The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: a Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century

by Ian Mortimer

Huge distances mean they do not have to deal with the problem of John the Baptist having three heads, and, by implication, the problem of the Church circulating untruths. For almost everyone, the principle of divine providence explains everything. Things are as they are because God has determined that that is the way they shall be – even to the point of John the Baptist having three heads.

People do not understand the laws of physics, or the nature of matter, or even how the human body functions. Hence they do not see limitations on how the world operates. Their sense of normality is thus somewhat precarious.

If a horse kills its master, then it should be confiscated as a ‘deodand’ and sold, its value being payable to the Crown. Even a ship can be deemed guilty of murder and confiscated as a deodand, the proceeds of its sale being given to the king to be distributed as alms. Extraordinary though this practice seems, it is at least slightly more rational than the system which prevails in France, where donkeys, pigs and cows are often tried and hanged for murder, if they happen to kill a child. In 1349 a cow is solemnly burnt at the stake for just such a crime.29

As postmodernist philosophers have repeatedly pointed out – to the great frustration of many historians – the past has gone, never to return. Knowledge of it as it actually was is impossible.1 That is all very well. But, as this book has shown, there is no reason why we cannot consider medieval England as a living community. It is just another place in time, like France in the twenty-first century, or Germany in the twentieth, and so on. Knowledge of it as it actually was might be difficult – impossible even – but so is knowledge of England as it actually was yesterday. If we accept that the evidence available to us in writing about any place in any time is always going to be partial and incomplete – including a modern country which could be physically visited (for you cannot see all of it at once, or meet everyone) – then certainly one can write a guidebook to medieval England which in theory is as comprehensive and accurate as a guidebook to a modern country.

However, if treated as a living place, the only limits are the experience of the author and his perception of the requirements, interests and curiosity of his readers. We can ask any question we like about the past, and set about answering it to the best of our knowledge and ability. The implications of this for understanding the nature of history itself, and for transcending the postmodern questioning of historical knowledge, are huge. History is no longer just an extended academic exercise – it can be anything you want it to be. If the limits of history are set by the questions which people (not just historians) ask about the past, then history is as wide as the public imagination. As stated in the introduction, the result is a new way of conceiving history – ‘free history’ as I have described it in a theoretical essay, ‘What isn’t History?’, written alongside this book.2

Everything changes. What does not change? Only that these people, like us, are human, and have urges, needs and challenges, and that these are continually shifting. If we really want to understand what humanity is, and how adaptable we are, we must see ourselves as a constantly living, evolving race – always on the very cusp of a vast and unimaginable future, whether we live in the fourteenth century or the twenty-first – and in no way dead until the whitened bones of the last human being lie abandoned on the sand.

History is not just about the analysis of evidence, unrolling vellum documents or answering exam papers. It is not about judging the dead. It is about understanding the meaning of the past – to realise the whole evolving human story over centuries, not just our own lifetimes.

Somewhere in the 1370s, a beautiful young noblewoman is looking at Geoffrey Chaucer. She is teasing him, looking him in the eye, smiling and laughing. She will remain there like that, forever, just like the Canterbury pilgrims will forever be riding along together on their way to Canterbury, never to return.

But if you believe that we are the inheritors of a living, vibrant past, and that an understanding of what we have been is vital to an understanding of what we are today, and what we will be in the future, then you may find yourself becoming a thoughtful time traveller, setting out on the highway of human history, guided by Chaucer down all the alleys of fourteenth-century life. You might even consider joining him and his companions in that tavern, the Tabard, in Southwark, and yourself becoming a pilgrim. At the very least you will hear some good stories.