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A not nice end in the middle ages

S

starrynight

Senior Registered
It's a while since I had this dream. I usually take two to confirm pl but the emotion was so strong & it felt real. I did some research but drew blanks. I think all I needed to know was in the dream & I'll probably get no more memories, not sure I want to.
A programme I watched late last night about Elizabethan life & ways of execution(amazing what you can learn after a late night at work!) brought it back to me so thought would share.:eek:
 
Time frame I guess mid 1400's to 1600.


I'm a young girl, 11 to 15, sat with my family receiving guests.


The room is long with dark wood floor & panelling. There is a window at the end, long with lead beading squares. Large wood, straight back chairs are placed along either wall, opposite each other & there is a table with a bowl of what I think is punch.


For me the expression "seen but not heard" comes to mind. I sit as my family welcome people & talk about me. They are arranging my marriage. I don't like or agree with anything. I don't like or trust the man they are arranging. He seems old to me & the whole thought scares me but I will do what they say. Even though I dread it I have no choice.


I am a little older, 16 to 20 & have been summoned home. I enter a large hall, again all dark wood. Rooms come off the hall downstairs but I walk up the staircase. It's a very large, open staircase. My dress is full but not ornate, I think the neck is plain, not high or fancy. I think there is either lace or white edging on the neck & sleeves.


My stomach fall when I enter the room upstairs. I address the man there as "Sir Thomas" & immediatley know I'm in trouble.


I'm in a room, looking down on people outside. I'm shaking from head to foot in terror of what is going to happen & trying my best to compose myself.


(I haven't worked out whether I'm awaiting sentence or death at this point.)


I feel I'm in a coffin. The thing that goes round & round my head is how unfair it is to be a woman. I did what I was asked even though I knew it would turn out wrong. I didn't want to do it but now I was paying the price for it. This goes round again & again, I feel so claustrophobic, I wake myself up.
 
Just a couple of points.


I don't know whether lying in the coffin was my thoughts after death or whether it was my fate. I'm not sure whether being buried alive was used as an execution. I did see on the programme, death by heavy weights on the chest which made me remember this dream.


I have thought I'd rather be cremated because I'd dread to wake up to find myself in a coffin.


I've always said "I don't think I would have liked to have lived through the middle ages. It was pretty barbaric then."
 
I've never heard of entombment as a formal method of execution in that period. I have heard of it being used on priests and nuns. Men were sometimes drawn and quartered for treason, one of the worst deaths I can imagine. I have been doing a little research on the Elizabethan period, and it was pretty much a police state. Elizabeth was very paranoid. High-ranking women were seldom executed with their husbands, unless they had a claim to the throne. There is a case that comes to mind, but I need to do some research. I'll get back to you, but I'm sure our history buffs know more than I do! It's an intriguing dream, and sounds like it has a basis in experience.
 
Hi Briarrose, I wonder if the one you're thinking of is Lady Jane Grey? She was the nine day queen. A tragic story but no I don't think I was her. I did think she was worth reading about.


There were some pretty horrible ways of being killed them days-no wonder I would have been happy to skip that time!


I actually think it was just me being executed. My husband might have been the reason, I think I'd displeased him and my family in some way.


I doubt I'd done anything wrong-even by opinion in them days! I felt like I couldn't have avioded what had happened.


I wonder if the main reason for remembering is to know to trust my own judgement.


In that life I didn't want to do what was being arranged & could see it going wrong, yet I did nothing to stop it.


Maybe it was a prod to use that sixth sense & trust my instincts.


I think my personality is much more determined now but maybe the early lives were to teach me that.
 
I recently read a book on the history of torture and executions that was pretty thorough. Though it mentioned entombment, it was as in "being walled up and left to starve". No mention of burial alive was made, but I wouldn't put it past them. It may also have been a "private affair" to put it nicely, instead of a state-approved execution. In short, murder. Imagined infidelity, not-imagined infidelity, failure to produce an acceptable heir, maybe the first born was deformed and they thought it was a sign of some diabolical influence, but to spare both families any shame, you simply disappeared one day. The possibilities are endless. It would be (dubiously) nice to hear if you rack up any more detail.
 
It's also possible they thought you were dead when they buried you. That was fairly common. People would wake up out of a coma with no way to get out and no one could hear you. Sometimes people in the coffin would pull their hair out before they finally died.
 
Thinking about that sort of thing always makes me shudder. George Washington had a fear of being buried alive. I don't remember what the exact details were, but he had stipulated that once he was declared dead they were supposed to make absolutely sure he was dead before they buried him.


I noticed that the memory involves an awaiting of something dreadful. Perhaps it's a memory of a terrible fear that might have later become realized?
 
My Arkansas mother had all kinds of stories like the ones Argonne mentioned. A mother being buried prematurely, getting out of the coffin, and arriving home in the middle of the night was one of them. I think they used a mirror to see if there was "fog" from the breath in some cases, and should have used that mirror trick more often. You spoke about weights on your chest, starry. I know people were sometimes "pressed" to death, but don't know how it was done.
 
Hi shiftkitty-no not sure would want to dream this again! I do think whatever happened was public though, not private but like you say doubt my crime was very much. Remeber looking down at people below as I was waiting my fate.


I have wondered the coming back to life as well argonne-something I've heard about-doean't bare thinking about. Ughh! If that't the case I can be pretty sure I wasn't beheaded.


The weights I saw the other night briarrose. They puta board on the chest & kept adding heavier weights to it. It could take up to 12 hours to die. Not nice! It was used for women as well, often for the sort of crimes shiftkittty said.
 
I wonder if I was accussed of adultry? If it wasn't true it could explain later lives.


I have had more thought on the clothes. A dress of dark green come to mind in a thick material. Not sure whether like a linen or velvet. Again I don't think it was ornate, simple but quite full skirted, not hooped. I imagine I had light brown or maybe aurburn curled hair. Prob brown eyes. I always seem to have had brown eyes.
 
Your comment about Sir Thomas who you thought wasn't a Sir intrigues me. Your death sounds political. Were you a Catholic or a Protestant?


The dark place with the pressing on your heart sounds to me like bitter post-death thoughts. Hopefully, you moved to the light quickly after that.
 
starrynight said:
I wonder if I was accussed of adultry? If it wasn't true it could explain later lives.
I have had more thought on the clothes. A dress of dark green come to mind in a thick material. Not sure whether like a linen or velvet. Again I don't think it was ornate, simple but quite full skirted, not hooped. I imagine I had light brown or maybe aurburn curled hair. Prob brown eyes. I always seem to have had brown eyes.
Click to expand...
Your description of pressure on your chest instantly gave me a sense of puritan times in the northeastern US (colonies then) where one of the chosen methods of killing witches was to place the victim on her back with a door on top and add increasingly heavy weights as was described above. I'm certain it was used elsewhere, but I've seen it during the Puritan Witch Eradication fiasco.


As an aside, one of the possibilities for the cause of the hallucinations and "curses" placed on some of the supposed victims of witches and even some of the witches themselves (outside of the social issues of forcing out/murdering those who don't fit in) was the possibility of ergot poisoning...apparently archeologists have found traces of rye in basements which, when damp and beginning to mold can result in ergot which, in one of its forms, can be a powerful narcotic with psychadelic effects, much like LSD.
 
In the US (Salem, mostly) only one person was pressed to death, and he was a man. Giles Corey endured this torture for days because he refused to play along with the sick game and enter a plea. For three days they asked him to plead guilty or not guilty. He only replied, "more weight." Which they did, and he died as a result.


The rest of the witch trial victims were hanged or died in prison.
 
I defer to your expertise, but it surprises me that only one person was pressed to death. And there was no witch-dipping in the American colonies? Was that solely an English practice? (I enjoyed the silly discussion in Monty Python regarding throwing witches into a pond and if they float their guilty, but if they sink they're innocent! After all, what floats...ducks! wood! small pebbles! witches!)
 
Actually, Monty Python was historically accurate about that. If they floated, they were guilty, and if they sank, they were innocent. Go figure. My husband is related to one Edward Griswold, who sat on the jury in the Carrington trial. The Carringtons were a husband and wife. They were convicted of witchcraft, and executed. His family is still perfectly capable of that kind of behavior! :laugh: By the way, I loved the part in Monty Python where the supposed "witch" has a carrot tied on for a nose.
 
Useta and Briar, you got me interested, so I pulled out Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England: A Documentary History 1638-1693. Why I have this accessible, but not the Medieval stuff, I'll never know. But anyhow, it says this, "the clergy and the magistrates disapproved of certain kinds of evidence - for example, the 'swimming test' that was used in the Hartford witch-hunt of 1662-63."


For the Carringtons, it says, "Nothing is known of the circumstances that led to their executions." Does family lore give any other details, I wonder?


Did they build a bridge out of her? It's a fair cop . . .
 
Hi Blueheart. No one in his family knew about Edward Griswold. I found the story when I started working on his ancestry. The weird thing is that when I first saw his name, I felt a shiver of dislike. Then I read about the Carrington trial, and realized why! The record just says they "entertained the devil", and manipulated nature in an "unnatural" way. The strangest part of the story, is that two of the great- grandchildren of the Carringtons and Griswolds later married each other! Obviously, all my sympathy lies with the Carringtons.
 
Hi, have just managed to get back to this. Thanks to the replies. Love you all think I was a witch! LOL, need to speak to my family-they think it now!


The Sir Thomas was definately a Sir, I just didn't think he deserved to be one.There is no doubt he found "a reason" to have me finished with. This day and age it would be murder.


I have slighlty re thought the years being from the late 1400's onward. Probably Tudor to Elizabethan. I had thought earlier because I felt so young when they were arranging my marriage but the style of dress makes me think it was probably slightly later.


I think I was being found a good marriage, whether it was to elivate my status or my families I don't know.


The Salem bit I have found interesting in that it may be relevant in my American life. I've was really interested in that at school which has helped my dates in that life. I think I may have heard about it when it was happening or possibly lived in that area. This dream though I have never thought was any other than in England.


I'm sure I was executed, not sure how though. The coffin thing still gets me. Maybe they thought I was dead & I wasn't. When I saw the programme using weights as a method of execution it brought it back.


Not sure I'll ever find out who I was though. Somehow I don't think many other women may have come to similar ends for no real reason.
 
I met a similar fate, sometime towards the end of the medieval period. It was a scary time, you had to be careful of who you trusted and who you associated with. A lot of innocent people were killed or their lives ruined for political gains, but then again, I suppose that aspect of humanity hasn't changed, sadly.


I was a woman who basically, got thrown under the bus so to speak, and blamed for another's actions. I was considered disposable; he was not and so I was publicly executed. There were public executions of women back then, although they were not widely advertised. There are records of women in a similar situation as to what I'd been in, but no record if they were executed.


If you keep digging you may find little tidbits that tell one part of your story, or find that there are others like you, written out of the history books.
 
Those times middle or midevil,


where not a pleasent time anybody really.


Everybody seemed to marked for death


either by human hands or nature.
 
crystal_44 said:
It was a scary time, you had to be careful of who you trusted and who you associated with. A lot of innocent people were killed or their lives ruined for political gains, but then again, I suppose that aspect of humanity hasn't changed, sadly.
If you keep digging you may find little tidbits that tell one part of your story, or find that there are others like you, written out of the history books.
Click to expand...
I was involved in that also. The Salem witch trials were child's play compared to what was going on in Europe. The European witchhunts lasted a lot longer. History is written by the winners, and that wasn't us.
 
I don't know if many people realize it, (I know I didn't!) but the Carrington trial was in Connecticut, and was the first "witch trial" in North America. It was conducted considerably earlier than the events in Salem. My daughter and I wonder if the antipathy that exists between my husband's family and myself has something to do with the trial. I don't doubt that many forums members have been accused of witchcraft in the past, and have a mistrust of organized religion as a consequence.
 
I know I was a man during midieval times and the middle ages. Something about that time is truly depressing to me.
 
starrynight,


I feel like I have read the story you are trying to tell somewhere before. Have you looked at Anne Calthorpe? She was not executed. However, she was imprisoned in both the Tower and the Fleet in her lifetime, and must have spent many hours contemplating her probable end. Her husband did indeed want to get rid of her.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Calthorpe


This would be the Tudor era in England, by the way. Not the Middle Ages or Colonial America.


Thomas Wriothesley probably would have interrogated her in connection with Anne Askew. He worked for Cromwell, and was only made a "Sir" when Cromwell was made an Earl.
 
Hi, thanks for that Blueheart, no I hadn't heard of her but have done a google on her & Anne Askew.


It is a difficult one with not so much to go with. I was pretty sure I was in the tower, definately looking down on people as I awaited my fate. I remember shaking in fear from head to foot.


There isn't much info on women executed, except the really high profile ones who I've pretty much ruled out.


I've had a feeling I was in court at sometime during Henry VIII's reign & a dream, so this would go along with that. I am also pretty sure I had no blame, it was purely hearsay.


The only other thing I have to go on is that I was pretty young, twenties max.


The Thomas doesn't look disimilar from my dream. I'll keep googling & add any more I learn.
 
Hi Blueheart, thought I would update.


I have a room to sleep in at work, not a very big room. Recently I started to get the claustrophobic panicked feeling I had in this dream. I've never had it before & I've been sleeping there a couple of years now. I stayed with the moment & know it feel it could relate to this time. It could also explain suffering from claustrophoibia & a fear of being locked up (did think this might be from ww2 concentration camp also).


Only once have I been in a cabin on a ship & couldn't sleep a wink.


This could be a possibility.
 
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