A linen belt for a peasant: or, the belt that wasn't

Every once and a while with this hobby, you end up making something -perhaps even putting a lot of effort into something- only to realise that it's actually completely wrong. Some people choose to just keep it anyway (after all, you did put a lot of effort into it). Some people chalk it up as a learning exercise - after all, you now know more about what people didn't do, which is sometimes as important as knowing what they did do.

This is a blogpost about one of those projects...

The culprit.

Medieval London records

Just a quick little link here, found via medievalists.net: medievallondon.co.uk. This site was started last year by Robert Ellis and explores the extant textual records from medieval London, in particular the late 14th C record Letter-Book H which contains copies of various documents such as petitions, wills, mayorial proclamations, etc.

There is a nice option which takes you to a random entry. This took me to Entry 7, a mayorial proclamation from November 1375 which is rather preoccupied with poultery sellers (poulterers), but contains some interesting points:

1. Many of the crimes listed result in imprisonment in jail as well as a fine, even comparatively minor ones. My previous reading had led me to assume that imprisonment was a very rare form of punishment in medieval England and mostly used as a way of holding suspects of major crimes (e.g. treason, murder) until the annual crown court in the area. Maybe the greater use of imprisonment is a London/large city-specific thing?
2. There is a nice example of one of the many rulings that disprove the old myth about medieval people eating rotten meat. Namely: "and that no-one, of whatever condition that he should be should carry nor put {for sale} any manner of poultry that was rotten or stinking or not acceptable to the body of man, on the loss of the same poultry and upon the judgement of the pillory." (Interestingly, this is the only part of this entry that proscribes the pillory as punishment.)

The 14th Century bust: part 4

So, last time I finished up covering the female silhouettes we see in manuscript illustrations and effigies in the 14th Century. Now, drawing heavily from various websites and blog posts regarding the Lengberg bra finds, I'm going to discuss the few textual sources I'm aware of.

(Please note: being an amateur enthusiast, primary texual sources are one of my weakest points and I am currently reliant almost totally on other bloggers as I do not own or have access to the relevant books. In many cases, I don't even know what the relevant books would be! I am also a monoglot English speaker. Despite  because of this, if you have any further sources that could add to this topic, I would love to hear about them.)

~ Part 4: The 14th Century bust in text ~