I’m late to posting this so I assume most people have viewed the trailer already, but in case you haven’t, it is linked below.
Release date for the movie is set for May 12, 2017.
Immigration in Medieval England
I don’t so much care to discuss current immigration politics, but since that is all the news is covering lately, I thought it would be interesting to look up what immigration was like in England during the Middle Ages. The following article from medievalists.net references England particularly during the 14th – 16th centuries. This period was after the Black Death when the population across Europe was significantly lower and there was a lot more work available.
According to research provided by the Universities of York and Sheffield, approximately 1% of the population of England during this time was made up of immigrants. Today that number is approximately 12% according to this study.
About one out of every hundred people in late medieval England was an immigrant, according to researchers at the universities of York and Sheffield. They have also launched a new database that offers details about 65,000 immigrants who lived in England between 1330 and 1550.
The England’s Immigrants project was created by these universities with support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). It is led by Mark Ormrod, of the University of York’s Centre for Medieval Studies.
The database offers information on the names, origins, occupations and households of a significant number of foreigners who chose to live and work in England during the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries…
Read the full article at medievalists.net, which also provides links to the research database and other articles of interest.
Viking connection to Northeast Scotland
From the Archaeology News Network:
Their exploits are more linked to the Northern Isles and the west coast of Scotland, with monastries raided, islanders murdered and gold and silver plundered. But new research – and a clutch of archaeological finds – has now suggested that the North East may not have escaped the fury of the Norsemen after all.
Academics at Aberdeen University have been working to fill the “blank space” of Viking activity in Aberdeenshire and Moray, with written history barely touching on the area so far. Using finds recorded through the Treasure Trove system and the input a team of metal detectors in the North East, a picture of possible Viking activity in the old Pictish Kingdom of Fortriu during the 8th, 9th and 10th centuries is now emerging.
Read more at: http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.de/2015/11/viking-link-to-north-east-of-scotland.html#.VlNByHarRhE
50 graves discovered at medieval pilgrimage site in England
The skeletal remains of about 50 medieval individuals have been discovered in shallow graves near the pilgrimage site of a famous seventh-century saint in England.
The human remains, which have been exhumed, may help archaeologists learn more about the medieval era, according to Archaeology Warwickshire, an archaeology and excavation firm. The company plans to study each skeleton to determine its sex and approximate age, and to identify evidence of injuries or diseases preserved in the bones, said Stuart Palmer, the business manager of Archaeology Warwickshire
Vikings traded first, plundered later
From Live Science:
The Viking Age may not have started with the plundering of England, but with the peaceful trading of handcrafted combs made out of reindeer antlers, a new study suggests.
Until now, researchers thought the Viking Age began in June 793, when Norwegian Vikings raided Lindisfarne, an island off the northeast coast of England. But new research suggests Vikings were traveling from Norway to Ribe, one of Scandinavia’s earliest towns and a lively trading center on the west coast of Denmark, as early as 725, the researchers said.
The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England
The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England
By Marc Morris
Paperback: 464 pages
Publisher: Pegasus; 1 edition (December 15, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1605986518
Overview:
A riveting and authoritative history of the single most important event in English history: the Norman Conquest.An upstart French duke who sets out to conquer the most powerful and unified kingdom in Christendom. An invasion force on a scale not seen since the days of the Romans. One of the bloodiest and most decisive battles ever fought.This new history explains why the Norman Conquest was the most significant cultural and military episode in English history. Assessing the original evidence at every turn, Marc Morris goes beyond the familiar outline to explain why England was at once so powerful and yet so vulnerable to William the Conqueror’s attack; why the Normans, in some respects less sophisticated, possessed the military cutting edge; how William’s hopes of a united Anglo-Norman realm unraveled, dashed by English rebellions, Viking invasions, and the insatiable demands of his fellow conquerors.
Rating on Amazon: 4.5 stars (178 reviews)
More news on Richard III
“They Found Richard III. So Now What?”
What the remains of the “hunchback” king can teach us about other English royals
The last time Richard III was buried in Leicester, England, he had been taken from a battlefield, slung naked over a horse, stabbed in the buttocks with a dagger and thrown into a shallow grave. That was late August 1485. On Thursday, March 26, 2015, Richard will be buried again. This time will be different.
Oldest cannonball in England found
From Fox News:
The oldest surviving cannonball in England has been rediscovered on a medieval battlefield.
The cannonball, which was lost for several years, was likely used in the Battle of Northampton in 1460, one of the battles in the decades-long Wars of the Roses. The giant ball has two large dents from a few bounces, as well as a gouge mark that contains fragments of sand from the area.
Rare copy of Magna Carta discovered
From the BBC:
An early edition of Magna Carta has been found in a Victorian scrapbook during a search of a council’s archives
The discovery has come months ahead of the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta in Runnymede in 1215.
What did King Henry VIII really want from a wife?
From the BBC:
Henry VIII: Britain’s most famous king. Big, bold and brash, he is the epitome of ‘Merrie England’.
Ruling between 1509 and 1547, his marriages to a succession of six women became something of a Tudor soap opera and probably his most talked-about legacy.
So, as king of England and one of Europe’s most eligible royals, what did he want in a wife, and, more specifically, a queen?