Category archives: Medieval

Medieval Money 101: Livre, Sou, and Dernier

Medieval Money 101: Livre, Sou, and Dernier Nothing kills a bit of medieval fiction faster than a character casually paying “fifty pounds” for a loaf of bread, so let’s sort out how money actually worked — and, importantly, why the answer changes depending on which side of the Channel you’re standing. England ran on pounds, […]

The Village Church and Its Secrets

The Village Church and Its Secrets The village church gets cast, in most fiction, as a place people visit on Sundays and funerals and otherwise ignore. The reality was considerably livelier — and, frankly, a bit more useful. Every parish church needed at least one relic before it could even be consecrated, so somewhere in […]

Castle Design Through the Centuries

Castle Design Through the Centuries Ask someone to draw a “medieval castle” and you’ll almost certainly get the same picture: tall stone towers, crenellations, maybe a drawbridge. What you won’t get is any sense that castle design actually evolved quite dramatically over four centuries, largely in response to who was trying to knock them down. […]

Inside a 13th-Century Manor House

Inside a 13th-Century Manor House Let’s do a proper walkthrough of a 13th-century manor, using one particularly well-documented example — a bishop’s estate whose account rolls happened to survive in unusual detail. A manor wasn’t just “a big house.” It was a whole functioning settlement: one or more villages, a fortified dwelling for the landholder, […]

Getting, Keeping, and Losing a Fief

Getting, Keeping, and Losing a Fief Inheriting a fief sounds simple enough: wait for your father to die, collect the deeds, done. In practice, medieval landholding was less “here are the keys” and more “here is a small war waiting to happen.” The overwhelmingly normal way to get a fief was to inherit it or […]

What Is a Fief, Really?

What Is a Fief, Really? If you’ve ever pictured medieval England as a tidy pyramid — king at the top, dukes below him, then earls, then knights, then peasants, all standing in a neat org chart — I’m afraid we need to talk. Medieval people never drew that pyramid. We did. Centuries later. With hindsight […]

You broke the Pre-Order Record!

You broke the Pre-Order Record! Just a brief update as I wanted to thank everyone who pre-ordered the latest book. We absolutely smashed it by launch day on the 14th with 290 pre-orders. That was a new record for the Draychester Chronicles series. Also a big thanks to anyone who left an Amazon review. Leaving […]

Death Of The Merchant now available

Death of the Merchant – Now Available from Amazon. Its the 5th of October and my latest book in the Draychester Chronicle series, Death of The Merchant is now available on Amazon in Kindle, Paperback and Hardback editions. Once again we follow the Bishop Of Draychester’s officials, Will Bernard and Osbert as they tackle another […]