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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear jmh: Over sixty years ago, I read "1066 and All That", about King John allegedly dying
of "a surfeit of peaches". I have since read expert medical opinion that he died of coronary
heart disease. I suspect same was true of Henry I, I suspect. Indigestion just does not kill.
Wofahulicodoc, where are you when we need you?
Incidentally, I wonder how lampreys were caught, since they cannot take a baited hook.
I dissected on in Comparative Anatomy, and still remember how ugly it was. I wonder if fishing
nets were sufficiently fine meshed in those days to catch lampreys along with other fish.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I'm sure it takes a sane person.
TEd
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
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Or a boat plus several seine persons.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Finally I remembered that adult lampreys have to go up small streams as far as they can go
to breed and spawn. Fish weirs could be used to allow them to enter first weir, but not get
past a second weir. Then they could be either speared or caught with dipnets.
Fish weirs have a very long history, and would have been used in England of Henry I.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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> lampreys and peaches The writers of "1066 and all that" enjoyed a yarn and the surfeit story was a good one. Whether heart disease or dysentery were the real reasons, the sources of the day lacked modern medical expertise, so diagnoses were, at best sketchy. King John: When John came to the throne, he lost his temper and flung himself on the floor, foaming at the mouth and biting the rushes. He was thus a Bad King....
John was so bad that the Pope decided to put the whole country under an Interdict, i.e. he gave orders that no-one was to be born or die or marry (except in Church porches)....
John finally demonstrated his utter incompetence by losing the Crown and all his clothes in the wash and then dying of a surfeit of peaches and no cider; thus his awful reign came to an end."
1066 and all that, Sellar and Yeatman 1930There is a discussion on the sources for the story here as well as reference to Shakespeare’s King John: http://www.ku.edu/~medieval/melcher/matthias/t54/0135.htmlHenry I: The lampreys could have been sea lampreys, returning to fresh water to spawn and die or river or brook lampreys. Here is a site discussing the lifecycle of the sea lamprey http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/BMLSS/lamprey2.htmThe lamprey story was first raised by Henry of Huntingdon in his book "The History of the English People" 1123(ish) where he also tells the story of Cnut(or Canute) trying to stop the waves. http://www.oup.co.uk/worldsclassics/mag/eels/Here's a good site for Bill on medicine and Royal deaths in Britain: http://www.doctorzebra.com/prez/a_royalhx.htm
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear jmh: I appreciate your very interesting information, but am shedding great big tears
that you did not mention the "stickiest end of all", namely, that of Edward III, about whom
Cap K posted a Latin paragraph a long time ago, which said he had a red hot poker inserted
through his anus into his rectum. Brewer repeats allegation that his queen personally
supervised this. I have been unable to confirm this, and doubt that the queen would have
wanted to risk opprobrium sure to be attached to this horrid act, though she may well have
privately found it fitting punishment for his msdeeds. Can you find reliable information
about this? I have looked diligently but could find none. I think the queen had gone back
to France before it happened.
Edit: I went back and searched again, and found a bunch of sites that said it was Edward II
who was murdered by red hot poker. Dear jmh, I beg you, find us the real history of this.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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I hope you will forgive me for coming into this, but I got interested and found the following quotations from a professional archivist, Dr Caroline Shenton, formerly Senior Archivist at the Public Record Office. She deals with Edward's death and reputation. Thought you would be interested:
“Most sources do not recount how Edward II died. The red hot poker story emerged about 30 years after Edward's death, told to a chronicler by a man who alleged he was a guard in the castle on the night. It is far more likely that he was starved or suffocated, rather like Richard II.
The poker story is much more enjoyable to recount however...”
“In fact, Edward II had a bastard son called Adam, which suggests that at the very least he was bisexual - you don't father illegitimate children if you are an avowed homosexual.”
“Incidentally, the charge that the king was 'enchanted' by Gaveston is responsible for the suggestion that they were lovers. Chroniclers probably meant that Gaveston had undue influence not befitting his station; it did not necessarily mean they were lovers. Charges of homosexuality were only made after Edward II's death; the most recent revision of the relationship between Edward and Gaveston is in P.Chaplais, 'Piers Gaveston: Edward II's Adoptive Brother' (Oxford, 1994).”
“The thing that really got up the noses of the magnates was that Gaveston called them rude nicknames and did not defer to their superior status, not that he was sleeping with the king. If homosexuality were a bar to being a king then what about William Rufus, James I, William III....”
dxbuttingin
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Dear dxb: thank you for your contribution. "Urban legends" began long ago, and hoax
busting is a comparatively new phenomenon. The barons who held Edward II would
not have wanted to create any public sympath;y with him. .
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Here's something that I discovered today Edward II was listed at number 192 in the top 500 lesbian and gay heroes in The Pink Paper, 10th. October, 1997, issue 502, page 15Well, you learn something every day. http://www.sbu.ac.uk/stafflag/gaymillennium4.htmlEdward II got a bit of a bad press in Marlowe's play . He didn't come over too well in "Braveheart" either but given that the history element of Braveheart http://www.medievalscotland.org/scotbiblio/bravehearterrors.shtml was laughable, I'm not entirely surprised. As for the poker, I'm afraid that I have nothing more to add. If it was true it sounds pretty unpleasant, although, weren't the Middle Ages just a time of unrelenting misery, especially if you were famous (and worth killing) or just poor (and miserable)?
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veteran
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veteran
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the history element of Braveheart..was laughablehttp://www.medievalscotland.org/scotbiblio/bravehearterrors.shtmlThat's an excellent reference, Jo. I'd known that Braveheart was mostly fantasy (albeit a very entertaining one), but this really brings it home well. The problem is that there are an awful lot of people who treat "historical" movies as by definition true. And there are an awful lot of people making movies who see their duty as giving the majority of the audience what it wants - which ends up toadying to simplistic preconceptions.
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