Bias in Historical Research

by Stephenie Woolterton

As historical fiction authors and historians, we study and create characters, plots, and worlds that transport our readers to the past. Although we cannot actually visit these bygone times (when will they invent that time machine?), we are able to build worlds so powerful that we hope our readers feel as though they are transported to them through their imaginations. Even if we’re writing about people who once lived, we will never be able to actually meet and speak with them. What we can do, however, is use the intensive historical detective skills we’ve gathered to construct stories of distant times and places - periods accessible only through research. An unavoidable part we encounter in this research process is bias.

What exactly is bias?

Simply put, bias is perspective. Perspective is largely the consequence of the author’s background and the current political, social, and economic circumstances of the time in which the author is writing. Bias in historical research refers to the adoption of a particular perspective from which some things become salient and others merge into the background. It is a conscious or unconscious tendency on the part of the writer or researcher to interpret what they research.

For instance, history was once predominately written by powerful white males who assumed that only wealthy white males made history. They determined what history was deemed worth recording, and the role of others (e.g. servants, wives, mothers, etc.) was felt to be insignificant. These days, historians often allow for bias in the evidence they gather, and even explain it when reconstructing what happened in the past. The problems encountered involve matters of the ‘truth’ of historical events, the question of a balance between historical details and fictional elements, and the demand for authenticity and accuracy in the material we write about. In this case, for both the novelist and the historian, meaning lies not in the chain of events themselves, but in the writer's interpretation of what occurred. Pressures to conform to existing norms can be strong. What is taken to be historically ‘true’ by powerful, highly acknowledged historians is not easy to dispute. There can be great difficulty with challenging existing historical authorities or established interpretations of how an event happened or the taken for granted, ingrained ‘facts’ about an historical figure. This can even influence what is published versus what is rejected.

Yet historians and authors do not live their everyday lives in a vacuum: gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religious beliefs, social background, and nationality all mean something. They influence the historian in terms of which topics to focus on, what questions to ask, which sources to consult, and the interpretations they glean. To practice research and to create historical stories of our own is to question and consider interpretations that are different from our own. A way to discern bias in research involves being reflective over your work, and to consider various viewpoints.

Is it possible to overcome bias?

Although complete detachment may not be possible, historians can put commitment to rational standards of historical inquiry ahead of a desire for a certain outcome, thereby significantly reducing the outright bias in their work. Even if historians are fair-minded, the information available to them is often biased. The best way to reconcile bias is to acknowledge it when using quotes or paraphrasing material, and to point out where similar sources agree or disagree. Never forget to interrogate and question your sources. Who wrote it? What was their motivation or intention? What was the context or background behind this document? Did someone have an axe to grind when they wrote it?

Historians have long been aware that the information available to them, be it in historical texts or visual sources, have often been selected for certain purposes: these artifacts reflect the concepts and interests of their creators. The historian’s job is to look at explanations that account for the motivations behind them so they can then look for coherence among various explanations of the same historical period (i.e. The French Revolution). Critical historians should always interpret their evidence cautiously.

Unfortunately, there are occasions where historians cannot get to the ‘facts’ behind biased or missing evidence. The available information may have been so culled as to yield an inaccurate impression of events. For instance, in my own research into the private life of the late eighteenth century British politician William Pitt the Younger, I have found ample evidence to suggest that large swathes of Pitt’s private papers were deliberately destroyed by his executor, Bishop Tomline. What was Tomline’s purpose for systematically destroying Pitt’s papers? His wife was in direct collusion, and together they acted to conceal something about Pitt’s domestic life that they did not approve of and felt did not fit with the posthumous image of the pure, unsullied Minister. Instead, the untarnished image of Pitt was portrayed: the stately politician without any taint or scandal. Here Tomline’s motivation was to set himself up as Pitt’s official biographer by sifting out what did not fit with the interpretation – the image – of Pitt that he intended to portray. After over two centuries, my intention through my biography of Pitt is partly to expose Tomline’s bias of Pitt’s character.

Historical writing as a cooperative endeavor: Historians working together 

A balanced and well-argued account with supporting evidence to assert your claims is central in historical research. It’s important to get your friends and colleagues to look over your work and to discuss your findings. History should be viewed as a cooperative, collective endeavor, with historians working together to arrive at and challenge accounts of the past. The freedom to question your own views, and those of others, in an open-minded way is a great method for reaching fair descriptions of the past.

Image Source: My photo of a framed letter from William Pitt to his friend William Wilberforce (August 8, 1792) announcing his acceptance as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.

About the Author:

Stephenie Woolterton is currently writing a biography of William Pitt the Younger’s private life, primarily surrounding his female attachments. Her website is www.theprivatelifeofpitt.com and she’s on Twitter @anoondayeclipse.

John Wycliffe and the Necessity of Taking Sides in History

By Rosanne E. Lortz

Ascribing motivations—I’ve heard it said before that this is one of the main differences between historical novelists and historians. The historian aims to tell what historical characters did. The historical novelist aims to tell why they did it. The historian gives us the facts. The historical novelist embroiders the facts with what was going on in the actors’ heads and hearts. The historian gives us an impartial account of what happened. The historical novelist biases the account by giving us a hero and a villain and manipulating events to create a story arc.

While it is certainly true that good historical novelists try to get inside the heads of their characters, it’s also true that historians do the very same thing. Historians are telling a story, just as historical novelists are, and instead of assuming that everything we read in a history book is plain, unadulterated fact, we should instead learn to look at it as a piece of literature that must be evaluated. Who is the historian casting as the hero? Who is the historian casting as the villain? What events is the historian including in order to shape the story into the arc he wants? What events is he leaving out?

The story of John Wycliffe is a prime example of a man who has been dealt with in many different ways by historians. John Wycliffe was a fourteenth century intellectual who tried to reform the corruption in the church. He was an opponent of papal authority in England, which, as I discussed in an earlier post, had gradually increased over the centuries until the Roman pope claimed complete authority over all matters spiritual and secular. He believed that the Bible should be the sole authority for Christians and urged it to be made available in the vernacular so that every man could read it. He condemned pilgrimages, veneration of the saints, and transubstantiation. 

Wycliffe’s followers became known as the Lollards. They agitated against the established church with their anti-clerical views and were eventually suppressed by the civil rulers. Wycliffe’s teachings were condemned posthumously at the Council of Constance in 1415, and since he was no longer alive to face the punishment for his heresy, the church exhumed his bones and burned them. Historians would later refer to Wycliffe as “The Morning Star of the Reformation” since so many of his ideas were seminal to the ideas of men like Martin Luther and John Calvin.

Burning Wycliffe's Bones - Illustration from Foxe's Book of Martyrs

Thomas Walsingham, a fourteenth century monk of St. Albans, was quite clear what role Wycliffe played in the storybook of history:

There arose in the university of Oxford a northerner called John Wycliffe, a doctor in theology, who maintained publicly in the schools and elsewhere, erroneous, absurd and heretical conclusions against the teachings of the whole Church, resounding poisonously against monks and other religious possessioners…. The lords and magnates of the realm and many of the people favoured John Wycliffe and his followers in their preachings of such errors, especially since by their assertions they gave great power to the laity to take away the temporal possessions of the clergy and the religious. 

To Thomas Walsingham, Wycliffe is a villain, with “poisonous” teachings. His followers flocked to him only because it was to their own material advantage. They hoped to take the wealth belonging to the clergy.

Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, a work written two centuries later during the English Reformation, has a much different part assigned to Wycliffe. Foxe wrote:

This Wickliff, perceiving the true doctrine of Christ’s Gospel to be adulterated and defiled with so many filthy inventions and dark errors of bishops and monks…determined with himself to help and to remedy such things…. This holy man took great pains, protesting, as they said, openly in the schools, that it was his principal purpose to call back the Church from her idolatry, especially in the matter of the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ. But this boil or sore could not be touched without the great grief and pain of the whole world: for, first of all, the whole glut of monks and begging friars was set in a rage and madness, who, even as hornets with their sharp stings, did assail this good man on every side; fighting, as is said, for their altars, paunches, and bellies…. Notwithstanding, the said Wickliff, being somewhat friended and supported by the king, bore out the malice of the friars and of the archbishop; John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the king’s son, and Lord Henry Percy, being his special maintainers.

To Foxe, Wycliffe’s words are not poisonous; rather, it is the “filthy inventions and dark errors” of the established clergy which come under censure. The accusation of greed, which Walsingham said motivated Wycliffe’s followers, is now leveled against Wycliffe’s opponents who rejected Wycliffe’s teachings for the sake of “their altars, paunches, and bellies.”

In a later passage, Foxe goes out of his way to show that John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, was a true believer in Wycliffe’s teaching, not just an opportunist. He quotes a sermon given by Philip Reppyngdon, a colleague of Wycliffe’s, in which he said “that the Duke of Lancaster was very earnestly affected and minded in this manner, and would that all such [those who held Wycliffe’s views] should be received under his protection.”

The bias shown by each of these medieval historians is easy to spot. Their work is weighed down with adjectives containing moral judgments: holy, filthy, poisonous, dark, erroneous, absurd, heretical, good. Modern historians take more pains to hide their judgments, but the judgments are there all the same.

Jackson Spielvogel, in his monumental tome Western Civilization, tells the story in a way of which Foxe would probably approve:

Wyclif has sometimes been viewed as a forerunner of the Reformation of the sixteenth century because his arguments attacked the foundations of the medieval Catholic church’s organization and practices. His attacks on church property were especially popular, and he attracted a number of followers who came to be known as Lollards. Persecution by royal and church authorities who feared the socioeconomic consequences of Wyclif’s ideas forced the Lollards to go underground after 1400.

Spielvogel steers clear of the word “greedy”, but notice that it is Wycliffe’s opponents who “fear the socioeconomic consequences of Wyclif’s ideas.”

Brian Tierney, in Western Europe in the Middle Ages: 300-1475, describes things with a bit more skeptical tone:

John Wyclif (ca. 1330-1384), a theologian of Oxford University, first became prominent around 1375 for attacking the wealth and luxury of the church and for maintaining that all church property was held only at the discretion of the secular authorities. At this time, a group of English nobles headed by John of Ghent, duke of Lancaster, were looking with greedy eyes on the possessions of the church and were delighted to find an ecclesiastical supporter. Wyclif was lucky in having the protection of the powerful duke of Lancaster for the rest of his life.

Tierney does not go so far as to impugn Wycliffe’s motives, but John of Gaunt is certainly only in it for the money—just like the monk from St. Albans asserted.

Elizabeth Hallam, in one of the essays included in Chronicles of the Age of Chivalry, shows even more skepticism than Tierney:

Desperate for money to prosecute the faltering war with France, Gaunt looked to the English clergy, already hard-pressed by papal taxation. He needed to stem papal demands and also to coerce the clergy into paying even higher taxes to the state. To do this he harnessed prevailing anti-clerical and anti-papal prejudices and used Wycliffe as his propagandist. The don relished the task, developing the doctrine that it was laity’s right and duty to reform the erring Church.

With the loaded words “prejudices” and “propagandist”, Hallam manages to imply that Wycliffe was a tool in the hands of the money-grubbing John of Gaunt and that he might not even have truly believed in the doctrines he was drawing up.

In all of the examples I have given, the historians—both medieval and modern—ascribed motivations to John Wycliffe’s followers, John Wycliffe’s opponents, or John Wycliffe himself. The differing treatment from the pens of different historians is an eye-opening example of how moral judgments permeate history books. Like it or not, we must admit that historians take sides in the same way that historical novelists do. 

But at the same time, we must also realize that bias, per se, is not a failing for a historian. Bias is an inevitability. The historian puts John Wycliffe in the role of hero or villain because stories—even real stories—have good guys and bad guys. The historian makes a moral judgment about John Wycliffe’s teachings because there really are some right views and some wrong views in the world. And the historian—the modern historian—makes a concerted effort to hide his bias as best he can, because everyone knows that history books don’t take sides. That’s what historical novelists do.

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Rosanne E. Lortz is the author of I Serve: A Novel of the Black Prince, a historical adventure/romance set during the Hundred Years' War, and Road from the West: Book I of the Chronicles of Tancred, the beginning of a trilogy which takes place during the First Crusade.

You can visit Rosanne at her Facebook Page or her Official Author Website where she blogs about writing, mothering, and things historical.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Foxe, John. Foxe's Book of Martyrs. USA: Whitaker House, 1981.

Hallam, Elizabeth, ed. Chronicles of the Age of Chivalry. London: Greenwich Editions, 2002.

Spielvogel, Jackson J. Western Civilization. Third Edition. Minneapolis: West Publishing Company, 1997.

Tierney, Brian. Western Europe in the Middle Ages: 300-1475. Sixth Edition. USA: McGraw-Hill College, 1999.

William Wallace, the Hero?--Two Sides to Every Story

By Rosanne E. Lortz

Whenever I study history, I have an innate bias in favor of the underdog. When the Britons face the invading Angles and Saxons, I root for King Arthur’s warriors at Badon Hill. When the Anglo-Saxons bear the iron yoke of the Normans, I rally with Robin Hood’s men in Sherwood Forest. And when the Scots thwart Edward I’s ambition to rule the entire island, I look to William Wallace as the hero of the hour.

My first introduction to William Wallace was in The Scottish Chiefs, a nineteenth century novel by Jane Porter. The highly romanticized story, strewn with N. C. Wyeth’s poignant illustrations, appealed to my young teenage self. My second encounter with Wallace was in the 1995 movie Braveheart. The much grimier, but still highly romanticized story appealed to my older teenage self. Both stories made me want to cry “Freedom!” with the Scottish warrior and shed tears for his patriotic martyrdom.

Wyeth's William Wallace

Later, when I was curious enough to sift fact from fiction, I discovered that both of these retellings were about as accurate as a perjurer’s deposition. But, even with all the embellishments discarded, I had no doubts where my loyalty lay. I was still committed to William Wallace, and taking Edward I’s side was unthinkable.

This certainty was sorely shaken when I encountered the Flores Historiarum, a Latin chronicle written by several English hands during the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. It was begun at St. Alban’s Abbey, continued at Westminster Abbey, and today there are approximately twenty manuscripts extant.

The Flores Historiarum presents a much less romanticized view of William Wallace; it presents an English opinion of the Scottish hero:

About the time of the festival of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a certain Scot, by name William Wallace, an outcast from pity, a robber, a sacrilegious man, an incendiary and a homicide, a man more cruel than the cruelty of Herod, and more insane than the fury of Nero…a man who burnt alive boys in schools and churches, in great numbers; who, when he had collected an army of Scots in the battle of Falkirk against the King of England, and had seen that he could not resist the powerful army of the king, said to the Scots, "Behold I have brought you into a ring, now carol and dance as well as you can," and so fled himself from the battle, leaving his people to be slain by the sword. 

He, I say, this man of Belial, after his innumerable wickednesses, was at last taken prisoner by the king's servants and brought to London, as the king ordained that he should be formally tried, and was on the eve of St. Bartholomew [23rd August, 1305] condemned by the nobles of the kingdom of England to a most cruel but amply deserved death. First of all, he was led through the streets of London, dragged at the tail of a horse, and dragged to a very high gallows, made on purpose for him, where he was hanged with a halter, then taken down half dead, after which his body was vivisected in a most cruel and torturous manner, and after he had expired, his body was divided into four quarters, and his head fixed on a stake and set on London Bridge. But his four quarters thus divided, were sent to the four quarters of Scotland. Behold the end of a merciless man whom his mercilessness brought to this end.

For the William Wallace of this story, the punishment fits the crime. For the William Wallace of this story, the reader has no tears.

The portrayal of William Wallace in the Flores Historiarum is certainly as yellow as a jaundiced eye can make it. Some could argue that it is as far removed from truth as the whitewashed hagiographies of several centuries later. But whether it is accurate or not, for me, this passage has always illustrated an important lesson: there are two sides to every story.

As a historical novelist concerned about my craft, I can’t always follow my innate biases. I can’t just root for the underdog, or the man with the most glamorous legends. If two voices deserve to be heard, I must let them both speak.

Wallace Monument near Stirling Bridge

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Rosanne E. Lortz is the author of I Serve: A Novel of the Black Prince, a historical adventure/romance set during the Hundred Years' War, and Road from the West: Book I of the Chronicles of Tancred, the beginning of a trilogy which takes place during the First Crusade.

You can learn more about Rosanne's books at her Official Author Website where she also blogs about writing, mothering, and things historical.