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Medieval UK Battle Records Released Online

Posted by kdawson on from the next-year-at-agincourt dept.

eldavojohn writes "Do you have ancestors who served in the British military under Henry V or fought in the Hundred Years War? Look them up online now that 250,000 medieval battle records are online and available for searching. According to the project details (PDF): 'The main campaigns of the period were to France but there were others to Flanders, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Wales and Scotland, a much wider geographical spectrum than before 1369. In addition, garrisons were maintained within England (such as that held at the Tower of London), the Channel Islands, Wales and the marches, as well as at Calais and in Gascony. In the fourteenth-century phase of the Hundred Years War, the English also held some garrisons in areas of northern France, and in the fifteenth century phase, there was a systematic garrison-based occupation of Normandy and surrounding regions...'"

8 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. Beancounters in the day... by jamstar7 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Yeah, they had them back then:

    Dr Bell said: "The service records survive because the English exchequer had a very modern obsession with wanting to be sure that the government's money was being spent as intended.

    Seems that even absolute monarchies had problems with bureaucrats. Makes you wonder if the species will ever evolve past them.

    --
    Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
    1. Re:Beancounters in the day... by John+Hasler · · Score: 2, Interesting

      > Everybody loves to hate them, and sometimes they deserve it; but bureaucracy is one of
      > the defining characteristics of the move from feudalism to the nation-state.

      You say that as though you consider it to be self-evident that it was progress.

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      Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
  2. Re:Battle Results: Warning: spoiler!!!! by glitch23 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If you were wondering who won, it was the British.

    I know you were probably joking but someone should mod you informative for those people who are too stupid/ignorant to know who won. I say that because I was recently interviewing someone from the West Coast of the U.S. (I'm in WV) and the person did not catch the fact that we said we were located in *West* Virginia 3 times during the course of the interview. The person even made a note to ask how close we were to a particular airport because he said he has been to Virginia in the past. Someone needed to remind him of the Civil War and what happened afterward. Your comment reminded me of that, which just happened a couple weeks ago.

    --
    this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
  3. Re:Purpose? by gardyloo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You can do statistics on the datasets...

    Did the name "Cuthbert" not appear before 1361, and then it spread along river valleys because its carriers were predominantly farmers (with occurrences of it popping up here and there because people were conscripted into armies/died out/whatever)?
          Did the plague wipe out mainly those with surnames common to the Mediterranean region, because those people had less exposure to the rats, which carried the fleas, which were the main vectors?
          Do "Smiths" follow the armies, or settle in the cities? Were Teutonic names more indicative of higher classes? Did northern European names cluster more with archers rather than cavalry?

          I'm forseeing a lot of interesting temporal/spatial analysis which could be done with the data.

  4. Two technologies come to mind... by tcopeland · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...Sphinx for lightning-fast searches (and stemming, and relevancy, and much more) and Open Calais for text analysis. Combine this data set with those two tools and you could have a pretty nifty site.

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  5. Binary Expansion by meehawl · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Let's see...
    2009-1369 = 640 years
    Using a (conservative) 25 years/generation...
    640/25 ~= 25.6. Call it 26.
    2^26 = 67,108,864

    According to medieval demographics and human population, the number of people alive in "Europe" around then peaked at 70-100m *before* the famines and plagues of the 14th century. Europe would not regain that population peak again for 200 years.

    If you are caucasian then, given these figures, unless you are descended from a multi-generational set of *extremely* inbred kin, the probability that at least one of your ancestors was in that battle is quite high. The Most Recent Common Ancestor of all peoples. never mind all Europeans, is more recent than you think.

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    Da Blog
  6. Re:Lots of blokes called John by TapeCutter · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "Don't hold your hopes out if you were dreaming to find your ancestor..."

    I found 8 records with my family name and only one of them was an Earl. However I already knew my family name was connected with some powerfull head-kickers who owned large chunks of land and a couple of castles along the welsh border. They were part of the nobility for ~400yrs starting with a donation of 22 viking boats and crew for William the conqueres invasion. The male line died out and the families claims to the throne were passed to the Plantangents.

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    And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  7. Interesting... by Kupfernigk · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I found 15, though none above the rank of knight, which is about right from what I know of the family history post-Conquest (they lapsed into obscurity in Norfolk, and don't really reappear until the 16th cent.)

    However, I have to ask - if the male line died out, how do you come to have your surname? Cadet branch?

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