So the other guys explained why it would be highly unlikely such a person to be a mercenary in the WOR is extremely unlikely. The campaigns are relatively short and generally not well planned, so even if there was an opportunity by the time the news reached Bavaria and were able get up there and cro...

The earliest I was able to find is consistent with Ranulf's statement from July 1 1389. It is printed in the Foedera.

For much of the 15th century their were potential arrays of Clergy in England for defense of the realm there is an article about it during the early part of the century. Someone else can check the sources but one of the men in charge of part of the coastal watch against the Arrival campaign of Edwar...

American so I had never heard of moleskin before but interesting.

Anyone have ready access to the sumptuary law of 1463(?) handy and what it says, I have it somewhere but all my books are literally stacked in the corner.

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Based on this book http://books.google.com/books?id=YzS8AAAAIAAJ and looking at the use of the word fustian and fustians I'm going to guess they are a linen/wool fabric. Which makes sense I suppose.

The big question I have about linen doublets is this. It is my understanding that linen does not dye well or hold color well and we are often seeing colored doublets. Does someone know something more about dying linen or are we assuming that all the doublets we have depicted are upper class enough t...

No that link goes directly to it, the only way I could have been more explicit would have been to copy and paste it.
If I hadn't been surprised that no one had ever mentioned that book when I found it then I probably wouldn't have bothered but it has lots of info in it.

Reference?

Maybe a daft question. How do you know that how they wrote it down was how they spoke? It is only daft because because I don't actually know, I just read the people who study this stuff from time to time. To make a big complicated thing simple, they look at spelling variation particularly by the sa...

Theoretically the spelling is the pronounciation in Middle English. It just may or may not be how we pronounce it. And there are studies on these variations. There is actually an atlas that breaks it all down by regions and what not. The reading it phonetically for modern readers is just a way to ap...

I'm not sure how much of that one is American vs British pronounciation and how much of it is just being flexible in pronounciation. There will always be words that are difficult or odd and that is what the MED is for.

There was a really good set of articles on the early history of football in Britain written by a guy name Magoun. As has been said descriptions indicate medieval football is more akin to rugby then soccer. There is however description in the miracles of Henry VI at the end of the 15th century that c...

The key to Middle English is realizing that it is spoken language written down, whereas modern English is the opposite. So one of the keys to reading Middle English is to sound out the letters instead of looking at them as a word. Most native English speakers do fine reading Middle English this way ...

Contact Wolfe Argent they have had coins made and own a die.

I'm in US CST so it wasn't for me.

And amongst other things which I noted as said at that time, a certain knight, Sir Walter Hungerford, expressed a desire to the king's face that he might have had, added to the little company he already had with him, ten thousand of the best archers in England who would have been only too glad A not...

Militia probably is a poor term.
If you haven't already read Military Obligation in Medieval England you should.
You should look for terms like watch and ward and hue and cry in the documents of the town.

Do you mean that you don't think that they were part of a fashion or that they weren't worn without shoes? That they were not commonly worn without shoes and based on a couple images I saw I'd suspect if they were worn without shoes they were worn with leather footed hose. But that is not to say th...

Colin Middleton wrote: So what's your take on the leather soled pattens?

I don't have a take on them but I don't see any evidence that it was a fashion to wear them with just hose and no shoes.

I'm curious as to what you base the idea that it was fasion to just wear hosen with leather pattens during the period of the WOR. I'm going to go and check art work but I'm interested in what that is based on. MoL Shoes and Pattens book, I believe. I don't think there is much basis for calling it a...

There was a fashion in the WotR period for hosen and leather pattens. The pattens are described in the MoL Shoes and Pattens book and are basically 5 layers of thick leather with a strap over the top (kind of like flip-flops). You then wear footed hosen and these lift you out of the mud. Another po...

narvek wrote:Re soldiers need of bedding: when you're on enemy area, just pillage the village and voilá lots of space to sleep comfortably...

That may be how things go in central Europe but that isn't the English way of doing things.

I'm skeptical in general about soldiers especially in English WOR campaigns carrying anything specifically for bedding. I suspect it was much more a situation of doing with what was availible for the night then anything. If you were going to be in a place for a while such as a siege things might be ...

Those shown being carried by soldiers in 15th century art are smaller then those shown above and are shown being carried over a polearm, bow, or staff being carried over the shoulder.

I've never seen it or heard of it in that period and frankly I don't think it fits the mode of the period. I suspect it comes to re-enactors as a combination of 20th century use as a punishment combined with the fact that Joan of arc in movies is always shown wearing short hair while getting burned...

Roger Hart in "Witchcraft" states that before a witch was pricked ; that is using a needle to discover hidden devil's marks, the witchs whole body was shaved. The reasons for this were three fold: "the suspect may have tiny hidden amulets concealed on her; the devil might be hiding i...

I've never seen it or heard of it in that period and frankly I don't think it fits the mode of the period. I suspect it comes to re-enactors as a combination of 20th century use as a punishment combined with the fact that Joan of arc in movies is always shown wearing short hair while getting burned ...

Sophia, yes and no, Old Testament law without a doubt influenced Canon law on this but it is very unlikely that anyone except the canonist who was in charge of the court would have known that and by the end of the Middle Ages it was just part of the culture.