Archery, medieval style.

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Companions of the Longbow Christmas and New Year’s Quiz 2006

What follows are fifteen questions on some off beat medieval history first posted up on the website on the 19th December 2006. In a change to the originally posted quiz format pick an answer and read on to find out if you got it right. Keep a count of how many questions you get right overall and see how you fair on a sliding scale at the bottom. Good luck!

Question 1. How much would £1 in 1415 A.D. be worth if it was converted into the equivalent modern amount today?

(A) £54.

(B) £206.

(D) £414.

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Answer: Among the many thousands of people and towns who lent money to King Henry V’s 1415 campaign in France (where Henry V won the Battle of Agincourt) was Richard Whittington. Richard Whittington is known to generations of children as Dick Whittington and was mayor of London three times between 1397 and 1420. He lent the king £700, that’s roughly £29,000 ($43,000) in today’s money. So if you’ve not already done the maths and worked it out the answer is D.

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Question 2. Today our maps are orientated so that North is at the top. Medieval maps, called mappae mundi, were orientated with the top of the map at a different compass direction. Which direction were they orientated?

(A) East.

(B) South.

(D) Magnetic North.

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Answer: They had East at the top, facing towards the Holy Land. And because it was facing East it’s where we get the word "orientated". So the answer is A.

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Question 3. Medieval woollen cloth was trampled and soaked in stale urine by a person called a Fuller and then dried on racks. The ammonia in the stale urine helped bind the fibres to make it a superior cloth similar to felt. The racks the woollen cloth was dried on were called:

(A) Drying racks

(B) Tenter frames

(D) Fulling frames

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Answer: Tenter is said to come from the Latin word tendere "to stretch" and the cloth was attached to the tenter frames via tenter hooks. It’s where we get the phrase "he was on tenter hooks". So the answer is B.

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Question 4. The word "Noon" comes from:

(A) The Latin for midpoint.

(B) The church hour of nones, the ninth hour.

(D) The corruption of the word "soon" i.e. when is lunch? Soon.

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Answer: Noon comes from the church hour of nones and was originally around mid-afternoon i.e. 3pm. With the introduction of the first public mechanical clocks the church changed their time from variable "canonical hours" to ones of fixed duration. With their public clocks this enabled them to control the town and city’s need for accurate timekeeping. Churchmen found that nones had moved to midday ... and hence the corruption to the word "Noon". So the answer is B.

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Question 5. In medieval Western Europe, who actually knew that the world was round?

(A) Scholars knew the world was round, although they had to keep this knowledge secret from the church authorities.

(B) No one knew the world was round. It was believed that the world was flat.

(C) Due to their translation of Latin texts the church knew the world was round, but to keep control, kept this knowledge from the general populous.

(D) Everyone knew the world was round. It was common knowledge.

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Answer: Everyone knew the world was round and it’d been common knowledge since the time of the ancient Greeks. The misconception that people before the age of exploration believed that Earth was flat entered the popular imagination after Washington Irving's publication of "The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus" in 1828. The answer is therefore D.

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Question 6. Henry II’s favourite minstrel, Roland Le Pettour, was rewarded with 30 acres of land for his masterwork. What was his masterwork?

(A) The Song of Roland.

(B) The Ballad of Robin Hood.

(D) Le Roman D’Eneas, a French version of Virgil’s Aeneid.

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Answer: The King rewarded him for what was described as "a leap, a whistle and a fart" and the land was passed down from father to son for many generations on the condition that the incumbent turn up at court each Christmas Day to "perform". The answer is therefore C.

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Question 7. Around 1200 King John proposed building a hunting lodge near the city of Nottingham. The residents of the village of Gotham realised that as he would pass through the village on the way to his lodge the road would be made into a king’s highway and therefore make them liable for new taxes. What did they do?

(A) Appeal to the manor court.

(B) Appeal to the king.

(D) Pretend to be mad.

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Answer: It is said that the villagers built a fence around a cuckoo bush to the prevent it from escaping, tried to drown an eel, rolled cheeses down a hill to make them round and tried to pull the moon out of a pond with a rake. Since madness was considered contagious the plan appeared to have worked and the hunting lodge was never built. The correct answer is D.

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Question 8. In 1181 King Henry II issued an “assize” or royal edict in England laying down what arms and equipment men should possess according to a sliding scale of wealth. The longbow is not mentioned and this has been used by some historians to confirm the theory of the insignificance of the longbow before technological advances eventually lead to the higher poundage draw weights in what we now call a war bow (i.e. a longbow with draw weights in excess of 100lbs) and the success of English armies during the Hundred Years War (1337 to 1453). What other item is missing from the Assize of Arms of 1181?

(A) Shield and lance

(B) Hauberk (a shirt of mail armour)

(D) Iron headpiece

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Answer: Swords are wholly emitted from the Assize of Arms. That is the English Assize of Arms. At Le Mans at Christmas 1180, only a few months before the promulgation of the English Assize of Arms, Henry II had issued a similar, but longer assize relating to his continental lands, which did include the longbow (and swords). This forms part of the rival theory that the longbow had been around for a much longer time and it was purely the later development of the tactic of mass archers (thousands of them) and knights fighting on foot (contrary to the idea of that knights fought on horseback) that gave the English armies their success during the Hundred Years War. So the answer is C.

Incidentally, as the Assize of Arms of 1181 is a legal precedent decided by King Henry II of England it was developed in common law jurisdictions ever since. Having inherited the English common law legal system, it is said that the Assize of Arms formed part of the legal basis for the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution; the right to bare arms.

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Question 9. There are many recorded incidents of hunting and shooting accidents. In 1277 two friends, William and John, were hunting with their lord William Comyn in his park near Fakenham. "A deer came between William and John, and Will thought he had shot it, but the arrow glanced the branch of a tree and killed John by misadventure". In 1367 a chaplain, Walter Auncel, had gone out with some friends on the king’s highway to Egbaston "to sport at archery". A traveller coming the other way, seeing their sport, placed his cap on the road and said "Shoot at my cap". Walter loosed, but the arrow fell on a stone, glanced off, struck "Roger, son of Adam, who had been sitting by the highway under a bramble bush, piercing him above the navel and killing him".

Richard, son of Walter de Aspele, accidentally killed his brother William when "he was shooting at ???? and the arrow in falling fell on William and killed him". What ???? do you suspect Richard was shooting at?

(A) A bird

(B) A kite

(D) William

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Answer: He was shooting at a kite that William was flying at the time. There is no doubt that arrow wounds to unarmoured men (and women and children and animals!) can be deadly. The place of penetration is vital: 1 ½ inches through the left rib cage into the heart would be sufficient to kill, while with proper medical care 4 inches, or complete penetration of the muscle could be survived. A 2 inch wound to the thorax (the part of the human torso between the neck and the diaphragm) is enough to lead to death within 15 minutes. In case you haven’t made a note of it the answer was B.

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Question 10. What was the relationship between Edward of Woodstock, Lionel of Antwerp, John of Gaunt, Edmund of Langley and Thomas of Woodstock?

(A) They were first cousins.

(B) They were all kings of England.

(D) They were related through marriage.

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Answer: They were all sons of Edward III and confusingly for the reader new to the subject, commonly had their names referred to by places where they were born rather than their father’s last name. The descendants of John of Gaunt and Lionel of Antwerp would eventually fight for the crown of England in what is known as the War of Roses, after the red rose emblem of Dukes of Lancaster and the white rose emblem of the Duke of York. The answer is therefore C.

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Question 11. Medieval alchemists were interested in among other thins the transmutation of metals, the creation of an elixir that would prolong life indefinitely and the search for the Philosophers Stone. But what section of medieval society provided these alchemists?

(A) Churchmen

(B) Nobility

(D) Heretics

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Answer: With access to Arabic and Latin texts it was churchmen who were responsible for many of the discoveries of the age. Roger Bacon (c.1214 to 1294), also known as Doctor Mirabilis (Latin: "astounding teacher"), was one of the most famous Franciscan friars of his, or, indeed, any time. He was an English philosopher who placed considerable emphasis on empiricism, and has been presented as one of the earliest advocates of the modern scientific method in the West. At Malmesbury Abbey, in the eleventh century, a monk by the name of Elmer built himself wings and took off from the top of the tower. The wings took him a full 200 yards before he crash-landed, breaking both his legs. When he was in bed recovering he told his abbot he knew what had gone wrong: His flying machine needed a tail. The abbot wisely forbade him to take the experiment any further. The answer is A.

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Question 12. In 1191 at the Siege of Acre, a siege engine called a Petraria Arcatinus (a bow powered rock thrower) was built and used by the king of France. Our translation of the name is "Bad Neighbour", but what was it’s contemporary French nickname?

(A) Malamie

(B) Bonvoisin

(D) Malvoisin

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Answer: Latest news is that the Scrapeheap Challenge Roadshow featuring our very own Malvoisin 2 a.k.a. Bad Neighbour 2 has been postponed until October 2007. Currently our machine is sitting in various garages and gardens around Swindon awaiting the New Year when it can be refurbished, reassembled and beefed up so we can use it for displays... The answer was of course D.

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Question 13. From the 13th century until the mid 18th century in England, what date was considered the start of the New Year?

(A) 1st January

(B) 6th October

(D) 25th March

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Answer: Confusingly, before the 13th century the New Year was recorded in England from Christmas day i.e. 25th December. The 25th March was the feast of the Annunciation and was the preferred date for the New Year in England from the 13th century right up to the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar in September 1752. And way before England used the 25th December or the 25th of March as the start of the New Year, the Roman New Year was used which was the 1st of January (which the Romans themselves had moved from 1st March!) The 1st of January was originally rejected by the emerging Christian church because of some of the pre-Christian New Year's rituals. Funny how things came full circle. The answer was D by the way!

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Question 14. According to the "Book on the Order of Chivalry" on ethical guidelines for knights, written by Ramon Lull in 1276, the first duty of the knight is to defend the Holy Catholic Faith. The second is to maintain and defend his temporal lord. His third is ... ?

(A) To go hunting, give lavish dinners and fight in tournaments.

(B) To defend women, widows and orphans, diseased men and the weak.

(D) To maintain and keep his weapons and harness (armour) is good order.

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Answer: Well you’ve got to have a good time, the answer is A. The fourth on his list was "for because of the dread that the common people have of the knights, they labour and cultivate the earth, for fear lest they be destroyed." i.e. scare the peasantry into working the land. Nice! Protecting the "women, widows and orphans and diseased men and the weak" comes in fifth.

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Question 15. For a knight going into battle, a coat of arms would identify him during the confusion. A well marked knight would be fighting for his and for his family’s honour: if he ran away everyone would know. But what function would a coat of arms not offer a knight on the battlefield?

(A) It signalled he was wealthy and therefore worth keeping alive in order to be ransomed.

(B) It enabled the knight to have automatic preference in the battle order.

(D) It enabled his deeds to be observed and recorded by heralds and chroniclers.

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Answer: The correct answer was B, it did not enable the knight to have automatic preference in the battle order. There were numerous incidents of knights in disagreement over their position in a battle order before combat. When it came to being ransomed one mercenary captain took this to its logical extreme. It is said that Sir Robert Knolles used to ride into battle with an inscription on his helmet that read: "Whoever captures Sir Robert Knolles will gain 100,000 moutons." (The mouton d’or was a gold coin worth one-third of a pound of silver.)

Results

Number of questions right:

0-5 Outlaw: Rubbish! Off to the gallows with you!

6-10 Yeoman: A good attempt. Console yourself with a mug of ale and some pottage.

11-14 Knight: A marvellous effort. A cup of mead and some roasted pork for you.

15 Lord: Top score. Some venison and a cup of the finest imported wine my lord?