Medieval prisons

 We think of jails and prisons both as somewhere to lock up bad people so they won't do further harm and also as places of punishment, where someone who has committed something less than a totally heinous crime may "serve their time" and then emerge, considered properly punished.  Medieval prisons were somewhat different.

(In the US we draw a distinction between local "jails" and state or federal "prisons," which I'm not going to worry about here.  We don't really have "dungeons" anymore, a dark nasty place under a castle.)

A medieval person convicted of a crime would not be punished with "prison time."  Usually the punishment was a fine or, for serious crimes, hanging, though capital crimes (leading to the death penalty) were usually only tried by high courts, not by a local mayor's or manorial court.

Prisons were intended to hold people until whatever "happened next" might happen.  Someone awaiting a trial might be held in prison (as people still are if they can't make bail).  Since trials were extremely speedy by modern standards, this might just be a day or two.  Someone captured in battle might be imprisoned until his friends and family could pay a ransom.

Cruel castellan lords were routinely accused of capturing people and putting them in prison just because they felt like it.  Saints like Saint Foy of Conques was praised for freeing prisoners.  She would appear in a vision to someone unjustly held, telling them how to escape, or unlocking the door for them.  They were, unsurprisingly, highly grateful and would come to Conques, still wearing a chain or two, to thank the saint and get the chains cut off.  Her altar was surrounded with discarded chains.

Political prisoners were also imprisoned.  For example, King Henry I of England imprisoned his older brother, Robert Curthose, for the rest of his life, after defeating him in battle, for daring to think that he, rather than Henry, should be king of England.  King Henry II imprisoned his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, for a period for fomenting rebellion against him.

What were these prisons like?  Sometimes being in prison was more like house arrest.  Robert Curthose was not down with the ooze and the rats and could lead a comfortable life, as long as he got no ideas about leaving.  Political prisoners in the Tower of London had perfectly nice quarters.

But dungeons could be appalling, down under a castle.  Being underground, dungeons were wet and dark.  There were of course no sanitary facilities.  As well as being locked in, prisoners might be chained to the wall.  Food would be provided at times, but of course not fine dining (Robert Curthose did all right, but he wasn't down in a dungeon).

Sometimes prison cells had more light and air but came with their own problems. At Château Gaillard in Normandy, some French princesses were imprisoned at the end of the Middle Ages, accused of adultery.  As princesses they were not down in the dungeon. They had a cell high above the river, carved out of the cliff, with no furniture, and one side wide open, as seen here (the grill is modern, to protect tourists.)

When cold or rainy, the weather came right in.  Even worse, the floor slants ever so slightly.  At night, one would not dare fall asleep too deeply, for fear of rolling over and dropping through the opening.  (George Martin borrowed this idea for one of his books.)

© C. Dale Brittain 2023

For more on medieval law and justice and other aspects of medieval history, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms. Also available in paperback.