Season 5 | Bonus: Beasts at feasts

This episode delves into the extravagant medieval feasts, focusing particularly on the political and cultural significance of these events in the Middle Ages.

1. Medieval feasts were as much about politics and power as they were about celebration and cuisine.
2. Symbolic elements like swans and golden ornaments at feasts served deeper political and social purposes.
3. The extravagance of medieval feasts reflected not only the monarch's wealth but also their ability to mobilize and control resources.
4. Feasts were opportunities for rulers to reaffirm alliances and display their generosity and strength to both allies and rivals.
5. The discussion on feasts extends to broader themes of medieval life, including social hierarchy, cultural symbolism, and the personal attributes of historical figures like Edward II.

1: Introduction and Context

Dan Jones sets the stage for a discussion on medieval feasts, their significance, and introduces the Feast of the Swans.
Dan Jones: "Feasts are not just about eating; they're a display of power and a way to strengthen political alliances."

2: The Feast of the Swans

Exploration of the specific elements of the Feast of the Swans and its historical context.
Dan Jones: "The swans brought out at the feast were not just food; they were potent symbols of royal authority."

3: Symbolism and Subtlety in Feasting

Discussion on the use of symbolism in medieval feasts and the role of subtleties.
Dan Jones: "Subtleties at feasts, like golden swans, were about wowing guests with both beauty and hidden meanings."

4: The Social Mechanics of Feasting

Insight into how feasts facilitated social and political interactions among the medieval elite.
Dan Jones: "Feasting is a dance of diplomacy and hierarchy, played out over lavish meals."

5: Reflections on Royal Power and Feasting

Connecting the themes of the episode to broader political movements and figures, such as Edward I’s reign.
Dan Jones: "Through feasts, monarchs orchestrated the social order and showcased their splendor."

1. Understand the power of symbols and how they can be leveraged in social and business settings to communicate non-verbally.
2. Recognize the role of hospitality in forging relationships and alliances in any professional or personal context.
3. Appreciate the value of tradition and ceremony in maintaining cultural heritage and identity.
4. Use the principle of largesse—generosity in spending—as a tool for leadership and influence.
5. Engage in events that unite people, using shared experiences to build community and loyalty.

To mark the launch of season 5, we are dishing out a free sample of This is History Plus. Each week Dan and producer Georgia explore strange tangents and delicious Medieval gossip.

People

Edward I, King John

Guest Name(s):

Georgia Mills, Daisy

Content Warnings:

None

Dan Jones
Hello, Dan here. This is an episode of this is History, plus, our special subscriber only show, which we record after every main episode. Hope you enjoy it. I'll see you at the end.

Hello and welcome to a brand new season of this is history, plus, our weekly medieval deep dive into all the juiciest tangents and subplots from the world of the Plantagenets. I'm joined again this series by producer Georgia. Hi, Dan. Delighted to be back for another season, and it's not getting any calmer. So we've got an aging, increasingly crazy sounding Edward I who's trying to sort everything out in Scotland before he dies, and a very exciting new king to be the party Prince Edward II.

Daisy
So you started this episode with a party, the feast of the Swansea, and this got me thinking about medieval feasts and food in general. All the things you say are at this feast sound very nice. So what was the kind of general vibe of a feast? Were they eating this amount of royal birds all the time, or is this a really special event? Well, this is definitely a really special event.

Dan Jones
And feasts are aware, I suppose, feasts do two things. Firstly, it's feeding people. You know, it is a sort of communal meal, but there's a great symbolic, political importance to feasting in the Middle Ages, which is why, you see, for example, whenever a new king is crowned, there'll be a coronation banquet. And it's not just about showing largesse and hosting people for dinner. It's also a very visible way of manifesting political power.

So although the feast of the swans is not a coronation feast, it has a lot of really high symbolic importance. It's the making of all these new knights. It's the sort of cryptic, symbolic bringing out of these swans so that everyone can swear an oath. It's like a sort of reset, a pivot point in the reign that's designed to kind of galvanize opinion. But it is also, I mean, a chance for everyone just to stuff their faces.

There's no doubt about that. Was there any relevance, particularly, to swearing on swans, as opposed to swearing on, like, a pheasant or a deer? There's some thought that swearing on birds is kind of important. It's really hard for us to read the symbolism now. The presentation of dead beasts at feasts of which would be a good name for a kind of hip hop album, I think is a known thing.

I suppose the most famous example from the Middle Ages in Britain is the black dinner in 1440, which was adapted into the red wedding in Game of Thrones, where there was a murder committed. And the symbol for the murder was the bringing out of a black bull's head and sort of solemn beating of a drum. So the presentation of symbolic animal parts at feasts is a kind of. It's a known trope. These swans obviously have some sort of political importance for Edward at this moment in his reign.

And whether they are actual swans or whether they are sort of confectionary isn't entirely clear. I think they're swans that have been dressed up in kind of gold to make, made look very pretty, but it could be that they're actually physically crafted from gold as well. It's just hard to tell from the sources. And in terms of the feasting, what are some of your favorite medieval feasts? What feast would you most love to be at?

Well, it's almost unbelievable, the apparent scale of the gluttony that goes into medieval feasting. And although with the feast of the swans, as I said in the main episode, the menu for this one doesn't survive, there are not quite menus for this particular period, although you do get those a little bit later into the 15th century. But you can tell from the royal shopping lists, effectively, what people have had at feasts. King John, although he was sort of known as a miser in some quarters, was also incredibly lavish about his feasting. And so we have the orders from 1213, his sort of Christmas shopping list for feasts at Windsor Castle.

20 tons of good and ordinary wine, French and Gascon. Four tons of the best stuff that would be for the king's table. And then the food. Tons. Tons.

So not by weight. T U N. The imperial unit of measurement for wine. Big barrel. Oh, okay.

But the food. I'm going to throw some numbers at you, which I wouldn't normally do, but they're pretty big numbers. So this is 1213 at King John's feasting time. 400 pigs heads with all the pickled pork. Just the heads?

Just the heads. I mean, we use their bodies to burn the. Well remembered. Yes. 16,000 hens.

Daisy
16,000. Only slightly fewer herrings. 15,000 of those. 10,000 salted eels. And then for the spices, 50 pounds of pepper.

Dan Jones
Two pounds of saffron. Two pounds of saffron. If we think that saffron, it's worth its weight in. Usually sort of considered more expensive than gold. 100 pounds of almonds to be ground down for.

Daisy
Is this for one feet? How many people had he invited? This is Christmas time for King John, so we can imagine that this is for at least twelve days of feasting. But even still, that's still more than a thousand hens per day.

Dan Jones
I like hot wings as much as the next man, but I don't know that I could eat them by the thousand. Even you have your limits. But it's not just, you know, it's not just kings. There's closer to the time we're talking about the 14th century. It's actually slightly later than Edward I.

The second time. There's Archbishop Neville for his coronation feast, when he's made the archbishop. 2000 geese, 2000 pigs, 2000 chickens, 4000 ducks, 4000 pigeons, 4000 rabbits. Only 100 quails. Weirdly so.

Maybe people don't like quail that much. Well, that's really special. Maybe they're like, hard to come by. But also 4000 cold tarts and 1500 hot pasties. Wow.

I guess for like, you know, when you get the munchies, like, that's like late night thing. Late night pasties. Did they do things like, what's that poem where blackbirds fly out of a pie? Did they do like, performative food where, like, out pops a surprise animal from within? Yeah, it's huge.

I mean, the sense of performing and of performance being part of the dining experience is massive. So you've got subtleties. So to link this to the golden swans at the feast we're talking about, the idea of a subtlety being brought out with each course is ingrained in medieval feasting. And the subtlety is a usually non edible kind of device of great beauty and artistry. Have you ever seen a show called is it Cake on Netflix?

Daisy
I've seen the YouTube version. The short version. Yeah. It's always cake. It's usually, well, at some point it's going to be cake.

Dan Jones
But this is cake on Netflix would have been absolutely on the money for a medieval feast. That sense of something that looks so unreal and inedible, or that's just such an artistic creation. This would have been on the money. And there's also that certain jobs at medieval feasts are important. So the carver is not just like sticking the old fork in like, it's Sunday roast around my house, and I'm just sawing off a bit of chicken as it goes.

There's a sort of great sort of flamboyance, a good modern parallel for that. Do you know who I mean by Salt Bay? Oh, yes, the Nusra, what's his name? Did they have medieval pork bay? For listeners benefit, we're both sitting here doing the salt bay little hand sprinkle arm.

Weird thing that he does. Salt Bay would have had a very good career, just as he does now at the table of the rich and culinary minded, because he could do a sort of funny little salt thing. So, yeah, pork bay, I suppose in the middle ages that would have been. Legit gone down a tree. In your life, as a sort of renowned medieval scholar, do you ever get invited to sort of modern versions of medieval feasts?

Daisy
Do you get to feast a lot? I tell you what, less than you'd think. Oh, it's not very often, in fact, at all that I go to a feast. I did go to a feast. My good friend Daisy, a couple of years ago when she was a fellow at a Cambridge college, invited me to the Purn feast, which is at Peterhouse College, and that's been going since, I think, the 16th century.

Dan Jones
And the pern feast is 12, 13, 14 courses, something like that. There are three courses of dessert, savory dessert as well as sweet. For one of the dessert courses, you go to a different room. The dessert room. It's very magnificent and indulgent.

It's a white tie. And you didn't have to wear those special robes, the Harry Potter robes they wear sometimes. A gown, do you mean? Yes, I didn't wear a gown because I didn't have to because I was a guest. But if you were a fellow at the college, you would wear your.

I think I probably could have done. And the night came to an end. Daisy and I were standing next to, you know, Cambridge fairly well. You know what I mean by the burger van known as the van of life. Oh, yes.

Daisy
What destination? Well, standing in white tie by the van of life after midnight, eating a burger and thinking, well, I've just had 14 courses. I don't think I needed this. And then I said to daze, daze, you're eating a burger, you're a vegetarian. And she went, yeah, I know, but it's special occasion.

Dan Jones
So what I'm saying is that was the last feast I went to. And I suppose in its extravagance and decadence and in some people's ears at the moment, I'm sure obnoxiousness, you're still hungry. So they would have needed 16,000 hens to feed you. Was I hungry or had I partaken in the. In the fine wine served from the tunnel?

Daisy
Too much of the porter's sherry. That's a nice way of putting it, but I tell you. But all sorts comes out of medieval feasts. Just one more on Henry IV a bit later. In the 15th century, who knows?

Dan Jones
We might even even get there on this. Is history a dynasty to die for at his coronation feast? That we do have the menu. And there seems to be a hint that eagle is served. Eagle, yeah.

Because they really like going all out for different types of meat, different types of fish. So you see that just the birds that are served at medieval. Wow. It's not just chicken you'll get like crane and heron. There's.

Which queen is it now? I think it's Henry V's Queen Catherine de Valois. Her coronation feast is held in Lent, so they only serve fish. But the fish, I'm afraid to say herring and the pike and the lamprey and the trout and whatnot. Also porpoise, which is not technically a fish.

I knew you were going to say that. Go on, then. Zoological expert, what is a porpoise? Porpoise is a mammal. You can't eat them in Lenin, be more specific.

Daisy
It's a member of the cetaceans. You're so good. Could always rely on you for the hottest zoological knowledge. Four years of university, well spent. A porpoise, listeners, is a cetacean, and for my money, shouldn't have been served at a Lenten feast.

No, that's very naughty. Also, they're quite. They're quite little clever. Yeah, but. So it's an octopus.

Playful. Yeah. I love eating octopus. I really. I stopped.

Dan Jones
Would you not eat it? Not anymore. Not after I learned how good they are at pulling levers. Would you eat a crow? They're clever.

Daisy
I wouldn't eat a crow. No. Nothing that can pull a lever. Nothing that can pull a lever. So no elephant?

No elephant. No. Otherwise I'd be gorging on elephants. Anyway, that's enough of. Yeah, back to history.

Back to history. Back to this feast. So there are all these new knights arriving. They're having a blast. They get a bit overexcited.

I just wanted to ask, who made the cut of the invite list? How did they decide who gets to go? That's a great question. And in a sense, what they're trying to do here is build a new generation. So, I mean, you can't be knighted twice.

Dan Jones
So that is the requirement that you haven't been knighted. That generally, but not totally, means younger members of the aristocracy, because being knighted is a part of the passage to manhood. The best example, and this is a name that's going to loom large over the next few episodes of this podcast, is Piers Gaveston, who is a sort of warrior. The son of a knight. He's been placed in the household of young Edward of Carnarvon, but he hasn't yet been knighted, so he's among the gang.

Thomas of Lancaster, who's a Edwards cousin, Edmund Crouchback's son, he's there and he's knighted. So there's this sense that this is a kind of formal creation of the new generation of warriors who are going to take the Longshanks legacy on. And the whole reason it seems that they're doing this is because it's all kicking off in Scotland again. It is indeed. So let's just quickly retract, because William Wallace, big bad of the last season, is dead and buried.

Well, that's right. Buried. No, not buried. He denied a christian burial, very insultingly and fatally for his soul, I suppose. So last we heard of Wallace, when we ended season four, the battle of Falkirk, the Scots have been defeated.

After this, Wallace is kind of a busted flush. He resigns the guardianship of Scotland and he takes himself off to France. And the last time we were sitting here doing one of these bonus episodes, we were talking about the Wallace, the great poem that kind of mythologizes his life, features him fighting a lion for the entertainment, or not, of Philip Ivdev. Not true. But this part of his mythical adventures in France.

Well, he comes back from France, but he's pretty quickly betrayed, arrested, brought down to London and tried as a traitor. This, I suppose, is the interesting thing. Wallace denies that he can be tried and convicted as a traitor, because to be a traitor, you have to have rebelled against your rightful lord. Right. And in his view, and in the view of many others like him in Scotland, Edward I is very much not the rightful lord.

And so he has no business trying him as a traitor. But that's not a point of view with which Edward sympathizes. And in the end, it becomes academic because Wallace is hanged, drawn and quartered. Remember Edward I, Edwards favourite? His creation, I mean, creates it for welsh princes and brings it out for William Wallace.

Because this is saying, not only have you been a very naughty boy, but this is politically symbolic. And the quarters are sent off to four cities in northern England, Scotland. So Newcastle, Perth, Berwick and Stirling. So it's quite symbolic places. Stirling, obviously, because of stirling bridge, Perth, because it's near skhoon, where the stone of Skoon has been confiscated from Berwick, because it's been the scene of one of the most horrible sieges.

So this is the sense that places that have been important on Wallace's journey, on his career on his leadership of this scottish independent movement. Get a bit of him to show what happens. And his head, pickled in tar, well preserved in tar, is stuck up on London Bridge. Oh, horrible. So there's this new problem, which is Robert the Bruce, who was the grandson of one of the original claimants to the throne.

Daisy
So he, it sounds like, was playing both sides of for a while. So was Edward a bit tricked? Not really. I mean, so we've got to remember that the whole of Scotland is not universally and at all times lined up against Edward. There's a lot of faction in Scotland, big rivalries within the scottish aristocracy, most obviously between the Bruces, Roberts family and the Commynes, who are very powerful in northern Scotland.

Dan Jones
And so you have to maintain relations of some sort with the english court because Edward I is such an important political figure in Scotland. So over the course of Robert Bruce's life, there are times when he is playing nice with the king of England, where he's actually at court. So Bruce has sort of played a bit of a double game. On the one hand, he's kind of making nice with the English. On the other, it seems increasingly clear at the time and with retrospect, that hes more and more pulled towards the independence movement partly out of love for his country and partly out of this sense, inherited from his grandfather, that the Bruces actually are in the running to be the rightful kings.

Daisy
Right. And then this guy sort of snitches that hes getting kingly ideas and he gets upset and they have a fight. So tell me more about this quite dramatic sounding fight in a church. Well, so the backstory is slightly foggy, but what seems to have happened is that Bruce and John Comyn make this agreement whereby Comyn says to Bruce, if you at some point lead an uprising against Edward, then I, John Comyn, will stand aside and let you lead this as supposedly the rightful king of Scotland. If you give me, in the event of this uprising being successful, all the Bruce lands in Scotland.

Dan Jones
So if you rise up against Edward, become king of Scotland, I will back you. I'll not stand in your way. But I want as my reward all the Bruce estates in Scotland. And that'll be okay for you, Robert, because you'll be king. And supposedly they make a formal agreement, not just a handshake, but, you know, it's all drawn up.

And then, as you rightly say, common snitches. Bruce is tipped off. He has to flee the english court where he is, and he says, right, okay, this has all gone wrong. Okay, John Comyn, meet me in Dumfries priory in front of the altar safe space. That's why he goes, because he's like, he will never do anything in a church, surely.

Yeah. If he says, you know, meet me in a pub car park, I think common's probably not turning up. But. So there's a scuffle. Bruce stabs common.

Accounts differ as to whether he kills him outright or whether he sort of marches off saying, that will teach you. And then two of his followers go back and say, we'll finish the job and do common in. But that's how they do. John Common in. What's sort of more remarkable in Robert the Bruce's case is that he doesn't leave it there, that he sees what this represents, which is, yes, on the one hand, a heinous crime, but on the other hand, the opportunity to put himself in sole position as the representative of scottish independence.

Robert the Bruce is from a clan that has a good claim to be kings of Scotland, but then again, so is John Comyn. And the problem in Scotland is that they haven't been able to unify for long enough to seriously resist Edward. Yeah. And does Comyn have a clan who are like, want to take revenge? Very, very powerful clan in northern Scotland.

I mean, they run northern Scotland as sort of almost like petty kings in their own right. So what happens after Commons murder is that Bruce disappears for a bit, but then he cleans up northern Scotland. He goes and he smashes and destroys the powers of the commons in northern Scotland. So between 13, oh, 739, he makes himself the unassailable. I mean, first he has himself crowned king, but then he goes and makes that political fact.

Bruce has the nous to recognize once he's done John Comyn, once he's made himself irreconcilable with Edward, it's only going to succeed if he has the whole of Scotland behind him. And he does that, he makes the permanent fact. And that's why I. For the years that are going to follow, Robert the Bruce is a menace in Scotland to the English and is really the sort of becomes the legendary figure in a way that Wallace could never have been, that represents the true sort of royal, independent, royal Scotland roaring back. Right.

Daisy
And this is why Edward I is so cross, has this big feast and sends his son and all his new knights into Scotland to try and sort things out. So let's talk about Edward number two, the new prince. He sounds all right. He sounds pretty good so far. Well, listen, we're going to hear all about Edward of Caernarvon, Edward II in this series.

Dan Jones
And I've been looking forward to this series for so long because Edward II is a totally fascinating character and I know they've all been fascinated. Henry II was fascinating. John was fascinating, Richard. The Diana was fascinating. You think Henry iii was fascinating?

Yes, but Edward II, the older I get and the more I sort of come back to these stories. I remember the first time I was writing about Edward II when I wrote my book the Plantagenets. And you just think, well, he's just hopeless and he doesn't get it. But the more I think about him and write about him, the more he seems really quite a sympathetic character. He's quite a nice guy.

He's naive in some ways. And he's certainly not cut from the warrior cloth that Edward I is cut from. Richard the lionheart is cut from. And in future, Edward III, Henry V will be cut from. But he does seem quite fun to be around and he has a very jolly kind of time.

And he's a good time guy. He doesn't really go in for tournaments. He doesn't really go in for killing sentient beasts, hunting. He likes music and he likes, you know, it's all very sniffed at by the chroniclers rustic pursuits like gardening and, well, ditching, they call it digging ditches and rowing on ponds and thatching. You know, these country pursuits he's into.

And you think about, I don't know, Winston Churchill building. He liked building brick walls, didn't he? And he's sort of quite handsome and well turned out. So he's not a total duffer. But he's also maybe not cut out.

Daisy
For the job because we were trying for the main episode to think of a modern equivalent. Like where would he stand in the classroom? He's not quite a jock. He's not quite a nerd. Where is he sitting amongst that?

Dan Jones
He's definitely not a jock. He's not really a nerd. I wonder if he's got a little bit of emo in him. But then he's too friendly for that. So he's kind of.

Maybe he's a sort of skate kid counterculture. He was a skater king. He was a skater king. I said, see you later King. Well, he did in the end.

No spoilers.

He's a very curious character. Definitely not a jock, definitely not a nerd, but just a guy who tries to dance to his own tune. Yeah, he likes his own stuff, doesn't he? He likes what he likes. Unfortunately, you do need a bit of a squad.

If you're going to be that guy, particularly if you're king. The whole job is a confidence trick, being king. And you've got to carry with you the aristocratic class. You just have to. That's the job.

That's why Henry the. He could never carry the confidence. And John, for different reasons, because he was always betraying his own people. Yeah. By which I mean the other nobles and doing terrible things to them.

You've got to carry, like the most man, kind of middle of the road people with you. And if you're too sort of different, it's always going to be a struggle. And, man, is it a struggle for Edward II. We'll see. Well, yeah.

Daisy
After saying he sounds kind of nice, I do have to go back that, because he does go a bit crazy in Scotland and brutalizes the people quite heavily. So not that great. Well, nice is a relative term, yes. For a plantagenet, maybe, but his dad is angry with him. Not because he went too violent, because he just didn't approach it in quite the right way.

Dan Jones
I think so. And it's an awkward one because on the one hand, you know, you could see it from Edward of Carnarvon's perspective. He stood up, he made his vow, we're going to go smash the Scots. He goes up and does it and his dad gets mad with him because he lets everyone go off and have a sort of winter break. And I think it does come across as slightly unfair.

Yes. I think Edward. This isn't Edward of Carnarvon's fight. Right. He didn't conceive this.

I mean, he's grown up knowing that it's a thing, that it's all he's known is he's grown up, but it's not sort of in his blood, really. And I think Edwards Edward, I can sort of smell this, but I think this is more to do with Edward. I himself. Cantankerous, cantankerous old, ill. He knows the end is coming.

Daisy
Cant stand handing over the rain. Cant stand. And no one would probably have been good enough. Yeah, he does sound like a very hard to please dad. Well, family and the Plantagenets, theyre always got their dysfunctional.

They just need a therapist, dont they? So the gloves are off. Things are uber violent already. Episode one, what's coming up in the next episode, and I guess the season in general, what can we look forward to? Well, next episode is where the personalities that are going and the feuds that are going to inform this series will really start to take shape.

Dan Jones
And there's one character for Edward of Carnarvon who means more than anybody else, and that's Piers Gaveston. We hear his name in this episode. Next episode, we're really going to dig into the relationship between Piers Gaveston and Edward of Carnarvon, why it's so important for young Edward, why it's so abhorrent for his father, and as it will turn out for almost everybody else around him. Oh, that's exciting. Well, lots to look forward to then.

Daisy
And of course, after every episode, Dan and I will be here to give you the historical goods. And if you have a question, please do send them in. You can find Dan on social mediaegjones or use the hashtag hash dansplaining. See you next time. See you next time.

Georgia Mills
There's more like that every week where I chat with my producer about all things Plantagenet and answer your questions on the show. To listen to more like that, you can start a free trial by going to thisishistorypod.com. or if you're on Apple Podcasts, click try free at the top of the page. And a reminder you'll also get access to next week's episode early. It's already waiting.

Dan Jones
See you there.