Charlie Fenton > Recent Status Updates

‘Being at home, the duke wore no armour, but Crispin was almost more used to him in the black armour he was so fond of. Today he wore a velvet houppelande whose sleeve points surpassed the gown’s knee-length hem and nearly touched the floor. The coat’s face was quartered by the colourful arms of Gaunt and Castile. Only ten years Crispin’s senior, he seemed so much older, so much stronger and heroic.’

‘The word ‘medieval’ is often - and wrongly - used to mean something primitive, dirty and uncomfortable. This is really unfair to the people of the Middle Ages, where art, beauty, comfort and cleanliness were widely available (at least for those at the top of society). Washing their bodies was an important part of life for prosperous people, and from medieval towns there are numerous records of communal bathing’

‘Men were never criminalised in the same way for becoming parents outside marriage... In 1593, the House of Commons considered plans to punish men as well as women for having illegitimate children, but, as one member baldly put it, it wouldn’t work. The requirement to undergo a whipping ‘might chance upon gentlemen or men of quality, whom it were not fit to put to such a shame’.’

‘With the Enlightenment, though, the bedchamber began to lose its role as an operating theatre. Those in need began to turn to the professionals. There were physicians who would still perform you at home for a fee, but also surgeons who could perform operations in their own shops, and apothecaries and chemists who could sell you herbal remedies and drugs from commercial premises.’

‘With the slimmer, looser, less cumbersome fashions of the Jane Austen or Regency period, though, women began to adopt the male fashion for wearing protective drawers beneath their lighter, diaphanous and potentially more revealing skirts. The earliest knickers had long legs, but even so were considered terribly racy.’

I am really enjoying this and have got used to the characters pretty fast. The last mystery I read was the Shardlake series, which I loved, and so knew this book had a lot to live up to. So far it doesn’t disappoint.

‘A lower chair is better for a woman giving birth, as she can brace her feet against the floor. Its drawback is that the midwife has to bend down low... But from around 1700, when doctors began to take over, birth chairs started to have longer legs... Eventually mothers were encouraged to lie down flat on their beds and push, instead of to sit and use gravity. It strikes one as being more to the benefit of doctor‘

‘Pictures of pre-modern people in bed often show them in a curious half-sitting position. Propped up against pillows and bolsters, they look rather uncomfortable, and one wonders if they actually slept like that. Perhaps the answer is that art did not mirror reality... But I think that the explanation for the pose is that beds strung with rope cannot fail to dip in the middle and feel rather like hammocks.’

Johnny: “And when they {women] have a lot of children, then they become steady as milestones.”
Madalina: “Do you mean to say, sir, that I should be a milestone?”
Johnny: “A signpost to show a fellow the way he ought to go.”
Madalina: “John, shall I be a signpost for you?”
Johnny: “I think not… on the whole. You’ll make a fine signpost, I’m sure you will, but sadly I’ll be on a different road.”

I’m already losing track of how many times Philippa has slapped Crispin in this.

‘One of the most popular tourist destinations is Drake’s famous ship, The Golden Hind, which is on display in Greenwich. Not only can you go aboard, you can also rent her as a banqueting house. Unfortunately she is slowly being dismantled because most visitors take a piece as a souvenir. If you want to see her in all her glory, go quickly: by 1618 only the keel will be left.’

‘Crispin turned his attention to the quiet room and to the body of Nicholas Walcote. He’d been stabbed multiple times in the back. There was no sign of a struggle, no cast-over chairs or torn drapery. The blood had stopped running long ago. Such bodies he remembered from battlefields. These were the kind found in the morning after the corpse had lain all night.‘

‘Sixteenth-century people believe that water can infect them through the pores of their skin and the crevices of their body, and so they display a marked reluctance to immerse themselves wholly in a bath unless they know the water is pure... having a bath is seen as risky and unnecessary: not only might you catch a disease, but it costs a great deal of time, effort and money to prepare one.’

‘Food is valuable in Elizabethan England, far more so than in the modern world. A flock of 180 sheep is worth more than the average detached house. The difficulties of transportation mean that the food supply depends heavily on what grows locally and how much surplus is available. It also depends on the season. Harvest is obviously a time of much grain and fruit.’

‘Where you lay your head in Elizabethan England is - like everything else - very much a matter of status. Poor men will not be offered accommodation in a nobleman’s house, and most noblemen would not deign even to set foot inside a cottage. Travellers can’t expect cheap accommodation at a monastery any more: hospitality is no longer a matter of charity.’

‘For the first time in her life Blanche felt alone. Her husband had loved her dearly and greatly respected her. She had helped him make decisions; she had ruled with him; and on his death she had ruled for Louis and then with him; and now this little girl from Provence was slowly but surely ousting her from her position. It was becoming Louis and his wife Marguerite - not Louis and Blanche his mother.’

‘She wondered what Henry would say and do if she told him that she wished to marry Simon de Montfort... Henry would be more inclined to be lenient now because he had a bride of his own. This time he had actually achieved marriage and there was a queen at court. Eleanor - named as she was - was very young and very beautiful and had come from Provence to be Henry’s queen.’

‘Another reason for the sudden popularity of coaches is the lowering of the cost of production... In 1573 a new coach could be obtained for just £34 14s, plus 2s 6d for painting your cost of arms on the side. A second-hand one might cost as little as £8: the earl of Essex has one valued at this price, and the earl of Bedford has two old coaches valued together at £10 in 1585.’

‘’A greater population means that more people are chasing too little food, forcing prices up. At the same time, with a greater number of people available to work, employers reduce wages. Lower wages and increasing demand mean that when there is a shortage, food becomes unaffordable for many. In the 1550s, prices are approximately 50 per cent higher than they were ten years earlier.’

‘The English do not burn people for witchcraft; that sort of thing only goes on in Scotland and Continental Europe. In England witchcraft is not regarded as a religion or a heresy: in theory you can be a good Christian and a witch. Witches at this time do not yet congregate as a body, nor do they celebrate the sabbat together - that all comes later, in the next century.’

‘The relationship between Hubert de Burgh and the King had never regained its old footing since that unfortunate episode at Portsmouth. It continued to rankle with Henry who had displayed a violence in his nature which he had been ashamed of, and he could not forget that Hubert had proved him to be in the wrong when the expedition failed.’

‘The Tudor monarchs have a huge need for literate men to fill bureaucratic offices, taking on everything from corresponding with foreign agents to the production of baptism, marriage and burial registers for every parish in the country. With such a high value placed on literacy, people increasingly recognise that there are financial advantages to educating their sons.’

‘The atheist is the enemy of all, being utterly godless and therefore outside the scope of Elizabethan morality... Not believing in God is like not believing in trees. Most people simply cannot conceive of a line dividing the metaphysical and the physical. To them the two are indivisibly linked: Creation cannot exist without its Creator.‘

‘Since then Hubert had consolidated his position and although Henry was striving to be more independent he could not govern without Hubert, so Hubert was becoming richer and more influential everyday. He knew that resentment against him was rising among those who sought to take his place; but that he recognised as the inevitable result of power. He must accept it, while being wary of it.’

‘approximately 15,000 other gentlemen with an income from land sufficient to guarantee they do not have to work for a living. In this group you have the greatest disparities of wealth - from knights as rich as Sir John Harington... and Sir Nicholas Bacon, with incomes of £4,000 or more per year, down to local gentlemen with a thousand acres let out to tenant farmers for not much more than £100.’

‘Thomas Wilson... states that there are five types: nobles, townsmen, yeomen, artisans and countrymen; and he further divides these groupings into smaller sections... Some knights are richer than lords; a rich husbandman can be more respectable than a poor yeoman; and a spinster born into an ancient gentry family with coat of arms might look down on a merchant with ten times as much income.’

‘She must set aside her personal grief. There was no time for it. Later she would think of Louis, the understanding between them, the affection, the respect they had always had for each other, the happy married life - almost as felicitous as that of her own parents; but now she must think of the future... When a King died and left an heir not of an age to govern, there was always danger.’

‘You might think that barn conversions are a feature of the modern world, but a glimpse at the back yards of some properties will tell you otherwise. Quite a few old barns are let out to paupers who have nowhere else to go. The population of Stratford in 1558 is about 1,500; by 1603 it has swelled to 2,500. And the latter figure probably does not include all the poor and vagrants in and around the town’