Medieval weirdness: Clever King Cnut, giving land to monks, (and Odd Medieval Measurements!)

Monks mounting a ballista onto the boat : "What? You didn't say by hand."

I think Cnut was just trolling 'em. Probably thought making the monks hold a mini-olympics to find the best thrower would keep them out of his hair for a while.

Makes total sense to me: as far in land as someone from a boat can kill you by throwing an axe, and as far into the water as you can kill someone by holding a spear. So... they were essentially granted the right of collecting taxes on any goods being loaded/unloaded along the river. No right over ships just passing by, and the right and obligation of defending just as much land as needed to enforce those taxes. Expressing it in yards or some other exact measure would actually be more arbitrary.

It’s crazy how i never would’ve heard of this great channel if YouTube hadn’t randomly recommended it to me.

He was probably hoping that a monk couldn’t throw far enough to get any decent land grant

I wonder if king Cnut's warriors were using viking-style ships and also axes? In such case the king's grant could have had additional meaning: You can use land and build only there, where you are completely in my power, and don't you forget it!

I agree that it is more poetic than standardized measures -- but I also imagine it has some element of a measure related to one's strength or virtue, or perhaps the aid of providence. However, I don't think this would have been that unusual. The phrase "just a stone's throw" is still commonly used in describing a distance that is not too great. And when I was in Adelaide, Australia, a few years ago, we were told that Colonel William Light, who picked the location of the city and planned it, fired cannons to determine how far the gardens that would surround the city should extend.

It actually sounds extremely similar to something the British later did in Africa, in the country now known as Gambia. The border was marked on either side of the river by how far a cannonball could be shot from a ship on the river. The idea behind the measurement was about knowing what land around the river was vulnerable to a naval attack. In this case, the medieval equivalent to the cannonball seems to be a thrown ax. And sure, while the measurement could be standardized to a particular measurement, the land isn’t flat, and thus that measurement wouldn’t always fit within range of a naval attack. In areas where the elevation gets particularly higher than the river, the distance a naval attack could reach would be much lower, reducing the borders distance from the river to less than any set standardized measurement.

Topic request: Late Medieval coinage, currency, denominations, etc, both in England and in other Western European countries It would also be neat to learn more about how taxes and fees were paid, what wages were like for people of different classes and locales, and how government expenditures like wars and civil list salaries were paid for On that note, how were places governed? What powers did people like reeves have and how far did their authority go? How were cities and towns governed? How autonomous were various positions and how much “legislation” could they do without the consent of the King?

i hope these videos never stop coming

Thank god for random YouTube recommendations lol

Sounds like a good way to do it if there are no standards. It leaves clear limits. It lacks precision, but it sets a clear upper bound that can be confirmed. Imagine being the King giving the grant. He is not there to measure it, so the monks themselves would be able to set the measurement. Then if it seemed a bit on the big side, the King could then send someone to verify if the monks stretched it dishonestly. Throwing from a boat floating on the water sets a clear physical limit as to where to begin the measurement from. While the exact length of an axe throw is not defined, it does have within it physical limitations so the King would be able to relax knowing some outrageous measurement would not be likely. I would imagine what is not stated in the writing is that if the monks claim 500 meters from the shore, and the King has to bring an axe thrower to verify it, then they would lose the grant entirely. Or at least that would be a reasonable possibility. If the monks took a few extra feet and it mattered to the king, he probably would not be making the grant in the first place. This method allows him to ensure certain physical, reasonably reproducible limits. It's a way to manage things without a huge amount of overhead and time.

Such a treasure of a channel, bring on season 2!

What a fun bit of obscure history. Please do more videos like this that examine a very small slice of life back then!

In the Olden Days, we had a few equivalent units of measurement here in Denmark. "Et stenkast" ~ a stone's throw. Modern days real estate agents still use this unit of measurement in a poetic sense, as houses and summerhouses/cottages are often describes as being situated "within a stone's throw from the beach/water". There's not a firmly set standart, but usually it means that the house is very close to water. "Et pileskud" ~ an arrow-shot. The Romans used this unit of measurement quite often. A fortified camp was not to be set up in a place where, within an arrow-shot, an enemy could find cover or concealment. Imperial roads were to be sided by open land with full visibility for an arrow-shot to both sides to prevent ambushes on travellers. Fortifications in Denmark observed the same restriction.

I think, i might can help out with where the axe-throwing came from. I remember talking to my professor for ancient law history, (I.e. roman law) and there are several funny things the germanic law sources suggest for takeing land into ones posession, like riding around your land in full armour 3 times. Also she mentioned that sometimes they would grant a person land by throwing an axe a couple times in a direction, like a ritual. So this maybe was an act of of land takeing while at the same time measuring. love your channel, also "evil genius" is probaly my favorite game of all time.

Re axe-throwing, I was curious, so I had a very quick look around and I'm beginning to think the "axe-throw" as a measure of distance might not have been that much more obscure to medieval people than "an arrow's flight". In The Economy of Medieval Hungary (edited by József Laszlovszky, Balázs Nagy, Péter Szabó and András Vadas) it's mentioned that: "Farms consisting of a single house and its outbuildings have been found spaced 80-100 meters or even further apart. This corresponds to information from some written sources from the second half of the thirteenth century, stipulating the distance of an arrow's flight between such an outlying dwelling place and a small settlement, and an axe-throw as the shortest distance that a person altering a plot in the land around the village could locate his house from another dwelling place" (100). https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1IRXDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PR5&dq=The%20Economy%20of%20Medieval%20Hungary%20Edited%20by%20J%C3%B3zsef%20Laszlovszky%2C%20Bal%C3%A1zs%20Nagy%2C%20P%C3%A9ter%20Szab%C3%B3%20and%20Andr%C3%A1s%20Vadas&pg=PA100#v=onepage&q=axe-throw&f=false I found a snippet view mention of ""as far as a man can throw an axe with his right hand while holding part of his hair below his right ear with his left hand so that in throwing his right arm remains below his left arm" from the Sussex Archaeological Society "https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Tl0tAAAAMAAJ&q=%22as+far+as+a+man+can+throw+an+axe+with+his+right+hand+while+holding+part+of+his+hair+below+his+right+ear+with+his+left+hand+so+that+in+throwing+his+right+arm+remains+below+his+left+arm%22&dq=%22as+far+as+a+man+can+throw+an+axe+with+his+right+hand+while+holding+part+of+his+hair+below+his+right+ear+with+his+left+hand+so+that+in+throwing+his+right+arm+remains+below+his+left+arm%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiCmKvH66LmAhWEUcAKHbu2CDgQ6AEIKTAA A 19th-century antiquarian writes that in Fordwich there are medieval charters, one of which states that the distance of the "water liberty" is "as far as a man, being in a boat at high water, can throw an axe of 7lb weight, called a taper axe, upon the land" https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015009243174&view=1up&seq=321 and pretty much the same details appear here: https://archive.org/details/reliquary00sagoog/page/n90?q=%22called+a+taper+axe%2C+upon+the+land%22 I have the impression that nineteenth-century antiquarians could be a little bit unreliable. But it seems there's a similar date for the recording of a Welsh tradition: "the builder could claim ownership of both the house and as much surrounding land as could be encompassed by the distance an axe could be thrown. (The first known reference to a ty unnos - the term's singular form - dates from 1818.)" (from The Welsh Academy encyclopaedia of Wales, page 850)

Here's a recommendation for the channel: How about more cooking episodes? I'm sure there are some recipes from Henry III and preceding kings that could be reproduced.

This actually seems like a very practical way of measuring down by a river. Firstly, by measuring from a boat, you're getting rid of uncertainties of where the muddy slope stops being river and starts being bank. Secondly, by using a measurement of something being launched through the air, you're avoiding problems of pacing through boggy bits of land

Standing on a boat and keeping your balance while throwing the axe prevents you from taking a step or two before throwing, thus Knut made sure the monks got as little land as possible.