INTRODUCTION
1. Kendall, Paul Murray Richard the Third.
2. This is disputed, and the low estimate puts it at around 9,000, which would still make it the bloodiest battle on British soil. And indeed, the weather is hotly contested; besides which a British ‘blizzard’ might not impress many people from the Upper Midwest
3. Bryson, Bill Mother Tongue.
4. Pinker, Steven Better Angels of Our Nature.
5. http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/Influence_of_the_Wars_of_the_Roses.
6. http://uk.businessinsider.com/game-of-thrones-was-supposed-to-be-a-trilogy-2015-2.
7. Dan Jones, Sunday Times magazine, July 9, 2017.
8. https://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n07/john-lanchester/when-did-you-get-hooked.
9. Lowder, James (ed) Beyond the Wall.
10. Obviously we know he’s not really his bastard, but I don’t want to spoil it.
11. Kendall, Paul Murray Richard the Third.
12. Season 1, Episode 7.
CHAPTER 1
1. The exact date of the barbican is unclear; whether it dated from the early 14th century or as late as the late 15th century.
2. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
3. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
4. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
5. Ibid.
6. Ned Stark in A Game of Thrones.
7. Saul, Nigel For Honour and Glory.
8. Told by Walter of Guisborough, a 14th century canon, although many historians are skeptical of the story.
9. From the episode ‘You Win or You Die.’
10. Bartlett, Robert England Under the Normans and Angevins.
11. Rose Alexander The Kings in the North.
12. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
13. Geoffrey of Monmouth History of the Kings of Britain.
14. The contemporary Gesta Stephani.
15. The 15th century Crowland Chronicles.
16. Chronicles of Froissart.
17. Ibid.
18. Martin made the comparison himself https://winteriscoming.net/2017/07/15/game-of-thrones-as-myth-the-roots-of-the-white-walkers-the-others/.
19. Polydore Vergil’s English History.
20. Tombs, Robert The English and Their History.
21. Saul, Nigel For Honour and Glory.
22. A World of Ice and Fire.
23. Court records from 1368.
24. Quoted in Kelly, John The Great Mortality.
25. Kelly, John The Great Mortality.
26. Andrew Boorde, an Elizabethan poet.
27. http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/23/us/historical-study-of-homicide-and-cities-surprises-the-experts.html.
28. Tuchman Barbara A Distant Mirror.
29. Frankopan, Peter Silk Roads.
30. Bartlett, Robert The Norman and Angevin Kings.
31. Ibid.
32. Bergreen, Laurence Marco Polo.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Kelly, John The Great Mortality.
CHAPTER 2
1. Chronicles of Froissart.
2. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
3. Weir, Alison Isabella, She-Wolf of France, Queen of England.
4. This is all described in detail in Maurice Druon’s novel The Royal Succession.
5. According to one theory, so-called because so many Jews were burned there during various persecutions.
6. Kelly, John The Great Mortality.
7. Horne, Alistair The Seven Ages of Paris.
8. No one called it ‘Gothic’ at the time, this was a much later term.
9. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/19/westeros-europe_n_7565694.html.
10. As Martin said: ‘King’s Landing, that’s the capital, is not quite so tropical—in the books it’s more like medieval Paris or London and the north is more like Scotland.’
11. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/westeros-europe_n_7565694.
12. The famous Robert Browning poem, “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix,” helps to portray the sheer vastness of the country. Having driven across the country several times, I feel their pain.
13. Duby, Georges France in the Middle Ages.
14. Larrington Carolyne Winter is Coming.
15. Jager, Eric The Last Duel.
16. Alternatively it’s from louver, blockhouse, or l’ouevre work.
17. Manchester, William A World Lit Only by Fire.
18. Manchester, William A World Lit Only by Fire.
19. Horne, Alistair Seven Ages of Paris.
20. Duby, Georges France in the Middle Ages.
21. It may have been one of the other knights, as the witnesses couldn’t be sure because of the sound of the fire and screaming. In fact this story dates to many centuries later so may be completely made up.
22. This is only first recorded many centuries later.
23. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26824993.
CHAPTER 3
1. Sunday Times magazine.
2. http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~byzantium/Mdv.html.
3. From an 18th description of the corpses buried at Westminster Abbey.
4. Seward, Desmond Demon’s Brood.
5. This is at least the most popular theory.
6. The royal arms of England are ‘gules, three lions passant guardants or,’ in the language of heraldry, which translates as ‘on a red field, three golden lions, facing outwards, with right foreleg raised.’
7. http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast78.htm.
8. The Bestiary, translated by Richard Barber.
9. Morris, Marc A Great and Terrible King.
10. http://history-behind-game-of-thrones.com/medieval-scotland/longshanks.
11. Carpenter, David Magna Carta.
12. From the chronicles of the contemporary monk Matthew Paris.
13. Morris, Marc A Great and Terrible King.
14. Gillingham, John Conquest, Catastrophe and Recovery.
15. The contemporary Flores Historiarum, the Flowers of History.
16. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
17. http://historyofengland.typepad.com/documents_in_english_hist/2012/10/the-song-of-lewes-1264.html.
18. Shahar, Shulamith: Childhood in the Middle Ages, translation by Chaya Galai. Routledge, 1990.
19. This story may have grown in the telling, to put it mildly, but at the very least it reflects their enduring romance.
CHAPTER 4
1. British Isles is a contentious name in Ireland, although no alternative name has ever been found to replace it.
2. Martin, George R.R., Garcia, Elio M. Jr., Antonsson, Linda The World of Ice and Fire.
3. Also called ‘frozen fire.’
4. As written in The World of Ice and Fire, which is told as if in the style of a well-educated Renaissance man.
These statistics, based on the skulls of those people unlucky to live between 4000 and 3200 BC, only include head wounds, and it is also likely that the natives used deer antlers to stab each other to death http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/060518-skulls.html.
5. http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence/transcript?language=en.
6. Mallory, J.P. The Origins of the Irish.
7. http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/05/09/135962.
8. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13082240.
9. The nature of Pictish is extremely disputed. It may have been Celtic, Germanic or indigenous.
10. There may be confusion because the Normans and French invaders of 1066 sometimes called themselves ‘Romanz,’ the concept of Frenchness having not really been established yet.
11. Martin, George R.R. A Dange With Dragons.
CHAPTER 5
1. A nice description of this can be found in Ian Mortimer’s A Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England.
2. Bergreen, Laurence Marco Polo.
3. Quoted by contemporary Walter of Guisborough.
4. Asbridge, Thomas The Perfect Knight.
5. The taxable revenue of Holy Island just out of the border went from £202 in 1296 to £21 in 1326. From 1299-1316 annual tithes in Norham went from £162 to £2.
6. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
7. Martin, George R.R. A Game of Thrones.
8. Rosen, William The Third Horseman.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Quoted in Morris, Marc A Great and Terrible King.
12. According to The Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, written around 1346.
13. Rosen, William The Third Horseman.
14. In his poem ‘The Curse Upon Edward.’
15. Weir, Alison Isabella.
16. Rosen, William The Third Horseman.
17. The Annales Paulini.
18. Weir, Alison Isabella.
19. Weir, Alison Isabella.
20. Weir, Alison Isabella.
21. Horne, Alistair Seven Ages of Paris.
CHAPTER 6
1. This backstory is explained in a sort of fake history, The World of Ice and Fire, supposedly by a maestar although actually by George R.R. Martin, Elio M. Garcia and Linda Antonsson.
2. Literally ‘to rule,’ monarch meaning ‘one ruler.’
3. Martin, George R.R., Garcia, Elio M. Jr., Antonsson, Linda The World of Ice and Fire.
4. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/slaughter-bridge-uncovering-colossal-bronze-age-battle.
5. This point is made in Ayelet Haimson Luskkov’s You Win or You Die, so I cannot claim credit for it.
6. Martin, George R.R. A Dance With Dragons.
7. The precise etymology of this word is disputed. It may refer to the name of one of the Messinian villages.
8. Hall, Edith The Ancient Greeks.
9. Ibid.
10. Told by the Roman Plutarch in his book The Sayings of the Spartans.
11. Two of the 300 actually made it home. One, Aristodemus, was half-blinded and so told to return home, where he was treated as a coward. Another was returning from being sent as an envoy and so missed the crucial battle, and so when he got home was also disgraced and hanged himself.
12. Hall, Edith The Ancient Greeks.
13. Plutarch.
14. Wilkinson, Toby The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt. He wrote: ‘Indeed, it is remarkable that they were not afflicted by more serious congenital conditions.’
CHAPTER 7
1. Mary Beard estimates it as 13% while Alison Futrell, in The Roman Games: Historical Sources in Translation, puts it at 19%.
2. Holland, Tom Dynasty.
3. As Tom Holland wrote in Dynasty, he wished to ‘rub the noses of the nobility in their own irrelevance and desuetude, there was nothing any longer to keep him from the greatest stage of all.’
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Tacitus.
7. http://blogs.transparent.com/latin/game-of-thrones-ancient-rome-part-i/.
8. Tacitus’s Agricola.
9. Roman History by Cassius Dio.
10. http://www.livescience.com/42838-european-hunter-gatherer-genome-sequenced.html.
11. A theory first suggested in The 10,000 Year Explosion by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending.
12. Tacitus’s Agricola.
This is a subject that remains controversial and attracts some pretty wild speculation. The full details can be summarized here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legio_IX_Hispana.
13. From an interview with BBC Radio 4’s ‘Front Row’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00t0cvx.
14. http://blog.english-heritage.org.uk/30-surprising-facts-hadrians-wall/.
15. Roman History by Cassius Dio.
16. The film in question is the 2004 King Arthur with Clive Owen and Kiera Knightley
17. This is at least the traditional explanation, although much debated by historians, some would say debunked.
18. Bowman, Alan. K (ed) The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 11.
19. This is according to a source a century later who was admittedly anti-Persian. The true fate of the emperor is unknown. Valerian persecuted Christians and by the time of the writer the Persians were too, so it illustrated both Persian cruelty and the fact that a terrible fate awaited those who mistreated Christians. Other sources claim he was well-treated.
20. http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Doom_of_Valyria.
21. Recorded by Gildas, a sixth-century monk in his ‘Ruin and Destruction of Britain.’
CHAPTER 8
1. Poole, A.F. Domesday to Magna Carta.
2. Bartlett, Robert The Making of Europe.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Bartlett, Robert England under the Norman and Angevin Kings.
8. Ibid.
9. From his Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland.
10. Gillingham, John Conquest, Catastrophe and Recovery.
11. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
12. From the Orkneyinga Saga.
13. The cause of the dire wolves’ extinction is still a cause for debate, although certainly they disappeared around the same time that humans turned up in the Americas.
14. Gillingham, John Conquest, Catastrophe and Recovery.
15. From his memoirs, Commentaries.
16. Rosen, William The Third Horseman.
17. Rosen, William The Third Horseman.
CHAPTER 9
1. Pliny’s Natural History.
2. Frankel, Valerie Estelle Winter is Coming.
3. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/03/were-europes-mysterious-bog-people-human-sacrifices/472839/.
4. http://gameofthronesandnorsemythology.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/ragnarok-song-of-ice-fire.html.
5. Parker, Philip The Northmen’s Fury.
6. Whittock, Martyn A Brief History of Life in the Middle Ages.
7. Bartlett, Robert England under the Norman and Angevin Kings.
8. The always-skeptical William of Newburgh wrote ‘one would not easily believe that corpses come out of their graves and wander around, animated by I don’t know what spirit to terrorize or harm the living, unless there were cases in our times, supported by ample testimony.’ He did not suffer bullshit easily.
9. Ibid.
10. Bartlett, Robert England under the Norman and Angevin Kings.
11. The Chronicon Anglicanum.
12. A Game of Thrones.
13. From the Anglo-Saxon poem ‘The Battle of Brunanburh,’ written sometime in the 10th century.
14. Frankel, Valerie Estelle Winter is Coming.
15. http://www.irelandseye.com/aarticles/culture/talk/banshees/werewolf.shtm.
16. Angela, Alberto A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome.
17. Frankopan, Peter Silk Roads.
18. Nigosian, Solomon The Zoroastrian Faith: Tradition and Modern Research.
19. First mentioned in Ziauddin Barani’s History of Firoz Shah.
20. Van Woerkens, Martine The Strangled Traveler: Colonial Imaginings and the Thugs of India.
CHAPTER 10
1. Rosen, William The Third Horseman.
2. Kelly, John The Great Mortality.
3. Other sources suggest there may have been one or two days respite.
4. Rosen, William The Third Horseman.
5. Ibid.
6. Bartlett, Robert England under the Norman and Angevin Kings.
7. https://pseudoerasmus.com/2014/06/12/aside-angus-maddison/.
8. Kelly, John The Great Mortality.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Rosen, William The Third Horseman.
12. Horne, Alistair Seven Ages of Paris.
13. http://www.res.org.uk/details/mediabrief/10547499/ECONOMIC-ROOTS-OF-JEWISH-PERSECUTIONS-IN-MEDIEVAL-EUROPE.html.
14. Rosen, William The Third Horseman.
15. Ibid.
16. ‘Mair fell than wes ony devill in hell’, as a chronicler put it.
17. The evidence for this relationship is not so clear cut, it is fair to say. They certainly had an intimate friendship which damaged the king’s marriage.
18. McKisack, May The Fourteenth Century.
19. Weir, Alison Isabella.
20. Weir, Alison Isabella.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Quoted in Ibid.
24. Castor, She-Wolves.
25. However it had an immunity clause that said his land should be spared if he was attacked, which rather calls into question his motive.
26. Well, possibly.
27. Weir, Alison Isabella.
28. This is the theory suggested by her biographer Alison Weir.
29. Frankel wrote in Winter is Coming: ‘With her constant insistence on “courtesy as a lady’s armor,” Sansa demonstrates her love for medieval “courtesy books”—primers on proper behavior written mainly between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries.’
30. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
31. There is probably some degree of artistic license involved in this story, which is otherwise the only thing most people know about him. It was also reported that in jail he was mistreated, mocked and made to shave off his hair and beard with cold water from a ditch, then dressed in old clothes, and made to swallow rotting food and a crown of hay placed on his head, the aim being to slowly kill him. However Alison Weir doubts the source.
32. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
CHAPTER 11
1. Freeman, Charles A New History of Early Christianity.
2. A Game of Thrones.
3. http://www.onreligion.co.uk/religion-in-game-of-thrones/.
4. http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/15/were-there-dark-ages/.
5. Lewis, David Levering God’s Crucible.
6. The contemporary Zacharias of Mytilene.
7. Kelly, John The Great Mortality.
8. The theory that Westeros equals Europe is here http://www.quora.com/Are-Westeros-Kingdoms-inspired-by-real-life-countries-and-peoples The Iron Islands are not the Viking kingdoms of the islands of Scotland, Man and Ireland, but Scandinavia itself. In this theory the North is eastern Europe, with White Harbor translating as St Petersburg; the Slavic lands of north-east Europe were the last to leave the old gods behind, with some parts of the Baltic remaining pagan until the 13th century. The Westerlands, rich in mines, serves as a substitute for Britain, which was enriched by tin and later coal; both also have lions as symbols. In this comparison the Riverlands are the Low Countries and the Rhineland region of Germany, a region dominated by rivers, with good farming land that is nonetheless vulnerable to conquering armies. The Crownlands represent eastern Germany, forested land in the middle of continent that is often fought over.
9. Martin, George R.R., Garcia, Elio M. Jr., Antonsson, Linda The World of Ice and Fire.
10. Bartlett, Robert England under the Norman and Angevin Kings.
CHAPTER 12
1. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
2. Martin, George R.R., Garcia, Elio M. Jr., Antonsson, Linda The World of Ice and Fire.
3. https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/10/the-muslim-world-is-more-tolerant-of-homosexuality-than-you-think/.
4. Hourani, Albert A History of the Arab Peoples Quoted in the introduction by Malise Ruthven.
5. https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/4kdvo1/the_thirty_largest_cities_in_europe_by_population/.
6. A juicier description can be found in Fletcher, Richard Moorish Spain.
7. Lewis, David Levering God’s Crucible.
8. http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Long_Bridge.
9. Fletcher, Richard Moorish Spain.
10. Ibid.
11. Fletcher, Richard Moorish Spain.
12. It features in a Game of Thrones tour of Spain. http://www.designmena.com/thoughts/game-of-thrones-themed-tour-of-spains-moorish-architecture-on-offer.
13. Fletcher, Richard Moorish Spain.
14. This was apparently just a literary convention to show how romantic he was, although in Dubai today they can actually bring snow to the desert.
15. Fletcher, Richard Moorish Spain.
16. Lewis, David Levering God’s Crucible.
17. Fletcher, Richard Moorish Spain.
18. The current sword was made for Charles I’s coronation.
19. Fletcher, Richard Moorish Spain.
CHAPTER 13
1. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
2. Seward, Desmond Demon’s Brood.
3. (The term Warden of the March had first been used in 1309, a Clifford being the first.)
4. http://www.proto-english.org/o21.html He also said he ‘felt free to mix armour styles from several different periods.’
5. This was related to the indigenous Gaullish language spoken there before the Romans and now, with French dominance, the region’s Celtic language was being replaced by a Latin one for the second time.
6. As Froissart put it in his Chronicles.
7. Bartlett, Robert The Making of Europe.
8. As described by Gerald of Wales, a chronicler in the 12th century.
9. Reid, Peter A Brief History of Medieval Warfare.
10. Reid, Peter A Brief History of Medieval Warfare.
11. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
12. Mortimer, Ian A Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England.
13. De Charny’s Book of Chivalry.
14. Ibid.
15. Tuchman, Barbara wrote in A Distant Mirror: ‘To fight on horseback or foot wearing 55 pounds of plate armor, to crash in collision with an opponent at full gallop while holding horizontal an eighteen-foot lance half the length of an average telephone pole, to give and receive blows with sword or battle-ax that could cleave a skull or slice off a limb at a stroke, to spend half of life in the saddle through all weathers and for days at a time, was not a weakling’s work.’
16. A Storm of Swords.
17. Keegan, John The Illustrated Face of Battle.
18. A Game of Thrones.
19. Harvey, John The Plantagenets.
20. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Appleby, John C Outlaws in Medieval and Early Modern England.
24. Froissart’s Chronicles.
25. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
26. Duby, Georges France in the Middle Ages.
27. Bartlett, Robert England under the Norman and Angevin Kings.
28. Poole, A.F. Domesday to Magna Carta.
29. Ackroyd, Peter Foundations.
30. Seward, Desmond The Demon’s Brood.
31. Barker, Juliet England Arise.
32. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
CHAPTER 14
1. A Dance with Dragons.
2. Henry’s Historia Anglorum.
3. This is the traditional theory; another possibility is that these eastern parts of Britain had always been Germanic-speaking - indeed that Boudicca was a sort of Saxon—although there are a number of problems with this idea.
4. Mortimer, Ian Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England.
5. Martin, George R.R., Garcia, Elio M. Jr., Antonsson, Linda The World of Ice and Fire
6. This word was not used at the time, and only appeared much later.
7. http://www.nature.com/news/british-isles-mapped-out-by-genetic-ancestry-1.17136.
8. The degree to which the Angles and Saxons displaced the natives has always been hotly debated.
9. That is at least one theory. It may have been Mercia. Or East Anglia http://csis.pace.edu/grendel/projf20004d/History.html.
10. http://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/story/20140616-game-of-thrones-debt-to-tolkien.
11. http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20140616-game-of-thrones-debt-to-tolkien.
12. https://twitter.com/ClerkofOxford/status/914396271506575360.
CHAPTER 15
1. http://alxlockwood.webs.com/plaguecomet1347.htm.
2. Although this came about over a confusion with the 1st century outbreak in Rome, which Seneca had so christened).
3. Kelly, John The Great Mortality.
4. Ziegler, Philip The Black Death.
5. Contemporary Gabriel de Mussis, in The Great Dying of the Year of our Lord 1348.
6. Ziegler, Philip The Black Death.
7. Ibid.
8. In the early 20th century the price of tarabagan skins quadrupled and Chinese hunters flooded into Manchuria to catch the rodent, causing an outbreak that killed 60,000 people within a year. The average survival time from onset of symptoms was just 14 hours 30 minutes.
9. Ziegler, Philip The Black Death.
10. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/black-death-plague-spread-by-dirty-humans-and-not-rats-study-finds-a3741411.html.
11. Jean de Venette’s Chronicle of the Hundred Years War (although not everyone is sure he wrote it).
12. Frederic C. Lane says plague killed 60 percent of Venice, or 72,000 people.
13. One possible legacy of the plague is the folk song “Ring a Ring a Roses,” the children’s rhyme that ends ‘we all fall down’, although this is heavily disputed and many people think it originated in the nineteenth century. This Plague link only appears after World War Two.
CHAPTER 16
1. Lewis, David Levering God’s Crucible.
2. Brown, Peter The Rise of Western Christendom.
3. Jordanes’s Getica.
4. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
5. A Clash of Kings.
6. Clements, Jonathan The Vikings.
7. Wilkinson, Toby The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt.
8. Goldsworthy, Adrian The Fall of the West.
9. Parker, Philip The Norsemens’ Fury.
10. Price, Neil S. The Viking Way.
11. Price, Neil S. The Viking Way.
12. Pye, Michael The Edge of the World.
13. Price, Neil S. The Viking Way.
14. Price, Neil S. The Viking Way.
15. Price, Neil S. The Viking Way.
The Army of the Dead, or das germanische Totenheer, was according to Offo Hofler’s 1934 book Kultische Geheimbünde der Germanen (Secret Cultic Societies of the Germanic Peoples) ‘the mythological reflection of real warrior fraternities operating in the Iron Age among the Germanic peoples.’ From Price, Neil S. The Viking Way.
16. Price, Neil S. The Viking Way.
17. Ibid.
18. Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus.
19. http://www.electrummagazine.com/2017/04/neanderthals-scandinavian-trolls-and-troglodytes/.
The grave of a female Viking warrior was supposedly discovered in September 2017, but experts treat it with skepticism https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/have-we-finally-found-hard-evidence-for-viking-warrior-women/.
20. A Dance with Dragons.
21. A Feast for Crows.
22. This, of course, could have been a later rationalization after Ethelred’s disastrous reign.
23. A Feast for Crows.
24. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
25. Parker, Philip The Norsemens’ Fury.
26. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/03/10/one-million-brits-viking-descendants_n_4933186.html.
27. Iceland’s is older, but did not function for many years.
CHAPTER 17
1. ‘Carolyne Larrington: there’s no place for the High Septon on the Small Council, no communal prayers within the palace, no regular attendance at the equivalent of mass for the nobility or the knightly classes.’
2. Mortimer, Ian A Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England.
3. This comparison is made by Carolyn Larrington. Among the other masters of the English middle ages were Eadmer, William of Malmesbury, Symeon of Durham, Henry of Huntingdon, Orderic Vitalis, William of Newburgh, Gervase of Canterbury, Ralph of Diceto, Roger of Howden and Ralph of Coggeshall, men who provide the bulk of sources we rely on.
4. Bartlett, Robert England under the Norman and Angevin Kings.
5. Ibid.
6. Horne, Alistair Seven Ages of Paris.
7. Gies, Frances and Joseph Life in a Medieval Village.
8. Hibbert, Christopher The English, a Social History.
9. A Feast for Crows.
10. Kelly, John The Great Mortality.
11. Ziegler, Philip The Black Death.
12. Ziegler, Philip The Black Death.
13. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
14. Ibid.
15. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
16. Ibid.
17. Gies, Frances and Joseph Life in a Medieval City.
18. https://twitter.com/douthatnyt/status/747584810693042176?lang=en.
19. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-201388/Gunpowder-Plot-ruined-city.html.
CHAPTER 18
1. Bergreen, Lawrence Marco Polo.
2. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
3. Mortimer, Ian A Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England.
4. Crowley, Roger City of Fortune.
5. Ibid.
6. Reid, Peter Medieval Warfare.
7. Crowley, Roger City of Fortune.
8. Gies, Frances and Joseph Life in a Medieval City.
9. Martin, George R.R., Garcia, Elio M. Jr., Antonsson, Linda The World of Ice and Fire.
10. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
11. Bergreen, Lawrence Marco Polo.
12. Bergreen, Lawrence Marco Polo.
13. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
14. Bergreen, Lawrence Marco Polo.
15. Crowley, Roger City of Fortune.
16. Bergreen, Lawrence Marco Polo.
17. Crowley, Roger City of Fortune.
18. Martin, George R.R., Garcia, Elio M. Jr., Antonsson, Linda The World of Ice and Fire.
19. http://kengarex.com/real-life-game-of-thrones-locations-you-can-actually-visit-23-photos/15/.
20. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
21. http://www.oldpicsarchive.com/23-most-unusual-and-strange-sculptures-from-around-the-world/2/.
22. Bergreen, Lawrence Marco Polo.
23. Bergreen, Lawrence Marco Polo.
24. Crowley, Roger City of Fortune.
This sort of language test is known as shibboleth, from the Biblical story in which the Gileadites identified the Ephraimites by their inability to pronounce the word. Several such grizzly tests have marked groups down the years for death. If you’re REALLY interested you could learn more in my book England in the Age of Chivalry.
CHAPTER 19
1. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
2. Ibid.
3. Castor, Helen Joan of Arc.
4. Poole A.L. From Domesday Book to Magna Carta.
5. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
6. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
7. Bartlett, Robert England under the Norman and Angevin Kings.
8. A Clash of Kings.
9. A Dance with Dragons.
Of course a writer of fantasy is not constrained by this so it doesn’t matter, and no doubt GRRM is aware its myth. But it has appeared in historical fiction, too, mostly famously in Braveheart.
10. Alan MacFarlane’s The Origins of English Individualism changed the way many saw this period, making the idea of ‘peasants’ at the time seem obsolete.
11. This is a historical comparison made by Carolyn Larrington.
12. http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Smallfolk.
13. Braudel, Ferdinand The Identity of France.
14. Rosen, William The Third Horseman.
15. Kelly, John The Great Mortality.
16. Horne, Alistair The Seven Ages of Paris.
17. As Parliament described it in 1363.
18. Audley, Anselm Death Keeps His Court.
19. There hadn’t been a coronation for 50 years so almost no one would know what to do from first-hand experience. The coronation’s organizers used a book called Liber Regalis, written by Abbott Lytlyngton, which is still used for the coronation of British monarchs today.
20. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
21. Although mass break outs of medieval prisons were common, the prison at Bishop’s Stortford had breakouts of 16 in 1392, of 18 in 1393 and ten in 1401, all by ‘convicted clerks.’
22. Froissart’s Chronicle.
23. Ibid.
24. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
25. Or possibly Maidstone.
26. There is debate about the circumstances of Tyler’s death, and who drew a weapon first and why. Suffice it to say that the meeting didn’t go well for him.
1. Crowley, Roger 1453.
2. Crowley, Roger 1453.
3. Ibid.
4. McLynn, Frank 1066.
5. Petrus Gyllius’s De Topographia Constantinopoleos.
6. Larrington ‘a huge port city, owing its prosperity to the great guilds (the Ancient Guild of Spicers, the Tourmaline Brotherhood) and the merchant princes who trade in spices, saffron, silks and other exotic wares from further east beyond the Jade Sea.”
7. Martin, George R.R. A Clash of Kings.
8. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
9. http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Xaro_Xhoan_Daxos#cite_note-Racok 27.7B.7B.7B3.7D.7D.7D-0.
10. Martin, George R.R. A Clash of Kings.
11. Crowley, Roger 1453.
12. Norwich, John Julius Byzantium: The Apogee.
13. Norwich, John Julius Byzantium: The Apogee.
14. Norwich, John Julius Byzantium: The Apogee.
15. Allegedly. Quite a suspicious large numbers of such items were running around at the time.
16. From his Relatio de legatione Constantinopolitana ad Nicephorum Phocam.
17. As Jaime Lannister put it.
18. Although she may also have been stabbed or scalded to death.
19. Norwich, John Julius Byzantium: The Apogee.
20. Norwich, John Julius Byzantium: The Apogee.
21. Frankopan, Peter Silk Roads.
22. Frankopan, Peter Silk Roads.
23. Bridges, Antony The Crusades.
24. Herrin, Judith Byzantium.
25. A Clash of Kings.
26. Jean de Joinville’s Life of St Louis.
27. http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/mar/24/game-of-thrones-realistic-history.
28. Herrin, Judith Byzantium.
29. Frankopan, Peter Silk Roads.
30. Frankopan, Peter Silk Roads.
31. Herrin, Judith Byzantium.
32. Norwich, John Julius Byzantium: The Apogee.
33. Martin, George R.R., Garcia, Elio M. Jr., Antonsson, Linda The World of Ice and Fire This is at least according to Harald’s own sagas which were, in fairness, notoriously unreliable and filled improbable boasting, the sort of person who today would have claimed to be in the SAS.
34. This story may have not be 100 percent accurate, as with most of the stories told about Harald.
CHAPTER 21
1. The Thenns also acknowledge a lord and have discipline more typical of southern people, but in the television series, for simplicity reasons, they’re conflated with the cannibalistic ice river clans.
2. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
3. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
4. Ibid.
5. Jager, Eric The Last Duel.
6. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
7. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
8. Jager, Eric The Last Duel.
9. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
10. Jager, Eric The Last Duel.
11. Froissart’s Chronicles.
12. Chronique de Religieux de Saint-Denys, contenant le regne de Charles VI de 1380 a 1422.
13. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
14. Ibid.
15. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
16. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
17. Hibbert, Christopher The English, A Social History.
18. Gies, Frances and Joseph Life in a Medieval City.
19. The Vierzeiliger oberdeutscher Totentanz, written around 1460.
CHAPTER 22
1. The World of Ice and Fire.
2. http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/viruses101/hiv_resistant_mutation?isForcedMobile=Y
3. http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Category/C91/P90.
4. Jager, Eric The Last Duel.
5. Bartlett, Robert The Making of Europe.
6. This is disputed by some historians, who suggest her father was actually quite respectable. At any rate people believed it, and later taunted William.
7. Borman, Tracy Matilda.
8. Wilkinson, Toby The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt.
9. Bridgeford, Andrew 1066: The Hidden History of the Bayeux Tapestry.
10. William of Newburgh.
11. Gies, Joseph and Frances Life in a Medieval Castle.
12. Gies, Joseph and Frances Life in a Medieval Castle.
13. Duby, Georges France in the Middle Ages. One suspects that the entire system of medieval European civilization was largely designed by Frenchman to ensure that their supply of wine was safe.
14. Duby, Georges: ‘Just as early medieval kings brought up the sons of their vassals, so the territorial princes made the sons of castellans welcome at their courts, and the castellans in turn took in and trained the sons of local knights.’
15. Gies, Joseph and Frances Life in a Medieval Castle.
16. The Ecclestiastical History of Orderic Vitalis.
17. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming The names of the Houses reflect their environment; alongside the dominant House Reed are House Fenn, House Quagg, House Peat and House Boggs’, named after artificial islands.
18. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
19. This is one story. In truth very little is known about him.
20. Clark, Gregory The Son Also Rises.
CHAPTER 23
1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264402032_From_Swords_to_Words_Does_Macro-Level_Change_in_Self-Control_Predict_Long-Term_Variation_in_Levels_of_Homicide With thanks to Ben Southwood – @bswud – for the hat-tip.
2. The Real History behind Game of Thrones documentary with George R.R. Martin and historians https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odw3Nxdqq4o.
3. D’Elgin, Tershia The Everything Bird Book: From Identification to Bird Care, Everything You Need to Know about our Feathered Friends.
4. Or suffocated beneath a featherbed. The net effect was the same at any rate.
5. Ackroyd, Peter Foundations.
CHAPTER 24
1. https://www.oddee.com/item_96620.aspx.
2. Gies, Frances and Joseph Life in a Medieval Castle.
3. Bartlett, Robert The Norman and Angevin Kings.
4. Tuchman: ‘As penetration by outsiders increased, so did snobbery until a day in the mid-15th century when a knight rode into the lists followed by a parade of pennants bearing no less than 32 coat-of-arms.’
5. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
6. According to French medievalist Karl Uitti.’
7. The closest translation would be ‘cunt’, con being a very crude word.
8. Jones, Terry Medieval Lives.
CHAPTER 25
1. Hackett, David Fischer Albion’s Seed.
2. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
3. Ibid.
4. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
5. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
6. Goodwin, George Fatal Rivalry.
7. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
8. Steven Attwell, Race for the Iron Throne, writes that in Westeros ‘the Umbers don’t get along with the Glovers; the Manderlys (who like to build public works at Stark expense), Tallharts, Flints, Karstarks, and Boltons are interested in expanding their territories at the expense of the Hornwoods; the Boltons have only been relatively recently brought under Stark control, and clearly require a strong hand to keep in check.’
9. Goodwin, George Fatal Rivalry.
10. From Walter Scott’s Poetical Works.
11. Hackett, David Fischer Albion’s Seed.
12. Hackett, David Fischer Albion’s Seed.
13. Saul, Nigel For Honour and Fame.
CHAPTER 26
1. History of William Marshal.
2. Asbridge, Thomas The Perfect Knight.
3. There is only one reference to this, Marshal’s own biography.
4. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
5. http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Red_Keep.
6. The second most recent Gilbert Leigh, born in 1884, was from the Norman-descended Grosvenor family, the grandson of the 2nd Marquess of Westminster.
7. Seward, Desmond Demon’s Brood.
8. Frankel, Valerie Winter is Coming.
9. Castor, Helen She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England before Elizabeth.
10. http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/03/nyregion/the-royal-family-tree-sprouts-unofficial-limbs.html?pagewanted=all.
11. Seward, Desmond The Demon’s Brood.
12. Bradbury, Jim Stephen and Matilda.
13. Ibid.
14. Poole, A.F. Domesday to Magna Carta.
15. Ibid.
16. From his Historia Anglorum.
17. Ibid.
18. Bradbury, Jim Battle of Hastings.
19. Ibid.
20. https://ew.com/article/2014/04/13/george-r-r-martin-why-joffrey-killed/.
21. The Peterborough Chronicle.
22. Gies, Joseph and Frances Life in a Medieval Castle.
CHAPTER 27
1. The English account in the Gesta Henrici records: ‘For when some of them, killed when battle was first joined, fall at the front, so great was the undisciplined violence and pressure of the mass of men behind them that the living fell on top of the dead, and others falling on top of the living were killed as well.’
2. A Game of Thrones.
3. Some believe he was also a Lollard, like Oldcastle.
CHAPTER 28
1. Or at least it was suspected.
2. Jones, Terry Medieval Lives.
3. Gies, Frances and Joseph Life in a Medieval Castle.
4. Hibbert, Christopher The English, a Social History.
5. Larrington, Carolyn Winter is Coming.
6. Hibbert, Christopher The English, a Social History.
7. Bartlett, Robert The Norman and Angevin Kings.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. The evidence is mixed, however, and causal arrow not known.
11. Bartlett, Robert The Norman and Angevin Kings This is from an adventure involving Burnel the Ass, the main character in a fable written by Nigel, a monk in Canterbury.
12. In Britain alcohol consumption increased in the late 20th century, but is still nowhere near its 1800 rate, and has since declined sharply. In France the average person drinks one-third the amount of wine as 50 years ago.
13. Morris, Marc King John.
14. Horne, Alistair The Seven Ages of Paris.
15. Duby, Georges France in the Middle Ages.
16. For more—see my fantastic book 1215 and All That.
17. Clause 39: ‘No free man is to be arrested, or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any other way ruined, nor will we go against him or send against him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.’ Again, buy my book on the subject.
18. Bartlett.
19. This story is recalled in greater detail in Thomas Asbridge’s The Greatest Knight.
1. The institution, laws & ceremonies of the most noble Order of the Garter collected and digested into one body, Ashmole, Elias; Hollar, Wenceslaus; Sherwin, William, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A26024.0001.001/1:10.3?rgn=div2;view=fulltext.
2. Frankel, Valerie Winter is Coming.
3. Froissart’s Chronicles.
4. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
5. Carolyne Larrington: ‘Both women are warriors and are beautiful and in love with noble nights, Bradamante with Saracen Ruggiero, who she marries after he converts to Christianity, and Britomart with Artegall, who symbolises justice. Britomart rescues him from an enchantress. in line with Merlin’s prophecies, she becomes ancestor to British kings.’
6. ‘Brienne of Tarth and Joan of Arc share substance and style: they’re both obsessively loyal, and they both know how to rock a suit of armor. Brienne swore her sword first to Renly Baratheon, then to Catelyn Stark, and finally to Jamie Lannister-- she’s so devoted, she even named her sword “Oathkeeper.”
7. Castor, Helen Joan of Arc.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
13. Wilson, Colin The Occult.
CHAPTER 30
1. Brothers of the Night’s Watch weren’t supposed to have sex either although it’s ignored by quite a few of them.
2. We don’t know for certain there were nine to start with or whether this was just a convention.
3. Read, Piers Paul The Templars.
4. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
5. Read, Piers Paul The Templars.
6. The Rule of the Templars.
7. Ibid.
8. Haag, Michael The Tragedy of the Templars.
9. Ibid.
10. As Steven Attewell writes in Race for the Iron Throne: ‘While the religious nature of these orders doesn’t quite parallel, the strictness of the lifelong vows of the Night’s Watch, especially in relation to chastity and inheritance, does have at least the flavor of monasticism that came with the militant Christian orders.
11. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
12. Season 4, Episode 3.
13. Bridge, Antony The Crusades.
14. Read, Piers Paul The Templars.
15. Read, Piers Paul The Templars.
16. In 1274 Edward I repaid 27,974 livres with an extra 5,333 in expenses.
17. Frankopan, Peter Silk Roads.
1. http://www.hist.unibe.ch/content/tagungen/the_coldest_decade_of_the_millennium/index_ger.html.
2. As 19th century historian Jacques Chartier wrote: ‘The king of France imposed such good order on the conduct of his men-at-arms that it was a fine thing.’
3. https://neurosciencenews.com/schizophrenia-heritability-7672/?platform=hootsuite
4. Schizophrenia is far more common when both parents have it, and there is some suggestion that Henry V, a messianic figure whose behaviour was certainly on the cusp of deranged, carried risk factors.
5. Weir, Alison Lancaster and York.
6. Ibid.
7. Bicheno, Hugh Battle Royal.
8. Bicheno, Hugh Battle Royal.
9. Sewell, Desmond Demon’s Brood.
10. Russian-American academic Peter Turchin cites ‘elite overproduction’ as a major cause of destabilization in numerous societies, and this may have played a factor.
11. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
12. Harvey, John The Plantagenets.
13. Weir, Alison Lancaster and York.
14. The Paston Letters.
15. Frankel, Valerie Winter is Coming.
16. Royle, Trevor The War of the Roses.
17. Kendall, Paul Murray Richard III.
18. Huizinga, Johan The Waning of the Middle Ages.
19. Horspool, David Richard III.
CHAPTER 32
1. Jager, Eric The Last Duel.
2. Jager, Eric The Last Duel.
3. Ibid.
4. Jager, Eric The Last Duel.
5. Duby, Georges France in the Middle Ages.
6. Manchester, William A World Lit only by Fire.
7. http://www.thomas-morris.uk/roger-two-urinals-clerk/.
8. Jager, Eric The Last Duel.
9. A Dance with Dragons.
10. https://www.ft.com/content/5a3b661c-fc45-11e5-b5f5-070dca6d0a0d.
11. Pye, Michael The Edge of the World.
12. ‘It was possession of the gallows that marked out those lords who claimed routine franchisal jurisdiction over thieves.’
13. Ackroyd, Peter Foundations.
14. Manchester, William A World Lit only by Fire.
15. Jager, Eric The Last Duel.
16. This may not be a true story.
17. Steven Pinker’s Better Angels of Our Nature lists numerous such fights.
CHAPTER 33
1. Kelly, John The Great Mortality.
2. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
3. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
4. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
5. Frankopan, Peter Silk Roads.
6. A World of Ice and Fire.
7. Attewell, Steven Race for the Iron Throne.
8. Frankopan, Peter Silk Roads.
9. Frankopan, Peter Silk Roads.
The Dothraki language, created by David Peterson of the Language Creation Society, takes words from Turkish, Russian, Estonian (which belongs to the distant Ugric group of languages, not Indo-European), Inuktitut (spoken by Canadian Inuit) and Swahili. Peterson has said that ‘Most people probably don’t really know what Arabic actually sounds like, so to an untrained ear, it might sound like Arabic. To someone who knows Arabic, it doesn’t. I tend to think of the sound as a mix between Arabic (minus the distinctive pharyngeals) and Spanish.’ http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/04/creating-dothraki-an-interview-with-david-j-peterson-and-sai-emrys.
10. Kelly, John The Great Mortality.
11. Ata Malik Juviani, a Persian alive at the time.
12. According to The Secret Life of the Mongols, Chinggis means strong.
13. A contemporary, quoted in Frankopan, Peter Silk Roads.
14. Stone, Norman Turkey: A Short History.
15. Frankopan, Peter Silk Roads.
16. Bergreen, Lawrence Marco Polo.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/367/1589/657.
20. http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/polygamy-fuels-violence.aspx.
21. Bergreen, Lawrence Marco Polo.
22. Season 3, Episode 3.
23. Bergreen, Lawrence Marco Polo.
24. Ibid. A small branch of the Assassins did live on in Syria.
25. Haag, Michael The Tragedy of the Templars.
CHAPTER 34
1. Bicheno, Hugh Battle Royal.
2. Kendall, Paul Murray Richard the Third.
3. Royle, Trevor The War of the Roses.
4. Bicheno, Hugh Battle Royal.
5. Jones, Dan The Hollow Crown.
6. Huizinga, Johan The Waning of the Middle Ages.
7. Bicheno, Hugh Battle Royal.
8. Horspool, David Richard III.
CHAPTER 35
1. Crowley, Roger 1453.
2. Stone, Norman Turkey: A Short History.
3. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/11/11/why-turkeys-military-wants-to-ban-game-of-thrones/.
4. Crowley, Roger 1453.
5. Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah.
6. Frankpan, Peter Silk Roads.
7. Norwich, John Julius Byzantium: The Apogee.
8. Stone, Norman Turkey: A Short History.
9. Stone, Norman Turkey: A Short History.
10. Stone, Norman Turkey: A Short History.
11. Crowley, Roger 1453.
12. Stone, Norman Turkey: A Short History.
13. Crowley, Roger 1453.
14. Ibid.
15. Crowley, Roger 1453.
16. Alternatively it was St Elmo’s fire, which is caused by atmospheric electricity.
17. Ibid.
18. Crowley, Roger 1453.
19. Crowley, Roger City of Fortune.
20. Stone, Norman Turkey: A Short History.
21. Season 1, Episode 9.
22. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
CHAPTER 36
1. h/t to Dan Jackson, @northumbriana https://twitter.com/northumbriana/status/862745439619215360.
2. It is here that Maester Balder wrote The Edge of the World, a tale of legends.
3. In the words of historian R.L. Storey, Quoted in Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
4. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
5. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
6. Gillingham, John The War of the Roses.
CHAPTER 37
1. http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/dna-survey-reveals-25-welsh-8308111.
2. Sir John Wynn, a late 16th century Welsh baronet. Quoted in Skidmore, Chris Bosworth.
3. Kendall, Paul Murray Richard the Third.
4. Bicheno, Hugh Battle Royal.
5. Jones, Dan The Hollow Crown.
6. No one called him that at the time. It was first coined by David Hume in the 18th century.
7. Bicheno, Hugh Battle Royal.
8. Horspool, David Richard III.
9. Ibid.
CHAPTER 38
1. Seward, Desmond War of the Roses.
2. Season 2, Episode 4.
3. Whether her army contained Scots is disputed.
4. http://www.medievalists.net/2015/07/top-10-medieval-assassinations/?utm_content=bufferf2c6b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer.
5. The telling of the Black Dinner may have got exaggerated down the years. There is no mention of the bull in the earliest account.
1. Although the Shakespearean image of a man slaying a mere boy is misleading—Clifford was 25 and Rutland 17, and so considered fully a man.
2. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
3. Bicheno, Hugh Battle Royal.
4. It was the feast of Candlemass, a Christian festival that also marked the coming of spring, and in which people brought candles to church.
5. Well, depending on who you believe.
6. Weir, Alison Lancaster and York.
7. Chronicle of the Abbey of Croyland.
8. The Paston Letters.
9. The Cock, since renamed the Wharfe, is a small and beautiful river that nevertheless contains perhaps the most dangerous stretch of river anywhere in the world, the Strid, due to its fast current and rocks.
10. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3588584/Is-world-s-dangerous-stretch-water-innocent-looking-river-Yorkshire-Strid-s-currents-pulverise-falls-in.html.
11. Ibid.
12. A Storm of Swords.
13. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/camden-record-soc/vol17/pp210-239.
14. Seward, Desmond War of the Roses.