Medieval: September 2018

Bertrand du Guesclin (c. 1320 – 13 July 1380), nicknamed "The Eagle of Brittany" or "The Black Dog of Brocéliande", was a Breton knight and an important military commander on the French side during the Hundred Years' War. From 1370 to his death, he was Constable of France for King Charles V. Well known for his Fabian strategy, he took part in six pitched battles and won the four in which he held command.

Bertrand du Guesclin was born at Motte-Broons near Dinan, in Brittany, first-born son of Robert du Guesclin and Jeanne de Malmaines. His date of birth is unknown but is thought to have been sometime in 1320. His family was of minor Breton nobility, the seigneurs of Broons.

Battle of Radcot Bridge

Battle of Radcot Bridge 1387-12-19

The Battle of Radcot Bridge was fought on 19 December 1387 at Radcot Bridge in England, a bridge over the River Thames now in Oxfordshire but then the boundary between Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It was fought between troops loyal to Richard II, led by court favourite Robert de Vere, and an army captained by Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby.

Timeline:
1386
• July – John of Gaunt leaves England to make good his claim to the Crown of Castile.
https://mittelzeit.blogspot.com/2019/03/john-of-gaunt-1st-duke-of-lancaster.html
• October – the Wonderful Parliament is held, and appoints a commission to oversee the court and government.
1387
• 24 March – Hundred Years' War: A Franco-Castilian fleet is defeated off Margate.
• 14 November – a group of powerful nobles known as Lords Appellant raise arms against the King, demanding the arrest of members of the royal court.
• 20 December – Battle of Radcot Bridge: Lords Appellant defeat Richard's army. The king is imprisoned until he agrees to replace all the councillors in his court.
1388
• February – the entire court of King Richard II is convicted of treason by the Merciless Parliament, under the influence of the Lords Appellant, and are all either executed or exiled. Richard II effectively becomes a puppet of the Lords Appellant.

The Battle of Radcot Bridge

During the troubled times of King Richard II's reign, when his uncles and their allies, the 'Lords Appellant' were trying to impose their will on the immovable King, the young monarch did loose power for a short time in the Winter of 1387-88. Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, the King's uncle and chief adversary, took the opportunity to accuse the Richard's favourite, Robert De Vere, Earl of Oxford, of treason. De Vere escaped to the West Midlands where he gathered together an army of some fifteen thousand men. Quickly, he marched them south to both defend himself and reinforce the King's followers in London.

Gloucester immediately led troops north to close the roads from the Midlands and the King's western reinforcements, originally heading for Burford, found themselves obliged to head quickly south. Gloucester's deputy and nephew, Henry Bolingbroke, the Earl of Derby (later to become King Henry IV), had taken up a more southerly position, along with Thomas de Mowbray, the Earl Marshal. They blocked off any route across the Thames by encamping on the island between the Pidnell and Radcot Bridges on the Berkshire-Oxfordshire border, near Faringdon. Bolingbroke was a cousin of De Vere's repudiated wife (Philippa de Coucy). He regarded him as a scoundrel and yearned to meet him in the open field.

De Vere's army arrived at the twin Thames bridges, only to find the first sabotaged and the second guarded by Derby's troops. Gloucester's men were still closing in from the north. The Royalists turned and deserted at the first shock of Bolingbroke's pikes. They could only surrender or else make desperate rushes over or through the river in an attempt to escape. Mounting a fresh horse, De Vere pushed forward but, with Pidnell Bridge demolished, the terrified Earl was forced to have his mount leap into the river and face up stream. Hugging the bank, he lightened his load by dropping his gauntlets, sword and casque. At Radcot Bridge, stood a company of archers. Dodging their deadly arrows through the stream again, he sought a ford but none was to be found. As night came on, he slipped from his horse, put off his cuirass, plunged into the stream, and swimming across, escaped with the loss of everything but life and limb.

Hiding in the woods by day, De Vere stole away into the western shires where, for a while, he was safe. His enemies believed him dead. Horse, casque, sword and cuirass being found next morning by the riverbank, his pursuers fancied that he had been drowned. However, he eventually managed to flee to France, where he died in exile. With their victory at Radcot Bridge, the 'Lords Appellant' were able to gain a short-lived control over the country. This culminated in the merciless parliament in which King Richard's main allies were condemned.

Pidnell is the more northerly of the two bridges and Radcot the southerly, while the villages are the other way round. The present Radcot Bridge, spanning the southern branch of the River Thames and the Berkshire-Oxfordshire Boundary, is of 14th century date and is therefore the one that stood during the battle.

Background:
In August 1387 King Richard retaliated; he assembled a Council of magistrates at Nottingham and attempted to redefine the Royal Prerogative so as to render the Wonderful Parliament treasonous. The leaders of the Parliament, including Richard's uncle Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, hit back during the Miraculous Parliament of November 1387. During this session, Woodstock and the Earls of Warwick and Arundel submitted an appeal which accused several of Richard's closest friends of routinely deceiving the King for their own profit.

Richard responded by summoning Woodstock and the other Lords Appellant to the Tower of London; all three refused.

This was open dissent, and both Richard and the Appellants knew the implications of such defiance. According to the author of the Eulogium historiarum, Richard asked Woodstock whether his companions were willing to take arms against him, to which the Duke replied: "we do not rebel or arm ourselves against the King except in order to instruct him".

Pushed further by Richard, who protested that Parliament did not have the right to command a King even in the case of "the meanest kitchen boy", the Duke darkly reminded his nephew of his own standing: "But I am the son of a king".

Fearing deposition, King Richard ordered that the citizens of London should take up arms. De Vere was despatched to Cheshire, where King Richard had assembled an army of five thousand retainers, under the direct command of Sir Thomas Molineux, Constable of Chester. De Vere now took these southwards towards London.

The most direct routes to the capital were blocked by Arundel's men, so de Vere decided to cross the Thames at Radcot, near Faringdon. However, the bridge itself was under the guard of Derby's troops; they had also partly dismantled its structure. Undeterred, de Vere gave the command to storm the crossing. At this point, a larger force of Derby's men arrived from the north, effectively surrounding the Cheshiremen. De Vere managed to escape the field, eventually making his way to France; once it was known that he had fled, his army promptly surrendered. Among the handful of casualties was Molyneux himself, who was killed during the abortive attempt to cross the Thames.

After the battle, Woodstock and the other Appellants held a council with Richard at the Tower. Richard had no means of resisting their demands, and it was agreed that a further Parliament should be called in February 1388. The resulting Merciless Parliament saw a fullscale purge of Richard's household.

The Lords Appellant Part 2: Radcot Bridge

Merciless Parliament

The Merciless Parliament, a term coined by Augustinian chronicler Henry Knighton, refers to the English parliamentary session of February to June 1388, at which many members of Richard II's Court were convicted of treason. The session was preceded by a period in which Richard's power was revoked and the kingdom placed under the regency of the Lords Appellant. Richard had launched an abortive military attempt to overthrow the Lords Appellant and negotiate peace with the kingdom of France so he could focus all his resources against his domestic enemies. The Lords Appellant counteracted the attempt and called the Parliamentary session to expose his attempts to make peace. Parliament reacted with hostility and convicted almost all of Richard's advisers of treason. Most were executed and a few exiled. Parliament was dissolved after violence broke out in Kent and the Duke of York and his allies began objecting to some executions.

The ‘Good Parliament’ of 1376 > .
‘Good Parliament’ of 1376 ..

The Wonderful Parliament.

The Truce of Leulinghem.

Byward Angel, late 14th century

The Byward Angel at the Tower of London | Beyond Palace Doors > .

English Economy 14th century

English Economy 14th century

Economics of Medieval English Agriculture ..

Economics of Medieval English Brewing ..
Trade and Economics in the Middle Ages
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67Wfw_DbNVc
Early Medieval Trade | World History | Khan Academy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyW7CUl9KDc
11th-14th centuries: Rise of Towns & Europe's Economy in the Late Middle Ages
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhnyQjRjxY4
Changes in the Middle Ages 3 Economy and Trade
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvbegSLqMGc

Anglo-Saxon, Norman taxation > .

Medieval Economics
http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tuts/m_econ.htm
http://www.thefinertimes.com/Middle-Ages/economy-in-the-middle-ages.html
http://www.thefinertimes.com/Middle-Ages/the-black-death.html

Medieval Coinage
14th century: farthing, half penny, penny, half groat, groat, noble
https://plus.google.com/103755316640704343614/posts/V86JZuKvRAS

The loss of life in the Great Famine of 1315–17 shook the English economy severely and population growth ceased; the first outbreak of the Black Death in 1348 then killed around half the English population, with major implications for the post-plague economy. The agricultural sector shrank, with higher wages, lower prices and shrinking profits leading to the final demise of the old demesne system and the advent of the modern farming system of cash rents for lands. The Peasants Revolt of 1381 shook the older feudal order and limited the levels of royal taxation considerably for a century to come. The 15th century saw the growth of the English cloth industry and the establishment of a new class of international English merchant, increasingly based in London and the South-West, prospering at the expense of the older, shrinking economy of the eastern towns. These new trading systems brought about the end of many of the international fairs and the rise of the chartered company. Together with improvements in metalworking and shipbuilding, this represents the end of the medieval economy, and the beginnings of the early modern period in English economics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_England_in_the_Middle_Ages

The putting-out system (cottage industry) is a means of subcontracting work. Historically, it was also known as the workshop system and the domestic system. In putting-out, work is contracted by a central agent to subcontractors who complete the work in off-site facilities, either in their own homes or in workshops with multiple craftsmen.

It was used in the English and American textile industries, in shoemaking, lock-making trades, and making parts for small firearms from the Industrial Revolution until the mid-19th century.

The domestic system was suited to pre-urban times because workers did not have to travel from home to work, which was quite impracticable due to the state of roads and footpaths, and members of the household spent many hours in farm or household tasks.

A cottage industry is a small-scale industry, where the creation of products and services is home-based, rather than factory-based. While products and services created by cottage industries are often unique and distinctive, given the fact that they are usually not mass-produced, producers in this sector often face numerous disadvantages when trying to compete with much larger factory-based companies.

A cottage industry is an industry—primarily manufacturing—which includes many producers, working from their homes, typically part time. The term originally referred to home workers who were engaged in a task such as sewing, lace-making, wall hangings, or household manufacturing. Some industries which are usually operated from large, centralized factories were cottage industries before the Industrial Revolution. Business operators would travel around the world, buying raw materials, delivering them to people who would work on them, and then collecting the finished goods to sell, or typically to ship to another market. One of the factors which allowed the Industrial Revolution to take place in Western Europe was the presence of these business people who had the ability to expand the scale of their operations. Cottage industries were very common in the time when a large proportion of the population was engaged in agriculture, because the farmers (and their families) often had both the time and the desire to earn additional income during the part of the year (winter) when there was little work to do farming or selling produce by the farm's roadside.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putting-out_system

By late Roman times, domestic wool was already being used to produce textiles (“cloth”) in the Low Countries. The marshes along the coast, which had not yet been enclosed by dikes, provided grazing for large flocks of sheep which yielded sufficient wool to satisfy domestic demand. In the 12th century a fundamental change occurred. Production was transferred from the countryside to the fast-growing cities (Ypres, Ghent, Bruges, and later also Brussels and Antwerp), and weavers began using English wool as their raw material instead of home-produced wool. The result was a high quality, luxury product intended for export. Sheep reared on the type of grass produced by the very damp English pastureland with its poor soil yielded a particularly fine and springy woollen fleece. For that reason, demand for English wool was virtually inelastic: neither home-produced wool nor the wool occasionally imported from Spain offered a real alternative.

English wool was now being imported into the Low Countries in unprecedented quantities, in sacks or as fleeces still attached to the skin. Flemish and Brabant merchants and weavers were very active in this trade. They went to England in person, to the grounds of the sometimes remote Cistercian abbeys where the sheep were predominantly reared. On the local wool markets they often paid in advance for future deliveries, so that they also already had a stake in the actual production of the wool. Flemish vessels shipped the wool from London and other ports such as Great Yarmouth, King’s Lynn, Dover, Sandwich and Boston.

The Southern Netherlands merchants needed English coins to buy their wool; they became good customers of the English coin workshops, where they exchanged the lightweight pennies from the Netherlands or bars of silver for English sterling. Thus, the accounting records of the London Mint list the names of merchants from Ypres and Brussels, side by side with the names of English customers. On their return from England, they did not always take their surplus English money for melting down into local pennies again, but sometimes preferred to set the foreign currency aside ready for their next trip. It is therefore not surprising that the 13th century coin treasure discovered in 1908 during the demolition of a cellar wall in the house at no. 32 Rue d’assaut in Brussels contained no less than 80,927 English sterling coins.

Gradually, the rulers and merchants on the Continent came to realise that they could make considerable savings by minting sterling coins themselves in their own country, rather than buying them from English coin workshops. From around 1270, coins worth one or two sterling pennies were therefore minted in the Low Countries, alongside the ordinary lightweight pennies. The sterling copies had the same weight and alloy as the foreign originals. The images on the face of the coins varied greatly: some depicted a crowned head, just like the English coins, while others displayed a totally distinctive image. In contrast, the reverse of virtually all the coins depicted the cross with three bullets between the arms, copied from the English model. From about the mid 14th century, owing to the rising demand for high value currency, the sterling penny became less important, giving way to the silver groat – worth three sterlings – and gold coins.

https://www.nbbmuseum.be/en/2009/12/sterling.htm

The importance of London for craft and industry in medieval England
http://www.theposthole.org/sites/theposthole.org/files/downloads/posthole_47_360.pdf

1100-1290

Mining did not make up a large part of the English medieval economy, but the 12th and 13th centuries saw an increased demand for metals in England, thanks to the considerable population growth and building construction, including the great cathedrals and churches. Four metals were mined commercially in England during the period: iron, tin, lead and silver using a variety of refining techniques. Coal was also mined from the 13th century onwards.

Iron mining occurred in several locations including the main English centre in the Forest of Dean, as well as in Durham and the Weald. Some iron to meet English demand was also imported from the continent, especially by the late 13th century. By end of the 12th century, the older method of acquiring iron ore through strip mining was being supplemented by more advanced techniques, including tunnels, trenches and bell-pits. Iron ore was usually locally processed at a bloomery and by the 14th century the first water-powered iron forge in England was built at Chingley. As a result of the diminishing woodlands and consequent increases in the cost of both wood and charcoal, demand for coal increased in the 12th century and began to be commercially produced from bell-pits and strip mining.

A silver boom occurred in England after the discovery of silver near Carlisle in 1133. Huge quantities of silver were produced from a semicircle of mines reaching across Cumberland, Durham and Northumberland - up to three to four tonnes of silver were mined each year, more than ten times the previous annual production across the whole of Europe. The result was a local economic boom and a major uplift to 12th century royal finances. Tin mining was centred in Cornwall and Devon, exploiting alluvial deposits and governed by the special Stannary Courts and Parliaments - tin formed a valuable export good, initially to Germany and then later in the 14th century to the Low Countries. Lead was usually mined as a by-product of mining for silver, with mines in Yorkshire, Durham and the north, as well as in Devon. Economically fragile, the lead mines usually survived as a result of being subsidised by silver production.

England's economy was fundamentally agricultural throughout the period, but the mining of iron, tin, lead and silver, and later coal, played an important part within the English medieval economy.

The Black Death epidemic first arrived in England in 1348, re-occurring in waves during 1360-2, 1368-9, 1375 and more sporadically thereafter. The most immediate economic impact of this disaster was the widespread loss of life, between around 27% mortality amongst the upper classes, to 40-70% amongst the peasantry. Despite the very high loss of life, few settlements were abandoned during the epidemic itself, but many were badly affected or nearly eliminated altogether. The medieval authorities did their best to respond in an organised fashion, but the economic disruption was immense. Building work ceased and many mining operations paused. In the short term, efforts were taken by the authorities to control wages and enforce pre-epidemic working conditions. Coming on top of the previous years of famine, however, the longer term economic implications were profound. In contrast to the previous centuries of rapid growth, the English population would not begin to recover for over a century, despite the many positive reasons for a resurgence. The crisis would affect English mining for the remainder of the medieval period.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_English_Mining_in_the_Middle_Ages

Medieval technology
After the Renaissance of the 12th century, medieval Europe saw a radical change in the rate of new inventions, innovations in the ways of managing traditional means of production, and economic growth. The period saw major technological advances, including the adoption of gunpowder, the invention of vertical windmills, spectacles, mechanical clocks, and greatly improved water mills, building techniques (Gothic architecture, medieval castles), and agriculture in general (three-field crop rotation).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_technology

Search google book: "English Medieval Industries: Craftsmen, Techniques, Products" edited by John Blair, Nigel Ramsay

‘Good Parliament’ of 1376 ..

Economy of England in the Middle Ages - Wikipedia

MWP - Medieval Warm Period ends

In the 14th century, four centuries of mild weather came to an abrupt halt in Europe. Famine and frigid temperatures ensued, and roughly 10 percent of the population died

Long before the bitter cold winters and drenching rains of the early 14th century announced the end of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), Europe had expanded dangerously close to the limits of its resources. Four centuries of unusually mild temperatures (the highest in 8,000 years), prompted the continent’s farmers to plant crops on vast quantities of land previously unsuitable for agriculture; the increased food supply in turn fueled a population explosion that tripled the number of people in medieval Europe.

Little Ice Age - Medieval cooling, famine, plague, social change

When the Weather Went All Medieval: Climate Change, Famine, and Mass Death

When the Weather Went All Medieval: Climate Change, Famine, and Mass Death

William Wallace captured - 1305-8-5

5th August 1305: William Wallace captured by English troops at Robroyston > .

14th Century Women

14th century women - attire > .

Dressing up an early 14th century lady > .
Dressing up a late medieval (mid-15th C) lady > .
500 years of Medieval Fashion > .

Prior Attire Historical Costuming Portfolio: Medieval > .

A Brief History of Soap > .

Medieval Attire, Hygeine - ElQu >> .

https://www.youtube.com/user/priorattire .

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