Life and Times in the Eleventh Century: Death Comes at Christmas and a New King is Crowned

by Paula Lofting

September of the year 1065: King Edward, reigning for twenty years, was now beset by a rebellion  from the northern counties of his realm. Despite holding lands there, Edward had never been inclined to wander further than the Midlands. It might seem strange, but Edward was not a ruler who embraced the itinerant life. Nor was he the epitome of Anglo-Saxon warrior-kings who rode at the head of an army. Edward was the sort of king who preferred praying to fighting and hunting to swordplay, leaving most of the martial affairs of his kingdom to his capable number two, Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex.

Edward also seemed to prefer the company of men to that of women – well, if the way he treated his mother and his wife was anything to go by. One could say that Edward had a good reason not to be too fond of women, considering he was abandoned by his mother in an act of political survival. 

Although he was wed to Edith Godwinsdottir, it seemed he might have been fonder of her brother, Tostig, than he was of her.

Tostig’s appointment to the Earldom of Northumbria in 1055 had caused a lot of controversy at the time, and Tostig was often forced to deal with one conflict or another arising from among the stubborn, insubordinate northern thegns. By 1065, it seems they’d had enough of him increasing their taxes and executing those who challenged him. Tostig, however, had a different viewpoint - he'd only been trying to bring them into line with the laws of the southern earldoms. The men of Northumbria, backed by the Mercian lords, decided to oust him, preferring Morcar, the brother of Edwin, Earl of Mercia, to Tostig, threatening an internal war if the king did not agree. In November of that year, Tostig was forced into exile and not even his brother Harold was willing to see a civil war destroy the kingdom despite the blood tie. Whether or not the rebels were justified in their complaints, the downfall of Tostig had been set in motion and Harold was determined not to go down with him, and perhaps, who could blame him? He was, after all, at the pinnacle of his power.

Edward was devastated, shattered by his counsellors’ refusal to restore Tostig to his post using arms. The loss of Tostig seems to have broken him and he ‘became so ill, his mind was affected until his death’ - Vita Ædwardi Regis (The life of King Edward). It seems that on that fateful day when it was ruled that Tostig was to be outlawed, Edward was to suffer the first of a series of strokes that would lead to his death.

There must have been a strange tinge of unease during the Christmas preparations those following weeks that Edward took to his sick bed. Up until the Tostig episode, Edward, though a considerable age, had been quite robust and still able to go hunting in his favourite spot, the Forest of Dean. And Harold had intended to gift his king a hunting lodge, the land of Archenfield, that he had conquered back from Gruffudd a couple of years ago. Therefore, Edward, at that time, had been of stout heart and mind. But in an unfortunate incident in August 1065, Welsh raiders burned the lodge to the ground. The loss of Tostig must have hit the king harder than the loss of Harold’s gift. Tostig’s removal coincided with the start of Edward's illness which seemed to worsen as the weeks went by. As Christmas approached, it must have been clear that Edward was not going to recover from such a serious illness. He was on his way out and not coming back.

One would hardly imagine that a kingdom’s administration would have been totally unprepared for a change in regime. With possible war with various factions on the horizon, it would barely seem rational that plans for the aftermath of Edward’s passing had not been made. The speed with which Harold was to be crowned can be thought to have been a fait accompli. So, whilst Edward lay sick in his bed in those weeks after Tostig’s departure, the wise men of the kingdom, the witan, must have met to come up with a plan. The meeting would also have included the queen, who, according to Poitiers in his Gesta Guillelmi, was said to have loved her brother Tostig and hated Harold. Because of the nature of Tostig’s downfall and Harold’s refusal to back him to the northern rebels she held a grudge against him and may not have been happy that Harold was elected as heir to her husband’s throne. But her best chance of surviving as an influential player in this Anglo-Saxon Game of Thrones was to have gone with the flow and hedge all her bets on her brother, Harold. Ok, he was not flavour month where she was concerned, but she may have been reminded of what had happened to her predecessor, Emma of Normandy, whose power greatly diminished when her last husband died.

During this time, Harold would have been garnering support amongst the most significant members of the nobility. Earl Leofric, head of the Mercian anti-Godwin faction, was long dead, and so was his son Ælfgar. Now it was down to his sons who were in power in the north in both the midlands and the northern counties. Earls Morcar and Edwin were very young, only in their mid-to-late-teens, when the old king was dying, but they would have known of the conflicts involving their father and Harold.  Despite the Godwinson name coming up in events surrounding Ælfgar’s problems, Harold seems to have been the chief negotiator when solving the disputes which always came out in the Mercian lord’s favour. It is therefore not unreasonable, to believe that there was no real animosity between the sons of Ælfgar and Harold. They would owe him a debt for the part he played in allowing them to succeed to the earldoms of Merica and Northumbria, especially in the case of the latter which meant that Harold had to turn his back on his own brother. Its quite likely they would have voted for Harold with the witan, and thrown in their sister, Aldith, as part of the deal. Of course, all the other earls were Godwins too – Leofwine and Gyrth – who were Harold’s younger brothers after Tostig. Amongst the other members of the witan would have been archbishops Stigand and Eadred, both Godwin supporters, not to mention leading bishops and abbots, and abbesses also, and other wealthy and powerful thegns up and down the country. With the witan's seal on the table, all Harold really needed now as a stamp of approval was for Edward to express his consent, bearing in mind that it was less than eighteen months since Harold had sworn on holy relics to William of Normandy that he would help the duke realise his ambition of becoming the next King of England.

They say that when people are at the end of their lives, they somehow find the strength to stay for that special arrival, or occasion.  This could be said of Edward, who managed to find the strength to attend the Christmas Day celebrations and was probably hoping that he would make the consecration of his church. He certainly must have struggled throughout the day's proceedings for evidently he was unable to partake of much of his food, and after this night, he took to his bed and never arose again, even missing his newly built Romanesque-style church consecration ceremony on the 28th December.

Imagine the scenario, Edward, with the greatest of his nobles gathered around him, his dutiful loyal wife, Edith warming his feet as she was wont to do, and a lot of people scuffling here and there to prepare for the funeral and coronation. As already mentioned, it was already decided who the next king was going to be, but for added excitement, the Vita creates an atmosphere of suspense as  the court waited for Edward to make his nomination. The king spends days in and out of consciousness, but is unable to name his successor until he has, in a lucid moment, relayed a strange prophetical dream that produces some very cryptic foreshadowing - probably added to the Vita after the events of 1066 have played out.

Grumbling, Stigand, the Archbishop of Canterbury, turns to Harold and says that the king is raving like a madman, but then the king seems to be restored to sanity and speaks his last words: “Do not mourn for me, but pray for my soul and give me leave to go to God. He who allowed himself to die, will not allow me not to.” Queen Edith was weeping and he spoke words of comfort to her and he said, “May God reward my wife for her devoted loving service. For she has been a devoted servant to me, always by my side like a beloved daughter.”

Following on from this poignant, tragic scene, Edward finds the strength at last to speak the words they've all been waiting for, raising his hand to Harold: “I commend this woman and all the kingdom to your protection… and do not deprive her… of any honour she has received from me. I also commend to you all those men who have left their native land for love of me and served me faithfully. Take an oath of fealty from them, if they wish… or send them with safe conduct across the Channel to their own homes with all they have acquired in their service from me.” Edward - or perhaps Edith, who has commissioned the Vita Edwardi, seems to have been worried about her welfare after his death, and also that of the men whose names did not need mentioning but would have been known. Did Edith have reservations about Harold's intentions after he was crowned?

As we know, Edward pops his clogs and is gone from this world after giving instructions for his funeral. Did he ask them to send an invitation to William for the funeral? Not that there would have been time, but if, as the Normans liked to put it about, he had wanted William to be his heir, and had named him as such, surely arrangements would have been made to let the duke know that his cousin was soon to be extinguished from this life and that he should make preparations as soon as possible to attend his new court. But no, William was not sent for. Harold had already been chosen, had tried on the crown for size and made sure it fitted. William knew nothing about Edward's death and Harold's take-over. When he heard, it was said that he went into such a rage, he was almost catatonic, barely speaking.

And what of Edgar, the aetheling? Should he not have been considered? He was, after all throne-worthy due to his blood lineage. He was the only one known to use the title of aetheling. At this time, Edgar could not have been much more than thirteen or fourteen. He would not likely, given what could be coming, been able to handle such a situation without any experience. He did not appear to have followers or much in the way of land. His parents had arrived in England with riches, but he'd not been old enough to take charge of that yet, I suspect. He'd most likely had some grooming and education that any princeling might have expected to set him up for nomination, but Edward was not expected to leave the world just yet and he was, it seems, unprepared for kingship. And given the threat that would come from Normandy and from Tostig, whose intentions were probably easy to predict, would an untried mere boy of thirteen or fourteen be the best man for the job compared to Harold?

If it had been me on that counsel in 1065, Harold, tried and tested as a diplomat and military general, I would have opted for the man and not the boy. How about you?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Paula Lofting is an author and a member of the re-enactment society Regia Anglorum, where she regularly takes part in the Battle of Hastings. Her first novel, Sons of the Wolf, is set in eleventh-century England and tells the story of Wulfhere, a man torn between family and duty. The sequel, The Wolf Banner is available now. Paula is currently working on the third book in the series, Wolf's Bane.

Find Paula on her Blog
on her Amazon Author Page

The Queen Without a Crown

by Catherine Curzon

Caroline of Brunswick lived a life of drama, scandal and excitement. From her sheltered early days in Brunswick to a disastrous marriage to George IV (at the time merely the Prince of Wales) and a fling with an Italian chamberlain, she did nothing by halves. She had already survived George’s attempts to blacken her name, strip her of her titles and even divorce her, and through it all, the doughty lady emerged unscathed. Darling of the people, favourite of the radicals and rallying point for those who loathed her husband, she simply refused to bend, let alone break.

Yet even the strongest bough must eventually fall.

Caroline of Brunswick by Samuel Lane

Having survived a trial in the House of Lords that threatened to end her marriage and leave her in disgrace, without rank, title or privilege, in 1821 Caroline felt unstoppable. So unstoppable, in fact, that she decided to join the estranged husband who hated her at his Westminster Abbey coronation. Here the queen would be crowned, the crowd would cheer and Caroline would once and for all trounce George IV on his biggest of big days.

The whole of Great Britain knew that George was due to be crowned at Westminster Abbey on 19th July 1821, and it was going to be the biggest party the country had ever seen. He was determined that Caroline would not be there; she was determined that she would. Whether he liked it or not, she was set on having her moment in the spotlight.

Caroline, or rather her advisors, had always been masters of judging the public mood. Yet this time, the queen misread the atmosphere in the streets catastrophically. Though the public had always supported her in her battles with George, her victory in the Lords was old news by now. Instead, as the people of Britain weathered the long, cold winter and waited keenly for the summer to come, they were looking forward to the Coronation party, which promised to be the knees up to end all knees ups. As far as they were concerned, she had a home in Italy and with her husband’s efforts to divorce her exhausted, they began to wonder why she simply didn’t just go home and enjoy the £50,000 annuity Parliament had granted her. Could it be, the people wondered, that Caroline liked the limelight a little too much?

As the king’s Carlton House team went on the PR offensive, Caroline’s own advisors began to distance themselves from what was becoming a toxic situation. Lord Brougham, her chief advisor, told Caroline that she must not go to Westminster Abbey at any cost. He warned her that the public didn’t want it, and that, if she wanted to stay in their favour, the best approach was one of humility.

Caroline was having none of it.

Instead, she wrote to George IV to tell him that she would be there for her crowning. She requested that he let her know what he would like her to wear and asked for a retinue of ladies to assist her in preparing for the big day.

“The Queen from circumstances being obliged to remain in England, she requests the King will be pleased to command those Ladies of the first Rank his Majesty may think most proper in this Realms, to attend the Queen on the day of the Coronation, of which her Majesty is informed is now fixed, and also to name such Ladies which will be required to bear her Majesty's Train on that day. 

The Queen being particularly anxious to submit to the good Taste of his Majesty most earnestly entreats the King to inform the Queen in what Dress the King wishes the Queen to appear in, on that day, at the Coronation. Caroline R.”¹

Needless to say, George didn’t reply. Instead, he passed the letter to Lord Liverpool, the prime minster who was no fan of Caroline. He informed the hopeful lady that she wasn't welcome and should keep her distance. With Liverpool’s warning echoing his own, Brougham redoubled his efforts to keep her from the Coronation. Even the press joined in the chorus of disapproval and begged Caroline to heed the words of the politician who had, so far, not failed her. Brougham’s sound guidance in the Lords had saved her from divorce and disgrace, could he now save her from national embarrassment?

Alas, no.

Henry Brougham by Thomas Lawrence

Brougham knew from the start that Caroline wouldn’t be dissuaded from her planned path, it meant so much to her to score a victory over George. Still, Brougham did all he could to dissuade her, yet she refused to accept that “the public feeling would not go along with her”². Still, he wrote with an almost audible sigh, “having an order, she could not be stopt when she insisted upon it”³. So on 19th July 1821, Caroline sallied forth at six o’clock in the morning, determined to get into the Coronation.

Accompanied by the gallant and well-meaning Lord Hood, Caroline strode from door to door at Westminster Abbey attempting to gain admission. At each door she was turned away until, finally, one of the doors was literally slammed shut in her face. It was a humiliation like she had never known before, and as the crowd that had once cheered her now booed and jeered, one can only imagine what must have been going through Caroline’s head. 

Still she persisted until one of the exasperated doorkeepers told her that admission was by ticket only, regardless of who she was, queen or no queen. Trying to make the best of a bad situation Lord Hood offered Caroline his own ticket so that she might at least see the procession, but she declined, unable to bear such a humiliation. When he made the kind offer Lord Hood heard, “some persons within the porch of the Abbey laughed, and uttered some expressions of disrespect.”⁴. He was mortified and Caroline, plunged into despair, had no choice but to flee.

“She flinched,” wrote Brougham, “for the first time in her life”⁵, and it was the beginning of a swift end for Caroline of Brunswick.

From her rooms in Brandenburgh House the crownless queen Caroline continued to stir up trouble, but to no avail. A letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury requesting “to be crowned some days after the King, and before the arrangements were done away with, so that there might be no additional expense”⁶ was met with a polite but firm rebuttal and one by one, her remaining allies deserted her.

George IV by Thomas Lawrence

Caroline fell ill with stomach pains in late July and her doctors diagnosed an obstruction of the bowel. Her attempts to self-medicate with opiates made matters worse and as the days passed, her condition grew ever weaker. She became convinced that her death was drawing near and requested one final meeting with Brougham, at which she told him,“I shall not recover; and I am much better dead, for I be tired of this life”⁷.

Caroline of Brunswick, the uncrowned queen, died just after ten o’clock on the evening of 7th August 1821.

“Yesterday evening, at twenty-five minutes after ten o’clock, the QUEEN departed this life after a short but painful illness, at Brandenburgh House, at Hammersmith.”⁸

Her last wish was to be taken back to her homeland of Brunswick and buried alongside her family. She envisaged a coffin bearing a plate that stated this was the last resting place of the injured queen of England. George IV ordered the minimum period of mourning possible for his late wife, and though he was happy to see her body leave England for Brunswick, her coffin was notably free of the plate she had requested. Enormous crowds turned out to watch her final journey to the coast, mourning the death of the woman who had always provided them with entertainment, if nothing else.

In fact, when the party paused for a rest at Colchester Caroline’s supporters succeeded in fastening the controversial plate to her coffin. The triumph was short lived, and when the procession began again, the official plate was in place once more.

Lord Brougham wrote that the crowds who gathered to watch the procession pass moved him deeply. Though her final weeks had been unhappy, Caroline had not been deserted by her public after all. Mourned, celebrated and notorious, Caroline of Brunswick might be dead, but she would never, ever be forgotten.

Footnotes

1. Melville, Lewis (1912), An Injured Queen, Caroline of Brunswick: Vol I. London: Hutchinson & Co, p.542.

2. Brougham, Henry (1871), The Life and Times of Henry, Lord Brougham, Vol II. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, p.422.

3. Ibid.

4. Urban, Sylvanus (1821). The Gentleman's Magazine: 1821, Volume 91, Part 2. London: John Nichols and Son, p.74.

5. Brougham, Henry (1871), The Life and Times of Henry, Lord Brougham, Vol II. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, p.422.

6. Nightingale, Joseph (1822). Memoirs of the Last Days of Her Late Most Gracious Majesty Caroline, Queen of Great Britain. London: J Robins & Co, p.516.

7. Brougham, Henry (1871), The Life and Times of Henry, Lord Brougham, Vol II. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, p.423.

8. The Morning Post (London, England), Thursday, August 09, 1821; Issue 15725, p.3.

All images courtesy Wikipedia

Further reading

Anonymous. A Brief Account of the Coronation of His Majesty, George IV. London: D Walther, 1821. 

Brougham, Henry. The Critical and Miscellaneous Writings of Henry Lord Brougham. London: Lea & Blanchard, 1841.

Brougham, Henry. The Life and Times of Henry, Lord Brougham, Vol II. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1871.

Chapman, Frederic (trans.). A Queen of Indiscretions, The Tragedy of Caroline of Brunswick, Queen of England. London: John Lane, 1897.

Chapman, Hester W. Caroline Matilda, Queen of Denmark, 1751-75. London: Cape, 1971.

David, Saul. Prince of Pleasure. New York: Grove Press, 2000.

Fraser, Flora. The Unruly Queen: The Life of Queen Caroline. Edinburgh: A&C Black, 2012.

Gossip, Giles. Coronation Anecdotes. London: Robert Jennings, 1828.

Hibbert, Christopher. George IV. London: Penguin, 1998.

Huish, Robert. Memoirs of George the Fourth: Vol I. London: Thomas Kelly, 1830.

Huish, Robert. Memoirs of Her Late Majesty Caroline, Queen of Great Britain. London: T Kelly, 1821.

Melville, Lewis, An Injured Queen, Caroline of Brunswick: Vol I. London: Hutchinson & Co, 1912.

Nightingale, Joseph, Memoirs of Her Late Majesty Queen Caroline. London: J Robins and Company, 1821.

Nightingale, Joseph. Memoirs of the Last Days of Her Late Most Gracious Majesty Caroline, Queen of Great Britain, and Consort of King George the Fourth. London: J Robins and Company, 1822.

Nightingale, Joseph. Memoirs of the Public and Private Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty Caroline, Queen of Great Britain. London: J Robins & Co, 1820.

Richardson, Joanne. The Disastrous Marriage. London: Jonathan Cape, 1960.

Robins, Jane. The Trial of Queen Caroline: The Scandalous Affair that Nearly Ended a Monarchy. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006.

Smith, EA. George IV. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.

Wilkins, William Henry. The Love of an Uncrowned Queen. London: Hutchinson & Co, 1900.

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

Catherine Curzon is a royal historian. She is the author of Life in the Georgian Court, Kings of Georgian Britain, and Queens of Georgian Britain (October 2017). 

Her work has been featured online by BBC History Magazine and in Explore History, All About History, History of Royals and Jane Austen’s Regency World. She has provided research for An Evening with Jane Austen at the V&A and spoken at venues including the Royal Pavilion, Lichfield Guildhall, Greenwich National Maritime Museum and Dr Johnson’s House. This year she will speak at the Stamford Georgian Festival, the Jane Austen Festival, Kenwood House and Godmersham Park. 

Her novels, The Crown Spire, The Star of Versailles, and The Mistress of Blackstairs, are available now.

Catherine holds a Master’s degree in Film and lives in Yorkshire atop a ludicrously steep hill.

http://www.madamegilflurt.com

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https://www.instagram.com/catherinecurzon/

TOMBS of HENRY VIII’S QUEENS: PART TWO by LINDA FETTERLY ROOT

Westminster Abbey

If the pop quizzes so popular on social media were to ask: ‘Which of Henry VIII’s wives is buried at Westminster?’,  I suspect the correct answer would be the least popular.  I would have guessed Katherine Parr, a woman of untarnished reputation and an Anglican scholar. And I would be wrong.  So would scores of others who had been to the site and read the grave markers in Henry VII’s Lady Chapel where the other Tudors are interred. The last of Great Harry’s wives to die is buried at an obscure location in the nave. Her name is Anne of Cleves.

ANNE OF CLEVES:  

The German princess Anne of Cleves is as obscure in death as she had been in life. She is buried in the nave, and for political and security reasons, her grave is not easily accessible to the public because it is within the sanctuary.  It is said that a visitor standing on the tip of the toes can see the marker, a rather recent addition which is only slightly higher than the floor. Apparently, there was a more visible tomb which was obscured to make a place for another queen’s mother and grandmother to sit at Elizabeth II’s coronation.  Earlier photos of the site are copyrighted and licensed at a king’s ransom.

Anne of Cleves' days as Henry’s consort were short-lived. She was never crowned and Henry swore the marriage was never consummated. Apparently,  the bride was too sexually naïve to know, one way or another, or perhaps she was astute enough to keep her mouth shut. Henry exercised  no such restraint. He found his bride ill-mannered, unappealing and malodorous. He complained of sagging breasts. He is quoted as referring to her as The Flanders Mare. Considering his expanding girth and abscessed leg wound, one might find his comment coming from the pot who called the kettle black. By 1540, the historical Henry was no longer the well-proportioned, athletic Henry portrayed in the Anne of Cleves episodes of the Tudors.

The Holbein Portrait {PD US} Wikimedia 

The king had entered into the marriage contract based on a portrait he had commissioned from court portraitist Hans Holbein, but looks were not the only matter of concern.  A match with a daughter of the Duke of Cleves was meant to solidify his alliance with the German states.  Once contracted, there was no diplomatic way to avoid a wedding without making enemies of the German princes, which Henry could ill-afford. Thus, in January 1540, a disgruntled Henry went through with the ceremony, but neither Holbein nor Thomas Cromwell recovered from the king’s disfavor.  After the wedding night, Henry told Cromwell that he had not liked her much before the bedding, and afterward, he liked her not at all. In February, she was told to leave the court. In early July, the marriage was annulled for lack of consummation and allegations of a pre-contract between Anne of Cleves and the heir to the House of Guise.  By the end of the month, Cromwell had paid for his failed matchmaking with his head, and on the same day, Henry married adolescent Kathryn Howard.

Anne of Cleves stayed on in England.  The king gave her the title of the King’s Sister. She never spoke ill of Henry and had a good relationship with both of his daughters. She is open game for historical novelists because she left an empty slate. She made no enemies and kept her opinions to herself. She survived Henry and his 5^th and 6^th consorts and avoided confrontation during Somerset’s protectorate of Edward VI  and during the Boy King's reign.  When the powers behind the throne rejected Lady Jane Grey and declared for Mary Tudor, Anne of Cleves joined the Lady Elizabeth in the parade marking Mary I's entry into London.  When Catholicism was in vogue during Mary’s reign, Anne abjured the Protestant faith she had adopted when she came.  She ended her days at Chelsea Old House after Queen Mary became suspicious of her relationship with Elizabeth and Frances Brandon, the Duchess of Suffolk.  She lived in quietude, known for the efficient management of her estates, her pleasant temperament, and her generosity to her servants. Henry could have done much worse.

And he did.

KATHRYN HOWARD

Church of Saint Peter ad Vincula, Tower of London (Wikimedia)

Henry's fifth wife, young, vivacious and unfortunately, promiscuous Kat Howard takes us on our second visit to the Church of Saint Peter ad Vincula at the Tower of London. In today’s terms, she would be called a Trophy Wife. At the time of her marriage in July 1540, she was probably no more than nineteen.  Kathryn was one of a brood of several children born to Lord Edmund Howard, the financially challenged younger brother of the Duke of Norfolk. Queen Anne Boleyn’s mother had been their sister. The dead queen had been a cousin.  Kathryn’s parents were both previously married with children.  Hence, Kathryn had so many older siblings of the whole and the half that her parents did not bother to record her birth date. It is believed to have been between 1521 and 1523.

With too many daughters in the family, her parents sent her to Lambeth House to live in the household of her paternal grandmother Agnes, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, who ran an ex-officio home for high-born but impoverished surplus daughters. In that setting,the seeds of Kathryn’s fall were sown.  A visit to the Dowager’s household would have found it well-managed in every respect but one—the supervision of the teenage girls who had been deposited there.  The atmosphere portrayed in the mini-series The Tudors is reasonably accurate.  The girls lived in a dormitory and behaved as if it were a long term sleepover. It was a fine place for a robust good time, but not a training-ground for queens.

Kathryn was not a beauty nor was she especially bright, but she was a Howard and vivacious. How far her sexual dalliances as a ward of Lady Agnes Howard may have progressed is a case in controversy. The popular nominees as the girl’s despoiler include her music teacher Henry Mannock, her cousin Thomas Culpepper, and a young aristocrat, Francis Dereham, to whom she was possibly betrothed. Kathryn  might have married Dereham, had she not met the king on a visit to the Bishop of Rochester’s House. Henry's interest did not escape the attention of Kathryn's uncle, the Duke of Norfolk.

Not much later in a move probably brokered by Norfolk, she left her grandmother’s house to become a lady-in-waiting to Anne of Cleves.  Norfolk and the Catholic faction promoted her rise in the king's affection. Already determined to rid himself of his German bride, Henry had discovered a replacement more to his sexual taste,  and the Catholic faction saw a way to get rid of both the German consort and Thomas Cromwell, who was already the subject of Henry's animus.

Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk

Weeks after Anne of Cleves agreed to an annulment on terms allowing her to remain living comfortably in England, Henry married Kathryn at Oatlands.  She was likely not yet twenty and he was forty-nine, obese and diseased. But he was infatuated with his young bride.

Kat Howard's uncle and his allies who had promoted her so vigorously had not wasted any time by vetting her. Not long after her honeymoon, Kathryn renewed her relationship with her cousin Tom Culpepper, meeting with him privately in trysts arranged by her cousin-by-marriage, Lady Rochford, sister-in-law of Anne Boleyn. Kat Howard had never been especially discreet, and her new royal status did not change that.  The anti-Howard faction took notice, even if  their smitten king did not. When they had enough evidence, they presented it to the king. After ordering the queen's  arrest, he never saw her again. The men in Kathryn's past were quickly dispatched.  The queen's case presented some dicey legal issues, and  trial was delayed so Parliament could pass a law making it a capital offense for a consort to withhold knowledge of prior sexual conduct. Also, a Bill of Attainder would eliminate the need for an embarrassing trial. Soon any issues stemming from a precontract with Dereham were moot. Culpepper had confessed to a relationship with Kat while she was queen before he died. Evidence included a  letter to Culpepper before his arrest which Kathryn signed 'Yours as long as life endures,' which turned out to be not very long at all for either of the lovers. The cuckolded King of England wanted blood.

By January 1542, enemies of the Howards had accumulated enough evidence of an on-going affair with Culpepper to send both the silly queen and her lady, Jane Rochford, to the block. The two women joined their Boleyn relatives  in the pile of bones in the floor of Saint Peter ad Vincula.

Norfolk was included in the attaint, but his fall was more of a bounce.  Soon he was back in favor and appointed Lieutenant of the Armies. His eventual fall from grace had more to do with his conservative but astute decision to lift the siege on Montreuil and retreat to Calais, which embarrassed Henry during his war against the French. The behavior of his two royal nieces had little to do with it.

KATHERINE PARR:

A slightly different likeness of Katherine Parr
Wikimedia Commons

Thomas Seymour, Baron Sudeley

Katherine Parr is buried in Saint Mary’s Church at Sudeley Castle. It is the only private English castle to have a Queen buried on its grounds.  

Young Elizabeth

After Henry VIII’s death, the dead king's son Edward VI gave Sudeley 
to his uncle Thomas at the same time he made him a baron, probably at Thomas’s older brother Edward Seymour’s suggestion. Edward, Earl of Somerset was the self-appointed Protector of the Realm.  After their marriage, Seymour and his wife, who had been granted the title Queen Dowager for Life, resided at Chelsea with Lady Jane Gray and Lady Elizabeth as their wards.

Those who remember their Tudor history will identify Sudeley as the new home of Thomas Seymour, Baron Seymour of Sudeley, who, driven by ambition that outstripped his wit, married Henry’s widow and later broke her heart by making advances to his ward, the adolescent Lady Elizabeth, later Queen of England. Both women suffered over the love triangle. Seymour's unbridled ambition later put Elizabeth's life at risk. 

By the time Katherine became pregnant, Elizabeth had been sent to Hatfield in disgrace. The Queen Dowager moved her household to Sudeley for her laying in.  Six days after delivering a daughter, she died. She had not been a young woman when she married Seymour, and although she had been widowed twice when she married the king, all of her prior marriages had been childless. She would have been 35 at the time she gave birth to Seymour’s child.  Pregnancies were dangerous under the best of circumstances, but a first pregnancy in what was then well into middle age was especially precarious.  Some of  Seymour’s vociferous enemies suspected poison. Others blamed it on the stress his dalliance with Elizabeth caused the Queen. Nevertheless, although she had been heartbroken when she caught him and Elizabeth embracing, Katherine had forgiven her husband and had renewed a warm correspondence with Elizabeth, who sent a hand-knit baby gift.

Katherine Parr was buried at Sudeley Castle in Saint Mary’s Chapel. Thomas engaged in a series of madcap maneuvers aimed at displacing his brother Edward. In the last escapade, he shot the young king's dog. Seymour was executed for treason seven months after Katherine died. He is buried in the floor at the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula in the Tower.

Queen Katherine's lead coffin was not identified until 1782. When it was opened, her corpse was well preserved. Drunken grave robbers ravaged the site ten years later, and what was left was buried in the tomb of one of the castle’s subsequent owners. Gothic architect George Gilbert Scott restored the site in the early 19th century and commissioned John Birnie Philip to create a tomb effigy for Katherine Parr. It seems a suitable resting place for a woman who understood the concept of duty but was never bound to silence and who appreciated beauty. She was a competent scholar and the first female English  writer to publish under her own name in England.  She was a gifted woman who deserved better of the men in her life. Her writings are available through the Women Writers Project and on Amazon.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

 Photographs are from Wikimedia Commons.  Online sources are numerous. Print sources include:  

John Field, Kingdom Power and Glory, A Historical Guide to Westminster Abbey, James& James, 1996: Derek Wilson, The Tower of London, Constable/Dorset 1978:and Julia Fox, Jane Boleyn: The True Story of Lady Rochford, Ballantyne Books, New York, 2009, among others.

LINDA FETTERLY ROOT is a former major crimes prosecutor, armchair historian, and author of the historical novels in the Legacy of the Queen of Scots series, and two epic novels set in the life and times of Marie Stuart. She lives in the historically rich ‘wild west’ north of Palm Springs, on the edge of Joshua Tree National Park, with her canine partners Maxx and Maya, and assorted wild things. https://www.amazon.com/Linda-Root/e/B0053DIGM8/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1473349726&sr=1-2-ent

"Stone walls do not a prison make": The Infamous Westminster Gate-House

By Nancy Bilyeau

This post is an EHFA Editor's choice. It was first published on December 28, 2013

In 1663, in the flush of the Restoration, a woman named Mary Carleton went on trial for bigamy. Born in Canterbury of humble parents, she’d married a shoemaker and given birth to two children before disappearing to Cologne. There she had a torrid affair with a nobleman, turning down his offer of marriage but keeping his rich gifts and some money besides. She then returned to England, claiming to be an orphaned German princess and marrying one John Carleton. A discovered letter betrayed her first marriage and she was arrested.

Bigamist and impersonator Mary Carleton, 1663
© National Portrait Gallery, London, licensed under CCA.

Mary’s colorful life—she was acquitted of bigamy after a spirited defense and went on to marry, steal from, and abandon a string of new husbands before being transported to Jamaica and, finally, hanged for theft in 1673—is not, however, the focus of this post. It is her place of incarceration before going on trial, a strange prison within a very short distance of Westminster Abbey where men and women had been held for three centuries before Mary’s celebrated trial, captured in the book The Arraignment, Tryal and Examination of Mary Moders, Otherwise Stedman, Now Carleton, (styled, the German Princess) At the Sessions House in the Old Bayly, Being Brought Prisoner from the Gate-House Westminster, for Having Two Husbands.

The Tower of London holds claim to being the prison of greatest tragic renown, where queens were feted and beheaded and Jesuit priests screamed on the rack. But the Westminster Gate-House has many stories to tell too, holding errant clerks, religious dissidents, poets and legendary Englishmen such as Sir Walter Ralegh and Samuel Pepys before imprisoning a great many miserable, anonymous debtors.

In a description of the Gate-House Prison written in 1768, it "is situated near the west end of the abbey, entering into Tuttle Street, and the Almery...it is the chief prison for the City of Westminster liberties, not only for debt, but treason, theft and other criminal matters."

In the beginning, the prison was more connected to Westminster Abbey, which makes sense. Some say it was a powerful abbot who transformed the gatehouse into a prison, but documents point to William Warfield, the cellarer of Westminster Abbey. In 1370 he arranged for the gatehouse’s upper storey to house a jail.

But why?

By the time of the reign of Edward III, Westminster was in full medieval throttle. William Rufus' majestic Great Hall, where Parliament met and kings sat on marble thrones, was raised near the spectacular Westminster Abbey, founded by Edward the Confessor in 1065.

Westminster Abbey today.
Image by ChrisO, licensed under CCA.

In Walter Thornbury's Old and New London (1878), he speculates about the preeminence in Plantagenet times of Westminster Abbey and the importance of even the "butler," who was most probably this same William Warfield: "A magnificent apex to a royal palace, the abbey church was surrounded by its own greater and lesser sanctuaries and almonries; its bell towers (the principal one 72 feet 6 inches square, with walls 20 feet thick), chapels, gatehouses, boundary walls, and a train of other buildings, of which we can at the present day scarcely form an idea. In addition to all the land around it, extending from the Thames to Oxford Street, the Abbey possessed 97 towns and villages, 17 hamlets and 216 manors. Its officers fed hundreds of persons daily, and one of its priests (not the abbott) entertained at this pavilion the king and queen, with so large a party, that seven hundred dishes did not suffice for the first table, and even the abbey butler, in the reign of Edward III, rebuilt at his own expense the stately gatehouse which gave entrance to Tothill Street."

Tudor-era historian John Stow wrote that the eastern part of the north gate was used as the bishop of London's prison for "clarks convict." So was it originally an ecclesiastical prison? That's contradicted by another report that during the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381, rioters set the Westminster prisoners free. It's difficult to picture the peasant rebels fired up to liberate errant clerks. But in 1596, a Southwark preacher confined in the Gate-House did write an abject letter to Lord Burghley "for keeping Wednesday a fast, and transferring the observation of it unto Thursday." Hardly a violent felon.

Another Tudor troublemaker, Giles Wigginton, a Cambridge-educated clergyman, was twice confined in the Gate-House, once for refusing to swear he was not the author of The Marprelate Tracts, pamphlets attacking the kingdom's traditional Anglican leaders. While imprisoned in the 1590s, Wigginton was joined by other fiery Puritans, such as William Hacket, who claimed to be the messiah, called for the removal of Elizabeth I, and on the way to his execution insulted the clergyman determined to comfort him.

A 16th century prisoner of opposite views was Nicholas Vaux, a chorister of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, imprisoned for "propagating the Romish religion." He died in the Gate-House "of cold and hunger" in 1571.

Sir Walter Ralegh

The first "celebrity" prisoner of the Westminster Gate-House was Sir Walter Ralegh. After a lengthy imprisonment in the Tower of London under James I, he was released to lead a disastrous expedition to Venezuela to find gold. But on his return to England, he was re-imprisoned in the Gate-House, perhaps because he was to be executed in the Old Palace Yard in Westminster.

Tradition has it that Ralegh wrote this poem shortly before he met his end on Oct. 29, 1618:

Verses Found in His Bible in the Gate House at Westminster 

"Even such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days;
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust."

 On the scaffold, Ralegh was shown the ax that would soon decapitate him and said, "This is a sharp medicine, but it is a physician for all diseases and miseries." Ralegh was buried in St. Margaret's Church nearby, and never moved.

Richard Lovelace

The next poet adventurer to be held at Westminster--but not, fortunately, beheaded--was Richard Lovelace, a wealthy knight's son who at the age of 13 became a "gentleman wayter extraordinary" to King Charles I. In his twenties, Lovelace was arrested for destroying a pro-parliamentary petition. During his several months' stay in the Gate-House, he is believed to have written his most famous poem:

To Althea, From Prison 

"Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an Hermitage.
If I have freedom in my love,
and in my soul am free,
angels alone that soar above,
enjoy such liberty."

Ruined by his undaunted support of the royalist cause, Lovelace died in poverty in 1658, two years before the restoration of the monarchy in Charles II.

In the late 17th century, the two most famous prisoners were condemned to the Gate-House.

Jeffrey Hudson and the Queen,
by Anthony van Dyck

The first was court dwarf Sir Jeffrey Hudson. He was presented to Queen Henrietta Maria as a surprise when he was a child 18 inches tall: he emerged from a pie, dressed in armor. Hudson became a cherished member of the royal household and eventually traveled with the Queen to French exile. At some point, Hudson tired of insults about his size; responding to a taunt from the queen's master of horse, he entered a duel and shot his opponent in the head. He then fled France. Sometime later, Hudson was on a boat seized by Barbary pirates and it took him many years to escape and make his way to England. But this was now the time of Titus Oates, and Hudson was arrested for being a "Roman Catholick." He died in 1682, two years after being released from the Gate-House.

The last illustrious prisoner was the erudite Samuel Pepys, jailed in 1690. A longtime civil servant, wit and bibliophile, he kept a diary that is one of the leading records of the Restoration, the Anglo-Dutch War, the Great Plague and the Great Fire. A correspondent of Newton's, he also wrote about his personal problems--bladder problems, fights with his wife, squalid extramarital affairs--and his love of wine and theater. But he too fell afoul of anti-Catholic paranoia. He was suspected of being a Jacobite in secret contact with the exiled James II; because of his poor health, he was given bail.

In the 18th century, the occupants of the Westminster Gate-House were almost all debtors. In 1769, this article was published about the grim conditions to be found in Westminster:

"The Gate-House, near Westminster Abbey, is the jail whereunto those poor wretches, who cannot pay their small debts, are committed, for forty days, unless they do what is all too often impossible; namely, pay the debt sooner. Add to this, that these prisoners have no other maintenance but what they derive from charity...for strange as it is, yet true it is, that there is no provision by law for the subsistence of prisoners in this jail..."

The Gate-House in its final dreary decades.

Charity for the prisoners was obtained by way of a box hanging from a pole forty feet long, let down by a chain, to those who wished to give. Even more incredibly, "gin and other spirits" were allowed into the Westminster Gate-House as freely as at the "public houses." The prison keeper or under keeper would go to the window and shout into the street, "Jackass! Jackass!" so that an employee of a public house would come to receive orders.

In the year 1776, as the question of freedom was raging across the ocean, the Westminster Gate-House also was liberated. The prison was closed, some say after a public campaign by the author Samuel Johnson who said "a building so offensive ought to be pulled down."

Dr. Johnson died eight years later and was buried at Westminster Abbey.

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Nancy Bilyeau is the author of a trilogy of mysteries set in the 16th century: The Crown, The Chalice, and The Tapestry, for sale in North America, the United Kingdom, Germany and Spain.

The Crown was an Oprah pick: "The real draw of this suspenseful novel is its juicy blend of murder, lust, conspiracy and betrayal."

The Chalice won the RT Reviewers Award for Best Historical Mystery. The Tapestry was released in paperback in March 2016.

For more information, please visit Nancy's website at http://www.nancybilyeau.com/

With the whole world in his hand

by Anna Belfrage

Some kings peer out at us from the mist of history as rather forgettable characters. One such king, IMO, is Henry III. Yes, I realise he has the misfortune of being squished between the upheaval that characterised the reign of his father, King John, and the rather impressive persona of his son, Edward I, but all the same, Henry comes across as passive – and seriously inept, as demonstrated by the rebellion of men like Simon de Montfort.

To be fair to Henry, he did not have an easy start in life. Becoming king at the tender age of nine, with your kingdom invaded by French mercenaries, your barons at each other’s throat, and your father vilified by every man around, cannot have been easy. Things were probably not made better when his mother, the famously beautiful Isabella, Countess of Angouleme, decided she was not cut out to play the part of grieving widow. In 1217, a year after Henry had lost his father, Isabella chose to return to her native Angouleme where she subsequently married Hugh de Lusignan and went on to present Henry with nine half-siblings.

Henry must have been lonely. Yes, he had a brother he loved dearly, and yes, he definitely had older men who acted as regents in his name, but ultimately he was still a child, however much a king he was expected to act.  In such an atmosphere, it is not surprising if Henry grew up to be reserved, turning inwards rather than outwards. Neither is it a surprise that he found solace in his faith – Henry is described as being a most pious king. And here, dear readers, lies the seed to the magnificent legacy Henry III did leave us: Westminster Abbey.

I have previously written a post about Westminster Abbey, and so as not to bore you to tears regarding my fascination for this place, today I thought we’d talk a bit about what drove Henry to invest such immense amounts in rebuilding the old and somewhat dark original abbey church into what it is today. And the starting point, I believe, is Henry’s determination not to be outdone by Louis IX of France.

St Louis

The two young kings were of an age – Henry was born in 1207, Louis in 1214. They were also brothers-in-law, both of them married to daughters of the Count of Provence. And they were both pious – very pious. If Henry went to mass every day – so did Louis. Louis fed hundreds of orphans – so did Henry.  One gave alms – so did the other. If Henry went on pilgrimages, chances are Louis would also go. When Louis washed the feet of lepers to show his humility, very soon after, Henry was also washing leprous feet.

The two kings seemed to be involved in an unspoken competition, a determination to show the world just who was the most pious, devoted and Christian king around. So when Louis proudly paraded the True Cross through Paris, Henry did not rest until he’d acquired the Relic of the Holy Blood (and no, let’s not go there…) and could just as proudly carry the vial with its priceless content to Westminster Abbey.

Sainte-Chapelle Photo by Michael D Hill Jr

Then, of course, Louis went ahead and started building Sainte-Chapelle – he needed an adequately beautiful church to store all those precious relics of his. Sainte-Chapelle was (is) a work of art and light. The upper part of the chapel was given fifteen huge stained glass windows, allowing light to stream in and illuminate the magnificently painted walls, the resplendent fabrics, the life-size statues of the apostles, and, of course, the huge silver chest in which Louis stored his precious relics.

What did Henry have that could match this? Nothing. Yes, Westminster Abbey was steeped in history, but did it have a lofty nave, did it invite the heavens to come within? Nope. So Henry rolled up his sleeves – figuratively speaking – and decided to rebuild, determined to create something as magnificent and imposing as Louis had done.

Henry had a trump card: within the abbey was the shrine to St Edward the Confessor – Henry’s patron saint – and Sainte-Chapelle had no such shrine, no such saint (although, to be honest, I find it difficult to understand why Edward was ever canonised. Neither here nor there…)

The shrine was remodelled. It was decked out with paint and gold-leaf, it was so adorned it immediately drew the eyes of any visitor, rising huge beyond the altar. The nave was rebuilt, rising to new heights. Light streamed in – not, perhaps, as much as in Louis’ chapel, but substantially more than before. And then Henry turned to the decoration within.

We may be excused for believing medieval churches were austere, mostly whitewash and wood – modern man has a tendency to equate starkness with piety. In truth, entering a medieval church was an assault on the senses, and especially that of sight. The walls were painted with scenes from the bible, statues glowed in blues and reds and golds, pillars rose towards the ceiling decorated with stonework and colour.  Candles cast further light on gold decorations, glimmered off priceless church silver. Sunlight streamed through stained glass windows, dappling the floor with coloured reflections. A bit, I imagine, like entering a full-size kaleidoscope, with so much to see, so much to gawk at.

This was the reaction Henry strived for. He wanted people to enter and stop, amazed at what they saw within. So not only did he lift the nave, order the walls to be painted and decorated, St Edward’s shrine to be adequately highlighted and gilded, he also added a magnificent floor just before the shrine, and to top it all off, the high altar was adorned with a magnificent retable.

St Peter with the key to Heaven

Amazingly, the Westminster Retable is still with us. Close to eight centuries old, badly damaged and scuffed, it is still there, still retains sufficient traces of the images that must at one time have had people going ‘ooooo’ and ‘aaaa’. To be frank, it is difficult not to do the ‘ooo’ and ‘aaa’ thing now as well – assuming you’ve taken the time to find the retable, which relatively few visitors to the abbey do, seeing as they never feel sufficiently motivated to visit the museum.

Divided into five panels, the retable was made of oak, decorated with enamels and jewels, meticulously painted using linseed oils. The frames of each panel was gilded, to the furthest left was St Peter, holding the keys to heaven, to the right St Paul, brandishing his sword. And in the central panel, decorated so as to resemble a gothic church, complete with stained glass windows, was, of course, Christ the Saviour, flanked by St John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary.

The whole world in his hands...

I must admit to being somewhat in love with the retable. Specifically, I am intrigued by one image, that of Christ holding the whole world in his hand. Because you see, dear readers, the world Christ is holding is round. It’s a sphere. On a work of art from the 13th century. I shall leave you to mull that one over…

It is somewhat of a miracle that the retable is still around. When the Reformation happened, churches were often stripped of what was considered as excessively popish decorations, wall paintings were hidden under whitewash, statues of saints and the Virgin destroyed. And then, during the English Civil War, the Puritans had a tendency to go wild and crazy when it came to what they perceived as idolatry. The retable was not destroyed. It was just bundled off into storage somewhere, and in the 18th century someone came up with the bright idea to use the ancient thing – newly painted – as a cask for William Pitt the elder’s wax effigy.

These days, the retable is restored to a fragment of its original magnificence, but it is sufficient to conclude that the English (and French) craftsmen involved in its creation were true artists – and that the king who ordered it did not consider money a limiting factor.

Photo: Bede 735

It is, I suppose, an open question which king succeeded in best demonstrating his piety to the world. In their constant competition, they left the world two marvels, the pure gothic beauty of Sainte-Chapelle and the somewhat more grounded Westminster Abbey, its ancient roots still visible. And as to which one of them was the most devout, that too must remain an open question, although Louis would probably sniff and tell me not to be an idiot: after all, there is no St Henry while there most definitely is a St Louis – and by all accounts deservedly so.

In 1272, Henry III died. He left behind a devoted and extremely capable son and a work of art. Not a bad legacy, for a man who began his days as a frightened child-king and grew up to be a rather deficient ruler. Not bad at all.

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

Presently, Anna is hard at work with The King’s Greatest Enemy, a series set in the 1320s featuring Adam de Guirande, his wife Kit, and their adventures and misfortunes in connection with Roger Mortimer’s rise to power. The first instalment, In the Shadow of the Storm, was published on November 1, 2015.

Anna Belfrage is also the author of the acclaimed  The Graham Saga. Set in 17th century Scotland, Virginia and Maryland, eight books tell 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.

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.