Lumberjills: The Women Who Went to War in Britain’s Forests

By Joanna Foat, novelist, historian and expert on the Women’s Timber Corps 

Summer 1940. As bombs fell over London, another battle was raging deep within Britain’s forests. A war few men believed women were strong enough to fight... 

But those men had never met the World War II women known as the Lumberjills before! I discovered these were incredibly inspiring, strong women from history. 

Lumberjills moving a tree. Photo: Doris Youde (nee Stanyon)

While working for the Forestry Commission years ago, I heard rumours of a forgotten army of women who had served in Britain’s forests during the Second World War. There had been as many as fifteen thousand—so how had I never heard of the Women’s Timber Corps? 

The Lumberjills were barely mentioned in history books or online, and few people had ever heard of them. Only one sample folder relating to the Women’s Timber Corps survived in The National Archives; the rest of its records had been destroyed. 

My father had given me an axe for Christmas when I was younger, as I loved chopping wood for the fire. I thought, if I had I been born just fifty years earlier, maybe I would have been a Lumberjill. I was determined to uncover their coming of age story, so I travelled the country to interview more than sixty former Lumberjills. 

Through their own words, I discovered the vital and dangerous work they had performed for Britain in the Second World War—and the laughter, friendships, prejudice and hardships that shaped their lives.

Crosscutting with bushman saw in woods. Photo: Doris Youde (née Stanyon). 

Britain’s Urgent Need For Timber 

In 1939, Britain was the largest importer of timber in the world, with 96 per cent of its wood coming from overseas. Only four per cent was home-grown, and there were just 14,000 men working in forestry. Wood was essential to the war effort. Millions of tonnes were needed for pit props to keep coal mines operating, as well as for railway sleepers, telegraph poles, aircraft, ammunition boxes, rifle butts and countless other military uses. 

Yet many male workers had been called up to fight, creating a desperate shortage of labour. At first, the government resisted employing women. They were regarded as the “fairer sex”, incapable of coping with the physical demands of forestry. Officials looked instead to male prisoners, dockyard workers, students and even schoolboys. Meanwhile, women were waiting to "do their bit" for the war like their brothers. 

Before the war, they were domestic servants, shop assistants, secretaries and factory workers. Dorothy, a hairdresser from Derbyshire, could not have imagined how dramatically her life would change. She literally swapped her scissors and comb for an axe and crosscut saw.

 

Lumberjill Marion King felling a tree

Initially, the women were ridiculed and regarded as more ornamental than useful. Yet, with blistered hands and aching muscles, they learned to fell trees, strip branches, operate sawmills, calculate timber measurements, drive tractors and haul enormous loads. 

They carried logs like weightlifters, rode on top of timber lorries as they travelled through the forests and shattered deeply rooted assumptions about what women were capable of. 

Lumberjill Jessie MacLean remembered: “How often, when travelling about, were we asked by members of various military units, ‘What regiment are you in?’ We…went on to try to explain our work: felling, snedding, peeling—oh, the pain!—saw bench, stacking, horses and tractors. They didn’t believe any of this.” 

One sailor listened in amazement before concluding: “Oh, you work for Bryant and May then, making matches.” “Talk about the hackles rising,” Jessie recalled. 

Pulling off the resaw bench. Photo: Doris Youde (née Stanyon)

Training the Lumberjills 

The Women’s Timber Corps was officially established in England in April 1942. Every month hundreds of recruits were sent to forestry training centres, including Culford near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk and the Royal Ordnance Factory hostel near Wetherby in Yorkshire. 

Heather Rumsby wrote to her parents about her first twenty-four hours at Wetherby: “There seems to be an overwhelming amount to tell you! We are waiting in our bedroom clad in vest and pants for a medical inspection. It’s just like getting into the army—we even had to give our next of kin.” 

The women generally received four to six weeks of training, learning to wield axes and crosscut saws, work with horses, operate dangerous sawmills and handle timber haulage. 

But many learnt on the job with little guidance. Margaret Finch was working at Epping Green in Hertfordshire when her foreman arrived with a fifty-five-foot articulated lorry. He gave her the keys and told her to deliver a load of trees to Welwyn Garden City railway station, seven miles away. 

Margaret’s felling partner, Jean, could not ride a bicycle, while Margaret knew nothing about cars or lorries. Nevertheless, because she could ride a bicycle, she was elected driver. Neither woman knew what the gear stick was for. 

They made it to Welwyn Garden City, where a policeman stepped into the road and informed them they were travelling the wrong way along a one-way street. He told them to reverse to the turning. 

“We looked at each other and laughed,” Margaret recalled, “and then said, ‘We don’t know how to reverse; we only know how to go forward.’” 

Tractor driver hauling tree. Photo: Doris Youde (née Stanyon)

The Forgotten Army 

The Lumberjills proved they could do exactly the same jobs as the men, but their service was not equally valued. They endured prejudice, lower wages and suspicion, and when the war ended they received no medals, grants or gratuities. They were not even allowed to take part in Remembrance Day parades. 

Lumberjill Audrey Broad told me: “It was only years later that I began to realise that we were not appreciated for what we had done. We should have got some recognition. We didn’t get any money. We weren’t even allowed to keep our uniforms. I thought that was dreadful.” 

Almost every Lumberjill I met spoke of the hurt caused by this lack of recognition. They had supplied essential timber, undertaken dangerous work and challenged society’s expectations of women, yet their contribution had been ignored. 

I became determined to give them a voice and ensure their stories were preserved for future generations. I first wrote the non-fiction history book Lumberjills: Britain’s Forgotten Army, using the women’s own words. Since then, I have continued sharing their experiences through talks, exhibitions, national commemorations—including the VE Day 80 celebrations at the Royal Albert Hall—and my historical fiction series, The Lumberjills. 

Non-fiction: Lumberjills Britain's Forgotten Army 

From Real Lives to Fiction

One of the first women I interviewed was Eileen Mark, née Worsell. Eileen grew up in Hackney and worked in a glass factory making baby bottles and poison bottles before joining the Women’s Timber Corps. 

She was full of life and a sense of adventure. “I was always up for a laugh,” she told me, “and if anyone was going to get into trouble, it would be me.” 

After meeting her, I remember thinking that the Lumberjills’ experiences would make an incredible film or television series. A screenwriter suggested I write a novel first—so I did. 

Eileen became the inspiration for Rosie, my seventeen-year-old Cockney character. I gave Rosie the surname Worsell because I wanted readers to know that, although fictional, she was rooted in the life of a real Lumberjill. 

Many of Eileen’s stories found their way into the novels. One time after stacking pit props beside a road, she discovered that they had mysteriously disappeared. Furious, she marched into a nearby anti-aircraft camp and demanded an explanation. The soldiers admitted burning the wood on a campfire. 

Their sergeant apologised, offered Eileen tea and cake and introduced himself as Wally. He later became her husband, and they were married for fifty-four years. 

Lumberjill Eileen Mark (nee Worsell) 

Stories such as this showed me that the Lumberjills’ lives contained not only hardship, but humour, friendship, courage and unexpected romance. 

My central characters allowed me to explore the wartime experiences and coming of age for women from different backgrounds. Alongside Rosie, who is from London, Keeva O’Connor is a wild child brought up with the freedom of living in the countryside. While Beatrice is a debutante with a privileged upbringing. Each one has their secrets, upsets and has a lot to discover from their fellow Lumberjills. 

They come from different backgrounds, but wartime forestry brings their lives together as it did for the real Lumberjills. Through their friendships, disagreements, loyalties and secrets, I could explore how women who might never have met in peacetime learned to understand, depend upon one another and become great friends. 

The novels are inspired by real events and women, but fiction enables me to go beyond. It allows me to feel the vibration of a crosscut saw, hear an approaching enemy aircraft or follow a young woman’s thoughts as she realises she is capable of far more than she has been taught to believe.

Novel: There Lumberjills Under Suspicion 

Under Suspicion

During my research, I discovered that prejudice, suspicion and mistrust recurred throughout the women’s stories. Their physical work was difficult enough, but this emotional pressure could make it harder still. 

There were numerous accounts of Lumberjills being reported to the police for “behaving suspiciously” in the woods. Sylvia Evans, whose photograph appears on the cover of my history book, was arrested simply for waiting at a bus stop. Her son told me that she was tall and blonde and wore jodhpurs, so the police thought she looked German. She spent the night in a cell before being released. 

The women were not always greeted warmly in the communities where they were posted. Lumberjill Barbara Beddow recalled that local people regarded them as “a bit wild and too free”. They had left home, travelled independently and earned their own wages—freedoms many young women had never experienced. Their independence challenged expectations, and that tension became central to my second novel, The Lumberjills: Under Suspicion. 

I wanted to show that the greatest obstacles were not always the trees they had to fell, but the attitudes they confronted every day. 

Novel: The Lumberjills Stronger Together 

Stronger Together 

Resilience, friendship and courage run through the real women’s stories and my fictional characters’ lives. Many Lumberjills formed friendships that lasted for the rest of their lives. 

Jessie MacLean said: “The Women’s Timber Corps helped me to discover my love of travelling, as well as being responsible for a very great happiness in my life, then and now. True friends, we shared joys and sorrows and helped one another through difficult times. I would not have changed anything. Heart breaking to leave.” 

Their story still matters today. Women’s choices continue to be narrowed by unconscious bias, family expectations, peer pressure and assumptions within education and the workplace. The Lumberjills demonstrate what can happen when women are given opportunities beyond the conventional paths laid out for them. 

They also show the importance of female solidarity. Confronted by prejudice, harassment and danger, the women defended and encouraged one another. They became stronger by working together and standing up for one another. 

The Lumberjills have made me laugh and cry. They have inspired me and become my role models. Whenever life has felt difficult, writing about them has made me feel strong again—as though they were beside me in spirit, keeping me going. I hope other women will draw strength from them too. 

The Lumberjills: Under Suspicion 

Four women. One war. A forest full of secrets. 

In the villages, trust is fragile, doors slam in their faces and suspicion grows. Romance kindles, rumours spread and friendships are tested. When the Lumberjills are accused of espionage, can Keeva uncover the truth before prejudice tears their tender bonds of sisterhood apart? 

Inspired by true events, this is the latest novel by Joanna Foat. A gripping story of resilience, friendship and love, bringing to life the forgotten story of the Lumberjills in World War Two. 

Author, Joanna Foat 

About the author Joanna Foat is a novelist, historian and one of Britain’s leading experts on the Women’s Timber Corps. She interviewed more than sixty former Lumberjills for her non-fiction history, Lumberjills: Britain’s Forgotten Army, published The Lumberjills photobook and has spent over a decade preserving and sharing their stories. 

She is the author of The Lumberjills: Stronger Together and The Lumberjills: Under Suspicion, the first two novels in a planned trilogy. Joanna has presented the Lumberjills’ story through more than 250 public talks, television and radio appearances, exhibitions created with Forestry England and the VE Day 80 celebrations at the Royal Albert Hall. 

Find out more at www.thelumberjills.uk.

Descended from Woden: Why Anglo-Saxon Kings Claimed a Pagan God as Their Ancestor

By Calogero Nicosia

In the early eighth century, a Northumbrian monk sat down to write the history of the English Church. Bede was a careful scholar and a devout Christian, and his Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731) is the story of how the English turned from idols to Christ. Yet in the first book, when he introduces Hengist and Horsa, the two brothers said to have led the first Germanic settlers into Britain, he gives them a family tree. They were, he writes, the sons of Wihtgils, son of Witta, son of Wecta, son of Woden; and from Woden's stock, Bede adds, the royal families of many provinces took their origin (Ecclesiastical History I.15).

Woden was the chief god of the pagan English, the god whose name survives in our Wednesday (Old English Wōdnesdæg, "Woden's day"). A Christian monk was telling his readers, without apology, that the kings of England descended from him. He was not alone. For the next three centuries, English scribes went on copying royal pedigrees that ran back to Woden, and some of them went further still.

A god at the top of every tree

Bede's remark was not a passing curiosity. In Book II he gives the descent of the kings of Kent: Æthelberht, the first English king to accept Christianity, was the son of Irminric, son of Octa, son of Oeric, called Oisc, after whom the kings of Kent were known as Oiscings; and Oeric was the son of Hengist (Ecclesiastical History II.5). Put the two passages together, and the first Christian king in England stands eight generations below a pagan god.

The fullest evidence comes from a set of lists that historians call the Anglian Collection. It survives in four manuscripts, the oldest of which, now in the British Library (Cotton Vespasian B. vi), was written in Mercia in the first years of the ninth century. David Dumville, who edited the collection in 1976, traced its lost common source to Mercia around 796. It sets out the pedigrees of six royal houses: Deira and Bernicia (the two halves of Northumbria), Mercia, Lindsey, Kent and East Anglia. Every one of them ends in Woden.

The names below Woden differ from kingdom to kingdom. Kent descends through Wecta, as in Bede. Deira descends through Wægdæg, Bernicia through Bældæg, Lindsey through Winta. The Mercian line, which included the great Offa (d. 796), passes through an older Offa, a hero of Old English poetry who ruled the ancient kingdom of Angel, and his father Wermund, who reappears in medieval Danish histories. The East Anglian line, the dynasty of the Wuffings to which Rædwald belonged (the king usually linked to the Sutton Hoo ship burial), runs back through a figure called Caser, that is, Caesar, before reaching Woden.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, begun in Wessex in the reign of Alfred the Great, does the same for the West Saxon kings. Cerdic, the founder of the dynasty, is given a line of ancestors ending in Bældæg, son of Woden. Woden himself appears in the landscape the Chronicle describes: battles were fought in 592 and 715 at Wodnesbeorg, "Woden's barrow", usually identified with the long barrow in Wiltshire now called Adam's Grave. Not far away runs the great earthwork of Wansdyke, "Woden's dyke".

Of the surviving pedigrees, only one breaks the pattern. The kings of Essex traced themselves to Seaxnēat, not to Woden; it was a twelfth-century chronicle that finally made Seaxnēat a son of Woden.

Why keep a pagan god?

The obvious question is why Christian kings, and the monks who wrote for them, held on to such an ancestor.

Part of the answer is that a shared ancestor was useful. If every royal house descended from Woden, then every royal house was of one blood, and only those houses were truly royal. A king without Woden in his pedigree was a king with something to explain. Scholars such as Kenneth Sisam and David Dumville have shown how these lists were edited, extended and borrowed between kingdoms as political fortunes changed. They were not neutral records of memory; they were arguments about who had the right to rule.

The other part of the answer lies in how medieval Christians explained the old gods. A widespread idea, which goes back to the Greek writer Euhemerus, held that pagan gods had once been famous men, later worshipped by people who did not know better. On that view there was nothing shameful in descending from Woden. He had been a powerful king; the sin lay with those who had prayed to him.

Some English writers said so plainly. Æthelweard, an ealdorman who translated the Chronicle into Latin late in the tenth century, describes Woden as a king of a great host of barbarians, and complains that the unbelieving Danes, Northmen and Swedes still worship him as a god. Asser, Alfred's Welsh biographer, writing in 893, notes of Geat, one of the names above Woden in the West Saxon line, that the pagans had long venerated him as a god. Asser does not comment further, and Æthelweard's answer is clear enough: Woden had been a king whom pagans wrongly worshipped. Neither writer saw any reason to remove these men from the king's family tree.

Born in Noah's ark

In Wessex, the pedigree kept growing. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in its entry on King Æthelwulf, Alfred's father, sets out his descent in full. It climbs past Woden through Frealaf (or Frithuwald, in some copies), Finn, Godwulf, Geat, Tætwa, Beaw, Sceldwea and others, to a figure named Sceaf, "that is, the son of Noah, who was born in Noah's ark" (in James Ingram's translation). From there it runs through the patriarchs of Genesis to Adam, "the first man, and our Father, that is, Christ".

This is the most revealing step of all. The scribes did not cut Woden out. They placed him in the middle of a much longer line that began with Adam and passed through Noah, so that the West Saxon kings were tied at once to the heroes of the north and to the history of salvation. Several of the names above Woden, Sceldwea and Beaw among them, belong to the same legendary world as the Old English poem Beowulf, which opens with the story of Scyld Scefing. The genealogy took the old northern legends and folded them into the Bible.

Snorri runs it in reverse

The idea travelled. Around 1220, the Icelandic writer Snorri Sturluson, or whoever wrote the prologue to his Edda, faced the same problem from the other side. He loved the old poems about Odin, the Norse form of Woden, and he wanted to preserve them for Christian readers. His solution was to make Odin a man. In the Prologue, Odin is a ruler who leaves "Tyrkland", the land in which Troy stood, and travels north with his people, who are called the Æsir because they are men of Asia. He comes to "Saxland" and sets his sons up as kings: Vegdeg, Beldeg (whom the Prologue identifies with Baldr) and Sigi in Saxland and the land of the Franks, Skjöldr in Jutland, Yngvi in Sweden and Sæmingr in Norway.

The names give the source away. Vegdeg and Beldeg are the English Wægdæg and Bældæg. The Prologue's list of Odin's ancestors (Seskef, Bedvig, Athra, Ítermann, Heremód, Skjaldun, Bjáf, Ját, Guðólfr, Finn, Fríallaf) is recognisably the West Saxon line above Woden, run through Norse mouths. The debt to English tradition is clear, and Anthony Faulkes has argued that the author worked from genealogical notes derived from English sources.

So the same family tree served two purposes. In England, it turned a god into a royal ancestor. In Iceland, it turned a god into a migrating king, so that his myths could be read as history rather than as religion. In both cases a Christian writer kept Woden, or Odin, because he could not do without him.

What the pedigrees tell us

None of this proves that a man called Woden ever lived, or that Hengist was his great-great-grandson. The lists are literary and political creations, revised whenever a dynasty needed a new claim. What they do show is how slowly the old gods left English memory. Two centuries after the conversion, the kings of England still wanted Woden at the head of their line. They made room for him by calling him a man, and when that was not enough, they set him beneath Noah and Adam.

The pagan English left us almost nothing in their own words about Woden. Their Christian descendants, by refusing to let go of him, left us a great deal.

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Sources quoted: Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People I.15 and II.5; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, annals for 592, 715 and the genealogy of Æthelwulf (entry for 855, numbered 854 in some editions); Asser, Life of King Alfred, ch. 1; Æthelweard, Chronicon; Snorri Sturluson, Edda, Prologue. Further reading: Kenneth Sisam, "Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies", Proceedings of the British Academy 39 (1953); David Dumville, "The Anglian Collection of Royal Genealogies and Regnal Lists", Anglo-Saxon England 5 (1976); Anthony Faulkes (ed.), Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning (Oxford, 1982).

About the author: Calogero Nicosia writes Mythic Harmonies, an evidence-based Norse mythology blog that quotes the Eddas and sagas passage by passage and separates the sources from modern interpretation. His guide to Odin, the Norse counterpart of Woden, is at https://www.mythic-harmonies.com/norse-mythology/odin-allfather/ 

In Search of Northanger Abbey: Farleigh Hungerford Castle

By Nancy Bilyeau

Jane Austen is revered for the characters she created, for her wit, and for how she fuses an acerbic, unblinking view of human nature with deep stores of empathy.  I believe that, among her arsenal of gifts, also lies a talent for writing "place." Austen mixed descriptions of her most iconic creations—Pemberley, Mansfield Park, Kellynch Hall—with those of "real" places she visited and knew well, from London's West End to Lyme Regis to Bath.

When it comes to Northanger Abbey, that talent is on full display. As in Persuasion, Austen brings Bath vividly to life. She also creates an imposing country house in Northanger Abbey, the manor house of the Tilney family located in Gloucestershire.

When reading the novel closely — and writing my sequel, The Heiress of Northanger Abbey — I admired the evocative, if not precise, description of Northanger Abbey, a product of Austen's imagination. The novel tells us it was once an abbey for nuns. Based on the usual trajectory, we can assume that, after Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries, the abbey was closed to religious life. Maybe the nuns received adequate pensions, or perhaps they starved. But as for the building itself, it's logical to think it was sold to a courtier friendly to King Henry or Thomas Cromwell.  

In Austen's novel, the Tilney family did not enter into it until much later, perhaps two centuries later. In the early18th century, a Tilney purchased the manor house and modernized it: Northanger Abbey was a massive quadrangle that retains its Gothic arches and heavy stone walls. But in the story, General Tilney, the family patriarch, is proud of the "modern" kitchen he installed. The house also features smooth parquet floors, modern sash windows, elegant carpets, and "Rumford" fireplaces, invented in the 1790s. The house has a modern "bell system," General Tilney's pride and joy.

So we know that Northanger Abbey has been made comfortable and stylish in line with Regency ideals.

What a disappointment for Catherine Morland, the novel's heroine! She was thrilled to receive an invitation to Northanger Abbey, not only because it's the home of Henry Tilney, whom she is falling in love with, but because abbeys are supposed to be spooky ruins, filled with dark, dusty corridors, secret passageways, and cobwebs. This belief supposedly stems from Catherine's passion for Gothic literature.

I'd like to pause here and say that Catherine Morland is not the only one who lets her Gothic imagination run away with her. Here are four different book covers of Northanger Abbey, two of which seem to be fairly accurate renditions of the house in the novel; one is more like Dracula's castle, hanging off a cliff; and one is such a fragile ruin that nobody could spend the night there, much less live there!

But to the point of this column, I was curious about why Catherine is so convinced that Northanger Abbey will be a shabby ruin and a place filled with frightening and dangerous possibilities. The other characters attribute it to her fixation on Gothic novels. When Jane Austen wrote this novel, Sir Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto and Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho were popular, along with many imitators. But in those books, the castles are in Europe, and the stories are from the past. Catherine is seventeen and naive, but would she really expect Northanger Abbey to resemble an Italian castle from centuries ago, as described in a clearly fictional tale?

I wondered whether this belief was more common in the 1790s, when Northanger Abbey was written, than we might assume. Did people in the Regency have ideas similar to Catherine Morland's about English castle ruins and former abbeys as repositories of fear and violence, independent of fashionable Gothic fiction? 

I believe the answer is yes, and one such place that may have inspired the darker possibilities of an old castle or abbey is Farleigh Hungerford Castle.

"A Place of Solemn and Romantic Solitude"

Farleigh Hungerford Castle is today a ruin on a hillside, overlooking the rolling Somerset countryside. Owned by English Heritage, it is a much-visited site. Parts of the complex remain roofed and structurally intact, though no one has lived there for centuries, apart from the Priest’s House in the Outer Court, which was repurposed into a tenant farmhouse and was continuously occupied by farm managers into the mid-20th century.

Eastern gatehouse of Farleigh Hungerford Castle. Source: Wikipedia.

The original property was a manor house built before the Norman Conquest, as William the Conqueror gave it to a Norman "companion," Roger de Courcelles, in the 11th century. It passed between various owners until the Hungerford family took over in the 14th century and built a massive quadrangle castle on the site.

I knew of the Hungerfords because, while writing my Joanna Stafford trilogy set in Tudor England, I stumbled upon the bizarre life of Sir Walter Hungerford in my research. It's little known that Cromwell did not die alone--he was executed on Tower Hill after Hungerford, convicted of "high treason, sorcery, and buggery." 

Sir Walter Hungerford seems to have gone insane while imprisoned in the Tower of London, much like Jane Boleyn did two years later. An observer said that on execution day Hungerford "seemed so unquiet that many judged him rather in a frenzy than otherwise." In fact, one report says that Cromwell tried to steady Hungerford, saying, "There is no cause for you to fear. If you repent and be heartily sorry for what you have done, there is for you mercy enough for the Lord, who for Christ's sake will forgive you. Therefore be not dismayed, and though the breakfast we are going to be sharp, yet, trusting in the mercy of the Lord, we shall have a joyous dinner."

What gives Hungerford even more fame than his death — and provides fodder for stories told centuries later — is his treatment of his wives. James Tunstall, in a 19th-century guidebook, identified Hungerford as “something of a Bluebeard.” Three wives in succession complained of his cruel treatment. He imprisoned his third wife, Elizabeth, in the castle for nearly four years and frequently attempted to poison her. She is said to have survived only by drinking her own urine and eating food secretly supplied by local women.

After Cromwell's arrest, among all the letters found was one by Elizabeth accusing Lord Hungerford:

"Here I have been for three or four years past, without comfort of any creature, and under custody of my lord's chaplain, which hath once or twice poisoned me, as he will not deny under examination. He hath promised my lord that he 'would soon rid him of me,' and I am sure he intendeth to keep his promise."

(In case you're wondering, Elizabeth Hungerford survived her husband and remarried.)

The Hungerfords held Farleigh Hungerford Castle for another century, though the family remained problematic. According to the English Heritage site for the castle, Sir Edward Hungerford was known as "the Spendthrift," legendary both for his extravagance – allegedly paying 500 guineas for a wig – and for his debts. He sold the castle in 1686 to the Baynton family, who lived there until about 1702.

A watercolor sketch of the castle from the early 18th century

The once-proud medieval stronghold was sold for salvage in 1705. Over the following decades, the castle was systematically plundered for its materials and fittings.

In the 18th century, as it continued to fall apart, Farleigh Hungerford Castle became a popular place to visit. It was seen as noteworthy for “its antiquity, its importance, and the beautiful romantic scenery with which it is encompassed."

John Collinson, in The History and Antiquities of the County of Somerset, published in 1791, wrote:

"The remains of this castle stand in one of the most rural and picturesque spots within a wide radius of Bath... [The site] displays a scene of fallen grandeur, where overgrown towers and ivy-bound walls awaken the mingled sentiments of pleasure and melancholy."

Did Jane Austen Visit the Castle?

The key to this question is Collinson's writing that Farleigh Hungerford stood "within a wide radius of Bath." It was seven miles away. Jane Austen lived in Bath during two periods of her life. According to Professor Janine Barchas,  "Farleigh (or Farley) Hungerford Castle features prominently in a Bath guidebook owned by the Austen family."

So we have no proof of an Austen visit, but it seems very possible, even likely. If she and her family had gone day-tripping, they would have heard the story of the "Lady Tower," where Lady Elizabeth was said to have been confined by her husband.

The Lady Tower, where Elizabeth Hungerford was allegedly kept prisoner

In the plot of Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morland becomes fixated on stories about the dead mother of Henry Tilney. Her rooms in the abbey are kept separate, and Eleanor, Henry's sister, is very upset that her mother died while she was away. Catherine begins to wonder if there is something cruel about General Tilney, the dominating father of the family, and whether his wife was confined to her room or even if she died of natural causes.

Catherine cannot resist exploring the dead mother's room. While snooping, she is caught by a surprised Henry Tilney. She eventually explains that she feared his father "had not been very fond of" the late Mrs. Tilney.

Henry scolds her for her suspicions. The death was of a "malady," and the General's "value of her was sincere."

Embarrassed, Catherine flees the room in tears.

However, and Austen scholars find this interesting, Henry does tell Catherine that his mother "had much to bear" from General Tilney. And Catherine herself is mistreated when the General, who mistakenly thinks she is an heiress, orders her put out of the house when he discovers she is not.

Is General Tilney a "Bluebeard" guilty of imprisoning wives in his crumbling castle and trying to poison at least one? No. But he is not an admirable man either. 

These complexities are part of what makes Northanger Abbey, and Jane Austen's other novels, so cherished.

This is the first part in a series of articles I am writing about the inspiration for Northanger Abbey, the place.

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Learn more:

The Real Bluebeard of Bath:A Historical Model for Northanger Abbey, written by Professor Janine Barchas

The Thing About Austen podcast: General Tilney's bell system and other Northanger episodes

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The Heiress of Northanger Abbey will be published on September 1st in paperback, hardcover, and ebook. Real Simple magazine put the novel on its list of "Perfect Fall Reads," saying, “You’ll get a touch of that Austen spirit, with a Gothic mystery mixed in.”

"A thrilling mystery for everyone who wishes the Abbey really did have deep Gothic secrets--including some more dangerous than Catherine Morland ever dreamed!" -- Claudia Gray, NYT bestselling author of the Mr. Darcy and Miss Tilney series

To learn more, go to Nancy Bilyeau's website.

William Caxton: The Man who brought Printing to England

 by Toni Mount

When you think about the printing press, you might picture Gutenberg, or maybe the rise of books in the Renaissance. But did you know that the story of printing in England has its own legendary figure? Meet William Caxton, the fellow who introduced the printing press to England and helped make books more accessible for everyone.

"William Caxton showing specimens of his printing to King Edward IV and his Queen"

Engraving published in The Graphic in 1877

Who was William Caxton?

William Caxton was born around 1422 in Kent, England, in an area known as the Weald. The Weald was a vast area of forest, scrub and pasture with few settlements and no towns. The main occupations were iron mining and smelting, the production of charcoal and animal husbandry, especially rearing pigs which could forage in the woods.

According to Caxton, he and the locals spoke English which was ‘broad and rude’ and hardly understood by outsiders. Although Caxton never tells us about his parents, there must have been money enough to pay for schooling and to afford to buy young William an apprenticeship with a wealthy London mercer, Robert Large, by 1438. For his son to serve an apprenticeship with Large – Lord Mayor of London in 1439-40 – William’s father must have had impressive connections in the city and, although there is no certainty, Stevyn Causton (a variant spelling of Caxton) seems a probable contender. Stevyn was a contemporary of and fellow mercer with Large. It was common practice for mercers to take on the sons of their fellows as apprentices and if Stevyn was prosperous and successful, he would probably have owned a town house in London and possibly a country retreat in Kent. Was that how William came to be born in rustic Kent and maybe spent his early years there, learning his English from a local woman who served as his wet nurse? This would fit the few facts that we know but is unlikely ever to be confirmed beyond doubt.

In 1441, Robert Large died, leaving his wife, Joanna, to continue the business and train the apprentices, including Caxton. In his will, Large made numerous sizable bequests which included leaving considerable sums to each of his eight apprentices. Caxton, as one of the two youngest trainees received a very generous 20 marks. Around the time of his master’s death, perhaps under instruction from the widowed Joanna, Caxton appears to have been working in Bruges, in Flanders (modern day Belgium) but quite what he was doing there is unclear. It isn’t certain if he’d completed his apprenticeship or not but he would spend perhaps three decades there, in the Low Countries (now the Netherlands), with occasional visits back to London.     

How did Caxton become a printer?

Mercers did not only trade in cloth and textiles – known as ‘mercery’. They bought and sold other high status goods and, like his master, Robert Large before him, there is evidence that Caxton was building up a market for illuminated manuscripts for which Bruges was a famous centre of production. King Henry VI of England and other noblemen bought many Bruges books, the king’s uncle, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, in particular, created a considerable library for the time so there was no shortage of wealthy English customers to buy the exquisite books, each one unique.

But these hand-written and illustrated books took a great many man-hours to create a single volume and, at the time, the printing revolution was already underway in Europe, enabling books to be produced faster than ever before. It was most likely during the eighteen months Caxton spent in Cologne, Germany, from July 1471 to the end of 1472, that he became familiar with the process of printing. Cologne was particularly welcoming to English merchants and was rapidly becoming a major centre of printing whereas England was lagging behind with this new technology.

Why is Caxton important?

After seeing the power of the press firsthand and studying the methods of using it, Caxton decided to introduce this revolutionary new contraption back home and, in 1476, he set up his own printing press in London at the Sign of the Red Pale at the Almonry in Westminster Abbey. This was handy for the king, Edward IV, the nobility at court and anyone involved in parliamentary procedure or the law courts.

Caxton’s biggest achievement was making books more affordable and more widely available, opening up literacy and learning to more people in England. One of his first printed books was The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, a classic of English literature but he didn’t only print books –he translated them from Latin, French and Dutch into English, helping to shape the English language as he did so. He printed works in what we now call ‘Middle English’ and the choices he made in spelling and grammar influenced the way English would evolve. As an example, in a preface to one of his printed editions in 1490, Caxton tells the reader a story to demonstrate some of the difficulties he had in trying to create a version of English that was common to all:

In my days [it] happened that certain merchants were in a ship in Thames, for to have sailed over the sea into Zealand [in the Netherlands] and for lack of wind they tarried at Foreland [in Kent] and went to land for to refresh them. And one of them named Sheffelde, a mercer, came into an house and asked for meat and especially he asked for eggs and the good wife answered that she could speak no French. And the merchant was angry for he also could speak no French but would have had eggs and she understood him not. And then at last another said that he would have eyren, then the good wife said that she understood him well.

Lo, asks Caxton, what should a man in these days now write, eggs or eyren ? Certainly it is hard to please every man by cause of diversity and change of language.      

Caxton’s Legacy

Caxton was a true pioneer in the world of publishing. He worked hard to create a system for translating and printing English texts and his work helped standardise the language at a time when there were no set rules for spelling or grammar. That’s a big deal when you think about how our language has evolved into what we use today!

Plus, Caxton didn’t just print literature. He printed books on a wide range of topics – history, religion, philosophy and instructional books. This means that Caxton’s press helped spread knowledge and ideas to a much wider audience than ever before. His first printed book in England was The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, a translation from a French work and Caxton was so proud of it that he wrote a little preface about how he learned the craft of printing. Such personal touches in his books tell us more about everyday life at the time and bring history alive rather than simply being works of literature.

By introducing the printing press to England, William Caxton helped set the stage for the spread of literacy, education and new ideas. And who can say, without Caxton’s work, maybe our world of books and publishing would look very different – and sparse – today, missing so many great stories.

The Colour of Darkness

In my new novel, The Colour of Darkness, the hero, Seb Foxley encounters William Caxton. Midsummer in medieval London is a joyous festivity but, for some, there is nothing to celebrate when Death stalks the city’s sweltering streets. As livelihoods are brought to ruin and trust withers in the heat, artist-cum-sleuth, Sebastian Foxley, finds trouble has come to his own doorstep. Plague rears its hideous head; fire, theft and murder imperil the citizens.

A beautiful young woman enchants the men of London and the mob shrieks that witchcraft is to blame when waxen dolls, spiked with pins, are discovered. With such horrors in his possession and discovering that guilt lies too close at hand, can Seb unravel the mysteries and save those he loves before it’s too late?

Join Seb Foxley in this intriguing and danger-riddled new adventure The Colour of Darkness

Midsummer in medieval London is a joyous festivity but, for some, there is nothing to celebrate when Death stalks the city’s sweltering streets. As livelihoods are brought to ruin and trust withers in the heat, artist-cum-sleuth, Sebastian Foxley, finds trouble has come to his own doorstep. Plague rears its hideous head; fire, theft and murder imperil the citizens.

A beautiful young woman enchants the men of London and the mob shrieks that witchcraft is to blame when waxen dolls, spiked with pins, are discovered. With such horrors in his possession and discovering that guilt lies too close at hand, can Seb unravel the mysteries and save those he loves before it’s too late?

Join Seb Foxley in this intriguing and danger-riddled new adventure, The Colour of Darkness, published by MadeGlobal and out now.  

Toni Mount is a best-selling author of both medieval fiction and non-fiction, with over 30 published titles. Her book Everyday Lives in Medieval London was named ‘Best History Book’ by Goodreads and became an Amazon bestseller. Her internationally popular Sebastian Foxley medieval murder mystery series has earned over 15 million page reads on Kindle Unlimited.

A historian and experienced educator, Toni holds a Master’s degree from the University of Kent, a first-class BA with Honours, and diplomas in European Humanities, English Literature and Creative Writing from the Open University, as well as a PGCE from the University of Greenwich. She is a member of the Richard III Society's Research Committee and contributes regularly to history magazines and blogs.

Toni also teaches history and offers a range of unique online courses at MedievalCourses.com. She lives in Kent with her husband Glenn and has two grown-up sons.

Toni at the launch of The Colour of Darkness as Sandwich Medieval Centre, Kent 

Photo courtesy of Pepsoft

tonimount.com

The Spy Who Changed the Course of British History

 By Nancy Bilyeau

The year: 1745. London? In a panic. The long-exiled Stuart family, driven out in 1688, was threatening to retake the English throne.

Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Severino Maria Stuart, commonly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, and his predominantly Scottish army of 6,000 men had made it to Derby, just over 120 miles from the capital.

Since landing at Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides on July 23, 1745, with not even a dozen men, the charismatic prince, grandson of the deposed James II, had recruited influential Highlands leaders, easily taken Edinburgh, and defeated an army led by Hanoverian supporters of the present King at the battle of Prestonpans. Then he turned south, crossing into England.

Portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie, painted by Allan Ramsey in 1745. Source: Wikipedia

A horde of "crazed Highlands thieves" was on the move!  There was a run on the Bank of England! George II, who, like his father, had not troubled to hide the fact that he preferred living in Hanover to England, loaded up a ship with personal valuables, in case he needed to flee the vengeful Jacobites and turn the Continent into his permanent home. These were the sorts of wild rumors that swirled around the city.

Yet in Derby, the temporary headquarters of the invading army, the mood was far from confident. Prince Charles' advisers had noted the lack of English Jacobite support. Few were rallying to their cause. Neither was it at all certain that the French would show up to reinforce the Scottish invasion, a cornerstone of the Stuart strategy.

Most worryingly, a well-trained army, most likely led by King George II's son, the Duke of Cumberland, must surely be coming to meet them. Who knew how large it would be?

Exeter House in Derby, where the prince and his men plotted strategy.
Picture taken in 1853. Source: Wikipedia.

As the advisers to the impetuous 25-year-old prince debated their next move, one of Charles's followers spoke up. It was Captain Oliver Williams, a trusted Irish supporter of the cause.

A Hanoverian force of 9,000 men had been sighted in Northampton, Captain Williams informed the men in the room. This army was not much more than 50 miles away. And other units must be hurrying toward Derby.

That sealed it. Overruling Prince Charles' outrage and passionate protests that he wanted to march on London, the Jacobite army's military commanders said they must instead return to Scotland and consolidate their position. Four months after this retreat came the crushing defeat at Culloden, followed by Bonnie Prince Charlie's flight from Scotland.

Artist's rendition of Culloden. Some feel the depiction of the Highlanders relied on stereotypes. Source: wikipedia

Culloden, the last battle ever fought on the British mainland, has been studied and analyzed ever since those hours of fierce fighting, which killed some 2,000 men. Going beyond historians' domain, Culloden has become a cornerstone of popular culture, such as the center of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander books and TV series. The tragedy and glamour of the lost cause, a royal family in embittered exile, even penetrated the Game of Thrones fantasy series, with the Targaryen family living far from the Seven Kingdoms, believed to be modeled on the Stuarts who fled to France and then Italy.  "The people drink secret toasts to your health and cry out for their true king," an adviser whispers to the ambitious young Viserys Targaryen, the "king across the water," in the first episode of the series.

When proposing various "What if"s on the subject of Bonnie Prince Charlie, people often come back to the decision at Derby. 

Historians believe that the turning point was then and there, that he lost the strategic and psychological advantage by retreating. Many of the Scots who followed the prince's cause did so not so much as to prop up a Catholic Stuart monarch as to force through more independence for Scotland. As for the Irish, those followers did wish for a Catholic king, as it would presumably ease the religious discrimination they suffered. Failure brought agony. The punishment the Hanoverian government meted out to the defeated enemy and their supporters was ghastly. The Duke of Cumberland earned the nickname "Butcher" with the slaughter of the injured and the prisoners, and ordered attacks on the helpless civilian population.

The defeat meant that Great Britain became more centralized; bolstered by its industrialized feats and banking policies, the British Empire became a force like no other. The fates of not just Scotland and Ireland but also America and India were arguably influenced by the smashing of Bonnie Prince Charlie's rising.

The impact of Culloden on world history makes it all the more shocking that the information the Stuart army relied on in Derby was a complete lie. There were no 9,000 men in Northampton. In fact, the road to London at that time was clear.

It turned out that Captain Oliver Williams, true name Dudley Bradstreet, was a spy, employed by the Duke of Cumberland to report on the Jacobites' movements and to spread disinformation. Which he most certainly did.

The craft of espionage was in a murky stage in the mid-1700s. Not much is written about the policies and practices of spying between the time of Sir Francis Walsingham, the spymaster of Elizabeth I, and the intense spying that took place later in the 18th century, during the American Revolution.

Those recruited for espionage were a far cry from Ian Fleming's James Bond or any of the Cambridge-educated manipulators from a John Le Carre novel. The Hanoverian government assumed that spying was immoral, so it used immoral men.

Dudley Bradstreet fit that requirement to a "T," a fact he cheerfully admitted in the book he wrote about his life, The Life and Uncommon Adventures of Captain Dudley Bradstreet. There's rarely been a more gleeful rogue than Bradstreet: fortune hunter, gambler, trickster, and spy.

He was Irish; that part was genuine. Bradstreet was born in Tipperary in 1711, the youngest son of landowner John Bradstreet, a man who received Cromwellian grants but, by the time Dudley came along, had a fortune that was "continually declining."

Wrote Dudley in his memoir: "My education was neglected, he removed his whole family from the country to Dublin except for me, whom he left in charge with a Foster-Father. Here I must observe, the injury my being thus abandoned did to my conduct and morals, that it may be a caution to parents whom they trust with the early habits and impressions their children may receive."

Bradstreet became addicted to card playing, and as a young man, left for London with a mistress but returned to Ireland to join the army. He later married for love, but she died; he had children by various women. He inherited nothing from his father and was arrested for debt, managing to marry a wealthy widow to stay afloat.

The Duke of Montagu, Bradstreet's friend, source: wikipedia

"A crony" of the Duke of Montagu, a peer notorious for his practical jokes, Bradstreet came to the notice of the British government in 1744 and was encouraged to infiltrate the Jacobites and report back what he learned. It was a shock to many when Bonnie Prince Charlie, defying the enormous odds against him, landed in Scotland in 1745. Unfortunately for the prince, it meant that Dudley Bradstreet was well-positioned to learn much--and make a lot of mischief.

After "Captain Williams" successfully derailed Bonnie Prince Charlie's quest in Derby, Bradstreet melted away before the Jacobites returned to Scotland. He approached government officials and demanded money and a commission — he got neither. Incredibly, Bradstreet persisted in his haranguing, and eventually George II gave him 150 pounds.

His career then took a decided turn into the fantastical. Bradstreet became a "bottle conjurer," someone who told the gullible he could talk to the dead and restore lost youth. "Bradstreet knew how to touch the infirmity of man," wrote one chronicler. Bradstreet himself said without apology he owed it all to the "superstition" of his victims and their "credulity and faith in wondrous things."

Bradstreet made a lot of money from his conjurings, lost nearly all of it, and then returned to Ireland for good, buying a house and writing his memoir.

The book sold well. "In the free narrative of his reckless adventures, some incidents have a breadth rather suspicious and some a warmth rather indelicate," a critic wrote.

Dudley Bradstreet, the fateful spy in the Jacobite camp, died in Ireland at the age of 52.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nancy Bilyeau is a magazine editor and historical novelist. Her Genevieve Planche series--The Blue, The Fugitive Colours, and The Versailles Formula--is set in the espionage and art world of the mid-18th century. To learn more, go to www.nancybilyeau.com.

 

Marguerite of Anjou - A woman scorned...

by Judith Arnopp

I first came across Marguerite while I was at university where I was struck by her unjust legacy. I spent many years researching and writing about Marguerite’s contemporary, Margaret Beaufort, who similarly fought for her son. The similarities only diverge when Margaret Beaufort triumphs and Marguerite’s hopes perish on Tewkesbury field.

Yorkist propaganda against Marguerite of Anjou begins early in her story and continues to affect our perception of her today. Polydore Vergil’s assessment of her character, taken from widespread Yorkist propaganda, echoes loudly in Shakespeare’s malevolent portrayal of the queen in his play ‘The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York and the Good King Henry the Sixth’

‘She wolf of France but worse than the wolves of France,

whose tongue more poisons than the adder’s tooth!

How ill be-seeming is it in thy sex

To triumph like an Amazonian trull

Upon their woes who Fortune captivates!

But that thy face is vizard like, unchanging,

Made impudent with use of evil deeds,

I would assay, proud queen, to make thee blush.

To tell thee whence thy cam’st, of whom derived,

Were shame enough to shame thee, wert not shameless.’ (Act 1.4.112)

Sounds like a nice lady but my research revealed no monster but simply a queen determined to maintain her husband’s throne and to secure the inheritance of her son.  But Marguerite was a foreigner, unhampered by the political restraint placed upon English women and that fact cast the first shadow over her life in England.

Marguerite came from a line of determined women; both her paternal grandmother Yolande of Aragon, and her mother, Isabelle of Lorraine were deeply involved in politics and championed the rights of their absent husbands, raised taxes and armies, administered the duchies and laid down policies. Both women impacted on Marguerite’s own experience after she became Queen of England. To Marguerite, on finding her crown at risk, there was only one thing she could do and that was fight.

During her early years as queen, Marguerite acted as a supporting, conciliatory presence behind the king, mainly confining her activities to matchmaking and obtaining positions at court for friends and servants. She used her influence to secure the surrender of Maine and Anjou and, although the pressure on her to comply is obvious to us now, the act did not endear her to her new subjects.  

Her first real intercession into politics was during the Jack Cade rebellion when at her instigation Henry agreed to show leniency and issue a pardon to the rebels.  The king’s preamble to the pardon illustrates Marguerite’s role in the matter.

‘Nevertheless, recalling to the reflection and consideration of our mind that among those virtues fitting and proper to the royal person and dignity, none befits him more than clemency, which is apt to bring about and put the shame of sinning in the minds of his subject people, and considering as well that it is fitting to show himself such a prince to his subjects as he wishes and desires God to be supreme and high Lord him, persuaded and moved by these and many other pious considerations, among others by the most humble and persistent supplications, prayers and requests of our most serene and beloved wife and consort the queen…we have pardoned…’

The lure of a pardon undermined Cade’s force and mention of Marguerite’s intercession allowed Henry to show leniency without appearing weak. 

It is quite possible that had Henry not fallen ill, Marguerite’s supporting role would have continued but as his condition worsened and the threat from the Yorkist faction grew stronger, she had little option but to assume a more prominent position. The fluctuating health of the king meant that increasingly she governed beneath the cloak of Henry’s kingship, continuing to represent herself as subordinate to the king’s authority whilst, in fact, assuming increasing power.

During a lull in Henry’s illness Marguerite produced the king with an heir Edward, securing Lancaster’s position and dealing a blow to the ambitious Duke of York who was previously Henry’s heir. It is no coincidence that around this time propaganda against the queen increased, and York’s attempts to undermine Margaret’s authority picked up pace.

Some contemporary reports accuse the queen of sexual misconduct and her son, Edward, is described as a ‘changeling,’ a term which infers he was base born.  Two days before York was removed from office on 23 February 1456 a John Helton was executed for distributing bills that alleged the prince was not the queen’s son.  

As the enmity between York and Lancaster increased, the battle for power descended into military combat obliging Marguerite to step further and further from the expected feminine role. The nobles of England and their adherents were killed in skirmishes and battles, the reins of government passing from York to Henry (or Marguerite)  but it was not until the Battle of Towton that the reign of Lancaster was all but ended and the new Yorkist dynasty arose.

York was dead and Edward IV was firmly on the throne, Marguerite could have faded into gentile retirement. The House of York’s vendetta against the deposed queen could have ceased. But poetry and pamphlets continued to be issued, denigrating both Marguerite and her claim to the throne. She was blamed for the fall of the Lancastrian dynasty and stereotyped as ‘an angry woman driven by malice, spreading sorrow, disorder and confusion in her wake.’  

Marguerite, still refusing to admit defeat, spent the next ten years in exile, plotting to reinstate her son Edward. Her determination strong enough that when Warwick fell out with Edward IV, she formed an alliance with her great enemy and consented to a marriage between her son and Warwick’s youngest daughter, Anne.  

It was a short lived alliance that ended for Warwick at Barnet, and for Marguerite at Tewkesbury where her seventeen year old son was killed, along with her ambition for the English throne.

But Yorkist propaganda continued, using a wide range of devices to defame Marguerite, making it difficult, even now, to obtain a clear view of her. Early historians picked up the Yorkist banner and continued to dehumanise her, subverting her female instinct to nurture into an unnatural lust for murder.

               By the time Shakespeare wrote his Wars of the Roses plays Marguerite’s had already come to epitomise unrelieved lust for power possessing a ‘tigers heart wrapped in a woman’s hide.’   Her strength is undermined by her female flaws and she ‘lacks the true qualities of royalty...the queen’s character is also tainted by immorality: she is an adulteress. But it is power rather than lust which dominates her character, and vengefulness which becomes its most terrible flaw.’  

In Henry VI part III her feminine weaknesses are replaced by the most ignoble of male attributes; she is masculine but akin to the worst of men. Shakespeare’s Marguerite is an arch-villainess whose femininity is inverted to encompass the direst human traits; her assumption of a male role and her lust for blood and revenge reverses the natural order and creates chaos in the realm. 

In the hands of the bard, Marguerite is a marvellous authorial depiction of twisted humanity and as a playwright Shakespeare remains unchallenged but a historian he was not.  Unfortunately, Shakespeare’s history plays came to be utilised not as examples of literary genius but as factual documents of history.

In the 1840’s Agnes Strickland published her Lives of the Queens of England and viewed Marguerite’s story ‘...of more powerful of interest than are to be found in the imaginary career of any heroine of romance; for the creations of fiction, however forcibly they may appeal to our imagination, fade into insignificance before the simple majesty of truth.’

Like other Victorian moralists, Strickland provides a highly romanticised picture of an unfortunate queen who unwisely meddled in the concerns of men. Marguerite becomes pitiful in her defeat but Strickland, by illustrating her utter personal defeat and regret, upholds the medieval opinion of a woman’s proper place.

‘There is something touching in the very simplicity of the Latin sentence with which the deed begins, that was wrung from the broken-hearted heroine who had, through so many storms of adversity, defended the rights of her royal consort and son.  While they remained in life, she would have died a thousand deaths rather than relinquish even the most shadowy of their claims; but the dear ones were no more,

‘Ambition, pride, the rival names

of York and Lancaster,

with all their long contested claims

what were they then to her?

Passively and almost with indifference, Margaret subscribed the instrument commencing ‘Ego, Margarita dum in regno Anglia maritata etc. I, Margaret, formerly in England married, renounce all that I could pretend to in England by the conditions of my marriage, with all other things there, to Edward, now king of England.’

J. J. Bagley in his biography of Marguerite written in 1948 provides a less romantic presentation. Bagley admits that Marguerite ‘did not cause the Wars of the Roses, but her intense, bitter feeling, her refusal to compromise, and her disregard of any other factor than the inheritance of her only son were reflected in the brutal, callous nature of the prolonged struggle.  For the sake of its own cause and for the welfare of the English people, the house of Lancaster might have wished for a wiser and more understanding leader, but nowhere could it have found a braver and more determined champion. Queen Margaret’s life was more than a sad story. It was a true tragedy, for the root cause of her failure lay, not in the fickle fate of battles, but in her own character and philosophy.’

In Bagley’s opinion, the Lancastrian cause could not have wished for a braver leader but perhaps one less swayed by dangerous female characteristics such as loyalty to her son and a determination to maintain a hold on his birthright.  

Richard, Duke of York was equally ambitious for his sons and fought just as fiercely for what he saw as his own rights and, moreover, he fought against an anointed king. 

Marguerite was trying to defend the throne of England against attack, as was her duty.

Historical research in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has focused on the study of women and how women have exercised power; gendered analysis has allowed historians to move away from the traditional perception of queens.  Modern scholars look at the restrictions placed upon them and how those limitations impinged upon their political lives.  Marguerite pushed the boundaries of her engendered position; faced with the insurmountable problem of an inefficient consort she was forced to take unpopular actions and has since been judged accordingly. 

Other people have campaigned for thrones, overthrown kings and taken power from weak or incompetent rulers and (with the exception of Richard III) have not been recorded historically as unnatural monsters; the only difference is that they were men. 

Marguerite posed a threat to male rule that the medieval world was unprepared to accept.   A woman out of her prescribed place was deemed ‘unnatural’ and any divergence from the norm considered suspect and therefore dangerous.  Rosaldo clarifies the point in his book Women, Culture and Society,

‘Societies that define woman as lacking legitimate authority have no way of acknowledging the reality of female power.  This difference between rule and reality is reflected in our own society when we speak of powerful women as ‘bitches.’’

Marguerite’s determination and indefatigable resolve to win back her son’s throne was only exhausted by his death. In a man such tenacity would be heroic.  She has been labelled a violent and vengeful woman but surely she was no more so than her male opponents.  The unique circumstances in which she found herself made it impossible to follow prescribed gender boundaries while her opponents remained unfettered.  

Hostile propaganda, perpetuated by male playwrights and Victorian moralists, remains in our consciousness today.  Every day on social media I hear derogatory comments against Marguerite and her contemporary, Margaret Beaufort, but medieval history cannot be judged from a modern perspective and it does nobody any favours to perpetuate the misogyny of the past. 

As was my intention in The Beaufort Chronicle which traces the life of Margaret Beaufort, my novel, Marguerite: Hell Hath No Fury is my own poor attempt to rectify the flawed perception of a brave woman. 

~~~~~

Judith Arnopp – Author Biography

A lifelong history enthusiast and avid reader, Judith holds a BA in English/Creative writing and a Masters in Medieval Studies. She lives on the coast of West Wales where she writes both fiction and non-fiction. She is best known for her novels set in the Medieval and Tudor period, focussing on the perspective of historical women but recently she has written a trilogy from the perspective of Henry VIII himself.

 Judith is also a founder member of a re-enactment group called The Fyne Companye of Cambria which is when and why she began to experiment with sewing historical garments. She now makes clothes and accessories both for the group and others. She is not a professionally trained sewer but through trial, error and determination has learned how to make authentic looking, if not strictly historically accurate clothing. A non-fiction book about Tudor clothing, How to Dress like a Tudor, was published in 2023 by Pen and Sword.

 She runs a small seaside holiday let in Aberporth and when she has time for fun, likes to garden and restore antique doll’s houses. You can find her on most social media platforms.

 Her novels include:

A Song of Sixpence: the story of Elizabeth of York

The Beaufort Chronicle: the life of Lady Margaret Beaufort (three book series)

The Henrician Chronicle: comprising of:

A Matter of Conscience: Henry VIII, the Aragon Years (Book One of The Henrician Chronicle)

A Matter of Faith: Henry VIII, the Days of the Phoenix (Book Two of The Henrician Chronicle)

A Matter of Time: Henry VIII, the Dying of the Light (Book Three of The Henrician Chronicle)

The Kiss of the Concubine: a story of Anne Boleyn

The Winchester Goose: at the court of Henry VIII

Intractable Heart: the story of Katheryn Parr

Sisters of Arden: on the Pilgrimage of Grace

The Heretic Wind: the life of Mary Tudor, Queen of England

Peaceweaver

The Forest Dwellers

The Song of Heledd

The Book of Thornhold

A Daughter of Warwick: the story of Anne Neville, Queen of Richard III

Marguerite: Hell Hath No Fury! 

Webpage: http://www.judithmarnopp.com

Amazon Author Page: author.to/juditharnoppbooks

Blog: www.juditharnoppnovelist.blogspot.co.uk/

Social media links

https://www.facebook.com/thetudorworldofjuditharnopp

https://x.com/JudithArnopp

https://www.threads.net/@tudor_juditharnopp 

Illustrations via WikimediaCommons

Fig 1 - John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, presents the Book of Romances to Margaret of Anjou, Queen to Henry VI 

Fig 2 - Portrait of Marguerite of Anjou (1430 -1482) Queen Consort of England

Fig 3 - John Gilbert - Margaret of Anjou taken prisoner after the battle of Tewkesbury (1875)

Fig 4 - Richard Burchett (1815-1875) - Sanctuary (Edward IV and Lancastrian Fugitives at Tewkesbury Abbey) - 600 - Guildhall Art Gallery