Boring History For Sleep By The Snoritorian
Oct 14, 2026 · 1 hr 56 min · 19 segments
One Night in a Medieval Brothel Would Be the End of You YouTube: / @Snoritorian Facebook: / https://www.facebook.com/Snoritorian/ Instagram: / https://www.instagram.com/snoritorian/ TikTok: /…
Let us begin with a date, because this time it is a remarkable one.
It is the beginning of July in the year 1450.
King Henry VI sits on the throne of England, a pious, gentle and deeply ineffective man.
His government is drowning in debt.
In May, the king's hated favourite, the Duke of Suffolk, was seized at sea and beheaded on the side of a small boat.
And now, out of Kent, thousands of angry men have marched on London, behind a mysterious leader who calls himself John Mortimer, though history will remember him as Jack Cade.
Where have the rebels made their headquarters? Southwark.
Their leader has taken up lodgings at the White Hart, one of the great coaching inns on Southwark's High Street.
Congratulations.
The air is warm and thick with the smells of summer in a medieval town.
River weed, wood smoke, horse dung, frying fat, and the sharp, sour tang of the tanners and brewers who work nearby.
Somewhere else, a great many men are singing, badly, about the wickedness of the king's counsellors.
Across the black water, the lights of the city wink behind their walls, and London Bridge, crowded with houses and shops, stretches across the river like a street that forgot to stop.
Before you is a row of whitewashed houses, with their gable ends turned towards the Thames, each with a painted sign hung out so that people on the water can find it.
One of the houses along here may already bear the sign of a Cardinal's hat, a name that will become famous in the decades to come.
Yours, tonight, shows a bell, or possibly an upturned bucket.
The paint has seen better decades.
You knock.
The door is opened by a broad, sunburnt woman with flour on her sleeves and suspicion in her eyes.
She looks you up and down at your strange shoes and your stranger haircut and decides, with visible effort, that you are probably harmless.
You'll be wanting the hall, she says and steps aside.
The hall is low, smoky and crowded.
Let us begin with a date, because this time it is a remarkable one.
It is the beginning of July in the year 1450.
King Henry VI sits on the throne of England, a pious, gentle and deeply ineffective man.
His government is drowning in debt.
In May, the king's hated favourite, the Duke of Suffolk, was seized at sea and beheaded on the side of a small boat.
And now, out of Kent, thousands of angry men have marched on London, behind a mysterious leader who calls himself John Mortimer, though history will remember him as Jack Cade.
Where have the rebels made their headquarters? Southwark.
Their leader has taken up lodgings at the White Hart, one of the great coaching inns on Southwark's High Street.
Congratulations.
The air is warm and thick with the smells of summer in a medieval town.
River weed, wood smoke, horse dung, frying fat, and the sharp, sour tang of the tanners and brewers who work nearby.
Somewhere else, a great many men are singing, badly, about the wickedness of the king's counsellors.
Across the black water, the lights of the city wink behind their walls, and London Bridge, crowded with houses and shops, stretches across the river like a street that forgot to stop.
Before you is a row of whitewashed houses, with their gable ends turned towards the Thames, each with a painted sign hung out so that people on the water can find it.
One of the houses along here may already bear the sign of a Cardinal's hat, a name that will become famous in the decades to come.
Yours, tonight, shows a bell, or possibly an upturned bucket.
The paint has seen better decades.
You knock.
The door is opened by a broad, sunburnt woman with flour on her sleeves and suspicion in her eyes.
She looks you up and down at your strange shoes and your stranger haircut and decides, with visible effort, that you are probably harmless.
You'll be wanting the hall, she says and steps aside.
The hall is low, smoky and crowded.
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