The Clerk's Tale

Author’s Note

Some degree of circumlocution in describing Master Gruesby’s behavior has been necessary because in medieval English “nerves” referred to ligaments and sinews and to say someone was “nervous” meant they were strong-bodied. Therefore, Master Gruesby is never “nervous,” except on one occasion when, in the medieval sense, he is actually unnerved.

Although the fine grinding of lenses had not been perfected by the 1400s, spectacles-“eyeglasses” and “glasses” are later terms-can be seen in paintings of the time and at least one will of the 1400s refers to silver-rimmed spectacles.

As for using a plea of insanity to clear someone of murder, such a plea was indeed recognized in medieval English law, though in the thirteenth century’s On the Laws and Customs of England, Bracton warns that careful ward should be made against people claiming madness in order to take advantage of the law. Ah, yes, some things do stay the same.

The type of dagger used to kill Master Montfort tends to appear in modem reference books as a “kidney dagger.” It seems that Victorian scholars were uncomfortable with the actual medieval name and changed it.

Concerning Lady Agnes’s obvious independence and control of her household and business interests, something should be said about the myth of medieval women as helpless pawns in a male-dominated society structure. By the 1400s, before the Renaissance came to England, women had more legal and economic rights than at any time afterward until the late twentieth century. What uses were made of their possibilities varied according to the individual, just as now, but a competent, well-off widow was expected to run her own life and properties and she expected to have no more interference at it than a man would have. For pleasure as well as information there is Medieval Gentlewoman: Life in a Widow’s Household in the Later Middle Ages by Fiona Swaby.

For an actual medieval legal case concerning bastard (or not) heirs there is The Armburgh Papers, ed. by Christine Carpenter.

That there are differences between this story and modem Goring in regard to street names and some river topography is accounted for by the passage of over five hundred years and the recent replacing of the medieval ferry by a bridge.

My particular thanks go to Eleanor Simpson of the Goring and Streatley Local History Society and Mary Carr of Goring (website: www.goring@lineone.net), who provided me information about medieval Goring and its nunnery that I would not have come by otherwise.