In 1398, King Richard II of England did something that astonished the cutthroat, blood-soaked world of medieval England: he stopped two noblemen from killing one another.
What happened in 1398 is that two noblemen, Thomas Mowbray and Henry Bolingbroke, came to Richard’s court and accused one another of treason. Richard tried to talk them down, but failed: They threw their gages (armored gloves) upon the ground and in the custom of the day the challenged one another to trial by combat as part of a code of honor.
According to both chronicles, the day of their battle was a grand affair, with some 10,000 knights on hand to keep the peace in case a fight broke out between the men’s factions.
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But what Cummins finds is that, “European nobility specialized in the execution of violence,” and that for the first 600 years of this period (that is, 800-1400), approximately 30% of male European nobles died of violence (warfare and combat). Beginning around that time, the lifespans of European nobles starts to climb — and the percentage of deaths by violence drops to around 5%.
