The Horrendous Life Of A Medieval Gong Farmer | History Of Britain | Absolute History

[Music] our british history is rich with tales of wealth and power and all that political nonsense the glamour of our kings and queens the jewels and furs and charisma and all those heads being chopped off but what about the real people who made everything happen [Music] i'll discover what they ate a little bit dodgy the challenges they faced stuff this for a game of soldiers and how they built britain that's straight as i die i'm going to uncover the extraordinary lives of some of history's ordinary people romans it's quite a weight on my head i have to say [Music] edwardians breathe in madame breathing 1950s put the needle on the record oh really soft breaks takes ages to stop it and the middle ages there's the executive model inside the house whatever history from the bottom up [Music] this time i'm going back a thousand years to a time of nights in shining armor big personality kings a powerful church and great clothes our story begins after that infamous invasion by william the conqueror in 1066. once the normans stopped killing people business boomed and the population soon trebled to a massive 5 million people crowded into the towns food production rocketed to cope but once they'd fed their faces and those of their animals the people of medieval britain had to deal with the consequences so what to do with all the poo they produced well people in the middle ages were renowned for chucking the contents of their chamber pots into the streets below which were like open sewers and there's no doubt that that happened women love my singing she'll be putty in my hands get lost cray [Music] what she meant was prenegada low look out water which is where we get the word lou from but you'll be relieved to know this wasn't how the sum of most human waste was dealt with well moderately relieved for most people there would be a communal privy out back a wooden seat suspended above a cesspit like this 12th century model unearthed in york or there's the executive model which was actually inside the house see look there's the little hole so you just get in do what you have to do and bosh it goes straight down into the cesspit hurry along mate i've been waiting half an hour naturally it was polite to check first that no one was using the economy version but that's not the end of the problem is it because you can't dig a bottomless hole and eventually the cesspit's going to overflow so the question is what do you do with all the stuff in the cesspit it's your turn to empty it the solution created a career for a special sort of person someone like richard rakia the clue is in his name what he raked was pooh he was also known as a gong farmer gong as in going like oing the toilet this could be him richard's job was to harvest all that poo load it into the back of the cart and take it out of the city where it could be disposed of [Music] even by medieval standards the contents of richard's barrow were pretty disgusting so he would start work just after dark and finish at the crack of dawn which is why he and his colleagues were known as night men and their product was rather tweely referred to as night soil there was a clear career progression for gong farmers everyone wanted to be the tub man he was the bloke who had a little cart with a bucket on it and he would transfer the bucket to and from the cesspit and below him there was the rope man and his job was to chuck the bucket down into the cesspit and at the very bottom literally there was the whole man who went down the hole and excavated all the disgusting stuff oh what a job there was a constant risk of cholera a lethal bacterial disease caused by contact with infected feces it killed around a million people a year worldwide back then they thought the smelly air itself was dangerous so richard got danger money and earned a walloping sixpence a day a whole week's wages for the average laborer hmm quite tempting then and richard would really earn his money when it came to emptying large communal toilets in the big city [Music] somerset house one of london's most fabulous buildings but this glorious georgian architecture hides quite a mucky past one which has only recently reared its disgusting head [Applause] this part of the building is the courthold institute for art and around the corner there they're in the process of revamping the art galleries which believe me are going to be really nice i'm meeting project director dr stephanie hall just by where a fascinating discovery was made so this is what the excavation looked like when we had just started what we actually thought that we would find was a tudor wall but actually it turns out that it was a assessed pet assessment as in a bog a bog a toilet a zest pet a toilet yeah i have to say it did get a little bit smelly as the archaeologists were digging down now it's hundreds of years old but it never loses its its shine as it were the builders are now busy covering it up behind their brickwork the cesspit was part of an inn which stood here in the middle ages it was lined with large chalk blocks that allowed water to gradually filter out into the thames leaving the waste trapped inside for chaps like richard's too empty toilet seats two or three in a row would have been suspended above the stinking void of the pit our sas pit was full of about a hundred things so here you've got a jug some pottery this is a boot spur and a buckle on a belt the pottery was brown and the conservators cleaned it up so it would have been green like that it would have been green like that so this would have been a condiment dish so if you were eating olive you put pits in one side and keep the olives in the other so you're sitting there on the loo having your hors d'oeuvres somebody gives you a shout you stand up and your olives go down the karsi but there's something else a little more distressing so the other thing we found was an entire dog skeleton a little dog he may have come to have a little dig and a little sniff and maybe he fell in that's the saddest part of this story he was very sad [Music] emptying this place would have been a big job quite literally but this wasn't the end of it before the night was over richard was supposed to carry his load out of town and deposit it with a local farmer who'd used the night soil as fertilizer some unscrupulous night men just fly tip the stuff wherever they could but the penalties for that could be really harsh there was one young london gong farmer who was caught pouring effluent down a drain and they stuck him in one of his own vessels filled it with poo right up to his neck and they left him in golden lane for everyone to see with a big sign around his neck telling them what he'd done imagine richard yearning to escape his stinking struggle of everyday life unfortunately that wasn't what happened the reason we know about richard is that in 1326 unusually for a nightmare his death was recorded because its manner was so bizarre one afternoon richard was at home and i don't know maybe he was just a bit tired wasn't quite on his game and he realized he needed to go to the toilet and he sat down and he'd meant to fix that toilet seat it had been rotten for some time but he never got round to it and suddenly there was a crash and he plunged down down down into the cesspit and he drowned in his own pool it's an odd way to become famous [Applause] in the middle ages it wasn't only chaps who kicked ass you've probably heard about the great medieval warrior heroine and saint joan of arc who fought for the french against the english but what you may not know is that we brits had our own joan joan of leeds joan of leeds wasn't actually a saint and she didn't live in leeds she lived in the benedictine priory of saint clement in york in the 1300s as a nun joan was part of the most powerful organization in medieval europe the church the countryside of the middle ages was positively cluttered with religious buildings monasteries priorities convents the church was a fundamental part of everyone's life many people worked on its land monasteries and convents delivered a constant vigil of prayer but also provided hospitals and social services and were centers of science education and literature but being a nun wasn't all fun in fact joan was as miserable as hell she was a teenager she was a novice and she soon realized that the whole nun thing really wasn't for her joan was probably sent to the convent as a little girl to be educated by the nuns then in her mid-teens at some point she apparently decided to forsake worldly things and become a novice nun but was it really her decision or was she pushed jones family would originally have come from leeds and were reasonably well off i recommend the chateaubriand mid umrah yummy such families didn't like too many daughters because they were extremely expensive to marry off with lavish dowries oh dear that left one option the convent with a handsome donation to the ms i got overheads you know while most people in the middle ages were trying to get out of poverty nuns were trying to get into it jones priory like most at that time followed the strict rule of saint benedict that meant she had to take three vowels obedience to the abbess and abysses could be really strict poverty for life and chastity no relations with men in fact men weren't allowed anywhere near the place whatever and that was just for starters joan didn't even get a lying each day would begin at 2 a.m in the chapel with prayers psalms hymns and readings the primary role of monasteries and convents in the middle ages was to pray for the souls of the dead so they'd eventually ascend into heaven and people donated a lot of money to be prayed for so for joan after a few more hours sleep it was up at dawn for more prayers followed by a simple breakfast then another service at 6 a.m then another four lots of prayers perhaps interspersed with a bit of book illuminating and odd jobs followed by a simple supper jack pudding again yes every day for the last two years and then prayers lights out by seven for many it was a genuine calling to which they were devoted all i'm saying is i don't know many teenagers who plump for it to better understand joan's plight i'm meeting professor sarah rhys jones a medieval historian from the university of york it would have been really tough for a teenage girl to be a novice wouldn't it i think it could have been really tedious because all the nuns were required to do was to observe the religious offices throughout the day and doing that day after day after day with the same very small group of women there were probably fewer than 20 nuns in this convent would have been very tedious repetitive and claustrophobic it does sound like a pretty dreadful boarding school type of life yes we have plenty of evidence of nuns falling out with each other and there being sort of factions and bullying and quarrels so there could be a lot of unhappiness in a convent as well how would joan cope fall into line fade away or stand up against the system no one could have predicted what joan did next her true story has only recently come to light recorded in the margins of an ancient document held at the university of york it was the year 1318 joan had been complaining about feeling ill for months none of the medicines they gave her seemed to work eventually she took to her bed she was there for days she went off her food and finally she died her funeral was held and she was buried a tragic but all too common end to a young life at least that was what everyone thought then would you believe it a few months later joan turned up again 30 miles away in beverly shacked up with her secret boyfriend [Music] was it a miracle no actually some of the sisters had helped her escape by going along with the story about her being ill they'd even buried a straw mannequin in her place [Music] on hearing this the archbishop of york demanded her return to the priory that was all we knew about joan's story until researchers in york discovered another very different account one of my colleagues working on the project found another record about joan of leeds and this is truly rare because it actually gives her version of the story that's fantastic what's her story somebody called brother john says that he's met joan and that joan says that she was committed to the nunnery age she had to be 13 to be a nun against her will and that she had never taken vows and that therefore she shouldn't be a null and that was you know her reason for denying her vocation and brother john then writes to the archbishop saying it would be better that she were married than getting up to who knows what uh outside the convent you like this story don't you yes joan does come across as a woman with guts and initiative great ingenuity a great character quite honestly what amazes me is that so many nuns actually stayed in the convents which maybe shows that there really weren't many options available for young women at that time and that when you've got a really established system it takes a reckless act of rebellion to break away from it whether your name is joan of arc or joan of leeds i think it's fair to say that in terms of civil liberties things have progressed a bit since the middle ages for example freedom of speech it's the cornerstone of our democracy isn't it we can say what we like the prime minister is a scoundrel you might even say that we rather take it for granted but back in the middle ages it was entirely different there was only one person who could say what they liked to the most powerful man in the country the king and it wasn't the queen it was the royal jester i'm as long as i can be you see being king wasn't all it was cracked up to be there was constant pressure to win battles to keep all the pushy landowners happy and to be the life and soul of the banquet all while keeping an eye on the power grabbing church heresy the revolting peasants and that self-important son of yours who has his eyes on your hat being a king was exhausting stressful and frankly really depressing what you needed was someone to burst the bubble of all that stress and that's exactly what the jester's job was to be outrageous to do and say the unthinkable your majesty your wondrous majesty if we may become your majesty a royal jester could be a sharp witch's satirist poking fun at the great and the good enough oiliness here to fry a whole pig oh stop it at the other end of the scale there were the end of the pier boardy jesters who were a bit more in your face but either way their ambition was the same to make the monarch split his tights algester was very much in the second vulgar category his name was roland le petois [Music] roland may have had to work his way right up from the bottom early on in his career as a peasant roland found that he had a talent for entertaining people making them laugh or maybe he just thought that being a peasant was too much like hard work anyway he used to go down the market square and made a few quid showing off but however much he made people laugh an amit a fool like roland didn't get much in the way of respect or cash when there were no festivals he'd travel from town to town busking for pennies and if he couldn't afford props he'd just have to mine [Music] i'm being entertained by ben smith one of the resident jesters at warwick castle [Applause] ben your costume looks a bit like something a jester would wear in a movie would roland actually have worn this kind of thing absolutely so from the pied design of the costume up all the way up to the ears the uh asses ears and tails that run behind the costume this is a traditional authentic uh jester's costume and as his ears because they make you look stupid yes of course he he he was the fool what would just have had to do some just like to employ walking on stilts some would like to do a little bit of a dance and a jig juggling or maybe playing the loot and telling stories but the biggest thing was their charisma so like today they would be selling themselves on their personality absolutely and this was very important as a professional jester [Music] simply being a regular jester that no one's heard of sounds like hard work but how do you break through and make it big as ever in showbiz the secret is to create your own special brand at some point roland discovered he had a gift let's call it a talent something that set him apart from all the other entertainers [Music] that wasn't me [Music] yes roland could break wind at will which is why he was known as le petois french for farter but more classy sounding back in the middle ages breaking wind was just as funny as it is today funnier in fact [Music] it was a whole genre of its own oh the breaking of wind by all members and species of society was beautifully captured in medieval sacred texts it was part of life perhaps thanks to all those turnips roland's unique skills were recognized with a special job title roland was a flatulist the most respected flatulists could even play tunes from their bottoms [Music] history doesn't recall the precise nature of roland's act or indeed what tunes he played but he must have been very good because very quickly his stock rose and he got a crack at every jester's dream a chance to appear in the medieval version of the royal command performance which could end up giving him a permanent job in the royal household henry ii's christmas show and he was billed as performing his very own signature act a whistle a leap and a fart [Music] performing in front of the king was dangerous for a jester like that talent show on tv i can't remember the name of it could make or break you was the king in a bad mood would roland's talents be appreciated or would his prowess desert him at the moment of truth [Music] roland gave it everything and here roland comes he's jumped he's left [Music] and there it is he's let one go oh what a talent so how did the king react he loved it so much so that the king insisted roland returned for a repeat performance the following christmas and the one after that every christmas in fact [Music] and by way of gratuity he let roland have use of a rather fine house hemingston manor in suffolk complete with 30 acres of land [Music] roland was made up he got the king to laugh and gone from zero to hero now he could indulge in the life of a celebrity [Music] the problem was tastes change when henry iii came to the throne inexplicably he regarded roland as well indecent roland's services to the crown were no longer required his contract was cancelled he was booted out of the manor and onto the street showbiz is tough as now [Music] you may think that in the middle ages everyone knew their place you were born to be a peasant or a knight or even a nun but things were changing and for some career options were starting to open up take young simon winchcomb this could be him i said hello he's an apprentice to this gruff looking chap where have you been your lazy idol loafer an apprenticeship could give someone from a poor family the chance to get ahead in the hip industry of the 1300s simon was learning how to be an armorer that's someone who made this stuff armor anyone who was anyone in the middle ages had a nice suit and the top of the range could set you back as much as a very nice car in today's money young winchcomb may have been as young as seven when his parents sent him away to live with the master armorer up at the local castle that may sound grim but if you are hard up then getting someone else to feed your kid was good news and getting them an apprenticeship in a swanky profession that was a result but for simon it meant getting up before dawn and getting straight to work without even having breakfast as an apprentice simon would start the day by lighting the fire and getting the coals blazing hot ready for his master to do his work in fact he'd spend an awful lot of his time just clearing up the debris that his master had hammered and chipped away imagine all that heat and long long long hours be really difficult for a seven-year-old can i go and play now i'm hoping to pick up some of the skills that simon would have learned as a young apprentice how hot do you have to get it orange graeme ashford is a professional maker of medieval armor used for jousting competitions and displays this way a bit towards towards that's it from around 1300 chainmails started to be replaced by armor plate especially to protect legs and arms what we're making is a van brace this is part of the forearm so you're trying to create like a drain pipe a cylinder that's it we'll get that back in the fire am i right in saying that the arms are one of the hardest pieces of the armor to make the shape of the arm and the greave are two of the more fluid shapes that resemble the human being so if you get them wrong they're really uncomfortable it's one of those easy to learn hard to master types of skills simon would learn to pump exactly the right amount of air into the forge so it was hot enough just when his boss needed it we reckon simon was about seven when he first started right is it a young landscape yeah the older armorers have all got sort of some sort of tennis elbow or elbow complaints i mean just about everything in these workshops particularly back then is designed to either maim or kill you [Music] are the old smokes coming up simon would have had to endure up to 10 years of this without even wearing safety goggles until in his mid-teens he would have been considered a grown-up a journeyman armorer i imagine simon doing this hour after hour now he could literally journey from castle to castle town to town with his tools doing odd jobs or attach himself to a master armorer oh it sounds like a bad regard being tortured [Music] [Applause] so that will go on my left arm right hey yes nothing can harm me i see what you mean though if it was just cylindrical it would chafe both there and there but now it fits in really rather snuggly simon's job had lots of other dangers apart from just running the risk of getting tennis elbow throughout most of the 1300s england was at war with france it was called the hundred years war a massive scrap affecting the whole of europe made brexit look a bit like a tea party and simon may have got caught up in it you see in the heat of battle a knight's armor could get into a right old state as a young armorer simon would have been sent off to war and put on standby ready to bash bits of plate armor back into shape while the battle raged a bit like being in a pit lane team replacing wheels in formula one for simon it was a steep learning curve testing the limits of the technology he may even have saved lives on the other hand while war could be a little grim it was great news for the armorers and it guaranteed simon lots of work he survived to settle down with a decent income and married his sweetheart joanna i've done your favorite quail with peppercorns oh i think i'm in love now they could dream big simon was ambitious he didn't just want to repair armor he wanted to create it he saw himself as an artist he wanted to head for the top and be a top designer i've come to the worshipful company of armorers and braziers in london it's been here for 700 years surviving the great fire of london and hitler look at these two aren't they great real classical pieces of armor and you've got breastplates here thing for a horse's face you've got these marvellous helmets dr tobias capwell is a freeman of the company and a leading authority on english armour he's got a finished suit in the style that simon himself might well have created in the 14th century english knights often fought on foot so their armor had to offer high protection without slowing them down these armpits it's actually very light isn't it yeah this is the armor technology in the 14th century is about developing a complete hard exoskeleton for the human body i love that word exoskeleton it's like one of those crunchy insects isn't it you just can't get at the juicy bits an armorer has to be an anatomist they have to know not just the obvious bendy places but all the subtleties of human movement you know if you stick that gauntlet on for example you start to see how subtle that movement actually is oh yeah yeah you can really do all that this is light equipment that's very flexible and yet gives you extraordinary protection the big difference between what we saw on the stairs and here though is that this is made of what in the 14th century they weren't really capable of making really big pieces of iron and steel but these are all little pieces that are all riveted to a fabric cover so the guy who would have been wearing this he's bought it off simon but this isn't just one guy making this there's a load of different skills here aren't there yes part of the role of a master armor the head of a workshop is to be able to bring together and coordinate all those skills so simon wouldn't just have been the artist that he wanted to be he would have been a manager he'd have been a big boss yeah he's probably not picking up a hammer very much at all and he's coordinating the efforts of mercers and tailors and embroiderers and spurriers but why was this place the company of armorers so important well it was all about protecting the livelihoods of its members a little bit like a medieval trade union in the 14th century the armorers were in a very difficult situation because the crown reserves the right to take armors and make them work for however much money you feel like paying them they're not allowed to sell to anyone else and getting political power for themselves is the only way out of it [Music] with the support of the company simon could work for whoever he wanted without fear of being put in the tower his business took off but life wasn't only a bit of roses his beloved wife joanna died most likely as so many women did in childbirth eventually simon remarried to alice and having come from nothing he continued to get richer and richer right up to the day he died one of the most interesting things i think about simon winchcombe is his death or at least his will he died in the year 1396 clearly by that time he was absolutely loaded the proof is look he wanted to be buried in the church of saint mary of armensbury next to the body of joanna his first wife but in order to do that god willing they would have to rebuild the church so he hands out bequests to that church and to loads of other churches nine or ten of them and other charities and priorities and convents and hospitals and prisons and even to the lepers of saint giles he gives lots of silver and this one i find very intriguing to richard person who is called his servant he leaves a gown of blue motley and six complete suits of armor and the implements of his craft as an armor so he's handing over the whole business and then a slightly waspish note at the end to his current wife alice he gives such share of his gifts as of right and by the custom of the city of london and no more well that speaks volumes about their relationship didn't they [Music] regardless of what really went on between him and his wife alice what this really shows is that it was possible for a select few people if they had the right marketing skills to succeed big time in medieval england even if they weren't members of the aristocracy tensions over immigration a global pandemic trouble with europe i am of course talking about the middle ages [Music] although most of the population lived out in the sticks had no newspapers and their internet was rubbish issues of disease europe and immigration were every bit the hot potatoes they are today no they were even hotter potatoes with some uncomfortable consequences for the lives of ordinary people take young alice spinner the spinster for example when i say spinster in medieval times the word meant female spinner rather than unmarried woman surnames were a new thing and they often denoted your profession so everyone knew what alice spinner did for a living alice was also irish she'd been drawn to england in the 1430s by the lure of the english wool industry which was booming and one of its boom towns was here in lebanon 600 years ago these funny-shaped houses were the power behind england's most lucrative industry you see for sheep the british climate is paradise every spring sheep up and down the country were shorn the raw wool was cleaned and combed and then dropped round in batches to spinners like alice to be turned into wool and thread essentially what she did was this she'd had this spindle here which she would spin round and round and round and round and round and round and round and the wall would get more and more taut and eventually she just tease it out with her thumb and forefinger like that a bit and then she just put it round around again and ease it out again mind you she'd have to do it quicker than i'm doing but even for alice it took ages add a push she could manage a hundred yards an hour but to make a single dress needs at least 10 000 yards two weeks hard work i hope she didn't get rsi she had been under constant pressure from the weaver to deliver but at least the equipment was portable so she could get out and meet her mates without stopping work balls of the wool that alice had spun would then be collected and go first to be dyed then to the weaver to be turned into cloth which tailors could cut and sew to make clothes an international trade quickly grew up flogging thousands of tons of wool to weavers and tailors in belgium who turned it into gorgeous outfits but a couple of things happened to change that happy balance the global pandemic of the black deaths wiped out a third of the population and war with the french seriously messed up the cross channel workflow so belgian cloth makers fled to england to be closer to their precious supplies and england became the center in europe for the entire woolen clothing industry pipeline from sheep to welsh odd gentry oh isn't it gorgeous alice was now at the heart of a roaring trade a trade that was turning england from a backwater into a regional power but however much the country needed the labor of immigrants like alice not everyone was happy many of the english demanded immigration controls by the 1430s the war with france was going badly resentment was directed at anyone who was french or just a little bit foreign even the irish which was a bit unfair as ireland came under the english crown so someone came up with what they considered was a neat idea yes you've guessed it a brand new tax but not a tax on everyone just on the immigrants [Music] including our alice so how did it work this is leicester university medieval historian professor joanna storey how could they prove who was foreign and who was i mean they didn't have passports there wasn't a census in those days was that no they had to ask people's neighbours essentially so it was a system that was put in place where the neighbours reported on who was a foreign-born person that'll learn them coming here with a weird ways and how much would you have had to pay well for somebody with alice's status it would have been about six pence which is probably around about two days wages and that would have been quite a lot uh for someone of her status could she have avoided the tax if she stayed here for a long time or if she got married rich people or people with money behind them could become natural-born english people by paying a sum of money but that's very unlikely for someone of alice's status have we any idea whether the tax acted as a disincentive and that less skilled foreign people came over here it doesn't seem that it did for the 50 or so years after the 1440 tax there are 40 odd thousand people reappear in those records can you imagine her eventually earning a decent amount of money she appears to be independent she appears to be someone who manages herself don't forget that she's a spinner and that gives us the modern word spinster which has connotations of independence and not being married after several years of poisonous gossip the legislation was eventually withdrawn as for the war ultimately the english had to concede defeat and give up on their french territories we don't know what eventually happened to alice let's hope the immigration tax didn't put her off and she stayed put maybe she married the weaver of her dreams maybe she stayed independent and got rich on wool all we can be sure of is that while fashions have changed a fair bit since alice's time the way people treat each other unfortunately hasn't much

Channel: Absolute History

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Id: xwdkOfxMMUY

Length: 43min 20sec (2600 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 03 2021