"Subtitles corrected by SirGawen." "Once upon a time, there lived a damsel." "She was the fairest in the land." "Her beauty was celebrated far and wide." "And she was as modest as she was chaste." "But she was held captive in a high tower." "And there she awaited rescue by a handsome knight." "Helpless, threatened, forever in need of rescue." "The medieval damsel is our archetype of the passive female." "But did she ever really exist?" "Well, some damsels certainly got trapped in tall towers." "In 1217, Nicola de la Haye must have looked out from the top of this castle, and hoped for rescue." "But it wasn't quite like the fairy tale." "The castle was under siege by French troops, and Nicola was trapped." "But she was no shrinking violet." "She was constable of Lincoln Castle and was putting up one hell of a fight." "Nicola must have been in the thick of it." "The French army was down in the square down there with their catapults and crossbows, just outside the pub." "And Nicola would have been dodging lumps of stone like this." "Nicola was, admittedly, a bit mature for a damsel." "She was pushing 70." "But she could still do with a knight in shining armour." "And she got one." "It was another old-age pensioner." "The knight in shining armour was William Marshall, well into his 70s, but the epitome of chivalry." "And Regent of England, a sort of stand-in for the young king." "Together, these two OAPs defeated the foreign invaders, saved Lincoln and in the process saved England for Henry III." "William, ever the perfect chivalric knight, celebrated their joint victory by taking Nicola's castle away from her and giving it to the Earl of Salisbury." "However, Nicola wasn't gonna stand for behaviour like that from a geriatric like William." "She stormed off down to London, had the castle restored to her control and kept going as constable until well into her 80s." "In the Middle Ages, women like Nicola were not expected to be helpless or shy." "We have had a fake version of the Middle Ages erected for us." "Quite literally." "And we may easily mistake it for the real thing." "This is Castell Coch in South Wales." "And it really is a load of old coch." "It may look like the archetypal medieval castle." "But it isn't." "Castell Coch was built by a wealthy Victorian nobleman in the 1870s and it's as fake as our stereotype of the damsel in distress." "The Victorians saw the Middle Ages as a time of pre-industrial innocence and heroism." "They created an image of medieval womanhood that reflected their own ideals." "An image that has lasted through to today." "However, the reality was very different." "Women's role in society changed throughout the Middle Ages." "And as society became more sophisticated, so women became more empowered." "(Battle sounds )" "But the story begins back in Norman England, with men firmly in the driving seat." "Yes, it was a man's life in Norman England." "Women were supposed to do as they were told, and were dependent on their fathers and husbands." "And Normans expected to take English brides..." "Aaah!" "..as part of the proceeds of victory." "But right from the start, there were damsels with their own ideas." "You are about to witness the true life story of one such damsel." "It contains graphic scenes of sex and violence so we shall tell the tale using authentic medieval puppets to avoid offense." "The story takes place nearly a thousand years ago." "A girl is fleeing through the woods near St. Albans." "Her name, Christina of Markyate." "She is fleeing the lewd embraces of this man, a nobleman by the name of Burthred." "oddly enough it isn't Burthred who's keenest to get Christina to submit to his lewd embraces." "It's her parents." "Why are they so keen to see their daughter deflowered?" "Well, we have to go back to the beginning of the story." "After the Norman conquest of 1066, wealthy Anglo-Saxons found themselves outside the structures of power." "For a couple like Christina's parents, the one way back in was the traditional one of trading in your daughter's flesh, i.e., marrying her off to a rich Norman." "Intermarriage was encouraged by William the Conqueror as a way of embedding his men in their new country." "Christina, however, had no intention of getting embedded with anybody." "As a young girl, she'd made a pilgrimage to St. Albans Abbey and later she made a vow to become a nun." "unfortunately, Christina has come to the attention of the wicked Ranulf Flambard, an influential Norman and Bishop of Durham." "Her parents can't wait to oblige the bishop with their daughter's..." "well, I would say hand, but that's not quite what the wicked Ranulf has in mind." "The bishop wants Christina for his mistress." "Huh?" "For respectability's sake, both bishop and parents want the girl married." "So they persuade Burthred to do the honours on the understanding that the Bishop has first call on Christina's favours." "Christina, however, is still hellbent on celibacy." "(Applause)" "The marriage isn't complete until she sleeps with Burthred." "And she's having none of it." "Her parents try everything - they flatter her... they bully her... and even slip love potions into her herbal tea." "Finally, they push the hapless Burthred into her bedroom and tell him to take their daughter by force." "Christina, meanwhile, is literally climbing up the walls, where she hangs from a nail until Burthred goes away." "She finally makes her escape fleeing through the woods." "(Cheering)" "You'll be pleased to know the story has a happy ending." "Christina made it to safety and became a renowned holy woman here in the Abbey of St. Albans, where, apparently, she made slippers for the Pope." "Oh, and underwear for the Abbot." "In the Norman world, damsels like Christina were faced not just with the threat of forced marriages, they were also continually liable to abduction, especially if they were wealthy." "For some damsels, however, abduction could be preferable to a loveless marriage." "Faced with marriage to the usual sort of knightly suitor, who, let's face it, tended to be a cross between your average serial killer and the local rapist, the clued-up damsel might arrange to get herself abducted" "by the preferred lover of her choice." "Or, to be on the safe side, sometimes a damsel found she simply had to do the abducting herself." "Turnberry on the West Coast of Scotland is best known today for its championship golf course." "But in 1271, a spectacular castle stood here on the cliff edge, with a gate that opened onto the wild sea." "The castle was the home of a wealthy damsel, who'd inherited it from her father." "Her name was Marjorie, Countess of Carrick." "One day, Marjorie was out hunting when she spotted a handsome young man." "It was lust at first sight." "The chronicles relate how Marjorie, by force, with her own hand, brought the knight, although very loathe, to her Castle of Turnberry." "Marjorie kept him here for 15 days." "And she must have been doing something right, because when they emerged, they were man and wife." "The happy couple soon produced a boy, none other than Robert the Bruce, future King of Scotland." "The point is that in the Middle Ages it was entirely credible for a powerful young woman to kidnap a man." "Marjorie was by no means an isolated example." "The Victorian idea that women are somehow less sexual than men, would have struck your medieval punter as, well, just plain daft." "If you want to know how people like to imagine themselves or how they wanted other people to see them, a good way is to look at the kind of entertainment they enjoy." "And in the Middle Ages that meant listening to stories." "Reading was a communal activity." "The lady of the household would sit in her private apartments with her damsels and they'd take it in turns to read aloud to each other." "And sometimes the stories could be surprisingly sexy." "They certainly didn't expect their heroines to be shy and retiring." "Try this from the 14th-century fantasy, Sir Gawain And The Green Knight." "Story so far" " Gawain's on a quest, and he sleeps the night in a strange castle and he's woken up very early in the morning, when the lady of the castle comes into his room, locks the door," "tiptoes across to his bed and sits down on it and she says," ""My lord and his men are a long way off," ""the other men are still in their beds, and my ladies also." ""The door is closed and fastened with a strong lock." ""You are welcome to my body, your pleasure to take." ""I am driven by forces beyond my control to be your servant" ""and so I shall."" "Phew." "Mills and Boon eat your heart out, huh?" "Prudery in medieval England was not a virtue." "For example, if a husband failed to perform in the marriage bed, his wife was perfectly at liberty to go public." "One 12th-century manual advocates the physical examination of the man's genitals, by wise matrons who presumably knew how these things worked." "Witnesses were then to be summoned to observe a full-blown road test of the underperforming member." "Poor old Walter De Font was a citizen of Canterbury." "In 1292 his wife complained he was impotent." "So he was duly examined by 12 worthy women of good reputation and honest life, who testified that his virile member was, quotes, "useless"." "What a way to enter history." "In a similar case involving a character by the name of John, one of the witnesses seems to have got rather carried away." "According to the court report, one conscientious matron was so anxious to fulfill her civic duty that she..." ""Exposed her naked breasts" ""and with her hands warmed at the said fire," ""she held the member of the said John" ""and she embraced and frequently kissed the said John."" "Well, you can't get that on the NHS." "The medieval church had long struggled with the problem of sexuality." "It's not that there was anything wrong with sex, of course." "After all, God had said, "Go forth and multiply. "" "It's just the tendency for people to enjoy it that was the problem." "It's not surprising that the monkish writers saw woman and her remorseless sexual appetite as the root of all evil." ""The wickedness of women" ""is greater than all the other wickedness of the world." ""The poison of asps and dragons is less dangerous to men" ""than the familiarity of women." ""The image of God is in man." ""Woman is not made in God's image."" "Women, of course, were still carrying the can for the sins of Eve, for which they'd been under attack long before the Middle Ages." ""Do you not know that you are Eve?" ""You are the devil's gateway."" "At the same time, as the Church castigated women for being the daughters of Eve, it also promoted an ideal of chaste womanhood that did not lure men to sin." "Of course it wasn't an easy ideal to achieve, since it involved becoming a mother while at the same time, remaining a virgin." "A bit of a tricky one." "But then, the Church was hardly living in the real world when it came to women's roles." "The reality was that women often took on exactly the same work as men, in addition to having children and running the home." "Take Margaret Paston, for example, who lived in and around Norwich in the 15th century." "That's one of the family homes down there." "Well, there must have been times when Margaret found her role as a country housewife rather more eventful than anyone could have imagined." "The family's showpiece was Caister Castle in Norfolk." "It was one of the earliest all-brick properties in England, with 40 bedrooms, two halls, a chapel, kitchen, larder, cellar, buttery, pantry, armoury, brewery, bakery and stables." "And Margaret ran the whole show." "But over and above all this, Margaret was even expected to fill her husband's shoes as a warrior when the need arose." "The Pastons were a family on the make who'd acquired a lot of land in Norfolk very quickly and acquired a lot of enemies into the bargain." "Margaret's husband John was a sharp lawyer who spent most of his time in London, leaving his wife at home in Norfolk." "Sad for them, but lucky for us because it meant the loving couple kept writing to each other." "And by a small miracle, a lot of their letters have survived." "And these tell us that while her husband was away defending the family interests in court," "Margaret was back home in Norfolk, defending the estates in a rather more dramatic way." "In 1448, a certain Lord Moleyns claimed that the house she was currently living in belonged to him." "And he threatened to attack her with a small army." "Margaret sent to her husband a request for certain domestic supplies." ""Right worshipful husband, I pray you to get some crossbows" ""and handles to wind them with and arrows" ""and also two or three short poleaxes." ""I pray that you also have brought for me" ""one pound of almonds and one pound of sugar" ""and some broadcloth for a hood for me."" "Eventually, Lord Moleyns sent in a thousand armed men with battering rams and pans of fire." "They dug mines under the building and the wall of the chamber where Margaret was sitting collapsed." "She was carried off, presumably complete with crossbows, poleaxes, almonds and sugar." "As the Middle Ages progresses, women's improving status, can be seen reflected in what they wore." "But although medieval women begun to take on men's roles, the more equality they acquired, the more they dressed to emphasize their femininity." "Medieval clothing expert Sarah Thursfield showed me some of the latest styles." "with the help of the Burgh players at Gainsborough old Hall, Lincolnshire." "Everybody has a mental picture of the medieval lady with the traffic cone on her head." "And as far as we can tell," "English women never actually wore traffic cones on their heads." "You get the shorter version, not the long, pointed Burgundian fantasy." "In the 14th century you've got more elaborate, more splendid costumes for both men and women." "Possibly not more splendid, but a shift is from loose layers of nice fabric to things which really fit the body very closely." "The gown is a generic term for what both men and women wear on the outside." " Yeah." " And this is about as grand as it gets because this is velvet." "She's a lady, her husband's big with the court, they can afford velvet." "Most of us can't." "So what sort of social standing would you be?" "I'm a respectable...sort of lower middle-class widow." "Oh yeah." "Yeah." " So I'm not nearly as fitted as Dawn." " Yeah." "Erm, I'm not trying to pull everything in." "Lady Burgh, she's dressed for dinner, she's dressed for ceremony, so it's a matter of impressing everyone when she comes to the hall." "Looking her part, looking her status." "14th century seems to be actually one of the best times for women." "Oh yes, yes." "Within 100 years of the Conquest, noble ladies had moved from wearing simple gowns to elaborate embroidery and even more elaborate hairstyles, and as trade increased, making a greater variety of coloured cloths available, women begun making strong statements about who they were" "by what they wore." "By the middle of the 14th century, women had become more empowered, thanks, ironically, to a social catastrophe." "The Black death wiped out half the population of England by 135O." "As a result, there was a chronic labour shortage." "Women had to take on roles that had traditionally been reserved for men." "A new kind of damsel began to emerge, the business damsel." "We don't know much about these women since they didn't leave much record." "Probably too busy doing business." "However, in 1934, a 500-year-old manuscript was discovered and it turned out to be the autobiography of exactly such a woman." "Her name was Marjorie Kemp and she was born here in King's Lynn in 1373." "From the start, she enjoyed a pretty good lifestyle." "Marjorie saw herself as a bit of a trendy dresser." "She wore her hair braided into gold nets." "And her clothes were slashed to reveal even richer cloth underneath." "Ooh-la-la!" "Marjorie's husband must have thought she looked good enough without the frills, or else he thought the frills were too expensive." "Either way, he refused to pay for them." "So Marjorie, as a modern go-getting woman, decided to earn the money for herself, and she set up in town as a brewer." "The greatest in the town of Lynn." "But then an odd thing happened." "She started to lose her head." "Well, at least, her beer started to lose its head." "It would be fermenting away, building up a nice head like this." "And then the head would suddenly go flat and sink to the bottom." "And quite honestly, not having enough head was about the most embarrassing thing that could happen to any brewer." "After a while, her brewers decided they couldn't stand the professional disgrace and they ran away." "And the business collapsed." "Marjorie wasn't to be beaten." "She bought horses and a mill and set herself up to grind corn." "But then the horses started to go backwards." "Eventually, the miller ran away." "Ohhhh!" "And then it was noised about the town of Lynn, that neither man nor beast would work for her." "It was time for a versatile woman like Marjorie to make another career change." "And though it may seem an odd choice to us, she decided to become a full-time professional religious hysteric." "Marjorie discovered that the thing she could do really well was weeping." "And I don't just mean, er, the odd sniffle in the corner when she felt sad." "She wept in public, extremely loudly and incessantly." "She'd weep through meal times, she'd weep through sermons, she'd scream and yell or start rolling on the floor." "A holy woman said it was a gift from the Holy Spirit." "But most people thought it was just a damn nuisance." "(Sobbing)" "When Marjorie went on pilgrimage, for example, her fellow pilgrims couldn't stand the way she wept and screamed through dinner." "They ditched her before they got a quarter of the way to Jerusalem." "So, maybe not the typical businesswoman of the day but at least before she died, she made it into the guild." "And here, on the accounts for the Trinity Guild for 1438, we can see her record of her membership payment." ""Marjorie Kemp, 20 shillings."" "damsels, it seemed, were becoming very much a part of what had been strictly a man's world." "In Richard II's court, for example, women enjoyed a high profile." "It was a very sophisticated court." "Refinement and sensitivity were the new buzzwords." "Replacing the old, lads' army preoccupation with martial arts and getting drunk." "The emphasis was on the arts." "on poetry, music, fashion and haute cuisine." "It was enough to turn the stomach of the more conservative chroniclers." ""The King surrounds himself with knights of Venus" ""more valued in the bedchamber than on the battle hills. "" "Richard was the first king to create a woman a duchess in her own right." "Women, it seemed, were going places." "But the pendulum which had been swinging in women's direction throughout the Middle Ages began to swing the other way." "By 1450, there was no longer a shortage of labour." "The population had begun to stabilize and the economic cycle went into reverse, with women being the first to be squeezed out." "It was the start of the backlash." "one of the clearest examples of this backlash against feminine power is the extraordinary story of Joan of Arc." "In 1429, the French were losing the war against the English, when the French army was put under the command of a 16-year-old peasant girl who claimed divine guidance." "Joan routed the English at Orleans, but was captured the following year." "She'd gone into battle dressed as a man and she kept these clothes on in prison, the pants and tunic firmly laced together, apparently as a defense against being raped by her guards." "But she was told that for a woman to wear men's clothing was a crime against God and for that crime, she was burned to death." "Something sinister was going on." "Later, it would be claimed in England that Joan was burned as a witch, but that wasn't true." "The medieval world didn't go in much for witchcraft." "Centuries of Christian teaching had taught that such beliefs were mere superstition." "What was being made clear, however, was that for a woman to take over a man's role was henceforth to be regarded as unnatural." ""The wickedness of women is greater" ""than all the other wickedness of the world."" "As men sought to constrain women's role in society, they began to demonize women and they enlisted the help of the Church to do it." ""God's sentence hangs over all your sex."" "In 1484, the Pope pronounced that witches were not figments of the imagination, but a present evil, and his words sparked a European-wide... well, witch-hunt is the only word for it." "It would lead to the judicial execution of thousands of thousands of women." "(Fire crackling, screaming)" "In fact, during the period that followed, the so-called Renaissance, relationships between damsels and their men deteriorated dramatically." "And it was no good the women of the Renaissance looking to St. George to save them." "during this period the dragon that St. George kills sometimes mysteriously acquires female genitalia." "What on earth was going on?" "one interpretation is that St. George represents chastity and the dragon symbolizes loose, uncontrolled female sexuality which can undermine male authority." "Women must submit to control by men." "The superstition and brutality directed against women was a product of the Renaissance, not of the Middle Ages." "And it has stained the history of the last 500 years right down to today." "The last two centuries have proved a far darker time for women than the Middle Ages ever were." "In the Victorian era, any woman who was interested in sex was deemed to be either sick or mad." "It's an attitude that would have been incomprehensible to people of the Middle Ages." "The Victorians were determined to marginalize the role of women in society, to strip them of power and to deprive them even of their sexuality." "That's why they invented the medieval damsel in distress." "Next time on Terry Jones' Medieval Lives, "The Minstrel"." "That carefree wandering life may not have been so carefree after all." "In fact, at times it could be downright dangerous." "Subtitles corrected by SirGawen."