Home / Albums / The Middle Ages 206
-
Technology
26 pictures
62 pictures in 4 sub-albums
-
The Arts
10 pictures
-
Religion
14 pictures
-
Rulers and Government
19 pictures
51 pictures in 4 sub-albums
-
The Economy and Trade
2 pictures
71 pictures in 5 sub-albums
-
Life in the Middle ages
99 pictures in 5 sub-albums
-
Image 10735
283 visits
-
Image 10736
244 visits
-
Image 10737
256 visits
-
Image 10738
247 visits
-
Image 10739
239 visits
-
Image 10733
245 visits
-
Image 10732
240 visits
-
Image 10734
245 visits
-
Image 10729
252 visits
-
Image 10731
244 visits
-
Image 10730
241 visits
-
Image 10727
239 visits
-
Image 10726
239 visits
-
Image 10728
249 visits
-
Image 10722
263 visits
-
Image 10723
252 visits
-
Image 10724
237 visits
-
Image 10725
237 visits
-
Image 10716
294 visits
-
Image 10717
331 visits
-
Image 10718
226 visits
-
Image 10719
230 visits
-
Image 10721
221 visits
-
Image 10720
199 visits
-
Image 10709
234 visits
-
Image 10710
258 visits
-
Image 10711
277 visits
-
Image 10712
236 visits
-
Image 10713
229 visits
-
Image 10714
227 visits
-
Image 10715
231 visits
-
Image 10704
230 visits
-
Image 10705
226 visits
-
Image 10706
217 visits
-
Image 10707
233 visits
-
Image 10708
229 visits
-
Image 10703
238 visits
-
[The four images are taken from an exact facsimile of the first English treatise on fishing, printed in 1496]
798 visits
-
[The four images are taken from an exact facsimile of the first English treatise on fishing, printed in 1496]
736 visits
-
[The four images are taken from an exact facsimile of the first English treatise on fishing, printed in 1496]
721 visits
-
[The four images are taken from an exact facsimile of the first English treatise on fishing, printed in 1496]
771 visits
-
Blacksmith wearing a leathern apron
684 visits
-
Image 7556
406 visits
-
Image 6872
493 visits
-
Image 6870
413 visits
-
Image 6871
400 visits
-
The engraving represents a Saxon chieftain, attended by his huntsman and a couple of hounds, pursuing the wild swine in a forest, taken from a manuscriptal painting of the ninth century in the Cotton Library.
1557 visits
-
The above is a representation of the manner of attacking the wild boar, from a manuscript written about the commencement of the fourteenth century, in the possession of Francis Douce, Esq.
1368 visits
-
frequently the different members of the same band of minstrels present differences of costume, as in the instance here given, from the title-page of the fourteenth century MS. Add., 10,293; proving that the minstrels did not affect any uniformity of costume whatever.
2060 visits
-
Wool Merchants from Northleach Church
1013 visits
-
The Bayeux tapestry is probably our earliest trustworthy authority for a British ship, and it gives a considerable number of illustrations of them, intended to represent in one place the numerous fleet which William the Conqueror gathered for the transport of his army across the Channel; in another place the considerable fleet with which Harold hoped to bar the way. The one we have chosen is the duke’s own ship; it displays at its mast-head the banner which the Pope had blessed, and the trumpeter on the high poop is also an evidence that it is the commander’s ship.
1001 visits
-
William de Langley, who gave to the monastery a well-built house in Dagnale Street, in the town of St. Alban’s, for which the monastery received sixty shillings per annum, which Geoffrey Stukeley held at the time of writing. William de Langley is a man of regular features, partly bald, with pointed beard and moustache, the kind of face that might so easily have been merely conventional, but which has really much individuality of expression. The house—his benefaction—represented beside him, is a two-storied house; three of the square compartments just under the eaves are seen, by the colouring of the illumination, to be windows; it is timber-built and tiled, and the upper story overhangs the lower. The gable is finished with a weather-vane, which, in the original, is carried beyond the limits of the picture.
1078 visits
-
The donors seem to be chiefly tradespeople rather than merchants of the higher class, and of the latter half of the fourteenth century. Here, for example, are William Cheupaign and his wife Johanna, who gave to the Abbey-church two tenements in the Halliwelle Street. One of the tenements is represented in the picture, a single-storied house of timber, thatched, with a carved stag’s head as a finial to its gable.
1067 visits
-
In the Additional MS. 11,695, in the British Museum, a work of the eleventh century, there are several representations of warriors thus fully armed, very rude and coarse in drawing, but valuable for the clearness with which they represent the military equipment of the time. At folio 194 there is a large figure of a warrior in a mail shirt, a conical helmet,[Pg 316] strengthened with iron ribs converging to the apex, the front rib extending downwards, into what is called a nasal, i.e., a piece of iron extending downwards over the nose, so as to protect the face from a sword-cut across the upper part of it.
2460 visits
-
They were grateful men, these Benedictines of St. Alban’s; they have immortalised another of their inferior officers, Walterus de Hamuntesham, fidelis minister hujus ecclesiæ, because on one occasion he received a beating at the hands of the rabble of St. Alban’s while standing up for the rights and liberties of the church.
838 visits
-
View of Jerusalem
871 visits
-
The archers of the castle found shelter behind the merlons of the battlements, and had the windows from which they shot screened by movable shutters; as may be seen in the next woodcut of the assault on a castle. It would have put the archers of the assailants at a great disadvantage if they had had to stand out in the open space, exposed defenceless to the aim of the foe; all neighbouring trees which could give shelter were, of course, cut down, in order to reduce them to this defenceless condition, and works were erected so as to command every possible coigne of vantage which the nooks and angles of the walls might have afforded. But the archers of the besiegers sought to put themselves on more equal terms with their opponents by using the pavis or mantelet. The pavis was a tall shield, curved so as partly to envelop the person of the bearer, broad at the top and tapering to the feet.
1921 visits
-
The illustration shows a group of people crossing the bridge into a town, and the collector levying the toll. The oxen and pigs, the country-wife on horseback, with a lamb laid over the front of her saddle, represent the country-people and their farm-produce; the pack-horse and mule on the left, with their flat-capped attendant, are an interesting illustration of the itinerant trader bringing in his goods.
1119 visits
-
In the middle of the picture is a castle with a bridge, protected by an advanced tower, and a postern with a drawbridge drawn up. Archers, cross-bowmen, and men-at-arms man the battlements. In front is a group of men-at-arms and tents, with archers and cross-bowmen shooting up at the defenders. On the right is a group of men-at-arms who seem to be meditating an attack by surprise upon the postern. On the left, opposed to the principal gate, is the timber fort shown in the woodcut. Its construction, of great posts and thick slabs of timber strengthened with stays and cross-beams, is well indicated. There seem to be two separate works: one is a battery of two cannon, the cannon having wheeled carriages; the other is manned by archers. It is curious to see the mixture of arms—long-bow, cross-bow, portable fire-arm, and wheeled cannon, all used at the same time; indeed, it may be questioned whether the earlier fire-arms were very much superior in effect to the more ancient weapons which they supplanted.
1469 visits
-
The most usual foreign pilgrimages were to the Holy Land, the scene of our Lord’s earthly life; to Rome, the centre of western Christianity; and to the shrine of St. James at Compostella.
The number of pilgrims to these places must have been comparatively limited; for a man who had any regular business or profession could not[Pg 160] well undertake so long an absence from home. The rich of no occupation could afford the leisure and the cost; and the poor who chose to abandon their lawful occupation could make these pilgrimages at the cost of others; for the pilgrim was sure of entertainment at every hospital, or monastery, or priory, probably at every parish priest’s rectory and every gentleman’s hall, on his way; and there were not a few poor men and women who indulged a vagabond humour in a pilgrim’s life. The poor pilgrim repaid his entertainer’s hospitality by bringing the news of the countries through which he had passed, and by amusing the household after supper with marvelous saintly legends, and traveler’s tales.
1325 visits
-
The woodcut is a reproduction from the frontispiece of one of Hulsius’ curious tracts on naval affairs, and represents the ship Victoria, in which Magellan sailed round the world, passing through the straits to which he gave his name.
1146 visits
-
Picture shows the costume and the holy water-pot and aspersoir, and to indicate how he went into all the rooms of the house now into the hall sprinkling the lord and lady who are at breakfast.
2268 visits
-
The Parish Clerk sprinkling the Cook
The picture will shows the costume and the holy water-pot and aspersoir, and to indicate how he went into all the rooms of the house—now into the kitchen sprinkling the cook.
1782 visits
-
In the MSS. we not unfrequently find the ordinary musical instruments placed in the hands of the angels; e.g., in the early fourteenth-century MS. Royal 2 B. vii., in a representation of the creation, with the morning stars singing together, and all the sons of God shouting for joy, an angelic choir are making melody on the trumpet, violin, cittern, shalm (or psaltery), and harp.
2370 visits
-
There is so much of character in his squire’s face in the picture, and that character so different from our conventional idea of a squire as he leans over the horse’s back talking to his master.
1688 visits
-
For an actual historical example of the tournament in which a number of knights challengers undertake to hold the field against all comers, we will take the passage of arms at St. Inglebert’s, near Calais, in the days of Edward III., because it is very fully narrated by Froissart, and because the splendid MS. of Froissart in the British Museum supplies us with a magnificent picture of the scene.
1828 visits
-
The illustration is from the valuable MS. Life and Acts of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. The present is part of a fight before Calais, in which Philip Duke of Burgundy was concerned on one side, and Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, Richard Earl of Warwick, and Humphrey Earl of Stafford on the other.
2218 visits
-
The use of the regular mine for effecting a breach in the wall of a fortified place was well known, and often brought to bear. The miners began their work at some distance, and drove a shaft underground towards the part of the fortifications which seemed most assailable; they excavated beneath the foundations of the wall, supporting the substructure with wooden props until they had finished their work. Then they set fire to the props, and retired to see the unsupported weight of the wall bringing it down in a heap of ruins. The operation of mining was usually effected under the protection of a temporary pent-house, called a cat or sow.
1319 visits
-
The woodcut from a MS. of Lydgate’s “Storie of Thebes”, gives a general view of a town. The travelers in the foreground are a group of Canterbury pilgrims.
693 visits
-
The chief sign of the Canterbury pilgrimage was an ampul (ampulla, a flask); we are told all about its origin and meaning by Abbot Benedict, who wrote a book on the miracles of St. Thomas. The monks had carefully collected from the pavement the blood of the martyr which had been shed upon it, and preserved it as one of the precious relics.
988 visits
-
Another of these guilds was the ancient company or fraternity of minstrels in Beverley, of which an account is given in Poulson’s “Beverlac”. When the fraternity originated we do not know; but they were of some consideration and wealth in the reign of Henry VI., when the Church of St. Mary’s, Beverley, was built.
3794 visits
-
Seizing that moment, a party of camp followers run forward with a couple of planks, which they throw over the moat to make a temporary bridge. They are across in an instant, and place scaling-ladders against the walls. The knights, following close at their heels, mount rapidly, each man carrying his shield over his head, so that the bare ladder is converted into a covered stair, from whose shield-roof arrows glint and stones roll off innocuous. It is easy to see that a body of the enemy might thus, in a few minutes, effect a lodgment on the castle-wall, and open a way for the whole party of assailants into the interior.
2002 visits
-
When many combatants fought on each side, it was called a tournament. Such sports were sometimes played in gorgeous costumes, but with weapons of lath, to make a spectacle in honour of a festal occasion. Sometimes the tournament was with bated weapons, but was a serious trial of skill and strength. And sometimes the tournament was even a mimic battle, and then usually between the adherents of hostile factions which sought thus to gratify their mutual hatreds, or it was a chivalrous incident in a war between two nations.
1269 visits
-
Suppose the king and his chivalry in the following woodcut to be only summoning the castle; and suppose them, on receiving a refusal to surrender, to resolve upon an assault. They retire a few hundred yards and dismount, and put their horses under the care of a guard. Presently they return supported by a strong body of archers, who ply the mail-clad defenders with such a hail of arrows that they are driven to seek shelter behind the battlements.
1868 visits
-
The woodcut shows the style of carriage associated—grotesquely associated, it seems to our eyes—with the armour and costume of the Middle Ages. It might represent Duke Theseus going in state through the streets of Athens, hung with tapestry and cloth of gold, to the solemn deed of arms of Palamon and Arcite.
1296 visits
-
The picture which we here give of an anchoress, is taken from a figure of St. Paula, one of the anchorite saints of the desert.
1311 visits
-
The best and clearest illustration which we have been able to find of the usual costume in which the hermits are represented, we here give to the reader. It is from the figure of St. Damasus, one of the group in the fine picture of “St. Jerome,” by Cosimo Roselli (who lived from 1439 to 1506), now in the National Gallery. The hermit-saint wears a light-brown frock, and scapular, with no girdle, and, over all, a cloak and hood of the same colour, and his naked feet are protected by wooden clogs.
1178 visits
-
The woodcut, greatly reduced from one of the fine tournament scenes in the MS. history of the Roi Meliadus, shows the temporary gallery erected for the convenience of the ladies and other spectators to witness the sports. The tent of one of the knights is seen in the background, and an indication of the hurly-burly of the combat below
2043 visits
-
In the monumental effigy of Sir Robert Shurland, who was made a knight-banneret in 1300, we seem to have a curious and probably unique effigy of a knight in the gameson. We give a woodcut of it, reduced from Stothard’s engraving. The smaller figure of the man placed at the feet of the effigy is in the same costume, and affords us an additional example.
4945 visits
-
The reclusorium, or anchorhold, seems sometimes to have been, like the hermitage, a house of timber or stone, or a grotto in a solitary place. In Sir T. Mallory’s “Prince Arthur” we are introduced to one of these, which afforded all the appliances for lodging and entertaining even male guests.
799 visits
