Living in Medieval England by Kathryn Warner

Author:Kathryn Warner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History / Europe / Great Britain / General
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books
Published: 2020-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

August

Early in the morning of Friday, 1 August 1326, Lucy Barstaple, viciously attacked in the street near the Tower of London by Anneis Houdydoudy a month earlier, died of her injuries in the hospital of St Katherine near the Tower, a week or so after she had borne a premature child who did not live. Sir John Cromwell, formerly steward of the king’s household but now with Queen Isabella in France and refusing to return to England, owned houses within the hospital of St Katherine. In August 1326 these houses were said to contain horses, falcons, weapons, clothes, jewels and other goods, and the king allowed Cromwell’s wife Idonea to take possession of some of the items.1

On the same day as Lucy Barstaple’s death, 80 miles away at Portchester in Hampshire, Edward II sent out an order to the townspeople of Great Yarmouth to prepare their ships to set out on the sea ‘in succour of the fishermen of England who were daily slain and robbed there’. The king sent his clerk Adam of Bridlington to Great Yarmouth with £300 for the sailors’ expenses, and on Wednesday, 6 August, 786 sailors put to sea in twenty great ships and remained there for thirty-one days.2 Edward set out his reasoning: his brother-in-law Charles IV of France had (so Edward claimed) ordered the capture of several English ships and had slain merchants and sailors, and Edward was therefore sending his fleet to sea to ‘restrain the malice’ of the French. In a letter about this matter to the two universities and the two English archbishops, Reynolds of Canterbury and Melton of York, Edward stated that some persons were ‘endeavouring to obscure the truth concerning these matters by false narratives, and do not shrink from saying evil things concerning the king and some of his subjects, so that they may turn from him the hearts of his subjects, who frequently from simplicity believe the tellers of false tales’.3

The 1st of August 1326 marked the third anniversary of Roger Mortimer of Wigmore’s escape from the Tower of London, and on Sunday, 3 August 1326, Wigmore’s uncle Roger Mortimer, lord of Chirk (between Wrexham and Oswestry) died in the Tower of London. He had been imprisoned since February 1322 after taking part in the Contrariant rebellion. Mortimer of Chirk was about 70 when he died and had outlived all his siblings by decades, and there is no reason to suppose that his death was suspicious. Chirk’s body was examined by local jurors, who confirmed that he had died a natural death and that there were no wounds, bruises or marks on his body.4

On 2 August, the king paid a draper called Hick Rotour 6s 6d for six ells or about 270 inches of grey russet cloth to make a tunic and courtepie for his fletcher, whose name was Henry Fletcher. A fletcher’s job was to attach feathers (or fletches) to arrows, and russet was a cheap and coarse woollen cloth. On another two occasions in

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