English Ladies in Waiting

by Sandra Byrd

Having close friends is an important part of most women's lives from girlhood through womanhood. These friends might be especially valuable when the woman's position is exalted, public, and potentially treacherous - such friendships take on an even more important role. When Oprah Winfrey started her empire she brought along Gayle King. When Kate Middleton was preparing to become Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge her sister Pippa was her constant companion. And when Anne Boleyn went to court to stay she took her friends, too. Among them was her longtime friend, who would ultimately become her Chief Lady and Mistress of Robes, Meg Wyatt.

Ladies in waiting were companions at church, at cards, at dance, and at hunt. They tended to their mistress when she was ill or anxious and also shared in her joys and pleasures. They did not do menial tasks - there were servants for that - but they did remain in charge of important elements of the Queen's household, for example, her jewelry and wardrobe. They were gatekeepers; during the reign of Elizabeth I small bribes were offered for access to Her Majesty. The Queen was expected to assist her maids of honor in becoming polished and finding a good match; they in turn were loyal, obedient, and ornaments of the court. Married women had more freedom, better rooms, and usually more contact with the Queen.

In her excellent book, Ladies in Waiting, Anne Somerset quotes a lady-in-waiting to Queen Caroline as saying, "Courts are mysterious places ... Intrigues, jealousies, heart-burnings, lies, dissimulations thrive in (court) as mushrooms in a hot-bed." This is exactly the kind of place where one wants to know whom one can trust. Somerset goes on to tell us that, "At a time when virtually every profession was an exclusively masculine preserve, the position of lady-in-waiting to the Queen was almost the only occupation that an upperclass Englishwoman could with propriety pursue." Although direct control was out of their hands, the power of influence, of knowledge, of gossip, and of relationship networks was within the firm grasp of these ladies.

Appointment was not only by personal choice of the King or Queen, but was a political decision as well. Queen Victoria's first stand took place when her new Prime Minister, Robert Peel, meant to replace some of the ladies in her household to reflect the bipartisan English government and keep an equal political balance. According to Maureen Waller in, Sovereign Ladies, Victoria was adamant. "'I cannot give up any of my ladies,' she told him at their second meeting. 'What ma'am!' Peel queried, 'Does Your Majesty mean to retain them all?' 'All,' she replied."

Keeping a political balance was a concern during the Tudor years, too. Ladies from all of the important households were appointed to be among the Queen's ladies, though she held her personal friends in closest confidence. Queen Katherine of Aragon understandably preferred the ladies who had served her for most of her life right up till her death. Queen Anne Boleyn numbered both Wyatt sisters among her closest ladies as well as Nan Zouche. Henry told his sixth wife, Queen Kateryn Parr, that she may, "choose whichever women she liked to pass the time with her in amusing manners or otherwise accompany her for her leisure."

Many Queens, like Elizabeth I regularly surrounded themselves with family members, in her case, often those through her mother's side, hoping that they could trust in their loyalty and perhaps, like all of us, because they simply enjoyed the company of those they loved best.

Sandra Byrd is the author of the series, Ladies in Waiting, three books which tell the stories of Queen Anne Boleyn, Queen Kateryn Parr, and Queen Elizabeth I from the point of view of one of their ladies. To learn more, please visit my website!  

A Brief but Very Satisfactory Wooing

by Anne O'Brien

This is the only true representation we have of the appearance of Philippa of Hainault, taken from her tomb in Westminster Abbey next to that of Edward III. Some five years before her death she gave orders for it to be carved specifcally to show her as she was in advancing age, not as she had been in her youth. She was about 55 years old at this time. It shows her as stout and maternal with broad features. She has no claim to beauty but without doubt Edward loved her.

In July 1326, when the future Edward III was 14 years old, he and his mother Queen Isabella, visited Valenciennes in the state of Hainault on a mission - to find the youthful Edward a bride. They had been sent a description of one of the Hainault daughters, of which there were four: Margaret, Philippa, Jeanne and Isabella.

The description was always thought to have been of Philippa, written by Bishop Stapledon who had visited Hainault twice and reported back. The young girl was described in 1319 as having dark hair, deep-set brown eyes, a large forehead and a large nose, but not snubbed. Her body and limbs were well formed but some of her teeth were discoloured. It does not sound to be the stuff of high romance, but the proposed bride was considered to be an attractive proposition for the young prince. It has to be said that Isabella, in conflict with her husband Edward II, had her eye on a troop of Hainaulter mercenaries, which might have swayed her in her choice of a Hainault bride for her son. A contemporary writer further suggested that Philippa had been chosen because of the quality of her hips for childbearing - not the first or the last time such an attribute was to play a part when the provision of an heir was of paramount importance.

This charming illustration shows Edward at 14 years at his coronation, some months after the visit. He looks very young, but his decision with regard to his future bride suggests that he had a degree of maturity.

Recent research suggests that the description was not in fact Philippa, but more likely her eldest sister Margaret, chiefly because of the correlation of birth dates with Stapledon's visit. In fact Margaret was not available for marriage. By the time that Edward visited Hainault, Margaret was already married to Ludwig of Bavaria.

The decision that Edward and Philippa would marry was made by Isabella and Count William of Hainault, Philippa's father, thus the young people had no say in the matter. Philippa was about 12 years old and the wedding, it was agreed, would happen within the next two years. Edward's visit lasted for only 8 days, at the end of which, when Edward left, Philippa is said to have wept bitterly.

Edward met Philippa again in January 1328 at the gates of York and they were married the next day in York Minster. This began a marriage that lasted for forty years until Philippa's death in 1369. In character, they matched each other perfectly. They enjoyed books - Philippa read romances while Edward enjoyed tales of the heroic feats of King Arthur. They enjoyed hunting, celebrations and extravagant festivities. They also enjoyed their family life, Philippa producing 12 children, Edward being an indulgent and generous father. Edward was the flamboyant one: Philippa had a strong streak of common sense and loyalty to Edward, both of which he needed to put his reign on a firm footing.

So what happened in those eight days in Valenciennes in July 1326 between Edward and Philippa that caused Philippa to weep when her young suitor left? We have no idea. Whatever attraction there was between the two young people, it laid the foundation for one of the most important and successful marriages - and one of the most definitive reigns - in English history.

Anne O'Brien: author of Virgin Widow and Queen Defiant/Devil's Consort
The King's Concubine, a novel of Alice Perrers, is released in May (UK) June(US) 2012

http://www.anneobrienbooks.com/

www.facebook.com/anneobrienbooks

The Reformation and the English People

In an earlier post, I got pretty deep into the weeds in the historiography of the English Reformation, outlining two very different views of religious change under the Tudors. In a nutshell, you had one view which said that the Reformation was a “bottom up” event, driven by popular disgust with the Catholic Church. This view has largely been overtaken by more recent arguments that the Church was in fine health, and if not for the dynastic troubles of the Henry VIII and his descendants, England would have remained Catholic.

What this latter view cannot explain, however, is how the English went from being a Protestant nation to a nation of Protestants. (The phrase is Christopher Haigh’s.) It is one thing to change doctrine, but it is another to change hearts and minds, and there can be little doubt that in the long run the Reformation was a resounding success.  How did this happen?

One answer to this has been offered by Ethan Shagan in his book Popular Politics and the English Reformation. In this book, Shagan traces the myriad ways in which the English people participated in the Reformation and (deliberately or not) helped to advance the Protestant cause. A few examples will illustrate Shagan’s argument.

Over a period of months in 1540-41, the Cistercian abbey at Hailes in Gloucestershire – which had been formally dissolved some months earlier – was pillaged of nearly everything of value: windows, doors, ceiling timbers, lamps, locks, even the abbey’s beehives were taken. What makes this even so interesting is that it was not done by rapacious agents of the Crown, but by English men and women living around the abbey. (Indeed, the government was furious about the theft, for once dissolved, the abbey’s goods belonged to the Crown.)

What makes this event particularly interesting is that Shagan’s analysis demonstrates that this was not a Protestant project. Records show that many of those who participated in the plunder were Catholics who overcame any religious qualms they might have had, and joined their Protestant neighbors in ransacking the abbey.

While one explanation for this is mere hypocrisy, Shagan offers a more sensitive interpretation. In order for a Catholic to tear the lead roof off the chapel or remove a stained-glass window and steal the iron bars supporting it, he would have to believe that the space was no longer sacred, that whatever holiness had once resided in the church had now gone. But who had the power to do such a thing? Who had the authority to say, “That was a church, a place of holiness, but now it is not?” The answer is clear: The Crown.

Thus, when Catholics pillaged the abbey, they implicitly acknowledged that the Crown (and not the Papacy) had the authority to decide what was holy and what was not. That is no small thing, and the destruction of Hales is hardly exceptional: whether it was by participating in the destruction of religious houses, or the enthusiastic pursuit of monastic lands, the English people proved willing participants in the physical dismantling of the Catholic Church.

A similar example of this kind of behavior can be found in disputes between priests and their parishioners. While conflict at the parish level could be over doctrine, more prosaic disputes were far more common. The priest was obliged both to discipline his flock and to collect tithes, and not everyone appreciated these efforts.

While disagreements between priests and parishioners were not new in the sixteenth century, the Reformation provided parishioners with a new weapon against priests, for they now had a potential ally in the government. Parishioners could go to a government official, accuse their priest of religious unorthodoxy, and have the offending minister removed. The Crown, of course, was eager to assert its authority over the clergy, and took every advantage to demonstrate their new-found power. What makes this strategy important was that you did not have to be a Protestant to use it. A devout Catholic saddled with a rapacious or lewd minister could appeal to secular officials (again, not the Papacy but the Crown) for his removal.

What ties these examples together is that in each case, English men and women began to act like Protestants, even if they had no particular affinity to Protestant doctrine. They accepted the power of the government to confiscate monastic lands, to de-sacralize holy sites; in short, to govern the religious life of the nation. They might use the new order to their own advantage by stealing a monastery’s property or by buying its land, and they might even say, “Better that I have it than the heretic on the throne.” But whatever the case, every time a man or woman collaborated with the government to the detriment of the Catholic Church, they helped to shape and advance the Reformation. And once the people began to act like Protestants, the road to getting them to think like Protestants became much clearer.

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Sam Thomas's debut novel The Midwife's Tale: A Mystery will be published in January 2013 by Minotaur/St. Martin's press. He can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and his very own website. 

An Inconvenient Princess

by Nancy Bilyeau

On November 11^th, 1480, a child was baptized in the Palace of Eltham with all solemnity and grandeur, as was fitting for a royal princess of the House of York. The child was named Bridget, after the 14^th century Swedish saint who wrote of personal visions of Christ and founded a religious order.

On baptism day Lady Margaret Beaufort, the Lancastrian heiress who was nonetheless in high standing at court, carried the one-day-old princess, a singular honor. Designated godparents were Bridget’s oldest sister, the 14-year-old Elizabeth, and Bridget’s grandmother, Cecily, duchess of York and mother of King Edward IV. No one could have foreseen how profoundly this trio of women would influence the destiny of Bridget of York.

After the Bishop of Chichester completed the baptism, the party carried the tiny princess to her waiting mother, with “great gifts” borne before her in procession.  Bridget was the tenth and last child of Elizabeth Woodville, now 43 years of age.

History has not been kind to the consort of Edward IV. She is seen as an icily beautiful conniver who ensnared a love-struck king into a mismatch. There is another side to Elizabeth Woodville, that of a pious and diligent queen who produced a bevy of heirs as she did her best to ignore her husband’s continual infidelities. But no one could deny her stubborn devotion to her own family, the Woodvilles, a myopia that cost her the trust of the kingdom’s nobility.

During the first years of Bridget’s life, her parents were much occupied with matchmaking diplomacy for their older children in the courts of Europe. Everyone assumed glittering futures for the two princes and six princesses.

The family’s Christmastide in 1482 awed chroniclers. Like his grandson Henry VIII, the strapping King Edward loved fashion and splendor. He was “clad in a great variety of most costly garments, of quite a different cut to those which had usually been seen hitherto in our kingdom,” said one. The king presented a “distinguished air to beholders, he being a person of most elegant appearance, and remarkable beyond all others for the attractions of his person.” The beauty of the daughters who surrounded him was “surpassing.”

Less than four months later, King Edward caught a chill and died of his illness. Bridget’s golden future darkened. She was now set on a path of troubling obscurity, tinged with rumors of madness and even, far in the future, sexual scandal. 

It all happened very fast. A few weeks after the death of the king, the prince of Wales was seized by Edward’s younger brother, Richard of Gloucester, and Queen Elizabeth fled with the rest of her children to the sanctuary of Westminster. There she was observed “all desolate and dismayed.” The most powerful in the land supported Richard, not Elizabeth. Conditions were not comfortable for the new widow and her children. But she refused to leave the Church-sanctified protection of sanctuary.

Bridget stayed with her mother through this harrowing time. After months of pressure the queen broke down and turned over younger son, Prince Richard, to men who promised he would be kept safe. The two princes disappeared from view shortly after; their fate is one of history’s saddest and most tantalizing  mysteries.

Richard III proclaimed the marriage of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville invalid because of an obscure pre-contract to another English woman. All the children were now illegitimate. On March 1, 1484, Elizabeth Woodville finally emerged with her daughters from sanctuary and appeared to be amenable to the new king. But in reality she was deep in conspiracy with Lady Margaret Beaufort to marry her oldest daughter to Margaret’s son in exile, Henry Tudor.

In 1485 Henry Tudor claimed the throne after winning the battle of Bosworth. He revoked the illegitimacy of the children, including Bridget, now five years old. He married the oldest girl, Elizabeth of York, as he’d promised. 

But the status of the entire York family was uneasy in the infancy of the Tudors. In the court and country, grumblings turned to conspiracy. Pretenders emerged. Rebellions flared.

Rather suddenly, Elizabeth Woodville retired from public life to a suite of rooms in Bermondsey Abbey, a Benedictine order in the London borough of Southwark. Some believe her son-in-law forced the duplicitous queen dowager into monastic life because he thought she was plotting against him, though there is no evidence of it. Said one biographer, "Nineteen years as queen had cost her three sons, a father, and two brothers sacrificed to the court's bloody politics. Elizabeth Woodville now sought solace and peace in service to her God."

But what about Bridget? Did she go with her mother to the abbey--or find a place with her sister the queen or another sibling? No one knows. The next time Bridget appears in historical record is in 1490, when she, too, left the public arena for religious life. But the youngest child of Edward IV was sent to live not at Bermondsey but at Dartford Priory, a Dominican order in Kent. No one knows if this was because of her own piety, her mother’s wish to devote a child to God or the sad fact that Bridget had become an inconvenience to her family.

There were no 10-year-old nuns, not even in the late medieval age. Only adults could take vows. But abbeys accepted boarders and this might have been what happened to Bridget.

There is a theory to Bridget’s rustication. Perhaps an unhappy childhood had unbalanced her. Ponders a historian: “Bridget was excluded because she had mental incapacities and was hidden away to save the royal family any embarrassment.” However, a priory such as Dartford was far from a mental hospital. The sole Dominican convent in England was known for its library and its members’ intellectual achievements. To be considered, a woman must be able to read or be capable of learning.

Another more probable explanation is that Bridget’s grandmother, Cecily of York, had a hand in choosing Dartford. The priory attracted women of aristocratic background, often connected to the House of York. Prioress Joan Scrope, who oversaw Dartford in the 1470s, was the granddaughter of Cecily’s sister, Margaret Neville. Cecily also bequeathed three beautiful devotional books to Bridget, including a tome of the life of Catherine Siena, a Dominican mystic. These seem unlikely gifts to a young woman with “mental incapacities.”

Elizabeth Woodville died in her sleep on June 8, 1492. Her youngest child, 12-year-old Bridget, attended the funeral, a simple one at the express wish of the queen. She was buried beside her beloved husband Edward at Windsor.

The Tudor regime continued to gain strength. Bridget’s sister, the new queen, gave birth to four children who survived childhood. Elizabeth of York quietly did what she could to protect her sisters and promote their interests. She supported Bridget with funds from her own privy purse: “On the 6th July, 1502, 3l. 6s. 8d. were paid by her sister the Queen to the Abbess of Dartford, towards the charges of Lady Bridget there; and in September following, a person was paid for going from Windsor to Dartford to Lady Bridget, with a message from her Majesty.”

At some point Bridget took vows and became a sister of Dartford. One writer says: “Her whole adult life had been dedicated to God, within the walls of the nunnery, where her family had made little or no effort to see her.” However, this is something of a misunderstanding of life in an enclosed order. Visitors, family or otherwise, are rare; the sisters form a sealed-off community dedicated to prayer and intercession for the souls of the dead, with time set aside for study, embroidery, gardening, music and the more menial tasks of the priory.

Elizabeth of York died in childbirth in 1503; her husband died in 1509, to be succeeded by young Prince Henry. It is not known if Henry VIII ever met his Aunt Bridget. Certainly he gave no thought to sparing Dartford Priory in the break from Rome. It was demolished along with all of the other monasteries of England in the late 1530s.

But Bridget did not live through the Dissolution; she did not suffer yet another wrenching change in her fate wrought by others. Sister Bridget of York died of unknown causes in 1517. She was only 37.

A new theory has come to light. One source believes she gave birth to an illegitimate child, a girl named Agnes, in 1498. Pregnancies were obviously very unusual at a priory and the cause of great scandal, though they did happen. There are no confirmed births to any of the nuns of Dartford. Still, this girl supposedly became a ward of the priory, her expenses paid by the queen. She was called Agnes of Eltham, a reference to the palace where Bridget was born. According to Wikipedia (the paragraph was later removed): “Agnes later left the Priory and was married Adam Langstroth, the head of a landed family in Yorkshire (the ancestral home of the Yorks and refuge of York loyalists in the early Tudor period) with 'a considerable dowry.'"

The leading book on the priory, Paul Lee’s “Nunneries, Learning and Spirituality in Late Medieval English Society: The Dominican Priory of Dartford,” contains no mention of a child of Bridget. Instead, the book says: “Sister Agnes Roper, daughter of Henry VIII’s attorney general John Roper of Eltham…was a nun at Dartford from the 1520s until the time of Dissolution.” Were there two women named Agnes, or have historical records become muddled?

I traveled to Dartford while researching my novel “The Crown,” a historical thriller whose heroine is a fictional nun of the priory, Sister Joanna Stafford. On a quiet afternoon I walked north of the town’s center and discovered the site of the ruined convent. All that remains is a large gatehouse built by Henry VIII from the rubble in 1540—now, ironically, used for wedding receptions—and a long, low wall that ran the perimeter of the Dominican sisters’ home. This wall kept Bridget of York in—and the world out.

Did she find peace and fulfillment in her vocation? Perhaps Bridget created a family for herself, to replace the one she lost to death and political strife, the last violent cataclysms of the Wars of the Roses. Or did she rebel against the strict, chaste life of a Dominican sister and take a secret lover and give birth to her own baby?

Six hundred years later, as I lingered by the crumbling medieval wall that now hugs a modern road, there is no way for me to know what happened to Bridget of York, what her life was like. But in that moment, I sensed a lingering sadness.

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Nancy Bilyeau’s debut novel, "The Crown," which takes place at Dartford Priory, is on sale in North America, the United Kingdom, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, Brazil, Portugal and Italy. It was on the shortlist of the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award of the Crime Writers Association. The sequel, "The Chalice,"  was published this year in North America and the United Kingdom. To learn more, go to www.nancy bilyeau.com

Partridges: Interesting Facts and Curious Habits

by Farida Mestek

I thought that the habits of red grouse are cute, but I found those of partridges even cuter :-))

The Partridge of Britain is of two kinds: the one is the gray or common partridge, and the other is sometimes termed the French partridge. Partridges are chiefly found in temperate climates, the extremes of heat and cold being equally unfavourable to them. Partridges pair early in the spring; and once united it is rare that anything but death separates them.

The affection of the partridge for her young is peculiarly strong and lively: she is also greatly assisted in the care of rearing them by her mate; they together lead them in common, call them together, gather for them their suitable food, and assist in procuring it by scratching the ground. They frequently sit close to each other, covering their offspring like the hen.

In this situation they are not easily flushed; but should the pointer come too near, or run in upon them, then great confusion follows. The male first gives the signal of alarm by a peculiar cry of distress, throwing himself at the same moment more immediately in the way of danger, in order to deceive or mislead the enemy; he flies, or rather runs along the ground, hanging his wings, and exhibiting every symptom of debility and weakness, in order to decoy the dog. The female flies off in a contrary direction and to a great distance but returns soon after by secret paths, and she then commonly finds her scattered brood closely squatted among the grass and collecting them with haste, she leads them from the danger before the dog has had time to return from the pursuit.

The female lays from fourteen to eighteen or twenty eggs, generally in the month of May, making her nest (rather a rough one) of dry leaves and grass upon the ground in grass fields, among standing corn, in clover, in furze, and sometimes even at the top of a ditch. From this time to the latter end of June, the process of incubation takes place. In all the stages of this task the male bird takes a certain share. When the brood is hatched, he manifests the greatest solicitude in leading them abroad in search of ants’ eggs, and larva among insects.

This care, however, is left to the female as soon as the birds are able to fly. Her watchfulness still continues, and seems even increased. She is never far from them, but searches for food for them and leads them abroad to their scratching ground, and when they seem tired, she gathers them all around her with great care. When they are about their full size or within a third of her own bulk, they are left in a great measure to shift for themselves.

The young birds run as soon as hatched, frequently encumbered with a part of the shell attached to them. It is not unusual thing also to introduce partridge’s eggs under the common hen, who hatches and rears them as her own: in this case the young birds require to be fed with ants’ eggs, which are their favourite food, and without which it is impossible to bring them up; they likewise eat insects, and, when full grown, all kinds of grain and plants.

Taken from “Shooting” by Robert Blakey
Illustrations by Archibald Thorburn, WikiGallery

Farida Mestek is the author of “Margaret's Rematch”, “A Secret Arrangement” and “Lord Darlington's Fancy” - romantic stories set against the backdrop of Regency England. You can learn more about her books and link to her previous posts on the subject of sport at her blog.

Stourhead ~ Painting with Nature

by M.M. Bennetts

Stourhead. Home to the famous Hoare family--bankers to Catherine of Braganza, Vanbrugh, Lord Byron and Jane Austen.

Along with Wilton and Longleat, it is one of the great houses--surrounded by gardens, of course--of south Wiltshire. And it has been a must-see destination for garden visitors for over two centuries.

In 1717, Henry Hoare, the son of the man who'd founded Hoare's Bank, bought Stourton Manor and promptly had the crumbling half-derelict mediaeval-Tudor pile pulled down. Then, with Colen Campbell (champion of the newest thing in architecture) as his architect, he set about rebuilding a new Palladian villa, which he would call Stourhead, on an adjacent site.

Yet, unlike so many of their contemporaries who sought land-owning respectability and the political power that came with it, the Hoares did not disengage from the business which had made the family rich. Rather the family continued on doing that which they did very well--banking and making money...even as they turned their excess profits into land and Parliamentary influence.

Upon the first Henry Hoare's death in 1725, his son, also called Henry, completed the work of house-building.

And it was he who, until his death in 1785, made the house and garden what it is today. Well-travelled and well-read--he was travelling and/or living on the Continent until 1738. It wasn't until 1741 that he finally made his home at Stourhead.

After the death of his wife, in 1743, and even as he continued work on the house and purchasing paintings and sculptures for it, he began work on the garden--but again, unlike his contemporaries, he didn't hire a master gardener like Capability Brown.

No, Hoare did it himself.

And basing his work on the idealised landscapes he loved by Claude Lorrain, Poussin and especially Gaspar Dughet, Hoare made his garden by painting with nature. "The greens should be ranged together in large masses [he wrote] as the shades are in painting: to contrast the dark masses with the light ones, and to relieve each dark mass itself with little sprinklings of lighter greens here and there."

He had the vast lake that is such a striking feature still today created in 1754 by damming a small stream. (For the trivia seekers among you, the lake is the source of the River Stour--one of five rivers in England so named--which flows through Wiltshire and Dorset, reaching the English Channel at Christchurch. In at least one early map of Dorset it is shown as the River Stower, as it is pronounced to this day. Stourton, on the other hand, is pronounced "Sterton".)

And like many of his class, he sought to illustrate his classical education and erudition through classical references and allusions in his building and decoration of the garden. So he had a Pantheon built that same year--based on the Pantheon in Rome. While the whole trip around the lake--it feels like a good two to three miles up and downhill--was based on the journey of the classical hero, Aeneas.

Writing of the garden in 1755, he said: "Whether at pleasure or business, let us be in earnest, and ever active to be outdone or exceeded by none, that is the way to thrive...What is there in creation [at Stourhead]...those are the fruits of industry and application to business, and show what great things may be done by it, the envy of the indolent, who have no claim to Temples, Grottos, Bridges, Rocks, Exotick Pines and Ice in Summer."

Within a few years, the garden was renowned, not only for Henry Flitcroft's temples around the lake, but for the wide range of plants which had been gathered from around the world and coaxed into growing in this very English landscape.

Indeed, visiting Stourhead became such a late 18th century craze among polite society (similar to visiting Derbyshire and Chatsworth) that Hoare had an hotel built, the Spread Eagle, only a few hundred yards from his gatehouse. Though when Mrs. Libby Powys--a prolific garden visitor and arbiter of garden taste--came for a visit in 1776, she found the inn full...

Over the years, the house was expanded--notably by Henry Hoare's grandson, Richard Colt Hoare (1758-1838) who became a noted county historian and an omnivore of a collector. It was he who had built the two side wings--the one to house his library and the other to house his Picture Gallery. It was he also who employed the younger Chippendale to make furnishings for the two new wings and invited a young unknown watercolourist, JMW Turner, down to Wiltshire to paint.

Today, the house and gardens too have seen many changes. The house was gutted by fire in 1902--though because it was slow to spread, the furnishings and paintings from the ground floor were able to be rescued. And within months, it was being rebuilt.

More distressing still to the then owner, the 6th Baronet, Henry Hugh Hoare, was the death of his only son in 1917, while he was serving in Palestine. Thus by 1938, Hoare had decided to give the house and gardens to the National Trust; and in 1946, he did so.

And thus Stourhead, the great visitor attraction of the eighteenth century, came full circle. The Spread Eagle now serves excellent pub lunches; Hoare's estate workers' cottages now provide holiday lets. And the landscape garden designed by a banker, now moulded timelessly into Wiltshire's landscape, continues to paint with nature as season gives way to season.

The lake at Stourhead depicted by Coplestone Warre Bampfylde in the 1770s.
All other pictures were taken this week.

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M.M. Bennetts is a specialist in early nineteenth-century British and European history, and the author of two historical novels set in the period - May 1812 and Of Honest Fame. Find out more at www.mmbennetts.com.

And what would Jane Austen's hero have packed for the weekend? Travel in the second half of the Eighteenth Century.

by Mike Rendell

Apparently Jane Austen wrote her first novel Love and Freindship (sic) in 1789 when she was 14. It is classed as part of her "Juvenilia" - one of 29 stories bound up into three manuscript books. So, if she had her hero pay a visit for the weekend, what would he have packed in his bags? Well, I can say what Richard Hall would pack for a weekend away, because he noted it in his diary in May 1784. (He was my great, great, great, great-grandfather.)



Some of the entries are hard to decipher but it appears to start off with shirts; first a couple of night shirts, then what appears to be two "neck shirts" including a "new fine plain" one. He packed two Ruffles plus "One fine Holland Ditto" as well as three pairs of silk stockings. One piece of gauze, three pairs worsted (stockings, presumably) went into the case along with a couple of night caps made of "linnen".

"W. shoes" may have referred to walking shoes but I cannot be sure and I have been unable to decipher the following line apart from seeing that it involved "one Blue Ditto and One Silk"

He needed a cloth coat and waistcoat (he called it "cloath") as well as a silk waistcoat and a white dining waistcoat. Silk breeches and five stocks were packed as well as "muffatees". Sadly I have no record showing what these were made from - they were fingerless gloves or wrist bands, often knitted but sometimes made of elasticated strips of leather, or even fancy ones made of peacock feathers. They remained popular for many years - even Beatrice Potter has Old Mrs. Rabbit earning her living by knitting rabbit-wool mittens and muffatees (~ The Tale of Benjamin Bunny).

One knitting site called Dancing with Wolves, states: "in the days before central heating, keeping warm in winter was a major challenge. We think we know about dressing in layers, but most of us don’t have to resort to wearing coats and hats and gloves indoors. But heavy layering was necessary. Working with your hands in mittens is clumsy at best. The solution? Wear muffatees.

"Muffatees are tube-like, fingerless mitts that cover wrist and hand up to the middle of the fingers, usually with an opening along the side for the thumb. The simplest, and possibly earliest form was comprised of the cuff or leg of a worn-out stocking, minus the foot. But in the 18th and 19th centuries, many pairs were sewn from warm cloth, or simply knitted of wool in plain or fancy patterns."

Several sites give patterns - and incidentally Richard often called them wrist bands (pronounced "risbans" according to the one of the entries in his diary, at the same time as remembering that "waistcoat" was pronounced "wescote").



They were thought to work on the basis of keeping the blood warm at the point where the pulse is felt at the wrist, but leaving the fingers completely unfettered.



For longer journeys Richard would then record how many items of luggage were needed. For a trip lasting a fortnight (travelling the 264 miles from Bourton on the Water to Weymouth and Lulworth Castle and back) he needed seven items, all of them charged separately by the coachman. And then as an afterthought Richard showed an eighth item - his steam kettle! This would have gone on board along with the Great Trunk, the blue box. the wainscot (i.e. wood-panelled) box, his green bag, his great coat, his shoes and his wig box.

The actual cost of travel was considerable. Richard shows a coach journey from Bourton to Evesham of 41 miles costing over one pound eleven shillings.



This would have been the equivalent of perhaps a hundred pounds (around 150 dollars) today. This included his dinner at four shillings and ten pence (equivalent to a buying power of perhaps $22 today); the waiter at sixpence (a couple of dollars); the horsler i.e. ostler a shilling (four dollars); and turnpikes one shilling and sixpence (six dollars). The actual coach fare came to a guinea (getting on for a hundred dollars nowadays), and these figures have to be seen in the light of farm labourers having to get by on ten shillings a week!



Why the turnpikes? Their frequency increased as a direct result of the Duke of Cumberland's campaign against the Jacobites in 1745/6 . Moving troops north to meet the rebels was handicapped by the dreadful state of the roads, and in the wake of the Duke's criticism, Parliament encouraged local communities to form Turnpike Trusts. In return for filling in potholes, and re-surfacing and maintaining the roads, each Trust was entitled to levy a toll. Within a couple of decades roads had improved dramatically - to the extent that some coach operators were able to run throughout the night. Think Georgian carriage lamps and think of a coach-and-four thundering through the darkness! The result was a dramatic decrease in journey times. The cost of travel in turn came down, as the operators reduced their overheads by cutting out the need to stay overnight, for instance on the journey between London and Bristol.



Mind you, there was still the risk of being ordered to "stand and deliver" by highwaymen. This picture shows the moment when a coach is hijacked.



But justice was as swift as it was lethal, and here we see the miscreant swinging from the gallows. I love the nonchalant behaviour of the horse-riders as they gossip nearby!

Incidentally all these cut-outs were made by my ancestor Richard Hall. He was born in 1729 and died in 1801 and I suspect that most of the cut-outs were made in the last twenty years of his life, possibly to entertain his young family. I am fortunate enough to have all his journals and papers, from diaries to accounts, and from shopping lists to inventories. These have enabled me to write a social history of England as seen through the eyes of my ancestor.

             

You can buy Mike's book The Journal of a Georgian Gentleman HERE.

Mike also blogs on aspects of Eighteenth Century life (on a more-or-less daily basis) at his blog, Georgian Gentleman.

Time Travelers Alert: The Historical History of the Hysterical Top Hat

by Brenda Hibbs

PART I

Looking diligently back into The History of Fancy Hats, one can deduce a definite chronological divide between “The Time of TriCorns” and “The Time of Top Hats.” This is important information for Time Travelers, since arriving in the “Time of TriCorns” wearing a Top Hat could be disastrous, as could, of course, the opposite! And top hats have such an interestingly dichotomous lineage – both silly and elegant! Silly because, as we shall see, they have gone through amazing extremes of fashion on their way to becoming the dignified head wear familiar to Upper-Crusteans the world over.

Although their invention is generally attributed to haberdasher George Dunnage in 1793 (more on that in Part II), and thought of by most as an English conception, they can actually be seen in French etchings as early as the 1780's. There had been a hat called a “Capotain” in style since the 1590's (can you imagine a style with 200-year staying power?? Time travelers, take note), which was middlin' tall and slightly conical, with a somewhat narrow brim. We in the U.S. tend to think of them as “pilgrim hats;” they were often adorned with a centered buckle on the hatband.

By the late 1700's, however, the style had been refined and was being worn regularly by French “dandies” - gentlemen fashionistas who were principal driver's of French style at the time. They were not then called “top hats,” but, rather “Paris Beau,” or even just “beaver hats,” since beaver was a favorite hat material, as was silk.

Here's where the story starts tending toward the silly... It would be a gross understatement to say that the late 18th century French aristocracy were quite fond of exaggeration when it came to costume. Think dresses 3 times wider than your body, and powdered wigs half again your own height! The same was true of hats, of course, including the top hat. Well- heeled French Ladies would have the style enlarged and softened, then adorned with everything from bird cages to sailing ships, with plenty of large, fluffy ostrich feathers shoved in all over. The men's hats, were, of course, somewhat less overdone, but those caught up in the movement called “Les Incroiables” (the Incredibles) were, for a time, also seen wearing large floppy versions, as seen in the illustration to the right.

So, you may ask, how did this caricature of what would become the ultimate in distinctive menswear morph into the perfect hat for any special occasion? Stay tuned to Part II for tales of women swooning and screaming, courts, coppers and jail, patents and royalty!

PART II

By 1797 the top hat had made its way to England, the Aristocratic French and the well-to-do English perpetually racing to outdo each other as fashion plates. The Dandy movement, too, was just as popular in England, the chief model of which was Mr. George Bryan “Beau” Brummel, a man who was reportedly famous for not wearing a wig (somebody decided to put a tax on wig powder!) and, well... being famous. And although the trend in England did not involve hyperbolic hats or skirts as wide as church doors, it did involve specific modes of style, including men's corsets, to achieve just that perfect air of insouciance and laissez-faire. However popular the style (including the top hat) may have been amongst the gentry, though, it was apparently not equally well received in all locales, as we shall see.

As noted in Part I, hatter George Dunnage of Middlesex County is generally credited with the “invention” of the top hat in 1793. (Of course, we Futurians are now the wiser, knowing as we do that the French were wearing them at least a decade earlier!) What Mr. Dunnage actually did was patent it – a very smart gentleman, indeed. Curiously, about a century later, an article printed in an English publication, “The Hatter's Gazette,” told of turbulent events surrounding the appearance of the “first” top hat in London. One would think that people residing in the heart of London would be somewhat less insular, but here's where the tale gets really silly, just a few years before the hat came to be the height of elegance.

The report was of poor John Hetherington, out for a promenade one day when he inadvertently caused not just a “stir” but nearly a riot in what one would have assumed was a “fashionable” district of London called “The Strand.”

Apparently there were women screaming and fainting. Dogs barking and children crying. Fear, confusion and flying fruit. Horses bolting and crowds surging (there is even a report of one boy's arm being broken as a result)! Quite the ruckus! All just because Mr. Hetherington decided to take a leisurely stroll down the thoroughfare wearing his shiny new Top Hat.

Evidently the constabulary was called in to calm things down and take Mr. Hetherington off to court. There, in lieu of jail, he was fined 500 Pounds (the equivalent of $10,000 today) for a “Breach of the Peace,” with one officer stating, “Hetherington had such a tall and shiny construction on his head that it must have terrified nervous people. The sight of this construction was so overstated that various women fainted, children began to cry and dogs started to bark. One child broke his arm among all the jostling.” Eventually the story made the front page of the London Times, which stated, “Hetherington’s hat points to a significant advance in the transformation of dress. Sooner or later, everyone will accept this headwear. We believe that both the court and the police made a mistake here.” It was also recorded that a law was passed against wearing such hats because they “frightened timid people.”

Of course, despite Mr. Hetherington's escapade, it wasn't long before top hats were all the rage in England.

Of course, the London Times was correct in their prognostication. By mid-nineteenth century the top hat was ubiquitous at every level of English society, from the lowly chimney sweep to the gentry, and had made its way to the U.S. as well. During the first half of the century there was still a bit of exaggeration involved (witness the “stovepipe” hat favored by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln; stovepipe hats could be as tall as 8” or 9”). But in later decades the height slowly descended to the now-standard five to 6.5 inches, while the top of the hat broadened slightly, giving a more “nipped-in” or tailored look.

For a time in the Victorian era, top hats were actually mandatory for certain lines of work, such as doormen and carriage drivers.

Wikipedia state that in some cases it was even “worn daily for formal wear, such as in London at various positions in the Bank of England and City stockbroking, or boys at some public schools.



In 1829, London's Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel initiated a new police force (called “Peelers” at the time) whose uniform consisted of blue tail-coats and top hats, no doubt adding to the perceived “authority” of the headwear. Sir Roberts' variously instituted police forces eventually rendered London's famous “Bobbies,” sans the top hats (but incorporating another awesome hat-type, the pith helmet)!

It's commonly known that by the early 20th century top hats were the very pinnacle of formal attire. High-end hats owned by the wealthy would be scrupulously cared for, including being packed in special cases when traveling by train, or on steamer ships such as the Titanic.

By the 1920's and '30's top hats were generally confined to solemn occasions, such as weddings and funerals, black-tie events, and the world of entertainment. It is still such fun to watch Fred Astaire dance in his top hat and tails!

Unbeknownst to many in our modern age of tablets that aren't pills, mice that don't eat cheese and monitors that aren't lizards, though, top hats are actually seeing somewhat of a resurgence. They are still with us, of course, in their usual guises, worn by prom-goers and pall bearers, carriage drivers and ringmasters.

But they can be seen more and more frequently of late in the newly-growing costume genre called “Steampunk” (also known as “Vernian” or “Neo-Victorian”). These costume hats have really become an art form of their own, coming in all sizes and shapes from exaggerated to mini, highly decorated to elegantly simple, and most commonly seen sporting a pair of goggles!

So, why not surprise your friends by showing up in a top hat at your next formal event? Or, even better, play along with the theme next time you go to an old fashioned fair or reenactment!

By the blog owner's friend, Brenda Hibbs, peddler of Steampunk fashions and accessories. Visit Brenda at Steam Circus. Facebook