# M.J.Westerbone

> Home of M J Westerbone Historical Fiction Author

Language: en
URL: https://westerbone.com/

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## Pages

- [Privacy Policy](https://westerbone.com/privacy-policy/): Privacy PolicyWhat Information Does This Site Collect?Newsletter or Blog:If you voluntarily sign up for the M J Westerbone newsletter or blog, this site will record your email address. You can refuse to supply personal information, but that will exclude you
- [Death Of The Messenger – the free ebook prequel to the Draychester Chronicles](https://westerbone.com/deathofthemessenger/): Death Of The Messenger – the free ebook prequel to the Draychester Chronicles
- [Medieval thriller and historical fiction author](https://westerbone.com/): Website of M J Westerbone, author of the Draychester Chronicles, a series of medieval murder mysteries set in late 14th-century England.
- [Apúntate al boletín de M. J. Westerbone](https://westerbone.com/boletin/): ¿Quieres la precuela gratuita de la serie «Las Crónicas de Draychester»?Suscríbete a mi boletín gratuito —repleto de aún más asesinatos, misterios e intrigas medievales— y hazte con tu copia gratuita del ebook «La muerte del mensajero». Solo tienes que introducir tu
- [Blog](https://westerbone.com/blog/): Blog page of M J Westerbone, author of the Draychester Chronicles, a series of medieval murder mysteries set in late 14th-century England
- [About Author](https://westerbone.com/aboutauthor/): About M J Westerbone, author of the Draychester Chronicles, a series of medieval murder mysteries set in late 14th-century England
- [Signup to the M J Westerbone Newsletter](https://westerbone.com/newslettersignupbi/): Want the free prequel to the Draychester Chronicles series?Join my free newsletter - packed with more medieval murder, mystery and skulduggery - and claim your complimentary copy of the ebook "Death of the Messenger", enter your email below:Privacy Policy
- [Signup to the Westerbone Newsletter](https://westerbone.com/newslettersignuppin/): Want the free prequel to the Draychester Chronicles series?Join my free newsletter - packed with more medieval murder, mystery and skulduggery - and claim your complimentary copy of the ebook "Death of the Messenger", enter your email below:Privacy Policy
- [Medieval calendar: feasts, fasts and saints’ days for any date](https://westerbone.com/medievalcalendar/): Medieval calendar: feasts, fasts and saints’ days for any date
- [How far could you travel in a day in medieval England](https://westerbone.com/how-far-could-you-travel-in-a-day-in-medieval-england/): How far could you travel in a day in medieval England?
- [Contact](https://westerbone.com/contact/): Contact page of M J Westerbone, author of the Draychester Chronicles, a series of medieval murder mysteries set in late 14th-century England
- [Medieval Price & Wage Calculator](https://westerbone.com/medieval-price-and-wage-calculator/): Medieval Price and Wage Calculator
- [Books](https://westerbone.com/books/): The books of M J Westerbone, author of the Draychester Chronicles, a series of medieval murder mysteries set in late 14th-century England
- [Contact Thanks](https://westerbone.com/contact-thanks/): Thanks for contacting me.Your details have been sent to me.I will try and respond to any contact from you requiring a reply as soon as possible.Thanks, M J Westerbone.Copyright 2026, M J Westerbone. All rights reserved.
- [Medieval Weights & Measures](https://westerbone.com/medieval-weights-and-measures/): Medieval Weights and Measures
- [Melde dich für den M J Westerbone Newsletter an](https://westerbone.com/der-newsletter/): Willst du das kostenlose Prequel zur Serie „Die Draychester-Chroniken“?Melde dich für meinen kostenlosen Newsletter an – vollgepackt mit noch mehr mittelalterlichen Morden, Geheimnissen und Intrigen – und sichere dir dein Gratis-Exemplar des E-Books „Der Tod des Boten“. Gib einfach unten
- [Sign-up to the M J Westerbone Newsletter](https://westerbone.com/newslettersignupbi2/): Want a complimentary copy of "Bizarre Deaths From History"?Join my free newsletter - packed with medieval murder, mystery and skulduggery - and claim your complimentary copy of the ebook "Bizarre Deaths From History", enter your email below:Privacy Policy

## Blog Posts

- [What You’d Need to Survive Medieval Travel](https://westerbone.com/2026/10/13/what-youd-need-to-survive-medieval-travel/) (2026-10-13): What You'd Need to Survive Medieval Travel Before setting out on any journey in medieval England, it was worth knowing what lay ahead — and the honest answer was a great deal of hard going.The main roads were old Roman
- [Execution Cemeteries and the Medieval Outcast Dead](https://westerbone.com/2026/10/12/execution-cemeteries-and-the-medieval-outcast-dead/) (2026-10-12): 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
- [The Inheritance Loophole Nobody Talks About: Bastardy](https://westerbone.com/2026/10/11/the-inheritance-loophole-nobody-talks-about-bastardy/) (2026-10-11): 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
- [The Risky Way Some Attackers Got Into Castles](https://westerbone.com/2026/10/10/the-risky-way-some-attackers-got-into-castles/) (2026-10-10): 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
- [What Actually Made a Settlement a ‘Town’?](https://westerbone.com/2026/10/09/what-actually-made-a-settlement-a-town/) (2026-10-09): 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
- [Tithes: The Tax That Built the Parish System](https://westerbone.com/2026/10/08/tithes-the-tax-that-built-the-parish-system/) (2026-10-08): 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
- [Death, Judgement Day, and Memento Mori](https://westerbone.com/2026/10/07/death-judgement-day-and-memento-mori/) (2026-10-07): 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
- [Gilds: The Closest Thing to a Backup Family](https://westerbone.com/2026/10/06/gilds-the-closest-thing-to-a-backup-family/) (2026-10-06): 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
- [Ale, Taverns, and the Village Drink Problem](https://westerbone.com/2026/10/05/ale-taverns-and-the-village-drink-problem/) (2026-10-05): 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
- [Funerals Were Expensive, and Purgatory Terrified Everyone](https://westerbone.com/2026/10/04/funerals-were-expensive-and-purgatory-terrified-everyone/) (2026-10-04): 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
- [A Medieval Elopement Scandal](https://westerbone.com/2026/10/03/a-medieval-elopement-scandal/) (2026-10-03): 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
- [Forest Law and the Four Ways to Get Arrested](https://westerbone.com/2026/10/02/forest-law-and-the-four-ways-to-get-arrested/) (2026-10-02): Forest Law and the Four Ways to Get Arrested The medieval forest law had little to do with the woods in the way we understand them today. By “forest” we must understand a special hunting ground, which was either a
- [How the Reformation Ended Medieval Church Life](https://westerbone.com/2026/10/01/how-the-reformation-ended-medieval-church-life/) (2026-10-01): How the Reformation Ended Medieval Church Life The medieval Catholic ritual calendar was not simply gradually abandoned – it was actively dismantled, with a speed and determination that the authorities only managed to display during the initial phase of Edward
- [Medieval Life Expectancy Wasn’t What You Think](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/30/medieval-life-expectancy-wasnt-what-you-think/) (2026-09-30): Medieval Life Expectancy Wasn't What You Think Medieval life expectancy tables have a way of misleading people, because the statistic that actually matters - how old you'd live to be if you'd survived childhood - tells a different story from
- [Confirmation and Baptism After the Reformation](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/29/confirmation-and-baptism-after-the-reformation/) (2026-09-29): Confirmation and Baptism After the Reformation Baptism and confirmation both survived England's Reformation more or less intact in terms of general shape, but the details the reformers stripped out (and the ones they left in) are an extremely careful, selective
- [Bad Behaviour in the Pews](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/28/bad-behaviour-in-the-pews/) (2026-09-28): Bad Behaviour in the Pews Medieval churchgoers, by the Church's own repeated complaints, were considerably less consistently well-behaved than the solemn stereotype of medieval piety usually suggests, and the surviving disciplinary records preserve a genuinely entertaining rogues' gallery of exactly
- [How Criminal Were the Middle Ages, Really?](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/27/how-criminal-were-the-middle-ages-really/) (2026-09-27): How Criminal Were the Middle Ages, Really? Ask how violent medieval England was, and you'll get an answer that it was much less violent than our present-day equivalents. The murder rate in fourteenth-century East Anglia has been calculated equivalent to
- [Were Anglo-Saxons and Vikings Really Divided?](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/26/were-anglo-saxons-and-vikings-really-divided/) (2026-09-26): Were Anglo-Saxons and Vikings Really Divided? The St Brice's Day slaughter of 1002, when king Ethelred II ordered the massacre of the Danes, is presented as an illustration of a nation divided along ethnic lines; however, the archaeological and linguistic
- [Medieval York: A Case Study](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/25/medieval-york-a-case-study/) (2026-09-25): Medieval York: A Case Study York offers an interesting English equivalent to Paris and Venice: smaller, more provincial, but with a parallel rise and fall from Roman garrison town to England's second city and back down to a firmly-established regional
- [How Medieval Children Actually Grew Up, Stage by Stage](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/24/how-medieval-children-actually-grew-up-stage-by-stage/) (2026-09-24): How Medieval Children Actually Grew Up, Stage by Stage One of the more poignant findings buried within medieval coroner's records is the way in which children's development followed a strikingly similar biologically-based pattern to what we'd today recognise, tracked purely
- [Hell’s Kitchen: Cooking as Eternal Punishment](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/23/hells-kitchen-cooking-as-eternal-punishment/) (2026-09-23): Hell's Kitchen: Cooking as Eternal Punishment When medieval artists were called upon to depict eternal punishment, the imagery they most often turned to was culinary. Hell was frequently envisioned as an immense, malevolent kitchen in which devil-cooks tormented the damned
- [Medieval Villages Were Planned, Not Accidental](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/22/medieval-villages-were-planned-not-accidental/) (2026-09-22): Medieval Villages Were Planned, Not Accidental The idyllic image of a medieval English village, with its houses arranged conveniently around a church and plots of arable land stretching out from it like spokes from a wheel, is at least partially
- [How a Medieval Doctor Diagnosed You Without a Blood Test](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/21/how-a-medieval-doctor-diagnosed-you-without-a-blood-test/) (2026-09-21): How a Medieval Doctor Diagnosed You Without a Blood Test Long before blood chemistry panels existed, medieval doctors had their own uniquely central diagnostic ritual in which they used the patient's urine, examined in a special special clear glass container
- [Abraham of Bristol and the Price of Being Jewish in Medieval England](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/20/abraham-of-bristol-and-the-price-of-being-jewish-in-medieval-england/) (2026-09-20): Abraham of Bristol and the Price of Being Jewish in Medieval England The story of Abraham of Bristol is one of the most harrowing possible glimpses into what life was like for medieval England's Jewish community, living precariously at the
- [Serfs vs. Peasants: Medieval Rural Class Explained](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/19/serfs-vs-peasants-medieval-rural-class-explained/) (2026-09-19): Serfs vs. Peasants: Medieval Rural Class Explained “Serf” and “peasant” are terms that appeared to be interchangeable in numerous fictional contexts, which would have greatly surprised the people living in medieval England, as the difference between the two was significant.First
- [Golf and Tennis Were Banned to Save Archery](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/18/golf-and-tennis-were-banned-to-save-archery/) (2026-09-18): Golf and Tennis Were Banned to Save Archery Several sports that have become international institutions and staples were actually banned numerous times from play in England and Scotland, not due to any moral objection but because the kings needed all
- [How English Lost (and Regained) Its Status](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/17/how-english-lost-and-regained-its-status/) (2026-09-17): How English Lost (and Regained) Its Status The English language almost completely lost its status as a prestigious and powerful language after the year 1066. The process of returning to the position of a language fit for governance and intellectual
- [How Many People Actually Went to Medieval Church?](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/16/how-many-people-actually-went-to-medieval-church/) (2026-09-16): How Many People Actually Went to Medieval Church? How many people actually turned up to a medieval English parish church on an ordinary Sunday? It's a genuinely hard question to answer with real precision, but the surviving fragments of evidence
- [What They Wore and What They Ate](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/15/what-they-wore-and-what-they-ate/) (2026-09-15): What They Wore and What They Ate What people wore and ate is where medieval fiction most often gets it wrong: they all look like they've just come off the Renaissance fair's main street, and everyone eats with a knife,
- [Why Villeinage Declined](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/14/why-villeinage-declined/) (2026-09-14): Why Villeinage Declined Villeinage – the bondage of serfs to the land and their lord – is not easily extinguished. It is convenient to imagine that its passing was instantaneous and terminated abruptly with the ravages of the Black Death.
- [Bread, Milk and Cheese on a Peasant’s Table](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/14/bread-milk-and-cheese-on-a-peasants-table/) (2026-09-14): Bread, Milk and Cheese on a Peasant's Table Bread, milk and cheese formed the genuine backbone of a peasant's diet, and each came with its own set of small, practical problems that a resourceful cook had to solve, day in
- [The Real Robin Hood(s)](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/14/the-real-robin-hoods/) (2026-09-14): The Real Robin Hood(s) Robin Hood, as most people picture him, is a largely 19th- and 20th-century invention layered onto a much older, considerably stranger medieval legend — and the earliest genuine evidence points not to one heroic outlaw at
- [Medieval Paris: A Case Study](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/13/medieval-paris-a-case-study/) (2026-09-13): Medieval Paris: A Case Study Paris is the single best worked example of a "subject town" — genuinely split in its governance between the crown, the bishop, and the university, each pulling in a slightly different direction, and it's worth
- [Life Inside a Medieval Nunnery](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/12/life-inside-a-medieval-nunnery/) (2026-09-12): Life Inside a Medieval Nunnery Medieval nunneries ran on broadly the same daily rhythm of communal prayer, reading and work as male monasteries — but they were, in several important and genuinely revealing respects, a fundamentally different institution, shaped as
- [Rogation Week: Beating the Bounds With a Dragon on a Pole](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/11/rogation-week-beating-the-bounds-with-a-dragon-on-a-pole/) (2026-09-11): Rogation Week: Beating the Bounds With a Dragon on a Pole Rogation Week, the week before Ascension Day, sent the whole parish physically outside the church walls for three consecutive days of penitential walking — genuinely long processions accompanied, at
- [Buying a New Outfit in Medieval England](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/10/buying-a-new-outfit-in-medieval-england/) (2026-09-10): Buying a New Outfit in Medieval England Getting a new outfit made in medieval England was a genuinely slow, multi-stage process, and it involved rather more separate tradespeople than simply popping to a single shop.Early in the 14th century, clothes
- [Death, Burial, and the Business of Dying Well](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/09/death-burial-and-the-business-of-dying-well/) (2026-09-09): Death, Burial, and the Business of Dying Well Death in a medieval English parish followed a genuinely careful, deeply symbolic sequence of ritual — from the moment of burial itself right through to a full year of subsequent memorial services
- [Maud Heath and the Medieval Market Economy](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/08/maud-heath-and-the-medieval-market-economy/) (2026-09-08): Maud Heath and the Medieval Market Economy A sixty-foot column on a Wiltshire hilltop, topped with the sculpted figure of a small, determined woman clutching a shopping bag, commemorates a genuinely modest but lasting act of medieval infrastructure — and
- [Enclosure and ‘Organic Barbed Wire’](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/07/enclosure-and-organic-barbed-wire/) (2026-09-07): Enclosure and 'Organic Barbed Wire' The enclosure of common land — hedging fields that had once been shared, open resources into private, exclusive pasture — was one of the most socially disruptive economic trends of the final decades of medieval
- [Improvised Medieval Cooking Fires](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/06/improvised-medieval-cooking-fires/) (2026-09-06): Improvised Medieval Cooking Fires Fixed kitchen hearths weren't always practical, and the surviving pictorial record shows medieval households and travellers alike coming up with genuinely inventive portable heating solutions wherever a hot meal or a bit of warmth was needed
- [Medieval London’s Sewage Problem](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/05/medieval-londons-sewage-problem/) (2026-09-05): Medieval London's Sewage Problem Medieval London had a sewage problem so severe it occasionally killed people outright — and the surviving records of exactly how Londoners tried (and often failed) to manage their own waste are simultaneously grim and darkly
- [War Comes to the City Gates](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/04/war-comes-to-the-city-gates/) (2026-09-04): War Comes to the City Gates Towns rarely fought their own wars directly — they mostly funded, supplied, and occasionally suffered them, preferring to pay someone else to do the actual fighting whenever they possibly could.Merchants, even ones who could
- [Feast Days and Public Spectacle](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/03/feast-days-and-public-spectacle/) (2026-09-03): Feast Days and Public Spectacle Medieval town life ran on a genuinely dense calendar of feasts, processions, and public spectacle, and it's worth remembering that religion and entertainment weren't remotely separate categories the way they often are today.Bruges held thirteen
- [Canons Regular and England’s Only Homegrown Order](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/02/canons-regular-and-englands-only-homegrown-order/) (2026-09-02): Canons Regular and England's Only Homegrown Order Not every medieval religious community fit neatly into the four great monastic orders — a whole separate category, the Canons Regular, blurred the line between cloistered monk and working parish priest, and England
- [The Medieval Bath (Such As It Was)](https://westerbone.com/2026/09/01/the-medieval-bath-such-as-it-was/) (2026-09-01): The Medieval Bath (Such As It Was) One of the most persistent questions about medieval life is also one of the hardest to answer with any confidence: did people actually bathe? The honest answer from the records is a shrug,
- [Candlemas, Lent, and the Rules of Fasting](https://westerbone.com/2026/08/31/candlemas-lent-and-the-rules-of-fasting/) (2026-08-31): Candlemas, Lent, and the Rules of Fasting Candlemas and Lent together kicked off the most visually dramatic and dietetically demanding stretch of the whole medieval Church year — genuine hardship layered on top of genuine spectacle, and the details of
- [The Castle Word That Became a Prison Word](https://westerbone.com/2026/08/30/the-castle-word-that-became-a-prison-word/) (2026-08-30): The Castle Word That Became a Prison Word The word "dungeon" has a much less grim medieval origin than its modern meaning suggests, and the gap between the two tells you something real about how castles actually functioned as prisons
- [When Trouble Came to the Cloister](https://westerbone.com/2026/08/29/when-trouble-came-to-the-cloister/) (2026-08-29): When Trouble Came to the Cloister Even the most carefully enclosed monastery couldn't always keep genuine trouble outside its own walls — and a handful of surviving incidents show real violence occasionally breaking directly into the supposedly sacred space of
- [Anatomy of a Medieval Town: Walls to Workshops](https://westerbone.com/2026/08/28/anatomy-of-a-medieval-town-walls-to-workshops/) (2026-08-28): Anatomy of a Medieval Town: Walls to Workshops From bath houses to bakeries, medieval towns packed a genuinely impressive range of building types into their walls — and several of them come with details odd enough to be worth stealing
- [How Many People Lived in Medieval England?](https://westerbone.com/2026/08/27/how-many-people-lived-in-medieval-england/) (2026-08-27): How Many People Lived in Medieval England? England's medieval population didn't climb steadily upward the way a modern reader might assume — it went through a dramatic boom-and-bust cycle so severe that the country didn't recover its 1300 population level