In theory medieval popes were based in Rome but in practice they travelled a great deal. In 1309 Pope Clement V moved to Avignon in the south of France to escape Rome’s political instability and the papacy settled there, building a magnificent palace which still survives. In 1377 Pope Gregory XI moved back to Rome and a rival pope was elected in Avignon, causing the Great Schism that lasted until 1417.

Pope Urban II’s sermon asking the European aristocracy to defend Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land marked the start of the First Crusade, which against all the odds resulted in the capture of Jerusalem by the crusaders in 1099. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem survived until 1291. The Peace of God movement was an early 11th-century religious movement that, like Urban II’s sermon, sought to reduce the amount of internal fighting among the aristocrats of Europe.

Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, or History of the Kings of Britain, first told Arthur’s story. Geoffrey claimed to have got his information from an ancient book in Welsh, but this does not survive. Gildas, writing close to Arthur’s time in the 6th century, does not mention him, and William of Newburgh, a historian writing later in the 12th century, accused Geoffrey of fabricating much of History of the Kings of Britain. Later, in the 1170s, Chretien de Troyes wrote the first stories set in Arthur’s world.

There are no records of births and deaths for this period, so it is very difficult to estimate the population of medieval England or the numbers killed by the Black Death. However, most estimates are around one third. Contemporaries across Europe noted it as a major catastrophe that had profound psychological, political and economic repercussions for the survivors.

The answer is all peasants must be given time off to attend church on Sundays. After a rebellion the English barons forced King John to agree to Magna Carta, the ‘Great Charter’, in 1215. John was an unpopular king, and the charter sought to end the abuses committed by his officials. It includes several clauses limiting the king’s powers, and many more aimed at particular abuses, including the removal of fish weirs on the Thames. However, it did not give peasants time off on Sundays.

The Pastons penned a number of letters between 1422 and 1509 as several generations of the family swapped news and advice between their estates in Norfolk and their business in London. Their letters form the largest surviving collection from medieval England, and tell us much about the lives of the gentry at the time, as well as about political events during the Wars of the Roses.

According to medieval church law from the 12th century onwards, a couple could marry simply by exchanging words of consent with one another: witnesses, priests, parental consent, and the exchange of gifts such as rings were customary, but not essential. This rule was designed to emphasize the importance of mutual consent as the key foundation of marriage, but it also led to numerous lawsuits when a person who had married one person without witnesses later married someone else.

Westminster Abbey was first built by Edward the Confessor, the last Anglo-Saxon king, but it was rebuilt in the 13th century by Henry III. It was an expensive project, but Westminster was an important site for the English kings, who had been crowned there since 1066. Henry was also a devout man who particularly revered Edward the Confessor (who had been canonized in 1161), and he built Edward a magnificent shrine in the abbey.

The answer is Lithuania. Missionaries had been visiting the Baltic states for centuries, and there had also been warfare between the Teutonic Knights and the pagan Lithuanian kings. The Scandinavian countries had officially converted much earlier: Norway in the 10th/11th centuries, and Iceland in around 1,000 AD.

Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Edward IV, was a widow who was not deemed to be Edward’s social equal, and when he married her rumours circulated that she and her mother, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, had bewitched him. Accusations of magic were relatively common during the Wars of the Roses, and an effective way of attacking political opponents. Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI, was also a highly controversial queen during the Wars of the Roses, but she was not accused of magic.