Timor mortis conturbat me
The pretty little church of St Andrew’s at Wickhampton has overlooked the Norfolk marshland for at least 800 years, probably more. It is situated 4 miles from the coast, on the edge of the Yare Valley, but its dedication to a patron saint of fishermen suggests it may have originally served a community who enjoyed easier access to the North Sea. Wooden vessels could have found their way along the Yare in the south, or the Bude in the north, to the port of Great Yarmouth, to take advantage of a national diet that was rich in seafood thanks to an adherence to the regular fish days of the Catholic calendar: Fridays in particular, and often Wednesdays and Saturdays too. Across the length and breadth of the country, those days saw cooks using almonds or onions, cinnamon or pine nuts to dress their herring and cod, supplied from places like Wickhampton.
Today St Andrew’s lies quietly among the fields, rebuilt extensively in the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries. Yet for all its long-dead maritime connections, it is remarkable for symbolising another of the key elements of medieval life, an inescapable, all-pervasive, unceasing element as universal as the need for the people to provide and consume food. Adorning the western corner of the north wall are images of a subject that the congregation would have thought about almost as much as their meals, a subject to which the questions of eating and survival were closely allied. Along with many other English churches of the period, St Andrew’s contains a series of famous memento mori, or paintings depicting the dead. And death, when, where and how it arrived, was nothing short of a medieval obsession.
It is unclear exactly who painted the three eerie-looking skeletons at Wickhampton and the fleshy reflections of their living descendants. The job might have gone to a skilled local painter, who also depicted the images of saints upon other walls of the church, or perhaps an artist drafted in from the royal court, recommended by a wealthy patron. Similar themes appear in churches nearby that were frequented by the well-connected Paston family. However, the artist’s execution of the six figures here and the details that accompany them leave no doubt as to where he gained his inspiration. The three living and three dead figures are engaged in a hunting scene: a rabbit runs for cover, a dog handler holds leashes and one nobleman holds a falcon upon his outstretched arm. This allows the painting to be identified as an illustration of a widespread legend: that of the Three Living and the Three Dead, originating from the 1280s, and found in places as widespread as France and Germany, Switzerland and Denmark. Although the narratives vary, the most succinct English version is an anonymous alliterative poem of the fifteenth century, possibly by the Shropshire priest John Audelay.
The Three Living and the Three Dead, also called The Three Dead Kings, relates how three kings follow a boar hunt and end up getting lost in the mist. There, in a strange twilight world between earth and the afterlife, they encounter the figures of their ancestors, in varying states of decay, and react with a mixture of fear and bravery. The corpses berate the kings for neglecting their memories and failing to say masses for their souls, reminding the living that their hold on life was brief, and they should ‘makis your mirrour be me’, since ‘such as I was you are, and such as I am you will be.’ The dead also rue their materialistic, lascivious lives, wishing they had lived more simply and spiritually, and warning how rapidly time passes unnoticed. The three living kings heed this macabre message and combine forces to build a church, on whose walls the legend is depicted to the edification of its flock.
But such legends and images were not confined to the walls of churches, to watch over Catholic heads bent in prayer below. The dead were seemingly everywhere, adorning psalters and Books of Hours in lurid colour, creeping into the most quiet, intimate moments of people’s lives. Sixty versions of The Three Living and the Three Dead survive, alongside eighty versions of a later manifestation of the same theme, called The Dance of Death,1 but corpses also spoke up in other contemporary poems and stories, such as the graphic Disputacione betwyx the Body and Wormes. This unusual dialogue also raises the medieval obsession with the connection between mortality and appetite, as a decaying woman tries to dissuade the worms in her tomb from consuming her, only to be informed that all desires will be overcome by the hunger of others. Although they were ultimately silenced by worms and time, the medieval dead were difficult to ignore, being visceral and three-dimensional, carvings of their rotting corpses glimpsed underneath cadaver or transi tombs, such as those erected for Archbishop Henry Chichele in Canterbury Cathedral and Bishop Richard Fleming at Lincoln. In fact, Chichele’s tomb prompted the passer-by to remember ‘you will be like me after you die’ and was completed before his death, so that he might sit and contemplate it in his final years. It also bore a reminder of his humble origins, ‘a pauper born then to Primate raised’, and echoed the imagery of the Disputacione, asserting that he was now ‘cut down and ready to be food for worms’.
First, one had to survive birth. With complications arising from delivery, puerperal fever and infection, it has been estimated that mothers faced around a 1 per cent chance of mortality as a result of giving birth, a statistic that marks the process as around 150 times more dangerous than it is today. Spread through the average woman’s childbearing career, that led to a risk of 6 or 7 per cent. Around one in five children died before they reached the age of 1, and more before their fifth birthday. After this, their life expectancy improved again before another dangerous peak between the ages of 10 and 14. The middle to late teens introduced a new swathe of potential killers, as the medieval child straddled the adult world and engaged in warfare, sexual activity and greater independence.
Sometimes death came knocking at the door. Plague was a regular occurrence, sweeping away huge portions of the population and going into abeyance only to resurface again later. After the first catastrophic outbreak of 1348–49, major outbreaks hit Europe in 1360–63, 1374, 1400, 1438–89, 1456–57, 1464–66, 1481–83, 1500–03, 1518–31 and 1544–48. England was particularly battered by a specific resurgence in 1361, another in 1471, which might have claimed as much as 10–15 per cent of the population, followed by the onslaught of 1479–80, which is considered to be responsible for the deaths of around a fifth of England’s inhabitants.2 Then there was the dreaded and highly contagious Sweating Sickness, which arrived in 1485, and rampaged through the country for the next sixty-five years before vanishing as mysteriously as it had arrived.
If medieval people successfully navigated these epidemics, their fellow men might prove just as lethal. The English upper classes represented a very small gene pool from aristocratic families with a tendency to intermarry going back generations. Many of their young men were directly affected by the civil wars of the second half of the fifteenth century, commonly known as the Wars of the Roses, a struggle for dynastic supremacy which was fought out among this elite group, with the inevitable results. When each side took up arms, they were not unaware of the possibility of capture, injury and death, although the prevailing chivalric code meant that it still took some by surprise. Brutal attacks upon the battlefield and merciless executions in its aftermath meant that these courtesies of warfare were eroded, marking a new savagery and finality between enemies. Blue blood or not, those who got in the way needed to be removed.
Despite its constant presence, death was only one of many facets of medieval life. It does not appear to have created a mood of excessive fatalism, morbidity, pessimism or even thanatophobia. On the contrary, the proximity of death seems to have bred a sense of opportunity, not exactly a ‘seize the day’ mentality, but a fighting spirit in the face of a force that might be eluded for a while. Death, personified, was an adversary to outwit. In contemporary literature, there is almost a sense of glee in the notion that death could be cheated of its prize, held at bay, even though it would always gain the final victory. A sardonic, dark humour pervades accounts and images of the Devil being outsmarted in his search for corruptible souls. This is not to suggest that people pursued hedonistic lives, since the dance with death was balanced by the influence of Christian teaching; it was more a game of chance, a cultural motif that recurred very often throughout the period. By snatching back a few more weeks, months or years, and living to fight another day, medieval people embraced the moment while keeping their eye on the eternal. Death was not considered to be the end, of course, within the context of the Catholic faith. Medieval people hoped to make a ‘good death’, which could determine their ultimate fate just as much as their deeds during life. This meant having time to prepare oneself for the end, in terms of deathbed provisions, confession and setting one’s affairs in order.
Yet more than anything, death could be unexpected. While modern mortality rates remain fairly constant, the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries experienced wild fluctuations which created more of a fear of being unprepared for death, especially of being unshriven, than of death itself. The century 1450–1550 certainly saw sudden episodes of mass annihilation, through battle and epidemic, as well as changes in population and life expectancy. According to monastic records, especially those collated at Westminster Abbey, the latter half of the fifteenth century was marked by a greater tendency towards premature death, which may have correlated with the most devastating conflicts of the Wars of the Roses. The birth rate took a slight turn upwards in 1470 and again in 1520. By this point, the national population is estimated to have reached around 2.5 million, nowhere near the pre-plague figure of between 4 and 6 million in 1300.3
Death may have been commonplace, but there is no denying the grief of the bereaved. Loss had a huge impact upon the personal lives of loved ones and relations, changing the prospects of their children, spouses and siblings, often catapulting them into unexpected positions of power, or the lack of it. This book explores the lives of ten young men in the century 1450–1550 who were products of this visceral environment and died prematurely. Each loss represented the absence of a life, of a future path forsaken, the laws of inheritance resulting in serious changes for dynasties. Each death broke a branch of the tree, created a man who would not father children, a king who would not rule, an established household to be disbanded, dependents to seek another master, subjects to find another lord and a group of allegiances lost. The social standing of these lost youths meant that the political and national consequences of their deaths vastly outweighed the personal impact of their loss. And each loss left a very brief vacuum, or window of opportunity, into which others might step. Of the ten young men analysed here, four died of illness, three in battle, two by execution and one disappeared under mysterious circumstances, probably smothered in his bed. Their youth and the suddenness of their ends, made it less likely that they had taken the necessary legal steps to ensure a smooth transition of their legacies or created the spiritual conditions conducive to the salvation of their souls. In some cases, they were deliberately denied the opportunity for closure by those who wished to exploit their demise. The only one to write a lengthy surviving will was Edward VI, but even then his wishes about the succession and religion were quickly overridden.
Those who were facing death at the start of this period were concerned about their salvation, the distribution of their property and the future of their families. The will of Thomas atte Bregge in Kent, written on 31 October 1443, left certain rents, lands and tenements to his son Thomas, the remainder going to his other son John; 40 marks went to each of his three daughters and a priest received a sum to say masses for his soul at Lydd church for the next three years.4 Similar wills of the era provide for meat and drink to be served to those attending mass on the anniversary of the subject’s death, bequests to monasteries and for the comfortable living of widows, providing, in the will of Sir Ralph Rochefort, they ‘behave properly or marry well’. Ralph’s son and heir was still underage at the time of his father’s decease, but he was to inherit all his manors and pass them on to the legitimate heirs of his body.5 Failing that, the next preferred family line was identified, with clarification for the transfer of property in the event of their deaths. Blood and inheritance mattered. Medieval nobles had a strong sense of themselves as temporary custodians of dynastic possession, which it was their job to tend, increase and hand on to the next in line. From this came their sense of identity and duty, their position in society, their career and choice of marriage partner, their lifestyle and the manner and significance of their death.
Wills were also the last opportunity to exercise influence that was available to the dying. The medieval belief in purgatory, still so strong at the start of this period, meant that the fates of those in spiritual limbo could be influenced by their acts of charity and the prayers of the living. To obtain their good will, and their active influence, the dying might leave bequests to individuals or churches, for the benefit of the entire congregation, or establish chantry chapels where priests could pray for their souls in perpetuity. Their gifts of money, clothing and objects, their devout effigies, hands clasped together, might encourage those left behind to appeal to the saints on their behalf. The fires of hell were very real. They did not just exist inside class-exclusive manuscripts such as Dante’s Inferno, or on the illuminated pages of rich women’s prayer books; they were painted in lurid colour on the walls of churches and preached in sermons. They crept right up behind people and insinuated themselves into their lives, in popular stories, legends and customs. And just as material wealth could exalt the conditions, comfort and diet of the upper classes, so it was thought to ease the path to heaven. The wealthy could not take their riches with them, but they might put them to good use in the service of their souls, or purchase papal indulgences to pardon their sins. To an extent, access to heaven in the late medieval period could still be bought. Writing his will in 1454, the priest Nicholas Sturgeon bequeathed his soul to ‘the great mercy of almighty God’, his ‘wretched body to the earth sanctified and hallowed’ and ‘all my worldly goods to be demened for the merits of my soul’. He paid for a new steeple for the parish church of St Augustine’s in London, a costly chalice for St Nicholas in Henstridge, vestments for priests in St Andrew’s of Asperton to observe the anniversary of his death for the next seven years, and asked the abbeys at Canterbury and St Albans to pray for his soul.6 A century later, when Guildford Dudley met his death in 1554, the concepts of prayers for the death had been rejected. The dead were dead, and those ties with the living had been severed. England’s religion, its beliefs about the afterlife and its methods of memorial had undergone a revolution.
This book is about death and its impact but, even more so, it is about life. Life as an opportunity to be seized with both hands, to be fought for amid difficult and overwhelming circumstances, to be celebrated and exploited, valued and revered, in all its brutal brevity. Death is always of significance, in any era, but the concentration of these ten young losses fed into a complex process by which the dynasties of York, Lancaster and Tudor were redefined. These deaths shaped the Wars of the Roses and the families’ descendants, as much as its key adult players, by virtue of the young men’s birth, the offices they held and their actions or inactions. The cultural, social and dynastic impacts of death cast particularly long shadows over the living during this century and helped to shape the posthumous reputations of these ten young men, often casting them as martyrs and victims. Their lives and the manner of their ends require fresh evaluation to place them in the context of their family trees, assess their contribution and counter the knowledge of hindsight that hung a sword of Damocles above their youthful heads. It is the fate of death to always be written about by the living, but the trails these young men left, like temporary lines on a beach, are worth recording before the waves wash them away.
This book is also about history and the way it is written. It is impossible for the historian of any era to shake off the specific combination of factors that formed their particular consciousness and dictated their education. It is almost as difficult to divorce interpretation from hindsight, so its influence must be recognised and viewed from an alternative platform, from as detached and timeless a perspective as is humanly possible. The nature of premature death means that some questions must be left open-ended and all likely conclusions considered, mapped out around the actual course that events took, and the measurable facts. It may seem a fruitless exercise in fiction to speculate what might have been had they lived, but it is possible to examine what did happen as a result of their deaths; the people who took their land and position, seized the opportunity and stepped into their shoes, either by design or accident of birth. These results, these lives and events, are the opportunity cost of the lives lost.
Amy Licence
Canterbury, August 2017
I that in heill wes and gladnes,
Am trublit now with gret seiknes,
And feblit with infermite;
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Our plesance heir is all vane glory,
This fals warld is bot transitory,
The flesche is brukle, the Fend is sle;
Timor mortis conturbat me.
The stait of man dois change and vary,
Now sound, now seik, now blith, now sary,
Now dansand mery, now like to dee;
Timor mortis conturbat me.
No stait in erd heir standis sickir;
As with the wynd wavis the wickir,
Wavis this warldis vanite.
Timor mortis conturbat me.
On to the ded gois all estatis,
Princis, prelotis, and potestatis,
Baith riche and pur of al degre;
Timor mortis conturbat me.
William Dunbar, ‘Lament for the Makers’