Author archives: martin

Execution Cemeteries and the Medieval Outcast Dead Not every medieval body received a Christian burial in consecrated ground, and the archaeology of where “deviant” burials were placed instead offers a genuinely striking window into how firmly medieval society drew the line between the community of the living and the dead — and who fell outside […]

The Inheritance Loophole Nobody Talks About: Bastardy Medieval inheritance laws were particularly harsh toward bastards, for whom a claim to their father’s villein land was forbidden by the laws of England. A court of one manor summarily rejected a claimant’s appeal, stating that he was bastard “to whom no villein-land can descend.” But in practice, […]

The Risky Way Some Attackers Got Into Castles Every castle required a means of disposing of human waste, and the solution — long, vertical shafts running down through the thickness of the wall to a moat, ditch, or river below — proved to have an unexpected, genuine security vulnerability. Castle toilets, known as garderobes, were […]

What Actually Made a Settlement a ‘Town’? What actually made a medieval settlement a “town” rather than an overgrown village? Not size, as it turns out — it was the market. The defining feature was having one or more permanent, year-round markets, with guild self-regulation as the other big tell. A large village might hold […]

Tithes: The Tax That Built the Parish System Nothing shaped the medieval English parish quite as decisively as the tithe — a mandatory tenth of a household’s income handed over to the Church every year — and tracing how it grew from a voluntary biblical gesture into a genuinely enormous, closely audited revenue stream tells […]

Death, Judgement Day, and Memento Mori Death in medieval England was neither a taboo subject nor something that people generally tried to ignore. The skeleton became a popular motif in tomb effigies and wall paintings under the theme of memento mori – however glorious and powerful you are in this world, this is what awaits […]

Gilds: The Closest Thing to a Backup Family If medieval English peasants did not have the extensive and complex social webs of obligation and association usually associated with large families, then what else might serve to satisfy such needs? One answer, which was available to many, was the parish social-religious gild, a voluntary association which […]

Ale, Taverns, and the Village Drink Problem Forget the picture of a purpose-built village inn. Most medieval ale was sold from a front room and that front room was often tended by a woman since brewing was overwhelmingly a female trade both for consumption and for sale. If you had a batch of ale ready, […]

Funerals Were Expensive, and Purgatory Terrified Everyone Dying in medieval England was costly to the families who survived them. It is evident from the surviving records that the burden of both money and conscience was a heavy one – but for the right price, families could make sure that even their soul would find its […]

A Medieval Elopement Scandal Every medieval marriage was not necessarily an arrangement based on land and wealth, as there were also cases of genuine love matches, although a particularly well-documented Norfolk gentry example serves as a cautionary tale about the lengths to which families would go to put an end to a “beneath you” romance. […]