Isabel MacDuff, Countess of Buchan was a woman who followed her conscience and suffered the consequences. Her family line, the MacDuffs, had the hereditary right to crown the Kings of Scotland. So in 1306 when Robert Bruce killed his rival for the throne, Red Comyn, she defied her husband, stole his horse, and rode to Scone. The place where Scottish monarchs had been crowned since 838AD On hearing of her arrival, The Bruce who had already been crowned, agreed to go through with the rite of enthronement a second time, so on March 27th 1306 Isabel crowned Robert I. You might be forgiven for thinking The Bruce was just placating a loyal follower, but I don’t think so. By royal decree a MacDuff had crowned the kings of Scotland since 1057. Being crowned by Isabel gave his claim to the throne a legitimacy it would have lacked otherwise. In late 1306 Edward I captured her, along with Robert’s wife, sisters, and daughter. Her husband asked for her death, but Edward had other ideas. She was imprisoned, exposed to the elements, in a cage suspended from the outer walls of Berwick Castle, the object of public humiliation. “As she did not strike with the sword, she shall not perish by the sword... let her be closely confined in an abode of stone and iron... let her be hung up out of doors in the open air at Berwick, that both in life and after her death, she may be a spectacle and eternal reproach to travellers.” Edward I, King of England I cannot even begin to imagine how cold she must have been in winter, or how she scared she must've been when the cage swayed in the wind? I also have to wonder if the inhabitants of Berwick pitied or scorned her. She stayed in that cage for fours years until 1310, when she was sent to a Carmelite nunnery. By this time, Robert was making headway in his campaign against the English, and the women had become valuable as hostages. Accounts vary, but it seems that this is the last time she appears in the historical record. After the Battle of Bannockburn there was a hostage exchange, and the Bruce women were returned to Scotland. Isabel was not among them and it is believed she died in captivity. A sad fate for a woman who followed her conscience and crowned a king. The Scottish Highlands of the middle Ages is the point where the European and Celtic cultures meet. The Highlands are a place of amazing natural beauty with mountains, glens, and lochs…and then there’s the rain. The western Highlands can receive nearly sixteen feet of rain per year. With such a rugged environment you might expect the people to be isolated, but we know from clan histories that lairds and chiefs went on crusade, so they probably weren’t as secluded as you might think. There is evidence of trade between the Highlands, the Western Isles, Ireland, and England. And you would expect them to have used the rivers and lochs as their highways. Everyone who belonged to a clan would go by the same last name. That does not mean they were related but rather that they identified with or were under the protection of a particular clan. For instance, if you were a McDonald and were in McNaughton territory you might use the name McNaughton for protection. Archeologists and scholars believe that most of the clan-folk lived in townships where the population could be as high as a hundred and fifty people. They resided in timber frame homes known as creel houses. These structures had thatched roofs, and a turf outer wall. The interior would have been dark, with one small hearth, dirt floors and very little in the way of creature comforts. The door faced south to take advantage of the natural light. Creel houses were in use from the high middle ages until the eighteenth century. The people of the clans were subsistence farmers, working tracks of land. They lived off the food they could grow, which included kale, oats, and bere, which is a type of barley. They picked nuts and berries, hunted, and fished. They also raised cattle for the chief. I'll post more about the food of the Highlanders in a few days. The chiefs of this time had a closer kinship with their people than the lords in the south. Many of the laird's clan would have been related to him. In this period the highlands were an unsettled place where disputes, open war, and feuding were regular occurrences. Members of the clan worked the land and paid a small rent, in return their chief provided them with a safe haven in the event of an attack. Compared to the rest of his clan the laird lived in relative luxury. He would have a castle, with a proper fireplace, a stone floor, tapestries, and a private bedchamber. He would probably have had chain mail, and armor too, remember some of them had travelled to the holy land, so they would have experienced the world beyond Scotland. Plus, he had a wealth of cattle and an army of kinsmen at his command. Perhaps one of the reasons the clan system was successful for hundreds of years was because the chief didn’t own the land. It belonged to the clan. The position of chief was not hereditary; another man from the ruling class could replace him. This gave him an incentive to put the clan’s needs above his own. As some of you may know, in August I dragged my family to England for a vacation, and then I dragged them to castles and museums. (I’m so mean.) Anyway, I had the good fortune to tour the restored apartments of Edward I at the Tower of London. A few days later I visited a peasant’s cottage at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum. I thought it might be helpful if I shared some of my photos with you. Edward I ruled from 1239 until his death in 1307 and the cottage is dated from 1310 so these pictures will give you an idea of the disparity between the rich and poor in the same period. First, I’ll show you the king’s apartments. You’ll notice the walls are plastered and painted with a delicate ornate pattern. There is glass in the windows. Lead glass was commonly used in the living quarters of most castles, but only on the windows that faced into the bailey. Edward had his own personal chapel with stained glass windows, where he would have heard mass. His bed was luxurious even by today’s standards and the curtains would have been drawn, while he slept, to keep in the heat. He also has a fireplace in his bedroom with a chimney. The earliest known hearth with a chimney, in England, dates from 1185, but they weren’t commonly used until 15th or 16th Century. The peasant lived in misery. The family would have slept together on the floor sharing blankets and body heat to keep the cold at bay. All the fixtures are basic and serve a purpose. Every minute of the day would have been taken with providing for the family’s meager needs. You’ll notice the rustic furniture, pieces of wood hammered together to meet their basic requirements. There is also a storage area in the roof beams. This would have been safe from rats and other vermin, and is a reminder of the hardships these people faced on a daily basis. It also reminds me of the nursery rhyme ‘Rock a Bye Baby.” I hope you enjoyed my pictures.
Marlow I would like to thank the two historians at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum for this post. They made it clear to me that daily life of the medieval peasant improved significantly after the Black Death. Before the plague, in 1348, England was vastly overpopulated which suited the landlords perfectly. They had an abundant source of cheap labour to work their fields for little or no pay. Each peasant was obligated to work his master’s land for at least three days a week. Then he still had to cultivate his own meagre portion of land hoping to grow enough to feed his family. It’s known that there was a climate change at the beginning of the fourteenth century which resulted in colder winters and wetter summers. Between 1315 and 1322 crops failed and people starved. And yet the nobility who owned the land still demanded their taxes and labour. By and large, generosity towards the peasant class seems to have been non-existent. So how did the Black Death of 1348 change all this? It will come as no surprise that the plague hit the peasant class the hardest. They were, after all, the poorest, most malnourished members of society. It’s estimated that approximately 50% of the population died, most of them from the peasant class. In some areas the death toll was even higher. In fact, it killed so many people that there was hardly anyone left to work the land. For the first time those on the lowest rungs of society had a bargaining chip. Instead of working for their lord they could go and work for another landowner and demand a better wage. The nobility fought back. In 1351 they past an act of parliament that stated; “It was lately ordained by our lord king, with the assent of the prelates, nobles and others of his council against the malice of employees, who were idle and were not willing to take employment after the pestilence unless for outrageous wages, that such employees, both men and women, should be obliged to take employment for the salary and wages accustomed to be paid in the place where they were working in the 20th year of the king's reign [1346], or five or six years earlier; and that if the same employees refused to accept employment in such a manner they should be punished by imprisonment, as is more clearly contained in the said ordinance.” It failed. Wages rose and with it the standard of living for the common man. Because so many of its educated clerks had died Parliament was forced to pass a statute, in 1362, stating that all pleas should be heard in English. This is the moment when English replaced French as the official language of England. I imagine it also made the legal process more accessible to the ordinary man. Before the plague English society was divided into three main groups; the nobility, the church and the peasants. After the Black Death with the increase in commerce and wages there emerged a class of merchants and yeoman farmers; people who weren’t nobility, but who weren’t peasants either. These were the landed freemen; they were a class of society that hadn’t been seen in England before. They were, what I would call, the beginnings of a middle class. Within a generation of the Black Death preachers like John Wycliffe and John Ball started to spread their message that all men were created equal. John ball is quoted in the medieval document The Froissart Chronicles as saying; “Ah, ye good people, the matter goes not well to pass in England, nor shall not do so till everything be common, and that we be all united together and that the lords be no greater masters than we. What have we deserved or why should we be thus kept in serfdom? We be all come from one father and one mother, Adam and Eve. How can they claim to prove that they be lords more than us, save by making us produce and grow the wealth that they do spend?” Commoners listened and thanks to their new social freedoms, garnered after the Black Death, they seemed to have a new confidence when it came to demanding their rights. In 1381 The Peasants Revolt swept through England. The revolt itself was a reaction against over taxation caused by the Hundred Year’s War, but it was a revolt for commoners and led by commoners, the first of its kind in English history, and something that would’ve been unimaginable a hundred years earlier. For me this idea that all men are created equal is the beginning of democracy in England. Not that democracy or the middle class were new ideas even in the medieval period. Greek philosopher Aristotle said, “The most perfect political community must be amongst those who are in the middle rank.” And scholars today believe that to maintain democracy you need a strong middle class. In England the middle class was born out of the suffering and devastation that was the Black Death. To quote H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds “By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth.” We have paid for our democracy with millions of lives, not just those who have died for an ideal, but also those who suffered and died so that the ideal of equality could be formed. I recently took a vacation to London, England. My parents live there, and so I try and visit once a year. Normally, these visits are short affairs where I stay in my home town of Ashford and catch up with family and old friends. This year was different, this year I took my husband and children with me. We had a blast. Each of us chose one thing we wanted to see while we were near London. And today I want to share my choice The Weald and Downland Open Air Museum. It is a few hours by train from London. If you want to go the easy way then travel by train from Waterloo Station to Chichester and then take a cab from there. Of course, we went the hard way. We took a train from Clapham Junction to Hazelmere from there we got a bus to Midhurst, a pretty medieval town, and then another bus to the museum. I was amazed at how well timed the public transport was. We didn’t wait long for any of the trains or buses and taking public transportation added to the adventure. The Weald and Downland Open Air Museum consists of a large parcel of land where volunteers and workers at the museum have taken tumble down buildings from the southeast of England, restored them to their original condition, completed research concerning their history, and acquired historically relevant artifacts. It is a place where you can explore the everyday life of the medieval world. This is simply one of the best museums I’ve ever been to and hardly anyone seems to know about it. For me it’s a living history of the medieval and Tudor period. To quote their website “…traditional buildings in a rural landscape that tell the story of the men, women and children who lived and worked in them over a 600-year period. You can explore the 50-acre site and visit some of our 50 exhibit buildings. Many of our exhibit houses are furnished to recreate historic domestic interiors. We have a regular programme of domestic and craft demonstrations, including cooking in our Tudor kitchen.” Each building has an information plaque explaining; where the build came from, the time of its construction, and any relevant history. There is also a photo showing the original condition of the structure before its restoration. Their re-enactors are friendly and helpful. I was fortunate enough to talk to two of them and pick their brains about life in the early 14th century. They were amazingly knowledgeable and very kindly took the time to share their wisdom and research tips with me. As a history geek I was in heaven. We sampled food from the Tudor kitchen, walked through the buildings where you can touch and handle the furniture This was an amazing day and the English countryside is exceptionally beautiful. The only hiccup was that our bus stop near the museum was out of commission due to construction, but Andy from The Old Forge B&B was nice enough to give us a ride to Midhurst, where we had a delicious cup of coffee before starting our journey back to London.
The Weald and Downland is a beautiful part of England and with its proximity to London is definitely worth a visit. Like many people I’m absolutely enthralled by History Channel's The Vikings, but as usual I can’t just enjoy the show I have to know if there are any facts behind the fiction. Unfortunately after days of research I’ve come to realize that I’ll probably never know if Ragnar Lothbrok, and his wife, Lagertha, were real because the Scandinavian people of the Viking age left no written records. The accounts we have of Ragnar come mainly from The History of the Danes written by Saxo Grammaticus in the 12th century. Scholars disagree as to whether Ragnar really existed. Some say there is historical fact behind the legend, others state that he is a composite of many kings. And if the experts don’t know, how can I? But if I had to guess I’d say there was some truth behind the myth. My reasoning lies with another Viking, Leif Erikson. For centuries it was believed that the saga describing Erikson’s voyage to Vineland was merely a myth and had no basis in fact, and yet in the early 1960’s Norwegian explorer, Helge Ingstad, and his wife, archeologist Anne Stine Ingstad, discovered proof that the Vikings had, in fact, sailed to North America, and had settled at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. So maybe we can look again at the evidence, take for example, the idea that shield-maidens existed only in myth. My common sense tells me that in a warring society, there must have been women who were proficient with the sword. They would have to be, especially when you consider that the men were gone for long periods, raiding. It’s human nature to protect your home and family no matter what your gender. Like most pagan peoples the Norse buried their dead with grave goods, so one could assume that shield-maidens were buried with their swords. Once again it’s not that straightforward. Marianne Moen in the January 2013 article Don’t Underestimate Viking Women, says “There have also been cases of male graves with beads and woven cloths, and women were sometimes buried with smaller weapons, for instance arrowheads. Generally it is fairly obvious what constitutes male or female objects, but the lines were sometimes blurred.” It seems that archeologists have assumed gender roles based on their own skewed perception rather than the facts. In 1904 a grave ship containing the skeletons of two women was found. Instead of assuming that this was the burial of powerful women in their own right archeologists assumed it was the wife or mother of a powerful man. But could this in fact have been the burial of a Lagertha-like character? Maybe. In the same article Moen also says “To assume that Viking men were ranked above women is to impose modern values on the past, which would be misleading,” The experts are now re-examining the evidence, hopefully with fresh eyes. Perhaps one day soon we will have a better glimpse into the the real lives of the Vikings. I have decided that for the next few months. I will post my blog along the same lines as my current research. I write in three different timelines; Medieval Scotland, Victorian England and Early Christian Ireland. Why these three? I’m honestly not sure but they seem speak to me in a way that sparks my imagination. I will start with Medieval Scotland, with a focus on the lives of women, as I’m currently working on a novel in this time period. I’ll start with an overview and then see where my research takes me in future weeks. It seems to me that feudal society of the medieval Europe was a glorified pyramid scheme with the king at the top; next came the barons, then the lords and knights, and at the bottom of the heap were the peasants. Life in Medieval Europe was hard. It is estimated that ninety percent of the population lived off the land, that’s a lot of people living at a subsistence level. Some estimates put life expectancy at twenty-five years of age. There were frequent famines and let’s not forget the Black Death that ravaged Europe between 1348 – 1350, some scholars put the death rate as high as three quarters of the population. Is it any wonder that religion was the centre of their world? Almost everyone was Christian and the only Christian religion at the time was Catholicism, Protestantism didn’t begin until the sixteenth century. The church governed every aspect of life, except for marriage. They weren’t happy about this but seemed unable to stop it. All two people had to do to become married was to make a promise to one another and they were wed. The promise could take place anywhere, such as a pub, a field, or your own home. As long as there were witnesses the marriage was considered valid. Many of our ideas about this time period are romanticized Victorian ideals and have no basis in reality. It was the Victorians who came up with the knight in shining armour and the damsel in distress. They were also the ones responsible for the idea that women of an earlier time period would have been overly modest when in actuality medieval woman were expected to get the job done rather than worry about if their ankles were showing. It’s also interesting to note the churches attitude towards women. They were considered lesser beings, which is no surprise, but they were also expected to be more lusty and base than men. The idea being that men were perfect (I know that gave me a chuckle) and so therefore women, who were imperfect, were drawn to desire them.
There are some manor court records from this time period in England that show there was a fine levied for premarital sex but there doesn’t seem to be much social stigma attached the act. Normally, only the women were charged and daughters of elite families figure prominently in those convicted. I have to wonder if these unfortunate women were required to provide proof of fertility before marriage. How does this relate to medieval Scotland? Well, society in lowland Scotland would have been very similar to that of England, except poorer. You have to remember everyone lived off the land and Scotland is mountainous, limiting the amount of arable cultivation. Although as of yet I have found very little reliable research regarding the everyday life of the Highland Clans, I have to assume, with their language ties and origins that they were closer to the Gaelic Irish culture than the English. I also believe that they were adept sailors and were known to have wonderful ships called birlinns. I will be exploring the Highland culture and aspects of their daily life in later posts. I will also be looking into the roles played by women and attitudes towards them. Below is an image of a birlinn. |
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