Gone Medieval - How to Survive in Medieval England

Episode Date: January 22, 2022

If you travelled back in time to the Medieval period this very second, do you think you would survive? The short answer is probably not. If you weren't wearing a hat, wore glasses on the street, or even laced your corset in the wrong way, things would go south for you very quickly. Luckily, this week Matt is joined by Toni Mount, author of the book 'How to Survive in Medieval England' who provides an insight on what it would take to avoid beatings, homelessness, and hunger in Medieval times.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hithttps://access.historyhit.com/?utm_source=audio&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=Podcast+Campaign&utm_id=PodcastIf you’re enjoying this podcast and looking for more fascinating Gone Medieval content then subscribe to our Gone Medieval newsletter. Follow the link here:https://www.historyhit.com/sign-up-to-history-hit/?utm_source=timelinenewsletter&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=Timeline+Podcast+Campaign Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. I'm Matt Lewis. It's probably no surprise that I've thought about being able to travel back in time to the medieval period. I'd probably want to be fairly rich, mind you, if I had the choice. If it ever happened, though, how would I actually cope? There's a myriad of ways in which the medieval world was different to the one that we live in today. No internet or smartphones for one thing, and I'm old

enough to remember that horror kids. Fortunately, the wonderful Tony Mount has produced a new book entitled How to Survive in Medieval England. And Tony joins me now to give us some pointers on surviving there. Thank you very much for joining us, Tony. It's good to be with you, Matt. It's great to talk to you again. So I've landed in medieval England. Something I've always thought would be pretty cool. and I guess the first thing is that my clothes will stick out like a sore thumb if I arrive dressed like this. So what would I have to get hold of in terms of clothing to be able to blend in a bit better? Well, definitely no jeans, t-shirts and trainers. I would suggest you do a little bit of research before you go.

Basically, girls, it's long skirts. No trousers, sorry about that. For the boys, you might want to borrow your sister's tights, because they could look quite good again. So it's Dublin House for the boys, which is a kind of belted jacket with your sister's tights. And for the girls' long skirts, cover your arms. and if you're a married woman, I'm afraid you've got to cover your hair as well, it would probably be safest to do a bit of research before you go. But as soon as you get to your medieval period,

I suggest you go and visit someone called a fripperer. Friperer's deal in second-hand clumps. There's nothing grubby and dirty about it. Everyone but the rich wears second-hand clothes. It's also a lot quicker in an emergency because if you have your clothes made for you, it's a very long process, and you could have to wait a couple of weeks for your new outfit.

So definitely visit the fripper. They might not have the absolute up-to-date fashion, but you will definitely blend in because most other people are also wearing stuff bought from the fripper or hand me down. So I suggest that's what you do. It's a good place to start. So how easy would I find it to get myself dressed in the clothes of the medieval period? So I think a lot of dresses are lace up at the back, not that I would necessarily be wearing a dress. And the men's clothes are quite often,

they're kind of sewn, like stitched together, aren't they, sort of tied together? Well, they can be a bit tricky, but basically once you're dressed in the morning, you can stay dressed. So for the men, yes, your hose, those things which look a bit like tights, normally laced to your shirt but if you need to go to the loo you've got flaps front and back so you don't have to lace and if it's cold you probably keep it on a night as well because

they don't wear night shirts if it's warm enough you sleep in the nude and if it's not you can keep your undergarments on your nether clouts So for the men, yes, everything laces or buckles. No zips, no Velcro, no poppers. You do get hooks and eyes, especially on things like clugs that fasten at the neck. And you do get buttons. But buttons tend to be for decoration, not for fastening.

And the lacing down the, the back of the dress that you mentioned. That's for people with servants. It's a way of showing that they're wealthy enough to have a servant get them dressed. So ordinary women tend to lace their gowns down the front so you can see what you're doing. But you do have to be careful with your The sort of cross-lacing where you start at the bottom and keep crossing it. Respectable women do not do that. The idea is that cross-lacing is very quick to do up and undo. So it's prostitutes who have to get their clothes on and off in a rush who cross-lase.

But other people use one long, thread and go over in some spiral lacing which gives an effect of straight lines across the front of the lacing and that's so that's being a straight lace person that's similar to how we would lace up shoes these days there's sort of two different ways of doing it with the crossover or or the sort of spiral so right so we need to stick to the spiral and all be very straight laced and careful yes yes if you want to be respectful and is it true that People tended to change their underclothes more often than their outer clothes, and that was what got washed.

It was the linen underwear that gets washed rather than the outer clothes very often. Very much so. All but the poorest of the poor would have a couple of changes of leather clouds, your undergarments, which for the men would be a shirt and sort of draw string pants. and for the winning was a shift, which was just like a very long loose shirt. These would be made of easily washed linen. And the idea was linen soaks up the sweat. So your outer garments, which could be made of wool,

which is difficult to wash and keep nice. Or if you're wealthy, velvet or silk, You can't have it dry, cleaned, so it's best not to wash your outer garments. But if you keep washing the undergarments and put them on clean, it's amazing how fresh your outer garments will stay. It's the humans inside that are dirty rather than the world's outside. Yes, exactly that, yes. There is some discussion about whether women,

war. I think they did. Knickers were actually found in amongst rags, found underneath 15th century floorboards in a castle in Austria and these were sort of tie each side on the hip briefs and they also found bras which are mentioned, both are mentioned in them medieval manuscripts. Not so much in this country but various continental sources talk about breastback which prostitutes tended to pad out to make themselves more voluptuous and there are also a couple of French court cases in which girls were raped and it described how the man ripped off the girl's nether breeches, which have got to be knickers.

So the evidence is gradually building for medieval women wearing knickers, which is great because when I do reenactments in costume, I do like to keep my nether breeches on. So if I managed to get myself properly dressed, I might be wondering where in England I could have landed. So how might I go about finding out where I am, given that I can't get maps on my phone or anything like that? Well, this is a big difficulty. You must be a traveller. Otherwise, you know where you were.

And any traveller asking the way is suspicious. You're an outsider. Nobody trusts people, they don't know. Also, there are no signposts, mainly because most people can't read, so there's no point. And it is a very difficult problem. You could well ask which way it's London

and the locals, if they don't like the look of you, will probably point you in the role. Always supposing they can even understand what you say. Local accents are going to be far more pronounced than they are today. I still had trouble understanding jolts and Glaswegians. But back in the day, for example, a merchant from Hull was travelling abroad by ship. This is a story told by William Caxdon. And William tells us how merchant from Hull, his ship was caught in bad weather, and they landed in Kent.

And he asked a local woman if she had any eggs, because he fancied eggs for breakfast. And she looked at him, shook her head and said, don't speak French. And this was a man from Hull. So he had reliant a friend who understood Kentish to ask for eggs, which the Kentish people called Ireland. That could be very different. In his book, Kasten says, So which word should I use in my printed text?

Regional variations are one thing, but even you receive pronunciation, as it was might well have been very different. Geoffrey Tulsa was born in London and lived in Kent. But his writing is Middle English, but using what was called a Mercian accent. And Mercian is the Midlands. That's what they spoke in London.

So for all I know is London accent, could have sounded more like Derbyship and some people say it's sounding more like Somerset with the S's pronounced as Z as in Somerset so it's difficult for us to know what the language sounded like anyway all I would tell you was to listen and keep your mouth shut because it will mark you out as a A foreigner was anyone not from. And if you're really, really foreign, you're called an alien. Remarkable. It's a foreigner or not.

I mean, keep my mouth shut and just listen is advice that I get quite a lot, actually, to be fair. And so accents were very different then. And you mentioned the word for egg could be quite different. But how different would the general language have been in conversation, even assuming I could pick up someone's accent? Would they use words and language that was very different? to what I would use. They might well use some familiar words

that don't actually mean what you think they mean. One word that youngsters love to use today is amazing. Everything's so amazing. But that didn't mean fantastic and wonderful. That meant totally bewildering. A maze, as in the mazer, Hampton Court say is a place to get lost in and that word actually comes from

her maze meaning to bewilder and confuse someone what other words do we have things like nice never tell a woman she's nice it means fussy scolding nitpicking the sort who would be taken caught by her husband and tried for being a scold. You could take your wife to court and try her for being too nice? Yes, exactly. Yes, nitpicking and being generally a pain. That's what nice meant. And naughty. Naughty was what you would call a toddler who was misbehaving. naughty was the word to describe the murderer

or someone who was so bad they were not silly mean sweet and innocent so you do have to watch even the words you think it's amazing how many of those words have really flipped their meaning all the way around you know naughty goes from being the one end of absolutely diabolical to something that we call someone who's being a little bit mischievous and you know

some of the words there just meant the exact opposite of the way that we use them today. I can imagine you get myself into trouble quite easily. You could, yes. So keep quite a game is. We're back to shutting up. Yes, yes. Have you ever thought about sex in ancient Rome? Perhaps you've pondered over the origins of civilisation. Or maybe you've had restless nights contemplating where Alexander the Great's lost tomb might be.

I know I have. If so, we've got the perfect remedy. It's the Ancients on History Hit, the ancient history podcast. We've got interviews with leading experts on all of the above and so much more. So why not give the podcast a listen? Subscribe to the Ancients on History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so I'm never very far from being hungry, if I'm perfectly honest, but I'm also a pretty picky eater.

So what might I be able to expect to get my hands on in medieval England when I get a bit peckish? Well, it's going to be serious. There's none of this importing red peppers from America and tomatoes from Spain. You can only have what grows locally and what's in season unless it can be stored. So also for the poor of people it's going to be 95% vegetables. So if you're a vegetarian you're probably going to do a whole. going to do okay. If you like your meat then you've definitely got to be rich. I'm afraid you've also got to like fish. Fish is on the menu at least twice a week and every day throughout

lent and advent and the eve of every important feast. So while the rich are eating, salmon and trout and cod and all the really nice fish. You could well be living on eels which were cheap and white bait and that sort of thing. Or even crab, shrimps, whatever could be called locally. So you were lucky if you lived on the coast there would be more choice. It is possible just buy a snack. Most towns have cook shops of some sort, which were surprisingly sophisticated.

There's a super 15th century poem called the London Lick. It was probably originally the London Lack penny. Comes up from Kent, you know, miles away. He's a country bumpkin. and he wants to bring a cult case to the King's notice. Well the first thing he finds is that you can't sneeze in London without paying for it and he hasn't got any money. But he goes to Westminster and it's a cook shop, puts a table outside,

puts tablecloth on it, off simmer stall, gives him a spoon until he says, well I can't pay for this. And then suddenly it's all taken away. And the same thing happens everywhere. The real sad thing is that early on, someone steals his hat. And later on, when he's given up, he's walking back through London to cross London Bridge back. He sees his own hat for sale in a fripperate shop. It's a pretty sad story. Yes, it is.

but everything it wants to do costs money. But if you had money, you could dine quite well outside. Al fresco if the weather's nice or buy something from a cook shop. Pigs trotters were a way snack. In season in the summer, peas conds, which sort of monged too, fried in butter. So it sounds like I'm going to be needing some money if I'm, here in the Middle Ages for any more than a day trip. So how might I go about making some money? What kind of jobs were available? And would I understand the kind of money that I was getting given

and how much that was worth? Well, it's pound shillings and pens. So you'd understand that. But you'd probably only ever see pennies and grotes. A penny was silver, quite small, about as big as your thumb nail. and you could actually cut that in half. Then it would be a half penny. Cutting quarters, that would be a four thing or farthings, as they came to be known, which was a quarter of a penny coin right up until 1950s. A groat is four pence, and again that can be cut into four equal parts, to make four separate pennies,

which actually sort of be triangular shaped like a slice of cake. And that's probably all you'd ever see. Six pennies were a week's wages for some people, but skilled people, a carpenter or someone like that, might get paid six penn. You could buy a jug of ale for a farthing. It was called a household loaf, which was meant to last a whole household every meal of the day.

So a few pence, you'd have to find a job, Bradie Poole. Because even if you were a skilled jeweller or a leather worker, you would either have to work out in the country, or if you came into the tax, to be a member of the rights, they wouldn't know. how many country communities need a skilled jeweler. Not many of them or fancy shoes or something like that. So getting a job will be difficult. And about the only thing you can do without retraining

and buying your membership of a guild is... Probably hard work in the fields. Is that seasonal as well? Would that depend on what season I'd landed in? Well, it would be seasonal, but there's... There's nearly always a job to be bowing and kids used to run behind the platter, picking out the stones, which they then threw at the crows when they were planting the sea corn to keep them off. You could get paid farther a day as a crow-scarer, and that's rare as not scarecrows.

And then you've got planting, once the crop begins to grow, you've got weeding, then you've got harvesting, right the way through. So it's only sort of Christmas up until what was called Plough Monday. It's the first Monday after epiphany. Plouts are taken to church and blessed. And so if I've arrived in winter and it's probably getting quite dark quite early, I might need to think about where I'm going to stay and where I might get some sleep. So what accommodation might be available for a traveller, given that I'm going to be under suspicion if I'm a traveller, is anyone going to want to put me up for the night? Oh yes, I'll be very willing, so long as you've got some money.

If you haven't got any money, there are so many abbeys, priories, hostels, which were often called hospitals, but there were actually places where you could be put up for the night. It was basically one night, but you'd also get food. You'd have to share a sort of communal dormitory. You might even have to share a bad stranger. But if you didn't have money to pay the monastery or whatever in the morning, you could always do some labour washing up, grass in the meadow or something, and that'll be a way of paying for your bored and logic means.

Fascinating. So is there anything that we do day to day today, something that we might consider a habit or that we do routinely that would be considered bad behaviour in medieval England that might get me into trouble? Oh, certainly. If you think of Crattle, those millions of people barging along the pavement, that is just so, so bad. That would be considered riotous behaviour. There's no elbow in your neighbour to get to the front of the queue.

This is just so bad. Everybody had their place in society. And this was shown by how you were dressed. And one thing you must have was why that poor boyfriend, Ken, who had his hat pinched, was in a bad way because you must have a hat in order to doff your hat to everybody who's above you in the social system and you can tell that by the way they're dressed so if you see a person with a fur collar you have to step aside and bow your head and touch your cap and let them people lower down and scale than you. So a beggar with those shoes has to step off the sidewalk. You have to get

it's not case them minding you. You've got to mind them. And if they look like a lord, you've got to bend the knee and actually remove your headwear. So it's all very polite. I think it's one of my pet peeves, people barging on the pavement. So that's one area I'd probably be quite happy in medieval England. Although I guess I'm probably, I'm walking everywhere, aren't I? I'm not having a horse unless I'm a very wealthy nobleman or something. Not less so rich, not. So one last thing, from an entirely selfish point of view from me, I am horrendously short-sighted. How would I cope in medieval England? Would I be able to get new glasses? How far advanced was that kind of thing in those days? Or would I literally be struggling to see anything and work and all of those kinds of

things because how bad my eyesight is? Well, Matt, you and I have been the same. same buttons because I'm also very short-sighted. I suggest you take your contact lenses or your glasses with you and take the greatest care of them. Nobody will be shocked at you wearing glasses because glasses were invented at the end of 13th century. What they will think is strange is when you wear them in the street because all glasses are reading glasses not what we need to see whether there's a horse charging down the street so take great care of your detail might might not be that you can probably pick stones out of the field whether you can see them brilliantly or not But you could come proper with the manners if you can't identify someone who's dressed.

So that could be... Would I get in trouble for that? Could I potentially get into trouble for not showing someone proper respect? Well, if it's a horseman, he can take his whip to you to knock you out of the way. Or he can send his servant to shove you aside, that sort of thing. Or he could just barge you with his horse. run you down. Lords tended not go on foot, but just someone like the alderman of your ward, if you were in London, if you didn't recognise him coming. Wouldn't be so much punishment

as your reputation as that ill-mannered wretch who doesn't show respect, and it was all about name, is perhaps the most important thing you've got. So it sounds like if I lost my glasses, even if I managed to shut up and listen, I could still get myself into trouble if I can't see anything very well. Yes, yes, you could. I don't know what really short-sighted people.

I think the idea of glasses for short-sighted people starts to come in at the very beginning of the 17th century. I think it was someone I kept up, who came up with the idea that if you could make lenses for long sighted people, I guess he was short-sighted himself and so filled around with lenses. But yes, we could be out. We could get into some big trouble.

Well, thank you so much for sharing all of those insights with us, Tony. Tony's new book is entitled How to Survive in Medieval England and will now be firmly tucked under my arm if the TARDIS ever. comes calling with a medieval mission for me. You can join Dr Kat Jarman on Tuesday for another brand new episode. Don't forget to also subscribe to Gone Medieval wherever you get your podcasts from and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. If you have a moment, please do drop us a review or rate us wherever you listen to podcasts, including on Spotify now. It really does help new listeners to find the podcast. If you're enjoying this podcast and

looking for a bit more medieval goodness in your life, then subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter, just follow the link in the show notes below. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hits.