COME FOR THE KITCHENAID, STAY FOR THE MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPT

The thirteenth-century document that turned up in a rummage sale

What’s the best thing you’ve ever found in a rummage sale? Mine is a small blue and white stuffed toy rabbit, which I turned up at a school fundraiser in about 1987. Being somewhat more of a monarchist then than now, I named the rabbit Charles. (His namesake has only just become King.) Charles was my constant companion through childhood, and he is still with us, somewhat patched up and still well loved. He now sits in the nursery, lord of all he surveys.

Charles is great and I wouldn’t swap him. But he’s not this. According to news reports popping up all over my feeds this week, some guy went bargain hunting to an estate sale in Maine, looking for kitchen appliances. As he browsed, he came across an illuminated sheet of vellum from a thirteenth-century religious text.

The guy paid 75 bucks for it. It’s worth about $10,000.

But of course, whatever Puff Daddy once said, it’s not all about the benjamins. This is a sheet of devotional music from a book (or ‘missal’) made in 1285, and used in Beauvais cathedral in northern France. If you want to locate yourself in time, that’s the year Philip IV ‘the Fair’ came to the French throne - he’s the guy who in later years would bring down the Templars. It’s a beautiful thing in its own right.

I love this story for a couple of reasons. Partly because, well, that’s the dream! Go out looking for a stand mixer, come home with a precious piece of medieval history. But I also love It because I wrote about Beauvais in Essex Dogs. Those of you who’ve already read the book will know that this is where some of the Black Prince’s men come to an unfortunate end. In my imagination one of them sliced this page out of the Beauvais Missal and flogged it before he got his comeuppance.

Or maybe not. Either way, I liked this story. I hope you do too. This week I’m writing the last few episodes of my new podcast, This Is History: A Dynasty To Die For, which is all about the early Plantagenets.

In the course of my work on one of the later episodes I think I’ve made a small but important breakthrough concerning William Marshal, and the mystery of what he did when he went to Jerusalem. I’ll try and share that with you here - as not all of what I’ve discovered/deduced will make the cut of the podcast episode.

Oh, and if you haven’t checked out the podcast yet, please do. You can click here, or search ‘A Dynasty To Die For’ on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc etc. If you dig it, please please rate and review it on your podcast app. It helps enormously with visibility and will mean more new listeners can find it.

I also owe you an episode of First Draft, about the historical significance of the second Elizabethan Age. Now things are a bit less crazy with book tour, I should be able to get that done.

Dan x