A surfeit of lampreys – a true story or a myth?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Lampreys were considered a delicacy among most royal families and the nobility in medieval Britain. The tradition was for the people to present the monarch with a lamprey pie once a year. King Henry I (1068–1135) of England was known for his lust for eating lampreys and is reported to have died from a “surfeit of lampreys,” as the chronicle said. The information concerning this event is scarce, confined to only two sources, the chronicle of Henry of Huntingdon and the history of Roger of Wendover. Both write about Henry’s death, but only the former mentions its cause, albeit without many details. It remains a mystery then whether the king died from gluttony, or maybe from food poisoning or some other reason. The author of the article describes the circumstances of Henry’s death and presents the arguments to justify the probable cause of it. Medieval dietetics has been used as a springboard to writing about the importance of fish in the diet despite its unfavorable opinion in the light of the theory of humors. Fish were believed to predominate in cold and moist humors, which, in terms of humoral theory, is particularly dangerous to anyone in cold and moist seasons.