Capons, Cocks and Hens: Keeping Chickens in Medieval England
EverydayLife Rachel Elwiss Joyce EverydayLife Rachel Elwiss Joyce

Capons, Cocks and Hens: Keeping Chickens in Medieval England

If you were a chicken in medieval England, the worst thing you could be was male

We tend to picture the medieval farmyard as gently pastoral: hens scratching contentedly around the cottage, a cockerel crowing at dawn. That picture isn't wrong, exactly, it's just missing most of the story. Because from the moment a male chick hatched, the farmyard had already decided he was a problem to be solved: too many mouths, too much aggression, not enough usefulness. What happened to him next ranged from a quick death to a surgeon's knife to, for a smaller number, a fighting pit.

This is the story of the medieval chicken — hens, capons and cocks alike — but it's the males whose fate deserves the closer look.

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Why the Plantenet Angevins Ruled Half of Europe
TimePeriods, EnglandAndAngevinEmpire Rachel Elwiss Joyce TimePeriods, EnglandAndAngevinEmpire Rachel Elwiss Joyce

Why the Plantenet Angevins Ruled Half of Europe

When most people think of medieval kings, we generally think of one monarch, one kingdom, and then the people below him.. But Henry II of England—first of the Angevin kings—was no ordinary ruler. By the 1170s, he commanded more territory than any other monarch in Christendom, stretching from the wild hills of Northumberland to the sunlit vineyards of Aquitaine. He was king in only England—he was the Norman and Aquitainian duke, the count of Anjou, Touraine, and Maine. But is was all his dominion, and it was so vast that chroniclers called it an “empire,” though it was stitched together by marriage, inheritance, and sheer force of will.

So how did a French count’s son come to rule half of Europe?

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