Name etched on a Suffolk church.
(Credit: The Norfolk and Suffolk Medieval Graffiti Survey, via History Extra)

In Kingston, a small village in rural Cambridgeshire, a stolid tenant farmer is wiping moist eyes. His three children had survived the 1507 outbreak of the ‘sweats;’ a sickness that could see you hale and hearty at lunchtime, and dead before supper. But by 1515 they succumbed to a particularly virulent outbreak of the bubonic plague. Having hastily buried them in unmarked graves, he is seeking a way to memorialize them. Without thinking, he fishes a knife from his pocket and neatly etches the names of his three dead children into the walls: Cateryn Maddyngley, Jane Maddyngley, and Amee Maddyngley.

Tagging and graffiti

Medieval Graffiti by Matthew Champion

When I was a young thing studying in Edinburgh, I watched with amusement our (older) best friend, Mike, rant against…