**"The detailed service records of 250,000 medieval soldiers - including archers who served with Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt - have gone online.
"The database of those who fought in the Hundred Years War reveals salaries, sickness records and who was knighted.
“The full profiles of soldiers from 1369 to 1453 will allow researchers to piece together details of their lives.”**
This is wonderful news and will be of interest to more than a few Dopers, I’m sure.
And of course, a link to the actual Medieval Soldier Database. Seems to need a bit more work, though.
It will take some more digging, but so far I’ve found 16 possible ancestors listed, based on their surname. Over the years, we’ve traced my direct line with that surname back to Queen Elizabeth I’s court. This is only 150-200 years or so behind that, and it’s conceivable that at least one of these guys is an ancestor.
Although my own surname is Germanic, it was only in the mid-18th century that the ancestor with the surname in question married my great-grandfather and gave me my Germanic one.