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The Middle Ages is what we call the 500 year period that ended just before 1500.


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It was the time when the great cathedrals and castles of England were built.

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The time of the crusades, of bishops and barons.

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When Magna Carta was signed,

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and when Robin Hood and his merry men

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terrorised Sherwood.

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The country prospered under the wool trade and suffered the ravages of the Black Death.

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But above all it was the age of Chivalry. Think saintly nobles, jousting champions, and pure maidens.

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Think battles and bravery, think deeds of daring do... think again.

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Oops

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We do tend to have a rather romantic attitude towards the age of chivalry.

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With knights in shining armour fighting for fair damsels in a misty haze.

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But actually that's got far more to do with the sentimental nature of the Victorians than with reality.

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So what were knights really like? What did they do? Who looked after them?

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Well that brings me to my first worst job.

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Because you didn't start off being a knight, you started off on the very lowest rung of the ladder,

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being an arming squire.

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The arming squire was actually a combination of a valet and a washer woman.

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To plumb the depths of the knightly hierarchy,


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I have come to Arundel Castle in West Sussex.

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Cool, look at the state of you.


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You're supposed to be a knight in shining armour.

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He looks as though he has been hit by a load of cowpats

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Did you really look like that at the end of a battle?

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Probably even worse than that to be honest.

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Umm, this as you see is everyday work for myself.

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It's pretty grimy, it's wet, it's slimy. 


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I've been in here for probably 8 hours.

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Umm, I haven't had a toilet break so things are pretty hot

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and sweaty, and smelly in here as well.

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Gavin you're his arming squire, when he comes back after 8 hours on the field,

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what's the worst part of the job here?

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Basically taking him out of the armour.

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He might have fallen into blood,

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he's going to fall into where horses have been cut down.

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So how do we get it off?

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Well, we start with the helm, 


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just to give him a little bit of air now.

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So what would you be doing while he was battling away at the enemy for 8 hours?

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Well if he hadn't called me to be at his side on the field of battle as well

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I would be at the back of the lines,

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maybe with another piece of armour,

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if something was broken, if it got caught.

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I could be there just to run in and help him out.

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Would you be trained much before you could do all this?

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Oh, very much. I mean I started off as a page, then I would become a squire,

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and at some point maybe in my late teens, early twenties,

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at that point, if I was brave enough and if I had wanted it enough

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then I would be knighted.

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So Gavin, have you got the chance to end up like Paul, a proper full pledged knight?

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That's right, yeah, as I have been in his service for many years

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So I would be trained up in the ways of the knight, the ways of chivalry.

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He needs to carve my meat as well.
Yeah

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I beg your pardon?

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Has to carve my meat,

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he has to learn how to carve that in a proper fashionable manner.

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Basically you're like a Formula 1 pit team, aren't you?

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Pretty much so.

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A good team would be like a Formula 1 team,

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you could get in and out of it relatively quickly.

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The problem of course, is what

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you're going to do once you're out of it,

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and some poor person has to clean your things,

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and that's likely to be my squire or

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any other attendants that I got within the camp.

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There are 24 pieces of armour in a full suit, weighing up to 27kg.

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Supported by a leather harness,

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and worn over a hot and sweaty padded jacket.

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Oh, dear oh dear. If you had been scared during the course of the battle,

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I wouldn't wanted to have been down here.

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And of course most of it is running down, literally my legs.

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Yes alright. That's a step too far for me.

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In order to clean up the dirty armour,

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the arming squire would have used vinegar and sand, like this stuff here.

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Occasionally they used to include a bit of urine into the mix to give added zest.

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As you can see it's pretty effective although its horrible stuff,

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it would remove your fingerprints pretty quickly.

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But this is just the tedium of the camp. 


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What would the actual battle have been like?

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Before you got the clean out the armour, 


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you had to get to the battlefield.

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And that could be a nightmare.

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Take the most famous conflict of the middle ages, 
the battle of Ashencore.

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Our squire would have marched 260 miles through France in 17 days,

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living outdoors in almost continuous heavy rain.

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Food and clean drinking water were scarce.

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Dysentery killed far more soldiers on the way to Ashencore

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than died on the battlefield.

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The English were hopelessly out numbered.

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But the heavy rains created a quagmire for the French cavalry in their heavy armour.

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They became sitting ducks,

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for the English armies mightiest weapon - the long bow.

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In the end it was the archers that did it, they won the battle.

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Their arrows might not have been able to pierce a suit of armour,

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but they could kill the horses.

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And they did, they decimated them.

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Now you might think that being an archer was one of the

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better medieval jobs, but in many ways it wasn't.

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If you got captured, you got your fingers sliced off.

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And at the end of the battle, it really did become one of the worst jobs in history.

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There were no doctors on the battlefield,

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no St Johns ambulance running around with stretchers.

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So the archers used to wonder among the carnage and

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when they found someone who was seriously injured,

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they put them out of their misery.

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In the year 1348 the Black Death swept into England from Europe.

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It decimated the population, and killed round about 2 million

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men, women and children in a couple of years.

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Understandably, people began to get more and more frightened of falling ill.

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Of-course we know that they were fighting a losing battle

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against over-crowding, and poor sanitation.

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Remember in those days, household waste and

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excrement were just chucked out of the windows into the streets

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in the towns and in the cities.

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But most people had no idea that

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that was the cause of their problems,

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and instead, in their panic,

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they began to rely on a whole host of bizarre remedies.

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And for us, that means lots more worst jobs.

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Medical theories were sophisticated

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but as we now know, hopelessly misguided.

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Success rates were terribly low

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even before the plague.

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So any career in medieval medicine was bound to be frustrating.

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Oh and messy, very messy.

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How about a few of these

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if you don't fancy walking around with a bottle of aspirin.

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Leeches. In the medieval period

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these were a staple, medical treatment.

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The idea was that as they suck the blood out of you,

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they would suck the badness out as well.

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In fact they were so popular that it brings me on to my

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next disgusting job- leech collector.

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By the 20th century, leeches were almost declared extinct.

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So I am heading for one of the few spots left, 
for a leech safari.

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Romney Marsh is in Kent, with ranger Owen

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Oh nice smell.

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I'm practically up to the top of my waders in one step.

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What sort of people would have been leech gatherers?

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They would have been professionals,

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but they would have also been people like thatchers

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who would have had leeches stuck to them

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as they were collecting, all these reeds and sages

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And they would have passed them on to dealers.

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Could have made a lot of money

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out of these reeds if you were a thatcher couldn't you.

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Yeah

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Still have a nice bit of pin money from the leeches on your feet.

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Apparently if we jiggle around a lot

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then the leeches will think that we're cows or sheep or something

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that have come down to the waters edge to have a drink

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and they will come up from the bottom and attach themselves onto us.

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Mind you they wouldn't have had waders in the middle ages.

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No they wouldn't no, they would have had

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Scottish women in the Northern England Lake district

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and Yorshire, they would have gone to some of these

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good leech areas, and they would have gone in barefoot

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into these marshy areas looking for leeches.

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What are leeches?

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They are worms with character.

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They really are worms?

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Yeah they are