Status Updates From A Fool and His Money: Life ...

“When [royal officials] tried to push into town politics they were often rebuffed again. One of them, around 1350, had made sterling efforts to stop the illegal duel between the sergeants….; but, having failed, the king’s representative was next seen hanging over the duelling fence, urging the contenders on as loudly as the next man.”

"History keeps memorials of the great, the saintly or the vicious, but we may pine for the chance to hear about men and women more like ourselves: common folk. Marques was preserved, in effect, in the tittle-tattle of his neighbors. Reading the documents about the jug of gold, we hear the ancient equivalent of lace curtains being moved aside."

"The naves were cluttered with chests, bundles of clothes and flitches of bacon, stowed there for safety in case the English showed up."

"A proper illness confined you to bed, like the paupers in the peace hospital, where you were bled and fed on broth until eventually, almost inevitably, you died."

"in the late 1360s taxes soared...Marques borrowed to pay them, and then could not pay the debts back, at which his creditors would ask the parish priest to excommunicate him. This was a fairly routine rebuke (one neighbour was excommunicated over a shipment of faulty nails)..."

"Caissac spoke with such authority that the string of Bourg witnesses behind him were content to say they agreed with him, and leave it at that. Presented with this damning evidence, the City lawyers were reduced to scratching fierce remarks in the margins when the record was written up later."

Pausing to read this month's challenge books...