"Every One a Witness" Series

It seems like all the best research books are out of print! That is again the case with one of my favorites, The Plantagenet Age: Every One a Witness, by A.F. Scott. I found my copy in 1976 at the University of Arizona student bookstore. It was part of a series of Every One a Witness books.

Fortunately for those of us who delight in “first hand history”, there appear to be plenty of people willing to sell their old copies at quite reasonable prices on such websites as Amazon.

The Plantagenet Age (also subtitled, Commentaries of an Era) is a compilation of contemporary source materials beginning with the reign of King Henry II through the death of King Richard III, last of the Plantagenet kings of England. But these are no dry political treatises by those who kept the royal chronicles. Although royalty is, indeed, included, the majority of the book covers such wide ranging topics as towns, family, food and drink, dress, education, sports and pastimes, travel, law and crime, and many, many more subjects.

Let me share with you just a few intriguing tidbits about medieval life that you will find in The Plantagenet Age…

(Ack! Two of my pages just popped free of their binding! Now I’ll have to take extra-special care not to lose them. Old, dried-out bindings can be so annoying.)

Okay, forgive my little panic attack there. I take my research books very seriously.

On with the examples I promised!

On the subject of “Health”, here is a quote from John Arderne’s 14th Century Treatise on the Fistula:

“And if the patients or their friends or servants ask by what length of time he hopes to cure the complaint, let the doctor always promise double what he supposes: that is, if the doctor hopes to heal the patient in twenty weeks—that is the common course of curing—let him add so many over. For it is better that the term be lengthened than the cure. For to prolong the cure brings despair to the patient, when trust in the doctor is the strongest hope of cure. And if the patient wonders why he was told the cure would be so long when he was healed in half the time, tell him he was strong-hearted, bore the pain well and had a body to heal quickly. The patient will be proud and delighted to hear such words.” (The Plantagenet Age, p 131-132)

Under “Sports and Pastimes”, the following story is told of a tournament that took place in 1347:

“And a little before the feast of St. Michael at London in Chepe there were very beautiful lists. Here the lady Queen Philippa [wife to King Edward III] with a great party of her ladies fell to the ground from the pavilions which had been newly built so that they could watch the knightly deeds; but they were not hurt. That most pious queen would not allow the carpenters to be punished for this, but she assuaged the anger of the king and his courtiers with prayers on bended knee. This merciful act of the queen aroused the love of all towards her when they considered her piety.” (The Plantagenet Age, p 119)

In 1381, Thomas de Walsingham wrote in his Historia Brevis, the following regarding Wat Tyler and his followers:

“See too what they did against the faith; how they compelled masters of grammar schools to swear that they would never again teach grammar to children! It was perilous to be recognized as a clerk, and far more perilous if any were caught bearing an inkhorn at his side.” (The Plantagenet Age, p 92; I know more than a few modern school children who would have sympathized with Wat Tyler on this subject!)

Let’s see if I can find one more short passage to share with you. After that, you’ll have to find a copy of this delightful book for yourself.

Ah, let’s end with this. “Medieval amusements around an evening fire” recorded by Wynken de Worde in 15th Century England. Try these on some of your friends, and see if they’re any smarter than our medieval ancestors!

“Question: What thing is it that never was nor never shall be?
“Answer: Never mouse made her nest in a cat’s ear.
“Question: Why come dogs so often to church?
“Answer: Because, when they see the altars covered, they think their masters go there to dine.
“Question: Why do men make an oven in the town?
“Answer: Because they cannot make a town in the oven.
“Question: What is it that never freezeth?
“Answer: Hot water.
“Question: What thing is it, the less it is the more it is dreaded?
“Answer: A bridge.
“Question: Who was he that slew the fourth part of the world?
“Answer: Cain, when he slew his brother Abel, in which time there were but four persons in the world.”
(The Plantagenet Age, pp 64, 65)

Whether the audience groaned when the answers above were revealed, Wynken de Worde fails to tell us.

The Plantagenet Age is not only a solid research source, it is also a delightful “browsing” book for the modern reader interested in fascinating bits of historical trivia.

And it is not alone. In addition to The Plantagenet Age, these titles are also available in the Every One A Witness series:


The Roman Age
The Saxon Age
The Norman Age
The Plantagenet Age
The Tudor Age
The Stuart Age
Early Hanoverian Age
The Georgian Age



Not all of these are available on Amazon. You can Google “books by Arthur Finley Scott” to find additional buying options from both US and British booksellers. And don’t forget, you can always try interlibrary loan. Surely some library somewhere in the United States has copies, too!

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REMINDER: My drawing for a copy of A History of Feasting in the Middle Ages, With 25 Authentic Recipes ends on Friday, June 20th. To read more about this chapbook and how to enter my drawing, see my post on Let’s Have Another Drawing.

Medieval Gardens, Part II: medieval healing

In my last post, I demonstrated how you can build a medieval garden for your characters with the help of the book, Medieval English Gardens, by Teresa McLean. Today, I’d like to share another useful function of this book.

In addition to wanting a garden for my heroine to enjoy in Loyalty’s Web, I also wanted her to have some healing skills. Not the “mystical” kind, but the “practical” kind. And for that, I needed to know something about the healing abilities of plants that were available in the Middle Ages.

Medieval English Gardens proved a treasure trove of such information for me. The two most pertinent sections for my research on this subject were chapters 5 & 6: “Many a Fresh and Sundry Flower”, and “The Herb Garden”. Each chapter contains sub-chapters, as follows:

Within: “Many a Fresh and Sundry Flower” are the sub-chapters: “Useful Flowers”; “Useful and Pretty Flowers”; “Beautiful, Flower Garden Flowers, and Flower Gardens”; and “Medieval Roses and Rose Gardens”. The last two sub-chapters are more useful for assistance in garden descriptions (as per my previous post) than for information on the healing properties of medieval plants, but the first two sub-chapters were extremely useful for my “healing heroine".

Within: “The Herb Garden” are the sub-chapters: “Infirmary Garden Herbs”; “Herb Garden Herbs”; “Kitchen Garden Herbs”; and “Backyard Herbs.”

Let me share with you a few examples of the kinds of information contained within each sub-chapter, and the method I used to transform these chapters into a permanent “quick research” resource for me.

This was where a red pencil or highlighter, and a pencil or pen came in extremely handy. The paragraphs are pretty much broken down by flower or herb, which makes it easy to mark each flower or herb individually.

For example, beginning on p 140, under “Useful Flowers”, I red-lined the flower “southernwood”, along with its description and uses. Then, in pen, I wrote the word “southernwood” in the margin, underlined it, and underneath that wrote: “uses”, under which I wrote the words “fever; wounds; pot-pourris”.

The next paragraph (on p 141) dealt with the wormwood plant. So I redlined “wormwood”, together with some pertinent information about it within the paragraph, then in the margin, I penned “wormwood” (underlined), and underneath again wrote: “uses”, then listed “flea repellant; expel poisons; constipation; stomachache.”

I followed this pattern with the following paragraphs on “mugwort”; “tansy”; “marigold”; and so on, throughout the above mentioned chapters (“Many a Fresh and Sundry Flower” and “The Herb Garden”).

Yes, this process can be somewhat time consuming, but it also the kind of task that can be done a little at a time…during commercials when watching TV, while waiting in a doctor’s office, while waiting to pick up a child from an activity…a few minutes here, and few minutes there, and before you know it, you have the quick research guide I referred to above.

Now that I had these chapters thus marked, when I found my hero with a knife wound in his arm and my heroine with a need to help heal it, all I had to do was flip through the margins of the chapters for plants that were used for healing wounds. I was very quickly able to whittle down my list to: southernwood; milfoil/yarrow; primrose; plantain/waybread; comfrey; burnet and orpine; and tutsan.

In the paragraphs I’d marked with red pencil, I could then look from the word in the margin to a more full description (in parentheses below) of how the flower or herb was used to heal wounds:

Southernwood (soothes wounds)
Milfoil/Yarrow: (staunched bleeding)
Primrose (leaves rubbed into wounds to relieve soreness)
Plantain/Waybread (ingredients in ointments to cure wounds)
Comfrey (power to heal wounds and stop bleeding)
Burnet and Orpine (wound soothers)
Tutsan (antiseptic for open flesh wounds)

My heroine ultimately settled on the following:

She gathered up a handful of fresh green leaves from a bowl and turned to lay them on the Earl's arm, squeezing them first so that the juice ran into his wound. The wine had dulled the fiery pain to a bearable throb, but even that discomfort began to subside, as the flesh around the wound grew numb…. [Some dialogue ensues…]

She removed the leaves she had spread on his arm and replaced them with a different kind, gathered from another bowl. "Plantain," she explained, crushing them between her fingers as she had done before. "It will slow the bleeding, and then we will spread on the comfrey poultice to help in healing."

She followed through with this prescription and finished by binding up his arm with several strips of linen, which Flora handed her from the tray.

"There. Your arm should remain numb for several hours. The pain may return after that, but you may send to the kitchen for more leaves if it becomes too uncomfortable. Mind they be of the tutsan plant and fresh enough to squeeze as you saw me do. If the bleeding resumes, it is plantain you must ask for. The bandages should be changed frequently for the next day or two, each time reapplying the poultice. I will see that some be kept in readiness for you."

I am certain there are other equally useful books for learning about medieval flowers and herbs, but I am confining myself in these blogs only to books and resources that I have actually used myself, and Medieval English Gardens, by Teresa McLean, was my major resource in the writing of my novel, Loyalty’s Web, as well as in writing its sequel, which I hope to publish sometime in 2008. However useful other books may be, Medieval English Gardens is a true treasure, and is well worth the search for a copy of your own.

(See previous post for suggestions for locating copies of Medieval English Gardens.)

Reminder: My drawing for a FREE copy of Medieval Wordbook is still open. For details, see post on Research Book Drawing.