Living in Medieval England

The Turbulent Year of 1326

Kathryn Warner

• Publisher: Pen & Sword History
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781526754066
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

A month-by-month account of what life was like for the everyday person just before the Black Plague wiped out most of Europe. 1326 was one of the most dramatic years in English history. The queen of England, Isabella of France, invaded the country with an army of mercenaries to destroy her husband's powerful and detested lover, Hugh Despenser the Younger, and brought down her husband, King Edward II, in the process. It was also a year, however, when the majority of English people carried on living their normal, ordinary lives: Eleyne Glaswreghte ran her own successful glass-making business in London; Jack Cressing the master carpenter repaired the beams in a tower of Kenilworth Castle; Alis Coleman sold her best ale at a penny and a half for a gallon in Byfleet; and Will Muleward made the king "laugh greatly" when he spent time with him at a wedding in Marlborough. England sweltered in one of the hottest, driest summers of the Middle Ages; a whale washed ashore at Walton-on-the-Naze; and the unfortunate John Toly died when he relieved himself out of the window of his London house at midnight, and lost his balance. Living in Medieval England: The Turbulent Year of 1326 tells the true and fascinating stories of the men and women alive in England in this most eventful year, narrated chronologically with a chapter devoted to each month.

Notes

Any statements in the text which are not footnoted come from Edward II’s last chamber account of 24 May 1325 to 31 October 1326, now held in the library of the Society of Antiquaries in London, manuscript no. 122 (SAL MS 122).

January

1. Calendar of Coroners Rolls of the City of London A. D. 1300–1378, ed. R. R. Sharpe (1913) [hereafter Coroners Rolls], 139–40. Alis’s name means that either she or Richard had worked as a maker of purses.

2. The National Archives [hereafter TNA] E [Exchequer] 101/380/4, fo. 22v.

3. Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England (2008), 100.

4. Calendar of the Patent Rolls [hereafter CPR], Edward II vol. 5, 1324–27 (1904), 205.

5. CPR 1324–27, 204; Calendar of Chancery Warrants Preserved in the Public Record Office, A. D. 1244–1326 (1927) [hereafter CCW], 572.

6. CPR 1324–27, 206; Calendar of the Close Rolls [hereafter CCR], vol. 9, 1323–27 (1898), 452, 533.

7. CPR 1324–27, 208–12.

8. SAL MS 122, 24, 44–5; Calendar of Memoranda Rolls Michaelmas 1326– Michaelmas 1327 (Exchequer) (1968) [hereafter CMR], no. 2202; TNA E 101/380/4, fos. 17v, 19r. The location, Henley near Guildford, is also called Ash Manor, and Edward II purchased the manor-house in 1324; see http://www.gatehouse-gazetteer.info/English%20sites/4456.html, accessed 20 December 2018.

9. E 101/380/4, fos. 20v, 24r; CPR 1324–27, 142.

10. CPR 1317–21, 536.

11. CPR 1324–27, 145–6; Calendar of Letter-Books Preserved Among the Archives of the Corporation of the City of London at the Guildhall, Letter-Book E, 1314–1337 [hereafter: Letter-Book E], ed. R. R. Sharpe (1903), 201–2.

12. E 101/380/4, fos. 16r, 24v.

13. TNA C [Chancery] 53/112, nos. 17–23.

14. The earls were Norfolk, Kent, Leicester, Chester (the king’s elder son Edward of Windsor), Surrey, Arundel, Winchester, Oxford and Richmond, and the underage heirs were Warwick, Pembroke and Hereford. The last earl of Lincoln and Salisbury died in 1311 and the last earl of Cornwall in 1312, and the earl of Carlisle was executed in 1323. The first English duke was Edward II’s grandson Edward of Woodstock (1330–76), made duke of Cornwall in 1337.

15. CCW, 573.

16. Coroners Rolls, 140–1.

17. CCR 1318–23, 700; CCR 1323–27, 613–3, 648; CCR 1327–30, 177–8; CCR 1333–37, 532; CPR 1324–27, 194; Letter-Book E, 38; Coroners Rolls, 100; Calendar of Wills Proved and Enrolled in the Court of Husting, London, Part 1: 1258–1358, ed. R. R. Sharpe (1889), 336–7, 505 [hereafter: Wills Proved]; Memorials of London and London Li...