Category: Medieval Warfare

The Medieval Knight

23/2/2017

Many a medieval armed knight, once dismounted, was forced to fight his foe in hand to hand combat fully encased in heavy armour. No doubt his enemy was wielding either a pole weapon or hammer, ready to bludgeon and impale. He might strike with his sword, the sharpness of which would be enough split him in two.

This image gives us an idea of how ferocious these fights were. Despite what we may think, these men were not involved in brutish slogging matches, they were not awkward or clumsy, these medieval men had plenty of technique that needed practiced foot work.

A medieval fight between two equally skilled knights could be over and done with in less than thirty seconds with one fatal blow, the less they were trained the longer it would take. They warded off their opponent with mixture of strength and defensive moves, the power behind a direct strike of sword on sword must have been immense, a direct strike would be the death of one, leaving the other exhausted and weakened to face another armed, blooded, sword wielding opponent!

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Mohun, Norman Lords of Dunster.

15/5/2015

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The Mohun Family of Dunster
The Mohun family story from 1050 to 1268 can be viewed here:
http://meanderingthroughtime.weebly.com/mohun-of-dunster.html

Nevertheless, William was named in this work as “Le Viel Willame de Moion” where it is stated “Ont avec li maint compagnon," which roughly translated means “to have many comrades.” There is little mention of William in books I have read but the main concentration of interest in William via the internet is the meaning of the above quote.“Ont avec li maint compagnon." The term Viel in our own language means old and therefore implies that he is the elder of two William Mohuns.

The early Mohuns were landlords under Robert Count of Mortain, half brother to the conqueror and the biggest land owner in the south-west. The Mohuns prospered under the reigns of the first Norman kings and with the county of Somerset ‘settled’ they were able to fund the building of religious houses. William's son, also William was the most prominent of the Mohuns becoming infamous in the west country during the power struggle between Matilda and Stephen. Mohun sons and grandsons found themselves caught up in the troubles that Richard I, King John and the Barons Wars brought to the country. Dynastic marriages into the FitzPiers/deClare family and later the de Ferrers see the family hovering on the fringe of England’s power base with a connection to the family of William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, regent of England. The Mohun line continues past my direct ancestor Alice Mohun, who married into the Beauchamp family, to her nephew John Mohun. By the middle of the fortheenth century the last male Mohun had died childless and his wife left in control of the estate, eventually Joan Mohun passed Dunster into the hands of Elizabeth Luttrell whose descendants held the castle and manor for the next 600 years.

Today the castle is run by the National Trust, it was bequeathed to them in 1976 by the last Luttrell one Geoffrey Walter Fownes Luttrell. It is now graded by the trust as a Grade 1 listed building

Dunster Castle by Stephen Biesty

Robert Wace presents Le Roman de Rou to Henry II

Medieval Gatehouse of Dunster Castle

Today I begin the story of the Mohuns, Norman Lords of Dunster in the county of Somerset.

This family were eleventh to thirteenth century feudal barons and my 22nd to 28th great grandparents. My direst ancestry within the Mohun’s lasted six generations through the main male line from 1050 to 1257. My direct line ends about 1212 with the birth of a daughter.

The Mohuns, pronounced Moon, owned Dunster Castle which proudly stands on what is known locally as The Tor, which is in fact a very steep hill. The arrival of the Normans saw these lands given to William de Mohun who built a timber castle here to keep an eye on the rebellious English in the West Country. It was a motte and bailey castle, the motte being built at the beginning of the twelth century. The Mohuns lived in and owned the castle until it passed from them to the family of Luttrell.

The progenitor of this ancient family was one William de Moion whose name probably derives from the French village of Moyon which lies just south of St Lo in Normandy, and it seems that this family had considerable land and possessions there. In 1027 these lands formed part of the dowry of Adela, Duchess of Normandy. Mohun descendant's flourished in the west country and their names can be seen in such villages as Ottery Mohun, Tormorham and Grange Mohun in Ireland.

It is more than likely that the first mention of a Mohun is a William whose name is found in “Le Roman de Rou” a work by Wace, a Norman poet. This work covered the history of the Duchy of Normandy at the time of Rollo until the Battle of Tinchebray in 1106, it was written two centuries after the event and therefore must be treated with scepticism.

Dunster Castle as it is today

The castle seen today by visitors is the house as it would have been seen in the seventeenth century, all remains of the medieval castle is the gatehouse and towers in the lower part of the house.

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King Valdemar and the Slaughter of the Farmers

30/8/2014

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Gotland is an island that lies just ninety kilometres from the Swedish mainland, and for many centuries it played a dominant role in trade between Europe and Russia. Its walled town of Visby had been a member of the Hanseatic League since 1280.

This league protected the economic interests of all cities within its membership along trade routes and each city had its own legal system and military force. By the middle of the fourteenth century, the town had encroached into rural areas, this fact and its membership in the Hanseatic League had separated the city from the rest of the island and this had caused much antagonism between the town dwellers and those who lived in the countryside.

The walled town of Visby as it is today.

Within this walled town there were over two hundred warehouses and homes of rich merchants, but outside the farming community was also thriving and there had been an increase in wealth too which had resulted in the building of over ninety stone churches and medieval houses. Despite Visby's self-contained importance, its inhabitants felt threatened by those outside its walls, so much so that its massive curtain wall was strengthened and heightened. It is easy to see that this fine curtain wall, built in the middle of the thirteenth century in defence against invaders from the outside, was becoming more than just defence from those who crossed the Baltic Sea.

By 1356, Visby had become less important within the Hanseatic community and this had not gone unnoticed by King Valdemar of Denmark who had seen the Hanseatic League become increasingly powerful within his own country, angry that he had no control or any say within the trade route it protected, Valdemar made his way to Gotland in the summer of 1361 with an army and landed on the west coast of Gotland on the 27th of July.

Ajmund's bridge marks the area where farmers tired to stop Valdemar's invading army.

On landing, the Danish forces met with little resistance, but by the second day, a local force arrived at Fjale Myr, an area of marshland to do battle with the invaders. This encounter would later be known as the Battle of Masterby and it is thought that eight hundred local farmers died here.

By the 27th the army of Valdemar arrived outside the city walls of Visby and it was here that the main attack on the people of Gotland took place. Even with some support from their Estonian neighbours, the badly armed local men were defeated by Valdemar's elite force of only one hundred men. The question that must be asked here is, and remembering Visby's attitude towards the community outside its walls, did its forces make any attempt to support these men or did they watch from the ramparts as the people of Gotland were slaughtered?

By the end of the battle, it is thought that nearly two thousand people met their death at the hands of only one hundred men who later went on to kill all those who were injured or dying.

The dead were buried in five mass graves. This was a dreadful loss of Swedish lives, a tragedy in its own right, but even more so as it came only eleven years after the Black Death struck Sweden. In 1905 the first of these mass graves were excavated and between 1909 and 1928 two more were opened resulting in the finding of over one thousand bodies, it is thought that there are many more still within these graves that are, at present, inaccessible.

A twentieth century tapestry depicting the Battle of Visby.

It never ceases to shock me when I read about the injuries men who fought in battles inflicted on each other, but the men defending what was theirs were farmers, they were not specially trained armoured knights and their injuries were horrific. This was not a battle, it was a massacre. What the archaeologists found was that these people were not able to defend or attack and there is no evidence of help coming from within the walls of Visby, it seems then that inhabitants of Visby did indeed stand and watch as their own people meet a dreadful death.

Riveted mail coif taken from a mass grave and the skull of either Estonian supporter or a Danish warrior.

The majority of the wounds found on the remains of the men of Gotland were the result of cutting weapons such as swords and axes, followed closely by the use of piercing weapons such as arrows, lances, and the use of what we know as the Morning Star, a heavy wooden ball studded with metal spikes and attached to a short handle with a chain, these were used against head and shoulders of the farmers from above. Some of the remains had crushing injuries from the mace that was used, as previously mentioned, to finish off the wounded. One poor man, seen below, died from being hit with bodkin arrow points that had penetrated the skull, later two holes were hammered into his head that almost split it in half. Investigations into this battle eventually found that one-third of Gotland's army was made up of children, elderly men, and those who were disabled.

Skull with bodkin arrow points.

King Valdemar saw to it that all of Gotland's churches were stripped of their valuables and taken back to Denmark, the king even added the title King of Gotland to his name, but his actions at Visby did not go unpunished by the Hanseatic League. Eventually, they forced Valdemar and his son-in-law, who was King of Norway, to grant the League over ten percent of the profits from Danish trade enabling them to gain a 'political monopoly' in Scandinavia. And what of Visby itself? By the fifteenth century, the town was continually involved in battles between the Danes and Sweden's one time king, Eric of Pomerania who had made Visby his home and headquarters in his attempts to claim what was rightfully his. By the eighteenth century, Gotland had returned to Swedish rule.

King Valdemar of Denmark

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The Medieval Knight

Mohun, Norman Lords of Dunster.

The Mohun Family of Dunster
The Mohun family story from 1050 to 1268 can be viewed here:
http://meanderingthroughtime.weebly.com/mohun-of-dunster.html

King Valdemar and the Slaughter of the Farmers

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The Medieval Knight

Mohun, Norman Lords of Dunster.

The Mohun Family of DunsterThe Mohun family story from 1050 to 1268 can be viewed here: http://meanderingthroughtime.weebly.com/mohun-of-dunster.html

King Valdemar and the Slaughter of the Farmers

Archives

Categories

The Mohun Family of Dunster
The Mohun family story from 1050 to 1268 can be viewed here:
http://meanderingthroughtime.weebly.com/mohun-of-dunster.html