The Portsmouth Road aka The Sailor’s Highway

by Margaret Muir

"Portsmouth Point, 1811" by Thomas Rowlandson 
the British caricaturist (1756–1827) on the 
Bridge Hotel at the Camber in Portsmouth 
at the site where the original scene for the painting is set.

The Portsmouth Road was the direct link between London and England’s greatest naval port and, because it was frequented by seaman from foremast Jacks to Admirals, it was dubbed The Sailor’s Highway.

In 1805, there was no glamour or romance attached to coach travel. Being ‘cabin’d, cribb’d or confin’d’ in a wooden box on wheels that rolled, pitched and creaked like a ship at sea, and being ‘hauled by four horses, charging along an uneven road at the breakneck-speed of 8 mph’, was regarded as an evil best avoided.

But for those who were obliged to travel, the tedious journey began at Stone’s End (Southwark) – literally the place where the paved streets of the London Borough ended and the unmetalled country roads began. The distance of 71 miles and 7 furlongs was interrupted by six toll-houses and turnpike bars, and at least one stop at a coaching inn for a change of horses, and a chance for the passengers to eat a meal and catch a little sleep.

The Jolly Old Tars of England

While images such as those of caricaturist, Isaac Cruickshank represent a jolly coach load of inebriated passengers, the biting cold, the inclement weather and the likelihood of falling in with thieves and robbers along the way dulled many a spirit.

Passenger had little choice but to accept the various minor miseries of the journey. For example, it was not unusual to arrive at the coach, having booked a seat in advance, only to find the coach full. Also, having to ‘ease the horses’ at the bottom of a steep hill, meant getting out and walking. And if driving through torrential rain, it was not unusual for an outside passenger, who was dripping wet, to take shelter in the already crowded cabin. The bad language and behaviour of drunks and beggars, who descended on the coach when it arrived at a coaching stop, could not be avoided.

Prior to 1784 and the establishment of mail coaches, the journey from London to Portsmouth took 14 hours – depending on the condition of the road. But from the turn of the century, services increased and several coaches departed London every day including the Regulator, which left at 8 am and reached Portsmouth at five in the afternoon. The Rocket and Light Post also travelled in daylight. The Royal Mail, picked up passengers at The Angel in the Strand at 7.15 pm and arrived, ‘with God’s good Grace’ at The George in Portsmouth at 6.10 the following morning. The Night Post coach, as its name indicated, also travelled through the night.

Of the hundreds of naval officers and common sailors heading to the seaport to join a ship, admirals and captains usually made use of their private carriages or hired a post chaise. These conveyances not only allowed for faster travel but offered a greater degree of privacy and comfort than the regular services. It also allowed the passenger to decide which inn he wished to stop at along the way.

Lower ranked naval officers travelled by the regular coaches, whereas common sailors often covered the distance on foot or in the back of an open stage-wagon hauled by eight horses. These conveyances took three days to cover the 72 miles travelling with the ‘tripping step of a tortoise’.

The Royal Anchor Inn

Breaking the journey at a coaching house such as The Anchor (later renamed The Royal Anchor) at Liphook offered the opportunity for a meal and a bed for those who could afford it. For sailors, clean straw on the floor of the outhouses was made available.

But apart from the minor discomforts, journeying along the Portsmouth Road was considered a dangerous venture especially if travelling at night. Because of the fear factor, fellow passengers regarded each other suspiciously and sat ‘glum and nervous – with their money in their boots, their watches in the lining of their hats, and other light valuables secreted in unlikely parts of their persons, in the fond hope that the fine fellow, mounted on a mettlesome horse, and bristling with weapons, who would presently bring the coach to a stop in some gloomy bend of the road, might be either too unpractised or in too great a hurry to think of those very obvious hiding-places.’

"Rogues 1883" by F.Dodd 1859-1929

The threat of the rope’s end did little to deter the highwaymen, who, since the 17th century, had preyed on coaches travelling the lonely roads after nightfall. Sitting in the mail-coach’s ‘dickey’ seat, the guard was armed with a musket, sword or blunderbuss.

Those passengers seated up-top were afforded the best views and when the coach neared Portsmouth, the sight of the British fleet at anchor would serve to remind them of what lay ahead. Occasionally, however, due to his excited or inebriated state, a sailor would tumble from the coach and break his leg, head, or arm, but that, in the circumstances, was not unexpected.

The Landport Gate

Arriving safely at the Landport Gate in the early hours of the morning, passengers breathed a sigh of relief – though perhaps it was unwise to inhale too deeply! Being a fortified town, the entry points to Portsmouth were locked every night from midnight to 4.00 am, so if the London coach arrived at that hour it would be obliged to wait for a line of night-soil wagons to pass out of the gate before it could enter.

On 14th September, 1805, the post chaise carrying Admiral Lord Nelson drove though the Landport Gate and allowed him to alight at The George on High Street at 6.00 am. From there the coach continued for a further mile through the streets to its final destination at Victoria Pier.

After eating breakfast at The George, Lord Nelson proceeded to the naval dockyard where he spent several hours assessing the ships being readied for sea and visiting the Block Mill.

Admiral Lord Nelson

Nelson’s journey from his home at Merton in south London was the last coach journey he ever took. At 2.00 o’clock that afternoon, he was rowed across Spithead to St Helens where he climbed aboard HMS Victory, the ship that would carry him to his final fateful battle at Trafalgar.


References: Isaac Cruikshank 1799 - The Jolly Tars of Old England or All Alive at Portsmouth.

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Portsmouth Road and Its Tributaries, by Charles G. Harper 1895

The Story of Nelson’s Portsmouth by Jane Smith

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Margaret Muir is author of 4 historical fiction novels set in Yorkshire (her birthplace) and a nautical fiction series written under the by-line M.C. Muir. Inspired by her love of tall ships, Muir’s latest adventures are set during the Napoleonic sea wars. The first 3 books in the series have been published as an e-book boxed set: “The Oliver Quintrell Trilogy”. Book 4 is due later this year. Other individual titles are available from Amazon.

Giveaway of The Unexpected Earl by Philippa Jane Keyworth

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The Marriage of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham and Lady Katherine Manners

by Pamela Womack

George Villiers, 1st Duke 
of Buckingham attributed 
to William Larkin, and 

studio of William Larkin 
(circa 1616) 

© National Portrait Gallery 
London  

When early in 1619 it became known that King James I wished his powerful favourite George Villiers, Marquis of Buckingham, to marry, there was a flurry of excitement in the court as wealthy courtiers with daughters of marriageable age scrambled to push them forward. However, Buckingham and his redoubtable mother Mary Beaumont, Countess of Buckingham, had already determined that George would marry Lady Katherine Manners, the greatest heiress in England. Although this marriage, achieved through deception and coercion, has often been briefly mentioned in works about Buckingham and judged to have been either unusually happy or a one-sided love affair, research reveals a complex and fascinating story of a relationship which was characterised by continuous infidelity on one side and passionate devotion on the other, but which also reveals that Katherine was neither meek nor subservient, but was a spirited and determined woman who was prepared to flout convention to marry the man she loved.

Katherine Manners was the daughter of Francis Manners, 6th Earl of Rutland and Frances Knyvett.  After the death of his first wife Rutland married Cecily, the daughter of Sir John Tufton, who bore him two sons who died in apparently mysterious circumstances which were the centre of a notorious witchcraft case. Their deaths resulted in Katherine becoming the heir not only to the Knyvett property from her mother, but also to the unentailed estates in Yorkshire and Northamptonshire.

Portraits of Katherine show her to have been a rather plain woman, but doubtless her inheritance more than made up for her lack of beauty, and Buckingham and his mother opened negotiations. However, there were complications: Rutland was a Roman Catholic and the king would only permit his favourite to marry a Protestant, therefore pressure was brought to bear upon Katherine to abandon her religion. Rutland may well also have heard the talk and speculation about the exact nature of King James’s intense relationship with his handsome young favourite; the Earl was often at court and must have witnessed the very public display of kissing and caressing. The amount of dowry demanded, too, was exorbitant and Rutland was offended. The negotiations floundered, but Buckingham and Mary’s solution to the deadlock was a plan which reflects badly on them both.

In March 1620 Mary visited the Countess of Rutland in the absence of the Earl, and invited Katherine to dine with her, promising to bring her back home before night-fall. It has been commonly assumed that the invitation was to Mary’s Leicestershire home at nearby Goadby Marwood. However, Mary brought the innocent girl to her lodgings at the Gatehouse in Whitehall. Even worse, Katherine stayed overnight, and so did her suitor, despite the fact that his own lodgings were within walking distance. The next day Katherine was returned home, but her outraged and furious father refused to receive her at Belvoir. The fact that Buckingham had also slept under the same roof ensured that Katherine’s reputation was ruined. Rutland was now forced into the position of insisting that Buckingham marry his daughter to save both her and the family’s honour.

The affair caused great scandal and despite Buckingham’s importance, the marriage did not take place at court with the usual lavish and lengthy entertainments, instead the couple were married privately in 1620, witnessed only by the Earl and the King.

The Buckinghams lived a lavish life-style, but it seems clear that this was not the fairy-tale life which Katherine had imagined. Perhaps she had unrealistically believed that Buckingham would leave his life at court and devote himself exclusively to her, and in a bitter, reproachful letter in 1627 she told him that, ‘… there is none more miserable than I am, and till you leave this life of a courtier which you have been ever since I knew you, I shall think myself unhappy.’

The Duke of Buckingham and his Family 

after Gerrit van Honthorst (1628) 

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Whatever the dreams and hopes for her marriage had been, Katherine had to contend with reality and accept that she had not only gained a husband but also all his family, which included the doting King himself. Then there were the mistresses, notably the spirited court beauty Lucy, Countess of Carlisle. When Buckingham was in Madrid with Prince Charles in 1623, during which time he was created a Duke, his behaviour at the straight-laced Spanish court caused great offence.

Buckingham again outraged convention and stretched Katherine’s devotion to the uttermost when he travelled to Paris in May 1625 to escort England’s new Queen, Henrietta Maria, to her new home. The English favourite scandalised the French court by blatantly making love to the French Queen Anne of Austria, giving scant thought to his pregnant wife at home. The Duke’s obsession with Anne, which he did not try to disguise, must have caused Katherine great heartache, and he made determined attempts to see the queen again.

King Charles I 

by Gerrit van Honthorst (1628) 

© National Portrait Gallery, London

A cursory reading of Katherine’s letters gives the impression of a woman whose life was utterly bound up with her adored husband. However, further readings suggest a strong-willed woman who was no door-mat and whose relationship with her illustrious husband could be stormy. Buckingham pampered his ‘poor little wife’ as her father may have done, and it seems that she made clear her displeasure with his frequent absences, and was not above using emotional blackmail.

The evidence suggests that although Buckingham was never in love with his wife he nonetheless genuinely cared for her, and notwithstanding his inability to remain faithful, treated her well. When he discovered that Katherine had been ill, perhaps seriously, while he was in Madrid, he seems to have been genuinely alarmed, confessing his adultery and asking for forgiveness, and even telling her he would return home if she was still sick. Katherine was aware of her husband’s weakness, and comforted by his concern for her, she was able to be sufficiently magnanimous to tell him that he was a good man save for his one sin of "loving women so well."

The increasing attacks upon the Duke during the first three years of Charles I’s reign, and the attempts by Parliament to impeach him in 1626 caused Katherine serious alarm. The Duke survived because of the King’s deep attachment to him, but Katherine and his mother and sister were devastated to hear that Buckingham intended to command a naval expedition to La Rochelle to relieve the Protestant Huguenots in the summer of 1627. Such was Katherine’s distress that Buckingham promised her that he would not accompany the fleet, and she wrote to him several times reminding of his promise to her, telling him in one letter that, "I hope you will not deceive me in breaking yours, for I protest if you should, it would half kill me."

However, Buckingham lied and left without saying goodbye. When she realised that he had really gone, Katherine told him she could almost wish herself dead, but although she had failed to keep her husband at home, her letters indicate her continued attempts to control his behaviour.

Buckingham and Charles planned another attempt to liberate La Rochelle, but this time Katherine refused to allow him to quietly slip away, determinedly accompanying him to Portsmouth in August 1628. Fortunately she was still in her bedchamber when the Duke was stabbed to death by John Felton.

The Duchess returned to her Catholic faith after Buckingham’s death. The king, whose devotion to the Duke had matched her own, removed his beloved friend’s children from her care and had them brought up with his own children. Katherine again occasioned the king’s wrath when she married the Irish Randal MacDonnell, then Viscount Dunluce, in 1635 to general censure. Katherine’s second marriage was equally eventful but seems to have been a far more equal partnership, with Katherine playing a leading role. MacDonnell was deeply distressed when she died in November 1649.

Living through a time of political upheaval and the tumultuous events of the Civil War, Katherine Manners was fiercely loyal and passionately devoted to her two husbands, even to the extent of defying convention and incurring the displeasure of her father and the king to marry the men of her choice.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pamela J. Womack is the author of Darling of Kings, published by Hayloft Publishing Ltd., an historical novel which tells the tragic story of the friendship between Charles I and George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham. She has also written An Illustrated Introduction to the Stuarts, published by Amberley Publishing Ltd. She is currently writing the Duke of Buckingham’s biography.

For more information visit her website at www.thebuckinghamchronicles.com

The Spare Child of James I of England: a Tragedy in the Making

by Linda Root

Charles I {{PD-Art}}

Somehow in the last several years the phrase 'an heir and a spare' has become a popular term to describe the ideal dynastic plan.  The press has been peppered with it recently, partially due to the high visibility of the current favorite  spare, the fascinating and unpredictable Prince Harry, and the recent announcement that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge  are expecting a second child.  Under current law, whether the child is male or female, it still will be that coveted spare child likely to insure the preservation of the dynasty, assuming the monarchy itself survives.  Such was not the case in 1600.

At the end of the Sixteenth Century,  King James VI of Scotland and his Danish bride Anne had one son and one daughter.  The heir was Henry Frederick Stuart, Duke of Rothesay, born in February 1594, and what an heir he was!  He was robust and alert, and by God, he was male!  His sister Elizabeth followed in August 1596.  Anne’s next child was another daughter, Margaret, who died shortly after her first birthday.  Anne was obviously capable of producing children and had  many child bearing years ahead.  There was no cause for alarm.

Henry Frederick {{PD-Art}}

Anne of Denmark {{PD-Art}}

The Duke of Rothesay was the ideal prince. One thinks of England’s Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales. But James VI and I was no more content to risk his dynasty on the survival of a single son than Henry VII had been.

Dunfermline Palace, Engraving by William .Miller {{PD-Art}}

And thus, on November 19 of 1600 at Dunfermline, the second son was born, and in December he was christened Duke of Albany in the chapel royal at Holyrood with far less pomp than had accompanied his older brother's legendary baptism at Sterling.  Another lavish christening such as James himself had been given by his mother the Queen of Scots and which he had sought to equal for Henry Frederick would have bankrupted Scotland.

DunfermlineAbbey {{Wikimedia}}

Although James had his coveted second son, the birth of the spare did little to insure the dynasty.  The infant Charles was a sickly, fragile bairn who in the present day might be termed a 'failure to thrive' child. There were subsequent royal pregnancies, and none of the infants including a third son Robert lived more than two years. The queen had suffered at least two miscarriages even before Elizabeth Tudor died in the spring of 1603.

Some historians suggest at least one of them was provoked by her husband’s failure to allow her to take custody of her eldest son Prince Henry, who was living in Stirling under the supervision of the Countess and Earl of Mar as was the Scottish custom.  James had been raised at Stirling under the guardianship of a previous Earl of Mar, and like Anne, his mother Marie Stuart, Queen of Scots, had been denied his custody in April of 1567.

The last time Marie Stuart, Queen of Scots saw her infant son was when Mar allowed her a few hours of supervised visitation. On the way home from Stirling, the Queen of Scots was carried off to Dunbar by the Earl of Bothwell and was either raped or merely seduced.  Her trip to collect her heir did not end well.  Anne's similar defeat was far less tragic in the long term. In 1603 when Elizabeth Tudor died and James VI traveled south to claim his crown, he took the Earl of Mar along while Queen Anne remained in Scotland. She took advantage of their absences and marched on Stirling to take physical custody of the prince, but Mar's relatives suppressed and repelled her assault, and in May she suffered a miscarriage.

James VI and I-  {{PD Art}}

Finally James gave in and allowed Queen Anne to travel south with his nine-year-old heir. Charles did not join the entourage.  He was adjudged too sickly to endure the journey. At age three, the little Duke of Albany neither walked nor talked.

One wonders if the decision to leave him in Scotland with Seton was made in part to keep the slow developer from raining on his older brother's parade.  And indeed, a parade it was. Anne was a flashy woman, and at age nine, Prince Henry Frederick was already magnificent to behold.  People traveled across England just for a glimpse of them as they journeyed south to meet the king.

Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales {{PD-Art

THE EARLY CHILDHOOD OF PRINCE CHARLES

In 1600 when Charles was born, Queen Anne was not denied the close association with her second son she had so desperately wanted with her firstborn. She would never need to arrange an armed confrontation to gain his custody. No one else particularly wanted him.

His survival was uncertain and no aristocrats vied for the responsibility of having a dead royal on their hands.

By then Anne had made Dunfermline Abbey in Fife her home and established a royal palace adjoining the abbey. The supervision of Charles's early training was placed in the hands of the queen's friend Alexander Seton,  Lord Fyvie, who later became Earl of Dunfermline. The queen's new apartments were remodeled and embellished by the queen's favorite William Schaw, the same architect who had upgraded Stirling for the lavish Christening of Henry Frederick.

Alexander Seton {{PD art}}

From 1603 until the autumn of 1604, Charles was left at Dunfermline in the custody of Alexander Seton, a cautious Catholic who was a member of Queen Anne's inner circle and who was soon to become Scotland’s Chancellor.  Seton was happy  to be ensconced in Dunfermline, which was closer to the centers of power than his newly acquired estates at Fyvie.

Anne could have selected worse in terms of the quality of the  education and care Seton provided,  but leaving him in Seton's Catholic household may have helped seal his ultimate fate.  By then, Anne herself was considered a closet Catholic, and Seton was a known adherent of the auld religion.  He was just wise enough not to flaunt it.

At the time of Elizabeth Tudor’s death, Sir Robert Carey, her first cousin once removed, a grandchild of her aunt Mary Boleyn, was representing Northumberland in the English Parliament, and living in the English north.

Carey  had been Warden of the East Marches during a portion of the final decade of  the Sixteenth Century and was the person who rode to Scotland to inform James of Elizabeth Tudor’s death. The year after  his queen and his heir arrived at Windsor,  the king sent Carey to Dunfermline to report on Charles’s development. Sir Robert engaged a new physician who declared the Duke of Albany able to travel after a demonstration in which young Charles was able to stagger across the Great Hall at Dunfermline.

THE SECOND SON COMES TO ENGLAND

The Careys ~ {{PD-Art}} Wikimedia

If the new doctor exaggerated his ward’s recovery, Seton did not complain. Being guardian to a royal was a thankless task. Keeping Charles at Dunfermline was confining and expensive. Elaborate arrangements were made for the journey south, with Carey and Seton leading the entourage.  In February 1605, Sir Robert and his formidable wife Dame Robert were made his guardians. Within months, Dame Robert had him walking unaided and talking, albeit with a stammer. Charles was slight of build, and while he apparently recovered physically under Dame Robert’s care, he never cut the same swashbuckling image as his flamboyant and staunchly protestant older brother.  According to his caregivers, he was given to displays of temper which he never entirely outgrew.

THE SPARE BECOMES THE HEIR

While Charles is said to have idolized Prince Henry Frederick, there is at least one  incident reported in which his older brother publicly humiliated him.  There were religious undertones to the insult. The affair is used to support an allegation that Henry Frederick had scant affection for his brother. It is just as likely a single incident seized upon by historians who wished to separate the image of the glorious heir who died from the unpopular young sibling who survived. Whatever the Prince of Wales’ attitude to his less auspicious young brother may have been, when Henry Frederick died apparently of typhoid in November 1612, Charles was the chief mourner at his funeral.  King James disliked funerals and refused to attend. At least outwardly, Henry Frederick had resisted the Stuart dynasty's love affair with the concept of Divine Right Monarchy.  He also had the gumption and independent spirit to openly defy his royal father on occasion. There is evidence James had grown afraid of him.

The twelve year old second son of England’s first Stuart king never captured the imagination of the English people in the way his brother had. The glory and hope of England had died an early death. As heir apparent, at least Charles finally gained the attention of his parents. One wonders if the king did not feel some relief for having an heir who was less a rival.

However, by 1612 when the Prince of Wales died,  the king’s own fiscal policies, his personal extravagance and his friendly relationship with Spain had eroded his support both with the parliament and the common people . Charles, the erstwhile spare, became the heir to an already brewing tragedy. James made the further mistake of forsaking his promise to the Scots to stay close to Scottish politics. Instead, in his only trip to Scotland after he became the king of England, all he did was  try to force a high Anglican prayer book on the Scottish kirk, an act which caused a religious division that became a precursor of civil war.

THE SPANISH MATCH

Then James and his Queen did the unthinkable.  They sought a Spanish marriage for their son. James, to his credit, dreamed of bringing peace to Europe, but his logic was flawed in thinking he could achieve it through a marriage of his second son to the Spanish Infanta. Prince Charles, in the company of the overreaching Duke of Buckingham, traveled to Spain in hopes of negotiating a formal betrothal. The English people and the Parliament, however, had not forgotten what occurred when Queen Mary Tudor married Philip of Spain.  They also remembered the words of Henry Frederick who had scoffed when such a plan was proposed to him. The ardent protestant Henry Frederick  declared there would never be two religions sleeping in his royal bed. Later when Charles married the French Catholic daughter of Henry IV and Marie de Medici, Henrietta Maria, the English were not impressed.

Prince Charles, however, was a Divine Right Monarchist to the core and had inherited his father’s disdain of Parliament, considering it an advisory body, a toy to be put aside at will. He no doubt thought the dynasty was secure when he and his French Catholic wife Henrietta Maria, sister of the French king, produced two sons, Charles and James, although it took eight years to do so.  He was not particularly troubled when his French wife raised them as Catholics. The English people were not as accommodating as their king. There was widespread belief that Charles also had but a single religion in the royal bed—and not the one the English were prepared to tolerate.

When one explores the writings of Robert Carey, often regarded  the first modern English autobiographer, and the memoirs of Alexander Seton, Earl of Dunfermline, one wonders if Charles was not marked to be a victim from the time of his birth.  What Charles did not realize at the time of his ascension when his father died was the English people also had a spare in incubation.

His name was Oliver Cromwell.

Portrait said to be Charles by unknown artist

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE EARLY LIFE OF CHARLES I

It is difficult not to feel empathy for the little Duke of Albany, left behind when his mother and brother traveled to England in glory. There are qualities to be admired in young Charles. With Dame Robert Carey's help, he overcame his physical infirmities. presumably caused by Rickets.  His recuperation must have been physically and mentally painful. At one point the king had wanted to put him in iron boots, and Lady Carey would not stand still for it.  Soon after she had her royal ward walking. It is not surprising throughout his early reign, he often sought advice from her.  In a sense she was his surrogate mother and his greatest champion.

Under the guidance of Dame Robert, the  once crippled child learned to enjoy sports, especially the hunt.  Charles seemed to emulate the family life characteristic of the Careys. He and Henrietta Maria came to love one another. He sired nine children, five of  whom survived.  He took great pride in his family. He exceeded the expectations of those who had attended his birth simply by living.

I read somewhere when Henry Frederick was on his death bed, Charles braved the risk of contagion and brought him a little metal horse as gift in hopes it would cheer him.  He was the chief mourner at a funeral his father did not choose to attend.  There is something profoundly sad about a child who struggled so hard merely to endure only to suffer so ignomious an end.

The beheading of Charles Stuart, King of England , Scotland and Ireland

Author's note:

Thank you for joining me.   The young Charles Stuart and Dame Robert Carey appear in  my Scottish fantasy The Green Woman in which he is kidnapped by the Wizard Earl of Bothwell, Frances Stuart, in collusion with the Goddess Nyx and sleeps through the entire adventure.

Charles is also the focus of my conventional historical novel in progress, In the Shadow of the Gallows, in which he briefly appears as a potential target of Gunpowder plotter Thomas Percy in an effort to kidnap Charles and place him as a puppet on the English throne under a Regency by Percy's relative Northumberland or some other peer sympathetic to the Catholic cause.  Fortunately, due to suspiciously delayed action of the Earl of Salisbury, Robert Cecil, the infamous explosion did not ignite other than in the imaginations of the British people and generations of historians and historical novelists.

Linda Root is the author of  The First Marie and the Queen of Scots, the story of the Queen's relationship with her cousin Marie Flemyng, whose love affair with William Maitland stunned the Queen and rocked the Scottish court; and The Last Knight and the Queen of Scots, the embellished adventures of Sir William Kirkcaldy of Grange.  Kirkcaldy's death after holding Edinburgh Castle as the last fortress to fly the banner of the captive Queen of Scots inspired the series The Legacy of the Queen of Scots, including The Midwife's Secret:The Mystery of the Hidden Princess.  Its sequels The Other Daughter, and 1603, the Queen's Revenge and her current work in progress In The Shadow of the Gallows feature Kirkcaldy's posthumous bastard daughter Daisy and Lord James Hepburn's bastard son William Hepburn who is an actual character but about whom little is recorded. Root and her husband Chris live in the Morongo Basin area of San Bernardino County where they are leasing space in a house governed by their giant Alaskan Malamutes Maxx and Maya. Linda is a retired major crimes prosecutor and Supervising Deputy District Attorney.

Horse Racing and its Organization

by Sue Millard

The Jockey Club

The Jockey Club, according to its own records, was founded in the reign of George II, in 1750. It was effectively one of the most exclusive of gentlemen’s clubs. Its first meetings were held at the Star & Garter Pub at Pall Mall, London before moving to Newmarket, which under James I, Charles II and Queen Anne had gradually become the home of racing. The Jockey Club controlled all regulations to do with racing until 2006 when, in a conscious move to decouple racing from its “patrician” roots, it set up the British Racing Authority. 

Weatherbys

Weatherbys is a privately owned English company, established 1770, which provides British horse racing with its central administration under contract to the British Horseracing Authority, acts as its bank and has maintained the Thoroughbred breed register since its inception.

Training

John Evelyn recorded in his Diary around 1684: “We returnd over New-market-heath...the Jockies breathing their fine Barbs & racers, & giving them their heates.” The term “breathing” meant giving a horse exercise that raised its respiration rate, while “heat” meant any exercise that raised its temperature, crudely measured as making the horse sweat. In 1761 George Stubbs portrayed the Duke of Richmond’s racehorses, being exercised in heavy rugs and hoods to achieve this.

Stubbs, The Duke of Richmond’s racehorses, painting from WikiArt

Types of races

In the early years, horse races were “matches” between two horses who competed in multiple heats, at distances from two to four miles. Only on a match day did a heat mean a stage of a race. Race heats were repeated until a horse had won the event twice or “distanced” the opponent – arriving at the finish more than 30 horse-lengths ahead, about 240 yards. These races were “stakes” in which both parties put up equal money as a sporting bet, and the winner took all.  

Horses were not raced until they were five or six years old. Carlisle racecourse, for instance, held a King's Plate – a race for 5-year-old horses in 3 mile heats – set up by George III in 1763.

Eclipse, by George Stubbs

The great horse Eclipse started racing at the age of five on 3 May 1769. Most racehorses ran only a few times in their lives, but Eclipse ran the unusually high number of 18 races in a career of about 17 months – by which time rival owners would no longer enter their horses against him because he was unbeatable: “Eclipse first, the rest nowhere”.

Originally, short races for 2 and 3 year old horses, the ones we are most familiar with today, were “futurities”, testing youngsters a couple of times on their potential for longer races.  The St Leger, first run in 1776 at Doncaster, was the first “Classic” race, though today the Derby has greater fame. The St Leger is a single contest for 3-year-olds over 1 mile 6 furlongs, so from the start it broke the tradition of races run in repeated heats and over long distances. 

Handicapping

Most races in the past were at “level weights” – all horses carrying the same weight (rider, saddle and, if necessary, lead strips carried in a saddle cloth). Weight-for-age races were a way of compensating for the relative strengths of younger and older horses and giving all a more equal chance of winning; they defined level weights for horses of equal age, with younger horses carrying less weight. 

Handicap races, in which faster or stronger horses are allotted slightly more weight to try and level the chances of winning, were not introduced until the 19^th century. The name “handicap” comes from a method of making a trading agreement, Hand I(n) Cap – a bit like Scissors Paper Stone, but with the participants hiding their hands in a cap containing money. When they pulled out their hands at the word, the agreement was made if they had all picked up some money, but if one or all had not, there was no contract.

Handicapping in horseracing there’s far less chance of the “Eclipse first, the rest nowhere” scenario where the favourite is so likely to win that no-one will take your bet. In hound trailing very often the bookmakers will not give odds against two or three of the really good hounds running and you can only bet on who will be third or fourth! So the Handicap system made gambling more exciting.

Bookmaking

The first commercial bookmaker in Britain was probably Harry Ogden, who opened a business in the 1790s; then an Act of Parliament in 1845 made it illegal to gamble except at race tracks. Bookies had to be extremely good at calculating odds, so they didn’t make a loss overall. From those times onward to the present day, and with the legalisation of off-track betting in 1961, commercial interests took over racing.

A comparison with the modern day

Horseracing now has the production values of an entertainment industry, with vast sums being generated in stud fees for outstanding stallions, and total prize money exceeding the £1 million mark for some high-prestige races. 

Thoroughbred foals can only be registered if their dams are registered with Weatherby’s, and they have to be DNA sampled and microchipped before they are 4 weeks old. When they are a year old they are sold on the basis of their pedigree (which gives an idea of whether their parents or grandparents had been any good on the racecourse), their conformation (overall good physique) and their heart-score (a predictor of blood-pumping capacity, ie, racing efficiency). 

The five great British Classics are the 2,000 Guineas, the 1,000 Guineas (for fillies only), the Derby, the Oaks (for fillies only), and the St Leger. They are all for 3-year-olds, and since these runners have to be trained and prepared for the high-value contests for months beforehand, the majority of modern racing uses very young horses of two and three years old, and mature horses are now the exception rather than the rule in the thoroughbred flat-racing population. 

Training involves dietary analysis, veterinary advice and treatment, regular weighing, interval training and swimming as well as exercise with a “lad” or a “work rider” on the gallops. Yet only a third of the foals born, overall, are ever good enough mentally or physically to set foot on a racecourse, let alone to win a race.

The first Derby on 4 May 1780 had been won by Diomed, a colt owned by Sir Charles Bunbury, who collected prize money of £1,065 15s. Two hundred and thirty-three years later the first prize was £782,314.

It’s all a far cry from word-of-mouth pedigrees and gentlemen’s wagers, in racing’s amateur heyday.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 Sue Millard is the author of several books on horses, both fiction and non-fiction. Her web site is Jackdaw E Books, http://www.jackdawebooks.co.uk

---

Wool is the whole wealth of my people!

by Octavia Randolph

Milking an ewe. Sheep's milk and cheese was a
valued commodity for hundreds of years.

LIFE without sheep was unthinkable. For the average Anglo-Saxon, sheep meant sustaining meat, milk, and cheese, healing wool-wax, valuable parchment, and most vitally, fleece. Fleece to be shorn or pulled, and spun and woven into cloth. Recall that there were then only two types of fabrics: woollen ones, and linen. (Only the very rich, on rare, ceremonial occasions, clothed themselves in imported silks.)

It is not for nothing that the seat of the Lord High Chancellor in the House of Lords has been a woolsack.

The woolsack is the low cushion (with protruding
backrest in middle) facing the throne in this
photograph of Westminster, c 1880.
Wikimedia Commons

It is almost impossible to overstate the importance of sheep on the early economy:

The history of the change from mediaeval to modern England might well be written in the form of a social history of the English cloth trade. -G.M. Trevelyan, O.M., Illustrated History of England

Sheep can thrive in harsh and stony environments where crop farming is difficult, and if protected from natural predators small flocks can rapidly grow large due to many ewes’ propensity to twinned lambs. Raw wool was exported from England to the Continent at least by the 8th century, and greatly expanded under Norman rule. British wool found eager buyers abroad, especially for the productive looms of Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres – creation site of so many magnificent medieval tapestries. The vast majority of exported wool went into durable cloth for clothing and drapery use – cloth sent back to the British Isles in its finished state.

It was Edward III who, by inviting skilled Flemish weavers to settle in England in 1331, began to reverse this wool-out/cloth-back trade. Many of the Flemings were in fact English allies and refugees from the Hundred Years War. Although subject to discrimination, suspicion, and even outright massacre in the London uprising against them in 1381, these weavers became entrenched in English society, their skill elevating the woollens trade to an exalted economic status.

Buying and selling sheep. Having reached
an agreement, two men shake hands.

Of the sixty-five distinct sheep breeds in Britain today, the oldest is the diminutive Soay, a descendent of the animals brought by the earliest Neolithic immigrants. A remnant population still lives on the St Kilda islands off the Outer Hebrides. They are typically brown, black, or dark cream-coloured, often with nearly white bellies. Most rams have downward curving horns, and a good percentage of the ewes as well. Soays are indeed tiny, only a third of the size of a modern sheep. Their wool is fine and short (2").

Soay ewe with twins. Photo from the St Kilda Soay Sheep Project,
which monitors and studies the wild population on the island.

Soay horned ewe with her lamb. Soay Sheep Breeders Cooperative

The tan-faced mountain breeds, still surviving in many variations, descend from medieval stock of marsh and hill sheep. Intelligent and very hardy, the ewes have a keen sense of direction and remember migratory trails from season to season. The mountain breeds generally have a coarse, hairy outer-coat over a fine woolly under-coat. The wool is loosely packed, even stringy in appearance, allowing the sheep to dry out quickly after a sudden downpour or washing.

Dalesbred, a mountain breed, showing the luxuriously
long and dense coat. www.nationalsheep.org.uk

Dalesbred ram, with splendid horns.
Dalesbred Sheep Breeders Association

Speaking of washing...

A clean sheep will produce a clean fleece, with less waste and a higher yield. Long before sheep were "dipped" in ghastly pesticides, they were, when it was warranted, washed. Small streams were ideal for this, for they could be temporarily dammed, and a pool formed. If the stream had a gravel bed, so much the better, as little muck would be churned up by the actions of the washers. Sheep, fouled with mud and matted droppings, were driven into the pool. Not surprisingly when one considers the amount of air trapped in the fleece, sheep float - and are also strong swimmers. Sometimes a good, wet, rubdown would be all that was needed; if required, a dilute solution of washing lye (made from wood ash) was scrubbed over the beast. Once released the sheep swam for the nearest bank to dry in the sun.

Wool-fat, Wool-oil, Wool-wax...

Are earlier names for lanolin. Lanolin was extracted from sheep's wool by boiling washed wool in water. When the pan was left to cool, a milky white grease would be floating on top - the sheep's waterproofing. The globules could be picked out, and further refined by squeezing them through linen cloths. Lanolin was invaluable as a simple remedy for chapped and roughened skin. Blended with powdered or crushed herbs, it served as a medicinal salve.

The Danes brought over native multi-horned sheep during the Viking invasion, some with as many as six horns. There may have been some breeds native to the British Isles which also sported horns in multiples, as noted by Robert Trow-Smith in A History of British Livestock Husbandry, 1700-1900:

…four or six-horned sheep is also to be found in the Isle of Man under the name ‘loaghton’. It, and indeed all the other native Scottish sheep types, is commonly given a Scandinavian origin and said to have been brought in by the Vikings. That may be so; but it should be noted that sculls and horn-cores of four-horned sheep have been found in undated deposits at Jarlshof (an ancient site in Shetland, Scotland), where the long succession of sites ranges from Bronze Age to late mediaeval dates, and the arrival of this sheep could have equally well have occurred earlier – or later – than the Viking settlement.

Their descendants are still bred for fleece and flesh in Britain. They found their way into ornamental sheep parks for the gentry in the seventeenth century.

A Manx Loaghton sheep, with characteristic four horns.
Manx Loaghton Sheep Breeders Group

~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Wool is the whole wealth of my people” exclaims Ælfwyn, one of the major characters in The Circle of Ceridwen, to a group of doubting Danes. She believed in her sheep! The Circle of Ceridwen Saga, 16 weeks on Amazon's Top Twenty Best Selling List in Women's Adventure. Now in paperback!

Why the Saxons Kept Breaking Their Vows

By Kim Rendfeld

Alcuin of York wanted the Christian mission in pagan Saxony to succeed, but in the 790s, he was deeply troubled by how it was carried out.

A 9th century manuscript
illustration with Alcuin in the middle.

Letters from the Northumbrian scholar who led Charlemagne’s Palace School might be as close as we get to the Continental Saxons’ side of the decades of bitter wars. The Saxons themselves had no written language as we know it, and the Church, aided by King Charles (Charlemagne), did whatever it could to obliterate a religion it equated with devil worship.

Neither side is innocent. The Saxons burned churches and killed indiscriminately, the latter perhaps as a thanksgiving to the war god. As for the Franks, in 782, Charles issued a capitulary that among other things called for the death of anyone who didn’t convert to Christianity.

In 789, Alcuin was optimistic about the spread of Christianity and for good reason. The Saxon war leader Widukind had accepted baptism four years before, and the peace thus far held. Alcuin asked a friend how the Saxons took his preaching, and a few months later, he praised Charles for pressuring the Saxons to convert whether it was with rewards or threats.

Three years later, Charles’s wars with the Saxons had restarted. Other contemporary sources complain that the Saxons broke their oaths. The entry in the Lorsch annals invokes Proverbs and compares the Saxons’ reverting to paganism, burning churches, and killing priests “as a dog returns to its vomit.”

Alcuin took a more nuanced approached in 796. Writing to Arno, a former student and bishop of Salzburg, Alcuin advised, “And be a preacher of compassion, not an exactor of tithes … It is tithes, men say, that have destroyed the faith of the Saxons.”

A 19th century illustration of Saxons being baptized.

The year before, emissaries of an Avarian governor came to Saxony, where the Franks were at war again, and promised to submit to Charles and accept baptism. It’s not too much of a stretch to think that Charles and his magnates talked about spreading Christianity to the Avars, whom the Franks had fought off and on since 788. Perhaps, Arno was already a candidate to lead the spiritual mission.

In 796, the Franks had a major victory over the Avars. With Avarian leaders killed in internecine conflict, the Franks broke into a stronghold and took its riches, probably centuries of plunder. The Avar governor, identified only as the tudun, and his companions accepted baptism.

Was Alcuin trying to prevent repeating the mistakes made with the Saxons in addition to changing the Christian mission there? Again and again that year, Alcuin pleaded for a different, gentler approach to spreading Christianity, even taking his message to King Charles. He pointed out the apostles did not exact tithes from the newly converted and said it was better to lose the wealth than the soul.

In a letter to Meginfrid the chamberlain (although the real audience is King Charles), Alcuin outlined how the process should work: teach first, then baptize, then expound on the Gospel. “And if any one of these three is lacking, the listener’s soul cannot enjoy salvation. Moreover, faith, as St. Augustine says, is a matter of will, not of compulsion. A person can be drawn to faith but cannot forced to it.”

Alcuin himself was well educated. Born around 735, he had directed the school at York for 15 years before joining Charles’s court.

“If the light and sweet burden of Christ were to be preached to the obstinate people of the Saxons with as much determination as the payment of tithes has been exacted and the force of the legal decree applied for faults of the most trifling sort imaginable, perhaps they would not be averse to their baptismal vows,” he wrote to Meginfrid, adding that missionaries should be learned men, “preachers, not predators.”

Arno was, in fact, assigned mission territory in Avaria and later appointed archbishop. Perhaps another letter to him from Alcuin is as much a warning as a lament: “It is because the wretched people of the Saxons has never had the faith in its heart that it has so often abandoned the baptismal oath.”

Public domain images via Wikimedia Commons.

Sources

Charlemagne: Translated Sources by P.D. King

“Alcuin” by James Burns, The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907). Retrieved from New Advent

"Salzburg" by Cölestin Wolfsgrüber, The Catholic Encyclopedia (1912). Retrieved from New Advent

Charlemagne by Roger Collins

Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, translated by Bernhard Walter Scholz with Barbara Rogers

Alcuin’s letters played an important role in Kim Rendfeld’s research about eighth-century Saxony, where the story for The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar begins (August 28, 2014, Fireship Press). Kim’s latest release is a tale of the lengths a mother will go to protect her children after she’s lost everything else. To read the first chapter or find out more about Kim, visit kimrendfeld.com, her blog Outtakes of a Historical Novelist, at kimrendfeld.wordpress.com, like her on Facebook at facebook.com/authorkimrendfeld, follow her on Twitter at @kimrendfeld, or contact her at kim [at] kimrendfeld [dot] com.

The Third Anniversary of #EHFA

by Debra Brown

Thank you! We have enjoyed your visits to the blog for a full three years. Your comments, Google plusing, and help with sending out links has been very much appreciated. At this writing we have had 1,759,084 pageviews since Day One, September 23, 2011.

Lindisfarne Castle, Holy Island*

Our all-time most visited posts, counting down, have been:

#10) Playing Doctor with the Queen by Anna Belfrage
#9) Samuel Leech's Account of War at Sea by Wanda Luce
#8) The Real Identities Behind the Books we Love by Karen V. Wasylowski
#7) Victorian Violence: Repelling Ruffians (Part Three) by Terry Kroenung
#6) Tudor England's Most Infamous Villain: Richard Rich, 1st Baron Rich of Leez by Beth von Staats
#5) Stand And Deliver ... Your Tolls? The Rise and Fall of the Turnpikes by J.A. Beard
#4) Who Placed the Earliest Roman Footprint in Scotland? by Nancy Jardine
#3) Greeting Nobility by Marie Higgins
#2) Little Ease: Torture and the Tudors by Nancy Bilyeau
#1) Seven Surprising Facts About Anne of Cleves by Nancy Bilyeau

Congratulations to all of the authors above, and especially to Nancy with the #1 and 2 posts.

There are ever so many other wonderful posts by regularly contributing authors. We have several by Linda Root on the topic of Mary, Queen of Scots and the people and events surrounding her. Beth von Staats who runs the Queen Anne Boleyn blog focuses on the ministers of and people living during the time of Henry VIII. Helena P. Schrader is currently discussing people and events surrounding the Crusades, and Octavia Randolph takes us back to Anglo-Saxon times. Mark Patton shares information on Roman and pre-Roman Britain.

One of my favorite all-time posts remains that of Richard Denning with his haunting video of the Lord's Prayer in Old English.

I am seriously neglecting many other outstanding authors whose posts fill the pages of this blog, and I apologize that I cannot name them all. If you have not followed them here for long, please take a good look through for true tales from your favorite eras and authors. Please use the blog's search function. On social media sites, watch for our hashtag, #EHFA. It will take you to our group posts and projects as well as those of some of our members individually. And we'd love to have you join our Facebook group where we actively discuss history and historical fiction topics.

Mistletoe at Hampton Court Palace**

Last year at this date we released our anthology of selected posts from the first year of this blog titled Castles, Customs, and Kings: True takes by English Historical Fiction Authors edited by myself and M.M. Bennetts and published by Madison Street Publishing. CC&K has done well and continues to sell. Volume II is in the works.

We had at one time planned to announce the release of CC&K Volume II today, but tragedy cut into our path with the illness and death of M.M. Bennetts, one of the blog's beloved member-authors and a co-editor of the book. Her death has keenly saddened the group and the historical fiction community. Her witty posts and the extensive knowledge she imparted when we had questions on historical topics will be greatly missed. What more might she have taught us? Please browse these EHFA posts, most of which are her writing. I am sure you would also enjoy her own blog focusing mainly on Regency and Napoleonic (she hated him--that will clearly and amusingly come through) history.

If you have not read M.M.'s books, you are missing a treat. They can be found on Amazon US and UK.

Plans for a distinguished, annual M.M. Bennetts Historical Fiction Award at EHFA is in the works with Katherine Ashe as Chairman of the Board.

The following post is a tribute to M.M. Bennetts by her good friend, Nancy Bilyeau. Please read on.

Thank you for being a part of our lives, and I hope we will be invited to join you at tea every day!

Photo Attributions
*"LindisfarneCastleHolyIsland" by matthew Hunt - originally posted to Flickr as Holly Island 11. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LindisfarneCastleHolyIsland.jpg#mediaviewer/File:LindisfarneCastleHolyIsland.jpg
**"Mistletoe at Hampton Court Palace" by Jonathan Cardy - Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mistletoe_at_Hampton_Court_Palace.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Mistletoe_at_Hampton_Court_Palace.jpg