Sansom's Revelation and Fool's Day in England

April Fool's Day has existed since the Middle Ages. It's questionable when it actually started, but somewhere between the 14th and 16th century people started playing practical jokes annually.

I can only confirm the date for the 17th century (1698). The origin of April 1st as the chosen date is just as obscure as the custom itself.

Edited by caldrail - 22 Oct 2020 at 07:21

I am not quite sure of what you are saying.  Is the problem a matter of pranks occurring on Sunday?  Or are you somehow saying it was not properly verified by Sansom?  Perhaps you feel that he cut corners on his homework?  If so, I would attribute it to artistic license of someone writing fiction.  Again, I am not sure what your difficulty is, maybe if I understood it, it might bother me too.

Well, as I said earlier, Sansom holds a PhD in history, so his view of history of 16th century must be informative.  I have actually screenshotted some pages from his books, which seem to contain some historic data which I find rather interesting. For instance, Sansom mentions that England used to host about 200 monasteries under Henry the 8th. He also mentions that London's population was about 60 thousand people. Surely, I do realize that any facts cited from fiction books need a proper verification  

Sewer system?

The Church was a major landowner and sponsor of rural industry during the Middle Ages. Indeed, but for Henry VIII, we might have had a religiously sponsored industrial revolution at least a century before commericial entrepeneurs got there. The foundations were already in place with at least one monastery making bells in a primitive industrial process.