Here, in a remarkably tidy scene, given that it’s all about spoils of war, we see some of Edward’s soldiers loading the Stone of Scone onto a cart, so they can drag it back to London and build a chair over it. (The Scots get it back eventually. On loan. Supposedly.)
Edward I invaded Scotland in 1296, on account of (he said) their broken feudal obligations. Amongst the usual spoils of war — prisoners, horses, weapons, nice gold stuff — he took a rock. Weighing about 335 pounds. We discuss the theft of the Stone of Destiny, and its subsequent history. Including, to our delight, a 20th century liberation of the Stone, wherein four university students break into Westminster Abbey and take the stone back to Scotland. Then it went back to England. Now it’s in Scotland again. It’s a very important rock, really.
As a true crime subject, our Viking child is problematic: who is he? We don’t know. How did he die? We don’t know. Why did he get thrown in the tidal pool that’s now the back gardens of Dublin Castle? We don’t know. When did this happen? We don’t know. But we know something bad happened. And Michelle gets to talk about archeology and awesome civil disobedience in the service of history.
From the Radziwill Chronicle of the 15th century, we see the first batch of Drevlian ambassadors, as they are honored by being carried in their boat, through the streets of Kiev, and then thrown, boat and all, into the trench that got dug the night before, where they will be buried alive. This didn’t happen.
The Primary Russian Chronicle tells us much about the revenge that Olga of of the Kievan Rus took on the Drevlians after they killed her husband. And most of it is surely mythological. Entire boatloads of ambassadors being dropped into a trench, dug overnight in the royal hall? Two groups of ambassadors slaughtered, without the Drevlians getting suspicious? Flocks of bird set on fire, and then burning a town down? No, no, and no. However, Anne stands firm on the blood feast, and Michelle stands firm on the idea that the Primary Russian Chronicle should have been published under its name in direct translation, “Tale of Bygone Years.” It’s true that Olga converted and saved a lot of Christians later, though, so the saintliness part we are just fine with.
The Bayeux Tapestry depicts the Norman invasion and the events leading up to it; here King Harold is killed; the arrow was added later to fit a later story. For our purposes, you can imagine that right on top of Harold, where he fell, the impressive Battle Abbey was built, started by William the Conqueror because he was so very sorry about all the slaughter. But not so sorry he gave England back.
After the Normans conquered England, the pope sanctioned them, on account of how much slaughtering had gone on. So, being sanctioned, they were very sorry. Which is why William the Conqueror founded Battle Abbey, where the Battle of Hastings was. And when he did that, he gave the monks some special rights (mostly having to do with not being required to listen to the bishop), but they didn’t get written down, because nobody needed to; the king, after all, had said so. But time moved on, and written culture became the thing, so the monks needed a charter to prove the things William said. So they made some. About seven of them. They were very nice looking forgeries, but nobody believed them. However! There was a forgery ring running out of Winchester Abbey. Really. You can’t make this stuff up.
True to its time, this view of the Crusaders riding into Constantinople is energetic and romantic (it’s 1840, Eugène Ferdinand Victor Delacroix). But it doesn’t make the crusaders look heroic. They’re awful. That’s pretty accurate.
From the middle of the 5th century until 1204, Constantinople was the largest, the wealthiest, the most sophisticated, the most important city in Europe. Then the 4th Crusade, which had intended to go retake Jerusalem, went to the center of Eastern Christianity and besieged it, sacked it, crippled it, and destroyed — for at least 800 years — the relations between the Roman Christians and the Byzantine Christians. None of this makes any sense, except that money was involved and people behaved badly. Michelle explains how Western scholarship has dealt with this major crime (it wasn’t until the 1950’s that it was described as a crime), and Anne explains the money. Follow the money.
After King James I stabbed William Douglas 26 times, at Stirling Castle, he got thrown out the window. This is, we gather, the window. Now it has a stained glass Douglas coat-of-arms. The place where the body landed is covered with paving tiles and has a monument. You can go see these things, if you go to Stirling.
If you are an Earl, and you are sent a safe conduct pass to go talk to the King, you’re safe, right? You can go meet them, and calmly discuss that alliance you made with a couple of other noblemen, one that is not in favor of the king and his kingly position. Calmly, yes, and then you can go home. Unless it’s 1452, and you’re in Scotland, and you’re one of the Douglases, and the king is known for having a very bad temper. In which case you might get stabbed 26 times and thrown out a window. Really, given Scots history before that, one might have been able to predict that; noblemen getting stabbed despite their safe conduct passes is sort of a theme.
The Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, holds the Cathach of St. Columba (RIA MS 12 R 33), which might be the book that St. Columba copied secretly, which might be the reason that the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne started, which was probably why St. Columba was exiled from Ireland and ended up in Scotland. We can ask ourselves, what might have happened if he’d actually asked permission to copy the book? And we will never know.
It’s very rude to copy books secretly whilst staying with one of your old teachers, even if you are very careful not to harm the books, and don’t use cheese sandwiches as bookmarks. That’s what we learn from this episode. Also that the ancient kings of Ireland liked to use cattle as examples of just about everything. And that the O’Neills were willing to go to war with the High King over a book. Michelle and Anne discuss the meaning of copyright law, which really has nothing to do with copying a manuscript in 6th century Ireland. Though to every cow belongs her calf, and to every book its copy. We guess. In good news, there’s no torture. Though there are some deaths — about 3,000, at the Battle of the Book. Darn.
The famous portrait of Christopher Marlowe might not be him at all. Of course. It was found under some rubble at the Master’s Lodge at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where Marlowe was a student, and it has an inscription saying that it’s 1525 and the sitter is 21, and Marlowe was that age at that time. The incredible sumptuousness of the clothing is an issue, though; Marlowe, theoretically, could not have afforded that outfit. Nor would he have been technically allowed it, since it would have denoted someone of higher class than he. But Marlowe was already working for the government, and Marlowe never minded silly things like rules. And lord knows he had attitude.
At the end of May 1593, the most important and influential playwright in England died at the age of 29. Rumor and gossip and a great many history books and literature collections would say, over the centuries, that he died in a tavern brawl. To be fair, his earlier history with drunken brawl involvement makes this plausible. But the evidence — or rather, the lack of evidence — given at the inquest makes it clear that he was being got rid of. Oh, besides being a writer, he was involved in Walsingham’s Elizabethan espionage net. There’s that. In this special episode, stepping out of the middle ages and into the early modern era, we discuss the evidence. Also Michelle has found some musicals. Yikes.
