Medieval Weobley - by Ann Swinfen

The village of Weobley is one of the most beautiful in England.

However, lying as it does a mere four miles from the Welsh border, it has known troubles over the centuries, some arising from Marcher warfare, some due to wider national events. Today Weobley has retained a wealth of black-and-white medieval buildings, although some have been lost, and where the castle once stood on an eminence overlooking the village nothing is readily visible above ground but the castle mound and intriguing humps and bumps. Much of the valuable dressed stone from the castle building has found its way into village houses.

Artifacts from the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods have been found in the area, including a Neolithic polished stone axe produced by the Graig Lwyd ‘axe factory’ at faraway Penmaenmawr (North Wales), an indication of long-distance trading contacts. Bronze Age cup-marked stones and small metal objects have also turned up, suggesting that this extremely fertile, sheltered and well-watered spot has been occupied since earliest times. Settlement seems to have increased during the Iron Age, Roman, and Romano-British periods, a number of coins having turned up, mostly in the abandoned castle site. If there is other evidence it probably lies under the medieval houses which stand in the long occupied central portion of the village, and so are inaccessible.

It is in the Saxon period that Weobley truly enters documented history. The name Weobley is of Saxon origin and is recorded in the Doomsday Book as Wibelai, which means ‘Wibba’s clearing’. Wibba may have been the son of Cribba, first king of Mercia (late 6th century). A ‘lai’ or ‘ley’ was a glade or clearing in woodland, used for a settlement. The Ley is a sixteenth century house on the outskirts of the village.
The original form of the name as Wibelai perhaps accounts for the present-day pronunciation, which is ‘Webly’, the ‘o’ not being sounded. The pre-Conquest lord of Weobley at the time of the Doomsday Book (1086) is listed as Edwin. A priest is also recorded, so it seems there was already a church in the village. The Conqueror’s inventory of the lands he had seized indicate a flourishing agricultural settlement.

As a side note – we own a house on the banks of the brook which runs through the village. It seems that this was regularly allowed to flood in winter, thereby depositing silt washed down from the limestone Burton and Wormesley hills to the south, resulting in what is still an extraordinarily rich soil.

Weobley, with the surrounding area, was granted post-Conquest to William fitzOsborn, Earl of Hereford. (The city of Hereford is twelve miles to the south.) The family did not long remain in possession, for a rebellion by William’s son, Roger de Breteuil in 1074 was put down by Walter de Lacy, who then succeeded him as tenant-in-chief of the crown. He himself did not enjoy his lordship for long, as he fell to his death in 1085 from St Peter’s Church in Hereford while it was under construction. (Faulty medieval scaffolding?) His son Roger therefore held Weobley at the time of the Doomsday survey, and may have been the original builder of the castle.

Weobley was to see more war and rebellion. During the Anarchy, the struggle between the Empress Matilda and her cousin Stephen for the crown of England, Weobley Castle was held for Matilda in 1139. Stephen besieged and captured it in 1140, an experience which must have had a serious effect on the villagers. By the late 1180s, the castle was held by Matilda’s son, Henry II. The de Lacy family continued to be prominent in the area, although for a time they were mainly concerned with their lands in Ireland. More trouble was brewing, however.

The second Walter de Lacy married Margaret, daughter of William de Braose, lord of Brecon, who was one of the barons who rose against King John, using Weobley as his headquarters. It was from Weobley that he may have launched his attack on Leominster, burning the town, and it was while he was in Weobley that King John demanded that he should surrender and hand over his son as hostage. As a result of his father-in-law’s activities, Walter de Lacy lost his lands and only regained them in 1213, at which time (wisely) he probably rebuilt and strengthened Weobley Castle. This de Lacy went on to have a distinguished career as Custodian of Hereford Castle, and Sheriff of Herefordshire. In this latter role he implemented the new royal policy (alas, short-lived) of protection of the Jews.

While all this political strife was happening, the people of Weobley were getting on with their lives. By this time Weobley had become a flourishing market town, serving the neighbouring villages, as well as being the centre of a prosperous agricultural district. At some point it must have been granted a charter for an annual fair, since Walter de Lacy petitioned for a change to the date in 1231. The very wide central area of the village would have been eminently suitable for holding a fair, though the slope might have made the pitching of stalls something of a headache! It is likely that this same busy de Lacy may have laid out more properties in the village, to increase his income from rents. Weobley was on the rise.

By 1255 Weobley had its own jury in the court of eyre, which would be presided over by the king’s justices – the mark of its increased status as a borough. Weobley would no longer need to send its cases for trial in Hereford. Even earlier, a case in 1229 cites Weobley as a borough. And from 1295 to 1303 Weobley sent two Members to Parliament.

The powerful de Lacy family was to die out. When Walter died in 1241, his only heir was his granddaughter Margery, now married to John de Verdon, a family which has remained notable in the area down to modern times. The lordship of Weobley passed to John, then to his son and grandson (both called Theobald).When the younger Theobald died in 1316, the heir was again a woman, his daughter, another Margery, thereafter known as the Lady of the Manor of Weobley.
At the time of her inheritance, Margery Vernon was married to William le Blount, who was made joint heir in her father’s will. William died in 1337 and manor and castle passed to Margery and her heirs. As it was not normally the custom for a woman to hold a castle on her own, in 1338 she granted it for life to John le Blount, who may have been her brother-in-law. At some point Margery married a Marcus Husee, then in 1356 married for a third time, to John de Crophull or Crophill. If you do the sums, Margery was quite a remarkable lady. This third marriage was forty years after she had originally inherited from her father, when she was already married. How old was she? There is little information available about her second husband, but the Black Death occurred between 1348 and 1349, so he may have been a victim of it. Like everywhere else in Europe, Weobley is likely to have had a third to half its population wiped out.

On his marriage to Margery, John de Crophull took possession of her property, and on his death in 1383 left it to his granddaughter Agnes. Considering the way the manor and castle of Weobley was passed around, it seems as though Margery had no children, or at any rate none who survived. It would have been impossible (given what must have been her age) for Agnes to have been her granddaughter. It is curious also how often the heir to the manor of Weobley was a girl.

Agnes was under age when she married Sir Walter Devereux – it was not uncommon for a rich heiress to be married off as a child – but in 1386 Sir Walter was able to prove that she was ‘of majority’, so that he could claim ‘livery’ of her lands. As usual, the husbands of these women took control. Weobley therefore fell into the hands of the Devereux family (of whom more later). Sir Walter was killed on 22nd June 1402, fighting under the Marcher lord Roger Mortimer against Owain Glyndwr at the battle of Bryn Glas (not far from Weobley), during the reign of Henry IV – a battle mentioned by Shakespeare. Sir Walter’s tomb is in the church of St Peter and St Paul, Weobley.

Agnes, the Lady of the Manor of Weobley, then married Sir John Marbury (or Merbury) of nearby Lyonshall. He seems to have been living at Weobley Castle when he made his will in 1437. This mentions the ‘king’s chamber’, which suggests that there had been at least one royal visit to Weobley by this time. The tomb of Agnes and John Marbury is also in Weobley church.

Much of the fifteenth century was, of course, blighted by the Wars of the Roses and Weobley was not exempt. Walter Devereux, grandson of the dead hero of Bryn Glas, fought on the losing side at the battle of Ludford Bridge. The enormous fines he was forced to pay were granted to the Duke of Buckingham in 1459. Ten years later, Weobley was to have another visitor, later to become a king. At the age of four, Henry Tudor had been taken captive by William Herbert, and later made his ward. When Herbert died in 1469, his widow, Anne Devereux, took the twelve-year-old Henry home with her to Weobley, where he lived for several months.

The final years of the fifteenth century saw further dramatic events when in 1483 Henry, Duke of Buckingham, attempted a rebellion against Richard III, using Weobley as his base. The rebellion was a failure, and although the Duke fled, disguised as a countryman, he was captured in Shropshire and taken for execution. His Duchess was seized in Weobley, but a Mistress Olliffe, governess to their two small boys, hid them in Weobley, then escaped with them, disguised as girls, to Hereford. Six years later the son of the Walter Devereux who had fought at Ludford Bridge, rode off to Bosworth, and died there. So many of the events involving Weobley seem to have found their way into Shakespeare’s plays!

While all these gentleman and knights were fighting and dying, the ordinary people of Weobley continued to build a prosperous town. It grew rich in the wool trade, and was famous for a number of manufactured articles, principally gloves, ale, and nails. One of its chief agricultural products was fruit, and the byproduct of its apple orchards, cider.

During the sixteenth century Weobley saw few dramatic events – no doubt to the relief of the inhabitants – and the Devereux family continued to hold the manor. From being minor gentry, however, they rose under the Tudors, another Walter Devereux being created Earl of Essex by Elizabeth I, and his son, the second earl, rising to the giddy heights of royal favourite. This Robert Devereux – arrogant, wilful, and (dare one say?) stupid, decided to lead a coup against Elizabeth in 1601 which, not surprisingly, was an abject failure. He was executed for treason and his lands forfeit. His widow was Frances Walsingham, daughter of Elizabeth’s late spymaster Francis Walsingham. Their son Robert was ten at the time.

Frances sought to have her son’s inheritance, including Weobley, restored, and in this was ably assisted by John Swinfen (d.1632), one of my husband’s ancestors. (So the family connection with Weobley goes back a long way. Interestingly John christened a son born in 1603 ‘Deveroxe’, a spelling which suggests how the name was pronounced at the time.) The appeal was successful and young Robert Devereux regained his lands in 1603.

He was to become a general on the Parliamentary side in the Civil War and was yet another to have no male heirs, leaving Weobley to his eldest daughter, called Frances after his mother.

There was another royal visit in 1645, when Charles I stayed at the Unicorn Inn after the battle of Naseby. The building was renamed The Throne in commemoration of the king’s visit, and is now a private house. The ‘new’ Unicorn was built across the road, also in the seventeenth century. The sixteenth century house looking across at the Throne is called Throne View, and was where my parents-in-law stayed when they first came to Weobley.

Weobley church contains a magnificent memorial to Colonel John Birch, a member of the Moderate Party in Parliament during the Civil War, and a friend of John Swynfen (1613-94), grandson of the other John.

Both John Birch and John Swynfen fell out with Cromwell, being opposed to the execution of Charles I, as they supported the peaceful establishment of a constitutional monarchy with greater powers for Parliament. Cromwell had them excluded from Parliament. Birch retired to Weobley, where he purchased Garnstone Manor and became a prominent and highly regarded landowner, rebuilding the church spire in 1675, which had been destroyed in a storm 30 years before. He was MP for Weobley 1679-91.

Weobley had resumed sending two Members to Parliament in 1628, and continued to do so down to the nineteenth century, by which time the once flourishing town had declined drastically in population, so that following the Reform Act of 1832 it was declared a ‘rotten borough’. After Weobley ceased to become politically useful, a number of apparently empty houses were demolished. However, recent research suggests that many of these may have been temporary buildings erected to house a ‘rent-a-crowd’ of voters, imported for elections only.

The nineteenth century saw the erection of a rather fine brick-built workhouse on the northern outskirts of the village. Like other rural workhouses, this did not function in quite the same way as the urban workhouses described by Dickens. During the winter, they served as a refuge for casual farm labourers and their families when work on the surrounding farms dried up for the season. There are even records of entertainments laid on for the inmates, and the contracts for suppliers contain evidence of ample provision of food and clothing.

After the excitements of earlier years, a major event in 1857 was the disappearance of Mr. Ford’s pig. Having searched high and low for her, to no avail, he despaired of finding her. The story had a happy ending: ‘At the time of the disappearance, a steam threshing machine was working outside his house, and it was a full three weeks later that Mr. Ford discovered his missing pig buried under the straw. The poor animal had had nothing to eat or drink, and was heavy with piglets, but with much care and attention she recovered from her imprisonment and soon produced 10 piglets.’

In the mid nineteenth century it must have seemed a disaster when the widespread development of railways passed Weobley by. Without easy access to this new speedy form of transport, Weobley declined into gentle decay, but it was almost certainly this which saved all the wonderful medieval houses. There was a further disaster in 1943 when a group of houses (including a bakery) on a small triangular plot in the very centre of the village caught fire and burned down before the fire engines from Hereford could reach them. Looking at the tiny flower garden which has replaced them, it seems they must have been very small.

With the expansion of car ownership since World War II, Weobley’s fortunes have changed again. Once more it outdoes all other villages in the area, with shops, schools, post office, pubs, restaurant, doctor, dentist, museum, library and all manner of social activities. The de Lacy and Devereux families may be gone, along with the threat from Owain Glyndwr, but the people of Weobley have a flourishing community in one of the loveliest villages in England.

Ann Swinfen

http://www.annswinfen.com

Powder and Paint: Make-Up and the Medieval Woman by Catherine Hokin

"A woman without paint is like food without salt."

You might think that quote is taken from a particularly literary edition of Femail magazine's never-ending 'name and shame celebrities caught without make-up' feature but it was actually coined by the Roman philosopher Plautus around 254 BC. I offer it as an illustration of both our ongoing fascination with cosmetics (now a $170 billion a year global business) and the attitudes and social connotations that affect its wearing.

 Roman face cream with visible finger-marks

Although they did not match the colourful heights of the Egyptians whose practices they copied, the Roman women Plautus associated with wore a lot of make-up. Their heavily-blackened eyebrows would not look out of place in a twenty-first century city centre, although they would have been framing faces whitened with a chalk and vinegar paste rather than apparently darkened with builders' tea. Cheeks and lips were highlighted in pink or red, thick eyeliner was essential and it was common for wealthy women to employ a cosmetic artist (a cosmatae) a la the Kardashians. 

Not only was make-up heavily used (pun intended), in both ancient Rome and ancient Greece, sporting a visibly painted face appears to have been acceptable across the social ranks. For medieval British women, however, whose lives were increasingly governed by the complex and judgemental rules of the Church, the picture was far more complex. 

 Visible cheek and lip paint

Whatever the current debate gracing the pages of the Huffington Post about the politics of wearing/not wearing cosmetics, it is a truth surely universally acknowleged that wearers use them to look healthier/more rested/more 'attractive'. I have yet to meet anyone who puts their slap on to look worse. It is no surprise, therefore, that the male clerics of the medieval church would instantly equate paint and powder with harlotry: if a woman is temptation enough, goodness knows what madness an enhanced woman could unleash. Based on this logic, cosmetics were banned for quite some time outside brothels. Ordinary women, however, continued to use make-up as is clear from the statuary, paintings and writings of the time. 'Ladies red powder' (made from dried and ground safflowers or angelica leaves or brazilwood chips soaked in rosewater) is mentioned in a number of sources including a twelfth-century poem which complains that statues are going undecorated because the women have used up all the paint. 

Now I know my fiction revolves around rediscovering hidden women's voices but even I cannot pretend the women of medieval England were strutting round plastered in full war-paint in open revolt against the Church and just no one thought to mention it, so what was going on? The answer: very clever rule-bending. Marriage, and avoiding the sin of adultery, was key to maintaining an ordered society: if allowing a wife to make herself attractive to her husband (particularly if she had been afflicted by a disfiguring illness) maintained this, even the clerics could see they had created a problem by condemning cosmetics quite so harshly. So they began to make exceptions to the rules, and women began to bend them: the 'natural look' was born.

 The Natural Look

Unlike the earlier intentionally visible cosmetic fashions, medieval faces can look surprisingly colourless - there were none of the bright pigments that characterised ancient Egyptian make-up and eye-shadow does not appear to have been worn. This look was all about hiding (both the flaws and the fact you were doing it) and enhancing, in this case not just your looks but your status. A pale face signified you did not work outside, a clear one showed you had not been marked by disease. Rather like a modern serum, skin preparation could start with a strawberry juice wash to remove redness or a wet amethyst crystal rubbed against spots, before the all-important paling (a lightening as opposed to the more extreme whitening seen in later periods) could begin. Twelfth century recipes include ground lily roots to whiten the skin but the favourite method used wheaten flour: this would be soaked in water for 15 days, then strained and crystallized to give a white powder that was mixed to a foundation-like paste using rosewater and patted on with a cloth. By the end of the medieval period, the whitening powder had become lead-based and highly toxic to the wearer - in the case of the renaissance Aqua Toffana it had become arsenic-based and far more dangerous to the husbands invited to kiss it but that's another story.

 The medieval make-up artist

Mouths and cheeks would be tackled next with wine or adaptations of the ubiquitous red powder added to lip balms made from beeswax or suet. Apparently a common beauty trick was also to rub a cut lemon across your lips to make them redder. Weirdly this works (I tried it) and the tingle was quite fun but it may not be the most practical thing to keep in your make-up bag! 

It must have been a time-consuming beauty routine. All the preparations seem to have a long drying time and all the tweezing required to maintain the high hairline and thin brows must have taken hours and goes some way to explain why some women resorted to quicklime powders to remove hair. Please do not try this one at home: the whitening effect is created by revealing bone. 

Perhaps there was a subversive element to some of the painting and powdering, I hope there was and at least one of my medieval characters will be wielding her face-brush with as much defiance as her sword. What I love, however, is the one thing that really hasn't changed over the centuries: achieving the 'natural look' still takes forever. As the playwrite Tracy Letts put it so neatly in August: Osage County: "The only woman who was pretty enough to go without make-up was Elizabeth Taylor, and she wore a ton."

KING JOHN'S BLING by Elizabeth Chadwick

King John's tomb Worcester Cathedral

As a writer,  much of the need-to-know detail for my novel is the background material culture of my settings. While it's vitally important to get the mindset and attitudes right so that I don't end up with modern people in fancy dress, a part of this is knowing the world in which my characters lived, and immersing myself in it as thoroughly as I can in order to convince the readers – although the more I study the more I realise how much in the shallows I still am even after more than 40 years of research!

Since King John and Magna Carta are so much on the agenda at the moment I thought this might be fun for my June post on The History Girls.

Supposing King John walked in on us right this minute. What might we see? Let's take it that it's a decent time for him and not too politically fraught. He is prepared to be affable. What does he look like?
We don't have a lot to go on from his own time. Contemporary historian Gerald of Wales tells us that his height was slightly below average and he was not as tall as his father or his older brothers Henry and Richard.  His tomb in Worcester Cathedral was opened in 1797, where he was found to have been placed in a stone coffin. The corpse was somewhat decomposed with the dried skins of maggots dispersed over the body. He had been dressed in a full length robe of red damask. That's a kind of wool fabric woven with silk and often patterned. There was a badly decomposed sword and scabbard in his left hand. He didn't wear a crown, but on his head was a coif that the antiquarians thought was perhaps a monk's cowl, perhaps placed on his head to cut down the time he might have to spend in purgatory. Modern historians now believe the cowl to be the cap he wore on his head at his coronation that was intended to soak up the holy oil with which he had been anointed. So it was in its own way as Royal as a crown. The skeleton was measured and turned out to be 5 foot 6 1/2 inches tall. So we know John's height and part of what he was wearing. It's the same outfit more or less, that is on his tomb effigy today. He may well have worn this robe to his coronation too.

We don't know what colour his hair was. People often think that he was dark-haired but that comes from books, film and TV. An illuminated sketch of him hunting from a century after his death shows him as being blonde, but really we have no idea.

A blonde king John out hunting - made 100 years after his death.

We do know from his correspondence that he liked to wear jewels around his neck and a black leather belt. Here's the letter about the jewels:
  'The King to Geoffrey FitzPeter. We had lost the precious stones and jewels which we were accustomed to wear around our neck: and Berchal the bearer of these presents, found them, and liberally and faithfully brought them unto us; and for his service we have given him 20 shillings worth of rent at Berkhamsted, where he was born.'

And the piece about the black leather belt
'on 27 June at Winchester, know that on the Friday next after the nativity of St John the Baptist, we received at Winchester 12 silver cups, and amongst other articles is specified the plain black leather belt with which the king was usually girt.'

Plaster cast mould of John's effigy in the Cast Court
at the V&A Museum. Note the jewelled collar and red robe

So, we can imagine him in a full-length red patterned gown, jewels around his neck and a black leather belt around his waist. He might have one of those silver cups in his hand and it will contain wine. Perhaps a strong one from Poitou. We know his wife liked to drink strong wine from that region because he ordered it for her when she was at Marlborough. John himself enjoyed wine from Le Blanc near Poitiers. 150 casks of it were delivered to his sellers at Southampton sometime before September 1202. There were numerous wines at that period and they had different qualities. The wines of Auxerre were famous for being as 'clear as a sinner's tears.' Or how about this one  - here's a description of a raisin wine from John's time, written by Alexander Nequam who have been Richard the Lion heart's breast-brother.  Oz Clarke eat your heart out!

'Raisin wine which is clear to the bottom of the cup, in its clarity similar to the tears were penitent, and the colour is that of an ox horn. It descends like lightning upon one who takes it – most tasty as an almond nut, quick as a squirrel, frisky as a kid, strong in the manner of a host of Cistercians or grey monks, emitting a kind of spark; it is supplied with the subtlety of a syllogism of Petit-Pont; delicate as a fine cotton, it exceeds crystal in its coolness'

Royal servants Reginald of Cornhill and John Fitzhugh were vitally important in the procurement of luxury goods in John's household and the maintenance of the same. Luxury goods they purchased included spices, fabrics, fruit, nuts, fresh fish, wine and wax. Cups and dishes were bought and mended. There is a mention on the accounts requiring five drinking horns to be ornamented with silver, and for the Kings own drinking horn to be ornamented with gold. So perhaps we ought to take that silver cup off him and put a drinking horn in his hand instead, and it will be decorated with emeralds rubies and sapphires. Rings were bought from Italian merchants at one point amounting to £226 13s 4d. The major producer of emeralds, rubies and sapphires were India and Sri Lanka (the latter known in the Medieval period as Sarandib), so these jewels had a long way to travel. At this point in history the faceting that we see today on gemstones was unknown and the jewels would have been polished in the smooth cabocchon style that makes them look like lumpy boiled sweets!

Cabochon tourmaline ring circa 1200

If John was feeling magnanimous, he might hand over some of these cups and jewels as gifts, or as diplomatic sweeteners. So for example he gave three gold rings set with sapphires to the King Norway

William, John's tailor (who also had brief to buy luxury goods for the King), in November 1214 was given a pile of textiles intended to be made into clothes as gifts from King John to Peter des Roches Bishop of Winchester. The materials included silk cloths, quilts, squirrel furs, scarlet cloth, grey cloth for a bed covering, six pairs of fasteners, and a gilded saddle with silk cloth and gilded bridle reins. Scarlet cloth cost eight shillings for a length of 37 inches -a measurement that was known as a cloth yard. Each finished cloth was made of 24 of these clothyards and required about ninety pounds of the finest English wool. This would take at least 36 sheep to provide and probably a lot more and that was before the cost of the dyestuff.  Just over three modern yards of cloth cost eight shillings which would be somewhere around a week's wages for a household knight.

If King John's cloak happened to be lined with super special ermines, that is the winter coat of the stoat, it would have cost him 100 shillings. Lambskin linings cost between six and seven shillings each, and a panel of northern squirrel fur cost 20 shillings.

If King John had walked into this room with his servants you would have noticed that their outfits were colour-coded. Stewards had robes of black and brown. Huntsmen wore blue and green. The nurses and washer women wore blue and green also

Back to John himself. In March 1213, Reginald of Cornhill supplied gold lace to William the Tailor to make a surcoat for the King. That's interesting because lace from the 13th century doesn't seem to have many surviving examples. In Winchester in 1210, miniver was bought to make John a nightgown. This doesn't mean he actually slept in it as such, it was more in the way of a luxurious dressing gown to lounge about in!

At Easter 1213 William the Tailor made three blood red robes, one for John, one for his queen and one for William D'Albini, although the latter's cost less. He also received a gift of a ruby red robe that was lined with green cendal (a form of silk). True red being such an expensive dye, it was commonly featured in royal robes. Ghent in Flanders was the centre for the best dyed red cloth. There are more accounts for robes lined with green cendal for members of the royal household including John's brother William Longespee Earl of Salisbury and John's own bastard son Richard FitzRoy.

John loved his jewels and display as we've already seen. One of his purveyors bought  150 gold leaves to gild 567 lances for theatrical display. We have a chamber receipt for 'one staff ornamented with 19 sapphires, and another with 10. A golden cabinet set with stones. 21 rings. A staff ornamented with six garnets, a silver cabinet with precious stones. Then there was the golden case made to hold the Kings 'ambergris apples' - an early form of pomander. This really gives you a feel for the colour and the richness of the period which you don't see in the bare shells of  the draughty castles that are all that are left to use,  but if you go somewhere like reconstructed interpretation of the King's bedchamber at Dover you begin to realise what a colourful, rich and textured world the 12th century aristocracy lived in.

casket late 12thc

You see reenactors today – and I'm one myself - who strive to emulate the clothing and trappings of the time, but in high status cases we cannot begin to replicate the wealth of a medieval king such as John. People often say that his reign wasn't his fault that inherited Richard's debts and a bankrupted realm. Does this look like bankruptcy? John, whatever you think of him has to be one of the most gifted fiscal geniuses in terms of raising money that England has ever known. It's also one of the reasons among many for Magna Carta.  But I just wish I could blur time for a moment and experience the full effect as it originally was.
Elizabeth Chadwick

Henry II's bed replica. Dover Castle

If you can get to the Magna Carta Exhibition at the British Library in London, do go - there are some bishop's accoutrements that give an idea of the wonderful textiles being produced in the 13thc, as well as a scrap of embroidered fabric from John's tomb.

Other sources used in this article:
Lost Letters of Medieval Life English Society 1200-1250 edited and translated by Martha Carlin and David Crouch - University of Pennsylvania Press 2013

A Description of the The Patent Rolls in the Tower of London to which is added an Itinerary of King John with Prefatory Observations by Thomas Duffus Hardy, F.S.A. of the Inner Temple. 1835

Serving the Man that rules: Aspects of the domestic arrangements of the Household of King John 1199-1216 - Henrietta Kaye.  Thesis submitted to the School of History at the University of East Anglia 2013.

King John - Treachery, Tyranny and the Road to Magna Carta by Marc Morris - Hutchinson 2015

Hersende, Haemorrhoids and Healing Water by Karen Maitland

King Louis IX receiving envoys

Last week I was privileged to give a joint talk on Medicine through the Ages with Ruth Downie, author of the wonderful series of Roman novels. Preparing for our discussion, reminded me of a remarkable 13th century woman doctor called Hersende, who become Royal Physician to King Louis IX of France. Some researchers have suggested that her title – Magistre Hersende Physica – indicates she studied medicine at University.

In 1248, she accompanied King Louis on the Seventh Crusade to conquer Egypt, receiving 12 Parisian deniers a day, which was an excellent rate of pay. Unfortunately for Hersende, instead of the French capturing Egypt it was the French army who were taken prisoner by the Egyptians and she was held captive, along with her king, until the ransom was paid.

Crusader Seige painted for King Louis in 1250

After they were released in 1250, Hersende went with the army to Acre. As well as being physician to the king, she tended to the illnesses and injuries of his favourite nobles, including treating them for haemorrhoids and anal fistulas, a common hazard of riding for hours in hot, sweaty armour. And if this was not work enough, she was also put in charge of the health of the many camp-followers. That was not an easy task given that she had to deal with unknown fevers, stomach bugs, childbirth and STDs. But Hersende survived and eventually returned to Paris where she married Jacques, an apothecary, which must have been an excellent business arrangement.

The illustration on the left shows a cure for gout by cutting
 and burning the feet,
while on the left is an operation on haemorrhoids.

Talking of matches, today, 8th November, is the feast day of St Cybi and St Tysilio, two 6th century saints who were great friends. They both settled in Anglesey, with St Cybi living on a small island off the coast, probably bridged by a causeway. They used to meet halfway every day to pray and talk, but poor Cybi had to walk facing east in the morning and go home facing west in the afternoon, so he got the full sun on his face all day and legend has it, he became so tanned he was known as Cybi the Red or Tawny. While Tysilio, coming the other way, always had his back to the sun, so he was known as Tysilio the Pale or Fair.

St Cybi does have something in common with Hersende, for the saint also had a reputation as a healer, though only when he was dead. It seems he struck a rock with his staff when he first landed on the island and a well sprang up, whose waters were said to cure blindness, scrofula, scurvy, rheumatism and warts. But to be a cured you had drink the well water mixed with equal amounts of seawater twice a day for seven days and bath in the same mixture before retiring to bed in a nearby cottage. If you found yourself growing warm in bed, the waters were curing you, but if you were cold the saint’s blessing was not with you.

St Cybi’s holy island eventually gave its name to the town of Holyhead, while St Tysilio's name is incorporated in the most famous place name in Britain – Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyll-llantysiliogogogoch
Which, I’m told, means St Mary’s Church in the hollow of the white hazel near a rapid whirlpool and the Church of St Tysilio of the red cave. I wonder how often that place name gets tweeted!



13th Century Anatomical Illustration

Ferragosto - or or the art of living in a Renaissance painting - Dianne Hofmeyr

If you’ve ever wanted the experience of being in Renaissance painting then head out to any village in Le Marche during the 35-40 degree days of mid August. This is Ferragosto time – the holiday derived from Feriae Augusti – festival of the Emperor Augustus - which takes place to celebrate the end of harvest. Some celebrations are virtually unchanged in form, participation and music. The palio of Sienna is well known but lesser palio’s in smaller hilltop villages where pecorino sheep still browse the olive groves on the outskirts of the town walls, are perhaps even more steeped in their traditions.

The word palio comes from the palium or piece of precious fabric that was given to the winners of horse races in ancient Rome. And most celebrations of Ferragosto involve a horse race or jousting race between different quadrants of the town or village. The hilltop town of San Ginesio on Wednesday 15th of August this year, was no exception. And while I can’t explain the intricacies of the parade I watched through shimmering heat against the backdrop of an unchanged medieval town square … it was incredibly regal. No one speaks or shouts as they walk the route to the jousting grounds where the cavalieri will compete for the palio… each group named after one of the four ancient portals to the town and dressed in the colours of their rioni.

I’ve always thought people in Renaissance paintings have a certain look that a modern face lacks. But in San Ginesio I saw figures and profiles and expressions one might expect in artwork from the School of Rimini under the influence of Giotto. How did this page boy get that look? Or these young men shouldering their crossbows display such bravery yet at the same time such vulnerability? How were the women with their long necks and calm profiles able to show such regal dignity and yet such exquisite womanliness?

These weren’t modern people. They had walked straight out of a Marchigianan painting and the 13th century stone walls and arches and far vistas of hills and sheep were merely painted backdrop.

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photographs copyright Dianne Hofmeyr. Please do not reproduce without permission.