is one of the stained-glass windows in Saint John the Baptist parish church in Glastonbury that tell the legends of Joseph of Arimathea.

Another feature of the basic legend has arisen in recent centuries.  It says that Joseph stood resting on Wearyall Hill on the southwest edge of Glastonbury.  When he brought down his staff hard onto the earth, it suddenly bloomed, becoming a hawthorn, which blooms every Christmas and May and sometimes in between.  The so-called Glastonbury Thorn is still part of modern folk-culture.  It has been featured on a British postage stamp, and a sprig of flowers from it is sent to the Queen of England every Christmas.  The Glastonbury Thorn on Wearyall Hill has been vandalised in recent years but copies of it are to be found in the abbey grounds and in front of the parish church of Saint John the Baptist as well as by the abbey tithe barn.

There are other legends about Joseph of Arimathea.  One is that he was the uncle of the Virgin Mary and brought his teenage nephew, Jesus, to Glastonbury.  We know that ancient peoples from the Mediterranean area got to Cornwall with the tin trade.  If someone sailed to Cornwall at that time, Glastonbury could also be reached by ship.  At high tide, the Bristol Channel reached all the way to Glastonbury.  This was before the Romans and the medieval monks began reclaiming vast areas of Somerset from the sea.  In Joseph’s time, such a voyage was feasible.

Another Joseph legend is that he led the first missionaries in bringing Christianity to Britain around 63 AD.  The abbots of Glastonbury used this story to enhance their claim to be the first monastery in England.  At the time of my story and in the next century, they were promoting some of these legends.  There is a well in the crypt of the Lady Chapel which was renamed Joseph’s Well, and I have used that well in my story.

For more on the legends about Joseph of Arimathea, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_of_Arimathea or on
http://www.glastonburyabbey.com/joseph_of_arimathea.php or on
http://www.bbc.co.uk/thepassion/articles/joseph_of_arimathea.shtml .