1) Last night, I was watching part 1 of 3 of History T.V's new series about Henry VIII, which made the point that Henry's mother, Elizabeth of York, was 5'11", and her father was 6'4" or more (that's almost 2metres tall). They made the point that the aristocracy in the 15/16th century had a meat-rich diet, rather like the North American diet of today which accounted for such 'gigantism.' (that's not to say, however, that all the royal household were as tall as that!)Now, it struck me at the time, that the diet of Jane Austen's family was meat-rich, too.

Having said that, there's a pelisse in Chawton that was supposed to have been hers....if so, it wasn't any taller or smaller than I would expect for today, though she was rather thin.

2) There's a conversation about the Duke of Wellington's height in the old archives. I think we established that he was 'of medium height' and was about 5'9"