The Rose - Emblem of England

By Deborah Swift

The rose is a symbolic figure so rich in meaning that by now it hardly has any meaning left: Dante's mystic rose, and 'go lovely rose', the Wars of the Roses, rose thou art sick, too many rings around Rosie, a rose by any other name, a rose is a rose is a rose...'
Umberto Eco : Reflections on The Name of the Rose.1983 

The Symbolism of the Rose

For centuries, flowers appeared in Western Art primarily for their symbolism. In the case of roses, these usually revolved around ideas of heavenly and earthly love. Early roses had only five petals, and legend says the original colour was always white. The ancient Greeks believed that roses only turned red after Venus chased after her lover, Adonis, and pricked her finger on a thorny rose bush in her lust to catch him.

Another Christian legend is, that the blood of the crucified Christ spilled down onto a white rose bush which grew at the foot of the cross, and since then, the roses there grew red instead of white. Red and white roses were also symbols of the Virgin Mary, representing sacrifice and purity, and rosary beads (a rosary is a rose garden) are still associated with Mary. Rosary beads refer back to the 11th century, when, the story goes, Godgifu ( Lady Godiva) gave a set of beads as an offering to the Virgin Mary at St Mary’s Abbey, Coventry (later Coventry cathedral). 

This portrait shows the 26-year-old Elizabeth I dressed in coronation robes upon which the rose emblem is fiercely evident. This particular image was used as the basis for coins and seals, hence the reason she is shown full face. The portrait is based on a now lost original which dated from 1559. Elizabeth's long flowing hair was traditional for a coronation. and her elaborate gown is made from woven gold and silk thread and was also used by Mary I, five years earlier. The decoration of Tudor roses and fleurs-de-lis refers obliquely to the English sovereignty and the English claim on French land.

What is the Tudor Rose?
The Tudor rose, one of the most distinctive and unmistakable flowers in England, has been in use as the country’s emblem since the Tudor Era. It is a representation of the merging of two warring houses, and the end of years of conflict.

This illustration in the painting at the top of this post is by Albert Payne from 1910, and depicts The Plucking of the Red and White Roses in the Old Temple Gardens - an event that supposedly happened in the mid-fifteenth century but was probably a fiction - invented by Tudor propagandists and popularised by Shakespeare. Do Read the scene here - it's wonderful and very dramatic! The scene in the painting represents both the dynastic struggle for the throne, and the bringing about of unity with the rise of the Tudors.

The years of armed conflict, sometimes known as the Cousins’ War (both Richard, Duke of York, and Henry Tudor were directly descended from Edward III and therefore cousins), are most commonly known as the Wars of the Roses which came to an end with the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. King Richard III was defeated by the Lancastrian claimant, Henry Tudor, who ascended the throne as Henry VII.

Their marriage united the two warring houses, and so Henry VII introduced the Tudor Rose, which combined the red rose of Lancaster with the white rose of York. The Tudor Rose was adopted as the national emblem of England, and became a symbol of peace and unity in the period after the long civil war.

The Tudor Rose is a common sight in England even today. It can be seen as a symbol on a number of old buildings, most notably Hampton Court Palace, which was built during the reign of Henry VIII. The badge is found on the uniforms of the Yeoman of the Guard at the Tower of London, on the Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom, and also on the back of our 20p coins. It is a common emblem in stained glass in public houses and palaces all over England.

The Popularity of Roses in Tudor Gardens

Because of this, cultivated roses in the Tudor garden were very popular. Roses were used in cookery, for making rosehip wine and also for perfumes, cut flower arrangements and pot pourri mixtures to keep rooms smelling sweet. In a London where people lived very closely together without any proper sanitation or drainage, the smell in summer could be unbearable, and roses, with their strong scent, were used to allay the stench. Levinus Lemnius, a Dutchman visiting England in 1560, was impressed by the English use of herbs in the home; 

their Chambers and parlours strawed over with sweet herbes, refreshed mee, their nosegayes finely entermingled with sondry sortes of fragrant floures in their bed chambers and privie roomes, with comfortable smell cheered me up, and entirelye delighted all my sences.

Because of the new interest in rose varieties, in gardens as a status symbol, and added to this the fact that new roses were also arriving from abroad, a great deal of 'rose lore' was published in the Tudor era. Some of this lore was useful; some of it deluded by our standards today. 

Harking back to the York/Lancaster division, Thomas Hill's book ‘The Gardener’s Labyrinth’ of 1577 suggests that you can turn white roses red by placing the white flowers in the mouth of a pot filled with the best redde wine, close to, but not actually touching the wine. Then, by keeping the pot tightly-stoppered all day the roses will have become red by the evening!

He also suggests you can turn red flowers white by holding them over

‘the smoke of brimstone beaten into a fine powder and burnt on a new tile stone'

Another of his ideas, of how to have fresh roses at all times of the year was equally suspect, involving gathering half-open rosebuds at sunset, 

'touche them not with a hande in gathering, with a sharpe knife properly gather them'

 After that you had to put them in a jar stoppered with horse dung, and bury the pot underground.

A bestseller in the field or herbal advice was Hugh Platt's The Jewell House of Art and Nature which contains a whole section devoted to the art of distillation of flowers. He advises his ladies to collect rose petals, spread them out on on clean linen to dry them, or to put half-opened roses in shallow boxes of washed and dried sand, to sprinkle them with another fine layer of sand and to build up four or five layers of drying roses and leave them in the sun.  

'and so you may have rose leaves and other flowers to lay about your basons, windowes and court cupboards, all the winter long.'

Echoes of the past
There is something quintessentially English about roses. Partly it is because of our gardens, lavishly furnished with traditional rose-beds, partly it is because of fairy tales we remember like Snow White and Rose Red and The Sleeping Beauty. Much of it is also because of the way our royal family has adopted the Tudor Rose to convey the absence of division, something as a nation we should all aspire to. In the early part of  the 20th century, and still surviving in rural England to this day, (picture above from the Edwardian era) the ceremony of the 'Rose Queen' was very popular. In early summer, processions were led by a young woman, who had been crowned the "Rose Queen" for the year. In some communities, the Rose Queen and May Queen have become indistinguishable, but in some villages they are still distinctly different ideas. The Rose Queen may be particular to a church, but can also represent the whole village or community. Her duties are often as an ambassador at local fetes or charities, where her presence acts as a kind of blessing. The rose and royalty, and the link to sovereignty and the land are still strong in our customs and folklore.

Pictures from wikipedia, unless linked.

Bibliography

The Rose - Jennifer Potter

Culpeper's Herbal

Elizabethan England - Dodd

The Tudors - Terry Breverton

Building the House of Tudor BBC

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Deborah Swift  worked as a set and costume designer for film and TV before publishing her first novel. She also developed a degree course in Theatre Arts at the Arden School of Theatre, where she taught scenography and the history of design. In 2007 she took an MA in Creative Writing at Lancaster University, and since then has juggled writing with teaching. Her first novel, The Lady's Slipper, about the wild flower of that name, is available for free download here.

A History of the Cuckold's Horns

By Deborah Swift

What is a cuckold?
Up until the Victorian era, the concept of the cuckold was endemic through English culture. The word 'cuckold' comes from late Old English, from the Old French cucuault. The root of this is from cucu ‘cuckoo’, and refers to the cuckoo's habit of laying its egg in another bird's nest. A cuckold is the husband of an adulterous wife, and in days gone by, a label associated with shame and humiliation. It's implication was that the man could not control his wife, or that he was impotent.

Copy of a painting by Francois Bunel

The Mystery of the Horns

The symbol universally associated with cuckolding was a pair of ram's horns. Strength, power and supremacy, along with procreative vigor have always been associated with horns, which are used when the animal fights its rival in the mating season. In some cultures today, horns are still used symbolically, and powdered rhinoceros horn is still sold in Asia as an aphrodisiac. What we must understand as modern readers is that the horns had connotations of the Devil, that the mention of them was full of sexual innuendo. In a way the horn embodies both the male and female organs by being both hollow and protuberant.

In Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice says 

'There will the Devil meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head.' 

Stag antlers were also an old symbol of cuckolds. Christianity sought to discourage pagan worship of horns and depicted the Devil himself as bestial, and thus horned.

The Contented Cuckold 1673 - British Museum

Charlton Horn Fair 
One of the most popular events in London's season was the Charlton Horn Fair, which lasted for three days, and was a fair with a scurrilous reputation, encouraging rowdy and drunken behaviour. It was so bawdy that the fair had to be moved from its place opposite St Luke's Church, to a place at the other end of the village.

The Legend of King John
So how did it start? Legend has it that King John, having been out hunting on Shooters Hill, was in dire need of refreshment. Finding a miller's cottage nearby, he went to ask for a drink. He found the master of the house away, but his beautiful wife took pity on him (or perhaps was impressed by his fine clothes) and invited him in.

They talked a while, and she gave him food and drink, and the attraction between the King and the miller's wife grew. Just as he was about to kiss her, the door swung open and the miller strode in. Finding his wife in the King's arms, the miller pulled out a dagger and swore he'd kill them both.

Of course the King then told him who he was, and the miller sheathed his dagger and swallowed his fury. The King, mindful of the wrong he had done to the miller, and no doubt grateful for his life, vowed to endow him with him all the land he could see - as far as the bend in the river where the horns were fixed on a pole.

He also gave him permission to hold a fair on 18th October every year - the anniversary of the event. That bend in the river became known as Cuckold's Point, and the fair the Horn Fair. Now whether this is a true story, we can only guess, but perhaps there is a grain of truth there.

The Procession
By tradition, the fair opened with a procession, headed by a man carrying a pair of horns on a pole, and visitors dressed up as the miller, his wife or the King. Much cross-dressing went on, and ribald jokes and lewd behaviour were the order of the day.

'at Horn Fair, a party of humorists of both sexes (query, of either sex) cornuted in all the variety of bull-feather fashion, after perambulating round Cuckold’s Point, startled the little quiet village of Charlton on St. Luke’s Day, shouting their emulation, and blowing voluntaries on rams’ horns, in honour of their patron saint.'

In this 18th century etching from the British Museum below, we can see 'a riotous scene in a country village where a shrewish wife and hen-pecked husband are mocked by their neighbours in procession. The couple ride on one horse, the man facing the tail, preceded by another man on horseback who throws grain from a pannier to the crowd. Further to the right, cuckold's horns in the form of a stag's head, a ram's head and a cow's head are held aloft, the latter attached to a woman's shift, and "rough music" is played on pots and pans. In the background, is a river and a similar procession takes place on the far bank.

Skimmington-Triumph, Or the Humours of Horn Fair

When the parade reached the actual fair, this was the scene, according to author Daniel Defoe:

'Charleton, a village famous, or rather infamous for the yearly collected rabble of mad-people, at Horn-Fair; the rudeness of which I cannot but think, is such as ought to be suppressed, and indeed in a civiliz’d well govern’d nation, it may well be said to be unsufferable. The mob indeed at that time take all kinds of liberties, and the women are especially impudent for that day; as if it was a day that justify’d the giving themselves a loose to all manner of indecency and immodesty, without any reproach, or without suffering the censure which such behaviour would deserve at another time.'

Every visitor to the fair wore a pair of horns, or carried one, and horns were tied above the gate, around the fences and over the stalls. Even the gingerbread men for sale had horns. The fair was a great excuse for licentiousness in all forms and this no doubt led to its great popularity.

The cuckold was a common feature of married life in the seventeenth century, and cuckold often used as an insult, the way bastard might be now. Insulting someone could be done by showing them a horned fist gesture, or putting two fingers up behind the head as a sign of  their stupidity. During the English Civil War a song called Cuckolds All In A Row was popular with Cavaliers, who sang it as a chant against the London Roundheads.

‘And when they reach Cuckold’s Point they make a gallant show.
Their wives bid the Musick play Cuckolds All In A Row.’

Cuckold’s Point also features in the play Eastward Ho by Ben Jonson. This scene epitomises the idea of putting up cuckold's horns to let a man know his wife was being unfaithful.

Enter SLITGUT with a pair of ox-horns, discovering Cuckold’s Haven.
SLIT: All hail, fair haven of married men only! for there are none but married men cuckolds. For my part, I presume not to arrive here but in my master’s behalf, a poor butcher of Eastcheap, who sends me to set up, in honor of Saint Luke, these necessary ensigns of his homage. And up I got this morning, thus early, to get up to the top of this famous tree, that is all fruit and no leaves, to advance this crest of my master’s occupation.' 

Censure and Closure of the Horn Fair

In 1873 the fair fell victim to Victorian morality and was closed down. It has been re-incarnated as a family friendly event, with none of its historical connotations, and Cuckold’s Point is now The Canary Wharf Hilton Hotel!

Charlton Horn Fair - Victorian era

I couldn't resist including a cuckolding procession in one of my novels, and you'll find it in The Lady's Slipper. 

Bibliography
London Lore - Steve Roud
Mayhew's London - Peter Quinell
Folklore and Customs of Rural England - Margaret Baker
Shakespeare's Life and World - Folio Society
Strange History
Charlton Champion

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Deborah Swift lives in North Lancashire on the edge of the Lake District, an area made famous by the Romantic Poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge. In the past she used to work as a set and costume designer for theatre and TV, so enjoys the research aspect of creating historical fiction.

More details of her research and writing process can be found on her blog at www.deborahswift.com or follow her on twitter @swiftstory