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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...'"

3 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.

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  2. 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.

  3. 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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