This is the age of Jane Austen and the Romantic poets; the paintings of John Constable and the gardens of Humphry Repton; Britain's military triumphs at Trafalgar and Waterloo. It was perhaps the last age of true freedom before the arrival of the stifling world of Victorian morality. The small towns of medieval England are unlike the cities and large towns. They do not have eighteen-foot-high stone walls around the perimeter. Nor do they have substantial gatehouses. They tend to be gathered around a marketplace, with the parish church on one side (usually the east), with the houses themselves and their garden walls marking the boundaries. The center is generally the market cross. The other principal structures, apart from the church, are the manor house, the rectory or vicarage, and the inns. You will find no guildhall here, nor a monastery or friary, although it is possible there is a hospital, for the accommodation of poor travelers. If not, there may well be a church house, fulfilling much the same purpose. The Church was the biggest landholder, employer and source of education of the day, and it firmly disapproved of all this drunkenness and whoring around and the consequent illegitimate babies. No one else minded that much though. But some did, and come the time of Oliver Cromwell and the deposing of King Charles who didn't really mind debauchery and dancing, and liked a bit of gourmand excess and seduction himself, they took off. From descriptions of what cities and towns were like, to the various societal divisions, common practices, food, etc

In 1300 the nobility speak French, not English! If you can't speak French, you can't command any respect. Only the lowly poor lowly peasants speak English. Nobody authorizes literature written in English. Not until 1350 when King Edward the III, who spoke English, expressed pride in the English language, did aristocrats begin to speak English as well as French. In The Time Traveller's Guide Ian Mortimer's radical new approach turns our entire understanding of history upside down. History is not just something to be studied; it is also something to be lived, whether that's the life of a peasant or a lord. The result is perhaps the most astonishing history book you are ever likely to read; as revolutionary as it is informative, as entertaining as it is startling.

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The average medieval person is much shorter than the average person today, although nobility were about the same height as today. This disparity in height is due to genetic selection as well as differences in diet. The extra height gives a nobleman a considerable advantage in a fight. Successfully communicating the extraordinary energy of this vibrant, cathedral-building time Alistair Mabbott, Sunday Herald After The Canterbury Tales this has to be the most entertaining book ever written about the middle ages Sue Arnold, Guardian In this book Ian Mortimer reveals a country in which life expectancy is in the early thirties, people still starve to death and Catholics are persecuted for their faith. Yet it produces some of the finest writing in the English language, some of the most magnificent architecture, and sees Elizabeth's subjects settle in America and circumnavigate the globe. Welcome to a country that is, in all its contradictions, the very crucible of the modern world. This is the history book I've been waiting for: the essential handbook for any would-be Time Lords wishing to travel to the Middle Ages. Thorough, detailed and totally absorbing Jason Webster

Given the noise and the textures of the place, you may be surprised to learn how few people actually live in the greater towns and cities of England. In 1377 the walls of Exeter encircle six or seven hundred houses where about twenty-six hundred citizens live. But that makes it the twenty-fourth largest community in the whole kingdom. Only the very largest — London, with more than forty thousand inhabitants — can properly be called a great city when compared to the largest Continental cities of Bruges, Ghent, Paris, Venice, Florence, and Rome, all of which have in excess of fifty thousand. However, do not be misled into thinking that towns like Exeter are small, quiet places. The inns add considerably to the total, albeit on a continually shifting basis. Travelers of all sorts — clergymen, merchants, messengers, king's officers, judges, clerks, master masons, carpenters, painters, pilgrims, itinerant preachers, and musicians — are to be found every day in a town. In addition you will come across crowds of local people coming in from the countryside to buy goods and services or to bring their produce to the retailers. When you think of the sheer variety of wares and services which the city provides, from metalwork to leatherwork, from the sheriff 's courts and scriveners' offices to apothecaries' and spicemongers' shops, it soon becomes clear how the daytime population of a city can be two or even three times as great as the number of people living within the walls. And on a special occasion — during a fair, for example — it can be many times greater. An original, entertaining and illuminating guide to a completely different world: England in the Middle Ages. Mortimer, Ian (29 February 2012). The time traveller's guide to medieval England: a handbook for visitors to the fourteenth century. Bodley Head. p.318. ISBN 978-1448103782. Small towns are not just muddy carbuncles on the medieval landscape. Each preserves at least part of its original open market square, and in summer, when the stalls are all set up, and the shops are open, with the sunlight shining onto the wooden worktops, there is a totally different feel to them. The size of the crowd that gathers on market days will surprise you: several hundred people come in from farms and manors in the surrounding parishes. In addition there are the travelers and the long-distance merchants who journey from market to market selling their wares. Colors abound, music is to be heard in the streets. The alehouses and inns are full to overflowing; there is laughter, shouting, and banter, and much parading of strutting horses. Most of all there is a sense of excitement that leaves you in no doubt that this small community of a hundred houses is not merely a provincial outpost of the trading world but an integral part of it. The holding of a market has transformed this part of the landscape into a hubbub of commerce, discussion, gossip, and news, if only for one day each week. Speaking of fighting, it is not unusual to come across men who have lost eyes, ears, and limbs in battles. A surprisingly large amount of men have to hobble around without a leg or with foot injuries that never healed correctly.Mortimer] sets out to re-enchant the 14th Century, taking us by the hand through a landscape furnished with jousting knights, revolting peasants and beautiful ladies in wimples. It is Monty Python and the Holy Grail with footnotes, and, my goodness it is fun... The result of this careful blend of scholarship and fancy is a jaunty journey through the 14th Century, one that wriggles with the stuff of everyday life Guardian Mortimer, Ian (2020-11-12). The Time Traveller's Guide to Regency Britain. Random House. ISBN 978-1-4735-4798-8.

People rarely bathed or did laundry but they did try to rinse their hands with water before eating. Leitko, Aaron (14 February 2010). "Book review: 'The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England' by Ian Mortimer". The Washington Post . Retrieved 25 November 2018. The Royal Palace in the Tower of London. You are, of course, familiar with the White Tower, the great building left by William the Conqueror, but most of the visible castle — including the moat — actually dates from the thirteenth century. Here is situated an extensive royal palace, including a great hall, royal solar (private living room), and a multitude of lordly chambers. In addition, a royal mint is based here, as are the royal library and the royal menagerie. Edward Ill's collection of lions, leopards, and other big cats is kept here from the late 1330s and is continually being supplemented with new animals.

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A butcher selling bad meat can expect to be dragged through the streets of the town on a hurdle and then placed in the pillory with the rotten meat being burnt under him. Likewise a baker selling bad bread. A vintner caught selling foul wine is dragged to the pillory on a hurdle, forced to drink a draught of the offending liquor, and then set in the pillory, where the remainder of the liquid is poured over his head. The sweetness of the revenge makes up for the sourness of the wine.” The city described above is Exeter, in the southwest of England, but it could almost be any of the seventeen cathedral cities. You could say the same for many of the large towns too, except for the fact that their churches are not cathedrals. Arriving in every one of these places involves an assault on all the senses. Your eyes will open wide at the great churches, and you will be dazzled by the wealth and the stained glass they contain. Your nostrils will be invaded by the stench from the sewage-polluted watercourses and town ditches. After the natural quiet of the country road, the birdsong, and the wind in the trees, your hearing must attune to the calls of travelers and town criers, the shouts of laborers and the ringing of church bells. In any town on a market day, or during a fair, you will find yourself being jostled by the crowds who come in from the country for the occasion, and who live it up rowdily in the taverns. To visit an English town in the late fourteenth century is a bewildering and extreme sensory experience. I notice Ian Mortimer has taken the same approach in two other books - The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England and The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain: Life in the Age of Samuel Pepys, Isaac Newton and The Great Fire of London. I intend to read them too. You have come face to face with the contrasts of a medieval city. It is so proud, so grand, and in places so beautiful; and yet it displays all the disgusting features of a bloated glutton. The city as a body is a caricature of the human body: smelly, dirty, commanding, rich and indulgent. As you hurry across the wooden bridge over Shitbrook, and hasten towards the gates, the contrasts become even more vivid. A group of boys with dirty faces and tousled hair run towards you, and crowd around, shouting, 'Sir, do you want a room? A bed for the night? Where are you from?', struggling between them to take the reins of your horse, and maybe pretending that they know your brother, or are from the same region as you. Their clothes are filthy, and their feet even filthier, being bound into leather shoes which have suffered the stones and mud of the streets for more years than their owners. Welcome to a place of pride, wealth, authority, crime, justice, high art, stench and beggary.