Tea at Trianon: How Carpenters Built Medieval England

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, December 1, 2025

How Carpenters Built Medieval England

From Medievalists:

One of the strongest insights from Dyer’s article is the sheer ubiquity of carpenters in medieval England. They appear in villages, small market towns, major urban centres, and forested regions where timber was abundant. Using evidence from the 1379–1381 poll taxes, Dyer estimates more than 10,000 carpenters were active around 1380 — or about one in every 270 people was employed in the craft. Their presence spans every kind of medieval settlement, demonstrating that carpentry was a cornerstone trade, not a marginal or urban-only occupation.
Mobility was a key feature of the carpentry trade in medieval England. Using 158 cases where both a carpenter’s home and place of work can be identified, Dyer shows that carpenters travelled widely depending on the scale and prestige of the project. About a third stayed within their own town or village, especially in larger centres such as London or Oxford where work was plentiful. Another third travelled modest distances—up to 12 miles—for routine building tasks, moving between neighbouring communities for house repairs, timber framing, and small construction jobs. This mobility created a wide regional labour market in which both rural and urban carpenters crossed boundaries when opportunities arose. (Read more.)