Richard III is not the point of this course...

Richard III was King of England for only two years. So the Future Learn course England in the Time of Richard III is able to give an amazingly detailed overview of what one country looked like in a brief snapshot of time.

I'm almost done with this course. It's six weeks long (drawn out to eight by the inclusion of end of year holidays), and I have two weeks left. Not to fear, however. These courses cycle back around, and it's slated to come back in mid-2014, so if you've got a yen to look at something historical, this is not a bad starting point.

I do a fair amount of reenacting through the Society for Creative Anachronism (http://www.sca.org/), so this was a very useful course for my situation. We began by looking at battles and the War of the Roses (Richard III died at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485). We touched on the prevalence of reenacting within the same week. We then went on to look at the economy of the time, getting an overview of the peasant population, which was still recovering from the effects of massive population decrease due to the plague. This was a time of massive change, with entire villages being left abandoned and people moving around in search of better wages. This was the time of enclosure of fields, the end of servile tenure, and uprisings.

Week three looked at books and literature. Wanting very much to dip my toes into transcribing medieval texts into modern English for recipe redactions etc., I found this to be an interesting subject, as parts of this section focussed on what some of the unusual marks were that occur in medieval text. I also have an interest in typesetting which has sprung from my job as copy editor, so this section tickled me in the right spots.

Week four looked at death: the common theological practices and beliefs, life expectancy, wills and burials.

And now I'm at week seven, weeks five and six being the Christmas/New Years break. This week looks at food, so I'm really looking forward to it. They've started us off early on with a quiz to determine if we know what foods they had available at the time. Rice vs turkey, chili vs sugar, almonds vs potatoes, oranges vs coffee. I was able to get all four questions right first time, basing my responses entirely on prior knowledge.

What about you? Do you know what foods were available in the late 15th Century? You may find yourself surprised at what you find.