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

by Ian Mortimer

You have come face to face with the contrasts of a medieval city. It is so proud, so grand, and in places so beautiful; and yet it displays all the disgusting features of a bloated glutton.

So if someone slaps you on the back in a hearty way, and exclaims ‘your breeches and your very balls be blessed!’ do not take it amiss. It is a compliment.

the old draconian sea-laws of Richard I applied. If one man murders another on board, the penalty is to tie him to the corpse and fling him into the sea. If a man so much as punches another, he can expect to be tied up with a rope and dunked three times in the sea.

man who drinks out of an enamelled gilt-silver cup is rich; but a man whose steward drinks out of such a cup is powerful.

a man is spiritually clean, and without sin, he is far less likely to have to go through the purifying fires of illness, and seek redemption through God’s mercy. He will smell sweet to those around him. He will be without the stench of sin. In the modern world we have no equivalent to this form of cleanliness. Instead we have antibacterial wipes.

You have no idea what destruction a disease can wreak upon society.

Stares in 2020

IT IS A challenge, when confronted by the extreme adversities of life, to remember that fourteenth-century England has a strong element of joy running through it. It is a calamitous century, no doubt about it; but people cope.

Everyone sings and dances. In a century of plague, war and suffering, you have to.