DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

I began my research of the world of The House of York by searching for visual stimuli that would allow me to access the various nuances of the reality of life for 15th century English men and women. Below are some of the images that stayed with me throughout my process.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
User-uploaded Content

The Chain of Being; the supreme law of nature for the medieval world.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Issac Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare has been a crucial resource to grasping the full extent of the Bard's reckoning of the War of the Roses. Asimov meticulously separates Shakespeare's creative license from historic accuracy, which proves invaluable when attempting to stay true to the story that the play is telling versus what might have actually occurred.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

 

 

The television series The White Queen was instrumental in immersing myself within the world of the War of the Roses. Without this valuable resource I would not have had the understanding of the complexity of royal relationships in 15th century England and Europe.

 

 

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Below are some sources that I held onto throughout the rehearsal process. I came back and reviewed these sections from time to time as was appropriate for particular scene research.

 

ECONOMY:

 

Encyclopedia Britannica- Central to all social change in the 15th century was change in the economy. Although plague remained endemic in England, there was little change in the level of population. Villein labour service largely disappeared, to be replaced by copyhold tenure (tenure by copy of the record of the manorial court). The period has been considered a golden age for the English labourer, but individual prosperity varied widely. There was a well-developed land market among peasants, some of whom managed to rise above their neighbours and began to constitute a class called yeomen. Large landlords entirely abandoned direct management of their estates in favour of a leasehold system. In many cases they faced growing arrears of rent and found it difficult to maintain their income levels. Because many landholders solved the problem of labour shortage by converting their holdings to sheep pasture, much land enclosure took place. As a result a great many villages were abandoned by their inhabitants.

Though England remained a predominantly agrarian society, significant development and change occurred in the towns. London continued to grow, dominating the southeast. Elsewhere the development of the woolen industry brought major changes. Halifax and Leeds grew at the expense of York, and the West Riding at the expense of the eastern part of Yorkshire. Suffolk and the Cotswold region became important in the national economy. As the cloth trade grew in importance, so did the association of the Merchant Adventurers. The merchants of the Staple, who had a monopoly on the export of raw wool, did less well. Italian merchants prospered in 15th-century England, and important privileges were accorded to the German Hanseatic merchants by Edward IV.

 

FOOD:

 

http://www.medievalcuisine.com/Euriol/my-recipes/recipes-by-time-period/15th-century

 

Medical science of the Middle Ages had a considerable influence on what was considered healthy and nutritious among the upper classes. One's lifestyle—including diet, exercise, appropriate social behavior, and approved medical remedies—was the way to good health, and all types of food were assigned certain properties that affected a person's health. All foodstuffs were also classified on scales ranging from hot to cold and moist to dry, according to the four bodily humors theory proposed by Galen that dominated Western medical science from late Antiquity until the 17th century.

Medieval scholars considered human digestion to be a process similar to cooking. The processing of food in the stomach was seen as a continuation of the preparation initiated by the cook. In order for the food to be properly "cooked" and for the nutrients to be properly absorbed, it was important that the stomach be filled in an appropriate manner. Easily digestible foods would be consumed first, followed by gradually heavier dishes. If this regimen was not respected it was believed that heavy foods would sink to the bottom of the stomach, thus blocking the digestion duct, so that food would digest very slowly and cause putrefaction of the body and draw bad humors into the stomach. It was also of vital importance that food of differing properties not be mixed.

Before a meal, the stomach would preferably be "opened" with an apéritif (from Latinaperire, "to open") that was preferably of a hot and dry nature: confections made fromsugar- or honey-coated spices like ginger, caraway and seeds of anise, fennel or cumin, wine and sweetened fortified milk drinks. As the stomach had been opened, it should then be "closed" at the end of the meal with the help of a digestive, most commonly a dragée, which during the Middle Ages consisted of lumps of spiced sugar, or hypocras, a wine flavored with fragrant spices, along with aged cheese. A meal would ideally begin with easily digestible fruit, such as apples. It would then be followed by vegetables such as lettuce, cabbage, purslane, herbs, moist fruits, light meats, like chicken or goat kid, with potages and broths. After that came the "heavy" meats, such as pork and beef, as well as vegetables and nuts, including pears and chestnuts, both considered difficult to digest. It was popular, and recommended by medical expertise, to finish the meal with aged cheese and various digestives.

The most ideal food was that which most closely matched the humor of human beings, i.e. moderately warm and moist. Food should preferably also be finely chopped, ground, pounded and strained to achieve a true mixture of all the ingredients. White wine was believed to be cooler than red and the same distinction was applied to red and white vinegar. Milk was moderately warm and moist, but the milk of different animals was often believed to differ. Egg yolks were considered to be warm and moist while the whites were cold and moist. Skilled cooks were expected to conform to the regimen of humoral medicine. Even if this limited the combinations of food they could prepare, there was still ample room for artistic variation by the chef.

 

WITCHCRAFT/SUPERSTITION:

 

http://www.witchcraftandwitches.com/history_medieval.html

 

Although the Inquisition began in the late Medieval Period, it was during the Early Modern period that the witch hunt in Europe began in earnest, beginning with the early witch trials in the 15th Century. In England, for example, the first Act of Parliament directed specifically against witchcraft was the act “De hæretico comburendo”, passed at the instigation of Archbishop Thomas Arundel in 1401. It specifically named witchcraft or sorcery as a species of heresy, and provided that, unless the accused witches abjured these beliefs, they were to be burnt at the stake. Further and broader Witchcraft Acts were passed by Queen Elizabeth I in 1563 and by King James I in 1604, making witchcraft a felony, and removing the accused witches from the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts to the courts of common law. The Inquisition, per se, did not operate in England, but the procedure was comparable.

By the mid-15th Century in central Europe, torture inflicted on heretics suspected of magical pacts or demon-driven sexual misconduct led to some alarming confessions, where defendants admitted to flying on poles and animals to attend assemblies presided over by Satan (who appeared in the form of a goat or other animal). Some defendants told investigators that they repeatedly kissed Satan's anus as a display of their loyalty, while others admitted to casting spells on neighbours, having sex with animals, or causing storms. Gradually, the distinctive “crime” of witchcraft began to take shape.

The “Formicarius” by Johannes Nider (written in 1435 - 1437 during the Council of Basel, but first printed in 1475) dealt specifically with witchcraft in its fifth section, demonstrating that, by the early 15th Century, trials and torture of people alleged to be witches were already taking place.

 

 

RELIGION:

 

Encyclopedia Britannica-Only in architecture did England show great originality. Large churches were built in English Perpendicular style, especially in regions made rich by the woolen industry. The tomb of Richard Beauchamp at Warwick and King’s College Chapel in Cambridge show the quality of English architecture and sculpture in the period.

 

 

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/medieval_church.htm

 

The Medieval Church played a far greater role in Medieval England than the Church does today. In Medieval England, the Church dominated everybody's life. All Medieval people - be they village peasants or townspeople - believed that God, Heaven and Hell all existed. From the very earliest of ages, the people were taught that the only way they could get to Heaven was if the Roman Catholic Church let them. Everybody would have been terrified of Hell and the people would have been told of the sheer horrors awaiting for them in Hell in the weekly services they attended.

 

The control the Church had over the people was total. Peasants worked for free on Church land. This proved difficult for peasants as the time they spent working on Church land, could have been better spent working on their own plots of land producing food for their families.

 

They paid 10% of what they earned in a year to the Church (this tax was called tithes). Tithes could be paid in either money or in goods produced by the peasant farmers. As peasants had little money, they almost always had to pay in seeds, harvested grain, animals etc. This usually caused a peasant a lot of hardship as seeds, for example, would be needed to feed a family the following year. What the Church got in tithes was kept in huge tithe barns; a lot of the stored grain would have been eaten  by rats or poisoned by their urine. A failure to pay tithes, so the peasants were told by the Church, would lead to their souls going to Hell after they had died.

 

This is one reason why the Church was so wealthy.  One of the reasons Henry VIII wanted to reform the  Church was get hold of the Catholic Church's money. People were too scared not to pay tithes despite the difficulties it meant for them.

 

You also had to pay for baptisms (if you were not baptised you could not go to Heaven when you died), marriages (there were no couples living together in Medieval times as the Church taught that this equaled sin) and burials - you had to be buried on holy land if your soul was to get to heaven. Whichever way you looked, the Church received money.

 

The Church also did not have to pay taxes. This saved them a vast sum of money and made it far more wealthy than any king of England at this time. The sheer wealth of the Church is best shown in its buildings :cathedrals, churches and monasteries.

 

In Medieval England, peasants lived in cruck houses. These were filthy, usually no more than two rooms, with a wooden frame covered with wattle and daub (a mixture of mud, straw and manure). No cruck houses exist now - most simply collapsed after a while as they were so poorly built. However, there are many Medieval churches around. The way they were built and have lasted for centuries, is an indication of how well they were built and the money the Church had to invest in these building.

 

Important cities would have cathedrals in them. The most famous cathedrals were at Canterbury and York. After the death of Thomas Becket, Canterbury Cathedral became a center for pilgrimage and the city grew more and more wealthy. So did the Church. Cathedrals  were vast. They are big by our standards today, but in Medieval England they were bigger than all buildings including royal palaces. Their sheer size meant that people would see them from miles around, and remind them of the huge power of the Catholic Church in medieval England.

 

To work on the building of a cathedral was a great honour. Those who did the skilled work had to belong to aguild. They would have used just the most basic of tools and less than strong scaffolding to do the ceilings. However, if you were killed in an accident while working in a cathedral or a church, you were guaranteed a place in Heaven - or so the workers were told.

 

 

 

CULTURE/ENTERTAINMENT:

 

http://www.r3.org/richard-iii/15th-century-life/15th-century-life-articles/delights-of-life-in-fifteenth-century-england/

 

Football- In a time when it was a challenge even to survive in the face of famine, plague, and other uncontrollable obstacles of life, there was not only the need for physical strength, but also an appreciation of physical prowess that could engender delight. Game playing tended to be vigorous and passionate, and ball games were among the most exuberantly played.Camp-ball was the basic game and, in different forms, could involve either kicking or throwing (or both) of a ball which by the fifteenth century was commonly made of a pig’s bladder filled with dried peas. Kicking camp was the ancestor of modern English football, and the term ‘football’ first appeared in the fifteenth century. Men and women of all ages engaged in ball games, as well as other sports, both as participants and as spectators.

 

Archery- What may appropriately be called “the official national sport” was archery, and it was a sport with obvious military overtones.3 The weapon of choice in the late medieval period was the longbow, being simpler and having a greater rapidity of fire than the crossbow. The stave of the longbow ran to about six feet, and might be made of ash, hazel, wych-elm or, preferably, the wood of the mountain yew. The best arrows were made of ash, and they were fired by drawing the hemp or flax bowstring to the ear before release. Practice and competition at archery were commonly undertaken at butts, which were often established in churchyards, but archery could be very informal. A popular form of competition was to shoot from a distance, even as much as 200 yards, at a wooden stick fixed in a target or staked vertically in the ground, with the objective of splitting the peg with an arrow. Another popular form of archery practice and competition was roving, where groups of people traipsed through the countryside shooting at random targets, sometimes to the dismay of landowners.

 

Hunting- Hunting, hawking, and fishing were physical activities that brought delight as well as sustenance to participants. By the fifteenth century hunting was also judged to have an educational aspect for aristocratic youths destined for military training. In addition to teaching courage, strategy, and mental quickness, hunting was enjoyable sport. In the fifteenth century refined hunting of the aristocartic sort tended to take the form either of pursuing the game with hounds while the hunters kept up with the chase on horseback, the dogs completing the kill, or by having the quarry driven within rage of hunters who would attempt to take the prey with bow and arrow.5 These matters and a great deal more were discussed at considerable length between. A fine hunting pack would consist of three types of hounds, which is not to say three breeds.The leimers, or scenting hounds, were used to locate the game before the hunt and then were used during the hunt as they might be needed. Two other types of hounds, the running dogs and greyhounds, formed the main pack of hounds. The running dogs, known as harriers, brachets, or raches, hunted by their sense of smell. These dogs were the repsonsiblity of servants called berners, while servants called fewterers supervised the final type of hounds, miscellaneous breeds known collectively as greyhounds, which hunted by sight. Edward of York was of the opinion that the hare was the best game for hunting, available year round and a challenge to boot, although most of the noble hunters of Europe would likely have named the stag. Less rarified hunting, hunting to obtain meat, hides, grease, and whatever else animals might provide, was done with nets, traps, pits, knives, clubs, spears, and many means that might prove efficient, but this sort of hunting seems well removed from our attention to things delightful. On the other hand, illegal hunting may well have contained a special element of delight as an “expression of male gender identity. Poaching permits all of the challenges and skills that hunting does, but adds elements of stealth, danger, violence, sexuality, and assertion of independence.”

 

Falconry- A highly specialized and aristocratic form of hunting was hawking or falconry. The two terms were used as synonyms although hawks and falcons are different types of birds of prey. The hawker, wearing a large leather glove upon which the bird was perched, was a strikingly noble sight, and a bird so perched was said to be “on the creep.” Hunting on the creep was thus one way to use the birds. Brids were also trained to remain in place while the hunter flushed the game, at which moment the hunter would command the bird to attack. Birds could be trained to catch prey, such as hares, on the ground, or to take other birds in the air, and this was the most dramatic and popular form of hawking. Hawking was a delightful diversion whether done on foot or from horseback. It was also an expensive diversion, for the birds were expensive, and their care and feeding, to say nothing of the lengthy and specialized training they received, could be costly.

 

Fishing- A far less costly, though more contemplative, sport was angling. Rods were made of hazel, willow, or ash, and were normally of two wands, the sharpened end of one fitting into the hollowed end of the other to give length and flexibility. Line was made by twisting together the hairs from horses’ tails, and the number of hairs varied according to the weight and strength of the fish being sought. Hooks were made of bent wire or needles, and the depth of the hook in the water was regulated by floats and weights. Live bait might be caterpillars, minnows, or worms, and artificial flies were made of colored bits of wool, feathers, and insect wings. Angling was not so popular as hunting and hawking, and it seems to have been thought more appropriate for children and theoretically less vigorous adults like monks and nuns.

 

Tournaments- Tournaments clearly attracted enthusiastic attention. They were taken very seriously as training for war and they could be highly dangerous. Some tournaments, like that of Lord Scales and the Bastard of Burgundy, were duels between two mounted warriors. From the 1420s it had been customary to erect a wooden barrier, or tilt, down the center of the tournament ground, or lists, to keep the charging horses from crashing into one another. The combatant rode with the tilt on his left side and his lance held under his right arm and pointed across the tilt as his opponent charged from the opposite direction on the opposite side of the tilt. Combatants were encased in plate armor, heavier and allowing less mobility than the armor used in war. In “jousts of peace,” blunted lances were used to minimize the chance of penetrating the opponent’s armor and doing serious or mortal injury. In “jousts of war,” the lances employed were sharp. A third type of mounted combat was known as “at large” or “at random” and in this the tilt was eliminated. Foot-combat also had its place in English tournaments of the fifteenth century. Tournaments had changed a great deal since they appeared somewhere around 1100 as little more than scheduled wars between two groups of knights. There had come to be elaborate rules, judges, heralds, pursuivants, pageantry, audiences, and other trappings of order, together with entertainment. The element of danger still remained as an attraction, which can be readily appreciated by any participant or fan (including the football hooligan) interested in modern contact sports. There may have been laments in the fifteenth century about the decay of chivalry,16 but the martial spirit was evident as well. An admittedly opinionated Frenchman could write in his journal in 1436 during the English occupation of Paris: “the English, essentially, are always wanting to make war on their neighbors without cause. That is why they all die an evil death…”

 

Board Games- Dicing was an ancient game and one of pure chance, so long as it was played honestly.Hasard was a commonly played game with two dice and varying rules in which participants and onlookers bet on the outcome of the throws. Some dice games, like raffle, utilized three dice. Akin to dicing was cross and pile; the farthing of Edward I had a cross on one side and the other side of the coin was called the pile. Also akin to dicing was queek, which was played by rolling or throwing pebbles onto a chequered board with bets being placed anticipating the pebble landing on a light or a dark sqaure. The game known to medievals as tables was the ancestor of backgammon, and was very popular. It existed in some two dozen forms but basically the players used dice to determine the movement of the counters over the board. Another very popular board game was merrills. In its most simple form the board had nine holes, and the play was like the pencil and paper game familiar to us as tic-tac-toe: each player had three pieces, and they took turns putting them in holes in the board trying to get three in a row. By the fifteenth century merrills had evolved into a more complex game with an expanded board, each player having nine pieces, and the play involved the capture of one’s opponent’s pieces: the winner being the first player to capture seven of his opponent’s pieces. This is nine men’s morris, a sort of triple tic-tac-toe with capturing, and the square board is laid out with three squares of eight holes each, one inside the other, and simple but precise rules governed the vertical and horizontal movement of the pieces. Nine men’s morris is the game of merrills for which a world championship competition was first organized in 1988 by the Ryedale Folk Museum at Hutton-le-Hole in North Yorkshire. Merrills became even more complicated with the addition of yet more pieces and diagonal movement on still larger boards and, in one form, fox-and-geese, was played by King Edward IV.

 

Chess- The board game, though, that outclassed all others was chess. It was a game of strategy that reflected the real world of politics, and by the fifteenth century was being played by all ranks of society in spite of its aristocratic aura. Delight in the game of chess is another bridge by which we can connect emotionally with the English of the fifteenth century. Chess was a popular pastime of long standing by the fifteenth century, but a new arrival on the scene was the playing of cards. Whatever the particular game, cards, like chess, required strategy and skill, and afforded an opportunity for gambling. The cards themselves were made of ivory, parchment, or wood, with designs and images put on and colored by hand. A legacy of the medieval design of cards is that queen of all suits today is a stylized representation of a contemporary portrait of Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV and queen on Henry VII, who holds in her hand the white rose of York. There may be some connection of the queen card design with the fact that by the time of Edward IV there were card makers in England who were protected from foreign competition by law.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.