If you were King of England the 13th century was a bit of a bugger. The Magna Carta meant that you could no longer parade through Tesco’s checkout without paying. You had the church on your back demanding money for leaking roofs, or for actually attaching one to Salisbury Cathedral. Uppity barons wouldn’t let you play with their knights and were always complaining in French. The only course left open to any self-respecting king was to chop off someone’s genitalia. And Simon de Monfort was very well hung - around his hooter unfortunately, by Edward I. Yes, the old ‘tie the penis around the nose’ trick. Gets a laugh every time.

14th century chronicle portraying Simon de Monfort’s ‘bloody end’

As you can see a sense of humour helped on those dark dreary nights in the 13th century. The one consolation if you were a serf was that your genitalia generally remained intact. No one was interested in hanging it in amusing places. You weren’t important enough to warrant such an ignominious end. So, serfs could have a right old laugh about barons with unusual noses. And when you consider that the other main form of light entertainment was minstrels strolling about the place in hilarious fashion, you realise that 13th century folk needed all the laughs they could get.

There was plenty of work around if you were a brickie. Castles and churches smothered the country like a stony rash. Unfortunately health and safety was pretty lax so you’d be lucky to see the construction through. And if you were working on a cathedral you had no chance! Generations of labourers worked on Salisbury. Coaches of disappointed tourists flocked year after year to see men falling to their death from creaky scaffolding. It became customary for a book to be open on which precariously placed worker would fall to his death next. 107-2 outsider, ‘landscape gardener in a brown shirt’ won Thomas Faringay his fortune when a careless brickie fell on his head, planting him firmly in the hydrangeas.

If you were a peasant land-worker then you could only dream of falling spectacularly from half-built cathedrals. For you it was malnutrition in a one bedroom cottage with no cable television. It’s true that more prosperous peasants might own an extra bedroom, but it had no roof or bed and was shared with various farm animals. An enlightened landowner might allow you to marry one of them if a romance blossomed.

Of course things weren’t all bad in the 13th century, the black death hadn’t arrived yet, there were very few Starbucks around and teenages didn’t spend their time texting and sending nude pictures on their mobiles. However, unless you were a baron life was no fun, and if you were, watch your tackle! Are you sure you’d rather live in the 13th century?

Person to be in the 13th century - a baron without facial appendages
Person not to be in the 13th century - Simon de Montfort’s girlfriend

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