Category archives: Medieval

The Medieval Revenant During the middle ages a belief in souls returning from the dead was very common. A revenant was an animated corpse believed to have been revived from the dead to haunt the living. At various times the term revenant has often been used interchangeably with vampire. Numerous contemporary writers of the period […]

Medieval Anchorites In the third of the William Blackburne series of medieval adventures a spate of killings involving anchorites takes place. Many people confuse the terms anchorite and hermit. Although anchorites can be thought of as religious hermits there were some subtle differences. Most were required to take vows that tied them to one place. […]

Medieval Shipping – The Cog In my book “Death of the Vintner” the three bishop’s officials of the story arrive at the small harbour town of Tenby in the west of Wales by sea. The ship they travel in was known as a Cog. This type of ship first appeared in the 10th century and […]

The Population of the English Medieval City In 1377 of the thirty most populous cities and towns in England only three had a population of more than ten thousand people. These were London with forty thousand, York (see picture above) with twelve thousand and Bristol with ten and a half thousand. The others ranged in […]

Medieval Violence The middle ages in England were a pretty violent place viewed from a modern perspective. Even today statistically most crime is carried out by males on males under the age of 25.  A study of coroners rolls from the 1340’s suggests a homicide rate of 120 per 100,000 of the population in Oxford. […]

Medieval Seals I’ve had a few questions about the medieval seal depicted on my upcoming book, “Death of The Official”. The image on the left depicts the impression made by William Blackburne’s seal matrix. William is an official of the bishop of Draychester and the Latin inscription reflects this. The status of the seals owner […]

Medieval Bridge Chapels and Bridge Hermits In one of my upcoming books “The Death of the Official” Sir Roger Mudstone has an unfortunate encounter with a hermit collecting a toll on a bridge crossing a river. In the late medieval period it was fairly common for bridges to have all manor of buildings built on […]

Medieval Sanctuary In my upcoming book, “The Death of the Vintner”, two brothers sought for the murder of their father seek sanctuary in the cathedral at Saint Davids in West Wales. This was a crime that would likely result in execution. The alternative sought by many who committed capital crimes was to seek the protection […]