Queen Elizabeth, Spain, and the Sea Beggars

by Barbara Kyle

William de la Marck
[Public Domain] Wikimedia Commons

This is a David and Goliath story of the 16th century. "David" was Dutch rebel William de la Marck. "Goliath" was the mighty Philip II of Spain. Elizabeth I of England was the surprise catalyst of an uprising that sparked the Dutch War of Independence against Spain.

Elizabeth I by William Sugar
[Public Domain] Wikimedia Commons

In 1571 Elizabeth, at the age of thirty-eight, had reigned for thirteen years. She was far from secure on her throne. England had no standing army and an undersized navy, and Elizabeth feared that Philip of Spain, the most powerful monarch in Europe, was poised to invade. To strike at her, his army would sail from the Netherlands. There, less than a hundred miles off her shores, his troops had already subjugated the Dutch.

Philip II

Philip was lord of Spain, portions of the Italian peninsula, and the Low Countries (modern-day Belgium and the Netherlands) whose cities of Antwerp and Bruges were Europe's richest trading centres. He was also stupendously wealthy thanks to his vast New World possessions. The Spanish Main, a scythe-shaped slice of the globe, ran from Florida through Mexico and Central America to the north coast of South America, gateway to the riches of Peru.

Twice a year the Spanish treasure fleet, the flota, crossed the Atlantic to deliver hoards of New World gold, silver, and precious gems to Philip's treasury in Spain. Philip used this constant river of riches to finance his constant wars. Throughout Europe, Spain's armies were feared and triumphant.

Nowhere were they more feared than in the Netherlands. There, Philip's general, the Duke of Alba, had crushed Dutch resistance to Spanish rule. "The Iron Duke," as Alba was called, was governor of the Netherlands from 1567 and had set up a special court called the Council of Troubles under whose authority he executed thousands, including leading Dutch nobles. The people called it the Council of Blood. Here are Alba's own words: "It is better that a kingdom be laid waste and ruined through war for God and for the king, than maintained intact for the devil and his heretical horde."

The Duke of Alba

The Dutch Prince William of Orange was one of the ten thousand people summoned before the Council. But the Prince escaped. He gathered a rebel army and marched into Brabant, the Dutch heartland. But his troops were inexperienced and untrained, and with winter approaching and money running out, the Prince turned back. He went into exile in the German lands, awaiting his next chance.

Religion, as always in the 16th century, was a fiery instrument of division. Philip of Spain was known as "the most Catholic prince in Christendom." Catholics considered Elizabeth of England a bastard, since they did not acknowledge her mother Anne Boleyn's marriage to her father Henry VIII, and a heretic, since Elizabeth's first act as queen had been to make the realm officially Protestant. That act had also made her the supreme head of the church in England, a concept that Catholics found grotesque: a woman as head of a church. In 1570 Pope Pious V excommunicated Elizabeth in a fierce decree, calling her a heretic and "the servant of crime." He released all her subjects from any allegiance to her, and excommunicated any who obeyed her orders. Scores of affluent Catholics left England with their families and settled in the Spanish-occupied Netherlands.

Mary, Queen of Scots

These English exiles considered Elizabeth's cousin Mary, Queen of Scots the legitimate claimant to the English throne. But by this time Elizabeth held Mary under house arrest in England, a comfortable captivity in Sheffield Castle. Elizabeth did not dare set Mary free, fearing she would foment an invasion by a Catholic League of Spain, France, and the Pope. In the Netherlands, the English exiles were plotting to overthrow Elizabeth with military help from their powerful Spanish friends and install Mary in her place . . . and there, in the Netherlands, just a day's sail from the English coast, Spanish troops under the merciless Duke of Alva stood ready should Philip give the invasion order.

But the Dutch rebels had not given up, only gone to ground. They still considered Prince William of Orange their leader. He was keen for a second chance to win back his country for the Dutch. And Elizabeth of England was eager to secretly support him. That second chance came in the spring of 1572. This time the rebels would not come marching, as an army. They would come from the sea: a motley fleet called the Sea Beggars.

The origin of their name is intriguing. Before Alba's arrival in the Netherlands the governor was Philip's sister, Margaret. A delegation of over two hundred Dutch nobles appeared before her with a petition stating their grievances. She was alarmed at the appearance of so large a body, but one of her councillors exclaimed, "What, madam, is your highness afraid of these beggars?" The Dutch heard the insult, and after Margaret ignored their petition they declared they were ready to become beggars in their country's cause, and adopted the name "Beggars" with defiant pride. Scores of them took to the sea to harry Spanish shipping. Led by William de la Marck, they called themselves the Sea Beggars.

William de la Marck

For several years Elizabeth gave safe conduct to the Sea Beggars, allowing La Marck and his rebel mariners to make Dover and the creeks and bays along England's south coast their home as they continued their raids on Spanish shipping, which infuriated Philip. England was far weaker than mighty Spain, so Elizabeth was playing "a game of cat and mouse" with Philip, says historian Susan Ronald in her book The Pirate Queen; helping the Sea Beggars was "the only course open to her to show her defiance of Spain."

But as 1572 dawned Philips's fury grew dangerous. In March, Elizabeth ordered the expulsion of the Sea Beggars from her realm, an act that people assumed was to placate Philip. It turned out, however, that Elizabeth had struck a lethal blow at Spain: by expelling the Sea Beggars she had unleashed their latent power. For a month theses rebel privateers wandered the sea, homeless and hungry, until, on the first of April, they made a desperate attack on the Dutch port city of Brielle, which had been left unattended by the Spanish garrison. They astounded everyone, even themselves, by capturing the city.

The Capture of Brielle

Their victory provided the Dutch opposition's first foothold on land and launched a revolution: the Dutch War of Independence. The capture of Brielle gave heart to other Dutch cities suffering under Spain's harsh rule, and when the Sea Beggars pushed on inland they rejoiced to see town after town open their gates to them. The exiled Prince of Orange now sent troops to support them. But Spain ferociously struck back. Taking the rebel-held cities of Mechelen and Zutphen, the Duke of Alba's troops massacred the inhabitants; in Mechelen the atrocities went on for four days. The town of Haarlem bravely resisted during a long siege, but finally surrendered. Alba's troops methodically cut the throats of the entire garrison, some two thousand men, in cold blood.

By 1585 Elizabeth could no longer tolerate Spain's tyranny in the Netherlands, and she sent an army under the Earl of Leicester to support the Dutch revolution. Nevertheless, it took six decades more until the people of the Netherlands won their freedom, in 1648.

To this day, on the First of April every year, the Dutch people still exuberantly celebrate the Sea Beggars' capture of Brielle.

This Editor's Choice was first published on November 26, 2013. 

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Barbara Kyle is the author of seven acclaimed historical novels – the Thornleigh Saga series – all published internationally, and of contemporary thrillers, three under pen-name Stephen Kyle, including Beyond Recall, a Literary Guild Selection. Her latest novel is The Traitor's Daughter. Over 500,000 copies of her books have been sold in seven countries. Barbara has taught writers at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies and is a popular guest presenter at writers' conferences. Before becoming an author Barbara enjoyed a twenty-year acting career in television, film, and stage productions in Canada and the U.S.

Barbara’s workshops, master classes, and manuscript evaluations have launched many writers to published success. She recently released a non-fiction writing resource, Page-Turner: Your Path to Writing a Novel That Publishers Want and Readers Buy. Barbara welcomes you to her website: www.BarbaraKyle.com.

The Sea Beggars feature in Barbara Kyle's novel The Queen's Exiles.

About The Queen's Exiles: "1572. Europe is in turmoil. A vengeful faction of exiled English Catholics is plotting to overthrow Queen Elizabeth and install her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots on the throne. And in the Netherlands the streets are red with the blood of those who dare to oppose the brutal Spanish occupation. But amid the unrest one resourceful young woman has made a lucrative enterprise. Scottish-born Fenella Doorn salvages crippled vessels. It is on one of these ships that she meets wealthy Baron Adam Thornleigh. Secretly drawn to him, Fenella can’t refuse when Adam enlists her to join him in war-torn Brussels to help find his traitorous wife, Frances—and the children she’s taken from him. But Adam and Fenella will put their lives in peril as they attempt to rescue his young ones, defend the crown, and restore the peace that few can remember."

Barbara Kyle's six-book Thornleigh Saga follows an English middle-class family's rise through three tumultuous Tudor reigns.

"Riveting...adventurous...superb!" Historical Novel Society, "Editor's Choice."

"Kyle knows what historical fiction readers crave." RT Book Reviews

"A beautifully written and compelling novel. Again, Barbara Kyle reigns!” - New York Times bestselling author Karen Harper

　

Duty first - of Philip II, his Tudor Matter and life in general

by Anna Belfrage

Philip II

Philip II of Spain tends to be remembered for two – well, three – things from an English perspective:

• He married Mary Tudor – a match not exactly made in heaven between a love-sick woman and a man who married out of political obligations 
• He wooed his former sister-in-law Elizabeth Tudor, supposedly hoping to marry her when Mary died 
• He sent the Spanish Armada to conquer England.

One could think, based on this, that Philip had a special affinity for England, that his heart and soul longed to be an Englishman. I’m sorry to break this to you, but from Philip’s perspective, England was pretty insignificant – this was a man with more titles than would fit on the fly leaf of a Bible, ruler of a huge empire. No, Philip’s interest in England emanated from his irritation with this pesky Protestant kingdom and its determined support to those equally pesky Protestants in the Spanish Dominions.

Philip II comes down to us through the years as something of a bore. Too stiff, too dour, too fond of black…Rarely does anyone mention his impressive library in El Escorial, where the books were turned the wrong way so that instead of spines, the visitors saw only gold-edged pages. Rarely does anyone mention that Philip had read a substantial part of all those books – conversant in multiple languages, raised to rule, and from a family that set a high value on schooling their princes, Philip had received an excellent and thorough education. And rarely does anyone mention his other wives, his problems with his children, his affectionate letters to his daughters, his carefully chosen gifts to both his children and his wives – or his gruesome death.

So today, I thought we’d spend some time with Philip – or Felipe el Prudente, as those of us who speak Castilian prefer to call him.

Charles I&V

Being born the son of an extremely capable man is not always a blessing. In this case, Philip II had giant footprints to fill, but he doesn’t seem to have been unduly daunted. Philip was born the eldest son of Charles I & V, that powerful Holy Roman Emperor who was ever a champion of his aunt, Catherine of Aragon (see? Another, if indirect, English connection) who ruled an empire so vast he decided it was too big for any mortal man to manage well – which was why, upon Charles’ death, Philip did not become the next Holy Roman Emperor. Being King of Spain and its growing empire was enough of a challenge.

Charles married Philip’s mother to make his Spanish grandees happy. He himself was in no hurry to wed, but by all accounts he was happy with his Portuguese wife, and his son and heir was raised in a harmonious household. Once again, to appease those Spanish grandees, Philip was raised in Spain, speaking Castilian as his first language.

Philip was a serious man – and somewhat shy. Already as a boy, his distinguishing characteristic was his sense of duty. Duty to his father, duty to his mother, duty to his tutors – and as he grew, this would morph into duty to his country, to his family and wives.

Rarely did Philip do something for himself. Never did he caper about while warbling “don’t worry, be happy.” In Philip’s strictly regimented life, happy was not something a serious man aspired to, and as to worry, well Philip always worried. About being good enough. About the lack of sons. About the situation in England. About the Spanish Netherlands. About God. About the state of his linens – Philip had an abhorrence of anything dirty and was meticulous about his hygiene. Major plus, if you ask me…

Charles was quite taken with this reflective son of his, and once Philip was over his childhood years, father and son bonded as Charles tried to teach Philip everything he knew about ruling an empire consisting of various people, various languages, various cultures. There was one fundamental difference between Charles and Philip: Charles had been raised in the polyglot court of his aunt Margaret of Austria, had as a matter of course been exposed to various creeds, various cultures. Philip, on the other hand, had been raised in the tender care of devoted Catholics in a country that viewed all cultures but their own with a sizeable pinch of suspicion. Let’s just say that Philip’s upbringing left him somewhat less…flexible.

He was however, ever the obedient and dutiful son. So when Charles arranged Philip’s first marriage with Princess Maria Manuela of Portugal, Philip of course agreed. As an aside, being a prince – just as much as being a princess – meant little say in who you married. Royal marriage was for building alliances and consolidating power, not for something as ephemeral as love.

Purportedly Maria Manuela

Anyway: Maria Manuela and Philip were of an age – both of them were sixteen – and liked each other well enough. They were also very closely related: Maria’s mother was Philip’s paternal aunt, and Philip’s mother was Maria’s paternal aunt, plus Philip’s maternal grandmother was his father’s maternal aunt. Well: let’s just say it was complicated. Very complicated – and it didn’t help that the somewhat unstable bloodline of Juana of Castile  appeared all over the place. So when little Maria Manuela gave birth to a son in 1545, the baby had a DNA cocktail that did not exactly predestine him to greatness. Even worse, Maria died in childbirth, and Philip was left with a feeble if male heir but no wife.

Years passed. In England, that heretic of a king, the man who’d broken with the Holy Church, finally died – and it was Philip’s conviction Henry VIII was destined for hell. As we all know, Henry’s son was not long for this world, and in 1553, Mary Tudor became Queen of England.

Holy Roman Emperor Charles made happy sounds, as did the Pope. At last an opportunity to bring England back into the fold of the true faith! At the time, Mary was in her late thirties. She was more than aware that time was running out, and she desperately wanted an heir of impeccable Catholic lineage. Charles slid a look at his son – at the time 27 or so – slid a look at Mary, and suggested they wed, despite being cousins. Well: it was suggested to Mary – Philip was ordered to comply with daddy’s wishes.

Mary, wearing Philip's gift to her,
the famous pearl La peregrina

Mary was over the moon. Handsome Philip had everything she desired in a bridegroom. Whether the groom was as thrilled is debatable – his aide wrote that “the marriage was concluded for no fleshly consideration” – but as always Philip set his shoulders and proceeded to do his duty. In this case, his duty was to check the growing power of France and preserve control over the Low Countries. A fiercely Protestant England had offered succour to the Protestants in the Spanish Netherlands, but now, with Mary and Philip firmly in charge, such safe harbours no longer existed. Philip could therefore hope to quell the difficult Dutch before they all embraced the Reformation. That did not go so well for him, putting it mildly, but that is a story for another day.

Mary very much wanted to become pregnant. Here, yet again, Philip did his duty, but despite hope, prayers and effort there was no child – there was just a phantom pregnancy. Philip seems to have doubted all along that Mary was pregnant, and after the sad matter had come to an end, he left his bride for the restless Low Countries. Mary was inconsolable. What Philip felt is unknown, but he was courteous enough to bid his wife a tender farewell.

Philip and Mary

We are now in 1555, and this is when Philip supposedly was starting to regard Elizabeth Tudor as a potential replacement for his sister. Hmm. At the time, Mary was not yet forty, and while barren there was nothing to suggest she was about to die anytime soon. Not that Philip did not enjoy Elizabeth’s company – he liked intelligent and erudite women – and Elizabeth came with the added plus of being younger than Philip rather than eleven years older. But there were issues regarding Elizabeth’s faith, and Philip would never consider marrying a Protestant – his soul shrieked in pain at the thought.

Still, I imagine there was some attraction, and Elizabeth was smart enough to establish a cordial relationship with her brother-in-law, very soon to become one of the more powerful European monarchs.  In 1556, Charles abdicated in favour of his son and brother. Philip became king of Spain and all its dominions, his uncle became the next Holy Roman Emperor, based in the historical homeland of the Hapsburgs, namely Austria.

Mary’s reign was plagued by famine, by her cleansing of the heretics among her subjects, by dwindling trade as her Spanish husband forbade her from doing anything detrimental to Spain. Of course her subjects grumbled, and there were plots aplenty – even, in some cases, headed by her Catholic subjects. France and Spain were at loggerheads, and with Mary being married to Philip, France considered England an enemy too – rightly so, as per Philip, who wanted England’s help in defeating these upstart Frenchies who had the temerity to question just who was the most important Catholic monarch in the world. That’s why Philip popped by on a visit in 1557 – to convince Mary to support war with France. Mary hoped this conjugal visit would lead to other things, and lo and behold, some months later Mary declared herself pregnant. Yet again, a phantom pregnancy…

Poor Mary – no child, no loving husband, just a cool political union as expressed by Philip’s rather laconic comment upon hearing about Mary’s death in 1558. “I feel reasonable regret,” he said.

Elizabeth of Valois

Philip had other matters to concern himself, first and foremost the situation in France. And then there was the matter of his son, Don Carlos, all of thirteen and showing worrying signs of mental instability. Don Carlos had been proposed as a groom for Elizabeth of Valois, this as an attempt to heal the rift between France and Spain. At the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, Philip went one step further and offered to marry Elizabeth himself, despite an age difference of almost twenty years.

By all accounts, this was a very happy marriage. Philip was a devoted husband, entranced by his pretty and vivacious wife. She stood by his side during that most difficult time in his life, when his son went from bad to worse until at last Philip had no option but to incarcerate Don Carlos, by now mad as a hatter. Philip’s little wife might have been young, but she was wise, and in her company he found comfort and hope – plus she gave him children. Daughters, to be sure, but healthy living children. A son would surely follow. Unfortunately, that did not happen. Elizabeth died in childbirth – yet another girl, stillborn, and Philip was devastated.

By now we’re in 1568, and while relationships with France remained coolly cordial, Philip now had another mess on his hands: the Low Countries had risen in insurrection, protesting the heavy yoke of Spanish taxes and demanding the right to embrace the Protestant faith. England, of course, hastened to the aid of their religious brethren. Philip was pissed off, putting it mildly. Here he’d been advocating a lenient approach towards the upstart English and their Protestant queen, urging the Pope to cool down, not do anything hasty, and this is how the English dogs repaid him?

On top of the utter political mess in the Spanish Netherlands, plus the rather urgent matter of halting Ottoman expansion into Europe, Philip had the pressing matter of begetting an heir, which was why he married his niece, Anna of Austria, in 1570.

Little Diego

Anna was yet another young bride, more than twenty years his junior, but just like Elizabeth she was affectionate and kind, and Philip was as happy with her as he’d been with his French princess. Anna gave Philip sons – beautiful boys, and Philip had his heir, the Infante Fernando, who died at age six in dysentery. A grief-struck father consoled himself with the fact that there was the Infante Diego to take the dead son’s place. Except that four years later he also died, this time of small-pox. Fortunately, there was one son left, little Philip. Not that Philip was the son his father would have hoped for, being small and sickly, but at least he was alive.

Anna of Austria

Anna died in 1580, leaving Philip a widower for the fourth time. He was never to re-marry. Instead, he invested his efforts in his children and his empire, a lot of his energy directed at pacifying the Dutch now that the Ottomans had been adequately crushed at Lepanto in 1571.

In England, Elizabeth encouraged support to the Dutch, quietly applauded English pirates when they attacked the treasure-laden Spanish galleons, and in general caused Philip much irritation. But so far, Elizabeth had no children, and the obvious heir to the English crown was therefore Mary, Queen of Scots, at present Elizabeth’s prisoner. A light in the tunnel for Catholics everywhere, was Mary – a light brutally extinguished when Elizabeth was prevailed upon to sign the execution order for her cousin in 1587.

The situation in the Spanish Netherlands went from bad to worse, and with Mary dead, there was no hope the English would come to their senses all by themselves and turn from their heretic faith. No, it fell upon Philip to take responsibility for their souls – and, while he was at it, effectively squash all support for the Dutch reformers – which was why he decided to send the Armada, an effort to invade England and once and for all reinstall the Catholic faith. We all know how that ended, don’t we?

Philip in his younger years

Today, we tend to measure Philip by his few failures rather than his numerous successes. Partly because he was who he was, partly because of his turn-coat secretary Antonio Pérez, generations of Europeans have been fed an image of Philip as a cold-hearted fanatic who delighted in seeing heretics twist in torment. Philip has become a victim to the Black Legend, whereby Spain – and Philip – are depicted as infested by evil. Philip has been accused of killing his own son, of strangling prisoners with his own hands. He had been defamed and ridiculed – even in his own lifetime – and rarely has anyone risen to defend him, least of all Philip himself, who chose to never respond to the more ludicrous of Pérez’ accusations.

I would argue Philip was much more than this: in his private letters, we see a man who concerned himself greatly with the well-being of those he loved. In how he managed his empire, we see a man who eschewed absolute power, attempting instead to ensure there were future controls in place. Genuinely devout, he quelled some of the more fanatic aspects of the Counter-Reformation, he encouraged learning and education and brought Spain firmly out of the Middle Ages. Yes, he was the enemy of Protestants' champions such as William the Silent. But he was equally the hero of his Catholic subjects, the determined defender of Europe against the Ottomans, and a man who always tried to do his duty. Always.

Philip's favourite daughter, Catalina

In 1598, an old and weakened Philip fell ill. By now, he was a lonely old man – of his eleven children only three remained alive, and his favourite daughter had recently died, the single occasion in which Philip gave in to open despair, cursing fate for taking his loved ones from him. For 55 days, the king lay dying, covered in pustules and weeping sores. Incapable of rising from his bed, he lay in his stinking waste, any attempt at keeping him clean futile. A humiliating death for a man who abhorred being dirty. He died clutching the same crucifix his father had held when he died. At the moment of his death he was lucid, and it is said he saw Death coming and smiled in welcome, free at last from this life of duty and sorrows – so many sorrows.

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

Anna Belfrage is the successful author of eight published books, all of them part of The Graham Saga. Set in 17th century Scotland, Virginia and Maryland, this is the story of Matthew Graham and his wife, Alex Lind - two people who should never have met, not when she was born three centuries after him.

Anna's books have won several awards - recently, one of her books won the HNS Indie Book of the Year Award -  and are available on Amazon, or wherever else good books are sold.

Presently, Anna is working on a new series set in 14th century England - the first installment will be published in November 2015. Plus, after the above, she's thinking Philip II has potential as a character...

For more information about Anna and her books, please visit her website. If not on her website, Anna can mostly be found on her blog.

The Capture of Messina, Sicily 4 October 1190

by Char Newcomb

Richard Couer d' lion

“And storm and slash with fearsome shout,
And wound and smite and lay about.
They had seized Messina long before
A priest had said his matins o’er.” - Ambroise.

King Richard I of England, the Lionheart, had taken the Cross in 1188 and within weeks of his coronation in September 1189 began planning for the crusade to re-capture Jerusalem from Salah al-Dīn. Richard and King Philip of France set aside their quarrels to join forces. After a meeting in Vézelay in July 1190, the two kings’ armies marched overland to Lyon. From there, the kings parted ways - Richard to Marseille, Philip to Genoa. They agreed to assemble their armies in Messina, Sicily, to prepare for the voyage to the Holy Land.

Richard expected to rendevouz with his fleet in Marseille, but his ships had been waylaid in Portugal. Hundreds of crewmen sat in Portuguese gaols after running rampant through Lisbon. Not aware of their fate, Richard hired a number of busses (cargo ships) and twenty well-armed galleys. He finally set sail for Messina in mid-August. The fleet stopped at Genoa where Richard found Philip ailing and in want of five of his ships. Richard offered three. Philip turned up his nose at the offer. It was the first of many incidents that surfaced old hates and rivalries. Would the territorial wars and the question of Richard’s long betrothal to Philip’s sister Alais wend their ways into the temporary peace the men had agreed to at Vézelay?

From Genoa, Richard’s fleet skirted the coastline, dropping anchor at numerous ports including Portofino, Naples, and Salerno. Whilst in Salerno, Richard learned his ships detained in Portugal were nearing Messina, so he set out to rendezvous with them.

Messina was a busy seaport. Philip had arrived a week earlier without fanfare. But Richard’s fleet, now comprised of more than a hundred galleys, busses, and esneccas (descendents of the Viking longship), must have been an awe-inspiring sight when it entered the harbour. The chronicler of the Itinerarium describes the scene:

“…the people rushed out in crowds, wanting to see [the king]. Pouring on to the shore, they struggled to stand where they could see him coming in. …the sound of war trumpets echoed in their ears… Galleys…adorned and laden…with weapons, with countless standards… The prows of the galleys were each painted differently, with shields glittering in the sun hung on each bow. You would have seen the sea boil as the great number of rowing oars approached.”

Richard I and Joan greeting Philip Augustus

Was that auspicious entrance meant to inspire or to send a warning? Tancred, the king of Sicily, had been granted the crown by Pope Clement III when William II had died the previous November. It had been a political move, which left Tancred with rebellious barons who supported the rightful heir, Constance. She was married to a German, Henry VI. (The Pope had no desire to be surrounded by Germans to the north and south of Rome.) Tancred made matters worse - William’s widow was Joan, Richard’s younger sister. At William’s death, Tancred had placed Joan under house arrest. He had refused to give Joan the money and property due her as dowager queen. William had been a staunch supporter of Richard’s father. His will had stipulated galleys, monies, and provisions to Henry II for the purpose of the crusade. Tancred was not so keen to follow his predecessor’s wishes - after all, Henry was dead. He felt no obligation to provide support to Richard. He did, however, agree to release Joan.

Tensions remained high. The local populace - a diverse people of Norman, Lombard, Greek and Muslim descent - felt overburdened by the imposition of two armies. Inflation was rampant. Tempers as well as food, drink, and goods were stretched to the limit, and fights erupted.

For the townsfolk. . .
Did heap upon our pilgrims scorn
Fingers to eyes, they mocked at us,
Calling us dogs malodorous.
They did us foulness every day:
Sometimes our pilgrims they did slay,
And their corpses in the privies threw.
Ambroise.


The locals weren’t entirely to blame. Richard’s men admired the Sicilian women, more to irritate their husbands than to seduce them according to Ambroise and other contemporary accounts. One of Richard’s men was nearly killed when a group attacked him for refusing to pay the price demanded for a loaf of bread. Richard sought calm and reason, which lasted a day. Matters escalated when Richard took over a monastery to house provisions from his ships. The locals feared they were staring a conqueror in the face.

Tancred von Lecce

By the third day of October, fights erupted anew “to such a pitch did the exasperation on both sides increase, that the citizens shut the gates of the city, and putting on their arms, mounted the walls.” Richard met with the kings, Philip and Tancred, and Messina’s governors to reach a peaceful solution, but when the home of one of his own barons was attacked, Richard had had enough and ordered his men to arms. Richard implored Philip to commit his own troops against the locals. Philip complained Richard’s army was to blame for the troubles and refused to lift a finger to help.

The locals “filled the ramparts of the city walls, throwing rocks, firing arrows and a rain of crossbow bolts, and attacking their besiegers in any way that they could.” Whilst his army attacked the main city gates, Richard led a small force of knights to a western postern he’d seen during an inspection of the city. It was not well guarded. The men climbed a steep hill and “boldly made a great charge through this gate and entered the city, broke down the city gates and let the rest of the army enter... The victors swept through it led by the king, who was first in every attack. He was first to enter the city; he was always at their head, giving his troops an example of courage and striking fear into the enemy.” The army plundered the town and burned the locals’ ships in the harbour until Richard called a halt to the pillaging. His banner was hoisted on the towers and city walls to the ire of the French king, prompting the author of the Itinerarium to claim “The king of France was so violently shaken by this that he conceived a lifelong hatred for the king of England,” which led to his later attacks on Normandy.

Philip argued the treaty signed by the two kings in Vézelay in July had stipulated all spoils of the crusade would be split in half. He insisted his own banner be erected over the city. Though Philip had not assisted in the taking of Messina, and despite his men’s accusations that the French helped the locals, Richard settled the disagreement by lowering his banner and placing the city under the Templar and Hospitaller knights. (The Itinerarium claims the banners of both kings flew over the city.) Richard and Philip met to iron out their differences. They enacted an agreement that included: the disposition of property of people who might die on the pilgrimage; rules for gambling by clerics, knights and nobles (common soldiers were forbidden to play); and provisions for the sale of certain foods, including fixing the price of bread at a penny per loaf.

Richard also sent terms of surrender to Tancred seeking compensation for the ills suffered by his troops and for Joan’s dower. His request contained a laundry list: a gilded chair for Joan, a gilded table twelve feet in length for his own use, a tent of silk large enough to seat 200, dishes, cups, corn, wine, and a hundred galleys - many items that had been promised by William II to Richard’s father. Messengers came and went between the kings, and again, the English claimed Philip was conspiring to convince Tancred to reject Richard’s demands.

Tancred recognized Richard’s superior military might, and realized he had few options if he wanted to keep his crown given the threats of a German invasion to secure the throne for Constance. Tancred needed to seek a peaceful solution rather than antagonize Richard. On the 6th day of October, two days after Messina’s capture, a peace was reached. Richard promised to defend Tancred’s territories “so long as we shall stay in your kingdom.” He offered Arthur, his nephew and heir (should he die without issue), in marriage to Tancred’s daughter. Tancred agreed to grant Joan 20,000 ounces of gold for her dower, and another 20,000 for his daughter’s dowry.

The agreement may well have inspired the peaceful co-existence that ensued until Richard sailed for the Holy Land the following April.


Sources

Image: "Richard coeur de lion" by Merry-Joseph Blondel - [1] (orginally: 1 avr 2004 à 20:42 . . Kelson (13505 octets) at fr.wikipedia). Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:
Richard_coeur_de_lion.jpg

Image: "Richard I and Joan greeting Philip Augustus" by Unknown - Histoire d'Outremer, British Library Yates Thompson MS 12, fol. 188v. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Richard_I_and_Joan_greeting_Philip_Augustus.jpg

Image: "Tancred von Lecce." Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tancred_von_Lecce.jpg

De Hoveden, R. The annals of Roger de Hoveden, comprising the history of England and of other countries of Europe from A. D. 732 to A. D. 1201. (Henry T. Riley, Trans.). London: H. G. Bohn, 1853. (Original work published 1201?)

Gillingham, J. Richard the Lionheart. New York: Times Books, 1978.

Ambroise. The crusade of Richard Lion-Heart. (Trans. by M.J. Hubert.) New York: Octagon, 1976.

Miller, D. Richard the Lionheart: the mighty crusader. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003.

Chronicle of the third crusade : A translation of the itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis ricardi. Nicholson, H., & Stubbs, W., trans. Aldershot, Hants, England ; Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1997.

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Charlene Newcomb is the author of Men of the Cross, book 1 of Battle Scars, a historical adventure set during the Third Crusade. It is a tale of war’s impact on a young knight serving Richard the Lionheart and of forbidden love. Book 2, For King and Country, will be published in spring 2015. For more information about Charlene, please visit her website, http://charlenenewcomb.com, find her on Facebook at CharleneNewcombAuthor, and on Twitter @charnewcomb.

The Strange Death of Richard the Lionheart

By Nancy Bilyeau

In April 1199, the French King, Philip II, thanked God for the providential death of his great rival: Richard I. Ever since the English king was freed from his prison in Austria in 1194, he had turned his war machine on the French, reclaiming the lands and castles that were taken while he was captive. Had he continued his relentless campaign, Richard might well have conquered the whole of France, and medieval history would have turned out quite differently.

Richard I

But at the age of 42, Richard died of an infection caused by an arrow wound. He was slain during a siege of a small and seemingly unimportant French castle, and certain aspects of his death struck the chroniclers of his time--and later historians--as strange, almost sordid. It was an anticlimactic end to the life of the Lionheart.

Richard was taken captive on his way back from the Third Crusade. Leopold of Austria held grudges against Richard, and he put him in a secret prison. Once Queen Eleanor, Richard's mother, discovered where her beloved son was, she appealed to the Pope. The Holy Roman Emperor set a ransom of 150,000 marks--65,000 pounds of silver. It was an astronomical sum, estimated to be three times the annual income of the English crown. But Eleanor raised it.

In the legends of Robin Hood, Richard is a benevolent ruler, who after being freed forgives his brother John and returns to the task of governing England. But Richard had little interest in England his whole life--he is rumored to have said, "If I could have found a buyer, I would have sold London itself"--and was passionate about going on Crusades or fighting for more French territory than he already possessed as the ruler of the Aquitaine.

The ruins of Chateau-Gaillard today

Richard decided what he needed was an impregnable castle from which to defend Normandy and then retake critical French land.  The vast one that he built required two years of punishing around-the-clock labor and cost an estimated £20,000, more than had been spent on any English castle in the last decade. Legend has it that while building the Chateau-Gaillard, Richard and his men were drenched with "rain of blood," but he refused to take it as an evil omen.

In March 1199, Richard was in the Limousin, suppressing a revolt by the Viscount of Limoges. He "devastated the Viscount's land with fire and sword." Then he besieged the nearby small chateau of Chalus-Chabrol. Accounts differ on why; some say it was because a peasant found treasure underground--either Roman gold or valuable objects--and Richard was so desperate for money, he lay siege to the castle. But some historians say that this entire area was of strategic importance to Richard's hold on France, and he was only there to suppress rebellion.

Ruins of Chalus-Chabrol

What most historians agree on is that Richard was walking the chateau's perimeter without wearing his chain mail and he was shot by a castle defender using a crossbow. The wound in his left shoulder turned gangrenous. It steadily grew worse over the next 10 days. Some wrote that while dying Richard asked that the bowman be brought to him. He then forgave the man, who was named Peter Basil, and instructed that he should not be harmed. Richard died in the arms of his mother on April 6th. Later, defying Richard's orders, Peter Basil was flayed alive and hanged.

Why did Richard I, a seasoned and expert warrior, expose himself to a bowman's shot? Did the king and crusader put his life at risk to claim some grubby treasure dug up from the ground--why?

Richard's tomb at the Abbey of Fontrevault

Following the custom of the time, Richard's body was buried in different places. His heart was buried at Rouen in Normandy; his entrails in Chalus; and the rest of his body near his father's remains in Anjou. A French forensics expert received permission last May to analyze a small sample of Richard I's heart to determine if the cause of the king's death was indeed septicemia, an infection of the blood. Tests results have not yet been released. When completed, they may confirm what disease killed Richard. What's harder to understand is what put him at that particular castle at that particular time so that he was killed while in his prime. There is no test for that.

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Nancy Bilyeau is the author of a historical thriller trilogy. The first in the series, The Crown, examines the mystery of what killed Richard I. The Crime Writers' Association put the novel on the shortlist for the 2012 Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award. The third in the series, The Tapestry is now on sale. To learn more, go to www.nancybilyeau.com

Sir Francis Drake and the African Slaves, by Tim Vicary

As a boy, growing up in Devon, I was taught that Francis Drake and John Hawkins were great Elizabethan heroes.  Drake was the first Englishman to sail around the world, to return with untold riches and be knighted by Queen Elizabeth on the deck of his ship, the Golden Hind; Hawkins was the founder of the Royal Navy, the man who designed and built the fast, weatherly galleons which sailed rings around the Spanish Armada.

These men were pioneers, adventurers, founders of the British Empire. Everything they did seemed admirable. They had saved the nation once; if England were ever in danger of invasion again all we had to do was to sound Drake’s Drum (which was hidden somewhere in Plymouth) and like King Arthur, he would rise from the dead and sail back to our rescue. As schoolboys, we basked in the reflected glory of these men. The symbol for the county of Devon was an Elizabethan galleon – Drake’s ship - sailing proudly across a blue sea.

It’s different today. Look up Devon County Council on the web and what do you find? No ship – just a logo of two green leaves. Terrific. (So Devon has trees and the rest of England does not?) But it’s a sign of the times. The environment is fashionable, the British Empire is no longer something to be proud of. 

Do today’s school children learn much about Francis Drake and John Hawkins? I wonder. If they do, I’m sure they are taught a different version of British history differently to the one I learned; and to an extent, that’s quite right. For Sir Francis Drake was not just a hero; he was also a pirate and a thief. He was licensed by the Queen to steal, burn and destroy Spanish ships and colonies in the New World. He was as feared and hated by the Spanish just as much as the Vikings once were by English monks, or Somali pirates are by sailors today.  

So what about his cousin, Sir John Hawkins, the founder of the British Navy, the man who built Queen Elizabeth’s galleons to defend us against the Spanish Armada? Surely he was no pirate; he was a respectable merchant, a shipowner,  a businessman, a senior civil servant.

Well, yes. He was all of those things. But he was a slave trader too. That’s where much of his wealth came from.

Oh dear. If there’s one thing that’s really really bad about the British Empire, that has be it: the slave trade. African prisoners torn from their homes, chained and packed like sardines into the stinking holds of wooden ships for month-long voyages across the heaving Atlantic. Then poked and prodded, naked and trembling, in a marketplace where they stood waiting to be sold.

Everyone knows this. I’m sure if there’s one thing that British school children DO learn about in their history lessons it’s the slave trade. And quite right too. It was horrible. It was also one of the greatest forced migrations in history. It’s because of the slave trade that British and American classrooms today don’t just contain white children who can identify with men like Drake and Hawkins, but also black children whose African ancestors were enslaved by men just like them.

You might think John Hawkins was ashamed of being a slave trader, but he wasn’t. Not at all. After all he hadn’t started it; the Portuguese were selling slaves long before him; they regarded the whole of the west African seaboard as exclusively their own, granted to them by the Pope. They sold slaves across the Atlantic to Spanish colonists in New Spain, the part of the New World the Pope had granted exclusively to them. Hawkins was just trying to get some of this commerce for himself, in the spirit of free trade. He made three slave-trading voyages, and he was so successful that he commissioned a coat of arms, proudly featuring – of all things – a black man bound with a rope.

Not very politically correct. Not the sort of public relations we can celebrate in our schools today, where racism is rightly regarded with anathema. And it wasn’t just John Hawkins who was involved with this; his young cousin Francis Drake sailed with him too, on the third and most troublesome of his three slaving voyages.

Clearly, these men were no angels. They were slave-traders, pirates, thieves – how can we possibly regard them as heroes? Surely we should just condemn them outright; and say there was nothing good about their lives at all?

 Well, perhaps. But perhaps not. These men, like most historical figures, were more complex than they first appear.

John Hawkins was both a slave trader AND the Treasurer of Queen Elizabeth’s Navy. He was the man who commissioned and built the ships which defeated the Spanish Armada. And by doing that, he saved many English men from becoming slaves themselves, bound for years to an oar in a Spanish galley, or being burned alive by the Inquisition at an Auto-da-Fe.

Francis Drake was both a pirate AND a great explorer, consummate navigator, circumnavigator of the world. He, like Hawkins, saved England from invasion by Spain.

But the life of Francis Drake also shows us something else. Astonishingly, it seems that it was possible to be both a slave trader AND the friend of escaped African slaves!

Here is the evidence. In 1567 the young Francis Drake sailed to Sierra Leone in a fleet commanded by his cousin, John Hawkins. Here they bought, stole and captured some 500 African slaves which they transported to the Spanish Main and sold to Spanish colonists. But although the colonists were happy to buy the slaves, they were less happy about the vendor; their King, Philip of Spain, had made it very clear that English and French merchants should be kept out of his New World Empire, and treated as pirates.

So when Hawkins’s fleet was caught in a hurricane, and forced to seek shelter in the Spanish port of San Juan de Ulloa, he knew he was in trouble. While he was there, repairing his ships, the new Viceroy arrived from Spain with a fleet of 13 ships. At first, Hawkins negotiated an uneasy truce with the Viceroy: hostages were exchanged, and the Spanish fleet entered the harbor, mooring a short distance from the English. But the Spanish Viceroy had no intention of doing deals with a pirate. The truce was broken, and after a fierce battle most the English ships were sunk or captured. Hawkins escaped in one ship, Drake in another. Hawkins’s ship, the Minion, was so overcrowded with sailors from his other ships that he was forced to maroon several hundred men on land, where they were taken prisoner by the Spanish. When the Minion eventually reached England, only 15 men were still alive on board.

This incident made it crystal clear, as the Spanish Viceroy intended, that there was no possibility of English merchants trading with the Spanish colonists. Over the next few years Hawkins tried to negotiate with Spain for the return of his imprisoned sailors, even pretending, at times, that he was a Catholic. But Francis Drake took a more direct method. Since it was no longer possible to trade with the Spanish colonists, he decided to raid them instead. He set out to steal the gold and silver from the mines of South America which made the Spanish king so rich.

Francis Drake was very successful at this. In fact, he became one of the most successful pirates in all history. Historians estimate that each shareholder in his voyage of circumnavigation round the world made a profit of £47 for each £1 they invested. Queen Elizabeth got more money from that one pirate ship, than all other Exchequer receipts for a year.

But Francis Drake couldn’t have done all this on his own. Many of his most successful raids were due to some very important allies – the Cimarrons. These Cimarrons were escaped African slaves; people exactly like those whom he and John Hawkins had captured in Sierra Leone. Some of them may have actually travelled in Hawkins’s ships. But a lot of the Africans who were sold as slaves to the colonists had escaped. So many of them escaped, in fact, that they became a major threat to the Spanish colonists – just as big a threat as the English and French pirates. But unlike the pirates, the Cimarrons didn’t want gold and silver; they didn’t have much use for it.  They wanted freedom, and revenge, and the ability to defeat their Spanish masters.

All the accounts suggest that Francis Drake got on really well with these people. In a famous raid in Panama Drake presented the Cimarron leader, Pedro, with a gold encrusted scimitar which had previously belonged to Henry II, king of France. A true pirate’s sword! His Cimarron allies also took him to a hilltop in Panama, and showed him a famous tree. They climbed this tree with Francis Drake and his friend, John Oxenham, and showed them a marvelous sight: the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Pacific to the west. It was this vision which inspired Drake’s later voyage round Cape Horn.

Some of these Africans liked Drake so much that they even chose to sail with him. As the wounded Drake was getting back into his pinnace after a raid on Nombre de Dios in 1573, a black man called out to him from the shore: ‘Are you Francis Drake? Then I am coming with you!’ This man, an escaped African slave called Diego, became one of Drake’s longest-serving seamen, and stayed with him until he died on the Golden Hind’s round-the-world voyage six years later. And in 1586, at the siege of Santo Domingo, Drake sent a different black servant to receive a Spanish officer who carried a flag of truce. When the Spaniard, apparently insulted by this, callously ran the black man through with his sword, Drake was so incensed that he insisted that the Spanish hanged their own officer before any further negotiations took place.

So perhaps, even though he was once a slave-trader, we can exonerate Drake from the modern slur of racism. Slavery, after all, was common in the sixteenth century, and not necessarily linked to race. Thousands of slaves were chained to the oars of the galleys on both sides, Spanish and Turkish, at the battle of Lepanto; that was how Mediterranean sea-battles were fought. Moorish sailors from North Africa raided the coasts of Cornwall and southern Ireland for slaves to sell in the markets of Constantinople. For sailors and people who lived near the coast, slavery was an unfortunate hazard of life. It could happen at any time, out of the blue, and transform a person’s life forever.

For someone writing a historical novel about Drake and Hawkins today, what does all this mean? Surely the story can’t, or shouldn’t, be only about the heroic English sailors, as books were when I was young. John Hawkins’s third slave-trading voyage transformed the lives of hundreds of unlucky Africans – more Africans, probably, than there were English sailors on his ships. So in a novel about these events, surely the Africans should have a prominent place too. What was life like for them, as well as for the English sailors who captured them?

In my book, Nobody’s Slave, I try to imagine what this may have been like. Nobody’s Slave is the story of two teenage boys, one African, one English, whose lives collide on John Hawkins’s third slave-trading voyage. I have tried to write an adventure story which, I hope, can be read by anyone, white or black, as part of our shared and troublesome history. It’s a work of fiction, but all the main events really happened; they are based on original sources, and as true and accurate as I can make them.

Sources:  Much of the original source material can be found in The Principal Navigations Voyages Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, by Richard Hakluyt. Hawkins’ own account of his voyage (written and approved by John Sparke, who sailed with him) is in Volume 7; two other very colorful accounts, by Miles Philips and Job Hortob, both of whom sailed with Hawkins and were captured by the Spanish, are in Volume 6.

Links: Amazon US

Amazon UK

Tim’s website

The Last Nun

By Nancy Bilyeau

           

One spring day in 1539, twenty-six women were forced to leave their home— the only home most had known for their entire adult lives. The women were nuns of the Dominican Order of Dartford Priory, in Kent. The relentless dissolution of the monasteries had finally reached their convent door. Having no choice, Prioress Joan Vane turned the priory over to King Henry VIII, who had broken from Rome.

What the women would do with their lives now was unclear. Because Dartford Priory surrendered to rather than defied the crown, some monies were provided. Lord Privy Seal Thomas Cromwell, the architect of the dissolution that poured over a million pounds into the royal treasury, had devised a pension plan for the displaced monks, friars and nuns. According to John Russell Stowe’s History and Antiquities of Dartford, published in 1844, Prioress Joan received “66 pounds, 13 shillings per annum.” She left Dartford and was not heard from again—it’s thought she lived with a brother.

Sister Elizabeth Exmewe, a younger, less important nun, received a pension of “100 shillings per annum.” This was the amount that most Dartford nuns received. The roaring inflation of the 1540s meant that such a pension would probably not be enough to live on after a few years—but there was never a question of its being adjusted.

Some of the thousands of monks and friars who were turned out of their monasteries in the 1530s became priests or teachers or apothecaries. But nuns—roughly 1,900 of them at the time of the Dissolution--did not have such options. “Those who had relatives sought asylum in the bosom of their own family,” wrote Stowe with 19^th century floridity. Marriage was not an option. In 1539, the most conservative noble, the Duke of Norfolk, introduced to Parliament “the Act of Six Articles,” which forbade ex-nuns and monks from marrying. The act, which had the approval of Henry VIII, became law. The king did not want nuns in the priory but he did not want them to marry either. There was literally no place for them in England.

Sisters who could afford it immigrated to Catholic countries to search for priories that would take them in. Others lacking family support sank into poverty. Eustace Chapuys, the Spanish ambassador, wrote: “It is a lamentable thing to see a legion of monks and nuns who have been chased from their monasteries wandering miserably hither and thither seeking means to live; and several honest men have told me that what with monks, nuns, and persons dependent on the monasteries suppressed, there were over 20,000 who knew not how to live.”

Such wandering through England would not be the fate of Elizabeth Exmewe. Enough is known of her life from various sources to gain a picture of a determined woman.

Dartford Priory, founded by Edward III, drew women from the gentry and aristocracy, even one from royalty. Princess Bridget Plantagenet, youngest sister of Elizabeth of York, was promised to Dartford as a baby. She lived there from childhood until her death in 1517. Elizabeth Exmewe was typical of most of the other nuns—she was the daughter of a gentleman, Sir Thomas Exmewe. He was a goldsmith and “merchant adventurer,” serving as Lord Mayor of London.

It was common for brothers and sisters to enter monastic life together, though at separate places. Elizabeth’s brother, William Exmewe, was a Carthusian monk and respected scholar of Greek and Latin at the London Charterhouse. He was also one of the monks who in 1535 refused to sign the Oath of Supremacy to Henry VIII, despite intense pressure. The king had broken from the Pope because he could not get a divorce from Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. Once the king became head of the Church of England, it was imperative that all monks shift their loyalty to him. But Exmewe would not compromise his beliefs, and he was punished with a horrifying death: He was hanged, disemboweled while still alive and quartered.

No nun in England was executed besides Sister Elizabeth Barton, a Benedictine who prophesied against the king’s marriage to Anne Boleyn. Barton was arrested, tortured, tried, and hanged for it. Elizabeth Exmewe did not publicly criticize the king nor seek martyrdom. Four years after the death of her brother, she was turned out from Dartford Priory.

Historians studying the dissolution have noted a remarkable fact: in several cases, nuns attempted to live together in small groups after being forced from their priories. They were determined to continue their vocations, in whatever way they could. Elizabeth Exmewe shared a home in Walsingham with another ex-nun of Dartford. “They were Catholic women of honest conversation,” said one contemporary account. A half-dozen other Dartford refugees tried to live under one roof closer to Dartford. Meanwhile, Henry VIII had their priory demolished. He built a luxurious manor house on the rubble of the Dominican Order, although he’s not believed to have ever slept there. It became the home of his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, after he divorced her in disgust in 1540.

Following the reign of Henry’s Protestant son, Edward VI, his Catholic daughter, Mary I, took the throne in 1553. Mary re-formed several religious communities as she struggled to turn back time in England and restore the “True Faith.” Elizabeth Exmewe and six other ex-nuns successfully petitioned Queen Mary to re-create their Dominican community at Dartford, which was vacant after the death of Anne of Cleves. They moved into the manor house, built on the home they left 14 years earlier, with two chaplains. The convent life they loved flourished again: the sisters spent their days praying, singing and chanting; gardening; embroidering; and studying.

But the restoration didn’t last long. When Mary died and her Protestant half-sister took the throne, one of Elizabeth’s goals was extinguishing the monastic flames. In 1559 Elizabeth’s first Reformation Parliament repressed all the re-founded convents and confiscated the land.

And so the Dartford nuns were ejected again, this time with no pensions. Mary’s widower, King Philip of Spain, heard of their plight, and paid for a ship to convey the nuns of Dartford and Syon Abbey to Antwerp, in the Low Countries. Paul Lee, in his book Nunneries, Learning and Spirituality in Late Medieval Society, has charted the sisters’ poignant journey after leaving their native land.  

After a few months, a new home was secured for them. For the next ten years Elizabeth Exmewe lived “in the poor Dutch Dominican nunnery at Leliendal, near Zierikzee on the western shore of the bleak island of Schouwen in Zeeland.” Several of the English nuns were entering their eighties, with Elizabeth being the youngest. All suffered from illness and near poverty. The Duchess of Parma, hearing of their hardships, sent an envoy to the Dartford nuns. He wrote: “I certainly found them extremely badly lodged. This monastery is very poor and very badly built…. I find that these are the most elderly of the religious and the most infirm, and it seems that they are more than half dead. “ Despite his dire observances, the nuns themselves expressed pride in their convent. Their leader, Prioress Elizabeth Croessner, wrote a letter to the new pope, Pius IV, saying they strove to remain faithful to their vows and were interested in new recruits!

In the 1560s the nuns died, one by one, leaving only Elizabeth Exmewe and her prioress, Elizabeth Croessner. Destitute, the pair moved to Bruges and found another convent. They lived through a bout of religious wars, with Calvinists marching through the streets.

The onetime prioress of Dartford, Elizabeth Croessner, died in 1577. Now Elizabeth Exmewe, the daughter of a Lord Mayor and the sister of a Carthusian martyr, was the only one left of her Order. In 1585, she, too, perished in Bruges and was buried by Dominican friars with all honors. Elizabeth Exmewe is believed to have lived to 76 years of age.

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U.S. Simon&Schuster cover

U.K. Orion cover

Nancy Bilyeau’s historical thriller, The Crown, is set in Dartford Priory in 1537-1538. The book is on sale in North America, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Brazil. 
The Chalice, the sequel, will be published on Feb. 28th, 2013 in the UK and on March 5th, 2013 in North America.

To learn more, go to www.nancybilyeau.com.