To further extend his grip on England, William I ordered that a book be made containing information on who owned what throughout the country. This book would also tell him who owed him what in tax and because the information was on record, nobody could dispute or argue against a tax demand. This is why the book brought doom and gloom to the people of England – hence “Domesday Book”. The decision of what someone owed was final – rather like Judgement Day when your soul was judged for Heaven or Hell.

William ordered the survey of England to take place about twenty years after the Battle of Hastings. The Saxon Chronicle states that it took place in 1085, while other sources state that it was done in 1086. The whole survey took less than a year to complete and the books can be found in the Public Records Office.

Norman officials checked the answers and the punishments for giving false information were severe. The reeve from a manor and six peasants were questioned for every manor visited. The questions were designed to find out how much each manor owed the king in tax. It also told William who owned what land and how much it was worth. The book lists each manor and its owner and the value of that manor.

For Sussex in particular, the Domesday Book contains some interesting information about the area around Pevensey and Hastings – fifteen manors were attacked so badly that they were described as “waste” (as in waste land) by the men sent out to gather information for the Domesday Book. This gives a clear indication of how badly the coastal area of Sussex between Pevensey Bay and Hastings was affected by the Norman invasion. Other areas in East Sussex faired little better.

The Domesday Book is really two independent works. One, known as Little Domesday, covers Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex. The other, Great Domesday, covers the rest of England, except for lands in the north that would later become Westmorland, Cumberland, Northumberland, and County Durham.  There are no surveys of London, Winshester, and some other towns. The omission of these two major cities is probably due to their size and complexity.

Despite its name, Little Domesday was actually larger as it is far more detailed, down to numbers of livestock. It has been suggested that Little Domesday represents a first attempt, and that it was found impossible, or at least inconvenient, to complete the work on the same scale for Great Domesday.

Though the Domesday Book gives historians a detailed picture of what life was like in England in 1085-1086, the book did miss out important cities such as Winchester (then a major English city) and London. In all, 13,418 places were visited and the final record was produced in Winchester by a monk.

Everybody had to pay their tax to the king. This meant that no lord or other nobleman could build up enough money to raise a private army to challenge William. It also meant that William had money to increase the size of his own army – paid for by English taxes. William did not live long enough to see the benefit of the Domesday Book. He died in September 1087 but his successor, William II (also known as William Rufus) did benefit as he knew as soon as he was crowned who owed him what and who his troublesome lords might be – because of the wealth they had.

©2010 Gerri Russell's Knightly Musings. All Rights Reserved.

The Disney Dolphin Hotel

Gerri signing at the Literacy Event

One of the best parts of conference for me is the networking. Writing tends to be a lonely occupation, so it’s nice to get out, dress up, and visit with others. I was able to see many of my American Title II sisters, old friends and new, the editors from my publishing house–Leah Hultenschmidt and Chris Keesler, my fabulous agent, Pam Ahearn, my web designer, Emily Cotler from Waxcreative Design, as well as attending workshops and meeting people who are doing what I’m doing — writing.

The “big” news at the conference…there’s always something, and this year it was all about e-books. Sales are up, reader demand is up, and the prices of e-readers are down. Sounds like some interesting days are ahead for the publishing industry.

Great speeches. Yes, there were many. Two notable ones were: Nora Roberts’ keynote address reminded us in a tongue and cheek fashion how it is no harder today to get published than it was 30 years ago. Her theme: Stop whining and start writing. Great advice as always. Then, Jayne Ann Krentz’s motivational speech helped remind us that every author’s career has its ups and downs and the being a master at re-inventing yourself is what it takes to survive in this business.

April, Gerri, Joleen, Gina, Judy at the Awards Celebration

This year RWA celebrated its 30^thAnniversary in style with a formal sit down dinner, giving conference attendees a night to remember with the 2010 Golden Heart and RITA awards. It was thrilling to hear the winners as they shared their tears of joy and triumph in their acceptance speeches. Even emcee, Sabrina Jeffries, contributed to the fun with her running dialogue and attempts to heist one of Nora Roberts’ numerous RITA statuettes. No worries, Sabrina, you’ll have your own RITA very soon, I’m sure.

Cinderella's Castle

It was also great to get out of the hotel for a time or two and visit some of the local sites. Being in the middle of the Disney Resorts, that wasn’t too hard. And other than realizing what the words “it’s hot outside” really mean, a good time was had by all!

©2010 Gerri Russell's Knightly Musings. All Rights Reserved.

Have you ever dreamed of owning your own medieval castle? I have. I watch the Internet for “for sale” notices for castles in Scotland, England, and France. They go up for sale more often than you’d think. This week I found a listing by James Rothaar at JustLuxe for the 11th century chateau de Montbrun that lists for a mere $25 million.

The chateau is fully remodeled yet still retains a historical flair. The grand Great Knight’s Hall seats 100 people, there is a professional kitchen, a breakfast room, dining rooms, smoking room, guest lounges, a library, a music room, a private cinema in a vaulted tower room, a billiard room, a chapel, and a concert hall. as well as 17 bedrooms, each with toilet and bath or shower room. Lifts, central heating, private internal telephone system. etc. The library looks like a place I could spend hours reading in.

Chateau de Montbrun’s history can be traced back to the Crusades and King Richard the Lionhearted. It is located approximately 215 miles south of Paris in the Liomousin region in Haute-Vienne.  The  French Ministry of Culture has recognized this property as a protected monument since 1947. This historical residence was the property of both England and France during the Hundred Years’ War.

Legend has it that Richard the Lionheart died here and is buried somewhere on the grounds of chateau de Montbrun. Officially, the king is entombed at Fontevraud, parts of him anyway. His heart is buried at Rouen and his brains and entrails are in an abbey at Chattoux.

Any takers? I’d be happy to come for a visit.

©2010 Gerri Russell's Knightly Musings. All Rights Reserved.

In drawings of medieval pets, the British Library has a manuscript showing a woman with a pet squirrel, while the Luttrell Psalter shows a collared pet squirrel as a sign of status.

In many households, birds were kept in cages as pets.  Larks and nightingales were kept for their sweet songs. Jays and magpies, often simply called ’pies’, were taught to copy speech. Parrots, which were called popinjays, were available for a high price. They were exotic, colorful, and entertaining, but being imports from the Middle East were not easily obtained. Geoffrey Chaucer mentions the popinjay six times in his works.

Cats in the Middle Ages were kept mainly to hunt mice, and also, more grimly, for their fur and skins. Yet cats were also treasured. Exeter Cathedral lists in its accounts from 1305 to 1467 the sum of a penny a week to feed the cathedral cats if the animals did not catch many mice in the main church.

Dogs, however, remained a favourite. Geoffrey Chaucer referred to the Prioress in The Canterbury Tales as having ”small hounds that she fed with meat and milk”. Eileen Power, in her research into medieval nunneries, found that in spite of efforts by ecclesiastical authorities to banish such worldly customs, the nuns often kept dogs, cats, monkeys, birds, rabbits, and squirrels. 

Hunting dogs and hawks were not officially pets, being used to hunt and bring extra food for the table and to provide sport and entertainment to their lords and ladies. However, hawks were also status symbols, given as kingly gifts and well-known as signs of wealth and power. As such they were pampered and displayed–so much so that perches were even brought indoors to their owners could have their falcons with them. In 1368 the Abbot of Westminster, Nicholas de Litlington, bought a wax image of a falcon to offer at the altar to help a sick falcon recover. Lay men and women often brought their pets into church–the men with hawks on their wrists and women with lap-dogs.

©2010 Gerri Russell's Knightly Musings. All Rights Reserved.

Within weeks, people all over Sicily were dying. Three months later, the infection had spread to mainland Italy. And by the summer of 1350 most of Europe had been affected. The plague had come to the Continent, and by the end of the century over a third of the European population–an estimated 50 million people–would be dead.

The Black Death, as it came to be known, was an unpredictable killer. Some victims could go to bed in seemingly perfect health and be dead by morning. They were the lucky ones. Others suffered for up to a week, enduring the full range of symptoms before death: aches and chills, egg-sized swellings in the armpits and groin, hemorrhaging under the skin, and the collapse of the nervous system, which often caused bizarre, dance-like movements.

The toll was terrible. In the countryside so many peasants perished that the manorial system itself was threatened. But things were even worse in the cities, where overcrowded conditions and poor sanitation were ideal incubators for the disease. In some areas as many as 600 people died each day. Londoners buried corpses in mass graves six feet deep, six feet wide, and a 100 yards long. In Milan the living and the dead shared the same fate as all members of a victim’s household were walled up together to die.

Perhaps the worst natural disaster Europe has ever seen, the plague abated and recurred, seeming to run it’s dreadful course only to strike again. The Black Death of 1347 subsided in 1351, but another epidemic followed in 1361, another in 1369, and another every decade for the rest of the century. Its ultimate disappearance remains a mystery.

Medicine proved powerless to stop it. Academia was at a loss to explain it. Into this void flooded a host of wild theories. Some blamed the Jews for poisoning the water supply; others, the sinister conjunction of the planets Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars; still others, thought it came from corrupt vapors. Some even suggested that the plague was passed on through “lust with old women.” Most believed the Black Death was God’s vengeance on sinful men.

No matter the source, the sense of resignation was immense. Siena’s Agnolo di Tura wrote the words that sum it all up, “no one wept for any death, for all awaited death.”

©2010 Gerri Russell's Knightly Musings. All Rights Reserved.

At that time disease was thought to result from an imbalance in the four fluids, or humors, of the body–choler, phlegm, black bile, and blood. The physician’s task was to restore the balance of these humors. Means at his disposal included cauterization, surgery, diet, and medicine. A common medical practice was bloodletting, in which a specific vein was opened to treat a particular disease. The blood was then checked for distinctive properties, such as smell and greasiness.

Medical science during the Middle Ages became increasingly sophisticated and even extended to the study of cadavers. Profusely illustrated manuals guided apprentice doctors through every step of patient diagnosis. There were charts to aid in inspecting urine for color, smell, and sediment; calendars and tables for use in astrological medicine; manuals on techniques of bloodletting; pharmaceutical reference books depicting herbs and their applications; and collections of recipes for balms and potions.

Members of the medical community ranged from university-trained doctors-strongly influenced by centuries of Greek and Islamic insight–to traditional healers, who learned their craft through apprenticeship to other folk practitioners.

The care provided by a formally-trained doctor was priced beyond the reach of most people, although in the early 13th century some Italian cities retained physicians to treat the poor for free. And during the 14th and 15th centuries, religious communities offered the poor and aged refuge in hospitals, providing food, shelter, and prayer, along with limited medical care.

On the whole, however, in the Middle Ages such care for agrarian peasants and poor city dwellers was limited to the ministrations of village healers, herbalists, and barber-surgeons, as well as self-medications and visits to mineral baths.

©2010 Gerri Russell's Knightly Musings. All Rights Reserved.

As always, children enjoyed playing outdoors, fashioning mills and dams out of water, earth, and sticks, or they built houses or castles out of sand.

Group games such as hide-and-seek, ballgames, and winter snowball fights were popular, and younger children learned the rules by imitating their older brothers and sisters.

Children used their imaginations to transform blocks of wood into knights, sticks into horses or swords, and pieces of bread into boats. Some were lucky enough to have a toy crafted solely for play: Spinning tops, miniature windmills, rocking horses, hobby horses, dolls, balls, hoops, whistles and clay birds all made up the medieval child’s realm of playthings.

©2010 Gerri Russell's Knightly Musings. All Rights Reserved.

During the delivery, some peasant women received help from female neighbors, others could rely only on their husbands. A woman of the merchant or noble classes was attended by midwives and female relatives. The chamber would be dimly lit, and a warm bath prepared for the infant. Both measures were designed to ease the transition from the womb into the world. The expectant father performed the important job of appealing to the saints for the safety of his with and child.

The infant was wrapped in swaddling clothes–long cloths wrapped around the body and secured with crisscross bands. Swaddling kept the child warm but was also said to force the limbs to grow straight.

Unless work prevented it, peasants and artisans nursed their own babies, but wealthy mothers hired other women to serve as wet nurses. Without the burden of nursing, which can serve as a natural birth control, such women sometimes conceived as frequently as biologically possible, bearing as many as twenty children in their lifetime.

©2010 Gerri Russell's Knightly Musings. All Rights Reserved.

Enter to win the Let’s Celebrate Summer Contest at GerriRussell.net

The Question:
What were Alan and Jessamine searching for when they went to the Mountain of God?

The Hint:
Read the excerpt for Seducing the Knight to find the answer.

The Prize:
One grand prize winner will receive a summertime beach tote, beach towel, your very own signed copy of The Warrior Trainer, and a $25 Starbucks Gift Card for those delicious summertime treats.

To Enter:
Click here to submit your contest entry and to read the Fine Print.

The contest runs through September 1st, 2010. The winner will be posted shortly after that date. Good luck!

Don’t forget to sign up for Gerri’s newsletter to receive the latest news on upcoming releases, contest, and exciting happenings!

©2010 Gerri Russell's Knightly Musings. All Rights Reserved.

The first requirement for a castle was that it be difficult to reach, and the easiest way to do that was to build in a naturally inaccessible location. Dunnottar Castle in Scotland, for example, sits on a bluff near the sea, leaving attackers few lanes of approach. Other castles were built on islands, or steep hilltops. Where there was no natural defense, builders created one by digging a moat around the castle. Some moats were filled with water diverted from a nearby river, but most were not, as even a dry moat presented a formidable obstacle. The only access over the moat was a bridge, which could be drawn into the castle. Large gatehouses guarded entry to the bridge.

The castles themselves boasted ingenious defenses. The battlements, which give castle walls their familiar notched silhouette, afforded shelter as archers returned fire through “arrow slits” cut into them.  Many battlements were also built with overhangs called machicolations. These had holes in the floors so the defenders could drop stones or hot oil on any invaders who reached the castle walls. If any enemy did manage to get inside the castle, he would have to dodge stones dropped through “murder holes” cut into the ceilings.

Though castles were first and foremost defensive structures, they also served as residences for the lord and his family. Inside, elaborate vaults and buttresses created soaring interiors that were often described as elegant as they were strong. A castle had to house not only its master, but also a garrison of soldiers and the retinue of servants required to keep it running. To meet the huge demand of services and supplies, entire towns often sprang up around the castle.

 

 

 

©2010 Gerri Russell's Knightly Musings. All Rights Reserved.